Today’s Old Mole is hosted by Norm Diamond. Norm starts things off with a personal credo about what the Mole stands for. The show continues with the following segments:
Another World Is Possible: With this segment we inaugurate a new feature. In the first installment, Norm discusses some of the questions that arise in thinking about social and economic alternatives and how utopian and dystopian literature illuminate these. As illustration, Patricia Kullberg reads from a Luisa May Alcott short story, “Transcendental Wild Oats,” about an effort to found a utopian community and the gender differences that arise in both its founding and its failure. Candy Luisa Herrera explains her suggestion of musical theme for Another World is Possible.
On the Front Lines of COVID: In the first of a two-part interview, Bill Resnick interviews Ted Levine, a New York City nurse working on the frontlines of the pandemic. They discuss official incompetence and venality, lack of preparation for the pandemic, cuts in public health funding in pursuit profit, the inequities that lead to higher burden of illness on people of color and the risks front line workers face.
Wild Life: Book Mole Larry Bowlden reviews Molly Gloss’s novel Wild Life, the story of a writer of women’s adventure stories who becomes lost in the woods, and who survives only with the aid of a family of human-like creatures. It is also a book about writing and especially women’s writing.
The Well Read Red: Today the Well-Read Red contrasts two essays about pandemics. Both draw on the same historical and literary sources, but derive utterly different conclusions from them. Our Well Read Red finds this fascinating and asks why Orhan Pamuk, Nobel Prize-winning Turkish author, and David Brooks, New York Times columnist, end up so far apart.
To hear the whole show, use the play button below; to listen to separate segments, follow the links above.
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- KBOO