Listener Feedback for 4 September 2020.

Art historian and curator Mary Kisler discusses the opening of a touring Auckland Art Gallery exhibition at the Adam Art Gallery Te Pataka Toi in Wellington. The 19 Gallery's part of the Frances Hodgkins: European Journeys exhibition she is curating. By asking contemporary local artists to respond to Hodgkins' work with their own miniatures, it recreates a similar, charity-raising exhibition Hodgkins herself took part in back in 1934.

Dr Erin Macaulay is passionate about placentas. The Otago University academic studies the epigenetics of early human development and is intrigued by the fact that placentas display similar growth genes to cancer. Placentas stop growing when some of these invasive genes get switched off through a process called DNA methylation. So why does cancer just keep on growing, and not stop in a similar fashion? By investigating these placental genes and DNA methylation she hopes to better understand tumour growth, knowledge that one day could even be used to develop new cancer treatments.

Underground is where humans have kept our most sacred treasures and darkest secrets. From the subterranean cities of Cappadocia to smuggling tunnels on the US-Mexico border, caves full of tiny blind dragons and a seed vault located 1300km inside the Arctic circle, there are incredible worlds beneath us. Writer and geographer Chris Fitch explores these extraordinary places in his new book Subterranea. Fitch's 2017 debut The Atlas of Untamed Places was nominated for a 2018 Edward Stanford Travel Writing Award, and translated into several languages.

Plant biologist Professor Jason Wargent studies how plants respond to UV light. From strawberries to medical marijuana, his research is showing that exposing seeds or seedlings to artificial UV rays can help to grow more pest-resistant crops with higher yields. As the Chief Science Officer and founder of BioLumic in Palmerston North he's taking his ideas and technology global. He has just been selected as a finalist in the 'Researcher Entrepreneur' category of the KiwiNet Research Commercialisation Awards.

Australian cleaning specialist Sandra Pankhurst has undertaken some of the toughest jobs imaginable. Violent crime scenes, meth labs, and hoarder's houses are all in a day's work for Specialised Trauma Cleaning Services, the Melbourne business she set up more than 20 years ago. She has used her own trauma, including an abusive childhood and experience as a transgender woman, to offer empathy and bring order and care to people who are often going through the worst experience of their lives. Pankhurst was the subject of Sarah Krasnostein's successful 2017 book The Trauma Cleaner.

Big bums, married sex, Botox, teenagers and ageing parents. Columnist and author Caitlin Moran has tackled writing about the challenges of middle age with the same passion and humour that endeared her to readers of her best-selling feminist memoir How to Be a Woman. Her brand new book More Than A Woman is a guide to growing older. Moran was a published author at the age of 16 and became a columnist at The Times at 18. She has been named Columnist of the Year six times. She's also written two volumes of collected journalism, Moranthology and Moranifesto, and a novel, How to Build a Girl, which has been adapted as a movie.

Phylogeneticist Dr James Hadfield is working with scientists at ESR, the University of Otago & the University of Auckland to map the path of the recent Auckland COVID-19 outbreak using genetic tracing techniques. He works on the open source Nextstrain platform which allows scientists around the world to compare genetic information about SARS CoV-2, and track mutation rates and spread, almost in real time. When we last spoke to him in March, in the early stages of the pandemic, he was sharing the results from hundreds of positive samples from 33 different countries. Now there are over 80,000 coronavirus genomes publicly available from over 100 countries.

Recently-retired criminology professor Dr Greg Newbold built his 30-plus year academic career on a base of personal experience - courtesy of a seven-and-a-half year jail sentence for selling heroin.

While incarcerated he completed an MA on the social organisation of a maximum security prison. He began teaching sociology and criminology at the University of Canterbury In 1988 after completing his PhD. He is regarded as a leading authority on New Zealand's corrections system, and has published ten books, including The Big Huey a best-selling narrative of his prison experiences, and more than 100 articles on crime and criminal justice.

Kim reads listener feedback.