Rnz: The Podcast Hour

Tom Jackson got into postcards more than 25 years ago, and since then he's built up a massive collection of around 60,000 of them. He's also written a book and started up a popular Twitter account @PastPostcard. In his show 'Podcast From The Past', Tom uses the postcard as a springboard into stories. Two guests bring some favourite postcards into the studio, Tom does the same, and they talk about what they mean and why they were sent. We speak to Tom Jackson about his collection and how he finds his guests, and play some of an episode of Podcast From the Past featuring the poet, playwright and translator Sasha Dugdale and the actor and director Samuel West.

The homegrown comedy 'Melody Rules' that came out on TV3 in the 1990s has been panned as one of the worst sitcoms ever made. The critics called it cringeworthy, atrocious, awful, and a disaster in reviews, and the whole experience proved so traumatic that some actors fled overseas to escape the embarrassment! Now 'Melody Rules' gets a post mortem 25 years on with one of the show's original writers. In 'The Worst Sitcom Ever Made', Geoff Houtman tracks down more than 20 of the cast and crew to find out where it all went wrong and how the failure's affected them since And you can listen to the show on RNZ's Nights after the 9pm news each Wednesday from Wednesday 13th March, at rnz.co.nz, or wherever you get your podcasts if you search for 'The Worst Sitcom Ever Made'.

Was Melody Rules really 'The Worst Sitcom Ever Made'?! 'Podcast From The Past' uses postcards as springboards into stories. Then 'Sweeping The World' offers a hidden history of brushes and brushing, and 'Over My Dead Body' is a new true crime show, telling the story of a picture perfect relationship that ends in murder.

Seen by some as a viable, cheap and fun urban transport solution, Lime electric scooters got taken off the streets of Auckland and Dunedin last week over safety concerns. We share an e-scooter investigation from The Washington Post's daily news podcast, Post Reports. In it, host Martine Powers speaks to technology reporter Peter Holley, who started looking into the operations and some dodgy practices at some of the biggest e-scooter businesses in the US.

Tracy Hall had been separated from her husband for over a year when she first met a man called Max Tavita via a dating app. He seemed witty, charming, intelligent, and attractive....a successful investment advisor with a sensitive side. He'd also been struck by terrible tragedy: he told her that as a 6-year-old he'd been in a plane crash that killed his parents, and left him an orphan. And then there was his job in New York...he apparently worked in the World Trade Centre, knew lots of people who died on 9-11, and had been walking underneath the Twin Towers when the first plane hit. But in 'Who The Hell is Hamish?' from 'The Australian' newspaper (presented by Greg Bearup) it becomes clear that Max Tavita isn't who he says he is.

Early in the morning of Friday June the 17th 1966, two African-American men walked into the Lafayette Bar and Grill in Paterson, New Jersey and shot four white people, killing three of them. Rising professional middleweight boxer Rubin Carter and his friend John Artis were picked up by police shortly afterwards and convicted of the killings, with Carter spending 18 years in prison before being cleared and freed. In 'The Hurricane Tapes', sports reporter Steve Crossman and producer Joel Hammer try to get to the true story using a treasure trove of 40 hours of old, previously unheard interviews of Carter speaking about the case.

He's probably best known for playing Doctor Who, or for his role as a dishevelled detective in Broadchurch...now the Scottish actor David Tennant's got his own podcast too! His first guest is his friend, fellow Broadchurch star, and now Oscar winner Olivia Colman. And she's bracingly forthright, funny and potty-mouthed about her path into acting, the challenges of fame, and how she copes with life in the 24/7 goldfish bowl enabled by smartphones and social media. Sounding and feeling very much like eavesdropping on a chat between mates, it's full of lovely revelations too: like how she once ate a cigarette butt in an audition, how she can do a mean Scottish accent, and how she played a great trick on Emma Stone in The Favourite using a damp sponge. 'David Tennant Does a Podcast with...Olivia Colman' (A Somethin' Else and No Mystery production).

'David Tennant Does A Podcast with...Olivia Colman'. A famous boxer's murder conviction overturned: 'The Hurricane Tapes'. On the trail of a serial conman in 'Who The Hell is Hamish?' and an e-scooter safety investigation in 'Post Reports'.

NEON uses our favourite films, TV shows, and computer games as the vehicle to find out more about the history behind them. Presented by Jem Duducu and produced by Dan Morelle, we play some of an episode about the 1987 film Predator starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Conviction's a new release from Gimlet Media centring on a colourful private eye called Manuel (Manny) Gomez and his attempts to clear the name of a teenager accused in a shooting. We play some of Part 2 of Conviction called The Porsche presented by Saki Knafo, where he and Gomez head out to investigate claims of police harassment and false arrests in a local neighbourhood.

In 'Finding Drago' (ABC) Aussie film geeks, comedians and Rocky fans Alexei Toliopoulos and Cameron James go on the hunt for a mysterious author called Todd Noy. He's the writer of a piece of fan fiction called 'Drago: On Mountains We Stand', which imagines the life of Ivan Drago after Rocky 4.

Do you believe extraterrestrials exist? Astronomer Seth Shostak explores what we do and don't know about potential life on other planets in the new BBC podcast So Where Are The Aliens?

Hunting for ET: So Where are the Aliens? 'Finding Drago' goes on the search for a mysterious writer. 'Conviction' is a true crime series starring a colourful private eye. And NEON explores the history behind our favourite films, TV shows and games.

Proof from America's Test Kitchen is a new-ish show trying to solve some food mysteries. Like should you put ketchup on burgers, and how do odd jellybean flavours get designed?! Writer and producer Maya Kroth shares her love of celery with Proof's host Bridget Lancaster, including stories from celery's golden age in Victorian times when it was a status symbol costing more than caviar! And in 'Beanboozeld, Part 2', Sara Joyner investigates how people design weird jelly bean flavours, with her research opening up a rabbit hole into the global food flavouring industry, and its history from about 1850 onwards.

Listener Ange emailed us at pods@rnz.co.nz as she's loving The Sporkful with Dan Pashman. She says the show's become a "recent podcast obsession", and strongly recommends an episode called 'A Brief History of American Barbecue'. We play a clip from this episode (and thanks to Anne Saini for her help bringing that to you).

BBC Radio 4's Food Programme turns 40 this year. With a mission to explore the world of food "from culture to cooking, from politics to pleasure" each week host Sheila Dillon, producer Dan Saladino, and regular contributors including the food writer Tim Hayward, tuck into all sorts of stories about the foods and drinks we're consuming today. We play clips from a couple of episodes; one called 'Seeds: a 400-million-year-old food story' presented by Dan Saladino and the food historian Polly Russell. The other is called 'How Instagram Changed Food' with food columnist George Reynolds, produced by Miles Warde for BBC Radio 4.

Business Wars from Wondery recreates the stories of some of the big rivalries that have shaped consumer history. Past series have followed Nike vs Adidas, Xbox and Playstation, and Coke versus Pepsi. We play an excerpt from Episode 2 of the Business Wars series dealing with the battle of the burgers- Burger King vs McDonald's- with milkshake mixer salesman Ray Kroc poised to take over the McDonald's business.

For a few years back in the 1980s and 90s, McDonald's sold pizza at some of its restaurants. Then it stopped doing so. These simple facts have propelled Brian Thompson into an investigation spanning years and 105 podcast episodes as he tries to answer the question- 'Whatever Happened to Pizza at McDonald's?'

Whatever Happened to Pizza at McDonald's? Also battling burger chains, the future of seeds, Instagram and food culture, American BBQ, and that time when celery cost more than caviar!

If you're a fan of classic detective fiction- think Ngaio Marsh, Dorothy L. Sayers, maybe some Miss Marple or Hercule Poirot- then check out Shedunnit. It's made by Caroline Crampton who writes for the industry website and newsletter Hot Pod but is also seriously into fictional sleuths and some of the real life mysteries that surround them. And as the title suggests, she's especially interested in the role women play in this world. We play some of 'The Lady Vanishes', an interesting story all about the disappearance of the famous writer Agatha Christie who went missing for 10 days back in 1926.