Ken Burns

I think what happens is that it's so interesting because we understand, as you're referencing the power of a book, still the greatest mechanical invention there is.

that it can go into some depths, a documentary do.

But a documentary can hold lots of different opposing points of view, not make them arguments, but allow people to have different points of view and sort of collect, almost like spokes in the wheel.

You want to get to the hub.

That's whatever it is that you're after.

But the wheel is much stronger by all those spokes.

And unfortunately, too often in history or in teaching, we subscribe to one particular theory of history, right?

That it's got to be this or it's got to be that.

And what we've done is we've found the documentary and the storytelling aspects of it hugely, hugely valuable in communicating the complexity of the subject without putting your thumb on the scale and making a political point.

We're just, you know, look, I will be totally honest.

History doesn't repeat itself.

No event has ever happened twice.

But Mark Twain is supposed to have said history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes.

If he did say that, he's exactly right, because human nature doesn't change.

And so you watch these events.

And when we finish working on it, I told you we began this when Barack Obama had a year and a half to go in his presidency or a year and a month to go in his presidency.

It's a totally different world, and we know that it rhymes, but we never once have concentrated on saying, oh, we're going to put our thumb on the scale here.

We want everybody to watch.

We have no axe to grind.

We're just, as I'm saying, calling balls and strikes.