Every so often, an academic finds the right forum at the right time and breaks out of the lecture hall and into the culture at large. Before American scholar Joseph Campbell died in 1987, he sat with PBS host Bill Moyers for a series of interviews about his lifelong interest in world mythology and its commonalities. Campbell wrote well-received books both prior to and following his retirement from Sarah Lawrence in 1972, and throughout his life, he was an in-demand lecturer, prized both for his insights and for the accessible way he presented them. But Campbell’s popularity exploded posthumously, after Moyer’s interviews with him aired as a six-hour miniseries in 1988. Though illustrated with film clips and old texts, Joseph Campbell And The Power Of Myth primarily consists of Moyers asking questions, and Campbell answering at length. And yet the series remains so beloved that even now, some PBS stations air it once a year, usually during pledge drives, with Campbell/Moyers coffee-table tomes and audiobooks as premiums. The phenomenon would seem to counter the conventional wisdom about TV-watchers: We’re supposed to be dumb, so why do we like this project so much?

This is a great series . . . .