Dead Men’s Tales: Harry Houdini

137 years ago today, the great Harry Houdini was born. Hovering between magic and stuntsmanship, history’s greatest escape artist captivated hearts and minds by making humans believe that superhuman feats were possible. He made a living out of mystery and his life ended with even more mystery. The Secret Life of Houdini: The Making of America’s First Superhero is one of the best books on modern mythology you’ll ever read — a meticulously researched and rivetingly narrated biography of the great magician, equal parts comprehensive and controversial.

Today, we celebrate his birthday with Dead Men’s Tales: Harry Houdini — a fascinating Discovery documentary that investigates the life and contentious death of the iconic escapologist, drawing a striking parallel between Houdini’s tale and the story of early 20th-century America — the modernity, the sleekness, the optimism that made everything seem possible and humanity feel indestructible. From how he hacked the body’s neurochemistry to tolerate incredible pain levels to why he changed his name and forged his birth certificate to what the popular Hollywood myth about his demise got wrong, the film is an absolute gem of modern myth-making. Enjoy:

He made a career out of mystery, and mystery still surrounds his death.”

For a closer look at Houdini’s life and legacy, we really couldn’t recommend The Secret Life of Houdini more strongly — more than a mere historical biography, it tells a timeless story of self-invention, creative entrepreneurship and relentless perseverance, deeply relevant to everyone from the startup founder to the professional athlete to the everyday aspiration-chaser.

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Hans Rosling: How the Washing Machine Sparked the Reading Revolution

We love statistical stuntsman Hans Rosling. Last year, he mesmerized us with a phenomenal augmented reality run through 200 years that changed the world in 4 minutes, as a part of BBC’s excellent The Joy of Stats series. (If you haven’t seen it, do — it’s free online and absolutely fantastic.)

This week, he’s back with another blockbuster TED talk, demonstrating — with his characteristic blend of statistical rigor and delightful wit — that the washing machine was indeed the greatest invention of the Industrial Revolution, enabling everything from economic development through electrical efficiency to intellectual growth by reallocating free time for reading.

An interesting parallel emerges when we examine Rosling’s talk in alongside Clay Shirky’s Cognitive Surplus: The washing machine is the antithesis of television, freeing up the same kind of “cognitive surplus” — excess human creative and intellectual energy — that, according to Shirky’s central argument, TV absorbed, a parallel that bespeaks the universal duality of innovation and the incredible potential of technology as a force of social change the polarity of which we get to choose.

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The Longevity Project: Insights on Life from an 80-Year Study

Immortality has long been humanity’s existential pipe dream, but its holy grail has evaded us scientists and philosophers alike since time immemorial. But as modern science continues to strive for eternal youth, the true secrets of longevity may lie where we least expect to find them. In The Longevity Project: Surprising Discoveries for Health and Long Life from the Landmark Eight-Decade Study, social psychologists Leslie Martin and Howard Friedman dissect one of the most famous studies in the history of psychology to reveal the character traits, habits and mindsets that make some people live longer than others. And the findings are guaranteed to surprise you.

The project is based on an 80-year longitudinal study of that began in 1921, when researchers started following 1,500 then-kids to investigate the habits and behaviors that made them thrive and perish. Its revealing conclusions, rather than didactically overwhelming you with long to-do lists of thing to keep you forever young, help you develop simple patterns that lay the foundation for a healthier, longer life.

The most surprising thing to me in The Longevity Project was the differences that we found for men versus women when they encounter divorce. Divorce certainly is stressful and a bad things for anyone, but men were really able to improve their odds and ameliorating their risks by getting remarried after a divorce. That wasn’t really so much the case for women.” ~ Leslie Martin

Both deeply fascinating and remarkably readable, The Longevity Project is essentially a pop culture mythbuster that offers compelling and counter-intuitive insight into the art and science of being our best selves for the longest possible time.

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