There’s just something about Bill Moyers I like. It might be that his prolific journalism covers a variety of subjects, many of which are of great interest to me. It might also be because his greatest hits – his multi-part specials that aired originally on PBS – are now finding their way home to DVD, thanks to the Athena imprint of Acorn Media. February 15 saw the release of two of his sets with Acorn. One of those sets, A World of Ideas – Writers, was particularly engrossing to me, as it should have been to any fan of storytelling (and I’m assuming most of you are fans of good storytelling). For us, this set had some pretty exciting stuff.
Any genre fan should know of Isaac Asimov. Asimov’s Foundation series is a landmark work of sci-fi, but unfortunately most people nowadays know him because he penned the work that loosely inspired the film I, Robot. Asimov died over a decade before that film came out, however, and his discussion with Moyers (one of the few hourlong discussions in the set; most others are half an hour long) is absolutely fascinating. The interview covers a wide range of topics, from religion to environmentalism. And that’s just one interview.
Other writers Moyers speaks to include Chinua Achebe (Things Fall Apart), Toni Morrison (Beloved), and Tom Wolfe (The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test). In addition to the sixteen episodes provided in the set, there’s a bonus disc that features interviews with a further eight authors which weren’t recorded as part of the World of Ideas series.
That bonus disc also contains on-screen biographies of Moyers and the interview subjects, while each disc features on-screen bibliographies of the authors interviewed. It’s nothing you couldn’t find out with Wikipedia, but can be pretty handy on an immediate basis.
Overall, I would strongly recommend this set. I’m still making my way through the latter discs (there are four in all), but I have to say, each author has been engrossing, regardless of my familiarity with their works. It’s a great way to get into the heads of iconic storytellers of a generation past.
You can order Bill Moyers: World of Ideas – Writers on Amazon for $59.49.
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