Saturday Morning for Saturday 28 May 2011

Guest details for Saturday Morning 28 May 2011

8:15 Bryan Caplan

Bryan Caplan is professor of economics at George Mason University in Virginia USA and blogger at EconLog, one of the Wall St. Journal's top 25 economics blogs. His first book, The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies, was named the best political book of 2007 by the New York Times. His latest book is Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids: Why Being a Great Parent is Less Work and More Fun Than you Think (Basic Books, ISBN: 978-0465018673). During the interview Bryan and Kim discussed the book The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do, by Judith Rich Harris (Free Press, ISBN 978-068-484409-1).

8:30 Michael Morrissey

Auckland writer Michael Morrissey has published twenty books of poetry and fiction. He details his experience of bipolar disorder in the new book, Taming the Tiger (Polygraphia, ISBN: 9781887332968), and is profiled in Daytime Tiger, a feature documentary by Costa Botes, which will premiere at this year’s New Zealand International Film Festival. During the interview Michael and Kim discussed two books by Kay Redfield Jamison: Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament (1993, The Free Press, ISBN: 0-02-916030-8), and her 1995 autobiography, An Unquiet Mind: a Memoir of Moods and Madness (Vintage, ISBN: 978-0-679-76330-9).

9:05 James Gleick

James Gleick is an American author, journalist, and biographer. His first book, Chaos: Making a New Science (1987) chronicled the development of chaos theory, and his subsequent books include Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything (1999), and biographies of Richard Feynman and Isaac Newton. His new book is The Information: a History, a Theory, a Flood (Fourth Estate, ISBN: 978-0-00-742311-8).

9:45 Jen Hay

Jen Hay is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Canterbury, and is the director of the New Zealand Institute of Language, Brain and Behaviour. She will talk about infant directed speech, or "motherese".

10:00 Playing Favourites with Kate Camp

Kate Camp is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently last year’s The Mirror of Simple Annihilated Souls (Victoria University Press , ISBN: 9780864736215), which is a finalist in the 2011 New Zealand Post Book Awards. She is also the author of the 2002 essay, On Kissing (Four Winds Press), and a selection of her discussions with Kim Hill on classic literature were published in 2007 as Kate’s Klassics (Penguin, ISBN: 9780143007524). From September, Kate will spend a year in Berlin as the 2011 recipient of the Creative New Zealand Berlin Writers’ Residency, completing a collection of poetry and exploring collaborations with local artists.

11:00 Dale Williams

Dale Williams is the Mayor of Otorohanga. The Otorohanga District Council has had great success in recent years with its youth programmes, minimising youth offending and unemployment. Mayor Williams participated in a recent discussion organised by the Henwood Trust and Robson Hanan Trust to explore pathways that might address New Zealand's growing incarceration rate.

11:45 Children’s Books with Kate De Goldi

Kate De Goldi will discuss three new books:
The Dream of the Thylacine, by Margaret Wild and Ron Brooks (Allen and Unwin, ISBN: 978-1-74237-383-6), a new picture book from the celebrated collaborators of Fox;
Small as an Elephant, by Jennifer Richard Jacobson (Candlewick, ISBN: 978-0-7636-4155-9), a survival story with a difference; and
Matchless, by Gregory Maguire (Harper, ISBN: 978-0-06-200482-6), a rethink of The Little Match Girl by the author of Wicked.

Music played during the programme

Playing Favourites with Kate Camp

The Beatles: Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)
From the 1965 album: Rubber Soul
(Parlophone)
Played at around 10:20

Smog: Rock Bottom Riser
From the 2005 album: A River Ain’t Too Much to Love
(Spunk)
Played at around 10:30

Gram Parsons: A Song For You
From the 1974 album: GP
(Reprise)
Played at around 10:50

Thunderclap Newman: Something in the Air
The 1969 single
(MCA)
Played at around 10:55

Smog: In the Pines
From the 2005 album: A River Ain’t Too Much to Love
(Spunk)
Played at around 11:40

Studio operators

Wellington engineer: Carol Jones
Christchurch engineer: Joseph Veale
Hamilton engineer: Andrew McRae