Hey, it's Ken Burns.

I'm at the Ronald Reagan Library.

It's one of the most spectacular places I've ever been to.

And I'm here with my friend Fred Ryan, who I've known for many years, who is the chairman of this august organization.

And I wanted to ask you, we've just finished, as you know, a big series we've worked on for nearly a decade on the history of the American Revolution, six parts, 12 hours.

That'll be out in November, of this year on PBS.

And I wanted to know what President Reagan's relationship was to our founding, to our origin story.

Well, Ken welcome to the library.

It's great to have you here.

There's a very enthusiastic crowd, and we're looking forward to this conversation with you.

One thing that President Reagan did was he would talk about the significance of our Constitution, and he would when he met with other world leaders, he would read the constitutions of their countries because every country has a constitution, so he'd be well versed on it.

But then he would talk about how ours is different because ours is We the People.

And to your point about the American Revolution, he would talk about America's experiment, and this first time ever, this notion that the rights of the individual are greater than the rights of the monarch, which was, I think we can take for granted today.

But that's the essence of our country.

You know, I've been drawn for years to a particular phrase in the Declaration beyond the famous second sentence where Jefferson wrote it All experience has shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, meaning heretofore everybody's been a subject under authoritarian rule, and we're inventing something else of great responsibility: a citizen of the United States.

And that's what happens.

And it it's so interesting that your visiting exhibition is the Dead Sea Scrolls, because we also have been thinking that this revolution, which turned the world upside down, the first revolution proclaiming the inalienable rights of all people is, I believe, the most important event since the birth of Christ in human history.

And so we are trying to prove it from a top-down and a bottom-up view with our story of the American Revolution.

And you've got all of this antiquity visiting you for a while, which is so moving.

And so impressive.

One thing I think today we seem to take our form of government for granted because we've grown up with it.

And what's so great about your film is it's it helps take us back to our history, because I think the more we can appreciate our history, the better we are as Americans and the better our democracy works.

I agree completely, and I think at a time when we, you know, we say we're so divided right now, I can tell you we were super divided during the revolution.

This is a civil war.

The loyalists are are right in our midst.

It's happening all the time.

But I think there's a possibility, as you say, when you rediscover the actual story of how it is to give dimension to the famous people the Washingtons, the Jeffersons, the Adams, the Patrick Henrys, but then introduce you to dozens and scores of other people who are equally involved in this who didn't have their portrait painted, but are no less responsible for the success of this improbable revolution, that you realize that you have the possibility, if you can be a campfire, an electronic one, that people can gather round to put the us back in the U.S.. And such a great time to do it with our 250th birthday approaching.

Exactly.

And to have a complicated conversation.

Not just a sort of superficial view, because I think the revolution, because there are no photographs or newsreels, it sort of devolves into sentimentality and nostalgia, when it's very complicated and and the issues are as urgent as any issue: landing at D-Day or, you know, the Tet Offensive or the Battle of Gettysburg.

And yet, because we don't have that verifiable proof and photographs and newsreels, it it gets lost a little bit.

And we're trying to figure out a way to, resurrect the ideas, the individuals and, the events of of our revolution mostly the ideas.

As you’ve gone back into our history, I know you talk about how there were divisions, there were differences in the very beginning.

Are there things that you learned in putting this together that would help us now as a country, at a time when we are divided and, you know, feeling such a gulf between our differences.

You know, we have it's the human sort of state to believe that your time is the most complicated time, that your time is the most fraught time, that like many Chicken Littles, the sky is always falling.

Because it couldn't be worse than what it is right now?

And I think what history gives you is the perspective that it's been difficult at every single moment.

There have been divisions at every single moment.

When you think about our revolution as a civil war, you begin to understand that when you think about our civil war, 750,000 people died over this in a population of 31 million when the war began.

This is significant stuff.

The Depression, all different parts of Vietnam and the great divisions there.

So I think what that does is, is that when you have that kind of sky is falling mentality, you actually help to flame and escalate the divisions in the rhetoric.

Whereas having the perspective of history, I think gives you the ability to sort of calm down, maybe exhale and say, well, then how do we find our way back to a common ground?

Where do I find common ground with somebody who might seem so diametrically opposed?

And the answer, the very simple answer to that is to tell stories.

Because we live in a binary world, a computer world, which it’s a one or a zero, a media world in which it's a red state or a blue state.

everything is a binary which doesn't exist in real life, doesn't exist in nature.

And so when you tell a story, you have the opportunity to provide, complication and undertow to the characters and see events from many different perspectives.

And when that happens, then you if you're offering, as we think we have with the revolution, a complicated story then everybody has a place, a way in.

Everybody has a handhold in the subway car of of history, you know, and you just you're a strap hanger and you're connected and therefore you're connected to everybody else.

And it's a little bit harder to be meaner and to be divisive when you've got, when you're sharing the same story in common.

And President Reagan used a term called informed patriotism.

And I really, like it.

Because it meant that if you know about your country, you know what we've gone through, you know how we're all part of it.

And that's what's so great about your storytelling.

And it includes all of that.

This is what is important to us.

You know, we're documentaries, have a tremendously rich tradition of advocating, certain points of view, some of them political, some of them social, whatever.

We've chosen to tell more complicated stories, to not put our thumb on the scale on any particular a thing, but to call balls and strikes.

And calling balls and strikes, that's another way, I think, echoing the President, of inviting people into a shared narrative rather than: I've got my story.

What you're telling is excluding my story.

We're just saying, no, we're we're pulling back the lens and we're telling everybody's story and everybody's got a part of it.

And then when everybody feels like they own part of the story, then you have the chance to be constructive and figure out how you go forward, rather than how you just disagree for the sake of disagreement.