Latest news with #MadeleineChapman
RNZ News
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- RNZ News
Fast Favourites: The Spinoff editor Madeleine Chapman
Madeleine Chapman will be stepping down from her role as editor of news and culture website The Spinoff later this year. Chapman has been in the position for four years and first started at the website in 2016 as an intern. Of Samoan, Tuvaluan and Chinese descent, Chapman also co-wrote basketballer Steven Adams' autobiography and in 2019, wrote a biography of then-prime minister Jacinda Ardern, A New Kind of Leader . Madeleine Chapman joins Culture 101 for Fast Favourites, sharing her cultural recommendations.
The Spinoff
5 days ago
- Lifestyle
- The Spinoff
The Weekend: If I wrote a self-help book…
Madeleine Chapman reflects on the week that was. I'll be honest, it's 3.50pm on Friday and I have no meaningful thoughts to share on the state of the world because it is sunny in winter and that seems to throw everything off (in the best way). So instead, since we had a great and thoughtful essay on self-help books this week, and the deputy prime minister called 100,000 New Zealanders 'dropkicks', here are five things that I would put in a self-help book to improve your life. 1. Wear a singlet Yes it will make you feel like a five-year-old but if you are wearing a shirt or sweater and it's freezing, wear a singlet! A simple woollen white singlet can be the difference between feeling cosy and feeling a constant chill. I didn't think it would work so well after years of neglect but turns out even a singlet under a t-shirt will keep you warm. 2. Eat a kransky Sorry to the vegetarians but a debased single kransky from the local bakery on a cold day is truly one of life's greatest pleasures. It's kind of weird to order and weirder to eat but absolutely worth it. 3. Learn how to fold a fitted sheet This is extremely non-essential but learning how to fold a fitted sheet has huge morale payoff for what is a very basic set of movements. Add this tiny skill to boost your sense of self-worth every time you wash your sheets. 4. Realise you are in fact an elderly person in your 30s Reading those first three off-the-cuff items has confirmed once and for all that I am, and have always been, a 65-year-old man. Everyone has a true age and once you know yours it can set you free. How old are you, really? 5. Write a card A genuine sentiment in a handwritten card will outlive every trend. Stuck for what to get someone? Start with a card. A handwritten card alongside literally anything is a good gift. And with everyone existing in a world of typed text, what a joy to see someone's personality in their handwriting. Anyway, that's my self-help book and now it's time for my afternoon nap. The stories Spinoff readers spent the most time with this week A rare and compelling example of Main Character syndrome lasting a whole week. Feedback of the week On Help Me Hera: There aren't enough hours in the day 'The world lost one Ozzy this week; Shelley wrote about another: 'Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair.' We are all just ripples and the pond is small.' 'Great commentary here. Several years ago I developed a unit of work for the Level 3 English writing portfolio. It unpacked the conventions, students engaged with self-help texts, then wrote their own. It was hugely successful in a few ways. 1. It reiterated the tried and tested formula that drives all self-help. 2. Students developed a critical understanding of the formulaic nature of self-help. 3. They wrote fantastic texts that spoke to their own experience.. from 'How to be Slick and pick up chicks' to 'Living with a bi-polar parent'. And for me, I still enjoy the occasional SH book (Oliver Burkeman in particular), but I approach the genre with healthy scepticism. They have their place, and surely human nature is grounded in seeking continuous improvement? '
The Spinoff
11-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Spinoff
The Weekend: I can't stop thinking about this ad
Madeleine Chapman reflects on the week that was. It's either a sign I'm scraping the bottom of the vibes barrel or a sign that I'm choosing to find joy in unexpected places but last weekend I found myself utterly captivated, impressed and moved(?!) by a billboard. To be clear, I have high standards for creative consumerism. I hate that we all just have to accept we'll be surrounded by ads all the time, and therefore feel personally insulted when it feels like that privilege – the privilege corporations have in demanding our attention – is taken for granted. When I see a grotesque and lazy Grimace ad, I will complain about it. Yesterday I saw someone opt, at the last minute, to wait for another bus because their one had the garish police wrap on it. I applauded that stranger. Nothing signals a recession like advertising agencies phoning it in or pitching (likely out of necessity) the most low-effort campaigns imaginable. Digital billboards mean I see six meh ads at the traffic lights instead of one. My expectations for some creative flair on a sign are nil. And then last week, as I waited at the Newton Road offramp lights, I saw this: That's it. Just an ad for a medicinal cannabis clinic. I have no need for medicinal cannabis and won't be buying any now but I laughed out loud when I saw this and then yelled 'good ad!' in the car like a child. It's a grabby billboard that takes a quietly understood visual and makes a point with it. And it looks cool. Technically the campaign is about destigmatising cannabis use for medicinal purposes but ultimately it's an ad and an effective one at that. But what moved me was the real-life presence of it. It's tangible and has to have been man-made. If I have to look at a big ad, it's mildly comforting to know that someone actually put it there. People all over the world still talk about the New Zealand ads for Kill Bill from 20 years ago. AI is unavoidable at this point, and so many creative outputs (read: ads but also art, music, literature) feel either written by AI, designed with AI or at least deployed with little human touch. Giant screens that can be edited with the push of a button are cost-effective but never make me think about real people – even though there are very real people putting ads out in the world. I looked at those giant Chucks and wondered how they were made, what they were made of, how they were transported and how they were installed. For the first time in years I saw an ad and immediately thought fondly of the real human effort behind it. Is that inspiring or depressing? I'm still not sure. The stories Spinoff readers spent the most time with this week Outrageous Week's wonderful opener, The birth of the Wests: How Outrageous Fortune came to be by Tara Ward Hayden Donnell's open letter to Jacinda Ardern on open letters to Jacinda Ardern Local Liam Rātana returns to the far north to visit the country's new supreme cafe and sees a half-frozen pie It's once again time to ignore our crumbling infrastructure and pass the rates bills on to the next generation. Hayden Donnell on things that make people mad Auckland councillor Julie Fairey has always advocated for improved road safety – then she got hit by a car Feedback of the week 'Could we all please collectively take a moment to pause and appreciate the guy rocking the marijuana shirt in the back row of the fourth/bottom photo?' On What it's like to go blind at 25 'Bloody wonderful article, Oscar. My dads blind- started in his 30's, like his mum. It's always been far away future for me until it wasn't – on the cusp on 30 and suddenly I can't see shit. Weird, lonely experience – thanks for making it less so.'
The Spinoff
04-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Spinoff
The Weekend: The illusion of choice
Madeleine Chapman reflects on the week that was. Over the past two years, The Spinoff has published more than 130 entries in our Cost of Being series. We got off to a shaky start, with a number of readers believing that presenting poor people's spending habits was glamourising poverty (bad) and presenting rich people's spending habits was celebrating wealth (even worse). Thankfully, as more and more New Zealanders – and yes, they are all written by real people – shared their financial realities, the real reason for the Cost of Being's popularity has revealed itself. We are all nosy and we are all judgy. What a joy it is to get such a peek into a stranger's life, and then to be able to quietly judge all of their financial decisions. We all make so many decisions every day that it can be equal parts comforting and aspirational to see how others choose differently. And that's the key part: choices. We aren't judging people, we're judging their choices. As if all choices happen in the same reality. This week's Cover Story was Alex Casey's excellent deep-dive into why so many New Zealand women get botox. She spoke to dozens of women who got the treatment and was surprised by how positively they spoke about its effects. But even those who had no regrets and were happy to keeping doing it questioned whether or not this choice they had made was really a choice at all. Did they really want to have a smooth forehead or had societal conditioning, ageism and sexism all combined to give the impression that this just had to be done? The judgement and shame around 'cosmetic' spending is perhaps only rivalled by judgement about alcohol. If you used the Cost of Being as a sample of the population, you'd think New Zealanders are all sober. This is obviously not true but I suspect no one really wants to reveal how much they spend on something as 'non-essential' as alcohol lest they be judged, albeit anonymously, for it. Two days ago, while launching Rotorua's first ever 'beat team' to patrol the city, police minister Mark Mitchell questioned how many of the city's rough sleepers were really homeless. 'From my own experience many of the rough sleepers have got somewhere to go,' he said. 'It's more a lifestyle choice for them.' He's probably right. Many rough sleepers technically have other places they could go. But I wonder if Mitchell has considered what sort of choices are out there if the preferred one is to sleep on the street in the middle of winter. I love reading every Cost of Being entry and, yes, I love to scratch my head at some of the random choices people make. But every once in a while I have to remind myself that no choice is made in a vacuum, and sometimes a 'choice' is just a means of survival. Want to contribute to the Cost of Being? Fill out the questionnaire here. The stories Spinoff readers spent the most time with this week Feedback of the week 'I'm in my late 30s and feel really similarly about all the points in the article. I'm really fucking vain and I want to look my best, but I also feel really strongly this is yet another patriarchal and capitalist pressure on feminine-coded bodies. I'm also a high school teacher very aware of all the shit that is pouring through the sponsored social media posts peppering my girl students' algorithms and I am rebelling by allowing my age to see seen on my face – side note, my frown lines are hard won and can be weaponized against a class of unruly year 9s or 10s.'
The Spinoff
27-06-2025
- General
- The Spinoff
The Weekend: The best food I ate in Singapore was toast
Madeleine Chapman reflects on the week that was. It's almost too predictable that I would travel to Singapore for the first time, spend a week eating incredible Malaysian, Chinese and Indian cuisine and only want to write about the buttered toast. But if nothing else, my surprisingly extensive food writing portfolio has revealed my palate to be that of a healthy, developing three-year-old. So let me talk about this toast. I never thought I'd pay for toast (bread, of course, but not toast) until I kept reading recommendations for Ya Kun Kaya Toast, the Singapore breakfast chain that began as a hawker cart 80 years ago. Supposedly this place could make toast better than anywhere else in Singapore, maybe even the world. I went in with low expectations because how much better can a piece of plain buttered toast be compared to the one you make at home? I may have a basic palate but I avoid places that offer things I think I'd enjoy more at home – I love that cereal cafes exist, I'll never eat at one. Well colour me humbled because the Ya Kun Kaya Toast was by far the best buttered toast I've ever had, and for all the wrong reasons. Have you ever tried to describe why toast is delicious? It's quite hard, but here's my attempt to explain why this particular toast was so good. The bread was thin. A piece of thin toast is really underrated. It wasn't hot. Sounds bad but this toast was just warm, and somehow stayed just warm, which meant… The butter had texture. Buttering hot toast means the butter disappears and you're left experiencing just one texture (the slightly soggy, crunchy bread). If you butter like an aunty, you'll get the soggy bread and some extra butter on top. But because the toast wasn't too hot, the butter sat inside like a piece of cheese, resulting in the soft butter texture alongside the dry crunch of the toast. Delightful. The kaya. Kaya is a coconut jam, sweet and subtle. Ya Kun includes it in the toast but very, very sparingly. I'd say the kaya-butter ratio was 1:4. Rather than tasting like coconut, the buttered toast instead tasted just a little bit sweeter, like it had a sprinkle of sugar added (I think they do add an extra sprinkle actually). The portion was small. I could eat a truly shocking amount of white toast with butter and yet the single serving (four pieces of bread with crusts cut off) felt just right. The classic 'kit' came with veeery soft boiled eggs – barely seasoned, just my style – which worked surprisingly well as a dip, and a cup of tea or coffee (I got tea). A perfect light breakfast. I also got some buttered crackers, another island aunty staple, but they weren't needed. I went back two more times at different times of the day, and the toast remained the best I've eaten. I am bringing a jar of Ya Kun Kaya back with me but I suspect it won't be near as nice when I'm in my own kitchen. I love it when people take something that everyone can, and does, do, and finds a way to make it perfect. Ya Kun Kaya makes the perfect toast. The stories Spinoff readers spent the most time with this week Feedback of the week 'Hatch, Match and Despatch is right up there as a memorable institutional name; in my book it ranks alongside a pre-earthquakes Chch women's clothing shop called Get Frocked.' 'Ursula Le Guin: 'The Earth is beautiful, and bright, and kindly, but that is not all. The Earth is also terrible, and dark, and cruel. The rabbit shrieks dying in the green meadows. The mountains clench their great hands full of hidden fire. There are sharks in the sea, and there is cruelty in men's eyes … They exist. But they are not your Masters. They never were.''
