Breaking down the details on how the art heist at the Louvre unfolded

In 2025, thieves stole roughly $100M of jewels from the Louvre

The robbery of the world's most visited museum took less than ten minutes and resulted in worldwide shock. The thieves used a ladder to break into the building and steal eight pieces of French crown jewels, and then escaped on motorbikes.

Two men dressed as cops stole artwork from a Boston museum valued at over $500M at the time

On March 18, 1990, the thieves entered Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum pretending to be police officers responding to a disturbance. After overpowering and handcuffing the guards on duty, they stole 13 precious items, including works by Rembrandt and Manet. The theft is the largest art heist in US history. The pieces are still missing, and the museum is offering a $10M reward to anyone who provides valuable information about their location.

Learn about eight art heists that have gone terribly wrong

Half-baked plots, car troubles, and poor forgeries are some examples of blunders that led to failures in stealing works of art. For example, one heist by armed gunmen led to the theft of 20 van Gogh paintings. Before the robbers could declare victory, a flat tire on one of the getaway cars forced them to abandon the Dutch master's works and escape. They were later arrested for the crime.

Why can't we see Mona Lisa's eyebrows?

The world's most famous painting is missing something. And it took centuries for experts to figure out what. In this episode, August Moon investigates what happened to the Mona Lisa's eyebrows—analyzing infrared scans, tracking 500 years of restoration, and examining a forgotten copy from Leonardo's studio. But he uncovers something bigger: what we lost after the 1911 theft that has nothing to do with the painting leaving the Louvre.

Art theft is the third-largest source of criminal revenues worldwide, thanks in part to the subjective nature of valuing a work of art.

The Louvre in Paris has its own particle accelerator for art analysis

The Accélérateur Grand Louvre d'analyse élémentaire serves as a noninvasive tool for identifying and quantifying trace elements present in artworks by analyzing how particles backscatter off targets. This information can help detect forgeries and determine a piece's provenance. (Some readers may experience a paywall.)

The Mona Lisa's celebrity status and repeated restorations have obscured what made the painting so revolutionary for its time

Hear the untold colonial backstories of the British Museum’s most famous artifacts

This podcast from VICE’s Unfiltered History Tour visits the British Museum’s prized objects through accounts from experts and communities from which they were taken.

A ‘Bored Ape’ NFT was once kidnapped

An art heist in the crypto world plunges listeners of the "Search Engine" podcast into another mystery about why so many celebrities suddenly started selling the public on NFTs in 2021.

Worldwide cryptocurrency heists tracker

A look at the biggest cryptocurrency heists, be they from an exchange, smart contract, or a business, including amounts, methods, reparations, and consequences.

Listen to a podcast episode that goes inside the 2017 Equifax credit bureau hack

This podcast episode details a 2017 credit bureau hack in which Equifax data about millions of Americans was compromised. It dives into the history of credit bureaus, specifically how they became legally allowed to access Americans' financial information without Americans actually volunteering it themselves.

The man behind the dark novel abandoned on the floor of the Bastille

As tensions rose in the days before the French Revolution of 1789, Donatien Alphonse François attempted to fan the flames by shouting at passersby about false horrors happening inside the Bastille where he was imprisoned. This 39-minute podcast...

True crime, explained

Tales exploring some of the most grisly and unthinkable crimes have satisfied the public's morbid curiosity for more than a century, and modern podcasting has shot the genre to new heights. Want to learn more about the history of true crime? 1440 has the breakdown here.

Often dubbed the 'king of bank robbers,' George Leonidas Leslie stole an estimated $7M (equivalent to $200M today) and charged other criminals a $20K fee to evaluate their heist plans

Leslie studied architecture and used blueprints of safes and banks to execute meticulously planned bank heists across the Northeast between 1869 and 1878. Although Leslie was an infamous bank robber by night, he posed as a member of high society by day, providing critical intel on the institutions he'd rob and helping conceal his crimes. Months before his largest planned heist, where he planned to turn on his gang, Leslie's body mysteriously washed up along the Hudson River. His killer remains a mystery.

‘Tulip mania’ may have been the first financial bubble. It still shapes markets today

This podcast revisits tulip mania, the 1630s Dutch craze where rare bulbs were briefly traded like luxury assets. It unpacks the myths surrounding the event and shows how its legend continues to shape modern perceptions of financial bubbles.

Hear how the first moon landing was saved

This podcast series explores Apollo 11 through firsthand stories from the engineers, mission controllers, and astronauts who made the moon landing possible, culminating in 13 minutes of NASA archive audio leading up to the landing.

The locksmith who posthumously opened Prince's music vault

When legendary musician Prince died in 2016, he left behind thousands of unreleased songs in a locked vault, and no one knew the combination (even Prince had forgotten it before his death). Safecracker Dave McOmie was called in to break the 6,000-pound Mosler American Century vault by microdrilling into it and using a periscope to view the combination lock.

'Ben Franklin’s World' podcast explores the building of the Erie Canal

Historian Janice Fontanella, site manager of the Schoharie Crossing State Historic Site, joined the podcast to recount the engineering challenges, local innovations, and broader impact of constructing the Erie Canal.

The strange, unsolved story of Filippo Bernardini and the stolen book manuscripts

Over the last five years, a mysterious figure has been stealing manuscripts, often unpublished, from individuals and organizations in the publishing industry across three continents. The scammer, later identified as Filippo Bernardini, was an...

Banksy turned graffiti into high art

The anonymous artist is renowned for his puckish, often stenciled street art. He's also known for the eye-popping sales those works command once they're up for auction. This podcast dives into the history of the singular artist, exploring how a British graffiti artist became a cultural icon.

The story of Kryptos, the long unsolved cryptographic sculpture outside the CIA's headquarters

Made by American artist Jim Sanborn, the sculpture features four copper plates engraved with messages written with the 26 letters of the Latin alphabet and question marks. The last of these plates was solved in 2025, but the piece remains of interest to cryptoanalysts.

What techniques did cave painters use to create their work?

Cave paintings long predate local craft stores and premade paints, so what techniques and tools did cave artists use to create such long-lasting works? This video gallery details how ancient artists inscribed and painted their work on cave walls, specifically the Chauvet cave in France.

Meet a government agent who laundered millions of dollars for Pablo Escobar

Robert Mazur went undercover for years inside the Medellín cartel, which was sending more than 15 tons of cocaine into the United States every single day. Mazur created more than 30 jewelry stores to create business fronts before he finally got through to the cartel.

The official podcast of A24 film studio

They've made arthouse cinema mainstream while winning critical acclaim at the Oscars, Golden Globes, and more. Catch up on the latest episode of A24's official podcast here with interview of actors, directors, and more.

Explore how fine jewelry investing works

Experts recommend that fine jewelry investors focus on the most in-demand brands like Cartier, and on trends, time periods, and stones with staying power.

A brief guide to espionage

Spies have one of the most challenging and dangerous jobs in the world, risking their lives and legacy to extract secrets in the interest of their country. This in-depth explainer breaks down one of the profession's oft-ignored aspects: The...

Experts reconstruct Pompeii’s daily life—and whether disaster could strike again

This documentary utilizes archaeology, X-rays, and 3D reconstructions to reconstruct what the streets, homes, and rituals of Pompeii looked like before 79 CE. Scientists also use satellite imaging to track landslide risks that could damage the site today.

Explore the archaeological treasures of Pompeii, the city buried under volcanic ash when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 CE.

Watch this video that uses Lego bricks to explain how venture capital works.

When a Paris department store hesitated to sell Estée Lauder's perfume, she 'accidentally' broke a bottle, causing the smell to spread throughout the store and shoppers to start asking to buy the scent.

In 2019, a laptop loaded with six of the worst malware in history and described as 'an exhibit of historical weaponry' sold for $1.3M.

The idea for the Federal Reserve was conceived in secret in 1910—with bankers donning duck hunt gear for disguise while traveling to a remote country club on Georgia's Jekyll Island

See 33 images that became central to huge scandals, including a young Charles and Camilla, Michael Jackson's baby on a hotel balcony, and Hugh Grant's mugshot.

Exploring the Larry Bird punch that almost changed March Madness

Netflix profits when you're not watching, and its movies are designed that way—read a detail-rich critical essay exposing lesser-known Netflix takes

Hear about the 250-year history of the United States Postal Service, complete with some of its strangest deliveries, important innovations, and the figures that made it an American institution.

Hear 50 years of iconic hip-hop samples, the genre's foundational looped tracks

See these 16 pieces of art evoking phobias of snakes, flying, spiders, and more. 

Explore the history, structure, and species of Australia's Great Barrier Reef with this interactive journey narrated by Sir David Attenborough.

In 2009, the nation was gripped by the story of a missing young boy who was believed to be floating over Colorado in a homemade balloon, until it was revealed that he was at home the whole time.

Before the current East Wing ballroom project, only two White House renovations in the past 100 years cost more than $10M.

See how fireworks are made and learn how metals like magnesium and copper are responsible for different colors.

In 1945, Surrealist artist Salvador Dalí and legendary animator Walt Disney began collaborating on a short film that was not completed until 2003, years after both men had died.

Search a massive database of over 4 decades of clues from the TV quiz show 'Jeopardy!'

Crows are believed to have intelligence on par with a seven-year-old child and demonstrate complex behaviors, from problem-solving with tools to recognizing human faces.

Hotels in Cannes, the glamorous city on the French Riviera, hire hawks to ward off seagulls during the city's famous film festival.

Listen to an in-depth conversation on the links between Parkinson's disease and herbicide exposure and the challenging pace of scientific investigation.

See how Ebola tore through Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia in 2014-2016.

After NASA's Voyager 1 captured Earth as a single pixel as it left the solar system in 1990, astronomer Carl Sagan used the image to reflect on humanity's fragility and the responsibility to protect 'the only world we've ever known.'

Objects can be 3D printed with light by projecting 2D computerized tomography (CT) scans onto rotating cylinders of resin, which solidify upon exposure.