Saturday Morning for Saturday 15 February 2020

8:10 Professor Raina MacIntyre - What can we do to protect NZ from coronavirus?

Professor Raina McIntyre leads the Biosecurity Research Program at the Kirby Institute at the University of New South Wales in Sydney.

One of her key research areas is in epidemic responses to emerging infectious diseases, including how people can protect themselves and how travel bans and quarantine can reduce risk.

She's been in New Zealand this week leading a University of Otago Public Health Summer School course called 'Responding to a mystery epidemic in the Pacific'. This was organised before the current novel coronavirus/Covid-19 outbreak.

 

8:35 Ronald Purser: How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality

A professor of management at San Francisco State University, Ronald Purser is a leading figure in the backlash against the mindfulness movement.

He says that while mindfulness is promoted as an antidote to the stresses of modern life, it's actually leading us to an acceptance of our unhealthy capitalist society.

He's the author of McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality.

9:05 Heart surgeon Samer Nashef: The Angina Monologues

UK heart surgeon Samer Nashef is a world-leading expert on risk and quality in surgical care.

He's authored two memoirs about life inside the operating theatre: The Naked Surgeon and most recently The Angina Monologues.

In The Angina Monologues he examines salt (not to be feared he says), statins, the hidden risks of heart surgery, and why it's best to find a surgeon who's just returned from a holiday.

He also finds time to compile cryptic crosswords for The Guardian and the Financial Times. 

Samer Nashef is coming to New Zealand for a live event as part of the New Zealand Festival of The Arts. Details here

10:05 Katie Paterson: Future Library

The Scottish artist Katie Paterson collaborates with scientists and researchers to explore ideas of time, transience, and our place on Earth.

She's broadcast the sound of a melting glacier, mapped dead stars, collected different varieties of astronomical darkness, and sent a recast meteorite back into space.

In 2014 she had the idea for the Future Library project, described as 'the world's most secretive library'.

Every year, from 2014 to 2114, an original work from a popular author gets collected and stored. The only catch? It can't be read or published until 2114 when the 100 manuscripts will get printed out on paper in limited edition anthologies made from 1000 specially planted trees from a wood in Norway.

In the meantime the works will be on display in the new Oslo Public Library (in a building constructed from older trees from that same wood). Writers Margaret Atwood,  David Mitchell and Karl Ove Knausgård are among those who have already contributed their work.

Katie Paterson will be one of the artists featured in Auckland Art Gallery’s upcoming exhibition "Rubble: A Matter of Time" which opens on July 4.

10:30 Actor Nathaniel Lees on The Legend of Baron To'a

Veteran actor and director Nathaniel Lees has featured in more than 40 films including The Matrix Reloaded, The Matrix Revolutions and The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.

Born to Samoan parents living in New Zealand, his latest role is in a new local film called The Legend of Baron To'a which has been described as "The Karate Kid meets South Auckland" It's opening on screens from Thursday February 20th.

An action-comedy featuring retro japes, combat capers, and the theft of a prized wrestling belt, it features a Pasifika/Māori cast including John Tui, Jay Laga'aia, and Shavaughn Ruakere.

Its setting in a Mt Albert cul-de-sac echoes Lees' own multicultural upbringing.

11:05 Playing favourites with The Front Lawn

As "The Front Lawn", Harry Sinclair and Don McGlashan released two albums and made three short films between 1985 and 1990. Many of their songs such as "Andy", "When You Come Back Home" and "How You Doing?" have become classics.

Since then they've both found individual success; Sinclair as an actor and director of films including The Price of Milk and Topless Women Talk About Their Lives, and McGlashan as a solo musician, composer, and founder of The Mutton Birds.

They're now back working together on a kiwi stop motion children's show Kiri and Lou. Set in prehistoric New Zealand the show features work by animator Ant Elworthy (Isle of Dogs, Coraline, and The Corpse Bride) and the voices of Olivia Tennet, Jemaine Clement, Rima Te Wiata and Jaquie Brown. The series has just been sold to the BBC for screening on its children's network CBeebies.

You can watch Kiri and Lou on HeiHei.

 

Books mentioned in this show

 

 

McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality.
By Ronald Purser
ISBN: 9781912248315
Published by Repeater Books

The Angina Monologues - Stories of Surgery for Broken Hearts
By Samer Nashef
ISBN 9781925713817
Published by Scribe