Latest Content for Old Mole Variety Hour

What do we learn from Precious, the movie about a pregnant black teenager, about poverty, education, and matriarchy?  What does it leave out or distort?  The Old Mole's Denise Morris talks with Juell Stuart, a writer and activist from Brooklyn whose article on Precious a... Read more

  There is always music inspired by, and that  inspires,  political resistance, and these times are no exception.  Radical musicologist Brad Duncan talks with Bill Resnick about some recent currents in political music, some of which were heard on today's Old Mole:  "Tina... Read more

 As part  of KBOO's special programming for  this day, the Old Mole looks at the WTO and corporate globalization, with pieces on how the WTO protects business from the full costs of doing business, the socialist alternative to the capitalist crisis, issues of race and po... Read more

 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 achie... 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 Mol... 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 ab... 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 ... 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 ca... 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 st... Read more