Saturday Morning for Saturday 12 October 2019
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Turkish forces move in to northern Syria as the US withdraws
8:12 AM.Turkish forces have entered Kurdish-held areas of northern Syria in response to a US military withrawal from the region. Read more Audio
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A bright future for seaweed farming in NZ?
8:30 AM.Ecological economist Marjan Van Den Belt is excited about the environmental and financial opportunities large scale seaweed farming could bring to New Zealand. Read more Audio
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White Teeth Author Zadie Smith on her short fiction experiment
9:05 AM.Author and New York University professor Zadie Smith has just released Grand Union, her first collection of short fiction. Read more Audio
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Kim Gordon: 'I never questioned that I would succeed at something'
9:40 AM.Musician, artist, and author Kim Gordon has released her first solo album No Home Record eight years after the end of her band Sonic Youth and her 27 year marriage to bandmate Thurston Moore. Read more Video, Audio
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Megan Phelps Roper - Leaving the Westboro Baptist Church
10:05 AM.As the granddaughter of Westboro Baptist Church founder Fred Phelps, Megan Phelps-Roper grew up believing that God hates gay people. Read more Audio
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Mike White - How to Walk a Dog
11:05 AM.Mike White is well known for his hard hitting investigative crime and justice journalism including coverage of Mark Lundy, Scott Watson, and the murder of Scott Guy. Read more Audio
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Doug Wilson - Science vs Ageing
11:35 AM.The wealth of new research about the science of ageing should help improve care for older people but is there a danger in over medicalising a natural process? Read more Audio
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Listener feedback
11:55 AM.Listener feedback for the Saturday Morning programme, 12 October 2019. Audio
8:10 Turkish forces move in to northern Syria as the US withdraws
Turkish forces have entered Kurdish-held areas of northern Syria in response to a US military withrawal from the region.
Launched this week, Operation Peace Spring, has opened a large new front in a war that began in 2011.
Freelance war reporter and academic Aris Roussinos has reported extensively from the region for Vice News.
Kim will ask him what's led to the current conflict and what the global implications will be.
Turkey's Sanliurfa province, on October 09, 2019. Smoke rises at the site of Ras al-Ayn city of Syria Photo: AFP
8:35 A bright future for seaweed farming in NZ?
Marjan Van Den Belt Photo: supplied
Ecological economist Marjan Van Den Belt is excited about the environmental and financial opportunities large scale seaweed farming could bring to New Zealand.
Marjan is a strategic partner at Terra Moana and the convener of seaweed collective ReGenSEA.
Photo: supplied / Nicole Miller
9:05 White Teeth Author Zadie Smith on her short fiction experiment
Author and New York University professor Zadie Smith has just released Grand Union, her first collection of short fiction.
It's a bold turn for writer of novels White Teeth, Swing Time, NW, On Beauty, The Autograph Man, and essay collections Changing My Mind and Feel Free.
Kim will ask her why she's come around to short stories, the quality of grace and why it can be so hard to live according to the credo you believe in.
Zadie Smith will be appearing at WORD Christchurch on 13 November details here.
Zadie Smith Photo: supplied / Dominique Nabokov
9:40 Kim Gordon: going it solo after Sonic Youth
Musician, artist, and author Kim Gordon has released her first solo album No Home Record eight years after the end of her band Sonic Youth and also her 27 year marriage to bandmate Thurston Moore.
Now LA based, she's active as an artist, musician and authored a memoir in 2015, Girl in a Band.
Kim will ask her about her work, her fascination with Airbnb, and an unlikely Gilmore Girls cameo.
Kim Gordon Photo: supplied / Natalia Mantini
10:05 Megan Phelps Roper - Leaving the Westboro Baptist Church
As the granddaughter of Westboro Baptist Church founder Fred Phelps, Megan Phelps-Roper grew up believing that God hates gay people.
From the age of five she participated in almost daily public protests including the infamous picketing of the funerals of U.S. soldiers - whose deaths the church believed were a punishment for America's tolerance of homosexuality.
She was a subject of the Louis Theroux documentary "The Most Hated Family in America".
Megan and her sister, Grace, left the Kansas-based religious group in November 2012.
Megan is now an activist and speaker who lobbies to overcome hatred. She's just released an autobiography Unfollow.
Megan Phelps Roper Photo: supplied / Michelle Wray
11:05 Mike White - How to Walk a Dog
Mike White is well known for his hard hitting investigative crime and justice journalism including coverage of Mark Lundy, Scott Watson, and the murder of Scott Guy.
The North and South senior writer is also a life long dog-lover and has written a new book, illustrated by Stuff and Dominion Post cartoonist Sharon Murdoch, about life in and around a dog park.
White's current dog Cooper features heavily in How to Walk a Dog but so do the dogs that have helped shape who he is.
Mike White and his dog Cooper Photo: supplied / Nikki Macdonald
11:30 Doug Wilson - Science vs Ageing
Dr Doug Wilson Photo: supplied
The wealth of new research about the science of ageing should help improve care for older people but is there a danger in over medicalising a natural process?
We'll ask medical academic and author of Ageing for Beginners Doug Wilson.
He's been reading two new books on the topic Elderhood: redefining ageing, transforming medicine, reimagining life and Lifespan: Why We Age - and Why We Don't Have To.
You can hear an interview with the author of Lifespan here
Photo: supplied
Books mentioned in this show
Grand Union
Zadie Smith
ISBN: 9780241337035
Published by Penguin
Unfollow - A Memoir of Loving and Leaving the Westboro Baptist Church
Megan Phelps-Roper
ISBN: 9781787478008
Published by Hachette
How to Walk a Dog
Mike White / illustrated by Sharon Murdoch
ISBN: 9781988547206
Published by Allen & Unwin
Elderhood: redefining ageing, transforming medicine, reimagining life
Louise Aronson
ISBN 9781620405468
Bloomsbury
Lifespan: Why We Age - and Why We Don’t Have To
David A. Sinclair with Matthew LaPlante
ISBN 9780008292362
HarperCollins
Music played in this show
Song: Air BnB
Artist: Kim Gordon
Played at 9:45
Song: The Ballad of the Hulk
Artist: Bill Callahan
Played at 10:54