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
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Summary: One of North America's most prominent practitioners of Buddhist monasticism, Ani Pema Chodron has written extensively on Buddhist principles in the context of everyday living. Bill Moyers talks with the author of When Things Fall Apart, The Places That Scare You, and No Time to Lose about ideas and teachings that have special significance for western Buddhists-and will resonate with...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: Writer, actor, and rapper Will Power brings unique characters and thought-provoking scenarios to life in his vividly staged performances-including The Seven, his hip-hop adaptation of Aeschylus' Seven Against Thebes. Bill Moyers interviews Power about his creative process, focusing on his ability to "flip" an ancient Greek drama into a highly charged, completely contemporary work-one that has...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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Summary: Anne Provoost's interpretive novel In the Shadow of the Ark tells the story of a young woman excluded from Noah's vessel. The Rose and the Swine is Provoost's reshaping of an equally archetypal story, Beauty and the Beast. Provoost talks with Bill Moyers about finding new truths in ancient narratives, and the ways that myth and storytelling offer life-changing insight into basic human experiences.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: Richard Rodriguez-the author of Hunger of Memory and Days of Obligation: An Argument with My Mexican Father-has expressed provocative views on diversity and its relationship to identity. Bill Moyers talks with Rodriguez about spirituality, mortality, and growing up among mixed influences-including a Catholic family and community often at odds with Protestant-dominated mainstream America.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: Painfully familiar with the clash of personal and religious expression, Salman Rushdie can now be seen as a literary sentinel regarding the rise of Islamic extremism. In this program, Bill Moyers talks with the author of Shame, The Satanic Verses, and Shalimar the Clown about the impact of 9/11, about tension between moderate and radical Islam, and about the need to hold the line on...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: On August 9, 2001, President George W. Bush announced his support for federal funding of limited embryonic stem cell research. This NewsHour program offers a revealing snapshot of that historic intersection between science and public policy. It features a panel of ethicists and researchers expressing their views on the President's decisions-including University of Chicago professor Leon Kass,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
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Summary: This program examines the ramifications of the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, where Viet Minh revolutionaries defeated French forces and changed the future of Southeast Asia.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2000
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Summary: Deborah Rhodes is an expert at managing breast-cancer risk. The director of the Mayo Clinic's Executive Health Program has developed a gamma camera which can see tumors that mammography misses. The life-saving implications are stunning - the tool is three times as effective as traditional mammograms for women with dense breast tissue. So why haven't we heard more about it? Rhodes shares the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
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Summary: Is it possible to see an upside to having a stroke? It is if you’re Jill Bolte Taylor. As a neuroanatomist, she studied her own stroke as it unfolded and has since become a powerful voice for the possibilities of post-stroke brain recovery. In this TEDTalk, Taylor relates what she experienced while having her stroke, what she terms the “stroke of insight” that followed her brain attack, and how...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
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Summary: Those who wish to pursue a life of pure reason are often attracted to the movement known as secular humanism. This program explores the movement by presenting several humanist inquiries, including: How and why do religions develop? Can morality exist without religion? Is there a humanist narrative that can take the place of myth? How can public policy become truly rational? The film features...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: In this program, Robert Winston focuses on monotheism as he continues to examine the building blocks of faith and humankind's quest to plumb the nature of God. Visits to Mt. Sinai, the Tomb of the Patriarchs, the Western Wall, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, St. Peter's Basilica, Mecca, and the Abalfazl and Imam Mosques, Isfahan, shed light on the beliefs that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
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Summary: Since their appearance in Europe some 300 years ago, the stories of The Thousand and One Nights have entranced Western readers with visions of an exotic, magical Middle East. In this program, actor and director Richard E. Grant revisits the book he loved as a child and seeks to understand its persistent hold on the collective imagination. Grant travels to Paris to discover how the Arabist...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
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Summary: It has been called a gateway to eternal salvation and an incitement to holy war. It has unified peoples yet divided nations. Religion: would society be better off without it? That is the question in this Oxford Union-style debate as panelists make their case. Speakers for the motion underscore that rampant interfaith and intrafaith violence vastly outweighs any social benefits of religion and...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: Barbara Walters hosts this ABC News program about the afterlife, collecting an array of opinions, hopes, and scenarios concerning what, if anything, happens following death. Walters interviews religious leaders from various cultures and faiths, including Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, archbishop of Washington, D.C.; Pastor Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals; Rabbi...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: Will modern science close the book on God, or can reason and faith coexist? This program analyzes how the process of scientific inquiry has challenged belief in a divine being. With visits to locations ranging from the CERN particle physics lab, to the Lourdes shrine, to Grace Fellowship Church, Kentucky, Robert Winston discusses the views of Pascal, Galileo, Newton, and Darwin; the Higgs...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: This program summarizes and distills what we have learned about the great religions in this series. Smith's lifetime of experience and study helps him to go beyond the differences between each tradition. He shows how the cultivation of virtues valued by all religions-intelligence, compassion, creativity, truth, beauty, and goodness-can lead to transcendence. In the many faces of God he has...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
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Summary: No religions have proved more combative than Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, despite the fact that they share the same deity-or perhaps because of it. In this program, renowned biblical scholar and religious historian Othmar Keel sheds light on topics such as the volatile historical and cultural contexts in which the Old Testament originated; the protracted struggle of monotheism for...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007