Speaker 1: Here's the thing, and I bet you get this. When
Speaker 1: you're an actor, people think you must be a good liar,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, no, I memorize other people's words. I
Speaker 1: can't come up with them on my own. I'm not
Speaker 1: like a liar on the fly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm bad at that.
Speaker 3: Hey, there, I met Helms and Welcome to SNAPO, the
Speaker 3: show about history's greatest screw ups, or more specifically, the
Speaker 3: show where I lead my brilliant guests through some of
Speaker 3: the least brilliant moments in history. Today, I am joined
Speaker 3: by someone who wears a lot of hats. This woman
Speaker 3: is a powerhouse. You've seen her on the big screen,
Speaker 3: the small screen, and in your podcast feed with the
Speaker 3: stirring and thoughtful show in progress. She's an actress, an activist, producer,
Speaker 3: and all around troublemaker for justice. Please welcome Sophia Bush.
Speaker 1: I like that introduction, ed Helms. Can I It's like,
Speaker 1: I want a little recording of that I can pull
Speaker 1: out of my pocket when I go somewhere.
Speaker 3: Well, we're recording is the podcast? This is sad feel
Speaker 3: you can yeah, just feel free to use anytime you want.
Speaker 1: I'm going to admit to you now I'll be stealing
Speaker 1: your audio. Thank you, sir.
Speaker 3: I was trying to think about I feel like I've
Speaker 3: known you a long long time, but then I couldn't
Speaker 3: place our the sort of origin of our connection. I
Speaker 3: think it was represent us. Did we need to ed
Speaker 3: represent us? Event only like way.
Speaker 1: Back gosh, I think you're right, yeah, yeah, I didn't
Speaker 1: know if it was do something or like I knew
Speaker 1: we were in the mix on the let's inject hope
Speaker 1: into working on society's problems because everyone always thinks that's
Speaker 1: a drag, and it's like, no, it's actually pretty cool.
Speaker 3: Were just before we started recording, we were talking about
Speaker 3: fly fishing, which I want to get back to. But
Speaker 3: I just have a more sort of like meaty question
Speaker 3: for you, because I really love how you have like
Speaker 3: leveraged your platform for meaningful impact in the world.
Speaker 1: Thanks.
Speaker 3: I am a voter times up. Of course, you know
Speaker 3: your your your climate work, and I'm just curious. You
Speaker 3: know a lot of people with high profile kind of
Speaker 3: dip into activism here and there. You've done much more
Speaker 3: than dipping in, like you're you're fully engaged, and I'm
Speaker 3: curious how those particular issues emerged for you. Was that.
Speaker 3: Was it sort of strategic about where you could make
Speaker 3: the most impact or was it more visceral like this,
Speaker 3: These are things I feel in my gut, and I
Speaker 3: got to speak up about this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's definitely definitely option B and to choose your adventure.
Speaker 1: I The irony is you're like, was it strategic? I
Speaker 1: think it was probably the most unstrategic thing I could do.
Speaker 1: For most of my career, my whole team has been like,
Speaker 1: please shut up about the just can you like tone
Speaker 1: it down? Could you just pick a charity, go to
Speaker 1: the gala, like, write a check once in a while.
Speaker 1: Why do you have to be so agitating to the system.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, because the system needs to be agitated.
Speaker 1: It's a shitty system. I the way I have come
Speaker 1: to understand this thing about myself, and I think it's
Speaker 1: been helpful. One of my best friends is a really
Speaker 1: brilliant writer. His name's Jedediah Jenkins, and he said something
Speaker 1: to me years ago. He said, we have a lot
Speaker 1: of friends that work in creative spaces, and a lot
Speaker 1: of our friends who are creatives are also concerned citizens.
Speaker 1: You know, he goes, but You're I think you're the
Speaker 1: only person I know who pretend who's a full time activist,
Speaker 1: who pretends to be a full time actor, Like, I
Speaker 1: feel like you kind of act just so you can
Speaker 1: maintain the reach. And I used to think that was true.
Speaker 1: And I think what I've realized over the last couple
Speaker 1: of years is the spectrum of my experience as a
Speaker 1: person needs both My work, whether it's like you know,
Speaker 1: jumping in to do an improv show or a movie
Speaker 1: is so sustaining to me and like my creative gas tank.
Speaker 1: But the activism that is for everybody else, for community,
Speaker 1: Like that's my calling. It's like like like painters can't
Speaker 1: not paint, Yeah, writers can't not write. I cannot, even
Speaker 1: despite great advice at times, keep my mouth shut about
Speaker 1: things that I know are wrong and ways we could
Speaker 1: be better, and how the whole point of being on
Speaker 1: this planet is to like be neighbors with people. I
Speaker 1: can't shut my mouth.
Speaker 3: No, that's incredible. I could just like go down this
Speaker 3: rabbit hole for let me just ask you quickly and
Speaker 3: let's let's keep this far short. What do you love
Speaker 3: about fly fishing? I have an answer to this, but
Speaker 3: what is your what is it you love about it?
Speaker 1: Fly fishing for me is in that kind of cannon
Speaker 1: of the American West. And to be clear, and like
Speaker 1: I'm sure people will tell me I'm cringe or whatever.
Speaker 1: I'm like like I am. I am a horse girl
Speaker 1: at heart. Like I'm never happier than when I'm out
Speaker 1: on horseback, out on empty you know, land or forests
Speaker 1: or whatever. And fly fishing is that same kind of beautiful,
Speaker 1: meditative experience in the land. It's so grounding to me.
Speaker 1: And oh, I just I think it's magic totally. And
Speaker 1: I have to say, like, the chakiest, gayest trip I've
Speaker 1: ever taken was taking five of my girlfriends fly fishing
Speaker 1: years ago, and I look back at the photos and
Speaker 1: I'm like a clue. It was so cool and it's like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I am passionate about it, and I'm
Speaker 1: also really passionate about getting more women out into the outdoors,
Speaker 1: into spaces where there are often less of us, but
Speaker 1: where we're we're actually quite good caster.
Speaker 3: All right, let's get into this snap. But we have
Speaker 3: a really fun one today.
Speaker 1: What do you got for me? It's very exciting for me.
Speaker 1: I'm nervous and excited all at the same time.
Speaker 3: So this is a great, early and very literal example
Speaker 3: of there is no such thing as bad press. We
Speaker 3: are going to dig into the infamous Mona Lisa. Heist. Oh,
Speaker 3: we begin our tale. In France, it's August twenty first,
Speaker 3: nineteen eleven, a Tuesday, to be precise. A local artist
Speaker 3: by the name of Louis Berude has decided to escape
Speaker 3: the sweltering August Parisian heat and peruse a few of
Speaker 3: his favorite works at a local museum. One of the
Speaker 3: pieces he likes to check out was an oil painting
Speaker 3: on a poplar wood panel that many lovingly called La Gioconda.
Speaker 3: It utilized a stunning innovative technique called svumto a hazy effect,
Speaker 3: blending colors and tones with subtle precision. But when Brud
Speaker 3: arrived at Lagiaconda's normal hanging spot in the museum, she
Speaker 3: wasn't there.
Speaker 1: She was gone.
Speaker 3: She was gone. Now this may not feel like such
Speaker 3: a big deal at first, but let's just be clear.
Speaker 3: Lagiaconda is also known by her other name, the Mona Lisa.
Speaker 3: We're talking about the Mona Lisa, and we actually have
Speaker 3: a photo. Let's let's get up that photo of the
Speaker 3: Mona Lisa. There she is hello, lady, Hello darling. Yes,
Speaker 3: isn't she incredible?
Speaker 1: She really is quite stunning.
Speaker 3: She has achieved this legendary status in large, as we'll hear,
Speaker 3: because of this famous heist, but she deserves it too,
Speaker 3: and she's truly a masterpiece.
Speaker 1: She's so luminous.
Speaker 3: Look at her.
Speaker 1: She looks like she swallowed a light bulb.
Speaker 3: Yes, let's just get a few facts out. Let's get
Speaker 3: into the numbers of the Mona Lisa for a quick second.
Speaker 3: Here's some stats. She's roughly thirty inches tall and twenty
Speaker 3: one inches wide, which is not large. That's like the
Speaker 3: average size of your Led Zeppelin poster in a college
Speaker 3: dorm room.
Speaker 1: She's just like a little gal.
Speaker 3: He's right, she's a little gal.
Speaker 2: She's like a.
Speaker 1: Concert poster you have framed in your kitchen.
Speaker 3: There you go. Mona Lisa's eyes famously follow the viewer.
Speaker 3: Thanks to Da Vinci's mastery of perspective. Psychologists estimate this
Speaker 3: smile appears to shift depending on where your eyes land.
Speaker 3: A two thousand and five University of Amsterdam study found
Speaker 3: eighty three percent of viewers interpret her as happy, nine
Speaker 3: percent disgusted, six percent fearful, and two percent angry. I
Speaker 3: love that.
Speaker 1: I've never thought any of those things.
Speaker 3: So on that morning, Louis Beerude asked a guard where
Speaker 3: has the Mona Lisa gone? And the guard wasn't particularly concerned.
Speaker 3: He assumed it had just been taken out by a
Speaker 3: staff photographer who was known to remove various paintings to
Speaker 3: take pictures of them, and then sometimes forget to return
Speaker 3: them right away. But as the hours ticked by and
Speaker 3: the photographer swore he didn't have it, panic started to
Speaker 3: set in. By mid afternoon, around three pm, the louver
Speaker 3: quietly cleared out all the tourists and staff under the
Speaker 3: pretense of a burst water pipe, not true. Meanwhile, they
Speaker 3: called in about sixty detectives to comb through the museum's
Speaker 3: endless corridors and hidden corners, which is no small feet
Speaker 3: because the louver is huge. If you lay it out
Speaker 3: all of its halls and galleries in a straight line,
Speaker 3: it would be nearly nine miles, which is crazy. Have
Speaker 3: you ever been to the Louver? Have you seen the
Speaker 3: Mona Lisa in person? I have?
Speaker 1: Can I actually tell you the coolest thing that's ever
Speaker 1: happened to me? Of no, it's like of no doing
Speaker 1: of my own so there are very There are only
Speaker 1: five modern artists, like you know, our era of modernity
Speaker 1: who have installations, permanent installations in the Louver. And one
Speaker 1: of them happens to be a dear friend of mine
Speaker 1: who is like an incredibly exceptional engineer and artist who
Speaker 1: makes moving sculptures, and a few years ago when he
Speaker 1: was selected to be the artist of our generation with
Speaker 1: a permanent installation, I got to go on installation day
Speaker 1: because I happened to be in France because I was
Speaker 1: working and the Louver was closed.
Speaker 3: You've got a backstage pass to the louver.
Speaker 1: Yes, I got to be there for the day, you know,
Speaker 1: and I was taking photographs and like so excited I
Speaker 1: did for him and his family. And then the curator said,
Speaker 1: would everyone, like, you know, quietly, would everyone like thirty
Speaker 1: minutes to go see a few of our most famous exhibitions.
Speaker 1: And they took us to see them on a lisa,
Speaker 1: no ropes, no lines, no humans, and it was like
Speaker 1: it actually made me emotional. I got a little weepy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it felt like a not even like a once in
Speaker 1: a lifetime, it was like a once in a generation
Speaker 1: kind of experience. And I was like, wow, I'm this
Speaker 1: is like, maybe one of the coolest things that will
Speaker 1: ever happen to me in my life.
Speaker 3: That's that is incredibly cool. I went to the Louver.
Speaker 3: I don't know, it was probably seven or eight years ago.
Speaker 3: I've been a few times, but the last visit I
Speaker 3: just like, I'm going to go by myself. I love
Speaker 3: going to museums by myself because half the time in
Speaker 3: a museum you're either waiting for your friends or family
Speaker 3: or you're looking for them or whatever. And this was
Speaker 3: so nice. And then I remember getting I was like,
Speaker 3: I gotta check in on Mona, right, I gotta just
Speaker 3: give her a little hello. And I get in there
Speaker 3: and it's the exact opposite of what you're saying. It
Speaker 3: was so crowded and full of people in this huge hall,
Speaker 3: and like we were saying before, it's small, like it's
Speaker 3: not a big painting, and they're trying to shuffle people through.
Speaker 3: But I just remember standing. I was probably like a
Speaker 3: couple like one hundred feet back, and I just kind
Speaker 3: of was like, Hey, Mona, good to see you. We're
Speaker 3: gonna make sure we're in Paris at the same time
Speaker 3: soon so that you can give me like a backstage tour.
Speaker 1: I will absolutely ask if we can go back.
Speaker 3: All right, So back into the story. After an hour
Speaker 3: of frantic searching, the detectives uncovered an empty glass frame
Speaker 3: in a service stairwell. It was La Gioconda's frame. She
Speaker 3: had seemingly vanished into thin air.
Speaker 1: And just like that, bad news fairs.
Speaker 3: Yeah, a massive international scandal erupted Mona's gentle smirk, peppered
Speaker 3: the front pages of newspapers around the globe. And here's
Speaker 3: the thing. At the time, the Mona Lisa was certainly
Speaker 3: considered a masterpiece. Leonardo da Vinci really didn't was not prolific.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think he had only like twenty five ish,
Speaker 3: I don't know the exact number, but a small number
Speaker 3: of paintings, and so this was it was definitely it
Speaker 3: had incredible value and was a masterpiece. But it wasn't
Speaker 3: that well known. It wasn't especially outside of France. But
Speaker 3: almost overnight she just was thrust into the cultural spotlight
Speaker 3: and became the most famous painting in the entire world.
Speaker 3: You and I know a little bit about fame. Was
Speaker 3: your transition into a famous person sudden or gradual? Has
Speaker 3: it been? Was it difficult?
Speaker 1: Ah. The phrase that comes to mind is a baptism
Speaker 1: by fire. Sure did it feel that way for you?
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, there's certainly these moments where you're just like,
Speaker 3: oh my god, like what just happened to reality? It's
Speaker 3: it's like so different.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, certainly it was a shocking experience for
Speaker 1: all of us who worked together on One Tree Hill,
Speaker 1: which was my first like a regular gig on a
Speaker 1: TV show. I think for me it was especially arresting
Speaker 1: because I had gone to an all girls, like super
Speaker 1: nerdy prep school. I know, you're shocked when I'm talking
Speaker 1: about like global systems of oppression. You're like, gee, I
Speaker 1: there were fifty five girls in my graduating class. Like,
Speaker 1: I had no kind of experience with the world outside
Speaker 1: of gorgeous academia. And I'm so grateful for it. My
Speaker 1: passion for learning, my obsession with knowledge, the way I
Speaker 1: was encouraged, especially in science, which so many girls are not.
Speaker 1: I'm so grateful for it. But I did that. Then
Speaker 1: I went to college for three years and was literally
Speaker 1: a philanthropy chair like Nerd all the way through, kind
Speaker 1: of trying to get my bearings. Sure, and to be clear,
Speaker 1: I started working on my first TV show in two
Speaker 1: thousand and three, So like this was the era that
Speaker 1: literally we drove Britney spears to madness. Like the press
Speaker 1: was not good to women in the early aughts. It
Speaker 1: called everyone fat, it called everyone's sluts. It was just
Speaker 1: it was horrible and to like put a hat on
Speaker 1: a hat. Not only am I working on a teen
Speaker 1: TV show which is high drama, all sexy, all the
Speaker 1: things I'd literally never experienced, but I'm playing the like
Speaker 1: captain of the cheer squad who's a vixen, And.
Speaker 3: I'm like, what is a vixen?
Speaker 1: Like I I like, I read the news for fun.
Speaker 3: What are we doing right?
Speaker 1: And so it was really weird for me because I
Speaker 1: just didn't like, I look back at photos and I
Speaker 1: feel like I can like see the goog behind my ears,
Speaker 1: like I had just hatched and I didn't know anything.
Speaker 1: I didn't know that a journalist could ask you a
Speaker 1: question and you didn't have to answer it.
Speaker 3: I now like to say, when I get asked a
Speaker 3: question I don't want to answer, I just say pass,
Speaker 3: which is really fun because reporters are like, wait, what
Speaker 3: you can't pass? Next? Yeah? Just next question. They're like, yeah,
Speaker 3: you can't pass, Like, yeah I can. I'm passing on
Speaker 3: your question. Yeah, instead I'm doing, oh my god, use that,
Speaker 3: by the way, pass it around.
Speaker 1: I will say, like, given what that journey was, like,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm also kind of really proud of myself. I'm
Speaker 1: like the fact that I'm not like sitting in the
Speaker 1: corner chewing my hair feels like a fucking miracle. So
Speaker 1: I think we did good. I don't know, Amen, how
Speaker 1: old were you when things really like exploded in your career.
Speaker 3: I was an adult, Like, I have very little to
Speaker 3: complain about. I was an adult, but I also matured
Speaker 3: very late as a human being. I was. I was
Speaker 3: an adult by the numbers, but I was still very
Speaker 3: much a child I was. I really appreciate that I
Speaker 3: was twenty eight when I got on The Daily Show.
Speaker 3: But that's kind of like what we called toy fame
Speaker 3: because it was basic cable and it was like, and
Speaker 3: you know, it grew while I was on the show,
Speaker 3: but it was it wasn't you know. I wasn't getting
Speaker 3: like chased by reporters or anything or tabloids. Yeah, but
Speaker 3: then the office then sort of kicked things up a
Speaker 3: major notch, and then of course the hangover. It was
Speaker 3: just like, oh God, wow, here you go. Here we are.
Speaker 3: This is like a whole new thing.
Speaker 1: But here's the thing. It never ceases being weird.
Speaker 3: No, it's always weird, because.
Speaker 1: Like I am an adult and it's still so weird.
Speaker 3: Let's take a trip back to the fifteen hundreds.
Speaker 1: Hit me.
Speaker 3: One of the greatest Renaissance artists, Leonardo da Vinci, painted
Speaker 3: the Mona Lisa between fifteen oh three and fifteen oh six.
Speaker 3: Now why why did he paint this, this variouscial painting.
Speaker 3: Well because wealthy Florentine merchant Francesco del Giocondo commissioned Da
Speaker 3: Vinci to paint a portrait of his wife, Lisa Gerandini. Giocondo,
Speaker 3: also the source of the painting's Italian nickname La Gioconda
Speaker 3: or in French, la jaconde. The literal translation of that
Speaker 3: is the joyful one or the happy woman, which is
Speaker 3: a play on both her married name Giocondo and and
Speaker 3: her expression in the painting. Francesco never actually paid for
Speaker 3: the painting, so Da Vinci held on to it and
Speaker 3: wound up taking it with him when he moved to
Speaker 3: France in fifteen sixteen. At the request of King Francois
Speaker 3: the first. This is not fact per se, but this
Speaker 3: is generally the historian's consensus. It's kind of the closest
Speaker 3: we can get. According to the Louvers records, King Francoise
Speaker 3: was enamored with the work and officially purchased the Mona
Speaker 3: Lisa from Da Vinci in fifteen eighteen. Da Vinci would
Speaker 3: sadly pass away a short while later in fifteen nineteen.
Speaker 3: He was sixty seven years old, which is like pretty
Speaker 3: ripe for that time period. Yeah, so this is when
Speaker 3: mon Lisa sort of started bouncing around. She would move
Speaker 3: from French leader to French leader, allegedly sitting in King Francois,
Speaker 3: King Francis's bathroom for a short stant, then onto the
Speaker 3: fontine Bleau Palace. Later, Louis the fourteenth would place her
Speaker 3: at the Palace of Versailles, and then Napoleon would keep
Speaker 3: her in his own private bedchambers. How intimate apparently he
Speaker 3: referred to her. He referred to her as the quote
Speaker 3: Sphinx of the occident. I think this is really evidence
Speaker 3: of the spell that this painting can cast on people.
Speaker 3: That she wasn't just hung in a hall somewhere she
Speaker 3: was like in private quarters for people intimate. Mona Lisa
Speaker 3: was established as part of the French Royal collection eventually
Speaker 3: and was transferred to the Louver.
Speaker 1: Accordingly, question, yeah, question, professor, Yeah, who transferred her to
Speaker 1: the French collection?
Speaker 3: Like there was a moment. That's a great question, and
Speaker 3: I don't know the precise answer, but there was a
Speaker 3: moment where the royal collection was in the late seventeen hundreds,
Speaker 3: the Royal collection was made public. It was made to
Speaker 3: be sort of owned by the French people, and that's
Speaker 3: when a lot of that art made it into the Louver,
Speaker 3: which is Yeah, So the Louver first began showing the
Speaker 3: Mona Lisa on public display in eighteen oh four. Fast
Speaker 3: forward about a century and the Mona Lisa belonged to
Speaker 3: the people of France, sitting comfortably in the salon carre
Speaker 3: of the Louver along with various other masterpieces. This is
Speaker 3: before it was it got its own sort of gallery.
Speaker 3: But one former employee of the Louver believed that maybe
Speaker 3: she belonged elsewhere.
Speaker 1: Don't done, Yeah, you need the law and order like
Speaker 1: bumpo done.
Speaker 3: Now we get into the height. So we're back in
Speaker 3: nineteen eleven, and the heist of the twentieth century was
Speaker 3: all like Gray Poupon. So who took the Mona Lisa? Well?
Speaker 3: Was it an international crime syndicate? Was it Napoleon's ghost
Speaker 3: desperate for some new bedroom decorps? Was it a time
Speaker 3: traveling banksy? Perhaps No, it is none of the above. No, no,
Speaker 3: but yeah, and now there is a swarm of detectives,
Speaker 3: sixty some odd detectives, following a myriad of leads, and
Speaker 3: all the while she is actually actually just a few
Speaker 3: blocks over from the Louver, resting in a trunk with
Speaker 3: a fall bottom, owned by a man named Vincenzo Perugia.
Speaker 3: I think we have a photo of Vincenzo here. Let's
Speaker 3: take a look at this man.
Speaker 1: Look at him.
Speaker 3: A literal mustache twirl, Yeah, yeah, a little bit of
Speaker 3: a yeah. I mean, he's he's he's got that energy.
Speaker 3: He's Italian. He's an Italian immigrant and living in Paris,
Speaker 3: something of a handyman, and he had been employed at
Speaker 3: the Louver.
Speaker 1: Interesting.
Speaker 3: There are various reports of how the act of the
Speaker 3: heist actually went down, but all told, it was quite seamless.
Speaker 3: Perugia had been employed by the louver and and in fact,
Speaker 3: in one of his duties, he had helped construct the
Speaker 3: glass case that held the Mona Lisa, so he knew
Speaker 3: exactly how it sort of came together and came apart,
Speaker 3: and precisely how to remove her quite carefully. Now interesting
Speaker 3: side note, he apparently suffered a lot of discrimination as
Speaker 3: an Italian immigrant in France and had a bit of
Speaker 3: a grudge against French society, which he will claim played
Speaker 3: into his actions. And as we'll learn later, on Monday
Speaker 3: August twenty first, nineteen eleven, Perugia entered the museum at
Speaker 3: a time when it was only open to staff mondays
Speaker 3: were cleaning days. Now some reports say he actually hid
Speaker 3: the night before in a supply closet and then e
Speaker 3: merged on that Monday morning. In any case, he was
Speaker 3: wearing a workman's smock, so kind of, you know, fit
Speaker 3: in with the staff. He snuck into the hall removed
Speaker 3: the painting in this glass case, which at that time
Speaker 3: they weren't they were worried about, I guess about graffiti
Speaker 3: and things. So it did have a glass case. It's
Speaker 3: nothing like the bulletproof thing it's behind now, but and
Speaker 3: it weighed, it was quite heavy, but he got it
Speaker 3: off the wall. Other reports say he had two accomplices.
Speaker 3: There's different, different details floating around, but managed to get
Speaker 3: this bulky glass case into a stairwell where he was
Speaker 3: able to open the case and pull out just the painting,
Speaker 3: this piece of poplar with some oil paint on it,
Speaker 3: and then he just was able to stroll out onto
Speaker 3: the Rue de Revoulie. Yes, another cool, sort of fun detail.
Speaker 3: He actually found himself locked in to the louver because
Speaker 3: it was a working day. They weren't allowing you know,
Speaker 3: the public in on this on this Monday, and he
Speaker 3: wasn't able to get out the way he thought. But
Speaker 3: then a plumber, a louve like staff plumber walked up
Speaker 3: and was like, no problem, I'll help you out. Here
Speaker 3: you go, and like helped him through the door. So
Speaker 3: off he goes, and he's carrying the painting just down
Speaker 3: the street under his smock apparently.
Speaker 1: Can you imagine.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, it's it's nuts. It's nuts. The anxiety I
Speaker 3: feel like what makes me not a criminal mastermind is
Speaker 3: like I as soon as I even start to think
Speaker 3: about that, I just start sweating.
Speaker 1: By the way I am, it is so far in
Speaker 1: the degree of panic for me, even when I know
Speaker 1: I've done nothing wrong. Exactly, if you were like, hey, hey,
Speaker 1: I need to talk to you later, I'd be like,
Speaker 1: what have I done? What don't I remember?
Speaker 3: And then you're what I maybe do and not the
Speaker 3: same way? What is what? What childhood trauma led us
Speaker 3: into this? It's so annoying, I mean, and like this,
Speaker 3: And it's also very interesting this that that fear of
Speaker 3: being perceived as guilty can can actually make you act
Speaker 3: more guilty. Uh and and this is a this will
Speaker 3: this is this will emerge in just a few minutes.
Speaker 1: And here's the thing. And I bet you get this.
Speaker 1: When you're an actor, people think you must be a
Speaker 1: good liar, and I'm like, no, I memorize other people's words.
Speaker 1: I can't come up with them on my own. I'm
Speaker 1: not like a liar on the Flygh.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm bad at that.
Speaker 1: Exactly did he get caught because he was a panicky
Speaker 1: little potato?
Speaker 3: No? No, no, no he didn't. But it gets interesting.
Speaker 3: So local police concluded that they just eventually, it took
Speaker 3: like twenty four hours talking to the photographer and you know,
Speaker 3: looking everywhere, they finally realized like this thing is gone
Speaker 3: like it's stolen, and word spread fast news reports began
Speaker 3: to extend beyond Paris, and in short order it just
Speaker 3: became a global scandal, like how could such a prominent
Speaker 3: museum lose one of their masterpieces. A French publication called
Speaker 3: lilos Stracion wrote quote, what audacious criminal, what mystifier? What
Speaker 3: maniac collector? What insane lover has committed this abduction?
Speaker 1: Insane lover?
Speaker 3: Yes? Like a French publication goes right to like he
Speaker 3: must love this painting. He's an insane lover. Or he's
Speaker 3: doing it for his lover's love.
Speaker 1: He is obsessed with her, he loves his mona Lisa.
Speaker 3: Oh it's so good, it's so French. I love it.
Speaker 3: The New York Times Correspondent posted an article claiming offers
Speaker 3: of five million dollars for its return. Now that's it's
Speaker 3: unclear if those were actually real, but that's more than
Speaker 3: one hundred and sixty nine million dollars in today's money.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, it's not feeling worth it.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you paid me one hundred and sixty
Speaker 1: nine million dollars, would I try to steal something for someone?
Speaker 1: But I wouldn't be able to pull it off. So no,
Speaker 1: I can. I can ask myself the question, but I
Speaker 1: already know even in theory, I'm going to fail.
Speaker 3: Oh boy. The art curator of the louver said that
Speaker 3: he had a gut feeling that it was stolen, so
Speaker 3: that the would attempt to copy it, but he wasn't.
Speaker 3: He wasn't gonna let that or even like return a
Speaker 3: copy and hold on to the original. But he would
Speaker 3: not let that fly because quote, I studied the picture
Speaker 3: for years, mounted and unmounted. I know every minor detail
Speaker 3: of it, and I would recognize a copy, however perfect
Speaker 3: after five minutes observation. Okay, so that's a quote so
Speaker 3: obviously quite cocky about his painting analysis skills, but but
Speaker 3: it's actually true. Because he was an expert as as
Speaker 3: the curator of the loop, he knew a lot about
Speaker 3: what's called crack colure, which is the tiny little cracks
Speaker 3: and fissures that form over time. And as an oil
Speaker 3: painting ages, the Mona Lisa upclose is quite cracked like
Speaker 3: it is, it's covered in sort of checking and cracking,
Speaker 3: and that is that is that becomes something of a
Speaker 3: DNA signature or a fingerprint for a painting because that's
Speaker 3: virtually impossible to duplicate. You can duplicate the cracking, but
Speaker 3: to match cracking, Yeah, exactly, it's not gonna It's just
Speaker 3: gonna be impossible. So naturally, lots of odd theories and
Speaker 3: false accusations are flying all around. One claimed the JP Morgan,
Speaker 3: the American banker, had the picture stolen so that he
Speaker 3: could keep it in his private collection. Yeah. A renowned
Speaker 3: poet by the name of Guillame Aoignier became a suspect.
Speaker 3: He was forgive my French accent, by the way, I'm
Speaker 3: very like, I'm kind of cocky about it, but I
Speaker 3: know it's terrible.
Speaker 1: It's not terrible.
Speaker 3: So apore was one of the rare folks who apparently
Speaker 3: was not a fan of the painting, and at one
Speaker 3: point had joked about burning the louver down. But he
Speaker 3: was like he was kind of a sort of counterculture poet, bohemian,
Speaker 3: just in the like almost like a comic. Sure. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and he was well known and he was something of
Speaker 3: celebrity in the in the in French sort of artistic
Speaker 3: culture at the time. A Poigniere's trail led to a
Speaker 3: shocking second suspect, Pablo Picasso. What yes, isn't this wild?
Speaker 3: They thought that Picasso might have stolen the Mona Lisa
Speaker 3: shut up? For what? Well, the link between a poigniere
Speaker 3: and Picasso was this shady buddy that they had, who
Speaker 3: had who had stolen Iberian busts for them from the Louver,
Speaker 3: like they did have stolen property from the louver.
Speaker 1: We why why?
Speaker 3: Why? Why?
Speaker 1: Because they wanted to learn to copy them or just
Speaker 1: because they thought it was like funny and they were
Speaker 1: a bunch of crazy drunks.
Speaker 3: I don't know the I don't know the truth of
Speaker 3: that answer, but I do know, well, could you not know? Well,
Speaker 3: Picasso did also paint one of the busts, so it
Speaker 3: was for artistic reasons presumably, but like, also, why a
Speaker 3: stolen thing? Anyway? It's so badass that Picasso had a
Speaker 3: stolen bust from the.
Speaker 1: Loop, it really is. It makes me like him more.
Speaker 3: Police investigated them, and this is where that guilty thing
Speaker 3: it gets in, because I read a thing about how
Speaker 3: they were questioned and Picasso was so terrified and overwhelmed
Speaker 3: with fear that that he was sobbing and me yeah,
Speaker 3: and and and acting so guilty that they were just like, uh,
Speaker 3: you couldn't have done this.
Speaker 2: You're not.
Speaker 3: You're too much of a whimp. You're not. You don't
Speaker 3: have the sort of like fortitude to pull something like
Speaker 3: this off. But it is a wild connection. Anyway, After
Speaker 3: considerable questioning, both Are and Pablo Picasso were were let
Speaker 3: go and uh and they were not suspects any longer.
Speaker 3: Another two years goes by Sophia Bush. They don't, they
Speaker 3: don't find it. Two years, two years, and they're starting
Speaker 3: to think, oh my god, maybe the Mona Lisa is
Speaker 3: gone forever. Until in December of nineteen thirteen, a Florentine
Speaker 3: art and antiquities dealer Alfredo Jeri, Now I do have
Speaker 3: now my Italian accident is horrific, but I'm just gonna
Speaker 3: I'm diving all in, Alfredo Jeri. I also like to
Speaker 3: do it like this. I put on this voice for
Speaker 3: a Brando. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Sure.
Speaker 3: He received an odd correspondence from a man calling himself,
Speaker 3: wait for it, Leonard or Leonardo perhaps yeah, calling himself Leonardo.
Speaker 3: This mystery man claimed he had stolen the Mona Lisa
Speaker 3: and wanted to return it to its birthplace, Italy. Wow,
Speaker 3: so he's now claiming that he stole it for patriotic reasons.
Speaker 3: Jari was suspicious but intrigued. He agreed to meet with
Speaker 3: this mysterious Leonard at the Tripoli Italia Hotel in Florence,
Speaker 3: and brought along with him the Uffizi Gallery director Giovanni Polgi. Okay,
Speaker 3: the Offizi Gallery obviously being like the louver of Italy.
Speaker 3: And this guy knows his ship, let's put it that way.
Speaker 3: So the three men arranged to meet in Leonard's hotel room,
Speaker 3: where a wooden trunk was waiting Leonyard removed a false
Speaker 3: bottom from the trunk, and they're wrapped in a red
Speaker 3: silk cloth. Was the Mona lis is the jacund one?
Speaker 3: Pretty dramatic reveal, right, a red silken cloth.
Speaker 1: This is really giving Thomas Crown affair?
Speaker 3: Yes right, and I like it. I do too. So
Speaker 3: are Italian art dealers. They're no fools. They they are
Speaker 3: like pretty sure this is the real deal, and they
Speaker 3: play it very cool. They confirm its authenticity, and Jeri
Speaker 3: and Polgi pretended to agree to this to Leonard's asking
Speaker 3: price of one hundred thousand dollars, and they sort of
Speaker 3: kept him on the hook. Now that's one hundred thousand
Speaker 3: dollars at that time is three million dollars to day.
Speaker 3: It's not too shabby. And this is the primary thing
Speaker 3: that sort of throws his patriotic motives into question. Right,
Speaker 3: He's like, he's also kind of asking for a big
Speaker 3: paycheck here.
Speaker 1: Right, He's like, no, I'm doing it for Italy, but
Speaker 1: also for my retirement.
Speaker 3: He's like my Italian bride, but also not give me
Speaker 3: a little cheddar. Right, that's like a little Mozarella with
Speaker 3: this perhaps, and that tracks for a thief, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: So they told Leonard that they needed to take the
Speaker 3: painting to the Afizi gallery to further confirm that it
Speaker 3: was the.
Speaker 1: Real thing before they paid him.
Speaker 3: Yeah. But then, of course they immediately alerted the police
Speaker 3: and Perugia was arrested the next day on December eleventh,
Speaker 3: nineteen thirteen, in his hotel room. Boom caught in the
Speaker 3: at Perugia. Yeah, they got him, they snagged.
Speaker 1: Him, They got him.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Wait, but so then what happened? What happened to the
Speaker 1: handyman from the Louver and everybody else involved?
Speaker 3: Well, Perugia is that handyman?
Speaker 1: Oh he is the handyman? Yes? Oh gosh, sorry, I
Speaker 1: don't know why.
Speaker 3: He held on to it for years.
Speaker 1: I'm wondering, do you think that it was always his
Speaker 1: plan to, you know, do it for the home country,
Speaker 1: or do you do you think he wanted to like
Speaker 1: see if he could and then it was such a
Speaker 1: scandal that he kept it in a trunk and was.
Speaker 3: Like, oh shit, well what do I do?
Speaker 1: Or maybe it was a little mixed up.
Speaker 3: It's a bit of columns A, B, and C here,
Speaker 3: because you know, it was there is evidence that that
Speaker 3: he did suffer discrimination and had a grudge against sort
Speaker 3: of French society culture, and also that that this painting
Speaker 3: being such an icon of Italian culture and Italian uh
Speaker 3: sort of sort of brilliance and excellence in the arts,
Speaker 3: his having a sort of it would it would clock
Speaker 3: that he would then see that as a as a
Speaker 3: as a sort of righteous target to take and and
Speaker 3: as almost as like a punishment to the French. That
Speaker 3: this is my speculation. I don't know how much evidence
Speaker 3: there is of this, but but I think, uh it,
Speaker 3: but this sort of tracks in my mind. And and
Speaker 3: then realizing after a couple of years that like he's
Speaker 3: sitting on a seriously hot potato that he can't sell
Speaker 3: or like there's no one that that will fence the
Speaker 3: Mona Lisa after especially after like worldwide headlines. And then
Speaker 3: he's like, Okay, now I have to sort of create
Speaker 3: this narrative that I can sell it to these Italians, uh,
Speaker 3: for the for the right reasons, and maybe they'll like
Speaker 3: buy it and let me sort of be stay anonymous.
Speaker 3: But of course they're like, no, you're busted, like you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're like, we're not stupid. We can't hang this
Speaker 1: in our museum and be like.
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh look what we found. We just floated down
Speaker 3: the river.
Speaker 1: But now that it's here, we're not gonna we're not
Speaker 1: sending it back.
Speaker 3: It doesn't work like exactly all right, So Perusia, Uh,
Speaker 3: this is this is really cool. Perusia also said that
Speaker 3: over time he felt he quote fell victim to her
Speaker 3: smile and feasted my eyes on my treasure every evening.
Speaker 3: I fell in love with her, he said, which is uh,
Speaker 3: which is more sort of evidence of her, her spell,
Speaker 3: her her sort of mystical powers. But but yeah, wow,
Speaker 3: she was a hot she was a hot. Yeah, she
Speaker 3: was a hot hot to Molly. There After, of course
Speaker 3: this was all discovered and he was arrested and and
Speaker 3: uh found guilty. It was returned to France, and we
Speaker 3: have a photo of It's of of her giddy homecoming
Speaker 3: at the Louver. Let's see. Wow, obviously a huge party.
Speaker 3: You can see how everyone's dancing with reckless abandon and glee. Yes,
Speaker 3: I love how the guy holding her looks like her legs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a little bit of something.
Speaker 3: You can kind of see. You can't see the guy's
Speaker 3: face who's actually holding the painting, but you can see
Speaker 3: his legs.
Speaker 1: You can see his little top hat.
Speaker 3: Yeah, right, right, right, Yeah, it.
Speaker 1: Almost feels like he'd pop through the frame where it
Speaker 1: not so valuable.
Speaker 3: I wish we could go back to this, this style.
Speaker 3: I love all the mustaches and top hats and trench coats.
Speaker 3: Although I must say they do look hot, like I mean,
Speaker 3: they look hot as in like like spicy hot, but
Speaker 3: they also look like they're probably sweating under all that wool.
Speaker 1: Yeah. It's also one of those things like I don't
Speaker 1: know about you, but we have air conditioning and like
Speaker 1: we can wear linen in the summer now.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I look at pictures like this and I think, like, oh,
Speaker 1: I know why they used to have fainting couches.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there you go, it makes sense, you go. I
Speaker 3: love that, you know. So right upon Mona Lisa's return
Speaker 3: to France, everyone wanted to get an eye on this
Speaker 3: new mythical painting. Over one hundred twenty thousand people came
Speaker 3: to see her in just two days. Da Vinci's painting
Speaker 3: had exploded into the cultural stratosphere. All the press and
Speaker 3: news coverage took the painting to the next level. So
Speaker 3: what happened to our man Vincenzo Perugia, the art thief. Well,
Speaker 3: he was tried in Italy, where he again he claimed
Speaker 3: that he was stealing the painting for patriotic reasons. He
Speaker 3: became something of a folk hero and he was sentenced
Speaker 3: to a year in prison, but he wound up only
Speaker 3: serving about seven months before this is right before World
Speaker 3: War One, which then broke out, and he left prison,
Speaker 3: joined the army, fought for Italy, and then wound up
Speaker 3: dying in France in nineteen twenty five.
Speaker 1: Oh gie.
Speaker 3: As for La Gioconda, her smile still smites eight million
Speaker 3: visitors per year. Eight million visitors go and see the
Speaker 3: Monaliese ever year, which is that's insane and She's so
Speaker 3: popular that she has her own mailbox at the Louver
Speaker 3: because she gets so much direct fan mail.
Speaker 1: What an odd thing to write a letter to a painting. Yeah, interesting,
Speaker 1: I guess when I when I hear you say eight
Speaker 1: million people a year ago to France to visit her,
Speaker 1: I think, Look, the guy was clearly misguided and obviously
Speaker 1: a little fantastical in his storytelling about his motivations. But
Speaker 1: that's a whole lot of money France has made on
Speaker 1: this painting and not Italy.
Speaker 3: You're raising a really interesting, uh, really interesting question that
Speaker 3: that I think this story brings up. There are a
Speaker 3: couple of I think, kind of high altitude takeaways from
Speaker 3: this story. One is is just how the narrative around
Speaker 3: the Mona Lisa, like her theft, the scandal, the recovery,
Speaker 3: it just it became as important and exciting as the painting.
Speaker 3: It's and it's it's a kind of a reflection of
Speaker 3: how the story of something can almost matter more than
Speaker 3: just the reality of it, right. I mean, that's certainly true.
Speaker 3: I think for celebrities, like we celebrities cultivate stories and
Speaker 3: kind of narratives, we often find out like, oh, that
Speaker 3: person was not what we thought. I don't just mean celebrities,
Speaker 3: I mean like public figures, politicians, whoever.
Speaker 1: They'll kind of cast you as a character correct rather
Speaker 1: than highlight your reality. And the interesting thing is, I
Speaker 1: think when you become a media figure, if that if
Speaker 1: there is a character that is not accurate or not
Speaker 1: honoring the nuance of your life, but it's profitable to others,
Speaker 1: it's the one that will.
Speaker 3: Prevail, and that's sucks.
Speaker 1: And so I think there's something really interesting about I
Speaker 1: don't know, it's crazy to me that this woman, the
Speaker 1: Mona Lisa, seems to be a person in our cultural lexicon.
Speaker 1: I mean she gets fan mail, yeah, and she's a painting.
Speaker 1: There's there's a there's something wild about you.
Speaker 3: She's she's magical. In my view, it sort of took
Speaker 3: this heist for people to truly see like how sort
Speaker 3: of mystical and powerful she is. And obviously Leonardo da
Speaker 3: Vinci is such a legend for so many reasons as
Speaker 3: a scientist and a painter and all these things, and
Speaker 3: and this is this, this work is truly special.
Speaker 1: It almost strikes me like it's momentum, circular momentum. Something
Speaker 1: started it, and I would wager that to your point
Speaker 1: at the top of the episode, you know, the haze,
Speaker 1: the kind of the colors, the way her eyes follow you,
Speaker 1: things that had never been done before were very arresting
Speaker 1: for people. But then people like to feel like they're
Speaker 1: in on something, so when they hear that this thing
Speaker 1: is very arresting, then they say, oh, I was so
Speaker 1: arrested by this painting, and then the whole thing just grows.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this story also very much raises the very real
Speaker 3: question about repatriation. Of course, Perugia was I think, claiming
Speaker 3: that he was repatriating the Mona Lisa for sort of
Speaker 3: cynical reasons to maybe help exonerate himself, although there probably
Speaker 3: was also some national pride that wrapped up in him
Speaker 3: or resentment for French culture. But the idea of returning
Speaker 3: cultural treasures to their rightful home is a very real one,
Speaker 3: and it's something that has bubbled up more and more,
Speaker 3: and I think just for example, the Netherlands recently returned
Speaker 3: one hundred and nineteen bronzes to Nigeria which had been
Speaker 3: looted in the nineteenth century, and you know, they're finally
Speaker 3: back where they belong after one hundred and thirty years.
Speaker 3: To me, that's inspiring proof that even old injustices can
Speaker 3: be addressed through yes, through dialogue. It takes an honest
Speaker 3: accounting of history to kind of get to these places.
Speaker 3: A lot of museums are now experimenting with shared custody
Speaker 3: of items, rotating collections, so that people around the world
Speaker 3: can access all of this history, and that reminds me
Speaker 3: of like, you know, when we're kids, our parents being like,
Speaker 3: you have to share those toys, right, to share those books, right,
Speaker 3: everybody gets a turn. And it strikes me that whether
Speaker 3: we're talking about art or stories or history itself, the
Speaker 3: more we treat it as something to be passed around
Speaker 3: and experienced by everyone, the richer it all becomes. I
Speaker 3: don't know, I think that's something that's some hopeful shit.
Speaker 1: Yeah it is. It's almost like learning about other cultures
Speaker 1: is cool, gett a get here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's almost it's almost like learning about history is cool.
Speaker 1: Doesn't make me cool pretty, I don't know, it's pretty cool.
Speaker 3: I think so, Sophia Bush, you are extremely cool. This
Speaker 3: has been so so hard cool. I feel like I
Speaker 3: run into you every like, I don't know, it's like
Speaker 3: a year a couple of years ago by I get
Speaker 3: that and then I get the high five you somewhere,
Speaker 3: and this has been like such a fun hang and
Speaker 3: I'm so grateful that you came on.
Speaker 1: Thanks in a world that is odd to know you
Speaker 1: have like fellow history nerds out there. Feels good.
Speaker 3: Yeah we got homies, Yeah we do. Snapoo is a
Speaker 3: production of iHeart Podcasts and Snapoo Media, a partnership between
Speaker 3: Film Nation Entertainment and Pacific Electric Picture Company. Our post
Speaker 3: production studio is Gilded Audio. Our executive producers are me
Speaker 3: Ed Helms, Mike Falbo, Glenn Basner, Andy Kim Whitney, Donaldson,
Speaker 3: and Dylan Fagan. This episode was produced by Alyssa Martino
Speaker 3: and Tory Smith. Our video editor is Jared Smith. Technical
Speaker 3: direction and engineering from Nick Dooley. Our creative executive is
Speaker 3: Brett Harris. Logo and branding by The Collected Works. Legal
Speaker 3: review from Dan Welsh, Meghan Halson and Caroline Johnson. Special
Speaker 3: thanks to Isaac Dunham, Adam Horn, Lane Klein and everyone
Speaker 3: at iHeart Podcasts, but especially Will Pearson, Kerry Lieberman, Nikki Etoor,
Speaker 3: Nathan O'towski and Alex Corral. While I have you don't
Speaker 3: forget to pick up a copy of my book, Snafoo,
Speaker 3: The Definitive Guide to History's Greatest screw Ups. It's available
Speaker 3: now from any book retailer. Just go to Snaffoo dashbook
Speaker 3: dot com. Thanks for listening, and see you next week.