Saturday Morning with Jack Tame

Kevin Milne was recently sent a parking infringement notice from Rotorua.  Only thing is, Kevin lives in Wellington, and hadn’t been anywhere near Rotorua at the time of the supposed crime.  So is it a scam? A mistake? Either way, he’s decided not to pay for it.   LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Fourth Option by Jack Carr   Disillusioned by the government and institutions he dedicated his life to serving, former Navy SEAL and CIA ground branch operative Chris Walker is about to end his life when he receives a call that saves it. The wife of a teammate he lost in Afghanistan has now lost her son to the opioid crisis and needs Walker’s help. Thrust into a conspiracy that goes deeper than he ever imagined, Walker must go up against the system and the very Constitution he once swore an oath to support and defend in order to find justice for his friend’s widow.  With ambitious FBI agent Jarrett Stanton on his tail, Walker—accompanied by his loyal Belgian Malinois and using his off-the-grid VW pop-up camper filled with a hidden cache of weapons—takes the law into his own hands, exposing corruption and issuing a long-forgotten brand of lethal outlaw justice.     Stakes by Noelle McCarthy   You have to invite him in. You have to want the vampire’s badness in the house with you.  Growing up in Catholic Ireland, Noelle McCarthy is captivated by Bram Stoker’s Dracula. The vampire is a risk-free fantasy, a suave alternative to the fraught realities of desire.  Twenty years later, exhausted by her unruly appetites, Noelle returns to Dracula, reckoning with her own history and a changing world: generation-spanning shame and trauma given voice by #Metoo and the horrors emerging from Irish soil.  More than a century after readers were first mesmerised by Dracula, Stakes transposes its electric themes of transgression, intoxication and sexual danger onto Noelle’s own life, asking; what's the difference between an inheritance and a curse?  A funny, visceral follow-up to the acclaimed Grand, Stakes celebrates the power of a gothic horror to help you face the parts of life that scare you most.    LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the Saturday Morning with Jack Tame Full Show Podcast for Saturday June 20 2026, legendary children's entertainer Suzy Cato joins us in the studio to talk about her new series of ‘You and Me!’ Plus, we have a little birthday surprise for her.  Jack is immersed in the thrills of the FIFA World Cup...  Kevin Milne finds out live on air that he may have been scammed, and Francesca Rudkin reviews some brilliant films from the Doc Edge Festival.  Also, Sublime have dropped a brand new, 21 track album! Does it stack up to the originals? Chris Schulz shares his thoughts. Get the Saturday Morning with Jack Tame Full Show Podcast every Saturday on iHeartRadio, or wherever you get your podcasts. LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hair, fur, wool, nails, and skin. This doesn’t sound too bad when we think of stuff lying on the floor. It’s the part of decomposition; a job that many invertebrates get in to when an animal dies.   Keratin is really hard to digest – mammals and birds can’t do that (cat’s fur-balls, owls ejected pellets, etc). Some moths are therefore valued members of the RECYCLING SQUAD.   All I really need to do is mention “CARPET BEETLES”.  This appears to be the most common carpet destroyer in Aotearoa; probably because our houses are a lot more “open” than in Europe, for instance.   Less insulation (especially in older homes), more moisture inside, not well sealed, wooden structures, and draughty windows   We also have this habit of living outside a lot: leaving windows and doors open in summertime, so that there is an unlimited indoor-outdoor flow.   Carpet beetles are quite different from clothes moths – different family of insects. Also, a different life cycle and different tactic of chewing on carpet.   The adult beetles (those with the ability to reproduce) have a real beetle “look” – a little bit like miniature ladybird beetles: the membranous flight wings are hidden under some sturdy forewings.  They are actually quite beautiful little beetles: patterned in browny-orange, white, and black; and only a couple of millimetres in size.   But these beetles aren’t really your problem at all! In fact, they are pretty useful pollinators in your garden.   In mid-summer you can find dozens of them in your marigolds, yarrow, and even Pohutukawa flowers; I bet you that the vast majority of New Zealanders rarely notice them there!   Later in summer when the beetles have mated, they fly into your home through the open door or window and lay their eggs in your woollen carpet.   larvae will start gnawing at the keratin (wool), especially on the underside of the carpet backing, so that the woollen strands become loose and are easily sucked up the vacuum cleaner   They look a little like “hairy maggots”, and are pretty resilient down there. Their habitat of choice is birds' nests, lined with feathers and fur, as well as carcasses of dead rodents, hedgehogs, and birds   Breaking down the keratin is their gig! The trick is simple: all you need is a clever enzyme that chops the protein into bits, and you will have earned your reputation as one of the few insects that are literally able to split hairs.   As is the case with clothes moths, control can be achieved with some residual insecticides – active ingredients such as permethrin and other synthetic pyrethroids will do the job well (Safeworx aerosol cans).  It works well and is residual for 6 to 8 weeks, as long as the substrate treated is not exposed to direct sunlight.  LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The shoe company Allbirds is now an AI company   Talk about a bizarre turn of events. It sold its shoe business for $43 million, but instead of shutting down like you'd think a company would do when its core business is sold, it instead turned into an AI company.   You see, the fact it's already listed on the stock exchange makes it valuable as a fast-forward through a lot of hoops and regulation. So Allbirds is now Smartbird, and raised $100 million on the stock market. It just got a CEO and needs to figure out what's next. No employees. No real plan apart from going after the AI infrastructure market.      We have robot vacuum cleaners... what about a robotic self-driving toilet?    It can come to you! This was unveiled at an expo for elderly and assisted care. It literally looks like a toilet you're used to seeing, but it has wheels in the bottom to drive to you using a suite of lidar and ultrasonic sensors.   Just like your robot vacuum, it learns your house and how to navigate it. It has a built-in bidet, self-cleans the bowl and even goes back to the bathroom to empty its tank into the real toilet with a robotic arm. Or you can install a plumbing connected docking station. It’s expected to sell for around $4500 USD if/when it passes regulatory checks.    LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Shoulder chops make for an economical lamb meal and by slow cooking them you get tender, succulent meat every time and the lemons and capers provide a great foil for any fattiness in the lamb.   Serves 4     Ingredients   4-6 lamb shoulder chops   ½ cup white wine   ½ cup stock or water   1 tsp dried oregano   ½ tsp season salt and grind of pepper   1 lemon, skin on, thinly sliced   1 bunch baby carrots, washed   6-8 garlic cloves   2 tbsps. capers     Method  Preheat oven to 170C.   Lay the chops flat in a roasting dish. Add wine and stock (or water).   Season with oregano, salt and pepper, then scatter over lemons slices and garlic cloves. Add carrots in one corner of the dish.   Cover tightly with foil and bake for one and half hours.   Remove the foil, scatter over capers and cook for a further 20-30 minutes, uncovered, until the lamb is nicely browned and falling from the bones.   Before serving, tilt the dish and skim the fat, leaving only the cooking juices to drizzle over meat.   Serve the lamb with either mashed potatoes or pumpkin and/or boiled peas.     Nici’s Note:   I like to cook fatty meat dishes ahead of time, then cool it down and skim the excess layer of solidified fat off before reheating and eating – it’s a little bit healthier and less heavy this way.    LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Tell you what, there aren’t many times in sport I find myself supporting an Australian team. By not many I mean basically none – usually, I’d be delighted to see them getting pumped. The Football World Cup is maybe the only the only occasion I feel differently because it’s about the only time the Aussies feel like genuine underdogs. They’ve had a tough few hours, this morning. The underdog dynamic is one of the unique joys of a Football World Cup. Take Cabo Verde. I’d guess most people wouldn’t have the faintest idea where to start trying to find them on a map, and yet they held Spain, the talent-stacked and one of the obvious favourites for the title, to a nil-all draw. Who would’ve thought scoring no goals could be so exciting?! Another unique joy I love about the World Cup —and I know this sounds bad— is the advertising. You just get biggest brands in the world, with the biggest creative budgets, combining with the biggest icons in the sport. And because football is so simple, it lends itself to really clever little concepts. Take McDonalds. I know, I know, I know... But they posted an ad the other day designed for the TikTok generation – vertical video, designed for phones. I don’t even think it’s on TV. But it’s honestly genius in its simplicity. Lamine Yamal, the Spanish wunderkind, just 18-years-old and one of the biggest names in world sport, sets up a phone camera in front of a McDonalds, the golden arches on a pole behind him. Ronaldinho, the Brazilian icon steps into shot. Both of them are in casual clothes. You’d swear they’d just bumped into each other on the street. They toss up a football and each casually juggle it a few times. The shot never changes. It looks exactly like it would look if you or I leaned our phones against the curb and recorded it. After a few seconds, Yamal kicks the ball high and it juuuuust misses the McDonalds golden arches. Another ball immediately rolls into shot, they each juggle it again, and Ronaldinho kicks it up, perfectly slotting the ball through the little gap in the McDonalds ‘M’. They laugh, and that’s it.  No words. No meals. No biting cheeseburgers. So simple. So shareable. And from a creative perspective, honestly, so clever. The third thing I love about Football World Cups —aside from the football— are the fans. I just don’t think there is another sporting contest where you have huge, organised groups of fans coming from all corners of the planet. The Olympics might attract people from all over, but they’re not organised in the same way. And I love how different nations have their own quirks and traditions. The Scottish fans have completely taken over Boston. An estimated 20,000 travelled to the city for their teams matches against Haiti and Morocco. The US media is awash with stories about the Scottish fans literally drinking bars dry around the city. After their first World Cup win in 36 years, they marched across the city, led by pipers, and completely took over Fenway Park for the Boston Red Sox. It was so funny watching it... American baseball fans outnumbered in a stadium by Scots in kilts, singing Flower of Scotland. But then add to that the fans from the Democratic Republic of Congo. Most of them were singing and dancing in the stands, but they have a tradition where one man stands as a perfect statue for all of his team’s game. He commemorates his country’s first Prime Minister, Patrice Lumumba, the man who helped lead Congo to independence from Belgium. He wears beautiful bright clothes and amidst the frenzy of the activity around him, even when his team scores, he stands above the masses, perfect and almost unsettlingly still for the whole game. Still, how you could go past the Japanese? I’m not sure there’s a greater act of soft power in all of world sport than having fans who carefully collect all of the rubbish and clean up the grandstands at the end of every game. For all of the controversy and all of the appalling grift, there can be no denying it is the global game. I haven’t even mentioned the football. But I for one am utterly absorbed. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.