White Silence podcast | Listen online for free

11 episodes

Trailer: Quarantine Nation
03/03/2026 | 3 mins.
A lethal virus. A drastic lockdown. A nation turned upside down.

From the makers of acclaimed podcasts The Commune, True Story and Witi Underwater, this eight-part narrative series revisits the Covid-19 pandemic with the benefit of hindsight and powerful interviews. Adam Dudding and Eugene Bingham delve into what really happened – and what it taught us about ourselves.

Subscribe to "Quarantine Nation" wherever you get your podcasts, or follow the links here: https://linktr.ee/quarantinenation

Made with the support of NZ on Air for Stuff by Te Pūrongo Productions.
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Introducing: The Trial - Philip Polkinghorne
02/08/2024 | 28 mins.
On Easter Monday 2021, police were called to the home of a successful professional couple in the affluent Auckland suburb of Remuera. They found the body of Pauline Hanna.
In his emergency call, her husband, Philip Polkinghorne, said she killed herself. Sixteen months later he was charged with her murder. As this podcast is released, he's currently on trial at the High Court in Auckland.
Stuff's groundbreaking series returns to take you inside the Polkinghorne trial: Hear the witnesses, follow the evidence, wait for the verdict.
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Episode Eight - The Apology
19/12/2019 | 33 mins.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern speaks to White Silence about her decision to say sorry to the families of the Erebus victims: “It all built a picture for me of unfinished business, and that wasn't right.”
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Episode Seven - Playing Through
27/11/2019 | 40 mins.
A special bonus episode of White Silence for November 28 - the anniversary of the Erebus disaster. Bringing together stories from listeners like Air NZ staff who had to work through the tragedy, a teenager's 40-year trauma finally brought to a close and an unlikely golf tournament played in the shadow of Erebus.
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Episode Six - White Silence
12/11/2019 | 55 mins.
40 years after the Erebus disaster, there is still no national memorial to the victims and no consensus on exactly what happened that day in 1979. Why has New Zealand been so hopelessly unable to deal with its worst-ever disaster?
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About White Silence

On November 28, 1979, an Air New Zealand jet took off from Auckland Airport on a sightseeing trip to Antarctica. There were 257 people on board. Hours later everyone was dead. Somehow, the plane had flown directly into the Erebus volcano. This was a disaster that shattered a country’s psyche. In the decades since, grief gave way to blame, anger and recrimination. Who was responsible for so many deaths? Was there a cover-up? How could a plane just fly into a mountain? To mark the 40th anniversary of the disaster, Michael Wright and Katy Gosset explore why New Zealand’s deadliest disaster was also its most controversial; why a nation was incapable of moving on; and how it was captured by one famous phrase: ‘an orchestrated litany of lies’. White Silence will be released daily from November 8, 2019.

Documentary History Society & Culture