OnlyFromNZ

Kiwi Flees' Podcast

New Zealand’s a world champion at exporting its people to almost every country on earth. Nearly a million of us now don’t call NZ home. This is like a million sentient billboards telling a unique New Zealander Story.

Kiwi Flees is on a light-touch mission to find a few of them and share their stories – a blend of personal and professional in each conversation. From pioneers to innovators, artists & scholars, chefs & inventors, musicians & physicians, volunteers & athletes, bureaucrats & business leaders, and more.

The podcast’s aim is to energise and open the minds of their South Pacific tribe – part booster-shot, part virtual campfire – helping keep Kiwis abroad connected to each other and to their former homeland as we share their uniquely international New Zealander Stories.

Listen here, or on Apple Podcasts or Spotify to follow and leave a review.

Ellie Smith (MNZM) – Actress, Singer, Writer, Gem

October 29, 2025

In this pod I talk to Ellie Smith about what she has been up to since leaving New Zealand in 2009. We talk about her time teaching curmudgeonly Spanish bankers how to speak English, the impact of her travels to Kenya, and the sometimes heart-breaking connections made performing in UK care homes. Ellie also talks about her return onto the NZ stage for the first time in 17 years to perform her London solo sell-out show, Life on a Loop.

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