Benjamin Franklin w/ Dayton Duncan & David Schmidt
The Road to Now
Benjamin Sawyer
4.8 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 3 July 2023
⏱️ 52 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' 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.
If you enjoy this episode, check out Ben and Bob's conversation with Ken Burns in episode #191.
If you want to learn more about American indepenence and the July 4th holiday, check out Ben's curated list on Hark audio!
If you want to catch Bob or Ben live, check out The Avett Brothers tour dates here and Ben's standup comedy schedule here!
This is a rebroadcast of RTN #229, which originally aired on April 4, 2022.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | I'm Ben Sawyer and this is the road to now. |
| 0:09.2 | Guys, Bob and I are taking a few weeks off here. |
| 0:13.1 | Bob is on vacation with his family, then has a lot of shows with the Avat brothers. |
| 0:16.7 | I'm getting a car with my family and driving out to Los Angeles where I'll be for a month, |
| 0:20.5 | doing stand-up comedy and enjoying the Not Nashville 100-degree weather. |
| 0:24.7 | In the meantime, though, we're going to be sharing Best of episodes for the next few weeks. |
| 0:28.5 | And since it's July 4th, we figured it would be a great time to re-air our conversation with writer |
| 0:33.1 | Dayton Duncan and producer David Schmidt, two of the brilliant minds behind Ken Burns' documentary |
| 0:38.6 | on Benjamin Franklin. If you haven't seen it, go watch it. As with all of Ken Burns' projects, |
| 0:43.8 | it is, it's fantastic. Before we get to the episode, though, just wanted to spread the word. I've |
| 0:50.0 | created a Hark List over at Hark Audio. It's the July 4th Independence Day Hark List. |
| 0:55.4 | I've selected clips from multiple podcasts covering various aspects of both July 4th itself, 1776, |
| 1:04.0 | what happens that day. And then the story of how July 4th got created as our National |
| 1:09.1 | Independence holiday. It was a lot of fun to put together. |
| 1:12.6 | I always love working with the folks over at Hark Audio. So if you haven't gotten that app yet, |
| 1:16.8 | go check it out. This is not a paid sponsorship. This is just my honest assessment of a great |
| 1:21.2 | tool. It's a podcast curation app. You've probably heard about them on here before. |
| 1:25.4 | I've got a list of clips of my favorite comedy history moments, and some great editors over there are putting together HarkList all the time. A few months ago, they put on one when ChatGBT.GBT came out, and it just really helped me see it from different angles. So if you want to check it out, there's a link in this podcast description. And yes, there is definitely a clip from this conversation in that Hark List. So go check it out. There's a link in this podcast description. And yes, there is definitely a clip from |
| 1:44.6 | this conversation in that Hark List. So go check it out. Guys, I hope you have a happy |
| 1:49.5 | Independence Day. And patrons, as always, we are grateful. Without further ado, here's our |
| 1:56.6 | conversation on Benjamin Franklin. Take care. |
| 2:06.8 | I'm Bob Crawford. I'm Ben Sawyer. And this is the road to now. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Benjamin Sawyer, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Benjamin Sawyer and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.