David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)

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Speaker 8 The first time I ever saw you, you were suspended in this box in the middle of London. You were in it for 44 days.

Speaker 3 I was on the edge of irreversible organ failure. I do have effects that haven't recovered since, and that was 22 years ago.

Speaker 8 Stone the world over for a street magic and endurance stunts?

Speaker 9 I love the reactions you get doing these tricks.

Speaker 8 The human endurance part is what's so fascinating about it.

Speaker 3 You just went for it. Took an x-ray.
The knife was on the edge of the nervous system. It was really at that like exact line.
When you're out of your comfort zone, when you're breaking that.

Speaker 3 How do you get out of that? Well, this series did that.

Speaker 8 What's the illusion that's kept you up the most nights?

Speaker 3 Body is capable of doing things that science and doctors don't even imagine could be possible.

Speaker 8 Is there anything that you're actually scared of?

Speaker 3 The number one health and wellness podcast.

Speaker 8 Jay Shetty. Jay Shetty.
The one, the only Jay Shetty.

Speaker 8 Hey, everyone. Welcome back to On Purpose.
I am so excited for today because I'm getting to sit down with someone that I have loved and followed for the past two decades.

Speaker 8 This is someone that I grew up watching. When I was back in London, I'd be wanting to watch every show, everything he did.
I was addicted and I still am today.

Speaker 8 And this is one of those moments that I look back and I'm like, my 10-year-old self, my 15-year-old self would be high-fiving me so bad right now. So I'm so pumped.

Speaker 8 I'm sitting down with the world's most iconic illusionist, endurance artist, and mentalist from death-defying stunts to pushing the limits of human potential.

Speaker 8 He spent his career redefining what's possible. And his latest series, Do Not Attempt, premieres March 23rd on National Geographic.
Please welcome to the show David Blaine.

Speaker 8 David, I get to sit down with a lot of cool people, but when I heard you were coming on and we made this happen, I honestly, I felt like a kid the whole time.

Speaker 8 You got captivated by a subway trick when you were like four years old. Like that's what kind of introduced you into this world.
What was that trick? And what was it captivating?

Speaker 3 It was a bunch of things. Okay.
So I had a friend that

Speaker 3 one of his relatives gave him a trick called scotch and soda, which is just, it's like a half dollar changes with the English. But anyway,

Speaker 3 so he couldn't figure out how to do it. And immediately I understood it and I was able to do it and present as a trick.
So that, that was one thing.

Speaker 3 Another thing was seeing the guys in Coney Island that would do sword sawing or rope tricks, things like that. Then people that were in the subways, I would watch the three-card Monty guys.

Speaker 3 So I think it was like a constant, you know, for some reason, that's the stuff I was most attracted to.

Speaker 3 And I loved how cards felt, you know, so they're almost for me meditative, like the way they feel in my hands.

Speaker 3 It's all, I think even before I even knew what to do with them, I would almost just like meditate because I was holding them. So it was really interesting.
Almost like a digital fixation.

Speaker 3 I just became, I guess, like a security blanket almost, you know? Yeah.

Speaker 3 And then when I realized I could make my mother, I could change her day by doing a simple magic trick. It was kind of like the beginning of my love for performing.

Speaker 3 And then I would only do it for her and her friends, and they would all react. And that was one part of the journey.

Speaker 3 But yeah, it is seeing little performances, seeing a book of Harry Houdini and seeing him chained to the side of a building, watching him dangle over the edge of a building.

Speaker 3 So yeah, it's a collective, but it all processed early on.

Speaker 8 Yeah, when did your mother realize that this was a gift and not just a cute kid who could do some tricks?

Speaker 3 I could have done anything and that that was the you know what i mean so it wasn't like oh my son has a gift no but it's like like everything i did she was like that's beautiful yeah that's really beautiful man so it's not like i had any special gift i didn't but i had a mother that believed that i had you know what i mean so she encouraged it just by being so excited and so you know yeah well i'm having a moment now because just before we went on you showed me a video of your daughter daughter performing, and I was thinking you were doing the same thing.

Speaker 8 Like when I saw you, you were watching that video. You've probably watched a million times.
By the way, your daughter is so talented. Dessa's phenomenally talented.

Speaker 8 I can't wait to see her perform live. But you were looking at that video like it was the first time you'd seen it.
And you were so proud as a proud dad to show it to me.

Speaker 8 And I'm thinking, you're like mirroring your mom's energy. Yeah.

Speaker 3 It's true.

Speaker 8 It's really special. It's amazing to see that.
Yeah. What does it look feel like to you now when you're watching Dessa perform and build her?

Speaker 3 I'm not watching her do anything. I'm like mind-blowing it's incredible you know

Speaker 3 so if she draws something if she writes something if she makes something whatever she does it's like

Speaker 8 i was saying to you when you walked in today that the first time i ever saw you was in 2003 you were doing your act above the below and you were suspended 30 feet up or something, maybe higher in this box in the middle of London and you were in it for 44 days.

Speaker 8 You survived on like four and a half liters of water a day. Yeah.
And I think you lost like 60 pounds. Yeah.
And I used to come wave at you. But you don't remember me.

Speaker 3 I remember the good energy.

Speaker 3 That was something that changed my

Speaker 3 everything about the way I think. That one

Speaker 3 messed up my metabolism, which is hence the side effects of it. But

Speaker 3 it was absolutely one of the most beautiful, compelling experiences. Aside from that, it was a stunt and I did do it publicly.

Speaker 3 So I feel like if I didn't do this publicly, I could have never committed to doing that type of a fast.

Speaker 3 And I was obsessed with fasting because every time I would fast, you become aware of everything around you that you normally ignore.

Speaker 3 Because we spend so much time thinking about, oh, what am I going to have for breakfast? What am I going to have for lunch? Who am I going to see? What are we going to do for dinner?

Speaker 3 And your day is consumed by the, but as soon as you remove all of that, suddenly you have like all this brain activity and it's incredible.

Speaker 3 That's one of the best things for me about fasting is that, and every stunt that I'd done was up to that point was I fasted just so I wouldn't have to use a toilet. Right.

Speaker 3 So for me, the fasting was one of the things that I was most excited about. So I decided to make it into a stunt 44 days.

Speaker 3 And I knew that the only way that I would actually do it is if I publicly committed to it. But so, even though it was difficult and I was suffering, it was one of the most beautiful experiences.

Speaker 3 The people I connected with, it was like I would get emotional just by like looking at somebody, you know?

Speaker 3 And I could never do something like that again. So I think I was on the edge of irreversible organ failure or something.
I think I did go on the threshold. But it's funny because

Speaker 3 I studied monks, I studied yogis, I studied all these, the hunger strikers, I read, you know, Bobby Sands, I read all of the books about the people that pushed themselves to the edge.

Speaker 3 And some were doing it as a protest, some were doing it for enlightenment. But all the things that I read about it were kind of similar.
It's like there are certain beats.

Speaker 3 There are certain things that happen. In a few days, you lose your hunger, but it has to be pure water.
It has to be nothing but water.

Speaker 3 If you have other things, you keep your metabolism going but and i don't recommend it obviously because i i do have effects that haven't recovered since and that was what 2003 so it was 22 years ago but there's like 20 on around 28 days it says that you suddenly have this pear taste in your mouth and around day 28 i started to think that they were putting sugar in my water So I would pour the water out to people walking by.

Speaker 3 And I would say, could you check? Can you, could you tell? Because I didn't trust my team. I thought they were like involved in keeping me alive.
So I was like, Can you, is there, is that sweet?

Speaker 3 They go, No, it's just water.

Speaker 8 But but you could taste it because of that pear taste in 2010.

Speaker 3 That happens during starvation.

Speaker 3 And then, then the other thing, you lose the hunger first. Around a month, you get that pear taste.
But then around like day 39, I started to have really strange heart palpitations.

Speaker 3 And you start to feel like you're eating your body that's where it starts to become you you start to become aware of that pain but through that pain you find this this other thing that's like the most beautiful experience that i've ever felt so it's amazing that you were there for that that's amazing i mean but hearing about it from the person who actually lived through it is pretty remarkable and i wonder though like one thing i love about you david is that These are not just tricks or experiments.

Speaker 8 These are things that you research, you read. There's a story that inspires it.
There's an experiment that happened years ago that inspires something you do.

Speaker 8 These are not just, you know, manufactured things.

Speaker 8 They're really deep parts of things you're fascinated by. How did you start to come across stories, ideas, images that inspired these tricks? Where did that come from?

Speaker 3 Well, I started fasting, actually. I read Siddhartha by Herman Hess when I was young.
I think like 11, 12, 13, around that time. And his character fasts, waits, and

Speaker 3 learns how to take control over his mind and body. And I was fascinated with that principle.

Speaker 3 And then I would just try to test myself with simple things, you know, enduring the cold, holding my breath, things like that. But I think it started earlier and then I connected to it with that.

Speaker 3 And then fasting was, I wanted to bury myself alive. That was a pivotal part that made the stunt easy to do, actually.
Because if you have no food, it makes everything easier.

Speaker 3 You sleep easier.

Speaker 3 Once you ignore the hunger, once you lose that, then your ability to focus, I guess you switch into a different survival mode or something.

Speaker 8 You were saying earlier that when you were in the box for 44 days, it ruined your metabolism.

Speaker 8 How much did you study and know that that was going to happen? Or how much was that a real shock and surprise to the system?

Speaker 3 I knew I was going to do some damage. So I was prepared for that.
I knew that when you push your body to that extreme, it's going to take a toll.

Speaker 3 But there's a lot of things I do that I know they're going to take a toll, and I kind of balance out the risk of it.

Speaker 8 When is it worth it, and when is it not worth it?

Speaker 3 Now I'm different because I have a daughter, right? So now I'm more careful about the risk. But I was obsessed with the idea of staying awake for,

Speaker 3 I think, the world record was 11 days.

Speaker 3 So I was thinking, if you go, I think it's like 11.56 or 56,

Speaker 3 but that would be a million seconds. I got obsessed with this idea and I started messing around with it.
And I met with Dr. Dement, who's like the number one sleep expert at the time up at Stanford.

Speaker 3 He was there when the record was done at 11 days.

Speaker 3 I thought I could pull it off and I started testing it. The tests were very difficult.

Speaker 3 And then, as I started to really research it and speak to people and look into it, it seemed like there is something that you could do to your mind where you don't recover.

Speaker 3 So, you could tweak your brain and have it not recover. So, I,

Speaker 3 yeah, so I, that's not worth it. You know, losing your sight isn't worth it.
So, when I was in India and I was at the Urs Festival, and the Sufi.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 When they pull their eyes out, they pull their eyes out, it's very, very hard to watch. But I called my

Speaker 3 dear friend

Speaker 3 who's a great optometrist, and I just said, is there any,

Speaker 3 how does this make sense? He say, it could be done, but you may degenerate your vision. So I said, okay, I'm not going to mess around with that.

Speaker 3 So there is like, can I pull this off or am I going to do permanent damage? And it's studying the past and finding experts and finding people that have done things and then

Speaker 3 making a decision. Or I guess it's more like a feeling.
And then the other thing that I like to do is I use like numeric, like I use numbers.

Speaker 3 So I'll do a test where I test something to like, you know, let me get to the halfway point. If I could do the halfway point, then I can estimate how much more can I tolerate.

Speaker 3 So that's kind of like if I'm going to fast for 44 days, I'll do something like a 22-day fast just to

Speaker 3 understand if I can do it, you know?

Speaker 8 Yeah, I love how mathematical it is for you as well, though.

Speaker 3 Numbers play a key factor. Yeah.

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Speaker 4 This is Martha Stewart from the Martha Stewart Podcast. Hello, darlings.
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Speaker 6 Kahlua Caramel Swirl Cream Liqueur, 16% Alcohol by Volume, 32 Proof.

Speaker 7 Copyright 2025, imported by the Kahlua Company, New York, New York.

Speaker 5 Duncan trademarks owned by DDIP Holder LLC, used under license. Copyright 2025, DDIP Holder LLC.

Speaker 8 I love kind of diving into your mind right now because I love that process. There's a lot of,

Speaker 8 it's also how you transition. But going back to that video you just showed me, when everyone sees this in the new Nat Geo show,

Speaker 8 that is like, I mean, I had to look away multiple times. So if anyone doesn't know what's going on, it's like this guy's like expanding his eye up, but then he's like nearly gouging it.

Speaker 3 with like what like a steel rod or something like yeah how do you even make sure that's disinfected no they no they don't they don't no because because i pushed an ice pick through my arm and I put it on the, I don't know, there wasn't even a table.

Speaker 3 I just put it on, I think on the floor. In India.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
He picked it up and pushed it right through his body. Yeah, it's crazy.

Speaker 3 And how are they doing that?

Speaker 8 Like, what did you learn from that experience of watching them? Like, if you had to look away.

Speaker 3 What they're doing, I think it's passed down.

Speaker 3 for generations. And I think they know exactly what they're doing.

Speaker 3 And part of it is accepting what you have to do. Like there's an acceptance to what they're going to do, like a faith, right?

Speaker 3 They know that they can do these things. So when they push these things through their body, they're just completely at ease.

Speaker 3 And I think therefore their body recovers at a really fast rate. Because the body's incredible.
The body can do so many amazing things. Through evolution,

Speaker 3 we've developed these abilities to survive. So

Speaker 3 one that I wasn't prepared for, I was surrounded by doctors, and I was trying to hold my breath for as long as possible. I had telemetry on me and everything else.

Speaker 3 I was surrounded by a great group of doctors and pulmonary experts and free divers. And

Speaker 3 I was holding my breath underwater.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 at one point, I wasn't even aware of the time. I didn't, there was no such thing as time.
So I'm holding my breath at one point. I think it was once I, when I was like above 18 minutes, right?

Speaker 3 And then all of a sudden, I'm pulled out of the water and it's 20 minutes and two seconds. And I was just completely at peace.

Speaker 3 But they pulled me up because my heart rate had dropped to eight beats per minute. And in their minds, I'm going to go into cardiac arrest and they're not going to be able to recover me.

Speaker 3 But it was the opposite.

Speaker 3 The body went into this strange survival mode, I guess, and it does everything it can to conserve all of your energy, shuts the brain down because the brain uses oxygen.

Speaker 3 And again, I was at like complete peace. And then I was like, why did you pull me out?

Speaker 8 But that's like a mind-body disconnect, no? Like, isn't your mind at peace and your body's going into cardiac arrest? Like, is that?

Speaker 3 I don't think it was going into it. I think it was going into survival mode.
Right. There's a boy that blacked out under an icy river.

Speaker 3 He was trapped under the water, and he was there for 45 minutes, not breathing. They pulled him out.
He fully recovered. No brain damage, nothing.

Speaker 3 And the body is capable of doing things that we don't even.

Speaker 3 science and doctors don't even imagine could be possible.

Speaker 3 And at the Earth Festival in India, they were all, everything that I saw, it was overwhelming, but it was still like they were doing things that don't make any sense.

Speaker 8 And these are not tricks. That's your point.
These are not, these are, like you're saying, it's been passed down for generations. These are not sleight of hand.
This is not faking it.

Speaker 3 It's hard to say,

Speaker 3 right? You never know. But what I was seeing was, it was as real as it gets.
But then there was one thing

Speaker 3 that didn't make sense. There was one thing that I started to think, well, what's the magic? You know?

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 3 who knows?

Speaker 3 What is that thing? I want to know. You know, the guy pushes the thing through his neck and it comes out here.
But then I looked carefully and there was no, there was no hole.

Speaker 3 There was no blood, no hole, no nothing. So I, so then I started thinking, like, well, so what, how is that possible? Right?

Speaker 3 And we don't know. No.
You don't have an answer.

Speaker 8 You didn't figure it out.

Speaker 3 No, but it's funny because that, so I wanted to go to India first when we started shooting the series because the first time I saw somebody combine magic with

Speaker 3 real human

Speaker 3 endurance feats other than pictures of Boudin and stuff like that was a magician that ate a thread and then he pulled the thread out of his stomach. And when I saw that, I was like blown away.

Speaker 8 Yeah, it's crazy.

Speaker 3 And he wouldn't show anybody else, but he pulled me into another. He's like, I'll show you.
And he showed me. And I was like, whoa.
And I thought it was crazy how he did it.

Speaker 3 It's a magic combined with doing something that most people wouldn't want to do. And when I saw,

Speaker 3 it kind of changed my

Speaker 3 theory on what could be possible. And I think I've always had that curiosity of, you know, what the human body can endure, what, what we could tolerate.

Speaker 3 So I think it was some sort of a trigger that like led me on this journey, which was not just as a magician, but what are people doing that? Yeah.

Speaker 3 And the magicians I like the most, like Harry Houdini, Ricky J.

Speaker 3 Ricky J wrote a book called Learned Pigs and Fireproof Women, which is that kind of guidebook to all of these people that were using their bodies to do crazy thing.

Speaker 3 Well, their minds and their bodies to do these unbelievable feats.

Speaker 8 When did it turn for you from being magic tricks?

Speaker 8 I used to, I grew up watching you chuck cards at a car door and it's on the window of the inside of the, you know, the car or you talking about like, oh, you could guess who was calling your house, you know, when we all had landlines to then actually pushing your body to limits.

Speaker 8 Like, where was that switch for you?

Speaker 3 I always liked things that I believe, right? So it's like I was always, so if I'm watching a magician, I like if I know that he put tons of work into one card move, right?

Speaker 3 When I saw people that were doing things that were defied logic, which is what magic does.

Speaker 3 But then I knew that there was an element of they are really doing that. I think it led me first into the Swami mantra, which led to the buried alive, which then led to me looking into

Speaker 3 all the other things I was excited about.

Speaker 3 But I would fight with magicians. They would be like, you can't, what's the magic in it? Like, what's the point? You have to disappear from the pole and appear in boxes.

Speaker 3 But there's no believability to that. I'd rather just jump into the boxes.
Well, then they're like, well, you at least have to just disappear.

Speaker 3 I was like, but then that ruins the whole, like, then it's not a real thing.

Speaker 8 What would they say back?

Speaker 3 I mean, they wouldn't win the argument. But then afterwards, they were like, all right, I get it.

Speaker 8 Yeah, it's, it's just the, the human endurance part is what's so fascinating about it because I feel like there's the great scene in the nude show where you're like literally figuring out how to put a knife.

Speaker 3 Oh, yeah, that was crazy.

Speaker 8 Walk us through that because you see the scan as well.

Speaker 3 You know, I had done nails in the nose and things like that because you could hammer a nail, you know, back in.

Speaker 3 But then when I was in the favela in Rio in Josinha,

Speaker 3 this performer,

Speaker 3 Maesta Ligirinho, took a

Speaker 3 serrated steak knife and he just shoved it in his nose, just pushed it all the way in.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 how is that possible? We don't think of that as being, you know, it seems like

Speaker 3 you're going to do something, you know, to your nervous system, something, right? He pushes it all the way in and pulls it out, does it a few times. And of course, I'm like, whoa, that's crazy.

Speaker 3 But obviously, my whole theory is like, if somebody can do it, it means nobody should do it, but it means there's an explanation. There's no, it's not a magic thing.
It's like there's an explanation.

Speaker 3 So it means it is possible.

Speaker 3 So I kind of trusted him and just went for it and just pushed the thing in you didn't want to start with anything no no no i i watched him do it and i trusted what he was saying

Speaker 3 and i think i was nobody should do it actually it's super super dangerous of course but anyway i did it but then i wanted to see it so i took an x-ray and then when we took the x-ray we saw that the knife was on the edge of the nervous system so

Speaker 3 it was really at that like exact

Speaker 3 line, you know, but again, you're not, it doesn't make sense. But once again, there, you know, people have survived lots of crazy things.
Yeah.

Speaker 8 Yeah. How did you know how far back to not let it go? Like you were that close on that scan.

Speaker 3 I don't know. I don't know.

Speaker 8 You just could sense it.

Speaker 3 I, yeah, and I trusted him who has done this so many times.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 8 God. I mean, when I see you do this stuff, I, the, the question I always ask myself when I'm watching you is like, is there anything that you're actually scared of?

Speaker 3 just something happening to my daughter but but by the way but these things when magicians or anybody are telling me oh well i say do the card tricks because that's the best stuff that that's what people like do not do these crazy things that you know which is why the show is called do not attempt do not attempt exactly i couldn't be more excited to share something truly special with all you tea lovers out there And even if you don't love tea, if you love refreshing, rejuvenating, refueling sodas that are good for you, listen to this.

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Speaker 8 Over history, are there lots of magicians, illusionists, people that have died trying to do crazy things? Like, what are the...

Speaker 3 Yeah, there is, actually.

Speaker 3 Funny enough, like the bullet catch killed 12 magicians, but they were doing it as a trick. And the guy that was doing it for real wasn't a magician.

Speaker 3 He was just catching bullets and a little cup in his mouth. And he did it hundreds of times and he was okay.

Speaker 3 But 12 magicians that were doing it as a trick, that were switching bullets out and stuff like that, 12 of them died. I'm not laughing, but 12 of them died doing it as a trick.

Speaker 8 That's crazy. Yeah.
What was the difference about the guy that was actually doing it? What was he doing differently?

Speaker 3 He was catching the bullet in the metal cup in his mouth. I think one time it sliced through his cheek, but nah,

Speaker 3 he pulled it off.

Speaker 8 Would you ever try the bullet catch? No, I did it. Oh, yeah.
Oh, sorry.

Speaker 3 I have seen that. Yeah, I did it.
I had my best friend. It's funny because I'm looking at don't shoot.

Speaker 3 So my best friend's a magician, and I saw him shoot a cup far away with a BB gun. I was like, will you do the bullet catch with me?

Speaker 3 And somehow I convinced him to do it

Speaker 3 because he didn't want somebody else to mess up. And he knew he he would get the mark.
So he did it. I caught the bullet.
That was kind of crazy.

Speaker 3 But then I wanted to do it again, but I didn't want to have anybody shoot me because I didn't want to make anybody that uncomfortable. So I put a string

Speaker 3 on the trigger of a rifle, a 22-long bullet, and I pulled the string

Speaker 3 and caught it in that metal cup. Another thing nobody should ever do.

Speaker 8 So you're saying no one should, apart from you putting yourself at risk, ideally nothing else should get hurt during the treatment.

Speaker 3 Yeah, for sure. Yeah, that's right.
And

Speaker 3 I do tricks with frogs and things like that. I've never injured a frog.

Speaker 3 They're my daughter's pet frogs. I've kept them for years.
They've been with us.

Speaker 3 And then I give them to somebody that when they get too big, then I give them to somebody that's going to care for them. And yeah.
So my doctor's kids now have

Speaker 3 these giant frogs.

Speaker 3 And by the way,

Speaker 3 they try to hold them and the frogs won't let anybody, nobody can pick them up. And I hadn't seen the frog in like a year or something.
And I came to his house and they were filming it.

Speaker 3 And I put my hand in. And I'm not kidding.
The frog walked right onto my hand and I lifted it up and he just sat there. We underestimate these creatures, right? But there's some sort of, I don't know,

Speaker 3 intelligence.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 8 And that was scent or saliva.

Speaker 3 Whatever it is, yeah. Which is crazy.

Speaker 8 You are so right. We really do downplay the intelligence, especially of animals.
Yeah.

Speaker 8 But even humans, but because of animals, yeah, we don't recognize it. And the body.

Speaker 3 Yeah. And the body.
That's right.

Speaker 8 Do you think it's interesting how the world's, we've focused on becoming more comfortable? What do you think that's doing to us?

Speaker 3 That's right. That's good.
Because I agree.

Speaker 3 Being comfortable for me, I think, is always the worst thing ever. When you're comfortable, you achieve nothing, you learn learn nothing, you do.

Speaker 3 So it's like when you're out of your comfort zone, when you're breaking that, it's like that's when everything becomes intense and we're alive, right?

Speaker 3 And that's probably what you experienced when you took yourself out of

Speaker 3 your comfort zone and live with this incredible monk is

Speaker 3 then suddenly you're living in the moment. You're living in this heightened sense of awareness.

Speaker 3 And that's all from breaking the comfort zone. Yeah.

Speaker 8 And it's so interesting because you're so right. Like we just, we all naturally though, and that's what you were saying when you were talking about the guy earlier who nearly gouged his eye out.

Speaker 8 Something that you said, which is so subtle but so powerful, you were like, but when he's doing it, his body's not repelling it. And that's why somehow it works out.

Speaker 8 And I was thinking about it that everything you do

Speaker 8 defies what we want to do because we're looking for comfort. But it's like, how do you prep yourself to actually want discomfort?

Speaker 8 Like, how do we prepare our minds and brains to actually seek out discomfort? Because just as you said, it's actually better for us, even for survival, even for growth of the species. But we don't.

Speaker 8 We kind of go backwards into reclining, Netflix and chill. That's the vibe.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 8 how do you get out of that? What have you done to continuously?

Speaker 3 Well, this series did that.

Speaker 3 When they were asking me what I wanted to do, I said, here's the thing. So we're talking about lots of ideas.
Doug, my magician friend that was here, he's the one that found Deepak, you know,

Speaker 3 in India that did the most incredible stuff I've ever

Speaker 3 mind-blowing, just the way he is able to override his body with his mind. But basically, when they were coming to me with this idea,

Speaker 3 oh, this one, that one, I said, here's the thing. Only

Speaker 3 present to me the ideas that when you tell me about them, it makes you uncomfortable just saying that we're going to go be a part. You know, I wanted it to be, I wanted it to be that.

Speaker 3 And I think that's a big thing that I like to do: put myself in major discomfort so I can, so it wakes me up, you know, brings me to life.

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Speaker 8 How did you train yourself to get get there and to do that? Because I want to help people almost who are sitting here going, you know what, I agree with David.

Speaker 8 Like, I'm not going to go and, you know, put a knife down my nose, which he's not encouraging either.

Speaker 3 That's right.

Speaker 8 But I want to be able to push the boundaries in my own growth and my own life.

Speaker 8 How did you kind of, you've gone to the full extreme of it. How do we kind of get to three out of 10?

Speaker 3 I think it starts with baby steps. I think you just go push yourself to do pub, speak in front of a classroom, public.
You know, I was super intimidated by public speaking.

Speaker 3 And I could do magic, but I wasn't, I was like, I'm not going to speak. So, you know, I wanted my brother to go to the TED conference.

Speaker 3 So I agreed to like stand up and speak for the first time with no mat, just do a talk. And it was, it was horrific for me.

Speaker 3 It was like, it was, and, and I didn't sleep for days on end before it, but also months before I was working on the notes, writing it down, putting all the thoughts on.

Speaker 3 And that part of it was already incredible because then you're like, it, but then I had to get up and do it.

Speaker 3 And that was really, that was like, but then as soon as you start, and you, I put myself in the boiling, speaking at Ted for your first time, I didn't go do little talks. I started there, right?

Speaker 3 So it's like by, by doing that, suddenly I shocked the system. And now I went on a speaking tour for like a year.
I would do dates in all different audiences.

Speaker 3 And what I would do is I would, I wouldn't thoroughly prepare. I would kind of just go out there and put myself in front of everybody.
And I would say often it was uncomfortable.

Speaker 3 And often it didn't work. And often the audience didn't react.
You know what I mean? It was like one of the, but eventually after doing it over and over and over and over and over, it really helped.

Speaker 3 And I really understood, it changed the way I thought about public speaking. But what it really did is it helped me when I was doing magic because now I had like, now the magic was a conversation.

Speaker 3 The point of breaking your comfort zone, it could be anything. It could be get up and do a talk.
It could be,

Speaker 3 you know,

Speaker 3 go out,

Speaker 3 sit in the sauna, go in a steamroom.

Speaker 8 Jump in a coal plunge.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 So I think it's baby steps that can help you kind of figure out how to do something. But it could be, it's anything.

Speaker 8 I love how giving a TED talk is harder for you than like...

Speaker 8 Way harder. I love that.

Speaker 3 It was way harder. Yeah.
Given the TED Talk for me was probably

Speaker 3 more difficult than holding my breath for the...

Speaker 8 20 minutes and 22 seconds.

Speaker 3 Yeah. And that talk, by the way, is when you watch it down, it's exactly the length of my actual breath hold record.
Did you do that one? 2002? No, it just worked out that way. It's crazy.

Speaker 3 That's cool. 20.02 was the actual breath hold time.
And the talk, when you time it out, was, I think it was almost 20.02.

Speaker 8 Wow. And that was harder.

Speaker 3 For me, the talk was more uncomfortable, more difficult than the breath hold.

Speaker 8 I mean, holding your breath for 20 minutes and two seconds is insanity.

Speaker 3 Well, now the record's 24 minutes and 3 seconds.

Speaker 8 You're going to go back?

Speaker 3 I don't think it's safe at this point. That's what you were saying.
It's like you push yourself too far.

Speaker 3 You could do not just irreversible. It might be like game over.

Speaker 3 And I'm paranoid about that stuff because one of my favorite magicians, Harry Houdini, he was punched in the stomach, hypothetically, or he had a ruptured opinion.

Speaker 3 Whatever he had, he shouldn't have done his stage show. He was feeling ill.
He was in lots of pain, but he didn't want to let the audience down. Went in the show.

Speaker 3 He did his whole show, got in the water tank.

Speaker 3 After the water tank, when he came out he collapsed on the stage they rushed him to a hospital and he died so i i do think there's a limit to what the body can endure and things go wrong very easily and you're not prepared for them so there is a balance to all that stuff well you had that crazy fall at your vegas show right like a couple of years ago exactly and i feel like i got lucky I got because just my arm, my shoulder went down to my armpit.

Speaker 3 That was terrible. But I mean, it could have been my neck.
It could have been. Walk us through what happened?

Speaker 3 So my vegas show i wanted to start by i put a light light truss all the way up and it was shaky and things which i thought would be funny and i climbed up and in the beginning i think i was jumping like 68 feet 68 feet and i put cardboard boxes down where the seats were and i would jump down into the boxes but i was doing three shows per month which is like the max that i could even tolerate but my stunt guy jim churchman was helping put that together he's like we got to be careful careful because it's about 20 G's of force and you can't keep doing this over and over.

Speaker 3 You're getting something's going to go wrong.

Speaker 3 You know, for some reason, I figured I could pull it off and I kept increasing the height because I started with the idea of like, okay, I'm going to go up.

Speaker 3 And then I would, then I would be like, but wait, can I go?

Speaker 3 Like, I don't know. I just wanted to keep pushing it.
Right. So I don't know what the reason I should have just been content there, but I'm never content.
So I'm like, I have to go higher, higher.

Speaker 3 And right when I got my head next to the ceiling, I jumped. And it it was after I was, you know, in Thailand.
And I had

Speaker 3 a swarm of bees covering me. And I was, I took a bunch of stuns.

Speaker 3 I was stung all over, a bunch of stings. I was stung all over the place.
I had to go on, I think I had to take antibiotics. So I wasn't probably 100% when I did that jump.
I did the jump. And

Speaker 3 I don't know what it was. I didn't land right or my body was slightly there.
And that happened.

Speaker 3 But then I think about it. I'm like, whoa, I was lucky because that could have been anything.
But yeah, so that was the end of that in the show. It's never recovered properly.

Speaker 3 But no, it's, I mean, that's not a big, no, that's not like the

Speaker 3 box in London, which is, you know, major.

Speaker 8 You feel like you're still recovering from that.

Speaker 3 From the London thing? It messed me up, yeah.

Speaker 8 Irreversibly, you feel?

Speaker 3 Probably on some level, yeah. There's other things I do that mess me up.
Like I used to drink kerosene, which I I would float on top of the water in my stomach. Terrible idea.

Speaker 3 Eating the glass is really bad because there's also chemicals in that glass and stuff like that.

Speaker 3 So aside from the enamel and everything going away on your teeth, so I never experience hot and cold without such extreme, ah, right?

Speaker 3 So, and then there's tons of little injuries, but the ones that I'm most concerned with are

Speaker 3 those ones. Now I'm much more careful on some level because I have a daughter, so I don't want something,

Speaker 3 you know, you think about life differently and how you're going to push yourself differently and what you can and can't do.

Speaker 3 Yeah, the London box, I don't think I would ever do something like that again.

Speaker 8 Did it change from the moment you held your daughter, like when she was born?

Speaker 3 Not right when she was, but when she was born was like the most incredible moment of my life.

Speaker 3 But I still, when she was like one and a half, I still, I did a stunt. I was in, you know, a million volts of electricity and it went wrong.
My legs swelled up from edema.

Speaker 3 It it ripped through the chain. I was getting shocked.
I spit some electrolyte water out, and it hit the coil and went inside and really messed me up. So, at the end of that stunt, which was 73 hours,

Speaker 3 I said, I'm not going to do any of these things anymore because I don't want something to go wrong.

Speaker 8 I have a daughter, but when I was saying, Is there anything you're scared of? You just mentioned something happening to your daughter. That's like very real.

Speaker 3 When she is, she stretches and she goes into splits and things. When I'm watching hurts, it's so painful for me to to watch

Speaker 8 imagine how she feels when you're putting a knife through your nose there i talk to her and i'm very careful yeah

Speaker 3 how does she react like when she sees this all that you're up well she's grown up with it so she's i think she's like uh even though it seems super crazy i'm i'm pretty i have to really trust the person that's showing me the teacher and you know the The learning curve for that series was short, but these are masters that have done the countless thousands of hours of work.

Speaker 3 And some secrets were passed down to them, some they've developed on their own. It is a matter of trust.
And then this series,

Speaker 3 I was very careful, even though it looks like there's so many crazy, you know, things that I'm trying, or certain things like sitting with the black mumbas.

Speaker 3 It was an enclosure this size, of just like this space.

Speaker 3 And there were six black mumbas in there. but the thing is and i was with this man named neville a south african man that wants to show people that you don't need to

Speaker 3 when you see a black mamba because they they they they end up in schools and they end up killing people and it's because people react to them and they try to push them away that and as soon as you do that the black mamba reacts back so he sits with the mambas at peace and he's showing everybody that if you encounter a black mamba the best thing to do is to not be aggressive, not act in a way that makes it uncomfortable, just be at peace and just stay very calm.

Speaker 3 They're very instinctual, like most animals. Like if you, if there's some people that go into

Speaker 3 a house and there's cats that won't come out, and the cats come out with some people and they go near them, right?

Speaker 3 And it's just because that person has this like energy, this like this stillness or whatever that makes the cat comfortable.

Speaker 3 And what his point is, is it's the same with the with these feared black mambas. You just remain calm.

Speaker 3 So I trusted him. It was the scariest thing I've ever done in my lifetime.

Speaker 3 This is the one. Oh, yeah, absolutely.
Scariest thing I've ever done. And it doesn't look like it is.
Like when you watch it, you won't understand that. In Africa, they call it the two-step.

Speaker 3 So you get one step and then the second step and you're done. But sitting there with him, even though I was like,

Speaker 3 i i knew i had to just follow exactly what he said and i walk i observed first i watched him for a few days and i realized he he knows what he's doing he believes in everything that he's saying and

Speaker 3 i sat with him in there and then and then when one started to come towards you know when it was close he said uh

Speaker 3 said don't worry if something goes wrong i'll take the hit and i was like um i think i'm ready to go

Speaker 3 I think, can I get out of here? No, go now.

Speaker 3 Can I go?

Speaker 3 And he's like, nope, because you can't leave until

Speaker 3 it's a what you can't do any abrupt movement. So that was the craziest thing I've ever done in my life.

Speaker 8 You got really close to it as well.

Speaker 3 I did get really close. But again,

Speaker 3 I trusted him completely.

Speaker 8 How does someone like him build that skill without dying in the process?

Speaker 3 Well, he was bitten a few times. So he did go into a coma once.
He had a

Speaker 3 snake-related injury where he lost his leg. So he has one leg.

Speaker 8 And he still does it.

Speaker 3 Yeah. And he sits with them.
So, so people will come and see him and

Speaker 3 know that if they've seen this, it kind of gets a point across.

Speaker 3 Like if you see a guy sitting in a small room like this with a bunch of black mambas, you realize, okay, so if a black mamba does come into our school or into our house or wherever,

Speaker 3 you can just stay at peace, stay calm on some level. So he's protecting the people and the mambas.

Speaker 8 And there's no way of training a mamba.

Speaker 3 So no, and these are wild. These are rescues.
He keeps them and then releases them back. So yeah, no, you know.
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 8 That, I mean, just listening to that. It's crazy.
It is. And to hear you say it's the hardest thing

Speaker 3 you've ever done. Not hard, but the scariest.
Scariest. It wasn't hard.
It was the opposite of hard. It's just all you have to do is just sit still.
Yeah. But you have to stay still and

Speaker 3 you have to be at ease.

Speaker 8 Did you have to prepare that before you went in?

Speaker 3 Oh, I look like I'm about to

Speaker 3 run to the bathroom the whole time.

Speaker 8 I think all of us would be. I think all of us wouldn't even get in there.

Speaker 8 There's an interesting thing about animals in that way, isn't there? There's

Speaker 8 my monk teacher who spent time in,

Speaker 8 when he traveled, would live in the forests and things like that back in the day. And he would always talk about how animals see whether you respect them or whether you fear them.

Speaker 8 And he would talk about that every time he saw an animal, it was like he'd have to bow down to the animal in his heart and mind.

Speaker 8 And if he was to do that, then the animal would know that that wasn't a threat or there wasn't any fear.

Speaker 8 And then that would be what created a sense of peace, that if he could bow down and show respect.

Speaker 3 Yeah, that's that's because human fancy rights.

Speaker 8 Yeah, we think we have to dominate and like

Speaker 3 show them.

Speaker 3 and then they'll run away but but it depends some you have to right so it varies some you have to show that you're not afraid and that you're strong and you're not going to be an easy target or they say with sharks what you have to do is if you're with a a bun, if you're around bull sharks in the ocean or whatever, you just look at them and you keep looking because they don't want to challenge.

Speaker 3 They're so evolved, they don't want to have to waste any energy. They're so perfect.
They conserve energy in the most efficient way. So if you're looking at it, it knows that

Speaker 3 it may get a fight back. But if you're not looking, then

Speaker 3 right. Yeah.
Wow.

Speaker 8 Think about them preserving energy.

Speaker 3 But he sits in there for hours. And when I met him, he was just sitting with a forest cobra, another snake that could easily kill you.
But he was just like drinking his coffee.

Speaker 3 Yeah, he was amazing. Wow.

Speaker 8 And has he got to a place of fearlessness? Like, would he say that he feels fearless or no?

Speaker 3 He feels peaceful? No, I think no. I think he respects and loves these snakes.
He thinks they're beautiful and incredible. So it's not.

Speaker 3 Yeah, sure, he's fearless with that specifically. Yeah.
But I think it's more like he has

Speaker 3 just such a deep respect for, like you said, like, you know, bowing down to. Yeah, it's that.

Speaker 8 I mean, even listening to you, though, there's such a respect for your craft and art. Like the number of times in this conversation, you've always already said, like, I trusted the teacher.

Speaker 8 I trusted Neville. Trusted Deepak.
Like, there's such a respect for mentors and trust for teachers and guides. And there's such a respect for the art and craft.
It's not just,

Speaker 8 you know, as today, we kind of make everything today just feel like entertainment. And even when people have talents, it's kind of just like, oh, yeah, everyone's got talents now.

Speaker 8 But it's like, actually, for you, it's a respect and study of the craft.

Speaker 3 I think it's the same when

Speaker 3 you met the monk. You immediately felt his knowledge and his faith and his beliefs and his discipline, his wisdom, right? And I think with the people I've met, all of them, I felt that.

Speaker 3 And as soon as I felt that, I was okay to

Speaker 3 try things. So I think lots of it has to do with just trusting the person and their abilities and their understanding of what they're doing.

Speaker 3 And then from that, it's a leap of faith.

Speaker 8 It's beautiful to think about what you do that way. Because I think a lot of people can kind of project it as like, oh, well, David's figured it out.
But it's actually like, no, you're willing to.

Speaker 8 submit yourself and study and become a beginner again. Right.
Like that beginner's mindset.

Speaker 3 That's right. And that's, that's the part that's like breaking the comfort zone is

Speaker 3 trying something you haven't done, trying something new, pushing yourself in a way that you're uncomfortable and working diligently and loving failure, right? The failure is like, that's okay.

Speaker 3 The failure is amazing.

Speaker 3 When you're performing magic, it's the failures that you learn from. right? It's like you're performing a card trick and you fail.
Well, that's where you learn and you're constantly learning.

Speaker 3 That's what's amazing about being a magician is there's a constant learning curve and it never stops. You're always practicing.

Speaker 3 You're always, even if it's the same trick that you've worked on for, for me, 30 years, some of them, 40, whatever it is, and I'm still changing. I'm still learning.
And

Speaker 3 that's, for me, the exciting part of everything.

Speaker 8 Yeah, you're constantly going from becoming the expert, going back to the beginner, becoming an expert. That cycle doesn't stop.

Speaker 3 Right. And therefore, you're never an expert, you know? Yeah, it's really cool.

Speaker 8 I love that.

Speaker 8 What's the illusion that's kept you up the most nights before you've done it that you've had sleepless nights over as you prepare or get ready for it?

Speaker 3 Probably kissing the king cobra.

Speaker 3 Just because I understood that the risk was, it was, you know, I understood the risk. So that one I was, that took me a long time to mentally prepare for.
That one took me a long time.

Speaker 8 How many times had you been in the pen before you did that one? Was that in that time, that night?

Speaker 3 No, no, no. I took time on that one.

Speaker 3 I wasn't ready. So I left, came back months later.
I tried to understand the behavior of the king cobra. I met with my friends that had king cobras that undersea.

Speaker 3 I mean, that one was a pretty intense learning curve because, you know, they strike fast.

Speaker 3 If it gets you, you know.

Speaker 3 So I think of everything I've done, that might have been the most intimidating one, probably.

Speaker 8 I think that's very legitimate. Kissing a king cobra.

Speaker 3 Yeah, because all the stunts that I, all the other things that I've done, there was no real immediate risk of death. Yes, something could go wrong,

Speaker 3 but there's not a

Speaker 3 this is a lights out situation where with the king cobra I understood the risk was great.

Speaker 3 So I wanted to know that I had the ability to get out of the way and that I could understand its movements and its timing.

Speaker 8 Are you scared of dying?

Speaker 3 I'm not afraid of dying, but

Speaker 3 I understand, you know, my mother died in my arms.

Speaker 3 And the last word she said to me is, God is love.

Speaker 3 But since having a daughter, it's like you want to live for as long as possible. But previous to having a daughter,

Speaker 3 I didn't even, I was like, yeah, I'll just whatever. Now, because of my daughter, I want to not, you know, do something.
It's like, oops.

Speaker 8 What was it like losing your mother? So sorry for your loss.

Speaker 3 She got sick when I was 16 and she died when I was 20.

Speaker 3 She was a warrior through it and a peaceful warrior. When she died,

Speaker 3 I felt like my body was like a tree and it was like the brand, one big branch of a tree or something. And it went.

Speaker 3 like that. It was like an immediate like broken.
You know, it was like I never want to feel that type of pain again it was it was it was like literally like i felt like

Speaker 3 like something broke in half you know so that was that was a good and i was so close to my mother it was she was my best friend she was my my world but then what started to happen

Speaker 3 was i started to

Speaker 3 find

Speaker 3 there was like messages by the way whenever i did stunts i'm not even kidding. She would always, like, I would get a sign from her and those signs would make me know I was going to be okay.

Speaker 3 It was when I was buried alive. It sounds crazy, but like you just, I think the energy is, is always there, right? So I was buried alive, and I was like,

Speaker 3 it was all cloudy. I was like, mom, can you give me a sign? And right when I said it, I'm not even kidding.
It was like the clouds opened and the sun came through. It was like an immediate thing.

Speaker 3 When I was in the box in London, 44 days, day 40, I was having these terrible heart palpitations. Like, I mean, no, but I thought I was going to die or something, right?

Speaker 3 And I went in my head to give Bob, give me a side. Like, you know, what should I do? And

Speaker 3 at that exact moment, you know, I could see the tower bridge over there. And this was day 40.
I had to go to day 44. And there was a bunch of people yelling, dang it, you know, from the tower bridge.

Speaker 3 And I look over, and I'm not even kidding. Right when I said that,

Speaker 3 they opened up this banner banner that they made and it just said God is love

Speaker 3 and I'm not exactly and that was her final words yes

Speaker 3 so it was like it's like the energy is just there and she so so basically when she wasn't there she was she's even more you know it's like her presence became so strong that's so powerful yeah that that's that's really special yeah do you look for her in in any i don't need to look for her she's everywhere she's everywhere.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Wow. That's really special.
That's funny. Yeah.
I didn't think of that. But yeah.

Speaker 8 I've had a couple of experiences recently. I was

Speaker 8 officiating a wedding, not last Christmas, the Christmas before, December before.

Speaker 8 And

Speaker 8 the couple that I'd introduced had met through meditations that I'd led for them. And so I was leading a meditation for their wedding ceremony because they had asked for it.

Speaker 8 And so me and the couple closed their eyes during that period. But the rest of the audience, I think some of them probably joined in and some people don't want to join in, so they didn't join in.

Speaker 8 And it was amazing because we were in Tulum in Mexico and this, I had my eyes closed, so I didn't see it.

Speaker 8 But this huge blue butterfly flew from between the couple and then flew throughout the whole audience. And for those who had their eyes open, saw it.

Speaker 8 And for most of us who had our eyes closed, we didn't see it.

Speaker 8 And then we found found out later on that the the lady who's getting married she has a blue butterfly on her neck because it represents her father who is passed on that's and we didn't see it because we had our eyes closed in meditation but that's

Speaker 8 beautifully just and it was just one butterfly no one really saw it and it's just i love things like that when people have such a strong semblance to signs.

Speaker 3 Yeah. There are signs everywhere if you pay attention to them, if you look for them, if you're open to them.

Speaker 3 And it's easy to block off from all that stuff, but it's like, yeah, if you open to it, it's everywhere.

Speaker 8 Well, that's what I love about the way you think about it, because I think there's a lot of illusionists in the world who almost see illusion as a way of saying there are no, there is no mysticism in the world.

Speaker 8 There's a lot of illusionists who will say, oh, yeah, because I can explain everything, it kind of proves that there is no

Speaker 8 otherworldly, supernatural, or mystical, whatever language you want to use for it. But you seem to have somewhat of a...

Speaker 3 Well, it's, yeah, I mean, it's more about like being open to it. So if you're open to it, you'll find it because that's what you're looking for, right? But if you're like, eh, then you won't.

Speaker 3 And it's like, I feel like

Speaker 3 the better approach is to be open to it so you could experience these incredible things, you know.

Speaker 8 What's one of the most amazing things you've experienced by being open?

Speaker 3 No, I mean, just by being just

Speaker 3 like, you know, watching my daughter just grow. And, you know, that's the most amazing.
And watching who she becomes. And you said that.

Speaker 3 But yeah, when you need those signs, if you're open to it, they'll be there. And if you're close to it, you'll never see them because you're like, nah.

Speaker 3 You know what I kept writing in my journal when I was in the box of fur videos? That's the only thing I really brought was no toothbrush, no, nothing. But I had a journal and a couple of pens.

Speaker 3 And I kept writing, everything is perspective.

Speaker 3 Everything is how you decide to see it. Because people kept saying, are you bored in the box? I'm like, boredom is a choice.

Speaker 3 Like you choose to be bored because your mind has so many things it can think about, create, do, wonder, dream, everything. So it's like, so those two things are the things

Speaker 3 that are all over that journal. Everything is perspective and boredom is a choice.
And then there was a lot of numbers and mapping out like the amount of time and graphs.

Speaker 3 But those were two of the very strong prominent thoughts of what I learned and became very clear to me during that 44-day fast. It opened me up to so many thoughts.
And it was like this clarity

Speaker 3 that I never get because there's very few distractions.

Speaker 3 No phone, no this, no that, no food, no distractions really. So you suddenly you become hyper-aware.

Speaker 3 Like you're, it's like a heightened sense of awareness and everything becomes intense and beautiful.

Speaker 3 which is probably what you were doing for the three years.

Speaker 8 Yeah, I mean, we were talking about it earlier, like you start realizing that the sky is not just blue. There's so many different variations that not every leaf you see is green.

Speaker 8 There's so many variations. But if you look on an average day, it's like, oh, the sky's blue.

Speaker 3 The trees are green.

Speaker 8 Like we have this, we kind of have this.

Speaker 8 almost veneer or this lens we put on everything which makes it all the same and you look at that in society too where like you go down most city centers every shop is the same we see the same coffee shop everywhere you see the same like you know we homogenize everything in the world.

Speaker 8 And there's a sense of comfort. There's a sense of comfort when you see, I remember my friend was giving us a tour of Oxford.
He was studying at Oxford University and he was going around.

Speaker 8 He was saying, this is where Lord of the Rings was written. And this is where Alice in Wonderland was written.
He was giving me this. And me and Mohim were like loving this.
And we were with someone.

Speaker 8 And then we walked into the town center. And they were like, oh my God, there's an urban outfitters here.

Speaker 3 It's like the clothes store. And we were all like, what is wrong with you? But it's like, for them, that was a sense of comfort.
That's funny. Yeah.

Speaker 8 And I was like, but wait a minute, like, this is where Alice in Wonderland was written.

Speaker 3 Everything is perspective. Everything is perspective.
And that person may be just as excited about that as this person is about this, which is amazing.

Speaker 8 And it's so fascinating. It's like, yeah, who have you met or what have you done that has just shifted your perspective the most in the last few decades?

Speaker 8 Like, is this a person you met, a place you went to, that just shifted

Speaker 3 so many, many.

Speaker 3 It's just a well, books. Books are, that's like a big one, right?

Speaker 3 Just books, just you know, I think like

Speaker 3 what books do to the mind is identical to what exercising does for the body.

Speaker 3 That's the main problem with the phones, is it's really taken away, like my ability to just read a book has changed because I'm so distracted by,

Speaker 3 you know, so it's like, but it's like just being able to like open up your mind and explore these incredible worlds that were meticulously done by these brilliant writers that studied psychology and philosophy and that outpouring of

Speaker 3 just you know knowledge but

Speaker 3 so I think books would be the first thing that have like that have like impacted any favorites any any ones that you recommend

Speaker 3 yeah Cervantes and his life story was incredible Cervantes he's fascinating and then Don Quixote is like one of the most I think one of the most important books written in many ways.

Speaker 3 His story is incredible because he was the son of a surgeon. He grew up very poor, Cervantes.
So he went to fight for his country. And during the Inquisition, I guess he was maimed on his left side.

Speaker 3 So he was paralyzed on his left side. He couldn't use his arm.
And he was given the equivalent of a purple heart. So on his way back, the boat was seized.

Speaker 3 They took him captive, and he was tortured and beaten for years, right? He wasn't able to really,

Speaker 3 he couldn't get out. And his brother finally raised enough money that he was,

Speaker 3 by the way, from the monastery. His brother raised enough money when he came out.

Speaker 3 They gave him a job as a tax collector. And he didn't want to do that.
He didn't want to collect taxes because he thought, like, if I'm doing this to a mother of six and

Speaker 3 she can't afford this, I don't want to do this. They ended up putting him in jail for, I think, 12 years.

Speaker 3 While he was in prison, he wrote Don Quixote, which is this book about a guy that wants to save the world and make the world a better place. But

Speaker 3 he finished it when he came out.

Speaker 3 The book was published. And

Speaker 3 it became like the number one book in Europe. But the book publisher, I don't think they ever really paid him.
So

Speaker 3 this book that became like the Shakespeare even wrote an entire play about one character in the book called Cardenio, which is that character is incredible. But

Speaker 3 when he was basically, when he came out, they never gave him

Speaker 3 his earnings and he died completely broke. And the story of Don Quixote is about a guy that wants to make the world a better place, but it's not possible, you know, which is what his mission was.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Wow. Yeah, but that's a great book.
Yeah, thank you.

Speaker 8 How does that speak to you now? Like, how does his dilemma speak to you?

Speaker 3 I mean, it's related to everything, right? Hope for the best and expect the worst. It's a theme of his book.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 8 There's a beautiful statement that it reminds me of from F.

Speaker 8 Scott Fitzgerald, who said that the sign of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in the mind at the same time.

Speaker 8 So one should be able to look around and see that everything is hopeless, but still be determined to make it.

Speaker 3 It's still be hopeful yeah exactly like that ability to yeah that's right to absorb two to truth

Speaker 3 yeah because the brain's not meant to be malleable so it's like you think one way and it's very hard to unthink that it's very hard to change the direction of what you accept and what you like but you're right that sign of intelligence is the ability to grow and learn and and scrap previous ideas and change the way you think and and continue to break everything that you think you know.

Speaker 8 But that's literally what you do in a physical, tangible, mental way.

Speaker 8 Because everything about you knows that putting a blade close to your body cuts it, that being close to a black mamba like kills you. Like that, that's what you're, you're literally living that.

Speaker 8 Because I'm intrigued to know this because

Speaker 8 you're one of the most unrelatable people on the planet.

Speaker 8 Because you've done things that even if you explain them and even if we watch you do them, 99.9% of people, even more than that, that's even a low percentage, have no idea what it even feels like.

Speaker 8 How does that feel?

Speaker 3 I don't think of it like that. Okay.
Actually, I think everybody has their thing. Like everybody has that thing that they're like, it's the same thing.
It's just, it just

Speaker 3 speaks differently. Yeah.
And it just speaks differently. Yeah.

Speaker 3 So I think everybody, like if you look into every single person, there's like, you can find some, you know, it's like things that you can't understand or you never,

Speaker 3 and it's like, it's amazing to like explore that. You know,

Speaker 8 I like that perspective. I like that perspective.
Everyone has, everyone can feel that way if they want to. It's a challenge.

Speaker 3 And they do. Yeah.
Like everybody has their thing that's unique to them.

Speaker 3 It might be that, and there's so many, you know, it's like, it's like the skill that I respect, my mother being the best mother ever, right?

Speaker 3 But that's hard. That's like complete surrender, dedication, and belief and pat, you know, that's.

Speaker 8 That's their special source.

Speaker 3 Yeah, that's their, that's their passion. That's what, that's what lights their fire.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 8 You'd avoid

Speaker 8 you'd avoided fire for a while, or like you'd avoided wanting to do that. You finally succeed with the bridge dive.

Speaker 8 I mean,

Speaker 8 how did that feel? Why were you avoiding it?

Speaker 3 It just never came together properly. Like, it just never, the idea was planted in my head, but it never really came to, it never came together properly.

Speaker 3 But then when I went to Brazil and I met these incredible, you know, high divers, the Karina, who had like walked over, traversed a volcano. And by the way, she almost died doing that.

Speaker 3 She was bleeding through her mouth. She couldn't even breathe.
But when you look at the images of her walking across. a volcano lake, it's whoa.

Speaker 3 But anyway, so there was a man, Andre, who's this fire genius that just respects and loves fires.

Speaker 3 The same way Neville does with the Black Mambas, they helped me put together this idea of just, you know,

Speaker 3 doing something off of a bridge on fire. And that, yeah.
And it was, it was amazing.

Speaker 8 I mean, but you had a set amount of time that you had to like

Speaker 3 quick. Yeah, it was quick.

Speaker 8 Yeah. It was quick.
Yeah. Did it live up to your...
Feeling of wanting to do something with fire?

Speaker 3 Yeah. Do I want to do it again? Yeah.
No, yeah. No, you would.
You did it again. Yeah.
Yeah. Cause you're always thinking, like, oh, well, you know,

Speaker 3 it was bright out. It's the night time would have been, you know, so yeah, you're always thinking about like, you know, that's not like the box, which is one I can't ever do again.

Speaker 3 That's one that's like, that's interesting. So my way that this show came together was my concept was if something can be done by one, it can be done by others, right?

Speaker 3 And I think that's part of what happens is like somebody does something and somebody else or oh, this guy ran a mile in four minutes, so now I can break it.

Speaker 3 And then then it's almost like a continual like part that I love is one thing leads to another. You push somebody, the idea opens up.

Speaker 3 The idea opens up that you can do anything or you can do something you didn't think was possible. And then it just snowballs and it affects people around.

Speaker 3 And I think that's what's interesting about the magicians that I love is they create this fantasy land, right?

Speaker 3 They do these things that seem impossible, but the ones that I like are really doing things that are actually possible, but we think it's not possible.

Speaker 3 And then it relates to everybody because anybody that wants to do, oh, I want to write a book, they can write a book, right? You just have to believe in it. Oh, I want to direct a movie.

Speaker 3 They can direct a movie. I want to be a photographer for National Geographic.
They can be a photography. So it's like,

Speaker 3 I want to do this. I want to build a rocket.
It's unlimited.

Speaker 3 So I think, and that's the thing that I love about the search for people that are doing things that to me feel like it's as close to magic as possible because it defies what we know to be possible.

Speaker 3 It's what I think it's what's amazing about humanity is we just keep improving and we keep learning and we keep evolving to become better and better and better. So yeah, so I think part of the

Speaker 3 search for these fascinating people or this love of

Speaker 3 magic stems from that idea that everybody is basically the same. Like there is nobody that's different than everybody.
And you can apply that thinking to anything.

Speaker 3 And so I'm inspired by the people that do these things, not just magicians, but the people I've been searching for throughout the world that just push the limits of what we would assume to be possible.

Speaker 8 I love that answer. Yeah, that's brilliant.
That idea that...

Speaker 8 Every single person gets to kind of pass on the baton, right? Like that idea of like, I open up the door and now it's open. And I always ask people, I'm like, find your monk.

Speaker 8 And what I mean by that is if I didn't meet this monk, the entire trajectory of my life wouldn't have shifted and changed. It was like meeting this one person

Speaker 8 completely pivoted my whole life journey.

Speaker 3 And whoever that is for you. And you were open to it.
And I understood that. That's open to it.

Speaker 8 And we all just need to be open to that. Like, who's that person who could just completely, or perspective that could completely shift and change your trajectory? That's right.
It's pretty phenomenal.

Speaker 3 I love it. And it's not, and anybody, and what's nice about that is then therefore it's like anything can inspire you to do, to do anything that you, that you want or that you dream of.

Speaker 3 And that's the stuff that, once again, that's what I love about when I studied these incredible performers, these magicians, these vaudevillians, these dime circus, I would read these things.

Speaker 3 I'd say, wait, how is this guy a human aquarium? Like, does that make sense? But he couldn't.

Speaker 3 Houdini wrote about Mac Norton, the human aquarium, but I'm like, but wait, he couldn't have fooled Houdini because Houdini is a magician. He's looking for the trick.

Speaker 3 And if Houdini's saying the guy is really doing it, it has to be real. So that just led, that was like the planting of the seed, right?

Speaker 3 So it's like, and just all these fascinating characters throughout the history of magic. And there's like these surreal images of these posters that these magicians created.

Speaker 3 That when you look at them, it's like this, it's like this fantastical, mystical, magical world.

Speaker 3 So it's like, and that's what I think great books do: they open up your mind, they open up your thinking to this, like, to this, to this, it's like

Speaker 3 not just beauty, it's, it's, it's your imagination, it's your creations, it's your visualization.

Speaker 3 And then it's like converting that into through repetition, failure, practice, repeat into whatever you, and by the way, you shoot for this, and then it may end up here, but you shot for it.

Speaker 3 And so, you know, and it's a constant, you know, which is part of the thing that I love about all of these types of feelings or

Speaker 3 people or inspirations. Like you found your monk who led you into this whole, your brain changed.

Speaker 8 you opened the door right and it seems like that's why you'll never be done because that's what drives you and that's why we'll all never be done

Speaker 8 david you've been so generous with your time i've loved every moment of this you are truly one of the most fascinating people i've ever spoken to and we we end on purpose with a final five a fast five these have to be answered in one word to one sentence maximum okay so these are your uh david blain these are your final five question number one what is the best life advice you've ever heard or received I mean, I like always surround yourself with people that will inspire you and help you grow.

Speaker 3 That was a good one.

Speaker 8 Good advice.

Speaker 8 Question number two, what's the worst advice you've ever heard or received?

Speaker 3 Don't go for your dream. Don't, you're not going to succeed.
Don't even bother. Worst advice.

Speaker 8 Yeah, I think a lot of people have had that.

Speaker 3 If you listen to the people that are, that they're going to, you're, no, you cannot, you have to go for,

Speaker 3 you have to at least try. By the way, you may fail, but if you keep failing, eventually you're probably going to do something.
You'll get

Speaker 3 some version of what you want to do.

Speaker 8 If you wanted your life to leave behind three messages, what would they be?

Speaker 3 That you can find magic everywhere. You know, the connections between

Speaker 3 there's like the way I feel with my daughter, finding that. connection, that surrender, that love is, that's the most beautiful thing that I have ever experienced.
And then one more thing.

Speaker 3 I guess it goes to the first thing, which is just to try to always experience that feeling of wonder. Like always be amazed.
Allow yourself to be amazed. You know, allow yourself to,

Speaker 3 yeah, what we were talking about, allow yourself to see the blue in the sky, you know? Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 8 I love allow. I love that said, allow yourself to be amazed because I think today, yeah, we don't allow ourselves because we're kind of used to it.

Speaker 8 We don't even realize, even though we all make phones look bad, but this is actually phenomenal that it exists. It's amazing

Speaker 8 that it's possible.

Speaker 8 Allow yourself to be amazed is a great line. I love that.
Question number four, when your mother left you with the words, God is love,

Speaker 8 what does that mean to you today?

Speaker 3 It means love is God, God is love. Like the feeling of love, the surrender, that is everything.

Speaker 3 That is what life is about. That's what life is.

Speaker 8 That's the ultimate.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Giving into that feeling, which we're all very guarded. You know, I'm super guarded.
And like you said, as a magician, I'm super skeptical.

Speaker 3 But at the same time, I still do believe there's so much that we don't know, that we don't understand. And we're all connected to this one.
We're all part of this one connection. We're all connected.

Speaker 3 We're all made of the same

Speaker 3 molecules and atoms and material. So I think we're everything is connected and everything is one.
And I don't think there's a beginning or an an end. And energy is neither created nor destroyed.

Speaker 3 So it's always. So that whole.

Speaker 3 Love that.

Speaker 8 Fifth and final question. If you could, we asked this to every guest who's ever been on the show.
If you could create one law that everyone in the world had to follow, what would it be?

Speaker 3 Wow.

Speaker 3 So one law.

Speaker 8 It can be as tangible or intangible as you like. Yeah.

Speaker 3 So then it should be the law of love.

Speaker 3 Simple. Yeah.
I mean, like just that surrender, that, like,

Speaker 3 because that's, there's no ego in that. There's no...

Speaker 8 Yeah, no ego is definitely a

Speaker 3 hard to, you know, it's like we're so locked in all this stuff. Yeah, giving up, just like surrender.

Speaker 8 When do you feel you have the least ego? When do you feel you experience no ego?

Speaker 3 When I'm with my daughters, it's like that's like,

Speaker 3 everything disappears.

Speaker 8 David Blaine, thank you so much for your time, your energy, everyone who's been been listening and watching. Make sure you go and watch the new show, David Blaine, Do Not Attempt.
It's on Nat Geo.

Speaker 8 I can't wait for you to see it. It's phenomenal.
You got to hear some of the stories here. Out March 23rd on National Geographic.

Speaker 8 David takes viewers on an incredible journey where he immerses himself in unique cultures and meeting extraordinary performers who inspire and share their rare skills and secrets.

Speaker 8 And of course, you can also see David at his Las Vegas residency at the Encore Theater and at the win.

Speaker 8 I can't wait to go. I'm coming to see you live.
I'm really looking forward to it. And congratulations, my friend.
And really wonderful getting to know you.

Speaker 3 Well, you too.

Speaker 3 Thank you. Thank you.

Speaker 8 If you love this podcast, you'll love my episode with Lewis Hamilton. Lewis and I talk about why you should stop chasing society's definition of success and how to be more intentional with your goals.

Speaker 8 You don't want to miss it.

Speaker 14 Like, it's not about being perfect. It's about just every day, one step at a time, trying to be better, trying to do more.
I'm learning a lot about myself.

Speaker 14 I have to break myself down in order to be able to be better.

Speaker 1 This is an iHeart podcast.