Ken Burns

Hi, my name is Ken Burns, and I feel hopeful about being

Conan O'Brien's friend. Well, can you shouldn't be?

“Because this is the take-down of Ken Burns.”

Right. You have coasted way too long. 50 years of coasting. Just you know, everybody loves their Ken Burns. That's why all the henchmen are here.

Yeah, you're a kid, a boss. Get a boss. I have with me two people who don't read. [LAUGHTER] I'm pretty sure they don't write.

We read magazine. Yeah, I'm sorry. I forgot about Us magazine. That does count as-- by 1990s is showing.

[MUSIC PLAYING] Hey there, welcome to Conan O'Brien, needs a friend joined by Sonom of Session. Hi.

Matt Gorley is outie is on paternity leave,

and we wish him and his lovely family the best. Got him smooth. And then David Hopping, joining us. How are you, David? I'm good, Hario.

Sonna, you said that you heard from your father? Yes. Gil. Gil. Was this yesterday or the other day?

It was last night. Yeah. Last night, he called you, and he was unhappy. What happened? He texted me, he was angry.

He saw a clip online, and he got angry about something I said. And my parents are, you know, they're traditional people. And I am-- I've got a mouth. And why are you laughing so hard? No, but you know what?

Sonom, you're a modern woman of the world. Thank you. You've been here, you've been there, you've been to Porter Square, you've been-- you've seen it all. Some say you've done it all, and your father.

Yeah. Was born in a very small village? Yes, he was. Where was this? This was in Turkey.

What used to be Armenia? Thank you very much. But yeah, he was born in Turkey, and he was in a small village immigrated here. They're traditional people, my parents.

And I say a lot of things on this podcast that are not traditional things. And so yesterday, he texted me, and he's like, I can't believe you talk like that on the podcast. And he said, you're a mother.

You have kids, like he went on for it. And I was like, oh my god, my dad's actually upset. But I couldn't think of which clip he would have been upset of that.

“I think just so many times on this podcast.”

I talked about Dix. I talk about the gin as they talk about, like, heated rivalry all the time. I couldn't-- I was like, running tacos, like, did I-- is there one thing that was agreed with you?

If I sang a Santa Claus, thanks for the gift. And Santa's like, what? What do you mean? And then he's got to think about the 55 billion gifts he's given out, right?

But you are-- yeah, you're the Santa Claus of Phil. If you're just constantly-- it's butts, it's buns, you love it. And so what did you say? Did you defend yourself to your dad?

No, I was just like, I really needed to figure out which thing upset him. So I said, which clip? And then he said, I appeared on my friend Rick's podcast. I know Rick, yeah.

You Rick Glassman. And I was on his podcast. And we released a clip not even from this one.

So I'm like, clearly, he'd never watch his this podcast,

because otherwise he'd be really pissed. It was that podcast. And I-- Well, what were you talking about? I said the way I said the word "fuck" like twice.

And my dad was-- And he was a way to mend it. So he can't ever listen to this podcast. Never. Because I saw some of you with Rick.

And it was very tame compared to what you do every day here. Yes. Now, let me be in a picture for the people listening. Your father is a very distinguished, very handsome. Yes.

An older gentleman. Yes. He's got a big white mustache. OK. Does he not?

I knew what you were going through. I don't know what I'm just saying. Yes. Have you ever noticed that your brother has hinges where his joints should be?

Have you ever noticed that? And does your-- Remember when you were growing up, your brother would say, "I wish I could be a real boy. Do you remember?

Do you remember?" Oh, you're actually-- I'm saying your father carved your brother. OK. But he is, in fact, chupetto.

And I do hope that someday Danny becomes a real boy. But that is-- yes. I'm fine with my-- you say these things, because my dad does not watch this podcast, obviously.

“Because how can he not be mad about the thousands of things I've said?”

I don't know.

You're a sprinkler that just shoots filth. But you get filth on every single part of the lawn. You know, the lawn is saturated with filth. Why are you acting like you're an innocent guy? Which one of us has a voice for their penis?

Not me. What's your penis's voice like? Hey, leave me out of the house. Everybody bark off. Cut it out.

I was just in here on these briefs, mind of my own business.

My penis is always reading a tiny copy of the New Yorker.

Oh, this is great. Some good cartoons for this group. This is-- you created this environment. Got little glasses. Hey, anyway, that's not the point.

The point is that your parents need to accept who you are. I think that's important. Yes. They need to see the real you. And I know you get into it with your mom a lot.

You guys have your differences. Because I think that you were quite--

“I think you were a lot to handle when you were growing up.”

Were you not? I was. Yeah. And how are you and not you doing these days? We're cool.

We love her. And I love my dad. Of course you do. And there are times when I say things where I think, oh, man, their friends will listen to this one day.

But then I kind of forget what I say. And also, I mean, my dad, he was just like toned it down a little. And I was like, I don't know how to do that. You can't do that. You can't do that.

You can't say something about-- if we have a conversation about Dixon stuff, how are we not supposed to talk about it? One point out that you're usually the one that brings it up. The topic is not Dixon. And then you chime in a little bit.

And I've seen a Dekatoo. That's not what happened. I'm usually talking about Woodrow Wilson. And then you say, Dekat. And you have a cock.

And I'm like, well, I guess he did. Oh, look good.

“But you don't even mean that's usually how it goes.”

So this is on you, and you'll have to pay for it. I like Poop Poop Peepy humor. Yeah, yeah, I do. I have to say, I can relate somewhat because my parents very, very staunch, good old school

Catholics. Yes. And they watched every episode of my show starting in 1993. And what a cavalcade of horrific sights, sounds, and smells.

And they were always just, my mother would say,

we do a show with the masturbating bear. And then, you know, a talking, whatever. Money shot, Lincoln, and all this stuff. And my mother would say, well, I just thought you looked lovely last night.

That's how you were wearing. And she would always go to the thing that she because, and so she never, not once, said, oh, you know, you got to stop that. Not once.

She knew I was bringing in the Benjamin's. And that meant, did get a hand for Christmas. Anyway, hey, Gill, we love you, and your daughter's doing a great job. And I agree with you.

She's horrible. OK. [LAUGHTER] He's nice. So I was horrible.

This is the end. My dad didn't say it was horrible.

“No, but I also give him a lot of credit.”

He carved-- Yes, oh, dear. --you're brother. He carved him. You start off being nice to my dad.

And then you start talking about how he's been. How many times of my life have we been in a restaurant or anywhere? And I have secretly taken my napkin, scrunched it up, and turned it into a giant mustache, put it under my nose,

and said, hey, so on a Gil wants to talk to you. And I have a maybe two and a half foot long, white mustache under my nose. I don't think we've ever had a meal without you to help me do it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like-- And if there's nothing able to do it, if there's-- and if there's no-- if I didn't have an napkin for any reason,

they hadn't put out the napkin yet. There was a mistake. I would tear the tablecloth off the table, smashing all the plates, put it under my nose and say, your father's here to speak to you. Yeah.

That's the beauty of our friendship.

I'll never be able to watch it.

Or it's a podcast. You really should be listening. Here we go. Today's guest is one of the most influential documentary filmmakers of all time.

His latest documentary series, "The American Revolution" is available to stream on PBS.org and the PBS app. And-- [INAUDIBLE] He is the guest.

He's the guest. He is the guest. And curious to hear what he has to say about Cox and Giz, and Butts and Buns, and Pupu and Peepie. This wonderful, wonderful historian

who has brought the fabric of what is America into our lives, refreshed it, and is of just the very best America has to offer Pupu Peepie. Ken Burns, welcome.

We've spoken a couple of times, but your series

“"The American Revolution" was an absolute delight.”

Loved it, and fascinating for me, because I grew up in Massachusetts. It's happened. Right outside Boston and Brooklyn in Mass. And there's a couple of times when you're

explaining the siege of Boston where you cut to a map, and in the slight low left corner, it says, "Brooklyn" and shows a few hills. And I stand up. I'm like a nerd and cheer, and I'm like, "Brooklyn!"

And then try to act like I can take credit, though, my people were still firmly in Ireland at the time, hitting each other with sticks. So there's no way I can claim any credit for-- If you look in the bigger maps, as they pull out in the hamster,

there's always a wallpole this tiny little village.

The only reason why I justified it. I've lived there for 47 years, is that wallpole, because that was this very well-respected, well-read, up and down the colony, sort of rag sheet, that had opinions and thoughts, and was part of it.

So I justified the little hometown shoutout, too. And I saw what you were doing, and I thought it was pathetic. I told you this would be the takedown. This is the takedown, right? You know, it's such an easy point to make.

Everything that everyone's dealing with in your series are things that we are dealing with now.

“And at the time, I don't know, when does this come out?”

It's been out. No, I know yours is out, but I'm so about this. This podcast. I was told this was live. Yeah, yeah, yeah, this is going to--

I did joke with it, and it was live. No, no, no, no, no. No, Joe Rugg is a different situation. No, Joe Rugg is different. He's brave.

He's puts it out live. We sit with these are central laboratory where they're scrubbed, so any opinions or possible woke die tribes. So that's just not going to happen here. But at the time, I'm sure there'll be another crisis

when this is airing, but at the time that this drops, this episode will be about a month from now, right? This episode's probably going to be two to three months from now. Two to three months? April.

Why are we even here? This isn't the same. Yeah, two to three months from now. I mean, I don't know where we'll be. We have a very packed release schedule,

but we wanted to make sure this happened. OK, well, I would like to, I mean, I was really excited about this one. What? I hate the other guests we're talking to.

I mean, I load them to this. The one that whatever is one is out now or the one last week or the way in two weeks from now, these people are my enemies. Good friends of yours? Yeah, it's all for me.

That's the people. I was excited about this, and now you tell me that it's coming out a year from April.

The release schedule is always movable if we want to--

The 256 is really important too. [LAUGHTER] I said, let's do this. Look, look, we're going to be celebrating 250 if we survive until 2039, which is when the U.S. government starts.

Yeah. So don't get me started because there's 31, which is your town. There's 33, which is the British leave. Well, we are taping this as we approach the 250th anniversary of our nation with hope.

And one of the things I've always loved about history is that it constantly reminds me we've been here before. Yeah, so this is the thing. We like to say history of pizza itself. It never does.

No event has happened twice. Ecclesiastes, which is the Old Testament said, what has been, will be again, what has been done, will be done again. There's nothing new under the sun.

Which means human nature doesn't change. So that human nature is going to superimpose itself over the seemingly random chaos of events. And we're going to see themes and recurring echoes and what Mark Twain called rhymes.

I have never worked on a film, whether it's about the Brooklyn

Bridge or Jazz Music or whatever. That isn't rhyming constantly in the present. And I used to have a stump speech going off for whatever film it was. I'll give you one.

There's a 2011. I said, what if I told you that I've been working for years about a film about a single issue political campaign that metastasized with horrible unintended consequences that it was about the demonization of recent immigrant groups

to the United States, that it was about a presidential election cycle with unbelievable violence and kind of rank and sort of mock ranking and stuff. And that it also represents a whole group of people who felt they had lost control of their country

and wanted to take it back. You'd say, wow, you're talking about the Tea Party or this and that. I said, these are only four themes of my film on prohibition. And they go, but what about the flappers and the gangsters?

It's that they're, but the more interesting thing is this underlying resonance.

“The thing you have to do is a film maker, though,”

in order for the thing to speak more directly

to the mast where you can see here that those echoes,

“but you don't go, oh, isn't there so much like today?”

I mean, the revolution has a failed invasion of Canada. It has a standing army that precipitates this war in Boston. It has a big continent wide epidemic or epidemic's plural that kills more people than the revolution and also engenders a huge debate on the part of Washington

about inoculating the army.

And finally, he decides, which many historians think

is the best military decision he made. So, you know, Pluto Shals as the French who came to our aid and without who's helped we don't have a country, which, again, watching it. And as you said, smallpox is a terrible scourge

that looks like it's going to cost us the war. What to do about that and they're making decisions about an oculation that we're struggling with today, which is a little mind-blowing to me as the son of a scientist and physician.

I have a hard time with that. But, you know, so many people will say to me, oh, but, you know, now we have the internet and I think that's true, but they had broad sides back then. They had, they had their version of the internet.

They had people saying irresponsible inflammatory things all the time and everybody's reading it. - Same, same atoms. - Yeah. - It's a failure as a brewer and a tax collector,

but he's really good as a propaganda. So, he says, "My job is to keep my fellow citizens "alive to their grievances." - Yes. - "Sound familiar to their people today

"within whose interest it is to keep up the divisions "between people rather than show the fact "that these divisions, which accounts "for your own my 51, 52% are my a-wide "by the kind of an inch thick."

And that what you want, the ability to transcend the dialectic of, yes and no, one in zero, red state, blue state, is to tell a good story, 'cause it has a kind of benign Trojan horse effect. It kind of, oh yeah, this is who we were,

this is who we are, it's very, very similar. Same degree of virtue and venality, same degree of generosity and greed, same degree of, you know, make up your own alliteration.

“- Yeah, and I think, you know, when I grew up,”

there used to be this kind of hay geography about the American Revolution, we would get these textbooks, you know, George Washington chopped down the cherry tree and I cannot tell a lie and, you know,

these people were represented us as representatives, as these marble men who were infallible. And then what I've loved about my lifelong obsession with history is you see, George Washington is a very impressive man

in a lot of ways. He's also a slaveholder.

We always have to accept that both sides of the story.

We both, we have to accept that. And I like my, you know, these humans to be human beings. - Yeah. - And I think that's the only way we can actually take a measure of inspiration from them.

If they're just the gods, then they don't do something. We just feel like mortals, we're flawed, we know that. They're not, they're perfect, they never tell a lie. But I think we go back to heroism. The Greeks were trying to talk about it as something

that was a war within people. Between warring factions, you know, some, you know, that Achilles had his heel and his hubris to go along with his great strengths. And that what they're setting up are stories,

good stories that remind us that we are all like wise, divided within ourselves. And we have chances to sort of tilt towards that virtue or tilt towards that viinality. And so I think with the revolution,

it's understandable why we've made it bloodless and gallant. You know, we got some big ideas in Philadelphia. We don't want them to be diminished, which we think if we admit, this is a bloody civil war, a bloody revolution, and a bloody world war,

the fourth or fifth over the prize of North America. And that George Washington, the man, without whom we don't have a country, and there's very few times in world history, we can say it's literally one person.

One person together, deeply flawed, as you point out, rash rides out on the battlefield, risking his life, which means the entire cause makes a couple of really bad tactical relationships. - Really screws up in New York and it brandy wine.

And a couple of other places where that just the luck doesn't fall, but he's able to inspire people to fight in the dead of night, picks a boardenate talent without any worry about whether they're better generals than him.

Just happy to have something. - This is what I do. - Now you're gonna say, talk about, you're gonna say, oh, this isn't sane, fun. - Oh my God.

- But I'm very like Washington. I, first of all, I'm Tory Tall, very tall. - He was maybe six to six. - Six to six. - I made sure everyone here is inoculated against smallpox.

- Right. - And I pick, looking around for the people I've picked, do I think you're good. - Okay, well this isn't a good example, this room. (laughing)

“- But, no, but I think I'm very much like Washington.”

- His biggest, the most important thing besides convincing people

that they were not Georgians or New Hampshire rights, but Americans and deferring to Congress is that he gave up his power twice. So yes, these people were gonna really be so proud of you

- Yeah. - Well, I don't like the way this has gone. (laughing) (upbeat music) - I do want to say one thing about Washington

that's long, interested me, he was kind of wide in the hips, wasn't he? - Kind of a pear shaped guy. - I'm sorry, but he wasn't. I hate to body shame our first president

and someone-- - I didn't know there were no photographs and you got to trust Gilbert Stewart or Copley or others--

- Or if he'd always the one who really pointed it out

in one of his quotes, Dahl has some access to grind, some founders to take down. - Yeah. - He really, he portrays Washington as humorless and goes out of his way to talk about his wide hips

and his big butt. No, I'm sorry, those are just things I needed to get out there. Now, can you probably regretting being here? Do you think--

(laughing) - You got enough friends. (laughing) You're saying, well, how did this turn this prickly? (laughing)

But how did you get me into this? (laughing) - More publicists have been fired. - All right.

“- You have to become a blind user, friend taping.”

- It's always the first thing.

- Why? - Who's idea? - You said, we do have something-- - We have a few things in common. One thing is that I'm addicted to reading history

and my wife loves fiction and she's always trying to get me to read fiction is if eating my vegetables, you know, each of vegetables and I just have this burning desire to know what happened.

And if she's reading this wonderful, powerful novel, I'm like, you have a what happened? That's just made up. - And so she has wonderful photos of me when we've gone on vacations over our long marriage

on different beaches in a different beautiful settings, reading the most turgid, dark books about, you know, the ghoulog. - Yeah, I'm sitting there with like a rum punch next to me. - Oh my god.

- Which you can be reading, you know, Schultz and Ease. - No, no, no, she's very well read

and she's always reading, you know, she's reading great stuff

and she has convinced me. She's, she's, no, no, no, no, no, no. - It's much drama in what was and what is as anything the human imagination makes up. But it's not a choice because you're gonna lose Shakespeare

“if you're not gonna let people make stuff up, right?”

- You don't lose a lot of wonderful insight that comes from whatever the license is that people take to sort of focus on our interior lives and why we're here and what we're supposed to be doing and making of it. - Yeah, I have to say even one of my,

I'd probably my favorite book is a historical novel, the Killer Angels, which is what got me into the, to do this of all, I finished reading this. - Is that true? - Let me tell you this, I gave it David McCullough gave it to me.

I finished reading it on Christmas day, 1984. I was visiting my dad and Michigan and I said, I know what I'm gonna do for my next film. And he said, "What's that son?" And I said, "The civil warning goes, "What part?"

And I said, "All of it." And he just shook his head and walked down to the room. - Yeah. - Yeah. - And it was, it was because the civil war had been looming over all the subjects of the film I'd made

and really bizarre ways on the Brooklyn Bridge, on the Shakers, on the Statue of Liberty, on the Congress, on Thomas Arbenton, on all the, a Huey Long, all of the stuff I had done and that, or we're doing and that,

I just couldn't figure out that this seemed to be, as Shelby Fought one said, you know, it's an American history, is this clear river that flows into a bloody lake that flows out clear again. Not true, but the idea that everything

cast a pass through the civil war was important to it. So, yeah, I mean, I, Killer Angels, have you read the Raven by Marcus James? - I have not. - I have not. - Very antiquated book, 1920s.

“He won the Pulitzer Prize, I think, for this,”

or another one, he did a biography first on Andrew Jackson, but then he did one that the Raven is on Sam Houston. And there is so much that happens to Sam Houston before he's even heard of the word Texas. I mean, he is this close to the presidency.

He's sort of holding the governorship while Andrew Jackson is at President, he's gonna be the next president for sure he marries this young girl, his wife, and at some moment, she leaves him. No, we do not know to this day why she did.

Something sexual and all love her, whatever it was. He resigned the governorship, he went to what is now meant to swam across the Mississippi and became big drunk, a kind of dangerous loose cannon, Indian agent across the Mississippi.

And he still hasn't heard, he's had fought duels in Congress. I mean, it's just about, if somebody gave me an $180 million and said you had to do a feature film, I did the life of Sam Houston based on this,

- Well, you know, there's so many things that really happened in our history and just in history and general that if you wrote it as a screenplay, someone would say, yeah, this is too much. - Yeah, you don't mean this is new, you lost me,

you know, avatars more believable than this. - Right. - You know what I mean? You got a little crazy here when he swims across the river and you think, no, no, this is all true.

“- And I think that's what's always attracted me so much”

to it. My dad was really into history and I got into it and I realized, oh, it's just stories.

And you know, son is always giving me a hard time.

You always make fun of me for reading so much history. - Well, you read a lot of history, but like you don't really like 50 shades of gray for instance. I've recommended books to you and you completely ignore me. - Have you read 50 shades of gray?

(laughing) - Have it. - Okay, this is your next stop, this is your next stop, you made a recal, I did the blue and the gray, but I don't know, it's like the blue and the gray,

but a blue and the blue or it's blue or it's blue or it's blue. - Imagine the Civil War was spanking. - Yeah. (laughing) - Yeah.

(laughing) Shelby's foot said to me once, "I was struggling over how to tell something." And he goes, you know, how to tell the very complicated thing between Chancellor'sville, Vixberg,

and Gettysburg, and he just said, "God is a greatest dramatist." Meaning, stop doing what everybody else does, which is, do either, all of Vixberg before Gettysburg or do all of Gettysburg, after Vixberg,

you divide it up and say when it happened. You know, and just stop and go tell what happened. - Tell what happened. - And then he said, just think about it. Lisa Renders, Gettysburg, and a few days later, Lincoln,

who's been working 18 hours a day, has enough time to go to the theater. - I mean, yeah. I've had a few projects, which I'll remain nameless, with various places in this town,

where people are wanted to adapt something we've done. And this stuff that's good, is this stuff that's true, and the stuff that's made up, is this stuff that just doesn't work? - It doesn't work.

You could say, he would never say that,

or he would never do that. Or why did you need to add that? Because there's already a life that has that kind of, if you brought it to a producer, they go, that can't possibly have happened.

Like the whole story of the building of the Brooklyn Bridge, which was my first film that PBS showed, was exactly that you could not make it up. - Yeah. I like anything that makes you stop,

'cause I spent so much of my life in New York City living there, and every time I passed the Brooklyn Bridge,

“I think about what went into making that,”

and it used to be just this thing. That's a Brooklyn Bridge, and we can all do that, but when you realize that this is before people know what happens when you submerge humans, you know,

at great depth, yes, and you put them in these caseons, and you submerge them down, but they don't know, and people are dying these horrible deaths, all the thought that went into it, and the lives that went into it,

and then what it meant when it was completed, and it's beautiful. And so I just appreciate when I read history, one of the things it does is it usually makes me a little more optimistic, which is a strange thing to say,

because most of the history I'm reading is very, you know, many dark things happen, but I meet a lot of young people who have this attitude that these are end days, and the world is on fire, and it's all over for us.

- I had a friend in the financial industry in 2008, and the fall said, this is a depression, and I said, you know, in our depression, in many cities, in America, the animals in the zoo were shot,

and the meat distributed to the poor. When that happens, I'll agree, we're in a thing. To me, the optimism is a natural recourse, 'cause you've seen, I mean, there's something unprecedented about the level of the perfity

and where it's taking place, at this moment, but I've seen it in the story a few years long, I've seen it in other places, and so you just realize, you know, you want to be on guard, you just, you know, that other 49% is talking really loudly,

but you can't, history is a great great teacher, great great teacher. - Yeah, and it's also, it's like a friend that can calm you down and give you a little bit of perspective when things are very dark,

I've had so many people say to me,

it's never been worse in this country than it is now,

and I'm more divided than it is.

“- Yeah, and I'll say, okay, have you heard of the civil war?”

And do you know what was going on in the civil war? I was going on in Vietnam, but we have a lot of work to do and we have to be on guard and we have to speak up, but there's so much to be hopeful about. And that needs to get out there,

and I think one of the things that I've liked so much about your work is that it's taking, whether it's jazz, your baseball, you're taking these things that are really important part of America and who we are, and you're telling us about this wonderful gift,

all the darkness that's involved. - You're just telling the truth. - You're not trying to push it one way or the other. - Yeah, calling balls and strikes.

And I always walk away feeling this sense of nourishment

that I've been taken care of. - We live in a world and that waitress and so many people are, it's a highlight reel. That's all it is. So, Babe Ruth, to take somebody ancient and baseball,

only hit some runs. - Right, highlight reel. - Babe Ruth struck out almost three times as many times as he hit a home run. He also comes up once every nine times at bat,

which means that sometimes everything falls to a middle in the field or a second basement. The recent seventh game of the world series was exactly that case, where the big, the big superstars didn't do the thing

that the second basement did and that was the difference.

“And I think that's a really good, simplistic analogy”

to history. You've got to call balls and strikes. And you have to be able to understand, I mean, you see the ball players who all the hit the home run and they cross home play it and they thank God for delivering that.

They never do that when they hit into a game ending double play.

- Right. - So, if there is that, oh no, it's, I always think if you're gonna thank God, you also have to blame him. - Yep.

And I wanna see people doing that, striking out and going, "I defy you God!" (laughing) - You know, the only step I've ever seen is Pedro Martinez is pulled off the mound when the red socks are beginning

to lose something and he looks up as he's being pulled off. I've never seen, I talked to him about it. - Yeah. - Never seen anybody do it. But you go back to the revolution.

“Most of the founders become particularly Jefferson Diaz.”

They believe that there is some sort of supreme being, supreme architect, divine providence, the supreme architect of the universe, whatever they call it, who is disinterested in the affairs of us. And it makes no distinction between faiths.

What an unbelievably great way to understand it. So, it's my obligation to sort of be better. Persu happiness was not objects in a marketplace of things, but lifelong learning in a marketplace of ideas. It to be more virtuous to earn the right of citizenship,

but then also present myself as moving closer through my actions to whatever that higher being is. It's a really great way to conduct yourself. And they also understood the first amendment, which we say free speech and because of Minneapolis,

right to protest and assembly, the number one thing is, we shall make no establishment of a religion. Every other country on earth had been born with a set official religion. Here's the stamp and we didn't have it. And it has been one of the blessings, wasn't we?

Speak about the political benefits and their legion. This is the Enlightenment applied to a physical thing, a government, but it's also the religious thing, in which you are just trying to pull the fuel rods out of what everybody does is they make a they of them.

It's a playbook of the authoritarian. This is a bad, the radical, this or the-- - They are the cause of all our problems. - And me within, for Hitler was the Jews and the Jehovah's Witness and homosexuals and Marxists and Bolsheviks

and whatever it might be, everybody looks to say it's them. And I've made films about the US, but I've also made films about us, right? There's an intimacy there as well as a majesty and complexity and even controversy to the US.

But the thing I've known after doing this for 50 plus years is there is no them. There's no them, no them. - Yeah. - And our obligation is to try to remember to tell people there's no them in some way, in story form.

“And that's what you were talking, you're just leading.”

- It's all us with just how much a story can have this sense of, oh, this is just like it was before and just like it was before is very much like what's happening now. - Well, it's also, if you don't read history or you're not interested, there's this belief

that the way things are now is the way they've always been.

Also, in accurate way, so there's this notion, I think a lot of young people probably think, well, the Republican party has always meant, has always been tied to like fundamental Christianity. And I think, no, no, no, they would have been,

I mean, for a long time, that is exactly the Republican party and Republicans who start from the beginning of the party's establishment would have been kind of horrified by that idea that we were tied to that. - Do you know what I mean?

- That's a more of a recent invention in 1980. - I got a map of the political parties. - Right, just twist. I mean, by, there was the last Cabot Lodge to run against a Kennedy or anybody in was 62

and Ted Kennedy took the seat vacated by the Senate seat. - The Senate seat in Massachusetts and he lost. And he loved Ted Kennedy. He said, yeah, we voted for the same things. I don't think I'd disagree to them on anything.

wait a second, the Republican party was founded

“in 1854 in a schoolhouse in Ripon, Wisconsin to end slavery.”

The wig party had died. They were looking out of the ashes to start something. They put up a candidate, John C. Freemount, the Pathfinder in 56 he loses. And then this guy, this bizarre,

tall thin lawyer prone to bouts of debilitating depression, wins the election in 1866. - As a Republican, 40% of vote. As the beginning of the Republican party as a national force, the most successful party,

unfortunately also because it often taxed to different places and basically gets is really good at convincing people to vote against their own interests. I mean, that's been the last 50 years of the Republican party

but I mean, up until when Johnson took Kennedy civil rights which Kennedy couldn't have fast, took it and got it through and then the voting rights act, he knew he was losing the South. But he was a Southern or Democrat. You woke up on January, you woke up on election day

and you had every one of the 11 states of the former

“confederacy in the Democratic party hall.”

You could count on those electoral votes. And now you wake up on election day and the Republicans count on it. A Ronald Reagan began his traditional post labor day campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi.

That's in shocked out, Connie. He did not go there to honor Goodwin, Cheney, and Schumer, the police of all rights people who were murdered there. He went and began within the first few paragraphs in to talk about states rights which was virtue signaling.

I don't know, virtue is the right word, but signaling to his audience and then one by one you watch. You've already seen it happen the former states of the confederacy that been solidly anti-Republican because they were trying to promote racially quality

switchover and it's just, it's breathtaking to watch. Just the changes that the just the two parties let alone the various three parties that kind of like fish live parasitically off the various parties. It's a wonderful dynamic fluid thing.

Harry Truman said the only thing that's really new is the history you don't know. That's really great. I mean, can founding thing because we live in this narcissistic present.

So therefore we're all chicken littles of sky is falling. It's worse that it's ever could be. And you don't have the agency to pull yourself out of the nose dive that you're, you're put yourself into.

- Well, this is, there's never been a,

what I, one of the sentiments I agree with is there's never been a better time to be alive than right now. And it's actually the only time to be alive right now. - Yeah, but, you know, I'll have people say, well, come on, come on.

- I don't know. Why do you think it's, give me one reason why this is the best time to be alive and I'll always start with child mortality rates. - Yeah.

- Like, you realize that for almost all of human history, if you had children, there was a very good chance that most of them would die. That's, that was just the way it was.

“That's why there are a few, there's no industry”

around making toys for kids or portraits of kids for a long time because they don't last that long. Very few of them make it a big market for small caskets. - Yeah, it's just, but no, it's really, but it's awful.

Sorry to bring this up. This is really dark. - You go into graveyards in New England and you've got four, three, 18 months, six, eight, 12. And then, in the '96 and a hundred, you're like,

you know, if you got past, if you got past into your teens, you probably live to be 98 and wrote the Declaration of Independence. (audience laughs) But, but what's, no, it was just I,

there's, I would like people to be a little more conscious of all the ways in which we're very blessed. And I also, when I, when I watch the American Revolution series, one of the things that impresses me is just the stunning good luck. I mean, the idea that so many things broke our way

during the American Revolution does make you believe in Providence. And it reminds me of this quote that I'm going to butcher right now. And it was Otto Bismarck said, there is a divine Providence that protects

drunkards, children, and the United States of America. And it's just like this wonderful quote is true. - I don't know what is going on with America,

but they always seem to get away with you.

(audience laughs) - Well, this has happened in the early days of the Revolution when the improbable success is along with mostly failures happened. They also saw it as a sign of Providence

that they would be like the walls of Jericho. You would just blow the trumpet and they'd fold in. Think about it. The odds on Lexington Green in that morning of April, 1975 are zero of success.

And six and a half really long bloody is what we don't admit to. Bloody years later, Civil War Revolution and Global War

And the phenomenal good luck in the midst of some really bad luck in bad decisions and stuff.

“I mean, it's a lot of it has to do with the size of the continent.”

It has to do with the weather. It has to do with the distance, 3000 miles from the home office. So a letter coming takes longer than letter going back because of the Gulf Stream. And so you just, frankly, this writer comes up

to his place in Paris and he's trying to get the French in and he needs some little victory just to convince him. And then the writer goes and he walks out and he says Philadelphia fell and he goes, "Yeah, which it had." Through Washington's neglect at Brandingman.

And he turns away and he goes, "But wait, there's better news." That a couple months after that, the Battle of Saratoga took place. Washington had nothing to do with it.

Other than sending two of his best generals, Daniel Morgan and a guy named Benedict Arnold, who was the hero of Saratoga. And it's not only a little thing. It's a gigantic, the surrender of entire British Army. And Franklin goes, "Whoa, he goes right

with the competition." - I think you should be that one first. - And yes. - And he asked him first. I mean, he was pessimistic in disposition

towards the news he was about to get. And then they go to Louis XVI and within a couple months, they've got two alliances, one of which is essentially

$30 billion dollars for the faith, an army and navy,

guns, whatever you need that are going to be the key to the American. - No, the French completely saved our bacon. Something we probably occasionally like to forget. And also the French, because they gave us so much money

and so much hope during the Revolutionary War, go bankrupt leading to their revolution. - They had other problems too. - One of the declaration, I mean, they're British Constitutional Marnicky

was pretty good place for Montgomery to live under.

“And that's why you're a loyalist in the colonies.”

And your excuse, we didn't make loyalist bad people. We just made them, you know, this is your prosperity, your education, your good health, your property that you own, whatever it might be, has come from that. The French are more oppressive.

And then when Franklin's there, they adore him. And he's speaking the same language. - Is a rock star in French. - He's the most famous American on earth because of his scientific stuff.

But he's charming and he's witty and he also shares sympathy with Montesquieu and the others of the French Enlightenment, not just the Scottish Enlightenment. And then when the declaration happens, he prints it up and asks all the newspapers

to print it, so they print it. So ordinary people are reading, yeah. And the power of this, the importance of the revolution, just in the ideas cannot be denied. This thing promotes revolutions, our declaration,

promotes revolutions for more than two centuries. When a Ho Chi Minh, on September 2nd, 1945, that's the date that the Japanese are surrendering unconditionally on the USS Missouri and Tokyo Bay, he declares Vietnamese independence.

And he is quoting Thomas Jefferson. From that second sentence and standing next to him are OSO officers who have saved his life earlier in the year and are supporting him. And within a month, they're going to be told by the State Department.

Oh, he's a common, you can't do that. He, you know, and he's a ship so much, yeah. - He had stayed with him and then followed the Geneva Convention and allowed the election of him.

In 56, there'd be six million more human beings

haunting the earth. - Yeah. - Well, it's amazing just how many times things just keep flipping and flipping and flipping. So, you know, Stalin, our best friend in our buddy

up until, in 1946, you know, or in 1945, '46, and then it switches. And so, I have a propaganda poster of Uncle Sam

“and I think it's Chankha's Shek and Churchill and Stalin”

as all these good buddies who are tormenting a little Hitler. And it's like Uncle Sam's arm is draped around our good buddy, Stalin. And then they get the word after the war. - We're switching that now.

- Yes, right. - He's now the villain of the story. - We got it. - Okay, he's the bad guy. - And so, this happens so many times in history,

it's kind of fascinating. - So, the biggest, I mean, the, - I'll be later seen as a good guy. - You'll see, so. - Oh, okay.

- The 20th century is the bloodiest and it has the biggest killers are Mao, followed by Stalin, Stalin, a distant thirtest Hitler. It's really unbelievable. And they were our ally.

The second world war is won by American manufacturing,

followed by Soviet sacrifice. - Yeah, followed by Western ally sacrifice. - So, it's really, it's a triumph. In 1945, more than 50% of all things manufactured in the world were manufactured in the United States.

And it, and I mean, to understand exactly what happened. And Stalin had the, you know, the Russian fear as Putin does of needing all the buffer states. And so, he was gonna hang onto it. There was no army that could,

it was the size of his, there was no energy to decide as, as Churchill's forminating, go take it back, to go take it back. Nobody was gonna do it. And so, we ended up with a post war paralysis,

One of the greatest things Americans have ever done.

You know, we do things for other people because that's a good thing to do, not, because we're not serving ourselves.

“- Historically, we, and we have done a lot”

that created, because it was the right thing to do. - And then we had a say, so now you can spend your entire life in many people too, listing the crimes of the United States. But as you were suggesting earlier,

if you start with the declaration and the constitution, particularly the Bill of Rights and land grant colleges and the Homestead Act and National Parks and Child Labor and GI Bill and Social Security and Interstate Highway

and Man on the Moon and Affordable Care. I mean, you just like the list of positive things that we've done and yet we've been told that the enemy is our government. And it is in the interest of people to make that happen,

to remind people that we're divided and there's them and there is no them. - I have to just ask you, and it seems very superficial, but you just listed about 35 things with great eloquence and fluidity.

I'm guessing we're a sort of the same age. I can't do that anymore. I can start to list things and then I go away there. Eh, eh, well, you know what I mean. - Yes, really?

- What do you do that?

“- That's really bad 'cause I'm 10 years older than you.”

So, are you really? - 72, are you 60, too? - 42. - Yeah, I'm sorry Dr. This morning, too. - I'm 62, that was, did you see it?

- He didn't do that.

- I'm very imp, you could never.

- I can't, if I was listing to the ingredients in my smoothie, I couldn't do that. - I did them in kind of chronological order, too. - I saw that. I'm looking at you do that, and I know it's supposed to be like,

no, these are really good points, but I'm still, I was just stunned. He just said so much stuff without looking at notes. (laughing) - I'm very shallow, can't.

(laughing) (laughing) I'm thinking the acts that were passed, that he WC, the MIO, the WWN, the lab at Harvard, and the seafood at Dubodown, the Ruben at Babadown,

the seafood at Babadown, the seafood at Babadown, seafood at Babadown, seafood at Babadown, seafood at Babadown, seafood at Babadown, seafood at Babadown, seafood at Babadown, the whole time, you're just like, my brain no work, (laughing)

- I'm so cool. (laughing) - I wanna feel bad about yourself, have a conversation with Ken Burr. (laughing) Now I picture cameras, we've been having a black and white

photos of me looking sad, and you're here a show can farewell. - Well, what we often do is start in the photograph, off in the dark, zig, thing, and then paned to the extra close-up of the eyes,

and then you begin to feel the tragedy of it. (laughing) - As Conan's mind slipped away. (laughing) He knew mom, that he had to retreat

to the idiocy of a podcast. ♪ Mama mama mama mama mama mama ♪ - What's make that documentary? - Yes, you would have three viewers, you will be stripped of every award you've ever won.

“- Can we talk about the idiocy of podcast for a second?”

Like this year promoting,

I mean, I always do that, there's no money in PBS

to go out and promote stuff to speak up. So you can't put billboards on Belarus and Beverly, you know, saying are the buses or the subways, or whatever across the country. So you go out and we did 40 cities, 80 screenings,

250 interviews, radio, satellite tours, TV, and radio. And also, this time, more podcast. I think there are 352 million podcasts in the United States, and I now have done half of them today. (laughing)

Today is the half, half, half. - So what you're saying is, we're the last stop. (laughing) - None of them, I'm sure they're gonna give me more. (laughing)

- Conan realized, mama mama mama, he was the last stop, I'll do the music if you want. (laughing) - Be nice, heart for me to talk and do the music. - Now they can't, mama mama mama mama mama.

- Conan knew that there was he was the lowest of the low. - My dearest Sarah. (laughing) - Conan writing home, my dearest Liza, Ken Burns today said he had done every podcast,

and now he was doing it. (laughing) (laughing) - Well, I was, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. (singing in foreign language)

(singing in foreign language) - This is all, this is making me so happy right now. (laughing) - I thought you're gonna fill in. - Oh sorry, my dearest Liza, yeah.

- And it doesn't work anymore. - Yeah, so I'm just making me so happy that you're singing that tune. I've been singing that tune, and dining out on that tune for 36 years.

- I often, I downloaded it onto my, I have this sense of self-serving, but I do like to work out. He'd check this thing out, this body. But that's not the point, the point is, I like to listen to a hard, fast, like rock and roll music

for your, when your heart rates up, 'cause that really gets me going, and then I kind of runs on the treadmill and lift the weights and do everything I have to do.

into my workout feed, a show confer well,

and it will come on, and I'm, I'm just,

“I won't take it out, but when it comes on,”

I stop working out. (laughing) - Maybe it's just a restore, your heart rate, yeah, exactly, I just stop whatever I'm doing. - You can cry in the middle of your work out.

They say is really good. (laughing) And to think about everything this country has been through. - Yes.

(upbeat music) - So a show confer well was not, it's not contemporary, it's the civil war. - It's not contemporary civil war. - That's a song that one of your session music.

- Session musicians came up with. - Yeah, so his name is Jay Unger,

he's a Jewish kid from the Bronx who wrote

the most beautiful Scotch Irish woman I've ever heard in my life. I'm not even sure at the beginning he knew what he had. It was so filled with heart. Friend of his, one of his co- musicians had given me an album

they'd put out, and I was just doing needle drops and on the fourth song of the first side, they heard this thing and I went, wow. He runs a music camp still does in the caskills near the Ashokan Reservoir part of the New York City thing.

And they were breaking up for the summer and everybody was heading back to the new school year and he sat down in like 15 minutes or so, wrote Ashokan Farewell. And it is a guarantee that today, whatever today is,

it is being played a hundred times at a funeral or a memorial service or a wedding or a renewal of vows. And sometimes it's with this letter that's Sullivan Blu, a Rhode Island soldier wrote back to his wife for his death at the first battle of bull run.

And it's, it's, I'm just never come across a piece

of American music that works and I like the fact that it was a Jewish guy from the Bronx who turned out a Scotch Irish song. Yeah, he wrote it for a bar mitzvah. Yeah, right. (laughing)

The original title was, the horror. Look at you, more comedy. (laughing) The horror, the horror. (laughing) Very good, you're killing it. I feel very threatened right now.

Very threatened. (laughing) But you gotta pick subordinate talent that you know is better than you, right?

“That's what George Washington did and look what he got to be.”

The father or country, like he knew he was George Washington. He didn't know there was gonna be a dollar bill or a quarter of a big spiky thing in the national capital name for him or a state on the other side of the continent. That's name for him and every other state has a county

or a town, he did no idea. Yeah. That's what was gonna happen. No, he just, it's so fascinating to me that some of them must have been aware.

Some of the founding fathers must have been aware that I'm going down in history as a great man. Whether it was Jefferson or Millity, you know what it is? They're aware of you. They're aware of you.

They talk, John Adams talks about the millions yet on board. They are all speaking about like this is not just for right now. We're doing this, like Tom Payne says, not since the time of Noah do we have a chance to make it over.

This is why the world turned upside down. Everything had been the same. For a thousand years, your family had worked the same plot of land at Wales or Scotland or Ireland or England. And now you had the possibility of owning somebody else's land

in England, but you had, you could see that things could change and that all of a sudden, everybody up to this point had been subjects. And now they were this new thing called citizens. And a few sentences after pursuit of happiness, few phrases.

Jefferson says, all experience has shown that mankind are more to suppose to suffer. Well, evils are sufferable. It's not hard to parse. It means that here to for everybody just puts up

with the authoritarian boot. And you know what? We're not gonna do that anymore. And we're not gonna do that. It's gonna take extra energy.

“And I think whenever we're in a bad spot,”

it's because that energy is atrophied. And that we've forgotten that we have that energy, not you within me. Not that somebody else is gonna take care of it, but I'm gonna do.

And you're seeing one of the good things about all these young people or is, you know, what's a matter with kids today? They're running for office. They're, you know, they're mayor of New York. They're, you know, they're doing stuff.

And that, that is a democratic impulse in the face of the idea that no evils are not sufferable. We don't have to do this. We do not have to put up with this. It's not the war.

We're tennis and road that nature is red, meaning RED in tooth and claw, meaning everything's bloody and everything's, you know, Stephen Miller says, you know, the mightiest win.

It's not about that. We invent civilization to forstal the law of the jungle. And what you have are guys who are saying no, it's just the law of the jungle. That's what authoritarian say.

- Yeah. One of the things that I most admire about your work

That's the word I come up with is that I'm reinvested in us.

- This experiment and it is an experiment and we just have to keep working on it. - The last line of the film, and it's not given it away. Benjamin Rush, the only physician to science,

said the American war is over. The American Revolution is still going on. It doesn't mean like Jefferson, I'm sure you would wish you could take it back. That's a tree of liberty has to be watered

with the blood of patriots every 20 years. No, it means that we designed a system so we can figure out how to do that without the budget. - Right, right, unbelievable. Well, thank you so much for being here.

And this is remarkable.

“You have to come back and I wanna do all the other podcasts for us.”

- No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Let me get to some of the half a million more

than I've got to do. - We have a pretty big audience on this one. So you might wanna skip some of those other ones. You know, yeah, but you and me, no, no, no, no, no, no, Edward isn't listening to this. - Oh, he doesn't listen to this. - He doesn't listen to this.

- He has no patience to listen to this shit. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. - But it's six that really go, go out and buy stuff. - Yeah, so that's important. - And I could talk to you for maybe 40 hours

and just be the happiest guy in the world. - And tie that with that. - And tie that with that. - Yeah, well, I have a brief nine part response. - I have a brief nine part response every cousin. (laughing) Listen to Ken Burns' 14 part response.

But I've taken such solace in your work. It's just, it does nourish me in the very best way. And I do think all of this goes beyond politics. And I like to try and step out of that divide and try to say to people that we,

I believe we all want similar things.

“And we, and I think there's many more good people”

than bad people. And this is, I mean, I love this country

and I always think we can do better.

And I think we will. And I just get that from your work. And I get so inspired. - I think, obviously, if you know where you've been, you can know a little bit better where you are.

That's the optimism in the face of the chicken littles of this narcissistic moment. But you also know where you're going. And so you can begin to see in the midst of being like that little kid in Schindler's list

completely submerged in shit that, you know, he's submerged in shit 'cause he's dedicated to living. And so that our next job is repair and restoration. And we should be thinking about that. Rather than all is the sky is falling.

Oh, it's really, it's been worse, you know, this is the worst it's ever been in American history. It's not. - Yeah. - And, you know, things will,

there's a fluidity in the only thing that's certain is it's gonna change in.

“Some way, you have to actually be prepared”

to catch that change, you know. - That's like that. - That's the biggest thing. - There's better times are coming and we have to prepare for that.

- Happy to laser her again. - Yeah. - All right, we'll, again, if anyone out there hasn't listened to the American Revolution series, we actually, they can watch it too.

- Yeah. - Listening to the podcast and kind of thing, you know. - We spent 10 years assembling images. - Even when there were no photographs, dad, I swear you got it. - It's where the God, um, I didn't realize that they were

images that went along with the show. I watched it on television, but my face was averted from the screen. - Oh. - And I'm told it was quite beautiful. - Yeah.

- As Conan's eyesight failed and he listened to the broadcast of Ken Burns' special. - Okay. - Conan was full of his joke. - He's a pretty dense litter at thing. You can listen to him too, it's okay.

But there's some great paintings and some cool reenactments and you know, it's beautiful and I don't know why I said listen. I think, 'cause we're doing a polka. - No, I think I was really thrown when you made that long list, filetly.

I think I was in shock that my brain has atrophied to this degree. - She was so practice-alist. - Yeah, that's cool. - That's cool, okay. - Yeah. - Deck. - Alright, yeah. - That was a good question.

- Constitua Wright's. - He jumped ahead. Land Grand College is Homestead Ag. - Homestead Ag for Mark. - Homestead Ag for Mark. - Yeah. - National Mark. - Child Labor, we've got to say, even anti-trust laws, you know.

- That's pretty good. - That's pretty good. Then I think there'd be all the new deal programs and then social security, labor's right to organize. WPA, which created 10,000 landing scripts

with all that work on the parks.

“I mean, if you landed at LaGuardia Airport, New Deal,”

went through the Tribal Bridge, New Deal. Lincoln, I don't, New Deal, right? Skyline Drive, New Deal, right? All the bridge, all the dams in the, Lincoln Highway, all the dams in the Northwest.

That's all.

10,000 landing ships, a billion trees.

Not even out of the New Deal. - Mm. - The peanut is neither a pea nor a nut. (laughing) - It's a legum, thank you very much.

- That I still know, that's my list. - Yeah.

“- Can please go out and do more amazing work.”

Also, this book is gorgeous. - So just absolutely gorgeous. - I worked with for 45 years. This is the, the most wonderful book. He has put his heart and his soul into it.

- No, and it was gorgeous artwork to your point. And I spent, I just, I opened it randomly to a page

of some revolutionary war powder horns

that were etched engraved and I was just geeking out over them thinking, "I got to get a powder horn." (laughing) - Went on Amazon, no powder horns? - No revolutionary war power horns.

- You took a powder horn? - Exactly, okay. I'll do the comedy around you. - Now you're doing the comedy too? - I'm getting my ass kicked.

(laughing)

“- I can't do it here for the takes down of me.”

- Yeah, I know.

- It's not happening now.

- Dude, it's too. (laughing) - Can, thank you so much. - This is amazing. - This is really fun. Thank you.

- Conan O'Brien needs a friend. With Conan O'Brien, Sonom of Sessian and Macquarlie. Produced by me, Macquarlie. Executive produced by Adam Sachs, Jeff Ross and Nick Leow. Theme song by The White Stripes.

Incidental music by Jimmy Avivino. Take it away, Jimmy. Our supervising producer is Aaron Blair and our associate talent producer is Jennifer Samples. Engineering and mixing by Eduardo Perez and Brendan Burns.

Additional production support by Mars Melnick. Talent booking by Paula Davis, Gina Batista and Britcon. You can write and review this show on Apple Podcasts and you might find your review read on a future episode. Got a question for Conan?

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