The Sunday Session with Francesca Rudkin

This week, Lyttleton singer-songwriter Mel Parsons has landed a big milestone - after seven albums, she’s hit the top spot on the Kiwi charts.

Castle Hill has debuted at number one on not only the Top 20 Aotearoa Albums Chart, but the Top 40 Albums chart.

She says she's happy to see people enjoying it - and her kids appreciate how high it got on the charts. 

"The kids all think that we're rich now, that's their kind of marker. They're like - you're bigger than Olivia Dean! And I'm like - well, this week we are." 

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The Unselected Journals of Emma M.Lion by Beth Brower. This is a series of journals published by a writer purporting to be a 20 year old woman, in 1883 London, writing about her family, her housing situation and the events of her days. They’re charming and whimsical and become quickly very moreish with two books in the series just published and many more apparently to follow. Emma’s father has left her his London house in his will but her cousin Archibald is entitled to live there until she comes of age and he’s not best pleased at her inheritance. The books have a touch of An Unfortunate Series of Events, along with Anne of Green Gables and the Victorian era of Georgette Heyer. Once you start it’s hard to stop. 

Agrippa by Robert Harris – who is one of the finest contemporary writers, known also for his trilogy of Roman novels about Cicero. This new one is subtitled A Novel of Ancient Rome’s Descent into Dictatorship. Julius Caesar is dead, and the lives of two teenaged boys are about to be changed forever. One is Caesar's 17-year-old nephew, Octavius, whom he has made his heir; the other is Octavius's closest friend, Agrippa. Now aged 50, Agrippa presents this novel as his memoir remembering their eventful lives which were so intertwined, for better or worse, with fascinating history and insight. 

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During Megan Singleton's big group holiday in Fiji, she visited a local school in order to give them some much-needed supplies.

She'd contacted the head teacher prior, and her group brought over reams of coloured paper, pens, pencils, learning posters, books, stickers, paints, scissors and more. 

She revealed her tips for carrying out a similar exercise, including how to find a school, how to reach out, what types of things they want - and how to get a free extra suitcase on the plane to take the gifts over.

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Listen to the Sunday Session with Francesca Rudkin Full Show Podcast for Sunday 23 August.
Get the Sunday Session with Francesca Rudkin Full Show Podcast every Sunday on iHeartRadio, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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This week on The Sunday Panel, TV producer, journalist and commentator Irene Gardiner and Front Page podcast host Chelsea Daniels joined in on a discussion about the following issues of the day - and more!

ACT has expanded on their proposed cancer centre concept after Paul Henry spoke of the idea last month. Do we think this is a good idea? Does New Zealand have enough donors to get this through?

The Mount Maunganui landslide review came out last week, and it found the geotechnical risk had been noted by experts for decades - but local officials had failed to take any action. Are we appalled by this? Does Tauranga City Council need more accountability? 

Meta is on trial in California over claims it deliberately designed its platforms to be addictive to young people. Do we see any change coming from this? 

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Thanks to social media and similar online platforms, quick health fixes are more available than ever, and people are often drawn to solutions that feel simple and immediate.

Quick fixes offer instant gratification, provide a sense of control, and help us avoid the hard work and discomfort of making long-term lifestyle changes.

Naturopath and wellness expert Erin O'Hara explained further.

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Hot beef jerky

Cook time: 6 hours 

Prep time: 20 minutes

1kg beef silverside or blade steak  

Marinade  

1 cup sweet apple cider (or unsweetened apple juice)  

1/4 cup balsamic vinegar  

2 tbsp fish sauce  

¼ cup Dijon mustard  

¼ cup honey  

2 tbsp freshly cracked black pepper  

2 tbsp smoked paprika  

3 tbsp garlic powder  

1 tbsp onion powder  

1 tbsp sea salt  

2 tbsp crushed chili pepper

Remove all traces of visible fat from your piece of meat. Place the meat in the freezer for about 30 minutes, which will make it easier to slice thinly.  

Slice the meat in long thin strips, going with the grain. Place your meat in a re-sealable plastic bag along with the marinate ingredients. Place into the fridge to marinate overnight. 

Before you go any further, cover the bottom of your oven with aluminium foil. Things are going to get messy! 

Remove the strips of meat from the marinade and place them directly on your oven racks. No need to pat them dry just let the strips drip a little bit as you remove them. Place your racks back in the oven and set the temperature to 140*c. Keep the oven door slightly open by sticking a wooden spoon. This will allow moisture to escape so the meat has a chance to dry without cooking.  

Let the meat cook for about 3 hours, then flip it over and give it another 3 hours or so. Total cooking time depends on the size and thickness of your strips. Your jerky will be done when it’s dry enough that you can rip off a piece easily but not so dry that it’ll snap if you bend it.

Leave the jerky out to cool for a couple of hours then pop it into an airtight container or sealed plastic bag where it will keep unrefrigerated for up to 2 months.

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The headline sounds like something from a science fiction movie, but the reality is both less alarming and far more scientifically interesting.

Published in the journal Science, researchers designed viruses called bacteriophages, which infect only bacteria with the hope to use them as living medicines to fight infections that no longer respond to antibiotics. 

Scientists have used artificial intelligence to predict proteins and analyse DNA before, but designing an entire working genome with every gene, every control sequence and every interaction needed to build a functioning virus is vastly more difficult. 

The researchers started by training an AI model called Evo on millions of DNA sequences from a tiny bacteriophage called ΦX174, one of the best-studied viruses in biology, which infects only Escherichia coli (E. coli) bacteria. 

The goal was to teach the AI the rules of building similar viruses and it worked - the AI generated around 700,000 completely new viral genomes. 

From these, the scientists selected 285 promising genomes and the DNA was chemically synthesised in the laboratory. 

The synthetic genomes were then inserted into E. coli bacteria and 16 of them successfully produced functional viruses which contained new combinations of genes and DNA sequences that hadn't previously been seen in nature, yet they still managed to infect bacteria successfully. 

The team then tested if these AI-designed phages could solve bacterial resistance. 

They first allowed E. coli bacteria to evolve resistance against the natural ΦX174 virus. 

Normally, once resistance develops, treatment becomes ineffective. 

Instead of using one virus, the researchers mixed all 16 AI-generated phages into a cocktail. 

The bacteria that resisted the natural virus were rapidly overcome by the AI-designed mixture, while a comparable cocktail made from naturally occurring relatives of ΦX174 performed much less effectively. 

Each virus attacked the bacteria in slightly different ways. 

A mutation that protects bacteria from one virus doesn't necessarily protect it from all of them. 

Antibiotic resistance is one of the biggest challenges facing modern medicine and some infections, including tuberculosis and MRSA, are becoming increasingly difficult to treat because bacteria evolve resistance to our existing drugs. 

Phage therapy offers one possible alternative. 

This study suggests that, rather than searching nature for suitable phages, we may one day be able to design entirely new ones on demand, tailored to attack specific bacterial infections. 

That could dramatically speed up the development of future antimicrobial treatments. 

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The End of Oak Street is currently in theatres, and entertainment correspondent Steve Newall reveals whether it's worth a watch.

Starring Anne Hathaway, Ewan McGregor, Maisy Stella and Christian Convery, the film is about a family whose suburban neighbourhood has been transported from 1982 into the age of dinosaurs.

Steve Newall says it's 'punchy' and doesn't shy away from the 'menacing' details.

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There's hopes an unprecedented lawsuit against Meta will change social media as we know it.

The Facebook and Instagram owner is on trial in California over claims it deliberately designed its platforms to be addictive to young people.

More than half of US states have joined the lawsuit, seeking billions of dollars and changes to the platforms. 

Laura Marquez-Garrett, Counsel of Record in a successful case against Meta in March, says the platforms are designed to be digital nicotine - and it's not ok. 

"If we can change social media as we know it by taking out the digital nicotine and making it something that is safer, it's a great step forward - and I do think these outcomes could change social media for the better."

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