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Speaker 1: Well, I'm thrilled this afternoon to be joined by the

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Speaker 1: pre eminent storyteller of the American story, the greatest documentarian

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Speaker 1: filmmaker in American history, the one and only Ken Burns.

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Speaker 1: Ken welcome and thank you so much for being here.

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Speaker 2: Thank you, Steve. I'm so happy to be with you.

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Speaker 1: You have a new documentary coming out I do.

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Speaker 2: It's called The American Buffalo.

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Speaker 1: It is hard to imagine what America looked like. That's right,

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Speaker 1: physically in the latter part of the nineteenth century, eighteen sixties,

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Speaker 1: eighteen seventies. Given that they were somewhere between thirty to

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Speaker 1: fifty million of these animals spread out across the American West,

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Speaker 1: what did it look like?

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Speaker 2: It's a pretty good great question. You know, there were

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Speaker 2: probably sixty to seventy million before Columbus arrived by the

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Speaker 2: beginning of the nineteenth century. We think that there were

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Speaker 2: that thirty plus By the mid century. Because of market pressures,

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Speaker 2: there were maybe twelve to fifteen by the end of

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Speaker 2: the eighteen eighties. There are none, I mean literally fewer

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Speaker 2: than a thousand alive, most of them in zoos and

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Speaker 2: private collections. We can imagine maybe twenty wild and free

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Speaker 2: in Yosemite. But let's paint the picture before that. Most

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Speaker 2: of the travel across the continent involved going past the

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Speaker 2: Great Plains. You're going to Santa Fe for business, You're

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Speaker 2: going to California for goals, You're going to Oregon for

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Speaker 2: land and converting native populations to Christianity, all sorts of reasons.

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Speaker 2: But the center of the country, the Great Plains, the

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Speaker 2: American Serengetti, is still controlled and populated by dozens of

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Speaker 2: Native tribes. The place itself is alive with animals and plants.

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Speaker 2: It is like an unbelievable place. The grizzly bears are

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Speaker 2: down there, the elk are down there, not having retreated

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Speaker 2: yet to the rocky mountains. You've got, you know, all

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Speaker 2: of these creatures because the buffalo are there. They've created

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Speaker 2: all of these little tiny wallows from there rubbing in

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Speaker 2: the dirt. So you've got all these little places that

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Speaker 2: are growing different kinds of life and particularly plant life.

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Speaker 2: So it's unlike the monoculture of today. It was a

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Speaker 2: garden of eden and in it were populated thirty to

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Speaker 2: fifty different nations Native American tribes who flourished and lived

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Speaker 2: for six hundred generations with the biggest land mammal in

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Speaker 2: North America what scientists call bison bison, which we all

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Speaker 2: call buffalo. And the story is just about what happens

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Speaker 2: when the dominant species of the European variety come in

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Speaker 2: and don't try to live in harmony but try to

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Speaker 2: control it. That is to say, they look at a

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Speaker 2: river and think damn. They look at a stand of

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Speaker 2: timber and think board feet, They look at a canyon

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Speaker 2: and wonder what mineral wealth can be extracted, rather than

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Speaker 2: a Native American perspective, which is all about some sort

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Speaker 2: of living in harmony with it, in which the buffalo

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Speaker 2: was used from the tail to the snout. Every bit

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Speaker 2: of it was used, even the waste was used in

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Speaker 2: the treeless planes. It's fuel for the fire and Amanda

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Speaker 2: in Indian. In our film That's where North Dakota now is,

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Speaker 2: Gerard Baker says, even the sounds, the snorts are become

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Speaker 2: part of the rituals of these people. The creation ness

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Speaker 2: of many tribes have to do with the buffalo coming

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Speaker 2: first and then all of a sudden it's gone. It's

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Speaker 2: slaughtered for the hides, for the leather to run belts.

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Speaker 2: In industrial machines of the Industrial Revolution. They've already liked

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Speaker 2: the tongues as a delicacy. Later on, when they're thinning out,

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Speaker 2: they want the heads for the saloon wall or the study.

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Speaker 2: And even then they find out that the bones are

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Speaker 2: worth something. In fact, more money is made off the

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Speaker 2: bones that have been bleaching for decades on the Great

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Speaker 2: Plains than anything else. And the largest industry in Detroit

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Speaker 2: are the bone pickers. As one of our consultants says

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Speaker 2: in the film, it's like they're cleaning up a crime scene.

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Speaker 2: And so our film is an attempt to understand the

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Speaker 2: depth of the Native American connection to it. Six hundred

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Speaker 2: generations of coexistence and then this devastating few decades in

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Speaker 2: which it goes to the brink of extinction, and then

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Speaker 2: you know, it does resolve itself in a positive way,

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Speaker 2: a parable of de extinction. But you cannot underestimate how

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Speaker 2: beautiful the planes were. You know, it was said that

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Speaker 2: a squirrel could start at the Atlantic Ocean and go

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Speaker 2: to the Mississippi River without touching ground. But when you

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Speaker 2: hit the Mississippi, that's where it stopped. And it was

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Speaker 2: this beautiful, undulating place filled with all of this flora

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Speaker 2: and faun and lots of Native peoples, and then in

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Speaker 2: a remarkably short time, it wasn't.

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Speaker 1: The slaughter that takes place under military command is strategic,

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Speaker 1: with intent to deprive those nations of their food supply

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Speaker 1: and inflict misery and starvation on them.

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Speaker 2: You know, one of the things that I admire most

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Speaker 2: about you is your righteous indignation about the state of things,

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Speaker 2: might be politics now or some aspect of American history.

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Speaker 2: You cannot get more indignant in American history than this.

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Speaker 2: This is a story in which market pressures bring the

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Speaker 2: people out there, but the government which has made treaties,

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Speaker 2: for example, in the Southern Plains, promising Native peoples that

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Speaker 2: they will not let white settlers who are now beginning

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Speaker 2: to populate the interior of the plains go below the

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Speaker 2: Arkansas River. Of course, as soon as the buffalo are

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Speaker 2: erased from the Arkansas River, they go to the commandant

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Speaker 2: at Fort Dodge and they say, what should we do?

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Speaker 2: And he said, if I were a buffalo hunter, I'd

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Speaker 2: go hunting where the buffalo are. So they cross over

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Speaker 2: and they start slaughtering the remainder of the herds in

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Speaker 2: the Southern Plains. So there's no official US policy that

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Speaker 2: is to say, written into legislation. Sometimes by not passing

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Speaker 2: legislation or pocket videoing is granted something that would protect

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Speaker 2: females and calves. You have this, you've sort of said

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Speaker 2: what you're interested in, but it was vocalized. And this

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Speaker 2: is what it is, Steve. If you kill the buffalo,

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Speaker 2: you kill the Indian, they become malleable. You can get

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Speaker 2: them into reservations, you can stop the way their way

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Speaker 2: of life. And this is what happens all up and

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Speaker 2: down the planes, not just southern as I've been focusing on,

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Speaker 2: but central and northern. It takes a little bit while

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Speaker 2: longer for the railroad to get into Montana where the

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Speaker 2: big herds are. But it is one of the great

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Speaker 2: human catastrophes of all its largest slaughter of mammals in

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Speaker 2: the history of the world that takes place, And not

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Speaker 2: just the buffalo, buffalo primarily, but it's elk, and it's grizzly,

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Speaker 2: and it's wolves, and its coyotes and it eagles. Everything

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Speaker 2: that you can think of that was making this this

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Speaker 2: American Serengeti is taken away so that what we perceive

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Speaker 2: right now is a deafening silence of a monoculture that

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Speaker 2: is just free of almost all of those animals and

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Speaker 2: most of the flora.

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Speaker 1: Is there any voice in America in that moment that

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Speaker 1: addresses this as a moral proposition from the east, from

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Speaker 1: the cities that has experience in the American West? Certainly,

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Speaker 1: Teddy Roosevelt is impacted by his experiences. You've made films

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Speaker 1: about that, which is a little bit later. But as

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Speaker 1: this is at its inception, when the slaughter begins, is

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Speaker 1: there any opposition to it on a moral plane anywhere

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Speaker 1: in the United States?

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Speaker 2: Yes. The most important person, and tr is a big

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Speaker 2: part of this film. The most important person is a

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Speaker 2: naturalist and writer, an editor named George Bird Grennell who's

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Speaker 2: a graduate of Ivy League colleges, but he spends summers

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Speaker 2: on Paleto logical expeditions in the West. He's drawn to

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Speaker 2: the native tribes, he sees what's happening to the buffalo.

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Speaker 2: He gives a mildly critical review of a book that

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Speaker 2: tr wrote about his experiences in the Badlines, including shooting

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Speaker 2: a buffalo, and Roosevelt, not yet President, bursts into his

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Speaker 2: office and they turned the awkward moment into a friendship

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Speaker 2: and Grinnell kind of moves Roosevelt towards conservation. That is

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Speaker 2: to say, he still wants to kill things. He still

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Speaker 2: thinks that Native people are savages and subhuman, and he

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Speaker 2: migrates a little bit in a positive direction in the

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Speaker 2: course of his life. But it's Grinnelle that I think

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Speaker 2: is the father of this concern, the kind of moral stuff.

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Speaker 2: We can't be doing this, obviously, the Native American voices

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Speaker 2: are plain and clear and throughout, but it you know,

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Speaker 2: I would say, the hero. And there are many heroes

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Speaker 2: in the European population, in the American population that are

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Speaker 2: important to recognize, and I think we do. And people

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Speaker 2: who go a long way Charlie Goodnight in the Panandle

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Speaker 2: of Texas, who is an Indian fighter and an Indian killer,

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Speaker 2: and a hater of buffalo and a slaughterer of buffalo

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Speaker 2: and brings the first cattle ranch into the Palo Duro Canyon.

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Speaker 2: By the end of his life, he's mellowed. He's made

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Speaker 2: friends with many Native Americans that were his enemies, and

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Speaker 2: his wife has started a small herd. He's now become

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Speaker 2: more interested in and help preserve the buffalo, so his

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Speaker 2: stock becomes an important resource for the receding of America

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Speaker 2: of the Buffalo. But I think, hands down, among white Americans,

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Speaker 2: it's George bird Grenew that is our conscience, a few

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Speaker 2: earlier painters who are suggesting that maybe we can put

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Speaker 2: we can create a nation's park well before the idea

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Speaker 2: of the national parks comes into existence. And within the

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Speaker 2: context of that dream, you're saving not just spaces, but animals, species,

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Speaker 2: And that's a huge evolution. And let's remember, you know,

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Speaker 2: as you know, in American history, sometimes the worst is

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Speaker 2: there with the best. So at the same time we're slaughtering,

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Speaker 2: we're also saying, hey, wait a second, we're losing all

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Speaker 2: this beautiful land. Let's create national parks. The first time

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Speaker 2: in human history that anybody ever set aside land for

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Speaker 2: everybody and for all time. All other land that was

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Speaker 2: spectacular belonged to royalty or the very very rich. But

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Speaker 2: as you and I know, we own some of the

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Speaker 2: most spectacular scenery on earth. CO own it in the

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Speaker 2: Grand Canyon and Yosemite and Yellowstone, and you know, four

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Speaker 2: hundred plus National Park Service sites and more than fifty

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Speaker 2: national actual full fledged national parks. It's a great legacy.

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Speaker 2: And every other country has copied us. At the same time,

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Speaker 2: manifest destiny is disinterested in that. It is just steamrolling across.

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Speaker 2: And you know, we had been thinking about this, Steve

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Speaker 2: for decades. You know. We made a film in the

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Speaker 2: West in the mid nineties, and another film in the

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Speaker 2: late nineties on Lewis and Clark, and then spent most

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Speaker 2: of the aughts doing a National Parks film. And so

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Speaker 2: the buffalo is always a big part of it. But

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Speaker 2: we always way back then, we found a mid nineties

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Speaker 2: proposal to do a standalone biography of an animal, knowing

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Speaker 2: full well it would touch in every corner of American

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Speaker 2: history and an American vibe. I'm so glad we waited

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Speaker 2: because instead of back then, you know, with lesser chops

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Speaker 2: paying kind of lip service to other people's perspectives, it

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Speaker 2: was possible for us to just stop and not only listen,

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Speaker 2: but just yield. And so there are moments in the

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Speaker 2: film when a man named George horse Capture Junior, belongs

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Speaker 2: to a small tribe in north central Montana on the

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Speaker 2: Fort Bellknapp Reservation. He just questions the basic assumptions, what

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Speaker 2: do you mean my cattle, What do you mean my land?

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Speaker 2: What does that mean and has asked us, you know,

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Speaker 2: as we have this momentum, our marketplace has this momentum,

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Speaker 2: we have our own momentum. To just have it arrested

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Speaker 2: for one second, I think is maybe the best thing

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Speaker 2: that the film might do in bits and pieces, not

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Speaker 2: just from George Junior, but from other Native Americans who

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Speaker 2: populate the film and whom we permit saying, look, you

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Speaker 2: do have six hundred generations, we have at best six

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Speaker 2: tell us about this animal, tell us how it was.

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Speaker 2: And now you know, there's some repatriation going on from

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Speaker 2: tribes bringing buffalo to other tribes, tribes that have been

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Speaker 2: broken not just for one hundred and fifty years, but

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Speaker 2: two hundred and fifty years. And I watched one of

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Speaker 2: our consulting producers, Juliana Branham, who's a Cherokee, has made

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Speaker 2: a beautiful short film that will a company ours called Homecoming,

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Speaker 2: in which a Native American, Jason bald Is from the

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Speaker 2: Wind River in Wyoming Reservation, is repatriating buffalo back to Wisconsin,

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Speaker 2: to the Menominee and to see their faces. It's like

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Speaker 2: somebody just shows up for dinner that hasn't been there

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Speaker 2: for two and a half centuries, and to look in

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Speaker 2: their eyes and see these animals who if you've ever

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Speaker 2: been close to a buffalo, there's something about their eyes

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Speaker 2: that have seen a lot of stuff over the last

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Speaker 2: twelve thousand years. It is so profoundly spiritual for me

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Speaker 2: that you just can't help but be moved by this

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Speaker 2: story that is filled obviously with the worst of us

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Speaker 2: and also the best of us. We did save it,

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Speaker 2: We did save the buffalo.

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Speaker 1: I want to come to the recovery of the animal

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Speaker 1: in a moment, but before we do, I want to

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Speaker 1: talk about a relationship that you introduced a lot of

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Speaker 1: America to that's among the deepest and most interesting in

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Speaker 1: American history. It's the friendship between Ulysses Grant and William

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Speaker 1: To comes to Sherman. I remember living in Washington, d C.

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Speaker 1: During my days there, and I would frequently go out

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Speaker 1: and hike the Manassas Battlefield, which you could get around

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Speaker 1: in about eight miles, and out in the woods there's

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Speaker 1: a little marker where Colonel William To comes to Sherman

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Speaker 1: makes his debut for the Union Army on a battlefield

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Speaker 1: with all of Washington, DC's elites around on the hillside

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Speaker 1: to watch the day's activities, appalled by the slaughter. As

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Speaker 1: the defeat, Union troops stream back into Washington and Sherman

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Speaker 1: rises to become grants indispensable partner, the great battle captain

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Speaker 1: of the Southern Front, and Sherman introduces a strategy of

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Speaker 1: total war that prefaces the wars of the twentieth century,

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Speaker 1: the American Civil War. By casualty, count by industrial might.

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Speaker 1: The person who applies these tactics integrated movement a modern army.

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Speaker 1: By the time you get to City Point in eighteen

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Speaker 1: sixty five, this is a twentieth century army thirty five

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Speaker 1: years early, the most powerful in the world. German does

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Speaker 1: nothing on the planes that he doesn't do to the Confederacy.

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Speaker 2: That's exactly right. I would, I would say, I would

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Speaker 2: amend your absolutely correct things. You know, And that friendship

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Speaker 2: is so poignant at times. You know, Grant had a

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Speaker 2: reputation in the early years as being a drunkard, and

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Speaker 2: Sherman went home with some form of mental illness for

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Speaker 2: a while. And you know, Sherman said, he stood by

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Speaker 2: me when I was crazy, and I stood by him

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Speaker 2: when he was drunk, and we now stand by each

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Speaker 2: other together. His Southern strategy is not the total war

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Speaker 2: that our civil war is not a civil war. It's

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Speaker 2: a sectional war North against South. His attack is not

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Speaker 2: against civilians. There are very few civilian deaths outside of

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Speaker 2: Missouri and Kansas, which begins before the Civil War and

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Speaker 2: extends well afterward. Our revolution is a civil war, but

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Speaker 2: and we think of it more as a gentleman's war.

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Speaker 2: And it's not just really hands on Native American, Black,

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Speaker 2: you know, German immigrants, Irish immigrants, you know, ne'er do wells.

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Speaker 2: That's the Continental army, you know, not the sturdy militiaman

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Speaker 2: that we see in the statues on the Lexington Green.

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Speaker 2: They play an important part, but it's a different, unless

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Speaker 2: permanent one. Our civil war. Though he brings a total

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Speaker 2: war to the we would call it the industrial heart

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Speaker 2: of the South. That is to say, the plantations doesn't

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Speaker 2: kill anybody. No white women are raped by his soldiers

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Speaker 2: in the course of it. All the tropes and lies

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Speaker 2: of the you know, Churchill said, the winners write the history,

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Speaker 2: but the South wrote the history of the Civil War.

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Speaker 2: And that's why Reconstruction is seen as a bad period.

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Speaker 2: You know, all of these things, why the Confederate Army

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Speaker 2: is still sort of still with us, right, and why

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Speaker 2: we had the big discussion about monuments which didn't come

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Speaker 2: up at the time. They were later put in after

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Speaker 2: the collapse of reconstruction, or the Dixie flag into the

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Speaker 2: flags of the old Confederate States, which came in after

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Speaker 2: nineteen fifty four. And correct me if I'm wrong. Only

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Speaker 2: one significant event in nineteen fifty four, and that's a

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Speaker 2: Supreme Court decision in Brown versus Board of Education, and

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Speaker 2: then all of a sudden it shows up. So somehow

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Speaker 2: the heritage part doesn't work in any case. Sherman is

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Speaker 2: a brilliant tactician, and it is combined with what's going

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Speaker 2: on with Grant up north outside of Petersburg, which is

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Speaker 2: trench warfare, and what's happening in the prison camps of

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Speaker 2: the North as well as the South, particularly Andersonville. You're

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Speaker 2: looking at the twentieth century, a kind of preview of

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Speaker 2: the twentieth century, as you quite accurately say it. And

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Speaker 2: then they're gonna take it, take it West, and Phil Sheridan,

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Speaker 2: one of the principal generals, is going to say the

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Speaker 2: famous thing, the only good Indian is a dead Indian.

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Speaker 2: Even the progressive friends of the Indians who create schools

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Speaker 2: have a slogan, kill the Indian, save the man. These

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Speaker 2: are the friends of the Indian. And they don't mean

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Speaker 2: kill him physically, they mean destroy his culture, cut off

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Speaker 2: his hair, dress him in regular beat him if he speaks,

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Speaker 2: and children beat them if they speak their native tongues.

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Speaker 2: And so the Carlisle Indian School is just one of

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Speaker 2: these places that is a kind of you know, we

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Speaker 2: would call it a bleeding heart, you know, attempt to

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Speaker 2: do this, share it and want them all dead. The

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Speaker 2: good people want them just completely drained of any cultural thing.

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Speaker 2: And so, you know, one of the things that the

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Speaker 2: buffalo and its restoration symbolizes is the possibility of repair,

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Speaker 2: which is a huge theme in American history, Like what

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Speaker 2: do we repair the gap between north and South, the

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Speaker 2: gap between black and white, now obviously the gap between

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Speaker 2: native and newcomers. And you know, you have to realize

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Speaker 2: when you say the word American, you have to understand

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Speaker 2: they're all Americans, all of them, enslave people, freed blacks, women,

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Speaker 2: none of whom Native Americans, none of whom are recognized

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Speaker 2: by our spec tacular experiment in democracy that begins with

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Speaker 2: the Declaration of Independence.

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Speaker 1: When is the American West finally completely by your estimation, subjugated,

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Speaker 1: And what is the moment where and how we arrive

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Speaker 1: at an understanding from tens and tens of millions of

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Speaker 1: these animals, these magnificent animals. There are seventy seven left.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, So the eighteen nineties is really it. It's the

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Speaker 2: end of the slaughter ends at the end of the

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Speaker 2: eighteen eighties, because you can't find any buffalo to kill anymore.

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Speaker 2: And it's that, I mean, when you know, you know

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Speaker 2: that most people think about the vast middle of the

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Speaker 2: plains of the United States, you know, just tactically how

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Speaker 2: big it is, and you the idea that there could

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Speaker 2: be seventy seven or twenty six or six hundred, you know,

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Speaker 2: whatever the number might be. It's spread out over people

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Speaker 2: cannot find it. There's an essay by Frederick Jackson Turner

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Speaker 2: in the early nineties that said, the frontier is closed,

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Speaker 2: and it causes Americans this great soul searching. There's always been,

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Speaker 2: there's already a nascent conservation movement, as I've talked about.

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Speaker 2: George Bird Grenell tr formed the Boone and Crocket Club,

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Speaker 2: the Autumn Society, has created people are trying to save

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Speaker 2: animals after witnessing what happens to the beaver and the

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Speaker 2: passenger pigeon, which is extinct, used to be in the billions,

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Speaker 2: and so there's the buffalo gone, and all of a

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Speaker 2: sudden there's a sense that the thing that is really

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Speaker 2: at heart of our identity are these things that we've

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Speaker 2: spent a long time trying to get rid of. And

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Speaker 2: so to me, the apotheosis of this insanity is in

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Speaker 2: nineteen thirteen when we come out with the Indian head Nickel.

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Speaker 2: We know who the Indian is modeled off after, and

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Speaker 2: we know the name of the of the buffalo that

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Speaker 2: goes it was, you know, sculpted up here in Midtown,

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Speaker 2: and the buffalo is sent to the meat pass packing

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Speaker 2: district to be packaged out and eaten. Right, we know

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Speaker 2: what happened to this, to this buffalo. But what are

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Speaker 2: we doing. We are beginning to romanticize and even fetishize,

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Speaker 2: I would suggest, an animal and a human being that

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Speaker 2: we have spent the last century trying to get rid of.

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Speaker 2: And so George Horse Capture Junior again comes on and

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Speaker 2: just says in wonderment, like I have to ask you

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Speaker 2: why do you kill the things you love? And Johnny

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Speaker 2: Mitchell said it, you don't know what you've got till

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Speaker 2: it's gone. And I think there was a sense that

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Speaker 2: we were paving paradise and something had to be done.

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Speaker 2: While Stagner wrote this great quote that sort of is

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Speaker 2: part of the introduction of our second of two episodes

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Speaker 2: where we begin to pull out of the nosedive of

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Speaker 2: the eradication of the buffalo, and he says, you know,

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Speaker 2: human beings are the most dangerous species on Earth, and

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Speaker 2: every other species and the Earth itself has caused to

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Speaker 2: be fearful, but we're also the only species that when

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Speaker 2: we want to consave another. And so I think what

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Speaker 2: we're talking about is things I've heard you speak about

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Speaker 2: many times, and I've tried to be a thematic is

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Speaker 2: that we have this ability, at any given moment to

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Speaker 2: be called by our better angels. And what is going

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Speaker 2: to obtain in the American story. Is it going to

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Speaker 2: be that impulse, the darker, more regressive impulse that makes

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Speaker 2: an other of everyone and of an animal, or is

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Speaker 2: it something that tries to understand about coexistence. I mean,

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Speaker 2: I like to phrase it really simply. I make films

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Speaker 2: about the US, But I also make films about us,

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Speaker 2: that is to say, the lower case two letter plural

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Speaker 2: pronoun all the intimacy of us and we and our

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Speaker 2: and all of the majesty, the complexity, the contradiction, and

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Speaker 2: even the controversy of the US. And that is a

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Speaker 2: great privilege to have spent nearly fifty years of my life,

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Speaker 2: you know that in that field, plowing those acres and

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Speaker 2: trying to come to terms with it. And it always

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Speaker 2: seems to be a tension between these impulses. We struggle

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Speaker 2: with it today in the you know, the three greatest

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Speaker 2: greatest crisis leading up to hear, the Civil War, the Depression,

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Speaker 2: and World War Two in some ways don't even compare

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Speaker 2: to the current fourth crisis, because all of those events

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Speaker 2: took place where there was no question about the peaceful

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Speaker 2: transfer power, free and fair elections, the independence of the judiciary,

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Speaker 2: respected free press. You know, now all of those things

394
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Speaker 2: are are called into question, and so once again we're

395
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Speaker 2: being asked to call on our better angels. I know,

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Speaker 2: I go back to the declaration. I'm working on a

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Speaker 2: big history right now of the American Revolution, which is

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Speaker 2: not your grandfather's revolution. In which Jefferson, a few sentences

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Speaker 2: after the famous second sentence of the declaration, says, all

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Speaker 2: experience has shown that mankind are disposed to suffer while

401
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Speaker 2: evils are sufferable, than to throw all. And everybody focuses

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Speaker 2: on the throw off meaning as a justification for revolution.

403
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Speaker 2: But he's what he's saying is, Look, we're proposing something

404
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Speaker 2: altogether distance different. The entire history of mankind has been

405
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Speaker 2: to be under someone's authoritarian rule, and we're disposed to

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Speaker 2: suffer while those evils are sufferable. But now we're asking

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Speaker 2: something else of you. We're asking a more responsible citizenship,

408
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Speaker 2: and in return, we will trust you us to govern.

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Speaker 2: And that's the American compact. And when we get distracted

410
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Speaker 2: from it, we realize the extent to which we are

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Speaker 2: still disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable to I

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Speaker 2: the line of the demagogue or the or the authoritarian,

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Speaker 2: or or whatever it might be, wherever it raises its end.

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Speaker 1: There is almost a providential aspect to the story of America,

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Speaker 1: the rising of people, as if from nowhere into positions

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Speaker 1: of responsibility that history history remembers as as as gigantic

417
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Speaker 1: Dwight Eisenhower hadn't been promoted for thirteen years, a lieutenant,

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Speaker 1: a lieutenant colonel in the in the army. One of

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Speaker 1: the one of the interesting figures of the Revolutionary War

420
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Speaker 1: is the Marquis de Lafayette. Yes, and and Lafayette says

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Speaker 1: something profound at Yorktown. He says, humanity has its victory,

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Speaker 1: liberty has its country. And this war is a rupture

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Speaker 1: in the story of human civilization. It marks the end

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Speaker 1: of an epoch and the beginning of another one. And

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Speaker 1: what la Fayette believes is, as a fierce abolitionist, that

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Speaker 1: slavery will end. It will end as a direct result

427
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Speaker 1: of the revolution. That the inconsistencies between the language, between

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Speaker 1: the philosophies are not endurable. He accurately predicts the last

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Speaker 1: place that slavery will be rooted and adure is the

430
00:27:42,040 --> 00:27:49,399
Speaker 1: deep of the American South. There is a malaise or

431
00:27:49,440 --> 00:27:54,359
Speaker 1: an apathy in the country. Forty eight years after independence,

432
00:27:54,480 --> 00:27:59,400
Speaker 1: in eighteen twenty four, we have a contested election.

433
00:27:59,600 --> 00:28:01,360
Speaker 2: It is clear that.

434
00:28:01,400 --> 00:28:05,600
Speaker 1: Andrew Jackson will concede to John Quincy Adams. But the

435
00:28:05,680 --> 00:28:11,600
Speaker 1: mar Quy the Lafayette, returns to America and he begins

436
00:28:11,680 --> 00:28:16,200
Speaker 1: a tour of all twenty four states, and people turn

437
00:28:16,280 --> 00:28:20,240
Speaker 1: out in every town in the country rapturously the last

438
00:28:20,880 --> 00:28:26,440
Speaker 1: surviving major general of the Revolutionary War, and their hearts

439
00:28:26,560 --> 00:28:32,880
Speaker 1: are lit with a gratitude that really culminates in eighteen

440
00:28:33,000 --> 00:28:37,119
Speaker 1: twenty six, the fiftieth anniversary of the country, when both

441
00:28:37,720 --> 00:28:42,720
Speaker 1: Adams and Jefferson die within hours of one another. Reconciled.

442
00:28:43,200 --> 00:28:49,840
Speaker 1: And this is a momentous cultural event in the country

443
00:28:50,840 --> 00:28:56,440
Speaker 1: that people view through a mystical lens that reignites a

444
00:28:56,800 --> 00:29:01,000
Speaker 1: ebb in patriotism. And we've always gone through this, and

445
00:29:01,040 --> 00:29:05,840
Speaker 1: one of the things you talked about was reconciliation and

446
00:29:06,040 --> 00:29:11,920
Speaker 1: the buffalo as a symbol of that. So with regard

447
00:29:12,040 --> 00:29:15,280
Speaker 1: to the American Indian I think that there are a

448
00:29:15,360 --> 00:29:20,479
Speaker 1: couple of issues that are in fact important, symbolic and

449
00:29:20,560 --> 00:29:24,520
Speaker 1: reconcilable that I think the nation should pursue, and I'd

450
00:29:24,560 --> 00:29:26,800
Speaker 1: like to get your reaction to them.

451
00:29:27,360 --> 00:29:27,600
Speaker 2: First.

452
00:29:27,680 --> 00:29:32,080
Speaker 1: One is, and there's legislation on this, there's some twenty

453
00:29:32,200 --> 00:29:39,160
Speaker 1: six medals of honor that were received for participation in

454
00:29:39,200 --> 00:29:43,480
Speaker 1: a massacre of men, women, and children that should be

455
00:29:43,560 --> 00:29:48,440
Speaker 1: investigated and stripped by the US military. That debases that

456
00:29:49,160 --> 00:29:52,480
Speaker 1: honor at the massacre wounded.

457
00:29:52,160 --> 00:29:54,320
Speaker 2: Me Amen eighteen nineties.

458
00:29:54,520 --> 00:29:59,880
Speaker 1: Yep, the second thing. And I think this is one

459
00:29:59,880 --> 00:30:03,800
Speaker 1: of the most interesting stories that's out there in this

460
00:30:03,960 --> 00:30:08,200
Speaker 1: moment that no one knows about. And the Sioux, of course,

461
00:30:09,120 --> 00:30:13,400
Speaker 1: look at the Black Hills of South Dakota, look at

462
00:30:13,520 --> 00:30:17,120
Speaker 1: Mount Rushmore National Park, and they say, that's our land.

463
00:30:19,400 --> 00:30:26,080
Speaker 1: Supreme Court basically made a decision, if I'm saying it accurately,

464
00:30:27,240 --> 00:30:33,080
Speaker 1: which was it was your land, it was unjustifiably taken

465
00:30:33,240 --> 00:30:39,760
Speaker 1: in breach of the treaty. Here's your compensation. The Sioux

466
00:30:40,360 --> 00:30:45,520
Speaker 1: have refused to touch the compensation, which because of the

467
00:30:45,560 --> 00:30:50,520
Speaker 1: miracle of compound interest, now stands at an amount of

468
00:30:50,600 --> 00:30:56,080
Speaker 1: money far in excess of a billion dollars. And there

469
00:30:56,120 --> 00:31:01,040
Speaker 1: it sets accruing interest. And so the way that I

470
00:31:01,160 --> 00:31:04,160
Speaker 1: look at it, when you look at some of the

471
00:31:04,200 --> 00:31:09,120
Speaker 1: people that you're quoting from your film, right, you look

472
00:31:09,160 --> 00:31:14,800
Speaker 1: at the fact that every army military weapons system has

473
00:31:14,840 --> 00:31:19,400
Speaker 1: an Indian name on it. We admire the defiance, we

474
00:31:19,960 --> 00:31:24,680
Speaker 1: admire the warrior, we admire all of these things that

475
00:31:24,720 --> 00:31:28,080
Speaker 1: couldn't be seen in the nineteenth century. What do you

476
00:31:28,200 --> 00:31:33,240
Speaker 1: think about the idea that the United States government transfers

477
00:31:33,320 --> 00:31:38,040
Speaker 1: that National Park back in perpetuity to the Sioux Nation

478
00:31:38,920 --> 00:31:43,200
Speaker 1: for the enjoyment of all of the people on this condent,

479
00:31:43,280 --> 00:31:47,640
Speaker 1: but that will be the sovereign territory of the of

480
00:31:47,720 --> 00:31:51,240
Speaker 1: the of the Sioux Nation, and they get to keep

481
00:31:51,320 --> 00:31:51,840
Speaker 1: the money.

482
00:31:52,160 --> 00:31:54,480
Speaker 2: How about that for a deal. I'm totally with it.

483
00:31:54,520 --> 00:31:57,280
Speaker 2: First of all, let's dispose of the wounded knething. That's

484
00:31:57,320 --> 00:32:02,240
Speaker 2: absolutely goes without saying. The treaty that created the large

485
00:32:02,880 --> 00:32:06,640
Speaker 2: Lakota Reservation, Sioux Reservation as it was called, included the

486
00:32:06,640 --> 00:32:09,760
Speaker 2: Black Hills, the most sacred part. It's not a National park,

487
00:32:09,960 --> 00:32:14,240
Speaker 2: it's a National Park Service site at the out Mount Rushmore.

488
00:32:14,840 --> 00:32:17,920
Speaker 2: There's also the Crazy Horse Monument being built and will

489
00:32:17,960 --> 00:32:20,760
Speaker 2: continue to be built for decades and decades more to come,

490
00:32:20,800 --> 00:32:24,360
Speaker 2: which is an interesting sort of an attempt to not

491
00:32:25,160 --> 00:32:27,720
Speaker 2: buy off it. There's also the town of Deadwood, which

492
00:32:27,760 --> 00:32:29,880
Speaker 2: makes a lot of money with gambling in the middle

493
00:32:29,880 --> 00:32:32,760
Speaker 2: of it. But those Black Hills ought to be turned

494
00:32:32,760 --> 00:32:37,440
Speaker 2: over and back to the Lakota people as they are

495
00:32:38,280 --> 00:32:43,480
Speaker 2: called themselves, and I believe fully that that. You know,

496
00:32:43,560 --> 00:32:45,920
Speaker 2: maybe they're waiting for the interests to accuru a little

497
00:32:45,920 --> 00:32:48,920
Speaker 2: bit more. But we all we have to consider what

498
00:32:49,080 --> 00:32:53,080
Speaker 2: it means. You know, there's a wonderful person who, just

499
00:32:53,120 --> 00:32:57,000
Speaker 2: after emancipation writes back to his former enslaver, and the

500
00:32:57,040 --> 00:32:59,240
Speaker 2: guy is begging him to come back to work, and

501
00:32:59,240 --> 00:33:01,600
Speaker 2: he'll pay him a really good wage to come back

502
00:33:01,640 --> 00:33:04,200
Speaker 2: into work, and he goes, no, First of all, you

503
00:33:04,240 --> 00:33:07,600
Speaker 2: have to pay me with compound interest for all of

504
00:33:07,640 --> 00:33:10,600
Speaker 2: my labor that you never paid me for when I

505
00:33:10,720 --> 00:33:14,480
Speaker 2: was a slave, right, And it's it's that. And there

506
00:33:14,520 --> 00:33:18,400
Speaker 2: are people talking about how not about reparations, but about

507
00:33:18,680 --> 00:33:21,720
Speaker 2: how will we take care of the newly emancipated, because

508
00:33:22,160 --> 00:33:25,280
Speaker 2: all they were given was freedom, which meant nothing. And

509
00:33:25,520 --> 00:33:28,280
Speaker 2: in that vacuum of nothing, not even forty acres and

510
00:33:28,320 --> 00:33:33,200
Speaker 2: a mule comes, the return, the sharecropping, the return of

511
00:33:33,280 --> 00:33:35,680
Speaker 2: Jim Crow, all of the things, and I think the

512
00:33:35,760 --> 00:33:39,280
Speaker 2: Native American example is equal. Nothing is more important. Custer

513
00:33:39,440 --> 00:33:42,920
Speaker 2: leads an expedition into the Black Hills and he takes

514
00:33:42,960 --> 00:33:45,760
Speaker 2: along some geologists and they discover gold. And as my

515
00:33:46,160 --> 00:33:49,120
Speaker 2: producing partner Dayton Duncanson, the writer of this film, a

516
00:33:49,120 --> 00:33:54,080
Speaker 2: beautiful script I think says, you know the worst words

517
00:33:54,160 --> 00:33:56,640
Speaker 2: you could hear if you're a Native American was and

518
00:33:56,680 --> 00:34:00,760
Speaker 2: then gold was discovered because what happened happens is that

519
00:34:00,800 --> 00:34:05,280
Speaker 2: you've sort of begrudgingly allotted Native people certain parcels of

520
00:34:05,360 --> 00:34:09,680
Speaker 2: land their reservations, which looks at first blush as if

521
00:34:09,719 --> 00:34:12,120
Speaker 2: it's bad land, but all of a sudden, if there's gold,

522
00:34:12,160 --> 00:34:14,880
Speaker 2: if there's oil, if there's silver, if there's whatever, then

523
00:34:14,920 --> 00:34:17,960
Speaker 2: there's no compunction to take it back. And what we did,

524
00:34:18,080 --> 00:34:20,640
Speaker 2: which was so underhanded, is that we passed the dows

525
00:34:20,680 --> 00:34:23,439
Speaker 2: a Lot Mknact that said, look, we are so we

526
00:34:23,640 --> 00:34:26,200
Speaker 2: love you so much. We're going to give you, you know,

527
00:34:26,360 --> 00:34:28,680
Speaker 2: one hundred and twenty five acres to plow and two

528
00:34:28,760 --> 00:34:31,480
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty to acres to ranch, and you'll be fine.

529
00:34:31,560 --> 00:34:33,560
Speaker 2: And then we're going to sell off all the surplus

530
00:34:33,640 --> 00:34:39,680
Speaker 2: land to white settlement. And so Native tribes native land

531
00:34:39,880 --> 00:34:43,080
Speaker 2: shrink proportionally because of the dows a Lot inanac which

532
00:34:43,120 --> 00:34:47,440
Speaker 2: is so incredibly sad, and it just takes a slow

533
00:34:47,520 --> 00:34:51,279
Speaker 2: motion kind of death. But you know, once once the

534
00:34:51,760 --> 00:34:54,520
Speaker 2: gold is found in the Black Hills, that's it. That's it.

535
00:34:54,680 --> 00:34:57,319
Speaker 2: And so we have the kind of desecration of the

536
00:34:57,320 --> 00:35:00,319
Speaker 2: most sacred land, not just of the Lakotas, but many

537
00:35:00,360 --> 00:35:03,040
Speaker 2: of the Northern Plains tribes hold it, and if you've

538
00:35:03,080 --> 00:35:07,960
Speaker 2: ever been there, it is unlike any other place that

539
00:35:08,040 --> 00:35:10,520
Speaker 2: you've ever been. And we have so many places that

540
00:35:10,640 --> 00:35:14,320
Speaker 2: are like that, but just the geological formations and the sense,

541
00:35:14,360 --> 00:35:16,440
Speaker 2: you know, many of the mythologies are there was a

542
00:35:16,480 --> 00:35:20,160
Speaker 2: competition between the buffalo and the man, and man one

543
00:35:20,520 --> 00:35:24,160
Speaker 2: for supremacy, and the buffalo's blood stain the rocks red.

544
00:35:24,480 --> 00:35:28,200
Speaker 2: I mean, just very powerful imagery. And all you need

545
00:35:28,239 --> 00:35:30,440
Speaker 2: to do is you can go visit and see the

546
00:35:30,440 --> 00:35:32,880
Speaker 2: postcard version of Mount Rushmore, and then all you have

547
00:35:32,960 --> 00:35:34,759
Speaker 2: to do is go a quarter of a mile on

548
00:35:34,760 --> 00:35:37,279
Speaker 2: one side or the other, or drive a mile and

549
00:35:37,280 --> 00:35:39,600
Speaker 2: a half to the backside, and you're seeing a whole

550
00:35:39,719 --> 00:35:45,520
Speaker 2: nother set of views and perspectives that totally change your thing.

551
00:35:45,560 --> 00:35:48,560
Speaker 2: It's no longer that postcard which seems so far away,

552
00:35:48,840 --> 00:35:53,160
Speaker 2: but it's actually intimate and you understand the complexity of

553
00:35:53,400 --> 00:35:56,759
Speaker 2: this story of us, which is, you know, seeking those

554
00:35:56,800 --> 00:36:00,799
Speaker 2: better angels, looking for the moments of reconciliation, and it's

555
00:36:00,840 --> 00:36:03,719
Speaker 2: in you know, just you know, north of there, in

556
00:36:04,280 --> 00:36:07,800
Speaker 2: Montana and in Bozeman. In nineteen ninety three, some idiot

557
00:36:07,840 --> 00:36:11,160
Speaker 2: through a rock through the window of a family that

558
00:36:11,320 --> 00:36:15,400
Speaker 2: was displaying a minora at Christmas time, and the Bozeman

559
00:36:15,480 --> 00:36:19,600
Speaker 2: newspaper whatever it's called, prince a full page picture of

560
00:36:19,640 --> 00:36:22,279
Speaker 2: a minora, because I can't imagine you can go to

561
00:36:22,320 --> 00:36:25,319
Speaker 2: the hardware store or the or the whatever shop and

562
00:36:25,480 --> 00:36:31,000
Speaker 2: get a menora in Bozeman, and thousands of Christian families

563
00:36:31,360 --> 00:36:36,040
Speaker 2: put a menora up in their picture windows on Christmas time.

564
00:36:37,160 --> 00:36:40,640
Speaker 2: That's us, as well as all the kind of venality

565
00:36:40,640 --> 00:36:44,120
Speaker 2: and smallness that we've also are required to talk about,

566
00:36:44,280 --> 00:36:48,400
Speaker 2: not edit out, not kind of protect from hurt feelings.

567
00:36:48,440 --> 00:36:51,360
Speaker 2: You know, this is not where we're going. There's a German,

568
00:36:52,120 --> 00:36:56,320
Speaker 2: a woman who teaches American history in Bethesda who's German,

569
00:36:56,520 --> 00:36:58,800
Speaker 2: and she said, I was taught my history, and arguably

570
00:36:58,800 --> 00:37:03,960
Speaker 2: they've got the worst history, and I'm not traumatized. Our president,

571
00:37:04,120 --> 00:37:06,640
Speaker 2: largely a ceremonial role, said I love my country with

572
00:37:06,680 --> 00:37:09,560
Speaker 2: a broken heart. And you know, the people who liberated us,

573
00:37:09,680 --> 00:37:12,800
Speaker 2: the people who imposed a democracy on us, also insisted

574
00:37:12,840 --> 00:37:14,960
Speaker 2: that we teach our history every single day. And you

575
00:37:14,960 --> 00:37:17,640
Speaker 2: can't go to Berlin and not stumble over a rock.

576
00:37:19,640 --> 00:37:22,760
Speaker 2: It's how they've handled it. And she goes, I cannot

577
00:37:22,800 --> 00:37:26,600
Speaker 2: believe that you would want to edit your history. I mean,

578
00:37:26,800 --> 00:37:29,520
Speaker 2: everybody's exposed to the negative and the violent at an

579
00:37:29,600 --> 00:37:31,680
Speaker 2: early age. The coach is yelling at you at age

580
00:37:31,719 --> 00:37:35,560
Speaker 2: four or five in little league? Are pop Warner football?

581
00:37:35,760 --> 00:37:38,720
Speaker 2: I mean, and you can't take an understanding of slavery.

582
00:37:38,760 --> 00:37:41,360
Speaker 2: You think you can talk about Rosa Parks without bringing

583
00:37:41,440 --> 00:37:46,560
Speaker 2: up race. I mean, we don't remain exceptional. We don't

584
00:37:46,719 --> 00:37:50,319
Speaker 2: continue to be exceptional unless we're willing to self evaluate

585
00:37:50,400 --> 00:37:53,200
Speaker 2: at every moment in the most critical terms and not

586
00:37:53,239 --> 00:37:57,320
Speaker 2: blame the other, but understand the way we can improve,

587
00:37:57,360 --> 00:37:59,120
Speaker 2: and then you get to be exceptional.

588
00:38:00,600 --> 00:38:06,560
Speaker 1: We're at the precipice of this most remarkable moment. This

589
00:38:06,719 --> 00:38:11,840
Speaker 1: experiment is about to pass the two hundred and fifty

590
00:38:11,960 --> 00:38:16,480
Speaker 1: year mark, which is an extraordinary achievement.

591
00:38:18,520 --> 00:38:22,520
Speaker 2: It is indeed, my film before the Buffalo was one

592
00:38:22,560 --> 00:38:26,239
Speaker 2: called The US and the Holocaust a very difficulty, a.

593
00:38:28,680 --> 00:38:37,840
Speaker 1: Work of genius, of profound importance and relevance. And you

594
00:38:38,160 --> 00:38:42,840
Speaker 1: honor the memory of the dead with that work and

595
00:38:43,000 --> 00:38:47,640
Speaker 1: your country's history with it, and I hope it gives

596
00:38:47,680 --> 00:38:53,000
Speaker 1: you deep satisfaction that it will endure for generations.

597
00:38:53,400 --> 00:38:56,680
Speaker 2: I will tell my co directors Sarah Botstein and Lenovic

598
00:38:56,719 --> 00:38:59,040
Speaker 2: and our writer Jeff Ford. What you said, we are

599
00:38:59,160 --> 00:39:03,800
Speaker 2: proud of it. Legs. It's convenient continuing to do something.

600
00:39:03,840 --> 00:39:06,719
Speaker 2: I ran into a man the other day who said

601
00:39:06,760 --> 00:39:11,080
Speaker 2: to me, do you agree that the Holocaust is the

602
00:39:11,120 --> 00:39:14,600
Speaker 2: most important event since the birth of Christ? And I said, no,

603
00:39:15,560 --> 00:39:18,360
Speaker 2: the birth of the United States is the most important

604
00:39:18,360 --> 00:39:22,560
Speaker 2: event since the since the the birth of Christ. And

605
00:39:22,640 --> 00:39:24,920
Speaker 2: I believe that in all my heart, I mean, the

606
00:39:24,960 --> 00:39:26,000
Speaker 2: most important.

607
00:39:26,200 --> 00:39:27,600
Speaker 1: There's no question answer.

608
00:39:27,360 --> 00:39:31,319
Speaker 2: There's no question about it. And that's true, and that's

609
00:39:31,360 --> 00:39:35,960
Speaker 2: why we cannot lose our connection to the ideas. However

610
00:39:37,200 --> 00:39:41,320
Speaker 2: imperfect they were, however certainly imperfectly applied at the beginning.

611
00:39:41,360 --> 00:39:47,399
Speaker 2: However much contradiction and hypocrisy is in is in it.

612
00:39:47,560 --> 00:39:50,480
Speaker 2: You know, slave owners talking about how George the Third

613
00:39:50,560 --> 00:39:54,360
Speaker 2: is enslaving them, right, Thomas Jefferson writing these immortal words,

614
00:39:54,400 --> 00:39:56,160
Speaker 2: We hope these truths to be self evident, that all

615
00:39:56,239 --> 00:39:58,600
Speaker 2: men are created equal, and he owns hundreds of human

616
00:39:58,640 --> 00:40:03,000
Speaker 2: beings and doesn't see that contradiction or that hypocrisy. We

617
00:40:03,200 --> 00:40:09,000
Speaker 2: still represent a light that we have to actually at

618
00:40:09,000 --> 00:40:12,480
Speaker 2: this moment preserve. I mean, what the revolution working on

619
00:40:12,480 --> 00:40:14,200
Speaker 2: a history of the Revolution, which will come out, by

620
00:40:14,200 --> 00:40:15,880
Speaker 2: the way in two years, which will be the two

621
00:40:15,960 --> 00:40:19,000
Speaker 2: hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Lexington and Conquered the beginning

622
00:40:19,000 --> 00:40:21,960
Speaker 2: of the Revolution, and hopefully avoid some of the fife

623
00:40:22,000 --> 00:40:25,200
Speaker 2: and drum treacle will be drowning in the next year.

624
00:40:26,960 --> 00:40:32,120
Speaker 2: Is that there is something there for all the contradictions,

625
00:40:32,160 --> 00:40:34,960
Speaker 2: for all the terrible things done to native peoples, to

626
00:40:35,400 --> 00:40:38,600
Speaker 2: the fact that more black Americans wanted to side with

627
00:40:38,640 --> 00:40:42,000
Speaker 2: the British because they saw a clearer path to freedom

628
00:40:42,000 --> 00:40:46,520
Speaker 2: and liberation, sometimes cynically promised by the Brits. But at

629
00:40:46,560 --> 00:40:50,400
Speaker 2: the heart of this is the most noble experiment, in

630
00:40:50,760 --> 00:40:54,759
Speaker 2: the most noble aspirations of humankind, that liberated it, like

631
00:40:54,840 --> 00:40:57,680
Speaker 2: the next stage of our rocket from where it had

632
00:40:57,760 --> 00:41:02,560
Speaker 2: been heretofore. And that's what we are required now, particularly

633
00:41:02,640 --> 00:41:06,000
Speaker 2: in this grave crisis we're in, to remember and to

634
00:41:06,120 --> 00:41:07,399
Speaker 2: try to save.

635
00:41:09,360 --> 00:41:17,320
Speaker 1: Let's talk about that crisis. I gave a speech yesterday

636
00:41:17,360 --> 00:41:21,120
Speaker 1: to the United Brotherhood of Carpenters, and I said that

637
00:41:21,280 --> 00:41:26,520
Speaker 1: I think there are two unique things about me. The

638
00:41:26,600 --> 00:41:29,600
Speaker 1: first one is is that I'm one of a very

639
00:41:29,719 --> 00:41:34,240
Speaker 1: very small number of living Americans that have been deeply

640
00:41:34,320 --> 00:41:38,360
Speaker 1: involved on both sides of the concession transaction on the

641
00:41:38,400 --> 00:41:42,200
Speaker 1: winning side, and I placed the phone call for John

642
00:41:42,280 --> 00:41:47,680
Speaker 1: McCain to Barack Obama. He became the first person to

643
00:41:47,719 --> 00:41:55,399
Speaker 1: say the following words, congratulations, mister President elect. God bless you, sir.

644
00:41:56,480 --> 00:42:00,400
Speaker 1: That's what John McCain said when he was ended my

645
00:42:00,560 --> 00:42:08,040
Speaker 1: BlackBerry to Barack Obama on election. It's also why I

646
00:42:08,160 --> 00:42:12,000
Speaker 1: forbade Sarah Palin to speak, who wanted to go out

647
00:42:12,040 --> 00:42:16,360
Speaker 1: and desecrate the moment, which she certainly would have even

648
00:42:16,440 --> 00:42:21,040
Speaker 1: as the President elect was speaking. The second thing is

649
00:42:21,080 --> 00:42:26,040
Speaker 1: that in a political business where I understand kind of

650
00:42:26,080 --> 00:42:31,919
Speaker 1: the history of the parties, the coalitions within them, the dynamism,

651
00:42:32,120 --> 00:42:34,640
Speaker 1: dynamism between them, the movement.

652
00:42:34,280 --> 00:42:35,120
Speaker 2: Back and forth.

653
00:42:35,880 --> 00:42:41,640
Speaker 1: I came from New Jersey, a moderate Republican tradition. But

654
00:42:42,560 --> 00:42:47,400
Speaker 1: what is true in this era with a handful of exceptions,

655
00:42:47,400 --> 00:42:51,160
Speaker 1: and by handful, I mean literally I can count them

656
00:42:51,200 --> 00:42:55,600
Speaker 1: on a hand, every single person I ever worked with,

657
00:42:55,640 --> 00:43:01,120
Speaker 1: it in a business that ultimately, if you or or

658
00:43:01,239 --> 00:43:05,760
Speaker 1: invested with any type of government responsibility, you take an oath. Yes,

659
00:43:06,360 --> 00:43:09,759
Speaker 1: every single person I've ever known and ever worked with

660
00:43:09,880 --> 00:43:15,920
Speaker 1: abandoned everything that they said that they believed in, and

661
00:43:15,960 --> 00:43:20,520
Speaker 1: they got in line as fast as any group of

662
00:43:20,600 --> 00:43:25,000
Speaker 1: people anywhere in the world have ever gotten in line

663
00:43:25,960 --> 00:43:31,439
Speaker 1: behind something they knew to be wrong for their convenience.

664
00:43:33,040 --> 00:43:33,480
Speaker 2: And so.

665
00:43:35,840 --> 00:43:39,840
Speaker 1: I have been accused of being hyperbolic about the nature

666
00:43:39,880 --> 00:43:42,239
Speaker 1: of the threat. I don't think I have been. I

667
00:43:42,239 --> 00:43:47,640
Speaker 1: think I've been understated. If anything, I think you're able

668
00:43:47,719 --> 00:43:52,080
Speaker 1: to see it a long time coming. There's an allergy,

669
00:43:52,280 --> 00:43:57,560
Speaker 1: for some reason in our culture to take what the

670
00:43:57,680 --> 00:44:02,759
Speaker 1: extremist movement says both lives literally and seriously, case in

671
00:44:02,880 --> 00:44:06,080
Speaker 1: point to the proud boy, stand by and stand back.

672
00:44:06,800 --> 00:44:12,080
Speaker 1: There seem to be a real disorientation around what it

673
00:44:12,360 --> 00:44:15,200
Speaker 1: is that a proud boy is, which is a fascist

674
00:44:15,239 --> 00:44:24,040
Speaker 1: power military. They are a version Americanized, twenty first centuryized

675
00:44:24,080 --> 00:44:28,560
Speaker 1: of the essay, simple simple, as simple as that. So

676
00:44:28,960 --> 00:44:32,920
Speaker 1: there's this been this allergy to dealing with it, and

677
00:44:33,520 --> 00:44:38,560
Speaker 1: I just wanted to ask you to talk about how

678
00:44:38,640 --> 00:44:43,360
Speaker 1: you see the magnitude of the danger and the threat,

679
00:44:43,560 --> 00:44:48,759
Speaker 1: and to me, without prejudicing you, what I think is

680
00:44:48,880 --> 00:44:55,480
Speaker 1: unique in it is the cowardice in confronting it, which

681
00:44:57,920 --> 00:45:04,080
Speaker 1: whatever you say about the country, cowardice and confronting some

682
00:45:04,160 --> 00:45:07,200
Speaker 1: of this stuff has never been top of the list.

683
00:45:07,520 --> 00:45:10,680
Speaker 1: It's a new phenomenon and I'm not sure I understand

684
00:45:10,680 --> 00:45:13,319
Speaker 1: what drives it, and I'm hoping you can give some

685
00:45:13,440 --> 00:45:14,360
Speaker 1: perspective to it.

686
00:45:14,840 --> 00:45:17,759
Speaker 2: I wish, Steve, that I could give an intelligent one.

687
00:45:17,800 --> 00:45:22,520
Speaker 2: I think cowardice is exactly the word. Obviously, it's motivated

688
00:45:22,600 --> 00:45:27,520
Speaker 2: by political expediency, and that means power and holding on

689
00:45:27,600 --> 00:45:32,400
Speaker 2: to it and not upholding the oath that you've taken,

690
00:45:33,400 --> 00:45:40,000
Speaker 2: not understanding the fundamental thing that makes us all the same.

691
00:45:40,440 --> 00:45:43,799
Speaker 2: That there's the lesson of my work is that there's

692
00:45:43,840 --> 00:45:47,000
Speaker 2: only us. There's no them, And whenever anyone tells you

693
00:45:47,080 --> 00:45:51,080
Speaker 2: that there's them, just run away. I mean, there's no them,

694
00:45:51,280 --> 00:45:54,680
Speaker 2: It's only us. That's what it's about. And we have

695
00:45:54,880 --> 00:45:57,560
Speaker 2: lost that. There is a sense of I'm shrewd and

696
00:45:57,640 --> 00:45:59,640
Speaker 2: I can do this. But I'll tell you, if you

697
00:45:59,680 --> 00:46:01,840
Speaker 2: wanted to be in the hippus place on earth where

698
00:46:01,960 --> 00:46:05,319
Speaker 2: everything is happening in cinema and in architecture and in

699
00:46:05,400 --> 00:46:08,560
Speaker 2: painting and in music, in nineteen thirty two, there's no

700
00:46:08,680 --> 00:46:13,000
Speaker 2: better place to go than Berlin. And the next year,

701
00:46:13,760 --> 00:46:17,080
Speaker 2: not so much. The people who permitted him, though he

702
00:46:17,120 --> 00:46:19,960
Speaker 2: had nowhere near a majority of votes, not even a

703
00:46:20,000 --> 00:46:24,359
Speaker 2: significant plurality. The conservatives who put him in saying in

704
00:46:24,440 --> 00:46:26,759
Speaker 2: six months he will be singing our tune. In six

705
00:46:26,800 --> 00:46:31,400
Speaker 2: months they were dead or marginalized or you know, complete toadies.

706
00:46:31,520 --> 00:46:34,920
Speaker 2: And so this is not new in human existence. The

707
00:46:35,480 --> 00:46:40,959
Speaker 2: ability to take an expedient route that speaks to some

708
00:46:41,040 --> 00:46:45,080
Speaker 2: sort of short term game is basically what Jefferson was

709
00:46:45,080 --> 00:46:48,000
Speaker 2: talking about when he said, we're disposed to suffer while

710
00:46:48,040 --> 00:46:51,680
Speaker 2: evils are sufferable. Well, we'll take that short term reward.

711
00:46:51,719 --> 00:46:54,200
Speaker 2: The kid will take the one eminem and not wait

712
00:46:54,239 --> 00:46:57,359
Speaker 2: for the fifteen minutes for the three. You know, that's

713
00:46:57,400 --> 00:47:00,279
Speaker 2: what we do. And that kind of thing is so

714
00:47:00,520 --> 00:47:04,080
Speaker 2: stunning in the face of a history, as you're suggesting

715
00:47:04,160 --> 00:47:08,640
Speaker 2: and implying, that is so filled with moments of courage, including,

716
00:47:08,719 --> 00:47:12,480
Speaker 2: by the way, the group of people who suffered proportionally

717
00:47:12,520 --> 00:47:17,600
Speaker 2: the greatest number of casualties in the Vietnam War, Native Americans,

718
00:47:19,200 --> 00:47:25,400
Speaker 2: Native Americans. Right, It's just it's hard to fathom. And

719
00:47:25,440 --> 00:47:28,960
Speaker 2: I think, you know, we've watched over our lives the

720
00:47:29,080 --> 00:47:32,560
Speaker 2: switch of the party that was founded in eighteen fifty four,

721
00:47:32,680 --> 00:47:35,800
Speaker 2: which had as one of its principal things, the emancipation

722
00:47:36,239 --> 00:47:39,799
Speaker 2: of the black man, the elimination of the oligarchy, the

723
00:47:39,840 --> 00:47:43,239
Speaker 2: domination of the very rich is represented by the plantation

724
00:47:43,719 --> 00:47:46,600
Speaker 2: no aristocracy in America out of the ashes of the

725
00:47:46,600 --> 00:47:49,080
Speaker 2: Whig Party. We're going to form this thing, and we're

726
00:47:49,080 --> 00:47:52,120
Speaker 2: going to support small farmers and small businessmen and African

727
00:47:52,120 --> 00:47:56,880
Speaker 2: Americans as they live out the full meaning of our creed.

728
00:47:57,160 --> 00:48:01,400
Speaker 2: As doctor King said, that's all been that's all been

729
00:48:01,440 --> 00:48:05,200
Speaker 2: switched around, and now we find ourselves in a place

730
00:48:05,280 --> 00:48:08,239
Speaker 2: where and I think, in some ways, as Marshall McLuhan said,

731
00:48:08,239 --> 00:48:12,000
Speaker 2: the medium's the message. There is something about the proliferation

732
00:48:12,520 --> 00:48:17,640
Speaker 2: of media like the Dangers in you know, Fantasia of

733
00:48:17,719 --> 00:48:20,720
Speaker 2: Mickey Mouse and The Sorcerer's Apprentice of all that stuff,

734
00:48:21,000 --> 00:48:24,000
Speaker 2: all those places. Everybody's an independent, free agent, and it's

735
00:48:24,040 --> 00:48:27,320
Speaker 2: now what's in it for me? And there's not enough

736
00:48:27,440 --> 00:48:30,920
Speaker 2: about what I can do, as Kennedy, a challenge for

737
00:48:31,000 --> 00:48:35,280
Speaker 2: our country. And you see the extraordinary examples of courage

738
00:48:35,280 --> 00:48:37,880
Speaker 2: and when they stand out, they're in broad relief. But

739
00:48:37,880 --> 00:48:40,080
Speaker 2: they're not enough of them. They're not enough Liz Change,

740
00:48:40,080 --> 00:48:43,279
Speaker 2: they're not enough Adam Kinsinger's they're not enough you or

741
00:48:43,360 --> 00:48:46,560
Speaker 2: others who have just said, you know David Jolly, who

742
00:48:46,600 --> 00:48:50,000
Speaker 2: just says, you know, I can't associate myself with this

743
00:48:50,120 --> 00:48:53,239
Speaker 2: set of actions. They're not even principles. There are no

744
00:48:53,400 --> 00:48:56,160
Speaker 2: policies that go along with it. It's just a kind

745
00:48:56,160 --> 00:49:00,120
Speaker 2: of blind adherence to personality. And that doesn't make for

746
00:49:00,160 --> 00:49:03,080
Speaker 2: a political party, and it doesn't make for the future

747
00:49:03,440 --> 00:49:07,520
Speaker 2: of a democracy. And so you know, we have to

748
00:49:07,640 --> 00:49:11,480
Speaker 2: just constantly remind ourselves of our history with all its complexity.

749
00:49:11,920 --> 00:49:13,799
Speaker 2: And I have in my editing room this neon sign

750
00:49:13,840 --> 00:49:16,160
Speaker 2: that says it's complicated, you know, because there's not a

751
00:49:16,160 --> 00:49:18,360
Speaker 2: filmmaker on earth. If the scene's working, you want to

752
00:49:18,440 --> 00:49:20,799
Speaker 2: leave it alone. But no, we open those things up

753
00:49:20,840 --> 00:49:23,719
Speaker 2: when we learn new and contradictory information. And we have

754
00:49:23,800 --> 00:49:27,280
Speaker 2: to go forward finding some way where we can speak

755
00:49:27,320 --> 00:49:30,680
Speaker 2: to our brothers and sisters in a way that reminds

756
00:49:30,719 --> 00:49:33,560
Speaker 2: them of the seriousness of this moment, that the law

757
00:49:33,680 --> 00:49:37,200
Speaker 2: does matter, that these are not minor things that have

758
00:49:37,280 --> 00:49:40,200
Speaker 2: taken place. This is not the revenge of one person

759
00:49:40,239 --> 00:49:44,600
Speaker 2: against another. This is what we've always done as a country,

760
00:49:44,760 --> 00:49:47,960
Speaker 2: and you know, it really remains to be seen, particularly

761
00:49:48,000 --> 00:49:53,759
Speaker 2: today as we are recording this. How we will how

762
00:49:53,800 --> 00:49:56,000
Speaker 2: we will come out? I don't know the answer, but

763
00:49:56,080 --> 00:49:59,880
Speaker 2: I know that we can't. You know, now is the

764
00:50:00,360 --> 00:50:03,719
Speaker 2: as the old typing thing goes, for all good beatries

765
00:50:03,760 --> 00:50:05,120
Speaker 2: to come to the aid of their country.

766
00:50:05,800 --> 00:50:10,520
Speaker 1: I got I got one last question for you. I

767
00:50:10,520 --> 00:50:14,040
Speaker 1: want to talk about the Vietnam documentary for a second,

768
00:50:14,200 --> 00:50:17,920
Speaker 1: which I think is another on a long list of

769
00:50:18,000 --> 00:50:26,279
Speaker 1: works of genius, but a profound experience watching it. And

770
00:50:26,320 --> 00:50:30,200
Speaker 1: I've been to Vietnam on a couple of occasions. And

771
00:50:30,600 --> 00:50:32,960
Speaker 1: when you look at this era that we live in

772
00:50:33,920 --> 00:50:38,680
Speaker 1: today in twenty twenty three, there's a conventional wisdom I

773
00:50:38,719 --> 00:50:41,200
Speaker 1: think that exists, and a lot of the political media,

774
00:50:41,239 --> 00:50:45,040
Speaker 1: I've gotten the question a lot that posits that it

775
00:50:45,120 --> 00:50:50,360
Speaker 1: began the day that Sarah Palin appeared with John McCain

776
00:50:50,520 --> 00:50:53,000
Speaker 1: in the Rise of the Key Party Movement. And I've

777
00:50:53,040 --> 00:50:58,640
Speaker 1: always rejected that. And what I believe is that this era,

778
00:50:59,200 --> 00:51:04,280
Speaker 1: such as it is, either began on November twenty second,

779
00:51:04,560 --> 00:51:08,360
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty three, or it began on the day that

780
00:51:08,520 --> 00:51:14,239
Speaker 1: combat marines came ashore outside of Danang in Vietnam, where

781
00:51:14,280 --> 00:51:19,319
Speaker 1: the country went to war on the orders of a

782
00:51:19,800 --> 00:51:24,520
Speaker 1: leadership establishment that A knew the war could not be won,

783
00:51:26,800 --> 00:51:34,520
Speaker 1: b excuse from participation the wealthy and the college educated

784
00:51:35,160 --> 00:51:39,240
Speaker 1: and sent the poor, white, Black and Hispanic and American Indian,

785
00:51:40,640 --> 00:51:45,840
Speaker 1: And those fault lines and those divisions are still are

786
00:51:46,280 --> 00:51:55,120
Speaker 1: structural in a culture that is always upriver from politics,

787
00:51:55,160 --> 00:51:59,799
Speaker 1: despite how cable news covers it, right, which is inversed,

788
00:52:02,680 --> 00:52:05,319
Speaker 1: and that if you consider it the fact that you've

789
00:52:05,360 --> 00:52:09,239
Speaker 1: had the baby boomers who've carried on that fight since

790
00:52:09,360 --> 00:52:14,320
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety two in power. We're at the last baby

791
00:52:14,360 --> 00:52:19,640
Speaker 1: boomer election, for sure. I stipulated I said that to

792
00:52:20,040 --> 00:52:23,719
Speaker 1: maybe three elections ago. But this will be the last one.

793
00:52:23,800 --> 00:52:25,400
Speaker 2: This will be the last one, right.

794
00:52:25,280 --> 00:52:30,799
Speaker 1: This will be the last one. How does the country

795
00:52:31,400 --> 00:52:42,080
Speaker 1: move past that intractable set of issues while avoiding the

796
00:52:42,280 --> 00:52:47,560
Speaker 1: rise of a new version of the lost cause or

797
00:52:47,680 --> 00:52:52,240
Speaker 1: a forgetting what the cause was in the first place

798
00:52:54,600 --> 00:53:00,560
Speaker 1: that pushes the country forward and starts to spark the

799
00:53:00,640 --> 00:53:04,239
Speaker 1: inevitable era of reform and renewal.

800
00:53:04,800 --> 00:53:07,080
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, you're saying, when's Lafayette coming?

801
00:53:07,320 --> 00:53:11,400
Speaker 1: Right, when is Lafayette coming? I mean, people forget about Lincoln.

802
00:53:12,200 --> 00:53:14,920
Speaker 1: Part of what made him great is how terrible his

803
00:53:15,040 --> 00:53:18,360
Speaker 1: predecessor was right exactly.

804
00:53:19,120 --> 00:53:22,319
Speaker 2: I would I would, first of all, as much of

805
00:53:22,640 --> 00:53:27,560
Speaker 2: a benchmark. I was ten years old when Kennedy was shot.

806
00:53:28,400 --> 00:53:32,600
Speaker 2: I would agree with your Vietnam thing, that that troops

807
00:53:32,640 --> 00:53:36,480
Speaker 2: were committed not. I mean, Kennedy had inherited from eyesenower

808
00:53:36,600 --> 00:53:40,600
Speaker 2: seven hundred advisors. He left seventeen thousand, you know, a

809
00:53:40,680 --> 00:53:46,000
Speaker 2: thousand days later to his successor. But the commitment of

810
00:53:46,120 --> 00:53:51,280
Speaker 2: they were advisors, right, But the commitment of ground troops really,

811
00:53:51,320 --> 00:53:55,279
Speaker 2: I think was a cynical thing. It was already you

812
00:53:55,320 --> 00:53:58,880
Speaker 2: know there politically with regard to Vietnam. When we saved

813
00:53:58,880 --> 00:54:03,160
Speaker 2: Ho Chiman's life in early the OSS, he declares independence

814
00:54:03,200 --> 00:54:06,920
Speaker 2: the same day the Japanese are surrendering. He's quoting Thomas Jefferson.

815
00:54:06,960 --> 00:54:09,640
Speaker 2: He's surrounded by a couple of OSS guys, and three

816
00:54:09,640 --> 00:54:12,080
Speaker 2: weeks later the State Department says, no, he's the bad guy.

817
00:54:12,320 --> 00:54:14,920
Speaker 2: He's a kamie, not a nationalist. And you know, and

818
00:54:14,960 --> 00:54:17,960
Speaker 2: when we do the Geneva Accords in fifty four that

819
00:54:18,040 --> 00:54:20,719
Speaker 2: call for an election in two years, he would have won.

820
00:54:20,840 --> 00:54:23,160
Speaker 2: But we didn't have that election. We just supported a

821
00:54:23,200 --> 00:54:25,920
Speaker 2: dictator No ding ZM and that goes. So that's the

822
00:54:25,920 --> 00:54:29,040
Speaker 2: political stuff. What you're talking about is inside the American

823
00:54:29,080 --> 00:54:33,560
Speaker 2: psyche and the kind of divisions that get exacerbated at times.

824
00:54:33,880 --> 00:54:36,799
Speaker 2: One thing that the Holocaust film taught me is that

825
00:54:36,800 --> 00:54:41,279
Speaker 2: that stuff is always there. The rampant anti semitism of

826
00:54:41,480 --> 00:54:44,479
Speaker 2: the period of the twenties and thirties that didn't allow

827
00:54:44,560 --> 00:54:48,120
Speaker 2: us to bring anything, the constant racism, the anti Native

828
00:54:48,120 --> 00:54:52,399
Speaker 2: American postures, the xenophobia, all of that stuff is always there.

829
00:54:52,480 --> 00:54:56,040
Speaker 2: The question is what gives it oxygen at any given time.

830
00:54:56,280 --> 00:54:58,600
Speaker 2: Sometimes it's a war like Vietnam, in which you can

831
00:54:58,920 --> 00:55:01,680
Speaker 2: see the opposite. Oh oh, those long haired hippies, I'm

832
00:55:01,719 --> 00:55:04,040
Speaker 2: against I'm for this right. And so you have the

833
00:55:04,520 --> 00:55:09,319
Speaker 2: construction worker riot in New York City against protesters. You know,

834
00:55:09,640 --> 00:55:13,640
Speaker 2: you have moments like that, and then people forget the seventies.

835
00:55:13,640 --> 00:55:18,160
Speaker 2: We're filled with hundreds of bombings, hundreds of bombings, and

836
00:55:18,760 --> 00:55:21,680
Speaker 2: there's a sense of dislocation that's going on. But it

837
00:55:21,760 --> 00:55:25,520
Speaker 2: kind of ebbs out. I think what makes today so

838
00:55:25,840 --> 00:55:29,440
Speaker 2: different and so dangerous and makes us wonder as your

839
00:55:29,520 --> 00:55:31,480
Speaker 2: question is, how do you get the genie back in

840
00:55:31,520 --> 00:55:33,080
Speaker 2: the bottle? How do you get the two paste back

841
00:55:33,080 --> 00:55:37,520
Speaker 2: in the tube? Is that many of these baser instincts

842
00:55:37,560 --> 00:55:41,880
Speaker 2: have been articulated by people at the highest levels of

843
00:55:41,920 --> 00:55:45,840
Speaker 2: our government or at the highest levels of our political process,

844
00:55:46,360 --> 00:55:51,400
Speaker 2: and that in itself is an accelerant. It's like the

845
00:55:51,440 --> 00:55:56,480
Speaker 2: invasive species in Maui that just helped fuel a fire

846
00:55:56,600 --> 00:56:00,279
Speaker 2: in a kind of unnatural or surprising way. And so

847
00:56:00,320 --> 00:56:04,839
Speaker 2: I think our our great challenge right now is to

848
00:56:04,880 --> 00:56:09,480
Speaker 2: figure out some both patients to trust, as we must

849
00:56:09,480 --> 00:56:14,000
Speaker 2: trust in the fact that history will come back, not

850
00:56:14,040 --> 00:56:16,960
Speaker 2: repeat itself but rhyme, as Mark Twain says, and there

851
00:56:17,000 --> 00:56:20,160
Speaker 2: will be that ebbing of those sorts of feelings, and

852
00:56:20,239 --> 00:56:23,279
Speaker 2: there will be a resurgence of a sense of repurposing,

853
00:56:23,680 --> 00:56:29,160
Speaker 2: but also a way to actively challenge that which is undemocratic.

854
00:56:29,440 --> 00:56:32,920
Speaker 2: And you can't do that, you know, in the media

855
00:56:33,040 --> 00:56:36,520
Speaker 2: landscape with all the outlets, and you can't do that

856
00:56:36,600 --> 00:56:38,920
Speaker 2: in an educational system if you're going to suck it

857
00:56:39,040 --> 00:56:42,799
Speaker 2: dry of the truth. So we've got an obligation to

858
00:56:42,920 --> 00:56:48,560
Speaker 2: be dedicated to what has actually happened and what is

859
00:56:48,719 --> 00:56:52,320
Speaker 2: actually happening. Can we have the courage of the little

860
00:56:52,400 --> 00:56:57,680
Speaker 2: child to say the emperor has no clothes? Do we

861
00:56:57,800 --> 00:57:01,160
Speaker 2: have that ability to say that? And to have people

862
00:57:01,239 --> 00:57:04,759
Speaker 2: in positions of power say it with enough frequency that

863
00:57:04,800 --> 00:57:06,920
Speaker 2: we can do it. And you know, there's lots of

864
00:57:06,960 --> 00:57:09,720
Speaker 2: signs that that's happening, and there are lots of signs

865
00:57:10,160 --> 00:57:13,360
Speaker 2: that once again is not going to happen. So my

866
00:57:13,719 --> 00:57:19,680
Speaker 2: feeling is just to kind of trust, but also a vigilance,

867
00:57:19,800 --> 00:57:25,080
Speaker 2: an active vigilance, an active citizenship is what's required from everyone.

868
00:57:26,600 --> 00:57:30,360
Speaker 1: Well, we will leave it there. What a pleasure to

869
00:57:30,400 --> 00:57:33,000
Speaker 1: be joined by you can. Thank you so much, the

870
00:57:33,040 --> 00:57:38,800
Speaker 1: greatest documentary of our times, a future recipient of the

871
00:57:38,840 --> 00:57:43,480
Speaker 1: Presidential Medal of Freedom, which you have well earned, and

872
00:57:43,520 --> 00:57:48,160
Speaker 1: then some the chronicler of America's story, and it is

873
00:57:49,320 --> 00:57:54,200
Speaker 1: essential work. I cannot wait to see your latest chapters.

874
00:57:55,080 --> 00:57:57,680
Speaker 1: It's going to be great. It's coming out I think

875
00:57:57,880 --> 00:58:00,520
Speaker 1: in the latter part of October.

876
00:58:00,080 --> 00:58:01,960
Speaker 2: October sixteenth and seventeenth.

877
00:58:01,640 --> 00:58:05,360
Speaker 1: Yeh, October sixteenth and seventeenth on PBS, and I know that,

878
00:58:05,560 --> 00:58:08,640
Speaker 1: like millions of others, I'll be watching it. Thank you

879
00:58:08,680 --> 00:58:09,440
Speaker 1: so much, Ken

880
00:58:09,920 --> 00:58:10,520
Speaker 2: Thank you, Steve,