(bright upbeat music) ♪ ♪ Yeah, the simple things in life ♪ - My guest is public television and radio host, author, writer, and lifelong traveler, Rick Steves.

Welcome and great to have you back on "Lifestyles".

- Nice to be with you.

Thanks, Lillian.

- So, last time we were together, we talked about your book "For the Love of Europe".

And now, you have a new six-part miniseries, "Rick Steves Art of Europe".

For years, you've traveled intensively throughout Europe and beyond featuring quaint cafes, taverns, architecture, historical sites.

Were you taking mental photos of the art along the way?

Tell me what's featured in the series and any highlights.

- Well, thank you.

And, yes, I was thinking about it all the time for like 20 years.

In fact, it just occurred to me.

Back in my 20s, I was giving lectures long before I had a TV show and I gave these How-to-Travel lectures on a... six hours on a Saturday.

And then, I started giving the follow-up.

Six hours on the Sunday would be the art talk, Art for Travelers, back when I was a student.

And, it's just to me-- of course, you gotta know how to pack light and catch the train and find a hotel and that's all the skills.

But really, you're going there to understand, you're sightseeing.

And, it's just been my joy for years of splicing in a little bit of art appreciation into our Rick Steves Europe TV series.

You know, we've got a hundred-and-some episodes covering Europe but over that time I've been able to film in the greatest spots in Europe for art, the greatest galleries, the greatest palaces, the greatest buildings.

And, I thought, 'we gotta weave this together and offer a mini-series.'

So, for the last two years, that's been our mission.

We have been working on telling the story of the art of Europe, that's the name of the series, "Rick Steves Art of Europe" and I gave myself a tight limit.

I'm not Ken Burns, so I can't go as long as I want!

(Lillian laughs) And, I just also believe there's something good to be said about making-- it's a discipline to get it really tight.

So, we distilled it down into a six-hour miniseries and it was so much fun.

And, about half of the footage was stuff that we had shot over the years and with just glorious high definition footage.

And, some of the places we can't get into anymore because they've tightened up security.

So, we were all alone with "Leonardo's Last Supper" and all alone with "Mona Lisa" and all alone with Michelangelo's "David".

And, thank goodness we had all of that in the can.

And then, in the last year, we've traveled with the crew in all the great art capitals.

I think, in this order, we went to Florence, Rome, Athens, London, Paris, Bruges, Madrid, and Vienna.

And, we got to shoot in some beautiful spots and it's just so exciting to have it into this six-hour package!

- Which is really not probably long enough but it is, like you said, what you allowed yourself.

Did you feature the iconic art or maybe some less-known pieces?

- That's a good question.

We wanted to feature the iconic art because people can relate to it.

So, you know, Michelangelo's "David", and "Mona Lisa", and "The Thinker", and that kinda stuff.

But, you gotta have that because people are not gonna go to Paris and not see the Eiffel Tower.

But also, we've got exposing people to new art, whether new artists or new ages that you wouldn't appreciate otherwise.

You know, people-- you could spend a whole college career learning about this stuff and just scratch the surface.

So, we're not covering anything thoroughly but we are exposing smart people that don't know the difference between Gothic and Romanesque to this great art.

And, my-- you know, I'm more of a tour guide than an art scholar and I think I've been able to employ the experience I've had from 30 years of taking people around Europe on my tour buses to make the art fun and meaningful.

As a tour guide, I have a pretty good sense of how many Madonnas-and-children a mortal tourist can look at without their eyes glazing over and they'd rather skip out, you know?

And, that's important to be mindful of that.

- Yeah, that's no joke.

And, I'm sure just from the editing standpoint, if you have all this footage and all this information that you wanna get out there and the hardest part- and I don't know if people know this- but the hardest part is editing down and cutting out and what you have to leave out.

But then, I sometimes find that when I play the whole thing, 'oh, it's okay.

I didn't miss what I had to cut out.'

But, it is still hard to do it.

- It's heartbreaking.

In fact, just yesterday I was talking with my editor and we're gonna sweep up all the things that ended-- the little bits that I love that ended up on the "cutting room floor" and we'll have that as the modern day equivalent of a DVD extra, you know?

- There you go!

- But, one thing we did in a very calculated way from the start was not clutter up the script with a lot of dates and names that don't really matter.

It's good to know those names and dates.

And, in the show at the end we say very clearly, if you want the identities, and dates and names of all the art we show here, and if you want to know any sort of insights to the travel specifics, if you go to our website, we have the script.

And then, in each paragraph or sequence, in hard brackets, we have a list of everything that shows during that little bit of the show because the schoolteachers will use this series and they'll wanna know exactly which Giotto was that, and what year was this, and so on.

So, you'd bore people if you put that into the script - Yeah.

- And talked about it but it's important to have that available.

- Yeah, especially for the learning element and for others to go back and really get that deep information.

- Yep.

- Let me ask.

Have you always enjoyed or collected art yourself?

- No, I have not always enjoyed art.

In fact, when I was a kid, I remember at the university in the cafeteria gathering with my friends at the dorm, we'd have-- play a game of, we'd look at the class catalog and we'd say, "what's the most boring class that you'd never take?"

And, I remember thinking "European Art History!"

Who would find that interesting?

Of course, that was before I had the opportunity to be exposed to all of that with great guides and great professors.

And now, my passion has been to explain to people how fun and rewarding it is to enjoy the art.

I mean, when you're in Rome, (laughs) when you're in Rome, you go to the Pantheon!

You're gonna go to the Pantheon because it's the greatest building standing from ancient Rome.

You step into that amazing Pantheon which is a "temple to all the gods": "Pan-theon."

And, you are stepping into the splendor and the exquisite beauty of what Rome could do.

And then, you step out into the portico and you've got a dozen or so one-piece, granite columns, 50 tons each.

And, as a tour guide for years, I've demonstrated how big they are by getting four tourists to gather together and put their arms around that.

To hug that thing, it takes four tourists.

And, you remind people this was quarried in Egypt, 50 tons, 2,000 years ago, put on a big row boat, essentially, and rowed all the way to Rome and then brought to that square in Rome, and assembled with its sisters there in the portico.

And today, 2,000 years later, we step in and today we don't know what those pagans thought when the sun was shining in, and they had all their mythical gods there.

But, we can still feel the wonder of that sunbeam coming through thinking 'this is connecting us with the heavens.'

To know a little bit about that makes that experience so much more rewarding.

- Absolutely.

When there's background knowledge to something, it means that much more.

I think on anything but on art, it's definitely gonna add more feeling, more everything to it.

- Oh, and I know that just from my own experience as a tour guide because if it's done right, stuff that people didn't know they were excited about, they become excited about, and like there's so many great examples of that.

- Travel has always been your passion for years, from when you were first exposed as a young kid with your parents.

What later in life made you think you could host a TV travel show?

- Well, I've always taught what I love.

I've only had one other job and that was as a piano teacher and I love teaching piano.

And, the moms would bring their kids in and they'd have tear-stained cheeks and they just wanted to play the pop stuff and the boogie-woogie.

And, I go, "That's okay but we're gonna get you into Bach "and Beethoven, and Mozart before you know it!"

And, I was able to do that because you can inspire people to open up to great culture!

And, as far as traveling goes, you know, my parents took me to Europe when I was 14 years old to see the piano factories 'cause my dad was a piano tuner and he started importing the best pianos in the world from Germany to the Seattle area where I've always lived.

And, I went over there to see the piano factories and the relatives in Norway, and didn't wanna go but I had to go 'cause my parents were taking me.

And, it occurred to me, 'you know, this is not that bad.'

And, I started traveling on my own, as a piano teacher, kids wouldn't practice in the summer.

"I'm gonna go to Europe.

I'll see you in September."

And, I started really learning how to travel well and it was clear to me other people were making the same mistakes I had made.

And, if I could just package the lessons I've learned from my experience into a book or a talk or something, people could learn from my experience rather than their own, have a better trip.

And, that's what I've been doing for 40 years.

And now, I've got a staff of a hundred colleagues here that are just so driven by the same mission I am is just to inspire Americans to venture beyond Las Vegas and Disney World, you know?

Nothing wrong with those places but after three or four trips you could try Portugal!

And, I'm doing the same thing with technology beyond my wildest dreams to amplify my teaching.

So, for me as a tour guide and a teacher and somebody who really cares about the value of travel to help Americans open up to the wonders of our world and to let history and art be sort of a time tunnel experience and take us back to the past so we can better understand from where we've come, where we are and where we're going.

It's a very gratifying work and I just love it.

And, I gotta say, I'm so thankful that we've got public broadcasting as an oasis in our media environment where somebody like me who's passionate about something can produce something of value and assume an attention span and respect people's intelligence and not dumb it down, and be driven not by a passion for keeping advertisers happy because advertisers don't matter 'cause we're public funded.

And, to be driven just by a passion for inspiring people to reach out and embrace the world in all its beauty and diversity, aha!

That's a beautiful, very rewarding thing!

- Thank goodness we are public funded for the very reasons that you just listed but public funding is really important so that we can continue to do this.

That's my pitch for that.

But, I wanna talk about the series.

In the series, you cover European art from the Stone Age to Modern Age.

Is there an era you particularly appreciate, based on what you just said?

Maybe you love it all, but is there an era that you most gravitate to, or really make sure you wanna get in there or talk about?

- Probably the Renaissance because that was the hinge point between old and new, between medieval and modern.

And, the Renaissance is all about humanism.

And, I really like humanism.

Humanism, 500 years ago was-- remember in the Middle Ages it was all about God: what's gonna happen after we die?

Humanism is man asserting himself; "mankind", man and woman asserting themself, and it's not a repudiation of God.

It is an understanding that the best way to glorify God is not to bow down in church all day long but it's to recognize the skills and the talents and the energy God gives us, and then to use it with all your creativity in order to make the world a better place and to live a more fulfilling life.

That's a beautiful thing.

And, when we look into the eyes of David- everybody probably knows Michelangelo's "David"- you look into the eyes of David and, of course, the Bible story is it's a shepherd that's getting ready to kill the giant with his slingshot.

And, that's a cool little story from a local pride and political point of view.

David represented Florence overcoming its bully, crude giant neighboring city states that they were always fighting.

So, that's why they paid Michelangelo to do it.

And, Michelangelo was making a statement of 'this is humanism.'

David is sussing up the giant but he's also looking at the Middle Ages and saying, "Yeah.

I can take the Middle Ages, too.

"We can step beyond that.

We can get beyond the darkness "and the superstition, and the goofiness of the Middle Ages "and we can now make life better.

"We can now be smart.

We can grapple with challenges because we are capable."

And, that kinda confidence kicked off the Modern Age and to be able to explain that and show that and have people look into the eyes of David and see the birth of the modern world?

Man, that is exciting!

So, to answer your question, I think the Renaissance is probably the most exciting.

- Well, alright And, you have explained it well why it's your most exciting or why you prefer it.

Now, you've been shooting your travel show for years.

You and your crew must have it down to a science!

- We do!

(Lillian laughs) And, I've got the same crew that I've had for 30 years.

- Amazing!

It really is.

- Talk about a blessing.

You know, I've got Simon Griffith, who's my producer, and I can't imagine going to Europe without Simon.

He's been with me for every minute of our footage for 30 years and he cares so much and he's so good, and he's so strong and hardworking.

He's a combination of a philosopher and a writer and a mule and an ox, and he just does it all.

We wear a lot of hats 'cause there's just three of us in our crew.

There's me; I write the script, and I'm the host.

And, Carl is our lead photographer.

So, we have three of us in the crew and then we usually have one of our local guides helping us out in each town.

Oh!

And the other element, we have one man that does the editing at home, Steve Cammarano.

And, he's edited everything from the start for us.

And, he's just a gem to work with.

And, one thing I really appreciate about our editor-at-home is, first of all, we're lucky that we have the field producer, also the post production producer.

So, Simon's in the field.

He knows what I care about; he knows what we shot and then he's back in the studio working with Steve to edit it all.

And, Steve has this amazing ability to use music to give a wonderful flow and orchestral quality.

And, it's just-- there's a rhythm.

The editing fits the rhythm of the music.

We're all driven by the same mission.

We just are so thankful to be able to help inspire Americans to reach out and broaden their perspective through travel.

- Let me ask a little bit more about the behind-the-scenes.

Did you have easy access into getting into these facilities or getting into the museums?

Because you are Rick Steves, do they just let you in?

No problem?

Tell me some of that maybe behind the scenes, or what your team has to go through.

- It's an interesting challenge for us, Lillian.

First of all, when it comes to permissions, it's getting tighter and tighter and more complicated all the time with security concerns and everything in Europe.

- I bet.

Yeah.

- Especially with COVID and everything and it's just-- people are less motivated to go to the trouble of having you.

They're more worried about a lot of things.

Thank goodness we've done a lot of the most high security places in the last 10 years.

So, we've been alone with "Mona Lisa."

We've been alone in the Sainte-Chapelle and we've been alone with the "Last Supper", and we have perfectly good high definition footage with the lights plugged in!

I mean, our attendant in the monastery in Milan let us plug in the lights and, if you make TV, you know when you can shine a light on a dim painting, suddenly the colors pop and it's like, "oh, now I get it!"

So, we filmed the "Last Supper" with the lights on it and it just was-- it radiated.

Because I'm Rick Steves has nothing to do with it.

It's maybe-?

Well, in some cases it does because people appreciate that we're for real and we're public television.

So, we're thoughtful and we're not cheesy and it's not gonna be some goofy ad for a hamburger or something like that but we're teaching people to appreciate the culture.

- Why was this series important to you to create?

- For 30 years, I've been a tour guide and I've developed a knack for teaching the art.

And, I've developed an understanding of what smart caring people know, and how steep they are on the learning curve.

And, I just thought, I know from my own story how you can write off art as just not important or you can be made aware of 'this is how we learn about who we are and from where we came and where we're going,' and it's genius!

And, you gain an appreciation of a genius 500 years ago would be a genius today!

And, to understand this creative genius is so cool.

And, I have the opportunity through public television to share this, what I think is important.

I have the crew and I've got a chance to inspire Americans to better appreciate art.

And, I don't think there's anything out there now that does this.

This is immodest, I suppose, but I would love to be this generation's opportunity to get all excited about art.

And, what we've put together is a six-hour story.

And, of course, it's gonna run its course on public television and it's running in every city in the country.

So, it's already plenty successful.

But, I hope that it'll be part of the arsenal for teachers across the country and homeschooling parents and so on to help their students be introduced to art.

And, it's not a course in art because it's doing the Baroque movement in one hour!

(Lillian laughs) But, it is telling you a lot about art!

I mean, we go into a studio in Florence and we meet a sculptor.

And, he demonstrates for our camera how they take a raw piece of marble and then go through the whole process with making a mold out of clay.

And then, using a pointer to transfer that onto the marble and then the big chisel and the little chisel and the rasp and the sandpaper.

The same process that ancient Romans used was used by Rodin, a hundred years ago or 150 years ago.

And, it's fun to demonstrate that.

To go into a painter's studio and see them mixing egg yolk into paint and doing the old-fashioned tempera paint, and then see how much better it is when you have vegetable oil (Lillian chuckles) and make oil paints!

I didn't know about that and now we've demonstrated it!

It's really fun to go into a mosaic school and do that.

And then, I got to have the fun of demonstrating on the piano how music-- - Ohh!

- can be Bernini for your ears.

So, I would say, you know?

Bach, Handel, Scarlatti.

They were all born in the same year: 1685.

This was the Baroque Age.

And, if you listen to Bach, it's like "Bernini for your ears."

And I go, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

And, you have the interwoven melodies and you have the trills.

And then I say, "If you're gonna play Baroque music, "you should have ruffles on your sleeves!"

(Lillian laughs) So, that's a little bit-- that's just a fun dimension of art.

And, again, I'm thankful for public television to be able to offer this.

- Let me ask two more things.

Specifically the fact that we-- it's on public television.

That means you have an audience that cares about what you're putting out.

That cares-- It trusts public television, right?

It's one of the most trusted networks around.

- Right.

- So, the responsibility of getting it right and accurate definitely falls on you and your crew.

- Yeah.

And a danger for me 'cause I'm a tour guide is a lot of what I've learned is from other tour guides.

And, that's recycled information and it's not vetted and it's not scholarly but it's fun.

I mean, tour guides are entertainers.

You know?

But, I was very, very careful.

Spent a lot of time and a lot of money having college professors from three different colleges vet our script and help me out.

And it was huge, and I wouldn't have done it without having scholars look at it.

Then, I had to moderate the hair-splitting kind of details that would numb you so that it's a viewable thing and not get caught up in too much of the minutiae of the scholarly world.

But still, I wanted what I was saying to be accurate and it was great help to have those scholars vet what we did.

And, I wouldn't offer it on public television-- - If it weren't.

Yeah, I bet.

So, is it a series for art lovers or history lovers or both or anyone?

- Yes!

(laughs) - I wanted to make it-- my producer Simon, he gives it what we call the "Joe Six-Pack Test" because there's a lot of people that have not learned about art and they're smart people and they're into all sorts of stuff.

And, he's the one that goes, 'wait a minute!

'You just said this, that, and this.

'I don't know what any of those things mean.

Let's make it meaningful.'

So, I wanted to be really careful that anybody can watch this.

I know from my own experience as a tour guide, a lot of times I've got 20 people on my bus and it's 10 couples and half of the couples, the mom or the wife or the woman wanted to go to Europe and the husband's going-- - Dragging him along!

Yeah.

- Alright, alright.

And, they're dragged along and you know, like, here's another "Madonna and Child."

So, I want it to be accessible.

We have an ethic where we don't include anything in our TV shows whether it's my regular shows or this art series that our viewers can't do also or our viewers can't see also.

So, I will never show something-- when I was at Anne Frank's, they said, "Hey, we'll take you to a special room "that none of the public gets to see."

It's worthless to me.

You know, "there's a great festival on right now.

You'll never see this again.

Check it out here."

It's worthless to me because I'm shooting something that'll be brought home and next year people will be either reading about it in my Rick Steves guidebook, or they'll be watching it on a Rick Steves TV show and it's gotta be of value to my travelers.

Because deep down inside, I'm still wanting to help people actually do it themselves.

But, I've long since learned that there are a lot of people that for whatever reason, won't be going to Europe and public broadcasting is their next best thing to a plane ticket.

And, if I can take them into the museum in Madrid where Picasso's "Guernica" hangs-- it's this amazing 25-foot-wide mural created in the 1930s during Spain's civil war when Hitler got to test out his Air Force ability to drop bombs and have the first-- history's first aero bombardment and destroy a town called Guernica to help out his fascist buddy Franco in Spain fight and win the civil war.

To be able to go to Spain and film that, and then explain it and talk about what Picasso was trying to do.

And, you see the mother with her dead child, a "modern pietà."

You see the bull, the symbol of Spain, and the strength and the courage of Spain looking up at heavens going, "why?"

And, to see a soldier falling down with a broken soldier and all the chaos created by the bombing, that first aerial bombardment.

And, you realize, 'wow.

Picasso was putting a human face on what we call "collateral damage."'

He was humanizing that the tragedy of war for innocent victims- "collateral damage"- what a phrase, you know?

Innocent people being killed.

That was powerful, and that's the most powerful piece of art in 20th century Europe.

But, I spent one minute now explaining that.

Now, you could look at "Guernica" and you see the context and then people go, "Oh, I get it.

Wow, that's powerful."

- Yeah.

A light bulb kinda goes on when they have that.

And, I just wanna say, when I was in Europe, a few times that I've been there, having you as a tour guide in my ear just feels very comfortable.

If it's you telling me or if you're on your podcast and you're explaining it while you're touring the place, it's a trusted element to-- - Wow, Lillian.

- my tour because it's you telling me the story.

- Thank you so much for saying that!

'Cause this last year I've been working very hard to update my app which is called Rick Steves Audio Europe.

It's totally free, and it's got 60 guided tours-- - Yes!

- of the 60 most important artistic and historic experiences.

The walks!

The historic walks, you know?

And, people put me in their ears, and thousands of people like you are going around Europe and I'm their buddy.

And, look up there and look over there.

And, when you step off the, if the statue hopped off the pedestal and turned around and walked 10 steps, he would find, you know, this!

And you do that, and you go, "Well, there it is!"

And, I just love that!

So, I've been updating that and that's-- part of our spirit of teaching is just get it right, and help people travel better.

And, it's rewarding to be able to do that.

- Okay, so what's next?

It seems you never slow down except for maybe during the pandemic but you never seem to slow down.

What's next on your list?

- Up next, we had scripts for Poland and Iceland that we had the shoot scheduled, the permissions and everything ready to go.

And then, COVID hit and we really wanna get back to Iceland and Poland to make four half-hour shows.

I would love to do "Cuisine in Italy" shows.

We wrote a book about Italian food over the pandemic and I'm very excited about that.

Everybody loves Italian food.

I certainly do.

And then, a dream of mine would be when Ukraine wins the war and it's starting to rebuild, to be able to go there with our crew and do a one hour special on 'what is Ukraine?

'What is the culture?

Why are these people fighting so hard for their motherland?'

And, it would be a beautiful hour but right now we're just kinda celebrating the fact that we've finished our art series on time!

It was pedal to the metal for the last year!

I mean, and it all fell into place and it's so great to be able to talk about it, and celebrate it and hope that people enjoy it.

- Well, thank you so much.

You know, Rick, I do wanna comment one thing.

You do have a tie-in to Southern California in that you were born and spent a few of your youth here in Barstow, right?

(Rick laughs) - Barstow!

I guess that's the stop off on the way to Las Vegas, or something!

- Yes!

So, there is a tie-in to Southern California!

- My dad was in the army in Camp Fort Irwin, I think it's called.

So, I was registered in Barstow but I was a Californian for about two months and then back-- - Okay, okay!

- Where my family's been for- - There's still a slight tie-in to Southern California, Rick!

- On my passport it says California!

- Okay!

- And, I just am very happy to be able to have that connection.

And, it's really nice to know that travelers in Southern California are just able to watch the show and get some tips, and go over there and turn their travel dreams into smooth and affordable and meaningful reality.

- And, we get to hear you every Sunday on public radio.

So, we've got you all over the place here in Southern California.

Rick, thank you so much for your time.

It's been a pleasure.

- Lillian, I've enjoyed every minute, and happy travels to you and your listeners and viewers.

- Thank you.

This program was originally produced for 91.9 KVCR-Radio.

(bright upbeat music) ♪ Yeah, the simple things in life ♪