Nicholas Day
1) The Mona Lisa vanishes: a legendary painter, a shocking heist, and the birth of a global celebrity
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"A narrative nonfiction about how the Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre, how the robbery made the portrait the most famous artwork in the world-and how the painting by Leonardo da Vinci should never have existed at all"--
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2019 Green Earth Book Awards - Short List Sylvia Samantha White is very good at finding--she just doesn't know exactly what all her "junk" is good for, not yet at least. But when completely ridiculous disaster strikes, she springs into action and uses her junk to create solutions to the town's troubles. A charming ode to collecting, creating, and following your bliss--even when you're not entirely sure where it will lead you.
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Amelia Dyer was perhaps the most prolific killer in British history. She earned a living through murder. And her victims were babies. There was a grim trade which flourished in the Victorian age. In a time when unmarried mothers were shamed and shunned, giving up children to a 'baby-farmer' was often the only option. Dyer promised mothers that for a fee she would adopt the babies and raise them as her own. In fact, she neglected and murdered them....
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Jimmy Alcott was a troubled young man. He had joined the army after leaving school, but his time in Germany ended in disgrace when he was court-martialled for the violent murder of a civilian. Spared execution by the mercy of the King, he returned to England and built a new life for himself. He had not left his violent ways behind however. In 1952, he travelled from his home in London to the village of Ash Vale in Surrey. There he staked out the railway...
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In the early twentieth century, a new technology changed the way we consume the news forever. No long would we rely on words or still photography alone; moving pictures had arrived. The cameras would be there for the grand funeral of Queen Victoria in 1901. They would be there for the flights of the first powered aircraft, and for the 1908 Olympic Games. And in 1911, they would be there to record police, soldiers, and Winston Churchill, join a gun...
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Until its closure in 2016, Madame Tussauds' Chamber of Horrors was one of the museum's oldest and most popular attractions. And for decades, staring out at visitors was the waxwork of a notorious Victorian double killer, the murderer of a young mother and baby - a woman named Mary Pearcey. In this episode, we reveal how the trouble Pearcey began an affair with her victim's husband. How she inserted herself into the family's life. How she lured her...
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Forest and mountain, sea and ice – the wilds of this world are a rich setting for myths and legends. As this episode shows, the stories told about the wilderness – and the monsters feared lurking within it – can tell us a lot about a people.
The city-loving Ancient Greeks saw it as a realm of the divine – and a dangerous place for mortals. The Norse were master sailors, yet imagined the seas filled with terrifying monsters. The Celts of...
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Percy Lefroy Mapleton was a talented young writer. But he was also a liar, a thief and a fantasist. By 1881, he had become fixated on a beautiful stage actress. Convinced the two of them belonged together, he concocted an elaborate fraud to win her heart. But Lefroy could not outrun his lies forever and, when exposure seemed certain, he was driven to a darker and more violent
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In 1910, the city of Newcastle was transfixed by a murder trial. A clerk had been killed on a train and his wages bag stolen with hundreds of pounds inside. Accused of the murder was a local man named John Alexander Dickman. But the evidence against him was all circumstantial and, thanks to a recent change in the law, Dickman himself would have the chance to go into the witness box. Dickman was a professional gambler, but he had never faced stakes...
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The First World War took the lives of countless soldiers on the front line. But one man in Paris too old for combat saw this as an opportunity. Henri Landru targeted the lonely and vulnerable women left behind by the war. He seduced them with promises of marriage and lured them to houses outside Paris where the women vanished. With the police uninterested in investigating the disappearances, two women took it upon themselves to pursue Landru.
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War has been a constant in human history. All civilisations have grappled with the questions it raises. It is no surprise then that myths of war are among the most enduring.
In this episode, we show how the Romans explained their violent ways through the bloody tale of their founders Romulus and Remus. We explore the role of the mysterious Valkyries in Norse myth and what that can tell us about the Vikings. We show that war can make myths out of...
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Stories of heroes and the villains encountered on their adventures are among the most thrilling in all mythology. This episode examines the controversial theory that a common structure exists in such stories that transcends cultural and historical influences.
That was the theory of American mythologist Joseph Campbell. His work has shaped popular thinking about myth and was a key influence on icons of modern culture such as the Star Wars saga and...