All Things New Zealand
Assorted kiwi recommendations
Tyler Cowen occasionally posts his favourite things from different countries. Here are examples of Norway and Nigeria. I had a recent ping of nostalgia when chatting to a fellow kiwi expat and was inspired to create a list for New Zealand.
I doubt I have particularly special insight and many picks will be unsurprising if you’re from New Zealand but the average kiwi opinion might be useful for others around the world. As patio11 constantly reminds us about software, the internet’s a bigger place than you think - even when you account for this fact.
Anyway, here they are:
Movies:
The two big names in New Zealand cinema are correctly rated.
Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings is self-recommending. However, it’s more of an international film despite the New Zealand landscapes. His less watched drama Heavenly Creatures is almost as good.
All Taika Waititi’s films are great except the Marvel ones. I’d start with Boy or Hunt for the Wilderpeople. Both capturing small town New Zealand and the national character more generally.
Whale Rider is a deserved classic drama that looks at the Māori community. Once Were Warriors looks at another side of the community: It’s raw and honest and probably wouldn’t get made today: It’s one of the most important kiwi movies for kiwis. In My Fathers Den captures a different small town feel of Anglo-New Zealanders in the south of New Zealand.
Some lesser known indie movies that capture the 90s New Zealand zeitgeist are the buddy movie Stickmen and the rom-com Topless Women Talk About their Lives.
Books:
Not as strong as New Zealand film across the board. The Luminaries is a contemporary novel that is very kiwi but also universal in capturing the gold rush mentality and the dynamics of different communities colliding. The Bone People is another Booker Prize winner.
Janet Frame’s novels and short stories on reclusion and the psyche.
There’s also Katherine Mansfield. The Garden Party is her pick of short stories. But for all intents and purposes, it’s essentially British modernist fiction.
John Krakeaur’s Into Thin Air is a great read. It’s American, but it’s about the tragic Everest disaster in the 1990s and outlines the nascent commercialisation of guided exhibitions which was pioneered by New Zealanders.
Music:
Split Enz is probably NZ’s best, but like many things (Russell Crowe, Pavlova, flat white coffee) Australia likes to claim them (often with good reason).
Everyone already knows Lorde, who is the kiwi Taylor Swift.
Fat Freddy’s Drop is the best example of an evolved kiwi sound which is sort of a blend of reggae, soul, rock, RnB, and jazz. They’re even better live.
For rap fans, Tom Scott (not to be confused with the British youtuber) is underrated in the broader hip hop community. Unlike a string of rappers in the early 2000s, he’s unashamedly kiwi, perhaps part of the reason why he’s not bigger. His best work sonically and thematically is his band’s Bowie-esque rap science fiction slash philosophy album.
Cities/Towns:
There’s a cliched saying that you can’t beat Wellington on a good day. In fact, it was Tyler’s nomination for the most beautiful city in the world. Be warned: it’s literally the most windy city in the world so there aren’t too many good days.
Auckland, New Zealand’s only big city, is underrated by Kiwis.
Napier for the architecture. Queenstown/Wanaka for the scenery. Kaikoura for whale watching. Taranaki is slightly underrated but is often too cloudy to fully see the mountain.
New Zealand has the best multi day hikes in the world along with California, Chile, and Canada’s West Coast. Top of the list is hiking through the Milford Sound (it’s actually a fiord not a sound). However, peak season sells out quicker than Justin Bieber tickets. Kayaking is another option. The best one-day hike is through Mount Doom. Dress prepared. Only hobbits can do it without good footwear. And your best chance to see a kiwi (the bird) is the Rakiura track on New Zealand’s third (smaller) island.
The best beaches are in the Coromandel peninsula. Make day trips to Hot Water Beach and Cathedral Cove. My pick to stay for a few nights is Whangamata, but you can’t go wrong. Further north, Northland is slightly underrated. Less busy.
Food:
Although you don’t really think of chocolate when you think of New Zealand, Whittaker’s Chocolate rivals the best in the world.
Fish and Chips is less surprising. Better than Australia. Every kiwi family eats this for Friday dinner. Gurnard would be my pick. A subtle sweetness and not too fishy. Blue cod for the flakiness.
Every city in NZ has exceptional meat pies. Go to a specialized pie shop that bakes them in house.
Coffee is very good. Try a Flat White. Cafe culture in general is high quality but slightly bettered by Australia. The craft beer is good too.
Duck Island ice cream is a less commercial Ben and Jerry’s.
Television:
Despite Tyler telling us to turn off our TV sets, Outrageous Fortune was the great New Zealand show. It’s well-acted and quintessentially kiwi. It’s a product of the 2000s meaning it wouldn’t quite get made the same way today so your mileage may vary. It’s about a family from West Auckland who are bogan (which is Australian and New Zealand slang for sort of white trash). First three seasons are the best.
Flight of the Conchords both for their songs and show. Jemaine Clement is the star.
Bro Town was New Zealand’s version of The Simpsons with a focus on the Pacific and Māori community. The caveat that it wouldn’t get made today for modern audiences applies even more strongly.
Painters:
Rita Angus and Colin McCahon brought modernism to New Zealand and are known for their landscapes.
Academia:
New Zealand’s a little light here.
James Flynn is famous for the eponymous finding of increasing IQ over time. Slightly less well known is his congenial demeanour and intellectual honesty even during his decades long disagreement with Arthur Jensen.
The famous Phillips Curve in economics was formalized by Paul Samuelson but named after the New Zealander Bill Phillips. Tim Harford has a nice chapter on him in Undercover Economist Strikes Back which adequately portrays the vibe of the small town farm boy on the other side of the world making major breakthroughs in the wider Anglosphere. Perhaps similar to Norman Borlaug from rural Midwest America.
Brian Boyd is good on Nabokov, Popper and evolutionary psychology. His insight that Nabokov is mainly about discovery is golden. Though, I don’t totally buy his ever changing theories about Pale Fire.
Speaking of Popper, he spent time in Christchurch where he wrote Open Society and taught himself ancient Greek during WW2. I met the grandson of his barber. However, I think Popper felt constrained and isolated and was happy to be saved by Bertrand Russell. (I’m unsure if Russell visited the barber).
Michael Corballis is an accessible academic writer in the tradition of Steven Pinker discussing language and evolution. He also stood strong during the “other ways of knowing” controversy.
Susan Moller Okin was somewhat influential in feminism.
Derek Freeman criticised Margaret Mead’s influential anthropology on Samoa society over several decades. The controversy was even made into a play in Australia.
The go to history of New Zealand is Michael King’s.
Historical:
Despite being small and isolated, New Zealand has many historical vanguards. Edmund Hillary and Everest. Ernest Rutherford and the atom. New Zealand was the first country to grant the women’s vote due to the suffragette Kate Shepherd. You’ll see her silhouette on some of the pedestrian stop lights.
In 1990, New Zealand’s Reserve Bank was first to do inflation targeting which is now ubiquitous. A useful counter argument, when thinking about the environment, AI, or your particular hobby horse, against the claim that policies don’t really matter in small countries due to low impact.
To this day, New Zealand sometimes gets used as a petri dish of testing out new technologies of a small developed market like contactless payments or even Pokémon Go.
It’s not a breakthrough, but New Zealand has a fascinating case study during the 1980s neoliberal reforms around the world. Where England had Thatcher and USA had Reagan, New Zealand’s push for free markets was driven from within the left wing political party. Roger Douglas was a libertarian finance Minister causing a splinter within the left. Afterwards, he founded the libertarian party which usually has coalitions with the centre-right party.
Another big thing was New Zealand’s strict anti-nuclear power stance. It was a source of pride for the clean green image but in hindsight looks like a stain on New Zealand politics.
Over the last 30 years, I’m concerned that New Zealand has become complacent. Its housing crisis is one of the worst in the world and young kiwis wanting and potential immigrants wanting more dynamism and higher pay now opt for Australia.
Business:
That said, there are still impressive organizations in New Zealand. Wētā Workshop is one of the best in the world. Best known for the special effects and design in Lord of the Rings. They also did an excellent exhibition of New Zealanders in World War 1 at the museum in Wellington.
Although I side with python in the data wars, the R programming language is kiwi. Haley Wickham, curator of the tidy verse, is also kiwi and is underrated in this space. His best talent is his exposition and I’d recommend R for Data Science.
Most of my programmer friends work at Xero. Most of them wear Allbirds. This last decade New Zealand has had a bit of a burgeoning start up scene which I hope doesn’t fizzle out. Rocketlab is one of the best recent breakthroughs.
For the rationalist crowd, PredictIt is a successful prediction market founded in New Zealand.
Birds:
New Zealand animals are largely limited to birds. We’re a useful natural experiment for evolutionary biologists to analyse how weird a lot of them are.
I’d argue that people overrate particular birds at the margin due to how endangered they are. Thus, the Tui and Kaka are underrated and the blue duck and Takahe are overrated.
Here’s Stephen Fry narrating our most famous flightless parrot getting too close to his crew member in the remake of Douglas Adam’s Last Chance to See.
Sport:
Kiwis are fairly obsessed with sport. Although slightly less so than Australians. The All Blacks are the household name. Watching the Haka is worth the price of admission. Unfortunately, over the last decade the rivalry with Australia has become less competitive as South Australians are mad about Aussie Rules, North Australians are Rugby League, and New Zealanders are Rugby Union.
Wynton Rufer is the best ever footballer (soccer player) from this side of the world. Despite Australia’s golden generation in the mid-late-2000s. A country’s success at football is a function of GDP per capita, population size, and interest in the game. NZ ranks poorly in the latter two categories.
Other than that it’s the usual array of British sports.
During the Olympics all Kiwis rediscover their passion for rowing. Probably more out of national pride than the intrinsic appeal of the sport.
Final thoughts:
The biggest tension I found was whether I was overrating things that are “world famous in New Zealand” but relatively unheard of elsewhere due to patriotism and nostalgia.
The other thing that rang home for me was that New Zealand truly can feel like a village. One of our mobile companies is called 2 degrees, referencing the six degrees of separation concept but lessening it for New Zealand. This even feels true for this list.
Addendum:
Tyler and other commenters have pointed out the director Vincent Ward. Also, the historian of political thought J Pocock, who was born in Britain by spent most of his time in New Zealand.
Vincent Ward's "The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey" had a huge impact on me as a 9 year old and remains one of my favorite films. Also loved Mauricee Gee's "The Halfmen of O" at that age, though only a few elements of the writing are still interesting as an adult.
No love for Jane Campion?