Saturday Morning for Saturday 6 September 2014

8:15 Alan Cooper

New Zealand evolutionary biologist Alan Cooper is Director of the Australian Centre for Ancient DNA at the University of Adelaide. He has just been awarded a Laureate Fellowship by the Australian Research Council, which will fund his Centre for a five-year project using ancient micro biomes and genomes to study human origins, disease and Aboriginal genetics. Professor Cooper returned to New Zealand briefly late last month, from field work in the permafrost areas of Canada and a trip to Natural Trap Cave in Wyoming, for the Queenstown Molecular Biology conference. (He was interviewed on the Saturday programme in May about his paper in Science on the evolutionary history of the kiwi.)

9:05 Robin Robilliard

Robin “Robby” Robilliard and her husband Garry have owned the Rocklands farm near Takaka since the late 1950s. A former journalist and keen walker, she has written the memoir, Hard Country: A Golden Bay Life (Random House NZ, ISBN: 9781775536635). She will be speaking at the Going West Festival on 14 September at the Titirangi War Memorial Hall, Auckland.

9:45 Laura O'Connell Rapira

West Auckland social entrepreneur Laura O'Connell Rapira was selected as part of the inaugural Live The Dream social enterprise accelerator program last summer, and has since developed Our Place Events, which connects the crowd to the cause, RockEnrol, a campaign to build and activate political power for young people, and Fill Bellies Not Bins, which aims to provide a free meal for 5000 people in Aotea Square in 2015 using food that would otherwise have gone to waste. She is a guest speaker at Festival for the Future 2014 in Auckland (5-7 September).

10:05 Playing Favourites with Arthur Meek

New Zealand playwright Arthur Meek has been living in New York as the third recipient of the Harriet Friedlander New York Residency. His 2011 play, On the Upside Down of the World, has been staged around New Zealand, and has just finished a season at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Later this year he will adapt his early work, On the Conditions and Possibilities of Helen Clark Taking Me as Her Young Lover (with a title change substituting Hillary Clinton for Clark), and will perform it as part of a festival of New Zealand performance at La Mama, New York, in March 2015. The Auckland Theatre Company's world premiere production of his family drama, Trees Beneath the Lake, opens 6 September at Auckland's Maidment Theatre (to 27 September). View images from the production in this online gallery.

11:05 Lucy Sargisson

Lucy Sargisson is Professor of Utopian Studies at the University of Nottingham, and the author of four books and numerous articles on the topic of political utopianism. Last month, she delivered the 2014 Robert Chapman Lecture, Utopianism in the Twenty First Century, at the University of Auckland.

11:45 Children’s Books with Kate De Goldi

New Zealand writer Kate De Goldi is the author of many books, most recently, The ACB with Honora Lee (Random House). She will discuss three novels for middle readers (10-12 years):
Ghost Hawk, by Susan Cooper (2013, Random House, ISBN: 978-0-552-56818-0);
The One and Only Ivan, by Katherine Applegate (2012, HarperCollins, ISBN: 978-0-00-745533-1); and}
One Crazy Summer, by Rita Williams-Garcia (2010, Amistad, ISBN: 978-00-607-60908).

Music played during the programme

Details of tracks and artists will be listed on the Playlist section of this page shortly following broadcast.

This Saturday’s team

Producer: Mark Cubey
Wellington engineer: Carol Jones
Auckland engineer: Alex Baron
Research by Infofind

Music played in this show

Playlist

Tautahi: Get Up Stand Up
The 2014 single
(LOOP)
Played at around 9:40

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds: There She Goes My Beautiful World
From the 2004 album: Abbatoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus
(Mute)
Played at around 10:15

Home Brew (feat Esther Stephens): Space
From the 2012 album: Home Brew
(Young Gifted & Broke)
Played at around 10:30

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Kenneth Young, with Mere Boynton (karanga), Virginia-Marie Stack (mezzo-soprano) and Simon O'Neill (tenor): Te Papa (log drum’n’bass mix)
From the 1998 album: Farr: Te Papa
(Trust)
Played at around 10:45

David Dallas: Runnin'
From the 2013 album: Falling Into Place
(Dawn Raid)
Played at around 10:50

Sinead O’Connor: Take Me to Church
From the 2014 album: I’m Not Bossy, I’m the Boss
(Nettwerk)
Played at around 11:40