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Guess what's that Mango?
So you're never gonna believe this, but I finally found a new Zealand bird that's even more endearing than the Kiwi.
I actually feel weird saying this, but i know I need to congratulate you, because I'm pretty sure this has been a dream of yours for a while now. So so congratulating.
Yeah, thank you. I mean Sundays, I doubted it was even possible, But this week I read about these big green parrots that live there called Chaos, and they are so mischievous and so clever that I just had to give them the top spot because I know it's a controversial pick, but I like to keep things spicy.
Wait, you're saying this is actually controversial.
Yeah, So i'mlike Kiwi's kaas aren't universally adored. They are kind of these one and a half foot tall mischief makers, and they will steal laces from boots or strip the rubber off your windshield wipers. But the wildest prank I've heard is that kias actually dragged traffic cones into the middle of the road and leave them there and some researchers believe this is an intentional act, like it's a crafty way to get drivers to slow down enough that the parrots can beg for food.
Wow, I mean that is kind of a nee trick. It also does sound a little bit dangerous. I wonder how many of these get hit.
Yeah, I mean it's become a real problem. But the good news is that there's this conservation team in New Zealand that's been testing this ingenious way to keep the kaas distracted. They've installed all these little parrot gyms by the roadside, and so it kind of looks like a miniature jungle gym with swings and spinning toys and little ladders.
I guess I kind of feel like everything you've said to this point may not actually be true, but I'm gonna go with it. So are these you call them gyms? Are these gyms actually helping?
Yeah? They are so far fewer birds are messing with traffic cones and the roads are a whole lot safer. But you know, these parrot gyms aren't the only out of the box solution that NEWSS come up with over the past few years. From state approved wizards to car driving dogs. The country has plenty of eccentricities to go around, so for today's show, I thought we could dive into some of that.
Hey, their podcast listeners, Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson and is always I'm joined by my good friend mangesh hot Ticketter on the other side of the soundproof glass, just sipping his way through what he claims is a hokey pokey milkshake. That's what That's what he says. At least that is our friend and producer loll So. I don't know what a hokey pokey milkshake is.
You dip one finger in, you dip one finger out, I guess. So anytime anyone says hokey pokey, it reminds me of that shirt we made at Metal Floss.
I was trying to remember it that it said hokey pokey anonymous. Is that right?
Yeah? And the tagline was a place to turn yourself around, which I kind of loved. I actually saw someone in that shirt this year, which which amazs me, that's awesome. Let's keep the focus on loll here the way he likes it. Well, what exactly is a hokey poke milkshake?
Yeah, so I've pulled it up here.
So hokey pokey is I guess what we'd call honeycomb toffee. You know, we always call things honeycomb toffee. But it's like this light, crunchy candy made from brown sugar and corn syrup. And apparently everyone in New Zealand fell in love with the flavor way back in the nineteen forties and they have been obsessed with it ever since, especially when it takes the form of milkshake.
So now I see why he just seems so happy over there.
I mean, it's a great nickname. I also really like the cup he's drinking it from. I wish listeners could see it. It's a white cup with a red and blue cartoon giraffe on the side, and in big red letters it says the longest drink in town. I mean, if you're going to tell how big your beverages, it feels so much cooler than like a big goal.
Yeah, A long drink. Yeah.
I actually I looked this up too, and the longest drink in the world cup is actually pretty iconic. So this design debuted in the nineteen sixties and for the next several decades it was featured on just about every paper milkshake cup in the country.
Oh wow.
It became synonymous with summertime in New Zealand, and thanks in large part to that widespread nostalgia, the longest drink in the world is still served up at New Zealand ice cream parlors today. Also, just because I kind of fell in love with the lingo this week, I have to mention that if you're inspired to bring ice cream or cold milk to work, just like Loulda today, a cooler in New Zealand is called a chili bin.
I kind of like that.
I like that. So where do you want to start today?
All right, well, how about we start with the country's name. Like, this is something that's always confused me, because if the country is New Zealand, that kind of implies that there is an old Zealand out there, right, so maybe just or just Zealand.
I guess I was curious about this.
I guess I hadn't really thought about that, Like, is there a Zealand in Europe or somewhere.
There actually is?
The original Zealand is all the way over in the far west of the Netherlands. And just like with the names of early American cities and states. It goes back to the era of European exploration, and in New Zealand's case, it goes back to a Dutch explorer named Abel Tasman, the namesake of Tasmania. So in sixteen forty two, Tasman was off exploring the southern Pacific Ocean. This was on behalf of the Dutch East India Company, and it was on that voyage that he stumbled upon the territories that
we now know as Tonga, Fiji and New Zealand. So when Tasman got home, he told his fellow navigators what he'd found, and pretty soon the islands were added to the charts of their day. So as for the name, Dutch map makers were already calling Australia New Holland at the time, so they just decided to keep this convention going and name Tasman's territory New Zealand, after a coastal
province in the southwest region of the Netherlands. So British colonists later settled on the island about one hundred years later, but by then the Dutch name was so established that they just decided to keep it and just anglicize the spelling of it.
Do we know why the Dutch named it Zealand in the first place, Like, was there something about New Zealand that reminded them of this old Zealand?
Yeah, I guess it was the geography.
I mean, apparently the province and the Netherlands is made up of a bunch of little islands and peninsulas with rivers crossing through them. And because of that that yet it really is I've actually never been Have you ever been there before?
The New Zealand? Oh I haven't.
I haven't either, And so because of that, the Dutch called the region Zealand, which translates as Sealand. So it's maybe not the most creative name in the world, but certainly a fitting one for the area.
Well, since you brought up geography and Matt Makers, I think it's time we addressed the fact that a lot of modern maps don't include New Zealand and the country is just straight up missing, with nothing more than ocean where it's cluster of six hundred plus US island should be.
Actually, I had heard about this. I mean, this is a pretty widespread era though, right it is.
Yeah, there's actually an entire maps without New Zealand subreddit, where users have cataloged hundreds of examples of places that use bad maps, including video games, magazines, textbooks, hotels, restaurants, ikea. Even for instance, did you know that giant rotating globe that sits in front of Universal Studios that is missing New ze Also the map on the risk board missing
New Zealand. There are even some international airports that have maps without New Zealand hung in their terminals, even though they offer flights straight to New Zealand.
Wow, I mean the country that, according to their maps doesn't exist. It gets to a point where people just feel like they should just keep going with it just to be jerks about it.
Yeah, and I'm sure it's some sort of existential problem for New Zealanders, but it's pretty funny how far this goes. So Like, there's a World map in front of the United Nations office in Geneva, and apparently New Zealand isn't on that, despite the country being a found member. And if all that wasn't bad enough, New Zealand actually uses
these maps themselves. Gabe pointed me to this, but it's on their four h four error page for its official government website and it shows a world map that doesn't include its own country, which is intentional.
Actually, I just pulled this up and it's pretty funny. It has this four or four map and says something is missing, and you know, it's cute that they've got this sense of humor about it. But why does this phenomenon of cutting New Zealand off maps keep happening?
I mean, there are definitely smaller places in the world.
Yeah, I mean it's mostly because of that Mercator projection, which is the one that most world maps are based on, and as you might expect, it has a serious old World bias. This map places Europe in the dead center often while poor New Zealand is shoved way down in
the bottom right hand corner. And the result is it's kind of an awkward placement and it's easy to crop, and if a designer isn't careful, they might try to turn some of the Pacific Ocean from the image and wind up blopping off an entire country in the process. But you know, judging by the number of places that these have turned up, it's apparently something that happens all the time. But New Zealand just kind of take it
in stride. Actually, there's this Kiwi comedian ree Starby, and this is how he puts it, quote, we are quite a fiddly looking shaped country, a bit like a half eaten lamb chop. Perhaps people are just leaving us off, thinking we're a mistake.
That's such a great line.
Yeah, it's funny what you said about European bias, because I guess you could use a projection of a Mercader map that places New Zealand at the center and it wouldn't be any more inaccurate.
That's true, and in fact, many maps in New Zealand classrooms actually do that. They place Middle Earth in the actual middle of the Earth.
I mean, it's hard to argue with the logic on that one. But well, here's another thing I read this week and wanted to talk about. So this was in twenty sixteen, New Zealand spent over seventeen million US dollars on a contest to redesign its national flag, and then the country voted to just keep the flag they already had. I guess it turned out to be not such a bad flag, So that seventeen million dollars it's crazy.
I know, it kind of makes me want to see the other designs, Like, do you know how bad they were?
So well?
I mean, the contest was open to the public and over ten thousand people submitted designs, many of which were actually pretty elegant and well designed. I mean, there's some really pretty ones on there, but yeah, there were also some really horrible ones. One of my favorites is this blue and red one here. It's got this very cruelly drawn sheep on the blue half because New Zealand has a lot of those, obviously, and then on the red half there's an equally crudely drawn ice cream cone.
So just you know two things they like to think about.
I mean, I bet I can guess what flavor that is.
Oh, I know you can. It's rum raisin. No, I'm kidding.
It's hokey pokey, of course. And the artist even included little flex of the candy in there, drawing to make that as clear as possible.
Can you imagine this about the cand the new flag, Like, and they cleaned up the design, it'd be the most beloved flag in the world.
I think you know it does.
I mean, it feels like because they're able to sort of laugh at their situation, they might have gone on with something like that, but it was actually another one that has a black flag with a silver fern, which is one of the country's national symbols, which is elegant enough, but the real highlight is it's got this Kiwi bird on the other side and it's blasting this green laser
beam from its eyes. So it's probably not the most scientifically accurate flag in the world, but you know, it's pretty interesting.
It might be the most badass, though, I might. I can see why New Zealand kind of decide to stick with their old flag. Why was there like such a push to change it in the first place.
Well, I don't know how familiar you are with the real New Zealand flag very.
I said a lot of carbon San Diego as a kid.
That's right, well as a refresher for anybody who's listening. It's basically a blue flag with a Union Jack symbol in the top left hand corner and four red stars on the body representing the Southern Cross constellation. So the original design is one hundred years old or so, and for a long time now people have debated whether it was appropriate to have a British symbol on the New Zealand flag, you know, since it's a sovereign country but technically still part of the British Commonwealth.
So, I mean, the other thing that's always struck me as odd is like how close the flag actually looks to Australia's flag.
Yeah, that was one of the other main contentions, that the flag is too derivative and not really representative of New Zealand. But despite all these complaints, when the issue was finally put to a national vote, fifty six percent of New Zealanders voted to keep the original flag versus forty three percent who voted for the new fern design.
And the reason for that upset is pretty interesting. According to interviews conducted by The Guardian, many New Zealanders voted against the new flags simply because they'd grown disillusioned with how costly the campaign was.
Seventeen million dollars is a lot of.
Money, yeah, and you know they didn't want the country to spend more money on top of that to produce tens of thousands of new flags to replace all the old ones. So anyway, well, now that we've gotten the lay of the land, let's zoom in a little bit closer. And talk about the finer details that make New Zealand such a special place. But before we get to that, let's take a quick break. You're listening to part time Genius and we're talking about some of New Zealand's strangest
claims to fame. All right, Mago, the wheel is yours. So where do you want to go first?
So I really like that fact about where the new in New Zealand's name comes from. But there's actually a hill on the North Island of New Zealand with an even better story behind its name. It's this thousand foot hill. It's named after Tamata, who's a legendary explorer from New Zealand's Maori culture, part of their mythical culture there and Tamata is said to have been one of the first ever to step foot on New Zealand, long long before
any European columnists came along. And the summit of the hill is where he supposedly played the nose flute for.
His beloved The nose flute. Is that what I think it is?
Yeah, it's exactly what it sounds like. It's a flute you play by exhaling through your nose.
Wow, this you know, I know how we like to give tips to our listeners, So I feel good about this one. Like, if you ever need to charm someone with a private nose flute concert, then Tamataya Hill is that's the place to go.
It seems like here's the thing.
It's not actually called Tamatya Hill. The Maori people wanted to really celebrate Tamataya's exploits and not sound short, so they named the hill using an entire sense and roughly translated, it's an eighty five character name. It means the summit where Tamataya, the man with the big knees, the slider climber of mountains, the land swallower who traveled about played his nose flute to his loved one.
And the name means all of that, Like wouldn't you love to be known as the man with the big knees?
Like that?
I feel like that's great. But it's such such a great title. I do feel like you bury the lead here? What is this eighty five character name? How do you say it?
So I'm gonna apologize a little because my uh my Maori is a little rusty, but this is how it goes Tamatawaka Tonga Honga kara tom. I am butchering this right, it goes.
I think.
It's so long, seman nogaru Akau, it goes.
You should really stop.
And I'm really not trying to be disrespectful.
Yeah, but it.
Is amazing and it makes for a very very long street sign. It's actually the longest place name in the world according to Guinness. The wildest part, though, is that there's actually an unofficial version of the name that adds an extra twenty character. It's worth of details.
Wow.
So according to Atlas Obscure, the extended version translates as the Hill of the Nose flute playing by Tamatao, who was blown hither from Afar, had a split penis, raised his knees climbing mountains, fell on the earth, and encircled the land to his beloved and so good before you ask, that one part is a reference to basically what's in my version of a circumcision?
Oh got it? Yeah, I was kind of curious.
Well, for any geography nerds who find themselves in New Zealand, another cantonss landmark on your list should be the slightly more plainly named Baldwin Street. So it's located in the city of Dunedin, and Baldwin Street is one of the
steepest streets in the world. It only runs about three hundred and fifty meters, which is less than a fourth of a mile, but for every three horizontal meters there is a rise of one meter, So the result is that it takes ten minutes or more to basically climb up this relatively short street.
It's pretty crazy.
What I want to know is why wouldn't anyone put a street though to begin with? It seems like if the land is that steep, it'd be easier to just kind of plan around it.
Right, Yeah, I mean that's true, and I'm sure that's exactly what the city planner would have done had he actually looked at the land he was planning for. Instead that the city was planned by these London based designers who never bothered to see the topography in person. They just laid out a grid system on top of a flat map and called it a day, I guess, and that oversight resulted in a number of these incredibly steep streets, with Baldwin being the most extreme of them.
Wait, so are there houses on Baldwin Street.
There actually are houses, and the cool thing is they are all built into this hill at an angle. It's worth taking a look at it. So if you walk down or up Baldwin Street, you'll pass a row of these severely slanted houses.
I just hould it up. This is insane. It's like you're living in like one of those old v commercials. Everything's built. It's amazing. It does feel like it would be a dream for Instagrammers, but probably a huge pain in the neck for residents. But you know what, we've talked about a couple of special places that New Zealanders can boast about. But why don't we talk about one of their exceptional citizens next?
All right, so who would it be? Let me let me guess. Is it one of the Flight of the Concords?
No, I mean that's a good guess. But this guy's birth name is Ian Brackenbury Channel. But today people around the world know him simply as the Wizard, and he is the Wizard, mind you, not not a wizard, because not only does he have the driver's license to prove it, he also has the backing of New Zealand's government. Back in nineteen ninety the country's Prime Minister made Channel the world's first and still only state appointed wizard.
I have so many questions about this, but I guess the first one is how exactly one gets appointed the official Wizard of New Zealand.
I think it starts with the wardrobe. But New Zealand's Wizard has a pretty impressive resiment. He was born in London in nineteen thirty two and later served as a navigator in the Royal Air Force. In nineteen sixty three, he earned a double BA in psychology and sociology and began teaching in the Middle East in Australia, and given his dual fields of study as a teacher, Channel was
especially interested in experimental teaching and social reform techniques. But as for his wizarding career, that started to take off in the mid seventies, and that's when Channel began appearing throughout New Zealand as a public speaker. He would dress in a long black robe and a wizard's hat, and
of course he carried his staff. And then he'd go to Cathedral Square in christ Church and he'd climb up on a ladder and share his views on all sorts of topics with passes by, no matter how taboo the subject. So public officials initially tried to have a banned from the premises, but eventually they gave up and the Wizard kind of became this weird cultural institution slash tourist attraction.
All right.
So to sum this up, you had a decorated British veteran turned Australian school teacher who made his way to New Zealand, began dressing as a wizard, lost his mind and began scaring people in the streets.
That I have that right, yeah.
I mean everything except that lost his mind part. Like the wizard was and is eccentric, but he still has a firm grip on his mind. His body, though, was donated to the National Gallery of Victoria, which officially recognizes it as a living work of art.
Of course they did. I mean nothing about this surprises me at this point. But so he's harassing people on this ladder and then what.
Well from there the city of christ which kind of fell under his spell, he got super popular. In fact, the director of the Robert McDougall Art Gallery and christ Church actually contacted the National Gallery of Victoria and they arranged to have the living work of art title transferred to christ Church. You're kidding me, No, this is all real,
and the Wizard's fame only grew from there. So in nineteen eighty he was appointed to be the official arch Wizard of Kenterbury, and then ten years after that he was appointed Wizard of New Zealand by Prime Minister Mike Moore.
And remind me again what a state appointed wizard actually does.
Yeah, it's a good question. So this is the official
proclamation that was declared at the time. Quote. The first Wizard of New Zealand is entitled to wear the appropriate regalia and required to carry out the duties of national Wizard, namely to protect the government, to blessed new enterprises, cast out evil spits, upset fanatics, cheer up the population, and most importantly, design and promote a new and improved universe which puts New Zealand on top of the world, both physically and metaphysically.
So, now that the truth comes out, you forget Middle Earth. They actually want to be on top of it. I think is the issue here, right.
Yeah, So I'm rooting for them and for the Wizard, and I don't think I'm alone in that either. The Wizard retired from his active duties back in two thousand and five, but he still speaks publicly on occasion, and to this day he remains a beloved figure in christ Church. In fact, there's one quick story that really shows how big a role the Wizard is played in the community there. This is back in nineteen ninety five when the christ Church City Council hosted a whole week of activities to
celebrate his twenty first year as the local Wizard. So festivities began with the Wizard hovering above a rugby match in a helicopter and he was chanting a spell the whole time, which supposedly helped the home team win the game. But it concluded with him hatching from a giant egg inside the city's art gallery.
So he hashed from an egg.
Yeah, this is years before Lady Gaga did. But you know, to complete the process, everyone in attendance had to chant the correct hum while he was hatching.
All right, I feel like this is the perfect place for an ad break. We'll be back with more stories in just a minute. Welcome back to part time genius.
All right, Mango.
So New Zealanders have a reputation for being some of the friendliest and really most cheerful people in the world. I think most of the stories we've talked about today kind of a test to that in one way or another. But the people there do have a somber side just like anybody else, and a growing number of Kiwis have taken up a new pastime to help fill their more reflective moments, and that's actually building their own coffins.
Huh, that's unusual. Why is that?
Well, it's a trend that's been going on for about a decade now, and it started back in twenty ten when the Kiwi Coffin Club was formed in the town of Rotorua. I don't know if I'm bouncing that right, but according to its mission statement, the club is meant to provide quote an environment in which issues of death and loss can be raised, addressed, understood and accepted through discussion, support, and the activity of painting and lining your own coffins.
I mean, I guess I can see how that could be cathartic or maybe even sobering in a way.
Yeah, and I guess it's a you know, it's filling a need since the first one in twenty ten, coffin clubs have actually sprung up all across New Zealand, with some of the bigger ones boasting more than two hundred members and counting. In fact, most members view the actual coffin building as a way to celebrate their lives and showcase their personalities.
So are these coffins themed?
Sometimes they are? Yeah, I mean it really depends on what the builder wants. Some people build plain wooden coffins, others go a little bit more elaborate. So, for instance, I saw one that had a hand painted nature scene on the exterior and another that had a collage of Elvis photos. And it turns out there are really no rules for DIY coffin building. Is that line in the pressure I'm sure that is, Or if it's not, they can use it if they want. But it's a pretty
upbeat way to embrace death. And the meetings are kind of this three part blind like it's a woodworking class, it's a therapy group, it's a social mixer and as one club treasurer John Russell told The Atlantic, we had a TV crew come to film one of our meetings thinking it would be formal, but they were astonished to see that we chat about everything but death and dying. It's a really great atmosphere.
And has this expanded to other countries or is it just kind of stayed local in New Zealand.
You know, I was actually wondering the same thing. And in that same story, The Atlantic reports that Coffin clubs have since launched in Australia and the UK, and yes, even here in the US. The first one opened earlier this year in Cleveland, Ohio. So heads up to our listeners. There is a waiting list for the club right now. So if you're on a tight schedule, you might want to think about just starting up your own chapter.
That is kind of amazing. I don't want to end the show on build your own coffin themes. So I'm going to tell you about the time New Zealand taught some dogs to drive a car.
Oh wow, and so successfully did this?
Yeah. So this happened back in twenty twelve when New Zealand's SPCA realized that not enough people were adopting their dogs. So the organization came up with a very sane and very sensible solution. They were going to teach a couple of their dogs how to drive a car. And I guess for some reason, this seemed to make them more appealing. According to the group's Facebook page quote, our dogs may be a motley bunch, but they're all smart and they're
all lovable, so please don't write them off. Adopt them. If we can teach one to drive, we think you'll do just fine.
Wow. So how did they do this?
The plan for the stunt was to have the dogs drive a modified Mini along a racetrack while sitting on their haunches in the driver's seat, so they customized the brake pedal and a clutch. For some reason, they didn't teach them to go automatic. They taught them to shift gears, but they made it long enough for the dogs to actually reach them. So the dogs went through five weeks of indoor training where they were encouraged to touch and
move replica brake pedals and gearsticks and steering wheels. And then once the dogs had mastered the driving position and how to steer, they moved on to these little goat courts. And after a few weeks of that, the pups were ready to hit the road. So in December, one warm December day in New Zealand, they these two dogs took to the racetrack and the first dog to make history was one named Porter. He was a ten month old Beardy Cross and he drove this mini straight and then
and then around a turn. And then Monty followed him. He was an eighteen month old Schnauzer Cross and he completed the same course. And to their credit, both dogs were wearing seabelts.
I'm curious, though, did this stunt work, like, did the dogs find homes?
Yeah? So, as you might imagine that SPCA and Auckland was swamped with calls from people who wanted to adopt these two amazing dogs. In the end, they actually decided to give the pups to the trainer who'd spent these two months training them to drive the cars. But Porter and Monty stunt was broadcast live online and it helped
drive up adoption rates kind of around the world. And in fact, the campaign was so popular in New Zealand that a year later at SPCA launched a follow up where every dog adopted was given its own car to drive home in. But this time it was kind of a crate. It wasn't a real car, and this box opened up into sort of a cozy dog bed.
I feel like that's more my dog speed. But all right, well you were right, Mago. That was a nice way for us to close out the show, although we're not quite done yet because like a map without New Zealand, our show isn't complete without a fiddly shaped fact off. All right, So, like I mentioned earlier, I've been really digging Kiwi slang this week, and so here's another word you can expect me to slip into our conversation soon.
Jandles.
That's the New Zealand word for flip flops and it was coined by a Kiwi businessman who was inspired by the footwear he saw on a trip to Japan. So soon after he and his son started making their own version of the rubber slip ons in their own garage in New Zealand, and as a way to pay homage to the culture that inspired it all, they named their product Jandles, which is sort of like a portmanteau of the words Japanese and sandals.
So you know the kids show Power Rangers, right of course, look at show on Power Rangers. I can explain it to you. So you know, the show was massively popular. It was filmed with this like existing footage in Japan and the new characters in California and other places. But but you know, the show was a massive success and it got imported all around the world, but not to
New Zealand. The show was actually banned there for being too violent, and this was true even after production for the show shifted to New Zealand in the late nineties. More than a dozen seasons of the long running show were filmed there over the years, but kids in New Zealand didn't get to see any of it until the band was lifted in twenty eleven.
Wow, thank goodness, I was lifted.
Well, you've probably heard all the rumors about all the crazy laws that New Zealand supposedly has, like the one that prohibits quote, malicious bell ringing. Unfortunately, while that was really a law in New Zealand at one point, it is no longer on the books. In fact, the country has been pretty good about updating its laws and doing away with weird, outdated stuff. But there is at least
one exception though. According to the New Zealand Herald, it is still against the law to say no questions asked when advertising a reward for missing property. So if your dog drives off with the car one day. You can't post a flyer asking them for their return, no questions asked. If you do, you could actually be slammed with a fine of up to two hundred dollars.
Here's a nice feel good story from a few years back. In twenty sixteen, forty thousand New Zealanders banded together and bought the country a brand new public beach. And when the eight hundred meter stretches In went up for sale early that year, two brothers in law, Adam Gardner and Dwayne Major, decided to launch a crowdfunding campaign to try and keep the beach from falling into private ownership. So during the campaign, individuals and corporations alike pitched in to
help buy the park. The New Zealand government even got into action. They threw in two hundred and twenty five thousand dollars US dollars to the effort, and in the end the donors raised about one point seven million dollars, which was enough to buy the beach from the original owner and today the beach is run as part of the Able Tasman National Park, where it's free and open to the public.
Yeah, that's definitely a feel good story. But I actually think I can top this story because one thing I learned this week is that New Zealand is home to the first of its kind, a nationwide secret Santa Gift exchange. So this program started on Twitter back in twenty ten, when one New Zealand user suggested that anyone interested should connect through the site and then dig through the post of their assigned person in order to sniff out clues
about the kind of gift that they might like. The first couple gift exchanges proved so popular with the public that in twenty thirteen, New Zealand's postal service actually signed on as the official sponsor. So the program continued in the years since, even adding a physical warehouse to help deal with all the packages. Now thousands of kiwis take part each year, and it's all for the sake of making a stranger's holiday just a little bit brighter.
Oh I really like that, and I think it is better than my beuch story. And it's also seasonal, is right, which is great. So congratulations, I think you get the trophy.
All right, Well, that's going to do it for today's part time genius for myself, Mango, Gabe and Lowell. Thanks so much for listening. We'll be back soon with another episode. Part Time Genius is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Potodcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. M HM.