Author Interview

The remarkable world of nature's hidden sounds and the way species communicate are being revealed by scientists using digital bioacoustics. Canadian scientist, Professor Karen Bakker, is an author and… Audio

Space is no longer the final frontier, a noble quest to satisfy humankind's destiny. There's a new space race, one between start up companies trying to be the next Fed-ex to the stars. Audio

One woman who knows all about banned books, and the attention they inadvertently draw, is Dr Emma Smith, Professor of Shakespeare studies at Oxford University. She's the author of Portable Magic: A… Audio

Set on a single day in 2016, Cliff Taylor's novel, The Spanish Garden tells a story of memory and loss, the fatal history shared between two families, Pakeha and Maori, and a man's enduring obsession… Audio

The popular Featherston Booktown Karukatea Festival is back this weekend. One of this weekend's events is called 'Campfire Tales', an event that show cases Kiwi horror writers. Audio

Professor Susan Magsamen is the founder of the International Arts + Mind Lab at the Center for Applied Neuroaesthetics at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. She and Ivy Ross, he VP of design for… Audio

More than 280 years ago, 250 men would set sail aboard the HMS Wager on a doomed secret mission to capture Spanish silver and gold off the coast of South America. Audio

Author and art writer Megan Dunn joins Kim to talk about two current shows with very different approaches to displaying public art collections. Audio, Gallery

In his new book Pathogenesis Dr Jonathan Kennedy offers a radical new frame to view human history. He argues that infectious diseases have been a decisive force in shaping humanity, from the… Audio

Award-winning writer Dr Emma Espiner (Ngāti Tukorehe, Ngāti Porou) talks to Kim Hill about her unconventional upbringing, ditching her recruitment job for med school and how New Zealand can improve… Audio

A Waikato midwife has drawn on a 33-year career, and even deeper family ties, to publish a novel about the profession's challenging New Zealand history.  Marie-ann Quin talks to Jesse. Audio

Psychotherapist Sandra Russell shares her experience of confronting the emotional challenges of living with incurable cancer in her book The Feeling of Cancer. Beyond the physical and medical demands… Audio

Reflecting on what makes a place home, Alie Benge's collection of essays Ithaca takes us to wildly different places from her past: from Ethiopia as a child to time spent in the Australian Army and… Audio

In Australian author and broadcaster Richard Fidler's The Book of Roads and Kingdoms he delves into the life of medieval wanderers who travelled to the outer edges of the known world during Islam's… Audio

Romantic comedy or rom-com, is often used as shorthand for something shallow and lacking in substance, but Minneapolis author Curtis Sittenfeld loves them. Audio

As the final series of HBO's hit drama Succession goes to air, the Murdoch media empire that inspired the show is dealing with its own dramas. Audio

 New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik says we overrate masters and underrate mastery. Away from the spotlight, people are doing the hard work to get better at something. Audio

Anne Perry the famous New Zealand crime novelist - formally Juliet Hulme the infamous Christchurch teenager convicted of murder - died last week at aged 84. The murder of Honorah Parker by her… Audio

Louisa Lim is no stranger to controversy - her first book The People's Republic of Amnesia - Tiananmen Revisited resulted in her being unable to visit mainland China for years. When the Hong Kong… Audio

There are various sacred walking journeys throughout the world and its religions. The most famous is probably the Way of St James, the Camino de Santiago in Spain. Writer and educator Sir Anthony… Audio