Transcript: Well I think John Adams with his sense of history would have laughed any use of the word dynasty for one generation succeeding another generation in the office of the presidency. That two generations does not a dynasty make, if any one family had occupied executive power held executive power under our system for 3, 4, 5 or 6 or 10 generations then that might be constituted as the dynasty. Now I think that like a lot of thing was a people say today it really doesn’t have much historic validity, when people say for example of it about days gone by and lets say the days gone by of 18th century of America. Oh, that was a simpler time, that they didn’t have to contend with the complexities and difficulties be set our time that was the simple time, anybody never says that has no sense of history doesn’t know it he/she is talking about. There was no simpler time ever different time, but not simpler and I think anyone who watches this series, when the realities of smallpox. The realities of medicine would have the benefit of anesthetics, the reality of epidemic disease, the reality of very difficult often horrendously dangerous transportation that come through in the film they will never think that those people in our family they live in the simpler time ever began.

Recorded on: 3/3/08

Transcript: Legacy of John Adams is an example of a man who was willing to go through almost every conceivable kind of inconvenience hard ship and pain to achieve a Nobel objective, to create a nation her people would govern themselves, against the forces that wished otherwise. It had never happened before in history such a revolution had never been successful and he was working with others who had had no more experience in creating this dream come true then he had and they succeeded. I am not everybody of that revolutionary era was a hero, hundreds of people, went over to the other side, went over to the British side, where hundreds of them gave up, hundreds just sat back and watched and said well we will be on which ever side wins. Thousands of them, the estimates are that maybe as much as the 1/3rd of the country were simply waiting to see what happened, but this group this ragtag group very much of them many of them, if you saw them today you would think they look like homeless people, starving, hopeless looking army at one point, would not where and would not lose faith and any scenic, any skeptic, any self centered materialistic, keenest of the kind that would turn up his or her nose at such idealism was proven wrong, they did succeed, they succeeded against tremendous odds and we wouldn’t have what we have in the way of freedoms and idealism a body of the secular faith that you will, its the words so that, that’s his legacy and the legacy of the English. I think John Adams never failed to answer the call of his country to serve, John Adams is the only founding father who never owned a slave as a matter of principle. These were principled people and Abigail no less than John Adams.

Recorded on: 3/3/08

Transcript: Well sad to say we are raising and have been raising for about 25 years one generation after another of young Americans who are by and large historically illiterate. Now it isn’t their faults we can’t blame young people in high school or college for not knowing what they haven't been taught. It’s the fault of their parents follow lot of us, teachers-parents and the culture. History is of the utmost importance, I think its probably more important than any other one single subject because its about the human experience, its about life and consequences of ones actions and its about the role of personality of character in events passed, and we can learn from it, we can learn infinite number of lessons from history and we can also take strength from it, we could be guided by in our own performance, in our own contributions, by the examples of those who went before us and the founders alas have been rather forgotten in part I think because they appear in no photographs. We have no photographs of them, we have no film clips of them, we have no recordings of their voices, we have no television out takes. All we had is what they wrote and some paintings and a last two the close they were make them seem like characters in the costume pageant which they want, and they were not they weren’t walking around seeing themselves as living in the past, that Jefferson Adams they didn’t say isn’t this fascinating looming the past, we picture asking her we had close they are living in the present and they had no more idea of how was going to turn out than we do, and they were extraordinary people, brilliant people and how it happened nobody could explain it completely, that a small population, we are only 2 million 500 thousand people. Philadelphia in 1776 the largest city in the country had only 30,000 people, now that would be a little town of no consequence to us, but out of that small population came these talented, brilliant, committed people who were willing as they said to put their lives, their fortunes, their sacred honor on the line, if you signed the declaration of independence of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin you are putting your head in the nudes, because you are saying I am a traitor and if they have been caught, they would have been hanged, and they were doing it for the future of the country. They were not doing it for themselves to get richer and to be powerful. They were doing it because they believed to the marrow of their bones in what they call the glorious cause of the America and we cannot know enough about them, we cannot know enough about what happened and what cost and what suffering, we cannot know about the injustices that had to be cured in this scholar of life, that had to be eliminated if possible. The contradictions, the hypocrisies, all men are created equal written by a man who owned slaves, who held men, women and children in bondage. So it wasn’t just they where imperfect, but what they had created was imperfect and they knew it, what they were doing for us was to create a plan, an adjective a start and steer by that we must strive for each generation successively to live up to the idea and that’s our strength, it would all been handled to us in perfect order, perfect running machine, it doesn’t need any attention, it’s all oil run in perpetuity, sit back and enjoyed everybody we wouldn’t be there in the country we are where the country we are because each of us has to take the torch and try and carry us a little bit closer to the ideal.

Recorded on: 3/3/08

Transcript: Well I knew from the first time that I met Tom Hanks who produced the mini-series that it was going to be done right, because I could tell from his understanding of what I had written and from the other films that he had made or had been a performer in that he really cares about American history, and that he would do it right. I was then asked to come to meet with Kirk Ellis [phonetic] the screenwriter, and we began blocking things out, we are talking about scenes and things that could be perhaps left out things that absolutely had to be included and from that point on I was part of the process through the entire production and I never once felt that there weren’t sincerely interested in my point of view, my objections, my enthusiasm for what they were doing. I didn’t have my way with all decisions, nor did I expect to a movie is a different vehicle, a different medium from the book and they are not the same. What the author of a book really hopes and prays for is it the people doing it will interpret the book, the materials, the characters in the right way, and that’s happened here. I was asked by Tom Hanks again to go to the back log of the sets, the whole production facility it was set up outside of Richmond, Virginia to give a talk to all the people who are working on film, not just actors but people who are involved with scripts and props costumes the whole crew, and my message to them was you are only get have one chance to do this story, probably won't be done again, in the same way ever, and you have the chance to have more of an effect on how Americans feel, how what they know, what they understand, but how they feel, about that founding time, then has ever been done before, because the power of this medium, the power of film and of great acting and of magnificent cinematography is so infinitely beyond almost any other medium that we have and the numbers of people who will see it, that it could transform our national respect and understanding for where we began? How we began? And what are we all about? What do we believe? What is the bed rock faith that we call American, because this is where it started and these are the people who had articulated it and I felt all along that everybody working on that production really cared about it and I certainly found that both Laura and Paul had done the reading had thought about it, had put themselves into those other lives in a way that to me is a genius.

Recorded on: 3/3/08

Transcript: John and Abigail Adams were too immensely vital, energetic, aspiring and affectionate people whose story is a great love story. They are a great real love story and their character, their personality, their mental vitality work together in a way that would not have happened to had either one of them have been going it alone. They are also very revealing to us, about what life was like them? And what they thought? What they felt? What they found painful or exhilarating or hardcore or uplifting because they report all their feelings out in letters, on paper and they did it all through their whole lives for over a thousand letters between John and Abigail Adams that have survived and we don’t have to wonder about, what did they think or where they frighten, where they depressed, where they optimistic. We know, we told each other, and they are honest about it, they are candid about it because the other one would have known in a minute if the one writing was being superficial or instance here, and they were both superb writers that is not a dull letter in the whole lot, nor of short one, they daily reported out and if they had done nothing else in their lives, but write those letters in that day, in that time in the letter survived as they have, they would have made an immense contribution of the country because they are the great window on to their time and on to their own intimate lives of anybody who lived there, any American who lived there. Jefferson for example destroyed every letter his wife ever wrote to him or he wrote to her, Martha Washington destroyed orbit of one or two letters that her husband wrote to her, but not sure why they did it, there any web they have succeeded in obliterating that record, the Adams is saved everything and because of it was written on, red paper that is paper made from jobbed up linen rags and not wood pulp as our paper is that paper is this good today, those letters are as good today isn’t they were written and to whole one of those in your hands very same piece of paper about the same distance from your eyes as the recipient of letter held it from her eyes or his eyes is to make contact with those people in the way that’s surpasses almost anything I have ever experienced, it’s a tacto real contact with those manage people.

Recorded on: 3/3/08

Transcript: I don’t think you can predict how they would react to the present day, political scene or the particular individuals. I think they would applaud those candidates who have a sense of history, who understand that they the candidates themselves must in every thing they do as best they can try to measure up to the high standards established before they came alone, that is part of the importance of the sense of history. It is not just knowing what happened before you came on the scene, but realizing the you too are part of history that you too are involved in the unfolding of the history of our time and you too all of us will be judged in time to come as to how we played our part, in our day and in our way and that the judgment of the long run is the judgment that matters most. One of the great senses, a great part of my own satisfaction gratification from the result of this mini series is that I think it will remind Americans at this crucial moment in this election year of what being a citizen involves and what public service can amount to that character counts that being a system of government where by we govern ourselves requires that you have an informed and committed population. It sets so often you should vote because as part of being a citizen. It isn’t deep but it so it is only the beginning of being a citizen. John Adams is a shining emblem of the transforming miracle of education. John Adams came from a back ground is humble or more humble than that of Abraham Lincoln. His father was a farmer, a shoe maker; his mother was almost certainly illiterate, but because he had a scholarship to go to college when he was 15 years old. He discovered books that he said he read for ever. He became the most widely deeply read American of that very bookish time and he and Jefferson and others all felt that unless we were educated, unless we are informed, unless we are well read and thoughtful about our role as roles as parents and the citizens. That the system wasn’t going to work, it would break down. Jefferson said any nation that expects to be ignorant free, expects what never was and never will be. In other words we must be informed and educated and care about whether the system worked and I think that it is enormously encouraging, enormously exciting that so many young people, young Americans are taking part in this current election year, the way they are. I think it is marvelous and I think it is historic and it’s importance should not be over looked.

Recorded on: 3/3/08

Transcript: I think if John Adams, Jefferson was in Hamilton the others were to come back today. They would be amazed that the system of government that they created is still in place so that constitution is still there that we still have the bill of rights at that they created and I think they would be very proud of that we have an independent judiciary for example that the legislature is in two parts, senate in the house and at the president is the chief executive, that would all please them enormously because the odds were there would not survive, that the nation is survived, it did not pull itself apart. They would be amazed by our chemistry, our medicine, our capacity to build skyscrapers and bridges and all of that the speed at which we communicate and the speed at which we move from one place to another. I think they would think they would feel that we were rather soft and that we really hadn’t been through any thing like they had experienced, there I think that their might turn little at the role of money in our politics now and the degree to which politics has been turned into merchandizing and marketing and advertising and valued.

Recorded on: 3/3/08

Transcript: I don’t think that most Americans have any idea of what those brave Americans of that founding time went through and when Abigail said, posterity who will reap the blessings will scarcely be able to conceive of the hard ships and sufferings of their ancestor, she was elapsed right. Too many people, if they think about it at all, think of it as a kind of costume fashion and they think of the founders as elderly men and women with white powdered hair done up in satin clothes that seem quite silly. And what they fail to understand is that almost all those people that we honored Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Abigail Adams were young in 1776 young during the revolution. Jefferson wrote the declaration of independence when he was 33 years old. John Adams who was 40 when he went to serve in the Continental Congress, George Washington was 43 when he took command of the continental army. They were young and they were learning as they went along. None of them had ever fermented revolution before. Washington never commanded an army in the field before in his life when he was given command to the continental army. And they did not know how it was going to turn out and in fact all the signs worthy arts, were that they would not succeed, could not succeed and the revolutionary war was the longest war in our history except for Vietnam, lasted nearly eight and a half years. It was the bloodiest war in our history on a per capital basis, only the civil war took a heavier toll, and it was the war that gave birth to our country and to what we have the blessings we enjoy and of course this isn’t just the people who get killed in the war, it’s those people who cared for the people who were lost in the war. The mothers, fathers, wives, brothers and sisters and the suffering of those who may be did not get killed but who were badly wounded or who lost limbs. One of the things what happens in the John Adams series is that we see as we have not before, what hardship meant, what suffering meant when there were no anesthetics for example, when children were inoculated for small pox, it was a gruesome, very unpleasant experience and one from which child could die. You see that being tired and feathered in the old way, it was not a high school prank, it was not joke it was torture and people could die from it. We see people with bad teeth and dirt under their finger nails and dirty hair and we reminded that they were human beings. The decoration of independence begins with the line when in the course of human events in that what we are seeing in the film “Human Events”. They weren’t marble icons, there weren’t demi girls, there were people and the head failings, they made mistakes some of them didn’t like each other, all of that and I think in the role of Abigail and particularly as portrayed by Lorolini [phonetic], we see and we feel the extent to which women were part of the struggle and who played an important part in the role. John Adams cannot be understood without understanding the part news like the Abigail play and she was as she said his powers to help keep him on course level.

Recorded on: 3/3/08

Transcript: I am David McCullough and I am an author. I grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania the city with great view to see and to learn from, lot of history. My family had settled there before the revolutionary war which is tried for most many people who imagine. It must have been and was virtually the frontier then and I have always loved books and I have always loved hearing people tell stories, like to tell them myself and I think that the opportunities of Pittsburgh in that day in public school particularly to explore the arts and to take advantage of the wonderful Art Gallery and Natural History Museum and Public Library that were combined into the Carnegie library complex, had a great effect on my interest in lot of things. I was fortunate that I went to good schools, fortunate that I went to a very great university, Yale University, where I was an English major and I came out of Yale knowing that I had to face the decisions of what to do with my life, tough problem for every body at that stage and I had about seven things I wanted to do and I couldn’t make up my mind, so I thought I will just go to New York and some thing will happen and I was very eager to get to New York and some thing did happen. I warmed up getting a job as a very junior, very low employee in the training program, in the new magazine called Sports Illustrated and it was working there at time and life publications for the next six years. Because I learned about being edited and learned not only to take editing and take the advice of good editors. But learned how to edit my self and that is the hardest thing for any writer to learn, how to edit yourself and I then went on to answer the call of President Kennedy, what one can do for one’s country rather than what one’s country can do for you. I took it very much to heart and quit my job and went to Washington and wound up working for the US Information Agency, had a very exciting time, because the agency was being run by the great Edward. R. Murrow and that in many ways was the turning point in my life, because it was then in Washington. Quite by chance that I discovered some material about the terrible Jonstown Flood of 1889 when the dam broken mountains of western Pennsylvania and destroyed an entire city. Taking the lives of some 2500 people that I decided to try and write a book about it. I did not have any experience in writing a book. I had never done historical research but I found that I not only could do it but I loved doing it. I found what I wanted to do with my life and I have tried to, I tried then to write the kind of book about the subject that I wanted to read that I would like to read and in a way that has been what I have been doing ever since.

Recorded on: 3/3/08