And, This Is How To Preserve Our Democracy With Filmmaker Ken Burns
This is Gavin Newsom
iHeartPodcasts
3.0 • 7.2K Ratings
🗓️ 2 April 2026
⏱️ 73 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Filmmaker Ken Burns joins the show to talk George Washington's leadership, erasing American history and how his work threatens autocrats. Plus, the benefits of working with PBS and whether MAGA loves his work.
00:00 Intro
0:17 Flawed Heroes Founded This Country
9:27 - Disinformation & Censorship Is Nothing New
12:47 Who Made The Revolution Possible?
18:00 Faith & Religion in Our Democracy
24:54 The Birthright Citizenship Fight & American Nativism
28:25 American Patriotism & The Disappointing Legislative Branch
35:39 "I Just Want To Know Who Is Being Protected"
42:03 The One Thing That Surprised Burns About The Revolution
50:15 Ranking Today Amongst Historical American Crises
58:00 Make America Great Again Going Forward
1:02:10 Ken Burns Relationship With Steve Jobs & Apple
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | We live in a place right now where it actually pays to promote division. I do not think somebody should enrich themselves in office. Let's go back to arguing about the things that matter without demonizing. This is Gavin Newsom. And this is Ken Burns This is an I-Heart podcast |
| 0:23.6 | Guaranteed Human |
| 0:25.7 | No gloss, no filter, |
| 0:29.6 | just stories, spoken without fear. |
| 0:33.2 | Person who is not generous can not be an artist. |
| 0:36.0 | The world will be at peace |
| 0:37.3 | only when it is ruled by poets and philosophers. |
| 0:40.9 | Listen to my weekly podcast, the Pooja Bhats show and the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. |
| 0:49.5 | Come for the honesty. |
| 0:51.4 | Stay for the fire. |
| 0:55.0 | Hi, Governor. Hey, Ken. How are you? Nice to the fire. Hi, Governor. |
| 0:56.3 | Hey, Ken. |
| 0:57.0 | How are you? |
| 0:58.2 | I know that background well. |
| 1:00.9 | Yeah. |
| 1:02.8 | I'm sorry to say, I think that there are, as you know, there are 342 million podcasts, and I've, I've done half of them of them and I'm absolutely certain not in this case |
| 1:15.2 | that I'm speaking to myself and to the person I'm talking to. At least now I know that there's |
| 1:20.0 | at least a few other people listening. God bless you man. I imagine that's got to be the biggest |
| 1:27.2 | change for you since you started this, right? |
| 1:29.9 | 20 years ago had been, you know, the broadcast worker in person. Now it's, you know, ubiquity. |
| 1:34.8 | Oh, yeah. Well, we were still doing all of the old stuff. I mean, I've been doing it for, it's almost 50 years. |
| 1:41.1 | And, you know, we started off in film and analog you know with razor blades cutting film |
... |
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