RNZ: Saturday Morning

Michael Mansfield QC has has represented defendants in criminal trials, appeals and inquiries in some of the UK's most controversial legal cases, including Barry George, accused of killing TV presenter Jill Dando; the family of Stephen Lawrence both in the private prosecution for murder and the public Inquiry, and the families of victims at the Bloody Sunday Inquiry in Derry and London. More recently he acted for the family of Jean Charles de Menezes, shot by the Metropolitan Police in 2005, and Mohammed Al Fayed in his pursuit of the truth surrounding the death of his son, Dodi, and Princess Diana in Paris in 1997. As well as a slew of honours, he has a number of professional memberships including President of the National Civil Rights Movement, and is a patron of several organisations including Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights. Mansfield is a keynote speaker at the 2017 Criminal Bar Association Conference in Auckland.

One of Canada's most respected arbitrators and advocates, Ian Binnie served for nearly 14 years as a Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada. During this time Binnie authored more than 170 opinions, including in landmark cases involving corporate and commercial disputes, aboriginal rights, media law, punitive damages, expert evidence and many other aspects of constitutional, criminal and administrative law. In 2011, he was asked by the New Zealand government to investigate compensating David Bain after the Dunedinite's conviction for killing five family members was quashed in 2009. Binnie went on to recommend compensation, a decision that was thrown out by the Justice Minister at the time, Judith Collins, after a peer review by Robert Fisher QC - a process Binnie has called "a stitch-up". Binnie is in New Zealand as a keynote speaker at the 2017 Criminal Bar Association Conference in Auckland.

Medical student Isabelle Lomax-Sawyers refers to her body as the type patients are warned not to have in a recent article. She talks to Kim Hill about living with a body that is stigmatised while training to be a doctor.

Kate Adie started with the BBC in 1968 as a studio technician in local radio, joining BBC TV News in London in 1979. Her coverage of the 1980 siege of the Iranian embassy changed the trajectory of her career, and set her on a path that saw her cover almost all major foreign crises in the subsequent decade, including the conflicts in Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Libya and the student uprising in Tiananmen Square in 1989. Adie has won a number of awards and a clutch of honorary degrees throughout her long and distinguished career as a war correspondent, including an OBE in 1993. The Iranian Embassy siege has been made into a film by New Zealand's Toa Fraser. 6 Days screens in the New Zealand International Film Festival.

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

Violinist Andrew Beer has been described as a performer displaying "accuracy and subtle charisma" by the Boston Globe, and as a "musical gift" by the New York Times. He has performed extensively throughout North America, Europe, Asia and Australasia, and his performances have been broadcast widely. Beer also teaches both privately and at the University of Auckland. He frequently serves as a judge for competitions and scholarship funds throughout New Zealand, including the selection panel for the Michael Hill International Violin Competition. Humanitarian and outreach concerts have also played an important role in his musical output, and through such endeavours he was awarded a US Congressional Commendation in 2006. Beer, concertmaster for the APO, will play lead violin in the upcoming APO production of Baroque Voices, which will feature one of Bach's happiest works, Orchestral Suite No.3 in D Major - the second movement has become famously known as the 'Air on the G String'. Andrew Beer will play for Kim and discuss the upcoming performances.

Emily Perkins holds a Master of Creative Writing from The University of Auckland and is a graduate of Toi Whakaari, the New Zealand Drama School. Her first book, Not Her Real Name and Other Stories, won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize (UK) and the Montana Award for Best First Book of Fiction (NZ). Her four novels include Novel About My Wife, which won the Montana Book Award (NZ) and the Believer Book of the Year (US). Her most recent novel is The Forrests, selected as a Book of the Year in the Daily Telegraph, Observer, and New Statesman among others. She is the co-writer, along with director Alison Maclean, of The Rehearsal, a feature film based on the novel by Eleanor Catton and her first play - an adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House - will be performed at Wellington's Circa Theatre, opening on August 5. Perkins and her IIML colleague, senior lecturer Chris Price, have recently edited The Fuse Box - a collection of essays from writers about the creative process. https://www.emilyperkinsauthor.com/ http://www.victoria.ac.nz/modernletters http://www.circa.co.nz/ @EmilyJPerkins @modernletters

Ethnographer and filmmaker Paul Wolffram spent two years living with the Lak people in the rainforests of southern New Ireland, Papua New Guinea, for his earlier documentary, Stori Tumbuna. In his new film, What Lies That Way, Wolffram aims to take his cultural understanding to a spiritual level by going bush for an initiation process into the Lak's Buai shaman cult. In a remote part of the forest he is left to fast without food and water, assisted by an elderly sorcerer who assures him that things will get tough - but he won't die. What Lies That Way is screening at the NZ International Film Festival. https://www.nziff.co.nz/2017/ https://whatliesthatway.com/ @nzff

Professor Richard (Rick) Legro is the Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Public Health Sciences at Penn State College of Medicine. He is an internationally recognised expert in fertility and polycystic ovarian syndrome. Professor Legro has held many important national and international roles. He is first author of four New England Journal of Medicine articles as well as many other highly regarded journals for the specialty of reproductive medicine. His topics of interest are fertility, obesity, genomics, insulin resistance, and clinical trials. Legro is in New Zealand as a guest of the University of Auckland where he will give a public lecture about obesity and fertility in women, which aims to answer the question "can we and should we treat obesity prior to conception?"

Ken Loach has been described as the most left-wing and subversive film director Britain has ever had.  He talks about the stories he loves, his hopes for the UK and his reputation as a firebrand.

Poorna Bell is an award-winning journalist who works as executive editor for The Huffington Post UK - the UK's third most-read digital website. Bell has also previously written for The Guardian, The Telegraph and The Observer. For five years she also was a regular on BBC radio, and has featured on BBC news, Sky news, London Live and ITV. Bell has recently written Chase the Rainbow, an account of her marriage to New Zealander Rob Bell, who suffered severe depression, and revealed his heroin addiction three years into the marriage. Rob Bell took his life in May 2015, at the age of 39.

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

Scott Brown is the new US Ambassador to New Zealand. Originally trained as a lawyer, during his student years Brown developed a career as a part-time model, and in 1982, won Cosmopolitan magazine's "America's Sexiest Man" contest. He received his law degree at Boston College Law School and built a successful career as an attorney, before switching to public office in 1992. Concurrently he served in the Massachusetts and Maryland National Guard, retiring as a Colonel after 35 years of service. In 2010, Brown won a special election and served in the U.S Senate for three years, during which time he had a reputation for bipartisanship. Having succeeded Democrat Ted Kennedy 2010, he was eventually defeated by Democrat Elizabeth Warren in the 2012 general election. After retiring from politics, he took up private practice and work with FOX News channel, where he was known for his conservative views on social issues. After endorsing Donald Trump during the presidential primaries, he was picked to replace outgoing US ambassador to New Zealand, Mark Gilbert, in January 2017.

Sarah Smuts-Kennedy is a New Zealand born and based artist, and an MFA graduate of the Elam School of Fine Arts, 2012. Smuts-Kennedy's biodynamic, permaculture teaching garden, 45 minutes north of Auckland, functions as a central axis for her research. She was the McCahon House Artist in Residence September - December in 2016, where she undertook a project called Awake, aiming to heal the McCahon Kauri - which were a great inspiration to the artist in the 1950s - of Kauri dieback. She'll talk to Kim about the McCahon Kauri - some of the seedlings of which will be on sale at an event at the Titirangi War Memorial Hall on August 6th - biodynamic gardening, as well as her For the Love of Bees project, which aims to make Auckland the safest city in the world for bees to live.

Laura Spinney graduated from Durham University with a degree in Natural Sciences and is now a writer and science journalist based in Paris. She has written for the New Scientist, The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph. Spinney's latest book, Pale Rider, examines what might be the the greatest human disaster, not only of the twentieth century, but possibly in all of recorded history - the Spanish flu of 1918-1920. Pale Rider recounts the story of an overlooked pandemic that killed as many as 100 million people - tracing it from Alaska to Brazil, from Persia to Spain, and from South Africa to Odessa.