Guest details for Saturday Morning 26 March 2011

8:12 Siddharta Mukherjee

Indian-born American doctor Siddhartha Mukherjee is Assistant Professor of Medicine at Columbia University, and staff cancer physician at Columbia University Medical Center. He is the author of The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer (HarperCollins, 978-0-007-36748-1).

8:40 Alex Gibney

Documentary film maker Alex Gibney is the founder of Jigsaw Productions, and blogs for the Atlantic about subjects including politics, human rights, and the arts. His work as a writer and director includes the 2006 Oscar-nominated Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room and the 2008 Oscar-winning film Taxi to the Dark Side. In 2010 he directed the feature Casino Jack and the United States of Money , and the documentary Client 9: the Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer, along with one of the six segments in the documentary Freakonomics, based on the best-selling book. The latter two films will screen during the World Cinema Showcase (Auckland 1-18 April, Wellington 14-30 April, Dunedin 5-18 May).

9:05 Pamela Ronald

Pamela Ronald is Professor of Plant Pathology at the University of California, Davis, and Director of Grass Genetics at the Joint Bioenergy Institute. With her husband, organic farmer Raoul W Adamchak, she wrote the 2008 book, Tomorrow's Table: Organic Farming, Genetics and the Future of Food (Oxford University Press, ISBN: 978-0-19-539357-6). She visited New Zealand for the NZBIO conference (21-23 March).

9:45 Art with Mary Kisler

Mary Kisler is the Senior Curator, Mackelvie Collection, International Art, at the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki, and the author of Angels & Aristocrats: Early European Art in New Zealand Public Collections (Random House). She will discuss the Auckland Arts Festival 2011 event White Night, which saw Auckland museums and galleries staying open till midnight on Saturday 12 March, featuring special exhibitions, activities and performances. Selected images from exhibitions by Louise Purvis at Bath St Gallery, Lisa Roet at Gow Langsford Gallery, and Ann Robinson and Ans Westra at FHE Gallery are available for view by clicking here or on the Art on Saturday Morning link on the right hand side of the Saturday Morning web page.

10:05 Playing Favorites with David Vann

David Vann teaches creative nonfiction and fiction at the University of San Francisco, and is the author of the memoir A Mile Down: The True Story of a Disastrous Career at Sea (2005), the short story collection, Legend of a Suicide (2008), and the new novel Caribou Island (Penguin, ISBN: 978-0-670-91844-7). David is an International Guest Writer at Victoria University of Wellington from 7 March to 30 May, and will be a guest of the Auckland Writers Festival (11-15 May).

11:10 Jean Auel

Jean Auel is best known for her 1980 novel The Clan of the Cave Bear, and the subsequent Earth's Children series set in prehistoric Europe, that as of 2010 had sold over 45 million copies worldwide. The sixth book in the series, The Land of Painted Caves (Hodder & Stoughton, ISBN: 978- 0-340-82425-2), will be published on 29 March.

11:45 Children's Books with Kate De Goldi

Kate De Goldi will discuss two new books:
The Dreamer, by Pam Munoz and Peter Sis (Scholastic, ISBN: 978-0-439-26970-4), an illustrated story based around the childhood of Pablo Neruda; and
The Golden Day by Ursula Dubosarsky (Allen & Unwin: ISBN: 978-1-74237-471-0), a story set in 1967 about a class of girls and their teacher who go missing.

Music played during the programme

Playing Favourites with David Vann

Roger Miller: King of the Road
The 1964 single
(Mercury)
Played at around 10:25

Berlin: Sex (I'm a ...)
The 1982 single from the album: Pleasure Victim
(Geffen)
Played at around 10:40

Parliament: Flash Light
The 1978 single
(Casablanca)
Played at around 10:50

Florence and the Machine: Cosmic Love
From the 2009 album: Lungs
(Island)
Played at around 10:55

Studio operators

Wellington engineer: Damon Taylor
Auckland engineer: Jeremy Ansell