No Such Thing As Trigger's Stradivarius

12:51James Harkin:And then the end of that story is that Totenberg never gets to find out where it was. He dies the year before this guy, Johnson, died and the wife found it in all his belongings. So there was a one year overlap between their deaths where if someone had just gone through his stuff, they could have got the end of the story for Totenberg. But he died. Oh, that's tragic. And they had a ceremony returning it to the family after it was discovered. Yeah.

13:16Dan Schreiber:It takes ages when someone's died to go through all that stuff. You can't blame the poor woman.

13:21Anna Ptaszynski:There is a theory about why they're so good. It's partly that Stradivari was a genius. And it's partly that they're not that good. Partly that they're rubbish. But in between that, there is this theory that it's due to the weather at the time. Because Europe went through this period called the Little Ice Age from about 1300 to about 1850. And the idea is Stradivari got all of his wood from a particular forest in Italy and it came from particular spruce trees and those spruce trees during this period of colder weather grew more slowly and the wood is more dense and as a result those are supposedly the golden period ones where he did turn out some actually quite good violins and I just love the science that's gone into it you know the scientists did they compared ring patterns in the violins to the International Tree Ring Data Bank which is a huge vault of tree records from 6 ,000 different places around the world.

14:18Anna Ptaszynski:6 ,000! And they clustered patterns and they did a lot of clever analysis and they found these master chronologies of trees across Europe and they traced it down to this particular bit of this particular forest at this time. And so that's one of the reasons why they... There's quite a few different theories as to why they're so good. So one idea is that the wood was treated with borax to prevent worms from eating it and that supposedly made it better there's another idea that they made the varnish with volcanic ash wow so that made it better really common one is the varnish itself was cochineal varnish it's made out of insects i think cochineal but this was supposed to really help the resonance of the instrument and the thing is that he was the only one using cochineal because he was making instruments for extremely wealthy powerful people and had everything at his disposal to make the best violins which is why i think probably they were the best ones because you know like he just had every chance to make the best ones because he was making them for the royal family and yeah

15:18Dan Schreiber:also there weren't that many which just it wasn't like violins that existed for thousands of years you know they'd just been invented he was one of the early inventors of the violin really and that yeah basically the violin had that that century yeah and um it was him and then a bunch of other people whose violins are also very famous like guarneri who had the most expensive one and then Marty but I do love do you always feel a bit Jekyll and Hyde when you read about these experiments where you think how cool that scientists have found this and given that we know it's a load of old bollocks anyway and no one can tell the difference why are people wasting their time don't we still have malaria do you find yourself doing that it's not really it's just me I sort of like that it's been done yeah if you're not every scientist can try and cure malaria otherwise there's going to be lots of other parts of the science that sorry we can't fix your computer because we're trying to Him and his laptop again.

16:07Dan Schreiber:I think it's more like people are so unwilling to believe the results of the study. I mean, this poor woman who did their study that showed people can't tell the difference in the sound. People laid into her, didn't they? And they said the methodology is all wrong. She went back and did it again better. Found exactly the same thing. People can't tell the difference. Still, they just sell for so much. And people say, what's the key to how good they sound? And it's obviously that you're holding a strap.

16:29Anna Ptaszynski:I don't think we've ever talked about the thing in 2019 where there was a city in Italy called Cremona, still is, and they had a Stradivarius that they wanted to record the sounds of because they were making a library of Stradivarius sounds. So that, I presume in the future, you can get it on a synthesizer and just play it like that, you know?

16:48James Harkin:It's where he's from, by the way, as well.

16:50Anna Ptaszynski:Cremona. Yeah, he was from Cremona, Stradivarius. Well, this all starts to make sense. They were making the Stradivarius sound bank And they had to record this one violin in particular And they had to make the whole city go quiet For ages while they record the sound So they cordoned off five blocks Right in the middle of town And in the auditorium they were in They turned off the ventilation You know, because that might make a slight noise They turned off the lifts Just in case in a different bit of the building A tiny bit of sound came in Ding! They unscrewed the light bulbs in case there was a slight electrical hum.

17:25Anna Ptaszynski:They just did absolutely everything to make it as quiet as it could possibly be for literally 100 metres a round. I love it.

17:32Dan Schreiber:And then did the person completely fuck the piece up?

17:34Anna Ptaszynski:Yeah. Just really squeaky. They got a 10-year-old to play it. You can play it on the synthesiser now, but there's a cough in the middle of the main night.

17:40Dan Schreiber:I imagine someone did cough at some point, you know, when there's Remembrance Day silence. And have you ever walked into a room not realising it's a two-minute silence? I don't think, how are you doing, John, a cup of tea? I'm pretty sure I've done that to you at the airport, actually. and everyone turns around and goes, shh. Oh, yes, you did. When we were on tour, that happened. Yeah, I think it did. So I imagine someone did that to the Strad and got a similarly ego-destroying response. Does anyone know why the air con's been turned off?

18:06Anna Ptaszynski:I had to come up the stairs. It's really dark in here, by the way.

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20:38Dan Schreiber:On with the show.

20:44James Harkin:Okay, it's time for fact number two, and that is Andy.

20:47Anna Ptaszynski:My fact is, there is a testing body in America which makes sure bins are bear-proof by testing them on live grizzly bears. Makes sense. Yeah. Absolutely does. Yeah. This is the work of the Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee, the IGBC. And just a quick shout-out to where I got this fact, I got it from a book called How to Keep a Plane in the Sky. It's by a guy called Alex Davies And it's all about test engineering basically It's the way in which engineers make products safe Things are tested to destruction and beyond To try and make sure they work in the real world And it's such an interesting book So big shout out to the author Alex Davies The Bear Agency Committee This is an American thing Basically if a bear gets into your bin Or your food canister when you're camping That's a problem, you know Because it makes a mess Because it makes a mess But it means they're more likely to go towards places where humans are right exactly if they know they can get a picnic basket from the humans then they're going to go towards the humans yeah they might attack them exactly so they test all these products which are sold as bear resistant and there's only one way to prove if it's bear resistant which is to get get it in the ring with a bear so they have a bear on staff called cobook the destroyer who is their mvp he's really really good at it um but they have a few bears they tested on and the thing has to survive i think it's one hour of bear contact time yeah and then they get then they get a sticker and a sticker from the IGBC and that sticker means that it can go in like god I really thought before you meant the bear yeah yeah

22:16Dan Schreiber:bear gets a little like you go to the dentist well done you you tried really hard yeah I liked I read an article about these guys and I like it that they're all problem bears that they use they only use problem bears right what is it is every bear not a problem bear once it's quite near human being no these are bears who have previously gained access to unsecured foods so they know that they're up for it.

22:37James Harkin:And Kobuk is like their code breaker. This is the one who's just got into things that no other bear has managed. And that went just very quickly because you've given a shout out for the book. That is the name of the book in America, Kobuk the Destroyer, just for any Americans who want to get it because it's coming out just now. And I do like, there's a point that Alex Davies makes, which is that we're so obsessed with inventors and we remember the name of inventors, but what this book is trying to say is There's a whole other level of innovators who, once they get the product, have to refine and fix it.

23:09James Harkin:They're kind of a silent genius that we never get to see.

23:12Dan Schreiber:We have the same on our British bins, but with the less interesting foxes. They get tested on foxes, yes. Coral products who make food caddies. They have their own fox, fondly called Felix, they say. And they also have a bunch of rodents that they haven't named. And they trial all of their bins on Felix and their rats.

23:33Anna Ptaszynski:Did not know that.

23:34Dan Schreiber:Yeah. Doesn't seem to work. Foxes seem to get into bins left, right and centre. Yeah, exactly. It doesn't seem to work at all. My wheelie bin, they absolutely worked out to get into that. Have they? Yeah. Very clever, aren't they? You can't outwit a fox in the end. We've all read Fantastic Mr. Fox. Yeah. Yeah, I do keep live chickens in my wheelie bins.

23:54Dan Schreiber:I was looking at quite a lot of bin. I got really sidetracked by bins. Oh, great. And other testing on bins. There's a company called Simple Human, which I really like actually. It's an environmentally friendly company that makes stuff. It tests its pedal bins with a massive robot called the Punisher. I mean, it's not that massive. It's like human size. But the Punisher, well, can you guess what it does?

24:15Anna Ptaszynski:It opens the pedal bin repeatedly and violently.

24:18Dan Schreiber:I don't actually know if it has to be too violent. What's the punishment part of it? I think it's just punishing for the bin once it has been open and closed at least 150 ,000 times, which is what it does. That's incredible. which is the equivalent of doing 20 open shuts a day for 20 years. So that's what the Punisher does. You do open your bin quite a lot, don't you? Absolutely. Yeah, and 20 years seems like a... Actually, that's quite long to have. But that's really long. I've had my bin for 12 years. Have you? Yeah, my main bin in my house. Oh, wow. You're just so confident about how long you've had your bin for.

24:51I got it when we got the house, and I knew when we got the house. I know. Easy equation. I got married in the same year, so... The bin was the best man.

25:01Anna Ptaszynski:A big thing in the book is like how you replicate real life conditions, but you're also trying to do standardised experiments. Do you know what I mean? And those things are slightly in tension with each other. So, for example, planes are tested with having chickens fired at them, even though chickens do not typically go into plane engines because they're mostly on the ground. Yeah. Right? They're easy to get hold of. Exactly. And also there's not going to be a bird that's much bigger than a chicken. Well, I mean, geese are much bigger. That one that went down in, you know, the Sullenberger miracle on the Hudson, That was a flock of geese, all of which are much bigger.

25:31That's true, actually. And it's not that hard to get frozen geese.

25:34Dan Schreiber:Or an ostrich at Christmas. Get an ostrich for God's sake. Listen to Mr.

25:38Anna Ptaszynski:Scrooge here. Go out and get me the biggest turkey you can find because I've got a Boeing engine here.

25:43James Harkin:Would the Hudson not have happened if it was a flock of regular-sized chickens?

25:48Anna Ptaszynski:I don't know. Because it's, again, they...

25:50James Harkin:It was the number of them that went in. It was the number and it was the size.

25:53Anna Ptaszynski:So they're always trying to find out a thing where you can do the test repeatedly. So chicken is perfect because you can get four pound chickens really readily. But even these days, they're using artificial chicken, bird simulant material, which is just a sack of gelatin. So again, it's like that's not a real world thing, but it is completely standardized. So I think that's really interesting.

26:15Dan Schreiber:I think I've seen that in the vegetarian section at my local Tesco. Lovely.

26:20Anna Ptaszynski:Battered bird simulant. Fire some tofu into the engine. um they call it torture sometimes don't they when you're testing one of these products again and again and again and torture has been used in advertising quite a lot over the years so rca victor radios uh they would take two different radios and do torture tests on them and show that theirs was the one that would last for the longest timex did the same where they would sort of whack their watches with hammers and stuff and say look ours is the one that survived okay and there's a web a youtube series called will it blend have you ever seen that sounds good yeah yes i have seen that yeah exactly yeah it's just um it's an advert basically for a blender i didn't realize it was an advert actually when i've seen it in the past yeah yeah and the idea is that the blender's so great that it can blend all these different things and so they get like a rock and they put it in they go will it blend and then an iphone and then what i thought it was going to be an advert for the iPhone that it couldn't blend.

27:19No, it's not.

27:21Dan Schreiber:But they could do a partnership, I guess, with the iPhone and the blender.

27:25James Harkin:Someone's always going to lose. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like that because a lot of the stress tests are about quite large things, about plane wings and the turbines and all that. I like the really simple ones. And there's an example in the book, which is the Zilgian symbol. And we've spoken about this symbol before. It's the symbol that every drummer uses on the drum kit.

27:44Anna Ptaszynski:You love these so much.

27:45James Harkin:Yeah, and I'd better pronounce the name wrong, But they have someone who up to 4 ,000 times a day takes every single symbol and just gives it three taps. And they know the quality of what should be out there. And that's when one is free to go. So it's just someone in a room going ting, ting, ting. On the same symbol? No, no. Every individual symbol up to 4 ,000 a day of these symbols come through. And he does three taps on each. And he says yes or no. He's the quality control. He's quality control. I see. So that's quality control.

28:11Anna Ptaszynski:You think that would be incredibly boring to do. I would send you mad with boredom. But fortunately, it's a drummer doing it. So they don't know it's boring. Just a drama joke for you there. There you go. Yeah, very good.

28:20Dan Schreiber:Is he testing the quality of the sound then? Like, oh, this sound is a bit flat.

28:23Anna Ptaszynski:What sound is he expecting?

28:25Dan Schreiber:I know. Someone's put a chicken in this one. It's like the person at the Maltesers factory who looks at every single Malteser that goes past to make sure that there's none that are too big or too small. It was bad.

28:37Anna Ptaszynski:That was bad. I can see faster than the cameras.

28:44Dan Schreiber:Do you guys know what a tenderometer measures? The tenderness of something? Yes, meat Of what though? Meat It should be meat, shouldn't it? Tender James Blunt singles What needs to be tender? Tender I don't think you'll guess this based on that question Turkey tenders They're like turkey strips are called turkey tenders, aren't they? Oh, I didn't know that I thought they were turkey twizzlers

29:09Anna Ptaszynski:Turkey dinosaurs? sauce you've all gone too meaty classic isn't it sensitive the product oh yeah what needs to squish something that tells you how bruised you are it's actually something that you want it to be almost

29:23Dan Schreiber:less tender it's misnamed it's peas i'm gonna put you out your misery okay it's peas this big machine the tenderometer invented in 1937 and still use the exact same machine or copies of it today and it's to make sure you know exactly how much force they can withstand because you don't want your piece to be too mealy so actually it should be called like the crunchometer or something yeah so wait it is smashing yes but what it does i know what you're thinking you can't use the piece but that's the problem with all of these things isn't it it's like okay we've smashed this mobile phone 200 000 times now we'll sell it that's not how it works we need a better system yes i think you're usually smashing one in the batch aren't you and then you say all right the rest of the The batch must be good if that one works.

30:06Mobile phones are tested. What is the highest that anyone has ever dropped a mobile phone for it to survive?

30:15Anna Ptaszynski:I'm sorry, James, to do this with the guessing game. I'm going to say from space.

30:19James Harkin:Oh, wow.

30:20Anna Ptaszynski:Okay. From the International Space Station.

30:23James Harkin:I've definitely seen a video of someone filming themselves on a parachute jump and it fell out, but it happened to land somewhere on bales of hay or something.

30:33Anna Ptaszynski:Unfortunately the person Did not land on a bay of the bay Very sadly but the phone survived It's somewhere in between space And a parachute A very high plane It was from the stratosphere It was from 100 ,000 feet Above Sweden

30:49Dan Schreiber:A Sweden particularly hard surface Is there a reason they chose The reason they chose it is I think because mobile phones are made in Sweden But it was definitely Near the S range space centre which is in northern Sweden. And the main problem was, once they dropped it, finding it.

31:05Anna Ptaszynski:Yes. Surely it's got a thing in it. They spent time finding my rhino deal phone. There's not much signal up there, I think.

31:12James Harkin:Harkin would have found it if it was laptop. That's the joke. But they managed to use tracking to narrow it down to about two kilometres radius. Still a lot to look. And it took them five hours searching in the wilderness to find it. And then they turned it on and it did work.

31:27Anna Ptaszynski:And it did? Oh, that's great. Wow. So that's what, 100 ,000 feet, that's sort of three times a plane, isn't it? Three times a plane's normally 30 ,000 feet-ish. Yeah, now we're flying at 30 ,000 feet. So yeah, three times that. So it's basically in the stratosphere. Wow. And it had a special RhinoShield case on it, which is what helped the impact. You've got to put a case on it.

31:47Dan Schreiber:What is this RhinoShield thing? It's the name of the company that makes the case.

31:51Anna Ptaszynski:I see, okay. Oh yeah, you wouldn't have it without a case from 100 ,000 feet. You're asking for trouble, aren't you? Absolutely.

31:57Dan Schreiber:So if you're over the age of 55 and you drop your phone, it will survive anything because you always keep your phone in one of those leather cases that pop us up. Yeah. And also you've got a Nokia 3310 still out there. They will actually go all the way from space. OK,

32:16it's time for fact number three, and that is James. OK, my fact this week is that Van Gogh sometimes ate his paint. Was it on the canvas?

32:23Anna Ptaszynski:Are there paintings where you say this is from his hungry period Where there's just a little nibble missing No it's not that There is a myth that he ate yellow paint to cheer himself up I have never heard this myth before But the Van Gogh Museum debunks it on their FAQs You've got to have something to fill up the FAQs haven't you And it does seem like he ate the paint But it seems like he did it because he had a thing called pika which means you sometimes you just feel like you have to eat something and it's something that's not normally eaten by humans and he seems to have a craving for something called terpenes and terpenes are also found in absinthe which we know he drank a lot of absinthe and we don't really know exactly why he had this cravings his doctor thought that he was deliberately trying to poison himself because he was so depressed we don't think it's that either it just seems to have been a thing that his brain just told him that he needed this and it is not common but a not uncommon thing for people to have isn't pica thing when you're pregnant yeah you can get um coal and stuff soil and coal yeah and it's good for you isn't it and broccoli sure soil and broccoli stick to spinach um i think it's like sometimes it can be good for you if it's broccoli

33:44that's where it starts being pica i guess i guess so yeah um so did man go to his doctor and say i keep eating pain what do i do about it um he did to a few doctors actually because he had quite a lot of problems they thought he had epilepsy but certainly he was having all sorts of health issues and one of them thought it was due to turpentine poisoning another one thought it was due to too

34:05Dan Schreiber:much sun uh what that he was eating his pain no that he was just having these mental disorders but did he say to the doctors i'm eating pain or did the doctor say to him i think you're eating paint well they looked around his mouth and he had a little bit of it i'm not sure exactly who said what but um certainly the doctors did know about it yeah

34:24Anna Ptaszynski:because he was i didn't really well i didn't know anything about frank off really but he was he was quite unwell in the last couple of years of his life in particular and sometimes he was in institutions i mean he's still painting at an incredibly rapid clip but when it did happen that he was discovered drinking the paint he was restricted to pencils for a little while yes but he had himself committed to an institution i think partly because of this the health issues that he had couldn't have been due to turpentine toxicity because before it gave him any convulsions or mental problems he would have also had giddiness redness and burning of the face and throat itching and burning of the anus and painful urinating and defecating so he would have noticed before the um the convulsions and mental problems began i don't know you look at some van gogh

35:10Dan Schreiber:paintings and they could have been done by someone with a very burning anus you could that sort of frantic hurling the brush around that's what i get i guess that period's called the burning anus

35:19Anna Ptaszynski:period exactly i think he's a bit of an icon for late starters in life oh yeah has he only decided to become an artist at the age of 27 i think he died in his late 30s didn't he i don't think he saw 40 yeah 37 i think 27 he did he had done so much other stuff and it hadn't really taken so he'd been an art dealer and his brother Theo was an art dealer he was a big part of his story he'd been a teacher in Ramsgate not paid so I don't know what the deal was with his employment he was just not paid for it but that didn't work and then he became a preacher and that didn't work and eventually at the age of 27 he took his brother's advice his brother kept saying I think you should become an artist and he did

35:57Dan Schreiber:and he was from a huge arty family family of art dealers wasn't he his brother's I think his dad was an art dealer maybe but yeah The thing that struck me about Van Gogh, reading up on him, is that he was such a nice guy.

36:10James Harkin:Yeah.

36:11Dan Schreiber:Like genuinely seemed like the most unbelievably gentle. In fact, the whole family, very gentle, very sweet in a time when you'd think everyone has to be very masculine. You know, you said he became a preacher. What he did when he went to preach, he went to the mining district of Belgium, I think, as a preacher, and was working with lots of very poverty stricken communities. And he did the Orwell thing of he gave away his clothes, his bed, all of his money. And he went and he lived as them, preaching to them. He tended to the sick all the time. He was actually fired from his preacher job ostensibly because he wasn't very good at public speaking and organising people.

36:46Dan Schreiber:But we think because the clergy thought, this is a bit weird, this bloke's kind of making friends with the poor.

36:52Anna Ptaszynski:You mean he's living too like Christ? That was certainly his version of events. I don't know.

36:58James Harkin:what's quite nice is um you don't often hear about who the man was you often just have these bigger ideas that he cut off his ear that you know he was in the institute and so on there's an amazing book that i'm reading at the moment by bernadette murphy called van gogh's ear and there's a description of what he was like from his friends they said he had a strange gait he had distinctive rapid footsteps due to the loss of 10 teeth in 1886 he had a slight speech impediment spoke quickly which combined with his dutch accent apparently made it for it hard to follow. He spoke multiple languages. He spoke English, so hence Ramsgate.

37:30James Harkin:He spoke Dutch, French. You never hear that kind of side of Van Gogh, just the day-to-day stuff. I want to know how you lose ten teeth in one year.

37:38Dan Schreiber:We've all picked up on the same detail.

37:42James Harkin:No one goes around

37:43Dan Schreiber:the languages, mate.

37:44Anna Ptaszynski:He spoke French, didn't he?

37:47James Harkin:Ten teeth. You know what's weird about his name? Vincent Van Gogh. I always thought, oh, that's just his name, right? But he's like da Vinci. That's of Gough from Gough

37:58Anna Ptaszynski:yeah but he signed the paintings Vincent but he signed the paintings Vincent because I think he wrote in a letter to his brother no one can say Van Gogh yeah so he just said I'll just sign him Vincent well it's true no one can say it no one can say it he's absolutely right his main influence I love this artistically was his cousin did you guys find his cousin's name? who's that? Anton Mauve I did find them yeah who was a successful artist and do you know that Anton Mauve was famous for painting in grey and blue tones. He never painted in mauve.

38:30Dan Schreiber:Wait, but if you put grey and blue together, isn't that sort of mauve? Kind of dirty blue. You've got to add some red in, haven't you? But yeah, isn't that funny? That's very weird. Mauve means mallow, like marshmallow in French. Does it? That's where that comes from, yeah. It's really interesting because we all have this impression that totally underappreciated in its time.

38:52Anna Ptaszynski:This post-impression more like. It's good stuff. Because he was a post-impreferentist.

38:56Dan Schreiber:Yeah, no, no, he understood it. I think I've been wronged. Thank you, Dan. We all have this impression that he was unappreciated in his time and that I guess I thought, you know, he died and then ages later, lots of his paintings were sold. But actually, first of all, he went to art school and the students who met him, a lot of them said he's clearly a genius. You know, he worked insanely fast. He created these extraordinary canvases. His tutors hated him because he didn't do what they asked him to do. So they'd say, paint this statue in the middle of the room and he'd like paint the walls and the floor and the chairs and the other people.

39:30Legend.

39:31Dan Schreiber:But, you know, people who remember him said, yeah, he was pretty damn good. And his whole family said he's a genius. Theo, his brother, devoted his life and then Theo's wife devoted her life to making the world realise he was a genius. And also it was literally straight after he died that he became famous. Right. It was like within five years, there were these big exhibitions. He was already. Oh, yeah, he's good. He was kind of almost famous, wasn't he? He was so on the cast. He was part of a group and he did have some exhibitions of his work before he died. And even ones that were shown to the president of France at the time.

40:04So it was, you know, I think if he'd have not died, he would have been famous within two or three years. Right. I think. Yeah. Dying helps an artist. But yeah, and he only, he sold just one, didn't he, in his lifetime to Anna Bock. It was the Red Vineyard and it was sold for 400 francs. And she was the only female member of a group called Levin, which was a group of Belgian artists. But they were Pissarro, Monet, Gauguin all became quite famous because these Belgian artists really liked them and started putting on exhibitions for them. She was one of the first people to own a car in Belgium. Wow.

40:43In Belgium. In Belgium. Well, this was in the 1890s. turn of the century. But more importantly, she would drive alone or with her female friends. She wouldn't have a man with them all the time because they liked to drive around doing outdoor paintings.

41:01Anna Ptaszynski:So wait, who was this? She was the one who bought... She was the woman who bought the only Van Gogh in Van Gogh's lifestyle. Wow. I saw a few claims that actually he sold a few more than that, but it's never... It's more like he sold six. I don't think we have absolute evidence for any apartment this one but yeah. Some of them apparently he would barter for more paint which is kind of amazing isn't it?

41:24Dan Schreiber:What do you mean he'd give away a painting for more paint?

41:26Anna Ptaszynski:Well he'd paint and then he'd sell the painting for paint and then he'd turn that paint into another painting. Actually that is perfect. Oh wait so he did sell that

41:33Dan Schreiber:if we're carrying those as sales. That sort of barter isn't it? Well you would have to pay tax on that really On the paint? I think so if you're bartering you still have to pay tax on the amount You're joking. I'm afraid so. Oh I'm in big trouble with the authorities

41:47Anna Ptaszynski:my little barter shop at home

41:49James Harkin:thanks for food speaking of the authorities the FBI they have an arts crime unit and as part of their arts crime unit on their website they have produced a list of the 10 most wanted missing pieces of art that are out there or things to do with art and culture and there was a big moment where a bunch of paintings were stolen from the Van Gogh Museum which is in Amsterdam and they caught the guys but they've never recovered the paintings. So those are still, it's still up there on the site and there's 10, they've got their top 10 list and one of the other 10 is a Stradivarius. So two of our topics today are sitting on the top 10 list of the FBI's most wanted missing bits of art and culture.

42:31Dan Schreiber:So cool to be sitting in prison. I'm always jealous of those guys. I take that back. I'm not jealous of them, but it's cool to be sitting in prison thinking, ha ha ha, I know where this is, but I'm not telling you. Is that what they're doing?

42:43Anna Ptaszynski:They must be, right? If they took it. And is it, are you thinking when I get out, I'll get it back and then?

42:49Dan Schreiber:I'm not thinking you've got one over on these dickheads who put you in prison.

42:52Anna Ptaszynski:I think these are the police. These are the authorities. I'm sorry to sound like a cop.

42:57Dan Schreiber:This unjustified imprisonment just for sealing the odd prices painting. Oh, my God. Well, a lot of them were stolen by Nazis. I don't know what you think about those, Anna. Oh, look, once you're a Nazi and an art thief, maybe a couple of years, you know. Yeah, so basically Van Gogh was very popular in the Jewish community in the 30s and 40s when he hadn't become really, really popular yet. Because they were a bit less conservative than the non-Jewish collectors. And Van Goghs were like still, they were expensive, but they were still kind of affordable at that stage. And so a lot of the Van Goghs were in Jewish collections.

43:33And of course, the Nazis basically stole all of those. and by 2021 I haven't got the current figures but the Nazi era provenance internet portal which goes through all of the paintings and sees if they might have been stolen they list 73 Van Goghs in American museums they say have questionable provenance so there's quite a lot of them on display which might have been plundered in the war

43:59Anna Ptaszynski:you would think that there would be records going back that far that would be able to nail it but it is just a bit muddier than that It's difficult. Especially because he painted so many. I imagine that's part of it. He painted sort of a thousand. Yeah. And you can't really tell what any of them are. Yeah. Because they're all just squiggles, aren't they? All just squiggles. He's not Kandinsky. Did I say something about the squiggles? So the squiggles that I was referring to is Starry Night. Oh, Starry Night. Which is the famous one. You will have seen parodied everywhere. But scientists have looked at it and found that the squiggles that he put between the stars are an exact model of turbulence.

44:36Like, let's say you're testing an airplane by throwing a chicken into it. You need to see where all the wind's going. And you can see the little eddies and the little walls that the air makes. And the Starry Night is almost exactly what scientists would see if they fed that into a computer. But the really interesting thing is he did loads of these similar paintings, but some of them were done in the institution and some of them were done when he was not having his mental issues. And the ones that were done when he was having his bad periods, they're the ones that are more correct. Wait, are we saying he could see turbulence in the sky?

45:12It's kind of weird. I'm not saying that, but there is kind of like, if that was possible, that does seem to be what it's suggesting. I like it. I like it.

45:21Anna Ptaszynski:He had extra vision. No wonder he was a genius. Do you want a few bonuses on Van Gogh? Yeah, go on. I just want you to guess what these things are. Van Gogh. it's an app where you put in the sound of your fart and it gives you it turns it into a beautiful

45:39James Harkin:painting that's really good is it the type of sound that an exhaust on a van makes oh you're

45:45Anna Ptaszynski:all good it's just a logistics company based in the uk it's sadly been liquidated okay um van cough okay uh van cough vincent vincent van cough that doesn't really help you oh no but it's okay but It's not a van. I'm just going for van every time. Yeah, maybe it's a comedian or something or someone who goes on stage and does lots of coughing. You remember that farter, Roland the farter? Yes. Lepetimen. Lepetimen or whatever. Yeah, so this guy can cough the national anthem.

46:16James Harkin:Or puts paint in their mouth, swells it around and spits it out onto a canvas.

46:20Anna Ptaszynski:The guy who can cough the national anthem had a very bad COVID, didn't he? The work really dried up. No it's Doncaster's Drop in health van It is a van Dan I'm sorry It's called Vincent Van Cough Damn it If you've got a minor ailment You can drop in If you're in Doncaster And Vincent Van Scoff Well it's obviously A Frite van Somewhere Kebab van or something

46:42Dan Schreiber:Oh I thought it was Someone who takes the piss Out of post impressionism

46:45Anna Ptaszynski:Lovely It is a food waste Recycling truck In Merseyside These are very loosely

46:52Dan Schreiber:Connected to The painter himself

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50:06James Harkin:Okay, it's time for our final fact of the show, and that is my fact. My fact this week is that the author, Thomas Hardy, proposed to his second wife by taking her to the grave of his first wife, pointing at the vacant plot near it and saying, that's for you. Romance. What did she say? She inferred that that was a proposal and she was sort of pro it. And then they sort of just got engaged off the back of it. They started talking as if they were engaged. I see. So, yeah, he was not the most forward of man when it came to that kind of thing. So his first wife had died. His first wife had died. Yes.

50:42James Harkin:I mean because her grave was yeah yeah yeah she was in the ground there

50:46Dan Schreiber:that's well inferred Andy yes I don't know if you would have got the implications of his statement inferred and interred in fact

50:55James Harkin:but no

50:56Anna Ptaszynski:you can have a grave without being dead yet absolutely what you can you can buy the plot can't you sure that would have then become shall we kill my first wife together and then you'll get the next one yes

51:08Dan Schreiber:and then I'll murder you

51:09Anna Ptaszynski:yes exactly yeah yeah yeah it's creepy it's a very creepy proposal or either way.

51:13Dan Schreiber:It sounds like a murder threat.

51:15Anna Ptaszynski:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

51:15Dan Schreiber:In fact, is it possible that it was? And then he felt too awkward to say, oh, no, you've misunderstood. And so he just said, okay, let's get married when she assumed that was what he was asking.

51:23James Harkin:So he married her to just soften the awkwardness of life. Well, I got this fact from a book, which is really good, actually. It's called Six Poets by Alan Bennett. And it's best poems. It's curated by him, but then also little bits of biography in between each poem. It's a really easy read and he's very interesting with it. um and so she was called florence dugdale she became the second wife of thomas hardy so it yeah it did work as a proposal and i think he was a slightly um socially uh quite held back character because in in the book it also explains that he used to walk in the road so that he didn't need to bump into people on the sidewalk he just hated having contact with people uh the people who were the help in his house if they needed to put his jacket on uh maybe back in the day people would literally put your jacket on they would just drop it on his shoulders and then he would do the rest because he wouldn't want any contact.

52:14Dan Schreiber:Paul, put your own fucking jacket on from the start, Thomas. You should have learned that Montessori technique that kids can do where you put it on the ground backwards and you kind of shove your hands in. Yes. Pretty cool. Yes. It's so cool. So do you think the reason people put it on his shoulders is because he didn't actually know how to do that bit?

52:29Anna Ptaszynski:I reckon. Yes. So this is about proposals. Proposals. Married proposals. I found a place that is cool to propose and which has seen a lot of proposals. Okay. The London Eye.

52:39James Harkin:Okay.

52:39Anna Ptaszynski:I think within the first decade of it opening It had about 5 ,000 Wedding proposals So that is more than one per day How do they know? You can just go up right

52:52Dan Schreiber:But then you'll tell people as you get off You'll tell the staff won't you We just got engaged

52:56Anna Ptaszynski:So basically they now offer a proposal Pod with three different Packages and I think these are so funny Because they sound so mad right There is a musical proposal where, I'm just quoting from the website here, as the pod reaches the top of the ark, our musicians, hidden as tourists, begin to sing and play your special song. Oh my God. And the idea is they've smuggled their instruments onto the... the pod with you. So I presume one guy's walking very, very straight. Darling, darling, that guy seems to be pulling an elbow out of his ass. Don't look over there! Don't look over there! It's a surprise!

53:37Look at the House of Parliament!

53:41Dan Schreiber:Is it Because I would make sure If I were proposing To someone on the London Eye You do it right Before you're about to get off Because you obviously Don't want to do it Near the start No you want to do it At the top No because then When they say no You have to wait For half an hour For it to come down

53:53Anna Ptaszynski:Yeah I just think It's a funny place to propose Because yeah if you're stuck You're stuck That's 15 minutes You know If they say no You've got to do the whole Down Going back down bit Which is the worst bit Because you've already seen All the going up bit Yeah

54:05Dan Schreiber:I think you'd say yes And then say no at the bottom

54:09James Harkin:and then run off as the thing opens. No, but presumably that's part of the pitch is that's the opposite. Propose as early as possible. If a no's on the way, you've now stuck in the space. Like usually whoever says no gets up and leaves the dinner table or goes, oh, Brian, and runs off. You've got half an hour now with that person. Turn it around. Turn it around. Yeah, yeah. Or maybe if you say, will you marry me? And they say no. Then the guy pulls a trombone out of his ass and goes, whoop, whoop, whoop.

54:40David Bellamy Do you remember David Bellamy? The politician No, not the politician He was a naturalist Oh yes, yeah He had a big beard And he would go around Oh, look at this lovely He was on TV in the 80s

54:56Anna Ptaszynski:And he was Not naturist, sorry Naturalist I'm thinking, where's he going to hide the trombone Under the big beard So naturalist He was a naturalist And he proposed to his partner, Rosemary Froy, in the middle of a waterlogged sphagnum bog. Lucky lady. This is according to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. And he used to call Rosemary his sphagnum widow because he loved moss so much.

55:24Dan Schreiber:Why is she a widow when he's still alive, presumably, when he's caught? Sometimes you would say like a golfing widow because I play golf all the time. So it's as if I've died by playing golf. and for him it's as if he's died, he's actually going looking at moss in bogs. Have you ever heard that, Anna?

55:38Anna Ptaszynski:Something weird, like a FIFA widow or whatever.

55:41Dan Schreiber:I think maybe I have. I think in the context of sphagnum moss, even I couldn't stretch to understanding how that would take up all your time. And yet I know you. All these romantic proposals, very old-fashioned, obviously, very dated this day and age, but were even dated in the 1960s. I read an article in the Aberdeen Evening Express from 1961, which was all about the tradition of the romantic proposal and how it was over a century out of date, saying that the idea of proposing to someone by moonlight or by candlelight, over a century out of date. So they're saying even in 1862, this was too old fashioned.

56:17Dan Schreiber:But I found, and I thought this was really interesting, propose means to offer to marry someone, ask someone to marry you. But when did, so that's an old word, when did pop the question come to mean that?

56:30Anna Ptaszynski:Ah, so it's either going to be like 700 AD and it's in the venerable bead or it's going to be 2012.

56:38Dan Schreiber:What are you going to plump for?

56:40Anna Ptaszynski:700 AD.

56:41James Harkin:I think 2012, outside of things, but I think if it did exist, it meant something very different. It wasn't, you were popping a question that was not to do in marriage.

56:51Dan Schreiber:So, I mean, it did originally mean you would pop any question, but the phrase pop the question, used specifically just to mean ask someone to marry them is older than propose. So it was 1722. It was first used in a magazine and in fact, it's really interesting because in this reference, it's about whether a woman should propose to a man. So 1722 in a magazine, there's an exchange and it says, I should be glad to know your sentiments about whether it would be improper for the lady to pop the question first.

57:20Anna Ptaszynski:That's stunning. Isn't that amazing? That's so good. There would have been people in life who remembered Oliver Cromwell being in charge who were reading about popping the question. A woman popping the question, no less.

57:29Dan Schreiber:That's crazy. And to propose without having to specify to propose marriage, as in using that to mean offer of marriage, is 1771. So half a century later.

57:38James Harkin:Right.

57:39Anna Ptaszynski:That's brilliant.

57:39Dan Schreiber:And you used to shorten it. You'd say, has he popped? Has he popped yet?

57:43Anna Ptaszynski:A bit of a personal question. We're going to wait until after the wedding. We're being traditional.

57:48James Harkin:You know, Thomas Hardy's way of doing it with his second wife-to-be, it might not be as bad as it sounds if you were living in a different culture and who knows maybe he had read about this in Japan but that is one of the ways that you would propose to someone in Japan you would say to them do you want to be buried with me? or words like that I want to be buried with you maybe as a softer way of saying it I read this on a Japanese website the idea is that when married couples die there's a lot of family plots in Japan and you would often be buried with the family plot. And that was a way of saying, I want to be with you till the end of our days and you will be buried with my family.

58:28James Harkin:So become part of my family. Let's get buried together. Might be a bit out of date, but it definitely existed.

58:32Dan Schreiber:I mean, we say till death to us part. There's just a way of saying till death do us continue not parting or something that makes more sense. That's really nice. Yeah, it's really beautiful.

58:42Anna Ptaszynski:Yeah, yeah.

58:43Dan Schreiber:I've had a lot of refusals.

58:46Anna Ptaszynski:I did read, we've all been doing Crypto Crosswords together recently about a proposal in the Times Crossword, which is quite nice. This was about a decade ago, and the Crossword editor was a guy called Richard Rogan, who I actually met. He was a very nice guy, and he helped a guy propose to his girlfriend, Delith. Right? So he put her name in the Crossword as an answer. I mean, it's such an unusual name that I feel that even if I knew someone called Delith, and that looked like it must be the answer to the clue, I'd be like, it must be Delilah or something. It can't be Delith. Yeah, yeah. Pretty Welsh girl Widely thought Not to be all there So it's in the middle Of widely thought The name Deleth Is in there

59:26Dan Schreiber:I love those ones

59:28Anna Ptaszynski:And the guy Drew it to her attention Because I think it had Deleth and it had Will you marry me As two phrases In the crossword But the guy had to Solve the crossword And then point it out To his girlfriend As his way of proposing Her response When they wrote this up Was this was a Typical gesture By her new fiance Who she said was A smart ass At the best of times She did say yes It's not very romantic to say, hey, look, I've managed to do the crossword. And stop the stopwatch. Right. 2734. Pretty good.

59:58Dan Schreiber:In China, you can propose to a dead person. People sometimes propose to dead people.

1:00:03Anna Ptaszynski:OK.

1:00:05Dan Schreiber:And dead people get engaged to each other.

1:00:07Anna Ptaszynski:But they're both dead.

1:00:08Dan Schreiber:Yes, but they're both dead. This is the tradition of ghost marriage, which has been going on since at least the third century. We've got evidence dating back to the third century. and it's when the family members of a dead person find someone of the opposite sex, also dead, to marry them for various reasons. Or sometimes you'll marry a dead person to an alive person. And so the reasons are... Tax. That happens in France, for sure. We have talked about it in France. But you need permission off the president or something. Yes. Screw it in France. And again, that's a legal thing. If your husband dies and you weren't married, that means you get none of the money, but then the president says, oh, you should have gotten married so you get some of the money or something.

1:00:50Dan Schreiber:So it's slightly different in China. And this isn't all over the China. This is just in a lot of parts of China. Culturally, if a woman dies and she's single, then no one looks after her in the afterlife because it's your husband's descendants who look after you. So you're like, oh my God, there's no one to care for you. We can't, we're your family. So we'll have to find you a dead man to marry. And then you'd go and propose to this dead man's family and say, can your dead son marry our dead daughter? Because otherwise there's no one to look after her.

1:01:14Anna Ptaszynski:Okay Bridget Jones 5 should be Afterlife based Yeah I don't like that Like that's cool It's still Renee Zellweger That's lovely It's a way of getting Colin Firth back into the series

1:01:28James Harkin:Because he died, he's Darcy

1:01:29Dan Schreiber:Yeah so they meet in the afterlife, they don't know each other But it's like oh our families have just set us up We have to spend eternity together now

1:01:35Anna Ptaszynski:This is a film I'm sorry but it is

1:01:38Dan Schreiber:Or the other one is actually if a man Has died

1:01:43Anna Ptaszynski:Bridget Jones' dowry

1:01:44Dan Schreiber:Sorry you're still brainstorming I'll give you a minute

1:01:47Anna Ptaszynski:Bridget Jones' dowry

1:01:48Dan Schreiber:It's good It was worth it actually Sorry to cut across you What about Bridget Jones' die Bridget Jones' die Is it that someone's got to go back into

1:02:04Anna Ptaszynski:Go into the underworld to get her out To bring her back to life No it's better if she just stays She's staying

1:02:09Dan Schreiber:she's staying you can actually marry a dead person if you're alive so this also could be another sequel because if a man's died and he's got no descendants and his family need descendants they can marry him to a live woman then that means his family can adopt children of this marriage which is supposed to happen guys I'm going to go out there I think they should have stopped Bridget Jones at the first one wow I don't think we're helping the world making new ones what? disagree

1:02:35James Harkin:no way mate someone hasn't seen Bridget Jones' baby

1:02:46James Harkin:Okay, that's it. That is all of our facts. Thank you so much for listening. If you'd like to get in contact with any of us about the things that we've said over the course of this podcast, we can all be found online. I'm at Schreiberland on Instagram. Andy? At Andrew Hunter M. James? I'm no such thing as James Harkin. And if you want to get to us as a group, Anna, where should they head?

1:03:06Dan Schreiber:Instagram at no such thing or email podcast.qy.com.

1:03:09James Harkin:Yeah. podcasts at qi.com that's the most important address of all because if you have something to say to us if you've got a extra fact that you want to add to what we've just said well we'll go through the inbox and he picks out the best bits of those and he brings it to drop us a line that is a bonus show that we do and you can only access that if you're a part of clubfish which is our secret members club go to patreon.com slash clubfish there's multiple tiers of stuff that you can get there do check it out or if you're emailing because you have a great fact that you want us to read out, send it to us and Andy will pick those out for us to read on Little Fish, which is our bonus Monday show.

1:03:44James Harkin:We put down our facts, we read yours, we love it, so please do send them in. Otherwise, check out our website for any upcoming live gigs, or just come back here next week because we're going to be back with another episode, and we'll see you then. Goodbye.

1:04:25James Harkin:We'll be right back. Tylenol liquid gels, One-A-Day Men's Health, and Vicks Dayquil and NyQuil combo packs. Offer ends September 29th. Restrictions apply. Offers may vary. Visit Jewelosco.com for more details. I like things my way. My coffee, my schedule, and my treatment. So I talked to my doctor about self-injecting with the Vivgard Hytrulo Pre-Filled Syringe, which contains F-Gartigamide Alpha and Hyaluronidase QVFC. It's injected under your skin subcutaneously. It means I can inject in my space on my time. It's my treatment, my way. Visit VivGuardMyWay.com. That's V-Y-V-G-A-R-T MyWay.com. And talk to your doctor about VivGuard Hytrulo.

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