The Guilty Pleasure of the Heist

12:42Vinson Cunningham:I've seen a number I enjoy, including, you know, some variations on the get ready with me trope on social media where It's get ready with me to rob the Louvre. But the one that's truly won my heart is by a young creator, shall we say, who goes by Jake Amazing. And his name is Jake Schroeder. He writes songs like pop style songs around ridiculous events like this. There are headshots of these two guys. Have you seen these headshots circulating? Yeah. I'm not even clear on whether these headshots are real or not. Yeah. France doesn't release headshots in the way. There is no kind of purple walk in France.

13:19Vinson Cunningham:Mugshots. Thank you, mugshots. Of course, this is right. But I guess I call them headshots because they do look like actors, these two guys. So here's a little pop song by Jake. Amazing. The two good dudes who rubbed the Louvre are literally sexy as hell.

13:36Alexandra Schwartz:I, too, am depressed that they found the dudes. But I'm grateful for that visual. Steal me. Feel me. This is good. Louvre me. Not Louvre me.

13:50Vinson Cunningham:I love this. I will say why. It's because this guy is clearly talented. Like, he can write a song that, frankly, I might like to hear in a long-term developed Broadway show. You know, 15 years later, when all of us have forgotten this heist. It's very Broadway. I can see this appearing on Broadway. Yeah. But I just love it. Alex, why don't you write it? Wow. That would be a wonderful use of my time. This is a chance to strike it rich. I truly can't think of a better creative endeavor for me personally. Thank you for suggesting it. I just love the combo of actual talent and absurdity that's going on here.

14:23Vinson Cunningham:It is perfect. It's almost like it was engineered for these ridiculous memes. But no, we must recall that, in fact, this heist was engineered to make a small handful of people very, very rich. If only they could figure out how to fence their stolen items. So we have much more to say and discuss about the Louvre heist. But I want to move us to The Mastermind, which is Kelly Reichardt's new movie starring the ubiquitous Josh O 'Connor. I'm not sad that he's ubiquitous. He's great. He's all over the place for a reason. Vincent, could you just tell us a little bit about the plot of this film?

14:57Alexandra Schwartz:The Mastermind begins with the sort of sad but sort of like intriguingly, I don't know, hangdog existence of JB or James Mooney, who is the sort of wayward son of a very prominent judge. His wife is played by Alana Haim. He has two sons, and it starts with them in a museum. We see them hanging around a museum, and he surreptitiously unlocks a museum case and takes a small trinket. Then we see him getting together with a bunch of people, planning to steal a bunch of paintings from a specific room, paintings by Arthur Dove, abstract works that still have something to do with landscape and the outdoors, but mostly abstractions.

15:44Alexandra Schwartz:The heist happens and it's like a shit show at one point.

15:49Vinson Cunningham:And it's also a day heist. It's a day heist.

15:52Alexandra Schwartz:It prominently figures a museum guard who's always asleep. And eventually one of the heisters brings out a gun unplanned. They get out barely. And from there forward, he has to go on the run. Dad! Dad! You don't look like cops. See, James, we've been told that you're mixed up in this robbery. I sure don't know how you got down this road. You got the wrong idea. I'm afraid you got some bad information. It is, like a lot of Kelly Reichert films, reminds me a little bit of an Eric Romer film, of sort of a quotidian movie of the extreme emotion.

16:35Vinson Cunningham:And now I just want to know, did you like it?

16:38Alexandra Schwartz:Sort of.

16:39Vinson Cunningham:Okay, say more.

16:40Alexandra Schwartz:I really found lots of the first half of the movie very funny. And I will admit that after that first half, I kept speculating as to, I won't say hoping, but speculating as to when it might end.

16:53Vinson Cunningham:Aha. I got it. I got it.

16:56Alexandra Schwartz:Kelly Reichert admirably gets these arty, interesting films made. And the bargain that she has to make is getting famous people in the movies. And, like, Josh O 'Connor does not belong in this movie. I think it's got a casting problem. He's like, he's too famous and he's not actually, like, this movie calls for anonymity. And yet I enjoyed it and thought it had a lot to offer. But I do think that the sleeping museum guard had a point.

17:20Vinson Cunningham:Wow. Nomi, what did you think? Okay. I usually really love Kelly Reichert movies. Oh, my God. Look at the consensus forming. Well, it's not. I was of two minds about this movie. Much like Vincent, I appreciate, admire, and am thankful for Reichert's ability to get through in this current, you know, commercial climate, movies that aren't commercial. I do think that's important and I usually like it. Like, for instance, I love showing up her last movie. I do feel that a movie about a heist and a heist gone wrong and a heist whose aims are not completely apparent. And I, again, appreciate this about Kelly Reichardt's movies that there is no necessary explanation or point because life doesn't necessarily proceed to any climax or explanation, right, or epiphany.

18:21And that's fine. But I do think here that got kind of stretched a little bit too far into like, who is this guy? Like, I get that the point is this movie takes place in the early 70s. It's a moment of great ideological, you know, foment and people who are kind of of the generation of this character, you know, youngish, are feeling very strongly, you know, against the Vietnam War, against the institutions around them. And he is sort of like doesn't seem to be part of that. But then also it's unclear what drives this heist. You know, why are we following this person? Why Arthur Dove? Again, it doesn't need to be some like great spiritual revelation or some.

19:10But the kind of like pointlessness of the whole thing, which I know was the point, was like stretched a little bit beyond comprehension for me. You guys ready? Oh, my God. Give it to us.

19:23Vinson Cunningham:Loved every second of this movie. Awesome. Every frame. Incredible. Every minute, every music cue. Loved it.

19:32Alexandra Schwartz:Music was very good.

19:33Vinson Cunningham:I will say it's a beautiful movie. I'm here to speak for it. And I see your criticisms. And I understand your criticisms. And I'm here to defend the movie from them. Okay. Sorry, that came on really strong. Nope. I love your points of view. We need emotion. I love your points of view. I just happen to love this movie. And I was very surprised by loving this movie because, Vincent, you're right. Kelly Reichardt can be a bit of a slow burn. But I was on the absolute edge of my seat at 11 a.m. with all of the other four people at the Angelica Cinema. What I love about this movie is all the, there are a few things.

20:05Vinson Cunningham:One is that I just love an escape story or where the noose is tightening and you're desperate. The guy is desperate. How are they going to get out of this situation? But the other thing I do like about it is the apparent aimlessness of it, which if you think about it and you poke at it, I think there are some answers. Like there is an answer in the movie itself about why he chose these paintings because they were important to his mentor in art school. But like it doesn't matter that much. I think it's about someone in search of a life and in search of an identity and in search of something to do.

20:34Vinson Cunningham:He is a dropout, but he's not a political dropout in the ways of so many of the people at the time. And there's so much political that happens in this movie. There's constant reference to the Vietnam War. It takes place in the year 1970. There's reference to the bombings in Cambodia. There's a big, climactic protest march. And this guy is just kind of a regular failure. I loved how the attentiveness that Kelly Reichardt showed to the mechanics of the heist, because that, and we'll get to that in a second, is what can be so exciting about a great heist movie. And here, all those mechanics just show you what goes awry.

21:09Vinson Cunningham:There's also a long sequence of him trying to hide the paintings in a barn. The camera does not cut. You're just watching him go up and down a ladder. a pig snorts away trying to hide these works of art with no idea what he's going to do with them. It is a film about a gross incompetent who could have been a contender. And I love that.

21:32Vinson Cunningham:The heist has been a staple of movies since the very beginning of the 20th century. What keeps us coming back to stories of elaborate robberies? That's after the break on Critics at Large from The New Yorker.

21:53This week on the New Yorker Radio Hour, a Democrat and a Republican in Congress on how the immigration crackdown is changing America. They're going to see vast swaths of our workforce disappear. They're going to see our economy contract.

22:05Vinson Cunningham:Mr. President, you've got to change the way when it comes to immigration. Otherwise, we're not going to have a Republican Party. That's the New Yorker Radio Hour from WNYC. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

22:47tech debates and lighting up your group chats. Listen to new episodes every Thursday, wherever you get your podcasts. Who is going to win control of Congress this November? And what is it going to mean for the final two years of Donald Trump's disruptive presidency? I'm Susan Glasser. I'm Jane Mayer. And I'm Evan Osnos. We host the Washington Roundtable on the New Yorker's Political Scene podcast. We're following what key races could tip the balance of power in Washington this fall. We're also going to go deep on the influence of dark money and tech billionaires.

23:21Vinson Cunningham:So join us in the run-up to the midterms in 2026. Subscribe to The Political Scene wherever you get your podcasts.

23:38Vinson Cunningham:So we've been talking about two heists. The Louvre heist, which every single person on planet Earth is following. And The Mastermind, which, as we say, is a bit more selective. I would urge people to see it. Part of the fun, I would say, of especially the heist memes around the Louvre, is the fact that the tropes and the story beats they're playing off of are so familiar. I mean, all heists have three components. You've got to get a gang together, you've got to do the robbery, and then you've got to get away. So I think we're all following it in a lot of ways, knowing those beats because of the movies.

24:11Vinson Cunningham:So I wanted to ask you guys, what are some of your favorite heist movies? Your personal heist canon, if you will. So as I was prepping for this episode, I was like, yeah, of course. I've watched like Ocean's Eleven and then like the, you know, 11 sequels. 12, 13, 8. To that movie. and the Italian job. You know, the kind of classic, like, kind of like gentlemen's, like a glamorous gentleman's occupation, right? The kind of like, oh, it's glamorous. You know, these people are all like the best at what they do, right? And I suddenly remember this movie from childhood. I don't know if you guys are familiar with it.

24:57It's from 1980. It's a minor comedy. It's called How to Beat the High Cost of Living. I don't know this movie. It's like so random. Suddenly I was like, wait, that was actually really like fascinated me when I was a child. Like I watch it on TV in the 80s sometime. It's three women, a young Jessica Lange. Okay. Jane Curtin and Susan St. James. All right. It's about these three women living in Oregon, suburban moms, who are all struggling in their way. So it's 1980. It's, you know, 70s feminism, you know, second wave feminism is in the air. But women are still fucked over, right? So these are all women who have been fucked over and they can't make ends meet.

25:38Alexandra Schwartz:Elaine, three girls who are in the same trouble as millions of Americans. I need more money. I cannot swing it on$200 a month child support anymore. Why don't we just become hookers and rent a motel room? We'd starve to death. There's 12 ,000 college girls in this town giving it away. One day, they did to the system what the system's been doing to them. And they decide to pull off a heist. And the heist happens in the local mall. So I have a question. Is it good? It's, you know, it's a minor movie. But I remember it. It looms large in my memory as something kind of fun and games and kind of stupid and silly.

26:17And they manage to, they carry it off. Like, it's fine. But it also shows kind of the real kind of like socioeconomic and kind of gender desperation that's behind this endeavor in a way that's very true to the moment it came out in. And so I think that is something that sometimes, not always, but sometimes happens with depictions of heists.

26:41Alexandra Schwartz:One of my favorites, a kind of smaller scale picture that I really like is the movie Drive, 2011. Starring Ryan Gosling. Directed by Nicholas Vending Refn. And it is about a stunt driver, called Driver throughout the movie, who also sort of moonlights as a getaway driver. If I drive for you, you give me a time and a place, I give you a five-minute window. Anything happens in that five minutes and I'm yours, no matter what. I don't sit in while you're running it down. I don't carry a gun. I drive.

27:25Alexandra Schwartz:Interestingly, I think the heist movie, as a subgenre of the crime movie, is sort of about skirting the legit world and the illegitimate world. and often using the skills and talents that are developed in one and importing it to the other. In this case, very talented driver is sort of deep in this underworld that's just a part of it. He just is a hired gun as a getaway driver. He is sort of getting to know this woman, one of his neighbors and her kid, but her ex gets out of jail and he's pulled into a heist situation with the ex, whose name is Standard. and they go out to try to rob a pawn shop of like tens of thousands of dollars.

28:08Alexandra Schwartz:There's a heist, including another accomplice who was played by Christina Hendricks. I forgot about that part. It goes wrong. It goes bad. And the rest of the picture is a kind of aftermath of the failed heist. So again, the sort of sorrow of an underworld and its inhabitants, people who are desperate, but it's also just a very, very, very stylish movie. The cars look great. The lights are all very sort of like ambient and glowy. It's a really beautiful movie about a really desperate situation.

28:39Vinson Cunningham:Love it.

28:40Alexandra Schwartz:Sounds great. How about you, Alex?

28:41Vinson Cunningham:Well, I do think Ocean's Eleven, which we keep mentioning, is one of the great films. I rewatched it this weekend. It is so fun and so good and so satisfying and just like oozes charisma from every shot. But the film I want to talk about is another tremendous film that I really think everyone should see. If you're in New York City, you can go see it soon at Film Forum, which is doing a series about French heists, which I think will be really fun. And it's called Le Cercle Rouge, The Red Circle. Ah, yes. By Jean-Pierre Melville. Alain Delon. So this movie is so fantastic and complex and brilliantly plotted and timed that I think it will really scratch the itch of anyone who loves a heist film.

29:28Vinson Cunningham:It starts with a criminal, Coré, who's played by Alain Delon, who's about to get out of jail after five years. He gets a tip from his guard that there is a fancy jewelry store in Paris that this prison guard has an in at that could be robbed. Should one be willing to do such a thing? This plot line crosses with a criminal who is running away from a police inspector and their paths cross and they begin to put a team together for this jewelry store heist. And at the same time, they're being hunted. They're being hunted by the police inspector who's after the criminal who got away. So it's layers on layers on layers.

30:04Vinson Cunningham:One thing I love about this movie is the way time works in it. Because, of course, a heist happens like we all are so fixated on the Louvre heist, the three minutes and 54 seconds, whatever it was, that they were actually inside. You know, for film, it's great because it's a real-time endeavor. You're trying to show how long this crazy thing takes because it all needs to be very precisely timed. In Ocean's Eleven, there's the whole thing where they have the Chinese acrobat who's inside of this sealed container who will actually suffocate after 30 minutes if they can't get him out. So one thing I love about Le Cirque du Rouge is you just feel the weight of time.

30:43Vinson Cunningham:You feel it during the heist itself. It's a beautiful, long, I would say maybe almost 30-minute sequence of how they're going to get in and out of this jewelry store. And in that sense, it's very satisfying in the sense that you sympathize with everyone, including the police inspector who has, Nomi, you would love this, three cats who he dotes on. Not cats. Who he calls his babies. Oh, baby. It's very stylish and it's beautiful. And I also really felt like it would be a good double viewing, I think, with the mastermind. One was actually made in 1970. The other takes place in 1970. And there's a kind of, there's a sort of jazzy rhythm to each.

31:18Vinson Cunningham:The way silence works in N 'A� S 'Au Klau Rouge, it's not a movie that over soundtracks, music is not playing at all times. But when music goes, something significant is happening. And the same is true in The Mastermind with this kind of jazzy score that peters out as things go increasingly wrong. It's fabulous. It's satisfying. And it's also philosophical about the darker nature of man, what leads someone to commit crime. And that's also what I'm wondering for you guys. You know, you talked before about how fun heists are, I think, generally because they're often seen as being a victimless crime.

31:55Vinson Cunningham:Like Ocean's Eleven is, again, the perfect example. They're hitting three casinos who are run by the guy who took George Clooney's girl. We don't like him. We want him to lose. But we also feel very satisfied that this$160 million take is not coming out of, you know, other people's wallets. No one is going to have to starve because of this heist. Just Andy Garcia. Just Andy Garcia. So is there something about the criminality of the heist film that makes us sympathize more with the criminal? Is it like a way into the criminal mind? Is that uncomfortable? Is that okay?

32:30Alexandra Schwartz:It's about the criminal mind, but it's also about exactly what you mentioned. What is the nature of an establishment? and it seems that the competencies involved in the planning of the heist sort of interestingly rival the nature of the establishments against which the crimes are committed. Maybe the way to understand the heist movie is that the only way to understand society or the establishments that symbolize that society are to understand the holes in them at which the heist is sort of laser targeted, right?

33:04Vinson Cunningham:It's designed to expose them.

33:06Alexandra Schwartz:It's a double mirror that gives us a greater picture of society because it shows the crannies. What are the blind spots in the society, right? The highest picture forensically attacks those things. Attacks and in that way provides a possible figure to believe in in a kind of like twisted way, right? I mean, you know how I have the bit where I'm like, we need a strong leader, which obviously I don't mean per se. But like the notion that no one's in charge and everyone's an idiot or like that the people who are in charge are idiots. Yeah. I think there is a certain satisfaction. And this is like in a heist gone well, in a heist gone right, that you're like, oh, someone can carry something off.

33:55I mean, no matter that it's like stealing the crown jewels or something. It's not necessarily, you know, at all socially redeeming. But it's like, OK, someone else just like me is seeing that everybody is an idiot, but unlike me, they're able to sort of best those people in charge. So it's like an alternative morality or something. It's the morality of wits. Yeah.

34:20Alexandra Schwartz:And like the underworld generally is a way of saying I reject the mores of the wider culture, even the totally legit, even the the competent heist that is totally welcome in the light. Right. Like you think about sort of corporate takeovers, mergers, acquisitions, the big these have the structure of heists and they're told by wealthy, powerful people. And then, you know, we, you know, we, whatever, I don't know. Maybe this is more broadly the sort of the idea of the underworld is that there are rival hierarchies to this, that there are there are ways to sort of achieve a different kind of glamour and esteem and to accomplish something equally impressive and titanic.

35:05Alexandra Schwartz:but sort of on the total flip side of everything that we're taught to glamorize and admire.

35:22Vinson Cunningham:Successful heists may be fun to watch, but the ones that go awry might tell us more about who we are. This is Critics at Large from The New Yorker. We'll be right back.

36:03We'll see you next time. on the influence of dark money and tech billionaires.

36:09Vinson Cunningham:So join us in the run-up to the midterms in 2026. Subscribe to The Political Scene wherever you get your podcasts.

36:35Vinson Cunningham:the hows and whys and what didn't work that come with it. Every month, we publish a recipe on bonappetit.com that introduces a baking concept we think you should know. Then you'll go bake, send us any questions you have. And we'll get together here on the podcast to talk about the recipe. And this month, we're making tiny tomato galettes. They are these adorable, maybe four-bite little galettes. So cute. Head to ba.com and come and bake along with us. Send us your questions, pictures, and any thoughts to Bake Club at bonappetit.com or find us on Substack. Join us the first Tuesday of every month as we debrief about our latest bake.

37:12Vinson Cunningham:Find BA Bake Club wherever you get your podcasts. Happy baking.

37:22Vinson Cunningham:Hi, I'm Rebecca Ford. And I'm John Ross. And we're the hosts of Little Gold Men, Vanity Fair's podcast for film, TV, and awards lovers. And just because the Oscars are done, for now, Doesn't mean we are. Join us every week for coverage of the biggest stories in Hollywood, interviews with today's brightest stars, and so much more. Listen to Little Gold Men every Thursday, wherever you get your podcasts.

37:54Vinson Cunningham:We've been talking about some of our favorite heist movies and the things that go right in some of them, And also the things that go wrong, I should say. Quite often, things do go wrong. And in the case of the Louvre robbery, they seem to have gone very wrong. Someone was apprehended at the airport trying to fly back to his native Algeria. Four people have been arrested, three of whom are suspected to be the ones who actually were on site the day of the heist. It's not like they're getting away with it. So do you feel that this question of getting away with it is central to the heist? Do we actually want to see heisters caught?

38:35Alexandra Schwartz:As always, you know, it depends. In the big vaunted institution and the goods are even gotten by that institution by sort of like doubtful provenance or whatever. I think, yeah, we want to see the end of Shawshank Redemption. Like, you know, somebody on the beach with sand between their toes and like, okay, you know, this worked out for the person. But it always depends about the sort of legitimacy. Maybe that's another big theme of the Heist movie. It's like, how did this institution come by its power? The museum, the government, the casino. And do we all agree that that is legitimate? You know, we all live in these contexts and kind of accept a lot of their premises.

39:22Alexandra Schwartz:Everybody has to do this just to be alive. Yes, this bank that I get my money from may have some, but you know what? They have my money and I trust them and I'll take up, go to the ATM. Yeah, I'm going to get on the train and however its finances are run, you can like, this premise is humming under all of our everyday lives, right? The heist movie says, I want to interrupt that. And so the success or failure of the heist sort of in our attitudes toward it start to describe for us how we feel about the great big totems of our everyday lives. I think that's very useful.

39:53Vinson Cunningham:Yeah, you know, that's interesting to me. I did once see a rather enjoyable Netflix-y movie about the heist at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. I mean, I don't know why I added the why. I think it was on Netflix, but it was also Netflix-y. It was both. Netflix-y is an idea. It was both.

40:06Alexandra Schwartz:It doesn't have to be on Netflix to be Netflix-y. Yeah.

40:08Vinson Cunningham:I mean, one crazy thing about that heist. Garlic-y Netflix-y. Do you guys know about that heist? Tell us, give us the, it was 1990. It took place on March 18th, 1990 at like 12.30 a.m. And the date is relevant because it was the night of St. Patrick's Day. So thieves had known Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is in Boston. They knew that a night of absolute drunken revelry would be consuming the city and its police force, and they dressed as cops. And so a couple of years ago, I was at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum after having seen this movie. And what I had forgotten in the time in between was that the objects, the paintings that were stolen have not been replaced not only by themselves, but by anything else.

40:49Vinson Cunningham:They're just blank spaces on the wall, you know, where the frame should go. I will tell you, that had quite an emotional effect on me. Yeah. I felt quite, quite bereft to see the absence of these things which should be seen. Because, yes, it was this one very rich woman, Isabella Stewart Gardner, who acquired them. But they are there for the viewing of the general public. And they are there to be entered into our own lives and shared among us. Because that is another community, the people who see things and watch things and listen to things together over generations. Like, you know, we all know we believe in this stuff.

41:32Vinson Cunningham:So seeing that gone for like, who knows, were they sold? Was it a particular collector who just had to have these things who's now living with them staring evilly in, you know, his evil lair under a snowy mountain? Or are they just under a bed because no one could get rid of them? I don't know. So, but it did have an effect on me. And I think that's part of what people have enjoyed about the Louvre heist. I don't think anyone has personally felt like, not the emeralds. Oh, my goodness. They are fascinating objects. They're beautiful objects. They're spectacular objects. It didn't seem to me the same thing as a work of art that people have a profound emotional connection to.

42:11I think that I think these two different paths that a heist might take, they scratch different itches for us. Like, if I'm watching Brad Pitt and Clooney, you know, pull the wool over Andy Garcia's eyes in a well cut suit, you know, like in Ocean's Eleven, that scratches one itch for me. whereas if I'm watching you know The Mastermind or I'm watching like you know The Safdie's Good Time or something where Robert Pattinson plays like a desperate petty criminal who convinces his mentally disabled brother to rob a bank and they plan it and of course it all goes incredibly awry and then it's just like on the run very kind of like ugly depressing life that shows like all the current ills of society, it's clear from the start that any plan that springs from this guy's head is going to be a failure, you know?

43:15That scratches a different itch for me, which is it's turning a mirror to society in a way in which I can identify and worry about. Whereas a successful heist is pure escapism, you know? It's like the difference between pure entertainment versus like the lowest stakes, you know, sad individuals trying to scramble and like the dirty subway for scraps. You know, the pulled off heist movie and the failed heist movie, it's almost like two different separate genres. Yeah, I think that's a very good point.

43:51Vinson Cunningham:And often with the failed heist movie, the failure for obvious reasons, but still it might be worth noting, the failure happens early on so that you can see the sordid aftermath. You know, Good Time, it's certainly the case. reservoir dogs it's the case yes um even in the mastermind even though the mastermind takes a lot of attention to show you you know how how the box was made that the paintings are going to be slipped into it's almost it's not almost it's in service of the chaos that follows when everything starts to fall apart um you know i think another that just reminds me that i think another pleasure of the heist movie and the heist in general is competency porn careful planning making sure I mean, that's Ocean's Eleven all over.

44:32Vinson Cunningham:But there's something else that occurs to me, a kind of literary point to your social point, Vincent, that you're making about the holes that the heist exposes in institutions, making us question the institutions. I'm always interested when I just get attached to a character and when that phenomenon, that human phenomenon of caring starts. Caring about another person and their fate. And, of course, a good movie makes you care. It makes you want to care. A good novel does the same thing. That, for me, has not happened with the Louvre heisters. I'm just noting my own feelings. I feel indifferent to their fate.

45:11Alexandra Schwartz:Individual plight. Yes.

45:13Vinson Cunningham:I feel maybe that will change the more we know about them. But that fictional element, that element of character and investing in someone else's success or failure, I think part of what's fun, and I use that word now with a kind of barbed meaning, like I don't know if a heist should be fun, like a real one. I don't know. There is something sorted even about finding it fun. And part of it is my sort of indifference to the people behind it. But that may well change the more we know. I wanted to ask you guys also, you know, it occurs to me that we live in a time of widespread criminality at the highest levels.

45:56Vinson Cunningham:There's a lot of what normally would be very illegal activity happening in broad daylight at all times. you know as we're recording the day that we're recording this a pre-pardon was handed out to Rudy Giuliani friend of friend of the show of course yes um and as we all know George Santos whom we spoke about in I would call it a companion episode to this one our scammers episode very very scammers and heisters similar but one just feels a lot grosser than the other um you know and And there was this—I'm sorry that I have to know this, and I only know it not because I'm on Truth Social all times, but because one of our beloved producers has enlightened me that what Trump said about Santos was that he was something of a rogue.

46:45Vinson Cunningham:But there are many rogues throughout our country that aren't forced to serve seven years in prison. And it's like, OK, well, you know, now I feel like we're sitting around talking about heisters. We're loving on Alain Delon. But somewhere someone else is applying this to George Santos. It makes me feel dirty. So we're living in a time of kind of sanctioned criminality that none of us can do anything about, or at least it very much feels that way. And when we are, Vincent, you were talking about institutions. In a very different way, the holes of all the institutions around us are now being exposed not by a daring mastermind, but by the bluntest tools of power.

47:22Vinson Cunningham:How much will you pay to make your problem go away is a question that universities are answering. law firms are answering. We're going to see more and more institutions answering this question, I'm sure. So, does this connect to you to our feelings about the Louvre heist? To me, it's a little bit of a sense, again, of that fictional character sense of wanting to invest a Robin Hood-ish-like quality, not a moral quality, but just a character quality, at a time when we're really helpless against much bigger forces.

47:54Alexandra Schwartz:Well, you know, yes. In the case of at least the United States, I can imagine myself or imagine the mind of someone who is a fan of Donald Trump and says, yep, he's getting in there and enriching himself and his kids just like Nancy Pelosi, who recently announced her retirement, and others like her have steadily enriched themselves by being in Congress, that, again, the society has given itself a kind of dark funhouse mirror, that the supposedly minor criminality or benign criminality of the establishment has now been doubled down upon, made sort of buffoonishly pushed to its final extent, etc.

48:34Alexandra Schwartz:On the other hand, you could say from someone who abhors the Trump phenomenon, yeah, it exposes what was always exploitable.

48:45Vinson Cunningham:Right. I mean, you're making me think of the White House. Yeah, absolutely. I was just thinking that. I'm suddenly feeling very connected to the White House, as it was. Whereas, you know, I didn't really, you know what I mean? It's not like I think about like the structure of the White House every day and how important it is to me as an American. But now that it's like being torn down willy nilly to build like a gilded$300 million ballroom, I'm like, fuck, I miss like the George W. Bush White House or something. You know what I mean? Like it's making me think things that I never thought I'd really care about.

49:26Vinson Cunningham:Well, there's something about it, I think, that is like a bad heist because the other thing I love about a heist is restraint. You have to know what you can get away with. And when you get too greedy, the whole thing is liable to fall apart. And what is so repulsive among many things about what's happening, what makes it seem like a bad heist about what's happening at the White House is it's also a daytime heist. It's in broad daylight, but it's by the people in power. So there's no sense of, aha, we're going to just, you know, take from you a little bit and reverse who holds power. It's punching down.

49:59Vinson Cunningham:It's just taking something that is actually collective and making it individual. And that's also what I don't like about a lot of art crime. Don't like it. so do you guys think that heisters will now be emboldened by this utterly brazen heist

50:18Alexandra Schwartz:i think heisters will always be with us i don't think that they will be i don't think they will be emboldened you will always be famous heisters you'll always be i think that like you know the sort of the darker kinds of crime that we come to like associate with a kind of like thirst for fame like i feel like those people are always like our trends but i I think the heist is, we often think of the heister as a very sane person who just has a big idea. What if it's like smash cut to like a month from now, me on the cover of the New York Times, like being dragged into custody after like having attempted to like rob the, you know, the Charles Schultz Museum in Santa Rosa, California for their original peanut strips.

51:00Vinson Cunningham:If that happens, I will write a Broadway musical about it and it will be out in 15 years and we'll all get to go together. Hopefully by then, Nomi, it's the law. I'll be out of the slammer. You'll be out then.

51:20Vinson Cunningham:This has been Critics at Large. This week's episode was produced by Michelle O 'Brien. Alex Barish is our consulting editor. Rhiannon Corby is our senior producer. Our executive producer is Stephen Valentino. Our show is mixed by Mike Kutchman. Alexis Quadrato composed our theme music, and we had engineering help today from James Yost. You can find every episode of Critics at Large at newyorker.com slash critics. We will see you next week.

51:58Vinson Cunningham:The Wired Newsroom is known for award-winning reporting on how technology shapes our world. On Wired's Uncanny Valley, we take that curiosity even further. Each week, journalists from Wired break down the biggest stories in tech while speaking directly with the people building, challenging, and reshaping the future.

52:14Alexandra Schwartz:Is the AI boom sustainable? How do you protect your privacy in an age of constant surveillance? Uncanny Valley tackles the questions driving today's tech debates and lighting up your group chats. Listen to new episodes every Thursday, wherever you get your podcasts.

52:30Vinson Cunningham:I'm Jazzy Savchak. And I'm Shilpa Oskoukowicz. And we're senior test kitchen editors at Bon Appetit and the hosts of the Bon Appetit Bake Club podcast. Bake Club is Bon Appetit's community of confident, curious bakers. We love to bake. Some might even call the two of us obsessive. And we love to talk about all the hows and whys and what didn't work that come with it. Every month, we publish a recipe on bonappetit.com that introduces a baking concept we think you should know. Then you'll go bake, send us any questions you have. And we'll get together here on the podcast to talk about the recipe.

53:02Vinson Cunningham:And this month, we're making tiny tomato galettes. They are these adorable, maybe four-bite little galettes. So cute. Head to BA.com and come and bake along with us. Send us your questions, pictures, and any thoughts to BakeClub at BonAppetit.com or find us on Substack. Join us the first Tuesday of every month as we debrief about our latest bake. Find BA Bake Club wherever you get your podcasts. Happy baking!

53:32Alexandra Schwartz:I'm Vincent Cunningham.

53:34Vinson Cunningham:I'm Nomi Fry. I'm Alex Schwartz, and we host Critics at Large from The New Yorker.

53:38Alexandra Schwartz:Each week, we pick a starting point. The new novel you can't stop thinking about, the movie everybody's seeing this weekend, and we kind of go galaxy-brand with it.

53:47Vinson Cunningham:Right. We take the ideas at the center of these things and trace them across history, across mediums, all to get to the bottom of why this particular text is important right now in politics and culture and also in your everyday life. We go highbrow. We go lowbrow. We go everything in between.

54:04Alexandra Schwartz:Food culture to meme culture. Charlie XCX to Toni Morrison. K-pop to the Kennedys. From horror movies to heated rivalry.

54:13Vinson Cunningham:From the Oscars to the Met Gala. The Golden Bachelor to Wuthering Heights. Great expectations to Desperate Housewives.

54:18Alexandra Schwartz:That's what we're talking about over here. We're having fun. It's Critics at Large from The New Yorker. Every Thursday, wherever you get your podcasts.