Before this episode, I didn't know a lot about Harry Houdini.

Mostly because I've never had much respect for magicians, and frankly, they've always creeped me out.

Never had a lot of interest in magic, but I gotta say this episode changed me.

Definitely find them somewhat less creepy now, at least some of them.

A lot more respect for the masters of this craft, and no one was a greater master of the craft of magic than Harry Houdini.

I'd obviously heard of him before, you know, I knew some kind of escape artist, and I knew that uh...

Well, that's actually about all I knew.

I didn't realize how truly famous he was in his day.

You know, I didn't know that he was an illusionist, in addition to an escape artist,

or that his brother was also a well-known magician of his day, Turingas Hardin.

Sounds like a magician name.

And I definitely didn't know that he devoted the final decade of his life to exposing mediums,

psychics, clairvoyance, and other spiritualists as fake and fraudulent.

And why did he do this? Well, for a variety of reasons, but probably because he was a mama's boy.

In the best way.

He was extremely close to his mother, took great care of her after his father died, and when she died in 1913,

he was virtually inconsolable.

And his skepticism of those who advertised inability to contact dead, those who prayed on the sorrow of the grief-stricken turned to hatred.

He despised them.

He would have loved to be able to contact Mama, and know that she was out there somewhere, know that she was okay,

and he hated the pieces of shit who took this desire and tried to monetize that grief by pretending to contact the deceased.

Many people were skeptical of spiritualists, but they didn't have his highly trained, illusionist eye,

...