Selects: MC Escher and His Trippy Art

Summary

Podcast Summary: Stuff You Should Know – "Selects: MC Escher and His Trippy Art"

Hosts: Josh Clark & Chuck Bryant
Date: January 3, 2026 (original episode from December 2019)
Theme: An engaging, in-depth exploration of the life, influences, and extraordinary techniques of the artist M.C. Escher, whose work bridges art and mathematics.

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Overview of the Episode

In this artsy edition of "Stuff You Should Know," Josh and Chuck dive deep into the fascinating world of Maurits Cornelis (M.C.) Escher—the artist famed for his mathematically inspired, mind-bending drawings and prints. The hosts trace Escher’s journey from privileged Dutch childhood through his artistic odyssey across Europe, exploring the intersection of his mathematical mind, graphic design prowess, dramatic life events, and eventual pop culture fame. Their lively banter makes for an accessible yet rich account of both the man and his method.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Escher’s Early Life and Education

• Pronunciation and Naming: The hosts playfully struggle with his full name (Moritz/Maurits Cornelis Escher), settling on a blend of affection and accuracy (05:13).
• Family Background: Escher came from affluence—his father was a civil engineer. This allowed him to travel and focus on art without immediate pressure to earn (07:08).
• Education:
  • Attended Technical College of Delft briefly, then moved to the Haarlem School of Architecture and Decorative Arts, where he met his key mentor, Samuel Jesserun de Mesquita (11:19).
  • "He wasn't great in school... He did love drawing class, but apparently wasn’t... you know, he didn’t have his second grade teachers falling over themselves about what a talented artist he was." – Chuck (07:19)

2. Formative Influences: Italy and Spain

• Italian Inspiration: Escher was deeply inspired by the Italian countryside, often producing distinctive, black-and-white landscapes that would later influence his style (15:03).
• Spanish Tessellations: Visits to the Alhambra in Spain introduced Escher to Islamic mosaics and geometric tessellations—complex interlocking forms he’d later popularize (13:16, 23:03).

3. The Escher Style Emerges

• Distinctive Art:
  • From his earliest works, people noted the technical precision and unique perspective of his landscapes: “His Italian landscapes... you would almost certainly have never seen them in your entire life were it not for him moving from Italy... In doing that, the true Escher was unlocked.” – Josh (30:36)
  • His art rarely featured detailed people; human figures often became abstract or background elements.
• Mathematics and Art: Escher’s work was quickly adopted by mathematicians and scientists who marveled at his ability to visualize and render complex geometrical concepts (08:28).

4. Life Events and Artistic Shifts

• Marriage and Family: Married Swiss woman Jetta Umiker; together, they had three sons (16:22, 18:24).
• Impact of WWII: The rise of fascism forced Escher to leave Italy. In Switzerland and later in Belgium and the Netherlands, he struggled with inspiration, leading to a turn inward—fueling the creation of his renowned "trippy" art (20:08, 30:29).
• Personal Tragedy: Escher’s beloved mentor, de Mesquita, was killed at Auschwitz, a loss that deeply affected him. The anecdote of a Nazi boot print on Mesquita’s sketch, which Escher kept all his life, is a powerful and haunting detail (24:17, 25:09).

5. Escher's Techniques: Woodcuts, Lithographs, Mezzotints

• Woodcuts:
  • “Imagine cutting that out of wood—in reverse.” – Chuck (33:51)
  • The complexity of carving negative images for positive prints, often requiring multiple blocks for shading and layering (34:35).
• Lithographs:
  • Escher used limestone slabs, grease pencils, and chemical etching to achieve subtle gradients (36:10).
  • “You have a very special brain, if you can work this stuff out as an artist." – Chuck (38:07)
• Mezzotints:
  • Especially labor-intensive; Escher referred to it as “the black art” and only produced a handful of these (43:45).
• Color Works:
  • Rare, due to the technical complexity of multicolor printing—a separate stone/block for each shade (41:32).

6. Mathematics, Wallpaper Groups, and Geometry

• Mathematical Roots:
  • Escher drew inspiration from mathematical conversations and the study of crystallography. He intuitively understood complex tessellation patterns, including the so-called “17 wallpaper groups,” even if he couldn’t articulate the math formally (50:07).
• Mutual Influence with Mathematicians:
  • Notably collaborated and corresponded with mathematicians like Roger and Lionel Penrose, leading to now-famous imagery such as the “Penrose Stairs” (52:00).

7. Hallmarks and Memorable Works

• Famous Prints:
  • “Hand with Reflecting Sphere,” “Drawing Hands,” and “Relativity” (the impossible stairs) were discussed as iconic examples (04:12, 56:56).
• Themes:
  • Illusionism (figures emerging from flatness, like “Drawing Hands” and “Reptiles”), infinity (patterns that shrink endlessly toward the edge, as in “Circle Limit”), and paradoxical spaces (stairs that go nowhere).
• Notable Quote:
  • “The flat shape irritates me. I feel as if I were shouting to my figures, 'You are too fictitious for me. You just lie there, static and frozen together. Do something! Come out of there and show me what you are capable of.'” – Escher (55:58)
• On Chaos vs. Order:
  • "We adore chaos because we love to produce order." – Escher (54:13)

8. Legacy and Pop Culture

• From Mathematical Circles to Mainstream:
  • Escher’s work caught the eye of mathematicians long before it exploded in popular culture via articles in Life and Rolling Stone, and especially the 1966 Scientific American feature (59:49, 60:18).
• Rock Star Connections:
  • Graham Nash and Mick Jagger were fans; Jagger even requested permission to use Escher’s work for an album (rebuffed for using his first name) (60:20).
• Late Recognition:
  • “Once he was featured in Scientific American, that led to the big daddy of them all—he got featured in Rolling Stone. And then after that, it was all over. He was huge. Dorm room huge.” – Chuck (60:48)
• Influence Continues:
  • Massive exhibitions in the 2010s, resurgence in critical appreciation, and continued presence on both museum walls and dorm rooms (43:01).

9. End of Life

• Later Years:
  • Escher continued innovating and experimenting, demonstrating his process in exhibitions and even creating three-dimensional versions of his illusions (55:07).
• Death:
  • Died in 1972, age 73, after a final burst of broader renown (61:09).

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Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• On the Mathematical Nature of His Work:

  • “He was a mathematician. He was a bit of a square, but he was also a very imaginative square.” – Josh (09:36)

• On Escher’s Printmaking Process (Timestamp 34:01):

  • “If you’ve ever seen an MC Escher print, and you thought, man, that guy could sure draw a print, imagine cutting that out of wood—in reverse.” – Chuck

• On the Transition from Italy to Inward Imagination (30:29):

  • “In doing so, he lost his source of inspiration and was forced to kind of turn inward because he hated what Switzerland looked like... And in doing that, the true Escher was unlocked.” – Josh

• On Illusion and Dimensionality (55:58):

  • “The flat shape irritates me. I feel as if I were shouting to my figures, 'You are too fictitious for me...'”

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Escher’s Early Life and Education:

  • 05:13 – 11:19

• Influence of Italy and Spain:

  • 13:16 – 15:53; 23:03 – 23:51

• World War II and the Move North:

  • 19:52 – 21:44; 24:17 – 26:23

• Tragedy—Mesquita’s Death; The Nazi Bootprint Story:

  • 24:17 – 25:57

• Escher's Printing Techniques Explained:

  • 33:51 – 41:49

• The 17 Wallpaper Groups and Mathematical Concepts:

  • 50:07 – 51:24

• Penrose Stairs and Impossible Objects:

  • 52:00 – 58:16

• Illusion and Escher’s Iconic Works:

  • 55:36 – 57:20

• Pop Culture & Late Fame:

  • 59:49 – 60:48

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Episode Tone and Style

The hosts maintain a playful, enthusiastic, and occasionally irreverent tone, mixing personal anecdotes, gentle teasing, and pop culture asides with well-researched biography and analysis. Their conversations about screen-printing jobs, art school experiences, and dorm room posters keep the material relatable and lively.

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Final Thoughts

For listeners new to Escher or art history, this episode serves as both a primer and a detailed exploration. It reveals how Escher’s seemingly impossible images required both a mathematician’s mind and a craftsman’s patience—qualities that made his trippy art endure far beyond the dorm room.

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For further exploration:

• Documentary: "Journey Into Infinity" (features Escher's children) [09:11, 61:45]
• Major article: "The Impossible World of MC Escher," The Guardian [60:27]
• Visit the MC Escher Foundation for exhibition info [42:23]

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Stuff You Should Know:
"Guaranteed human" insight into the stories behind mind-bending worlds—right down to woodcut lizards and never-ending stairs.

Transcript

[A]

This is an iHeart podcast.

[B]

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[A]

Hey everybody, we're hitting the road again starting in January 2026, picking up again in April 2026. And eventually Canada will tell you year dates too.

[B]

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[B]

That's right. We can't wait to see everybody again out there on the road.

[C]

Hi Kyle, could you draw up a quick document with the basic business plan? Just one page as a Google Doc and send me the link. Thanks.

[A]

Hey, just finished drawing up that quick.

[C]

One page business plan for you.

[A]

Here's the link.

[C]

But there was no link. There was no business plan. I hadn't programmed Kyle to be able.

[B]

To do that yet.

[C]

I'm Evan Ratliff here with the story of entrepreneurship in the AI age. Listen as I attempt to build a real startup run by fake people. Check out the second season of my podcast Shell Game on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

[B]

Hi everybody. Chuck here on a Saturday. I'm just sitting here drawing cubes and things with my poor artwork. But you know who's really good at this? MC Escher. And this episode from December 2019 gets all into the life of the great artist. And the title is MC Escher and his trippy art. I hope you enjoy it.

[A]

Welcome to Stuff youf Should Know, a production of iHeartradio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And there's Jerry over there. And this is Stuff you should know. The artsy edition.

[B]

Jerry Roomtone. Roland.

[A]

Yeah, I think that's make believe stuff.

[B]

Room Tone.

[A]

Yeah, she might as well be like, let me capture a few fairies in this Mason jar first. I think it's the same thing.

[B]

We may need those in the final edit.

[A]

Uh huh.

[B]

I don't know what it is about to explain to everyone. Room Tone is you do this on film sets and in studios where you just make everyone sit completely silently while you capture the sound of the room. So I guess you can. What do you do with that, Jerry? Do you layer it in in case you need it or something? Did you hear that, everyone?

[A]

She said she cleans up the background. To everybody listening, it sounded like, womp, womp, womp, womp, womp, womp.

[B]

There's something about it, though. It's like being in church and getting the giggles. It's really hard, especially on a film set when there's like 50 standing around being completely silent, no one farting.

[A]

I suspect it's strictly a power trip.

[B]

You think so?

[A]

By the person calling for room tone. That's what I think.

[B]

I'm gonna start doing that in my house when things get out of hand. Room tone. Let's see if that works.

[A]

Don't make me bust out the room tone on you. Well, since we're talking about.

[B]

None of that has to do with this.

[A]

No, no. I was gonna say, since we're talking about room tone, obviously. The topic today is MC Escher, who is well known for going berserk anytime someone asked him to be quiet for room tone. He would trash chairs, grab reptiles straight out of the two dimensions and throw them into the third dimension. Just do all sorts of weird stuff.

[B]

That's funny.

[A]

Did you think so? Mm. That was a joke just for you.

[B]

Yeah. So he. Everyone knows MC Escher. If you've ever been to college or.

[A]

Taken drugs or sold drugs to somebody.

[B]

In college, then you've probably seen hands. Drawing hands. Or. I mean, that's not what the name.

[A]

Of that one was, but it's called Drawing Hands.

[B]

Oh, is it? Or some of his more famous ones are these impossible rooms, like stairs that lead to sideways stairs. But you gotta wrap your head around it in a certain way to even make sense of it.

[A]

All right. Or stairs that lead into other stairs that lead back into the other stairs.

[B]

Sure.

[A]

Just constant.

[B]

Or. I'm a big fan of that one self portrait he did in the.

[A]

With the sphere. Yeah, the mirror sphere.

[B]

Mirror sphere.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

It's cool.

[A]

And it is very cool. I'm not crazy about the face, even though I'm sure he did it exactly precise. But the hand, if you look at the hand, it's really realistic. It's very pretty.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, I like this stuff. This is not my style, as in anything I would put on my walls these days. But I still think he's one of the coolest, more innovative artists out there. And there's a great factoid that I Hope will hold till the end. Or not the end, but kind of where it falls in our non outline.

[A]

What does factoid mean again? Does that mean you've killed 10% of all the facts? That's right. And this is just one of the 10% remaining? That's right. Okay, gotcha. So one of the things, Chuck, about MC Escher that I found was that if you are impressed by his work, prepare to get exponentially more impressed as we talk about how he made those works, too.

[B]

Well, that's the fact of the showjuice for me.

[A]

Oh, okay. That's the factoid you're talking.

[B]

Yeah. You got to hold on to that.

[A]

Oh, sure, sure, sure. I was just teasing it a little bit. I didn't know that's what you're talking about. Although I should have guessed. Yeah. So this is us talking about an artist, which means that we should probably talk about the artist being born. And in the case of M.C. escher, whose name, by the way, was Moritz. Cornelis. I want to say Cornelius, but there's no U in there, I think.

[B]

Cornelis.

[A]

Sure. Escher. I nailed the last name. That's right. But I misspoke on name.

[B]

Oh, you didn't say name.

[A]

I nailed the last Nurm. This is the point where the people say, get to the point already.

[B]

Well, we are at that point. That's MC and then Escher. Born June 17, 1898, not 1989, as the Grabster put it. I was like, man, he's like, here's the numbers. He was born in Leeuwarden, Netherlands, grew up in Arnhem, which is about 60 miles southeast of Amsterdam.

[A]

Is that right? Yeah. Okay.

[B]

I mapped all this stuff out nice. It's all kind of in that general area.

[A]

You went on a little Google tour.

[B]

Sure. And he signed, even from early on, as mce, he signed his paintings, although people called him Mauk M A U K. Friends and family.

[A]

Right. Which didn't mean anything, Ed points out, but it's just like, you know, an affectionate term for Moritz.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Is it Moritz?

[B]

Probably Moritz. Moritz Cornelis Escher.

[A]

But it could also go the way of Morris. So is it Moritz or Maurice? I don't know. I wish I knew.

[B]

Well, what we do know is that. And this we should put a pin in, because it sort of plays a big part in how he pursued his art. But his dad had some money.

[A]

He was a rich kid. Yeah, for sure.

[B]

Which really helps, as we'll see as he's traipsing around Europe on Dad's Dime.

[A]

Slowly getting better at art.

[B]

Slowly, yeah, that's a good point. Because he was not great in school. He did love drawing class, but apparently wasn't. You know, he didn't have his second grade teachers falling over themselves about what a talented artist he was.

[A]

No. And apparently he also didn't consider himself much of an artist, although he engaged in art like he did produce art from a very young age. He was terrible in school, except at math and at drawing. Apparently when he was in grade school, primary school, he failed his finals, all of them, except for math. And I read that his father noted in his journal with some affection that his son consoled himself by producing a linotype of a sunflower. That's how he made himself feel better after. After failing out of school.

[B]

Well, and he was somewhat adept at math early on. But it's interesting. His work is highly mathematical as far as art goes. But later on in life, when he was confronted with real mathematicians, he would sort of be like, no, not me, man, I'm an artist. I'm not that kind of mathematician.

[A]

So I said, yes. But most of his friends were mathematicians. For most of his career, he was mostly appreciated by mathematicians and scientists. Those are the people who really vibed.

[B]

On his work and drugs.

[A]

That came later. Okay, that came later when he got real popular. But I saw that somebody made a movie called Journey Into Infinity. It's a documentary, a full length documentary. I believe the whole thing's on YouTube and it starts out, or the trailer starts out with Graham Nash saying, hey, I called up MC Escher one day just to say, Mr. Escher, I think you're a really great artist. That's all I wanted you to say. And he said, I don't consider myself an artist, I. I consider myself a mathematician.

[B]

Oh, really?

[A]

Yes. So I'm going with Graham Nash's interpretation.

[B]

That runs counter to this.

[A]

Spoke to him directly. Yeah, yeah.

[B]

I mean, it's crazy. I mean, not to spoil anything, but he died in 1972 at just 73. So, you know, if he would have lived to his, like mid-80s, which is somewhat reasonable, he would have been like alive in the 80s, which just seems so weird.

[A]

It does seem kind of weird, you know. Yeah, because he seems countercultural for sure. Even though his personality was not very countercultural and he didn't really have much love for hippies. In fact, he later said that the hippies in San Francisco are illegally making copies of my work. He didn't exactly follow the normal usual beat throughout his lifetime. And he was a mathematician. He was a bit of a square, but he was also a very imaginative square.

[B]

That's right. I was trying to make a square joke, but it's not coming to me.

[A]

Remember that show Square Pegs? Square Pegs. Square, yeah, Square pegs.

[B]

Sarah Jessica Parker.

[A]

Was she in that? She was also in Girls Just Want to have Fun.

[B]

That's right.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I'm going to see her on Broadway next spring.

[A]

Really?

[B]

Yeah. She and her husband are co starring in Plaza Suite. Neil Simon's Plaza Suite.

[A]

Very nice.

[B]

Very excited about that.

[A]

I'll bet.

[B]

I'm trying to align it with the Bonnie Prince Billy show, but they're like a week apart. And I'm like, I can't just stay in New York.

[A]

That's a lot of time to kill. Especially when there's hourly flights between Atlanta and New York.

[B]

I know I may just go see Bonnie Prince Billy and come home because he didn't play much. But that's a story for another day. All right, so he goes to school at Technical College of Delft. Not for very long. And then he went to the Harlem with two A's. School of Architecture and Decorative Arts, which is west of Amsterdam, not Harlem, New York.

[A]

Well, I think that's what the Harlem, New York is named after, right? Yeah, that's where Bonnie Prince William is playing.

[B]

He's at Town hall, actually.

[A]

Oh, is that right? Yeah, we played there.

[B]

That's right. We got our stank on that joint. So his dad said, you know, because, you know, his dad had a lot of money and made money, and even though you want to support your kids, you want to try and edge them into something, if you're that kind of dude, that might be lucrative. So he said, hey, you like to draw shapes, why don't you go study architecture? And he did that for a little while, even though he wasn't super into it. But while at school there, he had a very fortunate meeting by being mentored by one Samuel Jasuran Demysquita, who would.

[A]

Be his mentor, who noticed some of his early art. I'm not sure how he saw it, but he took one look at Escher's art and said, you don't need to go into architecture. Come study under me and learn graphic design. And so Escher did. He became a graphic designer, which he, whether he knew it or not, he had been his whole life up to that point. All of his work is very graphic.

[B]

In nature and designy.

[A]

Yeah, it really, really is.

[B]

But I'm sure his dad in the early 1920s was probably like Is that even a thing?

[A]

Right. That sounds made up. Yeah. Well, his dad also, I don't know if you said or not, was a civil engineer. So of course he would be like, you draw. Just go do architecture.

[B]

Right.

[A]

That's what I know, civil engineering. And there's architects in the world. Just go do the other thing that I don't do.

[B]

And he probably thought graphic design just meant like, you're going to make signs.

[A]

Right. Or postage stamps or Christmas paper, which he did later on.

[B]

That's right. So he made a little bit of dough. So in the early 1920s, he started on his sort of rich kid journey, traveling around Europe on his dad's dime.

[A]

On a gap year that was really, really long.

[B]

Very long. But on one of these trips, he went to a couple of places that would end up having a big influence on him. One in Spain at the Alhambra, and then just traveling through southern Italy, through the countryside.

[A]

Yeah. He just fell in love with Italy.

[B]

Yeah. But in Spain, this is one that didn't bear fruit right away. But he was really fascinated by these mosaics and tessellations, which are described as.

[A]

Okay, they are repeating designs that interlock with one another, leave no space between one another, and that when you fit them together, they fully cover a plane, which is harder to do than you would think.

[B]

Yeah. Like, if you've ever seen the Escher fish sort of tessellation, the white fish.

[A]

And the black fish kind of working in one another.

[B]

Yeah, That's a perfect example. And he would do this a lot later on, if you've ever played Qbert.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Those cubes are tessellations.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

A certain kind. But he got really into this, even though it wasn't like, right away that he started doing these things. That sort of came a little bit later. But what he did do was started drawing the Italian countryside because he loved it.

[A]

Loved it. I mean, like, he went to Italy and was like, this is my home. Yeah. And he was quoted at one point in time as saying, like, he never wanted to become an Italian among Italians. He liked being a stranger, but he.

[B]

Loved Italy, which is an interesting thing to say. I'm not exactly sure what it means.

[A]

I think what he was saying was he's. He. He likes being a visitor to Italy rather than. There's a certain amount of responsibility that comes with being one of us. You know what I mean?

[B]

Sure.

[A]

Whereas if you can be like that guy over there who will accept him, we're not going to throw rocks at him every time we see him or anything. Like that. And we'll take his money and, you know, maybe even say hi to him or whatever, but we'll leave him alone. We won't include him in our expectations of what it means to be a local.

[B]

Gotcha.

[A]

That's what I think he's after. Clearly, I can identify with that.

[B]

Well, that kind of came through in his work too. Because if you'll notice, even in these, before he started doing the like trippy three dimensional hands, drawing hands and stuff, when he was doing countrysides, he didn't do a lot of people, didn't do a lot of faces. People were very much in the background and nondescript. But even when you look at these, when you say Italian still lifes of countrysides, what came to mind for me were these beautiful, lush, colorful recreations of a countryside. Nope, Nope. When you look at these, they still look very much like in the M.C. escher style that we all know.

[A]

Yeah. Like very clearly. A lot of them.

[B]

I love them too. They're cool.

[A]

Yeah, they're beautiful. They're black and white and then shades of gray, which is all just shading, right? Yeah. But they are beautiful in their way. Lovely even.

[B]

I like this stuff more than the trippy stuff.

[A]

Oh, yeah?

[B]

Yeah. I mean, this is something I would put on my wall.

[A]

You're an art snob. You're like, oh, I only like Escher's early Italian landscapes.

[B]

Oh, man.

[A]

You take that. Save that trippy stuff for Graham Nash.

[B]

I'm so ashamed.

[A]

No, I think it's great. Chuck, you have totally right there.

[B]

But they are gorgeous. And then in 1923, he met his wife, whose name was Jetta.

[A]

Jetta Umicher.

[B]

That's right.

[A]

Very nice. Thank you. She was Swiss, I learned from the best.

[B]

They met her in Ital, but she was Swiss. And she went home and they sent a bunch of love letters. It's a very sweet story. I'm sure an MC Escher movie would be pretty cool.

[A]

Somebody wrote a script or they wrote a dissertation about the process of writing a script about MC Escher. It's from University of Texas. They wrote it in 2017. I can't remember the name of it, but just look up. Oh, just some random stuff comes up. If you look up mosquito boot print, which will come up later, but if you search that on Google, it brings up. Have you ever done that? Have you ever been like, I'm bored. I want to see what weird stuff I can unlock from Google?

[B]

No.

[A]

And it takes a certain amount of skill because Google wants to give you exactly what you're looking for. It doesn't want to give you just randomness, so you have to trick it. So maybe you'll type in a weird word or the first three letters of a word or something like that, and weird stuff will start to come. Well, if you type in mosquito boot print, probably only, like, the first three of them pertain to MC Escher, and the rest are just a random assortment of links.

[B]

I remember early in the days of Google, we had a mutual friend who. They did this, what I thought was a very dumb game where they would try and find two words together, that they would try and produce the fewest amount of Google results. And whoever could put two words together that found the fewest ones. And I don't know if you remember them doing that, but I don't know.

[A]

If I remember you talking about colossal waste of time, but I remember that some guy did like a TED Talk about that.

[B]

Oh, really?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Oh, well, maybe I'm the dummy.

[A]

No, no, no, it was meh.

[B]

I mean, look at me. I like MC Escher's early work.

[A]

I think that's awesome. I mean, what taste. Yeah. You know?

[B]

So he meets and gets married. She returns to Italy, and they marry in 1924.

[A]

Do you mean Jeddah Umicher?

[B]

That's right. She would become Jeddah Escher.

[A]

Jeddah Umaker Escher.

[B]

And they had a son named Giorgio. Later had sons Arthur and Jan, and they were still just sort of traveling. And his dad was. Even though he was married, his dad was still footing the bill.

[A]

Escher's dad. M.C. escher's father? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Which I was thinking about it. I was like, gosh, you know, how.

[B]

Do you get a benefactor?

[A]

Wake up every day and look at yourself in the mirror. But if you're.

[B]

Look in the mirror sphere, right?

[A]

And then how do you drink? Draw it so amazingly, the father, Escher's father, though, like, what better way to spend your money than to just be like, this is what you want to do with your life, son. You want to pursue art and live in beautiful Italy. Than, like, here, this is what I want for you.

[B]

That's like, if that's how it went down, that's awesome.

[A]

That's the pinnacle of what a parent can do for their child in a lot of ways.

[B]

No, totally. I agree.

[A]

It's not like, hey, why don't you go take up heroin and here's a bunch of money for you to lay around in Ibiza?

[B]

True. I want to know more. I hope I'm not Coming across as cynical. But I wonder if some of this was like, he'll come around if I. You know, to architecture or whatever.

[A]

Right. You kept waiting for the part where his father cuts him off.

[B]

I was.

[A]

His father, apparently. Wouldn't like that. All right, I know how you feel. I'm not trying to talk you into my way of thinking. I'm just saying, like I had. I started out thinking the same way you did, and then something happened. I was like, oh, it was actually really neat of his.

[B]

It was. It all seems above board.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So World War II has a profound effect on Escher and his work. In 1935, he learned that they were making his nine year old son, Giorgio march in fascist youth parades. And he said, pack your bags, we're going to Switzerland.

[A]

That is the appropriate response to that news. Yeah, we're getting out of here. Marching for Mussolini.

[B]

Have you seen Jojo Rabbit yet?

[A]

No. Is it good? Is it as good as it looks?

[B]

It's great.

[A]

Oh, I can't wait.

[B]

It's great. Everything about it is great.

[A]

Do I need to see it in theater? It doesn't seem like one I have to see in the theater.

[B]

No, I mean, you know, it's always fun to laugh with a big group of people. Although by now it's probably thinned out.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I was laughing a lot and people weren't laughing.

[A]

Oh, I like that.

[B]

Kind of one of those deals.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I mean, it's a movie about a kid having Hitler as an imaginary friend.

[A]

So don't tell me that. I didn't know that. No, I had no idea.

[B]

Hitler's on the poster.

[A]

I know, but I didn't know he was an imaginary friend. Oh, get out of my brain.

[B]

Sorry. That really doesn't spoil anything.

[A]

Okay, don't tell me anything else that's.

[B]

Not some big reveal. So they go to Switzerland. All apologies.

[A]

It's all right.

[B]

I'll let you know. It's really not a big deal.

[A]

As long as it's not a big spoiler.

[B]

No, no, no, no, of course not. They go to Switzerland and he, Even though he did not like the mountains, he didn't like the snow, did not like cold weather. So they moved to Belgium after a couple of years, which is just beautiful.

[A]

Compared to Switzerland, Belgium's nice. Sure.

[B]

In May of 1940, though, the Nazis invaded Belgium. And so they moved to the Netherlands in 1941.

[A]

Where the Nazis already were.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I guess they really can't occupy it again.

[B]

Well, in its home.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And they settled in barn, which is about 23 miles southeast of Amsterdam.

[A]

I don't know if that's how you're supposed to say it.

[B]

B, A, A, A, A, rn.

[A]

Right. I like it.

[B]

It's probably barren.

[A]

Oh, yeah, I'll bet you just nailed it.

[B]

I think so. But Dutch is very strange language. Not strange, but just for my English. Dumb English ears.

[A]

Supposedly English is the strangest of all. Yeah, I'm sure it's just a hybrid mongrel language that doesn't make any sense to anyone who's not a native speaker of it.

[B]

You know what is an interesting language is Welsh. Because I'm watching the crown and when Prince Charles starts coming around, Prince of Wales, there's people speaking Welsh. And I was very ignorant about even knowing that.

[A]

What it sounds like, what it sounds like.

[B]

And that it was still spoken. And it was a very odd hybrid. It sounded like of several different things.

[A]

It's all old Celtic stuff.

[B]

Yeah, it's very unusual.

[A]

Gaelic. Gallic. Yeah, I think it's Gaelic. That's like the language group, one of the two. Yeah. Everything I know about Welsh I learned from Super Furry Animals. Oh, yeah, because that guy's Welsh, man.

[B]

I saw them blow Granddaddy off the stage one time.

[A]

Oh, you saw him live? Oh, I think you told me.

[B]

That melted my brain. It was so good.

[A]

I'll bet.

[B]

So they're traveling around still, even though they're settled in Bern and they go back to Alhambra in Spain, which I don't even think we said what that is.

[A]

No, it's a 13th century Moorish castle from when the Moors conquered Spain. It's beautiful. It is very beautiful. And they built it in the Moorish style, and then it was eventually taken over by the Christian royalty that explored the New World and all that stuff. But this castle was done in these tiles that are renowned for being some of the most beautiful geometric, like Islamic patterns you've ever seen in your life. And they got to Escher. He'd seen him before, but it was. I guess he was like, oh, that's kind of cool. But the second trip that he went back with, after they moved from Switzerland, I think, to Belgium or maybe to Switzerland, that's when he was like, I am obsessed with these now these tessellations.

[B]

Started drawing them jetted too. It says that they work together. So I didn't know that she was an artist.

[A]

Yeah, I didn't either.

[B]

But they. World War II comes back around. Well, not comes back around. It never left, let's be honest. But Spain would devolve into Civil War. And so this meant that he was kind of stuck outside of Amsterdam for a little while longer.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

He wasn't doing as much traveling.

[A]

No, he was in the Netherlands. And he rekindled his friendship with Mesquita, his old mentor, who had stayed in Netherlands this whole time. And Meskita was Jewish. And he was taken away by the Nazis eventually. He was killed at Auschwitz, I believe, with his wife.

[B]

Terrible.

[A]

And their son was also killed at another concentration camp by the Nazis. And this really got to Escher. Like, this is one of his dear friends, and he had a work. A sketch of mosquitoes. When he went to his house to visit Mosquito, he found the door was open and they weren't there, and they clearly had been taken by the Nazis. And one of the pieces of artwork that he gathered together to preserve was a sketch of mosquitoes that had a Nazi boot print on it.

[B]

And that's what you were referenced earlier.

[A]

With your Google search, mosquito, boot print.

[B]

Did you. Was there a picture of it?

[A]

No, I couldn't find anything aside from the fact that it was a sketch. Not that it was a sketch of what or anything like that. Just that there was a sketch of mosquitoes that was. That had a boot. Bore a boot print. And that Escher hung onto this his entire life. This was very important to him. And he was not a very flowery, like, passionate man or anything like that. I get the impression that he. And this is Eshar I'm talking about, that he internalized a lot of stuff. And I think that him holding onto that piece of art was probably more significant than even it appears on the outside.

[B]

Yeah. And supposedly hid some people from a Jewish family during the Nazi occupation years. And also during those same years, did not exhibit or release any prints.

[A]

Wait a minute. I think you just said hid some people from a Jewish family. Or did you say hid some members of a Jewish family?

[B]

Well, people members of a Jewish family.

[A]

But you said from. I think.

[B]

Yeah, I mean, like, they were from a Jewish family.

[A]

Oh, gotcha, gotcha, gotcha.

[B]

He didn't hide them from the family.

[A]

Right, right. Don't tell a Jewish family that you're hiding over here.

[B]

No, that would have been weird. So maybe we should take a break now.

[A]

Oh, I think it's unraveled.

[B]

Sort through who the good guys are.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

All right, Dan, inside.

[A]

Joshua. Hey, everybody. We're hitting the road again starting in January 2026, picking up again in April 2026. And eventually Canada will tell you year dates, too.

[B]

That's right. We're going to do at least three legs. And the first leg is starting out in Denver, Colorado at the Paramount Theater on January 27th. We're going to go back to our beloved Seattle at the Paramount Theater there on the 28th, and then finally back at SketchFest on the 29th at the Sidney Goldstein Theater.

[A]

Yep. And then April 16th, 17th and 18th, we're going to be in Madison, Wisconsin, Chicago, Illinois and Akron, Ohio. And if you're not keeping up with all this or taking notes, don't worry, you can get all the info you need and buy [e-mail], click on the tour button and thank us later.

[B]

That's right. We can't wait to see everybody again out there on the road.

[C]

Hi Kyle, could you draw up a quick document with the basic business plan? Just one page as a Google Doc and send me the link. Thanks.

[A]

Hey, just finished drawing up that quick.

[C]

One page business plan for you.

[A]

Here's the link.

[C]

But there was no link. There was no business plan. It's not his fault. I hadn't programmed Kyle to be able.

[B]

To do that yet.

[C]

My name is Evan Ratliff. I decided to create Kyle, my AI co founder, after hearing a lot of stuff like this from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

[B]

There's this betting pool for the first year that there's a one person billion dollar company which would have been like unimaginable without AI. And now will happen.

[C]

I got to thinking, could I be that one person? I'd made AI agents before for my award winning podcast Shell Game. This season on Shell Game, I'm trying to build a real company with a real product run by fake people.

[A]

Oh hey Evan.

[C]

Good to have you join us.

[A]

I found some really interesting data on adoption rates for AI agents and small to medium businesses.

[C]

Listen to Shell game on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

[A]

You know the shade is always shadiest right here.

[C]

Season six of the podcast Reasonably Shady.

[A]

With Gisele Bryan and Robyn Dixon is.

[B]

Here dropping every Monday.

[A]

As two of the founding members of the Real Housewives Potomac, we're giving you all the laughs, drama and reality news you can handle. And you know we don't hold back. So come be Reasonable or Shady with us Each and every Monday, I was going through a walk in my neighborhood.

[B]

Out of the blue, I see this huge sign next to somebody's house.

[A]

The sign says, my neighbor is a Karen. No way.

[B]

I died laughing.

[A]

I'm like, I have to know you are lying. Humongous. Y' all they had some time on their hands. Listen to Reasonably Shady from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Okay, Chuck. So World War II kind of comes and goes around Escher, despite his best efforts to escape it. And it definitely had a mark on him. But one of the other things that had a really big mark on him was having to move from Italy. It was like you said, he was married, had a family, his father was still supporting him. And every spring and summer he would just tour the Italian countryside and visit small, quaint towns and just be inspired to keep making these Italian landscapes. But Ed makes a really great point here, that his Italian landscapes are very handsome works of art. Very beautiful.

[B]

My favorite.

[A]

Technically proficient, they're Chuck's favorite. But you would almost certainly have never seen them in your entire life.

[B]

No.

[A]

Were it not for him moving from Italy, because in doing so, he lost his source of inspiration and was forced to kind of turn inward because he hated what Switzerland looked like. He wasn't apparently very inspired by his home country of the Netherlands. So he had to kind of turn inward into his own imagination and start coming up with new subjects. And in doing that, the true Escher was unlocked.

[B]

Yeah. Because early, like a lot of artists early in their career, they kind of free ranged through different styles, trying to find their own personal thing.

[A]

He had a very colorful clown period. It's very bizarre. It doesn't fit with the rest of it.

[B]

Very John Wayne Gacy.

[A]

Right.

[B]

But you can very clearly see, if you look at Mosquito's work, the connection and the influence from him. Although Mosquito did a lot of sort of graphic portraits and things like that, whereas Escher didn't really worry too much about humans and faces.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. They were just kind of like almost afterthoughts.

[B]

But early on, he did start experimenting with stuff that would later become sort of his hallmark. When he did do, like a sketch of a building, let's say it would be from this really tall, odd angle looking down on it, very severe angles and like a horizon or trees that sort of go on into infinity, stuff like that. That would become very much his style later on. And Ed very astutely points out that there's something about his style that.

[A]

I.

[B]

Don'T know how dark of a person he was emotionally, but there is something about the severity of these angles and a lot of his work that was just sort of uneasy feeling.

[A]

Right.

[B]

It didn't look like just some beautiful, colorful Italian countryside. There was something kind of Strange and unusual about it.

[A]

Something about the contrast of black and white definitely does it, too. And he was such a master of shading that if something was stark and black and white, I mean, unless it was his earliest work, it was because he wanted it to look that way and to make it stark and kind of unsettling like that. But, yeah, there's like a certain amount of dread in a lot of his stuff.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And it's not something you can easily put your finger on, but it's definitely there.

[B]

Yeah. Like, did you see the mummified priests? Yeah, that was creepy. And then one of his.

[A]

But isn't it more creepy to actually do that in real life?

[B]

To mummify?

[A]

Yeah. To stand them up like that in these little alcoves?

[B]

Well, yeah, absolutely.

[A]

Sure. He was just. Don't kill the messenger.

[B]

And he would have sometimes skulls featured in some of his work and stuff like that. Like the one of the eye, I believe, called eye. Right in the middle of the pupil is a skull staring back. So he had little touches like that without going full, like Lovecraftian.

[A]

Right. Or Goya or something like that.

[B]

I don't even know who that is.

[A]

Hieronymous Bosch.

[B]

I don't know who that is.

[A]

Sure you do.

[B]

I'm just kidding.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

I know those people.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

So his. I guess this is where we get to the fact of the show for me.

[A]

Take it away, Chuck.

[B]

Because, folks, if you've ever seen an MC Escher print, and you thought, man, that guy could sure draw a print, imagine cutting that out of wood.

[A]

Yeah. In reverse.

[B]

In reverse.

[A]

Because that's what he did. A lot of his stuff were wood cuts even harder than that, Chuck, is the lithograph.

[B]

Yeah. So a woodcut. If you've ever used a stamp or made a potato stamp as a kid.

[A]

You'Re basically MC Escher.

[B]

Well, that's what it is. He's actually carving this stuff into wood as a negative image. Because then when you run ink over it and stamp it, you get the positive image. And it's just incredible. I mean, it's hard enough to draw and sketch this stuff, much less cut it out of wood.

[A]

Right. So just take a step back and think about the Eschers that you've seen before. Imagine that they were originally carved out of wood. And now imagine that to get even more detail, because you can't adjust how much ink a certain part of the wood block gets. It's all going to get an even layer of ink. So to shade something, you have to do cross hatching. Lines stippling, something like that. But to get really detailed with shading, you need multiple blocks of the same image in the exact same size with different parts accentuated so that you can layer over. You can take the same paper and layer them on different blocks and line them up so that you have layers to this image. That was the level of the woodcuts this guy was doing.

[B]

Yeah, like, that's sort of like a T shirt hippie.

[A]

Exactly.

[B]

Screen printing, like a four color shirt. You got to put it on exactly in the spot that it needs to go each time, drag that ink across so it's not off by a centimeter.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Because it would look bad.

[A]

So the woodcuts, especially as earlier woodcuts, you can tell they are wood cuts. They look like wood cuts. Some of them do not. There's some of the Italian countryside that just.

[B]

My favorite.

[A]

Astounding. And when you stop and think about the idea that it's not a drawing, that they're wood cuts, multiple blocked wood cuts is pretty astounding. But like I was saying to me, even more difficult is making the lithograph.

[B]

Yeah, I think I talked about this on some other episode. I know I talked about batiking, but I also talked in industrial arts, we did offset lithography in that social experiment.

[A]

High school you went to.

[B]

Yeah, exactly. We did offset lithography, which basically. I mean, that's the process today. I mean, that's how they make newspapers, posters, books, maps. Kind of everything is to do with offset lithography.

[A]

It was in. Do you remember? It was in the Etch A Sketch episode. Oh, that's what Ohio Art originally did was lithography.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

It's a deep cut.

[B]

This is pretty. Like today you use like aluminum or some other kind of metal sheet. And these emulsions and chemicals. Back then it was drawn onto limestone, a flat slab of limestone with a grease pencil, and then used a chemical treatment on the areas that basically water and ink don't mix. It's sort of all built on that principle.

[A]

Right.

[B]

So the areas where you have written in Greece do not hold that ink. Or is it the other way around?

[A]

No, I think they don't hold the ink.

[B]

Yeah. Again, what you're doing is creating a negative image, just like the woodcut, essentially.

[A]

Right. So you've got this attraction and repulsion interplay between ink, water and grease.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And when you put it all together on limestone, it makes these extremely subtle gradients of shading that are kind of like a hallmark of some of Escher's More well known works. The hands. Drawing hands, right. Yeah. That was a lithograph. He made that with limestone and grease, pen and ink. And did it in reverse, too, because just like with the woodblock, you have to create the negative of it.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Because you want the positive image on the paper.

[B]

You have a very special brain. If you can work this stuff out as an artist.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

You know, it's not saying that any kind of artist is any better or worse or smarter than the next, but your brain just has to be wired a little bit differently to think in negatives like that.

[A]

Like a mathematician, basically.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Your brain has to be set up that way.

[B]

Yeah, absolutely. But lithography is difficult, very labor intensive. So later on he would hire a lithographer to actually create his prints after he's sketched and drawn this stuff out.

[A]

Smart move.

[B]

And he would destroy the limestone. Well, he wouldn't destroy it. He would scrape it clean so he could reuse it.

[A]

Right.

[B]

So that's the reason, like, if you want to buy an original MC Escher, good luck.

[A]

Well, there's no such thing. There's original prints that he made.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And apparently.

[B]

But you're not going to get your hands on one of those limestones.

[A]

No, but there are a couple of those left over. But he said that he wanted them, I think, canceled is what they call it in his will where they intentionally damage it. So that even if you got ahold of one of these things and you were like, I'm gonna print me a brand new Escher, there'd be like the negative image of Snagglepuss, like, comes through and like the hand drawing. Hands picture.

[B]

And he did not do many original prints from those original woodcuts and lithographs either. I think he only did 10 of still life with spherical mirror. And so anything, obviously anything you buy in a Spencer Gifts is gonna be a print anyway.

[A]

What they told me it was an original.

[B]

You mean Bikini lady on Corvette?

[A]

You could probably get the original of that at Spencer's.

[B]

You probably could. The original negative.

[A]

Bikini lady on Corvette.

[B]

Oh, man.

[A]

Remember those Garfield with Lamborghini.

[B]

These lithographs? He would also layer those just like he did with the woodcuts, creating multiple plates to layer on top of one another for shading and toning and stuff like that. It's just amazing.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I mean, I did it to make a Monkees T shirt.

[A]

I forgot you used to screen print too. So did I. Yeah. Yeah.

[B]

Well, actually, the Monkees T shirt was screen printing. I think I can't remember what I did for a lithograph, I think something to make a notepad that said, like, my name and something else.

[A]

Oh, that's right. So you screen printed in Industrial Arts? Yes. Okay. Were you ever employed gainfully as a screen?

[B]

Oh, no.

[A]

Oh, no.

[B]

Did you do that?

[A]

Yeah. No.

[B]

I mean, I would have loved to, but I wasn't good enough.

[A]

Oh, it's not hard.

[B]

Yeah, but you would draw the stuff or you would just.

[A]

Oh, no, no, no, no. Would, like, burn the screens and everything and drag the ink through.

[B]

You did that for a job?

[A]

Sure.

[B]

Like high school?

[A]

No, this is college.

[B]

What kind of dough do you make doing that, Jack?

[A]

Yeah, but it's fun. It's cool work. You know, you just listen to music.

[B]

And beer and a few bucks, pretty.

[A]

Much hang out with some cool dudes and, you know.

[B]

Yeah, I gotcha.

[A]

Say no more. Good early college job. You know what I mean?

[B]

I think it'd be cool. I mean, there's a very cool T shirt local T shirt shop here that every time I go over there, because that's where our friend the patchmaker, Katie Culp, works. Or at least she used to. I think she's got her own space now.

[A]

Oh, cool.

[B]

But she shared a space with T shirt dudes, and anytime I'm in there, it's just a good vibe, you know what I mean?

[A]

It really is. Yeah.

[B]

There are a lot worse places to spend your time than a T shirt shop.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So. Oh, Another thing we should point out is that he did do color occasionally, but color was a whole different. You had to do a separate stone for each color. So that's why a lot of his stuff ended up in black and white. Aside from the fact that he liked it as well.

[A]

Yeah. He seemed to be very pleased with black and white in general.

[B]

Yeah. I'm not saying he was lazy.

[A]

No. But let's take a step back here for a second and examine the idea that you thought MC Escher was a pretty amazing artist when you just imagined that he was sitting in his studio drawing all this stuff with a pencil.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Now really let it sink in that he carved these things in reverse out of wood.

[B]

Or limestone.

[A]

Or limestone. And then used these crazy techniques to make these extraordinarily detailed, incredibly precise and technical works of art.

[B]

It's amazing.

[A]

It really is amazing.

[B]

Truly astounding. And like you said, there are a few of those stones and woodblocks that are owned by the M.C. escher Foundation.

[A]

Snaggle puss on every single one of them.

[B]

And apparently they will display them occasionally along with his works.

[A]

Right. Which I imagine seeing that and then looking at the work of art and then going back and looking at that limestone and then looking at the work of art, it really kind of sinks in, like, oh, my God. Yeah.

[B]

I'd love to see an exhibition of his stuff.

[A]

Me too. They've picked up in recent years. Have they?

[B]

Yeah. It seems like he's being more appreciated as a truly great artist and less college dorm wall material.

[A]

Yep. In 2011, the record for highest overall attendance in the world out of all the museums in the world that year was at the Centro Cultural Banco de Brasil, which held their Magical World of Escher exhibit. Oh, wow. 570,000 visitors. About 10,000 a day.

[B]

Holy cow.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

So if you think lithography and woodcutting sounds difficult, we'll talk a minute about mezzotint. That is sort of like wood cutting, except you're using a sheet of copper that starts out as a rough surface, and then use these little tools to smooth out things that are going to be the image. Applying that ink and then wiping it off.

[A]

Right. So the places you smooth out are.

[B]

Don't have ink.

[A]

The ones that are going to be white on the paper or blank on the paper. Right. It's the rough edges that hold the ink. So you cover the whole thing with ink, wipe it down. The smooth start parts come clean. The rough stuff has the ink. And you can use this. Like, this is. This isn't like, oh, look, I made an X.

[B]

Right.

[A]

This is, like, incredibly fine. Stippling is possible with these copper plates and all this. And a mezzotint. And the eye that you were talking about, the one with the skull, if you go back and look at that, that was a mezzo tint. Yeah.

[B]

So it was dewdrop, very detailed cupped leaf showing a single drop of dew inside it with all kinds of cool reflections. But Escher called this the black art. He only made eight of these because it is a real undertaking. And I think he just. He did a handful of them and then moved on to the far easier woodcutting.

[A]

Right, right. He's like, oh, I came back, baby.

[B]

All right, we'll take a break, and then we'll come back and pick up with his life story again, which is, I believe that we left off in what? End of World War II?

[A]

Sounds right. All right. Hey, everybody, we're hitting the road again, starting in January 2026, picking up again in April 2026. And eventually Canada will tell you year dates, too.

[B]

That's Right. We're going to do at least three legs and the first leg is starting out in Denver, Colorado at the Paramount Theater on January 27th. We're going to go back to our beloved Seattle at the Paramount Theater there on the 28th, and then finally back at SketchFest on the 29th at the Sidney Goldstein Theater.

[A]

Yep. And then April 16th, 17th and 18th, we're going to be in Madison, Wisconsin, Chicago, Illinois and Akron, Ohio. And if you're not keeping up with all this or taking notes, don't worry. You can get all the info you need and buy tickets atstuffyou should know.com, click on the tour button and thank us later.

[B]

That's right. We can't wait to see everybody again out there on the road.

[C]

Hi, Kyle. Could you draw up a quick document with the basic business plan, just one page as a Google Doc and send me the link. Thanks.

[A]

Hey, just finished drawing up that quick.

[C]

One page business plan for you.

[A]

Here's the link.

[C]

But there was no link. There was no business plan. It's not his fault. I hadn't programmed Kyle to be able.

[B]

To do that yet.

[C]

My name is Evan Ratliff. I decided to create Kyle, my AI co founder, after hearing a lot of stuff like this from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

[B]

There's this betting pool for the first year that there's a one person billion dollar company which would have been like unimaginable without AI. And now will happen.

[C]

I got to thinking, could I be that one person? I'd made AI agents before for my award winning podcast, Shell Game. This season on Shell Game, I'm trying to build a real company with a real product run by fake people.

[A]

Oh, hey Evan.

[C]

Good to have you join us.

[A]

I found some really interesting data on adoption rates for AI agents and small to medium businesses.

[C]

Listen to Shell game on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

[A]

Hi, I'm Danny Shapiro, host of the hit podcast Family Secrets. We were in the car like a Rolling Stone came on and he said, there's a line in there about your mother. And I said, what? What I would do if I didn't.

[B]

Feel like I was being accepted is.

[A]

Choose an identity that other people can't have.

[B]

I knew something had happened to me.

[A]

In the middle of the night, but.

[B]

I couldn't hold on to what had happened. These are just a few of the.

[A]

Moving and important stories I'll be holding space for on my upcoming 13th season of Family Secrets. Whether you've been on this journey with me from season one or just joining the Family Secrets family, we're so happy to have you with us. I'll dive deep into the incredible power of secrets, the ones that shape our identities, test our relationships, and ultimately reveal who we truly are. Listen to Family secrets on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[B]

Okay. World War II is over. MC Escher was, like a lot of people, very rattled by that experience in Europe. And at this point, he still is not a super famous artist making tons of money.

[A]

No. But he's more famous than this makes him out to be. Like, he's got some renown in the Netherlands.

[B]

There's certain circles.

[A]

Yeah. But he's not anywhere even approaching how he is today or how he has been the last few decades since about like the late 60s.

[B]

Yeah. College dorms. Have not yet started putting his stuff everywhere.

[A]

No. But the people who most appreciate what he's doing are scientists and mathematicians who are like, this is astounding. This guy is taking what we write out as formulas and turning them into art and making them precise.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Like you could describe this work of art as a formula. That is what MC Escher was able to do. He was able to take math and translate it into a visual art.

[B]

Yeah. And you know, remember what you said earlier? This is where we are in his life. Where he is. He is not in the Italian countryside.

[A]

He's been ripped from its bodice.

[B]

So his muse is gone and he is now looking inward for his inspiration in his own unique brain.

[A]

He's being forced into his own bodice face first.

[B]

This is where he starts with these tessellations. Tessellations, More elaborate geometric shapes. He's doing the lizards and the birds and the insects as tessellations. Really, really cool stuff. His brother said, hey, dude, you know what you should do is go talk to a crystallographer. He's like, if you want to talk detailed shapes and math. And he does so. And that taught him a lot. And then he Learned about the 17 wallpaper groups, which is so dense that, you know, how much do we even want to talk about it?

[A]

Well, we'll just sum it up. The 17 wallpaper groups basically is a mathematical concept that says every geometric pattern, two dimensional geometric pattern, falls into one of 17 categories. There's only 17, and they're called, kind of half jokingly, the wallpaper groups, because wallpaper has geometric patterns on it usually. Right, right. Escher couldn't understand it mathematically.

[B]

Yeah. It was proved out twice independently that.

[A]

There are 17 wallpapers yeah.

[B]

The mathematical proof.

[A]

One of the things that's interesting, Chuck, is the Alhambra apparently is the only place in the world that contains all 17 geometric wallpaper patterns within its walls.

[B]

That's pretty cool.

[A]

Yeah. So of course this would appeal to Escher, but he didn't understand. He couldn't sit down and explain like we can, what the 17 wallpaper groups are or what they mean mathematically. But he understood them intuitively. And as with mathematicians about mid career, he was apparently kind of amused to find like these guys spend all this time writing this stuff out in these formulas and I just know it. It was almost like I was born knowing it.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I guess he was real cocky. Yeah. He wasn't really though.

[B]

I'm just kidding. And I didn't get the idea either that he was like, take your math and shove it. He was just a little more amused that like you've got these mathematical proofs that like, I'm drawing this stuff from my creative brain on limestone. Yeah, on limestone. Cutting it out of wood. So I think he appreciated the way they coalesced. And he was very. Like you said, most of his friends were mathematicians, I think later in life. Who did he.

[A]

The Penroses.

[B]

Yeah. Roger and Lionel Penrose. I love how it's described here. Father and son, mathematician team.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. You know those, they wore matching dolphin shorts.

[B]

Oh, man.

[A]

As part of their uniform.

[B]

I wish people still wore those.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Did you ever wear those?

[A]

No, they were a little before my time.

[B]

Well, they were for joggers and runners.

[A]

Yeah. And starts at 2011. And Hooters. I forgot about that. Yeah. That is what Hooters waitresses wore.

[B]

Orange dolphin shorts with bronze pantyhose.

[A]

Yeah. And then chunky white socks. Yeah.

[B]

And Reebok high tops.

[A]

It was bizarre.

[B]

It's an interesting look.

[A]

Somebody put that together and not a woman. Do you remember there was a Hooters airline? What? Yeah.

[B]

Wow. That kind of rings a bell.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

That was very short lived, I imagine.

[A]

I believe so. It was pretty short lived.

[B]

Interesting.

[A]

I guess. Yeah.

[B]

So you would get asked like, what kind of drink and what style of chicken wing do you want?

[A]

But they did serve chicken wings on those. Of course. But can you imagine being on an airplane being forced to smell chicken wings the whole time if you didn't like it?

[B]

That's like every flight I ever take.

[A]

It's true.

[B]

There's somebody with some stinky food.

[A]

You know, if I sit next to somebody on the plane and I'm gonna eat, I ask them if it's okay if I eat?

[B]

Like if you bring food on.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

I don't bring food onto a flight sometimes, dude.

[A]

You just have to. Yeah, it's a long flight. And they run out of turkey wraps, like in the first half a second.

[B]

So you just pull out your, what.

[A]

My Kung Pao out of your pocket.

[B]

You had. Just in case. They're out of turkey wraps.

[A]

Not even in a container. It's just in my pocket.

[B]

Oh, goodness. So I thought this part was sort of amusing. How orderly he always was with his art. And he tried to get into chaos a bit in this one work. Contrast, parentheses, order and chaos, parentheses. Wherein he went and dug up a bunch of trash and said, I will draw chaos. And it ended up being. If you go and look at it, there's like a broken bottle, broken eggshell, an open sardine tin, a broken clay pipe and some other refuse drawn to like perfect or I guess woodcutter lithographed with perfect, beautiful precision.

[A]

Right. That was chaos, his interpretation of it.

[B]

He just couldn't do it.

[A]

He was very much preoccupied with chaos. He has a very famous quote, probably his most famous quote. We adore chaos because we love to produce order. And he's like, by we, I mean me mc. Yeah. Sure.

[B]

Sounded very much like an I statement.

[A]

But he was very much into geometry and precision and clean lines and all that.

[B]

Yeah. And also, as his career would progress, these repeating patterns on a finite space. If you've seen his Circle Limit series, that's where you'll find the fish or these demons. And they start out with like one in the center and then there's a pattern all around. And as it gets closer and closer to the edge, they get smaller and smaller and smaller.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And you can just sort of imagine that there is no end to these.

[A]

Shapes, that they're just going infinitely around the sphere perfectly. But again, you have to stop and remind yourself, this is a two dimensional image I'm looking at.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And then secondly, this is cut out of wood. But yeah, he apparently made a three dimensional wood carving of his Circle Limit series later on in life. And I'll bet that's spectacular to see too.

[B]

He made a what?

[A]

A three dimensional wood carving of it. Basically proving that his two dimensional drawing was accurate. Yeah. Because he made it in the three dimensions.

[B]

That's awesome.

[A]

Yeah, he was just showing off toward the end there.

[B]

I like reptiles.

[A]

Yeah, that's a good one.

[B]

Aside from his early countryside work, that is far superior. The tessellation of the lizards and reptiles is really neat. That's the one that has the lizards being like crawling off of the page as a drawn image, circling around, walking over some books and then crawling back over onto the page as a drawn image. Yeah, very neat.

[A]

It's a lot like the hands. Drawing or drawing hands. One kind of where the hands are drawing themselves or one another, but they're also three dimensional too. And that actually kind of jives with another quote he had that I think really sums that style of art up. He said, the flat shape irritates me. I feel as if I were shouting to my figures, you are too fictitious for me. You just lie there, static and frozen together. Do something. Come out of there and show me what you are capable of. And he would shout it just like that.

[B]

And then Jetta would back out of the room slowly. Okay, dear, here's your tea. And that sort of brings us to. With the reptiles. We need to talk a little bit about illusion. Because it started sort of early on he was preoccupied with illusion, whether it was like these lizards coming off the page or Still Life in Street, which is a tabletop that blends into a street scene.

[A]

That's a neat one.

[B]

Yeah, it's really cool. I like that one too. Or relativity, which. I don't know. I mean, is there a. Most famous. Maybe hands.

[A]

It's between hands. Self Portrait with sphere and relativity.

[B]

Yeah, Relativity is the one with the sphere.

[A]

Yeah. And people going up and down stairs that don't go anywhere, but they go everywhere and they circle back on each other and it's just an impossible staircase actually called Penrose Stairs.

[B]

Oh, really? Yeah, after the famous Father and son mathematician team.

[A]

And speaking of the Penroses, did I.

[B]

Just say math magician? I just invented something I did.

[A]

That's amazing. Completely by accident, the Penroses. That would be great. Math magician.

[B]

Yeah, I bet that's something. 4.

[A]

But the Penroses apparently wrote they saw some of Escher's work, wrote a paper explaining his work about impossible things like impossible stairs, which came to be called Penrose stairs. And Escher was either mailed a copy of this or somebody pointed it out to him. So he created something called House of Stairs or Upstairs Downstairs, one of the two, and sent one of the original prints to the Penroses. So in a way, their correspondence and inspiration for one another was like a set of impossible stairs in real life. Isn't that interesting?

[B]

Yeah. And this is. You know, we were talking earlier about how his works somehow felt unsettling and, you know, the subject matter as well. When you think about the Subjects walking in relativity, clearly never getting anywhere. Walking downstairs. I'm sideways. All of a sudden, I'm walking back into the same staircase I was just on.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Like you imagine if these things were to come alive, they would be frustrated, angry people.

[A]

Right. And as a matter of fact, one of the one that you were just talking about upstairs, downstairs, that was supposedly based on a staircase in his school.

[B]

Oh, really?

[A]

Which suddenly says quite a bit about his psychology, don't you think?

[B]

Well, how so?

[A]

Well, I mean, like, these students aren't going anywhere. They're not even human. They're centipedes with human faces.

[B]

Gotcha.

[A]

Gotcha. And they're kind of trapped in this, what you could definitely call, like, a purposeless existence in this building. It's kind of a dark building.

[B]

Interesting. So he does finally achieve really great fame later in his life. Like you said, he was holding exhibitions in the Netherlands and a little bit in Europe, but he did one in Belgium in 1950 that led to an article in the Studio, which was an art magazine, and that captured the attention of a journalist who wrote about him in Time and Life magazines, which definitely propped him up a little bit.

[A]

Yeah. Oh, yeah.

[B]

Then that led to a larger exhibition at the International mathematical congress in 54. Flash forward to 66. He was featured in Mathematical Games column in Scientific American by Martin Gardner, math magician. I guarantee you that's a thing. And that increased his. And this was 66. So it was kind of perfect timing with the hippies and the drugs and the counterculture.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And I guess. Who was it? Graham Nash.

[A]

Graham Nash. Mick Jagger sent him a fan letter and made the mistake of calling him by his first name.

[B]

Oh, really?

[A]

Escher did not appreciate Stanley Kubrick. Tried to recruit him to make 2001 A Space Odyssey, a fourth dimensional film. Yeah. There's this interesting article called the Impossible World of MC Escher that Stephen Poole wrote in the Guardian that has a lot of that stuff in it. But he was kind of like, no, I'm good over here with my mathematician friends.

[B]

Well, once he was featured in Scientific American, that led to the big daddy of them all. He got featured in Rolling Stone. And then after that, it was all over. He was huge. Yeah, Dorm room huge.448 works then. This doesn't count all the sketches and drafts. These are like the actual final works.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And like we said earlier, he died in 1972 of cancer at the age of 73. And I tried to find more about his family, but there's not a lot out there, like his sons and whether or not his. I mean, I guess his grandkids would be contemporaries of ours.

[A]

Yeah. I don't know. Like he was born in 1899. Well, great grandkids, maybe.

[B]

Yeah. Okay. I guess if his kids were born in the 1920s. Yeah. Contemporaries of our parents, maybe.

[A]

Sure. The oldsters.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Boomers.

[B]

Hey, Boomer. Okay, Boomer. Okay. Hey, Boomer.

[A]

I didn't get that right in that. That Journey to Infinity movie. Apparently all three of his children appear in it.

[B]

Oh, really?

[A]

If you want to know more about them, go watch that.

[B]

I saw one picture of him where he looked a lot like our old colleague John Fuller when John had a beard.

[A]

Oh, yeah, he did, didn't he?

[B]

Looked a little bit like him.

[A]

Yeah. Was not expecting that. No. So there's MC Escher.

[B]

That's right.

[A]

Speaking of not expecting that, Bikini babe on Corvette.

[B]

Sure.

[A]

And Hooters airline made appearances in the MCS Year 1. I just want to point out, if you want to know more about any of those things, go onto the Internet and start searching. And since I said that, it's time for listener mail.

[B]

Hey, guys. I've been listening to your show since 2011. I even sent you. I've even seen you on your first amazing show in Chicago and had to wait a whole year to hear that on the podcast. Oh, yeah, that's how it works, you know.

[A]

Sorry. It's not even guaranteed that it's gonna be the show you saw.

[B]

Yeah, a lot of podcasts put out, just tons and tons of live shows. We don't do that.

[A]

No. Yeah.

[B]

And I honestly think the live shows are a little better in person. I don't think they make. As a fan of other podcasts, I don't think they make for the best, just regular content.

[A]

I think most people think that, but we just.

[B]

So that's why we only put out the one.

[A]

Right?

[B]

So back to the letter. This show is so great. I would even save high interest episodes for my son to listen to over the years.

[A]

Nice.

[B]

You were one of the few people that can keep his attention. I never thought I would write, but as a science teacher, you said something recently that is so true. Some of the best science websites are children's science website websites. Or if a definition is too difficult, I always tell people to look up a child's definition for that word. Really good tip, guys. Thanks for sharing that. Thanks for all your work. And now I will have to figure out what to do now that I am finally caught up. Keep up the great work. And that is from Jenny with an I.

[A]

Thanks, Jenny. With an I. Hopefully you dot the I with the heart. Maybe with a little reflection on the side of the heart. You remember that one? Two curved lines topped with. Topped and I guess bottomed with a straight line.

[B]

I think I know what you're talking.

[A]

About Here, I'll show you.

[B]

Oh, boy. Since we just. Aw. Oh, sure.

[A]

That.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

It almost looks like a bent Roman.

[B]

Numeral tube inside the heart.

[A]

That's the reflection of light. That's where the light's coming from.

[B]

It's beautiful. Thank you.

[A]

It's an Escher reference. I'll treasure that, but. You're welcome, Chuck. I wasn't going to give it to you, but now I have to just sign it first. If you want to get in touch with us, you can go on to stuffyouchouchouchouknow.com and look for our social links there. And you can also send us an email like Jenny with an I did. You can send it to stuffpodcastheartradio.com.

[C]

Stuff youf Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcast My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever.

[B]

You listen to your favorite shows.

[A]

Hey, everybody. We're hitting the road again starting in January 2026, picking up again in April 2026. And eventually Canada will tell you year dates too.

[B]

That's right. We're gonna do at least three legs. And the first leg is starting out in Denver, Colorado at the paramount theater on January 27th. We're going to go back to our beloved Seattle at the Paramount Theater there on the 28th. And then finally back at Sketchfest on the 29th at the Sidney Goldstein Theater.

[A]

Yep. And then April 16th, 17th and 18th, we're going to be in Madison, Wisconsin, Chicago, Illinois and Akron, Ohio. And if you're not keeping up with all this or taking notes, don't worry. You can get all the info you need and buy [e-mail], click on the tour button and thank us later.

[B]

That's right. We can't wait to see everybody again out there on the road.

[C]

Hi, Kyle. Could you draw up a quick document with the basic business plan? Just one page as a Google Doc and send me the link. Thanks.

[A]

Hey, just finished drawing up that quick.

[C]

One page business plan for you.

[A]

Here's the link.

[C]

But there was no link. There was no business plan. I hadn't programmed Kyle to be able.

[B]

To do that yet.

[C]

I'm Evan Ratliff here with the story of entrepreneurship in the AI age. Listen as I attempt to build a real startup run by fake people. Check out the second season of my podcast Shell Game on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

[A]

This is an iHeart podcast, Guaranteed Human.