Boston Public Radio Podcast
Best Of BPR 9/24: Denouncing Dehumanizing Rhetoric & The PBS Veepstakes
Today:It’s not just Ohio: Around the country, Haitian communities are facing threats of violence after incendiary lies made by former president Trump and JD Vance. We talk with former State Rep -- the first Haitian-American to hold public office in Massachusetts -- Marie St. Fleur. And, we speak with two award-winning GBH filmmakers about their work highlighting the role of Vice Presidents past, present and future… Cameo George, Executive Producer for American Experience and Rainey Aronson-Rath from Frontline will discuss their new documentaries on the VEEP-stakes.
- Broadcast on:
- 24 Sep 2024
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- other
Support for Boston Public Radio comes from the Peabody Essex Museum, presenting Conjuring the Spirit World, Art, Magic, and Mediums. On view this fall. For tickets and more information, you can visit pem.org/spiritworld. I'm Jim Brody. And I'm Martin Regan. This is the best of Boston Public Radio, a new daily podcast from GBH, featuring our favorite conversations from our three-hour radio show in under 40 minutes. Don't panic. If you love filling your phone with episodes of our Full Show Podcast, you can still find it anywhere you get your podcast, or just catch us live on 89/7 GBH, starting at 11 o'clock. Today on the podcast is not just Ohio. Around the country, Haitian communities are facing threats of violence. After incendiary and flat-out false comments made by Donald Trump and JD Vance, we talk with former state rep, the first Haitian American to hold public office in Massachusetts, Marie St. Fleur. And we speak with two award-winning GBH filmmakers about their work highlighting the role of Vice President's past, present, and future cameo George, executive producer for American Experience, and Randy Aronson Roth from Frontline will discuss their new documentaries on the Veeb mistake. Here's the show. To nobody's surprise, Trump and his VP candidate Vance continue to push fake stories, this information about immigrants coming for pets. Last night about a new community of Haitian immigrants in Pennsylvania, actually, that was Trumpet did that. It's led to a series of bomb threats in Springfield, schools being closed, hospitals on shutdown, and unease in the communities of hard-working good people. What we haven't been discussing enough is the rich contribution of Haitian immigrants through history, not just in recent times. Here to lay it out for us and talk about how recent headlines have affected Boston's rich Haitian community. We're joined by former state representative Marie St. Fleur, who is the first Haitian American to hold elected office in Massachusetts. She now runs St. Fleur Communications. Marie, it's great to see you. Thanks so much for being here. Good to be here, good to be here. We always talk about the large Haitian community here in Boston. So how was it that so many Haitians wound up in Boston? Well, I think first it was education. I think my family came because it had a great reputation for education. And it was an opportunity. And so what happens is, you know, for most immigrants is one person comes. They find that there's an opportunity and they invite others over. And that's for my family. We had folks who were here in the '50s who were building a life. And when my parents ended up in Jersey and the New York area, where our family had actually, when they first immigrated, that's where they were. Boston was a great place to come. They wanted me to go to Catholic schools, and back in those days, Jersey wasn't accepting too many black kids in Catholic schools. Then this was a place where I could come and ended up at St. Patrick's. So that was one reason. And many of them came for the universities that were here in order to attend. I mean, that was the first wave. If you remember, there was just really just a brain drain out of Haiti after the '50s during the Duvalier regime. And that was the first wave. And then there was a wave of everybody else being called communists. That was the second wave. And there was another wave where, you know, people were leaving because of the dire instability and hunger and all of that that was happening on the island. So that's what brought us here to different shores. Usually, it was not honestly as Florida. A lot of it was New York. New York was where the place that hailed a lot of people and eventually folks made it north. But I'm kind of say, Haitians have been coming here since the early 1800s. You know, you know, Jean-Bazis points you subbed, established, they'll establish the city of Chicago. And I always say to folks, you know, somebody paid for my ticket here long before I got here. By the way, and today, we have the third largest concentration of Haitians in the United States, is that all right? Yes, absolutely. You know, one of the things Marty and I have had to admit far too many times is embarrassment since the murder of George Floyd about how many holes in our knowledge of black history in general in this country we have, we've learned a lot, we've learned a lot and again doesn't undo the fact that we shouldn't have had to learn this late in our lives. Narrowing the focus, we were talking this morning, our knowledge of Haitian history in this country and the contributions Haitians and Haitians and Americans have made was virtually nonexistent until we're preparing for you. And when you were here last time, a few months ago, fill in a blank or two of things you think people should know and don't. Well, you know, when I was a kid, my father thought it was important that we learned about who we are. And so if you think about the Louisiana Purchase, there's no Louisiana Purchase without Haiti, the group of slaves deciding that they wanted their freedom. And at that time, we had three superpowers that were occupying that small rock. The British were there, they wanted to subdue the slaves, they weren't successful. The French were there, they hung around a little longer, they weren't successful either, they made us pay, they always talk about reparations. Well, the French made Haitian slaves pay for reparations back in the late 1800s, right? YA ended up paying France for the privilege of my freedom. And then, of course, you had the Spanish, right? And the Spanish occupied Haiti as well. And then, you know, they had the separation of the island because at that time it was San Dominique, then it was split up between, then it became the Spanish, took over one side and it became the Dominican Republic. The French kept on with the other side of the island. Now, you have to understand, in the northern part was where the British had held. So, a lot of the influence, if you even take a look at some of the names, you have the influence of the British in the northern part of the country. And so, when you think about the slaves that ended up there, so a lot of them came over because a lot of the French ran out of Haiti because of the revolution that was starting there, ended up in Louisiana in that whole section of the United States. And then, one sad was, and these are really rough history, guys. So, you know, so you had a lot of the Africans, the folks of African descent, hail from that part of the Caribbean. Now, let's move a little further up. Now, World War II happens, right? Take a step back. >> I knew you were. >> Right? Before World War II, Haiti gets established. They're still fighting for there to be recognized, right? Because you got to think about it, Jim Crow is being established in this country. There's a real push, the southern states do not want the blacks to be free. And here's this country on the tip of the United States, the side of all these black folks decided no more, we're not going to hold us in slavery, we're going to free ourselves. And so, by the way, Africans were talking to each other, we didn't have cell phones, but we communicated. We're able to communicate. So, Africans from their age, that island, and Africans from the South were in communication. Folks don't believe it, but they were. And so, you had a lot of disturbances happening. Call the guerrilla welfare people trying to be free that were happening before that. So, you push forward, there's the, they get out of Louisiana purchase, the Battle of Savannah, a lot of Haitian slaves. Again, blacks, who's fighting in Savannah? Haitian slaves fighting for the freedom of the Union, right here in the United States. There's a statute in the middle of Savannah, Georgia, recognizing the contributions of the Haitians in that war. Keep forward, we'll jump, keep forward again, I could keep going, but the beautiful thing is while we're fighting our own wars, America comes, you know, if you remember, John Adams wasn't too happy about these black folks becoming free. And honestly, he spent a lot of time trying to kill the economy in Haiti during the time. They actually quit any exchange, because if Haiti was actually, it was called La Pérales en Si, which was the pearl of the Antilles, because it was the plantation. This island was a huge plantation that was producing the most sugar cane, indigo, you name it, it was being produced there for the benefit of the French. And so, when that ended, and so it was selling to the United States and it was selling to the other countries in that area. So, when Toussaint Levetsieu, Descelin, and all of them decided to take the freedom, they killed the trade with that, because they didn't want to trade with any black folks. They didn't want to trade with the slaves, they killed them. They killed the exchange of the opportunity to actually build infrastructure, raise funds, and create an economy on that island got killed. And then one of the cute things that happened is John Adams decided, well, when the Haitian good was created, he would flood it. He would flood the Haitian market with the false Haitian dollars and help kill the economy that way, too. Fast forward, fast forward. We're now going to World War II, and we need folks to help fight World War II. So, where do they go? They decided that they wanted help, and, you know, if you remember, blacks were still fighting, and the United States were still fighting for recognition, for their freedom, for their dignity here. Africans were still fighting across, and blacks could not what? We still couldn't come sit with no public transportation. Couldn't walk into a place like this, and he couldn't be served. My kids couldn't go to school, right? Public schools were not open to us. We couldn't come in and walk into public schools. We weren't allowed into universities, what have you? We had to create our own churches. Wouldn't allow us into their spaces. And so, but here it is. We needed bodies for World War II. We got a bunch of, you know, so, which again led to the desegregation happened first in the United States Army than it ever did in the United States Civil Society. But there we were in Haiti again, and we were able to recruit from the Haitian Army at the time. They first, a class of six, they were going to train piter, piter, fighter, fighter, fighter pilots, fighter pilots, fighter pilots in order to go to World War II. And they, there were two classes from the Haitian Army that came to the United States, that trained in the South to fight with the United States in World War II. So the reward for all those contributions decades later as a former president, and once we present it again, lies about people who were legally in this country, who as we just heard from the president of that company, are making huge contributions in that community. What happened, we know the suffering that people, Haitians, Haitian Americans, and non Haitians in Springfield are going through. And I have to say, I'm heartened by the fact that some rock-ribbed Republicans who even support Trump have said the right thing and done the right thing to protect their fellow community members. What kind of spillover does that kind of rhetoric have on the larger Haitian, Haitian American community beyond the borders of Springfield, Ohio, Marie? You know, I think every community where there's a Haitian presence right now is feeling it. You can't help it, right? You can't walk into a space and not feel that people are looking at you funny because of what somebody else is saying. You know, I'm lucky, so removed because you get to be removed. But if I am somebody who's a health aide, who now has to walk into these spaces, who will walk into the hospitals right now trying to take care of people, if I'm a kid in school today, if I'm a five-year-old, a six-year-old, walking into school today and having your community being discussed that way, and kids could be so nice, you know that, right? I mean, the things that they'll say, they'll hear it from their parents, they communicated it, and they don't understand that the hurt that they're creating. And so for us, at least here, it's that. I think the Boston Public Schools have to pay particular attention to what's happening to young people in schools right now. I don't know. I don't know. And then that's a very good question. They have to pay particular attention to particularly teenagers right now in terms because that is where altercations will happen. And even if it doesn't happen, the anticipation that it might happen because of what adults are saying about, yeah. It's fight or flight, right? Because that remains with you. But in Springfield, they're being attacked, right? The people, I mean, their lives have been disrupted. Folks who, Springfield, you know, I met a gentleman who's from Springfield, African-American gentleman who said there was nothing there. And so they wanted people to come. In fact, they're looking for people to come because a lot of these small towns in the United States have lost many of its population and they needed to build it back. And so those folks came and were building community back. And so-- By the way, it shouldn't matter. But the vast majority are here legally. They're absolutely illegally. Yeah. But then, you know, so here's the other thing. I don't spend a lot of time on that gentleman. Both of them because they're not worth it. Because it is a distraction that is created to do just that. It's not the first time that we've used those tropes in this country and we'll continue to use it. You know, ethnic discrimination is not new in this country. I mean, I think if I grew up in an Irish Catholic community, I mean, so there was there the, you know, the Italians have experiences. The Polish have experiences. The Jews have experienced it. What's particular about Haitians is that we get two. It's a twofer. You get to have the ethnic issue. And you also get to be black in this country. Where there's structural written-in law structures in order to prevent you from being able to equitably enjoy the benefits of our democracy. So that's the double whammy. We only have a few seconds left to Marie Saint-Flare. But tell people who are concerned about this. What they might be able to do to show some solidarity here. One, if you hear it, stop, stand up against say something. I think it was Nima who said that, you know, they came for one and then he said nothing. Then there was nobody left when they come for you. Because that's the way it works. You know, we can forget, maybe you forget what happened to your ancestors, but for somebody standing up for them, you will enjoy the freedom that you're enjoying today. Say something. That's all. And the other thing is vote people. The America only asks us to do one simple thing. We are so blessed. And we don't appreciate it because we get to sit here and be so relaxed and think the world is going to continue to revolve around us. Only one thing as a citizen in the United States that you're asked to do. Vote. That's it. Do it. Thank you very much. You can take a breath now, but he's saying sorry. I want you to know. I'm really glad you spent some time with us. Thanks so much. Thanks for inviting me. I appreciate it. It's a battle of the vice presidential PBS programming here on Boston Public Radio. Joined now by two award-winning GBH filmmakers, about two brand new documentaries highlighting the role of vice presidents past, present and future. Camio George, executive producer for American Experience. I want to talk about their latest film, which examines the office of vice presidents throughout history. As I said, I learned a lot and I know Marjorie did too. It's terrific. And Rainy Aronson Roth, his editor-in-chief and executive producer of Frontline, on their new documentary, The VB Choice by the Life and Political Careers of Candidates J.D. Vance and Tim Walls, and we should mention that not too long ago, Rainy and her colleagues won the Academy Award for Best Documentary, 20 Days of Mary Eupple. Nice to see you both. Camio and Rainy, congratulations to you. Thank you. Let's start with you. How did this come about, that you were getting ready with Frontline, with the Veebs, and Camio, you were already doing the Veebs like the Veebs down through history? How did this come about? I mean, I'll speak for Frontline, but we thought this particular season, that we should look at the VP candidates, and Camio can tell us the history, but for us, at the time, we were looking at Biden and Trump, and people started to ask questions about who were the people sitting next to them, and so we did commission a film. It was originally about Kamala Harris and whoever was going to be Trump's candidate with him, and then, of course, everything changed as we all know, and we had to do a very intense pivot in the middle of the summer, and now we're working hard on the VP candidate show for Frontline, which airs on October 8th. So, Rainy, before we leave you, but you've been doing you and your predecessors, of doing the choice since 1988. Yes. Why this year, the Veebs, is it because how old the two candidates were? Obviously, '78 and '81. Here's a down. What Biden was in the race. I started to feel this way, actually, when Pence was the vice president as well. I started to wonder what was his ideology, what did he think about, what was he talking to Trump about during those years, and I got really curious about that role as a VP. Then, in this case, we thought, right, both of these men who are going to be running against each other, they have candidates next to them, we should know who's next in line. And so, that's really the birth of this, is an idea. First time we're doing it, so it's been an experiment, but I think it's a vital one, and Kamala will tell you why. I mean, they really play an important role in our history. Well, that was one of the things that I learned is that, yeah, they really do play an important part, because I think one in five vice presidents want that being present. It's incredible. I had no idea. But they didn't get much respect for a long time, so fill this in on that. Right, so for us, it's really interesting, because we did start out thinking about making this film because of the age of the candidates, when it was Biden versus Trump. But then, as we started thinking about the implications of that, and some of the statistics of political data that shows how often a vice president does have to step up in the case of infirmity of the president, or all sorts of different conditions, we realized we really do, as a country, treat the vice presidency as a joke, as a punchline. And we thought, this of all years, we should not do that. And we have to know who the people are who are standing next to the person at the top of the ticket. Who was the line? Who was the line? What consolation? That was a great line. That was Lyndon B. Johnson. It was. Oh, that's great. But my favorite line is the line you started with with the woman who had two sons who disappeared, fell in the blacks there. I thought that was a great line. The Lord is this woman who talked about these two sons who were lost to her forever. One was lost at sea, never to be heard from again. One was lost at sea. The other became vice president, but don't fall. I love that. I love that one. You know, I assume most people at least know this fact, by the only thing in the film that I knew beforehand, the vice president under the constitution has virtually no responsibilities. He or she, in this particular case, they preside over the Senate so that if it's a tie vote, they break the ties. Harris is done. Vice president Harris many a time. And they succeed or fill in for the president once the 25th amendment came about, but succeed the president if he, based on our history, dies. That's it, right? That is it. So incredible is that you brought up the 25th amendment, which is what the crux of what our film revolves around. That didn't come into play until JFK was assassinated. And so to think that we've had the constitution for 200 years, and no one have thought about rules of succession until the 60s, like that's actually pretty incredible. Can we say, you know, one of the things that is so many factoids in this that are incredible, how little forget formal responsibility, how little respect so many vice presidents had. I hope I got this number right because I was falling asleep at this point, not because the film it was late at night. Did you say that when we're going to get to Rockefeller in a few minutes, when he replaced when Spuy Ragnu had a resign and obviously, ultimately, there was the disappearance of Richard Nixon, who before that was Rockefeller, that the budget of the vice president's office when Nixon was Eisenhower's vice president was $48,000? Is that the right number? I'll have to double check the number, but it was astonishingly low. And it wasn't until Walter Mondale actually came in that the office became something more akin to what we're used to seeing now where there's actually an office that is in the West Wing that there is a budget, that there's staff, and that there's actually an expectation that the president will take on serious policy issues and a more robust and firm role. That's a voice of Camio George. She's an executive producer for Merck Experience, their film on the vice presidency airs on October 1st at 8 p.m. with her as Rainey Aronson Roth, who runs Frontline, glad to say runs Frontline. She runs it. Okay, run Frontline. And October 8th, the VP Joyce will also be on GBH2. So Rainey, tell us what you have found out, at least so far, that we might not know about Tim Walts or J.D. Vance. I think the most important thing that we're doing in the film is we're looking at how they form their political ideologies, the way they think politically. So as opposed to telling their entire biography, we're really looking at where do they get their ideas from? In each case, their childhoods and their education and their life experience actually really shape them. So what you're going to hear from are friends, family, people who know them well, and that's a really fresh take on these two people who oftentimes you're just seeing quick sound bites from, you're seeing them interpreted by other media. This way you can actually understand, okay, what is the trajectory of their life? How did they arrive at these points of view? And then what would that mean for all of us if they're sitting next to the president? Well, one of the things, after reading Vance's book a while ago of Hillbilly Elegy, which turned out to be nothing like I expected, I thought he was going to talk about how poor people get abused and neglected and all that kind of stuff, and he soon to be, have such a disturbing childhood, you know, I can't help think that unless he's gone through intensive therapy, and I don't know if he has, that he's a disturbed person as a grownup. I mean, the mother threatened to kill him, the mother, it's the grand-- It's a good question for raining. The great mother's got all these guns everywhere, I mean, didn't she try to set her husband on fire at one point? I think the thing to remember about J.D., regardless of his upbringing, and I think everyone could say this too, is that he does go to Yale. Right. He is very influenced by Peter Thiel and others who are in his circle as he goes forward in both his work that he does in Silicon Valley and then later his work that he does as a politician himself, and I think if you look at him as a character, as a person, yes, he had that childhood, he's owned it, he's talked about it. But then he really does do a pivot to think about what does matter to him and what he believes is best, and so it's really important to look at J.D. Vance today, even though the book was about his childhood and his upbringing. Yeah. You don't think a lot of his weird views of today have to do with his weird upbringing? I don't know. No comment. Okay, no comment. Right. And you know, just important to note that when we're doing political reporting, there is a variety of different points of view out there about each of these candidates. And so sometimes when someone's speaking, J.D. Vance, you could take him, for example, he's speaking, and some people will resonate with what he believes in, and those are the things that we wrestle with in the film, you know. Our job really is for hers is to put it out on the table and then you decide, do you want to vote for a candidacy that has Trump and J.D. Vance, or do you want to vote for Harris in the case of the choice obviously as well? And of course, her running mate, who's Tim Walz. How about him? Anything we don't-- So Tim is a very interesting character. I mean, the fact is one of his gifts is communication, and we've really looked at him being a social studies teacher and his ability to talk to pretty much anyone across a partisan divide. We spent a lot of time in the film looking at his work that he did in his congressional district that was mostly conservative and how he tried to bridge the gaps there, especially with issues like Obamacare and other things like that. And that's a big part of his story that hasn't really been told. And I think it's really, really quite interesting to learn. You know, I tell you, I love that you just did, that you called them J.D. and Tim. I'm so sick of Harris being called Kamala by everybody in the--or Kamala, in the case of Trump, and referring to them by their less names that really made me happy. Can we talk about your thing for a second? I hope I get the chronology right, because I had forgotten this. So Richard Nixon begins to get in trouble. Yes. And then after he begins to get in trouble, feel free to correct me. Spiro Agnew, former governor of Maryland, who is his vice president, starts to get in trouble. Is that right or no? Well, it's actually a new spirit, since we're doing first things. He starts to get in trouble, and even before the news of Watergate begins to break. And one of the things that we talked about in the film that's so interesting in terms of the chronology, is that the Attorney General is trying to get in touch with President Nixon, and they're-- Is Eliot Richardson at the time, which Attorney Eliot Richardson at the time. Yes, they need to talk, but they won't leave a message and explain why. And it turns out that it's because they've started to collect evidence about what's happening with Spiro Agnew. Okay, so far I've gotten one thing wrong. Let me go to the next thing, see if I can get this wrong too. But then it becomes clear, since Nixon's in trouble, that they got to figure out how to get Agnew, the hell out of there, as quickly as possible. Because otherwise, if Nixon does disappear, either impeach and convict it or resign, and there's a guy under criminal investigation in his home state of Maryland, there's a problem. So ultimately, a plea deal is cut. He doesn't go to jail. Agnew is gone. And then all of a sudden, we have who is the Vice President of the United States. We have Gerald Ford from the 5th District of Michigan, a man who, by all accounts, had no interest in running for the presidency. He had no interest in being Vice President. In fact, he had told his wife and his family members that he was actually thinking about stepping down and not running for reelection in his own congressional district when he gets the call. Okay, so he becomes President and he realizes he's got to pick somebody to fill the hole. Here's that moment. Here's a clip from your film on American Experience talking about the choice Ford made for VP, followed by archival tape of the announcement. Here it is. Adding even more to the whole oddness of the situation, if you will, was that the first task Gerald Ford had as President was to choose a new Vice President. And he comes through the door now with his choice, and the choice, which is, it is not a rocker, the former governor of New York, who was leading the list of speculators among many people. Yeah, and I didn't, based on that sound, I didn't remember either. We didn't even know who the choice was till Rockefeller, the former governor of New York, walked through the door. Until he walked through the door, everyone was peering, waiting to see who was going to walk through. So it really was, unlike now, where there's speculation, there's the whole deep stakes who's it going to be. You're talking about the pros and cons of each of the potential candidates. This was a blank slate. And no one did. I think it was a good move because he was so rich, he wouldn't have to be doing any shenanigans in the side to make money, and Nelson Rockefeller came from a very wealthy family, as we recall. He did. The best thing, and then I'll shut up about this, that I thought was fabulously interesting. The Speaker of the House, who's next in line for the presidency, is Carl Albert. Yes. Now, he faces a couple of issues coming before him, and a potential consequence based upon what he does. Explain what that was there, Samuel. Carl Albert is an amazing figure in history, who I really knew nothing about before the making of this film. We're in a situation, as you just set up, Richard Nixon has to step aside. His vice president has already had to step aside. So now there are two potential vacancies that are about to happen. Carl Albert, a Speaker of the House, is next in line. He is a Democrat, but Nixon, who had just won in a landslide, is a Republican. And so Carl Albert is presented with this moment where he can, as some of our experts talk about, stage a revolution, and take over, and in state himself as a Democrat, as the President. Proceeds with impeachment and doesn't proceed with the confirmation of the Vice President. Could it have been him? He becomes President of the United States. We could have had President Carl Albert, but it's incredible. That period in history is absolutely unbelievable, amazing. We had a President and a Vice President, neither of whom had run for election, had never received a single vote from the American public. You know, Ray, I know you're doing -- I think -- That's incredible. It is incredible. It's just history we should all know, right? I just love it. Yeah. I don't know any of this stuff. How many of the 51 Vice Presidents can any of the three of your names? Oh, come on. None of them, practically. We could do all of them, and then we'll go off the air. I'll tell you. I knew almost nothing. But I also learned that Garfield, after he got shot, lingered for 88 days, I mean, that was incredible. I did not realize that either. You know what? One of the great scenes that I thought in your documentary was the scene when Eisenhower is coming back home after recovering, I think, from his second heart attack? The crowds, the adulation, people cheering, the big welcome back, I signs. I thought that was kind of sad because you would probably never see that. I had this discussion last night that the candidates, their images, everything around them is so tightly managed, regardless of party. Just where we are now in contemporary politics, you would never see that kind of moment of vulnerability. It's literally in a wheelchair with a blanket over his lap, and he looks frail. He looks small, and we just would not have that experience today. I don't think so. I don't think so either. I know you're doing biographies, not political analysis, Randy, but what's your sense from the reporting? Do people think this matters that who the vice president is in terms of what happens with the election? I do this time around. I feel like, actually, in the VP film, we do more political analysis than we did in the choice, and the reason we did it is because so much is not known about what they both believe, so we really felt it was imperative to understand, especially in the final act. What does Tim Walz believe in? What does his voting record been? The same thing with JD Vance, shorter voting record, obviously, right, but we're looking at it through the lens of what do they believe and how are their political ideologies formed. I do think people are incredibly curious about both these candidates, and I get has to do with the fury of the race, right? It is a neck-and-neck race. People are looking for what differentiates them, and they're looking at Tim and JD as very different people. They have very different ideas, represent different parts of American, this sort of American dream even if you think about it, so I think that's what we really focus on, so you do see more politics in this film than you would have in the choice. Well, by the way, for people that don't see the choice, I should just say, one of the choices beyond how spectacular they are is proof, to me at least, how fair you and your people are. Everybody talks to you. It doesn't matter. It's true. Everybody sits down for an interview, which speaks to the fact that they think they'll get a fair deal, which is hugely important. Right. No, I mean, that's huge, right? And that's the same thing with JD Vance and Tim Walz, is we have people from both sides of that aisle talking to us, family, friends, political, you know, people who have looked at their lives in a more critical way, people who look at them and agree with them, and I think that's really important because that is America. I know he announced very proud that his mother had been 10 years sober at the Republican National Convention. Did you talk to the mom? We didn't get to the mother. Yeah, she wouldn't do it. Oh, well. Maybe you can. I don't know. Cabrio, could you explain the 25th Amendment, which almost none of us heard of, until Donald Trump was president, and there was some talk unconfirmed that cabinet members were talking about using Section 4, which no one really ever heard of, titled Declaration by the Vice President and Cabinet Members of a President's Inability to Serve. Forget that for a second. The other birch by, Senator from Indiana, is that right, I think he was. How did the 25th Amendment come out, come about to begin with? So as I was talking about before, there was this moment when the country is deeply grief stricken in the wake of JFK being assassinated live on television, and where we are politically as a country, there's the Cuban Missile Crisis, there are all of these things, remnants of the Cold War, the state of international relations is tense, America's role in the world is critical. And so when JFK is killed, suddenly, for the first time in more than 100 years, people actually come to grips with the fact that there is no actual documented rule of succession for what needs to happen. And so, as you're saying, Senator By and others are just like, we can't let this happen. And so there is a process where Congress people led by him and others, academic experts, attorneys come together and try to figure out how do we map this out? Like what should the rules be? Because all along, it's been sort of a gentleman's agreement. We talked about Eisenhower when he's in the hospital. He and Richard Nixon basically have a handshake agreement that if something goes south with him, then Richard Nixon will step up. But people realize there are just so many things happening in the country of such major import that we can't just leave it up to a handshake agreement. And so the process for formulating an amendment begins. We talked about civic education and polarization the other day, and the polarization is just as we all know, out of control, bad for democracy, bad for your mental health, bad for everything. And we posited, not an original notion, a lot of people have said it, is when you learn more about your government, learn how the system works, how it doesn't work. It may be mute some of the edges of that. Do you subscribe to that notion, Camino? Because this really is a lesson. As I said, we learned, I'd say 90% of what we saw in this film, we had no idea, was the state of the law or the Constitution. Do you subscribe to that? I absolutely do. And I think that that's at the heart of our mission at American Experience, not just with this film, but all of the films that we do. There's so much about our government, about our country, that we just don't know, highly educated people, where things you gloss over them, and I think that if you have a deeper understanding and you have more context based in history and government and civics, that you will have a better understanding of where we are today, of the politics that we're dealing with today. And a point that our filmmaker, Michelle Ferrari made, actually, is that one of the things that struck her the most in making this film was a reminder that government can change and these founding documents can change. That's the whole idea of amendments. And we think that we are, quote, unquote, stuck with so many things, but actually you just need a course of people who have the motivation to do something and then the stick to it-tiv-ness to actually carry it through. And that's the thing. There's a reason that we have amendments like none of these documents are perfect. How about you, Randy? There's interesting, as Cameo is talking, and I don't want to speak for you at all, but I think a lot of us who are in public media are here because of the educational mandate of our programming. So our program's frontline and many of our programs actually are seen in over 60% of the public educational schools across America. I didn't know that. Wow. And actually something that is for all of us deeply meaningful, that our work, our journalism is reaching younger people. And we're also, and I'll come hopefully and talk with you all about it, launching something called Frontline Short Docs, where we're making short documentaries. We're doing it this election season for younger people, especially people who are voting for the first time. They can go there and they can see shorter form- And what kinds of things? On the choice to American families, and hopefully, if we can get it done, the VPs as well. That's really funny. I mean, they're short. They're five or six minutes each. But we hope that that will encourage younger people to know their history, know who's their voting for, understand more, without all the partisan noise and this sort of commercialized media around them. Please do come back. Do you see the quote? To the quote from Zoey, our producer says, "That's how I got here. Nova Frontline films in high school were a big reason I studied journalism in college." So there you go. There you go. There you go. That's how I learned about Frontline was in a high school career. Really? So this is how we didn't have a television at home. So this is literally an access point for many of us. And on ongoing and maybe more important than ever part of why our work has the reach that it has. And the VP choice will premiere on October 8th at 10 PM on GBH2 and the Frontline YouTube channel, American Experience is Terrific. The American Vice President premieres on October 1st at 8 PM on GBH2 and on the American Experience YouTube channel. Thanks for listening to the Best of Boston Public Radio podcasts from GBH. Our crew is Zoey Matthews, Aiden Connolly, Nicole Garcia, Pamela Loss. Our engineer is John The Claw Parker. Our executive producer is Jamie Bologna. We want to hear the full show, download our full show podcast, or tune into 89/7 GBH 11 to 2 each weekday. Today's episode was produced by Zoey Matthews. (upbeat music)