The debut novel from Nathan Harris has received high praise and has been added to Barack Obama's summer reading list, selected for Oprah's Book Club, and longlisted for The 2021 Booker Prize.

Tensions between China and Taiwan have been described as the worst in 40 years after the Chinese air force intensified its overflights into the Taiwanese air defence zone earlier this month. Susan Thornton spent nearly 30 years working on Eurasia and East Asia for the US state department. Currently she is a senior fellow at Yale Law School's Paul Tsai China Center.

A global pioneer in the science of canopy ecology, Meg Lowman has been dubbed 'Einstein of the Treetops' by The Wall Street Journal. In other circles she is affectionately known as Canopy Meg.

With daily Covid case numbers climbing, there is mounting concern from health workers about the strain that could be put on ICU capacity. But it's not just the immediate hospitalisations that are a cause for worry, says Professor John Potter.

Listener feedback for 16 October 2021.

Rainy day lunch times, kapa haka practice, first crushes and classroom pets are all captured in Skinny Dip, the new poetry anthology curated by Kate De Goldi and Susan Paris.

With her unmistakable warble and towering figure, Julia Child was an unexpected icon of the kitchen. A new documentary from Betsy West and Julie Cohen uses unseen footage of Child along with chef interviews and mouth-watering cinematography to tell the story of her surprising rise to cult sensation and champion of French cuisine.

Multi-disciplinary artist Lisa Reihana (Ngapuhi - Ngati Hine, Ngai Tu-Te Auru) is the Artist In Focus for the upcoming Aotearoa New Zealand Festival of the Arts, and will be bringing a series of her most celebrated pieces alongside new works to the Wellington region for the festival. Reihana joins the show to discuss her work and play a few favourites.

Jeanette Kehoe-Perkinson believes far too many experienced, successful women give up their jobs midlife because they find it too difficult managing the effects of menopause, as well as juggling work and family. And Kehoe-Perkinson should know: she resigned from a demanding top executive job after 12 months a few years ago, on the tail of moving from the UK to New Zealand. As well as now working as a Chief People Officer for a global company Kehoe-Perkinson has set up Power Pause, a social enterprise raising awareness of menopause in workplaces, and helping to get policies in place so that companies and organisations can retain women through this time in life. She works with all sorts of businesses and organisations - from big banks to city councils - providing consultancy and workshops, and joins us ahead of the awareness-raising World Menopause Day on Monday.

Researchers have long searched for an alternative to opioids for pain relief, with few results so far. But that might all be about to change. Dr Charles Berde and his colleagues have been working to develop a local anaesthetic made from neosaxitoxin, an algae-derived pain medication with the power to replace opioids.