US writer Kim Stanley Robinson spends a lot of time imagining the future. The author of more than 20 novels, including his best-selling The Mars Trilogy, he's considered one of the greatest writers of contemporary science fiction of our time. More recently the committed environmentalist has turned his attention back on Earth, putting his mind and imagination to climate change in his acclaimed book The Ministry for the Future. It lays out what's been described as a chilling yet hopeful vision of how the next few decades on Earth might unfold.

Saturday morning listener feedback

One of the world's most respected contemporary choreographers, award-winning British dancer of Bangladeshi-descent Akram Khan is bringing a retelling of Rudyard Kipling's much-loved classic to New Zealand in February in the Aotearoa New Zealand Festival of the Arts. State-of-the-art animation, narration and music bring the jungle and city to life in Jungle Book reimagined; about connecting with and respecting our natural world, and of humans' need to belong. The Akram Khan Company is recognised as one of the world's foremost innovative dance companies - its roots are in Indian kathak form and contemporary dance. A highlight of Khan's career was the creation of an acclaimed section of the London 2012 Olympic Games Opening Ceremony.

Traditional Irish band Gráda are reforming and returning to tour New Zealand in October. Two members of the band, Gerry Paul and Andrew Laking are Kiwis. Gráda is known for its energy on stage. According to Gráda's Galway-based lead singer Nicola Joyce it's this energy that creates moments of empathy in the crowd. After Gráda disbanded in 2011, a song Joyce wrote for her new band The Whileaways, Toss the Bobbin, inspired an invitation from the University of Galway to contribute a chapter to Ionbhá: The Empathy Book for Ireland. Nicola Joyce has been described by The Wall Street Journal as 'a magnificent vocalist who sings with sheer beauty and poignancy'.

In her non-fiction writing, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Visit From the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan has explored solutions for homelessness in America. Her year-long reporting on street homelessness and supportive housing in Brooklyn recently appeared in The New Yorker. As a journalist, Jennifer also writes frequently in the New York Times Magazine. Her 2002 cover story on homeless children received the Carroll Kowal Journalism Award.

Dutch art detective Arthur Brand is known as 'the Indiana Jones of the art world', having spent decades tracking down stolen masterpieces, including Picassos, Van Goghs and missing artifacts such as Oscar Wilde's ring and the "Hitler's Horses" bronze statues. Earlier this month, Brand recovered The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring, an early Van Gogh stolen from a Dutch museum three years ago. The painting was delivered to his doorstep in an IKEA bag. Brand has written two books about his recoveries, including Hitler's Horses.

Emeritus Professor of Behavioural Genetics at the University of Sydney, Benjamin Oldroyd is an experimental scientist who has published more than three hundred scientific papers, mostly on honey bees and their evolution. Oldroyd's new book Beyond DNA: How Epigenetics is Transforming our Understanding of Evolution advances new ways of thinking about evolution and adaptation. Here Prof Oldroyd examines the idea that spores, sperm, pollen and ova are packed with personalised extra-genetic information that play an important role in offspring development with lifelong effects.

The All Blacks play Italy in a game they can't afford to lose in Lyon. RNZ sports aficionado Nathan Rarere checks in at half time with how the All Blacks are performing with a full strength team in a crunch game.

In his new novel Lola in The Mirror, Trent Dalton brings to life the experience of homelessness in his usual compelling and strangely uplifting style. The Australian writer talks to Kim Hill about hope, compassion and how darkness reveals light.

After years of exploring the function of dreams, sleep scientist Mark Blagrove suspects human connection may be at the heart of our brain's unconscious storytelling. "Humans may have evolved to have dreams that have lots of characters in them, lots of emotions in them, that are worth telling to other people," he tells Kim Hill.