'It was the most nervous I've ever been interviewing someone'
In the new TVNZ show Counting the Beat, journalist Tāmati Rimene-Sproat interviews his tearful mum and his pregnant wife.
For Tāmati Rimene-Sproat, who "wasn't much of a data person" before, hosting Counting the Beat was a massive learning experience about how population statistics both reflect and challenge who we think we are as a country.
Interviewing his wife about the motherhood penalty, he was "probably the most nervous I've ever been interviewing someone", he says.
"Me doing my TV stuff is one person, but me at home with arguably the person who knows me the best [is another]. It was a kind of clash of my two worlds," Rimene-Sproat tells Saturday Morning.
Counting the Beat is a new four-part series looking at what the numbers tell us about money, love and family, community and health in Aotearoa.
TVNZ
The journalist says he was "very naive" about how working women are penalised for becoming mothers before learning the data and speaking to his wife, who was becoming a mother at 31 - the median age for a woman giving birth in New Zealand.
She came into the conversation with really honest answers, he says, and really challenged him to think about it.
"She said, of course this is something that I've had to think about - my desire to become a mother, but also my goals and ambitions as a professional.
"[They discussed] 'How do we make sure that you are still able to be a mother, but also achieve some of the goals that you want to achieve in terms of your professional career?' There was a kōrero that came out of it, but yeah, it was probably one of the hardest interviews I've ever had."
Another really challenging conversation for Rimene-Sproat was with his mum about prostate cancer - a subject that's "incredibly relevant" to Māori whānau generally, because they are overrepresented in the data, and also personal for him because his mother's father passed away from it in his mid-60s.
"We had never talked about it as a whānau, so this was really raw… There are tears, but I think the story is really powerful in that we need to talk about this stuff."
In Counting the Beat, Rimene-Sproat speaks to a range of Kiwis around the country whose personal stories reflect our population data.
In the "incredibly diverse community" of Balclutha, he plays in a basketball tournament with one of thousands of Filipino people who've moved to the South Otago town.
Westport has "some really interesting Pornhub data" says journalist Tāmati Rimene-Sproat.
Peter Archibald/Carters Beach Seaside Accommodation
He also heads to Westport - a part of NZ with a high meal consumption, the lowest rate of work-related stress, and "some really interesting Pornhub data". (In a recent post on the Counting the Beat Instagram page, Rimene-Sproat revealed the top 5 Pornhub searches in NZ).
Visiting South Auckland, he joined thousands of people at the only stadium outside of India dedicated to kabaddi - a sport that's "like a combination of bullrush, tag, a little bit of rugby and a little bit of [the traditional Māori ball game] kī o rahi".
Rimene-Sproat even got to meet top player Jairo Chavez, who he says is considered "the Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi of the kabaddi world".
"He was this Mexican former policeman wearing these pink Speedos. We had to interview him in the car park because if he'd actually gone anywhere near the stadium, he would have got mobbed."
Counting the Beat starts on Wednesday 8 October at 7.30 pm.
