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Sierra: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Ideas Program at the �����ԹϺ��� Festival. The next session will begin in five minutes. Please take your seats and silence your mobile devices.

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PADDYO AND MIKE ROBERTS INTRO VO

PaddyO: Howdy pals. We've got something extra fun for you today. And to help explain the auditory delicacy we're about to serve, up to you is a voice. I'm sure you'll remember from the podcast days of yore my good friend Mike Roberts.

Mike Roberts: Did we, did we get to good friend? Are we still working towards that? Maybe.

PaddyO: That is, so rude. So rude. Okay, moving along. So anyways, Mike used to host this show, but now you have a new super cool creative gig at outside. Can you tell us how you spend your days now please?

Mike Roberts: Yeah, so I get to build the conversations that happen at the outside festival and summit. So that means I spend my days reaching out [00:01:00] to athletes and explorers and storytellers and artists and activists, and. Explain what we're building out there in Denver and try to convince them to come join us and take part in these conversations.

And so there's a lot of matchmaking of trying to put interesting pairs and groups together for what are supposed to be really inspiring conversations to get people who come to the event to think bigger about their own life, and of course, get off the couch and get outside.

PaddyO: You do an incredible job. I have to give you your flowers here. The discussions at the outside fest are so damn interesting and thought provoking, but there was one in particular this year that felt extra special because this idea isn't one you've been working on for months. You've been tracking down this story, this chat for two decades.

Am I correct?

Mike Roberts: That's right. Yeah. So, uh, as you know Paddy, I've been an outside for a very long time.

PaddyO: Yes. Yes. You have.

Mike Roberts: back in 2006, I was an editor for the outside print [00:02:00] magazine living in New York City, and I got a chance to meet the magician, David Blaine. It was sort of a strange situation. He was, uh, if you remember this stunt from back then, he was living in a giant fishbowl outside of Lincoln Center in Manhattan.

PaddyO: yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mike Roberts: It was essentially like a human aquarium. Um, and.

PaddyO: through tubes and stuff, but not eating.

Mike Roberts: That's right. No food drinking through tubes. And, , like thousands of other New Yorkers, I walked up and said hello. Um, don't think he really remembers me there actually. but he lived inside that aquarium essentially for seven days and seven nights and then the moment after seven days, like the moment he came out, he immediately attempted to hold his breath for the world record.

PaddyO: Oh my God.

Mike Roberts: yeah, well, unfortunately for him, , he blacked out after seven minutes, so. Didn't happen. Yeah. And you know, my reaction at the time to all that was, oh, this seems like a great outside [00:03:00] magazine story., So I brought it to an editorial meeting and pitched it and I said, Hey look, you know, David Blain's doing some really interesting stuff, on, that edge of sort of human potential and endurance.

I think we have a, a profile here and I had a colleague at the time. who said something that at, at first I was just really confused by. He's like, oh, if you, if you're gonna understand David Blaine, you have to think of him as an endurance artist. And those two words together didn't make a lot of sense to me.

You know, I was like, endurance artist. But as he went on to, you know, make his argument, it was that, Blaine wasn't just pushing the limits of what humans can withstand. He wasn't just doing this as an athlete, like the big wave surfers and the free divers. We were studying at the time. He was doing it with this performative flare and that there was something special about that, and it didn't undercut the athletic piece of it and the sort of mental and and physical endurance piece.

In fact, maybe it made it a little more interesting and it got more people to pay attention. I was like, oh yeah, like this is that, that sounds great. Like that's a really [00:04:00] interesting angle. Let's do it. And so I did what, uh, magazine editors are prone to do it. Sometimes when you come across a story you're really excited about, which is I assigned it to myself.

Um,

PaddyO: smart moves. job.

Mike Roberts: It is not, not the only time that happened. Uh, so I reached out to David Blaine's team and to my delight, they thought this was a great idea. I got a chance to meet David and started working on this piece. But then it, it just sort of slowed down. And as I've come to learn subsequently, like David Blaine spends, you know, years on these projects, you know, doing research and, and getting his body ready for them and, and, you know, putting all the pieces together.

And so the, the project that I wanted to write a story about, the next one he was working on was just slowly, slowly playing out. And then I ended up moving from New York to the West coast and I stayed in touch with. David, but you know, we were sort of less and less frequently in touch and, and the story just basically started to feel like it was slipping between my fingers.

And I was, I was quite disappointed about that because it was something, you know, that I wanted to do. But literally, you know, all this time went [00:05:00] by and then at the start of this year, back in January, I heard about a new project that he was working on for National Geographic.

DAVID BLAINE "DO NOT ATTEMPT" TV SHOW TRAILER

It was a TV series called David Blaine Do Not Attempt, and it had him like traveling all over the world to learn from extraordinary endurance performers like he learned, from this one guy, , about. How to swim under slabs of ice in the Arctic. So, so Blaine did that for 90 meters wearing, just shorts and a t-shirt. And then there was this other episode where he went to Southeast Asia and his body, it was just absolutely covered in Scorpions and in Thailand.

He, learned how to sort of work with snakes to the point where he was able to go out in an open field with a king cobra. And kiss the thing on top of the its head,

PaddyO: Oh my

Mike Roberts: so, you know, really interesting wild stuff. [00:06:00] Um, and I was like, this is it. Like this is finally my chance to get David Blaine , and do something with him.

But at this point I didn't wanna do a magazine story with him. And, and really that's partly because. He'd done a lot of magazine stories and I didn't, I didn't think that would get him as excited. The other thing is, I have this job that is supposed to bring people to Denver to be on a stage there. Um, But I also knew that it just, I couldn't just say, Hey, come have a conversation with me. I, I didn't think that would get him, it doesn't help that he lives in Paris when he is not working. So he would have to fly all the way from Paris to Denver. There's like almost no direct flights. So what I figured was I would have to make an offer to him, a proposal that would just have him so enticed, so excited that he wouldn't be able to say no.

And that would have to be a conversation with someone who maybe understood what compelled him to do all this stuff. And I really struggled trying to think about who that would be. You know, for weeks, something like six weeks, I just, I was talking to colleagues and I was just [00:07:00] thinking about like, you know, who would this be?

I, I went through lists of journalists in my head and none of that seemed right.

PaddyO: Passed over Beloved friends and podcast hosts.

Mike Roberts: That. Yeah. This is, this is, this is true., And then I had this moment, and this is honest to God, true, like in, in maybe mid to late February where I woke up in the middle of the night and it was actually, I woke up with like a gasp.

It was like.

PaddyO: Yeah.

Mike Roberts: Oh, right, Diana Nyad. And here's the thing. , So Diana Nyad, you probably know, you know, is best known for her incredible swim from Cuba to Key West. That, became part of that Netflix film that came out last year. Nyad, well, Diana Nyad came to the 2024 outside festival and she gave a talk, about, , that experience, that journey.

And it was unbelievable, you

PaddyO: Right. Yeah. crowd went nuts.

Mike Roberts: Yeah. My favorite photo from the 2024 event is a shot from behind her. She's got a fist raise in the air, and the, the, the room is just, you know, exploding with applause. And the thing you gotta understand about her is she, I. Like David, [00:08:00] really is an endurance artist.

She's not just an athlete. I don't know if if you know this, but she did an off-Broadway play where she, yeah, she, she wrote, directed and starred in a one woman play all about her swim and it was great. And so she's not just. Someone with an amazing story to tell. She really is an amazing storyteller. so I was like, I think this might be it.

I reached out to David with this idea, would you like to come to Denver, to the outside festival and talk with Diana Nyad.

PaddyO: Yes.

Mike Roberts: and unbelievably, but maybe believably? 'cause it was a pretty good idea. He, he, he said yes. And so I will tell you, 20 years in the making. The moment this year when I was able to introduce Diana Nyad to that room in Denver, it was just, I'll never forget it.

Mike: MUSIC

Please welcome to our stage, Diana Nyad.[00:09:00]

Diana Nyad: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. When I first started going after this dream, which is a long time ago in 1978, uh, one of the questions media would ask me is, well, will any boats be accompanying you? And I would deadpan to say, oh, no, no, no. I, I'm gonna hunt fish with a Jim buoy knife. And, um, that's how I'll get my nutrition and I'll navigate by the stars at night.

And, um, so it's true that what it really would've taken to do the swim without a crew would've been a magician. That's the first lead. And by the way, as a quick aside. I had a world class crew and the head of the expedition is here with us. Bonnie Stoll. Stand up. Bonnie.[00:10:00]

Uh, yes, by all means, David Blaine is a magician. But the truth is, and look who we have here, uh, this weekend. Um, we are, we are a playground of the world's best extreme athletes. Alex Honnold was here today, uh, greatest rock climber that ever lived. Rebecca Rusch is with us in the audience somewhere. Uh, Rebecca is the greatest mountain bike climber.

Um, that, that we've had. Um, Melissa Arnot Reid six times to the top of Mount Everest one time without bottled oxygen is with us this weekend. You just met Ian Walsh, you know, surfing the hundred foot waves of Portugal. And let me tell you something, make no mistake. David Blaine is a brother to those of us who try to figure out the phy physiology, the potential of not just the human spirit, but the human body.

He is a superstar in this world. And David, I welcome you [00:11:00] as my badass brother.

David Blaine: Thank you. Thank you, thank you. So it's rare. That I, if it's not magic, if it's just me talking, it's very rare that I actually agree to do these. And as Michael said, he has been mentioning doing something with me for years, and as soon as he said Diana Nyad, I said, yep, done!. Because to me, just from a beautiful, romantic, incredible, just not just endurance, exploration humanity, what she does goes beyond anything that I think I've ever seen anybody do.

And I feel like I actually, I was just watching the other shore crying [00:12:00] repetitively, but I feel like there's so much that it, it would be impossible to even try to understand. So I. And, and I picked her brain. We just met a week ago, and I've been picking her brain and I said, I want to talk about you forget the, and the things that the other shore doesn't mention.

First of all, to be in, in, in that extreme environment of the ocean. They, they say like the two unchartered territories that, that we know the least about. Outer space and the ocean, right? We know very little. So to be in that extreme environment, hypothermia, sleep deprivation, hallucinations, sharks, box jellyfish, or Portuguese man of wars, every single thing that you could think of and endure that, and to keep going and to go back and do it.

To me, what, what you've achieved, [00:13:00] accomplished, and have set out to do and have never let anybody ever stop you. Diana, it's just an honor. You're an incredible inspiration. You, David, thank you for having me with Yeah. I don't think there's anything to talk about with me. There's the whole story's there.

Thank you. And to me, it's the most badass stunt. You guys, you have to watch the other shore. The movie, uh, yes, is great. The other shore is when you see her eyes, when you see her reaction after being stung by these jellyfish, that that half, half the people may die. Just to be and to see that look, it was, it was like, for me, it was unlike anything that I've ever seen anybody do to push themself in that endurance kind of way.

So,

Diana Nyad: thank you, David. Yeah, you, David's very busy, but as of tonight, he will become my publicist. So, may I start, may I ask you? Yeah. So, you know, I'm sure you are, are [00:14:00] familiar, um, with, with many of David's, I, I don't know really whether you call it tricks, stunts, maneuvers, you know, what's the right word?

What's the respectful word for this wide range of, of activities that you do?

David Blaine: Well, I think it began just with the love of magic. So it began with something simple. I was a kid in Brooklyn, single mother. She gave me a deck of cards. She worked multiple jobs to put me in a good school and I would just carry cards everywhere that I went.

But I didn't really know what to do with them. I just loved how they felt. So they were almost like my security blanket, the stick of cards. And when I would wait for her to finish work, I was in a library waiting for her to come. And a librarian said, oh, we have this book of self-work magic tricks. Can I show you one?

And she showed me a simple trick. And now magic books are not in the art section. Magic is like tricks, games, puzzles, magic. So it was always that little section that nobody would ever really have access to. So it wasn't [00:15:00] a big group of books. But this trick, when I learned it, when the librarian showed it to me, it's like five or six years old when I did it to my mother.

She went crazy, running away screaming, and I realized at a young age that a simple trick could make her day even if she had a terrible day. So I wanted to learn more and I kept practicing and trying new tricks, but around the same time, which answers the question of what do I kind of label it as? I pulled out a book, and on the cover of the book, there was a guy chained up to the side of a building, staring at the camera, and it was Harry Houdini.

Now, I didn't understand much, but I know that from that moment on, I would have reoccurring dreams of this guy chained up to the building. And I don't know if it was scary or if it was beautiful or probably like what you do. Scary and beautiful and intense and everything that I love. It made me explore that world and the [00:16:00] idea of being a magician, but really searching for things that humans should not be able to do.

Things that seem impossible, but are actually real. That became one of my fascinations. So,

Diana Nyad: yeah.

David Blaine: Yeah. I don't know how you'd label it, but Yeah. Yeah. But, and as I say,

Diana Nyad: it's so wide. Um, I recently, before I was gonna meet, you watched a lot, uh, a lot of the new Nat Geo series. Um, just blow your mind what he's doing in this thing.

But, you know, how do you go from being a kid, a 6-year-old in Brooklyn, learning sleight of hand with cards? So I'm sure there's some science to that too. The hand they say is quicker than the eye. So there's a little bit of that hold on's. Something of distracting the person. Right. So, go ahead. No, so that's

David Blaine: not actually true.

So basically no. So, so basically no. So basically our, our vision, our eyes are like the worse than the first camera phone that we ever had. So the, the resolution of our eyes so low, the image is upside down. We have the [00:17:00] optical nerves. There's a big. Black spot in the middle. So basically the mind paints a picture.

It even turns it upside down. So with magic, you don't know what you're seeing. So if you're talking somebody through something and they think that they're seeing one thing, you make them see what's not actually happening. So I think part of the stuff that I love is using the just normal psychology and incorporating it into everything that I love.

Okay. Okay. So it's not that the hand is quicker than the eye, it's thank you's. Just that the eye is very low resolution, doesn't really see things that well.

Diana Nyad: Well, that explanation's leading me to the whole thing that I'm personally most interested in. I mean, you could say that. You know, clearly that, you know, what you do is, um, let's not say the card tricks, but all the rest of it, living in a coffin for seven days, uh, with, with nothing but a, a stream of water.

Is that all you had going on water? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And you know, we, we could go, I'm sure you all know many of the things David's done, but you could say that it's absolutely unrelatable, right? We, we can't [00:18:00] imagine it's unrelatable. And on the other hand, because it's the human body, um, there is some fascination and some connection.

You know, uh, to, to what the lungs can do, what the stomach can do, you know, what, what, what the vision, how can, how long can you hold your breath? So if you haven't seen his Ted talk, uh, you probably have, because 22 million people have seen it. So I assume you guys have seen it as well. But, um, you know, 17 and a half minutes.

But just today, David was doing a card trick and he said, it took me 12 years to learn this trick. So it's like an athlete preparing, you know, for with the physiology and the, and the quickness and whatnot. But how did you go from being a 5-year-old doing card tricks to doing these very extreme events where you could die and you almost have died several times?

David Blaine: Well, I think it started once again, so single mother kid in Brooklyn also, I was waiting for her often at the YMCA. And I joined the [00:19:00] swim team. But as a kid, I was born and, and, and hence why, another reason I'm obsessed with her, but I, I was born with my feet turned in, so I had leg braces and they straightened my, the feet out, but I still don't swim properly.

But in order to not be last, what I would do is when I was just swimming, instead of turning my head to breathe, I would just swim straight. And then I would do a lap without breathing. Then I would do two laps, then I would do three laps. And then I started to research Harry Houdini, who had three and a half minutes of a breath hold.

So I was obsessed with that idea. And the older kids would come and they would kind of watch me do laughs, watch me not breathe, and then they'd compete against me and I would hold the ladder. And I, I didn't know the physiology of breath holding. I didn't understand anything about it. I was a kid, but I would

like this. Right. And the other kids could go up and down while I was holding my breath. But that's actually. It's, it's the opposite of what you wanna do. If you wanna hold your [00:20:00] breath, you have to override your body with your mind, which is what I'm fascinated with. So the idea of just staying there and sitting it through and just fighting what your body's trying to tell you to do and just waiting allows you to be much more efficient than the guy that's going up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down.

So I was able to beat the older kids in breath holding and, and that was kind of the beginning of that love of, I think, using your mind to override your body.

Diana Nyad: Yeah. Yeah. But is 17 and a half minutes now the world record.

David Blaine: No, the, the world record is now, I believe, 24 minutes and three seconds. Oh my God. Oh my God.

But so the 17 minute and four second that Diana is talking about, I actually, in training, I actually did 20 minutes and two seconds and I had pulmonary experts. I had doctors, I had a, a, a good team, and I had telemetry hooked up to me and I was under the water and I was at 20 minutes and two seconds and they pulled me up and I was like, why [00:21:00] did you do that?

Because you know, you go to another place at one point. And they said, well, your heart rate was eight beats per minute and we didn't want you to go into cardiac arrest. So they pulled me up and I was like, ah. But anyway, that was good because by pushing so far. When I went on the Oprah Winfrey show to go for the world record, which was at the time 1632, it, I already had the confidence that I was gonna be able to do it.

And the circumstances were difficult because live on her show, I had to be strapped in. I had a wetsuit on because I dropped the temperature of the water to about 85, which, as you know, you're not warming up that ocean. That's taking your core temperature down quickly, which is the other thing I'm obsessed with about what you've go through.

Go on, go on. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, so yeah. So I was, I had to, and I had a wetsuit on to keep my core temperature up. So the body's going up, so now I'm using my feet to hold my body down, and they also put the heart rate monitor next to my ear. So I kept hearing the beeping, which is throwing [00:22:00] everything off, and my heart rate was going like 1 50 40.

What? And I was, so, I was having ischemia of the heart and I just kept pushing through, pushing through. But because of the 20 minutes and two seconds, I knew that I wasn't gonna. Die in front of the Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So although you told

Diana Nyad: me today, he says today, you know, the kids in high school get high and whatnot.

He said, the greatest high I've ever had, and I've had it 40 times, is blacking out. Because when you come back to consciousness, it's just a, it's an other worldly thing. So you, you, that's a high for you. Blacking out. Well,

David Blaine: so yeah, it, it is pretty amazing. They, they do, I don't recommend it, but they do say a great way to die is to drown.

Right. Because everything just, but anyway, when you black out you, but, but not, but, but when you black out everything's, you go through and you're out. So that's the painful part. 'cause you're fighting, you're fighting and your brain says That's it lights out. But when every time I woke up [00:23:00] from that, I was like, whoa, that was amazing.

'cause you kind of have this weird dream world that you go through, but the Navy Seals. In training, they, they carry the 45 pound plates and they're roped up to it and they have to walk across the bottom and their trainers are swimming above them, looking down. And the, the Navy seals black out underwater, and then they bring them up, cut the rope, and get their head open.

And, you know, and, and everything is fine. But they do that to learn that they should not fear blacking out. 'cause now shallow water death is a terrible way to die if you're not with somebody. But if you're with somebody that's watching and monitoring and they know what to do, then they get you up and, and everything is fine.

So that was, yeah.

Diana Nyad: Well, you, you just brought up the word fear for the first time. So, um, many people, um, ask me, you know, about you're going out into the ocean for two and a half days, um, dangerous sharks of the tropics underneath you, the boxed [00:24:00] jellyfish emits the most potent venom on planet earth. There's no animal that can kill as quickly as a boxed jellyfish, but I can't afford to be afraid.

If I'm out there swimming on the surface, all I see is Bonnie, I'm breathing to the left. I've gotta have a team I trust in, I've gotta have shark experts who know those chalks to the tropics. Um, Dr. Angel Yanagihara top box jellyfish in the world, who knows their behaviors, knows their locations, what to do with me if it happens.

So I, I can't be afraid, but here you have put yourself in so many could die near death experiences, blackout. Have you ever worried about brain damage, about losing your life?

David Blaine: When I do worry about that, I actually did. So I, because all for all of my stunts, I have to. Stay awake throughout the entire duration of them, which is usually three days or so.

And, and I usually hallucinate somewhere around like 55 hours depending on the stunt. But so out of the obsession for [00:25:00] sleep deprivation, overriding it, I was thinking about trying to get the record for not sleeping, which was about a million seconds. 'cause a guy named Randy Gardner did it, I think in the sixties where he did 11 and a half days.

So I was thinking, oh, 11.57 days. But, but in rehearsing it and trying it, I felt like it's very easy for something to really go wrong and not return. So I kind of let that one slide. So I, I moved on from it. And that, and that, that's what I wanted to ask you about because I know your passion was going from Cuba to Key West.

That was your passion and, and, and you were so, your perseverance, your willpower, your, your dedication not quit is just keep

Diana Nyad: going. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But yes,

David Blaine: but still. But, but I want to know is did you have like a, along, along the way, did, did you ever, like, did you have other things that, that would, that like, just, I like swimming around Manhattan, things like that.

Did you have lots of other ideas that you thought of and then you didn't do? Or did you go after [00:26:00] every idea that you had? I was very curious about

Diana Nyad: that. The, the, the, the ones that moved me most were Manhattan Here you're in, you know, I was going to graduate school in New York City and, you know, marathon swimmers, um, how many open water swimmers we got in the audience?

I bet we got a bunch. There we go. My, my brother and sister back there. So, um, you're, um, you know, it's a blue planet, right? You can choose, you know, umpteen thousands and thousands of places to swim, but usually you pick something that's, that's close to your heart. So here I am going, I was born in New York City.

I'm going to graduate school in New York, and we swimmers are going to swim over in Greece and islands and off the shore of, of, uh, Argentina and whatnot. And I, one day literally I'm running along the Hudson River and I thought. This is the most famous island in the world. Why are we not swimming around this island?

Then I researched and it turned out people did way back decades before, but the swim was dead. And so that excited me. The, the uh, you know, like you're in this performance art, you know, I wanna, we wanna get into that too. Uh, but swimming around [00:27:00] Manhattan and, and one, uh, minor detail when I did it, I swam around going counterclockwise, breathing to the left, and I was the only one.

I researched it, all the people who did it before me breathed toward New Jersey all day. What? And, um, I saw Manhattan. I saw Manhattan all day long. And then the Cuba thing was clearly, uh, you know, just, it was in my soul. You know, I grew up down there. There was born in New York, but I grew up in the Miami area, Fort Lauderdale.

The Cuban revolution happened. I was a 9-year-old swimmer this big, and, um, we were fixated on that. Suddenly within 24 hours, that forbidden island, when Shea and Fidel rode their horses into Havana, all Cubans had 24 hours if they wanted to leave or live under socialism, they came into my hometown. And all of a sudden, that place, we knew we had danced salsa in the hotel.

National, my parents did. It was forbidden. And all of a sudden I got fixated, as many people did. Most people didn't wanna [00:28:00] swim there. Um, that, you know, I don't recommend it, frankly. Um, but I stood on the beach with my mother one day and said, mom, everybody says it's so close Cuba, but I can't see it. Where is it?

And she said, it's right there. It's right across the horizon. A matter of fact, it's so close, you, little 9-year-old champion swimmer, you could actually swim there. And that, that lodged in my imagination. Wow. But unlike you. All I did was long distance swimming. I wasn't breathing fire. Um, I wasn't locking myself in an ice cube, you know, for, for days and days.

So, you know, we, I was just about to bring up the whole performance art, because you have to be authentically curious about doing the trick. It can't just be, you know, the, the wealth of it and the fame of it. Um, and you, you have all that. But I watch you on this series. You are so genuinely engaged. You know, he goes to South Africa and then to the, the Amazon in Brazil and all over the world watching [00:29:00] the locals, whether they do their swords down the throat or whether they eat, uh, uh, glass glasses of nails and whatnot.

But you are standing around going, wow, look at this kid. Look what he can do. So it has to come from that, doesn't it?

David Blaine: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, I mean, so it, Ricky J, who is a great magician and a friend of mine. Wrote a book called Learned Pigs and Fireproof Women. And he wrote about all these incredible people that had these really profound, strange, but incredible skills that nobody knew how to do.

They there, there was no guidebook on how to do them, but they were almost in line with magic, or at least the kind of magic that he was drawn to. And Harry Houdini wrote a book called Miracle Mongers and their methods, which was he would hang out with people that he would be on the vaudevillian circuit with.

One guy was called the Human Aquarium, Mac Norton, and he could put a, uh, four liters of water in his stomach and he would put [00:30:00] frogs and he would put fish inside and he could keep them inside for hours and then bring them up at will. And he would fill kids' glasses up with like a, a fish and a, and a bunch of water, and he would give it to the kid.

But, but I was, but so when I was thinking about it, it was like, wait a second. If Harry Houdini is top billing with this guy and he's writing about this guy in his book and validating that this guy is really doing it, it was like, he's not fooling Harry Houdini with sight of hand. So that, that kind of led to like my obsession with, oh wait, what could you do with your stomach and what could you convert it into and what could be done?

So I started working on stupidly drinking kerosene, which I would float on top of a gallon of water, and then I would light a fire with the kerosene and then I would put it out with the water. And that was the beginning of like my pursuit of turning the stomach into an aquarium and, and, and my love [00:31:00] of, of, of using the body for magic purposes.

Diana Nyad: Yeah. You know, we were just backstage and David brought up a video. Um, he's doing a Broadway show, and by the way, he doesn't care about promoting anything. He's not promoting his, his, uh, Nat Geo series is not, he's not promoting his Vegas show, which will become a Broadway show. But he shows me this video of doing, um, what the other magician did.

Um, he flooded his stomach, you know, which he had to learn to do over a long period of time to tolerate that. And then he had a live frog in there. But he doesn't understand that the woman on stage with him gonna gonna observe what's gonna happen and come up is frog phobic.

David Blaine: It was her number one fear. It is her number

Diana Nyad: one.

She's not afraid of snakes, but she can't, she can't tolerate it. And so she's watching what's gonna come up, you know, it's gonna be a goldfish, it's gonna be, and when it's a frog, she goes, ah, she screams and runs off the stage. Yeah.

David Blaine: And her husband was so funny 'cause he was up there with her [00:32:00] and uh, and, and, and he just started laughing.

He goes, yeah, she's afraid frogs. He's like, falls was amazing.

PADDYO VO:

More from Diana Nyad and David Blaine, live from the �����ԹϺ��� Festival after the break.

MIDROLL MIDROLL MIDROLL MIDROLL MIDROLL

Diana Nyad: talk to us a little bit about your vision. Yeah, because you know, you're doing so many of these shows over so many years and you'll continue, I'm sure, for decades. So you, you have to, as we say, it's a performance art, so it doesn't work unless it's visual, unless it's exciting, you know, to, to the public to see.

So how, how do you spark to these ideas?

David Blaine: Yeah. So lots of the idea. Well, so, so the thing I always felt like that was like the ability I was most intrigued by was endurance. And I, you know, I, I started with, you know, Harry Houdini was an escape artist, and his, his stunt that he didn't get to do because he died, was called Buried Alive, and he was gonna get [00:33:00] buried an escape.

And I, I, I stared at this poster of him called Buried Alive, and I was like, oh, I want to do that, but I'm gonna do it for real. And I had like a Bonnie to, I had another magician, bill Kalu, who's a great magician, but he's a sight of hand guy. And he fought with me. He's like, no. You're gonna get buried alive, we're gonna bury you in Central Park under dirt, and then we're gonna sneak you out.

And then, yeah. And then a month later, we're gonna sneak you back in and, and we'll do this great stunt. And I was like, well, what's the fun in that Uhhuh? What's the point of that? No. And, and I said, for the audience to appreciate it, they have to see it. So my first stunt in honor of Harry Houdini was buried alive, and I buried myself under a six ton water tank.

So it was visible. And even though I was visible around the clock for a week in the water tank, everybody thought it was a trick. Everybody thought it was an a hologram. It was illusion and firemen. And people would come and [00:34:00] instead of like waving to me, they'd have their lasers and they would shine their lasers on me.

I'd be like, what are you doing? And, and, and then eventually, I guess some people started to realize that it wasn't a hologram and it was real. And that was my first. So-called Endurance Act.

Diana Nyad: And this became important to you because I, you know, when I was starting to introduce you, I said, it's not a negative term magician.

It's a magical term. Um, but, but you also, along with magic, you want to do true valid endurance. They're not tricks, endurance events, you know, it's, it's important to you, right?

David Blaine: Yeah. Very. Yeah. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's greater passion of mine is shuffling a deck of cards or, or just manipulating cards all day and all night, which is what I do constantly.

And I think the same thing is, is my obsession with being able to just. Try to push yourself to achieve something that you shouldn't be able to do. And most of the stunts always have [00:35:00] fasting, so I always fast before, so to be buried alive for a week, I had to fast for a week first, so you wouldn't have to go to the bathroom other than, than number one.

But through fasting, I started to, your brain changes and the world becomes amazing, the stuff that you experience because no longer are you thinking about food and, and, and it's almost like you move to a different spiritual mindset. And that became like the impetus for one of my favorite things I did, which was I put myself in a box over the River Thames in London for 44 days and 44 nights with nothing but pure H2O.

And. There was a book that I read, a short story by Kafka called The Hunger Artist. And it's about a dime circus performer that, that he's doing his shows and nobody shows up. So he says, I'm gonna put myself in this cage. I'm gonna stay in this cage and not eat. And people were like, no, is he really gonna do it?

And they all started to come to watch him [00:36:00] do it. And at the end of Kafka's story, the guy is still in the cage, but you can't see him. He's, he's invisible 'cause he is starved himself for so long he always stood away and every, yeah. And everybody's there to see him, but there's no one there that, that kind of led to that stunt because I liked it as a performance piece.

I like that element of it is interesting to me. So combining that with what can you tolerate, what can you physically handle? And, and then pushing as far as I can now, my own doctor was one of the top starvation experts, and at the end of the stunt, when they brought me to the hospital. He assumed that I was cheating.

He assumed that I was taking glucose or, or some, something to help me get through. So when I was in the hospital, they put me on the IV and my phosphate levels crashed and I almost went into shock and suddenly he said, oh my God, wait, he's, he, he really did this. So he actually took bloods, collected urine, [00:37:00] and published the paper in the New England Journal Medicine called the Refeeding Syndrome, which is kind of like, you know, when people starve themselves for an extended period of time, usually if it was like a protest against the government, they wouldn't be giving all of the blood and all the, you know, all the samples.

They, but he used it to kind of show what, what happens if, if you wanna bring somebody back properly. So, so that, that I was pretty honored that I, you know, 'cause, 'cause most the people, because they're the science, assume you're,

Diana Nyad: you're helping the science world,

David Blaine: but it's also because I'm a magician. Most people assume everything is a trick.

Right. Like, what's the trick?

Diana Nyad: It's an illusion.

David Blaine: Yes. Or what's the trick behind it?

Diana Nyad: Yeah.

David Blaine: Yeah. So when I've held my breath on stage, I've had people write, oh, well there was a glass plate in front of him, and, and there's no way he was really holding his breath. And he, he, the act used to be that I would eat underwater, so I'd have like a banana, I'd have a things underwater while holding my breath and people are like, oh, there's oxygen in the bene.

But [00:38:00] none of those, none of those made sense because where would the bubbles be that are coming out? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like you have to exhale. Yeah. Yeah.

Diana Nyad: Talk about, 'cause I was so. Riveted when I, when I saw your Ted talk about the 17 and a half minutes holding your breath. Um, first of all, today in doing a card trick, you said it took you 12 years to learn that trick.

So when you're talking about the 17 and a half minutes, most of these things you do, they take years and years, right? Of practice knowledge, uh, you know, getting into it, right? Yeah. So, tell people about, you know, so I can't, can't remember something you had put in the blood that needs less oxygen. I What were some of the elements of the body you learned about where you don't need oxygen?

David Blaine: Well, it's, it's not that you don't need it, it's that it's that we're able to endure much more than we think we can.

Audience: Okay?

David Blaine: So it's like, you know, when, when we have the urge to breathe, obviously when we're holding our breath, but it's a co buildup, the CO2 buildup in the bloodstream that makes you feel that pain.

So in order to learn to override that. I trained with free [00:39:00] divers, and they would, they would do these tables every morning that they taught me. And by the way, we're at about one mile up, we're about 5,000 feet here. And I remember I was, I was sleeping in, in, in, in, in a low oxygen tent every night trying to get the red blood, you know, trying to increase my ability to hold my breath.

And, you know, every, which simulated it was 15,000 feet altitude. So it was like base Camp Everest. But I remember I was in the daze all the time. Then I, but I was in New York City doing it. So then I'd come out and it would, I don't think it helped really, but every morning I would late, nobody, which was

Diana Nyad: just fun.

David Blaine: But every morning what I would do is I would purge to build up my resistance level. I would purge for a minute, so I really hard aggressively, and then pH. That I would hold for six minutes and I would immediately fall, purge for another minute, and then hold for six 15. Purge for a minute, hold for six 30, purge for a minute, hold for 6 45.

Purge for a minute, hold for seven minutes. And [00:40:00] by the time I was done with the first hour of that, I was like a space cadet because I only, I, I breathed like a total of nine minutes, right? So I would walk around like a space cadet. And when I was training one time I was in Mexico and I was with my friend who's my best friend, who's from Cuba.

And we were going to eat and we're sitting at the restaurant and he's being polite like she is with you. Like he's, and, and I'm staring at the menu and I can't figure out what to eat. I'm staring at this menu. And after 20 minutes of staring at the menu, he says, yo, yo, Dave, you, you read Spanish. And I was like, oh, the menu's in Spanish.

I didn't even know. So, so the training for that was just constantly like, you know, flushing out all the CO2 O2 deprivation.

Diana Nyad: Yeah,

David Blaine: but it was all worth it for the breath hold.

Diana Nyad: But I didn't know about you. We were talking before about this is absolutely [00:41:00] unrelatable, right? None of us can do this. None of us will ever do this.

And on the other hand, aren't you curious, aren't you curious like how long you could hold your breath? What if you had to, what if you were, your car went over the bridge and under and you're trying to get out, but you can't get out yet. So you learn the things like keep your pulse low, you know, don't do much activity, stay really calm and, you know, not that any of us are gonna be in these situations, but I'm very, uh, you know, curious and, and taken away with what, what the parts of the body can and can't do.

And you're saying don't even say they can't do, mostly you could do anything.

David Blaine: By the way, have you worked on breath holding?

Diana Nyad: I have.

David Blaine: How far I have. How did you go? Uh,

Diana Nyad: yeah, I was thinking of coming up to challenging you with this, but, um, no, but, uh, as kids, we used to swim a hundred meters underwater and, uh, that would take a little over three minutes.

I understand you're 14-year-old daughter

David Blaine: moving. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Moving

Diana Nyad: has held her breath for three and a half minutes now.

David Blaine: Wow.

Diana Nyad: Yeah, she's in training, she's a magician in training, [00:42:00] I, I, I don't mean this in a rude way, but just because you do this, you know, as we've said many times, these wide variety of, uh, of, uh, of events, I've never been one who's been a fan of the eating contests.

You know, Joey Chestnut not to, not to pick on him, but all the ones who can eat 300 hot dogs in five minutes. I didn't know. For me, it's been an affront of people who are starving around the world. Um, but. You changed my mind when I've watched you and you've watched these people in foreign countries take down water and it's, it's now we're gonna try to understand the digestive system, just like you're understanding the pulmonary system.

And it actually makes sense to me that it's, um, it's, it, it's a wonder just like you can hold your breath, that you could take that much into the stomach and control it, you know? So I, I, I, I, you know, I've come to appreciate it more than I used to. I was up for an award from ESPN, they call it, I don't know, Bonnie, if you can remember what the name of it is.

It's a, it's a, [00:43:00] yeah, it's the, it's the Science of Sports Award and uh, the guy who first surfed the a hundred foot wave was there and Aaron Rogers, who threw more revolutions per, per second with the football. So there were five of us and we all had great respect for each other. We got around and then there was Joey Chestnut.

He, he ate like thousands of hot dogs. And, um, so the five of us got together, you know, we were gonna cause a mutiny and we all said, I don't care who wins the surfer, the, you know, the, the football player, me, I don't care who wins, but if Joey Chestnut wins, we're gonna get up and walk out. Uh, and um, and it turns out we didn't have to, but, but because I've watched your videos, now I'm in, I'm in much more of appreciation of what that part of the body, you know, what the potential there is too. You know,

David Blaine: so when I traveled to Japan, which she's referring to is I met somebody who I'd heard about named Ko and he was. A boy, his dad wanted him to travel and see the world. [00:44:00] So his dad used to force him at the age of six, seven to eat tons of protein, work out like an animal, it's a young boy, and become tough so he could become a baseball player or whatever.

So, and, and this story, when Kobe was telling me this, it's not in the show, but, but I was so emotionally moved, he never really talks about it, but he was watching the TV and he saw the Nathan's hotdog eating contest and he saw somebody eat 25 hot dogs and win the contest. And he is like, wait a second.

And I could do that because his dad used to make him eat so much food that his stomach, you know, when you, you overeat and you just like, ugh. So his dad would make him overeat. So when he saw this, he was like, no problem. He flew to America, did the contest, and doubled it. He did 50 right away, and then he started looking at it as a technique.

So what he would do is he would drink a gallon and a half of water, six liters of water, and he would [00:45:00] stretch his stomach out. Which when I did it with him, I was spitting up blood. We didn't put that on the show either to stretch that big. I was like spouting just nothing but red water. Anyway, when he saw that, he was horrified 'cause he didn't even know that's what he was doing to his stomach.

'cause he can't bring it back out. So he would do this, stretch out his stomach, and then he could put absurd amounts of food in his stomach. And he invented the technique of not even chewing, just swallowing. He would just swallow the hotdog. And he said it was like Tetris. He was placing them. But when, but yeah.

Yeah. But when he was explaining all this, I was like, wow. Like here's a guy that's actually converted his stomach into a prop to be able to do things that seem impossible. And that's what, that's what I kind of search the world for people that. Will push through all limitations, defy science, defy doctors, and do things that should not be possible.

And, and to me that's real magic.

Diana Nyad: Yeah. Yeah, it

David Blaine: is. And that's what Harry Houdini did as well.

Diana Nyad: You, you were, that's, [00:46:00] that's your hero, right? He's, he's the number one team. My mother is

David Blaine: my hero.

Diana Nyad: Okay. Yes.

David Blaine: But, but Harry Houdini was, was my, my inspiration and almost like a university, just studying him and reading everything about him and looking at all the images that he left behind.

So that,

Diana Nyad: yeah. And I think most of us who may maybe don't, you know, haven't immersed ourselves in the world of magic. We do know the name Harry Houdini. And, um, you know, I've just picture him in chains and, uh, you know, you know, as you say, underwater. But I didn't know that he was also a, a huge card specialist.

David Blaine: Yeah, a great magician. Yeah. Lots of magicians were jealous of him, so they wouldn't. Give him credit of being a great magician, but he was also a great magician. But, but he was doing like the guys that, that are the best at Card Magic. They're spending, I'm not kidding, probably 12 to 15 hours a day every single day with a deck of cards doing nothing but manipulating cards.

My, my, my best friend, my other best friend who's a magician, anytime that you call him, anytime that you're on the [00:47:00] phone with him, anytime these, you always hear in the back on,

and he's always moving cars through his fingers. And he does. And he, by the way, he won't share it with anybody. He won't demonstrate it.

He and I say, well, what do you do? You do the magic to, to yourself and scream and run away. And he said, no, it's just an art form. Like, like Van Gogh painting. He just loved to, to paint. I love to just manipulate cards and he's one of the best in the world. And he was showing me a move that was considered an impossible card move, a legendary move that nobody in the world can do.

And he did the move, which is it, it, it just looks like, it doesn't make any sense without breaking a deck. He's like moving the cards through his hands in a way that. Physically seems impossible. So I pulled out my iPhone to film it. I was like, oh my God, could, could I film it? And he, um, he put the cards away, never showed it to me again.

Diana Nyad: Yeah, he knew, as I said, David was, uh, you know, [00:48:00] he's very generous. He was entertaining us when we rehearsed today, uh, with some card tricks and when we get done, um, to take some selfies and he's gonna do some tricks for you back there. So you gotta you gotta gather around. Yeah. If you guys

David Blaine: wanna see, um, I'm gonna be hanging out around here for a bit, so if anybody does wanna see some magic close up.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll, I'll be here all night.

Appreciate.

Diana Nyad: And so, you know, just like any of us, you're, you're saying you're standing so close, you're watching like a hawk. You're, you're watching your hands, you know, you're trying to get around the edge in case you're fiddling around with it there. And when it, when it pulls off what it is, you're just, you can't believe it.

But in your series, in the do not attempt. You know, series when you're with, you know, um, just young people in the, in the, in the plazas of, you know, lots of foreign towns. Um, when you do the tricks for them, I mean, they, they scream, you know, he'll do a trick and there it is. The two of clubs is behind his ear.

They, they run around and go, what did you say? So, [00:49:00] uh, thank you for being so generous and offering to do that for us later. Yeah, of course.

David Blaine: Yeah. Yeah. Should we, should we,

Diana Nyad: but, but wait, I got another Wait, wait. I got a few more questions. We're not, we're not done with you yet. Um, so we've already established that it takes you a long, long time.

Like it does anybody who does these truly, uh, you know, uh, difficult, um, you know, tricks. So it can take you years. So how do you constantly keep performing? How do you get, you know, now you've got the Vegas show. Um, how do you, how do you have the new one ready all the time if it takes so long to get ready?

David Blaine: Well, so, so for the series that that, that we just worked on with National Geographic, that was different for me because normally to prepare for, for the breath hold for example, that's been a lifetime. Or even just to stand in the block of ice. I trained for that for two years, learning how to jump from a hundred feet into cardboard boxes.

That was, again, two years of training. So for this series, we spent a year finding these incredible performers from all [00:50:00] over the world, and then we would travel to go meet them. And, and the learning curve was immediate. It had to happen right away because we only had so much time. So lots of the things that, that, that I saw it, I didn't, I, I didn't have really the time to prepare, so I had to trust them and trust what they were telling me.

So I was sitting in a, in a small room with, with, with this incredible man named Neville, who's a conservationist, and, and his whole thing is. He lives in, in, in South Africa and black mamba, black mambas are responsible for many deaths. But what happens when people, that's a cobra.

Diana Nyad: Black Mamba?

David Blaine: No, the black mamba is the, the deadliest snake in all of Africa.

Oh, okay. And it's very, it's not a cobra fat. No, it's very fast, very aggressive strikes multiple times. And just if it scratches you with its fang, you're dead mo it has a, the 99.999% chance of death if, if untreated [00:51:00] so, and he's missing a leg from a snake related injury, and he was in a coma two times. And I was watching him in this small enclosure, less than the size of this carpet.

And he sits there and kids can come look and he wants to teach them that if you encounter a black mumba, the thing to do is to not chase it with anything, to not react, to not run away, just stay really calm. And to prove his point, he sits in this small, see-through room, this classroom with his rescue, black mambas.

And he just sits there and he asked me if I would want to join. And, and again, no time to prepare, but, but. Fully trusted him. Heart rate was through the roof. Probably the craziest thing I've ever done in my lifetime, nobody would ever realize it, but just sitting there with him and putting my life in his hands was, was, was probably one of the most exhilarating [00:52:00] but intense and scariest things I've ever felt.

And that's why I was saying with, with what I was assessed with, with your thing is there's so many unknowns that you, that the box jellyfish sharks just swimming in the nighttime. When you're sleep deprived, you're hallucinating, you're shivering, you're cold, everything is against you. The salt, the in, the inflammation, just all that stuff is, is something that I, I could never, ever, ever imagine.

Well, but I would love for you to take, that's about the

Diana Nyad: only thing on earth that you can't imagine, I guess, because you that no way you're doing all the rest of them. That,

David Blaine: but I, I, I just, yeah, I would, I would love to. Come visit you and just do for like an hour. Go in the ocean. Come on. Not like two days, three, three days.

Do it. Let's do it.

Diana Nyad: But you must have been injured a number of times because, you know, we talk about the real danger of blacking out and, you know, maybe going into, into brain damage because of the lack of oxygen. When you [00:53:00] stood on the pole, how, how high was the pole? And, and how, how, how big was it? You're standing space.

It was about

David Blaine: this big and I stood there,

Diana Nyad: so barely as big as your shoes. It just, it just, yeah.

David Blaine: Like a pizza. Yeah. Yeah. And how tall

Diana Nyad: was it?

David Blaine: That was almost a hundred feet. Um, and then I put it in my theater in Vegas and, uh, and it was about 86 feet. And for some stupid reason, I thought that I could do it multiple times a night and I would jump down.

So the show began, I would leap down 86 feet and landing cardboard boxes that were about six feet high. So I would have about a foot and a half stopping distance. Yes. Yeah. So it was about 20 Gs of force. And, uh, all the stunt guys said, you can't do this night after you, you, this is, you do this once a year.

But I stupidly thought that I could keep going, and I kept making it higher and higher. So one jump my shoulder came out, it, it was dislocated, went into my armpit. So I was like this, and I come out and that was the first thing in the show. And I didn't wanna let the audience down, but [00:54:00] Yeah. But, but, but everybody on my team and, and ag is like, we're getting you to a hospital.

And I was like, yeah, but everybody's out there to see a show. Um. It, can we at least try to pop it back in? Nobody knew how to do it, and the EMTs weren't allowed to touch me unless it's to, unless it's to as a defibrillator, so to pop your shoulder and they can't. So, uh, I, I said go to my, uh, magician friend Doug.

I said, Google it right now. Find, find how to put a shoulder back in. And they're going, ah, and it wasn't working. And so I said, okay, hold on. And I walked out into the, into the front of the house, uh, into the, to the Audi, to, to the audience. And I said, uh. Are there, are there any doctors in the room? And there ha there happened to be an orthopedic surgeon's convention in Vegas, and I had five in the audience, so they, and I said, no, we're doing it right here.

And they were like, everybody put your phones out. I was like, no, everybody take your phones out. So they pulled, they pop the shoulder, I'm laying on the [00:55:00] foot, pop the shoulder back in, and, um, uh, fully numb for like eight months or whatever, but, and the right hand, the card trick hand. So, uh, but so I, I go to do the, start the show and I realize I have no feeling and I can't lift my arm up.

So when I bring the people up to do the tricks, I'm like, uh, could you hold this arm? And I had sewing my mouth shut, doing all the tricks. And anyway, I did the show with the woman. But, but, and, but that was the last time I was allowed to do it, be because the insurance was, that we had was covered to that show.

And the Monday following. The insurance company called the, the, the lady that works. I mean, they said, uh, do you wanna discuss his new condition, his pre-existing? So that was no longer a part of the show.

Diana Nyad: Yeah, because you would think about Cirque de Soleil performers, you know, they're injured often to the point that their, their careers are over, you know?

So all these years that you've been doing these things, I'm surprised you haven't, you know, uh, gotten to a point where you can't even [00:56:00] perform anymore.

David Blaine: Well, so I am superstitious and Harry Houdini was my hero. And he, he did die at 52 years old because he didn't wanna let the audience down and he was suffering, they said from peritonitis or something internally.

But he wanted to do the show, and he put himself upside down in the water tank. And at the end of getting out of the water tank, he collapsed and was rushed to a hospital. And he, he passed away, uh, Halloween in 1926. But, but, but because of that, and because I'm now 52 and because I have a daughter who, who means everything to me, I'm taking 52 off from doing anything too dangerous.

But we'll continue in a year.

Audience: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Good,

David Blaine: good.

Diana Nyad: You know, so forget about whether it's gonna be dangerous or not. What are a couple of the things that you've got in the back of your mind that, that intrigue you, that you know, you, you want to test out and see if you can do.

David Blaine: so that's my problem [00:57:00] is I have so many ideas that I'm intrigued by. Like, I have so many things I'm obsessed with, but, um, I, I always fear that if you talk about them before you do them, then you talk them away.

Okay. Okay. So, so, but I do have things that I'm very curious about, but again, I want to be very careful about pushing to the point that you end up breaking yourself, which as you know, can happen very easily because if you push too hard, your willpower says yes, but there is a point where the body just says that's it.

And, and, and you don't want to end up in that place where that's, it means that's it.

Diana Nyad: Of course, of course. Um, I hope it's okay if I ask you this, but, um, since I started reading about you and following you, and since I've now gotten a chance to spend some time with you, um, as you said, your mother was your hero.

Yeah. And it was just the two of you alone in Brooklyn and

David Blaine: for the first 10 years? Yeah. Yeah. And then she got remarried and, and we moved to New Jersey.

Diana Nyad: Okay. But, um, but I was

David Blaine: looking back to the city. The head was, my head was to the left. How, how

Diana Nyad: old were you when your mom passed [00:58:00] away, if I might ask?

David Blaine: She, the cancer developed when she was, uh, when I was 16.

Diana Nyad: So young.

David Blaine: Yeah. And then she fought for four years and, uh, eventually it spread everywhere. She died in my arms. And the last thing she said to me is, God is love. And I really feel like, because, you know, my whole feeling on everything is, you know, the energy is never created nor destroyed. So during many of my stunts, I asked for a sign from her, and it always just happened.

Like at the end of the 44 days, towards the end, I was having really bad heart, heart palpitations, but I didn't want to quit. I think I was on day 40 and I was like near collapse. And, um, I, I said. Mom, can you gimme a sign? Just in my head. And at that moment, a bunch of kids started yelling, yelling, yelling, David, and they were on the tower bridge and I was on a crane dangling looking over, trying to see, and they opened up a huge banner.

And on that banner it said, God is [00:59:00] love. And I was like, okay, I got this. So,

Diana Nyad: yeah, yeah, yeah.

David Blaine: So I, so I really believe, like, I really believe that like, you know, we don't understand what happens when we die. Like before you're born, you don't know where you're going. And when you die, you don't know. So I believe that, that, you know, that, that the energy is here and it's there and, and I've had so many strange occurrences when I needed it most.

So

Diana Nyad: I'll bet you anything that we're your mom alive today, um, she would be proud. Not of the big, necessarily the huge success you've made, but you're delight. You're, you're delight in, in humankind. That's what shows in this series. You gotta check it out. Um, by the way, my mother, people say to me, it's too bad your mom wasn't alive when you made it.

If you finally made the Cuba swim. And I said, my mom would've died when I got onto Dancing with the Stars. Um, that would've, that would've meant much more to her than, than walking up on the, on the [01:00:00] shore. I bet your mom would've been just deeply proud of you,

David Blaine: thank you.

But by the way, but I always felt like the way my mother reacted to everything. I never felt like she needed to see me succeed in any way, because I felt like she already thought that, like with the simple card trick that I did to her, you know, so, so I felt like, like, like her celebration was just like, she was just an amazing.

Human being an amazing mother. She was so caring. She loved all people. So she kind of represented everything good that I think about.

Diana Nyad: the special David Blaine everybody.

David Blaine: Thank you.

Another round applause for David and Diana.

Paddy: MUSIC TO START

PADDYO VO OUTRO:

That was David Blaine and Diana Nyad's  incredible convo from �����ԹϺ��� Fest.  It was a highlight of a superb festival weekend. You should really come [01:01:00] next year. And you can check out amazing photos from this talk and others at The �����ԹϺ��� Festival dot com.

You can stream David Blaine's new show Do Not attempt on Disney+ and Hulu.

You can also catch David Blaine performing magic live; his show is David Blaine: Live in Las Vegas at Encore Theater at Wynn Las Vegas. Find more information and tickets at Wynn LasVegas dot com

Besides being an amazing endurance athlete, Diana Nyad is an awesome human being. With her coach Bonnie Stoll, Diana created a nonprofit called Everwalk that inspires people to get outside and move; you should join them on one of their walks, they are so much fun. Learn more at Everwalk.com

At the top of the episode you heard Michael Roberts, �����ԹϺ���'s creativity pocketknife, former host of this podcast, and my dear friend. You can find him standing in his kitchen feverishly [01:02:00] eating bun-less chicken apple sausages over his sink in between all day meetings planning next year's �����ԹϺ��� Fest back in Denver. Keep your eyes and ears a-ready for announcements.

And remember, we'll be playing more panel discussions from the fest's Ideas Program over the next few weeks. So tune back in. They're gonna rock your world.

And sidenote: Dear sweet audience members, this show is your show. So email us guest nominations and your thoughts on the pod to �����ԹϺ��� Podcast At �����ԹϺ��� Inc Dot Com. We wanna hear about your earhole desires.

The �����ԹϺ��� Podcast is hosted and produced by me, Paddy O'Connell. But you can call me PaddyO. The show is also produced by storytelling wizard, Micah "the Bert to my Ernie, the Alfred to my Batman" Abrams. Music and Sound Design by Robbie Carver. And booking and research by Maren Larsen.

The �����ԹϺ��� Podcast is made possible [01:03:00] by our �����ԹϺ��� Plus members. Learn about all the extra rad benefits and become a member yourself at �����ԹϺ��� Online Dot Com Slash Pod Plus.