Afternoons for Monday 18 March 2013

1:10 Best Song Ever Written - Fliss Butcher of Dunedin nominated Big Sky by Annie Lennox.

1:20 8 Months To Mars - Christchurch Arts Centre CEO, Andre Lovatt

2:10  The Abraham Lincoln Story - Peter Field
What if Abraham Lincoln had not freed the slaves? It's one of the great hypothetical what-if's in history, up there alongside 'what if Germany had won the war?' and 'what if the french had colonised New Zealand'
The Lincoln question is at the heart of the story of modern America, and it's the subject of a public lecture this week at Canterbury University. And the historian who'll be delivering the lecture this wednesday  is not only an expert on American presidents, he went to school with one of them!
Peter Field is Associate Professor of History at Canterbury University, teaching all aspects of American cultural and intellectual history. He's also a former classmate of the 44th President of the United States. He and Barack Obama went to Colombia University together in the 1980's.

2:20 A Day In The Life of New Zealand - Paul Donovan  
A day in the life... of a country.  That was the brief the photographers got.
They were asked to record  24 hours in the life of New Zealand, from dawn to dusk, from the top of the North Island, to the tip of the South.
75 photographers in all, took part in the project, capturing a day in the life of New Zealand, for a book of the same name.
A day in the Life of New Zealand is a remarkable document, a compilation of 450 photos that capture not only unforgettable moments, but also the quiet, ordinary beats that make up the minutes, that make up the hours,  that go into a day.
That day was March 18th 1983, thirty years ago today.
Paul Donovan was one of the photographers on the project, he co-ordinated the Dunedin section of the book.

2:30 Reading - Auckland Festival Review:Justin Gregory
In today's Festival Review slot; a world premiere of a New Zealand play, a celebration of Maori music and stories from halfway down Dominion Road.  We critique the play Hui, the concert Everything is Ka Pai and the community event Dominion Road Stories.

2:45 Feature Album - Innuendo - the second to last  studio album by British rock band Queen. Released in February 1991.

3:10 Feature Author - Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes - Maria Konnikova
It's not every day life's conundrums require major brain power like the mystery of the Hound of the Baskervills, or even a spectacular bank robbery. But developing the mental powers of Sherlock Holmes, his deductive techniques and his superior reasoning, can help anyone think more clearly and with deeper insight. So says Maria Konnikova, a psychologist, science writer and author. Maria believes developing mental strategies to think more  methodically and observantly should be elementary. Her book is Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes.

3:30 The Syrian Uprising - BBC Witness 
It's two years since anti-government demonstrations in Syria sparked off the current conflict, which began with with anti-government demonstrations in the southern city of Daraa.

4:06 The Panel - Steve McCabe and Penny Ashton.
Droughts and volcanoes, the seeming increase in daylight robbery, the Pope asks for prayers - if you had one prayer that could be granted, what would it be? And if you could resurrect one extinct creature, because they're thinking that the woolly mammoth can be brought back now, which creature would it be? Are young people saving enough and do they have any hope of doing so? Is air travel as safe as it was? And the sad, sad story of the soldier who drowned in a lake near Waiouru - how could that have happened?