While legends of transplant surgery date back as far as the second Century, the reality of transferring organs from one body to another is less than 50 years old. We follow a father and daughter kidney donor and recipient, and examine the strange spiritual relationship organ recipients have with the deceased donors to whom they […]...
From religious ceremony to myths and horror movies, blood is the most potent of human symbols. Whether it is being sought by a hungry vampire or used in a modern hospital, blood flows in a rich red torrent through both medical and mythical history. We travel back in time to examine the history of this […]...
Medical stories are as old as humankind, and there have been few happy endings. More often than not, the cure was just as likely to kill the patient as the disease....
The human brain may be the most complex object in the universe and scientists are only just beginning to understand how it works and why it malfunctions. We examine the strange and terrible history of mental illness, from the first surgical procedure to ‘release demons’ to modern remedies such as Prozac, the wonder drug for […]...
Pregnancy and childbirth make up an area of medicine that has suffered greatly from social, medical, religious and historical whims and misconceptions. This episode takes viewers on a journey through medical history from the ancient Egyptians, who linked fertility with the flooding of the Nile, to the dark ages when midwives were seen as witches […]...
You are more likely to be killed by an infection than any other disease and of all the people in the history of the world who have died of anything; half were killed by infections carried by mosquitoes. We examine the long and bitter struggle for understanding that ultimately led to the development of modern […]...
Magazine
Issue 200
Jul - Aug 2026
Solar power
Horses of Huntly
Forget me not
Whaling
Red admirals
The blast of the harpoon may have given way to the click of the camera, but whales are still the cornerstone of commerce—and the subject of many a decorative mural—in the north Canterbury town of Kaikoura. In little more than a decade, marine ecotourism has transformed a coastal backwater into an international travel hotspot....
Whanganui is Aotearoa’s third-longest river. It begins on Mount Tongariro and flows 290 kilometres to the Tasman Sea, joined by thousands of small tributaries along the way. Whanganui iwi have long sought legal recognition of their relationship with the river. They petitioned Parliament in the 1870s for protection of their awa. From the 1880s, the […]...
The track goes over Mt Tamahunga (437 metres) the highest accessible summit between Auckland and Whangarei. It’s named for Te Kiri, a Ngati Wai chief who in 1864 rescued 180 Waikato prisoners from Governor George Grey’s nearby Kawau Island estate and brought them here, beyond reach of the British military. The Government demanded that the […]...
Old snow can tell us a lot about the past. As snowflakes fall, they collect whatever particles are in the atmosphere at the time—dust, volcanic ash, smoke, pollen. Then, as the snow accumulates and turns to ice, it freezes with it a record of what the weather was like dozens, even hundreds, of years ago. […]...
How was it that a tiny colony far from the centres of political power and influence became the first self-governing country in the world to grant its women the vote?...
Two degrees. It’s not much. But many of New Zealand’s native species occupy precarious ecological perches under siege from the various armies of habitat destruction, invasive species and human exploitation. Over the next century, the climate will change 20 times more rapidly than in any other period in history, leaving them further threatened and—like rockhopper […]...
