Easter Monday for Monday 22 April 2019

08:12 News and Current Affairs

 

08:25 Alayne Dick - Poet

Poetry slam is where poetry meets sport and the first of our poets this morning is a 2018 national poetry slam finalist, she's a playwright and writes for film. Alayne Dick has been performing at the Feminist Poetry Club at the Wellington Fringe Bar for a year. She loves to play with words and turn them into performance art. Alayne reads Rococo and Oh God, I have a Body.

 

08:30 Frances Mayes - The Italy only the locals know

Celebrated Italophile Frances and her husband, Ed eat and drink their way through regional Italy from Friuli to Sicily. They seek out the cultural and historic gems not found in traditional guidebooks. Frances joins Megan Whelan live from her home in California to chat about the joy of discovering the nooks and crannies of Italy most people don't get to see.

 

08:45 Shaun Hendy and Quentin Atkinson - Grounded for climate change

Criticism is piling up for politicians and climate change scientists for the carbon emissions they use flying to conferences. In 2017, two Auckland University professors made the decision not to fly last year. Shaun Hendy is a physicist and Quentin Atkinson is a psychologist who spent 2018 taking trains, ecars, hybrid vehicles, buses and well, probably legs!

 

09:05 Haritina Mogoșanu - To the Moon and back

The Moon and space travel are magical for Bucharest-born Hari Mogosanu, who loves them so much she has an asteroid named after her. She explains why Easter is the only public holiday that revolves around a new moon and why some years it's March 22, while and others it's as late as April the 25th. Hari is pretty certain that the Moon will become the base for human space travel.  In the meantime, as Senior Science Communicator at the Carter Observatory in Wellington, Hari is sharing her love of the Moon and space travel far and wide

 

09:20 Tarns Hood - poet

Tarns Hood is a Wellington performance poet who describes ordinary things with witty, rhythmic quick verse. She's the 2017 national slam poetry champ. Her style is raw and linguistically twisted and has been on stage in Variety Shows and fundraisers, has featured on radio and in print for the past seven years.  Tarns reads: We're meant to love ourselves, apparently.

 

09:30 The insanity of Auckland's hot sauce festival   

Connoisseurs of hot chillies will gather at an Auckland bar in May for its annual Hot Sauce Festival. The two day festival, now into its fourth year, features a competition for the best homemade hot chilli sauce and crowns the person able to eat the most of the world's hottest chilli, the Carolina reaper. Megan Whelan is joined by Fire Dragon Chillies owner Clint Meyer and chilli expert, Waiheke Island's ChefDeb. Seven relative novice RNZ staffers bravely try a piece of Carolina reaper and tell us what it's like.

 

09:45 Guerilla Girls: Conscience of the Art World

The Guerilla Girls have been creating protest posters for 30 years - calling out the art world,using fact, statistics, shame and irony to call for then end to all forms of gender and racial inequality in galleries and among artists, collectors, and buyers. The group is anonymous and goes by pseudonyms such as Frida Kahlo and Käthe Kollwitz.
Frida Kahlo tells Megan Whelan why the group is more relevant now that ever.

 

10:00 Emily Nagoski: Why women burn out faster than men

Emily Nagoski is the award-winning  author of the New York Times bestseller, Come As You Are: the surprising new science that will transform your sex life and The Come As You Are Workbook, and co-author, with her sister Amelia, of Burnout: the secret to unlocking the stress cycle. Dr Nagoski is a sex educator at the University of Delaware. She teaches sex education and stress education for women.  Burnout explains why women experience burnout differently to men - and shows how to minimise stress, manage emotions, and live a more joyful life.

 

10:20 Sharn Maree - poet

Sharn Maree is of Ngāpuhi and Ngati Porou descent. Her poetry is woven with Māori whakapapa and her pono - her truth, advocating for greater awareness on mental health, political wrongdoings and Indigenous rights. Sharn Maree is a cross between spoken word activism and Tony Robins with a tāmoko and she defines a good piece as one that slaps you in the face with real talk, empowers and embraces you all at once.

 

10:25 Biomimicry - harnessing nature's innovation

Debbie Munro is a mechanical and biomedical engineer who says the future of biomimicry is vast. It's design inspired by how nature solves problems and Dr Munro says it won't be long before we are using it to design tiny robots that hide like cockroaches when the lights are turned on, or swarming so that they cannot be shot down or destroyed.
Dr Munro has designed orthopedic implants, robotic dinosaurs for the Jurassic Park Ride at Universal Studios Hollywood and NASA's spacesuits and the SOFIA project. And she's a science fiction writer.

 

11:00 Jared Davidson: Subversion and censorship in NZ

Privacy issues aren't just a feature of the digital age; a new book by labour historian, Jared Davidson, hows how pervasive military censorship was in the wartime years from 1914 to 1920. Dead Letters, on censorship and subversion in New Zealand traces how Postal Service seize letters and sealed them away, not to be read for the next hundred years.

 

11:20 Kate Spencer - poet

Our last poet of the show is Kate Spencer - she's a wordsmith, a show-off and a shutter bug - she's co-producer of Poetry In Motion, the Wellington Feminist Poetry Club, an alumni of Naked Girls Reading  - She won TVNZ's House of Drag and she's an award-winning Fringe Festival artist, winning a Tour Ready award for her first Fringe show.

 

11:25  Mel Parsons: On her way with the Proclaimers

New Zealand's alt-country songstress heads out with the Proclaimers, touring her new album Glass Heart. The album was recorded in Los Angeles with celebrated US producer Mitchell Froom. Mel talks to Megan Whelan about recording with Mitchell in LA, the challenge of taking a baby on the road and the upcoming tour.

 

11:35 Elle Coco: Life of a chocolate judge

Chocolate took over Elle Coco's life in 2010. She was teaching chocolate workshops and guiding chocolate themed walking tours around London when she started working for one of Britain's best chocolatiers - William Curley. Today she has her own chocolate consultancy and is an internationally recognised chocolate judge. Elle shares her favourite chocolate truffle recipe and explains how to make the best gourmet chocolate.

 

11:45 Arthur Dahl: saving the world's coral

One of the most vulnerable parts of the planet to show the effects of global warming is coral reefs. Across the globe bleaching events have become more common in recent years and scientists are concerned they have not had time to recover. Arthur Dahl is an international expert on coral reefs, sustainability, and environmental assessment in small island developing States, recently retiring as Deputy Assistant Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme. He spoke to Megan Whelan about the plight of coral reefs while he was in New Zealand attending a conference.