In new series Coming Home, Duncan Greive and Jane Yee meet some of the many highly skilled New Zealanders who’ve returned in 2020 to hear their stories and explore what their return means for all of us. The pandemic has handed New Zealand a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity – how do we stop it slipping through our fingers?

For decades it’s felt like you couldn’t turn on the 6 o’clock news without hearing another story about the ‘brain drain’ – the waves after waves of highly-qualified New Zealanders leaving the country to pursue bigger and better career opportunities overseas. This year, as a result of the global Covid-19 pandemic, we’re suddenly seeing the opposite happen. Thousands of high-achieving New Zealanders who’ve left the country over the last 30 years are all coming home at once.

In The Spinoff’s new five-part podcast series Coming Home, hosts Duncan Greive and Jane Yee want to find out what this means for us as a country. They’ll be meeting some of the industry leaders who have returned to work in New Zealand this year, and speaking to economists and demographers to get a better understanding of who’s returning, why they left Aotearoa in the first place and how we can make the most of this unprecedented influx of talent.

We’ll hear from some of these recent returnees – among them top chef Peter Gordon, tech strategist Julia Arnott-Neenee and former Huffington Post Highline editor Rachel Morris – about how they uprooted their old lives and careers to come home in the middle of a pandemic, and how being back in New Zealand has both challenged and inspired them. 

Now they’re back, what should we do to keep them here – or should we even be trying to? We’ve only got one chance to do this right.

Listen to the Coming Home trailer above and subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you usually listen to podcasts. New episodes arriving weekly, brought to you by The Spinoff and Kiwibank.