Latest / The Chuck ToddCast / Interview Only w/ Ken Burns - Lessons From History On America’s 250th Birthday

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Interview Only w/ Ken Burns - Lessons From History On America’s 250th Birthday · The Chuck ToddCast

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  Speaker 1: Joining me now is one of those you know, I'm
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  Speaker 1: I am A. I hate this cliche, but sometimes some
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  Speaker 1: people actually live the cliche. This person needs no introduction.
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  Speaker 1: It's ken Burns, and he is as I was joking
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  Speaker 1: with him before in my own team. I may season
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  Speaker 1: pass subscriber to ken Burns, and yet there are still
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: ken Burns documentaries. I have not fully consumed. My biggest
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: regrets so far, as Jazz, I have not fully consumed Jazz,
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  Speaker 1: I will make that confession. But you know, it's one
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  Speaker 1: of those cases where every time you think there isn't
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  Speaker 1: a new story to tell, there's a new story to tell,
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  Speaker 1: and Ken burnsfuys that story to tell. Ken, It's good
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  Speaker 1: to see you.
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  Speaker 2: It's good to see you too, Check, thank you. You know,
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  Speaker 2: I think if I were given a thousand years to live,
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  Speaker 2: which I will not, I wouldn't run out of topics
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  Speaker 2: in American history. And there's something just incredibly wonderful about
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  Speaker 2: saying that, particularly in tough times where we're sometimes avoid
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  Speaker 2: the tough times. But history's so instructive. You know, we're
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  Speaker 2: way more divided during our Revolution, way more divided obviously
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  Speaker 2: during our Civil War, way more divided during depression, way
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  Speaker 2: more divided during the Vietnam year. I mean, we tend
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  Speaker 2: to think, as kind of narcissist Dick Chicken littles that
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  Speaker 2: our time is the worst. It's got to be bad,
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  Speaker 2: and there's history is there to say, you know what.
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  Speaker 2: I had a friend in the financial services you'll appreciate
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  Speaker 2: this who came to me in the after the eight
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  Speaker 2: meltdown and he said, this is a depression, and I
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  Speaker 2: just I said, you know, in the depression, in many
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  Speaker 2: American cities, the animals in the zoo were shot and
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  Speaker 2: the meat distributed to the poor. And that happens.
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  Speaker 1: It's a depression.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a depression. And so like right now, we're not.
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  Speaker 2: I don't want to minimize whatever pain he was personally
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  Speaker 2: going through or professional going through. But I do think
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  Speaker 2: having perspective is a really important thing in history. Is
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  Speaker 2: the best teacher there is for giving you a kind
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  Speaker 2: of perspective?
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  Speaker 1: No, And obviously we're having an argument on history sometimes,
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  Speaker 1: right we're having I and I actually this I want
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  Speaker 1: to begin here. I think the most remarkable accomplishment you
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  Speaker 1: made with American Revolution was how limited the critiques were,
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  Speaker 1: what I would call the partisan critiques. I know you felt.
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  Speaker 1: I'm sure you saw them, and I'm.
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  Speaker 2: Sure you're right. You're right, you're right. I mean my
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  Speaker 2: feeling is and I do this with every film. You know,
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  Speaker 2: Mark Twain once said, if you if you tell the truth,
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: you don't have to remember anything. So I said the
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: same thing in the year of promotion of this thing
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: last year to Joe Rogan and Theo vanas I said
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: to the New York Times editorial board as I said
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  Speaker 2: to inner city school kids in Charleston and Detroit, and
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: suburban kids in Chicago and the forty cities we went
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: to in the eighty different screenings and the six million podcasts,
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: I felt like I did, and all the other interviews,
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: and because I was trying to reach everybody, this is
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: a story for everybody. And problem is that right now
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: we've gotten to a place where we want to limit everything.
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: It's you have to pass a litmus test, you have
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: to sign a loyalty oath and nda to your real feelings.
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: And I want to speak to everyone. And so I
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: assumed if I could just get to October before the
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: mid November broadcast would be okay. Well, October came and went,
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: and then November broadcast came, and in the middle of
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: it there were a couple half hearted this is woke,
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: sort of superficial dismissals. It was really clear that the people,
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: the authors of two or three of these things had
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: watched maybe twenty minutes of the thing.
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  Speaker 1: And this is a.
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  Speaker 2: Film, by the way, that suggests that the American Revolution
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  Speaker 2: is the most important event in world history in the
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  Speaker 2: last two thousand years, and that, oh, by the way,
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  Speaker 2: a guy I'm sure you've never heard of named George
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  Speaker 2: Washington is the person most responsible for our success in
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  Speaker 2: the creation of our country. And somehow because there were
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  Speaker 2: women in it, and somehow because they were oh my god,
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: black people in it, and somehow because they were Native
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  Speaker 2: Americans and there were other people from other countries who
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: were engaged in this World war in addition to our
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: revolution and a bloody civil war, that somehow this is woke.
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: And then you realize where is the wokeness? Actually is
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: it in the litmust of one side of what it
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: should be? And that's what it is. Wokeness is just
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: a miss test that is fearful of the truth. And
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: it occurs in both ends of the spectrum. And and
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: in fact, I don't think there ends.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: I think there.
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: You know, we discussed this before. You know, a third
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: of Bernie's supporters stayed home, a third voted for Hillary,
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: and a third voted for Trump. So you've got a
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  Speaker 2: circle here in which the far left and the far
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  Speaker 2: right are often much closer than we would think.
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  Speaker 1: No, I mean, that's why you know, we're all taught
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: the pendulum right when it comes to that, is that
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: at some point the two ends could meet. And you know,
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: in fact, I like to warn some of my friends
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: in the business community, watch out if there is a
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: if the populace on the right drop their cultural grievance
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: and you just have all of the economic grievance parts
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: of the electorate unite, we would call it the FDR coalition,
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: and it could It could end up not be pretty transformational.
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: I don't want to say I agree.
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: You know, for a couple of different times in a
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: coup role of different positions standing in very different political
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  Speaker 2: ideological places, the Republican Party has been the most successful
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: political party on Earth, and a lot of ways in
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: the last fifty years, is getting.
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  Speaker 1: The most successful third party.
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, exactly started it, by the way, in a
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  Speaker 2: schoolhouse in rip On, Wisconsin, in eighteen fifty four with
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  Speaker 2: one platform out of the Demond dispute.
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  Speaker 1: There's still a dispute between a place in Illinois and
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: a place in Wisconsin.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, I know, I hear that all the time. I'm
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: opting for rip But the whole idea is that they're
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: anti slavery, you know. And so then you come full
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: circle where you know it's successful in that it's gotten
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: so many people to vote against their economic self interest
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: because they've been able to interpose enemies. The great bugaboo
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: of political distraction and ledger domain in sight of hand
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: is to say it's oh, it's them, and to create them.
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  Speaker 2: And I can tell you right now, I mean, my
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: bottom line is I've been making films about the US,
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: but I've been also making films about us, right the
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: lower case two lighter thing. And there's only us, there's
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: no them. And whenever anyone tells you there's them, you're
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: having the woe pulled over your eyes. You're having a
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: distraction take place in order for you to think it's
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  Speaker 2: actually an economic interest that is of central value to
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: me is not as important as the thing that those
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: people might be doing to me.
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  Speaker 1: What's always helpful about your documentaries is that I do
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  Speaker 1: think they have a point of view, but it's not
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: this left right point no, no, no, no, it is it
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  Speaker 1: is more of a larger, you know, sense of you know.
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  Speaker 1: Just so, how would you describe, for instance, your point
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  Speaker 1: of view for the American Revolution? You clearly at a
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  Speaker 1: framework that you want to do and check the story with.
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  Speaker 2: Not really, because what happens is when any whenever you
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  Speaker 2: say yes, and your heart and your gut, whatever you choose,
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  Speaker 2: you don't know anything about it. I mean, I got
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  Speaker 2: the general edgic, I got a good education. I know
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  Speaker 2: a lot about history. And yet when you say I'm
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: going to do country music or I'm going to do
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: baseball something I grew up playing, oh well, finally a
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: subject I know about. Each day of baseball was a
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: humiliation of what I didn't know. And so revolution you
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: just automatically, so you're not looking. You've got a chronological structure.
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  Speaker 2: It's already there, that is to say, and then and
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: then and then, so then how you begin to put
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: it together. You're absolutely right that there's no political thing.
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  Speaker 2: You just want to say what happened, and you want
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: to call balls and strikes. And I would suggest that
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: in our media culture, as diverse and as multitudinous as
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: it is a kind of tsunami of information, it's relatively
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: the same. And so we become a kind of highlight reel.
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: Babybruth only hits home runs. Well, Baybruth struck out way
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: more times than he hit home run. And more importantly,
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: bab Ruth only comes up once every nine times at
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: bad So sometime as the last World Series showed you
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: a second basement, a middle infielder, not the star, becomes
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: central to the outcome of a very dramatic thing. And
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: so what we've tried to do is always keep that
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: in mind. Do you scrimp on your biography of Babe Ruth, No,
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: you tell a complete one. In this case, the Babe
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: Ruth is George Washington. We don't have a country without him.
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: But then you also introduce people to scores of other
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: characters that are bottom up, probably for the most part,
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: but they also are central to what happened. They're the
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: calling of balls and strikes, and I think there's something
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: exhilarating in that complexity. And this notion that, certainly among authoritarians,
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: that you want to reduce it to some simplistic slogans
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: is ridiculous. Ridiculous.
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: How do you deal with you know, one of my
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: one of the things that obviously the more you read
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  Speaker 1: up on an historical event. I'm obsessed right now with
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  Speaker 1: the period between eighteen sixty five and nineteen twenty eight.
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  Speaker 2: We're making a film on it called Emancipation to Excess,
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: about reconstruction and the filon.
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: Period, and you know, it's it's you know Garfield's the
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: you know, I view Garfield as of all of our
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: assassinated presidents. You know what the modern myth making around
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: Kennedy was, actually that could have been Garfield, and Garfield absolutely,
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: you know, Garfield could assigned.
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: The Civil Rights Act has a great book on this right.
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  Speaker 1: And there's a couple of them that I've read now.
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: But in order to understand eighteen eighty, you got to
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: understand eighteen seventy six. And this is my long winding
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: road to get to the eighteen seventy six. A lot
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: of people have written the book about the eighteen seventy
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: six election. There's all sorts of scholarship on it. And
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: what I've noticed is that the author's politics matter a
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: lot when you read, when you consume these books, and
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: it's become to the point where I am get frustrated
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: sometimes by his history books when you realize, no, the
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: author has their own point of view and they start
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: with it. And then and then it's sort of I
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: don't want to say it poisons it, because if you
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: know it in advance, you know it.
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  Speaker 2: Does poison it. Chuck, because you're smart and discerning and
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: have read enough. But for the people who are picking
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: it up. They then become.
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: What if it's the only thing they read about it,
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: only that's what I always worried about it, Then that's
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: what I worry about too, And that's why I can't
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: do that.
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: I can't ignore that George Washington owned hundreds of human beings.
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: You can't, as the writer Rick Atkinson said, and you
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: know he's now two thirds the way through his Marvel's trilogy,
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: you can't square that circle that he makes, you know,
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: tactical mistakes, that he's rash on the battlefield. But all
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: the other things add up to something. And you don't
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: need to throw the baby out with the unforgiving revisionist bathwater.
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: Nor do you have to subscribe to the Parson Weems treaqily.
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: You know, never tell a lie, chop down on Jerry Dreeley,
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: throw a coin across the doll. You can you can
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: unsubscribe from both of these tyrannies and come to a
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: much more complex thing. And that's where you bother people.
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: Because they want things to fit in. They just want
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: it to be white, or they wanted to be male,
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: or they wanted to be simple, or they wanted to
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: be still entrusted with the barnacles. But we don't even
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: have to look at the big ideas that we're supposed
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: to be protecting, because if you look at those big ideas,
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: you begin to understand even further the complexity and the beauty.
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: You have to go into fiction. You have to go
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: into William Shakespeare to see all that.
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: So what I'm curious about is when you're dealing with
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: source material. Maybe it is Abigail Adams letters, right, maybe
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: it's Ben Franklin letters, and you really have to understand
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: the language of that day to get certain nuances. You've
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: got to understand that a turn of phrase that may
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: be meaningless to somebody reading it two hundred years later
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: actually was incredibly important. And I often find that sort
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: of what I would call the amateur historian, and I
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: would put myself in that where I could misinterpret reading
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: something because I'm reading it through the prism of today's
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: American English language, and I just think about those issues. So,
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: you know, when did you realize as you went through
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: this over decades that you've done this. I assume over
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: time you've now you're now almost an expert at seeing this.
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: But when you first ran into this challenge. You know
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: what were the what are the different ways to deal
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: with it?
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know what? It manifested. I think I'm quite
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: lucky it manifested less as a challenge. It is always
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: a challenge than an exhilaration. The idea that information could
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: be delivered in a way that I wouldn't or you
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: wouldn't speak it suddenly becomes I mean, Lincoln didn't go
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: around saying four score and seven years ago. He was
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: just trying to ask you to think about eighty seven
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: years in a different way, that's all. And it was
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: a great rhetorical device for score in seven. So you
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: have to do the math yourself. He's got you. As
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: you're doing the math intention you're paying attention, and you've
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: been sucked in, and you begin to understand. And so
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: what you find in all of these parsing the last
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: sentence of the first inaugural taking, the Declaration of Independence,
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: A few phrases past the pursuit of happiness, we can
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: get to that which is really loaded and wonderful, particularly
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: for today. He says, all experience has shown that mankind
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable. Maybe
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: you've read it at the picnic before on the fourth
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: of July, and just let it go over. Think about
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: what he's saying. He says, all experience has shown that
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable.
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: Not hard to parse means Heretofore everybody, he has been
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: under an authoritarian's boot and have been willing to suffer
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: for that for a thousand years working someone else's land,
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: you know, for a thousand years being a slave without
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: even earning a farthing. Right. But this is going to
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: be a new era. This is going to be a
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: place where we're going to replace your subject hood with
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: something much more responsible, coled citizenship. So let's go back
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: to pursuit of happiness. So we've always assumed this is
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: the American license for freedom. He didn't follow John Locke
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: and said life, liberty, and property. He said pursuit of happiness.
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: And so happiness was not the acquisition of things in
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: a marketplace of objects, but lifelong learning in a marketplace
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: of ideas. If you did that, you would become more virtuous.
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: That was the free electron word throughout every episode of
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: the revolution. As we began to gather stuff. John Adams
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: is worrying about virtue. Abigail's worrying about that. George Washington, everybody,
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: even the folks at the so called bottom, are thinking
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: about it. And so virtue becomes a thing reaching back
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: across the Middle Ages, the Dark Ages, back to antiquity,
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: the virtue that was going to make you able to
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: assume the mantle of this, and Adams, at one point
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: great worrier says, you know, there's too much avarice and ambition,
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: too much lust for profit, not enough virtue that I
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: wonder whether we have the ability to create a republic.
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: So what happens is by isolating these words, by getting
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: great actors, I have the best cast I think for
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: anyone ever made, bringing them to life in a way
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: that you say, oh, I now know what that means.
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: I get it, and you begin to see that those
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: differences which have held these people. They're wearing hoes and
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: breeches and they've got you know, powdered wigs.
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: They're not me.
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: There's no photograph of anybody, so they can't be like me,
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: and they are exactly like us, and they are. One
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: of the more moving things Chuck to me is that
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: they're speaking to us like all the time Washington and
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: Jefferson Adams too says about the millions yet unborn. They
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: are taking an idea that's never been tried. The chances
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: of success that, like Sington Green, are zero, and yet
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: they're thinking about you and me. And so the strawdinary
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: story of our founding is the fact that, as the
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: Old Testament says, there's nothing new under the sun, guess
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: what on July fourth, seventeen seventy six, there was something
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: new under the sun. Now does that mean that there's
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: not the same quantities of virtue and venality and generosity
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: and greed. Nope, that's the same thing. And you can
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: find him in our story then, and it will echo or,
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: as Mark Twain said, rhyme with the present moment. But
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: you have to be disciplined as a storyteller not to
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: date your film by pointing arrows at isn't this so
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: much like today? I began this film when Barack Obama
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: had thirteen months to go in his presidency, right, lots
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: of water under the brid No one was talking to
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: fifty no one was celebrating. Now people are saying, oh,
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: you're so smart, you figured this out. You came out
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: exactly the right time. I went the total total luck
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: of the draw.
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: History is always the right time.
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: History is always the right time. There is no clearer
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: statement than that. And then when you do that, and
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: Mark Twain is right if he said he says history
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes, you are aware. I mean,
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: I'll tell you there's a if our film is just like,
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: by chance, come out a year earlier than it did
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: in the Fall of twenty four. You knew what was
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: going on in the Fall of twenty four. Well, we follow,
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: among dozens of characters, one hundred and fifty different characters
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: in the film, the wife of a German general who's
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: heading to join Burgoyne's army and her husband for their
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: triumphant victory at Saratoga. Doesn't happen. The French come in
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: blah blah blah. I'll give away the punchline. However, she's
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: doing the perilous Atlantic crossing a little bit nervous because
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: she hears that Americans eat cats. Now, nobody said anything
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: this fall, but if it had come out, they'd go burns.
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: You know what he's trying to do, You know, I
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: mean there was a letter that didn't make it into
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: the film. But Jefferson's trapped during the Constitutional Convention in Paris,
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: and he writes a Madison who's writing the code. The
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: Constitution is not pros except for the preamble written by
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: Goriuvenor Morris in New York, but says what if someone
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: should lose an election and pretend false votes and reap
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: the whirlwind?
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: I mean they were trying to reverse engineer for all
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: the things. So the founders are no.
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: I mean I I look, the Constitution is such a
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: brilliant document.
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: Oh my god, four pieces they are still.
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: And it anticipated all of these issues we're dealing with today.
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: The thing that the Constitution that those that wrote this
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: Constitution didn't anticipate was that they were going to be
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: these five hundred and thirty five individuals who didn't bother
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: to read Article one. That's exactly what I was just
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: going to say.
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: Uve El eleven, the conservative scholar told me the Scott
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: the founders would not be surprised that someone who was
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: seeking monarchical powers is that Article one, the first article
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: that Article two is the executive that's the manager of
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: what Article one did. And the third article. Is the
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: judicial that is going to judge this and pass on
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: it is that they had abdicated their power. That would
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: be the great overwhelming disappointment on the part of the founders.
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: If they look they'd be happy that we'd survive, surprised
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: and so many of the changes, and not surprised that
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: there could be you know, power grabs.
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: You know, it's funny. I keep going backwards about like
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: when did Congress start to abdicate? And you know, you
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: can keep going back. I've taken it all the way
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: back to nineteen twenty and the decision no longer to
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: expand the size of the House of Representatives. That moment
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: in that decade when they chose to stop expanding the House,
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: they actually stopped. They stopped implementing the founder's vision.
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: And you had a complex modern world, a twentieth century
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: that is going to be within ten or fifteen years
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: working at a kind of lightning speed. That always makes
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: the argument of authoritarians that I need to decide this
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: in advance of your cumbersome democratic process. Trust me.
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: This episode of the Chuck Toddcast is brought to you
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: by American Financing. So if you looked at your credit
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• 24:42
  Speaker 1: Chuck podcast at checkout for the fifteen percent discount. Again,
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: use the code Chuck Podcast. I would argue we basically
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: one hundred years of congress eroding away its own and
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: they did it to themselves. They did it to themselves.
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: But I would say it's been most noticeable in the
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: last few years where you've just the century just all
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: all of this, you know, undeclared war stuff all well.
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: It goes back to nine to eleven. I mean, you know,
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: and and fear does that right, Fear.
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: That's exactly right? And whether it's real or not. The
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: manufacturer of fear in a populace allows them to say, okay, please, Mussolini,
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: make the trains run on time for me. Please. All right.
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: Let me ask a few questions because missus Todd wanted one,
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: which is, does does your Ben and Franklin doc change
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: if this had come out first, if American Revolution had
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: come out before Ben Franklin.
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: Well, it's funny that it's a really that's a very
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: smart question. First of all, we'd already been well underway
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: on the American Revolution before we even said yes to
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: Franklin and began working.
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: On Oh interesting, So you were how simultaneous was this?
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: Well, I you know, when I say this took ten years,
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: nine years and eleven months to do, it's true. But
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: I also released ten films during that time. So I've
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: got different production teams and we're working on stuff. And
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: it's very symbiotic. When you leave to work on Leonardo
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: da Vinci or Muhammad Ali, it helps you come back
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: to the revolution, It helps you come back. Well, what
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: Ben Franklin represented was an opportunity to practice on the
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: absence of photographs and newsreels, and we could because it
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: was only two episodes, do it without doing any recreations
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: with except for the print shot stuff. But here, as
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: soon as I said it, I knew we were fully invested.
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: So rather than get people to have them reenact a
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: specific thing I'm not crazy about, why not make a
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: feature film. We just spent seven years collecting a critical
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: mass of people doing reenactments in an impressionistic way, sometimes
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: way up above from a drone, sometimes intimately where the
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: musket the hammer hits the flint and the gunpowder explodes,
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: or the cannon goes off, or you see women tending
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: to a burned hand or slashing blood off a tile floor.
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: And then what you have is yet another resource. You've
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: got paintings, you've got drawings, you have lithographs, you have
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: print you have maps, maps, maps, you have live cinematography
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: devoided people of the real star of our film, the
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: magnificent country that we have, the prize that had animated
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: this fifth Global war over it the land, And so
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: then it could work in and you'd find a volley
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: sort of out of focus and muzzy of redcoats firing,
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: and all of a sudden you're panning across a painting
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: in which on the left side of the painting are
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: a bunch of red coats firing, and then all of
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: a sudden, you treat the paintings like they're live, and
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: you treat the live like their paintings, and you've got
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: a wonderful dynamic. We didn't have that in Ben Franklin
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: because you could always return to a portrait of him.
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: And it's over two. So this is six with as
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: I said, one hundred and fifty different characters.
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: It's six feature length movies. It makes you know, I
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: mean it is you know it was not this is
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: not six episodes of six.
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: So I have a friend who's a noted a director
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: in Hollywood who wrote me after I think I'd send
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: him a link, and he wrote back how much he
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: had loved it. And then after Christmas he said, I
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: looked at it again, this time to look at characters.
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: And so you realize there's there's a lot that goes
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: into it, and it rewards sometimes second, third, fourth.
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: You need one hundred percent. And it's sometimes easier to
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: watch you a second time than read the book a
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: second time. Yes, that sort of historical event, right like yeah, yeah,
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: yeah you know that you that you that's I.
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: Could spend an hour on that paragraph and really get it.
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: But in a film, I'm controlling how long you see something,
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: and I've got lots of things going. There's lots, and
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: it's not we're trying to do it to be confusing.
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: It's just that it is complicated. As my neon sign says.
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: I want to throw another one at prohibition. So I
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: now understand prohibition better after COVID than I did before COVID,
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: And right, you just sort of I get it, You're like,
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: And frankly, I look at the current anti VAXX movement
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: and I sort of see it as sort of familiar
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: to how we ended up with prohibition and then how
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: within a decade we realized, well, this is crazy. Well
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: it is.
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: Different in some ways in that using government as an
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: instrumentality of social change is different from suspecting government and
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: therefore not doing what the government says might be efficacious
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: with regard to measles or COVID.
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: No, no, no, no, I get that. But I guess what
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: I'm saying is that sort of I looked at it,
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: not in the specific, but sort of in this respect
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: after the pandemic in nineteen seventeen and eighteen, you know,
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: and what we all learn is everybody loses their minds
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: a little bit, like we all go a little because
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: of the different and so something that seems so radical,
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: like prohibition or you know, or you know, or calling
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: it the temperance movement, right, which was had We've been
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: there a long time, but it had never really gotten huge
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: traction until we had this perceived moral decay, you know,
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: and the whole what happened with the pandemic. And that's
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: where you sort of like, okay, we can sort of
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: you see, how we can go down sort of rabbit
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: holes almost as a collective society when you go through
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: a shared trauma like a pandemic is right in a
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: fairly organized society, I guess I ask, I'm curious, do
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: you think you would have Do you think you end
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: up spending more time in the pandemic in nineteen seventeen
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: and eighteen if you're doing prohibition today post, well.
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: I think prohibition was already about to happen before the
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: pandemic hit. It may have sped it along. I don't
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: think it's that a determinant, I understand, And it's a
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: really really good argument.
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: This is something that I've like' and I totally accept
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: the premise. It's my own interpretation, but I know it's
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: sort of like, okay, I think I understand.
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: How we talked a lot about it with scholars. I
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: think what happens is that you have a rare sort
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: of eclips like situation where you have a conservative movement
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: that is starting first with temperance, which means moderation, that
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: all of a sudden becomes absolute. The Anti Saloonty League
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: takes over and it's all about no and it's a
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: conservative thing, and a lot of it's based on immigration.
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: Catholics are coming in, and so you want to take
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: away the sacrament. Blacks have the vote, you want to
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: take away the bottle. You know, you've got these these
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: other ulterior, sort of darker motives. And it's a conservative movement.
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: And then you the progressive movement, which you can say
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: is liberal or not. It doesn't really fit quite great,
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: but they're going along saying that government, as I said,
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: could be an instrumentality of social change. So if you
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: reverse engineer it. We have an amendment of the Constitution,
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: the only one that's been repealed, the only one that
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: limited human freedom, that was prohibition, and you had people
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: on both sides of the aisle buying into it for
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: different reasons. I'd say a much more determinate part. And
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: again it's based chuck on fear. So your pandemic of
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: the influenced Spanish influenza thing is not is the First
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: World War. So Germans were brewers, and it became very
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: easy to say they had been equating all the nineteenth
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: century that it's grain, beer equals bread, it's the milk
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: of human kindness. And suddenly they're the enemy, and so
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: it becomes possible to begin to rev up your population
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: in that sort of the thing that happens when people
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: react by fear. And I would think it's more the
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: anti German sentiment. Most of the brewers, if not all
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: the brewers were Germans. And then this sense of social
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: change combining with the anti immigrant, anti black, anti Catholic
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: sort of sentiments, and the idea too but very legitimate
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: idea that, as our first episode of three was called,
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: we were a nation of drunkards. Alcohol was a big,
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: huge problem. What we learned is that we couldn't address
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: it by you know, as Twain said, again, never wrote
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: a bad sent in his life. The prohibition of anything
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: makes it worthwhile, you know, or as he also said,
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits. You know,
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: that's what prohibition is, reforming other people's habits.
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: So you know, when I look at your your overall
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: and you say that you want to hit reconstruction, I
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: mean in some ways there are still more stories to tell.
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: On other ways, you've hit a lot of the big stories.
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: But there are different slices you could always go at.
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: That's different. You have religion, you always historically note, but
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: you've you've never I say never you did. I'm not
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: going to say never you did the early on the Shakers.
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: But you know, I think so I go in political
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: science curriculum, you're never And I think it's a huge
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: mistake by universities. If you're trying to study the politics
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: of any society and you don't understand the following three things.
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: It's religious history, it's sort of economic engine, and its
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: demography demographic history, then you're not going to understand. These are,
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: by the way, three classes that no political science community
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: makes requirements. It's one of these I find the whole
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: You know, political theory is fine to know, but you
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: need to know other things. I agree, and you know,
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: I believe and I always I. I uh, when I
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: got to college, I didn't know who ponnscious Pilot was really,
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: and I just didn't. I grew up. I was basically
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: I say, basically, I'm Jewish, but I didn't really I
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: had no knowledge of the New Testament. And you know,
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: I think of myself as incredibly well read. My parents
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: were well read, and yet I remember, and I got
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: shamed about it. It happened. I was a music composition
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: major for a brief period and I was having to
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: write write in the style of Bach and my teacher
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: got my professor got mad. He said this is too
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: upbeat for ponscious Pilot. And I went like, okay, who's
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: ponscious Pilot? And he goes, well, I'm not telling you.
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: And that's so I literally went and read read the
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: New Testament. I just sort of like realized, Okay, I
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: lacking education. And then I got upset. I'm like, you know,
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: we don't teach the history of religion because we're so afraid.
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: I know why we don't write. I know in the
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: public school system we can have huge fights over it, right,
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: and so our fear of it. Sometimes we just leave
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: it out too much because those that are devoted don't
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: like when people deal with it as scholarship, and those
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: that aren't devoted don't, you know, in some ways are
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: like you're giving it too much attention. Yeah, and no
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: thing that.
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well i'll tell you, Chuck, I'm so glad you
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: brought that up because I said something the other day
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: in some conversation.
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: I confessate that conscious pilot story, but I always want it.
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: I get it, but I also want it as a Look,
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: we all, no matter who you are, there's certain things
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: you don't know that you're embarrassed to say. And it's
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: like you got to learn to say it.
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: This is what I agree with you one D. And
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: there's always a spiritual dimension to the films that we've made.
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: You always doing it.
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: Because look, let's just take Article one. I mean, you know,
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: Amendment one of the Constitution, the first Amendment. It does it?
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: You ask anybody on the street, you take your camera
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: out there and you stick the mic, and they say
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: it's freedom of speech, right, And then maybe you get
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: somebody who says freedom to redress your grievances, you know,
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: protest whatever it might be. And then those are the
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: second and third parts of a three part thing, the
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: first of which is that the Congress will make no
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: establishment of any religion. And so one of my favorite
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: sections in all of the Revolution film is one on deism,
• 37:27
  Speaker 2: which becomes this sort of aggregate not default, but kind
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: of aggregate conscious choice of many of the mostly Protestant Founders,
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: you know, capital ab Founders, and the whole idea. And
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: our scene begins with Thomas Jefferson saying, if my neighbor
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: believes in twenty gods or no god at all, it
• 37:50
  Speaker 2: neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. So we've
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: all religion has heretofore, the Founders understood, always been the
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: cultural every country's had in this state bablished faith, and
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: that has been the source of a great deal of
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: the problems. But in fact, as we begun.
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: To enlightened to understand that back then, it's actually it is.
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: We are an enlightenment and.
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: Invent This is what it is, is.
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: That God we always you know, you hit a home
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: run and you thank God. You know when you hit
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: into a game ending doubles play, you don't thank God, right,
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: And that's and somehow God is always responsible for this
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: and the anthropomorphosizing and the narcissism that's involved. The Founders
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: came to some very incredibly amazing enlightened idea that they believe,
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: almost all of them believe in a supreme being, supreme architect,
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: divine providence. You hear those words, right, And they believe
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: that that God has takes no interest in the daily
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: affairs of mankind and makes obviously therefore no distinctions between religions.
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: So it then becomes, in pursuit of happiness that our
• 39:01
  Speaker 2: obligation to make ourselves better and then closer to whatever
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: that being is, because if you're worse, you're cruder, and
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: you're devolving, and you're closer to the animals. And many
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: might say Satan, but there is such an I've spent
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: a lot of time looking at Deism and I find
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: it such an interesting thing, and nobody wants to do.
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: I mean, I'm traveling around the country and people say, well,
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: this is a Protestant a Christian nation, and you go, well,
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: you know, they're Jews and they're Catholics, and there's you know,
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: all the animals religions that are brought over in the
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: slave ships, including Muslim relationship, and then Native Americans have
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: their own stuff. This is really polyglot, and people are
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: in different parts of the country susceptible. One of the
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: things that they resented in the back country of the
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: Carolina is and Georgia was that if it was the
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: Anglican Church or the Presbyterian Church, or not Presbyterian, but
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: some other church that was the favorite of the governor,
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: then you had to pay for the minister's salaries. And
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: you didn't like that if your own Methodist or a
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: Baptist or a Presbyterian, and so you have this sense
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: of being suspicious of somebody trying to tell you their
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: way is the only way, and that the government should
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: in any way favor any one flavor faith, whatever you
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: want to talk. And if you go to Deism and understand,
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: it's just you'r and my responsibility to move closer to God.
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: However we see that to divine providence to the miracle
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: of this snowfall out my window or the sunset that
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: will come in a little bit.
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  Speaker 1: quite surprising that the founders were this enlightened, considering how
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  Speaker 1: important you know that the place, in some ways, the
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: reason many of their their found their parents came here
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: was for freedom to worship.
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: That's correct, and I think that what they realize, I
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: mean that you have to say that that we are
• 44:07
  Speaker 2: the manifestation of the enlightenment in the form of a country.
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: The first ever I've said it on the road. I
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: didn't say it in the film per se. I mean,
• 44:15
  Speaker 2: I said it's consequential revolution in the history, but I
• 44:18
  Speaker 2: said it's the most consequence it's the most important event
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: since the birth of Christ in world history, because it's
• 44:24
  Speaker 2: set in motion revolutions for two centuries, but in set
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: in motion, which for two hundred and fifty years is produced,
• 44:30
  Speaker 2: you know, one of the greatest countries.
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: Now. Have there been.
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: Series of mistakes, Yes, indeed, and I've spent most of
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: my professional life not ignoring them in favor in some way,
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: chronicling them in some ways. But you know it. But
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: it's not all dark either. It's it's an incredibly positive story.
• 44:48
  Speaker 2: And if you listed all the good things, I don't
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: know any other country on Earth that could put up,
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: you know, starting with the Declaration, the Constitution and the
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: Bill of Rights, and then you just go on, whether
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: it's land grant colleges or National Park or Homestead Act,
• 45:01
  Speaker 2: or you know, child labor laws or anti trust or
• 45:05
  Speaker 2: you know the GI Bill, or Social Security, labor's right
• 45:08
  Speaker 2: to organize, Interstate Highway, Man on the Moon, affordable care medicaid,
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: medicare you know voting? I mean, this is like an
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: amazing stuff and it has tangible things. William Luckdeberg the
• 45:20
  Speaker 2: latest Story and died recently at A one hundred and two,
• 45:23
  Speaker 2: was an advisor for almost all the films that we
• 45:26
  Speaker 2: worked on. But he was in our Roosevelt thing. He said,
• 45:28
  Speaker 2: you land at LaGuardia FDR New Deal, you go across
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: the bridge FDR New Deal, you go through the Lincoln
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: Tunnel FDR, you go down the Skyline Drive and the
• 45:37
  Speaker 2: you know, Blue Ridge Parkway. The thing if you do
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: the Lincoln Highway, if you do this ten thousand landing strips,
• 45:43
  Speaker 2: you begin to understand all of the ways in which
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: just that one presidential administration transformed the country.
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: How long? What is you know? I've been I was
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: looking to see what's the shortest amount of time between
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: in this historical event or era that you would then
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: feel comfortable making talk about it. I guess the Central
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: Park five is the shortest. Is that?
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah? I think I think that's the correct All that
• 46:15
  Speaker 2: we've had things like the Shakers and baseball and jazz
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: country music, the.
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: Present comes up to the press.
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: We unlocked the narrative and are more impressionistic for the
• 46:25
  Speaker 2: last twenty five third years. That's what I've said. So
• 46:27
  Speaker 2: the actual event of the Central Bark Jogger, that's a
• 46:30
  Speaker 2: film that came out in twenty twelve twenty thirteen, was
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: nineteen eighty nine. So that's still twenty five years, still
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: under twenty five years, but it's enough. Things are collaps
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: You Know. What's interesting is I've had the great privilege
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: of interviewing Barack Obama for eight two hour interviews. I've
• 46:46
  Speaker 2: got a couple more to go, but there's no rush
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: because what's happened in the recent political administrations is that
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: it's constipated the scholarship. So by this time there'd normally
• 46:57
  Speaker 2: be twenty five books of scholarship on Barack Obama's presidency.
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: But it hasn't happened, and so there's no urge to
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: go and do it till you can get to that
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: point of triangulation, that is to say, the perspective that
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: comes from new scholarship and new things in which you're
• 47:13
  Speaker 2: not solely dependent on.
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: Well, I'll give you a perfect example of how my
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: view has changed about this century and how my views
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: get or frankly, the Cold War you know, I'm now
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: more comfortable understanding that the Cold War was an outlier.
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: It's an outlier in American history, it's an outlier in
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: the history of the media, it's an outlier in all
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: sorts of It's an outlier in our streamism and politics.
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: But you don't fully appreciate it until you get farther
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: away from it.
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: That's correct.
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: Barack Obama's election, You're going to have one interpretation based
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: on it when you look at it through the prism
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: of starting at say twenty fifteen. Now I look back
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: now from a perch of twenty twenty six, and you
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: now see that Obama and Trump are are more intertwined,
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: and they're going to be more intertwined in American history
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: fifty years from now than I think either gentleman wants
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: to what a wants to admit would be. That's sort
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: of you know, your successor whoever that person is in
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: fifty years. You can't explain Trump without Obama, and you're
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: not gonna be able to explain Obama without Trump, like
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: you agree, going to be intertwined. Yet you couldn't tell
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: the Obama story in twenty seventeen completely. No, I don't
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: know and maybe that you can't tell this story completely.
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: And maybe it's twenty thirty eight, maybe it's twenty three.
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: Don't so, I guess, Mike, when do you feel comfortable me? Okay,
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: I think I can tackle it. I can tackle an
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: era now where new information isn't going to change.
• 48:47
  Speaker 2: I used to say twenty five thirty. I still believe it.
• 48:49
  Speaker 2: I do believe that because of the rate of information.
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: I wish there was more scholarship, and I will wait
• 48:55
  Speaker 2: for that before I really begin to try to structure
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: and put together. The Obama thing is really just unbelievable stuff.
• 49:01
  Speaker 2: But I'll give you an example that's close to tell you. So,
• 49:05
  Speaker 2: we did a film that came out in twenty seventeen
• 49:07
  Speaker 2: on the Vietnam War. It was ten episodes, eighteen hours.
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: If I had done it ten years after the fall
• 49:15
  Speaker 2: of Saigon in nineteen eighty five, America was in a recession.
• 49:19
  Speaker 2: There's a Pacific rim but we're not talking about us.
• 49:21
  Speaker 2: We're talking about Japan is a scendant, and we would
• 49:25
  Speaker 2: see Vietnam as this ball and chain, this sort of
• 49:28
  Speaker 2: like perpetual rain cloud over a.
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: Star on ours a star.
• 49:33
  Speaker 2: So if you wait, if I waited twenty years, So
• 49:36
  Speaker 2: nineteen ninety five, we are the sole superpower. We're in
• 49:38
  Speaker 2: the middle of the largest peacetime economic expansion. We have
• 49:42
  Speaker 2: just fought a Gulf War without all all of the
• 49:46
  Speaker 2: you know, assembly of people. We would say Vietnam is important,
• 49:49
  Speaker 2: but it's you know, we've liberated, we've escaped the specific gravity.
• 49:52
  Speaker 2: If I've waited thirty years and it's twenty two thousand
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: and five, we're bogged down in both Iraq and Afghanistan,
• 50:00
  Speaker 2: and people are using Vietnam analogies to talk about that.
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: And then you know, the film comes out essentially ten
• 50:07
  Speaker 2: years after that, forty years, forty two years after that,
• 50:10
  Speaker 2: and you begin to realize that your job is to
• 50:13
  Speaker 2: use the passage of time as triangulation, to use the
• 50:17
  Speaker 2: scholarship as triangulation, to figure out how to more firmly
• 50:21
  Speaker 2: understand an event by what you've done and sort of
• 50:25
  Speaker 2: average out those things. Disaster not a disaster, disaster again,
• 50:30
  Speaker 2: And so Vietnam undergoes lots of things, and of course
• 50:32
  Speaker 2: it's none of those things. It's never history doesn't repeat itself.
• 50:37
  Speaker 2: No event has ever happened twice, never has, never will,
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: And so the trope of that becomes a kind of
• 50:45
  Speaker 2: prison for us to get in. And so what you
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: have to do is be dispassionate. You have to sort
• 50:50
  Speaker 2: of like a dissease, tie yourself to the mass so
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: you can hear seriously sound, but you don't want to
• 50:56
  Speaker 2: like point arrows. Isn't this so much like today? Because
• 51:00
  Speaker 2: as I said, you're dated instantly by that, and you've
• 51:03
  Speaker 2: become you know, the historical profession has gone through many
• 51:07
  Speaker 2: fashions of historiography. Right, so after World War Two, narratives bad,
• 51:12
  Speaker 2: it's bankrupt. So we're going to replace it with a
• 51:14
  Speaker 2: Freudian interpretation, a psychosexuality, and it's going to be Marxist
• 51:18
  Speaker 2: economic determinism. Somewhere along the line. It's symbolism, it's semiotics,
• 51:23
  Speaker 2: it's deconstruction, it's queer studies, it's afrocentrism, it's whatever it is.
• 51:28
  Speaker 2: None of those give you what all of those give you,
• 51:32
  Speaker 2: which is a multitude of modes of inquiry, multitude of perspectives,
• 51:37
  Speaker 2: like the spokes on a wheel that make the wheel
• 51:40
  Speaker 2: engineered to great strength, to able to bear a great load.
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: So we draw in.
• 51:46
  Speaker 2: Scholars on Vietnam or the Revolution that represent all sorts
• 51:50
  Speaker 2: of different areas of scholarship, and we take in what
• 51:53
  Speaker 2: their knowledge is, but not necessarily their total interpretation. So
• 51:57
  Speaker 2: scholars of Native Americans, one of us dollars, Christopher Brown
• 52:01
  Speaker 2: is a student of eighteenth and nineteenth century British economy.
• 52:08
  Speaker 2: He's a black man to go, no, no, no, he must
• 52:10
  Speaker 2: want to talk about slavery, and does, but only in
• 52:12
  Speaker 2: the context of economic So you get a wonderful dynamic
• 52:16
  Speaker 2: without having to subscribe to anybody's theory of how American history.
• 52:25
  Speaker 2: That's why, you know, and we're constantly being bombarded with
• 52:29
  Speaker 2: what is the correct way to see this? You know,
• 52:31
  Speaker 2: it's seventeen seventy six, or it's sixteen nineteen, or it's no,
• 52:36
  Speaker 2: it's from eighteen seventy it's from seventeen seventy five to
• 52:40
  Speaker 2: seventeen eighty one or seventeen eighty three, depending on whether
• 52:42
  Speaker 2: it's Yorktown or the British Slavy Board.
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: So well, let me ask about the Cold War. That
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: feels like a ken Burns project.
• 52:51
  Speaker 2: It is we do you know what we've been talking about?
• 52:53
  Speaker 2: The Cold War? I can't believe you brought that up.
• 52:55
  Speaker 2: Check it's so we're on the same wavelength. So we've
• 52:58
  Speaker 2: been talking for probably two decades about the Cold War,
• 53:02
  Speaker 2: and about a year ago I said, I want to
• 53:05
  Speaker 2: make it the CIA. So we're doing a big but
• 53:08
  Speaker 2: we're just beginning to sort of unload and create the space.
• 53:12
  Speaker 2: I like took all the books and stuff like that
• 53:14
  Speaker 2: and put it in a corner of my house and
• 53:16
  Speaker 2: I put a sign up over and said, Langley, you know,
• 53:19
  Speaker 2: because that's where we're going to collect all the CIA
• 53:21
  Speaker 2: notes and papers.
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: We talked to something.
• 53:24
  Speaker 2: We know how we're going to do it because you'll
• 53:26
  Speaker 2: get the Cold War, which you also get all the
• 53:28
  Speaker 2: intimacies of the stories, you know. Like I was just
• 53:31
  Speaker 2: talking to Rick Atkinson the History and he described a
• 53:34
  Speaker 2: friend that he knew, a Russian who disappeared because Alder
• 53:38
  Speaker 2: James betrayed him. He was an asset for the United
• 53:41
  Speaker 2: States working at the Soviet Embassy in Washington. Poof gone.
• 53:44
  Speaker 2: So all of a sudden, the abstractions of talking about
• 53:47
  Speaker 2: Cold wars and stuff like that goes down to the
• 53:50
  Speaker 2: minutia of somebody in Geneva doing this to somebody else.
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: So my obsession with Cold War, with the Cold War
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: has come from when people lament to me I wish
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: we were like this, you know, whatever it is. I
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: wish our politics were this way. I wish our media
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: were this way, and I wish and I go back
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: and I'm like, you're a child of the Cold War era,
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: and you don't realize you live in an outlier. And
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: then I'll go through, you know, and say, you know,
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: we're actually we're reverting. Today's America is no different from
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: nineteenth century America. There's a lot of differences and as
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: far as people's freedoms and not but in some ways
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: our politics is not this similar. We're still fighting about
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: who gets to be an American and who isn't. We're
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: still fighting about you know, shares of the pie and
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: things like that. And oh, by the way, the nineteenth
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: century was superpartisan, our media was superpartisan. And where are
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: we today, you know? And then it has made me
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: look at the Cold War as an outlier as far
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: as in political history, right, we had I love to
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: remind people are closest. We've had six of the last
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: seven presidential elections been decided by five points or less
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: in the entire twentieth century, when we had five, and
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: it's like, okay, why and yet the nineteenth century. My gosh,
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: we had twenty I'm obsessed with the seven presidents between
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: Jackson and Lincoln in twenty eight years. Like you want
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: to talk about instability, there's instability.
• 55:13
  Speaker 2: You know, the popular vote in seventy six, eighteen seventy six,
• 55:17
  Speaker 2: Tilden wins the popular vote, and we had three elections
• 55:19
  Speaker 2: with Grover Cleveland. He all won the popular vote three
• 55:24
  Speaker 2: times and lost the middle one.
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: And what I love to also remind folks is that
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: we've had three straight one term presidents. We never had
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: that once in the twentieth century, but we had it
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: two different times. We went five straight one term presidents
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: in the nineteenth century. So it is I think we
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: haven't fully appreciated. And this is where obviously it's sort
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: of like why does experience matter? Because you have to
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: sort of live to see it. You have to be
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: able to look backwards in the world I grew up,
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: you know, I always think now that that I grew
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: up in the wrong I always think I grew up
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: in the right of the way the media worked, And
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: it's like, no, in some ways, I grew up in
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: the wrong era because it was a false premise.
• 56:08
  Speaker 2: So you could make an argument therefore, with regard to
• 56:11
  Speaker 2: I think your excellent theories about the Cold War is
• 56:16
  Speaker 2: that when the Soviet Empire collapsed, the total destabilizing of
• 56:21
  Speaker 2: American politics was assured. That is to say, destabilize from
• 56:26
  Speaker 2: what you're calling the outlier of a kind of general
• 56:29
  Speaker 2: consensus that had been built not since just forty five,
• 56:32
  Speaker 2: but I would say back to the progressive era, where
• 56:34
  Speaker 2: you had people in both parties wishing to use government
• 56:37
  Speaker 2: as an instrumentality of progress, or at least, as tr
• 56:41
  Speaker 2: would say, a countervailing force between labor and capital.
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: And instead we basically were a period of just security.
• 56:49
  Speaker 2: So what happens just surviving the thing, and so that
• 56:53
  Speaker 2: when you take this away, you don't have an enemy anymore.
• 56:57
  Speaker 2: And so who do you make the enemy?
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: No? Right, well, well, I love to remind people the
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: Berlin Wall falls in eighty nine, and within three years
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: the isolationist wing of the Republican Party sprouts up again,
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: and Donald Trump's first campaign is launched. It's called Pat
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: Buchanan's campaign for President, and so and it's and I
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: you know, and in fact, two of our closest presidential
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: elections were followed by two of our biggest blowouts. So
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: seventy two and sixty four were blowouts because each party
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: went off the reservation, But sixty and seventy six were
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: two of our closest presidential elections because both parties went
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: back on the reservation and it was anyway. It's just
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: one of those where I feel like you have to
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: capture this.
• 57:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I'm trying. I'm trying. Give me time, I'm
• 57:52
  Speaker 2: taking vitamins, I'm walking, I'm doing my exercises. It's I've
• 57:55
  Speaker 2: got that look, Chuck, I have the best job in
• 57:57
  Speaker 2: the country.
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I do. Well, you're you are you are this
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: this guy for us. When do you suspect you'll do
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: your first twenty first century you know, an event in
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: an era which the most obvious would be nine to eleven.
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: But when do you feel like you'll tackle your first
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: twenty first century event era?
• 58:17
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, I think that part of the Central
• 58:25
  Speaker 2: Park five begins in the early is resolved in the
• 58:28
  Speaker 2: twenty first century. The update of baseball, called the Tenth
• 58:32
  Speaker 2: Inning ends in two thousand and nine. We've done some
• 58:36
  Speaker 2: stuff on housing. I was executive producer. My daughter Sarah,
• 58:41
  Speaker 2: who's one of our main directors, and her husband, David
• 58:44
  Speaker 2: McMahon have done things on public housing. I think the
• 58:48
  Speaker 2: Obama one will be fully potentially. I mean, my first
• 58:54
  Speaker 2: question to him is, of course, where were you born?
• 58:57
  Speaker 2: But you know, you should see the way I.
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: Said it was it's a log cabin in Kentucky. Right,
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: that had been funny?
• 59:05
  Speaker 2: You mean him Madras in Pakistan or Indonesia.
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: Well, I've always said, you know, if he were this
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: sort of counter this secret you know, idea of like,
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: you know, to take over America, Right, that was what
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: a brilliant move, right to incubate him through Hawaii and
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: all this stuff. Why would you name him Barak Husain?
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: Why wouldn't you call him Thomas Jefferson.
• 59:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. So the log cabin is to your point, Yeah,
• 59:28
  Speaker 2: it's it's a pretty great story. I've I've dealt with
• 59:32
  Speaker 2: Race Chuck forty plus films that have been out. I
• 59:36
  Speaker 2: can count on the fingers of one hand.
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: When is Race not a part of it? And I
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: say this because it's always a part. And I always
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: apart art.
• 59:45
  Speaker 2: Fingers of one hand and self enough time to snap
• 59:48
  Speaker 2: my fingers. And I've gotten a lot of criticism over
• 59:50
  Speaker 2: the years about it from people from critics, from even historians, friends,
• 59:55
  Speaker 2: other colleagues, and they said, what are you going to stop?
• 59:59
  Speaker 2: And when Barack Obama was inaugurated on December twenty, two
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 2: thousand and nine, they said, now are you going to stop?
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 2: And I held up the Onion magazine and it said
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 2: black man given worst job in nation. And I just said,
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 2: watch what happens. And at least to their credit, most
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 2: people have come back and apologized. Is that you're right.
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 2: Race is central, it's the story. How can you say
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 2: that we know exactly when we were founded, and we
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 2: know what's our catechism, and it begins, we hold these
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 2: schoos to be self evident, that all men are created equal,
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 2: and the guy who wrote it owned other human beings.
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 2: And so how are we not constantly both ennobled and
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 2: also stricken by this, by that contradiction and that hypocrisy.
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: All right, let me let you play critic on historical fiction.
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: What's your favorite historical fiction out there?
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 3: Oh?
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 2: To me, it's Michael Sharra's Killer Angels. I read it
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 2: and finished it on Christmas Day nineteen eighty four, is
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 2: visiting my dad in Michigan, and I said, I now
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 2: know what I'm going to do for my next subject.
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 2: And he said what's that? I said, the Civil War?
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 2: And he said what part? I said, all of it.
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 2: He just shook his hand and walked out of the room, like,
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 2: my idiot son, what's.
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: My son doing? But yeah, he's never going to succeed
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: in this career. I mean, you know, there's no way
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: people are going to watch nine.
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 2: In the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. May they rest in peace?
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 2: The first time three didn't turn this down. They said, look,
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 2: you know, people watch an hour an hour and a half, ken, Yeah,
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 2: are you really that we do a proposal five one hours.
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 2: It only became because the editing was going well, the
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 2: nine episodes in the eleven and a half twelve hours
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 2: that it is, And so even at five one hours,
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 2: my biggest source of our funding over the years wasn't
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 2: sure that it would work well.
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: Have you ever wanted to dabble in either dramatize?
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 2: She just wanted to be a filmmaker. My mom died
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 2: when I was eleven. When I was twelve, my dad,
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 2: who never cried during her sickness or death or funeral,
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 2: cried at an old movie. Let me stay up and
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 2: watch with him, and I thought, right then and there,
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 2: I get it. I want to be a feature filmmaker.
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 2: That means I'm David Lean, it means I'm Howard Hawks,
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 2: I'm John Ford, I'm Alfred Hitchcock. And then I went
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 2: to Hampshire College where they were doing nothing but social documentary,
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 2: still photography. So I realized, truthfully that there is as
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 2: much drama, if not more, in what was and what
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 2: is than anything that human imagination dreams up. But I
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 2: think about it all the time. But I don't have to,
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 2: you know, Shelby called me up in the middle where
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 2: editing had this huge problem. I called him up and
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 2: I just said, I can't figure out how to do
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 2: Vicksburg and Gettysburg. And he said, God's the greatest dramatist,
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 2: I said, he said, I said, what goes? God's the
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 2: greatest dramatist. So I hung up, and I realized, just
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 2: tell it the way it happened. So everybody either puts
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 2: Vicksburg after Gettysburg or Vicksburg before, but actually Vicksburg happens
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 2: before and during and after a Yettysburg. And that's exactly
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 2: the way. And then he called me up and he
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 2: said it again. He said, maybe a couple of years later,
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 2: he goes, God's the greatest dramatis. Who would have thought
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 2: that Lee would surrender the grant and a few days
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 2: later Lincoln would have enough free time after eighteen hour
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 2: days prosecuting the war to go to the theater. God
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 2: is the greatest drama.
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: No, it just tell the story.
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 2: Just tell the story. And then and people say, what's
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 2: your structure? I go and then and then, and then
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 2: if you look at our World War two drama, we
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 2: land d day, go back to the reaction, and then
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 2: go to Saipan, because that's what the front page of
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 2: the paper is looking at. Everybody does, Oh, we'll do
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 2: the European. Then we'll go to do the Pacific. And
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 2: then you have no idea of their continuity. And so
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 2: we then go back and they're having trouble breaking out
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 2: of the hedgerows. And then you go back to the
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 2: middle of the Battle of Sidepark.
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: I wish you were put in charge of the World
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: War two memorial here. I'm not going to make you
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: criticize it. It frustrates me to all end. How it is,
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: how it just barely scratches the surface. I get it.
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: It's what happens when you have a committee. Whenever you
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: put a committee in charge of something.
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 2: The greatest gotaclosm in human history. We can do better.
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: We can do so much better than that. So America
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: two fifty, How do you celebrate? How do you tell
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: how do you tell somebody to celebrate? How would you Well, it's.
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 2: All individual and independent, right, We're all citizens. We've got
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 2: that great special privilege. What I've done every year is,
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 2: with maybe one or two exceptions over the last forty years,
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 2: is at our late cottage, I get out on the
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 2: front porch and before I let anybody eat, I read
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 2: them the Declaration of Independence. And it ends with we
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 2: mutually pledged to each other our lives, our fortunes, and
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 2: our sacred honor. And you know who, George Washington was
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 2: probably the richest person in America, or one of the
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 2: richest at the time of the revolution, certainly before he was,
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 2: and he risked everything, his life and his fortune and
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 2: his sacred honor. You know, you make we make a
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 2: joke now of Washington slept here, But he spent between
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 2: when he was named the head of the Continental Army,
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 2: not the East Coast Army, but continental. We knew where
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 2: we were going. By the Continental Congress, we knew where
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 2: we were going. In the early summer of seventy five,
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 2: he gets back to my Mount Vernon for four nights. Right,
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 2: he comes back to Mount Vernon in December of seventeen
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 2: eighty three. So who would And this is an idea
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 2: that's never been tested. Now we've tested it for two
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 2: hundred and fifty years. And could you imagine somebody in
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 2: the top one hundred risking their lives, their fortunes, and
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 2: their sacred honor for something as important as our founding.
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 2: And so that's what the celebration of two fifteen. Nobody
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 2: can tell you what it isn't nobody can tell you
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 2: what it is. It's always complex, that's the nature of
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 2: human beings, and we should be reveling in that complexity.
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 2: Let me give you one slight example. The bell cow
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 2: of the conservative movement at this time is the television
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 2: series Yellowstone Right. Right, This is finally they've made liberal.
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 2: Hollywood made a story for us, right, And what is
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 2: at the heart of that story A a patriarch who
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 2: is the George Washington of the series, who also kills
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 2: people who piss him off. Just as his father and
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 2: grandfather have done, dumping their bodies wherever they went. He's
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 2: got a daughter cut from his same cloth, as ruthless
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 2: as he is. He's got two sons. One is tortured
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 2: by the relationship to the land and the Native American
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 2: story that has been superimposed without any questions over that,
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 2: and he's married a Native American.
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: Woman, right.
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 2: The other son is Benedict Arnold, right. And then the
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 2: daughter is in love with the chief foreman of this thing,
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 2: who's in charge of a group of ranchers who are
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 2: young and old, white and black, gay and straight, and
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 2: over and surrounding them is this larger Native American issue,
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 2: and over that this idea of development. If that isn't
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 2: as complex a storyline as anything I've said in which
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 2: it's got undertow and all of the American experience. We
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 2: made a film on the American Buffalo, and I remember
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 2: looking at one scene where Kevin Costner plays the lead.
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 2: John Dutton is explaining to somebody just about it, and
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 2: in three seconds I just turned to my daughter and
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 2: I said, that was our four hours on the Buffalo,
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 2: you know, And he did it in like three sentences.
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: Have you ever spent. Do you know Taylor Sheridan.
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 2: I know Kevin and he's one of the great guys.
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 2: So anyway, yeah, it's it. Anybody trying to tell you
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 2: how it was, or to simplify it or to take
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 2: down a plaque is scared and only authoritarians. And by
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 2: the way, we follow in our film, and maybe this
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 2: is a way to ram this out. We follow, among
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 2: the one hundred and fifty different characters, we follow a
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 2: German Hessian soldier named Johann Evld. He's openly contemptuous of
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 2: these rebels, and he arrives in episode three at Staten
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 2: Island when we send the first big batch there, but
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 2: he's there in three, four or five and six, but
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 2: he's part of the surrounding army at Yorktown. And he says,
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 2: after Yorktown, who would have thought one hundred years ago
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 2: that out of this multitude of rabble could rise of
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 2: people who could defy kings. These German soldiers who didn't
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 2: get killed, who escaped and blended into the German communities,
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 2: those who stayed and then got shipped back home. A
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 2: lot of them came back with their families because they
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 2: had seen the promised land who would have thought one
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 2: hundred years ago, out of this multitude of rabble could
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 2: rise of people who could defy kings johanney Vov.
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: You didn't have to make up the script. Nope, it
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: was right there.
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, God's the greatest dramedis right there.
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: You go.
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 2: Thank you, sev.
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: Ken. It's always a pleasure to talk with you. Like
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: I said, you've got you've got the job that many
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: of us political journalists wish we could. We wish we
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: could be you for a day.
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 2: Come on over, it's all fine where you know. We're
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 2: up in rural New Nay.
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: I'm going to stay in my lane of campaign history,
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: so I'm messing around in that world. I think, you know,
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: I think people you know, don't don't try to do
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: something you're not capable of it.
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 2: No, I agree. That's the thing. I'm so lucky because,
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 2: as I said, at twelve, I knew that, eighteen I
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 2: knew what kind, and at twenty two it was history.
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: So well it is, you know, and you never half asset.
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: Sorry for the colorful language.
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 2: No, no, no, this is there's a.
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: Lot there's a lot of people in your space. You
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: could start, you know, Ken Burns presents somebody else's version
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 1: of history, and you could license your name and make
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: a whole bunch of money and not have to work anymore. Yeah,
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: but I don't I get the sense that you wouldn't
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: be proud of that.
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 2: No, no, no, And and the work's the thing, you know,
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 2: why would you take a shortcut?
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: If?
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 2: If? I mean, every film is a million no exaggeration,
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 2: a million problems. But we don't see the problems as pejorative.
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 2: We see them as inevitable friction that every marathon runner knows.
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 2: I don't want to pick up my foot this next
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 2: time I picked up my foot. I don't want to
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 2: pick up the night I pick up my foot. And
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 2: you just you figure this out? How do you tell
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 2: this story? How do you do Vicksburg? And Getty's all right?
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: There you go. Look, I think the more remarkable thing
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: is not how many you start, it's how many you finish.
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: And we've been so flushing is the hard part.
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 2: We have finished. We have not abandoned a project once
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 2: we started shooting. Been very lucky, lucky.
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: So lucky. Well we're the lucky ones. Ken always a pleasure,
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: Thank you, check, see you next time. Happy Birthday America.
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 2: Thanks Yeah, happy birthday. Let's let's have a real celebration.
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: Absolutely, thank you.