Magician Robert Olson Has Passed Away

 

I just heard the sad news that Robert Olson has passed away. He was a very interesting character from the New England area. He performed a historical magic show as Richard Potter, the early colonial magician. He shared stories and did magic from that time period. Of course, he dressed the part as can be seen above. 

I got to meet him briefly at the 2024 NEMCA Conference in Nashua NH back in 2024. He was very kind and complimentary to me about my lecture. We spoke a little bit about Robert Heller, and then later he emailed me all the information he had in his files on Heller for my future book. 

He worked for many years with the Old Sturbridge Village in Mass, this is the largest outdoor history museum in the Northeast. It recreates the conditions of early 19th century living, with buildings, costumed presenters, workshops, lectures, performances and more. Robert was an active artist at this location.

He was the featured guest at last years NEMCA Conference and was interviewed about his life and career as a performer and character performer. A truly remarkable human being. Of course, I cover only magic related things, but he was a father, husband, friend, and so much more!

Robert Olson passed away on December 13th, 2025. He was 86 years young. RIP

Magic Detective Updates and NEW Content for 2026

 

2026 is fast approaching and its going to be quite the year for The Magic Detective and me personally. Ive only shared this with a few people, but Im planning some new things for 2026. Now, Im always planning things, and some of them never come into being, some just get delayed, and a few happen, lol. 

There will be a new addition to The Magic Detective content next year. Right now there is the blog and the podcast. The blog seems like its lagged behind for a while and the podcast, it does well, when I can get an episode out. Its just that each episode is so time consuming to do the research. I dont use Ai, as Ive seen other sites use for their content. I break out physical books and magazines and do the hard research. I will of course use ask alexander and other online databases like newspapers.com and ancestry.com on occasion. But Im doing all the work. So with all that, imagine how crazy I am to add to my plate, lol.

There will be new content in 2026 strictly devoted to Houdini. It is the 100th Anniversary of his passing. And technically, it could have begun on Nov 1st of this year. But Im holding out till Jan 2026. I won't yet reveal what the content will be. Will it be a book? Will it be another podcast, Hmm, Im not saying, but it will be 100% Houdini. Dont worry, I'll still have the podcast where I cover other magic history figures. And I still plan to get the Harry Anderson podcast out before the end of the year. In fact, I hope to have 2 more episodes out before the year is up, so that my total is 10 for the season, the same as last year. 

Because there will be a big influx of content, Im also planning on starting a patreon page for anyone who would like to support the Magic Detective sites. I have some really incredible behind the scenes content to share with folks. Some big time bonuses for supporters. More on that later. More on all this later, lol. 

But for now get ready for more HOUDINI in 2026!!!!!

Houdini Documentary with Transcript

 

There have been a host of Houdini documentaries over the years. This one is a fun documentary because it features Doug Henning and Harry Blackstone Jr.. I'm sure it's somewhere on youtube, but I didn't see it. Granted I didn't look through all the pages of documentaries.

This one is kind of unique because you can watch it on the site but you can also read the transcript, which is not something that most sites offer. It's a pretty standard documentary for the most part, no big revelations or anything. But as I said, some great footage of two of the recent masters of the art besides ton of Houdini stuff. This was originally shot for the Wisconsin Public Television out of Madison WI. It originally aired in April of 1987. 

Here is the link to the website. https://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-526-9882j69777