Kim Hill Collection
A good interview is equal parts art and science. For more than 30 years, Kim Hill has set the gold standard. She is, by popular acclaim, one of the finest interviewers New Zealand has ever produced. In this collection, we delve into the archives to bring you a selection of her best interviews. These interviews are incisive and insightful; sometimes uproarious, sometimes heartbreaking, always striving to provide for us a moment of discovery and delight.
Episodes
January 9, 2024 • 38 mins
New Zealand and New South Wales are the only places in the world where sex work is fully decriminalised. John Oh, a heterosexual male escort, talks with Kim Hill in 2019 about his life as a sex worker, and how straight men like himself are a "tiny minority" in the sex industry.
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January 8, 2024 • 28 mins
Bill Bailey has been described as Britain's biggest alternative act, regarded there as a national treasure. Best known for his film and television work on ‘Never Mind the Buzzcocks’, ‘QI’, he was also host of the first season of NZ comedy panel show ‘Patriot Brains’. He speaks with Kim Hill in 2023 ahead of his visit to New Zealand for his comedy tour ‘Thoughtifier.’
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January 7, 2024 • 29 mins
Award-winning writer, Dr Emma Espiner (Ngāti Tukorehe, Ngāti Porou) talked to Kim Hill earlier in 2023 about her unconventional upbringing, ditching her recruitment job for med school and how New Zealand can improve healthcare for Māori.
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January 6, 2024 • 46 mins
One of Kim Hill’s most popular interviews in 2020, she chats with Irish entertainer Graham Norton to discuss his novel 'Home Stretch'. Well known as the host of the eponymous BBC chat show, he has become one of the UK’s best loved figures. He’s won 9 BAFTAs, has recently taken over as Britain’s tongue-in-cheek commentator of the 'Eurovision Song Contest' and has become an author, releasing his third novel.
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January 5, 2024 • 31 mins
After a lengthy career in NZ politics, in 2016 Don Brash became the spokesperson for a new lobby group called Hobson's Pledge, a group formed to oppose what Brash has described as Māori favoritism. In 2017, he began weighing into the debate about the use of te reo Māori, saying he was "utterly sick" of the use of the language by RNZ reporters and presenters. He joined Kim hill to explain his perspective.
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January 4, 2024 • 30 mins
In 2020, Kim hill spoke with legendary singer, songwriter, actor, author, and humanitarian - Dolly Parton. She’s happy to be seen as a feminist icon – at the same time she's considering posing for Playboy magazine. The famous American country singer's image might be bottle-blonde with augmented breasts, but underneath Parton says she's utterly authentic.
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January 3, 2024 • 13 mins
Poet and literature critic, Kate Camp talks with Kim Hill about Katherine Mansfield – perhaps New Zealand’s most famous literary daughter. Camp won the NZSA Jessie Mackay Award for Best First Book of Poetry at the 1999 Montana New Zealand Book Awards. She has published a further six collections, establishing her at the vanguard of New Zealand poetry.
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January 2, 2024 • 42 mins
Siân Davey is a photographer with a background in fine art and social policy. Her book ‘Looking for Alice’, which documents the childhood of her daughter with Down Syndrome, was shortlisted for the Aperture Best Book Award at Paris Photo in 2016. Davey joins Kim Hill to discuss her book ‘Martha’ in 2018, which sees her turn the camera again on her adolescent stepdaughter as a response to the girl's question: 'why don't you...
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January 1, 2024 • 31 mins
A Kim Hill interview with Professor Emeritus of Māori Studies at Auckland University, Dr Ranginui Walker, who had recently updated his book 'Ka Whawhai Tonu Mātou: Struggle Without End'. An educator and historian, Dr Walker was a biographer of Sir Apirana Ngata and of the master carver Paki Harrison. He was also a commentator and his columns in the Listener magazine ran for 20 years.
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December 31, 2023 • 32 mins
Canadian author Margaret Atwood's 1985 novel ‘The Handmaid's Tale’ was, in 2017, enjoying a resurgence of interest. The dystopian totalitarian United States that it depicts came to life in a TV series of the same name. It was likened to living under Donald Trump’s presidency. Kim Hill talks with Atwood during this time about how the series had begun to hit a modern nerve, and whether it was good news or bad for the series ...
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December 30, 2023 • 42 mins
Auckland's Centrepoint commune was closed down in 2000, and its founder Bert Potter jailed for drug crimes and sexual abuse of minors. Angie Meiklejohn moved to the commune with her mother and three siblings in the late 1980s when she was 15. She tells Kim Hill, in 2019, that participating in the documentary ‘Angie’ has lifted her shame about what happened there.
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December 29, 2023 • 39 mins
David Simon, creator of ‘The Wire’, regarded by some critics as the best TV series ever made, talked to Kim Hill in 2020 about his television series ‘The Plot Against America’, and perceptions of belonging in his home country, the United States.
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December 28, 2023 • 27 mins
Ella Yelich-O'Connor - better known as Lorde - shot to fame with her hit single ‘’Royals in 2013, which took out a Grammy Award for Song of the Year. In 2017, ahead of the release of her album ‘Melodrama’, she spoke with Kim Hill about feeling free, hearing colours and the oddness of some of her “spicy” fan mail.
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December 27, 2023 • 52 mins
Feminist author and academic Camille Paglia joins Kim to talk about her book released in 2018 - a collection of essays on modern feminism called ‘Free Women, Free Men: Sex, Gender, Feminism’. Paglia is a University Professor of Humanities and Media Studies at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia.
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December 26, 2023 • 37 mins
Kim Hill interviews historian and writer Dr Michael King at the time of the release of his acclaimed book ‘The Penguin History of New Zealand’, in 2003, the year before King's death. The author talks about his optimism for Māori and Pākehā relations. He says one of the reasons he writes books is because "information dissolves prejudice". He offers a theory that you can have two indigenous peoples in one country - that Māori ar...
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December 25, 2023 • 28 mins
Armando Iannucci is a critically-acclaimed British comedy writer and producer. He created the Emmy award winning HBO American political satire ‘Veep’, and the UK series ‘The Thick of It’. In 2017, Iannucci joins Kim Hill to discuss his film The Death of Stalin, which is a comedic take on the events that transpired after the brutal Soviet leader died in 1953.
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December 24, 2023 • 25 mins
Jacqueline Fahey was one of the first New Zealand artists to paint from a woman's perspective, illustrating "the theatricality of domestic life" and, in the 1950s, the crippling isolation of women in the suburban family home. Fahey tells Kim Hill she's always been a rebel. The painter is also a writer of two memoirs and two novels. She lost belief in God aged eight when the nuns at her boarding school said that her pet dogs ha...
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December 23, 2023 • 51 mins
The author of 10 novels, Colm Tóibín speaks with Kim Hill in 2022 about his 2021 Folio Prize winning book ‘The Magician’, a fictionalised account of the life of Thomas Mann. Tóibín’s novels ‘The Blackwater Lightship’ and ‘The Master’ were both shortlisted for the Booker Prize, the latter winning the 2006 International Dublin Literary Award. His 2022 collection of essays ‘A Guest at the Feast’ begins by taking us back to his ch...
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December 22, 2023 • 19 mins
Kim Hill interviews one of New Zealand's most distinguished scientists, the late Sir Paul Callaghan. Sir Paul was educated at Victoria and won a Commonwealth Scholarship to Oxford University. His cutting-edge research in the development of nuclear magnetic resonance methods has significantly impacted medicine, physics, and biology. Not only was he a renowned scientist but a remarkable science communicator helping ordinary peop...
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December 21, 2023 • 26 mins
American musician Sonny Rollins is regarded as one of the all-time great tenor saxophonists. He's been a professional jazz player for more than 60 years, famous for his improvisation. Sonny Rollins spoke with Kim Hill in 2011 when he visited New Zealand for the Wellington Jazz Festival.
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