The History of Magic | StarTalk

What's this with Escape artists? I never was as enchanted by that as others have been. When you're talking about a escape artist, you're really talking about Houdini and then a lot of knockoffs after that. Houdini, in the early 20th century, a man born in Budapest who claimed to be born in Appleton, Wisconsin, which is about all you need to know. That tells the whole story.

He takes a straight jacket and says, as his tagline, "I defy the jails of the world to hold me." The early part of the 20th century, and then he hangs upside down in a straight jacket way up high over a sea of people in Times Square, many of whom are immigrants. This man, self-made man by any definition you want, casts off the chains of anything that any corporation or government put on him.

I'm getting all deep on this. This is all metaphorical. Well, that's the answer though, isn't it? And you know that was an idea of its time; that was an idea of its time as important as Bob Dylan singing before Martin Luther King. I had not thought of it in that way. I mean, it's really, really important.

And then other guys come along and say, "I got fake cuffs, boom, here we go!" But that's not what was going on there. We celebrate Houdini because he grabbed the heart of America. In some ways, he was the first modern star. He's the first celebrity to appear nearly nude in public. He's the first celebrity to have descriptions of his shows be more important than his shows.

Houdini is in the dictionary. You know, to pull a Houdini means to disappear. Oh, you become a verb! And if we walk out on the street right now, if you walk out there and say to people, "Name a magician," and you ask 10 people, at least one of them and maybe seven of them will name Houdini.

Pretty heavy, you know? It's been 100 years, and that's because he was speaking for America's heart. I mean, just say to yourself again, "I defy the jails of the world to hold me." That's about as heavy as you can lay on somebody, huh?