Radio New Zealand - Te Reo Irirangi o Aotearoa

Guest details for Saturday Morning 29 November 2008

8:12 Gary Marcus

Gary Marcus is an award-winning Professor of Psychology at New York University, and Director of the NYU Center for Child Language. He is the author of the 2004 book Birth of the Mind, and the new book, Kluge: the Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind (Faber & Faber, ISBN: 978-0-5712-3651-0). He visited Auckland for the 15th International Conference on Neural Information Processing at AUT, from 25-28 November.

8:45 Geoff Steven

Paris-based New Zealander Geoff Steven is photographic editor and photographer for the first official world heritage photographic databank, OUR PLACE The World's Heritage. Photos and accompanying text from this project have been collated for the book Places of Wonder & Discovery (OP Publishing, ISBN: 978-1-86953-669-5), as party of a cross-media project documenting sites that make up the UNESCO World Heritage List.

9:05 Margaret Atwood

Canadian poet, fiction and non-fiction writer, and activist Margaret Atwood has been short listed five times for the Booker Prize. Her new non-fiction book is Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth (Bloomsbury, ISBN: 978-0-7475-9849-7), and is available in audio form as the CBC Massey Lectures 2008.

9:40 Frances Hill

Education consultant and former principal Frances Hill, set up the Alpha eLearning Facility in South Canterbury to give New Zealand children the opportunity to work in a secure and supervised environment from their home computers.

10:05 Playing Favourites with Steve Katz

Musician Steve Katz was a member of the Blues Project and Blood Sweat & Tears, produced records for artists as diverse as Lou Reed and Horslips, and was managing director in the late 1980s for Irish music label Green Linnet. Now a professional photographer who works with his ceramicist wife Alison Palmer, he has rejoined Blood, Sweat & Tears after a 35-year sabbatical, and will tour here with the band in February 2009 for three concerts, in Auckland (Aotea Centre, 5 February), Napier (Church Road, 7 February), Wellington (Opera House 9 February).

11:05 Alan Breslau

Alan Breslau, an American chemical engineer, survived the crash of a commercial airliner in 1963, and spent the next five years in hospital undergoing 52 operations for his burn injuries. He wrote a book in 1977 about the incident, The Time of My Death (E. P. Dutton Co., ISBN: 0-525-21992-7), and started an international burn support group, The Phoenix Society, which grew to 10,000 members in 82 countries. In 1988 he started the first annual World Burn Congress, and invited New Zealander Delwyn Tait, the mother of a burned son, to give a talk about her work in setting up a burn support network in New Zealand. Five years later they were married, and Delwyn became Associate Director of The Phoenix Society. They established a camp for burned children in Pennsylvania, and are working on establishing a camp for burned children in Israel. When Alan retired as Society Director in 1998 they moved to New Zealand to give Delwyn a chance to be with her new grandchildren. Alan's latest book, The Beauty of Disfigurement: How to Cope With Looking, will be published in 2009.

11:45 Fatcat & Fishface

Musical duo Fatcat & Fishface describe themselves as the outlaws of New Zealand's children's music. They have just released a compilation of songs from their five albums from the last decade, The Bestest and Horriblest Songs for Children. Their 2007 album, Meanie, was judged by children as a winner in the category Best Recording for School Age Children 5-12, at the USA-based Children's Music Web Awards.

Music played on the programme

Dengue Fever: Sober Driver
From the 2008 album: Venus on Earth
(Real World /Proper)
Played at around 9:45am

The Wellington International Ukulele Orchestra: Feliz Navidad
From the 2008 EP: A Little Bit Wonderful
(www.ukulele.co.nz/)
Played at around 11.45am

Fatcat & Fishface: The Wreck of the Diddley
From the 2008 compilation album: The Bestest and Horriblest Songs for Children
(www.fatcat-fishface.com/)
Played at around 11:52am

Fatcat & Fishface: Flyby
From the 2008 compilation album: The Bestest and Horriblest Songs for Children
(www.fatcat-fishface.com/)
Played at around 11:57am

Playing Favourites with Steve Katz

Lou Reed: Intro/Sweet Jane
From the 1974 album: Rock'n'Roll Animal
(RCA)
Played at around 10:05am

Blood, Sweat & Tears: Sometime in Winter
From the 1969 album: Blood, Sweat & Tears
(Columbia)
Played at around 10:20am

The Even Dozen Jug Band (feat. Steve Katz and Maria Muldaur): Come On In
From the 1964 album: The Even Dozen Jug Band
(Elektra)
Played at around 10:30am

Blues Project track: I Can't Keep from Crying
From the 1966 album: Projections
(Verve/Folkways)
Played at around 10:40am

Horslips: The Man Who Built America
From the remastered 2001 version of the 1978 album: The Man Who Built America
(Horslips/Edsel)
Played at around 10.45am

Stefan Grossman, Danny Kalb and Steve Katz: Kettle of Fish
From the 2007 album: Played a Little Fiddle
(Stefan Grossman's Guitar Workshop)
Played at around 10.55am

Studio operators

Wellington engineer: Phil Swallow
Auckland engineer: Ian Gordon
Christchurch engineer: Hamish Doake