Antiques Freaks

It's a hatchet for your face! This week we discuss razors, from their ancient origins to their stage musical and silver screen fame, all the way up to their hipster resurgence. With a pit stop in King Camp Gillette's bizarre utopian metropolis.

Meet the electric Victorian version of Martha Stewart! Mrs. J. E. H. Gordon, aka Alice, is here to tell us all how to best decorate our London townhouses. With electricity! You won't believe what she does to her Chippendale. It will rejoice the heart of your butler.

It's not just a rockin' good They Might Be Giants tune. It's also an incredibly difficult and intricate decoration technique that may have contributed to the collapse of the Byzantine Empire.

Get your goggles, cogs, and corsets ready! It's time to delve into the wild wild world of steampunk. Pour one out for all the antique clocks destroyed along the way.

From Gibson to Vargas, the Antiques Freaks discuss the history behind saucy illustrations of ladies.

It's kitsch gone wrong! Will the true artist behind these weepy-eyed waifs please stand up?

...Because we have to congratulate them on getting an Antiques Roadshow appraiser to say the word "anime" out loud.

Fraudulent fossils abound in 18th century Germany! Tune in to hear a tale of academic pranking gone horribly awry.

Postcards! It all started with legendary Regency prankster Thomas Hook and only got weirder from there.

Happy Boxing Day! In the second half of our holiday special, we cover lights from candles to bubbles to NOMA and beyond; tinsel, pavuchky, and the Legend of the Christmas Spider; the Yankee Candle Flagship Store Bavarian Christmas Village; Thomas Kinkade; Czech beaded ornaments; festive hospital fires; Dragostea din tei; Repo! The Genetic Opera; "spontaneous" human combustion; the Spider Queen; Goliath bird-eaters; and our future careers as Hallmark Holiday movie writers. Plus spiders. A lot of spiders. Probably too many spiders. Enjoy!