Afternoons for Monday 7 February 2011

1:10 Best Song Ever Written

I'm Gonna Be Strong by Gene Pitney as chosen by Suzanne Paul.

1:15 8 Months To Mars - what would well-known people do on an trip to Mars?

Musical Theatre star Delia Hannah.

2:10 Feature Stories

A group of mates, a couple of guitars and two intense days in a home-built recording studio in Invercargill have produced a new album for country music legend Dusty Spittle. Dusty's music career nearly ended in 1992 when brain surgery caused partial of face and memory loss. It took him a long time to get back on track, and back in the studio.

The Coast to Coast multi-sport race is coming up again this weekend - where competitors run, cycle and kayak their way across 243 kilometres from Kumara Beach on the West Coast, to Sumner Beach in Christchurch. Over 800 people are competing in the challenge, and one of them has the most unlikely CV. Paul Avery from Taranaki is already a world champion, but in a slightly unrelated area. Paul is a shearer, and only last weekend won the North Island shearing champs. This is the first time he's entered the Coast to Coast.

2:30 Reading

In My Father's Den by Maurice Gee. Adapted for radio by Terry Swanson and read by Peter Vere-Jones. (Part one)

2:45 Feature Album

Lights, the debut LP for English singer-songwriter, Ellie Goulding.

3:12 Author Slot

Bobby Fischer, possibly the greatest Chess player of all time, certainly in the top 5, was as complex and puzzling as the game he played. There was beauty and brilliance in his moves on the board, but ugliness off it. In his personal life, he became better known for his anti-Semitic and anti-American comments and increasingly bizzare behavior. Dr. Frank Brady knew Bobby Fisher. Endgame: Bobby Fischer's Remarkable Rise and Fall-From America's Brightest Prodigy to the Edge of Madness is his second book about this troubled genius.

3:33 Our Changing World

For most people, just being in Antarctica sounds a cold proposition. But when Alison Ballance tracks down University of Otago physicist Pat Langhorne to discuss a special kind of sea ice, she finds herself being invited into a 'supercold' freezer where the research is conducted.

4:06 The Panel

Rosemary McLeod and Tim Watkin.