Here's the thing, and I bet you get this.

When you're an actor, people think you must be a good liar, and I'm like, no, I memorize other people's words.

I can't come up with them on my own.

I'm not like a liar on the fly.

Yeah, I'm bad at that.

Hey, there, I met Helms and Welcome to SNAPO, the show about history's greatest screw ups, or more specifically, the show where I lead my brilliant guests through some of the least brilliant moments in history.

Today, I am joined by someone who wears a lot of hats.

This woman is a powerhouse.

You've seen her on the big screen, the small screen, and in your podcast feed with the stirring and thoughtful show in progress.

She's an actress, an activist, producer, and all around troublemaker for justice.

Please welcome Sophia Bush.

I like that introduction, ed Helms.

Can I It's like, I want a little recording of that I can pull out of my pocket when I go somewhere.

Well, we're recording is the podcast?

This is sad feel you can yeah, just feel free to use anytime you want.

I'm going to admit to you now I'll be stealing your audio.

Thank you, sir.

I was trying to think about I feel like I've known you a long long time, but then I couldn't place our the sort of origin of our connection.

I think it was represent us.

Did we need to ed represent us?

Event only like way.

Back gosh, I think you're right, yeah, yeah, I didn't know if it was do something or like I knew we were in the mix on the let's inject hope into working on society's problems because everyone always thinks that's a drag, and it's like, no, it's actually pretty cool.

Were just before we started recording, we were talking about fly fishing, which I want to get back to.

But I just have a more sort of like meaty question for you, because I really love how you have like leveraged your platform for meaningful impact in the world.

Thanks.

I am a voter times up.

Of course, you know your your your climate work, and I'm just curious.

You know a lot of people with high profile kind of dip into activism here and there.

You've done much more than dipping in, like you're you're fully engaged, and I'm curious how those particular issues emerged for you.

Was that.

Was it sort of strategic about where you could make the most impact or was it more visceral like this, These are things I feel in my gut, and I got to speak up about this.

Yeah, it's definitely definitely option B and to choose your adventure.

I The irony is you're like, was it strategic?

I think it was probably the most unstrategic thing I could do.

For most of my career, my whole team has been like, please shut up about the just can you like tone it down?

Could you just pick a charity, go to the gala, like, write a check once in a while.

Why do you have to be so agitating to the system.

And I'm like, because the system needs to be agitated.

It's a shitty system.

I the way I have come to understand this thing about myself, and I think it's been helpful.

One of my best friends is a really brilliant writer.

His name's Jedediah Jenkins, and he said something to me years ago.

He said, we have a lot of friends that work in creative spaces, and a lot of our friends who are creatives are also concerned citizens.

You know, he goes, but You're I think you're the only person I know who pretend who's a full time activist, who pretends to be a full time actor, Like, I feel like you kind of act just so you can maintain the reach.

And I used to think that was true.

And I think what I've realized over the last couple of years is the spectrum of my experience as a person needs both My work, whether it's like you know, jumping in to do an improv show or a movie is so sustaining to me and like my creative gas tank.

But the activism that is for everybody else, for community, Like that's my calling.

It's like like like painters can't not paint, Yeah, writers can't not write.

I cannot, even despite great advice at times, keep my mouth shut about things that I know are wrong and ways we could be better, and how the whole point of being on this planet is to like be neighbors with people.

I can't shut my mouth.

No, that's incredible.

I could just like go down this rabbit hole for let me just ask you quickly and let's let's keep this far short.

What do you love about fly fishing?

I have an answer to this, but what is your what is it you love about it?

Fly fishing for me is in that kind of cannon of the American West.

And to be clear, and like I'm sure people will tell me I'm cringe or whatever.

I'm like like I am.

I am a horse girl at heart.

Like I'm never happier than when I'm out on horseback, out on empty you know, land or forests or whatever.

And fly fishing is that same kind of beautiful, meditative experience in the land.

It's so grounding to me.

And oh, I just I think it's magic totally.

And I have to say, like, the chakiest, gayest trip I've ever taken was taking five of my girlfriends fly fishing years ago, and I look back at the photos and I'm like a clue.

It was so cool and it's like, I don't know, I am passionate about it, and I'm also really passionate about getting more women out into the outdoors, into spaces where there are often less of us, but where we're we're actually quite good caster.

All right, let's get into this snap.

But we have a really fun one today.

What do you got for me?

It's very exciting for me.

I'm nervous and excited all at the same time.

So this is a great, early and very literal example of there is no such thing as bad press.

We are going to dig into the infamous Mona Lisa.

Heist.

Oh, we begin our tale.

In France, it's August twenty first, nineteen eleven, a Tuesday, to be precise.

A local artist by the name of Louis Berude has decided to escape the sweltering August Parisian heat and peruse a few of his favorite works at a local museum.

One of the pieces he likes to check out was an oil painting on a poplar wood panel that many lovingly called La Gioconda.

It utilized a stunning innovative technique called svumto a hazy effect, blending colors and tones with subtle precision.

But when Brud arrived at Lagiaconda's normal hanging spot in the museum, she wasn't there.

She was gone.

She was gone.

Now this may not feel like such a big deal at first, but let's just be clear.

Lagiaconda is also known by her other name, the Mona Lisa.

We're talking about the Mona Lisa, and we actually have a photo.

Let's let's get up that photo of the Mona Lisa.

There she is hello, lady, Hello darling.

Yes, isn't she incredible?

She really is quite stunning.

She has achieved this legendary status in large, as we'll hear, because of this famous heist, but she deserves it too, and she's truly a masterpiece.

She's so luminous.

Look at her.

She looks like she swallowed a light bulb.

Yes, let's just get a few facts out.

Let's get into the numbers of the Mona Lisa for a quick second.

Here's some stats.

She's roughly thirty inches tall and twenty one inches wide, which is not large.

That's like the average size of your Led Zeppelin poster in a college dorm room.

She's just like a little gal.

He's right, she's a little gal.

She's like a.

Concert poster you have framed in your kitchen.

There you go.

Mona Lisa's eyes famously follow the viewer.

Thanks to Da Vinci's mastery of perspective.

Psychologists estimate this smile appears to shift depending on where your eyes land.

A two thousand and five University of Amsterdam study found eighty three percent of viewers interpret her as happy, nine percent disgusted, six percent fearful, and two percent angry.

I love that.

I've never thought any of those things.

So on that morning, Louis Beerude asked a guard where has the Mona Lisa gone?

And the guard wasn't particularly concerned.

He assumed it had just been taken out by a staff photographer who was known to remove various paintings to take pictures of them, and then sometimes forget to return them right away.

But as the hours ticked by and the photographer swore he didn't have it, panic started to set in.

By mid afternoon, around three pm, the louver quietly cleared out all the tourists and staff under the pretense of a burst water pipe, not true.

Meanwhile, they called in about sixty detectives to comb through the museum's endless corridors and hidden corners, which is no small feet because the louver is huge.

If you lay it out all of its halls and galleries in a straight line, it would be nearly nine miles, which is crazy.

Have you ever been to the Louver?

Have you seen the Mona Lisa in person?

I have?

Can I actually tell you the coolest thing that's ever happened to me?

Of no, it's like of no doing of my own so there are very There are only five modern artists, like you know, our era of modernity who have installations, permanent installations in the Louver.

And one of them happens to be a dear friend of mine who is like an incredibly exceptional engineer and artist who makes moving sculptures, and a few years ago when he was selected to be the artist of our generation with a permanent installation, I got to go on installation day because I happened to be in France because I was working and the Louver was closed.

You've got a backstage pass to the louver.

Yes, I got to be there for the day, you know, and I was taking photographs and like so excited I did for him and his family.

And then the curator said, would everyone, like, you know, quietly, would everyone like thirty minutes to go see a few of our most famous exhibitions.

And they took us to see them on a lisa, no ropes, no lines, no humans, and it was like it actually made me emotional.

I got a little weepy.

Yeah, it felt like a not even like a once in a lifetime, it was like a once in a generation kind of experience.

And I was like, wow, I'm this is like, maybe one of the coolest things that will ever happen to me in my life.

That's that is incredibly cool.

I went to the Louver.

I don't know, it was probably seven or eight years ago.

I've been a few times, but the last visit I just like, I'm going to go by myself.

I love going to museums by myself because half the time in a museum you're either waiting for your friends or family or you're looking for them or whatever.

And this was so nice.

And then I remember getting I was like, I gotta check in on Mona, right, I gotta just give her a little hello.

And I get in there and it's the exact opposite of what you're saying.

It was so crowded and full of people in this huge hall, and like we were saying before, it's small, like it's not a big painting, and they're trying to shuffle people through.

But I just remember standing.

I was probably like a couple like one hundred feet back, and I just kind of was like, Hey, Mona, good to see you.

We're gonna make sure we're in Paris at the same time soon so that you can give me like a backstage tour.

I will absolutely ask if we can go back.

All right, So back into the story.

After an hour of frantic searching, the detectives uncovered an empty glass frame in a service stairwell.

It was La Gioconda's frame.

She had seemingly vanished into thin air.

And just like that, bad news fairs.

Yeah, a massive international scandal erupted Mona's gentle smirk, peppered the front pages of newspapers around the globe.

And here's the thing.

At the time, the Mona Lisa was certainly considered a masterpiece.

Leonardo da Vinci really didn't was not prolific.

I mean, I think he had only like twenty five ish, I don't know the exact number, but a small number of paintings, and so this was it was definitely it had incredible value and was a masterpiece.

But it wasn't that well known.

It wasn't especially outside of France.

But almost overnight she just was thrust into the cultural spotlight and became the most famous painting in the entire world.

You and I know a little bit about fame.

Was your transition into a famous person sudden or gradual?

Has it been?

Was it difficult?

Ah.

The phrase that comes to mind is a baptism by fire.

Sure did it feel that way for you?

Yeah, well, there's certainly these moments where you're just like, oh my god, like what just happened to reality?

It's it's like so different.

Yeah, I mean, certainly it was a shocking experience for all of us who worked together on One Tree Hill, which was my first like a regular gig on a TV show.

I think for me it was especially arresting because I had gone to an all girls, like super nerdy prep school.

I know, you're shocked when I'm talking about like global systems of oppression.

You're like, gee, I there were fifty five girls in my graduating class.

Like, I had no kind of experience with the world outside of gorgeous academia.

And I'm so grateful for it.

My passion for learning, my obsession with knowledge, the way I was encouraged, especially in science, which so many girls are not.

I'm so grateful for it.

But I did that.

Then I went to college for three years and was literally a philanthropy chair like Nerd all the way through, kind of trying to get my bearings.

Sure, and to be clear, I started working on my first TV show in two thousand and three, So like this was the era that literally we drove Britney spears to madness.

Like the press was not good to women in the early aughts.

It called everyone fat, it called everyone's sluts.

It was just it was horrible and to like put a hat on a hat.

Not only am I working on a teen TV show which is high drama, all sexy, all the things I'd literally never experienced, but I'm playing the like captain of the cheer squad who's a vixen, And.

I'm like, what is a vixen?

Like I I like, I read the news for fun.

What are we doing right?

And so it was really weird for me because I just didn't like, I look back at photos and I feel like I can like see the goog behind my ears, like I had just hatched and I didn't know anything.

I didn't know that a journalist could ask you a question and you didn't have to answer it.

I now like to say, when I get asked a question I don't want to answer, I just say pass, which is really fun because reporters are like, wait, what you can't pass?

Next?

Yeah?

Just next question.

They're like, yeah, you can't pass, Like, yeah I can.

I'm passing on your question.

Yeah, instead I'm doing, oh my god, use that, by the way, pass it around.

I will say, like, given what that journey was, like, I'm I'm also kind of really proud of myself.

I'm like the fact that I'm not like sitting in the corner chewing my hair feels like a fucking miracle.

So I think we did good.

I don't know, Amen, how old were you when things really like exploded in your career.

I was an adult, Like, I have very little to complain about.

I was an adult, but I also matured very late as a human being.

I was.

I was an adult by the numbers, but I was still very much a child I was.

I really appreciate that I was twenty eight when I got on The Daily Show.

But that's kind of like what we called toy fame because it was basic cable and it was like, and you know, it grew while I was on the show, but it was it wasn't you know.

I wasn't getting like chased by reporters or anything or tabloids.

Yeah, but then the office then sort of kicked things up a major notch, and then of course the hangover.

It was just like, oh God, wow, here you go.

Here we are.

This is like a whole new thing.

But here's the thing.

It never ceases being weird.

No, it's always weird, because.

Like I am an adult and it's still so weird.

Let's take a trip back to the fifteen hundreds.

Hit me.

One of the greatest Renaissance artists, Leonardo da Vinci, painted the Mona Lisa between fifteen oh three and fifteen oh six.

Now why why did he paint this, this variouscial painting.

Well because wealthy Florentine merchant Francesco del Giocondo commissioned Da Vinci to paint a portrait of his wife, Lisa Gerandini.

Giocondo, also the source of the painting's Italian nickname La Gioconda or in French, la jaconde.

The literal translation of that is the joyful one or the happy woman, which is a play on both her married name Giocondo and and her expression in the painting.

Francesco never actually paid for the painting, so Da Vinci held on to it and wound up taking it with him when he moved to France in fifteen sixteen.

At the request of King Francois the first.

This is not fact per se, but this is generally the historian's consensus.

It's kind of the closest we can get.

According to the Louvers records, King Francoise was enamored with the work and officially purchased the Mona Lisa from Da Vinci in fifteen eighteen.

Da Vinci would sadly pass away a short while later in fifteen nineteen.

He was sixty seven years old, which is like pretty ripe for that time period.

Yeah, so this is when mon Lisa sort of started bouncing around.

She would move from French leader to French leader, allegedly sitting in King Francois, King Francis's bathroom for a short stant, then onto the fontine Bleau Palace.

Later, Louis the fourteenth would place her at the Palace of Versailles, and then Napoleon would keep her in his own private bedchambers.

How intimate apparently he referred to her.

He referred to her as the quote Sphinx of the occident.

I think this is really evidence of the spell that this painting can cast on people.

That she wasn't just hung in a hall somewhere she was like in private quarters for people intimate.

Mona Lisa was established as part of the French Royal collection eventually and was transferred to the Louver.

Accordingly, question, yeah, question, professor, Yeah, who transferred her to the French collection?

Like there was a moment.

That's a great question, and I don't know the precise answer, but there was a moment where the royal collection was in the late seventeen hundreds, the Royal collection was made public.

It was made to be sort of owned by the French people, and that's when a lot of that art made it into the Louver, which is Yeah, So the Louver first began showing the Mona Lisa on public display in eighteen oh four.

Fast forward about a century and the Mona Lisa belonged to the people of France, sitting comfortably in the salon carre of the Louver along with various other masterpieces.

This is before it was it got its own sort of gallery.

But one former employee of the Louver believed that maybe she belonged elsewhere.

Don't done, Yeah, you need the law and order like bumpo done.

Now we get into the height.

So we're back in nineteen eleven, and the heist of the twentieth century was all like Gray Poupon.

So who took the Mona Lisa?

Well?

Was it an international crime syndicate?

Was it Napoleon's ghost desperate for some new bedroom decorps?

Was it a time traveling banksy?

Perhaps No, it is none of the above.

No, no, but yeah, and now there is a swarm of detectives, sixty some odd detectives, following a myriad of leads, and all the while she is actually actually just a few blocks over from the Louver, resting in a trunk with a fall bottom, owned by a man named Vincenzo Perugia.

I think we have a photo of Vincenzo here.

Let's take a look at this man.

Look at him.

A literal mustache twirl, Yeah, yeah, a little bit of a yeah.

I mean, he's he's he's got that energy.

He's Italian.

He's an Italian immigrant and living in Paris, something of a handyman, and he had been employed at the Louver.

Interesting.

There are various reports of how the act of the heist actually went down, but all told, it was quite seamless.

Perugia had been employed by the louver and and in fact, in one of his duties, he had helped construct the glass case that held the Mona Lisa, so he knew exactly how it sort of came together and came apart, and precisely how to remove her quite carefully.

Now interesting side note, he apparently suffered a lot of discrimination as an Italian immigrant in France and had a bit of a grudge against French society, which he will claim played into his actions.

And as we'll learn later, on Monday August twenty first, nineteen eleven, Perugia entered the museum at a time when it was only open to staff mondays were cleaning days.

Now some reports say he actually hid the night before in a supply closet and then e merged on that Monday morning.

In any case, he was wearing a workman's smock, so kind of, you know, fit in with the staff.

He snuck into the hall removed the painting in this glass case, which at that time they weren't they were worried about, I guess about graffiti and things.

So it did have a glass case.

It's nothing like the bulletproof thing it's behind now, but and it weighed, it was quite heavy, but he got it off the wall.

Other reports say he had two accomplices.

There's different, different details floating around, but managed to get this bulky glass case into a stairwell where he was able to open the case and pull out just the painting, this piece of poplar with some oil paint on it, and then he just was able to stroll out onto the Rue de Revoulie.

Yes, another cool, sort of fun detail.

He actually found himself locked in to the louver because it was a working day.

They weren't allowing you know, the public in on this on this Monday, and he wasn't able to get out the way he thought.

But then a plumber, a louve like staff plumber walked up and was like, no problem, I'll help you out.

Here you go, and like helped him through the door.

So off he goes, and he's carrying the painting just down the street under his smock apparently.

Can you imagine.

Yeah, no, it's it's nuts.

It's nuts.

The anxiety I feel like what makes me not a criminal mastermind is like I as soon as I even start to think about that, I just start sweating.

By the way I am, it is so far in the degree of panic for me, even when I know I've done nothing wrong.

Exactly, if you were like, hey, hey, I need to talk to you later, I'd be like, what have I done?

What don't I remember?

And then you're what I maybe do and not the same way?

What is what?

What childhood trauma led us into this?

It's so annoying, I mean, and like this, And it's also very interesting this that that fear of being perceived as guilty can can actually make you act more guilty.

Uh and and this is a this will this is this will emerge in just a few minutes.

And here's the thing.

And I bet you get this.

When you're an actor, people think you must be a good liar, and I'm like, no, I memorize other people's words.

I can't come up with them on my own.

I'm not like a liar on the Flygh.

Yeah, I'm bad at that.

Exactly did he get caught because he was a panicky little potato?

No?

No, no, no he didn't.

But it gets interesting.

So local police concluded that they just eventually, it took like twenty four hours talking to the photographer and you know, looking everywhere, they finally realized like this thing is gone like it's stolen, and word spread fast news reports began to extend beyond Paris, and in short order it just became a global scandal, like how could such a prominent museum lose one of their masterpieces.

A French publication called lilos Stracion wrote quote, what audacious criminal, what mystifier?

What maniac collector?

What insane lover has committed this abduction?

Insane lover?

Yes?

Like a French publication goes right to like he must love this painting.

He's an insane lover.

Or he's doing it for his lover's love.

He is obsessed with her, he loves his mona Lisa.

Oh it's so good, it's so French.

I love it.

The New York Times Correspondent posted an article claiming offers of five million dollars for its return.

Now that's it's unclear if those were actually real, but that's more than one hundred and sixty nine million dollars in today's money.

Oh my god, it's not feeling worth it.

I mean, if you paid me one hundred and sixty nine million dollars, would I try to steal something for someone?

But I wouldn't be able to pull it off.

So no, I can.

I can ask myself the question, but I already know even in theory, I'm going to fail.

Oh boy.

The art curator of the louver said that he had a gut feeling that it was stolen, so that the would attempt to copy it, but he wasn't.

He wasn't gonna let that or even like return a copy and hold on to the original.

But he would not let that fly because quote, I studied the picture for years, mounted and unmounted.

I know every minor detail of it, and I would recognize a copy, however perfect after five minutes observation.

Okay, so that's a quote so obviously quite cocky about his painting analysis skills, but but it's actually true.

Because he was an expert as as the curator of the loop, he knew a lot about what's called crack colure, which is the tiny little cracks and fissures that form over time.

And as an oil painting ages, the Mona Lisa upclose is quite cracked like it is, it's covered in sort of checking and cracking, and that is that is that becomes something of a DNA signature or a fingerprint for a painting because that's virtually impossible to duplicate.

You can duplicate the cracking, but to match cracking, Yeah, exactly, it's not gonna It's just gonna be impossible.

So naturally, lots of odd theories and false accusations are flying all around.

One claimed the JP Morgan, the American banker, had the picture stolen so that he could keep it in his private collection.

Yeah.

A renowned poet by the name of Guillame Aoignier became a suspect.

He was forgive my French accent, by the way, I'm very like, I'm kind of cocky about it, but I know it's terrible.

It's not terrible.

So apore was one of the rare folks who apparently was not a fan of the painting, and at one point had joked about burning the louver down.

But he was like he was kind of a sort of counterculture poet, bohemian, just in the like almost like a comic.

Sure.

Yeah, and he was well known and he was something of celebrity in the in the in French sort of artistic culture at the time.

A Poigniere's trail led to a shocking second suspect, Pablo Picasso.

What yes, isn't this wild?

They thought that Picasso might have stolen the Mona Lisa shut up?

For what?

Well, the link between a poigniere and Picasso was this shady buddy that they had, who had who had stolen Iberian busts for them from the Louver, like they did have stolen property from the louver.

We why why?

Why?

Why?

Because they wanted to learn to copy them or just because they thought it was like funny and they were a bunch of crazy drunks.

I don't know the I don't know the truth of that answer, but I do know, well, could you not know?

Well, Picasso did also paint one of the busts, so it was for artistic reasons presumably, but like, also, why a stolen thing?

Anyway?

It's so badass that Picasso had a stolen bust from the.

Loop, it really is.

It makes me like him more.

Police investigated them, and this is where that guilty thing it gets in, because I read a thing about how they were questioned and Picasso was so terrified and overwhelmed with fear that that he was sobbing and me yeah, and and and acting so guilty that they were just like, uh, you couldn't have done this.

You're not.

You're too much of a whimp.

You're not.

You don't have the sort of like fortitude to pull something like this off.

But it is a wild connection.

Anyway, After considerable questioning, both Are and Pablo Picasso were were let go and uh and they were not suspects any longer.

Another two years goes by Sophia Bush.

They don't, they don't find it.

Two years, two years, and they're starting to think, oh my god, maybe the Mona Lisa is gone forever.

Until in December of nineteen thirteen, a Florentine art and antiquities dealer Alfredo Jeri, Now I do have now my Italian accident is horrific, but I'm just gonna I'm diving all in, Alfredo Jeri.

I also like to do it like this.

I put on this voice for a Brando.

Yeah.

Sure.

He received an odd correspondence from a man calling himself, wait for it, Leonard or Leonardo perhaps yeah, calling himself Leonardo.

This mystery man claimed he had stolen the Mona Lisa and wanted to return it to its birthplace, Italy.

Wow, so he's now claiming that he stole it for patriotic reasons.

Jari was suspicious but intrigued.

He agreed to meet with this mysterious Leonard at the Tripoli Italia Hotel in Florence, and brought along with him the Uffizi Gallery director Giovanni Polgi.

Okay, the Offizi Gallery obviously being like the louver of Italy.

And this guy knows his ship, let's put it that way.

So the three men arranged to meet in Leonard's hotel room, where a wooden trunk was waiting Leonyard removed a false bottom from the trunk, and they're wrapped in a red silk cloth.

Was the Mona lis is the jacund one?

Pretty dramatic reveal, right, a red silken cloth.

This is really giving Thomas Crown affair?

Yes right, and I like it.

I do too.

So are Italian art dealers.

They're no fools.

They they are like pretty sure this is the real deal, and they play it very cool.

They confirm its authenticity, and Jeri and Polgi pretended to agree to this to Leonard's asking price of one hundred thousand dollars, and they sort of kept him on the hook.

Now that's one hundred thousand dollars at that time is three million dollars to day.

It's not too shabby.

And this is the primary thing that sort of throws his patriotic motives into question.

Right, He's like, he's also kind of asking for a big paycheck here.

Right, He's like, no, I'm doing it for Italy, but also for my retirement.

He's like my Italian bride, but also not give me a little cheddar.

Right, that's like a little Mozarella with this perhaps, and that tracks for a thief, Yeah, exactly.

So they told Leonard that they needed to take the painting to the Afizi gallery to further confirm that it was the.

Real thing before they paid him.

Yeah.

But then, of course they immediately alerted the police and Perugia was arrested the next day on December eleventh, nineteen thirteen, in his hotel room.

Boom caught in the at Perugia.

Yeah, they got him, they snagged.

Him, They got him.

Yeah.

Wait, but so then what happened?

What happened to the handyman from the Louver and everybody else involved?

Well, Perugia is that handyman?

Oh he is the handyman?

Yes?

Oh gosh, sorry, I don't know why.

He held on to it for years.

I'm wondering, do you think that it was always his plan to, you know, do it for the home country, or do you do you think he wanted to like see if he could and then it was such a scandal that he kept it in a trunk and was.

Like, oh shit, well what do I do?

Or maybe it was a little mixed up.

It's a bit of columns A, B, and C here, because you know, it was there is evidence that that he did suffer discrimination and had a grudge against sort of French society culture, and also that that this painting being such an icon of Italian culture and Italian uh sort of sort of brilliance and excellence in the arts, his having a sort of it would it would clock that he would then see that as a as a as a sort of righteous target to take and and as almost as like a punishment to the French.

That this is my speculation.

I don't know how much evidence there is of this, but but I think, uh it, but this sort of tracks in my mind.

And and then realizing after a couple of years that like he's sitting on a seriously hot potato that he can't sell or like there's no one that that will fence the Mona Lisa after especially after like worldwide headlines.

And then he's like, Okay, now I have to sort of create this narrative that I can sell it to these Italians, uh, for the for the right reasons, and maybe they'll like buy it and let me sort of be stay anonymous.

But of course they're like, no, you're busted, like you.

Yeah, they're like, we're not stupid.

We can't hang this in our museum and be like.

Yeah, oh look what we found.

We just floated down the river.

But now that it's here, we're not gonna we're not sending it back.

It doesn't work like exactly all right, So Perusia, Uh, this is this is really cool.

Perusia also said that over time he felt he quote fell victim to her smile and feasted my eyes on my treasure every evening.

I fell in love with her, he said, which is uh, which is more sort of evidence of her, her spell, her her sort of mystical powers.

But but yeah, wow, she was a hot she was a hot.

Yeah, she was a hot hot to Molly.

There After, of course this was all discovered and he was arrested and and uh found guilty.

It was returned to France, and we have a photo of It's of of her giddy homecoming at the Louver.

Let's see.

Wow, obviously a huge party.

You can see how everyone's dancing with reckless abandon and glee.

Yes, I love how the guy holding her looks like her legs.

Yeah, a little bit of something.

You can kind of see.

You can't see the guy's face who's actually holding the painting, but you can see his legs.

You can see his little top hat.

Yeah, right, right, right, Yeah, it.

Almost feels like he'd pop through the frame where it not so valuable.

I wish we could go back to this, this style.

I love all the mustaches and top hats and trench coats.

Although I must say they do look hot, like I mean, they look hot as in like like spicy hot, but they also look like they're probably sweating under all that wool.

Yeah.

It's also one of those things like I don't know about you, but we have air conditioning and like we can wear linen in the summer now.

Yeah.

I look at pictures like this and I think, like, oh, I know why they used to have fainting couches.

Yeah, there you go, it makes sense, you go.

I love that, you know.

So right upon Mona Lisa's return to France, everyone wanted to get an eye on this new mythical painting.

Over one hundred twenty thousand people came to see her in just two days.

Da Vinci's painting had exploded into the cultural stratosphere.

All the press and news coverage took the painting to the next level.

So what happened to our man Vincenzo Perugia, the art thief.

Well, he was tried in Italy, where he again he claimed that he was stealing the painting for patriotic reasons.

He became something of a folk hero and he was sentenced to a year in prison, but he wound up only serving about seven months before this is right before World War One, which then broke out, and he left prison, joined the army, fought for Italy, and then wound up dying in France in nineteen twenty five.

Oh gie.

As for La Gioconda, her smile still smites eight million visitors per year.

Eight million visitors go and see the Monaliese ever year, which is that's insane and She's so popular that she has her own mailbox at the Louver because she gets so much direct fan mail.

What an odd thing to write a letter to a painting.

Yeah, interesting, I guess when I when I hear you say eight million people a year ago to France to visit her, I think, Look, the guy was clearly misguided and obviously a little fantastical in his storytelling about his motivations.

But that's a whole lot of money France has made on this painting and not Italy.

You're raising a really interesting, uh, really interesting question that that I think this story brings up.

There are a couple of I think, kind of high altitude takeaways from this story.

One is is just how the narrative around the Mona Lisa, like her theft, the scandal, the recovery, it just it became as important and exciting as the painting.

It's and it's it's a kind of a reflection of how the story of something can almost matter more than just the reality of it, right.

I mean, that's certainly true.

I think for celebrities, like we celebrities cultivate stories and kind of narratives, we often find out like, oh, that person was not what we thought.

I don't just mean celebrities, I mean like public figures, politicians, whoever.

They'll kind of cast you as a character correct rather than highlight your reality.

And the interesting thing is, I think when you become a media figure, if that if there is a character that is not accurate or not honoring the nuance of your life, but it's profitable to others, it's the one that will.

Prevail, and that's sucks.

And so I think there's something really interesting about I don't know, it's crazy to me that this woman, the Mona Lisa, seems to be a person in our cultural lexicon.

I mean she gets fan mail, yeah, and she's a painting.

There's there's a there's something wild about you.

She's she's magical.

In my view, it sort of took this heist for people to truly see like how sort of mystical and powerful she is.

And obviously Leonardo da Vinci is such a legend for so many reasons as a scientist and a painter and all these things, and and this is this, this work is truly special.

It almost strikes me like it's momentum, circular momentum.

Something started it, and I would wager that to your point at the top of the episode, you know, the haze, the kind of the colors, the way her eyes follow you, things that had never been done before were very arresting for people.

But then people like to feel like they're in on something, so when they hear that this thing is very arresting, then they say, oh, I was so arrested by this painting, and then the whole thing just grows.

Yeah, this story also very much raises the very real question about repatriation.

Of course, Perugia was I think, claiming that he was repatriating the Mona Lisa for sort of cynical reasons to maybe help exonerate himself, although there probably was also some national pride that wrapped up in him or resentment for French culture.

But the idea of returning cultural treasures to their rightful home is a very real one, and it's something that has bubbled up more and more, and I think just for example, the Netherlands recently returned one hundred and nineteen bronzes to Nigeria which had been looted in the nineteenth century, and you know, they're finally back where they belong after one hundred and thirty years.

To me, that's inspiring proof that even old injustices can be addressed through yes, through dialogue.

It takes an honest accounting of history to kind of get to these places.

A lot of museums are now experimenting with shared custody of items, rotating collections, so that people around the world can access all of this history, and that reminds me of like, you know, when we're kids, our parents being like, you have to share those toys, right, to share those books, right, everybody gets a turn.

And it strikes me that whether we're talking about art or stories or history itself, the more we treat it as something to be passed around and experienced by everyone, the richer it all becomes.

I don't know, I think that's something that's some hopeful shit.

Yeah it is.

It's almost like learning about other cultures is cool, gett a get here.

Yeah, it's almost it's almost like learning about history is cool.

Doesn't make me cool pretty, I don't know, it's pretty cool.

I think so, Sophia Bush, you are extremely cool.

This has been so so hard cool.

I feel like I run into you every like, I don't know, it's like a year a couple of years ago by I get that and then I get the high five you somewhere, and this has been like such a fun hang and I'm so grateful that you came on.

Thanks in a world that is odd to know you have like fellow history nerds out there.

Feels good.

Yeah we got homies, Yeah we do.

Snapoo is a production of iHeart Podcasts and Snapoo Media, a partnership between Film Nation Entertainment and Pacific Electric Picture Company.

Our post production studio is Gilded Audio.

Our executive producers are me Ed Helms, Mike Falbo, Glenn Basner, Andy Kim Whitney, Donaldson, and Dylan Fagan.

This episode was produced by Alyssa Martino and Tory Smith.

Our video editor is Jared Smith.

Technical direction and engineering from Nick Dooley.

Our creative executive is Brett Harris.

Logo and branding by The Collected Works.

Legal review from Dan Welsh, Meghan Halson and Caroline Johnson.

Special thanks to Isaac Dunham, Adam Horn, Lane Klein and everyone at iHeart Podcasts, but especially Will Pearson, Kerry Lieberman, Nikki Etoor, Nathan O'towski and Alex Corral.

While I have you don't forget to pick up a copy of my book, Snafoo, The Definitive Guide to History's Greatest screw Ups.

It's available now from any book retailer.

Just go to Snaffoo dashbook dot com.

Thanks for listening, and see you next week.