[2] Soon after, Todd joined the Long Beach Mystics, a troupe run by the students and hosting professional magicians and variety acts, including an up-and-coming young juggler/magician named Steve Martin.

He began working at Coney Island in an amusement park sideshow swallowing swords, eating fire, hammering nails in his nose, doing all those great, classic old-timer acts.

Born in 1907, Burkhart worked venues from Ringling Brothers to Ripley's Believe It or Not, making a name for himself as the father of the Human Blockhead act—hammering a nail into one's nostril.

[7] Robbins has been featured on more than 100 television shows, which include multiple appearances on David Letterman, Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien; Masters of Illusion; and the NBC special Extreme Variety.

He was a featured guest on Criss Angel Mindfreak[8] and is also the main subject of the 2005 documentary American Carny: True Tales From The Circus Sideshow, directed by Nick Basile.

He has been associated with the Big Apple Circus for more than a dozen years (performing in various roles including the ringmaster) and can often be seen playing piano with Woody Allen's jazz band at the Cafe Carlyle.

[17] In 2019, Robbins began hosting and producing a weekly showcase of stage and close-up magic in New York City called, "Speakeasy Magick", at the McKittrick Hotel.

This Grand Guignol revivalism hearkens back to the early days of the 1940s spook shows when gruesome surprises awaited an unsuspecting audience.

"The series chronicles a traveling theatrical troupe that, under the guise of performing a quirky magic show of spooky amusement, presents experimentations of alchemistic procedures for the resurrection of the dead", writes Robbins.