Guest details for Saturday 10 May

8:12 Kathy Marks

Sydney-based journalist Kathy Marks was one of six journalists permitted to live on Pitcairn Island while reporting on the sexual abuse trials, and witnessed the domestic workings of the island first hand. In her book, Pitcairn: Paradise Lost - Uncovering the Dark Secrets of a South Pacific Fantasy Island (Fourth Estate, ISBN: 978-0-7322-8254-7), she documents a society gone astray.

8:30 Terry Hicks

Terry Hicks is the father of David Hicks, who served with the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, was captured, and incarcerated for five and a half years by the United States Government at Guantanamo Bay until his release in 2007. Terry Hicks is in New Zealand as a guest at the annual meeting of Amnesty International NZ.

9:05 Hermione Lee

Since 1998, writer, reviewer and broadcaster Hermione Lee has been the Goldsmiths' Professor of English Literature and the first woman professorial Fellow of New College at Wolfson College Oxford. She will take up the office of President in October 2008. Her biography of Virginia Woolf (Vintage, ISBN: 978-0-099-73251-8) was published in 1996 to the same acclaim that has greeted her 2007 biography of Edith Wharton (Vintage, ISBN: 978-0-099-76351-2). Her 2005 collection about the process of writing, Body Parts: Essays on Life Writing (Pimlico, ISBN: 978-1-844-13746-6), has just been republished. Hermione Lee is a guest at two sessions at the Auckland Writers & Readers Festival '08, on Wednesday 14 May, Saturday 17 May and Sunday 18 May.

9:45 Neil Gemmell

Professor Neil Gemmell, who was recently appointed to the AgResearch Chair in Reproduction and Genomics at Otago University, completed his PhD thesis on the platypus. While at the University of Canterbury, he led a team of New Zealand-based researchers contributing to an international consortium which has just decoded the genome of the platypus. The team included scientists from the United States, Australia, England, Germany, Israel, Japan and Spain, under the leadership of the Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis. Their achievements are the subject of this week's cover story for the respected international science journal, Nature.

10:05 Peter Cameron

Peter Cameron is Professor of Mathematics at Queen Mary College, University of London. He is the 2008 Forder Lecturer, a lectureship awarded every two years by the London Mathematical Society for an eminent mathematician from the UK to tour New Zealand. He delivered a lecture (Sudoku: Is It Mathematics?) at Auckland University during his visit.
NB. Mentioned during the interview is the mathematician Paul Erdos; his life is covered in the 1998 book, The Man Who Loved Only Numbers by Paul Hoffman (Hyperion Press, ISBN: 0786884061).

10:45 Ron Hanson

With his brother Mark, Ron Hanson is co-publisher and co-editor of experimental arts magazine White Fungus. Based in Wellington, the print magazine is distributed to cities around the world, including Taiwan, Tokyo, San Francisco, Montreal and Berlin, as well as in New Zealand; there's also a news blog. Ron also provides monthly comment on noise music for the Upbeat! programme on Radio New Zealand Concert.

11:05 William E. Marks

William E. Marks has been a longtime advocate for the protection of water and was made the first WWRF Hero by the World Water Rescue Foundation. As well as journeying by horseback across the United States for two years in the 1970s, he has visited Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and Australia to study historical water management practices. He established water testing institutes and a publishing company, but sold all his business interests in the 1990s to focus on writing about water. He is the author of The Holy Order of Water (Bell Pond Books, ISBN: 0-88010-483-X), which describes the biological, historical, environmental and spiritual significance of water, and the editor of Water Voices from Around the World: A Profound Book About Water (ISBN: 978-0-9793046-0-6), in which 77 authors attest to the significance of water.

11:30 Suzanne Innes-Kent

Suzanne Innes-Kent is a counselor and celebrant. She recently completed a Master in Laws degree at Victoria University, focusing on employment, freedom of expression and international human rights law. A long-time contributor on the Nine to Noon and Saturday Morning programmes, she heads to Singapore in June with her husband Ian Macduff, for a period of several years. She will talk about making big changes in mid-life.

Music played on the programme

Sweet & Irie: Mama, Don't Cry
The 2008 single
(Dawn Raid)
Played at around 9:40am

Bob Dorough: Three is a Magic Number
From the 1998 album: Best of Schoolhouse Rock
(Kid Rhino)
Played at around 10:05am

Flight of the Conchords: Think About It
From the 2008 album: Flight of the Conchords
(Sub Pop)
Played at around 10:05am

Studio operators

Wellington engineer: Nick Chave
Auckland engineer: Jeremy Ansell