48 Successful People With Unique Hobbies - mental_floss on YouTube (Ep.205)

Hi, I'm John Green. Welcome to my salon. Did you know that when I'm not hosting Menafloss

on YouTube I have a hobby? I write books. It's just a thing I do in my spare time, but I even wrote like half of the quotes that have been attributed to me on Tumblr. Now

we all know that Justin Bieber fills his spare time by drag racing and Shia LaBeouf likes

to plagiarize, but today I'm going to share with you the surprising hobbies of many well-known people

Chuck Norris gave former Price is Right host Bob Barker karate lessons for eight years

Barker once recalled, he used to come to my home and we'd do karate. We started out here on my lawn and then I started parking my car on the driveway and

made my garage into a karate studio. I took lessons for eight years

Then Chuck got into acting. You'll be surprised to learn that director David Lynch has had some bizarre hobbies over

the years, including musician, coffee roaster, and nightclub owner. Since I'm sure you'll want to see for yourself, you can actually buy his coffee at Whole Foods

and visit the Mulholland Drive-inspired Club Silencio in Paris. And this club has everything, or at least that's what I heard from Stefan

Speaking of directors, Stanley Kubrick collected stationery and other letter-writing paraphernalia. According to his brother-in-law, Kubrick once learned that a line of brown ink was getting

discontinued, so he went ahead and bought every bottle left in existence, a total of

100 bottles. Another famous collector is Ayn Rand, who had a stamp collection

She even wrote an article called Why I Like Stamp Collecting for the Minkus Stamp Journal

in 1971. Spoiler alert, she likes stamp collecting because it's not a Marxist enterprise that props

up the week. Thomas Edison was a huge cinephile, but he wasn't a fan of talkies, even believing that

sound in the movies spoiled everything He once said there isn any good acting on the screen They concentrate on the voice now and have forgotten how to act I don blame you Edison That was before acting legends like

Ashton Kutcher, Paris Hilton, and Nicolas Cage made it to the big screen

and combined physical presence with a beautiful voice. Anyway, nice to know

that Thomas Edison was one of those get-off-my-lawn old people. Former British Prime Minister

Margaret Thatcher also took in culture as a hobby. She was a big fan of operas

and going to museums. Warren Buffett plays the ukulele. He told the Today Show that he learned to play in college so that

he could impress a girl. Surprisingly, it didn't work. Ernest Hemingway was, of course, quite the outdoorsman. He enjoyed hunting and fishing

Another famous outdoorsman, though, Sigmund Freud. He liked to hike and collect mushrooms

Not those kind. Albert Einstein enjoyed sailing, but many say he never really learned how to properly swim

His boat was named Tenef, which is Yiddish for junk. Einstein was also a violinist, by

the way, generally an overachiever. Emily Dickinson was an excellent baker. A loaf of bread that she made even came in second

place for a baking competition in the 1856 Amherst Cattle Show. Her prize? 50 cents

A lot of famous people love golf, including Condoleezza Rice, Samuel L. Jackson, Dennis

Quaid, Clint Eastwood, Morgan Freeman, Halle Berry, Michael Jordan, Barack Obama, and Bill

Murray. Of course, we all know that another of Bill Murray's hobbies is getting arrested for drunk driving a golf cart. And yes, that is the

third time that we've made that joke on this show and I refuse to apologize

Speaking of sports, NFL running back Arian Foster likes to write poetry and raps in his

spare time and David Beckham fences with his pals Tom Cruise and Will Smith and no, I am

not making that up. Former Houston Rockets guard and the shortest player to be inducted into the Basketball

Hall of Fame Calvin Murphy was a world baton twirler Fellow Basketball Hall of Famer Kareem Abdul collects rugs and current San Antonio Spurs player Tim Duncan likes going to Renaissance fairs

and playing Dungeons and Dragons, a man after my own heart. Billionaire Richard Branson likes to kite surf

In fact, in 2013, he was part of a group that broke the Guinness World Record

for largest parade of kite surfers. Speaking of billionaires, Steve Jobs grew up playing Bob Dylan songs on the guitar

We can actually partially thank Bob Dylan, who was a painter in his spare time for the record, for Apple

According to the company's co-founder Steve Wozniak, he and Jobs developed a friendship

because they both liked Dylan and would go on shopping excursions together to buy his bootlegs

Wozniak's current hobby, by the way, Segway Polo. Brad Pitt has a fairly normal hobby, photography

On the other hand, his wife Angelina Jolie collects daggers. Jolie's mom took her to buy her first dagger when she was just 11, and the Jolie-Pitts

plan to continue that tradition with their own kids, which is going to mean a lot of daggers

While I'm talking about actors, Susan Sarandon loves ping pong. In fact, she calls herself a ping pong propagandist and is part owner of Spin, a company that

runs ping pong clubs in New York, Toronto, LA, and Dubai. When she's not busy being nominated for every possible award, Meryl Streep knits, as does

Ryan Gosling. One of my favorite authors, Zadie Smith, grew up tap dancing

In fact, she spent 10 years pursuing the art form and a career in musical theater before

becoming a writer. Another author, Samuel Clemens, aka Mark Twain, dabbled in fashion

My god, why didn't he just write books? Anyway, in 1871 he was granted a patent for adjustable and detachable straps for garments

better known now as suspenders. Off topic but I always believed that Shrute deep down is a suspenders guy Oh my gosh there Mark Twain No wait that Albert Einstein And while we on the wall Marie Curie and her husband Pierre not pictured because he doesn have a bobblehead Anyway they loved bicycling For their honeymoon in 1895 they took a train to the coast of France and biked from town

to town. And two other famous bicyclists from the 1890s were the Wright brothers. Orville

Wright was even a champion bicyclist, which is why he ran a bike shop with Wilbur before

you know, they created airplanes. Let's finish up by talking about some U.S. presidents. George W. Bush likes to paint

in his spare time. James Madison and Thomas Jefferson liked to play chess against each

other. The games allegedly lasted for over four hours. Jimmy Carter made his own wine

and as you'll remember from our beer episode, Jimmy Carter was also the president who legalized

home brewing. Coincidence? Probably so. Anyway, he also made furniture. John Tyler played the

violin. In fact, some sources even claim he wanted to be a concert violinist before he

decided to study law. Finally, I returned to my salon to tell all of you young people

out there that former President Bill Clinton also played an instrument, the saxophone

In fact, in 1992, when he was running for president, he went on the Arsenio Hall show

and played Heartbreak Hotel on the saxophone, and I kid you not, Arsenio said, it's nice

to see a Democrat blow something besides the election. Oh, Bill Clinton

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Every week, we endeavor to answer one of your mind-blowing questions. This week's question comes from Jack Hughes, who asks, who came up with the idea for Mount Rushmore

We have this today because of Doan Robinson, the state historian of South Dakota in the

early 1900s. He was like, well, we don't have a ton of actual history here in South Dakota, but what

if we carved some president faces on a mountain? If you have a mind-blowing question, please leave it in the comments below

Thanks again for watching, and as we say in my hometown, don't forget to be awesome