Sunday Morning for Sunday 21 July 2024

 

8:10 Mitch McCann: A week in US politics 

The world is waiting to see if US President Joe Biden will abandon his attempt to win a second term in the White House.

This was supposed to be the weekend he throws in the towel, according to one report.

Sources say he's being urged to quit at a high level inside the Democrat Party, let alone the opposition to him expressed at the Republican National Convention this past week.

Correspondent Mitch McCann speaks to Jim from New York.

8:20 The Sunday Morning Quiz with Jack Waley-Cohen   

Our quiz master Jack Waley-Cohen is back for another Sunday Morning quiz.   

Jack is the mind behind the questions on BBC quiz show ‘Only Connect’ which is known for being both difficult to crack and totally obvious.     

It’s Sunday morning, so wake up your brain and have a go!       

8:30 Your morning coffee: the best brew for your gut health 

We know about the benefits of coffee - it perks us up, it may reduce our chances of getting type-2 diabetes, Parkinson's Disease - and in the case of Parkinson's it can slow its progression.

Coffee consumption can help reduce body fat, and support the liver and the heart, the list goes on, thanks to its flavonoids and flavonols.

400 billion cups of it are consumed annually in the world, with Scandinavian countries well out in front.

Two-thirds of NZ adults drink it now, either at home or from nearly 9,000 cafes in Aotearoa that sell it.

Because coffee consumption is so huge globally, research is ongoing into what the beans do.

Nicola Shubrook is a nutritionist with the British Association for Nutrition and Lifestyle Medicine, and the Institute for Functional Medicine.

She's also a regular contributor to BBCGoodFood.com and she speaks to Jim about the best brew for your body.

9:10 Mediawatch 

This week Mediawatch looks at how best to cover global climate change - and what our media made of the government’s new emissions plan for the future.  

Mediawatch also talks to an RNZ reporter who got a rare opportunity to find out what's going on Nauru, where journalists have been kept at arm's length for years.

9:35 Calling Home: Ian Borthwick in Paris 

Calling Home this week is with Ian Borthwick, a sports journalist and photographer in Paris.

He talks to Jim about energy picking up in the city of lights ahead of the Olympics. 

10:10 Jon Ronson brings his “Psychopath Night” to Wellington  

It’s been fifteen years since Jon Ronson’s ground-breaking and best-selling work, The Psychopath Test hit the shelves. 

Now the renowned journalist, filmmaker, and author revisits the work in a live show at The Opera House, Wellington on Tuesday November 26.  

10:35 Argue with Science 

Mary Argue is back guiding us through the latest weird and wonderful headlines from the world of science.  

10:45 How to know what temperature to set your home to 

New research out of a university in Ireland suggests that we set thermostats in our homes, if we have them, based on how warm or cold we were in the homes we grew up in, as children.

We've probably all been feeling the cold this past week, and women will have been feeling it more than men, apparently.

We might not like being too cold, or too hot for that matter, and at work it seems that both can affect us in ways we mightn't realise.

Dr Thomas Chang is a data scientist and a professor of finance and business as well at the University of Southern California.

He set out to study this, and he did so using students in Germany. 

11:10 Rick Neitzel on the noise we can’t escape 

The National Geographic reports that in 2023, more than half a billion pairs of headphones were sold in the world, double the number a decade ago.

Many people wear earbuds for hours at a time, sometimes all day long.

And all that listening is taking a toll on our hearing.

The World Health Organisation estimates that 1 billion young people who are aged now between 12 and 35, at least one billion are at risk of permanent, disabled hearing loss because of "unsafe listening practices" 
 
Dr Rick Neitzel is an exposure scientist at the University of Michigan.

His research involved 180,000 people regularly reporting on the noise around them over a number of years.

11:25 Are we using too much laundry detergent? 

How much is too much when it comes to getting those stains out?  We're joined by Dr Jack Chen, senior lecturer at AUT’s faculty of Chemistry.

11:35 Relics – the hidden lives of ordinary things 

Every culture, every religion, every era has enshrined otherwise regular objects with a significance which stretches beyond their literal importance.

Whether the bone of a Catholic martyr or Jimi Hendrix's guitar pick, relics are the objects which the faithful understand as being more than just objects.

Material things of sacred importance, relics are indicative of a culture's deepest values. 
Ed Simon is an essayist, author, and the Editor-in-Chief for Belt Magazine .

He talks to Jim Mora about his latest work, ‘Relic: Object Lessons’, is a series of short books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.