# Ken Burns On The American Revolution  ## Episode metadata - Episode title: Ken Burns On The American Revolution - Show: Fresh Air - Owner / Host: NPR - Guests: [Ken Burns](https://share.snipd.com/person/4261987d-65a8-40a1-906d-e89a20b34339) - Episode publish date: 2025-10-20 - Episode AI description: Ken Burns, the acclaimed documentary filmmaker renowned for his PBS series on American history, dives deep into the complexities of the American Revolution. He highlights the often-overlooked stories of women, Native Americans, and Black individuals who played crucial roles. Burns discusses the war's brutal nature and persistent national divisions, the motivations behind loyalists and patriots, and how social class influenced participation. He also addresses the troubling legacy of the Declaration and advocates for inclusive storytelling in history. - Mentioned books: [Finding My Way](https://share.snipd.com/book/96551b02-8906-4082-9450-d1767b547cb8) by [Malala Yousafzai](https://share.snipd.com/person/fde3d5ff-2496-4ef7-a38f-78612bca89d6) - Duration: 45:28 - Episode URL: [Open in Snipd](https://share.snipd.com/episode/3bd6bb5b-23b4-4a23-ae0f-95f639a7ee99) - Show URL: [Open in Snipd](https://share.snipd.com/show/74968254-1b39-42d5-89fb-0ba0e44cf3a3) - Export date: 2026-02-17T23:24:34 ## Snips ### [Revolution Was Global And Brutal](https://share.snipd.com/snip/b190b284-9e85-4764-815f-da8cce83f58d) 🎧 00:18 - 01:34 (01:15) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/8b308c0d-97ae-4e21-aeab-6c9feff49cb2" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Ken Burns frames the Revolutionary War as both a bloody civil war and a global conflict involving European powers and Caribbean colonies. - He emphasizes the war's vast scope and economic stakes tied to Caribbean slave-based plantations. #### 💬 Quote > I don't think there was a day, Terry, when we weren't stunned by something we'd learned new, that this was not just a revolution that takes place of ideas in Philadelphia, but a real revolution, a bloody one [...] and then that it's a world war. > — Ken Burns Ken Burns on the Revolutionary War's scale and global nature #### 📚 Transcript **Terry Gross:** is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. Divisions in our country are often traced back to the Civil War. But the divisions go all the way back to the Revolutionary War. It wasn't just a war against the British. It was a bloody civil war in the colonies between the revolutionaries, who call themselves the Patriots, and the Loyalists, who wanted to remain under British rule. The Revolutionary War is the subject of a new documentary series made by America's best-known documentary filmmaker, Ken Burns, along with Sarah Botstein and David Schmidt. Burns describes the Revolutionary War as the most consequential revolution in history. The series tells the story not only from the perspectives of the founding fathers, the and the fighters. It includes the stories of people left out of the Declaration's statement, all men are created equal. That's women, Native Americans, enslaved people, and free black people. Making this film, Byrne says, led him to new perspectives on the fundamental questions about the founding. This 12-part series premieres on most public TV stations Sunday, November 16th, with two hour-long episodes on six consecutive nights. --- ### [Division Rooted In Land And Loyalty](https://share.snipd.com/snip/902ad9f3-d9b4-4d7f-981e-41a1b8fc4e50) 🎧 03:51 - 06:19 (02:28) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/b18b6a07-8a85-4872-83ab-7fe874293127" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Divisions in the colonies were deep and personal, with loyalists and patriots often trading violence and revenge. - Key revolutionary drivers included taxes, representation, and intense desire for Indian land expansion. #### 💬 Quote > The patriots are a kind of an amalgam of concerns. The most, the central one, we're not taught this in school, it's taxes and representation, which is super important, but it's Indian land. > — Ken Burns Ken Burns explaining motivations behind patriot and loyalist divisions #### 📚 Transcript **Ken Burns:** We've always been divided. I don't know if you can take comfort from it, given the current state of affairs. But I do believe that the historian's perspective is one that permits you to understand, as Ecclesiastes says, there's nothing new under the sun. The colonists, they are human beings and like us. And I think because there are no photographs to prove that, just paintings and they have buckles on their feet and stockings and waistcoats and powdered wigs that we think somehow they're just utterly different from us and they're not. So I think we can understand, the Maya Jasanoff says that we're born in violence. The United States comes out of violence, she says, and that's an important thing that we have to understand. There's certainly big ideas over there. And those big ideas, I have to say, are not diminished by telling the truth about how complicated and how violent this struggle is and how diverse the group of people participating in it are. Yeah. **Terry Gross:** So let's talk about the divisive nature of the Revolutionary War and the colonies. Tell us briefly some of the arguments for being a loyalist, being loyal to Britain, and for being a revolutionary and fighting for independence from Britain and the king. **Ken Burns:** Well, loyalists, they think that their prosperity, the fact that they own land, their health, their literacy, all of it has come from the British constitutional monarchy. Why rock the boat for some strange, crazy, cockamamie ideas? The patriots are a kind of an amalgam of concerns. The most, the central one, we're not taught this in school, it's taxes and representation, which is super important, but it's Indian land. It's Indian land in an intimate, personal way for an ordinary person who wants to get 150 acres of land and wants to spill over the Appalachians where the British won't let us go because they can't afford having won the previous war, the previous World War, the Seven Years' War, which we call the French and Indian War, they can't afford to defend us. And so please don't go over. And it's enraging people like Benjamin Franklin and George Washington, who are speculators in tens of thousands of acres of land in the Ohio Valley where people want to go. So it's about Indian land. And then it's about a funny thing that takes over this kind of gravitation from an argument between British people over English law and property and things like that into natural laws. --- ### [Founding Families Torn Apart](https://share.snipd.com/snip/421ea144-2abf-4ad5-ba38-7d22c53805f3) 🎧 07:02 - 08:00 (00:57) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/8b34acf0-53e7-40c6-bfc5-12bc751d875e" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Benjamin Franklin's son William became a royal governor, was deposed, imprisoned, and later led violent loyalist reprisals. - Burns uses this to show families and communities often split, switching sides and escalating local terror. #### 💬 Quote > Benjamin Franklin's son, William, was the royal governor of New Jersey. He was deposed, spent time in a prison in Connecticut... and he stays and forms a terrorist organization that are hunting down patriots. > — Ken Burns Ken Burns describing family divisions during the revolution #### 📚 Transcript **Terry Gross:** and I was amazed that America was so divided during the Revolutionary War that Ben Franklin's son was a loyalist. He was siding with the British. And Abigail Adams, John Adams' wife, the first vice president's wife, she initially thought, like, you are really underestimating the amount of anarchy and violence this is going to lead to. This is not going to be an easy thing. And she was so right. But by the time the revolution was over, she was fully behind independence and **Ken Burns:** revolution. This And it's not even that one person is a loyalist and another person's a patriot and their positions are held. They're people who change. Benjamin Franklin's son, William, was the royal governor of New Jersey. He was deposed, spent time in a prison in Connecticut. It was presumed when he was released, he would go back to his beloved England, and he stays and forms a terrorist organization that are hunting down patriots. And there are lots of patriot organizations hunting down loyalists. --- ### [Black Combatants Faced Unequal Promises](https://share.snipd.com/snip/ad0b90ee-788c-41e3-b4a8-7b2f6fcd81fc) 🎧 09:17 - 10:22 (01:04) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/9700eca2-0e80-4d69-ac0e-3cffa7495d4c" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Thousands of Black people fought on both sides; the British recruited roughly 15,000 with promises of freedom, mainly from rebel owners. - Patriot recruitment of Black soldiers was limited and often tied to compensating owners for freed slaves. #### 💬 Quote > Many, we think 20,000 fought, 15,000 for the British, who had cynically promised freedom for those slaves of rebelling people... The remaining 5,000 were patriots who fought. > — Ken Burns Ken Burns on Black participation and British emancipation promises #### 📚 Transcript **Terry Gross:** So **Ken Burns:** the war is big and global, as I said, but it's also intimate down to a family or an individual's decision. There are about 20% of the population of two and a half to three million people included in the colonies, excluding native peoples, are enslaved and free black people, and they've got decisions to make. Many, we think 20,000 fought, 15,000 for the British, who had cynically promised freedom for those slaves of rebelling people, not of slaves of loyalists. They had to remain slaves. The man who issued this proclamation, Dunmore himself, owned other human beings and didn't think that that was inconsistent. And many black Americans flooded there and had a taste of freedom for the first time and fought alongside British regiments. The **Terry Gross:** remaining 5,000 were patriots who fought. So the British promised that enslaved people, if they fought with the Brits, would be freed. Did the Americans make the same promise? No, --- ### [Washington's Contradictory Evolution](https://share.snipd.com/snip/32dd84ed-8b60-4e05-9f36-2189b83af447) 🎧 10:45 - 12:14 (01:29) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/dfaad9da-1b41-4217-b66d-e87d1e4d919d" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - George Washington initially resisted Black soldiers but later changed his view, recruiting them and evolving personally on slavery. - Burns highlights Washington's growth while acknowledging his continued status as a slaveholder. #### 💬 Quote > He doesn't want to recruit anymore... And then finally, and this distinguishes George Washington from many other people of his time, he suddenly realizes this has been a mistake. > — Ken Burns Ken Burns on Washington's initial resistance and later acceptance of Black soldiers #### 📚 Transcript **Terry Gross:** And Washington, when he saw black people in the militia, he didn't want them there. He **Ken Burns:** arrives a Virginian and a very wealthy man and an owner like Jefferson of hundreds of human beings over the course of his lifetime. and he arrives in Boston and discovers that the army that he is assembling, this new Continental Army that's created in the spring of 1776, has black soldiers who have fought in Lexington and Concord and have served bravely at Bunkers Hill, and he doesn't want to recruit anymore, and he sort of insists on that. And then finally, and this distinguishes George Washington from many other people of his time, he suddenly realizes this has been a mistake. And what's so incredible about Washington, I think, and why he's so endlessly interesting, despite these flaws, despite his military mistakes, is how he is singularly the one person responsible for the United States. a lot of it is his fluidity and his ability to say, oh, okay, you make good soldiers. That's okay. So he changes his mind and he grows in a way that is impressive. And I think by the end, he's freeing his slaves and he understands of **Terry Gross:** his **Ken Burns:** life. He understands, as Jefferson knows, that slavery is wrong. It's a complicated thing that defies the sort of binary. --- ### [Vagueness Fueled Future Rights](https://share.snipd.com/snip/37600008-2361-48b5-8eb4-f906bc5cb7f2) 🎧 12:14 - 13:39 (01:24) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/666b3ac5-6a69-4033-97b9-f11e36647666" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Revolutionary rhetoric like 'all men are created equal' was narrow at first but later became a vehicle for expanding rights. - Burns argues the Declaration's vagueness allowed marginalized groups to claim its promises over time. #### 💬 Quote > When he says all men are created equal, and he means all white men of property, it's over. Women are going to get the vote. It takes 144 years, but it's going to happen. > — Ken Burns Ken Burns discussing how revolutionary ideals expanded across time #### 📚 Transcript **Terry Gross:** I want to quote something that Washington says, because I found this a fascinating quote, and he's talking about how upsetting it is to see one brother killing another. And he says, the once happy and peaceful plains of America are either to be drenched with blood or inhabited by slaves. Sad alternative, but can a virtuous man hesitate in his choice? So he's not talking about enslaved people. He's talking about himself. That's right. That he is being treated like a slave by the British. Like that's the choice that the colonists have to be treated as a slave by the British or to fight. And I'm thinking, hey, you're an enslaver. You are not a slave. So **Ken Burns:** this is the whole conundrum of the revolution. Many people began to describe their situation within British America as being dependent or slaves to them. And the irony is not lost on everybody. It's not lost on the British. It's not lost on even some of the people. And so what happens is, is that the second that incredibly hypocritical comment comes from Washington and many, many others. Slavery is kind of over. I mean, it's over by the time Thomas Jefferson writes the Declaration. It's going to take a long time, four score and nine years. But when he says all men are created equal, and he means all white men of property, it's over. --- ### [Early Voices For Women's And Anti‑Slavery Rights](https://share.snipd.com/snip/1f00005c-b1ab-440c-b6e1-38cdcc25d940) 🎧 14:33 - 15:18 (00:45) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/ed4a191f-3e39-4099-bd14-222c6726fac2" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Abigail Adams warned to 'remember the ladies' and feared husbands becoming tyrants without representation. - Benjamin Franklin later proposed an anti-slavery bill to Congress, showing active debates existed during the era. #### 💬 Quote > Abigail Adams... Remember the ladies, it sounds dainty and we leave it alone. But she says all husbands would be tyrants if they want to. > — Ken Burns (quoting Abigail Adams) Ken Burns recounting Abigail Adams' appeal and early anti-slavery efforts #### 📚 Transcript **Ken Burns:** the time. It's going on. Abigail Adams. During the revolution, Abigail Adams is saying, you know, we have this phrase that comes down to us and we leave it. Remember the ladies, it sounds dainty and we leave it alone. But she says all husbands would be tyrants if they want to. And then goes on to say that if we don't get some sort of representation, we're likely to foment a rebellion. And so there are people who are already patently anti-slavery speaking about this at the time. And by the time the Constitutional Convention is over and our government is starting, Benjamin Franklin himself, who had owned human beings in his own household, a handful of people, is submitting to Congress a bill that goes, of course, nowhere to end slavery in the United States. --- ### [Native Nations Were Divided And Disrupted](https://share.snipd.com/snip/c8ccb43d-5dfd-4519-b50e-c20aa7bfb4f0) 🎧 15:37 - 17:19 (01:41) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/c508f16d-8069-4829-9852-08ba6d345562" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Native nations made varied choices, with some siding with the British to resist settler encroachment and others fighting for patriots. - The Revolution severely disrupted long-standing tribal structures like the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. #### 💬 Quote > The Haudenosaunee, the Iroquois Confederacy... 20 years before the revolution, that gets destroyed by our American revolution. > — Ken Burns Ken Burns on Native American alignments and consequences of the revolution #### 📚 Transcript **Terry Gross:** So, as you mentioned, the British had fought the French and Indian War. Native Americans were siding with the French at that time. **Ken Burns:** Some of them. Some of were with the British, some were with the French. And remember, the colonies are superimposed over many tribal lands, and so there's coexistence and even assimilation of Native peoples among the colonists. And then you have all of these separate nations at the West who are fearing the encroachment of the settlers and early on figure that maybe they should go with the British who beat the French, because the British seem to be trying to restrain their own people, their own upstarts. And a lot of Native tribes are waiting and seeing, and a lot are also fighting on the American side. Rebecca Tanner, a Mohegan woman, therefore I presume to be from Connecticut, lost five sons fighting for the patriots. It's just an extraordinary loss. I can't imagine being a mother losing five sons. And the Haudenosaunee, the group that we open our film with, the Iroquois Confederacy that Franklin decides could be the model for the United States, a union, and 20 years before the revolution, that gets destroyed by our American revolution. and the Westerns, the Senecas and Mohawks are siding with the British and the entire beautiful democracy that had existed for centuries that Franklin was trying to model this idea for the on. The falls apart as a result of the American Revolution. --- ### [Women's Labor Kept Armies Going](https://share.snipd.com/snip/d8075510-c357-46df-adcc-21a8cd52342a) 🎧 18:30 - 20:18 (01:48) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/26f94d80-d993-4b56-bfb3-252282b00030" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Women sustained the resistance by nursing, washing bloodied clothes, burying the dead, and sometimes fighting disguised as men. - Margaret Corbin notably manned artillery after her husband died and became the first woman granted a pension, at half men's pay. #### 💬 Quote > There are women and children accompanying every army... Margaret Corbin's husband is killed, and she directs such a furious fire... and she's wounded... and ends up being the first woman offered a pension. > — Ken Burns Ken Burns describing women's roles and Margaret Corbin's story #### 📚 Transcript **Terry Gross:** let's talk about women. And an image that you have in your film really sticks in my mind of like women in a stream washing blood out of clothes. And you talk in the movie about how women's jobs, part of it was washing the blood out of clothes so that the clothes of the dead soldiers could be given to fighters who were wearing tatters, you know, tattered clothes. Tell us more about the role that women played during the Revolutionary War. **Ken Burns:** The role of women is essential. They are responsible for sustaining the resistance period in the 10 or so years leading up to the actual warfare beginning in April of 1775. Our idea of battles as solely masculine affairs are completely wrong. There are women and children accompanying every army. Washington, every general resents the kind of dependence, but they are performing functions of cleaning and nursing and burying the dead and washing the blood and preparing a uniform of a dead soldier to be handed down to someone else. They are very active in all aspects of this. Some women, of course, disguise themselves very famously at Fort Washington in Manhattan, across from Fort Lee in New Jersey, almost where the George Washington Bridge is now. There's a big fight, and Margaret Corbin's husband is killed, and she directs such a furious fire down on the Hessians who are coming up the hill, that they direct all their fire at her, and she's wounded in the breast and in the jaw, and ends up being the first woman offered a pension after the Revolutionary War, though, of course, at half the rate of the men. --- ### [Poor Recruits Drove Democratic Change](https://share.snipd.com/snip/46cd8d11-ea95-476e-a5a9-67fe3065a4af) 🎧 26:19 - 28:21 (02:01) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/28de14d2-5036-457c-99ca-c44e59b69cbb" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - The war's later ranks were filled by poorer men, immigrants, and convicted felons, turning a property-protecting insurgency into a mass movement. - That shift produced unexpected steps toward democracy, like Pennsylvania removing property voting requirements. #### 💬 Quote > And so by the end of the war, the war is being fought in large measure by people who have little or no property... The first rewarding happens in Pennsylvania... extends to all men, 21 years of age, the right to vote. > — Ken Burns Ken Burns on how the composition of the army led to democratic reforms #### 📚 Transcript **Terry Gross:** That's the thing. A lot of the wealthy landowners who start off fighting for independence, they end up going home. And then it's the relatively poor people, the people who don't own land, and teenagers and felons, you say, who become the army. And it's kind of remarkable that they succeeded. They had no training. **Ken Burns:** There's zero chance that they're going to succeed at Lexington Green on April 19, 1775. And this is a war that has been proposed and sort of undertaken by property owners, from militiamen who are farmers to businessmen and merchants and big planters and rich people. But in order to actually succeed, it has to be, as you say, those teenagers and those felons and those ne'er and those second and third sons without a chance of inheritance and recent immigrants who have nothing. And so by the end of the war, the war is being fought in large measure by people who have little or no property that had started out as a war to protect the rights of property owners. And so the interesting thing is our textbooks say, you know, the American Revolution was about bringing democracy. Democracy is not an object of the American Revolution. It's a consequence of it. Because those people, as Washington himself said so movingly, it is a standing miracle that that army stayed together and did it. And that's what impresses the French. And that's what impresses the world, is that, and in Johann Evald, who we follow, and it says, who would have thought a century ago that out of this multitude of rabble, he's dismissive of them, could come a people who could defy kings. And what you have to do is reward those people. And the first rewarding happens in Pennsylvania, when the Pennsylvania State Convention, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, extends to all men, 21 years or age, the right to vote. They don't have to own property. They can be in debt. And that's where the door gets opened. And we can say we're taking the tentative steps of democracy. --- ### [Storytelling Beats Binary History Wars](https://share.snipd.com/snip/f0b14a59-0e4a-4417-830c-17d22bff37be) 🎧 32:47 - 35:33 (02:45) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/3c4ef055-a20b-4d58-95fb-8109041caecb" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Burns defends telling complex, inclusive histories, arguing good stories can change perspectives more than arguments. - He warns against simplifying or erasing history and values nuanced storytelling across viewpoints. #### 💬 Quote > The only thing that can do that is a good story. A good story is a good story is a good story. > — Ken Burns Ken Burns on the power of narrative over polarized argument #### 📚 Transcript **Ken Burns:** always thought another way of saying DEI is e pluribus unum. Part of the dilemma, the trap, the mistake of argument is that we become so dialectically preoccupied. One side or the other, we see things in simple binaries that don't exist. And so Richard Powers, the novelist, said the best arguments in the world won't change a single person's point of view. The only thing that can do that is a good story. A good story is a good story is a good story. I think the story of the American Revolution is a really good story. Conservatives are supposed to love the series Yellowstone, and that is a film about a rancher. **Terry Gross:** I'm going to stop you. I want to stop you to say that you did a series on national parks. Look at what's happening in the national parks. History has literally been escorted out of the parks, taken down, erased, and that's the climate that we're living in now. So in reality, you might have been canceled if it was at the Smithsonian, if it was in a national park. Are there bits of history that you, for instance, treasure in the national parks that you became very familiar with when you were doing your series that are gone now? Because everybody loves a good story, but we know we're living in a time when history is being erased and diversity is being punished. **Ken Burns:** They did just scrub the word Enola Gay, which is the mother of the pilot who dropped the first atomic bomb. And that was the name of his plane, the Enola Gay, because it had the word gay in it. And I'm disappointed that we at this present moment, and it's not everyone, feel compelled to take the simplified version of things and try to make it all morning again in America. We don't operate that way. I don't think a good story operates that way. And my argument about Yellowstone is that it's telling about all the stories. They're black and gay and female and white and poor and Native American, and greed is one of the main objects of it, and the main character is a murderer in addition to this big patriotic, and it's just beloved good stories about human beings, whether it's William Shakespeare or Kevin Costner or, God forbid, a documentary about the revolution can have complexity and nuance, and people get it. And I'll tell you that I couldn't have made any of the films we made outside of public broadcasting. --- ### [Funding Cuts Threaten Public Media](https://share.snipd.com/snip/315fad9b-b41d-49d1-9351-ccbf9199616e) 🎧 35:44 - 36:50 (01:05) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/bf897b3d-9054-4bd2-9c64-4b442e383115" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Burns reports losing millions after funding rescissions and warns rural stations will become news deserts without public broadcasting support. - He argues cuts harm local journalism, education, and emergency services beyond prime programming. #### 💬 Quote > I've lost a great deal, millions of dollars, as a result of the rescission... The losers will be the rural stations, the poor rural areas that will now be news deserts. > — Ken Burns Ken Burns on the impact of defunding public broadcasting #### 📚 Transcript **Ken Burns:** I've lost a great deal, millions of dollars, as a result of the rescission, which, as you know, clawed back two years of money that had been authorized and appropriated. And it promised, and it's gone away. And it's an incredibly short-sighted thing. This is a network, in the case of PBS, that had William F. Buckley, a noted conservative's show on for 32 years. And that show's still on, still moderated by a conservative. But because some people did not like certain aspects of it, the idea that it had to be defunded, it will mostly hurt. WHYY will survive. I will too. We'll figure out ways to overcome that. More people will join and become members in Philadelphia, and that will be a good thing. But the losers will be the rural stations, the poor rural areas that will now be news deserts. No one will be covering the school board or the city council. There will not only be the good children's and prime time, but there won't be a classroom of the air and continuing education and emergency signals and homeland security things. This is, you know, this is a big deal. --- Created with [Snipd](https://www.snipd.com) | Highlight & Take Notes from Podcasts