Sunday Morning for Sunday 23 April 2023

8:10 Herb Farant: Remembering Le Quesnoy

Historian Herb Farrant joins us in the buildup to ANZAC Day, not from Gallipoli, but from another place in the world where our sacrifices in the first World War will always be remembered.

The assault on the fortified town of Le Quesnoy in France was the last act by the New Zealand troops in the First World War. Kiwis have regularly made a pilgrimage walking across fields to the town on Anzac Day, taking the same route the New Zealand Rifle Brigade took in 1918.

Herb is President of the New Zealand Military Historical Society and the man behind the creation of a Memorial Museum in Le Quesnoy.

8:20 Bianca Ranson: 'Show Your Heart for the Hauraki'

A special event organised by Greenpeace Aotearoa and Forest & Bird calling for an end to bottom trawling in the Hauraki Gulf will go ahead at Auckland's Mission Bay today after windy weather meant the event was postponed last weekend.

'Show Your Heart for the Hauraki' culminates in a floating 'ban bottom trawling' banner being deployed and met by a flotilla and over 200 crafts, from kayaks to skiffs, fishing boats and yachts have registered to take part

Bianca Ranson is Forest & Bird's Hauraki Gulf Coordinator

8:25 Sir Anthony Seldon: The Path of Peace

“It was only 1000 kilometres; it was only a million steps through soil where ten million people had bled. So, for every step I took that meant there were ten casualties”

There are various sacred walking journeys throughout the world and its religions. The most famous is probably the Way of St James, the Camino de Santiago in Spain. Writer and educator Sir Anthony Seldon wants another one, in memory of the sacrifices of the first World War. He has written the book The Path of Peace to promote that idea, and he's done the walk himself. 

Anthony Seldon's known for his political biographies of Margaret Thatcher, John Major, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Theresa May. He was headmaster of Wellington College, and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Buckingham. He's written or edited 45 books on contemporary history, politics and education. He founded the global charity Action for Happiness, he's a governor of the Royal Shakespeare Company, and last but not least he's also the honorary historical adviser to No. 10 Downing Street.

The Path of Peace describes his 1000-kilometre walk along the route of the Western Front.

9:06 Mediawatch

This week Mediawatch asks the broadcasting minister about his government's plan for public media after scrapping the plan for a new public media entity.

Mediawatch also talks to the founders of a new national news service to be based in the regions  - and looks at how in-flight snacks got the media's attention this week.

9:40 Calling Home: Abby Christo from Sydney

A slightly different Calling Home this week.

Abby Christo first stepped into the spotlight in 2015, when she appeared on X- Factor NZ as part of duo Mae Valley.  They broke charts with their debut EP and played alongside global country megastars like Keith Urban, Carrie Underwood and Kelsea Ballerini.

Abby has since moved to Sydney and is about to release a new EP.

She joins us to chat about her life there and to play her new single “Note To Self”.

10:10 Louisa Lim: The art of telling untold stories

Louisa Lim is no stranger to controversy - her first book The People's Republic of Amnesia - Tiananmen Revisited resulted in her being unable to visit mainland China for years.

When the Hong Kong protests began over concerns about an extradition treaty, and escalated to a crackdown on freedom of expression, award-winning journalist Louisa Lim found herself uniquely placed to capture the city's untold history in her most recent, Stella Prize shortlisted Indelible City: Dispossession and Defiance in Hong Kong.

A former correspondent for the BBC and NPR, and now a Senior Lecturer at University of Melbourne, Louisa is coming to Auckland next month for an event at the Auckland Writers Festival.

10:30 Dr Susannah Stevens: How to stop hating exercise

Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha | the University of Canterbury is raising a glass to knowledge with a series of talks.

Raising The Bar is an evening of 20 talks across 10 bar venues throughout Ōtautahi Christchurch and wider Waitaha Canterbury.  These include improving mental health, resisting antibiotic resistance, AI in business and How to Stop Hating Exercise.

We're well and truly into Autumn and those new year’s resolutions are starting to feel like a distant memory so how can we keep ourselves fit and healthy and our bodies moving throughout the winter.

Dr Susannah Stevens from their School of Child Wellbeing focuses her research on  learning and well-being - looking at movement pleasure, the body, and how learning occurs with the whole body, not just the mind.

11:10 Dr Joanne Drayton: Can we ever leave our past mistakes behind?

Anne Perry the famous New Zealand crime novelist -  formally Juliet Hulme the infamous Christchurch teenager convicted of murder - died last week at aged 84.

The murder of Honorah Parker by her daughter Pauline and friend Juliet Hulme rocked New Zealand in 1954, and has stayed in our public memory. The crime was later dramatised in Peter Jackson's film 'Heavenly Creatures'. 

Yet Anne Perry managed an extraodinary reinvention; leaving behind a country gripped by the Parker-Hulme case and forging a new life as a bestselling crime writer in a remote part of England. 

But can one ever leave a past like that behind? Will the public allow it? Anne Perry's biographer, Dr Joanne Drayton joins us.

11:30 Professor Nicholas Humphrey: We feel, therefore we are

Nicholas Humphrey is a theoretical psychologist, based in Cambridge, who is known for his work on the evolution of human intelligence and consciousness.

He studied mountain gorillas with Dian Fossey in Rwanda, he was the first to demonstrate the existence of "blindsight" after brain damage in monkeys, he proposed the celebrated theory of the "social function of intellect, and he is the only scientist ever to edit the literary journal Granta.

He has been the recipient of several honours, including the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize, the British Psychological Society's book award, the Pufendorff Medal and the Mind and Brain Prize.

He has been Lecturer in Psychology at Oxford, Assistant Director of the Subdepartment of Animal Behaviour at Cambridge, Senior Research Fellow in Parapsychology at Cambridge, Professor of Psychology at the New School for Social Research, New York, and School Professor at the London School of Economics.

He's written many books, his latest, Sentience: The Invention of Consciousness is available now.