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