Nights

Pater Lampp joins us once again. Tonight we're taking a look at the history of Manawatu Golf Club, asking why we love bad boys in Tennis and learning a bit more about world cycling champion Campbell Stewart.

Dr Catherine Theys, a senior lecturer at the University of Canterbury's School of Psychology, Speech and Hearing, has collaborated with researchers at KU Leuven (Belgium), the University of Toronto (Canada) and the University of Otago using MRI scans to find out what causes speech production problems.

Dr Craig Stevens, Principal Scientist of Marine Physics at NIWA - he's just returned from "grounding line" of the Ross Ice Shelf where he and teams from throughout the world were researching a number of climate questions including sea level rise, ocean health and Antarctic ecology.

A new series on Nights in collaboration with the MacDiarmid Institute where we take an idea from fiction and see how it stands up to scientific scrutiny. Tonight, Professor Justin Hodgkiss Professor of Chemistry at Victoria University Wellington and MacDiarmid Institute Co-Director and Principal Investigator give us his take on lightsabers.

We're joined by actor Amberlea Jones and writer and producer Joanna Pearce, who's play Testostrogen tells the story of a man dealing with a powerful inclination to dress in women's clothes and then making the decision to switch genders completely. Male to female transformation on stage!

Elsbeth Hardie joins us to tell us about her new book which tells the story of how in 1797, the British government pressed a small group of French and German prisoners of war into the New South Wales Corps, gave them firearms and placed them as guards on a ship carrying 66 convict women and two convict men to New South Wales. The result was a mutiny some months into the voyage in which the captain of the Lady Shore was killed and the fates of all of those on board were tied together as the ship was taken to South America.

Nina Hall, Assistant Professor of International Relations at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies joins us for her debut as a regular nights contributor. Tonight she asks How transformative has the Labour coalition government's foreign policy been? And what are the international issues likely to be in 2020, an election year?

RNZ Pacific's Vinnie Wylie joins us for the first time as our Monday sportscaster.

The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra performs a work inspired by pop and minimalist rock from lauded American composer John Adams this Friday, 31 January. This is the first NZSO concert for 2020 and also the first under Hamish McKeich's new title "NZSO Principal Conductor in Residence" after several years as NZSO Associate Conductor - we talk to Hamish about the concert and his new role.

Sebastian Xu has made hs home in Wellington but hails from the city of Wuhan in China where most of his family still live. He's here to give us a local's guide to the city.