In her new book, This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends, New York Times cybersecurity reporter Nicole Perlroth exposes threat posed by an international market in cyberweapons For decades the US government has been collecting "zero days", a software bug that allows a hacker to break into and silently spy on a computer or device, paying hackers for their code. This has fostered a global market in computer hacks that are now being used against the country. A high profile example last year involved a foreign hack of American tech firm Solar Winds, which then spread the virus to its clients, including huge corporations, the Pentagon, and other government agencies. Nicole Perlroth covers cybersecurity and digital espionage for The New York Times. She has covered Russian hacks of nuclear plants, airports, and elections, North Korea's cyberattacks against movie studios, banks and hospitals, Iranian attacks on oil companies, banks and the Trump campaign and hundreds of Chinese cyberattacks, including a months-long hack of The Times. Perlroth is a guest lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a graduate of Princeton University and Stanford University.

In the last 20 years, nearly 500,000 Americans have died from an opioid overdose making them the leading cause of accidental death in the country. Patrick Radden Keefe tells the story of how the Sackler family became a decisive force in this national tragedy In his new book Empire of Pain. The super-rich family is known for their lavish donations to the arts and the sciences, but the source of the family fortune turned out to be the opioid painkiller OxyContin. For years, their company Purdue Pharma had been in the news for creating OxyContin - the powerful painkiller whose introduction in 1996 ushered in a new era of both pain management and opioid addiction. Patrick Radden Keefe is a staff writer at the New Yorker and the author of Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland, as well as The Snakehead, and Chatter. He also created and hosted the popular podcast "Wind of Change".

Scots go to the polls for the Scottish Parliament election on May 6 and the stakes are high as the Scottish National Party aims to control the devolved parliament and make another push for independence. Comedian Janey Godley won a huge following last year for her irreverent voice-over videos of Scotland's first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, during Sturgeon's coronavirus briefings. In 2016 a photo of Godley standing outside Donald Trump's Turnberry Golf resort holding a sign stating "Trump is a C***", went viral.

All across India, a trail of death and misery is devastating the country and pushing the overburdened healthcare system towards collapse. Oxygen and medicine are in short supply as the nation deals with a reported 18 million Covid-19 cases, and more than 204,000 deaths. Author and journalist Shoba Narayan joins us from Bengaluru (Bangalore) where a double mutant strain of the disease is spreading.

Kim Hill reads listener feedback for Saturday Morning 24 April 2021.

Poet and writer Kate Camp returns to discuss another classic work of literature. This week, Sydney Bridge Upside Down. Written by David Ballantyne and published in 1968, it's been described as the great unread New Zealand novel, a gothic thriller, a coming-of-age story and a sinister family tragedy.

All travel between New Zealand and Western Australia has been paused after a three-day lockdown was announced in Perth and the Peel region. Kim asked epidemiologist Professor Michael Baker about the significance of the Western Australian outbreak and the likely impact on the travel bubble.

Bill Edgar is the son of one of Australia's most notorious gangsters, a former street kid, prisoner, sexual abuse survivor and inventor. Now the Queensland private investigator has found fame for an unusual service he offers - messages delivered from beyond the grave.

Australian human rights lawyer Jennifer Robinson has been described as the go-to barrister for London's rich and famous. Standing by her clients Julian Assange and Amber Heard in the full glare of international media, she is based at a top London law firm Doughty Street Chambers. Originally from the small town of Berry, NSW, Jennifer Robinson also has a long-term commitment to independence for West Papua and works with human rights activist Benny Wenda. Her latest mission is to improve educational opportunities for public school children. She recently founded the Acacia Awards, in association with the Public Education Foundation in Australia, in which prominent people who were educated in the public system will sponsor a student from their former school or area, providing mentorship and a small scholarship.

New Zealand film director Toa Fraser, 46, recently revealed on Twitter that he has Young Onset Parkinson's Disease. "People used to say I look cool. These days, people ask me why I look so serious. Mine is one of the many faces of Young Onset Parkinson's, an (as yet) incurable brain disease. I was diagnosed five years ago. I've kept it quiet until today. #ParkinsonsAwarenessMonth". Toa Fraser's first feature film, No. 2, won the Audience Award at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival and lately he has been working on the series Sweet Tooth, which screens on Netflix later this year.