Talking Heads

Dr Gareth Morgan and Kim Hill will examine whether New Zealanders' expectations of material wealth can be satiated or is despoiling of our land and environment an inevitable precondition for our priorities to change from consumerism to well-being?

Kim Hill and a panel of East Coast people discuss the vicissitudes of life on the land, the disasters that threaten the environment and their efforts to take their destiny in hand, and build a resilient community where people can make a living, enjoy living off the land and the land endures.

At a time when we work harder and earn less than most of the developed world, and it's no wonder the planes are fuller leaving, Kim Hill and a panel of New Zealand's top scientists consider whether scientists have any idea at all about the reality of business and economics? And do they have a role in determining our future?

Kim Hill and a panel of experts consider Sir Paul Callaghan's final challenge - to make New Zealand pest free. How realistic is this vision? Will New Zealanders rise to the challenge? What will it cost? And would it be worth the expense?

Dame Anne Salmond and Kim Hill explore the possibility of a new Enlightenment that recaptures the wide-ranging curiosity of New Zealand's early exploring scientists while transcending western modernity by drawing upon other intellectual traditions, including the relational thinking characteristic of Maori and other Pacific life worlds.

Sir Peter Gluckman and Kim Hill explore the issues we need to address to have improve our prosperity, environment and social cohesion; and how science can help.

Kim Hill joins Professor Kate McGrath, Professor Wayne Cutfield and Dr Maurice Curtis to discuss the chemistry of brains, genetics and aging, and they don't stop there. You really are what you eat but you're also what your granddad ate.

Kim Hill sits down with eminent chemists Professor Ian Shaw, Dr Michael Edmonds and Associate Professor Margreet Vissers in front of a live Christchurch audience to chew on the matter of things that sustain us - both good and bad. Vitamins, fats, sugars, estrogen-like chemicals and soy; breast milk and how the French keep heart disease at bay while supping on brie.

Kim Hill talks to best-selling author and TV personality, Professor Joe Schwarcz from McGill University, Canada.

Dr Donna Rose Addis.