The Gilded Hour Podcast

"The Gilded Age" is back for a fourth season and with it, The Gilded Hour Podcast! As the series' fourth season unfolds over the next 8 weeks, let's take a look at the real-life history behind some of the key scenes and plots of this season of Julian Fellowes' period drama. This episode is about the season four premiere, which started out with a plethora of storylines, plot points and dramatic tur...

The Gilded Age is coming back for a fourth season this November! In anticipation, I put together some of my thoughts about what could happen in the next season of the show. I know that this podcast episode will get outdated quickly, but I thought it might be fun to chat about what I’m looking forward to (potentially) seeing in this next instalment of the series. To guide the conversation, I chat a...

It's our final podcast episode of our first season, and we of course go into the famous Vanderbilt ball that very clearly inspired events in the finale episode of The Gilded Age's season 1. (This ball made such an impact in the 1880s, it was still being talked about 60 years later!) To wrap up our own first season of the podcast, we look into the prominent individuals and families of the Gilded Ag...

In this week's podcast episode, we explore the real-life Newport homes and talk a bit about how the concept of summer came about in the first place. We also go over some of the popular architectural styles of Victorian era homes, and how the Newport cottages took some of the most popular architecture of the time period to the next level, and again, left a lasting impact that we can still see in ci...

In this episode of "The Gilded Age," drama unfolds against a backdrop of a very significant change happening in cities around the world in the 1880s: the dawn of electricity being widely available, and the start of lightbulbs as common household items. Over 140 years later, it's easy for us to take for granted electricity and artificial lighting, which surrounds us every day in our homes, workplac...

HBO's "The Gilded Age" series has featured real-life, prominent influencers of the historical era within its fictional environment. But who exactly were these individuals who shaped the Gilded Age into how we remember it today? In this podcast episode, we explore who the real, so-called tastemakers of this time period were in actual American history. Individuals such as Ward McAllister, Lina Astor...

What inspired this episode? In The Gilded Age's first season, the theme of charitable donations came up a few times. We saw it on the show as both a necessary method of distributing funds to worthy organizations, like Clara Barton's Red Cross, as well as a way of flaunting wealth, status and buying one's way into otherwise closed social circles, as Bertha Russell demonstrated through her actions....

The Gilded Age was a rich time in American literature. In this episode, we explore a few of the more prominent and popular authors of the era who were writing about everyday life and the lived experiences of women, people of color, and many others during this historical time period. Exploring their work and activities in the 1880s gives us a more well-rounded view of what was actually happening in...

If you love watching historical shows like The Gilded Age , it's likely you also enjoy the fashion and costumes, the elaborate sets and art design, and the overall vibes of the time period. Inspired by one particularly beautifully-shot scene in this episode, we are going to take a deep-dive into some specific aspects of the art and fashion of the 1880s. We explore how The Gilded Age costumers and...

In our second podcast episode, we investigate the downstairs spaces of the Gilded Age. Who were the people who were hired as the servants in the breathtakingly large homes built by the ruling elite? What was life like as a servant to New York City’s wealthy families? About The Gilded Age Episode “Money isn’t Everything” Tom Raikes, the lawyer who helped Marian settle her father’s estate in Pennsyl...

This is our first episode, and inspired by the failed soirée of one of the show's main characters, Bertha Russell, we take a glimpse into the wild, glamorous, and at times unhinged real-life parties that the Gilded Age New York City elite would host to dazzle society, New York, and the world. About this episode The episode of "The Gilded Age" that our episode is based on is the premier of this str...