Ladies and gentlemen, we invite you to meet the press.

Meet the press.

Meet the press.

Meet the press.

Welcome to 1947, the Meet the Press podcast, a war that goes on for years without end.

That can't be won by conventional means that pits a powerful military against a guerrilla

insurgency.

I might be describing Afghanistan, circa 2017, but it also was America in Vietnam.

My guest today is filmmaker Ken Burns, who's 18-hour documentary, The Vietnam War, is

running now on PBS.

Ken Burns, welcome to 1947.

My pleasure, Jeff.

What does the word Vietnam mean now?

I say this because you hear the word and everybody has a different definition.

Exactly.

First of all, let's just step back a little bit and say this is the most important event

in American history since the Second World War.

And so it is informed so much of how we are now.

And you could say a good deal of the divisions and the hyper-partisanship that we experienced

today was born out of those divisions and hyper-partisanship of the Vietnam era.

But it's also a thing in which people have left right, have put themselves in these

hardened silos of certainty based on arguments and not facts.

...