Once upon a time, back in the 1500s, someone came up with a new way to say "hot take." It came from the French word "to attempt."

Brendon Harre has both the mind and the heart of an essayist. While working as a psych nurse and periodically bracing himself for flights around the world (he has two sons in Norway), Harre became the first New Zealand writer whose thinking about housing I ran into across the Pacific. The essays on his blog, "New Zealand Needs an Urbanization Project," became part of the intellectual backbone of New Zealand's YIMBY movement. (While connecting it to other urbanization subjects like transportation, energy, and jobs.)

Harre is also interesting in that, unlike most interviewees for this show, he's from th ...