The Smith­son­ian

has come out with a nice pho­to essay look­ing back on the leg­endary escape artist Har­ry Hou­di­ni. It begins:

Har­ry Hou­di­ni freed him­self from chains after jump­ing off a pier into Boston’s Charles Riv­er, wig­gled out of a strait jack­et while hang­ing upside down in Times Square and appeared alive and well after being sub­merged in his Water Tor­ture Cell. The great escape artist defied belief and enter­tained hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple through­out the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry until he died on Hal­loween in 1926, at age 52. His death cer­tifi­cate blames a rup­tured appen­dix, but rumors cir­cu­lat­ed that he may have been mur­dered.
Adver­tise­ment

A new biog­ra­phy, The Secret Life of Hou­di­ni by William Kalush and Lar­ry Slo­man, has caused many peo­ple, includ­ing the magi­cian’s great-nephew, to recon­sid­er these rumors. Hou­di­ni, they believe, may have been poi­soned by Spir­i­tu­al­ists, a group who claimed to speak to the dead through séances. Hou­di­ni went to great lengths to debunk their prac­tices, often expos­ing their tricks on the stage. In late March, foren­sic pathol­o­gists announced that they will exhume Hou­dini’s body to deter­mine once and for all what hap­pened to the escape artist.

In this pho­to essay, explore the extra­or­di­nary life of Har­ry Hou­di­ni: BEGIN SLIDESHOW>

The iPod is not just for groov­ing to music any­more. Muse­ums are using pod­casts to help vis­i­tors bet­ter explore their
art col­lec­tions (See our relat­ed arti­cle). Uni­ver­si­ties are doing the same for their cam­pus­es (see UC Berke­ley’s tour on iTunes). Doc­tors are now using iPods to improve their stetho­scope skills. And, trav­el­ers can now use them to tour through the great cities and coun­tries of the world.

Along these lines, a ven­ture called Sound­walk pro­vides engag­ing, some­what off­beat audio tours of New York and Paris. In New York, they offer indi­vid­ual tours of Lit­tle Italy, the Low­er East Side, Times Square and the Meat Pack­ing Dis­trict. They also get into Brook­lyn and the Bronx. Mean­while, in Paris, they take you through the Marais, St. Ger­main, Pigalle, Belleville, and the Palais Roy­al. Each tour is nar­rat­ed by fit­ting fig­ures. The writer Paul Auster leads you through Ground Zero in New York. Vin­ny Vel­la, who has played roles in The Sopra­nos and Mar­tin Scorce­se’s Casi­no, takes you through Chi­na­town. To get a feel for whether it’s the right kind of expe­ri­ence for you, Sound­walk lets you lis­ten to a sam­ple of each tour. Unlike most things that we fea­ture on Open Cul­ture, these audio files are not free. They’ll run you $12 a piece. But in the scheme of a big trip, it may be worth the cost.

Now if you’re look­ing for free trav­el pod­casts, then you’ll want to give some time to Trav­el with Rick Steves (iTunes — Feed — Web Site). Some recent episodes look at Sici­ly, Spain, Cuba and Mex­i­co. You can also find a sep­a­rate col­lec­tion ded­i­cat­ed to trav­el­ing in Paris and its envi­rons (iTunes). Lis­ten­ers give these pod­casts high marks.

See all of Open Cul­ture’s Pod­cast Col­lec­tions:

Arts & Cul­ture — Audio Books — For­eign Lan­guage Lessons — News & Infor­ma­tion — Sci­ence — Tech­nol­o­gy — Uni­ver­si­ty (Gen­er­al) — Uni­ver­si­ty (B‑School) — Pod­cast Primer

We live in a moment when every­thing — includ­ing some­times think­ing itself — gets done fast and on the cheap. The Long Now
Foun­da­tion hopes to change all of that, to encour­age “slower/better” think­ing that fos­ters more respon­si­bil­i­ty. To ful­fill this mis­sion, the foun­da­tion runs a month­ly speak­ing series host­ed by Stew­art Brand, cre­ator of the icon­ic The Whole Earth Cat­a­log and author of How Build­ings Learn and The Clock of the Long Now. You can access the series via pod­cast (get feed here) and lis­ten in on some excel­lent talks — talks with Jim­my Wales (Wikipedia founder), Chris Ander­son (author of The Long Tail), Sam Har­ris (Let­ter to a Chris­t­ian Nation), Bri­an Eno (musi­cian), and Jared Dia­mond (Guns, Germs and Steel). And while you’re at it, you may want to spend some time with the accom­pa­ny­ing blog.

If you’re used to access­ing pod­casts through iTunes, you can read our pod­cast primer and we’ll explain how to access the feed not­ed above with the Apple soft­ware.

For more think­ing pod­casts, check out our Arts & Cul­ture Pod­cast Col­lec­tion.