Listener feedback for 13 February 2021.

New Zealand's first batch of the Pfizer BionTech Covid-19 vaccine is set to arrive next week and vaccination of high-risk people will start a few weeks later. Medical academic and former pharmaceutical executive Doug Wilson shares his views from the other side of 80.

A new documentary with accompanying podcast casts fresh light on a campaign in the New Zealand Wars. NZ Wars: Stories of Tainui is the third part of a series produced for RNZ by Great Southern Television and looks at the events surrounding the invasion of the Waikato by soldiers of the Crown in 1863. The action preserved the power of what is now one of Aotearoa's oldest political institutions- the Kingitanga- and paved the way for land confiscations that remain the subject of discussion (and Treaty settlements) to this day. We speak to the show's host and creator Mihingarangi Forbes, and to Waikato Tribal Historian Rahui Papa.

Protein scientist and writer Danyl McLauchlan is following his two 'esoteric cult' novels Unspeakable Secrets of the Aro Valley and Mysterious Mysteries of the Aro Valley with a collection of essays. Tranquillity and Ruin sees him in pursuit of contentment, exploring "ideas and paths that he hopes will make him freer and happier - or, at least, less trapped, less medicated and less depressed". The quest takes him to a monastery to meditate, sees him joining a group of effective altruists as they try to figure out how to do most good in the world, and shoveling clay with a Buddhist monk.

As a young single mother in Arkansas with no medical training, Ruth Coker Burks cared for around 1000 men dying from AIDS through their final days. This was in the 1980s and 90s when the disease carried such a stigma that patients were shunned by their own families, and neglected by the medical profession at large. She tells the incredible story in her book All The Young Men.

Palmerston North-based writer Laura Jean McKay recently won $125,000 at the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards, taking out the Victorian Prize for Literature and the Fiction award for her novel The Animals in That Country. The book imagines the consequences a pandemic virus that gives infected humans the ability to understand animals. McKay is a lecturer in creative writing at Massey University, with a PhD from the University of Melbourne focusing on literary animal studies. She will be appearing at Adelaide Writers Week on February 27th, and the Bristol Festival of Ideas on March 16th. Both of these events can be attended online.

With thousands of mariners stranded in foreign waters by the coronavirus pandemic, and congestion and chaos affecting ports worldwide, there's no shortage of issues for maritime journalist Ian Urbina to cover. The Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter heads The Outlaw Ocean Project, a non-profit journalism organization based in Washington, D.C. that focuses on reporting about environmental and human rights crimes at sea. His recent work has been documenting incursions by China's huge fishing fleet into foreign waters (including in the Pacific), sometimes with fatal results for local fishing vessels, and the origins of the vast cache of fertiliser that led to last year's devastating port explosion in Beirut.

King's College London psychology lecturer Stuart Ritchie is on a mission to take on prominent Covid deniers, "lockdown sceptics", and influencers and celebs who spout anti-scientific guff. His Anti-Virus website issues clear point by point takedowns of their claims and misconceptions, providing links to relevant research to stop people being misled by spurious claims. Ritchie is also the author of Science Fictions, a book about the shortcomings of scientific research.

The second impeachment trial of the former US President Donald Trump is entering a critical phase. Amherst College law professor Lawrence Douglas joins us to discuss partisanship, the proceedings, and their ramifications for the US political scene. Prof Douglas is the author of several books including 2020's Will He Go?: Trump and the Looming Election Meltdown.

In 2015, a metre under English soil, two metal-detector enthusiasts (or detectorists) literally struck gold . They discovered an underground Viking treasure trove: a bangle, pendant and a ring, with a silver ingot plus hundreds of silver coins. Everything pointed towards their find being a hugely valuable 'hoard': a collection of valuables typically hidden to avoid looting by raiding parties. Such collections are subject to far tighter treasure-seeking controls than those applying to individual finds. So with question marks over their search rights over the land in question, they were faced with a dilemma. Their bumbling attempts to conceal the find are documented in Rebecca Mead's recent article 'The Curse of The Buried Treasure' in The New Yorker. Mead is a New Yorker staff writer and author of the critically acclaimed My Life in Middlemarch; a celebration of George Eliot, and the joys of literature.