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Who Was Harry Houdini? (Halloween Special) · Dirt Nap City - History's Most Interesting Dead People

• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: Hey everybody, welcome to Dirt Nap City.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Kelly, one of your hosts.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'm here with Alex, and we got another great show for you today.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: How's it going, Alex?
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: I'm doing great.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: How are you, Kelly?
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: I'm doing really well.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: As a matter of fact, it is October 2022.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's finally cooled down here in Texas a little bit.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: Have you getting some uh nicer October fall weather finally?
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, it's crisp, beautiful.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um fall is in the air, as they say.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and of course, that means that right around the corner is Halloween, and uh we are gonna do a Halloween special today.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: Alex doesn't know this, but uh we're doing a Halloween special, and uh the person that we are gonna be talking about today, um, while isn't a big figure in Halloween, does hold some significance around the holiday.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: There is some significance to this person's life and Halloween.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um well let's let's jump into this one.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's a little different vibe because, like I said, it's a Halloween special.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I'm gonna give you some clues as we always start off.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the audience knows who it is because it's in the title, but we're gonna see if Alex can guess with a couple of clues, and then I'm gonna give you all kinds of fascinating stories about this person.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: So you know more about this name you've heard, but you might not know much about.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: So he was born March 24th, 1874.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: And he died.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: This is kind of our tie-in, Halloween, October 31st, 1926, at the age of 52.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this guy was actually born, just like Andre the Giant, was born overseas in Budapest, Hungary, but he actually moved to Wisconsin as a child.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: Appleton, Wisconsin, at a very young age.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: I think he was uh like four or five, something like that, when he moved to Wisconsin.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: And actually later, as part of his act, he claimed that he was born in Wisconsin.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: Part of his act.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: There's a clue.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: Now he died in a place near and dear to your heart, uh, Detroit, Michigan.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: Again, on Halloween day.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: He died, or night, I'm not sure what time of day it was, but it was it was Halloween on the calendar when he died.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: And he was actually changed his name uh from his original name.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah?
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: You got it?
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I mean, can I guess?
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: Go.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: Harry Houdini.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, well done.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: When you said act, that was a good and I thought that he was maybe not from the US, but claimed that he was from the US.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_01: He was Houdini doesn't sound Hungarian, so that it sounds Italian.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: No, it was actually uh he he named himself after a French person.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: He he uh changed his name based on inspiration from a French magician, which we'll get into.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: But his name was actually Eric Weitz and uh E-R-I-C-H.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: And he uh later they changed their last name from W E I S Z, which was the Hungarian spelling, to the German spelling W E-I-S-S, Weiss, more Weiss, all kinds of interesting stuff.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: So, how much do you know about Houdini?
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I as I mentioned on uh I think the first episode of Dirt Nap City, uh, I know that um, or I think at least that um he had a contest to see uh uh daring people to punch him.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um and um I thought that the legend was that that killed him, but I might be wrong about that.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um this is great though.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: These are people that like we think we know about, but when you kind of peel it back, we really don't know a whole lot about.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: I also had read something about him uh having a deal with his wife that if there was an afterlife.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yep, yep, yeah.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: You're getting you're getting into you, you are correct on both accounts, however, sort of wrong on one of them.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: So uh yeah, I'm sure, I'm sure I I am a right.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: But but yes, you've heard some legends about Harry Houdini.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: Well, let's start with his early life.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, he was born in 1874, like I said, in Hungary.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: He was one of seven children, and his father was a Jewish rabbi, and they moved from Hungary uh when he was four years old.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: So I guess this would have been 1878.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: They moved to Appleton, Wisconsin, where he grew up.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, his father was a rabbi for the Zion Reformed Jewish Congregation in Appleton, Wisconsin, and they actually changed, like I said, their their spellings um to more traditional American spellings.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that was really kind of the start of his Americanization.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: He was a little bit of a uh troublemaker.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: He was very good at picking locks as a child and uh got into a few little tussles here and there, but but was kind of known as an athletic, rambunctious child.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: Now, when he was 13, he moved with his family to New York City and started living in a boarding house and actually started taking um lessons, became interested in trapeze.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't know how that happened or how he found trapeze, but that was sort of his start as a performer and a professional sort of show-off.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: So did you know that Houdini did trapeze as a young child?
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't, but it makes sense that that could have got him into the circus life.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, he went ahead and changed his name after um he started getting into trapeze arts and he started doing a little bit of magic.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: He changed his name to Harry Houdini, uh, which was uh inspired by the French magician Jean Eugene Robert Houdin.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think the last name was a tribute to um Jean Eugene Robert Houdin.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: And at first his magic met with very little success.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: He he didn't have a lot of luck with it.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: However, that all changed when he started doing escapes from handcuffs.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: That was uh that was sort of the thing that that started to make him famous.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um so in 1899, Houdini's act caught the attention of Marvin Beck, uh, not Jeff Beck, but Marvin Beck, an entertainment manager who booked him for some vaudeville shows touring across the U.S., kind of like um they did over in France and Europe, but this was the American version.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: They also went to Europe a little bit.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: And what part of the show is local police would uh search him, place him in shackles, and lock him in jail, and then he would escape.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: And that was part of the uh part of the routine that made him famous in vaudeville, like escaping from shackles.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: As a matter of fact, in the early days, he was in Coffeeville, Kansas when a local sheriff first put handcuffs on him, saying to the audience, if I put these on, you'll never get loose.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: And it was a challenge that changed his life.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: He emerged from the shackles and was soon known as the handcuffed king, performing all over the nation.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: Now, Kelly, would you want to go to a show like that?
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: Does that sound like something that you would you would go to?
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: No, absolutely not today.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: But in 1899, 1900, I don't think there were a lot of options.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I think it was it was public hangings, um, you know, Scarlet Scarlet Letter kind of things, and Houdini escaping.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there, you know, people people were entertained by different stuff.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: So I can't really speak to 1899 me, but no, if it was like happening today, probably not.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: But do you like that element of this guy might not get out?
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_01: He might, you know, this there's there's a little, you know, uh risk involved watching some money.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: You know, sometimes people are actually hoping that they don't make it, right?
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: Some people want to see the gore or the death or the crash on the motorcycle or whatever.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um, that's not really my personality.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: No, I'm I'm not into that.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: But people back then loved it.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, he would be locked up and put in a straitjacket, he'd put it put into filled water tanks, he'd be nailed into packing crates, and he was actually very athletic and very strong.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: So he was able to uh use that strength and his ability to pick locks.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: I mentioned that, you know, as a kid, he was a lock picker.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: Those two things actually helped him escape.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_01: So this was not magic.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: This was this was tricks that he was actually escaping from these perilous circumstances, they weren't trick handcuffs or false doors or anything like that, right?
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: Interestingly, it was a combination of the two things.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: There were some cases where things were pre-planned, sort of Siegfried and Roy style, where you know there was a there was a secret door that they would crawl through and go through a tunnel and come out behind the audience, you know.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: There was a little bit of that.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: But um, you know, Houdini was actually really big into the idea that he didn't like fakes, he didn't like charlatans, he didn't like people that were planning or pretending to talk to dead people, for example.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: He was always kind of opposed to that.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: And you mentioned the thing about he and his wife like trying to contact each other after he died.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, that was actually one of the things that they were really interested to see if that could be real.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: But I'll I'll talk about that in a minute.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: But no, he was trying to do these things for real, um, you know, to actually use his physical abilities, his ability to pick locks to actually escape.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: And in 1912, he kind of reached the pinnacle of his career with the Chinese water torture cell, which was sort of the hallmark of his uh act for a long time.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: He would be suspended by his feet, lowered into a locked glass cabinet filled with water, and he had to hold his breath for like three, three and a half minutes in order to escape.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: And it actually was like him really, he could really hold his breath for that long.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, could you hold your breath for three and a half minutes?
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_01: I could not, but I could, you know, I I think you can practice that.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: I think I I heard an interview with Sigourney Weaver recently where she said that uh in the new Avatar movie, she has to hold her breath for like she she got to hold her breath for like six minutes.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, wow.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I think you can learn that, but I wouldn't want to do that.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: He was always developing new trips, tricks, and trying to figure out ways to escape from things, right?
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: That was his sort of shtick was um escaping in 1908.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: He uh tried something really daring.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: He was in an airtight vessel filled with water, completely chained, and hung off a skyscraper and and escaped from the vessel off the skyscraper.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: He also did some where he was thrown into an icy river and then was able to get out and pop up um in a you know in a locked box out of the in the icy river, like as the box filled with water.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: And then in September, or I'm sorry, yeah, September 1911, this was really an odd thing.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: A group of businessmen in Boston challenged him to escape from the belly of a 1,500-pound sea monster that had washed up in the Boston Harbor.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: And they weren't sure what it actually was.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: Some people said it was a whale, some people thought it was a leatherbacked turtle.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but Houdini took the challenge, and as thousands of people watched, he allowed himself to be handcuffed, shackled in leg irons, and wedged in the stinking carcass of this animal, which was covered in chains, placed behind a curtain, and in 15 minutes he emerged.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: However, people asked him afterward in an interview, he said that he actually almost suffocated from the fumes and the chemicals that they were using to embalm the thing.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: So it was You can't really practice that.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's a one time, one time shot.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: So um, do you remember in in um Empire Strikes Back where they stuff Luke inside the Tauntaun?
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: Is that where they get it from?
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: Han Solo.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: Uh maybe so.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: You know what strikes me is that you said thousands of people were watching.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: That's not actually very many people.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: When you consider there was no television, um, so you're doing this only for a couple of thousand people.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_01: You're risking your life, you're doing these things.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if that's that.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I guess you're hoping that word of mouth gets around to the next city.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, without social media, without TV, it's just pretty hardcore doing these things from city to city, right?
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: And hoping that someone's probably charging like 10 cents a ticket for people to get in, right?
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: So even you know, the the the take on this might have been two or three hundred dollars, but you know, these were early$1,900, right?
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, he he actually became a very high paid and very wealthy person.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: One other famous thing that he did that was unique is uh you've heard of the Hippodrome Theater in New York?
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: Back in the day.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it was uh this this it was torn down in the 40s or 50s or something like that, but it was uh famous theater.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: He did a lot of his shows there.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um in 1918, on stage, he actually made uh an elephant named Jenny disappear.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: And guess what the act was called?
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: It was called the Vanishing Elephant.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, yeah.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you can't be too vague about that.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: You gotta, you know, if you want to see make an elephant disappear, you can't call it like something where Escape from the Sea Monster.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: They don't want those two to be confused.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_01: Well, right, and I don't want it to be called like uh Black Death or something.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I want to go to something that's you know, I know what's gonna happen.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, when you saw there and you were paying the 10 cents to see uh Jenny the elephant disappear.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um apparently he he she was there, they raised a curtain, he fired a pistol, and then she was gone.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: And actually, uh one of the only uh magical duos to replicate that act to do that later was uh Siegfried and Roy.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: They made an elephant disappear.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: Really?
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: Well, they're big on the animal things, right?
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_01: I can't figure out if that's um if that's uh if PETA would be okay with uh making something an animal disappear.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I mean, you know that uh Roy was attacked by of Zigfried and Roy was attacked by a tiger and you know it bit his neck, and that was kind of the beginning of his downfall.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: Well, no, it didn't kill him right away, but he suffered a stroke and he was never able to really perform again.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: And uh they both they both died within like a year of each other.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: I just read an article, you know, kind of going down this rabbit hole, I read an article about them as well.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: But future Epp.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh yeah, maybe we do one about two two dead guys.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: I might not be able to do that though.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: I if I just googled Roy.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: You'd get you'd get uh uh Jenna Fisher's boyfriend from the office.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_01: How did Roy die?
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_01: I bet you I bet you that's all you would have to Google.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_01: How did Roy die and it'll get you that anyways if they were that famous?
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it is kind of amazing, you know, if you don't if you don't cover your search history, what starts popping up, like with you know, when you've been doing Harry Houdini searches and and Audre the Giant searches, weird stuff pops up.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: But one one other interesting thing about uh him is that he a lot of people think he went over Niagara Falls.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um he never did.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: He actually considered it.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: And interestingly, this is a case where he was not going to he he had written out plans for it, and the plans were where he would get into a crate, the crate would be on a wagon, and the wagon would pull the crate to the edge of the falls, uh, you know, be nailed up, like totally secured, pull it to the edge of the falls and throw it over, and then he would emerge, you know, down below.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: Well, what his plan was, and this is where the sort of authentic thing kind of got a little murky, he had drawn up plans to get into the crate, have it sealed up, but on the cart there was a false bottom, so he was gonna crawl into the bottom of the cart, they'd throw the thing over, and meanwhile he would like rush down and get into the water down below and and pop up.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: But he never actually did it.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: How do we know those now?
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_01: Like, how do you know that?
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: Because he had drawn up plans for it.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: He had a written, like he actually would write up plans for these tricks.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: Like, here's how this trick is gonna work.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, he didn't really make the elephant disappear, right?
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: They had to have a way to make that work.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: So he had drawn up plans for that.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: That was also just a false box.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: The elephant was up on a stage.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: They they I don't know how they got it down into that box so quickly without making a noise.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: What is that?
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: I I hear I hear I hear something uh making an elephant noise in that box.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: No, uh you know, obviously magic is is one thing, escapes are other, and I think he sort of viewed the two as symbiotic, but not the same thing, right?
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: The and the magic is the magic is something where there is a trick, there is a way of making the coin disappear, but it didn't really disappear.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas the escape, in a lot of cases, he really was escaping.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: But in the case of the uh Niagara Falls, which he never actually did, it was gonna be fake.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: He wasn't gonna actually go over the cliff, over the falls.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: Did he saw ladies in half?
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: Was that his thing?
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: He did.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: As a matter of fact, he saw one lady in half many, many times.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: She always seemed to come back from it, but his assistant was his wife.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: So he married her in 1893.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: Her name was Vilhemina, Vilhelmina, Beatrice Rahner, and she became known as Bess Houdini, B-E-S-S.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: So that was his wife and longtime partner, and she's the one that when he died tried to contact him after the dead, but was never able to do so.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_01: Did he used to do card tricks?
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: Uh yeah, I think he did all the sleight of hand stuff, you know, early on.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: But but of course, much like David Copperfield, he was known for the bigger stuff, right?
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: He was known for the big disappearing acts.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: He was known for the and of course, really the thing that distinguished him was his ability to escape from things, right?
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: So let's talk a little bit of him outside of magic, unless you have any other magic questions.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, not in well, we'll ask magic questions when we do the Doug Henning episode.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: So, so outside of Magic, um, he did make a lot of money.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: He was one of the best paid vaudeville performers of his time, and that got him into sort of some rich man's passions, and one of that, one of them was aviation.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: So he actually bought an airplane in 1909.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: It was a French-made uh Violsen biplane, V-O-I-S-I-N biplane, and he became actually one of the first private pilots in the world.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: There weren't many individuals that could afford or knew how to fly an airplane, and he was one of the first people to do that.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: He actually crashed the plane during his maiden flight in Germany.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: I guess it was a French plane.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: He did his maiden flight in Germany and he crashed, but he survived, and just like evil can evil, and he got better, and he eventually tried to become the first person to fly an airplane in Australia, which he was certified for being the first man to fly an airplane in Australia, but he actually wasn't.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: There was somebody else that did it first.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: So there's some controversy there.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: So uh airplane pilot, private pilot, and then he also became a big supporter of the U.S.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: government during World War I.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: Even though he was born in Hungary, he considered himself an American and a patriot.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: He persuaded the Society of American Magicians to sign loyalty oaths to President Woodrow Wilson, and he later canceled a touring season so that he could dedicate himself to entertaining soldiers and raising money for the war effort.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, he was a he was a patriot.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: He actually um drew on his escape knowledge to teach classes in New York at the Hippodrome, once again, and he counseled the Doughboys on how to escape from sinking ships and pull themselves out of handcuffs, out of ropes, and other things in case they were captured by the Germans.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: Now, do you know who the Doughboys were?
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, you've asked me this before, but you were talking about podcasters on uh the Colonel Sander episode.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: Doughboys was actually a popular nickname for American infantrymen during World War I.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: And so they had had something to do with the look of their uniform, and it was sort of a derogatory thing given by the officers to the infantrymen.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but it stuck, and they still were called Doughboys through World War II in the 1940s.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what the Pillsbury Doughboy looks like now, is how they were dressed.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, doughboy.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_01: Could be first could be.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: And he, you know, he he supported you didn't know that, right?
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: That he supported the uh troops during World War One.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's great.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_01: That's great.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um he sounds like the kind of guy that was famous, but back then being famous was hard.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_01: Like if if to just go from like I like I said before, to go from city to city and just basically be famous by what.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Word of mouth because let's face it, magic is not uh for for radio, right?
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: That's not wow, did you see that?
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: That was amazing.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it would be easy to make an elephant disappear on the radio, right?
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: So I I think we should do that on a show.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna do it right now.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: Uh hear the sound effects.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: So you you know, you make a good point, and I think that he actually saw that, and so he tried to diversify his um revenue streams a little bit by taking on not only being a pilot, which I don't think he was trying to make money at that, he was just doing it because it was fun and he could afford it, but he also uh launched a movie career.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: His first film was in 1901 called Marevue Exploits du Celebrity Houdini Peris.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: And it was basically about um him in Paris escaping from things.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: He also made a couple of other films called the Master Mystery, he called one the Grim Game, Terror Island, and uh he had his own production company.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: He also had his own film development company, and that seems like kind of the most common sense thing.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: It was like, okay, films are gonna be a thing, we're gonna develop films for people.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but they were never really very successful, um, neither the film company, but he does have some movies.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_00: You can actually see some of these on YouTube, and then in 1923, he became the president of Martinka and Company, which is the uh oldest magic company in the U.S.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_01: I I assume that in Vaudeville back then there were magicians in every act.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_01: So the magic was a thing that people liked, and he was kind of the top dog in magic.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: As a matter of fact, um, just real quick, because we're gonna get into that a little bit, um uh and also his brother, who was also a magician.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: We'll talk about that in a second.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: But um Really, was his brother a Houdini?
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: Like he changed his name too.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: Uh similar name, similar name.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: But let me tell you real quick before we go to that, that he did also write some books called uh one was called Miracle Mongers and Their Methods, and the other was called A Magician Among the Spirits from 1920 and 1924, respectively.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: So, so getting into a little bit about his um uh beliefs, as I said before, he really had little patience for people who claimed to be supernatural.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_00: That was one thing he didn't really early on, early in life didn't believe in.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, as a matter of fact, in the 1920s, um, he became a big skeptic and debunker of psychic mind readers, mediums, and other spiritualists.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: So he was really against that.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_00: But um interestingly, like you said before, he did have a deal with his wife that when he died, or whoever died first, they would try to contact the other person from the grave, like communicate from from after death.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: But in 1943, when Bess Houdini died, she said it never happened.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_00: It was a failure.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_01: Which means maybe it was a success.
• 25:09
  unknown: Right.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: That's what he was trying to prove, right?
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_00: That's right, that's right.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: It did, it did kind of um uh it did kind of prove his point that uh maybe that doesn't exist.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, it being Halloween or Halloween season, uh, do you believe in ghosts?
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_01: No?
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_01: Like not at all.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_01: Zero percent.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: So so like if um if there were a really creepy as a matter of fact, I'll just sidebar for a second again, Halloween.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: Jody and I have been watching this show about this British family who moves to Canada and they buy a um a funeral home to live in in Canada and they're redoing it, and they um turn like the embalming room into a like a bar, you know, where you can hang out.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's like it's like a 12,000 square foot house.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's it's a huge, huge old mansion that was used for funerals, used for embalming, used for um, you know, kind of grieving and and celebrations of life or funerals as they used to call them.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um I don't know, man.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if I could live there.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I'm not saying I could live there.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_01: I believe I don't believe that ghosts exist, but I believe that people are so freaked out by the idea of ghosts that that makes it scary.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_01: So it kind of ends up being the same thing, right?
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_01: And ends up being like, there's you know, just like the 13th floor.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's like it's probably not a thing, but why take a chance?
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: You know?
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's more about luck, though.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's more of a luck superstition.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um, what we're talking about here is like, could you sleep in a room like like this show that we're watching?
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: Again, it's I think it's called We We Bought a Funeral Home, um, and and it's on Netflix or whatever.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: They're a very weird family, they're a very kind of goth family.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, they they have lots of tattoos and piercings and stuff.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_00: They're very entertaining, though.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's a fun show to watch.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: But the son sleeps down in the basement where the embalming room was, and he's always talking about seeing weird stuff.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_00: Now it doesn't stop him from sleeping down there.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: He's fine with it, at least, you know, in the show's arc, but I don't think I could do that.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, honestly, I think I would just be awake all the time looking around, wondering what's you know what's gonna happen.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but here's the thing there is no legend that ghosts are gonna come and kill you.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_01: If they're not gonna hurt you, and your kind of your whole life is based on the fact that uh on the premise that ghosts probably do exist, then of course you're gonna want to stay there because that's what it's or maybe you don't want to because you don't want to have the possibility that there aren't ghosts.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_01: Like if if ghosts exist, then of course I would I don't know what the big deal is to be staying around him because like either you either nothing happens, which is my hypothesis, or something happens and you got a great story, but I don't think the ghost is gonna come and kill you.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_01: No, so let's do it.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_01: I'll do it.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_01: I'll do it.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_01: I changed my mind.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_01: I'll do it.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_01: I'll sleep in a cemetery tonight and let you know how it went with your KFC.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I don't have no problem doing that.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_00: Get a bucket of KFC.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_00: All right, well, back to um back to Mr.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: Houdini.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_00: You know, he was not a fan of people who claimed to talk to the dead or to, you know, make money from that, as I said.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, however, he did die himself.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_00: And as you said, it was through an incident, and there's a little bit of debate about what actually caused his death, but in um 1926, he was in doing a show at McGill University.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_00: Do you know where McGill is?
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, isn't that in um it's in Canada?
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's in Montreal, he's in Montreal, Canada, and he did a show there, and after the show, several of the students, um, who were I guess one of them was actually a medical student, like a pre-med student, came back backstage and asked if he could punch him.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: You know, he said, You you always let let people punch you, you say you can, you know, and I guess the kid punched him in the stomach before Houdini could tighten his stomach.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: And he actually punched him twice.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_00: The kid's name was Jocelyn Gordon Whitehead, and this was at the Princess Theater in Montreal.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: And he punched him, and Houdini allowed it.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_00: You know, he said, Yes, you can do it, but I guess he wasn't ready.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_00: And then uh he punched him again, and then Houdini actually stopped him mid-blow on the third punch.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: But at this time, Houdini was in a lot of pain.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_00: He had to get on a train to go to Detroit to do his next show, and he blamed the pain on the belly punches, and he had recently fractured his foot.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_00: Well, when he got to the Garrick Theater in Detroit, are you familiar with the Garrick Theater?
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_01: I must have closed before I was 1926.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, he had a temperature of 104 degrees Fahrenheit, and a physician came to his dressing room and diagnosed him with acute appendicitis.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_00: And the doctor immediately said he should go to the hospital, and he said, No, the show must go on.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_00: So he went ahead and said, I'll do it if this is my last show.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna do the show.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_00: So he didn't do his best show, apparently, according to reports, but he made it through.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_00: He got a one-star review, two-star review.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_00: He got he got a yeah, wasn't it great for his Yelp or his I would love to read the review for that show.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_01: He was he seemed distracted, yeah.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_01: He was kept holding his stomach, he seemed like he might have an appendicitis.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_01: Overall, not his best work.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_00: I don't recommend the nerve of giving him a bad review.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_00: So, so after the show, he checked into his hotel and he still refused medical treatment.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_00: And then his wife finally, because the pain was so great, she called and rushed him to the Grace Hospital nearby.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_00: And on the 24th, he underwent emergency surgery to remove his appendix, which was ruptured and caused severe peritonitis, which is uh sort of an infection of the abdomen cavity.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_00: And then he had a second operation on October 28th, and this time they used an anti-streptococcal serum, which was supposed to help, but it didn't work.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_00: He got septis and he died on Halloween at the age of 52, and his last words reportedly were, I'm tired of fighting.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_01: Oh man, that's my age.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_01: That's my age.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, he used to be 52.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I just I was 52 two weeks ago.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, man.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_01: So that was a thing that he would go around and say, punch me, and then he was just so confident of his core and abs that he was just like always tighten up.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean, I used to do that with my kid.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, punch me in the stomach, and you tighten up and you do that and laugh.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_01: And no, no, but I always thought about I always thought about Houdini every time, even when he was four years old.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_01: I always thought, oh, this is how Houdini went, but be careful.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_00: I can't answer that.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: And apparently he was in good shape.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_00: He was a physically a strong guy, uh, very athletic.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_00: And again, that's part of how he did his escapes.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I think he had a little bit of ego, and it was sort of an ego-driven thing where he wanted to prove his strength and prove his toughness.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so, yes, he would allow people to take a gut shot to him and was able to generally live through it, you know, have have no problems with it.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_00: I think there were two factors that happened here.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, he had not tightened his stomach, apparently, like he wasn't ready.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_00: The guy, the guy did it before he was ready.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_00: And number two, he had appendicitis.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, this this was uh something that had been brewing, and eventually um, you know, the the it it ruptured his pet appendix, right?
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's what I thought that the punch gave him the appendicitis.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, he already had it.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_00: So basically his appendix was already in bad shape, and the student's punch is what burst it and caused the fatal infection.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_00: In 2013, a literature review published in the World Journal of Emergency Surgery uh concluded that the cause was acute appendicitis.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_00: Basically, um the appendicitis was already there and the the punch just accelerated it.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_00: Did they press charges?
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_00: No, no.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_00: So apparently the student like went about his uh life, but there were a lot of um kind of conspiracy theorists that thought maybe he was um sent there by somebody.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that he did have some enemies in the spiritualist community.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they they they actually um the people that he were always saying were fakes, they hated him.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't they didn't like that.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there were some people out to get him, apparently, but nobody knows.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody and in reality, it was just bad luck for the kid.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_00: You know, he was a student, he was a medical student, right?
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_00: Why why would a medical student want to kill somebody when they're training to save lives?
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_01: It's one of those weird things, though, that uh on one hand he felt probably felt terrible.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_01: On the other hand, I mean it's kind of something you'd have to always mention, isn't it?
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_01: When you're you know meeting new people.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_01: Tell me an interesting fact about yourself.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_01: You'd be like, Well, I was the one that kind of took Houdini down, so put some respect on my name there.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, if he had been if he had been a rapper, I think that would have worked really well.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_00: But he was a Canadian medical student.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_00: Canadians by their nature are very, very um humble.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you've you've met Canadians, they're generally very soft-spoken, humble, not big self-flatterers.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, explaining on the other hand, he was the type of person that came up to somebody and said, Can I punch you?
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_01: An old man, a 52-year-old man.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, can I punch you?
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_01: Well, um, and then when after he did it, he said, That was cool, can I do it again?
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_01: So, I mean, I don't know about this nicety thing.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: That's true.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_00: He might have been he might have been that a rare, rare exceptional Canadian bully.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_00: Sounds like a jerk.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Whitehead, that was his name, last last name.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um if a stranger came up to you and asked Jocelyn Gordon Whitehead.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_00: If so, a stranger came up to me, but if I was Harry Houdini and that's what I was known for?
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_00: No, just now.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, and said, Can I punch you in the stomach?
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I guess depend on their apparent strength.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'd let you punch me in the stomach.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_01: Would you immediately think a Harry Houdini?
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_01: You would let me punch you in the stomach?
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_01: Because you don't think I'd pack a punch?
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_00: I was kidding.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_01: Or because you're that confident in your abs.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, neither.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_00: Neither of those things.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_00: I will not no.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_00: That I'm gonna delete that part.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_00: That's coming out.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_01: Would you what would you rather have to do?
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want evidence.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want evidence about that.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_00: You know, where you go back and play this in court when I'm when I'm dying of appendicitis.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_00: You're like, he's not a good.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_01: Would you rather have somebody body slam you or punch you in the stomach?
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_00: Hmm.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_00: Hmm.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_00: That's a great question.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_00: Probably a stranger.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_00: Probably body slam.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_00: I think I could take the body slam better.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_00: I would let a guy named Jocelyn punch me.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_00: Jocelyn Gordon, Canadian guy.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so so a couple of more things interesting about his death.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_00: So, as I said, he had a brother named Theo, Theodore, and Theod Theodore went by the magician name Hardine, H-A-R-D-E-E-N.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_00: He was actually a very respected early 1900s magician uh who also did a lot of the same tricks that Houdini did.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_00: Now he wasn't as famous for the escapes as Houdini, but Hardine, uh, while people knew was his brother, they actually contemplated these stories.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_00: This is almost like the early days of wrestling, where they would pretend to be phony rivals.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_00: So they would pretend to hate each other.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_00: And in reality, they were actually great friends, they were brothers, and they did that so that they could basically get free promotion.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_00: Like the the controversy sold.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_01: Was it common knowledge that they were brothers or was that a secret?
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_00: No, I think it was common knowledge, but but I think the fact that they uh a lot of people thought they didn't get along when in reality they did.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_00: There was sort of this facade that they hated each other because they were jealous of one another, and and according to my sources, they weren't.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_01: I think Hardini.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_01: It was Hardine.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_01: Hardine, H A R E N.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_01: I think you missed a chance.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_01: Hardini sounds badass.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, true, true.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_01: Hardini.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_00: Now nowadays.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_00: So much of uh Houdini's collection went to the Appleton Museum in Wisconsin.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_00: There is a Houdini museum in Appleton.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_00: So if we're gonna go to the uh Andre the Giant Museum in North Carolina, um, and then make it up to Wisconsin to the Houdini Museum, um, we would have had to do that before 2004 because uh it actually got auctioned off and most of it ended up with uh David Copperfield.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, he's an extremely wealthy man.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_00: Houdini is actually buried in Queens, New York in a small Jewish cemetery called MacPela.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_00: Macpellah.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_00: M-A-C-H Machpella, maybe M-A-C-H-P-E-L-A-H.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_00: And now when people go to visit Houdini's um gravesite, instead of leaving flowers, they usually leave playing cards.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, wow.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_01: I would have suspected handcuffs.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I imagine.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you know how some people put locks on uh on bridges to signify love?
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_01: I'm surprised he didn't have like a glass casket where you could like watch him decompose or something.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_01: It seems like something he would have done.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, well, interesting enough, I I didn't have this in my notes, but I did read this and I remember this.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_00: So he did one of his escape acts was Buried Alive.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_00: It was called Buried Alive, where he was buried in a casket under sand or under a variety of different things, and he would escape.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_00: He was actually buried in the casket that he used for the act.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, wow.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_01: It seems on brand.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and you know, he had so much money by the end of his uh career before he died that he could have just retired and made it rain for the rest of his life.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_00: I see what you did there.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so died on Halloween, and so you know, that's our way of saying thank you to all of our listeners for tuning into Dirtnap City because it really is Halloween's sort of our special time of year.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_01: Well, um you never mentioned David Blaine, so good job uh for the for this whole time.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_01: You never once mentioned David Blaine, who is uh apparently really influenced by um Houdini, but kind of instead of playing for thousands of people, millions of people on TV, does a lot of the same things.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_01: But I did hear him talk about somebody asked him one time if these if this about the authenticity of it.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_01: And he said, you know, obviously I'm not doing all the things that you think I'm doing, but it's not like anybody could do them.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_01: This is an exact quote.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_01: He's basically saying, just like, you know, you're watching elite athletes do their thing, people hit home runs and slam dunk.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_01: What I do is really hard and takes a lot of practice.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_01: So whether or not it's actually what you're seeing or not, the fact that nobody else could do it should be respected.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_01: That's kind of a cool way to answer that question.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm I'm sure that Houdini was the same way.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_01: It takes a lot of skill and a lot of practice to do what he did, even though he actually wasn't making an elephant disappear or always escaping out of things the way you think he was.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but it still involved a uh a little bit of skill, which is probably why Houdini was okay blurring those lines, because to him it wasn't about um a trick, it wasn't about you know a trick, it was about fooling the audience using skill.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_01: So props to to Harry Houdini.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_00: He was blurring lines way before Robin Thick.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there you go.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_00: All right, well, thanks everybody.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_00: Hope you enjoyed this.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_00: Hope you will subscribe and be sure to send us an email.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_00: DirtNApCity at gmail is the current email address.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_00: It could change in the future, but we'll keep checking it.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_00: And uh hope you have a great spooky Halloween and uh raise a glass to Mr.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_00: Harry Houdini while you're out and about it.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_00: We'll see you next time in dirtnap city.