Joseph Campbell was well-known for his exploration of the monomyth, or the hero's journey, which posits that worldwide myths that have survived for thousands of years all share a fundamental structure. Campbell's work inspired George Lucas to create the first Star Wars trilogy.
In the mid-1980s, Bill Moyers spent many hours interviewing Campbell at Skywalker Ranch. The result was a now famous documentary called "
The Power of Myth." The series has been available on
DVD since 2001, but Moyers has just made the
full series available for streaming and download on his site.
posted by ajr
on Mar 16, 2013 -
29 comments
"The fact that photographs — they’re mute, they don’t have any narrative ability at all. You know what something looks like, but you don’t know what’s happening, you don’t know whether the hat’s being held or is it being put on her head or taken off her head. From the photograph, you don’t know that. A piece of time and space is well described. But not what is happening."
Legendary street photographer Garry Winogrand with Bill Moyers, 1982 [more inside]
posted by Lorin
on Jan 6, 2013 -
7 comments
Moyers & Company
presents “United States of ALEC,” a report on the most influential corporate-funded political force most of America has never heard of — ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council. A national consortium of state politicians and powerful corporations, ALEC presents itself as a “nonpartisan public-private partnership”. But behind that mantra lies a vast network of corporate lobbying and political action aimed to increase corporate profits at public expense without public knowledge. [previously]
posted by troll
on Oct 6, 2012 -
21 comments
But this season, PBS chose to move Independent Lens and P.O.V. to a new time slot -- 10 pm, ET, on Thursday nights. This may not seem like such a big deal at first, until you know that on Thursday nights stations can broadcast any program they like in prime time, whether it's part of the PBS schedule or not. Many take the opportunity to offers viewers locally produced programs, British sitcoms or reruns of Antiques Roadshow. As a result, episodes of the independent documentary series can now be run anywhere local stations choose to fit them in (here in New York, WNET airs the films at 11 p.m. on Sundays) or maybe not at all.
Bill Moyers writes an open letter to PBS about scheduling changes which have ruined PBS as Tuesday night destination for documentary television.
posted by hippybear
on Mar 24, 2012 -
17 comments
Bill Moyers' scathing 1987 special report on our
secret government.(SLYT)(via)(trigger warning: pictures and video of dead bodies) It includes an in-depth look at the Iran-Contra Affair and much, much more. Note: sound cuts out for a couple of minutes during the intro because of copyrighted song. Sound returns around 3:20.
posted by AElfwine Evenstar
on Mar 23, 2012 -
19 comments
This that you call Ursus maritimus, this polar bear. This is a being who came from somewhere and is going somewhere. It's not locked in time. And that—the great resistance to Darwin is, I think, he told us that it's all moving. And it's headed in no particular place. And then particular physics comes along. And quantum mechanics come along. And these physicists tell us the same thing. "It's really fuzzy out there."
A few days ago, without much notice, PBS broadcast the
final episode of the
Bill Moyers Journal. Moyers devoted his final segment to
an interview with essayist Barry Lopez—whose writing, Moyers said, has "set the gold standard for all of us whose work it is to explain those things we don't understand."
(Transcript.) [more inside]
posted by cirripede
on May 3, 2010 -
34 comments
"'I am going to get rid of everything, including mosquitoes, that bothers me, anywhere in the world, and then I will be a very happy, content person.' We're laughing, but it's what we all do." SLYT: A wry two-minute teaching about avoiding pain by Buddhist nun
Pema Chodron, based on
these writings of the 8th century scholar
Shantideva. For those who don't like video, here's a
transcript (scroll down.) For those who
really like video, here's
55 minutes of Chodron with Bill Moyers. (This too has
a partial transcript.)
posted by escabeche
on Jan 11, 2010 -
81 comments
Amid the financial headlines (about
new banking reforms,
more bank failures, the
need for more lending by
the fat-cats, the question of whether
a European-style bonus-tax might
be possible here, and the
shrinking of the middle class), on PBS yesterday Bill Moyers wondered, in an in-depth segment (with organizers from
here and
here), whether
a new wave of populist economic activism is perhaps, despite
all odds, beginning to make
a dent after all.
posted by HP LaserJet P10006
on Dec 12, 2009 -
31 comments
Playing for Change - Peace Through Music (flash) is a documentary film by Mark Johnson. He traveled the world and recorded various musicians playing the song
Stand By Me. Each musician was charged with layering a single song over the previous artist thus building upon it. Over thirty musicians globally participated in this project and not one artist knew the other or came in contact initially.
[more inside]
posted by Sailormom
on Nov 23, 2008 -
13 comments
Don't miss tonight on PBS the final NOW with Bill Moyers.
"Bill Moyers looks inside the right-wing media machine that the conservative NEW YORK TIMES columnist David Brooks called a "dazzlingly efficient ideology delivery system." The program examines how a vast echo chamber that is admittedly partisan and powerfully successful delivers information — and misinformation — with more regard for propaganda than fact. Founding father to the conservative movement, Richard Viguerie tells Moyers, 'That’s what journalism is, Bill. It’s all just opinion. Just opinion.'”
posted by semmi
on Dec 17, 2004 -
45 comments
Republican environmental politics as usual? While the president's policies seem to be standard for his party, Bill Moyers thinks there's more than meets the eye. On receiving Harvard medical school's Global Environment Citizen Award, Moyers posits that destruction of the environment isn't just good for big business, it's a self fulfilling prophecy of the apocalypse. Not just any old apocalypse, it's
The Rapture, complete with plagues for the non-believers and immmediate ascension to the right hand of God Himself for the righteous.
Two days after Moyer's speech, Science magazine looks at
the scientific consensus on global warming. If you're having a hard time explaining all this to your kids, don't worry, your
tax dollars are hard at work.
posted by jimray
on Dec 8, 2004 -
51 comments
"How do we nurture the healing side of religion over the killing side? How do we protect the soul of democracy against bad theology in service of an imperial state? OVER THE PAST few years, as the poor got poorer, the health care crisis worsened, wealth and media became more and more concentrated, and our political system was bought out from under us, prophetic Christianity lost its voice. The Religious Right drowned everyone else out. And they hijacked Jesus. The very Jesus who stood in Nazareth and proclaimed, 'The Lord has anointed me to preach the good news to the poor.' The very Jesus who told 5,000 hungry people that all of you will be fed, not just some of you. The very Jesus who challenged the religious orthodoxy of the day by feeding the hungry on the Sabbath, who offered kindness to the prostitute and hospitality to the outcast, who raised the status of women and treated even the tax collector like a child of God. The very Jesus who drove the money changers from the temple. This Jesus has been hijacked and turned into a guardian of privilege instead of a champion of the dispossessed. Hijacked, he was made over into a militarist, hedonist, and lobbyist, sent prowling the halls of Congress in Guccis, seeking tax breaks and loopholes for the powerful, costly new weapon systems that don't work, and punitive public policies."
Bill Moyers on democracy excruciate.
posted by fold_and_mutilate
on Jul 15, 2004 -
91 comments
Mad As Hell
First we had Al Gore letting loose with
both barrels at NYU, and now Bill Moyers drops the bomb on the
poverty gap in this country.
"The rich have the right to buy more homes than anyone else. They have the right to buy more cars than anyone else, more gizmos than anyone else, more clothes and vacations than anyone else. But they do not have the right to buy more democracy than anyone else."
P.S: Earth to Kerry: mebbe you want to talk to one of these guys, they seem to be on to something. Have one of your speech writers give them a call...
posted by piedrasyluz
on Jun 18, 2004 -
47 comments
"Our nation can no more survive as half democracy and half oligarchy than it could survive 'half slave and half free'" (
alternative non-PDF link). "Understanding the real interests and deep opinions of the American people is the first thing. And what are those? That a Social Security card is not a private portfolio statement but a membership ticket in a society where we all contribute to a common treasury so that none need face the indignities of poverty in old age without that help. That tax evasion is not a form of conserving investment capital but a brazen abandonment of responsibility to the country. That income inequality is not a sign of freedom-of-opportunity at work, because if it persists and grows, then unless you believe that some people are naturally born to ride and some to wear saddles, it's a sign that opportunity is less than equal. That self-interest is a great motivator for production and progress, but is amoral unless contained within the framework of community. That the rich have the right to buy more cars than anyone else, more homes, vacations, gadgets and gizmos, but they do not have the right to buy more democracy than anyone else."
Bill Moyers
"tends the flame of democracy."
posted by fold_and_mutilate
on Jun 11, 2003 -
75 comments
BodyBurden: the pollution in people. "Researchers at two major laboratories found an average of 91 industrial compounds, pollutants, and other chemicals in the blood and urine of nine volunteers, with a total of 167 chemicals found in the group. Like most of us, the people tested do not work with chemicals on the job and do not live near an industrial facility. Scientists refer to this contamination as a person’s body burden. Of the 167 chemicals found, 76 cause cancer in humans or animals, 94 are toxic to the brain and nervous system, and 79 cause birth defects or abnormal development. The dangers of exposure to these chemicals in combination has never been studied."
This was also the subject of a PBS program by Bill Moyers,
Trade Secrets. Moyers himself was found to have
84 chemicals in his blood and urine. [Via
This Modern World.]
posted by homunculus
on May 26, 2003 -
17 comments
One of the left's strongest allies in the war against media conglomeration is... Barry Diller! Weeks after
telling the National Association of Broadcasters that their industry needs "more regulation, not less," Diller
speaks to Bill Moyers.
posted by PrinceValium
on Apr 27, 2003 -
2 comments
PBS's Televangelist: "Moyers's difficulty conversing with people on the right seems to have impaired his ability to report their opinions fairly, particularly on issues of race. "The right gets away with blaming liberals for their efforts to help the poor, but what the right is really objecting to is the fact that the poor are primarily black," he told Alterman. "The man who sits in the White House today [George H.W. Bush] opposed the Civil Rights Act. So did Ronald Reagan. This crowd is really fighting a retroactive civil rights war to prevent the people they dislike because of their color from achieving success in American life."" (via
medianews)
posted by owillis
on Feb 18, 2002 -
43 comments
Bravo Bill Moyers! Once in awhile there comes a personality that can bridge ideological gaps. Granted these "gaps" are left, center left and moderate right. At that, Moyers is quite the ace. In this keynote address, Moyers speaks of patriotism, unity, heartbreak, renewable energy, "it could have been worse" scenarios, further terrorist attacks and who's side We the People should be on.
posted by crasspastor
on Oct 31, 2001 -
13 comments
So we think we're free? Bill Moyers tells us that we're in the grip of the mega-corporate media who know how to lavishly butter their own bread. And if we like jam? Too bad.
posted by caraig
on Apr 22, 2001 -
3 comments
