Latest Content for Old Mole Variety Hour

 Is the Healthcare bill now being debated in Congress a step in the right, or in the wrong, direction?  In this piece by long-time health professional Carol Miller, read here by Tom Becker, it's another corporate bailout that will make real reform more difficult to achieve.... Read more

Do higher taxes make for fewer jobs -- or more?  Is Congress debating real healthcare reform -- or just another corporate bailout?  Is PTSD a good way to think about how people are  affected by violence?   This show takes on these questions, with host Tom Becker, Old Mole r... Read more

 Is PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) a useful concept  for thinking about how people deal with a society saturated in violence?   What is gained by using it to treat soldiers suffering from the results of battle mayhem?  Can it be extended  to understand women in abusi... Read more

 Do higher taxes on businesses and wealthy individuals drive down investment and cost us jobs?  Not at all, according to Karen Kraut of United for a Fair Economy in this wide-ranging discussion with the Old Mole's Bill Resnick.  In fact, higher taxes keep surplus wealth out... Read more

 This show is hosted by Tom Becker (pictured here), and covers this variety of topics:  What has to happen to include jobs in the economic recovery (it's not happening now); a new film about Hip Hop culture spanning the distance between Portland and Sierra Leone;  how stori... Read more

 The economy is recovering -- but without jobs.  Heidi Schierholz of the Economic Policy Institute talks with the Old Mole's Bill Resnick about what can and should be done right away to create enough jobs for everyone.  Schierholz is one of the author's of  the annual repor... Read more

Bridging the gap between the US and Africa with Hip Hop youth culture -- that's one of the aims of the new film Moving 2 the Beat, produced here in Portland and in Sierra Leone.  Abdul Fofanah, co-director of the film and a Sierra Leonean -American, talks about the film her... Read more

 Elizabeth Strout's book Olive Kitteridge is a set of short stories revolving around a central character, and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2009.  Our reviewer Larry Bowlden tells us what's great about it.  You can find more of Larry's reviews here.   Read more

 Reponding to the recent shootings at Fort Hood, Psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Maureen Katz talks with the Old Mole's Jan Haaken about how the military uses psychiatry, and how the media portray PTSD and mental illness among  soldiers and mental health workers.   Who carri... Read more

What keeps us at war -- and without universal healthcare -- is not the moral  failings of politicians but the system within which politicians -- including presidents -- are forced to act.  That's the argument of  investigative journalist Russ Baker in this conversation with... Read more