#229 Benjamin Franklin w/ Dayton Duncan and David Schmidt
The Road to Now
Benjamin Sawyer
4.8 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 4 April 2022
⏱️ 59 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It's difficult to fathom how Benjamin Franklin accomplished so much in a single lifetime. It's equally difficult to imagine how to take such an incredible life and consolidate it into four hours of documentary film. In this episode, we cover both feats with writer Dayton Duncan and producer David Schmidt, two of the great minds behind Ken Burns' new documentary on Benjamin Franklin. Dayton and David discuss Franklin's life, the work that goes into creating a historical documentary film, and their process for deciding the best way to tell an American icon's story in a pair of two-hour episodes.
Benjamin Franklin: A Film by Ken Burns premieres Monday, April 4th and Tuesday, April 5th on your local PBS station and we highly recommend it!
If you enjoy this episode, check out Ben and Bob's conversation with Ken Burns in episode #191.
This episode was edited by Gary Fletcher.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm Bob Crawford. |
| 0:06.5 | I'm Ben Sawyer. |
| 0:08.1 | And this is the road to know. |
| 0:11.3 | Episode 230, we still can't get it right. |
| 0:14.4 | Man, Ben, so many weeks. |
| 0:16.5 | Like, somebody once told me when we started this, |
| 0:19.3 | an experienced journalist, radio host, said, |
| 0:25.2 | for every interview, have twice as many questions prepared as you have time. |
| 0:32.4 | Always have twice as many questions ready to go. |
| 0:36.0 | And for this conversation we're about to have, I have five times as many questions |
| 0:43.1 | ready to go. |
| 0:44.1 | And yet, I just, it's just, note pads of thoughts, not even questions, like just, just, just inspirations and and and uh ponderings and facts and so i hope you can |
| 1:02.3 | help bring some you know order to what it's what's about to take place here what promises |
| 1:08.0 | i can i can say this i can say that i have not always had twice as many questions, but this episode brings |
| 1:15.5 | us up to the average of twice as many questions because I too have a lot. |
| 1:18.9 | So let's welcome our guests right now. |
| 1:21.3 | The writer for the new Ben Franklin documentary coming out, Ken Burns on PBS, Dayton Duncan, and the producer |
| 1:29.0 | for the same series, David Schmidt. It's great to have you guys here. Thank you. |
| 1:32.7 | Great to be here. I guess the first question that I have for you guys, you know, so many, |
| 1:39.6 | you guys have worked on so many documentaries, so many incredible documentaries. And there's no shortage in the |
| 1:45.7 | world of subject matter, like the world of history. Why Ben Franklin and why now? |
| 1:53.2 | Well, there's no rhyme or reason necessarily for all the, you know, the order in which all |
... |
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