Saturday Morning for Saturday 17 June 2023

8.10 Jenny Nguyen: 'Sports Bra' bar supporting women's sports

Former basketball player and chef Jenny Nguyen became increasingly frustrated by the lack of women's sports playing at the bars she hung out in.

So, in 2022 she used her life savings to open the Sports Bra, an inclusive bar and restaurant in Portland, Oregon, that plays only women's sports on its TV screens.

It's been a raging success, bringing in one million dollars in revenue in its first eight months.

9.05 Isabel Allende on forced immigration and family separation 

Best-selling Latin American author Isabel Allende’s new book The Wind Knows My Name reveals the brutal reality and lasting trauma caused by forced immigration and family separation.

It tells the tale of two child immigrants - a boy who escapes Nazi occupied Vienna in 1938, and a girl who escapes military gangs in El Salvador in 2019.

Isabel Allende is the author of many critically acclaimed works including Violeta, A Long Petal of the Sea, The House of the Spirits, Of Love and Shadows, Eva Luna, and Paula. Her books have been translated into more than forty-two languages and have sold more than seventy-four million copies.

9.40 Dagan Wells: babies born using three-person IVF

Last month it was reported that children in the UK had been born using mitochondrial donation, eight years after the technique was regulated. 

The IVF procedure uses genetic material from a mother and father and a tiny amount from a third female donor, with the aim of preventing the inheritance of mitochondrial diseases. These diseases are incurable and can be fatal. 

The news gives hope to women carrying mitochondrial disease, yet Dr Dagan Wells, Professor of Reproductive Genetics at University of Oxford, says scientists have many questions.

Mitochondrial donation has been performed in other countries where its use is not regulated. The first baby created using the technique was born in Mexico in 2016.

10.05 Justin Gregg: animal intelligence and human stupidity 

Are humans really the smartest animal? Animal cognition expert Dr Justin Gregg thinks maybe not. 

In his new book If Nietzsche Were a Narwhal, he examines our exceptional brain power and finds it wanting.

Sure we can write novels and go to outer space, but our brains are also wired for existential angst and have put us on a trajectory towards self-extinction.

He argues the reason why human intelligence isn’t more prevalent in the animal kingdom is that other species are perfectly successful without it. 

Dr Justin Gregg is a senior research associate with the Dolphin Communication Project and adjunct professor at St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia. 

10.40 Maniototo icemaster Jock Scott on the endangered sport of outdoor curling

There’s strong hope this winter that the ice will be right for the Baxter Cup, New Zealand’s oldest sporting trophy. 

The Naseby-based cup is for outdoor curling, yet bonspiels (curling tournaments) are increasingly threatened by climate change. They’re no longer even held in the sport’s birthplace of Scotland and the last Baxter Cup was held here in 2017.

Maniototo farmer Jock Scott is heavily involved in all things ice. Naseby Curling Council secretary, Scott is also widely considered New Zealand’s longest practising Scottish piper. 
 
It’s a big weekend in Naseby. Indoors, the finals of the national men and women’s curling championships are on Sunday and the public curling, luging and skating season has just opened.

11.05 Lucinda Williams’ rock’n’roll life

From 'Car Wheels on a Gravel Road’ to ‘Bus to Baton Rouge’ Americana music star Lucinda Williams has written her life in songs. 

And now she's sharing her life in words with the release of a long awaited memoir. In Don't Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You Williams credits her mother with giving her music, her father - a poet - words. Typically honest and beautifully written, the book chronicles a life that has often seen her on the move and has had its fair share of challenges. 

Williams' 15th studio album, Stories from a Rock n Roll Heart is due out at the end of this month, while her memoir is released July 5. 

 

11.45 Megan Dunn: the fine art of winning prizes

Author and art writer Megan Dunn joins Kim to talk about the pros and cons of having prizes for art.

Prizes are one of the key ways artists get recognised and a financial boost but they also attract controversy and debate.

But how to judge art? And how are decisions made? 

Megan's looking at the winners of two new awards; The Rydal Prize (which she was one of the judges for), and The Kiingi Tuheitia Portraiture Award, currently showing  at the New Zealand Portrait Gallery in Wellington until August 20.  
 

 

 

 

Books featured on this show:

The Wind Knows My Name
By Isabel Allende
Translated by Frances Riddle 
Published by Ballantine Books
ISBN: 9780593598108

If Nietzsche Were a Narwhal: What Animal Intelligence Reveals About Human Stupidity
By Justin Gregg
Published by Hodder & Stoughton 
ISBN: 9781399712507

Don't Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You
By Lucinda Williams
Published by Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 9781471177484

Songs featured on this show:

Portland, Oregon
Loretta Lynn
Played at 8.50am

Changed the Locks
Lucinda Williams
Played at 8.54am

37 Days Ago
Bingley and the Rogues
Played at 10.05am

Car Wheels on a Gravel Road
Lucinda Williams
Played at 11.30am

Side of the Road
Lucinda Williams
Played at 11.15am

New York Comeback
Lucinda Williams
Played at 11.40am