Ken Burns and his American Revolution documentary

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
This is the Tal podcast. They call me crazy because I'm
facing I'm a giants. They try to scare me into
thinking I can fight it. They tell me I should never even
take a try it. But that's just me.
I'm going to live out in the fire.

(00:29):
Hey alphas, ignore Stacey eatingtoday.
We've got very special guests joining us to talk about his new
film, The American Revolution. Over the last nearly 50 years.
I don't remember all of it. This gentleman has produced some
of the most iconic documentariesabout American history,
including the Civil War, not just a Guns N' Roses song, and
the Vietnam War, which is not a song at all that I know of.

(00:51):
I'm sure it is. His work is so recognizable,
though. He's become a household name.
Yes, Ken Burns is in the house. Nice Joe, do you know what the
Ken Burns effect is? You know, if you'd asked me a
week ago, I would have said no, but I've done a little bit of
reading on it. But I want to hear your take.
Well, the Ken Burns effect is pretty popular for those of us

(01:12):
who are in the photo slash videoindustry.
It's actually like this, this panning effect with still still
images. The Ken Burns Effect is a video
post production technique that adds a slow, subtle, continuous
panning and zooming motion to still images to help guide the
viewer's eye to a key point, just so you can hone in on those

(01:33):
that particular visual narrative.
While Ken Burns did not invent this particular method, he used
it in a significant way throughout his work, and thus
people call it the Ken Burns fact.
Oh, you were going to add something?
Well, I yeah, but it's, it's a sort of a detour, so I'll let

(01:53):
you finish what you were saying.Well, I'm going to go on a
completely different direction. So if you want to stay in that.
All right, so a friend of mine and I were goofing around doing
doing like some, some voice stuff, and he wrote up this
thing called Letters from the Rear.
And it was, you know, usually it's like letters from the
frontline. And it's got like, guitar music

(02:14):
in the background. And the way I visualized it was
literally panning over, like, poorly drawn, like, crayon
pictures. And so, little did I know, eight
years ago when I was goofing around with this Letters from
the Rear concept, I was practicing in my head, the Ken
Burns effect. You got it.
Sounds like you're leaps and bounds ahead simply.

(02:36):
Leaping and bounding I do these days.
Here, here's something interesting that I found that
Ken Burns works almost exclusively with PBS, and
another person who works exclusively with PBS is this
wonderful gentleman who does like background checks or not
background checks. That sounds too criminal.

(02:59):
It's called Finding Your Roots. This show on on PBS.
I'm sure you guys watched it or you're familiar with it.
And it's where they sit down with an individual and they go
back into their family tree and they they dredge up a bunch of
really interesting people. Maybe they don't even, maybe the
guest doesn't even know who these family members are.
Well, Ken Burns went on this particular show and found out
that he had an American Revolution soldier in his

(03:22):
background by the name of DoctorJaredus Clarkson.
And he served, he was born in 1737 in New York City.
He became a medical doctor. He served on a floating battery
Putnam in Pennsylvania State Navy and was the surgeon for the
board of war in the American Revolutionary War from 76 to 77.

(03:45):
And so he, I guess he went on tobe like this prominent
Philadelphia physician and well.With a name like that, I think
you just get a doctorate. I don't think you'd even have to
do anything. Gerardus, Gerardus.
I I would trust anybody that grew up with the name Gerardus,
like that guy's, been through them through some things.
Apparently it's Ken Burns 5th great grandfather, which that's

(04:07):
cool. I have a couple, if not a few,
Revolutionary Patriots in my background.
One of them that I really honed in on with the help of the
Daughters of the American Revolution was John Thompson.
He was a Sergeant of Artillery from Worcester, MA.
Well, I should say in that vicinity is that's where he

(04:28):
served for three years, from April 7th, 1777 to April 1780.
And he was with the Third Regiment of the Artillery
Artillery of the Massachusetts Line, and he served under
Captain David Cook, Captain Burbank, and Colonel John Crane.
One thing that was pretty interesting was that he
participated in the Battle of Monmouth.

(04:50):
Are you familiar with that? You were there, right?
Battle Monmouth Well. I was on the outskirts, I was a
little slow, I was behind everyone else.
So the Battle of Monmouth took place on June 28th, 1787 and it
was the longest and largest single day of battle in the
American Revolution where the newly trained Continental Army

(05:12):
under General George Washington clashed with Sir Henry Clinton's
British forces. And although it was a tactical
draw, it was strategically a victory for the Americans
because it proved that the Continental Army could stand up,
or at least stand equal to the British after they trained up at
the Valet Forge location. So.
Interesting. So George Washington was a was

(05:36):
known as a really good general, but it wasn't necessarily just
because of his ability to fight.He was really good at keeping
people alive, which which soundslike, oh, well, that's like
winning a battle, right? No, not necessarily.
We, he could get out of a battlewith more people than anybody.
So he always had a fighting force because he could retreat

(05:58):
out of a battle and you know, some people would lose 3040% of
their people trying to get away.And he just had a, the ability
to, to safely get people out of a, a battle that was, wasn't
leaning their way. So, you know, you don't just
beat George Washington once. You got to beat him a few times.
I will say while he could retainpersonnel, he could not retain

(06:18):
his teeth. And I'm told that he had a set
of wooden dentures, which were pretty painful.
Anyway, all joking aside, I, youknow, I watched Ken Burns has
this big Revolutionary War documentary coming out.
That's why he's going to be on the show today to talk about
that. And I, I watched it and I found
out a lot of really, really interesting things, which I'm,

(06:41):
you know, I don't want to give spoiler alerts here, but the one
fun fact that I walked away withwas that George Washington kind
of resented the fact that he hadto feed his soldiers, wives and
hangers on. Like because he was struggling
enough to, to feed his own army,let alone he had to feed them.
But he worried that if he didn'tkeep them or their morale up, he

(07:04):
would lose his army. So it makes sense he needs, he
needs a morale tent. That's what he needs.
I always wondered, you know, like when, when these people
that do documentaries wet like, and I'm sure it's different for
everyone, but I I'm really excited to find out whether he
knew a bunch about this and decided to do a documentary and

(07:25):
then learned more or whether it was like, this is something that
I want to know more. Let's let's make something
incredible because that's what Iwould do if I was like, Hey, I
want to know everything there isto know about the Cherokee
Native Americans. So I'm going to do a documentary
on the Cherokee Native Americans.
And I would go in at not even knowing a single Cherokee word.
But by the end of it, the goal being I know as much as you

(07:47):
could possibly learn maybe. Well, we'll have to ask him.
Remind me to ask him that. That's that's your it's on you
if it doesn't happen now. OK.
All right, Alphas, please stick around.
We'll be back with our wonderfulguest, Ken Burns right after the
break. Join me in the American Legion's
year long celebration of our nation's 250th birthday.

(08:09):
We're celebrating America with USA 250 Challenge.
What is the challenge? USA 250 Challenge is built on
three important features we knowwell, physical activity, mental
Wellness and community service. Join the challenge today.
Visit lisa.org to learn more andregister for $30.00.
For your registration fee, you'll get to choose a

(08:30):
commemorative T-shirt while supporting Veterans and
Children's Foundation. I look forward to celebrating
the special birthday celebrationwith you.
All right, now that we're done with talking about quilts, today
we're joined by the Ken Burns. His films have been honored with

(08:51):
dozens of major awards, including 17 Emmys, 2 Grammy
Awards, and 2O nominations. In September of 2008, at the
News and Documentary Emmy Awards, Ken was honored by the
Academy of Television Arts and Sciences with a Lifetime
Achievement Award in November. I'm young for that, Joe.
Yeah, yeah, I want. When I when I accepted it, I
said I want to because with tough times it was the 08

(09:13):
meltdown. I said I want a half lifetime
there we. Go.
What are you guys trying to say here?
Over I've got work to do. And then in 2022, you were
inducted in the Television Academy Hall of Fame, which
tells me again, they're trying to get rid of you.
Be careful. There's no.
Getting rid of No no. In my in my kitchen, I can't
reach it right now, but it's an old New Yorker cartoon and it

(09:36):
shows three guys standing in hell, the flames licking up
around them and one guy says to the other two.
Apparently my over 200 screen credits didn't mean a damn thing
and I have that there every day to remind me, you know, and all
of that stuff that you list plus$0.50 get you a cup of coffee.
Outstanding. Well, we're super glad to have

(09:58):
you at the Tal Podcast. We're I, we, I me, myself.
The collected the Royal our our.We had a lot of royalty in the
American Revolution, so I reallyblew that.
But the me, myself and I very loud and complicated up here
through a. Loyalist or a patriot hobbyist?
Patriot I did find deep in my you know, Skip Gates did the

(10:23):
Finding Your Roots thing with me, yes, many years ago and was
able to mitochondrial DNA link me to Robert Burns the poet,
which I'd never been able to do and I'm fourth cousin of
Abraham. All this stuff.
I had someone who enslaved people, which I wasn't surprised
about. The really bad thing is that
just fight lots of patriots on my mother's side.

(10:43):
There's a guy named Eldad Tupperthat refused to sign the loyalty
oath and moved to New Brunswick and I just to me that was like
crushing. I thought Eldad what a great
name for a dog. No more.
Welcome to the show, Ken to haveyou here and I want to start a
little bit by getting to to knowyou.

(11:04):
I'm I'm we're all familiar with you.
You're a household name, so I want to kind of no get to know
the the person behind what people normally see.
And after digging a little bit, I found out that your, your,
your dad was, was he an amateur photographer or pro
photographer? Somebody who?
Amateur. He's an anthropologist, cultural
anthropologist, But he took pictures and my first memory is

(11:25):
of him building a darkroom when I was 2 1/2 in a tract house in
a development in Newark, DE. He was the only anthropologist
in the entire state of Delaware.But that's my first memory is
and then of of, of the magic of sitting in his, you know, being
held in one arm as he's turning the smells and the this magic
taking place. It was great.

(11:46):
So I've got that in my DNA. I was going to ask, I was a
combat photographer in the military and so seeing that
little snippet of your your dad's past made me wonder, did
he pass the bug down to you? Is that what got you into
wanting to do documentary work or?
It's, can I, it's, it's so complicated.
I mean, in a, in a real basic way, yes.

(12:06):
So I got a brownie camera early and I thought I'd be that, but
my mom was sick the whole time from when I was 2 to when I was
12. Oh, she died when I was 11, just
a few months short of my 12th birthday.
And after she died, my dad had avery strict curfew.
But for some reason, on school nights for me, he would let me
stay up late, sometimes till 1:00 AM with all the commercials

(12:28):
to look at old movies. And it was the first time I'd
ever seen my dad cry. Not when she was sick, not when
she died, not at this impossiblysad funeral.
And I remember him crying at a movie called Odd Man Out about
the Irish Troubles and in the 19teens and 20s.
And I just remember saying to myself, I'm now 12.
I want to be a film maker. It provided my dad with an

(12:50):
emotional safe haven. Oh, my God.
And that's what I wanted to do. And so that meant Hollywood.
I went to Hampshire College in Amherst, MA, and all my teachers
were social documentaries. Still photographers got back
interested in that and documentaries.
And then somewhere along the line, by the time I was 22, it
emerged with a completely untrained interest in American

(13:13):
history. Like I've always loved the
questions, the stories, the the parts, difficult and otherwise
of our country. And so all of a sudden by I mean
by 12, I knew what I wanted to do.
By 18 I knew what kind of thing film I wanted to make.
And by 22 it was American history.
And so you're looking at a 72 year old pathetically 50 years

(13:34):
later who has not deviated from that course.
Yet he's going to decide he wants to break wild ponies.
Dad was a Rifleman and an engineer and the Rangers in in
World War 2 landed after, you know, in in early 45.

(13:58):
But he was apparently an incredible marksman that I don't
know about whether I've inherited any of that.
Did you talk to your dad a little bit about his
experiences? Yeah, he did not see combat
because he got into Laar in France at about April of 45.
He ended up occupying as a 19 year old Krups Essen mansion

(14:22):
with a few other guys and had asa 19 year old turning 20 in in
in June of 45, had the had the good sense to soak the labels
off the wine bottles from one ofEurope's greatest wine Cellars.
And when my dad passed away, I found this book of all of the
labels of what must have been the greatest wines, right?

(14:44):
I mean, Krupp is going to have that sort of stuff.
Yeah. And he liberated some other, you
know, interesting things. Spreading democracy 1 bottle at
a time. 1 bottle. At a.
Time. I think those are called war
treasures. War booty.
Well, that's incredible. So I so we never really know how

(15:06):
deep somebody's willing to get in.
And, and so I always have like sort of a deeper backup
question. And I, I do want to lean into
that because I think that you seem like the kind of guy that
gets what I'm trying to say whenI ask this question.
So, you know, from civil war to Vietnam War, you're, you know,
you explore these lasting scars of conflict, not just on our

(15:28):
country, but on the, the individual.
And as somebody, you know, like yourself that's interviewed
countless veterans for your projects, My easy question was,
why do you feel that push and desire to share those specific
stories? How did you land on, you know,
America in the way that you did?And then my deeper question is,

(15:52):
is it the history that you want to share and hope that people
draw their own lessons from whatthey see, or is there something
more specific that you hope people get from the stories of
those who wore the uniform? Well, that's a great question,
Joe. So after we did the Civil War
series, which I had to do because I saw that it was the
determining factor, the most important event in American

(16:13):
history once we'd gotten startedand everything issued from it.
My first film on Brooklyn Bridge.
New metal called Steel, which the Civil War promoted.
Second film on the Shakers, A celibate religious sect that
died out after we murdered 650,700 thousand of our owns own
people and and and the question of the sole survival wasn't as
big a deal in the last half of the 19th century.

(16:36):
History of the Statue of Liberty, which was originally
intended as a gift from the French to Missus Lincoln to
commemorate the survival of the Union.
Besides her husband's ultimate triumph, the Congress.
Obviously its most important moment when there were two
Congresses, one in one in Washington, DC, the other in
first Montgomery and then later Richmond, VA.

(16:58):
So it's just a big, big moment. And afterwards I just looked at
everybody. I said no more wars.
Like it was just too much when, when people in the Civil War,
both North and South had been incombat.
And as you know, not everybody'sin combat, right?
It's it's a, it's a fairly smallsubset of people who actually
see combat and, and certainly regularly, but when they've been

(17:21):
in it, they said we'd seen the elephant.
And I assume that means it was the most exotic thing you can
imagine. You're trying to tell you you
everybody else has no idea what this like is like.
And so I said, you know, we haven't seen the elephant, but
we know what they meant. We felt their pain and we
understood, looked at the gory photographs and the the cost of

(17:42):
war. So no more.
But then at the end of the 90s, Civil War came out in 1990.
At the end of the 90s, I learnedthat 1000 veterans of the Second
World War, American veterans were dying every day.
That is no longer the case. It's down to single digits,
right? And that this impossibly large
percentage, I can't remember exactly what it was of

(18:03):
graduating high school seniors. That means with diploma in hand,
marching off the thing Thought we fought with the Germans
against the Russians in the Second World War.
And I said, F no way, I've got to do something.
And so we tried. I mean, this is the only subject
that I've ever done that had lots of brethren, hundreds of
World War 2 movies. But I thought, what if we saw

(18:24):
the greatest cataclysm in human history through the eyes of
people who lived in four geographically distributed
American towns, Waterbury, CT, Mobile, AL, Sacramento, CA, and
tiny, tiny Laverne, Minnesota. The other three about 100,000 in
1941. This one has 3000.
OK, so we do that. That takes us more than seven

(18:46):
years. But before the ink is dry on
that, I looked at everybody, I said we're doing Vietnam.
And then like, I knew I couldn'tno longer keep that that ban,
because it obviously exposes thebest and the worst of us is all
the cliches that we say about war, but it's really
fundamentally a portal into human behavior, experience and

(19:07):
that good and bad stuff. Before the ink was dry in
December of 20, 15, before the September 2017 broadcast of
Vietnam, I said, we're doing therevolution.
And I knew how difficult it was going to be like, you know, no
photographs, no news reels. Everybody thinks nothing

(19:27):
happened. It was this, you know, peaceful
thing. This is a civil war that's
proportionally as bad as our civil war.
And our civil war isn't really acivil war.
It's a sectional war. Civil war means lots of civilian
deaths. There's almost none, no civilian
deaths outside of Missouri and eastern Kansas in our civil war.
It's, it's just a sectional war,but man, the loyalists in

(19:50):
everything and the killing patriots and patriots killing
loyalists and the disaffected, those who wanted to just not
just like conquer down who are distrusted by both.
It's really bad. There's some battles in Southern
theaters where there may be a British officer leading the
loyalists, right. But everybody who's killed in
this battle, Kings Mountain, that's in North Carolina, just

(20:12):
over the South Carolina border, everybody else.
Is an American killing another American?
And, and what happens in New Jersey and particularly New
Jersey and South Carolina is as bad as you could possibly
imagine. And I just want to communicate.
I think most people don't trust to the ideas.
They think we got to protect theideas.

(20:32):
It's just great thoughts in Philadelphia.
Plus they're all wearing stockings and breeches and, and
so we can't know them. But in fact, those big ideas are
not diminished. They're in fact enlarged by
understanding the cost. And you know, last April, 250
years ago, last April 19th on Lexington Green, the chances of

(20:53):
our success is zero. 6 1/2 yearslater in October of 1781 at
Yorktown, it's 100%. And don't you want to know how
that happens? And don't you want to know not
just the top down, but you know,the Washington who's the most
important person and The Jeffersons and the Adams people.
We kind of know about Abigail Adams, but what about a little

(21:15):
girl 10 years old from Yorktown?What about a 14 year old
volunteer for the Patriots from Boston or a 15 year old for
Connecticut? What's what's the biggest battle
of the Revolution? Battle of Long Island, where
George Washington makes a terrible mistake and and leaves
his left flank completely unprotected and the British take
advantage of it. What's the battle of Brand?

(21:36):
You want a big set to BC leaves his white right flank
unprotected, you know. So here you've got the greatest
guy, most important, but he alsois flawed.
And so we wanted to we, we introduce you to literally
dozens of characters in the American Revolution.
They're wives of German Hessian soldiers arriving to
triumphantly join Bergan's army as it wins at Saratoga.

(21:58):
Oops. And who is the great hero of
Saratoga? Benedict Arnold, our general,
right. And it's only, you know, you
meet him in the first moments ofepisode 2 and it isn't till well
into episode 6, the last episode, that you find out what
it is. And then he escapes.
You know, his his his conspirator, Major Andre, who's
in the British Secret Service, is caught and hung as a spy.

(22:22):
But and I want I'm glad you're all sitting down.
Benedict Arnold then joins and creates A loyalist regiment
called the American Legion. Boiler Alert.
Boiler Alert goes to Virginia and wreaks havoc until he

(22:42):
suddenly realizes that everybodyis now focused on him.
He's he's been injured twice in the service of the Patriot
'cause his same leg. And so they're everybody's
saying we'll just, we'll take the leg and give it a military
burial and the work of him, you know?
I. I actually have a leg that what
they do, military burial. They just loaded me up in the

(23:04):
back of a home V and drove me back home.
Same thing. Same thing, same thing.
It's really pretty amazing. And I think, you know, we have
this cast that you I mean, the Longest Day doesn't have as
great a cast as we have, you know, Meryl Streep, your.
Voice actor? Who is that?
Holy cow. We have dozens of voices, OK,
fine actors reading the first person letters, making people

(23:26):
come alive. You know, Paul Giamatti Reprises
is John Adams. Claire Danes is is Abigail
Adams. But Laura Linney, who was
Abigail has many different voices.
We've got Tom Hanks, we've got Meryl Streep.
We have. So many recognizable choice.
And they're all off camera and we're all taking that stuff.
So suddenly the wig business, the separation of paintings,

(23:48):
we've got lot. We followed lots of reenactors,
but very sort of impressionistically.
I can't wait for you to see thisthing because I think it takes
the onus off. You know, I think the barnacles
of sentimentality and nostalgia have encrusted the American
Revolution and that we need to just say this is what happened.
We, you know, that people say Ecclesiastes, that's the Old

(24:11):
Testament said there's nothing new under the sun, meaning human
nature doesn't change. There is something new under the
sun. The most important event since
the birth of Christ is the American Revolution.
That said, you are no longer subjects.
They're going to be a few peopleon earth who are citizens.
And that's a huge responsibility.
And when they say pursuit of happiness, they don't mean
whatever you want to do. You know, the, you know, the

(24:32):
acquisition of things in the marketplace of objects.
This is lifelong learning to earn the virtuous reward of
citizenship. And so I think particularly now
when people are worried about the future of the American
experiment, to go back to the opening moments and understand
the sacrifice. I mean, we always think the

(24:55):
sturdy militiamen, they were often the least reliable
soldiers that Washington had. It was these kids.
It was these narrative wells. It was these felons.
It was these second and third sons who didn't have a chance of
an inheritance. There were women dressed as men.
There were recent immigrants from Ireland and Germany.
They did the fighting and there's a couple battles, one in

(25:15):
South Carolina and Cowpens wherelike Daniel Morgan who's their
commander of Virginia uses tactics that that plays into
Cornwallis. And this case is Territons
understanding of how the militiadissolves.
So he puts the militia guys in the 2 front lines and says just
fire twice. That's all I asked.

(25:35):
Just fire twice. Sometimes they didn't fire at
all, sometimes they just ran. Promise me you'll fire twice.
They fire twice and then retreat.
Just run behind us, the second line do the same thing, fire
twice, run behind us and and Taroton is saying, OK, we got
them wrapped up and then over The Reg are the continentals,
these kids, these you know, you know, the people who who who

(25:57):
stuck it out, who you know, thiswas not originally democracy
wasn't the object of the revolution.
It was a consequence of it because in order for these
patricians, the Washingtons and the Franklins and the Adams's to
win, they had to begin to promise regular people rights.

(26:18):
And so these are the people thatstayed with Washington, didn't
go home to plant a crop, didn't bail at the first sign of fire.
It is so inspiring. It is so interesting.
And we, you know, this is a rabble.
We were called the rabble by theGermans, he says.
One guy we follow, a German guy named Johan Evald.
He's completely contemptuous in the beginning and at the end at

(26:39):
Yorktown, he's surrender. He's part of the surrender, he
says. These this rabble.
Who would have thought 100 yearsago this rabble could defy
kings? That's us guys.
Well I I am proud to say that my7 times great grandfather was a
terrorist or a patriot. He said rebel everybody.

(27:01):
The British and the Loyalist called everybody who's a patriot
rebels. OK, well, I definitely come from
good rebel stock. Yeah, yeah, he was a a Sergeant,
an artillery Sergeant out of Massachusetts, fought in the
Battle of Monmouth. But I also discovered because of
your Finding Roots episode that you also had a patriot doctor,

(27:22):
Gerardus Clarkson. Yeah, and he, with Benjamin
Rush, started one of the first medical colleges in the United
States, in Pennsylvania. That's pretty.
Cool. Yeah, it's very cool.
Lots of patriots all up and downthe line, I'm happy to say.
Let's forget about LL. We won't mention that.
Name it. I'm not even good enough for a
dog. OK, so I was lucky enough to

(27:44):
watch some of the film, several hours actually, because I
couldn't put it down. And what I really appreciated
about it was, as you said, it's not a time where pictures
existed. But you guys did an incredible
job of supporting it with with graphics, with, you know,
really, really skillful voice overs, as you said.

(28:07):
But I think what was astounding was the the beautiful
cinematography that you had incorporated.
And you included footage from what all all 13 original
colonies. What was that travel like?
I mean, it took almost a decade to do this film, right?
Yeah. So, so yeah, it'll be when it's
broadcast, it'll be 9 years and 11 months.
So the idea was, I've not been abig fan of reenactments.

(28:30):
My feeling is if you're doing reenactments, you might as well
do a feature film, right? I'm not in the feature film
business, but I knew I had to dothat.
I had to film people who dressedin French soldiers as German
Hessians, as British soldiers, as cavalry, as militia, as
continentals, as Native Americans.
There are black soldiers, you know, fighting for the British

(28:51):
and black soldiers fighting for the America.
I mean, it's really an interesting dynamic.
And so I didn't want to go and say, you mentioned the Battle of
Monmouth. I didn't want to go and say,
let's reenact the battle of Monmouth, right?
Let's just go down there, film in New Jersey and the Pine
Barrens and and, and shoot on a super odd day.
But let's take back stuff that just becomes with all the other

(29:14):
stuff we've shot over years and years and years, just grist for
the mill. So it's like when I'm making the
film on World War 2, I go to theto the National Archives and I
say, what do you got on World War 2?
And they say, what part? And you say I'm interested in
this. So we began to blend it in with
the maps. I love maps, and I've had them
in almost every film I've made. And there are more maps in this

(29:35):
one film than in all the other films that I put together
combined. Because people want a sense of
what actually happened. And if you now know this little
girl or this little boy who's inthe fight, it gives you a
different kind of relationship to that arrow.
You know, the blue arrow for thePatriots, the red arrow for the
for the British or the Loyalists, whatever it might be.

(29:57):
It's so important to us to make it come alive and take off the
onus. It really helps if you see these
reenactors just their feet goingthrough mud that sucks down, you
know, opening of our 4th episodeis sucking down a foot and it's
really happening to them. It's not just this sort of
pristine reenactment. So here we are.

(30:18):
It's early in the morning, the lights weird, it's silhouetted,
whatever it might be and what itdoes, it gives you a tactile
sense. So a feature film is going to
have hundreds of soundtracks, documentary, you know, maybe 10
or 15. We have 250 soundtracks going in
some of those battles because wewant to treat it as if it's
really happening. And what's been nice, I've been

(30:39):
going around the Film Festival. I've, I've, I've done some
screenings, you know, of, of different things.
And people are like, you know, after the battle of Long Island,
as I said, the biggest battle, like my heart's pounding.
They said, you know, and it's not because I live in New York
and my brother lives in Brooklynand it's all the places where he
is now that this battle took place.
But it's that, you know, you tell a good story.

(31:02):
That's what I want to do. I want to take that onus off the
powdered wigs and the breeches and the buckles on the shoes and
the and the and the and the hoseand all of that.
Sense that oversimplification. Yeah, and that they didn't
really experience stuff. War has been bad since you, the
first human being killed anotherone.

(31:22):
And that's that's where we have to you have to start with the
fact that this is a really toughthing.
Yet this is the first war revolution in history that came
out saying proclaiming the universal rights of old people.
I think the other thing I appreciate about the film as

(31:42):
well, Ken, is obviously, as you said, there was a lot of maps,
but how much of A collaboration did you have with, say, the
National Archives or the Smithsonian?
Like how did you go about sourcing these materials to be
able to include them in this film and bring them to the the

(32:02):
layperson? I am so glad you asked that.
So we identified scholars. We may have four or five
scholars who know a lot about Native American.
It's really important dynamic. A lot of scholars who know about
the British Empire and their dependence on their other 13
colonies, which were way more profitable in the Caribbean
because they depended on slave labor.

(32:23):
People who are military historians.
Rick Atkinson, who's written, you know, 2 volumes of three
about the revolution, who's justamazing.
A lot of other writers, but we also hired A cartographer and we
also had to, if you're looking at Boston today, you know, the
Charles River just goes like this.
It was a huge, what's called theBack Bay is all apartments and
streets that are familiar to everybody who's ever been to

(32:45):
Boston that was not filled in. Boston looked like a little head
at the end of a narrow isthmus. And so then you begin to
understand one of by land, 2 by sea.
You understand why your ancestorworking for Henry Knox was able
to get that artillery up into Dorchester Heights.
And the British look up and go, we're out of here.

(33:07):
You know, the, the, the Patriotsdidn't have enough muscle to to
take over Boston. They could go in and out by sea,
but they were blocked in. But the second we could bombard
it, the game was over and they headed to Halifax, NS.
So you understand the dynamics of that.
And so we were constant. I mean, literally all that time
is US trying to get that map right, trying to get this fact

(33:28):
right, trying to not put your thumb on the scale.
Just like umpires call balls andstrikes.
Like not make loyalists bad. A loyalist is a conservative.
A loyalist is saying, hey, the British constitutional monarchy
is the greatest government ever invented up till now.
And they're absolutely right. It is.
It's not like being a French citizen, which is abject, you

(33:51):
know, you know, the monarchy is abject authoritarianism, but the
British constitution, that's a good system.
We're just invented a better one.
And and you have to decide whether you want to go with this
completely untested idea or you stick with the old thing.
So a loyalist is not a bad person per SE.
And so we follow throughout loyalists and as I said, German

(34:12):
soldiers and their wives and British kings, prime ministers,
you know, ministers there and native people.
I mean, there's it's such a great cast of figures and it
doesn't make it complicated. It makes it interesting.
Like if everything was black andwhite and say, the TV series
Succession, no, it wouldn't be successful.

(34:32):
It's the fact that people have within them, you know, different
things. Look at Benedict Arnold.
He's next to Nathaniel Greene. He is Washington's most reliable
soldier until he's not. Which I think is just a
fascinating, you know, it's he'salmost a character.
You forget that he's human. He's a human being, right?

(34:54):
I remember I made a film on HueyLong, the turbulent Southern
demagogue. It got accepted at the New York
Film Festival. And I'm walking out in this
woman's Upper West Side of New York, probably a Jewish woman.
She said you should do a biography of Hitler.
And I said, why would you want me to do that?
I'd have to make him a human being, right?
And right now, it's not right now, but anytime it's almost
better to have him as this symbol of pure evil.

(35:17):
But you know, Washington's deeply flawed.
He's rash. He rides out on the battlefield
at Hips Bay. His aides are going no, no, no.
And they're grabbing the reins of his horse and pulling him
back because if he's killed, it's over.
It's dead. And Princeton does the same
thing and an aide is putting hishand over his face.
I mean, he's unbelievably brave and has been since he's a 22

(35:37):
year old militiamen that probably fired the first shot of
the Seven Years War war, what wecall the French and Indian War.
He may have started it by firinginto an encampment of French and
their native allies to begin what we call the French and
Indian War. Later on, his cat has to
surrender Later on is, you know,Braddock's aid to camp.

(35:58):
Braddock is killed. Arrogantly thinks that I can
handle any French and Native American.
He's ambushed Washington executes.
You know, it says 2 bullets fly.He's two horses shot out from
under and bullets Pierce's jacket, and he executes a
retreat and gets everybody else off.
And they won't give him a Commission in the British Army.

(36:18):
So he's like, OK. Talk about being petty.
I mean petticoats. I guess I'm an.
American, right? Yeah.
So, so you got, you guys know this elementary, let me do this
quiz on you reverse question, Right.
All right. How are the Patriots, rich and
poor, all white men dressed whenthey dump the tea in Boston

(36:41):
Harbor? They were all dressed up like
Native Americans, correct? Very, very good, Joe.
You get at least temporarily a Anow, Joe, why were they dressed?
Or Stacey. Why were they dressed as Native
Americans? Were they trying to sow
discontent of some sort or throwoff throw off the British?

(37:02):
That would be what you'd think they were saying to the British.
And this is the great irony of history and the complication of
it. They're saying we're aboriginal,
we're Americans, we're no longerpart of the modern.
And they're not trying to blame it on the Native Americans.
They're trying to say, like the Native Americans, we're
different from you. Meanwhile, the Native Americans

(37:25):
are over here like meanwhile they're going excuse.
Me, you've just taken our demand.
You're you're upset with Britain, the main reason they're
fighting you, not just taxes andrepresentation and taxes on tea.
It's mostly because the British have said we can't protect you.
So don't crossover the Appalachians and take Indian
land, which is what the smallestfarmer wants to do.

(37:46):
And with the big land speculators want to do with 10s
of thousands of acres they don'town, like George Washington,
like Benjamin Franklin, like Patrick Henry, they're all
pissed because they can't go over and just take any.
So it's, I mean, doesn't that make that so much more
interesting, the whole dynamic? Yeah.
The real question is, who wore it better?

(38:08):
No, no, no, no. Actually, I, I.
So in your film The American Buffalo, which is I, I, I am, so
I, I've loved Native American culture my whole life.
Well, I say my whole life. 2nd grade, I did a report on
Geronimo and found out that my family has some, not physically

(38:31):
to me, at least on my father's side has links to Cherokee
blood. But I, you know, that explores
the near extinction of a speciesthat's intrinsically linked to
the history of the American Westand, and Native American
culture, of course. And I never knew how bad it was
until I did my own research in high school for a paper.

(38:51):
And so weirdly, going into that,I knew a fair amount and was
still blown away. So my question to you is, and
and I mentioned to this that I told Stacey, she had to remind
me to ask you this. How much of it is you going?
I want to know more about this. Let's do a documentary.
And how much of it is is you knowing and just and needing to

(39:13):
share? I'm sure it's a mix, but I'm
curious. Percent, oh, I need to know 5%
This is what you should know because think about it.
If it's the other way around, then it's homework, right?
This is what you need to know. But if it's me going, hey, let
me share with you what I've justlearned then it's a story.

(39:33):
There's no homework there's no test on Tuesday.
It's just like something you canshare And the best thing I mean,
I, I, I did a conversation with Joe Rogan a couple months ago 3
hours, right? He was going, oh, I had no idea.
Oh, I had, I had no idea. Oh, I had no idea.
Which is the greatest thing thatyou want to say because he's
well versed and stuff like that.He knows history pretty well.

(39:56):
He's curious guy, you know, and most of the people we meet
presume that they know some stuff about the revolution.
And what I love is not disabusing of that, but just
saying it's more. I'll tell you once there's a
deposed governor of Virginia, he's royal governor.
He's in a ship in the ChesapeakeBay because.
The rebels control his province,his colony, our state, soon to

(40:19):
be our state of Virginia. And he goes, he owns some
slaves. He says, what if we just free?
He issues a proclamation. We'll free the slaves of rebels,
not the of, of loyalists. How you tell the difference, I
don't know. And if you come over to us, you
can fight for us and we'll give you your freedom, right?

(40:39):
It's a very destabilizing thing.The entire British economy is
dependent on slave labor in the Caribbean and to a lesser extent
in South Carolina and Virginia. And slavery is legal in every
state, but the least profitable is Massachusetts and New
Hampshire and places that just don't have slaves in that
regard. And so it destabilizes the

(41:00):
situation and makes a lot of people who are a bit a bit on
the fence go over to the patriotside.
So it gives some, you know, historians the chance to say
it's all about slavery. It's not, but it's an amazing
it's amazing thing. So here's what we do know.
20,000 black Americans fought inthe Revolution, 15,000 for the

(41:25):
British, 5000 for the Americans.Because even with this promise
of continued existence of slavery, they felt the cause.
Right? Like there's AI.
Agreed Black. There was a kid named James
Fortin who nine years old hears 2 days after the declaration is
signed, the first public readingin Philadelphia.

(41:46):
And he never for a second doesn't believe that those
self-evident truths aren't for him.
He goes on, becomes fights, is imprisoned.
He has a chance to get us to getout.
If he goes back to England with the ship captain's son and be
fined. He goes, no, I'm fighting for my
'cause he ends up in a prison ship, nearly dies, and then
later becomes rich in the merchant marine and gives a lot

(42:08):
of his profits to funding the beginning of the abolitionist
movement in the 19th century. I mean this just you can't make
this stuff up. What an American.
Yeah, that's James Fort. And that's just one person.
You know, we follow a guy who left named Harry Washington.
Guess whose plantation he was at?
Mount Vernon like. Me and in.

(42:30):
Africa in a new colony whose capital is Freetown, right,
Because they're not welcome in Nova Scotia, where most of the
loyalists go because it's cold and they're black.
And they are not so welcome in England either.
So they end up going from Britain to, you know, and that's
just a couple of stories. I mean, it's just so interesting

(42:52):
if you just say it isn't just, you know, guys in in
Philadelphia thinking up great ideas.
Do not misunderstand me. Those are the best ideas human
beings have ever come up with. And our film celebrates them, in
fact exalts them. But if you this is called the
American Revolution, meaning we're not going to pretend like

(43:12):
it's just we fire some shots at Lexington, which is a bloodbath.
The Americans are told to disperse.
They start doing some of the fires and it's a massacre.
And then it changes at, at at Northbridge and Concord, but,
and then the British are running.
But it's, it's bloody. You know, I'll tell you some.
There's an English historian in our film named Stephen Conway at

(43:33):
the end of the battle of BunkersHill, which takes place, of
course, on Breeds Hill, but we call it Bunkers Hill.
Hal makes his final charge. They Americans run out of
ammunition and their guns are fouled from overshooting.
They've, they've inflicted 40% casualties on the British.
The British Army will not experience 40% casualties again

(43:56):
until 1916 and the first day of the sun.
Now we think of World War One asthe worst trench warfare, gut
wrenching kind of combat situations.
Bunker Hill, right? And nobody said don't fire till
you see the whites of their eyes.
They started off the first charge.

(44:18):
They was wait till you're they're 90 yards out.
The next is 50. The next is 30 just to save
ammunition. But you know, we get distracted
by the mythology and then we don't suddenly say 40%
casualties. Yeah, come on.
I mean, that's heartbreaking to imagine as somebody who served.
Heartbreaking, heartbreaking. And the you know, you know, a

(44:41):
British general was shot in the head and he was the officer who
had led the charge at Lexington and Concord.
He fell into the arms of his sonand died in his arms.
Warren, who is the head of the Massachusetts Assembly, the most
radical of all of them, was shotand killed.
And he was stuffed in a in a great mass grave by the British

(45:02):
with two other rebels where their seditious beliefs would be
buried forever. So I mean this, you know, if you
personalize it, you do it from the top down here with the maps,
Yes, Stacey with the arrows. But if you know who's there
bottom up and you know what their wife says when their
bodies brought back into Acton MA, when you're you're the first

(45:25):
American killed at the North Bridge, right.
You know Isaac Davis, gunsmith from Acton you you've already
watched him at dawn leave kind of seriously and his wife
responding, you know, to how serious he is and then comes
back along with the bodies of two other Acton fellow soldiers
and buried their house becomes the place think of their

(45:46):
children. Then you've got something that
any one of us can can hang on to.
You know, remember, after the Civil War series came out, this
woman came up to me and said, what are you working on next?
I said, oh, history of baseball.And she goes, oh, my husband and
son will like that. And so I turned to her and I
said, so you're a military history expert.
She goes, oh, no, but it was thestories.

(46:08):
I said, look, I know your son and your husband are going to
watch baseball. I'm making it for you.
These are universal stories. These are stories about
Americans dealing with stuff. Maybe it's a fastball, you know,
maybe it's a curveball. Maybe it's a bullet, maybe it's
a cannon. But these are big questions of
human being. I don't need to tell you or your

(46:30):
listeners who are the front lines of of why we still are the
greatest country on earth. And and I should have led off by
saying how honored I am to even spend a few minutes with you.
We're we're seeing the energy and we're, I mean, you know, you
can tell when somebody's life isdedicated to something because
they're the way they light up. And so yeah, I don't it's

(46:53):
self-evident as. I can, for one, I appreciate
your approach in humanizing these experiences because I
think we can all see ourselves reflected in that, and
especially the alphas who are listening, who've had their own
experiences through the militarywhere there are no winners in

(47:13):
war. And I think that gives you a
better appreciation of other people's turmoil.
And I know I, I kind of teased alittle bit about calling my
ancestor a terrorist because depending on which side of the
line you are, it's going to skewhow you view it.
But either side thinks they're they're supposed to be the
victorious ones. Robert McNamara told Curtis

(47:34):
Lemay at the end of World War 2 that if we're the losers, we get
hung as war criminals for the carpet bombing of essentially
wood and paper Tokyo that killed, you know, hundreds of
thousands of people, well, more than Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
more than a million people, he said.
You know, we, we're, we're, we'dbe war criminals and, and hung

(47:56):
for what we'd done. And so it's one man's meat is
another man's poison. I will say this too, Ken, I've
had a family member who's had skin in the game in every single
era of of war that you've covered in your films.
So from the Revolution all the way forward, we we got to get
one on World War One. You didn't do one on that one.
I'll tell you that that's a really good point.

(48:19):
We've covered World War One in alot of different films from
Hemingway, believe it or not, till Jazz and baseball and and
other stuff. So we passed through it.
World War One is in a way, and this is where the isolationist
movement in America started, is their war.
Like we came in and we were the difference and we won it for
them, but it was it was their war in a way that World War 2 is

(48:42):
not in that we did come and win it, but mainly it was our
manufacturing is the biggest cause of the winning of the
Second World War. Second is Soviet sacrifice.
Americans don't like to hear that.
And 3rd is the sacrifice of the Western European allies,
including those people who landed at at Omaha and and and

(49:02):
golden sword that day. So I mean, it's just, it's Utah
and all the other, all the beaches there, you know,
Canadian and British and, and, and mostly Americans.
And the Americans bore the bruntof it at, at, at Omaha, of
course. And you go there and you just
can't help but say they weren't getting paid, they weren't there

(49:24):
for empire, there was no conquest.
They were there for an idea thattyranny and authoritarianism is
not the way of human progress. And that's why I can't even talk
about it without breaking up. Yeah, I mean, I've had, my
ancestors were from after Massachusetts.

(49:47):
They migrated over to Michigan to do farming.
So you talked about moving West.Ann Arbor.
Yes, yeah, I saw that. I've got.
Yeah. Harbor Springs.
Oh, it's so funny. You talked about Laverne,
Minnesota, and I did the veteran.
So after I got wounded, I started doing the Veterans
Portrait Project, where I traveled to all 50 states to

(50:07):
document veteran stories. And I went to Laverne, Minnesota
and I met this this Korean War veteran named Arvin and he lost
almost his entire unit in Korea.And so they shipped him home.
He land. He said he landed in the middle
of the night and and by the timehe got back to the farm, it was

(50:28):
like 5 in the morning and he wason a tractor harvesting by like
7 in the morning after coming home from Korea and losing.
Anyway, this is the kind of metal of the Americans that that
you document in your films. And I can definitely appreciate
that. And I'm, I'm looking forward to
sitting down and watching the rest of of this film when it

(50:50):
comes out. When, when are we expected to
have this drop? Where can alphas watch it?
Tell us all about. All of my films couldn't have
been made without PBS, which is sorry that it's sort of under
attack. I, I, I, you know, they have one
foot tentatively in the marketplace and the other
proudly out. And, and that's where I've been
able to do it. I could have gone to a streaming
service or premium cable and said I need $30 million to make

(51:12):
the Vietnam film. And they go great.
With your track record here, it is, right?
But they wouldn't have given me 10 1/2 years, which is what it
took to get it right, Right. So that's what PBSI had to raise
all that money from them and from the Corporation for Public
Broadcasting, which is just beenzeroed out and is no more.
But I was able to do it right. So I PBS will begin broadcasting

(51:36):
this and streaming it for free on on Sunday, November 16th.
And it's going to be broadcast all that week, Sunday through
Friday night. They'll rebroadcast it, do it
marathons on the weekends, rebroadcast in January.
It'll be in pledge, it'll be going and they'll have another
national broadcast again in Junebefore the 250th anniversary of

(51:57):
the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
It's going to be hard to miss the DVDs and Blu rays if you
know what those things are. There's a companion book by
Alfred A Knopf, which is the handsomest of all the companion
books we've done. And we've done educational
outreach. So any school that's interested
in the American Revolution, whether it's third grade, 5th
grade, 8th grade, 11th grade, college, continuing education,

(52:19):
they're not going to miss it. So I'm really hoping that
everybody tunes in. Like we're now so divided, but
we share a lot of things in common.
Like I've made films for almost 50 years about the US, but I've
also made films about us. That is to say, the lowercase, 2
letter plural pronoun. All the intimacy of us and we

(52:43):
and our and all of the majesty, the complexity, the
contradiction and even the controversy of the US.
And it is my great privilege to spend that time telling those
stories. And I can't wait.
If we all watch this together, as it happened to remember at
the Civil War, well, you're too young.
At the Civil War series, the whole country stopped.
Joe was there. I I that was the first one I

(53:05):
watched actually. Was Civil War in the 90s?
Yeah. Yeah.
So it came out in September of 1990 and you're both too young
to stayed up. But the country stopped and I'm
really hoping we don't do that anymore.
But I really hope in some ways, not for me, but for us to be
able to all claim, regardless ofwhat side of the political

(53:25):
divide you're on, claim this extraordinary the birth of our
creation story, our creation myth, the the the moment that I
am calling the most important moment since the birth of
Christ. Alphas.
You can also get your passports and watch that on on the PBS
app. You can stream it beginning

(53:46):
November 16th. If you want to watch it through
your local, whether it's an ETV or your local PBS station, make
sure you check your local listings.
It'll all be the same time. This one you're going to show at
the same time. OK, great.
Perfect. And you're.
Going to show every episode twice.
So on Sunday night they'll show episode 1 from 8 to 10 and then

(54:06):
show episode 1 again from 11:50.So you can go out and have a
beer, you can come back and do it.
You can go to bed early and you know whatever it is and they'll
do that all week. So that's called a double pump.
Nice. And if you want to get your kids
involved, sit down with a pitcher of lemonade and every
time they say General Washington, take a shot of
lemonade. Have a little fun.

(54:28):
I can tell you I was drunk. I was drunk on that sour
goodness watching just a a few hours of it.
But you can also find it probably on Apple TV, Amazon
Prime. So just make sure that there's a
bunch of platforms. It's going to be out there and
pretty widespread. It's going to be hard to miss.
Yeah. We're going to have lots of
partnerships of various places like Walmart that will permit us

(54:51):
to to sort of give point of salethings.
It'll be good Christmas stuff. And it isn't just for Dad.
I think it's everybody's story. Like I, I've got four daughters
and couple of them. Yeah.
Isn't it the best? I'm rich in Daughters, but my
younger ones, I'll show them thestuff and they're like riveted.
And they'll go whoa, you know? And they like the maps.

(55:13):
They like. There were women in espionage
during the revolution. Indeed, indeed.
In fact, they're what? Perfect spies?
Perfect spies. Exactly, if they could just
live. It's all the petticoats where we
hide all the letters, yeah. That's.
Exactly. Do you love a good petticoat?
Alphas, we're gonna have links to where you can find more
information about the American Revolution by Ken Burns.

(55:35):
You can also be sure to check out pbs.org back slash Ken Burns
back slash U&UM For more information there.
Ken, as we wrap up, is there anything that we didn't cover
that you wanted to share with? Us awesome.
I'll just tell you that one of the first things we did in
support of the promotion of this, which was way back last
February, we went as we always do, to West Point.

(55:58):
And at lunch, you know, where all 4000 cadets are hooing.
We showed the opening quote by Thomas Paine about liberty and
freedom and throwing off the feeble engines of despotism.
And then 1600 cadets came and weshowed them in an auditorium
about 40 minutes of stuff. It was as it was in the Civil

(56:19):
War, as it was in World War 2, as it was in Vietnam, one of the
highlights of this tour. So I just, I bless the folks who
put on the uniform and service. And I think we've done a good
job telling your story and understanding the difficulties
of war and getting into just howbad it is.
So it's not sugar coated. I mean, soldiers always make the

(56:39):
best peacemakers. I will say that there is a
request on Reddit, Ken that you do a film about Ken Burns.
Yeah, right. Okay.
Yeah, that when? I'll play you.
I'll need a wig. Yeah, we'll, we'll call that
when hell freezes over. Hell has frozen.

(57:02):
But pigs are flying alphas. That's right, pig, when pigs are
flying. Exactly.
Ken, you're a real treat. Thank you for what you do for
American history, for what you do for public television and
filmmaking in general. And keep up the fantastic,
incredible market, setting the bar high for all of us.
It's all back at you guys. That's that's the thing that we
care about. And we're so grateful for your

(57:24):
service and we're so grateful for your sacrifice.
Welcome home. Let us know what we can do for
you. Thank you so much for visiting
us today, Ken. Alphas, please stick around for
some scuttlebutt after the break.
Discover the power of your voiceand form a deeper understanding
of our nation and the principlesthat shape it.

(57:45):
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you'll develop a deeper knowledge of the US Constitution
and a greater understanding of the duties, responsibilities,
rights, and privileges of American citizenship.
As you step up to this academic speaking challenge, you'll learn
leadership skills, the art of oration, and have a shot at
winning up to $25,000 in scholarships.

(58:09):
Seize your moment, visit legion.org/oratorical and take
the first steps towards shaping your future today.
OK, Alphas, we hope that you hadan absolutely stupendous break,
and now it's time for Joe's favorite segment, Scuttlebutt.

(58:32):
Scuttlebutt, Scuttlebutt, all right.
Scuttlebutt, all right. I wanted to share a recent NPR
article I found where Ken Burns called the elimination of
federal funding for public broadcasting short sighted,
warning that the cuts will be catastrophic for new film makers
and rural communities. He calls it a profound blow to

(58:53):
what he says is a uniquely American institution.
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, CPB, and another
agency that has felt the axe, the National Endowment for the
Humanities, has been central to my origin story, Burns told
Morning Edition. I wouldn't have been able to
make any of the films without their support.
So that early support, he said, helped attract foundations and

(59:16):
underwriters that made it possible to complete films like
Brooklyn Bridge, Huey Long and the sixth film in the Civil War
series. Even today, the CPB represents
up to 25% of the funds for his project, Byrne says.
I'm less concerned with our ability to recover because we'll
just redouble the efforts, Byrnesaid.
But the effect down the system for film makers is going to be

(59:36):
catastrophic. Agreed.
What a really great way of looking at it because I think
that an example would be the I remember the first time when
they were scanning prosthetics going through the airport.
It did not bother me because youknow me that they had my leg
like flipped upside down and they were doing this in front of
everyone while everyone was looking around the pretty 6 foot

(59:59):
blonde to see what I was doing. So I had all these people
looking at me and what kept going through my mind is.
I'm uncomfortable. This is going to really mess up
somebody else's day. And I just kept thinking they're
like, this can't be how they handle this from now on.
This can't be how all this is handled.
And, and I, I did talk to them about that afterwards and they

(01:00:21):
completely understood and apologized to me.
But again, that wasn't my point.And to be able to think past
yourself because like he says, he knows what what to do to
recover on his side. But what happens to these young
people who are are who don't have the resources and the
backing that he got because of this?
Well, that's people like me, Joe.

(01:00:42):
I want to help veterans. I want to help the veteran
community. And you know that my show on
After Action is a PBS show. Yes.
So I definitely understand what he's saying.
I am. While we're in our third season,
I'm still very new to this approach and how to do
fundraising. And that's what PBS helps.
That helps us do as as film makers, as people who want to

(01:01:05):
give back to our community to help educate.
That's what's tremendously important about about PBS is, is
hitting the markets that are underserved.
And as Ken so eloquently mentioned at the very top of
this, this news article is the people who are going to be
hardest hit are those who are underserved and then rural
areas. But anyway, let's hear what else
he has to say. Well, I, I want to add on the

(01:01:28):
back of that, that I think the PBS is one of the most American
thing. It's it's been a part of every
single person's childhood that Iknow in one way or another.
Besame St. Everybody.
Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, even to this day my, my
3 year old carries around 2 Elmo's everywhere he goes.
And exactly that's right. So well.

(01:01:51):
Recently the the House approved a Trump administration plan to
rescind 9 to $9 billion in previously allocated funds,
including 1.1 billion for the CPBA move that cuts all federal
support for NPRPBS and their member stations and 7.9 billion
in foreign aid. President Trump and most
congressional Republicans contend that public media is

(01:02:13):
biased and does not need federalfunding.
The House votes split largely along party lines, 216 to 213,
with two Republicans joining Democrats in opposition.
Which doesn't sound like a lot, but the way that things are
drawn out right now, that's a huge show of support for someone
to cross lines in that vote. But Burns said the damage will

(01:02:34):
be especially severe in rural areas where local stations may
be the only source of news, educational programming and
emergency alerts. And that's really unfortunate
because these local stations arethe least bias.
They're not the ones that are that are creating narratives or,
or trying to, you know, primarily their funding comes
from, from don't come from the public like that.

(01:02:58):
And so they're not, they're not trying to do gotcha stories or
whatever. They're telling the news the way
that that I think all of us wishthe news was being told.
So public broadcasting is the Declaration of Independence
applied to communications, he said.
It's that central to our definition.
Burns disagreed with arguments that public media is politically
biased or unnecessary in the in this digital age.

(01:03:20):
My own films, I don't have a political point of view in them,
which is incredible by the way, I I call balls and strikes, he
said, noting PBS's 32 year run of conservative commenter
William F Buckley's Firing Line.Mostly it's Sesame Street,
American Experience, Nature, Antiques Roadshow and Frontline,
which may be the greatest television series of all time.

(01:03:43):
Yeah. I mean, and there's nothing in
my opinion politically skewed about Downton Abbey.
When you when you when you watchPBS in your in your stream in
Downton Abbey, I don't think you're thinking about politics
whatsoever. Or in when you're watching
Antiques Roadshow and are. You saying the bougie aren't
politically? I'm just joking.
Go ahead or whatever. And after Action is a show that

(01:04:06):
that we created for veterans in our community and, and bringing
communities back together. So there's nothing politically
skewed about that aside from wanting to bring Americans
together and not not divide them, but.
And continue to show support forveterans the way that you do.
Every regardless of whether you or left, right or down the
center or non affiliated, we don't care.

(01:04:27):
We care about the veteran. But anyway, thanks for sharing
that. Appreciate it.
Of course, I also have a scuttlebutt that's in honor of
our esteemed esteemed guest. Of course I took to Reddit to
see what kind of Ken Burns rabbit hole I can get down and
boy did I have some fun. The first post I found was

(01:04:47):
titled quote. Once or twice a year I get drunk
and watch Ken Burns Civil War. Does anybody else?
And of course, there were a lot.Now I'm going to preface this.
I don't come up with these people's handles.
All right, They they they come up with them with themselves.
But for me, part of the fun withthe Reddit rabbit holes are the

(01:05:07):
handles. So forgive me for some cursing
that's going to happen. It's not my problem.
OK, so to the to respond to thispost at crew, Mario asked.
Like the whole thing. Yeah, that's.
Isn't there 9 episodes or something like that?

(01:05:29):
It's like an entire Lifetime documentary and then at Fuck
Face 59 added. I wonder how many dudes forced
their girlfriends to sit throughthe entire film.
Great question. In, in, in that person's
defense, they come from a long line of faces.
I don't know if you know that it's a long, a long, strong line
of faces. Yeah.

(01:05:49):
Eventually you're going to run out of names.
Where did the 59 come from? Was it the year they were born?
Were they born in 59 or? Yeah or?
I'm sure there's a sexual connotation that we're missing
as well. I don't know.
I'm not even going to go there because there's there's 10° off
on that 59. My friend anyway at Lester Green
junior said I no longer drink, but I consider the documentary

(01:06:13):
to be a masterpiece. You were absolutely right.
The Civil war by Ken Burns's stupendous at chewing gum on
table, Rose shared. Man, I thought I thought what
would be Sullivan Balu's bit I'll get the Kleenex out to
which at quality of will responded.
Yeah, I know it was a little a little shockley or something,

(01:06:36):
but it is such a beautiful, poetic piece of writing that I
am genuinely moved every time I hear it.
The combination of prose, the narration, the music are
perfectly engineered to make me break.
And at chewing gum on the table followed up with I agree.
I wish I could express myself even a tenth of the matter in
which he does. For those of you who haven't

(01:06:58):
watched Ken Burns film The CivilWar or are not familiar with
Sullivan, Balo. Balo.
Balo. I don't know.
I'm sure I'm saying that Balo. Balu.
Balu. I always thought it was Balu.
OK, whatever. We'll go with that.
We'll just say Sullivan. Mr. Sullivan.
He was an American lawyer, a politician from Rhode Island,
and an officer in the Union Armyduring the American Civil War.

(01:07:20):
He is remembered for an eloquentletter that he wrote to his
young wife, Sarah, a week beforehe was mortally wounded at the
First Battle of Bull Run, Sullivan was hit by a six
pounder cannonball. Jeez, that sounds horrendous.
It tore off part of his leg and it killed us worse.
I'm a horse lover and that really shocked me.

(01:07:41):
Yeah, I'm a leg lover and that got me too.
You can relate? I'm sure.
Yeah. He was left behind by the
retreating Union forces and dieda week after the battle.
He was buried in Suddenly Church's graveyard.
I'm not sure where Suddenly Church is, but I'm sure it's
nice. He was one of 94 men from the
Second Rhode Island who were whowere killed or mortally wounded

(01:08:02):
at Bow Run. The battle in the area was
occupied by Confederate forces, and Sullivan's body was
allegedly exhumed, decapitated and burned by Confederate
troops. That's grim.
Like, listen, I get that tensions are high, but that
takes a lot of forethought to dig up some bodies, decapitate,

(01:08:23):
dismember them and then burn them anyway.
His body was never recovered, sadly.
A reading of the letter from Sullivan to his wife who was 24
when he was killed by the way, which is very young.
It was included in Ken Burns film Civil War.
It's a tearjerker. Watch the film, grab your
tissues, get after it. Alphas.

(01:08:44):
Anyway back to Ken Burns. So at clue with like 7 news
suggested quote. Definitely check out Ken Burns
Vietnam. That was the most haunting
documentary I have ever seen at AT Oh my God long car Why?
Followed on his own comment withI do it with the Vietnam one.

(01:09:08):
But yeah, any Ken Burns doc demands annual or biannual
rewatches at obese backgammon. Been waiting for the
Revolutionary War doc. You can now basically do a whole
U.S. history course by Ken Burnsdocumentaries.
This is absolutely true. Whether he'll be sober watching

(01:09:30):
Ken's new film, he didn't say. We'll see at D632 stated Ken
Burns single handedly justifies the cost of associated with APBS
streaming subscription. Absolutely.
By the way, Alphas, if you don'thave APBS passport, it's really
a nominal fee. I think I pay like $65 a year

(01:09:52):
for PBS subscription. And it goes it goes toward film
makers like Ken Burns like myself and it helps out a lot.
Anyway so at D632 goes on to saythat's not me saying it's not
worth it either. His documentary content on that
service and it being around $60.00 a year is a great value
in modern times. You are absolutely right.
Get out there alphas. Get your passports at big filet

(01:10:15):
boldly stated of Ken Burns that hair can't be real to which at
never nude 666 said I'd love to watch Ken Burns documentary
about Ken Burns. All right alphas, don't forget
the American Legion is on Reddit.
I'm on Reddit. Get your butts on Reddit Follow
us. Go down the rabbit hole with me.

(01:10:37):
It's a lot of fun. Additionally, I do want to bring
up the USA 250 Challenge. It's been 250 years and America
we've never looked better. The.
Wrinkles on your face prove thatyou've been there for a.
While these are these are my crows crows legs, these aren't
crows feet anymore. Those are crevasses.
Crevasses, I'm so sorry, but youcan actually go to legion.org

(01:11:03):
back slash USA 250 challenge andand that is the website to find
out more. What we're trying to do is we're
trying to get people moving, baby, whether it's volunteer
hours, walking, running, fighting squirrels.
I don't know if Fighting Squirrels is on there, but there
are many options for you to get involved and there's a T-shirt

(01:11:25):
and everyone likes T-shirts, so.I got my T-shirt, mine's like a
a bright blue. The blue, it looks incredible on
you, by the way, That's definitely your color.
It is. I'm more of a nude guy.
I heard that about you. You know I'm shirts, your skins.
All right, Alphas, thanks for listening and get on there and

(01:11:46):
get your passports. Watch this new documentary by
Ken Burns. Get registered for the USA 250
Challenge. Get your steps in, get your
volunteer hours logged. You can subscribe to our
podcast, our newsletter, send ussome mail, guest recommendations
at legion.org. Back slash Tal, we're going to
see you next week. Next week, take that.

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