#615 - Ken Burns

Today's guest is a filmmaker. He's a historian. He's a writer. He is a Cartographer of time if you will his name is ubiquitous with documentaries He's covered some of the biggest events in US history and his new film the American Revolution Premiers in November. I had a great chat with the one and only mr. Ken Burns I Yeah, and if you like to sit back whatever you feel like and if you feel uncomfortable just let us know and we'll get you I'm kind of an edge of the seat guy. You are yeah, wow Excited that's an I've never heard somebody say like I'm an edge of the seat guy Yeah, like you're edging or whatever. I know that's like it's just I'm excited. Yeah, you know, oh, yeah If I were an animal I'd be a puppy. Oh, yeah, you know kind of by the door. Yeah, come on. Come on. Yeah What are we doing? Yeah, it must be horrible that an animal they don't even give it a key on its wrist or anything That's right for it to think it could have any it's just sitting by the door. Yes, exactly waiting. Yeah Like if your wife or husband were like that, and they're just sitting by the door you'd get it. I'm help. Yeah Are you did you at least give them like a Yeah, or spare keys They can at least have a chance right you get them a little button they could hit. Yes, right just to walk out Yeah, that would help We good that Ken Burns, thank you so much for hanging out man pleasure. My pleasure. Yeah with you and thank you for all your your examination of Humanity I guess through documentaries I was like I know about you as most people did You know kind of when you burst onto the scene with the Ken Burns effect. I think that's That's when it kind of hit a lot of my Culture, you know, you're like instead of hiring actors and everything we're just gonna Want to hear the story of how that happened. Yeah, it's really pretty cool so, you know, I've been trying to make films about American history since like the mid 70s and I'd had some success a couple Academy Award nominations But I hit the jackpot when this big series in 1990 came out on the Civil War series Yeah, which you know use the photographs and stuff like that and and our idea was to energetically explore the landscape of a painting and treat an old photograph like it was a feature filmmakers Master shot having a wide medium a close a tilt a pan a reveal an insert of detail So we were just sort of very energetically exploring the landscape of each image And so I got a call in 2002 November and it said it was Steve Jobs. I went really and he goes. Yeah, he said will you come out and visit me? And I said, yeah, that's me knocking at the door So a few weeks later in December of 2002. I'm in a room with him. We're talking and he brings in a couple of pretty nervous Engineers, yeah, and they're and I'm a lot. I and particularly you're a lot. I yeah, meaning I'm not a big computer person It represents a group in England in the 19th century who were opposed to technological changes and so Okay, so midnight Luddite Amish similar. Well, not quite. It wasn't religious as much as a kind of a social anyway Okay, so Amish without the dairy kind of that's right Exactly so it's it's basically folks who are opposed to it. I'm not I'm just inept So got it children of my grandchildren helped me with all the anyway Steve is saying look we've been working on this thing and every Mac computer that comes out next month January of 2003 Is going to have this feature on it and he's showing me and it's sort of like you can upload your photographs and pan and zoom on I'm very very simply kind of crude superficial version of What we do or try to do with our stuff to wake up the image to wake the dead, you know So, um, I'm looking at it and I'm kind of going cool because I don't really know what's going on And um, and he says so we'd like to keep the working title And I said was that and and he said the Ken Burns if I can I said, you know, I don't do commercial endorsements What and the engineers kind of blanched and I'd known a little bit that he had a temporary never showed it to me But we went back to his office and after an hour I I worked out agreement that he could use it, but I'd um, yeah, I already had a temporary already his iPhone always had a crack screen Maybe but I know some folks who got yelled at he never he said what so at the end I walked out and he basically Agreed to give us what turned out to be over a million dollars of hardware and software That we gave away to nonprofits except for one or two computers that stayed in the office because we didn't have a good Mac computer at the office and then we became friends For the rest of his life and so whenever I visited Silicon Valley, I'd stay with him, you know kids kids his daughter Uh became an intern for us for a couple of semesters. Uh, so it was a really good relationship, but it is really funny It's the technological tail that wags the dog of what I'm trying to do Which is take these old things where you don't have newsreels or you don't have living witnesses and try to wake up Moments in the past and make them as dramatically compelling as you would If you you could talk to some veterans say of of the iraq war who's still alive Well, you certainly mastered it man, you know, I mean and the and the ken burns effect is like that was at the time where everybody was trying to be Could suddenly everybody could suddenly be a filmmaker, right? That's right. Well, this is what steve did. I mean by inventing this He made us all filmmakers He made us it democratized it all and what you needed were the tools to be able to polish it I mean my kids now and my grandkids can do stuff with this that I wouldn't have any idea how to do it And one of the cruder tools is the ken burns effect, which has saved lots of vacations Lots of birthdays lots of memorial services lots of bar mitzvahs, you know, it's a great point You know what I mean? Yeah, and people say oh like man, you didn't ask him for a cut and I said No, I don't do commercial endorsements But if I'd said like I want One one hundredth of a penny every time it's used he go, okay, we'll call it the pan and zoom effect You know what I mean? It was like it was like the the great thing was to just sort of Split the difference in the middle and not be so obstinate that I couldn't yield. I don't do commercial endorsements So it was sort of awkward, but at the same time I wasn't endorsing A thing I was endorsing an idea of how you use and manipulate images is which is what I do for an image Right living and also you manipulate the past right just in a way to bring it to life Right, it's almost like you're giving CPR to it in a way, you know, I can't believe that you said that because My mom was sick from the time I was born like a couple years in and you grew up here in New York City Which is where we are. No, no, no. I was born in Brooklyn I grew up in Delaware and Michigan and came east to Massachusetts for college But my mom had cancer from the very very beginning and she died when you were a child Yeah, when I was 11 and it was just a horrible Just just the worst shittiest growing up and my dad had some mental illness stuff So it was really hard. I'm not alone in having a hard yeah, yeah Childhood, but it's not self pity. You're just but I watched my dad cry at a movie After my mom died and he had never seen him cry when she was sick or when She died or at the impossibly sad funeral and I realized it was 12 years old ago I'm gonna be a filmmaker. This is 1965 This is you know a long time ago 60 years ago great as to way too long to be without a mom, but I But I said I that meant I'd be John Ford or Alfred Hitchcock Hollywood directors and stuff like that And then I went to Hampshire college in Amherst, Massachusetts And they were all documentary still photographers and filmmakers that reminded me that there's as much drama in What it what is and what was is anything to human imagination? So I'm a documentary filmmaker by 22. I'm making films in history and I've been doing that for 50 years. So I had a crisis going through a crisis. My late father-in-law was an eminent psychologist and I said To him one night. I said I seem to be keeping my mom alive And he goes Yeah, I bet you blew out your candles on your birthday wishing she'd come back and I go How'd you know? And then he named two or three other things that only I knew you know really intimate stuff Because that's how the children like that operate. Yes, and and it's just you know What grief does and what the inability to express it when you're 11 years old or when you're two years old and realize There's never a moment when there's not a sort of damocles hanging over your head that's going to ruin everything So so I just I I said what do you mean? And he goes well, look what you do for a living you wake the dead you make Jackie Robinson and Abraham Lincoln come alive Who do you think you're really trying to wake up and then all of a sudden? I knew that's what I do. I'm waking the dead and it's everything is a conversation with this woman that has not have been around for 60 years 60 years which is way too long to be without a mom. It's all a love story. Isn't it in a way all a love life You know, there's a there's a musician Stephen Wilson jr. Who's really great. He's a great poet Um, and he says that grief is only love that's got no place to go. Yeah, it's that's that's perfect I just we'll just think about the energy the propulsion of this loss just for me Is and and also my father's sort of he's the smartest guy I knew but kind of a maserati without a clutch You know looked really good sounded boom boom really good But yeah couldn't get into first gear that that made me You know such you know keep working on me. I've got 40 films, you know I'm not stopping all my friends are retiring and I'm like what what's retiring, you know, I'm you know Yeah, you're drinking plasma at the house and taking electrolytes. I got stuff to do I got you know if I were given a thousand years to live I would never run out of topics in american history like so This is sort of a you know, I make films about the u.s. But I make films about us You know, I mean got you yeah lowercase two letter plural pronoun all of the intimacy of us And we and our and all of the majesty complexity contradiction and even controversy of the u.s And it is a magnificent space to operate in I feel incredibly lucky and privileged to be have the It's a huge responsibility to dive into something like the vietnam war right now the american revolution Which we just finished and you know or the civil war or world war two or the biographies we did qb long You know, we're talking about from your state of louisiana, which is just like one of the great Unknown stories is such an amazing story. Yeah, there he is. Good job. Yeah, man. Oh, he was like, uh He was definitely a big he had a mass more personal power than anyone else in the history of the united states in a state context He was both governor and united states senator, which is not Legal and he was already running for president against uh, franklin roosevelt in 1936 when he was assassinated in In september of 1935 in the state house In baton rouge in the big magnificent art deco state house He built as a kind of monument to himself when he was governor Yeah, kind of wild to build a monument while you're alive And then it also immediately kind of turned to become your Liam. Yeah, exactly right. Pretty wild how that works Well as children we would go there and uh, yeah, it was like a big part of the field trips and stuff like that We're growing up in uh in louisiana But yeah, there was something really amazing about him that he he riled the poor But he also was able to operate with the elite, you know, you have like, um But it was hard to know if he was just out for himself. That's how I felt at the end of there's a kind of watching your documentary Ultimate corruption of power, you know, and and and jeverson said power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely And so I think hui has that but unlike all the other demagogues that we know He actually did provide schools He did provide school books. He did build bridges. He did pave roads so that the poor of louisiana could bring their products to market He did, um, you know create hospitals He did do all the things that he that he said he was going to do But he didn't edit on corrupt passion and and basically leveled as the journalist I have stone said in our film all the liberties of the republic, you know It was kind of like a Caesar who took charge and thought it was his right to destroy the democratic institutions That had more or less work. And so we have this woman from the garden district In in louisiana beautiful woman High to the manor born and she says in the film right in the first couple minutes There wasn't a saturday night when we didn't talk about killing you elong It didn't mean you were going to do it. You just wish there was some way to rid the state of this Incubus which is like an old, you know, evil Thing and because he wasn't born in the wealth. He no no So that's another thing if you're not in that if you're not part of that echelon, especially in a traditional area Like new orleans like louisiana then you there's you never really can get to those rungs of that ladder You know, it's really many different states, but certainly there's new orleans. There's the catholic south There's the protestant north and he's from a wind parish in north louisiana Oh, yeah, there's nothing up there And and was able to articulate the aspirations of people who then Surrendered to him and then also had to then pay the price for the kind of dictatorial stuff He was surrounded by jack booted state troopers. He was you know, I had bodyguards He's eventually killed by the son-in-law of a judge that he fired got out of his job and so Or or so we think right because with all, you know, things like that There's an attached conspiracy theory that maybe he didn't even have a gun carl austin weiss was his name Maybe he didn't do anything except confront Huey about this and that bodyguard shot him and the ricocheting But bullet in the close quarters of the of the hallway of his state house Ricochet and killed him, but you know, we we just don't know 100 what happened But it's one hell of us an american story. Yeah, I love it man. Yeah, I think one thing about documentaries is it makes people think that you You feel cared about, you know, I think the past feels cared about And there's something that's very beautiful about that. Um, I want to the american revolution It's a new series. It comes out next month. It comes out in in November November 16th, and I've been working on it for when it comes out. It'll be Nine years and 11 months. I started it I said yes to it when barack obama had 13 months to go in his presidency And you know mark twain says history doesn't repeat itself. He's absolutely right. No event has happened twice But the bible old testament says there's nothing new under the sun meaning human nature doesn't change So mark twain is supposed to have said history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes So I've never worked on a film in which it wasn't rhyming in the present moment And so the revolution is just another one of these extraordinary stories our origin story, which we've lost Touch with oh, I think yeah, there's no doubt about it. It's at arm's length because there are no photographs There's no newsreels. They're they're in buckled shoes. They got hoes. They got breeches. They got waistcoats They got powdered wigs and somehow We don't want to fuss with the the great ideas and the great ideas are the greatest ideas ever I actually think the american revolution is the most important event since the birth of christ I heard you say that I really really firmly believe that because if you think about it up until that moment everybody Was under an authoritarian rule. They were subjects they were superstitious peasants and we created citizens and that's a big deal when we say we hold these Choose to be self-evident there was nothing self-evident about what jefferson was about to say that all men are created equal No one on earth had made that proposition that they're endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights that among these are life liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Let's go that is not Stuff that the world had ever really heard he had distilled a century of enlightenment thinking He'd been goaded on by what was happening in the breakdown of relationships with the british over stuff And what became a quarrel between englishmen suddenly got broken out into natural rights like this is what we all not only Deserve but the world needs to change and it did from that all moment on that was jefferson And that's jefferson distilling it, but it's the sensibility of everybody. The other thing is that it's a process thing It's like democracy isn't something that you It's a thing it's a process. It's something you do So when it says pursuit of happiness the key is we can get to happiness in a second But the key is pursuit. It's like after a more perfect union as the Constitution says the pursuit means it's a process You're never getting there and happiness did not mean the acquisition of things in a marketplace of objects But lifelong learning so that we you would be virtuous enough They borrowed from the classical traditions to earn the right of citizenship and everybody talked to you hear it As we're working on that virtue virtue virtue. It's all about character It's all about the idea that character is destiny john adams is Petrified that there's too much ambition and avarice too much Loss for profit that that we won't be virtuous enough to sustain this republic. It's so Interesting because there are all the ideas that we wrestle with today, you know So the declaration is kind of like a love letter to the future in a way. Oh my god. That's the best Expression I've ever heard that's exactly what it is Tom Payne Thomas Payne an Englishman who came off the boat in Philadelphia Failure and everything and he contracted dysentery or typhus on the way and he writes this pamphlet That's published in January early January 1776 at that point the war has already started at lexington and conquered the previous April but nobody's really sure what we're going to do with this rebellion and certainly Independency as they called it is not on the mind of everybody, but he writes this thing called common sense It's this pamphlet the most important pamphlet in american history and just comes out and says the king is an ass You know, it is Thomas pain. Yeah, Thomas pain, you know, and he then says not since the time of noah You know what happened with noah Do we have a chance to remake the world? And that's the american revolution? It's suddenly you're no longer quarreling over Native american land or taxes or representation You're actually into the biggest idea that human beings have suggested that we could actually govern ourselves That had never happened before and that we could we could sustain And we then sponsor these ideas sponsor revolutions for the next 200 plus years And you know, we've been going along for 249 years Pretty well. Thank you. And we're in it. Thank you very much. That's that's a great answer I love the love letter to the future though, man. I'm not going to forget that. That's a great gift. You gave me today Oh, man, that's that's what it is because it's all about you said it's a pursuit of happiness, right? It's like right sometimes we even now you're challenging the way that I've thought about some of this because it's like um And you and you're and you're the documentary does this and I think it's eight parts. I'm not sure I'm six six parts 12 hours I haven't watched all of it, but um, but uh, but it challenges you to think about that It's like you're not just here to just be here, right? You're not just here like you got this willy-wonk out ticket like to be in a Citizen or a part of a society It's something that is alive and that's evolving and you need to constantly put it under the microscope That's correct. And you need to put you under the microscope, right? That's right. We don't have a relationship with ourselves That's one thing I think a lot of people don't have a relationship with themselves anymore And so I think when you're not sitting there and thinking and contemplating where you're at And how the world's affecting you and how you can affect the world I think it starts to limit us to just looking at our at our declaration of independence almost as just like a receipt of times instead of as a Living document, you know or more of like a living will and testament I don't know how it could be said any better than that. I think we wear Too many things instead of be too many things we wear our faith And use it as a cultural, you know, if there's one thing I learned about um making films about the us and us is that there's only us There's no them. I mean and people are always creating a them to make an enemy in order to To postpone the active work that I have to do that self investigation and that's interestingly enough that that self reflective sense that I need to improve, you know um mark twain once said Nothing so needs Improving as other people's habits like we're always ready to sail man. You should do this differently You should do that differently, but we're not willing to you know, my I have an ancestor the Scottish poet Robert Burns who said oh would some power the gift to give us to see ourselves as others see us And I think that this whole work of not just wearing your ideas like a piece of clothing a fashion But absorbing them and living it is the big uh dynamic. So everybody It is in the interest of an authoritarian to have everybody be a kind of superstitious peasant right uneducated not improving not in pursuit of happiness and and lifelong learning which is What that what they all meant? I'm not that's where they want us That's where that's where the the rulers want you there They want you in a place where you're passive where you're distracted by your your things and your whatever and this scandal and stuff like that Eleanor Roosevelt once said that that great people discuss ideas um average people discuss events and small minds discuss Other people, you know, and you realize the extent to which our old culture is based on kind of Judgment not of ourselves not with the with the self reflective scrutiny that all of our religious teachings all of our philosophy and all of the common sense of Negotiating this complicated thing that we call our lives suggest but abandoning that in favor of I can tell you what you're doing and I could tell you what he's doing wrong, but oh no, I'm I'm I'm I'm fine here You know, I believe it's nice. It's nice to reflect because it's fucking a painful look at yourself That is and I think it's painful or I don't know if it's painful. It was inventive of these guys at the time and the american revolution um it also it It all it often gets classified as like 1776 that's the year everybody everybody has but your documentary It kind of goes I think from 75 or to 83 Well, we start at 55 and back up and show you, you know The french and indian war what we call the french and indian war It was really called the seven years war Which is probably the third global war over the prize of north america and our revolution is the fourth global war We don't like to think of it as a global war So it leads up to it But at the end of the first episode lexington conquered happens in 1775 by 1776 the land We're sitting on by the way is farmland the biggest battle of the revolution will take place in Long on the battle of long island which we lose because of george washington Who's the most important person in the history of the united states without him? We don't have a country Because of his mistakes, so nobody's perfect everybody's pretty complicated and wait one of a country because of his mistakes No, no, no we if he didn't live if he didn't survive or if he was surrendered We wouldn't have a country he's central to it and at the same time he's flawed He's rash he rides out on the battlefield at kip spade just over there and um and his his age grab the reins of the horse Because he's gonna get killed if he gets killed it's all over he rides out in princeton In the next january in the middle of the battle and some aid You know covers his eyes He's gonna get killed but he makes a classic mistake at the battle of long island in brooklyn What is now brooklyn and he doesn't protect his left flank and the british curl him up makes the same mistake Again the next year at the battle of brandy wine and yet He keeps his army together and he suddenly realizes he doesn't have to To win he just can't not completely lose The british have to win and they're 3 000 miles away from headquarters And nobody knows what weather is coming and it takes six weeks to get back the news to get back to england It takes even longer because the gulf stream is not working in your favor come in the other way and so What are you gonna do so it's it's an amazing story so new york uh 249 years ago is in british hands and it stays in british hands Through the rest of the war ends in the fall of 1781 at yorktown and another two years and two months Before the treaty of paris and the british evacuate evacuation day is november 25th So it's two months and 10 days That's when the brits had to take a hike eight years when they finally leave and he just drove washington crazy And in fact everybody's going saying go to virginia the french are going go to virginia Let's get them there which they do and he's going no no no what about new york Why don't we take back new york because he's the the humiliation of having lost the city and this is the big british stronghold and loyalist stronghold for the war and people don't remember that our revolution Was a civil war more than our civil war right our civil war was a sectional war one part of the country against the other But this is a civil war in which people in your own town in your own family Might be loyalists and you might be a patriot or you might be disaffected. Please leave me alone I just want to keep my head down and not be bothered by it. So there's a constant Set of interesting struggles that we don't tend to do with I think we don't want to accept the violence of the revolution Because we think it might diminish those big ideas we've been talking about right. They're not in any way diminish They're made even more inspirational and more impressive right it's better when you look at because of how Incredibly violent and bloody that this this revolution was people were willing to die for something, you know I think you should know that bitcoin just hit an all-time high Which is pretty wild considering that it was at about 60 000 last year When I need more bitcoin Moonpay is always the first app that I open Because it doesn't force you to buy a whole coin and it's super easy to use Moonpay is one of the biggest partners on the show Which is why I'm excited to share that I've made my decision to accept my compensation from them in bitcoin Instead of us dollars. I'm planning to hold and save that bitcoin in my moonpay account Yep, that bitcoin will sit in a digital wallet that no one can access except for me The us dollar continues to fluctuate in value. So by making this decision I'm diversifying my portfolio and hopefully earning more from our partnership than I would have otherwise Remember while moonpay makes buying crypto straightforward It's essential to do your own research and understand the risks involved Crypto trading can be volatile and you could lose your investment Moonpay is a tool to facilitate your transactions not a source of financial advice trade responsibly Take me into those 20 years before there's two groups right the patriots and the loyalists. We discovered america, right? We developed these colonies along the eastern seaboard. So there's 13 but there's also the native americans I mean, there's so many things going on so many elements going on So what happens is is everybody wants to bust out cross over the appellations and take more Native american land and it isn't just them They are many many nations that are lined up again and there is different You mean so is it many nations wanted to go over there? No, no, no many native american nations are there So you might have the delaware the shawnee You might have the six nations of the ira coy confederacy The senica on indaga tuscarora the onida and mohawk you've got You know all the cherries in the sat you have all these different and there is separate and as unique As say virginia is or say france is or the netherlands? And so you need to treat them not as a monolithic them You need to treat them as themselves in fact franklin's whole idea vengerman franklin has the idea of uniting the colonies Because he reads about the ira coy confederacy and they said we are a powerful confederacy Never fall out one with the other so they had their individual interests. We call that states rights But they had the federal connection that protected them in their general rights So it's the great irony is the american revolution destroys the their their confederacy But what what's going on here is people are wanting to move west the british win the french and india war their Treasury is bankrupt and they have no way to protect The settlers as they're pouring across the land trying to take land So the british are trying to control everything from over there Yes, but remember they have no money to protect their own people. They're all brits from that. They also have 13 other colonies in the caribbean which are much more profitable. They're all based on slave labor Only virginia and south carolina are profitable all the rest aren't but we're the most populist We're the most literate We make things we trade with them and so and we're also On the continent, which is what everybody wants the french wanted the spanish wanted the dutch wanted Everybody wants to be in the americas and to own what we call north america and of course the native peoples who've been there for You know 20 000 years Want to keep it and so there's all these tensions And so their big land speculators too like normally you and i we'd have we'd be working our land for a thousand years for somebody else in wales or scotland or ireland or england But now we're over here and we can get 125 acres of our own But there's big speculators like franklin and washington and and they they just decided that native american land is mine Why don't i divide it up and sell it and be the middle man for land they didn't yet own the british are like We can't protect you our treasury is whatever so not only can you not cross the apple ashes in 18 in 1763? They made a rule you can't go over that that enraged the colonists and then They said we need you to help pay the stamp act is that and they Various things that they were going to tax us t stamp act they proposed and everybody went that was amazing That was a good sign of how the people had a lot of control Well, this is what happened The individual colonies that had no interest in connecting with one another franklin had suggested back in the 1750s Let's get together into a union like the native peoples can't do and we all said no We're not giving up our autonomy nobody came nobody wanted to do it but then as these taxes happened as the The decision to not allow Colonists to go into indian land was enforced They just suddenly started coming together and there's committees of correspondences the sons of liberties There's resistance women are hugely part of it. You never hear about this. They keep this thing going They said we can do without these imported goods will make our own homespun cloth And so people are in competition the ladies of this province or this and and so what happens is eventually As always happens and this happens in history so much is that I tell you, you know, you're acting Radical you may not be acting radical, but then you start acting more radical You say me you're being tyrannical and I may not be tyrannical But I start acting more tyrannical and you get to this point where somebody says We think they're storing arms in lexington and conquered. Let's go and capture their leaders this is firebrand Samuel Adams and john hancock and let's collect this stuff So the weapons of mass destruction Well, it's their rifles and muskets and flints and gunpowder And they go and you know the patriots meet them on the on the green at lexington and the british say disperse And they start to and shot fires out somebody say it It's a massacre the british kill Eight or nine of us and wound others and then they march on to conquered and then finally conquered everybody said If this you know, we're going and so they fight back and the whole way the retreat back to boston is just a slaughter For the british and then they're hemmed in they're not they can get out They've got their the most powerful navy on earth, but they can't Um, they can't move out because there's just thousands of patriots who've rushed from rhodiola and canada can in new hampshire As well as massachusetts towns to the defense of boston and they ring them and they've got them in and then it begins A war that is going to take Six and a half years until yorktown and any time you're in telling a story You have to remember that everyone's who's in it Doesn't know how it's going to turn out and that if you're a good storyteller You have people tune in pay attention to the story because you think It may not turn out the way you know it did that's the essence of it So I have people telling me about my civil war series. They say, you know, I went into the forts theater hoping the gun would jam this time And I went, yeah, so that's exactly what you want, right? That's exactly what you want Even even when the french decide to come in after battle of saratoga This is still not a given that we're gonna win washington isn't totally sure that we're gonna win and when charleston falls in In the spring of 1780. It's like I think the game is over. I'm not sure how we can continue and he does and and then the french We have a few engagement the first couple of engagements with the french are disasters and we're thinking Maybe we don't their help isn't going to be helpful and then Their army comes and they march with washington not to new york to deliberate it but around and down and they Trap cornwallis and the french navy defeats the british and allows the big guns to come in from new I mean it is as riveting a story as you could ever Tell and it's our story and nobody knows it. It's our origin story. It's our origin mythology. It's our it's our our You know valhalla. It's our it's our Thorin odin. This these are all the the founding Stuff and what could be more important and particularly today when we feel like we're divided so divided Well, you go well, we're pretty divided back then and we were pretty divided during the vietnam We were really divided during the great great depression and and we were really, you know in america first and we were really divided during the civil war so Maybe we're always divided and maybe the essence is not to just keep pointing and escalating it but say How do what do we share in common? Well, I'll tell you what we share in common We share an origin story that on july 4th and 1776 very few countries know exactly when they were born Where philadelphia when july 4th 1776 and what we hold these truths to be self-evident. That's our story What's our zodiac sign? So we are cancer That's our zodiac sign. Yeah july 4th Although I read an article the other day that suggests that actually these Borders of the signs might have been shifting. So now i'm gonna now i'm gonna put an asterisk next So america's a cancer cancer with an asterisk. Yeah, I love that Um, take me character cancer is characterized as highly emotional imaginative and loyal. There you go. That's so Maybe maybe we ought to uh work on those things tenacious sympathetic creative protective. That's pretty good Weaknesses are moodyness insecurity pessimism and being easily hurt So there's no worry. So we this is us, right? This is the us. This is us So this is uh, we have you know, there's a there was a cartoonist named work Moret, uh, walt kelly and he had a cartoon series called pogo strip and uh, and at one point he the main character Who's this odd animal figure says, uh, we have met the enemy And he is us. Right? Because it's a variation on a military moment and it's um It's really true Lincoln As a young lawyer not yet 29 years old 28 years old addresses the young men's lies see him In springfield, illinois and he's and they're discussing foreign policy and he says whence shall we expect the approach of danger Shall some transatlantic giants step the earth and crush us at a blow and then he answers his own question Never all the armies of europe asia and africa could not by force Take a drink in the ohio river or make a track in the blue ridge in a trial of a thousand years If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher We are a nation of free men who will live forever or die by suicide. Wow So there's our challenge, right? You want to get self-involved? You want to make the your neighbor your enemy? You want to make lots of them? Then you are headed towards that self-destruction That lincoln's talking about you want to figure out what we share in common this a corny sort of civic Virtue civic energy that is comes from the declaration of independence like how you can work together to do it and you know A lot of people who are unbelievable citizens. It's like they go to the school board meeting They like they participate in you know, we I live in new england and we have a town meeting and and you know Sometimes the biggest decision is whether to buy a new pumper for the fire department. That's a big deal That's civics. That's dealing with the stuff and it's also saying I've got a vote And I and I have a responsibility as a citizenship to do it and then we'll save our country then then you know if if you like the abstraction of Disagreement and violence and all that sort of stuff or suddenly just because your your feed tells you one thing that somebody's an enemy Then you're lost. But if you look across the room and you say, you know I don't share in common that much with somebody who comes from louisiana and lives in tennessee I was born in brooklyn and grew up in delaware in michigan and now i've lived in new england for the last you know 54 years. What will we have in common? We share a love of those ideas. We share a love of that process the pursuit of happiness god Yeah, it comes so much back to like your own integrity with yourself, you know And I think it's interesting whenever like as i'm watching your documentary. It's like You learn that like Even as you were saying earlier that this is like the first time that people thought of themselves um As not under rule, but of like It's almost like they were we were away at summer camp or something and you kind of your imagination started to bloom That's right, you know like that's kind of the feeling that I get of those Uh, the first colonists here. It's so it's so exciting. There's a moment in the blooming on somebody else's land as well It's definitely blooming on native americans land. We have so I don't want to not say that so here's here's the deal You ask any school kid kid. How's the How are the colonists who threw the tea in boston harbour dressed and they say as native americans? Why were they dressed as native americans and they go to deflect the blame and you go? No They were dressing and it's so ironic and poignant and sad and also ennobling That we were saying to britain. We're no longer Part of you the scholar phil deloria says We're aboriginal we choose to dress this way because we're severing Our feelings and our affections with the motherland because of what you're doing to us And who do you choose? Oh the people that you've spent the last 150 years Dispossessing of their land and oh by the way, we're going to spend the next 150 years Continuing to dis possess them of their land. So there's a great irony But there was a point you made a second ago a little bit later in the declaration after he says pursuit of happiness There's the phrase he says Jefferson says all experience has shown That man mankind are more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable It's not that difficult to take me through that a little bit but can you break it down for me a little bit so I can understand it So he says Basically he says all experience has shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable Meaning here to fall all human beings have been under the boot of an authoritarian and that basically It's the human lot to just put up with it and we are creating something new called a citizen It's going to take hard work. It's going to take that self-examination. It's going to take that self-criticism Which we're so unwilling to do it's rather criticize the other than ourselves rather the to assume the discipline necessary To have the virtue getting better as a human being Um to to be a citizen But he's he's putting it right down there You will devolve back to that state where when somebody comes in who is acting as an authoritarian You'll go fine. Take it over for me. Mussolini the trains are running on time That's all I need is for the trains to run on time, you know, you think that's what it's about. It's not about we know What the story of tyranny is and we know what the our story is and our story is not the story of tyranny And that we and it never happens with a light switch. It happens incrementally. Yes, you know, you don't it's like two frogs Sitting in the boiling pot of water and somebody says they're still saying to each other I really like a hot bath, you know until they're cooked. Yeah, and so you at some point What jefferson is saying is do not be so disposed to suffer Well evils are sufferable meaning do not put up with the yoke of authoritarianism You know be more active as a citizen and understand that that person that you disagree with We want them to disagree. Remember, we're the first country on earth that didn't establish a religion like Almost all of the wars that are fought are over some interpretations of religion or some other such thing that devolves from that And we were saying make no notice of it. Thomas Jefferson himself said if my neighbor believes in 20 gods or no god at all It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg and like New york and pennsylvania have got worked into their state constitutions Just not paying attention to to a particular religion Means you are free from all the tyrannical thou shall rather than this is like Like the the thing that you're talking about that individual or responsibility other them and me That's exactly when when it when it is this is and it is an acceptance Thou shall is telling somebody else how to be and how how that's wrong. So the whole story is Trying to figure out we you could say that we're a nation in the process of becoming Like and what do you want to be ever see the movie? It's a one of you should always be a nation in the process of becoming Otherwise, what are you you are static? You're you know Putin's rusher you're she's china. You've just got people telling you what to do and and nobody wants that you want to develop ideas You want to pursue science you want to pursue arts you want to have a lot you want to tolerate Lots of different points of view and and right now we've gotten to the place where we don't even want to listen to another Point of view we only want to hear the information that you know saddest Oh, yeah, that's what I agree with you know and not sort of expand ourselves and say I can listen to someone that I totally disagree with and I don't have to then Make that person the enemy. That's well. I think to the American experiment. Yeah Well, I think even there's a conversation like this man. It's so good for me like it's so good. It takes me out of this like I don't get too caught up in the like us and them thing But it puts me back in a place of like, oh, yeah Well, I'm here with a purpose right like it gives you a purpose of like being a citizen of being a human right of like Of like a rubik's cube that will never be solved, right? It's like I don't need to win, right? Like But I do need to keep playing and also be a good competitor and an earnest competitor and Yeah, it just it puts it more back on you, right? It makes the mirror a little bit stronger I think it's nice. That is a beautiful thing and it goes along with your dream of the I mean Jefferson wrote that Adams, you know, they were friends and they were enemies and then they were friends again at the end of their life They both died on july 4th 1826 50 years to the moment of the signing of the declaration and they both thought the other was alive Jefferson had died first Adams survived him by a couple of hours But just before he died he said, you know, I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past And and and we and so we shall go on So we will go on and shall go on Puzzled and prospering beyond example in the history of mankind and I love that idea that's puzzled and prospering I gave a commencement address last year at Brandeis University. Now I was talking about how we're so preoccupied with these binaries, you know red state blue state Democrat republican young old black white gay straight rich poor east west north south We always have these divisions. They don't exist in nature They're just arbitrary divisions that we've imposed on things and so I said when you look at things And you see how it's going the opposite of faith is not doubt Doubt is central to faith The opposite of faith Is certainty I was gonna say certainty destroys the mystery of this thing that you and I have been talking about Who wants to stop that unless it's a thou shall you can't dance you can't do this You can't do this you can't all the things that were told or because you do this You are not a good person or you are not a real american or what what's a real american? I mean, I there are a group of native americans And I'm very pleased to report that there are more native americans now in the united states Not in the best of circumstances in many cases, but more than there were when when uh, the american revolution took place However, they do have a legitimate claim to saying, you know We're the real americans and so all of this stuff in the revolution then has to parse that Who are we in massachusetts? Who are we in georgia? Who are we in new hampshire and south carolina? What are the native people in our midst? What are the native people at our borders? And there are lots of different cultures as distinct I said as any other cultures and we've also imported by fours 500 000 enslaved african americans Where are they gonna go? And what are they gonna do and then we have all this pressure from all these big superpowers like britain that owns us and france that is sorry that they lost us and Spain that wants that gots the bottom and they wants more and the dutch who used to be in their You know new york was a this this was a dutch city And so in brooklyn is a dutch name harlem is a dutch name that i mean so you've got this Overlay of all of these cultures competing here. And so the revolution is the place where we coalesce we bring together The best ideas that had ever been thought in humankind about human Organization amongst a huge variety of people And we've made it work for at least 249 years and i'm super proud to be an american i mean i With the exception of one film All of the things i've done have been about american history because i'm trying to ask this deceptively simple question Who are we who are the strange and complicated people who like to call themselves americans? And what does an investigation of the past that particular moment that particular person that particular war tell us about not only Where we were back then but where we are now and where we may be going This episode is sponsored by better help Did you know that october 10th is world mental health day? And this year we're saying thank you therapists Better help therapists have helped over five million people worldwide on their mental health journeys That's millions of stories And behind everyone is a therapist who showed up listened and helped someone take a step forward I want you to know that the right therapist can help change everything And better help has 12 plus years experience in matching people to the right therapist Better help therapists work according to a strict code of conduct and are fully licensed in the us This world mental health day. We're celebrating the therapists who have helped millions of people take a step forward If you're ready to find the right therapist for you better help can help you start that journey Our listeners get 10 off their first month at betterhelp.com Slash theo. That's better help.com th Eo Thank you so much man. This is so fun. Um, it is fun. I'm having the best time. Yeah, I'll appreciate that Um, let's look at a little bit of the minutiae. So just to make just to like add just to get into a little bit of the storytelling Um to add some like blush to the cheeks of this conversation. Uh, what about uh, paul revere's ride What was real about that was he just a loud mouth? That some people said it was autism. You got ahold of a horse and some booze There's a lot of like a lot of rumors going on out there. Some of that's tick tock. But still yeah Well, so let me dispel the most important thing Which is he did not say the british are coming the british are coming He didn't he didn't say the red coats are coming or the red coats are coming What he yelled was the regulars are coming out The regulars are coming out meaning the regular british army that has been stationed in boston for whatever it is almost two years Um are coming out and so he is a patriot He has made he's a silversmith and an engraver and he's made an engraving of the eight, uh, uh 1770 event in march called the boston massacre He calls it the bloody massacre. We end up calling it the boston massacre when some of these Occupying a standing army. I mean this is the big deal, right? You didn't send an army To a place unless you were protecting them. You didn't send an army there to police the population That's not what free people have right is the army in your midst So so the british armies in there in the columbia in boston because there's so much only in boston or in all the Columns only they've they've got a presence to protect the stuff, but they are in boston particularly to try to put down The resistance to their taxes the resistance to that so the people realize that the military is there kind of Against them. Uh-huh. Hmm. And that's kind of what we have a lot going on right now. So hypothetically a lot I I had us premiere of the film at the telluride film festival episode tell your ride beautiful over there Gorgeous gorgeous and we go every year even whether we have a film or not Anyway, so they were doing it and when they got to the point when general gauge imported these number of ships from halifax nova scotia To go to occupy boston not to protect it but to police it and then you hear the voices from the passing a standing army in peacetime This is horrible, you know like that and the audience in telluride Because they're going wait that's happening now. That's where history can be your best teacher to go. Wait a second Did we just get did they just raise the temperature on that pot? I'm sitting in am I about to be boiled? You know what what what's going on? So anyway the the the he he does a An engraving paul revere does an engraving of the massacre before you move on actually you do you mind ken? Yeah, i'm sorry But let's they just had a thing in britain the other day where people showed up and I don't know if it was half a million a million people Showed up to support like the british um, just what it what being british, right? And so like, um, i'm not sure exactly what we're doing, but this is just incredible Um, wow, unite the kingdom rally in britain, and it wasn't they weren't putting this on a lot of news channels I think a lot of the news we're trying to label this is like a far right thing You know the news I don't think has done a good job. I feel like they want us to Uh be at odds a lot of times. I think I think that do you think that's a fair statement? Yeah, I think that in many ways media regardless of its You know orientation depends on conflict And that we we spend a lot of time that's the essence of a story is we think conflict rather than You know, it's oh, it's you know, it's so funny. You get involved. This is incredible. It's just street after street You get involved in a war and then after the war you get involved in negotiations and you just wonder We were making our film in vietnam and they were introducing a marine It just did some amazing thing got a chest full of medals just you know Almost the congressional medal of honor just amazing stuff for his action We kept pressing him wanting to hear the stuff and he finally looked up and he said it's the history of the world meaning Warfare it's what we do and you would think that at some point We get to a place all of our religious teachings all of them Are just big tributaries flowing into the same sea do unto others as you would have others do unto you that we would just jump from the argument To the negotiation and the solution rather than But we seem to have and and i'm guilty of focusing as you know, I tell other things but you know history of country music history of jazz music baseball All of that stuff but I but I focus on civil war and world war two and vietnam and the american revolution now because they're so Instructive about human behavior bad, of course, but also really good There's these ennobling ideas that we've been talking about first ever Which is why I feel comfortable saying it's the most important event in world history since the birth of christ and um and yet The violence is unnecessary and certainly political violence is unnecessary and certainly Reactive violence well that because they did that then we have to do that and it's you realize that It's like the old testament an eye for an eye You know and you realize you keep going with that and everybody's blind Yeah, everybody has a seeing eye dog or something that's getting um go back to that rally We've got us want to even read who was there just I just want to even know a little bit about it I just saw videos of this and it blew my mind. I think a lot of Well what this what I liked about this is it's people showing up for something right? Yes, it's people in the streets Well, they're expressing what they're allowed to do right and that's what in a democratic society Which britain is you get a chance to You know as our first amendment says it's it's The government will establish no religion you have freedom of the press and freedom of assembly You know the ability to these are the hallmarks the the number one thing after the constitution was done Everybody said whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa time out. We've got a constitution. We've got an operating manual But we're not going to go forward in this unless we get a bill of rights that tells us What you know that that enshrines the things we just fought for the things we just died for there's you know There's one you know the saving private ryan story of you know Sons are dying it's based on a true story where a woman I think from Iowa His last name is Sullivan lost four sons in a battleship that went down and the department of war said, you know We're now going to separate everybody all the brothers Rebecca Tanner a mokegan woman meaning probably Connecticut Lost five sons not four but five sons fighting for the patriot cause. This is a native american women So you realize that's the sacrifice that people have made in order for us to be able to hold a demonstration express our point of view non-violently and to be able to Tolerate lots of ideas. I mean it you can't say Uh, we're only going to tolerate our ideas and everybody else who doesn't agree with us are therefore bad, you know I mean across the street from us On 23rd street in New York City where we are right now Is the headquarters of the communist party of the united states that has as much right to its office space as The republican national committee or the democratic national committee. Oh, doesn't it in a country in which all ideas are free Is the head is the head of the communist party the the the american communist party has its headquarters across the street and they have had their headquarters there for Decades and decades and decades. Well, you know, it's funny to me kin is that it feels like just being a regular american that's hopeful You're almost a communist these days in our own country. Well, that's you know, I'm saying that that idea That's what I think is interesting about these. Um Let me just start here the unite the kingdom rally was a massive and this says far right demonstration held in London on September 13th, 2025 organized by anti-immigrant activist Tommy Robinson The event attracted between 100 and 100 or 5000 people make one of the largest protests in british history um The rally was built as a free speech festival and the demonstration featured chance like we won our country back Uh, what I think is interesting about this. It's people who Have a set of beliefs and ideals of what british life is right and history is to them And that they want to speak out for it, right? That's one thing that I thought was pretty cool, you know That this is the democratic right, right? I mean, I remember when I was growing up people tweeting with their feet Right. I said this the other day in a conversation But it's like it's not people sitting in the fucking background yelling stuff or screaming or you know Uh, but it's people who are actually out, right? And this this to me is always inspiring because it's you're putting your face out there with your voice, right? And and you're putting your feet out there with your voice and that to me feels like A real tweet any any they could be left wing. They could be right. I agree They could be immigrants saying we're as much britain says and any of that is possible within a peaceful Context yeah, and it's people that like you know people get an idea of what a culture is right? Yeah, and especially I mean britain was predominantly white probably I would guess until they took in slaves and native americans and much Well, they they there was not a Caucasian. I guess they would have called it at the time or european They were european But they're also a mixture of lots of european cultures and they their whole worldwide economy was dependent on slavery Mostly in the caribbean as the spanish had it mostly in south and and and central america Um, and then we had it in the southern states. It was slavery was legal In in the colonies from new hampshire to to georgia and then one by one the northern states sort of realized it And george washington freed his slaves. I mean george. They all knew he kept a couple somebody said i don't know if that's true Thomas jefferson understood they were they understood that slavery was morally wrong right and and yet it was an impossible What's the right word? It was a con they're making too much money not to give it up And it's only later in the 19th century when the abolitionist movement comes We should abolish slavery that then you find slaveholders now making Really big arguments about how oh, they're inferior their children They can't handle freedom and all of this stuff all of which they they didn't really Express tomas jefferson did a little bit in his notes on the state of virginia. It's very very complicated But we're always looking for a way To say that some people are more equal than others and and if you believe in equality That's not the case that that if you believe in the second line of the declaration, which is our catechism Then it's everybody and that people have the ability to rise according to their abilities and and Opportunities and you try to provide as many opportunities for as many people but the minute you transform this civic You know just explosion this beautiful civic compact that we have And racialize it it can only be white. It can only be black and it can only be this it can only be that It's already lost. Yeah, it is not one thing or one type of people That's where you you go wrong. I mean but but history does that a like it's kind of interesting because it's like even like um even whenever they were Declaring america right in deciding what it meant to be american and they were in this period that you that you Investigate in the american revolution doc bennery. It's like they were saying this is who we are right at the same time They're also colonizing. It's just it's interesting when colonization and Human and being human started to sort of I don't do you know what i'm kind of saying? I know what you're talking. It's just such a weird Uh, it's the dichotomy It's the difference between the ideal and the human possibility at any given moment And what the founders were saying is that in order to have a Government that operates not only to all people have to be created equal But you have to be pursuing this self-examination. We should be Interested in improving ourselves. So when thomas jeverson wrote all men are created equal He meant all white men of property free of debt He did not mean a majority of the white population of the colonies women He did not mean the 500 000 free and enslaved african americans He did not mean the native peoples both Intermixed with people and part of the rest of the continent and remember we didn't say when we started our congress And when we started our army, we didn't say the eastern seaboard congress We didn't say the eastern seaboard army. We said the continental congress the continental army We knew where we were going and we knew who we were going to run over to get it And even when the constitution was started women were let out There's a one of the leading women of philadelphia elizabeth willing bowel Met benjamin franklin as he came out in in mid september in 1787 from independence hall where they had been You know figuring out the constitution and getting it down and said what have you created dr. Franklin a monarchy or a republic and he said A republic if you can keep it Meaning we're going to do this now when they went into it in 1776 they were not after a democracy Democracy meant mob rule to a lot of people. They were interested in an aristocracy of the elites, right? But in order to win the war They had to enlist not the sturdy militiamen Who often left to go plant a crop or often left to go? um Harvest that crop But they ended up with an army the continental the regular army of the united states of america the continental army were teenagers Second and third sons without a chance of an inheritance felons Nair duels recent immigrants from germany and england and they won the war and so as they're dogs The dogs won the war and as they're beginning and we follow them as you'll see you know in this story 14 year old kin from boston named john greed room 15 year old kid joseph plumb martin from canada kid, you know a 10 year old girl from Yorktown who's a refugee all of the war you get to meet them So it's not just george washington and all all of that stuff But when they start trying to figure out their state constitutions Pennsylvania says well, why don't we give votes to every white man who's 21 or older? Whether their own property or not and and and john adams is like wait, wait, wait, we're not gonna what about the aristocracy not You know not the landed so what happens is is that democracy is not an object of our revolution? It's a consequence of it which is okay because if you've got an unintended consequence of democracy That's pretty good pretty cool pretty cool pretty cool. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's just so exciting I mean I have the best job in the country I have the best job in the country it educates all my parts I don't go in knowing about the revolution and telling you what you should know Because the oh that is like saying there's a test on on next tuesday. Yeah, I'm sharing with you the process of discovery like Betsy ross isn't mentioned in here. We don't actually know who made the first flag No one says don't fire to you. You're the whites of our eyes. Paul revere did not say the red coats are coming The red coats are the regular regulars are coming out the regulars are coming out And that made the regular are coming out of their homes out of boston to the to out to lexington and to and to conquered Concord was the place where they thought everything was hidden and they were right and they just never found it And then we and then we started fighting back. We didn't fight back so much on lexington green It was it was a massacre on lexington green and then conquered at the north bridge We meet a guy named isaac davis who's a gunsmith from actin, massachusetts and he leaves early in the morning And he's at the north bridge and he is along with a fellow guy abner Hosmer is one of the first americans to be killed at the north bridge, but then the fury of the of the of the militia Patriot militia just overwhelms the british and they start a retreat and it's if there hadn't been some reinforcements that caught up with them When they limped we're limping back retreating back through lexington It would have been a route and it was still all the way every spot of ground all the way back to boston was contested And everybody sitting there going like yesterday These were our brothers yesterday. These were our fellow countrymen. Yesterday. We were You know arguing today Were at war and there's a there's a great sense of thing. I mean abigales. I mean adam says something we're in the midst of a revolution the most glorious and and the fate of Of millions yet unborn are being decided me you and me So great and then abigale his own wife's greatest convo Correspondence between anybody. Oh, he's a don and she and she maybe wrote better than anybody She said we should be very cautious about tearing down Empires because of all the blood and suffering that attends to it That's in the first minutes of our film, which meaning be careful what you wish for you know, she's something else Yeah, she's and and you know when people say who's the best way is it is it? Thomas pain is it Thomas Jefferson is a George Washington to great writers at john adams great writer Abigail's Holds her own. She's pretty good That's cool, man. And she's got a friend named. I bet you can call this out too. Yeah name mercy odis warren pull up with a friend mercy odis warren look keke Mer oh ot. Yeah, there she is. There's you got a book of her. She writes one of the first Histories of it. There she is. She's in our film there. Oh, yeah, she she meryl streep reads her verse That's the one thing we haven't talked about We've got peter coyote is the third person narrator But we have the best cast that has ever been assembled They all reading off camera of any film or every television. Okay, maybe so the longest The longest day about d-day had cast list But we've got tom hanks and meryl streep who reads mercy odis warren and Claire danes who's reads Abigail adams and paul jamadi and josh brolin and sir kenneth brownow and morgan freeman and samuel l jackson and liev schreiber and ed norton and That have all voiced in your docs in this doc. Oh in this doc alone in american revolution alone and domnell glissand Daniels and Jeff daniels. He's the voice of thomas jefferson. It is I probably listed A fifth of the voices that you ask them or no, how does it happen? Yeah, we ask him and and you know a lot of people have read for us before a lot of new people have read this time But we ask him tom hanks has read for us For Almost 25 years. Well, he's he did the d-day museum in new warlands. He's their whole d-day. Have you been there? Yeah Oh, man. Yes, I that's I took my little girl a year ago to a year and a half ago My then 13 year old sheet and we just loved it and I and I've been there many many times steven ambrose the late historian Well really started it but tom and many other people made it possible and he's just so so phenomenal and he's also like like meryl streep and and and jeff daniels and others jesh brolin couldn't be nice. Sam, you know, I I recorded long distance A morgan freeman who's you know in his in his mid to late 80s. He's getting up there and he lives on the gulf coast and In mississippi and i'm saying um, and so i'm just making idle chat. I said morgan. So why are you in mobil? He says I'm recording for ken burns Like he'd driven up. Oh, yeah to come and do this thing and that He just made me feel really good. And you know, and I'll bump into someone and they go Why haven't you called me like because this they're not making anything we pay them sag minimum and I always tease tom I always go and I'm giving you a check for three hundred and thirteen dollars and twenty two cents Please don't spend it all in one place. Please, you know, save it. But you know, they come and they work Look at look at that list. Oh, that's remarkable. You know, yeah Josh brolin is an exceptional man. Oh, he's great. He's george washington and what I did is I told him george washington is unknowable and opaque and yet he's able to motivate men in the dead of night when they're losing and He somehow have to be somebody that is both unknowable like only only as the historian One of the stories in the film says Maybe martha gets in there his wife, maybe lafayette, maybe hamilton But very very few people get into that inner space of him and yet his Rectitude he's taller than most of the folks, but he has a bearing that is so Powerful that men that are leaving Men that are deserting men that are mutiny Stop when he starts and talks and they sign up and say, okay, we'll fight for another six weeks or you're right I'm going to put down my arms. This is crazy And there are moments when the entire fate even after the revolution the entire fate of the united states of america is dependent on the army Angry that they haven't been paid by congress not marching on philadelphia and turning this into a military Dictatorship and it's george washington who stops and then what does he do when everything's got together? He resigns his military commission and then he is Asked to be the president of the constitutional convention. He lends his stuff. He has voted unanimously president And what does he do after two terms? He leaves it. He's kind of the coach of the bad news bear is kind of George III who's not the idiot that we try to make him out to be George w bush. No, george the I was gonna say he the king george He says when he hears that washington voted he was an idiot. I think he might have when when washington resigned his military commission And then resigned to presidency. He said then he is the most powerful character of the age So this imagine what that means today that we're in an age where everybody wants Me and that he is no you he understood that the actual highest office Is citizen and he was determined to go back to that and to not claim for himself Wealth didn't make money during the war. You know didn't um Try to amass personal power. He just said it is my service to this new idea You know as pain was saying not since the time of noah Do we have a chance to reset? And go back to zero and create something new as he called it an asylum for mankind That's the second episode of our film every one of our episodes is named after a phrase from thomas pain The first is in order to be free, you know that the feeble Engines of despotism only work. He said unless you you can will it in order to be free You just need to will it and then asylum for mankind and then when things are dark The times that try man's soul and then a great title called conquer by the drawn game. It's what washington understood britain they have to win and they can't do it They can't sustain armies three thousand ways from home in an area that they they misunderstand how big we are And of course nobody's got a weather report. So that storm right he realized the battle's not it's not it's it's not right here in this moment It is but there's if you look at the different legs of it There's more than there's more than a couple of ways to win this thing, you know The historian jane kominsky says he knows what every insurrectionary leader means meaning gorilla, you know That you just you you eat at them there, you know, like more british and hessian their mercenaries soldiers die in new jersey From being picked off in gorilla moments foraging than they are in three big set battles of trenton Princeton and monmouth courthouse. So it is a down and dirty war and there are terrorist organizations of It's like grand theft america. Okay It's it's pretty it's pretty wild and yet out of it comes an extraordinary Order and yet out of it comes the echo of lincoln who understood the founding better than anyone else and delivers The declaration of independence 2.0 at gettysburg in which he said we really do mean all men are created Oh, yeah, right. Lincoln was that white eyed person We're gonna live through all time or die by suicide like nobody's coming to attack us and and conquer us If we dissolve it's on us. And so that's the message for today. It is it's it's what it's what Washington's example of giving up power It's it's of the non authoritarian Stuff of thomas pain and jefferson and this sense of of of the power of the the power of the civic example And then of course Lincoln's warning that you have to stay to get and he presided over the closest we ever came the closest we ever came to National suiciders civil war and without him like without washington Who knows what happens? Yeah, yeah, lincoln was the guy that like Just that really that kept the pilot light of what these other guys had lit going right? Um, I have like one or two questions. Do you think? There's been this thing in my lifetime where you felt like colonialism ended, right? You kind of felt like that through Articles that were written in just looking like that's bad. This is wrong, right? But then you still have things that happen like you still have genocides happening You still have like the ethnic cleansing and Gaza that some people believe is happening um You know, you still have colonial is that just something in the media tricked us to think? Is it safe for us to think that that kind of thing is ended like, you know Because you almost want to evolve as a species and think that that's not happening anymore because it seems so brutal, right? That war and conquering isn't happening anymore because it seems so brutal But do you think it will always be a part of us? And then a second question is like Yeah, like these guys like lit like this pilot light a long time ago Like being a citizen and reflection of yourself and how that's going to be That's going to need to always be a part of what it means to be an American Yes, and for this to evolve and to stay alive and then and the only way it can die is by suicide, right? It really puts it immediately back on you, especially with that word suicide But what can we do now? Where do you feel like we're at now? And not in a judgment away, but just in like a hopeful way even Where do you think that we're at now and what can we do? Because it feels scary now. Yeah, it is scary I think we pull out the fuel rods of our own self-righteousness and just take it down a notch and realize That all the people we're saying are evil and whatever are just fellow citizens Who disagree with us and then just let it go The first part of your question is the sadder one Ecclesiastes that's the old testament says what has been will be again. What has been done will be done again There's nothing new under the sun war Ethnic violence religious disagreements the pain of slavery of some form of subjugation of other Totalitarianism It's as my marine Tommy Valilly was his name Corporal Tommy Valilly It's the history of the world and what we the United States represent Is the beacon the pilot light? I love that phrase of yours the better than the beacon It's the pilot light Of where we could be who we could be So if we are a nation in the process of becoming We got a lot of work to do and we take a few steps forward and you think ah, it's the end of colonialism It's the end of partisan rancor. It's the end of this. It's the progress We're at some, you know, we're colorblind, you know, isn't we like a black president? Isn't it all you know, all right, we solved it. Yeah. Well, I friends would say I've centered race in a lot of my films I've gotten some criticism for it, you know telling the story that you know Of that that are our asterisks are yes, but and And then when obama was was inaugurated They said now will you stop talking about that and I held up the onion Onion magazine and it said black men given worst job in nation, you know, and I just said just watch what happens and and what it did is it it actually awoke in some people the darker sides in which you judge people Not by the content of their character as dr. King suggested but by the color of their skin that somehow I could know everything about you by the color of your skin Oh, what your type is what it is and that's of course I feel obama got us out of that in a lot of ways I think he moved it in a way and then all of a sudden there was a reactive thing which is Almost lawful as well if it's physics in a way that allowed people to play to their worst basis instincts Basis instincts that had been in some ways by both parties sort of suppressed. I don't know We're not going to manifest that way kids behave. We've still got two hours before we get to the beach, right? And suddenly by the time we got to the beach, we're at war again And you know, we're not okay. We're turning around. We're going home. There's no ice cream today. Whatever it is There's got to be that thing that you and I the essence of what we've talked about it seemed to me has been About this incredibly difficult thing which is self-discipline like I need to actually do the work on myself I cannot assume I cannot insist that you do the work for you Before I am willing to do it for myself But there are people now where it seems like a lot of people are do people like the people who have been doing the work and following the rules hypothetically and Trying their best to be an American I feel like some of those people are starting to wear thin because it seems like everybody doesn't want to um And that may be and that may be that their idea of what being an american is Isn't the same as the other people right? Well, I don't think that's case I think a lot of it has to do with this device in our back pocket and all the the atomized Sources of information that we have like when I grew up there were three channels and pbs Which I works all my films on pbs and maybe an independent channel You basically got your local newspaper that had a staff of lots of people who covered the school board meeting and This and so people knew what it was Now You know Daniel patrick moinehan the late senator from new york here said everybody's entitled to their own opinion But not their own facts Right, we do know that the battle of gettysburg happened on july 1st 2nd and 3rd 1863 but what we're now in a situation is and this is the greatest danger Is that we are being told things that aren't true and there's not amongst the Exponentially greater number of possibilities of outlets that everyone has Anybody saying well actually that's not true. And so what happens that demoralization that you're talking about or that sense that I played by the rules or whatever it may be more Imbalanced by the fact that they have been Convinced of a lot of things that aren't necessarily true. You know One in one has got to equal two. Yeah, right except in our faith in that faith Where one in one has to equal three that we say the whole is greater than the sum of the parts So here are the sum of the parts and here's the whole and so what's the difference? That's where we want to spend our lives here not in parsing how You really don't get it and you're wearing that and you've got this thing you got your hat backwards So I know exactly who you are Right, right and that's not who I am And and we are all the same, you know Shakespeare has it when the Shylock in the the merchant event Are are we not human having not eyes organs senses dimensions Affections fed by the same foods Subject to the same diseases if you prick us do we not bleed if you tickle us do we not laugh? I mean if you poison us do we not die We are all the same and unless you can stop and turn and not say oh you're a Radical leftist destroying and you're looking at this person who's like this midwestern whatever or you are a right wing You know, you know fascist that you don't have a chance you're boiling gay people Your apartment or whatever. Yes, but just shit like that. It's like what is going it is well You think about what happens in an unchecked information world that is to say where you don't have The self-discipline of the traditional media outlets that was reliable to that was reliable I mean, I would still when people say what would you do? I would say I would watch one of the nightly news of the three networks or all of them if you can get them and I would read The wall street journal or the new york times Or the washington post or maybe all three and don't look at anything else because The other things will tell you that all democrats are into pedophilia and all you know and you just after a while you have to go Stop This noise is crazy What you've done is by telling the lie up on top of the mountain and formed it into this snowball It's rolled down the hill and it's now this giant thing where Truth is lies and knowledge is is ignorance and everything is the opposite of what it actually is and what you have to get back Is to what is what is verifiable and and as much as people say oh the The mainstream media the lame stream media or whatever it is the new york times and the wall street journal that are You know have opposite editorial positions their actual papers if you really want to follow what's going on and pretend that it's not just oh Well their interest is this in promoting the elites. It's it's just They're actually really good at what they do and and I think if americans were to sort of say I mean Spencer Cox the governor of utah just in the middle of our tragedy He said turn your phones off turn off social media because you know what? I want to have him on here. Yeah, I would love to get to have you have a conversation with him last january governor's association He was I was talking about the revolution and we showed some clips at the national governors association And he came up and he asked a question. He said you talk about virtue. I want to pursue this question of virtue And I said thank god. Here's a place where we can have it But he's the guy who said Turn off your social media go out into nature hug somebody that you know because if you look at it Social media Isn't you ever been in a room of teenagers where they've all got their phones. Yeah, it's nothing social about it There's nothing social about it. It's all an interior dialogue with yourself. It's schizophrenic It's it actually very much a thousand people in you when our object as we've been talking for the entire time We talked about is to find out who this person is inside Who am I? Is the central question I start with an easier question very hard Who are we the united states of america? But then inevitably all of those questions form a mirror And I don't know if you get out in nature much but nature is perfect And nature puts a mirror back to all of your Imperfections and that's that's tough a lot of people would rather be you know Listen completely occupied by other Stuff all the time rather than say What is it that I could do that could make me a better person? um Yeah, thank you some of these some of these thoughts are so great a group of friends and oh you've given me the I mean Just this dream of the future the pilot light all of that stuff Thank you. Well, it's important that we're thinking about this stuff together And I would even like I would disagree like on the news alice you mentioned right? I would disagree for me I don't need to disagree with you about it But I see when you are and I are here talking we probably have a lot of the very same of course ideas and hopes But I don't need to sit there and tell to you. Hey, I don't I don't I disagree with a news source You might like you know, it's like It just shows that like what you're even saying is just like us conversating about something is what really matters That's all that is real media right here Exactly is when we talk about each other all I meant about choosing stuff is that you want to make sure that the source Is fact checking itself that it has its own responsibility You know because like when the cats away the mice will play and that's all we have now our mice out there And you just need a little bit of people who go we have to check this to make sure it's true Yeah, I wonder if we'll get to a place where there's some sort of a purity test of some, you know That we could all agree on I wonder if a I or something in some way gets us to a purity test Well, that would be a wonderful unintended consequence because right isn't it supposed to destroy us because I know You know, it's gonna drive us crazy and maybe maybe maybe the opposite will happen You know, we're gonna be data slaves you and I are gonna have Pickaxes will be in a bit mind somewhere and will literally be hammering out like statistics from old NBA games So some guy can upload them for his draft Kings. That's right. It's all that's what's exactly how it's That's where we're gonna go and then and years later your son or some orb that you created will be doing a documentary on that Or your daughter who you just had a nice time with at the D-Day Museum Last year you she will be doing a documentary on on you and I right working as Mining miners in a bit mind somewhere I'm running back to New Hampshire so that I can go back to my little tiny town where things work And people are civil and they've got their their signs out, but nobody says, you know, you're wrong. They just say That's what you believe. I disagree with that. It's really yeah And I think there's there's a lot of good places out there that do have a lot of peace in them So since we're talking about kind of information stuff, where do you get your information? How do you do it? Do you have a team that helps you source like what do you guys do? It's pretty walk into the library at congress and you know, yeah Like Kenny boy They do know my face So in the american revolution, we've got materials drawn from 340 sources archives libraries around The world we have drawn on thousands of volumes and we have Gone to scholars who spent their lives Delving deep into one aspect of it. Maybe it's the british empire's economic structure Right just to understand the difference between the 13 colonies that we are and the other 13 colonies that really make their money for them Because in jamaica, they got 90 percent of the population is enslaved and barbedo same thing as opposed to You know very few in massachusetts and maybe half in south carolina So, you know, we just want to find out that we want to check the dates. So we always have Lots of different sources. We want a source thing from scholars who've been working and and you find there's sometimes a little desperate stuff different stuff. So we will say um Even after we locked the film we might have the word 16. It might be battleships. It might be days. It might be dead Whatever the number is but we've got footnotes on our script of all the sources that have contributed to why we believe it's 16 And then you read a fifth source and it says I'm not sure so I so we go somewhere in all this the narration that peter coyote has read and found the word perhaps Cut it duplicate it and pull it and go perhaps 16 that we do not sleep at night until we know We're absolutely dead certain we don't want to slander even the past We don't even want to say we particularly don't want to slander the past because the pasts are greatest teacher And people manipulate the past. We know what it's like, you know, soviet system where they cut somebody else out of the picture Are there on the Procedium, you know in the pilot bureau in front of the mayday parade and that somebody's out of favor So suddenly they edit it out of the pre It's like libraries in cuba You can't even get history books before certain years because people want to manipulate this stuff And what's so great about a free country as we go? Yeah, we screwed up there. You know what? I mean, it's so funny that we're in a we live in a in a Country that is totally devoted to football, right? Understandably so every level friday night High school saturday college sunday pro and if that coach comes up and says, yeah, well, you know, we're we're okay You go he's fired you go. We really sucked on special teams this time We really need to do some work here and we do and there's a sense of and we do this in business all the time And we just say you're saying how do we get better? Well, how what is it that we did wrong? And so there is that incredible american drive to be super honest and just say I really messed up here and I can do better the next time if you think that tom brady wins his first super bowl and he goes Okay cruise control for the rest of my career, right? And i'll get six more super bowls he is phenomenally dedicated to self criticism and where you can improve if we extended that into our civic and our political world We would not be in the kind of argumentative Mud that we're in right now where we feel stuck and unable to move and this and it's always the other person Not me and i'm in the mud because of you not because of i stepped in it It's just if we if we brought that ethic of self improvement It's what we've been talking along along. It's it's my response. My mom used to say that to me You know, if if he's got a problem with you, it's your responsibility. You've got a problem with him. It's your responsibility Right, which means I don't need you to change. I need to figure out what it is if this is worth Repairing which I think our experiment is then it always begins With myself and it's so rare to see people particularly in politics take a stand that says You know a george washington stand. I'm leaving. I'm giving up power or you know what? My party is wrong in this Right. I'm not going to do that. That's more people would vote for that guy. Of course, of course I think it's one of the reasons why it's like, um, I think we're getting down to people don't trust entities for information Right, I think it's one of the problems that you have with news and stuff and because some of those are uh, You know, they make money based on advertising So there's a bit of there's somewhat of a conflict of interest in a way Not really it didn't seem like there used to be but then that kind of evolved So I think people now are trying to find a person that they believe right because it's easier for them to like to like, uh Concept to analyze right like I can figure out if I believe this person so I'll get information from them Whereas I think entities it's people people won't trust entities anymore as much, you know Well, I I've spent my entire professional life as an independent filmmaker But all of my films are made for pbs and let me tell you why They are the declaration of independence the pursuit of happiness applied to communications. There's rigorous fact-checking I cannot put a film out unless I have been vetted by scholars from all different perspectives and understandings and and and knowledge and They also are not they're free of that advertising thing, right so that I am Able to do it like I could tell you like the let me just say our vietnam series took 10 and a half years to make Costs 30 million bucks. I spent 10 of the 10 and a half years with my cup out going to Foundations and corporations bank of america has been a corporate underwriter. They're not a sponsor So they're not saying hey, we don't like that content They accept whatever content i'm going to do because they know my process is rigors foundations individuals of wealth government Granting agencies until they were just killed so that p that cpb kill, you know, the death of cpb is is a big Ask you about that your funding how's that been affected by it's huge it's huge But it's you know more importantly it's such a short-sighted decision because you know what's going to hurt most most of cpb's money went to Rural stations what is cpb the corporation for public broadcasting which was just not only they took back money They'd already appropriated four million for an upcoming project But they we had been in discussions for another 10 million. So I just lost 14 million for about Three or four projects coming up in the future I'll recover but the problem is most of the money goes to rural stations Which would be and will be when these stations die a news desert Right, they're used to the pbs not just for the children's programming not just for the great prime time But for their homeland security their alerts They may be you know the the most important The only signal they get and you don't want to be a news desert where you've got somebody telling you Because you want somebody there covering the school board. You want somebody there you want somebody You want a personal person that you know so I have worked with them. So go back to my my vietnam example I I spent 10 of the 10 and a half years trying to raise that I could have walked into a streaming service or a premium cable and With my reputation Walked in and given them a description of vietnam and walked out in a half an hour with a check for 30 million dollars They would not have given me the 10 and a half years it took me to do the good job Now that film came out in the fall in september of 2017 if I do my math, right? That's eight years ago It is still even though it's a film one-stop shopping for the most aggregation of the most recent Information about the vietnam war still after eight years. I am so proud of that But it I didn't take the money Do it in a year or a year and a half and have it be a piece of shit. Oh, you're not a t-bill. You're a bond, dude Yeah, I am in long term. That's exactly it and I'm and I need to marinate and mature and come to term And I need to just redeem it at its face value. I'm not making up. I am trying to share This and you know what pvs stands for It's not system the s is not it's public. I like that part meaning you and me Broadcasting obviously service service. It's not the columbia broadcasting system. It's not the public broadcasting self It's it's a not a top down right like it's not a network saying What part of our our primetime schedule? Don't you understand you're taking it all It's individual stations working with independent filmmakers Making stuff and sending it up and then it's going out and there's no you have to take this it's it is exactly the declaration of independence applied to The communications world just as the national parks Are the declaration of independence applied to the landscape because we for the first time in human history and you could have only done that Operating under a declaration of independence. We set aside the most beautiful landscape in the world Not for kings Not for noblemen not for the very rich But for you and for me and for more importantly Our posterity Our children's children's children. That's what theater Roosevelt says. We are not saving this for a day We know we're saving it for all time and that's Beautiful stuff because if we didn't have that if we had a different kind of system Zion and Yosemite would be gated communities the rim of the Grand Canyon There may be one little place where you could go and look out, but the rest would be owned by other people The Everglades would been drained and be endless strip malls and golf courses and condominiums and Yellowstone would be a down on its luck Sort of amusement place called geyser world Yeah You know and and just think about it. There'd be a lot of hippies. There'll a lot of be a lot of edm That's look look there manifest manifest destiny says we're gonna take the whole continent And you're gonna have to get out of the way whoever you are and that stand of trees I look at I think board feet that river. I think dam that canyon. I think mineral rights. That's fine But some of those places you can set aside free from that so that we can go So there are places in the united states like the south rim or the north rim of the grand canyon or Zion or Yosemite what I think is one of the most beautiful places on earth If not the most beautiful place or Yellowstone and you can go there and look at it And see exactly what theater Roosevelt saw And more importantly you can see in the case of Um The native people who occupied Yosemite what they saw 2000 years ago, right? And so it gives you an access To all time which then gives you a perspective some journalist When he went up to Alaska and he saw what was then called mount McKinley and has been called Denali said McKinley never saw the mountain um He said it reminds me of my atomic Insignificance meaning the way nature dwarfs you you just look up at a night sky and yeah When it's 10 below zero and you see all those stars and you go, oh, I mean, I'm like nothing Yeah, I need to and then but the The thing is about that it's paradoxical nature and and I would suggest our national parks because they That feeling of insignificance In spirits you makes you larger just as the egotist in our midst is diminished by his or her self-regard Right, you know that like you see somebody who's so full of shit so full of themselves and you think they just get smaller and smaller But the person who goes wow You know, I'm nothing in the scheme of things and that's true Seems bigger. Yeah, you know seems Like somebody I want to listen to you know Oh, yeah All all all the great gurus of the national parks like emerson and and and particularly john mure and theater roosevelt They're all they have distance in their eyes. That's what steward udall who's a former secretary of the interior Utter kennedy and johnson. He said he had distance in his eyes I just love that phrase as if somebody could almost look Around the curve of the earth and see not only physically what's going to happen, but in time So he's this blustery, you know guy that we love for all his belligerence walks awfully But carry a big stick, but what does he do? He he sets up the grand canyon the grandest canyon on earth I assure you and had that longevity of thought to have the I don't want other people to come here and see the same thing. I want my great great grandchildren to enjoy it and guess what they are Um, we touched on spencer cox really quickly. I think we're in a new space for an american revolution in the sense You know, I know part of it was the bill of rights Um, we don't have an internet bill of rights. We don't have a social media bill of rights And it's I think it's stuff like that that's killing us, you know, it's like you can have if i'm a restaurant You come there and I poison you. Yes, you can sue me. You can file charges against me. They will shut me down But there's all these algorithms that are poisoning people, right feeding people um Literally poisoning and they know what they're feeding they have a log of it They have a log of the recipe if you go here, we're gonna send you here They're poisoning people to the point where People are sick people are literally sick addicted and sick and there's no way to um To kind of stop them it feels like I agree completely. I think that's beautifully said and so One would hope that there was a health Uh department that might have noticed that that restaurant had Uh ingredients or there was you know mice or rats around in the kitchen that might be Uh poisoning they're going to contribute to this that shuts them down or gives them a bad grade as they do in New York City you see the a or the b or the c and oh, you know, b for warrant I'll eat a little c you'll eat a c now man. I draw the line at b I'm sorry. This is where you and I disagree on this But you know, maybe there is some overarching sense of discipline or maybe their self discipline Maybe I realize that you know in in fantasia in the sorcerer's apprentice Where he's got the endless number of brooms carrying the the buckets of water like it's just so proliferated We're just so out of control and unable to um Make sense of anything that at some point you need someone in this case the wizard to come and Recast the spell so it it goes back to being one room that's carrying these things and then you've got You know, we've got that possibility and that's my impulse is always to just reduce reduce get down to something that you know You can trust and I think what you're saying is could we agree to maybe a set of rules that would govern? Facts that we would say that facts were primary that we couldn't just constantly Not just speculate but wildly lie because the toxicity of that is as you say as lethal Over the long term as that poison is in your restaurant. Yeah And the algorithms the fact that you can continue to poison imagine a 15 year old But it pays if it bleeds it leads So then right now that used to be the thing in the 70s when there's still just three stations or whatever But then you've got millions of outlets who have no Responsibility and they can say that up is down and down is up and what's your problem? You're you know, you're wrong It's a big conspiracy that you've been thinking that up is down all of your life and I can prove to you why you're absolutely dead wrong So follow me over this cliff Well, I guess it goes to show like even as we said in the beginning that this doesn't end right the the the idea to be Free to think free to feel all those things. Well, you're gonna constantly have to come into Bring those into the present day to keep America evolving and I think that that's it's no more Evident than ever them right now with just a new front line If like war for information for pure for facts for the ability of our children not to be contaminated You know, maybe it used to be by dirty water, but now it's by bad information. It's by algorithms that aren't like shackled by any Um Facts, you know or or there are there that that they don't want to poison people, you know So I think one of the impulses 10 years ago was to go back to the story of our founding to our creation story And ask essential questions what happened it isn't just lexington and conquered and then he He crosses the Delaware and captures Trenton and then they surrender at Yorktown Booped on and in the middle these great documents were signed But say it's a really complicated story about Very complicated and very interesting people who were able to As you said at the very beginning what cause are you willing to to serve? What what are you willing to risk your life for and these people coming from a wide variety of backgrounds? It's not like the purity of it's only one type of person that makes up our country We've been a huge variety from the very beginning and from and of many different face and of many different Perspectives we're able to figure out how they could govern themselves and it set an example for the world and so maybe going back and collecting You know as maybe as unsexy as it sounds like american history. Oh, jesus last thing I need to know I'm so glad I'm out of high school because I don't have to take another history maybe As harry truman said the only thing that's really new is the history you don't know And that by telling a story of our creation We might have the ability to save the experiment because we could rededicate ourselves To the things that the people who are willing to give as they said in the declaration our lives Our fortunes and our sacred honor too I think it's worth a shot. Let's do it. Let's do it Ken Burns. Thank you so much, man. It's been so much fun. It's been so cool, dude I'm so happy to meet you. Yeah, really really happy to meet you too. And thank you for all your commitment and uh Your undying desire and I bet your mother's very proud of uh, can I tell you? My my mother's name was lila. L y l a and so that name for ever was just draped in black crepe, right? We didn't say it. We called her mommy My daughter oldest daughter who's now 42 in on uh, January 18th 2011 Had her first child my first grandchild And named her after a grandmother. She never met named lila. So now we say lila every day And we smile and flowers bloom and birds chirp and it's it's the music place. So it's it's a wonderful kind of um, you know nose dive and then The pilot lights relit the pilot light is relit lila. We'll have to put a picture of her up there at the end If you'll send us a cute one. L l y l a we'll get it to you. Yeah, that'd be awesome. Uh, thank you so much. Keep working Stay alive. No, no, no, no. I get on peptides. We need more We need more ken Burns forever. We need the uh, the pilot lights keep burns. Thank you so much, brother. Thank you Oh, but when I reach that ground, I'll share this piece of mind. I found I can feel it in my bones But it's gonna take