Smart Talk

Economist Stephen Hickson explains how inflation rises, why it's bad for us and how we got rid of it. (A highlight from the University of Canterbury's Raising the Bar series)

Economist Stephen Hickson explains how inflation rises, why it's bad for us and how we got rid of it. (A highlight from the University of Canterbury's Raising the Bar series)

Listen to Stephen Hickson's talk

Developed nations have enjoyed a long period of time with low inflation. An entire generation of people (largely those born after the mid-80s) has grown up knowing nothing other than stable prices - and in fact, enjoying falling prices for many things, such as computers and other tech.

But inflation has come back again, and we have collectively forgotten why it was a problem in the first place and how hard it can be to get rid of it. In this talk, Stephen Hickson explains how inflation arises, why it's bad for us and how we got rid of it. And yes - why it is like toothpaste.

The session, which was recorded in Laboratory Bar in Lincoln, features a lively q&a session with the audience. And the first person to ask a question during the discussion time is the former Finance Minister from the 1990s, the Hon. Ruth Richardson.

(Wikipedia records that the Mother of all Budgets was the nickname given to the 1991 New Zealand budget, the first delivered by the new National Party Minister of Finance Ruth Richardson. It was the catalyst of her economic reforms known in the media as "Ruthanasia.")

About the speaker

Stephen Hickson

Stephen Hickson is a Senior Teaching Fellow in the Department of Economics and Finance and Director of the Business Taught Masters programme. To him, economics isn't just another academic discipline - it's a fascinating window on the world and a lens through which we can understand the behaviour of people in their everyday lives. So much so, that if you see him out on his bike, he's more likely to be listening to Tim Harford than Taylor Swift.  His long-suffering wife thinks this is slightly weird. She is probably right.

This session was broadcast in association with the University of Canterbury's Raising the Bar Christchurch night, held in May 2023

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Vietnamese author Dr Nguy n Phan Qu Mai's Dust Child tackles the difficult subject of Amerasian children, left behind when the American military fled after the Vietnam War.

Vietnamese author Dr Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai's Dust Child tackles the difficult subject of Amerasian children, left behind when the American military fled after the Vietnam War.

In this, Quế Mai's second novel past and present come together. In 1969, we follow the story of two sisters Trang and Quỳnh becoming 'bar girls' in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) and today, those searching to reclaim their stories.

With debut novel The Mountains Sing, Quế Mai became the first Vietnamese citizen to have fiction published in English to international acclaim. Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai will be at Auckland Writers Festival in May

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

The 2022 Read NZ Te Pou Muramura Panui features the eminent writer Dame Fiona Kidman talking about her life as a reader and writer.

The eminent writer Dame Fiona Kidman gives this year's annual lecture for Read NZ Te Pou Muramura.

Listen to Dame Fiona Kidman's lecture The heart of the matter

Dame Kidman's talk spans her own personal reading journey to her job as founding secretary of the then New Zealand Book Council, a career as a celebrated author, and her lifelong love of the written word.

The fluent and vivid script - evidence of Kidman's skill as a writer - begins with an account of childhood, and how she learned to read while recuperating in a Kawakawa hospital.

Later, she recounts being of interest to the NZ spy agency as she began work for the Book Council. There she helped set up the programmes like Writers in Schools which continue to make their mark on the literary landscape of this country.

To download a copy of the pānui, follow this link to the dedicated page on the Read Te Pou Muramura website.

From the lecture

I learned to read in a country hospital in the Far North. At the end of World War II, my parents had bought land in Kerikeri. My Irish father was in the air force throughout that war, although his health had prevented him from seeing active service abroad so he didn't qualify for a rehabilitation loan to buy a farm or set himself up for the future in other ways. My prudent Scots mother, herself of farming stock, saved up his pay and earned money of her own from milking on her parent's farm. There was enough for a deposit on the cheapest block of land they could find. My father bought it, sight unseen. In an early novel of mine called Mandarin Summer, the fictional me, who becomes a girl called Emily, has this to say:

It's nearly thirty-five years now since I first went north. I was with my mother and I was eleven years old. When we left the south my grandmother and my aunts and uncles all came to the railway station and wept over me, as if I was going to a far country. My grandmother wore black, presumably to suit the occasion. My mother wore her best clothes with a cherry-red pudding bowl hat over her short-cropped greying hair as if to say, well, it's going to be all right, it's going to be fun up there amongst the orchards and hibiscus, the pukka sahibs and tea on the lawn.

Except for the fact that I was still shy of six, that is how it was, just as the fictional narrator describes the scene. It was hard for most of the years the real-life family was up north…

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Fifty years ago, the Polynesian Panthers Party led a revolution against what it argued was the rampant racism of 1970s Aotearoa. Dr Melani Anae explores its impact.

Fifty years ago, the Polynesian Panthers Party led a revolution against what it argued was the rampant racism of 1970s Aotearoa.

Dr Melani Anae explores the impact of the Panthers movement on herself and New Zealand society.

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Dr Melani Anae is a senior lecturer in Pacific Studies at the University of Auckland. This talk was delivered on 2 August 2022 at the university's Raising the Bar event.

Educate to liberate!

The Polynesian Panthers movement aimed to expose the oppression and persecution of Pacific people which was accepted by mainstream New Zealand. Only a few years after the group's founding, the period of the Dawn Raids would bring into sharpest relief the way the country's predominantly palagi power structures treated its Pacific populations.

In 2021, the government issued a formal apology for this dark period in New Zealand history, which had seen police entering homes and demanding to see permits, visas, or passports - anything that proved a person's right to be in the country. This happened almost exclusively to Pacific Islanders, even though most overstayers in this era were from Europe or North America.

In this very personal talk, Dr Melani Anae explores how the movement's radical position permeated her work as an academic, teacher and mentor.

Throughout her career, Dr Anae has been committed to confronting racism through education.

Since the 1970s, a highly politicised generation of Pacific leaders have become politicians, university graduates, doctors, lawyers, All Blacks, academics, writers, theologians, musicians and entertainers.

As a Pacific scholar, Melani has played a significant role in establishing what Pacific scholarship and research should be, particularly in the context of current global challenges such as the Covid-19 pandemic, climate change and the modern and more subtle prejudice that continues today.

She is determined that the Panthers' story and legacy be passed on to the next generation so history is not repeated.

Related:

Polynesian Panthers mark 50 years of activism (News)

Polynesian Panther Party of Aotearoa - 50 years on (Voices)

Dr Melani Anae on Saturday Morning (2015)

https://youtu.be/fueGYb822xQ

Dr Melani Anae…

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By looking to the stars we can understand where we came from and how we came to be. Dr Jan Eldridge explains how the different death throes of stars create what's needed for life.

By looking to the stars we can understand where we came from and how we came to be.

Dr Jan Eldridge explains how the different death throes of stars create what's needed for life in a talk at the University of Auckland's Raising the Bar night.

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We're all made of stardust

Come, gentle night, come, loving, black-brow'd night,

Give me my Romeo; and, when he shall die,

Take him and cut him out in little stars,

And he will make the face of heaven so fine

That all the world will be in love with night.

- Juliet in William Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet.

If we are all made of stardust, which stars have to die to make it? All the complex elements needed for life - like carbon, oxygen and iron - are made by stars as they die.

In this talk, Assoc. Prof Eldridge explains how the processes by which the different death throes of stars create different elements for life.

In the last few years, scientists have discovered that rare elements such as gold and silver are formed in the events where stellar corpses collide, showing that even dead stars can enrich the universe.

By looking to the stars we can understand where we came from and how we came to be, as all life on Earth is linked to the universe.

Dr Jan Aldridge

Dr Jan Eldridge is an astrophysicist, Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Physics in the Faculty of Science. She studies exploding binary stars (while exploding the myth that gender is also binary). Her main research interest is the lives and deaths of stars, especially binary stars - from those in our own Galaxy to those in galaxies at the edge of the observable Universe.

This session was broadcast in association with the University of Auckland's Raising the Bar night, held in August 2022

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Conspiracists often claim that a shadowy cabal is in control of the world. But is it actually corporations? Nation states? Markets? Or no-one in particular? Dr Guy Fiti Sinclair explores the options.

Conspiracists often claim that a shadowy cabal is in control of the world.

But is it really corporations? Nation states? Markets? Or no-one in particular?

Auckland University law professor Guy Fiti Sinclair explores who really has the power at Raising the Bar 2022.

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Climate change, global financial shocks, the Covid-19 pandemic and Russia's invasion of Ukraine - the international community seems to be lurching from crisis to crisis, with no apparent end in sight.

Even in Aotearoa New Zealand, where we feel relatively sheltered, we are not immune from the rising tide of social issues facing other countries, be it economic inequality, political extremism or violence.

In this feverish environment, conspiracists often claim that a shadowy cabal exerts control over the world. But who actually does? Corporations? Nation states? Markets? Or no-one?

Assoc. Prof. Guy Fiti Sinclair, a Samoan-Kiwi lawyer and historian raised in Papua New Guinea, provides an historical perspective on the shifting fortunes of international law and governance over the past century.

From empires to nation-states, from international organisations to markets, and from global to regional governance - he analyses the current set of international crises, who is trying to control them, and how.

Dr Guy Fiti Sinclair

Dr Guy Fiti Sinclair is an Associate Professor at Auckland Law School. He studied law and history at the University of Auckland. Guy practised as a commercial lawyer for 10 years before completing a doctorate in international law at the New York University School of Law. He has published widely in international law journals. His book To Reform the World: International Organizations and the Making of Modern States won the 2018 Book Prize of the European Society of International Law.

This session was broadcast in association with the University of Auckland's Raising the Bar night, held in August 2022

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The term 'Long Covid' was coined in May 2020 but the virus became a pandemic before the most common post-viral condition was taken seriously. Dr Anna Brooks explores what we now know about it.

The term 'Long Covid' was coined in May 2020 but the virus became a pandemic before the most common post-viral condition - (ME/CFS) - was taken seriously.

So what do we know now about it? Dr Anna Brooks explores Long Covid in a talk for Auckland University's Raising the Bar 2022.

The global Covid-19 pandemic has changed life as we once knew it, creating wave upon wave of disruptions and uncertainty.

A pandemic-scale, highly contagious virus has not been experienced in our lifetimes. And one of the most significant discoveries has been the effect on those who have suffered from Long Covid.

The notion that viruses can cause debilitating post-infectious conditions is not new.

Following the realisation that many people were not recovering from their SARS-CoV-2 infection, the term 'Long Covid' was coined in May 2020.

The call for further research was patient-led as it seemed to the sufferers that no one in the medical establishment was listening.

Those who did understand were the millions worldwide already living with myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) - the most common, yet still poorly understood, post-viral condition.

It has taken a pandemic-scale virus for many to finally take a largely neglected area of research and medicine seriously.

There is still much we don't understand about how viruses affect our long-term health - so what has this pandemic taught us that desperately needs attention?

Dr Anna Brooks talks through the state of current knowledge, and uncovers many areas which need further research.

  Listen to the talk

Further listening and reading:

Long Covid researcher sceptical of study suggesting Omicron causes less disease

Long Covid: Experts warn against exercising too soon after virus

Long Covid must be taken seriously as Omicron dominates - experts

Warnings about Long Covid

Dr Anna Brooks

Dr Anna Brooks is a cellular immunologist, Senior Lecturer and Director of the Auckland Cytometry lab. She has a broad background in human immunology, with specific training and expertise in advanced cell characterisation using leading-edge cell analysis technologies (spectral flow cytometry)…

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

The perils of data-driven design are explored by Dr Angus Campbell. (A highlight of Auckland University's Raising the Bar talk series)

Are you perpetually underwhelmed by the products you buy?

According to design expert Angus Campbell, this is most probably because they are the result of data-driven design.

This trend has dampened creativity and led to products which are boring and also less effective than they should be, says the Auckland University lecturer.

In a world with complex problems, we need creatives to take back the reins and be more innovative, Campbell argues.

To support this position, he cites two examples of human-centred design - that is based on data - going awry.

In the first, designers have been developing a new Bluetooth speaker. In the consulting rooms of the design agency, against a wall, they have stacked different-coloured versions of the speaker.

In the session, when the consultants asked what colour the participants preferred, their choices spread across the whole gamut of colours that they could see.

At the end of the session, though, when the design consultant said to the participants, "Thanks for your time. In appreciation, please take one of the speaker prototypes with you when you leave," guess what happened?

They all chose the black speaker.

This is a clear example of people saying what they think others want to hear, Campbell says. But when it comes down to it, their real desire can be quite different.

Another example of this comes from an honours student project he supervised while working for the University of Johannesburg.

In 2008 they travelled to Grupo Desportivo Dominique - an integrated community football club on the border between Mozambique and Zimbabwe that uses sport for social good.

One of the student teams decided to work directly with the football players, and after watching a practice game and undertaking interviews with them, they identified a clear problem with their football boots.

Most of these are designed for plush, grassy pitches in Europe, not the hard sand and abrasive dirt that you find in Africa. As a result, the grip never really works because the studs are unable to penetrate the surface, and after a few games they eventually wear down. And then they completely don't work.

Campbell's students creatively partnered with local cobblers, exploring ways to resole the boots, using discarded car tyres. This seemed a fantastic solution, reusing waste to make much more durable boots with much-improved grip.

However, despite all the enthusiasm from the football players during the process, when they got the final prototype, they couldn't get even one of the players to test them on the pitch. What had gone wrong?…

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

Dr Kiri Dell from Auckland University's Business School explores what Maori and Pakeha need to consider for the journey towards revitalisation of te reo Maori to become a reality. A highlight of the 2022 Raising the Bar season..

Dr Kiri Dell explores what Māori and Pākehā need to consider for the revitalisation of te reo Maori to become a reality.

(This talk is a highlight from Auckland University's Raising the Bar series)

Through acts of assimilation and racism, te reo Māori has been pushed to the brink of extinction.

In recent years, millions of dollars have been poured into language revitalisation, yet fewer than 20 percent of Māori can speak te reo confidently.

Normalising te reo is a language revitalisation strategy viewed as essential for its survival. The strategy advocates learning the language as a national duty, and a taonga for usage by all New Zealanders.

Consequently, the uptake of te reo by non-Māori speakers has increased significantly. However, many Māori are feeling left out, unaccounted for and marginalised by the strategy, which they perceive as focusing on Pākehā accessing, speaking, and using te reo Māori.

In this talk, Dr Kiri Dell brings to light the complex layers of our country's journey to become a te reo Māori nation and attempts to open up conversations and considerations for both Māori and Pākehā.

Listen to Dr Kiri Dell speak on 2 August 2022

Dr Dell reads from a series of tweets that make suggestions about how Pākehā who are making an effort to learn te reo Māori should comport themselves:

Pākehā are manuhiri in a te reo class.

Be mindful of the physical space you take up. Leave space for others to answer questions.

Pākehā presence can be really hard on others.

Pākehā experience of education is different from non-Pākehā.

If you're learning a pepeha, remember your own whakapapa.

Pākehā are highly praised for any effort in te reo Māori, and Māori are just expected to know.

Try not to bring it back to yourself in the class.

Hear Dr Kiri Dell in this highlight of the University of Auckland's Raising the Bar night held on 2 August 2022

Kiri Dell

Dr Kiri Dell is a Senior Lecturer in the Business School at the University of Auckland. She is a Ngāti Porou woman living in her tribal territory of Ruatōria. Her main passion is working with whānau and activating their aspirations for whenua Māori. She holds various director, trustee and board roles across a number of organisations, and is a chair of the Indigenous Caucus of the Academy of Management. She has a lively and large whānau, which enables her to play the many roles of mum, aunty, daughter, sister, cousin and niece…

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Julie Stout describes how Auckland could connect in the future to the wairua and cultures that make up Tamaki Makaurau. One of the highlights of Auckland University's Raising the Bar 2022.

Auckland City, oh what a pity

On returning to Auckland in 2000, architect Julie Stout was dismayed to see what an unloved, shabby place our central city had become.

Twenty years on, it would be nice to say a lot has improved - but has it?

Auckland City is again in trouble. With more road cones and construction trucks than people on the streets, it's hard to see the way forward.

Will a phoenix rise from the ashes? Do we have to reinvent our city (again)? And has Covid changed the way we should build the world around us?

It is not too late to realise Auckland's magnificent potential.

Using experiences gleaned from masters students' design projects at the School of Architecture and Planning, Julie will describe a future Auckland that connects to the wairua/spirit-of-place often lost in the urban environment and encompasses the many cultures that make up the unique fabric of Tāmaki Makaurau.

Listen to Julie Stout's talk (A highlight of the University of Auckland's Raising the Bar night held on 2 August 2022)

More listening:

Casting a critical eye over development in Auckland's city centre

Julie Stout - NZIA Gold Medallist 2021

Visions of Auckland's waterfront

Julie Stout

Julie Stout is an Auckland architect, urbanist and activist and a Professional Teaching Fellow in the master's programme at the School of Architecture and Planning.

Earlier this year, she was awarded the Te Kāhui Whaihanga New Zealand Institute of Architects Gold Medal for lifetime achievement. She is the first woman to be so honoured.

With her late partner David Mitchell, Julie has designed some of New Zealand's more notable architecture, but it is the wider canvas of the city that takes up a lot of her time. For the last 20 years, she has led campaigns to make Auckland a better city, including legal action protecting the Waitematā from a possible Ports of Auckland expansion and pushing for better buildings and public spaces.

This session was broadcast in association with the University of Auckland's Raising the Bar night, held in August 2022

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details