On Saturday Morning this week: Kim talks to conservative commentator, author and one-time psychiatrist Anthony Daniels, more commonly known by his nom de plume Theodore Dalrymple, about a new foray into short stories; anthropologist Barbara J King explains the problematic nature of farming and eating sentient animals; RNZ's own Simon Morton describes what happened when he undertook a stint as an Uber driver; ordained minister and Praise Be presenter Chris Nichol reflects on a year of beginnings and endings; and author Kate De Goldi and Adelaide Writer's Week director Laura Kroetsch nominate their best fiction and non-fiction reads of the year.  

 

8.20 Anthony Daniels (aka Theodore Dalrymple) - The Proper Procedure

Anthony Daniels aka Theodore Dalrymple

Anthony Daniels aka Theodore Dalrymple Photo: YouTube

Theodore Dalrymple is the nom de plume of Anthony Daniels, a physician and psychiatrist who, most recently practiced in a British inner-city hospital and prison. Dalrymple has written a column for The Spectator (London) for many years and writes regularly for National Review.  He's a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. Dalrymple's most famous work was Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass (2001). He's just published his first collection of short stories, called The Proper Procedure and Other Stories.

 


9.04 Barbara J King - Personalities on the Plate 

Barbara J King

Barbara J King Photo: supplied

Barbara J. King is emerita professor of anthropology at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, and a freelance science writer. King is a frequent guest on national and international radio shows discussing matters of animal cognition, emotion, and welfare. She and her husband are heavily involved in cat rescue work. Her latest book, Personalities on the Plate: The Lives and Minds of Animals We Eat, is about how animals ranging from fish and octopus to goats, pigs, chickens and cows think and feel - and what that means for our food choices.

 


9.35 Simon Morton - Undercover Uber

No caption

Photo: Supplied


What's it really like to be an Uber driver? RNZ’s Simon Morton went undercover to find out. He talks to Kim about working through the process of becoming a driver, the promise of good money and the reality of what he earned, plus picking up passengers - and passengers trying to pick him up. Morton also discusses how Uber is part of the 'gig economy', using technology to match supply and demand in real time, something critics say leads to a casualisation of the labour force.

What would you rate this driver?

What would you rate this driver? Photo: Supplied

 

 

10.04 Chris Nichol - Beginnings and endings 

Chris Nichol

Chris Nichol Photo: supplied

Chris Nichol has worked in television since 1986, in senior roles with TVNZ's Religious Programmes Unit. He produced Praise Be from 1991 - 1994 and presented the programme from 2007 to this year, when it was cancelled by the network. Nichol is an ordained minister of the Presbyterian Church and has taught a course in Religion, Media and Culture at Victoria University. Nichol has a band called the Dunstan Rangers, which has released two CDs, and ruminates on music and life to friends in emails he calls Regularly Irregular Musical Meanderings

 

 


11.04 Kate De Goldi and Laura Kroetsch - the year in books  

Photos of Laura Kroetsch and Kate De Goldi

Laura Kroetsch (left) and Kate De Goldi Photo: supplied

Laura Kroetsch is director of Adelaide Writers' Week, which takes place March 3 to 8, 2018. Kate De Goldi is a fiction writer and book reviewer. Her most recent novel, From the Cutting Room of Barney Kettle, won the Esther Glen Medal at the 2016 NZ Children's and Young Adult Book Awards, and she's just published ANNUAL 2 with Susan Paris, a miscellany for 9-to-12 year olds.  The pair will each discuss their three favourite fiction and non-fiction picks for 2017.
 

 

Songs played in this episode

Vulfpeck - Running Away
Played at: 08:56

Played during the Chris Nichol interview:

Gary Davis  - Death Don't Have No Mercy

Dr Ralph Stanley  - O Death 

Lyle Lovett  - I Will Rise Up 

Grateful Dead - Brokedown Palace 

Blessed Relief - I Fear For my Rug 
 

 

Books mentioned in this episode

 

The Proper Procedure and Other Stories

by Theodore Dalrymple

 9781943003105

World Encounter Institute / New English Review Press 

 

Personalities on the Plate

by Barbara J King

ISBN 022619518X

University of Chicago Press

 

Kate De Goldi and Laura Kroetsch's best of 2017 book picks:

 

Laura's picks:

Beautiful Animals by Lawrence Osborne  (ISBN 0553447378, Hogarth Press) 

Goodbye, Vitamin by Rachel Khong  (ISBN 1250109167, Henry Holt and Co) 

My Absolute Darling by Gabriel Tallent  (ISBN 0735211175, Riverhead Books) 

The Fact of a Body by Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich  (ISBN 1250080541, Flatiron Books) 

Priestdaddy by Patricia Lockwood (ISBN 1594633738, Riverhead Books) 

Victoria: The Queen by Julia Baird  (ISBN 9780349134505, Penguin Random House) 

The Trauma Cleaner  by Sarah Krasnostein  (ISBN 1250101204, St Martin's Press) 

 

Kate's picks

Miss Jane by Brad Watson (ISBN 0393241734, Picador) 

The Wisdom Tree; five novellas by Nick Earls (Inkerman & Blunt) 

The Explorer by Katherine Rundell (ISBN 1481419455, Bloomsbury) 

The Trauma Cleaner by Sara Krasnostein

East West Street by Philippe Sands (ISBN 0385350716, Weidenfeld & Nicolson)

Hard Frost; Structures of feeling in NZ Literature 1908-1945 by John Newton (ISBN 9781776561629, Victoria University Press)