If you got on the trans-Siberian railway in the Ural mountains and you travelled east across Siberia for 5,500 miles to Vladivostok on the Pacific coast, you’d cross a region bigger than the US and Western Europe put together.

You would travel over some of the richest oil and mineral reserves in the world and pass by some of the poorest people on earth. You’d spend days looking at forests that stretch to the horizon, and you’d see Lake Baikal, the deepest in the world, a lake that holds 1/5th of the earth’s fresh water.

You would be travelling through the land of cruel, cold exile, where Russia sent its human detritus, but you might also, in a sense, catch a glimpse of Russia’s heart and soul.

Siberia’s permafrost is hard as steel for eight months of the year, but it melts every spring – and the Siberians themselves have their own endless endurance and capacity for renewal.

Russia’s Wild Wild East in the first hour of the Connection. (Hosted by Christopher Lydon)

Guests:

Colin Thubron, intrepid traveller and author of “In Siberia.”

Philip Glass’s opera “Akhnaten” is a “Camelot” tragedy set in Ancient Egypt: it’s a musical vision-an artist’s guess really-about one man’s short and revolutionary adventure as Pharoah nearly 4000 years ago.

Akhnaten was a dynastic heir who became a radical reformer. He moved Egypt’s capital to the sparkling emerald city of Amarna.

Bolder still, a first in the human record, Akhnaten decreed the worship of one god, maker and master of all-for which the many old gods of Egypt and their powerful priesthood had their revenge.

As a departure in opera writing, Philip Glass’s repetitive modular music and his chanted libretto made original leaps that Akhnaten himself might have admired. The opera is 16-years old now; so it’s lasted very nearly as long as Akhnaten ruled Egypt: and in fresh production for Boston and Chicago, “Akhnaten” is a music show and a human figure of surprising poignancy.

Philip Glass and his “Akhnaten” in the second hour of The Connection.
(Hosted by Christopher Lydon)

Guests:

Philip Glass

New Hampshire primary voters didn’t just scrub the coronation of George W. Bush; they raised up against him a candidate of conviction and character proven in war and reform politics, John McCain.

Among Democrats, New Hampshire extends Bill Bradley’s pesky pursuit of Bill Clinton’s designated heir, Al Gore. Bradley lost again, by 5 points; but he’d lost Iowa by 29 points, and can say now he gained on Gore in New Hampshire, especially after his negative needling sunk in.

The legacy candidates are on notice; the Marquis of Queensbury rules may be suspended; the fund-raising phonebanks will staff up for more. These fights move on to South Carolina, Georgia, New York and California.

Maybe New Hampshire’s real gift last night was to the hungry spectator class in American politics and the pundits who’ve got a full season now to argue and explain what’s going on.
(Hosted by Christopher Lydon)

Guests:

Kevin Phillips, author most recently of “The Cousin’s War,” NPR Political Reporter Anthony Brooks.

The reggae giant Bob Marley was more than a musician.

He was a poet and some say a prophet, a Rastafari ambassador, a man mythologized in his own lifetime. No wonder that Marley is still the best selling reggae artist in the world, nearly 20 years after his death.

He was born in the tiny Jamaican village of Nine Miles, the son of a black mother and a white father, and he’s become all things to all people – the positive, partying beatmaker of Rastaman Vibration, the uplifting political visionary of Redemption Song, the religious mystic, pointing to the danger of Babylon and the promise of Zion, the wild and powerful performer, a shaman on the stage.

Marley’s message has proven as contagious as the slow, synchopated heartbeat of the reggae that carried it – a wailing call for unity and social justice for the downtrodden and impoverished.

The one world and one heart of Bob Marley in the second hour of The Connection. (Hosted by Christopher Lydon)

Guests:

Roger Steffens, reggae historian, collector and creator of the travelling multi-media presentation “Life of Bob Marley.”

The rusted old iron fist of Israeli politics, Ariel Sharon, is favored to win the Prime Minister’s office next week.
He has the advantage in the special elections next week when Israelis will choose.
Ehud Barak’s term has been marked by the great hope and the greater disappointment of Camp David II. Who will prevail?
(Hosted by Christopher Lydon)

Guests:

Tom Segev, author of “One Palestine Complete: Jews and Arabs Under the British Mandate.”

Maybe New Hampshire primary day should be called Emerson and Thoreau Day, in remembrance of the Cranky Yankee patrons of that prickly New England independence that we still celebrate, and mean to preserve – and not just in our politics.

“Do your own thing!” was Ralph Waldo Emerson’s line, a century before our hippies made it famous again.

If a man would plant himself indomitably on his own instincts, wrote the Sage of Concord, the huge world would come round to him. Nobody gobbled up Emerson’s non-conformist individualism more hungrily than the precocious young Harvard student from the other side of Concord, Henry David Thoreau.

Emerson was an enthusiastic intellectual who came to rebellion gradually. Thoreau was a friend of nature who took a dim view of his fellow men. Through the thick and thin of prickly, passionate friendship, they became like gods to each other.

The Emerson-Thoreau legacy in first hour of The Connection.
(Hosted by Christopher Lydon)

Guests:

Harmon Smith, author of “My Friend, My Friend: The Story of Thoreau’s Relationship with Emerson.”