Saturday Morning for Saturday 13 May 2023

08:10 Mstyslav Chernov: Pulitzer prize winner on exposing Mariupol war atrocities

Mstyslav Chernov is part of a small team of Associated Press Ukrainian journalists who this week won a Pulitzer Prize for their fearless reporting from Mariupol last year.

For nearly three weeks they were the only international journalists in the port city, exposing the horrors of the Russian siege including an airstrike on a children's hospital and maternity ward.

Their work has been credited with saving thousands of lives, by leading to a push for humanitarian corridors which allowed mass evacuations. 

Chernov has turned 30 hours of footage from Mariupol into an extraordinary fly on the wall documentary, 20 Days in Mariupol which plays at the Doc Edge Film Festival in Auckland on 31 May, Wellington on 14 June and online 19 June to 9 July. 

 

09:05 Liv Sisson: Aotearoa’s fascinating and freaky fungi 

Aotearoa’s fungi are fascinating, freaky and fantastical according to Ōtautahi based forager and food writer Liv Sisson.

We have 22,000 species, including one that hunts bugs, a lichen named after Jacinda Ardern, the famous bright blue mushroom, and a couple that even glow in the dark.

Some are delicious but others can kill you, liquefy your liver or send you to outer space. 

Liv has just released Fungi of Aotearoa: A Curious Forager’s Field Guide, a resource to help find, identify and use mushrooms and other fungi found in New Zealand.

 

 

9:35  Sameena Zehra: immigration is a serious laughing matter

From performing on street corners in India to the National Theatre in London, comedian, actor, writer, and blues singer Sameena Zehra has spent her life telling stories and, in her own words, holding power to account. 

She now lives in Aotearoa, and her latest show Immigrunting tackles her battle to convince Immigration New Zealand to let her stay in the country.

Immigrunting is part of the NZ International Comedy Festival, and has one more show in Wellington on May 13 before a run in Auckland from 16 to 20 May. 

10:05 David Good: the remarkable gut life of the Yanomami people  

The Yanomami people of the Amazon rainforest are one of the last Indigenous groups living as hunter-gatherers and small-scale farmers. They also have the most diverse gut microbiome of any community studied in the world.

David Good is half Yanomami but has spent most of his life in the United States. A life-changing reunion with his mother led him to study how his people's unusual microbiomes might hold the secret to better health by fighting inflammation. 

Good is the author of The Way Around: Finding My Mother and Myself Among the Yanomami and Executive Director of the Yanomami Foundation.

 

10:35 David Lawrence: binge-reading Shakespeare’s plays in order

Known for his contemporary takes on Shakespeare, Aotearoa theatre director and scholar David Lawrence believes the bard’s intentions have been long compromised by being organised into the genres of Comedy, History and Tragedy. 

Instead, in his book Shakespeare’s Tropes Lawrence covers the 41 plays in the order they were written, “to be read as if you were binge-watching them on Netflix”. He makes comparisons between Shakespeare and The Sopranos, The Simpsons and Star Wars along the way.

David Lawrence was the Artistic Director of The Bacchanals and Head of Research and Associate Artistic Director of the Pop-up Globe. 

 

11:05 Playing Favourites with Russell Brown

In the early 1980s journalist Russell Brown jumped ship from his boring newsroom job to become deputy editor of Rip It Up, a music magazine capturing and feeding a thriving urban culture Brown was part of.

Since then his career has reflected the changes in our music and media. From editing influential street magazine Planet, establishing the Public Address community of blogs to presented media commentary programmes Media7 on TVNZ 7, Media3 on TV3 and finally Media Take on Māori Television.

He has also been a vocal advocate for the decriminalisation of recreational drug use.

A music aficionado and self-confessed Dad DJ, Russell joins Kim to play some of his favourite tunes.

 

Books featured in this show:

Fungi of Aotearoa - A Curious Forager's Field Guide
By Liv Sisson
ISBN:9781761047879 
Published by Penguin

The Way Around: Finding My Mother and Myself Among the Yanomami
By David Good
ISBN: 9780062382122
Published by Harper Collins

Shakespeare’s Tropes
By David Lawrence
ISBN: 9780-4736-6701-6.
Published by Bovine University

 

Music featured on this show

Observations I
William Philipson
Played at 8.50am

Sugar in your coffee
Mike 'Dr Blue'
Played at 9.40am

 

Sit Down

Playthings
Played by 11.15am
 

You Make Me Feel Real 

Sylvester
Played at 11.30am
 

Rougher Yet

Slim Smith

Played at 11.50am

 

Beth

Voom
Played at 11.58am

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