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
Bill Moyers' discussion with two expert analysts of health care, Trudy Lieberman, director of the health and medical reporting program at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, and Marcia Angell, senior lecturer in social medicine at Harvard Medical School and former editor in chief of the New England Journal of Medicine.
posted by semmi
on Jul 25, 2009 -
100 comments
"The story of how high officials misled the country has been told. But they couldn't have done it on their own; they needed a compliant press, to pass on their propaganda as news and cheer them on."
Bill Moyers returned to PBS last night with
this documentary (
transcript) examining the mainstream media's role in the run-up to the US-led invasion of Iraq.
posted by ibmcginty
on Apr 26, 2007 -
56 comments
The Plantation Mentality The veteran broadcast journalist Bill Moyers spoke on Friday before 3,500 at the opening of the National Conference on Media Reform in Memphis. He announced his return to the airwaves and outlined his vision of media reform. "As ownership gets more and more concentrated, fewer and fewer independent sources of information have survived in the marketplace; and those few significant alternatives that do survive, such as PBS and NPR, are under growing financial and political pressure to reduce critical news content and to shift their focus in a mainstream direction, which means being more attentive to establishment views than to the bleak realities of powerlessness that shape the lives of ordinary people."
posted by nofundy
on Jan 18, 2007 -
48 comments
Bill Moyers: Theocrats and ideologues in charge of US government. Moyers: For the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a monopoly of power in Washington. Theology asserts propositions that cannot be proven true; ideologues hold stoutly to a worldview despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality. When ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not always bad, but they are always blind. And there is the danger: voters and politicians alike, oblivious to the facts.
posted by skallas
on Feb 24, 2005 -
100 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
"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
