Saturday Morning

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 speaks to Susie about his new book You Are Here.

Lyndy McIntyre's 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