Sunday Morning for Sunday 31 July 2022

8:10 Are RATs giving us the right results?

Doubts have been raised about the efficacy of RAT test brands in Australia, but we've been reassured that the ones here are picking up the new variants. So with so many people post-infection, the latest research on Long Covid enters the frame again.

Dr Andrew Read is at Penn State, Pennsylvania State University. He's the director of its Institutes of Life Sciences and he specialises in the ways infectious diseases work, with expertise as well in how well vaccines cope with them. 

8:30 Calling Home from Croatia 

David Howard's coming up on Calling Home, from Croatia, where he met his wife, and has stayed. It's an area with turbulent history, its savage war of independence isn't a distant memory yet. NZ's Greg Johnson once sang about that, and a young woman in the middle of it all 

9:06 Mediawatch

This week Mediawatch looks at looks how the media covered a leadership upheaval within The Greens. 
Also: a complaint about conflicts of interest; the latest steps towards a new public media organisation  - and what makes a good news theme tune or a bad one? 

9:37 US correspondent Karen Kasler, the Statehouse bureau chief for public radio and television in Ohio

US correspondent Karen Kasler talks to Sunday Morning about \ the blue states and red states, the Democrat-run cities how well they are run, with rising crime rates while on the left the claim that murder rates for example are actually higher in Republican-run states. But in the British Medical Journal a study of individual counties across the US shows you'll live longer in those are run by Democrats.

10:06 JACK JOHNSON SINGS FOR JIM

He was born and raised in Hawai'i, he was a champion  surfer until an injury put paid to that life; and he's sold 25 million records. Two of his albums went to no. 1 on the billboard charts. He's an accomplished film-maker, and he's starred in surfing films. One critic described him like this - "Perennially posed on the edge of some salty shore, guitar in hand, the heir apparent to Jimmy Buffett's fiefdom of mixed drinks and beach breezes, a pleasant guy with tunes about the surf and your soul". That was early in Jack Johnson's career, he and the music have grown through the years. We'll talk to Jack on the other side of the opening track from his new album, Meet The Moonlight.

10.35 Amanda Ripley on fixing the news media 

Amanda Ripley is both a journalist and a NY Times best-selling author. Last year, she wrote the book High  Conflict - Why We Get Trapper and How We Get Out. Amanda also hosts the 'How To" problem-solving podcast for Slate Magazine. She talks to Jim about her latest op-ed about the news media and how to fix it. 

11:05 Massive uncontrolled re-entry happening today 

On Aerospace.org this is being called a "massive uncontrolled re-entry". It's happening today. It's a 23-metric-ton Chinese rocket booster, coming down from space, 53 metres long, and where will it land no-one knows, although there is projected tracking excluding areas of the globe, as usual. Dr Jan Eldridge, associate professor and HOD for Physics at the University of Auckland, and an expert in Astrophysics. She talks to Jim. 

11.15 What I'm Listening to on Sunday Morning

Choosing the song this week is one of the young members of the Blackjacks, our Lawn Bowls team at the Commonwealth Games, 28-year-old Selina Goddard. 

 

11.35 Diagnosed as a narcissist, Jim speaks to Dr Sam Vaknin 

Dr Sam Vaknin is the author of one of the first in depth books about narcissism and has a large database on narcissists which is now used globally. Not only is he an expert on the disorder, he's a clinically diganosed narcissist himself, so he's got some good insights to share, and to beware of. He's now a visiting professor of psychology as well, and the author of the book Malignant Self Love: Narcissism Revisited. Dr Vaknin speaks to Jim.