Ken Burns Says We've Grown Numb to Violence

is David wall Street time. Horrific shooting in Las Vegas with us now, uh for a generous uh in good half hours, Robert for fuseck of Jones Day and uh, Bob. The normal discussion with you would be M and A and finance, and I guess we can do that here in a bit or in our next section. Jones Day is well in excess of two thousand lawyers worldwide, truly worldwide and one of your jewels. As Peter Canfield of Atlanta.

I should point out that Mr Canfield has represented Bloomberg guilp on various matters and he is a leader in thinking about guns safety. Um, it's not something Bob, I'm assuming you're up to speed. On the minutia of us. But where does the legal business fit into this only in America debate that we have about guns just framed for us. Where lawyers fit in to the debate that we're going to once again have over the next number of days. Well, I think they basically line up just

where their politics line up. Um. I don't understand personally why this is a political issue, but it's been been that for gosh for decades, and you're gonna be expected to continue. There was a a an effort to uh get the gun control through litigation a few years ago. It actually kind of on the tobacco model of taking on the gun manufacturers in the ground they were producing an inherently dangerous product that didn't really go anywhere in the courts. Um. So it's not something that's gonna be

gonna be dealt with in litigation. It will be the political issue. I hate to be negative about it, but obviously the the lobbying has has kept things from happening very much is particularly on a federal level. I mean, the cynic of it all is twenty six dead in Connecticut, which clearly has a local tinge to our New York audience. And maybe you know, we shouldn't focus on that versus Danville, California.

But now this horrific event in Las Vegas. From where you sit, what is the power of those that want to protect firearms? Is the romance they talk about that those weren't firearms in that video this morning, that we saw people dying in Las Vegas, that was warfare. Well, sometimes you know, incidents like that can change people's perspectives. And when you listened to that continue the automatic weapon could continuing to discharge, you thought, is this a gun

or is this a weapon? And maybe if there are people started drawing that distinction. Uh, there's a possibility of of taking a different perspective. I suspect this may be something more likely to be dealt with state by state than on a federal level. There's just too much paralysis in Washington over the most basic of issues. And you know, the pro the anti gun lobby didn't have much, didn't have much lobby, and r A and other people can lobby. And I would say, David, and I don't say this

with any expertise or authority. The video and audio attached to it that we ran on Bloomberg Television, this morning. I was stunned because I had not seen it until we went to air, and I was just thunderstruck by the immediacy of the video that America wakes up to this morning. Yeah, I think Bomb's right. I think people are gonna be reckoning with that today and throughout the

week and beyond. And certainly something that has changed is the availability of audio and video of incidents like these. It certainly changes. I think how one process is begins to process what happened here, probably pivot if I could, and and and go to something more mundane as as that Tom said at the top, that is, uh, what we we focus on here day in and day out in light of what we've been falling overnight. Just get us up to speed on sort of what the this

environment looks like for deal making. There's a lot of conversation here about what the fete is going to look like, what's going to happen to interest rates? So we continue to follow that on Bloomberg surveillance, of course, how is that? How is the conversation about interest rates shaping a company's appetites for for deal making? Here in two thousand seventeen, well, equity capital is getting very expensive, but that debt capital is basically free. I mean for high high end credit,

it's it's effectively free. When you think of the amount of debt that will be taken down for the Time Warner deal, for example, it's it's almost like going to the A T M for a T N T to do that deal. So it's pretty extraordinary. And that there is going to be some pressure when there is a perspective that those rates will actually change normalize. I'm not sure I know what normal means for the debt markets anymore, but get get higher up, that's gonna put some pressure.

The biggest issue though, is we talked about it earlier on the on TV, is is getting rid of the uncertainty about taxation. It isn't that that there'll be repatriation, although that would be stimulative, or that there will be lower rates that would be stimulative as well. Is that some of the other stuff is off the table. That's important because you're trying to value something and you don't know.

It's hard to do it with that text. I don't mean to interrupt, but I am it's Monday interruption day here, David. I'm sorry to interrupt. Do you have a number of yields where the game changes you have in your head. I mean, you're not a numbers yield guy, You're a legal guy. So I'm gonna ask you the question because probably you're the only one that knows. Do you have a number where the rules change for M and A? Is it a three percent yield? Is it? Do you

have a number in your head? I think when the ten years starts, when people start getting convinced a tenure will actually start approaching three, you're gonna see a stampede or transaction. We would never get that answer, David from a financial guy, their general counsel, a lawyer like Robert Profuse, don't say that on air or Profuse, I can said, given what we're saying with that, why why have we seen some sluctions or slowness to to the deals that

marketplace at this point? Do you think it's gonna we're gonna see an uptick here soon? Well? I do think that that. Well, there's a lot of things, of course, I mean, and there's never one answer at anything, but to me, the overwriting issue has been the uncertainty of the of everything going on in Washington, including and that and some of that will continue just the you know, oh my god, can you believe this reaction that we seem to have on whether it's the NFL or Puerto

Rico or you name it. I mean that that has an effect. But the fundamentals, tax policy is an important issue. Um and you know, earlier in the year, and this was less Trump than and more Kevin Brady. Uh, they had a Houseways and Means Committee. It was like, We're going to do these grand things. We're gonna go to a territorial system, We're gonna do all of that sort of stuff. People are saying, well, how do I value something?

How do you value even a retailer, which there's got to be a lot of M and A in that space, There's no question about it. But if you import both of your stuff and there'll be the B A T, what's it worth? I don't know. I mean, so it it inhibited things getting rid of that uncertainty, and it's self gonna open the floodgate, but it will be an

important point of a very important part of it. I've talked with Stephano Pissina of Well Grade Boots Allions just a few weeks ago after his steal for right aid went through and I asked him what he thought about the environment and Shington, and he said, there is a lot of uncertainty and surprised by how long his particular

process took. Our things taking longer. Imagine there's a lot of observation of how these regulators are working, some of which have fewer commissioners than than a full panoply of them. Of course, but is it taking longer than it did in the past. Well, it's it's kind of break into two pieces. Deals is started in the old administration. Those are taking even longer because of there's been a lot of departures. Um the thing, you know, the leadership changes,

but the staff positions don't change. So their attitudes about very aggressive uh. Any trust enforcement If FCC you name a regulatory enforcement, that's that's uh. That's continuing and in fact even dragging things out. We have a deal that was announced fourth quarter last year that we thought would be long be closed. It looks like a team deal. Same people who would have reviewed this transaction under President Obama they've got it, so they have those attitudes. H

Any trust will get easier. On the other hand, there's some aspects of the new administration where deals are tougher. I mean, the amount of Chinese M and A in in the United States is going to be not virtually nothing. I think Uma Chinese companies have switched almost like vcs venture capital investment rather than M and A. Boberfus is

with us here in Bloombic even three studios. He's the global chair of M and A at jones Day Law from jones Day and before break, Bubb we were talking about the role of China in the deal's space, and uh, you know, I've I've noted the degree to which Chinese regulators Chinese that government officials are cracking down on capital outflows.

When when you look at the diminished role of China in the deal space, is it is it because of a declining US appetite that you see Cyphius perhaps expressing some reluctance to approve these deals, or is it more attributable to what the Chinese government is doing that is letting less Chinese money out of the global marketplace. Well, it's really both. Um was an incredible here for Chinese

investment in North America. Had forgotten the exact number. I think it was in the order of j billion dollars. That's a lot from way more than there have ever been before. Yes, the it's coming from both ends. The

Chinese government is cracking down. But when you talk to Chinese clients we have we have over a hundred lawyers in China and UM we talked to these clients what they're really they're They're concerned less about currency issues and their regulatory UM regulatory matters, but the attitude of the current administration, which has perceived to be very antagonistic towards Chinese investment. UM. There was an important cifist decision to block a semiconductor deal on the basis of that impacted

national security. I don't know, there's a lot of semiconductor companies, no offense to anybody in the industry, but it just you know, to the m and A community, people went g that that's pretty significant. There was a cifious decision earlier having to do with what was essentially a real estate transaction, but it was close to an army base

up in the Pacific Northwest. So there's a sense that some of this America first, and America is going to be great again, all that stuff, it's going to really impact foreign investment. Maybe not for an investment generally, but certainly China within these wonderful observations is our collective memory, whether it's Pebble Beach Golf Club, remember the upward when we were kids over that. But I guess my right. UNICELL was sort of the seismic legal transaction review that

police MR purchasing. Well, there's a the sort of a very large Chinese company named c which is that at that time of state owned enterprise tried to acquire Unical and it has that name Unical, and so the perception was it was an American company and it was blocked on Ciphius grounds, like Stiffius is a inter agency's committee in Washington that looks at things that impact national security. And it was a pretty extraordinary transaction. This is because,

in all honesty, it was an oil company. Um. Well, of course oil in general impacts everything, at least at least today and back then. Um. But the irony was, even though it was named Unchale, about eight percent of assesss were in Asia. UM. So it really wasn't an American transaction except name only in a real sense. But that's sort of the point, is that politics can get in the way. UM. Most times the other regulatory agencies

don't really look at that. UM. But you know, there was a lot of talk about you know, America, this, America that, and the and the election last last term, and we're probably going to see it, and there was some you know, biggest bad uh stuff. We haven't seen the answer yet. UM. I frankly think it'll go forward. But the Time Warner deal still pending, and of course, as a candidate, President Trump basically said he'd block it. So we'll see what if we learned about the leg

to see if breakit. We talk with the legacy of Brexit before it's officially happened here, but the legacy of that vote at least, and our notions of of what's accessible when it comes to to competition and companies in Europe. I sat down with the Margaret ofst Or a few weeks back. She was in Washington, d C. And obviously she's focusing on a large part on on US tech companies. Is there a lessoned appetite for for deals in Europe or in the UK at this point as a result

of Brexit? Well, actually, um, the deal of in the third quarter Europe was down more than any any other market if you look, if you think it's Asia and America's and Europe. It was down almost fifteent year on urine on a dollar basis. Um. Again, the number of transactions wasn't down quite so much. That stays pretty constant, and that the value is driven by these big deal of things over five billion and that sort of thing. I think there's a sense that it's probably not going

to make that big of a difference. Yeah, there will be a thousand bankers moved from London to frank It or someplace like this by that, by a financial institution or two. But in terms of the overall activity, there's a sense and maybe we're kidding ourselves that maybe it was more sound and fury than reality. Um. And frankly, the EU was doing it in general pretty well economically, and there's in terms of growth rate and all the

rest of it. So that you're seeing a lot of activity again, thinking about activity, and it comes through the railed UH announcement about a rail deal that was last week. That's an evidence there's plenty to do there. So um, I think people are pretty optimistic. I think the concern is is Asia. I really do Bob, thank you so much for being with a great in Your time is

very valuable. Bob Bills by a syllable issue Ago David, his time is extremely generous of you to be with a sense surveillance on television and in a radio, and particularly your perspective there of your colleague in Atlanta. You're gonna dash out the door. Good to see. Take care you try to move to things uh more holiday and more timely on the calendar, which is finally degree in

New York ended a few days ago, joining us. Uh. Stephen bar with p WC Steve let me ask with an open question October one, October two, how does the holiday season shape up? Yeah, it's really looking like it's going to be a great holiday both for retailers and consumers. We're about to release our holiday outlook which tells us, which tells us that the majority of consumers about are going to spend more or the same as they did

last year. And that's a six in works. But being them to spend about six percent more than they did last year on average overall about eighty nine dollars sounds great. It's all going to go to Amazon or to some of it actually migrate to the brick and mortars store with two down, empty and vacant. Right now, which way is that going to till? Yeah, we're we're actually looking for it to be both. UM a great holiday for in store and online. No, no question that we're going

to see the majority of the growth online. But the retailers have really come back with propositions that say they can keep the store relevant, especially in those areas with key demographics. And so for the first time in a long time, we're looking for stores to have a very productive holiday season. How did they go about keeping those stories relevant? You write about I love this phrase holiday

felicity at stories? How does it? How does a traditional retailer get people to walk in You went to my house, We've got felicity. Yeah, it's yeah, it's Look, the malls UM of the past is long dead. And while we've seen as a massive shift to more entertainment and dining and so so the stores UM or the malls of the past that we're really a destination primarily for apparel.

UM now are a destination for community, with dining and entertainment options making up nearly a quarter a quarter of the overall property and We've also seen the great mall operators adapt and they're doing things to draw Gen Z and and young millennials with things like uber lounges and really just making it convenient for UM that that next set of shoppers in the younger generations to care about

the mall. Again. Interestingly enough, UM, we did a survey of of young Gen zs and they told us their favorite place to shop is actually you store versus online. You wrote about the move here for people to spend more this holiday season, I think gout by a six. That's your your prediction. Is that going to be across the board? In other words, do you have all strata of consumers indicating that they're going to be paying more

this holiday season? Yeah, Well, the good news is that consumers over sixty that earn over sixty tho dollars a year are are going to spend more this year. But those consumers UM that that earned less than sixty thou dollars, they're they're still struggling. And so the median income for for UM all households in the US is around fifty nine thou dollars, but it takes about sixty six thousand dollars for a family afford to cover their basic needs. So it's just, you know, we just haven't seen the

wage growth. While it's better than it's been um, you know in recent past, it just isn't enough to push those folks over. So we really do expect that the higher end consumer, and we also expect and older crowd to be the crowd that's driving the overall. Okay, I'm glad it doesn't identify me. Um. You know, when when I look at this, Steve, I think beg EON's and it was a Sears robot catalog that drove the dialogue. And then maybe with nostalgia and their bankruptcy, it was

Toys r Us. Everybody wandered into Toys r Us for a frenzy of one hour shopping or two hour shopping. In case of the growth family, What's what's the emotion now behind all your economics, What's what's the emotion of the holiday moment? Yeah? Well, I think that emotion is driven by different things. I think that when we see, for for the younger generations, their emotion is influenced by social media, and that that social media is generally visual.

So we see we see an interesting split in the analysis where um, for the older crowd, their social media is drive and by things like Facebook, and then for for for the younger generations, it's driven by things like Instagram and YouTube because they're they're far more visual. So and so that's the emotion that was that we're seeing Steve bar Thank you, Steve Barr, Thank you. P WC on retail David YouTube will never replace this, Sears, Roebuck

Christmas candalog page four, silvertone guitars. This is Bloomberg, David Garrett, and Tom Keane here in New York Bloomberg surveillance on Bloomberg Radio. As a reporter in Washington, I relied often on the work the Urban Brookings Tax Policy Center, Howard Gleckman, Len Berman, Donald Marrin as well, who joins us on our phone lines. The Tax Policy Center worked quick after that framework came out last week, delivered an analysis just

couple of days later. The headline here the Text Policy Center estimating that the proposal would reduce federal revenues by two point four trillion dollars over the first ten years and three point two trillion dollars over the subsequent decade. Donald mayn Great to speak with you. And before we dig into that headline number, let me just ask you

about the difficulty of doing this. We look at these nine pages and the unanswered questions there, and how how difficult is it to forecast the ramifications of something like this with that little information. Well, you know, it is difficult. And you'll you'll see that our our report is headlined a preliminary analysis. Uh they're clearly important features that it doesn't include because the administration and Congress have inspelled them

out in any detail. But we've we've seen some of the ideas they've had in previous proposals, and they certainly provided a lot more detail last week. And so this is this is the team's best cut at what we

know about the plan so far. Something we've heard over the week, and they provided detail in that that framework, of course, and we've heard from many of the principles over the course of the week, and Stephen anution, the Treasury Secretary reiterating this is actually going to reduce the deaf Is it square square that with what you found in your preliminary analysis thus far? Uh So, it's exceedingly

difficult to square that. The pieces that we've seen articulated thus far as as he said in the lead in, would reduce revenues by more than two trillion dollars over the next decade. Uh. That doesn't include our estimate of what the macroeconomic effect will be. That's in the works. That just takes longer, so you'll see that soon. But you know, none of the models that the scoring shops here in Washington, US would show you anywhere near you know,

two trillion plus. Coming back from that, we should point out that all of our CBO directors, of various flavors and persuasions, are steamed academics. Mr Mayren no different with his mathematics at a school in Cambridge called Harvard, and then he went he went down the river, up the river. I guess it's down the river, downstream into the economics m I T. And what that tells me done is you know, the glide path. If we start at one point five trillion, I've seen numbers as high as two

point four trillion. First of all, what's the certitude that the number is bigger than one point five trillion? What's the likelihood is always the case at the cost of this thing is a lot bigger than anybody thinks, well, you know, the likelihood is high of what we saw spelled out in detail. But you know, but they did include some language in there about things they could do that might bring in more revenue. Right, So they've talked

about limiting interest deductibility for businesses. Uh, they talked about possibly while they focused on reducing the tax code individual tax code to three brackets, they talked about the possibility of a fourth one on high income folks. Obviously, depending on what numbers you choose for those, you could raise a significant amount of money doing those two things. Okay, well that's the optimistic tech. Let me be more realistic. Do you know of any proof in history that generating

that there's a possibility of generating economic growth, sir? Substantial tax reduction? Oh you are after the car. Yes, is there a theory, but is there a tangible evidence? You know? So, there there's definitely some evidence that links taxes to economic growth, but the magnitudes are just not on the level that you know that the more extreme advocates suggest. You know, when the when the Congressional Budget Office or the Joint Committee on Taxation sit down and analyze, you know, look

at all the evidence and then analyze tax proposals. For ones that are particularly pro growth, they find that sometimes the growth will offset ten fift of the lost revenue, which is helpful and material and something Congress ought to know about, but you know, nowhere near paying for the vast majority of it. Let me ask you what this means for for individuals. Something else that the Principle stressed over the weekend here is everyone's going to get a

tax cut. Looking at your Prelimer analysis, again, that is the case. There are going to be tax cuts for most Americans. That seems it just varies based on what income strata you're in. Yes, it's certainly not everybody, because they're going to be some people who face tax cuts, which I mean taste face tax increases, which is almost inevitable as you make changes to something that's complicated. Uh.

And it also depends when you look. So if you look in the first year all these changes, what hypothetically be in effect, about seventy eight percent of households would see their taxes go down and in about up. But then if you go to the end of the decade, that's down about with a tax cut and about with a tax increase. Because of various features that bite more

as you go through time. Is there a belief among the proponents of this tax legislation that it's what, to use a sophisticated word, you learn in differential equations that it's squishy or is it like the rest of us mere mortals think that actually, bright guys like you and or Zag and hold Seken and in the Great Alice Riddle and the rest of you, you can actually model and count what's going to happen. Which is it is this tangible and pountable model building and analysis or is

it squishy squishy squishy squishy? So it's both, Uh, yes, you know it's I mean the optimistic way we phrase that is that there's art and science. The the things that are spelled out in detail you can model pretty well. Right, So we have you know, a giant tax tax calculator, right, the policy wanks equivalent of turbo tax here um. And you can analyze that using recent data on what people's tax returns look like to get a good first kind

of what things look like. If you make these changes, now it gets you know, now you have to start making assumptions and estimates and predictions about how will people respond and how will the world change in the future, and that becomes you know, less and less precise. Uh. But you know the modeling, I think, you know proprised incredibly useful data information about kind of what you should expect. The ballpark of effects debate, did you in your initial

modeling increase GDP estimates? No? Not in the one that came out Friday. There wasn't time to run the matter model. So that's that's something the team is is working on. Will give you to Wednesday. Don Let me ask you what we've learned about the business side of things. We've focused on personal tax cuts and personal tax reform here when when you look at what's been proposed when it comes to the corporate taxes, what have you learned in

terms of the ramifications of that. Well, so, obviously big cut in the corporate rate right from thirty five down to twenty. Uh. You know, some talk about rolling back tax breaks that the corporations benefit from. The net effect of that would be a significant tax reduction on corporations, with the wild card being what happens with interest deductibility, which is just in there as sort of a placeholder at the moment, But we don't know whether they intend

to do that aggressively or not aggressively. What's the greatest unanswered question you have at this point? Again, the whole thing is in coit. We're going to see it move up to Capitol Hills. Some legislation is going to be built around this this framework, presumably. But as you were doing this analysis, what's the biggest unanswered question? How do the thing that made it most difficult to do the

kind of full analysis you do with the Tax Policy Center. So, I mean the biggest would be, uh, what's going to happen with this hypothetical fourth bracket? Uh? Is there one? Is there? Not there one? Um? And then the issues about pass throughs, Right, so there's there are many businesses in America that don't pay taxes directly themselves, but instead past their income and tax liability through to their through to their owners. The tax proposal would reduce, would cap

the tax rate those folks face at uh. And there's a big unknown about exactly how you draw the line about who qualifies, like do all pass throughs qualify or only a limited sent uh? And there's a big uncertainty about how well you can prevent people from gaming the system, because once you have a rate differential like twenty five for pass throughs and thirty five or more for high income people, a lot of people are going to have an incentive dl LC themselves, and you don't want that

to happen. But we don't know how good a job they're going to be able to do with stopping that. Donald Maren, thank you so much, Former acting director CBO and Urban Institute fellow as well, Dr Marin. Today this was scheduled weeks ago. We must start with an opening comment on this tragedy from someone who knows the power of video. The video of the Jason Aldean concert is extraordinary, Ken Burns joins us. But before we speak of Vietnam,

Ken video can change our social dialogue. With the video that we see of rapid firing into a large crowd, will it change the dialogue of gun legislation? Good morning, Tom, Thank you for having me. This is, of course a very very sad momentum. We'd like to say that a picture is worth a thousand words, and perhaps film and

video amplify that. Unfortunately, I think today we've become kind of numb and annured to this, and I don't think we ever moved the dial either politically or socially, or legislatively or more importantly, you know, emotionally or spiritually on these things, and we've become kind of um numb. And I think that in some ways that the best line or a line of the of the of the inaugural speech in January, this American carnage must stop, was maybe

used prematurely. Kenverns to your acclaimed new video. I think everyone knows the success of it. I go to the imagery, the silver haylide of tri X film that you captured brilliantly. Let me just start with what was it like to see the images that you saw in compiling this versus

what Walter crn Kite told me as a kid. Yeah, you know, I grew up during that time, and Walter Concite I thought was speaking to me, not you, Tom, And so all of these things kind of entered into my consciousness and formed into my conventional I now realized wisdom of very superficial conventional wisdom, and working the last ten years putting it together and trying to connect the dots between these images, these pictures, this extraordinary photography that

did at a time change things. Whether it's the assassination of the North Vietnamese spy Lamb on the streets of Saigon, whether it's Kimfluck, the little girl running naked uh you know, of her body on fire from napalm, whether it's the friend of the shot student at Kent State over his body. All of the images of that war kind of compounded into sort of a mass jumble of impressions, and we spent ten years trying to sort them out. What was true, what was accurate, what's the real story behind it? Is

there a way to provide dimension it? Does contradiction have a role in it, because more often than not, and especially in war, the opposite is also true. And so by triangulating the witnesses Nor Vietnamese soldiers and civilians via con guerrillas, South Vietnamese soldiers and civilians, as well as the whole spectrum of American beliefs, we tried to paint a portrait that might take these images that form in our consciousness and enlarge them and put them into a

better content. We're bringing my colleague David. David, you had an incredible quantity of footage here, and I wonder if you can begin to describe what that process was like, just just making it through all of that, and it certainly brings to front of mind how much of this was available contemporaneously. Yeah, so, David, that's a really good question.

You know, one of the benefits of working in public broadcasting and having enlightened understanding underwriters like Bank of America who said, you know, when we said this is going to be controversial subject, they said, bring it on, bring it on. Better connected as their slogan, and and like the idea of a variety of perspectives. The ten years bought us a lot of time to dive deep into archives. Most people filmmakers are going to take what's on the

top of the table. We could go and ask those archivists, could we get the out takes, could we get the original negative? Could we see this? We could also go to European outlets. We could go to Moscow, we could go to Beijing, we could go to Hanoi. We have some images in there that have never before been seen, and we've been able to to show them to a

great effect. I think David Great and Tom Keene here in New York, Bloombergs surveillance on Bloomberg Radio Pleasure be joined by Ken Burns, the filmmaker Ken Burns, who with Lennovic has created Vietnam An eighteen hour long, a documentary in ten parts on PBS focused on that conflict and kind I want to ask you just how you you you distill all of this to find the principles on

whom you focus. I was particularly moved by a via Mogi Crocker, Denton Crocker, Saratoga Springs, and you talk with his mother, Jean Marie, with with his sister as well, Carol Crocker. How do you find someone like that? How do you find a story that has so many layers and ends up being as moving? Is that one is? Well? You know the key word, David, thank you is is distilled. I think you hit it on the head. Most people assume that you build a film, and you do that,

it's additive, but it's mostly subtractive. So we will collect thousands of hours of footage, tens of thousands of still photographs, hundreds of hours of testimony, transcripts of of interviews, etcetera, etcetera. So we just cast our net as far and wide as we can, and in the course of it you read an unpublished memoir of of a gold star mother.

It's very moving, and wonder whether she would be willing to share on camera the worst experience of her life, and if her daughter might also be willing to do that. They they were, of course reluctantly, with great reticence and and and generosity, and gave a great gift to all of us, not just us as filmmakers, but us as a country, because the half life of grief is endless, and when you see somebody who has negotiated it, however

income completely, it can be a big help. There's a moment at the end of our section on the Wall where John Musgrave, one of our interviews a marine has gone through unbelievable transformations in the course of the film, says when he got to the wall, that this is going to save lives. It would be very presumptuous to put our work of art on the same level as my a lens extraordinary thing. But I hope that in some ways people will begin to talk with each other

to themselves about what took place. And I think Jean Murray Crocker and Carol Crocker have done us all an enormous service by sharing with you us the painful details of the loss of their son and brother. Mogi. What's the negotiation, like the conversation like with somebody who is a parent, who's lost a child or had someone who went right up to nearly committing a suicide. These are

incredibly emotional moments you capture. How do how do you get people to to consent to to go down that path again, to to re engage with the well, you know, I'm not sure that they we we even know or they even know what kind of path we're going to go down. For us, we have to be honorable. There's

no kind of gotcha journalism here, There's no aha. It's looking for telltale signs and and maybe listening that much harder and pursuing something that caused a twitch in the cheek, and and doing it, you know, gently, uh, in a way that's not going to upset their own fragile you know infrastructure. That's a really really important thing that we have to learn is is to listen and to be prepared to hear these things from them and and not just go after a list of questions. You can't to

parallel this. Whether you're magnificent the Civil War, which some of us are embarrassed to say, we've seen five times. The Battle of Casson was to go back to Mr Cronkite, something daily that we heard about. And this is a six month battle, truly a battle almost in the John Keegan sense. What did you learn in piecing together Ducto and Casson? What was the thing that came away? It was totally removed. We didn't know about it except the

nightly news. And yet here was something out of another time, a John Keegan kind of another war, Yes, exactly. And so I think that you know, and and it has it harkens back to the Alamo and harkens back other things. There's a moment when John Musgrave, the marine I was talking about in his experience up an I Corps where where Cassan is, he was in a different place called Kandian. He said, you know, war is a real estate business, but it wasn't here. You don't like to be wounded

taking the same mountain again. And I think that in some ways with regard to Casson, we could grasp it because here we were in a place a fort. It was like the Indian Wars or the Alamo and we're being attacked. So Americans could sort of wrap themselves around the Kegan esque aspects of that, and ducto for most of the action of the Vietnam War, though it's something else.

It's send man a patrol, sometimes as little as a patrol out to be ambushed, to draw fire, to be bait as they themselves, the army guys and the Marines set it. And so these are harder battles to understand.

And when you take a mountain, a Hamburger hill and backwards uh in time uh at great cost, and then abandon it right away, you begin to see the effect that it has not just on an American public, but on the morale of the soldiers who are being asked to take or retake, or or take yet again a hill that has no strategic places, just where the enemy is. The enemy also understands this, and so they are willing.

They've they've made a huge commitment of lives that we will not count the cost, their leader lays one said, which is a terrifying thing, meaning they will send you know, many thousands of men to their deaths in order to lure Americans into these kind of battles in which they then blend back into the into Cambodia or something like this. So John George Marshall said, uh at the end of World War Two that a democracy could be in a war for ten years and then the people would get

really unhappy about it. So it may be speaking a kind of truth from the ancient voices of our past generals to what happened in Vietnam in the time we have left you. Let me ask you about how the way that you make these films has changed. My wife and I sat down and watched this contiguously, night after night after night, and we came to the realization just because of talking to friends that some had binge watched or watched it, you know, in large chunks. Others we're

gonna wait and watch it later on. It's not a moment in the way that it was with the Civil War, tim reference, not just a moment ago. How does that change the way that you pursue making a film, the way that we watch movies, the way that we watched documentaries and television programs to do that's a great question. Again. I mean, we don't change the way we do it.

We want to still keep it very process oriented. We wish we should were still shooting film where we could hold the damn things in our hand instead of all of us having a mouse and a keyboard and all of that sort of stuff. But we do have to understand. I always watch it every time as broadcast. I am there in my living room alone, uh, you know, or with loved ones watching the film that I've made and I've seen a hundred times, but I want to watch

it when everyone else is. But you have to understand in this new agent, everybody got it are Underwriter's Bank of America, the Better Angels Society, which is a group of people across the political spectrum of people of means who have contributed to this film. Which was very heartening that we could have that kind of support. Uh, you know, the various foundations, the government branding agencies all understood we have a new paradigm. So you do have that broadcast,

but it is available for streaming. The DVDs are released two days after the series starts broadcasting. I'm meeting friends who finished it last night. Tom, you know who s this is like the Ken we know and love, you know, but so people are and right now it's going to be launched Tomorrow Night as a weekly series on on PBS. It's gonna take us almost at Christmas time, and um, that's the new paradigm. You've got to have it on

every single platform in every way. But it doesn't alter fundamentally how you make the film, Ken Burns, I downloaded off Amazon Video if that helps your data points as you can, Ken Burns, congratulations and thank you so much. It is simply the Vietnam War. Thanks for listening to the Bloomberg Surveillance podcast. Subscribe and listen to interviews on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, or whichever podcast platform you prefer. I'm on Twitter at Tom Keene, David Gura. Is that David Gura?

Before the podcast? You can always catch us worldwide. I'm Bloomberg Radio