On The Dial: A grim year

Maybe it’s just that summer doesn’t seem to have arrived yet, but 2014 has felt like the bleakest year in recent memory.

In this week’s On The Dial, Megan Whelan, Elle Hunt, Radio New Zealand political reporter Craig McCulloch, Wireless film reviewer Judah Finnigan, and comedian Thanaa Majeed reflect on the year that was.

Craig thinks that looking back at the events of the year, all years seem grim, but it turns out, 2014 was especially so. Robin Williams and Philip Seymour Hoffman died because this year, this refuse pile of 365 days known as 2014, took them from us,” writes The Nib, calling 2014 a trashpile of world events and sewer people. (And a cat made more money than you this year, don’t forget.)

READ The Wireless contributors respond to the death of comedian Robin Williams. 

New York Magazine has Google’s top searches of 2014 – and it was a terrible year: “between Ebola and ISIS and high-profile celebrity suicide and all the airplane disasters, 2014 does seem like a particularly awful year”.

“2014 was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad year,” writes Jeb Lund in the Guardian, though watching too much news might be part of the problem.

There were some good moments, our panellists agree – Pope Francis has been doing good deeds, women made some steps, in popular culture at least (less so if you happened to be a woman of colour or here in New Zealand), and Beyoncé continues her stranglehold on, well, everything.

Still feeling grim about 2014? Don’t worry, Bloomberg has you covered with a pessimist’s guide to the world in 2015. In the meantime, happy holidays from all of us at The Wireless. 

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On The Dial was produced by Elle Hunt and Megan Whelan with technical production by Marc Chesterman, and assistance from Daniela Maoate-Cox and NZonAir. Our music was composed and performed by Eddie Johnston, and the cover image was made by Hadley Donaldson.

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See you next year.