RNZ: Sunday Morning

Dan Nocera is the Patterson Rockwood Professor of Energy in Harvard's Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology. He is due in New Zealand next week for the MacDiarmid Institute's biennial international conference. He is best known as the scientist behind the artificial leaf, which uses clever chemistry to do some of the things that plants do in photosynthesis.

Philippa Tolley explores the application of the blueprint for central Christchurch and asks if local people are still enthused.

The subject of this week's segment was shaped by The Enlightenment and has been described as the English Voltaire.

Labour List MP Carmen Hack is concerned about David Shearer's affordable homes promise but comes up with an idea that might just keep building costs down.

Former Speaker of House and soon to be New Zealand's High Commissioner to the Court of St James, Dr Smith speaks about his career in the media, as an academic, with the NZ Dairy Board and in New Zealand's Parliament.

Ideas this week talks to Marama Davidson, David Geary and Clayton Thomas-Muller about the Idle No More movement which deals with the rights and identity of First Nations people, starting in Canada with a predominantly female lead.

Associate Professor from the University of Auckland, Mark Costello talks about the discovering and naming the various species on Earth in order to stop them from going extinct.

The media's long goodbye to Sir Paul Holmes and the thoughts of a former colleague; Gareth Morgan on copping flak from cat lovers and football fans - and how he gets issues into the media and; knock-backs for news in Auckland.

Of all the rugby formats Gordon Tietjens has been New Zealand's most successful coach. He speaks about that record of success and the road to Rio where 7's will make their Olympic debut.

Sally Round investigates if more needs to be done to help self harming teenagers

Opening in New Zealand this week is the controversial film Zero Dark Thirty the story of the tracking down of Osama Bin Laden. It's been criticised for its disturbing scenes of torture and for making no moral case against torture, though director Kathryn Bigelow insists that she's against such practices. In the light of the film's release and proposed new legislation in the UK that would make prosecution of torturers more difficult, Wayne takes a timely look at the subject.

South African trumpeter Hugh Masekela is heading to New Zealand to play Womad Taranaki in March. He tells Chris about his career, his obsession with music and its role in the downfall of apartheid.

Simon Rogers-Flaccid, National List MP, is trying to figure out what is actually required to be offered a ministerial portfolio in the next cabinet reshuffle.

'Another World is Possible' is the slogan of the World Social Forum an annual gathering of civil society organisations that began in Porto Alegre, Brazil in 2001. And it's the topic of an essay competition being launched by the Labour History Project this week. Chris Laidlaw talks to historian Mark Derby about the competition and the 1913 'What is Socialism?' essay competition, organised by the labour activist and later Labour Prime Minister Water Nash, that inspired it; Professor Roger Robinson discusses Julius Vogel's Anno Domini 2000 the Utopian Novel that Got the Future Right; and Wellington regional councillor Paul Bruce recalls attending the first World Social Forum gathering in 2001.

As the new school year gets under way the headmaster of Wellington College, Roger Moses, thinks about the challenges ahead for schools and those who work and learn in the country's classrooms.