SPEAKER_16: Pushkin.
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SPEAKER_16: Welcome to the bonus holiday special Atlanta themed edition of Revisionist History, Part 2. A word before we begin. There is no overarching theme to what follows. No beginning, no middle, no end. No single compelling through line. My editor, Julia Barton, who is normally lovely, actually got all grumpy about doing this episode. So grumpy, in fact, that I thought I should let her put in her two cents before we get going.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, I thought about it some more. Happy holidays, Malcolm. From here on out, you're on your own.
SPEAKER_15: All right, all right, all right. Here's my feeling.
SPEAKER_16: If there is anything in the world that unites my fellow Revisionist historians, it is our endless appetite for wandering down empty corridors. And poking through the cobwebs of the half-baked and the marginal. By the way, do you have anything better to do? No you don't. And nor do I. I've been cooped up in my house for nine months and I'm losing my mind.
SPEAKER_16: And dreaming of Atlanta. So, I'm just going to answer a few more random questions from you, my listeners. Lucas Nicholson asks on Twitter, what's your favorite memory of your father? Okay, as you know, my dad comes up on this show every now and again. I like to refer to him as the patron saint of Revisionist history because, among other things, Graham Gladwell was a deeply mischievous man. In a way that we strive every day to emulate here at Pushkin. Oh, I should point out, why do we call Pushkin, Pushkin? Not because we have some pretentious intellectual connection to the famous Russian poet. Well, kind of. It's half of it. The other half is, Graham Gladwell named our family's first dog growing up, Pushkin.
SPEAKER_16: A floppy-eared shepherd lab mix. And I've always loved the name. My dad also named his garden rototiller Alexander, after Alexander the Great. And his garden cart Rufus, after the English king, King William II, otherwise known as William Rufus. He really liked to name things. My dad was English. In the 1950s, he meets my mother, they get married, and a few years later, they move back to Jamaica, where my mother is from. And my father teaches mathematics at the University of the West Indies. Uy, as it's called, in Kingston, Jamaica. Parenthetically, while he's there, who does he meet and try to encourage to take mathematics? Donald Harris. Father of future vice president, Kamala Harris. Small world. Anyway. So my dad is working on some crazily complex bit of math. And this is before the internet, of course. If you needed to read some crucial bit of scholarship, you had to go to an actual library. And he realizes the closest library that has the books he needs is at Georgia Tech, in Atlanta. So he writes the chair of the math department at Georgia Tech. Can I come and use your library? Stay on campus for a bit while I do my research? They say, of course. He starts to plan his trip. Boat from Kingston to Miami. Bus from Miami to Georgia. This is 1959. Georgia Tech is still a segregated institution. And the administration realizes that the head of the math department has just extended an invitation to a professor from the University of the West Indies. A place chock full of black people. Panic sweeps through Georgia Tech. They start calling around other math departments. Does anyone know a Graham Gladwell? No one does. Because my dad is 25 years old. He's a nobody. Finally, just before my dad is about to leave Jamaica, they manage to reach him by phone. Professor Gladwell, I have an important question for you. Are you white? My father says, why, yes I am. And the Georgia Tech guy says, oh thank God.
SPEAKER_16: Now, my dad doesn't say anything at the time, because that's the way he was, a poker face. But when he finally gets to Atlanta, a bunch of people from the university take him out to dinner. And he announces to the group, gentlemen, I've just gotten married. I want you to see a picture of my lovely bride. And passes a photo of Joyce Gladwell, sister, around the table. I think you can see why he's the patron saint of revisionist history.
SPEAKER_16: It's funny, I hadn't thought about that story for a long time, but Lucas Nicholson's question inspired me to do a follow-up. So a few weeks ago, I called up the Dean of Computer Science at Georgia Tech, an artificial intelligence researcher named Charles Isbell. I'm going to warn you, this is a tangent. But as Hyman Roth said to Michael Corleone, tangents are the business we've chosen. Tell me a little bit about your own, are you from Atlanta?
SPEAKER_13: Yes, well, as you can tell by my accent, I'm from Chattanooga, Tennessee, but my earliest memory is arriving in Atlanta on a moving truck at the age of three. So I think of myself as being from Atlanta.
SPEAKER_16: And did you go to do your undergrad at Georgia Tech? I did my undergrad at Georgia Tech and I did my master's and PhD at MIT.
SPEAKER_16: Oh, I see. So, but you are a, you consider yourself, you're in Atlanta and... Oh, yes. Through and through. Isbell then told me the following story.
SPEAKER_13: We started the first online Master's of Science in Computer Science from a large elite university. Give you a sense of scale of that, we had zero students. And as of this past semester, we have about 11,000. So we went from zero to 11,000 in less than six years.
SPEAKER_16: For around six and a half thousand dollars, you can now get a Master's of Computer Science from Georgia Tech online, as opposed to the $46,000 it would cost you on campus. Same professors, same course materials, same academic standards.
SPEAKER_13: So once you accept this larger idea, you start asking yourself, okay, well, if we want to educate everyone, if we want to truly be accessible and live up to this idea, then where can we go? Who can we talk to? So I took a trip for somewhat unrelated reasons to Kenya and visited Kenya, ended up visiting Nigeria and a few other countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and started meeting with people there. And I came to the conclusion that this is a population where you have a large amount of untapped talent, people who are really interested in figuring out how to get formal education in computing and in computer science.
SPEAKER_16: Isbell and his colleagues began traveling to Africa all the time. Their goal is to make Georgia Tech the world's number one educator of IT talent in Sub-Saharan Africa. Does it make a difference that you're an African American when you're making this case for Georgia Tech in Africa?
SPEAKER_13: I think it does. Certainly the conversations I've had make me think that it does. I think people are excited that there's someone over here who wants to have those conversations.
SPEAKER_16: Then I told Isbell the story about my dad. I feel like there's something personal he would have been so happy to hear about what's happening now at Georgia Tech, but just this wonderful story about how in the space of 60 years, the institution has gone from turning its back on people, even if they suspect them of being black, to like opening up its doors to Sub-Saharan Africa. I think that's, I don't know, I was moved. Well, you know, I'm glad to hear you say that.
SPEAKER_13: It's actually a remarkable thing, particularly when you put it like that.
SPEAKER_16: Today Georgia Tech is one of the largest producers of black engineers, Hispanic engineers, and Asian engineers in the country. It has more black undergrads who go on to do PhDs in computer science than any other American university.
SPEAKER_13: Yeah, you know, I have these, I talk to people all the time and they ask me about my life story and the things that I've gone through, positive and negative. And I was having this conversation with someone the other day and I was telling about interactions I've had with the police in my younger days that didn't go very well and things people had said to me over the years. And I started talking about what I was hoping was going to happen for the future and someone said to me, well, you know, you seem very optimistic and hopeful. And I thought about it and I thought, you know, it's true. In the end, I'm optimistic and hopeful. I do like the idea that, you know, within a generation, and it's certainly a place like Atlanta, there's a reason why I love the city.
SPEAKER_16: And I saw on your website that you do, I don't know, you still do, but hip hop reviews on this, I mean, this is the most Atlanta thing I've ever heard in my life. The AI professor at Georgia Tech who does hip hop stuff on the side.
SPEAKER_13: Yes, I've been a huge fan of hip hop since the very beginning. Well, certainly the modern hip hop era since the very beginning. I did an online hip hop award show for about eight years for a while there. I had the first online black history database.
SPEAKER_16: And I saw on your lab page, everyone gets a P-Funk name?
SPEAKER_13: P-Funk being, of course, the nickname of Parliament Funkadelic, the legendary funk band started
SPEAKER_16: by George Clinton. On Isabelle's laboratory website, it reads, the P in P-Funk stands for probabilistic. As for the funk, it stands for many things as well it should. Specific interpretations are left as an exercise for the reader. You are atomic dog. You would have to be atomic dog. Of course I'm atomic dog. There's no other option.
SPEAKER_13: How much do I love Atlanta?
SPEAKER_16: All right. RogerNation24 asks on Twitter, why have you never made an episode about Kanye West? His career trajectory seems like the perfect fit for your podcast. Very very good question, RogerNation24. Let's put it this way. It's not for lack of trying because no one likes a celebrity hang more than me. I once met David Hasselhoff in Sweden of all places. Got a selfie with him. And if you look at the photo, I have this big stupid grin on my face like I'm the happiest I've ever been in my life for the Hoff.
SPEAKER_16: But I have a better story. Which also, and you're not going to believe this, involves my favorite city, Atlanta. So a couple years ago, when Kevin Durant was still with the Golden State Warriors, they came to Atlanta to play the Hawks. And after the game, Quavo of the great hip hop group Migos comes up to Durant. And Durant, who is like seven feet tall, leans down and takes off his jersey and gives it to Quavo. One of the greatest basketball players in the world comes to town and pays homage to the King of Atlanta hip hop. The picture goes viral. It's a sensation. In fact, you should look it up for yourself. Image Google Quavo and Kevin Durant. Epic pop culture defining moment, right? Now while you're at it, look to the right. You'll see a bunch of people standing in the background. You might have to zoom in a bit. There's a skinny guy wearing a beige jacket, glasses, big head of curly hair. Now who does that look like? Oh yeah, baby! I love Atlanta. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor.
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SPEAKER_16: Do you know that right now, as you listen to this, there's an astronaut named Frank Rubio in some tiny spacecraft way, way up there in space. He left for the International Space Station in September of last year, thought he was going for six months. And then once he was up there, NASA called him up and said, actually, Frank, we want you out there for a year, 371 days to be exact. My question is, if you're NASA and you pull that bait and switch once, how do you recruit the next crop of astronauts? I mean, you say to your recruits, I need you to leave your family and friends and everything you know and love dearly, eat food out of a tube, but only for six months. And they're like, wait, look at Frank. That's what you told him. And he's still up there. Recruiting for astronauts, if you're NASA, is hard. If only there was some sophisticated job recruiting site capable of finding those few Americans who are perfectly happy to float around in space for an undetermined length of time. Sadly for NASA, there's no such tool, but for the rest of us, oh yes, there is. Zip recruiter. New hires cost on average $4,700 for all of us non-spaceflight companies. And with that kind of money at stake, you have to get it right. So what's the most effective way to find the right people for your roles? Zip recruiter. See for yourself. Right now you can try it for free at ziprecruiter.com slash Gladwell and experience the value Zip Recruiter brings to hiring. Once you post your job, Zip Recruiter's smart technology works quickly to identify people whose skills and experience line up with exactly what you want. It's simple. Zip Recruiter helps you get hiring right. Four out of five employers who post on Zip Recruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. See for yourself. Go to this exclusive web address to try Zip Recruiter for free before you commit. Ziprecruiter.com slash Gladwell. Again, that's ziprecruiter.com slash G-L-A-D-W-E-L-L. Zip Recruiter, the smartest way to hire. Somewhere out there, believe it or not, there's someone who wants Frank Rubio's job.
SPEAKER_16: Let's talk about Pandora's box. According to Greek mythology, Pandora was given a box from the gods that contained special gifts, but they forbade her from opening it. In the end, Pandora's curiosity got the best of her. She opened the box, thereby unleashing curses upon mankind. Cut to 3,000 years later, and we could very well be talking about the story of those mattresses in a box. You know what I'm talking about. They promised something special inside, but in the end, many would say it's a curse. After all, they're just glorified slabs of foam that are crushed, crammed into a box, and then left on your doorstep. If you want a mattress that feels like a true gift from the gods, consider a Saatva luxury mattress. Saatvas don't come in a box. That kind of quality simply can't be crammed into a cardboard container. What's more, Saatva will set up your new mattress for you, and take your old one at no extra charge. If history has taught us anything, it's do not open Pandora's box. And right now, you'll save $200 on $1,000 or more at saatva.com slash Gladwell. That's S-A-A-T-V-A dot com slash Gladwell.
SPEAKER_16: We're back with more of your excellent questions. This one's from Zoe Radice. At the conclusion of each revisionist history episode, Mr. Gladwell says, original scoring by. The next two words could be Luis Skara, Louise Sierra, Lou Wiskara, or some other combo I haven't thought of yet. I would like to get in touch with this person, as I think their talents are neat. And as an aspiring score writer myself, I hope they might share some info with me about how they came to be in this role. Thank you so much, Zoe. Zoe, I am happy to tell you, his name is Luis Guerra, G-U-E-R-R-A. He's a musical genius, as should be apparent if you've listened to any episode of the show. And I will let him answer the rest of your questions himself. Well, it's like I would double take to hear Malcolm Gladwell and put musical genius with
SPEAKER_12: by my name in the same sentence as a little bit of a but. So I mean, that's what that said. My name is Luis Guerra. You could also say Luis Guerra, totally fine. I have two ethnic identities going here. So I do compose music for a living. I'm pushing into my 30th year as like a full time musician. So I started really young in my life. I grew up in a family where all of us kids, there was four of us, we were encouraged and required to play a musical instrument and I sort of jumped around the most. So I started out on drums, went to piano, played a little guitar and then ended up playing bass and for whatever reason stuck with the bass. It wasn't really something that I wanted to do for a career. It was more about this is a great way to escape things going on in my life. So then, long story short, I moved to Austin, Texas in the early 90s. And artist, musician, whatever, creative person, you didn't need a lot of money to pay your rent and your bills. So as a young person, that was a great place to actually like, just jump into a scene. And I also was a short order line cook. And those two things sort of merged at later on in my life, because I started realizing that as people would come up and ask for their food to be made, they would also sometimes come and ask for me to make a piece of music. And, you know, either one, I just would do it. Podcasting wasn't like, I didn't think a whole lot of it, honestly. And it was just something that like, I would, you know, occasionally listen to a podcast when I go run or something. But when this came up, I knew that this was going to be a very serious project. And so I was like, heck, yeah, that sounds awesome. The podcast would it's things overlooked, right and misunderstood. And I think there's room to explore musical cliches. And so I'm feeling like there's that's sort of the top level down, I want to take stereotypical ideas sort of that where they're predictable and start inverting them and like, not just remixing them, you know, but actually like really playing with that. Maybe there's three things that come to mind and how I approach it. One, I wanted the music to be transparent, I don't want it to stand out so that it's just overshadowing, right? And like overtaking and like, wow, that's a really great piece of music. That's a really great sound. But then you forget whatever the topic was. The other one is I wanted to support and evolve and be interesting so that if you actually do find yourself thinking about the music, you're like, well, what is that? What's the sound? What's going on? And then the other is like, I want it to be flexible. I do imagine this music could be performed live. I've thought about Revisionist History and this team of producers is like a band. We've been in this band for five years, you know, and sometimes the band gets bigger and more producers step in and they're like, we're all supporting Malcolm, who's the front man. So how do I shape the music to sound to match Malcolm's voice on Revisionist History? Well, it's a little trick in composing for media, but every speaker has some sort of tonality to their voice. So if I can find that, then I can actually make things sound more harmonious. But if I wanted to create tension, then I can actually like write in a key to be sort of juxtaposed or to clash specifically with the voice. So for Malcolm's voice, there's a few tonal centers that I do. If you listen to Revisionist History music, there are tonal centers that I pick frequently that really I feel like support his voice. So there's a mysterious element to this, right? I want to pull from the cliche that I'm referencing, but I also want it to be done in a Revisionist History sort of way. So in this situation, there's marimba, right? So if you put a marimba to me with like a certain amount of delay and reverb is going to put the listener into this zone, even if they don't know it, they're going to immediately feel like, hmm, what's going on here? And so it's a device, if you will. And I think that's what composers do. Every day is a new adventure at the studio. I can't, I mean, it's, I don't know, it's a fun job. I could think of worse things to be doing.
SPEAKER_16: Thank you, Luis, for five years of making me sound fantastic. Okay, back to listener mailbag. And I have to warn you, you know how like a fleeting moment can inspire a whole novel that takes years to complete? This one is kind of like that. Jonathan Walfitz asks on Twitter, what do you do when you feel like you've reached a dead end in a story? Very, very good question, Jonathan. This actually happened to us last season, when we were in the middle of doing the episode about the tangled provenance of Van Gogh's vase with carnations. Here's a little piece of that story. In 1956, Kirk Douglas starred in a movie about Van Gogh called Lust for Life.
SPEAKER_01: Few people know the real story of this intense, strong-willed man. Now his tumultuous career is revealed for the first time with frankness and intimacy. With all that lust for life.
SPEAKER_16: If you look at the corner of the movie poster for Lust for Life, there it is, vase with carnations. But by then, Goetzert sold it. He didn't hang on to his Van Gogh the way he did his other treasures. It wasn't for him. The painting passed to the heiress to the Kmart fortune, Katherine Kresge, who among other things was once married to a Swedish baron. She convinced him to leave London and come live with her in her native Detroit. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Swedish baron's order for Miss Kresge did not survive the move to Michigan. When Kresge died in 1990, she willed vase with carnations to the Detroit Institute of Arts. She gave it without restriction, meaning the DIA, as it's known, could do with it what they wanted. Sell it. Trade it. They didn't have to make it part of their permanent collection. Kresge clearly didn't care anymore for the painting than Goetz did. And neither did the DIA. They put it in their basement for 20 years. Vincent Van Gogh painted many remarkable canvases. This is not one of them. While we were reporting this episode, we had to solve a problem, which was we didn't know whether the Van Gogh was a fake. So I said to my producer, Eloise Linton, can we find out? Thinking foolishly. It would be easy. Eloise starts with a curator at the Detroit Institute of Arts named George, who went on the record years ago to say that he thought vase with carnations was a fake.
SPEAKER_05: I call his home in Maine. He doesn't answer. I leave a message. I call again. His wife picks up. I tell her what I'm asking about. And she says, they're going on a trip. And if I call back, they won't be there.
SPEAKER_16: This was the beginning of the pandemic, April. Eloise and I had started having these Zoom calls where we shared our frustrations.
SPEAKER_14: That's one little weird fact number one. He's retired. He's living in Maine. He doesn't want to talk about a painting that he neither liked nor thought was real. Okay, next. What was next? What happened next?
SPEAKER_16: Then Eloise tries a prominent art journalist who'd written extensively about Van Gogh. As soon as she mentions vase with carnations, the guy disappears. Then she just starts calling up big name Van Gogh experts one after another. Same thing.
SPEAKER_05: I told him I was thinking about vase with carnations and he stopped replying. And then I followed up two weeks later because someone had recommended I talk to him. And he said that he would speak to me this morning. And then when I called his office, they said he wasn't there. And then I emailed him and he never responded.
SPEAKER_16: Understand, this is not the Mona Lisa we're talking about. Vase with carnations is a third rate, maybe Van Gogh. It spent much of its life over the past few decades in the basement of the Detroit Institute of Arts. And also understand that we're doing this reporting while the entire world is at home. Do you know how easy it is to get people to talk during lockdown? It's been the most fantastic stretch of reporting in my 35 years in journalism. I could get the Pope on the phone if I wanted because he's sitting in his palazzo like everyone else doing nothing but watching Italian Netflix. Everyone was available except art people. I talked to the lawyer on the other side of that controversy and he insists everything has to be on background and then sends me this long email in which he tells me stuff
SPEAKER_14: that's like totally obvious. I could have gotten off Wikipedia and says you can use that but only on background. This is this random painting which isn't any good, which we thought was fake for years and years and years. And the whole world doesn't want to talk about it. Not even to little old us.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, who knows why? I mean, I can't understand why. Unless we're just being, part of me thinks that we're just alone and quarantined and becoming paranoid or something.
SPEAKER_16: Finally Eloise finds a Van Gogh expert named David Brooks who spells it out for us.
SPEAKER_10: Yeah, everybody kind of walks on eggshells when it comes to the fakes topic and rightfully so. I don't really say much about it. And the Van Gogh Museum is always very careful. For example, I'll even say to my friend, my contact at the Van Gogh Museum, such and such work. I mean, people have questioned it. What do you think? And my friend will say, we have no opinion. We simply can't express an opinion. Unless they're officially called on to do an investigation and to properly study the work, they're Switzerland. They just remain neutral. And that's a smart move. It makes life easier for them.
SPEAKER_04: Why? Why is it such a, I think you called it a firecracker topic.
SPEAKER_10: It is. It's a firecracker topic. And again, one that I've avoided over the years because I just don't need the grief.
SPEAKER_16: The art world is a collection of people with a great deal of knowledge about art who on the question of fakes, whether knowledge might be useful, declined to use their knowledge. They don't want to be the one who rains on someone's parade by telling them that their prized Van Gogh was actually painted by like some dude in Cleveland in the 1970s. This is like doctors who are happy to tell you that you're healthy, but would rather not break the news to you that you're sick. So finally, Eloise tracks down a data scientist at a university in Holland named Eric Postma.
SPEAKER_07: I was working on in the old days of computer vision before the time of deep learning, there was this challenge to recognize visual texture. And I was I had visited the Van Gogh Museum. There was a kind of impressionist paintings exhibit. And then I had the idea to create a data set from paintings because they all have these different visual textures.
SPEAKER_16: Basically, Postma trains his AI program to match the patterns of authenticated Van Goghs against unverified Van Goghs. So Eloise sends him an image of Vause with carnations. And a few weeks later, he calls with the results.
SPEAKER_07: To make it very concrete, I take blocks of 256 by 256 pixels. And I look at each block in the image and compare it and try to classify that as real Van Gogh or non-Van Gogh. And what I see in many paintings that I know are Van Goghs, I always see, OK, it's about 70 to 80 percent of the surface is classified as Van Gogh. But in this particular case, it's 50-50. It's really 50-50. I replicated that several times. I changed the data set. Normally, I would like to have multiple copies of reproductions. But this suggests to me that it's not clearly a Van Gogh and it's also not clearly a non-Van Gogh. It's something in between, which is not very helpful, of course. But it's the first time that I have such a clear code where it's really balanced. It's really 50-50.
SPEAKER_16: I mean, how perfect is that? 50-50. Then Postma comes back to us and says, actually, upon reanalysis, I think the flowers are real, but maybe the background is not. We spared you all this in the original episode because we found a better story to tell. But at least you know how I came to the conclusion that I did, which is the art world is nuts. The only person who would actually discuss the authenticity of Voz wasn't someone in the art world. It was a data scientist, for goodness sake, an outsider who uses AI to analyze pixels. And poor Eric Postma is left spending his days dealing with crazy art world types, clutching would-be masterpieces.
SPEAKER_07: There were even people that wanted to put their painting in my computer, literally.
SPEAKER_05: What do you mean? Oh, the physical painting?
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, they called me and said, I have my painting, can I put it in your computer? I said, yeah, well, what do you mean? I can bring it to you. Is there an opening in your computer that I can put it in? Really, people were strange people. Pretty sure this will be my last episode on the art world.
SPEAKER_11: Let's talk about Pandora's box.
SPEAKER_16: According to Greek mythology, Pandora was given a box from the gods that contained special gifts, but they forbade her from opening it. In the end, Pandora's curiosity got the best of her. She opened the box, thereby unleashing curses upon mankind. Cut to 3,000 years later, and we could very well be talking about the story of those mattresses in a box. You know what I'm talking about. They promised something special inside. But in the end, many would say it's a curse. After all, they're just glorified slabs of foam that are crushed, crammed into a box, and then left on your doorstep. If you want a mattress that feels like a true gift from the gods, consider a Saatva luxury mattress. Saatvas don't come in a box. That kind of quality simply can't be crammed into a cardboard container. What's more, Saatva will set up your new mattress for you and take your old one at no extra charge. If history has taught us anything, it's do not open Pandora's box. And right now, you'll save $200 on $1,000 or more at saatva.com slash Gladwell. That's S-A-A-T-V-A dot com slash Gladwell. Picture this. It's Monday morning. You're cruising through hundreds of unread emails. You didn't know you needed Mimecast. Your impulse to promptly click, download or respond could be the launch of a cyber attack. You see, an email address is a direct digital path to the mind, the machine and the data of every person in your organization. That means your M365 accounts are at risk of cyber attacks. But you can put your mind at ease with Mimecast. They developed an integrated, frictionless solution that fortifies your existing email security and reduces risk, cost and complexity, allowing your organization to work protected. Best of all, you can get set up in under five minutes with a free 30 day trial of their advanced email security and see all the malicious threats that your current security solution is letting through the cracks. So before you click your next email, visit Mimecast dot com for your free 30 day trial. That's M-I-M-E-C-A-S-T dot com to learn how you can work protected with Mimecast.
SPEAKER_16: We're back with more of your insightful listener questions. Aaron Clanderman at Clandera asks, love to hear more about your running obsession. Smiley face. What's your routine? Got some good shoe recommendations? OK, ultra shoes, tracksmith gear. My favorite thing in the world is group track workouts. But sadly, since Covid, my only running partner has been the 13 year old son of my friends who is super speedy and completely plays me, pretends he's all exhausted and then destroys me on the final interval. Speaking of tracksmith, you may have heard some of their ads on Revisionist History. I'm a huge fan of their stuff. Wear it all the time. A few weeks ago, the founder of tracksmith asked me, could he convince me to write the copy for an ad they were making? And I said, sure, because I don't know if you know this, but my ambition coming out of college was to be a copywriter. I applied to 28 ad agencies and got 28 rejection letters, which I put on the wall of my dorm room. So I'm a frustrated ad guy deep down. That's my core identity, which is why I sometimes go a little crazy on the ads I do for Revisionist History. Do you remember Horace Throgbottom of the law firm? Throgbottom, Throgbottom and Throgbottom? That was a character I cooked up with my producer, Jacob Smith, for Zip Recruiter.
SPEAKER_16: Really? And where do you work now?
SPEAKER_12: Oh, I just started. I'm a partner at Throgbottom and Throgbottom.
SPEAKER_16: Horace, my man, let's drink to your future. Chin chin. If you're Horace Cabot Throgbottom the first, it's easy to figure out who to hire. But if your last name isn't Throgbottom, you need Zip Recruiter. Point is, the head of some little startup who makes my favorite running stuff comes to me and says, do you want to help out? Of course I'm going to say yes. So here it is. The video of this is a couple of runners, including the great Mary Cain, running through darkened, lonely streets. You could always stay in bed, pull up the covers, pour a stiff drink, order in, worry. You could always let someone else take on the world. Actors playing heroes, pounding soundtrack, that thing where they take on great risks. Only it's all made up. But then, who would you be? Or you could say to the world, I have all I need. I have movement, breath, lungs, daydreams. I have running. Running is a gift. It's so emotional. It's like the emo of Malcolm Gladwell. Is anyone still listening? At Harsha Shrow asks, hire percentile, your mile time for your age group or your LSAT score? There were actually a bunch of questions like this. At Production Labs writes, hello from Germany. What did you score on the LSAT in the Puzzle Rush episode? I get this question all the time now. Back in season four, my then assistant Camille Baptista and I took the LSAT. Not to become lawyers, no, just to see whether a young, brainy whippersnapper like Camille was a match for a savvy, grizzled veteran like me. And at the end of a two episode arc with so much ridiculous buildup, I refused to reveal what our score was. Which apparently left many in the revisionist history universe up in arms. But wait, the whole point of the episode was that standardized tests like the LSAT don't tell us anything meaningful. If you tell someone your score, you're complicit in the scam. Don't ask, don't tell. But we did get one very charming email on the subject from Joan Riddle-Sommer. Who teaches choir at Paradigm High School in Salt Lake City. Steinman wrote a whole song inspired by our LSAT episodes. I'm not kidding. It's called A Scantrona Day Keeps All Learning at Bay. She said she was coming to New York with her choir and could they perform it for us? This is what she wrote. We, 24 singers, 4 parents, and a son, we are all learning at bay.
SPEAKER_16: We, 24 singers, 4 parents, chaperones, myself, and our school principal would love to sing to him, meaning me. We can meet him outside a coffee shop or anywhere and sing the song a cappella. Sadly, because of COVID, the meeting never happened. So we're going to play the song for you now. A B C D A A C C B D A A E C D E D C B E F is marked between the lines.
SPEAKER_09: A C T S A T G R U stop M cat N G Merton L third N stop. A Scantrona Day is part of Steinman's musical Solve for X, which you can check out at solveforxmusical.com.
SPEAKER_16: You want to get on my good side? Write me songs. Joan Steinman, you are a genius. Proof that sometimes good things happen outside of Atlanta.
SPEAKER_08: Your favorite letter and just mark it every time. That's all, ladies and gentlemen. Stay safe.
SPEAKER_16: Have a wonderful holiday and see you for season six of Revisionist History in 2021.
SPEAKER_09: A C H E L P B A G M B R I N G S U L S S E G D I E N T H Northeast South Front East East East Eastskin, East Unreal City, bodiesancinone
SPEAKER_16: owder culp Bogusia, Herman Nerf, commercial object This Big Week cab modifier Revisionist History is produced by Mia Lobel. And Le evening, Pharaoh with Jacob Smith, Eloise been, Coby Govard and one and, I am Our editor is Julia Barton, original scoring by the great Luis Guerra. G-U-E-R-R-A. Mastering by Flawn Williams. Special thanks to the Pushkin crew, Hedda Fain, Carly Magliore, Maya Koenig, Maggie Taylor, Eric Sandler, Jason Kambral, Martine Gonzalez, and of course, El Jefe.
SPEAKER_16: Jacob Weisberg. I'm Malcolm Glabo.
SPEAKER_09: Put your pencils down.
SPEAKER_16: Now I have to sing Little Feet, but I've forgotten. And I realized that what I thought were the lyrics to Little Feet were not the lyrics to Little Feet. I thought it was Oh Atlanta, I Hear You Calling. It's not. You don't know this song? Do you guys, do you guys know this song?
SPEAKER_16: What? What's the, what's the ma- Are you serious? Eloise, do you know it? Oh my God. Okay, hold on.
SPEAKER_15: I said, Oh, Atlanta. Oh, Atlanta. I can't do that. Well, we'll do this later. I said, Oh, I said, Oh, Atlanta. Oh, Atlanta. I got to get back to.
SPEAKER_15: All right.
SPEAKER_16: Malcolm Glabo here. Let's re-examine employee benefits with the Hartford Insurance Group Benefits Insurance. You'll get it right the first time. Keep your business competitive by looking out for your employees' needs with quality benefits from the Hartford. The Hartford Group Benefits team makes managing benefits and absences a breeze while providing your employees with a streamlined, world-class customer experience that treats them like people, not policies. Keep your workforce moving forward with group benefits from the Hartford. The Bucks got your back. Learn more at the Hartford.com slash benefits.
SPEAKER_03: With millions of books on Amazon, there's a reading feeling for everyone. For example, Juan's, as he drifts away to Nirvana after only the first chapter, is different to Maya's. When she discovered the narrator was in fact the evil twin, which is also different to Noah's. Anytime the cute cyberpunk is mentioned, even though in reality, he'd be totally out of his league, from two to Amazon books, that reading feeling awaits.
SPEAKER_00: The IONIQ 6 boasts a mind blowing range of up to 360 miles and can deliver up to an 80% charge in just 18 minutes with its 800 volt DC ultrafast charger. Check out Hyundai at the I Heart Radio Music Festival in Las Vegas as their all-star IONIQ lineup hits the stage like you've never seen before. Hyundai. It's your journey.
