August 12, 2025 • 45 mins
Imagine you are beyond wealthy. You no longer dream of the average "rich people" flexes -- you've got all the diamonds, all the mansions, all the ordinary baubles of the elite. How can you distinguish yourself? What can you buy when you can buy literally anything? In today's episode, Ben, Noel and Max explore the astonishing, ridiculous origin story of Czarist Russia's peak luxury item; an egg you can't eat, nor wear -- a toy and a flex to end all flexes: the Fabergé Egg.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous Histories, a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to the show,
(00:27):
fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much for
tuning in. Let's hear it for one of the fanciest
boys in podcasting, our super producer, mister Max Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
I feel like I should go put a checket on him,
and also I Max, Yeah you do MAXX yeah, bleeping
all that. I don't know, Ben. Kind of my feelings
are a little hurd. I'm not gonna lie because I
am the one podcasting holding a tiny Peterbread hypoelogenic dog
named Apollo, So I'm feeling pretty fancy today too.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
Apollo absolute legend. One of our favorite audience members as
well as you, specifically you, if you are listening to this,
that's none other than mister Noel Brown. I am several people,
but they called me Ben.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
Here multitudes, there's no question about that.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Oh thanks man.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
And that you're you're you know you have multiple personality Disorderah,
I'm diagnosed. I'm diagnosed. No it's not true. Well it's
not true at all. You have you leave many lives
and wear many hats.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
Sir, sir, immediate response without being defensive is why call
it a disorder exactly?
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Why why be inherently negative about it from the start?
You know it's it's it's just a how about list
a syndrome? Okay, all right, negative too. I'm not gonna
let so how about this?
Speaker 1 (01:51):
How about instead we pull up one of the old
personas for voiceover, which would go something like previously on
Ridiculous History.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Is that Max powers astronaut with a secret.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Oh my gosh, you remember, Thank you for so much man.
All right, so this episode is a spiritual successor to
a series you and I did that we quite enjoy.
With our pals Jack and Miles on Ridiculous Historical Flexes,
we were hanging out with our friends out west and
(02:25):
we said, Hey, one ridiculous thing about history is people
find the weirdest ways to try to be important or
try to show off.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
It's true. I think it's a product of like, once
you reach a certain level of wealth and you kind
of have all your basic needs met, shelter, food, companionship,
all of the mass stuff, you kind of run out
of stuff to throw your money into, and then you
start to get into the really niche territory of what's
the smallest thing that I could spend a lot of
(02:59):
money on to show off the fact that I am
unconcerned with money.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Right, I don't want to buy a multi million dollar
yacht like all those common rich folk.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
Now I got all my money and eggs.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
I got all my money and eggs. Excellent setup. Later,
after we were hanging with the boys from Daily Zeitgeist
please tune into their show, we realized that no, you,
Max and I had not addressed one of the strangest,
(03:34):
most niche flexes in all of Western history. And you
nailed it perfectly. It's an idea that seems ludicrous on
the surface, but it came to define an era of
Russian monarchy. It launched loads of mysteries. It led to
the creation of one of the world's most bizarre flexes ever,
(03:56):
the Faberge.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
Egg, for sure. And I do just want to say,
per my last comment about what is the smallest thing
that I could dump a bunch of money into? There
is also, of course, the aspect of craftsmanship and the
appreciation of fine things of fine art. So I do
not entirely believe that interest in fine things or artifacts
(04:19):
is inherently some sort of look at mesm right. But
that being said, the idea of the Faberge egg is
more or less or the concept of it. The term
has become a stand in for just like really really
really expensive small stuff. Yeah, yeah, what am I made
a faggs?
Speaker 1 (04:38):
Remember that episode of The Simpsons with bleeding Gums Murphy eggs.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
That's a that's a touching episode. Well, I guess I'm
thinking of the original bleeding Gums Murphy episode, and that
must be the same one. I don't remember the Faberge
eggs detail though.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
Oh here, let's play a clip. Please, Let's see if
we can get away with it.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
And I spent all my money on my fifteen hundred
dollars a day habit. I'd like another Faberge egg please.
I'll tell you when I've had enough.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
Yeah, I mean cook. Let's say, first of all, though, Ben,
that's great, and obviously the joke there would be that,
you know, even a jazz musician, the mind immediately goes to,
like having a fifteen dollars a day drugs habit, But
fifteen hundred bucks for a Faberge egg. I mean, that's
some serious inflation. That episode came out in like the
early nineties, so I think the prices have gone up
(05:33):
quite a bit since then. My friend I found a
video that I checked out in advance of this about
the I think ten individually most expensive and valuable Faberge eggs. Yeah,
which we're gonna get into later. But what the hell
is a Faberge egg?
Speaker 1 (05:49):
Right?
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (05:50):
Okay, spoiler for everybody hungry as we always are. You
cannot eat these eggs.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
You can't.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
Yeah, possibly you could wear them like jewelry, but it
would be inconvenient. They don't really do anything, So how
did they become a thing in the first place?
Speaker 2 (06:09):
Or to a display piece? Right right?
Speaker 1 (06:11):
Objective art, objective fancy. So to understand this, we have
to start with the man himself, Peter Carl Faberget Carl,
to his buckeroos and to his buddies.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
Ah yes, and we of course have to journey to
Karl's native land of Russia, Saint Petersburg, specifically, born there
in May of eighteen forty six, he was part of
a very elite class of artisans, coming from a storied
lineage of these types of very bespoke craftspeople. So his
(06:44):
path was kind of already laid out for him, and
that he was the son of a fine jeweler. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
Yeah, in the context of this era, your path, as
you said, Nole's kind of set out for you. If
you're the son of a blacksmith, you're probably going to
grow up to be a blacksmith. If you're the son
of a cheesemaker, you're gonna grow up to make cheese.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
You say that to me, you son of a cheesemaker.
It's pretty good. Although I do love cheese. Cheese monger. Also,
the manger thing has always been felt inherently insulting to me.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
But why do people only mong cheese and war?
Speaker 2 (07:20):
And fish? Your fishmonger as well. I think the manger
of it all has to do with like the fact
that you ply your trade like outdoors and just like.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
Selling on the street.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
Mongering your your wares. But a warmonger would also be,
like what would you call it, a profiteer, like a
war profiteer, like.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
A murk abersonary. Anyway, Luckily Faberge is not a one
of those war monsters.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
He's a blingmonger.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
He's a bling monger just so. His dad is a
successful jeweler in Saint Petersburg, and so from a young
age his son is training in that same craft, and
his journeys take him to Fan to Dresden, to Paris
to London. At each and every stop he is studying
with the great masters of goldsmith ory a word I'm
(08:09):
kind of styling on and and jewelry in general. It's
the eighteen seventies. Let's fast forward there. Carl inherits his
dad's operation and at this time they are successful jewelers
in Saint Petersburg, but they are not not quite Faberge
(08:30):
as we understand it today. It's still a family business.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
But Carl, having inherited his father's business, has got eyes
on expansion.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. So Carl brings on his brother. I know,
we'll love this name, Agathon. Agathon is that like, do
you know any Agathon?
Speaker 2 (08:52):
I know, I know an Agamemnon.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
No, you don't, I'm just.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
From like that. The history Agathon is incredible though. It's
sounds like someone who would inherently be blessed with some
sort of godlike you know, thunder power. So yeah, in
eighteen eighty two this happens. He also takes on his
own sons and they bring in another outsider, a Swiss
(09:16):
artisan by the name of facois barbe perfect.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
Yeah, and their initial thing from the jump is to
make money. The House of Faberge is a studio, right,
They require custom and they want to pitch to sort
of the one percenters of the world. People of money
and means. Begin to take notice, and the folks in
(09:43):
the know, like we were talking about one percenters increasingly
looking for a way to financially flex. What they all
start saying to each other is this Carl Faberget guy.
He's a brilliant designer. He specializes, yes, in precious things
like gems and jade and gold and silver. And we
(10:05):
know that he is informed. Right, we're Russian nobles, you Max,
me and us listening along at home, and so when
we're talking about how to flex on people, we're saying,
you know, this guy has a lot of design aesthetics
that came from very fancy French places, that came from
(10:26):
very fancy Italian places, and they're not focusing on Novu
reach stuff. The question for a lot of jewelry at
the day was how big is the stone, right, the
biggest diamond, the biggest emerald, the biggest ruby. Faberge is
not concerned with that like you were saying, Faberge is
(10:50):
more invested in craftsmanship, in innovation, in creativity. And this
is where he has a quote that I think really
stood out to both of us. He was, I'm gonna
say it, well, I think he's a little pretentious.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
You mean, you know, but that sometimes when you're the
house of anything, pretentiousness is your stock in trade. You
have to kind of set the tone, you know, of
the era and sort of believe your own hype to
a certain degree, which he absolutely was doing.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
Oh yeah, yeah. And here's a great example. This is
a direct quote from Carl who later in life said,
expensive things interest me little if the value is millions,
so many diamonds of pearls. Like to him, it wasn't
the street value of the materials. Who was working with
(11:41):
It was, as you said, the esthetic, the concept, the ideology.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
And that is really forward thinking because so many art
objects and or fashion iconic kind of fashion pieces. They're
not expensive because they're made of you know, magical stones.
They're expensive because of the brand. They're expensive because of
the design, and they're expensive because of this like sort
of built in scarcity.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
Yeah, one hundred percent check out. Also with no disrespect
the legendary success of brands like Supreme.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
Which I'm a fan of. Again, I fully a bunch
of their stuff. I dig Supreme hats, and I got
a few of their shirts and a few like they
did a run of things with like a collaboration with
one of my favorite musical artists, Aphex Twin, and I
got a few of those. But there is something inherently
interesting and sort of grabby about this idea of once
we do this drop, there's not going to be any
(12:36):
more like this, right right exactly, and that's great foreshadowing.
The reputation, or the street rep of Faberge continues to grow.
In eighteen eighty one, over in Russia, his peers in
the Jewelry Game appoint him as a quote master of
the Second Guild. This is clutch af because it means
(12:59):
that he is no longer considered a proletariat hoy paloy craftsman. Instead,
he is officially recognized as a big deal merchant and retailer.
Everybody says, Okay, this guy knows his stuff. So if
Karl makes something and Carl.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
Says it's good to go boom, it does not need
to be inspected. Good to go. It was Cortor Gower
was Yoda voice, like he's becoming the Yoda of jewelry.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
I don't know if that lands any lands. How are
you feeling about the Spaceball's sequel. I'm excited, I'm bullish.
I haven't I haven't checked it out. You know, it's
supposed to be great. Speaking of lega sequels, the New
Naked Gun movie is supposed to be hilarious.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
That's what I heard.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
Very excited to see it. Good director too, A Kiva Schaeffer,
Lomon Island dude, yep, for sure, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
Yeah, yeah. So when Carl Screw goes to the Pan
Russian Exhibition in eighteen eighty two, you know of like
the Osako World Expo or the World Fair kind of thing,
his crew wins gold medal for their exhibit, for their
flex and this is when Russian nobility gets super tuned in.
(14:15):
This guy, Carl Faberge, is a superstar. Magazines from the
time give us a sense of just how popular he becomes.
One of their articles speaks to his revolutionary design philosophy
and his status with the royal family. This is a
quote from a magazine called Neva. Well.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
This is also a time when I'm sorry none to
jump on the quote, which we'll get to in two seconds.
But this was a time where Russia. We think of
Russia as so like isolationists and kind of its own
thing and kind of cut off from the rest of
the world in a lot of ways. But wouldn't you say, ben,
at this time, it's much more of a cultural melting
pot and has a much bigger influence on culture outside
(14:55):
of its boundaries.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
I would say, so, yeah, cool, just check.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
In and just seemed like that was something worth mentioning. This,
like the Byzantine architecture and things of this era that
definitely began to have impact outside of Russia. And this
is the case with this type of craftsmanship as well,
and making a name for himself the Faberget House outside
of just Russian nobility. So mister Faberge opens a new
(15:21):
era in the art of jewelry. And this is not
just in Russia, this is just at large. Her majesty
honored Faberge by buying a pair of cuff links with
images of cicadas, which, according to ancient Greek belief, bring luck.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
Yeah, this comes to us from an excellent source. Faberget's Eggs,
One Man's Masterpiece and the End of an Empire by
Tony faber And you know, folks, at this point, as
history is always proven, royal attention can be extremely good
or extremely bad, and there's little in between. Thankfully, nol
(16:04):
not to make this about us, but our encounters with
various royalty have been extremely good.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
Yeah, we were ones walked in on by some royalty
and we apparently we didn't stand up, and we thought
we maybe should have after the fact, but apparently that
wasn't worth any strikes against us. So we got we
got some contacts, We have some hit us up offline
and we'll talk.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
Oh jeez, how do we make it out of that one? Anyway,
At this point, our buddy Carl is riding high. He's
the catbird seat. He's doing very well, but he's far
from the only game in town. If you look at
Russian court records from eighteen eighty three, you'll see that
the royal family has at least five different jewelry companies
(16:54):
working for the Russian Royal court. Our buddy Faberge is
making only the six four hundred roubles with them in
eighteen eighty three. To be clear, for the vast majority
of people living in Tsarist Russia at the time, six
four hundred rubles is a fortune. But for him, he
(17:19):
is making less than all of the other jewelers employed
by the royal family.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
He is very because he's spending so much on materials
and he just takes it so much. He takes it
so seriously and cares about the quality.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
It's kind of because he's the new guy in tech.
House of Faberge is like a pilot program for these folks.
He's by far the lowest of the high which is
a good thing, you know. And arguably Karl probably had
these conversations with his colleagues. Arguably being directly connected with
(17:54):
the royal family of Russia is more valuable than the money,
right it goes beyond the money. Now you have the
ear of the king. And this is what happens. Okay.
So it's after this exposition everybody's impressed. Royal family tunes in.
They decide not to execute Karl, which they could always
do because they're monarchs. This guy, Alexander the Third, you
(18:19):
may have heard of him. It's eighteen eighty five, and
he goes up to our buddy Carl and he has
a pitch that sounds lucrative, right if you're Carl Faberge,
and to us it sounds patently ridiculous. He says, look
a hell, wife, I'm not going to do the voice anymore.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
Okay, you've done enough. We've done enough on that one.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
And he wants to make a special present for his wife,
what's her name.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
I'm gonna we work this out off the air a
little bit. So let's do the best combination of the
two of us together, we make one complete human being.
Maria Fyodorovna.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
Oh, nailed it.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
And his head had a little bit of stink on it.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
You put some steak on it. I like that fuel little.
So we got to keep in mind that the Royal
family at this point they run the show, right, one
of the most important empires in the world. They are
already a wash with your typical gems and bobbles. They
got the rings, they got the necklaces, the abulets, the bracelets,
(19:23):
et cetera. So Alex doesn't want that. He doesn't want
a special necklace or ring or bracelet. He wants something he.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
Wasn't a babble.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
He wants an egg.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
Yep, exactly. He wants a very very bespoke egg, not
just any egg, not the kind you'd make a delightful
omelet out of, not the kind that would birth a tiny,
terrifying bird. Instead, he worked closely with Carl Studio, advising
throughout the process of creating this art object that he
(19:58):
had in mind. Alex and the team decided they would
do the world's fanciest spin on an Easter egg. And
isn't the Easter Easter is huge in Russia?
Speaker 1 (20:09):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, this doesn't.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
There's a lot of egg imagery in Russian architecture and art.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
Absolutely, It's a long standing Russian Orthodox tradition at this
point to exchange decorated eggs for Easter. So this was
essentially an insanely opulent escalation of that traditional practice, and
they ended up with something called the hen Egg. It's
a little doodad, but it's extremely impressive from a technical perspective,
(20:41):
and it follows on Faberget's existing design philosophy. You know,
the materials you use are less important than the idea
you convey.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
But also like, let's use fancy materials, but also let's like,
let's use fancy materials.
Speaker 1 (20:59):
So Maria gets this gift and when she let's go
to the moment when she receives it, and here's what
she's looking at. She sees a plain white enamel shell.
My tennessee came out, but we'll keep it a plain
white enamel shell. And that's representative of the egg. But
(21:20):
holy smokes, hang on a tick. You can open the egg,
and when Maria opens it, she finds something else.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
As we know, the Russians are also big fans of
nesting stuff, so this story comes into play here as well.
The matros Cardozo. Yes, she opens that up and within
it is another smaller egg. Yeah, and then she's that out. Yeah,
I believe there's a tiny little pillow inside the egg
made of sueded material.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
Yeah, stippled gold. And upon this rest an intricately carved
tiny gold hid And this is impressive. But get this,
but wait, folks, there more as Billy Amazed was wont
to say, the hen itself also opens. And when you
open the hen, there's a miniature replica of the Russian
(22:10):
crown and it is drowning in drip. It's encrusted with diamonds,
it's got rubies. The Russian crown holds a small ruby pendant.
This is beyond impressive. Maria loves it, Alex gets massive
hobby points. The entire Royal court is going bananas and
nuts with approval. This was going to be a one off,
(22:34):
like a fancy I don't know.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
But how to trends in those days get created, Ben,
it's when royals are stoked about something.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
Probably you're probably right, I.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
Too must have one.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
Oh yes, exactly, And as you said, limited supply, right,
we don't know if Alex was buying this as an
apology to his wife for something possible. Anyway, the Russian
royal family they say this is not a one off
for us like you were saying, Noel, They're going, I
do must have one. They start routinely commissioning these eggs
(23:07):
from Carl, and each egg is growing more and more
elaborate with each iteration. Well, and also, Ben, I mean
I walk back what I said slightly. There's definitely within
the royal family a keeping up with the Joneses thing.
But part of the whole story of Faberge and kind
of what it represents is that there's not an unlimited supply,
(23:27):
and that it's created in the style of or by
hand by this very specific, you know, group of craftsmen.
So the royal family does start commissioning those on the regular,
making it a family tradition. After Alexander passed away in
eighteen ninety four, his son, Nicholas the Second continues on
with the tradition, commissioning further pieces, further elaborations of these designs,
(23:51):
giving one each to his mother and to his wife Alexandria.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
And I mean these are we're talking, you know, the
level of bespokenness in these creations. An entire year to
create one, yes.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
Yeah, and Faberge. Faberge is given this huge level of autonomy.
He and his crew don't have to check in with
the royal family when they make these eggs. All they
have to do is guarantee that each egg must contain
some kind of surprise and credit. We're due are buddy Carl,
(24:29):
who is a visionary. He is designing these like he's
writing or drawing pictures of what he thinks they should
look like, and he's kind of project managing the work,
but he is not actually in the trenches making the eggs.
It's too much work for one guy.
Speaker 2 (24:49):
That's the case with a lot of big process oriented
artists like the glass artist Shahuli I think is his name,
who does these incredible stained glass arrays. You can go
to his a museum or at the very least an
exhibit in Seattle. But there's a film about him, and
he is the visionary behind these works and these installations.
But he's got a team of workers and crafts people
(25:12):
that are you know, doing his bidding. It's what allows
him to scale those works because they're huge. They're all
these massively intricate combinations of stained glass kind of pieces,
three three dimensional black I don't.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
Know, I don't know I feel about that because it
reminds me of the painter Thomas Kincaid or some of
the airport novelists, like, oh, who's that guy who? It
doesn't matter, but.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
Well, I hear you been on certain things. I definitely agree.
But let's also think about like film, you know, production,
Like you've got a filmmaker, a quote unquote director or whatever,
who's who's job it is to guide the vision and
direct the work of hundreds dozens, if not hundreds of
other very specific crafts people, and yet it is the
(25:58):
director that ultimately kind of is the most remembered name
when it comes to one of those projects. So with
something like this, with this level of intricacy and oversight,
I think I'm on board with giving him the props
that he deserves.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
I hear you. That's a really good point. Yeah, because
you know, if you're the even if you were Stanley
Kubrick or something, you can't also be in charge of
the craft table. Rights takes a village, and the House
of Faberget at this point is a village. There are
tons of people evolved in crafting these eggs. Two of
(26:33):
the most prominent artisans are Mikhale Perkin and Heinrich Wigstrom.
These eggs, to your earlier excellent point about size, they
are little do dads, right, They're little chotchkes. I love
the word chachkes. They're three to six inches tall, not
counting their equally elaborate bases. All in all, there are
(26:57):
fifty of what we call Imperial egg created from eighteen
eighty five, the first one, the head egg, all the
way up to nineteen seventeen. There's a brief pause in
commissions from nineteen oh four to nineteen oh five. That's
due to the Russo Japanese War, which we did a
whole episode on maybe more than one.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
Actually, yes, do go back and check that one out.
So Carl he kind of saw that he had it
pretty good in terms of like being not the only
game in town in terms of elaborate, you know, design
of bespoke jewelry pieces. But he had created a brand
at this point, he had created a thing that it
(27:39):
would almost be in poor form for anyone else to
attempt at this point, right, yeah, yeah, like it's his thing,
Like I mean, like they're going directly to him. You
got to imagine though, that there were imitators, right.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
Yeah, faux Berge, Yeah, that's very great. We gotta do it.
So Faberge was to your point, commissioned to make non
imperial eggs, but these are all still very much for
the one percenters of the time, people like the Duchess
of Marlborough or the Rothschild family, the yusobrovs. Faberge was
(28:13):
commissioned to make a couple of eggs for a guy
named Alexander Kelch. He even made one for the nephew
of an absolute dynamite guy named Alfred Nobel.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
Yep, the guy I remembered mainly for the Peace Prize
that bears his name, but also, yeah, definitely the dude
that invented like the least peaceful thing that ever could
be brought into existence, dynamite.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
Well, yeah, I wonder if we'll ever get in trouble
for describing Al as a dynamite guy.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
No, I don't think so.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
It's accurate. We know that there have been as many
of six nine of these Faberge eggs created during the
era of Czarist Russia. Sixty one survive. We won't list
all the fifty Imperial eggs, but you do need to
(29:12):
know they are definitely the top tier, or as we
say in video games, the s tier of the bunch.
We should get into some of this nool because Alex,
our buddy Alex or Alexi if you prefer, and his
son Nikolay, the Nikolay commissioned most of the Imperial eggs Alex.
(29:35):
Alex signed on for ten Nick signed on for forty
or two more that were designed but never really fully
completed because they came at the end of that era.
Right now, the fifty completed eggs, there are forty four
that are known to exist in some form, either complete
(29:55):
or partial, which makes us wonder what happened man.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
So some of these are lost to history, right.
Speaker 1 (30:03):
Yeah, what happened to your eggs? Doc?
Speaker 2 (30:05):
And I do want to get into this. Maybe we'll
save it a little bit of I think everyone listening
probably wants a little bit of a price list.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
Oh yeah, yeah, well let's do it. Now. Hit us
with some of your favorites, because these are all unique.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
We do have a list of some of the most
expensive Faberge eggs from that Imperial well not all of
which are from the Imperial run, but one that definitely is,
which is called the Third Imperial Easter from eighteen eighty seven.
And if we were going to describe this one, it
would be a golden egg kind of clock piece with
(30:40):
like lions feet and it looks to me like the
there's a diamond pendant right in the middle and all
of this gold filigree and you know kind of what's
the word scroll work kind of you know, and beveled
egg in this rested in resting in this kind of
a cradle with all of that metal work that I
was talking about, and it hinges the top hinges like
(31:02):
an Easter egg, well plastic Easter egg. But as you
do that, there's moving pieces, moving parts that raise up
a beautifully machined and very elegant looking I sound like
a mon antique throat show clock.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
I love it.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
And a lot of these had what I think we
didn't mention. We hadn't really described the look of too
many of these. A lot of these did have really
cool ornate kind of moving parts. Yeah, points of articulation
is exactly how you put it in. Like, for example,
one that I saw you open the top and all
of a sudden like this like fan of little framed portraits,
(31:38):
kind of like fans out really really cool. So this
one the third Imperial Easter egg, given by Alexander, the
third Emperor and autocrat of all the Russias. He is
referred to to Empress Maria Fyodorovna. That's the one original
one that we talked about for Easter eighteen eighty seven.
I love this description on wartski dot to think is
(32:00):
like an appraisal type site. The jeweled and rigid yellow
gold egg rests on its original tripod pedestal with chased
lion paw feet and encircled by colored gold garlands suspended
from cabochan blue sapphires, topped with rose diamond set bows
one's missing. It contains a surprise of a lady's watch
(32:23):
by Vacheron Constantine with a too sorry, too much French
on that one, with a white enamel dial and open
work diamond set gold hands. The watch has been taken
from its case to be mounted in the egg and
is hinged, allowing it to stand upright hazarding a guess here, y'all,
what do you think how much for the third Imperial Easter?
Speaker 1 (32:46):
The for the one from eighteen eighty shoes?
Speaker 3 (32:48):
Uh?
Speaker 2 (32:48):
Huh? You know that, I know, I know that you
probably know, Max, if you were to hazard a guess
one hundred and eighteen thousand pounds thirteen three million dollars,
I might be close. I don't know how what a
pound conversion is, and for a penny in for a pound,
let's start doing that.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
And that's an excellent guess.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
Max, dude. That's the thing man, with some of the
stuff like this, based on where we exist, if outside
of our research, just in the world, we have no
frame of reference for an object worth thirty three million
dollars thirty three millions million dollars. That's right, I like
the past ten's there.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
Yeah, this is so this shows us just how how
rarefied the air is in this situation. And one thing
we have to we have to point out for all
our fellow astute, ridiculous historians, is that you will have
clocked a specific year when the original House of Faberget
(33:52):
stopped cranking out these eggs. It's nineteen seventeen. Because you see, folks,
the entire time the House of Faberget is making nice
with the Russian royal family, making these objects of fancy
for them. There's a lot of trouble brewing in the
rest of the empire. The public is beat me here, Max,
(34:14):
fucking starving.
Speaker 2 (34:15):
Yeah, we did all ben, We did not mention that
context whatsoever. I mean this is, you know, a absolutely
despicably gross flex and you know, when it comes to
what else is going on under their you know, their oversight.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
Right or lack. They're black thereof people people are saying,
you know, these royals are cartoonishly corrupt, the government's inefficient.
Let's also consider if it's nineteen seventeen. World War One
has absolutely obliterated the economy. Morale is in the toilet.
(34:55):
People are again starving like wishing they could bread, while
the royals are admiring they're silly, expensive inedible eggs. The
people revolt, the Imperial government is overthrown. No more eggs
for you, jerks, cry the peasants. Fun fact about the
Russian Revolution not really a fun fact. Russian Revolution of
(35:19):
nineteen seventeen was two revolutions in the very same year.
One in February the overthrow, another in October when Lennen
and the Bolshevik boys take over and create the Soviet Union.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
Yeah yeah, check out the animated film Ani Station I tell.
Speaker 1 (35:35):
You all, yeah right as well.
Speaker 2 (35:37):
Only died in nineteen eighteen. She was the youngest daughter
of Czar Nicholas the Second, who was the last sovereign
of Imperial Russia.
Speaker 1 (35:47):
And in the wake of this chaos, the Faberge Workshop
in Saint Petersburg, like so many other private industries, is
nationalized under the red flag of communism. Whatever, we'll keep
it for sure.
Speaker 2 (36:04):
No, no, and I mean unless you'd be like, okay, come
on back to the numbers, give us more expensive things,
just a couple more like eighteen ninety seven, ten years
later from the Third Imperial Easter, we have the Imperial Coordination,
which has got like a carriage kind of design that
one's valued at eighteen million, but outside the Rothschild clock,
which is almost as valuable as the original Third Imperial
(36:26):
Easter made for the Rothschild family in nineteen oh two
twenty five point one million. But Ben, isn't there sort
of a modern carrying on of the Faberge name? Don't
they like make stuff now? Because I heard something about
a Game of Thrones Faberge.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
Egg it is correct, you are, You're absolutely correct. The
Faberge Egg brand, or the House of Faberget brand, i
should say, has been reconstituted.
Speaker 2 (36:55):
We know that there are.
Speaker 1 (36:59):
There things is recently as twenty twenty three, the Faberge
House of Faberget, not Carl. They debuted the Journey and
Jewels on a luxury cruise ship and there so they're
still keeping the hope alive in the modern day, despite
(37:20):
the fact that you know, Carl is a sad point.
Carl unfortunately passes away only three years after the Russian Revolution.
He and his family have to skip town obviously they
will have been murdered, and he passes away in nineteen
twenty in Switzerland when he's seventy four years old. We
(37:45):
also know that amid all this pandemonium, some of the
eggs disappeared, some were destroyed properly, but in our opinion,
it's way more likely that a lot of these were away, Yeah,
squirreled away and hidden in the nest of a private collector.
Speaker 3 (38:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:05):
Speaking of exactly been good with the egg the egg
metaphors of the egg references. The one that I think
is the most beautiful and interesting sounding that we talked
about today was the hen with sapphire pendant, which was
the one with the little pillow and the egg within
the egg that is among the missing Faberge eggs. And
if you want to find out a little bit more detail,
(38:27):
check out history Hits article the Mystery of the Missing
Faberge Imperial Easter Eggs. And I just want to add
and then I'm done. It does appear that the House
of faberget Stock has fallen just to touch, even in
their attempt at a rebrand here because that Game of
Thrones egg that I mentioned that is modeled after one
of the dragon eggs in the popular Fantasy TV series
(38:48):
only two point two mil only two pshaw, tut tut.
This is one of the weirdest parts of this entire tale. Folks,
right now, as Noel Max and yours truly are recording
this and as you have joined us to hang out
wherever you are in this wide world, someone listening to
(39:12):
this episode may indeed possess one of these missing eggs.
It is not impossible that one of our fellow ridiculous
historians may be just sort of fitling with one of
these missing eggs while they're listening to the show. And
if you happen to make it a Saint Petersburg, Ben,
I think this is still a thing. Isn't there a
(39:33):
Faberge museum where you can check out some of the
ones that are still around.
Speaker 1 (39:37):
Yes, and we are in active conversations about whether we
can make it to Russia. Oh jeez, it's a different
that's a different story. Right now. What you'll notice, folks,
is you'll see numbers for the missing eggs reported as
anywhere between like eight to seven to six. And the
(40:00):
reason that number is changeable is because there is still
hope to find these weirdo missing eggs. Mentioned Hedden with
sapphire pendant. There's Cherub with Chario Necessarre, There's Royal Danish,
there's Alexander third commemorative there's one called wave anyway.
Speaker 2 (40:19):
Like the color of like a like a like a
reddish hue.
Speaker 1 (40:24):
I think you're correct on that one. Man. Here's here's
the thing. This is maybe where we end it. People
are still finding these missing eggs. Back in twenty fifteen,
the third Imperial Easter Egg was discovered by a guy
who had been planning to melt it down for scrap.
It's a great story. He essentially he ended up googling
(40:47):
the value of metal because he got a they call
it a jumble sale, but like an estate sale.
Speaker 2 (40:56):
I like jumblestale. They say that more like in the
maybe the Northeast and the.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
Yeah yeah, Midwest exactly. So he said, maybe I can
make five hundred dollars by selling this gold egg for scrap.
And then he figured out it was one of the
famous missing Faberge eggs, which means it's possible that one
(41:21):
day these eggs might emerge into the public eye. Again
this is where okay, So here's where we end it.
Noel Max, if you ran across a Faberge egg in
the wild, right like at a junk sale, add an
estate sale, what would you do?
Speaker 2 (41:41):
I will say, I'm not I would think I would
know enough at this point to recognize it. But there
is an episode of Pond Stars, I think where a
woman asks for like one thousand dollars for what she
describes as an ugly piece of jewelry because she doesn't
really understand what it is, and they immediately clock it
as a Faberge egg and offer fifteen k for him.
(42:04):
I would eat it, You would eat it, you would
choke on it. Max, little bites, little bite, that's true.
Speaker 3 (42:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (42:14):
Yeah, noticed how they like totally phased out the original
kinder egg designs in America because Americans are too supple.
Speaker 1 (42:20):
Thing.
Speaker 2 (42:21):
Yeah, it's a legal thing. I think the real ones
with the tiny chokable parts inside. Now you just get
a little cookie with some icing.
Speaker 1 (42:28):
I like the little action figures exactly. It's about the intricacy,
the points of articulation and and to Max's point there,
you know, uh, there's a guy who managed to eat
an entire airplane by taking little bites out of time.
We'll get to that story in the future. In the meantime,
we cannot thank you enough for tuning in and joining
(42:51):
us for another exploration of ridiculous history. So despite not
being able to thank you enough. We do want to
say thank you. We also want to thank our super
producer mister Max Williams his biological brother Alex Williams currently
on Adventures, who recorded this sick bop. You know who
(43:11):
would dude, you know who would buy a Faberge egg
and be really weird about it in the office. Jonathan
Strict Strict, he covered it, He'd hoard it like.
Speaker 2 (43:24):
Can you just imagine him? Yeah, because we have much
more like Gollum. Just yeah, cover his precious fabric Gollumn
accent like British and just missed both accents by a
wide mile.
Speaker 1 (43:37):
Y'all, be like that weird kid at Show and Tell
where he has a cool egg that has a lot
of uh, a lot of bells and whistles to it,
and then he would want us to see that he
has it, and he wouldn't let us play with it.
Speaker 2 (43:51):
Ah, what a jerk share with the class. No right,
my own now, I will say, y'all, though I don't
I'm not like a blinkster or anything like that. I
don't have like rings on every finger like some kind
of crazy neck piece. But as I've gotten a little older,
I do like just a simple gold chain or shit,
(44:12):
you've been wearing one. I've been wearing I just it's
not about the flex, it's just about I think it
just you get to a certain point where it's like,
I do want to represent maybe that I'm a quote
unquote adult. You could like afford a gold chain, but
not necessarily an iced out, you know, death Row Records logo.
Speaker 1 (44:31):
I'm going to send you a great song by a
group called Brockhampton.
Speaker 2 (44:35):
Brockhampton, Yeah about gold chains.
Speaker 1 (44:37):
Also big thanks to big thanks to Rachel Big Spinach Lance,
the world authority on underwater explosions. Big thanks to A. J.
Bahama's Jacobs, Big thanks to Eaves, Jeff Go. Chris rossiotis
here in spirit and of course the rudeest of dudes
at Ridiculous Crime and No big thanks to a follow Ah.
Speaker 2 (44:59):
Also you Apologizer. Thank you very much, you guys. We'll
see you next time. Folks. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous Histories, a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to the show,
(00:27):
fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much for
tuning in. Let's hear it for one of the fanciest
boys in podcasting, our super producer, mister Max Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
I feel like I should go put a checket on him,
and also I Max, Yeah you do MAXX yeah, bleeping
all that. I don't know, Ben. Kind of my feelings
are a little hurd. I'm not gonna lie because I
am the one podcasting holding a tiny Peterbread hypoelogenic dog
named Apollo, So I'm feeling pretty fancy today too.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
Apollo absolute legend. One of our favorite audience members as
well as you, specifically you, if you are listening to this,
that's none other than mister Noel Brown. I am several people,
but they called me Ben.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
Here multitudes, there's no question about that.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Oh thanks man.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
And that you're you're you know you have multiple personality Disorderah,
I'm diagnosed. I'm diagnosed. No it's not true. Well it's
not true at all. You have you leave many lives
and wear many hats.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
Sir, sir, immediate response without being defensive is why call
it a disorder exactly?
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Why why be inherently negative about it from the start?
You know it's it's it's just a how about list
a syndrome? Okay, all right, negative too. I'm not gonna
let so how about this?
Speaker 1 (01:51):
How about instead we pull up one of the old
personas for voiceover, which would go something like previously on
Ridiculous History.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Is that Max powers astronaut with a secret.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Oh my gosh, you remember, Thank you for so much man.
All right, so this episode is a spiritual successor to
a series you and I did that we quite enjoy.
With our pals Jack and Miles on Ridiculous Historical Flexes,
we were hanging out with our friends out west and
(02:25):
we said, Hey, one ridiculous thing about history is people
find the weirdest ways to try to be important or
try to show off.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
It's true. I think it's a product of like, once
you reach a certain level of wealth and you kind
of have all your basic needs met, shelter, food, companionship,
all of the mass stuff, you kind of run out
of stuff to throw your money into, and then you
start to get into the really niche territory of what's
the smallest thing that I could spend a lot of
(02:59):
money on to show off the fact that I am
unconcerned with money.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Right, I don't want to buy a multi million dollar
yacht like all those common rich folk.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
Now I got all my money and eggs.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
I got all my money and eggs. Excellent setup. Later,
after we were hanging with the boys from Daily Zeitgeist
please tune into their show, we realized that no, you,
Max and I had not addressed one of the strangest,
(03:34):
most niche flexes in all of Western history. And you
nailed it perfectly. It's an idea that seems ludicrous on
the surface, but it came to define an era of
Russian monarchy. It launched loads of mysteries. It led to
the creation of one of the world's most bizarre flexes ever,
(03:56):
the Faberge.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
Egg, for sure. And I do just want to say,
per my last comment about what is the smallest thing
that I could dump a bunch of money into? There
is also, of course, the aspect of craftsmanship and the
appreciation of fine things of fine art. So I do
not entirely believe that interest in fine things or artifacts
(04:19):
is inherently some sort of look at mesm right. But
that being said, the idea of the Faberge egg is
more or less or the concept of it. The term
has become a stand in for just like really really
really expensive small stuff. Yeah, yeah, what am I made
a faggs?
Speaker 1 (04:38):
Remember that episode of The Simpsons with bleeding Gums Murphy eggs.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
That's a that's a touching episode. Well, I guess I'm
thinking of the original bleeding Gums Murphy episode, and that
must be the same one. I don't remember the Faberge
eggs detail though.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
Oh here, let's play a clip. Please, Let's see if
we can get away with it.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
And I spent all my money on my fifteen hundred
dollars a day habit. I'd like another Faberge egg please.
I'll tell you when I've had enough.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
Yeah, I mean cook. Let's say, first of all, though, Ben,
that's great, and obviously the joke there would be that,
you know, even a jazz musician, the mind immediately goes to,
like having a fifteen dollars a day drugs habit, But
fifteen hundred bucks for a Faberge egg. I mean, that's
some serious inflation. That episode came out in like the
early nineties, so I think the prices have gone up
(05:33):
quite a bit since then. My friend I found a
video that I checked out in advance of this about
the I think ten individually most expensive and valuable Faberge eggs. Yeah,
which we're gonna get into later. But what the hell
is a Faberge egg?
Speaker 1 (05:49):
Right?
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (05:50):
Okay, spoiler for everybody hungry as we always are. You
cannot eat these eggs.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
You can't.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
Yeah, possibly you could wear them like jewelry, but it
would be inconvenient. They don't really do anything, So how
did they become a thing in the first place?
Speaker 2 (06:09):
Or to a display piece? Right right?
Speaker 1 (06:11):
Objective art, objective fancy. So to understand this, we have
to start with the man himself, Peter Carl Faberget Carl,
to his buckeroos and to his buddies.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
Ah yes, and we of course have to journey to
Karl's native land of Russia, Saint Petersburg, specifically, born there
in May of eighteen forty six, he was part of
a very elite class of artisans, coming from a storied
lineage of these types of very bespoke craftspeople. So his
(06:44):
path was kind of already laid out for him, and
that he was the son of a fine jeweler. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
Yeah, in the context of this era, your path, as
you said, Nole's kind of set out for you. If
you're the son of a blacksmith, you're probably going to
grow up to be a blacksmith. If you're the son
of a cheesemaker, you're gonna grow up to make cheese.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
You say that to me, you son of a cheesemaker.
It's pretty good. Although I do love cheese. Cheese monger. Also,
the manger thing has always been felt inherently insulting to me.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
But why do people only mong cheese and war?
Speaker 2 (07:20):
And fish? Your fishmonger as well. I think the manger
of it all has to do with like the fact
that you ply your trade like outdoors and just like.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
Selling on the street.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
Mongering your your wares. But a warmonger would also be,
like what would you call it, a profiteer, like a
war profiteer, like.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
A murk abersonary. Anyway, Luckily Faberge is not a one
of those war monsters.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
He's a blingmonger.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
He's a bling monger just so. His dad is a
successful jeweler in Saint Petersburg, and so from a young
age his son is training in that same craft, and
his journeys take him to Fan to Dresden, to Paris
to London. At each and every stop he is studying
with the great masters of goldsmith ory a word I'm
(08:09):
kind of styling on and and jewelry in general. It's
the eighteen seventies. Let's fast forward there. Carl inherits his
dad's operation and at this time they are successful jewelers
in Saint Petersburg, but they are not not quite Faberge
(08:30):
as we understand it today. It's still a family business.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
But Carl, having inherited his father's business, has got eyes
on expansion.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. So Carl brings on his brother. I know,
we'll love this name, Agathon. Agathon is that like, do
you know any Agathon?
Speaker 2 (08:52):
I know, I know an Agamemnon.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
No, you don't, I'm just.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
From like that. The history Agathon is incredible though. It's
sounds like someone who would inherently be blessed with some
sort of godlike you know, thunder power. So yeah, in
eighteen eighty two this happens. He also takes on his
own sons and they bring in another outsider, a Swiss
(09:16):
artisan by the name of facois barbe perfect.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
Yeah, and their initial thing from the jump is to
make money. The House of Faberge is a studio, right,
They require custom and they want to pitch to sort
of the one percenters of the world. People of money
and means. Begin to take notice, and the folks in
(09:43):
the know, like we were talking about one percenters increasingly
looking for a way to financially flex. What they all
start saying to each other is this Carl Faberget guy.
He's a brilliant designer. He specializes, yes, in precious things
like gems and jade and gold and silver. And we
(10:05):
know that he is informed. Right, we're Russian nobles, you Max,
me and us listening along at home, and so when
we're talking about how to flex on people, we're saying,
you know, this guy has a lot of design aesthetics
that came from very fancy French places, that came from
(10:26):
very fancy Italian places, and they're not focusing on Novu
reach stuff. The question for a lot of jewelry at
the day was how big is the stone, right, the
biggest diamond, the biggest emerald, the biggest ruby. Faberge is
not concerned with that like you were saying, Faberge is
(10:50):
more invested in craftsmanship, in innovation, in creativity. And this
is where he has a quote that I think really
stood out to both of us. He was, I'm gonna
say it, well, I think he's a little pretentious.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
You mean, you know, but that sometimes when you're the
house of anything, pretentiousness is your stock in trade. You
have to kind of set the tone, you know, of
the era and sort of believe your own hype to
a certain degree, which he absolutely was doing.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
Oh yeah, yeah. And here's a great example. This is
a direct quote from Carl who later in life said,
expensive things interest me little if the value is millions,
so many diamonds of pearls. Like to him, it wasn't
the street value of the materials. Who was working with
(11:41):
It was, as you said, the esthetic, the concept, the ideology.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
And that is really forward thinking because so many art
objects and or fashion iconic kind of fashion pieces. They're
not expensive because they're made of you know, magical stones.
They're expensive because of the brand. They're expensive because of
the design, and they're expensive because of this like sort
of built in scarcity.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
Yeah, one hundred percent check out. Also with no disrespect
the legendary success of brands like Supreme.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
Which I'm a fan of. Again, I fully a bunch
of their stuff. I dig Supreme hats, and I got
a few of their shirts and a few like they
did a run of things with like a collaboration with
one of my favorite musical artists, Aphex Twin, and I
got a few of those. But there is something inherently
interesting and sort of grabby about this idea of once
we do this drop, there's not going to be any
(12:36):
more like this, right right exactly, and that's great foreshadowing.
The reputation, or the street rep of Faberge continues to grow.
In eighteen eighty one, over in Russia, his peers in
the Jewelry Game appoint him as a quote master of
the Second Guild. This is clutch af because it means
(12:59):
that he is no longer considered a proletariat hoy paloy craftsman. Instead,
he is officially recognized as a big deal merchant and retailer.
Everybody says, Okay, this guy knows his stuff. So if
Karl makes something and Carl.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
Says it's good to go boom, it does not need
to be inspected. Good to go. It was Cortor Gower
was Yoda voice, like he's becoming the Yoda of jewelry.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
I don't know if that lands any lands. How are
you feeling about the Spaceball's sequel. I'm excited, I'm bullish.
I haven't I haven't checked it out. You know, it's
supposed to be great. Speaking of lega sequels, the New
Naked Gun movie is supposed to be hilarious.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
That's what I heard.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
Very excited to see it. Good director too, A Kiva Schaeffer,
Lomon Island dude, yep, for sure, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
Yeah, yeah. So when Carl Screw goes to the Pan
Russian Exhibition in eighteen eighty two, you know of like
the Osako World Expo or the World Fair kind of thing,
his crew wins gold medal for their exhibit, for their
flex and this is when Russian nobility gets super tuned in.
(14:15):
This guy, Carl Faberge, is a superstar. Magazines from the
time give us a sense of just how popular he becomes.
One of their articles speaks to his revolutionary design philosophy
and his status with the royal family. This is a
quote from a magazine called Neva. Well.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
This is also a time when I'm sorry none to
jump on the quote, which we'll get to in two seconds.
But this was a time where Russia. We think of
Russia as so like isolationists and kind of its own
thing and kind of cut off from the rest of
the world in a lot of ways. But wouldn't you say, ben,
at this time, it's much more of a cultural melting
pot and has a much bigger influence on culture outside
(14:55):
of its boundaries.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
I would say, so, yeah, cool, just check.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
In and just seemed like that was something worth mentioning. This,
like the Byzantine architecture and things of this era that
definitely began to have impact outside of Russia. And this
is the case with this type of craftsmanship as well,
and making a name for himself the Faberget House outside
of just Russian nobility. So mister Faberge opens a new
(15:21):
era in the art of jewelry. And this is not
just in Russia, this is just at large. Her majesty
honored Faberge by buying a pair of cuff links with
images of cicadas, which, according to ancient Greek belief, bring luck.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
Yeah, this comes to us from an excellent source. Faberget's Eggs,
One Man's Masterpiece and the End of an Empire by
Tony faber And you know, folks, at this point, as
history is always proven, royal attention can be extremely good
or extremely bad, and there's little in between. Thankfully, nol
(16:04):
not to make this about us, but our encounters with
various royalty have been extremely good.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
Yeah, we were ones walked in on by some royalty
and we apparently we didn't stand up, and we thought
we maybe should have after the fact, but apparently that
wasn't worth any strikes against us. So we got we
got some contacts, We have some hit us up offline
and we'll talk.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
Oh jeez, how do we make it out of that one? Anyway,
At this point, our buddy Carl is riding high. He's
the catbird seat. He's doing very well, but he's far
from the only game in town. If you look at
Russian court records from eighteen eighty three, you'll see that
the royal family has at least five different jewelry companies
(16:54):
working for the Russian Royal court. Our buddy Faberge is
making only the six four hundred roubles with them in
eighteen eighty three. To be clear, for the vast majority
of people living in Tsarist Russia at the time, six
four hundred rubles is a fortune. But for him, he
(17:19):
is making less than all of the other jewelers employed
by the royal family.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
He is very because he's spending so much on materials
and he just takes it so much. He takes it
so seriously and cares about the quality.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
It's kind of because he's the new guy in tech.
House of Faberge is like a pilot program for these folks.
He's by far the lowest of the high which is
a good thing, you know. And arguably Karl probably had
these conversations with his colleagues. Arguably being directly connected with
(17:54):
the royal family of Russia is more valuable than the money,
right it goes beyond the money. Now you have the
ear of the king. And this is what happens. Okay.
So it's after this exposition everybody's impressed. Royal family tunes in.
They decide not to execute Karl, which they could always
do because they're monarchs. This guy, Alexander the Third, you
(18:19):
may have heard of him. It's eighteen eighty five, and
he goes up to our buddy Carl and he has
a pitch that sounds lucrative, right if you're Carl Faberge,
and to us it sounds patently ridiculous. He says, look
a hell, wife, I'm not going to do the voice anymore.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
Okay, you've done enough. We've done enough on that one.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
And he wants to make a special present for his wife,
what's her name.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
I'm gonna we work this out off the air a
little bit. So let's do the best combination of the
two of us together, we make one complete human being.
Maria Fyodorovna.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
Oh, nailed it.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
And his head had a little bit of stink on it.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
You put some steak on it. I like that fuel little.
So we got to keep in mind that the Royal
family at this point they run the show, right, one
of the most important empires in the world. They are
already a wash with your typical gems and bobbles. They
got the rings, they got the necklaces, the abulets, the bracelets,
(19:23):
et cetera. So Alex doesn't want that. He doesn't want
a special necklace or ring or bracelet. He wants something he.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
Wasn't a babble.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
He wants an egg.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
Yep, exactly. He wants a very very bespoke egg, not
just any egg, not the kind you'd make a delightful
omelet out of, not the kind that would birth a tiny,
terrifying bird. Instead, he worked closely with Carl Studio, advising
throughout the process of creating this art object that he
(19:58):
had in mind. Alex and the team decided they would
do the world's fanciest spin on an Easter egg. And
isn't the Easter Easter is huge in Russia?
Speaker 1 (20:09):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, this doesn't.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
There's a lot of egg imagery in Russian architecture and art.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
Absolutely, It's a long standing Russian Orthodox tradition at this
point to exchange decorated eggs for Easter. So this was
essentially an insanely opulent escalation of that traditional practice, and
they ended up with something called the hen Egg. It's
a little doodad, but it's extremely impressive from a technical perspective,
(20:41):
and it follows on Faberget's existing design philosophy. You know,
the materials you use are less important than the idea
you convey.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
But also like, let's use fancy materials, but also let's like,
let's use fancy materials.
Speaker 1 (20:59):
So Maria gets this gift and when she let's go
to the moment when she receives it, and here's what
she's looking at. She sees a plain white enamel shell.
My tennessee came out, but we'll keep it a plain
white enamel shell. And that's representative of the egg. But
(21:20):
holy smokes, hang on a tick. You can open the egg,
and when Maria opens it, she finds something else.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
As we know, the Russians are also big fans of
nesting stuff, so this story comes into play here as well.
The matros Cardozo. Yes, she opens that up and within
it is another smaller egg. Yeah, and then she's that out. Yeah,
I believe there's a tiny little pillow inside the egg
made of sueded material.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
Yeah, stippled gold. And upon this rest an intricately carved
tiny gold hid And this is impressive. But get this,
but wait, folks, there more as Billy Amazed was wont
to say, the hen itself also opens. And when you
open the hen, there's a miniature replica of the Russian
(22:10):
crown and it is drowning in drip. It's encrusted with diamonds,
it's got rubies. The Russian crown holds a small ruby pendant.
This is beyond impressive. Maria loves it, Alex gets massive
hobby points. The entire Royal court is going bananas and
nuts with approval. This was going to be a one off,
(22:34):
like a fancy I don't know.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
But how to trends in those days get created, Ben,
it's when royals are stoked about something.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
Probably you're probably right, I.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
Too must have one.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
Oh yes, exactly, And as you said, limited supply, right,
we don't know if Alex was buying this as an
apology to his wife for something possible. Anyway, the Russian
royal family they say this is not a one off
for us like you were saying, Noel, They're going, I
do must have one. They start routinely commissioning these eggs
(23:07):
from Carl, and each egg is growing more and more
elaborate with each iteration. Well, and also, Ben, I mean
I walk back what I said slightly. There's definitely within
the royal family a keeping up with the Joneses thing.
But part of the whole story of Faberge and kind
of what it represents is that there's not an unlimited supply,
(23:27):
and that it's created in the style of or by
hand by this very specific, you know, group of craftsmen.
So the royal family does start commissioning those on the regular,
making it a family tradition. After Alexander passed away in
eighteen ninety four, his son, Nicholas the Second continues on
with the tradition, commissioning further pieces, further elaborations of these designs,
(23:51):
giving one each to his mother and to his wife Alexandria.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
And I mean these are we're talking, you know, the
level of bespokenness in these creations. An entire year to
create one, yes.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
Yeah, and Faberge. Faberge is given this huge level of autonomy.
He and his crew don't have to check in with
the royal family when they make these eggs. All they
have to do is guarantee that each egg must contain
some kind of surprise and credit. We're due are buddy Carl,
(24:29):
who is a visionary. He is designing these like he's
writing or drawing pictures of what he thinks they should
look like, and he's kind of project managing the work,
but he is not actually in the trenches making the eggs.
It's too much work for one guy.
Speaker 2 (24:49):
That's the case with a lot of big process oriented
artists like the glass artist Shahuli I think is his name,
who does these incredible stained glass arrays. You can go
to his a museum or at the very least an
exhibit in Seattle. But there's a film about him, and
he is the visionary behind these works and these installations.
But he's got a team of workers and crafts people
(25:12):
that are you know, doing his bidding. It's what allows
him to scale those works because they're huge. They're all
these massively intricate combinations of stained glass kind of pieces,
three three dimensional black I don't.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
Know, I don't know I feel about that because it
reminds me of the painter Thomas Kincaid or some of
the airport novelists, like, oh, who's that guy who? It
doesn't matter, but.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
Well, I hear you been on certain things. I definitely agree.
But let's also think about like film, you know, production,
Like you've got a filmmaker, a quote unquote director or whatever,
who's who's job it is to guide the vision and
direct the work of hundreds dozens, if not hundreds of
other very specific crafts people, and yet it is the
(25:58):
director that ultimately kind of is the most remembered name
when it comes to one of those projects. So with
something like this, with this level of intricacy and oversight,
I think I'm on board with giving him the props
that he deserves.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
I hear you. That's a really good point. Yeah, because
you know, if you're the even if you were Stanley
Kubrick or something, you can't also be in charge of
the craft table. Rights takes a village, and the House
of Faberget at this point is a village. There are
tons of people evolved in crafting these eggs. Two of
(26:33):
the most prominent artisans are Mikhale Perkin and Heinrich Wigstrom.
These eggs, to your earlier excellent point about size, they
are little do dads, right, They're little chotchkes. I love
the word chachkes. They're three to six inches tall, not
counting their equally elaborate bases. All in all, there are
(26:57):
fifty of what we call Imperial egg created from eighteen
eighty five, the first one, the head egg, all the
way up to nineteen seventeen. There's a brief pause in
commissions from nineteen oh four to nineteen oh five. That's
due to the Russo Japanese War, which we did a
whole episode on maybe more than one.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
Actually, yes, do go back and check that one out.
So Carl he kind of saw that he had it
pretty good in terms of like being not the only
game in town in terms of elaborate, you know, design
of bespoke jewelry pieces. But he had created a brand
at this point, he had created a thing that it
(27:39):
would almost be in poor form for anyone else to
attempt at this point, right, yeah, yeah, like it's his thing,
Like I mean, like they're going directly to him. You
got to imagine though, that there were imitators, right.
Speaker 1 (27:51):
Yeah, faux Berge, Yeah, that's very great. We gotta do it.
So Faberge was to your point, commissioned to make non
imperial eggs, but these are all still very much for
the one percenters of the time, people like the Duchess
of Marlborough or the Rothschild family, the yusobrovs. Faberge was
(28:13):
commissioned to make a couple of eggs for a guy
named Alexander Kelch. He even made one for the nephew
of an absolute dynamite guy named Alfred Nobel.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
Yep, the guy I remembered mainly for the Peace Prize
that bears his name, but also, yeah, definitely the dude
that invented like the least peaceful thing that ever could
be brought into existence, dynamite.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
Well, yeah, I wonder if we'll ever get in trouble
for describing Al as a dynamite guy.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
No, I don't think so.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
It's accurate. We know that there have been as many
of six nine of these Faberge eggs created during the
era of Czarist Russia. Sixty one survive. We won't list
all the fifty Imperial eggs, but you do need to
(29:12):
know they are definitely the top tier, or as we
say in video games, the s tier of the bunch.
We should get into some of this nool because Alex,
our buddy Alex or Alexi if you prefer, and his
son Nikolay, the Nikolay commissioned most of the Imperial eggs Alex.
(29:35):
Alex signed on for ten Nick signed on for forty
or two more that were designed but never really fully
completed because they came at the end of that era.
Right now, the fifty completed eggs, there are forty four
that are known to exist in some form, either complete
(29:55):
or partial, which makes us wonder what happened man.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
So some of these are lost to history, right.
Speaker 1 (30:03):
Yeah, what happened to your eggs? Doc?
Speaker 2 (30:05):
And I do want to get into this. Maybe we'll
save it a little bit of I think everyone listening
probably wants a little bit of a price list.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
Oh yeah, yeah, well let's do it. Now. Hit us
with some of your favorites, because these are all unique.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
We do have a list of some of the most
expensive Faberge eggs from that Imperial well not all of
which are from the Imperial run, but one that definitely is,
which is called the Third Imperial Easter from eighteen eighty seven.
And if we were going to describe this one, it
would be a golden egg kind of clock piece with
(30:40):
like lions feet and it looks to me like the
there's a diamond pendant right in the middle and all
of this gold filigree and you know kind of what's
the word scroll work kind of you know, and beveled
egg in this rested in resting in this kind of
a cradle with all of that metal work that I
was talking about, and it hinges the top hinges like
(31:02):
an Easter egg, well plastic Easter egg. But as you
do that, there's moving pieces, moving parts that raise up
a beautifully machined and very elegant looking I sound like
a mon antique throat show clock.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
I love it.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
And a lot of these had what I think we
didn't mention. We hadn't really described the look of too
many of these. A lot of these did have really
cool ornate kind of moving parts. Yeah, points of articulation
is exactly how you put it in. Like, for example,
one that I saw you open the top and all
of a sudden like this like fan of little framed portraits,
(31:38):
kind of like fans out really really cool. So this
one the third Imperial Easter egg, given by Alexander, the
third Emperor and autocrat of all the Russias. He is
referred to to Empress Maria Fyodorovna. That's the one original
one that we talked about for Easter eighteen eighty seven.
I love this description on wartski dot to think is
(32:00):
like an appraisal type site. The jeweled and rigid yellow
gold egg rests on its original tripod pedestal with chased
lion paw feet and encircled by colored gold garlands suspended
from cabochan blue sapphires, topped with rose diamond set bows
one's missing. It contains a surprise of a lady's watch
(32:23):
by Vacheron Constantine with a too sorry, too much French
on that one, with a white enamel dial and open
work diamond set gold hands. The watch has been taken
from its case to be mounted in the egg and
is hinged, allowing it to stand upright hazarding a guess here, y'all,
what do you think how much for the third Imperial Easter?
Speaker 1 (32:46):
The for the one from eighteen eighty shoes?
Speaker 3 (32:48):
Uh?
Speaker 2 (32:48):
Huh? You know that, I know, I know that you
probably know, Max, if you were to hazard a guess
one hundred and eighteen thousand pounds thirteen three million dollars,
I might be close. I don't know how what a
pound conversion is, and for a penny in for a pound,
let's start doing that.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
And that's an excellent guess.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
Max, dude. That's the thing man, with some of the
stuff like this, based on where we exist, if outside
of our research, just in the world, we have no
frame of reference for an object worth thirty three million
dollars thirty three millions million dollars. That's right, I like
the past ten's there.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
Yeah, this is so this shows us just how how
rarefied the air is in this situation. And one thing
we have to we have to point out for all
our fellow astute, ridiculous historians, is that you will have
clocked a specific year when the original House of Faberget
(33:52):
stopped cranking out these eggs. It's nineteen seventeen. Because you see, folks,
the entire time the House of Faberget is making nice
with the Russian royal family, making these objects of fancy
for them. There's a lot of trouble brewing in the
rest of the empire. The public is beat me here, Max,
(34:14):
fucking starving.
Speaker 2 (34:15):
Yeah, we did all ben, We did not mention that
context whatsoever. I mean this is, you know, a absolutely
despicably gross flex and you know, when it comes to
what else is going on under their you know, their oversight.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
Right or lack. They're black thereof people people are saying,
you know, these royals are cartoonishly corrupt, the government's inefficient.
Let's also consider if it's nineteen seventeen. World War One
has absolutely obliterated the economy. Morale is in the toilet.
(34:55):
People are again starving like wishing they could bread, while
the royals are admiring they're silly, expensive inedible eggs. The
people revolt, the Imperial government is overthrown. No more eggs
for you, jerks, cry the peasants. Fun fact about the
Russian Revolution not really a fun fact. Russian Revolution of
(35:19):
nineteen seventeen was two revolutions in the very same year.
One in February the overthrow, another in October when Lennen
and the Bolshevik boys take over and create the Soviet Union.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
Yeah yeah, check out the animated film Ani Station I tell.
Speaker 1 (35:35):
You all, yeah right as well.
Speaker 2 (35:37):
Only died in nineteen eighteen. She was the youngest daughter
of Czar Nicholas the Second, who was the last sovereign
of Imperial Russia.
Speaker 1 (35:47):
And in the wake of this chaos, the Faberge Workshop
in Saint Petersburg, like so many other private industries, is
nationalized under the red flag of communism. Whatever, we'll keep
it for sure.
Speaker 2 (36:04):
No, no, and I mean unless you'd be like, okay, come
on back to the numbers, give us more expensive things,
just a couple more like eighteen ninety seven, ten years
later from the Third Imperial Easter, we have the Imperial Coordination,
which has got like a carriage kind of design that
one's valued at eighteen million, but outside the Rothschild clock,
which is almost as valuable as the original Third Imperial
(36:26):
Easter made for the Rothschild family in nineteen oh two
twenty five point one million. But Ben, isn't there sort
of a modern carrying on of the Faberge name? Don't
they like make stuff now? Because I heard something about
a Game of Thrones Faberge.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
Egg it is correct, you are, You're absolutely correct. The
Faberge Egg brand, or the House of Faberget brand, i
should say, has been reconstituted.
Speaker 2 (36:55):
We know that there are.
Speaker 1 (36:59):
There things is recently as twenty twenty three, the Faberge
House of Faberget, not Carl. They debuted the Journey and
Jewels on a luxury cruise ship and there so they're
still keeping the hope alive in the modern day, despite
(37:20):
the fact that you know, Carl is a sad point.
Carl unfortunately passes away only three years after the Russian Revolution.
He and his family have to skip town obviously they
will have been murdered, and he passes away in nineteen
twenty in Switzerland when he's seventy four years old. We
(37:45):
also know that amid all this pandemonium, some of the
eggs disappeared, some were destroyed properly, but in our opinion,
it's way more likely that a lot of these were away, Yeah,
squirreled away and hidden in the nest of a private collector.
Speaker 3 (38:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:05):
Speaking of exactly been good with the egg the egg
metaphors of the egg references. The one that I think
is the most beautiful and interesting sounding that we talked
about today was the hen with sapphire pendant, which was
the one with the little pillow and the egg within
the egg that is among the missing Faberge eggs. And
if you want to find out a little bit more detail,
(38:27):
check out history Hits article the Mystery of the Missing
Faberge Imperial Easter Eggs. And I just want to add
and then I'm done. It does appear that the House
of faberget Stock has fallen just to touch, even in
their attempt at a rebrand here because that Game of
Thrones egg that I mentioned that is modeled after one
of the dragon eggs in the popular Fantasy TV series
(38:48):
only two point two mil only two pshaw, tut tut.
This is one of the weirdest parts of this entire tale. Folks,
right now, as Noel Max and yours truly are recording
this and as you have joined us to hang out
wherever you are in this wide world, someone listening to
(39:12):
this episode may indeed possess one of these missing eggs.
It is not impossible that one of our fellow ridiculous
historians may be just sort of fitling with one of
these missing eggs while they're listening to the show. And
if you happen to make it a Saint Petersburg, Ben,
I think this is still a thing. Isn't there a
(39:33):
Faberge museum where you can check out some of the
ones that are still around.
Speaker 1 (39:37):
Yes, and we are in active conversations about whether we
can make it to Russia. Oh jeez, it's a different
that's a different story. Right now. What you'll notice, folks,
is you'll see numbers for the missing eggs reported as
anywhere between like eight to seven to six. And the
(40:00):
reason that number is changeable is because there is still
hope to find these weirdo missing eggs. Mentioned Hedden with
sapphire pendant. There's Cherub with Chario Necessarre, There's Royal Danish,
there's Alexander third commemorative there's one called wave anyway.
Speaker 2 (40:19):
Like the color of like a like a like a
reddish hue.
Speaker 1 (40:24):
I think you're correct on that one. Man. Here's here's
the thing. This is maybe where we end it. People
are still finding these missing eggs. Back in twenty fifteen,
the third Imperial Easter Egg was discovered by a guy
who had been planning to melt it down for scrap.
It's a great story. He essentially he ended up googling
(40:47):
the value of metal because he got a they call
it a jumble sale, but like an estate sale.
Speaker 2 (40:56):
I like jumblestale. They say that more like in the
maybe the Northeast and the.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
Yeah yeah, Midwest exactly. So he said, maybe I can
make five hundred dollars by selling this gold egg for scrap.
And then he figured out it was one of the
famous missing Faberge eggs, which means it's possible that one
(41:21):
day these eggs might emerge into the public eye. Again
this is where okay, So here's where we end it.
Noel Max, if you ran across a Faberge egg in
the wild, right like at a junk sale, add an
estate sale, what would you do?
Speaker 2 (41:41):
I will say, I'm not I would think I would
know enough at this point to recognize it. But there
is an episode of Pond Stars, I think where a
woman asks for like one thousand dollars for what she
describes as an ugly piece of jewelry because she doesn't
really understand what it is, and they immediately clock it
as a Faberge egg and offer fifteen k for him.
(42:04):
I would eat it, You would eat it, you would
choke on it. Max, little bites, little bite, that's true.
Speaker 3 (42:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (42:14):
Yeah, noticed how they like totally phased out the original
kinder egg designs in America because Americans are too supple.
Speaker 1 (42:20):
Thing.
Speaker 2 (42:21):
Yeah, it's a legal thing. I think the real ones
with the tiny chokable parts inside. Now you just get
a little cookie with some icing.
Speaker 1 (42:28):
I like the little action figures exactly. It's about the intricacy,
the points of articulation and and to Max's point there,
you know, uh, there's a guy who managed to eat
an entire airplane by taking little bites out of time.
We'll get to that story in the future. In the meantime,
we cannot thank you enough for tuning in and joining
(42:51):
us for another exploration of ridiculous history. So despite not
being able to thank you enough. We do want to
say thank you. We also want to thank our super
producer mister Max Williams his biological brother Alex Williams currently
on Adventures, who recorded this sick bop. You know who
(43:11):
would dude, you know who would buy a Faberge egg
and be really weird about it in the office. Jonathan
Strict Strict, he covered it, He'd hoard it like.
Speaker 2 (43:24):
Can you just imagine him? Yeah, because we have much
more like Gollum. Just yeah, cover his precious fabric Gollumn
accent like British and just missed both accents by a
wide mile.
Speaker 1 (43:37):
Y'all, be like that weird kid at Show and Tell
where he has a cool egg that has a lot
of uh, a lot of bells and whistles to it,
and then he would want us to see that he
has it, and he wouldn't let us play with it.
Speaker 2 (43:51):
Ah, what a jerk share with the class. No right,
my own now, I will say, y'all, though I don't
I'm not like a blinkster or anything like that. I
don't have like rings on every finger like some kind
of crazy neck piece. But as I've gotten a little older,
I do like just a simple gold chain or shit,
(44:12):
you've been wearing one. I've been wearing I just it's
not about the flex, it's just about I think it
just you get to a certain point where it's like,
I do want to represent maybe that I'm a quote
unquote adult. You could like afford a gold chain, but
not necessarily an iced out, you know, death Row Records logo.
Speaker 1 (44:31):
I'm going to send you a great song by a
group called Brockhampton.
Speaker 2 (44:35):
Brockhampton, Yeah about gold chains.
Speaker 1 (44:37):
Also big thanks to big thanks to Rachel Big Spinach Lance,
the world authority on underwater explosions. Big thanks to A. J.
Bahama's Jacobs, Big thanks to Eaves, Jeff Go. Chris rossiotis
here in spirit and of course the rudeest of dudes
at Ridiculous Crime and No big thanks to a follow Ah.
Speaker 2 (44:59):
Also you Apologizer. Thank you very much, you guys. We'll
see you next time. Folks. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
My Favorite Murder is a true crime comedy podcast hosted by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. Each week, Karen and Georgia share compelling true crimes and hometown stories from friends and listeners. Since MFM launched in January of 2016, Karen and Georgia have shared their lifelong interest in true crime and have covered stories of infamous serial killers like the Night Stalker, mysterious cold cases, captivating cults, incredible survivor stories and important events from history like the Tulsa race massacre of 1921. My Favorite Murder is part of the Exactly Right podcast network that provides a platform for bold, creative voices to bring to life provocative, entertaining and relatable stories for audiences everywhere. The Exactly Right roster of podcasts covers a variety of topics including historic true crime, comedic interviews and news, science, pop culture and more. Podcasts on the network include Buried Bones with Kate Winkler Dawson and Paul Holes, That's Messed Up: An SVU Podcast, This Podcast Will Kill You, Bananas and more.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.