Ramtin Arablui

Which makes me think about this idea that

you're just pointing to about like not knowing the possible futures.

We may know possible futures from reading about history, but you're never gonna know exactly what's gonna happen.

And so looking forward, this always brings me to my like future prediction question, but listen, as we both acknowledge, we are in a moment of division and difficulty in our country.

How it compares to things in the past, that we'll only be able to know as things proceed, right?

Like you can't predict the future.

But given, coming out of making this film over the course of 10 years, and also let's just note, 10 years in which the country changed drastically.

You know?

And that lie, I mean, if you think about the lie is at the root of storytelling.

So this brings me to what I kind of want to get to here, which is your films have almost a mythical quality, even though they're dealing in fact, they're told in a way that I felt that, you know, in my own tradition, you know, my parents have always taught me that it's important to remember your ancestors and the things that have happened, because if you're not rooted in anything,

You're out there sailing out in the ocean with nothing to hold you down.

Have you viewed your career up till now in a lot of ways as creating that anchor, not creating it or pointing to it maybe, even in all of its complexity, that in some sense we have to kind of understand and appreciate our ancestors because without understanding that, what are we?

Where are we?

I think one of the questions me and a lot of other fans of your films over the years have asked is like, what happens when Ken Burns stops making these films one day for like whatever reason, right?

How important to you is it to kind of pass on the baton of this work, of this kind of documentary storytelling as you're looking into the future?

How important is that for you?

Given all of that and your wish, do you think right now after making this film and after making all the other films you've made, that the moment we're living here in the US right now, is it lean more towards just being part of a cycle or that it's a uniquely tenuous moment?

I'm just trying to tell a complicated story.

So that actually leads me to kind of a this is a little bit of a personal question, but I'm fascinated by it, which is I've interviewed over the years now doing this show.

So many historians are people who have been so interested and fascinated.