The market for Chinese art used to be very small and is now a billion dollar annual industry. What changed? And how is this all tied to a string of heists? Listen in to find out. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic of this episode?
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and Jerry's here too, and this is Stuff You Should Know. And we're going to talk a little bit about Chinese art heists. So let's get started. Go.
That's right. Big thanks to Livia. She did a banger of an article for us.
But also thanks to you. Where'd you come up with this idea?
Oh, was this a recommendation? I'm so bad about that. I don't know. But we also have to thank a reporter for GQ magazine named Alex W. Palmer, who in 2018 wrote a pretty
a banger of an article as well about these art heists of cultural, very specific cultural and art artifacts from China that have been stolen from museums in the 2010s and basically pose the question, is the Chinese government behind this?
Right. Are they commissioning people to rob art museums? And I mean, not just like, you know, some Tinkertown museum on the corner of a neighborhood that like, I don't know. You know, not a good museum. You know those museums? I'm talking like world-class museums like the Fountain Blue outside Paris. Paris, France, that is, not Texas.
Yeah.
So, yeah, there's like a – still to this day, people don't know exactly what the deal was. And it seems like despite what Palmer, Alex Palmer was saying, Palmer basically was like, you know, didn't point the finger directly. But that was kind of the premise of the article that who knows who's behind this and it's possible that the government of China has some hand in it.
But also the Chinese art market, as we'll see, has blown up so much that it's also entirely possible that it's just like that makes a lot of sense for thieves to steal Chinese art. The thing is, is the string of particular heists that Alex Palmer talks about that really kind of form this galaxy of particular heists.
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Chapter 2: How did the Chinese art market evolve?
Well, since Chuck said Jackie Champ, he unlocked listener mail.
All right, this is on swamp coolers. Hey, guys, you talked about swamp coolers in the history of refrigeration episode. We live in Santa Fe, New Mexico at 7000 feet elevation, where it's historically hasn't gotten hot enough to need air conditioning. Although summers are getting hotter here with a couple of weeks in the high to mid 90s every year now. It's pretty hot.
Our house was a custom-built house in 2005 and it does not have AC. So we bought a portable swamp cooler last summer to help just on those handful of really hot days when it's too hot to sleep. And it's really effective, I have to say, in the dry desert air. Some people have whole house swamp coolers on the roof with thermostats inside. They use a lot less energy than AC.
So they're a good option in places where it's dry and not too hot. They only lower the temperature 10 to 15 degrees. That's not bad at all. So anything 95 we get for a short time wouldn't really work. I disagree. 80 to 95 is pretty substantial. Yeah, for sure. But that is from Chandra.
Thanks a lot, Chandra. Whole house swamp cooler. Can't you just see like the tops like open and it says Igloo and giant letters on the side?
Yeah, sounds like a record name too, like an album title.
Whole house swamp cooler.
Yeah, like the Chickasaw Mud Puppies or something.
Very nice, Chuck. Very nice. Well, if you want to be like Chandra and write in and tell us about something that we talked about that's whole house size, we love hearing that kind of stuff. You can shoot us an email to stuffpodcasts at iheartradio.com.
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