Listener’s Songs

Jul 7, 2024 | newstral.com | Listener’s Songs

Listener’s Songs of the week: New tracks from Jon Toogood, Marlin’s Dreaming, and MouseyBy Jon Toogood Jon Toogood of Shihad, whose last album was Old Gods, still has deity images in mind for this slow piano ballad which is freighted with...

Jun 30, 2024 | nzherald.co.nz | Paul Gorman |Listener’s Songs

Sir Peter Gluckman: “It’s a big burden, but it’s one that is so important for New Zealand.” Photo / Elise Manahan It’s midday in Christchurch and Aotearoa’s science éminence grise, Sir Peter Gluckman, is well into pressing business. Only days before, he had returned from Rwanda and a meeting of the International Science Council, of which he is president.

Jun 30, 2024 | nzherald.co.nz | Danyl Mclauchlan |Listener’s Songs

In The Power Broker – the biography of Robert Moses, New York’s brilliant and tyrannical city planner for 40 years – the Machiavellian public servant delivers a masterclass on how to manipulate elected politicians into funding his ruinously expensive megaprojects. The most important thing was to estimate the initial budget at about a tenth of the real price. It would quickly be approved – such a great deal! – and he then used the sunk-cost fallacy to gradually ratchet up the funding.