Good Job, Brain! - 138: Abracadabra

Episode Date: December 13, 2014

Shazam! Presto! Prepare to be amazed by origin stories, facts, and trivia about MAGIC. Chris tries to dazzle us (and YOU, the listener) with aural magic tricks. Find out why his mind-reading tricks work. Take our quiz about the magical products all around us. Open Sesame! Abracadabra! Hocus pocus! Find out how and why these magic phrases came to be. We all have heard about Harry Houdini and his great magical escape feats but did you know he was an avid mythbuster and skeptic? Oh yeah, and his on-and-off friendship with Arthur Conan Doyle. Dramaaaa. Also: poop dust Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media podcast. Hello, fantastic, fearless, flightless, and featherless fact fanatics. Welcome to Good Job Brain, your weekly quiz show and offbeat trivia podcast. This is episode 138. And of course, I am your humble host, Karen. and we are your pleasing, playful plushies who take pleasure in plots plus plaid. I'm Colin. And I'm Chris.

No, no Dana this week. Yes. Yeah. Oh, big news for Dana, even though she's not here. Oh, yeah. And that's the reason why she's not here because she's out celebrating for a company holiday party. Her new game just launched, Peggle Blast, available in the app store. She is the game designer on it, and I know you guys have been playing it.

We have. We were commiserating over some of the more difficult levels. is it fun it is fun if you like peggle it's it's fun it's fun and it looks really great awesome so I have a listener email here and a couple of episodes ago talked about porta potty's my burning question is what did they do with the blue liquid oh where does it go oh okay and what do they do with it yeah I was hoping maybe they do something and then they can invent like a new type of plastic or I don't know something cool um so we got an email from Nikki, and Nikki says,

Hello, Brains, I couldn't help giggling about your question of what happens to all the poo during the saltpeter discussion. I live in Baltimore, Maryland, and there's a crappy town, no pun intended here, with a waste processing plant everyone jokes about. We call it the Dundalk Golden Eggs because of the giant golden domes they have covering the incinerators. It's kind of like, it's almost like two gold boobs. Okay, sure. Like I looked at a picture. Sure. Like golden eggs.

Okay. But there are two of them, so really it looks like boobs. Dobs? Did they have tiny spires at the top? No, that would be funny. That would be great. And Nikki says, according to the older folks, the eggs weren't always there. And certain areas on certain days of the week were covered in a yellow dusting, a sort of fecal fallout coating the town.

And people would schedule their laundry and hairdressing appointments according to the wind reports from the plant. Wow. She says, gross, exclamation point. Move. Yeah. Oh, man. That'd just be just a low-level horror. Yeah.

So I guess they burn it. Okay. Yeah. I mean, it's all right. They got to dispose of it somehow. That's right. All right. Well, thanks.

Thank you, Nikki. Great. Hey, thanks. All right. Let's jump into our first general trivia segment. Pop quiz. Hot shot. Boy versus boy.

Sorry, man versus man. Oh, you know. Yeah. Where are you going to find two men? Um, here we go. I have a random trivial pursuit card and you, and you guys have your morning zoo radio buzzers. Here we go. Blue Wedge for geography. What is the more common name for the United States Bullion Depository? Oh, Colin. Is that Fort Knox? Yes. If you were to guess how many tons of gold. Oh, man, hundred, hundred, high hundreds, eight hundred tons of gold. I have no idea. Four thousand tons of gold. That's a lot of gold. Yeah, it's a lot of gold. Man.

All right. Pink Wedge for pop culture. Who plays the guitar solo in Michael Jackson's Beat It? Oh, you guys both know this? Eddie Vedder. No. Eddie Van Halen. Eddie Van Halen.

I knew what you meant. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Eddie Vander was like young. He would have been young. He would have been young. He would have been young. Yes, yeah. That was so, man, that's so 80s right there.

Eddie Van Halen playing the guitar solo to beat it. That's by Michael Jackson. the most 80s, yeah. All right, Yellow Wedge. Who won the popular vote for the U.S. presidency in 2000 by more than half a million voters? Oh, gee. Al Gore. Correct.

Twisting the knife on those people, I guess. I think they're still counting. And there's a note here. Still some hanging chads that are going to rectify. There's a note here that says, you could still win it. George W. Bush won the electoral vote in presidency. That's right. It's like, thanks.

All right, Purple Wedge, what is the title of Tony Kushner's two-part play about the AIDS crisis? This is Angels in America. Correct. Very good. Very cultured. Yeah. All right. Green Wedge for science.

What part of the body does a podiatrist specialize in? Everybody. The feats. Featsy. Feetzes. Well, it says foot here, but, oh, my God. Okay. Okay, last question.

Oh. This is a sports question that you all can get. Okay. Orange wedge. Wait, let me see if I can get it first. Okay, yeah, yeah, fair enough, fair enough. Okay. The 1988 Calgary Olympic Games saw the debut of a bobsled team from what snowless country.

Well, Jamaica. Jamaica. All right. Okay. Field of rhythm. Field of rhyme. Cool runnings. All right, good job, Brains.

And let's get into our show. this week's topic is uh is pretty exciting near and dear to our hearts I think that's right that's right today's show is about magic yes and illusions and tricks when we did our Las Vegas shows you know we went to see Penn and Teller all of us yeah brain and loved it I think I just mentioned Penn and Teller on a few episodes ago about Kevlar yeah yeah yeah so we're all magic nerds here yeah I think there is a definitely some sort of design or engineering involved and then kind of slide of hand tricks and you know as a consumer as an audience you're kind of like trying to figure out oh yeah at least our personality is just like how do they do well maybe this and this and this

so hocus pocus on with the showkis do you believe in magic in a young girl's heart how the music can free her whenever it starts and it's magic if the music is proving It makes you feel happy like an old-time movie

I wanted, you know, like a lot of nerdy kids, I did magic when I was a kid. Oh, me too. You know, whenever we'd like go on vacation, we go to some tourist trap, I always wanted to spend like the entire time in the magic shop. Me too. All buying all the magic tricks and stuff like that. Yeah, I used to be that guy who would like, you know, carry around magic tricks. Super cool.

Things of that nature. I know, you know, it was an icebreaker. But I was trying to think like, oh, man, can I do? Is there a magic trick that I can do purely through the magic of audio. Oh. If you guys could leave the room, I'll do it for our listeners, and then I'll do it to you. All right. Okay. Okay. I like it. Okay. Okay. Okay. Good job, brain audience. It's just you and me. I'm just going to ask you guys some questions, and I want you to just, if you're alone, shout it out. If you're not alone, just feel free to hold it in your head, and you can compare answers with the people that you're in a carpooling with. And just think of the first thing that comes to mind after you hear these questions. Okay. Ready? Here we go. Think of a color and think of a tool. Are you thinking of a red hammer? If you're like most people, right now you're thinking of a red hammer.

For this one, I want you to audibly, if you can, if you're in a place where we won't be embarrassed, just go ahead and answer my questions as I'm asking them out loud, okay? Great. What's five plus one? What's four plus two? What's three plus three? What's two plus four? What's one plus five? Say the word six, ten times fast. Quick, tell me the name of a vegetable. Was it a carrot? Now, let's invite Karen and Colin back into the studio, and we'll see how they do, and then I'll explain to you how this trick was done.

Okay, everybody, so we brought Colin and Karen back in, so let's see how they like this trick. Okay. So, Karen, I'm going to start with you. I've got one for each of you guys, okay? So, Karen, I'm going to start with you. I want you to very quickly answer my questions. Okay.

So I'm like, I want you to think of a color and a tool. Got it? Okay. Okay. I'm giving you a piece of paper. Just hold on this piece of paper that I wrote down before the show. Colin, I'm going to ask you some questions just like I asked Karen some questions. Okay.

So, and then you're going to answer them just as soon as you can. Okay. Just quick. Okay, ready? Here we go. What is one plus five? Six. What is two plus four?

six what is three plus three six what is four plus two six what is five plus one six I want you to say the number six ten times fast six six six six six okay quick tell me the name of a vegetable carrot okay great so I want you to take this piece of paper and hold on to that so Karen first of all can you tell me what the color and tool that you thought of were yellow an axe a yellow axe okay great and Colin you had said carrot so Colin why don't you go ahead and open up this this piece of paper that I wrote down earlier before the show and you'll find that written on this piece of paper is carrot oh it says carrot i opened it up and it says carrot and uh carrot why don't you go ahead and open up your piece of paper right now and let's see what's written there oh what's written down there red hammer right so this worked with colin it didn't so much work with you now the way that this actually works is there's there's stuff about the repeating well no okay um so here's the thing. It worked on me. What happened? No, sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't.

The repeating of the number six, some people say that it has some effect that it makes you think of carrots because you think of carrot sticks. I don't actually think that that's the case. 90% of people, if you kind of clear their mind and then jump on them and say, quick think of a vegetable, 90% of the time they'll say carrots. Really? Then usually they'll say broccoli. Now, if you really want to go crazy with this trick, you can write down carrot on one piece of paper and put it in your right hand pocket.

write down broccoli on another piece of paper and put it in your left hand pocket, write down celery, which is another one that they say all the time, and put it in your back pocket, and then you just sort of pull it out of your pocket and give it to them out here. Why don't you read this? But most of the time, and especially if you don't even want to write something down, you can say, think of a vegetable, and then, okay, and be like, it's a carrot, and you'll really freak them out.

Wow. Most of, like, 90-something percent of the time, people will say carrot. I like this. 90 percent of the time, if you tell somebody think of a, color and a tool, they will think of a red hammer. So when I was sitting silently, of course, thinking of a color tool as you're talking to Karen, and I thought of an orange hammer. You thought of an orange hammer?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just the crazy thing about carrot, I guess, in the American English-speaking world, is that if you It's fast. It's like the prototypical vegetable. It is. And, you know, it's funny that because some people relate this back to prototype theory,

as if we have, Karen, think of a piece of furniture. What are you thinking of a chair? Love seat. I was thinking of a chair. I thought of a chair. You were thinking of a chair. I thought of a chair. This is dangerous.

to do with Karen because your brain works in different ways in the average human brain. You don't think of the first thing. But if you, but with prototype theory, the idea is that like if you tell somebody, think of a piece of furniture, they'll think of a chair. Think of a vegetable. Think of a carrot. Like, there's just something quintessential about certain items in certain groups

that most of the time people will jump to those things. There's actually another trick that I can do. I can do it for you guys, the listeners, and you guys all at the same time. Ready? I want you to think of any number, any single digit number between one and nine. Just pick out an integer. Got it? I want you to take that number and multiply it times nine.

Okay? Did you have that yet? You multiplied the single digit energy that you picked out times nine. Okay. You're going to have probably maybe not a two digit number. If you have a two digit number, I want you to add those two digits together. Okay. You've added those two digits together.

Take that number. and I want you to subtract five from it. You got that in your heads? Okay. I want you to take that number and convert it to a letter. A is one, two is B, C is three, et cetera. You've converted it to a letter? Great.

Think of a country fast that starts with that letter. Got a country? Yes. The last letter of that country, think of an animal that starts with that letter. Okay. Got one? Okay, great. The last letter of that animal, think of a fruit that starts with that letter.

Uh-huh. Okay. Do you have that? Yeah. Karen, you got that? Mm-hmm. Okay. So, Denmark kangaroo orange.

Yep. Yep. Denmark kangaroo orange. Really? Denmark kangaroo orange. Yep. I have. What do you have?

Djibouti iguana apricot. This is why, yeah, this is, yeah, exactly. But you got us all down the same path. Like, we had the same number converted, but yeah. Your brain just works differently. It does. It really does. Yep.

Denmark kangaroo orange. Denmark. Absolutely. Karen knows their countries for sure. Yep. You got me when it says, when you said times nine. We've had a whole segment. About that.

Yeah, exactly. And this is a wonderful way if people don't know that if you multiply a number times nine and then add the digits, you will always come back to nine. Right. So we're always down to four. You're always down to D. Denmark. Kangaroo orange. It's like the sequel to zero dark 30.

And again, you know, the important thing with these things is, you know, people will remember. if you get it right, and they'll forget it if you get it wrong. So, you know, just get it wrong a bunch of times. But, you know, you'll get it right like 90% of the time. I love it. I love stuff like this. Well, you guys are consumers like I am. I'm sure you have noticed.

Bye, bye, thanks. Yeah, on occasion. There are a good many products that incorporate the word magic into their name. Yeah. Because they either make your life easier or do something that seems, you know, miraculous or magic. So I have a quiz for you about products. Every answer will have the word magic somewhere in this product name. All right.

These are brand name, trade name products. Nothing generic. Get your buzzers ready. Invented in 1953. This product originally consisted of a glass tube filled with ink and a felt wicking tip. Oh, Chris. The magic marker. That is the magic marker.

Yeah. Which, you know, if you ask most people, they would say it's, like a generic size these days, you know, like Xerox or something like that. It is a trademark. There was a trademark. The original, yes, magic marker brand. They're not made of glass anymore because you don't want to give a glass tube to children. Why? Okay. Introduced in 2007, this small electronic device allowed you to place internet-based telephone calls hawked frequently on infomercials. It was to replace your traditional phone jack.

Chris. Magic Jack. Magic Jack, yes. Just led you right up to that one. Yeah, you really did. Yes, Magic Jack. Hold my hand. What does it do?

It's basically like internet phone calls, you know, via VOIP. But it was just, it was sold in a very simplified. It was like internet phone calls for the, The masses, right, yep, yep. Another infomercial staple in the 2000s, this is a personal size blender. Karen. Magic Bullet. That is the Magic Bullet, party blender with various attachments and such.

I was reading some article that that specific infomercial for the original Magic Bullet was kind of the first time that they staged the infomercial as a party as like an actual storyline. It's the morning after a big party, a bunch of friends in a vacation house. So they're all kind of waking up and congregating around the bar by the kitchen. Sort of the island. Yeah. What's for breakfast? Oh, I can make you a smoothie. Oh, man, I'm not hungover, but like, oh, the last time.

They never said. They're like, oh, last time. So it's really fascinating because the other infomercial is always a guy hawking in front of an audience. Right, right, right. That's really funny. Yeah. And people at a party and everybody knows. new friends and names.

It's a very interesting premise. Or the infomercials that are like, it pretends to be a show. Welcome to amazing discovery. Yeah, as if you just like flip through, yeah. Yeah, I like infomercials. Me too. I do too. I agree.

I agree. And I feel like just as an infomercial aside, I feel like the magic bullet, that was one of those like the sort of the rare infomercial product that really works exactly the way you think it's going to work. You know, it's small. It makes margaritas. does what it says. Yeah.

As a child, you may have found sage advice from this popular toy. Karen. Magic eight ball. It is the magic eight ball. For a bonus point here, how many answers were there? How many possible answers? They were, of course, either, you know, generally affirmative, generally negative, or in the reply, hazy, try again family.

I think that there's six. Eight. There are 20. Get out. Oh, it's a detourable. It's a D20. It's a D20 on the inside there. Yeah.

It is a lot. There are 10 positive answers, five hazy answers, and five negative. So it generally gives up positive answers. Oh, so hopefully you're asking positive questions. Right. Well, we always learned his kids. Just rephrase the question, you know. Yeah.

If you're not getting what you want, just phrasing it. Does he hate me? No. Does he not, not, not, not like me? This household cleaning product is made primarily from a substance known as melamine foam. Chris. This is Mr. Clean Magic Eraser. That is correct.

And props for the full name there. I was just looking for Magic Eraser, but you know your cleaning products. Oh, man, Mr. Clean Magic Eraser is the best. It's the best for everything. What do you do? Like, what is it? It's just this really finely, it's almost like sandpaper. Like it's super, super, super fine.

ingrained foam that will take the rust off your car bumper. I mean, it's really, like, I use it, I actually use it for, like, if I have a sticker on a Nintendo game or something and there's residue, I just rub a little magic eraser and it pulls it right up. It's great for, like, you know, like stainless steel surfaces with food stuck to them, it takes it right off. It's great. It is like magic.

Like, I don't, I'm not too effusive in my praise of a lot of products, but the first time I used it, I was like, holy crap, this is incredible. Yeah, no, Chris has it exactly right. It's a foam, but it's extremely, extremely microporous. And it basically just works like sandpaper, because it's flexible, it can get into all little nooks and crannies. Right. It's really good, yeah, for like, waxy, gummy stuff.

Grease in the kitchen, it's great. Yeah. This dessert product, marketed by smuckers, allows you to add an instant hard chocolate coating to your ice cream. I don't know if full name. Yeah, I mean, is it... Magic shell? Yes.

Magic shell. Oh, sorry. I was literally about to say that. Yeah. Jumped right out of it. I'm sorry. I was just thinking about it. Chris, yes, correct.

And Karen, correct. Magic shell. I believe you. Yes. That's right. And it in, again, like as a kid, seems like magic. Comes out liquid, put it on the ice cream. Two seconds later, it's hard.

Invented in Australia. You guys just said juvenile. As a kid, it. it really does seem like magic. It just goes from liquid to hard-coating, boom. This has Ben Collin for Viagra. I discovered this was invented in Australia. So shout out to our Australian ice cream chocolate lovers,

where it's sold as ice magic. Oh. Oh. All right. And finally, this item common to many homes and offices is known by its trademark green and yellow tartan packaging. And you may need to think about this one. Scotch Magic tape.

Correct. Scotch Magic tape. Right. Which was sort of their original famous magic tape. They have like the fully transparent. The magic one is the one that's kind of like hazy. Translucent. Yeah.

Translucent and not fully transparent. But it doesn't like reflect a glare back at you basically. Like it kind of if you use it on paper, it kind of disappears. That's exactly how they sell it. That's the magic. Yep. Exactly. It disappears on.

paper so it's great for gift wrapping etc yeah all right well you guys are i'm going to piggyback on this quiz oh oh all right because i have you have products and i have uh pop culture things uh i don't have that many questions it's more like lightning rounds all right i figured we can kind of combine you got a quiz in my quiz yeah um and we actually didn't have any overlap at all excellent so here i have a quick lightning round um about pop culture stuff names that have the word magic in them. All right, and I will give you a description. Here we go. One of the six parks at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida. Chris. Magic Kingdom. Correct. All right. A Jimmy Hendrix experience song that's really about a club near Seattle. Oh, no. Night magic? Magic. Magic. Magic.

Clue. It's in Guitar Hero 1. Not sure. I know, my Jimmy Hendricks thought I did. No. Spanish Castle Magic. All right. Okay. A mega popular game published by Wizards of the Coast. Magic the Gathering.

Correct. Magic the Gathering. Film that stars Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock as a pair of sister witches. Oh. Practical Magic. Correct. Featuring Stevie Nix on the soundtrack. Of course.

Of course. Of course. Okay. Other names in the works when deciding the name of this organization include heat, tropics, and juice. Is it the Orlando Magic? Correct. Professional basketball club. Yes, it is.

Heat, well, I guess heat is taken. They did go on to use heat for the Miami heat. Yep. And tropics and juice. I'm very happy it's not Orlando juice. I figure because of oranges, not because of steroids. Yes, yes. What about the Orlando hot juice?

There's Logan. Don't get any hot juice on you. That's my best of movie. All right. Book series that featured Ms. Valerie Frizzle. Oh, yes. The Magic School Bus. Yes, correct.

I didn't know that one. You didn't grow up with that? I don't know. Am I too old? Oh. Oh, really? I grew up with it. Huh.

Yeah. This is why your brain works differently, Karen. Like, it's like science nerd. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. They, like, they shrink the school bus and then they go inside of somebody's body. Oh, okay. I think I have seen that. Like, as an adult, I think maybe I've seen that.

Right, right, right, yeah, yeah. All right. Contrary to popular belief, this song is not about marijuana. Wait, no, I don't know. Magic. Magic. Do you believe in magic? Magical mystery tour?

Puff the Magic Dragon. Oh, the Magic Dragon. Of course. It's not about popular belief. I don't believe it. It is. And I'm popular.

Yes. You know. That's what I was, that's what I was always told. Yeah, that's what that's. And like, like, I always thought like, but a kid who likes to smoke marijuana and then when he becomes an adult, he gives it up. Well, the other, the other sort of the evidence. That doesn't make any sense.

Well, I remember talking about like Jackie paper was like for like joint paper. This is what I was told. Jay Paper. Right. Oh, man. All right. Last one. This runaway hit TV show debuted in 2010.

Hit show. Hit show. Probably a hit show we've never watched. Oh, okay. So, but we know it. Kids show maybe. Magic. 2010, huge pop culture.

Huge. Cultural phenomenon. Huge. Wow. Oh, man. I think we're going to hate ourselves. What is it? What is it?

My little pony, friendship is magic. Yes, the word can appear at the end. I get hung up on that. All right, good job. Thank you for letting me merge, merge the quiz. Nice. That was good. That's good.

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Here's a little bit of biographical information about Chris Kohler for when they write the definitive biography of the man, the myth, the legend. When I was in, let's say the, I think it was the eighth grade, the seventh grade or the eighth grade. When I was in the eighth grade, no, I have to get this right, or else the biography will be. All right, all right, terrible. I believe that when I was in the seventh grade, there was the seventh grade wax museum. I don't know if you guys have ever done this or if this is a thing. Probably some listeners are like, I know what this is. I have no idea what you're talking about.

Stupidest thing that schools will do. They make you, now this part is not stupid. They make you learn about a historical figure. Okay. Dress up in costume as that historical figure, getting stupider. Okay. And then you put on a quote-unquote wax museum in the evening, and you have your little presentation that you've written out and you cosplaying as this person. That sounds cool.

But you have to stand still as if you were a statue of the person in a wax museum. Can you talk? You cannot talk. You're not supposed to talk or move or anything. I've never heard of this being done in the school. Ridiculous It makes no sense When you're 13 years old

It is some type Hottam Lincoln Revenge Plot Doesn't make any sense at all You could at least let the kids sit there and talk But no you have to stand stock still And they parade Littler kids by you

To read about the historical figure That you're writing about Oh so it's not even like parents for a tag It's parents and younger kids It is a ridiculous You're like oh Why did I choose a figure who wears a tweed suit? I know, yeah, exactly.

Why am I Merrillou Retton? Shaved my bikini zone for this. Right, right, right. So I obviously was Stevie Nix. No, I was, I went as Harry Houdini. Oh, that's awesome. Great magician and escape artist. Yeah, I had a, we brought an old trunk, and I had some fake handcuffs and chains and things of that nature.

Yeah, I was, you know. So Harry Houdini, much like Einstein, you know, was one of those people whose name is like a general noun. You know, it has become synonymous with, in this case, I mean, magic, but really escapism, you know, escape artistry. He was born. Anybody remember Houdini's name? It was Eric. Yes. Wow.

I was also a big Houdini nerd as a kid, but oh, it was like Eric. I can't remember. I can't. Eric Weiss was his name, Eric Weiss, and he was born in what country? Hungary. He was born in Hungary. He was born in Budapest. He was Hungarian, lived from 1874 to 1926, and was, you know, world famous, right?

World famous. Besides doing the amazing, like, escapes and, you know, escaping out of handcuffs and straight jackets and coffins at the bottom of a swimming pool and all that kind of stuff that he was, famous for. Houdini, in his later years, was a prominent skeptic, mythbuster, if you will. The early 1900s were mysticism, spiritualism, the idea that you could communicate with the dead and that seances were real. Medians. This was big. It had some very, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, uh, who wrote the, um, the Sherlock Holmes. I wanted to say James Bond for some reason. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

He's the original James Bond. Yeah. He was the Sherlock Holmes stories, um, was big into this. Oh, really? Absolutely believe that seances were real and that you could, that it was, it was, it was, it was the dead we're talking and, and that, and that, and that you'd have a seance and you'd hear rattling or a piece of furniture would break in that. was the dead was doing it you know he wrote tons of books about this you know he was really into it um and uh he was actually friends good friends with harry houdini wow yeah and so started kind of taking him along oh you got to go to the same got to check this out um and just

tons and tons of people i mean there were magicians but then there were people who claimed that they had supernatural powers and that they claimed that they were psychic and that they could conjure up spirits and this era there wasn't a whole lot of technology to like prove that they were wrong and catch them in the act. So a lot of people got away with it for their whole lives. Scamming people essentially. Yeah, scamming people thinking that they were talking to the dead. And scientists at the time just had a difficult time trying to figure out, well, how do we prove definitively? Yeah. How do you prove a negative? Right. I'm going to read to you, I love doing this. I'm reading to you from a New York Times story from July 22nd

1924. Marjorie passes all psychic tests. That is the headline. Scientists find no trickery in score of seances with Boston Medium. From the story, in further sessions with Marjorie, the private and uncommercial Boston medium, many scientific men have been unable to find the slightest evidence of fraud in her manifestations, which include, The spontaneous appearance of a great variety of lights? The apparent passing of a window pole

through the arms and legs of the investigators. The wrecking of cabinets by unseen hands. The playing of invisible ukuleles. Wow, people were kind of dumb. They were naive. They wanted to believe. Well, I mean, you know, again, And there's no, how do you disprove, you know, that these, you know, how it proved they're not happening.

Additionally, Marjorie, whose real name was Mina Crandon, she would use, as a lot of mediums did in these seances, she'd use ectoplasm. Oh, like slimer. Like slimer in the ghost box, she's always sling me. Like, she would summon ectoplasm, which was probably cow intestines that she got from the butcher. Yeah. Or like the ectoplasmic hand of her dead broken. Walter would appear. And apparently this was like sewn together from like liver and stuff.

Yeah. And trails. So scientific American magazine offered a prize to anyone who could demonstrate under, you know, strict supervision and scientific controlled, you know, conditions that they had supernatural abilities. And in 1924, this Marjorie, Mina Crandon, very. very famous for her, you know, supposed abilities was one of the women who was tested. So one of the people on the committee was Harry Houdini. And again, he'd been going to seances with Sir Arthur, Conan Doyle, and he came away less than impressed. Because Houdini was a magician.

Like, he knew about scamming people, right? He's just conditioned to think about that. Right. He sees a trick and tries to deconstruct it. Yeah. So he's thinking all of these supposedly unexplainable things can be totally explained. Like, I can find ways. that these people are doing these things that can be explained rationally.

One day in 1924, Houdini picks up the latest issue of Scientific American, and he is surprised to find that its editors had written a fairly positive, fairly credulous profile of Marjorie. And he was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, writes to them, and he's like, hey, I'm on your committee here. Why are you writing this article? I think this woman is a fraud, like all the others. And he goes into the offices of Scientific American, and he speaks to the editor,

wrote the piece, the associate editor who wrote the piece on Marjorie, Houdini's recollection of what this guy said was, why, yes, she's genuine. She does resort to trickery at times, but I believe she's 50 or 60 percent genuine. That's a pretty high standard there. Yeah. Also, I love the fact that, like, he just marches into the offices. Let me speak to the man who wrote his order to hold. He knew these guys. But, you know, he is Harry Houdini. I'm sure they had an elegant lunch And so he goes with the Scientific American editors to Boston To Marjorie's home

So in preparation for the seance So the way that the seance works is that People are sitting on either side of the medium And she will like cross her leg with your leg And then cross her other leg with the person sitting on her other side Everybody's holding hands in a circle But it's to prove that she's not using her hands and that she's not using her feet

ostensibly ostensibly well again the idea would be you know it's it's misdirection it's like oh well I'm holding her hands and I'm touching her feet so she's clearly not using them

but you know in cases in certain cases she was in certain cases she could just use her head or her neck and just set up things within the room that can be easily accessed also the lights are off you know so so Houdini says

that he tied a really tight bandage under his knees. Okay. And the idea of this was to make his leg painful and throbbing and sensitive because he was cutting off the circulation so that if he, so that if Marjorie made any movement, he would feel it. Wow. Wow.

Yep. Yeah, yeah, after doing the seance, Houdini was like, I figured out how she's done everything, you know, she's throwing things across the room, but she can just do it with her head, you know what I mean? Like putting on her head and, you know, moving her neck around to throw. it. And he went kind of back to Scientific American. He's like, okay, well, let's denounce her. Let's, you know, here's all the things that she did. But of course, again, there's no videotape running. So the lights are all off. Scientific American never like ran a story

at that time saying she is a fake. The closest they got was a, well, who can say? So Houdini wrote his own pamphlet. And this is where I get most of this information. And he drew illustrations of how she did everything or how he imagined that she did everything. This cost him with his friendship with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who according to one source that I read, apparently to his dying day, believed that, A, spiritualism, you know, still super real. Houdini was in fact a master psychic

who was just trying to ruin all the other psychics so that he could be the best psychic of the mall. What a great justification. Right. Houdini died not very long after. that in 1926 of sepsis toxicity from a ruptured appendix because he got sucker punched right he did get sucker punched not nobody's entirely sure if that definitely ruptured his appendix or not like your appendix you know you get appendicitis without getting punched in the stomach but it could

have true what was interesting about this story is that houdini seemed like he at least allowed a little part of himself to believe that maybe there was life after death that maybe there was a to communicate with the living because he worked out with his wife Bess a secret code that only the two of them were supposed to know about such that if she ever received that secret code somehow she would know that it had to come from him um the code was uh rosabelle believe was the secret code of rosabel was his nickname for her and yeah rosabel believe at one point years after his death she said and signed a statement to the effect that she had in fact

received this message from him but later she said that it was actually faked by a mutual friend of theirs who had figured out what the what the code was somehow that's just low that's low

so but Bess held seances for Houdini every year on Halloween he died on Halloween October 31 1826 she held seances for him for 10 years after his death you know just see if he would communicate with her, never did.

And Houdini fans admirers every year since then, on Halloween hold an official Houdini seance. Not really to talk to one, but just to celebrate. Yeah, it's sort of the meeting of the Houdini fan club and, you know, an excuse to get together and drink.

But they have, you know, they have a Houdini seance, like, just to see if he comes back. There's apparently, there was left a pair of handcuffs by Houdini where he said, I'm the only one who how to open these. So if I can open them from the afterlife, I will. So the official Houdini seance, they have this pair of handcuffs that they put on the table. So far, still closed. Oh. Yeah. You can spend less time staying in the know about all things gaming and get more

time to actually play the games you love with the IGN Daily Update podcast. All you need is a few minutes to hear the latest from IGN on the world of video games, movies, and television with news, previews and reviews. You'll hear everything from Comic-Con coverage to the huge Diablo for launch. So listen and subscribe to the IGN Daily Update, wherever you get your podcasts. That's the IGN Daily Update, wherever you get your podcasts. All right, I want you guys to play along with me here and just very quickly without too much thought. you to name some magic words give me some magic words abracadabra hocus pocus yeah those are good ala-zacabry uh-huh oh alacazam open sesame open sesame ala-cazam

hocus pocus abridabbybibbibbibbibbibbony boo great all right all right great so these are all now please just stop perfect yeah it's time until you name one that I don't have something prepared for yeah these are all examples of magic words I guess let's see. Out of those, uh, bibboby-boobboo, probably the most recent of those invented, of course, for Cinderella in 1950. Um, but I, as a kid, again, I was, as you said, I was into magic as well, and I was really into the showmanship part of it. Like, I liked, I liked putting on little tricks for my family, you know, and it's so nerdy. I know. But like, the appeal was it like, I have this secret that none of the grownups have. Right. They probably saw through the tricks. They probably had one

of the plastic magic sets from Toys R Us when they were going up too. Yeah, yes, exactly. They humored me at least. But I would research some of the patter, and I had like a little wand, and so I, yeah, all the presto and Shazam, hocus, pocus, I knew all that stuff. Never knew what any of the stuff really meant. I think most people don't really know what any of those words mean what the origin is. You guys heard Shazam, this is a magic word?

You ever know that one? Do you know where that one goes back to? The Flash? I do. I think. Captain Marvel. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, it came with Captain Marvel. And it's, it's an abbreviation. Oh, yeah, you're right, you're right. So let's back up for a little bit. So far, listeners maybe who don't know, the original Captain Marvel, so this is like back in 1939, not Marvel Comics Captain Marvel, sort of the way it worked in the story was our, our hero young Billy Batson, revealed to him was an ancient Egyptian wizard

named Captain Marvel. And when Billy would say the magic word, Shazam, he would transform into Captain Marvel, you know, go fight crime and then turn back into Billy Batson. But yeah, you're right, Karen, Shazam was said to be an acronym essentially. They're like... Named after six of history's great heroes. Great heroes. They were all men.

You guys could guess some of them, I'm sore. So, S-H-A-Z. Zeus is the Z. D. Erie's. Hercules. Hercules is the H. Mercury. Mercury is the M.

Aries? No, not Aries. Atlas and Achilles are the A's. Solomon. Yeah, Karen, there you go. Right. The idea being he would have... Sounds more like a backonym to me. Yeah, I think you're right. I think you're right. Yeah, the idea being he'd have the wisdom of Solomon and, you know, whatever. You get it. Right. You get it. Yep. Have powers combined. Right. So they stopped printing Captain Marvel in the 50s, the original company partly under threat of a lawsuit from D.C. D.C. alleging, this is just a rip-off of Superman.

Oh. And so they shut down production. Oh, they did? DC eventually acquired the rights to Captain Marvel. And then when they started it back up again, they ran for a while, they relaunched it just a couple years ago and just renamed the character, Shazam. Partly to avoid confusion with Marvel's Captain Marvel. Yes. They're like, you know what?

Let's just call him Shazam. Yeah. Hocus pocus. This is a great one. Like, for me, because like, this is like, just sort of the. the template for sort of fake Latin sounding. I mean, I think it echoes all the way through Harry Potter, even up to these days. There are a lot of stories about where this one comes from, but most sources, including

the OED, trace it back to about the early 1600s. Oh, wow. And apparently, hocus, pocus was a stage name for a performer of the time. Oh, okay, that makes sense. And specifically, he was a juggler. Like the main part of his act was juggling and, you know, maybe some small stage magic, that kind of thing. And within, you know, pretty short order, it got to the point that you could use it generically.

So kind of the way that, like, we might call any clown bozo, you know, like, oh, check out bozo over here. You might see a juggling baby, oh, look at hocus pocus running his tricks over here. We do have records, though, from the 1600s of one very specific performer called the King's Majesty's Most Excellent Hocus Pocus. Yeah. Sounds like a, like a Westminster dog name. Well, so here's the interesting part to me anyway, is that it comes back to the state. page patter. So, you know, he's doing some juggling, maybe some slight of hand tricks up on stage. And the accounts go that he would use the phrase, hocus, pocus, tantus, talantus, vade celeratier, jubeo. It's fake. It's all fake Latin. It doesn't mean anything. It sounds impressive. And, you know, most importantly, it would distract you. I'm really impressed. Yeah, while he's talking and, you know, you're not looking at his hands. What is he saying? What is he saying? And the next thing, you know, he's pulled off his trick. There are a lot, a lot of alternative. explanations for this one.

Some of these make me laugh. I read what some, some people believe it came from a Norse magical figure called Ocus, Bacchus. Doesn't seem to be very well substantiated. There's one source cites it as a corruption of Hockes corpus mium. Oh.

From like Catholic liturgy. That I think I've heard. What does that mean? So it's from the Eucharist. This is my body. This is my body. That's right. Again, there's only one writer seems to have ever thrown this out.

The OED really traces it back to jugglers. Jesus would do a lot of close-up street magic. This is a way of getting new followers. Follow the loaves and the fish, yeah, which shell is it under? But it makes sense how it can go from a performer to magic to just sort of any magical phrase. All right. Let's get to the meat of the matter here. Abra-cadabra.

We finally have a real magic word here. And by which I mean the closest thing to real magic, something that people practiced believing it was magic. All of the history we have about it points that it was used in a magical setting. Got it. Not made up. The etymology for this is really, really disputed and probably will never be known. Yeah. I mean, the OED says there are sources anything from Latin to Greek to Hebrew, to Aramaic, to on and on and on. We just don't know. What we do know is that it's very, very old. There are records that the word abracadabra, just written just like that, go back to at least the fourth century.

Oh, no way. Not the 14th century, the fourth century. And no one knows why it was written? Like, it lost to the mists of time. Yeah, you know, the OED, they're on it. They've got their best researchers. They just don't know. As I say, there are many explanations like, oh, it means, you know, it's the name of a devil

in Aramaic, or it means away with the damage, all kinds of stories. No one really knows. So one of the earliest references we have to it is that it seems to have been used. like as a, more like a charm or a spell. Like, you would use the power of this word. You know what I mean? Early magic was a lot about words and especially writing certain words down. So this was against disease.

One of the earliest references we have to it was in a book. It was called Liber Medicinalis from somewhere between the 200s and the 400s, written somewhere in there. It has very specific directions in there. If you're suffering from malaria, okay. Okay. What you're supposed to do is, take the word abracadabra and you write it, and I will show you an example here of how you're

supposed to write this. So you would write the word abracadabra on one line. And then right below it, you would write centered abracadabra. You just take off the A. Okay. And then you keep taking off one letter each line, then abracadab, then abracadda, all the way down until you get to just the letter A. Okay.

So if you can imagine you have sort of... Then we sacrifice a chicken, right? That's right. It's like a perfect triangle. It is. It's a nice triangle. inverted triangle and with any word though and it does work with any word of course yes yes but it seems magical when you do this so the instructions this is no wait no this is the konami code i think right

up up b no no look ab abab look it spells abacabra in every like this way it spells it across the top and then across yeah from the bottom up across the right diagonal yep yeah works with every word power of words And what the author, Quintus Simonicus Serenus, instructs you to do is write this formation of abracadabra on an amulet and wear it. So you keep the power of the words close to your body. You have to write that whole thing on an emulet? That whole thing on an amulet. Well, you know, I printed it maybe a little bit larger.

Yeah, maybe. Yeah. You find point, right. This is kind of cool, though. Yeah. Like, what if I actually did wear jewelry that had all of this? That had that on there? I bet you could go on Etsy right now and find an abricadabra amulet.

I think Stevie Nix has one. Oh, my God. Is there one? There is one. Thank you, Internet, for not letting me down. Oh, there is. Oh, my God. Yep.

So now, so one of the things that I, that is impressive about this is that it's kept its meaning for so, so long. Right. Like it's spread across cultures over the centuries. The Gnostics used it for a while. They believed in the power of this word. There are reports that into the 1600s during the great plague of London of people writing abracadabra on their doorways to ward off the disease, you know, and keep it at bay. So that's, you know, 1,200 years at least, essentially of the word being used in the same way. A lot of the occultists, you know, sort of into the 1800s, 1900s, like Alastair Crowley, he really believed in the power of abracadabra.

He invented his own take on it, which was Abrahadabra, with an H. Long story. Jackie Raleigh had a Avra. Avra cadaver. She has said that it was, I mean, it seems pretty clear on the face of it. Which I think is hilarious. Because it's the only, it is the absolute worst and the spell that kills people, right? And it's the only, it's the only thing in her sort of magical, you know, world that she's kind of built out that

references at all like traditional what you think of yeah which is funny because yeah the implication being that when like little kids you know little muggle children are running around with their top hats and their wands going abracadabra don't realize that yeah the super kill spell it says yeah it's like a time bomb waiting to go off yeah and then it seems that by you know 1800s it was kind of settled into sort of the way we think of it now as a stagey kind of, you know, on stage, the magician, part of the pattern of the distraction. But what's beautiful is it sort of was cyclical. You know, the audiences kind of come to expect it as a magic phrase. The magicians like it, so they'll use it as a magic phrase. And, you know, there are still, I'm sure, people on Etsy and otherware using it to ward off disease. But for the most part, it is a stage magician's word at this point. Or young Colin doing living room magic to an audience of very patient adults. To an audience of dad. audience of one

an audience of dad yeah and and your younger sister she's her assistant and then just because you mentioned it Chris at the top of course open sesame I did that that comes you might be able to remember where this one comes from it comes from Alibaba

Alibaba and the 40 thieves Oh yes just come right from there And you know I had forgotten this part of the lore about open sesame is that in the story you know you have to have the exact right password to open up the cave where the thieves stash all the loot

you know and you can get trapped inside if you don't know the right grain or the right you know it's i know it was open something what was it open poppy seed open open open everything bagel open open garlic yeah and finally uh presto presto associated with magic uh this one's not very super romantic i guess it's italian it means soon kind of quickly oh presto voila and it very right perfect comparison like voila you know it sort of just made its way into english is just sort of And there you go. No one will ever know where it comes from.

Yeah, right, exactly. Except for the Italians. So please wield the power of abracadabra carefully. And if you're suffering from malaria, good luck with that. Yeah. All right. And that is our show about magic. Thank you guys for joining me.

Thank you guys listeners for listening in. Hope you learned a lot of stuff about Houdini's bromance with Sir Arthur Cornwall, magic words, magic products, and the origins of magical. words. You can find us on iTunes, on Stitcher, on SoundCloud, and on our website, goodjobbrain.com. And thanks to our sponsor, Audible. And we'll see you guys next week. Bye. This is Jen and Jenny from Ancient History. fan girl and we're here to tell you about Jenny's scorching historical romanticcy based on

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