Latest / Revisionist History / Return to the 404

Transcript

Return to the 404 · Revisionist History

0:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin.
0:20
Speaker 2: Welcome to the bonus Holiday special Atlanta, theine edition of
0:24
Speaker 2: Revisionist History, Part two. A word before we begin. There
0:29
Speaker 2: is no overarching theme to what follows. No beginning, no middle,
0:34
Speaker 2: no end, no single compelling through line. My editor Julia Barton,
0:39
Speaker 2: who is normally lovely, actually got all grumpy about doing
0:42
Speaker 2: this episode, so grumpy in fact, that I thought I
0:45
Speaker 2: should let her put in her two cents before we
0:47
Speaker 2: get going.
0:49
Speaker 3: Okay, I thought about it.
0:50
Speaker 4: Some more Happy holidays, Malcolm.
0:53
Speaker 1: From here on out, you're on your own.
0:56
Speaker 2: All right, all right, all right, here's my feeling. If
1:00
Speaker 2: there is anything in the world that unites my fellow
1:03
Speaker 2: revisionist historians, it is our endless appetite for wandering down
1:08
Speaker 2: empty corridors and poking through the cobwebs of the half
1:14
Speaker 2: baked and the marginal. By the way, do you have
1:25
Speaker 2: anything better to do? No, you don't, and no do I.
1:28
Speaker 2: I've been cooped up in my house for nine months,
1:30
Speaker 2: and I'm moving my mind.
1:33
Speaker 1: And dreaming of Atlanta.
1:50
Speaker 2: So I'm just going to answer a few more random
1:54
Speaker 2: questions from you, my listeners. Lucas Nicholson asks on Twitter,
2:00
Speaker 2: what's your favorite memory of your father. Okay, As you know,
2:04
Speaker 2: my dad comes up on the show every now and again.
2:07
Speaker 2: I like to refer to him as the patron saint
2:10
Speaker 2: of Revision's history, because, among other things, Graham Glabo was
2:14
Speaker 2: a deeply mischievous man in a way that we strive
2:17
Speaker 2: every day to emulate here at Pushkin. Oh, I should
2:21
Speaker 2: point out, why do we call Pushkin Pushkin? Not because
2:25
Speaker 2: we have some pretentious intellectual connection to the famous Russian poet.
2:29
Speaker 2: Well kind of, it's half of it. The other half
2:32
Speaker 2: is Graham Glabo named our family's first dog growing up, Pushkin,
2:37
Speaker 2: a floppy eared Shepherd lab mix, and have always loved
2:40
Speaker 2: the name. My dad also named his garden Rhodo Tiller
2:44
Speaker 2: Alexander after Alexander the Great, and his garden cart Rufus
2:49
Speaker 2: after the English king, King William the Second, otherwise known
2:52
Speaker 2: as William Rufus. He really liked to name things. My
2:57
Speaker 2: dad was English. In the nineteen fifties, he meets my mother,
3:01
Speaker 2: they get married, and a few years later they move
3:03
Speaker 2: back to Jamaica, where my mother is from, and my
3:06
Speaker 2: father teaches mathematics at the University of the West Indies
3:10
Speaker 2: UI as it's called in Kingston.
3:12
Speaker 1: Jamaica.
3:13
Speaker 2: Parenthetically, while he's there, who does he meet and try
3:16
Speaker 2: to encourage to take mathematics? Donald Harris, father of future
3:21
Speaker 2: Vice President Kamala Harris. Small world anyway, So my dad
3:29
Speaker 2: is working on some crazily complex bit of math, and
3:32
Speaker 2: this is before the Internet. Of course, if you needed
3:35
Speaker 2: to read some crucial bit of scholarship, you had to
3:38
Speaker 2: go to an actual library. And he realizes the closest
3:41
Speaker 2: library that has the books he needs is at Georgia
3:44
Speaker 2: Tech in Atlanta. So he writes the chair of the
3:47
Speaker 2: math department at Georgia Tech, can I come and use
3:50
Speaker 2: your library stay on campus for a bit while I
3:52
Speaker 2: do my research? They say, of course. He starts to
3:55
Speaker 2: plan his trip vote from Kingston to Miami, bus from
4:00
Speaker 2: Miami to Georgia. This is nineteen fifty nine. Georgia Tech
4:05
Speaker 2: is still a segregated institution and the administration realizes that
4:09
Speaker 2: the head of the math department has just extended an
4:12
Speaker 2: invitation to a professor from the University of the West Indies,
4:16
Speaker 2: a place chock full a black people. Panic sweeps through
4:22
Speaker 2: Georgia Tech. They start calling around other math departments. Does
4:25
Speaker 2: anyone know a Graham Gladwell no one does, because my
4:29
Speaker 2: dad is twenty five years old. He's a nobody. Finally,
4:33
Speaker 2: just before my dad is about to leave Jamaica, they
4:35
Speaker 2: manage to reach him by phone. Professor Gladwell, I have
4:39
Speaker 2: an important question for you. Are you white? My father says, why, yes,
4:45
Speaker 2: I am, and the Georgia Tech guy says, oh, thank god.
4:53
Speaker 2: Now my dad doesn't say anything at the time, because
4:56
Speaker 2: that's the way he was. I'll poker face. But when
4:58
Speaker 2: he finally gets to Atlanta, a bunch of people from
5:01
Speaker 2: the university take him out to dinner and he announces
5:04
Speaker 2: to the group, gentlemen, I've just gotten married. I want
5:08
Speaker 2: you to see a picture my lovely bride, and passes
5:11
Speaker 2: a photo of Joyce gladwell sister around the table. I
5:16
Speaker 2: think you can see why he's the patron saint.
5:18
Speaker 1: Of Revision's history.
5:26
Speaker 2: It's funny. I hadn't thought about that story for a
5:28
Speaker 2: long time, but Lucas Nicholson's question inspired me to do
5:32
Speaker 2: a follow up. So a few weeks ago, I called
5:35
Speaker 2: up the dean of computer science at Georgia Tech, an
5:37
Speaker 2: artificial intelligence researcher named Charles I isbel I'm going to
5:42
Speaker 2: warn you this is a tangent, But as Himon Roth
5:45
Speaker 2: said to Michael Corleone, tangents are the business we've chosen. Yeah,
5:50
Speaker 2: tell me a little bit about your own are you
5:52
Speaker 2: Are you from Atlanta?
5:54
Speaker 5: Yes, Well, as you can tell by my accent, I'm
5:56
Speaker 5: from Chattanooga, Tennessee. But my earliest memory is arriving in
5:59
Speaker 5: Atlanta on a moving truck at the age of three.
6:01
Speaker 5: So I think of myself as being from Ataint. Yeah.
6:02
Speaker 2: And did you do your undergrad at Georgia Tech?
6:05
Speaker 5: I did undergrad at Georgia Tech, and I did my
6:07
Speaker 5: master's and PhD and mit.
6:09
Speaker 2: Oh I see, so but you are you consider yourself?
6:12
Speaker 2: You're in Atlanta?
6:13
Speaker 1: And oh yes?
6:15
Speaker 2: And through through is Bell then told me the following story.
6:19
Speaker 5: We started the first online masters of science and computer
6:22
Speaker 5: science from a large elite university. Give you a sense
6:25
Speaker 5: of scale of that, we had zero students and as
6:28
Speaker 5: of this past semester we have about eleven thousand. So
6:32
Speaker 5: we went from zero to eleven thousand in less than
6:35
Speaker 5: six years.
6:35
Speaker 2: For around six and a half thousand dollars, you can
6:38
Speaker 2: now get a Master's of Computer Science from Georgia Tech online,
6:42
Speaker 2: as opposed to the forty six thousand dollars it would
6:45
Speaker 2: cost you on campus, same professors, same course materials, same
6:49
Speaker 2: academic standards.
6:50
Speaker 5: So once you accept this larger idea, you start asking yourself, Okay, well,
6:53
Speaker 5: if we want to educate everyone, if we want to
6:55
Speaker 5: truly be accessible and live up to this idea, then
6:57
Speaker 5: where can we go? Who can we talk to? So
7:00
Speaker 5: I took a trip for somewhat unrelated reasons to Kenya
7:05
Speaker 5: and visited Kenya, ended up visiting Nigeria and a few
7:09
Speaker 5: other countries in Sub Saharan Africa and started meeting with
7:12
Speaker 5: people there, and I came to the conclusion that this
7:15
Speaker 5: is a population where you have a large amount of
7:20
Speaker 5: untapped talent, people who are really interested in figuring out
7:24
Speaker 5: how to get formal education in computing and in computer science.
7:28
Speaker 2: Is Bill and his colleagues began traveling to Africa all
7:30
Speaker 2: the time. Their goal is to make Georgia Tech the
7:33
Speaker 2: world's number one educator of IT talent in Sub Saharan Africa.
7:39
Speaker 2: Does it make a difference that you're an African American
7:41
Speaker 2: when you're making this case for Georgia Tech in Africa?
7:44
Speaker 5: I think it does certainly. The conversations I've had make
7:49
Speaker 5: me think that it does. I think people are excited
7:52
Speaker 5: that there's someone over here who wants to have those conversations.
7:56
Speaker 2: Then I told Isbell the story about my dad. I
7:59
Speaker 2: feel like there's something First of all, he would have
8:01
Speaker 2: been so happy to hear about what's happening now at
8:03
Speaker 2: Georgia Tech. But just this wonderful story about how, in
8:06
Speaker 2: the space of sixty years the institution has gone from
8:11
Speaker 2: turning its back on people even if they suspect them
8:15
Speaker 2: of being black, to like opening up its doors to
8:19
Speaker 2: sub Saharan Africa. I think that's I don't know, I
8:23
Speaker 2: was moved.
8:24
Speaker 5: Well, you know, I'm glad to hear you say that.
8:26
Speaker 5: It's actually a remarkable thing, particularly when you put it
8:29
Speaker 5: like that.
8:30
Speaker 2: Today, Georgia Tech is one of the largest producers of
8:33
Speaker 2: black engineers, Hispanic engineers, and Asian engineers in the country.
8:37
Speaker 2: It has more black undergrads who go on to do
8:40
Speaker 2: PhDs in computer science than any other American university.
8:44
Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, I have these I talk to people
8:46
Speaker 5: all the time, and you know, they asked me about
8:49
Speaker 5: my life story and the things that I've gone through,
8:51
Speaker 5: positive and negative, and and I was having this conversation
8:54
Speaker 5: with some of the other day, and you know, I
8:56
Speaker 5: was telling about, you know, interactions I've had with the
8:58
Speaker 5: police in my younger days that didn't go very well,
9:00
Speaker 5: and things people had said to me over the years.
9:02
Speaker 5: And I started talking about what I was hoping was
9:05
Speaker 5: going to happen for the future. And someone said to me, well,
9:08
Speaker 5: you know, you seem very optimistic and hopeful. And I
9:10
Speaker 5: thought about it, and I thought, you know, it's true.
9:13
Speaker 5: In the end, I'm optimistic and hopeful. I do like
9:15
Speaker 5: the idea that you know, within a generation, and it's
9:17
Speaker 5: certainly a place like Atlanta. There's the reason why I
9:19
Speaker 5: love the city.
9:25
Speaker 2: And I saw on your website that you do I
9:29
Speaker 2: don't know you still do, but hip hop reviews on
9:32
Speaker 2: the side. I mean, this is the most Atlanta thing
9:34
Speaker 2: I've ever heard in my life. The AI professor Georgia
9:38
Speaker 2: Tech who does hip hop stuff on the side.
9:40
Speaker 5: Yes, I've been a huge fan of hip hop's it's
9:43
Speaker 5: the very beginning, well, certainly the modern hip hop Araasi's
9:47
Speaker 5: the very beginning. I did an online hip hop award
9:51
Speaker 5: show for about eight years. For a while there had
9:55
Speaker 5: the first online black history database.
9:58
Speaker 2: And I saw on your lab page everyone gets a
10:00
Speaker 2: p funk Dame. Everyone gets a p funk name, p
10:03
Speaker 2: Funk being, of course, the nickname of Parliament Funkadelic, the
10:07
Speaker 2: legendary funk band started by George Clinton. On Isabel's laboratory website,
10:12
Speaker 2: it reads the P in p funk stands for probabilistic,
10:17
Speaker 2: as for the funk, it stands for many things as well.
10:20
Speaker 1: It should.
10:21
Speaker 2: Specific interpretations are left as an exercise for the reader.
10:25
Speaker 2: You are atomic dog, you would have to be at home.
10:27
Speaker 5: Of course, I'm atomic dog. What a there's no other option?
10:31
Speaker 2: How much do I love Atlanta?
10:36
Speaker 1: All right?
10:37
Speaker 2: Roger Nation twenty four asks on Twitter, why have you
10:42
Speaker 2: never made an episode about Kanye West? His career trajectory
10:46
Speaker 2: seems like the perfect fit for your podcast. Very very
10:50
Speaker 2: good question, Roger Nation twenty four. Let's put it this way.
10:53
Speaker 2: It's not for lack of trying, because no one likes
10:56
Speaker 2: a celebrity hang more than me. I once met David
10:59
Speaker 2: Hasselhoff in Sweden, of all places, got a selfie with him,
11:03
Speaker 2: and if you look at the photo, I have this
11:04
Speaker 2: big stupid grin on my face, like I'm the happiest
11:08
Speaker 2: I've ever been in my life for the Hoff. But
11:12
Speaker 2: I have a better story which also, and you're not
11:14
Speaker 2: going to believe this involves my favorite city, Atlanta. So
11:21
Speaker 2: a couple of years ago, when Kevin Durant was still
11:24
Speaker 2: with the Golden State Warriors, they came to Atlanta to
11:27
Speaker 2: play the Hawks, and after the game, Quavo of the
11:31
Speaker 2: great hip hop group Migos comes up to Durant, and Durant,
11:35
Speaker 2: who is like seven feet tall, leans down and takes
11:38
Speaker 2: off his jersey and gives it to Quavo. One of
11:41
Speaker 2: the greatest basketball players in the world, comes to town
11:45
Speaker 2: and pays homage to the king of Atlanta hip hop.
11:49
Speaker 2: The picture goes viral. It's a sensation. In fact, you
11:53
Speaker 2: should look it up for yourself image Google Quavo and
11:57
Speaker 2: Kevin Durant epic pop culture defining moment. Right now, while
12:03
Speaker 2: you're at it, look to the right. You'll see a
12:07
Speaker 2: bunch of people standing in the background. You might have
12:09
Speaker 2: to zoom in a bit. There's a skinny guy wearing
12:13
Speaker 2: a beige jacket, glasses, big head of curly hair. Now
12:18
Speaker 2: who does that look like? Oh yeah, baby, I love Atlanta.
12:24
Speaker 2: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
12:38
Speaker 2: We're back with more of your excellent questions. This one's
12:41
Speaker 2: from Zoe Rattis. At the conclusion of each Revisionist History episode,
12:47
Speaker 2: mister Glapple says original scoring by the next two words
12:51
Speaker 2: could be Leuis Scarra, Louise Sierra, lou Wiscerra, or some
12:58
Speaker 2: other combo I haven't thought of yet. I would like
13:00
Speaker 2: to get in touch with this person, as I think
13:03
Speaker 2: their talents are neat and as an aspiring scorewriter myself,
13:07
Speaker 2: I hope they might share some fun with me about
13:10
Speaker 2: how they came to be in this role. Thank you
13:12
Speaker 2: so much, Zoe, Zoe. I am happy to tell you
13:16
Speaker 2: his name is Luis Gera g u e r r A.
13:21
Speaker 2: He's a musical genius, as should be a parent if
13:24
Speaker 2: you've listened to any episode of this show, and I
13:26
Speaker 2: will let him answer the rest of your questions himself.
13:30
Speaker 6: Well, it's like I would double take to hear Malcolm
13:33
Speaker 6: Gladwell and put musical genius with by my name in
13:36
Speaker 6: the same sentences.
13:37
Speaker 1: A little bit of a what.
13:40
Speaker 6: So I mean that's with that said, my name is
13:43
Speaker 6: Luis Guerra, you could also say Louis Gera. Totally fine.
13:47
Speaker 6: I have two ethnic identities. Go on here, so I
13:50
Speaker 6: do compose music for a living. I'm pushing into my
13:54
Speaker 6: thirtieth year as like a full time musician. So I
13:58
Speaker 6: started really young in my life. I grew up in
14:00
Speaker 6: a family where all of us kids, there was four
14:03
Speaker 6: of us, we were encouraged and required to play a
14:05
Speaker 6: musical instrument, and I sort of jumped around the most.
14:09
Speaker 6: So I start out on drums, went to piano, played
14:12
Speaker 6: a little guitar, and then ended up playing bass, and
14:15
Speaker 6: for whatever reason, stuck with the bass. It wasn't really
14:17
Speaker 6: something that I wanted to do for a career. It
14:20
Speaker 6: was more about, this is a great way to escape
14:25
Speaker 6: things going on in my life. And so then you know,
14:29
Speaker 6: long story short. I moved to Austin, Texas in the
14:32
Speaker 6: early nineties, and artist, musician, whatever, a creative person, you
14:37
Speaker 6: didn't need a lot of money to pay your rent
14:39
Speaker 6: and your bills, okay, So as a young person, that
14:42
Speaker 6: was a great place to actually like just jump into
14:45
Speaker 6: a scene. And I also was a short order line cook,
14:49
Speaker 6: and those two things sort of merged later on in
14:53
Speaker 6: my life because I started realizing that as people would
14:56
Speaker 6: come up and ask for their food to be made,
14:57
Speaker 6: they would also sometimes come and ask for me to
14:59
Speaker 6: make a piece of music, and you know, either one
15:02
Speaker 6: I just would do it podcasting. I was like, I
15:11
Speaker 6: didn't think a whole lot of it, honestly, and it
15:13
Speaker 6: was just something that like I would, you know, occasionally
15:15
Speaker 6: listen to a podcast when I go run or something.
15:17
Speaker 6: But when this came up, I knew that this was
15:19
Speaker 6: going to be a very serious project, and so I
15:23
Speaker 6: was like, heck, yeah, that sounds awesome. The podcast would
15:25
Speaker 6: it's things overlooked right and misunderstood, and I think there's
15:28
Speaker 6: room to explore musical cliches, and so I'm feeling like
15:33
Speaker 6: there's that's sort of the top level down I want
15:36
Speaker 6: to take stereotypical ideas sort of that we're there predictable
15:40
Speaker 6: and start inverting them and like not just remixing them,
15:44
Speaker 6: you know, but actually like really playing with that. Maybe
15:48
Speaker 6: there's three things that come to mind and how I
15:50
Speaker 6: approach it. One, I wanted the music to be transparent.
15:53
Speaker 6: I don't want it to stand out so that it's
15:56
Speaker 6: just overshadowing, right and like overtaking and like wow, that's
15:59
Speaker 6: a really great piece of music or that's a really
16:01
Speaker 6: great sound, but then you forget whatever the topic was.
16:04
Speaker 6: The other one is I wanted to support and evolve
16:06
Speaker 6: and be interesting, so that if you actually do find
16:08
Speaker 6: yourself thinking about the music, you're like, well, what is that?
16:12
Speaker 6: What's the sound? What's going on? And then the other
16:14
Speaker 6: is like, I want it to be flexible. I do
16:17
Speaker 6: imagine this music could be performed live. I've thought about
16:20
Speaker 6: Revision's History. I had this team of producers is like
16:22
Speaker 6: a band. We've been in this band for five years,
16:24
Speaker 6: you know, and sometimes the band gets bigger and more
16:27
Speaker 6: producers step in and they're like, we're all supporting Malcolm,
16:30
Speaker 6: who's the front man. So how do I shape the
16:37
Speaker 6: music to sound to match Malcolm's voice on Revision's History. Well,
16:45
Speaker 6: it's a little trick in composing for media, but every
16:48
Speaker 6: speaker has some sort of tonality to their voice. So
16:53
Speaker 6: if I can find that, then I can actually make
16:55
Speaker 6: things sound more harmonious. But if I wanted to create tension,
16:59
Speaker 6: then I can actually like create you right in a
17:02
Speaker 6: key to be sort of juxtaposed or to clash specifically
17:07
Speaker 6: with the voice. So for malcol voice, there's a few
17:10
Speaker 6: tonal centers that I do. If you listen to Revision's
17:15
Speaker 6: History music, there are tonal centers that I pick frequently
17:18
Speaker 6: that really I feel like support his voice. So there's
17:22
Speaker 6: a mysterious element to this, Right, I want to pull
17:26
Speaker 6: from the cliche that I'm referencing, but I also want
17:30
Speaker 6: it to be done in a revision's history sort of way.
17:33
Speaker 6: So in this situation, there's marimba, right, But a marimba
17:37
Speaker 6: to me, with like a certain amount of delay and
17:39
Speaker 6: reverb is going to put the listener into this zone
17:44
Speaker 6: even if they don't know what, they're going to immediately
17:45
Speaker 6: feel like, hmm, what's going on here?
17:49
Speaker 2: You know?
17:49
Speaker 6: And so it's a device, if you will. And I
17:51
Speaker 6: think that's what composers do. Every day's a new adventure
17:56
Speaker 6: at studio.
17:57
Speaker 1: I can't.
17:57
Speaker 6: I mean, it's I don't know, it's a fun job.
17:59
Speaker 6: I could think of worse things to be doing.
18:02
Speaker 2: Thank you, Louise for five years of making me sound fantastic. Okay,
18:12
Speaker 2: back to listener mail bag. And I have to warn you,
18:14
Speaker 2: you know how like a fleeting moment can inspire a
18:17
Speaker 2: whole novel that takes years to complete. This one is
18:21
Speaker 2: kind of like that. Jonathan Walfitz asks on Twitter, what
18:26
Speaker 2: do you do when you feel like you've reached a
18:28
Speaker 2: dead end in a story. Very very good question, Jonathan.
18:33
Speaker 2: This actually happened to us last season when we were
18:36
Speaker 2: in the middle of doing the episode about the tangled
18:38
Speaker 2: provenance of van Go's Vaz with Carnations. Here's a little
18:43
Speaker 2: piece of that story. In nineteen fifty six, Kirk Douglas
18:47
Speaker 2: started a movie about van Go called Lust for Life.
18:51
Speaker 7: Few people know the real story of this intense, strong
18:54
Speaker 7: willed man. Now his tumultuous career is revealed for the
18:58
Speaker 7: first time with frankness and intimacy, with all that lust
19:02
Speaker 7: for life.
19:03
Speaker 2: If you look at the corner of the movie poster
19:05
Speaker 2: for Lust for Life, there it is Vaz with Carnations.
19:09
Speaker 2: If by then gets it sold it. He didn't hang
19:11
Speaker 2: on to his van Go the way he did his
19:13
Speaker 2: other treasures. It wasn't for him. The painting passed to
19:16
Speaker 2: the heiress to the Kmart fortune, Katherine Kresgy, who, among
19:20
Speaker 2: other things, was once married to a Swedish baron. She
19:23
Speaker 2: convinced him to leave London and come live with her
19:26
Speaker 2: in her native Detroit. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Swedish baron's order
19:31
Speaker 2: for Miss Gresgy did not survive the move to Michigan.
19:35
Speaker 2: When Kresgy died in nineteen ninety, she willed Vaz with
19:38
Speaker 2: Carnations to the Detroit Institute of Arts. She gave it
19:42
Speaker 2: without restriction, meaning the Dea, as it's known, could do
19:45
Speaker 2: with it what they wanted, sell it, trade it. They
19:48
Speaker 2: didn't have to make it part of their permanent collection.
19:51
Speaker 2: Kresgy clearly didn't care any more for the painting than
19:54
Speaker 2: Gets did, and neither did the Dia. They put it
19:58
Speaker 2: in her basement for twenty years. Vincent van Goh painted
20:02
Speaker 2: many remarkable canvasses. This is not one of them. While
20:08
Speaker 2: we were reporting this epit, we had to solve a problem,
20:11
Speaker 2: which was we didn't know whether the van Go was
20:13
Speaker 2: a fake. So I said to my producer, Elouise Linton,
20:17
Speaker 2: can we find out? Thinking foolishly, it would be easy.
20:22
Speaker 2: Eloise starts with a curator at the Detroit Institute of
20:25
Speaker 2: Arts named George, who went on the record years ago
20:29
Speaker 2: to say that he thought Vaz with Carnations was a fake.
20:32
Speaker 4: I call his home in Maine. He doesn't answer. I
20:36
Speaker 4: leave a message. I call again. His wife picks up.
20:41
Speaker 4: I tell her what I'm asking about, and she says
20:44
Speaker 4: they're going on a trip and if I call back.
20:46
Speaker 1: They won't be there.
20:49
Speaker 2: This was the beginning of the pandemic. April, Eloise and
20:53
Speaker 2: I had started having these zoom calls where we shared
20:56
Speaker 2: our frustrations.
20:57
Speaker 8: That's one little weird fact. Number One, he's retired, he's
21:03
Speaker 8: living in Maine. He doesn't want to talk about a
21:05
Speaker 8: painting that he neither liked nor thought was real.
21:09
Speaker 9: Next, what was next? What happened next?
21:11
Speaker 2: Then Eloise tries a prominent art journalist who'd written extensively
21:16
Speaker 2: about Bengo. As soon as she mentions Vaz with Carnations,
21:20
Speaker 2: the guy disappears. Then she just starts calling up big
21:23
Speaker 2: name Bengo experts, one after another, same thing.
21:27
Speaker 4: I told him I was thinking about Days of Carnations,
21:30
Speaker 4: and he stopped replying, and then I followed up two
21:33
Speaker 4: weeks later because someone had recommended.
21:35
Speaker 10: I talked to him and.
21:38
Speaker 4: He said that he would speak to me this morning,
21:42
Speaker 4: and then when I called his office, they said he
21:46
Speaker 4: wasn't there, and then I emailed him and he never responded.
21:50
Speaker 2: Understand, this is not the Mona Lisa we're talking about.
21:54
Speaker 2: Vaz with Carnations is a third rate. Maybe Bengo. It
21:59
Speaker 2: spent much of its life over the past few decades
22:02
Speaker 2: in the basement of the Detroit Institute of Arts and
22:05
Speaker 2: also understand that we're doing this reporting while the entire
22:08
Speaker 2: world is at home. Do you know how easy it
22:11
Speaker 2: is to get people to talk during lockdown. It's been
22:14
Speaker 2: the most fantastic stretch of reporting in my thirty five
22:18
Speaker 2: years in journalism. I could get the Pope on the
22:20
Speaker 2: phone if I want it, because he's sitting in his
22:23
Speaker 2: palazzo like everyone else doing nothing but watching Italian Netflix.
22:28
Speaker 2: Everyone was available except art people.
22:33
Speaker 8: I talked to the lawyer on the other side of
22:34
Speaker 8: that controversy and he says insists everything has to be
22:38
Speaker 8: on background, and then sends me this long email in
22:42
Speaker 8: which he tells me something that it's like totally obvious,
22:44
Speaker 8: like I could have gotten off Wikipedia and says, you
22:48
Speaker 8: can use that, but only on background.
22:50
Speaker 9: This is this random painting which isn't any good, which
22:56
Speaker 9: we thought was fake for years and years and years,
22:58
Speaker 9: and the whole world doesn't want to talk about it,
23:00
Speaker 9: not even till little old us. Yeah, who knows what
23:05
Speaker 9: I mean.
23:06
Speaker 4: I can't understand why unless we're just being part of
23:10
Speaker 4: me thinks that we're just alone and quarantined and becoming
23:13
Speaker 4: paranoid or something.
23:15
Speaker 2: Finally, Eloise finds a Ango expert named David Brooks who
23:20
Speaker 2: spells it out for us.
23:21
Speaker 11: Yeah, everybody kind of walks on eggshells when it comes
23:23
Speaker 11: to the fakes topic, and rightfully so. I don't really
23:28
Speaker 11: say much about it, and the Vango Museum is always
23:31
Speaker 11: very careful. For example, I'll even say to my friend,
23:35
Speaker 11: my contact at the Vango Museum, such and such work.
23:38
Speaker 11: I mean, people have questioned it, what do you think?
23:41
Speaker 11: And my friend will say, we have no opinion. We
23:44
Speaker 11: simply can't express an opinion unless they're officially called on
23:49
Speaker 11: to do an investigation and to properly study the work.
23:53
Speaker 11: They're Switzerland. They just remain neutral, and that's a smart move.
23:57
Speaker 11: It makes life easier for them.
24:00
Speaker 4: Why why is it such a use I think you
24:03
Speaker 4: called it a firecracker topic.
24:06
Speaker 9: It is.
24:07
Speaker 11: It's a firecracker topic, and again one that I've avoided
24:12
Speaker 11: over the years because I just don't need the grief.
24:15
Speaker 2: The art world is a collection of people with a
24:18
Speaker 2: great deal of knowledge about art who, on the question
24:21
Speaker 2: of fakes, whether knowledge might be useful, declined to use
24:24
Speaker 2: their knowledge. Then, don't want to be the one who
24:27
Speaker 2: reigns on someone's parade by telling them that their prized
24:31
Speaker 2: van Go was actually painted by like some dude in
24:33
Speaker 2: Cleveland in the nineteen seventies. This is like doctors who
24:37
Speaker 2: are happy to tell you that you're healthy, but would
24:39
Speaker 2: rather not break the news to you that you're sick.
24:43
Speaker 2: So finally Eloise tracks down a data scientist at a
24:47
Speaker 2: university in Holland named Eric Postma.
24:50
Speaker 10: I was working on in the old days of computer vision,
24:53
Speaker 10: before the time of deep learning. There was this challenge
24:57
Speaker 10: to recognize visual texture, and I was I had a
25:01
Speaker 10: visitor to Ango Museum there was a kind of Impressionist
25:04
Speaker 10: paintings exhibit, and then an idea to create a data
25:08
Speaker 10: set from paintings because they all have these different visual textures.
25:12
Speaker 2: Basically, Postma trains his AI program to match the patterns
25:17
Speaker 2: of authenticated ven goes against unverified ven goes. So Alois
25:23
Speaker 2: sends him an image of us with carnations, and a
25:26
Speaker 2: few weeks later he calls with the results.
25:29
Speaker 10: To make it very concrete, I take blocks of two
25:31
Speaker 10: hundred and fifty six by two hundred fifty six pixels
25:35
Speaker 10: and I look at each block in the in the
25:37
Speaker 10: image and compared and try to classify that as real
25:42
Speaker 10: fango or none vango. And what I see in many
25:46
Speaker 10: paintings that I know are fango's I always see, Okay,
25:49
Speaker 10: it's about seventy to eighty percent of the surface is
25:52
Speaker 10: classified as fango, but in this particular case, it's fifty
25:57
Speaker 10: to fifty. It's really fifty to fifty. I replicated that
26:01
Speaker 10: several times I changed the data set. Normally I would
26:04
Speaker 10: like to have multiple copies of reproductions, but this suggests
26:10
Speaker 10: to me that it's not clearly if I'm GO and
26:13
Speaker 10: not clearly a non FuMO. It's something in between, which
26:17
Speaker 10: is not very helpful, of course, but it's the first
26:19
Speaker 10: time that I have such a clear code whey, where
26:21
Speaker 10: it's really balanced. It's really fifty to fifty.
26:24
Speaker 2: I mean, how perfect is that?
26:27
Speaker 1: Fifty to fifty.
26:28
Speaker 2: Then Postma comes back to us and says, actually, upon
26:31
Speaker 2: re analysis, I think the flowers are real, but maybe
26:34
Speaker 2: the background is not. We spared you all this in
26:38
Speaker 2: the original episode because we found a better story to tell,
26:42
Speaker 2: but at least you know how I came to the
26:44
Speaker 2: conclusion that I did, which is the art world is nuts.
26:48
Speaker 2: The only person who would actually discuss the authenticity of
26:52
Speaker 2: oz wasn't someone in the art world. It was a
26:55
Speaker 2: data scientist, for goodness sake, an outsider who uses AI
26:59
Speaker 2: to analyze pixels, and poor Eric Postma is left spending
27:03
Speaker 2: his days dealing with crazy art world types clutching would
27:07
Speaker 2: be masterpieces.
27:09
Speaker 10: Even people that wanted to put their painting in my computer.
27:11
Speaker 4: Literally, what do you mean, oh that physical painting?
27:16
Speaker 1: Yeah?
27:16
Speaker 10: They called me, so, yeah, I'm my painting. Can I
27:18
Speaker 10: put it in your computer? I said, yeah, what do
27:21
Speaker 10: you mean? I can bring it to you? And is
27:23
Speaker 10: there an opening in your computer that I can put
27:25
Speaker 10: it in? The Really people were strange people.
27:29
Speaker 2: Pretty sure this will be my last episode on the
27:33
Speaker 2: Art World. We're back with more of your insightful listener questions.
27:45
Speaker 2: Aaron Klanderman at Clandera asks love to hear more about
27:50
Speaker 2: your running obsession. Smiley face, what's your routine? Got some
27:54
Speaker 2: good shoe recommendations? Okay, Ultra shoes, tracksmith gear. My favorite
28:01
Speaker 2: thing in the world is group track workouts. But sadly,
28:03
Speaker 2: since COVID, my only running partner has been the thirteen
28:06
Speaker 2: year old son of my friends, who is super speedy
28:09
Speaker 2: and completely plays me. Pretends he's all exhausted and then
28:12
Speaker 2: destroys me on the final interval. Speaking of Tracksmith, you
28:16
Speaker 2: may have heard some of their ads on Revisionist History.
28:19
Speaker 2: I'm a huge fan of their stuff, wear it all
28:21
Speaker 2: the time. And a few weeks ago, the founder of
28:24
Speaker 2: Tracksmith asked me could he convince me to write the
28:27
Speaker 2: copy for an ad they were making, And I said sure,
28:30
Speaker 2: because I don't know if you know this, but my
28:32
Speaker 2: ambition coming out of college was to be a copywriter.
28:35
Speaker 2: I applied to twenty eight ad agencies and got twenty
28:38
Speaker 2: eight rejection letters, which I put on the wall of
28:40
Speaker 2: my dorm room. So I'm a frustrated ad guy deep down.
28:44
Speaker 2: That's my core identity, which is why I sometimes go
28:48
Speaker 2: a little crazy on the ads I do for Revisionist History.
28:51
Speaker 2: Do you remember Horace Throgbottom of the law firm throg Bottom,
28:56
Speaker 2: throg Bottom and Throgbottom. That was a character I cooked
28:59
Speaker 2: up with my producer Jacob Smith for zip Recruiter. Really
29:07
Speaker 2: and where do you work now?
29:09
Speaker 11: Started?
29:09
Speaker 9: I'm a partner at a throg Bottom and throg Bottom.
29:12
Speaker 2: Horrse, my man, let's drink to.
29:14
Speaker 9: Your future chinchin.
29:18
Speaker 2: If your horse cab at throg Bottom the first It's
29:22
Speaker 2: easy to figure out who to hire. But if your
29:25
Speaker 2: last name is in throg Bottom, you need zip recruiter.
29:29
Speaker 2: The point is the head of some little startup who
29:32
Speaker 2: makes my favorite running stuff comes to me and says,
29:35
Speaker 2: do you want to help? Out of course I'm going
29:37
Speaker 2: to say yes. So here it is the video of
29:40
Speaker 2: this is a couple of runners, including the great Mary Kine,
29:43
Speaker 2: running through darkened, lonely streets. You could always stay in bed,
29:51
Speaker 2: pull up the covers, pour a stiff drink, order in worry.
29:57
Speaker 2: You could always let someone else take on the world.
30:01
Speaker 2: Actors playing heroes, pounding soundtrack, that thing where they take
30:05
Speaker 2: on great risks, only it's all made up. But then
30:12
Speaker 2: who would you be? Or you could say to the world,
30:18
Speaker 2: I have all I need. I have movement, breath, lungs, daydreams,
30:33
Speaker 2: I have running. Running is a gift. It's so emotional.
30:46
Speaker 2: It's like the email Malcolm Gladwell, is anyone still listening
30:52
Speaker 2: at Harsha Shroud asks higher percentile your mild time for
30:57
Speaker 2: your age group or your l SAT score. There were
31:00
Speaker 2: actually a bunch of questions like this at Production Labs.
31:04
Speaker 2: Writes hello from Germany, what did you score on the
31:08
Speaker 2: l SAT in the Puzzle Rush episode. I get this
31:12
Speaker 2: question all the time.
31:13
Speaker 1: Now.
31:14
Speaker 2: Back in season four, my then assistant Camille Baptista, and
31:17
Speaker 2: I took the ELSAT not to become lawyers, no, just
31:22
Speaker 2: to see whether a young, brainy whipper snapper like Camille
31:26
Speaker 2: was a match for a savvy, grizzled veteran like me.
31:30
Speaker 2: And at the end of a two episode arc with
31:33
Speaker 2: so much ridiculous build up, I refuse to reveal what
31:37
Speaker 2: our scores were, which apparently left many in the revisionist
31:40
Speaker 2: history universe up in arms. But wait, the whole point
31:46
Speaker 2: of the episode was the standardized tests like the el
31:48
Speaker 2: SAT don't tell us anything meaningful. If you tell someone
31:52
Speaker 2: your score, you're complicit in the scam. Don't ask, don't tell.
31:58
Speaker 2: But we did get one very charming email on the
32:01
Speaker 2: subject from Joan Riddle Steinmann, who teaches choir at Paradigm
32:06
Speaker 2: High School in Salt Lake City. Steinmann wrote a whole
32:10
Speaker 2: song inspired by our l SAT episodes. I'm not kidding.
32:14
Speaker 2: It's called a SCANTRONA day keeps all learning at bay.
32:19
Speaker 2: She said she was coming to New York with her
32:21
Speaker 2: choir and could they perform it for us. This is
32:23
Speaker 2: what she wrote we twenty four singers, four parent chaperones,
32:28
Speaker 2: myself and our school principal would love to sing to him,
32:32
Speaker 2: meaning me we can meet him outside a coffee shop
32:36
Speaker 2: or anywhere and sing the song a cappella. Sadly, because
32:41
Speaker 2: of COVID, the meeting never happened, so we're going to
32:45
Speaker 2: play the song for you now.
32:50
Speaker 9: B C DCAC.
32:59
Speaker 7: DCB Please mark etes.
33:06
Speaker 3: Ictg Hoy, Stuff Katan g, Martin Elsa.
33:11
Speaker 2: And staff A SCANTRONA Day is part of Steinmann's musical
33:15
Speaker 2: Solve for X, which you can check out at Solve
33:19
Speaker 2: for x musical dot com. You want to get on
33:23
Speaker 2: my good side, write me songs, Joanes Steinmann, you are
33:27
Speaker 2: a genius, proof that sometimes good things happen outside of Atlanta.
33:33
Speaker 6: Fav and just market every time.
33:39
Speaker 2: That's all, ladies and gentlemen, stay safe, have a wonderful
33:43
Speaker 2: holiday and see you for season six of Revision's History
33:48
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty one. Revisions His He is produced by
34:10
Speaker 2: Mia LaBelle and le Mingestu with Jacob Smith, Eloise Linton,
34:14
Speaker 2: Kobe Guildford and ann An Aim. Our editor is Julia Barton.
34:19
Speaker 2: Original scoring by the Great Luis Kara Ge You E
34:23
Speaker 2: R R A mastering by Flawn Williams. Special thanks to
34:28
Speaker 2: the Pushkin Crew head a Fine, Carlei Migliori, Maya Knig,
34:32
Speaker 2: Maggie Taylor, Eric Sandler, Jason Cambrell, Martine Gonzalez, and of
34:38
Speaker 2: course l Hafe Jacob Westbrook.
34:42
Speaker 1: I'm mocol Bubble.
34:50
Speaker 9: Put your pencils down.
34:54
Speaker 3: Now.
34:55
Speaker 2: I have to sing Little Feed, But I've forgotten and
34:59
Speaker 2: I realized that what I thought with the lyrics to
35:01
Speaker 2: Little Feed, we're not the lyrics A little feet. I
35:04
Speaker 2: thought it was, Oh Atlanta, I hear you calling.
35:06
Speaker 1: It's not.
35:08
Speaker 2: You don't know the song?
35:10
Speaker 9: You guys?
35:11
Speaker 2: Do you guys know the song?
35:14
Speaker 7: What?
35:15
Speaker 2: What's the what's the Are you serious, Eloise?
35:19
Speaker 11: Do you know it? Oh?
35:21
Speaker 2: My god, came up hold on, I.
35:27
Speaker 3: Said, Oh Atlanta, Oh Atlanta, I got.
35:34
Speaker 2: To get back. Well, we'll do this later, I said.
35:42
Speaker 3: I said, Oh Atlanta, oh Atlanta, I got to get
35:48
Speaker 3: back to you, all right,