Saturday Morning
1,297 episodes - English - Latest episode: 2 days ago - ★★★★★ - 16 ratingsA magazine programme with long-form, in-depth feature interviews on current affairs, science, modern life, history, the arts and more.
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Episodes
Anushri Anandaraja: health workers’ champion in NYC
May 01, 2020 20:12 - 21 minutes - 20.1 MBNew York City remains at the epicentre of the US experience of the novel coronavirus. Although thankfully hospitalisations, new cases and deaths now seem to be on a downward path, its health system and the people staffing it remain under huge strain. Born and raised in Taranaki, Anushri (Anu) Anandaraja is the Director of the Office of Wellbeing and Resilience at Icahn School of Medicine in Manhattan. The medical school's part of the vast Mount Sinai hospital network that employs more th...
Sam Forbes: baking bread, breaking bread
April 24, 2020 22:42 - 19 minutes - 18 MBWith gluten-crazed hordes of home bakers stripping supermarket shelves of every last gram of flour, now sugar, yeast, and baking powder have become the new, must-have essentials of Lockdown Season. And the lockdown's also bringing busy times to some bakeries, especially those specialising in home delivery! Sam Forbes aka the Shelly Bay Baker explains how Level 4 has transformed his business, explores some sourdough science, and expands on why more of us are trying to bake their own bread...
John Darnielle: Mountain Goats' new lockdown album
April 24, 2020 22:06 - 28 minutes - 25.9 MBFormer punk, psychiatric nurse, wrestling fan, now novelist and musician John Darnielle (rhymes with 'barn feel'!) is a writer, composer, guitarist, pianist, and vocalist and the primary (and once the only) member of The Mountain Goats. The band's new album Songs For Pierre Chuvin is a product of the lockdown, recorded over 10 consecutive nights, one song a night, in self isolation in Darnielle's home in Durham, North Carolina. And it sees a return to the band's lo-fi roots, with a decid...
Christina Lamb: bearing witness to war crimes against women
April 24, 2020 21:07 - 50 minutes - 46.3 MBThe decorated war correspondent Christina Lamb (Farewell Kabul, I Am Malala) has written a harrowing history of what war does to women. Our Bodies, Their Battlefield is her attempt to tell the true story of the injustices down to women in wartime. And shamefully, rape and sexual violence have become commonplace in many modern conflicts as a weapon of terror and humiliation, and as a way of carrying out ethnic cleansing.
Lachlan Paterson & Angela Wanhalla: Maori Home Front
April 24, 2020 20:43 - 12 minutes - 11.3 MBAngela Wanhalla and Professor Lachy Paterson from the University of Otago are studying the often overlooked history of the impact of the Second World War on Maori society at home in New Zealand. With 3,600 Maori seeing active service on the battlefields of North Africa, Italy and elsewhere, a much bigger 'army' of 29,000 people (almost one-third of the total Maori population of the time) were making less heralded but no less valuable contributions to the war effort on the Home Front. Fro...
Dr Chris Smith: virologist on latest Covid-19 science
April 24, 2020 20:12 - 33 minutes - 31.1 MBDr Chris Smith, a consultant clinical virologist at Cambridge University, and one of BBC Radio 5 Live's Naked Scientists, is back to assess the latest research and Covid-19 scientific developments as we try to understand the virus better. This week, human trials on vaccines ramp up in the UK and Germany: so what kind of protections can a vaccine offer? Also a new study casts doubt on the idea of children as active 'super spreaders' of the disease. Meanwhile, strange blood clotting effect...
Craig Potton: conservationist and publisher’s lockdown life
April 17, 2020 23:45 - 8 minutes - 8.07 MBThe landscape photographer, conservationist, traveller and publisher Craig Potton is finding a prolonged period of social isolation strangely productive. Ensconced in a bubble in Nelson with two daughters and two dogs he's suspended all surfing activities, but is instead working on a book about pilgrimages in the Himalayas.
Australian working on Singapore’s Covid-19 offensive
April 17, 2020 23:25 - 21 minutes - 19.4 MBAustralian Dale Fisher is one of those leading Singapore’s response to tackling Covid-19. Professor Fisher is chair of Infection Control at the National University Hospital in Singapore, and also heads the Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network for the World Health Organization. He's also been sharing health messages and fighting fake news about the Covid-19 crisis in a comic series entitled The Covid-19 Chronicles. He arrived in Singapore in 2003 when it was dealing with the SARS ou...
Johanna Knox: lockdown food foraging
April 17, 2020 23:05 - 19 minutes - 18.2 MBWoodland warrior and seasoned forager Johanna Knox has been taking some value added walks around her neighbourhood in the lockdown.
Andrew Solomon: depression, anxiety and the virus
April 17, 2020 22:35 - 24 minutes - 22.4 MB"It's not that an antidepressant will make people unafraid of this mysterious and awful virus, nor that a single hug will mitigate their profound aloneness, but they can help." Writer, journalist and psychology professor Andrew Solomon is the author of The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression. The book won the 2001 National Book Award, was a finalist for the 2002 Pulitzer Prize, and was included in The Times' list of the 100 best books of the decade. His other books include Far from the...
Peter de Jager: overcoming the Y2K crisis
April 17, 2020 22:10 - 20 minutes - 18.9 MBCovid-19 isn't the first time the world has needed to rally together to mitigate a potential global catastrophe. Twenty years ago armies of computer programmers worked for years to prevent vital computer systems infrastructure falling over on January 1, 2000, due to the Y2K problem. This was a technical issue, abstract to most, the result of computer programs using two digits to represent a four-digit year, which when 1999 ended would cause computers to think it was 1900. Author and tech...
Chris Smith: Virologist on latest Covid-19 science
April 17, 2020 21:35 - 25 minutes - 23 MBAs New Zealand chafes under what could be last few days of its Level 4 lockdown, Dr Chris Smith returns to digest the week's scientific happenings. A consultant clinical virologist at Cambridge University, and one of BBC Radio 5 Live's Naked Scientists, he has the latest on the hunt for a vaccine, what we do and don't know about our immunity post infection, and the winding path to a fully functional antibody test to work out who's had the virus and who hasn't. Also on the agenda, the US ...
Ann Patchett: The Dutch House author
April 17, 2020 21:05 - 23 minutes - 21.2 MBThe US novelist Ann Patchett received the 2002 PEN/Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize for Fiction for her novel Bel Canto. She's also writes non-fiction and the latest of her eight novels, The Dutch House, was released last year. It revolves around siblings Danny and Maeve's obsession with their family home, after they are dispossessed of it by their (wicked?) stepmother. Patchett is currently locked down in Tennessee, and is keeping the independent bookshop she co-owns in Nashville ope...
Philippe Sands: The Ratline
April 17, 2020 20:30 - 29 minutes - 27.4 MBLaw professor and barrister Philippe Sands has appeared in some high profile international human rights trials involving the likes of Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet, and the wars and genocides in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. Sands is the author of 16 books about international law including Lawless World: America and the Making and Breaking of Global Rules (2005), Torture Team: Rumsfeld's Memo and the Betrayal of American Values (2008) and East West Street: On the Origins ...
Katy Watson: Brazil and coronavirus
April 17, 2020 20:10 - 13 minutes - 12.7 MBWhile the USA might be the current epicentre of the Covid-19 outbreak, another country headed by a strongman leader is grappling with its effects too. Brazil has had nearly 30,000 cases of the virus and close to 2,000 fatalities to date. The country's president Jair Bolsonaro has consistently downplayed the seriousness of the outbreak- even alienating the political allies who got him into power- and government inaction has led to vigilante quarantine rules enforced by gang leaders in fav...
Gregory O'Brien: poetry in isolation
April 10, 2020 23:40 - 8 minutes - 8.1 MBCould all this isolation be sparking a flowering of the nation's poetic creativity?! Certainly if the Saturday Morning inbox (sample size: 1) is any guide there's never been such an outpouring of poetry. So could the experience of self isolation perhaps be the key?! The author, artist, and poet Gregory O'Brien reckons poets are isolation specialists by nature, and New Zealand poetry is full of great self reflective moments. Although heading into the wilderness on foot or by bike isn't to...
Tangaroa Walker: dairy farming during lockdown
April 10, 2020 23:30 - 13 minutes - 12.1 MBSouthland contract milker Tangaroa Walker is a popular social media presence with his Facebook page Farm 4 Life, where he posts educational and earthy videos of daily life on a dairy farm. He's also started a mental wellness series called "Mask off Monday" and runs a gym and free diving venture. In November he became a dad, with baby Tekauenga already being lined up as a future helper on the farm. Now classed as an essential worker in the lockdown economy, we see how Tangaroa's bubble is...
Trent Dalton: Tales from the Bunker
April 10, 2020 23:10 - 21 minutes - 19.3 MBIt was a conversation with his wife over ham and cheese toasties that kicked off Tales from the Bunker - Australian writer Trent Dalton's weekly column about the power of the human spirit in these difficult times.
Ken Burns: doco director's epic histories
April 10, 2020 22:10 - 51 minutes - 47.2 MBAmerican documentary maker Ken Burns is best known for his sweeping, epic historical documentary series including The Civil War (1990), Jazz (2001), The War (2007), Prohibition (2011), The Roosevelts (2014), and The Vietnam War (2017). He's earned two Academy Award nominations and is the winner of several Emmy Awards, among other honours. He even has a visual cinematographic technique named after him! The 'Ken Burns Effect' uses panning and zooming in the production process to embed stil...
Whaitiri Poutawa: The "Maori Thor" bringing kapa haka online
April 10, 2020 21:30 - 11 minutes - 10.5 MBKapa haka teacher Whaitiri Poutawa loves his job and had a "mini freak-out" when the Level-4 lockdown was announced and he couldn't visit schools. To keep contributing, he's taken his funny, energetic classes online, where they've attracted tens of thousands of viewers from around the world. Whaitiri shoots his Kapahaka4kids videos in his living room with a camera is held in place by Blu Tack.
Chris Smith: COVID-19 science
April 10, 2020 21:10 - 36 minutes - 33.2 MBDr Chris Smith, consultant clinical virologist at Cambridge University and one of BBC Radio 5 Live's Naked Scientists, is back with the latest science about COVID-19 and its spread. Among the topics we'll be discussing this week: the risk of "flare-ups", an explanation of what "viral load" means, and whether you should hold your breath when you pass someone on the street.
Colin Thubron: travel writing off the beaten track
April 10, 2020 20:35 - 26 minutes - 24.4 MBThe acclaimed travel writer and novelist Colin Thubron was due to arrive in New Zealand for the Auckland Writers' Festival next month. He's been here before, travelling around the North and South Islands by motorbike back in 1965. His latest trip, of course, has now been derailed by coronavirus, along with all other global travel for what looks like an extended period. All this might come as a blow to Thubron who over his career has amassed air miles aplenty travelling to far flung and r...
Amy Goldstein: COVID-19 in the Land of the Free
April 10, 2020 20:15 - 19 minutes - 17.9 MBAfter forging a destructive path through Asia and Europe, COVID-19 has taken hold in the US: the country's transmission numbers have rapidly outstripped previous hotspots like China, Italy and Spain. And despite some isolated glimmers of hope, few people believe that the disease can quickly be brought under control. The exponential growth in the number of cases and deaths in cities like New York, Detroit and New Orleans, has the health system struggling to cope. Meanwhile critics of the ...
Kate Camp: literature for the lockdown
April 03, 2020 22:45 - 17 minutes - 15.6 MBWhen you tire of crashing Houseparty, of DIY hair styling, of panic-buying flour, and of video-calling every last person you know, how about a good book!?
Steph Miller: new short film Rat Man
April 03, 2020 22:30 - 9 minutes - 8.75 MBSteph Miller is a filmmaker based in Wellington. Her film Rat Man (co-directed and co-produced with Belle Gwilliam) tells the story of Daryl, a reclusive ex convict who becomes the toast of his neighbourhood when his house and his local community get overrun by rats.
Mary Kisler: art and museums online
April 03, 2020 22:10 - 16 minutes - 14.7 MBThis week the curator and art historian Mary Kisler has been visiting Monet's garden and the collections of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao without leaving home.
Dr Diana and Mark Kopua: Maori mental health
April 03, 2020 21:40 - 26 minutes - 24.1 MBWhat would mental health care look like if it took te ao Maori as its foundation? Psychiatrist Dr Diana Kopua and her husband Mark have been on a mission to answer that question.
Jane Patterson: government messaging in the Covid crisis
April 03, 2020 21:12 - 16 minutes - 15.4 MBRNZ's political editor Jane Patterson has been watching and assessing the government's handling of the coronavirus pandemic, and how it's navigating the country through the realities and tensions of the lockdown
Greg Woods: marble racing commentator
April 03, 2020 20:50 - 9 minutes - 8.48 MBGreg Woods is helping to turn the newly fashionable, socially distant sport of marble racing into a global phenomenon.
Chris Smith: coronavirus science latest
April 03, 2020 20:15 - 37 minutes - 33.9 MBDr Chris Smith, consultant clinical virologist at Cambridge University and one of BBC Radio 5 Live's Naked Scientists, is back with the latest science about COVID-19 and its spread.
Dr Michael Mosley: the secrets of a good night's sleep
April 03, 2020 19:35 - 26 minutes - 24.6 MBHe's explored intermittent fasting, Type 2 diabetes and the state of your insides - now the science journalist, TV presenter and bestselling author Dr Michael Mosley wants to help you sleep better too!
India's 1.3 billion person lockdown
April 03, 2020 19:15 - 12 minutes - 11.3 MBIndia, the world's second biggest country, has gone into lockdown mode for three weeks over the COVID-19 pandemic.
Kim's intro for Saturday 4 April 2020
April 03, 2020 19:00 - 2 minutes - 2.67 MBKim Hill's intro to Saturday's show.
Listener Feedback for 28 March
March 27, 2020 22:55 - 10 minutes - 9.92 MBKim reads listener feedback for Saturday 28 of March 2020.
Doug Wilson: the lockdown and the elderly
March 27, 2020 22:35 - 24 minutes - 22.6 MBOur expert on ageing Doug Wilson's back with his perspective on the COVID-19 lockdown and what this means for the elderly.
Steve Wratten: plants to please bees
March 27, 2020 22:07 - 19 minutes - 18.1 MBSteve Wratten is Professor of Ecology with the Bio-Protection Research Centre based at Lincoln University.
Harlan Coben: novelist's big on Netflix
March 27, 2020 21:35 - 25 minutes - 23.5 MBThe blockbusting US novelist Harlan Coben has a new book out: it's called The Boy From The Woods and this week he was meant to be on a book tour to promote it.
Ed Caesar: hunting huge diamonds
March 27, 2020 21:08 - 22 minutes - 20.3 MBJournalist Ed Caesar has been globe trotting through Africa and Europe on the trail of the world's largest rough diamonds.
Dr Chris Smith: lockdown science
March 27, 2020 20:30 - 30 minutes - 27.7 MBConsultant clinical virologist (and Naked Scientist) Dr Chris Smith is back with the latest science about what we're discovering about COVID-19 and its spread.
Jaimee Perrett: Nelson teacher's enforced Ghana stay
March 27, 2020 20:08 - 13 minutes - 12.4 MBJaimee Perrett is a primary school teacher from Nelson who's been fundraising to rebuild a school in Tetrem, a village about 300 kilometres north west of the Ghanaian capital, Accra.
Coronavirus causing unheard of reduction in air pollution
March 27, 2020 19:40 - 15 minutes - 14.6 MBThere might be at least one silver lining as the world navigates its way through the coronavirus pandemic. Paul Monks is Professor of Air Pollution at the University of Leicester.
Anu Partanen: why is Finland so happy?
March 27, 2020 19:07 - 28 minutes - 26.5 MBFinland was named the happiest country in the world this month...again!: It's the third straight year the country's come out on top of the World Happiness Report. So why are the Finns so damn happy?!
Michele Bannister: interplanetary passions
March 20, 2020 22:35 - 26 minutes - 24 MBPlanetary astronomer Michele Bannister has recently arrived home after working in Canada at The University of Victoria in British Columbia, and at Queen's University in Belfast. A passionate communicator on matters astronomical, her research interests include mapping the outer solar system, interstellar comets, and satellite mega constellations. Now back in New Zealand, she wants to help the country launch its own interplanetary space missions, informed by her experiences overseas.
Steven Taylor: the psychology of pandemics
March 20, 2020 22:05 - 14 minutes - 13.3 MBProfessor Steven Taylor is an Australian academic who's been living in Canada since 1988. On the 1st December 2019, just a few weeks before the full scale of the novel coronavirus outbreak became apparent in China, he released his book The Psychology of Pandemics: Preparing for the Next Global Outbreak of Infectious Disease. A Professor and Clinical Psychologist in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, he also has a clinical practice in the city...
James Hadfield: NZ phylogeneticist tracking COVID-19's spread
March 20, 2020 21:35 - 17 minutes - 16.3 MBWorking from home isn't exactly a new experience for phylogeneticist Dr James Hadfield. Based in Wanaka but employed by Seattle's Bedford Lab, he works on the open source Nextstrain platform: this allows scientists all over the world to share and compare genetic information about SARS CoV-2 and other viruses in one central location, and then track their rate of mutation and their spread in real time. The data helps to build up a 'family tree' of a virus revealing the timeline of where tr...
Arielle Kilker: Cheer co-director's feelgood hit
March 20, 2020 21:05 - 30 minutes - 27.5 MBIt's proving to be an unlikely-sounding global hit. The six-part Netflix documentary series Cheer follows the US's best college cheer-leading squad, Navarro College from Texas, as they train for the 2019 national championships. Under the exacting gaze of its glamorous coach, Monica Aldama (aka The Queen) viewers follow Cheer Team luminaries like La'Darius Marshall and Gabi Butler through endless practices, bone-crunching injuries, and jaw-dropping tumbling stunts. Cheer's developer, pro...
Robert Macfarlane: the #CoReadingVirus global reading group
March 20, 2020 20:30 - 15 minutes - 14.3 MBUnder the Twitter hashtag #CoReadingVirus, the nature and travel writer Robert Macfarlane is doing his bit to fight back against the boredom and increasing isolation many are experiencing as health authorities around the world introduce tough public health measures to combat the spread of COVID-19. His online reading group has just selected Nan Shepherd's 'slender masterpiece' The Living Mountain as its first book, and booksellers and participants are helping out to get copies to people ...
Mark Jenkin: director of Bait
March 20, 2020 20:05 - 32 minutes - 29.9 MBDubbed a 'dreamlike masterpiece' and 'one of the defining British films of the decade' in a 5 star review by film critic Mark Kermode, you won't have seen many movies like Bait before. A story of rising tensions in a Cornish fishing village, the 89 minute feature is described as a Brexit parable and is shot on 16mm film on clockwork cameras with audio added in post production. We speak to its director Mark Jenkin, who recently won a BAFTA for outstanding debut by a British writer, direct...
Dr Chris Smith: 'surface anxiety' and COVID-19 treatment trials
March 20, 2020 19:30 - 32 minutes - 29.7 MBConsultant clinical virologist (and Naked Scientist) Dr Chris Smith returns with the latest on what we're discovering about COVID-19 and how it's spreading. This week, a team of Imperial College London researchers released an influential study modelling the likely impact of various public health measures designed to slow the pandemic's spread. It seemed to prompt a rapid rethink by the US and UK governments, so where does this leave the 'herd immunity' theory now? Also existing antiviral...
Laura Spinney: the search for a vaccine and the 1918 flu
March 20, 2020 19:10 - 14 minutes - 13.2 MBLike other residents of Paris, journalist and science writer Laura Spinney is holed up in her home in the French capital: she's only able to venture out if she can produce an official certificate showing an approved reason for her journey. She's got a unique perspective on the current scenes of turmoil we're seeing around the world. Her 2017 book Pale Rider covered the devastating impact of the 1918 influenza pandemic, a global health disaster that killed somewhere between 50 and 100 mil...