The 7,100-pound bronze bull at Bowling Green looks like a monument commissioned by the financial establishment, but it began as illegal midnight guerrilla art dropped off as a Christmas present. This episode tells the story of Arturo Di Modica, who arrived in New York from Sicily in 1970 with nothing, bypassed the gatekept gallery world by selling directly from a Soho studio, and after the Black Monday crash of 1987 decided to spend roughly $360,000 of his own savings on an 11-foot symbol of American resilience.

We cover the two years of lost-wax casting at a Brooklyn foundry, the scouting of NYPD patrol gaps to find a four-to-five-minute window, the surprise Christmas tree on Broad Street on December 14, 1989, the impounding of the sculpture, and the public outcry that had the Parks Department relocate it to Bowling Green within days. Then we follow Di Modica’s financial struggle, the insulting Las Vegas offer, the 2004 sale with a condition that the bull never move, his lawsuits against Walmart and Random House to defend his copyright, and how Occupy Wall Street, Fearless Girl, climate activists, and a banjo-wielding vandal rewrote the meaning of his gift before his death in 2021.

• How 17 years of hustling private clients built the nest egg he poured into the bull
• The mechanics of casting three and a half tons of bronze in sections and welding them seamlessly
• The heist in reverse: timing police patrols and improvising under a 60-foot Christmas tree
• Why a rogue street artist became a fierce defender of intellectual property
• The question of who owns the meaning of public art once the public claims it