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Criminal

The Shell Game

Criminal

Vox Media Podcast Network

Society & Culture, True Crime

4.739.4K Ratings

🗓️ 18 November 2016

⏱️ 17 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The Magic Castle in Hollywood has been a private club for magicians since 1963, and its walls are lined with portraits of magicians past and present. Among them is a portrait of one of the earliest American organized crime bosses and conmen, Jefferson Randolph "Soapy" Smith. And though it may seem strange that this "mecca of magic" honors a criminal, Soapy's legacy reveals just how blurry the line is between a delightful trick and a dirty one.  Say hello on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Sign up for our occasional newsletter, The Accomplice. Follow the show and review us on Apple Podcasts: iTunes.com/CriminalShow. We also make This is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery. Artwork by Julienne Alexander. Check out our online shop.  Episode transcripts are posted on our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Support for this show comes from Krakan.

0:03.0

Krypto is like the financial system, but different.

0:07.0

It doesn't care where you come from, what you look like, your credit score,

0:11.0

or your outrageous food delivery habits.

0:13.7

crypto is finance for everyone everywhere all the time.

0:18.4

Krakhan, see what crypto can be.

0:21.3

Don't invest unless you're prepared to lose all the money you invest.

0:25.0

This is a high risk investment and you should not expect to be protected if something goes wrong. At Barclays, we're here for the land of football.

0:35.0

We're here for the Premier League.

0:38.0

And the Barclays Women's Super League.

0:41.0

We're here for the football chance for giving more girls a chance. We're

0:48.1

here for the grassroots and all the muddy booths. From schools to stadiums, we're here for it all.

0:55.0

Barclays, here for the land of football.

1:00.0

Any technology that is sufficiently unknown looks like magic.

1:06.0

You know, Arthur C. Clark said that well.

1:09.0

It's the same thing really, we have a technology that people are not knowledgeable about the

1:14.4

technology of deception. This is Witt Hayden he goes by pop and he's a professional

1:20.2

magician living in Los Angeles he's almost 70 now and started doing magic

1:25.7

when he was only 10 years old growing up in Clarksville, Tennessee. I was a

1:30.9

preacher's kid and this old man moved into our neighborhood.

1:35.0

He was in his 80s, but he'd been a gambler his whole life and, you know, back in the 20s and so and he was a total reprobate he drank whiskey

1:49.1

right out of a bottle and chain smoked these little black cigars and cussed like a sailor.

...

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