Saturday Morning for Saturday 4 December 2021

8.10 Prof Mohan Dutta: the worrying rise of right-wing Hindutva thinking

A strain of Hindu nationalism, Hindutva, has grown in global prominence since 2014 under Indian prime minister Narendra Modi’s BJP party. Now tensions are rising in the Indian community, both here and internationally, between those supporting Hindutva, and those concerned it promotes racism and Islamophobia. 

At the centre of the row in New Zealand is Massey University Professor Mohan J Dutta. He has written on how Hindutva thinking is being used to create a sense of pride in the Indian diaspora, yet is also leading to prejudice. Dutta has been the subject of online abuse, and a petition has been circulating, asking that Massey University and Dutta cease such publishing. 

Dutta is himself a Hindu and says supporters of Hindutva wrongly conflate it with hinduism, which is a far broader church. 

 

8.35 Prof Tony Ward: helping violent offenders lead better lives

Tony Ward began his quest for a better criminal rehabilitation model when he was appointed as the inaugural director of the Kia Marama treatment programme for child sex offenders at Christchurch's Rolleston Prison in 1989. His experience there changed the way he thought about people who commit offences, and how best to help them find other ways to live.

Now a Professor of Psychology at the Victoria University of Wellington, Ward has gained international recognition for the Good Lives treatment model he devised. Used around the globe, the model aims to rehabilitate violent individuals by assisting them to adopt more fulfilling and socially integrated lifestyles.

Professor Ward’s work in this arena has earned him the Royal Society's 2021 Mason Durie Medal, awarded annually to the nation’s preeminent social scientist.

 

9.05 Marcus Du Sautoy: the art of the shortcut in math and life

Oxford mathematician Marcus du Sautoy says humankind's laziness might just be its saving grace. Despite being frowned upon, du Sautoy says our inherent reluctance for hard work can often lead us to think of clever ways to solve problems. 

In his new book Thinking Better: The Art Of The Shortcut In Math and Life, du Sautoy takes a romp through the last 2000 years of smart problem solving and shortcut creating that has enabled much of human progress - whether in constructing the first cities around the Euphrates, using calculus to determine the scale of the universe, or in writing algorithms to help find a partner.

Du Sautoy’s previous books include The Creativity Code, How to Count to Infinity and The Great Unknown.

 

9.35 Dr Jane Rigby: Nasa’s biggest ever telescope prepares for launch

Later this month the James Webb Space Telescope will be shot into space, and when it reaches its destination – approximately 1.5 million kilometres from Earth – the massive telescope will slowly unfurl to its full size. All going to plan, it will allow us to see further into the Universe than anything else ever built, succeeding the Hubble telescope which has been orbiting the Earth since 1990.

Named after former Nasa administrator James Webb, it has taken 30 years and US$10 billion to develop, and is being described as one of the grand scientific endeavours of the 21st Century.

Dr Jane Rigby is an astrophysicist at the Nasa Goddard Space Flight Center. She serves as the Operations Project Scientist for the James Webb Space Telescope.
 

 

10.05 Jennifer Higgie: the astonishing re-emergence of Hilma af Klint

When Swedish artist and mystic Hilma af Klint died in 1944, she left behind more than 1300 works, only seen by a handful of people. The discovery of her paintings decades later has turned art history on its head, and an exhibition of her work at The Guggenheim in New York was the most visited in the gallery's history.  

Jennifer Higgie co-authored the book Hilma Af Klint: Painting the Unseen. She is the producer of podcast series Bow Down: Women in Art History and her next book features Klint: The Other Side: Women, Art and the Spirit World is out in 2022 with an accompanying BBC radio series.

Hilma af Klint: The Secret Paintings is at City Gallery Wellington until 27 March.
 

 

10.35 N.K. Jemisin: how sci-fi illuminates humanity's biggest themes

In 2018, N.K. Jemisin became the first author to win the Hugo Award for Best Novel in three consecutive years, each award going to a book in her widely-heralded Broken Earth series. As a child the New York-based author was an avid reader of sci-fi and fantasy, but she rarely came across characters that looked like her. 

These days, Jemisin is one of the biggest names in contemporary sci-fi, and continuously breaks the status quo as a black woman in a male dominated field. 

Jemisin will be speaking at the 2022 Aotearoa New Zealand Festival of the Arts to discuss the ways in which sci-fi and fantasy can illuminate some of the biggest themes of humanity: inequality, oppression and conflicts of culture. She will also be discussing her latest book, The City We Became, the beginning of her Great Cities trilogy.

 

11.05 Michael Lindsay-Hogg: the unlikely star in new Beatles film ‘Get Back’

Among the fascinating characters hovering around The Beatles in Peter Jackson’s documentary Get Back is Michael Lindsay-Hogg, the director charged with making a film out of the band’s rehearsals for 1970 album Let It Be.

As circumstances constantly change, Lindsay-Hogg negotiates with members of the group to decide an ending for their film - his proposal: a concert in an ancient amphitheatre near Tripoli, north Africa. Lindsay-Hogg’s resulting film Let It Be - released just after the band’s breakup - has been the subject of disparaging comments from the Fab Four and was never given an official video or DVD release. 

Now aged 81, Sir Michael has had a long, remarkable directing career, beginning with pop TV programme Ready Steady Go, pioneering videos for the Beatles, The Rolling Stones' Rock and Roll Circus and later BBC series Brideshead Revisited, Simon and Garfunkel's Concert in Central Park and working extensively on Broadway. His memoir Luck and Circumstance was published in 2011.
 

 

Book mentioned in this show:

Thinking Better: The Art of the Shortcut
By Marcus Du Sautoy
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 9780008393939
 

Hilma af Klint: Painting the Unseen
By: Hilma af Klint, Julia Peyton-Jones, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Daniel Birnbaum and Jennifer Higgie
Publisher: Koenig Books
ISBN: 3863358945
 

The City We Became
By N.K. Jemisin
Publisher: Orbit Books
ISBN: 9780356512686
 

Luck and Circumstance: A Coming of Age in Hollywood, New York and Points Beyond
By Michael Lindsay-Hogg
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN: 9780307701497

 

Music featured on this show:

Not Fair
Able Tasmans
Played at 9.37am

Get Back Take 19
The Beatles
Played at 10.10am

On the Dayshift / All Things Must Pass
The Beatles
Played at 10.30am