Show Notes
On May 9th, 1933, guards climbed a scaffold in the lobby of the RCA Building and brought Diego Rivera down mid-brushstroke. His fresco for Rockefeller Center held a portrait of Lenin, and Rivera had refused Nelson Rockefeller's written request to paint it out. The wall got a canvas drape, and 9 months later, workmen chiseled 63 feet of plaster into powder near midnight.
Buried in Rivera's refusal letter sat a counteroffer almost nobody remembers. He would trade the mural's nightclub scene for Abraham Lincoln, standing with John Brown, Nat Turner, and Harriet Beecher Stowe. Lenin on one side, Lincoln on the other. Nelson, 24 years old, said no.
What if he'd said yes?
This week we hit CTRL+Z on May 8th, 1933, and follow the ripple to today: a finished fresco drawing Depression crowds past a communist in a capitalist lobby, a congressman waving photographs of the wall on the House floor, a velvet curtain going up in the McCarthy years and coming down for a funeral, and delegates at the 1964 Republican convention booing the man who kept it. Rockefeller Center destroyed the painting, hired another artist, and put Lincoln on that wall anyway. The mural Rivera lost became the most famous artwork America ever destroyed, and the version that survives hangs in an office lobby where tourists walk past it on the way to the elevator.
More from CTRL+Z: Rewritten
On Thursday, August 21st, 2008, Joe Biden sat in a dentist’s office while his wife had a root canal, and Barack Obama was choosing his running mate. For 2 months Obama had kept Hillary Clinton on his list, though his campaign manager and chief strategist wanted her off it. She had the smarts, discipline, and steadfastness he wanted, he told them, but Bill Clinton was a complication. If he picked her, he said, there would be more than 2 of us in the relationship. By December the former president had agreed to 9 rules on his foundation’s money so his wife could run the State Department. He had 2 choices. Call Biden at the dentist’s office, or offer the job to Clinton. He called Biden, who said yes. Clinton used a private email server as secretary of state, and the FBI director wrote Congress about it 11 days before she lost Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. Biden took the oath as the 46th president in January of 2021. What if he’d offered it to Clinton? This week we hit CTRL+Z on the call to the dentist’s office, and follow the ripple to today: Bill Clinton holding the Bible while Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg swears in his wife as vice president, Secretary of State John Kerry receiving the coffins from Benghazi, a woman’s victory speech under the glass ceiling of the Javits Center, Donald Trump convicted by a Manhattan jury as his own TV channel covers the trial, and children taking class in tents on high school football fields in the fall of 2020. In 2026 Marco Rubio is the 46th president, Joe Biden is retired in Wilmington, and every public school built with federal money has a classroom outside, because one Thursday in August the call went to the Clintons’ house in Chappaqua.
On January 2nd, 1492, Ferdinand and Isabella took the surrender of Granada, and a 40-year-old sailor from Genoa watched from the crowd. For 6 years Christopher Columbus had asked them to pay for a voyage west to Asia, and twice their experts had told them the ocean was too wide. Within days they turned him down again, this time over his price: admiral, viceroy, and a tenth of the profit. He packed his charts on a mule and rode for France. Back in the camp, the king’s finance officer told the queen the whole fleet needed only 2,500 crowns, about a quarter of 1 percent of what the war had cost, and offered to lend it himself. She had 2 choices. Let him go, or send someone after him. She sent a court officer, who caught Columbus on a stone bridge 4 miles down the road. The contract was signed April 17th, 3 ships left Palos in August, and on October 12th a lookout sighted land in the Bahamas. What if she’d let him go? This week we hit CTRL+Z on the bridge at Pinos, and follow the ripple to today: a Genoese chartmaker growing old in a room over the harbor at Honfleur with Japan drawn 2,400 miles west of the Canaries, a Portuguese clerk writing Lisbon a letter about parrots from a beach in Brazil, a Breton captain named Jacques Cartier anchoring off Hispaniola in 1534, a grandson of Moctezuma ruling a city that buys its matchlocks from Norman traders, and a Spanish army marching out of the Netherlands because the king can’t pay it. In 2026 the 2 continents are called Santa Cruz, Portuguese is spoken from the Amazon to the River Plate, and Tenochtitlan is still on its lake, because one January a queen let a sailor keep riding.
Unfortunately, I came down with an illness this week that took my voice completely. So, instead of nothing, I'm sharing one of my favorite episodes to research:
On Easter Sunday, April 10th, 1803, Napoleon Bonaparte sat inside the palace of Saint-Cloud with 2 ministers who couldn't agree. One told him to sell the French colony of Louisiana before the Royal Navy took it for nothing. The other told him to keep it and send the 12 ships and 3,000 soldiers already waiting in a Dutch harbor. Britain was 38 days from declaring war, and an American named James Monroe was already riding for Paris with orders to buy one city, New Orleans, for 10 million dollars. He had 2 choices. Sign the order that sent the fleet, or sign the order that gave the whole territory away. At daybreak he told his treasury minister, "I renounce Louisiana." The United States paid 15 million dollars and nearly doubled in size. Britain declared war 18 days later. What if he'd listened to the other minister? This week we hit CTRL+Z on the palace at Saint-Cloud, and follow the ripple to today: a French garrison dying of yellow fever behind an earthen wall on the Chalmette plain, a British admiral landing troops through a Louisiana bayou 11 years before Andrew Jackson tries to take the same ground and fails, a Cherokee chief signing for land on the Arkansas river under the protection of the Crown, and a Canadian prime minister promising a railway from Montreal to New Orleans. In 2026 the Mississippi river is an international border for its entire length, and the customs post on the Memphis bridge flies a foreign flag, because one Easter Sunday a First Consul changed his mind by morning.
Just a quick update as to why there was no episode today and informing you that Episode 28 comes out tomorrow!