What topic should Ken Burns tackle next?

I agree that AIDS (and how could you leave the Reagan's out of that subject) would be a great next topic for him to tackle. I'm from the generation it affected and find myself thinking about it more and more lately. I don't want people to forget what happened, and I don't think the story has been told recently in a compelling way.

He should cover white supremacist groups in the US.

I once worked with a (early) fortysomething MAGAt attorney (from a good law school, too) who, in his bubble, had never heard of Ken Burns.

Three posts. Not bad.

The Plague.

BOHEMIAN GROVE!

The Calvin Coolidge Presidency and its wondrous effect on the American Ideal.

Teddy Roosevelt.

Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo VanzettI, and the wider social context of that era

The history of the bad toupee.

He should fuck off with his formulaic schlock.

Hollywood unsolved murders.

In God We Trust.

The Southern Baptist Church: The Progress from The Plantation to Trump

Nasty unhappy queens on DATALOUNGE

Too boring, R14, despite the wealth of first person accounts.

AIDS. It’s not just a look at the past it’s a warning about the future.

The initial mystery of WTF is going on with these men, a GS11 in Atlanta who noticed some strange requests for a certain drug and hit the alarm bell, the CDC response inc Don Francis , followed later by the NIH response, followed years later by the WH response, the baths, poppers, fisting, no condoms, no gloves, the fear, followed by the terror, the response of the gay community, the suggestions for camps or a tattoo to identify the infected by some on the right, the blood supply, the local govt and the closing of venues such as the baths, etc etc.

This is a series if done right will outrage piss off and anger just about everyone.

pinkertons/baldwin felts, anti-union violence in the us in the early 1900s.

"Teddy Roosevelt."

Already covered extensively in "The Roosevelts" circa 2014.

NPR is beholding to too many corporate interests but I'd love to see him dismantle Amazon.

Homosexual documentarians.

The Ivy League

Transexuals

American Food Science and Agro-industry

How about the history of men’s hair dye?

If he lives for a bit longer he can do the absolute collapse of the US as a democracy/republic.

The biggest problem with Ken Burns is that he does not ever develop any comparative context for his subjects. It's the kind of history that makes people feel good. "America is unique and populated by unique, forceful individuals. No one needs to know anything about the rest of the world to understand it." That's the point he drives home over and over again. It's as if the US exists in a vacuum.

Circumcision

LBJ, with the death of the Kennedy brothers, Civil Rights Movement, and Vietnam War would be an interesting choice. I’m distantly related to him.

[quote]What topic should Ken Burns tackle next?

The history of toupee’s and the male wig?

Skyscrapers

Hope never to hear from him again unless he sticks to benign topics like baseball. His very biased doc on the Central Park Five makes me ill - he did not include any interview time with the victim, Patricia Meili, or the doctors who treated her and believed her physical injuries evidenced multiple attackers. Nor did he give screen time to retired NYPD detective Eric Reynolds (who is Black), one of the officers on duty that night whose cogent and credible views on the evidence greatly deserved to be given an opportunity for viewers' consideration. I'll never waste my time on another Burns doc again.

Does Ken don a wig?

R29--well, huge apology to Burns: Apparently, Meili declined to be interviewed. Have no idea about the doctors and others. Glad to know Burns offered her a chance to be a part of the doc.

Which tomato sauce is best.

Get a load of DJT at r29.

R29 makes a point, Burns does in fact pepper his documentaries with slants toward his own sociopolitical opinions.

R33, isn't that endemic to all documentarians?

The pilgrims

The rise and fall of American Labor Unions

R35 - his brother Ric already made a pretty good documentary about the pilgrims about 8 years ago.

[quote] This is a series if done right will outrage piss off and anger just about everyone.

I cant speak for the rest of the world but Americans will NEVER be outraged by the failure of the U.S. response to the AIDS crisis. Even today, non-gay (and some gay) people who did not live through it will never understand the terror, inhumanity and fundamental injustice of what happened. We still live in a "don't say gay" world. People who weren't even alive in the 80s still think Reagan shit gold bullion. I don't see an opening for any empathy or reckoning on that issue.

He is truly a gift to education and documentary filmmaking. As an Australian, I learned so much from his work.

He should do a documentary on the Korean War. He would need to do a segment on his Uncle Frank's affair with Hot Lips Houlihan.

R38

CDC is a federal agency and they hit the ground running as soon as they realized very unusual requests for a certain med were coming in, They had no appropriations so they robbed staff and funds from other programs and went to work. People like Don Francis and others were heroes,

Then people like Koop

I had a call with a friend who worked for cdc and he was working 7 days a week on “some new problem impacting gay men” ‘This was weeks before the public ever read about KS or then GRID

Ken could tell the whole story not bits and pieces of a story..

And you can blame the rest of the govt and the WH but you can also blame gay men. In the summer and fall of 1981 I and others were now advising restraint , what we now know as safe sex, staying out of the baths, no fisting and poppers. We were laughed at. By later in 1982 the laughter slowed by the baths still thrived and safe sex was still a joke..

More US men were infected after we realized there was a major problem of death and disease than before when we were ignorant.

The Peculiar Institution -- American Slavery From the Southern Perspective.

The entire southern perspective was turning purchased Capital assets into liabilities. Please include the Southern Church as a way to control the soulless beasts of burden who would not kill slave owners after the Surrender. How ex slaves walked off the plantations and into the Black Church that their white slave masters created for them.

R23 But there may not be any PBS viewers left alive to watch it.

Why is a left-wing internet forum like The Data Lounge allowed to print hate of Republicans when Democrats have turned the USA into a third-world country?

OP once you have watched the 5 part series on Showtime about the Reagans, I don't think you will want to see anything else about them. It's brilliant. Check it out.

The Cold War Aids The 60s in general (from the Jfk Assasination to Kent State)

r45, Oh, sippy, change the channel.

Saturday Night Live

The War on Education, when it went from aspirational to something to be feared.

Nunavut.

I've just watched the first 2-hour portion of "The American Buffalo." As usual, he's uncovered a lot of fascinating photos to help document the history. I didn't know that the buffalo skeletons that had been left on the plains, after the mass slaughter, eventually proved to be more lucrative than the skins themselves: they were ground down to create fertilizer and cattle feed.

Faith

Martha Byrne’s shady husband.

American art and architecture.

J6.

The Grievances of Taraji P. Henson

I second whoever said the Ivy League

Ivy League + Seven Sisters, of course.

Since he's a New Englander, the old logging railroads of the White Mountains. Many are hiking trails now but at the expense of downing of the old mighty Spruce.

R60 wouldn't that topic be covered in 45 minutes, tops?

More likely 45 hours.

1968

The extinction of the carrier pigeon

Income inequality in American history.

The Philippine-American War

The Best Actress category at the 23rd Academy Awards.

The Stonewall Riots and the emergence of the gay rights movement in the U.S.

If he says "no", he's a homophobe.

His production company should have been called-

Bearded 🧔‍♀️ Lady Productions

UFOs and extraterrestrials!

Gay pron!

Women; suffragists, ERA, abortion.

The Holocaust

The Republic of Texas

William Walker and the takeover of Nicaragua

The first American princess of Monaco, Alice Heiine

I want Ken Burns to tackle Private Equity and how it has absolutely destroyed wide swaths of the working and middle class.

[quote] The biggest problem with Ken Burns is that he does not ever develop any comparative context for his subjects. It's the kind of history that makes people feel good. "America is unique and populated by unique, forceful individuals. No one needs to know anything about the rest of the world to understand it." That's the point he drives home over and over again. It's as if the US exists in a vacuum.

Not true. Have you seen THE WAR, his excellent documentary on World War 2? Yes, it spent a lot of time talking about the home front but he spent a lot of time covering the war itself and from the perspective of other countries.

I love Ken Burns’ work and being a cinephile since childhood, I’ve always hoped he did a doc on the golden age of Hollywood.

Bad wigs.

AIDS, for sure.

Why does he never do documentaries focused on women?

I want to live long enough to see Ken Burns tackle Trumpism and the utter insanity we've been living through the last eight years.

All I know is I am so relieved he gave up those ridiculous bangs for a more textured look.

Yes, that is the most important thing isn't it R83.

The utter dearth of well hung Dominican men at the baths.

The Porn Industry, done with full historical society reverence plus Doris Kearns Goodwin talking about money shots.

He should call his production company-

Bearded 🧔‍♀️ Lady Productions Presents

Our War Against Stupid

the planet mars

R84 It's the only thing.

If you're really curious about what Ken burns is doing next and next and next, you could go to his website.

Hey R41, thanks for your post! That is a sincere thank you BTW, not sarcasm.

Biden's senility and how evil Gavin Newsom is.

So you think Burns is into fiction now, R92?

The beginning of WAP

The beginning and end of Ashlee Simpson's music career.

Janet's Nipple at the Super Bowl. Including several interviews with Janet plus her nipple shield/ring.

Why he is buying Korean wigs instead of mine.

Was just chatting with a friend about Burns' brilliant The U.S. and the Holocaust. I wonder if he's ever considered doing a docuseries on the U.S. and Israel's relationship. Telling that story from the origin of Israel's creation, to the ongoing struggle for Palestinian statehood, from the BRUSHES with peace like the Camp David Accords, to terrorism and its impact on both sides, to the geopolitical hornets nest of the region's strategic and economic value to the U.S., to the influence on U.S. politics through to the current terrible conflict has the kind of scope that few others could tackle well and do so with a balanced, but not a milquetoast "both sides" approach, either.

He should do a ten parter on PMBT buying used textbooks.

He should rename his production company-

BEARDED LADY PRODUCTIONS

[Quote] Telling that story from the origin of Israel's creation, to the ongoing struggle for Palestinian statehood, from the BRUSHES with peace like the Camp David Accords, to terrorism and its impact on both sides,

This is such a myopically American view of the subject. Note how the formation and enforcement of the Israeli state is couched in such neutral terms, but then there has to be a callout of TERRORISM.

By the way, the Camp David Accords were no “brush with peace.” The Yom Kippur war showed that having Egypt on one flank and Syria on the other made it more challenging for Israel to exercise its regional hegemony, so the Israelis got the Americans to buy the Egyptians off.

We basically pay over a billion dollars a year to Egypt to buy their accord with Israel.

Did friends copy living single?

The Mississippi River, Including the flood of 1927.

The history of pornography

The history and denigration of the US Supreme Court

[quote]Was just chatting with a friend about Burns' brilliant The U.S. and the Holocaust. I wonder if he's ever considered doing a docuseries on the U.S. and Israel's relationship. Telling that story from the origin of Israel's creation, to the ongoing struggle for Palestinian statehood, from the BRUSHES with peace like the Camp David Accords, to terrorism and its impact on both sides, to the geopolitical hornets nest of the region's strategic and economic value to the U.S., to the influence on U.S. politics through to the current terrible conflict has the kind of scope that few others could tackle well and do so with a balanced, but not a milquetoast "both sides" approach, either.

R101 -

A). You're misreading my intent. I'll just speak for myself. When I speak of terrorism, I am speaking of BOTH terrorism from or on behalf of Palestinians AND terrorism from or on behalf of Israelis. I'm well aware that Zionism has violent origins. And, in fact, some of the "founding fathers" of the idea of an Israeli state were, themselves, considered terrorists by the international community, including by the U.S. While I do not condone Hamas' targeting and killing of civilians, I'm an ardent supporter of Palestinian statehood and am repulsed by the Far Right policies and literal violence of Netanyahu and his government. But, for THIS topic, I am not suggesting Ken Burns for some kind of polemic. That's not the nature of his work.

B). And, yes, I thought I was very clearly stating that I thought Burns could do a great job on a docuseries linking the American relationship to Israel -- just as he did between America and the Jewish refugees of the Holocaust in 'The U.S. & The Holocaust'. He told a familiar story (full of myths, half-truths and outright historical lies) and shed truth on the ambivalence and outright cowardice of 'The Greatest Generation' BEFORE their hand was forced to enter WWII.

Holy shit, DID Friends copy Living Single? It is the same show, isn’t it?

That feels like a better topic for a documentary short than a multi-episode docuseries, R108

The rise and fall of the studio system

(r78 just saw your post!)

The fall of traditional media, when it's done shaking out Newspapers, radio, television, all of them making less and less money with fewer and fewer eyeballs, and the decimation of local news.

R110 - that would be VERY interesting!

R111 - too soon, no?

A history of the French in North America. A huge and largely neglected topic. From the early colonies including the failed attempts in much of the USA. The fur trade and the French settlements including those in what is now the USA (Detroit, New Orleans..the tiny settlements in Missouri), the explorers, the Acadian expulsion and the birth of the 'Cajuns', French immigration to North America and the huge influx of French Canadians to New England in the 19th and early 20th centuries...

R26? He already did the Vietnam war.

Did you read OP’s post?

I’d like to seem produce a documentary regarding the race to the moon, NASA & exploratory space programs in general.

I also wouldn’t mind a documentary regarding Boeing, detailing how government contractors & publicly traded companies operate in order to culminate in airline crashes, near misses, etc.

Correction: I’d like to see him produce…

R41, Netflix’s PATIENT ZERO touched upon every one of your points quite well, except for the CDC raising the alarm due to the rise in orders for a specific drug.

Words to properly convey my adoration for R67 do not exist.

Fisting

Huh. I mistakenly attributed the Uncovering the Truth Behind Patient Zero documentary to Netflix.

Au contraire. I watched it on YT.

OK. Time for a cup of coffee. Sheesh.

I don't know what subject he should tackle next. I'm just glad he finally tackled that godawful hairstyle he used to sport.

Fire in the Hole: The Helen Lawson Story

Boathouses of the Adirondacks.

Is that your “safe” phrase, R122?

DataLounge, a documentary by Ken Burns.

The Civil War Part II - What Brought Us to January 6

I really enjoy his documentaries about music the most so something with music would be great.

[quote]Boathouses of the Adirondacks.

I was gonna W&W that when I thought it said Bathouses of the Adirondacks.

AIDS, definitely.