December 15, 2022 • 32 mins
To be, or not to be President? Shakespeare is a longtime ally of America’s Commanders-in-Chief, and for good reason: there's plenty to be found in his plays about leadership and how it works. We eavesdrop in the Oval Office to hear how Shakespeare shapes the thinking and feeling of political leaders, and how they draw on him for wisdom and solace. Just don't forget to keep an eye out for Brutus.
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. I am, hey, Barry, and I've got this little
Shakespeare guessing game I want to play. Oh yeah, let's play,
all right. Guess who this is? Now? Is the winter
of our discontent made glorious summer by this son of York? Okay,
(00:36):
you started with an easy one. That's Richard the Third Famous,
and judging by the sibilants, I would say that's Laurence Olivier.
You know your Shakespeare. Okay, the extra point. Who's this
America in the face of our common dangerous? In this
winter of our hardship? Let us remember these timeless words.
(00:57):
Oh that's Barack Obama. Yes, his first inaugural address January
two thousand and nine, and he almost quoted Shakespeare almost, Yes,
this winter of our hardship. He kind of glanced toward
Richard the Thirds Winter of our Discontent. He looked across
the National Mall, toward the folder Shakespeare Library next to
the Capitol, and he bailds, we'll get back to that. Okay,
(01:21):
on to round two. Who's this that light we see
is burning in my hole? How far that little candle
throws his beams? An English lady doing Shakespeare? Okay, wait,
wait a minute, I'm pretty sure that was an English
lady doing Shakespeare. No, no, you're you're right it was.
I was just looking for more detail. Also, I like
(01:43):
the sound of the buzzer, all right, so I'll give
you half a point for that. That was Dame Peggy
Ashcroft doing Porscha from the Merchant of Venice. Now, for
all the marbles, who's this? In The Merchant of Venice,
Shakespeare wrote of a small candle, and of how far
it throws its beams. And as we look about us
in this troubled world, with its tensions and complexities, a
(02:03):
collection of literature and art, however rare and great, may
seem a very small candle. Indeed, Ronald Reagan, Okay, Ronald Reagan,
Barack Obama? Is there some theme here? Yep? I have
a pet interest in presidents quoting Shakespeare. Ah, yes, you've
written about this. I have. There's been a long, intense
(02:25):
and sometimes really odd relationship between the US chief executive
and the greatest writer of all time. I want to
hear all about it. Tell me. John Adams and Thomas
Jefferson revered Shakespeare. So they made a pilgrimage together to
his house in Stratford, upon Avon. Adams was stunned by
(02:46):
how small it was, and Jefferson just complained about the
entrance fee. Relatable. Adam's son, John Quincy Adams, was a
serious Shakespeare lover, just like his dad, and he was
the only president to have published a volume of Shakespeare criticism.
No way. James Garfield read Shakespeare to his young kids
in the White House. Millard Fillmore read Shakespeare to factory
(03:08):
workers in Fellow to promote literacy among American workers. John F.
Kennedy was the first president to host Shakespeare performances in
the White House, and he claimed him as an American writer.
An American writer, that's bold, Kennedy. Bill Clinton knew a
chunk of Macbeth by heart, and he'd wheel it out
from time to time. George W. Bush knew of Shakespeare.
(03:28):
He told an interviewer that on vacation in two thousand
and six he had read three Shakespeare's which ones he
didn't say, oh and M. In the name of being
complete and for the sake of the historical record, I
guess I can't leave out this. Nevertheless, I take all
of these slings and arrows gladly for you, y boy.
(03:54):
I know I know, I know. There you go. Shakespeare
and the presidents. For two centuries, they've kept each other company.
I'm Barry Edelstein, and I run the Old Globe, one
of the countries leading Shakespeare theaters. And this is where
there's a will finding Shakespeare from the Globe and Pushkin industries.
(04:18):
Our show discovers Shakespeare in all sorts of unexpected places
and asks what he's doing there and what his presence
means about him and about us. My companion on this
search for Old William is a friend and colleague with
their own deep interest in Shakespeare. The director and writer
M Weinstein. Hey, am, you did great on that game.
I could go a few more rounds. But I can't
(04:40):
tell whether to be surprised that Shakespeare is so close
to so many presidents, or whether to feel like that's
the most unsurprising thing in the world. Presidents give speeches
all the time, and who better to quote? And Shakespeare
writes about history and leadership and politics and power, so
who better to read as a president? Right? Absolutely, I
think Shakespeare would be the best speech writer any president
(05:02):
could ever ask for. I mean, if I were President
Biden trying to get the country behind some policy. I'd
be out there with Henry the Fifth or Julie Caesar
in my hand all day long. Barry for president, Oh
God forbid. But then there's Barack Obama choosing to come
close but not quite with Shakespeare in as an augural address,
and I wonder maybe there's something much more complex going
(05:24):
on here. You put Shakespeare in a president next to
each other, and I guess complex is the least you
can expect. But what's it all about? That's what I
want to explore in this episode of our show. What
is Shakespeare doing in the Oval Office? And what does
it mean that he's there? Where there's a will? We'll
be back after a short break, am. As you know,
(05:52):
one of the most prominent Shakespeareans working in America at
this moment is James Shapiro. He's an author, scholar, researcher, professor,
theater maker, and I'm honored to say he's a good friend.
Professor Shapiro's book, Shakespeare in a Divided America is a
deep dive into Shakespeare's uncanny knack for showing up at
(06:13):
moments of huge political upheaval in our country's history. It's
a wonderful read and since presidents are central to those moments.
The book is also kind of this user's guide to
the long and strange relationship between the Bard of Stratford
upon Avon and the commander in chief, and Shapiro says
that the most important thing to grasp about that relationship
(06:34):
is that when a president opens a Shakespeare play, it
won't be long before he finds himself in its pages.
The reason I think Shakespeare wholes such power for presidents
is the majority of plays, history, comedy, tragedy all turn
(06:55):
on failed rulers, that is to say, rulers who come
into power and discover that it is overwhelming. So I
know in business schools they teach Shakespeare's Bible for success,
but Shakespeare's actually about political failure. And I think presidents
(07:16):
learned pretty early on after their inaugurations that the ratings
go down, the problems accumulate, and Shakespeare is a terrific
resource for reflecting upon how difficult it is to rule.
So the presidents are turning to Shakespeare for consolation, not inspiration.
(07:36):
That is so great. I asked Professor Shapiro to give
me an example. One of the most powerful documents written
about Shakespeare was written by one president to a future president.
It was a letter by John Adams, our second president,
to his son, John Quincy Adams, the future president, and
(07:58):
he writes about reading through the History plays from start
to finish, and he ends up doing a riff on
Henry the Fifth in which he magins a corrupt president
involved with foreign dictators who are marrying their children off
all getting into bed with them financially, and how dangerous
(08:22):
that would be for our country. So he's reading Shakespeare
as political science and warning his son about the dangerous
of factionalism in America. It's a kind of a dry letter.
It's not the kind of thing I would have wanted
to receive from my father or written to my son,
nor would you send that kind of letter to your son.
(08:44):
But these are political animals, and they find in Shakespeare
political truths. Don't be so sure that I wouldn't send
that kind of letter to my son. So it's not
like they're reading Shakespeare in a partisan sort of way. Right, Oh,
here's Shakespeare arguing for democracy, or here's Shakespeare arguing specifically
(09:04):
about an issue that we're dealing with in the eighteen
eighties or the nineteen twenties. It's more of an abstract
sense of how power works exactly. And Shakespeare thought harder
about how power works than a new writer. I know.
He was up close in Elizabeth's court and King James's court.
He saw how power work. He avoided prison, which most
(09:27):
playwrights of his day did not. He understood how far
you could push things, and he understood the limits of
power and what destroyed powerful people. And smart presidents recognized
that in Shakespeare. So m in the list of presidents
I went through at the opening of this episode, I
(09:48):
left out a whopper, the big cahuna of shakespeare Loving presidents,
Abraham Lincoln. That seems kind of appropriate because Lincoln was
Shakespearean figure himself, he really was, and the man was
obsessed with this writer, haunted by him. I had to
ask Professor Shapiro to talk about it. No president was
(10:10):
more of a bartiphile than Lincoln. Even an amazing chapter
in your book about Lincoln and his ties to Shakespeare
and his assassins ties to Shakespeare. Can you talk a
little bit about Lincoln's Shakespeare. Lincoln was the greatest reader
of Shakespeare in America when he entered the White House
(10:31):
after he waited a year following his son's death, he
started going to plays religiously. Lincoln didn't have much of
an education. He didn't, as we would say, go to
high school. He barely had a grammar school education. But
one of the books that his stepmother brought into the
house was an anthology with twenty or so excerpts from
(10:52):
the plays, including Hamlets speech, Claudius's speech from that same play,
Julius Caesar, and the like. And Lincoln really was drawn
to some of these, and every chance he got, especially
during the Civil War, where he faced terrible, terrible challenges
and he was mourning the death of a son, any
(11:15):
chance he got, he opened up a Shakespeare volume and
asked those in his company if he might read and
talk about them. It must have been unbelievable listening to
Lincoln read Claudius's speech on guilt in the midst of
watching six hundred thousand Americans die in a brutal civil war.
(11:38):
What if this cursed hand were thicker than itself with
brother's blood? Is there not rain enough in the sweet
heavens to wash it white as snow? That Claudius speech
is so arrowing. That's Hamlet's uncle King Claudius confessing that
he murdered his own brother to get his crown. It's
(12:00):
this breathtaking speech about guilt and self loathing, in this
terrible feeling of a soul that's just atrophied. Lincoln told
people that he thought this was the finest speech in Hamlet,
even better than to Be or not to Be. He
just felt these plays barry in ways that even you
and I don't. And the play Lincoln felt the most
(12:22):
was Macbeth. He was obsessed with the play and with
the great Tomorrow and Tomorrow speech. He would read that
speech and you could just feel how deeply he understood
the place where Macbeth was coming from. Right before the
end of his life, he had premonitions of his death,
(12:47):
and he had a dream in which he actually saw
himself kind of like Lady Macbeth walking around, sleepwalking in
the White House, walking up to a soldier who tells
him the president is dead. He's so deep into Shakespeare
that it is infecting his dream life and shaping his
(13:10):
fears about his own demise. That to me is extraordinary.
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow creeps in this petty pace
from day to day to the last syllable of recorded time,
and all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to
(13:32):
dusty death. It's going to take me a while to
get over this image of Abraham Lincoln wandering around the
White House mumbling tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. That's why
I find this whole subject so bracing. It's hard to
imagine a moment when the life circumstances of an actual
(13:55):
person reading a Shakespearean tragedy could be more heightened and
dramatic than the fictional circumstances in the play. But again
and again, Lincoln seems to meet Shakespeare when he himself
is in situation as intense as the ones in the plays.
It's this weird hall of mirrors, feeling like you can't
(14:15):
really tell where the boundary is between Lincoln's life and
Shakespeare's art. It's also just so satisfying to think about
a national leader actually turning towards these plays for spiritual nourishment.
It bomps me out that it's hard to imagine such
a thing happening today. M Lincoln lived at a moment
when not just he, but the entire country was shakespeare crazy.
(14:37):
Remember our episode about the astor place riots, Yeah, for sure.
I mean Shakespeare was just so much closer to the
center of culture one hundred and fifty years ago than
he is today. I asked Professor Shapiro about that, and
also about Obama's inaugural near miss of Shakespeare and whether
he thought it could ever be possible again to have
a Shakespeare loving president. Do you think that Shakespeare's place
(15:00):
in American life has somehow shifted to where if Obama
had quoted Shakespeare correctly in his inaugural it would have
been a merit. I'm trying to place where Shakespeare ended
as a truly popular figure. I would say since World
War Two, when Shakespeare became a formal academic subject. It's
(15:26):
really hard to pull him out of the elite category.
The professionalization of shakespeare scholarship into the university is a
major turning point. Once you're testing on Shakespeare, it's over
and the ione is no one takes down authority as
powerfully as Shakespeare, so he should be weaponized in our
(15:46):
political culture. But because he has been turned into one
of the elites, the embodiment of elite culture spoken in
a kind of BBC British accent. Until quite recently, and
not reflecting the diversity of American culture on stage until
(16:09):
the last say, forty years or so. It's going to
take a lot of work to change that. It is
going to take a lot of work, But that seems
like a worthwhile effort to me. Me too, And I
don't want to mischaracterize Professor Shapiro as being somehow grim
about Shakespeare's prospects for the future. Not at all. He
(16:29):
continues to inspire me to double down on this writer
as one of the real sources of hope for our
national conversation. Shakespeare in a Divided America is a great read,
not only because it reminds us of some extraordinary periods
in our country's history, but also because it shows how
a playwright figured deeply and necessarily into each one. As
(16:52):
angry as the divides in America may grow, somehow Shakespeare
manages to tamp down the flames. Americans are not very
good about speaking across the great cultural divide, whether this
subject is abortion or race or political divisions. But Shakespeare
is one of the few things still embraced across the
(17:14):
political spectrum. Perhaps his plays are just so broad in
their reach, But the best answer I have is his plays,
for better or worse, have touched upon the things that
mattered to us and continue to matter to us, whether
they divide or unite us, whether in peace or war.
(17:36):
And for that reason we keep turning back to his
work where there's a will, We'll be back after a
short break. There's one more American president we need to
talk about him if we're really going to understand what
(17:56):
Shakespeare is doing in the West Wing, and that's the
president who's at the center of the West Wing, President
Jed Bartlett. Bartlett was played by Martin Sheen, who, by
the way, was a Shakespearean actor who and Bartlett is
in many ways of character Shakespeare might have written erudite, brilliant, epigrammatic, wise, strong, compassionate, funny.
(18:21):
He's the perfect fantasy of what an American leader should be.
And he is a total fantasy, which is of course
the whole point. Absolutely. Jed Bartlett was a dream of
an American president at a very very different time in
our national politics. And there are whole podcasts on the
West Wing that delvin all of that far more than
there are Shakespeare podcasts. I bet well. We're working to
(18:43):
fix that here totally. Anyway, I want to talk about
Jed Bartlett because to me, he's the one president who
would have quoted Shakespeare in his inaugural address unapologetically and
at great length. So m to test this hunch. I
spoke to Eli Addie. He's an award winning television writer
who wrote for five seasons of The West Wing. Wow,
(19:05):
that's amazing. I love that show. And before that, he
was a speechwriter to major politicians, including Vice President Al Gore.
Gore's concession speech to George W. Bush, which he delivered
after the Supreme Court ended the long legal fight over
the recount of the Florida ballot. That was ADDIE's most
famous handiwork. I thought he might have some insight into
(19:25):
how presidents, both fictional and real, think about how and
why to quote Shakespeare. It's funny because I worked in
speech writing for a bunch of years, and they're worked
on Capitol Hill. I worked in the White House. I've
helped presidential campaigns on speeches since in the last you know,
bunch of years, and I have to I'm ashamed to
admit to you that I've never cited Shakespeare in a speech.
(19:48):
I've certainly tried to embody the rhythm and the sense
of the moment and the sense of drama, and the
sense of kind of narrative. Not that I could ever
come close, but it's just felt like you're showing how
smart you are. I wonder how many politicians in the
year twenty twenty two could get away with citing Shakespeare
(20:10):
and not be seen as elitist. So is there a
meeting where somebody says, okay, fifth grade English and no higher.
Do you sit down when you're sitting you know you've
got a big campaign speech that you've got to write,
or I don't know the state of the union, And
are there discussions about the level of speech that you're
(20:31):
going for or is it just kind of in the
water in Washington that we don't get to fancy. There
are meetings, and they're certainly depending on who you're working for.
If you're working for a president or a vice president,
the meetings can be expansive and lots of people can
try to kind of weigh in and express an opinion.
But I think that it's in the water, it's in
(20:52):
the culture. I do remember a time when I was
writing speeches in the mayor's office right after college that
I use the word vexed in a speech, or maybe
it was vexing, and some crusty deputy mayor kind of
pulled me aside and said, why do you think this
is Harvard University? You know, like nobody knows what this
word means. That I remember, We're thinking at the time, like, really,
nobody knows what the word vexing means. And I don't know.
(21:13):
Maybe maybe it is too sopiscated a word, but I
think you're trying to be plain spoken, bit elegant. You're
trying to be simple but beautiful. And too many big words,
too many grand illusions, and you can alienate people because
as much as I love Shakespeare, I don't see the
(21:35):
value of it because too many people, I'm sorry to say,
find it off putting, find it. I find him hard
to read. Got to see in that course in high school,
you know what I mean. And while the Bill Clintons
and Barack Obamas were whizzing past them and devouring all
of the soliloquies. It's a little bit like saying I
(21:56):
was one of the eggheads, kind of laughing at you
from across the lunchroom. I was one of the eggheads.
M me too. I don't think I was laughing at
anyone across the lunch room, though at least I hope
I wasn't. But you know what, I do remember my
high school self thinking about the way presidents speak. So
I was fifteen years old when Ronald Reagan was elected.
(22:18):
Would that makes sense in nineteen eighty, right, is when
Reagan was fifteen years old. And so Reagan was president
for eight years of my basically arrival into adulthood. And
he was the great communicator. And I have this very
vivid memory of the first Space Shuttle disaster. And he
quoted a poet whose name I don't recall, not Shakespeare,
(22:42):
and he rose to the moment, He rose to the
occasion of this horrendous tragedy by finding a kind of
register of eloquence that was beyond the normal. Somehow, the
crew of the Space Shuttle Challenger honored us for the
manner in which they lived their lives. We will never
(23:02):
forget them, nor the last time we saw them this
morning as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye
and slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the
face of God. Wow, that imagery is so evocative. Yeah,
And when I brought up Riggan's Challenger speech with Addie.
(23:24):
It got him thinking about rhetoric and its power. I
mean rhetoric in the classical sense, the art of using
language to persuade. That's what really great politicians do. I
actually believe very strongly that president's senators statesmen abandon a
(23:45):
kind of rhetorical tradition, if you will, a kind of
a rigorous, intellectually sound way of presenting ideas at their peril.
When I worked in the Clinton White House, as somebody
who had already been writing speeches for a handful of
years before I went to work there, I found that
Clinton himself brilliant, incredible guy, and brilliant speaker, and certainly
(24:08):
knew better than me about all manner of subjects. He
was not interested in rhetoric. And I remember I was
a junior guy, but I remember being desponded and talking
to some of the hanchos and consultants, and one of
the political consultants who was hanging around saying to me,
he agreed with me, and he was saying, you know,
rhetoric is your insurance policy on history. Rhetoric is your
(24:29):
insurance policy on history. Yeah, But in the sense that
very few people can name anything substantive that John Kennedy
did as president a bill he passed, but he was
incredibly quotable as our last you know, sort of poet friendly,
you know, barred, sensitive, intellectual president. It's really interesting, Eli
(24:49):
you know, to think about the eloquence of Abraham Lincoln,
which is so central to how we remember him FDR JFK.
But then you, as a young speechwriter, bump into a
guy in the mayor's office going vexed is too big?
So how on earth are you going to talk about
the proud man's on Tom Lee you can't resist a
(25:11):
good Hamlet quote Annyberry. Well, I'm not trying to convince
anyone who elect me president. But doing that was Eliadi's
job in real life and on TV two. And I
wondered if his work with fictional politicians gave him license
to do things that he could never do with real ones.
So I asked him about the West Wing and Jed Bartlett. Bartlett,
(25:33):
the character, the fictional character was a Nobel Prize winner
before he became a politician. That never happens, you know,
he was actually a brilliant economist who was sort of
talked into running because he was the kind of guy
who should have been running, even though they never do.
And then he won. All things at Dantende really happened.
Jed Bartlett is the writer Aaron Sorkin's greatest creation. Sorkin
(25:56):
recruited Addie to write for the West Wing. This was
after the bushby Gore decision ended his previous gig writing
for the Vice President. Sorkin is a theater lover and
a Shakespeare lover, and he and the rest of the
right on the West Wing gave Bartlett a few close
brushes with Shakespeare, didn't they They did. One of them
was when Bartlett went to see a Broadway production of
(26:17):
a Shakespeare play. My sense is that this was Aaron's
way of saying, you know, it matters if you're going
to go and actually sit through Shakespeare play. We want
our president to be somebody who can do that and
wants to do that, and it doesn't just want to
chomp down a hot dog at a baseball game, not
that there's anything wrong with that, you know. On the
one hand, we want to celebrate the eloquence. We want
(26:37):
to be inspired by the eloquence. On the other hand,
you can't do it because it's going to label you
as some sort of Harvard Yale elitist, right, But Bartlett
made it seem cool, made it seem aspirational to be
that brilliant, and that's what made the show so successful. Yeah,
The West Wing was a sort of a Shakespeare of
(26:59):
its own, and it was often in the top ten,
not always in the top ten. You know, Bury, This
whole conversation really makes me want to go back and
binge all of The West Wing. It is such a
great show. But you know, from the vantage point of
(27:20):
this moment in American political life, it seems positively quaint.
Jed Bartlett today looks completely impossible. It's heartbreaking. It's like
a vivid dream you wake up from and kind of
wish you could return to, but you know you can't.
My conversation with Eliaddy reminded me of this great JFK
(27:41):
quote that I love. He said, if more politicians new
poetry and more poets new politics, I'm convinced the world
would be a little better place in which to live.
If you're making me wistful, yeah, I get it, because
maybe we've lost something by kicking Shakespeare out of presidential speeches.
Maybe our world is a bit poorer if there's zero
(28:04):
chance that Jed Bartlett could ever be real. I asked
eli Addie he could relate to that, and he made
me feel a little better. It does come down to
this whole sort of idea of rhetoric as an insurance
policy on history, So I would love for him to
be embraced more. I guess maybe I'm just skeptical about
(28:25):
whether the answer is full on Shakespeare or just to
try to use it as a guy, to try to
just be as high minded as you can, you know,
without it's seeming that you are kind of lording it
over your audience, lording it over your constituents. But I
think I would submit to you Barry, that maybe Obama
(28:50):
got it right. If rhetoric is your insurance policy on
history and all you're doing is quoting Shakespeare, great as
he is, do you score points for that or is
it better if somebody hears you say you know, winner
of Hardship and they think like, wow, I get that,
and it's an image and it's an idea and this
guy's smarter than me, And okay, fine, I'm going to
(29:11):
go on this website and sign up for this healthcare plan.
So maybe if it's a guide, maybe if it's a
model for a certain kind of eloquence. Maybe if it
is a template for a way of invoking the drama
of a given moment, for placing ourselves in a context
of the human story, all the things Shakespeare did instinctively,
(29:32):
politicians labor to do. So maybe the answer is to
do what Barack Obama did and just change a couple
of words and claim it as your own, and then
nobody calls you an egghead. You get all the eloquence,
you get the insurance policy on history, and you know,
everyone's a winner. That does make me feel a little better, because, hey,
(29:53):
rhetoric is your insurance policy on history. Well, President Obama
did take out a pretty big policy with the rhetoric
insurance company. And you know what. Am After being careful
not to quote Shakespeare while he was president, years later,
in twenty one, when he no longer had to worry
about how it would land, he finally jumped in. So
(30:15):
let me give him the last word, or rather the
second to last, because on this podcast, Shakespeare always gets
the last word. Let me quote the barn William Shakespeare.
What wound he writes, did ever heal but buy the Grease?
(30:45):
Where There's a Will? Finding Shakespeare is written and hosted
by me Barry Edelstein. My co host is m Weinstein.
Our show was produced by Buffy Gorilla and Nisha Vencott,
with assistant producers Jennifer Sanchez and Salmon Ahad Khan. Our
executive producers are Katherine Girardo from Pushkin and Alex Lewis
and John Myers from Row Home Productions. Our editor is
(31:06):
Audrey Dilling. Our mix engineer is Justin Berger. Our theme
is an original composition by Hannis Brown. Samuel Buzid is
our fact checker. Thanks to Pushkin's development team LEETL. Mulad
and Justine Lange, and to producer Sam Dingman for creating
our pilot President Obama clip courtesy of UN Climate Change.
Where There's a Will is a co production of Pushkin
(31:28):
Industries and The Old Clobe. Barry Edelstein. That's Me is
Erna Fincy Veturbie artistic director and Timothy J. Shields is
Audreys Geisel Managing director of the Old Globe. For the
Globe thanks to sound director Paul Peterson and assistant to
the sound director Evan Eason, Director of Marketing and Communications,
Dave Henson, Assistant to the Artistic and Managing directors Carolyn Budd,
(31:50):
The Theodore and Audrey Geiselfund provides leadership support for The
Old Globe's year round activities. To learn more about the
Tony Award winning the Old Globe one of America's leading
regional theater companies, visit the Old Globe dot org. If
you love this show, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus, offering
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(32:12):
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To find more Pushkin podcasts, listen on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Pushkin. I am, hey, Barry, and I've got this little
Shakespeare guessing game I want to play. Oh yeah, let's play,
all right. Guess who this is? Now? Is the winter
of our discontent made glorious summer by this son of York? Okay,
(00:36):
you started with an easy one. That's Richard the Third Famous,
and judging by the sibilants, I would say that's Laurence Olivier.
You know your Shakespeare. Okay, the extra point. Who's this
America in the face of our common dangerous? In this
winter of our hardship? Let us remember these timeless words.
(00:57):
Oh that's Barack Obama. Yes, his first inaugural address January
two thousand and nine, and he almost quoted Shakespeare almost, Yes,
this winter of our hardship. He kind of glanced toward
Richard the Thirds Winter of our Discontent. He looked across
the National Mall, toward the folder Shakespeare Library next to
the Capitol, and he bailds, we'll get back to that. Okay,
(01:21):
on to round two. Who's this that light we see
is burning in my hole? How far that little candle
throws his beams? An English lady doing Shakespeare? Okay, wait,
wait a minute, I'm pretty sure that was an English
lady doing Shakespeare. No, no, you're you're right it was.
I was just looking for more detail. Also, I like
(01:43):
the sound of the buzzer, all right, so I'll give
you half a point for that. That was Dame Peggy
Ashcroft doing Porscha from the Merchant of Venice. Now, for
all the marbles, who's this? In The Merchant of Venice,
Shakespeare wrote of a small candle, and of how far
it throws its beams. And as we look about us
in this troubled world, with its tensions and complexities, a
(02:03):
collection of literature and art, however rare and great, may
seem a very small candle. Indeed, Ronald Reagan, Okay, Ronald Reagan,
Barack Obama? Is there some theme here? Yep? I have
a pet interest in presidents quoting Shakespeare. Ah, yes, you've
written about this. I have. There's been a long, intense
(02:25):
and sometimes really odd relationship between the US chief executive
and the greatest writer of all time. I want to
hear all about it. Tell me. John Adams and Thomas
Jefferson revered Shakespeare. So they made a pilgrimage together to
his house in Stratford, upon Avon. Adams was stunned by
(02:46):
how small it was, and Jefferson just complained about the
entrance fee. Relatable. Adam's son, John Quincy Adams, was a
serious Shakespeare lover, just like his dad, and he was
the only president to have published a volume of Shakespeare criticism.
No way. James Garfield read Shakespeare to his young kids
in the White House. Millard Fillmore read Shakespeare to factory
(03:08):
workers in Fellow to promote literacy among American workers. John F.
Kennedy was the first president to host Shakespeare performances in
the White House, and he claimed him as an American writer.
An American writer, that's bold, Kennedy. Bill Clinton knew a
chunk of Macbeth by heart, and he'd wheel it out
from time to time. George W. Bush knew of Shakespeare.
(03:28):
He told an interviewer that on vacation in two thousand
and six he had read three Shakespeare's which ones he
didn't say, oh and M. In the name of being
complete and for the sake of the historical record, I
guess I can't leave out this. Nevertheless, I take all
of these slings and arrows gladly for you, y boy.
(03:54):
I know I know, I know. There you go. Shakespeare
and the presidents. For two centuries, they've kept each other company.
I'm Barry Edelstein, and I run the Old Globe, one
of the countries leading Shakespeare theaters. And this is where
there's a will finding Shakespeare from the Globe and Pushkin industries.
(04:18):
Our show discovers Shakespeare in all sorts of unexpected places
and asks what he's doing there and what his presence
means about him and about us. My companion on this
search for Old William is a friend and colleague with
their own deep interest in Shakespeare. The director and writer
M Weinstein. Hey, am, you did great on that game.
I could go a few more rounds. But I can't
(04:40):
tell whether to be surprised that Shakespeare is so close
to so many presidents, or whether to feel like that's
the most unsurprising thing in the world. Presidents give speeches
all the time, and who better to quote? And Shakespeare
writes about history and leadership and politics and power, so
who better to read as a president? Right? Absolutely, I
think Shakespeare would be the best speech writer any president
(05:02):
could ever ask for. I mean, if I were President
Biden trying to get the country behind some policy. I'd
be out there with Henry the Fifth or Julie Caesar
in my hand all day long. Barry for president, Oh
God forbid. But then there's Barack Obama choosing to come
close but not quite with Shakespeare in as an augural address,
and I wonder maybe there's something much more complex going
(05:24):
on here. You put Shakespeare in a president next to
each other, and I guess complex is the least you
can expect. But what's it all about? That's what I
want to explore in this episode of our show. What
is Shakespeare doing in the Oval Office? And what does
it mean that he's there? Where there's a will? We'll
be back after a short break, am. As you know,
(05:52):
one of the most prominent Shakespeareans working in America at
this moment is James Shapiro. He's an author, scholar, researcher, professor,
theater maker, and I'm honored to say he's a good friend.
Professor Shapiro's book, Shakespeare in a Divided America is a
deep dive into Shakespeare's uncanny knack for showing up at
(06:13):
moments of huge political upheaval in our country's history. It's
a wonderful read and since presidents are central to those moments.
The book is also kind of this user's guide to
the long and strange relationship between the Bard of Stratford
upon Avon and the commander in chief, and Shapiro says
that the most important thing to grasp about that relationship
(06:34):
is that when a president opens a Shakespeare play, it
won't be long before he finds himself in its pages.
The reason I think Shakespeare wholes such power for presidents
is the majority of plays, history, comedy, tragedy all turn
(06:55):
on failed rulers, that is to say, rulers who come
into power and discover that it is overwhelming. So I
know in business schools they teach Shakespeare's Bible for success,
but Shakespeare's actually about political failure. And I think presidents
(07:16):
learned pretty early on after their inaugurations that the ratings
go down, the problems accumulate, and Shakespeare is a terrific
resource for reflecting upon how difficult it is to rule.
So the presidents are turning to Shakespeare for consolation, not inspiration.
(07:36):
That is so great. I asked Professor Shapiro to give
me an example. One of the most powerful documents written
about Shakespeare was written by one president to a future president.
It was a letter by John Adams, our second president,
to his son, John Quincy Adams, the future president, and
(07:58):
he writes about reading through the History plays from start
to finish, and he ends up doing a riff on
Henry the Fifth in which he magins a corrupt president
involved with foreign dictators who are marrying their children off
all getting into bed with them financially, and how dangerous
(08:22):
that would be for our country. So he's reading Shakespeare
as political science and warning his son about the dangerous
of factionalism in America. It's a kind of a dry letter.
It's not the kind of thing I would have wanted
to receive from my father or written to my son,
nor would you send that kind of letter to your son.
(08:44):
But these are political animals, and they find in Shakespeare
political truths. Don't be so sure that I wouldn't send
that kind of letter to my son. So it's not
like they're reading Shakespeare in a partisan sort of way. Right, Oh,
here's Shakespeare arguing for democracy, or here's Shakespeare arguing specifically
(09:04):
about an issue that we're dealing with in the eighteen
eighties or the nineteen twenties. It's more of an abstract
sense of how power works exactly. And Shakespeare thought harder
about how power works than a new writer. I know.
He was up close in Elizabeth's court and King James's court.
He saw how power work. He avoided prison, which most
(09:27):
playwrights of his day did not. He understood how far
you could push things, and he understood the limits of
power and what destroyed powerful people. And smart presidents recognized
that in Shakespeare. So m in the list of presidents
I went through at the opening of this episode, I
(09:48):
left out a whopper, the big cahuna of shakespeare Loving presidents,
Abraham Lincoln. That seems kind of appropriate because Lincoln was
Shakespearean figure himself, he really was, and the man was
obsessed with this writer, haunted by him. I had to
ask Professor Shapiro to talk about it. No president was
(10:10):
more of a bartiphile than Lincoln. Even an amazing chapter
in your book about Lincoln and his ties to Shakespeare
and his assassins ties to Shakespeare. Can you talk a
little bit about Lincoln's Shakespeare. Lincoln was the greatest reader
of Shakespeare in America when he entered the White House
(10:31):
after he waited a year following his son's death, he
started going to plays religiously. Lincoln didn't have much of
an education. He didn't, as we would say, go to
high school. He barely had a grammar school education. But
one of the books that his stepmother brought into the
house was an anthology with twenty or so excerpts from
(10:52):
the plays, including Hamlets speech, Claudius's speech from that same play,
Julius Caesar, and the like. And Lincoln really was drawn
to some of these, and every chance he got, especially
during the Civil War, where he faced terrible, terrible challenges
and he was mourning the death of a son, any
(11:15):
chance he got, he opened up a Shakespeare volume and
asked those in his company if he might read and
talk about them. It must have been unbelievable listening to
Lincoln read Claudius's speech on guilt in the midst of
watching six hundred thousand Americans die in a brutal civil war.
(11:38):
What if this cursed hand were thicker than itself with
brother's blood? Is there not rain enough in the sweet
heavens to wash it white as snow? That Claudius speech
is so arrowing. That's Hamlet's uncle King Claudius confessing that
he murdered his own brother to get his crown. It's
(12:00):
this breathtaking speech about guilt and self loathing, in this
terrible feeling of a soul that's just atrophied. Lincoln told
people that he thought this was the finest speech in Hamlet,
even better than to Be or not to Be. He
just felt these plays barry in ways that even you
and I don't. And the play Lincoln felt the most
(12:22):
was Macbeth. He was obsessed with the play and with
the great Tomorrow and Tomorrow speech. He would read that
speech and you could just feel how deeply he understood
the place where Macbeth was coming from. Right before the
end of his life, he had premonitions of his death,
(12:47):
and he had a dream in which he actually saw
himself kind of like Lady Macbeth walking around, sleepwalking in
the White House, walking up to a soldier who tells
him the president is dead. He's so deep into Shakespeare
that it is infecting his dream life and shaping his
(13:10):
fears about his own demise. That to me is extraordinary.
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow creeps in this petty pace
from day to day to the last syllable of recorded time,
and all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to
(13:32):
dusty death. It's going to take me a while to
get over this image of Abraham Lincoln wandering around the
White House mumbling tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. That's why
I find this whole subject so bracing. It's hard to
imagine a moment when the life circumstances of an actual
(13:55):
person reading a Shakespearean tragedy could be more heightened and
dramatic than the fictional circumstances in the play. But again
and again, Lincoln seems to meet Shakespeare when he himself
is in situation as intense as the ones in the plays.
It's this weird hall of mirrors, feeling like you can't
(14:15):
really tell where the boundary is between Lincoln's life and
Shakespeare's art. It's also just so satisfying to think about
a national leader actually turning towards these plays for spiritual nourishment.
It bomps me out that it's hard to imagine such
a thing happening today. M Lincoln lived at a moment
when not just he, but the entire country was shakespeare crazy.
(14:37):
Remember our episode about the astor place riots, Yeah, for sure.
I mean Shakespeare was just so much closer to the
center of culture one hundred and fifty years ago than
he is today. I asked Professor Shapiro about that, and
also about Obama's inaugural near miss of Shakespeare and whether
he thought it could ever be possible again to have
a Shakespeare loving president. Do you think that Shakespeare's place
(15:00):
in American life has somehow shifted to where if Obama
had quoted Shakespeare correctly in his inaugural it would have
been a merit. I'm trying to place where Shakespeare ended
as a truly popular figure. I would say since World
War Two, when Shakespeare became a formal academic subject. It's
(15:26):
really hard to pull him out of the elite category.
The professionalization of shakespeare scholarship into the university is a
major turning point. Once you're testing on Shakespeare, it's over
and the ione is no one takes down authority as
powerfully as Shakespeare, so he should be weaponized in our
(15:46):
political culture. But because he has been turned into one
of the elites, the embodiment of elite culture spoken in
a kind of BBC British accent. Until quite recently, and
not reflecting the diversity of American culture on stage until
(16:09):
the last say, forty years or so. It's going to
take a lot of work to change that. It is
going to take a lot of work, But that seems
like a worthwhile effort to me. Me too, And I
don't want to mischaracterize Professor Shapiro as being somehow grim
about Shakespeare's prospects for the future. Not at all. He
(16:29):
continues to inspire me to double down on this writer
as one of the real sources of hope for our
national conversation. Shakespeare in a Divided America is a great read,
not only because it reminds us of some extraordinary periods
in our country's history, but also because it shows how
a playwright figured deeply and necessarily into each one. As
(16:52):
angry as the divides in America may grow, somehow Shakespeare
manages to tamp down the flames. Americans are not very
good about speaking across the great cultural divide, whether this
subject is abortion or race or political divisions. But Shakespeare
is one of the few things still embraced across the
(17:14):
political spectrum. Perhaps his plays are just so broad in
their reach, But the best answer I have is his plays,
for better or worse, have touched upon the things that
mattered to us and continue to matter to us, whether
they divide or unite us, whether in peace or war.
(17:36):
And for that reason we keep turning back to his
work where there's a will, We'll be back after a
short break. There's one more American president we need to
talk about him if we're really going to understand what
(17:56):
Shakespeare is doing in the West Wing, and that's the
president who's at the center of the West Wing, President
Jed Bartlett. Bartlett was played by Martin Sheen, who, by
the way, was a Shakespearean actor who and Bartlett is
in many ways of character Shakespeare might have written erudite, brilliant, epigrammatic, wise, strong, compassionate, funny.
(18:21):
He's the perfect fantasy of what an American leader should be.
And he is a total fantasy, which is of course
the whole point. Absolutely. Jed Bartlett was a dream of
an American president at a very very different time in
our national politics. And there are whole podcasts on the
West Wing that delvin all of that far more than
there are Shakespeare podcasts. I bet well. We're working to
(18:43):
fix that here totally. Anyway, I want to talk about
Jed Bartlett because to me, he's the one president who
would have quoted Shakespeare in his inaugural address unapologetically and
at great length. So m to test this hunch. I
spoke to Eli Addie. He's an award winning television writer
who wrote for five seasons of The West Wing. Wow,
(19:05):
that's amazing. I love that show. And before that, he
was a speechwriter to major politicians, including Vice President Al Gore.
Gore's concession speech to George W. Bush, which he delivered
after the Supreme Court ended the long legal fight over
the recount of the Florida ballot. That was ADDIE's most
famous handiwork. I thought he might have some insight into
(19:25):
how presidents, both fictional and real, think about how and
why to quote Shakespeare. It's funny because I worked in
speech writing for a bunch of years, and they're worked
on Capitol Hill. I worked in the White House. I've
helped presidential campaigns on speeches since in the last you know,
bunch of years, and I have to I'm ashamed to
admit to you that I've never cited Shakespeare in a speech.
(19:48):
I've certainly tried to embody the rhythm and the sense
of the moment and the sense of drama, and the
sense of kind of narrative. Not that I could ever
come close, but it's just felt like you're showing how
smart you are. I wonder how many politicians in the
year twenty twenty two could get away with citing Shakespeare
(20:10):
and not be seen as elitist. So is there a
meeting where somebody says, okay, fifth grade English and no higher.
Do you sit down when you're sitting you know you've
got a big campaign speech that you've got to write,
or I don't know the state of the union, And
are there discussions about the level of speech that you're
(20:31):
going for or is it just kind of in the
water in Washington that we don't get to fancy. There
are meetings, and they're certainly depending on who you're working for.
If you're working for a president or a vice president,
the meetings can be expansive and lots of people can
try to kind of weigh in and express an opinion.
But I think that it's in the water, it's in
(20:52):
the culture. I do remember a time when I was
writing speeches in the mayor's office right after college that
I use the word vexed in a speech, or maybe
it was vexing, and some crusty deputy mayor kind of
pulled me aside and said, why do you think this
is Harvard University? You know, like nobody knows what this
word means. That I remember, We're thinking at the time, like, really,
nobody knows what the word vexing means. And I don't know.
(21:13):
Maybe maybe it is too sopiscated a word, but I
think you're trying to be plain spoken, bit elegant. You're
trying to be simple but beautiful. And too many big words,
too many grand illusions, and you can alienate people because
as much as I love Shakespeare, I don't see the
(21:35):
value of it because too many people, I'm sorry to say,
find it off putting, find it. I find him hard
to read. Got to see in that course in high school,
you know what I mean. And while the Bill Clintons
and Barack Obamas were whizzing past them and devouring all
of the soliloquies. It's a little bit like saying I
(21:56):
was one of the eggheads, kind of laughing at you
from across the lunchroom. I was one of the eggheads.
M me too. I don't think I was laughing at
anyone across the lunch room, though at least I hope
I wasn't. But you know what, I do remember my
high school self thinking about the way presidents speak. So
I was fifteen years old when Ronald Reagan was elected.
(22:18):
Would that makes sense in nineteen eighty, right, is when
Reagan was fifteen years old. And so Reagan was president
for eight years of my basically arrival into adulthood. And
he was the great communicator. And I have this very
vivid memory of the first Space Shuttle disaster. And he
quoted a poet whose name I don't recall, not Shakespeare,
(22:42):
and he rose to the moment, He rose to the
occasion of this horrendous tragedy by finding a kind of
register of eloquence that was beyond the normal. Somehow, the
crew of the Space Shuttle Challenger honored us for the
manner in which they lived their lives. We will never
(23:02):
forget them, nor the last time we saw them this
morning as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye
and slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the
face of God. Wow, that imagery is so evocative. Yeah,
And when I brought up Riggan's Challenger speech with Addie.
(23:24):
It got him thinking about rhetoric and its power. I
mean rhetoric in the classical sense, the art of using
language to persuade. That's what really great politicians do. I
actually believe very strongly that president's senators statesmen abandon a
(23:45):
kind of rhetorical tradition, if you will, a kind of
a rigorous, intellectually sound way of presenting ideas at their peril.
When I worked in the Clinton White House, as somebody
who had already been writing speeches for a handful of
years before I went to work there, I found that
Clinton himself brilliant, incredible guy, and brilliant speaker, and certainly
(24:08):
knew better than me about all manner of subjects. He
was not interested in rhetoric. And I remember I was
a junior guy, but I remember being desponded and talking
to some of the hanchos and consultants, and one of
the political consultants who was hanging around saying to me,
he agreed with me, and he was saying, you know,
rhetoric is your insurance policy on history. Rhetoric is your
(24:29):
insurance policy on history. Yeah, But in the sense that
very few people can name anything substantive that John Kennedy
did as president a bill he passed, but he was
incredibly quotable as our last you know, sort of poet friendly,
you know, barred, sensitive, intellectual president. It's really interesting, Eli
(24:49):
you know, to think about the eloquence of Abraham Lincoln,
which is so central to how we remember him FDR JFK.
But then you, as a young speechwriter, bump into a
guy in the mayor's office going vexed is too big?
So how on earth are you going to talk about
the proud man's on Tom Lee you can't resist a
(25:11):
good Hamlet quote Annyberry. Well, I'm not trying to convince
anyone who elect me president. But doing that was Eliadi's
job in real life and on TV two. And I
wondered if his work with fictional politicians gave him license
to do things that he could never do with real ones.
So I asked him about the West Wing and Jed Bartlett. Bartlett,
(25:33):
the character, the fictional character was a Nobel Prize winner
before he became a politician. That never happens, you know,
he was actually a brilliant economist who was sort of
talked into running because he was the kind of guy
who should have been running, even though they never do.
And then he won. All things at Dantende really happened.
Jed Bartlett is the writer Aaron Sorkin's greatest creation. Sorkin
(25:56):
recruited Addie to write for the West Wing. This was
after the bushby Gore decision ended his previous gig writing
for the Vice President. Sorkin is a theater lover and
a Shakespeare lover, and he and the rest of the
right on the West Wing gave Bartlett a few close
brushes with Shakespeare, didn't they They did. One of them
was when Bartlett went to see a Broadway production of
(26:17):
a Shakespeare play. My sense is that this was Aaron's
way of saying, you know, it matters if you're going
to go and actually sit through Shakespeare play. We want
our president to be somebody who can do that and
wants to do that, and it doesn't just want to
chomp down a hot dog at a baseball game, not
that there's anything wrong with that, you know. On the
one hand, we want to celebrate the eloquence. We want
(26:37):
to be inspired by the eloquence. On the other hand,
you can't do it because it's going to label you
as some sort of Harvard Yale elitist, right, But Bartlett
made it seem cool, made it seem aspirational to be
that brilliant, and that's what made the show so successful. Yeah,
The West Wing was a sort of a Shakespeare of
(26:59):
its own, and it was often in the top ten,
not always in the top ten. You know, Bury, This
whole conversation really makes me want to go back and
binge all of The West Wing. It is such a
great show. But you know, from the vantage point of
(27:20):
this moment in American political life, it seems positively quaint.
Jed Bartlett today looks completely impossible. It's heartbreaking. It's like
a vivid dream you wake up from and kind of
wish you could return to, but you know you can't.
My conversation with Eliaddy reminded me of this great JFK
(27:41):
quote that I love. He said, if more politicians new
poetry and more poets new politics, I'm convinced the world
would be a little better place in which to live.
If you're making me wistful, yeah, I get it, because
maybe we've lost something by kicking Shakespeare out of presidential speeches.
Maybe our world is a bit poorer if there's zero
(28:04):
chance that Jed Bartlett could ever be real. I asked
eli Addie he could relate to that, and he made
me feel a little better. It does come down to
this whole sort of idea of rhetoric as an insurance
policy on history, So I would love for him to
be embraced more. I guess maybe I'm just skeptical about
(28:25):
whether the answer is full on Shakespeare or just to
try to use it as a guy, to try to
just be as high minded as you can, you know,
without it's seeming that you are kind of lording it
over your audience, lording it over your constituents. But I
think I would submit to you Barry, that maybe Obama
(28:50):
got it right. If rhetoric is your insurance policy on
history and all you're doing is quoting Shakespeare, great as
he is, do you score points for that or is
it better if somebody hears you say you know, winner
of Hardship and they think like, wow, I get that,
and it's an image and it's an idea and this
guy's smarter than me, And okay, fine, I'm going to
(29:11):
go on this website and sign up for this healthcare plan.
So maybe if it's a guide, maybe if it's a
model for a certain kind of eloquence. Maybe if it
is a template for a way of invoking the drama
of a given moment, for placing ourselves in a context
of the human story, all the things Shakespeare did instinctively,
(29:32):
politicians labor to do. So maybe the answer is to
do what Barack Obama did and just change a couple
of words and claim it as your own, and then
nobody calls you an egghead. You get all the eloquence,
you get the insurance policy on history, and you know,
everyone's a winner. That does make me feel a little better, because, hey,
(29:53):
rhetoric is your insurance policy on history. Well, President Obama
did take out a pretty big policy with the rhetoric
insurance company. And you know what. Am After being careful
not to quote Shakespeare while he was president, years later,
in twenty one, when he no longer had to worry
about how it would land, he finally jumped in. So
(30:15):
let me give him the last word, or rather the
second to last, because on this podcast, Shakespeare always gets
the last word. Let me quote the barn William Shakespeare.
What wound he writes, did ever heal but buy the Grease?
(30:45):
Where There's a Will? Finding Shakespeare is written and hosted
by me Barry Edelstein. My co host is m Weinstein.
Our show was produced by Buffy Gorilla and Nisha Vencott,
with assistant producers Jennifer Sanchez and Salmon Ahad Khan. Our
executive producers are Katherine Girardo from Pushkin and Alex Lewis
and John Myers from Row Home Productions. Our editor is
(31:06):
Audrey Dilling. Our mix engineer is Justin Berger. Our theme
is an original composition by Hannis Brown. Samuel Buzid is
our fact checker. Thanks to Pushkin's development team LEETL. Mulad
and Justine Lange, and to producer Sam Dingman for creating
our pilot President Obama clip courtesy of UN Climate Change.
Where There's a Will is a co production of Pushkin
(31:28):
Industries and The Old Clobe. Barry Edelstein. That's Me is
Erna Fincy Veturbie artistic director and Timothy J. Shields is
Audreys Geisel Managing director of the Old Globe. For the
Globe thanks to sound director Paul Peterson and assistant to
the sound director Evan Eason, Director of Marketing and Communications,
Dave Henson, Assistant to the Artistic and Managing directors Carolyn Budd,
(31:50):
The Theodore and Audrey Geiselfund provides leadership support for The
Old Globe's year round activities. To learn more about the
Tony Award winning the Old Globe one of America's leading
regional theater companies, visit the Old Globe dot org. If
you love this show, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus, offering
bonus content and add free listening across our network for
(32:12):
four dollars and ninety nine cents a month. Find the
Pushkin Plus channel on Apple Podcasts or at pushkin dot fm.
To find more Pushkin podcasts, listen on the iHeartRadio app,
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