Sunday Morning for Sunday 8 October 2017

7:10 - 7:35 What the final count could mean

Our panel of RNZ Political Editor Jane Patterson, NBR's political editor Rob Hosking and political commentator and analyst Dr Bryce Edwards from Victoria University digest the final election result. 
The National Party has 56 seats compared with 58 on election night.  
The Labour Party has 46 seats compared with 45 on election night. 
The Green Party has 8 seats compared with 7 on election night.  

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7:34  Green MP Golriz Ghahraman 

The final vote count sees Golriz Ghahraman into Parliament on the Green party list.  She was nine when her family fled Iran and she's been a human rights lawyer for the United Nations and here in New Zealand.

7:43 Tom Nichols: the creeping threat of mini-nukes

Reports out this month say the Trump administration is considering the construction of “mini-nukes” that could take out buried or heavily shielded facilities without doing a lot of damage to surrounding areas or populations. Professor Tom Nichols says this is a bad idea whose time has already come and gone - but creeping is back in again. Nichols is also concerned that the president is not up to an effective diplomatic response should a crisis develop with North Korea.  Nichols is a professor at the US Naval War College and at the Harvard Extension School. He is a columnist and has written five books, on international relations, Russian affairs and nuclear weapons.

8:10 Insight Road to recovery: the Kaikoura quake

The 7.8 magnitude quake that struck in North Canterbury in November last year caused billions of dollars of damage.The event cost two people their lives and had a significant impact on a number of communities on the South Island's east coast. With State Highway One north of Kaikoura closed due to large slips, businesses along the once busy tourist route between Picton and Christchurch have faced a slow winter.

11 months on, homes are still being demolished and repaired, farmers are still picking up the pieces and schools say they are noticing quake related behavioural issues. But with spring now underway and the road north set to re-open in December, Maja Burry has travelled to Kaikoura to ask whether the area is now recovering.

8:40 Danielle Hawkins: life and love in rural NZ

Danielle Hawkins is a farmer, a vet, a gardener, a keen cook, mother of two and a popular author of light-romantic novels set in rural New Zealand. The Otorohanga-raised 39-year-old has now written three including her successful 2012 debut, “Dinner at Rose's”, set in a small imaginary King Country town. Her latest “The Pretty Delicious Cafe” centres on a cafe run by two friends Anna and Lia.

9:06 Mediawatch

How the idea of a Blue Green government got traction in the media. Also: sport on TV is back on the political agenda and RNZ’s outgoing newsgathering chief Brent Edwards.

9:37 Robert Harris: returning to the time of Hitler

Robert Harris has millions of readers buying his books, which fictionalise recent and ancient history. His latest novel returns to the period which began his success at doing this style of writing. Fatherland was based on a world in which Hitler had won the Second World War, and it sold more than three million copies.  His latest is Munich, a tense and dramatic re-examining of the 1938 Munich Agreement between Hitler and UK Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. It fell apart, but it did delay the start of World War II.

10:10 Ross Jolly: NZ premiere of The Father

Ross Jolly co-founded Wellington's Circa Theatre 41 years ago and has been at the helm of many notable productions. This new one is close to his heart, and it's certainly a play that has caused a big stir overseas. The Father, by Florian Zeller opens at Circa on October 14.  In the play, Andre is an 80-year-old retired engineer and widower living in Paris. Or is he? He is descending into dementia, and we see his diminishing world through his eyes.

10.25 Alexander Crooke: hip-hop healing

Though it has had a lot of bad press through its association with rap, hip hop culture is being used as a tool for therapists working with young people.  Alexander Crooke says that hip hop culture, at its core, is built on values of social justice, peace, self-worth, community, and having fun. School counsellors, psychologists and social workers are using hip hop as a tool for promoting mental health.

10:44 Extreme exercise - do we crave bodily punishment?

How much exercise you need is the subject of debate. What many of us wonder is why some people do so much exercise. Academics at the University of Cardiff have published a paper called "Selling Pain to the Saturated Self". It examines the thinking behind those sports where participants are prepared to subject themselves to extreme discomfort, such as the 400km Ultra Gobi event across the desert. These academics have an interesting theory that we crave bodily punishment in an age where so many of us sit around and just use our bodies to put food in and take us from A to B. Richard Ussher is the Coast To Coast's Event Director and an athlete in his own right, a five-time Coast-to-Coast winner, a former Olympic skier and former NZ Triathlon record holder.

11:05 Tim Watson-Munro: Dancing with Demons

Tim Watson-Munro is Australia's best-known criminal psychologist, as much for the dramas in his own life as for the cases he's been associated with. But many of those cases have been sensational, and they are chronicled in his new book, Dancing with Demons.

His acquaintance with Australia's criminal underworld, and with the minds of criminals who've committed horrific crimes, has also given Tim Watson-Munro some strong ideas about what we're doing wrong with the people we put in jail.

11:40 Jack Trolove: the moment that changed his life

Jack Trolove puts the paint on his work so thickly that he has to stand back to see what it’s looking like as it develops. He says his technique of applying paint with a palette knife gives his work two  variations - up close it’s abstract, and the audience sees the form from a distance. Trolove also works in suicide prevention and assists youth groups to learn how to work with young LGTBI people. In 2008, Trolove was awarded an Master of Fine Arts with Distinction from Auckland's Massey University. He was shortlisted for London's BP Portrait Award Exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in 2015, and was a finalist in the 2016 Wallace Art Awards. His work can be found in public and private collections across New Zealand, Australia, and Europe. He is exhibiting at Auckland’s Whitespace gallery as part of Artweek Auckland 2017. Trolove’s work can be seen on Instagram and his website.