Internationally respected New Zealand ecologist John Flux has spent his life studying hares, starlings, and even his own cats. His study of starlings in Belmont Regional Park, near Wellington, has become one of the longest continuous ecological studies in the world, running from 1970 to today. At its peak he and his wife Meg would examine 500 starling nest boxes, located in munitions bunkers built by the US military in 1942. John still climbs a ladder each year to check on 50 nesting boxes to see what effect climate change is having on the timing of egg laying. He's recently authored a paper in the European Journal of Ecology about what humans might learn from the fate of feral populations of domesticated rabbits.

Noelle McCarthy reads listener feedback for 1 June 2019.

Nga Hine Pukorero are a performance poetry group are from Nga Puna o Waiorea, the Te Reo Maori immersion kura at Western Springs College. In 2018, Nga Hine Pukorero competed against 44 other high school teams to be crowned the grand slam champions of 'Word - The Front Line', the largest poetry slam in Aotearoa. Two months later they also won the Trans-Tasman Poetry Youth Slam in Melbourne. These victories have secured them an invitation to the world's biggest youth poetry slam. In July they will travel across the Pacific to share their voices with the world at the 2019 Brave New Voices (BNV) Youth Poetry Festival in the United States. Nga Hine Pukorero are Arihia Hall, 17 yrs (Te Arawa Ngati Tuwharetoa, Ngati Tukorehe); Terina Wichman-Evans, 17 yrs (Ngapuhi, Ngati-Whatua, Te Au Pouri); Matariki Bennett, 16 yrs (Te Arawa, Ngati Pikiao, Ngati Whakaaue) and Manaia Tuwhare-Hoani, 16 yrs (Ngapuhi, Ngati Tautahi ki Kaikohe & Te Popoto ki Utakura, Ngati Wai Mai Mokau/Whangaruru) the great-granddaughter of the great New Zealand poet Hone Tuwhare. The group has a Givealittle page to fundraise for their trip to the US, details here.

Jason Te Mete (Ngati Ranganui) is an actor, singer, dancer, director, vocal coach, musical director and pianist. He is also programme leader of Performing Arts at Manukau Institute of Technology. He is in production of his new play, Over My Dead Body: LITTLE BLACK BITCH at Wellington's BATS Theatre (4-8 June), with students from his Bachelor of Creative Arts (Performing Arts) programme. Because the play includes the topic of suicide, trigger warnings will be made before the play, and a facilitated discussion held after the show, with an offer of further counselling to those affected by the work. Te Mete won an Adam NZ Play Award as Best Maori Playwright 2018 for the work, and has had a distinguished career across the creative arts.

Sean Mallon, of Samoan (Mulivai, Safata) and Irish descent, is Senior Curator Pacific Cultures at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. His latest book, done with Sébastien Galliot, is Tatau: A History of Samoan Tattooing (Te Papa Press), which won the award for best Illustrated Non-Fiction in the 2019 Ockham book awards. Mallon has been a council member of The Polynesian Society since 2008.

Qiane Matata-Sipu (Te Wai-o-hua, Waikato-Tainui) is a South Auckland based journalist, photographer and social activist. She is currently producing NUKU, a creative and social impact story-telling project profiling 100 "kickass indigenous wahine".

John Walker is one of Canada's best known documentary film-makers. His latest work is Assholes: A Theory. The film is a direct response to psychology professor Aaron James' witty bestseller about why some people are assholes and how to deal with them - in an age when the trait seems to be on the rise. John Walker's films have been widely broadcast and have appeared at major international film festivals in Toronto, Vancouver, New York, Los Angeles, Berlin, London and Tokyo. He has received over 60 Canadian and international nominations and awards for his writing, directing, producing and cinematography. Assholes: A Theory is screening in Auckland and Wellington as part of the Documentary Edge International Film Festival.

Wendy Parkins, formerly a professor of Victorian Literature, has taught at universities in New Zealand, Australia and the UK. She is the author of three scholarly monographs and dozens of academic articles and book chapters. Her previous books include Slow Living (co-authored with Geoffrey Craig) and Jane Morris: The burden of history. Her memoir, just published, is Every morning, so far, I'm alive which chronicles her struggle with homesickness and career burn-out, which develops into depression, contamination phobia and OCD.

Martin Wylie has decades of experience in business, including 10 years as company secretary at Telecom, chief executive of Simpson Grierson and iHug, and chief executive and director of CallPlus, which was founded by Malcolm Dick and Annette Presley in 1996. After exiting that business, following several other corporate roles, he left to head up the charity Elevator Group and its subsidiary Altus Enterprises, which employ over 900 people with mental and physical disabilities. The government is currently proposing changes to the minimum wage exemption act, which means organisations like Altus Enterprises would have to pay a minimum wage to its employees, rather than the nominal rate it pays currently. Wylie explains to Noelle why this move will "sink the sector".

A selection of feedback from today.