Tina Loo studies the impact of  hydropower projects on native people in Canada, and here she talks with the Old Mole's Laurie Mercier about how the techno-perspective of policy makers blinds them to the impacts of their projects on life in the areas where they are  located.    Professor Loo will be appearing next week (Nov. 6-7)  in Vancouver, WA at a major conference about dams -- Reversing the Flow: Big Dams, Power, and People in Global Perspective.

 How could our cities get rid of cars?  What would city life be like without them?  J.H. Crawford writes about these questions, and he talks here with the Old Mole's Bill Resnick about a future of car-free cities.

 Kathryn Stockett's  new novel The Help is about a white southern writer trying to tell the stories  of black domestic servants in Jackson, Mississippi in the 1960s.   Our Book Mole Larry Bowlden wrestles with the problems this poses.   

For an archive of Larry's reviews, go here.

 In this Well-read Red segment, Clayton Morgareidge reviews some of the  ways our digital activity is recorded and is increasingly being sorted and reviewed by both industry and government.  He asks whether  privacy is a lost cause, and if so, what kind of world would be safe without it.  For sources, go here, here, and here.  

 President Obama is caught between his base wanting withdrawal from Afghanistan, and his generals, wanting escalation, according to this article in Rolling Stone by Robert Dreyfus, excerpted and discussed here by Bill Resnick.   

This show, hosted by Clayton Morgareidge, raises questions about the impact of dams on native peoples in Canada; how to get automobiles out of our cities; Kathryn Stockett's novel The Help about black servants in Jackson, Missississippi in the '60s; is  it too late to protect our privacy in a digital world; and Obama's fight with his generals over  Afghanistan.