RNZ: Saturday Morning

Daniel Falconer is a designer and author at Weta Workshop in Wellington. He's been with the company for 20 years, working as part of the design team on such projects as The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, and has written 12 behind-the-scenes books about the work he and his colleagues have done on a number of films. Falconer's hobbies take in art, science, natural history and fantasy, and he also harbours a curiosity concerning the North American bigfoot mystery, a fascination that has seen him join US-based amateur researchers and scientists in the field a number of times in areas reputed to be hotspots for supposed encounters. His obsession helped spark a theatre production of Sasquatch, which will be performed for the first time during Loemis, Wellington's Winter Solstice Festival, June 15 - 21.

Ariel Levy is a journalist and writer based in New York. She joined The New Yorker as a staff writer in 2008, tackling topics such as the world's reaction to intersex South African runner Caster Semenya, and Edith Windsor, the plaintiff in the Supreme Court case that brought down the Defense of Marriage Act. Levy won a National Magazine Award in 2013 for the essay "Thanksgiving in Mongolia", where she details a miscarriage in a hotel room while on assignment in Ulaanbaatar. The loss caused Levy to examine the unravelling of her life, a process that led her to author the New York Times best-seller The Rules Do Not Apply (2017). Her first book was Female Chauvinist Pigs (2006), which looked at the rise of 'raunch' culture.

One of New Zealand's most successful and internationally prominent living painters, Max Gimblett has been living in North America since 1962. He took refuge in the teachings of Buddhism, and is a Rinzai Zen Priest - taking his vows in 2006. He is known for creating quatrefoil-shaped paintings and Sumi Ink 'enso' works. Gimblett has developed a reputation for shouting and stomping whilst painting in an attempt to be completely spontaneous and as an expression of the immediacy of Zen Buddhism. His work is in the collections of many of the world's leading museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum, the National Gallery of Art, and the Auckland Art Gallery Toi O Tamaki. A documentary about his life, Max Gimblett: Original Mind, will play on the closing night of the Doc Edge International Film Festival in both Wellington (May 21st, Roxy Cinema) and Auckland (June 5th, Q Theatre).

Charles Lane is an opinion writer for the Washington Post. He was a finalist for the 2009 Pulitzer Prize in editorial writing, and is the author of The Day Freedom Died: The Colfax Massacre and The Supreme Court and the Betrayal of Reconstruction, and is a frequent commentator on television and radio. He talks to Kim about an extraordinary week in US politics, which has seen President Donald Trump increasingly under pressure over the ongoing investigation into possible links between his associates and Russia.

Tommy Rhattigan was a seven-year-old boy in Manchester when he was lured to the house of Myra Hindley and Ian Brady with a promise of bread and jam.

Comedian Molly Sokhom was born in a refugee camp in Thailand after her parents fled Cambodia. Raised in California, she performed in the US before moving to Wellington in 2014. She is appearing at the NZ International Comedy Festival with a show about a family trip to Cambodia to meet the brother she never knew she had.

$42 billion dollars of Brazilian public money has been stolen in what is arguably the largest corruption scheme in history. Idelber Adelbar talks about the "frozen crisis" in his native country.

Juha Saarinen is a technology journalist and writer living in Auckland. He contributes to the New Zealand Herald over the years, he has written for the Guardian, Wired, PC World, Computerworld and ITnews Australia, covering networking, hardware, software, enterprise IT as well as the business and social aspects of computing.

Don Franks is a musician and song-writer, former factory worker and cleaner, runner and left-wing activist who has campaigned for workers' rights and the peace movement over many decades. He hosts Don Franks Music on Wellington Access Radio and is the author of Next to Gods: A cleaner's story and Nice Work If You Can Get It: Notes from a musician's diary. His latest book is Hill Run, a collection of his poems and his latest album is Blue Turning Grey, a selection of favourites from the American songbook.

Born in Palmerston North and educated at Victoria University, Annette Dixon has been the World Bank vice-president for the South Asia Region since 2014, a job that sees her direct lending operations and trust-funded projects worth more than $10 billion a year. Dixon joined the bank in 1999 as a sector manager in human development in the Europe and Central Asia (ECA) region and has since held many positions within the organisation. Before her overseas posting, Dixon was Ministry of Youth Affairs chief executive and worked in a number of high-level public sector roles. She recently spoke at the Wellington Club about how South Asia will fare as some of the world's largest economies turn increasingly protectionist.

Graham Lowe rose to prominence as a rugby league coach. He was the only one in the world to have won championships in three different countries - New Zealand, Australia and Great Britain. Lowe turned around both Wigan and the Manly Sea Eagles and was the first non-Queenslander to coach the State of Origin side. Lowe stood down from his job as the chief executive officer of the Manly Sea Eagles in 2011 because of health issues, but has since plunged back into sports management, with a takeover of the previously liquidated Bradford Bulls early this year. He has struggled with life-threatening illness on a number of occasions and is now an advocate for men's health issues. Lowe also contested the Albany ward of the Auckland Council for Auckland Future in 2016, ultimately missing out on one of the two positions. His latest venture sees him partner with the Manukau Institute of Technology to inspire would-be school leavers to stay in education, through courses he has devised with the institution's School of Sport.

Anne Enright is an Irish author and former television producer, and the country's inaugural Fiction Laureate. Her short stories have appeared in several magazines including The New Yorker and The Paris Review and won many awards. Her novels include The Wig My Father Wore (1995), shortlisted for the Irish Times/Aer Lingus Irish Literature Prize and The Gathering (2007) about a large Irish family gathering for the funeral of a wayward brother. The Gathering won the 2007 Man Booker Prize for Fiction and propelled Enright to international fame. Her most recent novel is The Green Road (2015), which won the Irish Novel of the Year. Anne Enright is in New Zealand for the WORD Christchurch Autumn Season and the Auckland Writers Festival.

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

Australians Dr Julian Fennessy and his wife Stephanie are co-founders and directors of the Giraffe Conservation Foundation (GCF) - the only NGO that concentrates solely on the conservation and management of giraffe throughout Africa. The pair, along with their two children, are based in Namibia from where the GCF conducts its work, including extensive research based on fitting wild giraffe with GPS tracking collars to understand behaviour and threats to the species. The work is considered urgent by many in conservation, with numbers of giraffe plummeting by over 40 per cent in the last two decades, and the animal having gone extinct in at least seven African countries. Julian and Stephanie Fennessy will be in Auckland for a free event, hosted by the Auckland Zoo, at the Auckland Art Gallery Auditorium on May 13, where they will present a screening of a David Attenborough-narrated documentary, Giraffes - Africa's Gentle Giants, about their Foundation's work.

After is Australian writer Nikki Gemmell's moving account of her complicated relationship with her mother Elayn and the effects of her mother's 'death by choice'.