48 Hours of Joseph Campbell Lectures Free Online: The Power of Myth & Storytelling

Pho­to by “Folk­sto­ry” fea­tures Joseph Camp­bell (left) with Jonathan Young, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons.

You may not be inter­est­ed in pol­i­tics, they say, but pol­i­tics is inter­est­ed in you. The same, if you believe famed mythol­o­gist Joseph Camp­bell, goes for myth: far from explain­ing only the ori­gin of the world as believed by extinct soci­eties, it can explain the pow­er of sto­ries we enjoy today — up to and includ­ing Star Wars.

The man behind PBS’ well-known series The Pow­er of Myth left behind many words in many for­mats telling us pre­cise­ly why, and now you can hear a fair few of them — 48 hours worth — for free on this Spo­ti­fy playlist. (If you don’t have Spo­ti­fy’s soft­ware already, you can down­load it free here.)

“From the Star Wars tril­o­gy to the Grate­ful Dead,” says the Joseph Camp­bell Foun­da­tion, “Joseph Camp­bell has had a pro­found impact on our cul­ture, our beliefs, and the way we view our­selves and the world.” This col­lec­tion, The Lec­tures of Joseph Camp­bell, which comes from ear­ly in his career, offers “a glimpse into one of the great minds of our time, draw­ing togeth­er his most wide-rang­ing and insight­ful talks” in the role of both “a schol­ar and a mas­ter sto­ry­teller.” So not only can Camp­bell enrich our under­stand­ing of all the sto­ries we love, he can spin his life­time of mytho­log­i­cal research into teach­ings that, in the telling, weave into a pret­ty grip­ping yarn in and of them­selves.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Joseph Camp­bell and Bill Moy­ers Break Down Star Wars as an Epic, Uni­ver­sal Myth

The Zen Teach­ings of Alan Watts: A Free Audio Archive of His Enlight­en­ing Lec­tures

How Star Wars Bor­rowed From Aki­ra Kurosawa’s Great Samu­rai Films

Every­thing I Know: 42 Hours of Buck­min­ster Fuller’s Vision­ary Lec­tures Free Online (1975)

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.