Latest Content for Old Mole Variety Hour

  Norm Diamond hosts this episode of the Old Mole, which includes the following segments: Guns, Violence, and Justice: In their Left & the Law segment, Jan Haaken and Mike Snedeker discuss recent upsurges in gun violence in Portland and elsewhere, beginning with the sh... Read more

In their Left & the Law segment, Jan Haaken and Mike Snedeker discuss recent upsurges in gun violence in Portland and elsewhere, beginning with the shooting of protesters and the murder of racial justice activist June Knightly in Northeast Portland on February 19th. Jan ... Read more

For the final day of Black History Month, Norm Diamond examines Robert Paul Wolff’s Autobiography of an Ex-White Man, an extraordinary book by a distinguished activist professor who, late in his career, was invited to join an Afro-American Studies Program and began to re... Read more

Today across the planet two familiar forces — corporate capital and the broad left — are furiously contesting for the resources and authority to direct the mobilization necessary to restore a habitable planet in the little time that remains. In part one of this two part ... Read more

Our music for today’s program compares powerful English-language versions of “Pirate Jenny” from the Three-Penny Opera by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht. Marianne Faithful stays faithful to the German original, while Nina Simone converts the song into a lament and revenge... Read more

  Alice Childress, Paul Robeson and Lorraine Hansberry; Illustration by Jonathan Aprea via Wikimedia Commons, NYPL   Patricia Kullberg hosts this episode of the Old Mole, which includes the following segments: Who will own the sun and wind? Today across the planet two ... Read more

Black artists of music, song, theater, fiction and poetry have a long association with radical left politics.  During the 1940’s and 50s, the socialist sympathies of Black artists like Paul Robeson, Lorraine Hansbury, and Alice Childress turned them into targets of the F... Read more

Today across the planet two familiar forces -— corporate capital and the broad left — are furiously contesting for the resources and authority to direct the mobilization necessary to restore a habitable planet in the little time that remains. The left’s energy networks a... Read more

Desiree Hellegers hosts this episode of the Old Mole, which includes the following segments: Police Reform: During the protests following the killing of George Floyd the police were on the defensive and the City Council discussed replacing the police in responding to me... Read more

During the protests following the killing of George Floyd the police were on the defensive and the City Council discussed replacing the police in responding to mental health emergencies, in intervening in school disorder, in dealing with the homeless, in investigating po... Read more