Afternoons for Monday 17 March 2014

1:10 Best song ever written

Our Day Will Come by Klaus Waldeck chosen by Aucklander Mary-Jane O'Reilly.

1:15 Eight months to Mars - what would well-known people do on a trip to Mars?

Tim Launder, general manager of Weta.

2:10 Skydiving at 90 - Ruby Leach

Jumping out of a plane at 4000 metres is not everyone's idea of a relaxing sunday activity, but for 90-year-old Ruby Leach, it was just another item ticked off her bucket list.

Ruby leapt from the plane in a tandem skydive yesterday, where she fell 45 seconds in a freedive, before parachuting safely down to land at a West Auckland airport.

2:20 Irish dancing on St Paddy's day - Mitchell O'Hara

As you are no doubt aware, it's Saint Patrick's Day, and in Christchurch Irish dance champion Mitchell O'Hara has been dancing since about 8 o'clock this morning.

The under-14 year old New Zealand Champion has spent the morning on his toes at the city's rest homes and he's taken some time out to talk to us before he begins on the St Patricks Day pub circuit this afternoon.

2:30 Reading - We Will Not Cease - part six

We continue Archibald Baxter's story of his experiences as a conscientious objector during the first world war. Last week we heard how  - after refusing to accept the call-up for military service - he had been arrested and jailed, then placed on a troop ship bound for the war. An outbreak of measles on the ship had given him an unexpected break in South Africa . But now he's been sent on to Europe where men are being killed in their thousands on the battle-front.

2:45 Feature album

Kimbra Vows (2011)

3:10 Writer Izidor Ruckel

They were images that shocked the world. In 1990, the first Western television crew talked their way into the  Hospital for Irrecoverable children in a remote Transylvanian town in Romania a few months after the execution of Romania’s leader, Nicolae Ceausescu. They found emaciated orphans living in cage like cots with shaved heads and desperate faces.  Izidor  Ruckel was one of them.   At ten, he looked like a 6 year old. Not enough food, not enough love. An American couple saw the story on an American TV programme and adopted him. But all the years of deprivation did not melt away with a family's love. He struggled, left home at 17, but has since reunited with his adoptive parents and now works as an advocate for orphans in Romania. We have a link on our Facebook page and website  He's written a book, Abandoned For Life: The Incredible Storty of One Romanian Orphan Hidden From the World: His Life. His Words.

3:30 Voices

For the first time in New Zealand lesbians, gays, bisexual and transgender or "LGBT" from our South East Asian community are finally speaking out in a ground-breaking theatre piece titled Mumbai Monologues.

4:06 The Panel

Ellen Read and Mark Inglis

Cyclone Lusi was weaker than we thought; the latest on the search for missing MH370; John Key is off to China; we celebrate St Patrick's Day; is the referendum in Crimea legal; and is it safe to bike around the Basin Reserve?