Saturday Morning for Saturday 7 May 2022

8.10 Meirion Jones: how Jimmy Savile hid his crimes for decades

Jimmy Savile was once celebrated as one of the UK's most beloved television personalities. Following Savile’s death in 2011, then-BBC journalist Meirion Jones and his colleague Liz MacKean made a documentary exposing Savile as a serial abuser. But the BBC pulled the documentary before it could air. Allegations against Savile came to light 10 months later on another outlet, leading to a major police investigation.

Jones, who features in new Netflix docu-series Jimmy Savile: A British Horror Story, says Savile was protected, in part, by arcane libel laws that quashed multiple attempts to blow the whistle on him since the 1960s.

 

8.40 Dr Andy Mycock: lessons from UK on lowering the voting age

The group behind the Make It 16 campaign will soon be heading to the New Zealand Supreme Court to seek declaration that preventing 16 and 17 year-olds from voting is age discrimination and a breach of the Bill of Rights. 

Andy Mycock works with a UK group advocating for lowering the voting age and has been following developments in New Zealand closely. Mycock says it’s noteworthy that campaigners here have adopted a legal route to potential reform. He says it goes against the mainstream constitutional approach adopted in other countries - such as Scotland and Wales - where supportive political parties passed parliamentary legislation to reform the voting age.

 

9.05 Roe v Wade protests outside US Supreme Court

Protesters have rallied outside the US Supreme Court following the bombshell leak earlier this week indicating the court is poised to overturn Roe v Wade, a landmark ruling that has protected a woman's right to abortion in the United States since 1973.

The protesters are from both sides - abortion rights activists and pro-life demonstrators - and while they have been largely peaceful, an "unscalable" eight-foot-high fence has been erected outside the court. Washington DC correspondent Simon Marks joins the show with an update.

 

9.10 Dr Nic Rawlence: game-changing method to extract ancient DNA 

Extracting DNA from a fossil would traditionally require chopping or drilling into it, a method suitable for bones from large creatures like moa, but would destroy precious remnants of smaller fauna such as geckos, frogs, and birds.

But a groundbreaking “bone bath” technique developed by researchers at the University of Otago now allows researchers to access ancient DNA non-destructively. Dr Nic Rawlence, director of University of Otago Paleogenetics Laboratory, says the new method allows them to now start reconstructing the evolutionary history of some of New Zealand’s tiniest taonga.

 

9.40 Eleanor Bishop: new opera draws inspiration from Janet Frame

Writer Janet Frame’s time at Seacliff Mental Hospital in the 1940s and 50s has provided inspiration for a new operatic work premiering in Christchurch this month. A fictionalised work, The Strangest of Angels explores the contrast between a calm, rational psychiatric patient and a traumatised nurse torn between empathy and the relative power of institutional duty.

For Eleanor Bishop, the show is her first foray into taking the reins as an opera director, having been the assistant director on The Marriage of Figaro last year. However, Bishop is no stranger to the stage, with multiple theatre productions tucked under her belt - including a show about consent called Yes Yes Yes, which she and Karin McCracken are touring around schools throughout June.

NZ Opera production The Strangest of Angels premieres at The Piano in Christchurch on 27-28 May. It will be heading to Dunedin in October. Tickets and more info here.

 

10.05 Amit Katwala: the intriguing origins of the polygraph machine

The average person hears up to 200 lies a day, according to research conducted by University of Southern California. However we’re pretty average at lie detection, and are only able to separate truth from lies 54 percent of the time.

The creators of the polygraph hoped a lie detector would make the justice system fairer, but as Amit Katwala describes in his new book Tremors in the Blood: Murder, Obsession and the Birth of the Lie Detector, the flawed device soon grew too powerful for them to control.

Amit Katwala is a senior editor at Wired. His previous book is The Athletic Brain: How Neuroscience is Revolutionising Sport and Can Help You Perform Better.

 

10.30 Edward Ashby: helping people understand the mana of Kauri

Three hundred kauri saplings grown from seeds saved from the Waitākere property of late artist Colin McCahon have been made available to the public to buy as part of the Kauri Ora project.

The project is being supported by Auckland iwi Te Kawerau ā Maki, who worked with Auckland Council to reopen three tracks in the Waitākere Ranges last month, following a multimillion dollar upgrade to help protect the forest. The tracks had been closed since 2018 due to the spread of the kauri dieback.

Iwi environmental lead and former CEO Edward Ashby considers Kauri Ora and the tracks reopening as important in helping people understand how truly significant the kauri are.

An accompanying exhibition is at Allpress Studio, Auckland until May 8. Saplings can be purchased from McCahon House here.

 

11.05 Playing Favourites with Lyttelton legend Al Park

Al Park has been at the heart of the Christchurch music scene since the 1970s: in bands, running venues and supporting musicians. Indeed, until the earthquakes saw it demolished, his venue Al's Bar was the premier place for live music in the city.

Park has lived over the hill in Lyttelton for more than 40 years - a legend of the town’s own influential music scene, he has supported the likes of Aldous Harding, Marlon Williams and Delaney Davidson coming through. Now Park is about to release his first solo album in 20 years, Pony, featuring songs written from the 1970s to now. 

Watch the video for the lead single ‘California’, which includes Park’s photographs from the 1970s: 

 

 

Books mentioned in this show:

Tremors in the Blood: Murder, Obsession and the Birth of the Lie Detector
By Amit Katwala
Publisher: HarperCollins 
ISBN: 9780008434076