Kiwi FM is a New Zealand Radio Network playing 100 percent New Zealand music both nationally and to the world via its 24/7 live stream. The network was designed specifically to showcase the best New Zealand music across the broadest range of genres, enabling greater access to an international market for local, contemporary artists. The station broadcasts in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch on FM frequencies, nationwide on SkyTV Channel 500, and globally through its internet stream. Kiwi FM is operated by Kiwi Radio Ltd, a non-profit subsidiary of MediaWorks New Zealand.

The station Kiwi FM was launched on Waitangi Day, 6 February 2005 and was opened with a speech by then-Prime Minister Helen Clark. It was created to replace alternative station Channel Z which had failed to deliver on its ratings.

The initial station ran for around a year and was rebranded in July 2006 when legendary New Zealand music journalist Karyn Hay stepped in as General Manager with Andrew Fagan as music director. On 1 May 2006, the New Zealand Government granted Kiwi FM access to new FM frequencies, under an agreement that kept the 100 percent Kiwi music station on the airwaves. Broadcasting Minister Steve Maharey said the station had been granted the use of three FM frequencies for an initial period of one year, during which time it would work towards becoming a not-for-profit organisation. As part of the agreement to use the frequencies, the station's brief was to be to significantly expand its content to include a greater range of New Zealand Music.

Kiwi are flightless birds endemic to New Zealand, in the genus Apteryx and family Apterygidae. At around the size of a domestic chicken, kiwi are by far the smallest living ratites and lay the largest egg in relation to their body size of any species of bird in the world. There are five recognised species, two of which are currently vulnerable, one of which is endangered, and one of which is critically endangered. All species have been adversely affected by historic deforestation but currently large areas of their forest habitat are well protected in reserves and national parks. At present, the greatest threat to their survival is predation by invasive mammalian predators.

The kiwi is a national symbol of New Zealand, and the association is so strong that the term Kiwi is used all over the world as the colloquial demonym for New Zealanders.

It was long presumed that the kiwi was closely related to the other New Zealand ratites, the moa. However, recent DNA studies indicate that the Ostrich is more closely related to the moa and the kiwi is more closely related to the Emu and the cassowaries. This theory suggests that the ancestors of the kiwi arrived in New Zealand from elsewhere in Australasia well after the moa. According to British scientists, the kiwi may be an ancient import from Australia. Researchers at Oxford University have found DNA evidence connected to Australia's Emu and the Ostrich of Africa. Upon examining DNA from the moa, they believe that the kiwi is more closely related to its Australian cousins.

Shona Laing (born 9 October 1955) is a New Zealand musician. She has had several hits in her native country, as well as a few minor international hits, most notably "(Glad I'm) Not a Kennedy" and "Soviet Snow". Laing also contributed to the Manfred Mann's Earth Band album Somewhere in Afrika. Laing also contributed music to, and appeared in, the 1985 action film Shaker Run.

Currently she resides in New Zealand and occasionally plays live shows, enjoying a small but devoted fan base.

Laing first came to prominence in 1972 as a 17-year-old schoolgirl, winning the television talent show "New Faces" with her song 1905. Signed to a recording contract with Phonogram, her first two singles, 1905 and Show your Love both certified gold and both peaked at number 4 on the New Zealand charts. In 1973 she won two Rata awards: Best New Artist and Recording Artist Of The Year. Laing twice represented New Zealand at the Tokyo, in 1973 (with the song Masquerade) and 1974. In 1975 she travelled to Britain and was based there for the next seven years, where in 1982, she was a vocalist for Manfred Mann's Earth Band alongside fellow New Zealander, Chris Thompson.

"Medicine man" or "medicine woman" are English terms used to describe traditional healers and spiritual leaders among Native American and other indigenous or aboriginal peoples. Anthropologists tend to prefer the term "shaman," a specific term for a spiritual mediator from the Tungusic peoples of Siberia.

The primary function of these "medicine elders" (who are not always male) is to secure the help of the spirit world, including the Great Spirit (Wakan Tanka in the language of the Lakota Sioux), for the benefit of the entire community.

Sometimes the help sought may be for the sake of healing disease, sometimes it may be for the sake of healing the psyche, sometimes the goal is to promote harmony between human groups or between humans & nature. So the term "medicine man/woman" is not entirely inappropriate, but it greatly oversimplifies and also skews the depiction of the people whose role in society complements that of the chief. These people are not the Native American equivalent of the Chinese "barefoot doctors", herbalists, nor of the emergency medical technicians who ride rescue vehicles.

Léo Gordon Laporte (/ləˈpɔrt/; born November 29, 1956 in Manhattan, New York City) is an Emmy Award winning, American technology broadcaster, author, and entrepreneur.

Laporte studied Chinese history at Yale University before dropping out in his junior year to pursue his career in radio broadcasting, where his early radio names were Dave Allen and Dan Hayes. He began his association with computers with his first home PC, an Atari 400. Laporte said he purchased his first Macintosh in 1984. He operated one of the first Macintosh-only bulletin board systems, MacQueue, from 1985 to 1988.

Laporte has worked on technology-related broadcasting projects, including Dvorak On Computers in January 1991 (co-hosted with computer pundit John C. Dvorak), and Laporte On Computers on KGO Radio and KSFO in San Francisco. Laporte also hosted Internet! on PBS, and The Personal Computing Show on CNBC. In 1997, he earned an Emmy Award for his work on MSNBC's The Site, where he created the motion capture character Dev Null.