David Blaine
Appearances
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
No, I had three frogs and also a gallon of water, which is very uncomfortable. Oh, my gosh. In this show, I went to Japan and met Kobayashi, who puts six liters. Is that the hot dog champion? Yep. Six of these inhaled. his stomach in less than a minute. Oh, it's the most painful thing of everything that I do in any of my shows, including breath holding for 10 minutes, including so my mouth.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
That's how I am, by the way. Every show that I do, I don't let anybody sign a release until they see the footage in the context of the show, approve it, and then I give their footage. Yeah, because when I do the shows for ABC, I don't want somebody to be on the show and not like what they did. Yeah.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
That's the most difficult part. And it's a part nobody even thinks about drinking. He has to do that to stretch his stomach out so he could fit all those hot dogs. That's right.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
So you leave New Jersey as quick as you can. No, I left when I was 18 years old and started working.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
I went to the neighborhood playhouse and I stayed with this incredible teacher, Richard Pinter. There was that Robert Houdin quote that Orson Welles, who's a magician, is an actor playing the part of a magician. And in the class, I would do these magic exercises. And I would do them in a very typical magical way where I would do the patter of the trick.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
Kind of. I was more along those lines. And he's like, really read that. And when I started to read it, I realized how ridiculous. And I just broke into a puddle of tears of laughter. So then I started to do magic with my own personality. Yeah, because if somebody could take this and change it into something, it wouldn't be like, watch me kind of stutter. And then it would change, right?
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
I was working at restaurants. I was doing magic to everybody. I started to understand the strongest way to communicate with simple close-up magic. And what I loved to watch was the way people reacted. And the less I would force, the more their reactions would be. So I kind of obsessed over the reactions.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
Yeah, there's people that just run around and flash people. Flash movies was huge in the 70s. I guess when I was in the box in London, I had sometimes women would do that to me.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
Well, actually, the media painted the incidents that were relevant to the story. People would come and they're like, where's all the action? And when they come, there was like nothing. Because I'd say like 99.9% of the entire time was just amazing people. But then you'd get that one egg thrown at them.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
But it was actually helpful to me because all of a sudden it would become about getting that thing off. Then four hours were gone.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
No, but when I was 18, I went up in a comedy club where my friend was performing, convinced me to do magic on stage. And I did a trick. It went terribly wrong. And I didn't get back on stage at all until I was like 30. I kept doing magic. Not on a stage. No way.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
I was doing all the fancy restaurants I'd go in. And at first I was a waiter and everybody would come back just to watch. And they would try to leave a really good tip. And I'd say, no, no, no, tip me a normal tip, but come back. So they'd come back to see me do magic. That's when I was like 18. And then I started just working the restaurants up on Lower Park Avenue.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
That's rare, by the way. Well, Joe Rogan doesn't cut anything. He wants it all to be hyper real. But when I did that and the blood whenever they had to stop because the medics. You did a trick on Rogan and it went sideways. Had him push the ice pick through the inside. Normally I go this way. Pop blood everywhere and they had to because it was a medic.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
No, I'd walk into the restaurant. I would do magic to the staff, to the manager. Be like, can I do magic to the tables? And I won't ask for anything, but if they want to tip me, they can. And that was actually very good. But really what happens, I would get booked to do private gigs off of that.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
Back then, I had a really cool business card. I mean, I had the definite magic on the back of it. It was all black with eyes on it. I would run into people years later that would pull it out of their wallet and say, look, I still have this in my wallet. And then people would call me to try to bookmark.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
me and then they would say how much i would say the price and be oh that's too high and i'd say go get a deck of cards then they'd get a deck of cards i'd do magic to them over the phone they'd say okay you're hired but then i had the idea for the show so i ran around and shot me doing magic to people all over the streets of new york okay so you do streets of magic in 97 and then you do another special the following year 98 magic man yeah
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
Leading into the airing of it is when I buried myself alive.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
I went in kind of Unknown and came out and there was this incredible reaction to it, which was crazy. A dear friend of mine who has a great library of magic, I was living behind his library of magic in a pantry room. And one day he opened up a book, Jadu, which is about the Indian fakirs. And he showed me a stunt where a guy was buried alive.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
And I knew Harry Houdini wanted to do the buried alive stunt, but he had died before he had a chance to do it. He had done another version. But I was like, oh, this is interesting, but nobody's going to believe it. And my friend Bill, who's a great magician, she said, we should bury you. sneak you out, do it in Central Park. Then a month later, we'll sneak you back in.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
I was like, no, it has to be real. Right? So I was like, we're going to do it underwater so everything is visible. And I fought with him about it because he's a magic purist. And lots of my magician friends would fight me on the stunts. Like, who cares about these stunts? There's nothing magic. When you jump off the pillow, you need to disappear and end up in the bottom and then appear back up top.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
And I was like, no, but that's not fair. But it's an illusion that you spend money building. So I was like, I'd rather just really bury myself. And eventually I buried myself alive.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
We went to the cemetery where Houdini was buried, which is out in Queens. They sold caskets there. So we bought a coffin and we brought it back to his apartment permanently. put it in the living room, and I would just practice how long could I go. And what I really became obsessed with, which I had always practiced as a kid, was fasting.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
When you remove everything, your brain starts to change and things become much more meaningful that you would normally just ignore. So you become more sensitive to colors, emotion, to everything. And it's kind of amazing.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
Yeah, you can. So you have to fast for a week before. So I had a trucker's tube. It's called what truck drivers that go long distance have. And then since I wasn't eating. You didn't have to go poop. Right. Even in the 44 days, I had the same setup and it was fine. Except that my stomach shut down and afterwards recovery was terrible.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
for the listener who can't visually see what you're saying you had what a skewer yeah an ice pick when that happens what is the range of emotion that's the thing is it changes it from magic to now it's like freak show yeah fine line i try to figure out the magical aspect of things so i try to show it where there's no blood no nothing you say how could that be possible yeah how is it possible
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
And did you have a goal of how many days? I went in for my birthday and then came out a week later, basically. So I set the time, which was seven days, seven nights. I think what happened was lots of magicians were so against it and they were saying, oh, this is all a hologram. It's not real. He's not really doing it. I remember the amazing Randy when I entertained him tonight. So he's a trickster.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
It's not real. There's no way he's doing it. So people would show up, firemen and people, they'd shine lasers at me. And then I'd be like, what are you doing? Because the laser wasn't going through. It was me. And then I would wave, and then they'd wave back. But what happened was that magician, Randy, they flew him to New York, and he looked at it, and he went, yeah, it's real.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
So then the vibe on it shifted to, oh, wow, this is a guy that's really doing something.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
I was in a coffin and it was buried, I would guess, like nine feet deep. And then three feet above me, there was a see-through plexi water tank. And that was six feet deep. So when you look through the water, I was there right below it. And then there was air pumping in and out. That was my big concern was what if the air supply something goes wrong? For sure.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
Yeah, but we had a very good team and they were in charge and careful. And did you self fund that? Jimmy Niederlander, who was a Broadway producer that I'm still close to. And when I do a show, he will be the producer of it. He backed it. Oh, how does one monetize this? I haven't monetized any of the stunts ever. Only the ones that are on TV. No, those cost more than the budget.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
I always lose off of all the stunts. I usually have to work and do gigs like the next year to pay back the money. I never monetize them. I wasn't accusing you of it. No, I don't advertise it and say I don't monetize them. But even when I do like the balloons, I say I don't want a penny. I look at them as like performative because when I was a kid, I was so struck by strong visuals.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
Like the balloons, for example, I always imagined if I was a kid and I was at PS2 there and I saw a guy flying over my head on a rig of balloons, it would make my brain go crazy.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
We started late. That was the issue. Everything was not right. So it delayed the start time. This was maybe the most difficult recovery after you got out of there. My training was I'd sit in ice baths and see if I could endure that. And then I would go into ice lockers and NIAC and I would stay in them for as long as it was always difficult. But I was like, OK, I can do this.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
It's going to be ice around me. It'll have the igloo effect. It was a warm November. So the air pumping through was 68 degrees. So I was like, this is no problem. And I was completely wrong. That's a stunt that to this day messed me up the most. And I could never, ever redo that one. So what went wrong? It wasn't just the standing.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
It's like the constant radiation of the cold from the ice that you don't think about. Standing in one place, the edema that occurs, everything swells down here. No sleep. And the hallucinations started kicking really hard and it became a living nightmare. And to this day, it was the most difficult stunt that I've ever done. Then there was the drip of the cold.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
No, I didn't surrender because the goal was to finish. We went live on ABC and they were going to break you out at the end. My original idea was I'm going to break myself out, which was ridiculous. So they cut in with a chainsaw. We had made it almost to the end. The vision of this stunt was something that I thought was going to be much better, of course.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
No, everybody there that knew me started saying, you have to cut him out now because I was tripping out of my mind. But when they started going through the ice with the chainsaw, I started grabbing at it. Oh my God. Yeah, because I didn't know what it was. My brain, I was out of it.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
I figured that out through trial and error. So it started years and years ago where I would do acupuncture needles, but I would just go all the way through. I did scans of the hands so I could see where all the blood vessels were. And I started with the hand. I started to build scar tissue, so I started switching locations. Then I started going through the bicep.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
It's the combination of the extreme environment, the standing up, no sleep. Did you catch yourself falling asleep? No, you can't because if you fall into the ice, your face will freeze. You get frostbite. That would be a disaster. So no, I stayed awake.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
Yeah, I'd wake up and I wouldn't even know I was there. I'd think I was on like a boat in the middle of the ocean sometimes. Why?
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
okay vertigo this one's really nuts you stood on a hundred foot high pillar like 90 foot but yeah just under two feet wide without a harness they had the things that could go up and down though so there's those handles if it got windy i had stability but i could have easily had something go wrong and at the end i started to hallucinate really hard again so i was supposed to jump into this little bit of boxes
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
Because they were so worried that I was hallucinating because I thought the buildings behind me were shaped like animal heads, but they were just New York City buildings. Yeah, yeah, there's some gargoyles. So they started to build the boxes really high and as close to me as possible, thinking that I was going to fall off wrong or early.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
A day and a half. The big problem with that one actually was my dear friend James Purse.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
You want an extra strong t-shirt? He made me something really cool. This hoodie with this design. What I wasn't prepared for because it was the end of May in New York City. It was 39 degree nighttime. So now you're again battling the cold and you're standing up there shivering.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
the whole thing so your energy is just depleting quickly so that's something i wasn't prepared for so i think that's what threw that one off for me is just i took a beating that i wasn't ready for and did you ever find yourself wobbly no if there was any time of wobble those things would just come out yeah this is a dumb question but are you scared up there No.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
So I lived on 11th Street and 5th at the time. And I would just stand up on the corner of my building and I would put like a flower pot upside down on the edge of the building.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
Lots of times in the beginning, an ambulance would show up or the fire door. But then they knew it was me and I wasn't going to fall off or jump. But that's how I trained myself. So I just changed my brain. So whether it's up there or down here, it's the same. Like if I said to you, you have to stand here for 36 hours or you will die. You're going to do it. You'll figure it out.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
No, you wouldn't. You trained yourself and just 160 feet up, stood there and looked down and made yourself comfortable that you could rewire your brain. And that's part of the thing that I love about all these challenges is you do learn to rewire your physiology or your brain or the way you think about things from a wiring point of view, etc.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
And what I realized is if you give it time, the blood coagulates. If you give it enough time, you can heal it before it even comes out. And there's nothing. It's about time and about pain control and about relaxation. and not freaking out over the pain. That's the interesting aspect for me.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
That's why they say when you're looking out of an airplane, you're not afraid. But when you stand on the edge of a building, you're afraid. It's because your hard wiring is like, you know this height. Standing on a cliff looking down, you understand it.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
Your brain understands those heights. But through evolution, we were never up 30,000 feet.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
Of course. The mental control.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
One of the most difficult episodes in the new show I did is India. It's the most difficult to watch because they show the suffering because then the people will give more because they say, oh, he's really doing it.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
identity piece of all this so i think for me it starts from a visual because i was struck by those visuals of houdini when i was a kid like standing on that pillar i was with guy osiru at a cafe and he's like oh look at that pole right out there that's kind of cool looking and right at that moment a bird landed on top of it and i was like oh that's got to be my next thing and then i obsessed over that idea of just like a tall column and then i started researching and i found some
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
And I became obsessed with it. But then the fun part for me was learning how to jump because you start at five feet, then 10 feet, constantly trying to learn new things, challenge myself and override the inherent fears that we have. I think that's part of the thing that I love.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
Part of that is proving that we are capable of more than we think.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
As you're saying all this, I'm seeing stranger in a strange land over your head, which is funny. And then above that is brave, not perfect. All these titles are great.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
No, no, no. But I think it's much more simple than that. For learning magic, it was just, I loved how cards felt in my hands. And then I loved how I could change the course of my mother's day with a simple trick. The endurance thing was just being able to override and do something that was unique to me. Once I started to come up with these, how do I make this into a visual?
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
How do I make this into something striking? That was where the love of performance are intersecting with magic was exciting. Even for the series, they said, only give me ideas that when you say them, it's going to make me uncomfortable. I want to do things that make me uncomfortable. I want to learn. I want to break the comfort zone.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
I understood that there's a technique, but I also understood that there's a great risk to this. Yes. And I also understood that you could easily slice your eye. You could do anything. And then normally I have a learning curve. Yeah. I'm like, well, I don't. I don't really have a learning curve. Everything was happening quickly during the last year of filming. And I was like, can I do it?
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
And at that moment, my daughter called. And when she called, somebody was holding my phone. I was like, yeah, I'm not doing this. But I still couldn't get out of my mind because the way he does it just makes no sense to me.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
I would watch it over and over and try to understand how does this make sense? Because it's so counterintuitive. So it was something that wouldn't leave my mind.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
We live by the spirit. That's why they do that. They desecrate. So, yes, that's part of the reason. But therefore, they like to show the blood. And for me, I was watching them do this. And it changed my whole idea of what I do. I'm like, oh, my God, I don't want to traumatize. It was so hard for me to accept that. I stopped them from doing what they do. And he's like, this is what I love doing.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
That's such a good question. I think it has to do with it's an idea that just gets stuck in my head.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
Yes. It's an idea gets stuck in my head and I'm trying to work out the mechanics of it. I'm trying to understand it. That makes sense. I needed an explanation. Thank you. I don't think it's a Bravo type of thing. I think it's more internal.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
I just love Deepak so much. I was so happy to let him teach me something.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
Well, no, but they're not all based on that obsession. One time it's like, oh, 15 minutes. One time, 20 minutes and two seconds underwater. Heartbeat was eight beats per minute. They had telemetry on me. So it was like this fascination with what's possible. Some of it is that. Some of it is an idea gets stuck in my head. Some of it is just the visuals is so compelling that I just want to do that.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
Also, when you're up there, there's a stillness now all of a sudden. And there's no phones. There's no distractions. There's no food. There's nothing about what I'm going to eat. So suddenly you're kind of like still.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
You're present. You feel everything. You see the sun go all the way across the sky. You see things that you would never normally stop and pay attention to. And they're amazing. There's so many different things that drive for each individual thing.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
Or it's a heightened sense of awareness.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
Yeah. People, when they're getting into accidents, they say they see everything in slow motion. And it's because everything else is gone. So you're aware of everything. And you're taking in more data, too. That's right.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
Yeah, it was like a 47-day fast. You drank nothing but pure H2O. 1.2 gallons of water a day. Yeah, 4.5 liters. Where... In London? On the River Thames, right by the Tower Bridge. So it was the most beautiful view ever of the river. It was pretty amazing and surreal.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
Wow. This is my guru taught me. This is my passion. I was obsessed with this guy, Deepak, who's a circus performer, but his guru taught him how to break bottles over his head, how to dive on mounds of glass.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
Yeah. I'd read all the books from people that had done extreme fasts or protests where they would fast against each other, like Bobby Sands when he died in 66 days or so. But then I started speaking to people that had done fasts. And you're always curious, are they really doing the fast like they say? Yeah. Or are they taking some sort of glue? Because it's hard to believe that the body can't.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
I did go right to the breaking point. I do think going that long is too much on the body. Yeah. But the things that I had read about were all exact. They said in about 28 days, in about a month, you start to have this pear taste in your mouth. You switch from breaking up muscle tissue and then the organs and you start to eat your own body, of course. But then it starts to taste sweet.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
And I was so paranoid because I had water that was coming up. But again, pure H2O, no minerals, no nothing. And when I was drinking it, it became sweet in like 28 days exactly when it said it would. Wow. And if I hadn't read that, I would think that they were putting sugar into the water. But I still thought that. I would make people stand below me and I'd pour water out into their cup.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
I'd say, taste this. Is there sugar in it? I didn't trust my own team with it. I thought they were all trying to like save me. Is there sugar in it? They're like, no, it's water. By the way, if you're on his team, you're like, he's fucking lost his mind. I know. Taste the water. And they'd say, oh, it's just water. But that happens.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
And then around 40 days, I started having really bad heart palpitations. It's really bad on your heart, right? It's tough on every organ. How long does the hunger part last? That's gone in two days.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
So in the beginning, I was dreaming of smoked salmon on a bagel with cream cheese. But then as it evolved, I started dreaming of soup. And I would wake up in the middle of the night after like day 30. I'd have vivid dreams. I left the box, got out. I was eating a meal and I'd wake up. Panicked you cheated and wounded.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
And a great starvation expert, Dr. Jeremy Powell-Tuck. We published a paper in New England Journal of Medicine. We were very proud about the effects of the refeeding syndrome because when I came out of the box, he assumed when I was going in, my team even tried to give me sugar vitamins.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
Which, by the way, I probably would have died if I had taken them because the metabolism, your body wouldn't shut down and go into starvation mode to preserve itself. I wouldn't take them, of course. So I did the entire 44 days. When I went to the hospital, he didn't believe it was real. He thought I was cheating as well, which is what everybody assumed because I'm a magician.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
Oh, what's the trick? So he put me on an IV right away and my phosphate levels went and I almost went into shock.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
I think the whole thing is dangerous once you go over 30 days. So I would never recommend anything like that to anybody.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
I don't know. But I know that when they put me on the IV, my phosphate level just... Why did it? The body can't handle it.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
I went on the IV and then boom, a friend has sent a trunk from Harrods full of food to my room. And I was giving it to all the doctors and nurses and everybody. And then two days later, I was so hungry. There was a bag of potato chips in there. And I was like, what the hell? I opened it and ate. Oh.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
agony the worst stomach like horrible pain and then they had to readjust and take care of me again eventually i got back to eating and then everything comes back in full force okay so there was the starvation part and then how do you deal with boredom i always say to everybody boredom is a choice and And I kept writing that. And I had a journal and a pen. That's all I had in there.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
And I wrote over and over boredom is a choice. And everything is perspective. Everything is how you see it. So I think you choose to be bored. And if you want to be bored, that's fine. But the mind has so many things. You know, Rainer Marie Rilke in his book, Letters to a Young Poet, I remember reading that when I was younger.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
And he says, you know, even if you're locked up in the most solitary prison confinement, you can still imagine where you are, what you're doing. You can see your friends.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
I have to say a lot of what I do, and I think with magic as well, is based on numbers and logic. I was breaking it up. It was 1,056 hours for it.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
for days I was breaking everything up into time numbers and then I would say okay I just need to get to the halfway point 22 days which I would then break up to 11 days and then when I got to 22 I was like okay this is now the starting point so I only have to do that again and then I would write all these logic puzzles and things in the journal and things that I just love doing to occupy my mind
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
So this is the episode I do not recommend, by the way, because it's so difficult. For people that like to watch scary things in the shore, you could watch the beginning, but it starts to become really whoa.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
And then also the people that would come, that would walk by to work every day. I became friends with all, you know, I was like communicating. Were you up? It was like 30 feet in a completely glass box.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
No, but they could on that camera that was up there if they wanted to. I think that was one of the first continual live stream.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
Ignoring every signal you're receiving. No, I think Olympic athletes, they have to work much harder.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
No, but I think this is more along the lines of accepting the conditions. But also it's different when you know the beginning and the end. Then it's just how do you get there.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
He tried to cut my water supply off. Oh, yeah. There we go.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
No, I want to hear your opinion.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
I wanted to go find the undercurrent, the things that are really driving what I'm most fascinated by, which is the ability to control pain with your mind, the ability to override what the body's capable of. And they find these secrets that they pass down for generations.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
There was this one guy that used to come every day because his girlfriend wanted to come see it. And he'd be behind her and every day he would walk up and go like this to me, but behind her. She'd be waving and he'd go like this. But when he would come, which was almost every day, he would make my day. I would laugh so hard because he was so passionately angry. Yeah.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
So when he would come, I would smile and wave at him. So he started to come on his own. Then I'd have full communication. He provided such an incredible distraction that he became a very relevant part for me. We became friends at the end when I got out.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
But I also think there's a part to it of what you're saying. That's weird. It makes no sense. And why is he doing it? You paint your own version of what the reason is. You're projecting what you feel onto that person.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
I don't trust you. I'm not complaining. I do fine. But money's never been the decision making factor. So my mother taught me when I was young because she grew up with extreme privilege, but left everything, did everything by herself and was much happier than when she lived in a big house in Scarsdale. She said, the way I think about things is If you would do it for a dollar, she would say penny.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
But if you would do it for a dollar, then you should do it for whatever. And if you won't do it for a dollar, then you shouldn't do it for whatever. When I think about things like, would I do this if it was a dollar? Yes or no. And that's how I decide on almost everything. And it could just be the person or the team. And that's enough of a decision making process.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
Well, that's what I was going to say.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
That wouldn't be fun for me. I wanted to show that I know anything can go wrong.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
Yes. I know that I'm giving everything I have to the audience.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
And I think that was a problem with Houdini. He was so driven by satisfying the people that were coming to see him that he pushed himself to the breaking point.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
Right. That's why he was always in incredible shape and that whole dime circus vaudevillian performing.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
So when I made my first TV show, I was studying Buster Keaton a bunch. And I remember his thing was he tried to do everything in one take, no cuts. So that led to what I was trying to do with Street Magic, was try to get one take, do the magic, get the reaction without cutting. That was inspired by him. He was a phenomenon.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
Brooklyn, 1973. Started in East Flatbush. We moved to Park Slope, but Park Slope during that time, it was nice buildings. It was a beautiful area, but it was a dangerous area at the same time. What did mom do to support you? Your parents were divorced. Yeah. Single mother, biological father. She stayed away from he was messed up from the war. Yeah. He was a minority.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
Supposedly Houdini gave him the name, although that's been disproven. But he had said that Houdini named him Buster when he was five because his parents used to throw him on the board of million stages into the wall. And Houdini said he's Buster.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
Southeast Asia would be the one I would say to watch first. Then Brazil. Then all the others. And then at the tail end, if you're like, okay, that's it. Then, okay, I'll watch India. But carefully. And I also think lots of them should be watched by adults. Watch it first. Make sure you understand. Because there's some things that are scary. Like I push a steak knife into my nasal. Who?
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
Yeah, which is crazy. And then, like he said, the bottle breaking thing, which is what woke me up in the middle of the night, which is why I called the show Do Not Attempt. Horrified of the idea of somebody trying to imitate that.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
The secrets get told. Yeah, or you reverse engineer it like a logic puzzle. You figure it out diligently, and then you come up with your own version by doing so.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
Yeah, and I figured that out by watching the Urz Festival. So they were pushing things through, and I was like, wait, so there's a passage there? And that led to trying to figure out how to turn it into a magic trick.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
No, it's real combined with magic, which is the stuff that I like. Because then it makes the magic more believable because then you're not like, oh, what's the trick? You're like, but wait, that thread is really coming out of his skin. Yeah, what part is the illusion? Right. That's the exciting part. That's right. The stunts themselves are not tricks. It's a different thing.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
You're not in great shape, right? You've damaged some stuff. Damaged, yeah, big time. And I go up and down, up and down. Right now I'm on the up. I've definitely messed up my body and my metabolism and everything else.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
You know that logic puzzle? It's two days ago, he was 18 years old. Next year, he turns 21 years old. How is that possible?
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
Next year, he turns 21 years old. How is that possible?
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
Bingo. Yeah. First. So two days ago, he was 18. Yeah. But yesterday on December 31st, he turns 19. The last day of this year, he turns 20. But next year on the very last day, he turns 21. Yes.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
So he got drafted and there was no way out. He was Puerto Rican. And I think what happens is in order to get somebody to go into these combat zones, they take more. They take whatever they get from the infirmaries. When he came back, it was so difficult because he was hooked. Yeah. So he started with heroin. And then my mother waited for him. She was pregnant, but it was just too difficult.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
That was the craziest thing I've ever seen. I called my optometrist. I was like, what are your thoughts on this? He's like, you're going to degenerate your vision. I was like, yeah, no. But yeah, they go in and pull their eyes significantly out, but it's very difficult to watch. Even the way you're reacting, that's just from hearing it. But seeing it, I couldn't even believe that this was real.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
But what you're saying is right. It does come off as that, but the way he does it. is his guru teaches him a method and he learns how to do it. And it is precision. It is something that he's done repetitively and it's flawless when he does it. It's kind of like, how is that possible? Like, how does he do it? And there's no bump.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
I have no enamel on my teeth. My nerves are exposed. It hurts all the time. Hot and cold. Sends pains into my head. So I don't recommend either. Like I said, that episode is the one that the show is titled. Do not attempt because of that.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
That's the one that's like the most extreme. I'm not telling anyone to eat glass.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
but it's something I don't recommend at all. I always tell magicians, if you want to get into magic, do card tricks. And ironically, that's the stuff people like the most, right? The other stuff is I'm obsessed with finding things out that seem impossible and then trying to figure out how to do those things and combine them with magic.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
For the first time, I'm showing the process of that learning curve. I'm showing what I normally would never share. And by having the real part of it exist with magic, it kind of stops the audience or the viewer or the spectator from just writing it all off right away, which is what you said you didn't like about some of the magic that you've seen.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
He would wake up with these nightmares. So that ended between them. What age were you? He disappeared when she told him she was pregnant. Then right when she was about to give birth, he showed up in the hospital, said, I don't love you anymore. I love another woman.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
It's like immediately like, sure, what's the trick?
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
Do you get on with other magicians? Yeah, yeah. Dan used to work with me. He's great. I have to say most of my best friends are magicians. That's who I spend all my time with.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
And I think that's a personality type. But also magic's a little different because the performative part of it is just like, you're always doing magic. If you do it to the same person over and over, they're going to get bored. So you're always looking for new people. The plane flying heroes do magic to half the flight. I'm lucky to be on a fucking flight and David Blaine's on it.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
But people say, oh, do you feel bad saying no? I'm like, no. I mean, this is how I practice. This is how I improve. This is how I'm constantly training. And this is a part of the process that I like the most is that constant tweaking, learning, changing, modifying, adding things. Have you...
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
Yeah, I do think I keep learning more and more. And I have two of my favorite tricks I've done for the last 30 years. And just recently, a few weeks ago, I realized that you can combine the two. And how did I not realize that for 30 years, these two things combine beautifully? Now, one of my favorite magicians, he was doing this incredible trick that I saw him do when I was 18.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
It was just a card trick, but it was so good. He did it in front of a small room of people that I was laughing and crying at the same time. And he stopped doing magic because he said he was doing that trick that he's done probably 100,000 times. Who knows how many times? Yeah. And in the middle of it, he forgot what he was doing. His brain couldn't process anymore.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
What a place to present. Yeah, but my mother gave me everything. I had the best childhood a kid could dream for. But by everything, I mean love. Or walks through the park or take me to libraries or museums or bring me to Coney Island where I would see those freak performers. We'd go into the aquarium. I'd play with all those different... Yes. Creatures that they have.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
So he stopped doing magic at that point.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
She's just brilliant. The way she thinks and the way she absorbs information.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
I mean, I was lucky and amazed to be around, but I had met her before, and I was blown away by her and thought she was incredible. Yeah, we all were. But I met her before she was famous. Oh, before she was famous. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, isn't she a California person? She was. She grew up in Venice, but not anymore. I still speak to her.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
Yeah. I think that psychology applied to psychics or tarot card readers. I think what they're doing is they're estimating what's normal, what you represent, and then kind of feeling out that information. Yeah.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
And I'm like, that's right, I do. But also you could go into the characteristics of a person as well, what they've been through, what struggles they've been through.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
There was a book that I read which was called King of the Cold Readers, the fundamental book of information on how to read people. It's so old now, it's kind of outdated. Now the way to access information is just so incredible. It's such a different game now.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
Just the techniques that are employed are incredible. But I'd love to do magic tricks, but you might have to sit here. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, good, good. We'll get Monica there. I'll show you the new trick that I was talking about.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
But really, I would go and I was fascinated. And anytime I saw a magician, she would let me just stop and watch. And I started doing magic when I was about five or six. And I would do tricks to her in the library because I'd wait for her to pick me up there. I was at PS230 and she worked a few jobs. So sometimes I would take the subway alone to the school, then back and forth.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
We worked three years on it and we all worked around the clock on it and everybody was amazing. We had the best team and we all gave it our all.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
And also when we went into these places, I wanted to show not like the fancy beaches and resorts. I wanted to show the things that most people never get to see. So we went into places that nobody would go or would want to go or things nobody would want to do and showed the beauty in what they do.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
And all the things that you're seeing, it's like they've really put their thousands of hours into those feats that they're doing. That's why to me it's magic. It's because of the invisible work that goes in that you don't equate for. You don't think about the amount of work and faith and diligence and practice and failure and repeating that they put into it to make it look so simple. Yeah.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
Yeah, yeah. And so that's why I think this is kind of like a discovery of people. They're constantly a student. They never see themselves as masters. They're searching for the next learning curve, the next thing, the next challenge. And they keep pushing themselves. And it was pretty amazing to have a glimpse into that world.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
For me, it's more like the characters. We don't show this, but I'm like in tears every time. I'm so excited and I'm so amazed by everybody that I'm meeting and I would say it's not a favorite episode. The people you love. Oh, yeah. Things that I saw and witnessed and was given an insider into their world. So it's like there's so many things in each thing.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
Ramesh, the guy who built his fire act, but he's a rickshaw driver by David. His passion is fire. David puts fire all over his head.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
And I've seen him before and I was blown away by his act. So then going and meeting him real time and then having him give me a like crash course. Yeah.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
Oh, my God. Turn this off, and I'll show you the good stuff.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
Like, it was... That's not like an atmosphere where...
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
People are active. What time of day?
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
Yes. By the way, I knew what I was doing. You just two stops. You got off. I walked a piece through there, got back. Then I would go to the library that was right there a block away. And then I would wait for her. I say this story over and over. So it's kind of redundant. But my mother gave me a deck of cards around that age. I would carry everywhere that I went. And I loved how it felt.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
That's right. To this day, I fall asleep with cards and wake up with them stuck to my face. Yeah. It's never stopped.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
We were going to beat the shit out of him.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
It was a show like you had never seen before.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
Yeah, but back then I only had the one deck, so I cherish that deck.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
You know, I had a similar, when I had my bar, there was crazy situations at my bar. So it wasn't this place and it wasn't a nice place.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
But things still could get escalated to that point where I'd have to make the decision and not a famous person spending a bunch of money and bringing all of his people, but like a drug dealer that was responsible for a lot of money being thrown around in there and this and that.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
Thought he fucking ran the place.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
Yeah, but then once everyone is so uncomfortable in the situation, you can only let it go so much. And you have, like... guess what? They come back after you kick them out.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
Like, enough's enough. When you have that business, you got to fucking take a stand.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
We had a bunch of fires back then in Brooklyn, so we lost. What was she doing for a living? She was a teacher. She was a social worker. She worked as a waitress. And what generation was she? She was second generation. Her family came from Odessa. They moved to Scarsdale. She grew up with a very privileged life, but she left everything behind when she was 18.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
And just did everything on her own, put herself through school, worked really hard. And education was first and foremost. But the most important thing to her was the encouragement, the love, the support. So it was specific to magic for me. But anything I do is like the most amazing thing she's ever seen.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
Yes. Who were you in school? Like what kid were you? Up until we moved to New Jersey and even in the beginning of New Jersey, I was that nerdy but funny, weird kid. And I think lots of my friends that are magicians were like the kind of people that weren't fitting in. And I wasn't able to throw the footballs and the baseball. But, you know, I was like the kid that could throw the playing cards.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
Yeah, like we would sit at the restaurant and what you're supposed to do is eat your food, but we'd be going...
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
Oh, yeah. That was for making noises. Yeah. Once in a while, it doesn't work out. But for the most part, it does.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
You probably wouldn't chase your suitcase without Monica there.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
Other than my two best friends.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
This is when we're together, it's been, I think, a 50-50 shot. Okay, it's more like one and two. Well, I mean, but I know you go without me, so...
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
Well, I'm lucky that I did it that way because kids are a tough audience. I have so many friends that are magicians that stopped for many years because they did it to other kids and the kids were mean and they felt terrible. So they never did it again. What happens is when you're young and you're doing magic, it's easy to get caught because you're learning. Oh, right, right, right.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
No. I'm jealous. Which is crazy. Yeah, I love watching it. Like, I love the, like, really fast walking.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
Like, it's about to start spraying.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
I mean, the meal has just left the table. Just got taken away.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
If there was a bathroom attendant, like, you'd have to be like, dude, can you just, here's $100. Can you just leave?
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
Our friends split a ribeye. We both got a ribeye.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
They just want to bust you. So somebody got busted with a thing that was like a little whatever string. And after that, after he got busted, he was so embarrassed that he like stopped doing it. So I was lucky that I only did it to my mother and all of her friends. And they were kind of hippies in the late 70s. So all of her reactions were just running away laughing. It was the greatest thing ever.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
That is one of the worst things I could imagine.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
Me too. Yeah. And I'll slice up. Oh, God.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
Why do you think when, like, I don't believe... In Satan, but for some reason, when a magician is real good, I think Satan's involved. Like, all of a sudden, I believe in Satan. You do?
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
Like, I'm like, oh, so he's Satan.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
Oh, I see it. The Ace of Dimes.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
Well, I went there when I was nine. Oh. What's funny is in Brooklyn, it was a different kind of tough. But in New Jersey, the kids were actually tough. One of the kids would walk all winter long in a T-shirt, and I was obsessed with that idea. Yeah, yeah. So I would kind of mimic that and take it to the next level.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
That's insane. I never thought of that. And by the way, I'm not in support of it anymore. But yeah, I thought it was cool. I thought it was... Fighting the power.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
So I started learning these weird skills that somehow connected to magic for me specifically.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
Just give them their freedom.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
That's what I would say, yeah.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
Yeah. Did he tell you, did Dex tell you about my nap that actually happened yesterday after we? Oh, that happened. I got a video.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
He could really take a buster, huh?
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
I have to say, I think it all began just from holding my breath. I was on the swim team at the YMCA in Brooklyn around six, seven, and I was worn. My feet turned in, so I couldn't swim fast. I couldn't run fast. But what I could do is eventually I learned to not turn my head while swimming so I could hold my breath longer and longer. The coaches would say, don't do that. You need to breathe.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
Yeah. That's what I was thinking about the water, too. That was on Stern. I remember they were sending, during his show, they were sending, like, you know, Baba Booey down there. Yeah, yeah. Fuck with them. Yeah, they had fun with them.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
But I was making up on time. So I kept doing it. And then The kids started to watch because I was able to do multiple laps. And then I would challenge the older kids because they would be like, you got to see if you can beat them. And I would just hold the ladder and stand or water holding my breath.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
And I didn't realize back then that the mechanism of just remaining still and calm and overriding that feeling is the success to breath holding. Because really, the other kids, I'd let them go up and down. They would go up and down five times. But the up and down... And that doesn't help.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
It's just not efficient. If you get trapped under a wave, the best thing to do is to just relax and wait. Your body is very capable. Right. But if you stress and you fight, it's like even if you're getting sucked up by a current, you don't fight the current because you're never going to beat the current. You just relax and conserve energy and go with it.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
And eventually you'll find the way out of the current.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
It felt good to be able to do something that it was my own thing because I couldn't compete at the other things successfully. So I think that was the beginning of the love of endurance. Then studying Houdini and his thing was escaped. Obviously, that was his specific thing and he was amazing at it. But I felt like what I was good at was endurance. I was like, how can I...
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
And then the first stunt led directly into it. I was buried alive for a week.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
Are you immediately obsessed with him? Yeah, but it started in the library, the same place that I started working on card tricks with the librarian that showed me a book of simple magic. I saw a book with Houdini, looked at the pictures, and I remember falling asleep. And immediately while I was sleeping, I kept seeing this guy chained to a building staring at me.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
It basically sunk into my mind without realizing and understanding why I just love the images that he was creating.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
No, he was an enigma now and in his time and in all time. He was incredible. But what you're saying is relevant. The things that he left behind were real. So real to the point that he collapsed after doing the breath hold on stage and was rushed to a hospital where he died. Do we not accept that it was from the punch the two days before in Toronto, maybe? Yeah, with the kids in his dressing room.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
Possible. He died in Detroit, right? Yeah. But he shouldn't have done the breath hold. It was immense pain, but he didn't want to let his audience down. So he did the show. He did the upside down breath hold. When he came out, collapsed on the stage, was rushed to a hospital and then died in the hospital a few days later. On Halloween. He was 52. Oh, that's pretty good.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
Once you have kids, you start reconsidering, oh, wait, I don't want to kill myself doing something crazy. Right.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
Even if you don't love the stunts or his magic, because he was a card magician. He was a magician. He had a magic show. Lots of magicians were against him in his day, so he's not a good magician. But I would say he was more like the greatest showman. He was doing the vaudevillian, the dime circus.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
And am I missing a bunch of cool magicians between Houdini and you? Oh, yeah. First of all, there's a guy named Chan Kanasta. He would go on talk shows like the biggest ones in London, and he would just take these incredible risks, just gambling on what people were going to say he was using psychology, magic.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
He was doing the same kind of risk-taking that a guy like Houdini was, but it wasn't dangerous, but it was still putting it all out there. There was another guy named Mack Norton who I was inspired by. He was like the human regurgitator. He was a human aquarium. He could put fish and frogs and they'd live inside.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
And had to never injure a fish. Let's be honest, a few went down in the R&D phase. I practice with frogs and I've never injured one. I believe you. Not one.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
No, what fascinated me was Harry Houdini wrote about it in his book, Miracle Mongers, which is kind of the impetus for this entire show. It's the idea of searching for these incredible people around the world that have these amazing secrets. Some are real, some are magic, but just exploring that.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
And what fascinated me about Mac Norton specifically, the Human Aquarium, was Houdini had taught Build with him and they were on tour together. And Houdini... said that this must be for real. And I was thinking, there's no way this guy was going to fool Houdini. And he knew all the sight of hand and everything else. So I believed it was real, but there was no way to figure out how to do it.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
But I was thinking, there's also a Hirana's Bosch painting from hundreds of years ago, The Conjurer, it's called. But in it, there's a man watching and there's a frog coming out of his mouth.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
No one had ever done that, but I started thinking, if a frog could just appear without drinking the water with the frogs and putting it out, which is what the human aquarium did, if it could just appear, that's the closest thing to real magic.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
So I went into studying the physiology of the body, learning how to swallow swords, learning how to swallow bingo balls, learning how to eliminate the acid from the stomach, not eating for a certain amount of time, putting a gallon of water in the stomach, holding it, what temperature, and then figuring out how to have frogs stay at the very tops
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
David Blaine (magician and mentalist)
Hours? Yes. When I did the scene with Drake, Dave Chappelle, and Steph Curry, I was doing magic and everything else to them.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
No, they don't. They don't, yeah. No, 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. I just put it on, I think on the floor.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. He picked it up and pushed it right through his body. Yeah, it was crazy.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
What they're doing, I think it's passed down for generations. And I think they know exactly what they're doing. 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? They know that they can do these things. So when they push these things through their body, they're just completely at ease.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
And I think therefore their body recovers at a really fast rate.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
Because the body's incredible. The body can do so many amazing things through evolution, right? We've developed these abilities to survive. So 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.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
I was surrounded by a great group of doctors and pulmonary experts and freedivers, and I was holding my breath underwater. And 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.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
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 with, 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. But it was the opposite.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
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. And again, I was at complete peace. And then I was like, why did you pull me out? Yeah.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
I was on the edge of irreversible organ failure. I do have effects that haven't recovered since, and that was 22 years ago.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
I don't think it was going into it. I think it was going into survival mode. There's a boy that blacked out under an icy river. 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. And the body is capable of doing things that we don't even, science and doctors don't even imagine could be possible.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
And at the Earth Festival in India, everything that I saw, it was overwhelming, but it was still like they were doing things that don't make any sense.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
This is not faking it. It's hard to say, right? You never know. But what I was seeing was it was as real as it gets. But then there was one thing that didn't make sense. There was one thing that I started to think, well, what's the magic, you know? So... Who knows? What is that thing? I want to know. You know, the guy pushes the thing through his neck and it comes out.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
But then I looked carefully and there was no, there was no hole. There was no blood, no hole, no nothing. So I, so then I started thinking like, well, so what, how is that possible? Right?
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
You didn't figure it out. 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 real human endurance feats other than pictures of Boudin and stuff like that was a magician that,
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
ate a thread and then he pulled the thread out of his stomach and when i saw that i was like blown away yeah it's crazy and he wouldn't show anybody else but he 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 it's a magic combined with doing something that most people wouldn't want to do and when i saw
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
it kind of changed my theory on what could be possible. And I think I've always had that curiosity of what the human body can endure, what we could tolerate. So I think it was some sort of a trigger that led me on this journey, which was not just as a magician, but what are people doing that? And the magicians I like the most, like Harry Houdini, Ricky Jay,
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
Ricky Jay 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 things. Well, their minds and their bodies to do these unbelievable feats.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
You just went for it. 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... How do you get out of that?
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
For you. I always like 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? When I saw people that were doing things that were defied logic, which is what magic does, but then I knew that there was an element of they are really doing that.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
I think it led me first into the Swami mantra, which led to the Buried Alive, which then led to me...
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
looking into all all the other things I was excited about or you know but 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 yeah but there's no believability to that I'd rather just jump into the box well then they're like well you at least have to just disappear I was like but then that ruins the whole like then it's not a real thing what would they say back
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
I mean, they wouldn't win the argument, but then afterwards they were like, all right, I get it.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
Oh yeah, that was crazy.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
You know, I had done nails in the nose and things like that because you could hammer a nail, you know, back in. But then when I was in the favela in Rio, in Rocinha, this performer, Maestro Legirinho, took a serrated steak knife and he just shoved it in his nose, just pushed it all the way in. And how is that possible? We don't think of that as being, you know, it seems like
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
You're going to do something 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. But obviously, my whole theory is if somebody can do it, it means nobody should do it. But it means there's an explanation. It's not a magic thing. It's like there's an explanation. So it means it is possible.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
So I kind of trusted him and just went for it and just pushed the thing in.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
No, no, no. I watched him do it, and I trusted what he was saying. 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 it was really at that exact line.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
The body is capable of doing things that science and doctors don't even imagine could be possible.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
But again, you're not, it doesn't make sense. But once again, people have survived lots of crazy things.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
I don't know, I don't know. You just could sense it? Yeah, and I trusted him who has done this so many times.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
Just something happening to my daughter. But by the way, these things, when magicians or anybody are telling me, oh, well, I say do the card tricks because that's the best stuff. That's what people like. Do not do these crazy things, which is why this show is called Do Not Attempt.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
Yeah, there is actually. Funny enough, 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. He was just catching bullets in a little cup in his mouth. And he did it hundreds of times and he was okay. But 12 magicians that were doing it as a trick that were switching bullets out and stuff like that, 12 of them died.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
I'm not laughing, but 12 of them died doing it as a trick.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
He was catching the bullet in a metal cup in his mouth. I think one time it sliced through his cheek, but he pulled it off.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
No, I did it.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
I did it. I had my best friend. It's funny because I'm looking at don't shoot. 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? And somehow I convinced him to do it.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
because he didn't want somebody else to mess up and he knew he would get the mark so he did it i caught the bullet that was kind of crazy 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 on a on the trigger of a rifle, a .22 long bullet, and I pulled the string and caught it in that metal cup.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
Another thing nobody should ever do.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
Yeah, for sure. Yeah, that's right. And I do tricks with frogs and things like that. I've never injured a frog. I, they're my daughter's pet frogs. I've kept them for years. They've been with us. 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. But yeah, so, so my doctor's kids now have, uh, uh, these giant.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
And by the way, 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. 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?
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
But there's some sort of, I don't know, bizarre. Yeah, yeah. Through scent or saliva. Whatever it is, yeah, which is crazy.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
Yeah.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
That's right. That's good. Because I agree that being comfortable for me, I think is always the worst thing ever. When you're comfortable... You achieve nothing. You learn nothing. 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?
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
And that's probably what you experienced when you took yourself out of your comfort zone and lived with this incredible monk is then suddenly you're living in the moment. You're living in this heightened sense of awareness. And that's all from breaking the comfort zone.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
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 in India that did the most incredible stuff I've ever... Mind-blowing just the way he is able to override his body with his mind.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
But basically, when they were coming to me with this idea, oh, this one, that one, I said, here's the thing. Only... 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, that.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
And I think that's a big thing that I'd like to do is put myself in major discomfort so I can, so it wakes me up, you know, brings me to life.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. . . . . . ., en P. P. P. P. P. P. P. P. P,實 , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , a in in in
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
It was a bunch of things. So I had a friend that... 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, 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 was one thing.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
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. So I think it was like a constant, you know, for some reason, that's the stuff I was most attracted to. And I loved how cards felt, you know?
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
And I realized he knows what he's doing. He believes in everything that he's saying. And I sat with him in there. And then when one started to come towards, when it was close, he 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. I think, can I get out of here?
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
And he was like, nope, because you can't leave until, until it's a, what you can't do any abrupt movement. So that was the craziest thing I've ever done in my life. You got really close to it as well. It did get really close. But again, I trusted, I trusted him completely.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
Well, he was bitten a few times. So he did go into a coma once. He had a snake-related injury where he lost his leg. So he has one leg.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
Yeah, and he sits with them so people will come and see him and know that if they've seen this, it kind of gets the point across. 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, you can just stay at peace, stay calm on some level.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
So he's protecting the people and the mambas.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
And these are wild. These are rescues. He keeps them and then releases them back. So, yeah, no.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
So they're almost, for me, meditative, like the way they feel in my hands. 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. I just became, I guess, like a security blanket almost, you know?
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
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.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
But you have to stay still. And you have to be at ease. Yeah.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
But it depends. Some you have to, 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 around bull sharks in the ocean or whatever, you just look at them and keep looking because they don't want to challenge you.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
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 it may get a fight back. But if you're not looking, then...
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
Yeah.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
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. So yeah, he was amazing. Wow.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
and and has he got to a place of fearlessness like would he say that he feels fearless or no he feels no i think no i think he respects and and loves these snakes he thinks they're beautiful and incredible so it's not yet sure he's fearless with that specifically yeah but i think it's more like he has a uh just such a deep respect for like you said like you know bowing down to yeah it's that
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
I think it's the same when 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. And as soon as I felt that, I was okay to 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.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
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. And then I would only do it for her and her friends, and they would all react. And that was one part of the...
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
And then from that, it's a leap of faith.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
That's right. And that's the part that's like breaking the comfort zone is 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. The failure is amazing. When you're performing magic, it's the failures that you learn from.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
It's like you're performing a card trick, and you fail. Well, that's where you learn, and you're constantly learning. That's what's amazing about being a magician is there's a constant learning curve, and it never stops. You're always practicing. 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.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
I'm still learning, and that's, for me, the exciting part of everything.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
Right. And therefore you're never an expert, you know?
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
Probably kissing the King Cobra. 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.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
No, no, no. I took time on that one. 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 understood. I mean, that one was a pretty intense learning curve because, you know, they strike fast. And if it gets you, you know...
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
So I think if everything had done that, that might have been the most intimidating one. Probably.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
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. So yeah, it's a collective, but it all happens.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
Yeah, because all the stunts, all the other things that I've done, there was no real immediate risk of death. Yes, something could go wrong, but there's not a... this is a lights out situation where with the King Cobra, I understood the risk was great. 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. Are you scared of dying?
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
I'm not afraid of dying, but I understand, you know, my mother died in my arms. So I don't, And the last word she said to me is God is love. But since having a daughter, it's like you want to live for as long as possible. But previous to having a daughter, I didn't even, I was like, yeah, just whatever. Now, because of my daughter, I want to not do something. It's like, oops.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
She got sick when I was 16 and she died when I was 20. She was a warrior through it and a peaceful warrior. When she died, I felt like my body was like a tree and it was like one big branch of a tree or something and it went like that. It was like an immediate like broken thing. It was like I never want to feel that type of pain again. It was literally like I felt like something broke in half.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
And I was so close to my mother. She was my best friend. She was my world. But then what started to happen was I started to... fine. 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. It was when I was buried alive.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
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, um, 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.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
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? And I went in my head again, Bob, give me a sign. Like, you know, what should I do? And 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.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
And there was a bunch of people yelling, you know, from the tower bridge. And I look over, and I'm not even kidding. Right when I said that, they open up this banner that they made, and it just said, God is love.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
processed early on yeah when when did your mother realize that this was a gift and not just a cute kid who could do some tricks 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 good no but it's like like everything i did she was like
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
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.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
Yeah.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
Yeah.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
Yeah, there are signs everywhere if you pay attention to them, if you look for them, if you're open to them. And it's easy to block off from all that stuff, but it's like, yeah, if you open to it, it's everywhere.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
But you seem to have somewhat of a... 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, nah, then you won't. It's And it's like, I feel like the better approach is to be open to it so you could experience these incredible things, you know?
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
No, I mean, just by being open, just 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. But yeah, when you need those signs, right? 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. You know what I kept writing in my journal when I was in the box?
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
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.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
Because that's the only thing I really brought was no toothbrush, nothing. But I had a journal and a couple of pens. And I kept writing, everything is perspective. 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. Like, you choose to be bored.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
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 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.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
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 that I never get because there's very few distractions. No phone, no this, no that, no food, no distractions really. So suddenly you become hyper-aware.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
It's like a heightened sense of awareness and everything becomes intense and beautiful and beautiful. which is probably what you were doing for the three years.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
It's just a, well, books, books are, that's like a big one, right? Just books, just, you know, I think like books, what books do to the mind is identical to what exercise and does for the body. That's the main problem with the phones is it's really taken away.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
Like my ability to just read a book has changed because I'm so distracted by, you know, so it's like, but it's like just being able to like open up your mind and, and, and explore these incredible worlds that we're meticulously done by these brilliant writers that studied psychology and philosophy and that outpouring of just, you know, knowledge.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
So I think books would be the first thing that have, like, that have impacted me the most.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
So many, yeah. Cervantes, and his life story was incredible. Cervantes, he's fascinating. And then Don Quixote is one of the most, I think, one of the most important books written in many ways. 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-
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
He was maimed on his left side, 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. They took him captive, and he was tortured and beaten for years, right? He wasn't able to really... He couldn't get out.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
And his brother finally raised enough money that he was, by the way, from the monastery, his brother raised enough money. When he came out, 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 she can't afford this, I don't want to do this.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
They ended up putting him in jail for, I think, 12 years. Wow. 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 he finished it when he came out. The book was published and it became like the number one book. book in Europe, but the book publisher, I don't think they ever really paid him.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
So this, 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 the, when he was basically, when he came out, um, They never gave him his earnings. And he died completely broke.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
And the story of Don Quixote is about a guy that wants to make the world a better place, but it's not possible, which is what his mission was. Yeah.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
Yeah, but that's a great book.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
I mean, it's related to everything, right? Hope for the best and expect the worst is the theme of his book.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
Like that ability to... Yeah, that's right. To absorb two different... 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.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
That sign of intelligence is the ability to grow and learn and scrap previous ideas and change the way you think and continue to break everything that you think you know.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
I don't think of it like that, 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 speaks differently. Yeah. And it just speaks differently. Yeah. So I think everybody, like if you look into every single person, there's like, you can find, you know, it's like things that you can't understand or you never...
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
I'm not watching her do anything. I'm like mind blown. It's incredible. If she draws something, if she writes something, if she makes something, whatever she does, it's like whoosh.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
and it's like it's amazing to like explore that you know i like that perspective i like that perspective everyone has everyone can feel that way if they want to it's a choice they do yeah like everybody has their thing that's unique to them it might be that and there's so many you know it's like it's like the skill that i respect on my mother being the best mother ever right that
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
But that's like complete surrender, dedication and belief. That's their special source. Yeah, that's their passion. That's what lights their fire.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
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. 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. She was...
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
Bleeding through her mouth or no, she couldn't even breathe. But when you look at the images of her walking across a volcano lake, it's whoa. But anyway, so there was a man, Andre, who's this fire genius that just respects and love fires in the same way. Neville does with the black Mambas.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
They helped me put together this, this idea of just, you know, doing something off of a bridge on fire and that, yeah. And that was, it was amazing.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
Because you're always thinking like, oh, well, you know, it was bright out. It was a nighttime 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. That's one that's like, that's interesting. So my, the way that this show came to was my concept was if something can be done by one, it can be done by others.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
Right. 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. And 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, the idea opens up that you can do anything or you can do something you didn't think was possible.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
And then it just snowballs and it affects people around. And I think that's what's interesting about the magicians that I love is they create this fantasy land, right? 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. And then it relates to everybody because it's,
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
Anybody that wants to do, oh, I want to write a book. They can write a book, right? You just have to believe in, oh, I want to direct a movie. They can direct a movie. I want to be a photographer for National Geographic. They can be a photographer. So it's like, I want to do this. I want to build a rocket. It's unlimited.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
So I think, and that's the thing that I love about the search for people that are doing things that, to me, fascinate.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
feel like it's as close to magic as possible because it defies what we know to be possible it's what i think it's what's amazing about humanity is we just keep improving and we keep learning and yeah and we keep evolving to become better and better and better so so yeah so i think part of the
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
The search for these fascinating people or this love of 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.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
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.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
whoever that is for you were open to it and understood that that's right 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 i love 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 or
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
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 circuses. I would read these things and I'd say, wait, how is this guy a human aquarium? Like, does that make sense? But he couldn't. Houdini wrote about Mac Norton, the human aquarium.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
But I'm like, but wait, he couldn't have fooled Houdini because Houdini is a magician. He's looking for the trick. And if Houdini's saying the guy's really doing it, it has to be real. So that was like the planting of the seed, right? And just all these fascinating characters throughout the history of magic.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
And there's like these surreal images of these posters that these magicians created that when you look at them, it's like this... It's like this fantastical, mystical, magical world. So it's like, and that's what I think great books do is they open up your mind. They open up your thinking to this, like to this, to this, it's like not just beauty. It's, it's, it's your imagination.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
It's your creations. It's your visualization. And then it's like converting that into through repetition, failure, practice, repeat, repetition.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
into whatever you and and by the way you shoot for this and then it may end up here but that you've shot for 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 or people or or inspirations like you found your your monk who led you into this whole your brain changed you opened the door right
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
And that's why we'll all never be done.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
I remember the good energy. That was something that changed everything about the way I think, that one. Messed up my metabolism, which is hence the side effects of it. But... It was absolutely one of the most beautiful, compelling experiences. Aside from that it was a stunt and I did do it publicly.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
I mean, I like always surround yourself with people that will inspire you and help you grow. That was a good one.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
Don't go for your dream. You're not going to succeed. Don't even bother. Worst advice.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
If you listen to the people that are going to, no, you cannot. You have to go for it. 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 some version of what you want to do.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
That you can find magic everywhere. You know, the connections between... 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...
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
have ever experienced and then one more thing 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 to yeah what we were talking about allow yourself to see the blue in the sky you know yeah yeah i love allow i love that saying allow yourself to be amazed because i
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
It means love is God, God is love. Like the feeling of love, the surrender, that is everything. That is what life is about. That's what life is.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
Yeah. 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 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 we're all part of this one connection we're all connected we're all made of the same molecules and atoms and material.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
So I think we're, everything is connected and everything is one. And I don't think there's a beginning or an end and energy isn't either created nor destroyed. So it's always, so that whole, uh, fifth and final question.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
Wow. So one law, a law.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
Yeah. So then it should be the law of love.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
Yeah. I mean, like just that surrender that like, uh, because that's, there's no ego in that. There's no.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
But it's so hard to, you know, it's like, we're so locked in all this stuff, but yeah, giving up just like surrender. Yeah.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
When I'm with my daughters. It's like that's like everything disappears.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
So I feel like if I didn't do this publicly, I could have never committed to doing that type of a fast. And I was obsessed with fasting because every time I would fast... You become aware of everything around you that you normally ignore. 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?
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
What are we going to do for dinner? And your day is consumed by the... But as soon as you remove all of that, suddenly you have all this...
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
brain activity and it's incredible that's one of the 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 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 and I knew that the only way that I would actually do it
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
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. The people I connected with, it was like I would get emotional just by looking at somebody. And I could never do something like that again. So I think I was on the edge of irreversible, organ failure or something.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
I think I did go on the threshold, but it's funny because I studied, I studied monks. I studied yogis. I studied all of these, the hunger strikers. I read, you know, Bobby Sands. I read all of the books about the people that push themselves to the edge. 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.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
It's like there are certain beats. 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. If you have other things, you keep your metabolism going. And I don't recommend it, obviously, because I do have effects that haven't recovered since. And that was, what, 2003. So it was 22 years ago.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
But there's like 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. And I would say, could you check? Could you tell? Because I didn't trust my team. I thought they were involved in keeping me alive. So I was like, is that sweet?
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
And they go, no, it's just water.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
It happens during starvation. And 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. Wow. And you start to feel like you're eating your body. That's where it starts to become, you start to become aware of that pain.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
But through that pain, you find 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.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
Well, I started fasting, actually. I read Siddhartha by Herman Hesse when I was young. I think like 11, 12, 13, around that time. And his character fasts, waits, and learns how to take control over his mind and body. And I was fascinated with that principle. And then I would just try to test myself with simple things, you know, enduring the cold, holding my breath, things like that.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
But I think it started earlier and then I connected to it with that. 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. You sleep easier.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
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.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
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. 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.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
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, I think, the world record was 11 days. So I was thinking, if you go, I think it's like 11.56 or 5 seconds. But that would be a million seconds. I got obsessed with this idea. And I started messing around with it.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
I met with Dr. Dement, who's like the number one sleep expert at the time up at Stanford. He was there when the record was done at 11 days. And I thought I could pull it off, and I started testing it. The tests were very difficult.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
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. So you could tweak your brain and have it not recover. So I, yeah, so that's not worth it. Losing your sight isn't worth it. So when I was in India and I was at the URSS festival and the Sufi... The video you just showed me.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
Yeah. When they pull their eyes out, it's very, very hard to watch. But I called my dear friend, who's a great optometrist, and I just said, how does this make sense? He said, it could be done, but you may degenerate your vision. So I said, OK, I'm not going to mess around with that. So there is like, can I pull this off or am I going to do permanent damage?
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
And it's studying the past and finding experts and finding people that have done things and then 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. So I'll do a test where I test something to like... you know, let me get to the halfway point.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
If I could do the halfway point, then I can estimate how much more can I tolerate. So that's kind of like, if I'm in a fast for 44 days, I'll do something like a 22 day fast just to, just to understand if I can do it, you know?
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
David Blaine: I Nearly Died Doing This (How to Conquer Fear and Push Your Limits)
Numbers play a key factor.