Latest Content for Old Mole Variety Hour

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

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

Establishment liberals have been mostly silent as President Obama has expanded the national security state for which liberals castigated his predecessor George W. Bush.  In this article, published on Al Jazeera and read here by Joe Clement, Deepa Kumar demonstrates the c... Read more

There is no contradiction in anarchists organizing.  To find out why, listen to this conversation between the Old Mole's Cara Dugas and organizer Colin O"Malley.  O'Malley is on speaking tour about how and why anarchists need to be organized and engaged with other left p... Read more

The national security state asks the citizens to trust it when it declares a terror alert: is this to divert our attention from the real threat to freedom posed by the state itself?  J. P. Sottile suggest that it is in this article from Counterpunch, read for us here by ... Read more

Tom Becker hosts this episode and we learn about the political influence of utopian and dystopian literature, the deceptions and crimes of the national security state, and what it means for anarchists to organize.  To hear the show in its entirety, use the play button be... Read more

Joe Clement hosts this episode and we hear:Bill Resnick talks with Peter Bratsis about how capitalist social relations have given rise to "economic man" and speciously individualistic conceptions of self-interest. They debate the possibility of and challenges for a cultu... Read more

Iven Hale discusses the radical feminist roots of the phrase "the personal is political" and examines other the ways that the political and personal intersect and inform one another. Read more

Joe Clement talks with Jeff Shantz about anarchist organizing, particularly Especifismo in South America. He explains the origins of anarchist organizing and "platformism", relating those to innovations brought by the especifista, namely social insertion. Jeff Shantz is ... Read more

Jan Haaken and Alan Wieder talk about South African politics and his recent tour there promoting his book "Ruth First and Joe Slovo: the war against apartheid". Jan asks Alan how he took it upon himself to tell the story of a contested history of political struggle. He t... Read more