RNZ: Saturday Morning

Norwegian Maja Lunde is the author of several books for children and young adults, and is also a screen writer for film and television. Her debut novel for adults, international best-seller The History of Bees, is set in the not-too-distant future when bees have died out in a global environmental crisis - causing food shortages and a steep decline in the human population. Lunde is a guest of Writers & Readers at the New Zealand Festival from 8 to 11 March. The full programme brochure and website will be available on Thursday 1 February.

With the opening of rodeo season in New Zealand, the organisation Anti Rodeo Action NZ has brought Dr Peggy Larson from her home in Vermont to Aotearoa, on her first ever visit. The former rodeo rider, vet and farmer turned rodeo opponent holds degrees from Ohio State Vet School, UC Davis, and Vermont Law School. She discusses her efforts to ban rodeo in a number of different states in the US and countries around the world. She is also founder of the US National Spay/Neuter Coalition

Michael Wolff was given unprecedented access to the White House during President Trump’s first 100 days and in his book Fire and Fury paints a picture of a chaotic, dysfunctional administration.

Educated at the University of Canterbury, Professor Richard Easther taught at Yale University from 2004 until the end of 2011, and is now head of the Department of Physics at the University of Auckland. His work focuses on the physics of the very early universe including the inflationary epoch - a period of accelerated expansion immediately after the big bang - which is thought to have set the stage for the subsequent evolution of the universe. Easther will explain the coming week's rare celestial event - the so-called 'super blue blood moon eclipse' - which sees three separate celestial events occur on one night for the first time since March 31,1866.

What do you get when our 50-mumble programme presenter and self-described 'music geek' Richard Langston, meets millennial music critic, freelance journalist and self-described 'pop culture enthusiast' Kate Robertson to discuss their top music picks for the year? Tune in for the answer - and some cool and surprising music.

Teremoana Rapley is singer, rapper, TV producer and director and entrepreneur. She joined hip hop group Upper Hutt Posse in 1987, aged 14, and a few years later, Moana Maniapoto's Moana and the Moahunters. She launched a solo singing career in 1995, the same year she joined long-running New Zealand children's television show What Now as a field reporter (and followed that with a decade with youth magazine programme Mai Time). After the birth of her fourth child, she moved permanently behind the camera, holding a range of roles including director, camera operator, scriptwriter and producer. Rapley currently works at Auckland City Council's Southern Initiative. She talks to Richard about her extensive career - as well as recently uncovering some startling family history.

Professor Alison Phipps is the UNESCO Chair of Refugee Integration at the University of Glasgow. In 2012 she received an OBE for Services to Education and Intercultural and Interreligious Relations. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the Royal Society of Arts, and of the Academy of Social Sciences. She is also an activist, poet and academic and has a refugee foster daughter, whose experience in coming to Scotland she has written about extensively. She is author of numerous books and articles and a regular international keynote speaker and broadcaster, with regular columns in the national Scottish broadsheet press. Phipps' visit to Aotearoa is hosted by the University of Otago.

Dianne Buchan spent her working life as a social and environmental impact assessor and researcher on projects and programmes throughout New Zealand and the Pacific. She is retired, though still serves as a board member of the Environment Institute of Australia and New Zealand, and of the DB Environmental Trust, which she established. As a member of the Otaki Historical Society, Buchan became interested in the stories around the people who attended the Otaki Health Camp (now called Stand Children's Village), and recorded their stories in a new book Sun, Sea & Sustenance, examining the history of New Zealand's first permanent health camp.

Mike Ladd started writing and reading his poetry in Adelaide at the age of 17. His first book The Crack in the Crib was published in 1984 followed by eight collections of poetry and prose. He was the editor and host of the long-running ABC programme Poetica, which ran for 18 years. Ladd shares some of his poems and talks about poets and poetry traditions that influence his work. His latest collection is Invisible Mending, and Ladd is coming to Aotearoa for a Writers and Readers event as part of the NZ Festival 2018 in Wellington.

UK musician and songwriter Nick Halliwell says it was difficult to make sense of the Brexit vote result - so he wrote a pop record about it. Halliwell leads an ensemble called The Granite Shore - two of its members are New Zealanders - and runs the label Occultation Recordings. His recently-released album is called Suspended Second and it's an exploration of anxiety and the impact of the UK's Brexit vote. Occultation Recordings has co-released the album with Dunedin's Fishrider Records.

Dr Alastair McClymont is a former Wellingtonian who now resides in Calgary, Canada. He specializes in applied geophysics for environmental, engineering, water supply, and archaeological projects. He has worked extensively around the globe. As well as three trips to Lithuania investigating Holocaust mass burial sites, Alastair most recently completed an emergency groundwater exploration project in Bangladesh for water supply to the rapidly expanding Rohingya refugee camps near Cox's Bazar.

Kim Hill reads feedback from listeners.

Laura Kroetsch is director of Adelaide Writers' Week and Kate De Goldi is a fiction writer and book reviewer. The pair discuss their three favourite fiction and nonfiction books of 2017.

Chris Nichol has worked in television since 1986, in senior roles with TVNZ's Religious Programmes Unit. He produced Praise Be from 1991 - 1994 and presented the programme from 2007 to this year, when it was cancelled by the network. Nichol is an ordained minister of the Presbyterian Church and has taught a course in Religion, Media and Culture at Victoria University. Nichol has a band called the Dunstan Rangers, who have released two CDs, and ruminates on music and life to friends in emails he calls Regularly Irregular Musical Meanderings.

What's it really like to be an Uber driver? RNZ's Simon Morton went undercover to find out. He talks to Kim Hill about becoming a driver, what he earned, picking up passengers – and passengers trying to pick him up.