Saturday Morning for Saturday 27 January 2024

8:10 New Zealand photo archive up for auction 

An online auction of historic photographs is taking place, with the aim of returning them to New Zealand hands.

Australian media company Fairfax sent 1.4 million images from its photographic archive offshore to be digitised eleven years ago. They never came back.   

Taken by regional Kiwi photographers throughout the 20th Century, they include images of royal tours, music festivals, the Springbok tour and Bastion Point occupation and protests.

New owner, LA-based Daniel Miller delivered a collection of over five thousand images of Māori to the National Library in Wellington.  A few NZ sports organisations have also bought some, but the rest are for sale online.  

166 lots are up for grabs this weekend, including pictures of Auckland's original tramway system, the Chatham Islands, and life in New Zealand's military training camps.

8:45 Alanna Smith: facial recognition to track turtles

A project led by Cook Islands environmentalist Alanna Smith, is taking advantage of an anatomical quirk to track turtles' movements around her home country of Rarotonga. 

The director of NGO Ipukarea Society is utilising AI facial recognition software to identify turtles by their facial patterns - which are unique, like fingerprints.

She joins Susie Ferguson to talk about this citizen science project, which has been running for a year.

9:05 Anne Michaels on her new novel Held 

Best known for Fugitive Pieces, Canadian novelist and poet Anne Michaels talks to Susie about her new novel Held.

With a cast of characters spanning over a century, in Held Michaels explores favourite themes: memory, trauma, grief and the healing power of love.

Anne Michaels' books are translated into more than fifty languages, winning international awards, including the Orange Prize and the Guardian Fiction Prize. 

9:35 The BIG U - defending Manhattan from future floods

When Hurricane Sandy hit the east coast of the U.S. in 2012 New York city was particularly badly hit, suffering major flooding and 20 billion dollars in damage.

Part of the Government's response was to fund resiliency projects to protect the Manhattan coastline against future flooding.

On of the proposals funded was The Dryline (BIG U). The 12 km-long infrastructural barrier incorporates public space with the high-water barrier doubling as parks. 

Susie speaks to New York-based architect Kai-Uwe Bergmann, who has contributed to BIG U.

He's a keynote speaker at the  "in:situ" architecture conference in Tāmaki Makaurau on Feb 21. 

10:05 "Your Fat Friend" Aubrey Gordon has a film

Aubrey Gordon began writing anonymously about the social realities of life as a very fat person under the name "Your Fat Friend".

In 2016 her open letter, imploring a fiend to call her "fat" went viral.

Since then she's written two bestselling books - What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Fat and You Just Need to Lose Weight And 19 Other Myths About Fat People.

She's the co-host of the popular podcast Maintenance Phase, which joyfully and thoroughly busts health and wellness myths.

Aubrey's now the subject of an intimate documentary film portrait by director Jeanie Finlay.

Your Fat Friend is screening online at the Doc Edge Virtual Cinema until the end of the month.

Susie speaks to them both about the film.

10:35 Scott Silven and the wonders of magic

Mentalist, illusionist and performance artist Scott Silven's marvelous magical career is inspired by the mists and mysticism of his Scottish homeland.

Silven studied hypnosis age 15.  At 19 he impressed David Blaine and by 21 he was headlining a show at one of the UK's top theatres.

Now 34, he's bringing his show Wonders  to the Auckland Arts Festival in March.

11:05 Dr Katie Mack: life, the universe and everything

Astrophysicist Katie Mack discusses the possibility of time travel, how time will end, gravitational waves and the power of antimatter.

Dr Mack is the Hawking Chair in Cosmology and Science Communication at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Canada - where she carries out research on dark matter and the early universe.

Dr Mack wants to make physics more accessible. She is the author of the 2021 book The End of Everything. 

 

Books featured on the show:

Held
By Anne Michaels
Published by Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN  9781526659118

The End of Everything
By: Dr Katie Mack
Published by: Scribner
ISBN: 9781982103552

Music played in this show

Song: No Plan
Artist: Hozier
Time played: 11:05