Saturday Morning for Saturday 6 May 2023

8.10  Rob Watson: London on the eve of the coronation

Hundreds of thousands of people are expected to head to central London this weekend to celebrate King Charles's Coronation. 

We catch up with the BBC World Service’s UK Political Correspondent Rob Watson after a day of preparations.  

8.20 Dr George Gross: coronations - the good, the bad, and the ugly 

Dr George Gross, a visiting research fellow at King's College London and co-founder of the British Coronations Project, says the crowning of William the Conqueror in 1066 set the tone for future coronations. While his reign was widely considered a success, the coronation itself was a disaster. 

Historically coronations have been littered with mistakes and exclusions, but Gross says modern coronations are far more polished.

King Charles III has welcomed more diversity to the ceremony. And while the coronation remains a religious ceremony, Gross says there’s nothing intrinsically Christian about it.

 

0905 Emma Espiner: a life less ordinary  

Emma Espiner’s (Ngāti Tukorehe, Ngāti Porou) memoir There’s a Cure for This captures a life less ordinary. 

After a childhood raised in a “purple lesbian state house” there was social activism, motherhood, and a radical career change at age 30. 

Now a surgical registrar at Middlemore Hospital, Espiner is dedicated to improving Maori health outcomes while working on the frontline of our fragile health system. 

Espiner was the Voyager Opinion Writer of the Year 2020 and her RNZ podcast Getting Better- A Year in the Life of a Maori Medical Student won Voyager Best Narrative Podcast of the year in 2021. She will be appearing at the Auckland Writers Festival on May 19.

9.35 Sean Collins-Smith: why American late night TV has gone dark

This weekend live American late-night shows - The Daily Show and Saturday Night Live plus those hosted by Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert and Seth Meyers - go off-air and turn to repeats as more than 11,000 television and film writers strike for the first time in 15 years. 

The industrial action follows the breakdown of negotiations between the Writers Guild of America and Hollywood studios. 

Sean Collins-Smith is a Guild member and protest spokesperson and has written for the popular NBC show Chicago PD. He has been on the picket line with other WGA screenwriters this week. 

 

10.05 Jonathan Kennedy: how germs made history

In his new book Pathogenesis Dr Jonathan Kennedy offers a radical new frame to view human history. 

He argues that infectious diseases have been a decisive force in shaping humanity, from the development of agriculture to the global rise of religion, and that they are not just something that happens to us, but a fundamental part of who we are.

Dr Kennedy is a visiting fellow at Queen Mary University, London where he teaches in global health policy. 

10.45 Megan Dunn: the kinky and the kooky lurking in public art collections  

Author and art writer Megan Dunn joins Kim to talk about two current shows with very different approaches to displaying public art collections.

A massive clearout of the Dowse Art Museum storage has resulted in a kooky eye feast with more than 1000 eclectic items on display; while Auckland Art Gallery reveals its queer pedigree with a selection celebrating eroticised male bodies 

Unhinged: Opening the Door to the Dowse Collection is at the Dowse in Lower Hutt until 13 August. Manpower: Myths of Masculinity is at Auckland Art Gallery Toi O Tamaki until 6 August.

 

 

 

11.00 Playing Favourites with Liz Mellish

From Te Atiawa, Liz Mellish has had a seminal influence on the visibility and rights of mana whenua and Māori heritage in contemporary Te-Whanganui-a-Tara. 

A respected businesswoman and current chair of the Palmerston North Māori Reserve Trust,  Liz has had a major hand in Te Raukura, the elegant Wharewaka function centre on Wellington’s waterfront, which opened in 2011.

While spending lots of time in the Capital, Mellish has lived most of her life in the Wairarapa, where she is Deputy Chair of Featherston Booktown, which is on May 11-13.

​Liz joins Kim to play favourites.  

 

Books featured in this show:

There’s a Cure for This: A Memoir
by Emma Espiner
ISBN: 9780143776857
Published by Penguin

Pathogenesis: How germs made history
By Jonathan Kennedy
ISBN: 9781911709053
Published by Penguin

Music featured on this show

Zadok the priest
Performed by Kings College Choir
Played at 8.30am

Tower of Babel
Performed by Natalie Merchant
Played at 9.05am

Poi E
Performed by the Patea Maori Club
Played at 11.15am

Memory
Performed by Barbra Streisand
Played at 11.30am

Perfect Symphony
Ed Sheeran and Andrea Bocelli
Played art 11.50am