Selects: What's the deal with Stradivarius violins?

Hey, everybody, it's me Josh, and for this week's select, I've chosen our episode from September of twenty sixteen, on the Strata Various Violin. It's where we get to the bottom of whether strata various violins really are that much better than others, or whether everyone in the music world is just really into brand names. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. And I mentioned the movie The Red Violin that like, this episode is worth checking out too, so enjoy them both.

Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles W Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry Roland. Yeah, Jerry said.

Right before she pressed record, I'm sleepy three two to one.

Oh really, Yeah, I didn't hear you didn't even notice that, did you. I was just remember or practicing what I was going to say.

Oh, sorry, we'll go ahead.

I just did. Oh it was successful.

You're practicing. Hey, welcome to the podcast. Should we talk fiddles?

Yeah, Chuck fiddle d D let's do.

I bought one a few years ago. By the way, it took one lesson.

And you became an expert.

Yep, No, that's just me, man, That's how things go with me. I have a lot of things that I've been like, I'm going to do this.

Got a lot of balls in the air.

Yeah, specifically musically. I bought a steel guitar and didn't learn to play that and sold it. I bought a keyboard and was going to learn to play piano, didn't do that, Okay, bought the violin. I'm keeping a violin.

Though, So you're stimulating the economy.

Yeah, pretty much. And I usually keep just like sell that and use that money to buy the next thing. I don't play. Yeah, but I don't know, like I know how to play guitar. So I'm kind of realizing at my age, like maybe that's all it's going to be.

You're a guitar man. And like Bread said, yeah.

But used I used to want to be like man by the time I die. I want to be able to play all the stringed instruments. Yeah, that was my goal, and I've learned one.

I mean that's more than some people. I don't I don't know how to play any stringed instruments.

So yeah, but you don't care too it sounds like no.

I mean I well, so you consider the piano a stringed instrument. It's got strings, so yeah, is it percussion or is it string or is it both?

Well, a little hammer hits the string percussion interesting, where as a harpsichord is plucked.

Yeah, talking piano, Yeah, I wish I could play the piano. I'd like to learn that one day.

Right. My brother took lessons as a kid and my sister, but I didn't. Oh yeah, Scott can still play a little bit today of.

Course, Hey Scott, super bro.

Uh So the fiddle a little history here before we get into the man the fiddle or violin. There's no difference, by the way, is that right? Yep?

It's one pronounced one way and the others pronounced it the other way.

Yeah, it's a little and I thought there was a difference when I bought mine. I was like, well, what's the difference, And it's just in how you play it.

They were like, hillbillies play fiddles, yeah, other people play violins exactly.

So the fiddle at first was not a well regarded instrument. It was thought of as a sort of a cheap tavern instrument, you know, like you'd get drunk and hop upon the table at the tavern, really and beat out a little Irish jig. Really yeah, and it didn't have a good reputation. Wait when, well, I mean this is the sixteenth century.

Okay, So then initially yeah, okay, yeah, I'm with you. Then I'm with you, okay, hanging on.

And even in parts of Italy, at first the church ordered the destruction of violins. They were so like look down upon. And then a lady named Catherine de Medici got on board and she was like, this thing is wonderful. Sure, I'm gonna order thirty eight of them for my court from the guy named Nicholas Amati, who was the grandson

Yeah. Once you introduce it into court, sure people tend to follow suit. Yeah. Yeah. So the Amades lived in a place called Cromona, Italy, right, and Crimona because the Amadis lived there, who were basically the de factor inventors of the violin, cello, and viola as we recognize them today. Because that's where they were from. Kromona became the center of violin production. Yeah, stringed instrument production, plain and simple. Yeah, which is pretty neat, like the idea that that's where

Yeah. And here's another cool little fact. The the you know, the fancy beautiful shape of a violin is not for esthetics. It is all about the sound that it makes.

The violin doesn't give a damn weather you think it looks good.

Well, it turned out to look beautiful. But all those curves allow for equal resonance of all the notes, which if it was more basically shaped, Yeah, certain notes would be sound better than others.

Huh.

So that allowed the entire fingerboard to sound wonderful.

Well. Plus, also, if you look at a violin face on. Sure, if you go down the sides in the middle, it's cut in. Yeah, those are called seabouts. Those actually have a practical purpose, I'm sure, in addition to helping produce sound, but it allows the bow to play the strings on either side without hitting the body of the violin. Yeah, pretty clever.

It's really hard to play. I can't stress that enough. It's like I thought, this is not so different than a guitar, Like I'm just holding it under my neck and using a bow instead of fingers.

That's got to be a pretty big difference.

It's a huge difference.

Yes, fingers, bows totally different. You're born with one the other. You have to like buy well.

It's a combination of pressure on a string, angle of the bow on the.

String, pressure from your parents.

Placement of the bow on like as far as how far down it is, up and down the violin speed. It's like there's like ten different things that go into making a sound on a violin that you have to do successfully all at once. It's really really hard. Yeah, Like I was intimidated and went in the closet. You go, maybe my daughter will play one day and then we'll be waiting for her. Nice so we'll see. But should we go over the parts? I know you mentioned the seabout.

Sure, seabout's my favorite. So you take it from there.

Well, if you look at a violin, you got the very above those little tuning pegs which are contained in the peg box. You've got the scroll, which is that kind of a curvy, lovely fancy piece at the top. Then you have the neck and the fingerboard. The neck goes from basically down to the body of the violin, but the fingerboard continues on through it. The upper about, the lower about, and then that seabout you mentioned, which

Ye, the fancy holes, Yeah, they look like f's.

Then you have your bridge, which is the very thin piece of wood that keeps the strings you know, off of the violin body itself and taut. Then you have your tail piece at the bottom where the strings end, and then the all important chin rest. And that's a violin.

Bam, go make one. Now I'm leaving. So again, there was the amadis that came up with the violin you just described, that's right, And one of the amadis the grandson of Andrea Amadi, who I think is credited with inventing the violin basically. But his grandson, Nicola taught a young man by the name of Antonio and Antonio Strataviri.

Ooh, that name sounds familiar.

Yeah, Antonio STRATAVII was born in Cremona. They're not sure when they think, probably about sixteen forty four.

His life is a bit of a mystery, his young life at least, right, not a lot of great records on it.

You know what, This just jogged my memory. We never explained why Alexander Hamilton would shave two years off of his age, even though we specifically said we were going to. Well that's all.

Should we follow up now?

Probably not, okay, I think people would get mad.

Yeah, if you want to know, right in and we'll tell you, or maybe we'll post it on such means.

I think that's better. Yeah, but who cares. We're talking Strataveri now.

Yeah, we've moved on, all right.

So Strativery there's not very good records about his youth, I think, as you said, but he pops up in sixteen sixty six at the very latest.

That's right.

A violin pops up in sixteen sixty six. I should say it has an inscription on it and a label actually, and if you translated to English, it says made by Antonio Stradiveri of cremona pupil of Nicoro Amadi in sixteen sixty six, well done the year of Satan.

And that means he was either a pupil, which it clearly says, sure, or a bit of a bit of a stretch of the truth and a bit of a ruse in a career move.

Really.

Yeah, there's some people that say, and that's why I was wondering it says people believe some people believe he was a pupil.

Yeah, I didn't get with the well it says he was.

A pupil and the inscription right. But the other thought is that maybe it was a bit of a career move to say I was taught by the grade Amadi.

Right, who's dead now and can't say otherwise?

Maybe, but uh, who knows. I bet he was probably a pupil.

Actually he wasn't dead, so that would have been pretty gut seacher to have done that, because Amadi didn't die for many years, many more years after sixteen sixty six. So I think the common consensus is that he was a pupil of Amadi.

He would have said, he's stealing my business, so what up?

But with that, right, man, this thing is going to be lousy with that, all right?

So sixteen sixty six, you are correct. He builds his very first violin on his own. He continues to build violins on his own in his attic, which was apparently the tradition attic violin building.

Was it?

That's what it said?

Huh.

I guess that was just like where you would put your workshop. Okay, who knows, maybe it I don't know.

Have you ever seen the movie The Red Violin? Yes, great movie, agreed, like, stick with it.

I think I might have seen that on your recommendation years ago, probably if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, really good movie though. Yeah. So he's making violins. He moves into a home in sixteen eighty and he started to get some recognition as a great builder and maker of violins, a great craftsman.

He did, and he was still kind of living in the shadow of the Amadis. But when Nikola Amadi died in sixteen eighty four, by this time everyone said, this guy is Kremona's best maker. Of violins. Yeah, which since Kromona was the world capital of violin making. They were made elsewhere, but Kromona was like the place where the best.

Were made, the krem of the Cromona.

Right. That made him the world's best violin maker. And he hadn't even entered his golden period yet.

Yeah, and he's making more than violins. He's making cellos and guitars and mandolins and harps pretty much anything with.

Strings except harpsichords.

Who knows, he might have made a harpsichord.

I'll bet that'd be worth a lot probably.

So all right, should we take a break here, Yes, all right, we'll get into more craftsmanship right after this. All right, So Strativari is following in Amadi's Amadi his footsteps, but he's also like, you know what I'm gonna. I'm gonna start tweaking this thing, Yeah, and craft my own brand of violin. And he does so. He said, I'm going to use some new materials, maybe some new finishes. I'm gonna I'm gonna make that seabout a little straighter then you're used to.

Yeah, man, then f's a little straighter the f holes is it straighter? Was that the deal, I think so.

And then we altered the f hole some and uh something with a scroll too, Is that right?

He made it more amazing.

And he made the the scroll larger scroll, the f holes not only straighter but longer, larger scroll, and a and a straighter and stronger seabout that was like mechanically that those were the biggest differences.

Right, But he also crucially came up with his own formula for a varnish. It's a very easily recognized, deep, deep red brown varnish. That's right, that his violins have. It's very handsome. But a lot of people, as we'll see later, believe that it's possibly the varnish that made Strata various violins so great because when he made these changes, not only was he making these changes to the shape and appearance of the violin, he was also like a

Yeah, that's the most really.

Saying something for sure, considering how much progress we've made in the last three hundred years and just about.

Everything, and and these are you know, for the the finest tuned ears in the world. Like clearly there are flawless, amazing instruments and violins being produced since then. But for the true like aficionado, they can spot the difference. Apparently, Oh yeah, like you and I can't.

No, But people whose job it is to identify and praise strata various violins. Say that comparing it to a non stratavarius, like a knockoff or something, is like comparing a Ferrari to a school bus. Yeah, well, it's like that obvious.

For people like saying things like that.

It's a great quote.

We're just a couple of schmumps. What do we know?

So it just went.

It might be a new gag. So he and his first wife had six kids. He was good at having kids. He and his second wife, His wife sadly died in sixteen ninety eight. He got remarried and had five more kids with wife number two. He was great at making violins and making children. Yes, crafting children. He's great at it, crafting little babies.

Yeah, they called them the mice tro in the bedroom, you know what I mean?

And I think a couple of his sons even went on to follow in his footsteps.

Is that right from his first marriage?

Right? They were at second lot they.

Were schmumps, though they couldn't hold a candle to their father's work.

So let's talk about the golden period from seventeen hundred to seventeen twenty to twenty five, depending on who you had talked to, This was the Golden Period where these violins, I mean, he had really honed his design at this point, and the materials that he used and everything kind of all coalesced into making the best violins in the history of the world.

Right, it was like Lebron's tenure at the Heat.

Oh, well, we'll see his career is not over yet. Yeah, wow, you're calling it now, huh.

I mean he he made a case for a resurgence this past season, but we'll see if he can repeat it. Okay, he was playing on five hundred cylinders with the Heat. It was just perfect because he didn't have to be the team leader. He could be one of like the leaders. That team had several leaders, and he could be one of them. It wasn't like the whole team just pushed upward towards Lebron.

See, a lot of people have the opposite view that that was. You know, anyone can get on a team of superstars and win championships, but no, not necessarily to be the one leader is a bigger accomplishment.

I'm very curious to know how, say, like the Golden State Warriors are going to be next season with Durant and Steph Curry and Klay Thompson on there. Thompson knows so much. But like Steph Curry and Kevin Durant, they're like two of the greatest players that have ever lived, ever lived, not just their playing right now, how are they going to gel the idea that Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh and Lebron James were all able to keep their egos in check and come together to work together

All right, So Stratavari is making his mark on the world, getting his reputation, and he's making a lot of money. He wasn't one of these. It's like after he died they later realized how great he was. He was a rich man. Yeah, making and selling these violins.

Yeah, apparently there was a phrase richest stretta vari Yeah, like richer than an astronaut is what we would say today.

Yeah. He was one of the more famous guys in Italy at the time, for sure.

Yeah, and rightfully so.

His crowning achievement supposedly is in seventeen sixteen when he built the Messiah And this is the only violin that he never sold that he kept in his workshop till the day died.

It was his head stash violin.

And this violin has rarely been played. Apparently. One of the sort of things unspoken rules when this thing's been sold and passed down is that don't even play it. This one should remain pristine.

Yeah, it's basically as close to a mint condition strata various as you can find in the world. Oh it's not close, it's meant yeah, but I mean a couple of people have played it. Oh really, Yeah, it's not been unplayed.

Okay, a couple of bad eggs in there, a couple of super lucky violin plays that screw your unwritten rules.

Yeah, well this is before the Ashmullyan got their hands on it.

Okay, So post seventeen twenty, post golden period, he still produced violins and things, but apparently his eyesight was going, his hands were not as steady, and they weren't quite what they were during the golden period. I'm sure they were still wonderful violence.

Oh yeah, he's still churning out the good stuff, but nothing like that golden period.

And he worked into his nineties, so he was building violins for you know, seventy years.

He worked up to his death. As far as I understand, I think so so yeah. But that golden period stuff that was there was the Messiah from seventeen sixteen, the Allard from seventeen fifteen, the Bets from seventeen oh four. Those are just a few of the ones that he made during this period that are still around today. He made I saw a thousand, also saw fifteen hundred stringed instruments during his career, amazing about six hundred and fifty

They weren't like a skippy and old roy right, Barnabas Barnabas the violin right.

So there's a there's a superstition among violinists that the more you play a violin, the more a particular person plays violin, the more that violin takes on the character of that player, right, so much so that a violinist or even a cellist or a violist can come along afterward and play that person's violin. Yeah, and it will say it will sound much more like the person who's violin it is than the person playing it.

Wow.

And there's there's a further superstition that the more you play a violin, the better it sounds.

Well, that's not a superstition, that's fact, right, any instrument.

So there is a study from I think nineteen ninety six that I came across that found that the more violin wood is vibrated, the more the dampening coefficient is lowered. The lower the damping coefficient, the longer a note resonates. The longer a note resonates, the richer the sound. And so just playing it right, because you're vibrating the wood when you're playing a violin, the more you do that, the more frequently you do that, the better the violin's

Well, that's true for any instrument, is it. Yeah, it's called breaking it in. Oh, So it's like a pair of genes you can identify with that.

Sure, I love genes.

You know, a pair of genes five years in or better than they are when you come off the shelf. Yeah, it's the same thing. It's breaking it in, especially strings with anything with the fingerboard. That fingerboard just you know, wears in those frets wear down a little and it does get a little bit attuned I think to your style.

Yeah for sure. Yeah, very interesting.

Yeah, I'd like to do more on musical instruments here and there. Okay, I'm putting it out there, all right, all right, well let's take another quick break and we will get into all the controversies surrounding just why these things sound so good and all those theories. Pretty interesting stuff.

So, Chuck, I gotta say, you did a good job putting this one together. Okay, sure, I'm interested in it.

You know we I had that stuff from the B Side podcast for like two months back in the day.

People still call for it.

And we covered this very briefly. Oh really, yeah not. We didn't do right by it. So that's why I was like, you know what, that's a good topic. Nice, I mean, dust that one off. Nice. So there have been many many theories over the years, like if the strat is so revered in legendary that people experts, scientists are bound to want to crack that nut. Yeah, like why yeah, like what's the deal.

And it's not. Again, this is it's objectively better than other violins, the ones that strata vary made.

Correct some of the theories. The old theories back then was that he would soak the wood in salt water. Not true, that the wood was coated with volcanic ash, not true. That dragon's blood was used in the varnish.

That may have been true, Okay, George R. Martin came up with that one.

Probably so, and then i'll, you know, we'll get into the more modern theories. There's really well, there's a couple of leading theories. One is the wood, yeah, this ice age wood, which we'll talk about, and the others the varnish.

Right, go, okay, Well, the Strativari was working during what's known as Europe's Little Ice Age, which is a period of unusually, very unusually colder temperatures, and I think they're still trying to figure out what the heck happened. And as a matter of fact, we need to do like an irregular ice age podcast and we'll talk about it then.

Yeah, But the.

Upshot of it was that because of the colder temperatures, the spruce that was used by Strativari in the manufacture of these violins grew slower but more evenly steadier, so that the wood that was harvested from these bruce trees was much more uniformly grained. Right, So just basically really high end wood was produced by this little ice age.

Yeah.

So the little ice age theory, while still I think out there has I think that really kind of goes a long way to undermining it.

Yeah, like they were, people were really excited about that at first, and I think they're like, yes, not proof.

It's a cool theory. It is cool, little ice age.

There's another dude at Texas A and M I named Joseph Nagavary nagie Vary, what a unique name. And he said, it's all about this varnish, this cremones. Cremones varnish. Is that not right?

Yeah? Cream and ease.

Yeah, I think that's what they say.

Start your morning right with cremin ese.

So he published an article in Scientific Journal Public Library of science one. It's capitalized for some reason, and he says, you know what's going on here. It's this varnish that he used. Let me analyze it chemically, and what he found out was it's very unique in that it has these things in there that you would not expect to be in a varnish, like borax and chromium. And he said, so,

Pushback his well, his theory is not entirely out of left field, like it's it's pretty much accepted that if you put the wrong kind of varnish on a violin, it's going to ruin the sound. Sure, so his whole thing was, well, why couldn't you stumble upon some varnish that actually enhanced the sound, And that was his idea that that's that accounted for strata areas violin sounding like that. Yeah, I think he did get a lot of pushback. There

Yeah.

There's a guy who was widely quoted. He's a violinist from America's name is James EANs Ends EANs Man, Well, James. His his whole view is that he's played a number of strata of various violins and other stringed instruments, and he said that there's probably a thousand things that make them special. Yeah, and we could never possibly know what all those thousand things are, and there's never just going to be just this one thing that is the key to what made strata varius violins so great.

Yeah. I think I watched a BBC documentary that was really pretty great and they interviewed another violin maker and he said, you know, it was the right place, right time. Thing like this guy came along. Maybe they had this good wood that was special, maybe he had this varnish that was special.

Yeah, but they were in the hands of somebody special too.

Well. That was his point was that other people were using some of these same things and they turned out very different. He said he was so good at what he did, Like that's the secret. He was just better at doing this than other people.

Right, Like how Chris Bosh and Dwayne Wade brought the best out of Lebron James.

Well, where I think this Texas A and M Professor aired was that he was so bold as to even posit the idea that it may have been an accident, and that like.

I would say bold is an appropriate term.

Yeah, Like they turned out this good on accident. He didn't know this varnish was going to do that, or the wood may have been even pre treated with these chemicals, and he kind of lucked into what it ended up being. Yeah, and not that he wasn't talented, but like that's why they are what they are.

And people were like, whoah, blasphemy.

Yeah, out heretic. So how much of these things cost a lot?

The end I saw, I mean, the numbers are all over the place. Like one thing, we'll say that the the record was three point five four four million dollars. Yeah, and then later on the record was broken with three point six million dollars with the Molitor stratavaries owned famously by Milwaukee brewer Paul Mollitor. That's where that one got its name.

Well, yeah, I agree. And then this says, in June twenty fourteen, the Kreutzer at a pre sale estimate of seven and a half million to ten million, but it failed to reach the reserve price.

Right But then later on another one sold in twenty eleven for sixteen million, So apparently nobody's really keeping tabs here. I looked down the internet. I couldn't find anything approaching a comprehensive list of how much these things had gone for. But the fact is millions of dollars, tens of millions

Yeah, and it's kind of a shame that these aren't in the hands of the great players of the world, you know.

Well, they're in the hands of the great players of the world who come from very wealthy families.

Yeah, or who, like you said, bought one twenty or thirty years ago, right, and that's their you know, their go to But.

Yeah, it's it's just another fat piggy thing to buy and own and possess. The one I have is the most expensive one, right, Fortunately, the one that's so so valuable that it's frequently cited as priceless is the Messiah. Yeah, and that is owned by the Ashmoley and at Oxford University, so that one's not up for grabs, which is cool because all the other ones are just operating under that level.

Yeah. And the lady in the BBC documentary as a violinist, and she got to hold the Messiah with gloves.

And it's called that because there's a Nativity scene in laid on the back I believe.

Oh I don't think it's the back. I think it's in the little tail piece. Oh okay, But this thing is gorgeous. And she was allowed to hold it with gloves is like white cotton gloves, And the whole time, even though I knew that wouldn't happen, I was like, don't drop it. Yeah, you know those slippy little cotton gloves. Sure, and it just made me nervous watching it.

Did you ever see that video of things that were very expensive things that were accidentally oken that I made years back?

I remember that.

It's just like it was tough to make. I bet it's tough to watch too.

Yeah. So over the years there have been many, many, many many fakes. As as soon as he died, they started pumping out forgeries, and not even forgeries, like just mass produced violins that they would throw a label on that.

At the time, in the nineteenth century, eighteenth and nineteenth century, the people buying the violins knew that they were like knockoff manufactured fakes.

Yeah, largely in Germany, right right, But they weren't like, yeah, they weren't.

They weren't being duped. It was like this is this is in the style of Stratavarius or whatever. Yeah, largely in Germany and Czechoslovakia. And the thing is, though, is over time these what are now pretty old violins because they were again made in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Yeah, they I had labels on them that would say like Stratavarius, cremonsis fachibot Onoh, and then say like sixteen seventy nine

It might say made in Germany too, though.

That's a big giveaway, it is. Yeah, And apparently if you're an appraiser of this kind of thing, you were so sick of people calling you that you can't even hide it when you're interviewed in an article. Yeah.

The one guy even said that. He's like, people get angry when you tell them it's not he said, because they think they've got a lottery ticket and you have to break it to him. And he said, they get mad on these phone calls.

Right, and they're like, well, do you have twenty bucks from men?

It's pretty funny. Uh, do you got anything else?

Yeah? If you find a violin and you look it over and it says Stratavarius and you look even further and it doesn't say made in Germany.

Fake.

If it doesn't say that, I know, but it's still probably a fake. Well you can. There's a Smithsonian article about it that has basically step by step what you can do and who you can submit photos to to get it basically pre appraised, well not appraised, but just looked at. And they can usually tell from the photos like, no, it's a fake.

Like step one, leave it out in the sun and let it let it get rained on a couple of times if ants are attracted to it, not as strata exactly.

Yeah, but one of the appraisers makes the point like they're about six hundred and fifty in the world and they're all basically accounted for it.

We know where they are.

Yeah, and even when we don't know where they are, we know we would know the one that we don't know where they are when they surface.

Yeah. They stolen one.

Yeah, there was one that was famously stolen thirty something years ago from a concert violinist and it was a stratavarius and it was in the attic of a Milwaukee thief's house and I guess he died and his girlfriend took it to an appraiser who's like, uh, this is stolen.

I know who's this is crazy.

So it's a very small community. So the idea that somebody's just gonna walk up with like a real strata varius that had previously been unknown is it's just most likely not going to happen.

Yeah. The one of the other appraisers said, it's like finding a new rem brand. He said, we know what he painted, right, we know where they are.

Yeah, now they got computers painting rem brands.

Oh yeah, I remember that.

Yeah.

I think a guy left his strata in the cab a few years ago too.

Was it, Joshua Bell? Sounds like something that I would do. He's wacky.

I can't remember. I believe that happened, though I remember to get it back. I think so.

Only in New York, right, jeez?

Can you imagine? No?

Because again, like these are concert violinists who have almost been entrusted by humanity with these things like here, this is a very expensive violin. Yes, but we are giving this to you because we think you will enrich this and with your playing and maybe someday it'll be called your last name Stratavarius. Play it well, don't leave it in the back of a cab.

And then that guy had to get on Craigslist and buy a one hundred dollars fiddle right yep to play first chair at the Philharmonic.

Yeah, Chuck, Yes, you got anything else?

I got nothing else.

I don't either. Good job putting this together, man.

Thanks.

If you want to know more about Stratavarius, you can search the internet for it, because we don't have an article on how stuff works. Since I said, uh, Internet, it's time for listener mail.

Recall this from my good buddy Becks Rebecca Bloomfield. She's one of my pen pals.

Okay from the stuff you should know want see in prison over the years.

She sure is. No, she's not. She's a delight though, and she backed me up on my comments about women in science, so I felt good about it, so I wanted to read it. She made me feel better. I hope you guys had a great time in the UK. By the way, she just missed our show and I think in London by a couple of days, since she was very bummed out.

Does she live there or was she visiting?

I think visiting. She now lives somewhere else, so she said, I know you did. I just listened to the delightful history of steam. Anyway, I'm writing to say, bloody well done. Is that a curse word?

I think like it's like.

Very okay, great, well done, Chuck on your comment on what we could have achieved of women had been allowed into the stem fields from the start. I know this sort of comment could be a minefield for guy, but I can assure you you made your point really well. I'm normally the first to jump on non feminist comments or man's plaining. That's what I was afraid of, So she said, I'm usually the first to jump on the man's plaining. And when you said it, I just said yes, yes, Chuck,

Nice. Well, thanks a lot Be's Can I call her that? Or should I just call her Rebecca?

No, you're in the club.

Okay, Well thanks a lot Bes for that email and for shouting. We appreciate that kind of thing certainly. If you want to get in touch of this, you can tweet to us at sysk podcast. You can hang out with us at Facebook dot com slash Stuff you Should Know. You can also send us an email to stuff podcast at HowStuffWorks dot com and as always, joined us sort o at home on the web, Stuff youshould Know dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.

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