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Polo cross, underwater hockey, foot volley ... who doesn't love a good hybrid sport? Well in just a few days time, the best speedgolfers in the world - yes you hear that right, speed golf - are going to be teeing off on our shores for The World Speedgolf Championship. Kiwi Amy Linton is the back-to-back New Zealand Women's open champion - and she's hoping to take out the top spot. So what is speed golf and how does it work? Amy joins Emile for a chat.

This Dwarfism Awareness Month a fantastic article was published in Australia to raise awareness and understanding of what it's like living with the physical condition. The piece centrered around hearing from a person with dwarfism about what we should and shouldn't ask ... what's appropriate and what could be considered offensive.  Well, we thought it would be wonderful to have our local Nights version of this conversation - so we have enlisted Jess Smith, president of Little People of New Zealand.

It's been three years since the Erin Patterson case first gripped Australia and the world after she murdered three people by serving them a meal laced with deadly death cap mushrooms. Since then there have been multiple podcasts, books, countless news articles and now television series, with New Zealand's own Melanie Lynskey set to play Patterson. And today, the case was back in the headlines, with Victoria's Court of Appeal rejecting Patterson's bid to overturn her murder convictions and increasing her sentence to life in prison without parole So will our fascination with this case ever fade? And what do Australians make of the seemingly endless appetite for it? Joining Emile is Dr Xanthe Weston a Criminologist, from Australia's CQUniversity.

Now to some sad news for theatre and film fans out there, prolific British actor Sir Patrick Stewart has died aged 86. Best known for his roles of Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek and Professor Charles Xavier in X-Men - tributes today praised him for bringing a deep sense of humanity to everything he did and for inspiring a new generation of stargazers. Joining Emile for some reflection in the Auckland studio - Ricky Didham from Star Trek Fans New Zealand.

If you're a Wellingtonian of a certain age you might remember flicking through the pages of Capital Times. Started in the early 80's, the publication spent decades telling local stories - news, entertainment, arts, politics, hospitality and even social pages. Capital Times ceased publication back in 2013 - but now 1,377 of it's issues have been digitized by Wellington City Libraries. Former managing editor of The Capital Times, Alison Franks, joins me on the line now.

Now - we may think we're a die-hard sports-loving lot in this country ... particularly when it comes to rugby ... but the future of some of our main competitions have been up in the air. Just last month a summit was held between New Zealand Rugby and stakeholders ... on the table was changing-up or scrapping our current NPC and Super Rugby competitions. But news today - NZR has decided to keep them in their existing formats - and will now focus on fan engagement and consolidation. Joining Emile for a bit of reaction is regular to the show, it's sports commentator Ben Strang.

Nights' resident screen critic joins Emile Donovan to review his screen picks of the week.

It's the return of friend of the show, writer and all-round thinker Danyl McLauchlan, who joins us to explore some of the best political novels of the 21st century. Tonight, he's diving into Iain M Bank's Look to Windward a book set in the far reaches of space but wrestling with some very earthly questions.

As we close in on election day on November 7, it feels like there's a new poll, with a new set of numbers, coming out every other day. But there's one poll that boasts of having a pretty good track record since it began in 2002. I am, of course, talking about the Muffin Break Bean Poll . . . Buy a coffee at one of the more than 30 Muffin Break cafes around the country and you get a bean to cast your vote. And it's got a pretty decent track record. In 2023, the Bean Poll had National on 35 percent. On election day, they got 38 percent. Not bad for a coffee bean. And before the 2020 election, it had Labour cracking 50 percent, something plenty of traditional polls didn't see coming. Labour went on to do exactly that. So, amid all the serious polling this campaign, should we actually be paying more attention to the beans? Well we thought we'd get the man who knows more about polls than almost anyone and that's Dr Stuart Donovan, Motu senior researcher and creator of the Poll of polls model being used by the NZ Herald.

AI is coming for your job. We've all heard that one by now, as large language models get smarter and seemingly more capable by the week. But one profession you might not have expected to be pondering that question quite so soon is mathematics. Long seen as one of the great frontiers of human intelligence, maths is now becoming a testing ground for just how far AI can go. It seems like every week there's another headline about AI cracking an unsolved problem, finding a new proof . . . doing in hours what might have taken mathematicians months or even years. So if the machines are getting really good at maths, what does that mean for the humans who do it? Melissa Lee is a senior lecturer in the School of Mathematics at Monash University, and she's been fascinated by exactly that question.

Listening to a piece of music can be an incredibly emotional and deeply personal experience. It's something we often do alone, with headphones on or the stereo turned up at home. But in Japan, there's a long tradition of experiencing music a little differently, through listening bars, places where people come together specifically to sit, listen and appreciate the music. It's this culture that's at the centre of a documentary co-directed by our next guest, Nick Dwyer. Nick will be a familiar voice to some of you here in New Zealand, having worked in television and radio since he was a teenager. But for the past decade, he's called Tokyo home, and it's there he fell in love with these audiophile havens, known as kissaten. So what is it about these places that inspires such devotion, and what made Nick want to capture their world on film? Nick Dwyer joins Emile for a chat.

Mouth ulcers - also known as canker sores - are one of those pesky things that can really ruin your week. And even though they can be small - oh the pain - so with up to one in four of us get them coming back again and again - we thought we should chat to an expert. So, what causes them, what makes them come back, and how can we know if it's that's worth getting help? Joining Emile is Dr Anita Lim, an Oral Medicine Specialist and PhD Candidate at Western Sydney University's School of Medicine.

Getting kiwis into their own home has been a major issue this election. For a lot of people - even if they earn a good wage, a major barrier is saving enough for a 20% deposit that a lot of banks require. Our major parties are aiming to address this by extending access to 5% deposits and expanding some of those income limits under the current First Home Loan Scheme. But is this the best approach and what might the economic knock on effects be? Joining Emile is Gareth Kiernan Acting Managing Director and Chief Forecaster of Infometrics Limited.

How do you convince an alien species that humans deserve to live? And what if you're starting to doubt they do? That simple but terrifying premise is at the centre of a new science fiction novel from New Zealand author Mandy Hager. It's Hager's 23rd book, and set in 2297, on an Earth devastated by climate catastrophe. The title of the book is Lifted and it officially launches in Wellington at Unity Books on Thursday night, but we thought we'd get in a couple of days early and speak to Mandy, who joins me now.

It's time for Shower Thoughts, our weekly attempt to answer the questions that get stuck in your head and refuse to leave. Tonight's one is this: in a world of GPS, Google Maps and instant tracking, why are we still relying on bits of colourful fabric to tell us who and where we are? Do we actually still need flags in the 21st century? Joining Emile to fly the flag for flags, and possibly put us sceptics in our place, is vexillologist Brian Cham.