S03E16: Victorian dress reform, the Rational Dress Society, and the history of bicycles.
For Victorian women, bicycles usher in both a newfound freedom and a new wave in practical, flexible fashion: Pants!
The chemistry, craftsmanship, and cringe behind wax figure making, Marie Tussauds Chamber of Horrors, and the early special effects makeup at the Grand Guignol.
S03E15: Madame Tussaud and her famed museum of lifelike wax figures, and Grand Guignol, a pioneering theater at the forefront of shockingly realistic body horror.
Marie Tussaud’s exceptional talent brought a spark of (kind of creepy) life to the art and craft of creating wax portraiture, inviting the public to mingle with likenesses of the famous. The masterful craftspeople at Grand Guignol, by contrast, brought a truly dramatic spark of death–and an in-house doctor–to audiences looking for a different kind of thrill.
September auction oddities: A confusing nun and a clown that *probably* isn’t trying to take you apart with power tools.
S03E14: Celebration, Florida and Arcosanti, Arizona: Two very different approaches to building a (mostly failed) utopia.
Learning how to almost successfully thrive in the desert, and why we wouldn’t want Disney in charge of our HOAs.