Latest Content for Old Mole Variety Hour

Clayton Morgareidge reads from and comments on David Graeber's The Democracy Project, which argues that our whole political system functions by bribery, and that the corruption of government entails the corruption of language through euphemism. For instance, rape, tortur... Read more

Movie Moles Denise Morris and Jan Haaken discuss Fruitvale Station, the dramatization of Oscar Grant's killing by Bay Area Rapid Transit guard Johannes Mehserle on New Years Eve 2008. They discuss some of the complexities of fictional films about real events, and suggest... Read more

Terracide: the knowing destruction of the planet earth in the pursuit of profit. Tom Becker reads from Tom Engelhardt's essay on the fossil fuel industry as the biggest criminal enterprise in history. Read more

Clayton Morgareidge will host this show featuring a hopeful discussion the rolling and global wave of people's movements for freedom, a review of the TV series about women in prison "Orange is the New Black," more of our series on community radio with Paul Roland, and  L... Read more

George Katsiaficas has written widely about people's liberation movements around the world, many of them unreported in our media.  Here he talks with the Old Mole's Bill Resnick about the "Eros Effect" -- the desire for freedom that constantly asserts itself in uprisings... Read more

Movie Moles Frann Michel and Iven Hale take a critical, yet appreciative, look at "Orange is the New Black," the Netflix series that has just finished its first season.  They point out its failures to fully represent prison life, while finding much to admire in the show.... Read more

Claire Connor has described her political journey in Wrapped in the Flag: A Personal History of America's Radical Right.  In Portland on a speaking tour, Old Mole contributor Paul Roland talked with her about the right wing's domination of the corporate media and the ris... Read more

Jane Smiley's 2010 novel Private Life: Marriage Can Sometimes Be the Lonliest Place takes the life of Margaret from 1883 to 1942, revealing in one "private life" the larger world in which it is lived.  Larry Bowlden reviews this work of a major American writer.  More of ... Read more

Clayton Morgareidge hosts this show featuring an unusually optimistic Bill Resnick interview about the growth of people's movements around the world, and our Movie Moles in an engaging critique of "Orange is the New Black," the TV series about a women's prison.  We also ... Read more

Utopias and dystupias are frequent themes in science fiction.  Gerry Canavan is a scholar of the utopian imagination, and he talks here with the Old Mole's Bill Resnick about how the interplay between politics and utopia in history and in daily life.  Canavan teaches cul... Read more