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It’s true.
For a couple of reasons, it’s time to talk about one thing I love. It’s this series of interviews that the great Bill Moyers, TV anchor and writer, conducted with Joseph Campbell.
It’s stunning.
As a storyteller, you may know Campbell, but in case not: He was an academic who made a career studying myths, the stories that people and cultures have told themselves throughout history and across continents. Perhaps no one studied these stories as deeply as Campbell, who wanted to know two things as he pored over the texts.
1) What are the common traits within these stories?
2) Why do they endure?
Answering these questions informed Campbell’s best-known book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, from which the story-craft term “the hero’s journey” derives. The book also influenced a young George Lucas, who relied on it heavily when he wrote the initial Star Wars trilogy. Lucas said he wanted to tell a story that had the endurance, the eternal truths, of the myths Campbell wrote about.
In other words: The knowledge Campbell holds is literally worth billions of dollars.
His book is a little dense, but the series of interviews is uh-mazing. Campbell distills for Moyers…
