Can the American experiment survive? (with Ken Burns)

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
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**Ken Burns** (0:15)
It's not a spectator sport, democracy. It's about active engagement. We are given this gift of citizenship. Most people before the American Revolution were subjects under authoritarian rule.

**Dasha Burns** (0:28)
Hello, hello, welcome to The Conversation and happy 4th of July. I'm Dasha Burns. Every week on this show, I talk to the most compelling and sometimes unexpected power players in Washington and beyond. And this week, to celebrate America 250, I sat down with award-winning documentarian Ken Burns.

**Ken Burns** (0:47)
Fourth of July is my favorite holiday because you sit there on a blanket, on a field looking at these fireworks with all these other people in the dark and you share with them in common that we agree to basically a sentence in a document.

**Dasha Burns** (1:05)
Ken Burns has chronicled a range of chapters in US history, from the Civil War to Prohibition to the Vietnam War and much more. He's observed uniquely American cultural touchstones through his series on jazz, baseball, and the national parks. And in his most recent work, Burns goes back to where it all began with the American Revolution.

**SPEAKER_4** (1:27)
My God, you can scarcely conceive of the distress and anxiety. The city in an uproar.

**Dasha Burns** (1:34)
His series goes deeper than what you may have learned in history class to examine the complicated roots of this great American experiment. So in our conversation, I wanted Burns to talk about the lessons of the American Revolution that may apply to this current moment that we face as a nation. If you want to go even deeper, you can catch the American Revolution streaming for free on pbs.org and PBS apps through July 12th. As we celebrate America's 250th birthday, a reminder that journalism is essential to maintaining a healthy democracy. You can show your support for our journalism by subscribing wherever you're listening or watching this episode. Now, Ken Burns joins The Conversation.
I am so excited to say these words, Ken Burns. Thank you so much for joining The Conversation.

**Ken Burns** (2:22)
My pleasure. Thank you.

**Dasha Burns** (2:23)
There's so much I want to talk to you about, so much that our viewers want to hear from you. But I do want to start big picture because we're having this conversation around the 250th anniversary of the United States. You've got this incredible series, The American Revolution. But you've said that all your films are organized around the central question of who are we as Americans.
And I want to know how you would answer that question today.

**Ken Burns** (2:52)
Well, as the neon sign in lowercase cursive in my editing room says, and has been there for years and years and years, it's complicated.
Mom, all of history is, filmmaking is, all of that stuff. And I want to be able to have the courage to take a scene that's working. And when I learn new information, that is destabilizing to why that scene is working to change it. And so I think that while I sound that question, who are we with each film, you never necessarily answer the question, you just deepen it. So the complexity that is inherent in who we are, is manifesting it right now. I mean, this film that you talked about, The American Revolution, I began in December of 2015 Barack Obama had 13 months to go in his presidency.

**Dasha Burns** (3:38)
Wow.

**Ken Burns** (3:39)
I mean, we don't plan for the moment and nobody was talking 250 I didn't even think about it. I knew it would probably be done in 2025, but it didn't occur to me. And somewhere about halfway through, I said, oh, it's the 250th anniversary of Lexington and Concord. And then all of a sudden people started saying, oh, you've planned this so perfectly. What I think happens is if you do the kind of deep dive that we've done in the Revolution, that it isn't just the superficial, sentimentalized, encrusted with the barnacles of nostalgia story of the Revolution, which is usually the way we tell it.

**Dasha Burns** (4:12)
Encrusted with the barnacles of nostalgia. Have you used that one before or is that just for us?

**Ken Burns** (4:16)
Very ancient on a theme, but I'll give it to you.

**Dasha Burns** (4:20)
I will take it.

**Ken Burns** (4:21)
We're in a position to benefit from the complexity of the history, that we can understand who we are. I mean, you know, history doesn't repeat itself. No event has ever happened twice as much as we always toss that phrase around. Mark Twain is supposed to have said history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes. That's closer to the real thing that you aware of things. Even nature never changes. The Bible, the Old Testament, Ecclesiastes told us that there's nothing new under the sun. And so we see patterns and themes and rhymes all the time. And so it means that history can be an extraordinary teacher, particularly in a fraught moment like this, when for many people, the greatest existential threat to the existence, the perpetuation of this 250 year old grand experiment seems in question. Having a complex and serviceable, usable history gives you a kind of perspective on the present moment that is, I think, pretty helpful.