The Power of Myth /// Joseph Campbell with Bill Moyers

An amuse-bouche to Joseph Campbell and humanity’s quiet survival mechanism: mythology. While Campbell’s popular “The Hero with a Thousand Faces” can prove daunting, “The Power of Myth” is an edited interview transcripts originally from a PBS television program. If it were made today, this would be podcast-shaped, cut into clips, and have a Mr. Beast-tinged thumbnail. Luckily it was made in 1988. While some “modern” examples might be dated (and Campbell’s unequivocal support of everything Sigmund Freud), there’s an undeniable universality to how people frame their relationship with the world. I think Kurt Vonnegut says it plainly: “The moral of the story is, is we’re here on Earth to fart around. And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And, what the computer people don’t realize, or they don’t care, is we’re dancing animals.”