Ken Burns

And then they played this segment that was just a goodbye letter with...

Like sentimental, like Ken Burns music playing behind it.

That was all from the perspective of this like 12 foot wide manta ray that they'd had hanging over their set all month.

In this interview, we talk about Letterman breaking into show business, his time in Indiana, his appearance in LA and his ascent to the late show.

Uh, it really perpetuated and reinforced the Lost Cause myth of the South for decades.

And then more recently, we have The Killer Angels, written by Michael Shaara in the 1970s, a fictional account of the Battle of Gettysburg, um, which was the inspiration for the filmmaker Ken Burns to do his documentary series in the 1980s on the Civil War on the Public Broadcasting Systems that really reignited an interest in the Civil War that continues to this day.

So the Civil War and historical fiction has been interti- intertwined for, for, for a century and a half or more.

Yeah.

And but to him, he's not

like Ken Burns or something.

I don't know.

Maybe they didn't want to.

The peacemakers could not be heard until the terrible swift sword had been sheathed, but the scabbard had been thrown away, and now the Confederacy was carrying the war into the enemy's country." Never Call Retreat is, of course, a very warlike language, but this was an awful and horrible war.

Now Lincoln, of course, and you've read now some documents on this, and if you've started to watch the Ken Burns film series, which by the way is now up on the Classis server, excuse me, it is up on the Classis server and it's up on But, as Sam Schaefer just informed me, if you go to the Classes server there is a message on, what's it called under Information? Under Announcements that tells you exactly, again, how to use the URL.

Have any of you already tapped in? Okay.

Make sure you watch Episodes II and III through the one entitled maybe by this weekend, certainly by the beginning of next week.

Forrest Gump.

This is Ken Burns' Civil War.

That shit called a tripwire.

With tits.

He was like, I've

been running

after Ken Burns all this time.

This is going to be my citizen Ken.

We will not be describing battles and tactics.

If that's your bag, might I suggest Ken Burns, or if you prefer books, like a thousand authors, my favorites being James McPherson and Shelby Foote.

And number two, we won't be bashing and or praising Abraham Lincoln very much, although we do have multiple Lincolns here because we've heard that's good for ratings.

I mean, to watch or read certain accounts, you would think that the Civil War was a lengthy chess game played by Abraham Lincoln against his cunning opponent, Abraham Lincoln.

You know, something occurred to me.

You know, Ken Burns, the documentary filmmaker, right? Oh, yeah.

Great films for PBS and everything.

Have you ever been compared to him? You know, you're kind of similar.