Saturday Morning for Saturday 25 August 2018

 

 

8:09   Rebecca Peters  - The world's foremost gun control activist 

Australian Rebecca Peters is considered by many governments to be the world's foremost expert on gun control. She was chair of the Australian National Coalition for Gun Control at the time of the Port Arthur massacre in 1996, and was a driving force in introducing stricter gun control in the wake of that tragedy, including a ban on semiautomatic rifles and shotguns. In 1996 she won a Human Rights Medal for her work. Peters later worked for George Soros' Open Society Institute, now know as the Open Society Foundation, and then became the director of the International Action Network on Small Arms. She was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia in 2016. Peters has lived in Guatemala since 2014, where she continues to lobby that country's government over its lax gun laws, while also fundraising for a charity, the Transitions Foundation of Guatemala, that assists its many citizens disabled by gun violence. 

Rebecca Peters contacted us after the interview with this:

"A few listeners contacted us to point out that our wretched online donation mechanism doesn't recognize NZ (or many other countries) as a location, so they couldn’t make a donation. We are trying to sort it out with the local company responsible. In the meantime I have found an even better solution, which is a tax deductible avenue for NZ donations!

CWS, the development agency of the NZ churches, has agreed to receive donations for Transitions and to provide a tax deduction.

Here are the instructions which CWS sent me:

•            Tax deductible donations can be made to CWS via the website (cws.org.nz) or by phoning 0800 74 73 72

•            Website donations should designate the funds to Transitions Foundation.  Use the comments section to write “Transitions” or "Guatemala wheelchairs". We'll have Transitions Foundation added to the dropdown list in the next couple of days."

 

9:06  Chelsea Manning - Traitor or hero? 

Chelsea Manning is an activist, politician, and former US army solider. Encouraged to join the army by her father while living as an openly gay man, Manning began training in 2007. She was deployed to Iraq in 2009 where she went on to access and share  almost 750,000 pieces of classified or non-classified but sensitive military and diplomatic documents. Initially set to lead to a life in prison, Manning's sentence was reduced by President Barack Obama in January 2017. Since her imprisonment, Manning has received numerous awards for her role in the leaks, and has established herself as a poster child for both whistle-blowers and transgender rights. Chelsea Manning is coming to New Zealand to speak in Auckland on September 8, and Wellington on September 9. Details here.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

9:30   Lizzie Marvelly - Growing up feminist in Aotearoa 

Lizzie Marvelly is a musician and multi-media writer and producer. She founded Villainesse.com, starting the #MyBodyMyTerms campaign, aiming to spark conversation about victim-blaming, revenge porn, consent and sexual violence - a campaign that has attracted international attention. In 2016, Marvelly began writing a weekly column for the Weekend Herald. In 2016 and 2017, she was named as a finalist in the New Zealand Women of Influence awards. In May 2017, Villainesse won Best Blog at the Canon Media Awards, the same year that Marvelly won Best Opinion Writing - General. She also co-wrote and co-produced The REAL Sex Talk, a 12-part sexuality education webseries, among other productions. She has recently released her first book, called That F Word - Growing up Feminist in Aotearoa. 
 

 

 

 

 

10.04 Dr Joshu Mountjoy - local voice on new series Drain the Ocean

Joshu Mountjoy is a research scientist at NIWA in Wellington. He focuses on the processes that shape the seafloor and how these affect society, for example through hazards such as earthquakes and tsunamis. The Kaikoura earthquake provided one of the most dramatic examples of dynamic seabed processes ever observed, including a six-metre seafloor uplift and dramatic change to a canyon identified as the world's highest biomass hotspot. Based on data from multiple ocean voyages, Mountjoy led a large team to document seafloor landslides triggered by the earthquake that travelled at least 580km along the deep ocean floor. This work has been made the subject of an episode of the National Geographic TV show Drain the Oceans that explores ocean floor hazards around the Pacific Rim of Fire. It premieres Tuesday September 11, 8.30pm, on National Geographic, SKY Channel 72.
 

 

 

 

10:40 Amber Rose - Chef celebrates wild food in her new cookbook

Amber Rose says her love of food stems from her childhood - growing up near the Northland town of  Kaiwaka, where she roamed free, milked the cows, made bread, grew vegetables and foraged honey and other wild foods. Her mother is Kay Baxter, founder of heritage food plant collection the Koanga Institute. Rose is the author of three other cook books, including Nourish - Mind, Body and Soul which she wrote with English actors, sisters Sadie Frost and Holly Davidson. Her latest is Wild Delicious, which she says connects her to her childhood and which she wrote during a difficult period in her life. Wild Delicious is published on September 3.

 

 

 

 

11:04 Denise Mina - The story of a Scottish serial killer

Glasgow writer Denise Mina's latest book is The Long Drop - a semi-fictionalised account of the case of Peter Manuel, who killed eight people in Lanarkshire, Scotland, between 1956 and 1958. The story alternates between Manuel's murder trial and his all-night pub crawl with William Watt, whose wife, daughter and sister-in-law Manuel murdered. The novel draws on the dark days of Glasgow's gangsters and also poses a question about Watt's complicity in the killings. Mina's other writing includes  the Garnethill trilogy, the Paddy Meehan series, plus graphic novels and plays. Denise Mina will be appearing at WORD Christchurch, details here and in Wellington in the days following, details here.

 

11.40 David Marr - Political shenanigans in Australia

David Marr is a Guardian Australia journalist. He is widely regarded as one of Australia's most influential progressive commentators, writing on subjects such as politics, censorship, the media and the arts. He has been a journalist since 1973 and is the recipient of four Walkley Awards for Excellence in Journalism. He will talk to Kim about an extraordinary week in Australian politics.

 

 

 

Books mentioned in this episode:

 

The F Word: Growing up Feminist in Aotearoa 

by Lizzie Marvelly 

ISBN: 9781775541127

Harper Collins 

 

Wild Delicious

by Amber Rose 

ISBN: 9780143771449

Random House 

 

The Long Drop

by Denise Mina 

ISBN: 9780316380577

Little, Brown and Company