Jono, Ben & Megan - The Podcast - FULL SHOW:Jono’s on the run… AGAIN… from Bible performers!

Episode Date: March 24, 2026

On today’s show:  Ben gets caught out by someone asking, "Where do you know me from?" Megan has been violently taken out by six-day-old chicken soup… Jono is chased (again) by Bible performers he previously lied to at a mall entrance! What are your food trauma stories? Nicole, our entertainment reporter, joins us LIVE from New York to chat about the new video of Justin Timberlake’s arrest. It’s the six-year anniversary of New Zealand’s first COVID lockdown, and we reflect on our collective trauma. Instagram: @THEHITSBREAKFAST Facebook: The Hits Breakfast with Jono, Ben & MeganSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The John O'Ben and Megan podcast, thanks to Dilma. Goodness really does taste great. Dilma, making the world a better tea. Welcome along to the podcast. No Megan today. She's off, well, she really pushed the boat out with some soup. She took a risk on six-day-old chicken soup, and hey, yeah. You know what happens.

You know what happens. Although someone texting today to the show, seven-day-old chicken casserole, and they're doing just fine. I guess it all just depends on, you know, what's, antibodies you have in your stomach. You know what you have? Is that the right use of the term antibodies? I'll go with it. Thank you. I'm not a medical professional.

But yeah, some people just have cast iron guts, don't you? They can eat anything. Can eat a rubber jandle and not have any side effects. But you had just been stumbled across the news article The Pussy Cat Dolls. Yeah, so they've now got back together, but there's just three of the Pussy Cat Dolls.

How many of the dolls were originally? Was there like five or six? Yeah. And I think there's a bit of animosity. Well, yeah, some of them were a bit disappointed that they didn't know about this reformation.

They were six at one stage. Six, right, yeah. So they've been left out of the reunion tour. There's some unsettled waters in the dollhouse. And a reporter asked

the Pussy Cat Dolls, you know, how do you feel about this? And Nicole, the lead singer? Nicole, the lead singer, yeah, she had this to say. As you probably know, some former members of the Pussy Cat Dolls, they made some headlines recently after they found out that you guys were coming back as a trio, not as the original group.

How did you arrive at that decision? Well, I mean, listen, we are just, we are like, we are so, as women today. I mean, it has been a never-changing mind-time. So, yeah, picking any things up as well. Thank God her wingwoman picked up that answer, but yeah, she, she, I think she out it. You know, that spinning beach ball that happens on your computer every now and again. I had the same thing when I asked how to pronounce her last name. I'm like, shersing.

Shluslinga. Yeah. And it happens to all of us, you know, a few times. I do it every day on the radio at some point. But, yeah, unfortunately for her, it happened in quite a pivotal question. You see, it just happened to me then. I'm imagining they didn't want the other three Pussycat dolls. There's three extra hotel rooms.

Jet fuel nowadays. Flight prices are going to go through the roof. Three extra seats on the plane. Just three extra everything. So, I mean, I guess if you can halve the costs is probably, that's what she should have said. You've seen the cost of living out there, mate? I've just picked the three best ones, me and these other two, and we're going out on tour. You feel bad.

As I said, the other pussycat dolls are coming out, one of them in particular on a podcast saying, none of us were called. None of us were told anything about it. No, it was called. In fact, we were all blindsided by it. So, yeah. Wow. Yeah.

Met her once. She kept calling me hono. Oh, no. Obviously with her Spanish roots. The Jay, yeah. Yeah. Jose and stuff. Jose and Hono.

I like Hono. That's nice. Yeah, Hono. I like that version of me. Better. I can move to Mexico. Yeah. I enjoy the rest of the podcast.

And hopefully, Megan... Well, who knows? She'll be back on deck tomorrow. I don't reckon we'll still. I think she's out for the week. Yeah. Taylor Swift, Travis Kelsey, planning their honeymoon.

Three week honeymoon. Now, I've seen the itinerary for this. This is a lot. It seems like something I would plan out. Were you the travel agent for this honeymoon? because this is a blistering three-week turnaround. Bahamas, Italy, France, Croatia, Greece, Singapore and Australia, all later in the era.

They're trying to really jamming it in for three weeks, aren't they? Yeah. Go, go, go. That's what I like. I like that, but no rest. It's like, were we just in the Bahamas two hours ago? We're in Australia now. And again, classic Taylor Swift stops at Australia.

Doesn't come over here. Doesn't come to New Zealand. What about honeymoaning in New Zealand? I think old luck so often, didn't he? I think he did, he'd come here and get married or something. Yeah. Like, thanks, I'm sure we could get married anywhere in the world. But, hey, I mean, he sounds beautiful.

They're going to come back from that honeymoon, exhausted. Then he's got to go into another NFL season. Oh, gosh. Oh, gosh. I'm a holiday from the holiday. Now over the weekend, Symphony was on, of course. It was a great time. And, you know, you run into a few people in a live concert situation.

Did you see Auckland mere Wayne Brown there? I saw a picture of Wayne Brown there. I saw hip, too, he had an injury. Oh, yeah. He was at Symphony. Oh, no, I did see that picture. He was wearing an Auckland bomber jacket. as well,

look very, very flashed as well. Yeah. Someone's like, where do I get that jacket from me? So I don't know, I'm the mirror. People just give me stuff.

It's just going to, that was quite good. People just get it. Yeah, a slip that he had on as well. I just turn up. They put stuff on me. That's what you do when you're a mere.

But, you know, you run into people from time to time. And you know, through this job. And I guess through life, you just meet people, many people over the years. You do?

I want to know, on average, how many people your average human would meet during a lifetime? And had someone come up to me on Saturday night and they were like, hey, how's it going? I'm good? And they're like, do you remember me? Now, as someone who always wants to be liked, you know?

That's your main goal. You get out of bed and you just want to be liked. I'm like, yeah, of course. Yeah, of course I remember. Good to see you again. I thought I'd moved on, asked another question. But no, they decided they'd circle back. Uh-oh.

You know, because I felt like I'd moved on. I'm like, yeah, I'd do. Yeah, of course. Great to see you. Anyway, loving Cynthia, that sort of thing. Let's keep the conversation going. And they went, hang on, hang on. where do you know me from?

And they knew what they were doing. Good play for them. Hang on, hang on. So they stopped to you just trying to keep the Uber moving. And I was like, oh, and I was like, you do look familiar like, yep, yep. And then just sat in silence waiting for you. And that's when your brain sort of goes through, you're like, where do I know this person from? Okay.

And so is everyone else watching this interaction? Yeah, if you people were around, I'm like, I can't screw this. This is a great game show. Is he going to land the name? And I'm like, I had to go, I had to go a clue. I was like, can you give me a clue? And they were like, well, because I had nothing.

I couldn't think of anything. And they'll, you give me a clue like it was a gay show. The clue was sport. I was like, ooh. That's God is a monster. That was well, well, played. Sport. And I was like, okay.

Warriors? Yeah, I was, I think, Warriors have played sport, do it. Today play sport. I was like, I didn't get another clue. I had to use my second life line. in this game show. Tennis. And we narrowed to be on tennis.

And I was like, tennis. Now, I've never played tennis. I've been to the age. You went to the tennis. Yeah. Did I go over it? And then I thought of it. And I got it.

And I was so pleased I got it. You landed it. I landed it. Now, many years ago, I think I watched that King Richard documentary. I was like, my daughter is going to get into tennis, you know, about the Venus and Serena, Tina is getting into tennis. You were running a hard tennis. And so we signed her up for a while.

term of tennis lessons. This was the tennis coach. Oh, yeah. Got it. Jeez. After two lifelines you got there, that's pretty good. No, I was like, one season of tennis, you really enjoyed it, and he was a great coach as well. But I was like, I walked away, I was like, pretty sure he's always wearing a cap and glasses as well.

So that was a big, big, big blue. But I was so pleased I landed on that one. Yeah, one nothing, one nothing at all in the game show. It was a game show you walked away with going, why? What do we play that? And even though, just a few. few lessons as well. You'd even remember that.

Well done. 50,000 people, you have the average person meets over a lifetime. Really? Yeah. Wow, so like pretty much the size of symphony. And you end up with 150 stable relationships over that period. That's interesting.

John O'Ben and Megan, the podcast. The Hits. Tell you what, something that's raining out of Megan's body parts at the moment. She, late night message on our WhatsApp group, saying she has gone down real hard, real quick after eating six day old chicken soup. Now, Megan is a real, she like eats the same thing every day. We talk about this quite a lot.

She comes in the morning, she has those depressing-looking pancakes that she eats. Blueberry pancakes. And she doesn't have sugar or anything, so they're just straight pancakes. It's fine. And then she has the same thing for lunch. Salad or something? Yeah, cottage cheese and some sort of thing. And then at night time, she's like, I have chicken.

I make myself, just herself, chicken soup. And she must do a big batch and then. I think so. Yeah, store it in the fridge. But, yeah, she took a big gamble on six-day-old chicken soup. I reckon you got 24 hours with chicken. Some people might push it a little bit longer. Yeah, that's a put...

Yeah. But... Producer, you come in here. You push chicken out to... His reckon is about three days. Three days? Yeah, I mean, hey, you never had an issue with a three-day chicken? Not home-cooked chicken, no.

No, I've usually been all right for two or three days. You cook it on a Sunday, it on a Wednesday. Right, okay. So, yeah, I know you and me both in the 24-hour category. Yeah, probably like 24 hours of a half for dinner the dinner the night before, then. the dinner the next night would be as far as I would push. I love chicken, love it, love it, love it, love it, but that's probably it. That's probably the recommendation from health authorities, I'd say, as well.

Have you had, have you had camp labacter? Yeah, I got, yeah, it was a, it was a, it was a, I'm not going to name the establishment, but it was a fast food place. It was a long chicken roll, and, like, two or three days just of like, oh, yeah, it's a ride over, yeah, yeah. There's waves, a lot of waves. It's waves, yeah. It was just like, yeah, I'm good.

And then I'm on, no, no, no, no, no, I'm good. You just, you feel. You feel like you're ready to get back out there. It's a roller coaster of a recovery. Now a later, you're like, I'm going to die. I'm going to die. I'm going to die. Then I'll be like, no, I'm going to go, I'm going, I'm going back.

This is it. And then I'm dying again. I don't reckon we're going to see her Friday. Lucky. We'll be lucky to see her on Friday. It depends how bad it was. And how quick, was it from, I need to know, was it from that particular night. It was from yesterday, Fso.

That's super quick. That's super quick. Or was it 24 hours earlier that, you know, it's pulsating through us. Like if she had it last night It fell down last night That's a quick turnaround Yeah So I wonder if it was the night

Yeah Must be Same thing every night It's a risk It's a risk Yeah I want to know Because wasn't that the chicken soup

That went all through Her kitchen She just scoop it up Off the floor And then She did right Yeah She ruined a pressure cooker

Or something Yeah Yeah And uh Well maybe it is floor chicken As well Who knows what She's dealing with

At the moment But yeah We're gonna talk about This later In the show But you know What's the one Food or meal

that traumatised you so much you've never gone back. She won't be going back to that. I don't reckon she'll go back to chicken soup after that. It'd be really interesting because that's all she is. Now, is she going to go back to it or not? Have you gone back to the long burger? I've never had one since.

Never. No. I can't do it. Sometimes you get sick and you don't know what it is, but then in this case you probably do. In a Megan's case, yeah, well, she definitely knows what she eats three things every day. John O'Ben and Megan, the podcast. The Hats.

No, it's not looking great for Megan either. She had six-day-old chicken soup. soup, so that's why she's not here. You can only imagine what is going on. Have we heard from her since? No. It was going to be like, let us know before 5 o'clock this morning. Did they ever happen?

Who knows? It was just a late night WhatsApp message, wasn't it? Yeah. Geez, thoughts and prayers. Thoughts and prayers. Mentioned yesterday, Ben, you know, that I ran into two lovely ladies who offered to perform the Bible for me in the car park of the supermarket the other day. Monday, 11.45 a.m.

Didn't specify how much of the Bible, did they? No. perform. As you said, it's a big book. It's a big story. Yeah, I didn't know if I was going to get all the seasons or what was going to happen. But, you know, I managed to just, I told a complete lie to the lovely Bible ladies. Which seems worse.

It does. It does. It does. It's seen what they do. Yeah. I said, I need to go put the kids up from school. And as I was walking off, one of them said, school doesn't finish all three. She was dead right.

She was 100% dead right. But anyway, the reason I say that is I went back into the mall yesterday. They were there again. He's back. He's got time. I'd just seen them in the distance, and I was walking into the front door, and all I could, I don't know if this was aimed for me, but you kind of know in your gut when something's aimed for you.

I could hear, I could hear, hey brother, hey brother! It was definitely a for you. I don't know, I don't know. Who else was around? Anyone? There might have been some other people. But yeah, I was inside the mall then, and I could just say, hey, brother, hey brother, and the door shut.

So those interactions, they are some of the most awkward interactions though, aren't they? When people are outside, you know, I get there. And that's a tough job for them to, you know, to do whatever that is, they have to, whether it's signing you up for a charity or whatever it is, that's a tough, that's a tough thing. That's a tough gig. And they're out there out there are doing God's work, literally. They're doing God's work. Yeah, right.

But tough conditions as well when you just want to go, I just got to go in and get to get out. I know. I know you even avoid charity people, don't you? sometimes you don't even go into the soup market. You pull into the car park. I'm like, no, not today. Well, worse, not today. Your loss.

I know, that's bad too. But there's always you're like, I don't have, you know, like, we sign up. We do support some charities. But, yeah, that's, it's tough. The problem is you just take your bloody two bucks. Take five bucks. Take them, be gone with it. Tap and go.

There you go. Ten bucks. You just sign you up to monthly repayments. But yeah, that, that happened at the front door yesterday. Then I bumped into someone and ended the call. conversation with, I said, let's catch up soon. Yeah, I don't think anyone has ever caught up soon after saying the words, let's catch up to catch up soon.

It doesn't happen that often. It's a former colleague, and you know what? You know what he did? He text an hour later. Oh, to try and get a catch up. Let's do it. What date? Name a day, name of time.

I've never had that before. That really threw me. So a couple of blindsides yesterday. We've been caught again by the lovely Bible people, and a follow up on let's catch up soon. Yeah. I thought it was like a verbal handshake I was like, let's just agree to the world's biggest lie.

Yeah, let's catch up soon. We've got to do that one time though. A lady did say to me that I caught up with. She's like, why? We just did that. You know? Good on it. And I was like, you're right.

And I respected that honestly. I was like, yeah, we've just caught up with all the things in each other's life. But you just need, you use it as a, I'm just, yeah, I'll catch up. Let's get out of this now. Yeah. So, well, anyway, I have to catch up soon. John O' Ben and Megan.

The podcast. The Hats. All Black's assistant coaches under Dave Rennie announced yesterday, including Atana Umanga. That's amazing. That's cool as well. That's great. Also, there's a bit of an old, like a coach's WhatsApp group going on. And Mike Blair, who's one of the other assistant coaches, apparently that were having some banter

a little while ago on the WhatsApp group, as you do with your mates. And he made a bit of a joke about, you know, I'll join you, Dave Rennie because I'll giving Dave Rennie a grief about some other coach. You might, you know, coaching job he might end up, not the All Blacks. And he privately messaged him and said, hey, if I get this All Black job? would you like to? And he was like, oh, it started off as a bit of a gag. Did they have an international coach's WhatsApp group?

Oh, yeah, I guess they have some, yeah, coaches all sort of bantering around. He took it offline, Dave, yeah. Well, took him to a side room for a bit of a conversation. Congratulations to all the new appointments. Now, Megan, she's suffering really badly today. She messaged late last night saying she'd eaten six-day-old chicken soup. Woo, gamble. You're huge gamble.

Now, we mentioned this earlier this morning, but without a word of, of the lie. Megan makes her own dinner separate from the family and she has chicken soup every day to the point that she traveled down to Christchurch. She took it with it and that was the soup again I was thinking well you've taken this out of your house all day four or five hours on the road.

In a plane you've taken it and you've eaten it that night this is chicken soup she has every night for dinner. You'd never meet a more traveled chicken soup than that one. It looks depressing too. It does look so. It looks like she sent us a photo of us like are you in hospital? I was like where you want to go to dinner? Because we're in you know in Christchreux. He's heaps of great places.

are like, well, should we go out and get something? She's like, oh no, I bought my own chicken suit. Yeah. It made me sad that photo. But anyway, she's out for the count. Six days, a really good poll. I've looked on chat GPT here on AI. Cooked chicken, refrigerated three to four days max.

Oh, that feels like it's pushing it. To me, three or four days, feels like it's pushing it. Not six days. All she go back there, because this is her only dinner at the moment. Do you think? Or she always just be like, no, I can't. I'm traumatized by it. I can't go back there.

You do find that with food poisoning. Yeah, I did, I self-provided camplebacter on the barbecue, barbecue chicken. Not fully cooked. Apparently the barbecue plate doesn't get hot enough to get rid of the bacteria, according to the doctor. I was all this would have been good information to know. But yeah, geez, talk to you, you feel like you're getting better? You feel like you've climbed the hill and then boom, you're back down. Yeah.

We're not going to say, oh, we're not lucky to see you Monday, Tuesday, I reckon. She's got campberbacter, yeah. Because you'll be like, I'm good, like you say. and then, no, and lost a lot of good pairs of underwear that time I had it. I thought you said Megan's lost a good. I don't know. I don't want to delve too deep into that with her. But we wanted to know this morning what's the food that you're traumatized by,

that maybe you got sick and you're like, now I can't eat that again. For you, producer Troy, it wasn't the food that made you sick. It was the food you had afterwards that you can't eat again, really. Yeah, so it was a chicken sandwich thing from fast food place that got me sick. But then the only thing I could eat, or the only thing mom wanted to make me, was chopped up apples, just an apple, quartered. Oh, you're pretty inoffensive, an apple. Yeah, yeah.

But now every time I see or think about eating an apple, it just reminds me of being fruit poisoned. And so I just have this yuck kind of feeling about eating apples. Don't eat apples. Don't need apples. How do you like them apples? Does it? None of them.

But I love it. Apple flavored things, but it's just the texture and the, I think, the... Bad memories. Is it a mental thing or is it a physical thing? Like, did your stomach get all queasy when you think of them? I think it'll be a both, yeah. Yeah, right. The mental thing triggers a physical thing, and then, yeah.

Take you back I don't have nothing really like that No I don't have anything that's you know Like there was when I got Camber back to I had a theory about where I got it from again A fast food place and I haven't had that particular Style of Burger before But I've gone back to the place many times

So Got back in the game Just not ask that one thing that could have been it May not have been it It's hard to tell Only one for me, kimchi Wild kimchi incident from when I was a child And I've told it on the radio multiple times

I won't get into the details But what it ended up with Troy was my mother having to retrieve a spade from the garden shed and clean up some... Yeah, you ended up scooping it out of the... Into the backyard of some friends here. I don't know how you ended up there. Now I'm going to explain it. No, I know. No, I know.

I had kimchi. I don't agree anymore. Kimchi did not agree with my sensitive Caucasian digestive system. Okay? And then nature followed? The toilet would somehow malfunction. So I'm like, what do I do? And so I managed to contain the contents, and I was like, I'll chuck him out the window.

Oh, God. I got home. And then I looked out the window, and the window was just like a path. It wasn't a garden or anything, so you can only imagine. And I went home, I was traumatized. I told my mother, and so she went to the garden. She had got a spade. We trapes back up the road, and she did what she needed to do.

And we've never spoken at a beginning. Well, you're talking about it many times, actually. Megan the podcast The Hits Megan's off Six Day Old Chicken Soup That's the reason

She's no longer With us And um Chicken Soup for the soul Was always the thing Back about Oprah days Wasn't it? It was

Yeah I don't think she'll have chickens Should we call her Lucker This is A call her Gambling She's probably

An answer right No I just love to get an update Please hello Yeah She does a great sick voice When she's sick

Doesn't she No I know We're not going to get an answer These aren't These aren't Breakfast Radio conditions for her. Are they?

We did ask her if to send like a voice memo, like just an update. We wanted a health update. We were concerned. Hey, it's Megan Heard. No. No, no. No, what else we expected? But food trauma.

What food can you not go back to? So many texts and calls coming through. Yeah. Fireball. Fireball. Not the great song, this one from football, but the actual drink. Yeah, a lot of people, there's a lot of drinks that people overindulge with early on in there, say, drinking career and they can't go back there.

Mississippi moonshine. Oh God. Christov 42, this $9 bottle of vodka that's come through a couple of times as well, but there's always going to be those instances. Jagermeister's one that always is... Late at night, it's not the... It's not. It comes out too late, you know?

My friend Hamish is always like, 52 herbs and spices in Yeagermeister. Fifty-two herbs and spices. Great, but that's three, four hours earlier would have been a lot better. Yeah, Angela, morning to you, your food trauma. What you cannot go back to? I can't go back to Odfellows. Well, actually, any mints. The mints.

Because as a kid, we would do a lot of traveling to go and see my grandparents so long road trips in the back of a very hot car. And when I'd start to feel car sick, mum would turn around and offer me an oddfellow. Shut some mints and stuff. in your gob. Yeah. Anytime I

smell odd fellows or mints or anything it just makes me feel cast like that form of everything they're a hearty mints

too they're a big and big say I love an odd fellow but yeah there are a lot of mint definitely a nana mint isn't it the odd fellow

another odd fellow text too here Angela sympathising with you someone who was pregnant and they were craving washing powder

and odd fellows were the closest thing to washing powder tablets that they could find So that brings back some trauma for that person. Thank you so much for your call. Appreciate it.

Anna, how are you in West Auckland? Good good, thank you. Lovely to have you on. Food trauma. What are you never going back to? Watermelon. That's no Anna for me. Oh, what's your problem with watermelon?

Ben's offended. I was seven years old and we were traveling around my home country. And I asked Mom to stop. to have some watermelon and it looked like was in the road for a long time so I was food poisoning for a couple of days so it's a no from me No from you.

I could hear you say the word watermelon all day long Can you give us one more watermelon? Okay, watermelon. Oh yeah. You do say it a lot cooler than we that we're like, watermelon? Yeah, can you do a sad watermelon?

Oh, yeah, it could be a sad watermelon. Yeah. Oh, sad watermelon. Oh, yeah. Happy watermelon? Happy watermelon? Yeah, we could get a one happy watermelon more. Yeah, that sounds a lot better.

I'll have been down. You've got me, won me back. You should be a voiceover artist, Anna. We'll tell you one more quickly. Food trauma. What is it for you, Sarah? I went to Rarotonga and I had eaten a yummy ham and egg sandwich at the resort and then vomited the whole way around the island.

All around the island, did you? Circumavated the island. I fed all the roaming dogs. Oh, no. Egg egg sandwich. You never had one since? I have. It just makes me shiver thinking about it.

It feels like egg sandwich is great, but you've got to consume it. It's got a wee window, like a short window. Yeah. Thank you for your cool. And some great text, too. Thank you so much. John O'Ben and Megan, the podcast. The Hats.

Live from New York City. It's our entertainment. Correspondent, Nicole Ryan. Nicole hosts the breakfast radio show in, out of New York, and we like to catch up with and talk entertainment every week. Good to see you, Nicole. Good to see you guys. What's going on? Notice a T-shirt now, so starting to warm up over there.

The snowy conditions disappearing. It's just, I'm just hot in here. I've got a sweater on. No, I was wearing a winter jacket today. Oh, okay. It sucks. I mean, it's like going back and forth. Like yesterday, it was beautiful, and we were outside.

It's just going back and forth. It's like the winter's holding on for dear life, but we'll get there. We'll get there. A lot of talk in New Zealand about gas prices. Are you getting that over there in America? I mean, obviously, obviously. I mean, you know who the president of the United States is. I haven't heard of them.

Do you know what, this whole time we've been like, oh, we feel bad for you because it's affecting you and not really us, but now we're not stoked about it. Hey, listen, I mean, listen, if you want to do something about it, we're all for it. Do you, do you have a car? Do you actually drive in New York? Yes. You do? Yeah, we have a car.

Yeah, because we drive a lot in the summer. We go on road trips. We also have tons of friends that are outside of New York City. And so we'll go visit family and friends and stay for the weekend and stuff. So, yeah, we actually use our car a lot. I imagine it's quite unusual for everyone to have a car in New York, right? Yeah, most people do not. Yeah, walking public transport.

Yeah, most people do not. Can you drive, like, is there a fee or a tariff that have to pay to drive into the middle of the city? Mm-hmm. You can't get into the city. That started recently. You get, like, like, congestion prices. So, like, if you drive, we're all. on the Upper East Side. Once you pass

60th Street going downtown, you have like a fee that will get automatically. Wow. Don't tell that to our councils. Well, they're trying to make it like that, aren't they? It all happen. Hey, Justin Timberlake. Maybe he should have been using public transport. His video, his video when he was arrested for

drunk driving has been released what seems like a year and a half later. Yeah, I'm on tour. What are you doing? I'm on the world tour. Doing what? I'm Justin Timberlake What's your name? Justin Timberlake

You are Justin Timberlake Yeah It's hard to explain You see I'm Justin Timberlake Because I couldn't believe that those words Came out of his mouth Come on, dude What are we doing here?

You can tell it first he didn't really want to say Because obviously if anyone hasn't seen it The footage has been released He got You know He was intoxicated behind the wheel And the footage Now he'd be like

Thanks for releasing that That's great A year and a half later You can tell it first He was like, it's going to affect the world tour and the person wasn't really picking up who he was. But what he said was in, like he was basically saying,

don't you know who I am in so many words? And like I almost would have rathered him say that. Really given me the ick that video. There's like three, isn't it? In a series, there's another one who's trying to walk in a straight line, which I found quite funny because he's a great dancer, you know,

but he should have good balance. Someone in the comments is like, this is the hardest choreography he's had to learn. Well, didn't he say, I might be completely making this up, but I swore he said, like, wow, these are really hard tests or something like that. Yeah. We did try the one foot in front of the other.

It's what's tough. You know what I don't like when they do? Some police officers will, not because I've had this experience, but will ask you to, like, say the alphabet backwards. I can't do that sober. No, no. Or I can only get so far, right? We're having to laugh.

One of my co-hosts always says, he tells people this, If you ever do happen to get yourself into trouble and you get arrested, when you take your mugshot, make sure you smile because that thing lives on forever and you don't want to. And I'm like, I don't know if that works for every charge, right? You don't want to be smiling away. You have a great time. It doesn't regret the crime whatsoever. Nicole, always great to catch her with you. John O'Ben and Megan today, she's off with food poisoning and she probably doesn't want to be here for this.

because this is going to be a little bit triggering. It is, yeah. She had six-day-old chicken soup, and that's what happens when you take a gamble on chicken soup. It's been sitting there for a week. But speaking of six, we are marking a six-year anniversary day of this moment right here. That's why Cabinet met today and agree that effective immediately, we will move to alert level three nationwide. After 48 hours, we will move to level four. I can't listen to anymore.

It's too triggering. It's been six years and it still feels triggering. Lockdown. The first lockdown was six years ago. Today. It doesn't feel like six years ago. Although it just feels like a lifetime ago in some ways too. We just started at this job at the hits, right?

And we actually started on air when it was locked down. We didn't know anyone. There was no one in the building. We didn't meet anyone we were working with. You're right. There was a little bubble we were allowed to come in for our radio show. And that was that. There was no one in the offices as all.

There was just a couple of other people on. air in other stations you couldn't interact with. It wasn't until like a year or two later, you were like, well, there's a lot of people work in this building. And I was, I was wild. I had gloves on and all sorts. Remember I'd come in with rubber gloves like a surgeon on the way to work? You did, you used to work with gloves, even though it was just us.

You had gloves on and. Gloves get quite sweaty too, the latex gloves. We all did it back in the time. We all, we all, but yeah, we all did. So that's what we want this morning. You just say something and you trigger us with your COVID memory of lockdowns, okay? Yeah. What have you got to kick things off?

Oh, look, washing fruit. I'm going to go with that. Like, washing, like, getting your stuff home from the supermarket and washing, you like, all of it. I mean, we still wash fruit, but it was just like washing packets and containers and all that before it was like, what was it doing? I remember individually washing grapes going, what am I doing with my life? And then there was like, you know, big articles on the news going, this is how you

wash your hands properly. Oh, yeah, we don't need to lessen the way. Oh, we really did reset humanity, didn't we? I'd say a big one for me. It was a particular sound effect. Oh, that is triggering. That is really triggering with it. The alert levels that we all knew so much about at the time,

and now you're like, I don't remember what any of that means now. And, you know, shout it to the composer of that as well, too. They're probably like, they don't want to be known for that for the rest of their career, do they? That was a big COVID announcement, right? We managed to turn that into, we were trying to take a positive spin on that sound effect. you know, we tried to turn it into a party anthem to smoke screen all the madness. This is a COVID-19 announcement.

When you're feeling unwell, isolate wherever you are. Isolate wherever you are. Call Healthline about a COVID-19 test. You see where this is going? Imagine this is a symphony, guys. How can keep your community safe, safe, safe, safe, safe, safe. Bounce a drop.

This is a COVID-19 announced. Here we go. Beautiful people. Good time you have you. That's what you want to do this morning. We're going to do it once next and we're going to move on, never talk about it again. But right, but you tell us the one thing that's going to trigger us from that time, from that lockdown time. It could be, we just mentioned, but we're talking about before cutting your own hair.

Haircuts. I became the household hairdresser. Oh, some tense conversations there. I was going to handing out some subpar haircuts. Well, I've got no experience. I got my kids to cut my hair and it looked like I was, it had been cut by someone in prison. Didn't you go up the side sort of shaved mullet?

One went way too high and then they had to back it. I was just like, what am I doing? Fresh out of Pairmeramo. John O'Ben and Megan, the podcast. The Hits. We're reflecting on it briefly. Different time, different time. Do you remember you're like elbowing everyone?

Oh yeah. You had great alternates to the shaking hands. fist pants became popular but I know we incorporated the elbows didn't we because hugs were off the table handshakes were off the table as well everyone was carrying masks everywhere they went God I was so desperate to have a picnic really wanted a picnic remember we just like can we go for a picnic just under

that was our little treat Can we go for a picnic please I just want one picnic people can come around to hang out but they can't use your bathroom you're like how's it work yeah I'm being for a picnic since jeez I was desperate for a picnic so yeah we are taking calls where you can trigger us with your COVID memories. Checking case numbers.

1 p.m. press conference come through a lot, you know. People just, you know, every day you'd be watching the TV. Geez, the rating numbers on that. TV was like, this is, we're booming, guys. We're back, baby, TV's back because Celebrity Treasure Island had a bump a year that year because we're all that's stuck at home watching it. It's really good. Tiger King as well.

Tiger King. Yeah, we're all watching that as well. Squid game? Yeah. Maybe just naming stuff. Marsha, you can name some stuff. Memories from six years ago. Trigger us.

It was the alert that still comes through on the cell phone that used to get me. And they didn't come through all at once. So five different cell phones in the house, you know. Oh, that noise, yeah. Yeah, you're like, oh no, something's epic. It's gone into it. Yeah, sometimes, yeah, it was just. Horrid.

Horrid, yeah. And we're all an expert on all the levels and we'd all hear, oh, someone says we're going into level three and the, you know, like, I don't know. The village, the old New Zealand village rumors were arrived, weren't they? Full of misinformation. I mean, there's some wild stuff I started about Clark All through that period we went bonkers, didn't we? I apologize to Clark for that too, sorry, bro.

Really put you through the ring of the air. Thank you, Marsha. Appreciate you call. Brittany, welcome. Welcome to the COVID trigger line. Memories you have. Happy New Year to, you two. What do you remember?

Trigger us. You are the same. We're just mentioning that, I know. You're just having to scan in everywhere you went. They were tracking us They were tracking us, mate You know what? I got me and my friends down to the parliament

We put up some tents We had a laugh We told them Good and proper Locations of interest Was another big one as well too You know Like you were like

Oh I was just there And they had COVID like The day before It's like What was like? I was in that supermarket Three days after there was a case

And the case numbers We'd all go Oh the cases are up And now you're like You wouldn't know Yeah It would have been interesting And it's all easy to say in hindsight, isn't it?

Like, if you had just adopted the plow on policy. That's why people in Parliament outside of them all. That's what I was saying. We should just plowed on. Shelley, the COVID trigger line, what have you got? Cueing up at the supermarket guys. You had to go and park, stand out the front, get your trolley, and there could be 20, 30 in the queue.

And you had to wait for someone to come out of the supermarket for the next one to go in. And then you had to stand on the stickers. so you had a meter and a half distance between you and the other person. Yeah. A supermarket shop took like three or four hours. It was there a big housing for the week, no. What else were we doing, though?

Hey, good on you, Shelley. That's great. Remember this spread your legs? Chris Hibkins. Chris Hipkins, yeah. In the press conference. There's a challenge in higher density areas for people to get outside and to spread their legs when they are...

he knew he'd messed up their name, but he's like, uh, what's the word, Streets of the legs is what he wanted. Yeah, he's had a bit of a spicy last couple of weeks to deal with anyway,

so I'm sure that's a distant memory. John O'Ben and Megan, the podcast, The Hits. You know, when you need something done at the house, you get someone over to quote, and so there's that age old saying,

you know, always get more than one quote. Is that an age old saying? I don't know. I don't know. Age old advice. Yeah, it seems like good advice. I's good solid advice.

My wife's very good at getting, yeah, she gets a couple of quotes. And often it does save you a lot of money. I'm just like, yep, done it once. Tick that box. We're going on. Move on to the next item on the to-do list. My thing, and I want to chuck this out to the trade,

you can text 4487. We'll just love your feedback on this because it's essentially speed dating for adults with professional services, isn't it? Yeah. And you get them in, and I want to know if they can see the look in your eyes that you're not going to follow through with their quote.

Sometimes you know instantly, hey. Yeah, they must know. They must know. They come around and they go, oh, that's going to be about that. You're like, whoa. You try to hide it. You try and hide it. Yeah, yeah.

I've never done that. They say a number, you try not to react. Yeah. But they must know. They must know that this has been a huge waste of their time. And you're essentially having to break. It's like a first date. You go on a first date and then you ghost them.

Yeah. Do you get back to them? Well, they're often quite good at getting back. Yeah. No, I probably like, if it's a no from me, if I know it's a no from me. You ghost them. You ghost them. I mean, if they came back and said, do you.

And I was, oh, hey, we're not going to do it. I'll probably blame it on my wife. I said, oh, I don't know right now. I wanted to, mate, but, you know. And Ball and Jane. You've got control of the finances, but yeah. This is what I want to ask the industry. Do you get annoyed when we ghost you?

I guess for them, though, it's part of the, you know, it's part of the job they have to know. It's like sending out your CV or pitching for an, you know, like a creative idea or something like that. Sometimes you've got to do a certain amount of work to get the response back. Yeah. Yeah, that's part of the game. I mean, they probably don't want to do that all day, go around and not get any work back, but yeah. Yeah, I feel like a coward when I don't get back to them. But, yeah, 4-487.

What's the industry's take on this one? Do you get really salty? Is there like little dolls that you stick pins into? Because then sometimes you see them in public and you lock eyes. And they're thinking, that son of a bit, never got back to me. And you're thinking, you're too expensive, you know? Yeah. They go, well, how's that going?

Yeah, we've got something else to do it. Yeah, I guess you don't want to admit that then, right? I know, Megan, who's not here today, God rest of her soul. She's recovering after a six-day-old chicken soup. But she said she had an incident. Guy came over, spent a couple of hours there, bantering, forming a relationship. Doing the hard yards, right? Yeah.

And then they did the right thing. They sent a message saying, hey, we've decided to go somewhere else. And that did not end well. No. He didn't take that break up well at all, she said. she's like well that's all new for spending two hours and then it kind of got a bit nasty but yeah yeah well true two hours is a long about a time

that feels like you're leading you're leading them along if they're spending. Absolutely. Two hours there. She's always like it was his help for spending two hours but I'm thinking well you kept it there for two hours doing something, quoting something. He'd be like this is great they're interested in all this stuff and then the poor guy comes out later.

John O'Ben and Megan The podcast The Hits. Dillon first went to lockdown. This is a COVID-19 amount triggering in it. It is, yeah, that noise is, we played it earlier today. We made that into a DeRood Sandstorm remix.

When you're feeling unwell, isolate wherever you are. Geez, we were really trying to find angles on the whole COVID thing, weren't we, for about 12 months. And we reflected this morning on all the things that still trigger you today. 1pm press conferences, QR codes, masks, drive-through COVID tests. Yeah, there's a nurse who said the one thing that I remember is I have to get home from work, my have to explode my clothes off at the front door and sprint to the shower and cleanse the COVID off me.

All the things we were doing, the intense washing of packages and parcels and, you know, all sorts of stuff before getting in the house. It was a different time. And a different time for you, producer Troy. Yeah, it was weird. It was a weird time. I was new to a job and I didn't really like my flatmate at the time. He was a pilot.

Okay. So he was still flying during lockdown. And I was like, if I'm going to get COVID, it's from this guy. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Because he was grubby. He was very grubby. And I was like, I don't want to be here.

If I could describe him, it would be grubby. Grubby pilot. Why are we in pilot? It doesn't really go together. Yeah, I would have thought. He loved the messy life. Yeah, did he? What was so messy about his life?

Oh, he just, like, empty ramen things in his room. Oh, right. Like, yeah, didn't wash, didn't clean. I never saw him do laundry for like a year. For a year? Yeah. Gee, you wouldn't get that from a pile? Maybe he was doing it on the road.

Maybe, yeah. Yeah, go down to the river or something. He, yeah, so he, I don't want to live with him. And I had a colleague who was like, come live with me, mate. We'll go a two-story family home. You can have the whole bottom story to yourself. What a generous offer. Yeah, I mean, I don't know.

I can't see myself doing that to anyone. Can you? Well, not someone you just met, you know. It was like, two months into the job. And I was like, this was before they announced the lockdown to. So I was like, yeah, yeah, if that came up, sure, that'd be great. Thank you. And then we went into lockdown.

I was like, oh, crap, okay. Yeah, I actually will take you up on that. Oh, so you did, you said, oh, thank you for the offer. I'll be there. They would have gone, oh. Yeah. I was just doing that to look good. How was it?

It was interesting. So yeah, I had the whole bottom floor to myself. There was like an onsuit bedroom and a little gaming room with a PlayStation. So I was sweet. But the one, I guess, requirement was that every Sunday, they asked me if I could come up and play a guitar for their church Zoom sessions. Oh, so you were like, uh, you were like, uh, What, you're doing the instrumentals on the old acoustic were you? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And so that's how you were paying rent during the time. I think that was how I was offering my services for, you know, they fed me. Oh, wow. That's a pretty good deal, though, isn't it? I know, yeah. See, how long had you known this person? Two months. Two months.

Two months. Eight weeks, wow. Yeah. It's a big offer from them. Did you, I guess, did you interact much with the people? A little bit. Like, we're in a bubble. Yeah, we're in a bubble.

So we still had to go into work to do, like, radio stuff every day. So we would commute together and know them quite well. Got to know the Bible quite well What was your favorite Jesus jam There was one called Save your Savior was a good hit Can you remember any of the lines

I can't be the lyrics I remember it was in C major He remembers the chords It was like C, D, E And did people Would people applaud after you No it was no applause But it was

You know Trying to, people would have done this Trying to sing over Zoom The delays Oh it doesn't work Okay Really messy It threw off my rhythm

Not good for the hymns No not good for the hym John O'Ben and Megan, the podcast. The hits. March 25, six years ago, today we went into a lockdown. We reflected a couple of times this morning. It's been quite triggering for a lot of us. There's some tough times for many.

Through that period. It's, you know, but it's a time we live through. And that's triggering every time you play that as well. And we're going to move on after this, no more talk. Not a text saying, hey, stop, you know. Some of us did it tough. Oh, yeah, it was a tough time. It was a tough time.

It really was. And it was. It was a tougher for a lot of people. especially Troy who spent the entire lockdown with somebody and only met a few weeks previously and kindly opened up their home and that was a really generous offer thinking about it during those songs

I just would you have done that to Troy if you okay so imagine you've known Troy for I like Troy I think I feel like him and I would have bonded over some PlayStation and nerded out to some Spider-Man Four weeks Troy would you have liked four weeks Troy If I had a place enough I mean if I hold downstairs part that's great yeah Troy could stay

Absolutely. Would you do it for Grace? She's asking in a area. Grace is, I mean, I do like, I want to keep Grace on my good side, so you, absolutely. Grace scares me a lot. I probably have to move out of the house and Grace would live there. It's Grace's house now. Exactly.

Ian, welcome. We'd just been the lockdown, mate. Oh, I was in a four and a half feet of caravan down in that, Trahung. I was in the temp season for frontier, and I've got the call up just before COVID there. And, yeah, you got to. stuck down near the lockdown. In a caravan? Five and a half months, yeah.

Oh, that's a long time. Yeah. Yeah, couldn't go home. Couldn't see my son and my wife. Yeah, he just buckled and afford to work. It's terrible. So how many months did you go without seeing them in the flesh? Yeah, five months almost.

Yeah, five months. Damn. That's wild, Ian. Yeah, yeah, well, you know, you're going to abide by everything, I suppose. Yeah. I can go home. But, yeah, I went to pick my start when I could go home. and he walked straight past me.

Oh, that's... He didn't recognise me, that was a bit of a lot of it. Yeah. That's heartbreaking. Does he recognise you now? Yeah. Does his son recognise you now, Ian?

Yeah, yeah. Oh, that's good. You repaired that relationship. People doing amazing things. Yeah, yeah, we bought a house down and after Hongas that were all together down there now. Oh, that's good to hear. Good to hear. I was talking to the guy who's Eden Park Groundsman.

And, yeah, during the lockdown, because, you know, that was... He lived in a character. at Eden Park by himself, the only one there, so he could keep on top of the grounds. Oh, because it would have just grown into weeds. Oh, wow, so Eden Park looked pristine all through lockdown. So he could keep on top of it, just by himself, in a caravan, away from his family, and, yeah, just to keep it. Jeez, that's commitment to the lawn. I know.

They could have got some new grass seed to it. The empty stadium, that would have been frightening. I was working on a commercial fishing boat when lockdown was announced. So we stayed out at sea for months, just watching everything unfold on the news. It was like a movie. Wow.