Sunday Morning for Sunday 24 April 2022

8:10 Tracey Martin on the RNZ-TVNZ merger 

Last month the Government confirmed it will create a new public media entity through the merger of Radio New Zealand and TVNZ. 

Former Member of Parliament Tracey Martin chaired the group that advised the Government on the business case and drafted the charter that would underpin it. 

Earlier this week it was announced that Martin, who was New Zealand First's Broadcasting spokesperson from 2011 to 2017, would be chairing the nine-member Establishment Board to lead the work on creating the new entity and "the change required to create it".

Martin joins the show to discuss the merger and what needs to happen to make it work. 

8:22 Teaching difficult histories in Aotearoa 

The new school curriculum of Aotearoa's history is in the process of making its way into practice. And it's likely to ruffle a few feathers along the way.

Several years ago five researchers and authors set out on a journey to understand why there is so much denial in the way we look at and talk about Aotearoa's past. Fragments from a Contested Past by Joanna Kidman, Vincent O'Malley, Liana MacDonald, Tom Roa and Keziah Wallis is the result of that work. It's an effort to understand why we find it so hard to teach the difficult bits of our histories, and how to tell those stories better in future. 

Colin talks to co-authors Joanna Kidman and Vincent O'Malley about the state of the nation when it comes to talking about our past. 

8:47 Nicola Saker: Why my Dad became an 'enemy of the state' 

The current issue of North and South magazine has a striking image on its front cover. It's an old black and white high school class photo with some of the young boys' faces circled in red - under the headline "Enemies of the State?"

The author of the cover story is Wellington journalist Nicola Saker - and one of the boys highlighted in that photo is her dad. 

It turns out that not long after that picture was taken, Dorian Saker and some of his classmates fell under suspicion as suspected subversives. 

But it was only when Nicola finally got her dad's official file from the SIS that it became clear the state surveillance of them went on for years.

9:05 Michael Boggs - NZME back in the black 

Two years ago this week, media bosses warned Parliament's Epidemic Response Committee news outlets might  not survive the Covid lockdown that had throttled their revenue almost overnight. The Herald's owner NZME cut costs, jobs and output to stay afloat - and pledged to keep Kiwis in the know with reliable info.

Two years on, its revenue is back up again - and chief executive Michael Boggs has promised investors bigger profts in future. Is the crisis over? And did he keep his word about Covid crisis coverage readers could trust? 

9:20 Mike Noon - 16 years as motorists' media voice

Mike Noon has called it a day after 16 years as a public face and voice for the AA's motoring members.

In that time the number of cars and drivers on the roads has soared - and the interlinked issues of cars, roads, carbon emissions, urban planning and the environment have become ever more fraught. How well do our media balance out the competing claims for roading and space?

Does the massive membership of the AA give drivers more clout when transport decisions are made?  

9:39 Dr Becky: the 'Millennial parent whisperer'

Dr Becky Kennedy became Instagram's favourite 'parent whisperer' almost by accident.
What started out as a useful tip in one of her early Instagram postings - where she called on parents to remember kids were watching them deal with uncertainty during Covid-19 - helped propel the New York-based clinical psychologist (and mother of three) into a parenting phenomenon. 
Indeed, Time went as far as describing 'Dr Becky' - as she's known online - as the 'Millennial parent whisperer'. 

Dr Becky's company Good Inside now has over a million followers (not to mention a hit podcast) from all over the world, including a large New Zealand contingent.  

10:06 The undeniable (and underrecognised) genius of the Calusa 

If you go back 500 years, the mighty Inca empire stretched some two and a half thousand miles north to south along the Andes range from Colombia to Chile - and reached west to east from the Atacama desert to the Amazon rain forest. 

It had been growing since the 13th century and was the largest nation on Earth. 

In 1532, the Spanish conquest began in earnest and within 40 years - it was all over.  

Other civilisatons in Americas also perished as living cultures within a couple of genrations, but one that held out a lot longer - well into the 1700s - was the incredibly-sophisticated Calusa, who developed a complex culture based on estuarine fisheries rather than agriculture in what's now the Florida peninsula in the US.  

Victor Thompson - Director of the Archaeology laboratory at the University of Georgia - is the lead author of a just-published study shedding light on just how the Calusa did it and why they should be a lot better known than they are.  

10:35 Elise Bohan: looking to the future of our species 

What is the future of our species? As technology becomes more and more a part of our daily lives, we may become something different to human down the line.
 
Elise Bohan is a Senior Research Scholar at the University of Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute (FHI). She holds a PhD in evolutionary macrohistory. Her PhD was in transhumanism and now she's written the book on it, 'Future Superhuman: Our transhuman lives in a make-or-break century.'

She joins Colin to look ahead. 

11.05 Kevin Day: 'Football fans feel they've lost the game'  

Chelsea Football Club is on the market after its former owner Roman Abramovich, a Russian oligarch with tight Vladimir Putin ties, threw the team up for sale in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine and said he would give proceeds to war victims.
 
Potential American buyers the Ricketts family - who own the Chicago Cubs - were in the running but eventually backed out after it was rumoured the family patriarch, Joe Ricketts, was deeply Islamaphobic. Meanwhile, Newcastle United was recently bought by an arm of the Saudi Arabian Government. And there are plenty of other examples of Premier League club owners behaving badly. 
  
All of this has distanced English fans from the game, and clubs, they grew up loving. 

Comedian, writer and podcaster Kevin Day is a staunch fan of Crystal Palace football club and self-described hopeless football romantic. He is also the co-host of The Price of Football podcast which digs into the influence of finance and 'sportswashing' in the sport, and explores the nature and depth of supporters to their local football clubs, big and small. 

11.32 Evans and Clarkson: Science through comics 

Kate Evans and Giselle Clarkson are on a mission to tell stories about science in Aotearoa through words and pictures. 

They've embarked on a fantastic new series for New Zealand Geographic magazine ('Just So') where they tackle the question no one thinks to ask through an illustrated and written approach. 

Kate does the words and Giselle does the pictures, although it's never that simple. 

They join Colin to talk about selling science communication with humour. 

11:50 Leimomi Oakes: Stitching into the past 

Now we're venturing into the world of stitching! Wellington-based costumier and clothing and textile historian Leimomi Oakes is the curator of a recently opened exhibition at the Katherine Mansfield Birthplace in Te Whanganui-a-Tara looking at the fashion of 19th century Wellington. 

It's titled Meet the Maker and it is part of the Threads Textiles Festival across the Wellington region and is on until June. Leimomi also takes people on journeys through how these clothes were made and keeps the techniques alive on her blog The Dreamstress.