Good evening students. I&rsquo;d like to begin by thanking those of you who showed up to this lecture. I guess the rest of your classmates decided they&rsquo;d rather spend Thanksgiving with their families! (light laughter) I&rsquo;m here today to talk about myths, and how I am living inside of one.
Now, you don&rsquo;t need to have a PhD to say that human life and mythology share some common features. I say this all time and I am illiterate. Truly anyone can say anything, anytime. But rather than talk about that, I&rsquo;d like to talk about the time I was approached at a very young age by a hideous old goblin, who told me I could save my starving family by following him into the forest. Next slide, please.
He had two holes where his nose should be, and scraggly white hair where his eyes should be. One touch of his wrinkled, leathery hands was enough to make you want to vomit, as I frequently did when he began to appear in my shower every morning for a month. You can see a close up of his fingers here, and here. You could call that fateful day when I followed him into his woodsy hovel my &ldquo;Call to Adventure&rdquo; if you will, and the subsequent twelve years I spent trying to escape his labyrinth my &ldquo;Adventure.&rdquo; Next slide.
But just because I endured a series of trials and hardships does not make me a hero. Refugees and homeless people are certainly not heroes, for example. A hero is marked above all by good deeds. Here&rsquo;s a shot of me really just going to town on this centaur I had to fight in the labyrinth. Next slide. Ah, and here&rsquo;s a shot of me signing the agreement to let Schmekel the Goblin &ldquo;have his way&rdquo; with my first-born daughter every spring, in exchange for my freedom. The sucker let me go immediately after that. Next slide.
(picture of a playground slide) Oops, wrong &ldquo;slide.&rdquo; (winking, light laughter) My daughter in the audience is gonna kill me for all these &ldquo;Dad jokes,&rdquo; right Melissa? Wave to the students. That&rsquo;s my daughter. Wave, Melissa. Okay, next slide.
Okay, and this is actually the wrong slide. Please go one forward. There, this is me standing next to the centaur&rsquo;s dead body.
Now I&rsquo;d like to argue that the patterns we find in mythology are universal and could be psychoanalyzed to reflect humanity&rsquo;s deepest desires, though because I started this lecture an hour late I&rsquo;ll instead just wrap things up with the quick argument that my experience was the one true Hero&rsquo;s Journey, and I am the one true hero. Thank you, all.

Good evening students. I’d like to begin by thanking those of you who showed up to this lecture. I g...

Guest Lecture by Joseph Campbell at University of Chicago, Transcript 11/24/68

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, but between you and me there was a little form and a whole lot of ocean. The Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. Just floating there about three feet in the air. And God said, &ldquo;Let there be light,&rdquo; and there was something in his throat so he had to say it again a little louder. God saw that the light was good, and he called it &ldquo;day.&rdquo; The darkness he called &ldquo;nort.&rdquo; This was the first day. Then God said, &ldquo;Let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water,&rdquo; and his assistant said &ldquo;Ok.&rdquo; And it was so, so good. Having accomplished his allotted one task per day, God declared that it was now the third day. Although he could fly, God could not swim and was embarrassed to constantly wear a lifejacket around his assistant. So he said, &ldquo;Let there be dry land and green vegetation upon it. I will call this vegetation &ldquo;nort.&rdquo; And it was bad because he had already named something nort. For the rest of the day, God sat around trying to think of a word that wasn&rsquo;t nort. After a long time he finally decided on a name for this vegetation: nort. On the fourth day, God created the sun and the moon to help keep track of time. For example, seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, decades, two-decades, and centuries. On the fifth day, God said &ldquo;Let the water teem with life and let the sky teem with birds and let the water teem with sky,&rdquo; forgetting the decision he had made earlier to distinguish between the sky and ocean. And he heard from a friend that it was good. On the sixth day, God brainstormed many animals and came up with fire ants, bull ants and humans. He created humans in his image and bull ants in the image of fire ants. He looked upon all his creations and saw that they were good. On the seventh day, God took rest because Sunday is the Sabbath.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, but b...

Genesis

I&rsquo;m embarking on a quest to personally give a big thumbs-up to the child who made my iPhone.
Day 1: The Flight. I sleep for 13 1&frasl;2 hours of my 14 hour flight to Suzhou, China. I&rsquo;m thinking about what I&rsquo;m gonna do when I find this kid. Then I remember: give him (or her) a big thumbs-up.
Day 2: Finding the Child. Shanghai is a big city, and there are a lot of kids here. It almost seems like any one of them could have made my iPhone. Nǐ zu&ograve; wǒ de iPhone? This is something I looked up on my iPhone, and it means, &ldquo;did you make my iPhone?&rdquo; I start asking.
Day 3: Bump in the Road. I have not been keeping track of the children I ask, and I&rsquo;m starting to ask some repeat kids. It&rsquo;s going to be slow-going finding the kid who made my iPhone unless I step up my organization game. Big time!
Day 4: Shanghai. Shanghai is an expensive city. But I am a very rich man.
Day 5: At the Hotel Bar. A well-groomed Chinese businessman tried to tell me that capitalism
involves a complex network of labor division, and there is not any one person who made my
iPhone, and certainly not a child. I laugh along. &ldquo;I must seem so naive! Kinda like the child who
made your iPhone&ndash; what&rsquo;s his name again?&rdquo; &ldquo;Guō T&aacute;i-m&iacute;ng,&rdquo; he said, before he could stop
himself. Bingo.
Day 7: The Factory. The place was totally empty. No employees, no assembly lines,
nothing. &ldquo;Guō?&rdquo; I shouted, hearing only an echo. Then a small noise from a strange door. I opened it slowly, revealing a gorgeous study lined with mahogany and books. At a desk was a small boy, examining his handiwork with a monocle, making new dints here and there with a small chisel. He looked up at me and smiled. &ldquo;Have you come to give me a big thumbs up?&rdquo; I was dumbfounded. I extended two big thumbs upward. &ldquo;Thanks,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I appreciate it.&rdquo; He put down his chisel and gazed out of his window. &ldquo;You know, I really am lucky. Not everyone loves what they do.&rdquo;

I’m embarking on a quest to personally give a big thumbs-up to the child who made my iPhone.
Day 1:...

A Quest

Announcer: In the red corner, he&rsquo;s your favorite all-American punisher, it&rsquo;s Joe &ldquo;Big Guns&rdquo;
Wilson!
Crowd: (cheers)
Announcer: And in the blue corner, he could buy your house and use it as a trash can, it&rsquo;s the
evil Mr. Moneybags!
Crowd: (boos)
Joe: Get ready for a Joe Wilson beat-down, you rich little weasel!
Crowd: (cheers)
Mr. Moneybags: Not before me and my moneybags buy this entire stadium!
Crowd: (boos)
Joe: You make me sick!
Mr. Moneybags: And when I turn it into a synagogue there will be no more wrestling!
Crowd: (boos)
Joe: Oh, yikes&hellip;that&rsquo;s no good. To be clear, that first part is irrelevant, but I definitely won&rsquo;t let
you stop the wrestling!
Crowd: (cheers)
Mr. Moneybags: You dare defy me and my plan to force wrestling fans to give up pork?
Crowd: (boos)
Joe: Uh &ndash; it&rsquo;s not cool to coerce others! I mean if you do kosher, whatever, Joe Wilson doesn&rsquo;t
have a problem with that. But I do have a problem with your plan generally!
Crowd: (silence)
Joe: &hellip;And I&rsquo;m gonna kick your ass!
Crowd: (cheers)
Mr. Moneybags: I&rsquo;m sooooo scared! But what will you do when I tag in the Hollywood Elite?
Joe: I&rsquo;m gonna pulverize them!
Crowd: (cheers)
Joe: As I would any wrestler! And when you read the headlines tomorrow, I&rsquo;m sure it&rsquo;ll be
something like: Joe Wilson pulverizes religiously diverse group of people who have
circumstantially acquired&ndash;
Mr. Moneybags: Enough chit-chat! Let&rsquo;s see you counter The 9-Headed Fire-Sword!
Joe: Oh god, that looks an awful lot like a menorah.
Mr. Moneybags: I don&rsquo;t know what you&rsquo;re talking about. Are you saying your famous Flying
Knee is useless against my Tiny-Felt-Shield-Cap?
Joe: It would be very easy to take you out with the Flying Knee. These are sacred symbols and
I&rsquo;m on national television&hellip;
Announcer: What&rsquo;s this? It looks like Joe Wilson is finally getting some help!
Sleepy Taco Tito: (falls asleep)
Joe: Damnit, Sleepy Taco Tito. You&rsquo;re so lazy.

Announcer: In the red corner, he’s your favorite all-American punisher, it’s Joe “Big Guns”
Wilson!...

For forty years I&rsquo;ve been Ray Charles&rsquo;s private caretaker, helping make his dreams come true.
I&rsquo;ll never forget the day Ray decided to be a musician. I&rsquo;d sat him down in front of his best and only friend, the radio, when little Ray asked if he could make music too. So I pulled up a coffee table and told Ray to start playing. With each imaginary note he pressed, I&rsquo;d sing, &ldquo;Bum bum bum.&rdquo; Of course, Ray was a natural.
After playing a gig at the hottest venue in the ward, &ldquo;The Janitor&rsquo;s Closet,&rdquo; and listening to his favorite record, Ambiance and Applause, Ray was approached by a famous music producer. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m a famous music producer and I&rsquo;d like to sign you,&rdquo; I told him in my big shot music producer voice.
After scribbling on some papers with an out-of-ink pen, Ray&rsquo;s contract was in place and it was time for him to move to the big city. The trip was easy: Ray flapped his arms as I blew cold air in his face.
The happiest I ever saw Ray was when he got to play at Radio City Music House: a school for the deaf I modeled after Radio City Music Hall. In a drafty auditorium, deaf kids watched Ray play his hits on a desk while Ray listened to me hum them. When he finished, the kids burst into applause, content with hearing exactly as much as Ray saw: nothing.
Eventually, Ray became more than just a musical pioneer: he became a civil rights activist. I couldn&rsquo;t have been prouder listening to my brilliant white patient deliver impassioned speeches as if he were black.
It was time to reward Ray for his success so I offered him the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, a five-pound weight I stole from the hospital gym. Ray accepted: &ldquo;People ask me if it&rsquo;s hard overcoming my disability. No. But it&rsquo;s nearly impossible to overcome my anxiety that everyone I know has the same voice.&rdquo;

For forty years I’ve been Ray Charles’s private caretaker, helping make his dreams come true.
I’ll ...

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My Creation Myth #