From WNYC Studios. I'm Brian Lehrer. This is my daily politics podcast. It's Friday, October 31st.

Well, the legendary documentary filmmaker Ken Burns has another ambitious project ready to roll out.

It's called the American

Revolution. And it's pegged to the fact that we are now in the 250th anniversary year of the founding

of the United States. Think about it. July 4th, 1776 to July 4th, 2026 is 250 years, a quarter of a

millennium. We've already passed the 200th anniversary of the

start of the war, which was April 1775. And just in time for Thanksgiving, when people think more

than usual about the colonial era, the six episodes will air on consecutive nights beginning Sunday night, November 16th.

Now, Ken and Sarah also have an Atlantic magazine story in the November issue called What

We Learned from Filming the American Revolution. Ken Burns joins us now along with a co-director

and longtime collaborator,

Sarah Botstein, will talk and we'll listen to a few audio clips from episode one. Sarah, welcome,

and Ken, welcome back to WNYC. Thank you, Brian. Thank you so much. You didn't try to tell the story of the

last 250 years, Ken, just of the period of the American

Revolution. Why did you choose that as your frame for six episodes of two hours each?

Well, first of all, I take issue with your word, Peg, in the introduction, because we began

this in December of 2015.

Barack Obama still had 13 months to go in his presidency.

Nobody was talking 250.

We weren't thinking 250.

We just realized after the Civil War, World War II in Vietnam,

we had this big glaring hole in our resume.

...