Saturday Morning for Saturday 15 July 2023

8.10 Rokhaya Diallo: how racist policing is fueling unrest in France

As France celebrates Bastille Day authorities are on alert for a resurgence of street violence.  

More than 3,000 people were arrested during recent nationwide protests triggered by a video of police killing black teen Nahel Merzouk. 

According to European Network Against Racism data, North African Arab or black people are twenty times more likely to be stopped by French police.

French Senegalese journalist Rokhaya Diallo says Nahel's killing is part of a long pattern of racist policing that has divided the country.

 

8.30 Caitlin Moran: saving men from the patriarchy

A feminist author focussing on the suffering of men? It seems unlikely, but after a career helping women navigate a misogynistic world, the obvious next step for Caitlin Moran was to offer a hand to men.

Her new book What about men? examines the good, the bad and the ugly of masculinity in 2023.

Moran's memoir How To Be A Woman is one of the bestselling works of popular feminism. She's also written two volumes of collected journalism, Moranthology and Moranifesto, and a novel, How to Build a Girl, which was adapted as a movie.

9.05 Ben Smith: how clicks, likes and shares ruined digital news

Journalist Ben Smith tells the story of how digital media organisations became addicted to "going viral" in his new book Traffic: Genius, Rivalry, and Delusion in the Billion-Dollar Race to Go Viral.

He was founding editor-in-chief of recently deceased digital news site BuzzFeed News, which along with HuffPost, Breitbart and Gawker Media represented a new world of online media in the early 2000s.

His book tells the inside story of how rivals Jonah Peretti of HuffPost and BuzzFeed. and Nick Denton of Gawker Media started the race for virality blamed for the rise of disinformation.

Ben Smith is the Editor in Chief of Semafor, a new global news company and a former media columnist for The New York Times.

 

9.40 Te Rangi Huata: lighting Matariki bonfires for Mahuika  

Driftwood and slash from Cyclone Gabrielle will fuel bonfires celebrating Matariki on Hawkes Bay beaches on Saturday night.

Families are encouraged to light a small fire, bring fish and chips and marshmallows, tell stories and make jokes.

Hawkes Bay iwi Ngati Kahungunu hope marking Matariki by celebrating the story of Mahuika, the goddess of fire, will become an annual tradition, eventually bigger than New Year's Eve.

Event organiser Te Rangi Huata hopes to see small registered beach bonfires burning all the way up the Napier Hastings shoreline, even as far as Mahia, with families connected by beacons of flames. 

Fire and Emergency NZ and local councils have approved the event. you can register your bonfire via email: matchfitnz@gmail.com

 

10.05 Lucy Hone: coping with devastating grief

Resilience expert Dr Lucy Hone has personal and academic experience with devastating grief.

Despite all her training and time working with people dealing with loss, nothing prepared her for the sudden death of her 12 year old daughter Abi in a car crash in 2014.

Since then she's focused on providing support for others affected by similarly overwhelming grief.

Her TEDx  talk  '3 Secrets of Resilient People', has been watched over 6 million times, she's authored Resilient Grieving, a practical, research-based guide to grief, and has a coping with loss website.

10.40 Patsy Carlyle: the Barbie Collector

Barbie's in the pink at the moment. There's a huge buzz surrounding a new comedy-fantasy film about the iconic and multi-vocational doll hitting screens next week.

Collecting Barbie dolls has been a decades-long passion for retired St John Ambulance paramedic Patsy Carlyle. 

Her Helensville home aka The Pink Palace houses over 1,600 boxed Barbie dolls, and more than four hundred freestanding dolls.  

Patsy and hundreds of her dolls are being celebrated in The Barbie Collector at Wellington Museum from 22nd July - 10th Sept.

 

11.00 Alice Englert: "Bad Behaviour"

Bad Behaviour is the debut feature film from actor, writer and director Alice Englert, celebrated New Zealand film-maker Jane Campion's daughter.

Bad Behaviour stars Ben Whishaw as the spiritual leader of a retreat attended by 40-something Lucy (Jennifer Connelly) who, while seeking enlightenment meets her nemesis in the form of model and DJ Beverly.

Meanwhile, Lucy's stunt-performer daughter, Dylan (played by Alice Englert) is in New Zealand working on set. We very soon learn they have a fraught relationship, just as Lucy did with her own mother.

There are supporting roles here from Ana Scotney, Marlon Williams, Xana Tang, Robbie Magasiva, Tom Sainsbury - and a cameo from mum.

Having premiered at Sundance Film Festival, Bad Behaviour is showing in the New Zealand International Film Festival.

11.30 Poet Jenny Bornholdt: A Garden is a Long Time 

Poet Jenny Bornholdt's new book A Garden is a Long Time weaves her words with the life and photographic art of Annemarie Hope-Cross, who died last year.

Hope-Cross studied photogenic drawing, wet and dry plate collodion and the daguerreotype technique at the Fox Talbot Museum in the UK, and used these early photographic processes and materials in her work.

The combination of these historic techniques with contemporary subjects created images both eerie and radiant.

Jenny Bornholdt is the author of several poetry collections including The Rocky Shore (Montana New Zealand Book Award for Poetry, 2009), Selected Poems (2016), and Lost and Somewhere Else (2019). In 2005 she became the fifth Te Mata Estate Poet Laureate, and in 2013 she was appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to literature.

 

Books featured on this show:

What About Men?
by Caitlin Moran
Published by Ebury Press
ISBN: 9781529149166

Traffic:Genius, Rivalry, and Delusion in the Billion-Dollar Race to Go Viral
By Ben Smith
published by Penguin Press
ISBN 9780593299753

Resilient Grieving - How to find your way through devastating loss
By Dr Lucy Hone
Published by Allen & Unwin
ISBN: 9781991006486    

 

Music played in this show

Song: Don't Tell The Boys
Artist: Petey
Time played: 8:55

Song: What Was I Made For?
Artist: Billie Eilish
Time played: 10:45

Song: Find an Island
Artist: Benee
Time played: 11:30