2:00

I was only seven years old when that nine-part

2:02

series premiered in September of 1990.

2:05

And now, today, I count this

2:07

and many of Ken's later films as important

2:10

influences on my own journey to becoming

2:12

a history scholar and storyteller. His

2:15

latest documentary, The American Buffalo, is

2:17

a sort of biography of the American bison,

2:19

or the buffalo, if they are more commonly known. The

2:22

fact is, we would only know of buffaloes

2:24

from history books if it weren't for a collective effort

2:27

to save the species from the brink of extinction

2:29

around the turn of the 20th century. It's

2:32

a remarkable story of how conservationists, industrialists,

2:35

and hunters alike pulled together to

2:37

repair some of what had been pulled apart by

2:39

unchecked slaughter and displacement of wildlife

2:42

and indigenous peoples. As you

2:44

listen to Ken and I chat, I'm sure you'll

2:46

recognize some of the historical context surrounding

2:48

this tale from our episodes on the Indian

2:50

Wars, the Transcontinental Railroad, and,

2:53

of course, Theodore Roosevelt. And

2:56

one last thing before we get to the interview. I

2:58

want to remind everyone that I'm currently on tour

3:00

with the live show. I wrote the show

3:02

specifically for the stage. It's titled The

3:04

Unlikely Union. Think of it as the first 100

3:07

years of American history told in 100 minutes,

3:10

with all the history telling and sound design you love

3:12

about the podcast, plus lights,

3:14

video, live musicians, and me

3:17

on stage. So head over to htdspodcast.com

3:21

slash tour for cities and dates, including

3:24

two shows in my home state of Utah on Veterans

3:26

Day weekend. That again is htdspodcast.com

3:29

slash tour, and I hope to see you out on the road.

3:33

All right. Without further ado, it is

3:35

my pleasure to welcome Ken Burns

3:37

to History That Doesn't Suck. Ken

3:52

Burns, so pleased to have you with me here

3:54

today. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Thank

3:57

you, Greg. It's a pleasure. You've made so

3:59

many iconic That's

6:00

a good story. The buffalo is not extinct.

6:03

There were 35 million

6:06

at the beginning of the 19th century in 1800, and by 1885, there were

6:11

fewer than 1,000. Nobody could find

6:13

any wild and free outside of Yellowstone,

6:15

and maybe there were two dozen there.

6:18

We don't know. And the rest were in zoos or

6:20

in private collections. And so this

6:22

was a really perilous moment, but we brought

6:24

it back from that. It

6:27

connects us to all the various

6:29

corners of American history, particularly the

6:32

most pernicious myths that we

6:34

suffer from, the superficial ones about manifest

6:36

destiny without ever considering

6:39

the consequences. It's the

6:41

Marlboro Man dying of cancer. It's

6:43

a very complex story,

6:46

and I think it also raises real

6:48

questions about what our relationship

6:52

is to the natural world. Do we wish to be

6:54

utter tyrannical masters, as

6:57

has been our want for the last few

6:59

generations, or do we wish to have a more symbiotic

7:02

relationship? And we kind of think that these two

7:04

parts of the first two acts of

7:06

a third act play that will be written by the rest

7:08

of us, having saved the buffalo, do

7:11

we have the courage to create ecosystems large

7:13

enough that they roam wild and free? So there's

7:16

sort of tossing it ahead, I think, in the way that

7:18

all good history does, is it describes

7:20

a moment in the past, but it's speaking because

7:23

human nature doesn't change to the present, and

7:25

also perhaps describes the possibilities

7:28

of a future. And this is all

7:30

without any kind of de-dacticism. It's baked

7:32

into how we like to tell stories.

7:35

So I think it's a perfect project. And I have

7:37

to say, Greg, finally, that I'm

7:39

so glad I waited more

7:41

than three decades to do it, because I hope

7:43

as our chops as filmmakers, as storytellers

7:46

got better. But I also know that

7:48

rather than with a kind of nobless oblige

7:51

or with a certain, perhaps, paternalism

7:54

or even patronizing, we let

7:57

other ideas in. In this case, we

7:59

have the courage to create a future. and the ability to just see

8:02

other ways of thinking about everything. I mean, there's

8:04

a moment when George Horse Capture

8:06

Jr., a member of a small tribe

8:08

in North Central Montana

8:11

on the Fort Beltonite Reservation, the

8:13

Anai people, says, my

8:15

cattle, my land? And

8:17

all of a sudden, you realize the centuries

8:20

of this momentum, the

8:22

inertia of movement of the idea

8:24

of property ownership gets called into question

8:27

by Native peoples who don't have exactly

8:29

that point of view. And it's so interesting

8:32

to have your molecules rearranged

8:35

or at least challenged for a time.

8:37

And that, of course, is another element

8:39

of good storytelling, we hope. Yeah, a

8:41

number of things. Yeah, so

8:44

a lot of things there that take my mind to several

8:46

different directions at once to kind of go

8:48

back to the very start of this most

8:50

recent film that you've made. It was

8:53

really powerful to me, the juxtaposition

8:55

that you throw out to the audience right out the

8:57

gate where you're talking about the

8:59

innumerable herds of buffalo

9:02

when Lewis and Clark are making their ways across

9:05

the continent. And then you jump

9:07

forward just in a sentence a century

9:10

later and describe an expedition

9:12

that can't find any. Right,

9:14

they can't find three months they search and they

9:16

cannot find a single buffalo. I think that

9:18

really is a very powerful way

9:21

to illustrate the very point that you just made here.

9:23

Well, let me put a finer point. That's part of our prologue

9:26

and it's deliberately designed to say, here

9:28

are Americans, the first white Americans,

9:30

going into this unknown

9:33

territory, which is not unknown to other

9:35

people. There are at least 30 to 40

9:37

nations in their route forwards

9:39

and back

9:40

that see, as you say, countless numbers

9:43

of perhaps 30 to 35 million bison. We

9:46

have no idea how many, of

9:48

course, but certainly those are all reasonable

9:50

numbers and maybe conservative. But let's

9:52

just put a finer point on it, which is this

9:54

is the largest slaughter of wildlife

9:58

in the history of the world.

10:00

period. I

10:02

mean, this is not just

10:04

the buffalo. The buffalo are the main victims,

10:06

but we're talking about elk and grizzly and

10:08

wolves and coyotes and other sort

10:11

of as the biologists say megafauna.

10:13

And what was our American Serengeti,

10:16

a loud, shattering set

10:18

of animals and plants in

10:21

great diversity is a kind of silent

10:23

monoculture now. And so

10:26

what happens in the 19th century, most

10:28

with the market pressures, we want their tongues.

10:30

Oh, no, we want their hides to create leather to

10:32

drive the belts of the Industrial Revolution. Oh,

10:35

we're running out of buffalotes, cut their head off and

10:37

put them in saloons or in my trophy

10:39

room. Oh, let's just take the bones, clean

10:42

up the crime scene as one of our historians

10:44

says on camera and make the most money

10:47

that anybody made in the chemical industry.

10:49

In fact, the largest industry in Michigan

10:51

was the Detroit carbon works,

10:54

grinding up the bones to use

10:56

in various concoctions. So you

10:59

just kind of shake your head as if the

11:02

hide hunters would just strip the hide off and

11:04

leave 800 pounds of meat

11:06

when native peoples had used everything

11:08

from the tail to the snout in

11:11

every aspect of their lives. It's a great complex

11:14

story with lots of figures who

11:16

suddenly have hitting on the idea that the buffalo

11:19

and the Native American are now our totamic

11:21

symbols. We're fetishizing and romanticizing

11:24

something that we've spent the last century trying

11:26

to annihilate. And so there's complicated

11:29

dynamics and undertow to the layers

11:31

of the story, almost like a Grand Canyon

11:33

of contradictions in the story of the buffalo

11:36

that helps us, I believe, understand

11:39

ourselves more clearly. Well,

11:41

I've always appreciated the complexities

11:44

that you get into it when you tell stories,

11:47

and kind of the duality that's always a presence

11:50

in American history and frankly, human history.

11:52

That is who we are as a species, right?

11:55

We are always, every generation, individual,

11:58

we are capable of such goodness. generosity

12:00

and abject evil, frankly.

12:03

Yeah. And good history is

12:05

always going to face that painful

12:07

reality. Mind listeners are fairly

12:10

familiar with Theodore Roosevelt and his conservation

12:12

efforts. They had a whole episode

12:14

on that. Let's go ahead and get into some of that duality

12:17

and dive a little bit deeper into the conservation

12:20

spec. What would you say within

12:22

the emergence of conservation that

12:24

starts really at the presidential level with

12:26

Theodore Roosevelt and starts to move forward?

12:29

What do you think are the big things someone should have in mind

12:32

as they think about the buffalo?

12:34

So what happens is the

12:35

conservation movement, I think it's difficult for people

12:37

now 100 years beyond it, more

12:39

than 100 years beyond it, is really born from

12:42

hunters, people who want to kill buffalo

12:44

like Theodore Roosevelt and can't find enough

12:47

to kill. And they merge

12:49

with more thoughtful people like George Byrd Grinnell,

12:51

who keeps by the way a

12:54

naturalist George Byrd Grinnell and writer keeps

12:57

the buffalo skull on

12:59

his desk, whereas Theodore Roosevelt displays

13:01

the trophy heads at Sagamore Head. That's a

13:04

big distinction. And so together

13:06

they form the Boone and Crockett Club with the idea

13:08

that there could be something called sustainable hunting.

13:11

And that's the beginnings of it. And it's okay,

13:13

that's the way it is. And then of

13:15

course the conservation movement grows and

13:18

morphs into many different things, not

13:20

just saving spectacular landscapes

13:22

and big wildlife, but understanding

13:25

historical and cultural things for

13:27

their historical and scientific values.

13:30

And then ecosystems, the Everglades

13:33

looks like a nothing thing, but

13:35

it's one of the most diverse habitats on

13:38

Earth that could easily be endless

13:40

strip malls and golf courses and resorts

13:42

right now. Apparently, TR's

13:45

fifth cousin, Franklin Roosevelt's famous song

13:47

was Home on the Range, so we're always looking for a place

13:49

where the buffalo roam and

13:51

the deer and the antelope play. Well,

13:54

it's funny that you mentioned that lyric because

13:56

that does kind of speak to that

13:59

fascinating. two-sided nature, again,

14:02

that we have here in

14:04

the United States where, yes,

14:06

there's this idealized image

14:09

of the home on the plains, this very

14:11

rugged experience, and yet you also talk

14:13

about the strip malls that could easily be

14:15

there today. We like to say, you know,

14:17

if there were no national parks, then

14:20

Zion and Yosemite would

14:22

be gated communities. The Grand Canyon

14:24

would just be lined with mansions. It would

14:26

be really hard. Maybe there'd be a public access

14:29

view. Yellowstone would be an old

14:31

and down on its luck place called Geyser

14:34

World, and I've already described the

14:36

fate of the stuff. You

14:39

know, there's an interesting thing. Home on

14:41

the Rains is a really

14:44

amazing piece of writing

14:46

because it's got a last verse that I was

14:48

trying to look up that I love

14:50

because it speaks to that duality,

14:53

Greg, that I think you're trying to understand. So

14:55

we want to give us a home. We're already romanticizing

14:58

a frontier that Frederick Jackson Turner has

15:00

told us is closed. But

15:03

the narrator, the speaker says, how

15:06

often at night when the heavens are bright with

15:08

the light from the glittering stars

15:11

have I stood there amazed and asked

15:13

as I gazed if their glory

15:15

exceeds that of ours? So

15:18

here you have human beings

15:20

once again, and in this case, American

15:23

human beings, believing that their point

15:25

of view is the center of the universe, that

15:27

how could the stars possibly have it

15:29

as good as we have it here in

15:32

a place in which we've actually, for

15:35

the most part, denuded it

15:37

of its flora, made it a monoculture,

15:40

as I said, have murdered

15:42

most of its animals and taken its indigenous

15:45

people away and isolated

15:48

them in things we call reservations.

15:50

And then even after giving them relatively

15:53

a large amount of land, we then

15:55

further through the Dawes Allotman

15:57

Act, take that away too and open that up.

16:00

for white settlement usually because there might be

16:02

an underlying interest in what's

16:04

underground oil or gas or gold

16:07

or whatever it might be. But whatever it is,

16:09

the native people have no voice in this, none

16:12

whatsoever. And so 300 separate

16:14

nations that occupy what is the continental

16:17

United States just get sort of brutally

16:19

pushed aside. And if they push back, then

16:22

the brutality becomes even more

16:24

severe. You know, we've done a few episodes

16:26

on the Indian wars. My listeners are very familiar

16:29

with that history, Frederick Jackson Turner

16:31

wounded me. But as you're talking,

16:34

something that comes to mind for me is thinking about reservations

16:36

in the present. I realize this has taken us

16:38

perhaps a little bit outside of the American Buffalo,

16:41

as you can see with the film. But as you

16:43

did this, and I know, I saw

16:45

you did an excellent job of bringing in a lot of

16:47

indigenous voices, particularly when

16:49

we compare it to what we're perhaps used to seeing in a documentary.

16:52

What experiences did you have either

16:55

engaging with indigenous communities

16:58

or getting to know perhaps

17:00

a little bit of life on reservations

17:02

that you think would be a value for the

17:04

average listener to hear and think about? Yeah,

17:07

I just think we have to understand how much more

17:09

dimensional they are than whatever our

17:11

conventional wisdom is. I don't know what everybody's

17:13

thinking in their hearts of what they think about an Indian

17:16

reservation. It has to do with sort of wrecked

17:18

cars next to a

17:21

trailer with alcoholism

17:23

and crime and whatever

17:26

and a kind of funny, difficult

17:28

relationship with the white people

17:30

that surround them and weird governance

17:33

and stuff like that. We can just change

17:35

a little bit about that. There are more

17:38

Native Americans now than at the time of

17:40

Columbus. The tribes

17:42

are incredibly organized. In

17:45

many cases, those problematic

17:48

things like alcoholism and drug

17:50

abuse and poverty do exist

17:53

and are persistent and at unacceptable

17:56

levels. The Vietnam War was

17:58

the subject of a film I made. the

18:00

percentage of native americans who served

18:02

is higher than any other group so

18:05

that these are loyal and patriotic

18:07

americans who you could give a pass given

18:09

our treatment of them. Do that but

18:11

have been hugely important in in

18:14

all of our wars and so you get

18:16

a chance to understand that a

18:18

native population is not frozen in

18:20

whatever superficial view we might have of

18:23

them but a much more. Complex

18:25

and organic set of cultures set

18:27

of language sets of tradition that

18:29

we are duty with our better

18:32

self to honor. I'm

18:34

going to take a quick break when we come back

18:36

can i talk about the art of storytelling master

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19:53

Fantastic answer thank you can

19:56

we talk a little bit about storytelling itself sure

19:58

so. I believe

20:00

firmly that history as

20:03

complex and difficult as it can

20:05

be and sometimes does not give itself

20:07

to a single narrative. In fact, often

20:09

does not give itself to a single narrative. Yet

20:12

history is best told when it retains that

20:14

human element, when it... That's right. When

20:16

we know the story. Yeah. So history

20:18

is mostly made up of the word story plus high,

20:21

which is a good way to begin a story. Sure.

20:24

I do understand that there was a kind of bankruptcy

20:27

to old narrative, which is entirely top

20:29

down in the United States with just a series

20:31

of presidential administrations punctuated

20:33

by wars. It's seen by the time

20:35

of the end of the Second World War bankrupt

20:38

in an extreme and you found the historical community,

20:40

academic historical community, understandably

20:44

sort of being seized by particular

20:46

forms of historiographies. I think first

20:49

Freudian was a good late

20:51

40s, early 50s attempt to filter through

20:53

a Freudian analysis. Then later

20:55

Marxist and economic determinist. You've

20:57

had symbolism and symbiotics

21:00

and queer studies. You've had Afrocentrism

21:03

and whatever it might be. There's

21:06

been lots of ways to sort of look at it. And

21:09

at the same time, I think what's

21:11

happened is that old fashioned narrative is always

21:14

obtained. It is possible, in fact,

21:16

in that old fashioned narrative to include all

21:18

those different points of view. And

21:20

so we've sort of adhered to the idea that we're

21:23

our storytellers, but uninterested

21:25

merely in that top down. We wish to have

21:27

a bottom up that is not unforgivingly

21:31

revisionist, that it throws out any

21:33

of the top down stuff. And at the same time

21:36

is very much aware

21:38

of the conflicts that you suggested that exist

21:41

not only between people in human nature, but

21:43

within people in human nature. And

21:46

so we're reveling in the greed

21:48

and the generosity that you find

21:51

not just between different

21:53

manifestations of people, but within manifestations

21:56

of a single person, the same thing with Puritanism

21:59

and Purianism. and virtue and vice, all

22:01

of these things are paired together.

22:04

In our jazz series, Wynton Marsalis said to

22:06

me something on camera that just stuck with me

22:08

for decades, which he said, sometimes

22:10

a thing and the opposite of a thing are true

22:12

at the same time. Yeah, that's powerful. Yeah,

22:15

it's really powerful. And I put up in our editing

22:17

room a neon sign in cursive, lowercase

22:20

cursive, that said it's complicated. And

22:22

there's not a filmmaker on earth that

22:25

when you've got a good scene that's working, you don't wanna touch

22:27

it. And all I've done most of my

22:29

professional career, my professional

22:31

life is to touch those things

22:34

that seem untouchable because we've learned new

22:37

and potentially contradictory information.

22:39

It just makes it interesting. We're working on

22:41

a history of the American Revolution after the glorious

22:43

victory at Yorktown. George Washington

22:46

points to these regiments and said, okay, you

22:48

guys go there and round up the black

22:50

Americans who have fled to the British lines, promise

22:53

freedom, and send them back to their plantations.

22:56

That sign you have in and of itself kind of captures

22:59

that whole point. I mean, it's a contraction,

23:01

so we'll call it three words, but it's

23:03

complicated. It's such a simple sign and

23:05

it conveys that whole

23:08

messy point. With

23:10

the American Buffalo, making the Buffalo

23:12

itself the protagonist, what

23:14

unique challenges did that present in

23:17

terms of having those complications and yet

23:20

trying to get yourself to a streamline where

23:22

you can tell a narrative and

23:24

a story that has this main

23:26

character? Yeah, I think

23:29

every film has unique set of

23:31

challenges. Interestingly enough,

23:33

I think focusing on the Buffalo was liberating

23:36

in some ways. It got us to de-center

23:39

everything else. Right? Right. And

23:41

in the de-centering, it allows you to kind

23:43

of reset or recalibrate a

23:45

relationship to, say, a dominant

23:48

white American culture, or

23:51

even to privilege

23:54

in some sort of reverse thing, kind

23:57

of a just knee-jerk revisionism. Native

24:00

culture. So it permitted through

24:02

the act of seeing it through the eyes

24:04

of the buffalo. I don't know if you've ever been

24:07

in proximity of a buffalo. I have. And

24:09

it was majestic. Yeah. And their

24:12

eyes, their eyes have seen everything. It's

24:14

sort of like, you know, when we're working on the national

24:16

parks, you always felt like the the sequoias

24:18

of the redwoods had just witnessed centuries

24:21

of stuff and our lives just blip by.

24:24

And yet there's a kind of silent witness

24:26

to them. The buffalo seem in that way kind

24:28

of witnesses to all the pain and tragedy,

24:31

but all the promise of

24:33

what's been going on. So in some ways, it

24:35

was liberating every as you know,

24:38

every every attempt at storytelling

24:41

is really, really difficult. And it's particularly

24:43

true when it's based

24:46

in fact, where it's history

24:48

or documentary films, because you

24:50

can't make stuff up. You can't conflate

24:52

characters or change countries or nationalities

24:55

or divide characters into more than one

24:57

or condense more than one character into

24:59

one. So how do you edit a

25:01

human experience which seems wild

25:04

and chaotic and and try to put

25:06

a shape around it while keeping

25:08

a kind of moral compass and an

25:11

accuracy, keeping these old

25:13

19th century things about virtue and honor

25:16

intact in the storytelling? And it's, of

25:18

course, incredibly difficult. And that's why

25:20

we have the sign is complicated. Now, as you mentioned,

25:23

the looking into the eyes of the

25:25

buffalo, seeing sorrow,

25:28

seeing the promise, what would

25:30

you say after making

25:32

this film? Well, what's the promise that you

25:34

see as you do try to? So we're

25:36

talking about a historical film. But

25:39

as you said at the beginning of this interview, you mentioned

25:41

the way that this does kind of look forward as well.

25:44

What would the promise be in your mind? I

25:47

think the promise would be that at the

25:49

beginning of our second episode where we watch

25:51

the descent, I mean, it is really Dante's Inferno.

25:54

And the second episode is not Paradiso,

25:57

but it's beginning to rise out of the Inferno.

26:00

wars as I said the good news the buffalo

26:02

saved it's not going extinct and in

26:04

a time of climate change when we will begin

26:06

to see many large mammals

26:09

go extinct and we'll go wait a second I really

26:11

like that animal and it's going to be sorry

26:14

bub it's just gone now the

26:16

buffalo offers a sense that human beings

26:18

could do something at the opening of that second episode

26:21

Wallace Stegner quoting him the

26:23

great writer about the West said you

26:25

know human beings are the most dangerous

26:27

species on the planet and every other

26:30

species including the planet itself

26:32

has reason to fear us but we're also

26:34

the only species that when we want to can

26:37

save another and

26:39

that I think is embodied in it this

26:41

is like Lincoln's first inaugural when he's

26:44

trying to appeal to the better angels of our nature

26:46

it didn't work the worst side

26:48

of us obtained for the next four years but

26:51

I think we all know that

26:53

there's this other thing this prick of conscience

26:55

in fact in 1913 we come

26:57

out with an Indian head nickel an

26:59

Indian we know who's modeled on and a

27:02

buffalo on the back we know which animal

27:04

is modeled on and who was sent immediately

27:06

to the meat packing district in Manhattan

27:08

and carved up right right

27:11

but it shows that we're beginning to fetishize

27:14

and beginning to romanticize and beginning to center

27:17

these two forces that we spent as

27:19

I said you know a century trying to get rid

27:21

of and it in and George

27:23

horse captured junior again comes in and just says

27:26

you know makes me wonder why do you destroy

27:28

the things you love I think that

27:30

is a very human complication in and of itself

27:32

we do we do that all the time even in

27:35

our personal lives don't we in our personal of

27:37

course we do yeah and that's why he's

27:39

saying it feels like it comes from God

27:41

like he's a holy man who's

27:43

just dispensed some indispensable

27:46

wisdom almost like Wynton saying yeah sometimes

27:48

the thing in the opposite of the thing or two at the same

27:50

time well and I'll say

27:52

can storytelling in and of itself

27:55

and that's part of how we build a relationship

27:57

with whatever whether it's an object

27:59

or a species or people. I

28:02

think about Victor Hugo, it's

28:05

a work of fiction, but his Notre dame

28:07

de Paris, that he was

28:09

highlighting a forgotten,

28:11

forsaken, overlooked cathedral that

28:14

most of us in the 21st century and

28:16

in my childhood and in the 20th,

28:19

we couldn't fathom Paris without it. And

28:21

the whole world mourned when

28:23

the cathedral caught fire a few years back

28:26

at your work on the Brooklyn Bridge. It

28:29

personified this bridge, it made it come

28:31

to life. And it makes

28:33

it a more real and tangible thing

28:35

as we hear the stories of the Roblings and those

28:38

surrounding the bridge. And I'm absolutely

28:40

confident that American Buffalo, it's likewise,

28:43

well, getting that story in

28:45

front of a larger populace,

28:47

it's just going to make the Buffalo

28:50

again, in a personified sort of

28:52

way, become something that we

28:54

think more about and are more concerned about. Two

28:56

little stories from my childhood that may

28:58

be Jermaine, I'm the son of an anthropologist.

29:01

And I grew up with as many

29:03

kids did in the 50s and

29:06

60s with a map of the United States.

29:08

My map had the political divisions of the states,

29:11

but no states, it had only the list of native

29:13

tribes. And I can remember as a boy, seeing

29:15

the first Buffalo in a zoo and just being so

29:18

amazed and drawn to it. The

29:21

second story is from high

29:23

school when I at Ann

29:26

Arbor, Michigan, Pioneer High

29:28

School, in 11th grade, I took a course

29:30

in Russian history by a guy named

29:32

Randy Peacock. And he really,

29:36

it goes back to the beginning of our conversation,

29:38

he just lit this class on fire. He

29:40

said, we're going to cover, you know, from 1861 when

29:43

the Tsar freed the serfs

29:48

to 1917, the beginning of the Russian Revolution. But

29:50

today, I want to get your attention

29:52

by telling you how Rasputin was

29:55

murdered. in

30:00

the 1960s, there are the people in the back drawing

30:02

pictures of horses' heads in their notebook,

30:04

and people who are not paying any

30:06

attention and maybe passing notes or whatever.

30:09

Within about five minutes, everybody was

30:11

listening and had their mouths open. Because

30:14

he took a story in which, as

30:16

you probably know, Rasputin was poisoned,

30:18

he was stabbed, he was shot, and he was still dumped

30:21

in the Neva River and still trying

30:23

to get up out of it before

30:26

he actually perished. I

30:29

was there, he had me at hello, but everybody

30:32

else was like, what? History,

30:34

I thought history was boring,

30:35

I thought I had to take this

30:36

course in order to get out here. Right.

30:39

Instead, he. Instead, truth is stranger than fiction,

30:42

yeah. And well, that's exactly

30:44

right, and I think that's the important thing is that

30:48

people have presumed, as a documentary filmmaker,

30:51

through most of my professional life, that this was

30:53

somehow some lower rung on a career

30:56

ladder that would eventually lead to

30:58

making a feature films, and I don't feel

31:00

like it. I think that there, you

31:02

can't make some of this stuff up just

31:04

in the story of the Brooklyn Bridge, or as

31:06

Shelby Foote wrote to me, he said,

31:09

as we were working on the Civil War and struggling in

31:11

editing, he said, God's the greatest dramatist.

31:15

And I said, Shelby, what do you mean? And

31:17

he basically was telling me it's in

31:19

then, and then, and then. So people get

31:21

their knickers all tied up and not

31:24

over Vicksburg versus Gettysburg, but

31:26

Vicksburg versus Fall. But actually

31:29

how it happened is you start with Vicksburg I, you

31:31

do Gettysburg, and when that's over, Vicksburg

31:34

II. And that's just, and then, and then,

31:36

and then, God's the greatest dramatist. But

31:38

he then said, you know, think about it. You

31:40

win the war on Friday, and then early

31:43

the next week, you figure out you have enough

31:45

time to go to the theater. Yeah, that's

31:47

a pretty powerful way to play it. Ken, I

31:49

wanna thank you so very much. It's my

31:52

pleasure and honor to be able to speak to you.

31:54

I've been watching your movies since I

31:56

was a kid. You're part of what's

31:58

taken you down the path on. on. So

32:01

thank you very much for your time today. It's been

32:03

wonderful. It's great to have a real

32:06

conversation about history. I really enjoyed

32:08

this. Sometimes the thing

32:10

and the opposite of a thing are true at the

32:12

same time. It's complicated

32:14

and that's why we tell stories.

32:17

I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did. Ken

32:20

Burns latest documentary, The American Buffalo,

32:23

premieres on October 16th on PBS

32:25

here in the United States. And I'll

32:28

be back in two weeks to tell you a story.

32:33

History That Doesn't Suck is created and hosted

32:36

by me,

32:36

Greg Jackson. Special thanks

32:38

to today's guests, documentary filmmaker

32:40

Ken

32:40

Burns. Episode produced and edited

32:42

by Dawson McCraw. Production by Airship.

32:45

Sound design by Molly Fox. Theme music composed

32:47

by Greg Jackson. Arrangement and additional

32:49

composition by Lindsey Graham of Airship. Home

32:51

on the Range license For

32:54

a bibliography of all primary and secondary sources

32:57

consulted in writing this episode, please visit

32:59

https://https.podcast.com. HTTPS

33:02

is supported by fans at patreon.com forward slash history

33:04

that doesn't suck. My gratitude

33:06

to you kind souls providing funding to help us keep going.

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