Saturday Morning

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...

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...

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)...

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...

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...

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...

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...