The Art of Crime

Today, we're joined by historian Jonathan Gill to talk about the amazing life of Boris Morros. After the Russian Revolution, Morros immigrated to America from Eastern Europe and became a big-time Hollywood filmmaker.  To an outside observer, his life would have seemed all glitz and glam, but what the public didn't know was that Morros was risking his neck every day as a double agent, spying for both the Soviets and the Americans throughout the 1940s.
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This week, I'm re-releasing my 2024 interview with Margalit Fox, author of The Talented Mrs. Mandelbaum, a biography of the notorious nineteenth-century New York crime boss, Fredericka Mandelbaum. Next week, we're back with a brand-new interview. Until then!
 
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Today, I'm joined by award-winning journalist Matthew Campbell to talk about his new book, The Man Who Stole the Gods. For decades, the Bangkok-based Brit, Douglas Latchford, bought priceless Cambodian artworks that had been looted from ancient religious sites. Some of these pieces made their way to the collections of museums as august as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. In The Man Who Stole the Gods, Matthew shines a light on the looters who stole this art and the international team of sleuths who helped return these works to their native country.
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We've rated the spies, now it's time for the rankings.
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Full transcripts at www.artofcrimepodcast.com.

Virginia Oldoini considered herself the most beautiful woman of the nineteenth century. In the 1850s, a high-ranking Italian official deployed her to France on a secret mission to seduce Emperor Napoleon III for political reasons. After her stint as a spy, the Countess emerged as a poioneer of photography, leaving behind one of the most stunning bodies of photographic self-portraits of the 1800s.
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For show notes and full transcripts, please visit www.artofcrimepodcast.com.