Sunday Morning

David Howard's coming up on Calling Home, from Croatia, where he met his wife, and has stayed. It's an area with turbulent history, its savage war of independence isn't a distant memory yet.

Doubts have been raised about the efficacy of RAT test brands in Australia, but we've been reassured that the ones here are picking up the new variants. Dr Andrew Read is at Penn State, Pennsylvania State University, he talks to Jim.

Professor of Psychology at Victoria University of Wellington Marc Wilson shares the latest research on what stress does to us and what other issues it might signal.

The name Higham is highly distinguished in the field of archaeology. Last year we interviewed Oxford University's Professor Tom Higham, originally from Dunedin, on his book How Science is Revealing a New Story of Our Human Origins. Now his dad has a book out too, his memoir. Charles Higham has been an eminent professor of archaeology at Otago, now emeritus, and his new book's called DIGGING DEEP - A Journey into Southeast Asia's past. He's still working at the forefront of discoveries there, extracting DNA from older and older humans there, creating deeper and deeper knowledge all the time of our ancient past as a species, how we lived and organised ourselves. Charles came to Otago University from Cambridge in the 1960s, with wife Polly and a very young Tom, and they have stayed.

How do you address the problem many people have, and not just elderly people, of getting up at night to go to the loo?

It's one of the least-studied human emotional states but one of the most important, cognitive neuroscientist Sophie Scott studies the science of laughter. As well as being interested in the serious science of brain function Professor Scott likes to have a laugh herself.

Danish native Torbjørn 'Thor' Pedersen is nearing the end of his mammoth mission to visit every nation in the world in a single journey, without taking a single flight.

Dr Richard Neutze is calling home this morning from Gothenburg, Sweden. He grew up on a sheep farm in mid-Canterbury and gained a PhD in Physics at the University of Canterbury before heading off overseas, finally settling down in Sweden where he's been living since 1998.

Dr Jack Watling, senior research fellow for land warfare at the Royal United Services Institute, gives us the latest on the war in Ukraine and what the next steps are for all involved in the conflict.

When Chris Thompson-Lang served with the Australian military in Afghanistan, he felt mentally prepared to witness the fall of his fellow soldiers. It was the suffering of civilians that was his "undoing". When Chris returned to Australia, the sound of his two kids crying triggered more stress than he could handle. Discovering yoga – and its powerful ability to help get stress out of the body – was what really turned his life around.