Sports rights storm intensifies; news in and out of North Korea

In this live Insight local elections special Philippa Tolley speaks to winning candidates from around the country and RNZ regional and local government reporters..

Former East Coaster Ereti Mitchell is the 2019 UK New Zealander of the Year. She is Calling Home from Scone, Perthshire.

The really intense debates at Parliament are not televised. They happen in a little-known ‘fourth’ debating chamber, behind closed doors, and involve temporary MPs.

In handing over the ISIS fight in Syria to Turkey, there are fears that US President Donald Trump has helped launch a platform for the Islamic State to make its comeback. Journalist and author Mike Giglio joins the show to discuss.

Research shows that in early courtship, it's generally the man who performs the role of the joker and women are the receptive ones, but over time the roles are reversed and it is the men who crave the humour from their wives and partners. Indeed, when women produce more humour, they have happier husbands. Professor Jeffrey Hall has conducted studies into the role humour plays in relationships and discusses it with Jim Mora.

The cults and propaganda surrounding dictatorships, from Hitler and Stalin to Mao Zedong and Kim Il Sung, are revealed in a new book by the Dutch historian Frank Dikotter. 'How to Be a Dictator' describes how these men built their regimes and maintained their public images and how those dictatorships influenced Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Now these leaders are using new technologies to target citizens directly, exploiting the cult of personality to achieve the illusion of popular approval without ever having to resort to elections.

Anne Unkenstein is a Melbourne-based clinical neuropsychologist who helps people cope with memory illnesses, including dementia. Dr Unkenstein's new book, Memory-wise, explains how memory works and the changes that can occur as we age, especially during menopause, and how to minimise the effects.

A longitudinal study of the School Sisters of Notre Dame in the US has discovered surprising insights into the impact speaking many languages has on a person's likelihood of developing dementia. The ground-breaking Nun Study has been studied since the 1980's and is now a complete, data rich cohort of more than 600 nuns. Public health professor at Waterloo University in Canada, Professor Suzanne Tyas, has studied the nun's brains and drawn fascinating conclusions from those who spoke multiple languages.

In 1996 Australian filmmaker Baz Lurmann made a big splash by putting Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet on the big-screen in a contemporary setting. Helping to colour the movie's moods and reflect the mid-90s pop-culture was its soundtrack featuring big name acts Radiohead and Garbage, and soon to be huge hits from The Cardigans and Des'ree. The soundtrack will be celebrated over two nights, December 7 and 8, at the Civic in Auckland with an all-star cast of local singing talent, supported by a 30-piece orchestra, choir and full rock band. Gin Wigmore is one of the stars of this show.