Saturday Morning for Saturday 15 October 2022

 

8.10 Ian Johnson: are major changes on the way for China?

When the Chinese Communist Party elite gather in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Sunday 15 October for the 20th Party Congress, all will not be as it seems. 

For more than 30 years, leaders have stepped down after two terms and handed the power of the General Secretary to a younger successor. But not Xi Jinping. He’s expected to be given an unprecedented third term - another five years, as the most powerful man in one of the most powerful countries on earth. Meanwhile a rare protest attacking Xi and Covid restrictions took place in Beijing just this week.  

Ian Johnson is a senior fellow for Chinese studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York and has won a Pulitzer Prize for his writing about China. He says 2022 marks a huge upheaval in Chinese politics – one that we’re going to feel over the coming years.

 

8.40 Prof Tim Bale: UK politics again in turmoil

After 39 days in office the UK Prime Minister Liz Truss has done a dramatic U-turn on her tax-cut plans in an effort to reassure financial markets. She has also dropped her close ally Kwasi Kwarteng as UK finance minister, replacing him as Chancellor with former Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt. Hunt backed Rishi Sunak in the recent Tory leadership contest.

Tim Bale is Professor of Politics at Queen Mary University of London. Books he has written or co-written include The Conservative Party from Thatcher to Cameron and The Conservatives since 1945: the Drivers of Party Change. His latest, out early next year, is The Conservative Party after Brexit.

 

9.05 Catherine Chidgey: life on the farm from a magpie eye’s view 

In a remarkable literary feat Catherine Chidgey’s seventh novel The Axeman’s Carnival is told entirely from the perspective of a magpie on a high country farm. Taken under the wing - so to speak - of a farmer’s wife, the cheeky Tama (short for Tamagotchi) becomes a social media sensation and a big player in an isolated couple’s future. 

Chidgey’s last novel Remote Sympathy was shortlisted for the 2022 Dublin Literary Award and longlisted for the international 2022 Women’s Prize for Fiction. 

Already being hailed by some critics as one of this year’s local bests, The Axeman’s Carnival will be launched alongside Chidgey’s picture book Jiffy's Greatest Hits at University of Waikato 27 October, and in the South Island at the Queenstown Writers Festival 12 November.  

 

9.30 Esther Perel: 'We are looking for the things we used to find in the divine'

Relationships are your story, write well and edit often.  This is the advice of renowned couples therapist Esther Perel who is on her way to Auckland soon to present a lecture on how culture shifts have been affecting human intimacy. Perel believes relationships today are under increased pressure as we look to our partners to provide what we used to find in our communities and religion.

Perel is the author of bestselling books Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence and The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity. She also has two very popular podcasts, Where Should We Begin? and How’s Work? So popular, she is even launching a card game while she’s touring Australasia. It aims to “foster connection and unlock the storyteller within.”

Go here for more details on her lecture.

 

10.05 Chris Parker: finding the extraordinary and the hilarious in the ordinary

Lockdown made Chris Parker - with his self-deprecating domestic mini dramas - an Instagram sensation. Then, in 2021, a surprise win as the comic relief on Celebrity Treasure Island further made him a household darling. Yet the Auckland comedian was no overnight success. He has long been celebrated on stage for his storytelling and acting chops in theatre and stand-up. 

And now he has turned those skills to the page. Here For a Good Time – Organised thoughts from a disorganised mind is a series of short stories, essays and musings on celebrity gardening, felting and living larger-than-life openly gay.

10.35 Sally Gates: quantum physics inspired jazz metal fusion

‘Relentless Attrition’ and ‘Infernal Assault’ - the names of guitarist Sally Gates’s early ‘00s bands betray her beginnings in the Auckland death metal scene. Since, she has moved to the United States and become a regular in New York’s experimental musical scene, playing and composing with guitar with strong stylistic elements from both metal and jazz.

 Gates returns home this month to play the Wellington Jazz Festival, performing a new solo commission at the Opera House Saturday October 23, and at venue Moon the night before backed by some legends of the Aotearoa experimental scene. Her new work for the festival is inspired by quantum physics, neuroscience and memories of home. 

Back in NYC, Gates heads trio Titan to Tachyons, whose second album Vonals has just been released.

 

11.05 Playing Favourites with fashion icon Doris de Pont 

As a fashion maker and curator Doris de Pont’s career has been dedicated to what we wear and why. And it’s in the blood: both of her grandfathers contributed to the garment industry in the Netherlands, where her parents emigrated from just before her birth.

 After a fabulous career in design and business  in 2010 Du Pont founded the innovative New Zealand Fashion Museum. Now she is organising Aotearoa’s contribution to Global Fashioning Assembly, a hybrid event moving around different far-flung places in the world, October 21-23 with a kaupapa of decolonising fashion.

  

 

Books mentioned on this show:

Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence
By Esther Perel
ISBN 978-0060753634
Published by Harper 

 

The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity
By Esther Perel
ISBN 978-0062322586
Published by Harper 

 

The Axeman’s Carnival
By Catherine Chidgey
ISBN: 9781776920051
Te Herenga Waka University Press

 

Jiffy’s Greatest Hits
By Catherine Chidgey
ISBN: 9781776890378
Bateman Books

 

Here For a Good Time
By Chris Parker
ISBN 9781991006233
Published by Allen & Unwin

 

Music featured on this show:

Dentures Out
The Proclaimers
Played at 8.33am

Friday Night
Beth Orton
Played at 8.50am

The Magpies
Six Volts
Played at 9.05am

Fever
Aldous Harding
Played at 9.55am

Neutron Wrangler
Titan to Tachyons
Played at 10.35am

Broken
Hot Chip
Played at 10.57am

Cool Shoes
Aaradhna
Played at 11.15am

In the Neighbourhood
Sisters Underground
Played at 11.30am

Jarabi
Sona Jobarteh
Played at 11.46am

Nuclear Bombs
Erny Belle
Played at 11.55am