Nights

Our regular soils expert Professor Louis Schipper from the University of Waikato is part of a group of scientist to recently recieve a Marsden Grant look at how biological systems respond to increasing temperature. Louis will be looking at the response of soil respiration to changes in temperature and he joins us to talk about this work and its implications.

Peter Lampp is our sportscaster tonight. He'll be casting his eye on Paul Coll from Greymouth reaching the Squash World final and asking if Sonny Bill Williams was the great he's claimed to be.

Regan Dooley is a dad from Island Bay in Wellington. He wonders whether we've got the priorities around the wrong way when it comes to walkers versus traffic, especially if we're trying to encourage more kids to walk.

To mark 2019 as the year of the Periodic Table, RNZ Nights has teamed up with the MacDiarmid Institute to bring you Element of The Week. Tonight, Sarah Masters, Associate Professor of Chemistry at Canterbury University and president of the New Zealand Institute of Chemistry introduces us to the element sulfur and the reason for tonight's sonic tonic dedicated to stink.

The NZ Music Awards are underway at Auckland's Spark Arena and RNZ Music is there to capture the moments and the memories. Performances include Avantdale Bowling Club, The Beths, BENEE, and a special performance from Hollie Smith and TEEKS. And Kiwi rock legends Th' Dudes, who are being inducted into the NZ Music Hall of Fame, will also perform. RNZ Music's Charlotte Ryan calls in to Karyn from the Awards.

It's time to dive into the week's news, in the past. This week our resident historian Robert Kelly is looking back to the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918. Armistice Day officially marked the end of hostilities on the western front. For the last 100 years it has been a significant day in most countries that fought in world war one but its meaning has changed a lot.

The Mental Health Foundation says new armed units being trialled by the police will result in people experiencing mental health crises being shot. The special patrols are aimed at cutting down response times in serious callouts where firearms are involved. The foundation's chief executive, Shaun Robinson, says tasers are disproportionately used in cases involving mental illness and he believes the same will occur with firearms. Shaun Robinson says Maori and Pacific people have higher rates of mental illness, so they'll be shot more often.

We check in with Reem Abbas for the latest news and views from Khartoum.

Barnardos Chief Executive Mike Munnelly joins us to mark the 50th year since the national children's charity was formally established as an incorporated society in New Zealand.

Dr Rizwan Asghar, senior lecturer at the University of Auckland's School of Computer Science joins us to look at the practicalities of implementing an online voting system in Aotearoa.