The History Podcast

In the concluding chapter of How Houdini Made Magic, Derren Brown explores how even in death, Houdini knew how to ensure his legend would endure.
The legendary death-defier would eventually fall, not to a locked water cell or an icy river, but to a ruptured appendix after a fateful backstage punch in Montreal.
Worn out by relentless spiritualist crusades, heavy lawsuits, and mounting mortality, a 52-year-old Houdini performed his final show in Detroit with a blazing 40-degree fever before collapsing. Dying on Halloween 1926, he went out at the absolute peak of his powers, avoiding the slow decline of an ageing performer and stepping straight into myth.
Houdini saw his death as an opportunity to test the claims of Spiritualists further. He set in motion a test by agreeing a secret code with his wife, Bess. Once he had passed, she was instructed to hold seances in a bid to reach her beloved Houdini. Bess never heard Houdini’s code, but seances are still held right to this very day, a century later.
Houdini’s greatest trick wasn't just escaping handcuffs or cell blocks - it was mastering the art of storytelling so that his name still means “doing the impossible”.
Presenter: Derren Brown
Writer/Producer: Calum McCrae
Additional research: Alice Homewood
Sound designer: David Crackles
Executive producer: Sophie Ellis
Commissioning Executive: Tracy Williams
Commissioning Editor: Daniel Clarke
Original music: The Inner Me - Epilogue (Rosie, sweet Rosabel)
A Strawberry Blond production for BBC Sounds and Radio 4

World War I and the Spanish Flu caused devastation. Estimates are that up to 120 million people died as a result of both in 6 years - many of them relatively young. It led to the revival of an already popular new religion: Spiritualism.
Spiritualists believe that human souls survive bodily death and can communicate with the living. Harry Houdini, the great mystifier, had some experience with the religion. In his early career, he performed a spirit medium routine with his wife as part of a travelling medicine show. But later in life, he turned into a dogged crusader against what he claimed was a fraudulent faith.
Derren Brown explores how Houdini was perhaps driven to this campaign by a complex mix of factors: personal grief following his mother's death, an informed understanding of the tricks they pulled and a master showman's instinct for staying topical.
Houdini’s crusade played out most clearly in his explosive rivalry with the best-known medium of his day, Margery Crandon. A rivalry that was covered on the front pages of America’s newspapers more than the President.
Presenter: Derren Brown
Writer/Producer: Calum McCrae
Additional research: Alice Homewood
Sound designer: David Crackles
Executive producer: Sophie Ellis
Commissioning Executive: Tracy Williams
Commissioning Editor: Daniel Clarke
A Strawberry Blond production for BBC Sounds and Radio 4

During the filming of the 1919 film, The Grim Game, there was a real-life mid-air plane crash. The star of the movie was the greatest escape artist of all time: Harry Houdini. So how did the producers capitalise on the crash? By telling the press that Houdini was on that plane and survived near certain death.
He was not on the plane; it was a stunt double (who did survive). But the public didn’t need to know that. They needed to know that Houdini was now a movie star.
While biographers often write off his silver-screen ventures as flops, Derren Brown argues that Houdini’s experience with Hollywood and his embrace of the emerging technology of film demonstrate a shrewd operator who understood that in order to be a genuine star, you must stay ahead of the curve.
And his use of emerging forms of communication with the masses goes beyond film: Houdini used early postal networks and telegrams like a proto-social media campaign. And he pioneered in radio, giving magic lessons over the newly formed airwaves.
Presenter: Derren Brown
Writer/Producer: Calum McCrae
Additional research: Alice Homewood
Sound designer: David Crackles
Executive producer: Sophie Ellis
Commissioning Executive: Tracy Williams
Commissioning Editor: Daniel Clarke
A Strawberry Blond production for BBC Sounds and Radio 4

“It was the making of Houdini”. That’s how one magician described Houdini’s dramatic “Mirror Handcuff escape”.
In London’s Hippodrome, in 1904, Houdini wowed the 4000 gripped audience members as he broke free from handcuffs designed by the Daily Illustrated Mirror to be impossible to escape. The resulting international media coverage was seismic for Houdini’s career.
But was it a masterful escape? Or a brilliantly conceived piece of mutually beneficial publicity?
Derren Brown explores how Houdini became the ultimate master in media manipulation. And how his ability to self-mythologise in the media suggests there was something fishy going on in the Hippodrome that day.
Far from being a let-down, however, Derren argues Houdini’s weaponisation of the media is a sign of his genius. His invented near-death river escapes demonstrate a canny ability to spin in a very modern way.
His understanding of the media then helped to secure Houdini’s name as a pioneer aviator!
Presenter: Derren Brown
Writer/Producer: Calum McCrae
Additional research: Alice Homewood
Sound designer: David Crackles
Executive producer: Sophie Ellis
Commissioning Executive: Tracy Williams
Commissioning Editor: Daniel Clarke
A Strawberry Blond production for BBC Sounds and Radio 4

Documentary evidence shows that when Harry Houdini first arrived in the UK, he struck up a friendship, of sorts, with a man who would go on to pioneer British espionage. A man who would go on to be the inspiration for the character “M” in Ian Fleming’s James Bond.
It begs the question: Beyond the handcuffs and the stage, did the world's most famous mystifier, Houdini, lead a double life as an international informant?
Derren Brown investigates the shadowy network of high-profile connections that shaped Houdini’s global career.
From suspicious passport alterations to intelligence reports signed "HH" ahead of tours through volatile Russia and Germany, the pieces of a tantalising puzzle begin to fall into place.
There is, after all, a striking overlap between the misdirection of a master magician and the tradecraft of espionage. Whatever the answer, Houdini’s fame clearly benefitted from his high-profile connections.
Presenter: Derren Brown
Writer/Producer: Calum McCrae
Additional research: Alice Homewood
Sound designer: David Crackles
Executive producer: Sophie Ellis
Commissioning Executive: Tracy Williams
Commissioning Editor: Daniel Clarke
A Strawberry Blond production for BBC Sounds and Radio 4