09:05 Trans-Tasman bubble: tourism sector relief

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Photo: RNZ/Carol Stiles

The tourism industry is heaving a sign of relief with the prospect of the border opening with Australia in less than two weeks. Australians made up 40-percent of tourists in 2019, spending two billion dollars. Their spending is forecast to recover to about 80-percent of that by early next year. Kathryn speaks with Grant Webster, Chief Executive of Tourism Holdings Limited, which owns Maui and Britz campervans and has two tourism businesses, Discover Waitomo, and Kiwi Experience. Its revenue has taken a 90 per cent hit due to covid, with over 100 jobs lost. She also talks with Justin Tighe-Umbers, Executive Director of the Board of Airline Representatives.

09:20 The building blocks of a career in robotics: from Lego to NASA

Aucklander Joseph Bowkett is living his dream, working as a robotics technologist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab. After completing an undergraduate degree in engineering at the University of Auckland, Joseph Bowkett moved to the US to pursue a PhD in mechanical engineering at Caltech in Los Angeles. First an intern through his PhD and now a permanent employee at NASA, Joseph Bowkett specialises in functional autonomy for robotic tasks, currently working on NASA's mission on Mars and on a proposed mission to Jupiter's moon, Europa. 

JPL Robotics Technologist Joseph Bowkett poses with RoMan.

JPL Robotics Technologist Joseph Bowkett poses with RoMan. Photo: Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech”

09:45 Australians welcome travel bubble, claim vaccine import blocked

Australia correspondent, Political Editor of The Age newspaper, Annika Smethurst looks at how news of a trans-Tasman travel bubble has been received in Australia. She'll also talk about Scott Morrison's claim that 3.1 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine have been blocked from coming to Australia. Just 850,000 doses of Covid vaccine has been administered across the country - well short of the 4 million doses the Government had promised by April.

Airplane flies over highway sign

Photo: 123RF

10:05 Fiona Murphy: The Shape of Sound

Fiona Murphy is an award winning poet and essayist whose new memoir The Shape of Sound explores her experience of being deaf. She was in her first year of school when a hearing test confirmed she was profoundly deaf in her left ear. She has limited hearing in her other ear, and has recently learned she will eventually lose her hearing completely. Fiona says for two decades she did her best to keep her deafness invisible, and it was only in her late 20s that she began indentifying as Deaf and began learning to sign. Fiona Murphy tells Kathryn Ryan learning Auslan  helped her discover her own place within the Deaf community and indeed her own identity.

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Photo: supplied

10:35 Book review  - The Madman's Library: The Greatest Curiosities of Literature by Edward Brooke-Hitchings

Fascinating, beautiful and not a little disquieting, this is a generously illustrated overview of unusual, rare and remarkable books. Selected from many different cultures and times, these books are intriguing physical objects, their contents often as thought-provoking as their appearance: Bronwyn Wylie-Gibb

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Photo: Simon and Schuster

Bronwyn Wylie-Gibb of University Book Shop, Dunedin reviews The Madman's Library: The Greatest Curiosities of Literature by Edward Brooke-Hitchings, Published by Simon & Schuster

10:45 The Reading

Part six of 'The Party Line' by Sue Orr.

11:05 Music with RNZ's Charlotte Ryan

Charlotte joins Kathryn to look at Tom Jones' new covers album, which contains a few surprises in his selections. Lana Del Ray has a new album and it's already being called one of the best releases of 2021, and local artist Mark Perkins releases his sophomore album this Friday - it's fun, uplifting and was influenced by ABBA and The Beach Boys.

11:20 Woodchopper Darcell Apelu on combining her axe with her art

Darcell Apelu is a champion woodchopper with a string of titles under her belt. In 2019 she took out much of the Sydney Royal Easter Show before going on to win the Inaugural New Zealand Stihl Timbersport Women's Championship. While Covid affected international and national competitions last year, she won two competitions on the South Island circuit. She's also a visual and performance artist who uses her body to explore themes of perceptions of the Pacific body, identity and being 'the other'. She joins Kathryn to talk about her time as artist-in-residence at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park in the UK and how she balances a busy life with teaching creative arts at Toi Ohomai Institute of Technology in Tauranga.

11:45 Covid emerged in October, eye genetics not so simple and a concussion spit test

Science commentator Siouxsie Wiles joins Kathryn to look at the modelling that shows Covid-19 may have emerged as early as October in China, how eye colour isn't just a simple genetic trait after all and the spit test that's being developed that could quickly diagnose concussion in rugby players.

Associate Professor Dr Siouxsie Wiles is the head of Bioluminescent Superbugs Lab at the University of Auckland.

9502646 - dna strand modern design, bright and colorful

Photo: amaviael/123RF

 

 

Music played in this show

Artist:   Isobel Campbell
Song: Ant Life
Broadcat time: 09:30