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