Ken Burns

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Hi, my name is Ken Burns and I feel like I'm not sure if you're hopeful about being Conan O'Brien's friend. Well Ken you shouldn't be because this is the takedown of Ken Burns. Right. You have coasted way too long. Fifty years of coasting. Uh just oh everybody loves their Ken Burns. That's why all the henchmen are here. Get a boss. Get a boss.

I have with me two people who don't read. I'm pretty sure they don't write. We read magazines. Yeah oh I'm sorry, I forgot about us magazine. That does count as my nineteen nineties is showing. Uh Hey there. Welcome to Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend, joined by Sonom Obsession. Hi. Matt Gorley is out. He is on paternity leave, and we wish him and his lovely family the best. God I'm smooth. And then

David Hopping joining us. How are you, David? I'm good. How are you? Uh Sona, you said that you uh heard from your father. Yes. Gil. Gil. Uh was this yesterday or the other? This was last night, yeah. Last night he called you and he was unhappy. What happened? He texted me, he was angry. He saw a clip online and he got angry about something I said. And, you know, my parents are, you know, they're traditional people. Yeah. And I am, I'm I have I got a mouth. And

Why are you laughing so hard? No, but you know what, Sona, you're a modern woman of the world. Thank you. You've been here, you've been there, you've been to Porter Square, you've been you've seen it all, some say you've done it all and Your father was born in a very small village. Yes, he was. Where was this? This was in in Turkey, what used to be Armenia, thank you very much. But yeah, he was born in Turkey and he um was in a small village

immigrated here. They're traditional people. My parents. And I say a lot of things on this podcast that are not traditional things. And so yesterday he texted me and he's like, I can't believe you talk like that on the on the podcast. And he said, You you you're a mother, you have kids. Like he he went on for and I was like, Oh my god, my dad's actually upset. Yeah. But I

couldn't think of which clip he would have been upset about. I say Jizz so many times on this podcast. You say I talk about dicks. Yeah. I talk about vaginas. I talk about like heated rivalry all the time. I couldn't, I was like Telling tech, I was like, did I is there one thing that was a great It's like saying to Santa Claus, thanks for the gift. And Santa's like, What? You know what I mean? And then he's gotta think about

The fifty-five billion gifts he's given out. Right? But you are yeah, you're the Santa Claus of filth. You're just constantly It's butts, it's buns. Uh you know, you you love it. Uh, and so what did you say? Did you defend yourself to your dad? No, I was just like, I I really needed to figure out which thing upset him. So I said, which clip?

And then he said me, I appeared on my friend Rick's podcast. I know Rick, yeah. Rick Glassman. And he I was on his podcast and he we released a clip not even from this one. So I'm like, clearly he never watches this podcast. 'Cause otherwise he'd be really pissed. Yeah. It was that podcast. And I was But what were you talking about? I said the I said the word fuck like twice.

Okay. And my dad was upset about it, I shouldn't. So what is it? So he can't ever listen to this podcast. Never. Because I saw some of you with Rick and it was very tame compared to what you do every day here. Yes. Now let me paint a picture for the people listening. Uh is

Uh very distinguished, very handsome. Yes. Uh an older gentleman. Yes. He's got a uh big white mustache. Okay. No, d does he not? I knew when you were going to the mustache. I know I'm just saying Yes, he ha he's always had a mustache. Does he not look like he looks a lot like the guy who carves Pinocchio, Geppetta?

He does. Does he not? Does he bear a resemblance to Geppetto? Just say. Yeah, a little. He's a little Geppetto-esque. Yeah. Have you ever noticed that your brother has hinges where his joints should be? Have you ever noticed that? And does your remember when you were growing up, your brother would say, I wish I could be a real boy? Do you remember? Do you remember? Oh, you're you're actually asking. I'm saying your father carved your brother that he is in fact Cippetto. Um

And I do hope that someday Danny becomes a real boy. You know what? That is yes. I'm fine with my dad you saying these things because my dad does not watch this podcast. Yes, obviously. You are uh you are just uh I'm thinking of like a sprinkler shooting water. You're a sprinkler that just shoots. Is saturated with filth. Why are you acting like you're an innocent guy? Who which one of us has a voice for their penis? Not me. What's your penis' voice like? Hey, leave me out of it.

Hey everybody back home! Cut it out. I was just in here and these briefs minding my own business. My penis is always reading a tiny copy of The New Yorker Oh, this is great. There's some good cartoons in this one. Um This is your you created this environment. It's got little glasses. Anyway, that's not the point. The point is

that your parents need to accept who you are. I know. I think that's important. Yes. They need to see the real you. And I know you get into it with your mom a lot. You guys have your differences, because I think that you were quite um

I think you were a a lot to handle when you were growing up, were you not? I was. Yeah. Yeah. I was. And how are you and Nadia doing these days? We're cool. We I love her and I love my dad. Of course you do. And I do there are times when I say things where I think, Oh man, their friends will listen to this. One day, but then I kind of forget what I Say

And also, I mean, my dad like he was just like tone it down a little and I was like, I don't know how to do that. I don't know how to do that. You can't do that, you know. I will point out that you're usually the one that brings it up. You know, the topic is not dicks and then you chime in a little bit and say, I've seen a dick or two That's not what happens. You bring I'm usually talking about Woodrow Wilson. And then you say, Didn't he have a cock?

And I'm like, Well, I guess he did. Uh but you know what I mean? That's usually how it goes. So this is on you and you'll have to pay for it. I like poopoo pee pee humor.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I do. I that's my I have to say I can relate somewhat because um my parents very, very staunch, good, old school Catholics. Yes. And they watched every episode of my show starting in nineteen ninety three. And what a cavalcade. of horrific sights, sounds, and smells. Yeah. And um and they were always They would always just my you know, my mother would say

Uh we do a show with the masturbating bear and then, you know, a talking whatever money shot money shot Lincoln and all this stuff. And my mother would say, Well I just thought you looked lovely last night. That tie you were wearing. And she would always go to the thing that she c because Sh and so she never, not once, said, Oh, you know, you gotta stop that. Not once. She knew I was bringing in the Benjamins. And that meant they'd get a ham for Christmas. Anyway.

Uh hey Gil, we love you. And and uh your your daughter's doing a great job and um I agree with you. She's uh She's horrible. Okay. This is the end. My dad didn't say I was horrible. No, but I d I also give him a lot of credit. He carved Yes. How many times in my life have we been in a restaurant or anywhere and I have secretly taken my napkin, scrunched it up.

And turned it into a giant mustache, put it under my nose and said, Hey, Sona Gill wants to talk to you. Yes, yes. And I have a maybe two and a half foot long uh white mustache under my nose. I don't think we've ever had a meal without you doing without me doing it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's like you wearing glasses, not being able to do a pillow. If there's and if there's no uh if I didn't have a napkin for any reason they hadn't put out the napkin yet or there was a mistake

I would tear the tablecloth off the table, smashing all the plates, put it under my nose and say, your father's here to speak to you. Yeah. That's the beauty of our friendship. You'll never be able to watch that. Um or it's a it's a podcast. You really should be listening. Here we go. Today's guest is one of the most influential documentary filmmakers of all time. His latest docuseries, The American Revolution, is available to stream on PBS dot org and the PBS app and

He's the guest. He is the guest. He is the guest. And I'm curious to hear what he has to say about Cox and Jizz and Butts and Buns and Pooh Poo and Pee-Pee. This wonderful wonderful historian who has brought the fabric of what is America into our lives. Refreshed it. And uh is uh just the very best that America has to offer poop.

Ken, I am thrilled that you're here. We've spoken a couple of times, but your series on the American Revolution uh was an absolute delight. loved it and fascinating for me because I grew up in Massachusetts. That happened. Right outside Boston in Brookline, Mass. And there's a couple of times when you're explaining um the the Siege of Boston where you cut to a map and in the slight low left corner it says Brookline and shows a few hills.

and I stand up like a nerd and cheer and I'm like, Brooklyn and then try to act like I can take credit, though my people were still firmly in Ireland at the time. So uh so there's no way I can claim any credit for uh if you look in the bigger maps as they pull out in New Hampshire, there's always Walpole, this tiny little village. The only reason why I justified it, I've lived there.

for forty seven years, is that Walpole Gazette was this very well respected, well read, up and down the colony sort of rag sheet that, you know, had opinions and thoughts and and and and was Aaron Powell And I saw what you were doing and I thought it was pathetic. Point to make. Everything that everyone's dealing with in your series are things that we are dealing with now. And at the time I don't know when is this

No, your I'm I know yours is out, but I'm sorry about this. Yeah, this podcast. I was I was told this was live. Yeah, yeah. This is going to be a few years. I did Joe Rogan, it was live. No, no, it wasn't. No, no, Joe Rogan's a different situation. No, uh Joe Rogan's different. He's brave, he puts it out live. We are we sit with these are sent to a laboratory where they're scrubbed of any opinions or um you know possible uh woke diatribes.

So uh that's that's not gonna happen here. But you know, at the time and I'm sure there'll be another crisis when this is airing, but at the time that this drops, this episode, um, will be uh about a month from now, right? This episode's probably gonna be two to three months from now. Two to three months? Why are we even here? This is insane. We have a very packed release schedule, but we wanted to make sure this

happened. Okay. Well I would like to I mean I was really excited about this one. Well I hate the other guests we're talking to. I mean I loathe them. Jesus the one that whatever's one is out now or the one last week or the one two weeks from now, these people are my enemies. Good friends of yours? Uh dreadful people. I was excited about this. And now you tell me that it's coming out a year from April?

The release schedule is always movable if we if we wanna The two hundred and fifty six is really important too. I said, let's do this. Look, look, look, we're gonna be celebrating two fifty if we survive. until twenty thirty nine, which is when the US government starts. So don't get me started because there's there's uh uh thirty one which is Yorktown, there's thirty-three, which is the British leave. Well we are taping this

Yes, uh as we approach the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of our nation. With hope. Um, and um one of the things I've always loved about history is that it constantly reminds me we've been here before. Yeah. So this is the thing. We like to say history repeats itself. It never does. No event has happened twice. Ecclesiastes, which is the Old Testament said what has been will be again, what has been done will be done again. There's nothing new under the sum. Which means

human nature doesn't change. So that human nature is gonna superimpose itself over the seemingly random chaos of events and we're gonna see themes and recurring echoes and what Mark Twain called rhymes. I have never worked on a film, whether it's about the Brooklyn Bridge or jazz music or whatever, that isn't rhyming constantly in the present. And I used to have a stump speech going off

for whatever film it was, I'll give you one. This is twenty eleven. I said, what if I told you uh that I've been working for years about a film about a single issue political campaign that metastasized with horrible unintended consequences. That it was about the demonization of recent immigrant groups to the United States, that it was about a presidential election cycle with

unbelievable violence and kind of rancor uh rancor and and and sort of muck raking and stuff. And that it it also represent a whole group of people who felt they had lost control of their country and wanted to take it back. You'd say

Wow, you're talking about the Tea Party or th this and that. I said, These are only four themes of my film on Prohibition and they go, But what about the flappers and the gangsters? I said they're but the more interesting thing is this underlying resonance. The thing you have to do as a filmmaker though. in order for the thing to speak more directly.

is to is to be disciplined, like Odysseus tied to lash to the mast, where you where you can see hear that th those echoes, but you don't go, Oh, isn't this so much like today? I mean the revolution has a failed invasion of Canada. It has a standing army that precipitates. This war in Boston. continent wide epidemic or epidemics plural.

uh that kills more people than the revolution and also uh engenders a huge debate on the part of Washington about inoculating the army. And finally he decides, which many historians think is the best military decision he made. So

You know, plus ça change as the French who came to our aid and without whose help we don't have a country would say. Again, watching that and as you said, smallpox there's a there's a that we're struggling with today, which is a little mind blowing to me as the son of a a scientist and physician. I I have a hard time with that. But um, you know, I so many people will say to me, Oh, but you know, now we have the internet, and I think, yeah, that's

True, but they had broadsides back then. They had they had their version of the internet. They had people saying irresponsible inflammatory things all the time and everybody's reading it. Sam Sam Adams is a failure as a brewer. And a tax collector. Uh but he's really good as a propagandist who says My job is to keep my fellow citizens alive to their grievances. Sound familiar? They're people today within whose interest it is to keep up the divisions.

between people rather than show the fact that these f divisions, which accounts for your and my fifty-one, fifty-two percent. are a mile wide but a kind of an inch thick. Yeah. And that what you want, the ability to transcend the dialectic of yes and no, one and zero, red state, blue state, is to tell a good story.'Cause it has a kind of

benign Trojan horse effect. It kind of r says oh yeah, this is who we were, this is who we are. It's very, very similar. Same same degree of virtue and venality, same degree of

Generosity and greed, same degree of, you know, make up your own alliteration. Aaron Ross Powell Yeah. And I think uh you know, when I grew up there used to be this kind of hagiography about the American Revolution and we would get these textbooks, you know, George Washington

chop down the cherry tree and I cannot tell a lie. And you know, these people were represented us as the uh represented to us as these marble men who were infallible. And then what I've loved about my lifelong obsession with history is you see, George Washington is a very impressive man in a lot of ways. He's also a slave holder. We we always have to accept

that both sides of the story. We both we have to accept that. And I like my, you know, these humans to be human beings. And I think that's the only way we can actually take a measure of inspiration from them. If they're just the gods. then they don't do something. We just feel like mortals. We're flawed. We know that. they're not, they're perfect, they'd never tell a lie. But I think we go back to heroism. The Greeks were trying to talk about it as something that was a war within people.

between warring factions, you know, some you know, that Achilles had his heel and his hubris. to go along with his great strengths and that what they're setting up are stories good stories that remind us that we are all likewise, um, divided within ourselves and we have chances to sort of tilt towards that virtue or tilt towards that venality. And so I think

With the revolution, it's understandable why we've made it bloodless and gallant. You know, we we got some big ideas in Philadelphia. We don't want them to be diminished, which we think if we admit This is a bloody civil war, a bloody revolution, and a bloody world war, the fourth or fifth over the prize of North America.

And that George Washington, the man without whom we don't have a country, and there's very few times in world history where you can say it's literally one person molds and together. Deeply flawed as you point out, rash, rides out on the battlefield, risking his life, which means the entire cause. uh makes a couple of really bad tactical responsibilities. Really screws up in New York. Really screws up in New York and at Brandywine and a couple of other places where the just the luck doesn't fall.

But he's able to inspire people to fight in the dead of night, pick subordinate talent without any worry about whether they're better generals than him. Just happy to have Yeah. Now you're gonna say talk about you're gonna say, Oh, this is insane kind of but I I'm very uh like Washington. I um first of all I'm tall very tall. Very tall. He was maybe six six two

Six two. I've made sure everyone here is inoculated against smallpox. Right. Um I I pick um looking around for the people I've picked who I think are good. Okay. Well this isn't a good example. This room. Oh man. No, but I think I'm I'm very much like Washington. Um that they were not Georgians or New Hampshire.

But Americans and deferring to Congress is that he gave up his power twice. So these people are gonna really be so proud of you when you just walk away. Well I don't like the way this has gone. Där det händer precis ja ingenting. E stralla!

I do want to say one thing about Washington that's long uh interested me. He was kinda wide in the hips, wasn't he? Kind of a kind of a pear shaped guy. I'm sorry, but he was. And I hate to body shame our first president and someone to know. There are no photographs and you gotta trust Gilbert Stewart or Copley or others to do. He really he portrays Washington as Um no I'm sorry. Those are just things I needed to get out there. Now Ken, you're probably regretting being here.

You got enough friends. You're saying, well, how did this turn this quickly? Um but uh How did you get me into this? You know, more publicists have been fired after a Conor Bryan needs a friend taping. It's always the first thing. Why? Whose idea? You said

Um, we do have something we have a few things in common. One thing is that I read hi I'm addicted to reading history and my wife loves fiction. And she's always trying to get me to read fiction as if eating my vegetables. Right. You know, eat your vegetables. And I just have this burning desire to know what what happened. And if she's reading this wonderful, powerful novel, I'm like, yeah, but what happened? That's just made up.

And so she has wonderful photos of me when we've gone on vacations over our long marriage on different beaches in a different beautiful settings, reading the most turgid dark about, you know, uh the gulag. Yeah. I'm sitting there with like a rum punch next to me. But she could be reading, you know, Schulze Nezen. No, no. She's very well read and she's always reading um you know she's reading great And she has convinced me. She's she's gotten me to read it. But it's not a choice.

because you're gonna lose Shakespeare if you're not gonna let people make stuff up, right? You're gonna lose a lot of wonderful insight that comes from whatever the license is that people take to to sort of focus on our interior lives and why we're here and what we're supposed to be doing and making of it. Yeah. I have to say even uh uh one of my uh probably my favorite book is a historical novel, um, The Killer Angels.

Which is this is what got me into the to do the Civil War. I finished reading that Is that true? Let me tell you this. I gave it David McCullough gave it to me. I finished reading it on Christmas Day nineteen eighty four. I was visiting my dad in Michigan and I said, I know what I'm gonna do for my next

film and he said, What's that, son? And I said, The Civil War And he goes, What part? And I said, All of it. And he just shook his head and walked out of the room. Yeah. You know? Yeah. And um it was it was because the Civil War had been looming over all the subjects of the film I'd made in really bizarre ways on the on the Brooklyn Bridge, on the Shakers.

on the Statue of Liberty, on on the Congress, on Thomas Hart Benton, on on all the stu Huey Long, all of the stuff I had done and that or were doing and that I just couldn't figure out that this seemed to be, as Shelby Foote once said, you know, it's a American history is this clear river that flows into a bloody lake that flows out clear again. Not true, but the idea that everything has to pass through the Civil War was

important to it. So yeah, I mean I kill her angels. Have you read Uh The Raven by Marcus James? I have not. Very antiquated uh book, uh um nineteen twenties. He won the Pulitzer Prize I think for this or another one. He did a biography first on Andrew Jackson, but then he did one that The Raven is on Sam Houston. And there is so much that happens to Sam Houston before he's even

heard of the word Texas. I mean he is this close to the presidency. He's sort of holding the governorship uh while Andrew Jackson is is uh at president, he's gonna be the next. President for sure he marries this young girl, his wife, and at some moment she leaves him. We do not know to this day why she did. Something sexual, an old lover, whatever it was. He resigned the governorship, he went to what is now Memphis, swam across the Mississippi

and became big drunk, a kinda dangerous loose cannon Indian agent across the Mississippi, and he still hasn't heard. He's had fought duels in in Congress. I mean it's just about if somebody gave me a hundred and eighty million dollars and said you had to do a feature film, I'd do the life of Well you know it's

There's so many things that really happened in our history and just in history in general that if you wrote it as a screenplay, someone would say, Yeah. Avatar is more believable than this. You know what I mean? Uh this is you got a little crazy here when he swims across the river and you think, no, no, this is all true. And and I think that's what's always attracted me So much to it. My dad was really into history and I got into it and I realized, oh, it's just stories. And you know, Sona's w

Stone's always giving me a hard time. You always make fun of me for reading so much history. Well, you read a lot of history, but like you don't read like fifty shades of gray, for instance. I've recommended books. to you and you completely ignore me. Have you read Fifty Shades of Grey? Okay. This is your next this is your next documentary, Kat. I did the blue and the gray, but I No, no. It's like the blue and the gray, but a little different. Imagine the Civil War with

Spanking. Uh yeah. Um Shelby Shelby Foot said Shelby's Food said to me once. I was struggling over how to tell something and he goes how to tell the like a very complicated thing between Chancellorsville, Vicksburg and Gettysburg and And he just said God is the greatest dramatist, meaning s don't stop doing what everybody else does, which is do either all of Vicksburg before Gettysburg or do all of Gettysburg after Vicksburg. You divide it up and say when it happened, you know, and just

Stop and go Tell what happened Tell what happened. And then he said, just think about it. Um Lee surrenders to Grant and a few days later, Lincoln, who's been working eighteen hours a day, has enough time to go to the theater. I mean I I've had a few projects w which shall remain nameless with various places in this town where people are wanted to adapt something we've done. And the stuff that's good is the stuff that's true and the stuff that's made up

Is this stuff that just c doesn't work? It doesn't work. You could say he would never say that or he would never do that or why did you need to add that? Because there's is already a life that has that kind of If you brought it to a producer, they go, that can't possibly have happened. Like the brook building of the whole story of the building of the Brooklyn Bridge, which was my first film that PBS showed, was exactly that. You could not make it up.

Yeah. I like anything that makes you stop because I spent so much of my life in New York City living there. And every time I passed the Brooklyn Bridge. I think about what went into making that. And it used to be just this

thing. It's a Brooklyn Bridge. And you we can all do that, but when you realize that this is before people know what happens when you submerge humans you know at great depth. Yes. And you put them in these caissons and you submerge them down, but they don't know And and people are dying these horrible deaths, all the thought that went into it and the lives that went into it. Um and then what it meant when it was completed and it's beautiful.

And so I just appreciate when I read history, one of the things it does is it usually makes me a little more optimistic, which is a strange thing to say because most of the history I'm reading is very, you know, many dark things happen.

But I meet a lot of young people who have this attitude that these are end days and the the world is on fire and it's all over for us. I had a friend in the financial industry in in two thousand and eight in the fall said, This is a depression. And I said, you know. in our depression in many cities in America. The animals in the zoo were shot.

and the meat distributed to the poor. When that happens, I'll agree we're in a thing. To me the optimism is a natural recourse because you've you've seen, I mean, There's something unprecedented about the level of the perfidy and where it's taking place at this moment. But I've seen it in the story of Huey Long. I've seen it in in other places. And so you just realize You know, you wanna be on guard. You just you know, that other forty nine percent is talking really loudly, but you you can't

Aaron Powell Yeah. And it's also uh it's like a friend that can calm you down and give you a little bit of perspective. when things are very dark, I've had so many people say to me, It's never been worse in this country than it is now and I'll divided in the revolution Okay Um, d have you heard of the Civil War?

And do you know what was going on in the Civil War and was going on in Vietnam? But we we have a lot of work to do and we have to be on guard and we have to speak up, but there's so much to be hopeful about. And that's needs to get out there. And I think one of the things that I've liked so much about your work is that it's taking whether it's jazz or baseball, uh, you're taking these things that are a really important part of America and who we are.

and you're telling us about this wonderful gift, but at the same time you're telling us all the darkness that's involved. You're just telling the truth. You're not trying to push it one way or the other. Yeah. Calling balls and strikes. And uh I always

walk away feeling this sense of nourishment that I've been taken care of. We live in a world and that waitress and so many people are it's a highlight reel. That's all it is. So Babe Ruth, to take somebody ancient in baseball, only hits home runs. A right highlight reel. Babe Ruth struck out almost three times as many times as he as he hit a home run. Um he also comes up once every nine times at bat.

Which means that sometimes everything falls to a middle infield or a second baseman. The recent seventh game of the World Series was exactly that case where the big the big superstars didn't do the thing that the second baseman did and that was the difference.

And I think that's a really good simplistic analogy uh to history. You've gotta call balls and strikes. Um, and you have to be able to understand. I mean, you see the ball players who all they hit the home run and they cross home play it and they think God for delivering that. They never do that when they hit into a game-ending double play. Right. Right. So if there is that overshadowing. Yeah. I've and I want to see people doing that.

Striking out and going, I defy you, God You know, the only stuff I've ever seen is Pedro Martinez is is pulled off the mound when the Red Sox are beginning to lose something and he looks up as he's being pulled off. I've never seen I talked to him about it, Never seen anybody do it. But you go back to the revolution, most of the founders become, particularly Jefferson Diaz.

They believe that there is some sort of supreme being, supreme architect, divine providence, the supreme architect of the universe, whatever they call it, who is disinterested in the affairs of us. And it and makes no distinction between faith. What an unbelievably great way to understand it. So it's my obligation

to sort of be better, pursue happiness was not objects in a marketplace of things, but lifelong learning in a marketplace of ideas. It to be more virtuous, to earn the right of citizenship, but then also present myself as moving closer. Through my actions. to whatever that higher being is. It's a really great way to conduct yourself.

And they also understood the first amendment, which we say free speech and because of Minneapolis, you know, right to protest and assembly, the number one thing is we shall make no establishment of a religion. Every other country on earth had been born with a a set official religion. Here's the stamp. And we didn't have it. And it has been one of the blessings for us. And we

speak about the political benefits and their their their legion. This is the enlightenment applied to of a physical thing, a government.

But it's also the religious thing in which you're just trying to pull the fuel ra rods out of what everybody does is they make a they. of them. It's the it's the it's the playbook of the authoritarian. This is the bad, the the radical, this or the cause they are the cause of all our enemy within, you know, for Hitler it was the Jews and the Jehovah's Witness and

homosexuals and and and Marxists and I mean Bolsheviks and whatever it might be. Everybody looks to say it's them. And w you know, I've made films about the US. But I've also made films about us, right? That's it. There's an intimacy there as well as a majesty and complexity and Even controversy to the US. But the thing I've known after doing this for fifty plus years is there is no them. There's no them. No them. Yeah. And and and our obligation is to try to remember

To tell people there's no them in some way, in story form. And that's what you were talking, you're just leading it all. sense of Just like it was before. And just like it was before is very much like what's happening now. What's also If you don't read history or you think you're you're not interested

There's this belief that the way things are now is the way they've always been, also in a in a inaccurate way. So there's this notion I think a lot of young people probably think, well the Republican Party has always meant um h has always been um f tied to like fundamental Christianity. And I think no, no, no. They would have been uh I mean for a long time that is exactly uh the the Republican Party and Republicans Start from the beginning of the party's establishment would have been kind of

horrified by that idea that it that we were tied to that. Do you know what I mean? So that's a more of a recent invention. And the just twist. I mean by W there was the last Cabot Lodge to run against a Kennedy in or anybody in was sixty two when Ted Kennedy took the seat vacated by the Senate seat in Massachusetts and he lost.

And um he he loved Ted Kennedy. He said, Yeah, we voted for the same things. I don't think I disagreed with him on anything. I voted for civil rights. And you think, you know, wait a second. The Republican Republican Party was founded. in eighteen fifty four in a schoolhouse in Ripon, Wisconsin,

to end slavery. The Whig Party had died. They were looking out of the ashes to start something. They put up a candidate, John C. Fremont, the Pathfinder. In fifty six he loses. And then this guy, this bizarre Tall, thin lawyer, prone to bouts of debilitating depression.

wins the election in eighteen sixty forty percent of the vote as the beginning of the Republican Party as a national force, the most successful party, unfortunately also because it often tacked to different places and and basically gets is really good at convincing people to vote against their own interests. I mean, that's been the last fifty years of the Republican Party, but I mean up until when when Johnson took Kennedy's civil rights, which Kennedy couldn't have passed.

took it and got it through and then the Voting Rights Act. He knew he was losing the South. But he'd you he was a Southerner Democrat. You woke up on on January uh or you woke up on election day and you had every one of the eleven states of the former Confederacy. In the Democratic Party comp. You could count on those electoral votes. And now you wake up on election day and the Republicans count on it.

Uh Ronald Reagan began his traditional post-Labor Day campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi. That's in Choctaw County. Um he did not go there to honor Goodwin, Cheney and Shermer, the three civil rights people who were murdered there. He went and began within the first few paragraphs in to talk about states' rights, which was virtue signaling. I don't know virtue's the right word, but signaling to his audience. And then one by one you watch

You've already seen it happen. The former states of the Confederacy have been solidly anti-Republican because they were trying to promote racial equality. switch over. And it's just it's been it's breathtaking to watch. just the changes that the just the two parties, let alone the various three parties that kinda like fish live parasitically off the various parties. It's it's a wonderful, dynamic, fluid thing. Harry Truman said the only thing that's really new is the history you don't know.

That's really great. I mean confounding thing'cause we live in this narcissistic present. So therefore we're all chicken littles, the sky is falling, it's worse than it's it ever could be. And you don't have the agency to pull yourself out of the nosedive that you're you're put yourself into. Well, there's and and this is uh There's never been a uh what I one of the sentiments I agree with is there's never been a better time. To be alive than right now.

And uh just the only time to be alive right now. Yeah. But you know, I'll have people say, Well, come on, Conan, things are really bad. Why do you think it's uh give me one reason why Uh, this is the best time to be alive, and I'll always start with child mortality rates. Yeah. Like do you realize that for almost all of human history? Uh, if you had children there was a very good chance that most of them would die. that was just the way it was. That's why there are few

There's no industry around making toys for kids or portraits of kids for a long time because they don't last that long. Very few of them make it. Big market for small caskets. Yeah. Sorry to bring this up. This is really dark. You go into graveyards in New England and you've got um four, three, eighteen months, six, eight. twelve and then and then ninety-six and a hundred are you like you No no if you got past your your if you got past

uh i into your teens. Um you probably lived to be ninety eight and wrote the declaration of independence. Uh but but what's um No, it was just I uh there's I I would like people to be a little more conscious of all the ways in which we're very blessed. Yep. And I also when I when I watch the the American Revolution series

One of the things that impresses me is just this stunning good luck. I mean, the idea that that so many things broke our way during the American Revolution does make you believe in providence. And it reminds me of this. quote that I'm gonna butcher right now. I think it was Otto Bismarck said, There is a divine providence that protects Uh drunkard.

Children in the United States of America. And it's just like this wonderful quote where I don't know what is going on with America, but they always seem to get away with Well, this has happened in in the early days of the revolution when the improbable successes along with mostly failures happened.

They also saw it as a sign of providence that that they would be like the walls of Jericho. You would just blow the trumpet and they'd fall down. Think about it. The odds on Lexington Green in that morning of April nineteenth, seventeen seventy five are zero.

of success. Mm-hmm. And six and a half really long, bloody this is what we don't admit to, bloody years later, civil war, revolution and global war. Um, it's one hundred percent. And the the phenomenal good luck in the midst of some really bad luck and bad decisions and stuff go I mean it it's

A lot of it has to do with the size of the continent, it has to do with the weather, it has to do with the distance three thousand miles from the home office, so a letter coming takes longer than letter going back because of the Gulf Stream and so you just

I mean Franklin, this writer comes up to his his uh uh place in Paris and he's trying to get the French in and he needs some little victory just to convince him. And then the the writer goes and he walks out and he says, Philadelphia fell? And he goes, Yeah, which it had. through Washington's neglect at at Brandywine. And um and he turns away and he goes, But wait, there's better news.

that a couple of months after that the Battle of Saratoga took place. Washington had nothing to do with it, other than sending two of his best generals, Daniel Morgan and a guy named Benedict Arnold, who was the hero of Saratoga. And um It's the it's not only a little thing, it's a gigantic the surrender of an entire British army. And Franklin goes, Whoa, he goes right to the company.

pessimistic in disposition towards the news he was about to get. And then they go to Louis the Sixteenth and within a couple of months, they have got two alliances, one of which is essentially thirty billion dollars for the fade.

w an army, a navy, uh you know, guns, whatever you need that are gonna be the key to the American. No, the French completely saved our bacon, um something we probably occasionally like to forget. Uh and also the French, because they gave us so much money and so much help during the Revolutionary War

go bankrupt leading to their revolution they had other problems. When the declaration came yeah there I mean the British constitutional monarchy was pretty good place form of government to live under. And and that's why you're a loyalist in the colonies and and there you you're excused. We didn't make loyalists bad people. We just made them they you know, this is your prosperity, your

education, your good health, your property that you own, whatever it might be, has come from that. The French are more oppressive and and then when Franklin's there, they adore him And he's speaking the same language He's a rock star in France. No, he's he's the most famous American on earth because of his scientific stuff. But he's charming and he's witty and he sh and he also shares

sympathy with Montesquieu and the others of the French Enlighten, not just the Scottish Enlighten. And then when the Declaration happens, he prints it up and asks all the newspapers to print it, so they print it so ordinary people are reading Yeah. And you the power of this, the importance of the revolution just in the ideas cannot be denied. This thing promotes revolutions. Our declaration promotes revolutions for more than two centuries. When Ho Chi Minh on September 2, 1945, that's the date.

that the Japanese are surrendering unconditionally on the USS Missouri and Tokyo Bay. He declares Vietnamese independence and he is quoting Thomas Jefferson from that second sentence and standing next to him are OS officers who have saved his life earlier in the year and are supporting him.

And within a month they're gonna be told by the State Department, Oh, he's a commie, you can't do that. He you know, and you would just shift so much we had stayed with him and then followed the Geneva Convention and allowed the election of him in fifty six.

there'd be six million more human beings haunting the earth. Yeah. Well there's it's amazing just how many times things just keep flipping and flipping and flipping. So, you know, Stalin, our best friend and our buddy up until about nineteen forty six. Yeah. You know, or nine nineteen forty five, forty six. And then it switches. And so, um I have a propaganda poster of Uncle Sam and

I think it's Chang Kai shek and um Churchill and Stalin as all these good buddies who are tormenting a little Hitler. And it's like Uncle Sam's arm is draped around our good buddy Stalin and you Then they get the word after the war We're switching that now. He's now the villain of the story. We got it. Okay, he's the bad guy. And this happens so many times in history. It's kind of fascinating. So the biggest I mean the

I'll be later seen as a good guy. You'll see some of that. The twentieth century uh is the bloodiest and it has the biggest killers are Mao, followed by Stal Stalin, and a distant third is Hitler. It's really unbelievable. And uh they were our ally. The Second World War is won by American manufacturing, followed by Soviet sacrifice, followed by Western ally sacrifice. It's really

It's a it's a triumph. In nineteen forty-five, more than fifty percent of all things manufactured in the world were manufactured in the United States. and it and I mean to understand exactly what happened. And and Stalin had the tr you know, the the Russian fear as Putin does of needing all the buffer states. And so he was gonna hang on to it and there was no army that could that was the size of his, there was no energy to decide as as

Churchill's fulminating go take it back to go take it back, nobody was gonna do it. And so we ended up with a post war paralysis, but we ended up with the Marshall Plan, one of the greatest things Americans have ever done. You know, we do things for other people because that's a good thing to do, not because we're not

serving ourselves. Yeah. Historically we've we've we have done a lot cre that created me. Because it was the right thing to do. And then we we had a stasis. Now you can spend your entire life and many people do listing the crimes of the United States.

But as you were suggesting, I think earlier, if you start with the declaration and the constitution, particularly the Bill of Rights and and uh land grant colleges and the Homestead Act and national parks and child labor and GI Bill and social security and Interstate Highway and Man on the Moon and affordable care I mean you just like the list of positive things that we've done, and yet we've been told that the enemy is our government, and it is in the interests of people.

to make that happen, to to to remind people that we're divided and there's them and there is no them. I have to just ask you, and this seems very superficial, but you just listed about thirty-five things with great eloquence and fluidity.

I'm guessing we're sort of the same age. I can't do that anymore. I can start to list things and then I go well, you know what I mean. It's really how do you do that? It's really bad'cause I'm ten years older than you. So Are you really? Are you f are you sixty two? I'm forty two. Forty yeah. I I saw a doctor this morning who's No, I'm sixty I'm sixty two. That was did you see her did you see her do that? I'm very impressed. You could never

I can't. If I was listing the ingredients in my smoothie, I couldn't do that. I know. I I did them in kind of chronological order too. I saw that. I'm looking at you do that and I know I'm supposed to be like, no, these are really good points, but I'm sitting I was just stunned. He just said so much stuff without looking at notes. I'm very shallow, Ken. And think of the acts that were passed. The GWC, the MIO, the WWN, the Labada Habera, the Cebada Dubada, the Rubada Babada, the Simonabada.

I was so impressed and then you the whole time you're just like, my brain no working. If you want to feel bad about yourself, have a conversation with Ken Burns. Now I picture I picture cameras sweeping past black black and white photos of me looking sad. And you hear a shoken farewell? Well what we often do is start in the photograph off in the dark, that vague thing, and then pan to the extra close up of the eyes.

As Conan's mind slipped away, he knew ma that he had to retreat to the idiocy of a podcast.

Mama. Let's make that documentary. Yes. You'll have three viewers. Yep. Uh you will be stripped of every award you've ever won. Like this year promoting I mean I always do that. There's no money in PBS to go out and promote stuff you know, to speak of. So you can't put billboards on Melrose and Beverly, you know, saying or the buses or the subways or whatever across the country. So you go out and we did forty cities, eighty screenings.

Uh you know, 250 interviews, radio, satellite tours, TV and radio, and also this time more podcasts. I think I think they're Three hundred and fifty two million podcasts in the United States, and I now have done half of them today. So what you're saying is we're the last stop. No no no I'm sure they're gonna give you a lot of people. Conan realized that he was the last one. I'll do the music if you want to use gig thanks. It's hard for me to talk and do the music. Not that I can't.

Conan knew that there was he was the lowest of the low. My dearest Sarah. Conan writing home, my dearest Liza. Ken Burns today said he had done every podcast and now he was doing it. Yeah. This is all this is making me so happy right now. I thought you were gonna fill in. Oh sorry. My dearest Liza. Yeah. This brain doesn't work anymore.

It's so uh just making me so happy that you're singing that tune. Um I've been singing that soon and dining out on that tune for thirty six years. I often I downloaded it onto my uh I have I have this. Uh uh this sounds um self serving, but I do like to work out. Um check this thing out, this body. I like to listen to

a hard, fast, like rock and roll music for your when your heart rate's up'cause that really gets me going and then I kinda runs on the treadmill and lift the weights and do everything I have to do. But I I dropped in there a long time ago into my workout feed a shoken farewell and it will come on and I'm I'm just I won't take it out, but when it comes on I stop working out. Exactly. I just stop whatever I'm doing. Cry in the middle of your two workouts.

They say is really good. Yeah. And to think about everything this country has been through. Men precis, ja, ingenting. Estrella! Um so Ashoken Farewell was not uh It's not contemporary to the Civil War. It's not contemporary to the Civil War. That's a song that One of your session musicians Session musicians came up with? Yeah. So he his name is Jay Unger. He's a Jewish kid from the Bronx who wrote the most beautiful Scotch Irish lament I've ever heard in my life.

Um I'm not even sure at the beginning he knew what he had. It was so filled with heart. A friend of his, one of his co-musicians, had given me an album they'd put out and I was just doing needle drops and on the fourth song of the first side I heard this. He runs a music camp, still does, in in the Catskills.

uh near the Ashokan reservoir, part of the New York City thing. And they were breaking up for the summer and everybody was heading back to the new school year and he sat down in like fifteen minutes or so uh wrote Ashokan farewell and It is I I I guarantee that today, whatever today is. it is being played a hundred times at a funeral or a memorial service or a wedding or a renewal of vows, and sometimes it's with this letter that's uh Sullivan blew uh

a Rhode Island soldier wrote back to his wife before his death at the first battle of Bull Run. And um it's it's i I I I've just never come across a a a piece of American music that works and I like the fact that it was a Jewish guy from the Bronx who Turned out a Scotch Irish on the He wrote it for Bar Mitzvah. The horror. Look at you. More comedy. The horror. The horror. Very good. You're you're killing it. I I feel very threatened right now. Very threatened.

Um but you gotta pick subordinate talent that you know is better than you, right? That's what George Washington did. And look what he got to be: the father of our country. Like he didn't know he was George Washington. He didn't know there was gonna be a dollar bill or a quarter, a big spiky thing in the national capital name for him or a state on the other side of the continent.

call that's named for him and every other state has a county or or a town. He had no idea that that that's what was gonna happen. No, he just um it's so fascinating to me that I th some of them must have been aware, some of the founding fathers must have been aware that I'm going down in history as a great man, whether it was Jefferson or humility, you know what it is? They're aware of you.

They're aware of you. They talk. John Adams talks about the millions yet unborn. They are all speaking about like this is not just for right now. We're doing this. Like Tom Payne says. Not since the time of Noah.

do we have a chance to make it over. This is why the world turned upside down. Everything had been the same. For a thousand years your family had worked the same plot of land at Wales or Scotland or Ireland or England, and now you had you you y you had the possibility of owning somebody else's land, Indian land, but you you had you could see that things could change and that all of a sudden everybody up to this point had been subjects and now they were this new thing called

citizens. And a few sentences after pursuit of happiness, a few phrases, Jefferson says, All experience has shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable. It's not hard to parse. It means that heretofore everybody just puts up with the authoritarian boot.

And you know what? We're not gonna do that anymore. We're not gonna do that. It's gonna take extra energy. And I think whenever we're in a bad spot, it's because that energy has atrophied and that we've forgotten that we have that energy, not you.

within me. Not that somebody else is gonna take care of it, but that I'm gonna do. And you're seeing one of the good things about all these young people who are as you know, what's the matter with kids today? They're running for office. They're che you know, they're mayor of New York. They're You know, they're doing stuff. And that that is a democratic impulse in the face of the idea that no, evils are not sufferable. We don't have to do this.

We do not have to put up with this is not the war what Tennyson wrote that nature is is red, i meaning R E D. in tooth and claw, meaning everything's bloody and everything's you know, Stephen Miller says, you know, the mightiest win. Uh it's not about that. We we invent civilization to forestall the law of the jungle. And what you have are guys who are saying, no, it's just the law of the jungle. That's what authoritarian

Yeah. One of the things that I most admire about your work is I watch it and I feel reinvested. That's the word I come up with is that I'm reinvested in Us. This experiment and it is an experiment and we just have to keep working on it. Um the last line of the film, and it's not giving it away, Benjamin Rush, the only physician to sign, said the American war is over.

But the American Revolution is still going on. Doesn't mean, like Jefferson, I'm sure he would wish he could take it back, that the tree of liberty has to be watered with the blood of patriots every twenty years. No. It means that we designed a system so we can figure out how to do that without the blood.

Right. Right. Unbelievable. Well, uh, thank you so much for being here. And um this is remarkable. You have to come back. I know you wanna do all the other podcasts first. Yes, no no. Let me get to some of the half a million more that I I've got gotta do. Yeah. You know, we have a pretty big audience on this one. So uh you know you might want to skip some of those other ones. You know? Yeah. Five. Plus you and me, that's

You can't no Eduardo doesn't listen to this. He's doesn't has no patience with this. Okay. Well that's but six that really go out go out and buy stuff. So that's important. I could talk to you for maybe forty hours and just be the happiest guy in the world and not really down with that. And not Yeah. Well I have a brief nine part response to every question. Listen to Ken Burns' fourteen part response. Um but I uh I've taken such solace in all in your work. It's just uh

Um it does nourish me in the very best way. And I do think all of this goes beyond politics. I I'd like to try and step out of that divide and try to say to people that we I believe we all want similar things and we uh and I think there's many more uh good people than bad people. Uh and

This is uh I mean I I love this country and I always think we can do better. We can and I think we will. And I just get that from your work. And I get so inspired. I I think obviously if you know where you've been you can know a little bit better where you are.

that's the optimism in in the face of the chicken littles of this narcissistic moment. But you also know where you're going. And so you can begin to see in the midst of, you know, being like that little kid and um in in Schindler's list completely submerged in shit that, you know, he's th he's submerged in shit'cause he's dedicated to living and so that our next job

Is repair and restoration. And we should be thinking about that rather than, oh, is the sky is falling. Oh, it's really, it's been worse. you know, this is the worst it's ever been in American history. It's not. And and um you know, things will th there's a fluidity and the only thing that's certain is that it's gonna change in some way and you have to actually be prepared to catch

That change. Yeah. That's that's the biggest thing. There's uh better times are coming and we have to prepare for that. Happy days are here again. Yeah.

Um all right. Well Ken, uh again, if anyone out there hasn't listened to the American Revolution series. Um We actually they can watch it too because listening is a podcasting kind of thing. You know? But but we we we spend ten years assembling images. Even when there were no photographs, duh dah. I swear to God. Um I didn't realize. That there were images that went along with the show. I watched it on television, but my face was averted from the screen.

Oh okay. And I'm told it was quite beautiful. Yeah. As Conan's eyesight failed and he listened to the broadcast of Ken Byrne's special. Conan was filled with joy. They're a pretty dense literate thing. You can listen to them too. It's okay. But there's some nice there's some great paintings and some cool reenactments and It's beautiful. And I don't know why I said listen. I think'cause we're doing a podcast? No, I think I was really thrown when you made that long list fluently. I think I

I was in shock that my brain has uh atrophied to this degree. Uh practice L? Yeah, okay. Yeah. Deck. Oration. That was right. Constitution. Constitution. Bill of Right. Bill of Rights. Homestead Act. Yeah. National Park. Child labor. That's pretty good. Um Uh then I think there'd be all the New Deal programs and then social security, labor's right to organize. Uh WPA which created ten thousand landing scripts and the c civilian conservation corps with all that work on the park.

I mean if you landed at LaGuardia Airport, New Deal. Went through the Triborough Bridge, New Deal. Lincoln Tunnel, New Deal, right? Skyline Drive, New Deal, right? All the bridge all the dams in in the uh Lincoln Highway, all the dams in in the northwest. That's all. Ten thousand landing strips, a billion trees. We're not even out of the New Deal. The peanut is neither a pea nor a nut. It's a legum. Thank you very much. That I still know. And that's my list. Yeah. Uh Ken.

Please go out and do more amazing work. Also this book is gorgeous. So Jeff Watson that I've worked with for forty five years, it this is the the most wonderful book. He has put his heart and his soul into it. No, and it's just gorgeous artwork to your point. And uh And I spent I've just I opened it randomly to a page of Some revolutionary war powder horns that were etched and engraved and I was just geeking out over them thinking

I gotta get a powder horn. Went on Amazon. Nope powder horns. No no Revolutionary War powder horns. Uh powder horns. You took a powder horn. Uh exactly. Okay. I'll do the comedy round. Now you're doing the comedy too. I'm getting my ass kicked. I don't know. And you were here for the takedown of me. Yeah, I know. It's not happening. This was jujitsu. Ken, thank you so much. This is amazing. This is really fun. Thank you. O'Brien. produced by me, Theme song by the Talent producer is Jennifer Sam.

Engineering and Mixing by Eduardo Pereira. Support by Mars Mel. Batista and Brick. You can rate and review this show. And leave a message. Precis ja ingenting. Estrella!