Your task will not be an easy one.

Your enemy is well trained, well equipped, and battle-hardy.

There is not a liberal America and a conservative America.

There is the United States of America.

Good night and good luck.

I'm honored to have Ken Burns join us today on the Lincoln Project podcast.

You all know Ken Burns.

He is one of the most famous documentary producers of our era.

The Civil War, Baseball, Prohibition, The War, Cancer, the West.

I mean, he has been involved in telling America's story through documentary filmmaking for decades.

And is a man who has watched and studied and internalized this great journey our country has been on throughout its history and and the strange journey it's been on in our lifetimes and again Ken I'm so grateful for you coming on the show today thank you so much um and I wanted to start out with the story that uh that has been making some news lately You gave a commencement address at Brandeis University.

And as you said, and I thought, I thought very rightly, you have tried to always have a posture in your work and your speaking of neutrality, of taking in the big sweep of history in this country.

But in that speech, you leveled some pretty intense criticisms of the moment we're in

and the way our country is responding or not responding to the constitutional crisis

that Donald Trump poses for the nation and our future.

Talk to us a little bit about how you came to this moment and about the Brandeis speech

because, and I recommend recommend folks we'll put

in the show notes to link it. It's a wonderful examination of America. But can tell us how you got

to this moment? Yeah. Well, first of all, thank you, Rick, for joining me. It's an honor for me. And

it's great to be with you. I gave a speech at Stanford for the graduation eight years ago, almost eight

years to the day, and took pains to sort of remind people that I have neutrality. I want to

speak to everybody. Look, I make films about the United States, but I also make films about us.

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