RNZ: Saturday Morning

Shaun Bythell lives in Wigtown, Scotland, where he runs The Bookshop - the largest second hand bookshop in Scotland. It contains over 100,000 books, spread over a mile of shelving along twisting corridors. In his book, Diary of a Bookseller, Bythell chronicles a year in the life of his bookshop - painting, with grumpy good humour, often unflattering pictures of customers and those who come to browse and not spend. But Bythell saves his real anger for the big online booksellers who dominate the market and drive small enterprises like his into the ground.

We know movies aren't real but we buy into them more than we realise, US neuroscientist Professor Jeff Zacks has concluded, after studying how we observe the world around us.

Brexit is a case of a "collective English mental breakdown", a Cambridge professor says.

Kim Hill reads emails and text messages from listeners to the Saturday Morning programme.

Last year marked the 200th anniversary since James Parkinson (1755-1824) defined the disease now named after him. Parkinson's Disease is still diagnosed today by recognising the symptoms he identified. In her book, The Enlightened Mr Parkinson: The Pioneering Life of a Forgotten English Surgeon, Cherry Lewis tells Parkinson's story through his three passions - medicine, politics and fossils. Parkinson was a political radical who was interrogated over a plot to kill King George III, and he wrote the first scientific study of fossils in English. Lewis is an honorary research fellow at the University of Bristol with a background in geology.\

Former Whanganui mayor and media commentator Michael Laws is a regional councillor in Otago, representing the Dunstan Ward, and the media spokesperson for the New Zealand Rodeo Cowboys Association. He will be talking to Kim in response to last week's interview with anti-rodeo activist Dr Peggy Larson.

A controversial Republican memo claiming bias in the FBI has been made public after US President Donald Trump overruled the Justice Department to order its release. The memo, written by Republican congressional staffers, is about the FBI's conduct during its inquiry into alleged Russian meddling in US elections. Josh Gerstein is White House correspondent for the political news website, Politico.

Professor Eric Topol is the director of the Scripps Translational Science Institute and Professor of Genomics at The Scripps Research Institute. He is one the world's foremost experts in digital medicine and currently holds the largest single grant of $US204 million to lead the Precision Medicine Initiative in the USA, involving one million Americans. Topol is an internationally acclaimed cardiologist and formerly Chief of Cardiology at the Cleveland Clinic. His most recent book The Patient Will See You Now (2015) explores how smartphones, big data, and technology are combining to democratise health care. Topol will be giving a lecture at the University of Auckland's School of Medicine on February 7. Details: https://www.fmhs.auckland.ac.nz/en/faculty/about/news-and-events/events/2018/2/7/Eric-Topol-public-lecture.html

Influential folk musician, activist and songwriter Peggy Seeger, was born in New York in 1935 and had a childhood steeped in music and politics.

Audience members at composer Max Richter's concert, Sleep, are provided with camp beds and encouraged to nod off during the eight-hour overnight performance. Richter, joined by other musicians and performers, plays piano throughout 31 uninterrupted classical and electronic music pieces. Sleep is coming to the Auckland Arts Festival on March 16: http://www.aucklandfestival.co.nz/events/sleep-at-shed-10-queens-wharf/

NASA is on a mission to land people on Mars and is building the world's most powerful rocket to get to the red planet. The rocket, called the Space Launch System (SLS) will produce more thrust at lift-off than anything before it. Building and testing the rocket is already under way and NASA engineer Tim Atkins is at the heart of the work. Atkins holds Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Engineering and Operations Research from the University of Central Florida, with decades of experience in software development, electronics integration, and rocket science. He is in Christchurch for the first UC Connect public lecture of 2018: 'Getting to Mars: Building the World's Most Powerful Rocket', 7pm - 8pm, Thursday 8 February, at the Engineering Core, Creyke Road, Ilam campus, University of Canterbury. Register to attend free at: www.canterbury.ac.nz/ucconnect. He'll also be speaking at MOTAT on February 12th, details here: http://www.motat.org.nz/experience/events/nasa-presentation-at-motat/.

Kim Hill reads emails and text messages from listeners to the Saturday Morning programme.

Megan Dunn has a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Auckland University. From 1996 - 2000, she co-directed the artist-run space Fiat Lux. She lived in London from 2001 and worked at Borders bookstores until the UK chain was liquidated in 2009; returning to New Zealand in 2010 to become general manager of Borders Lambton Quay, the Australasian chain promptly followed into receivership. Dunn now lives in Wellington where she is an art reviewer. Her first book Tinderbox, published at the end of 2017, is about the problems of the book world, which she now says she "never wants to think about again".

Oscar Kightley is a Samoan-born, New Zealand-raised writer/actor and director. Some of the most popular work he has been involved in include the movie series Sione's Wedding and the TV series bro'Town. In 2009 he was made a New Zealand Arts Foundation Arts Laureate. The same year he was given a medal from the Queen in recognition of services to New Zealand theatre and television. He most recently had a role in the Disney hit Moana. Kightley's famous 1997 play, Dawn Raids, has been reissued as part of Playmarkets Play Series - and he tells Kim why it remains relevant still.

Dr Kara Filbey is a postdoctoral research fellow in the Malaghan Institute's Allergic and Parasitic Diseases Programme and for the past 10 years she has researched immune responses to parasitic worm (helminth) infections. People in the world's tropical countries have the highest rates of infection with intestinal worms but also the lowest instances of allergy and autoimmune diseases - a phenomenon that has been explained by the 'hygiene hypothesis'. Filbey discusses how the worms manipulate their hosts' immune systems to survive - and how we can harness this ability to treat inflammatory diseases like asthma and dermatitis. Filbey is also a member of The Frank Burkitt Band.