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Genesis-A New View - Bill Moyers -ND2592P

October 1, 2025·54 min·4 clips

Bill Moyers quotes Pulitzer Prize-winner Jack Miles: the Noah flood story is 'a good God saving a good man from a bad God — and the horror is that the good God and the bad God are one and the same.'

Bill Moyers enters through Genesis. The host frames the project as a search for a public vision with religious authority, inclusive rather than sectarian. The question has room in it. Moyers arrives through the 1996 ten-part series Genesis, A Living Conversation, made with producers, scholars, artists, psychotherapists, writers, and philosophers. Television becomes the medium, but the conversation keeps pressing on what television can and cannot hold. Genesis is treated as a first story for people raised in the West and the Middle East, not as property with the door shut. Dialogue does the heavy lifting. The host points to sports, talking heads, and shuttle launches as moments television cannot fake: life happening while people watch. Moyers names the producer's problem plainly. Produced television leaves things out, but the editor still has to protect the spontaneity of the lived exchange. That makes editing a moral task, not just a technical one. The host looks back to Bill Moyers Journal, where conversations were rooted in place and guests were met on their own ground. Walking with Mortimer Adler at the Aspen Institute or sitting near James Dickey's home on a lake in Carolina becomes part of the talk. Ease matters. So does the care that creates it, from the camera crew to the time spent with people before filming. The close widens the circle as New Dimensions thanks listeners, affiliate stations, and supporters, placing the exchange inside a community of radio, podcasts, and archive.

As heard by us

A reflective conversation about Genesis, inclusive public life, and a cooperative vision for America.

The episode follows Bill Moyers as he connects Genesis to public life and to the idea that a change in human consciousness could change the world.

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Why you'd press play

If you want Genesis and public life discussed as one serious question, this is the conversation.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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