David Marr

Australia

Host, Late Night Live at ABC Radio National

Not really.

Articles

The Māori lesbian activist trailblazer who broke academic records

3 days ago | abc.net.au | David Marr |Sarah Allely

Ngāhuia te Awekōtuku has led such a rich, full life already that her memoir only covers the first 26 years of her life - from 1949-1975. And it’s a rollicking ride. The emeritus professor was the first Maori woman to get a doctorate from a New Zealand university. She later became first Maori woman professor. But that all happens later. This memoir charts her formative years, including her founding role in Gay and women’s liberation movements and also significant Maori activism.
Backstory to Assange's secret deal for freedom

4 days ago | abc.net.au | David Marr |Sarah Allely

A year ago this week Wikileaks founder Julian Assange was released from prison after a 14-year fight for freedom. Assange accepted a guilty plea of conspiring to obtain and disclose classified U.S. documents in exchange for being returned home to Australia. But how did this deal come about and what happened in the lead-up to his return home? Journalist Andrew Fowler shares the inner-dealings and joins the dots on the backstory of the negotiations to release Assange.
The fallacies of the global fertility crisis

1 week ago | abc.net.au | David Marr |Sarah Allely

In the face of falling fertility rates, the United Nations argues that the real fertility crisis the world faces is not too many babies or not enough babies but the lack of freedom women have to choose whether or not, and when, to have kids. A new UN Population Fund study warns governments against alarmist narratives and regressive policies around fertility.
The fallacies of the fertility crisis, and a gritty history of Macau

1 week ago | abc.net.au | David Marr

Why are people around the world having fewer babies, and what – if anything – should be done about it? And Macau has long been overshadowed by Hong Kong, but it was once a central meeting place of Western and Chinese cultures, a colonial outpost rich in stories and characters.
Macau, the Portuguese city in southern China

1 week ago | abc.net.au | David Marr |Ann Arnold

Macau is best known now for its casinos, and has been overshadowed by nearby Hong Kong. But it was the first European city in Asia, remained a Portuguese colony for 500 years, and contains many colourful and significant stories within its walls.
A shambolic expedition to Arnhem Land, and the first despot of North Korea

1 week ago | abc.net.au | David Marr

In 1948, a team of 17 Australians and Americans went to Arnhem Land to document traditional Aboriginal life, collecting thousands of natural specimens and cultural artefacts. It was an ethical and organisational shambles. And Kim Il-Sung, the grandfather of North Korea's current leader, Kim Jong Un, created the state of despair and oppression that continues today.
Kim Il-Sung, North Korea's tyrannical first leader - ABC listen

1 week ago | abc.net.au | David Marr |Ann Arnold

Kim Il-Sung is the ‘darkest figure in all of Korea’s history’ , according to Seoul-based scholar and author Fyodor Tertitskiy. With access to archives from Japan, China and Russia, biographer Tertitskiy has painted a grim picture of a man whose ego replaced his ideology, and whose legacy is that North Koreans, as one of the poorest populations in Asia, are on average several inches shorter than South Koreans.
Unraveling the mysteries of ancient string writing

1 week ago | abc.net.au | David Marr |Sarah Allely

Over millennia, humans have been better at inventing ways of writing than remembering how to read what we’ve written. We use marks and pictures and letters and symbols, but what they mean can disappear over time. We’re only now figuring out how to read the string writing of the Indigenous people of Peru, which until recently was thought to be essentially indecipherable.
Political chaos in the Netherlands

1 week ago | abc.net.au | David Marr |Ali Benton

In early June, far right politician Geert Wilders pulled his PVV, Party for Freedom, out of the ruling coalition, in the Netherlands. The government is now in caretaker mode, with a new election likely to be called in October
Bruce Shapiro's USA, Dutch politics in crisis, and the Inca language of knotted strings

1 week ago | abc.net.au | David Marr

Bruce Shapiro on Trump's Iran plan, and those military parades - how popular were they really? The right-wing firebrand Geert Wilders has walked out of the conservative Dutch coalition. And string writing by the Inca has been misunderstood. These khipus were in fact used to record changes in climate.