Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: In this episode, we discuss a recent interview of Ken Burns about his new documentary, the American Revolution, which really gave some interesting insight into how Burns tried to connect this, the story of the American Revolution and the people involved to our shared humanity.
Hello. Hello, welcome to the Call like I See it podcast. I'm James Keats, and joining me today is a man whose takes, like his personality, are without a doubt too real. Tunde. Ogonlana Tunde. You ready to do what you do today?
[00:00:45] Speaker B: Yeah, man, I'll keep it real.
[00:00:47] Speaker A: All right. All right, let's go, let's go.
[00:00:49] Speaker B: Oh, I'll be a little fake. Let's see which one.
[00:00:52] Speaker A: Now, before we get started, if you enjoy the show, I ask that you subscribe or like the show on YouTube or your podcast app. Doing so really helps the show out. We're recording on November 25, 2025. And Tunde, last week Ken Burns released his new six part 12 hour documentary, The American Revolution on PBS. And from all accounts, it really adds a lot of context and depth to the origin story of the United States.
Meaning the story in broad strokes is widely known, but there's a lot of humanity and just kind of the way people operate and the motivations behind certain things and, and the imperfections, you know, and, and heroes and so forth that are missed by these broad strokes. And sometimes that's intentional, sometimes that is unintentional. But Burns really looks to, to fill a lot, as a documentarian looks to fill a lot of that in and really give us more than, than that, just the broad strokes, so to speak. So now we're just starting the dot, you and I, Tunde. So, you know, but Burns has been out there making the rounds and he gave a really interesting interview to Lex Pryor of the Ringer. And we wanted to discuss some of the interesting thoughts that Burns had in that interview, ones that actually made us more inclined to want to watch. Because as an American, this is the kind of thing that would be good to watch, to have a better understanding of this collective history that we all share and kind of what we're doing here and so forth. So Tunde, what stood out to you in this Ken Burns interview, again with Lex Pryor of the Ringer, about the new documentary that just came out, the American Revolution.
[00:02:23] Speaker B: I would say the thing that stuck out the most actually was the idea that ken Burns is 72 years old. And I'll be a little bit anecdotal here for me that I've been watching his documentaries for a long time. He said he's been doing this for 44 years.
And the way that the interview kind of played itself out, I got the feeling that Ken Burns is the same guy.
He's. He's had the same vision message and I guess you know what he's wanted to do about telling the American story. Like you said, this collective history. I like the way you put that. And what I feel like what I found interesting about parts of the interview that I know we'll get into is that it seems like he's been the same guy the whole time, but the society that he's lived in has changed.
And I think, you know, the term culture wars, we're well versed with that. And I think that part of the interview is him wrestling with the fact that he's watched kind of the American society change while he's been making this documentary. And then that one of the things.
[00:03:31] Speaker A: About it was that he's done this over 10 years. And so that's what I was going.
[00:03:35] Speaker B: To finish off is that I just want to say this. The way he said it made me realize how long it is. And it's not really that long, but it feels long. He said, I started this with 13 months to go in the Obama administration.
[00:03:46] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:03:46] Speaker B: And so made me kind of go back and say, man, that is 10 years ago like you said. But I thought, man, this things were like the national conversation where the country was technology. Like we talk about a lot on our shows about how people have been influenced by what they see online. All that was so different just 10 years ago. So that's kind of what I felt. James, just to finish it off, there is this guy, seems to be the same guy with the same kind of ideas and mission in his heart for the last 44 years in making documentary films. But he seems to also be wrestling with his ability to tell a story in today's climate over the last 10 years as he's been making this.
[00:04:24] Speaker A: Well, yeah, because it seemed like he was. He talked about having to be careful to not get pulled into the day to day struggles or the day to day fight because he wants. He's trying to create and I think this is kind of the why what you're talking about. He's trying to create these works of these works that will stand the test of time, you know, that strike deeper. He talks about this in the interview. That strike deeper than, you know, scoring a political battle in the day, you know, in this day. But actually can can be told. A story that can be told now can be told three decades from now could have been told three decades ago and so forth, and tap into something different, which, you know, a lot of times with that, you're talking about the kind of the humanity of it all, you know, and then the idea of history rhyming but not repeating and the idea that, you know, humans, we have. The human nature isn't changing while all this stuff around us is. So if you can, when you're telling a story, and this seems to be like part of his discipline, you know, when you're telling a story, if you focus on kind of these human nature elements and how people are interacting with one another and how people are reacting to certain things, okay, this happens. So this is going to cause these. The people to react in this way or that way, then actually you can stay above the fray, so to speak, and call and be able to tell the story in a way that strikes at something deeper, something interesting with that. With me or stood out to me as well. And that was just kind of like when he went. When the interviewer asked him a question about, you know, maybe the broad or the variety of. Of perspectives that he incorporated in. And, hey, there's people doing stuff here. There's people doing stuff here. There's. You're telling some stuff about what the. What Native Americans might be doing, what other people might be doing. And he's like, oh, well, you know. And, you know, did. Was this an emphasis for you? He was like, well, no, this wasn't an emphasis. You know, I'm looking at myself as like an umpire calling balls and strikes. And he was like, you know, I've been, you know, when I did the Vietnam thing, people were calling me a commie. Other people were calling me, you know, war hawk, you know, and like. And so what it really struck out when he used the term umpire calling balls and strikes. I put it. Put it in a sports context for me, because it was like, well, if you think about it in a sports context, the ref or the umpire, if that person is doing their job and they're trying to call things, kind of call it as they see it down the middle, so to speak, then oftentimes partisans, fans on either side feel like the ref's against them because from their perspective, on one ledge, the ref is on the other side. But actually they just can't see that there's some. Or they. They don't recognize that there's somebody further to the other side than the ref or the. Who's actually trying to thinking the same thing about the ref. Like, oh, we were over there with them, you know. And so a lot of times, perspective becomes the key word in this type of thing. And so if we're talking about retelling of these stories, there's a couple of reasons to do it. One would be from a propagandist standpoint and say, oh, we just want to. We want to flatten this and make everybody feel good about. Or make certain people feel good about this or certain targeted people. We want to make them feel good about it. So let's flatten it another way, which would be like, maybe, hey, we're going to anybody, we're going to put a purity test to people and say, oh, well, you know, if they don't meet this purity test, as I define it now, then, you know, we're going to disparage them, you know, so there. Or you can look at it and again, tell the story from a humanity standpoint. So to me, I thought that was such an admirable aim and that he had such a clear vision of this is what we're trying to do here is trying to call the balls and strikes, so to speak. Everybody's not going to be happy. You know, we know that going in. You know, and so that, to me, was. Was it really?
You could tell he'd been doing it a long time because I was like, okay, yeah, this guy knows what he's doing in terms of how to present something like this. But that's needed, you know, that's needed in today's world.
[00:08:03] Speaker B: Yeah. And like, I'll go back to the point. You. You said collective history. Because I think that's one thing that Ken Burns tries to present is that this whole story of America is there's a lot of different people involved and different connection of humanity. And I think that to me, is what stands out about some of our culture wars today, about the history of our country. I mean, going back to the Orwell famous George Orwell quote from 1984, he who controls the past controls the present, and then he who controls the present controls the future.
So if you think about it, the American Revolution kind of was, if you really look at the history, like the First World War, I don't mean similar to the First World War that happened in the early 20th century. I mean, it was actually an early version of a world war. I mean, you had three major empires, the British, the French and the Spanish empires, fighting for the entire western hemisphere of the world that they were fighting, you know, colonizing and all that. Then you had Portugal, obviously, going down in Brazil, and then you had American.
[00:09:14] Speaker A: Tribes that were involved in various ways and all that kind of stuff.
[00:09:17] Speaker B: And that's what I was going to say is he. That's what I like about the way he. His. The way he talks about it, right?
[00:09:22] Speaker A: He.
[00:09:22] Speaker B: Because like you said, some people, I think I'll quote here, like, he said something like, some half the people think I'm a pinko commie, and the other people think I'm a right winger, you know, this and that. And it's like he. He's catching all these arrows from just trying to tell a story, and that's it. So I.
[00:09:38] Speaker A: Of course you're gonna catch the arrows if you're trying to tell a story. I mean, that's kind of the thing, because if you're not telling the story the way that somebody wants you to tell it, then, you know, you end up in that. One of the things that I thought was interesting also that was raised, that I'm looking forward to getting to this part in the documentary is talking about how the motivations to kind of. For the war as we understand it, it's like, oh, yeah, we want to create freedom, we want to create democracy. But to your point, from your last point, or from your last, a lot of it was about land and westward expansion, you know, and the British wanting to. To cut that off. And then you had people like, you know, interesting factoid. Washington. George Washington, I think it was Washington Adams, these guys are like mega spectators and had, you know, taken control of a bunch of land in the west that they wanted to then sell to colonists. And they're like, well, what do you mean? We can't go out there anymore? We're not. We can't send people out there. I'm about to sell these people all these lands. And so that was French land.
[00:10:34] Speaker B: Think about it, right?
[00:10:35] Speaker A: That's the.
[00:10:36] Speaker B: That was the French land at the time, if they're going west, because the French.
[00:10:39] Speaker A: Well, but the reason. It wasn't the French issue, it was the issue they couldn't provide any protection from the natives, you know, and so it was like, well, you go out there, you expect us to protect you out there, and we can't, so don't go out there. And so. But that does tie in still to the same theme of this kind of freedom, so to speak. And. But also to what you were talking about as far as this desire to expand, the desire to. To continue to push out from where they are. So. But all of those, again, all of those little factors that doesn't, in my mind, Say that these are bad people because it was, you know, there's. Westward. That democracy may not have been the initial impetus and. Or that democracy, the idea of that, or the republic may have come from the Iroquois Confederacy. You know, like, all of those types of things don't necessarily have to say, oh, well, these are bad people then. But. But it adds more depth and it adds more. As opposed to just these divinely inspired people that just, you know, came down and said, hey, boom, we're gonna, you know, bless you guys with democracy, you know, and if. If you can connect the human beings to, you know, To. To. To their struggle and then understand that, then we have our own struggle. I think it can help you in. In terms of dealing with the ambiguity and the difficulties or uncertainties in the present. So another thing I wanted to ask you about is about this. Like, just we've done. We've read about, you know, books. We've read books about how the importance of myths in the human experience and just kind of in binding people together, you know, is a big thing. Being able to. Shared myths can bind people together, make people who don't know each other work together for a common goal, which is a big thing and a big difference between human beings and animals. But also perhaps, you know, according to Sapiens, the book, a big difference between human being, Homo sapiens and. And earlier humans, you know, like, that. They weren't able necessarily to do that and then therefore cooperate in as large numbers as we could. So how do you. What are you looking forward to as far as seeing how. And this is based on what he talked about in the interview, based on how he. How Burns wants to handle kind of the mythical figures in America's founding, which, you know, one of the points I just, you know, kind of brought up as far as, you know, Washington being a land spectator, you know, but just in general, what are you looking at?
Look, what would you want to see or what do you want to, you know, what are you looking forward to seeing in that?
[00:12:52] Speaker B: I think that, like you said, the kind of texture of the nuances and maybe even contradictions within individuals and within.
[00:13:01] Speaker A: Yeah. Why were they doing this stuff? Yeah.
[00:13:03] Speaker B: And also, like, within concepts.
[00:13:05] Speaker A: Right.
[00:13:05] Speaker B: Like this idea that, yeah, they're fighting for freedom, but at the same time, they're slave owners. A lot of the people that wrote the Declaration.
[00:13:10] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:13:11] Speaker B: Yes. And I think that, you know, James, this is an interesting thing I'm going to say, because I'm not going to use the racial terms we're so used to in our Culture, I'll just use majority and minority, because, again, I'm not into eugenics. I think all humans are generally the same, so we all react in very similar ways. So this could be a story of a majority group and minority groups within the overall society anywhere in the world. But I think, James, that you and I, being from the group that's not the majority in our own culture, what. What it. What it does is it. I think, honestly, it kind of forces us to be able to hold two thoughts at once, which is, yeah, you and I personally revere the founding fathers. We think George Washington, Thomas, Jeopardy, These guys were geniuses.
But we also can hold the idea that you and I, literally, if we took a time machine and went back there, they'd look at us like we're their property, because that was law and that's how this country was founded.
But you and I also live in a country in the year of 2025, one year ago. So not five generations ago, one year ago, during a presidential campaign, one of the two candidates remaining of a major party in the Republican Party, one of two major parties, said that America has never been racist and never been not racist. Never been racist. Her name was Nikki Haley.
And that's my confusion sometimes, James, which is, we're here.
We all acknowledge that the country had this history. How come we just can't get past this part?
Because we want to be recognized as human beings, and they want to be recognized as dominant.
[00:14:42] Speaker A: So, yeah, I think that bringing back to kind of the interview, to me, it was one of the things that he raised that was very interesting to me is the idea of the Greeks and how the Greeks used their gods to talk about these people that were revered, these gods that were revered, but they had flaws. Like, the gods had good qualities and they had bad qualities. And so the Greeks used that to kind of give an illustration of the human experience where you can accept a God that is, you know, the God is all powerful but yet flawed. He has this personality flaw and ends up, you know, gets jealous of somebody else and all this other thing. And so it's easier actually to tell the story of humanity and to teach morals with that. There's an advantage with that, because if your God is all powerful and perfect, so to speak, then it's harder to teach from a human. You're a reflection of God. Then it's harder to teach kind of the nuances of our human experiences and the having strengths, having weaknesses, what to do when you have an insecurity, or what to do when you have something that you know about you that you're not proud of that you did or something like that.
The way that some religions flatten the deity and make it just, oh, it's perfect, it's everything. It makes it more difficult for people to process these types of things. And so I think that what we see because of that, I think it manifests itself in two ways. You have kind of the stuff you're talking about where there are people who prefer to look back at the mythical people of the American founding and flatten them and say that these people were perfect. You cannot say anything negative about these people because they are. If you say anything negative about them, that's basically blasphemy. Because my gods, you can't say anything negative about because that becomes blasphemy. They can't have any texture like a Greek God did.
And again, I'm not saying convert to Greek gods, I'm just saying talking about how these things can be used to help with, or how these things influence your understanding of the world around you. And so on the flip side though, so on one hand it's like, it's this purity thing. Like the Founding Fathers can't be questioned. You can't talk about any flaws that they may have had because that then is an affront on my myth making or my mythical kind of mindset, my religious belief almost to the extent. And on the other side there's this purity test where okay, well, if I'm going to apply this, if this mythical person in Americans founding was not perfect, if hey, this guy was a slave owner, I got to cancel him because that person is a bad person in my eyes. And so therefore I got to cancel him. And so then it's actually the same impulse though. It's like, okay, I'm going to apply this perfection standard to. And Burns actually says heroism isn't perfection, you know, and then you got to be able to digest that and grasp that. And if you want to be able to understand the textures of life and this is something that can help with that because, okay, just because Thomas Jefferson wasn't a perfect human being, you know, he had flaws, he had, he, he had some great ideas, some great thoughts, things that as you pointed out during the civil rights movement, he put things in place that helped us during the civil rights movement become a more perfect union. Great, you know, but he wasn't perfect. So then therefore, what do we do? You know, and again, I'm talking about like the Founding fathers in this instance when we're talking, I think It's a different conversation if you're talking about, like, people who rebelled against the country, the Confederacy and all that, but just the Founding fathers or people along that line. Like, the same impulse that has people wanting to say that they're perfect and you can't question them at all. It's actually that same impulse that makes people who may see things differently want to then cancel them and say, oh, well, we got to get. We got to take down their statues because they weren't perfect. And somewhere in between that is like, okay, I can revere the person for their contributions, but I can also understand they weren't perfect and. And that they were flawed and they had things about them that I don't rock with, you know?
[00:18:33] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, I say this because you said a lot there. One thing I'll say with a smile is I didn't think walking into this recording with you that I'd have a new appreciation for polytheism. So you may. You may have me going back.
[00:18:47] Speaker A: I'm not out here advocating polytheism or Zeus. Right. Hold on.
[00:18:53] Speaker B: Yeah, this. Dionysus, Zeus, Jupiter, all these God.
[00:18:56] Speaker A: It seemed kind of cool, actually. I'm like, all the reason.
[00:18:59] Speaker B: I remember that God of. I don't know who was the God of wine. I remember the Greek God of wine had, like, a God just for wine. So I'm gonna go find that one, because I figured a wine is the good part. So I'm wondering what the flaw is.
[00:19:09] Speaker A: But, yeah, I think we know what the flaw is.
[00:19:12] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:19:13] Speaker A: So.
[00:19:15] Speaker B: Hey, man, I'm about to change this show up. That got interesting here.
[00:19:20] Speaker A: Well, no, there was another question I wanted to ask you.
[00:19:23] Speaker B: Well, hold on, because I got to respond to what you said, because actually, it's. This is an interesting direction we're taking, James, because I didn't think we'd go this direction either, but I think you hit something on the head that's actually very important for what we've been this last 10 years since Charlottesville, all the way to the George Floyd summer when this. The Confederate statues were being taken down. I think this is a real thing that I've never had a chance to talk about, and I don't see many people discussing it. But it goes back to what I said earlier about us being in a minority group in a bigger country and having to make these already these things, these kind of reality, weigh them in our mind and just be okay with it.
[00:20:02] Speaker A: Yeah. So, yeah, we have to reconcile that.
We just have to reconcile. Reconcile that. Because we have no choice. You Know, like, we're here.
[00:20:10] Speaker B: And so here's an example. 2020 happens. The whole thing about the Confederate statues, the way I looked at it and you and I might look at it is, okay, you know, like the city of Charlottesville in 2017 to take down that first one that started all this in this era of culture wars, they had a vote in the city where the citizens delivered. Da, da, da. People came from out of town and started disturbing the peace because they didn't like it. Well, no, and I.
[00:20:34] Speaker A: You shouldn't gloss over that. The city, the leaders and the people in the city voted to do this. Then people. And then people got mad that they did it and came from the outside and. Correct. Made a big issue about it.
[00:20:45] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:20:46] Speaker A: So.
[00:20:46] Speaker B: So. So. And that's.
So the point I'm making is that you and I can nuance the idea, like you just said. That's why I wanted to stay on this. There's a group of Americans that formed their own government called the Confederacy and attacked the United States. Right. They went to war with the United States and then they lost. And so what we, you and I, can nuance the idea that our tax dollars. We don't want it to go there. Just like I wouldn't put the Japanese emperor on a statue.
[00:21:14] Speaker A: I don't want Benedict Arnold inconsistent with the American Revolution. I don't think they have statues to Benedict Arnold, you know? Yeah.
[00:21:20] Speaker B: So that's my point. But when, remember during 2020, a lot of people in the majority group were kind of steered into believing that people like you and I would want to take it all down. Right. That we wanted to change the entire historical narrative and take down Thomas Jefferson and George Washington. And people like us never said that. Right. We said the Confederacy represents something.
The Founding Fathers represent something totally different. And that goes back to James. What I've learned in this last decade, watching all this, you and I and people like us, what we revere is the American system. And so we looked at that as something to be sacrifice, sacred and protected. And that different people, no matter. Even if someone like an Andrew Yang can be my president, and I think he's an American president, even though he's of Asian descent, but there's a whole nother group of Americans that are like, nah, like, that's not what this country is about. It's not about the system is about the people and who we think is American.
And I think that is this tension. And going back to this documentary, it seems like during. That's why I love the Fact, use collective history. During this revolutionary period when everyone was scrapping and people were. It was either you wanted your freedom and not just slavery, but they talked about the white guys in the Continental army who were indentured servants and all these other things. They wanted freedom too. And so, you know, everybody was in this scramble. And then you had the loyalists, and so you, You. The country's founded on this huge, like, you know, I, I would say multicultural, but not in the way we say it. I mean, culture is in how people feel about their world.
The colonies, England, all that. And like you said, in. In a good way just now in this talk, we have flattened that history. And it's like, oh, these guys wrote this declaration. We had this war. It was because of some tea that we threw out into the Boston harbor. And then the British left and case closed. And I just think, yeah, this, this. This documentary gives us a lot more texture, which.
[00:23:19] Speaker A: But that. In that. Because you flatten it, then it becomes harder for people who want to.
For people to. To understand the nuance and the complexity of it and to deal with, okay, there is some dissonance here because this person wasn't perfect. Okay, erase the dissonance or erase the. The information that they're not perfect, or there's some dissonance here that this person isn't perfect. Okay, let's cancel this person. Like. Well, no, you have to be able to deal with the. The. The complexity or the, The. The fact that it's not all one thing or all the other thing. And that is a part of the human experience. That's what you have to be able to. That part is what creates that conflict. Before we get out, though, you know, I do want to mention, because this is happening, you know, the Burns documentary and so forth, and this is something that's been, you know, we've seen this, you know, talked about in the media and everything like that. We're talking about it, you know, trying to, you know, again, keep raising awareness about it. It's something that's a. It's a very noble undertaking, you know, again, to try to give some more texture to our collective myth, this American myth that we. That we buy into. And I say that in a positive way, you know, but the.
This is coming from, you know, pbs, you know, which. Your corporation for public broadcasting just had their funding cut and, you know, like, they're losing money, basically. PBS may not be going away, but the company above them that they get a lot of money from is having. Is getting cut and stuff, stuff like that.
Does that something that. Do you think, like just seeing this come out while that happens, does that create any, does that create any tension in your mind or like, is that something is like, you can not worry too worried about the former when you see the latter or anything like that?
[00:24:51] Speaker B: Yeah, it does because they, they cut the budget through legislation by $1 billion.
And then I realized that 40 of like, of $1 billion went to Argentina.
And so I was wondering if, when I was reading, I'm like, maybe we can go to Argentina and record. Ken Burns can make his documentaries from there because of the Internet now and we can see him here. Right. Like, would that be something.
Should I call that Argentinian guy, you know, the president? No. Okay. So, yeah, I think this is an issue, James. I mean, look, Let me go 30,000ft with it. Is it an issue? I don't know. I think it's the reason I make that joke, James, is because it's about choices.
[00:25:35] Speaker A: Your joke implies that it's about priorities. It's about, well, where we have a certain amount of money, even if we're borrowing too much, which is a separate issue, where are we going to put that money? Are we going to give that to some guy that the leader likes in Argentina just to kind of help him win an election? Or are we going to put that in to reinvest that into our own nation, to make our foundation stronger, to, you know, to build ourselves up and again, you can do that with bridges and roads, but you can also do that with sentiment and helping people feel more connected to what it is that we're doing.
[00:26:07] Speaker B: That's what I felt when I was, when I was reading that part, which was like, I love documentaries. I'm very curious. I'm an intellectual person.
So I enjoy learning just new things, you know, and whether it's astrophysics, whether it's this history stuff, I mean, this is why we got a podcast, right? We do different topics every week because we're curious people. And what I realize is these documentaries aren't that entertaining.
[00:26:31] Speaker A: Right? This is why not compared to It's a shame short form video and on TikTok or Instagram.
[00:26:37] Speaker B: Yeah, and it's a shame, Jane, but think about what I've complained about to you in private and on some of these shows over the years that we've been doing. It is channels like the History Channel, specifically. Yeah, Discovery Channel. Those two channels in my lifetime when I was a kid, they used to be very interesting. They will be only documentaries.
[00:26:55] Speaker A: Time out. They used to be very interesting to People like you and I. Yeah. Where they would give us all this information. I mean, now they're thinking in a different way.
[00:27:02] Speaker B: Yeah, but no, you've been complaining to me about this.
[00:27:05] Speaker A: I can vouch you've been complaining to me about this for a long time. Yeah, yeah. So it went from, you're right, and.
[00:27:11] Speaker B: I'm sorry, to the audience. Let me not project that everyone is.
[00:27:15] Speaker A: As stupid as me. Stuff like, hey, this is how, you know, this is what happened with the steam engine, you know, and 1850 or whatever, to Ancient Aliens. Like what?
[00:27:25] Speaker B: Yeah, but let's tie that in, James, because this is what happens with this type of inability to tell the human history and that Native Americans were complex people that could do things then. Now we have a channel that used to be kind of a legitimate channel for information like, you know, good history and facts, has a show called Ancient Aliens. Because people literally cannot believe that people in Central America build pyramids. They think that it had to be the aliens that come down, even though those people don't question, you know, building the old city in Jerusalem, you know, 2,000 years ago, or building a cathedral in the middle medieval Europe, you know, 500 years ago, no one says aliens built that.
[00:28:04] Speaker A: So this is why.
[00:28:05] Speaker B: It's not. I mean, I know I'm digressing from the revolution, but it's more to just show the idea that this is part of our issue in kind of flattening the way history is, I think, with the idea, like you say, about the nuances of wanting to find heroes being 100% perfect.
It's kind of fascinating that you tie that into monotheism and having a God. You know, the culture of having a God that's omniscient and cannot be questioned versus maybe other cultures who have gods that have imperfections. So I think that.
And then, you know, the way that our culture is with Christian nationalism and that's a big part of American culture and history, Christianity and how it formed here in the colonies. And so I think there's a little bit of all of that goes into these ingredients that makes this story very interesting.
And I guess to finish off on the public broadcasting thing is just. It's a shame that this information won't be available to the public as easily as it was for you and I when we were kids. I guess that's.
[00:29:06] Speaker A: Well, yeah. I mean, that, to me, the trend. The trend line is not promising. Not necessarily for us, you know, but for the next generation or two.
Because as Ken Burns pointed out in, you know, in the Interview, he was able to get the money. You know, he shows up, says, hey, I need to do this, I need to do that. People write checks. It's like, yeah, man, you, you got it. You know, we know you do your, you do your thing, but the next Ken Burns can't do that. You know, the person who is coming up and is going to be the next generation storyteller, who's 30 years old and doesn't have that track record.
Now, there are other avenues for that person to get out there and do this stuff. Like, that person can put it on YouTube, that person can do that. But unless he's got people jumping off buildings or girls in short shorts, it's not going to really catch on like that. That's kind of the thing. So the places where the people who are interested in that type of content go may dry up, so to speak. Like, oh, well again, pbs. Then next thing we know, they'll be talking about ancient aliens. Because that's just, you know, they don't have people making.
[00:30:09] Speaker B: Yeah, real. But it could happen.
[00:30:11] Speaker A: And so. Exactly. So. So to me, it's the trend line that's concerning that if as a society, we're not going to. It's. I do. I drew the analogy before, and I want to make it explicit now. It's, it's. It's similar to saying, hey, we're just not gonna put any money in building bridges anymore. You know, like, if the. We'll use the bridges that we still have once those go bad, you know, we'll think about it later on. But if we're not proactively saying, hey, we probably need to maintain these bridges, this, this message hit a little harder, you know, I know. Decade ago or a few years ago after, like, there was a bridge up in Minnesota over to Mississippi that collapsed, and people were like, yo, what are we doing here? Why are we not maintaining our bridges? Like that seems like we can all see that and be like, yeah, we probably should, you know, check on those things from time to time. But if we're not maintaining that kind of infrastructure, whether it be the physical infrastructure or again, the connectiveness, the connectiveness of us, that infrastructure, Intellectual infrastructure, intellectual infrastructure, what we can all tie into, then that doesn't bode well. And again, this is not just about whether we can get something done now, but in the future and whether the, the, the mechanisms to produce it and also the mechanisms to distribute it for the kinds of people that want it. Everybody's not going to be going for this, you know, but for the kinds of people that want it, are those mechanisms still in place? So I mean that to me is the concern.
But you know, every action has a reaction, you know, and I'd go to physics now but so we'll see. I mean maybe people have enough people have forgotten the importance of it and when it's taken away then it's like okay, yeah, we actually think that's important. So let's make sure that we do, we deal with that, you know, so from time to time that may have to happen as well. So I think we can wrap from there. We appreciate everybody for joining us on this episode of Call Like I see it. Subscribe to the podcast, rate it, review it, tell us what you think, send it to a friend. Until next time, I'm James Keys.
[00:31:50] Speaker B: I'm Tunde Lana.
[00:31:51] Speaker A: All right, we'll talk soon.
It.
