Sunday Morning

Grammy award-winning artist Richard Marx will play in New Zealand for the first time ever next year touring his 13th studio album Songwriter. His 1989 classic Right Here Waiting topped the charts in both Australia and New Zealand and in 2004 his work with Luther Vandross for the song Dance With My Father a won a Grammy for Song of the Year. He also received chart success with songs like Satisfied and Take This Heart.

More rancour on the road to a new public media entity; youth crime facts and headlines don't match; Christchurch Call digs deep into algorithms.

Chris Donovan is calling home this morning, from Germany. Hailing from Putararu originally, Chris now lives with his partner Priscilla and their family near Stuttgart in the country's south-west in a place called Kirchheim unter Teck, which translates roughly as the villlage with a church under a castle.

A brunch recipe this morning from Joshua Ross, the head chef at Bellamy's Restaurant at Parliament, and he has his own Upper Hutt restaurant, Twenty Eight. Josh is flying out this week to compete in the Young Chef of the Year competition in Mexico City, he's up against seventeen other young chefs from around the world who've all won their national competitions, as he has here.

The passing of Queen Elizabeth II, has for many reignited the debate about New Zealand becoming a republic. Having canvassed the topic in the past, Research New Zealand have run a new poll to gauge where opinion sits here in Aotearoa. Research New Zealand's Emanuel Kalafatelis joins us with more.

Putin's order for partial mobilisation of military reservists along with the Russian-backed referendums in Donetsk and Luhansk heralds a new phase of the war in Ukraine. Alexander Gillespie, Professor of Law at the University of Waikato disusses the opportunites and risks this presents for both sides.

Professor Thomas Neitzert is emeritus professor of mechanical engineering at Auckland University of Technology. He's been taking a look at the future sustainability of electric vehicles.

New research this week from the University of California confirming that adults have poorer cognition but better well-being, as they age. We see significantly worse symptoms of depression, anxiety, and loneliness in younger people, while older people evidence greater mental well-being along with a fading brain. But what are the interventions that improve brain function as we get old? We're joined once again by Dr Ali Hill from the Human Nutrition department of Otago University.

The idea that talking to your plants helps them grow has been mostly debunked, but new research has shed some light on the benefits for ourselves. Nearly half of the people in a Trees.com survey acknowledged that they talk to their plants and most of those believe it has helped their mental health. Gary Altman is a Registered Horticultural Therapist and a Teaching Instructor in the Department of Plant Biology, teaching the Horticultural Therapy Certificate program at Rutgers University in the US.

So many people loved Jim Mora's first conversation with Dr Zazie Todd the animal behaviour expert agreed to come back. The author of Purr: The Science of Making Your Cat Happy answers listeners' questions about cats.