Latest / Ministry X / Harry Houdini: Magician Among the Spirits - Ministry X - 047

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Harry Houdini: Magician Among the Spirits - Ministry X - 047 · Ministry X

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  Speaker 1: Hi, everybody, it's me Cinderella Acts. You are listening to
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  do you.
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  Speaker 5: I know, slippers, we gotta keep cleaning these chimneys.
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  Speaker 6: I say, sacrifices.
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  Speaker 7: Yes, it takes nothing to stay out of.
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  Speaker 6: It tastes riff.
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  Speaker 8: No, no, lay, it took courage, it too, courage lange
• 1:39
  every night.
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  Speaker 6: No, it's not in the box on the stege.
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  Speaker 9: What acus work.
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  Speaker 6: Even zero range human else.
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  Speaker 9: Thanks to this formula, who becomes a sensations throughout the
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  United States and Europe, but it is in Russia at
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  the persona of Harry, the man who could escape of
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  any chapels really sends by the imagination.
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  Speaker 2: When Heudini gets to Russia, who gets the idea to
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  challenge the police to escape from Siberian.
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  Speaker 7: Transsport self mentions the box car that we get to
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  throw in and take into Citeria.
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  Speaker 6: So it has this war around.
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  Speaker 2: It is the ultimate to.
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  Speaker 6: You're done well.
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  Speaker 2: They lock the dad and they're very good suption in
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  every possible place you can imagine.
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  Speaker 6: Hi, any ferment.
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  Speaker 7: You are listening to Ministry X on Fringe Radio Network.
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  Just checking all the wingers and the dingers and the
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  bleepers and we'll get started momentarily.
• 3:50
  Speaker 10: M Magic Trick consists of great parts.
• 4:09
  Speaker 11: As the first part is called the plage, the magician
• 4:20
  shows you something boredly.
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: The second act.
• 4:25
  Speaker 11: Is called the two. The magician takes the ordinary something
• 4:32
  and makes it into something extraordinary. But you wouldn't clap
• 4:38
  yet because making something disappear isn't enough.
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: You have to bring in back.
• 5:27
  Speaker 7: Welcome to the show. This is ministry X. I am
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  Daniel X, your faithful host on the Fringe Radio Network.
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  Radio Network Fringe radionetwork dot com. Go into the line
• 9:20
  it's Halloween. Now, I typically don't do Halloween shows because
• 9:29
  A I'm just not that organized. B I'm a Christian,
• 9:35
  and of course I don't celebrate pagan heathen holidays. But
• 9:42
  I'm not going to get into that today. I have
• 9:47
  mentioned on my show before Halloween, but it's just such
• 9:56
  a topic that's overdone. I think I did talk about
• 10:00
  out all Saints day also the day after Halloween and
• 10:04
  the history of that. I've gone into that in years
• 10:06
  past on this show. But you know the reason is,
• 10:11
  I'm just busy that night. You know, I got certain
• 10:16
  rituals and rites like carving pumpkins and passing out candy,
• 10:22
  that sort of thing. You know the deal. So which
• 10:36
  is it? Well, I'm not not conducting a rite like
• 10:40
  in the forest dancing around a fire. No, leave that
• 10:46
  to the virgin ladies from another world. I am the
• 10:53
  goat lord playing the pan flute. And then later I
• 11:00
  will retire to my goat mound to do my goat yoga,
• 11:09
  and if I'm a lucky goat, have my pick of
• 11:12
  the virgins. Oh, speaking of goats, not that yeah, not
• 11:19
  that kind of right. Speaking of goats, though, have you
• 11:22
  been to the Strange dot com dot com? There is
• 11:26
  a great collection of goat man stories there. Readers submitted
• 11:32
  goat man stories and a bunch of other strange stuff.
• 11:46
  Speaker 12: From the primordial mug of the world wide Web.
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: That's strange. Strange dot com dot com you are really.
• 12:01
  Speaker 11: Strange because you have to spell out the dot com
• 12:05
  and then put an actual dot com.
• 12:08
  Speaker 13: It's confusing.
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: The Strange Strange dot com dot com.
• 12:14
  Speaker 12: Mummies, bigfoots, ghosts, goat men, men in black, spongingyus, human combusting,
• 12:24
  DWIGHTE Fry?
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: Who's DWIGHTE Fry? You don't know?
• 12:29
  Speaker 12: That's why you have to go to the strange dot com.
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: The strange strange dot com dot com.
• 12:37
  Speaker 7: It still freaking works after all these years.
• 12:41
  Speaker 12: Shop at this strange dot com dot com.
• 12:45
  Speaker 7: And get some strange swag.
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: The Strange Strange dot com dot com.
• 12:52
  Speaker 12: That's h T TP calling forward slash forward stress, got
• 13:03
  t h E S t R A n g E
• 13:09
  dot com dot com.
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: Got it strange strange dot com dot com.
• 13:21
  Speaker 7: Yeah, so mostly I'm just not that organized. These episodes
• 13:27
  kind of come together in a seemingly haphazard way. But
• 13:33
  really I try my best to allow the Holy Spirit
• 13:36
  to direct me, to lead me on to the next subject,
• 13:39
  whatever subject he wants me to speak about, and that
• 13:45
  doesn't always coincide with holidays or what other people might
• 13:53
  be talking about on their podcasts. However, in this case,
• 14:02
  there just so happens to be this synchro mystic freaking
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  thing going on. I don't know if it's the vibes
• 14:13
  or what dude, I've been researching Houdini. Dude, whoa do you?
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: No way?
• 14:24
  Speaker 7: I was just freaking talking about Houdini with my mom.
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: Bro.
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  Speaker 7: She was alive when Houdini did like his last act,
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  we freaking drowned on stage. It was like his last
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  trick forever, dude. Houdini died in nineteen twenty six. Bro,
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  what are you talking about? Your mom is like seventy
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  eighth shit, that's like fifty ish. What fifty?
• 14:55
  Speaker 14: What?
• 14:56
  Speaker 7: No, she wasn't even born yet. Weird, So my mom
• 15:01
  time traveled, bro? Is that what you're trying to tell me? No,
• 15:06
  I'm saying your mom didn't see Houdini. Oh maybe it
• 15:12
  was some other magic dude. Yeah, probably Wait a minute,
• 15:23
  this says Whodini died on Halloween October thirty first, nineteen
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  twenty six. Woa, dude, that's a trip, bro. He didn't
• 15:40
  die on stage in a water tank. Listen to this.
• 15:46
  Houdini died on October thirty first, nineteen twenty six, in Detroit,
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  at age fifty two, from an infection stemming from a
• 15:57
  ruptured appendix, possibly worsened by abdominal punches from a student
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  days earlier. I didn't know that before dying, he and
• 16:08
  Bess that's his wife, agreed on a secret code Rosa
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  Belt Believe for after death contact. She held annual Halloween
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  seances for a decade without success, declaring the experiment of
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  failure in nineteen thirty six. So after he died, they
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  tried to contact him, and of course it wasn't successful
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  because Houdini was a big debunker of psychic mediums, and
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  that's not what he's primarily known for. But later on
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  in his career he made quite a name for himself
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  showing all the tricks and illusions that these mediums would
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  use to defraud their clients. Now let's go back to
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  the beginning here. Harry Houdini born Eric Wise on March
• 17:20
  twenty fourth, eighteen seventy four in Budapest, Hungary was the
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  son of Rabbi Mayor Samuel Wise and Cecilia Steiner. His
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  Jewish family immigrated to the United States in eighteen seventy eight,
• 17:38
  settling in Appleton, Wisconsin, where his father served as a rabbi. Later,
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  he would lose his position as a rabbi and this
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  led to periods of poverty and the family would move
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  to Milwaukee and then eventually New York City in eighteen eighty.
• 18:02
  Now Houdini debuted publicly at age nine as a trapeze
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  artist under the name Eric the Prince of the Air,
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  and that's Eric spelled ehricch Eric, while also excelling as
• 18:21
  a cross country runner. I didn't know that. He began
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  his professional magic career in eighteen ninety one, initially performing
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  card tricks and billing himself as the King of Cards,
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  but he didn't have a whole lot of success at
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  that at these vaudeville shows and dime museums. He was
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  inspired by the memoirs of French magician Jean Eugene Robert
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  who Din, and he adopted this age name Harry Houdini,
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  with Harry derived from his nickname Airy. In eighteen ninety four,
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  he married fellow performer Wilhelmina Beatrice Bess Rayner, who became
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  his lifelong stage assistant and partner in acts like the Houdinis.
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  Houdini's breakthrough came in eighteen ninety nine when vaudeville manager
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  Martin Beck encouraged him to focus on escape acts, leading
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  to bookings on major circuits and a European tour starting
• 19:37
  in nineteen hundred, he gained fame as the handcuff King,
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  challenging police across Europe and the US to restrain him
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  with shackles, ropes, and locks, often escaping while stripped and searched.
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  Notable feats included the nineteen oh four Daily Mirror handcuff
• 19:59
  challenge in London, the nineteen oh eight milk can escape
• 20:05
  from a locked water filled can, the nineteen twelve Chinese
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  water torture cell upside down in a submerged glass cabinet,
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  suspended straight jacket escapes from tall buildings, and the overboard
• 20:21
  box escape in New York's East River. He also performed
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  buried a live stunts, including a near fatal attempt in
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  nineteen fifteen and an endurance test in a submerged casket
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  in nineteen twenty six. Now a lot of people don't
• 20:41
  know this either, but Houdini was an early aviator, making
• 20:46
  the first powered flights in Australia in nineteen ten. He
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  also starred in silent films like The Master Mystery nineteen
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  eighteen and The Grim Game nineteen nineteen, and served as
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  president of the Society of American Magicians from nineteen seventeen
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  until his death. In his later career, he launched a
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  show combining magic escapes and exposures of fraudulent mediums. And
• 21:14
  that's kind of what I'm going to focus on, because
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  everybody knows Houdini as an escape artist. But Houdini's most
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  passionate pursuit in his final years was debunking psychics, mediums,
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  mind readers, and other people who claim to have supernatural powers.
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  And he basically viewed them as Charlatan's exploiting grief through
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  tricks he could replicate with his magician's expertise. So how
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  did why did Harry Houdini become such a hardcore skeptic
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  debunker guy. Well, his father died in eighteen ninety two
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  and at the time, mediums tried to contact his father
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  without success. So Houdini was on this search for genuine
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  spirit communication and he only turned up frauds, and this
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  sort of fueled his grief and this skepticism. After World
• 22:48
  War One, there was this surge in spiritualism, which also
• 22:54
  happened after the Civil War. Historically, there's been these surges
• 22:59
  in spiritualism after these traumatic wars where there's lots of
• 23:06
  death and lots of loss and lots of grief and
• 23:15
  widows and children left behind to fend for themselves. People
• 23:24
  reached out to so called psychics and mediums to contact
• 23:28
  their dead loved ones on the other side. So this
• 23:34
  happened Civil War, World War one, world War two, and
• 23:42
  Houdini took up this crusade of sorts to expose these
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  fraudulent mediums because he believed they were preying on vulnerable people.
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  Early in his career and his wife Bess, performed as
• 24:04
  fake mediums in vaudeville, and he later regretted that, but
• 24:13
  he used that to spot deceptions, and he famously said
• 24:19
  it takes a flim flammer to catch a flim flammer.
• 24:24
  Now I can identify with this, coming out of the
• 24:27
  occult and being around people who part of their magic,
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  part of their spiritual practice, is the art of illusion.
• 24:45
  When you boil it all down, it's all psychology. The
• 24:52
  magical phrases and things you say are more of a
• 24:57
  distraction from the real manipulation that's going on. Houdini investigated
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  hundreds of spiritualists over a period of about thirty five years.
• 25:14
  He attended seances in disguise with reporters and police. He
• 25:21
  hired undercover agents, and he came up with these rigorous
• 25:26
  test conditions to expose their tricks. He would replicate these illusions.
• 25:37
  He would show people how they were done, that it
• 25:41
  wasn't some mystical spiritual powers that these mediums were calling upon,
• 25:46
  they were just manufacturing illusions. There was this thing called
• 25:55
  spirit trumpets, which is basically whisper into a tube, you know,
• 26:01
  to make it sound like a disembodied voice. Let me
• 26:04
  allow me to demonstrate I just happen to have a
• 26:12
  spirit trumpet right here. Other things they would commonly do
• 26:25
  would be this slate writing, which is writing these preconcealed
• 26:30
  messages on like a little chalkboard or something. They would
• 26:36
  levitate objects, usually through the use of hidden wires and
• 26:42
  manipulating them with their feet, like under the table spirit photography,
• 26:50
  which were basically double exposures. Some of Houdini's more famous
• 26:59
  debunk would be nineteen twenty three, he exposed medium George
• 27:07
  Valiantines a floating trumpet as being rigged with electrical wiring.
• 27:18
  He would also bind up Italian medium Nino Pecorraro before
• 27:23
  a seance, which resulted in no phenomena because he didn't
• 27:30
  have his hands head feet free. In nineteen twenty four,
• 27:38
  he would unmask woking Agamacia, the Spaniard with the X
• 27:44
  ray eyes by demonstrating that he peeked through his blindfold.
• 27:52
  He would expose spirit photographer Alexander Martin for using double exposures. Basically,
• 28:01
  he made his own spirit photograph by superimposing an image
• 28:08
  of Abraham Lincoln, making it look like Abraham Lincoln's ghost.
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  He was part of a nineteen twenty four scientific American
• 28:22
  committee offering a twenty five hundred dollars prize for proven
• 28:27
  paranormal abilities. One of the participants was Boston medium Mina
• 28:35
  Marjorie Crandon, and Houdini was able to detect her using
• 28:41
  foot manipulations to ring bells and move objects, and this
• 28:46
  led to her being denied the prize money, and he
• 28:53
  created a forty page pamphlet on this. Houdini exposes the
• 28:59
  tricks used by the Boston medium Marjorie a forty page pamphlet.
• 29:08
  I mean, Harry Houdini would be very popular on Twitter
• 29:12
  today going around debunking and destroying their careers because he
• 29:22
  was passionate and he was tired of these mediums taking
• 29:27
  advantage of people. Now Does this mean he didn't believe
• 29:34
  in spiritual phenomena? Did he not believe in a spirit world? Well, no,
• 29:41
  he did actually. In the preface to his nineteen twenty
• 29:47
  four book A Magician among the Spirits, Houdini explicitly affirmed
• 29:53
  his faith in a higher power and life after death,
• 29:56
  stating quote, I firmly believe in a supreme being and
• 30:01
  that there is a hereafter. In the book's dedication, he
• 30:09
  expresses a deep hope for reunion with loved ones in
• 30:13
  the afterlife, quote, I believe in a hereafter, and no
• 30:17
  greater blessing could be bestowed upon me than the opportunity
• 30:21
  once again to speak to my sainted mother, who awaits
• 30:25
  me with open arms, to press me to her heart
• 30:28
  in welcome, just as she did when I entered this
• 30:31
  mundane sphere unquote. So this reflects a belief in the
• 30:41
  immortality of the soul and a personal emotional conviction that
• 30:47
  he had in this continued existence beyond physical death. Though
• 30:53
  he framed it as a matter of faith rather than
• 30:57
  scientific proof, Houdini repeatedly clarified that his crusade against fraudulent
• 31:07
  mediums was not a rejection of the afterlife. Itself, but
• 31:12
  of claims that the living could communicate with the dead
• 31:15
  through supernatural means. In the same book, he wrote gladly,
• 31:24
  I would embrace spiritualism if it could prove its claims,
• 31:28
  but I am not willing to be deluded by the
• 31:31
  fraudulent impositions of so called psychics, or, except as sacred reality,
• 31:38
  any of the evidence that has been placed before me
• 31:41
  thus far. He emphasized his openness to evidence, noting I
• 31:48
  am willing to be convinced. My mind is open, but
• 31:51
  the proof must be such as to leave no vestige
• 31:55
  of doubt that what is claim to be done is
• 31:57
  accomplished only through or by supernatural power unquote. After decades
• 32:07
  of investigations, including attending seances and making pacts with friends
• 32:12
  to communicate posthumously, none of which succeeded, he concluded, after
• 32:18
  twenty five years of ardent research and endeavor, I declare
• 32:23
  that nothing has been revealed to convince me that intercommunication
• 32:28
  has been established between the spirits of the departed and
• 32:32
  those still in the flesh.
• 32:34
  Speaker 9: Quote.
• 32:40
  Speaker 7: The stance was echoed in other contexts, such as his
• 32:43
  congressional testimony in nineteen twenty six, where he described spiritualism
• 32:48
  as quote, a fraud from start to finish, while maintaining
• 32:53
  his personal faith in God and an afterlife. His motivations
• 32:57
  were often tied to grief over his mother's death in
• 33:00
  nineteen thirteen, which I mentioned, which drove him to seek
• 33:05
  genuine contact, but ultimately reinforced his view that mediums exploited
• 33:10
  the vulnerable without providing real evidence of spirit communication. Well,
• 33:17
  he should have gone to the Witch of Endor. He's
• 33:28
  dealing with these vaudeville performance psychics, not with actual ritual
• 33:39
  magicians and shamans who may have actually been making some
• 33:43
  sort of spirit contact. And this also brings up the
• 33:46
  question when you're dealing with spirit communication, if you do
• 33:51
  indeed make contact with something or someone, some entity, are
• 33:57
  you really dealing with the spirit of a departed human being,
• 34:01
  a family member, a friend, or are you dealing with
• 34:05
  some other sort of spirit that is using deception to
• 34:11
  manipulate you. And basically, what magic is, It's the art
• 34:17
  of illusion and the art of deception and the art
• 34:19
  of using your will to influence others. And so it
• 34:31
  seems natural that you would partner with entities who also
• 34:36
  use deception as a means of manipulation, and so this
• 34:40
  can be a two way relationship, the medium or a
• 34:47
  person who's willing to act as a channel and the
• 34:51
  deceptive spirit who might be posing as Grandma or your
• 34:57
  deceased spouse or children or some thing. Now regarding reincarnation specifically,
• 35:12
  Houdini incorporated this into his nineteen twenty two silent film
• 35:16
  The Man from Beyond, which he wrote, produced, and starred.
• 35:21
  In the film's title card, stated quote, our personal beliefs
• 35:25
  are of no importance. The great teachers of the earth
• 35:29
  Zoraster down to Moses and Christ, who have made civilization possible,
• 35:35
  have taught the immortality and progression of the soul, reincarnation.
• 35:44
  So I wasn't aware that Moses and Christ had promoted reincarnation.
• 35:49
  I know some people believe that and that the reincarnation
• 35:54
  scriptures and verses were taken out of the Bible, but
• 35:57
  that's a gnostic notion, a gnostic heresy. So his disclaimer
• 36:09
  about his personal beliefs leaves ambiguity as to whether it
• 36:12
  reflected his own views or served the story's dramatic purposes.
• 36:17
  So no definitive statements from Houdini outright endorsing or rejecting
• 36:22
  reincarnation appear in any of his writings. Houdini expressed beliefs
• 36:33
  centered on a faith based acceptance of an afterlife and
• 36:36
  soul immortality, contrasted with his empirical rejection of spiritualist practices
• 36:43
  as unproven and often deceptive. He positioned himself as a
• 36:47
  rational skeptic who wanted to believe in communication with the dead,
• 36:52
  but found no substantiation for it. So, if we want
• 37:03
  to go back to the Bible and the Bible's condemnation
• 37:10
  of consulting with mediums and psychics and necromancers, anybody who
• 37:24
  sought to communicate with the dead, you have to wonder
• 37:32
  if this was because they were actually communicating with the
• 37:38
  dead or seeking to communicate with the dead, and that
• 37:43
  that was a known practice, or the mediums and necromancers
• 37:51
  of the day were also complete frauds, and that would
• 37:59
  be a very interesting rabbit hole to go down. Leviticus,
• 38:08
  chapter nineteen, verse thirty one reads, give no regard to
• 38:13
  mediums and familiar spirits. Do not seek after them to
• 38:18
  be defiled by them. I am the Lord your God. Okay,
• 38:24
  this is the expansion upon the Ten Commandments. Here. Other
• 38:31
  Bible verses concerning necromancy. A little bit further down here
• 38:43
  Leviticus twenty six. Whoever turns to mediums or spiritists and
• 38:48
  prostitutes himself with them, I will set my face against
• 38:52
  that person and cut him off from his people. So
• 38:57
  this is one of the practices that is an a bomination
• 39:01
  to the Lord because it's spiritual adultery. You're not seeking
• 39:11
  after the Lord for help, you know, in making decisions
• 39:16
  or future predictions. You're turning to psychics and mediums who
• 39:26
  are basically out to make a buck. And because you're gullible,
• 39:32
  and because you're vulnerable, and because you're grieving, perhaps because
• 39:39
  you want to believe so badly that this person with
• 39:46
  special powers can communicate from beyond the grave, that you
• 39:55
  allow yourself to be spiritually deceived and defiled. That's why
• 40:01
  it's such dangerous spiritual territory to engage in these things.
• 40:08
  In the New Testament we have this passage in Galatians
• 40:13
  chapter five, nineteen through twenty one. The acts of the
• 40:16
  flesh are obvious sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery, idolatry and sorcery, hatred, discord,
• 40:26
  jealousy and rage, rivalries, divisions, factions, and envy, drunkenness, orgies,
• 40:35
  and the like. I warn you, as I did before,
• 40:39
  that those who practice such things will not inherit the
• 40:42
  Kingdom of God. That doesn't mean if you once practiced
• 40:46
  these things, or that you have done these things at
• 40:50
  some point in your life. This is describing a condition
• 40:56
  where this is a practice that you regularly engage in
• 41:01
  repentant of these things, you think it's perfectly fine, perhaps
• 41:06
  to commit sexual immorality and necromancy and idolatry and be
• 41:14
  jealous and involve yourself in drunken orgies, And in my
• 41:21
  experience getting to know people who participated in these sort
• 41:26
  of alternative religions and lifestyles, a lot of these things
• 41:31
  go together. So on the surface, they're just you know,
• 41:35
  sort of interested in the spirit world and this mysticism
• 41:40
  and stuff, and they're usually opposed to any kind of
• 41:43
  organized religion. They're very much into nature and this sort
• 41:49
  of thing. But the underbelly of that is these abominable practices.
• 41:57
  It's all part of the same life lifestyle. Sorcery includes necromancy,
• 42:08
  and it's listed among the works of the flesh that
• 42:11
  are incompatible with inheriting the Kingdom of God. Revelation twenty one,
• 42:20
  verse eight, very end of the Bible. Here, but to
• 42:25
  the cowardly and unbelieving and abominable, and murderers and sexually immoral,
• 42:31
  and sorcerers and idolators and all liars, their place will
• 42:37
  be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur.
• 42:40
  This is the second death. So these sorts of things
• 42:44
  can have eternal consequences. Okay, spiritual death, the second death,
• 42:50
  which is the ultimate consequence. There's no coming back from that. Now.
• 43:01
  The underlying moral conundrum here presented by the practice of necromancy.
• 43:08
  From a biblical perspective or through God's eyes, let's say
• 43:13
  that revolves around human beings and their temptation to seek
• 43:20
  forbidden knowledge or power or comfort, even through means that
• 43:26
  undermine divine authority and expose individuals to deception and spiritual harm.
• 43:35
  They violate the sacred covenant between God and his people.
• 43:44
  So at its core, attempting to communicate with the dead
• 43:49
  or conjure the spirits of the dead for revelation, influence,
• 43:54
  guidance creates this profound dilemma. It pits human desperation or
• 44:06
  grief against unwavering trust in God's sovereignty, which leads to idolatry, defilement,
• 44:17
  and ultimately eternal separation. Necromancy fundamentally challenges God's role as
• 44:27
  the sole source of truth, wisdom, and guidance. Okay, the
• 44:33
  Bible talks about God being a jealous God. He demands
• 44:40
  his people's undivided loyalty, so seeking answers from the dead
• 44:48
  represents a direct act of distrust. Okay. Isaiah chapter eight nineteen,
• 45:01
  when they say to you, consult the mediums and the
• 45:03
  spiritists who whisper and mutter. Should not a people consult
• 45:09
  their God? Should they consult the dead on behalf of
• 45:12
  the living?
• 45:14
  Speaker 2: Okay?
• 45:15
  Speaker 7: What are these mediums doing? They're whispering and muttering and chanting.
• 45:22
  In moments of uncertainty or loss, human beings are drawn
• 45:26
  to these quick fixes like necromancy to gain hidden knowledge,
• 45:37
  but it rejects God's promise to provide wisdom freely to
• 45:41
  those who ask in faith James one to five. If
• 45:47
  any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God,
• 45:50
  who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it
• 45:55
  will be given to him. From God's perspective, such actions
• 46:04
  erode this covenant relationship. You're saying God is insufficient. You're
• 46:13
  turning instead to these prohibited sources. It's like spiritual adultery
• 46:19
  or prostitution. Turning to mediums and necromancers is equated with
• 46:27
  unfaithfulness to Yahweh. Now, the moral tension arises because this
• 46:34
  rebellion promises empowerment but delivers bondage, like we see with
• 46:44
  King Saul when he consults with the Witch of Endor.
• 46:51
  This led to divine judgment and death for seeking the
• 46:55
  dead over God. Necromancy is often linked to idolatrous practices
• 47:03
  that the Jews borrowed from surrounding nations, which God commands
• 47:08
  his people to reject to maintain holiness and separation. It
• 47:18
  implies that the dead holds some sort of power or
• 47:21
  exist in a realm outside God's control, and this fosters
• 47:28
  dualism or polytheism. These are ideas and practices that are
• 47:34
  in direct contradiction to the True and Living God, who
• 47:40
  is the sole arbiter of life and death. Necromancy is
• 47:45
  connected to ancestor worship, ancestor veneration, cults of the dead,
• 47:53
  where people would seek out favors from family spirits, and
• 48:03
  oftentimes these practices would culminate in, you know, ritual child
• 48:12
  sacrifice because you know, the spirits demand more and more.
• 48:21
  So is it your ancestor spirits that you're communicating with?
• 48:26
  You would think your ancestor spirits would want to help
• 48:30
  and prosper you, but instead these sort of communications lead
• 48:37
  one into spiritual bondage and result in you, you know,
• 48:45
  sacrificing your children to appease them. Sounds to me more
• 48:53
  like a bloodthirsty demon pretending to be Grandma or you know,
• 49:00
  the great you know, departed warrior king. Now these practices
• 49:12
  might stem from genuine grief or they're just these cultural norms,
• 49:20
  but they make the practitioners spiritually unclean before God, and
• 49:27
  they provoke divine wrath. Nothing makes God more angry than idolatry.
• 49:39
  And this whole sphere of practices, all these little individual practices,
• 49:48
  they really center around idolatry and an idolatrous belief system.
• 50:00
  Let's read another quick scripture here from Second Kings, chapter
• 50:06
  twenty one. Manassa was twelve years old when he became king,
• 50:13
  and he reigned fifty five years in Jerusalem. His mother's
• 50:17
  name was Hepzibah, and he did evil in the sight
• 50:23
  of the Lord, according to the abominations of the nations
• 50:27
  whom the Lord had cast out before the children of Israel.
• 50:33
  For he rebuilt the high places which Hezekiah his father
• 50:37
  had destroyed. He raised up altars for ball and made
• 50:41
  a wooden image, as Ahab, king of Israel, had done,
• 50:46
  and he worshiped all the hosts of heaven and served them.
• 50:51
  He also built altars in the House of the Lord,
• 50:55
  of which the Lord had said, in Jerusalem, I will
• 50:58
  put my name. And he built altars for all the
• 51:01
  hosts of Heaven in the two courts of the House
• 51:04
  of the Lord. And he made his son pass through
• 51:07
  the fire, practiced soothsaying, used witchcraft, and consulted spiritists and mediums.
• 51:17
  He did much evil in the sight of the Lord,
• 51:20
  to provoke him to anger. He even set a carved
• 51:23
  image of Ashira that he had made in the house
• 51:27
  of which the Lord had said to David and to
• 51:29
  Solomon his son, in this house and in Jerusalem, which
• 51:33
  I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel,
• 51:36
  I will put my name forever. And I will not
• 51:41
  make the feet of Israel wander anymore from the land
• 51:44
  which I gave their fathers only if they are careful
• 51:48
  to do according to all that I have commanded them,
• 51:51
  and according to all the law that my servant Moses
• 51:54
  commanded them. But they paid no attention, and Manassa sed
• 52:00
  used to them to do more evil than the nations
• 52:03
  whom the Lord had destroyed before the children of Israel.
• 52:07
  So the Israelites under Manassa and other kings were committing
• 52:14
  spiritual adultery. In fact, they were doing more evil than
• 52:22
  the nations who the Lord had driven out of the land.
• 52:31
  So is it worse to just be a regular old
• 52:34
  Canaanite worshiping your Canaanite gods and consulting with the dead ancestors,
• 52:41
  or having known the Lord your God and been commanded
• 52:49
  by the Lord your God to only worship him, and
• 52:56
  then turning around and adopting the practices of the tribes
• 53:03
  that surrounded you, something that was explicitly forbidden. What's worse
• 53:12
  having no knowledge of God and of God's commandments and
• 53:18
  God's requirements, or having knowledge of God's commandments and requirements
• 53:26
  and choosing to do the opposite choosing to do evil. Well,
• 53:33
  obviously the latter is the worst. So what's really weird
• 53:39
  is that Houdini was so prolific as a debunker. I mean,
• 53:47
  he was a bleeding heart skeptic. He went from expert
• 53:53
  escape artist to turn of the century pendulet. He never
• 54:03
  encountered a medium or fortune teller that stumped him. He
• 54:11
  testified before Congress as an expert witness in nineteen twenty six,
• 54:19
  and there was a bill being proposed at the time
• 54:24
  that would ban fortune telling, psychic readings, and similar operations
• 54:30
  for profit in Washington, d C. So why, after Houdini's death,
• 54:42
  which was shortly after these congressional hearings, would his widow
• 54:49
  using psychic medium's attempt to contact him. Well, they had
• 54:54
  made this pact him and his wife that whoever died
• 54:58
  first would seek to contact the other. Now was this
• 55:04
  a means to further solidify Harry Houdini's hypothesis that psychic
• 55:13
  mediums were all frauds and they couldn't actually reproduce any
• 55:17
  genuine spirit phenomena. This sort of practice was a detestable fraud,
• 55:29
  according to Houdini, But they did this for a whole
• 55:35
  decade after his death. Houdini was a hard liner. He
• 55:43
  considered these practices immoral, taking advantage of gullible people, so
• 55:53
  was best his lifelong wife and partner trying to prove
• 55:59
  her husband right, repeating these seances every Halloween for a
• 56:08
  full decade, and each time there was no secret code received,
• 56:19
  and other mediums all around the world made lots of
• 56:23
  claims that Houdini had contacted them, but never including this
• 56:28
  special code that Houdini and his wife had come up with.
• 56:35
  This was the scientific failsafe.
• 56:39
  Speaker 14: Ladies and gentleman, in this cathedral like atmosphere tonight, I
• 56:46
  wish to remind you that this is a most solid
• 56:50
  occasion for the close friends that have gathered. Heeared, that's
• 56:54
  a zero hour of the anniversary of our art and
• 56:58
  friend is fast nearing the end, and that the results
• 57:04
  of tonight are primarily of a personal and private nature.
• 57:10
  Speaker 6: Only.
• 57:11
  Speaker 14: No attempt is being made to sway the world or
• 57:15
  to convince the skeptics one way or the other. This
• 57:21
  is a personal gathering aiding Missus Houdini in completing any
• 57:26
  your visual and to aid Missus Vuccini and ourselves to
• 57:32
  a final and logical conclusion.
• 57:37
  Speaker 2: Nor is it.
• 57:37
  Speaker 14: Expected or intended that others must necessarily agree. But this
• 57:45
  last personal attempt to contact the spirit of Budini has
• 57:49
  aroused interests throughout the world, and to that extent, will
• 57:55
  the findings here tonight be publicly recorded. We wish it
• 58:01
  distinctly understood that in this last and final attempt, we
• 58:06
  are interested in Houghini coming to us instead of to
• 58:12
  a stranger. Should Houdini contact a stranger anywhere in the
• 58:17
  world tonight, we know that Boudhini will leave proper identifications
• 58:23
  on behalf of missus Airy Houdini. I wish to thank
• 58:28
  all members of the press, both local and worldwide, the
• 58:33
  various national magazines, and the hundreds of individuals throughout the
• 58:39
  world that have aided I wish to thank the sincere
• 58:44
  friends in the four corners of the United States, Canada,
• 58:48
  and Europe in the forming of some twenty or more
• 58:51
  simultaneous seances coinciding with our final attempts here in Hollywood.
• 59:00
  I wished to thank the several hundred friends, trained observers,
• 59:06
  and several dozen renowned psychics and mediums that are present
• 59:11
  with us here tonight, and especially the past president of
• 59:16
  the California State Spiritualist Associations present here tonight, whose kindly
• 59:24
  advice has been of great value. Every facility has been
• 59:30
  provided tonight that might aid in opening a pathway to
• 59:34
  the spirit world. Here in the inner circle reposes a
• 59:38
  medium's compet a pair of slates with shocks, a writing
• 59:43
  tabilist and pencils, a small bell, and an ascender reposes
• 59:48
  a huge pair of silver handcuffs on a silk cushion.
• 59:53
  Facing the inner circle stands the famous Boghini Shrine with
• 59:59
  its doors a jar. The world knows that the Houginis
• 1:00:05
  were always open minded regarding spirit communications. Bucghini thought to
• 1:00:11
  communicate with his beloved mother after she passed on, but
• 1:00:15
  they found no evidence that he could rely upon. The
• 1:00:18
  Huginis always believe that in their search, if you remove
• 1:00:23
  the fraud, what is left must be the truth, and
• 1:00:28
  they together were always seekers at the truth.
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 7: Central Biblical concern is that necromancy opens doors to demonic
• 1:00:41
  forces rather than genuine spirits of the dead. According to
• 1:00:48
  the Bible, souls upon death immediately enter the underworld. We
• 1:00:58
  can read that in Luke sixteen, where it talks about
• 1:01:02
  Lazarus and the rich Man. Now we've heard this story
• 1:01:10
  most of us, but let's read Luke sixteen nineteen. Now,
• 1:01:16
  there was a rich man dressed in purple and fine linen,
• 1:01:19
  who lived each day in joyous splendor. And a beggar
• 1:01:23
  named Lazarus lay at his gate, covered with sores and
• 1:01:27
  longing to be fed with the crumbs that fell from
• 1:01:30
  the rich man's table. Even the dogs came and licked
• 1:01:33
  his sores. One day, the beggar died and was carried
• 1:01:37
  by the angels to Abraham's side, and the rich man
• 1:01:42
  also died and was buried in Hades, where he was
• 1:01:46
  in torment. He looked up and saw Abraham from Afar,
• 1:01:50
  with Lazarus by his side. So he cried out, Father, Abraham,
• 1:01:55
  have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the
• 1:01:58
  tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue,
• 1:02:02
  for I am in agony in this fire. But Abraham answered, child,
• 1:02:08
  remember that during your lifetime you received your good things,
• 1:02:13
  while Lazarus received bad things. But now he is comforted
• 1:02:18
  here while you are in agony. And besides all this,
• 1:02:22
  a great chasm has been fixed between us and you,
• 1:02:25
  so that even those who wish cannot cross from here
• 1:02:28
  to you, nor can anyone cross from there to us.
• 1:02:33
  Then I beg you, father, he said, send Lazarus to
• 1:02:36
  my father's house, for I have five brothers. Let him
• 1:02:40
  warn them so that they will not also end up
• 1:02:42
  in this place of torment. But Abraham replied, they have
• 1:02:47
  Moses and the prophets. Let your brothers listen to them. No, Father, Abraham,
• 1:02:57
  he said, but if someone is sent to them from dead,
• 1:03:00
  they will repent. Then Abraham said to him, if they
• 1:03:05
  do not listen to Moses and the prophets, they will
• 1:03:07
  not be persuaded even if someone rises from the dead.
• 1:03:14
  Now that's sort of prophetic there speaking about Jesus Christ
• 1:03:19
  rising from the dead, whom they didn't listen to, And
• 1:03:23
  they didn't listen to Moses and the prophets either. Now
• 1:03:30
  that's a different subject. But here we have a description
• 1:03:36
  of the underworld the afterlife, and Abraham's there, and Lazarus
• 1:03:42
  is there, and the rich man. They're all there, but
• 1:03:53
  the rich man is being tormented. Meanwhile, Lazarus is in
• 1:03:57
  the bosom of abraham comfort, and there's a chasm between
• 1:04:03
  the place of torture and this place of comfort. This
• 1:04:09
  is basically saying there's no point to contacting the dead,
• 1:04:13
  or in this case, sending emissaries who are already dead
• 1:04:17
  to contact the living. To help them change their ways.
• 1:04:27
  They have the Law, they have the prophets, and we
• 1:04:33
  have Jesus Christ. So there's also this great chasm between
• 1:04:39
  the living and the dead, and any true communication would
• 1:04:46
  seem impossible, and if there's any sort of contact, it's
• 1:04:52
  more than likely demons impersonating the deceased. From God's perspective,
• 1:04:59
  this is a poor because it aligns with Satan's scheme
• 1:05:03
  to devour souls, and it turns what might feel like
• 1:05:09
  a harmless inquiry into a means of possession, lies, and
• 1:05:18
  ultimate destruction. So you go into this seeking some kind
• 1:05:27
  of closure or some kind of miracle, but it only
• 1:05:31
  invites evil that harms them eternally. Now, concerning Saul and
• 1:05:42
  the Witch of Endor and this medium calling up Samuel,
• 1:05:50
  some Christians say, well, that wasn't really Samuel, It was
• 1:05:53
  probably a demon. I think it really was Samuel or
• 1:06:00
  the spirit of Samuel, basically because of how the Witch
• 1:06:08
  of Endor acted in response to his appearance. All of
• 1:06:12
  a sudden, this is outside the realm of her trickery,
• 1:06:17
  and Samuel has actually manifested in front of them, And
• 1:06:24
  then she realizes she's dealing with something completely different than
• 1:06:28
  you know, probably the normal inquiries of her clients where
• 1:06:32
  she's tricking them and ripping them off. But this does
• 1:06:38
  sort of raise an important question. Is actual spirit communication possible?
• 1:06:44
  I think yes, but only when God permits it as
• 1:06:48
  is in this case. I think it's not a common thing.
• 1:06:53
  I don't think it's normally something that human beings should
• 1:06:57
  be engaged in for all the reasons that I've outlined.
• 1:07:04
  But it doesn't mean it's impossible. It doesn't mean that
• 1:07:06
  a loved one can't come to you in a dream.
• 1:07:10
  Are they actually coming to you or is there just
• 1:07:14
  some sort of message that's conveyed, or are you subconsciously
• 1:07:21
  picking up on something that feels significant and gives you closure.
• 1:07:28
  I think these are important distinctions to be made. And
• 1:07:33
  Houdini and his wife always believed in a spirit world.
• 1:07:39
  They were just seeking scientific proof of spirit communication, which
• 1:07:43
  they found none. Why is this so serious? Why is
• 1:07:49
  necromancy considered an abomination? Why does God have this moral
• 1:07:54
  revulsion towards it because it disrupts his ordained boundaries between
• 1:08:01
  life and death, physical and spiritual, holy and the profane.
• 1:08:10
  This creates a conundrum for believers. The desire for supernatural
• 1:08:15
  insight or reunion with the departed conflicts with God's call
• 1:08:21
  to holiness. It devalues human dignity by treating the dead
• 1:08:28
  as a tool for gain rather than resting in God's
• 1:08:35
  promise of eternal life through Christ. Houdini successfully debunked numerous
• 1:08:45
  high profile mediums through direct investigations, often attending these seances
• 1:08:51
  in disguise, which I think is funny, replicating their effects
• 1:08:56
  on stage, or exposing them in pamphlets and articles. We
• 1:09:04
  talked about Mina Crandon Marjorie, but one of the most
• 1:09:12
  high profile incidents involved Jeane Doyle, who was the wife
• 1:09:23
  of Houdini's friends Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Lady Doyle produced
• 1:09:29
  a message supposedly from Houdini's mother, but Houdini dismissed it
• 1:09:36
  as fraudulent due to inconsistencies like Christian crosses. Okay, his
• 1:09:43
  mother was Jewish now. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his
• 1:09:52
  wife were big proponents of the spiritism movement and believed
• 1:09:59
  that communication with the dead was possible, and Arthur Conan
• 1:10:07
  Doyle actually believed and would tell Wodini that no, no, no,
• 1:10:12
  you have supernatural powers. You just don't realize it. So
• 1:10:20
  this contention between the two would eventually lead to the
• 1:10:27
  dissolving of their friendship and then they became rivals. But
• 1:10:33
  Doyle never gave up insisting that Houdini had special powers
• 1:10:40
  or that the spiritism movement was something genuine. Sir Arthur
• 1:10:47
  Conan Doyle, we could do a whole episode on him
• 1:10:51
  as well. He's the author of the Sherlock Holmes novels, famously,
• 1:10:58
  which feature a hyper rationalist logical character in Sherlock Holmes,
• 1:11:09
  which is ironic because in real life he was the
• 1:11:13
  opposite of that. There was no scientific principles involved, no
• 1:11:19
  rationalism at all, just this wanton belief in spirit communication.
• 1:11:29
  So imagine Houdini, you know, grief stricken as he was
• 1:11:33
  over the loss of his father and later his mother,
• 1:11:39
  encountering all these psychics who promised to give him messages
• 1:11:44
  from beyond and only turning up fraud like Sir Arthur
• 1:11:50
  Conan Doyle's wife Jean, producing this message during a seance
• 1:11:57
  from Houdini's mother, supposedly, but then the message has crosses
• 1:12:03
  on it, which tipped off Houdini that this was fraudulent.
• 1:12:09
  Why would there be crosses? His mother was Jewish, so
• 1:12:16
  my man was on a mission to go after these people.
• 1:12:23
  He documented his work in books like Miracle Mongers and
• 1:12:27
  Their Methods and a Magician among the Spirits, and he
• 1:12:33
  commissioned an unfinished manuscript, The Cancer of Superstition, from HP Lovecraft.
• 1:12:42
  And we talked about his testimony before Congress supporting a
• 1:12:48
  bill to ban fortune telling in Washington, d C. And
• 1:12:52
  during the testimony he would stand up and demonstrate some
• 1:12:55
  of these tricks, and there was heated debates on the
• 1:12:59
  congressional flo Now, this legislation ultimately failed because of First
• 1:13:07
  Amendment concerns, but he got threats from exposed mediums, some
• 1:13:17
  of whom predicted his death, and this provided inspiration for
• 1:13:24
  later skeptics like James Randy Penn and Teller who I mentioned,
• 1:13:31
  and Dorothy Dietrich. Houdini emphasized that his debunking legacy was
• 1:13:38
  more important than his career as an escape artist. Now,
• 1:13:48
  like I mentioned before, there's no documented case of a
• 1:13:51
  medium that Houdini was unable to debunk, But there was
• 1:13:56
  a notable exception that this sort of sparked this historical
• 1:14:02
  speculation was his interaction with Edgar Casey, the Sleeping Prophet.
• 1:14:08
  Casey was a trance medium known for his psychic readings
• 1:14:13
  on health, reincarnation, and forecasting future events, but he was
• 1:14:21
  not known for these producing these physical manifestations. Like these
• 1:14:26
  other mediums, they would produce ectoplasm or levitation in this
• 1:14:33
  sort of thing. In nineteen twenty one, Houdini invited Casey
• 1:14:38
  to attend a heavyweight boxing match. This was Jack Dempsey
• 1:14:42
  versus George Carpentier, and Casey reportedly provided at least one
• 1:14:51
  private reading for Houdini, But unlike his vocal exposures of others,
• 1:14:58
  Houdini remained completely silent about Casey, neither debunking him as
• 1:15:05
  a fraud nor endorsing him as legitimate in public statements. Now,
• 1:15:13
  this silence on Casey has led to intrigue and debate
• 1:15:17
  among historians and skeptics. Some Casey proponents interpret it as
• 1:15:23
  Houdini being unable to debunk or explain Casey's abilities, suggesting
• 1:15:28
  it may have represented a rare challenge to his skepticism.
• 1:15:35
  Others argue Houdini avoided commenting because Casey's mental readings delivered
• 1:15:42
  in a trance without props, didn't fit his focus on
• 1:15:46
  physical frauds, which he could easily replicate, or because he
• 1:15:50
  found no clear evidence of deception but wasn't convinced of genuineness.
• 1:15:57
  There's no evidence Houdini viewed Casey as he didn't invest
• 1:16:02
  in Casey's ventures or reference him positively. Speculative claims. In
• 1:16:09
  other words, Casey predicting an assassination that Houdini later called
• 1:16:13
  his one true mystical experience appear in fringe sources but
• 1:16:18
  lack substantiation. So does that mean Casey's the real deal?
• 1:16:24
  I don't know. Maybe Edgar Casey is another interesting subject
• 1:16:32
  to study in this realm of psychic mediums and that
• 1:16:37
  sort of thing. Maybe Houdini realized after his interactions with
• 1:16:42
  Casey that he was dealing with a different form of spiritualism,
• 1:16:50
  but he never commented on it one way or another.
• 1:16:52
  Maybe it was somewhat baffling to Houdini. And we don't
• 1:16:56
  know the content of whatever reading he provided for Houdini.
• 1:17:06
  And just because a lot of these mediums are frauds
• 1:17:11
  and Charlatan's doesn't negate our spiritual reality. It doesn't confirm
• 1:17:18
  that there's no possible communication between the realm of the
• 1:17:24
  dead and the realm of the living. It doesn't say
• 1:17:28
  it's not possible, and the Bible seems to suggest that
• 1:17:33
  it's very much possible and gives examples of where it
• 1:17:38
  was practiced and hence the prohibition against it. So MythBusters
• 1:17:47
  and James Randy, who has the million dollar challenge for
• 1:17:51
  any you know psychic to prove their abilities under these
• 1:17:57
  scientific controls, can link their legacy back to Harry Houdini,
• 1:18:06
  the greatest debunker of them all, and they would go
• 1:18:12
  after more recent psychic mediums like Sylvia Brown and John
• 1:18:17
  Edward and accusing them of using grief to exploit people
• 1:18:29
  and harm people. Randy was one of Brown's most vocal critics,
• 1:18:37
  accusing her of inaccurate predictions, exploiting grief, and avoiding scientific scrutiny.
• 1:18:44
  He documented her failures extensively through the James Randy Educational Foundation.
• 1:18:53
  Randy highlighted Brown's incorrect two thousand and four prediction on
• 1:18:57
  the Montel Williams Show that missing person Amanda Barry was
• 1:19:02
  dead and quote in water. Meanwhile, Barry was found alive
• 1:19:08
  in twenty thirteen after a decade in captivity. He used
• 1:19:14
  this as evidence of her harmful misinformation during emotionally vulnerable times. Now,
• 1:19:19
  if you watch that episode of the Montell Williams show,
• 1:19:21
  someone in the audience, she's doing cold readings for people
• 1:19:26
  in the audience, and someone asks if this person is
• 1:19:32
  still alive, and she's very dismissive. Oh no, oh no, honey,
• 1:19:36
  oh no, she's dead and she's in water. And then
• 1:19:42
  ten years later turns up alive. I mean, imagine the
• 1:19:49
  devastation of that. How one person's so called prediction. Apparently
• 1:19:56
  she saw the person standing next to her and saying,
• 1:20:02
  you know, please tell them that I'm dead. All just
• 1:20:08
  flat out lies that she thought she'd never get called
• 1:20:11
  out on. Brown accepted Randy's one million dollar paranormal challenge
• 1:20:21
  on Larry King Live, but she never followed through and
• 1:20:26
  so then James Randy tracked on his website the amount
• 1:20:32
  of time that had lapsed between Sylvia Brown's acceptance of
• 1:20:36
  the challenge and her continuing excuses on why she didn't
• 1:20:43
  show up for the challenge, and Sylvia Brown went on,
• 1:20:46
  you know, just claiming that the money didn't really exist,
• 1:20:50
  and et cetera, et cetera. Randy also criticized John Edward, who,
• 1:20:56
  if you remember, he's one of these other TV celebrity
• 1:21:00
  psychic people who do these cold readings. Interesting how they
• 1:21:06
  always show up on these daytime talk shows, which are
• 1:21:12
  I mean, if we're gonna be honest here, mostly watched
• 1:21:14
  by women, and knowing full well that women are governed
• 1:21:20
  by their emotions primarily. I'm not saying women can't be
• 1:21:24
  rational or skeptical, but women in grief, you know, are
• 1:21:31
  looking for closure. They're looking for answers, they're looking for
• 1:21:35
  that last you know, communication. They want to be comforted,
• 1:21:40
  and these psychics are swooping in saying, oh yes, oh yes,
• 1:21:46
  he says he's fine and he's in a good place
• 1:21:48
  now and you can go on with your life. Is
• 1:21:51
  that giving them true closure, true comfort? Well, no, no
• 1:21:59
  it's not. It's leading them away from God and the
• 1:22:03
  comfort in knowing that you know your relatives are in
• 1:22:05
  God's hands, you know, they're not just floating around in
• 1:22:10
  some ether and they're lost and trying to communicate and
• 1:22:13
  they don't realize they're dead, and all this nonsense and
• 1:22:18
  gibberish that these psychics always spout, and they can all
• 1:22:26
  trace that back to Harry Houdini. And whenever you're trying
• 1:22:34
  to understand a phenomena, you know, such as spirit communication
• 1:22:39
  or something. You have to filter through out all the
• 1:22:42
  fraud and all the lies and all the tall tales
• 1:22:48
  before you can even try to get to the truth
• 1:22:52
  of a matter. But that also doesn't mean being a
• 1:22:55
  strict material, strict rationalist person and with no spiritual understanding
• 1:23:03
  or spiritual belief. So I think that the legacy of
• 1:23:08
  Harry Houdini is a very important one because you have
• 1:23:11
  all kinds of profits and psychics and seers and clairvoyants
• 1:23:18
  and stuff who are out here misleading and defrauding people
• 1:23:25
  with this new age, you know, star seed mumbo jumbo,
• 1:23:32
  and people are still gullible. People still fall for it.
• 1:23:36
  Although I find it hard to believe that you know,
• 1:23:39
  a modern person, you know, sitting in on one of
• 1:23:43
  these seances in nineteen fourteen or something, is not going
• 1:23:49
  to be able to detect, you know, one of these
• 1:23:54
  mediums with a string tied around her toe, you know,
• 1:23:57
  ringing a bell or something. You know, when spiritism was
• 1:24:02
  fresh and new, this was all sensational and miraculous, and
• 1:24:06
  people were easily fooled. I think we have a much
• 1:24:10
  more skeptical population nowadays than they did, say around the
• 1:24:16
  turn of the century. And we owe that to the
• 1:24:20
  legacy of Harry Houdini and others like William James and
• 1:24:26
  the early psychical researchers who wanted to believe and were
• 1:24:32
  setting out to scientifically prove the afterlife but ultimately found
• 1:24:41
  scant scientific evidence. Randy publicly exposed Yuri Geller on The
• 1:24:49
  Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, self proclaimed psychic and you
• 1:24:55
  know spoon bender and you know produced all these telekinetic effects. Well,
• 1:25:00
  Randy prevented him from handling the props, the spoons and
• 1:25:04
  stuff before the show, and as it turns out, he
• 1:25:07
  couldn't perform any of the spoon bending tricks that he
• 1:25:12
  was known for. And I've been a critic of Yuri Geller,
• 1:25:18
  especially considering his work with the CIA and supposedly mk
• 1:25:22
  Ultra and Poharic and other things that I've talked about
• 1:25:27
  on this show. But as far as us Christians, we
• 1:25:31
  don't have to worry about any of this sort of deception, right,
• 1:25:35
  we don't follow all this new age psychic medium stuff, right,
• 1:25:43
  spirit communication. Well, Randy also exposed Peter Popoff, who was
• 1:25:51
  a televangelist. I think he's still around. Faith healer guy
• 1:25:57
  who was claiming to receive these divine message is about
• 1:26:03
  audience members' ailments during church services. And in nineteen eighty six,
• 1:26:11
  Randy revealed that pop Off was using a hidden ear
• 1:26:14
  piece to receive information that was radioed by his wife,
• 1:26:19
  who gathered details from attendees beforehand, and this led to
• 1:26:25
  Popoff's public humiliation and caused him to go bankrupt. But yeah,
• 1:26:30
  he's still out here, Peter Popoff, Peterpopoff dot Org, Peter
• 1:26:37
  Popoff Ministries. So people still keep going back even after
• 1:26:42
  these people are exposed as frauds, because they just want
• 1:26:47
  to believe that some preacher man has supernatural powers and
• 1:26:56
  he sells this like miracle spring water or some thing too.
• 1:27:03
  Note do not ingest the miracle spring water. I'm reading
• 1:27:06
  right off the website. Now. The miracle spring water is
• 1:27:11
  a powerful biblical point of contact. Almost all of the
• 1:27:16
  miracles in both the Old and New Testament happened when
• 1:27:18
  a point of contact was used. I believe the miracle
• 1:27:22
  springwater will help you to use and release your faith
• 1:27:26
  as we agree together for the miracle you need. Okay,
• 1:27:31
  And people just gobble this stuff up. Man, It's amazing.
• 1:27:37
  Come on, haven't we learned anything from Harry Houdini. Oh
• 1:27:41
  and what do you know, he's calling himself a prophet
• 1:27:45
  on his website. You know, it's just no fun being
• 1:27:51
  a debunker and a skeptic. You're no fun at the
• 1:27:54
  Halloween party. So sorry for ruining your Halloween by showing
• 1:28:01
  that a lot of this stuff that you might believe
• 1:28:05
  is just Charlatan's trying to take advantage of that, take
• 1:28:10
  advantage of your desperate need to believe in something other
• 1:28:15
  than what the Bible clearly states and what the church teaches,
• 1:28:23
  you know, And the same goes for these interstellar objects
• 1:28:28
  that are supposedly alien mother ships visiting from outside the
• 1:28:34
  Solar System. We're going to talk about that when we
• 1:28:40
  return from the break. We're going to be tracking the
• 1:28:43
  three I Atlas object as it currently is rounding the
• 1:28:49
  Sun and heading back towards the Earth.
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 15: A M.
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 6: U M.
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 14: S M S.
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 1: M S.
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 13: S S S.
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 14: H.
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 7: We are back. You've been listening to Ministry X on
• 1:32:11
  Fringe Radio Network. You want some live updates on the
• 1:32:15
  three I Atlas comment, Well, I've got it for you now.
• 1:32:22
  Currently as of October thirty, first, the three I Atlas
• 1:32:27
  is rounding the Sun and preparing to head back towards
• 1:32:32
  the Earth, and I think it makes its closest flyby
• 1:32:41
  to Earth in December. That would be December eighteenth, twenty
• 1:32:46
  twenty five. Here's a story from USA today. I'm going
• 1:32:53
  to read this. A rare interstellar object was hurtling towards
• 1:32:58
  the Sun, and despite viral claims, experts say it's just
• 1:33:02
  a normal comet, although it's showing some unexpected behavior. Three
• 1:33:11
  Iye Atlas marks the third interstellar object ever discovered in
• 1:33:15
  our Solar System. Scientists found the interstellar object in July
• 1:33:19
  twenty twenty five, according to space dot com. As the
• 1:33:23
  comet neared its closest point to the Sun in its
• 1:33:25
  orbit October twenty ninth, and amid a Harvard astronomer's hypothesis
• 1:33:31
  about potential alien technology, the Internet was a buzz with
• 1:33:36
  curiosity about three Eye Atlas. Experts with NASA say there's
• 1:33:41
  no reason to worry, as the object is a natural
• 1:33:43
  comet posing no threat to Earth, though its unusual chemical
• 1:33:48
  activity offers a chance for new scientific discoveries. According to
• 1:33:53
  the Guardian, interstellar commet three I Atlas was expected to
• 1:34:04
  reach Perihelion, its closest point to the Sun Wednesday, October
• 1:34:08
  twenty ninth. According to space dot Com, astronomer Avi Lobe,
• 1:34:13
  the Frank B. Baird, Junior Professor of Science at Harvard University,
• 1:34:19
  made waves online for his theory that the interstellar comet
• 1:34:22
  has a thirty percent to forty percent chance of being
• 1:34:25
  an artificial alien object sent to observe the Solar System.
• 1:34:30
  Futurism reported, so this article is pulling in from a
• 1:34:35
  lot of different sources. Quote for a spacecraft, perihelion is
• 1:34:42
  the optimal time for either acceleration or deceleration by an
• 1:34:46
  impulse from an engine thanks to the gravitational assist from
• 1:34:50
  the Sun, lowbrote. This is also true of a mothership
• 1:34:55
  releasing many probes that maneuver toward the planets. Unfortunately, we
• 1:35:00
  cannot observe three I atlas from Earth at this opportune time,
• 1:35:04
  which raises the question of whether its trajectory was fine
• 1:35:07
  tuned by extraterrestrial intelligence. Unquote. Lobe has written papers outlining
• 1:35:17
  his theory and made media appearances, including on the Joe
• 1:35:20
  Rogan Experience podcast October twenty eighth episode, sparking online chatter
• 1:35:25
  and conspiracy theories. Quote on December nineteenth, twenty twenty five,
• 1:35:31
  six days before Christmas, three Iye Atlas will get to
• 1:35:35
  its closest distance of two hundred and sixty seven million
• 1:35:39
  kilometers from Earth. Assuming a purely gravitational trajectory, will three
• 1:35:44
  Eye Atlas send many probes towards Earth as Christmas gifts
• 1:35:48
  to humanity. Loeb's viral claims lack evidence, and astronomy experts
• 1:35:57
  at NASA confirm the object appears to be a natural
• 1:35:59
  intertidcet noting individual comments typically have unique variations. So is
• 1:36:09
  this story related at all to Harry Houdini and the
• 1:36:14
  spirit of debunking these extraordinary claims? In this case, we're
• 1:36:20
  not talking about the extraordinary claims of spiritualists, but the
• 1:36:25
  claims of people who support the eth the extraterrestrial hypothesis.
• 1:36:34
  And I think it has to be noted, what do
• 1:36:39
  these deceivers want us to believe? What is Avi Lobe saying?
• 1:36:49
  Avi Lobe a Harvard professor. I remember when a muamua
• 1:36:54
  came into the Solar system. It was the same thing
• 1:36:57
  he said about that, that it was an alien probe,
• 1:37:03
  that it accelerated strangely, therefore it indicates alien technology. Where
• 1:37:09
  does he get this thirty to forty percent chance figure
• 1:37:13
  from I mean, it really bothers me when these are
• 1:37:18
  like Harvard astrophysicists and astronomers and stuff putting out this
• 1:37:25
  sort of thing. And then you go on Joe Rogan
• 1:37:27
  and pretty soon everyone's saying, you know, this is just
• 1:37:33
  the first wave of alien invasions, et cetera, et cetera.
• 1:37:38
  Of course, it's not going to be any of that.
• 1:37:44
  We have no reason to believe that this is some
• 1:37:46
  sort of alien technology. Just because it's chemical makeup is
• 1:37:50
  a little bit interesting compared to other comments. This one
• 1:37:54
  came from interstellar space, from not within our solar system,
• 1:37:58
  in other words, so very likely it's going to have
• 1:38:01
  different components make it up. Seems very simple, seems very
• 1:38:08
  easy to understand. I mean, it's just it's sort of
• 1:38:12
  oblong shaped. It looks like a giant turd in space. Okay,
• 1:38:19
  but now you have all these AI videos purporting to
• 1:38:25
  be you know, telescopic observations, and it's showing you know,
• 1:38:30
  jets coming out of the back of it. You know,
• 1:38:35
  give me a break. Why is it so easy for
• 1:38:37
  some people to believe in this sort of thing and
• 1:38:40
  spend so much time speculating, and for the rest of
• 1:38:47
  us we chuckle at it because it seems so ridiculous.
• 1:38:54
  And what does it say when these are like Harvard
• 1:38:56
  professors and stuff, old renowned scientists making these sort of claims. Well,
• 1:39:07
  it's really disturbing and it seems to me to be
• 1:39:10
  pointing to some future construction of this alien savior hypothesis
• 1:39:24
  or maybe alien invader hypothesis. I was on the Happy
• 1:39:29
  Fools podcast recently talking about the phenomena and we end
• 1:39:35
  up talking about the Antichrist. How is the alien hypothesis
• 1:39:40
  tied in with the Antichrist? Well, it gets you to
• 1:39:44
  believe in something other than Christ. If aliens have a
• 1:39:50
  part in our future, then that means the Bible's inaccurate.
• 1:39:55
  Think about that.
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 2: Now.
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 7: I'm not against you know, speculation and you know, considering
• 1:40:05
  some of these things, these possibilities, but at the end
• 1:40:10
  of the day, it's really about truth and sifting the
• 1:40:14
  truth from the lies and the deceptions. And if we
• 1:40:20
  can't do that, then we're going to get caught up
• 1:40:23
  in the deception. And at some point here in the
• 1:40:28
  future we're going to see this continuing merging of the
• 1:40:35
  scientism and this new world religion mysticism into a new
• 1:40:45
  global religion slash belief system. Well, people already forgot about
• 1:40:53
  Amua Muha. They'll forget about three I Atlas once it
• 1:40:57
  leaves our solar system. They're going to forget that Abe
• 1:41:00
  was wrong, just like people forget that Haimi Mussan is
• 1:41:04
  wrong about every UFO evidence alien evidence he brings to
• 1:41:10
  the table. Because people want to believe, They want to believe,
• 1:41:16
  but they don't want to believe in Jesus. They don't
• 1:41:19
  want to believe in the Bible, so you believe other things. Now,
• 1:41:27
  when I look through a telescope, if I'm looking at
• 1:41:31
  three I Atlas, you know, I can be in awe
• 1:41:36
  and amazement. I can be like because it's really cool,
• 1:41:44
  and I've always loved space and space exploration as a child,
• 1:41:51
  because it's a testament to God's creation. You can't divorce
• 1:41:55
  God from these things and claim that it's some artificially
• 1:42:02
  created probe or something from an alien planet, an alien civilization. Now,
• 1:42:11
  Avi Lobe is an atheist. He's an Israeli American atheist Jew,
• 1:42:23
  so he doesn't have any spiritual or religious uh considerations,
• 1:42:30
  you know, in making these sort of claims, and honestly,
• 1:42:37
  that's uh, not surprising. Anyways, I'm gonna wrap it up there.
• 1:42:42
  I want to know what you think. Please send me
• 1:42:44
  an email.
• 1:42:48
  Speaker 3: Ministry ex at proton mail dot com, ministryekis at What.
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 7: Do you think about Harry Houdini? What do you think
• 1:42:57
  about James Randy? What do you think about Peter pop Off?
• 1:43:02
  What do you think about alien interstellar motherships from beyond
• 1:43:10
  the Solar System? You know, we don't know what's out there.
• 1:43:16
  It's a whole lot of dark matter. But what do
• 1:43:23
  you think? I promise I won't ridicule you if you
• 1:43:26
  send me an email. I like to hear other people's
• 1:43:29
  thoughts on this. And maybe you're not a debunker. Maybe
• 1:43:34
  you're not as skeptical as I am. Maybe you're more
• 1:43:37
  open minded than I am. Maybe you're more fringe than
• 1:43:41
  I am. Ooh, that's definitely a possibility, and it's okay, Well,
• 1:43:45
  what do you think about this intersection between science and
• 1:43:50
  scientific research and the spiritual? Can we even use science
• 1:43:57
  to explore them spiritual to study the spiritual? Should we?
• 1:44:05
  I say yes? And science has actually been able to
• 1:44:10
  uncover some mysteries. As it concerns you know, the spiritual,
• 1:44:18
  the metaphysical, but it's also debunked a lot of bogus
• 1:44:23
  claims too, So science is a very effective tool and
• 1:44:27
  we're not anti science here. So drop me an email
• 1:44:32
  if you have any comments, questions, if you'd like to
• 1:44:35
  share a testimony, if you'd like to be a guest
• 1:44:37
  on the show, there's some other subject matter you'd like
• 1:44:40
  me to talk about, just drop me an email. I
• 1:44:43
  love hearing from you guys. You can also find me
• 1:44:46
  on the social media's on X. I am at FRN
• 1:44:50
  Underscore Daniel Underscore X. I'm also on GAB. I'm also
• 1:44:56
  on Telegram, the ministry x telestream. Can find me there
• 1:45:01
  and if you'd like to join in the conversation, I
• 1:45:04
  post memes and news articles, usually related to whatever I'm
• 1:45:08
  talking about on my show, whatever I'm currently researching. So
• 1:45:13
  that's a good resource for listeners. I want to thank
• 1:45:17
  you for listening, and until next time, beware the Alien Savior.
• 1:45:54
  Speaker 2: X x x.
• 1:45:59
  Speaker 1: X Hi everybody, it's me Cinderella Acts. You are listening
• 1:46:32
  to the Fringe Radio Network. I know I was gonna
• 1:46:37
  tell him, Hey, do you.
• 1:46:38
  Speaker 2: Have the app?
• 1:46:39
  Speaker 3: It's the best way to listen to the.
• 1:46:41
  Speaker 5: Fringe Radio Network.
• 1:46:42
  Speaker 4: It's safe and you don't have to log in to
• 1:46:45
  use it, and it doesn't track you or trace you,
• 1:46:49
  and it sounds beautiful.
• 1:46:51
  Speaker 5: I know, I was gonna tell him, how.
• 1:46:53
  Speaker 8: Do you get the app?
• 1:46:55
  Speaker 3: Just go to Fringe radionetwork dot com right at the
• 1:46:58
  top of the page.
• 1:47:01
  Speaker 5: I know, slippers, we gotta keep cleaning these chimneys.