Are you out recording? Are we good?

Testing on two, three, testing, testing.

We're recording?

Um, okay. We have something special for you all today.

It's not a typical do-line episode.

It's a conversation with one of our favorite storytellers.

Ken Burns.

You might have heard of him.

He's made dozens of historical documentaries over the years

about everything from the Civil War, to jazz, to cancer, to the Vietnam War.

And now he's back with a new documentary about country music.

And I have to be honest, I don't really care about country music.

In fact, I don't like it.

Growing up, I associated country music with artists like Toby Keith,

whose songs were, you know, aggressively patriotic and really weren't for someone like me.

But when I heard Ken Burns was making a documentary about country music,

I was like, okay, let's see what this is about.

And that, my friends, is what makes Ken Burns so good at what he does.

He takes something that you think you have zero interest in

and makes it interesting, which is what we try to do every week on this show.

So we were super excited to sit down with him and talk about his approach to storytelling,

why history matters, and country music.

...