Afternoons for Tuesday 4 April 2017

2:20 Short Story Club

Our short story club is officially launched! and the first story is The Poet's Wife by Bill Manhire. (click on the book title to read the story). We will be discussing it next Thursday the 13th of April after the 3pm news.

Email us your thoughts once you've read it! jesse@radionz.co.nz (Put Short Story Club in the subject line)

1:10 First song: Stanaj performs live

New York singer, Stanaj  is in his early 20's but already making big waves in the US, he's performed on the Tonight Show, with Jimmy Fallon, has had wide praise for his dynamic vocal range and his debut EP got to the top 15 on itunes.

He performs live in our Auckland studio.

1:15 Bringing back the whitebait

Back in February last year, more than 200 straw bales were installed to try and get whitebait, or inanga, to spawn in Christchurch rivers. It was a response, to help dwindling numbers of whitebait, after the 2011 Canterbury earthquake shifted river banks and disrupted habitats. The egg count results from the 2016 season are now in. And the Whaka Inaka team says they're overwhelmingly positive. The project was a collaboration between EOS Ecology, Ngai Tahu, the University of Canterbury and Conservation Volunteers of New Zealand. Dr Mike Hickford is from the university's School of Biological Sciences and Shelley McMurtrie is the principal aquatic ecology scientist at EOS Ecology.

1:25 A cure for smelly armpits?

The bacteria on our skin is what causes body odour. But in some people the smell can be so putrid, that no deodorant can disguise it.

Chris Callewaert, a post doctoral scholar from the University of California, San Diego has discovered that replacing the underarm bacteria of a very smelly person, with the bacteria from a less smelly person can solve the problem, albeit temporarily.

1:35 Paul Brislen talks tech

The US government has given America's ISPs carte blanche to sell customer data to marketing companies but what does that mean for New Zealand and could something similar happen here?

1:40 Favourite album

The Terminals are an alternative rock band from Dunedin. Today we feature tracks from their 1990 debut Flying Nun album "Unconfined."

2:10 Book critic

Best selling author Catherine Robertson is our critic.  Today she talks to Jesse about Romance Writers NZ, an organisation of which she is vice President, and The Book Awards Trust where she is the New Zealand Society of Authors representative. 

2:20 Music Feature: Leila Adu

In today's music feature we talk to a young woman whose voice has been described as "like hot treacle on broken glass"  She's a New Zealand composer of Ghanaian descent who has a long list of notable achievements, yet you have probably not heard of her.  Leila Adu is currently based in Brooklyn, New York and is a doctoral fellow at Princeton University.

3:10 The Death of Expertise

Alternative facts did not start with Donald Trump. For years, emotion has played a bigger role than reason in many public debates.

But the rejection of rationalism and faith in experts is getting worse according to Tom Nichols, a Professor of National Security Affairs at the U.S. Naval War College. He says an epidemic of narcissism, where no one is ever wrong, is fueling the problem.  He explores the implications of the 'post truth' era in his new book, The Death of Expertise:
The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why It Matters

3:30 Science and environment stories

Stories from Our Changing World.

3:45 The Pre-Panel Story of the Day and One Quick Question

4:05 The Panel with Selwyn Manning and Julia Hartley-Moore