The Transcendentalists and the American Romantic Spirit

"I was kind of burned out from the semester, preoccupied about stupid things that don't matter. And then all of a sudden it's like, we're on a side of a cliff going down into the hour glass," he says. "It's just, this is the time of manifest destiny. This is when the rugged kind of individualism of America is born." The series premieres tonight at 10 p.m. ET/PT on HBO.