Saturday Morning for Saturday 18 February 2023

 

8.10 Cyclone Gabrielle aftermath

We check in with people dealing with the damage caused by Cyclone Gabrielle. 

9.05 Dub legend Mad Professor 

Neil Fraser aka Mad Professor is a master of dub reggae, a musical genre exemplified by chilled out, reverb and echo heavy remixes.

A disciple of the late Lee Scratch Perry, Fraser has been producing and engineering deep cuts for 45 years. He’s left his sonic mark on hundreds of albums, and remixed artists ranging from Massive Attack to Lorde.

Mad Professor returns to New Zealand to play at Auckland's Earth Beat Aotearoa Festival 22-26 March and in Wellington on 2 April.

9.35  Prof Roger Lentle: can wild deer and conservation coexist?

Roger Lentle can tell a lot from a hoofprint. He’s spent half a century hunting, tracking and studying deer. and has just published Tracking and Finding Deer in New Zealand. 

Deer are known to cause damage to our native forest, but Lentle thinks there's a case for the maintenance of controlled numbers, as source of revenue to support conservation. 

When not in the bush, Lentle is a Professor Emeritus in digestive biomechanics at Massey University.

10.05 Andrey Kurkov: one year on from the invasion of Ukraine

Ukraine’s best-known writer was in his apartment in Kyiv when the first missiles hit on the 24th of February last year. 

Since that day Kurkov has dedicated himself to giving voice to the feelings and experiences of Ukrainians under siege.

He has continued to live in Kyiv and the surrounding countryside but has also travelled widely, giving speeches and raising money for charities.  

His latest book Diary of an Invasion is a journal of the first months of the Russian invasion, collecting his writings and broadcasts from Kyiv. 

Kurkov is the author of 19 novels, including the bestselling Death and the Penguin.

11.05 Nobel Peace Prize winning journalist Maria Ressa

Filipino-American journalist and 2021 Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Ressa could still face life in prison despite being cleared of tax evasion charges in the Philippines in January. 

She's still facing a cyber libel charge in response to her accusations of corruption by former President Rofrigo Duterte's government. 

She considers the charges laid as designed to stifle press freedom. 

The CEO and cofounder of digital news media site Rappler, Ressa has recently published a book based on her career holding power to account, How to Stand Up to a Dictator. 

Prior to establishing Rappler, Ressa spent nearly 20 years as CNN's lead reporter in South East Asia.

11.35 Matt Baker: self repairing bacteria and de-extincting dodos

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

This week: how bacteria can fix their own flagellar motors when times get tough, and how feasible is a plan to ‘de-extinct’ dodos using biotechnology? 

Dr Baker is Scientia Associate Professor in the School of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Science at the University of New South Wales in Sydney.

 

Books featured on this show:

Tracking and Finding Deer in NZ
By Roger Lentle
Published: Bateman Books 
ISBN: 9781776890538

Diary of an Invasion
by Andrey Kurkov
Publisher: Deep Vellum
ISBN: 1646052811

How to Stand Up to a Dictator
By Maria Ressa
Penguin Random House
ISBN: 9780063257511

Music played in this show

Song: People's faces
Artist: Kae Tempest
Played: 8:10am

Song: Protection (Radiation Ruling the Nation)
Artist: Mad Professor vs Massive Attack
Played: 9:35am

Song: For the Love of it  (Version 2 Mad Professor remix)
Artist: Salmonella Dub
Played: 9:55am

Song: I Can't Give Anything Away
Artist: Spoon
Played: 11:35am