Brother and sister duo Sam and Ellie Studd's new book The Best Things In Life Are Cheese, aims to help us understand and appreciate cheese in all its many forms. They're about as close to cheese royalty as you get, their father is legendary expert Will Studd. As cheese guides they cover basics like how to pick a good one, tips for Christmas platters, plus recipes for cheesy treats.

What can mammals genome reveal about how the human genome works? Professor Elinor Karlsson co-leads the Zoonomia Project, which uses comparative genomics to shed light on how certain species achieve extraordinary feats, and to better understand parts of the human genome. Prof Karlsson is also well known for her Darwin's dogs citizen science genetics project- a collaboration between scientists and dog owners looking at the relationship between genetics and behaviour. She was in New Zealand for the Annual Meeting of Genomics Aotearoa.

As wars continue in Gaza and Ukraine, and other parts of the world, a new book questions whether New Zealand ought to have a military force at all. Professor Richard Jackson, Griffin Leonard and Joseph Llwellyn of The National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, at the University of Otago, are co-authors of Abolishing the Military - Arguments and Alternatives. So how could New Zealand ensure its security and promote international peace in alternative, non-violent ways?

A soulmate is someone who pushes you to discover your own potential, says actor and filmmaker Greg Sestero. For him, that's Tommy Wiseau, the "eccentric" friend who directed him in a 2003 film widely regarded as the worst ever made – The Room.

Writer Danyl McLauchlan joins Susie to tackle life's big questions, ideas and thinkers. Today's he's looking at Swedish academic and environmental activist Andreas Malm, author of the book How to Blow Up a Pipeline. Malm argues that climate change activists need to become more radical if they want to get results.

In The Best Country to Give Birth? medical historian Linda Bryder explores how New Zealand came to develop its unique approach to the role of midwives in childbirth. The 1990 Nurses Amendment Act allowed midwives to practise autonomously in the community without oversight by, or reference to, other health professionals and to set up training schemes separate from nursing. The College of Midwives celebrated this freedom as a win for women, but others expressed concerns about the unpreparedness of newly trained midwives to deal with emergencies. Linda Bryder is a Professor of History at Auckland University, a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand Te Aparangi, and is currently President of the Australian and New Zealand Society of the History of Medicine.

British clinical neuropsychologist Andy Mitchell was curious about the renewed attention psychedelics were getting in his field, so set out to do some first-person research. He took ten different drugs in ten different settings, from ketamine in a London kitchen to wachuma in the Colombian Amazon. The result is his new book Ten Trips - The New Reality of Psychedelics. In it Mitchell argues that a medical, therapeutic view of psychedelics neglects what is so unusual and valuable about them: the psychedelic experience itself.

Listener feedback 25 November 2023.

Kim and Hannah.

At the tender age of 72 Gary McCormick has no plans for retirement. The breakfast radio host is still touring small town New Zealand, as he did with Kim last century. Gary explored a different Kiwi community for each episode of Heartland, his documentary series, and was a regular contributor from the Blue Bird Caferina in Gisborne every Thursday, when Kim hosted Nine to Noon. Gary joins with stories of being stuck in small towns and singing karaoke with Kim until dawn.