What's the deal with Stradivarius violins?

the podcast. Uh should we talk fiddles? Uh? Yeah, chuck fiddle d D. Let's do I bought one a few years ago. By the way, I took one lesson. Uh huh, and you became an expert. 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 gonna do this, go allow of balls in the air. Yeah. Specifically musically, I bought a steel guitar and I didn't learn to play that. I bought a keyboard and was gonna learn

to play piano. Didn't do that. 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, 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 gonna be. You're a guitar man, 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. 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 but you don't care to it sounds like no. I mean, well, so you consider the piano stringed instrument. Uh it's got strings so yeah, as a percussion or is it stringers? It both? Well, a little hammer hits the strings percussion interesting, um, whereas a harpsichord is plucked. Yeah, talking piano, I wish I

could play the piano. I'd like to learn that one day. 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 um the fiddle or violin. There's no difference, by the way, is that right? Yep? One pronounced one way and the others pronounced 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 and how you play it. They're like kill billies play fiddles. Yeah, other people play violin 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 up on the table at the tavern and beat out a little Irish jig. Uh yeah, And it didn't have a good reputation. Win well, I mean this is uh

the sixteenth century, Okay. So then initially yeah, okay, yeah, I'm with you, I'm okay hang uh. And then 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's like, this thing is wonderful. I'm gonna order thirty eight of them for my court from this guy named Nicholas Amati who was the grandson of the

great violin maker Andrea Amadi. Actually she probably bought them from Andrea if it was and um, yeah, it was fifteen sixty four, and uh, that was it. Things started to change and that's literally what kind of led the violin down a path of respectability. Yeah. Once you introduced it into court, people tend to follow suit. Yeah. Um yeah.

So the the Amadi's lived in a place called Cremona, Italy, right, and Cremona 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, Cremona became the center of violin production, stringed instrument production,

plain and simple. Yeah, which is pretty neat, like the the idea that that's where violence came from and that they're that recent in origin, and of course that goes further back than that, like lutes were obviously around long before the violin. But again, if you look at a violin today and say, oh, it's a violin, you can thank the Amadis of cremona for for making that recognizable to you. Yeah, and here's another cool little fact. The uh the you know, the fancy beautiful shape of a

violin is not for aesthetics. It is all about the sound that it makes. The violin doesn't give a damn whether you think that 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, certain notes would be sound better than others. Huh so um. That allowed the entire fingerboard to sound wonderful well. Plus Also, if you look at a violin face on, sure, uh, if you go down the sides

in the middle, it's cut in. 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. 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 the 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 fingers bow totally different. You're born with one the other. You have to like buy well, it's 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 um 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. Like

I was intimidated and went in the closet. You go, maybe my daughter will play one day and it will be waiting for her. So we'll see. But should we go over the parts? I know you mentioned the sea about? Sure, sea about is my favorite, so you take it from there. Well, if you look at the violind 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 curvy, lovely fancy piece at the top. Uh. 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. Uh the upper bout, the lower about and then that sea about You mentioned, which is also called the waist. Then you have your two f holes cut on either side, the fancy holes. Yeah, they look like f's. Uh. 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 taught. Then you have your tailpiece 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 the violin you just described. That's right. And one of the amadis the grandson of Andrea Amati, who I think is credited with inventing the violin basically. Um, but his grandson, Nicola uh, taught a young man by the name of Antonio and and only a Strativiry. That name

sounds familiar, Yeah, Uh. Antonio Stradivari was born in Cremona. They're not sure when they think, probably about sixty four. Life is a bit of a mystery, his young life at least, right, not a lot of great records on it. Do you know what? This just a jog 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 awesome. Should we follow up now?

Probably not. 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 Stradivaria now. Yeah, we've moved on all right. So Stradivari. Uh, there's not very good records, um about his his youth. I think as you said, um, but he pops up in sixteen sixty six at the very latest. That's right. Violin pops

up in sixteen sixty six. I should say. It has an inscription on it and a label actually uh, And if you translated to English, it says made by Antonio Stradivari of cremona pupil of Nicolo Amati in sixteen sixty six. Well done a year of satan. Uh. And that means he was either a pupil, which it clearly says, or a bit of a bit of a stretch of the truth, in 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 the well it says he was a pupil and the inscription. But the other thought is that maybe it was a bit of a career move to say I was taught by the grade Amati um who's dead now and can't say otherwise. Maybe, but who knows. I bet he was probably a pupil. Actually he wasn't dead, so that would have been pretty uh gutsy to have done that, because um Amati 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 the body. He would have said, he's stealing in my business, So what up with that? Man? This thing is gonna be lousy with that, alright. So sixteen sixty six, you are correct, he builds his very first violin on his own. Uh. He continues to build violens on his own in his attic, which was apparently the tradition attic violin building? Was it? That's what it said. I guess that was just like

where you would put your workshop. 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, if I'm not mistaken. Uh yeah, really good movie though. Um so he's making violence. He moves into a home in sixteen eighty and um he started to get some recognition as a great builder and maker of violins,

a great craftsman. He did, h and he was still kind of living in the shadow of the Amadi's um But when uh Nicola Amadi died in sixteen eighty four, by this time everyone said, this guy is Cremona's best maker of violins, which since Cremona was the world capital of violin making and they were made elsewhere, but Cremona was like the place where the best were made, the crem of the Cremona Right, that made him the world's best violin maker. And he hadn't even entered his golden

period yet. Yeah, and he was making more than violins. He's making cellos and guitars and mandolins and harps uh pretty much anything with strings except harpsichords. Who knows, he might have made a harpsichord that that'd be worth a lot probably. So, Uh, all right, should we take a break here, Yes, all right, we'll get into more craftsmanship

right after this. M alright. So Strativari is following in Amadi's amati It's 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. Uh. And he does so. He said, I'm gonna use some new materials, maybe some new finishes. I'm gonna I'm gonna make that c about a little straighter then you're used to. And then f's a little straighter the f holes Is it straighter?

Was that the deal? I knew? We altered the f hole some and uh something with the scroll too, Is that right? He made it more amazing, and he made the scroll larger, 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. Um It's a very easily recognized, deep

deep red brown varnish that his violins have. It's very handsome, but a lot of people, as will see later, believe that it's possibly the varnish that makes strato various violins so great because when he made these changes, not only was he making these changes to the the shape and appearance of the violin um, he was also like a master would in layer like the craftsmanship that his violins had or just unparalleled. They're flawless, flawless works of art

as musical instruments. So in addition to just being a flawless work of art, they also sounded better than anything anything that could possibly um compare to be compared to it um. And what's really exceptional about Strata various is it's not just one of those things where like, oh the name is actually what what is really driving it? A strata various violin that's three years old today is probably better than any violin that's been produced in the

last three hundred years, including a brand new one. Like they're only now getting to the point where they can they they've discovered techniques where they can start to replicate the sound of strativarius. That's how good this guy's violins were. That that it's not it's not a joke, it's not hyperbole. Of how great the strata various violins were, they are still the ones that this guy made by hand are

still the best violins in the world. That's really saying something considering how much progress we've made in the last three hundred years on just about everything. And and these are you know, for the the finest uh tuned ear is 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 know. But people whose job it is to um identifying a praise strata various violence say that comparing it to a non strut strata various like a knockoff or something, is like comparing a ferrari to a school bus. It's like that. Obvious people like saying things like that, it's a great quote. We're just a couple of schumps. What do we know? Um, so it just might be a new gag. So uh. He and his first wife had six kids. He was good

at having kids. He and his second wife. His wife sadly died in He got remarried and had five more kids with wife Number two. He was great at making violins and making children, yes, crafting children's great at crafting little babies. They called them the mice jo 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 second line. They were smumps, 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 five. Depending on who you 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. It was like Lebron's tenure at the Heat. Oh well, we'll see his career is not over yet. Yeah you're calling it now, huh?

I mean he 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 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 would 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 Clay Thompson on there. Thompson knows so much, but like stef Curry and Kevin Durant, they're like two of the greatest players that have ever lived, ever lived, not just

they're playing right now. How are they going to gel the idea that Duane Wade and Chris Bosh and Lebron James, we're all a well to keep their egos in check and come together to work together and lead a team together. That I think that's harder than that's just being like forget it, I'll do it myself, you know. Yes, all right, So strata vari is uh 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 making and selling these violins. Yeah, apparently there's a phrase richest strata 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 uh in seventeen sixteen when he built the Messiah Uh. 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 um he this this violin has rarely been played. Apparently. One of the sort of things unspoken rules when this thing has 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 conditioned 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.

It's it's not been unplayed. Okay, Yeah, a couple of bad eggs in there, a couple of super lucky violin plays that screw your unwritten rules. This is before the Ashmolean got their hands on it. Okay, um, so post seventy, post Golden period, he still produced violins and things, but uh, 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 turning out the good stuff, but nothing like that Golden period. And he worked into his nineties, so he was building violence for you know, seventy years. He worked up to his death, as far as I understand, I think so, um so yeah, but that Golden period stuff that was there was the Messiah from seventeen sixteen, the Large from seventeen fifteen, the Bets from seventeen o four. Um. 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 alysis of hundred stringed instruments during his career, About six hundred and fifty survived today. Um. And there they tend to have names, especially the ones from his Golden period. As you just heard. Um, they have names, and they're usually the name of the most

famous UH player who owned it. Right, Um, they weren't like Skippy and old Roy right barnabas violin So Um, 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 of the oldest can come along afterward and play that person's violin and it will it will sound much more like the person who's violin it is than the

person playing it. And there's there's a further superstition that the more you play of violind the better it sounds. Well, that's not a superstition, that's fact in any instrument. So there is a study, um from I think that I came across that that found that the more violin would is vibrated, the more the dampening coefficient is lowered. The lower the dampening coefficient. The longer a note resonates, the

longer a note resonates, the richer the sound. And so just playing it right because you're 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 is actually gonna sound so astoundingly. The more you play a violin, the better it sounds. Well, that's true for any instrument. Yeah, it's called breaking it in. It's like

a pair of jeans that you can identify with that. Sure, I love jean and you know a pair of jeans five years in or better than there when you take them off the shelf. Yeah, it's the same thing. It's breaking it in, especially strings with anything with a fingerboard. That fingerboard just you know, wears in. Those frets wear down little, and it does get a little bit tuned, I think to your style. Yeah for sure. Yeah, very interesting. Um,

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 sounds so good and all those theories. Pretty interesting stuff. So, Chuck, I gotta say you did a good job putting this one together. Mhm, Okay, I'm 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 uh covered this very briefly. Yeah, and not we didn't do right by it. So that's I was like, you know what, that's a good topic. Nice, I mean, dust that one off. Um. So there have been many many theories over the years, like if the strata is so revered and 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 violence. The ones

that strat Stratavari 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. Dragon's blood was used in the varnish. That may have been true. Uh, 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 would which we'll

talk about and the others the varnish. Okay, well there, Strata Varia was working during what's known as Europe's Little Ice Age, which is a period of unusually, very unusually colder temperatures. Um, 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. But the upshot of it was that because of the colder temperatures, the spruce that was used by strativerari Um in the manufacture of these violins grew slower but more evenly steadier, so that the wood that was harvested from these spruce trees was much more um uniformly grained. Right, So just basically really high end wood is was produced by this

little ice age. The problem with that being the reason that Stratovarias violins were so great is that that wood was also available the violin makers elsewhere in Europe, and their violence don't sign anything like a stratovarry. So the Little Ice Age theory, while still I think um 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 sage. There's another dude at Texas A and M I named Joseph uh Naga Varry Nagy Varry. What a unique name, uh. And he said, it's all about this varnish, this cremonese, cremin varnish. Is that not right? Yeah? I think that's what they say, start your warning right with. 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 it's this

varnish that he used. Let me analyze it chemically, and what he found out was it's very unique and that it has these things in there that you would not expect to be being a varnish, like borax and chromium. And he said, so, what I think is going on is this stuff. He added this stuff to the varnish to protect it that would against damage an infestation, But what it really did was actually weakened the wood and

made it porous, uh, where it should not be. And that created more tone, a more booming, rich, powerful tone, and a lot of pushback his well, his theories 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. 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 varies violin

sounding like that. Um, yeah, I think he did get a lot of pushback. There seems to be even if he's right, there seems to be a desire among the people who collect and play strata various vi lens is that it will never understand what makes it special. We don't really want to know what will make it special. Um. There's a guy who was widely quoted, Um, he's a violinist from America's names, James EANs Ends EANs Man. Uh, Well, James.

His whole his whole view is that he's played a number of strativarious violins and other stringed instruments, and he said that there's probably a thousand things that make them special and we can never possibly know what all those thousand things are and there's never just gonna be just this one thing. That is the key to what made

Strata various violence so great. Yeah, I think, Um, I watched the BBC documentary that was really pretty great and um 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 had this varnish that was special. Um. Yeah, but they were in the hands of somebody special too. Well.

That was his point was 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 um 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 looked into what it ended up being, and not that he wasn't talented, but like that's why they are what they are. And people were like, who 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 will say that the the record was three point five four four million dollars, and then later on the record was broken with three point six million dollars with the monitor Strata Various, 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 two thousand fourteen, the creates Are had 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 two thousand eleven for sixteen millions. 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 have gone for.

But the fact is millions of dollars, tens of millions in some cases from what I understand, and there are collectors, very very wealthy collectors who are driving the price of strata various viol It's another streams through the roof where if you were smart enough to buy one for a few hundred thousand dollars thirty years ago, it's worth easily ten twenty times that now. 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 there, you know, their go to But yeah, it's just it's just another fat piggy thing to to buy and own

and possess. The one I have is the most expensive one, um. Fortunately, the one that's so it's so valuable that it's frequently cited as priceless is the Messiah and that is owned by the Ashmolean 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 is of violin. It's since you got to hold the Messiah with gloves, and it's called that because there's a Nativity seen 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. Um. 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, you know, those slippy little cotton gloves, And it just made me nervous watching it. Did you ever see that video of things that were very expensive things that were accidentally broken that I made

years back? I remember that. It's just like it was tough to tough to make to uh So over the years,

there's been many, many, many many fakes. Uh As as soon as he died, they started pumping out um 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, largely in Germany, right, right, But they weren't like, um, yeah, they weren't. They weren't being duped. It was like this

is this is in the style of Strativarius or whatever. Yeah, largely in Germany, in 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, they had labels on them that would say like Strativarius crimonisis facto and then say like sixteen seventy nine or

something like that. Right, So, if you find one of these violins and your attic and it looks pretty old, it literally says an Italian this violin was made by Strativarius in sixteen seventy nine, you could be forgiven to think that you have just found a Strativarius violin and all of your money problems are over. You can go buy more meth than you'll ever be able to do in your entire life. It might say made in Germany too, though,

that's a big giveaway, it is. And apparently, if you're an appraiser of this kind of thing, you are 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. Um, he's like, people get angry when you tell them it's not he said, because they think they got a lottery ticket and you have to break it to him. And he said they get mad on these phone calls and they're like, well, do you

have tony bucks from men? That's pretty funny. Uh, do you got anything else? Yeah. If you find a violin and you look it over and it says strativarius, and you look even further and it doesn't say Maide in Germany. If it doesn't say that, I know, but it's still probably a fake. Well you can. Um, 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 appraise, well not appraise, but

just looked at. And they can usually tough from the photos like, no, that's a fake. E step one. Uh, leave it out in the sun and let it let it get rained on a couple of times if ants are attracted to it exactly. Um. Yeah. But one of the appraisers makes the point like they're about six and fifty in the world and they're all basically accounted for. We know where they are. Yeah, and even when we don't know where they are, we know we would know the ones that we don't know where they are when

they surface. The stolen one. Yeah, there was one that was famously stolen um thirty something years ago from a concert violinist and it was a strato various and uh it was in the attic of a Milwaukee thieves 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. 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 is most likely not gonna happen. Yeah. The one of the other appraisers said, it's like finding a new rembrand. He said, we know what he painted, we know where they are. Um, now they've got computers painting rembrands. Oh yeah, I remember that. I think a guy left his strata in the cab a few years ago too, was it, Joshua Bell? It sounds like something that I would do. Way, I can't remember. I believe that happened, though, remember you 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, um and maybe someday it'll be called your last name Strata various. Play it well, don't leave it in the back of a cab. And then that guy had to get on craig'list and by hundred dollar fiddle right yep to play

first chair at the Philharmonic. Uh, chuck, Yes, you got anything else? I got nothing else. I don't either. Good job putting this together, man. Thanks. Uh. If you want to know more about Strata Barius, you can search the internet, fork, because we don't have an article on how stuff works. Since I said, uh, Internet, it's time for a listener, mel Ah. This is what we call this from my good buddy Becks. Rebecca Bloomfield. She's uh, one of my my pin pals from the stuff you should not want

see in prison over the years. She sure is. No, she's not. She's a delight though, h 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 uh, I think in London by a couple of days, since she was very bummed out. Does she live there? Was she visiting? I think visiting? She now lives some rounds. Uh, So she said, I

know you did. I just listened to the delightful history of steam. Anyway, I'm righting to say bloody well done. Uh is that a curse word? I think like it's like, um, very okay, great? Uh, 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 mine field for a 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 splaining. That's what I was afraid of. So she said, I'm usually the first to jump on the man splaining, And when you said it, I just said, yes, yes, Chuck, very loudly. In my office. I even startled the dogs. Raising children is very important, but men can do it too. All humans of any gender should have a choice as to what they do with their lives that should not be predetermined because of

their gender. So good on you, Chuck. Makes me happy to know that the next generation of women are being raised by men like you. And that's from Beck's Bloomfield and she is a graphic designer for Little Red Robot Design shout out and just a nice lady. Nice. Well, thanks a lot, Bex. Can I call her that? Or should I just call her Rebecca? You're you're in the club? Okay, Well, thanks a lot, Becks for that email and for um shouting.

We appreciate that kind of thing. If you want to get in touch with us, you can tweet to us at s Y s K podcast or Josh Underscore um Underscore Clark. You can hang out with us at Charles W. Chuck Bryant on Facebook or Super Josh Clark on Facebook or Facebook dot com slash Stuff you Should Know. You can also send us an email to Stuff podcast at how Stuff Works dot com and is always joined us at at home on the web. Stuff you Should Know dot com For more on this and thousands of other topics.

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