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Saturday Morning for Saturday 18 July 2020

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President Jair Bolsonaro (centre) maintains that Brazilians must keep working while taking precautions not to catch Covid-19.

Photo: AFP

8:10 Brazil's coronavirus catastrophe: "little flu" kills 75 000 people

Ernesto Londoño

Ernesto Londoño Photo: supplied

Brazil is on track to overtake the US and have the world's highest death toll from Covid-19 by the end of this month.

Led by President Jair Bolsonaro, who currently has the virus which he calls a "little flu", the country's response to the pandemic has been little short of disastrous.

With more than 2 million cases so far, 75,000 deaths, and more than 40,000 new cases every day, where did it all go wrong? We ask Ernesto Londoño, the Brazil bureau chief for The New York Times.

8:30 Alice Procter: getting real about "colonial loot" in museums

Alice Procter

Alice Procter Photo: supplied / Connor Harris

Alice Procter is an art historian, tour guide and museum enthusiast who thinks institutions need to be more honest about how they came to acquire their collections.

She runs "Uncomfortable Art Tours" at six London cultural institutions.

These unofficial guided experiences explore how places like the National Gallery, the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and Tate Britain came into being against the background of imperialism, and how they built up their collections (spoiler alert: 'display it like you stole it' badges are available).

She has a podcast called The Exhibitionist and is the author of The Whole Picture: the colonial story of the art in our museums and why we need to talk about it.

Egyptian mummies in Ägyptisches Museum Berlin

Egyptian mummies in Ägyptisches Museum Berlin Photo: Yair Haklai / CC BY-SA

9:05 Into The Wild author Jon Krakauer on adventure and risk

Jon Krakauer

Jon Krakauer Photo: Facebook - credit: Linda Moore

American mountaineer and writer Jon Krakauer was a member of a fateful 1996 Mount Everest expedition that got caught in a blizzard that claimed eight lives, including New Zealanders Rob Hall and Andrew "Harold" Harris. The tragedy, which remains one of the worst in modern climbing history, was the basis for Krakauer's bestselling book Into Thin Air.

An earlier book, Into The Wild, documents the travels and adventures of Christopher McCandless, a young man from a well-to-do family who gave away all his money to hike across North America, and who ended up dying in the Alaskan wilderness.The book was made into a popular film directed by Sean Penn, and the bus at the centre of the drama has just been relocated to deter visitors from making the dangerous pilgrimage there.

Krakauer's most recent book, a non-fiction collection called Classic Krakauer, will be his last.

Bivouac high on the Southeast Face of the Devils Thumb Alaska Coast Range May 15 1977 (Copyright Jon Krakauer)

NE face of Devils Thumb from Basecamp 1977 (Copyright Jon Krakauer)

Krakauer climbing in Utah (Photo by Matt Hale)

Classic Krakauer cover (Supplied by Penguin Random House NZ)

Jon Krakauer working as a commercial salmon fisherman in Alaska 1980

Krakauer climbing before work in Boulder (Photo by Dan Stone)

Into the Wild Bus July 1993 (Copyright Jon Krakauer)

Self-portrait of McCandless on the Stampede Trail found undeveloped in his camera after his death (Fair Use)

Andy Harris atop Hillary Step just below Everest Summit May 10 1996 (Copyright Jon Krakauer)

Rob Hall Everest 1996 (Copyright Jon Krakauer)

John Taske in the Khumbu Icefall on Everest 1996 (Copyright Jon Krakauer)

Krakauer with Commander Ghulam Khalil 2006 Afghan Special Forces Kunar Province (Photo by Jared Monti)

Skiing toward Rakekniven Queen Maud Land Antarctica 1997 (Copyright Jon Krakauer)

Krakauer meeting with Vice President Joe Biden in 2015 to talk about his book Missoula

10:05 Suicide and survival: doco director Leanne Pooley

Documentary film The Girl On The Bridge follows suicide survivor and activist Jazz Thornton as she confronts teenage suicide head on.

It's directed by Leanne Pooley, the prolific NZ/Canadian documentary maker whose past films have included Beyond the Edge (2013), The Topp Twins: Untouchable Girls (2009), Shackleton's Captain (about Frank Worsley, captain of Shackleton's Endurance), and Haunting Douglas (about the dancer and choreographer Douglas Wright).

As well as online screenings as part of Whānau Marama: New Zealand International Film Festival, The Girl On The Bridge will also show at cinemas around the country. Details here. There will be Q and A sessions at some of the screenings.

Pooley has another new release this year: We Need to Talk About A.I "explores the existential risk and exponential benefits of Artificial General Intelligence".

Where to get help:

If it is an emergency and you feel like you or someone else is at risk, call 111.

10:35 Justin Kurzel: the True History of Ned Kelly's Gang

Australian bushranger, outlaw, gang leader and convicted police murderer Ned Kelly is both a man and a myth.

From Sir Sydney Nolan's epic paintings to Peter Carey's 2001 Booker Prize-winning novel, Kelly's life has been thoroughly written and rewritten since his final shootout with the police in 1880.

Carey's book is source material for Australian film maker Justin Kurzel's new film True History of The Kelly Gang  which is screening as part of Whānau Marama: New Zealand International Film Festival.

He casts his wife, the actor Essie Davis, as Ned's mother Ellen in the film, and younger brother Jed contributes the music.

The film follows Kurzel's short Blue Tongue (2004), his controversial debut feature Snowtown (2011), a film adaptation of William Shakespeare's Macbeth (2015), and a 2016 film based on the video game franchise Assassin's Creed.

11:05 NZer working to protect Lebanon's migrant maids

Layla (not her real name) is a New Zealander working remotely from the Bay of Plenty as an online advocate for some of the estimated 400,000 migrant domestic workers in Lebanon.

They are mostly women who come from African and Asian countries to work in private households, and whose rights are largely ignored under Lebanese labour law.

She intervenes in the worst cases of maltreatment and abuse. These can leave workers unpaid, stranded without passports, and controlled and confined in conditions akin to slavery.

By threatening to name and shame the worst employers on social media, she and the activist group This Is Lebanon have made enemies in high places. 

Halima

Halima Photo: supplied

11:40 Doug Wilson: protecting our elderly if Covid-19 returns to NZ

Our expert on ageing Doug Wilson's back with his take on how the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic will affect older New Zealanders and what we need to do to protect them should the virus start spreading again.

The elderly are the most likely to die from the virus, and also often more vulnerable to the social and practical impacts of a lockdown.

So what measures need to be in place to protect them in the case of a 'second wave'?

Doug will discuss continuity of care, testing before transfers from hospitals to rest homes, and ensuring fair and equal access to any vaccine across all parts of the population.

Doug Wilson is a medical academic, former pharmaceutical executive, writer and the author of Ageing For Beginners.

A patient wearing a face mask being checked on by a doctor in hospital, during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Photo: 123rf

Books mentioned in this show

The Whole Picture: The colonial story of the art in our museums & why we need to talk about it
by Alice Procter
ISBN: 9781788401555
Published by: Cassell

Classic Krakauer: Essays on Wilderness and Risk
by Jon Krakauer
ISBN: 9781984897695
Published by  Doubleday

Music played in this show

Song:Take this Heart of Gold
Artist: Mandolin Orange
Played at 8:30

Song:Hard Sun
Artist: Eddie Vedder
Played at 8:55

Song Sergeant
composed by Jed Kurzel
From the soundtrack to True History of the Kelly Gang 
Played at 10:55

Song: Glitter
Artist: BENEE
Played at 11:40