Saturday Morning for Saturday 21 August 2021

Colin Peacock is filling in for Kim Hill this weekend.

8.10 Dr Chris Smith: dealing with Delta in the community

Our regular commentator, Cambridge University consultant clinical virologist Dr Chris Smith joins us with the latest Covid-19 science, and to answer your questions.

With New Zealand suddenly placed under lockdown this week following the first-ever instance of the highly-contagious Delta variant in the community, Dr Smith answers questions about the virus, and what we can expect over coming weeks as we look to get the emerging cluster under control.

Send your questions for Dr Chris Smith to saturday@rnz.co.nz or text 2101.

8.30 Prof Vrinda Narain: uncertain times for Afghan women

Concerns are high for the women of Afghanistan following the Taliban’s swift takeover of the Middle Eastern country. The militant group says the rights of Afghan women will be respected "within the framework of Islamic law" under the regime, with a spokesman saying women would be free to work - but little detail about other rules and restrictions has been revealed.

Professor Vrinda Narain says women were subjected to persistent human rights violations under the Taliban’s brutal rule between 1996 and 2001 and, despite claims they’ve changed their stance on women’s rights, the Taliban’s efforts to commit thousands of women to sexual slavery demonstrate quite the opposite.

Narain is an associate professor at the Faculty of Law at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. She is also a board member of Women Living Under Muslim Laws. Her research and teaching focus on constitutional law, social diversity and feminist legal theory.

9.05 Felix Marquardt: will re-embracing nomadism save humanity?

Felix Marquardt is a French author, former PR consultant and senior advisor to world leaders and CEOs, some he admits shady. His first book The New Nomads boldly proposes the future of humanity and the key to its enlightenment lies in re-embracing nomadism. 

Marquardt writes on the virtues of global movement, yet his own recent journey is of recovery from addiction and disillusionment with “global schmoozing” at places like the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. A varied career has also seen him work as a rap producer, start a reformist Islamic think tank, and recently he launched Black Elephant, an intellectual movement using the pandemic to consider how our modernity is predicated on violence, unsustainability, and other complex issues. 

9.30 Jim Schuster: saving Aotearoa's marae heritage

Jim Schuster works with Heritage New Zealand as a marae restorer around New Zealand and the world, and in the latter category there’s one particularly close to his heart. Meeting house Hinemihi has sat in the grounds of Clandon Estate in Surrey England since the 1890s. A few years prior it sheltered and saved 153 lives during the Tarawera Eruption. It is now, finally, due to return home. See our image gallery below for photos before and after the eruption and today.

Hinewihi was carved by Schuster’s great great grandfather Tene Waitere, and Schuster still lives on his tūpuna’s land at Ruato on the shores of Lake Rotoiti, Rotorua. He carries forward the great carving and weaving traditions and knowledge of his ancestors in this region sharing it around the world, including the harvesting of natural materials for restoration like raupō, harakeke, kākaho and kiekie.
 

 

10.05 Playing Favourites: Madeleine Chapman and Alex Casey

These days The Spinoff is a household name as a news and entertainment website, but back in 2004 when it first launched it had a different modus operandi. The independently-owned site was originally intended to cover New Zealand television, but has since expanded its remit to cover politics, business, culture and more. The Spinoff team have also dipped their toes into television, podcasts, videos and comics - including the wildly popular Toby Morris x Siouxsie Wiles Covid-19 collaboration.

Alex Casey was one of the original writers to work on The Spinoff alongside founding editor Duncan Grieve, and now Casey and her long-standing cohort Madeleine Chapman are taking the helm. The pair will become co-editors of the site when current editor Toby Manhire steps down in a few weeks' time. 

Casey and Chapman join Colin Peacock to discuss their new roles, and play some favourite songs.

 

11.05 Megan Dunn: Things I Learned At Art School

Following on from her critically acclaimed 2018 debut Tinderbox, Wellington-based author Megan Dunn has returned with new book Things I Learned At Art School. Billed as part-memoir and part essay collection, Dunn shares vignettes from her early life and coming-of-age during the 70s, 80s, and 90s - from her Smurf collection to working in a massage parlour called Belle de Jour.

True to the book’s title, Dunn has a Bachelor’s degree from Elam School of Fine Arts at the University of Auckland. She also works as an arts writer, a job she says is an accidental vocation.

 

11.35 Danyl McLauchlan: postjournalism and the media

Protein scientist and writer Danyl McLauchlan joins RNZ’s Saturday Morning to tackle life's big questions, ideas and thinkers. This week he's discussing the future of the news and how journalism will look radically different after the newspaper. So much so, that media theorist Andrey Mir suggests we refer to the new media product as ‘postjournalism’.

 

Books mentioned in this show:

The New Nomads
Written by Felix Marquardt
ISBN: 9781471177378
Published by Simon and Schuster
 

Things I Learned At Art School
Written by Megan Dunn
ISBN: 9780143774853
Published by Penguin

Postjournalism and the death of newspapers. The media after Trump: manufacturing anger and polarization
Written by Andrey Mir
Independently published
ISBN: 9798693861442

Music played on today's show:

Anything Could Happen
By The Clean
Played at 8.30am

Love Me When I Go To Sleep
By Steady Holiday
Played at 9.32am

 

Weak

By SVW

Played at 10.15am
 

The Fear

By Lily Allen

Played at 10.30am

 

What A Fool Believes
By The Doobie Brothers
Played at 10.40am

Islands in the Stream
By Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers
Played at 10.50am

Welcome to the Black Parade
By My Chemical Romance
Played at 10.55am:

Hard Drive
By Cassandra Jenkins
Played at 11.35am