The Tragic Life of Vincent Van Gogh

Summary

Stuff You Should Know — "The Tragic Life of Vincent Van Gogh"

Podcast: Stuff You Should Know
Hosts: Josh and Chuck
Release Date: June 2, 2026
Episode Theme:
A comprehensive and empathetic exploration of Vincent Van Gogh's troubled life, artistic innovations, relationships, mental health struggles, and his posthumous rise to fame. Josh and Chuck demythologize aspects of Van Gogh's story while highlighting his unique outlook and lasting influence.

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Episode Overview

Josh and Chuck dive deep into the real life and enduring legend of Vincent Van Gogh. Through conversation, they chart the emotional turns of Van Gogh's biography, from his difficult childhood, early aimlessness, and mental illness, to his revolutionary artistic vision and the posthumous efforts of his family—especially his sister-in-law—that secured his legacy as one of history's most celebrated painters.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Van Gogh’s Early Life and Personality

• [07:08 - 09:00]
  • Born 1853, the Netherlands. Came from a large family; his most notable sibling was Theo, with whom he had a close relationship.
  • Characterized as moody and challenging—possibly exhibiting symptoms of mental illness even as a child.
  • Spent years at boarding school, after which he started working for an art dealer, essentially following a family path into the art world.

Quote:

"Vincent was apparently a pretty moody, tough kid, and as we'll see, he certainly suffered from mental illness throughout his life." – Chuck [08:16]

2. Career Wanderings and Art Beginnings

• [09:00 - 12:28]
  • First career in art sales, then a stint as an unordained preacher among coal miners in Belgium, seeking connection and purpose.
  • After these failed ventures, he returned to art, supported mainly by his brother Theo.

Quote:

"He kind of fell into the art world because it was almost a family business, selling art was the impression." – Josh [09:00]

3. Theo’s Crucial Role and Family Relationships

• [12:28 - 14:56]
  • Theo was Van Gogh’s patron, giving him a modest allowance to survive and buy materials, always supporting his brother’s unique vision even when others doubted it.
  • Their relationship was based on deep belief in Van Gogh’s talent, not charity.

Quote:

"He genuinely believed in his brother's ability. And he very happily was like, I'm going to give you a monthly allowance...it kept Vincent in the art supplies." – Josh [13:39]

4. Early Artistic Style and Myth-Busting

• [15:19 - 17:33]
  • Van Gogh’s early work—especially “The Potato Eaters”—was dark, color-wise and in subject, and poorly received.
  • The myth that he only sold one painting is partly false; he sold others to family and friends.

Quote:

"One of his most famous paintings...Potato Eaters, was...like in hues of browns, essentially. He said... he wanted it to basically be the color of a potato. Unpeeled, of course" – Josh [17:11]

5. Move to Paris and Artistic Transformation

• [18:37 - 21:17]
  • Father's death catalyzed a brightening of Van Gogh’s color palette after relocation to Paris.
  • Exposed to and included in the Impressionist circle (Monet, Pissarro, Lautrec, Gauguin), Van Gogh’s style evolved rapidly.
  • Embraced bold color and quicker brushwork, inspired by the city atmosphere and artist peers.

Quote:

"When he moved to Paris, something changed, and he dropped those really gloomy colors in favor of...an increasingly bright, colorful palette..." – Josh [19:24]

6. Japanese Influence and Artistic Productivity

• [25:48 - 26:38]
  • Deeply inspired by Japanese woodblock prints, he even copied some works in paint, a practice common at the time.
  • His output dramatically increased: from 4 paintings a month in the Netherlands to as many as 18 a month later in France.

7. Mental Health Deterioration

• [26:55 - 29:34]
  • Paris period marked by the onset of cyclical bouts of mental illness, exacerbated by exhaustion and overwork.
  • After moving to Arles for tranquility, his productivity peaked but so did his psychological instability.

Quote:

"It seems like the more he pushed himself, the more exhausted he got, the more his mental illness was triggered." – Josh [26:55]

8. The Yellow House, Gauguin, and the Famous Ear Incident

• [28:36 - 35:09]
  • Van Gogh shared lodgings with Paul Gauguin in Arles; their intense, volatile friendship led to legendary fights.
  • The infamous ear-cutting episode: Most likely self-inflicted in a psychotic break, though alternate theories exist (e.g., Gauguin as the perpetrator).
  • The aftermath: Time in general hospitals, then, due to ongoing crises, admission to an asylum at Saint-Rémy.

Quote:

"He returned to the the house, used the razor to cut his ear off, wrapped it up, and took it to a sex worker at a local brothel and was rejected by her for this...but there's another school of thought that Gauguin actually cut it off and Van Gogh covered for him..." – Josh [33:31]

9. Asylum Life and “Starry Night”

• [37:46 - 41:05]
  • In the asylum, Van Gogh reached artistic heights—painting the iconic Starry Night among 143 works in one year.
  • Connection noted between Van Gogh’s reading of Walt Whitman and the painting’s inspiration.

Quote:

"He produced 143 paintings while he was staying in this sanitarium. And one was not A Starry Night, but the Starry Night..." – Chuck [38:11]

• Ate paint; possibly part of his illness (pica), not necessarily suicidal intent. Theo’s marriage and fatherhood inspired the beautiful “Almond Blossom” as a gift, a rare painting never sold by the family.

10. Late-Life Glimmers of Recognition

• [42:34 - 44:01]
  • Shortly before his death, and thanks to Theo’s efforts, Van Gogh received his first (tepid) critical notices and made the only public sale to a stranger (The Red Vineyard).
  • Still, widespread recognition was elusive.

Quote:

"He was still not getting any...attention. But finally, in January that year, he started to get a little...just people, like critics looking at his stuff and writing about his stuff." – Chuck [42:34]

11. Last Days and Death

• [44:47 - 46:59]
  • After release from the asylum, settled near Paris, working under a sympathetic doctor.
  • Overwhelmed by fear of burdening Theo, shot himself July 27, 1890; Theo rushed to his side, and Van Gogh died two days later.

Quote:

"He was so tight. They were actually buried next to one another in that town." – Josh [46:30]

12. Posthumous Fame: Joe Bonger’s Pivotal Role

• [47:50 - 49:24]
  • Theo’s widow, Joe Bonger, championed Van Gogh’s legacy, tirelessly promoting his work by educating herself in art and eventually publishing the brothers’ letters.
  • Her contextualization of Van Gogh’s painting style and struggles set the template for modern art biography and interpretation.

Quote:

"She was like, this is how you interpret Vincent van Gogh's work. You understand his background, his biography, his struggles. And that now is just so commonplace and ubiquitous. That's just part of learning about art. And this is where it came from." – Josh [48:35]

13. Mental Illness: Retrospective Diagnosis

• [51:09 - 51:57]
  • Modern analysis suggests he suffered from epilepsy, potentially bipolar disorder, and possibly schizophrenia (with supporting family history).
  • Heavy drinking likely made things worse.

14. Memorable Anecdote: Canvas Destruction

• [52:21 - 53:15]
  • An early Paris café exhibition: After foreclosure, his unsold paintings were auctioned in bundles and often scraped off to re-use the canvas, being worth more blank than as a Van Gogh.

Quote:

"They were so disliked that they were bundled together in bunches of 10 so that people who bought them could go and scrape the paintings off and sell them at a higher price than they bought the 10 Van Goghs for as blank canvases." – Josh [52:21]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On Van Gogh's Emotional Transparency:

"He wore his heart on his sleeve. He did the same thing with his painting, and people just connect with that." – Josh [50:23]

On Joe Bonger's Lasting Influence:

"When you go and you read about the artist...that just adds so much more to it. That came from her idea, which is pretty amazing." – Chuck [49:24]

On His Tragic Fate:

"He focused a lot on wheat fields...apparently that represented, like, the sowing and the reaping of it was like renewal and death and life and birth and all that to him." – Josh [44:47]

On Final Recognition:

"Since her death in 1925, his paintings have sold to the tune of about $117 million...and he's one of the most famous painters of all time now." – Chuck [50:23]

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Important Timestamps

• [01:50] Show begins with Van Gogh intro
• [07:08 - 10:05] Van Gogh’s early life, boarding school, move to art sales
• [12:28 - 14:56] Brotherly support, Theo as patron
• [15:19 - 17:33] Early dark works, Potato Eaters, myth-busting sales legend
• [18:37 - 21:17] Father’s death, move to Paris, color change, Impressionist peer group
• [25:48 - 26:38] Japanese influence and artistic output numbers by location
• [26:55 - 29:34] Mental health, Arles, productivity & suffering
• [33:31 - 35:09] Ear-cutting episode, myth variants
• [37:46 - 41:05] Asylum, "Starry Night," mental health symptoms
• [42:34 - 44:01] First sales and critical reception
• [44:47 - 46:59] Last days, suicide, Theo’s final vigil
• [47:50 - 49:24] Joe Bonger’s campaign, birth of interpretative art biography
• [52:21 - 53:15] Paris café foreclosure, paintings destroyed for blank canvas

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Conclusion: Why Van Gogh Resonates

Through Josh and Chuck's thoughtful and often humorous narrative, the episode underscores Van Gogh’s legacy as a pioneer who painted his inner turmoil and simple beauty with honesty and passion. His works and legend were saved by family devotion and later cultural reappraisal—a poignant reminder that art often outlives misunderstanding, and genius requires not just creation but often a champion.

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This summary presents the episode’s facts and emotions with the conversational warmth and inquisitive spirit characteristic of “Stuff You Should Know.”

Transcript

[Chuck]

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[Josh]

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[Chuck]

It feels like it's trying to divide people. If we got clear facts, maybe we

[Josh]

could calm down a little.

[Chuck]

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[Josh]

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh. And there's Chuck. And Jerry's here, too. And we all have bandages around our heads out of sympathy for a truly great guy, from what I can tell.

[Chuck]

Oh, yeah. Was he a catoosh?

[Josh]

Dan, this is stuff you should know.

[Chuck]

Oh, yes. Hi, Mary, everyone. Hi, I'm Chuck.

[Josh]

Oh, yeah, I'm Chuck, too. The Deuce.

[Chuck]

What is going on? I thought you were. I thought you were Chuck Deportes.

[Josh]

Oh, yeah. Or the Ocho.

[Chuck]

Yeah, boy. I'm trying to make ESPN jokes and it's just not happening.

[Josh]

That worked. Yeah, the Spanish version of espn and I got it.

[Chuck]

No, no, I know, but I'm just saying it's not good.

[Josh]

Oh, well, I can't argue with that.

[Chuck]

Should we start over?

[Josh]

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh. There's Chuck. Just Chuck. And Jerry's Here, too. And this is stuff you should know.

[Chuck]

That's right, Chuck Deportes.

[Josh]

Now we have to start over again. You ready here? We'll give everybody a little beep beep.

[Chuck]

Can we talk about Van Gogh?

[Josh]

Yeah, that's what I was saying. We have bandages around our heads because we are in solidarity. That's what I meant to say with a really great guy.

[Chuck]

Yeah. Have you ever seen any of the Van Gogh movies?

[Josh]

I watched one last night. It was a documentary, but it was the documentary. The one where David Bowie plays Andy Warhol.

[Chuck]

Which one did Bowie play Warhol in?

[Josh]

Basquiat.

[Chuck]

Basquiat, right. Because he was also played by Crispin

[Josh]

Glover in the Doors.

[Chuck]

In the Doors. And Van Gogh was played by Willem Dafoe.

[Josh]

That was unwatchable.

[Chuck]

I never saw that one.

[Josh]

It was unwatchable. Loving Vincent, I think that's what it's called. Yeah. I'm almost positive. It's not because it's bad or the dialogue's bad or anything like that. It's just so shaky and rapid cut and shot from weird angles to I guess, you know, represent his. His mental illness that you. I couldn't watch it. I watched like, 10 minutes of. I was like, oh, no. I was disappointed.

[Chuck]

Yeah, I never saw that one. I did see the One from the 90s, though, the Robert Altman film.

[Josh]

I didn't know he did one on. Are you talking about Nashville?

[Chuck]

Yeah. Oh, shoot.

[Josh]

That's.

[Chuck]

That's the one. No, Vincent Theo with Tim Roth as Van Gogh. That was a. Yeah, 1990. I think that was a good movie.

[Josh]

No idea. I'll have to go back and check that out.

[Chuck]

Yeah, I'd like to see it again. I don't think I've seen it since college.

[Josh]

I feel like a total schmo because I don't remember the name of the documentary, but essentially the premise of it is these documentarians went from place to place through and just followed Van Gogh's life because he moved around a lot, as we'll see, and was inspired differently by the different places he lived. And they basically talked about how those places inspired him or how they beat him down or whatever. And then they would show, you know, his. His, like, paintings morphing into the. The structures that are still there today, or vice versa. It was a really good documentary. They talked a lot about his life. And it's a. It was good. It was very tranquil. I think there was the same 30 seconds of very tranquil string music that they used over and over and over again. And it was Not a problem.

[Chuck]

I think Van Gogh, I mean, you know, I don't know much about art history. We've done quite a few shows about this kind of thing over the years, and my appreciation for art has grown sort of in lockstep. I've always sort of liked Van Gogh's stuff, for sure, but I like him even more now that I kind of understand that, you know, he never. Well, I mean, most people, if they know anything about van Gogh, know he never gained fame in his lifetime, but he certainly never tried to achieve fame as an artist by, like, painting what he thought people might want to see. He always painted what he, you know, his surroundings and like you said, depending on where he lived, that varied. And also, it seems like really from the heart and his deep, deep emotions, which I have a lot of respect for.

[Josh]

Yeah, in that sense, he was a pioneer. Same for me, too, by the way. I really came to like him even more. I think we both came from the same exact spot and ended up in about the same exact spot, too.

[Chuck]

Look at us.

[Josh]

One thing I saw that kind of explained him to me at least, was that he wanted to share the things he saw, the beauty he saw everywhere with the world because it was so beautiful. He wanted to provide that to the world. Not in any kind of egotistical way or anything like that, but just like, this is so pretty. I'm going to try my best to. To express how this makes me feel and show the world. And then, very sadly, the world was like, that's not very good. We don't want that. Thanks for sharing, but keep it to yourself.

[Chuck]

Yeah, that's tough. I mean, in fact, in one letter to his brother Theo, he said his only anxiety was, how can I be of use in the world? And his, you know, what he came to was to be an artist. And that he really thought that had. And he was right, had a lot of value. And that's how he would serve in a way.

[Josh]

Right, right.

[Chuck]

Kind of cool.

[Josh]

But before he became an artist, he pinged around here or there. He's a little aimless for a little while. And he was born in 1853 in the Netherlands, or der Nederlands, say, Holland. Sure. His father was Theodorus, or I guess it'd be Theodorus van Gogh. That's the correct way to say it. And I went back and I didn't listen to it. But I read the transcript from our episode seven, no, eight five Mysteries of the Art World, where we talked about Van Gogh a lot and you correctly said his name. I Think here or there or through.

[Chuck]

Yeah, I think I was probably making a joke from a Woody Allen movie,

[Josh]

as a matter of fact. You were. That's exactly. You mentioned that. Yeah.

[Chuck]

Yeah, that was a funny part. Van Gogh.

[Josh]

But the transcription, the AI transcribing it kept saying Van God. So I could tell that you were saying Van Gogh.

[Chuck]

Oh, I thought you were gonna say the AI transcription canceled. What I said about Woody Allen.

[Josh]

No, no, that'd be useful. It's coming. Don't worry.

[Chuck]

So, yeah, born in 1853, like you said. He had a bunch of siblings. He had five younger siblings. Theo the most notable, because, as you'll see, they had a very tight relationship and working relationship, which is why Robert Altman made the movie Vincent and Theo. Theo was younger by four years. Vincent was apparently a pretty moody, tough kid, and as we'll see, he certainly suffered from mental illness throughout his life. But his parents didn't know what to do with him, so they sent him to boarding school for about four years from 12 to 16. At which point he was like, you know what? I'm gonna get involved in the art world in the way of being sort of like an apprentice to a dealer. And he learned about the sales side.

[Josh]

Yeah, I get the impression he kind of fell into the art world because it was almost a family business, selling

[Chuck]

art was the impression.

[Josh]

Yeah. Put that in your pipe and smoke it later. Right.

[Chuck]

Yeah, I think you're probably right.

[Josh]

So he worked there for, I think, seven years. Yeah. Until about age 23. And it was during this period that he fell into what I. I think is viewed as his first true episode of depression, is bout of real depression. And it followed on the heels of a. I didn't see exactly what it was. Livia helps us with this. She just describes it as a romantic disappointment. But that seems to be a trend throughout his life where he did not. He was not lucky in love. I think the Little River Band would have called them the lonesome loser in that respect. And that would trigger some of his depressive episodes. But as a result, his uncle, or whoever ran his uncle's art dealership was like, sorry, you're fired.

[Chuck]

Yeah, so he lost that job. But he did learn about the world of art and sort of the business of art, even though he didn't, like I say, kind of kowtow to the business side of things. He got interested in religion for a little while after that job and was a, I guess, an unordained or unlicensed preacher for about four years. He never got a Theology degree or anything. But he did this work, sort of missionary work in Belgium, in sort of the poorest parts of Belgium in coal country at the time. And he wanted to, you know, very admirably. Didn't want to put on airs. And he lived as the people around him lived and was very open and shared what he had with his parishioners. But the church wasn't wild about that idea. I think they thought it was sort of beneath the parish. So he got fired from that job as a preacher.

[Josh]

Yeah. And I have the impression that he was taking steps to maybe please his father and just trying to throw himself into religion because he wanted something. He wanted some sort of connection to something bigger than him. And I guess that was just the easiest thing to try. But also his father, remember he was a Dutch minister, so, yeah, I could see him doing that. And then he kind of failed at that. So that probably didn't sit all that well.

[Chuck]

I mean, isn't that kind of the story of a lot of people, like boys trying to please Daddy, who didn't approve of them?

[Josh]

Yeah, that's how I became a podcaster. My dad told me when I was like, seven, he's like, I will never respect you unless you grow up to be a podcaster. And I was like, I can do that. He said, a good one. And I went good.

[Chuck]

Right. I remember my dad at one point suggested I become a mail carrier when

[Josh]

I was sort of aimless, just like Henry Chinaski.

[Chuck]

Government job, good benefits, you could do worse. He was absolutely right. There's nothing wrong with that job.

[Josh]

Of course not.

[Chuck]

I just wasn't so interested in that.

[Josh]

So, yeah, so he failed to please his father, if that's what he was doing. But he kind of.

[Chuck]

We all did exactly right.

[Josh]

Well put. But he was struck by his time in Belgian coal country, and he hopped out of there for a little while. But he would kind of carry with him, as we'll see, once he became an artist, this appreciation, or at least kind of this need to shine a spotlight on the toil and the suffering of his fellow humans, because he cared about them and he thought other people should care about him, too.

[Chuck]

Yeah, for sure. I mean, he definitely carried around socialist ideas. He started to actually study painting because, like I said, he had written that letter to Theo saying that he wanted to become an artist to try and serve the world and bring the beautiful art. So he thought, you know, maybe I should study this stuff. Off and on he lived with his parents, but that never worked out very well, as that happens. Sometimes in real life, he found them fairly suffocating. And so he would sort of move around between the Netherlands and Belgium for a period of years. That's not to say his family as a whole didn't support him, because Theo, as we'll see, was always very supportive. He was working in the art world. He worked for a big dealer and he was very sort of hip to the art scene. Theo was. And what was moving. And he would end up representing not only his brother, who was not popular, but other artists who were not popular in critical circles, like Monetary and Gauguin and Old Lautrec. Henri Toulouse Lautrec.

[Josh]

Yeah. Like, his brother had that foresight that was like these new impressionist guys. I like what they're doing.

[Chuck]

Yeah. I mean, he knew what was up,

[Josh]

but he also very importantly saw like, my brother actually has something here. This is a good decision that he became an artist. It was not at all patronizing, even though Theo. Theo was his patron, which is kind of confusing. And he genuinely believed in his brother's ability. And he very happily was like, I'm going to give you a monthly allowance that I saw was about equal to a minimum wage, what somebody would earn. Minimum wage. And it kept him. It kept Vincent in the art supplies. I think he spent 80% of it on art supplies and the other 20% on just living. But he was able to live like that and just produce art. And that's what Theo wanted.

[Chuck]

Yeah. And Vincent said, don't patronize me. And he said, well, that's tricky because technically I am.

[Josh]

Exactly.

[Chuck]

And that was about 20% of Theo's income. So it was not, you know, chicken scratch. He wasn't making a ton of money himself. His cousin was also very supportive of him in the way of teaching him. His name was Anton Mauve and he literally, quite literally taught him, like, how to paint with oil, how to paint with watercolors, and he had that. I guess it was that same, same uncle who he worked for would commission works and pay him occasionally to, like, you know, paint stuff for him.

[Josh]

Yeah. It's like in art circles, Van Gogh is like, very frequently cited as, like, only having sold one painting during his lifetime. That's not correct. Not exactly, but if you, you know, if you want to get technical. He sold several paintings, but they were like family and friends and stuff like that. He did sell one painting to one person he wasn't an acquaintance of. That's true.

[Chuck]

Yeah. For sure. We're going to be myth busting a little bit along the way because Van Gogh seems like more so than other artists. Had a lot of kind of falsehoods bandied about over the years. Is that fair to say I get

[Josh]

to wear the beret this time?

[Chuck]

Okay, so like you said, he never had a whole lot of luck with the ladies. Had a sort of a series of disappointments there. But eventually he would have about a year and a half relationship with a woman named C.N. hornick. This was in 1882. She was pregnant at the time and also had a five year old daughter and was a former sex worker, which his family didn't like any of this. And his father tried to get him, I guess, committed to an asylum, but, you know, Van Gogh was having none of it. He was in love.

[Josh]

No, but it would get easier and easier to have him committed as time went on. I guess this is just the first attempt and it didn't take. So like I said, he was kind of taken with the idea of peasants, people toiling people growing their own food or making their own living from the land, which he was infatuated with the land and nature in general. He's almost a transcendentalist, I guess, without quite knowing it. And when he moved back with his parents and then was bouncing back and forth between Belgium and the Netherlands for a little while, he was mostly doing studies and paintings of peasants. And one of his most famous paintings came out at this time. One of his first masterpieces, called the Potato Eaters, was a study of, I think five peasants sitting around a table, eating potatoes, drinking coffee. And it's like in hues of browns, essentially. He said in a letter to Theo that he wanted it to basically be the color of a potato.

[Chuck]

Yeah.

[Josh]

Unpeeled, of course, is how he put it. And he nailed it. It's also, it's bleak and grim in a way, but at the same time, the people almost appear noble, but they're blocky and cartoonish almost as far as their forms go. And that was all intentional, but everybody was like, this is terrible.

[Chuck]

Yeah, people didn't love it. He was sending these paintings to Theo to like, hey man, sell these. And hopefully that can kind of help pay you back. But he couldn't sell any of them at the time. And he took him to the art market in Paris there, but no one was into that. You know, his sort of, I don't want to say dour, but I guess it was fairly gloomy. Just his color palette at least. This would all change, though. In 1885, his father died and he painted, you know, very much in tribute to his father, something called Still Life with Bible, which shows sort of the contrast between himself and his father and their ideals, because obviously the open Bible on the table was representing his father. But there was also another novel, La Joie de Vivre, and it was a socialist book by a socialist writer named Emil, I guess Zola. And it was like, you know, here's a contrast between my father and I. I paint this in tribute, but I gotta get out of here now. Like, he needed a change in his life, I think because of his father's passing. He wanted to move.

[Josh]

Yeah. And he definitely did. He moved to Paris and he moved. I don't know if he moved in with Theo, but that would be my great guess. Either way, Theo was living and working there, and he moved to be close to Theo. And Theo introduced him to those artists he was repping in his circle, like he said, Monet and Pizarro and Toulouse Lautrec. Like, they were like, Van Gogh was hanging out with all of these guys and, like, learning from them. But at the same time, he was also impressing them, too. And when he moved to Paris, something changed, and he dropped those really gloomy colors in favor for, like, a. An increasingly bright, colorful palette that, like, Paris somehow triggered that in him.

[Chuck]

Yeah, you know, you can never. Or it's easy, I guess, rather than to go back after someone has passed and sort of judge their work compared to where they were in their life and think, like, you can kind of figure out things. But I guess my armchair psychology degree would point me in the direction of, like, almost being freed up a little bit by his father's passing as well. I know it upset him, but I think it also freed him up. So maybe that and the move to Paris, even though, as we'll see, he wasn't very much a city guy, I don't think it was a coincidence that all of a sudden things kind of brightened in his life a little bit. Or it could have just been the ups and downs of his fragile mental state.

[Josh]

Yeah, it could be either, but that's a. I think you dug up an equally comparative, compelling idea. Where did you get your armchair psychology degree?

[Chuck]

Just right here on my armchair.

[Josh]

Oh, okay. Well, you're a credit to your armchair.

[Chuck]

Yeah. The right arm.

[Josh]

Okay. Is it a Lazy Boy? Is it Ethan Allen?

[Chuck]

Oh, you know, it's a Lazy Boy, buddy.

[Josh]

Okay, gotcha. So, yeah, one of the first paintings that people are like, look, he came out of this gloom and doom stuff, and now he likes color. The Hill of Montmartre with a stone Quarry Love it is not part of the title. That was just me, but that was painted in 1886. And here's the thing that you should know about van Gogh. He was. He started painting in 20, age 27. He died at 37. In between that time he painted almost 900 paintings. Many, many, many of them masterpieces. So in a 10 year period, everything you know about van Gogh happened. And really you can kind of narrow it down to essentially the last three years of his life that were the most productive, where he really came into his own.

[Chuck]

Yeah, that, that website you sent kind of broke down his productivity by location. And his five years in the Netherlands, he painted about four paintings a month. So 245. Couple of years in Paris, painted 227. So 10 paintings per month. His 14 months, as we'll see in what would that be? Arlis. Is that how you pronounce that?

[Josh]

Arl.

[Chuck]

Arl. Okay.

[Josh]

It just sound like you're choking on a hard boiled egg.

[Chuck]

About 14 paintings a month. Over 14 months. And then Saint Remy. Is that right? 18 per month. And then finally, man, he was up to a painting per day by the time he ended up in that last place in France.

[Josh]

Yeah, like just a stunning number of painting and like complete oil paintings. Not like he half started one or something like that. These were completed paintings. Like that usually takes a day and a half. Not a day, Right?

[Chuck]

Yeah. I can't paint anything. I can paint a wall.

[Josh]

Yeah, I could probably paint a wall in a day.

[Chuck]

Yeah. You don't, you don't have artistic talent like that either, do you?

[Josh]

No. And it's always bothered me. I wanted to draw for so long and I just can't do it.

[Chuck]

Yeah, I can't. But we can both write, so.

[Josh]

Sure. Yeah.

[Chuck]

And we could both sing, right?

[Josh]

We just need an extra thousand words for each picture. We can't both sing. Wait a minute. No, hold on.

[Chuck]

Oh, slip it in. A compliment.

[Josh]

I can't sing. I'm not taking that one.

[Chuck]

All right, well, we'll get you some singing lessons and we'll be back right after this, okay?

[Announcer]

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[Chuck]

Number one hits millions of records Sold awards, sold out tours. You think the Jonas Brothers are satisfied? Nope. It's podcast time. We get to ask other people questions because we're sick and tired of being asked questions. A Jonas is available now and their first guest is a big one, Paul Rudd.

[Josh]

You know Steve Carell is a great singer.

[Chuck]

Can he tell you not to audition the Office or something? I told him we were filming Anchorman.

[Josh]

Clearly I was the idiot. Thank God he didn't listen to me, right?

[Chuck]

Listen to hey Jonas on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Announcer]

Mainstream media is full of crude depictions of the unhoused. Stories that shame and blame and paint the unhoused as a monolith. We the Unhoused is the podcast that's changing the that. I'm Theo Henderson, creator and host, and for years I've created a space where the unhoused and their advocates can tell their own stories. In the last few months alone, I've interviewed unhoused parents, immigrants, mutual aid organizers, veterans, the LGBQTIA community, and the policymakers who make the laws that impact the unhoused existence. We in House is a two time Webby and Signal award winning show with many exciting guests on the horizon. Tune in this week for my interview with Dr. Jill Wicherich, a street doctor turned influencer whose work with the unhoused community has made a huge impact online and in her community. Listen to we the unhoused on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

[Josh]

So despite moving to Paris, Chuck, we're back, by the way. He. He was still very much drawn to rural areas. That's where he found his most inspiration. He liked the light and the color out there. Although he did paint a lot of city stuff, like a. A cafe terrace at night. That's one of my favorites. There was. There were plenty of city paintings, but far and away he did like landscapes, some seascapes, that kind of stuff.

[Chuck]

Yeah.

[Josh]

And there was no different when he was in Paris. So he really started to kind of pick up painting the land around that time too. And then he was also inspired by Japanese art during this time.

[Chuck]

Yeah, for sure. Those woodblock prints, which I didn't even know what woodblock was until probably 10 years ago. And I just love this stuff. It's really pretty incredible, especially the process. But he was inspired not to do woodblock, but to kind of recreate that just using, you know, paint very, you know, contrasting colors and bold outlines. And he started, and I don't Know how common this is? You know, I know people are inspired, but he kind of straight up copied some other people at times in his career. And I don't think, like suffered in posthumously for that. Unless I'm wrong.

[Josh]

No.

[Chuck]

Okay. That was the case here. He recreated a Japanese woodblock sudden shower over Shin Ohashi Bridge and Atake in 1887. But again, using brushstrokes.

[Josh]

Right? Yeah. And I mean, both of them are pretty impressive, but yeah, the idea that the original by Uragawa Hiroshige is like carved out of wood, inked and then stamped is just how you know.

[Chuck]

Yeah, it's incredible.

[Josh]

So also in Paris, we talked about how he suffered his first real depressive episode in his early 20s. Paris was the point where his full blown recurring mental illness really started to take hold. It seems like the more he pushed himself, the more exhausted he got, the more his mental illness was triggered. And he could push himself, that guy. I mean, like you said, he was painting a painting a day, day after day after day for a while. So.

[Chuck]

Yeah, toward the end too.

[Josh]

Yeah, he was very capable of working until he was exhausted. So he really started doing that around this time, 1887, 88, that kind of thing. And I guess he lived in Paris for two years and then moved to Arles, which I know is not exactly how you say it, but it's in Provence. And I mean, dude, if you want to be like, inspired by nature, just move to Provence.

[Chuck]

Never been there.

[Josh]

I haven't either, but just from pictures I've seen on the tv, I'm telling you, it's inspiring.

[Chuck]

Yeah, he wanted a more chill life, for sure. So in 1888, that's when he split. He was painting a little more intensely at this point and the colors got even more bold. And his brushwork, I think that's one of the things he got inspired by. From the Impressionist was really kind of showing the brushwork and all of a sudden you're getting those farm fields and the wheat, a lot of wheat orchards, stuff like that. And then eventually he would paint a lot of the Yellow house is what he called it, where he lived.

[Josh]

He.

[Chuck]

He lived there. And he would end up renting out rooms, as we'll see, to different painters. And that's where the sunflowers started too. Very famous for sunflower paintings.

[Josh]

Yeah, there's one that I saw was called the still life version of the Mona Lisa. That's how good it is. Another thing I didn't realize, I've seen much of his work, but from researching this, I kept Zooming into paintings that we were talking about. And he was really good. Like, when you zoom in and look at the brushwork and see what he's doing with it, it's a whole different painting. I mean, it's Impressionism for you, but it looks so much more childish. And I know his work was described like that during his lifetime from, like, zoomed out, like, normally how you would look at a painting, but when you go into it, it's, like, such genius that it almost seems like it would be difficult to make it look childish. It's that good. You know what I mean?

[Chuck]

Yeah. When I go to museums, I make sure I'm not obnoxious about it and block people and stuff, but when I get a chance, I will get in there as close as allowable to really kind of look at what's going on on a close level. And not for any kind of. Obviously study for myself, because I don't paint. But there's something about it that makes it a little more real. Like, you can actually see, like, what somebody was doing rather than, you know, just looking at the hole from afar.

[Josh]

Yeah, it definitely connects you more to the painter, for sure, because it sinks in. Like somebody was standing in front of this canvas, like, 150 years ago, putting their brush to it. Like, that happened at one point, you know?

[Chuck]

Yeah, for sure. I love that stuff.

[Josh]

Do you get really close and put your finger right over and go, I'm not touching it. I'm not touching it. To the security guard.

[Chuck]

Yeah. Well, sometimes if they're not looking, I like to chip a little piece of the paint off and just take it as a souvenir.

[Josh]

You, like, stick it inside your cheek to smuggle it out. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, sunflowers. That was the one that I first really looked at and was like, oh, my God, this is way better than I thought it was. Yeah, he started. He's also obviously very well known for Starry Nights, and his first one was Starry Night over the rhone river in 1888. And his starry Nights would be kind of like a gift and a curse. Like, they became his most beloved works, essentially. But he kind of beat himself up about him because he's like, this isn't quite right, but I almost get the impression that to him, they were right, but he just. He was kind of adjusting his interpretation of them based on the feedback he was getting from everybody else. Like, he was subsuming his feelings about it to everybody else's dislike of it. Like, yeah, you're right. It's not very good kind of thing. It seemed to be specific to the Starry Night.

[Chuck]

Yeah. And just how tough was that? As someone who obviously was extremely talented in producing what would be some of the most beloved works of art after his death, to constantly be getting that feedback from art critics, and although he wasn't even on the radar of really art critics, but people who he would show to. And then his own brother, who was such a supporter but had to constantly break the news of, like, nobody wants to buy this stuff.

[Josh]

Right. And Vincent was like, but do you have to tell me, like, verbatim how much they said they hated it every time. Can you just tell me you didn't sell any this week?

[Chuck]

This guy said it looked like snot on canvas. I don't know what to tell you.

[Josh]

Right. Yeah. And also, again, if you take into account, Chuck, that he's not just, like, trying to do a still life photorealistically and not quite so. It's like your expertise isn't that good. He's, like, putting himself on the canvas, and people are rejecting it. So they're rejecting him as a human being as far as he's concerned.

[Chuck]

Yeah, for sure. So he's in the yellow house. I said he would rent it out to other artists. One of those, thanks to Theo, ended up being Gauguin. Because Theo was like, hey, listen, can I pay your expenses and you go move in with my brother? Because I really think it will. I think the quote was, it'll make a big change in your life. And he was hoping that one would inspire the other. Cause obviously, he was repping them both. But he wanted good things for Vincent, and that sort of worked, and it didn't. They were both very productive. They painted each other's portraits very famously. But they also fought a lot. It was just a very volatile relationship to the point where On Christmas Eve, 1888, Gauguin was already planning on leaving. This wasn't the impetus for him to leave. But Van Gogh threw a glass of absinthe in his face, which I imagine. I mean, no liquor in your face is great. I imagine absinthe is probably one of the worst ones to get thrown in your face.

[Josh]

Yeah, it stains your shirt.

[Chuck]

Yeah. And probably stings, I would imagine. I don't know.

[Josh]

So Gauguin was like, I'm out of here. And he left. And Van Gogh was like, hey, you can't leave. I'm leaving. And he threatened him with a razor. Apparently, as far as the. The standard story goes, Gauguin kept going, and Van Gogh returned to the the house, used the razor to cut his ear off, wrapped it up, and took it to a sex worker at a local brothel and was rejected by her from this. This gift was rejected by her. That is. There's some problems with that, but it's probably the correct story. But there's another school of thought that Gauguin actually cut it off and Van Gogh covered for him because Gauguin was apparently a master sword fighter, carried a sword around with him, and it's quite possible he took Vincent's ear off for being threatened with a razor.

[Chuck]

Right. Also another version of the story. They believe they found that the woman was actually a maid at the brothel and not a sex worker. But those are sort of nitpicky details. I think certainly cutting off your own ear wouldn't be nitpicky because that's a true sign of a desperate sort of upset that you can only feel if you're suffering from severe mental illness. So, yeah, self mutilation is super sad. And I think there's also some interpretations that it might have been influenced by the bull fighting ritual where you cut off a bull's ear to present it to a lady. But I don't know. I'm not so sure about that.

[Josh]

Yeah, that seems like something he would have done on, like a calm day then if that was the purpose of it, to present it to a lady. That almost seems like it was just some impulsive thing that was tacked onto the end of something that he wasn't planning, you know?

[Chuck]

Yeah, for sure. But the cops found him the next day. I think he was unconscious. They obviously went to the hospital and he was in a state of psychosis for a few days in the hospital. And a doctor there said, you think you have epilepsy? And I don't think we mentioned he's suffering from bouts of mental illness off and on throughout his life to this point. But also physical manifestations are happening that in retrospect, people are like, yeah, it wasn't just mental illness coming out physically. Like, he. It seems like he probably really did have epilepsy. So they gave him potassium bromide, which he said, Vincent said cured or at least stopped his intolerable hallucinations, but he was still fainting a lot. And he apparently didn't have any memory of what happened with Gauguin or the ear.

[Josh]

Yeah. So he was in that hospital for a little while. This wasn't a psychiatric hospital. This is like a hospital hospital. I also saw Chuck in that documentary that as a gift to the doctor who cared for him, he presented him with a painting of one of the wards in the hospital. And the doctor was like, no, thanks. It's not very good.

[Chuck]

So didn't even accept it.

[Josh]

Did not even accept it.

[Chuck]

Oh, boy.

[Josh]

So he was released from the hospital. He pretended he was scratching his temple, but it was with his middle finger as he was saying bye to the doctor.

[Chuck]

That old move.

[Josh]

Yeah. And he started painting again. But the. The hospital visit helped his epilepsy. It did not help the bouts of mental illness that he just kept suffering over and over and over again. In between, he would just work at like a breakneck pace and then exhaust himself, have another episode of mental illness and go to the hospital, get out work until he exhausted himself again and again. And so finally the hospital is like, look, man, we. You're in the wrong place now. Like, you need a different kind of care than we could offer. And so he checked himself into a Sanitarium at St. Remy, and he was there for a year being treated. And they actually helped him quite a bit being there.

[Chuck]

I think that's a good place for a break because something very interesting happened while he was there. Is that a good time?

[Josh]

I think so.

[Chuck]

All right, we'll be right back, everybody. All right, everyone, we're back. And I said something very interesting happened while he was in the sanitarium. And we. One thing I mentioned earlier was he painted about 18 paintings per month. He produced 143 paintings while he was staying in this sanitarium. And one of which was not A Starry Night, but the Starry Night or just Starry Night.

[Josh]

Sure. Pretty impressive, huh? Yeah, he said that he wrote in a letter, I guess that to his sister Wilhelmina about him wanting to make A Starry Night. And then in like the next breath, he recommends she read Walt Whitman's poetry. And people went and read Song to myself and said, there's like two stanzas in here that basically describe what Starry Night looks like. We think that Walt Whitman essentially inspired this painting. And that seems to be the consensus.

[Chuck]

Yeah. And if you've never seen Starry Night, you should. All you have to do is go to the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and walk around until you see crowds of people.

[Josh]

Yeah, they said it's their most visited painting in their whole collection.

[Chuck]

Yeah, that one's. You can't get close anyway, but it's tough to even to get a great view, period. It's just there's a lot of folks around that one.

[Josh]

Wow. Wow. Yeah. I would love to see that one. I don't believe I ever have in person.

[Chuck]

Have you not seen that one?

[Josh]

I don't believe so. I've been to MoMA, but that seems, like, weird that I wouldn't have seen it. But then again, why didn't I form a memory of seeing it?

[Chuck]

Well, you also don't like crowds of people, so maybe you're like, I don't know what's going on over there, but no, thanks.

[Josh]

Well, that is possible, but, yeah. So I have seen it on the Internet, at very least, if not in person. And it's got swirls in it that represent the wind. Like, the stars are huge and out of proportion and glowing. The moon is all odd and. And it's like a landscape at night. But he just captured all of it so perfectly. And it's. It's all a very. It's. The background's very dark. It's dark blues and stuff like that. But it's a very soothing, like, happy painting. And this was what I was talking about earlier, that even Theo is like this. I don't like this, man. And I guess Vincent wrote that he was once again allowing myself to do stars. Too big.

[Chuck]

Yeah. He said the search for style takes away the real sentiment of things, which sounds a little bit like a not form over fashion, fashion over form or something. I don't know. Like, just trying to make something super stylistic, but it doesn't really mean anything, which I'm sure cut pretty deeply. So while this is going on, he is continuing to kind of slip up and down as far as his mental illness is concerned. At some point, he started to, like, eat paint. Some people thought it might have been a suicidal thing, but it might have also been pica as part of his mental illness, which is interesting.

[Josh]

There's a legend that it was yellow paint and that he wanted to be happy inside, which doesn't, I don't think, hold up.

[Chuck]

Yeah. Okay. Well, partially because of that, he stayed away from pain altogether for a little while because he also had a lot of, like, many, many drawings throughout his career. And this is his drawing period.

[Josh]

Yeah, I like way more drawings than paintings, right?

[Chuck]

Oh, I think so. Yeah.

[Josh]

So Theo and he got married, I think, in 1889, maybe that sounds right, to a woman named Joe Bonger, or Bonger, who would eventually play a really pivotal role in Vincent van Gogh's posthumous life. And they honored him by naming their son, their only child, Vincent, after the kid's uncle. And Van Gogh was very, very touched by this. And he Painted one of my. I think one of the most beautiful paintings he ever did, Almond Blossom.

[Chuck]

I agree, buddy.

[Josh]

It's great. Gorgeous. Yeah. Just go look it up. It's very much in, like, the Japanese style, for sure. Yeah. And he painted it for the baby. And, like, despite, you know, years and decades of Van Gogh paintings being sold by the family, that one did not go up for sale. And it's even in the Van Gogh Museum still today.

[Chuck]

Yeah, the baby didn't want it either, though.

[Josh]

He said, this is not very good. Give me my baba.

[Chuck]

Spit up. Spit up on it.

[Josh]

Gross.

[Chuck]

I always hated that term.

[Josh]

It's a pretty bad term. Yeah.

[Chuck]

So Theo officially said, you know what? I'm going to start really submitting your paintings. Like, I think you are good, and nobody knows it. So he started really submitting at a more sort of serious, rapid pace in 1888, specifically at the annual Salon des Independent in 1890. And this is just a few months before Van Gogh would die. He was still not getting any. Almost any attention. But finally, in January that year, he started to get a little bit of. Not critical, like, praise, but just people, like critics looking at his stuff and writing about his stuff. The first one, I think, was an art critic named Albert Aurier, who published, I think, the very first Van Gogh review. And he said they initially appear strange, intense and feverish, but reflected the continual search for the most essential sign of each thing. So he was kind of getting it, I think.

[Josh]

Yeah, he was digging him. Yes. And then in 18, so I think 1888, 1889, and 1890, his work, thanks to Theo, appeared in the Salon in Paris. He was also featured in a Belgian salon called le vint the 20. And this is where he sold his first, his or his one and only painting to somebody he didn't really know. Right?

[Chuck]

Yeah, it was a painter, another painter named Anna Bach. And she bought the Red Vineyard. And that, I think, maybe. Well, I don't know if that was the impetus, but that's when things started to pick up a little bit. I think later that spring, the salon showed 10 of his paintings, which was a big deal. May of that year. May of 1890. And this was after a year being in the sanitarium, he finally was discharged. And that's where he moved to a pretty quiet place not too far from Paris, where he had a good doctor on hand who was able to kind of keep up with them. And that doctor was like, hey, man, you know what you need to do is paint like you seem to be doing best when you're really concentrating on the painting, so you should do that. And he did.

[Josh]

Yeah, he threw himself into it again, like you were saying that last few months or the last year, he was painting about a painting a day. And I've seen it, like people say, almost as if he knew, like, his time was running out and he wanted to get as much out as he could. He focused a lot on wheat fields, which he said earlier was one of his favorite subjects. Yeah, apparently that represented, like, the sowing and the reaping of it was like renewal and death and life and birth and all that to him. And he was, I guess, pretty close to Paris and Auvers. And he went and traveled once to. To visit Theo, and he found that Theo was talking about going out, striking out on his own, setting up his own art dealership. And Vincent was like, man, that is to himself, he thought, this is quite a risky gamble. You know, what's going to happen to my monthly stipend? Is that, like, in jeopardy? But also that will automatically make me a burden to my brother. Like, even if he becomes successful, it's not going to be overnight. And in that time between him taking this big risk and becoming a success, I'm going to be an even bigger burden than I am. That was something he concluded.

[Chuck]

Yeah, for sure. And that was in July of 1890. And later that month, on July 27, he shot himself in the chest and took his own life. We covered that in more detail in the. What was it? Mysteries of the art world.

[Josh]

Yeah, seven. No, wait, five. Mysteries of the art world from 2021.

[Chuck]

Yeah, so you can go get that full story there. But, yeah, it was. I think he didn't die immediately, and Theo made it from Paris to be there with him when he died a

[Josh]

couple of days later, which is so sweet. I mean, they were so tight. They were actually buried next to one another in that town.

[Chuck]

Yeah, tight, but also fraught. You know, there was a lot of arguing and stuff, too, but that's brother stuff.

[Josh]

But that was mostly from Vincent's side, right.

[Chuck]

Well, I mean, I just, you know, saw it could be a rough relationship, but again, as brothers and also business partners. And one had a real tough time with mental illness, so it's. None of it is unexpected.

[Josh]

So again, it's very much bandied about that Van Gogh was unknown and unappreciated in his time, and generally that's true. But like, when he was showing at the salons, other. Other painters, like Monet would say to Theo, like, tell your brother that his was the best work at the salon. Like, he's great. He had a claim with people who knew what they were talking about, but generally he didn't. The reason why we know of him today and the reason why his genius is seen and valued is because of Joe Bonger, his sister in law, who very shortly, I think six months after Vincent died. Theo died, some say of a broken heart, some say of syphilis, some say of both. And she inherited like all of, essentially all of Vincent van Gogh's paintings.

[Chuck]

Yeah, I mean, this is kind of the, in a way, sort of the hero of the story here. Because now with Theo gone and Vincent still having not achieved great fame, you're left with Joe to do something. And she was like, listen, I don't have a background in this. This was my husband's line. So she taught herself. She devoted herself to studying art. She devoted herself to studying the business of art. And she really worked tirelessly to, after his death, raise his profile. And I get the impression that it wasn't like, oh, I got all these paintings so I can get a lot of money. It was like to honor someone she thought was really talented.

[Josh]

Yes, absolutely. Yeah. She wanted to make sure that he was appreciated finally, even if it wasn't in his lifetime. She had a hard time going at first, like she still couldn't quite convince people. I guess she was just being like, look, see, it's good, it's good. And that wasn't taking. So she went through the letters between Theo and Vincent that Theo had kept and realized, like, he talks. Van Gogh talks a lot about like, his style, his technique, his inspiration, his mental health struggles in these letters. And she was like, this is how you interpret Vincent van Gogh's work. You understand his background, his biography, his struggles. And that now is just so commonplace and ubiquitous. That's just part of learning about art. And this is where it came from. It came from Joe Bonger trying to get people to understand Vincent van Gogh.

[Chuck]

Yeah. Which is. I never knew that. It's a super cool kind of cherry on this story that when you go and you read about the artist and that just adds so much more to it. That came from her idea, which is pretty amazing. She got up initially a critic named Jan Veth, who did not love the paintings. But then after the letters, that's when Jan came around and was swayed and was like, he really, quote, seeks the raw root of things. And I think, you know, once they knew this story, they're like, oh my gosh, this is this tortured human that Puts everything into these paintings, and now I'm seeing them in a different light. And that was it. I think. Since her death in 1925, you know, his paintings have sold to the tune of about $117 million. The Van Gogh Museum there in Amsterdam, which I have been to, it's well worth a trip. Opened in 1973, gets a couple of million visitors every year. And he's one of the most famous painters of all time now. Yeah.

[Josh]

And one of the reasons why I saw is because he wore his heart on his sleeve. He did the same thing with his painting, and people just connect with that. And, I mean, just from listening to this, Chuck, I imagine a lot of people were like, he really was kind of a neat guy. Yeah. A tortured artist, too. And that's another place where this kind of came from. The idea of somebody suffering for their art and their art being great because of their struggles with mental illness. That also kind of came from the profile of Van Gogh being raised at the same time. And over time, people have been like, well, what? What did he suffer from? Specifically? We don't really know, but there are some clues here or there that. That kind of point in a couple of directions.

[Chuck]

Yeah, for sure. I think everyone agrees, like I said earlier, that he was epileptic, but, you know, probably bipolar disorder is what a lot of people agree on. Possibly schizophrenia. You know, he talked about hallucinations and stuff like that. He also drank a lot, which definitely did not help along the way. He did not, in his, like, previous family history, at least as far as anyone knows, have a long documented history of mental illness. But one of his sisters was diagnosed with schizophrenia and was in an asylum, I think, a few years after Vincent died. And he had a brother named Cornelius who died in South Africa while serving in the Army. And it is speculated that he may have taken his own life as well.

[Josh]

Right. You have a 10% chance of having schizophrenia if one of your siblings does. And for people in the general population, it's just 1%. So that definitely increased the possibility. Before we finish, Chuck, I just want to briefly mention that anecdote that was in that one article I sent you about that cafe being foreclosed on with all of his paintings trapped inside.

[Chuck]

Oh, yeah.

[Josh]

So he was showing, like, I think they said, 100 paintings or something in this cafe. It was like an exhibit of Van Gogh, like, early Van Gogh stuff when he first moved to Paris. And the cafe owner, like, wasn't making their payments, so the cafe got foreclosed on, locked up and everything. Inside, including Van Gogh's paintings, which were not owned by the cafe, were auctioned off. And they were so disliked that they were bundled together in. In bunches of 10 so that people who bought them could go and scrape the paintings off and sell them at a higher price than they bought the 10 Van Goghs for as blank canvases. Wow. And he still was just like, well, I guess I need to just get up and dust myself up. He was like the Joe dirt of the 19th century French and Dutch art world. I never saw that same thing. He was essentially a Van Gogh.

[Chuck]

Okay, all right.

[Josh]

Okay. Thanks for humoring me with that one, because that's just too.

[Chuck]

I love it. Good story.

[Josh]

All right, well, Chuck said that was a good story, so I think we should end this on a high note and go straight to listener mail.

[Chuck]

This is about the 737 Max. Hey, guys. Love the show. Been listening for a few years. I'm an embedded control software engineer, not for Boeing, but in another industry where mistakes could kill people. For me, Boeing was always an aspirational company. So watching the news on MCAS was like meeting a disappointing drunk hero. At the time, my peers and I were following the news and doing our best to read between the lines. We were frankly disgusted to see that they actually deployed a single point of failure all the way to production. It was baffling to us because. Because we knew our internal processes would have stopped a program dead with that much risk. Surely Boeing held even higher standards. It was clear that a complete cultural and ethical breakdown occurred to allow the MCAS to exist without redundancy and censor voting or rationality checks. And voting is in quotes. Even worse, they allowed a helper system enough control authority to destabilize the vehicle. It's antithetical to the controls engineering title anyway. Certainly didn't expect to reignite professional rage on my commute today, guys, but that was a 10 out of 10 episode. And that is from Travis, last name withheld.

[Josh]

Nice, Travis. Somebody who knows what they're talking about gave us a 10 out of 10, Chuck.

[Chuck]

Yeah, that always feels nice.

[Josh]

I assume there's a would recommend after that.

[Chuck]

I hope so.

[Josh]

I'm going to assume that. That Travis works in the lawn dart industry.

[Chuck]

There you go.

[Josh]

If you want to be like Travis and send us an awesome email because you're an expert in something we talked about. We love that kind of stuff. Even if you're like, you guys kind of got this wrong, that's all right. We want to hear from you. Send us an email. To Stuff podcastheartradio.com

[Chuck]

Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.