Guest details for Saturday Morning 9 May 2009

8:15 Marcus Chown

Marcus Chown is an award-winning writer and broadcaster. Formerly a radio astronomer at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, he is currently cosmology consultant for the weekly magazine New Scientist. His most recent popular science books are Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You: A Guide to the Universe (Faber and Faber, ISBN: 978-0-571-23546-9), and The Never-Ending Days of Being Dead: Dispatches from the Front Line of Science (Faber and Faber, ISBN: 978-0-571-22056-4). He has also written a book for children, Felicity Frobisher and the Three-Headed Aldebaran Dust Devil (Faber & Faber). Marcus Chown is a guest of the Auckland Writers & Readers Festival (13-17 May 2009). His solo session is sold out, but tickets are still available for the panel session, The Next 100 years, to which he is contributing.

8:40 Bronwen Markham

Bronwen Markham is Clinical Policy Facilitator at Capital Coast District Health Board, and has a 10-year history at Wellington Hospital. She recently returned from Tokelau, where she was dealing with a suspected influenza outbreak of behalf of the Ministry of Health and the DHB, and has had Red Cross experience working in war zones, such as Afghanistan. (NB. International Nurses Day is celebrated around the world every May 12, the anniversary of Florence Nightingale's birth).

9:05 Robert Wade

Robert Wade is a New Zealander who has lived and worked in Britain and the US for the past four decades. He is Professor of Political Economy and Development, at the Development Studies Institute (DESTIN), London School of Economics. In 2008, he won the Leontief Prize in Economics, described as an "alternative Nobel Prize" for heterodox economists, and is a member of the Economists' Forum, a group described by the Financial Times as "50 of the world's most influential economists". He has visited Iceland several times over the past few years and has been giving public talks and interviews since August 2007 about the growing dangers of a major crisis, drawing on his knowledge of what happened in East Asia.

9:40 Art with Mary Kisler

Mary Kisler is the Mackelvie Curator of International Art at the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki. She will discuss two installation works: Something Transparent (Please Go Round The Back) by Fiona Connor at Michael Lett Gallery, Karangahape Road (to 16 May), and the Anish Kapoor installation on the Auckland farm of Alan Gibbs. To view images of the Connor and Kapoor works, click on the Art on Saturday Morning link on the right-hand side of the Saturday Morning web page. Mary will also talk about the gift to the Auckland Art Gallery through its Foundation, of 15 works from New York art collectors and philanthropists Julian and Josie Robertson, including well-known paintings by Paul Cézanne, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Paul Gauguin and Piet Mondrian - the largest gift ever made to an art museum in Australasia.

10:05 Playing Favourites with Dick and Barnaby Weir

Barnaby Weir fronts Wellington band The Black Seeds, and is the prime mover behind the Fly My Pretties project. This multimedia event involves a wide-ranging selection of songwriters and instrumentalists in performances, filmed and recorded for album release. After successful events in 2004 and 2006, Fly My Pretties returns to the road this month with performances in Christchurch (22 May at Isaac Theatre Royal), Dunedin (29 May at The Regent), Auckland (3-6 June at Sky City Theatre), and Wellington (12-13 June at St James Theatre). For this third incarnation of Fly My Pretties, the musicians will be joined on stage by Barnaby's father, broadcaster and storyteller Dick Weir, who has spent the last 44 years telling children's stories. Dick was the creator and presenter of Radio New Zealand's award-winning show, EARS, and has been awarded the Queen's Service Medal for his Services to Children's Broadcasting. For the Fly My Pretties performances, Dick will narrate parts of an original story written by Barnaby and himself throughout the show. They have also recorded this story as a radio play which received its debut broadcast - alongside a new Fly My Pretties song performed live in the RNZ studio - after 4.30pm during Music 101 on Saturday 9 May on Radio New Zealand National. (NB. Fly My Pretties - The Radio Play will be broadcast again after the 8:00pm news on Friday 15 May on RNZ National.)

11:05 Andrew Lih

Andrew Lih was an academic for ten years at Columbia University and Hong Kong University in new media and journalism, and is now based in Beijing. He is an administrator of the English edition of online encyclopedia Wikipedia, and is the author of The Wikipedia Revolution: How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the World's Greatest Encyclopedia (Hyperion, ISBN: 978-1-84513-473-0). (NB. During the interview Andrew references the Citizendium website, and the book The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman.)

11:45 Children's Books with Kate De Goldi

Kate De Goldi will discuss historical American fiction for children and young adults, looking at titles by Elizabeth George Speare and Irene Hunt:
The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare (Victor Gollancz, 1960)
The Bronze Bow by Elizabeth George Speare (Lion Publishing, 1961, 2001)
The Sign of the Beaver by Elizabeth George Speare (Houghton Mifflin, 1983)
Across Five Aprils by Irene Hunt (Bodley Head, 1964)

Music played during the programme

Playing Favourites with Dick and Barnaby Weir

Elvis Presley: Blue Suede Shoes
The 1956 single
(Sun)
Played at around 10:20am

Wild Bill Rickets: Coconut Tree
From the 2009 album: John Dryden
(Arch Hill)
Played at around 10:35am

The Back Seats: Old Nasty
(Unreleased track)
Played at around 10:45am

Samuel Flynn Scott and the B.O.P: Black Mark
From the 2008 album: Straight Answer Machine
(Loop)
Played at around 10:55am

Studio operators

Auckland engineer: Jeremy Ansell
Wellington engineer: Lianne Smith