Nights for Thursday 8 February 2024

7:12 Our Changing World

How fast - and how completely - could Antarctica's smaller western ice sheet melt in a warming world? 

An international science team, led by New Zealand, set out to investigate whether two degrees of warming could already be a tipping point for the frozen continent. 

In this special episode of Our Changing World, Veronika Meduna goes way down south.

 

7:45 The Reading

In the reading today we have the last story from 'Page Numbers' - the collection of writing from IIML 2018. 

Today's writer, KL Griffiths, describes her story as being about: what nostalgia might look like in sixty or so years, and what it means to leave things behind. 

Read here by Harriet Prebble.

 

8:15 Pacific Waves

A daily current affairs programme that delves deeper into the major stories of the week, through a Pacific lens, and shines a light on issues affecting Pacific people wherever they are in the world. Hosted by Susana Suisuiki.

In today's episode, the West Papua liberation army are willing to release kiwi pilot Phillip Mehrtens but there are concerns, Samoa hosts the OFC Women's Olympic qualifier tournament, and we get the latest on the Pacific Mission.

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8:30 BBC Health Check: Surviving Noma disease

We hear about Noma, a severe gangrenous disease which tends to affect 2 to 6-year-olds and has a 90% fatality rate. 

Also, there's promising news for treatment of another tropical disease, Nipah virus. 

And a charity in Northern Ireland which is using a virtual reality experience to give seeing family members a better understanding of what it's like to live with visual impairment.

 

9:07 Nights Quiz

Do you know your stuff? Come on the air and be grilled by Emile Donovan as he dons his quiz master hat.

If you get an answer right, you move on to the next question. If you get it wrong, your time in the chair is up, and the next caller will be put through. The person with the most correct answers at the end of the run goes in the draw for a weekly prize.

The quiz is themed - find out more about tonight's theme on Nights' Facebook page.

 

9:15 Should New Zealand books be 'Americanised' for an overseas readership?

To be a success overseas as a New Zealand writer, it can take some tweaks and compromises to fit the tastes of the American publishing beast which runs the literary world.

Rebecca K Reilly, bestselling author of Greta & Valdin, has experienced this very thing.

She joins Emile Donovan.

 

9.35 New Zealand's longest-running festival returns for 25th year

The beautiful Tāpapakanga Regional Park is ready to receive thousands of Splorers - as they are known - in two weeks' time.

As well as a impressive musical line-up, the festival offers a full range of artistic and spiritual experiences.

Emile Donovan is joined in the Auckland studio by festival producer Fred Kublilkowski and music journalist Russell Brown who will be co-hosting the Splore Listening Lounge.

 

10:17 Wellington's attempt to enable housing under scrutiny

You know Wellington, famously home to the sparkliest, newest, most warm and dry housing in the country, with cheap rents and first home buyers a-plenty... yeah, not quite.

It is one of the toughest places to build new homes in the country.

The capital is in the midst of writing its District Plan, a master document that will determine where housing can be built and what those houses can look like.

And the panel in charge of that Plan have been accused of conservative, regressive decision-making that will make new housing even tougher to get built.

Stuart Donovan is a senior fellow with Motu Economic and Public Policy Research and has worked in land use policy for more than 20 years.

 

10:30 Spies and intraspecies espionage used to take down invasive pests

A team of helicopter-based hunters in Canterbury were able to locate and destroy 18 pest wallabies in the space of a week.

Their method: GPS collaring just a handful of the wild wallabies which would then lead the hunters to larger groups. 

It's all part of a nationwide programme to cull wallabies, which can cause havoc on fragile ecosystems.

Gavin Udy is the project delivery specialist for national programmes at the Otago Regional Council and he joins Emile Donovan.

 

10:45 How Taylor Swift is uniting the worlds of football and pop music

The NFL final - known across the globe, even to non-fans, as the Super Bowl - is being played this Sunday (Monday NZT) between the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers.

This year the final may pull in an audience-base hitherto unseen: fans of the global megastar Taylor Swift, owing to her high-profile relationship with Chiefs player Travis Kelce.

Sports freak Hamish Girvan joins Emile Donovan to preview the big day.

 

11:07 Music 101 pocket edition

On the mixtape this week is Tom Scott, known for his musical projects Home Brew, At Peace, and Avantdale Bowling Club.

Last year after a decade-long hiatus, Home Brew released their second album Run It Back to much acclaim, alongside a two-part documentary on the process.

Tom shares tracks that inspired Home Brew's new album, lyrically and thematically.