Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend - Ken Burns

Episode Date: March 23, 2026

Documentarian Ken Burns feels hopeful about being Conan O’Brien’s friend.   Ken sits down with Conan to discuss his latest docuseries The American Revolution, the historical myth of “us vs. them", and how his 1990 series The Civil War brought a recent American folk tune into cultural ubiquity.   For Conan videos, tour dates and more visit TeamCoco.com. Got a question for Conan? Call our voicemail: [phone]. Get access to all the podcasts you love, music channels and radio shows with the SiriusXM App! Get 3 months free using this show link: https://siriusxm.com/conan. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hi, my name is Ken Burns, and I feel hopeful about being Conan O'Brien's friend. Well, Ken, you shouldn't be? Because this is the takedown of Ken Burns. Right. You have coasted way too long. 50 years of coasting. Oh, everybody loves their Ken Burns. That's why all the henchmen are here.

Yeah, get a boss. Get a boss. I have with me two people who don't read. I'm pretty sure they don't write. We read magazines? Yeah, yeah. Oh, I'm sorry. I forgot about us.

magazine. That does count as my 1990s is showing. Fall is here, hear the yell, back to school, ring the bell, brand new shoes, walking loose, climb the fence, books and pens, I can tell that we are going to be friends. Yes, I can tell that we are going to be friends. Hey there, welcome to Conan O'Brien needs a friend, joined by Sonam of Sessian. Hi. Matt Goreley is out. is 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. How are you? Sona, you said that you heard from your father? Yes. Gil. Gil. Was this yesterday? 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. Yeah. And I am, I got a mouth. And why are laughing so hard?

No, but you know what, Sona, 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?

This was in Turkey, what used to be Armenia. Thank you very much. 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. Yeah. But I couldn't think of which clip he would have been upset about. I say giz so many times on this podcast I talk about dicks I talk about vaginas I talk about like heated rivalry all the time I couldn't I was like

telling tech I was like did I Is there one thing that was egregious? It's like saying to Santa Claus Thanks for the gift And Santa's like what Do you know what I 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 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. He wrote Glassman. And I was on his podcast. And we released a clip, not even from this one. So I'm like, clearly he never watches this podcast. Because otherwise he'd be really pissed.

It was that podcast. And I watched it. What were you talking about? I said the word fuck like twice. Okay. Wait a minute. And my dad was upset about 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 paint a picture for the people listening. Your father is very distinguished, very handsome. Yes. An older gentleman. Yes.

He's got a big white mustache. Okay. Does he not? I knew when you were going to the mustache. Yes, he's always had a mustache. Does he not look like he looks a lot like the guy who carves Pinocchio, Geppetto. He does. Does he not?

Does he bear a resemblance to Geppetto? Just say. Yeah, a little. He's a little Jepetto. Yeah. 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 they could be a real boy. Do you remember? Do you remember? Oh, you're actually asking me. I'm saying your father carved your brother that he is, in fact, Chepetto. And I do hope that someday Danny becomes a real boy. You know what? Yes.

I'm fine with you saying 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 on this podcast? No, no, no. You are just, I'm thinking of like a sprinkler shooting water. You're a sprinker 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 this. Hey, everybody back off. Cut it out. I was just in here and these briefs minding my own business. My penis is always reading a tiny copy of the New Yorker. Oh, this is great.

There's some good cartoons on this one. You created this environment. He'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.

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. Yeah. I was. And how were you and Nadia doing these days? We're cool. I love her and I love my dad. Of course you do. And I 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. I don't know how to do that.

You can't do that. If you say something about if we have a conversation about dicks and stuff, like, how are we not supposed to talk about jazz? I will point out that you're usually the one that brings it up. You know, the topic is not dicks 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 he have a cock? And I'm like, well, I guess he did.

Oh, my God. 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. I like poo-poo-poo-pee humor. Yeah, yeah, you 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. Yeah. And they were always. they would always just, you know, 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 tie 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 they'd get a ham for Christmas.

Anyway, hey, Gil, we love you. I love you, Pop. Yeah. Your daughter's doing a great job. And I agree with you. She's horrible. Okay. He didn't say I was horrible.

This is the end. My dad didn't say I was horrible. No, but I also give him a lot of credit. He carved your brother. He carved him. You start off being nice to my dad, and then you started talking about how he's how he's too bad. 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, Sona Gill wants to talk to you. Yes, yeah. 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. Without me doing that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like you wearing glasses not being able to do a bit.

And if there's no, if I didn't have a 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 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.b.S.org and the PBS app. And I can't believe he's the guest. He is the guest. After this intro. He is the guest, and I'm curious to hear what he has to say about cocks and jizz and butts and buns and poo-poo and pee-poo and 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-pipi.

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, 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 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's sort of rag sheet that, you know, had opinions and thoughts and was part of it. So I justified 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 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 saying about this. This is live? I was told this was live. Yeah, yeah, this is going to. I did Joe Rogan, it was live.

No, no, it was. No, Joe Roggan is a different situation. No, Joe Rogan's different. He's brave. He puts it out live. We are, we sit with, these are sent to a laboratory where they're scrubbed of any opinions. Right. Or, you know, possible woke diatribes.

So that's just not going to happen here. But, you know, at the time, and 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 is probably going to be two to three months from now. Two to three months? April. Yeah. Why are we even here?

This is insane. 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. Okay. Well, I would like to, I mean, I was really excited about this one. I hate the other guests we're talking to. I mean, I load them.

Jesus. The one that, whatever's one is out now or the one last week or the one two weeks from now, these people are my enemies. Good friends of yours? Awful. Dreadful people. I was excited about this, and now you tell me that it's kind of. 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, look, we're going to be celebrating 250 if we survive until 2039, which is when the U.S. government starts. So don't get me started because there's 31, which is Yorktown, there's 33, which is the British leave. Well, we are taping this as we approach the 250. 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 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 sum. Which means human nature doesn't change. So that human nature is going to superimpose itself over the seemingly randed 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. This is 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 rancor. Ranker and sort of muckraking 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 gangster says that they're, but the more interesting thing is this underlying resonance. The thing you have to do is a filmmaker, though, in order for the thing to speak more directly is to be disciplined, like Odysseus tied to lash to the mast, where you can see, hear 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 engendered. There's 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, plus a change 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, 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 broadsides back then. They had their version of the internet. They had people saying irresponsible, inflammatory things all the time and everybody's reading it. Sam Adams is a failure as a brewer and a tax collector. but he's really good as a propagandist who says,

my job is to keep my fellow citizens alive to their grievances. Yes. Sound familiar? There are 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, but 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. And 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 as, as 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 slaveholder. We always have to accept that both sides of the story. We have to accept that. And I like my, you know, these humans to be human beings. 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, 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 venality. And so I think with the revolution, it's understandable why we've made it bloodless and gallant. You know, we've 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 where we can say it's literally one person that holds them together. Deeply flawed, as you point out, rash rides out on the battlefield, risking his life, which means the entire cause, makes a couple a really bad tactical mistakes. Really screws up in New York. Really screws up in New York and it, 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, pick subordinate talent without any worry about whether they're better generals than him. He's happy to have. Can I just say something? This is what I do. Yeah. Now, you're going to say, talk about, you're going to

say, oh, this is insane. But I'm very like Washington. First of all, I'm tall. Very tall. He was maybe six, six, two. I've 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 very much like Washington. Because you're tall. His biggest and most important thing besides convincing people that they were not Georgians or New Hampshireites, but Americans and deferring to Congress is that he gave up his power twice. So these people are going to really be so proud of you when you just walk away.

Yeah. Well, I don't like the way this is gone. I do want to say one thing about Washington that's long interested me. He was kind of widen the hips, wasn't he? Kind of a pear-shaped guy. I'm sorry, but he was. I hate to body shame our first president and someone who... to know there are no photographs and you've got to trust Gilbert Stewart or Copley or others.

Gorveydall was the one who really pointed it out in one of his books. Well, Gorby Dal 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, Ken, you're probably regretting being here. You think I'm... You got enough friends. You're saying, well, how did this turn this quickly? But how did you get me into this? You know, more publicists have been fired after a corner of my needs a 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, eat your vegetables. And I just have this burning desire to know what happened. And if she's reading this wonderful, powerful novel, I'm like, yeah, but 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 rum punch next to me. But she could be reading, you know, Schultzhenitsyn. 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 gotten me to read. 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 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. I have to say even one of my, probably my favorite book is a historical novel, The Killer Angels, which is. This would got me into the, to do the Civil War. I finished reading that. Is that true? Let me tell you this. I gave, 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. Yeah. Yeah. And it was, it was because the Civil War had been looming over all the subjects of the film I'd made in 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 stuff, 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 Foot once 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 has to 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. 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 going to 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 an old lover whatever it

was he resigned the governorship he went to what is now memphis 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 a If somebody gave me $180 million and said you had to do a feature film, I do the life of Sam Houston based on this, on the Raven. On the Raven. Well, you know, 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, eh, this is too much.

You know what I mean? You lost me, you know, Avatar is more believable than race. 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. 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 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. Haven't. Okay. This is your next...

This is your next documentary, Ken. I did the blue and the gray, but I... No, no. It's like the blue and the gray, but a little different. It's bluer. Imagine the Civil War with spanking. Yeah.

So Shelby Foote said... Shelby's foot said to me once, I was struggling over how to tell something, and he goes, how to tell the, like, a very complicated thing between Chancelliviv, Vicksburg, and Gettysburg. And he just said, God is the great astronomerous, 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. 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 shall remain nameless 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 could say he would never say that or he would never do that or why did you need to add that because there's is 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 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 because I spent so much of my life in New York City living there. And every time I pass the Brooklyn Bridge, I think about what went into making that. And it used to be just this thing. It'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 at great depths. And get casons. Yes, and you put them in these casons 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 in 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, 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 a few way 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 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 in the revolution.

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 and 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 be on guard and we have. 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. 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 in baseball, only hits home 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 infield or a second basement. The recent seventh game of the World Series

was exactly that case where the big superstars didn't do the thing that the second baseman 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 ballplayers who all, they 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 oversight. No, no, it's, 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 time I've ever seen is Pedro Martinez is, is pulled off the mound when the Red Sox 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 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 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. 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, right? And 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. Yeah. Is they make a they of them.

It's the playbook of the authoritarian. This is the bad, the radical this or the enemy. They are the cause of all our problems. The enemy within, you know, for Hitler. it 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, you know, I've made films about the U.S., 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 U.S.

But the thing I've known after doing this for 50 plus years is there is no them. There's no them, know them. Yeah. And our obligation is to try to remember. 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 off with 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 well it'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 inaccurate way so right 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, 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 it, that we were tied to that. Do you know what I mean? That's a more of a recent invention, 1980. I've got a map of the political parties and they just twist. I mean, by there was the last Cabot Lodge to run against Kennedy or anybody in was 62 when Ted Kennedy took the seat vacated by his 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. And you think, you know, wait a second. The Republican Party was founded in. 1854 in a schoolhouse in Ripon, Wisconsin to end slavery. The Whig Party had died. They were looking out of the ashes to start something. They put up a candidate, John C. Fremant, 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. 40% of the vote 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's civil rights, which Kennedy couldn't have passed, took it and got it through. And then the Voting Rights Act, he knew he was losing

the South. But he was a Southerner Democrat. You woke up on January. Oh, you woke up an election day and you had every one of the 11 states of the former confederacy in the Democratic Party comp. 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 Chalked Al-Conny. He did not go there to honor Goodwin, Cheney, and Schumer, the three 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'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, confounding thing because we live in this narcissistic present. So therefore, we're all chicken littles. The sky is falling. It's worse that it ever could be. And you don't have the agency to pull yourself out of the nosedive that you're put yourself into. Well, and this is, there's never been a, One of the sentiments I agree with is there's never been a better time to be alive than right now.

It's actually the only time to be alive right now. Yeah. But I'll have people say, well, come on, 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. Do 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 was just the way it was. That's why there are 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, 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 96. And 100. Are you like, you, no, if you got past your, if you got past, uh, into your teens, um, you probably lived to be 98 and wrote the Declaration of Independence. But, but what's, um, 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. Yeah. And I also, when I, when I watch the, the American Revolution series, one of the, the things that impresses me is just this 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. I think 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 where I don't know what is going on with America, but they always seem to get away

Well, this has happened in the early days of the revolution when the improbable successes, along with mostly failures happen, 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 fall down. Think about it. The odds on Lexington Green in that morning of April, 1775 are 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. it's 100%. And the phenomenal good luck in the midst of some really bad luck and 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 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, in Franklin, this rider 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 had had. Through Washington's neglect at Brandywine. 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 to the Comptivision. Why didn't you read me that one first? 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 XVIth. And within a couple months, they've got two alliances, one of which is essentially $30 billion with aid, an army and navy, you know, 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 too. When the Declaration came, I mean, the British constitutional Marnakee was pretty good

place for a government to live under. And that's why you're a loyalist in the colonies. And you're excused. We didn't make loyalists 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. He's a rock star in France. 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 Hocci men 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 kami, you can't do that. He, you know, and you would just think if we 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 and our buddy up until about 1946. Yeah.

You know, or 1945, 46. And then it switches. And so I have a propaganda poster of Uncle Sam and I think it's Chiang Kishek 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 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 this happens so many times in history. It's kind of fascinating. So the biggest, I mean, the 20. 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. 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 Allied sacrifice. It's really, it's a triumph. In 1945, more than 50 percent 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, as Putin does, of needing all the buffering. for 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 Churchill's fulminating, 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 Marshall 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.

Historically, we've, we have done a lot that's just because it was the right thing. 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're 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 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, well, you know what I mean. It's really, how 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 a doctor this morning. No, I'm 60. I'm 62. That was, did you see her? He didn't see her do that? I'm very, you could never. I can't. If I was listing the ingredients in my smoothie, I couldn't do that. I know. I did them in kind of chronological order, too. I saw that. I'm looking at you do that. And I know I'm supposed to be like, no, these are really good points, but I'm steady. 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 DWC, the M-I-O, the W-W-Dubada-Habur, the Sima-Dubida. Oh my God. The rubidabba-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a. So you know your shit? Yeah, see?

I was so impressed, and then the whole time you're just like, my brain's no worky. My brain's so good. If you want to feel bad about yourself, have a conversation with Ken Byrne. Now I picture cameras sweeping past black and white photos of me looking sad. And you hear a chokin farewell. What we often do is start in the photograph off in the dark, a vague thing, and then panned to the extra close-up up the eyes. And you begin to feel the tragedy of it.

As Conan's mind slipped away, he knew, ma-ma-ma. Then he had to retreat to the idiocy of a podcast. Mama, ma, ma, ma, ma, ma, ma, ma. Let's make that documentary. You'll 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? Yeah.

Like this year promoting, I mean, I always do that. There's no money in PBS to go out and promote stuff, you know, to speak of. So you can't put billboards on Melrose and Beverly, you know, saying or the buses or the subways or whatever across the country. So you go out and we did 40 cities, 80 screenings. you know, 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 is half the podcast.

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, ma-ma-ma-ma, that he was the last stop. I'll do the music if you want. You can just get back. It's hard for me to talk and do the music. Not that I can't. Conan knew that 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. Well, I will see. This is all, this is making me so happy right now. I thought you were going to fill in. Oh, sorry. My dearest Liza.

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 soon and dining out on that tune for 36 years. I often, I downloaded it onto my, I have this, sounds self-serving, but I do like to work out. 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 when your heart

rates up because 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. But I dropped in there a long time ago into my workout feed, a show can farewell. And it will come on. And 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 and then go back. Exactly.

I just stop whatever I'm doing. To have a cry in the middle of your workouts, they say is really good. And to think about everything this country has been through. Yes. So a show can farewell was not... It's not contemporary to the 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 event 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 of the first side, I heard this thing.

And I went, wow. He runs a music camp, still does in the Catskills 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 a Shoken farewell. And it is, I 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 Sullivan Blue, a Rhode Island soldier wrote back to his wife before his death at the first Battle of Bull Run.

And it's, 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. Yeah, yeah. He wrote it for a bar mitzvah. Yeah, right. The original title was it, the horror. Look at you.

More comedy. The horror. The horror. Very good. You're killing it. 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 was going to be a dollar bill or a quarter, a big spiky thing in the national capital name for him

or a state on the other side of the continent that's named for him and every other state has a county or a town. He had no idea 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... There's humility. You know what it is? They're aware of you. 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, Indian land,

but 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, 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 to four, everybody just puts up with you,

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, 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 is not what 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 invent civilization to forestall 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 is I watch it and I feel reinvested. That's the word I come up with is that I'm reinvested in 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 giving it away, Benjamin Rush, 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 he would wish he could take it back that the 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 bloodshed right right unbelievable well uh thank you so much for being here and um this is remarkable you have to come back i know you want to do all the other podcasts first no no let me let me get to some of the half a million more that I've got it, got it too.

Yeah. You know, we have a pretty big audience on this one. So, you know, you might want to skip some of those other ones, you know. Five plus you and me. That's seven. No, Eduardo doesn't listen to this. Oh, he doesn't listen. He has no patience to this shit.

So we're six, including you and me. Exactly. Well, that's good. But it's six that really go out and buy stuff. Yeah. So that's important. Ken, 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 not, yeah. Well, I have a brief nine-part response to every question. Listen to Ken Burns' 14-part response. But I've taken such solace in all 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 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 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, 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. And, and, you know, things will, there's a fluidity. And the only thing that's certain is that'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 days are here 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 podcasty kind of thing, you know? What? But we spent 10 years assembling images. Play the music? Even when 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. And I'm told it was quite beautiful. As Conan's eyesight failed,

and he listened to the broadcast of Ken Byrne's special. Conan was filled with joy. They're a pretty dense, literate thing. You can listen to him, too. It's okay. But there's some great paintings and some cool reenactments. 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 fluently. I think I was in shock that my brain has atrophied to this degree. Should you want to practice the list? Yeah. Okay. Decc.

Eeration. Constitution. Bill of rights. Bill of rights. Jim ahead. Landgrant colleges. Homestead Act. Homestate.

National Park. Child labor. I forgot to say. even antitrust laws, you know? That's pretty good. Then I think there'd be all the New Deal programs. And then certainly Social Security, Labor's right to organize. WPA, which created 10,000 landing scripts and the Civilian Conservation Corps with all that work on the parks.

I mean, if you landed at LaGuardia Airport, New Deal, went through the Triborough Bridge, New Deal, Lincoln Tunnel, New Deal, right? Skyline Drive, New Deal, right? All the bridge, all the dams in the Lincoln High. I weigh all the dams in the northwest. That's all 10,000 landing strips, a billion trees. We're not even out of the New Deal. The peanut is neither a pea nor a nut. It's a legum.

Thank you very much. That I still know. That's right. And that's my list. Yeah. Ken, please go out and do more amazing work. Also, this book is gorgeous. So Jeff Ward is our writer that I've worked with for 45 years. This is the most.

wonderful book. He has put his heart and his soul into it. No, and it's just gorgeous artwork to your point. And, uh, and I spent, I've 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 gotta get a powder horn. Yeah. Went on Amazon. Nope. No powder horns. No, no, no Revolutionary War power horns, uh, powder horns. You took a powder horn. Uh, exactly. Okay. I'll do the comedy around. Now you're doing the comedy too? I'm getting my ass kick. I don't know. You are here for the

takedown of me. Yeah, I know. It's not happening that way. This was jujitsu. Ken, thank you so much. This is amazing. This is really fun. Thank you. Conan O'Brien needs a friend. With Conan O'Brien, Sonam of Sessian, and Matt Goorley. Produced by me, Matt Goreley. Executive produced by Adam Sacks, Jeff Ross, and Nick Leow. Theme song by the White Stripes. Mental music by Jimmy Vivino.

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 Brick Con. You can rate and review this show on Apple Podcasts, and you might find your review read on a future episode.

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