A very powerful and challenging series.
Click on header link to see title. And click here to see how to watch and listen.
Bill Moyers has always been kind of a personal hero of mine. If you get a chance to watch any of the programmes (or have already seen them) I’d be interested to know what you thought of them.
casa azahar 
Boy, you’ve been a busy lady today! I haven’t had time to listen to any of these interviews yet, have to do a couple of massages. But maybe later this eve. I’ll do that. Looks very interesting.
Okay. Now, Az, I’ve been working like a dog on my blog and would love to have your input on how it looks and reads.
LikeLike
I have seen two or three programs in this series on PBS. I have always liked Moyers and appreciate that he is willing to actually look at issues involving faith with some objectivity. This isn’t as good as the Joseph Campbell series many years ago. But then, Campbell was so extraordinary.
Definitely worth the effort.
LikeLike
I have – or used to have – the Joseph Campbell/Moyers interviews on video, but then my video player fucking ate the tape!!!
Well, I’d already watched it about ten times already, and also have the book of the transcripts, still…
I just can’t help but be a bit in awe that this now oldish guy – this 70-something Texan Christian – is so bloody open to everything else that calls itself ‘god’ or whatever. Oh, and not to mention his diatribes against the present US gov’t, which can be read … will have to find a few links for those.
We were watching one of the interviews the other night and I said to Nog – ‘oh, if only Bill Moyers had been my dad!!!’
LikeLike
Pingback: Secret Mojo Dumbs It Down for You
I must listen to that. Also Google…Christopher Hitchens and Stephen Fry, Guardian, Hay Festival. V. entertaining. They’re both on form, there’s an amusing incident when an audience member storms off after objecting to Hitchens smoking and at one point it becomes clear that they’re playing a game of chess while talking.
Bertrand Russell talked of faith and reason by asking us to judge his assertion that a giant teapot is orbiting mars. By what process do we decide this is untrue?
LikeLike
I’m anxious to hear the Salman Rushdie and Margaret Atwood myself.
LikeLike
Margaret Atwood was the first one Nog and I watched and we spent so much time snapping our jaws back shut (her amazingly relaxed eloquence totally blew us away) that we really need to listen to it again.
Today we saw the Salman Rushdie interview and one of the interesting points he suggested was that morality comes before religion and that humans are somehow ‘hardwired’ for morality. By morality he meant the basic sorting of things into good and bad categories, not the fine details that are cultural. He also said that this hard-wired morality in tandem with our ability to imagine and create is where all religion and gods essentially come from. Well said, that man!
LikeLike
Watched Sir John Houghton this morning. Wasn’t impressed (wasn’t impressed by Richard Roriguez either). But Rushdie and Atwood were superb.
LikeLike
Compared to Rushdie and Atwood I also didn’t find Houghton or Rodriguez as impressive, but perhaps it’s a bit unfair to compare against those two as I’m thinking they will end up being the best of the lot.
I did like Houghton’s take on why people tend to anthropomorphise ‘God’, why so many refer to Him as a Person. I also liked when Houghton said that people simply calling things they don’t understand ‘God’ is far too simplistic and ends up with fundamentalists denying science or going with literal bible translations.
Though when Moyers questioned why Houghton took some things in the bible as literal and others as allegory, Houghton kind of lost the plot.
For me, in both the Houghton and Rodriguez interviews, Moyers came across as much more interesting – the questions he asked were much more probing and challenging than the answers he got back.
LikeLike
Az, thank you very much indeed for posting this! I am working my way through them and enjoying them exceedingly. A real real treat.
Sorry, too tired to have any clever thoughts on the matter at the moment. Just nodding happily.
LikeLike
Glad to hear you’re enjoying it. Nog and I will probably listen to a couple more this weekend.
LikeLike
Jeanette Winterson was the most entertaining and Mary Gordon the least. Houghton was rubbish! I listened to them all this afternoon.
LikeLike
If you like Colin McGinn (as I do) then read ‘The Atheism Tapes, 1: Colin McGinn’ @ http://cotimotb.siteburg.com/wiki/index.php?wiki=AtheismTapesOne
LikeLike
Houghton was rather rubbish, wasn’t he? Still haven’t seen/heard them all yet.
LikeLike
I’d like to add this link here that I found on Taliesin’s blog … fucking amazing!
Sam Harris
LikeLike
Watched the Jeanette Winterson interview this evening … very good! I liked her take on heroes and why we need to create myths and religions.
LikeLike