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PODCAST

The Unmaking

Exploring the transformations necessary in creative practice - the work behind the work. Big or small, the moments when we sometimes have to let go of what once worked and deal with what follows. theunmakingpodcast.substack.com

society & culture philosophy

All Episodes

74:02

S01E10: Jo Mills - Copywriter. The Outlet, Lake Wānaka

The Unmaking ·

2026/08/23

Jo Mills and I met up at The Outlet, the point where Lake Wānaka becomes Mata-Au / the Clutha River. Jo and her then-boyfriend Nick first lived together here, in a tiny crib that’s now part of the campground, and it’s where Nick proposed, in the kitchen of that cottage in 2005. They’ve since camped here with their kids, walked the dogs here, and Jo still points to this spot and that time as the moment she realised Wānaka was going to be her home.Jo Mills is a writer working across Central Otago and

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110:25

S01E09: Ed Leigh - Broadcaster & Producer. Wānaka

The Unmaking ·

2026/08/12

"I pinch myself every day"We recorded this one sitting outside Ed Leigh’s home above Lake Wānaka’s Peninsula Bay. Bought as a bare section by Ed and his wife Sian back in 2019, they’ve built something that is, in his own words, the culmination of their personal and professional lives made real. In addition to the beautiful home and working spaces, there’s a micro skatepark on the driveway - as Ed puts it, it’d be criminal to pour concrete and not bend it up at the corners. Mountain bike trails start

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82:18

S01E08: Carmen Hubber - Designer. Arrow Junction,...

The Unmaking ·

2026/08/04

A handshake kind of girlWhen Carmen Hubber’s daughter Ruby was born in 2003, she walked away from a senior interior design role at McKenzie & Willis, printed 200 business cards, and took Ruby’s pram cold-calling local businesses in Queenstown. She secured two commissions that first week - an apartment and a bar fit-out - and Carmen Hubber Interior Design was born.What followed were two recessions, a divorce, and COVID. The 2009-10 period hit hardest: Carmen lost her home and studio and found herself

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110:49

S01E07: Laura Williamson - Writer. Dean’s Bank,...

The Unmaking ·

2026/07/21

Laura Williamson arrived in Wānaka the week of the big flood of 1999. The water had just receded, the high water mark was still visible on the supermarket walls, and her partner immediately found a job taking apart, cleaning, re-lubing, and reassembling flood-damaged bikes. She’d initially come to Aotearoa from Toronto, where she’d been dying on the inside at an overwhelmed EFTPOS machine call-centre, asking herself where the furthest place from her cubefarm hellscape might be. New Zealand had been

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90:17

S01E06: Ben Wallbank - Filmmaker. Tititea / Mt....

The Unmaking ·

2026/07/07

The character traits that emerged so unexpectedly in the immediate aftermath of a car crash - the way he instinctively knew what to do, and how to do it - felt so deeply biologically anchored, they laid a career foundation that went unquestioned for the next fifteen years of Ben Wallbank’s life.A foundation that served him incredibly well, but also one that felt like it might have been keeping him from the thing he was supposed to be doing. He’s only recently begun to see things differently, better

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59:17

S01E05: Jenny Chisholm - landscape painter. Glendhu Bay.

The Unmaking ·

2026/06/23

S01E05. Jenny Chisholm. Landscape painter.Landscape guides meJenny Chisholm was “unmade” for the first time at two weeks old. Offered up. Then chosen. Adopted into a Bay of Plenty farming family, the youngest of five, with free range of the bush and paddocks from the moment she could walk. She's been drawing on that first monumental act ever since: in her landscapes, in the family she built, in the way she shows up fully, wherever she is. We're parked at the edge of Glendhu Bay, looking north across

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59:10

S01E04: Tony “Buzz” Burrows. Pendant light designer

The Unmaking ·

2026/06/16

S01E04: Tony “Buzz” Burrows. Pendant light designerThe Universe Inside a Ping-Pong Ball Tony Burrows is a designer and artist, former director of photography, and the man behind Central Otago’s Buzz Burrows lighting brand.After thirty years working with light in the film and television industry, rising through the ranks from runner to director of photography and producer/ director, filming in the Okavango Delta for National Geographic, and crewing on documentaries for Sir Peter Blake's environmental

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78:22

S01E03: Siobháin Hooper - Celebrant and Poet

The Unmaking ·

2026/06/09

Siobháin Hooper is a wedding celebrant and poet, and someone who has spent most of her adult life being very good at telling other people's stories. In agencies, at Air New Zealand, and now helping happy couples tie the knot in Wānaka, she has shaped narratives for brands and people. Her own story, she kept to herself for a long time - partly out of habit, partly because she was too busy, and partly because she wasn't entirely sure she'd found her voice yet.This conversation, recorded at Dublin Bay

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58:06

S01E02: Briar Hardy-Hesson - The Fruit Bowl Studio

The Unmaking ·

2026/06/02

Briar Hardy-Hesson is a maker, jeweller, and founding member of the Arté Collective in Luggate. She operates under the name Fruit Bowl Studio - a name chosen deliberately, so she could never be pinned down to just one thing.We sat outside Briar’s old flat on Dungarvon Street in Wānaka, where the idea for her studio was first hatched, and talked about what it means to build a creative life on your own terms: outside formal institutions, without a timeline, and with a healthy respect for the work that

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58:06

S01E01 Nathan Weathington: You need someone to do the...

The Unmaking ·

2026/05/26

Episode SummaryRecorded on the banks of the Clutha River / Te Mata Au in Albert Town, this conversation traces the unlikely journey of Nathan Weathington - civil engineer, accidental comedian, schoolteacher, tech entrepreneur, and now publisher of 1964, one of New Zealand's most distinctive print magazines. Nathan talks candidly about the repeated decisions to walk away from security, the creative life he stumbled into, and what it takes to build something meaningful in a modern society that rewards

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3:10

The Unmaking - Episode Zero

The Unmaking ·

2026/05/03

In early 2025, I found myself towing an old horsefloat crammed full of toys, tools and memories from more than two decades of life in Germany, south through Aotearoa New Zealand. I was returning to Wānaka, closing a loop of more than a quarter century.That drive became the seed of this podcast.I’m recording this, episode zero, from Albert Town, Wānaka, looking out over the Mata-Au Clutha River. It’s the reverse view of the one I had in January 2025, swimming in the river on my first day back in

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0:45

Meet Flø

The Unmaking ·

2026/05/01

Meet Flø, a former rental horse float, and the spiritual home of The Unmaking. Over summer we converted her into a mobile studio, in the spirit of making things last, repurposing what already exists, and adding some surprise and beauty to the world. Every conversation for The Unmaking will be recorded inside Flø's time- and space-bending walls, in a different setting each time. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit

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12 results

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