Saturday Morning for Saturday 30 September 2023

8:10 Trent Dalton: Lola in the Mirror

International best-selling Australian author Trent Dalton's new novel revisits working class Brisbane, this time in the midst of a housing crisis.

In Lola in the Mirror a girl and her mother find themselves living in a van with four flat tyres, parked in a scrapyard by the Brisbane River.

Dalton's Boy Swallows Universe was Australia's fastest selling debut novel in 2018. Along with All Our Shimmering Skies and Love Stories, Dalton's books have sold well over a million copies in Australia alone. 

8.45 Nathan Rarere at half time

The All Blacks play Italy in a game they can't afford to lose in Lyon.

RNZ sports aficionado Nathan Rarere checks in at half time with how the All Blacks are performing with a full strength team in a crunch game. 

9:05  Prof Benjamin Oldroyd: Epigenetics and evolution

Emeritus Professor of Behavioural Genetics at the University of Sydney, Benjamin Oldroyd is an experimental scientist who has published more than three hundred scientific papers, mostly on honey bees and their evolution.

Oldroyd's new book Beyond DNA: How Epigenetics is Transforming our Understanding of Evolution advances new ways of thinking about evolution and adaptation.

Here Prof Oldroyd examines the idea that spores, sperm, pollen and ova are packed with personalised extra-genetic information that play an important role in offspring development with lifelong effects.

 

09:35 Wanted: art detective Arthur Brand - tracking down stolen masterpieces

Dutch art detective Arthur Brand is known as 'the Indiana Jones of the art world', having spent decades tracking down stolen masterpieces, including Picassos, Van Goghs and missing artifacts such as Oscar Wilde's ring and the "Hitler's Horses" bronze statues.

Earlier this month, Brand recovered The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring, an early Van Gogh stolen from a Dutch museum three years ago.  The painting was delivered to his doorstep in an IKEA bag.

Brand has written two books about his recoveries, including Hitler's Horses.

 

10:05 Jennifer Egan on homelessness

In her non-fiction writing, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Visit From the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan has explored solutions for homelessness in America.

Her year-long reporting on street homelessness and supportive housing in Brooklyn recently appeared in The New Yorker.

As a journalist, Jennifer also writes frequently in the New York Times Magazine. Her 2002 cover story on homeless children received the Carroll Kowal Journalism Award.

 

10:35 Nicola Joyce: empathy in song-writing

Traditional Irish band Gráda are reforming and returning to tour New Zealand in October.  Two members of the band, Gerry Paul and Andrew Laking are Kiwis.

Gráda is known for its energy on stage. According to Gráda's Galway-based lead singer Nicola Joyce it's this energy that creates moments of empathy in the crowd.

After Gráda disbanded in 2011, a song Joyce wrote for her new band The Whileaways, Toss the Bobbin, inspired an invitation from the University of Galway to contribute a chapter to Ionbhá: The Empathy Book for Ireland.

Nicola Joyce has been described by The Wall Street Journal as 'a magnificent vocalist who sings with sheer beauty and poignancy'.

 

11:05 Akram Khan: Jungle Book reimagined

One of the world's most respected contemporary choreographers, award-winning British dancer of Bangladeshi-descent Akram Khan is bringing a retelling of Rudyard Kipling's much-loved classic to New Zealand in February in the Aotearoa New Zealand Festival of the Arts. 

State-of-the-art animation, narration and music bring the jungle and city to life in Jungle Book reimagined; about connecting with and respecting our natural world, and of humans' need to belong.

The Akram Khan Company is recognised as one of the world's foremost innovative dance companies - its roots are in Indian kathak form and contemporary dance.

A highlight of Khan's career was the creation of an acclaimed section of the London 2012 Olympic Games Opening Ceremony.

 

Books featured on this show

Lola in the Mirror
Trent Dalton
ISBN: 9781460759837
Published by HarperCollins Publishers

Beyond DNA: How Epigenetics is Transforming our Understanding of Evolution
Benjamin Oldroyd
ISBN: 9780522878868
Published by Melbourne University Press

Music played in this show

Song: Toss the Bobbin
Artist: The Whileaways  
Time played: 10:35

Song: John Riley
Artist: Gráda
Time played: 10:55

Song: I Wan'na Be Like You
Artist: Louis Prima, Phil Harris, from The Jungle Book: The Original Motion Picture
Time played: 11:05

Song: Prologue Exodus
Composer: Jocelyn Pook from Jungle Book reimagined
Time played: 11:10

Song: Burning Down the House
Artist: Talking Heads
Time played: 11:55