July 8, 2026 • 41 mins
My guest today has an incredible new documentary coming out this November called Crime and Punishment in America. It's a four-part, 8 hour review of the history of crime and incarceration dating back hundreds of years all the way to today (I was fortunate enough to get a preview).
Lynn Novick (The Vietnam War, College Behind Bars, The Us and the Holocaust) is the writer and director of this terrific new documentary and she sat down with me to talk about everything from where the idea to cover such an expansive subject came from to what it's like working with such tremendous talent to make history come to life.
This conversation is a great look into documenting the complexities of the American criminal justice system. Give it a listen and be sure to catch the new film when it comes out in a few months!
Lynn Novick has been making landmark documentary films about American life and culture, history, politics, sports, art, architecture, literature, and music for more than 30 years. As director and producer, she has created more than 100 hours of acclaimed programming for PBS in collaboration with Ken Burns, including most recently their six-hour series, The U.S. and The Holocaust, (co-directed and produced by Sarah Botstein) which received the Alfred I. DuPont Columbia Award and the Television Academy Honors award. Novick’s films include The Vietnam War, Ernest Hemingway,Prohibition, Baseball, Jazz, Frank Lloyd Wright, and The War-- these landmark series have garnered 19 Emmy nominations. Novick herself has received DuPont, Emmy and Peabody Awards.
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Episode Transcript
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SPEAKER_01 (00:00):
I'm Jeff Asher, and this is the Jeffalytics Podcast.
(00:03):
My guest today walked into aprison classroom in 2012 to show
a few scenes from a documentaryabout prohibition to the
incarcerated students.
She left with a differentproject entirely.
Lynn Novick has been makingdocumentary films since the
mid-1980s, working alongside KenByrne since his Civil War series
in 1989.
She's worked on subjects rangingfrom baseball to Vietnam to
(00:24):
World War II.
Her newest film is called Crimeand Punishment in America, and
it's out this November.
The documentary is a four-part,nearly eight-hour series tracing
criminal justice in this countryfrom the colonial era to today.
And fun fact, yours truly wasone of the subject matter
experts consulted for the film.
In this episode, Lynn and I talkabout her years-long exploration
(00:44):
into the U.S.
prison system, the invention ofthe penitentiary, the gap
between what the data says aboutcrime and punishment and what
people actually believe, andwhat it's like working with so
many talented actors who bringhistory back to life on screen.
This is a documentary that'swell worth a watch and a story
that's worth digging into.
So let's get into it.
My guest today is Lynn Novick.
(01:05):
Lynn, thank you so much forjoining me.
SPEAKER_00 (01:06):
Hey Chef, thank you so much for having me.
It's a pleasure to be here.
SPEAKER_01 (01:10):
I'm so excited to be having this conversation.
Um, this is probably the longesttime between asking a guest and
uh talking to a guest, and thenstill another few months until
the guest's work actually comesout.
So I'm I'm super excited to behaving this conversation.
SPEAKER_00 (01:26):
It's been wonderful working with you on our project,
and we're really excited for ourseries to see the light of day
after many, many years.
So I'm really looking forward tothe conversation.
SPEAKER_01 (01:35):
Just launching in, what what is your background?
How did you come to be afilmmaker?
SPEAKER_00 (01:39):
Oh my goodness, wow.
Well, I've been working in theworld of documentary films since
the mid-1980s.
A few years after college, Idecided I wanted to get involved
in historical documentary work,and I didn't actually know what
it was involved or what it wouldtake.
And so I started off as anintern and then worked my way up
to production assistant andassociate producer, learning
(02:00):
about archival research and umproduction planning and
coordinating and how to do aninterview and how to bring all
the materials together inpost-production.
And in 1989, I had the chance towork with Ken Burns when he was
finishing up his series on theCivil War.
So I started there as anassociate producer and worked my
(02:20):
way toward becoming a producerand director, and now a writer
also on this project that we'reabout to talk about.
SPEAKER_01 (02:26):
So let's start it.
What what is this new project?
Do you have a new film comingout?
Tell me about it.
SPEAKER_00 (02:31):
Yeah, so our new series is called Crime and
Punishment in America.
It's a four-part series, almosteight hours long, that tells the
story of criminal justice inthis country from the colonial
time until today.
SPEAKER_01 (02:45):
And how how did it start?
This this has obviously, Ithink, been a baby of yours for
quite a while.
SPEAKER_00 (02:50):
The stories we choose to tell come to us in
different ways.
Let's put it that way.
And so back in 2012, I wasinvited to teach a class in a
college and prison program inupstate New York.
And we were there to presentsome scenes from a film we made
about prohibition to a group ofincarcerated students who were
enrolled in the BARD PrisonInitiative, which is a wonderful
(03:11):
program that provides associatesand bachelor's degrees to
incarcerated men and women.
And that was my first time goinginto a prison.
It was my first time reallythinking deeply about the
carceral system that we have inthis country.
And I'm a student of history.
I've explored many aspects ofAmerican life and culture for 30
(03:31):
years, and I really had neverfocused on the question of why
do we have prisons?
What are they for?
How do they get here?
What is criminal justice meantto do?
What's it like to be in theseplaces?
And that sent me on a journey.
First, to make a documentaryabout the Barred Prison
Initiative, which was afour-year project.
I made a film with my producingpartner Sarah Botstein that came
(03:54):
out in 2019, a four-part seriesabout men and women who were
earning degrees through thisprogram.
And while we were working onCollege Behind Bars, started
thinking very deeply about thefact that I knew nothing about
the history that was in front ofour faces every day, but we
really didn't understand how itgot here.
And so at that time, Ken Burnsand Jeff Ward and I and Sarah
(04:16):
Bottstein decided to make aseries on the history of crime
and punishment in America.
And that was in 2014, 2015, along time ago.
We were busy with otherprojects, things happened, the
project evolved.
Um, Ken Burns ended up taking onthe role of executive producer
rather than co-director with me.
So I've become the director ofthis film and also the writer,
(04:37):
working with an amazing team ofproducers and editors to pull
the story together.
And it germinated for a verylong time.
And I'm glad of that becausethis is a very complex story and
it took us a while to figure outwhat was the most important uh
thread to pull through.
SPEAKER_01 (04:53):
Can I ask, how do you figure that out?
It is so expansive.
It's like doing a documentary onmath or something like that.
Like, did you set out to tell aspecific story or how did you
learn this first and then figureout what stories to tell?
SPEAKER_00 (05:08):
Well, sometimes it feels like we're flying the
airplane while we're buildingit.
And that can be a littleterrifying, but also very
exhilarating and exciting.
The first thing that we do,honestly, is to figure out who
the experts are.
Because we never can become theexperts the way that people have
dedicated their lives to aparticular topic or have lived
experience of it.
(05:29):
We can benefit from theirknowledge and expertise and
perspective.
So we started to pull together aboard of advisors, a wide mix of
people with different kinds ofexpertise.
And we convened meetings withthem to talk about well, we want
to make a film about the historyof crime and punishment in
America.
What should it contain?
What are the big questions weshould be trying to answer?
(05:51):
And we took a lot of guidancefrom them in terms of just
focusing our attention on thebig questions because there is
an infinite amount of storiesthat we could tell.
And then over time, put ideas onpaper, make outlines and write
scripts, and then send them outfor comments.
And it's very iterative.
So the process means that westart out with one idea, and by
(06:12):
the time the film is done, it'sdraft 17, and it has changed a
lot.
We learn a lot as we're makingthe film.
Most of what's in this film Idid not know when we started.
So even when we've done a lot ofresearch and are deep into it,
we still are discovering newthings and putting them in.
And that's that's what makes, Ithink, the process really
rewarding and hopefully willfeel fresh and exciting, even to
(06:32):
people who know this topicpretty well.
SPEAKER_01 (06:35):
Yeah, absolutely.
And I was fortunate enough tosee a screener and it it
absolutely accomplishes thatgoal.
And I felt like the closer itgot to the subject area that I
feel like I know a lot about,the more engrossed I was in the
subject.
It like it definitely capturedall of that.
Um, did you have preconceivednotions or this idea of the
criminal justice system goinginto this, or was it more of a
(06:57):
blank slate for you?
SPEAKER_00 (06:58):
I'm sure I did have preconceived notions.
Probably the most fundamentalone before we really started
working on the film was thatthere's kind of a logic and
consistency to a system thatexists because it was planned
that way.
And that, you know, having faithin our forebearers, people who
came before us, that theyplanned something out and, you
(07:19):
know, put things in place for areason.
And in exploring the story, itwas really interesting to really
deeply understand that we have50 states.
Each one has its own system.
There's 3,000 counties, each oneof them has a system of
prosecution.
There's jails in every city andtown, there's police forces all
(07:40):
over the place, thousands ofthem.
And that there is no one system,and there's no one single
organizing principle.
It's sort of, in a way, a bit ofa mess.
Whatever problems exist arechallenging to fix because you
can't do this from the top down.
You have to really work state bystate, county by county, city by
city, jurisdiction byjurisdiction to address whatever
(08:03):
issues there are.
And I definitely did not fullyunderstand that when we started
the project.
SPEAKER_01 (08:07):
And are there other things, big takeaways, even
small takeaways that you youtake from this that maybe coming
in you had no expectation oflearning these things?
SPEAKER_00 (08:17):
Probably the the big aha moment for many of us
working on the project was tocome to understand that prisons
have not always been here in theway that we think of them today.
Prisons and penitentiaries werean American invention of the
early 19th century, late, late18th, right after the
revolution, basically, thatAmericans came up with this idea
(08:40):
that we should build prisons andpenitentiaries as a solution to
the problem of crime and a morehumane solution than what we
were doing previously, which waspublic executions, whipping,
branding, really torturingpeople in public to shame them
and to teach them a lesson andto show everybody else this is
what will happen to you if youbreak the law.
And that that seemed to manypeople inconsistent with the
(09:04):
American experiment that we werebuilding, this new country with
a new form of government.
We needed a better form ofpunishment.
SPEAKER_01 (09:11):
So the the film traces like the start of the
country through the revolution,the Civil War, the prohibition,
and then all the way to today.
Was there a a period or asection of American history
where you were most sort ofenthralled about learning about
the criminal justice system?
SPEAKER_00 (09:29):
That's kind of like saying which is your favorite
child.
SPEAKER_01 (09:32):
I guess I feel it was all I won't say it on here,
but you know, we're all no, I'mjust kidding.
SPEAKER_00 (09:37):
Exactly.
We can't say which is ourfavorite.
It was all equally interesting.
The closer we got to thepresent, things seemed more
familiar.
So it felt like, oh, I Iremember events that happened
that we put in the film fromliving through them as a
sentient adult.
And so it was really interestingto explore events that were in
(09:57):
my memory, but look deeper intothem and understand the context
for why they happened the waythat they did and the impact
that they had.
And there's many examples ofthat in the in our last episode.
For me, I think learning aboutthe people whose stories I
didn't know in the earlierperiods was just absolutely
revelatory.
(10:18):
We get to know some reallyincredible characters who left
behind memoirs or other kind oftestimony that helps us open a
door into a world that weotherwise wouldn't have access
to.
And that's really the magic ofwhat we do.
So bringing in an actor to reada voice of someone who wrote a
memoir in the 19th century, forexample, Samuel L.
(10:40):
Jackson, reading the voice of aman named Austin Reed made that
story come alive for all of us.
Even though we had read the bookand we knew the story from deep
study of it, when a great actorreads those words, it comes
alive.
And even though this is a manfor whom there are no
photographs, we don't know whathe looked like.
But I feel I know him nowbecause I've read his memoir and
(11:03):
I've heard Sam Jackson speak hiswords.
And what he leaves us with is anaccount of a young man who was
caught up in what was then avery incipient system of
juvenile justice.
As a 10-year-old, he waspunished for trying to set fire
to the farm of a family that hewas working on in their house as
(11:24):
an indentured servant.
He was sent to an institution inNew York City called the House
of Refuge, which was horrible.
And as soon as he was releasedfrom there, he was convicted of
another crime.
And then he was sent to an adultprison.
And the time when these adultprisons were just starting to
become institutions and fixturesof American life.
(11:44):
His memoir of that experience isjust riveting and wrenching.
And through his words, we'reable to put ourselves there in a
way that is truly profound.
And seeing the resonancesbetween the experiences he had
and what people still experienceto this day, well, that stays
with you, I think.
SPEAKER_01 (12:03):
This is obviously, at least in a lot of parts, a
very difficult story to watchand hear.
And you know there's there'sparts that are frankly quite
depressing that this is thehistory of our country.
But you also blend in that sortof hope.
And how do you do that?
You I mean, masterfully tellstories like the Florida Four
and and Dr.
Sweet in Michigan and um all ofthese like horrendous injustices
(12:27):
in our American history.
How do you how do you try to dothat and not leave a viewer
feeling just terrible aboutthemselves?
SPEAKER_00 (12:35):
Yeah, well, we certainly are not attempting to
make anyone feel this is theirfault or bad about themselves or
anything they did, or pointingfingers at people today for the
failures of the past.
I don't think that's terriblyproductive and doesn't get us
too far in terms of justhonestly confronting the
failures of our society to liveup to its values.
(12:57):
Our feeling is that this is animportant history that needs to
be told, and that we can dobetter if we know that history.
And if we choose to ignore itand pretend it didn't happen, we
certainly cannot.
And it has been sometimes a darkand deeply disturbing narrative.
It also is inspiring to see theways that people who have faced
(13:20):
injustice maintain theirhumanity, have been resilient,
have expressed hope, havesurvived it, have endured that
we still tell their storiestoday, that they help us
understand the best and worst ofwhat people are capable of.
These are sort of profoundtruths about the human
condition.
And the human condition, sadly,is not always a happy one.
(13:42):
There are moments of uplift,there are moments of hope and
inspiration, and there aremoments of devastating tragedy.
And I think it's important tohold both of those things.
And finding the balance isalways a challenge for a story
like this.
I have worked on many projectsthat are inherently tragic,
especially the Vietnam War andour family on the Second World
(14:05):
War, where catastrophiccataclysmic loss and suffering
and degradation are at the coreof those stories and sometimes
just senseless waste ofhumanity.
And still they're important totell because we need to know
what happened so we can honorthe people who survived it and
(14:25):
the people who didn't and dobetter next time and carry that
with us.
Maya Angelou says history withits wrenching pain cannot be
unlived, but if faced withcourage need not be lived again.
So I I think that's what we'rereally all about, not just in
this film, but in really all thefilms I've made.
SPEAKER_01 (14:45):
Yeah.
And I do love that the way thatit ends is is very hopeful in
pointing out that even thatsomething is as difficult as our
criminal justice system, there'sevidence of like clear
improvement, which I think is astrong, good message for people
to take away from it.
SPEAKER_00 (15:01):
I completely agree.
I've I had the privilege ofinterviewing Brian Stevenson for
this project, and I asked himbasically the same question you
just asked me.
Where do you find hope?
You know, aren't I don't youthink it's do you ever feel
hopeless?
And he said, I can't let myselfbe hopeless.
Hopelessness is the enemy ofprogress.
We we have to be hopeful.
We don't have a choice.
And I completely agree withthat.
(15:22):
And I am very inspired by thepeople both in the past and
today, and I know in the future,who definitely have not given up
and are working to make thingsbetter.
We got ourselves into this, wecan get ourselves out of it.
It doesn't have to always bethat way.
And I don't think it will if wetell the story correctly.
SPEAKER_01 (15:40):
One of the parts that stuck out for me, um, and I
I wrote it down because um Iwanted to talk specifically
about this line.
And I I have no idea if thisstuck out for you, but as like a
data person, it stuck out for mewas uh you had the the in 1961
when crime was still like at hitthe historic lows that we talk
about in America, um, at leastfor the reported FBI crime,
(16:02):
Graucho Marks has the uh LosAngeles Police Department chief
on his show.
And Groucho says, Well, with thescientific approach, I assume
you've wiped out crime in LA.
Is that right?
And I think he expects, like,uh, yes, we're doing great work.
And the chief's response isactually it's getting worse.
We have a very difficult andserious situation.
It's not a question of theproficiency of the police
(16:23):
service, so it's not our faultthat everything's getting bad.
It's a question of theindulgences of the American
people.
You see, crime in America isskyrocketing.
And he's saying this at a timeum when crime in America was not
skyrocketing.
And if he'd said it a decadelater, he would have been like,
oh, yes, that's true.
But at this time it wasn't.
And I was just thinking how somuch of the documentary is about
(16:45):
the people that are in chargesort of setting a story that
doesn't inherently match thedata.
Is that a crazy interpretationfrom me?
Or is it just because I'm a dataperson, or is that something
that you set out to highlight?
SPEAKER_00 (16:56):
We've seen time and again that people in positions
of authority are saying that wehave a huge problem with crime.
And also the media.
So newspapers and pamphlets andthen radio, and then later on
television, the narrative thatcrime is going up, that people
are scared that crime is aproblem, is pervasive.
And this is before they keptreally good statistics.
(17:17):
So we don't necessarily have away of showing for sure if crime
is going up or down, but theperception of crime is that it's
always going up continually.
And I've heard you speak aboutthis in other conversations.
It's the power of anecdote andfear.
So one horrible crime thatpeople hear about or see or read
(17:38):
about tells them crime is goingup.
It doesn't matter if it onlyhappened once.
It's just so bad and sofrightening, and they're so
disturbed that it could happento them or could happen again
that the perception is crime isgoing up or the crime is a
growing problem.
And that goes back to the early19th century.
We see newspapers that arediscussing the crime wave and
(18:00):
that there's so much crime inour city streets and that these
places are becomingungovernable.
There's also kind of aconflation of crime and
disorder, crime and poverty,crime and kind of urban chaos.
So crime as a word can mean alot of different things.
I think a lot of people would,on the one hand, say crime is an
act of violence or you know,taking something that doesn't
(18:21):
belong to you or harmingsomebody else, sort of
one-on-one intrapersonalbreaking of the social order by
harming somebody else.
That's the kind of crime thatwe're talking about when people
say crime is going up.
That's what I think they mean.
Mugging, rape, murder, you know,child abuse, I don't know, car
theft, the kind of things thatpeople are afraid of happening
(18:42):
to them and that do happen andthat are sadly part of American
life.
But if you have, let's say,ethnic tensions that turn into
riots in the 19th century, oryou have urban America exploding
in the 1960s, that's alsoconsidered crime.
I'm not saying it's not deeplyconcerning, but it it gives the
sense to many people that crimeis a problem.
(19:04):
And that kind of confusion orconflation, I think, is not new.
SPEAKER_01 (19:08):
So much of my work is about like you can sort of
call a problem not solved,especially with crime, but also
acknowledge that the data iscorrect and and the data's hey,
the data's pointing down.
That's good.
Let's learn from that, let'skeep doing that.
Are there ways that youspecifically tried to work data
into the documentary and intoall the conversations?
SPEAKER_00 (19:30):
Well, we tried to understand as best we could the
data that was available.
So in the 19th century, I don'tthink you have really much in
the way of data at all.
So that's our first episode, nodata.
Really?
Our first episode goes up until1880s or so.
Our second episode goes until1930s.
(19:50):
What we talk about in thoseshows is a sense that people,
either because of the reading inthe paper or because they're
living in urban areas wherethere's strangers that they
don't know and there's kind ofdifferent kinds of tensions and
things happening in the street,um, a fear of crime is always
there.
And also a fascination withcrime and criminals and outlaws.
(20:10):
So we have this reallyinteresting tension between
we're both scared of crime andfearful that something bad will
happen, and fascinated by thepeople who seem to flout the law
and get away with it.
So Jesse James, for example.
SPEAKER_01 (20:25):
Growing.
SPEAKER_00 (20:28):
So we were really interested to understand sort of
just writ large, both Americans'perceptions of crime and fear
and desire for a criminaljustice system that will protect
them, and fascination with thepeople who are the outlaws who
seem to get away with it.
And how both of these things arehappening at the same time is, I
(20:50):
think, really interestingtension or reality paradox of
our history.
Once we get to the 1930s andbeyond, after the FBI is created
in the Roosevelt administration,and there's a coordinated effort
to collect data about crimeacross the country, the film
will show charts and informationabout crime, violent crime in
(21:11):
particular, as we know more,getting closer to the present.
And we also have a moment whereone of the historians that we
interviewed talks about J.
Edgar Hoover and the FBI werealways collecting the crime data
that they had and presenting it,that crime is going up and that
they therefore need more moneyand more resources to fight it.
So the use of crime statisticswas deployed to secure more of
(21:37):
what they needed to keep theirjobs and keep their bureaucracy
going.
SPEAKER_01 (21:41):
I'm gonna totally give away my my nerdiness here.
But if you go through the oldlike the 1960 or the 1940s or
the 1950s of the FBI PDFs, umthey like they get really
preachy in these things aboutlike, hey, crime is going up and
it's because of prosecutors orit's because of all of these
other things.
And in no way is it.
The FBI's fault, it's just like,you know, we're gonna explain
(22:03):
why it's everybody else's fault.
SPEAKER_00 (22:04):
One of the things we we were interested in kind of
shining a light on is that firstthere's the problem of how much
crime is there and how are wequantifying it and measuring it?
That's one big, huge question.
And another question is why isthis happening and who's
responsible?
So even if we were to postulateor stipulate, yes, crime did go
up, or if later on crime wentdown, why?
(22:26):
What are the causes of crime andhow much are we willing as a
society to do anything aboutthem?
And that's a huge questionthroughout our history, which we
haven't resolved.
It's an ongoing debate.
SPEAKER_01 (22:37):
It's arguably the biggest debate we have right
now.
We've conquered the hey, we canmeasure this thing question, and
we're going through thishistoric decline in crime, and
nobody knows why, and nobodyknows what to do about it.
SPEAKER_00 (22:51):
I find that really fascinating.
I really find that fascinating.
We basically will explain in thefilm that crime has been going
down and that it's a mystery.
There's many different theories.
We went down many rabbit holesto try to understand, as much as
you know, it's understandablewhat the different theories were
and sort of differentconjectures.
(23:11):
But of course, you can't youcan't prove this.
You're observing after the fact,well, demographic shifts
happened, or, you know, accessto different social services
happened, or street lights,parks, whatever the different
things that have been shown topotentially affect crime in a
neighborhood.
But in the aggregate, it's notpossible to really say.
(23:34):
But depending on what you thinkthe cause is, that will then
dictate your approach.
It's underlying that is afundamental question about human
nature, social responsibility,the role of government in our
lives, the role of the policeand the carceral system,
individuals and families, whatthey're supposed to do.
And I would say also the socialstructure, capitalism, labor,
(23:57):
health insurance, access tobenefits, all these mental
health services, all thesethings also play a role.
And everyone kind of agrees: well, there's not a ton of a (24:04):
undefined
crime in Palo Alto, Greenwich,Connecticut, very wealthy
enclaves, and there's a lot morecrime in really impoverished
neighborhoods.
So what more is there to sayabout that?
SPEAKER_01 (24:17):
If you could have an elected official, um, mayor or
governor, watch one story or onescene to like really get the
lesson and really understand thecomplexity of the issue.
Is there a specific part of thefilm you'd point to, or is this
me asking you to choose yourchildren again?
SPEAKER_00 (24:36):
I think that's a hard one.
I'm gonna have to punt on that.
It's too soon for me to answerthat.
I think that our systems are sosiloed, the people who make the
laws, the elected officials,let's say, we'll say
legislators, are one group, andthe decisions they make affect
how much time people spend inprison, for example.
The people who run the prisonsget their money from the state
(24:58):
to do or not do whatever they'resupposed to be doing for the
people who are in custody.
The police are given theirinstructions from, let's say,
the local mayor.
In other words, how many judgeshave ever spent any time inside
a prison, the place they'resending people to, or in jails?
How many prosecutors have beeninside jails and prisons?
How many police officers havebeen to these places to see, you
(25:22):
know, once someone gets into thesystem, this is where they end
up?
And that therefore, who'sresponsible for what happens to
them when they're there?
Who takes responsibility oraccountability for the failures
of those systems?
I think our film hopefullyshines a light on all of this in
a way.
So it's hard for me to pick onething because each group kind of
needs to understand what theother groups are doing in a way.
(25:43):
People are busy doing theirjobs, they're very
well-intentioned, they'reworking hard, they're doing what
they think is right, and they'renot responsible for what happens
after they do their part.
SPEAKER_01 (25:52):
Do you have any thoughts about what the future
of the criminal justice systemmight look like based on the
history and where we are now?
SPEAKER_00 (25:59):
We put our stock and trade in looking at the past
through the lens of the present,you know, so where we are now
and thinking about whatquestions to ask about the past.
Projecting forward is muchharder, I would say.
So many things can happen thatwe can't predict.
And I I recognize that over thecourse of the time we've been
working on this project, or I'vebeen interested in and focused
(26:21):
on the criminal justice system,let's say from 2013 to now, the
conversation has shiftedmultiple times in different
ways, locally and nationally.
And so it's kind of hard topredict where it will be in the
future.
But I am hopeful that we havesomewhat of a shared consensus
that our sentences are verylong, that most people don't
(26:44):
benefit from time in prison,that our system takes difficult
problems and makes them worse.
And so if we have some kind ofshared acknowledgement of those
truths, then perhaps we canstart to make things better.
I also recognize that there arejust as many Americans probably
who feel that when somebodycommits a terrible crime, or
(27:06):
maybe even not a terrible crime,a serious crime, they need to be
punished and they need to be putaway for as long as possible to
keep them away from the rest ofus.
And it that's just all we canever hope to do because human
nature is what it is, and youpeople don't change.
And therefore, someone who'scommitted serious harm can't be
redeemed, can't be helped, justneeds to be put somewhere else.
(27:29):
And we have to reckon with thefact that many people feel that
way and understand why they feelthat way and think about what
that means for our publicpolicy.
SPEAKER_01 (27:37):
And I mean, that that's something that I I
wrestle with all the time.
I know lots of people whowrestle with that.
Do you have any thoughts abouthow to weigh those two?
That that concept of justice andrevenge with also bettering
society and and not being overlydriven by punishment?
SPEAKER_00 (27:58):
I like the thought exercise for all of us to think
about what I would want tohappen if the person in question
was someone I loved.
Either a victim of a crime, ifsomeone I loved was victimized,
or if someone I loved committedan awful crime.
And what would I want to havehappen to that person?
Because I think that's the onlyway we can really move forward
(28:19):
is to think about theseproblems.
They're all of our problems.
And so we have to really find abalance.
And I don't think we have thatbalance right now.
We haven't had it maybe ever,but we certainly don't have it
now.
This is the hard problem of thiswhole topic.
And I think it's reallyimportant to have a nuanced
conversation about it and leavespace to just think about it and
(28:41):
not necessarily land on ananswer.
I don't think there are any easyanswers here.
And I think one of the problemsis that we have made policies
based on the worst cases andimposed the longest punishments
and most severe, harshestpunishments for everybody when
there's a lot of room forsubtlety and nuance and
(29:03):
individualization.
About what people can do andwill do in the future.
And I know many, many people whohave committed serious crimes
and have been incarcerated forlong periods of time.
And if you met them today, itwould be hard to figure out how
that happened.
So people do change, people canchange, most people want to
(29:24):
change.
And I think as a society, wehave to welcome that.
And we would if it was someonewe loved.
SPEAKER_01 (29:31):
And I appreciate you addressing that and answering
that.
And I know that's such adifficult question because it's
at the heart of everything.
I wanna want to take a step backand talk about how does
something like this, producingsomething like this, directing
something like this, compare todoing something like baseball
with a Vietnam War or somethingthat's a lot more contained.
SPEAKER_00 (29:48):
Baseball was a long time ago in my career.
And so it felt more manageablethan because I don't know, the
characters and the stories thatwere important to tell had kind
of stood the test of time.
So if you were talking about the1920s, it was going to be Babe
Ruth.
That's just obvious.
You know, it doesn't take arocket scientist to figure that
(30:08):
out.
How to make that come alive isstill making challenges.
But I think the path was a bitmore clear than even for the
Vietnam War.
The Vietnam War was hugelychallenging because it's not
settled history.
Similar to what we've beendiscussing here with criminal
justice, there's ongoing debatesraging about whether the war was
(30:29):
winnable, whether we lost, if welost, whose fault it was,
whether the soldiers who servedwere good, honorable, decent
Americans or quote unquote babykillers, which is what they were
called at the time, some ofthem.
So this was an incrediblypolarizing and devastating event
for our country and also for thepeople of Vietnam.
(30:50):
And we really wanted to bringinto the conversation the
perspectives of the Vietnamesewho lived through it and
understand from their points ofview what they thought it was
all about.
It turns out they were asdivided as we are about this
topic, which is the war theycall the American War.
So that was hugely challengingbecause we didn't know much
(31:11):
about the Vietnameseperspectives.
I knew a fair amount about whereAmericans stood on the war
across the spectrum.
I had no concept of whereVietnamese of the North and the
South would land when talkingabout the war today.
So that was a a blank slate or ablank piece of paper to figure
out what it was all about.
It was very, very challenging.
And yet the war had a beginning,middle, and end.
(31:34):
So we knew April 30th, 1975.
We're out, the war is over.
SPEAKER_01 (31:38):
Story's done.
SPEAKER_00 (31:39):
Yeah.
This topic is infinitelychallenging because it's an
ongoing story, as we were justdiscussing.
It's unfinished.
It will be a story of Americalong after I'm no longer on this
planet.
This is age old and forever.
And so putting your arms aroundit, putting guardrails around
(32:00):
what stories are we telling,what's important, was really,
really exciting and daunting andthrilling when we found the
stories that just rose up tohelp us kind of shed light on
the big questions we wereasking.
But it was hard.
It's intensely collaborative.
Our senior producer Lucas Frankand producers Vanessa Gonzalez
Block and Priscilla Pondue wereabsolutely essential to figuring
(32:23):
out the story and what we'rewhat parts of it we were going
to tell and how we were going totell them.
And finding the people who couldbring it alive and the archival
material that would make a movieout of it.
So this is very much of a teameffort.
And all of those peoplecontributed enormously to this
project.
SPEAKER_01 (32:40):
So I I ask all of my guests this now, and I'm really
curious for your answer.
Is there a role for AI for yourwork?
I don't talk to manydocumentarians.
Well, and I imagine that that'sa very loaded question.
SPEAKER_00 (32:55):
Yeah, it's a great question.
I'm glad you're asking it.
I am sure that there will beways in which our colleagues use
AI.
And I feel pretty strongly thatwe should avoid it.
And, you know, over time, I maybe proven completely wrong.
But at this moment, it feelsvery dangerous to me for the
(33:17):
following reason.
As documentary filmmakers, ourcore value is to find the truth,
the facts, to tell what actuallyhappened, even from different
points of view, but to begrounded in fact and reality and
truth.
And AI makes things veryslippery.
In the world of AI, we couldhave this interview, and you
(33:38):
could decide that you wish I hadsaid something more eloquently,
uh, use a different turn ofphrase, and you can make me say
it easily, and I would neverknow.
And it might be what I wouldhave wished I could have said.
Maybe it would be what I meantto say.
But it's way too easy to justplay with the truth and make an
alternative that's not true atall.
You can make me say it and seemy face, and it would no one
(34:01):
would know.
So from what what we do, it's aslippery slope.
If we use a little bit, itundercuts pretty much the whole
integrity of what we're doing,in my opinion.
So I'm very, very nervous aboutit.
I'm very concerned about notjust the integrity of the work
that we do, but all of ourcollective belief in reliable
(34:24):
sources, let's just say.
It can erode everything, andthen there's no truth, and
everything is a hall of mirrors,at which point I don't know.
I can't, I'm getting sort ofbreath even talking about it.
It makes me so nervous.
SPEAKER_01 (34:34):
There's no no AI in this interview, I promise.
SPEAKER_00 (34:37):
So But you know, people people are doing it.
I mean, we know there was adocumentary a number of years
ago about Anthony Bourdeen, andthey used AI with his voice to
have him say something that hehad written.
And they didn't acknowledge,disclose that until after the
film came out and they wereasked.
And you know, that doesn't soundthat bad.
I mean, he did write thosewords, but you're using a
(34:58):
machine to make his voice saysomething he didn't say.
So you could have made him sayanything.
And yeah, I just I think onceyou start down that path, you've
stepped off the edge of theknown world into someplace that
I don't want to be.
SPEAKER_01 (35:13):
My last question is um, you know, it's so many great
voice, not just in thisdocumentary, but all in all of
y'all's documentaries.
What is it like working with somuch talent?
And I swear, even before yourlast uh response, I had this
question written down.
How can I get Keith David torecord an outgoing voicemail
message for me?
SPEAKER_00 (35:30):
He might.
He might.
Um, yeah, I mean, I'm trying tothink.
I feel like Keith did maybe itwas an auction item or
something, some benefit.
But yeah, that would be prettyawesome.
You could use AI, obviously.
Yeah, I know.
Yeah, right.
It's been a really a thrill toover the many years that I've
worked on these kind ofhistorical films to work with
such incredible actors.
(35:51):
Some of them are bold-face namesthat everybody knows, and some
of them are just workingBroadway or off-Broadway actors
in New York who love to comeinto the studio and work with
us.
And what's really fun is thatthey come in for an hour or two.
We pay them the Screen ActorsGuild scale rate.
It's a very modest fee for theirtime.
For them, it's probably almostlike free, but we pay them.
(36:13):
Everyone gets the same, and wejust give them material to read
right there.
They don't prepare.
And they just sit down and say,Oh, interesting, and just start
reading.
And we have worked with suchbrilliant actors who have such a
wide range of expression,accent, feeling, and capacity to
read words off a page.
(36:34):
And we're always in awe, really.
It's been one of the great joysof every project is when we we
don't do it right away becausewe're not sure which voices are
going to make it into the film.
When we sit down to really doit, it's one of the best times
we have, really.
And they often have so much funbecause I think, at least in my
(36:55):
experience, you know, no matterwho you are as an actor, a lot
of times you don't get to workwith material like this that's
so rich and has so much depthand carries such weight.
And so that's I think why theycome back and love to do it.
So yeah, it's it's been reallyamazing.
(37:16):
And this project we got to workwith Laura Linney, Samuel L.
Jackson, Corey Stoll, MichaelStolbarg, B.D.
Wong, Latanya Richardson, somejust incredible actors, Harry
Lemmox, that took words we'vebeen reading on a page for years
and made them three-dimensional.
SPEAKER_01 (37:32):
That's amazing.
And of course, narrated by KeithDavid.
And Keith David, yes.
Incredible voice.
SPEAKER_00 (37:36):
Keith has a beautiful voice.
It's an instrument, and hereally uses it in every wish
way.
So he can he can do anythingwith that credible voice he has.
It was beautiful to work withhim on this.
I think he he really got deeplyinterested in the topic.
It's always fun when you'reworking with someone and they're
reading something, and then theysay, Wow, I had no idea.
(37:57):
And so he learned a lot as well.
I think he would be the first tosay.
SPEAKER_01 (38:01):
And so the movie is Crime and Punishment in America.
It's out like November 16th,right?
SPEAKER_00 (38:05):
Yes.
Airing on PBS starting November16th for four nights.
And we'll be releasing clips andsome material on social media in
the next coming months as sortof a lead-up.
There'll be a teaser andthere'll be some highlights
coming out a little bit at atime to build up to the
broadcast.
And then we'll be streaming onPBS for a while.
SPEAKER_01 (38:24):
And what's next for you?
Is there an 11th inning ofbaseball coming?
SPEAKER_00 (38:28):
Well, I don't know if there's an 11th inning.
When we did baseball, it airedin 1994, which was during the
strike.
There was a baseball strike thatyear.
And we had put in the film thatthe Red Sox had never won the
World Series since 1918.
And when they won, Ken feltlike, well, we have to open it
and we have to make anotherinning.
That was the 10th inning becausehe's a huge Red Sox fan and just
(38:50):
he couldn't leave that storyuntold.
And then the Cubs won the WorldSeries, and we had also
basically said the Cubs wouldnever win the World Series.
So now we were faced with maybewe need to open it again and do
11th innings.
So we'll see.
I mean, that's the the baseball,the story of baseball is
ongoing.
There's going to be maybe alockout this year or next year.
So yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (39:09):
Perfect time for an 11th inning, right?
SPEAKER_00 (39:10):
Exactly.
Yeah.
I think the game has changed alot in the last 10 years.
So it would be reallyinteresting to look at whether
it's still really the nationalpastime, what that means, given
where our attention lies.
I'm fascinated by theunbelievable phenomenon of
sports betting and what ishappening to professional sports
and the public with the way thatpeople relate to these games and
(39:32):
athletes and events and the waythat the betting has exploded.
I find very concerning.
SPEAKER_01 (39:40):
And college sports, we're just seeing with the Texas
Tech's quarterback allowed toplay despite betting.
SPEAKER_00 (39:46):
Yeah, right.
Yeah.
I mean, I've heard multiplecases of people who have gotten
into serious trouble withaccumulating debt from sports
betting and ended up embezzlingto pay off their debts and going
to jail for that.
I wonder what's going to happenwith that.
I I'd like to hope it'll bereined in, but I don't I don't
think it can sustain itself.
SPEAKER_01 (40:07):
Excellent.
Next next.
SPEAKER_00 (40:09):
It would be, I think sports betting, yeah, it would
be fascinating.
It would be fascinating.
Um, I'm working on a documentaryon the history of Central Park,
which is a a beautiful, prettymuch uplifting story, has some
dark times in it as well.
And then Ken Burns and myselfand Sarah Botstein are doing a
series on LBJ and the GreatSociety.
(40:29):
So we're going to be kind ofgoing back over in a way, from
my perspective, the 60s and thewar on crime that LBJ was
involved in, setting up then,and all the riots and unrest and
rebellions of that time and thesense that crime was out of
control that started to takeover and giving rise to the law
(40:50):
and order policies of the 1970s.
So that's gonna be looking atthat through the perspective of
LBJ and Zivil Rights will bereally interesting.
SPEAKER_01 (40:57):
That's great.
I I can't wait to watch it.
Lynn, thank you so much.
This has been awesome,fascinating.
Um, movie's out November 16th.
It's it's a terrific watch.
So I highly recommend everybodyto give it a look.
SPEAKER_00 (41:09):
Thank you so much, Jeff.
It was great talking with you.
SPEAKER_01 (41:11):
Thanks for listening to the Jeffalytics Podcast.
Be sure to subscribe and tolearn more, head on over to
ahdatalytics.com for moreinformation and previous
episodes.
If you like what you heard,please leave a glowing review,
which will help others todiscover the show.
Till next time, I'm Jeff Asher.
I'm Jeff Asher, and this is the Jeffalytics Podcast.
(00:03):
My guest today walked into aprison classroom in 2012 to show
a few scenes from a documentaryabout prohibition to the
incarcerated students.
She left with a differentproject entirely.
Lynn Novick has been makingdocumentary films since the
mid-1980s, working alongside KenByrne since his Civil War series
in 1989.
She's worked on subjects rangingfrom baseball to Vietnam to
(00:24):
World War II.
Her newest film is called Crimeand Punishment in America, and
it's out this November.
The documentary is a four-part,nearly eight-hour series tracing
criminal justice in this countryfrom the colonial era to today.
And fun fact, yours truly wasone of the subject matter
experts consulted for the film.
In this episode, Lynn and I talkabout her years-long exploration
(00:44):
into the U.S.
prison system, the invention ofthe penitentiary, the gap
between what the data says aboutcrime and punishment and what
people actually believe, andwhat it's like working with so
many talented actors who bringhistory back to life on screen.
This is a documentary that'swell worth a watch and a story
that's worth digging into.
So let's get into it.
My guest today is Lynn Novick.
(01:05):
Lynn, thank you so much forjoining me.
SPEAKER_00 (01:06):
Hey Chef, thank you so much for having me.
It's a pleasure to be here.
SPEAKER_01 (01:10):
I'm so excited to be having this conversation.
Um, this is probably the longesttime between asking a guest and
uh talking to a guest, and thenstill another few months until
the guest's work actually comesout.
So I'm I'm super excited to behaving this conversation.
SPEAKER_00 (01:26):
It's been wonderful working with you on our project,
and we're really excited for ourseries to see the light of day
after many, many years.
So I'm really looking forward tothe conversation.
SPEAKER_01 (01:35):
Just launching in, what what is your background?
How did you come to be afilmmaker?
SPEAKER_00 (01:39):
Oh my goodness, wow.
Well, I've been working in theworld of documentary films since
the mid-1980s.
A few years after college, Idecided I wanted to get involved
in historical documentary work,and I didn't actually know what
it was involved or what it wouldtake.
And so I started off as anintern and then worked my way up
to production assistant andassociate producer, learning
(02:00):
about archival research and umproduction planning and
coordinating and how to do aninterview and how to bring all
the materials together inpost-production.
And in 1989, I had the chance towork with Ken Burns when he was
finishing up his series on theCivil War.
So I started there as anassociate producer and worked my
(02:20):
way toward becoming a producerand director, and now a writer
also on this project that we'reabout to talk about.
SPEAKER_01 (02:26):
So let's start it.
What what is this new project?
Do you have a new film comingout?
Tell me about it.
SPEAKER_00 (02:31):
Yeah, so our new series is called Crime and
Punishment in America.
It's a four-part series, almosteight hours long, that tells the
story of criminal justice inthis country from the colonial
time until today.
SPEAKER_01 (02:45):
And how how did it start?
This this has obviously, Ithink, been a baby of yours for
quite a while.
SPEAKER_00 (02:50):
The stories we choose to tell come to us in
different ways.
Let's put it that way.
And so back in 2012, I wasinvited to teach a class in a
college and prison program inupstate New York.
And we were there to presentsome scenes from a film we made
about prohibition to a group ofincarcerated students who were
enrolled in the BARD PrisonInitiative, which is a wonderful
(03:11):
program that provides associatesand bachelor's degrees to
incarcerated men and women.
And that was my first time goinginto a prison.
It was my first time reallythinking deeply about the
carceral system that we have inthis country.
And I'm a student of history.
I've explored many aspects ofAmerican life and culture for 30
(03:31):
years, and I really had neverfocused on the question of why
do we have prisons?
What are they for?
How do they get here?
What is criminal justice meantto do?
What's it like to be in theseplaces?
And that sent me on a journey.
First, to make a documentaryabout the Barred Prison
Initiative, which was afour-year project.
I made a film with my producingpartner Sarah Botstein that came
(03:54):
out in 2019, a four-part seriesabout men and women who were
earning degrees through thisprogram.
And while we were working onCollege Behind Bars, started
thinking very deeply about thefact that I knew nothing about
the history that was in front ofour faces every day, but we
really didn't understand how itgot here.
And so at that time, Ken Burnsand Jeff Ward and I and Sarah
(04:16):
Bottstein decided to make aseries on the history of crime
and punishment in America.
And that was in 2014, 2015, along time ago.
We were busy with otherprojects, things happened, the
project evolved.
Um, Ken Burns ended up taking onthe role of executive producer
rather than co-director with me.
So I've become the director ofthis film and also the writer,
(04:37):
working with an amazing team ofproducers and editors to pull
the story together.
And it germinated for a verylong time.
And I'm glad of that becausethis is a very complex story and
it took us a while to figure outwhat was the most important uh
thread to pull through.
SPEAKER_01 (04:53):
Can I ask, how do you figure that out?
It is so expansive.
It's like doing a documentary onmath or something like that.
Like, did you set out to tell aspecific story or how did you
learn this first and then figureout what stories to tell?
SPEAKER_00 (05:08):
Well, sometimes it feels like we're flying the
airplane while we're buildingit.
And that can be a littleterrifying, but also very
exhilarating and exciting.
The first thing that we do,honestly, is to figure out who
the experts are.
Because we never can become theexperts the way that people have
dedicated their lives to aparticular topic or have lived
experience of it.
(05:29):
We can benefit from theirknowledge and expertise and
perspective.
So we started to pull together aboard of advisors, a wide mix of
people with different kinds ofexpertise.
And we convened meetings withthem to talk about well, we want
to make a film about the historyof crime and punishment in
America.
What should it contain?
What are the big questions weshould be trying to answer?
(05:51):
And we took a lot of guidancefrom them in terms of just
focusing our attention on thebig questions because there is
an infinite amount of storiesthat we could tell.
And then over time, put ideas onpaper, make outlines and write
scripts, and then send them outfor comments.
And it's very iterative.
So the process means that westart out with one idea, and by
(06:12):
the time the film is done, it'sdraft 17, and it has changed a
lot.
We learn a lot as we're makingthe film.
Most of what's in this film Idid not know when we started.
So even when we've done a lot ofresearch and are deep into it,
we still are discovering newthings and putting them in.
And that's that's what makes, Ithink, the process really
rewarding and hopefully willfeel fresh and exciting, even to
(06:32):
people who know this topicpretty well.
SPEAKER_01 (06:35):
Yeah, absolutely.
And I was fortunate enough tosee a screener and it it
absolutely accomplishes thatgoal.
And I felt like the closer itgot to the subject area that I
feel like I know a lot about,the more engrossed I was in the
subject.
It like it definitely capturedall of that.
Um, did you have preconceivednotions or this idea of the
criminal justice system goinginto this, or was it more of a
(06:57):
blank slate for you?
SPEAKER_00 (06:58):
I'm sure I did have preconceived notions.
Probably the most fundamentalone before we really started
working on the film was thatthere's kind of a logic and
consistency to a system thatexists because it was planned
that way.
And that, you know, having faithin our forebearers, people who
came before us, that theyplanned something out and, you
(07:19):
know, put things in place for areason.
And in exploring the story, itwas really interesting to really
deeply understand that we have50 states.
Each one has its own system.
There's 3,000 counties, each oneof them has a system of
prosecution.
There's jails in every city andtown, there's police forces all
(07:40):
over the place, thousands ofthem.
And that there is no one system,and there's no one single
organizing principle.
It's sort of, in a way, a bit ofa mess.
Whatever problems exist arechallenging to fix because you
can't do this from the top down.
You have to really work state bystate, county by county, city by
city, jurisdiction byjurisdiction to address whatever
(08:03):
issues there are.
And I definitely did not fullyunderstand that when we started
the project.
SPEAKER_01 (08:07):
And are there other things, big takeaways, even
small takeaways that you youtake from this that maybe coming
in you had no expectation oflearning these things?
SPEAKER_00 (08:17):
Probably the the big aha moment for many of us
working on the project was tocome to understand that prisons
have not always been here in theway that we think of them today.
Prisons and penitentiaries werean American invention of the
early 19th century, late, late18th, right after the
revolution, basically, thatAmericans came up with this idea
(08:40):
that we should build prisons andpenitentiaries as a solution to
the problem of crime and a morehumane solution than what we
were doing previously, which waspublic executions, whipping,
branding, really torturingpeople in public to shame them
and to teach them a lesson andto show everybody else this is
what will happen to you if youbreak the law.
And that that seemed to manypeople inconsistent with the
(09:04):
American experiment that we werebuilding, this new country with
a new form of government.
We needed a better form ofpunishment.
SPEAKER_01 (09:11):
So the the film traces like the start of the
country through the revolution,the Civil War, the prohibition,
and then all the way to today.
Was there a a period or asection of American history
where you were most sort ofenthralled about learning about
the criminal justice system?
SPEAKER_00 (09:29):
That's kind of like saying which is your favorite
child.
SPEAKER_01 (09:32):
I guess I feel it was all I won't say it on here,
but you know, we're all no, I'mjust kidding.
SPEAKER_00 (09:37):
Exactly.
We can't say which is ourfavorite.
It was all equally interesting.
The closer we got to thepresent, things seemed more
familiar.
So it felt like, oh, I Iremember events that happened
that we put in the film fromliving through them as a
sentient adult.
And so it was really interestingto explore events that were in
(09:57):
my memory, but look deeper intothem and understand the context
for why they happened the waythat they did and the impact
that they had.
And there's many examples ofthat in the in our last episode.
For me, I think learning aboutthe people whose stories I
didn't know in the earlierperiods was just absolutely
revelatory.
(10:18):
We get to know some reallyincredible characters who left
behind memoirs or other kind oftestimony that helps us open a
door into a world that weotherwise wouldn't have access
to.
And that's really the magic ofwhat we do.
So bringing in an actor to reada voice of someone who wrote a
memoir in the 19th century, forexample, Samuel L.
(10:40):
Jackson, reading the voice of aman named Austin Reed made that
story come alive for all of us.
Even though we had read the bookand we knew the story from deep
study of it, when a great actorreads those words, it comes
alive.
And even though this is a manfor whom there are no
photographs, we don't know whathe looked like.
But I feel I know him nowbecause I've read his memoir and
(11:03):
I've heard Sam Jackson speak hiswords.
And what he leaves us with is anaccount of a young man who was
caught up in what was then avery incipient system of
juvenile justice.
As a 10-year-old, he waspunished for trying to set fire
to the farm of a family that hewas working on in their house as
(11:24):
an indentured servant.
He was sent to an institution inNew York City called the House
of Refuge, which was horrible.
And as soon as he was releasedfrom there, he was convicted of
another crime.
And then he was sent to an adultprison.
And the time when these adultprisons were just starting to
become institutions and fixturesof American life.
(11:44):
His memoir of that experience isjust riveting and wrenching.
And through his words, we'reable to put ourselves there in a
way that is truly profound.
And seeing the resonancesbetween the experiences he had
and what people still experienceto this day, well, that stays
with you, I think.
SPEAKER_01 (12:03):
This is obviously, at least in a lot of parts, a
very difficult story to watchand hear.
And you know there's there'sparts that are frankly quite
depressing that this is thehistory of our country.
But you also blend in that sortof hope.
And how do you do that?
You I mean, masterfully tellstories like the Florida Four
and and Dr.
Sweet in Michigan and um all ofthese like horrendous injustices
(12:27):
in our American history.
How do you how do you try to dothat and not leave a viewer
feeling just terrible aboutthemselves?
SPEAKER_00 (12:35):
Yeah, well, we certainly are not attempting to
make anyone feel this is theirfault or bad about themselves or
anything they did, or pointingfingers at people today for the
failures of the past.
I don't think that's terriblyproductive and doesn't get us
too far in terms of justhonestly confronting the
failures of our society to liveup to its values.
(12:57):
Our feeling is that this is animportant history that needs to
be told, and that we can dobetter if we know that history.
And if we choose to ignore itand pretend it didn't happen, we
certainly cannot.
And it has been sometimes a darkand deeply disturbing narrative.
It also is inspiring to see theways that people who have faced
(13:20):
injustice maintain theirhumanity, have been resilient,
have expressed hope, havesurvived it, have endured that
we still tell their storiestoday, that they help us
understand the best and worst ofwhat people are capable of.
These are sort of profoundtruths about the human
condition.
And the human condition, sadly,is not always a happy one.
(13:42):
There are moments of uplift,there are moments of hope and
inspiration, and there aremoments of devastating tragedy.
And I think it's important tohold both of those things.
And finding the balance isalways a challenge for a story
like this.
I have worked on many projectsthat are inherently tragic,
especially the Vietnam War andour family on the Second World
(14:05):
War, where catastrophiccataclysmic loss and suffering
and degradation are at the coreof those stories and sometimes
just senseless waste ofhumanity.
And still they're important totell because we need to know
what happened so we can honorthe people who survived it and
(14:25):
the people who didn't and dobetter next time and carry that
with us.
Maya Angelou says history withits wrenching pain cannot be
unlived, but if faced withcourage need not be lived again.
So I I think that's what we'rereally all about, not just in
this film, but in really all thefilms I've made.
SPEAKER_01 (14:45):
Yeah.
And I do love that the way thatit ends is is very hopeful in
pointing out that even thatsomething is as difficult as our
criminal justice system, there'sevidence of like clear
improvement, which I think is astrong, good message for people
to take away from it.
SPEAKER_00 (15:01):
I completely agree.
I've I had the privilege ofinterviewing Brian Stevenson for
this project, and I asked himbasically the same question you
just asked me.
Where do you find hope?
You know, aren't I don't youthink it's do you ever feel
hopeless?
And he said, I can't let myselfbe hopeless.
Hopelessness is the enemy ofprogress.
We we have to be hopeful.
We don't have a choice.
And I completely agree withthat.
(15:22):
And I am very inspired by thepeople both in the past and
today, and I know in the future,who definitely have not given up
and are working to make thingsbetter.
We got ourselves into this, wecan get ourselves out of it.
It doesn't have to always bethat way.
And I don't think it will if wetell the story correctly.
SPEAKER_01 (15:40):
One of the parts that stuck out for me, um, and I
I wrote it down because um Iwanted to talk specifically
about this line.
And I I have no idea if thisstuck out for you, but as like a
data person, it stuck out for mewas uh you had the the in 1961
when crime was still like at hitthe historic lows that we talk
about in America, um, at leastfor the reported FBI crime,
(16:02):
Graucho Marks has the uh LosAngeles Police Department chief
on his show.
And Groucho says, Well, with thescientific approach, I assume
you've wiped out crime in LA.
Is that right?
And I think he expects, like,uh, yes, we're doing great work.
And the chief's response isactually it's getting worse.
We have a very difficult andserious situation.
It's not a question of theproficiency of the police
(16:23):
service, so it's not our faultthat everything's getting bad.
It's a question of theindulgences of the American
people.
You see, crime in America isskyrocketing.
And he's saying this at a timeum when crime in America was not
skyrocketing.
And if he'd said it a decadelater, he would have been like,
oh, yes, that's true.
But at this time it wasn't.
And I was just thinking how somuch of the documentary is about
(16:45):
the people that are in chargesort of setting a story that
doesn't inherently match thedata.
Is that a crazy interpretationfrom me?
Or is it just because I'm a dataperson, or is that something
that you set out to highlight?
SPEAKER_00 (16:56):
We've seen time and again that people in positions
of authority are saying that wehave a huge problem with crime.
And also the media.
So newspapers and pamphlets andthen radio, and then later on
television, the narrative thatcrime is going up, that people
are scared that crime is aproblem, is pervasive.
And this is before they keptreally good statistics.
(17:17):
So we don't necessarily have away of showing for sure if crime
is going up or down, but theperception of crime is that it's
always going up continually.
And I've heard you speak aboutthis in other conversations.
It's the power of anecdote andfear.
So one horrible crime thatpeople hear about or see or read
(17:38):
about tells them crime is goingup.
It doesn't matter if it onlyhappened once.
It's just so bad and sofrightening, and they're so
disturbed that it could happento them or could happen again
that the perception is crime isgoing up or the crime is a
growing problem.
And that goes back to the early19th century.
We see newspapers that arediscussing the crime wave and
(18:00):
that there's so much crime inour city streets and that these
places are becomingungovernable.
There's also kind of aconflation of crime and
disorder, crime and poverty,crime and kind of urban chaos.
So crime as a word can mean alot of different things.
I think a lot of people would,on the one hand, say crime is an
act of violence or you know,taking something that doesn't
(18:21):
belong to you or harmingsomebody else, sort of
one-on-one intrapersonalbreaking of the social order by
harming somebody else.
That's the kind of crime thatwe're talking about when people
say crime is going up.
That's what I think they mean.
Mugging, rape, murder, you know,child abuse, I don't know, car
theft, the kind of things thatpeople are afraid of happening
(18:42):
to them and that do happen andthat are sadly part of American
life.
But if you have, let's say,ethnic tensions that turn into
riots in the 19th century, oryou have urban America exploding
in the 1960s, that's alsoconsidered crime.
I'm not saying it's not deeplyconcerning, but it it gives the
sense to many people that crimeis a problem.
(19:04):
And that kind of confusion orconflation, I think, is not new.
SPEAKER_01 (19:08):
So much of my work is about like you can sort of
call a problem not solved,especially with crime, but also
acknowledge that the data iscorrect and and the data's hey,
the data's pointing down.
That's good.
Let's learn from that, let'skeep doing that.
Are there ways that youspecifically tried to work data
into the documentary and intoall the conversations?
SPEAKER_00 (19:30):
Well, we tried to understand as best we could the
data that was available.
So in the 19th century, I don'tthink you have really much in
the way of data at all.
So that's our first episode, nodata.
Really?
Our first episode goes up until1880s or so.
Our second episode goes until1930s.
(19:50):
What we talk about in thoseshows is a sense that people,
either because of the reading inthe paper or because they're
living in urban areas wherethere's strangers that they
don't know and there's kind ofdifferent kinds of tensions and
things happening in the street,um, a fear of crime is always
there.
And also a fascination withcrime and criminals and outlaws.
(20:10):
So we have this reallyinteresting tension between
we're both scared of crime andfearful that something bad will
happen, and fascinated by thepeople who seem to flout the law
and get away with it.
So Jesse James, for example.
SPEAKER_01 (20:25):
Growing.
SPEAKER_00 (20:28):
So we were really interested to understand sort of
just writ large, both Americans'perceptions of crime and fear
and desire for a criminaljustice system that will protect
them, and fascination with thepeople who are the outlaws who
seem to get away with it.
And how both of these things arehappening at the same time is, I
(20:50):
think, really interestingtension or reality paradox of
our history.
Once we get to the 1930s andbeyond, after the FBI is created
in the Roosevelt administration,and there's a coordinated effort
to collect data about crimeacross the country, the film
will show charts and informationabout crime, violent crime in
(21:11):
particular, as we know more,getting closer to the present.
And we also have a moment whereone of the historians that we
interviewed talks about J.
Edgar Hoover and the FBI werealways collecting the crime data
that they had and presenting it,that crime is going up and that
they therefore need more moneyand more resources to fight it.
So the use of crime statisticswas deployed to secure more of
(21:37):
what they needed to keep theirjobs and keep their bureaucracy
going.
SPEAKER_01 (21:41):
I'm gonna totally give away my my nerdiness here.
But if you go through the oldlike the 1960 or the 1940s or
the 1950s of the FBI PDFs, umthey like they get really
preachy in these things aboutlike, hey, crime is going up and
it's because of prosecutors orit's because of all of these
other things.
And in no way is it.
The FBI's fault, it's just like,you know, we're gonna explain
(22:03):
why it's everybody else's fault.
SPEAKER_00 (22:04):
One of the things we we were interested in kind of
shining a light on is that firstthere's the problem of how much
crime is there and how are wequantifying it and measuring it?
That's one big, huge question.
And another question is why isthis happening and who's
responsible?
So even if we were to postulateor stipulate, yes, crime did go
up, or if later on crime wentdown, why?
(22:26):
What are the causes of crime andhow much are we willing as a
society to do anything aboutthem?
And that's a huge questionthroughout our history, which we
haven't resolved.
It's an ongoing debate.
SPEAKER_01 (22:37):
It's arguably the biggest debate we have right
now.
We've conquered the hey, we canmeasure this thing question, and
we're going through thishistoric decline in crime, and
nobody knows why, and nobodyknows what to do about it.
SPEAKER_00 (22:51):
I find that really fascinating.
I really find that fascinating.
We basically will explain in thefilm that crime has been going
down and that it's a mystery.
There's many different theories.
We went down many rabbit holesto try to understand, as much as
you know, it's understandablewhat the different theories were
and sort of differentconjectures.
(23:11):
But of course, you can't youcan't prove this.
You're observing after the fact,well, demographic shifts
happened, or, you know, accessto different social services
happened, or street lights,parks, whatever the different
things that have been shown topotentially affect crime in a
neighborhood.
But in the aggregate, it's notpossible to really say.
(23:34):
But depending on what you thinkthe cause is, that will then
dictate your approach.
It's underlying that is afundamental question about human
nature, social responsibility,the role of government in our
lives, the role of the policeand the carceral system,
individuals and families, whatthey're supposed to do.
And I would say also the socialstructure, capitalism, labor,
(23:57):
health insurance, access tobenefits, all these mental
health services, all thesethings also play a role.
And everyone kind of agrees: well, there's not a ton of a (24:04):
undefined
crime in Palo Alto, Greenwich,Connecticut, very wealthy
enclaves, and there's a lot morecrime in really impoverished
neighborhoods.
So what more is there to sayabout that?
SPEAKER_01 (24:17):
If you could have an elected official, um, mayor or
governor, watch one story or onescene to like really get the
lesson and really understand thecomplexity of the issue.
Is there a specific part of thefilm you'd point to, or is this
me asking you to choose yourchildren again?
SPEAKER_00 (24:36):
I think that's a hard one.
I'm gonna have to punt on that.
It's too soon for me to answerthat.
I think that our systems are sosiloed, the people who make the
laws, the elected officials,let's say, we'll say
legislators, are one group, andthe decisions they make affect
how much time people spend inprison, for example.
The people who run the prisonsget their money from the state
(24:58):
to do or not do whatever they'resupposed to be doing for the
people who are in custody.
The police are given theirinstructions from, let's say,
the local mayor.
In other words, how many judgeshave ever spent any time inside
a prison, the place they'resending people to, or in jails?
How many prosecutors have beeninside jails and prisons?
How many police officers havebeen to these places to see, you
(25:22):
know, once someone gets into thesystem, this is where they end
up?
And that therefore, who'sresponsible for what happens to
them when they're there?
Who takes responsibility oraccountability for the failures
of those systems?
I think our film hopefullyshines a light on all of this in
a way.
So it's hard for me to pick onething because each group kind of
needs to understand what theother groups are doing in a way.
(25:43):
People are busy doing theirjobs, they're very
well-intentioned, they'reworking hard, they're doing what
they think is right, and they'renot responsible for what happens
after they do their part.
SPEAKER_01 (25:52):
Do you have any thoughts about what the future
of the criminal justice systemmight look like based on the
history and where we are now?
SPEAKER_00 (25:59):
We put our stock and trade in looking at the past
through the lens of the present,you know, so where we are now
and thinking about whatquestions to ask about the past.
Projecting forward is muchharder, I would say.
So many things can happen thatwe can't predict.
And I I recognize that over thecourse of the time we've been
working on this project, or I'vebeen interested in and focused
(26:21):
on the criminal justice system,let's say from 2013 to now, the
conversation has shiftedmultiple times in different
ways, locally and nationally.
And so it's kind of hard topredict where it will be in the
future.
But I am hopeful that we havesomewhat of a shared consensus
that our sentences are verylong, that most people don't
(26:44):
benefit from time in prison,that our system takes difficult
problems and makes them worse.
And so if we have some kind ofshared acknowledgement of those
truths, then perhaps we canstart to make things better.
I also recognize that there arejust as many Americans probably
who feel that when somebodycommits a terrible crime, or
(27:06):
maybe even not a terrible crime,a serious crime, they need to be
punished and they need to be putaway for as long as possible to
keep them away from the rest ofus.
And it that's just all we canever hope to do because human
nature is what it is, and youpeople don't change.
And therefore, someone who'scommitted serious harm can't be
redeemed, can't be helped, justneeds to be put somewhere else.
(27:29):
And we have to reckon with thefact that many people feel that
way and understand why they feelthat way and think about what
that means for our publicpolicy.
SPEAKER_01 (27:37):
And I mean, that that's something that I I
wrestle with all the time.
I know lots of people whowrestle with that.
Do you have any thoughts abouthow to weigh those two?
That that concept of justice andrevenge with also bettering
society and and not being overlydriven by punishment?
SPEAKER_00 (27:58):
I like the thought exercise for all of us to think
about what I would want tohappen if the person in question
was someone I loved.
Either a victim of a crime, ifsomeone I loved was victimized,
or if someone I loved committedan awful crime.
And what would I want to havehappen to that person?
Because I think that's the onlyway we can really move forward
(28:19):
is to think about theseproblems.
They're all of our problems.
And so we have to really find abalance.
And I don't think we have thatbalance right now.
We haven't had it maybe ever,but we certainly don't have it
now.
This is the hard problem of thiswhole topic.
And I think it's reallyimportant to have a nuanced
conversation about it and leavespace to just think about it and
(28:41):
not necessarily land on ananswer.
I don't think there are any easyanswers here.
And I think one of the problemsis that we have made policies
based on the worst cases andimposed the longest punishments
and most severe, harshestpunishments for everybody when
there's a lot of room forsubtlety and nuance and
(29:03):
individualization.
About what people can do andwill do in the future.
And I know many, many people whohave committed serious crimes
and have been incarcerated forlong periods of time.
And if you met them today, itwould be hard to figure out how
that happened.
So people do change, people canchange, most people want to
(29:24):
change.
And I think as a society, wehave to welcome that.
And we would if it was someonewe loved.
SPEAKER_01 (29:31):
And I appreciate you addressing that and answering
that.
And I know that's such adifficult question because it's
at the heart of everything.
I wanna want to take a step backand talk about how does
something like this, producingsomething like this, directing
something like this, compare todoing something like baseball
with a Vietnam War or somethingthat's a lot more contained.
SPEAKER_00 (29:48):
Baseball was a long time ago in my career.
And so it felt more manageablethan because I don't know, the
characters and the stories thatwere important to tell had kind
of stood the test of time.
So if you were talking about the1920s, it was going to be Babe
Ruth.
That's just obvious.
You know, it doesn't take arocket scientist to figure that
(30:08):
out.
How to make that come alive isstill making challenges.
But I think the path was a bitmore clear than even for the
Vietnam War.
The Vietnam War was hugelychallenging because it's not
settled history.
Similar to what we've beendiscussing here with criminal
justice, there's ongoing debatesraging about whether the war was
(30:29):
winnable, whether we lost, if welost, whose fault it was,
whether the soldiers who servedwere good, honorable, decent
Americans or quote unquote babykillers, which is what they were
called at the time, some ofthem.
So this was an incrediblypolarizing and devastating event
for our country and also for thepeople of Vietnam.
(30:50):
And we really wanted to bringinto the conversation the
perspectives of the Vietnamesewho lived through it and
understand from their points ofview what they thought it was
all about.
It turns out they were asdivided as we are about this
topic, which is the war theycall the American War.
So that was hugely challengingbecause we didn't know much
(31:11):
about the Vietnameseperspectives.
I knew a fair amount about whereAmericans stood on the war
across the spectrum.
I had no concept of whereVietnamese of the North and the
South would land when talkingabout the war today.
So that was a a blank slate or ablank piece of paper to figure
out what it was all about.
It was very, very challenging.
And yet the war had a beginning,middle, and end.
(31:34):
So we knew April 30th, 1975.
We're out, the war is over.
SPEAKER_01 (31:38):
Story's done.
SPEAKER_00 (31:39):
Yeah.
This topic is infinitelychallenging because it's an
ongoing story, as we were justdiscussing.
It's unfinished.
It will be a story of Americalong after I'm no longer on this
planet.
This is age old and forever.
And so putting your arms aroundit, putting guardrails around
(32:00):
what stories are we telling,what's important, was really,
really exciting and daunting andthrilling when we found the
stories that just rose up tohelp us kind of shed light on
the big questions we wereasking.
But it was hard.
It's intensely collaborative.
Our senior producer Lucas Frankand producers Vanessa Gonzalez
Block and Priscilla Pondue wereabsolutely essential to figuring
(32:23):
out the story and what we'rewhat parts of it we were going
to tell and how we were going totell them.
And finding the people who couldbring it alive and the archival
material that would make a movieout of it.
So this is very much of a teameffort.
And all of those peoplecontributed enormously to this
project.
SPEAKER_01 (32:40):
So I I ask all of my guests this now, and I'm really
curious for your answer.
Is there a role for AI for yourwork?
I don't talk to manydocumentarians.
Well, and I imagine that that'sa very loaded question.
SPEAKER_00 (32:55):
Yeah, it's a great question.
I'm glad you're asking it.
I am sure that there will beways in which our colleagues use
AI.
And I feel pretty strongly thatwe should avoid it.
And, you know, over time, I maybe proven completely wrong.
But at this moment, it feelsvery dangerous to me for the
(33:17):
following reason.
As documentary filmmakers, ourcore value is to find the truth,
the facts, to tell what actuallyhappened, even from different
points of view, but to begrounded in fact and reality and
truth.
And AI makes things veryslippery.
In the world of AI, we couldhave this interview, and you
(33:38):
could decide that you wish I hadsaid something more eloquently,
uh, use a different turn ofphrase, and you can make me say
it easily, and I would neverknow.
And it might be what I wouldhave wished I could have said.
Maybe it would be what I meantto say.
But it's way too easy to justplay with the truth and make an
alternative that's not true atall.
You can make me say it and seemy face, and it would no one
(34:01):
would know.
So from what what we do, it's aslippery slope.
If we use a little bit, itundercuts pretty much the whole
integrity of what we're doing,in my opinion.
So I'm very, very nervous aboutit.
I'm very concerned about notjust the integrity of the work
that we do, but all of ourcollective belief in reliable
(34:24):
sources, let's just say.
It can erode everything, andthen there's no truth, and
everything is a hall of mirrors,at which point I don't know.
I can't, I'm getting sort ofbreath even talking about it.
It makes me so nervous.
SPEAKER_01 (34:34):
There's no no AI in this interview, I promise.
SPEAKER_00 (34:37):
So But you know, people people are doing it.
I mean, we know there was adocumentary a number of years
ago about Anthony Bourdeen, andthey used AI with his voice to
have him say something that hehad written.
And they didn't acknowledge,disclose that until after the
film came out and they wereasked.
And you know, that doesn't soundthat bad.
I mean, he did write thosewords, but you're using a
(34:58):
machine to make his voice saysomething he didn't say.
So you could have made him sayanything.
And yeah, I just I think onceyou start down that path, you've
stepped off the edge of theknown world into someplace that
I don't want to be.
SPEAKER_01 (35:13):
My last question is um, you know, it's so many great
voice, not just in thisdocumentary, but all in all of
y'all's documentaries.
What is it like working with somuch talent?
And I swear, even before yourlast uh response, I had this
question written down.
How can I get Keith David torecord an outgoing voicemail
message for me?
SPEAKER_00 (35:30):
He might.
He might.
Um, yeah, I mean, I'm trying tothink.
I feel like Keith did maybe itwas an auction item or
something, some benefit.
But yeah, that would be prettyawesome.
You could use AI, obviously.
Yeah, I know.
Yeah, right.
It's been a really a thrill toover the many years that I've
worked on these kind ofhistorical films to work with
such incredible actors.
(35:51):
Some of them are bold-face namesthat everybody knows, and some
of them are just workingBroadway or off-Broadway actors
in New York who love to comeinto the studio and work with
us.
And what's really fun is thatthey come in for an hour or two.
We pay them the Screen ActorsGuild scale rate.
It's a very modest fee for theirtime.
For them, it's probably almostlike free, but we pay them.
(36:13):
Everyone gets the same, and wejust give them material to read
right there.
They don't prepare.
And they just sit down and say,Oh, interesting, and just start
reading.
And we have worked with suchbrilliant actors who have such a
wide range of expression,accent, feeling, and capacity to
read words off a page.
(36:34):
And we're always in awe, really.
It's been one of the great joysof every project is when we we
don't do it right away becausewe're not sure which voices are
going to make it into the film.
When we sit down to really doit, it's one of the best times
we have, really.
And they often have so much funbecause I think, at least in my
(36:55):
experience, you know, no matterwho you are as an actor, a lot
of times you don't get to workwith material like this that's
so rich and has so much depthand carries such weight.
And so that's I think why theycome back and love to do it.
So yeah, it's it's been reallyamazing.
(37:16):
And this project we got to workwith Laura Linney, Samuel L.
Jackson, Corey Stoll, MichaelStolbarg, B.D.
Wong, Latanya Richardson, somejust incredible actors, Harry
Lemmox, that took words we'vebeen reading on a page for years
and made them three-dimensional.
SPEAKER_01 (37:32):
That's amazing.
And of course, narrated by KeithDavid.
And Keith David, yes.
Incredible voice.
SPEAKER_00 (37:36):
Keith has a beautiful voice.
It's an instrument, and hereally uses it in every wish
way.
So he can he can do anythingwith that credible voice he has.
It was beautiful to work withhim on this.
I think he he really got deeplyinterested in the topic.
It's always fun when you'reworking with someone and they're
reading something, and then theysay, Wow, I had no idea.
(37:57):
And so he learned a lot as well.
I think he would be the first tosay.
SPEAKER_01 (38:01):
And so the movie is Crime and Punishment in America.
It's out like November 16th,right?
SPEAKER_00 (38:05):
Yes.
Airing on PBS starting November16th for four nights.
And we'll be releasing clips andsome material on social media in
the next coming months as sortof a lead-up.
There'll be a teaser andthere'll be some highlights
coming out a little bit at atime to build up to the
broadcast.
And then we'll be streaming onPBS for a while.
SPEAKER_01 (38:24):
And what's next for you?
Is there an 11th inning ofbaseball coming?
SPEAKER_00 (38:28):
Well, I don't know if there's an 11th inning.
When we did baseball, it airedin 1994, which was during the
strike.
There was a baseball strike thatyear.
And we had put in the film thatthe Red Sox had never won the
World Series since 1918.
And when they won, Ken feltlike, well, we have to open it
and we have to make anotherinning.
That was the 10th inning becausehe's a huge Red Sox fan and just
(38:50):
he couldn't leave that storyuntold.
And then the Cubs won the WorldSeries, and we had also
basically said the Cubs wouldnever win the World Series.
So now we were faced with maybewe need to open it again and do
11th innings.
So we'll see.
I mean, that's the the baseball,the story of baseball is
ongoing.
There's going to be maybe alockout this year or next year.
So yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (39:09):
Perfect time for an 11th inning, right?
SPEAKER_00 (39:10):
Exactly.
Yeah.
I think the game has changed alot in the last 10 years.
So it would be reallyinteresting to look at whether
it's still really the nationalpastime, what that means, given
where our attention lies.
I'm fascinated by theunbelievable phenomenon of
sports betting and what ishappening to professional sports
and the public with the way thatpeople relate to these games and
(39:32):
athletes and events and the waythat the betting has exploded.
I find very concerning.
SPEAKER_01 (39:40):
And college sports, we're just seeing with the Texas
Tech's quarterback allowed toplay despite betting.
SPEAKER_00 (39:46):
Yeah, right.
Yeah.
I mean, I've heard multiplecases of people who have gotten
into serious trouble withaccumulating debt from sports
betting and ended up embezzlingto pay off their debts and going
to jail for that.
I wonder what's going to happenwith that.
I I'd like to hope it'll bereined in, but I don't I don't
think it can sustain itself.
SPEAKER_01 (40:07):
Excellent.
Next next.
SPEAKER_00 (40:09):
It would be, I think sports betting, yeah, it would
be fascinating.
It would be fascinating.
Um, I'm working on a documentaryon the history of Central Park,
which is a a beautiful, prettymuch uplifting story, has some
dark times in it as well.
And then Ken Burns and myselfand Sarah Botstein are doing a
series on LBJ and the GreatSociety.
(40:29):
So we're going to be kind ofgoing back over in a way, from
my perspective, the 60s and thewar on crime that LBJ was
involved in, setting up then,and all the riots and unrest and
rebellions of that time and thesense that crime was out of
control that started to takeover and giving rise to the law
(40:50):
and order policies of the 1970s.
So that's gonna be looking atthat through the perspective of
LBJ and Zivil Rights will bereally interesting.
SPEAKER_01 (40:57):
That's great.
I I can't wait to watch it.
Lynn, thank you so much.
This has been awesome,fascinating.
Um, movie's out November 16th.
It's it's a terrific watch.
So I highly recommend everybodyto give it a look.
SPEAKER_00 (41:09):
Thank you so much, Jeff.
It was great talking with you.
SPEAKER_01 (41:11):
Thanks for listening to the Jeffalytics Podcast.
Be sure to subscribe and tolearn more, head on over to
ahdatalytics.com for moreinformation and previous
episodes.
If you like what you heard,please leave a glowing review,
which will help others todiscover the show.
Till next time, I'm Jeff Asher.
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