Saturday Morning for Saturday 13 April 2019

 

 

8.09 Dr Vaughan Turekian - Soothing international disputes with the salve with science diplomacy  

Dr Vaughan C. Turekian is the Executive Director of the Policy and Global Affairs Division (PGA) of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. He also serves as an honorary professor at University College London and a fellow and adjunct professor at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service. Prior to joining the Academies, he served as the fifth Science and Technology Advisor to the U.S. Secretary of State. In this capacity, he advised the Secretary of State and other senior State Department officials on international environment, science, emerging technology, and health matters affecting the foreign policy of the United States. Vaughan Turekian was in Auckland to attend a Liggins Institute symposium celebrating the life's work of his friend Sir Peter Gluckman. He was also the first guest at Sir Peter's new think-tank, the Centre for Science in Policy, Diplomacy and Society (SciPoDS), part of the University of Auckland's Public Policy Institute.

 

 

9.04 Jenny Erpenbeck - Go, Went, Gone - the asylum seeker experience in Germany 

Novelist, playwright and opera director, Jenny Erpenbeck is one of Europe's major literary voices. Born in East Berlin in 1967, she is the author of seven works of fiction, including The Book of Words and Visitation. Her 2017 published work Go, Went, Gone vividly illustrates the plight of African asylum seekers in Europe. The work was long-listed for the Man Booker in 2018. She was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 2017.  Jenny Erpenbeck will appear at the Auckland Writers Festival, details here. 

 

 

 

 

 

9.30 Ella Al-Shamahi - Neanderthals 

Ella Al-Shamahi is an archaeologist, palaeoanthropologist and Neanderthal specialist, and also a stand-up comic. She almost exclusively works "in places hard to get insurance" including Iraq and Yemen, where she's been trying to find Paleolithic caves in to test a theory that early humans may have migrated out of Africa via land bridges between East Africa and Yemen. Al-Shamahi has been performing science stand-up for four years in the UK and the States, from the Bloomsbury Theatre to the National Geographic main-stage in DC. She has also taken three shows to the world-renowned Edinburgh Fringe Festival. In 2018 she presented BBC Two's science series, Neanderthals: Meet Your Ancestors, as well as Horizon: Body Clock - What Makes Your Body Tick. Neanderthals will air in New Zealand on Wednesdays from 24 April, 8.30pm, BBC Earth, SKY Channel 74. Also available on SKY Go and SKY On Demand. 

 

10.04 Maria Tumarkin - How are we to live after trauma?

Maria Tumarkin is an Australian author, cultural historian and professor of writing at the University of Melbourne. She is the author of four critically-acclaimed books of ideas including Otherland and the essay collection Axiomatic, which won the 2018 Melbourne Prize for Literature Best Writing award. Maria Tumarkin will be appearing at the Auckland Writers Festival, details here.

 

 

 

10.40 Max Olijynk - Skateboarding

Max Olijynk is a writer, editor, publisher, photographer and self-described "ageing" skateboarder. Growing up in small town South Australia, Olijynk began skating at age 12 and eagerly embraced all of the culture including the music and fashion, but now describes himself as a "grey haired dad with a bad knee"  with a four year old son he's teaching to skate. His work has appeared in The Age, The Blackmail, Broadsheet, The Guardian, Smith Journal and Vice, and his first book, Some Stories, was released in 2016. Max Olijynk is appearing at Featherston Booktown in early May, details here. 

 

 

      
11.04  Gretchen Albrecht and Luke Smythe:  Between gesture and geometry

Gretchen Albrecht is one of New Zealand's most prominent painters. A forerunner of the women's art movement, Albrecht's work of the 1960s and 70s anticipated key aspects of feminist art practice. Art historian Luke Smythe, who teaches art history at Monash University in Melbourne, has had a long association with Albrecht and has celebrated and analysed her work in a new book called Gretchen Albrecht: Between gesture and geometry. A Gretchen Albrecht exhibition by the same name has just opened at the Two Rooms art gallery in Central Auckland.  Gretchen Albrecht will also speak at the Auckland Writers Festival upcoming, details here.

 

 

Gretchen Albrecht: Between gesture and geometry

 

 

 

Books mentioned in this episode:

 

Go, Went, Gone

By Jenny Erpenbeck

ISBN: 9780811225946

New Directions

 

Axiomatic

By Maria Tumarkin

ISBN: 9781925704051

Brow Books

 

 

Some Stories

By Max Olijynk

Freddo Books

 

 

Gretchen Albrecht: Between gesture and geometry

By Luke Smythe

ISBN: 978-0-9951095-1-3

Massey University Press

 

Music played in this show

Artist: Cat power
Song: Woman
Album: Wanderer
Played at: 10:39