A few days ago I was chatting with magician Ian Jones, and he pointed out that obtaining 300 pairs of boots would have been an expensive and complicated endeavour, and questioned the story.

Houdini did indeed carry out many acts of kindness during his life, including performing magic for children in hospital. But was this story true? Curious, I dug deeper.

First, I searched the British Newspaper Archive around the time of Houdini’s Edinburgh performances but couldn’t find any reports about the incident. Next, I searched Houdini’s scrapbooks in Ask Alexander (a huge database of magic literature) and again there was no mention of the tale.

The earliest reference that I could find appears to be in the 1928 book, Houdini: His Life-Story by Harold Kellock:

Playing in Edinburgh, Scotland, in cold weather, Houdini was shocked at the number of boys and girls on the streets without shoes. He bought three hundred pairs at a bootmaker’s and invited all shoeless children to the theater. His fellow performers became infected with his charitable enthusiasm, and the whole cast volunteered as shoe fitters to the children. For a time the theater resembled a settlement house. In the end there remained a considerable surplus of children without shoes. Houdini gathered together the disappointed ones and rushed off with them to the bootmaker, whose children’s stock he quite cleaned out.

The book appeared two years after Houdini’s death, and contains several stories that are more fiction than fact.

Next up, the famous writer Arthur Conan Doyle mentions the boots story in his 1930 book, The Edge Of The Unknown. In a chapter about his relationship with Houdini, Doyle writes:

Another favourable side of his character was his charity…At Edinburgh he was so shocked at the bare feet of the kiddies that he had them all into the theatre, and fitted them then and there with five hundred pairs of boots.

This chapter was first published as the article Houdini the Enigma in The Strand Magazine (August-September 1927). However, that article does not mention the boot story, suggesting that Doyle may have taken the read Kellock’s 1928 book and added it into his own writings in 1930.

After Doyle, we have the tale appearing in William Lindsay Gresham’s 1959 book, Houdini: The Man Who Walked Through Walls. Gresham says:

It was a cold winter and when he [Houdini] hit Edinburgh, he was shocked at the number of children, in the poorer sections of the city, who were barefooted….He put an announcement in the paper that children without shoes should come to the theater. He hurried to a bootery and bought three hundred pairs of shoes and then drafted all the other acts on the bill to help him as shoe fitters. When the three hundred pairs were gone, there was still a crowd of disappointed kids. Houdini herded them all together and led the way to the nearest shoe store. At last every child in the crowd had a new pair. Houdini had the merchant send the bill to him at the theater.

This is the first mention of there being a newspaper announcement (I can’t find any evidence of one in the newspaper archive). From there, lots of people – including myself, Tait, and many others – repeated the story. My magic pal David Britland kindly noted that Ken Silverman’s 1996 biography is more sceptical than most. Silverman writes:

By one story, true in spirit if not in fact, after seeing shoeless children on the streets of Edinburgh, he bought three hundred pairs of shoes at a bootmaker’s and invited the children into the theater to have them fitted.

If you do have any additional information about the event, please drop me a line!

Obtaining 300 pairs of boots or more would have been quite something. Having the cast of the show help to fit them would have been an impressive operation. Marching the children down the road to a bootmaker would have attracted lots of attention. Yet there is nothing in the newspaper archive or Houdini’s scrapbooks to suggest that any of this happened. There is also no advertisement announcing the performance or event. Houdini was the master of publicity and one might have expected him to have organised some journalists and photographers to cover the story. Plus getting hold of 300 pairs of boots in different sizes would have been challenging.

However, this tale first appears two years after Houdini’s death in a book that contains several questionable stories about his life, and is then repeated and inflated from there. So, my guess is that the story is…as we Brits say….a load of cobblers.

Oh, and if you are coming up for the Festival, or are just of a curious disposition, the Edinburgh magic walk is here.

My thanks to Ian Jones, David Britland and John Cox, and Caroline Watt for the final joke.

Lots of people will be heading up to the Edinburgh Festivals, and so I thought that it would be fun to put together a free, self-guided, magical tour of the city. It’s easy to walk through the streets, not realising you are surrounded by amazing stories about the history of magic and illusion. It forms part of the celebrations for the 80th Anniversary of The Edinburgh Magic Circle.

There are 13 locations in all (10 in the city centre and 3 at the nearby seaside town of Portobello). Along the way you will meet the famous escapologist Harry Houdini (no jail could hold him), The Great Lafayette (the illusionist who died twice), the amazing Charles Cameron (who helped to create a new genre of magic) and many more interesting characters and tales. Even if you are not coming to Edinburgh, click through and enjoy the stories.

One of my favourite (possibly apocryphal) stories surrounding Houdini apparently happened in a British prison. As the story goes, Houdini was locked in a cell and spent hours trying to pick the lock to no avail. Sweating and exhausted, he eventually collapsed against the door in frustration – only for it to swing wide open. It had never been locked in the first place! The great escapologist had been trapped purely by his own assumptions.

To whet your appetite for the walk, here is a rare photograph of Houdini outside Edinburgh’s Waverley Station!

My hope is that this project inspires others to map out similar walks in their own towns and cities. If you’d like to get involved, or know of any magic history in your area, please drop me a line (details here). Together, we could build a magical map of the entire country!

The link to the walk is here and I hope that you enjoy it.

1) Talk to one person

No matter whether you are speaking to 30, 300 or 3000 people, they somehow fuse together into a single entity. I have no idea how it happens, but it does. Every single time. The good news is that you can use this social quirk to bond with any audience.

When you chat with one person, you change your tempo, language, and stories to suit them. It’s the same with a large audience – change the words that you say, and the way that you say them, to fit the person they have become.

2) Create the illusion of spontaneity

A live event is like blowing a soap bubble. It’s sort of the same each time, but strangely unique and beautiful. That sense of wonderful uniqueness is key to a talk. For any audience, the talk must feel spontaneous, and live, and special.

You may have given the talk hundreds of times but remember that this is the first time this particular audience have heard it. For me, that means not using a script. I know what I want to say, but change exactly how I say it each time. It’s hard work, but it helps me to stay in the moment and so bond with the audience.

3) Have a script (but only for emergencies)

I have just said that I don’t have a script. That isn’t quite true. I do have one because, in the words of magician Eugene Burger, on a bad night I will need it. If I am tired, or it’s a tricky venue, or the audience aren’t settled, I like to know that I have a script to fall back on.

Those are never good talks, but at least you get through them. Oh and talking of bad nights, we all have them. Sometimes I come off and think: If that was the first time I had spoken, I would never do it again. It happens. Just get back on the horse and try again.

4) Don’t overstay your welcome

No one wants you to go on too long or is paying you for overtime. Brevity is always your friend. My friend and comedy writer Helen Keen once told there’s a saying amonst comedians – If it’s going badly, get off. If it is going well, get off.’ Remember the old theatrical adage – leave them wanting more.

5) Beware of speed bumps

Often you will be asked to speak for 50 minutes. That is a very long time to maintain attention (there is a reason why most television shows have a break every 12 minutes or so). In my experience, there are speed bumps (moments where the audience slows down and starts to lose interest) around the 15, 30, and 45 minute mark.

Try to ensure that you have something at each of these points to grab their attention. – Maybe a change of pace.

– Or a change of texture.

– Or a funny story.

– Or an unexpected twist in the tale.

6) Get out of jail free

If the talk isn’t going well: Cut to Questions and Answers! The talk might not be landing because you aren’t talking about something that interests the audience. With Q and A, you quickly find out where they audience are at and what they want to know.

It’s also a great way of writing a new talk! Cut to Q and A after about 25 minutes and incorporate the answers into your next talk! Let the audience write the show!

7) Dealing with nerves

Every speaker gets nervous, especially before the start of a talk. To help overcome them, try the old actors trick of reinterpreting your nerves as excitement. And remember that people have come along to hear you, not to have a bad time.

An audience will support you if you are authentic, likeable and want them to have a good time. And if that isn’t the case, maybe you shouldn’t be a speaker!

I hope that they are helpful! Enjoy!

Replication, replication, replication

Researchers try to replicate controversial findings to discover if the effects are genuine. When Daryl published his paper, I teamed up with Chris French and Stuart Ritchie and we all tried to replicate one of the key studies. Alas, we failed to obtain Daryl’s positive results and argued that his original findings might have been due to errors such as selective reporting and fishing around in the data (link to the paper here). This debate about paranormal phenomena has taken place many times over the years, but this time something unusual happened.

Into the mainstream

Some writers pointed out that the criticisms aimed at Bem’s work also applies to much of mainstream psychology. If this is the case, many of these mainstream findings are equally unreliable. Right now, researchers are figuring out ways of spotting, and avoiding, these errors. Interestingly, those researching the paranormal have already paved the way.

Over the years, parapsychologists have written about the problems that can plague research into Extra-Sensory Perception (ESP). However, this work tends to be published in obscure academic journals. A few years ago, Julie Milton and I co-authored a small book that brought all this work together and contained a checklist to help researchers run better studies.


The book was originally published by University of Hertfordshire Press but is now difficult to obtain. However, we have decided to make it publicly available for free! The link is here. Feel free to download and share it. Our guess is that it will be of use to anyone interested in the paranormal, researching ESP, and working in the behavioural sciences.

Enjoy!

Here’s a typical first slide from my deck:

I use a black background and a 4:3 aspect ratio.

While many speakers use the modern 16:9 widescreen format, I stick with 4:3. Why? Because many projector systems are still designed for 4:3. If you project a 16:9 slide onto a 4:3 screen, it can get cut off or letterboxed. But if you project a 4:3 slide onto a 16:9 screen, it puts black bars on the sides—which blend into my black background.

I also put a green frame around the edge of this initial slide. Before the audience enters, I look at the screen. If I can see the entire green frame, I know my slides aren’t being cut off by the projector.

The public never get to see that slide. It is just for me to test the system.

Tip One: Have a secret diagnostic slide just for you.

Before the audience enters, I switch to my second slide. This one looks almost identical, but the green frame is gone, and it contains an embedded audio track.

As people enter the hall, my music plays automatically from this slide (with the speaker icon hidden). This does two things. First, it sets the atmosphere I want, thus avoiding that awkward, dead-silent morgue feeling or relying on the organiser’s random playlist. Second, it shows that my laptop’s audio feed is working through the sound system.

Tip Two: Use your own music to test the laptop feed and control the atmosphere.

Finally, as I am being introduced, I use my remote clicker to advance to my third pre-slide.

To the audience, it looks the same as the previous one. But if you look closely at the bottom-left corner, there is a tiny green dot. If I click and the green dot appears, I know my remote is connected and the system hasn’t frozen. If it has frozen, I can speak for 10 minutes without slides while the problem is fixed (hopefully!).

There is nothing worse than building up audience anticipation, only to find out you can’t advance your first slide. With these quick, hidden checks, you’ll never have to worry about tech failures again. Test.

Tip Three: Use the Green Dot Trick to test the system just before you start.

The phrase comes from a great magic trick invented by Arnold Furst. A magician starts off with a strip of paper with the words FRESH FISH SOLD HERE TODAY printed along it. In my version, I explain that it’s a sign from a fishmonger’s window and point out that the word TODAY is redundant (when else would you be selling the fish?). I tear TODAY off the strip. Next, I point out that it’s obvious where the fish is being sold, and so I tear off HERE too. Then I point out that you don’t need the word SOLD because it’s obviously a shop, and tear SOLD off. Finally, I note that the fishmonger is obviously selling fish and so that word is torn off too. I am just left with the one word that really matters – FRESH!

In the trick, the pieces are then magically restored, but I don’t bother with that bit. Instead, I point out that the same principle applies to the text on slides. It’s important to be as efficient as possible. Whenever there is text on a slide, audiences start to read it, and so switch their attention from the speaker to the slide. To prevent this, cut any words to the absolute minimum. If it helps, imagine that you are paying £1000 for each word. What can go? In an ideal world, there are no words at all!

For instance, look at this early slide from one of my talks into the psychology of suggestion and séances….

It’s fine but loads of those words can go. Apply the FRESH FISH SOLD HERE TODAY rule and now it reads….

Look at your slides. If you had to pay £1000 per word, what would go?

Shop image produced by AI.

Third, it’s puzzle time! In my last post, I posed this puzzle…

Take a look at this plan of a launchpad.

One side of the launchpad is 9 metres long and another side is 15 metres long, and the distance between point A and point B is 10 metres. You need to buy some fencing to all around the perimeter of the launchpad. You aren’t allowed to use a ruler, consult a book, or ask a friend.

How did you get on? There’s a remarkably easy solution. You can ignore the distance between point A and point B. All you have to do is imagine moving these two horizontal lines up like this….

…..and these two vertical lines to the right like this…….

….it then you are left with a perfect rectangle like this…..

….and now it’s obvious that the launchpad’s perimeter is 48 metres (two sides that are 9 metres long plus two sides that are 15 metres long).

And here is one extra puzzle….

A magician says that they can throw a ping-pong ball and have it go a short distance, come to a complete stop, and then reverse itself. The magician says that he won’t bounce the ball against any object, or attach anything to it. How can he perform such an amazing feat?

The solution? The magician threw the ping pong ball up in the air.

How did you get on? Try them on your friends and annoy them too.

I am a huge fan of these lateral thinking projects and hope that you are too!

Here are three of my favourite learnings based around memorable quotes….

The power of optimism

Jerry Bostick grew up on a small farm in Mississippi, graduated with a degree in Civil Engineering and eventually ended up working at the NASA.  Bostick led the group that ensured Apollo 11 went in the right direction (known as Mission Control’s Flight Dynamics Branch).  When I interviewed Bostick, he made a great comment on the importance of the Mission Controllers being a young, optimistic, bunch:

“They decided to go with a bunch of young guys fresh out of college because we didn’t know that it couldn’t be done!  When we were told that we needed to find a way of getting to the Moon, we just got on and did it.”

I have often thought about Bostick’s ‘we were so young we didn’t know it couldn’t be done’ comment. We can all embrace the optimism of youth. Don’t give up before you have begun. Instead, assume there is a way forward and start to try to find solutions.

Personal responsibility

Apollo astronaut Ken Mattingly would go to the launch pad and look at the giant Saturn V rocket. Once, he went into a large room packed with electronics and chatted with a technician about the risks involved in the mission. The technician said that he no idea about how many parts of the rocket worked, and Mattingly became concerned. However, the engineer explained that it was his job to ensure that the electronics inside a single panel were in working order, and assured Mattingly that when it came to that panel, the project wouldn’t fail because of him.

Mattingly realized that the complex Apollo missions were successful, in part, because everyone had the same sense of personal responsibility, and that was summed up in a single sentence: It won’t fail because of me.  

It’s a simple but powerful idea. If you say that you are going to do something, do it.  Don’t procrastinate, pass the buck, or cut corners. Be conscientious and make your word your bond. Be fully accountable for what you do and what you don’t do.

Fear and risk taking

Space travel is risky and even the smallest mistake can prove fatal. Flight Director Glynn Lunney noticed that people involved in the Apollo missions often ran away from these risks by holding yet another meeting or other delaying tactic. He understood that if the mission were to become a reality, at some point they were going to have to take risks. He summed up his thoughts in one sentence: If you’re going to go to the Moon, sooner or later you’ve got to go to the Moon.

It is a great mantra. At certain points in our lives, we need to find the courage to face fear in the hope of bringing about a better future.  This means being action-based, taking risks (without being reckless), and focusing on overcoming potential problems. This action-based approach has two advantages. First, you learn by doing. Instead of talking the talk, you roll up your sleeves and get on with it, and so develop the skills needed to make your plans a reality. Second, by putting yourself out there, you increase the likelihood of meeting other like-minded people and coming across unexpected opportunities. 

I wrote all this up (and much more) in my book, Shoot for the Moon, which looks at the new psychology of success through the lens of the Apollo 11 mission. Thanks for reading.

His findings were startling. People in Western Europe were sprinting through life, while those in Africa and Latin America took a more measured pace. Within the US, New Yorkers were the speed-demons, while Los Angeles leaned into a slower groove.

But this wasn’t just about getting to lunch on time. Levine discovered that a faster pace of life was a double-edged sword. Higher speeds were linked to higher income and increased happiness, but also more coronary heart disease and a decrease in helpfulness.

In 2006, I teamed up with British Council to measure walking speeds across the world. On August 22, our research teams went into city centres and found busy streets that were flat, free from obstacles, and uncrowded. Between 11.30am and 2.00pm local time, they secretly timed how long it took people to walk along a 60-foot stretch of the pavement. All the people had to be on their own, not holding a telephone conversation or struggling with shopping bags. The results are shown in the table below.

City (Country)
Fastest
1 Singapore (Singapore)
2 Copenhagen (Denmark)
3 Madrid (Spain)
4 Guangzhou (China)
5 Dublin (Ireland)
6 Curitiba (Brazil)
7 Berlin (Germany)
8 New York (USA)
9 Utrecht (Netherlands)
10 Vienna (Austria)
11 Warsaw (Poland)
12 London (UK)
13 Zagreb (Croatia)
14 Prague (Czech Republic)
15 Wellington (New Zealand)
16 Paris (France)
17 Stockholm (Sweden)
18 Ljubljana (Slovenia)
19 Tokyo (Japan)
20 Ottawa (Canada)
21 Harare (Zimbabwe)
22 Sofia (Bulgaria)
23 Taipei (Taiwan)
24 Cairo (Egypt)
25 Sana’a (Yemen)
26 Bucharest (Romania)
27 Dubai (UAE)
28 Damascus (Syria)
29 Amman (Jordan)
30 Bern (Switzerland)
31 Manama (Bahrain)
32 Blantyre (Malawi)
SLOWEST

We compared the 16 cities that were in Levine’s work and our own and determined that the pace of life had increased by 10%! The pace of life in Guangzhou (China) increased by over 20%, and Singapore showed a 30% increase, resulting in it becoming the fastest moving city in the study. Projected forward, the results suggest that by 2040, they will arrive at their destination several seconds before they have set-off.

A few years ago, I had the privilege of interviewing Robert Levine about this work. I believe it may have been his final interview. You can listen to him discussing the “Geography of Time” below.

Finally, what is your pace of life? Are you moving too fast? Here are four questions to help you to decide.

– When someone takes too long to get to the point, do you feel like hurrying them along?

– Are you often the first person to finish at mealtimes?

– When walking along a street, do you often feel frustrated because you are stuck behind others?

– Do you walk out of restaurants or shops if you encounter even a short queue?

There was a long running rivalry between tennis stars Andy Murray and Novak Djokovic. In 2012, they faced one another in the final of the US Open. Murray took the first two sets but Djokovic battled back to win the next two sets. Murray took a toilet break and, according to several reports, looked in the bathroom mirror and shouted “You are not losing this match…you are not going to let this one slip’ Murray then walked back out and faced his opponent for the deciding set.

In 2014, psychologist Sanda Dolcos (University of Illinois) carried out some great experiments exploring how motivation is affected by whether we talk to ourselves in either the first or second person.

In one study, she had people try to complete some difficult anagrams. Some participants were asked to motivate themselves by using first-person sentences (“I can do it”) whilst others gave themselves a second-person pep talk (“You can do it”). Those using the ‘you’ word completed far more anagrams than those using the ‘I’ word. Dolcos then asked other people to motivate themselves to exercise more in either the first person (‘I should go for a run now’) or second person (’You must go to the gym’). Those using the ‘you’ word ended up feeling far more positive about going for a run or visiting a gym, and planned to take more exercise over the coming weeks.

Whatever the explanation, it is a simple but effective shortcut to motivation. And it worked for Andy Murray because he broke Djokovic’s serve, won the shortest set of the match, and emerged victorious.

When you are in need of some fast acting and powerful motivation, talk to yourself using the magic ‘you’ word. Tell yourself that ‘you can do it’, that ‘you’ love whatever it is that you have to do, and that ‘you’ will make a success of it. You may not end up winning the US Open, but you will discover how just one word has the power to motivate and energise.

Dolcos, S., & Albarracin, D. (2014). The inner speech of behavioral regulation: Intentions and task performance strengthen when you talk to yourself as a You. European Journal of Social Psychology, 44(6), 636–642.