Sunday Morning for Sunday 21 May 2023

8:10 Annie Crummer: Music and family

One of New Zealand's most loved voices, Annie Crummer joins us ahead of her special New Zealand Music Month performance at Auckland Museum featuring a special guest performance by Pacific treasure and Annies father, Papa Will Crummer.

8:30 Christall Lowe: Kai and family

The gathering of food and people to share a meal is at the heart of Award-winning food photographer Christall Lowe’s family life.

Her book KAI - Food stories and recipes from my family table,  is a homage to life, food, flavours and memory. This week Christall’s book won the Judith Binney Prize for illustrated non-fiction at the Ockham book awards

9:10 Mediawatch

Mediawatch looks at how local political ructions in Southland attracted national news media attention this week. Did the media focus influence the outcome of a bid to roll the mayor in Gore? Also - political leaders using the media as a platform to publicise plans and policies.

9:30: Calling Home: Tai Wynyard in Shanghai

Usually on Calling Home we talk to kiwis who've been living overseas for quite a while. We thought we'd change tack this week and get some first impressions of a radically different place to live.

Basketball star Tai Wynyard, the youngest-ever Tall Black to step onto the court and play for his country, has taken his family to China, to play for the Shanghai Sharks.

10:10 Dr Grainne Cleary: A bird behaviouralist’s first visit to New Zealand

Regular listeners will remember Irish wildlife ecologist and bird behaviouralist Grainne Cleary who is usually based in Melbourne.  Grainne has made it to Aotearoa for the Auckland Writers Festival and has had a chance to check our birdlife for the very first time - find out what she thinks.

10:30 Clare Cock-Starkey: How much is a dollop?

When they say in recipes to add a dash of salt or a pinch of salt; how much is that, exactly? How about a dollop, a drizzle of olive oil, that's quite a common instruction, or a smidgeon? A smidgeon is actually a precise measurement. Many of these words are.

Claire Cock-Starkey has made a name for herself writing books of curiosities: about hyphens and hashtags, how they regarded death in mediaeval England, and ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. Two of her previous titles have been How to Skin a Lion and Penguins, Pineapples and Pangolins.

The new title from Claire is 'The Curious History of Weights & Measures' published by Bodleian Library Publishing.

11:10 Jarkko Okkonen: ‘Frost Quakes’ explained

We are the shaky isles, but at the opposite end of the world some places we don't think of as shaky are becoming more so.

A town in northern Finland was hit this year by 26 frost quakes in 7 hours. That's a world record. They've just confirmed the data on this.

So what are frost quakes? Jarkko Okkonen joins us from the Geological Society of Finland.

11:25 Clive Fernandes: Kiwisaver Trends

We hear about the amount of money we'll need in retirement and for many people it seems like a long way from reality.

The KiwiSaver advisory firm National Capital has released its first KiwiSaver Value for Money Report. Managing director Clive Fernandes joins us.

11:45 Michael Vercoe: My current song

David Curtis, a 13-year-old Wellington schoolboy in 1970 was the youngest singer ever to make the NZ Top 20 charts as they were then, and the record sold 170,000 copies on vinyl.

The apple doesn't fall far from the tree then with our next guest. Michael Vercoe is David's son, and a musician. He joins us to share his third single call Vegas.