Saturday Morning for Saturday 24 June 2017

 

 

8:09 Polly Fisher - Velocity Made Good

Charlotte (Polly) Fisher is a sailor who raced for 11 years as a member of the Royal Port Nicholson Yacht Club, including in the Wellington Harbour and Coastal Offshore Series. In 1990, Polly was the sole woman in a crew of eight that raced the Auckland to Noumea Ocean Classic on the fast racer Flojo. She and husband Robert Fisher have attended four America's Cup competitions - Sir Peter Blake's first win in 1995 in San Diego, 2000 and 2003 in the Hauraki Gulf and the 2013 competition in San Francisco. Fisher, who is based in Wellington, will talk to Kim about how this year's America's Cup racing stands alongside the earlier regattas, what 'velocity made good' (VMG) means, and why Team New Zealand must beat Oracle Team USA at all costs.

8:30 Marcelo Rodriguez Ferrere - Animal sentience and the law

Marcelo Rodriguez Ferrere is a senior lecturer at the University of Otago Faculty of Law, teaching public law, the law of torts and animals and the law. His research interests include the status of animals within the law. Ferrere completed his Master of Laws at the University of Toronto, he was a judges' clerk at the High Court of New Zealand and practiced as a solicitor at Chapman Tripp in Wellington. He will be speaking on the topic of 'animal sentience and the law' at the NZ Animal Law Association's first conference, on July 1 in Auckland.

9:04 Daphne Merkin - This Close to Happy

Daphne Merkin is a former staff writer for The New Yorker and a regular contributor to Elle. Her writing frequently appears in The New York Times, W, Vogue and other publications. Her previous books include Enchantment, which won the Edward Lewis Wallant Award for best novel on a Jewish theme, and two collections of essays: Dreaming of Hitler and The Fame Lunches, which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. She has just released a memoir, This Close to Happy: A Reckoning with Depression. Merkin lives in New York City.

If you would like help with depression:

Lifeline – 0800 543 354 or (09) 5222 999 within Auckland

Suicide Crisis Helpline – 0508 828 865 (0508 TAUTOKO)

Healthline – 0800 611 116

Samaritans – 0800 726 666 

Youthline - 0800 376 633

 

Depression-specific helplines

Depression Helpline – 0800 111 757 or free text 4202 (to talk to a trained counsellor about how you are feeling or to ask any questions)

www.depression.org.nz – includes The Journal online help service

SPARX.org.nz –  online e-therapy tool provided by the University of Auckland that helps young people learn skills to deal with feeling down, depressed or stressed

 

10:04 Rhema Vaithianathan - The algorithm ace

Professor Rhema Vaithianathan is co-director of the Centre for Social Data Analytics at AUT. She is widely published in the research areas of health and development economics and applied microeconomics, has been a policy analyst for the New Zealand Treasury, and was a Harkness Fellow at Harvard. Previously, Vaithianathan was an associate professor at the University of Auckland, where she led a team that developed a mathematical method of predicting child abuse. She has recently used that model as a basis for work in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where a predictive tool developed by her and her team assists call screeners to decide which calls about alleged child maltreatment should be investigated further. The modelling is now being used and assessed by states across the US.

10:40 Linda Tyler - Francis Bacon and nudes

Linda Tyler will talk nudes to mark the imminent end of The Body Laid Bare: Masterpieces from Tate exhibition at the Auckland Art Gallery Toi O Tamaki. Tyler is an associate professor and director of the Centre for Art Studies at the University of Auckland. She also directs the Gus Fisher Gallery in Shortland Street, and curates its art collection. She will focus on works by Irish artist Francis Bacon in The Body Laid Bare, and the 1998 movie Love is the Devil which explores Bacon's masochistic relationship with his self-destructive young lover George Dyer. The movie screens July 1 at the gallery and The Body Laid Bare exhibition runs until July 16.

 

11:05 Barbara Francis - You Do Not Travel in China at the Full Moon

In April 1938 Agnes Moncrieff, New Zealand YWCA foreign secretary to the YWCA of China, wrote to her mother - "You do not travel in China at the full moon if you can help. There are always air raids." Agnes, or Nessie, Moncrieff arrived in China in 1930 and was part of humanitarian aid and reconstruction work there during the second Sino-Japanese war, when Japan invaded China and millions were killed in the ensuing conflict. Barbara Francis met Nessie Moncrieff in Wellington in 1956 and they remained friends up until Moncrieff's death in 1988. In 2007, Francis discovered that the Alexander Turnbull Library had a collection of Moncrieff's letters and reports sent home to Aotearoa, and she set about editing them, sharing her friend's story in a new book You Do Not Travel in China at the Full Moon: Agnes Moncrieff's Letters from China 1930-45.

 

11:30 Kobi Bosshard - Golden legacy

Kobi Bosshard is nearly 80, and still making beautiful jewellery in his modest workshop in Central Otago. Like his father and grandfather before him, Swiss-born Bosshard is a trained goldsmith and he is widely regarded as the grandfather of contemporary New Zealand jewellery after moving to Aotearoa in the 1960s. Bosshard's daughter, film-maker Andrea Bosshard, has produced a documentary portraying the life of her father, and her mother Patricia. Her film, Kobi, has its world premiere at the New Zealand International Film Festival 2017.

Music played in this show

Artist: John Grant
Song: Grey Tickles, Black Pressure
Composer: John Grant
Album: Grey Tickles, Black Pressure
Label: Dualtone Music
Played at: 9:10

Artist: Chuck Berry
Song: You go to my head
Composer: Haven Gillespie
Album: Chuck
Label: Decca
Played at: 10:40