[laughter] david: this is the time to go into my dillon ripley story. [laughter] ken: now that was a secretary. [laughter] david: join the crowd. [laughter] ambrose, then historian, is said to have said, more americans get their history from ken burns than any other source. hmm. what do you think? ken: well, he did say it because i was there when he said it. he wrote it in a letter and some pr person grabbed it. it is a funny thing. i don't know if that's true, but if it is true -- i mean, we need to be getting our history from lots of different places. that's really clear. we have to be getting it from -- to say --loathe mainstream sources. we are beset right now by this notion of fake news, and it is, academy, andto the people now can dismiss stuff that represents years and years of scholarship, from just saying it doesn't quite jive with what they think somebody's political beliefs are. we work extra hard to not put those in our films. they cannot help, i suppose, but be there by some kind of osmosis , the selection of what we choose to focus on. we

i will thank you not to bring up dillon ripley, who was the first -- the sainted secretary in the 1960's. whenever someone mentions him, they say something, then there is a comma and say that was a secretary. anyway, this is one of those nights you dream about when you have opportunities that i do. to interview one of my and i am sure your idol, ken burns. [applause] so i have a bunch of questions here. these are questions that we came up through a very deep and difficult scientific process. me and another guy made them up. if i want to ask these questions, maybe some of you will want to see the answers. why and how did you get into filmmaking? ken: i am the son of an anthropologist and a biology major. my mother is a biology major, contracted cancer when i was two years old and died around, before my 12th birthday. my father had a very strict curfew for my younger brother and me, and we would stay up until 1:00 on a school night looking at old movies. it was the first time i saw my dad cry was at a movie, "odd man out" about the irish troubles. i promised that i would be a filmmaker.