Wow, what a year this week has been! Just when you think the stink of western madness couldn’t get thicker on the air…it does. But anyone living on this side of 9/11 knows already that it can always get worse; and just in time for Christmas! One of our favourite things to do over the Christmas period is spiral in the family home after declining to join your loved ones at lunch, only to pull back from full dissociative affect by watching a familiar movie. Often this is Batman Returns or Eyes Wide Shut. But this year, why not remember the year that was by spiralling into a classic Rob Reiner, who we are presently mourning after he and his wife were stabbed to death in their LA home. The man gave us Princess Bride, and also This Is Spinal Tap, among others. And much like the inconceivable tragedy on Bondi Beach, Reiner’s death has already been re-framed by a toad-faced politician with a tic-tac-choad. Apparently, his death was an inevitable result of being anti-Trump (or so says Trump). Also on the agenda this week; theorist Byung Chul Han’s notion of terrorism as the ultimate selfie (kms), the offering of comedians versus the offering of musicians, the semiotic wasteland of techno neo-feudalism, the mirage of nationalism, and the unlikely power of Lynn Ramsey’s latest film Die My Love, in which impending climate doom and The Malaise Of The End are gorgeously rendered as one woman’s struggle with post natal depression (serious, it’s lit; and also the most punk thing you’ll see this year).

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It is officially Wicked Season and if you’re not a shrill femme jumping on the Ozian Express and getting your landing strip dyed a pleasing shade of verdigris, are you even ALIVE??!! Arguably, as our producer has pointed out, the true cinema of Wicked is the press tour, and by golly if Cynthia and Ariana haven’t ratcheted up the lezzy-platonic-whatever-it-is thing that they have going on like a director cut sizzle reel of the L Word. Truly, Cynthia Erivo is a force to be reckoned with and any mere mortal would be questioning their sexuality around her. Who doesn’t want to be Cynthia’s little pocket princess right now? Even if Ariana doesn’t get the Oscar, she’s got Erivo’s jacked arms and soothing upper-crust-British accent (worthy consolations). Oh to be the quasi-erotic fixation of a superhuman vocalist with the physical discipline of a Russian gymnast. Also, while the rats opine their lack of a Cynthia-Ariana style romance in their own lives, they discuss how finding a partner at this point is predominantly about just having someone beside you when we inevitably all burn together. You know, a fellow witness for the End of Everything (feasibly fucking imminent LOL). But in their chronic singleton status there’s always the symphonic stylings of Rosalia’s LUX (a cultural landmark akin to Moses’ high camp unveiling of the Ten Commandments on Sinai) to ease the stubborn agony of being alive in 2025. *sigh.

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There’s something rotten in the South Pacific (it’s cops, we’re talking about cops). Recent salacious pedo-adjacent revelations in NZ’s law enforcement aside, there is just SO MUCH to cover here at the end of everything, and the rats feel so honoured to have an avid listenership to join them in bearing witness to the rising seas (and everything that comes with that). Firstly, Auckland’s hornet problem, made more terrifying by the fact that they’re squirters (relatable, but ya know; time and place). Secondly, Johanna revisits her experiences as a young aryan-looking dressage aspirant at Horse Camp, a REAL THING THAT HAPPENED. While tumbling down nostalgia lanes, Johanna also tours us through the good Welly times of a local dairy-cum-party-hotspot, of which it’s reasonable to say Auckland has its own variations (not without a meth element though, which just isn’t everyone’s cup of tea). Second-to-lastly, we explore the recently disused Anthropocene moniker, and elect Cthuluhcene as a possible replacement, even though it feasibly all ends the same (so who tf cares; like, everyone dead etcetera). And last but not least, MUSICALS! Believe it or not Sam only saw Cabaret for the first time THIS YEAR, and is aghast at his own cultural lethargy. Turns out Bob Fosse is something of a genius. Get amongst!

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Get ready non-paying listeners (cough; no shade) for a very special and hopefully consistent-hereafter Agony Aunt section in which we answer your queries qualms and primal screams. Well, we do our best. As we see you have; your responses to our calls for willing plaintiffs has been voluminous and shrill (a compliment). And how can we blame you—life feels like a succession of vertigo-inducing obstacles in this particularly fraught historical moment. Obstacles the rats give a brief but strangely comprehensive tour of, from the national blight of Judith Collins, to the tragic regional loss of Bacios, one of Whangarei’s long standing (and infamous) night clubs where both rats have had formative experiences, on par with how golden age celebs of the seventies wistfully talk about Studio 54 (minus the A class drugs and human trafficking . . . we assume). A stretch sure. But not a place without its charms.

Like . . . the enduring appeal of the Great Unwashed, a type of bush-man known only to rural areas that city folk CANNOT comprehend. And as anyone that is viscerally repulsed by class violence will know, once you get a whiff of His forever-pheromones (soap and hydrochloric resistant) you’re under His spell, and you’re either ending the night in the back of his ute, or drinking enough whiskey you can give him a languid gobby in Bacio toilets without thinking about why the floor is so sticky. Sigh—truly the end of an era. Also, Azealia Banks has turned her fetid coat on Isreal yet again, in a string of tweets nearly identical to the last time she played in Tel Aviv in 2018. First she loves it, then she hates it. We’re presuming not because her common humanity rightly opposed genocide, but because the venue didn’t provide her with the kind of drugs that make playing in an apartheid state possible. Silly bitch

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This week, Melbourne vs Auckland. Which is better? Just kidding; it;’s obviously Melbourne. And yet the rats, being measured journalists, provide a balanced review of both locales, two places that are so different but also so similar; like their resemblance in local cuisine (meth). Or the casual and continued usurpation of the indigenous! With that in mind Johanna is settling in well, having just sourced an apartment in the scabies-riddled hipster paradise of Fitzroy; rivalled in plaid and stick-n-pokes only by neighbouring digital nomad hot spot Brunswick.

Could this be the beginning of a dynamic cultural exchange between Australia and New Zealand, the likes of which we haven’t seen since Gallipoli? Maybe. Also on the agenda—as always—the inevitable decline of the west, whether or not nazis deserve sex, the unbearable lightness of Lime bikes, small dogs, dank matter, the conspicuous collapse of Grindr every time more than one Republican enters a room, the timeless allure of femboys, the scheduled war between China and the US, how Sam’s been helping Johanna’s dad out of remission, human faeces, a waning interest in whether we live or die, and the on going beef between Nadia Lim and Missy Elliot.

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well well well the rats are back and despite their hiatus they are NOT feeling rested. If anything their personal lives reflect the disarray of global politics. Though if they had to pick a favourite cluster fuck from the last week, it would definitely be the Nepalese uprising of angry zoomers literally burning their government to the ground for kicking them off twitter. In that vein, the rats would like to formally apologise for ANYTHING they have ever said about Gen Z, whose vacuous phone addiction and digital nativism might actually have an unanticipated radical potential (!!!). That said, the rats can’t help but feel disaffected about Charlie Kirk. Not the death of the guy (literally fuck him); more how his death will inevitably be spun into an unhinged attack on the dreaded left, despite the fact that kirk’s shooter was a friggin Groyper (an alt right douche). As Johanna’s dad conveniently points out while overhearing our less than informed historical speculations, it’s not dissimilar from the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, in which biased spin about who did what and why triggered the First World War, which arguably engendered the second, which arguably put the tinders of a third world war in cold but living storage (and here we are). So yeah, pessimism is rife this week. But at least the Palestine march in Auckland had a hearteningly massive turnout; even if our government is too dickless to take a stance. In the rats humble opinion the world is currently over abundant with ugly middled aged men gaming public institutions to benefit private interests. How’s about we make like Nepal’s Gen Z and thin the crowd.

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What a time to be alive! The states are stating, the gulags are gulaging, and the labubu continues to rise as a new synthetic super power with total fractal. Domination of the collective human psyche in its sights. But what of toy-crazes of yesteryear? Such as, the Sea Monkey. Revisiting Johanna’s private shame this week, we reminisce about an earlier episode in which she confesses (is found out, actually) to having thought the eponymous sea monkeys had the simian form of their artful marketing. Mandela Effect? No; psychosis. Or, the luminous slippage between expectation and reality which we’re all prey to within these mortal coils and their roving dreaming, which seems hell bent on unknitting the limits of the corporeal with bigger bolder more destructive dreaming. Or whatever.

Also this week, were stuck on Saveloy Squids on both sides of the pay wall, for which the rats are extremely sorry (‘why is the precious meat brown?’). Like the labubu and asbestos, Saveloy Squids are a novel craze destined to ravage a significant cross section of the population with stealth carcinogens, predictably designed to thin the crowd before anybody even notices what’s going on. Forget the greys; squids are the REAL threat. The rats also discuss the perennial conditioning of women to be nice to men (vomit sound) and a Titanic-sinking conspiracy that’s as well researched as the government budget (cough).

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What a world we’re living in! They say god is dead but the rats know our One True Lord and Saviour is convenience, a modus operandi that’s convenient to some and kind of a bum deal to others depending on which side your bread’s buttered on; (Global) North or South. And so, the rats spend some time swapping misadventures on Uber Pool that’s equal parts sympathetic to the plight of neo slavery (which our gig-economy indelibly is), while opining the acute angles of the inescapable human zoo we all find ourselves in (like with everything there are pros and cons). For example, what do you do when your uber driver’s on the tail end of a 12 hr shift and is clearly showing symptoms of a potentially homicidal nervous breakdown? Not much tbh because you’re not behind the wheel, so if he decides to take a sharp and final left off Grafton Bridge there’s not really much you can do about it; the fact he’s letting you vape in the car should take the edge off though (true story).

Also also, join the rats in their mutual salivation as everyone’s favourite (maybe guilty) pleasure Florence and the Machine gears up for another bombastically operatic release. We don’t know about you but the rats enjoy Flo’s self described ‘incorrigible maximalism’ as a salve to an otherwise risk averse media landscape that’s all petit blondes and fourteen carat labubus (snore). Also; are you team Ethel or team Lana? Also also; does it matter which pale-skinned pop star you’re allegiant to when we’re cusping societal collapse? You bet it does! Inevitably, our pop preferences will dictate which cannibal urban gangs we self-organise into once the beehive goes radio silent and we’re fighting nazis for bags of pestilence riddled flour in the streets. I know which swamp queen I’m rooting for.

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Guests! Give a very warm welcome to our very special guests actor Matt Whelan and writer/actor Sophie Henderson, two of NZ’s finest film and television talents whose recent film Workmates just premiered at the NZIFF to acclaim and accolades and the kind of national pride our government should be aspiring to, rather than allying itself closer to a genocidal behemoth by letting them build an intelligence office in Wellington (kms). But Matt and Sophie aren’t just polymaths of screen and stage; they’re also humans, with stories and foibles like the rest of us. So join us for a magical hour of relatable truth saying (“we’re just like you”) by two kiwi treasures as they beguile us with anecdotes and BTS goodies like you won’t get anywhere else. Specifically, how their experiences with locally beloved venue Basement shaped their film’s story of resilience in the arts during austerity (and if that sounds familiar, it’s because we’re living it). Also featured; the unbearable lightness of platonic entanglements, the humid weight of modesty garments then filming sex scenes, and meeting a playboy bunny.

It’s an exclusive glimpse behind the curtain and you’re very welcome (RNZ could never).

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Like they’ve never done before (cough) the rats talk about democracy’s failings and how its formal and informal elements need to be kept distinct enough we have a functioning society, which anyone with a semi-functioning only marginally divergent brain can see we currently don’t have (or worse, are in the agony stages of losing permanently; use it or lose it!). but on a lighter note . . . eugenics! Sydney Sweeney’s been accused of pimping herself out to an optics of white supremacy, and while the rats are concerned they are also NOT concerned because people are literally dying and an object scientists thought was an asteroid might actually be hostile aliens and will be here by Xmas. It’s kinda hard to no where one’s priorities should be in such trying times. If Auckland had more options these rats might be prioritising getting laid. But unfortunately the wider population doesn’t share their enthusiasm for the orgy at the end of the world, and maybe won’t until it’s too late and we’re all getting lethally probed on a Y2K mothership with Giger-nightmares, no lube. Also on a lusciously varied agenda this week; when road rage is xenophobia, body horror, the alluringly unyielding embrace of a reformer pilates machine, and the lost art of disappearing completely!

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The clubs that raised us! The rats get nostalgic about a time when all venues were open til six AM, where supper clubs could serve you a pre-work night cap at eight, and the shame flowed as thick and hot as mid morning vodka red bulls. It’s a time that seems comparatively free and footloose, where the youths of today wouldn’t hit the club without checking their weekly schedule for important obligations that would otherwise be disrupted by a bender—whereas millennials saw the chic and beauty in premature death, a romantic strain now dead and gone (replaced by mogging mewing looks-maxing and biohacking; yuck!). Also also, LOVE IS BULLSHIT, is something the rats are spilt on—there’s the need for validation and the need for dick, and never the twain shall meet, despite society’s best but misplaced efforts. Was romantic coupling invented by a society geared towards maximal individual productivity and consumerism? Maybe. Finally pidgeons. Johanna has a fantastic fear of our urban companions, a hardy species that, despite raising the eco-diversity of any given city, are also fetid carriers of disease and ill repute. Cute though. Anyway, hear her talk about how they ruin her otherwise pristine cafe experience in Point Chev.

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Okay, so the Katy Perry abuse might’ve crossed over into primal woman-hate; on a local scale we mean. Like, it’s overkill at this point. In this being the rats dissect where the admittedly gleeful train of celebrity hate might accidentally be a mouthpiece for systemic misogyny; or worse, a cultural loathing of brunettes. And what vivisection of the bittersweet phenom known as Katy Perry would be complete without a full chronology of her famous Taylor Swift beef (because, you know, we’re in the mood for some dated trivia). Slightly less dated is Ireland, as both place and concept. They’re on the rats fevered minds this week for two reasons; one, their fabulous Occupied Territories Bill which has Washington shitting itself (rightly so); and two, known bad person Conor McGregor (still hot though) has been named and shamed by Azealia Banks after misguidedly sending her the world’s loudest BPD-sufferer his nudes (*mouth waters). Yes he’s a terrible guy but I bet his rabid psychosis and jacked physique has a nice pink Ireland-reared torpedo to boot; the only missile the British Empire has ever let Ireland have, ironically (and tragically). Press play for all this and more.

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For some reason, or perhaps because a show about surviving late-stage capitalism with your friends and sanity intact is relevant now, the rats revisit some ancient Buffy lore. Or perhaps it’s because a show about the undead resonates with recent national conversations (in actual mainstream media) about resurrecting the moa, or the kiwi when it’s finally extinct; because apparently conservation is redundant when we can just clone back whatever species we accidentally annihilate. It’s important to note that Buffy is not a show about non-violence; rather, it’s about building community and then weaponising that community against the evils of the corporate state (read; the undead). In that vein, maybe we should all be dying our hair blonde and sharpening our stakes because Doctor Hammond’s got his ostrich eggs and syringes ready and the shit’s about to hit the genetically re-engineered fan lol. Also; if this were Dune Northland is Arrakis and Wellington is Caladan (weather wise).

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Twinks; what even are they? This is just one of many hard hitting questions the rats tackle in this week’s free to air (fuckin freeloaders) episode. They don’t come to a conclusion mostly because doing so is grossly homophobic (or do they?). Also on the agenda is whether or not David Seymour should unalive himself which, as always, the rats are pretty strongly in favour of, if only because he represents reddit adjacent vitriol which our spineless PM and the National party broadly has allowed to enter the mainstream chat with the same negligence as America (and we all know how that’s going).

All things considered it’s a rough and tumble world out there at the moment, which is something most women know already. Which is why both rats feel that the quote unquote ‘nice woman’ is not aspirational in this or any climate. I mean, if women have been forced to adopt malicious strategies towards survival because it’s a man’s world and so often global games of dick measuring means mushroom clouds and mass graves, then who can blame the ‘difficult woman’ for being so. Not only is She completely understandable; the rats find her enviable, and seek her out like the Virgin Mary’s older cooler sister who would never lie about a ‘divine pregnancy’ because she’s already nipped the problem in the bud (she knows people). A mixed bag this week.

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SORRY FOLKS - this ep is coming out about a week late due to a technical error

If the rising seas don’t vanish Venice then surely Jeff Bezos’ repugnantly lavish wedding and its vile attendees will sink it faster than nineties-sized Oprah on a boogie board. So hypothesise the rats. Also, Lorde’s Virgin is finally here and so the rats share their initial impressions, and relief that Ella’s stepped away from NZ-tourism adjacent guitar pop and given us something ornate and vaguely menacing, like she’s oh so good at. Also also, the importance of European snobbery comes up as a threshold for good taste globally; naturally, Sabine makes a guest appearance and looks down her very long very French nose at the conspicuous consumption of the mega rich and poo-poos the gauche-ness of extreme wealth, as we all should. In fact, like French peasants and the majority of folk traditions that have come before, we should all probably seek out the embattled grimoires of feudalisms past and hire demon agents to topple the modern-day castles; it’s the purpose witchcraft has served in the past, and the rats concur that vintage is the new Y2k. An infernal curse to give anyone earning over a hundred mil a sentient face-goiter? Tick.

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