Saturday Morning listener feedback.

Christall Lowe's new cookbook Kai Feast is out now - full of recipes, inter-woven with stories of traditional gathering and feasting and tips on cooking for a crowd.

Harriet Constable's debut novel was inspired by the true story of an orphan who was a musical prodigy and student of one of the great Baroque composer, Antonio Vivaldi. 

Recent figures show 81,200 Kiwis left New Zealand long-term since the start of the year, how concerning is this for our economy? 

An expert on the history of the abnormal and the paranormal, Professor Greg Eghigian tells us about his latest, eye-opening research. 

New anthology Now and Then features 92 poets of all ages, ethnicities and languages from across New Zealand.

Dr Emma Maurice has been uncovering how Maori were portrayed in print media through archived letters to the editor.

Campaigners for Dunedin's fit-for-purpose hospital embark on a special tour today, in an ambulance called Cliff.

There's drama brewing in Wellington between central and local government with questions over whether there should be some intervention. 

Legislation giving family violence survivors the power to quickly dissolve abusive marriages passed with full cross party support this week.

Team New Zealand have exerted their dominance once again, beating the challengers Ineos Britannia overnight in Barcelona  

Unanswered questions as the family of Jason Butler continue their push for accountability as the 3rd anniversary of his disappearance approaches.

Memos sent to staff at Waikato and Christchurch hospitals have reminded nurses to only speak English in a clinical setting. 

Saturday morning listener feedback

Kate De Goldi, one of New Zealand's most celebrated authors, joins Perlina and Mihi to share some great books. 

Actor Elizabeth Banks has taken a step away from her usual block busters to play the lead role in a New Zealand medical drama A Mistake.

A photo book paying tribute to 32 of New Zealand's indie book stores has hit the shelves, fittingly on New Zealand Bookshop Day. Bold Types - Indie Bookshops of Aotearoa New Zealand is a collection of crafted stories and quirky insights - with the booksellers describing their businesses, their communities and the joy of pairing readers with the right books. The shops' unique characters, their backrooms and even resident pets, have been captured by one of the country's most celebrated photographers, Jane Ussher. Jane and Masterton bookshop owner David Hedley - whose family has been in the book business since 1907 - join Perlina to discuss Bold Types, and the art of selling books.

From November 1st, Pharmac will fully fund Estrogel, which currently costs at least $40 a month. Professor Bev Lawton talks about the impact.

Susie Ferguson opens up about becoming a war correspondent at only 25, while taking 15 painkillers a day to cope with her then undiagnosed endometriosis. 

Mark van Kaathoven has sent no more than four bags of green waste to the tip in the last 15 years - instead using that waste to make sponge gardens.

My Marae: in the latest in our occasional series Mihi visits Te Pai o Hauraki, a Ngati Tamatera marae to speak to historian and kaikorero Larn Wilkinson.

Australian "Living Treasure" Tim Winton's new novel Juice is a dystopian thriller mapping out a future so devastated by climate catastrophe it's nearly unbearable. 

Artist and fashion designer Jeanine Clarkin who's transforming an invasive seaweed into something truly special.

Health NZ is moving ahead with a National Perinatal Bereavement Care Pathway to assist families who experience miscarriage and the loss of a baby.

The mother of the three missing Marokopa kids says she's dumbfounded by the trolling and nasty comments she has experienced since 2021.

Susana reports from Samoa ahead of a big weekend there - Samoa Lotu Tamaiti, White Sunday, amid conflicting reports of whether oil is leaking from the HMNZS Manawanui.

UNICEF is extremely concerned about the rising death tolls and climbing number of people forced from their homes in both Gaza and Lebanon. 

The United States has urged Israel to ensure the safety of UN peacekeepers after Israel fired on UN bases in Lebanon this week, injuring two peacekeepers.

Key player in New Zealand's music scene, Laughton Kora is jumping back on stage for Fly My Pretties gigs in Wellington this month. 

This year marks 100 years of 'Netball New Zealand', the oldest netball association in the world. 

Birth doulas, who support mothers to be physically and emotionally throughout pregnancy and childbirth are fairly common, but what about death doulas?

How can phages, the viruses of bacteria, be used to reduce agrichemical and antibiotic use? Dr Heather Hendrickson explains.

Acclaimed Melbourne chef, Ben Shewry calls out toxic hospitality culture and denounces the 'incredibly problematic' restaurant awards system that helped make his own restaurant famous. 

World-renowned Canadian choreographer and performer, Anne Plamondon, is bringing her dance performance Myokine to the Tempo Dance Festival at Auckland's Q Theatre.

Gina Chick survived the wilds of Australia for a TV show but the heartbreak of losing her daughter to cancer led her to unexpected realisations.

Auckland's inaugural Ethnic Xchange Symposium is looking to grow the already significant contribution ethnic communities make to New Zealand.

If you suspect you have Covid-19 you now have to pay for your own RAT tests in a move that's angered one of our leading epidemiologists.

A growing number of parents are refusing to give their children smartphones, after research showing links between mental health issues and social media.

People in Dunedin are waking up to a massive clean up job after two days of deluge forced people from their flooded homes and created several slips.

More airstrikes have been reported in southern Beirut and Lebanon, as Israel tells people in more than 30 southern villages to evacuate. 

Saturday morning listener feedback

Spuds are one of the easiest crops for home gardeners to manage, so why don't more of us grow them? Kath Irvine is a passionate permaculture expert, who has designed, taught and managed food gardens for more than 20 years. She's also the author of The Edible Backyard, a practical guide to growing organic fruit and vegetables all year round. She gives personalised advice and answers your growing crop questions.

The mother of a disabled child who spent much of her short life in hospital, is calling for more support for the carers of severely disabled children. And a disability advocate says in the 40 years she has been working with families, she has never seen carers so battered and bruised. Three-and-a-half year old Lauren Malcolm-Swindells died two years ago. Her mother Rachel Malcolm-Swindells says there were times when she was desperate for support and having to fight for help when she was already exhausted, took an enormous toll on her health. In an essay published today, Rachel outlines her journey. Rachel and disability advocate Colleen Brown join Mihi to discuss the support carers need.

Sociologist Avril Bell says her new book Becoming Tangata Tiriti is a book of lessons learned. It brings together the voices of twelve non-Maori who have attempted to bring te Tiriti to life in their work and includes stories of missteps, victories, and traversing through the complexities of cross-cultural relationships. Avril Bell hopes Becoming Tangata Tiriti will act as a guide for people starting on their journey towards a Tiriti-based society.

It's WOW's 34th season - and this year's competition Dream Awake has 91 finalists from 15 countries. It's a fashion, music, theatre, circus, dance, art show spectacle. Perlina Lau speaks with the Supreme Winner Grace DuVal from the US who won for her garment Curves Ahead.

Social scientist Dr. Bella DePaulo is considered the leading expert on single life. She is the author of Singled Out and How We Live Now, among other titles. Her latest book Single at Heart is a comprehensive, unapologetic case for single life. In a world that favours couples, Bella shares the many benefits of singledom that go unrecognised. She claims the single-at-heart are flourishing because they are single, not in spite of being single.

Glimmers are those micro-moments of joy and peace that people experience when they hear their favourite song or see ducklings crossing the road. Everyone's glimmers are different, but there's much more to them then just giving us the warm fuzzies. RNZ journalist Jogai Bhatt shares the neurological benefits of recognising glimmers and basking in them. She's joined by Alex Walker, a mental health researcher at the Victoria University of Wellington

Nick Long has been called the grandfather of superconductors and for good reason. He's the reason why one of the coldest, hottest, and most powerful superconductor electric rocket thrusters ever to be tested in space, is being built in a hi-tech shed at the bottom of Wainuiomata Hill. Long, from the Robinson Research Institute, has spent three decades helping crack the puzzle that makes superconductors usable. The thrusters are scheduled to be launched in February next year and will head to the International Space Station, and one day, maybe Mars. He explains how it's all going to work.

Aotearoa is attempting to reclaim the official Guinness World Records® title for the largest haka. France holds the record. We need to top 4,028. Ten thousand participants are being called for the attempt tomorrow at Eden Park. There are still a few tickets left! Event organiser and cultural advisor Dame Hinewehi Mohi talks to Mihi about how it is that the French currently hold the title!

Whakaata Maori staff are reeling after news of significant job losses amid a restructure. In what Whakataa Maaori is calling its Whakataa Wai realignment, it's understood at least 25 jobs are set to go from the platform. It's yet another hit to the news media business, after multiple closures and restructures across the sector this year. RNZ Maori News journalist Tuwhenuaroa Natanahira explains what the restructure means.

The nine week trial over the death of Pauline Hanna is over and her husband, retired eye surgeon Philip Polkinghorne, was found not guilty of murdering her on Monday. Yet Polkinghorne has been in the news daily this week. RNZ crime reporter Finn Blackwell talks to Mihi about the extensive coverage of the case and the why it continues to be in the headlines.

A pilot project of a one-stop shop diabetes clinic that has toured 10 Far North marae has wound up this week. Sarah Williams is a nurse working with Te Hiku Hauora has been co-ordinating the clinics and talks to Mihi about the project.

In the UK, 700 former rugby union and league players suffering from concussion-related neurological injuries are suing World Rugby, England's Rugby Football Union and the Welsh Rugby Union. Former professional Welsh rugby union player Antony Evans developed Parkinson's aged 42 and is part of the litigation.  

The Pentagon says it had no advance warning of an Israeli strike on the Lebanese capital. Nearly 800 people have been killed so far.

Celebrated Australian author Craig Silvey's novel RUNT, is about to hit the big screen in New Zealand. The heart-warming family movie centres on Runt; a rascally, very speedy, stray dog.

In Auckland's suburb of Point Chevalier is the award winning whare, Te Taumata o Kupe. Mihi goes to take a look in a new Saturday Morning series.

New Zealand photographer Stuart Robertson talks about his new exhibition The Colours of Antarctica that just opened in Melbourne and Sydney.

Kate De Goldi, one of New Zealand's most celebrated authors, shares the latest books she's been reading.

Dr. Tony Fernando is a psychiatrist, sleep specialist and ordained Buddhist monk. His new book explains how to be calm and content in a chaotic world.

Volcanologist and GNS principal scientist Graham Leonard explains the difference between onshore and offshore volcanoes, and why it's important.

Te Kura kaupapa Māori o Ruamata is a total immersion Māori highschool based in Rotorua competing for Smoke Free Rock Quest 2024. 

Dr Rachel Clarke's new book is the account of a nine-year-old girl, who suffered a catastrophic brain bleed in a car accident, and the boy who received the lifesaving gift of her heart. It explores medical innovation, grief and hope. 

Elif Shafak is an award-winning British-Turkish novelist. Her latest book, There are Rivers in the Sky, has just hit the shelves.

This week central bank of the US - the Federal Reserve - lowered interest rates for the first time in more than four years - and by more than the usual incremental amount. Jarrod Kerr is Kiwibank Chief Economist and speaks to Colin.

Earlier this week two separate organised attacks took place in Lebanon. Mohamed Hassan is a journalist from Auckland and Cairo and explains what happened.

Ngati Whatua Orakei's new waka taua, their first in nearly 25 years, will lead the Emirates Team New Zealand yacht to the start line of the 37th America's Cup.

A professor of health equity is calling for big corporations to meet the costs of the harm they cause to human health, and for governments to hold them to account.  

Dr Inia Raumati is an emergency doctor at Auckland City Hospital, he's also on a mission to be the first person in the world to run a self-supported, multi-stage ultra marathon on every continent, in a single year. He's used Tikanga (Māori values) to navigate the challenges that come with ultra-marathons around the world. He sat down with Mihi to share how the mindset needed to push through extreme situations has helped him in all aspects of life, including critical situations at the hospital, being deployed to Iraq with the NZ army, and volunteering on rescue helicopters.

Women's health issues are very different to those of men. Hormones have a big influence on women's health and the likelihood of developing certain chronic health conditions. Auckland-based doctor, Frances Pitsilis takes an holistic approach to health care and in her new book, Well Woman: A Prescription for Lifelong Health, full of short and long-term changes women can make for their well-being. She joins Mihi and Susie to discuss diet, stress management, hormones, and ageing well.

Jan Tauoma, co-founded the first Samoan early childhood center in New Zealand, A'oga Fa'a Samoa. Over the last 40 years, she's seen thousands of students immersed in their culture and championed the training of bilingual teachers in Aotearoa. Her background as a teacher in Samoa and her commitment to preserving Samoan culture led her to establish the center in 1984. She later supported struggling Pasifika centers through the Ministry of Education and developed a Pasifika Diploma in Teaching (ECE). Her contributions were recognised with a Queen's Service Medal in 2014 and life membership in 2012. She shares her life story with Mihingarangi Forbes.

Best-selling author, Rumaan Alam, is turning the spotlight on wealth in his new book Entitlement. This follows his pandemic hit, Leave the World Behind, which was shortly followed by a movie adaptation for Netflix starring Julia Roberts and Mahershala Ali. In Entitlement, Alam captures the experience of living in one of the most expensive cities in the world, New York, and how people without trust funds get bent out of shape, pretending to be rich, to fit in. It's about self-delusion, magical thinking, and the American dream - minus the white picket fence.

Afghani judge Raihana Attaee had to flee her country when the Taliban returned to power and it became clear her life was in danger. 

A regular eye exam can now detect early signs of chronic conditions like diabetes and heart disease due to AI technology.

The creator of a new board game teaching children how to invest says she did not grow up knowing anything about it.

Black Ferns centre Logo I Pu-lotu Lemapu Atai'i Sylvia Brunt shares what the viral group hug was like.

A new report has found higher levels of maternal stress and large amounts of screen time during early childhood, are associated with higher levels of behavioural problems in children.

RNZ's in depth reporter Anusha Bradley shares what it was like talking to the mega wealthy in New Zealand for the new series RICH.

A top heart specialist says doctors are now having to schedule their own appointments because cutbacks to back office staff have gone too far. 

Polly Markus is the woman behind Miss Polly's Kitchen - with a bestselling book and thousands of social media followers drawn to her down to earth approach to food. The Auckland based real estate agent started posting recipes online when she lost work during the 2020 lockdown, and soon amassed a large following. She shares her recipe for 'Tasty Lamb Meatballs with Jammy Harissa Tomatoes' from her second cookbook 'Seriously Delicous'.

Music therapy has been making a difference in people's lives in New Zealand for 50 years. And next weekend that milestone is being celebrated in Wellington. Daphne Rickson is an adjunct professor at the New Zealand School of Music-Te Koki - the only place you can train to be a music therapist in New Zealand. She's just written a book A History of Music Therapy New Zealand. Daphne decided to train as a music therapist when she saw the difference music therapy made to her daughter, who was born profoundly deaf. She joins Susie and Mihi to talk about how the profession has grown and the impact it continues to have.

The global financial market has taken a hit this week, but it comes with a silver lining for motorists as oil prices have slumped to their lowest level this year - does that mean petrol savings are on the way? And despite being in a recession, business confidence is soaring right now. New Zealand Herald business editor-at-large Liam Dann is here with the latest business news from around the country.

Bestselling British author and former journalist Robert Harris' new novel is Precipice, delving inside WW1 British Prime Minister Herbert Asquith's scandalous affair with a much younger woman. But this wasn't simply a matter of sexual intrigue in Downing Street. The PM shared top secrets with his mistress - and their affair became a matter of national security that altered the course of political history.

Most of us feel anxious from time to time, but what happens when it interferes with our daily lives? Ex-lead crisis negotiator, Lance Burdett, is the author of Anxiety is a Worry, providing practical techniques for living a less anxious life.

Last year an act was passed that created provision for families and children going through separation to attend out-of-court mediation. This service, which aims to enhance the wellbeing for children experiencing separation, is means-tested and can be part or fully government funded.

It's 40 years since a revolutionary Te Māori exhibition put te ao Māori on the global stage, displaying Māori taonga in New York.

Freshwater ecologist Mike Joy is a controversial figure who says things some people don't want to hear. He came to academia late, after time spent as a mechanic, milkman, truck driver, agent with the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service, and farm hand. Mike's now written a book about his life, and the research that has turned him into an environmental activist. He joins Susie to talk about The Fight for Fresh Water.

A study based on millions of New Zealanders' health records shows vaccination continues to provide protection against Covid, but given how quickly the virus changes, different countries around the world are now using slightly different vaccines. RNZ's explainer editor Katie Kenny talks about the status of covid vaccines in New Zealand.

The inquiry into London's Grenfell tower fire which claimed the lives of 72 people seven years ago concluded this week that the deaths "were all avoidable". Antonio Roncolato escaped the burning tower in 2017, after being stuck inside for four hours. He describes his harrowing experience and explains why he believes those responsible should be sent to prison.

The Pacific Island forum, which had the theme Transformative Resilient Pasifiki: Build Better Now, wrapped up last week in Tonga. But award-winning Australian climate scientist Dr. Joelle Gergis, who has worked as part of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, explains why she thinks it was lacking in ambition.

Mihingarangi Forbes has been at  Tūrangawaewae Marae in Ngāruawāhia covering the death of Kiingi Tuheitia.  His 27-year-old daughter Ngā Wai hono i te pō was chosen as kuini on Thursday. Mihi shares what the last week has been like.

Author, reporter and cult researcher, Anke Richter, is involved in the planning of Decult 2024, New Zealand's first conference dedicated to tackling the harm cults cause.

Award-winning folk singer-songwriter Amiria Grenell plays live at Turanga. Amiria grew up in rural Canterbury where her family famously hosted decades of music festivals in their back paddocks. She's the daughter of late much-loved country musician John Grenell. Amiria and her brothers are currently planning The John Grenell Family Tribute Show to celebrate the life and music of their dad.

Award-winning folk singer-songwriter Amiria Grenell plays some live from Tūranga.

Artist and weaver, Kahutoi Te Kanawa, is the co-director of a new textile research centre at Tamaki Paenga Hira Auckland War Memorial museum.

Matt Heath is an actor, radio host, sports commentator and columnist, hosting a Dad's Day brunch at WORD Christchurch.

One of the worlds foremost novelists, Kate Atkinson is back with the newest edition of her beloved Jackson Brodie series.

Kiran Dass is a trusted book critic, writer, and judge of some of New Zealand's most prestigious book awards. She's also the Programme Lead at WORD Christchurch and joins Mihi and Susie to talk about this years festival highlights.

Natural disasters, climate change and a housing shortage have given us pause to think about how we want our cities to develop. New book Urban Aotearoa explores the evolution of our urban areas and what they could look like.

Historian Vincent O'Malley has gained recognition for his extensive research and publications on the Waikato Wars and the Kiingitanga. Vincent O'Malley joins Mihi to reflect on his relationship with Waikato and Kiingi Tuuheitia Pootatau Te Wherowhero.

Former SAS commander Jamie Pennell recounts his experiences in Afghanistan in his memoir, Serviceman J, detailing life in one of the world's elite military forces and the transition to civilian life afterwards.

Plant expert Juanita Hepi shares the significance of local botanicals and answers listeners questions.

The All Blacks are set to play the Springboks in South Africa for the Rugby Championship tomorrow.

The coalition government and it's policies were once again under fire this week. This comes after a seventh urgent Waitangi Tribunal claim into the coalition government's policies.

Tahu News reporter Shakayla Alapaki-Andrews shares Ngaai Tahu's reaction to the news of Kiingi Tuuheitia's death.

Newsroom's Environment and Climate Editor Te Waipounamu South Island Correspondent David Williams shares the latest stories from the region.

Yesterday, Kiingi Tuheitia died aged 69 following planned heart surgery. Veteran Maori broadcaster and host of RNZ's Mapuna Julian Wilcox joined us from Turangawaewae.

Join Susie Ferguson and Mihingarangi Forbes for our refreshed Saturday Morning show kicking off on Saturday 31st August in Ōtautahi Christchurch with a range of local and international guests. 7am - midday. 

Saturday morning listener feedback

West Auckland singer-songwriter Jan Hellriegel talks her upcoming tour 'If Not Now, When?' and plays favourites.

Many of us are concerned about the harm that might result from AI being too smart, but Danyl McLauchlan thinks it's worth considering the damage caused by AI being not smart enough.

More than 1500 photographers covered the Olympic games. One of them was award-winning photographer David Levene.  

Award-winning British playwright Dennis Kelly's work is both funny and confronting. His play Girls and Boys is being performed by the Auckland Theatre Company and opens next month.

Journalist Sarah Catherall has written the book she wishes she had when her own long-term relationship imploded.

Does music have the power to make a cities economy, tourism, and quality of life better? Shain Shapiro is a leading music and cultural policy thinker. In his book This Must Be The Place he examines the impact music can have on how cities are developed, built, managed and governed.

A severe outbreak of a new variant of mpox with a death rate of 10% triggered the WHO to declare a global health emergency last week. Cambridge University clinical virologist and naked scientist Dr Chris Smith - who was our go-to guy as the Covid pandemic unfolded.

Zoological correspondent and author Jules Howard on the revolutionary story of eggs.

When playwright and performer Ihaka Martyn (Ngati Tuwharetoa, Te Arawa) took an Introduction to Maori Culture course at University he was a pakeha identifying young man named Isaac who was "respectfully learning about the indigenous culture". Despite some knowledge of his whakapapa he felt "not Maori enough". His autobiographical one man show He Maori? weaves together stand-up comedy, waiata and theatrical performance to explore the evolution of his identity.

Lonneke Botello Hernandez is touring New Zealand with her book The Food Fountain of Youth, which offers advice about 'nutrients with science-based benefits for anti-aging beauty'. Lonneke and Colin discuss whether there is such a thing as anti-aging, and if you can really look more beautiful from the inside out.

With Spring on the horizon, there's plenty to be getting on with in the garden. Kath Irvine joins Colin to share her August to-do list. Kath is the author of The Edible Backyard, a practical guide to growing organic fruit and vegetables all year round.

Hamilton is playing host to an outstanding lineup of darts talent this weekend as the NZ Darts Masters takes place at Globox Arena. Refereeing the special event. Russ Bray, who is otherwise known as 'The Voice', due to his unique style of calling. Bray, who hails from the UK.  

The dream of writers the world over is a debut novel turning into a worldwide publishing sensation - and that's exactly what's happened for Amy Neff, a first-time author from Connecticut.

You won't find any of Elspeth Sandys' neighbours depicted in her play The Body Politic. However belonging to a body corporate inspired her to write it.

For decades, scientists have been working on a methane-reducing vaccine for cows with little success, until now. A prototype vaccine by US-based start-up Arkeabio is showing promise following a trial with 10 cows that saw emissions drop by nearly 13 percent.

Approximately 75 million people with diabetes need to inject themselves daily with insulin. Research led by Dr Nick Hunt of the University of Sydney has developed a new type of oral insulin tablet based on nanotechnology.

Kate De Goldi is one of New Zealand's most celebrated authors, an Arts Foundation Laureate, and a voracious reader. She joins Susie to share some great books: two time travel novels The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley, The Other Valley by Scott Alexander Howard, plus the Cetin Ikmen books by Barbara Nadela, a detective series set in Turkey.

The works of William Shakespeare have been taught in classrooms all over the globe for countless years, but have we been reading them the right way? Irish journalist, author and former theatre critic Fintan O'Toole reckons we've been getting it all wrong. In his book Shakespeare is Hard, but so is Life, O'Toole suggests we are too concerned with the idea of the 'tragic flaw', a concept dating back to Aristotle to describe the innate quality that leads a protagonist towards their own downfall. Instead of searching for meaning in the character's actions, O'Toole says we should look at Shakespeare's works in the social context of the time.

In 1979, group of young Maori and Pasifika activists tried to stop Pakeha students at the University of Auckland performing a parody of haka each capping week. Unfortunately, the consequences for those activists were severe - many were convicted. Three years ago actor, writer and director Katie Wolfe's play The Haka Party Incident opened in Auckland. Now, she's made a documentary intertwining views from both sides of the confrontation. It will have its world premiere at the New Zealand International Film Festival.

Gisborne based Sam Gibson has a deep love for the bush, spending his time hunting, fishing, trapping pests and working to protect endangered species like Whio. Tall, rugged and oil skin wearing, he fits the stereotype of a bush man, but he's also a bit of a social media star. As "Sam the Trap Man" he's built a following sharing snippets of his knowledge of the bush. He's just released a book: Sam the Trap Man full of yarns about his time in the bush.

Almost 500 arrests have been made in connection with the eruption of far-right violence this week following the killing of three young girls at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport, in the North West of England. False claims on social media said the suspect was an asylum seeker, and that he was Muslim. It's the worst violence in the UK in recent times, quickly spreading the length and breadth of England, fuelled by online misinformation. So what can be done to tackle the real life harm triggered by online hate? We ask Imran Ahmed, founder of the UK Centre for Countering Digital Hate.

The Olympics wrap up this weekend and New Zealand's medal tally is ramping up! Shotputter Maddi Wesche has won Silver in the women's Olympic shotput final. Earlier Dame Lisa Carrington and Alicia Hoskin won another gold medal in the women's 500m kayak doubles. RNZ sports reporter Dana Johannsen joins Susie live from the Stade de France.

Breaking has had its Olympic debut. It's an urban dance style in which competitors demonstrate incredible strength and athleticism. Amy Pope has been taking a very close look what it takes to execute the moves. She's a senior lecturer in physics at Clemson University in South Carolina.

Saturday morning listener feedback

Japanese journalist-turned director Shiori Ito tells her own story in Black Box Diaries. Her film is part of Whanau Marama - the New Zealand International Film Festival. In 2017 Shiori went public with an allegation of a sexual assault against a well-known figure and received death threats and hate mail. The film follows Shiori as she sets out to change attitudes and Japan's sexual assault laws.

Globally renowned choreographer, fascinated by the potential of the human body, Wayne McGregor is resident choreographer of The Royal Ballet. He is in demand as a choreographer for theatre, opera, film and music videos - famously choreographing the concert ABBA Voyage for the Swedish pop band. Sir Wayne has recently received a knighthood for outstanding services to the field of dance. He says everybody can, and should dance.

Last week a hydrothermal explosion blew rock and steam into the air, destroyed a boardwalk and sent tourists running in the Yellowstone National Park. GNS Science principal scientist Graham Leonard joins Susie to chat about hydrothermal explosions and how they differ to volcanic eruptions.

Sociologist and author Sarah Thornton hadn't really given too much thought to her breasts for most of her life. But in 2018, after undergoing a preventative double mastectomy and reconstructive surgery, she began to consider the social and cultural significance of them. Thornton's latest book Tits Up investigates the fixation with mammary glands, drawing on insights from sex workers, milk bankers, plastic surgeons, witches, and bra designers.

The effects of psilocybin - the active compound in magic mushrooms - have been illuminated in a new Washington University School of Medicine study. For the study, seven people were given doses of the psychedelic drug, and then had their brains scanned by MRI. The resulting heat map showed the drug desynchronizing certain brain networks, potentially enhancing its plasticity. This work adds to efforts to harness psilocybin's potential to treat mental illness. Dr Nico Dosenbach, an expert in brain imaging, was part of the study and joins the show to tell us more.

Author Catherine Taylor was born in Waikato but grew up in Sheffield, South Yorkshire. She is a book critic and features writer for British and Irish newspapers. Last week Catherine was announced the winner of the TLS Ackerley Prize for memoir and life-writing for her new book The Stirrings: A Memoir in Northern Time. She'll be in New Zealand next month for Word Christchurch to talk about her book - which has been described as 'a superb, moving and disturbing memoir'. She is also appearing at VERB Wellington.

Peanut farming has not traditionally been done in New Zealand, but that might be about to change. A three-year trial taking place in Northland is already yielding promising results and some of the sample harvest has been turned into peanut butter by Pic's Peanut Butter. A special jar of New Zealand's first ever homegrown peanut butter sold on Trade Me recently for more than $3,000. Dr Carolyn Lister from Plant & Food Research NZ, and Pic Picot join the show to discuss the trial and what has been learned about homegrown peanuts.

Consultation on the design of a 'digital cash' system for New Zealand closed last week. The Reserve Bank is exploring the new type of currency that would be used in addition to the cash we spend today and electronic money we have in our bank accounts. It had about 18,000 responses to its survey as well as detailed submissions. The bank says it will now consult with focus groups. Ian Woolford, Head of Money and Cash at the Reserve Bank and Dr Chanelle Duley, economics lecturer from the University of Auckland join Susie to talk about digital cash and how it would be managed.

You may know Claire Mabey as the founder of the Verb Wellington Festival, perhaps as co-curator of the Aotearoa NZ Festival of the Arts writers programme, or as a book reviewer. Now she's adding author to that CV. Claire's first book has just been published - The Raven's Eye Runaways, aimed at young teenagers is a gripping, fantasy quest set in a parallel medieval inspired world.

After the sudden death of a close friend at age 17, Tom Turcich resolved to make the most of life. He began his epic journey to circumnavigate the globe on foot. Four months into the trip he met his traveling companion, a puppy named Savannah. The expedition ended up taking seven years, with Tom and Savannah covering more than 45,000 kilometres - walking through the world's deserts, jungles, cities, and mountains. Tom is the 10th person to have ever completed the walk around the world, and Savannah is the first dog. Tom has written a book about his journey entitled The World Walk, which is due out in October.

Award-winning New Zealand author Shilo Kino has written a second novel - another debut of sorts. The Porangi Boy won the young Adult Fiction Award at the New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults in 2021. Now Shilo's written a novel for adults. It's set in Tamaki Makaurau and called All That We Know

Talking to your children about sex is challenging enough, but how do you tackle the topic of porn? Melody Thomas, host of award-winning podcast The Good Sex Project says that while it's a tricky conversation to navigate, it's also essential. She joins Susie to offer tips and tricks on how to communicate openly and confidently with your kids, and hopefully to avoid mutual cringe.

Engineered stone is a popular choice for benchtops in modern kitchens - it's cheaper and less porous than marble and more hard wearing than formica. However its production creates tiny dust particles that can cause silicosis - which damages lungs and can even be fatal. As of this month, Australia has banned the manufacture of engineered stone due to the risks of silicosis lung disease. Is it time for New Zealand to follow suit? Joining Susie are Australian health and safety specialist Jodi Goodall, and Wayne Scott, CEO of MinEx - which represents workers mining, quarrying and tunnelling.

Dr Jo Burzynska has her nose in a book, literally. The wine writer, sound artist and multisensory researcher is turning her attention to the smell of books. She's sniffing out stories, from the scent of Shakespeare, to recreations of book smells in an age of digital reading. Dr Burzynska is appearing at WORD festival next month.

The release of the final report from the Abuse in Care inquiry on Wednesday was an important day for Keith Wiffin, but not the end of his 22 year fight for justice. He was a member of the survivors' advisory group attached to the Royal Commission, and has been part of the design team that put together the independent redress proposal last year. Despite the release of the report, Keith says he feels there's still work to be done - mainly against attitudes. "Agencies' responses have been to resist, deny, minimise and cover up. It's been about corrupt practices and abuse of power," says Keith

The 2024 Olympic Games in Paris is under way. James Bond upped the ante in London, and the 2024 Olympic Games is introducing Parisian culture to the world in a similarly ambitious and spectacular style. For the very first time it's happening on a river, with a 6km flotilla along the Seine to welcome the world to Paris. Some are billing it as the greatest opening ceremony in Olympic history. RNZ's sports aficionado Nathan Rarere joins Susie from Paris with the latest as the spectacle unfolds.

Catherine Russell is UNICEF's first Executive Director to visit the Pacific. Before she took over the top job at UNICEF, Catherine held senior positions in the White House under presidents Biden and Obama and was the Ambassador-at-Large for Global Womens' Issues at the US Department of State. She now oversees UNICEF's work for children in more than 190 countries. Catherine has been in Vanuatu and Fiji and is pitching for investment and support to protect children against the impact of climate change, violence and poverty.

Lynfield-based Larry Killip describes himself as "possibly the most famous person that you have never heard of". With a musical career stretching back to the mid-60s, Killip's first band The Zarks was formed with a few high school buddies. Since then he's continued to write and perform in various iterations, but the work most people would be familiar with is the hundreds of jingles Killip has written - for everything from Columbine stockings to Skyline Gottages. He joins Colin Peacock to reflect on his unusual career, his work with indie pop darlings The Beths, and his ever-growing collection of vintage gear and ephemera.

The case of billionaire paedophile Jeffrey Epstein shocked and captured the attention of the world. Ghislaine Maxwell is the British socialite jailed for procuring young girls for Epstein. Her trial was meticulously covered by journalist and legal affairs correspondent Lucia Osborne-Crowley, one of only four reporters allowed into the courtroom every day. Lucia is an award-winning writer and journalist, her book The Lasting Harm: Witnessing The Trial Of Ghislaine Maxwell follows the 2021 Maxwell trial with a focus on the survivors at the centre of this case.

Societies have rules to stop them from descending into chaos - at least that's what Constitutional scholar Cindy Skach used to believe. Her career was spent advising governments and writing constitutions to help fix society in some of the most fractured, war-torn corners of the world. That was until 2009, when she survived a missile attack while in Iraq helping to revise the constitution - an event that changed her thinking on how societies function. In her book How to Be a Citizen, Skach calls to move beyond constitutions, inviting us to see society not as something imposed by law, but rather something we create together.

Award-winning journalist Åsne Seierstad, studied life in Afghanistan before and after the fall of the Taliban in 2001, documenting it in her book The Bookseller of Kabul. Twenty years later, with the Taliban back in power, Seierstad shares the story of her return to Afghanistan to explore life under the current regime through three individuals and their families in her latest book The Afghans.

New Zealand Herald business editor-at-large Liam Dann says interest rates are picked to fall, but before then small and medium businesses will continue to feel the pinch.

British writer, comedian and football fan Kevin Day joins Colin to talk about the reaction in England of football not coming home. Almost thirty years ago the song Three Lions took off. Its refrain "football's coming home" was been sung lustily by fans ever since - only to come up short time and again.

Renowned space environmentalist and astrodynamicist specialising in space object detection and identification, Dr Moriba Jah believes it's only a matter of time before someone is killed by falling space debris. Currently there are an estimated 27,000 objects bigger than a softball hurtling around the Earth's orbit, not to mention the millions of smaller fragments. And these numbers are only set to grow with 24,000 satellites set to launch in the next 10 years. Dr Jah is also the chief scientist for Privateer, a start-up co-founded by Apple's Steve Wozniak aiming to enable sustainable growth for the space sector. The company has mapped our crowded skies and used that data to create Wayfinder - a space junk tracker application available to the public.

New Zealand's health system was also affected last night. RNZ understands an integral part of the medical system was down.

The IT company at the centre of this storm, Crowdstrike, has their headquarters in Austin, Texas. RNZ correspondent Toni Waterman is outside Crowdstrike's headquarters.

The acting Prime Minister, David Seymour, has been briefed by officials throughout the evening on the outage, with initial concerns over government systems in particular.

As retailers start to open this morning we'll get a better idea of any lasting impacts of the Crowdstrike outage. Carolyn Young is the Chief Executive of Retail NZ

The IT outage affected supermarkets around the country yesterday. Some Woolworth stores shut as people were unable to buy things at checkouts or order items online. Woolworths NZ says all its stores have reopened this morning but some checkouts will still be affected. Jason Stockwill is Woolworths New Zealand's director of stores.

The cybersecurity company was founded in 2011, with goals to safeguard the world's largest companies and their hardware from cyber threats. The company specialises in endpoint security protection. Basically, it stops malicious software or files from infiltrating computer networks. It also protects the servers companies store data on, which is increasingly happening through the cloud. They're a highly trusted company, to the extent the US Democratic National Committee called them in 2016 to investigate a breach of their computer network. Dan Ives is with Wedbush Securities.

Helen and Gavin Cook, who run an animal rescue centre north of Auckland, are the stars of TVNZ's hit show The Dog House NZ. In the new book Good Dogs, the English-born couple share advice from their 15 years of canine fostering and rescue.

Professor Ian Hickie is a psychiatrist and co-director of health and policy at the University of Sydney's Brain and Mind Centre. As one of Australia's leading authorities on mental health, Professor Hickie says that disinformation can risk putting people with clinical depression off using potentially successful treatments. One of the most damaging myths: that antidepressants don't work. In his latest book The Devil You Knew, Hickie tackles these harmful myths and explores the spectre of depression and the myriad influences - such as environmental, physiological, social - to guide readers towards the correct diagnosis and offer pathways to healing.

Kate De Goldi is one of New Zealand's most celebrated authors, an Arts Foundation Laureate, and a voracious reader. She joins Bryan to share three books she's loved; Kids Run the Show by Delphine de Vigan, Cultish; the Language of Fanaticism by Amanda Montell; and The God of the Woods by Liz Moore.

In her new book, How the World Made the West, historian and archaeologist Josephine Quinn shakes the foundation of familiar ideas. Her target? Western Civilisation. Professor Quinn, who teaches ancient history at the University of Oxford, argues that the established paradigm of the 'West' being built on the ideas and values of Ancient Greece and Rome isn't quite true. Challenging what she calls 'civilisational thinking', Quinn centres her spotlight on traders and travellers across 4000 years of predominantly European history - positing there is no culture without contact.

The Dark Destroyer has been quizzing his way around New Zealand raising money for charity as he goes. He's also managed to squeeze in a couple of All Blacks games. The star of the Chase, Shaun Wallace, joins Bryan Crump to answer some gnarly questions, talk about rugby, what draws him back to NZ and what it's like to be a celebrity quizzer.

The developer of the world's smallest brain implant, Kitea Health, says it not only alerts parents when pressure is building in their child's brain, but will take the pressure off families living in constant fear of a serious medical event. Clinical trials have started in 20 people with hydrocephalus in Auckland. Kitea Health CEO Dr Simon Malpas tells Bryan Crump typically hydrocephalus is treated by inserting a shunt in the brain - which can block.

Susie Ferguson's listener feedback for saturday morning 6 July 2024

Writer Danyl McLauchlan joins Susie to tackle life's big questions, ideas, and thinkers. This week he tackles TESCREAL, the acronym you may have seen pop up online over the past few months. Coined by the computer scientist Timnit Gebru and the philosopher Emil Torres, TESCREAL stands for transhumanism, extropianism, singularitarianism, cosmism, rationalism, effective altruism and long-termism. The pair propose this acronym describes a suite of right-wing ideologies that are coming to dominate Silicon Valley.

Ken Wylie was guiding climbers on British Columbia's remote La Traviata peak, when an avalanche came crashing down, burying him and 12 others. Seven people died that day in January 2003, but Ken survived. The book he wrote about the experience, Buried, is a reflection of the mistakes and the motivations that contributed to the tragedy, how it influenced the rest of his life, and how out of tragedy and guilt came some personal and professional growth. Wylie is now devoted to educating others about hazard management. He appeared recently in Wanaka at the Southern Hemisphere Alpine Conference (SHAC), which the Mountain Safety Council holds every two years.

In 2016 Antonia Murphy started a feminist escort agency in New Zealand called The Bach. It wasn't the career she planned, but after immigrating to New Zealand from America and raising a family her life changed when her marriage ended in divorce and she needed income quickly. After writing about her experience running an 'ethical brothel' for HuffPost in 2016, which was republished in 2021, Murphy received a call from a television producer wanting to make a show based on The Bach. Madam is a fictionalised TV series starring Rachel Griffiths and based on Murphy's life experiences, and is screening now on Three and ThreeNow. Her non-fiction memoir by the same name comes out in October.

Australian playwright David Finnigan is bringing Scenes from the Climate Era to Auckland next month. Set in the past, present and possible future, the show snaps between the absurd, the turbulent and the vulnerable in twenty-five short scenes. The show opened last year at Sydney's Belvoir Theatre to rave reviews. Finnigan has been working with director Jason Te Kare (Every Brilliant Thing, Cellfish) to adapt the script to weavie in matauranga Maori alongside Western climate science. Scenes from the Climate Era is on at Q Theatre Rangatira from 2 - 24 August. Tickets and more information here.

The little-known story of how Nazi experiments into psychedelics covertly influenced the CIA and shaped the foundation of America's war on drugs has been told in the new book by best-selling author Norman Ohler. Following on from the themes in his 2015 book Blitzed, which looked at methamphetamine use by the Third Reich, new book Tripped examines how the Nazis experimented with LSD at Dachau in efforts to find a "truth serum". When the US liberated Germany, they discovered the research which led to the CIA's notorious brainwashing and psychological torture program of the 1950s and 1960s. Only now is LSD starting to gain mainstream acceptance for uses such as treating anxiety.

When science writer Lucy Jones had a baby, she found herself in an unexpectedly frightening and lonely new world. In the new book Matrescence, She takes a deep dive into the profound psychological and physiological effects of motherhood.

Organic gardener Kath Irvine joins the show to discuss pruning raspberries.

Critically acclaimed British novelist and BAFTA-winning screenwriter Author David Nicholls speks to Susie about his new book You Are Here.

Lyndy McIntyres book Power to Win tells the story of the Living Wage Movement through the voices of workers, activists, leaders and allies.

The story of Cleopatra has been immortalised in popular culture. Less talked about, is the fact that she was one of seven Cleopatras.

Self-confidence is the most important asset when you're alone on treacherous seas, says world-record-holding solo sailor Lisa Blair. In May 2022, she became the fastest person in the world to sail non-stop and unassisted around Antarctica.

Amor Towles, the best-selling author of A Gentleman in Moscow, has a new book of short stories Table for Two.

Massey University's School of Veterinary Science have taken home an international prize for their work replacing live animals with models in the classroom.

Rapa Nui (Easter Island) is often used as an example of how overexploitation of limited resources can result in a catastrophic societal collapse. But new research from the Columbia Center for Archaeology is challenging the long-held idea that islanders chopped down palm trees at an unsustainable rate leading to an 'ecocide'.

Millions of UK voters will be heading to the polls in the coming week to cast their votes in the July 4th general election.

Our US correspondent Caroline Malone discusses the implications of the latest Biden-Trump US presidential debate.

Saturday morning listener feedback

Mike joins Susie to chat about his new role, the changing face of the media, and to play a few favourite tracks.

This month marks the 60th anniversary of the Beatles historic - and hysterical - visit to Australasia. When We Was Fab: Inside The Beatles Australasian Tour 1964 is the culmination of a lifetime's research by Beatles experts, Andy Neill and Greg Armstrong, and features many previously unseen photographs and never before shared stories from the time.

New Zealand actor Temuera Morrison says making the historic film Ka Whawhai Tonu "woke him up" to his Māori ancestors' strength and suffering.

How risky is it to ski on Ruapehu, and what have we learned from previous eruptions, both recent and historic?

How do digital advertisers target people to sell their products? And how much do they really know about us? In a world increasingly lived online, our personal information is a precious resource highly sought after by advertisers.

Writing a journal helps psychiatrist Dr Hinemoa Elder work with her own high and low points across the monthly lunar cycle. Her new book Waitohu: A Journal for Making Meaning invites people to reflect on their own monthly mood patterns so they can plan and problem-solve accordingly.

Adventurer and best-selling author Sequoia Schmidt's childhood was spent travelling the world with her father, well-known Kiwi mountaineer Marty Schmidt, before she went on to launch a publishing house Di Angelo Publications in Texas at just 16 years old.

Kate De Goldi is one of New Zealand's most celebrated authors, an Arts Foundation Laureate, and a voracious reader. She joins Colin to share two novels she's loved; Tell by Jonathan Buckley and Kick the Latch by Kathryn Scanlan.

This week marks forty years since Robert Muldoon's now-notorious, inebriated, snap election announcement which set in motion a seismic chain of events in New Zealand politics, the impacts of which still remain raw for many.

UK artist and gay rights activist Derek Jarman is best known for his defiantly provocative avant-garde films, including Caravaggio (1986) and The Garden (1990) starring longtime collaborator and muse Tilda Swinton. Jarman was also a prolific painter, writer, set designer, performer and gardener. He died 30 years ago at just 52 of an AIDS related illness - but remains hugely influential. Aotearoa's first ever exhibition of his work in opens at Auckland's Gus Fisher Gallery this week. Derek Jarman : Delphinium Days is co-curated by Lisa Beauchamp who joins us to talk about his life, art and creative legacy.

American cult expert Dr Janja Lalich knows from experience how paralysed a person can feel within a high-control group. In the late 70s and early 80s, she was a high-up member of a political cult called the Democratic Workers Party. Dr Lalich's advice to anyone interested in joining a new group is to slow down and do your research before signing up.

Former FBI director turned crime writer, James Comey, takes readers into the world of high finance and corporate espionage in his new thriller Westport.

With the exponential growth of AI-based technology many people are left wondering if their jobs will exist in the not-too-distant future.

Kiwi surgeon in Southern Gaza, Dr Sandy Inglis has helped establish a new field hospital in Southern Gaza, under the banner of the ICRC - the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Susie Fergusons listener feedback for Saturday Morning 8th June 2024.

Renee Gracie was just 19 when she began racing V8 Supercars at Australia's legendary Bathurst 1000. Despite breaking records on the track, the sexism and sexualisation she faced forced her out of the sport. Fighting fire with fire, she set up an OnlyFans account, becoming Australia's biggest earner on the subscription adult content site. She then used the money to set up her own Supercars team. Her story is captured in a new documentary: Renee Gracie:Fireproof, screening as part of the DocEdge festival in June and July. Renee Gracie and the doco's co-director Frances Elliott join Susie.

When will interest rates go down? What impact will last week's Budget have on inflation? And why are the two connected? New Zealand Herald business editor-at-large Liam Dann joins us to survey the economic horizon and answer your questions. Dann recently released a best selling book: BBQ Economics: How money works and why it matters.

Award-winning investigative writer Tom Burgis' new book exposes a world where the rich can buy "truth". In Cuckooland - Where the Rich Own the Truth Burgis follows a trail from the Kremlin, through Kathmandu to a royal retreat in Scotland. He hunts down oligarchs and traces vast sums of money flowing between multinational corporations, ex-Soviet dictators and the west's ruling elites. He finds a very rich man with the power to impose his reality on the world. Tom Burgis's writing has appeared in the Telegraph, the Independent, the Observer and the New Statesman. His 2021 best-selling book is Kleptopia - How Dirty Money is Conquering the World.

A London-born Italian teenager is on course for a sainthood after two miracles attributed to him have been recognised by Pope Francis. Carlo Acutis was diagnosed with untreatable leukaemia and died aged 15 in 2006. He was eventually buried in Assisi. Acutis could become the Catholic church's first millennial saint. Susie is joined by Dr Liam Temple from Durham University's Department of Theology and Religion, to look at how this has come about and what it means for the Catholic church

A straight spine is so prized in our culture that megastar Taylor Swift is currently performing in a NZ$300 posture-supporting bra. Yet the idea there is a "universal good posture" that will protect us from back pain is not supported by science, says physical therapist-turned-medical historian Beth Linker.

Dennis and Judy Shepard's gay son Matthew Shepard was murdered in October 1998. The 21-year-old University of Wyoming student's death remains one of America's most high-profile cases of hate crime against an LGBTQI+ person. The grieving Shepards created a foundation in his name, and led the fight to pass the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Act, to help the federal government track and prosecute LGBTQI+ hate crimes. Dennis and Judy have been visiting New Zealand speaking at a range of events, including with NZ Police, to highlight LGBTQI+ security concerns and share their story.

We're heading to Gore, where the Gold Guitar Awards are in full swing as part of the Tussock country festival. It's one of New Zealand's most prestigious country music events, drawing contestants from around the world to converge on the Southland town to celebrate country music and compete for a chance at the top prize. We'll talk to RNZ's Samuel Robinson who's in town, soaking up the music, learning how to line dance and make cheese rolls. Plus we'll catch up with Kiwi country singing legend Jodi Vaughan who is being inducted into the hands of fame.

Since launching his YouTube channel four years ago, Max Miller has amassed more than two million of subscribers - all tuning in for his videos that fuse history lessons with a cooking show. Neither a trained chef or historian, Los Angeles-based Miller fell into the world of being a YouTuber when he was furloughed from his job at Disney due to the Covid pandemic. His videos, which are thoroughly researched and well-produced, span thousands of years and all four corners of the globe - and even delve into the outer space culinary experience. Some of his most popular videos include "Making Medieval Mead like a Viking", "Dining First Class on the RMS Titanic", and "Macaroni Cheese from 1845". Some of his recipes have even been collated into a cookbook, Tasting History: Explore the Past through 4,000 Years of Recipes, which was released last year.

Donald Trump is a convicted felon. A New York jury found him guilty on all 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up hush money paid to porn star Stormy Daniels. He intends to appeal, and major Republican donors say they're willing to back him still, despite his criminal record, but what does Trump's guilty verdict do for the Republican Party's hopes for re-election? American political commentator and 2016 Republican candidate Lenny McAllister joins Susie from Pensylvannia.

A phenomenon that hasn't occurred since 1803 is in full swing. Trillions of periodical cicadas are emerging in a rare double event. Brood XIX and XIII are either above ground, or emerging in 17 states, from Chicago through the Midwest. It's the first time in 221 years that these two broods have come above ground in the same place at the same time. Professor of biology at George Washington University, John Lill and his research team are in Chicago observing birds and other species feasting on a cicada banquet, which is changing their diet and causing much disruption to the food chain. John Lill has written about the consequences of this shift in avian foraging in Science.

A "miserable" moment on the banks of Lake Wakatipu was the initial inspiration for Matt Heath's new book A Life Less Punishing: 13 Ways To Love the Life You've Got. The radio host and writer tells Susie Ferguson we all have the power to change our own mindset for the better.

Some of the world's humanitarian crises are well known - Gaza and Ukraine for example - but many more are less likely to make international news: Chad and Sudan. One of the organisations operating wherever there is conflict is Médecins Sans Frontières or Doctors Without Borders. It's working in a world emerging from the covid pandemic, with inflation rampant and people increasingly disconnecting from bad news. MSF's International President, Dr Christos Christou is a trauma surgeon with extensive experience working in warzones.

If you're feeling sadder as the days get shorter, you're not alone. Around half the population report feeling less happy in winter and 5 percent fall into serious depression. Apart from nutrition and exercise, getting more light in your eyes is the best treatment we know for seasonal mood challenges, says NZ-born neurobiology researcher Anna Wirz-Justice.

Thousands of people rallied across the country on Thursday to protest the coalition government's policies - including axing the Maori Health Authority, removing local councils' right to set up Maori wards, removing reference to Te Tiriti o Waitangi in legislation, and the Act Party's bid to redefine the Treaty principles. Julia Whaipooti is a leader at Te Kahui Tika Tangata, the Human Rights Commission. Her opinion piece argues Budget 24 disadvantages Maori financially and falls short of the Crown's te Tiriti obligations.

The shameful treatment of pioneer women footballers 50 years ago is the subject of a new documentary Copa 71, which is screening now. Rapturous crowds of over 100,000 fans cheered 18 year old Carol Wilson as she captained England at the 1971 women's football World Cup in Mexico. The experience was a stark contrast to the reception she and other women players received at home. The UK Football Association, which had banned women from playing for 50 years, refused to endorse the tournament and tried to shut it down. To this day the team Carol represented is not recognised by the FA as an official England team, which has earned them the moniker of 'The Lost Lionesses'.

Kate De Goldi is one of New Zealand's most celebrated authors, an Arts Foundation Laureate, and a voracious reader. She joins Susie to share three books she's loved; Ironopolis by Glen James Brown, James by Percival Everett, and The Trip by Paul Beavis.

Recruiters are reporting an unprecedented jump in job applications in the wake of thousands of layoffs across the public and private sectors. But for those seeking new work, a key question often remains shrouded in mystery, 'What's the salary?' Fortunately there is a tool that can shed some light. Driven by a desire to promote salary transparency, Auckland-based web analytics consultant Tony Lu developed What's The Salary in 2019. Since then, there have been over a million searches, with demand up a reported 25 percent compared to a year ago.

Having grown up in Missouri, Jake Adelstein moved to Japan at age 19 to study Japanese literature. A few years later, he became the first non-Japanese staff writer at Yomiuri Shimbun, one of the country's largest newspapers, where as a rookie reporter he was put on the police beat. Before long he was immersed in the underbelly of Japan, reporting on organised crime and the shady dealings of yakuza bosses. Adelstein's first book, a dramatic memoir entitled Tokyo Vice was published in 2009, and eventually turned into a popular television series by HBO Max. Now he is poised to release the follow-up, Tokyo Noir, which has been billed as equal parts history lesson and true crime exposé.

In 2020, childhood friends Alex Towler and Jackson Harvey won the Australian reality show Lego Masters. Four years on, their elaborate retrofuturistic Lego exhibition RELICS: A New World Rises is coming to Auckland.

Creating food from 'thin air' sounds like a futuristic dream. But it's a future that's already arrived in the form of Solar Foods - Europe's first factory dedicated to making human food from electricity and air. What started with hydrogen oxidising microbes has resulted in Solein - a non-farmed yellowish protein product. After several years of lab experiments, production is underway in Vantaa, near the Finnish capital of Helsinki. The goal? To produce 160 tonnes of food a year. Solar Foods co-founder and chief executive Pasi Vainikka says Solein is a crucial next step in the food revolution.

The 1828 comic opera 'Le comte Ory' has been given a facelift by internationally acclaimed director Simon Phillips ('North by Northwest', 'Priscilla Queen of the Desert', 'The Elixir of Love'). Instead of being set in medieval France, this reworked production takes place in present-day Aotearoa, but sung in French with English subtitles. Written by Italian composer Gioachino Rossini, 'Le comte Ory' tells the story of a young count who is a cunning swindler, dedicated to seducing women. The NZ Opera production features the singing talents of lyric tenor Manase Latu, soprano Emma Pearson, mezzo-soprano Hanna Hipp, and baritone Moses Mackay. 'Le comte Ory' will be playing at Auckland's Kiri Te Kanawa Theatre on 30th of May and 1st of June, followed by performances in Wellington and Christchurch. Tickets and info are here.

American film director and script writer Matt Brown's new movie, just about to be released in cinemas here, is 'Freud's Last Session'. It stars Anthony Hopkins and Matthew Goode as two of the greatest minds of the 20th century - father of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud and Chronicles of Narnia author C.S. Lewis. The film follows the story of the pair doing battle over the existence of God, the future of mankind, and the complex relationships that made them who they are.

Gardeners flock to the 'Chelsea Flower Show' for ideas about cutting-edge garden design and to see fabulous floral displays. Floral designer Toby de Lacey - a regular behind the scenes - is also instrumental in the simultaneous free flower show 'Chelsea in Bloom' held on Kings Road. Toby came to floristry following a career in engineering, making carbon fibre parts for the Formula 1 and Aerospace. He has only recently returned to the UK after a summer in New Zealand, where he spent time foraging for wild flowers and creating displays.

More than 150 experts have signed an open letter calling on the NZ Government to legalise and regulate all psychoactive substances. The letter marks the launch of the Harm Reduction Coalition Aotearoa, which aims to reduce the negative consequences of drug use in a way that upholds people's dignity and rights. It's an idea already in practice in different corners of the world - including Portugal where possession of illicit substances for personal use was decriminalised in 2001. Canada followed in January 2023, with the province of British Columbia, kicking off a three-year trial that allows adults to possess up to 2.5 grams of heroin, fentanyl, cocaine or meth without being arrested, charged, or having their drugs seized - except around schools and airports. However, just over a year into the project it has come under increasing pressure from opponents who have called it a 'harmful experiment'. Recently some of the measures have been rolled back. Public drug use is now re-criminalised, while drug possession in private homes is still legal. Joining us to discuss are Dr Nuno Capaz, of Lisbon's Dissuasion Commission of Drug Addiction, Dr Lindsey Richardson from the BC Centre on Substance Use, and Dr Fiona Hutton, a member of the Harm Reduction Coalition Aotearoa.

Saturday morning listener feedback.

At just fifteen years old Joy Womack left her family home in Texas and travelled to Moscow to follow her dream of becoming a Prima Ballerina at the world-renowned Bolshoi Ballet Company. In the face of incredible challenges, she became the first American to graduate from the Bolshoi Ballet Academy's punishing training program with a red diploma, and the second American woman to sign a contract with the Bolshoi Ballet. Womack's captivating story has been made into a movie by the New Zealand filmmaking team of James Napier Robertson and Tom Hern. The biopic Joika, which is currently screening in NZ cinemas, stars actress and classically trained dancer Talia Ryder, and the real Womack served as choreographer and consultant.

The incremental stresses of modern life can easily build, to kill joy, and tip us towards physical and psychological burnout. It's tempting to "push on" but Prof Vincent Deary argues we need to accept our capacity to carry stress is finite and work harder at resting - a skill most of us need to consciously practice. The professor of psychology at the UK's Northumbria University and clinical fatigue specialist's new book is How We Break: Navigating the Wear and Tear of Living. It's an exploration of our varying responses to the corrosive pressures of daily life, especially work, and an ode to the necessity of rest, recovery and the lost art of convalescence.

Award-winning Canadian investigative journalist Connie Walker had been telling stories about missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls for years, and wondering why they received so little attention. All this changed with her true-crime podcasts. Missing & Murdered and Stolen have been wildly popular, the latter winning a Pulitzer Prize and a Peabody Award. But despite the prizes and the millions of followers, in a climate where profitability is prioritised over important journalism Stolen is being axed by Spotify beyond the current third series.

American author Jonathan Rauch argues free speech and robust criticism should be encouraged and defended, even when it's racist, sexist or causes hurt. A gay, Jewish writer and thinker Rauch admits free speech can do harm, but argues minorities are better off in a society where free speech is embraced. Rauch has been visiting NZ at the invitation of the Free Speech Union discussing the necessity of academic freedom. He's a senior fellow in the Governance Studies programme at the Brookings Institute, the author of eight books and many articles on public policy, culture, government, and LGBT rights.

Police have used tear gas and stun grenades on rioters at an airport near Nouméa as the unrest and rioting in New Caledonia goes into its sixth day. Five people, including two police officers, have died and hundreds of people are injured amid clashes between authorities and pro-independence protesters. They were sparked by anger at a proposed new law that would allow French residents who have lived in New Caledonia for more than 10 years to vote - which some say will weaken the indigenous Kanak vote. Correspondent for Islands Business Magazine, Nic Maclennan, who has been covering this story for decades, explains the back-story.

Over almost sixty years, Dutch-Kiwi photographer Ans Westra took hundreds of thousands of pictures of life in New Zealand. A new illustrated biography Ans Westra - A life in photography interrogates her at times controversial practice. Ans' daughter Lisa van Hulst and author Dr Paul Moon join Susie.

Following a two-year hiatus, comedian Nazeem Hussain is back on the tour circuit with his new stand-up show Totally Normal. Having cut his teeth in the Melbourne scene in the 1990s, Hussain is one of Australia's biggest comedy stars, with his 2022 YouTube special Hussain in the Membrane racking up millions of views. Having performed sold-out shows around the globe - including opening for controversial comedian Dave Chappelle in New York City - Hussein is back for two shows in NZ .

In the race to colonize Mars, millions - if not billions - of dollars have been poured into research by people like Elon Musk to see what would make the planet's environment less hostile for humans. But why not spend the money improving conditions on Earth instead? What is driving this obsession? Writer Danyl McLauchlan joins Susie to tackle life's big questions, ideas and thinkers.

In a crucial year for India, millions of voters are going to the polls in the mammoth six-week election in the most populous country on earth. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is hoping to secure a rare third term as the poll hits the mid point. Internationally acclaimed author of twenty-five books, Dr Shashi Tharoor is a third-term Member of Parliament for the Congress and former Under Secretary-General of the United Nations. Dr Tharoor is appearing in conversation with Linda Clark in 'The Year the World Votes' at the Auckland Writers Festival.

Housing solution advocate Jordan van den Berg received a wave of fury from landlords and real estate agents recently after posting a video suggesting people squat in houses left empty by their owners. The Melbourne-based lawyer, who posts online under the name Purple Pingers, has been dubbed the 'Robin Hood of renters' for his unorthodox solution to the country's housing crisis. Van den Berg also runs the website Shit Rentals, where tenants can rate undesirable properties and rental agents. And he has even taken aim at Aotearoa's terrible rental offerings on his social media page, pointing to a Riccarton rental that was effectively a shed, priced at $260 a week.

Promising a new kind of environmental journalism, Cape Town-based conservation writer Adam Welz's book The End of Eden: Wild Nature in the Age of Climate Breakdown explores climate change from the perspective of wild species and natural ecosystems. Prefering climate breakdown to climate change, Welz argues its most powerful impacts are felt by the natural world, including that of the northern Maine moose, parrots in Puerto Rico, cheetahs in Namibia, and rare fish in Australia - all struggling to survive.

Saturday morning listener feedback.

Colour analysis seems to be having a renaissance. Some will remember it from the 1980s. Or maybe you had your colours done and know that you suit a soft autumn or a bright spring and have taken your swatches shopping. Rachel Bilu of Colour Lab Stylist is Susie's guest.

A collection of letters written to and from iconic New Zealand painter Colin McCahon sheds light on a special relationship spanning four decades. McCahon met penpal Ron O'Reilly in 1938, when the pair were just 19 and 24 respectively. They wrote to each other regularly, amassing hundreds of letters covering McCahon's art practice, the contemporary art scene, ideas, philosophy, and spiritual life. A selection of the letters chosen by McCahon scholar Peter Simpson has been published in a new book Dear Colin, Dear Ron - with an afterword by McCahon's grandson Finn.

Thirty years ago, nurse Maybelle Ngapere McLeod realised a genetic link to the stomach cancer which killed many of her whanau was much more likely that the effect of a curse. She took her suspicions to Otago university, and the rest is history. Maybelle is part of the team awarded the top Prime Minister's Science Prize for transformative impact. The Hereditary Diffuse Gastric Cancer Team is led by Professor Parry Guilford, Director of the Centre for Translational Cancer Research at the University of Otago, in conjunction with members of the McLeod whanau and their community in Mount Maunganui. The research has resulted in a genetic test which gives the ability to understand their risk of cancer and take life-saving action. Professor Guilford joins Susie, along with Mabelle Ngapere McLeod and fellow team member, and whanau University of Otago Associate Professor Karyn Paringatai.

For those with asparagus patches: what to do to prep for a boomer crop in spring. Or, if you are planning an asparagus patch: how to kick start it.

Grace Blakeley takes aim at capitalism in her latest book Vulture Capitalism: Corporate Crimes, Backdoor Bailouts and the Death of Freedom. In the book, Blakeley asserts that rather than failing, capitalism is working exactly as intended - allowing corporate and political elites to advance their own interests at the expense of the rest of us. Susie is joined by Grace to discuss how instead of feeling powerless, there is a new path we can take to democratise the economy for a better future for all.

From the A303 in Wiltshire, motorists can catch sight of the megalithic structure of Stonehenge. But as a primary route for both commuters and holiday makers the road is notoriously traffic-clogged, and plans to upgrade the road have been decades in the making. However, the plans face strong opposition. They include building a road tunnel under the World Heritage Site in Wiltshire and costs have surged as high as £2.5 billion ($5.3 billion). John Adams is the chairman of the Stonehenge Alliance, a group dedicated to fighting the project that they consider too vast and intrusive to the prehistoric site.

It's thirty years since the 1994 genocide against the Tutsis in Rwanda, perpetrated by the Hutu-led government. British journalist Michela Wrong's book Do Not Disturb, The Story of a Political Murder and an African Regime Gone Bad explores the legacy of the genocide, exposing a murderous in-coming regime that operates on a "grand scale deceit", exercising a destabilising influence on the wider region. Michela has reported from and written about Africa for almost three decades, working for Reuters and the Financial Times. Michela is visiting NZ this week, giving a series of talks at the invitation of the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs.

The arrival of photography to New Zealand in 1848 was more about business than art. A cumbersome kit meant photographers needed carriages or horses to lug their gear across unsealed roads to sell their wares. These early images provide a valuable insight to the country's colonial era, with stunning portraits and landscapes now being presented in a new book entitled A Different Light: First Photographs of Aotearoa. Susie is joined by Shaun Higgins who, along with fellow book editor Catherine Hammond, has pulled together the extraordinary and extensive photographic collections of three major research libraries - Auckland Museum, Hocken Collections, and Alexander Turnbull Library. The book is also being celebrated with a travelling exhibition.

Former soldier Christian Lewis had hit rock bottom and was so severely depressed he would shut himself in his flat for weeks. But one day he made an impulsive decision, setting himself the challenge of walking the entire coastline of the UK. Christian joins Susie to talk about his new book, Finding Hildasay, which explores how with just ten pounds in his pocket and a few supplies, he walked himself into a brighter future.

New Zealand's volcanoes are world renowned, and most Kiwis are familiar with our big ones such as Ruapehu, Taranaki and Tarawera. But what about our lesser talked about volcanoes? GNS Science principal scientist Graham Leonard joins Susie to chat about some of the volcanic areas around the country that people are less familiar with - from Northland's periodically active field to volcanoes buried in the Canterbury plains gravels.

You could hardly avoid the gruesome spectacle of the Amber Heard-Johnny Depp trial - it made the nightly news, but it made a much bigger splash on social media. But was there something else at play? Was Amber Heard the victim of an orchestrated campaign of misinformation? Alexi Mostrous of Tortoise Media is a London-based journalist who has previously tackled catfishing and disinformation in his previous very popular podcasts Sweet Bobby and Hoaxed. Alexi joins Susie to talk about how, with the help of a team of data analysts, he dug through hundreds of thousands of tweets to uncover the shocking revelations of his latest series Who Trolled Amber?

Doctor and poet Glenn Colquhoun has been writing poetry since the 1990s. A long time in the making, he has simultaneously published two books: Nga Wahine E Toru/Three Women, a collection of Maori poetic forms, and Myths and Legends of the Ancient Pakeha, an exploration of the sung poem in English written as a response to Nga Wahine E Toru. Both are examinations of the oral poem in New Zealand, and both come with soundtracks. Glenn was awarded the Prize in Modern Letters in 2004 (the country's largest literary award at the time) and started up his own imprint OldKing Press a few years ago.

Kiwi scientist and champion épée-fencer Dr Matt Baker is representing NZ at fencing in the final Olympic qualifying tournament in Dubai later today. Sydney-based Baker is Scientia Research Fellow in the School of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Sciences at the University of New South Wales, where he studies the molecular motor that makes bacteria swim. But today it's all about the sport and Matt is the sole NZ gladiator in men's épée. Age 41, and father of two young children, he's en garde against some up-coming young stars, all hungry for success at the Asia-Oceania Zonal Qualifier for the Paris Olympics. The men's épée starts at 4pm NZ time, streamed live.

A first of its kind one-to-one support programme for pre-school children showing signs of autism is about to be trialed in Wellington, with aspirations of going nationwide. Professor Josie Barbaro pioneered the most successful tool in the world for the very early detection of autism. Known as Social Attention and Communication Surveillance or SACS, it identifies autistic children aged 11 to 30 months with an accuracy of 83%, and has identified 96% of autistic children by preschool age. Susie is joined by Prof Barbaro and Educational Psychologist and Clinic Lead of the Victoria University of Wellington Autism Clinic, Dr Hannah Waddington. Hannah is rolling out Raupi te Raupo, a world-first free support programme for under fives who, having undergone Josie's assessment, are showing signs of autism.

Saturday morning listener feedback

Kate De Goldi is one of New Zealand's most celebrated authors, an Arts Foundation Laureate, and a voracious reader. She joins Susie to share three books she's loved; Clear by Carys Davies, The Caretaker by Ron Rash, and The Puppets of Spelhorst by Kate di Camillo.

As a curator of ethnology at Waikato Museum in the 1980s, Te Awekotuku was among the first to insist museums rethink how they represent Maori culture, both in New Zealand and overseas. In 1981, she became the first Maori woman to earn a doctorate from a New Zealand university, with a PhD on the effects of tourism on the Te Arawa people. In 1996 she became the country's first Maori woman professor. Te Awekotuku is now poised to release her fiery memoir about identity and belonging, Hine Toa: A story of bravery. Heralded as 'heartbreaking and triumphant', the memoir traces what was possible for a restless working-class girl from the pa, who became a founding member of Nga Tamatoa and the Women's and Gay Liberation movements.

Veteran financial journalist Liam Dann returns to the show to shine a light on left-field economic news and the quirks of New Zealand economics. This week he discusses 'digital cash' and the future of money, and he takes a closer look at the job losses hitting the headlines and what it means amid our current recession. Dann has 25 years of reporting under his belt and is The New Zealand Herald business editor at large. He recently released BBQ Economics: How money works and why it matters.

The 2018 murder of 21-year old British backpacker Grace Millane gripped the country. A powerful new film The Lie explores how the shocking case highlights disturbing attitudes about violence towards women. It painstakingly pieces together Grace's final evening, stepping through the evidence the police used to make the case against her killer. The film also examines the controversial "rough sex defence", used by the defence team at the trial of Jesse Kempson, who was convicted of Grace's murder. The Lie is released in cinemas on April 25.

At the age of 29 New Yorker Carrie Sun bagged a top job at a top Wall Street hedge fund. As private assistant to the firm's billionaire founder, Sun entered a world of power, privilege and extreme wealth. But as the demands of the job take a toll on her physical and mental health, Sun starts to question everything she had worked so hard for. Her new memoir is Private Equity, which exposes the brutal reality of high finance.

In her new book H Is for Hope, author Elizabeth Kolbert explores the landscape of climate change in a series of 26 animated essays arranged in alphabetical order-from "A", for Svante Arrhenius, who created the world's first climate model in 1894, to "Z", for the Colorado River Basin, ground zero for climate change in the United States. Kolbert is a staff writer for The New Yorker and author of several books, most notably Pulitzer Prize winner The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, which chronicled previous mass extinction events and compared them to the accelerated, widespread extinctions of our present time.

Evidence indicates long covid presents a considerable burden to New Zealand. Between 4 and 14 percent of people infected with the virus will develop ongoing symptoms, anything from mild to severe. Scientists who conducted a recent evidence summary of long covid in Aotearoa are convinced its prevalence is likely to increase and preventative action is needed. Covid can change your DNA and your immune system and there is no cure for long Covid. Susie is joined by Jenene Crossan, founder of Long Covid Support Aotearoa and co-founder of the University of Auckland Long Covid Registry. Also Mona Jeffreys, epidemiologist and Associate Professor at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington, who advises on the Long Covid Registry.

Susie Fergusons listener feedback for Saturday Morning 13th April 2024

Writer and reviewer Leah McFall reckons one of the best endorsements for a book is when your friend borrows it and it never comes back. Leah shares three great non-fiction titles currently missing from her bookshelves: Amy Liptrot's The Outrun, Ruth Reichl's Garlic and Sapphires and Craig Brown's One, Two. Three, Four.

Deborah Frances-White opens each episode of her podcast with a confessional catch phrase "I'm a Feminist but.." It's an acknowledgement that you don't have to be perfect in the pursuit of social change. Recorded live on stage, with guest comedians and experts The Guilty Feminist is a joyous mashup of comedy and activism. The podcast has racked up 100-million downloads in eight years, and is coming to Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch as part of the NZ International Comedy Festival.

Holidays, work trips, cargo, freight and parcels; we rely on aviation personally and for business. But aviation's carbon footprint is huge, so what are some of the sustainable technology changes taking it into the future? A handful of manufacturers are looking at reviving the production of seaplanes for a new age in aviation, including Amphibian Aerospace Industries in Darwin. Professor of Aviation at Brisbane's Griffith University Tim Ryley weighs in on the future of seaplanes.

New Zealand born Aerospace engineer Karen Willcox is on the frontline of the rapidly developing field of digital twins. Digital twins are two-way data driven virtual representations that predict real world outcomes, with applications spanning aviation, aerospace, medicine and climate change. Willcox is director of the Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences at The University of Texas at Austin. Willcox spent 17 years as a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she served as the founding co-director of the MIT Center for Computational Engineering.

Alice Taylor may not have won Masterchef in 2022, but she won the hearts of fans, and the judges' attention. Competing in the show inspired the 24 year old to pivot from a planned career in politics to fully embrace her love of baking. She's now working as a pastry chef at Auckland's Paris Butter and has just released a cookbook - Alice in Cakeland. Packed with tips and tricks, it has easy, affordable and adaptable recipes for cakes, desserts, biscuits, breads, brioche, crepes, donuts and more

Bonnie Garmus had been a successful advertising creative for decades when she started writing the worldwide bestseller Lessons in Chemistry. That day, Garmus says a surge of anger about sexism overrode the rejection she'd felt when her previous book "didn't go anywhere". "For other writers, you should always realise that when you are filled with passion or anger - whatever shape the passion takes - it might be a good time to write it down," she tells Susie Ferguson.

Auckland's Dilworth boarding school was set up to to provide education to boys from disadvantaged backgrounds for free. Last year an independent inquiry into sexual and physical abuse at the school uncovered a "catalogue of damage and injustice" spanning more than half a century. Broadcaster turned screenwriter Mark Staufer was one of the boys physically and sexually abused while under Dilworth's care. He's written and features in The Lost Boys of Dilworth, a docu-drama revealing his experiences along with several other abuse survivors including Neil Harding, who is leading the legal charge to hold Dilworth to account. The Lost Boys of Dilworth premieres on TVNZ 1 at 8.30pm Sunday 14

Bestselling writer Deborah Challinor explores the world of Victorian funeral customs in the first book in a new series Black Silk and Sympathy. Deborah has written eighteen novels of historical fiction, including young adult novels, and two works of non-fiction about the Vietnam War. She speaks with Colin Peacock about her fascination with graves, cemeteries and funerals and how this interest shines in the first of a new series telling the tale of Sydney's first female undertaker.

Political commentator, academic and author Richard Shaw's new book The Unsettled confronts colonial land theft through Pakeha settler stories. A follow up to his 2021 book The Forgotten Coast, a personal story of his family history highlighting what he calls "the shady bits beneath our family tree, specifically, the land which underpinned his family's security and prosperity, taken from tangata whenua.

Oppenheimer has finally opened in Japan, eight months after it was released in the US. Japanese distributors delayed the release, following criticism the movie minimises the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and to distance it from offensive "Barbenheimer" memes. The seven times Oscar winner, which tells of the race to develop the atomic bomb, grossed $US 2.5 million in its first weekend in Japanese cinemas. Tokyo based author of Pure Invention: How Japan Made the Modern World Matt Alt joins Colin Peacock with how the film is being received.

Former New Zealand Army captain, Dr Ellen Joan Ford, was recognised with a Kiwibank Local Hero award last year for her work leading a team that freed over 500 Afghan refugees when the Taliban seized control in 2021. Ellen led this team remotely from her living room, during the Covid pandemic. Ellen, who now teaches leadership in business and high performance teams has a new fight on her hands: making working parents life better, under the banner #workschoolhours, striving to rethink the outdated current work model by providing a path forward that creates a win-win at home and work.

Simon Young is the first non-native mayor of Pitcairn. Originally from Yorkshire in the UK, Simon visited Pitcairn in 1992 and liked it so much he returned permanently in 1999 with his wife Shirley. Simon was elected mayor in 2022, becoming the first non-native to head the island's government. Pitcairn is home to fifty people, distant relatives of the mutinous crewmates of the HMS Bounty.

Jerusalem-based American journalist and author Nathan Thrall's new book is named on ten best books of the year lists, including The New Yorker, The Economist and the Financial Times. A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: A Palestine Story is a portrait of life in Israel and Palestine, giving an understanding of what it's like to live there, based on the real events of one tragic day, where Jewish and Palestinian characters' lives and pasts unexpectedly converge. Thrall has spent a decade at the International Crisis Group, where he was director of the Arab-Israeli Project. His first book, published in 2017 is The Only Language They Understand: Forcing Compromise in Israel and Palestine.

The British Post Office scandal been described as one of the most widespread miscarriages of justice in the country's history. Between 1999 and 2015, over 900 UK subpostmasters were falsely accused of theft and fraud as the result of faulty accounting software. Some were convicted and jailed, and more lost marriages, families and their mental health. A faulty accounting system doesn't perhaps sound like the makings of gripping drama, but it's been made into a series: Mr Bates vs The Post Office, The first episode airs on Sunday 31 March on TVNZ and on TVNZ on Demand. It was written by Gwyneth Hughes, a journalist turned screenwriter.

Filmmakers Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss's creative partnership spans two decades, winning them Emmy awards and several prizes at Sundance. Their latest documentary Girls State follows teenage girls from Missouri navigating a week-long immersive democratic experiment, learning how to build a government from the ground up. Girls State airs on Apple TV from April 5. It serves as a companion to their 2020 film Boys State which followed a similar experiment. They also directed The Mission, about American Christian missionary John Chau who was murdered when he tried to contact and convert one of the most remote tribes in the world on North Sentinel Island.

Irish novelist and short story writer Claire Keegan was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2022 for her book Small Things Like These. It's the story of a coal merchant whose eyes are opened to the horror of the laundry run by nuns one Christmas. The Booker Prize judges described it as "both a celebration of compassion and a stern rebuke of the sins committed in the name of religion". Keegan is appearing at Wanaka's Festival of Colour next Sunday, along with Audrey McGee, talking about why Irish writers are making a big impact.

For many, Easter means chocolate. And for chocolate makers Easter is one of the busiest times of year. Susie pops in to Baron Hasselhoff's chocolate boutique in Wellington to catch up with "chief chocolate disciple" Clayton McErlane.

As a child watching the film Apocalypse Now, writer Viet Thanh Nguyen felt split in two - was he one of the Americans doing the killing or one of the Vietnamese being killed? "That moment really brought home to me this idea that stories don't only have the power to save us but that stories have the power to destroy us, as well," he tells Susie Ferguson.

World renowned brain health expert, clinical neuroscientist and pioneer in dementia research Professor Vladimir Hachinski is the recipient of the 2024 Ryman Prize, a $250,000 grant for the world's best discovery, development, advance or achievement that enhances quality of life for older people. It's celebrating the major contribution Professor Hachinski has made to the diagnosis, treatment, prevention, and the links between 'the terrible three' - stroke, dementia and coronary heart disease. Professor Hachinski advocates for prevention by promoting the idea of "holistic brain health", linking cerebral health with our ability to interact and form meaningful relationships with others. Professor Hachinski joins Susie alongside New Zealand-based dementia educator Caroline Bartle.

Aboriginal artist Richard Bell's documentary You Can Go Now is screening at the Maoriland Film Festival, underway in Otaki . In it, he poses provocative and humourous challenges to the status quo and to our preconceived ideas of Aboriginal art.

Clinical psychologist Dr Olive Webb is nominated in the Local Hero category of the Kiwibank New Zealander of the Year awards. A strong defender of some of the most marginalised members of our community, she tirelessly advocated and revolutionised care for people with learning disabilities. Most recently she also gave evidence to the Royal Commission into the Abuse in State Care and supported others to tell their stories. Dr Webb released From Behind Closed Doors last year, a poignant reflection on her 50-year journey alongside individuals with intellectual disabilities.

Glacial geologist Jamey Stutz dates Antarctic rocks 'dropped like breadcrumbs from melting glaciers' to help determine the scale of glacial retreat. Jamey has recently joined the Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center in Ohio as a research scientist in the Polar Rock Repository, having completed his Ph.D at the Antarctic Research Center at Victoria University in Wellington. Jamey says he's excited to be part of the more than 60 year exchange of Antarctic knowledge between New Zealand and America.

Dubbed "deliciously rude and darkly funny", "chick lit" author Kathy Lette has a new book out which wreaks revenge. The Revenge Club features four best friends approaching their sixties, feeling invisible and bent on vengeance. It continues the Australian-British writer's observations of the best and worst parts of being a woman, with female friendships one of the perks. Kathy Lette has written fifteen bestselling novels, and has been recognised for her advocacy of equality, human rights, physical and mental health.

Around 600 people (including around 350 children) currently live at Gloriavale – a strict Christian community on the West Coast. In TVNZ's upcoming three-part doco Escaping Utopia, former church member Rosie Overseer talks about her experiences there, including years of childhood sexual abuse. Rosie joins Susie Ferguson with Liz Gregory, one of the people who helped her family make a new life and founder of the Gloriavale Leavers' Support Trust.

Social media content makers celebrating their role as "traditional wives" are enjoying a startling rise in popularity. Influencers such as Nara Smith, Emily Mariko and Ballerina Farm are baking, procreating and home-making their way to millions of followers. So why is their #Tradwife vision of submissive domesticity so appealing in 2024? We ask Caro Claire Burke, a cultural critic and journalist at Katie Couric Media.

Women still take most of the responsibility for contraception, but a long anticipated "male pill" could soon become a reality. Several non-hormonal male contraceptive pills that work by slowing sperm are under development, with one entering human trials. Head of the Reproductive Medicine Group at the University of Dundee Professor Chris Barratt has dedicated his career to understanding male infertility, human spermatozoa and sperm-egg interaction. He joins us to explain how these new pills work and why it's taken so long to get to this point.

Catherine, Princess of Wales has announced she has cancer. Kate Middleton is in the early stages of treatment after cancer was found in tests, and is undergoing chemotherapy. Details of the cancer have not been made public, but Kensington Palace says it is confident the princess will make a full recovery.

Saturday morning listener feedback

One of the many musicians hitting the stage at Tauranga's National Jazz Festival later this month is Australian jazz legend James Morrison. He's a multi-instrumentalist, playing the trombone, piano, saxophone and double bass, but is perhaps best known for the trumpet. He started playing instruments aged six and formed his own band by the time he was nine.

Ann Patchett is one of the world's most acclaimed, prize-winning novelists and non-fiction writers. She was named one of Time magazine's '100 Most Influential People in the World' and is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and Harper's Magazine. She also famously co-owns indie bookstore Parnassus Books in Nashville with her husband. Her collection of essays These Precious Days was chosen by Barack Obama as one of his books of the year in 2021. Ann is appearing at the Auckland Writer's Festival in May, where she'll be talking about her latest novel, Tom Lake.

If you want your garden to feed you through winter, now's the time to get prepping. Brassicas like Broccoli need three months to grow, so need to be planted, and it's a perfect time to make compost with all your late summer garden waste Organic gardener Kath Irvine from Edible Backyard joins Susie with tips and tricks for both small and large gardens. Plus she'll answer your questions.

Should you fix or float a mortgage? Is now a good time to buy - or sell? Why does cheese cost so much? And what even is money? These questions and many more are tackled by New Zealand Herald business editor at large Liam Dann in his new book, BBQ Economics He draws on his 25 years of reporting, sharing anecdotes to make economic concepts more accessible.

Filmmaker Lulu Wang came to international attention in 2019 with The Farewell which also caught the eye of Nicole Kidman. Kidman then approached Lulu to bring a best-selling novel to the small screen. The result is Expats, showing on Amazon Prime, about the lives of women in Hong Kong - both the super rich and their many "helpers". Lulu Wang is coming to Auckland for the Big Screen Symposium next month.

Traditional systems of wealth measurement don't include nature's contributions. Faculty Director of Stanford University's Natural Capital Project Professor Gretchen Daily thinks putting a dollar value on a mangrove, or a creek, or a honeybee is a vital paradigm shift. Gretchen and her team help governments, international banks, and NGOs determine their gross ecosystem product, or GEP - a parallel concept to GDP.

With proposed job cuts at TV3's News Hub and TVNZ's Midday and Late News, and the loss of Sunday and Fair Go, is it possible for employers to 'do' redundancy well? The news of the proposed redundancies was delivered in very different ways to each newsroom, each coming as a huge shock to employees. Top employment lawyer Susan Hornsby-Geluk joins Susie with her take on how they each played out.

Concerns about the rising practice of "freebirth" escalated last month, following the death of premature twins in Byron Bay. Freebirthing, also known as unassisted birthing, is when women choose to give birth without medical assistance, rejecting both hospital care and midwife supported homebirth. It's increasingly a movement that NZ midwives are running into too. So what is motivating women to choose this path? And how risky is it? Joining Susie, Australian Professor of Midwifery Hannah Dahlen and NZ College of Midwives CE Alison Eddy.

Saturday morning listener feedback

This Sunday, after nine years as Green Party co-leader, including a five year stint as Climate Change Minister, James Shaw is stepping down. He's joining Susie to talk about everything other than politics and share some favourite music.

The plumes of ash that can accompany volcanic eruptions are spectacular, but often damaging, in multiple and surprising ways. Most people think what comes out is like fire ash, but volcanic ash is something quite different. GNS principal scientist Graham Leonard join us to talk about exactly what ash is, how it can affect the health of both humans and animals, and all the ways it can disrupt everyday life.

Multi Grammy award winning Beninese musician Angélique Kidjo has been named one of the most influential people in the world by Time Magazine. Her career spans four decades and her music is a fusion of West African with American R&B, funk and jazz, dancehall and European and Latin American influences. Angélique serves as a UNICEF and OXFAM ambassador. She founded Batonga to support the education of young African girls. She also won last years Polar Music Prize, seen on a par with Nobel awards. Angélique Kidjo is playing in Auckland on Saturday night.

Why do we have a two-day weekend? And when will it stretch to three? How can billionaires be parted from some of their billions for the greater good? How long does it take for a new idea to take hold? Sir Geoff Mulgan led British PM Tony Blair's strategy unit, and writes about adopting and adapting good ideas. He recently published a paper on the skills required for running government. James Plunkett's book End State was The Guardian's political book of the year. Both Australian New Zealand School of Government visiting fellows join Susie to discuss the challenges and opportunities for governments in the next decades.

Film director Lee Tamahori and producer Robin Scholes have a long history of collaboration, beginning with 1994's Once Were Warriors, which launched both their careers. Their latest offering, The Convert, starring Guy Pearce, opens in cinemas next week. A loose adaptation of Wulf by New Zealand author Hamish Clayton, The Convert features a largely Maori cast and follows the story of Munro, a war veteran-cum-preacher who comes to Aotearoa in 1830.

Lawyer, linguist and teacher Aliya Danzeisen converted to Islam as an adult four months before 9/11. Today, Aliya is the national co-ordinator and spokesperson for the Islamic Women's Council, and a standard bearer for the contribution Muslim women are making in New Zealand. Danzeisen prepared the Islamic Women's Council's response to the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Christchurch mosque attacks. A week out from the 5th anniversary of the massacre, she joins Susie to reflect on the gains made for Muslim New Zealanders, and ongoing barriers and prejudice.

For the past 200 years blankets have formed part of Aotearoa's history, part of our early trade, providing warmth and comfort during the New Zealand Wars and for our soldiers fighting overseas during two world wars. For Whakaawa and Josh Te Kani, the history of wool in this country is integral to the stories they weave into their blankets and their work will feature in a new exhibition, Paraikete Threads, which opened yesterday at the Pataka Art Museum in Porirua.

Feedback for Saturday Morning March 2nd 2024

Clothing label Kowtow has built a devoted following since its inception in Wellington back in 2006. 

Against a backdrop of a new, increasingly privatised, space race, philosopher and author A.C. Grayling, asks an ever-more urgent question: Who Owns the Moon? 

Fiona Amundsen is a photographer and associate professor at AUT's School of Art and Design. 

The loss of a child is unbearable. To lose them in a brutal public beheading, unimaginable. But then to come face to face with their killer? 

A week ago, Alabama's Supreme Court ruled that embryos were "extrauterine children". 

The world-first law that would have created a smokefree generation in Aotearoa New Zealand was repealed under urgency by the coalition government on Wednesday. A tobacco control expert tells Susie Ferguson why we're ''swimming against the tide".

Saturday morning listener feedback.

Kate De Goldi is one of New Zealand's most celebrated authors, an Arts Foundation Laureate, and a voracious reader. 

The story of North Carolinian husband and wife, Kathleen and Michael Peterson, took the world by storm after Kathleen's mysterious death in 2001. 

The biggest BBQ festival in Australasia, Meatstock, is back at Mystery Creek, Kirikiriroa Hamilton, this weekend after a three year hiatus. 

The Belong Care Village in Chester has a fully integrated on-site nursery. 

When you think of surfing, Africa might not be the first place that springs to mind. Documentary filmmaker Benoit Lalande makes short films about that very thing. 

Leading sexuality educator and New York Times bestselling author Dr Emily Nagoski's latest book Come Together tackles the tricky topic of maintaining sexual connection and intimacy in long term relationships. 

Over 200,000 New Zealanders are affected by tinnitus, a condition experienced as ringing in the ears. 

This weekend marks two years since Russia invaded Ukraine, a war that has killed tens of thousands of people since. 

Saturday Morning listener feedback

The epic Te Arawa legend of Hatupatu and the bird woman Kurungaituku is centre stage at the Aotearoa New Zealand Festival of the Arts.

Sleep is fundamental to our survival, hence why we dedicate a third of our lives to it. 

Comedian's comedian Emma Lange is bringing a show to the fringe festival, based on her experience of a malignant, incurable brain tumor. 

Gary J. Bass has spent the past decade researching and writing his latest book, Judgement at Tokyo, about Japan's war criminal trials in the wake of WWII. 

Writer Danyl McLauchlan joins Susie to tackle life's big questions, ideas, and thinkers.

Russia's most significant opposition leader, and vocal critic of President Vladimir Putin - Alexei Navalny - is reported to have died in an Arctic Circle jail, aged 47. 

NPR science correspondent Michaeleen Doucleff thinks the key to happy kids and happy parents is doing less. 

In November 2023, a magma dike began to rapidly build below the Sundhnúkur crater chain in southwest Iceland. 

Silicon Valley has long promoted a vision of a future tech utopia - be that on earth, or elsewhere. 

Niuean-born Sir Collin Tukuitonga is highly regarded for his work in Pacific peoples' health, both in NZ and internationally. His big health interests are heart disease, obesity and diabetes, and the impact on health of the climate crisis. He recently resigned from his government advisory roles, citing no confidence, so he can "speak up and speak out" about the treatment of Pacific people. He joins Susie to share some of his favourite 70's and 80's hits, which he fears show his age!

Edible Backyard gardener Kath Irvine is evangelical about the benefits of homemade compost. It's tempting to just buy a bag, but Kath reckons making your own is the secret to a bountiful and healthy garden. She's in to share her knowledge and offer tips for quick and simple compost making. If you've got a compost question you can email it in to: [email protected]

British food writer Bee Wilson's new book The Secret of Cooking also serves up secrets for stress-free living. Alongside recipes, there's encouragement to improvise, a very useful section on learning to cook by experimenting with a bag of carrots, and repurposing an unloved wedding ring. Bee cooked her way through divorce, rekindling her appetite for life. She's a campaigner for food education through the charity TastEd, and writes the "Table Talk" column for The Wall Street Journal.

It's twenty years this week since Facebook was launched. Last week its founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg was forced to apologise at a US Senate hearing, to parents whose children died following sexual exploitation via social media or cyberbullying. A matter of hours later his company Meta delivered its quarterly results with the stock price surging by over 20 percent, its value up almost 200 billion dollars. Meta owns Instagram, WhatsApp and Threads as well as Facebook. Arturo Bejar worked for the company between 2009 and 2015 and then again from 2019 to 2021. He came forward as a whistleblower, saying Instagram isn't doing enough to protect children from online harms.

What are the dangers for society when a perfect face and body - especially for women - are not just promoted, but also possible? Whether it's a 10 step skincare regime, cosmetic injections or plastic surgery, endless self improvement has been valourised and recoded as empowerment. South Korea is the undisputed leader in the quest for physical perfection, with a $US10 billion beauty industry. NPR's host-at-large and the presenter of TED Talks Daily, Elise Hu lived and worked in Seoul during the boom days of the K-beauty industry. Her new book is Flawless: Lessons In Looks And Culture From The K-Beauty Capital.

British naturalist, broadcaster and environmental campaigner Chris Packham has been hailed as David Attenborough's successor. He began his broadcasting career on The Really Wild Show in the 1980s, and more recently has presented Springwatch for the BBC. He's found fans and made enemies with his vocal stance on environmental and ecological causes including opposing fox hunting. Recently he launched a legal challenge against the UK government over its plan to water down carbon commitments.

Something of an all-round Renaissance man, Kiran Parbhu joins Susie to share some favourite songs. A fourth generation Kiwi of Indian ancestry, Kiran came to fame when Maori language advocate Matai Rangi Smith praised his fluency of Te Reo. Kiran was captaining Matai's Air New Zealand flight at the time. He posted about the encounter on Facebook, getting over 13,000 likes. Kiran also trains young people to become pilots. In his spare time he's a mural artist, photographer, woodworker and sportsman.

Acclaimed actor, comedian, director and writer and "Snapchat Dude" Tom Sainsbury has another lesser known talent. Along with Lara Fischel-Chisholm he's one half of comedy dance troupe, Dynamotion. Their "camp, and country" Auckland Arts Festival show in March Boot Scootin' Boogie promises old fashioned barn dance fun.

Last Thursday melanoma researcher Professor Georgina Long was announced as Australian of the Year, along with colleague and friend Professor Richard Scolyer. As co-medical directors of the Melanoma Institute Australia, the pair are credited with saving thousands of lives. Their pioneering immunotherapy treatments for advanced forms of the cancer have resulted in 5 year survival rates increasing from less than 5% to more than 50%. In June of last year Professor Scolyer was diagnosed with glioblastoma IDH wild-type, a cancer that is usually fatal within six to nine months. Rather than undergoing traditional treatment, Prof Scolyer decided to experiment on himself, with Professor Long designing world-first treatments based on their melanoma work.

It ain't hard to tell when you don't communicate well so worth paying attention when you do, says English journalist Ros Atkins.

Patricia Grace is one of Aotearoa's most celebrated Maori fiction authors. She won the New Zealand Book Award for Fiction for Potiki in 1987, and was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2001 with Dogside Story. She has a new collection of short stories, Bird Child and Other Stories, which spans mythology and contemporary Maori life and reimagines ancient tales. The cover art is courtesy of granddaughter Miriama Grace-Smith.

Fourteen times world woodchopping champion, Adam Lowe manages the South Island Wood Chopping team, bound for New South Wales for a big grudge match. He joins Susie for which blade, what wood, how fast and too strong. This year he's taking the first mixed-team to the block.

Line company Vector's recently created electric vehicle trends tracker shows EV ownership in Auckland is up almost 200% in two years. This growth begs the question: is the city's infrastructure prepared? Moreover, when the cars leave the city, can you charge them? Will small town New Zealand's electricity supply stand the burden? Vector Chief Executive Simon MacKenzie joins Susie.

Chief Scientist at the world's biggest museum, wildlife forensic scientist and conservation geneticist Rebecca Johnson is a leading researcher in koala conservation. The iconic Aussie marsupial is hostage to climate change and chlamydia. Dr Johnson came to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History from Australia, where she was chief investigator of the Koala Genome Consortium. As Director of the Australian Museum Research Institute, Rebecca helped put the Australian Museum on the map as a global leader in wildlife forensic science and applied conservation genomics. Rebecca is passionate about protecting threatened species, reducing the illegal trade of wildlife and the importance of STEM. She's been recognised as one of the 30 inaugural "SuperStars of STEM" by Science and Technology Australia.

Listener feedback for 27th January 2024 saturday morning with Susie Ferguson.

Astrophysicist Katie Mack discusses the possibility of time travel, how time will end, gravitational waves and the power of antimatter. Dr Mack is the Hawking Chair in Cosmology and Science Communication at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Canada - where she carries out research on dark matter and the early universe. Dr Mack wants to make physics more accessible. She is the author of the 2021 book The End of Everything.

Mentalist, illusionist and performance artist Scott Silven's marvelous magical career is inspired by the mists and mysticism of his Scottish homeland. Silven studied hypnosis age 15. At 19 he impressed David Blaine and by 21 he was headlining a show at one of the UK's top theatres. Now 34, he's bringing his show Wonders to the Auckland Arts Festival in March.

The assumption that people actually mean 'unlovable' or 'unworthy' when they describe themselves as 'fat' reveals the harsh bias we have against bigger bodies, says writer and podcaster Aubrey Gordon. "It's rare that I say I'm fat without someone saying 'no, you're not, you're beautiful' which is a wild assumption to make that those things can't coexist," she tells Susie Ferguson.

When Hurricane Sandy hit the east coast of the U.S. in 2012 New York city was particularly badly hit, suffering major flooding and 20 billion dollars in damage. Part of the Government's response was to fund resiliency projects to protect the Manhattan coastline against future flooding. On of the proposals funded was The Dryline (BIG U). The 12 km-long infrastructural barrier incorporates public space with the high-water barrier doubling as parks. Susie speaks to New York-based architect Kai-Uwe Bergmann, who has contributed to BIG U. He's a keynote speaker at the "in:situ" architecture conference in Tamaki Makaurau on Feb 21.

Best known for Fugitive Pieces, Canadian novelist and poet Anne Michaels talks to Susie about her new novel Held. With a cast of characters spanning over a century, in Held Michaels explores favourite themes: memory, trauma, grief and the healing power of love. Anne Michaels' books are translated into more than fifty languages, winning international awards, including the Orange Prize and the Guardian Fiction Prize.

A project led by Cook Islands environmentalist Alanna Smith, is taking advantage of an anatomical quirk to track turtles' movements around her home country of Rarotonga. The director of NGO Ipukarea Society is utilising AI facial recognition software to identify turtles by their facial patterns - which are unique, like fingerprints. She joins Susie Ferguson to talk about this citizen science project, which has been running for a year.

An online auction of historic photographs is taking place, with the aim of returning them to New Zealand hands. Australian media company Fairfax sent 1.4 million images from its photographic archive offshore to be digitised eleven years ago. They never came back. Taken by regional Kiwi photographers throughout the 20th Century, they include images of royal tours, music festivals, the Springbok tour and Bastion Point occupation and protests. New owner, LA-based Daniel Miller delivered a collection of over five thousand images of Maori to the National Library in Wellington. A few NZ sports organisations have also bought some, but the rest are for sale online. 166 lots are up for grabs this weekend, including pictures of Auckland's original tramway system, the Chatham Islands, and life in New Zealand's military training camps.

What drives New Zealand's faultlines and earthquakes, and what does it mean for us? 

Chef Josh Emett spent a decade working with notoriously hot-tempered and foul-mouthed Gordan Ramsey. 

Prodigious readers Kate De Goldi and Elizabeth Knox are in to share their favourite books. 

Multitalented wahine Anika Moa joins us for this year's final Playing Favourites. 

Tomatoes are a favourite backyard crop but can be tricky to grow. Organic gardener Kath Irvine shares her tips.

Musician and author Edward Dusinberre is first violinist in the renowned Takács Quartet - one of the world's greatest string quartets. 

Septuagenarian Ruth Shaw's plans for a quiet retirement were derailed last year when her memoir The Bookseller at the End of the World, became an international bestseller. 

Michael Cunningham won a Pulitzer prize for his novel The Hours, which was adapted into an award-winning film, and saw Nicole Kidman scoop an Oscar for her performance as Virginia Woolf.

The first Sauvignon Blanc vines were planted in New Zealand fifty years ago. Taking the lead from California, in the early seventies when wine was either red or white, and liqueurs and sherries were the popular tipple, brothers Bill and Ross Spence experimented with something new and different at their West Auckland vineyard. They got about 6 litres of Sauvignon Blanc in their first batch and founded Matua wines. Today Sauvingnon Blanc is New Zealand's top wine export.

Earlier this year, Samoan-NZ writer Tusiata Avia became the target of harassment and death threats after her poem 250th anniversary of James Cook's arrival in New Zealand was labelled 'racist' by the ACT party. "I'm not hard to find and I live with my 16-year-old daughter and my 90-year-old mother, you know, so yeah it was scary," she tells Susie Ferguson. Avia's new poetry collection Big Fat Brown Bitch was partly written in response to that shocking backlash, which included the "deeply cynical and heartless and cruel” comparison of her work to the 2019 Christchurch mosque attacks. "I was bloody rarked up over what had happened and frustrated because I didn't get a right of reply, so all I had was poetry.

Berlin-based New Zealand artist Simon Denny likes to explore and play with the intersections of art, power and new technology. He represented New Zealand at the 2015 Venice Biennale with "Secret Power" inspired by the fallout from Edward Snowden's NSA leaks and Five Eyes surveillance technology. His 2018 exhibition "The Founder's Paradox", used the language and logic of board games to highlight competing utopian political visions for New Zealand's future. Denny's latest work "Optimism" is currently on view at Auckland Art Gallery. It consists of two hanging megastructures which are enlarged 3D-printed models of patent diagrams of rocket engine parts by Rocket Lab.

Not far down the BBC's list of 100 Women for 2023 is 31 year old Christchurch-based indigenous rights and disability advocate Kera Sherwood-O'Regan (Kai Tahu). Kera is the co-founder of Activate, a social impact agency intent on climate justice and creating social change. Kera's practice is grounded in a Te Ao Maori approach to the mainstream climate conversation. She argues minorities are most affected by climate change but can make a big difference in the fight against it.

An inquest hearing in the UK has heard how 27 year old Maeve Boothby-O'Neill died from complications relating to ME, following years of inadequate care from the National Health Service. At least 25-thousand people live with ME (Myalgic Encephalomyelitis), also known as chronic fatigue syndrome in New Zealand. The real number is likely higher, due to the nature of it being an 'invisible illness'. Maeve's father Sean O'Neill is a Times correspondent. He is joined by leading researcher in ME/CFS in New Zealand, University of Otago Emeritus Professor Warren Tate.

Leo Vardiashvili arrived in London as a 13 year old refugee from Georgia. His family was forced to flee after their country descended into civil war after breaking away from the Soviet Union. Hard by a Great Forest, his debut novel, draws on this experience, and is winning high praise from reviewers.

Sir Ranulph Fiennes pays tribute to a fellow legend in his new biography Lawrence of Arabia. A former SAS officer, Fiennes says he feels a lot of affinity for archaeologist and adventurer Thomas Edward Lawrence, who made a gruelling 300-mile journey through blistering desert heat during the 1916 Arab Revolt. No shirker himself, Fiennes was first to reach both Poles, first to cross the Antarctic and Arctic Ocean and first to circumnavigate the world along its polar axis. He climbed Everest age 65.

Brother and sister duo Sam and Ellie Studd's new book The Best Things In Life Are Cheese, aims to help us understand and appreciate cheese in all its many forms. They're about as close to cheese royalty as you get, their father is legendary expert Will Studd. As cheese guides they cover basics like how to pick a good one, tips for Christmas platters, plus recipes for cheesy treats.

What can mammals genome reveal about how the human genome works? Professor Elinor Karlsson co-leads the Zoonomia Project, which uses comparative genomics to shed light on how certain species achieve extraordinary feats, and to better understand parts of the human genome. Prof Karlsson is also well known for her Darwin's dogs citizen science genetics project- a collaboration between scientists and dog owners looking at the relationship between genetics and behaviour. She was in New Zealand for the Annual Meeting of Genomics Aotearoa.

As wars continue in Gaza and Ukraine, and other parts of the world, a new book questions whether New Zealand ought to have a military force at all. Professor Richard Jackson, Griffin Leonard and Joseph Llwellyn of The National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, at the University of Otago, are co-authors of Abolishing the Military - Arguments and Alternatives. So how could New Zealand ensure its security and promote international peace in alternative, non-violent ways?

A soulmate is someone who pushes you to discover your own potential, says actor and filmmaker Greg Sestero. For him, that's Tommy Wiseau, the "eccentric" friend who directed him in a 2003 film widely regarded as the worst ever made – The Room.

Writer Danyl McLauchlan joins Susie to tackle life's big questions, ideas and thinkers. Today's he's looking at Swedish academic and environmental activist Andreas Malm, author of the book How to Blow Up a Pipeline. Malm argues that climate change activists need to become more radical if they want to get results.

In The Best Country to Give Birth? medical historian Linda Bryder explores how New Zealand came to develop its unique approach to the role of midwives in childbirth. The 1990 Nurses Amendment Act allowed midwives to practise autonomously in the community without oversight by, or reference to, other health professionals and to set up training schemes separate from nursing. The College of Midwives celebrated this freedom as a win for women, but others expressed concerns about the unpreparedness of newly trained midwives to deal with emergencies. Linda Bryder is a Professor of History at Auckland University, a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand Te Aparangi, and is currently President of the Australian and New Zealand Society of the History of Medicine.

British clinical neuropsychologist Andy Mitchell was curious about the renewed attention psychedelics were getting in his field, so set out to do some first-person research. He took ten different drugs in ten different settings, from ketamine in a London kitchen to wachuma in the Colombian Amazon. The result is his new book Ten Trips - The New Reality of Psychedelics. In it Mitchell argues that a medical, therapeutic view of psychedelics neglects what is so unusual and valuable about them: the psychedelic experience itself.

British comedian, actor and writer Adrian Edmondson found fame in the 1980s, playing anarchic medical student Vyvyan alongside Rik Mayall in The Young Ones. They also starred together in Bottom and in The Comic Strip Presents, along with Dawn French and Edmondson's wife Jennifer Saunders. Edmondson went on to star in Filthy Rich & Catflap while taking roles in Blackadder, Absolutely Fabulous and even Star Wars: Episode VIII The Last Jedi. His new memoir Berserker! traces his journey through life and comedy, from a Methodist, boarding school upbringing to his loving but complicated relationship with Mayall, who died in 2014.

Listener feedback 25 November 2023.

Kim and Hannah.

At the tender age of 72 Gary McCormick has no plans for retirement. The breakfast radio host is still touring small town New Zealand, as he did with Kim last century. Gary explored a different Kiwi community for each episode of Heartland, his documentary series, and was a regular contributor from the Blue Bird Caferina in Gisborne every Thursday, when Kim hosted Nine to Noon. Gary joins with stories of being stuck in small towns and singing karaoke with Kim until dawn.

Australian musical comedian Tim Minchin is a swiss army knife of entertainment. He can be political, silly, and tear-inducing - all within the course of a song. As a composer he's written super-catchy songs for the mega-hit musical based on Roald Dahl's Matilda, which won a record 7 Olivier Awards, and 5 Tony Awards. In 2020 he released a studio album of more serious songs, "Apart Together". He also acts on stage and the screen - with credits including Upright, Californication, and the upcoming Disney Plus series, The Artful Dodger. He has released a graphic novel and two children's books. His latest show, An Unfunny* Evening with Tim Minchin and His Piano is coming to Wellington, Auckland and Christchurch in March.

Booker Prize-winning Tasmanian writer Richard Flanagan's new novel looks at the choices we make and the chain reaction that follows. By way of a literary love affair through nuclear physics to Flanagan's father's time as a Japanese POW, to Richard's own near-death experience, Question 7 explores the power of language, and of dreaming. Richard Flanagan's novels are published in forty-two countries. He won the Booker Prize for The Narrow Road to the Deep North and the Commonwealth Prize for Gould's Book of Fish. A rapid on the Franklin River is named after him.

The new National-ACT-NZ First coalition government says it will introduce a Treaty Principles Bill, based on ACT policy, and support it to a Select Committee. So what could this mean for Maori? Annabelle Lee Mather is a producer and reporter on TVNZ's Mata Reports and co-host of The Spinoff's political podcast Gone by Lunchtime.

"Passionate linguist, gifted humanist, national treasure and ambassador of gibberish" is a judge's description of this year's PEN Pinter prize winner, Michael Rosen. The British poet, author and performer has written more than 200 books, including Sad Book, which chronicles Rosen's grief over the loss of his son Eddie, and children's classic We're Going on a Bear Hunt.

Kim Hills listener feedback for Saturday morning18th November 2023

Dr Max Berry has dedicated her career to understanding and caring for babies born too soon. As a consultant neonatologist she's on the floor of Wellington's neonatal intensive care unit supporting premature babies and their parents through the often rocky first weeks and months. As a researcher her focus is ensuring better long-term outcomes, by understanding how prematurity impacts adult blood pressure regulation, diabetes risk and brain health.

Gerry Conlon spent fourteen years in jail as one of the Guildford Four, following the 1974 IRA Guildford pub bombing. New play In the Name of the Son chronicles the heady aftermath of his wrongful imprisonment. Richard O'Rawe wrote the 2017 book In the Name of the Son: The Gerry Conlon Story, which the play is based on. Himself a former Irish Republican prisoner, O'Rawe was a leading figure in the 1981 Maze prison hunger strike. He and life-long friend Conlon grew up together in Belfast. O'Rawe is the author of several books about the Irish Troubles, including Blanketmen: An Untold Story of the H-Block Hunger Strike. In the Name of the Son is coming to the Auckland Arts Festival in March next year.

Gerontologist Dr Amanda Smith Barusch argues it's time for older adults to embrace grumpyness. In Aging Angry: Making Peace with Rage the University of Otago and University of Utah Emeritus Professor looks at why we get angrier as we get older, and how it can benefit us. Barusch is a former Editor-in-Chief for the Journal of Gerontological Social Work, and is Deputy Editor-in-Chief for the Australasian Journal on Ageing.

Facial recognition technology is helping fight crime but it's also making the internet a less safe place to put your face, says New York Times tech journalist Kashmir Hill.

Iceland is bracing itself for a significant volcanic eruption on the Reykjanes peninsula near the capital Reykjavik. Tens of thousands of earthquakes have rattled the country in recent weeks, deforming the land and causing sinkholes. These tremors, along with evidence that an underground river of magma about 15km in length is rising towards the earth's surface led nearly 4,000 people to evacuate from the town of Grindavik earlier this week. Experts say it's not a case of if, but when, an eruption occurs. One of those watching and waiting is Dr Gregory De Pascale, an Associate Professor of Geology at the University of Iceland.

The murder of Harvey and Jeannette Crewe in their Pukekawa farmhouse in 1970 is perhaps New Zealand's most infamous unsolved crime. Arthur Allan Thomas was convicted twice, pardoned and compensated, after police evidence was found to be corrupt. In The Crewe Murders - Inside New Zealand's Most Infamous Cold Case investigative journalist Kirsty Johnston and Associate Professor of Journalism at Massey University James Hollings take a fresh look at the case.

In her new book Doppelganger, Canadian writer Naomi Klein explores conspiracy culture alongside the complicated behaviour of someone she views as her own doppelganger – Naomi Wolf. For over a decade, people have been confusing and conflating Klein with the author of The Beauty Myth, a prominent feminist writer turned anti-vaxxer.

Saturday Morning listener feedback.

The announcement of Bird of the Century has been delayed to Wednesday, following a massive influx of votes, thanks in large part to British-American talk show host John Oliver. Over 300,000 votes have been cast so far, crashing Forest and Bird's voting system at one point. Voting closes tomorrow at 5pm. Helen Jamieson is from conservation group Forest Bridge Trust, backing an under-bird, the Australasian bittern Matuku-hurepo

As a television and radio presenter, prolific and best selling author, classicist Dame Mary Beard has acquired celebrity status. The author of more than 20 books including Pompeii, SPQR and Women & Power recently retired from her post as Professor of Classics at Cambridge University. For her latest book Emperor of Rome, Beard leads us through the lives of thirty emperors over nearly three centuries. From Julius Caesar to Alexander Severus, she probes the emperors' powers and just how debauched Roman palaces really were.

As a television and radio presenter, prolific and best selling author, classicist Dame Mary Beard has acquired celebrity status. The author of more than 20 books including Pompeii, SPQR and Women & Power recently retired from her post as Professor of Classics at Cambridge University. For her latest book Emperor of Rome, Beard leads us through the lives of thirty emperors over nearly three centuries. From Julius Caesar to Alexander Severus, she probes the emperors' powers and just how debauched Roman palaces really were.

GNS principal scientist Graham Leonard looks into why we choose to live where we live, and what the risks are. Graham has recently taken over at GNS as Natural Hazards and Risk Theme Leader. He talks to Kim about resilience and adaptation in areas prone to natural disaster, and how individuals, businesses, infrastructure and decision makers have the power to reduce loss.

Why do so many women still believe a successful life involves being chosen by a man? That's the question being interrogated by high-profile Australian feminist author and podcaster Clementine Ford in her new book I Don't. In it she argues that marital bliss is a tenacious and dangerous myth that needs to be busted, so women can be truly free. Her previous books include Fight Like A Girl, Boys Will Be Boys and How We Love: Notes on a Life.

Isaac Heron was in contact with the foster care system since he was a baby. He was placed in care at six years old before finding a permanent foster home at the age of 8. These experiences fuel his work as an advocate pushing for improvements in New Zealand's foster care system, with National Youth Council for the Voice of the Young and Care Experienced Whakarongo Mai. Isaac is also a talented academic, and has just received a Rhodes Scholarship, which will take him to Oxford University for a Master of Philosophy in Economics.

English actor, comedian, singer and TV presenter Bradley Walsh is back on set at ITV filming new episodes of The Chase - the beloved and wildly popular quiz show he helped devise. Kim catches up with the former professional footballer to talk about family, work, and of course, the beautiful game.

Summer fruits such as grapes, currants and berries are at the stage where they need care and attention to ensure an abundant harvest. Tackling pests and diseases, thinning fruit trees, and feeding are all on the to-do list for November. Nomad gardener and author of The Edible Backyard Kath Irvine joins Kim from Kakanui.

Hailed as one of NZ's first internationally successful playwrights, Robert Lord divided his life between provincial New Zealand and the hedonism of life as a gay man in New York in the 1970s and 80s. He wrote numerous stage and radio plays, including Well-Hung, Bert and Maisy, and Joyful and Triumphant. In 1973, he co-founded Playmarket, New Zealand's playwrights' agency and publisher. Lord candidly chronicled his life in eight diaries, which have been edited into a new book. One of the editors of Robert Lord Diaries is Nonnita Rees, a long time friend and colleague of Lord's. Rees is also a cultural policy analyst and chair of the Robert Lord Writers Cottage Trust.

Imagine being told that you are an unwitting star of a pornographic film, and then realising there's nothing you can do about it. It happened to British writer Helen Mort, who discovered her photos had been used to make sexually explicit deep fakes. London-based filmmaker Rosie Morris' new documentary My Blonde GF tells Helen's story and advocates for greater online protection. You can watch the film here.

New Zealand writer Anna Smaill's first novel The Chimes made the Man Booker Prize long list in 2015. She's just released Bird Life, an exploration of madness and what it's like to experience the world differently. Set in Japan, it follows an unlikely friendship between two women.

Results have been released for Malaghan Institute's ground-breaking CAR T-cell cancer therapy trial, and they are promising. The therapy reprogrammes a patient's own immune cells to recognise and kill cancer. Discussing the treatment and trial are Professor Carl June from the University of Pennsylvania who pioneered the therapy and Dr Robert Weinkove, who leads Malaghan's CAR T-cell programme. They are joined by writer and poet Michele Leggott, who is twelve months into the trial, for an update on her progress.

The Laura Maersk, launched in September, is the first cargo ship to set sail with a green methanol engine. It's a significant milestone in the industry's efforts to lower its global greenhouse gas emissions, which currently stand at 3 percent of the world's total emissions - roughly as much as the aviation industry. So what is the the potential for green shipping, and what are the limitations? Ana Swanson writes about trade and international economics for the New York Times.

Comparisons between 9/11 and the October 7th Hamas attacks on Israel have repeatedly been drawn. As the Israel-Hamas war enters its fourth week, President Biden has warned Israel not to repeat the US's post-9/11 mistakes. So what were those mistakes, and what, if anything, been learnt from them? Spencer Ackerman is a Pulitzer Prize-winning national security reporter and author of Reign of Terror: How The 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump. He writes a newsletter Forever Wars and for The Nation.

Feedback for 28 October 2023.

Author and art writer Megan Dunn celebrates artworks often hidden in plain sight. From Wellington's bucket fountain, to Llew Summers' majestic maternal nudes, public art comes in all shapes and sizes, which research initiative Public Art Heritage Aotearoa is documenting.

Internationally bestselling Australian author Robyn Davidson's new memoir Unfinished Woman delves into her past to investigate time and memory, asking how can we learn to be 'at home everywhere'? A constant traveller, Davidson's career writing about her journeying and nomadic people has spanned 40 years. Known as the 'Camel Lady', Davidson trekked through the Australian desert aged 27, leading to the bestselling book Tracks, and global fame. If you or someone you know is affected by this story, you can get more information or help from: Mental Health Foundation - www.mentalhealth.org.nz Lifeline: 0800 543 354 - available 24/7 Suicide Crisis Helpline: 0508 828 865 (0508 TAUTOKO) - available 24/7

Internationally bestselling Australian author Robyn Davidson's new memoir Unfinished Woman delves into her past to investigate time and memory, asking how can we learn to be 'at home everywhere'? A constant traveller, Davidson's career writing about her journeying and nomadic people has spanned 40 years. Known as the 'Camel Lady', Davidson trekked through the Australian desert aged 27, leading to the bestselling book Tracks, and global fame. If you or someone you know is affected by this story, you can get more information or help from: Mental Health Foundation - www.mentalhealth.org.nz Lifeline: 0800 543 354 - available 24/7 Suicide Crisis Helpline: 0508 828 865 (0508 TAUTOKO) - available 24/7

Veteran Taranaki rugby player Kevin 'Smiley' Barrett has three sons playing in the Rugby World Cup final against the Springboks tomorrow. So how is he, and mum Robyn feeling ahead of Jordie, Beauden and Scott all starting in a game which could restore the All Blacks' status as the best rugby team in the world?

Two-time US National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward's latest novel Let Us Descend tackles the hellish reality of life as a chattel slave. Modelled on Dante's Inferno, and based on extensive historical research, the book details a gruelling journey teenager Annis makes from a North Carolina plantation to the slave markets of New Orleans. It's being hailed as an instant classic; announced this week as Oprah's latest book club pick. Jesmyn Ward is a professor of creative writing at Tulane University. She is the youngest winner of the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction, and a MacArthur Fellow. Her other works include novels Sing, Unburied, Sing and Salvage the Bones, and a memoir Men We Reaped.

Does the sound of ticking clocks, noisy eating, or loud breathing cause you physical distress? If so, you may be one of every five people who suffer from misophonia. The condition can trigger fight-or-flight mode, a surge of rage, anxiety, disgust or an urge to escape the sound as soon as possible. Oxford University-based Australian clinical psychologist and misophonia sufferer Dr Jane Gregory has written a practical guide to coping with the condition.

Considered one of New Zealand's most gifted sports people of his generation, Jeff 'Goldie' Wilson lined up with the All Blacks the last time they faced the Springboks in a Rugby World Cup final, in 1995. Wilson scored 44 tries in 60 Tests for the All Blacks. These days you'll see him on Sky TV, commentating the big games. He joins Kim ahead of the final, from Paris. So, was it food poisoning?

Bottled water is now a $300 billion global industry and the most consumed packaged drink. So why are we drinking so much of it, and what's the environmental and social cost? Associate Professor of Sociology at Portland State University, Daniel Jaffee's book Unbottled - The Fight against Plastic Water and for Water Justice dives into the increasing distrust of tap water, and the rapid growth of bottled water in countries where tap water is safe to drink.

A week on from the General Election, editor-at-large at the Spinoff Toby Manhire reflects on lessons learned during the times of previous National and Labour opposition, with cautionary tales for Labour now "the tide has gone out." Toby Manhire is host of the Gone By Lunchtime podcast. He's a former editor of the Guardian's comment pages, and edited the books Wikileaks- Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy, The Arab Spring: Rebellion, Revolution and a New World Order and The Spinoff Book.

Emmy award-winning singer and composer Lisa Simone is touring Australia with a tribute show to her legendary singer-songwriter and pianist mother Nina Simone with her tour 'Keeper Of The Flame' A Daughters Tribute to Dr. Nina Simone. While carrying a torch to Nina's repertoire, Lisa has endeavoured to come to terms with her notoriously difficult mother. Lisa released her first solo album All is Well in 2013, and co-produced the 2016 Oscar-nominated Netflix documentary about her mother's life, What Happened, Miss Simone?

Writer Danyl McLauchlan joins Kim to tackle life's big questions, ideas and thinkers. This week he looks at Bronze Age Pervert (BAP), an until-recently anonymous internet personality and influential far-right thinker. BAP's writing and commentary is an intentionally slippery and absurd mix of memes and inside jokes about homophobia, bodybuilding and ancient Greece. Behind the clownish facade however is a philosophically sophisticated argument for fascism which has alarmed mainstream conservatives.

Before her Emmy nominated role as flawed but lovable Galina 'Red' Reznikov in Orange is the New Black actor Kate Mulgrew was perhaps best known for playing Captain Kathryn Janeway in Star Trek: Voyager, the first female captain for the franchise. As a member of the SAG-AFTRA actors' union, Mulgrew is currently on strike, but is in Auckland this weekend appearing at pop culture convention Armageddon.

Could the Israel-Gaza war ignite a wider conflict, between the US and Iran? In his latest writing for The Guardian, foreign affairs commentator Simon Tisdall explains why this is a possibility.

Irish novelist Paul Lynch's latest book Prophet Song was shortlisted last month for this year's Booker Prize. The novel is set is a dystopian version of Dublin, after an unspecified crisis has tipped the government towards tyranny, and society towards collapse. Lynch's other novels are Beyond the Sea, Grace, The Black Snow and Red Sky in Morning.

The All Blacks are playing Argentina for a place in the Rugby World Cup final. After beating Ireland in a nail-biting quarterfinal, NZ is expected to beat Argentina to play either England or the Springboks in next weekend's final. RNZ Rugby commentator Nathan Rarere joins from his living room in Te Atatu.

Accomplished Nigerian-born UK actor and climate activist Fehinti Balogun isn't angry about climate change. He's furious. The Dune and I May Destroy You actor has presented at the UN COP26 climate summit, the Scottish Parliament, Cambridge University, and the YouTube Creator Summit. He's making a digital appearance at the Nelson Arts Festival this weekend with Can I Live?, an hour long spoken word and hiphop show exploring environmental activism.

British actor Fehinti Balogun isn't just angry about climate inaction – he's furious.

Egypt has agreed to open the Rafah crossing to allow trucks carrying aid into Gaza, in a conflict that is escalating two weeks on. Gregg Carlstrom is a Middle East correspondent for The Economist, based in Dubai. He has covered the region for over ten years. His reporting and analysis on the Middle East has been published in Foreign Affairs, The Atlantic and Politico. His first book was How Long Will Israel Survive: The Threat From Within.

Egypt has agreed to open the Rafah crossing to allow trucks carrying aid into Gaza, in a conflict that is escalating two weeks on. Gregg Carlstrom is a Middle East correspondent for The Economist, based in Dubai. He has covered the region for over ten years. His reporting and analysis on the Middle East has been published in Foreign Affairs, The Atlantic and Politico. His first book was How Long Will Israel Survive: The Threat From Within.

Kim Hills listener feedback for saturday morning 21st October 2023

Rebecca Priestley's new memoir End Times moves between recollections of teen punk nihilism and a flirtation with born again Christianity, to a modern day climate anxiety-fuelled South Island road trip. Her playlist from the trip is here. Priestley is professor of Science in Society at Te Herenga Waka-Victoria University of Wellington. She is the author or editor of six previous books, including Fifteen Million Years in Antarctica. Rebecca will be appearing at The Nelson Arts Festival on Oct 21.

It took Mexican scholar, novelist, and poet Cristina Rivera Garza 30 years to be able to write about what happened to her younger sister. Liliana Rivera Garza was murdered by her abusive boyfriend in an act of femicide. Rivera Garza's book Liliana's Invincible Summer has became part of a collective call for justice in Mexico, one of the most dangerous countries for women.

BBC Security Correspondent Frank Gardner on Israel's failure of intelligence, "and imagination", not to anticipate the Hamas attacks.

This month marks 150 years of business for a Wairarapa store that's been in the hands of one family for four generations. Martinborough's Pain and Kershaw traces its origins to the late 19th century with a hawker who travelled the region on horseback. At the turn of the 20th century, Pain was joined by John Kershaw. John's great-grandson Conor Kershaw runs it today.

The BBC's chief international correspondent Lyse Doucet is reporting in Southern Isreal, close to the Gaza-Israeli border in Ashkelon, which is coming under fire from Hamas. Doucet says the Israel Gaza war is "a situation Israel has never confronted before", and that the shock and anger in Israel in reflected in a sense of now doing whatever it takes, including going in on the ground.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ian Urbina's latest investigations into the Chinese distant-water fishing fleet has uncovered human rights and labour abuses. The Chinese foreign fishing fleet is an armada of over 4,600 vessels, including in the Pacific, accounting for 14 percent of worldwide marine catch, by value. For this investigation, Urbina has boarded Chinese vessels and exchanged messages in bottles with crew. Ian Urbina heads The Outlaw Ocean Project, a non-profit journalism organization based in Washington, D.C. focusing on reporting environmental and human rights crimes at sea.

Civilians are fleeing northern Gaza in anticipation of an Israeli ground offensive, following retaliatory air strikes. Palestinian militant group Hamas launched surprise attacks an Israel on Saturday, including on a music festival near the Gaza Strip, where 260 people were killed and over a hundred hostages were taken into Gaza. Robin Wright is a long-time writer for The New Yorker covering political and military dynamics in the Middle East. As a journalist she reported from more than 140 countries. She was a fellow at the Brookings Institution and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and is currently a distinguished fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Wright is the author of several books, including the widely acclaimed Rock the Casbah: Rage and Rebellion across the Islamic World.

US writer Kim Stanley Robinson spends a lot of time imagining the future. The author of more than 20 novels, including his best-selling The Mars Trilogy, he's considered one of the greatest writers of contemporary science fiction of our time. More recently the committed environmentalist has turned his attention back on Earth, putting his mind and imagination to climate change in his acclaimed book The Ministry for the Future. It lays out what's been described as a chilling yet hopeful vision of how the next few decades on Earth might unfold.

Frustrated by the lack of decent roles for middle-aged women, actor Robyn Malcolm and veteran screenwriter Dianne Taylor decided to do something about it. The pair put their heads together to create After the Party a six-part drama series set in Wellington which premieres on TVNZ at the end of the month. Its main character, played by Malcolm, is a woman in her 50s whose world implodes when she accuses her husband of a sex crime and nobody believes her. After the Party will premiere on TVNZ 1 and TVNZ+, October 29 at 8.30pm.

Pistachio nuts have become a popular snack around the world but a new documentary about where they come from and how they're farmed might make pistachio lovers think again before shelling their next nut. Dunedin film-maker Rowan Wernham has teamed up with US journalist Yasha Levine to tell the story of a bitter battle being waged in California where 90 percent of the world's pistachios are produced. Pistachio Wars is an investigative documentary into billionaire pistachio farmers and water barons Stewart and Lynda Resnick, who it's alleged are fragrantly bending the parched state's political system and privatising water to feed their vast farming empire in the desert.

Professor Jochen Mannhart is a physicist whose scientific work could prove to be a conservation game changer. Every year tens of thousands of African elephants continue to be hunted down and killed by poachers for their ivory tusks. Working to find ivory alternatives, Professor Mannhart and his team at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research in Germany have reproduced the chemistry of a real ivory tusk, opening a potential new market in synthetic ivory and help save an endangered species ... or at least that was the hope.

Dutch art detective Arthur Brand is known as 'the Indiana Jones of the art world', having spent decades tracking down stolen masterpieces, including Picassos, Van Goghs and missing artifacts such as Oscar Wilde's ring and the "Hitler's Horses" bronze statues. Earlier this month, Brand recovered The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring, an early Van Gogh stolen from a Dutch museum three years ago. The painting was delivered to his doorstep in an IKEA bag. Brand has written two books about his recoveries, including Hitler's Horses.

Saturday morning listener feedback

One of the world's most respected contemporary choreographers, award-winning British dancer of Bangladeshi-descent Akram Khan is bringing a retelling of Rudyard Kipling's much-loved classic to New Zealand in February in the Aotearoa New Zealand Festival of the Arts. State-of-the-art animation, narration and music bring the jungle and city to life in Jungle Book reimagined; about connecting with and respecting our natural world, and of humans' need to belong. The Akram Khan Company is recognised as one of the world's foremost innovative dance companies - its roots are in Indian kathak form and contemporary dance. A highlight of Khan's career was the creation of an acclaimed section of the London 2012 Olympic Games Opening Ceremony.

Traditional Irish band Gráda are reforming and returning to tour New Zealand in October. Two members of the band, Gerry Paul and Andrew Laking are Kiwis. Gráda is known for its energy on stage. According to Gráda's Galway-based lead singer Nicola Joyce it's this energy that creates moments of empathy in the crowd. After Gráda disbanded in 2011, a song Joyce wrote for her new band The Whileaways, Toss the Bobbin, inspired an invitation from the University of Galway to contribute a chapter to Ionbhá: The Empathy Book for Ireland. Nicola Joyce has been described by The Wall Street Journal as 'a magnificent vocalist who sings with sheer beauty and poignancy'.

In her non-fiction writing, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Visit From the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan has explored solutions for homelessness in America. Her year-long reporting on street homelessness and supportive housing in Brooklyn recently appeared in The New Yorker. As a journalist, Jennifer also writes frequently in the New York Times Magazine. Her 2002 cover story on homeless children received the Carroll Kowal Journalism Award.

Emeritus Professor of Behavioural Genetics at the University of Sydney, Benjamin Oldroyd is an experimental scientist who has published more than three hundred scientific papers, mostly on honey bees and their evolution. Oldroyd's new book Beyond DNA: How Epigenetics is Transforming our Understanding of Evolution advances new ways of thinking about evolution and adaptation. Here Prof Oldroyd examines the idea that spores, sperm, pollen and ova are packed with personalised extra-genetic information that play an important role in offspring development with lifelong effects.

The All Blacks play Italy in a game they can't afford to lose in Lyon. RNZ sports aficionado Nathan Rarere checks in at half time with how the All Blacks are performing with a full strength team in a crunch game.

In his new novel Lola in The Mirror, Trent Dalton brings to life the experience of homelessness in his usual compelling and strangely uplifting style. The Australian writer talks to Kim Hill about hope, compassion and how darkness reveals light.

After years of exploring the function of dreams, sleep scientist Mark Blagrove suspects human connection may be at the heart of our brain's unconscious storytelling. "Humans may have evolved to have dreams that have lots of characters in them, lots of emotions in them, that are worth telling to other people," he tells Kim Hill.

Cultural omen of darkness, reservoir of deadly viruses - bats don't have the best reputation. But they do have some impressive and potentially helpful biological quirks, including the ability to resist the ageing process.

In 1979, inspired by the countercultural movement sweeping the country, teenager Olive Jones embraced rural communal living. By the age of twenty-one she was one of the founders of the Graham Downs farming community in the Motueka Valley. Built on anarchy and idealism, with the aim of self-sufficiency, it was a bold experiment. Olive's book Commune: Chasing a Utopian Dream charts the course of the commune and the highs and lows of living without rules.

Pathologist professor Richard Scolyer's melanoma research is credited with saving tens of thousands of lives, but now he's in a race to save his own.

Nelson designer Gill Saunders is the Supreme Winner at the 2023 World of WearableArt™ show for her garment Earthling. It's Saunders' second Supreme WOW award, and her seventh award win in the show. Earthling is the third and final piece in Saunders wearable art trilogy. It takes its inspiration from the popularity of adult colouring books.

Internationally-acclaimed former principal dancer and artistic director of The Australian Ballet, David McAllister recently completed his tenure as acting artistic director of the Royal New Zealand Ballet. Throughout his career David has made numerous guest appearances worldwide, dancing with the Bolshoi Ballet. McAllister's book Ballet Confidential: A personal behind the-scenes guide lifts the curtain on a world of tutus, tulle and lycra, the pursuit of perfection, injuries and what it was like dancing for the Princess of Wales.

Saturday Morning Feedback

Nelson-based author and entrepreneur Peter Butler's fourth book is Night Tribe, a young adult novel set in the Kahurangi National Park. Peter's first job in Golden Bay was working on the Heaphy Track for the Forest Service. Today he's Chair of the Farewell Wharariki Health Post Nature Trust, helping to restore 12,000 hectares at the North West tip of the South Island. Peter lived for many years on a bush block near the Heaphy Track, where he still grows horopito. He is the author of two non-fiction titles: Opium & Gold and Life & Times of Te Rauparaha. His first novel was Gravel Roads.

Long-time bush man, lawyer and historian Ron Crosby's new book Te Kooti's Last Foray re-tells a forgotten period of Te Uruwera history. With the help of recently discovered diaries and by tramping the forests with ex-special forces soldiers, Crosby sets the historical record straight about the mass abduction in 1870 of 218 Whakatohea people by prophet-to-be Te Kooti during the New Zealand Wars. Ron Crosby is author of The Musket Wars - A History of Inter-Iwi Conflict 1806-1845; NZSAS: The First Fifty Years, and Andris Apse - Odyssey and Images.

The longest of the 12 cranial nerves, running from the brain stem to the colon, the vagus nerve is involved in controlling heart rate, digestion, our immune system, mood and even our voices. It's become a bit of an anatomical celebrity on social media with an explosion of interest in self-care "hacks" promising to make us calmer and happier. Beyond the well-being hype there's genuine excitement from the scientific and medical worlds for the potential of vagus nerve stimulation therapy. This electrical stimulation by way of an implanted device promises a breakthrough in treating inflammation, which is implicated in many autoimmune diseases such as Rheumatoid Arthritis. Professor Kevin Tracey is an expert on vagus nerve signaling and discovered and mapped the neural circuits controlling immunity. He is professor of molecular medicine and neurosurgery at the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research in Manhasset, New York.

Long or Strong - Get Gone! - most of us know this advice on when to evacuate due to tsunami risk following an earthquake, but if it happened would we actually act? Surveys suggest around a third of New Zealanders would either not evacuate, or not evacuate fast enough in the event of a tsunami. GNS Principal scientist Graham Leonard is in to talk about tsunami risk in New Zealand and what's being done to plan and prepare for one. Research shows that regular drills are key to preparedness, and an opportunity is coming up next month with the Tsunami Hikoi

UK counter-extremism expert Julia Ebner thinks we are at the beginning of a digital dark age. QAnon proponents run for U.S. Congress, neo-fascists win elections in Europe, and celebrity influencers like (Kan)Ye West spread dangerous myths to millions. All these are signs to Ebner that Enlightenment values are being eroded, and the myths and magical thinking of conspiracy theorists and other extremists are becoming part of mainstream culture. Ebner, who is a Research Fellow at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue in London, has been studying the growth of extremist ideas in our societies for the last decade. Her new book Going Mainstream is a follow on from her 2020 bestseller Going Dark, which was about radicalisation processes in the extreme fringes of society.

A week after their 27-13 defeat in the opening Rugby World Cup game against France, the All Blacks played Namibia. RNZ Sports commentator Nathan Rarere checks in after the final whistle at the Stadium de Toulouse.

Most remembered for her failure to secure a Brexit deal, Theresa May was British Prime Minister between 2016 and 2019 and the longest-serving Home Secretary in over a century. A Remainer herself, her job as PM was to work out how the UK should honour the country's 2016 Brexit referendum. May's book The Abuse of Power: Confronting Injustice in Public Life argues for a radical rethink of politics and public life. From the Hillsborough to Grenfell Tower tragedies, The Abuse of Power exposes powerful people serving themselves or protecting their organisation, rather than serving the interests of the powerless.

Saturday Morning listener feedback

Spring has well and truely sprung, and it's time to get busy in the garden. Growing your own seedlings is satisfying and a great way to save some money. Nomad gardener and The Edible Backyard author Kath Irvine joins us from Kakanui with tips and tricks to help avoid common mistakes, plus a recipe for homemade seed raising mix.

Earlier this week Ruby Franke, who shared parenting advice and the day to day lives of her six kids via a popular YouTube channel was charged with child abuse. It's an extreme example of the harm caused by parents using their kids for social media content. But it raises the question - is it ever ok to share your children's lives publicly? As the first wave of social media kids come of age they're forming a growing movement to protect others from having the intimate and often embarrassing moments of their young lives immortalised on the internet. Internet and social media commentator Kate Lindsay has written about the issue in an article for The Atlantic.

Kiwi protein biochemist and tissue engineer Dr Laura Domigan is an international leader in the emerging industry of cultivated meat. Her work tackles some of the planet's major social and environmental challenges, such as greenhouse gas emissions, ethical food choices, animal welfare and food security. She's the co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Opo Bio, New Zealand's first company to grown cells for the cultivated meat industry worldwide. Dr Domigan is a finalist in the Entrepreneur category of this year's KiwiNet Research Commercialisation Awards.

New Zealanders are losing millions of dollars each year to scammers impersonating banks, tech support, and government departments. The exact cost is not known, as embarrassed victims often don't report their losses. Like most people, Northern Irish software engineer Jim Browning hates scammers, but unlike the rest of us he welcomes their approach. He's a scam baiter, an internet vigilante who turns the tables by playing a naive victim while simultaneously hacking into their computers. His youtube channel exposes scams, explains how they work, and has even led to some scam call centres being shut down.

29-13 The Telegraph's award-winning Chief Rugby Union Correspondent Gavin Mairs, from the Stade de France, on how the game played out. Mairs has nine world cups under his belt, covering every Rugby World Cup since 1999.

American writer Richard Ford talks to Kim Hill about dyslexia, death, writing and Be Mine - the final book in his award-winning Frank Bascombe series.

Elton John's musical other half, the famously private man behind many millions of record sales and countless hits, lyricist Bernie Taupin opens up about his life in a new memoir. In Scattershot: Life, Music, Elton, and Me Taupin charts his childhood in provincial Lincolnshire, his fascination with country music and cowboy culture, the heady star-studded LA of the 1970s and '80s to encounters with John Lennon, Bob Marley, Frank Sinatra and Graham Greene.

Arguably an unmatched Rugby World Cup opener, the All Blacks are taking on arch-rivals and hosts France, at the Stade de France in Paris. RNZ sports correspondent Nathan Rarere checks in at half time.

Listener Feedback for 2 September 2023.

Paekakariki-based award-winning animator, illustrator and graphic artist Ned Wenlock's first graphic novel Tsunami is a cautionary tale about Peter, a self-righteous12-year-old boy, and his fraught last six weeks at primary school. It's a coming-of-age story, and an examination of teenage alienation and the unpredictable consequences of our actions. Everything feels overwhelming to Peter - like a tsunami is coming and he isn't sure he can stop it. Wenlock won 2016 New Zealand International Film Festival, Show Me Shorts Best Film Award & DEGNZ Best Director Award.

The tendency to use pop-psychology "therapy-speak" phrases like "triggered" and "toxic" is unhelpful, according to Dr Jonathan Shedler, psychologist at the University of California, San Francisco Dr Shedler says we humans have a tendency to distance ourselves from difficult aspects of emotional life, and one way we do this very well is through words. Jonathan is author, consultant, researcher, and clinical educator best known for his article The Efficacy of Psychodynamic Psychotherapy, which won worldwide acclaim for firmly establishing psychoanalytic therapy as an evidence-based treatment.

Pets hold a special place in our families, so it's devastating when they are stolen or go missing. Anne-Marie Curry founded and runs Melbourne pet detective service Arthur & Co in 2017. It's the only one of its kind in Australia. Business is booming, and she boasts an 80% success rate.

The science fiction fantasy of machine consciousness is swiftly moving towards becoming a reality. In 2021 a Google engineer was fired after publicly claiming the LaMDA chatbot he'd been testing was sentient, and last year the chief scientist of the company behind ChatGPT tweeted that some of most cutting-edge AI networks might be "slightly conscious". So what would it mean for humans if AI technology became conscious? And how would we even know they were? Computer scientist Brian Christian is the author of The Alignment Problem, Algorithms to Live By (with Tom Griffiths), and The Most Human Human. He is part of the AI Policy and Governance Working Group at the Institute for Advanced Study.

A shocking survey revealing the extent of sexual harassment at her old high school inspired filmmaker Liv McClymont to look closer at why consent education is still not compulsory in NZ schools. Her short documentary I Stand for Consent focuses on the story of a group of students at Avonside Girls High School, including year 13 student Aurora Garner-Randolph, who convinced their school to commission the survey. I Stand for Consent will be available to watch online from September 4 as part of series seven of Someday Stories.

Canadian author and screenwriter Patrick deWitt has a penchant for weirdos and non-heroes. His books include Man Booker shortlisted The Sisters Brothers, a Western featuring sibling assassins, Ablutions, narrated by an alcoholic bartender, deviant fairytale Undermajordomo Minor, and French Exit, in which a mother and son flee to Paris with their cat whose body her late husband's soul has transmogrified. His latest is The Librarianist which follows introverted bookworm Bob Comet as he makes a late-life bid to connect.

In five years Kiwi indie-rock darlings The Beths have sky-rocketed from playing K-Road's Whammy bar, to international success. Recent achievements include a NPR Tiny Desk concert, a stint touring with The National, and the acquisition of a new fan, former US President Barack Obama. The band is also among this year's finalists in the APRA Silver Scroll Awards, for their 2022 album Expert In A Dying Field. Lead guitarist and founding member Jon Pearce is appearing at this weekend's Going Global Summit discussing exporting Kiwi music to the world.

A now infamous kiss has arguably over-shadowed Spain's magnificent victory in the 2023 Women's World Cup. President of the Royal Spanish Football Federation and vice president of the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) Luis Rubiales has been suspended by FIFA, but is refusing to quit as president of the Spanish football federation, after kissing Spanish midfielder Jennifer Hermoso on the mouth during post-match celebrations. Events and marketing professional and author Sally Freedman has written about working in the football industry in her recently-published book, Get Your Tits Out For The Lads. She details her time working for UEFA, the Asian Football Confederation, and for Melbourne City. Sally has also worked with The Phoenix.

Today Anna talks to Jesse about Jared Davidson's book, Blood and Dirt: Prison Labour and the Making of New Zealand.

Listener feedback for 26 August 2023.

Mount Erebus is an ultra mountain and the planet's southernmost volcano. Sheathed in ice, with hundreds of ice caves and a lava lake, its name is synonymous with the tragic 1979 air accident. Polar and mountain photographer Colin Monteath's new book Erebus The Ice Dragon; A portrait of an Antarctic volcano blends history, science, art and adventure set alongside stunning amages. Colin has worked in Antarctica for 32 seasons, and was involved in the recovery operation after the air crash on Ross Island.

Curious about the complex and seemingly taboo subject of porn, British writer Polly Barton spent a year asking her acquaintances for their honest feelings about it. "Porn is a topic that brings together so many difficult feelings and quite complicated and thorny ethical dilemmas that the response can really be to turn away from it," she tells Kim Hill.

Scientist and writer Danyl McLauchlan joins Kim to tackle life's big questions, ideas and thinkers. This week, Nicolo Machiavelli, the founder of modern political theory, who argued that politics wasn't about deciding who should rule, but about realising that many of the people who want to rule are ruthless and devious, so the best political systems are adversarial systems that set them against each other and subject them to scrutiny. Danyl is the author of two novels and Tranquillity and Ruin, an essay collection.

New York-based Paula Scher is one of the world's most influential graphic designers. A partner at Pentagram design studio since 1991, she began her career as an art director in the 1970s and 80s, when she earned a reputation for her eclectic approach to typography. For over four decades, she has developed the visual language of iconic brands and institutions such as Citibank, Microsoft, the Museum of Modern Art, Tiffany & Co, Public Theater, the Metropolitan Opera, and the High Line. Scher is coming to Auckland next month for the AGI Open, a two-day design festival hosted by the Alliance Graphique Internationale.

A report co-authored by a UN judge has added to growing international calls for reparations to be paid by perpetrators of transatlantic slavery. The Brattle Group Report calculates 31 former slaveholding states including Britain, the US, France and Spain owe US$107.8 trillion, with the UK alone owing more than £18 trillion for its involvement in slavery in fourteen countries. Professor Trevor Burnard is Director of the Wilberforce Institute for the Study of Slavery and Emancipation at the University of Hull in the UK. He has written of the need for the British royal family to acknowledge its financial and moral responsibility for Britain's role in slavery.

The octopus is a highly intelligent and deeply mysterious creature. It changes colour as quickly as it can move, and it thinks with its tentacles. Marine biologist David Scheel has had a life-long fascination with them. He's discovered new species and has learned to understand how they communicate with signals. Dr Scheel's new book Many Things Under a Rock: the Mysteries of Octopuses reveals complex emotional beings that can teach us about ourselves.

How do you transform a rundown inner-city area into an attractive and thriving new town? Awarded a CBE for Services to Sustainable Development, Roger Madelin is credited with regenerating London's grotty King's Cross into a thriving carbon neutral residential and commercial precinct. Joint Head of Canada Water at British Land, Madelin's currently leading the development of a 53-acre site on the Thames just minutes from Central London by tube, which will become the UK's newest town. He has previously led major development projects in Manchester, Birmingham, and the City of London.

Listener feedback for 19 August 2023.

A travel guide like no other, combining poetry, photos and history, Walking with Rocks - Dreaming with Rivers - My Year in the Waikato is the result of Richard von Sturmer's year as writer in residence at the University of Waikato in 2020.

Airana Ngarewa left school to become a cage fighter. He hated English. Now a teacher, he's being described as a major new literary talent. His first novel is The Bone Tree. Born and raised in Patea, his aunts are Spotswood College principal Nicola Ngarewa, and Te Pati Maori co-leader MP Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. His grandparents started the Patea Maori Club. Airana will be appearing at WORD Christchurch on Aug 26 and 27.

Rivers have been given room to flood safely in the Netherlands for two decades, mitigating against flooding during severe weather events. Forest and Bird freshwater advocate Tom Kay is touring the country, giving Making Room for Rivers presentations to communities and local government groups keen to hear how accommodating a river prone to flood (rather than hem it in with engineering) can help manage flood risk for communities, and preserve ecosystems.

In her new book Fat Talk: Coming of Age in Diet Culture, US journalist, author and podcaster Virginia Sole-Smith looks at how the war on childhood obesity has caused children of all ages to absorb an onslaught of body shame from peers, diet culture, and their own parents.

The aftermath of the 2003 Iraq invasion is told by former New Zealand SAS soldier Barrie Rice in his book We Were Blackwater - Life, death and madness in the killing fields of Iraq.

Kim Hill's listener feedback for Saturday 12th August 2023

Among his varied interests, leading Victorian literature scholar and prison educator Professor John Plotz revisits forgotten novels, giving them a second life, and explores the redeeming value of books for former prisoners. Professor of Humanities at Brandeis University, Plotz is the editor of the B-Sides series on Public Books. His first book Portable Property examines the objects Victorian Britons took with them when they traveled abroad, to persuade them their national identity was intact. Professor Plotz is giving this year's University of Otago Dalziel lecture on August 25 in Dunedin, related to his current work about science fiction and satire; how it makes you think by making you laugh.

Some of New Zealand's most important roads, buildings, botanic gardens and great walks were constructed by forced labour, in an era where idleness and waste was deemed more criminal then crime. Historian Jared Davidson's new book Blood and Dirt - Prison Labour and the Making of New Zealand reveals the extent to which convicts were used to bolster a labour shortage gap in the latter half of the 19th Century. Davidson's other books include Dead Letters: Censorship and Subversion in New Zealand 1914-1920, Sewing Freedom, and The History of a Riot.

Art writer and author Megan Dunn is taking us to church. A surprising amount of art can be found on the walls and windows of Aotearoa's places of worship. Milan Mrkusich, Doreen Blumhardt, Nigel Brown and Shane Cotton are just some of the creatives whose work adorns churches. Megan's art pilgrimage takes us from Saint Joseph's in Grey Lynn, to Parnell's Trinity Cathedral, St Faiths Anglican Church in Rotorua, and an exhibition about Wellington's recently demolished First Church of Christ Scientist.

Gabriel Krauze's extra curricular activities were a little different from the average English literature student. While completing his degree at London's Queen Mary College, he was involved in gangs, drugs, stabbing and robbery. This double life is captured in his gritty debut autobiographical novel Who They Was, which was long listed for the 2020 Booker Prize. Gabriel Krauze is appearing at WORD Christchurch in late August.

Physicist Dr Ratu Mataira is on a mission to harness the power of the sun. The 31 year old leads OpenStar Technologies, a Wellington based start-up building a 'levitated dipole' fusion reactor prototype. Fusion is the process that happens inside the sun and other stars, when hydrogen atoms "fuse" to make helium, releasing tremendous amounts of energy. Recreating the process here on earth is viewed as the "holy grail" of energy, with the potential to create vast amounts of emissions-free electricity.

Listener feedback for 5 August 2023.

All That I Am and Stasiland author Anna Funder's new book Wifedom rewrites the life of her literary hero George Orwell to put a main character back in the story. Blending forensic research, fiction, life writing and criticism, Funder reveals the importance of his wife Eileen O'Shaughnessy. Eileen's financial and practical support allowed him to write, and her own literary talent shaped his work, including Animal Farm. Written over six years, the idea for Wifedom came after the discovery of six letters in 2015 from O'Shaughnessy to a friend, their contents contrary to all the biographies written on Orwell.

Beyond our romanticized vision of space exploration is a day-to-day life of physical and social isolation and confinement in an unnatural environment of microgravity and artificial light. New documentary Space: The Longest Goodbye follows NASA psychologist Dr. Al Holland, tasked with studying and mitigating the threat loneliness poses to missons. It's a particularly urgent task as NASA intends to send astronauts to Mars in the next decade - a voyage that will entail a three-year separation, with no real-time communication with Earth. One of the subjects of the film is Dr. Cady Coleman, a former NASA astronaut who has spent more than 180 days on the International Space Station, separated from her husband and two sons. Space: The Longest Goodbye screens in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin as part of Whanau Marama: New Zealand International Film Festival.

Aged-care doctor Dr Roderick Mulgan has a long-held interest in preventative medicine, with a research focus on inflammation, longevity, immunity and the role of functional foods. His new book, Build Your Immunity For Life, examines the role of lifestyle and diet in boosting immunity and protecting against infection. He is also the author of The Internal Flame: New Insights into Silent Inflammation, and Eat Yourself Healthy.

Former U.S. federal judge Nancy Gertner was appointed to the bench of the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts by President Bill Clinton in 1994, retiring in 2011 to teach at Harvard Law School, and is working on a book featuring interviews with people she imprisoned. Gertner is in New Zealand for the Criminal Bar Association conference, discussing, among other things, Donald Trump's chances of being re-elected, should he be convicted.

Face with Tears of Joy, Skull, Melting Face, Eyes. Emoji have been called the first language born of the digital world, with over 3,000 "picture characters" available to add emotional nuance to written communication. They first appeared on Japanese mobile phones at the turn of the millennium and are now an everyday part of the way we communicate. Jeremy Burge has been called the "Samuel Johnson of emoji". Ten years ago he founded Emojipedia, an online reference site of emoji characters and their meaning. He was also a member of the Unicode Emoji Subcommittee, which is responsible for reviewing requests for new emoji. He currently writes a Mobile Tech Journal and has a popular TikTok channel about living on a narrow boat.

London filmmaker, marathon runner and investigative journalist Gez Medinger was infected with COVID 19 in the first months of the pandemic and has suffered post-viral symptoms since. His YouTube channel, originally about running, old cars and bikes, has now become a valuable resource for long COVID patients, with over a hundred videos exploring the latest long COVID research. In an unusual patient-doctor collaboration Medinger co-wrote The Long Covid Handbook with immunologist Professor Danny Altmann.

How do we know when our cats and dogs are in pain? And how does pain affect their behaviour? These are among the topics being explored by Dr Sarah Heath, keynote speaker at next weekend's Kiwi Vet Behaviour Conference. Dr Heath is a UK-based veterinary specialist recognised for helping establish Behavioural Medicine as a discipline. Dr Heath will address the relationship between animal cognition, emotions and behaviour, also how vets can improve the design of their practices to make a visit more pleasant for an animal patient, especially cats.

Saturday morning listener feedbacl

Founded by the late Alan Brunton and Sally Rodwell in the early 1970s, avant-garde New Zealand performance collective Red Mole doggedly pursued a vision to embrace the energetic, romantic and erratic. Their shows which mixed theatre, music, dance, satire, fire-eating, and sometimes huge puppets, were performed wherever they could find an audience, from schools to strip clubs to opera houses. Deborah Hunt is a mask maker, puppeteer and theatre artist who performs and teaches around the world. She was a core member of Red Mole for about 10 years. She features in Annie Goldson's new documentary film Red Mole: A Romance which explores the origins, performances, personalities and fate of Red Mole. it will screen at Whanau Marama: New Zealand International Film Festival in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin.

Shortly after the birth of her first child in 2001 French writer Marie Darrieussecq developed insomnia, and she's not been able to get a good night's sleep since. She's spent some of her many waking hours writing a memoir dedicated to insomnia. Sleepless combines meditations from a list of revered writers (such as Virginia Woolf and Marcel Proust) with Marie's research and personal experiences. Darrieussecq is one of the leading voices in contemporary French literature. Her first novel, Pig Tales, was translated into thirty-five languages and she was awarded the Prix Médicis and the Prix des Prix in 2013.

Knock-offs are big business, worth $600 billion a year on the world market: anything from whiskey and bags to footwear and hair care products. In her book Authenticity: Reclaiming Reality in a Counterfeit Culture Alice Sherwood argues authenticity, the genuine article, is fashionable because it is rare: the market is flooded with counterfeits. Alice Sherwood is a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Policy Institute at King's College London.

The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Current (AMOC) is part of a conveyor belt of currents that circulate water around the world, regulating weather and sea level. Professor Peter Ditlevsen from Copenhagen's Niels Bohr Institute is co-author of a study, published this week in Nature Communications which predicts AMOC may dramatically slow down and then turn off, as soon as 2025 and likely by the end of the century. The collapse of this system will have enormous implications, including more extreme winters and sea level rises affecting parts of Europe and the US, and a shifting of the monsoon in the tropics.

Listener feedback for 22 July 2023.

People love sharing photos and videos. There are unknowably huge numbers of images on-line. But what if you disappeared from your own photo-album? The rest of the scene still there, but your face is faded out, gone. Your friends and family too. What happens when the bonds created by photos fade away? Wellington based author Thomas Sleigh ponders this in her new novel The Words For Her, where this exact thing happens: people start disappearing from images. Thomasin Sleigh is a writer and editor with a background in art history. Her essays and art criticism have been published by galleries, newspapers, and magazines. She has published two previous novels Ad Lib (2014), and Women in the Field, One and Two (2018), both of which look at the way images reflect and contest challenge wider hierarchies and power structures, particularly how women are depicted and understood through art and film.

It's 100 years since Australian chemist Cyril Callister invented Vegemite as an alternative to Marmite, which had become scarce due to German U-boats sinking the ships bringing the English spread. From humble beginnings to annual sales of more than 22 million jars, the yeast-based spread has become a fixture of culture down under. It's now so iconic the City of Melbourne Council has included the smell of the factory at 1 Vegemite Way in a statement of heritage significance. Jamie Callister explores his grandfather Cyril's life and legacy in Vegemite: The True Story of the Man Who Invented an Australian Icon.

Super yacht reality TV series Below Deck has been described as 'Downton Abbey on the water". Featuring demanding, often badly behaved guests and overworked and oversexed crew, the show captures the natural drama of life on board luxury charters. Since the original series aired in 2013 it's spawned several spin offs including Great Barrier Reef based Below Deck Down Under, the second series of which currently airs Tuesdays on Bravo. The Chief Stewardess is Tauranga-born Aesha Scott, who has become a fan favourite for her work ethic, cheekiness and indomitable positivity.

French filmmaker Nicolas Philibert is known for his intimate and patiently observed documentaries capturing the beauty of everyday humanity. He's most well known for 2002's Etre et Avoir which followed a year in the life of a tiny rural school with just one teacher. His latest film On the Adamant/Sur L'Adamant won the top prize at this year's Berlin International Film Festival. It follows the goings-on aboard L'Adamant, a floating day-centre for people with mental maladies, moored on the banks of the Seine in Paris. On the Adamant is screening at Whanau Marama: New Zealand International Film Festival

Auckland's iconic landmarks Mount Eden, One Tree Hill, and Rangitoto are all evidence of the 360 km2 volcanic field that lies beneath our largest city. The field has erupted at least 53 times in the past 250,000 years, each time in a new location, resulting in many small hills and pits across the Auckland landscape. Volcanologists have been studying the magma source deep beneath the city to get clues to where the next eruption might occur. The chance of an eruption is very small but the consequences for residents would be large. GNS volcanologist Graham Leonard is co leader of the DEVORA programme which has been assessing the risk.

World leading immunologist Professor Danny Altmann has declared the future burden of long COVID to be "so large as to be unfathomable". He has published a scientific review of long COVID in Nature, asserting if 10% of acute infections lead to persistent symptoms, up to 400 million people could be in need of support for long COVID worldwide. While the Australian government has allocated $50m for long COVID research, in New Zealand there has been zero investment for bio-medical long COVID research to understand and treat the condition. Professor in the Faculty of Medicine, Department of Immunology and Inflammation at Imperial College London, Professor Altmann has been studying T cells for four decades, and is interested in why people suffer debilitating consequences so long after COVID infection.

As parts of southern Europe and the US swelter in record summer temperatures, Gaia Vince anticipates mass migration to cooler countries, forced by global warming. Her book, Nomad Century: How to survive a climate upheaval describes the displacement of billions of people from the world's hottest latitudes. From The Sudan to the western US, and in cities from the UK to China, drought, heat, wildfires and flooding will make home uninhabitable. It's not all doom and gloom. Vince remains optimistic migration also brings benefits, both to migrants and their new countries, including solving labour shortages.

Journalist Ben Smith tells the story of how digital media organisations became addicted to "going viral" in his new book Traffic: Genius, Rivalry, and Delusion in the Billion-Dollar Race to Go Viral. He was founding editor-in-chief of recently deceased digital news site BuzzFeed News, which along with HuffPost, Breitbart and Gawker Media represented a new world of online media in the early 2000s. His book tells the inside story of how rivals Jonah Peretti of HuffPost and BuzzFeed. and Nick Denton of Gawker Media started the race for virality blamed for the rise of disinformation. Ben Smith is the Editor in Chief of Semafor, a new global news company and a former media columnist for The New York Times.

Listener feedback for 15 July 2023.

Poet Jenny Bornholdt's new book A Garden is a Long Time weaves her words with the life and photographic art of Annemarie Hope-Cross, who died last year. Hope-Cross studied photogenic drawing, wet and dry plate collodion and the daguerreotype technique at the Fox Talbot Museum in the UK, and used these early photographic processes and materials in her work. The combination of these historic techniques with contemporary subjects created images both eerie and radiant. Jenny Bornholdt is the author of several poetry collections including The Rocky Shore (Montana New Zealand Book Award for Poetry, 2009), Selected Poems (2016), and Lost and Somewhere Else (2019). In 2005 she became the fifth Te Mata Estate Poet Laureate, and in 2013 she was appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to literature.

Bad Behaviour is the debut feature film from actor, writer and director Alice Englert, celebrated New Zealand film-maker Jane Campion's daughter. Bad Behaviour stars Ben Whishaw as the spiritual leader of a retreat attended by 40-something Lucy (Jennifer Connelly) who, while seeking enlightenment meets her nemesis in the form of model and DJ Beverly. Meanwhile, Lucy's stunt-performer daughter, Dylan (played by Alice Englert) is in New Zealand working on set. We very soon learn they have a fraught relationship, just as Lucy did with her own mother. There are supporting roles here from Ana Scotney, Marlon Williams, Xana Tang, Robbie Magasiva, Tom Sainsbury - and a cameo from mum. Having premiered at Sundance Film Festival, Bad Behaviour is showing in the New Zealand International Film Festival.

Barbie's in the pink at the moment. There's a huge buzz surrounding a new comedy-fantasy film about the iconic and multi-vocational doll hitting screens next week. Collecting Barbie dolls has been a decades-long passion for retired St John Ambulance paramedic Patsy Carlyle. Her Helensville home aka The Pink Palace houses over 1,600 boxed Barbie dolls, and more than four hundred freestanding dolls. Patsy and hundreds of her dolls are being celebrated in The Barbie Collector at Wellington Museum from 22nd July - 10th Sept.

Resilience expert Dr Lucy Hone has personal and academic experience with devastating grief. Despite all her training and time working with people dealing with loss, nothing prepared her for the sudden death of her 12 year old daughter Abi in a car crash in 2014. Since then she's focused on providing support for others affected by similarly overwhelming grief. Her TEDx talk '3 Secrets of Resilient People', has been watched over 6 million times, she's authored Resilient Grieving, a practical, research-based guide to grief, and has a coping with loss website.

Driftwood and slash from Cyclone Gabrielle will fuel bonfires celebrating Matariki on Hawkes Bay beaches on Saturday night. Families are encouraged to light a small fire, bring fish and chips and marshmallows, tell stories and make jokes. Hawkes Bay iwi Ngati Kahungunu hope marking Matariki by celebrating the story of Mahuika, the goddess of fire, will become an annual tradition, eventually bigger than New Year's Eve. Event organiser Te Rangi Huata hopes to see small registered beach bonfires burning all the way up the Napier Hastings shoreline, even as far as Mahia, with families connected by beacons of flames. Fire and Emergency NZ and local councils have approved the event. you can register your bonfire via email: [email protected] {audio_play}

"Heartbreaking" is the word Caitlin Moran found herself repeating while researching her latest book What About Men? After ten years "trying to sort out the women" best-selling UK writer Caitlin Moran has turned her attention to the crisis of masculinity.

As France celebrates Bastille Day authorities are on alert for a resurgence of street violence. More than 3,000 people were arrested during recent nationwide protests triggered by a video of police killing black teen Nahel Merzouk. According to European Network Against Racism data, North African Arab or black people are twenty times more likely to be stopped by French police. French Senegalese journalist Rokhaya Diallo says Nahel's killing is part of a long pattern of racist policing that has divided the country.

Last year Bill Bailey walked 100 miles in memory of his late friend Sean Lock, inspired by the hikes the two comics used to take together. Bailey's become evangelical about the benefits of a good walk, as an opportunity for blokes to be a bit more open with each other about difficult subjects. He's less enthusiastic about Twitter, which, as far as he's concerned, is a "vituperative swamp of unpleasantness". The comedian, musician and actor best known for his film and television work on Never Mind the Buzzcocks, QI, and the award winning Black Books was also host of the first season of NZ hit comedy panel show Patriot Brains. He's returning to Aotearoa in November and December for a fourteen date tour of his new show Thoughtifier.

Saturday morning listener feedback

Nomad gardener and The Edible Backyard author Kath Irvine is back with some winter wisdom including why knowing where winter sun falls is the secret to year round success, plus how to avoid a soggy garden.

Australian-German investigative journalist Antony Loewenstein argues Israel has used occupied Palestinian territories as a testing ground to develop weaponry and surveillance technology. In his new book The Palestine Laboratory Loewenstein pulls together secret documents, interviews and contemporary reporting to argue Israel exports the resulting technology to other international conflicts. Antony Loewenstein has written for The Guardian, and The New York Times, His books include Pills, Powder and Smoke, and the best selling Disaster Capitalism.

Historians paint colonial New Zealanders as "smug bucolic hobbits", but alternative spirituality was part of life for many in the 19th and early 20th centuries, says Andrew Paul Wood. The historian and journalist explores a range of homegrown occult groups – and their intriguing leaders – in his new book Shadow Worlds: A History of the Occult and Esoteric in New Zealand.

In a world first, authorised Australian psychiatrists can now prescribe MDMA and psilocybin. As of 1 July, psilocybin, a psychedelic compound found in magic mushrooms and MDMA, commonly known as ecstasy, can be prescribed for treatment-resistant depression and post-traumatic stress disorder respectively. Professor Susan Rossell is a cognitive neuropsychologist at Swinburne University's Centre for Mental Health. She's working on Australia's only active clinical trial testing psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy for treatment-resistant depression. Despite the promise shown by these drugs in clinical trial settings she's concerned the approval process has been rushed and could cause a backlash.

Listener Feedback for 1 July 2023.

Nightclubs doubling as fight clubs, dairies with rice bunkers and aunties scheming away in mahjong dens.The first Aotearoa play to be commissioned from a South Asian woman provides a rather different sci-fi take on our future than we're used to. Yet beneath the stage combat, dance-offs and references to anime, Ankita Singh's 'neo-noir action-crime-comedy' Basmati Bitch aims to be a sharp look at contested borders and migrant exploitation Singh is an Auckland-based writer hailing from Chandigarh and Kirikiriroa. She's the founder of Asian theatre producers Oriental Maidens, and has an animated series in development with Taika Waititi's Piki Films. Basmati Bitch is on at Auckland's Q Theatre from 11 July.

Historians usually write about the past, with the benefit of knowing how things turned out, but Harvard academic and best-selling author Serhii Plokhy was so shaken by the Russian invasion of his homeland last year he felt compelled to write about it immediately. The result is his new book The Russo-Ukrainian War which traces the historical origins and evolution of the invasion and contemplates the wider consequences for the present and futures of both countries. He argues that Ukraine's defiance of Russia, and the West's support, presents a profound challenge to Putin's ambitions. Plokhy's other books include Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy, Nuclear Folly, The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine and The Last Empire.

Scientist and writer Danyl McLauchlan joins Kim to tackle life's big questions, ideas and thinkers. This week, he's examining the role dystopian novels play in politics. The conservative fundamentalist nightmare of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale has become a go-to analogy for liberals when criticising the right. Just recently Labour's Megan Woods accused National (via a tweeted GIF) of wanting to turn New Zealand into Gilead if they excluded contraceptives from their prescription subsidy scheme. It's not the only book to be co-opted as a political weapon. Orwell's 1984 and P D James' Children of Men have been used in similar ways by politicians of varying colours.

Aged just seven, Suzanne Heywood set sail with her family on a three-year voyage around the world. Three years turned into a decade, with little formal schooling and many tensions between Heywood and her parents. It all ended in Aotearoa, with a teenage Heywood looking after her younger brother and her Dad's business. This unusual childhood is the subject of her new memoir Wavewalker: Breaking Free Now a successful businesswoman, Heywood's last book was the bestselling What Does Jeremy Think? an account of the life of her late husband Jeremy Heywood, British cabinet secretary and confidant of four prime ministers.

There's a saying in the Cook Islands that anything decided by the government was hashed out at Trader Jacks. The legendary bar and eatery, opened in 1986 by Jack Cooper, is known to virtually every Kiwi who visits Rarotonga. Jack died a year ago but his life and the bar's many wild and wonderful times are celebrated in 40 Years Behind Bars: A Publican in Paradise. a book completed with the help of Golden Bay based journalist Gerard Hindmarsh.

In a so-called "orca uprising" killer whales have been attacking boats in Iberian waters, off Spain and Portugal,and are possibly teaching others to do the same. But why, and how will it all end? Dr Justin Gregg is a researcher with the Dolphin Communication Project, adjunct professor at St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia and author of If Nietzsche Were a Narwhal.

There's been a war raging in education over how to teach reading to kids for many years, and it shows no signs of abating. On one side are those who believe in whole language learning, that is, guessing words through contextual and visual clues. This method underpins 'reading recovery' therapy, which was developed by New Zealander Dame Marie Clay to boost the learning of those who fall behind. On the other side are fans of phonics, who think sounding out words is the way to go. Here in Aotearoa we currently teach a mix of both. Late last year, prompted by reports showing our literacy rates were falling, the Government announced plans to overhaul the teaching of reading. Emily Hanford is a senior correspondent and producer with American Public Media. Her podcast series Sold a Story examines America's experience with whole language learning, which she thinks has failed. Hanford will be in Auckland and Christchurch in late August to speak at a Literacy Symposium.

Listener feedback for 24 June 2023.

Known for her books about adolescence, 85-year-old Judy Blume remains beloved by those who grew up with her books. Her work is being introduced to a new generation, with a film adaptation of her breakthrough 1970 novel Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret which premieres at the New Zealand International Film Festival in July.

Since the 2020 lockdown the way we view each other from afar has changed dramatically thanks to technology. FacingTime: Portraits of Geoff by Euan Macleod at the New Zealand Portrait Gallery is a series of 346 portrait paintings recording Macleod and Geoff Dixon's daily catch-ups on FaceTime.

Featuring a chip-lipped duck, a structurally unsound tip truck, and the iconic train cake on the cover, a book of 108 themed cakes has been sparking sugary fantasies for three generations of kids.

As te reo becomes widespread, does Maori learning for Maori need to be prioritised? That's one of many pesky questions posed in the first episode of new Spinoff web series 2 Cents 2 Much. Answering them is Tamaki Makaurau kaiako and musician Jordyn Rapana aka Jordyn with a Why.

In their new book The Big Myth, Professor Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway document the rise of "market fundamentalism" over the 20th century, outlining Big Business's push to equate the free market with freedom and instil fear of government intervention.

Earlier this month Australia's most decorated soldier Ben Roberts-Smith lost his defamation case against three newspapers who reported he had murdered civilians in Afghanistan. While not a criminal trial, the court judged him responsible for the deaths of four Afghans while deployed during 2009-2012. Investigative journalist Nick McKenzie brought the allegations to the public eye and has spent five years working on the story.

Saturday morning listener feed back

Author and art writer Megan Dunn joins Kim to talk about the pros and cons of having prizes for art.

There's strong hope this winter that the ice will be right for the Baxter Cup, New Zealand's oldest sporting trophy. The cup is for outdoor curling, yet bonspiels (curling tournaments) are increasingly threatened by climate change. They're no longer even held in the sport's birthplace of Scotland and the last Baxter Cup was held here in 2017.

Are humans really the smartest animal? Animal cognition expert Dr Justin Gregg thinks maybe not. In his new book If Nietzsche Were a Narwhal, he examines our exceptional brain power and finds it wanting.

Last month it was reported that children in the UK had been born using mitochondrial donation, eight years after the technique was regulated. The IVF procedure uses genetic material from a mother and father and a tiny amount from a third female donor, with the aim of preventing the inheritance of mitochondrial diseases.

Best-selling Latin American author Isabel Allende's new book The Wind Knows My Name reveals the brutal reality and lasting trauma caused by forced immigration and family separation.

Former basketball player and chef Jenny Nguyen became increasingly frustrated by the lack of women's sports playing at the bars she hung out in. So, in 2022 she used her life savings to open the Sports Bra, an inclusive bar and restaurant in Portland, Oregon, that plays only women's sports on its TV screens. It's been a raging success, bringing in one million dollars in revenue in its first eight months.

Listener feedback for 10 June 2023.

Matt Baker returns for a chat about some of the latest science news. This week: why a single shot of gene therapy may replace surgical sterilisation for cats.

Mental illness may seem an unlikely subject for a musical, but in the US Brian Yorkey and Tom Kitt's Next to Normal has won not only Tony Awards but a Pulitzer Prize. Director of its Christchurch production Hayden Tee (Ngati Kahungunu, Takatapui) considers it one of the great musicals.

This month Kiwa Hammond has been part of an Aotearoa contingent in Germany to retrieve skeletal remains of karapuna, Ta Imi Moriori ancestors of Rekohu (the Chatham Islands) and Maori tipuna from various institutions and museums.

Chronobiologist Professor Emeritus Philippa Gander spends her waking hours researching the optimal conditions for sleep. She's studied horseshoe crabs, hibernating squirrels, jet-lagged pilots and space station astronauts.

When UK based New Zealand writer Margaret Meyer visited a local museum in the town of Aldeburgh, Suffolk, it sent her on a mission to uncover the story of a group of women accused of being witches, and the men who hunted them.

Proposed in the UK is a trial that would see 30 people paid an unconditional sum of about NZ$3295 a month for two years to see what effect it has on their mental and physical health. An equivalent scheme is already running in Wales.

New treatments for pancreatic cancer are urgently needed. Yet, results from a small study published recently suggest that bespoke messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines that prime a patient's immune system to fight their cancer might be an effective future option.

Nomad gardener and The Edible Backyard author Kath Irvine has parked up the house truck and settled down for winter in Golden Bay.

Australian Suzie Miller's play Prima Facie has been called "one of the most electrifying pieces of theatre on Broadway" and this year won an Olivier Award following a Westend run.

Danish adventurer, filmmaker and writer Thor F. Jensen completed a 6300km circumnavigation of the Island of New Guinea in a traditional outrigger sailing canoe.- a world-first achieved in collaboration with three Papuan master sailors.

English actor Dame Penelope Wilton's warm smile will be familiar to fans of Downton Abbey, Doctor Who and the Ricky Gervais series Afterlife. Her new film The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry is a study of the different ways two people react to profound loss, Penelope tells Colin Peacock.

Do we hear music differently across cultures? What about between the sexes? And does singing to a baby improve their mental health? These are some of the questions The Music Lab's Principal Investigator psychologist Dr Samuel Mehr is looking to answer.

When a major league US baseball team recently picked a fight with a group of queer and trans 'nuns', they struck out. After announcing the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence would be honoured with a community heroes award, the LA Dodgers buckled to conservative pressure from Republican politicians and some Catholic groups, revoking the award and an invitation to their Pride Night.

This week the government released a Safer Online Services and Media Platforms "discussion document" proposing to regulate online content the same way other media is regulated.

 Once upon a time, perhaps, there was no time.

Listener Feedback for 27 May 2023.

About 1800 years ago a powerful super-eruption of the Taupo volcano resulted in a plume of ash that coated lakeside areas in tens of metres of pumice and ash and a lava flow that spread up to 90 kilometres. Last year a volcanic alert for Taupo was issued for the first time. The supervolcano has entered a period of unrest with ground deformation and swarms of earthquakes including a M5.7 earthquake in November. A large eruption is not likely, but the small possibility of a minor one remains. GNS volcanologist Graham Leonard joins us to share the history of eruptions and rumbles under the lake and what the unrest means for people living near Taupo.

During Australia's "Black Summer" of 2019-20 a bush fire nearly destroyed the farm where actress Rachel Ward and her actor husband Bryan Brown had been raising cattle for 33 years. This head-on confrontation with the climate crisis triggered Ward with a neighbour to pivot away from conventional agriculture practices and embrace regenerative farming. She's now a champion for the movement which aims to lower the ecological impact of farming and increase the health of the soil. Her documentary Rachel's Farm screens in cinemas and online in the Doc Edge festival in June.

During Australia's "Black Summer" of 2019-20 a bush fire nearly destroyed the farm where actress Rachel Ward and her actor husband Bryan Brown had been raising cattle for 33 years. This head-on confrontation with the climate crisis triggered Ward with a neighbour to pivot away from conventional agriculture practices and embrace regenerative farming. She's now a champion for the movement which aims to lower the ecological impact of farming and increase the health of the soil. Her documentary Rachel's Farm screens in cinemas and online in the Doc Edge festival in June.

From being assumed extinct, to a healthy population of over 500 birds, the resurrection of the takahe is an incredible story.

About 1 in 6 New Zealanders live with chronic pain. Psychologist Dr Rachel Zoffness believes that medical treatment of chronic pain often fails because it is based on a flawed model of how pain works..

Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (who turns 100 the day we air) is talking about the potential for war between the United States and China. Increasingly, such talk about our biggest trading partner - China - is not uncommon in New Zealand. Newsroom's national affairs editor Sam Sachdeva examines what's in store for New Zealand in his book The China Tightrope: Navigating New Zealand's Relationship with a World Superpower.

When smoking first became popular it was heavily marketed as being cool. We were even told it was healthy. The results have not been so good. Simon Chapman, an Emeritus Professor at University of Sydney, believes history is repeating itself again with vaping.

Dr Jonathan Howard says over 800,000 Americans would be alive today if the US had taken New Zealand's Covid approach.

We hear from our listeners 20 May 2023

Scientist and writer Danyl McLauchlan joins Kim to tackle life's big questions, ideas and thinkers. This week, the life and work of influential twentieth century philosopher Hannah Arendt, whose books include The Origins of Totalitarianism and The Human Condition.

Between 2016 and 2018, dozens of North American diplomats stationed in Havana, Cuba, reported an array of health complaints which coincided with hearing strange sounds.

Husband and wife duo Dame Miranda Harcourt and Stuart McKenzie have become central to the film and theatre world. It's all in the family: while Miranda's mother Kate is one of Aotearoa's most respected actors, their daughter Thomasin is forging a career in Hollywood While Miranda acts and directs, Stuart writes.

Noel Hyde is one of New Zealand's most respected wildlife taxidermists, but it's with live birds as a falconer he's now making his mark, helping save karearea, ruru and barn owls.

Auckland nurse Doron Semu is using a traditional Sāmoan art form to bring together LGBTQ+ Pasifika youth. In his mid-20s, feeling disconnected from his Sāmoan heritage, Doron learnt how to make the barkcloth panels known as siapo. He now runs siapo-making workshops as a safe space for fellow LGBTQ+ Pasifika youth to do the same.

Ocham winner Chidgey has a new novel Pet, set in New Zealand in 1984 and 2014, which follows a 'teacher's pet', wrestling with her admiration for that teacher.

Listener feedback 13 May 2023.

Known for his contemporary takes on Shakespeare, Aotearoa theatre director and scholar David Lawrence believes the bard's intentions have been long compromised by being organised into the genres of Comedy, History and Tragedy. I

The Yanomami people of the Amazon rainforest are one of the last Indigenous groups living as hunter-gatherers and small-scale farmers. They also have the most diverse gut microbiome of any community studied in the world.

From performing on street corners in India to the National Theatre in London, comedian, actor, writer, and blues singer Sameena Zehra has spent her life telling stories and, in her own words, holding power to account.

Aotearoa's fungi are fascinating, freaky and fantastical according to Otautahi based forager and food writer Liv Sisson. We have 22,000 species, including one that hunts bugs, a lichen named after Jacinda Ardern, the famous bright blue mushroom, and a couple that even glow in the dark.

Mstyslav Chernov is part of a small team of Associated Press Ukrainian journalists who this week won a Pulitzer Prize for their fearless reporting from Mariupol last year. For nearly three weeks they were the only international journalists in the port city, exposing the horrors of the Russian siege including an airstrike on a children's hospital and maternity ward.

Listener Feedback for 6 May 2023.

Author and art writer Megan Dunn joins Kim to talk about two current shows with very different approaches to displaying public art collections.

In his new book Pathogenesis Dr Jonathan Kennedy offers a radical new frame to view human history. He argues that infectious diseases have been a decisive force in shaping humanity, from the development of agriculture to the global rise of religion, and that they are not just something that happens to us, but a fundamental part of who we are.

This weekend live American late-night shows - The Daily Show and Saturday Night Live plus those hosted by Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert and Seth Meyers - go off-air and turn to repeats as more than 11,000 television and film writers strike for the first time in 15 years.

Award-winning writer Dr Emma Espiner (Ngāti Tukorehe, Ngāti Porou) talks to Kim Hill about her unconventional upbringing, ditching her recruitment job for med school and how New Zealand can improve healthcare for Māori.

Dr George Gross, a visiting research fellow at King's College London and co-founder of the British Coronations Project, says the crowning of William the Conqueror in 1066 set the tone for future coronations. While his reign was widely considered a success, the coronation itself was a disaster.

Hundreds of thousands of people are expected to head to central London this weekend to celebrate King Charles's Coronation. We catch up with the BBC World Service's UK Political Correspondent Rob Watson after a day of preparations.

Listener Feedback for 29 April 2023.

Reflecting on what makes a place home, Alie Benge's collection of essays Ithaca takes us to wildly different places from her past: from Ethiopia as a child to time spent in the Australian Army and Bible school, and on to a 800-kilometre trek along the Camino De Santiago.

In Australian author and broadcaster Richard Fidler's The Book of Roads and Kingdoms he delves into the life of medieval wanderers who travelled to the outer edges of the known world during Islam's fabled 'Golden Age'.

Romantic comedy or rom-com, is often used as shorthand for something shallow and lacking in substance, but Minneapolis author Curtis Sittenfeld loves them.

NASA's new head scientist, Dr Nicola Fox, is on a mission to uncover the mysteries of the Universe and has an over eight billion dollar budget to do it.

How we deal with waste is getting an overhaul by the government with more urban households set to get kerbside food scrap collection. Community composting groups however are arguing they have a valuable role to play alongside large scale commercial enterprise. Liam Prince is compost manager at Wellington's Kaicycle, and co-founder with Hannah Blumhardt of The Rubbish Trip, a zero waste advocacy group.

As the final series of HBO's hit drama Succession goes to air, the Murdoch media empire that inspired the show is dealing with its own dramas.

Fighting between Sudan's military and the Rapid Support Forces continued Friday, hours into a second 72 hour ceasefire say eyewitnesses. The situation across Sudan has deteriorated, with shortages of water and food supplies, and reports of violence and widespread looting.

Listener Feedback for 22 April 2023.