Episode
Houdini Defies Death
- Podcast
- HISTORY This Week
- Published
- Jan 19, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 1734
- Processing state
not_requested- Canonical source
- http://historythisweekpodcast.com
Actions
POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/history-this-week-186536/episodes/houdini-defies-death/transcription-requests
Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode.GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/history-this-week-186536/houdini-defies-death.md
Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource.
Summary
January 25, 1908. Harry Houdini is the most famous magician in America. He’s known for his escapes – from handcuffs, boxes, jail cells, even a giant football. But the escape act is getting old, and ticket sales aren’t what they used to be. And on this day, an under-capacity audience at the Columbia Theater in St. Louis is about to witness Houdini’s most dangerous escape yet… from death itself. How did a Hungarian immigrant named Erik Weisz become Harry Houdini? And when his career was fading, how did Houdini embrace death to bring it back to life? Special thanks to our guest, Joe Posnanski, author of The Life and Afterlife of Harry Houdini. Additional thanks to San Diego magician Tom Interval for providing archival audio of Houdini. ** This episode originally aired Jan 25, 2021. Get in touch: [email protected] Follow on Instagram: @historythisweek Follow on Facebook: HISTORY This Week Podcast To stay updated: http://historythisweekpodcast.com To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices