Ken Burns Visits Barstool HQ

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2 days ago

Large | Twisted History

Transcript

00:00:00Hey everybody, welcome on back. It's the Twisted History Podcast. You may notice we're in the new

00:00:03studio that we have. We're pumping out Twisted History. You got to try this. Rubbin is racing

00:00:08all from this new digs. And before we get started, I just wanted to remind you that this show is

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00:01:26We're actually going to go upstairs to the most classy podcast studio we can find just to fit our guest

00:01:33this week, who's Ken Burns, legendary historian, documentarian. So we're extremely, extremely excited

00:01:39about this whole thing. Hey everybody, welcome on back to the Twisted History Podcast starring Annie

00:01:46right there and my wife, Jeff Ibert, myself large. And we have probably the most special guest that

00:01:52we've had on this program. It's Ken Burns. Ken Burns, welcome to the show. We got the American

00:01:56Revolution, which is releasing on November 16th on PBS. And it's going to be streaming everywhere that

00:02:02you stream. I don't know enough about streaming to talk intelligently about it, but I know it's going

00:02:06to be everywhere we want. The American Revolution is something that I don't think my Kung Fu is that

00:02:12strong on. So when I had heard that you were dropping this and we did get to see an advanced

00:02:16copy, which we all thought was wonderful. It was something that I jumped at. We talked about it

00:02:20earlier before he'd come in. He said that this is his most important story that he's ever told.

00:02:25And he's told countless American stories. What took you so long to get to this topic?

00:02:31I won't work on a more important project. There's a big distinction because I hope I said

00:02:36that about the US and the Holocaust for the first time. And I said it that way so that I could

00:02:42protect the films that I think are as important, like Civil War, baseball, jazz, World War II. And I

00:02:48hope that the films that I'm working on are now not some on the other side of the mountain, you know,

00:02:53kind of the downhill slope. So I won't work on a more important film. It's not getting around.

00:02:59There are no focus groups that decide. I'd done a film on the Civil War after it seemed to be the

00:03:04determining factor in all the five, six films I'd made before. Afterwards, I said, I'm not going to

00:03:09do another war. It was really emotionally hard, even at the remove of 150 years and all the

00:03:14photographs. And then I learned that a thousand American veterans of the Second World War were dying

00:03:20each day towards the end of the 90s. And that a huge number of graduating high school seniors thought we

00:03:28fought, you know, diploma in hand, going out to take over the mantle of leadership for the country,

00:03:32thought we fought with the Germans against the Russians in the Second World War. And I said,

00:03:36fuck. So I worked, gotcha. I worked for with our team for seven and a half years to do a series.

00:03:49And before the ink was dry on that, I said, we're doing Vietnam. And when I was in the last bit of

00:03:54editing in December of 2015 for a 10 part, 18 hour film on the history of the Vietnam War that would

00:04:02come out in the fall of 2017. I remember looking at a map of the Drang Valley that we'd created kind

00:04:09of a 3d map, and we're moving through it. That's in the central islands of South Vietnam. And I just

00:04:16went, Oh, that could be the British moving west in Long Island towards Brooklyn. And then I looked up and I

00:04:21said, we're doing the revolution next. So it's not about a kind of mental calculation. It's a kind of

00:04:27emotional or gut response to the curiosity about a subject. Now, one of the reasons why you might not

00:04:35get around to it is because it has a daunting set of challenges. Unlike Vietnam, World War Two, and the

00:04:41Civil War, there are no photographs or newsreels. And those people now are sort of encrusted with the

00:04:50barnacles of sentimentality. We just want to say it's a bunch of smart guys in Philadelphia thinking

00:04:54great thoughts, boom, done, no more stuff. But it's this bloody, bloody revolution. It's a bloody civil

00:05:01war. And it's a global war. And we had to figure out I had to get over an aversion to reenactments

00:05:07and say, Well, I don't have to reenact the battle, I can film reenactors for five or six years in every

00:05:13uniform at every time of day and year, and to accumulate a kind of critical mass of images,

00:05:20so that we can meld them with the paintings, the drawings, the documents, the maps of the period,

00:05:25the maps that we make the commentary of scholars, the third person narration that we spend 10 years

00:05:31working on and refining and getting right and making sure we've got 234 sources, you know, nobody

00:05:37fax checks like that. And and to try to get it right. But also, it's the 400 first person voices,

00:05:44not just of the top down people that we can help to remove the opacity of the boldface names,

00:05:50but to introduce you to scores, literally scores of people that I'd never heard of,

00:05:55fairly confident you've never heard of, that that fill out that picture. And among them is

00:06:01Baron von Steuben, who is presumed to be gay. And and and just like in any other thing,

00:06:06when you come across something, you say it, you know, one of Duke Ellington, our greatest composers,

00:06:12most important collaborator is Billy Strayhorn, who is a gay and was gay and is, you know, so it

00:06:19we're umpires calling balls and strikes, you know, whatever it is, it is. Does Washington have is he the

00:06:25person most responsible for our country? Yes. Does he? Is he a flawed human being? Yes. Does he make rash

00:06:31decisions? Yeah. And at Kipps Bay, he rides out and is almost killed and his and his aides are grabbing

00:06:36the reins of the horses. Same thing happens at Princeton and aid covers his eyes at Monmouth

00:06:42in New Jersey stops a retreat cold just by his presence. He he's also makes, you know, particularly

00:06:49in Long Island, the biggest battle of the American Revolution. He makes an incredibly bad blunder,

00:06:55where he leaves his less left flank unprotected does the same thing a little while later at Brandywine and

00:07:01in Pennsylvania. And yet, he's the most important. He knows how to inspire people in the dead of night.

00:07:07He knows how to convince people from Georgia and New Hampshire that that they're Americans not from

00:07:12these separate countries that they've been so far separate colonies. He knows how to defer to Congress.

00:07:18He knows how to pick subordinate talent without any sort of jealousy or worry that they might outshine

00:07:23him. And some do at times. And he more importantly, gives up his power twice military and then political

00:07:29power setting this example. So you just want to take the good with the bad. And what I say is we live in a,

00:07:38we live in an era in which we only are highlight reels, right? It's the touchdown, it's the home run.

00:07:46Babe Ruth struck out more times than he hit home runs. He comes up once every nine times at bat and

00:07:53sometimes as we just found in the recent world series, it's going to be the second baseman, the middle infielder,

00:07:58who's going to be the star of something. It's not going to be the big name that with the big contract.

00:08:03And so you got, you can approach history that way too. You just take it all in. And so we're not showing the

00:08:09highlight reel. We're showing you the complete at bat, the complete series in history of that, of at bats of that person.

00:08:17Yeah. I, I normally think of it as a highlight reel and the black and white where it's like Americans,

00:08:22the good guys versus the British, the bad guys, but you, and you just said it in your answer there,

00:08:26kind of changed my way of thinking. It was a civil war where it was brother versus brother, neighbor versus neighbor.

00:08:30So loyalists, the loyalists, you have to ask yourself if you're, if you're at all reasonably

00:08:36curious as you watch this film, you got to ask, and I think it's a great, one hell of a great story that's just not told.

00:08:42People go, Oh, Lexington crossing the Delaware Yorktown, boom, done. Um, there are 40 battles

00:08:48and they're incredible social transformation. And the colonies are incredibly diverse. You know,

00:08:52you'd be in Philadelphia and there are lots of different Indian nations, lots of different dress,

00:08:57lots of different languages. They're free and enslaved black people speaking African languages,

00:09:01as well as American. There are women, there's French, there's Spanish. I mean, it's like unbelievable scene.

00:09:07It's like the bar at Tatooine and the first Star Wars or what I call this old guy calls the first Star Wars,

00:09:12number four for all of the people born after me. Um, you know, it's, it's, it's a great story. And,

00:09:20and so the question would be, would I have been a loyalist? I mean, it's not unreasonable to say,

00:09:27Jesus, the British constitutional monarchy is responsible for my health, my education, my literacy, my

00:09:33property. I've, I've been able to come over here. And then my family in England or Wales or Scotland

00:09:38or Ireland worked the same piece of land for somebody else for a thousand years. I now own land.

00:09:43I started my own business. You know, why would I give this up for some crackpot idea that has zero

00:09:49chance of, of working, which was true. Uh, and so we, we don't make them the bad guys. And so you meet,

00:09:57follow John Peters, a loyalist who kills his best friend as he's about to lose the battle of Bennington.

00:10:02Uh, Jeremiah post, uh, who, who, you know, is, is stabs him on the ramparts of this redoubt of

00:10:11hastily built for it. The, the bayonet to flex off the rib cage. And he says in the most chilling

00:10:18thing, I was obliged to destroy him. Boom. And that, you know, and that is coupled with

00:10:25a British Irish guy named Roger lamb, who has kept a diary and has pictures accompanying them. So

00:10:32it's sort of like a poor man's Leonardo's, uh, diaries, you know, their pictures and drawings.

00:10:37And he's at a lull in the battle of Saratoga, which is going to be a huge British, uh, disaster and

00:10:42loss. And the troops are on both sides. They love lulls, right? You're not going to die. And they're

00:10:47hurling insults and jokes and telling funny, you know, Oh, your ma, your mother. And at one point,

00:10:52some British soldier gets up and he runs down to the bank of this little stream jumps in the river.

00:10:57Meanwhile, an American does the same thing and jump and they meet halfway. And as Roger lamb

00:11:02explains the words, these were two brothers who had not seen each other in years and they did not

00:11:07know they were fighting and opposing armies and they were embracing out of love. And so in the twin

00:11:12polarities of that kind of bottom up things, you know, you make films about the U S but you make films

00:11:18about us, the, all the intimacy of us and all the majesty and complexity and contradiction and

00:11:23controversy of the U S. And it's a great space. I mean, I've been doing it for 50 years and it's like,

00:11:31man, I think I got the best job in the country. It just educates all my parts. And it's just

00:11:36so exciting to dive into something that you don't know about and, and rather tell you what you should

00:11:41know. The last time I checked, it's called homework. Just share with you our process of discovery.

00:11:46That's, there's nothing more exhilarating than saying, Hey, I can't believe, you know,

00:11:52you live in Brooklyn. Let me just tell you what happened there. You know,

00:11:54I can tell you that we were lucky enough to spend a couple minutes with you

00:11:58before this and every topic that I touched on, you have a 15 minute answer for that. I think makes

00:12:06me more interesting than when I had first asked a question or touched on a topic.

00:12:11There's an interesting thing is that you pursue these projects and in the case of the revolution,

00:12:16it's taken, you know, it's we're now at nine years and, and 11 months that we've been working on it.

00:12:22Like we've done other films while we're doing it, but we've been pursuing this, you know, religiously

00:12:28for a long time. And what happens in the course of that time is you don't get bored.

00:12:33You don't tire of the subject. It only increases. The period of promotion is like the airlock that

00:12:39permits you to sort of forego the grief that comes from leaving something that you really love.

00:12:45Cause then I get to sort of share with it. But in the course of making it, you just hear all these

00:12:49voices. You get to know all these people and remember it's, as I said to you before, it's not

00:12:56additive to make a film. It's subtractive. We have 15, 50 times the 12 hours.

00:13:02And so there's lots of stuff on the cutting room floor that is not bad stuff. It's good stuff,

00:13:07but it's details that you have to know. And just like the sculptor who, who has a, you know,

00:13:14a block of stone delivered to her studio and is hacking away and what's on the floor does not make

00:13:19part two or anything. But what we see in the gallery or the museum doesn't represent all of

00:13:26her experience. She has to honor the negative space of creation, what's not there. And so

00:13:33part of my life is accumulating a lot of what's there, but also a lot of what's not there. And

00:13:41that's kind of cool.

00:13:43But that, the stuff that's not there and you say, you casually mentioned a part two,

00:13:49is that a director's cut? That's another 120 hours?

00:13:51No, I got a director's cut. I've worked for PBS. All the films not work for. Every film that I've

00:13:56made has been shown on PBS. And I then get to release a director's cut because there's not a

00:14:02suit saying, ah, too long, too short, not sexy enough, too sexy, not violent enough, too violent.

00:14:07You just say, this is what happened. And they've stepped out of the way. And, and also I could go,

00:14:13I mean, the fundraising is, it just is really hard. And it takes, you know, in the Vietnam,

00:14:17I was fundraising for 10 of the 10 and a half years. And I could have walked into with my reputation,

00:14:23a streaming service or premium cable and gotten all the money in one pitch, wouldn't give me 10 and

00:14:28a half years, which is what I need to tell the story what. And they would say, I need it in a

00:14:32year and a half or a year or whatever. And, and that's, that's the difference. Like, none of the

00:14:38films I could have made from the first called Brooklyn Bridge that took me five and a half years,

00:14:42because I looked 12 years old, and I was selling people the Brooklyn Bridge. And they said, ha ha ha,

00:14:46this child, so tried to sell me the Brooklyn Bridge. I'll tell you that. I'll tell you Brooklyn

00:14:52stories that'll blow your mind. Meet Esposito, the democratic boss of Brooklyn called me up to his office,

00:14:57second or third floor on Montague street and says, this is my bridge. And what if you're going to do

00:15:04a film, I've got to have, have it. And he hands me an envelope. I think it has cash in it. It actually

00:15:08has a check from the Kings County democratic committee to help underwrite this film on the

00:15:14Brooklyn Bridge. This is a man who died in prison, right from political corruption. I have stories

00:15:20like that all up and down making every film that is so amazing. Does anyone ever threaten to

00:15:26kidnap you, chain you up in a basement and just basically use you as, um,

00:15:32as a vehicle to be interested in like, Oh, it's called podcasts.

00:15:38Yeah, there's 340 million podcasts, 340.1 million podcasts. And I've done half of them. And it's

00:15:46basically, it's not always a basement, but you're certainly tied down for a long time. And people are

00:15:51just sucking you dry of information that you've had, but this is my favorite, right?

00:15:57Well, you twisted my arm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was on the wishlist. You had mentioned earlier

00:16:03about the integrity. You had mentioned earlier about the integrity of historians or storytelling.

00:16:08And I realized that, you know, we sometimes look at, at history on our little podcast and we do as much

00:16:14fact checking as we can, but a lot of stuff we just take at, at, you know, at face value.

00:16:20Yeah. Because we don't have the team behind it. You are the, you have a bigger team than us. You know,

00:16:25you, you've way bigger team. The thing is, is that we live in an environment, not just of the highlight

00:16:31reel where everything is just the dinger going out or the touchdown catch. That's one handed and

00:16:37miraculous or, you know, the backhanded pass that dunks, you know, it's all the, it's the whole game.

00:16:45And that we have so many people who make stuff up so many people who hear, hear information that isn't

00:16:51true. And then it just keeps going. And it's, it, it's the toxicity is so detrimental to who we are. And so I'll

00:16:59give you an example. I'll make something up. So say we've got a scene where we've said 16 something. So 16 months,

00:17:0716 dead, 16 ships in the revolution footnote. And you look down and there are three sources,

00:17:13right? Scholarly sort, three sources or two. And, and then you read something later on,

00:17:19after you've finished, you've locked the film, the narrator's gone back. My voice is the scratch

00:17:23narrator. We replace it in this case with Peter Coyote, who's great. I adore, he's just like, he,

00:17:29I mean, I love that he understands me, who I am deep inside. And, and, and when,

00:17:34if he gets to take three and we're not having hit it and he reads it cold, he doesn't read it in

00:17:39advance. We're not reading the picture. We're reading for meaning. He will tell me what music

00:17:44do you hear? Meaning how would I do it? And I press the play talk back button in the studio and I say it

00:17:50the best. He goes, Oh, okay. And then he gives it to you. Great. But he's gone. And we suddenly hear,

00:17:56it may not be 16, right? So we, from one person and it seems reliable enough and we stay up at

00:18:03night. So we go and we do a word search of all the things that Peter has read both in and out of the

00:18:08film for this particular film. We find a, perhaps we copy it and import it and say, cut it in Frank

00:18:15and bite it. We call perhaps 16. And then we go, you can sleep now that I swear to God, that is the

00:18:23level that we're working at. Will we have made a mistake in this? I'm sure. But it's so interesting

00:18:29to, to be attentive to those details in a world that says, Oh, okay. So yeah, uh, this person

00:18:38did this and you go, actually they didn't. Does that frustrate the hell out of you? Because

00:18:43even from my limited knowledge of Napoleon and we've done some stuff with him on the show.

00:18:49And then I go see a big picture, like the Napoleon picture. And right away,

00:18:53I see that didn't happen. That didn't happen. And it frustrates me to a degree. I can't imagine

00:18:58that doesn't get your Irish up. No, here's the reason why. Why?

00:19:01First of all, we have a first amendment, no establishment of religion. Uh, that's the first

00:19:06thing. The third thing is, uh, freedom to redress your grievances. And the middle one is

00:19:13freedom of the press, right? Free speech. I know a guy who takes these histories and he collapses

00:19:21characters, changes countries and does his stories that way named William Shakespeare. I do not for a

00:19:28second want to discourage or suggest that there could not be perhaps even a larger truth that could

00:19:36emerge from fiction. So I can look at, uh, Oliver Stone's JFK and go, Oh my God, you're driving me

00:19:44crazy. You're telling you, you're telling kids and people and ordinary stuff that there was 12 minutes

00:19:49when the whole national security thing went down that allowed them and them as variously the KGB,

00:19:55the CIA, the NSA, the, the FBI, the Cubans, the mafia to do X, Y, and Z. Right. And you just go,

00:20:05that didn't happen. And, and yes, you know, uh, Jim Garrison, Kevin Costner did do that, but he

00:20:11didn't do that. But you gotta just sit back because you don't want to select out for the next William or

00:20:19Wilhelmina Shakespeare. I just, I could imagine you taking notes in some of these things and say,

00:20:26I don't, I just have a reaction and, and, and, but most of the time I think fiction is able to do

00:20:33really interesting things. I'm chose the other way. And so I have to be true. And so it doesn't

00:20:38piss me off. The thing I worry about are the people who believe stuff and go down those rabbit holes and

00:20:45sometimes end up doing really horrible things based on some idea that, uh, that some group of

00:20:51people or type of people or race of people or political party of people are enemies and have

00:20:58to be killed. And you just kind of go, look, here's, I could walk out on this. I've been making films

00:21:04about the U S but I've also been making films about us, all of the, the lowercase two letter plural pronoun,

00:21:13all of the intimacy of, of us and we and our, and all the majesty, the complexity, the contradiction,

00:21:21and even the controversy of the U S. And if I have learned one thing, there's only us, there's no them,

00:21:28there is no them and them, the idea of them, the them of them animates 90% of the bullshit that is out

00:21:39there. 99% of the bullshit. There is no them. What would happen if in all of the struggles based

00:21:46on religion or politics or where there was not a them, what would happen?

00:21:51It'd be a much harder place. John Lennon wrote a good song about this. Imagine that.

00:21:56Don't you need one of them? Like, don't you think that when looking back and watching the documentary,

00:22:02you make a point to say, this guy, this, this Uber today, just cut me off at 26th street and

00:22:09seventh Avenue. Yeah. There's one them. Right. No, but when you say how during the war and as granular

00:22:16as you get to the actual battles, then you make sure that you spend equal time with the people who

00:22:22are trying to develop constitution and get all these different entities to agree on how we're going to

00:22:28govern this new entity, getting away from a tyrannical rule for the first time. Don't you

00:22:34think that it was easier in that room knowing that they had that, that, that similar enemy,

00:22:40that them across the way, you know, because I don't think that would be able to get done today

00:22:46because to your point, 99% of this world is them. So we can't come to an agreement that would

00:22:52essentially shape what the country is today. But, you know, but as you're telling a story about it,

00:22:59you have to subsume those binaries. Like we create binaries, you know, we live in a computer world.

00:23:06Everything's a one or a zero, right? Okay. Um, we are in a political world where it's my way or the

00:23:12highway, red state, blue state, you know, what young, old, rich, poor, white, black, uh, male, female,

00:23:19uh, you know, east, west, north, south, we do, they don't exist. Nature doesn't have these binaries.

00:23:26And that's the perfect example that surrounds us that we can riff off. So yes, part of telling a good

00:23:33story is understanding these dialectics and these dynamics and the false binaries that we make, but

00:23:40anything that has art in it is the reconciling thing. Like if you build a bridge or a building,

00:23:48one-on-one always has an airplane, one-on-one always has to equal two, right? Otherwise the

00:23:53whole project doesn't work. But what we want in our relationships, in our art, in our faith,

00:24:01is for the whole to be greater than the sum of the parts. So here are the sum of the parts

00:24:05and here's the whole. And what's that? That's the question that we need to be asking ourselves. And

00:24:10none of that has anything to do with any binary, just doesn't have it. It's, it's the reconciliation

00:24:17of these two opposing things. And to see that is the, is the responsibility of the storyteller. So

00:24:27Richard Powers, a novelist right now said, the best arguments in the world, these are binaries,

00:24:31that's all we do is argue, right? Won't change a single person's point of view. The only thing that

00:24:36can do that is a good story. So think about the way in which the good story could be, as I've said,

00:24:43like a benevolent Trojan horse that comes in not to be released at night to kill all the inhabitants

00:24:49of the city and to burn the city down, but to say, wow, it is true that sometimes a thing in the

00:24:56opposite of a thing, as Wynton Marsalis said in our jazz series, could be true at the same time.

00:25:01You know, we're in the binary say, oh, you got to cancel this person because this, right? Or we don't

00:25:07include this because we're doing real Americans and they are not real Americans. So unless you're talking

00:25:12about Native Americans, I've got a problem with that, right? And as our series does, we take,

00:25:19well, this is the main thing is the American Revolution is a global war, the fourth global

00:25:24war for the prize of North America. So when you say the prize of North America, what do you mean?

00:25:29You mean the land. So you can get an A in fifth grade and eighth grade and 11th grade on your test if

00:25:35you say taxes and representation. It's true. But ahead of that is land. And that land

00:25:42is originally occupied and still occupied to the west of the colonies by Native nations that are not

00:25:49them. They're separate and distinct nations that the Shawnee and the Delaware are distinct as

00:25:54Virginians and Massachusetts, or maybe Massachusetts folks, or maybe it's French and Prussians, right?

00:26:01So if you can create a circumstance in which you can say, not just them, but understand the Cherokee are

00:26:08hell of a lot different than the Iroquois Confederacy that says Seneca and Cayuga and Onondaga and Tuscarora

00:26:14and Oneida and Mohawk. It's really important for me to know those six nations that created

00:26:20this thing called the Haudenosaunee, often called the Iroquois Confederacy, that so impressed Benjamin

00:26:25Franklin, that he said, they have a union. Why can't we have a union of our colonies 20 years before

00:26:31the revolution? And he gets people together. He draws a cartoon of a snake cut up and under it is

00:26:37the dire warning, join or die. And he gets people to come to Albany and seven of the 13 colonies vote

00:26:42unanimously for his plan of the union. We've already been told by Kanesatago, the spokesman for the

00:26:48Haudenosaunee, the six nations, that never fall out with one another. The union is the most important

00:26:55thing, but they go back to the States to try to sell it and nobody buys it. Nobody wants to give

00:26:59up their autonomy. But 20 years later, they figure out how to do that in the American revolution.

00:27:04This is a really good story, right? What? This is a functioning, you know, union, confederacy,

00:27:10democracy that's been going for centuries. And oh, by the way, the revolution will kill that because

00:27:16in the Eastern tribes, like the Oneida, they've been assimilated, they're close, they know and they

00:27:21trust the Americans, the others on the Western thing, think the British might forestall the

00:27:25inevitable. Any side you choose, you're going to lose because we don't call it the Eastern Seaboard

00:27:30Congress meeting in Philadelphia. We don't put George Washington in charge of the Eastern Seaboard

00:27:36Army. We call it the Continental Army. We know where we're going. So all of a sudden,

00:27:41you've got a dynamic, right, that I've just introduced out of left field, a dynamic

00:27:48about the revolution that we just say, oh, it's not just guys in Philadelphia. Oh, it's not just

00:27:54crossing the Delaware in a nice clogged, you know, river on Christmas night. It's now got more

00:28:03interesting to me stuff. It's like, who's the second, Rojas, who hits the home run in the seventh

00:28:09game. He's the second baseman for the Dodgers. He's not Shohei Otani. He's not this guy that's supposed

00:28:14to hit the home run. It's this guy, the second baseman. And you go, this is the miracle of human

00:28:20experience. The more that I read and see your stuff, I often wonder, we're guilty of glamorizing

00:28:29things from history, just to kind of make them- Me too. Storytelling, yep.

00:28:32But our goal is to sit down at a bar next to somebody and be like, oh, I had heard that

00:28:40little thing on Twisted History. You know, Ric Flair was kidnapped as a kid. You know,

00:28:44little tidbits like that. And so we do have to glamorize it. Do you ever feel that you need to,

00:28:49or is history just that interesting that it doesn't need the special effects?

00:28:53Yeah. You know, I can say on the one hand, you just can't make this stuff up. Why would you want

00:28:58to pursue the fiction stuff? On the other hand, I do find myself saying the most important,

00:29:05the biggest, the whatever, as a way to kind of, in storytelling, sell it. I mean,

00:29:10after we tell the story of the Haudenosaunee and Franklin and the Albany Plan of Union, it dies. He said,

00:29:16but 20 years later, join or die would be the rallying cry in the most consequential revolution

00:29:21in history. About two months ago on the road, the endless road at, at every podcast and interview,

00:29:29hundreds of them that we've done. I finally, I just went out and I said, this is the most

00:29:34important event since the birth of Christ. I wasn't trying to be provocative. I wanted to

00:29:38get people thinking, you know, and I was in some place, I was Brown University.

00:29:41That's extremely provocative.

00:29:42Yeah. No, no, no. I was at Brown University and a French woman say, I think it's a French

00:29:45revolution. I said, how did that work out? You know? And then somebody said to me the other day,

00:29:49what about the Renaissance? I said, really good answer, you know, really good answer.

00:29:54And then you can offer other things. So like, we have a bias to Occidental as it used to be called

00:30:00culture, Western culture, you know, and, and there are flourishing Muslim regimes where the highest

00:30:05stuff going on in religious thinking and philosophy and ethics in history and science and astronomy and

00:30:12mathematics is happening in what we, in, in Persia and what we're now calling Iraq and Iran. And, um,

00:30:20that's the center of world civilization. And, and the Western world is in the dark ages, right? I mean,

00:30:27there it's not called dark ages, uh, uh, you know, for the wrong reasons. So I, I think that part of this

00:30:35superlatives or maybe overselling is a way to just grab attention in a world that is so filled with this

00:30:45stuff. And I just feel like then my responsibility is to go back and literally our responsibility,

00:30:52these are not made alone, um, to go back and try to, to justify the use of that superlative.

00:31:01Is there a part of history that you find boring where you just kind of roll your eyes and go,

00:31:05ah, I don't want to, I don't want to look into this or talk about this. So, um, no, um, you know,

00:31:11my, my pat answer is that if I were given a thousand years to live and I will not be given a thousand years

00:31:16to live and it creates a certain amount of urgency at age 72, um, I wouldn't run out of topics in American

00:31:23history. I've done one non-American topic with my daughter, Sarah and my son-in-law, David McMahon,

00:31:28uh, and they're one of our producing teams. And we did, you know, the central park five and a

00:31:35biography of Jackie Robinson and a four-part biography of Muhammad Ali. And then we did

00:31:40Leonardo da Vinci. And now we're working on a history of reconstruction called emancipation to

00:31:44exodus and a couple of other projects going forward on Obama on, on Martin Luther King. And so,

00:31:50you know, we, we did do that and it was sort of kind of wonderful and refreshing. I, somebody was trying to

00:31:55convince me to consider it and I refused to, and then Sarah and Dave said, why? And I went, okay,

00:32:01why? And, you know, he's arguably the most important person of the last hundred, uh, millennia.

00:32:09You know, there you go. I, I don't know what it would be. Um, I assume that you could conceivably

00:32:17make a series on vacuum cleaners that wouldn't suck. Well, you want the vacuum leaders to suck, but you

00:32:23don't want the film on vacuum cleaners to suck. Sorry. You know, you were talking,

00:32:28when you were talking about telling stories versus, you know, the binary, not to be morbid,

00:32:33but it kind of reminds me of a headstone. It's the dash in between that has all the substance,

00:32:40like the, the numbers are on both sides, but it's that, that little dash right there in the middle that.

00:32:45That is so profoundly true. That is as beautiful a statement as I've ever had. I was at a

00:32:52last Sunday or Sunday before. Cancel the divorce. You're back on for a couple.

00:32:56No, no, no. I want the divorce to happen now. The cameras are off. He was moving in too,

00:33:01by the way. Go ahead. But it just reminds me like you're saying binary and I'm thinking numbers and

00:33:06you know, it's the storytelling, the art, the, the. So I live in New England and, um, in the spring,

00:33:12when the water is cold and the air is getting warmer, it forms this cotton blanket over the rivers.

00:33:18It's so gorgeous. And in the fall where the water is warm, but the air is getting cold,

00:33:23it does the same thing. And there's something ineffable in, in what takes place between air and

00:33:29water that's manifested by that. That's your dash. That's exactly what we're after. That's the,

00:33:35some of the parts and that's the whole. And so that dash is, is right in there. And that's the whole,

00:33:40the whole game is that dash. I'm stealing that from you. I'm going to beat it to death. It's good.

00:33:45You're going to hear it on a hundred other, a hundred other podcasts before you're done.

00:33:49You go, what did I do? Yeah. Well, oh yeah. Well, we already know that.

00:33:55We're lucky enough that, um, the small group of people that can sit themselves, fans of this show

00:34:01often write into us and say, it's a small group of people. And they keep telling me that millions

00:34:05of people listen to this and that this is why I have to do it. Yeah. Comparatively. Um, but they say

00:34:12that even though they were, they hated history as kids, it was their least favorite subject.

00:34:17They love hearing history now, either through podcasts like ours and documentaries like yours.

00:34:24Is there an argument that teaching history is wasted on people who don't have history yet? And would you be

00:34:31as effective as teaching fifth grade history to a bunch of kids that haven't been anywhere or done

00:34:37anything? Everybody's drawn to story. The problem is the, how we teach history, which is dates and,

00:34:41and, and, you know, facts and, and the dry stuff. And so the word history is mostly made up of the

00:34:46word story plus high, which is a good way to begin. Right. Right. And so I remember in 11th grade

00:34:52at Ann Arbor pioneer high school, I took a history of Russian history and course, and it was taught by

00:34:59this flamboyant teacher named Randy Peacock, who told us all, he was a Trotskyite when he came in,

00:35:04and I'm sure the kids wrote it down, spelling it wrong and went home to their parents. It's the

00:35:08late sixties and they probably went, most of them went okay. Like, and some of them called the school

00:35:13board and went, went crazy, but he said, all right, this is going to be a course from the czar

00:35:19freeing the serfs, which he did before the emancipation proclamation. I think it's 1861

00:35:25up to the Russian revolution. So it's like, you're sort of kind of missing a lot of the stuff,

00:35:31but it's really great. And so interesting period. And he said, but today, the opening day,

00:35:37I'm just going to tell you about Rasputin, who he was and how he died. And like, he was stabbed,

00:35:42he was shot, he was poisoned. They dumped him in the river. He still were trying to,

00:35:46he was still trying to get through the ice. Even the girls in the back row who were painting,

00:35:52I'm not painting, but with their pencil drawing horses heads all day. And that's all they do in every

00:35:57class. I mean, I think this is a new, a thing that's been lost forever, but, but, you know,

00:36:03I tell people of a certain age and they go, oh yeah, the girls consciously sit in the back

00:36:08so they can draw pictures of horses head because they're just waiting for the moment,

00:36:12Tuesday and Thursday, where after school, their mom picks them up and they go riding.

00:36:16And that's the whole thing. And it's great. And I, I don't begrudge them.

00:36:20They had put their pencils down and we're going like this.

00:36:23You have to tell it like it's a Friday night party.

00:36:25You have to tell these, everybody in the class, including me, I can just remember his

00:36:30descriptions of that first class, you know, and I forever revere the name of Randy Peacock.

00:36:36Now dad, I was, his widow wrote to me just saying how happy he was that for 20 years,

00:36:42while he still lived, I would refer to him, uh, as this great inspirational figure in my life for

00:36:49having gone. I had already always liked history and I always was the weird kid that wasn't reading

00:36:54novels like my brother, but I was reading encyclopedias and the map above my bed was the,

00:37:00the, the, you know, all the native American tribes along with the political boundaries,

00:37:05kind of faint boundaries of, of the states that would occupy the 48 contiguous, um,

00:37:13states. So it's how you do it. Right. And, and that's what you guys do too. I mean,

00:37:18we're in the business of trying to say, Harry Truman said, David McCullough told me this,

00:37:22the late historian said that Harry Truman said that the only thing that's really new is the history

00:37:26you don't know. Now, most people presume from experience that there is nothing relevant about

00:37:33history. It's like now and what's going to happen two minutes from now. Right. And so there's,

00:37:41you, you do that at apparel. If you don't know where you've been, you can't possibly know where you

00:37:45are and where you're going. And so history is hugely important. It is the single greatest teacher.

00:37:50It's just, we have to now remind people of what it is. And starting with stories is, is really great.

00:37:56I mean, when John Peters kills his best friend growing up, Jeremiah post, that's a big moment.

00:38:02And people sit up and go, Whoa, that's the revolution too. And he's a loyalist and you're following him.

00:38:08And we don't judge. He ends up in Nova Scotia. He's not staying or sticking around. He is loyal

00:38:13to his sovereign. What is this stuff? This is crazy. So would you be upset then if the average

00:38:21high school teacher, we happen to have a very good history teacher in our local school system,

00:38:26Mike Troy, Mike Troy does a very good job with it. So shout out because you should get some recognition.

00:38:30But should history teachers who maybe aren't that good, should they wheel out the old TV

00:38:35like they used to during the thing and just put you on for 12 hours?

00:38:38I mean, one of the great things about PBS is that most broadcast television, now I understand that

00:38:43there's streaming, but most broadcast television is skywriting. The first breeze and it's gone.

00:38:49But PBS knows how to reach every classroom. So my civil war series that came out in September of 1990,

00:38:55do the math, it's a little bit over 35 years, is being shown as we're talking today, this is a

00:39:01school day in the United States. It's being shown hundreds of times, not the whole thing, but a

00:39:05little piece here and a little piece there. And yesterday, it was shown and Wednesday, it was

00:39:12shown and won't be shown tomorrow because tomorrow is Saturday and people will not be in school.

00:39:16But that's really satisfying to me. And that when I first came out, you could go on a college camp,

00:39:21but no kid knew me from Adam. Now kids come up to me. Oh, yeah, we watch your stuff all the time.

00:39:26I edit my vacations and my, you know, the bat mitzvah or the, you know, the birthday party with

00:39:36the Ken Burns effect, you know, that's been in every Mac computer since January of 2003. And I had visited

00:39:44Steve Jobs in December of 2002. And he just said, you know, he's showing me his stuff and I'm a Luddite.

00:39:50And I, I just said, Oh, cool. You know, and he goes, but we'd like to keep the working copy,

00:39:55uh, working title. And I said, what is it? He goes, Ken Burns effect. I said, I don't do commercial

00:40:00endorsements. And he goes, what? And so we ended up becoming really good friends. I'd stay at his

00:40:04house until, until he died when I was in Silicon Valley. And, and the, the, the quid pro quo was,

00:40:10I just walked out of his office after about an hour. He was incredulous until I explained, you know,

00:40:15that I felt that there was an integrity to this process. But if Apple was willing to give a lot

00:40:21of software and hardware that I could give away to nonprofits, I was cool with that.

00:40:25How, how did the Ken Burns effect become a thing? Was it just,

00:40:28it was, it's, it's basically what the way Apple applies is rather simplified version,

00:40:34a kind of panning and zooming thing. I have always treated an old photograph as if it was the feature

00:40:40filmmakers master shot. That is to say it's alive and it has within it the possibilities of what we

00:40:46call a long shot, a medium shot, a close shot, a tilt, a pan, a reveal and insertive details.

00:40:54And I don't just look at it and energetically explore the surface, the landscape of that,

00:41:00but I want to will it alive. So there's an oral dimension too, uh, is the bat cracking as the crowd

00:41:06cheering as the cannon firing or the bayonets clashing or the troops tramping is that horse

00:41:11whinnying of the leaves doing that. And so if you look at the, uh, revolution film,

00:41:19there are battle scenes in which we literally have hundreds of effects. We have as complicated as a

00:41:23sound effects track as a, as a, um, uh, a feature film. And if you're in a really good system with

00:41:29speakers and sub warfers and stuff like that, it'll scare the shit out of you. Bullets go past your head.

00:41:34Uh, the ground will shake when cannons fly. And I've been in a few screenings where we were in Camden,

00:41:40New Jersey of all places across the river from Philadelphia, showing to a few thousand people,

00:41:44a clip reel of 50 things is like three or four weeks ago. And I'd introduced the clip reel.

00:41:49And then I was going to take a seat in the front row with my co-producers, uh, co-directors, Sarah

00:41:55Botstein and David Schmidt and other of the team and, and, and folks that we're traveling with. And,

00:42:00and as the first cannon went off, I was still on the stage, the stage, which was wood shook.

00:42:05So I pulled up a folding chair just inside the curtain. So I couldn't be seen by the audience.

00:42:11Didn't have the greatest view of the thing, but I'd seen it a hundred times, but I sat there and just

00:42:15let the cannonballs reverberate in my chest and the bullets whizz by. And I was a pig in shit.

00:42:21I bet. Can you, as a filmmaker then, but first let's hear a little message from SimpliSafe.

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00:43:20there. I have a perfect example. We have kids that cut through our backyards. SimpliSafe has alerted

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00:43:38save 60% off a SimpliSafe home security system at SimpliSafe.com slash twisted. That's SimpliSafe.com

00:43:48slash twisted. There's no safe like SimpliSafe. And let's go back to Ken Burns. So that eye,

00:43:55that Ken Burns effect, does that affect the way that you walk around a museum? Because I see you take

00:44:00a piece of artwork and like you say, all the different shots. I don't know if you can do that

00:44:04like Guernica, but you can certainly do it with anything that's more realistic.

00:44:08That's a great question. Right from Sunflowers on down.

00:44:11So filmmaking is, is a pretty interesting, like music and all art form aspires to be music.

00:44:19When you die and if you go to heaven and you're an art form, you want to be music,

00:44:24because it's invisible. It's works on you fastest. But just as the musician controls the tempo,

00:44:31like I can pause at a photograph or a painting in a museum for as long as I want.

00:44:36As a filmmaker, I'm going to make you look at it for as long as I want you to look at it,

00:44:40as long as I think. I was told by an old editor in New York City, long dead guy named Jerry Michaels.

00:44:46He said, there's only one rule in filmmaking, and that is a shot lasts as long as it lasts.

00:44:52And so that's it. And it's true. And, and so I control the time. So you may want to watch

00:44:58Guernica for, you know, 20 minutes, but I may show you less than a minute of it,

00:45:02or maybe seven seconds of that painting, like the famous painting, the, the German

00:45:07painter of Washington crossing the Delaware in the daytime happened at night in an ice clogged,

00:45:12Delaware river. I don't think people stand up on a boat, maybe he does. But you know,

00:45:17it's howling winds and whatever. We use that when the historian Maya Jasanoff in the

00:45:23of the introduction of the film talks about that our relationship to it

00:45:28is so unreal and detached to the revolution. And I showed, we showed the, the Washington

00:45:35crossing the Delaware painting as, as our example of unreal and detached. We just had this heroic thing,

00:45:41and we're not going to ask any questions. We're not going to interrogate this thing. So it's a very

00:45:45interesting thing. I, I know of experiences where I have rushed through one of my favorite museums is a

00:45:52Musee d'Orsay in Paris, and I rush to the begin, up to the top floor, just to the impressionist

00:45:57galleries and fifth or sixth floor. And I can walk through the rooms very quickly. I know the Cezanne's,

00:46:03I know the Renoir's, I know the Degas and I, you know, just, you know, even the minor, you trios,

00:46:09and it's not minor, great painter, all, all of this stuff. And sometimes I'll just linger for a long

00:46:17time, but that's the luxury of being the digester of it rather than the creator or the collaborator

00:46:24of, with people of creating it. Does that make any sense? It makes a lot of sense, but I gotta,

00:46:29you have a natural way of overwhelming, right? Like what little conversations we've had in a delightful

00:46:37way. Oh, interrupting. No, not at all. No, but even when watching the documentary,

00:46:43Annie and I sitting down and getting our snacks ready and the whole deal, I'm trying to watch it

00:46:48in broader strokes. I find myself take Ethan Allen was a drunk. Benjamin Franklin's son was in prison.

00:46:53Like you, you tend to even give tidbits to everyone that it makes me hungry to learn more about,

00:47:00like, that's why that cutting room floor frustrates me. I want to swim on that floor. Now I want to go to

00:47:06the fifth floor. We had gotten engaged in Paris, so we were at that museum. I don't remember anything on

00:47:11the fifth floor. And now I'm remiss. I want to go back there and digest all that stuff.

00:47:15That's okay. You should go back. Do you feel that wall of noise,

00:47:17bringing it back to music? Like that wall of noise, just giving people as much as you can and

00:47:22just seeing if they can grab onto anything, throw it against the wall, see what sticks.

00:47:25We love a complicated story. And we also know that one viewing isn't enough. I mean,

00:47:32you can get it and you can walk away. You can even go, oh, this is too much for me. Most television is

00:47:37passive, right? Like it happens and you do it and you know, you know, the formulas. And so you,

00:47:42you predictable, you know, that person's going to die or they're going to figure this out,

00:47:45but let's figure out why, how they're going to figure it out. And it's the same stupid,

00:47:50boring way, but these are dense. These require a kind of active participation. But I meet people,

00:47:56you know, from, you know, captains of industry to stay at home moms, to kids who watch stuff

00:48:04like 10 times and they still find something like, I noticed that thing like that. And, and that,

00:48:10that interests me. It's not that we're putting in these little, you know, uh, what do people call

00:48:14them? Little, you know, no, like little presents, little Easter eggs. Thank you very much. Uh,

00:48:20it there to do that to Liberty. It's just that you want to tell a complex story. It can't all

00:48:26necessarily be absorbed at once. And I've had people come back and said, I watched the entire Civil War

00:48:33series. And then I listened to it again, like I'm a painter. And so I had it on in the other room

00:48:39and I listened to it. It's just, it's a great radio play. And I'm going, yes. And, and the images

00:48:45are still probably 60% of it, right? Like you can hear it. I mean, in the beginning is the word,

00:48:51like I didn't say that, but in the beginning is the word. So we are written, we are really tied to the

00:48:57words, my collaboration with Jeffrey Ward primarily, but also Dayton Duncan. And now,

00:49:02my daughter and son-in-law, Sarah Burns and David McMahon, you know, we take words and we transform

00:49:08them. I work on the sentences I help and, but that's the beginning. And so there, there's a dense

00:49:15literary aspect to these visual things. And, and yet the visual stuff is hugely always a little bit

00:49:23more than the, than, than the, what you hear. Right. Cause people can call you whatever they

00:49:28want. They call, can't call you superficial. Like, you know what I'm saying? Like I want to now listen

00:49:33back after watching it. Yeah. And I think maybe people who don't have the curiosity that the three

00:49:39of us have can just watch it for the surface, but it's like a little something for everyone.

00:49:43So that's why I think if it was wheeled into a fifth grade class,

00:49:46it happens. I think it would be very well received this. What, what is releasing

00:49:53the American revolution, which releasing on November 12th. I just want to remind everybody.

00:49:5616, 16, 16, November 16th, American revolution is releasing a PBS on all streaming, uh, platforms

00:50:02that you can find. I think that it would work with them, but the universe, the universality of it.

00:50:07We've been working with teachers who get a bum rap and who are on the front lines of all of this.

00:50:11You think about the Washington's and the Lafayette's and uh, and uh, Alexander Hamilton's they're there,

00:50:17they're firing guns in anger. They're brave. But the person going over the wall at redoubt

00:50:22number 10 in Yorktown, which is the final thing is Joseph Plum Martin and some black soldiers from

00:50:27Rhode Island who've been promised their freedom after the war. Right. And they're the ones that go

00:50:31through and Joseph Plum Martin, who we met at age 15, when he signs up a couple of days after the

00:50:37declaration and is blooded for the first time in the battle of Long Island, he's now a grizzled,

00:50:41old soldier, all of, of, you know, all of 18 or 19 years of age. And he's over the top. And he said,

00:50:47the man next to me took a bullet in the head and died crying out bitterly, but there was no stopping us.

00:50:53Right. Like,

00:50:56come on, like Joseph Plum Martin. We don't have an image of Joseph Plum Martin. We have his signature

00:51:00when he, when he signs up and yet, you know him, right? And we left some writing and so we got a good

00:51:07actor to read it. And it's just like, he's alive to me and he's, he's central and he's the epitome of

00:51:14the grunt. It was so interesting. Last night, I was at this big gala dinner at the Metropolitan Museum

00:51:19and this guy came up a Marine and he was, he, you know, he, I don't think he even served in Iraq or

00:51:25Afghanistan. And he's, but he said, we love your Vietnam film. Cause it just told the truth of what life

00:51:32is like. And there are grunts in that film who complain all the time about what went on,

00:51:38not trusting the leadership, didn't really care about what the orders, just cared about the

00:51:41survival of your friends. We have World War II guys who've said that there's civil war guys that said

00:51:46it. I'm sure if we went back to the Greek, you know, and, and, and did, you know, um, you know,

00:51:52the Ajax or one of the other things, you've got these grunts, you know, exactly what it's about,

00:51:58that they're fodder. And even Joseph Martin has this thing. It's like the great generals get all

00:52:03the credit and we get nothing, but this doesn't happen without us.

00:52:08Yeah. George Washington, you were saying, couldn't have happened without him. If he would have gone

00:52:11down in one of these close calls. We're done. We're done. We're speaking Spanish, Dutch,

00:52:16English, or, you know, or, or, or French. You don't think 80 years later they would have

00:52:21rose up again and gotten together and done something or. I don't know. As Christopher Brown,

00:52:26the scholar in our film breaks the fourth wall for the only time in the film and goes,

00:52:32you know, I'm not a big fan of the, of the great man theory of history or interpretation of history,

00:52:37but let's just put it this way without Washington's leadership. I don't know. I don't know that another

00:52:41Washington comes along. Another Washington does come along Abraham Lincoln at the right time for

00:52:47that particular set of events who's tall like Lincoln was, but Lincoln had a kind of melancholy to him

00:52:55and a kind of deference and a humor. Washington just projected something that permitted people to

00:53:05fight in the dead of night and, and do all these things. He's, I, we're just extraordinarily lucky at,

00:53:13at the same time, we have to acknowledge all the other aspects to him and everybody else. Nobody's

00:53:18in there. Heroism is not, you know, we're always lamenting there are no heroes today as if the

00:53:24supposition was that heroism is perfection. Heroism is we inherit from the Greeks, which is actually a

00:53:30negotiation between somebody's, an inner negotiation, sometimes a war between somebody's strengths and

00:53:36weaknesses. And it is the outcome of that negotiation or that war that determines heroism.

00:53:42So Achilles has his heel and his hubris along with his great powers and strengths, and they're using

00:53:48this as examples to tell us. So when we live in an age where we throw people out, we cancel people

00:53:54on either side of the political equation, we do ourselves a disservice because we don't then

00:54:00come to appreciate the varieties and the complexities of human experience. And we think it can be reduced into

00:54:06a binary, which then creates a them, which they, them doesn't exist. It's us. We're called the human

00:54:15race, period.

00:54:17Just like what we talked about in the car on the way in.

00:54:19Yeah.

00:54:19We were saying almost the same thing.

00:54:21I would say too, like from your perspective, you can speak so

00:54:25fondly of your team and what you and Sarah are doing, but let's go, it's 2025. Last time I checked,

00:54:30let's go to 2225. And your great granddaughter wants to do exactly what you're doing about stuff

00:54:36that had gone on around Y2K. Don't you feel that her job is going to be a hell of a lot more

00:54:42difficult because that's 16 that you were able to franken cut into a perhaps 16? Don't you think that

00:54:50she will have 17 million different people telling her every little detail that she puts out there

00:54:57is incorrect?

00:54:59The Bible in the Old Testament says what has been done will be done again. What has been will be

00:55:04again. There's nothing new under the sun. That's Ecclesiastes. And that means that human nature

00:55:10doesn't change. And it doesn't, except when it does, like July 4th, 1776. That's really new. People are

00:55:16subjects before that. Few people are citizens. And there's the same quality of venality and virtue,

00:55:23virtue being the free electron word that is throughout our series that we don't ever once

00:55:27say it, I don't think in narration, but it's said by all sorts of people as the object of this. That's

00:55:32pursuit of happiness is not the acquisition of stuff. It's lifelong learning. And if you learning

00:55:38all your life and improving yourself in a Socratic way, know thyself, then you have, you begin to develop

00:55:46the virtue and the other characteristics that would permit you to enjoy the responsibilities

00:55:52of citizenship. Now, this is so far remote from where we are, but, but the same qualities of

00:55:58venality and virtue are then and now and will be in 100 years when my great granddaughter is trying

00:56:06to do this thing. And so it depends on who she is and whether she's able to muster, um, the strength

00:56:13to be able to go against the stream of what may be, or maybe things have changed and maybe it is easier

00:56:19to get out of it. Maybe people have tired of the, uh, the extraordinary human psychic cost of lying all

00:56:29the time about everything. And that something happens. I mean, this is jump back to John Lennon

00:56:34again, imagine that. And that's the, that's the, what you hold out. I'll give you an example. There's

00:56:41a nine year old kid freed black kid from Philadelphia, James Fortin, who hears the declaration of red

00:56:49the first time it was read out loud. And he doesn't for a second think it doesn't apply to him. Of course

00:56:53it applies to me. He joins the Patriot cause. He is involved in the privateering and ship

00:56:59stuff where you're capturing British ships and things like that. And he's captured himself.

00:57:04And the British captain has a son who's with him. And he says, they're the same age. If you come back

00:57:09to England, you can be the friend of my son. He goes, no. So he gets sent to the Jersey, which is a

00:57:15prison ship in the East river, which is notorious. People are dying of disease and starvation. And he

00:57:20survives. He's a kid. He's a, he's a teenager. And he comes back, he walks barefoot home from New York to

00:57:26Philadelphia when he's released. His mom, my mother's long given him up for dead. He becomes

00:57:31wealthy in the merchant Marine afterwards building sales. And he helps fund the first abolitionist

00:57:38newspaper by William Lloyd Garrison called the Liberator. His granddaughter, Charlotte leaves

00:57:44Philadelphia and comes down during the civil war to the sea islands off Georgia and helps all the

00:57:51union army deal with all of these people. They're not emancipated yet, but they're free because the

00:57:56union army now occupies the plantations in the sea islands of both Georgia and South Carolina and

00:58:03mostly Georgia and how to teach them school, how to teach them languages, how to teach them agriculture,

00:58:10how to do stuff, how to, how to, how to live on your own. And I just thought,

00:58:15you know, James Fortin, granddaughter, Charlotte, all, all doing the same thing. And so I hope that

00:58:23whatever I leave, and more importantly, what my daughters are leaving my grandchildren, of which I

00:58:28have four, four daughters and four grandchildren, kids, that they will somewhere down the line be

00:58:35operating in the same dedication to truth, the same dedication to fact checking, to admitting you're

00:58:42wrong, to getting figuring out what actually happened. You know, we live in a society where, you know, there

00:58:48was an invasion of our Capitol on January 6 2021. More than 1000 people were tracked down and arrested

00:58:58trials, evidence was done, all the things that the Constitution was guaranteed. Those people, they were found

00:59:04guilty, some were released, some were found guilty, some were probation, many were given prison sentences.

00:59:12Upwards of 20 years. And on January 20th, 2025, all of them were pardoned, and it didn't happen.

00:59:21It didn't happen, we're told. It did not happen.

00:59:24It's a fault.

00:59:25Doesn't that seem like an impossible story to tell 200 years from now?

00:59:28No.

00:59:28Okay.

00:59:29Because the footage is there, you can find it. And in fact, we made a film called The

00:59:34US and the Holocaust, a few films back, came out in the fall of 2022. And we, we used in that last

00:59:40minute when we were talking at the end about the fragility of institutions, even when you think

00:59:46that they're rock solid, we showed, you know, we had this, we're trying to figure out where to end it

00:59:51when they changed the immigration laws in 65 to make it a little bit less pernicious with the quotas that

00:59:57helped justify why we couldn't let Jews in during the Holocaust to our country. And then we just sort of did a

01:00:05mad dash in, in like a minute or two, to the present through, you know, Nazis marching in

01:00:11Skokie and, you know, the, you know, in this, in this late sixties and the tree of life and, and then

01:00:17January 6th. And, you know, there's a guy with a t-shirt that says Camp Auschwitz on it, that's

01:00:23attacking the thing. And apparently I learned from somebody that on the back of it, it said staff.

01:00:28So this guy wakes up in the morning that he knows he's going to rush the Capitol. And he puts on a t-shirt

01:00:33called Camp Auschwitz that has the word staff member on the back. And, you know, that is an

01:00:40important fact that we just need to just be aware or Charlottesville, Jews will not replace us. Jews

01:00:46will not replace us. And, and, you know, apparently this is a complicated dynamic that you cannot erase,

01:00:54not only in American history or in the world. We can't do an episode without talking about Nazis,

01:00:59a twisted history. It was just the fascination that I have. And then sometimes whenever I see

01:01:04documentaries, Germans can't get a good headline. And then I'm watching American Revolution. And all

01:01:09of a sudden you bring up the Hessians who are giants who eat babies, right? You know, like even then

01:01:15it's one of those things. So let me, let me just take the onus of Germans. So there's a young German

01:01:20woman who's been teaching in the United States in, um, in suburban Maryland outside the state Capitol.

01:01:27And she said, you know, it's really important as we were having these discussions about truth,

01:01:32about telling the truth. In fact, um, after our country, uh, was devastated, another country came in

01:01:41and was trying to teach us how to have a democratic thing. And at the heart of it was education and

01:01:46telling everything. It was insisted that we learn everything about our past, good, bad, and otherwise,

01:01:52because that's the way. And that country was the United States of America. And we taught,

01:01:57we, we, we created one of the most powerful free nations on the face of the earth by teaching the

01:02:03German people to understand and absorb their history and to, to take it back. And there you can

01:02:11walk through Berlin and see cobblestones that are commemorating what the German people did. Now,

01:02:17you know, we're in a country that wants to sanitize this and make this all just a kind of

01:02:22morning again in America style. We're like, have our knickers completely, uh, torn up by a democratic

01:02:29socialist, right? Well, most of our allies are or have been democratic socialists. And I'll just say

01:02:36democratic socialists don't kill other people. National socialists do.

01:02:41Absolutely. That's the Nazi party. Yeah. So guy, I had to bring it back to Nazi.

01:02:46No, no. And that's what I need you to do that at least once an episode. Yeah.

01:02:49And it's same way with it. And I know primarily your subjects, like you had said, are domestic

01:02:55with very few exceptions, particularly Leonardo, but, but we traveled to, to, I mean, we did a series

01:03:01on world war II. So that's what I find with the Japanese where the Germans sort of were able,

01:03:07or at least open to hearing about some of the stuff, the atrocities that went on. I always think

01:03:12about that band of brothers episode when they brought the townsfolk to the actual, you know,

01:03:17yeah, why we fight. It seems like the Japanese have tried to keep a lot of stuff covered up. We

01:03:23just did something on comfort women and whatnot. Um, do you find that governments sometimes are the

01:03:31reason that you can't get the truth. And I'm talking about history that we no longer can access,

01:03:37but you need to culture and language is important. English is part of a Germanic language stream.

01:03:43There's a, there's a connection to there. The difference between English and Japanese is

01:03:49intense. There's huge cultural force from a island nation. That's been sort of dominant for so long and,

01:03:56and, and, and been part of it. It's, it's more difficult to have an outsider come in and say,

01:04:01this is what you should do. We did that. And they formed a democratic system of government.

01:04:06We forced it on them. They'd already adopted our national pastime is their national pastime.

01:04:11And it has been, and all I have to do is exhibit a is point of the world series. Um,

01:04:16um, so it it's, it's more complex and, and we're, we, um, we do ourselves a disservice if we make a

01:04:25distinction and we say all Germans or all Japanese, just like all Americans, you know, it's, it's,

01:04:33it's a fool's errand that then leads to them. And I, I would like to see, we know,

01:04:41you know, when your mom says, apologize to your brother and you go, no, right. That's,

01:04:47you're talking about the same thing. So, you know, exactly why some group of people might resist

01:04:54embracing entirely the bad stuff they've done in their history. Right. We just know

01:05:00on a basic fundamental molecular level from our own lives, what it would be. Well, do that. I mean,

01:05:06let's, we can reverse engineer this. Like when somebody is in crisis, you go to a pastor or a

01:05:12professional and they want to know where'd you come from? What's your origin story? What's,

01:05:17what's your childhood? Like who are your parents? Right. So if a country feels divided and, and

01:05:22whatever, you could go back to your origin story and ask the same question. It has the same psychological

01:05:29dynamic that self-improvement has for an individual. And I think, you know, if I, you know,

01:05:36people say, what do you want people to get out of this? I said, nothing, whatever you get out of it

01:05:39is whatever you get out of it. But I really hope today where we think we're so divided,

01:05:43you go back in revolution, go, oh, we were really divided then, um, that maybe you can put the us back

01:05:50in the U S you've really fostered relationships with everybody that you've spoken about, whether it's

01:05:56certain tribes, whether it's, um, musicians like Armstrong, it doesn't matter what genre you're

01:06:02speaking about. You've fostered these relationships. And I think that's why you're so effective.

01:06:07I'm listening to, and you really have that passion for the other person.

01:06:10Sarah Botstein and I were on C-SPAN last week in Washington, DC, and they have a morning show.

01:06:15I think it's called Washington Journal where they go over the headlines and stuff like that. And they've

01:06:20got three phone lines, right? Democratic line, a Republican line and an independent line. I've been

01:06:25on it before. And it's often, you're sort of like, you know, they're, you're, you're ducking from

01:06:31the brushback pitches that are being thrown. Um, everybody said all three lines, we really love

01:06:39your stuff. And then had their question and the funders for our film, when you get to see the

01:06:44funding list, there are people in the far right and people in the middle and people are on the left and

01:06:51everybody's involved. And that's the way I want it to be like, cause you want to be the umpire and you

01:06:57want to be able to say there is a place for every single person. I've been traveling the country and I

01:07:05have said the exact same thing to Joe Rogan, as I said to the New York Times editorial board, as I said to

01:07:11kids in the inner city of Charleston and Chicago and Detroit, as I said to general audiences all around the

01:07:18country, just haven't had to vary the story. Just trying to throw fastballs down the middle of the

01:07:24America about this thing. And so, you know, I'm excited by the possibility that we could, you know,

01:07:32there'll be people in the far left and the far right that will come after this with great guns. But,

01:07:38you know, most people will go, wow, I didn't know that, which is what Joe Rogan said, he was curious.

01:07:43And I'm telling him stories about the revelation goes, wow, I mean, he didn't have the benefit yet,

01:07:47it wasn't done done to be that to look at it. So it was like, wow, I had no idea. And this is

01:07:52what you want. You want to set aside the set of preconceptions that you have and go,

01:07:57okay, you're right. It's, it's a really complex story. And we've been doing this from the beginning.

01:08:03My first film that was on PBS called Brooklyn Bridge about the building of the Brooklyn Bridge

01:08:08is complex like this. There's wire fraud, there's corrupt politicians, there's death,

01:08:13there's all this sort of stuff. We're still celebrating the most beautiful, in my mind,

01:08:18work of art, superlative of the 19th century. It isn't a painting, American work of art,

01:08:24it isn't a painting, it's a bridge. And it's a beautiful bridge. And Arthur Miller, I interviewed

01:08:29him and he said, it makes you think that maybe you too could add something that would last and be

01:08:34beautiful. And if some, if, if, if a piece of civic structure, that's purpose, main purpose is to get

01:08:41people from the bedroom community of Brooklyn to work in Manhattan reliably, you know, as opposed

01:08:47to the ferries and weather and fog and, and ice filled East river. And it's also a work of art.

01:08:53Yeah.

01:08:55That's really, really great. And that maybe you too could add something that would last and be

01:09:00beautiful. There could be things in our environment. You ever walk over the Brooklyn Bridge? I've walked

01:09:03over it hundreds of times and I've never failed to be blown away by the, by the stone and compression

01:09:11and the steel intention and the Gothic arches and the spider web of the radiating stays and just go and

01:09:19go. Oh my God. You know, Lewis Mumford, the great social critic that I interviewed for the film said,

01:09:24you know, I'm not a religious person and I have people who have transcendental experiences all the

01:09:29time, but I'd never had one. But walking across the Brooklyn Bridge, he said, I felt the power and

01:09:33glory of the modern world. He's talking about walking over it in the 1920s as a young man.

01:09:38And you just go, I had that experience. I know what that is. It's got an elevated promenade.

01:09:43Who puts the people in front of the traffic, right? And it's, and it's still there. And you see

01:09:49all of humanity there. It's just, it's such a great work of art.

01:09:54I will tell you that Annie and I were still working on wall street during 9 11. So when we tried

01:09:59to get together and she had lost her dad and her uncle and a bunch of people,

01:10:02because they were at winners of the world on the top of the world.

01:10:04You lost family.

01:10:05Yes. 9.

01:10:05Yeah. So when we were trying to get to each other,

01:10:10we decided to meet on the Brooklyn side. There weren't cell phones at the time that were able

01:10:14to get through. And as you know, there was this crater forming in a skyline that we grew up loving,

01:10:21you know, in back of us, I don't think we ever really truly felt safe until we started walking

01:10:25across the Brooklyn Bridge, even though we're a couple of feet, a couple of hundred feet above the water,

01:10:29which is moderately terrifying for people who don't like heights, but there was something

01:10:33like welcoming about walking across there, you know, the Brooklyn Bridge in particular.

01:10:37So on top of it being just this iconic part of the skyline, it was like a life raft for us on that day.

01:10:45That is so beautiful. I know that. And I know lots of people, I've seen the footage of people

01:10:50streaming across the bridge to get away from the horror of lower Manhattan at that time.

01:10:57Yeah. So, and that's what makes New York a special place. And also-

01:11:01You think?

01:11:01Yeah. Well, I'll tell you what, the south side of Brooklyn,

01:11:06where I'm from, doesn't get enough shine until you watch the American Revolution.

01:11:11Yeah.

01:11:11Like just to see how that was a linchpin for basically everything.

01:11:15Everything. Alexander's troops there on the American right. Yeah.

01:11:18I take for granted, except for a couple of parks that I used to drink at as an underage kid,

01:11:24had a plaque up, you know, but outside of that, I don't think it got the shine that it deserves.

01:11:28Outside of you calling Brooklyn part of Long Island, which I know is going to piss off a lot

01:11:31of Italian people. But, you know, I think there's a certain degree of home time pride that I got

01:11:37while watching the show.

01:11:38Yeah.

01:11:38One of the things that I wanted to ask you, because everyone has cheat codes to make their,

01:11:42you know, their content a little bit more palatable or attractive or whatever. Sometimes I do this

01:11:49podcast topless. You seem to bring in these high powered murderers row of people to voice over

01:11:56some of the stuff. And we thought it was delightful as we're sitting there. I was like, is that

01:11:59Mandy Patinkin? Oh, it is like Mandy Patinkin, like all that stuff. Is that something that you do

01:12:03purposely as a little bit of a trick or does that voice fit it?

01:12:06Somebody asked me that question and using the word celebrity. I said, I don't use celebrities,

01:12:09I use actors like Kim Kardashian. We don't ask to read. Right.

01:12:13Right. So, but Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep and Mandy Patinkin and Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney

01:12:19and Claire Danes and Hugh Dancy and Matthew Reese and Liev Schreiber. And in fact, we have the,

01:12:25I would submit the greatest cast list of any film that's ever been made or television show that's

01:12:30ever been made. IMDB, the American revolution. And I'm telling you, it's staggering that you're all

01:12:35of a sudden, you're like, oh, there's a dude from the wire. Like sometimes you don't even know how

01:12:38much you love these guys. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, no. It's, uh,

01:12:42Morgan Freeman, Samuel L. Jackson, uh, those hacks. Um, yeah. Sir Kenneth Branagh, Damian Lewis,

01:12:48Dom Nell Gleason, uh, uh, Maya Hawk and Ethan Hawk. Um, uh, Jeff Daniels, uh, Josh Brolin,

01:12:55he's George Washington, uh, you know, it's, uh, it, it's amazing. And I've done that from the first

01:13:02film on the Brooklyn bridge. Uh, and the idea is you want to get the people who can make the

01:13:08way they spoke back then, not seem anachronistic, but to make them human. So we follow, um, this

01:13:14young girl who's 10 years old when the war begins named Betsy Ambler. She's from Yorktown conveniently

01:13:19where the war will end, but it is, um, uh, an amazing thing. And Maya Hawk makes this little girl

01:13:26come alive. Right. You must be impossible to buy a gift for. I don't need anything. I tell my daughters

01:13:32that, you know, you must be impossible. I mean, what do you, what do you need? Well, see, I do collect

01:13:37quilts, uh, but I, you know, I said I was going to stop and then I have somebody who works for me

01:13:41and they're all antiques and, and I just, I, I, I don't immerse myself in the information to me.

01:13:47I have to parse these stories, but quilts like an unknown thing. It may even be signed Hannah,

01:13:52but you don't know if Hannah's 12 or she's 18 or 28 or 88 happy, sad, whatever it is. So there are these

01:13:58mysteries. You just have to accept it. And of course it's, they're all by women who are cut out of our

01:14:05history entirely, except as we try to put them back into our history.

01:14:10I had saved all my kids t-shirts throughout the years because I was going to make them all their

01:14:14own special one. And my mental son brought it to Goodwill.

01:14:18I would tell you right now, it's like they had taken a lung from her. Like you're saving all the

01:14:23time, all the jerseys and all the stuff. Science fair shirts and their jerseys. And I had it all.

01:14:28It's like the belt in the last of the Mohicans, like telling the story of the people.

01:14:31Oh, I know what you're feeling. Yeah. I had a woman, uh, I go to the Telluride Film Festival

01:14:35every year. It's the best film festival superlative on earth. And, um, I, uh, and so it has t-shirts

01:14:43every year. And some lovely woman heard that I made quotes and made a quilt of, uh, of the t-shirts

01:14:48that, that the festival had had, which I love, but it started when my grandmother made me a quilt from

01:14:54all the materials that she'd save in from world war two and the forties and early fifties. And

01:15:00you'd get skirts and sweaters and jackets and stuff like that. I still have it. It's in my bedroom.

01:15:06And then somewhere along the line, as I, as I moved into my twenties, I just remember being drawn

01:15:12and bought a quilt. And I've now 120 quilts later.

01:15:15Maybe a sewing machine. Yeah. No, I, I did. After my mom died, I did take a home ec course and

01:15:22kind of learned how to make a duffel bag, but all of that's gone. Kind of learned how to cook.

01:15:26All of that's gone. Um, uh, not all of it's gone. I've had to cook, uh, as a single dad for, uh, twice.

01:15:33Uh, but it's, um, yeah, not so good at it. I'm not good at it either. He cooks everything. I'm a,

01:15:39I'm a terrible cook. I can't parallel park. She can't cook.

01:15:42Cause we just, I get out of the car. Can you, can you parallel park me too?

01:15:47She can bore out an engine. I can parallel park and you like green tea.

01:15:51I'm telling you, I don't stand a chance. I don't stand a chance.

01:15:55You're in big trouble. Yeah.

01:15:58Um, let me, uh, close on this just cause we've kept you past your time.

01:16:01You have, this will cost you. This guy keeps throwing daggers at me.

01:16:05Will you build them? Yeah.

01:16:07Is there something that, you know, we mentioned from the onset,

01:16:11I think it was Andy who had said it. And then you had, uh, mentioned at one point too,

01:16:14uh, history, uh, tends to repeat itself. Is there something that's eerily similar to you from

01:16:20history to what's going on nowadays?

01:16:22Always. And, and it doesn't repeat. That's the thing. No, no, no two events have happened twice.

01:16:28Mark Twain is supposed to have said history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes. If he did,

01:16:32it's the perfect thing. So at any given time, you always feel rhymes, but let me tell you,

01:16:37they're always changing. So there are lots of rhymes in this and there'll be stuff that people go,

01:16:41Oh, you put this in because of Trump or you put this in. We began this when Obama was still the

01:16:47president and had 13 months to go. And so we've been through Trump one, we've been through Biden,

01:16:51we've been into Trump too. And so like people will say, I'll give you an example. We follow

01:16:56beautifully this wife of a German general who's at Saratoga. And, um, she's crossing over the Atlantic.

01:17:04She's waited to not be with her husband. She's not with her husband because her third daughter is

01:17:08born. So she's making this perilous thing and she's anxious because she's heard that Americans eat

01:17:14cats. So if this film had come out a year ago, they would go, Oh, can you put that in because of

01:17:20Springfield, Ohio, the whole debate, how, how could you do, you know, and we don't ever put signs like

01:17:26this. This will rhyme in so many ways, but you have to actually have a discipline to not play to them.

01:17:33In fact, I taken something out of the film because there is no way that anyone would believe that

01:17:39we didn't put it in. It is so completely a rhyme. And I don't want people to be distracted or to fall

01:17:47out or to say, aha, I get your politics. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna watch this because you've done

01:17:53this thing. And you go, it was in three years ago. You know, it was in four years ago.

01:17:59Are you able to share what that was? No. Okay. All right.

01:18:01That's selective storytelling. And I think that's an absolute travesty. You should not be as

01:18:06enamored with them as you are. And maybe she should come back home with me. We won't keep

01:18:10you any longer. It's the American Revolution. It drops. It releases on November 16th on PBS.

01:18:19PBS, the best $5 you'll spend. The only place where any of my films could have been made. The

01:18:25only place. It stands for public, which is a really good thing. It goes back to citizenship. It's the

01:18:32Declaration of Independence. It's the pursuit of happiness applied to communications, broadcasting,

01:18:37obvious, not system, but service. Also part of a civic compact that we all have with each other,

01:18:48but actually don't practice.

01:18:50Did you take the subway here?

01:18:51No, I walked.

01:18:53Right. So we have-

01:18:55I either take the subway or I walk.

01:18:57We have a lot bigger people come into this office all the time

01:19:01with sunglasses and hats and entourages and stuff like that. But when we went outside

01:19:06to meet Emmett, I think he was doing fentanyl. I just, I don't know if you knew that or not.

01:19:09And all of a sudden, just to kind of see you walking up a New York City street, I don't know.

01:19:14Thoroughly impressed before you got here, even more impressed now.

01:19:17I got to ask one more.

01:19:18It was really an honor. No, you're done.

01:19:19I have to ask one more question.

01:19:20You can't. Are you done? Please, go ahead.

01:19:21When you're in one of your museums-

01:19:22My number, I'll get it.

01:19:23Stop.

01:19:23The digits were over. We're totally going to switch. But when you, I got to ask,

01:19:27when you're in a museum or when someone's taking a picture, because all these kids are on

01:19:32cameras now, right? Do you ever go up behind them and say, that's me?

01:19:36No.

01:19:38Like, do you ever be like, by the way, that's me?

01:19:39Like Bill Murray.

01:19:40Like Bill Murray, yeah.

01:19:41My whole old fogey thing is social media isn't.

01:19:47You don't have to be, though.

01:19:48Right? Because like, how is it that as I walk over the Brooklyn Bridge-

01:19:52Your name is right there. You could just be like, by the way.

01:19:53But to take a picture of yourself in front of this great work of art, to be someplace in a room

01:19:58with people where you're supposed to socialize and everybody's on their phone,

01:20:03checking what the thing is. I, you know, and I'm guilty of it too. I mean, I use the phone. I mean,

01:20:08I don't carry around a laptop. My phone is my computer and my life. And, you know, aside from

01:20:15Zooms that I do on a desktop, wherever I might be, this is it. And I'm as wedded as the next person.

01:20:23But this, I'm not on social media. Some people, I do have things, but I never do them. I've never

01:20:29been on X. I've never been on Facebook. I've never been on Instagram. And sometimes I get shown stuff

01:20:36or somebody will forward me. And of course I can't open it because I, you know, whatever it is. And

01:20:40sometimes it'll open anyway and you go, Oh, okay. But it's, you know, my landline.

01:20:45Yeah. Well, I do have a landline in New Hampshire, but it's, it's, you know,

01:20:49but that's a good way to socialize. You could actually say, by the way,

01:20:54well, I do have to say that the phone may be the greatest invention. And then as someone with four

01:21:00daughters spread around and, and, and for grandkids, FaceTime is like,

01:21:05I mean, when my grandson, my youngest grandchild calls me and he's about to turn four and he's,

01:21:14looks like I did when I was four, blonde haired and just, you know, his father is a big gigantic

01:21:20linebacker of a Hispanic guy. Just wonder, there's nothing visually that you can find of his dad,

01:21:26but his granddaddy, as he calls me, his granddaddy is in there and he says, granddaddy. And he just,

01:21:31I go, Oh, you know, it's a great feeling. Yeah. Do you watch TV? Like, do you watch stuff that's

01:21:38just totally inconsequential? I mean, I wanted to ask, do you watch like the Patriot with Mel

01:21:42Gibson and go, yeah, that's, that's kind of rad. That's cool. No, I watched the Patriots.

01:21:48Will you go see Predator's Badlands with me? Or I, I, what did I do? What did I actually stream? I,

01:21:55I streamed a couple of years ago, whenever it was a year and a half ago, uh, Shogun. Cause I

01:22:01remember the original reading and I watched it twice because I wanted to get it all digested,

01:22:08characterized because of the subtitles. I love, I thought it was fabulous, but I mainly watch sports

01:22:14and news and movies. So the first thing I might do is turn on Turner classic movies and then I'll

01:22:21just go to the other places. And, and I, I like, I like movies. I like getting caught up in some

01:22:28French guy who got hired by Hollywood in the late fifties and did a noir. That's like a noir,

01:22:36noir. And you know, and you just go, ah, it's great. Or Fritz Lang, the German expressionist who

01:22:42comes to Hollywood and has this period. That's great. Or Luis Manuel does the, the surrealist from

01:22:49uh, Spanish and French surrealist who like is one of the greatest directors, if not the greatest

01:22:54director superlative, um, who, who like had a Hollywood period and he had made, uh,

01:23:01Ancien and Alou with Salvador Dali with ants coming out of the hand. And then he does a Robinson Caruso,

01:23:07like 25 years later. And at one point he picks up at their ants on his hand and you go, okay,

01:23:12I got the reference. How about the bachelor? I mean, I mean like, is there a time where you unplug and say,

01:23:18I just want absolute stupidity to flow over me because I had just done such deep dive or do you

01:23:24not have time for that? Uh, not only do is it, it's a waste of time. I can get all the stupidity

01:23:29I want by following politics. That's true. That's absolutely true. And that's the mic drop.

01:23:34That's where we're going to close this. Honest to God. It's, it's been a thrill for all three of us.

01:23:38Are we dropping the mic? We're going to drop the mic right here. We're going to release the mic.

01:23:41I'd like to release the mic. This was an absolute pleasure.

01:23:44It was my pleasure too. Well, I'll be seeing you later on.

01:23:47It was a, yeah, perhaps there'll be a full release involved. Listen, uh, Ken, it was very,

01:23:51very nice to meet you. Yeah. Congratulations on whatever the hell you're doing.

01:23:55It's just a mystery. We'll see you guys next time.

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