Smart Talk

Ian Rankin, the creator of Inspector Rebus, talks live from Edinburgh with New Zealand crime writer Vanda Symon at Word Christchurch 2021.

Ian Rankin, the master of tartan noir, discusses his new book The Dark Remains, which brings to life the criminal world of 1970s Glasgow.

The Dark Remains focuses on a new character, Detective Inspector Laidlaw, and is based on an unfinished manuscript by the late Scottish crime writer William McIlvanney.

Ian Rankin talks with NZ crime writer Vanda Symon live from Edinburgh. (A highlight from the 2021 WORD Christchurch Festival)

Listen to the conversation

Related: Ian Rankin on finishing his literary hero's book (Afternoons)

Ian Rankin:

There was a time in Edinburgh when I was in a street and two doors away, two houses away, was Alexander McCall Smith. And if you went to the top of our road and turned left there was J.K. Rowling, Kate Atkinson was about a quarter-mile further along and then further in town you had other writers as well.

There was one occasion in the local café where all three of us  - me, Nicole Smith and J.K Rowling - were all in the café at the same time and had a chat. But it was weird even for a small city. Edinburgh's a city of half a million people, but the number of writers who have chosen to live here is just extraordinary and keeps growing.

Vanda Symon:

What is it about the physical environment there that makes everyone's souls so dark?

Ian Rankin:

Well, it's quite a dark city in some ways, it's a very 'Jekyll and Hyde' city which is why Robert Lewis Stevenson, got the idea for the book from a couple of real Scottish characters. One was Deacon William Brodie, a gentleman by day and thief by night who was eventually hanged on a scaffold he had actually made. That sense of being one thing during daylight and something else at night gave Stevenson the idea for the story because as a child he had a wardrobe in his bedroom made by William Brodie. His nurse would tell him the story of this guy who was good and evil in the same character.

The other thing that  was based on was a real Scottish doctor who went to London and consorted with body snatchers. He had gruesome experiments he would carry out in his laboratory. And the way that Stevenson describes the house of Dr Jekyll in London is very much like this guy's house…

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Christchurch barber Mataio (Matt) Brown wrote She is Not Your Rehab with his wife Sarah. They discuss the book and the global anti-violence movement it has spawned at 2021 WORD Christchurch.

Christchurch barber Mataio (Matt) Brown wrote the best-selling book She is Not Your Rehab with his wife Sarah.

The couple spoke to Phil Borell about the book and the global anti-violence movement it has spawned at 2021 WORD Christchurch.

Listen to the conversation

Find She Is Not Your Rehab on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram

Matt Brown is famous not only for the local barber's shop he runs in Christchurch but for the quality of the conversations he has with his clients.

Matt and his wife Sarah are both deeply involved in a range of programmes dealing with those in prison and on the margins of society. Together they wrote the book She Is Not Your Rehab to help break generational cycles of abuse.

During this conversation, Matt reads from a letter, included in the book, that outlines the kaupapa for his work with men whose troubled behaviour reflects their troubled upbringings.

Read / Listen: The barber helping break cycles of violence (Nine to Noon, July 2021)

Matt Brown:

A letter to my brother.

When you told me that you wished you could tell me everything, but you couldn't possibly because it would test even the limits of my love, my heart was still, my brother. So still, so quiet.

You said bro if I told you you'd walk like everyone else.

But if only you knew that when I think of why I even barber at all I think of men like you. If only you knew that it's the shame you push down that whispers in your ear telling you I'd leave if I knew. Because if the truth whispered, it would tell you nothing you could ever tell me would change my mind about you, because I see you. And when I see you, I don't see the gangster, I see a little boy sleeping on the bedsprings because your father deemed you unworthy to sleep on a mattress. I've always seen him.

So, when I cut your hair, I'm cutting that little boy's hair and with every snip, I'm telling him he's worthy.

You are worthy little one. Snip snip

You are worthy of healing. Snip snip

You are worthy of belonging. Snip snip.

You are worthy to be known. Snip snip.

You are worthy to exist. Snip snip.

You are worthy to be loved.

You epitomise the reason I do this at all when you come into the barbershop and sit in my chair, I feel you exhale.

I exhale too, and suddenly you aren't in my chair in the barbershop, you are lying on those bedsprings in a dark room and I'm sitting on the end of your bed with you.

I see your tears, but I don't hear them…

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Unionist Helen Kelly left a huge impact on New Zealand's political and industrial landscapes. Helen's biographer Rebecca Macfie speaks with Jo Malcolm about her life, times and legacy.

Listen to Helen Kelly's biographer Rebecca Macfie in conversation with Jo Malcolm.

According to Rebecca McFie, the Trades Hall bombing in 1984 was a pivotal moment for Helen Kelly, whose father Pat Kelly was a unionist working in the building.

Rebecca McFie:

The threat of violence sat with the household all the time. Helen's parents Pat and Cath used to kind of shrug it off, but Pat had put in a panic button in Helen's bedroom. It was on the floor by her bed and one of her friends accidentally set it off when they were playing one day. It set an alert off at the neighbours' next door. I mean he'd come home one night to find people who he thought were spies in the house rifling through things. He'd had the car painted Commie Go Home.

He'd had tyres let down. There was one time when Helen answered the phone and there's a man at the other end who describes in some detail how he's going to kill Pat. And then she rings up Pat, who's still at work, to say "there's this man and he rang and he talked about how he's going to kill you," and Pat probably brushed it off.

So it's hard to imagine what that was like. This is through the period when there's a lot of strike action going on, particularly towards the end of the seventies. We had gone through a long period of no strike action. After the waterfront lockout of 1951 there were two decades of practically no strike action. During that period, though, inflation increases and oil shocks then you enter that period of much greater levels of strike action. Meat workers and wharfies and people working on the Think Big projects. And so there's an increase level of hostility being directed at people like Pat Kelly.

And then you get into 1984 when Muldoon's still in power. And the Trades Hall bombing. This was an act of terrorism in downtown Wellington. People will remember the Rainbow Warrior bombing which was only a year later, but I don't think there's the same internalised consciousness of the Trades Hall bombing in the same way. Which tells us how we think of the legitimacy of the trade union movement, and the rights of the movement to organise, to further the interest of workers.

Jo Malcolm:

So Ernie Abbott, the caretaker, was killed. Was  meant for Pat?

Rebecca McFie:…

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Ben Brown (Ngāti Mahuta, Ngāti Koroki, Ngāti Paoa) speaks about the power of imagination and its deep roots in te ao Māori at the 2021 WORD Christchurch Festival.

Lyttelton poet Ben Brown (Ngāti Mahuta, Ngāti Koroki, Ngāti Paoa) speaks about the power of imagination and its deep roots in te ao Māori.

(This Margaret Mahy Memorial Lecture was a highlight of the 2021 WORD Christchurch Festival)

Ben Brown

Listen to Ben Brown's talk

Listen to Ben Brown's acclaimed 2020 Read NZ lecture on youth justice here

Storytelling, words, imagination are all concepts linked in the Western World to the idea of literacy.

In this ground-breaking lecture, Ben Brown reconsiders these ideas from the standpoint of the oral culture of Māori life before contact with European settlers.

Weaving together intensely personal memories of childhood, Brown explores what storytelling means to him now as a writer and poet.

Ben Brown: The Port Nicholson Exchange and Public Library opened in 1841 and it is noted in the histories as the first public library in Aotearoa New Zealand.

I've got news for the histories because when I was a kid my mum took me to the first public library in Aotearoa and it was still open. What's more, it's still open today. And what's more than more, it's a Māori library of an oral culture and it opened the first day of the waka. Mum took me to the harakeke section of the oldest library in Aotearoa. No more than a minute's walk from the bedroom.

Turning west through the hallway, through the glass-panelled art deco door at the end that opened onto a curved concrete porch - impressively pillared, but merely for effect. Three steps up or down depending on your perspective. Then westward still across a lawn of vast expanse which one day I would have to mow with precision. Every Sunday in the flush of Spring and early summer, till the dry-off somehow made it less of a chore.

Where I would find myself in the company of an old kowhai tree, which, by the way, you should never offend with the indignities of axe or saw. Nor any example of machinery which could topple it, or otherwise dislodge it from the whenua. Kowhai has potency. Seek permission before you mess with energies such as these that render the yellow of the sun. Or you do so at your peril…

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Sound historian Sarah Johnston explores 100 years of radio in a talk at the National Library, focusing on the early decades and the innovative World War II radio Mobile Unit recordings.

Sarah Johnston celebrates the first hundred years of radio

Read the full text of the talk

Kia ora koutou kātoa. Thank you to RNZ and National Library for organising this celebration of the start of radio in New Zealand, 100 years ago tonight.

Tonight is something of a game of two halves: first I will talk about the first broadcast of voice and music by radio and the start of radio broadcasting in this country - and then I'm also going speak about a research project I am working on, radio recordings made of New Zealand's forces overseas during World War II.

I have always been a huge fan of radio, ever since childhood listening to the Weekend children's request sessions, and then as a teenager, eating my breakfast with Morning Report coming out of the family transistor beside me. As a radio journalist I became one of those voices and worked for RNZ and Deutsche Welle in Germany, where I experienced the power of voices coming out of the air from the other side of the world. And as a sound archivist working with the Radio New Zealand archives, I learnt that that power of the voice doesn't diminish with time - listening to a voice from 80 years ago can transport you not just through space but also time. Sound to me, has a power that in many ways seems different to that of visual images.

100 years ago tonight, an experimental radio broadcast took place which signaled the arrival of this brand new technology, radio broadcasting, in Aotearoa. In time, radio would transform many aspects of New Zealand society and usher in many changes, which have included competing media such as television and now the internet. But radio has adapted and survived.

So this evening we are going to listen to the past. But I should start with a disclaimer - that there is no recording of that first broadcast from November 17, 1921. In fact, there are no known recordings of any radio broadcasts in New Zealand until 1935.

This is because no radio broadcaster had recording equipment, until the National Broadcasting Service purchased some disc recorders in 1935. Up until that time, all radio was simply broadcast live-to-air and not recorded or archived in any form.

The exception was of course commercially recorded music, which was imported from overseas in the form of 78 rpm discs. And that is what New Zealand's first radio broadcast of speech and music 100 years ago, largely consisted of. So we can at least get a feel for how that first broadcast sounded…

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In an update of his 2017 talk, Prof. Peter O'Connor explores the complexities of terrorism from an educator's perspective. From the online version of Auckland University's Raising the Bar.

Education expert Peter O'Connor explores the intricacies of terrorism in an updated version of his 2017 talk What Drives Terrorism?

He argues that critical empathy is essential to understanding other people, and reducing the alienation and exclusion which can result in individuals being radicalised.

How can this begin in primary school? With the story of The Billy Goats Gruff.

Listen to Professor Peter O'Connor

(From Raising the Bar - Home edition 2021)

https://youtu.be/wMmvwBtniz0

Edited highlights from the discussion:

We live in constant crisis. In amongst that what we have found is people offering cheap and easy answers. The kinds of things which lure people into finding the scapegoat, finding the other to blame for their lack of ability to deal with post-normal times. Times of contradiction, of complexity, of seemingly never-ending crisis.

But, you know, we have been here before. I think back to that period after the Second World War when democracies had taken on the evils of Nazism. They were confronting the dehumanising ideologies of Stalinism.

And what we understood in the Western Hemisphere was that progressive policies were one way to protect democracy, one answer to those radicalising and dehumanising ideologies.

We worked really hard to diminish wealth inequality so that people wouldn't be attracted to those ways of thinking. And so we had progressive tax systems, which actually put the burden on the wealthy. We understood that having a stake in democracy, which was centred around homeownership for many, was important. We worked against the idea of intergenerational cultures of despair.

Now, in post-normal times, we find a willingness to blame others for where we have ended up. The displaced, the refugees of this world who are the victims of terrorism, are so casually labelled as terrorist threats to democracy when, in fact, they are the victims of it.

People of colour, in particular, have suffered under the burden of systemic racism and increasingly are threatened by the rise of white supremacy across the world, because it finds its home in post-normal times.

The educational theorist John Dewey understood that the kind of education that was needed in schools to address these issues, needed to have at its heart, the arts.

The arts in particular have a role in changing the world to be a more just, fair, and equitable place.

I'd like to give an example of what that might look like in a school.

I've been teaching about terrorism coming up for 20 years…

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

Marketing expert Dr Mike Lee has kept a ten-year watch on the anti-vaccination movement. In this illuminating talk, he explores how we could develop herd immunity against harmful misinformation.

Marketing expert Dr Mike Lee has kept a ten-year watch on the anti-vaccination movement. In this illuminating talk, he explores the key reasons people reject vaccinations and how we could develop herd immunity against harmful misinformation.

Listen to Dr Mike Lee

(From Raising the Bar - Home edition 2021)

In 2011, Dr Mike Lee began his research into the anti-vaccination movement that opposed mandatory vaccination for childhood communicable diseases such as measles, mumps and rubella. At that time, so-called "anti-vaxxers" were on the fringes of society.

Fast-forward to 2021, and those hostile to vaccines have a brand new target as governments and pharmaceutical companies roll out Covid-19 vaccines.

Dr Michael Lee has kept a ten-year watch on the movement, monitoring blogs and news articles, as well as medical and social science journals.

He draws a connection between the current anti-vaxx campaign and anti-consumption battles against globalisation.

In this talk, Dr Lee applies his knowledge of marketing to this major social issue.

He explores the four main reasons for not getting a vaccination:

ideological beliefs

belief in freedom of choice

risk-to-benefit ratio perceived as poor

uncertainty about safety and efficacy

Dr Lee suggests that an awareness of our cognitive biases - apophenia, the availability heuristic and confirmation bias - could be crucial for our ability to develop herd immunity against misinformation.

https://youtu.be/I_D6ayQhn0A

Edited highlights from the discussion:

Mike Lee:

What is a marketer doing talking about anti-vaxxers?

I'm not an immunologist, a virologist, nor an epidemiologist. All I am is a humble marketer. My research area is about this concept called anti-consumption, usually to do with people boycotting or resisting brands, products or services. The classic example in the old days was Nike and sweatshop labour. Or people that are anti-globalisation may protest outside Starbucks or McDonalds.

The way I see it as a marketer is that a vaccine is essentially a product. It's something that you use to obtain certain benefits. The main difference between a vaccine and a pair of sneakers, for example, is that unlike the sneakers, the vaccines usually have a ton of evidence behind them, proving their safety and that they work…

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Science communicator Siouxsie Wiles spoke about Covid-19, conspiracy theories and how being a goth teenager led her into microbiology, at the 2021 NZ International Science Festival.

Science communicator and 2021 New Zealander of the Year Siouxsie Wiles is dedicated to informing the general public about the issues that matter.

At this year's NZ International Science Festival held in July, she spoke about conspiracy theories, why she's dyed her hair pink for 21 years and how being a goth teenager led her into microbiology.

Listen to Siouxsie Wiles in conversation with Jesse Bering

Edited highlights from the discussion:

Siouxsie Wiles:

My microbiology origin story is partly related to being a goth as a teenager. You're supposed to kind of like death and destruction, and I was reading Edgar Allan Poe, various things like that. And either I picked it up, or somebody gave me, the Fireside Book of Deadly Diseases. I just found these tales of tuberculosis and plague absolutely fascinating. And I remember thinking "What would it be like to live in those times?" and now we don't have to imagine, although it's not what I thought it was going to be.

I read those books and I thought, wow, this is kind of amazing. I want to understand more about how bacteria and viruses work. And so I ended up going to university to do biology. But the more microbiology courses I took, the more I just got sucked in.

Jesse Bering:

Do you remember the moment where you first heard about bioluminescence?

Siouxsie Wiles:

Bioluminescence is this chemical reaction that glowing creatures use to make light. I've always been that kid who loved glowing stuff. Like I had all the stars on my ceiling, right? I've always loved the idea of fireflies - it's quite mesmerising. During my degree, I got my first glimpse of the science of using light when I got to engineer plants to glow in the dark using the firefly enzyme, and I thought, "Oh my God, that's so cool!"

There was a PhD project that was all about making bacteria glow, acting as pollution sensors. And so that's what I did. And then I guess through the process, I realised you could turn that into a job. If you'd said to me as a kid, "You'll have a job making things glow in the dark" I would have said "Really?"…

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A team of experts discuss the future of gene editing to control pests, and how it connects with mātauranga Māori. A highlight of the NZ International Science Festival from July 2021.

"Gene editing does feature in  narratives. What I'm wary of is people running off and weaponising that" - Tame Malcolm

Listen to a team of Kiwi bio-heritage experts discuss the future of genetics in pest control, and how that connects with mātauranga Māori.

Professor Peter Dearden, Tame Malcolm, Aroha Mead, Professor Phil Lester and Brent Beaven on the role of genetics in Aotearoa's pest control

This conversation was a highlight of the 2021 NZ International Science Festival.

Highlights

The panellists are in agreement that the use of gene editing to control introduced pests could become as polarising as, say, mask-wearing and vaccinations in the Covid-19 era. They are thankful that mainstream political and civic discussion has remained focused on scientific matters rather than being swayed too much by social media. But what do to, when confronted with those who deny science?

Aroha Mead:

It's really important to be non-judgemental. People have their views, and you may not like them. They might be illogical to you, but they are logical to them.

What I'm more concerned with, though, is the value system that created the problem that we have . We're dealing with the outcome of a whole bunch of decisions made by humans about importing species into this country that have run havoc. So we don't want that same value system to be the decision-makers for what we have to do to fix the problem that they created.

So along with this technology, there has to be a total reform, a decolonisation of our conservation system. There has to be a strengthening of the role of Māori hapu and iwi in managing lands and resources. We just have to get out of the way we have done conservation here because it hasn't worked. It simply hasn't worked.

Peter Dearden:

Is it more ethical for us to genetically drive possums to extinction, or to treat them with 1080?

Phil Lester:

The mouse plagues in Australia occurring now happens over there every few years, depending often on the weather conditions. Gene drives are being suggested as a potential approach, and animal ethics groups are coming out in support and saying, "Look, this is a much better way of controlling mice populations." So there are groups out there thinking gene drives could be an ethical solution to pest problems.

Brent Beaven: …

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Angler Dougal Rillstone and surfer Derek Morrison talk to fellow explorer Bruce Ansley about their love for the wild places of Aotearoa.

Angler Dougal Rillstone (author of Upstream on the Mataura) and surfer Derek Morrison (author of Surf Dreams) talk to fellow explorer Bruce Ansley about their love for the wild places of Aotearoa.

This conversation was a highlight of the 2021 Dunedin Writers & Readers Festival.

Listen to Dougal Rillstone, Derek Morrison and Bruce Ansley in conversation

Highlights:

Dougal Rillstone: My association with the Mataura river Roes back a long way. I was born a stone's throw from it. I lived on the eastern side of Gore in a very ordinary street. But we had paddocks beside us. We had the Waikaka Stream at the end of our road. It was a wild place. And that was where I grew up, and grew to love being near water and the river. The Mataura was about three blocks to the west of us. And we were surrounded by green hills and the Hokonuis. And it became the landscape of my happiness really. I've been lucky because I feel such joy when I'm fly fishing. It's helped me going back to the river and feeling good about it. But you can't lose sight of what you've lost in that regard. The main  river is holding up ok, but the tributaries are being damaged by changes in agricultural practice.

Dougal Rillstone: One of my favourite streams is Fortune Creek, which I write about in Upstream on the Mataura. This beautiful little stream just running on the north side of the Hokonuis, into the Mataura. Water as clear as vodka. Beautiful plant life swinging in the current there like flags. Trout. A clean bottom. And, in the space of 15 or 20 years, for economic reasons, the farmer gave up sheep farming. It was converted to dairy. Pretty quickly the streamside vegetation was pulled out and burnt.

And before you know it there are pivot irrigators going across that landscape. There is cowshit arcing through the air fertilising the ground. And no surprise quite quickly that Fortune Creek deteriorated badly. The water lost its gloss. I used to drink from it with impunity. But I started to think that I shouldn't. And the insect life in the stream deteriorated badly. And frankly, it died. It runs under the highway as you head towards Riversdale. It's an inconspicuous thing. If you cross over it, it looks ok, but if you get close to it, and look at it in any kind of detail, it's a dead piece of water. And that's happened too much through that catchment…

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