Nigeria is the most African of African nations. That’s what the Nigerians say. And it is hard to argue with them — as their fellow Africans will tell you.

If you think of Africa metaphorically as a place of incomprehensible social and ethnic complexity, Nigeria is the ultimate example: one in six Africans live there; the country’s 110 million people belong to 300 different ethnic groups. Think of Africa as a place with natural wealth waiting to be exploited, and think Nigeria with billions of barrels of low-sulfur Bonny Light crude oil to sell on the world market. Political corruption — first place Nigeria. Dismal history of military dictatorship — it’s Nigeria.

Yet for all the corruption, dictatorship and ethnic strife, Nigerians continue to struggle toward democracy from dictatorship. If they succeed it will have an enormous impact thoughout the rest of Africa.
(Hosted by Michael Goldfarb)

Guests:

Father Kukah, Secretary General of the Bishop’s Council of Nigeria, and Member of the Human Rights Violation Investigation Commission

Karl Maier, Contributor to The Economist and The Washington Post

Salih Booker, Director of the Africa Fund for New York City and the Africa Policy Information Centre in Washington, D.C.

Wole Soyinka, Nobel Prize Winner.

Wanting to re-read those literary classics that first thrilled you when you were young but just don’t have time in this rush-rush world? Even on vacation, you just can’t get back in to Middlemarch because you gotta amuse the kids or gotta meet that colleague from the office?

Never fear — the five-Minute Iliad is here. Humorist Greg Nagan goes beyond the world of Cliff notes to deliver literary classics that take five minutes or less to read — and that’s a guarantee.

Of course, some breakthrough methods are required to fit epic literature into that five minute slot — for instance, Dante’s Inferno as a series of limericks instead of the terza rima cantos which you may have had to suffer through in college. And Joyce’s Ulysses — famous for its several page long unpunctuated sentences — is reduced to a single seven word sentence.
(Hosted by Michael Goldfarb)

Guests:

Greg Nagan, author of The Five-Minute Iliad and Other Instant Classics.

Risk. You know everyday life is full of risk, but just how much is absolutely astonishing. Let’s crunch some numbers from just around your house. You have a 1 in 30,000 risk of dying from a fall in your home this year. You have a one in 4,500 chance of injuring yourself in the bathroom. If the purpose of your visit to the loo is shaving you have a one in 7,000 chance of cutting yourself so badly you will need medical attention.

And if all this makes you feel like staying in bed with the covers over your head — forget it. You have a one in 650 chance of sustaining an injury in bed this year.

But beyond the amusing numbers risk is a serious subject. Our individual biology programs us for how we deal with the day-to-day risks of living. Our most mundane daily risk analyses shape the society in which we live — generating demand for certain food products — and certain politicians. From high to low — a discussion of risk is on this hour.
(Hosted by Christopher Lydon)

Guests:

John Ross, Smithsonian Magazine editor and author of Living Dangerously: Navigating the Risks of Everyday Life

The Broadside is a political tradition going back to 17th century England: a one page political pamphlet or lyric sheet meant to get a radical message straight to the people in the street.

Broadside Magazine was an American twist on the English formula. It was founded by Sis Cunningham and Gordon Friese, a married couple who had been radicalized in the Thirties and blacklisted in the forties. The pair set up Broadside in 1962 when the folk music revival was colliding head on with the protest song movement.

Broadside was the mimeographed bible of that time. And what a time it was: Phil Ochs, Tom Paxton, Eric Andersen, Buffy Sainte-Marie all were writing political songs about big issue politics: civil rights/Vietnam. And their work was published in Broadside. The magazine was also the first place the public could read the lyrics of the legendary Blind Boy Grunt a.k.a. Bob Dylan.
(Hosted by Michael Goldfarb)

Guests:

Janis Ian and Eric Andersen, Folk Musicians

Ronald Cohen, Producer of the Box Set The Best of Broadside 1962-1988.

Seven mathematics questions for the new Millenium. It’s becoming something of a tradition. At the dawn of the 20th century, German mathematician David Hilbert posed twenty-three problems for his colleagues to solve during the coming 100 years.

Now the Clay Mathematics Institute of Cambridge has come up with a list of seven questions to challenge the mathematical mind. The big seven exist in a world of pure abstraction, a world of algorithms and polynomial time solutions — a world that stretches the bounds of language to explain.

But these questions also have resonance in our physical world. The answers to them can lead to deeper understanding of the universe, greater computational speed for computers, and safer design for airplanes. And perhaps in the act of solving one of these questions a door might be opened to the equation that shows even deeper truths.

Oh, and did we mention that there is a cash prize of one million dollars per question to the mathematician who finds the answer?
(Hosted by Michael Goldfarb)

Guests:

Arthur Jaffe, Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Clay Mathematics Institute

Andrew Wiles, Professor of Mathematics at Princeton University and solver of the famous Fermat’s Last Theorem

and Barry Mazur, Professor of Mathematics at Harvard University

We know that the Industrial Revolution in America started in New England, and we know that it changed the landscape and ecology of the region forever. But it wasn’t the first time New England’s ecology had been changed to fit the needs of the creatures who inhabited it.

When the Puritans arrived in 1620 the coast had already been cleared for agriculture by native American tribes. These groups lived in an ecosystem that had been shaped by the animals who had been living in New England since the last ice sheet retreated.

The human and animal processes are connected. Meditate on a dammed mill pond created by an 18th century entrepreneur and a dam built by beavers who created a marshland around it, and you will see connections between the industrial world and the world of nature. Economy, ecosystems and reflections on Yankee ingenuity.
(Hosted by Michael Goldfarb)

Guests:

Diana Muir, author of Reflections in Bullough’s Pond: Economy and Ecosystem in New England.

The venerable English game of Cricket is a perfect pastime for anywhere but rush-rush America — or so you might think. It takes five days to play a game and frequently after five days the game ends in a draw — and we all know that a contest with no winners is positively un-American.

Yet Cricket is one of the fastest growing club sports in America, partially due to the immigration of computer experts from India and Pakistan, partially due to mentors wanting to teach teens old-fashioned sportsmanship. From Silicon Valley to sunny Florida teams are flourishing. Even in Compton, California — yes, home of crips, bloods and gangsta rappers — the satisfying sound of willow on leather, the polite hand clap and murmur of “well done, chaps” can be heard.

Isn’t it time you knew more about the game which is baseball’s granddaddy? From silly point to backward square leg, it’s worth a shout. Everything you wanted to know about Cricket is next on the Connection.
(Hosted by Michael Goldfarb)

Guests:

Deb Das, U.S. Coordinator for cricinfo.com, the oldest and largest internet site for cricket

Mark Berwick, American cricketeer who started a junior cricket league

Ted Hayes, homeless L.A. resident who started a cricket league five years ago for homeless people and inner-city youth.

Sometimes it seems physicists have answered all the big questions already. The results are tangible — man has been to the moon and split the atom, and split the atom smaller and smaller.

But there are still questions to answer in the search for physics’s Holy Grail — The General Theory of Everything. Even as we speak, scientists are trying to figure out the answers to these questions: Can you calculate the dimensionless parameters of the physical universe? What is the lifetime of the proton? Is nature supersymmetric? Is the cosmological constant really constant?

In their search physicists are refining the language of mathematics and extending the language of words. How long is a ball of superstring? Physics Questions for the New Millennium, on the Connection.
(Hosted by Michael Goldfarb)

Guests:

Brian Greene, Professor of Physics and Mathematics at Columbia University, author of The Elegant Universe

Melissa Franklin, Professor of Physics at Harvard University.

“I stand here tonight as my own man” — with those words Al Gore accepted the Democratic party’s nomination and the election campaign began in earnest. First order of business for Gore — Revelation: “I want you to know me for who I truly am.”

The Al Gore on display last night was an engagingly square guy with a big heart and a big brain. He was also recognizably — a Democrat — in the old fashioned sense, staking out his territory as the champion of working families, guaranteeing the continuation of New Deal/New Frontier/War on Poverty programs, and promising to fight against big corporations and special interests. He was also recognizably a new Democrat — promising tax cuts for the middle class.

The speech played well in the hall — but will it play well in the rest of the country? Election 2000 is truly underway.
(Hosted by Michael Goldfarb)

Guests:

Nicholas Lemann, Staff Writer for The New Yorker

Jack Beatty, Senior Editor at The Atlantic Monthly

David Maraniss, Washington Post reporter and co-author of The Prince of Tennessee.

It is the major dynamic that has shaped American popular music — the relationship between African-American musicians and the Jewish businessmen who brought their music to the rest of America.

Want an example? Take Chess Records — the home of Chicago blues, the label of Muddy Waters, Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry. Chess was founded by the Chess Brothers, Leonard and Phil, Jewish immigrants from Poland, who happily admitted they couldn’t tell a blue note from a major chord but knew what they liked.

And amazingly what these guys, former scrap iron dealers and saloon keepers, liked — the rest of the world went crazy for. The Beatles and the Rolling Stones made pilgrimages to the Chess Studios. Everyone who has ever bopped to Johnny B. Goode or felt their mojo working has a connection to the music recorded by the immigrant brothers.
(Hosted by Christopher Lydon)

Guests:

Nadine Cohodas, author of Spinning Blues Into Gold.