P played. My first act as president , i would like to ask you to join me in a moment of silent prayer for all of those we lost in this past year to the pandemic, those 400,000 fellow americans, moms, dads, husbands, wives and sons and daughters and friends and neighbors and coworkers. Well honor them. We know we can and should be. The question as the 46th president gets to work is how. How to conquer not just the virus that kills but also the politics that corrode the fear that none of it is fixable, the four years of american carnage. Will we master this rare and difficult hour . Will we meet our obligation to pass along a new and better world to our children . I believe we must, i am sure you do as well. I believe we will and when we do, well write the next great chapter in the history of the United States of america, the americans story. A new chapter and what it may hold for all of us living history. This is such a consequential chapter this the story of our nation that we want to talk to two remarkable story tellers, joining me now is cam burns and doris kearn goodwin. How are you feeling . I am feeling relaxed and exhaled. I feel there is a little bit of li lighter of my step and whether we would still be who we have claimed well be. I dont pretend nor should we ever sugar coat our history and think that it will all be okay just because we hope it will be. It will be not and there is a lot of hard work ahead of us. I think what we saw yesterday were the signals of adults, signals of people who understand how to use the instrumentality of government, people who dont automatically see government as an end in of itself and people who understand that there is something bigger than themselves. The out going president felt that the bucks stopped with him only in the sense that it was about him, joe biden clearly serves a god and a savior and a government and the ideals behind those governments and the idea of cooperation and the idea that there is no communication except among equals. So we begin again yesterday and today and tomorrow with an idea that we can press a restart button and get doing again. Doris . I think i felt a certain sense that the hunger for leadership that the country was experiencing was met both at the inaugural address but even more by the talk that biden gave the next day with his National Plan for action with the virus. What fdr was able to accomplish in 1933 was not just simply that phrase but fear itself, more importantly i am going to take action and be a wartime leader and put a plan in place, i am going to call congress. The day after the inauguration, what biden did was to say hes a wa r time leader to talk about the National Plan and give all of us a feeling that well be working it together and that goal of 100 million vaccines in arms will be met. Just seeing a press briefing that first night, oh my god, this is great, they have press briefings and all these things you should take for granted when they ex changchange gifts, ther warmth between pelosi and mcconnell and to see them together at the mass and arlington with the three president s there. You just felt like government was living again. That sort of what happened after fdr, the headline says we have a leader the government still lives. The dream is to get back to everyday normalcy once the virus is under control. Thats the real dream. We really do have that opportunity now and we talk about these divisions and perhaps theyre permanent but the way we change those by delivering the services that you need. You think as doris pointed out of the first days and years of fdr administration, he brought power to the tennessee valley. He electrified a part of rural america. Rural America Needs the same attention. It needs to feel like somebody cares. There are little tiny main streets hollowed out for decades now in the sense of place and sense of belonging have left people adrift and of course theyll become susceptible to lies which of course assassinate nuance and complexity and dont allow us to get things done and acceptable to grievance which promotes that divisions and makes it impossible to find your natural allies. You are told that your natural allies are your enemies and we find ourselves at war with one another. I was reminded by a moment in richard iii by shakespeare where someone says where is comfort . And someone responds, comfort is in heaven. Saint augustine says we live in a city of i am rolling up my sleeves now and i am going to get something done. There were an extraordinary moment on the day of the inauguration that i want to play. I happen to be anchoring at the moment the then president s plane took off and left washington, d. C. And, it was the moment of transition really from the past to the present. I just wanted to hear the sound which happens to be a song playing that the president plays at rallies. I want to play that moment and talk about it. Lets just watch in silent as air force one takes off, the trumps family leaves washington. There you go. And inside the church, bidens family, harris family. A new beginning. That was it. It was so startling to me seeing that juxtaposition. It is autocrats and listening to the sound track of their own design. People subscribe to the idea that we are intelligent enough to govern ourselves. This is the great by product of the enlightment, serves something higher whatever that may be. The specific gods and various religions and power of art and rationalism and philosophy, whatever it may be and you see in all the people assembled in the church submitting to something bigger than themselves. And, in the former case you see someone who believes that he is the end in of itself, in that negative feedback loop and verses negative, nothing can be accomplished. In the other loop, you have the ability of bringing in a Mitch Mcconnell and permitting the stirring of that democratic impulse to be reawaken again as it haas throughout history fallen dormant, as doris suggests we have this gigantic wave breaking over our heads of all these crisis rolling into one, division and insurrection and racism and pandemic and economic collapse. It is the perfect storm and the only thing thats going to get us out is not Frank Sinatra. It is going to be submitting to something bigger than ourselves and let us just say for americans we can just start with the constitution. Four pieces of parchment written at the end of the 18th century, a deeply flawed operating manual. One never the less at least suggested that we are permitted to serve something bigger than ourselves in order to agree to cohere. Thats how we get things done. A lot of work to be done. We have a lot to i mprove on that. He nonetheless said our enemies are waiting for us, expecting to be slashing each others throats he said. We are not. We would in however many years later, we seemed to be on the verge of that now. But, we have the possibility to remember that however imperfect the system we established, it is there to check the baser instincts of lies and grievances of paranoia that have been promoted over the last four years. I just want to play something that President Biden said of the challenges ahead tat inauguration. We face an attack under our democracy and untruth. A raging virus, growing in equity, systematic racism, climate in crisis, any one of these to challenge us in a profound way, the feedact is we face them all at once presenting this nation of one of the greatest responsibilities. Can we have a common purpose . Can we as a country, it seems like in our past or in times of true crisis and we are in the fourth one right now, the civil war, Great Depression and world war ii. The country has come together, not obviously the civil war but the sides came together and we are able to mobilize, can we come together for common purpose story . I think thats the task, not only of leadership but citizens. When you think of all the changes taken place, they come from the ground up. When lincoln was called the liberator, dont call me that, it was the Antislavery Movement and the Union Soldiers did it all. There is antislavery and abolitionism and emancipation. There were settlement houses created and the Civil Rights Movement made whatever Lyndon Johnson did whatever thats possible. We have to depend not just on the leadership thats coming from washington or our states governors, it got to depend on us. We have a responsibility to own up to this crisis and take the action of our local Community Areas that can begin to deal with the racial divide and economic and equities. Thats what citizenship is all about. There are real good signs of this, we voted in massive numbers than we have not before. Young people are taking part in the system. More women have been running than ever before. If we can take hold of democracy that we feel as citizens. The only thing i would like to say about the difference between those two of Frank Sinatra and the church, the ambition was President Trump was for themselves. We have to hope that biden being older at a different level that his ambition is to leave something behind. Thats what you want in a leader that they know their legacy and they got the character to want to be remembered for having done something good. If we feel the trust in government, the trust in ourselves, if we can trust in biden because he reached a different stage. His life is to create a legacy. He has the character and a good man. We have to trust in ourselves and our character now as a nation. We have to believe that somehow and not only will endure but fight to make it right. You know doris just gave the mic drop of all mic drop. Thats about as good as it gets. You bring up lincoln, i have been haunted all of my professional life, anderson, by a quote that doris knows. From a speech given by a tall, thin lawyer prone of debilitating depression, hes addressing one afternoon in springfield, illinois and he said when shall we expect the approach of danger . Never. All the armies of europe, asia and africa cant take a drink of the ohio river or make a track of the blue ridge in the trial of a thousand years. If destruction be our lives. Well live through our time or die by suicide. Hes acknowledging the two great oceans east and west that have shielded us from so much of what has happened in the rest of the world like the caucuses and yet he understood that protection also incubated the worse kind of habits along with the very best. He continually spent his life, it is becoming a builtin cliche appealing to our better angels to everywhere he went. He was not mindful of thewhere stood in time and willing to sacrifice everything for that. You begin to hear in american politics, the best of the leaders have echoed from lincoln who was himself trying to rewrite, remember his gettysburgs address was 2. 0 on the operating manual that was not so great. We really do mean all men are created equal. When we call him to mind and summon his own better angels then we are in a better position to address the problems that may at first seemed trackable or divisions thats impossible to solve. How President Biden chose to acknowledge the terrible toll this virus is taken. What the past tells us what lies ahead. Later inaugural, of amanda gorman, our conversations with doris and goodwin continues. , p, audible originals. All in one place. Im erin. And im margo. Weve always done things our own way. Charted our own paths. I wasnt going to just back down from moderate to severe rheumatoid arthritis. Psoriatic arthritis wasnt going to change who i am. When i learned that my joint pain could mean permanent joint damage, i asked about enbrel. Enbrel helps relieve joint pain, and helps stop permanent joint damage. Plus enbrel helps skin get clearer in psoriatic arthritis. Ask your doctor about enbrel, so you can get back to your true self. Play ball enbrel may lower your ability to fight infections. Serious, sometimes fatal events including infections, tuberculosis, lymphoma, other cancers, nervous system and Blood Disorders and allergic reactions have occurred. Tell your doctor if youve been someplace where fungal infections are common. Or if youre prone to infections, have cuts or sores, have had hepatitis b, have been treated for heart failure, or if you have persistent fever, bruising, bleeding or paleness. Dont start enbrel if you have an infection like the flu. Visit enbrel. Com to see how your joint damage could progress. Enbrel. Eligible patients may pay as little as 5 per month. Welcome back, we are living in history right now. It is one of those things, when we talked last time you said to me so much of this having their problems magnify inside a negative way. Thats something the former president did, he magnified real problems that is people have but he magnified them in a negative way and there is an alternative of that. Really it is about that is what leadership is about. Well, you know, the campaign of the former president began when he came down the escalator and lied about mexicans and he left the tarmac lying of his accomplishments or ignoring other important things. We were told there were 30,000 plus lies told, i think the Washington Post that accumulates this total of lies as biden said in his thing told for power and profit. What you have in Good Government is the opposite of that. The willingness to say it is tough and it is going to get tougher. Fdr was never afraid to say how bad it was. He was able to explain the whole theory of the Banking System on a sunday night and people had pulled their money on friday and they put it back on monday. He put it in the terms of neighbors and friends. There was something, i dont think people looking back at bidens inaugural as any great spectacular flowing pros of the way we heard from a kennedy or a lincoln but it was as good as it gets. He said folks, he spoke to people as if he knew the problem. All of us experienced grief in our lives. Everyone in this conversation and everyone listening to us have experienced grief. One of the things we know is halflife of grief is endless. The difference between leadership and absence of leadership is someone coming in and say i get it, i cant take it away. Let me walk with you. If anyone remember where joe biden was sworn in next to the hospital bed of his young son after his wife and daughter killed five and a half years beau died. This man is bookended by unspeakable loss and yet hes able in some ways to translate that into an understanding as his mother encouraged him make an effort to walk into peoples shoes. Ambitious and rather thin and every sense of the word. When the brackets go on and the braces go on his legs and hes able to literally without being physically able to walk, walk us through the depression and the second world war, the three of the great three crisis, the first one being is the civil war before that. It was interesting that President Biden chose to begin the entire inauguration event with the memorial for 400,000, the recognition of 400,000 dead in this country. That number has already risen and will continue to. To me it was such power in that. It was not i dont want to panic people, i am uncomfortable with lost, therefore, i am going to there is nothing worse when you lost somebody and the people around you dont know what to say because they feel awkward when in fact they dont have to say anything but just acknowledging it makes all the difference. I think what it made the difference to is everybody have been experienced losses in their own lives. There was no sense of collective understanding of that. Thats what you need go through. That was one of the most difficult part of the virus that people could not be with the people they love and could not express it because we were not acknowledging how big this problem was and somehow seeing those lights that night and feeling, made us experience it for everybody else. I think and i just like to follow up on something that ken said, i think it was so important when biden talked about being able to walk in other peoples shoes. It is true that fdr did that through the adversity of his polio. The time that really parallels ours before the pandemic set in is teddy roosevelt. He warns that democracy would falter when people and other classes or other section of the country began regarding each other as the other rather than the common american citizens. If they did not understand each others points of view or political persuasions or passion, we would not feel able to deal with the problem. This goes back to say a lack of concerns for rural areas. Big gaps developed between the rich and the poor because the industrial record. People are living in big city and the people in the country feeling left out. You got bombs in the streets and nationwide strike. It was a turbulent time and a feeling that democracy itself could not survive it. What theodore was able to do was somehow call for a square deal for the rich and and the poor, he was able to deal with the worse exploits of the industrial order. Before the pandemic, we had a problem of rich and poor and people lacking mobility in the rural areas of them feeling bad of the cities, a problem with people not feeling they were treated fairly and a true in equities of society. Ta faced us before the pandemic, that still faces us now. We need that kind of leadership and so there are so many parallels, you got the Racial Injustice and theyre all together on bidens head. When we return, the attack at the capitol and how that terrible moment changed our history. Some moments are best captured in poems and poetry. Well discuss the impact of amanda gorman. The loss we carry asea, we must wait and we braved the belly of the beast ch. Elors dege on your terms and budget. Capella university. Dont just learn. Learn smarter. Who takes care of yourself. So why wait to screen for colon cancer . Because when caught in early stages, its more treatable. Im cologuard. Im noninvasive and detect altered dna in your stool to find 92 of colon cancers even in early stages. Tell me more. Its for people 45 plus at average risk for colon cancer, not high risk. False positive and negative results may occur. Ask your prescriber or an online prescriber if cologuard is right for you. Ill do it. Good plan. Welcome back to our special report of living history. It has been less than three weeks since the Capitol Attack changing our history forever. We are back with ken burns and doris goodwin. Ken, i was looking at the attack at the capitol, at some point i asked questions of some of th