The Harvard philosopher Willard van Orman Quine had the question mark on his typewriter replaced with a logical symbol. Asked by a reporter if he missed the question mark, Quine replied, “I deal in certainties.” Quine’s certainties were of the scientific sort: he famously said that “philosophy of science is philosophy enough.” For Quine, this meant that philosophy had to give up its pretenses and recognize that it had no special claim to truth.

Willard Quine died on Christmas Day at the age of 92. He was one of the 20th Century’s greatest thinkers, whose work in logic and epistemology challenged philosophy’s perpetual quest for transcendent meaning. The search for truth beyond immediate human experience, Quine thought, was not only pointless, it was actually a barrier to the pursuit of knowledge. The philosophy of Quine, this hour on the Connection
(Hosted by Christopher Lydon)

Guests:

Alexander George, professor of Philosophy at Amherst College

Richard Rorty, professor of Literature at Stanford University

If your car were as hard to manage as your PC, Michael Dertouzos says, you might never get out of the garage. If you think your computer’s wasting your time, maybe driving you crazy, he says: you’re probably right. The first problem is that we think of our information machine as one thing, a cyber-something that demands a techno-transformation of ourselves. We got over that eventually in the Industrial Revolution, which was driven by motors; but we don’t take them as an invitation to enter motor-space, or to surrender to motor-ness.
We bring motors into our lives-of different sizes and speeds in automobiles and electric toothbrushes, and the good ones we adapt to our uses, not us to theirs. The next generation of computing will do something like that. Dertouzos says it should be less about machines, more about us, about our bodies and spirits as much as our heads. Computers for the whole human being are this hour on The Connection.
(Hosted by Christopher Lydon)

Guests:

Michael Dertouzos, director of MIT’s Laboratory for Computer Science, and author of “The Unfinished Revolution: Human-Centered Computers and What They Can Do for Us.”

Russia’s oligarchs like to compare themselves to robber barons of 19th century America. But billionaire businessmen like Boris Berezovksy and Vladimir Gusinsky are creating a far different legacy than the Rockefellers and Carnegies. Instead of railroads, libraries, and foundations, Russia’s new rich have offshore accounts, private security armies, and criminal connections. Post-Soviet Russia is an impoverished country with a fraction of its once mighty industrial output, and a handful of tycoons have made fortunes during its decline.

The writer Paul Klebnikov says that Russia’s troubled transition is a story of brazen embezzlement by corrupt communists, apparatchiks-turned-capitalists, and a mafia full of ex-KGB agents. Berezovsky may be the godfather of them all, with an expanding empire of oil, automobiles, airlines, and media unrivaled in the world. The looting of Russia is this hour on the Connection.
(Hosted by Christopher Lydon)

Guests:

Paul Klebnikov, Forbes writer and author of “Godfather of the Kremlin: Boris Berezovsky and The Looting of Russia”

Ask endurance athletes why they push themselves beyond their limits, and you won’t hear about “climbing the mountain because it was there”; you’ll hear about the ‘Zone’. Marathoners, triathletes, high-altitude climbers, and other ultra-athletes do what they do because they’re addicted to the moments of clarity and invincibility they achieve after hours of running or skiing. They talk in quasi-religious language about an ecstatic “space” where they can think or not think, where they find emotional, physical, and spiritual serenity.

It’s a big part of what drives professional athletes like cyclist Lance Armstrong, marathoner Haile Gebrsellassie, or Nordic skier Bjorn Dahlie. But there are also whole subcultures of amateur trail-runners, kayakers, race-walkers, and bikers who organize their lives and families around their first passion: the hardcore daily workouts they can’t live without. Pushing your limits is this hour on the Connection.
(Hosted by Christopher Lydon)

Guests:

Bill McKibben, author of “Long Distance: A Year of living Strenously.” Tori Murden, the first woman to row across the Atlantic. Jeannie Wall, director of Patagonia’s Endurance line, and cross-country skiing Olympic hopeful.

Washington is going retro. Not retro cool or retro chic but retro Republican. Repressed Republicans are back and they’ve got the White House and both houses of Congress for the first time since the 50’s when all of America liked Ike. What’s old is suddently new again: Nancy Reagan Red, pearls, petroleum, and pinstripes. The hipsters are history now. The ranchers are in charge. Barbara Streisand and Hollywood have been replaced by old time corporate CEOs and the B school. There will be no more oval office jokes.

All the buzz in the capital is about taxcuts and missile shields. Ralph Nader and the tree huggers have been hung out to dry, the loggers and the oilmen and the Sagebrush Rebellion are the new radical cause. But it’s not exactly your grandfather’s GOP. The New New republicans are multi-cultural and PC; they’re compassionate and they like their women on top. The Bush Restoration is this hour on the Connection.
(Hosted by Christopher Lydon)

Guests:

Bill Kristol, editor-in-chief, The Weekly Standard. Arianna Huffington, Syndicated columist and author. Her most recent book is “How to Overthrow the Government.” Alexander Cockburn.

Poetry is out of its book-bound cage and running loose in the world. Spoken word, slam poetry, and poetic theater are the latest labels for a performance art form that turns traditional poetry on its ear. It’s a live action medium designed for smoky clubs with a loud, engaged crowd. And there is no more pioneering voice in performance poetry today than one-time journalist Patricia Smith. In fact, long before Patricia Smith was fired from the Boston Globe for a bit too much creative license in her columns, she earned that license as Chicago’s poetry slam diva.

Now she’s sharpened her craft, and deepened her delivery. When she’s not channeling the voices of the overlooked and underfoot, she’s burrowing into music’s meaning. Here she is on Aretha Franklin: “Aretha. Deep butter dipt, burnt pot liquor, twisted sugar cane, vaselined knock knees clacking extraordinary gospel.” Patricia Smith is live this hour on the Connection.
(Hosted by Christopher Lydon)

Guests:

Patricia Smith, performance poet The Philip Pemberton Band (Philip Pemberton – Vocals, Jim Weston – Percussion, Joshua Carre – Bass, Steve Grzeskowiak – Guitar)