The Vietnam War (2017, with Lynn Novick; 10 episodes)[65]
The Mayo Clinic: Faith - Hope - Science (2018, with Erik Ewers and Christopher Loren Ewers)
Country Music (2019)[66]
Future releases
Ernest Hemingway (2021, with Lynn Novick)[67] Ali (2021, with Sarah Burns and David McMahon)[68]
The Holocaust & the United States (working title) (2021, with Lynn Novick)[69] Benjamin Franklin (2022)[70] Stand-up Comedy (TBA)[71] LBJ & the Great Society (2027) [72] The American Buffalo (TBA) [73] Leonardo da Vinci (TBA) [73] The American Revolution (TBA) [73] The History of Reconstruction (TBA) [73] Winston Churchill (TBA) [73]
While tracing the Vietnam War, Burns said he has heard many tawdry discussions on tape by Johnson and Nixon, while forgetting they were being recorded. But Burns says those tapes were nothing compared to the extreme indecency of Donald Trump.
What’s so dangerous about his appeal?
He has tapped a dark unconscious, in which it is easier to vilify the other than to see what you share in common. It’s easier to be afraid than to welcome change. It’s always been there. We had a civil war, you know. We killed 750,000 of ourselves over this issue.
He’s appealing to that in the most venal and vulgar ways. I could have answered your question in a much simpler way by just saying he’s too vulgar for me. There’s no one who has occupied the presidency of the United States like that.
This is coming from a person who has just finished a ten-part series on the Vietnam War, so I have been listening for years to Johnson and Nixon on tapes that they forgot were being recorded, and the vulgarity there is pretty extreme, but nothing compares to the vulgarity of this man.