Hi and welcome to classical stuff you should know a podcast about classical world, old books, education, art, music. I don't know what music. What am I talking about? We could do music. We could do music. But we are three guys who read a lot. And we, AJ and I are teachers at a classical school.

And Thomas has worked at this classical school in the past. And we do a podcast about old things.

Yep. My name is Graham Donaldson and I am joined joined, oh, crap, with by? Was it just every time? Joined by. We decided that joined with is not. I'm joined by AJ. I'm joined by J. Hanoverl. Conjoined is what it would mean if we're joined with? I am conjoined with AJ Hanenberg. That's me. And Thomas Magby. Hi. And it's the end of the school year here in Texas. And the kids have been messy. They've been leaving little, they've been leaving things around. There's like crumbs all over the floor. If you want ants, that's how you get ants. They're, well, actually, it's not just ants. We've been getting mice.

Oh, buddy.

Yeah.

We have all, and we as men must need to deal with this problem of mice.

If only there was some kind of handbook or guidebook that we could turn to, that we as men could deal with mice, something that was like of that subject.

That would be a helpful resource for us to have.

I talk about the famous John Steinbeck manual about how to deal with mouse problems.

Vermin, vermin issues.

Yes.

Of mice and men.

So that's what we're talking about today is John Steinbeck's tiny little novella called

Of Mice and Men.

You, again, just like all this stuff we talk about, you can go read it for yourself.

It's not a super long thing.

So I'm going to describe it today.

I might add a little bit of extra context for you and then we'll discuss some of the stuff

that sort of comes out of the novel. So go find your favorite puppy and give it a hug. So you have you guys read this? Yes. Okay, great. I might need your need your help on this one. But I like it's in a long time. In high school. I can I can remind you of some things and we can discuss some of those those bigger issues. I'm now there's a dude named Lenny. I'm also running on very little sleep. So brazen confidence is what's going to

carry us through this episode. So our novel opens with two characters, George Milton and Lenny small.

We learn their names later. We just know that they're Lenny and George. Lenny is not small. He is a huge

person, like physically imposing giant dude. George Milton is a smaller, more narrow, more skinny person. And it opens with them sort of trucking through the brush. It turns out they were heading towards this ranch and the bus driver dropped them off like five miles distant because he just didn't want to drive up to the gate. So he's like, get out. So they've been hiking and they're like, man, flipping bus driver. And so they don't want to roll in that evening because they know they'll have to work at the ranch if they get in early. And so there's like, well, I'll just sleep under the stars and hang out here. So as they sort of prepare to sleep, you find out that Lenny has been hiding a mouse in his pocket. And George is like, what do you got? He's like, nothing. He's like, give me the mouse. And so Lenny has to hand it over and George hucks it off into the weeds. And he's like, man, I told you like that. That's a dead mouse. That's gross. You can't do that. We'll find you a new mouse or something later, or a rabbit, but that's gross, man. You can't do that.

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