Summary: Out of the tradition of the great 19th-century European trade exhibitions came a 20th-century American phenomenon, one that provided recreation, inspiration, and what amounted to a cultural barometer-the World's Fair. At the time this classic program was produced, the United States had hosted nine of them, from the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 to the sprawling 1982 celebration in Knoxville,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
View online at AVOD
Summary: The 20th century began with enormous hopes for a future made safe and humane by technology. Although it realized some of these hopes, the century neared its end under the shadow of superweapons that still threaten the earth with annihilation. In this program, Bill Moyers traces the evolution of three instruments that enabled combatants to mass-produce death-the machine gun, the submarine, and...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
View online at AVOD
Summary: Coleman Barks, Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Georgia, has become the primary conduit for translating into English the ecstatic poetry of the 13th-century Sufi poet Jelaluddin Rumi, the bard of Islam. In this program, Bill Moyers and Dr. Barks discuss topics including the intricate challenge of transforming antiquated Persian idiom into modern English while retaining its...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: During her spiritually charged Catholic childhood, Mary Gordon became fixated on the idea of martyrdom-and vestiges of that obsession remain in her life and work. Bill Moyers talks with the author of Final Payments, The Company of Women, and Pearl about the concept of martyrdom and its connection to rage and despair. Gordon also explores the negative implications of what she sees as two...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Danger has always surrounded the coal miner's profession, but in the early years of the Colorado coal fields, it was almost as risky for a worker to stay above ground and face the wrath of the company as it was to toil in the tunnels below. This Bill Moyers program presents the memories of the people who worked those mines, freeing the rocks, metals, and minerals on which much of 20th-century...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
View online at AVOD
Summary: An atmospheric physicist and a leading expert on global warming, Sir John Houghton speaks as a scientist and evangelical Christian. The author of Does God Play Dice? A Look at the Story of the Universe and The Search for God: Can Science Help? talks with Bill Moyers, explaining his belief that science and religion, rather than dividing society, can both work towards improving the human condition.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: The outbreak of World War II saw two motion picture experts from Germany and the United States battle each other with as much ferocity as any army or navy. Their respective missions: to ignite a public desire to wage and win a global conflict. This Bill Moyers program contains an interview with Fritz Hippler, chief filmmaker for the Nazi Party. Hippler unrepentantly claims to have spoken to the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
View online at AVOD
Summary: As this Bill Moyers program makes clear, television became another member of the family in the 1960s, both reflecting and influencing the era. The times were chaotic and TV whirled us into that chaos while also holding up a mirror to it: the assassination and funeral of John F. Kennedy, the Vietnam War, the Apollo moon landing, the saga of the Civil Rights movement and Martin Luther King, Jr....
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
View online at AVOD
Summary: Does science have a monopoly on reason? Not at all, says philosopher and novelist Colin McGinn-reason is the foundation of morality as well. Bill Moyers talks with the author of The Mysterious Flame: Conscious Minds in a Material World and Ethics, Evil, and Fiction about his adoption of atheism, his views on the practicalities of religious tolerance, and his belief that rational scrutiny and...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Hollywood icon John Huston shares numerous insights and experiences in this classic Bill Moyers interview, filmed five years before the director's death in 1987. Answering questions on art and personal adversity at his secluded Mexican villa, Huston also allows Moyers to join him behind the camera during the shooting of Annie. Topics include the many false starts that prefaced Huston's career;...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 1982
View online at AVOD
Summary: The Hudson River, the catalyst for the conservation movement of the 19th century and the environmental movement of the 20th, remains a focus of conflicting desires and competing demands. In this Bill Moyers program, Robert Boyle, author of The Hudson River: A Natural and Unnatural History; Hudson Riverkeeper John Cronin; folksinger Pete Seeger, founder of the Clearwater Foundation; Franny...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Lorna Dee Cervantes began writing poetry at the age of eight and founded her own press to publish the works of Mexican-Americans. Dr. Shirley Geok-lin Lim, an English professor and Fulbright Distinguished Lecturer, uses her Chinese/Malaysian roots to bring a unique Asian-American perspective to her writing. In this program, Bill Moyers and the two poets discuss topics that revolve around the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Can spirituality, compassion, and emotional honesty survive in the face of oppression and religious fundamentalism? Canadian author Margaret Atwood, author of such classics as The Handmaid's Tale, The Edible Woman, and The Blind Assassin, speaks to Bill Moyers about agnosticism, the hunger for meaning, and the distinction between belief and knowledge.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: This Bill Moyers program features news correspondent Richard Strout, who covered Washington and the White House from 1925 to his retirement in 1984. Strout's reports, filed for the Christian Science Monitor and The New Republic, are studied here not only as chronicles of American history but as milestones circumscribing our nation's capital-and its evolution from a "small town" to the nerve...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
View online at AVOD
Summary: In 1911, the first newsreels flickered in America's nickelodeons. In the mid-1960s, they vanished from movie theaters as nightly television newscasts came to dominate visual journalism. In between, newsreels grew into a unique 20th-century institution that informed and entertained whole generations. In this program, Bill Moyers conducts a tour of the cultural and political landscape so...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
View online at AVOD
Summary: Robert Pinsky, Poet Laureate of the United States for an unprecedented third term, finds his inspiration in common things, transforming the culturally unpoetic into masterpieces of verbal expression. In this program, Bill Moyers and Mr. Pinsky discuss topics including his love of the English language, the pervasive influence of history, and the flourishing of poetry on the Internet. Readings by...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: In 1908, the first Model T rolled off the assembly line, quickly asserting itself as a dream machine that would take America down the highway and into the future. Bill Moyers shows how that future represented not only a new landscape bustling with high-speed transport and travel, but a new vision of ourselves. He uses film clips, photographs, music, and poetry to trace America's transformation...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
View online at AVOD
Summary: Innovation enabled the United States to take on the mantle of world leadership-most importantly, innovation in military technology. But among the great minds that drove American innovation, using science to make war sometimes led to questions, dilemmas, and even second thoughts. In this program, Bill Moyers presents a profile of I. I. Rabi, winner of the 1944 Nobel Prize in physics and an early...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
View online at AVOD
Summary: The effect of Jane Hirshfield's reading is almost transcendental, like the sound of distant echoes in a canyon. "I know that many of my poems don't evoke clapping," she says, "and I want to assure you that I take silence as a high compliment. In this program, Bill Moyers and Ms. Hirshfield discuss topics including her experience as a practitioner of Zen and the relative merits of sound and...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Raised with parental expectations that she become a Christian missionary, the teenaged Jeanette Winterson embarked instead upon a defiant journey of self-discovery-sparked by the books she smuggled into her bedroom. In this conversation with Bill Moyers, the author of Sexing the Cherry, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, and Lighthousekeeping talks about Weight, her new version of the story of...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: In the Martin Amis novel London Fields, a cynical and disjointed society hurtles toward doomsday; in Amis's follow-up book, Time's Arrow, the narrative follows an absurdly reversed course-backward from the Holocaust to purity and innocence. Bill Moyers talks with Martin Amis about humanity's present condition and the ongoing conflict between fundamentalism and secular values.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: No single force has changed American politics more than television-especially the television commercial. In this program, Bill Moyers examines the phenomenon of the "30-second president" and the role of advertising in 20th-century American politics. The video features an interview with Rosser Reeves, an advertising executive who worked on early political television campaigns for Dwight D....
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
View online at AVOD
Summary: Artist/activist Amiri Baraka has managed to alter not merely the face of African-American writing, but its very sound and substance as well: among the first to promote Africanized English, he also introduced an element of jazz into poetry. In this program, Bill Moyers and Mr. Baraka discuss topics centering on the black experience in America. Readings by Mr. Baraka spotlight "Funklore," "First...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: In works such as Someone to Run With and Death as a Way of Life, David Grossman has movingly depicted the realities of living in the Holy Land. Bill Moyers converses with Grossman about his most recent work, The Lion's Honey-a retelling of the Biblical story of Samson with parallels to today's Middle East conflicts and the mind-set of those who inflict violence in the name of faith.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006