Winston Churchill's Painting as a Pastime

Welcome back to the new thinkery. My name is David Barnes with me. It's always my good friend Alex Priyoh, Harry Alex. Howdy, howdy.

Howdy, howdy. And speaking of somebody that would actually use that phrase, Greg McBryer, how are you doing? I was the one who you guys were co-opting my culture and they're appropriating me. I'm doing well.

Let's go to see you guys. You're the next landers of the podcast, right? Who's your wife, right? And I had a mustache.

Oh, no, I was in the studio with the pie. I was going to church. Was it a YouTube heat in the session? Yeah, but Ned had a real pipe.

Oh, she fell. She fell off the back of the thing, at the back of the stadium. Is that the story you tell? My wife is alive.

This one. Who knows about the first one? I don't know about the first two or three. What are we doing today?

We're doing something by Winston Churchill called painting as a pastime. Yeah, that's a short piece he wrote. Maybe about 40 to pages, 25 pages. For listeners, we can tweet it out so that they can have something to read if they so choose as a short read, it's a pleasant read.

I don't really have a good reason for why I chose except a friend recommended it to me and said that it's interesting on painting, but that it might be about something else entirely other than painting. So I don't know. We were looking for ideas to bounce around something. Sure, we do want to make sure we're all busy, especially me and my apologies.

And we've done, gosh, we've done at least two episodes of Churchill, haven't we? Yeah, we did it. What do we do? We did massive facts.

And then what else do we do? I did a second one. I can't remember. We're all around together.

We want that. We want to try to come up with ideas for episodes and I realized we did it like a year and a half ago. Yeah, yeah. People won't really worry about it.

We are starting. People like, we were making money off this. We're going to have to redo some of these because we're going to spend all our intellectual firepower on stuff that's we're really good at. And I'm long since spending from spent.

Right, exactly. So I think there's a good case he made this. I mean, his basic question is something like, what does the public man do in his spare time? Right?

You need to only way to refresh your faculties is he argues to even the private man, even the private man though. But I think he says, so when he makes it, he makes a division of three types of men, right? One is the person has to work all the time. The one is the person who worries all the time, which is like the businessman slash politician.

And then there's like the idol aristocrat or something who just sits around and that person doesn't everybody needs a hobby. But for that person, they really need a like work, an actual serious endeavor. But anyways, he makes the case that to refresh your faculties or whatever your occupation is, you need to engage different faculties or engage your faculties in a different way. And in a serious way, like you can't just rest.

You need to actually, like, you know, how people talk about using a different part of your brain, right? Yeah, the rest doesn't actually do it. You need to exercise different brain muscles to get those brain muscles at your work, if you get some rest actually. Yeah.

So there's also a good activity that one could take up in one's old age, he says repeatedly. So I assume that's one reason you guys thought this would be a good text to cover. You thought maybe I needed a new pastime. And of course, it's people to take it up.

Actually, he says that, yeah, the line about taking it up before you're 40 or even at age of 40 when it's when he took it up. He says in 1915, when he was out of a political office. Yeah, yeah, painting incidentally is the paper pastime of many states. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, George Bush has a George Bush painting of you portraits, right? Yeah. Yeah. I think the act of painting for him, it's keeping one's mind a flame, but not in an onerous way.

So he says that reading doesn't accomplish this, interestingly enough. So if you spend your day, say, as a philosophy professor or a statesman, those two, I think, I know it's a model. It doesn't serve you to go home and just read more if your intent is to relax. But you still want to, you don't want to bring your brain totally off.

So he doesn't talk about watching the real housewives, but he would be a guest at this. So instead, he says, paint, he doesn't even say go for a walk and just take in beauty. That's what was interesting to me. It requires an active part on the part of the person to create small, right?

He says, the tired parts of the mind can be rested and strengthened, not merely by rest, but by using other parts. Yes, the brain is only sorry. If it's been wearing, it goes on wearing, it is only when new cells are called into activity that the brain is refreshed. So it's got to do something like that.

Yeah. I think one of the reasons he suggests painting, this is going back to Greg's point about old age, right? Is that it involves like your physical side of yourself, right? So if you're a state or a businessman, you spend a lot of time thinking and reading and contemplating how to fix situations, right?

This engages in the physical side, but you can do it when you're old, right? So you have to focus your hand, you have to focus your eye, right? And you can do it at any time of day at a certain point, like walks are fine and all, but you can only walk so much and so vigorously before you're sort of unable to do it. You can be rather sedentary and old and still get quite a lot of painting.

Another difference I thought that was pretty interesting is on page 16, he says in my little version I was reading, is that in politics, you can have knowledge but no control, but in painting, you're ignorant, you seem to have full control in a way, right? It seems weighty, it seems final because what you put paints, right? But in truth, it's actually not, right? It's kind of inconsequential, right?

So you can take daring, risky sort of moves and you can kind of do so freely and safely and you can always take off the paint. He's talking about oils now, but it seems like there's a kind of similarity to being involved in intellectual endeavor or practical endeavor, like a statesman, right? Or a, yeah, like a statesman or a businessman, but you don't have the worry, right? The worrying part of you is gone and it's just purely sort of a sort of play, right?

The serious core is gone and you don't have to do that well. Yeah, well, that was what was striking to me. He encourages one away from learning any technique with painting. He just says, do it.

He says, what are you young? You're going to take two years of drawing and the two years of, you know, more years of sculpting. So you don't have no time. He just says, right, five held colors and begin.

The one wonders if he ever did have training in some kind of drawing. I'm sure he did. Can I read you one of my favorite lines on that one? Sure.

He says, first of all, he says you have to be audacious, which I thought was interesting from a political perspective, like audacity is the main quality. And along those lines, he says, we must not be too ambitious. We cannot aspire to masterpieces. We may content ourselves with a joyride in a paint box.

And for this, audacity is the honky ticket, right? So it's, it's not fully serious. You're not going to go through the master using, but in a way, you're just going to give it a whirl, right? And go on this joyride.

I thought that was such a nice way to put it mainly because, you know, I used to play piano more and I'm thinking about starting to get out of the way of kids who are might get interested in music. And it just feels like you have to be audacious. I believe like, okay, I can play this really difficult piece well, right? We really just try to follow through it.

Though in typical Churchill fashion, he just encourages everyone. It's like, I was just about this Charles Butterworth. It's just so good at everything. You would say, oh, Mr.

Barr, treat yourself about what you haven't been to the moon, right? Like, just angry, you can come to astronaut. So Churchill is like, yeah, just start painting. Oh, by the way, I was exploring colors with my friend Cezanne.

And he starts talking on a first name basis, some of the most famous painters in the world. He has some of these paintings by the old masters in Blenheim Palace. So this all just take it up and it'll ease your mind. See, we have a frustrate some people.

Have you guys tried drawing with your children? Well, I was going to say, actually, one of the things I did, you guys know that I went to Italy this summer with my friend who's an art professor and we had students from politics, my students from art. And the idea was that we'd expose them to one of the other topics while we're there. And so with students, we read some Italian political philosophy, Machiavelli principally, and then we'd also get together and work on art.

And actually, I sketched a pretty neat in my mind, a pretty neat drawing of Machiavelli of a statue of Machiavelli actually in Florence. And I will say, like, I mean, I'm not super talented, but I take a great deal of pleasure out of it. And I thought it wasn't that bad when I was finished. Great.

Actually, quite talented. In fact, I've commissioned Greg to do some artwork. So I'm actually, and I met with the art professor friend of mine, I just got to work on a little bit. So we'll get back on that.

But there were a few things that he said that I thought for two hours ago. Are you? Yeah, you'll see. You'll see.

I think good. All right. It's so mildly pornographic. I'll just say that.

Is it have our faces in it? It's useful. Not our faces, no. So what I'll say a few things about how I thought that this little text by Churchill, it look, I'm not that good, but I'm pretty good for an amateur.

And I did drive a lot of pleasure from it. But the one thing I'll say that he said that really struck out, he was, so I did the Machiavelli drawing, which I'm pretty sure I shared with you guys. But I also did just some plants. And I remember, my friend was there, I was like, okay, sit here and draw.

And I was drawing and drawing. He's like, okay, it's time for lunch. And I was like, what do you mean? It's time for lunch.

That was like four hours ago that I started this. It can't possibly be lunchtime. That's actually literally one of things Churchill says, he says, you get lost and the luncheon will come a calling. So there's this weird way.

Maybe it's some kind of sign of what's wrong or right with my brain, but that you get kind of immersed in it. And it's not physically demanding, but it can it can compel your concentration, even with reading, I sort of a much more conscious of time when I'm reading what this is taking a while. This is demanding. This is challenging withdrawing.

It's sort of, it seemed cathartic in the way that I thought that he laid out in a way that was true to my experience. My way to be concerned about it doesn't, it's interesting. He doesn't, you were saying that you spent four hours essentially in this state of self forgetting, which was pleasant, but you could envision too much self forgetting, too much pleasant, pleasantness, right? He doesn't talk any, there's nothing negative about this and there's always a downside to any pursuit.

But I didn't expect him to go negative, though I did, I was surprised he didn't say anything about disappointing oneself when one paints for time, because you can just spend all your idle hours. Yeah. He, you know, let me be it's just to encharm people to start that. Maybe a sort of add on more sort of little point down.

I think he doesn't have a passage right where he outlines the kind of progress you make. Like first you'll start to get a sense of the colors and then the, you know, how to represent it, you'll go be able to appreciate what it so he does. I mean, it's not meant to be like a full on tutorial more like a sort of, you know, an exhortation, an exhortation or encouragement. One thing I found strange is when he's talking about pastimes in a writing, and this is a Nobel Prize winning writer, writer, writer.

What do you mean? That's right. Yeah. So, Remar Alberts, he's offered writing as a thing, right?

So, when Greg describes getting lost for hours, that reminds me of writing, right? When you're really composing something, you're interested in doing it, I can lose all day, you know, doing it. And this is a guy who's famous as a writer, and he even compares painting to on the one hand fighting, right, in war, which is something he did quite a bit, and then on the other hand to crafting arguments or being like a philosopher in a way. Why isn't he thinking about even the very thing he's writing right now as a kind of, I don't know.

I wonder if he doesn't think that most people aren't capable of writing the same way that they're capable of getting pleasure out of drawing or sketching or painting. I think that hearing your attention may just be too frustrating. Yeah. And then I was also thinking there's a pernicious sometimes writing can be pernicious, where I seem like a bad drawing is not particularly, I mean, I suppose there's certain things now that are avant-garde, they're meant to be morally edgy and these things.

But if you're just trying your hand at portraits and you're not good at it, there's not really any cost or any potential moral arm. But the other thing that sparked in my head when you're talking was, what is the purpose of this piece and who's the audience? It reads like an exhortation to do this. And I've never been honest, I think it seems like the audience is old people.

And it's highly rhetorical. You mentioned this is a piece of writing. This is a really good piece of writing. He uses parallel structures.

He's laying rhetorical device upon or terrible device upon or horrible device. I mean, just like I'll give you an example. There's a beautiful sentence on my page 9. I don't know what page you guys have, but the paragraph begins, I hope this is modest enough, but I'll skip down about four or five lines in that paragraph.

He says, it would be a sad pity to shuffle or scramble along through one's playtime with golf and bridge, pottering, loitering, shifting from one heel to the other, wondering what on earth to do is perhaps as perhaps as the fate of someone happy things when all the while, if you only knew, there is close of hand a wonderful new world of thought and craft, a sunlit garden gleaming with light and color of which you have a key in your wasted poke pocket. Now, there's a few things there, pottering, loitering, shifting right without having the conjunction there. So he's suppressed that. But it sort of dances along the way that he writes.

Even there's even some, as honestly, he's using the same letters, the same vowels, the same constants, the same vowels. Anyway, it's a beautiful piece. It's a way to read. Maybe it is directly the belver.

I was thinking that for such a man possessed of such a martial soul, encouraging painting as a pastime, which is a pieceable activity, especially when England is gearing for war. I guess he still thinks it's a good idea. I wonder if you would encourage young men to pursue it. No, painting is often used to help with PTSD and really traumatic experiences.

So maybe it's just a good thing. One of the, in the back of my head, one of the reasons I wanted to read this was because I swear, I remember somebody telling me that it's not about painting. It's about statesmanship or general ship. And there is that where he says, explicitly, it's like, it's like, like, strategic.

It's like being a general. And so you're right. One of the things that we should point out that this is 1932. I mean, he's jumping up and down, screaming that the Nazis are coming.

And yet he's taking time to paint. I don't know what to do with Adam. I think it's just simply, so he says, one of his lineups that he has a front row seat in this unfolding. And it's a kind of hell for him, because at the moment, you know, later, of course, it happens.

But at the moment, he can't do anything. He has this kind of shadow gap that he can be in. He's prepping for his big day down the line. But at the moment, he can't do anything.

So we've all had those evenings where it's just our thoughts, race, and nothing, nothing will quite it. And certainly not reading a book, right? You try and read when you're mentally agitated, you'll just end up reading the same paragraph over and again. Yeah.

I think Greg is, you know, you guys are both raising the points. I mean, I think it is about state graph in that the point that you bring up David about the frustration, right? That's the point where he says, you might have the knowledge that you lack the control, right? Painting is a kind of corollary in that you're utterly an amateur.

You don't know what to do, but at least you have full control, right? And you can see what happens when you're audacious and you do something bold on the canvas and you can see how your judgment and your perception lines up to reality, right? As you try to render whatever it is you're seeing. And in the process, as you're trying to get in again, you train your eye, you become more attentive to the natural world around you more observant.

I think that translates outside of it. So it's almost like a healthy activity to make you more aware as a person, right? You know, if you actually spend your time, like looking at a leaf or something on the ground or really just inspecting the details of the minutia when you're on a hike or something versus just walking quickly, you become your eye gets more subtle, right? You start to notice the way the light works.

You start to notice pleasant, you know, angles or vistas and you kind of enjoy the substance of it. On the subject of young and old, can I read another line that I really like? Sure. So a lot of, I think there's so much quotable in here.

I do want to read quite a few of these and talk about them, but the first, it is kind of divided into three or four parts, I think. The first part though is about pastimes in general. And it focuses quite a bit on reading. I thought some of the most memorable lines are from there.

But one on, I thought it was funny was young people should be careful in their reading as old people in eating food. They should not eat too much. They should chew it well. Right?

I thought that was so good. Like when you're young, if you just read a ton and you see this, obviously with graduate students, when they go to programs, especially that four cents to read a ton, you never learn to read that well. We have a very adeptist college in the secondary literature, but their eye is a train for the details. So the technology, I think a deeper point is it doesn't stick to your soul.

So you could even have perfect recall, but you we've all met people like that. A lot of people in academia, very fine brains, highly tuned. So the recall is excellent. But their understanding or analysis is one thing.

The other thing that he said, which made me smile was learning languages. He says, look, if you are going to read as a second best painting, perhaps, so he doesn't phrase it this way, read in a secondary language. And the trouble these days is that we force enough, he says, these funny enough, I actually have that like make your way through Italy, enough Greek to pass the exam in enough way. He says, the boy learns Latin enough to detest it enough Greek to pass an examination, enough French to get from Calais to Paris, enough German to exhibit a diploma, enough Spanish or Italian to tell which is which, but not enough of any to secure the enormous boon of access to a second literature.

Yeah, it's just, I mean, it's followed by a great one to jump in. I want to go back to this idea of the old, the young should read carefully like the old G.D. carefully, because he does, he uses this metaphor for reading throughout his texts, not just here, but also in one of my favorite, actually probably my favorite book by him is called My Early Life, when he's talking about his own education. And I won't trace all of it out for us.

But one of the things he talks about is how when he was a young man, he sort of despised education, but he sort of gradually comes to realize that he needs an education and he sort of walks through what he thinks of university students and how he has low opinions on them, low opinions on them, so he changes his mind a number of times. Now, he says, this is a sort of very kind of quote, but now I pity undergraduates when I see what frivolous lives many of them lead in the midst of precious leading opportunity. After all, a man's life must be nailed to a cross, either a thought or action without work, there's no play. So he sort of, at this point in his life, when he's out in India, he finally realizes that education is important.

And while he had originally sort of envied the undergraduates, he begins to pity them because they're studying the secondary literature that you were talking about. And what he says you need to do is read the primary texts themselves. He says, so while he's out in India, he starts to educate himself. He says, from November to May, I read four or five hours, every day, history and philosophy, Plato's Republic, Socrates, politics of Aristotle, Schopenhauer, Malthus, Darwin, all interspersed with books of lesser standing.

It was a curious education first because I approached it with an empty, hungry mind and with fairly strong jaws. That was the long way to get to this point that something about reading requires this chewing over of things. And it's not something you can do simply or passively, whereas painting seems like something you can do without sort of investing a ton of intellectual effort. It seems like the reason he's saying reading is not the thing you should be doing is because it's simply too intellectually taxing.

Right? He's a great, but you know what's so weird about that? I thought about that passage. Yeah, sure.

His stance there. I don't know if he's clear-sided with what he's writing. I'm not trying to nay a church altar. Go ahead.

He's writing this. He's like, yeah, it was during the war war that I was just pouring over air, saw as an epic show. Really? Really?

Yeah. During the war? That's when you absorb it with a steel trap? So I think that maybe it's after the vicissitudes of life brought him so close to death with his book stake on the new meaning for him.

So they become more impressionable. But then he's reading it in a serious way. Bullet search. Well, I don't know.

I mean, I think sometimes in these moments, Churchill kind of drops his garden and shows that he's just not the average guy. I mean, like you and I probably couldn't. But I mean, even his paint, like when he's hanging out with Cezanne's students in France, they're like, no, the reason you're actually that pretty good at paintings because you're just like a super smart, thoughtful person. And he's like, oh, I hope that's true.

It's like, yeah, Churchill, you're pretty much able to do what you want to do, right? Like you're a unique guy. But can I pick up on that? One small question, by the way, quick.

We've talked, we've talked, we've had some episodes on this is a real digression, but it's going to bring us back. In a way, I'm fascinated by the idea or the prospect that most impressive human beings are these double types, this makes it sorry. But Churchill's mother was American and his father was English, right? And who do we do?

What Plutarch liked? Do we do recently where that was the case, right? And Mr. Gliese.

The Misticles. And then Cyrus was thought to be Persian and Medean. So there's this interesting way. I mean, obviously, there's a lot of other factors to play, but just something about being a great children will be half man, half pick, right?

It's my wife, you're talking about it. No, no, your wife, you're a human. You're a girlfriend. Yeah.

A very human wife, very pretty white. Thank you. Very human. What's left is very human.

All right. Anyway, we go back to the books thing about how taxing is that you're right? This comes up. He says, what shall I do with all my books?

Was the question and the answer read them sobert the questioner. But if you cannot read them at any rate, handle them and as it were, bond with them, peer into them, let them fall open where they will read on from the first sentence that arrest the eye, then turn to another, make a voyage of discovery, taking soundings of uncharted seas, set them back on their shelves with your hands, arrange them on your own plan so that you do not know what is in them, at least know where they are. If they cannot be your friends, let them at any rate be your acquaintances. If they cannot enter the circle of your life, do not deny them at least a nod of recognition.

I think that's a great point. You cannot do with books what he is doing with painting. You can't, to just poke in and out of a book is not to read it seriously. That's what a book demands.

And the world is full of them. I think in a way, this observation fuels this little writing, which is, it is for old people. It's very short. It's very playful, highly rhetorical.

It's a pleasure to read. And then in the volume that it came, was followed by a lot of his own paintings. So it's meant to be a casual read. It's meant for the person who doesn't want to read his massive work on his grandfather.

You just want to dig into a little bit and then maybe that's the kind of mentality where that's the kind of reader who would be better predisposed toward painting than to study or something. Yeah. There was this other, isn't used. We're talking about the books and reading.

I was actually kind of struck by his, his account of entering a vast library and realizing you're sort of, and I've had this sentiment. So I can sympathize with it a little bit. And I think I've talked about this with both of you before. I'll say my point first and then read him on it.

I was, I became, I've become aware in the course of teaching that there are probably, I'll be generous with myself. Six to 12 books with which I could become really familiar and expert on. Right. Where I can sort of cite chapter and verse and that kind of thing.

And that's it. I mean, like, I can't have more than that in my head. I mean, I've talked courses five years ago on text that I knew really well and I'll teach them again. I'm like, I've forgotten in five years what this text is about.

So if you actually want to keep these books in your head over the course of your entire life, I mean, I'm not Churchill. So for me, it's six, eight, ten. Who wears this sometimes I'll be reading something for class that I haven't taught in a while. Yeah.

I'll find some old notes after I have her head. And I'm like, that's good. Yeah, I used to be smarter. Yeah, yeah.

That's me all the time. The converse of this. Yes, sorry. No, no, I was just going to say here's what he has to say.

The most common form diversions reading. So what most people do for their past time is reading. He says, I don't think that's true anymore. By the way, thanks to television.

This is 1932 lecture, not ticking. Tic-tock, tic-tock. But a day in a library, even if modest dimensions quickly dispels these illusory sensations of how awesome it is. As you browse about, ticking down book after book in the shelves and contemplate the vast infinitely varied store of knowledge and wisdom, which the human race is accumulated and preserved, pride, even in its most innocent forms, is chased from the heart by feelings of all, not untangid with sadness.

As one surveys the array of sages, the mighty array of sages, saints, historians, scientists, poets, and philosophers whose treasures one will never be able to admire, still less enjoy. The brief tenure of our existence here dominates mind and spirit. Perhaps there will never be enough time to actually achieve wisdom. And it makes writing seem strange, right?

Like you write something, you might pour over every word. And I mean, you even take somebody like a great mind, like Kant, right? You pour over, you write these three massive critiques. People might debate it.

It might be talked quite a bit, but nobody really ever gets to your recesses of your thoughts in that way. But then you take, you know, just walk down through any stacks through the, you know, the hundreds of commentaries on him that you might find. You know, I remember grabbing some commentaries when I was teaching it last summer and just being like, I guess I just got a like one or two and randomly. Yeah, I remember it was John Blitz and then the art of Shakespeare with the ones I looked at.

But you know, yeah, so you kind of you kind of have to choose and it makes you wonder, well, what is writing then? Well, you're kind of casting something out there, hoping somebody who cares about the book as much as you do will learn from it, study your writing. But you might never get that reader, right? Even the greatest minds who were read for centuries, millennia might rarely get the right kind of reader.

And then you look at this a little apparently frivolous piece and you're like, no, I think Churchill really hit the bell on the head. This is much more likely, I imagine more people have read this and appreciated it than have his biography of Marburg, right? Or his 50 volume, whatever of the book, or two, right? And so therefore, this, in my mind, therefore, this reflects, so I'm trying to put some pieces together here.

I think Churchill actually probably, I mean, he's far superior to him. He seems to have understood humans well. And so he recognizes that reading is the past time for most people. So he's written a piece that most people can read.

So this will be a pleasant diversion for large numbers of human beings. And there's a line in here that I really enjoyed where he divides human beings into three classes. I think Alex alluded to it at the beginning, but he says very quickly, broadly speaking, human beings may be divided into three classes, those who are toiled to death, those who are worried to death, and those who are bored to death. And so he goes on to say that your pastime or your hobbies should probably depend upon your character, but also upon what kind of stuff you do for a living.

So there does seem to be this connect idea that past time should be well suited to those who do different things. So if you're working hard, if you're toiling to death, your leisure should probably not be playing baseball or what, I feel like the other sport he mentions, right? And you know, you guys know that one of my big hobbies is my little Christian workout group, and the few times I've met men who work for a living and do actual physical labor, I've not put a lot of effort in terms of like, of course, the last thing this guy wants to do is come and break his bones down. But for me, all my pencil and that we need colleagues and friends who sit on our butts eight hours a day, like it actually is a nice pastime that probably can't go on until I'm elderly, but at least for now it is something good.

So there is this way in which the past time seems to align with your way of life. And if Churchill thinks his own way of life is somehow superior, maybe past time is a, maybe painting is a pastime well suited for that way of life. And it may not be well suited to these other ways of life. I think so.

Yeah, I think that's one of the core of you. Can I go to another line that really likes him for me? Some page of love, he says, it is a great pity to read a book too soon in life. Yes.

I mean, I remember I took my first year of grad school, of course, on Hegel's phenomenology, and I just didn't have the sense of the gravity of the problem, the epistemological problem, as well as the weight of the way that this is Robert Berman. I just could not follow Hegel, I couldn't get through it. And I wish I could have done that 10 years later. And I don't know if I'll ever have time to seriously read phenomenology.

I think that's what happens with high school kids in Shakespeare. I agree. That was happening with me in Shakespeare. Because when we say that, I was telling you not well, right?

Better reach Shakespeare, right? And then we've bemoaned the fact that they're, they're under educated when they get to college. But I'm not sure that it's easy for many people to receive Shakespeare and even the little smarty pants that can understand it because of high aptitudes. I'm not sure they feel it.

So it can be a turn off. I don't think it's a matter of what Shakespeare, I read it to really and I turned me off to it. And I don't think it's a, I sort of could understand what was going on. For me, it was the understanding at a different level.

Like, I didn't understand what the stakes were. So the human fundamental questions, the issues of the raising didn't speak to me. And I think they tried to mitigate this by doing Romeo and Juliet with middle schoolers or early high schoolers. But that even seems, I don't know, that doesn't seem to capture what it didn't speak to me as a middle schooler.

I mean, the most accessible was probably, it's probably some of my extreme, but it's a weird play, man. It's weird. We need to do it. But it's weird.

It's a kind of frivolous look. It's not frivolous, but it has a frivolous look. And even that is accessible. And then it appears like meaning less, I think, to most students and they're not going to take it seriously.

It's just the problem is maybe him, it would be good, but it's so long. It's too long. Yeah. So.

I've almost come to the opinion that reading anything is good for the young, but just, you know, Harry Potter, whatever, doesn't matter. Like, just get them reading. And then try to develop that taste later. I agree.

It's different. Ken House letters. I know David read that as a young boy and it sent him a ride. I thought it was a joke.

I had comments that he read too early. You remember that? It was Greg Shorty. Yeah, Archie.

Yeah. Yeah. They still ran those in newspapers when we were young. They take.

That's a true story. So Alex, you're getting, what's the end? It's away from the hour mark. You want to, what was your little scheme?

Okay. Yeah. So you guys want to play this game? Yeah.

Sure. So David, you mentioned earlier, I was a little worried we get on a tangent. We mentioned earlier, a lot of statesmen have been painters, right? Oh, no.

So I've put together eight paintings going from easiest to most difficult, okay, that have been done by well-known to famous, very famous statesmen, right? Now, so I'm going to show you the painting and we'll take a look at this out there. No, go ahead. Yeah.

Now the problem is, is this is, I already know where this is going, by the way, I feel like I do to paint it by Hitler, right? Yeah. That's obvious. No, no, no, no.

One of them's got to be like, this is, this is going to make us be like, oh, this one's really nice. You're like, oh, Hitler painted it. You're going to know it's easy. Look at you.

You're picking up. I don't know what he's saying. He's saying, Nazi is to know which painting. Hitler does make it a occurrence.

Yeah. But you're ruining it. Okay. So, now this is a, this is a, this is a audio format show, right?

Yeah. There's a fall. So I'm going to show you the painting, just take 10 seconds, describe it so that people know it. These are all serious.

These are all done by these statesmen. All right. So I think this will be interesting. But they go from easier to harder, right?

So, and I'm going to keep score and see who will show us. So I'll show you, you'll spend 10, 15 seconds, whatever you got really, but quickly describe what you're describing. You're describing. You're describing it.

And then the obvious also, he's going to go to something that we can't describe. That's another one. Go ahead. Go ahead.

That's the lever. And then you'll guess who it is. And then I think if you get it wrong, the other person gets a fall. So it's two points if you get it right, right?

One point if you steal. It's gone first. We'll start going first. Okay.

Ready? Yeah. You got to share my screen. Okay.

All right. What do you see? I see North Africa, maybe Morocco, Tunisia. Actually, well, okay.

So there's like a slight mountain in the background. In the foreground, there's a trickle of water, sort of like a little river with rocks. And there's a man on the horse or a donkey and dressed in, I guess, ropes clothing that would be fit a desert traveler. All right.

So who do you think painted this? I'm not Churchill. Very good. Two points.

It's the easiest one. Right? Oh, really? Churchill.

Yeah. I mean, we're doing Churchill. I thought it's not right. It's great.

It's your turn. Ready? This one's also very easy. No.

I see a man. It looks pretty good. He's a guy's lips, puckered, middle aged. You want a suit?

One eyebrows cocked. Looks like a confident man who's accomplished a lot of missions. This is a painting of George W. Bush.

And by? I'm going to go on a lemon zade, George W. Bush, self-portrait. We're tied two to two, my friends.

You ready? Right? Mm hmm. All right.

Oh, that's white Eisenhower. Yep. We got to describe the painting first. I was just a nice house in the New England style.

Maybe not doing proper. No. What? Yeah.

The problem is this is DE in the corner. The fairly, fairly simple tree, by the way. Yeah. In the foreground.

Are you ready, Grant? I'm ready. Okay. You got to keep up to tie.

Yeah. This is a beautiful building in the classical style. There are, yeah, I see there are men walking. They have hats.

One guy has a cane. The building is in the background, the men are in the foreground. There's a nice, a nice street lamp in front of there's a fountain over on the right hand side. There's a buggy being drawn by horse.

There's also a trolley. So that tells me this would have been painted in, I don't know, the 20s, maybe the 30s. It looks German, given the men on horses on top of the architecture. And there in the bottom right, I can see it's by a scribble.

And I'm going to go on a lemon zade. But this is the painting, Alex Prio, by Adolf Hitler. And this would have been where if Greg hadn't ruined the joke, if you knew how to play along, I'd have been like, oh, did you said a great station? Why are you?

Yeah, right. I was going to do a great station. Right. But that actually is a good painting set.

Is it okay to say that? Yeah, it's not great. But it's like, it looks fun. Let's not start talking.

Greg on Hitler's talents is not like a topic. Right. David, you ready? Yeah.

Right. We're dead. He has a great. Yeah.

Oh, I don't know, man. This is the tone of the last painter. Okay. He's this painter is similar in his political styling.

So another fascist? Yeah, what's it calls? What's it calls? Steel?

No, yeah, we're for David. So it's a hawk and it's persecuting smaller birds and there's one and there's a shot by laying on the ground beside my side. Yeah. Mountains off and the way there's an open leather sack that has some bittles.

Oh, no, no, it's the dead partridges. Yeah. Who's leaning? No, can't.

Branko. Very good, Greg. Greg takes the lead and Greg, your head by one point is your turn. Okay.

All right. Also, also not a great station for the record. Yes, that's true. All right.

So the next one, Greg, if you get this right, you'll take a three point lead. All right. And this is you'll have a good chance of running. You ready?

All right. Let's hear it. Folks, no, we're loving this. Can you describe it?

Can I describe it? Yes. It's a street sign in some very sad desolate place. And the street sign says Romney, Switzerland, American street sign green, spray painted over Romney and black with black spray paint is Obama.

And what great statesman did this? Alex for you did this to a street in Colorado. I didn't do this. This is actually from Texas.

I mean, this is Romney, Romney, Texas, apparently. Okay. Who did it? You got a guess.

All right. I'm gonna guess a great statesman. This is politicians. It's a politician.

It's a politician. Ted Cruz. Yeah. No.

Bar, you gotta guess. Well, your word statesman, can we ask myself? No, he changed. He got rid of statesman said, just the politician.

I was a state senator statesman too. I didn't mean anything about that. Can we have hints? Like what year?

Isn't this obvious? I guess. I don't know. I was trying to get what a colon if you racist for saying Obama did.

Perfeeding. Well, why would Obama spray in his own name? I was good at it. And it has the painting of it.

That doesn't make sense. That was a draw. That one's a draw. Next one bar.

It's your turn. This is the last round. Okay. So bar, you need to get this.

Okay. We're still gonna finish up, right? Right. Who's this a statesman?

Child? No, this is actually an adult statesman. And his doated. We described the painting.

But it's the White House, but it says a child judge drew it. Can I can I have one qualification? I think it's actually as an adult druid as if the adult were pretending to be a child. I think it's a child.

It's on graph paper, which I think okay. Okay. Okay. Sounds for this.

Okay. It's too so much well to be by a child. Okay. There's a graph paper for my guy.

I guess Jim Carter. No. Greg. Baron Trump.

No, this is actually Joe Biden. He did this last week. Oh geez. Okay.

Last one. Greg. Okay. Here's how it goes.

Greg, your head by point. If you get the next one, you win. If you lose barcancy over time and I guess that's just it. Right.

Right. Baron last one. You ready? All right.

Hey, look, no, I'm saying. Go ahead. It's here. This is just a typical Friday night for the guys of the new thinkery.

Yeah. What's going on here? Well, one guy's putting on the other rent. Yeah.

Another guy's helping him do that. There's another guy petting another guy in the head. And no one's really glad. Are they dressed?

Greg, no one's fully. There's one guy fully glad. Where are they? They're in a locker room.

It looks to be one of the old exercise halls in New York City. If I had to guess in the 1920s or 30s again, some dapper shoes. It's just guys nice run at it. So I'm going to go with.

I'm going to go with obviously. I'm going to go with Harry Truman. That's false. David, you got this?

I was going to guess like a Tom O'Finnland or whatever, that graphic homorotic guy's name is. No. No, I'm no. I'm no.

Guess man. One more shot. Anybody? Alex Brieu.

No, George Santos, actually. George Santos. The George Santos are Lindsey Graham. I can't remember.

Oh, did you guys appreciate our game? I did. Good plan. I started strong, but then ended kind of week.

You guys are painted? When I was a kid. Okay. I will say it's a treat.