Stuff You Should Know - Harry Houdini: More than Magic

Episode Date: October 21, 2021

Harry Houdini was a master magician. He was also a movie star. And an inventor. And an aviator. Listen and learn all about the late great illusionist. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to

believe. You can find in Major League Baseball, International Banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio. Kazam and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles W. Chuck Brian over there and Jerry's here. She's invisible but here. This is the Mystery Magic podcast hour,

aka Stuff You Should Know. I feel like we haven't covered much magic related stuff, have we? Not nearly enough. Oh yeah? You into it? Yeah, I find it interesting for sure. I think magicians are pretty cool people typically. Oh really? Yeah, you know Toby, our friend Toby, he and I were talking about working on a magic podcast, kind of like a magic skeptics podcast. That'd be great. With a couple of his good friends and they're just cool dudes, chill people, interesting, very witty, sharp, not pink boys at all. You guys should totally do that. Oh, this is years and years ago. Oh, so that ship, well he's a big movie producer now. Yeah, that ship. He's like magic podcast? No, thank you. Well, I'm glad to know that you found some cool magicians.

Yeah, are you not familiar with cool magicians? No, I mean the magicians I know about are decidedly uncool. Oh, I see, like Ben Stiller in Arrested Development. Ben Stiller in Arrested Development. Yeah, he was Job's rival. Oh, right. I forgot about that. It had kind of a white snake thing going on. I think I'm thinking mainly about the time I went to the Magic Castle on Los Angeles and I felt like one of the cooler people there, which is unusual. Okay. They're full of a lot of people. I don't mean like fawn's cool. I mean cool in the fact that they're like interesting, they are sharp, they're quick-witted. They will take your wallet from you if you're not careful. That kind of cool, you know what I mean? Okay. Yeah. Was Houdini cool? In a lot of ways he was

very cool. Not the band? In a lot, no, that's a pretty great reference. They were super cool. They were very cool. In a lot of ways I think he was cool. In some other ways he wasn't necessarily super cool, but I think overall you could say yes, Houdini was cool in the sense that a good magician is cool. Yeah, this is one of those guys where I did a little digging to see if we needed to like see if he was some monster in his personal life. Right. I didn't see anything like that. I think he was a pretty intense guy. Yeah. And maybe, and I'm sure a man of the time, but I didn't see anything that jumped out at me. And we should mention big thanks to, boy, a bunch of things, History.com, Smithsonian Magazine, which is always great, PBS, New Yorker, and of course,

TheGreatHarryHoudini.com. Yes, there's also a couple of other sites that I got some stuff from, Wild About Harry is a good Houdini site. And there's this documentary series by a site called Timeline. And the one I saw was hosted by Alan Davies. It's called Life and Magic of the Real Harry Houdini. And it was just like this, you know, hour long, pretty cool little documentary. I thought it was very neat. I got a good info from that too. It's on YouTube too. Well, I was into Houdini when I was a kid for a short time. And I think that it was probably just because it was a short time where I was, and I think a lot of kids go through a magic phase whether it's going to a trick shop and getting a fake deck or learning your first

dumb little card trick that's not very good, but you think it's awesome. It's just something that I feel like almost every kid goes through a brief little magic phase. And sometimes it sticks and you become super cool, evidently. That's right, exactly. So I saw a couple of things that seemed to support that he wasn't a monster, by the way, Chuck. One of them was that he would go to like the Children's Ward in hospitals and perform magic for the kids and beat them up and take their money. Yeah. But I mean, like, if you think about it, that's not something that just anybody does, you know, like that's time he could be spending doing something else. He was like almost pathologically

devoted to his mother, making sure that she was well taken care of. I think also one of the, I saw that that was like a, possibly a driver of his ambition as well, that he wanted to be mom's favorite in Impressor more than any of his siblings, because he was one of six. Yeah. And also that his father was never much of a success, which we'll get to. And I think, I think those are definitely the big drivers. And he himself called himself a mama's boy. Like he used those two words together. Yeah. Yeah. There's a famous picture of him with his wife Bess and his mother. And he's got like his arms around both of them. And he calls them my two girls or my two sweethearts or something like that. So I mean, like, I know hats off to Bess

for being like, all right, let's go with it. We're going to go with it. I'm definitely not going to try to pry that one loose. It's not going to work. So we're just going to go with it. And I say good for her. All right. Well, should we get into it? Yeah, let's, because you said something about his father. And I think that that's an important thing to understand about Houdini from the get go is that he was essentially born into poverty and it just got worse as he got older, because his father was a rabbi. And if there is such a thing as father was a failed rabbi, he couldn't make it as a rabbi. I know that was, I was surprised to see that because all, like everywhere I looked, it would continually say like, boy, his dad just couldn't make the

rabbi racket work. Right. And I kind of, I don't know, I kind of naively assumed that if you were sort of giving up a life of trying to make money as a capitalist for a living by going to the church and being a steward of the church, then you would at least do okay. You'd think so. But I think that means that he was so charmless, he couldn't even muster up a congregation to surround him. So he was a hard luck kind of guy. And as a result, Harry was raised in poverty, had to go to work from a very young age and also like missed out on a formal education as a result too. And so those things kind of converge to also, I think kind of drive him to prove himself that yeah, maybe he didn't go to school and maybe he was born poor,

but he could still be a superstar. He could still amaze people. He could still be idolized basically. Yeah. His dad's name was Meyer Weitz. His mom was Cecilia Steiner Weitz. And he was born Eric EHRICH Weitz in March of 1874 in Hungary in Budapest. But he, when he was four, he came over and joined the family in Wisconsin. And his dad did manage to have a small congregation in Wisconsin, I think in Appleton. And immigration officers changed the name to Weitz with two S's instead of an SZ. And Eric went by Airy, EHRIE. And the only reason I mentioned Airy is because that comes into play later when he takes on the name Harry is sort of an Americanized version of that name. Right. So that's where the Harry came from. He started working, I think,

when he was still single digits, but he started performing also around that same time too. When he was nine, he made his debut as a trapeze artist, Eric, the prince of the air. Nice. And he was always a rather short stature. I think he topped out at 5.5 feet, 5 inches. 5.5. But he was extremely fit. He decided early on that he wanted to be very athletic as much as he could be. So he really, like he was doing things like, you know, when he moved to New York a few years later, he was doing things like running five miles around Central Park every day, which is super commonplace today. But, you know, in the late 19th century, that was weird. Yeah. I mean, like God knows what kind of shoes he was wearing for that kind of thing, but he would do that kind

of stuff. So he was short of stature, but also very athletic, self-taught too. Yeah. So like you said, they eventually landed in New York after, you know, his, again, Rabbi Weiss was not doing so well. So he was kind of always on the move, trying to find somebody to listen to him. And they eventually get to New York. And in 1891, which would have been, what's the math there? 16ish, 17ish. Or were you trying to figure out before Ghostbusters? No, no, I was trying to figure out how old he was. Oh, okay. He was like 16 or 17 when he teamed up with his buddy Jacob Hyman. I'm sorry, Hyman. Hyman. Why did that look weird on the paper?

You may be having a stroke. I hope not. The Brothers Houdini is what they call themselves. And Harry, again, is what he went by because of Harry. And then as far as Houdini goes, his favorite French magicians, last name was Robert Houdin. So he threw an eye on there. Yeah. And all of a sudden, he's Harry Houdini for evermore. Yeah. I think I saw in that documentary that somebody told him that adding an eye to a name in French means that you're saying you're like that person. So he was saying Houdini, like he's like Houdin, Houdin Houdin, who was his idol for at least while he was growing up. And then apparently later on, he kind of turned on them and exposed all of his secrets after the

guy had died, which was actually not cool. It is not cool. And there, I think there was also a tradition of the eye name on those kind of acts. Yes, but I think he may have started that. Oh, really? I'm not sure, but he was... Like the blondinis and... Right, right. I think as far as magic goes, he may have been the originator of that because I saw some of... Like one of his other contemporaries who helped kind of train him was last name Heller. There was a Heller. Like there was no other eyes that I saw. Interesting. Yeah. All right. So he kicked off the big eye craze. Yeah. That's still going crazy today. It is the iPhone. So he... I think his dad died in 1892. Harry is 18 at this point. And he does a very unusual thing

and that he actually leaves his mom behind along with his brothers, which was a big deal for him, like you said, because he was a self-professed mama's boy. And he took off on the road doing his act kind of through New York, through the Midwest, was doing okay. He was performing kind of all around. It was a bit of a grind with Hyman. Still sounds weird and not because of what you think. Right. And then 1894, his younger brother replaced Hyman just for a short while because later that year, he would meet an 18-year-old Brooklynite named Villamina Beatrice Ronner, or Bess. And she became his magic partner. They called him assistants. Yeah. She would have been the one on stage looking pretty and doing all the flourishes. And it's a tradition and a magic that

I know... I don't want to use the word problematic, but it has changed in more recent years. Sure. Yeah, but this is at the time when a magician's assistant was... A lady in a bathing suit? Yeah, basically. And Bess was no exception to that, although if you read some of the descriptions of some of the illusions and tricks that they did together, she was just as much a magician in her own right as he was. She definitely got her training from him. I think he discovered her in a singing troupe, but she grew to be just as adept at magic and slight of hand as her husband, which is pretty cool. Yeah, it's interesting the things that have become boys clubs over the years. And like magic is definitely one of them. It's... I mean, that's changed a lot

over the years, but it always... I mean, go into the magic castle and you're mainly going to see male performers and a bunch of old men dressed in suits. It's just... I find it odd that it's something that maybe just appeals to young boys. I don't know. My sister wasn't into magic and my brother and I were, so maybe there's something to it. I know, but how much of that is just like the gender norms and expectations of society where it wasn't presented to your sister in a way that it's like, hey, isn't this interesting? Sure. Like everything else. Yeah, there was a documentary I saw. I'm sure I mentioned it before, years ago, about these up-and-coming teenage magicians who are all trying to make their way through competitions to the magic castle, to a grand showcase,

and they follow these ones. There was at least one girl that I remember and she was good, but I mean, she must have been 13, 14 at the time and had been into it for years. So clearly, there's something that appeals to some girls too, even if it's not directed toward them. I love it. It has a great documentary. You got to see it. And by the way, since we're speaking of documentaries, you have, of course, seen love on the spectrum. Have you not? No, you recommended that a few weeks ago. I still haven't seen it. Just, we'll just stop. I'll give you about six hours. Okay. You just go watch and we'll come back and finish recording, okay? All right. Well, then in another three weeks, you can bring it

up again. You just have to see it, okay? I'll see it. I'll see it. It's like, I'm giving you a gift here. Oh, did you make it? No, no. Just telling you about it as a gift is what I'm trying to say. It's that sweet. All right. Well, everyone watched Love on the Spectrum and we're going to take a break and we're going to talk about Houdini's eventual success right after this. come to the right place because I'm here to help. This I promise you. Oh God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that Michael and a different hot, sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Not another one. Kids,

relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikular. And to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life in India. It's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention because maybe there is magic in the stars,

if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. The situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. So we got Houdini and we got best together. And now things can begin in earnest. And they kind of pick up together what Houdini had started, which was very small,

little venues, sometimes a side show, sometimes a museum like a PT Barnum type museum, if they were lucky, they were just kind of there, almost part of the woodwork or the furniture with other stuff going on. They weren't doing actual shows. And if they were doing a show, it was a small act in a larger circus. And it was a grind from what I understand. Yeah. I mean, travel back then was not as still a grind, but it definitely wasn't fun. Yeah. And they were on the road all the time. And then finally in 1899, they met a man named Martin Beck, who was a big name and a big up and comer in the vaudeville scene, which at the time, I mean, you think of vaudeville now as like these kind of little shows. But at the time, that was kind of the peak of the touring world and the

live theater world. If you were doing vaudeville, that was that was sort of top of the pops. And he saw them perform in St. Paul, Minnesota, and was really knocked out. He did this one of his handcuff escapes. Yeah. And he also took these challenges. He was very famous for people saying, Hey, can you do this? Can you get out of these? And it really, you know, he would do this in public and it would help like promote his brand, basically, and get a lot of press. And he was challenged with a pair of handcuffs from Beck. And he got out of those and Beck said, Kid, you got it. Be an Omaha in March, and I'll pay 60 bucks, which is about $1,800 today. So it was good money. And all of a sudden, they are killing it on the vaudeville circuit. Yeah. His, his,

his cable to them said, I might proposition you for all next season as well. So it was like, it was a big, big deal. It wasn't just that one show was like, okay, you've just made it to the big time. And so all of a sudden they're in with, with Martin Beck, who basically is the king of the Western circuit of the vaudeville of vaudeville. And they're playing all over the place, making a lot more money than they were before playing fewer shows, putting in fewer hours on stage and getting compensated better for it. They're like, all right, this is, this is pretty great. I can, I can go with this. Yeah. And he would, you know, I mentioned that when he would go to these towns, he would do these challenges and stunts for the public in the press. And

one of the things he did that would later come back to bite him a little bit was he would always like the cops would come out and he would, you know, he would have the cops lock them up and put them in handcuffs and do all this stuff, which was great press, of course. But as we'll see later on in Germany, that didn't go over so well with the cops. But he, he was known because of this is the king of handcuffs and also the celebrated police baffler. Yeah. I mean, and not only did it kind of drum up like attention in a new town where they may not have heard of him, this guy shows up to a police station says, put me in jail and then gets out like in five minutes or something like that. But also the cops end up talking to the

press and they say, we have no idea how he did it. So now you have an official endorsement that you just got for free out of like the cops and the local police, you know. So it was like a, it was a very smart thing to do. And he would do that from town to town to like he said, drum up publicity and also to sell tickets. Like this would be a way that his shows would go from, you know, moving ho hum and then to sell out with one of his publicity stunts. So he was really good at that kind of thing. All right. So he's making all this dough. He tries to get a tour together with Beck to go to Europe. Because if you know, if you really back then, it wasn't if you can make it in New York, you can make it make it anywhere. It was if you could

make it in Europe, you could make it anywhere. And Beck was sort of not too high on that idea. So I think they had a falling out and Houdini put him put a tour together for he and best for themselves to go kind of run their own show. And they did, they went to Europe and were equally as successful all over Europe and the UK performing this, you know, these feats of escape. Yeah. And Russia too. He basically did a world tour over the course of five years he invested. They just like, they said, let's do it. We're going to, we're going to try to really kind of make this to the next level. And he took the same kind of like publicity chasing stuff from town to town that he did in the US that served him so well. He did the same thing in

Europe too. And he, he and best like really kind of up the act around that time. Like they started coming with more and more like grander illusions and tricks and stagecraft and the European thing was a huge success. And that's what catapulted him into like superstar. He became an international star thanks to that five year tour. Yeah. And that was in Germany, how I mentioned earlier, the police there, I don't think liked the fact, you know, the German police aren't known for their senses of humor. And I don't think they thought it was super cool that he would go over there and sort of not make a fool of them, but I think they may have some of them may have taken it that way. So they, a police officer in Cologne, Germany accused him of fraud at one point.

Houdini fired back that that is slander. And then I think he had to go to court and expose some of his tricks, which he wasn't too wild about, but he had in order to get out of it, he had to kind of expose how he did some of these tricks, but it did work and he did get out of it. Yeah. And now he had an official court endorsement that he was no fraud. He was an actual sure magician. So, and that was a big deal too, because Germany at the time was under the Kaiser who ruled it with an authoritarian state or ruled an authoritarian state. And to take on Germany and then prevail, like it took, it took Hutzpah, as his dad might have said, you know. So after that, they kind of go back to America, I think in 1905 after five years of touring Europe.

A lot of money. Yeah. A lot of money, a lot more stardom. This could have been a really like easy time for he and best to just settle down and say, you know what, we made it, we're rich, we're good, we can retire forever. Let's just live the good life. And they made some attempts to that. I think best really was ready to settle down. And I think Houdini was like saying he would. So, they bought a brownstone in Harlem. There was a farm in Connecticut they bought, mom moved in with them. And he was making the gestures of settling down. And then he said, you know what, I've got to get back out there. I'm getting stale. Yeah. I mean, I think one of my big takeaways from reading about his life was that, and we'll get into some of his inventions

later, but he was really an innovator and he was never content to just sort of sit back and do the same old tricks. I think he always wanted to invent new stuff, new gadgets and new tricks to do for people. And I think it was in 1908 that he had his, he developed his milk can escape, one of his more famous, because this is, you know, he did a couple of things where basically he was like, I might die if this doesn't work. And those were always the biggest tricks. Yeah. And like in that one, it was a milk can and oversight milk can, which is like a giant metal can that a human could conceivably fit into if they were very small and five foot five. Right. And it was filled with water and he would get in there and they would padlock the top and put a curtain behind, put

it behind a curtain. And then, you know, two minutes later, he would ask, he would tell the audience, like, try to hold your breath along with me, which just really raised the tension in the theater. And then like two minutes later, he would like come up from around the curtain, like soaking wet and like out of breath, but triumphant and everybody would just go nuts. And then that milk can, I don't know if it was his originally or if he like innovated it from somebody else, but he found out later that there were imitators doing the same thing. And he hated that kind of stuff. He hated imitators. He hated people like using his work, whether they credited him or not. He just did not like that kind of thing. But then that would

push him to innovate further. So he just abandoned the milk can altogether, which had brought him so much success and moved on to like increasingly more dangerous things. His greatest invention was the Chinese water torture cell, which is kind of similar to the milk can, but just even more nuts and even more dangerous. Yeah, that's easily his most famous trick. That's the one that you always see if you look up Houdini's greatest tricks. It's like you said, it's the same thing, but it's a clear tank of water. And he is lowered from his ankles. I think sometimes cuffed, sometimes in a straight jacket. And, you know, you can see him and of course, then they raise the curtain so you can't see what's going on. Are we going to tell people how he does some of

this stuff? I'll tell you what, since there's so much to say about him anyway, we probably don't have time, but there's a really great gizmodo article that says like the secrets behind Houdini's 10 greatest tricks that really does a great job of explaining it. I am. Yeah. I mean, let's just say this. Houdini was very good at things like getting out of handcuffs. He was a master of like locks and lock picking. So he did learn like tons and tons of skills. It's not to say that if a magician has a trick and you learn how to do it, that they're not skilled. But when it comes to some, you know, these contraptions, they're rigged, of course. It's not real magic. He didn't purport to be doing real magic. He just wanted to be a performer and delight audiences and he

did that. Yeah. Sometimes the answer is really simple. Like, oh, there's hinges or it's not really padlock. Those are fake ribbons. Yeah, exactly. Like there's a, like when you find these explanations, you're like, oh, that's, that's still pretty interesting that he was able to do this. And a lot of times like he would, he would take longer purposefully than he needed to. He could get out of these things in a matter of seconds, but he might say like take two minutes to appear just to keep the tension ratcheted up and just make it that much more amazing. But he also, like some of the sleight of hand that he and Bass would do, I read that his handcuff tricks, he was the guy who started handcuff tricks, like escaping from handcuffs. And when somebody came

up and said like, I had these cuffs specially made for you and I want to see if you can get out of them. Like he would, he would ask to examine them, ask to examine the key and Bass would just kind of be standing there looking too. And she'd make note of what the key looked like. And then she'd slip away without anybody noticing backstage to their huge giant ring o' keys. Find a key that looks similar and then like give Harry a kiss or like, like something like that. And they would exchange keys and then he would hand their key back to the person and palm the key that they had been letting him inspect and then manage to swap it out again later on. So like the sleight of hand and like the trickery that was involved in and of itself is masterful. Like I don't,

like if you, if you take actual magic out of the equation, I don't see how this could be any less impressive. You know what I mean? Yeah. I mean, every time I've seen and I haven't been to many magic shows, but like at the magic castle, you want to be entertained and you want someone to perform a good trick. No one in the audience, I mean, you want the audience leaving going, boy, how did they do that? Not, was it, was that real? Were they conjuring the dark magic? Right. I enjoyed the, you know, the magic castle. I know I told this on movie crush. I don't know if I ever talked about it here, but they have all these small parlor rooms in addition to the big main room where the big show is. It's just like eyes wide shut. Exactly. Fidelio. But the little

parlor rooms is really what I enjoy. They were very small, like not many people in there. And that was just like good old fashioned card tricks and stuff like that where you're just so well practiced. And those were just always the most fun for me. The big shows, eh, I could take it early. Well, you would have liked Houdini's early work because that's pretty much what it consisted of, is close up magic and card tricks. Yeah. It's like David Blaine. I love all those early specials, but then when he was like, let me go stand on this thing for three years and I didn't really care as much. He didn't like his three year standing face. He stood on a thing, right? Yeah. He stood on a big tall thing. He did. I think he was also frozen in a block of ice too,

maybe. Sure. That was the thing. So, Houdini's got this whole, he just keeps innovating and innovating and just wowing the public more and more. And he keeps going. But there's also these other things happening at the same time. The early 20th century was a really innovative time, if you think about it. One of the things that came out of it was the beginning of movies. And so, Houdini was the kind of person who was like, yes, I can use that to do magic. All I have to do is perform one trick once, capture it on film. We can just show everybody the film. It's going to be great because I'm like 43 now and I'm really starting to feel it. Hanging upside down in a straight jacket from a crane, six stories up or underwater in a tank. That wears on a person

having to do it night after night after night after night, right? So, he has front of a few hundred people. Exactly. So, he was really, well, sometimes thousands. He could draw a crowd at the height of his stardom, for sure. But he was very much drawn to film for that reason. One of the big problems was he was like zero good at acting from what I've read by all accounts. Yeah, he was like me. Zero good at acting. I've seen you act. You took that beasting. I thought you actually got stung by a bee. I was one good. I wasn't zero good. Okay. If we're on a scale of one to 100. I was one, but man, I was better than Houdini. But it was the beginning of movies and people would go see anything that you put up on the silver screen.

So, he was a big star. He was like one of Hollywood's big first action heroes. And he, like everything he did, went out at full bore and said, all right, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to start a production company and all these other movie ventures. And none of those were super successful, but he did have a brief stint as kind of the big action guy of the day. And these are things that like, I think most people, Houdini aficionados, of course, know all this stuff. But if you just know Houdini is magician, you may not know that he was a movie star or that he was a pretty advanced inventor, because he's coming up with all of these contraptions and machines himself to do these tricks. And so he realized early on, part of the problem with that

was if you want to safeguard something, you would file a patent, but in order to file a patent, you have to explicitly show how the thing works. So he was caught in a between a rock and a hard place magician wise, because he hated being ripped off, but he didn't want to reveal these tricks to get a patent on these machines. A lot of them, if you look through his list of patents that he got, a lot of them he never even ended up using or were abandoned kind of midway through the process of getting them patented. But he found a loophole in performing these things on stage and getting them a copy written as a live act. Right. So with a patent, you had to explain technically how the whole thing worked,

not the case with copyright. No, you just, you do a play and you copyright it and you're good to go. And that's essentially what he did with the Chinese water torture cell. He did a performance in front of, and legendarily, I don't know if this is true or not, but it's a pretty good story, in front of one single person live on stage as a one act play. And that enabled him to copyright it in England. Yeah, I think he also copyrighted maybe the metamorphosis. Yeah, one of his earlier tricks. Yeah, which he would just write a play and then in the play, this trick would happen,

he would describe the trick, but he didn't describe how the trick to work. He just described, say, from like the audience's vantage point. And then bam, it was copy written and anybody who tried that same trick would be infringing on his copyright. Pretty smart. I think we got to say, talk about that metamorphosis for a second though, it's worth saying. So it was a... He turned himself into a butterfly. It was, you know, he turned himself into Franz Kafka. That'd be even better.

That's a very literary joke. So he best would be standing there, helping him get into a sack, would pull the drawstring at the top of the sack, he would get into a box, the box would be chain, trust, padlocked, and then best would put a screen up, clap three times, and then on the third clap, the screen would come down and it would be Houdini standing there. He would unlock the box and open up the giant mail bag and there was best popped out. And we're talking in a matter of seconds, a matter of seconds this thing happened, and that was the metamorphosis. And that was a really good example of how good best got, because apparently they could trade places in reality with this trick and you can find out

how it worked at the Gizmodo article, but they had it down to where she could change places with him in three seconds. You're doing Gizmodo a big service here. Well, Gizmodo did the world a big service by writing that article. So I'm just paying it forward, backward. I guess before we break, let's talk a little bit about his aviation career. Can we do that? Yeah. Because if you're thinking aviator, Harry Houdini, the answer is yes. Because he was such a driven man, he would, in performer, the Wright brothers had proved that you could fly. So he was like, I need to get in on that because what's better to draw a crowd out in public than to do something like flying? So he bought a biplane for about five grand in

Europe, which is a lot of money back then, still a lot of money. But you know, it's even more because it's modern times because of inflation. And he took it to Australia, supposedly took out the first life insurance policy for an airplane accident in the history of the world and toured Australia and was the very first person to fly an airplane on Australian soil. Yeah. That's pretty historic if you think about it. And that was like another good example of there was this new innovative thing going on and he wanted in on it. So he went and did it. Until he didn't want to do it. Right. Once it became kind of commonplace, he's like, go home, don't fly. Yeah. That was Houdini.

All right. So we'll take our last break here and we'll come back and talk about his battle with his spiritualist and his odd demise right after this. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help this. I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously. I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey,

that's me. Yeah, we know that Michael and a different hot sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking this is the story of my life. Oh, just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikular. And to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get second hand

astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention. Because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the I Heart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Okay, Chuck, you promised a battle with the spiritualists. And I want to hear about it, even though I think we kind of talked a little bit about Houdini and our spiritualism episode. And I know we definitely talked about his death. Yeah, there's just no way. And I know we talked about his death in our appendix episode, don't to give too much away. Yeah, he's kind of appeared a couple of times. So he hated the spiritualism movement. From the very beginning, it seemed like, again, he was a performer and a magician who performed these really well thought out tricks. But the idea from him was never, I'm really doing this stuff. I'm a master at performing these escapes. He was really rubbed by the spiritualists because he thought they were

trying to con everybody because they were by saying, we're really doing this stuff. And he's like, no, you're just performing like me, but you're saying you're really doing it. And I don't like that. Yeah, you're taking advantage of people's grief, probably fleecing money out of them. Like there's a lot wrong with what you're doing. And apparently, so he was good friends for a brief time with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the guy who wrote the Sherlock Holmes mysteries. He was at least as famous as Houdini by this time. We're talking the early 1920s, if not more famous because of Sherlock Holmes. And Doyle was a huge adherent of spiritualism, enormous, one of the most gullible smart people who ever lived. And Houdini really wanted to

be friends with him. So he kind of kept his sentiments about spiritualism to himself. And the Doyles invited Houdini over for a seance because by this time, Houdini's mom had died. And apparently he fainted dead away when he got the news. Like he was in Europe at the time. And when he woke up, he was just sobbing uncontrollably. I'm sure he still went on stage. That was just what Houdini did. But he took it rather hard. So when the Doyles like invited him over for a seance, he went into it open-minded, hoping, you know, beyond hope, he would have loved to have spoken to his mom. But also I think he was already had the kernels of skepticism, like in the modern sense of the word, growing inside of him. And he really, it really rubbed him the wrong way.

Like the whole thing started when his mother inhabited the body of Mrs. Doyle, Lady Doyle, and made the sign of the cross, which a lifelong Jewish mother would never do. And apparently it went downhill from there. And it really rubbed him the wrong way. And he really resented it. And that led to the falling out of his friendship with Doyle, but also like his all-out just war on spiritualism and spiritualists. Yeah. I mean, he ended up in court. He testified in front of Congress in support of a bill that outlawed fortune-telling in D.C. And he specifically took on, we took on a lot of people, but Marjorie, the spiritualist Marjorie, Mina Crandon, and was a wife of a Boston surgeon and pretty big in that movement. And he got together with

Scientific American Magazine on a committee that they formed and exposed her basically and even put out a pamphlet, a 40-page pamphlet called Houdini exposes the trick used by the Boston medium Marjorie. Yeah, dude, it was a very specific title. It was a very public war between them. At one point they had dueling stage presentations in Boston, which within days of each other. And Houdini finally got, so he was part of a committee for Scientific American who was looking to award 2,500 bucks for evidence of actual mediumship, you know, of, I guess, like actual information from the other side or whatever. And he saw to it that she didn't get that. She lost, but it was apparently a Harvard student who ended up unmasking her. He just wrote that

pamphlet suggesting how she was probably doing it. And then also he added an act to his larger act, which was kind of like a seance. And he would explain how this was all being done, which is pretty cool. It was cool. What wasn't cool was how he died. Yeah. Is that fair to say? And I'm sure I've made fun of Jay Gordon Whitehead before, but I'll do it again. Yeah. So here's what happened. He fractured his ankle in a performance doing the Chinese water torture cell, and that kind of started this run of bad luck if you believe in that kind of thing. So he fractured his ankle. He's already a little bit hobbled. His doctor said he probably shouldn't be performing right now. He said, no, no, no, I'm going to do it anyway. I'm on tour. And he went

to Montreal and gave a lecture at McGill University where he invited these students backstage. And you know, the story you've heard is true. Like the, hey, can you take a punch to the stomach? I've heard you can. And Houdini is laid up on the couch because of this ankle says, yeah, I'm pretty good at that. And this guy, Jay Gordon Whitehead, and this is a quote, it says, abruptly delivered four or five terrible, terribly forcible, deliberate, well-directed blows, like just started wailing on his stomach, apparently. Yeah. He wasn't ready for it. He wasn't tightened up or, you know, didn't have those abs rock solid. Right. And it was decidedly uncool. Yes. Yes. Not not magician, cool, not funds, cool, not cool by any definition. Apparently,

the same witness said that Houdini was like, that'll do with his response to that. Really? Yeah. And he tried to play it off, you know, but he was like, that really hurt. And it just kept getting worse too. Like just that, that, you know, later that night, he had stomach cramps. The next day he was wracked with abdominal pain. And it was finally bad enough that he went to a doctor and his doctor was like, I think you might have appendicitis. You should go to a hospital. And Houdini said, never, I have to perform tonight. And went on stage in Detroit and gave what came, ended up being his final, final performance, I think on October 24th, 1926. Because that doctor was absolutely right. It was appendicitis and he was in big trouble.

Yes. It was too late for him. It was a ruptured appendix. He died on Halloween on October 31st with Bess and a couple of his brothers at his bedside. And what's really, what's what the debate is, you know, there was a lot of debate over the years about whether or not he was murdered and had been being poisoned by the spiritualist or whether the spiritualist hired this kid to go beat him up and wail on his stomach or whatever. Biff. Yeah, exactly. And I think most people that really know have come out and said, none of that stuff is really true. That's really probably all speculation. But what the real question is, is whether or not it's possible and whether or not those punches to the stomach actually ruptured his appendix or did he already

have an appendicitis happening? And this might have just brought it to light or exacerbated it or just maybe, maybe it was just ill timed all the way around. Yeah. I think in our appendix episode, we landed on the idea that no, it definitely didn't rupture his appendix. And apparently, there was a study that looked at 20 years worth of appendicitis and it could only find just a handful of appendixes that were ruptured from like violence or trauma. Yeah, like being hit. So it can happen, but it's really rare. And even J. Gordon Whitehead, Biff, probably didn't rupture Houdini's appendix. But what he did do was he gave Houdini a good reason why his abdomen would hurt right there, which would cause Houdini to just ignore it for longer than he otherwise

might have, had it been a mystery sensation that he couldn't attribute it to anything. And so J. Gordon Whitehead probably did at least indirectly lead to Houdini's death, but it was a neglected appendix or appendicitis that finally got him. And he died of sepsis on Halloween in 1926 in Detroit of all places. Of all places. Yeah. So the kind of, to put a tag on the spiritualist thing, before he died, he told Bess, he was like, hey, listen, I've got an opportunity here if I'm about to die to really prove this, this spiritualism thing is really bunk because I'm going to try from the other side to get back in touch with you. And you're going to have to have these

seances and try and get in touch with me. And this is going to prove it once and for all. And for about a decade after his death, Bess did hold a seance. It never worked, of course. And she eventually quit. But the Magic Castle still has Houdini's seances. I think every year, I don't know if you can just buy a special ticket or if you have to be invited to that. I know you have to be invited to get in period, but I don't know. I don't know how you get into that seance. You got to know somebody who at least knows somebody who knows somebody. Probably. I want to make fun of that theory though one more time about spiritualism. Sure. There was a book called The Secret Life of Houdini where the authors said that

if one were to suspect Houdini, a victim of foul play, the section of organized crime that was composed of fraudulent spirit mediums must be considered likely suspects. It's like something off a history channel or something, you know? Yeah. And fun to make fun of. Yeah. You got anything else about Houdini? I got nothing else. All right. Well, I don't have anything else either, but there's plenty more to learn. There's tons of websites dedicated to Houdini. There's like lots of documentaries out there. It's pretty cool to go check them out and also check out the Gizmodo article. And since I misspoke Gizmodo, it's time for a listener mail.

I'm going to call this another correction. Okay, good. They're rolling in lately. Yeah, we're rolling in them. Hey guys, just listening to the latest episode on criminal records. And we heard from quite a few people on this one, by the way. And as always, it was great stuff. However, I think Josh provided a bit of unfortunate misinformation in claiming that sex offenders have the highest rate of recidivism. While this is a common claim, the evidence does not support it. There are, as always, a lot of different variables in the research on the topic. Notes that there are so many

different factors here to consider. But the straight statement that sex offenders have been shown to have the highest recidivum rates of any criminal is not supported by the data. Anyway, there's a lot more research out there as well. But I think that the statement about recidivum rates reinforces the false belief among many that sex offenders are more likely to re-offend. Keep up the good work, Mike. And Mike's in a bunch of links that I went through and it appears that is correct. Yeah, got that one wrong, huh? So thanks to Mike and everybody who wrote in to say, eh, it's not true because we don't want to paint anybody in an unnecessarily bad light. Agreed. Okay, if you want to be like Mike and get in touch with us for the correction,

especially a vital correction, we'd love to hear those. And you can shoot us an email to StuffPodcast at iHeartRadio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. About my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find in major league

baseball, international banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.