Welcome to History's Not Boring by Kidopoly.com. I'm Mira! And I'm Finn. Today is a special bonus interview episode. If you listen to our regular quiz episode today, you probably already know exactly who we're talking to.
SPEAKER_03Exactly! But before we step into the time machine, we have a very special shout-out. This is for Nina, who is five years old and listening all the way from London.
SPEAKER_02Hi Nina! We heard you love the podcast, especially the Cleopatra episode. Well, today's special interview is made just for you.
SPEAKER_03We are travelling back in time for this one. Back to the year 1505, to a very crowded, very messy workshop in the city of Florence, Italy.
SPEAKER_02Our guest today is. well, he's kind of everything. A painter, an engineer, a scientist, a musician, and an inventor.
SPEAKER_03He writes all his notes completely backwards. He designs flying machines, and he is currently working on the most famous painting in the history of the world. Let's go meet him! Maestro Leonardo da Vinci, thank you so much for letting us visit your workshop.
SPEAKER_00What? Oh, watch your step there, young man. That wooden gear is very fragile. And please do not trip over the pile of anatomical sketches by the door. Welcome, welcome.
SPEAKER_02Wow, it smells like sawdust and dried flowers. And maybe eggs?
SPEAKER_00Haha, you have a very good nose. That is the smell of my paints. We mix crushed earth and minerals with egg yolk and linseed oil. And the sawdust is from my assistants, who are trying to build my latest design for a water pump.
SPEAKER_03There is so much stuff in here. Half-built machines, wooden models, cages full of birds, towering stacks of notebooks.
SPEAKER_00Yes, yes, it is quite cluttered. My mind is like a rushing river always spilling over its banks. I am Leonardo, originally from the small town of Vinci. I am a painter, yes, but mostly I am a man who wants to understand how every single thing in the world works.
SPEAKER_02You look like you haven't slept in a week, and you have a smudge of blue paint right on your nose.
SPEAKER_00Do I? Ah, well, sleep is a thief of time. For the last three nights I have been up on the roof watching how the bats fly around the bell tower. Did you know a bat's wing is built just like a human hand, with skin stretched between the fingers? It is magnificent. I simply had to draw it before I forgot.
SPEAKER_03Have you always been this curious about nature? Even when you were a little boy?
SPEAKER_00Always. I grew up in the countryside near the town of Vinci, surrounded by silver olive trees, rolling green hills, and rocky streams. Because of my family background, I was not allowed to go to the fancy universities to learn Latin or advanced mathematics. So I made the outdoors my classroom. I made nature my greatest teacher.
SPEAKER_02Nature was your teacher! Did you bring a shiny red apple to a tree?
SPEAKER_00Not quite, but I observed everything with absolute focus. I watched how water swirls and forms little whirlpools when it hits a rock. I watched how birds tilt their tail feathers to turn in the wind. When I was young, wandering the mountains, I found a deep dark cave.
SPEAKER_03Were you scared to go inside?
SPEAKER_00I was terrified. The dark was like a physical wall. But I was standing there feeling two things at once. A terrible fear of whatever monsters might be lurking in the dark, and a burning, overpowering desire to see if there was something marvelous inside. Well, what was inside? Fossilized seashells stuck in the rock high up in the mountains. It proved to me that the earth is older and stranger than anyone knows. That relentless curiosity led my father to send me to Florence to be an apprentice to the great artist Verrocchio.
SPEAKER_03And did he teach you how to paint?
SPEAKER_00He taught me how to grind pigments and make brushes, but soon I was painting better than he was. I painted an angel in one of his pictures, and it looked so alive, so full of grace, that poor Verrocchio supposedly said he would never touch a paintbrush again.
SPEAKER_02You made your teacher quit. That's kind of awesome.
SPEAKER_03Speaking of your painting, what is that picture sitting on the easel in the corner? The one covered with a dusty silk cloth.
SPEAKER_00Ah, that. It is a portrait of a Florentine silk merchant's wife. Her name is Lisa del Giocondo. Her husband, Francesco, asked me to paint her two years ago.
SPEAKER_02Wait, wait. Is that the Mona Lisa? Why is it covered up?
SPEAKER_00Because it is not finished, and perhaps it never will be. Everyone demands I finish it, hand it over, take my payment, but they do not understand. I do not just want to paint a flat face. I want to paint the soul breeding beneath the skin.
SPEAKER_03It looks so incredibly real. Her smile. It almost changes when you look away and look back. How do you do that?
SPEAKER_00I call the technique sfumato. It means like smoke. You see, there are no harsh dark outlines in real life, so I blend the colors so softly they vanish into the shadows, layer upon layer. It takes months just to dry. But to paint the outside of a person perfectly, I first had to learn what is underneath. I have studied real human bodies, working with doctors, gently examining how the muscles of the lips connect to the cheeks.
SPEAKER_02You studied actual inside-out bodies? That's a little spooky.
SPEAKER_00It is not spooky, little one. It is deeply respectful. The human body is the most perfect machine ever designed in nature. By drawing the bones and the muscles, I learned the truth of how we move. But my mind wanders constantly.
SPEAKER_03Wanders to where?
SPEAKER_00To the sky. Why should humans be chained to the earth? Come here, look at this wooden model. It is an aerial screw. If we spin it fast enough, it will pull us up into the air, like a corkscrew turning into wood.
SPEAKER_02That looks just like a helicopter. Did you actually build a real one you could ride in?
SPEAKER_00No, the materials we have, thick wood and heavy canvas, they weigh too much. I can see the machines so clearly in my mind, but the world is not quite ready to build them. I designed diving suits to breathe underwater and great armoured carts for the Duke of Milan. But mostly my designs remain only in my notebooks.
SPEAKER_02I wanted to ask about your notebooks. I heard you write everything in a top secret spy code.
SPEAKER_00A spy code. No, no, no. You mean my mirror writing. Look at this page here.
SPEAKER_03Whoa! All the letters are flipped completely backwards. You would have to hold it up to a mirror to read it. Why do you do that?
SPEAKER_00It is for a very practical reason. I am left-handed. Back in these days, we write with wet ink from a quill pen. If I write normally from left to right, my left hand drags right across the fresh ink and smears the page into a terrible, unreadable mess. So I simply pull the pen from right to left, backwards. It keeps my pages perfectly clean. It is not a secret code at all, just the easiest way for me to write.
SPEAKER_02Wait, you just write backwards so you don't get ink all over your hand? That's so simple.
SPEAKER_00The simplest answer is often the true one, my young friend.
SPEAKER_03Maestro, we also heard a very nice rumour about you. Is it true that you buy caged birds at the city market?
SPEAKER_00Ah yes, it is one of my greatest joys. Whenever I walk through the bustling markets here in Florence and I see the poor finches and swallows trapped in tiny wooden cages, it breaks my heart. A creature meant for the infinite sky, locked in a little box.
SPEAKER_02So what do you do with them?
SPEAKER_00I pay the merchant whatever coin he asks. Then I open the cage doors and watch them fly away back into the blue overhead. I am a vegetarian, you see. I do not eat meat. I respect all living things too much to harm them.
SPEAKER_03That is incredibly sweet. You design mighty fortresses for rulers, but you spend your own money freeing tiny birds. Maestro Leonardo, you have so many incredible, world-changing ideas. But you said yourself that a lot of your machines don't get built. And you have all these unfinished paintings in your workshop. Does that ever make you feel sad?
SPEAKER_00It is the great tragedy of my life. Time is a fast-moving river that washes everything away, and I am standing on the muddy bank trying to catch every single drop. I want to know everything. I want to capture the whole universe on paper. But knowing takes time, and the human life is so terribly short.
SPEAKER_01That's a little sad. Do you think you failed?
SPEAKER_00Sometimes the dark thoughts whisper that to me. But then I look at a perfect drop of morning dew on a green leaf, or I see the way the golden light hits my unfinished Mona Lisa. And I realize something important. The true joy is in the looking, the seeking, the asking.
SPEAKER_03What would you tell kids like Mina listening right now who want to be brilliant inventors or artists like you?
SPEAKER_00I would tell them to open their eyes. Do not just look at the world. Observe it. Ask why the sky is blue. Ask how a fish breathes underwater. Never accept that something is just because.
SPEAKER_03He really doesn't. What an absolutely amazing mind. We hope you loved this special bonus interview. Especially you, Nina.
SPEAKER_02Yeah! If you loved meeting the great Leonardo da Vinci, please leave us a five-star review. It really helps other kids find the show. And don't forget to check out our site, kidopoly.com, for more fun history adventures. If you want a shout out like Nina got, or if you want us to interview someone specific from history, ask a grown-up to email us at hello at kidopoly.com.
SPEAKER_03We will see you next time on History's Not Boring.