Saturday Morning for Saturday 23 April 2022

8.10 James Griffiths: Shanghai lockdown stirs online dissent

The 26 million residents of Shanghai have been dealing with strict lockdown conditions since late March due to China’s zero-Covid strategy. Given little warning or time to prepare provisions, residents have had to rely on meagre rations supplied by authorities, and Shanghaiers on the streets have clashed with hazmat-suited police nicknamed the “big whites”.

As a result of the escalating tension, China’s system of censorship is struggling to cope with the onslaught of online complaints from residents. 

James Griffiths is the Asia correspondent for The Globe and Mail, based in Hong Kong. His latest book is The Great Firewall of China: How to Build and Control an Alternative Version of the Internet.

 

8.35 Pauline Autet: the many firsts of the 2022 Venice Biennale

Often dubbed ‘the Art Olympics’, the Venice Biennale is all about representation. While the Russian pavilion is closed this year, near the centre of the biennale a large wooden temporary pavilion has been erected. It stands smouldering, scorched by fire, expressing the situation in Ukraine.

Delayed for the first time since World War II, there are many other firsts for the 2022 biennale. In a radical reversal from the past, nine out of ten artists in the main exhibition are women, and at the New Zealand pavilion Yuki Kihara is the first Pasifika, Asian and Fa’afafine artist to represent us. 

Pauline Autet is the director of Contemporary Hum, an online platform covering ​​NZ artists presenting overseas.
 

 

9.05 Jennifer Egan: sharing your unconscious in The Candy House

American writer Jennifer Egan has described her new novel The Candy House as the sibling to her 2011 Pulitzer Prize-winning A Visit from the Goon Squad. 

In the book, restless ‘tech demi-God’ Bix Bouton has developed a successful new technology called ‘Own Your Unconscious’. It allows you to access every memory you’ve ever had, and the ability to share them in exchange for access to the memories of others. Naturally the technology is a hit, but it has consequences.

Egan is the author of six previous books of fiction and her short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, and The New York Times Magazine. 

 

9.35 Jim Lynch: creating a blueprint for the end of extinction

A proposed 3313-hectare fenced ecosanctuary in Wainuiomata would see critically endangered species such as kākāpō, kōkako and hihi return to the valley, says its author Jim Lynch.

Lynch is the founder and architect of the Zealandia sanctuary in Wellington, which opened in 1999 and has come to fruition in the last 5-6 years. 

The proposed Puketahā sanctuary would be about 15 times the size of Zealandia, and Lynch says it could provide a blueprint for a national network that would help end the threat of extinction constantly hanging over our forest birds.

 

10.05 Bill Browder: the man high on Putin’s hit list

For the last 12 years Bill Browder has been firmly in the sights of Russian president Vladimir Putin. Initially a supporter of Putin, Browder’s company Hermitage Capital Management was the largest foreign investor in Russia until 2005 — when it was blacklisted. Browder was deemed a threat to national security and deported to the UK.

After his young lawyer Sergei Magnitsky was beaten to death in a Moscow jail, Browder made it his life’s mission to make sure his killers faced justice, and thus the Magnitsky Act was born. The bill, which applies globally, authorises the US government to sanction those deemed human rights offenders, freeze their assets, and ban them from entering the US.

Browder’s new book is Freezing Order: A True Story of Russian Money Laundering, State-Sponsored Murder, and Surviving Vladimir Putin's Wrath. It follows his 2015 debut Red Notice.

 

11.05 Matthew Galloway: why take rocks from the Western Sahara? 

From his house on Otago Harbour, designer and artist Matthew Galloway sees the same view every evening as the sun sets: a plume of smoke rising from the chimney of the Ravensdown Factory. 

The factory processes phosphate rock into fertiliser for our farms, but to make this product New Zealand imports the phosphate from occupied Western Sahara. Galloway says by purchasing it we are helping fund Morocco’s brutal occupation of this territory.

The view from Galloway’s window is featuring in his installation Endless with Sahrawi artist Mohamed Sleiman Labat, at Te Tuhi Auckland until May 8.

 

11.35 Matt Baker: engineered mosquitoes and giant planets

Sydney-based New Zealander Dr Matt Baker returns for a chat about some of the latest science news.

This week: what’s been learned from releasing genetically engineered mosquitoes in Florida; how mutations across various mammal species reveal clues to how we age; and the newly discovered ‘AB Aurigae b’ raises questions about how giant planets form.

Dr Baker is the Scientia Research Fellow in the School of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Sciences at the University of New South Wales. 

 

Books mentioned in this show:

The Great Firewall of China: How to Build and Control an Alternative Version of the Internet
James Griffiths
Published by Zed Books
ISBN: 1786995352

The Candy House
By Jennifer Egan
Published by Scribner
ISBN13: 9781476716763

The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America
Daniel Boorstin
Published by Vintage
ISBN10: 0679741801

Freezing Order
By Bill Browder
Published by Simon & Schuster
ISBN13: 9781982153281

 

Music featured on this show:

Lights Come On
Don McGlashan
Played at 8.30am