Ken Burns on his next projects and dealing with grief | ReThinking

1. 0:00 – 0:33

   Fatherhood, divorce, and why parenting came first

   1. KBKen Burns0:00

      I've been divorced, I've been a single dad twice. The failure of the r- r- relationships were, in fact, a godsend with regard to parenting because it didn't permit the distractions of my work, which are enormous, to take away from the fundamental stuff that for half the time I had to be there and cooking dinner and doing laundry and-

   2. AGAdam Grant0:23

      Wow

   3. KBKen Burns0:24

      ... I, I have four daughters. Yeah, I'm nowhere near as good a filmmaker, I think, as I am a father. [upbeat music]

2. 0:33 – 0:54

   Setting up the lightning round (and Burns’ long-form instincts)

   1. AGAdam Grant0:33

      All right. I wanna ask if you're up for a lightning round.

   2. KBKen Burns0:36

      Sure. [chuckles] Well, you know, uh, uh, if I can have six part 12-hour answers.

   3. AGAdam Grant0:42

      I know this is a very constraining form for you.

   4. KBKen Burns0:44

      Yeah. No, no, no, I'm just warning you i- in apology for the, the tendency to, to, uh, get excited and then go on.

   5. AGAdam Grant0:52

      It's, it's part of the magic of your work.

   6. KBKen Burns0:54

      Yeah. [chuckles]

3. 0:54 – 2:27

   Worst career advice and the best advice: “Careerism is death”

   1. AGAdam Grant0:54

      Not something you should apologize for. Uh, okay, so first lightning question. What is the worst career advice you've received?

   2. KBKen Burns1:01

      Why would you move to New Hampshire when you've been offered a job in New York City and you don't have a paying job 'cause you're working on a film, uh, about the Brooklyn Bridge, my first one. And conversely, or not conversely, as a parallel to that, I was told by someone in an animation studio where we animate the movements on the photographs, he said, "No one will ever look at a zoom that's 35 minutes on a single face." And I said, "Please do it anyway." [chuckles] You know?

   3. AGAdam Grant1:33

      Wow.

   4. KBKen Burns1:33

      Uh, but the best advice was from Robert Penn Warren, who looked at me once and fixed me with these, um, they called George Meade, the general at Gettysburg, the Union general, "a damned old, uh, goggle-eyed snapping turtle." And Red Warren was like that too, and he looked at me and he said, "Careerism is death." And I've actually never used the word career except in the way we're speaking at it now. I refer entirely to my professional life. Because careerism does presuppose that somebody else has already determined the rut you're in, the course you're gonna take, and, and, and, and has limited all, a priori, therefore the options and the ability to escape the specific gravity of that particular course if it turns out not to be, as Emerson said, not, i- if it doesn't inly rejoice, which is the greatest adverb I've... Inly, in self-reliance.

4. 2:27 – 3:18

   The dream dinner party: Armstrong, Lincoln, and America’s great feminist writers

   1. AGAdam Grant2:27

      All right, you get to host a dinner party with anybody from-

   2. KBKen Burns2:30

      Louis Armstrong.

   3. AGAdam Grant2:32

      There you go

   4. KBKen Burns2:32

      Abraham Lincoln. I want people that would talk. Franklin, uh, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. She's, she, you know, she's married and she has kids, and so, uh, Susan B. Anthony gets all the stuff, but she's the writer. She's the one who's just phenomenal stylist. I really love her. And, and in the revolutionary period, Abigail Adams may be the best writer of them all, and so gutsy and so fantastic. She has a great relationship with her prickly, you know, obnoxious, as he called himself, uh, um, husband, John. But, um, she's, she's great. She's, uh, and you can't even say a proto-feminist. She's a feminist, you know? She sort of... And she's anti-slavery back then. Like episode one, she's like, "You know this is wrong, everybody." You know? [chuckles] "Cut the crap."

5. 3:18 – 4:21

   Pitching the next film: Lucy Stone and the unfinished work of suffrage history

   1. AGAdam Grant3:18

      Well, that, that actually anticipates my next question, which is I wanted to get you to react to a few pitches from me on who might be the subject of your next film.

   2. KBKen Burns3:29

      Even though I know what I'm doing for the next-

   3. AGAdam Grant3:30

      Of course. Pretend you don't

   4. KBKen Burns3:31

      ... like seven to eight years. And I ha- I now have to say God and funding willing, right? Other than-

   5. AGAdam Grant3:35

      Yes, of course. So the first one is, um, maybe, maybe this is a sequel to "Not for Ourselves Alone."

   6. KBKen Burns3:43

      Yeah.

   7. AGAdam Grant3:43

      But I think Lucy Stone is the unsung hero of the suffrage movement.

   8. KBKen Burns3:45

      Oh, I agree. I agree. Terrific project. I agree. She, wonderful story. And in fact, when I, I worked with my longtime editor, Paul Barnes, who was the co-producer on this and "The Roosevelts," and while we were editing Civil War, every day we'd go out to lunch in New York City with whoever kind of collected, and he'd just be talking about this biography of Stanton and Anthony. And, and I just, I listened to it and it sounded so great, I said, "We'll do it." So we, we did do it. And they die well before, but it's their language that becomes the, the amendment. Um, yeah. I, it, and the work is ongoing, you know. It's ongoing.

6. 4:21 – 4:58

   How the 19th Amendment was decided: Harry Burn and a letter from his mother

   1. AGAdam Grant4:21

      All right. So you may not take it on, but you think someone should do the Lucy Stone-

   2. KBKen Burns4:24

      Oh my God, yes. Oh, and they, and I'm sure they have. I mean, American Experience, you sure there, there's not something that hasn't taken the post-Stanton/Anthony, uh, suffragists and done something with, with those folks? I mean, we mention her and we, you know, we take it right up to the Harry Burn, uh, in Tennessee, who cast the deciding vote in the last state that will ratify that amendment. And, uh, he'd been against the amendment, but he'd come with a letter, uh, from his mom [chuckles] who told him to do the right thing, and he did.

7. 4:58 – 6:35

   A Supreme Court series—and a fresh framework for the branches of government

   1. AGAdam Grant4:58

      Oh, there we go. All right. Second idea was history of the Supreme Court.

   2. KBKen Burns5:03

      Oh, fantastic. Fantastic. And, uh, you know what? I think after, I guess you'd have to say "All the President's Men," that, that, uh, that Bob Woodward's best book is about the Supreme Court, and a lot of other people have added some pretty good scholarship about it. I, I, I think it'd be a terrific thing. I mean, it's just filled with just spectacularly good and spectacularly bad decisions, you know. You could just do it on the bad decisions, right? Yuval Levin, the same conservative scholar that I was speaking with a few weeks ago, um, said that, that the founders would not be surprised by finding somebody wanting monarchical powers. They'd be surprised that, that Article One, the legislative branch, had given up, had ceded so much of their powers. That's the thing they'd be, "Just what? We designed this with you guys at the center of it." And Levin said, "You gotta think of it in tenses, that the, the legislative is future tense. You shall do this. The executive is present tense. I will execute this. And the Supreme Court is past tense, trying to make sense of what the tension between the future and the, and the present is." It's sort of an interesting kind of elemental and yet A completely, uh, seductive way of, of thinking about something that we w- we tend to just burden with too much, too much thinking and too much, uh, binary thinking when it, when it needs something with more finesse.

   3. AGAdam Grant6:32

      Are you just gonna green light all of my pitches? Is that what's happening here?

8. 6:35 – 7:30

   Burns’ real pipeline: LBJ, Reconstruction, Obama interviews, King, and the CIA idea

   1. KBKen Burns6:35

      Well, you know, because I s- really love... I- as I said, if I were given 1,000 years to live, which I won't, I wouldn't run out of topics in American history. We're working on LBJ and the Great Society. We've been working on it for years. We're working on Emancipation to Exodus, which is the story essentially of reconstruction both before and after the most misunderstood period in American history. Um, I've, I d- conducted eight two-hour interviews with, uh, Barack Obama. No rush, 'cause I wanna escape the specific gravity of journalism to be able to do a big series on him. I think I've got at least two to go. He'd probably say one or maybe none, "I'm done talking to you." Um, we've been filming people who knew Dr. King. I wanted to do a series, for years it was gonna be on the Cold War, now I wanna do it on the CIA.

   2. AGAdam Grant7:22

      Oh, love that.

   3. KBKen Burns7:23

      You know, because I figured you get the Cold War, but you also get all that intimate stuff, uh, of the CIA, right?

9. 7:30 – 8:24

   The OSS pitch and a Vietnam turning point on V-J Day

   1. AGAdam Grant7:30

      Well, that was gonna be my third pitch actually, was the precursor to the CIA, the OSS.

   2. KBKen Burns7:34

      The OSS.

   3. AGAdam Grant7:34

      I thought that would be a great-

   4. KBKen Burns7:35

      The, my favorite moment is that on September 2nd, 1945, that's the day the Japanese are surrendering on the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay unconditionally. In Ba Đình Square in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh, this nationalist leader that the, that the Russians and the Chinese are suspicious of 'cause he's purportedly a communist but they don't think he is, his life has been saved by OSS officers who parachuted into northern Vietnam and saved the life of a guerrilla leader, uh, in order to lead this thing, and he's saying, "We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal," and standing next to him are OSS guys. Within five weeks, they have been told unequivocally by the State Department, "Get away from this guy. He's a commie and we don't like commies anymore."

   5. AGAdam Grant8:22

      Wow.

   6. KBKen Burns8:23

      Yeah.

10. 8:24 – 9:11

    Best post-presidency: Jimmy Carter vs. John Quincy Adams

    1. AGAdam Grant8:24

       Next lightning question. Uh, this is inspired by one of our past guests, Jared Cohen. The question is, who do you think had the best post-presidency?

    2. KBKen Burns8:35

       It's obviously between Jimmy Carter and John Quincy Adams, and I can't decide. It's d- John Tyler had the worst. Um, yeah, I don't wanna decide between those two guys, and if they... And e- everybody I assume knows enough within the sound of our voices, Adam, about Jimmy Carter, which is a remarkable, spectacular post-presidency. Um, and not even hospice could kill him, you know? He's in hospice for a year and a half or something. Um, but John Quincy Adams does what George Washington kind of suggests, that being a citizen is this ongoing project, you know?

11. 9:11 – 10:18

    What Burns has rethought: resisting the urge to make others wrong

    1. AGAdam Grant9:11

       What's something you've rethought or changed your mind about lately?

    2. KBKen Burns9:14

       So I think I've had a series of acquired political or maybe even at times philosophical, but certainly just societal opinions that I've now rejoiced in letting go. My best friend, uh, someone asked him what was the secret to his long marriage, and he said, "We try not to make the other wrong." And [chuckles] I always have tried to apply that, 'cause I, I find that there is this knee-jerk necessity to sort of make this thing or this moment or that action or this person particularly wrong, and that the actual act of trying to check that, you fail, but trying to check that is actually what we're supposed to be doing. The, you know, when you're asking about the moral relativism, I, I, it's just a process, right? None of us get out of here alive, so what, what, you know, what, what is it that tends a garden, raises a child, c- cures a disease, does a symphony? You know? This is, this is the project.

12. 10:18 – 11:12

    Grief’s endless half-life: Burns’ question shaped by losing his mother at 11

    1. AGAdam Grant10:18

       Okay, one more question for you. What is a question you have for me as an organizational psychologist?

    2. KBKen Burns10:24

       I had a conversation with Anderson Cooper on his grief podcast, and I said to him that I thought that the half-life of grief was endless. I lost my mom after an eight-year illness, nine-year illness when I was 11 years old, and that was 60 and a half years ago. And I wouldn't do what I do if she hadn't died, and it's really way longer than anyone should be without a mother. So do you agree that the half-life of grief is endless? It pays dividends. It has its positive aspects to it. But at the same time, it's loss, and loss is loss.

13. 11:12 – 13:17

    Why closure is a myth: grief as waxing and waning cycles

    1. AGAdam Grant11:12

       I do. I'm, [sighs] you know, I'm struck by the fact that our cultural narratives are, about grief are broken, right? We, we expect it to be acute and then to fade, and we talk all the time about closure, and I think closure is a myth.

    2. KBKen Burns11:26

       I do too.

    3. AGAdam Grant11:27

       I think if you love someone, you never let them go. I think grief seems to ebb and flow over time, and we get better at processing it. But I don't think it ever fully fades. Do you?

    4. KBKen Burns11:38

       No. My Aunt Sarah just died, 92, lived a great life, devoted to her husband and her husband to her, and I was talking to my Uncle Johnny on the phone and I was saying, "I'm so sorry," and, you know, "Let us know if there's anything you can do, if there's anything you want." And he goes, "I want Sarah." You know? [chuckles] And I just, I just burst into tears because-

    5. AGAdam Grant12:00

       Yeah

    6. KBKen Burns12:00

       ... of course, it's like the little girl, you know, who's blowing out the cake at age three or four. Uh, "What did you wish for?" "I wished for cake." Right? Come on, get over it, you know? It's not world peace. It's not this or this. It's, "I want cake." Uh, and there's something really direct about that, and there's something really direct about what my uncle said, and it just reminded me the extent to which I am, as I think most people are in some ways, defined much more by loss. than by the good times, the gated community, uh, seeming security, uh, and that it's, it's really about the, the, these moments and the, and the decisions that you make.

    7. AGAdam Grant12:42

       I, I think this is, this is such a widespread misunderstanding of grief, and I, I blame it in part on the, the stage models that were popular for so long that said you have to progress through, through one to get to the next.

    8. KBKen Burns12:52

       Yeah.

    9. AGAdam Grant12:52

       And the reality is they're much more like phases of the moon, where-

    10. KBKen Burns12:55

        Yes

    11. AGAdam Grant12:55

        ... they wax and wane.

    12. KBKen Burns12:56

        That's right.

    13. AGAdam Grant12:56

        And what that says to me is that moving forward after a loss is not about erasing sorrow. It's, it's more about gaining perspective. And, you know, in a way, Ken, that's what all of your work has done for us. You zoom in and zoom out in ways that, that give us perspective that we never could have had otherwise, and I think that's a beautiful thing.

14. 13:17 – 15:30

    “You wake the dead”: how loss fuels Burns’ storytelling and legacy

    1. KBKen Burns13:17

       I, I have to remain optimistic about the human condition, 'cause I'm delving into it and I'm meeting unbelievably interesting people that sustain me, and also, I think, mitigate the grief. My, my late father-in-law was a, a well-known psychologist in the Boston area named Gerald Steklar. And when I told him I seemed to be keeping my mother alive, he told me, "You know, I bet you blow out your birthday candles wishing she'd come back." I go, "How do you know?" He says, "Well, look what you do for a living." I said, "What?" He said, "You wake the dead. You make Abraham Lincoln and Jackie Robinson come alive for us. Who do you think you're really waking up?" So Lila Tupper Burns, my mother, deceased since April 28th, 1965, is here, right? She's part of the animating engine. The fuel of, of this project of my trying to tell stories is, is re- is, comes from her and her absence.

    2. AGAdam Grant14:20

       And isn't that the ultimate purpose of grief?

    3. KBKen Burns14:23

       That's exactly right. It's not you don't wear the widow's black for a year and then that's it, get over it. As you're saying, it's cycles. It's just you figure out how to, how to respond to each cycle. So I mean, a couple weeks ago I just broke down and cried. I missed her, you know? And I, and I just missed her. It's 60 and a half years. And, and yet my gr- my oldest daughter, who had never met her grandmother obviously, named her first child Lila.

    4. AGAdam Grant14:50

       Mm-hmm.

    5. KBKen Burns14:50

       And so the name that was draped in black crepe of mourning, we now say it all the time. I saw Lila yesterday. I said, "Lila." She, "Granddaddy," gives me a big hug, and you just go... These are the gifts.

    6. AGAdam Grant15:04

       Wow. Wow. Grief, grief reminds us to cherish life, and no one reinforces that message more powerfully than you.

    7. KBKen Burns15:13

       Well, it's good to live and to live fully and to live, you know, strange for someone who spends all his time in the past, to live in the present. [upbeat music]

Episode duration: 15:41