Ken Burns

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From the creators of jury duty comes a new installment full of high jinx, hilarity and

hot sauce.

This season, we're taking the comedy out of the courthouse and into the mountains for an

annual company retreat.

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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 takedown of Ken Burns.

You have coasted way too long.

50 years of coasting.

I'm just joking.

Oh, everybody loves their Ken Burns.

That's why all the henchmen are here.

Yeah, get a bus.

Get a bus.

I have with me two people who don't read.

I'm pretty sure they don't write.

We read magazine.

Yeah.

Oh, I'm sorry.

I forgot about Us Magazine.

That does count as my 1990s is showing.

Hey there, welcome to Conan O'Brien needs a friend joined by Sonom Obsession.

Matt Gourley is out.

He's on paternity leave and we wish him and his lovely family the best.

God, I'm smooth.

And then David Hopping joining us.

How are you, David?

I'm good, are you?

Sonia, you said that you heard from your father?

Yes.

Gil.

Was this yesterday or the other day?

This 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 you know, my parents are, you know, they're traditional people.

And I am, I'm, I have, I got a mouth.

And why are laughing so hard?

No, but you know what, Sonia, 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 was born in a very small village.

Yes, he was.

Where was this?

He 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,

on the podcast.

And he said, you, you, you're a mother.

You have kids.

Like he, he went on for, and I was like, oh my god, my dad's actually upset.

Yeah.

Couldn't think of which clip he would have been upset about.

I say just so many times on this podcast, I talk about Dicks.

Yeah.

I talk about vaginas.

I talk about like heated rivalry all the time.

I couldn't.

I was like telling Tacas like, did I, is there one thing that was agreed to?

If I'm saying to Santa Claus, thanks for the gift and Santa's like, 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 filth.

You're just constantly, it's butts, it's buns, you know, you, you love it.

And so what did you say?

Did you defend yourself to your dad?

No, I was just like, I, I really needed to figure out which thing upset him.

So I said, which clip?

And then he said me, I appeared on my friend Rick's podcast.

I know Rick, yeah.

You were at Glassman and he, I was on his podcast and he, we released a clip not even

from this one.

So I'm like, clearly, he'd never watches this podcast because otherwise he'd be really

pissed.

Yeah.

It was that podcast.

And I, what were you talking about?

I said the, I said the word fuck like twice.

And my dad was, and you wait a minute, wait a minute, 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 paint a picture for the people listening.

Your father is very distinguished at, very handsome, an older gentleman, he's got a big

white mustache.

Okay.

No, does he not?

I knew you were going to the mustache.

No, no, I'm just saying.

He's always had a mustache.

Does he not look like, he looks a lot like the guy who carves Pinocchio, Jepetto.

He does.

Does he not?

Does he bear a resemblance to Jepetto?

Just say.

Yeah.

Okay, fine.

Yeah.

I'm saying 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?

Oh, you're, you're actually asking me.

I'm saying your father carved your brother.

Okay.

That he is.

In fact, Jepetto.

And I do hope that someday Danny becomes a real boy.

You know what?

I'm fine with my, you saying these things?

My dad does not watch this podcast, obviously, because how can he not be mad about the thousands

of things I've said?

No, no, you are, you are just, I'm thinking of like a sprinkler shooting water.

You're a sprinkler that just shoots filth, but you get filth on every single part of the

lawn.

You know, the lawn is, 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 this.

Hey, everybody back off.

Cut it out.

I was just in here and these briefs minded my own business.

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

Oh, this is great.

Some good cartoons with this one.

This is, you're, you created this environment.

It's got little glasses.

Okay.

Anyway, that's not the point.

The point is that your parents need to accept who you are.

I know.

I think that's important.

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're a lot

to handle when you were growing up.

Were you not?

I was.

Yeah, I was.

And how are you and Nadia doing these days?

We're cool.

I love her and I love my dad.

Of course you do.

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, like, he was just like toned down a little and I was like, I

don't know how to do that.

No, you can't.

You can't do that.

You know, say something about if we have a conversation about Dix and stuff, like how

are we not supposed to?

I don't know what it is.

The point is that you're usually the one that brings it up.

You know, the topic is not Dix and then you chime in a little bit.

And say, I've seen a dick or two.

That's not what happens.

I'm usually talking about Woodrow Wilson and then you say, did you have a cock?

And I'm like, well, I guess he did, but you know what I mean?

That's usually how it goes.

It's true.

So this is on you and you'll have to pay for this.

Like poop, poop, poopy humor.

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

sight sounds and smells.

And they were always, they would always just, my, you know, my mother would say,

we'd do a show with the masturbating bear and then, you know, a talking, whatever,

money shot Lincoln, money shot Lincoln and all this stuff.

And my mother would say, well, I just thought you looked lovely last night.

That tie you were wearing and she would always go to the thing that she, because she,

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 they'd get a ham for Christmas.

Anyway, hey, Gil, we love you.

I love you.

And your, your daughter's doing a great job and I agree with you.

She's, she's horrible.

Okay.

He did say I was horrible.

This is the end.

My dad didn't say I was horrible.

No, but I did.

I also give him a lot of credit.

He carved.

Yes.

Okay.

Your brother.

He carved him.

You start off being nice to my dad and then you started talking about how he's.

How many times in 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, Sonia, Gil wants to talk to you.

Yes.

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 doing it.

Without me doing it.

Yeah.

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 this.

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 docu-series, the American Revolution is available to stream on pbs.org and the

PBS app and hopefully he's the guest.

He is the guest.

I'm sure this is true.

He is the guest and curious to hear what he has to say about cox and giz and butts and

buns and poo poo and pee pee.

This wonderful, wonderful historian who has brought the fabric of what is America into

our lives, refreshed it and is just the very best that America has.

To offer poo poo pee pee.

Ken Burns, welcome.

Ken I am thrilled that you're here.

We've spoken a couple of times, but your series on the American Revolution was an absolute

delight, loved it and fascinating for me because I grew up in Massachusetts right outside

Boston in Brookline, 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 Brookline and

shows a few hills and I stand up like a nerd and cheer and I'm like Brookline.

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 New Hampshire, there's always Walpole, this tiny little village, the only reason

why I justified it.

I've lived there for 47 years is that Walpole Gazette 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.

That's to fight the little hometown shout out too.

Well, and I saw what you were doing and I thought it was pathetic, I told you this would

be the take down.

This is the take down, 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

is this come out?

It's been out.

No, I know yours is out, but I'm sorry about this, yeah, this podcast.

I was told this was live.

Yeah, yeah, this is going to, I did Joe Rogan, it was live.

No, no, no, no, no, no, Joe Rogan is a different situation, no, Joe Rogan is different,

he's brave, he puts it out live, we are, we sit with, these are sensual laboratory where

they're scrubbed of any opinions or, you know, possible woke diatribes.

So that's not going to happen here, but, you know, at the time, and it should 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 is probably going to be two to three months from now, a three months?

April.

Yeah.

Why are we even here?

This is insane.

Yeah, two to three months from now.

I mean, we, I don't know where we'll be.

We have a very packed release schedule, but we wanted to make sure this happened.

Okay.

Well, I would like to, I mean, I was really excited about this one.

What's happening?

I hate the other guests we're talking to.

I mean, I love them.

The one that whatever's 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?

Aw.

Yeah.

Dreadful 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.

I said, let's do this.

Look, look, we're going to be celebrating 250 if we survive until 2039, which is when

the US government starts.

Yeah.

So don't get me started because there's, there's a 31, which is Yorktown.

There's 33, which is there, you know, 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.

We like to say history repeats 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.

Right.

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.

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 ranker and sort of muck

raking and stuff.

And that it also represented 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?

I said, there, but the more interesting thing is this underlying resonance, the thing

you have to do as a filmmaker, though, in order for the thing to speak more directly

is to be disciplined, like Odysseus tied to the lash to the mast where you can see, hear

that those echoes, but you don't go, oh, isn't this 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 epidemics 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, Plutche Charles as the French who came to our aid and without whose help

we don't have a country would say again, watching it.

And as you said, smallpox is a, there's 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 inoculation 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, yeah, that's true, but they had broad sides back then.

They had their version of the internet.

They had people saying irresponsible and flammatory things all the time and everybody's

reading it.

Sam Adams is a failure as a brewer and a tax collector.

He's really good as a propagandist who says, my job is to keep my fellow citizens alive

to their grievances.

Yes.

Sound familiar?

They're 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 and my 51, 52% are

a mile wide by a kind of an inch thick.

And that what you want, the ability to transcend the dialectic of yes and no one and zero

red state, blue state, is to tell a good story because it has a kind of benign Trojan horse

effect.

It kind of said, 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 hagiography about

the American Revolution.

That's it.

And we would get these textbooks, you know, George Washington chopped down the cherry tree

and I cannot tell a lie.

You know, these people who represented us as the represented to us as these marble men

who are 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 slave holder.

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.

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'd 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

likewise divided within ourselves.

And we have chances to sort of tilt towards that virtue or tilt towards that vanity.

And so I think with the revolution, it's understandable why we've made it bloodless

and gallant.

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 man 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 or really screws up in New York and at Brandywine and a couple

of other places where just the luck doesn't fall, but he's able to inspire people to fight

in the dead of night, picks a boardnet talent without any worry about whether they're better

generals than him.

Just happy to have.

I just say something.

This is what I do.

Yeah.

Now, you're going to say, you're going to say, oh, this is insane, but I'm very like Washington.

I, first of all, I'm tall, very tall.

He was maybe six.

He's a man to room.

Six, two.

I made sure everyone here is inoculated against smallpox, right?

I pick looking around for the people I've picked who I think are good.

Okay.

Well, this isn't a good example.

This room.

Oh, man.

No, but I think I'm, I'm very much like Washington because his other, his biggest and 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, people, we're going to really be so proud of you when you just walk away.

Yeah.

Well, I don't like the way this is gone.

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Yeah, it is.

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Doing taxes used to mean sitting in a waiting room, handing over a pile of papers and then

staring across a desk for hours while someone berates you.

Yeah.

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I do want to say one thing about watching this long, interested me.

He was kind of widened the hips wasn't he?

Kind of a pair shaped guy.

I'm sorry, but he was.

And I hate to body shame our first president and someone to know there are no photographs

and you got to trust Gilbert Stewart or Coppley or others.

Corvidol was the one who really pointed it out in one of his books.

Corvidol has some access to grinds and founders to take down.

Yeah.

He really he portrays Washington as a 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're probably regretting being here?

You think I'm you got enough friends.

You're saying, well, how did this turn this prickly?

But how did you get me into this?

You know, more publicists have been fired after a corner by an user friend taping.

It's always the first thing.

Why?

Whose idea?

You said we do have something we have a few things in common.

One thing is that I read, I'm addicted to reading history and my wife loves fiction.

And she's always trying to get me to read fiction as if eating my vegetables.

Right.

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 know, 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 gulag.

I'm sitting there with like a rump punch next to me, but she can be reading, you know,

Shotson needs it.

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.

I mean, there is as much drama in what was and what is as anything the human imagination

makes up.

But it's not a choice because you're going to lose Shakespeare.

If you're not going to let people make stuff up, right, you're going to 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.

But even one of my probably my favorite book is a historical novel, The Killer Angels,

which is what got me into to do the Civil War.

I finished reading that.

Is that true?

Let me tell you this.

David McCullough gave it to me.

I finished reading it on Christmas day 1984.

I was visiting my dad in Michigan and I said, I know what I'm going to do for my next

film.

And he said, what's that son?

And I said, the Civil War and he goes, what part?

And I said, all of it.

And he just shook his head and walked out of the room.

And 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 Art Benton, on all the 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,

because Shelby foot one said, you know, it's a 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.

The 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, is, at president, he's

going to be the next president for sure he marries this young girl, his wife.

And at some moment, she leaves him.

So we do not know to this day why she did something sexual and old lover, 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, in Congress.

I mean, it's just about, if somebody gave me $180 million and said you had to do a feature

film, I did the life of, of Sam Houston based on, on this, on the raven, on the raven.

Well, you know, it's, there's so many things that really happened in our history and just

in history in general, that if you wrote it as a screenplay, someone would say, this

is too much.

You know what I mean?

This is, you lost me, you know, an avatar is more believable than right.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

You got a little crazy here when he swims across the river and you think, no, no, this

is all.

All true.

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, so does, so does 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 read 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?

Have it.

Okay.

This is your next, your next stop.

This is your next stop.

I did the blue in the gray, but it's like the blue in the gray, but it's blue in the

gray.

It's blue.

Imagine this civil war with spanking.

Yeah.

So Shelby, Shelby food said, Shelby's food said to me once, I was struggling over how to tell

something and he goes, you know, how to tell that like a very complicated thing between

Shancersville, Vicksburg and Gettysburg and he just said, God is the greatest dramatist,

meaning stop doing what everybody else does, which is, do either all of Vicksburg before

Gettysburg or do all of Gettysburg after Vicksburg, 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.

Lee surrenders to Grant and a few days later, Lincoln, who's been working 18 hours a day,

has enough time to go to the theater.

I mean, I've had a few projects which, which shall remain named.

It's been numerous with various places in this town where people are wanted to adapt

something we've done and the stuff that's good is the stuff that's true and the stuff

that's made up is the stuff that just doesn't work.

It doesn't work.

You can 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 building, 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.

I like anything that makes you stop because 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 as 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

at great depths.

Yes.

And you put them in these casings 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 and 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 because you've seen, I mean, there's something

unprecedented about the level of the perfidy and where it's taking place at this moment.

But I've seen it in the story, if you belong, 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.

So 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 in a revolution.

Yeah.

And I'll say, okay, have you heard of the Civil War?

Yeah.

And do you know what was going on in the Civil War and was going on in Vietnam?

But we, 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 or baseball, you're taking these things that are a really important part

of America and who we are.

And you're telling us about this wonderful gift, at the same time, you're telling us

all the darkness that's involved.

You're just telling the truth.

You're not trying to push it one way or the other, 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, 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 infield 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

and they thank God for delivering that.

They never do that when they hit into a game ending double play, right?

Right.

So if there is that, oh no, it's, I always think if you're going to thank God, you also

have to blame him.

Yeah.

And I want to see people doing that, striking out and going, I defy you God.

You know, the only thing that I've ever seen is Pedro Martinez is, is pulled off the

mound when the Red Sucks 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.

Never seen anybody do it.

But you go back to the revolution.

Most of the founders become, particularly Jeffers and DS, 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 fares of us and it

and makes no distinction between faiths.

What an unbelievably great way to understand it.

So it's my obligation to sort of be better, pursue 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, you know, 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're just trying to pull the fuel rods out of what everybody does is

they make a they of them, it's that it's the it's a playbook of the authoritarian.

This is a bad, the radical this or the they are the cause of all our problems in, you

know, for Hitler, it was the Jews and the Jehovah's Witness and homosexuals and Marxists

and I mean Bolsheviks and whatever it might be, everybody looks to say it's them and, you

know, 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 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

all us with just, you know, 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.

What's also, if you don't read history or you think you're, you're not interested, there's

this belief that the way things are now is the way they've always been also in a, in

an 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 tides to like fundamental Christianity.

I think, no, no, they would have been, I mean, for a long time, that is exactly the Republican

party and Republicans start from the beginning of the party's establishment would have been

kind of horrified by that idea that we were tied to that.

You know what I mean?

So that's a more of a recent invention is 1980, I've got a map of the political parties

and just twist.

I mean, by, there was the last Cabot Lodge to run against a Kennedy in 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 disagreed with them on anything.

I voted for civil rights.

You think, you know, 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. Freeman, 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 1860.

As a Republican.

Yeah.

As the beginning of the Republican party as a national force, the most successful party

unfortunately also because it often tax 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'd use a Southern

or Democrat.

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, you could count on those electoral votes.

And now you wake up on election day and the Republicans count on it.

Ronald Reagan began his traditional post labor day campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi.

That's in Choctel, Connie.

He did not go there to honor Goodwin, Cheney and Schumer, the civil 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, virtues 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 have been solidly anti-Republican because they were trying to promote racial equality

switch over.

And it's just, it's been, 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, kind of founding thing because we live in this narcissistic present.

So therefore we're all chicken littles.

The 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, there's, and 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 I just actually the only time to be alive right now, yeah.

But you know, I'll have people say, well, come on, Corona things are really bad.

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.

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 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.

Go into Graviars in New England and you've got four, three, 18 months, six, eight, 12,

and then, and then 96 and a hundred, are you like, you know, if you got past your, if

you got passed into your teens, you probably lived to be 98 and wrote the Declaration of Independence.

But, but what's, no, it was just, I, there's, I would like people to be able to be

a little more conscious of all the ways in which we're very blessed.

And I also, when I, when I watched the, the American Revolution series, one of the things

that impresses me is just the stunning good luck.

Yeah.

I mean, the idea that, 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.

I think it was Otto Bismarck said, there is a divine Providence that protects drunkards,

children in the United States of America.

Yeah.

And it's just like this wonderful quote where I don't know what is going on with America,

but they always seem to get what it was.

Yes.

Well, this has happened in the early days of the Revolution when the improbable successes

along with mostly failures happened.

They also saw it as a sign of Providence that they would be like the walls of Jericho.

So you would just blow the trumpet and they'd fall down.

Think about it.

They odds on Lexington Green in that morning of April, 1917, 75 or zero of success.

And six and a half really long bloody, this is what we don't admit to, bloody years later,

civil war, revolution and global war is 100%.

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

stuff, go, I mean, it's, a lot of it has to do with the size of the continent, has to

do with the weather.

It has to do with the distance 3,000 miles from the home office.

So a letter coming takes longer than a letter going back because of the Gulf Stream.

And so you just, I mean, Franklin, 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, at brand new one.

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 the, it's not only a little thing, it's a gigantic, the surrender of an entire

British army.

And Franklin goes, whoa, he goes right to the country.

Why didn't you read me that one first?

And yes.

And he passed him first.

I mean, he was pessimistic and disposition towards the news he was about to get.

And then they go to Louis the 16th and within a couple months, they've got two alliances,

one of which is essentially $30 billion paid, 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 help during the

Revolutionary War, go bankrupt, leading to their revolution, they had other problems.

When the declaration came, yeah, there, I mean, the British constitutional monarchy was

pretty good place for a government to live under.

And that's why you're a loyalist in the colonies and you're, excuse, we didn't make

loyalist bad people.

We just made them, they, 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, and then when Franklin's there, they adore him.

And he's speaking the same language.

He's a rock star in front of Franklin.

He's the most famous American on earth because of his scientific stuff, but he's charming

and he's witty and he's, 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 you, 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 man on September 2nd, 1945, that's the date that the Japanese are surrendering

unconditionally on the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay.

He declares Vietnamese independence and he is quoting Thomas Jefferson from that second

sentence and standing next to him are OSS 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 commie,

you can't do that.

He, you know, and you just shift so much, yeah, stayed with him.

And then follow the Geneva Convention and allow 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 and our buddy up until about 1946, or 1945, 46,

and then it switches.

And so I have a propaganda poster of Uncle Sam and I think it's Chiang Kai's Shek and

Churchill and Stalin has 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 you 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, I'll be later seen as a good guy.

You'll see.

Oh, okay.

The 20th century is the bloodiest and it has the biggest killers are Mao followed by Stalin

and a distant third is Hitler.

It's really unbelievable.

And they were our ally.

The second world war is won by American manufacturing, followed by Soviet sacrifice, followed

by Western ally sacrifice.

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 I mean, to understand exactly what happened and Stalin had the, you know, the Russian fear

is Putin does of needing all the buffer states.

And so he was going to hang on to it.

There was no army that could, that was the size of his.

There was no energy to decide as, as Churchill's culminating, go take it back to go take

it back.

Nobody was going to do it.

And so we ended up with a post war paralysis, but we ended up with the martial plan.

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.

Yeah.

And we have done a lot that created, because it was the right thing to do.

And then we had a stasis.

Now you can spend your entire life and many people do 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 interests 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 this seems very superficial, but you just listed about 35 things

with great eloquence and fluidity.

I'm guessing we're sort of the same age.

I can't do that anymore.

I can start to list things and then I go, eh, eh, eh, eh, well, you know what I mean.

It's really, why do you do that?

It's really bad because I'm 10 years older than you.

So are you really 72?

Are you 62?

42.

Yeah.

I saw that doctor this morning too.

No, I'm 62.

I'm 62.

That was just here.

He's going to do that.

I'm very impressed.

You could never.

I can't.

If I was listing 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.

I know I'm 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.

I'm very shallow, Ken.

I'm thinking of the acts that were passed.

The GWC, the MIO, the WWN, the Lab of Habitat, the C for the Dubit, the Rupert of Habitat,

the C for your shit.

I was so impressed.

The whole time, you're just like, my brain no work.

My brain's so cold.

Do you want to feel bad about yourself?

Have a conversation with Ken Burr.

Now I picture a picture of cameras sweeping past black and white photos of me looking sad.

And you hear a shoken farewell.

Well, what we often do is start in the photograph, off in the dark, on a vague thing, and then

expand to the extra close-up of the eyes, and you begin to feel the tragedy of it.

As Conan's mind slipped away.

He knew mom.

Then he had to retreat to the idiocy of a podcast.

Mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, what's make that documentary?

You would have three viewers.

You will be stripped of every award you've ever won.

Can you talk about the idiocy of podcast for a second?

This year, promoting, I mean, I always do that.

There's no money in PBS to go out and promote stuff to speak of, so you can't put billboards

on Melrose and Beverley, saying, or the buses or the subways or whatever across the country.

You go out and we did 40 cities, 80 screenings, 250 interviews, radio, satellite tours, TV

and radio, and also this time, more podcasts.

I think there are 352 million podcasts in the United States, and I now have done half

of them today.

Today's the half, half, half the audience.

So what you're saying is we're the last stop.

No, no, I'm sure they're going to give me more.

Conan realized, mom, mom, mom, mom, that he was the last stop.

I'll do the music if you want.

You just give me that.

It's hard for me to talk and do the music.

Now that I can't, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom.

Conan knew that there was, he was the lowest of the low.

My dearest Sarah.

Conan writing home.

My dearest Liza, Ken Burns today said he had done every podcast, and now he was doing it.

This is all, this is making me so happy right now.

I thought you were going to fill in.

Oh, sorry.

My dearest Liza.

His brother doesn't work anymore.

Yeah, so I'm just making me so happy that you're singing that tune.

I've been singing that soon, and dining out on that tune for 36 years.

I often, I downloaded it onto my, I have, I have this

sense, 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 when your heart rates up, because that really gets me going, and then I kind of runs

on the treadmill and lift the weights into everything I have to do.

But I dropped in there a long time ago into my workout feed, a show can fare 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.

Maybe it's just to restore your heart rate.

Yeah, exactly.

I just stop whatever I'm doing.

I'll have to cry in the middle of your work out.

They say it's really good.

Yeah.

And to think about everything this country has been through.

Yes.

On eBay, every find has a story.

Like if you're looking for a vintage band T, the one you wore everywhere,

until you lost it.

Blah, blah.

Or your brother Neil burned it.

Oh, now you're on eBay.

And there it is.

The things you love have a way of finding their way back to you, especially on eBay.

From rare collectibles and vintage cars to designer fashion, it's all there.

You can find it if it's out there.

And it can be back in your loving arms.

Shop eBay for millions of finds each of the story.

eBay, things, people, love.

You know, I value hard work.

I just do have an incredible work ethic.

Yeah.

And that brings me to Neutrograin.

Neutrograin is a hard working snack.

Okay.

I was wondering where you were going.

It fits into real.

Well, of course, the minute David knew, the minute I said hard work, he knew Neutrograin

is coming.

It's a hard working snack that fits into real life.

And it helps hard working people get it done.

Let me explain.

Yeah.

It's made with 10 grams of whole grains, 10 vitamins and minerals, and no high fruit,

toast corn syrup.

Yeah.

Neutrograin is portable.

And I demand that of a snack.

Yeah.

I demand that it be portable.

Sometimes a great snack will come out and it's over 600 pounds.

I can't lug that around.

600,000.

It's great for a grab and go option.

Busy.

I'm going to grab my Neutrograin bar, chomp chomp.

And I'm doing my best work ever.

Yeah.

You can choose between strawberry flavored Neutrograin for delicious classic

or new Neutrograin crunchy for something new.

You didn't see that come and did you?

Uh-oh.

Do you guys think you're hard working enough to merit these new Neutrograin bars?

I'm obviously.

I don't know.

I don't know if there's more hard working assistance.

Okay, tell me what you do and I will assess if you're hard working enough.

You know what?

You look really nice today.

I massage your ego, which is important because you go up in front of an audience.

So you don't mean it?

No.

You look horrible.

I look terrible.

Yeah.

Okay, well, you know what?

That does take a lot of energy to lie to a man with an incredibly fragile ego.

Yeah.

And you've been doing that for years.

For years?

That's a ton of work.

That I think you might merit a Neutrograin barber.

Thank you.

See about David Hopping.

David, what do you do?

I want to state the obvious.

You're here right now, which means that this recording was in your calendar.

There you go.

You went back to my calendar.

So you think you are hard working because you clicked into a computer.

And typed.

You know what?

And then hit save.

I'm proud of both of you.

You're both hard workers.

Yeah.

Find nutritious and always delicious Neutrograin bars at your favorite store

or online retailer today.

And look for new Neutrograin Crunchy bars in stores near you.

So a show can farewell 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 musicians came up with.

Yeah, so his name is Jay Younger.

He's a Jewish kid from the Bronx who wrote the most beautiful Scotch Irish

lament 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.

A 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 on the first side,

I heard this thing and I went, wow, he runs a music camp still does in the caskills

and near the Ashokin Reservoir part of the New York City thing.

And they were breaking up for the summer.

Everybody was heading back to the new school year.

And he sat down in like 15 minutes or so.

I wrote a show can 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 Blue,

a Rhode Island soldier, wrote back to his wife,

both his death at the first battleable run.

And it's, I've 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 Bar Mitzvah.

Yeah, I read a can.

The original title was it could, the horror.

Look at you, more comedy.

The horror, the horror.

Very good.

You're, you're killing it.

I, I feel very threatened right now, very threatened.

But you got to 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 of our country.

Like he didn't know he was George Washington.

He didn't know there's going to be a dollar bill or a quarter, a big spiky thing

in the national capital named for him or a state on the other side of the continent,

called that's name for him.

And every other state has a county or a town.

He did no idea that's that's what was going to 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.

You know what it is?

They're aware of you.

They talk, John Adams talks about the millions yet unborn.

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, 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 a pursuit of happiness, a few phrases, Jefferson says,

all experience has shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable.

It's not hard to parse.

It means that here before everybody just puts up with the authoritarian boot and you know what?

We're not going to do that anymore.

We're not going to do that.

It's going to take extra energy and I think whenever we're in a bad spot,

it's because that energy has atrophied and that we've forgotten that we have that energy,

not you within me, not that somebody else is going to take care of it, but I'm going to do.

And you're seeing one of the good things about all these young people who are,

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 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 with Tennyson wrote 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, we invent civilization to forstall the law of the jungle.

And what you have are guys 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 is I watch it and I feel

reinvested.

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 Rushy, the only physician to sign said the American war is over.

But the American revolution is still going on.

Doesn't mean like Jefferson, I'm sure you would wish he could take it back.

That's a tree of liberty has to be watered with a 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 know you want to do all the other podcasts first.

No, no, let me get to some of the half a million more that I've got to do.

Yeah, you know, we have a pretty big audience on this one.

So like, you know, you might want to skip some of those other ones, you know.

Five plus you and me.

No, Ed Wiener doesn't listen to this.

Oh, he doesn't listen.

He doesn't have no patience to do so.

So we're six, including you and me.

Yeah, but six that really 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.

I'm totally down with that.

And I have a brief nine part to respond to every question.

And listen to Ken Burns's 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.

I'd 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, you know, being like that little kid

and in Schindler's list, completely submerged in shit,

that, you know, he's he's submerged in shit because he's dedicated to living.

And so that our next job is repair and restoration.

And we should be thinking about that rather than oh,

is this guy 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.

And, and you know, things will, there's a fluidity.

And the only thing that's certain is it's going to change in some way.

And you have to actually be prepared to catch that change.

Yeah, I 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.

Well, Ken, again, if anyone out there hasn't listened to the American Revolution series,

we actually, they can watch it too.

Because listening is a podcasting kind of thing.

You know, we spent 10 years assembling images.

Play the music.

I mean, there were no photographs.

I swear to God, I swear to God, I didn't realize

that there were images that went along with the show.

I watched it on television, but my face was averted from the screen.

Oh, okay.

And I'm told it was quite beautiful.

As Conan's eyesight failed and he listened to the broadcast of Ken Burns Special.

Conan was filled with joy.

Pretty dense, literate thing.

You can listen to him too.

It's okay.

But there's some nice, there's some great paintings and some cool reenactments.

And you know, it's, it's beautiful.

And I don't know why I said listen.

I think because we're doing a podcast.

No, I think I was really thrown when you made that long list.

I think I, I was in shock that my brain has atrophied to this degree.

So practice the list.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

Deck.

Eurasian.

Constitution.

Delivery rights.

He jumped ahead.

Land-Gran College is.

Homestead Act.

National Park.

Yeah, National Park.

Child Labor, we forgot to say even anti-trust laws, you know?

That's pretty good.

Then I think there'd be all the new deal programs.

And then certainly.

Let's, let's social security labors write to organize.

WPA, which created 10,000 landing scripts.

And the civilian conservation core with all that work on the parks.

I mean, if you landed at LaGuardia Airport,

New Deal went through the Trebrow Bridge, New Deal,

Lincoln Tunnel, 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 scripts, a billion trees.

We're not even out of the New Deal.

The P-Night is neither a P nor a Knight.

It's a legum.

Thank you very much.

That I still know, and that's my list.

Ken, 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 most wonderful book.

He has put his heart and his soul into it.

No, and this is 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 and

graved, and I was just geeking out over them thinking,

I'm going to get a powder horn.

Went on Amazon.

Nope.

No powder horns?

No, no Revolutionary War power horns.

Powder horns.

You took a powder horn.

Exactly.

Okay.

I'll do the comedy around here.

Now you're doing the comedy, too?

I'm getting my ass kicked.

Hey, Ken.

You are here for the take down of me.

Yeah, I know, and this was jujitsu.

Ken, thank you so much.

This is amazing.

This is really fun.

Thank you.

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