Victor's Favorite Novels, TV Shows, and Movies.

I knew we all had two ages, our actual age and our internal biological age.

What I didn't know is, I've likely lowered my biological age without even knowing it.

Here's the thing, because Americans eat so many processed foods and not enough fruits and veggies, many, perhaps most, are 10 plus years older on the inside than their actual age.

They're ticking time bombs.

A major university study suggests how to slow aging and diffuse that biological time bomb.

Participants slowed their aging by drinking Field of Greens.

That's all.

They didn't change their eating, drinking, or exercise, just

field of greens.

When I started Field of Greens to replace my multivitamin, I was amazed.

After about two weeks, my energy improved.

I've been exercising more, and my overall wellness feels great.

Each fruit and vegetable in Field of Greens was doctor selected for specific health benefits.

Cell health, heart, lungs, kidney metabolism, even healthy weight.

It's wonderful knowing Field of Greens can slow how quickly I'm aging.

And I encourage you to join me.

Swap your untested fruit, vegetable, or green drink for Field of Greens.

While there's time, check out the university study and get 20%

off when using promo code Victor at fieldofgreens.com.

That's fieldofgreens.com, promo code Victor.

And we'd like to thank Field of Greens for continuing to sponsor the Victor Davis Hanson Show.

Hello, ladies.

Hello, gentlemen.

This is the Victor Davis-Hansen Show.

I'm Jack Fowler, the host, the star and the namesake, Victor Davis-Hanson, is the Martin and Ely Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Wayne and Marcia Buskie Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College.

This will be a kind of a fun episode, I believe.

Victor, the movie watcher, the book reader, the TV show guy.

Maybe we'll even ask, if we have the time, what things little Victor did, what kind of hobbies he had way back in the late 50s and early 60s.

But we'll get to Victor's favorite movies right after these important messages.

When empires debase their currency, citizens who hold gold survive the transition.

That's not opinion.

It's documented fact.

Trump's economic warning isn't speculation.

It's pattern recognition.

The same signals that preceded every major currency crisis are flashing now.

Unsustainable debt, foreign nations dumping our bonds, and central banks hoarding gold.

But Trump's also revealing the solution.

The IRS strategy he's used for decades is available to every American.

It's how the wealthy preserve their fortunes when paper currencies fail.

American Alternative Assets has documented this strategy in their their free 2025 wealth protection guide.

It shows exactly how to position yourself before the turbulence Trump's warning about arrives.

Call 888-615-8047 for your free guide.

That's 888-615-8047 or visit VictorLovesGold.com.

The patterns are clear.

Make sure you're on the right side of them.

If you're like me, you have a lot of product on your bathroom counter.

Well, I have found the secret serum.

And it's Vibrient Super C Serum.

The ingredients in this one bottle can replace your day creams, eye creams, night creams, neck creams, wrinkle creams, and even dark spot reducers.

Made in the USA with the highest quality ingredients, including vitamin C, hyaluronic acid, vitamin B5, and vitamin E, Super C Serum delivers noticeable results.

Simplify your skincare routine, get a healthier complexion, and minimize wrinkles and age spots with Vibrance.

I just began using Super C Serum last week and I love it.

My skin feels so much better, soft, moist, and fresh.

And by the way, it smells beautiful like the orange blossoms outside my kitchen door.

Give it a try and you'll love it too.

And if you don't find it better than your current skincare routine, you'll get a full refund.

Go to vibrance.com/slash Victor to save up to 37%

off and free shipping.

That's Vibrance.

V-I-B-R-I-A-N-C-E.

Vibrance.com slash Victor.

And we'd like to thank Vibrance for sponsoring the Victor Davis Hansen Show.

We're back with the Victor Davis Hansen Show.

Victor, I'm so glad you're willing to expose

your favorites.

Maybe we'll even find some movies you hate, books you hate.

But yeah, let's dig in.

Just ask my wife.

You know which ones I hate, the one she loves.

Oh, is that it?

Yeah.

What's the one with

You Got Mail or something about this?

You hate that?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah,

it's not a guy movie.

Actually, the original version of that with Carrie Grant.

I know that was good, wasn't it?

Yeah.

I find Tom Hanks kind of cloying as an actor.

Yeah,

he can get that way.

Well, we're going to we'll begin with the movies.

So, Victor, it's very simple.

I know you love movies, you incorporate some of their themes into some of the pieces you've written over the years.

So, let's pick what are three of your favorite movies?

Well, I confess at the outset, they are all Western.

Go ahead.

I'm going to bet on one of them.

No, go ahead.

No, you go ahead and bet.

Is Shane one of them?

Yes, it is.

It's my number two movie.

Okay.

We're going to talk about Shane.

Go ahead.

My number one is Sam Peckinpaw's Wild Bunch.

There are

elements in there that are sheer genius.

Oh, yeah.

I love that part where Bill Holden finally, they're all bickering.

He said, fight, go ahead.

When you side with a man, you stick with a man.

That's right.

Good.

And then when they're riding through that little village and they see war notes.

and Ben Johnson laughing and the old wizen elder of the village, Mecklen Village says, you know, there's good, there's everybody likes to be child, even they, even the worst of us.

It's really funny.

And

Edmund O'Brien was brilliant in that movie.

Absolutely brilliant.

That was Ernest Borgnine, one of his greatest roles.

That very last scene where they can take the money and leave or go avenge, get Angel back, and they know they're going to get killed.

And they kind of welcome that because all these Westerns are, as I said, ad nauseam.

They're all renditions of the tragic Sophoclean theme that certain

have certain skills that save people, but the manifestation of those skills means that they're precluded from civilized life.

And they're there's a great sense of honor, too, in that

when they go back, yeah, you know, they could, because they're kind of not kind of scoundrels, they are absolute scoundrels.

They are.

And then I love it when Robert Ryan, who used to be one of them, and he said, they're talking about them.

And he says, well, no, they're not going to do that.

they're not going to do that they're going to be men and god i wish i was with them now and he he's with struther martin and lq jones and all those weirdos

and that first scene is really nightmarish but and the second yeah the kids kids are burning uh huge scorpions yeah and they're shooting up that town they're

right yeah and bill holden was just I've always liked him in movies like Bridge of the Road,

Tokyo Ri, yeah and i bridge over the river kawaii and the bridges of tokyore and all of those great movies there's something about him i really like but that performance when he was supposedly over the hill was uh just perfect the second one that i like is you mentioned shane and you know alan ladd that it was a very small guy and he doesn't really he played some westerns and i think he had a short life but he did that was that was george stevens wasn't it that produced that he was yeah howard hawks was.

I think it was Howard Hawkes directed it, didn't he?

Oh, he did.

Maybe it was George Stevens.

No, no, no, no, no, you're right.

It's George Stevens.

I have Howard Hawks.

But he was a brilliant director.

I mean, my God, he made those blockbusters.

And

something about that movie, when he knows that he's not fit and he just wants to ride through, and then he sees the problem.

And there's two subtexts of that question from the very first scene.

Number one

is

that little Joey's mom is going to fall in love with shane and who wouldn't he's completely courageous and she's married to you know a great man right and there's going to be tension there and what is shane going to do about it because he's supposedly a cutthroat and the fact is he's a very honorable guy and and everybody knows that and so jean arthur is going to and she's a wonderful person and

i'm a god and then i've never seen her beautiful she's beautiful that was her last movie i think i think she was almost 50 when she filmed that.

Ben Johnson turns out to be, you know, that thing about Sody, you can't come in here.

What are you going to buy?

Sodi pop and such.

And then he gets beat up.

And then he turns out to be a good guy at the end.

Right.

And he comes and warns Shane.

And gosh, Van Heflin was such a great actor, the noble father.

And as Joe Starrett, Starrett, was that his name?

Joe Starrett?

Joe Starrett, yeah.

And then Brandon Wireless going back, Shane.

And he ended up tragically, I think, in an accident as well.

Right.

He was 30 when he died.

Yeah.

And then the greatest, I think that was his first role.

That was the greatest villain I've ever seen in Jack Palan.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, my God.

He was just, and then when they, Wilson, I think his name was, when they shoot him, and Shane has been so soft-spoken, but to get him to draw, you know, good.

Yankee Luck.

And remember, he's a southerner, and the southerners are always the tragic heroes, whether it's the searchers or

the John Wayne movies.

What's the Tyree is the Southerner?

Yes.

And then there was that,

I got to remember his name, Emile Meyer, those two awful brothers that are the cattle barons that are trying to run out the Sawbusters.

Yeah, one of them was John Dirkus, I think his name was, but they were brilliant actors.

They were.

Yeah.

Edgar Buchanan was in that.

That was just full of great actor acting.

but victor also it was a beautiful i mean the filming jackson jackson hole yeah it was just it was beautiful and and

shane come back and you get you don't know quite how whether he's going to die or he's got that bad shoulder he's riding with one reins he's been shot right he's got those you know he said well shane shane do you

is it better to have two you know one gun as good as any and better than most that succinct dialogue was just wonderful my third of course is john Wayne, Ethan Edwards, and the searchers.

That was kind of brilliant because, like Red River, and I think, wasn't that a Howard Hawks movie?

Red River?

Yes, Howard Hawks was Red River.

Yeah.

And that's when John Ford looked at Howard Hawks as Red River and said, my God, the son of a bitch can act about John Wayne.

It was kind of a cruel thing to say, but he had that dark side in Red River and he had it against searchers.

He's kind of a, you don't know where he comes from.

He has these gold dollars.

He's been down somewhere.

He wrote in the Civil War, kind of with a Contrelle-like Contrell-like group.

So he's kind of got, I don't know what the subtext with his relationship with his brother's wife is, Martha, when he comes back, but you can see that they jive together

to get killed.

And then he's got this racist hatred that he wants to kill anybody that would befoul themselves, he thinks, touching a Native American.

But then over time, he mellows.

And at the end, he saves everybody.

And then he has, again, like Shane, he's been contaminated.

And he has has the skills necessary to find the girl and save everybody.

But then he's got to walk out that door.

Got wonderful music, too.

And that screenplay was really good.

By the son's,

yeah.

What's interesting, they say that scene at the end there, Victor, is, you know, and you've written about, you actually, you wrote some great pieces about Shane and the searchers politically as.

explanatory of Donald Trump's ideal world.

And I said he wasn't going to end well.

And I said that in 2018.

Somebody from the administration called me and said, We read the case for Trump.

And

what do you mean he's not going to end well?

What is the tragic hero?

And I said, Donald Trump brings a certain set of skill sets.

That's kind of like, isn't that out of Taken?

That movie Taken?

He said, I have a certain set of skills.

And the same thing is in Man of Fire with Denzel Washington.

And that's my fourth favorite movie.

That was a brilliant acting performance by Denzel Washington.

What do they say to him?

He's an artist of death and he's about ready to paint his greatest masterpiece.

And that was a great movie.

But it's the same theme that these people have to come and solve problems that we in sophisticated society cannot.

solve because we have certain restrictions that we must have to be civilized.

There's no way out.

So there's not an easy solution.

It's a tragedy because both alternatives are unacceptable.

And yet, this unacceptable alternative comes in and saves people that despise him only after they're saved.

And that's what happens in the searchers, and that's what happens in Shane.

It happens in high noon, too.

Gary Cooper, that's another wonderful movie that has to throw down that badge and leave.

And it happens in, of course, the Magnificent Seven, when we are like the wind.

They blow.

You are like the wind, you blow in and blow out.

Now, we'll be glad to see us go, too.

And that element is really important.

That was what Sophocles made him the greatest of the three playwrights with Ajax, Philip Tedes, Antigone.

So, Oedipus is sort of a tragic hero.

But that's what Trump was in a weird way.

I mean, he had the skill sets, and he was the pit bull that was cut loose to even the score with the left.

But in the very process of that methodology, he alienated people.

And the better the economy did.

I had written an article and I think there's an element in the case for Trump.

I said, he's in a paradox.

The more that unemployment goes down, the more that he defeats Mueller, the more that he doesn't emulate the tactics of his enemies, the more that we get affordable gas, the border secure, the more people are going to have the leisure.

and the opportunity to focus on his tweets and the crude and the excess of his character.

And they're going to drive him out, just like they drove Shane out, just like they drove Ajax out.

And that's what they did.

Well, I do want to make one comment on one of the movies, The Searchers.

And I love the movie, but I have to say, compared to Mane, Shane's just beautiful, start to finish.

I could watch it every day.

I could watch The Searches every day, too.

But there was that comic aspect to The Searches with the wedding.

And

that was sort of a John Ford always had that element.

Yeah.

The social scene.

Yeah.

Yeah.

He did that in that Western trilogy to she wore a yellow ribbon and stuff.

They have those

comical, and then they have some of the sets-you know, they the frontier scenes are done in the set in Hollywood and they don't look realistic, you know, the fake landscape.

Whereas Shane was just so beautifully filmed.

Gorgeous.

I think the way they also developed the film was some of the colors, the colors seemed to be unique for that movie.

I read

last summer, I was on an occasion where I bumped into Patrick Wayne.

Remember him?

Oh, yeah.

Oh, sure.

He was in the

he was.

He was.

And he said, you probably don't know me.

I said, I know exactly who you are.

And I watched, I think it was the Seven Sins of Seven Things of Sinbad and all those movies he was in.

I knew every one of them.

And I talked about his, he had that scene where he...

He's kind of comical with a sword.

He ward bonds says, get that big knife near me or whatever he's talking about.

I talked to him for, I think I bored him to death, but I talked to him for three hours about his dad's movies.

We went over every one of his Westerns.

And what I like about somebody like him is that when they have a father like that, that's legendary and had obvious controversies surrounding him, they take the person and defend him and they acknowledge his controversies, but they see the greater good of what he did for the country and himself.

So he was very positive about his father.

I really like that.

I think that can be a rare thing.

It It didn't used to be, but it is now.

People feel that they can justify their own unhappiness by fobbing off their deficiencies onto their upbringing, i.e.

their parents.

Hey, Victor, before we get into books, I'm just curious, is there any particular filmmaker you like?

I'll say Hitchcock, it's just some names, Hitchcock, David Lean, Kubrick, just because I want to get a suite in here.

Ingmar Bergen,

not exclusive to those sorts, but is there anyone you, you don't have to, but anyone you may like as a filmmaker?

Well, I think I've liked John Ford, obviously, but another person, I don't know what it is about him, but he was, he was just brilliant, was William Wyler.

And I don't know if you remember, he did one of my favorite films, The Best Years of Our Lives.

Frederick March was just wonderful in that movie.

Oh, terrific.

And

in movie history.

Dana Andrews was in that too.

Right.

And he did Roman.

I mean, think of all.

I can, I know his films pretty good.

He did, I think he did Roman Holiday and Withering Heights.

Ben Hur.

Remember Ben Hur?

That was a big thing.

He did, and even that, you know,

The Apartment.

Did he do the apartment?

I thought that was Billy Wilder, but maybe that was Billy Wilder.

Yeah, yeah.

But he was so good in.

a very underrated movie.

Remember the big country?

Oh, yeah.

With Gregory Peck and Charlton, Charlton Heston, they had that fist fight.

And then Pearl Ives is in that.

They've got great in cinema scope.

Yeah, I mean, it was, it was just,

he was a brilliant guy.

And I've always liked his movies.

I like Sam Peck and Paul, obviously.

One of them, one of the most underrated Westerns is Ride the High Country.

Oh, Carrie Grant's.

No, my favorite actor was Joel McRae.

Joel McCrae, but the other one who was, I can't remember his name, he was Carrie Grant's buddy.

Wait a minute.

Yeah, they were two old men and they were there was a standoff scott you're saying

yeah yeah you're questioning his sexual orientation i'm not questioning i'm just repeating what i've heard yes of gossip i have to go to confusion for gossiping yeah he was a big heartthrob i think he was married three times but that had war notes and the regular evil cast in it but my god and it was kind of where sam peckinpaul grew up in Corsco.

He had a Peckinpaw small cattle ranch.

My mother was a second Superior Court judge.

It was a woman in Fresno County and she very kind of late in life in her early 50s.

But there was a very wonderful guy named Denver Peckinpaugh that was one of her colleagues.

And he was very, very conservative.

And she was a Democrat and she really liked him.

And once we found out the connection that it was Sam's brother, my gosh, he came over to our house once.

I wouldn't leave him alone.

I was like the most obnoxious 18-year-old about Sam Peckinpaw.

He made made some movies that were bad.

I never understood some of them,

but there was one called Sergeant Rutley.

Do you remember that one?

Sure.

I forget his name, the Woody.

Yeah.

And that was an underrated movie, but he tried to do things like that.

And he was.

drug addicted.

He was mercurial.

I think he died before he was even 60, but ride the high country.

And then they gave him a lot of money.

And the other movie, I think it was Major Dundee.

It wasn't very good.

That was Sir Charlton Heston, right?

Yeah.

But remember, he would come back.

He would make a movie that was really good that nobody liked, like Cable Hog and Junior Bonner, and everybody, because they were kind of into the West.

And then he's all through.

And then he would make a movie called The Getaway.

Remember that?

Stephen Queen?

That was a good movie.

And he also, what was that movie with Dustin Hoffman where he kills all those cycle paths that his wife in Ireland is at Straw Dogs.

Straw Dogs.

You remember see that movie?

Actually, I've never seen it.

No, it was a good movie.

The last part

in it, I think.

Yeah.

I think he, I don't know.

The last great movie he made, I think it was under underrated, was Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid.

There were some scenes in there with Sim Pickens and Katie Girardo when he gets shot and he's down by the river dying.

And then Bob Dylan's knock, knock, knocking on heaven's door, which was written for that movie.

I watched that in Greece the first time, and they mixed the film roles.

You know what I mean?

So they picked part two first.

And there was a guy with me, Steve Gould, a wonderful guy.

And we were like Sam Peck and Paul fans.

And we started screaming in front of the Greek audience and ran up into the, you know, the knock on the door and they wouldn't let us in.

And we made him switch it back and start over.

But that was a great movie.

Keep the change when he shoots the marshal with coins and the shotgun.

It's just, it didn't have really a great it didn't have a plot of the wild bunch but the vignettes and the acting were superb and then you know that convoy movie killer lead alfredo garcia all that he made a weird movie iron cross about the eastern front that there were some good scenes but it didn't work but boy you put wild bunch and Pat Garrett and Jared ride the hunt country.

It was absolute genius.

Folks, if you have not, I'm sure Victor someday is going to write an essay now about Sam Peckinpaugh.

But if you have not seen The Wild Bunch, you should see it

just for the last scene alone.

By the way, Victor, there is one scene that for the actors, it's very rare in a movie that so many Oscar-winning actors appear in the same scene.

But Edmund O'Brien, William Holden, Ben Johnson, and Ernest Borgnine are all in a scene together, and all four of them at one time won Oscars.

It's a little

acting was superior.

Ben Johnson and Warren Oates were just.

I love Ben Johnson.

He's great there.

And all those John Ford movies.

He's so terrific.

But okay, Victor, if we got to move on to books and we're going to do that, we're going to hear about some of your favorite writings right after these important messages.

So you just got back from summer vacation.

Maybe you might have even had to book two rooms because of your snoring.

Some vacation, huh?

Snoring can be an underlying cause of high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, and even memory loss.

Here is my advice.

If you want every night to be a true vacation, you need to get yourself Zipa.

That's happy Z, spelled backwards.

Zipa is a doctor-designed mouthpiece that not only moves your jaw forward, but is also the only device with a patented tongue seat belt to keep your airways open and the snoring away.

The snoring can stop as soon as the first night.

Zipa was proven in a 600-patient clinical trial and sold over half a million units.

From now until the end of October, show your family you actually care by purchasing a limited edition Pink Zipa.

Not only will you save $10,

but Zipa is on a mission to raise $50,000 for breast cancer research and they will donate another $10,000 to the Susan G.

Komen Breast Cancer Foundation.

Go to zyppah.com and use the code PINK or text Victor to 511-511.

Put your snoring on a permanent vacation and help a worthy cause with the snoring device we trust by visiting zyppah.com and use the code PINK or text Victor to 511-511.

Remember, Zipa is happy Z spelled backwards.

Text fees may apply, and we'd like to thank Zipa for sponsoring the Victor Davis Hansen Show.

If you're a homeowner, you need to listen to this.

In today's AI and cyber world, scammers are stealing your home titles, and your equity is the target.

Here's how it works.

Criminals forge your signature on one document, use a fake notary stamp, pay a small fee with your county, and just like that, your home title has been transferred out of your name.

Then they take out loans using your equity and even sell your property, and you won't even know what's happened until you get a collection or foreclosure notice.

So, when was the last time you checked on your home title?

If your answer is never, you need to do something about it right now.

And that's why we've partnered with Home Title Lock so you can find out today if you're already a victim.

Go to hometitalock.com/slash Victor to get a free title history report and a free trial of their million-dollar triple lock protection.

That's 24/7 monitoring of your title, urgent alerts to any changes, and if fraud does happen, they'll spend up to $1 million to fix it.

Please, please, don't be a victim.

Protect your equity today.

That's home titlelock.com/slash Victor.

We're back with the Victor Davis Hansen show.

Hey, subscribe to victorhanson.com and you can read the copious amount of exclusive and original material that Victor writes only for that website, $50 for the year.

If you want to test it out, $5

first month.

Check it out.

It's wonderful stuff.

For me, Jack Fowler, I write Civil Thoughts, a weekly email newsletter, free recommended, gives you about a dozen recommended readings from the previous week.

You can subscribe, civilthoughts.com.

And I also run the Center for Civil Society.

We're trying to save civil society.

You can learn more about that at centerforcivilsociety.com.

So, Victor, that was great to hear you.

Obviously, you are a movie lover.

I assume you're a book lover too.

So, similar, Victor, our listeners want to are curious about the books you like, the novels you like.

So, are there any particular let's just say three are there three favorite american novels i'm limiting it to american if you want to expand outside of america go ahead for all i know you like don Quixote and is there a particular favorite ancient work of you the great classical scholar have

well one of the most it's kind of a I'm not into a psychological but I read it because I think my older brother told me to read it.

It's one of his favorite novelists was Conrad, the Polish-born american wrote in english that's what i'm trying to say and he wrote a novel called victory about this i think the what was the guy's name axel axel heist and he's a narrator i mean he's the central protagonist and i read it because he was swedish and i thought i wanted that sober yeah brooding depressed and he he ends up doesn't want anything to do with society and yet he he intervenes once in a while to help people and it turns out to be tragedy.

And there's some villains in there that are just really, it's kind of like Lord Jim on steroids.

But it's a great novel.

And another great novel, again, by a foreigner, and he's a Norwegian, so I can't claim Shauvin, was, and I have to be very careful, was Newt Hampson, because the guy was a Nazi sympathizer.

And he won the Nobel Prize, but he disgraced himself by ingratiating himself to Hitler.

But my gosh, he wrote a novel, Growth of the Soil, that was one of the best things I've ever read about farming, about this rugged guy who goes out into the Norwegian wilderness and creates out of nothing, clears the land and just creates his farm.

And every,

I mean, he has this one son who's kind of, I don't know what, not quite there.

And he goes to America, went off to America and his wife disappoints him.

And he just works himself to death.

And like in a conrad there's always somebody he's done some good to and that yet that comes around his life and for some reason likes him and helps him and it's a brilliant novel and uh it's made a big effect on me because after i read that early on i thought that would be very important in a person's life that you scan the horizon and you see people who need help and at certain rare rare moments in your life you can help them.

You don't want to tell them that, but you just know that you're going to intervene at some point when you have some influence or money or power to help that person who deserves it.

And that has happened to me maybe three or four times in my life where out of the blue, I don't know what it's been, somebody has called me up and said, don't argue with me.

I want to help you.

And been kind of a guardian angel, like protected me in print or

invited me to offered me a job or something.

And I don't know why I haven't done anything, but that made a big impression on me, that scene and growth of the soil, as did victory.

So it's a good thing to do.

And it's sort of when you see how the world works and what it values and money, success, groupthink, and yet you see a very rare, talented person that's going nowhere, partly because of their own.

stubborn character.

And if you're ever in a position quietly, maybe from a distance, maybe unknown to him, I tried to do that a couple of times, unknown.

Try to help that person and be their savior, if you can, not out of an egocentric or I'm going to help somebody, but just as a small contribution to leveling the playing field.

I've been such a beneficiary.

And one of the persons who's helped me, I won't mention any of the three or four names, but I said, what can I do to repay you?

Just do this for somebody else sometime.

And so that was a great novel.

And I got for one period and

I don't know what happened.

I don't know if he's a great novelist or not, but I really got into Thomas Wolfe.

And when I read Look Homeward Angel and you can't go home again, about this southern writer who went into the kind of the cesspool of Upper West Side or East Side Manhattan in the pre-Depression area.

And then he writes about the Depression going back, the land boom right before the Depression.

He goes to Germany.

The writer, it's really an autobiography of himself.

He wrote four novels, I remember, The Web and the Rock, and another one.

And they were absolutely brilliant in they were

excessive and not tightly constructed plot.

And the characters were sometimes, and sometimes the narrative got out of control.

But it's at his best.

They're some of the best writing in American fiction.

As far as antiquity, I had one author that you got to specialize under the PhD program that I was, you had to go Greek literature, Latin literature, Greek history, Roman history, Greek composition, Latin composition, French and German, and three hours Greek, three hours.

Those were your exams, plus your thesis defense.

But you also had to specialize in what they called authors and fields.

And they picked an author Greek and an author Latin.

And I picked Thucydides and I read, it was very difficult Greek, but I think I read the text four or five times for my PhD, and I taught it.

And I just grows on me.

So at night, sometimes if I can't sleep, I will pick it up and read the Melian dialogue or the stasis of Corsaira.

It's kind of wise ass, you know, as always happens with humankind, the following, or as is the wont of people.

But he takes these venets and he just spans on them to make a devastating critique of human nature, the thin veneer of civilization.

Well, Victor, we have a few more minutes, and I think we'll wrap up this episode by finding out what Little Victor watched on the boob tube back in the day.

And we'll get to that right after these important messages.

Audival's romance collection has something to satisfy every side of you.

When it comes to what kind of romance you're into, you don't have to choose just one.

Fancy a dalliance with a duke or maybe a steamy billionaire.

You could find a book boyfriend in the city and another one tearing it up on the hockey field.

And And if nothing on this earth satisfies, you can always find love in another realm.

Discover modern rom-coms from authors like Lily Chu and Allie Hazelwood, the latest romantic series from Sarah J.

Maas and Rebecca Yaros, plus regency favorites like Bridgerton and Outlander.

And of course, all the really steamy stuff.

Your first great love story is free when you sign up for a free 30-day trial at audible.com/slash wondery.

That's audible.com/slash wondery.

It's easy to be a superhero.

You don't need a cape or x-ray vision.

You just need to sign up for PowerSaver Awards.

That way, when you save energy during a flex alert, you get a credit back on your energy bill.

Visit powersaverrewards.org and become a super power saver.

We're back with the Victor Davis Hansen show.

So, Victor, it's been really fun to hear what floats your boat when it comes to reading and movies.

Of course, you know, America is ruled by

the TV, was ruled by the TV, now it's ruled by the cell phone.

But back when you were young, I assume there was a television in the Hanson house.

I know there was, in fact, because I read about, was it your grandfather?

Yeah, he had

TV.

We didn't.

So we snuck down there.

But didn't he insisted on watching gunsmoke?

And he did.

He wouldn't let us watch certain Saturday night, it came out, the Saturday night movies.

And there were certain movies like my favorite, The Vikings, you know, he wouldn't let us.

yeah gunsmoke ruled right but he had good taste i mean except for lawrence woke lawrence wolk went on he would just go please yeah well was there any particular show that you had as a young kid you liked watching oh i loved uh have gun will travel one of my favorite actors is richard boone he was you know he i think he was a stanford student he got kicked out but remember that song have gun will travel read the card of a man they played at the beginning yeah a knight without armor and a savage.

I can still, I sang it all the time.

Well, yeah, we may ask you to sing it now, but just well, I remember it was being operated.

Oh, I had a kidney stone, a staghorn calculus that split my ureter in a hospital.

I was in the hospital off and on for six weeks.

And all they couldn't do it.

They couldn't treat it.

So they were trying to dope me up and get me strong enough to fly home to be operated.

because it was about the size of my thumb and it cut my ureter and it was terrible.

And I was on dope, and the doctor, I kind of his name was Papadopoulos, but he was really good.

He was a urologist.

He just said, I can take it out, but I can't do it under these facilities.

And I would sing, A knight without armor in a savage land, his fast gun higher, heeds the calling when the soldier of fortune is a man called Paladin.

And he'd say, Paladin, Victor, what is Paladin?

Who is this Paladin?

And I was on morphine all the time.

And I said, well, what was I singing?

And he said, you were singing about mercenaries.

Are you studying Greek mercenaries?

And I say, no, no, no, I'm just talking about Paladin.

So I love that show.

It was, it was kind of an intellectual.

It quoted.

It actually, I went back later in life and bought, it had a lot of references to Greek literature.

And he was a San Francisco guy.

And he ended up badly, Richard Boone, but he was a great actor.

Yeah, he had one of those NBC Sunday night shows.

I I think he name it, but that's how he, I think, his career ended up, but like Columbo and McLean.

Yeah, he drank very heavily.

Yeah, he loved it.

But he was a, I think he grew up in a wealthy family or he was, he went to Stanford University.

I think he got kicked.

When I was at Stanford, they had an article about him in the Stanford Daily, I remember.

But he was, man.

talking about remember hud when he was in that his name was cicero something

finally when HUD, you know, sort of shoots him.

He said, you got some pretty hard bark on you.

And he was just on, that was, excuse me, not HUD, Hombrey, Cicero Grimes is what I was remembering.

Yeah.

He was, he didn't.

That's with Paul Newman.

Is that?

Yes.

Yes.

Hombre.

He was in that.

He was the head of the really terrible.

Right.

I remember they were up in some

mine.

Yeah.

And that's again, the tragic hero is going to save everybody and they're going to hate him for saving them.

And he's going to die and they're not worth it but he does it and so that was a great movie and he was he had he had a pivotal role in a great anti-communist movie that very few people know of a man on a tightrope which was by kazan and it was that circus trying to get out of czech republic or whatever it was at the time yeah his name was crawford or kriffa or crawford

was fried the our favorite actor was yeah he was yeah

and adolf monsju who was a great anti-communist himself and well anyway hey victor we could actually we should do another movie book show another time, not just as a quote unquote fill in or substitute.

But this was terrific hearing about what pleases you culturally.

But that is all the time we have.

So to our listeners who...

are growing in numbers, thank you.

And if you listen on iTunes, consider leaving a rating.

And also, if you want to leave a comment, please do.

We read them.

Thanks very much.

Thanks again, Victor, for everything.

We'll be back soon with the Victor Davis Hansen Show.

Thanks so much.

Thank you everybody for listening.

Wherever you go,

whatever they get into, from chill time to everyday adventures, protect your dog from parasites with Credelio Quattro.

For full safety information, side effects, and warnings, visit CredelioQuattroLabel.com.

Consult your vet or call 1-888-545-5973.

Ask your vet for Cornelio Quattro and visit QuattroDog.com.