Saturday Morning for Saturday 10 February 2018

 

 

8.09 Nicholas Boyle - Brexit is a collective English breakdown 

Nicholas Boyle is Emeritus Schröder Professor of German at the University of Cambridge. He's been Professor of German Literary and Intellectual History, and he has taught German in Cambridge since he was a student. He has a particular interest in German literature and thought of the 18th and 19th centuries, and especially in Goethe. Boyle has latterly weighed in on the Brexit issue in a range of publications, questioning the results of the EU referendum. In January he wrote a piece for the Irish Times, describing Brexit as a "collective English mental breakdown".

8.35 Jeff Zacks - Your brain on movies

Professor Jeff Zacks is a neuroscientist at the Washington University in Saint Louis. He teaches courses on the cognitive neuroscience of film, and has spent over a decade exploring what happens in the brain as we observe the world around us. His latest research, captured in a book called Flicker: Your Brain on Movies, details how we experience moving images, and how filmmakers have learned to take advantage of the tricks our minds are already playing on us in real life. Zacks will be giving a talk at the University of Otago on February 12, details here.  

9.04 Shaun Bythell - Diary of a bookseller 

Shaun Bythell lives in Wigtown, Scotland, where he runs The Bookshop - the largest second hand bookshop in Scotland. It contains over 100,000 books, spread over a mile of shelving along twisting corridors. In his book, Diary of a Bookseller, Bythell chronicles a year in the life of his bookshop - painting, with grumpy good humour, often unflattering pictures of customers and those who come to browse and not spend. But Bythell saves his real anger for the big online booksellers who dominate the market and drive small enterprises like his into the ground. Wigtown is known as Scotland's Book Town and holds an annual book festival - which features The Bookshop Band. 

10.04 Helen Dorresteyn - The business of buffalo

Trained as an art teacher, Helen Dorresteyn is the co-founder of the Clevedon Village Farmers' Market and artisan cheese-making business, the Clevedon Buffalo Co, with her husband Richard.  When establishing the farmers' market in 2005, the couple struggled to find a local cheesemaker, and opted to do it themselves, traveling to Italy to learn how to establish a buffalo dairy farm. Their farm now boasts a herd of 150 Riverine buffalo, producing milk delivered to the company's Papakura factory every couple of days.

10.35 Max Patte - Haere rā, Aotearoa 

Max Patte is a British-born artist who has lived in Wellington for the past decade, and is about to return to the UK. One of his best known works is the Solace In The Wind sculpture on the capital city's waterfront, the 10th anniversary of which is being celebrated with limited edition sculptures. Patte sculpts primarily in clay, then casts in iron, plaster and bronze, using both traditional and contemporary techniques, although his newer works have led him in a different direction - using life-size titanium sculpture, infinity mirror, Swarovski crystal work and lightworks. Patte was elected an associate of the Royal Society of British Sculptors in 2008. He will have an open day at his studio before leaving, details here. 

 

The work of Max Patte 

 

11.04 Warren Maxwell  - Kupe

Warren Maxwell (Ngāi Tūhoe) has written the score for Kupe, the NZ Festival opening night extravaganza on Wellington's waterfront. Performers, a mass choir and a thousand-strong haka will kick off the festival as a fleet of waka hourua sail into the harbour. Maxwell grew up in Whangarei and studied jazz at the Conservatorium of Music, Wellington, where he has also taught. He is a founding member of Trinity Roots, played saxophone in Fat Freddy's Drop and is the leader of blues quartet Little Bushman. Maxwell has written film scores and worked on theatre sound design. He was one of five inaugural recipients of an Arts Foundation New Generation Award in 2006.

 

Books mention in this episode:

 

The Diary of a Bookseller 

by Shaun Bythell

ISBN 9781781258620

Profile Books 

 

Any Human Heart: The Intimate Journals of Logan Mountstuart

by William Boyd

ISBN 978-0-375-41493-0

Knopf

 

Flicker: Your Brain on Movies

by Jeffery Zacks 

ISBN 0199982872

Oxford University Press  

Music played in this show

Artist: The Bookshop Band
Song: A Shop with Books In
Composer: The Bookshop Band
Album: Accidents and Pretty Girls
Played at: 9:06

Artist: The Bookshop Band
Song: I Read a Book About Motorcycle Stories
Composer: The Bookshop Band
Album: Bring Me Back a Pyramid
Played at: 10:30

Artist: Tiwayyen
Song: Tinariwen
Composer:  Ibrahim Ag Alhabib / Eyadou Ag Leche
Album: Elwan
Label: Wedge
Played at: 11:15

Artist: War on Drugs
Song: Under The Pressure  
Composer: Adam Granduciel
Album: Lost in the Dream
Label:      Secretly Canadian
Played at: 11:30

Artist: Thomas Dybdahl
Song: One Day You'll Dance for me New York City
Composer: Thomas Dybdahl
Album: One Day You'll Dance for me New York City
Label:      Checkpoint Charlie
Played at: 11:45