Latest / Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond / BONUS: David Blaine with Rick Rubin

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BONUS: David Blaine with Rick Rubin · Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond

0:08
Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hey, y'all, it's justin Richmond. Like all of us,
0:14
Speaker 1: Rick Rubin has been thinking a lot about fear lately,
0:17
Speaker 1: and few people on the planet understand fear in the
0:19
Speaker 1: same way as Rick's good friend David Blaine. David has
0:23
Speaker 1: made a career of pushing his mind and body to
0:25
Speaker 1: the limit with crazy public stunts like staying awake for
0:29
Speaker 1: sixty three hours while standing in a block of ice
0:32
Speaker 1: in the middle of Times Square, or fastened for forty
0:34
Speaker 1: four days while suspended thirty feet in the air and
0:37
Speaker 1: a plexiglass cube in London. Feeds that blew my mind
0:41
Speaker 1: growing up, So Rick thought David might be a great
0:43
Speaker 1: person for y'all to hear from about facing fear. Obviously,
0:47
Speaker 1: this conversation isn't about music, but it does touch on
0:49
Speaker 1: one of Rick's other great loves. Magic. When he was
0:53
Speaker 1: a kid, Rick studying magic, and since then magic's becomes
0:56
Speaker 1: so much more than just slight of hand for him.
0:58
Speaker 1: He uses the idea of pulling something out of nothing
1:00
Speaker 1: in his music making, so it makes sense that he
1:02
Speaker 1: would turn to one of the best living magicians for
1:04
Speaker 1: words of wisdom. In this conversation, David Blaine runs through
1:08
Speaker 1: his most legendary public stunts and explains in excruciating detail
1:12
Speaker 1: what he went through physically and emotionally at each step.
1:16
Speaker 1: He also explains his relatively simple formula for getting through
1:19
Speaker 1: physical and psychological stress. The secret, it turns out, is
1:23
Speaker 1: that we can all handle a lot more than we think.
1:29
Speaker 1: This is broken record liner notes for the digital age.
1:32
Speaker 1: I'm justin Richmonds. Here's Rick Rubin and David Blaine, who
1:39
Speaker 1: connected recently on zoom. The reason that I wanted to
1:44
Speaker 1: talk to you is I'm feeling a collective fear in
1:51
Speaker 1: the air. I feel like I feel like I'm not
1:54
Speaker 1: feeling my fear so much as I'm feeling everybody's fear.
1:58
Speaker 1: That there's like a cloud of year in the air.
2:01
Speaker 1: I started thinking about different times in my life I've
2:03
Speaker 1: been afraid of something or people I know who have
2:06
Speaker 1: insights into fear. And I remember when I was learning
2:11
Speaker 1: to spend time in the ice in an ice bath
2:15
Speaker 1: that the longest I could ever stay in was a
2:17
Speaker 1: few minutes until I did it with you. And when
2:20
Speaker 1: I did it with you, your perspective on it opened
2:24
Speaker 1: my mind and helped me deal with the fear of
2:27
Speaker 1: staying longer and you talked me through it, and in
2:31
Speaker 1: that experience, it opened me up to conquer a fear.
2:36
Speaker 1: So I wanted to talk to you in general about
2:38
Speaker 1: the idea of conquering fears. Sound good, Yeah, that's great.
2:43
Speaker 1: What's uh? Tell me a little bit about your relationship
2:46
Speaker 1: to fear. Well, you know, I mean, I guess my
2:51
Speaker 1: outlook on everything was already My mother gave me this
2:54
Speaker 1: confidence as a kid. But when she was really sick,
2:57
Speaker 1: when she was dying, instead of focusing on the difficult part,
3:00
Speaker 1: of the sad part, of the painful part, she looked
3:03
Speaker 1: at the beauty and everything, so she didn't focus on
3:06
Speaker 1: herself and complaints. So she made death very poetic and
3:10
Speaker 1: very beautiful, which I think is like one of the
3:12
Speaker 1: best gifts you can give to your kid, because that
3:15
Speaker 1: immediately made me not afraid of the unknown, which is dead.
3:19
Speaker 1: But as far as I was always pushing my body
3:24
Speaker 1: to do things that were like difficult and probably dangerous
3:28
Speaker 1: since I was five years old. And here's the simple
3:32
Speaker 1: formula for it. Simple formula is you you don't just
3:36
Speaker 1: jump into the unknown. You go step by step by
3:40
Speaker 1: step by steps slowly. So if you go like if
3:42
Speaker 1: I was to say ok I'm gonna hold my breath
3:44
Speaker 1: for twenty minutes. I'd be afraid that I's gonna have
3:47
Speaker 1: cardiac I'll be dead. But you don't start like that,
3:51
Speaker 1: you said, Okay, well I did three and a half minutes,
3:53
Speaker 1: and as a kid, there's people that are free divers
3:56
Speaker 1: that have done this amount of time. Let me train
3:59
Speaker 1: with the best people. Let me slowly build a resistance
4:02
Speaker 1: or a tolerance and understand the pain that I'm going
4:04
Speaker 1: to go through so I could process it and fight it.
4:07
Speaker 1: So my outlook on the corona. And obviously I'm not
4:10
Speaker 1: a doctor, so I can't give advice. But the way
4:13
Speaker 1: I look at it is you have to do the
4:16
Speaker 1: things that you know are best. So you clean your
4:19
Speaker 1: diet up. You don't eat products that create mucus, like
4:23
Speaker 1: dairy or processed shivers or breads or things like that.
4:26
Speaker 1: You have ginger, you have garlic, You have you know,
4:29
Speaker 1: sixteen ounces of water before every anything that you drink.
4:34
Speaker 1: You keep yourself hydrated. So you do all the things
4:36
Speaker 1: that you can to really be ready for the fight.
4:40
Speaker 1: Because fear, like let's say you're anasmatic, which I was
4:43
Speaker 1: as a kid, and have a small and average lung capacity.
4:46
Speaker 1: It's scary. I think I'm corona is going to couldn't
4:49
Speaker 1: give me pneumonia types, you know, and my lungs could
4:52
Speaker 1: shut down. So what I want to do is, if
4:55
Speaker 1: I was a smoker, which I'm not, I wouldn't touch
4:57
Speaker 1: cigarettes because why do anything that can make the virus
5:00
Speaker 1: that much more you know, effective in its path to
5:04
Speaker 1: destroy you. So that's number one. Number two, as you
5:07
Speaker 1: follow all the rules, you know, don't go near people
5:10
Speaker 1: as much as you can, try to avoid contact other
5:13
Speaker 1: than the people that you're quarantined with, obviously. And then
5:16
Speaker 1: for me, the other thing that I really like to
5:18
Speaker 1: think about, which is I would say if you also
5:23
Speaker 1: study it from the point of view. And I'm not
5:25
Speaker 1: saying that this is right or wrong, it's it's just
5:28
Speaker 1: my perspective. But the reason we don't want the virus
5:32
Speaker 1: to spread as quickly as it's spreading because you don't
5:36
Speaker 1: know you have symptoms, you're not aware of it, you
5:38
Speaker 1: don't feel anything often, and you're very contagious, right, So
5:42
Speaker 1: you don't want to spread everywhere. Not that we couldn't
5:45
Speaker 1: fight it, it's just that you don't want the hospitals
5:48
Speaker 1: to suddenly become flooded, which is what's happening, and then
5:52
Speaker 1: everybody's losing the hospital beds, the respirators, and it's a shutdown.
5:56
Speaker 1: So it's not that you want to fear the virus.
6:00
Speaker 1: You want to do the right precautions to protect not
6:02
Speaker 1: even just yourself, everybody around you. So I think knowledge
6:07
Speaker 1: is basically the best way to overcome fear. Now, I
6:11
Speaker 1: was a kid, my mother the only fear she gave
6:15
Speaker 1: is when she saw not cockroaches, as would roll with them, right,
6:18
Speaker 1: but when she saw like spiders or stain bugs. Oh.
6:22
Speaker 1: So I was always afraid of like little bugs, not cockroaches,
6:26
Speaker 1: but I was afraid of every other little bug. So
6:28
Speaker 1: my magician friends would come over. We'd be brainstorm magic
6:32
Speaker 1: and like I'd see a bug and like ah, they
6:34
Speaker 1: thought I was a joe kid, right, but I wasn't.
6:36
Speaker 1: So to get over that fear, I would have people
6:40
Speaker 1: come over with bugs, insects, spiders, you know, everything, and
6:45
Speaker 1: I'd play with them. But that's temporarily getting over it.
6:48
Speaker 1: So a fluke happened and I really got over my
6:51
Speaker 1: last fear, which was an insect, certain insect. So I
6:54
Speaker 1: took my brother to Botswana, and he's the most afraid
6:58
Speaker 1: of everything, so I can't teach him how to get
7:00
Speaker 1: over that. But anyway, we go to Africa and we're
7:05
Speaker 1: in these little tents and we're with the guy who
7:07
Speaker 1: died who he was the lion Man. He goes out
7:10
Speaker 1: with the lions and he actually looks like a lion,
7:13
Speaker 1: and he brings a roll of toilet paper, no weapons, nothing,
7:16
Speaker 1: and he calls out with the wild lions and when
7:18
Speaker 1: they attack him. He could see it on YouTube. He
7:20
Speaker 1: would throw the toilet paper like fake though, and the
7:22
Speaker 1: lions would jumping away. This guy grew up in the
7:26
Speaker 1: bush with the lions, so he and hippos, he would
7:29
Speaker 1: scare them. His presence was unbelievable. But anyway, so that
7:34
Speaker 1: night after we went out with the lions and he
7:36
Speaker 1: crawls out with them and he plays with the you
7:39
Speaker 1: know them while they're eating the zebra. He's really unbelievable.
7:42
Speaker 1: But that night I went to bed and I gave
7:45
Speaker 1: my brother a night fish that I had, a really serious,
7:49
Speaker 1: high tech one, which I shouldn't have done. So he
7:51
Speaker 1: hears something walking throughout his tent and then my tent,
7:54
Speaker 1: but really mostly around his tent, and you know, I
7:57
Speaker 1: just assumed it's an elliston. I don't know. My brother
8:00
Speaker 1: looks through and it's a hippo just circling it, and
8:05
Speaker 1: he hears the hippos are the most deadly animals and
8:07
Speaker 1: that they'll just chomp through in half. Right, So my
8:10
Speaker 1: brother doesn't sleep the whole day he's just looking through
8:13
Speaker 1: this thing. And so what happened with me is balmb
8:17
Speaker 1: in this tent. I'm being careful because even if it's
8:19
Speaker 1: an elpha more right, you don't want to get anything
8:21
Speaker 1: can happened. Right. So I'm in this little tent alone
8:25
Speaker 1: and I put my phone light on and I look
8:28
Speaker 1: up and there's thousands of bugs all over the top
8:32
Speaker 1: of my tent. I'm like, okay, we're in this together.
8:36
Speaker 1: And I realize that those insects were my friends, not
8:39
Speaker 1: even joking, And from that moment onwards, I was never
8:42
Speaker 1: afraid of insects. So sometimes it is just like a
8:45
Speaker 1: fluke thing. But often I think it's like, you know,
8:48
Speaker 1: the process of trying to understand the information, to get
8:51
Speaker 1: over and to learn and to accelerate. So it's like
8:54
Speaker 1: and I also look at things as a challenge, So
8:56
Speaker 1: like even with my daughter when she takes a shower
8:58
Speaker 1: in the morning. We used to I would tell her, Okay,
9:01
Speaker 1: let's crank it the cold, you know, and I just
9:03
Speaker 1: want her so when all of her friends won't go
9:06
Speaker 1: on the ocean because the ocean's gold or our family,
9:08
Speaker 1: she goes right in. And it's just the mindset of like,
9:11
Speaker 1: I can overcome this, you know. So it's like and
9:14
Speaker 1: that translates across the board. So whether you're running as
9:17
Speaker 1: hard as you can or holding your breath, or you know,
9:19
Speaker 1: it's standing up in one place for seventy three hours,
9:22
Speaker 1: things like that that you have to endure slowly, build
9:25
Speaker 1: a tolerance, have an understanding of what you're really doing,
9:28
Speaker 1: do the research, study with the smartest people that you can,
9:32
Speaker 1: and and and that's the best way to you know,
9:35
Speaker 1: I think, to work on facing the fear in the
9:39
Speaker 1: most diligent and efficient way. How do you deal with
9:42
Speaker 1: the when you're in it. I'll give you an example.
9:46
Speaker 1: One time I was bodysurfing in Venice with a mutual
9:52
Speaker 1: friend of ours and the waves are getting big and
9:56
Speaker 1: it seemed normal at first, and then the waves you're
9:58
Speaker 1: getting bigger and bigger, and it was a pretty big
10:00
Speaker 1: day to begin within the ways, we're getting bigger, and
10:02
Speaker 1: we're out next to a pier, and then the waves
10:04
Speaker 1: started crashing over the pier, like really big, and I
10:08
Speaker 1: remember our friend looking at me and saying, you know,
10:12
Speaker 1: it keeps feeling like this, We're going to be in trouble.
10:14
Speaker 1: And that was the last thing he said, and then
10:17
Speaker 1: he was gone. And then I'm sort of in the
10:20
Speaker 1: drop zone and just waves are crashing on me and
10:26
Speaker 1: came really close to the ground, and I remember thinking,
10:31
Speaker 1: I know, the worst thing I can do is panic.
10:34
Speaker 1: So I know panic panic will only hurt in this situation.
10:39
Speaker 1: But when you're being held under water by waves, or
10:43
Speaker 1: when you come up for a breath and a wave
10:45
Speaker 1: crashes you, even there's a conversation that goes on between
10:51
Speaker 1: I know I'm not supposed to panic, that this isn't
10:54
Speaker 1: going to help me, and the other voices there's nowhere
10:58
Speaker 1: we're panicking. It's hard to control. I think, you know,
11:03
Speaker 1: number one rule of the twenty one laws of the
11:06
Speaker 1: samurais accept everything exactly the way it is. And I
11:10
Speaker 1: think even in the worst situation, when you panic and
11:13
Speaker 1: go crazy and let it over, you won't you won't
11:16
Speaker 1: win that battle. So you kind of have to accept
11:20
Speaker 1: what the situation is and then in a very careful
11:24
Speaker 1: and clever way to try to outremovering it, but without
11:27
Speaker 1: fighting it, because you're never going to be the ocean,
11:30
Speaker 1: so so you have to kind of smooth into it
11:32
Speaker 1: and have the faith that you can be under for
11:34
Speaker 1: a little more than you think. You can't even relax
11:36
Speaker 1: and kind of go with it a little bit, which
11:40
Speaker 1: is the only option. But have you ever had that
11:43
Speaker 1: come up, like in the midst of a challenge. Have
11:47
Speaker 1: you had it come up of what do I do now?
11:51
Speaker 1: Every time I'm holding my breath for a really long
11:55
Speaker 1: breath hold, my heart gets really weird and it does
11:58
Speaker 1: these strange things, and that makes you get more focused
12:01
Speaker 1: on the heart and it doesn't help. So I've learned
12:05
Speaker 1: over the years, even when pushing to the extreme, you
12:08
Speaker 1: just accept it and go with it. So you know
12:13
Speaker 1: that that's the best thing that I've learned. When I'm
12:16
Speaker 1: pushing to those extreme places and it gets a little
12:19
Speaker 1: out of control, Let's talk about each one of the
12:22
Speaker 1: things that you've done, and then in each case, what
12:28
Speaker 1: were the most difficult moments? So you know, so when
12:31
Speaker 1: I did the first stunt was buried alive. It was
12:33
Speaker 1: one dni die before you have the chance to do.
12:35
Speaker 1: And Bill Colluse, you know, said, yeah, you can go
12:40
Speaker 1: to Central Park bury yourself. You'll sneak out and then
12:43
Speaker 1: you'll come back a month later. And so what's the
12:45
Speaker 1: point of that, Like, what's the fun of that. I'm
12:49
Speaker 1: gonna really do it, And instead of doing it under
12:51
Speaker 1: dirt like the Fakirs used to do it, I'll just
12:53
Speaker 1: do it in a sea through boxes. I was thinking, like,
12:56
Speaker 1: you know, I've seen my mom laying a bed not
12:58
Speaker 1: moving for a very long period of time. I can
13:00
Speaker 1: at least lay in a little coffin for a week.
13:03
Speaker 1: And I was right. And I'd also rented Artha, so
13:07
Speaker 1: I had fasted as a kid. I had done you
13:09
Speaker 1: know those things, so I understood that that's all doable.
13:12
Speaker 1: So I had fasted for a week before buried a life,
13:17
Speaker 1: just to clean everything out because I knew I wasn't
13:19
Speaker 1: able to go to the bathroom. I'll bet the number
13:22
Speaker 1: two and the whole thing. And I put a coffin
13:25
Speaker 1: in Bill's living room where I was. I was sleeping
13:28
Speaker 1: in his pants room buying his kitchen at the time,
13:30
Speaker 1: and I put a coffin in his living room that
13:32
Speaker 1: I got in Queens, and I started practicing. I'd just
13:36
Speaker 1: sleep in the coffin. I was like, yeah, this isn't
13:38
Speaker 1: so hard. And I would stay there for a couple
13:40
Speaker 1: of days and I learned how to pee into one
13:42
Speaker 1: of those little bag whatever. I did the whole process,
13:45
Speaker 1: and I was clean, systems clean, ready to go, stunts
13:49
Speaker 1: about to stunts about to start, and I was clean.
13:54
Speaker 1: Just water. Bill that type of thinking it doesn't make
13:58
Speaker 1: sense to him. So he's like, here, have this, and
14:01
Speaker 1: he gives me a drink that was called a Mango Mama.
14:06
Speaker 1: So I don't know why I listened to Me's like
14:09
Speaker 1: take this. I was like, Bill, I don't think. So
14:11
Speaker 1: he's like, hey, you'll just pee it out because I
14:13
Speaker 1: had a fuckerstup to pee. So I drink the Mango
14:16
Speaker 1: Baba and I do my first big stunt. I get
14:19
Speaker 1: buried alive in the middle of New York. So you
14:21
Speaker 1: see through the whole thing in no way out for
14:23
Speaker 1: a week right away, like eight hours later, I'm like,
14:28
Speaker 1: oh no, and I have to go to the bathroom.
14:32
Speaker 1: But a number two and rick for a week, I
14:38
Speaker 1: had to hold it in it was the warms anyway anyway,
14:46
Speaker 1: But you know, it's fine. So I do the stunt,
14:48
Speaker 1: you know, and it was difficult and all that stuff,
14:51
Speaker 1: but that one getting used to it. Things that you
14:53
Speaker 1: don't think about. It's like, how am I going to
14:56
Speaker 1: do a number one? There's people staring at me the
14:58
Speaker 1: whole time, day, night. It became really crowded. So it's
15:04
Speaker 1: it's like when people are looking at you around the
15:07
Speaker 1: clock and you have to pee, it's difficult. You don't
15:10
Speaker 1: think about those things when you're practicing in the coffin
15:13
Speaker 1: by yourself, right, So what I would have to do
15:16
Speaker 1: at the beginning, so I would close my eyes and
15:19
Speaker 1: I would just pretend I was in front of the bathroom.
15:22
Speaker 1: It would take me like an hour and I'd be
15:24
Speaker 1: able to do the you know, take a number one again,
15:27
Speaker 1: no number two the whole time. But then eventually, by
15:30
Speaker 1: like day three, I'd be waving and smile wing and
15:34
Speaker 1: be like no but so no, but so the buried alive.
15:38
Speaker 1: But that's done. I did it, and I always look
15:41
Speaker 1: at it. It's like I could do that like nothing
15:43
Speaker 1: like easy tomorrow. So okay. So the next stunt was
15:48
Speaker 1: the block of ice training for that, I would get
15:51
Speaker 1: in ice bass all the time. How do you get
15:54
Speaker 1: the idea for it? First of all, after buried alive,
16:00
Speaker 1: I was like on an airplane, like from coming back
16:04
Speaker 1: from somewhere really nice, and I just started thinking about
16:07
Speaker 1: an insect in a piece of ember, like how cool
16:10
Speaker 1: that looked the whole thing, And I was like, maybe
16:13
Speaker 1: I could do something like that with like a big
16:15
Speaker 1: piece of ice and then put it in the middle
16:17
Speaker 1: of New York. So I looked frozen in the block
16:19
Speaker 1: of ice, and obviously it would be cut around me
16:21
Speaker 1: two pieces. So step one was I went to an
16:27
Speaker 1: ice locker and just got in the ice locker to
16:31
Speaker 1: see how much I could endure, which is a nightmare.
16:35
Speaker 1: It wears you down quickly. Step two was I built
16:39
Speaker 1: an ice igloo, just blocks of ice together like a
16:44
Speaker 1: regular ice car or put it together, and I was like, oh,
16:46
Speaker 1: this isn't so bad because the ice is against you,
16:50
Speaker 1: but it's enough away that it's actually like an igglue effect,
16:53
Speaker 1: so you could handle it. Now. When I did the
16:55
Speaker 1: real block of ice, I got the ice from an
16:59
Speaker 1: iceberg in a lassus. It was frozen and cold a temperature,
17:01
Speaker 1: so it's really see through did that block of ice
17:05
Speaker 1: when we brought it in. There was a couple of
17:09
Speaker 1: things I hadn't prepped for at all that you know,
17:11
Speaker 1: those unknown things that you don't think about. Number One,
17:15
Speaker 1: it keeps dripping on you over and over, which is
17:17
Speaker 1: kind of a weird form of just drives you out
17:20
Speaker 1: of your mind. Number Two, you can't fall asleep because
17:22
Speaker 1: if you lean into the ice, you get frostbite and
17:25
Speaker 1: you'll ket to cut off that part of your face
17:27
Speaker 1: whatever it is. Number Three, standing up for that entire
17:31
Speaker 1: duration sixty three hours. I practiced it, leaning and stuff
17:34
Speaker 1: like that, but not for that length of time. And
17:37
Speaker 1: then the only thing that was to my advantage was
17:41
Speaker 1: it was November twenty seventh to November twenty nine, two thousand,
17:44
Speaker 1: and it was a warm November, so the air that
17:47
Speaker 1: was coming through was you know, sixty eight degrees, which
17:50
Speaker 1: created the drop, but it also really kept it not
17:53
Speaker 1: so bad. Of course, the ice was raided. Now, the
17:57
Speaker 1: worst part of it that I could have never thought
18:01
Speaker 1: about at that time was sleep deprivation plus torture, meaning
18:07
Speaker 1: standing out the entire time, nothing to lean on, the
18:10
Speaker 1: ice radiating the cold against you put you in an
18:14
Speaker 1: hallucinatory state because you're trying to sleep, because your body
18:20
Speaker 1: knows to build the immune system and to function me
18:22
Speaker 1: to sleep, but you can't go to sleep because you
18:25
Speaker 1: know if you go to sleep, it's going to be
18:27
Speaker 1: really bad. So while you're in the situations like I
18:30
Speaker 1: can stay awake right now for five days if I
18:32
Speaker 1: had a few people helping, but in that situation, very
18:35
Speaker 1: very difficult. What happens is your brain touches into your
18:41
Speaker 1: worst spears. So your brain goes into whatever you're most
18:44
Speaker 1: afraid of and it puts that all over you. So
18:47
Speaker 1: I started seeing spiders crawling all over my body and
18:51
Speaker 1: all these weird things because your brain is trying to
18:54
Speaker 1: trick the other part of your will that's trying to
18:57
Speaker 1: stay awake to make you go to sleep, and you
19:00
Speaker 1: don't go to sleep, you start having dreams and nightmares,
19:03
Speaker 1: but your eyes are completely open. So my eyes were
19:06
Speaker 1: wide open, and I was having this insane hallucinogenic dream
19:10
Speaker 1: like wallawake steak, but not knowing if it was a
19:14
Speaker 1: dream or if it was fake. And your brain is
19:17
Speaker 1: slipping away, and the only thing that can get you along,
19:21
Speaker 1: I think is I had support from a couple of
19:24
Speaker 1: people that I loved and trusted, and they're like, you're
19:27
Speaker 1: gonna be okay, and it was enough for me to
19:29
Speaker 1: think that maybe they were right. When the guy started
19:32
Speaker 1: cutting through the ice of the chainsaw, I tried to
19:34
Speaker 1: grab the chainsaw. I didn't know. I didn't know what
19:36
Speaker 1: it was. And you know that one because of the
19:40
Speaker 1: sleep up provision. I always say I would never ever
19:44
Speaker 1: do that again. Ever. By the way, little things that
19:47
Speaker 1: go wrong is you have a catheter which is like
19:49
Speaker 1: a trucker's tube, which is like a condom with a
19:51
Speaker 1: tube coming off of it. One of the PA's working
19:53
Speaker 1: on the stunt didn't know and he was vacuuming underneath
19:56
Speaker 1: the water thing and he hit that hose and like, oh,
20:00
Speaker 1: you know, but your brain is already on a So
20:03
Speaker 1: it's it's like exaggerated big time. I'll give you one
20:06
Speaker 1: example of what happened, so you know, it was twenty
20:09
Speaker 1: four to seven in time squares, so people, I mean
20:11
Speaker 1: three days, but people could continuously come day and night
20:14
Speaker 1: and somebody was in front of you. I mean it
20:17
Speaker 1: was always crowded. But one of the people you lock
20:19
Speaker 1: onto me, you feel comfortable. So one of the people
20:21
Speaker 1: was passing by, I went, like, what time is it?
20:24
Speaker 1: It was like, you know, it was day three, the
20:26
Speaker 1: last day that it was supposed to tend to round
20:29
Speaker 1: ten o'clock or something like that. It's like, what time
20:31
Speaker 1: is it? And he said he went, I think it
20:35
Speaker 1: was like around and four for something. So he went
20:40
Speaker 1: four oh five. So I'm like, okay, four or that
20:45
Speaker 1: means I have about six more hours. I think, okay,
20:48
Speaker 1: I can do this. So I wait for as long
20:51
Speaker 1: like I wait for hours because I don't want to
20:55
Speaker 1: ask that question again. After waiting for hours, I look
20:59
Speaker 1: at and I go, what time is it? And it's
21:02
Speaker 1: the same guy And I didn't even realize that, and
21:06
Speaker 1: he goes four oh six. Of like, but you know,
21:15
Speaker 1: the Native American India, a lot of people use sleep deprivation,
21:18
Speaker 1: but in a controlled environment to go to that hallucinogenic
21:22
Speaker 1: dream light state. And it is incredible because there is
21:26
Speaker 1: a part of it that's like one of my favorite
21:28
Speaker 1: journeys I've ever taken. Not recommended to anybody ever, but
21:32
Speaker 1: there is a part of it that's like, wow, you know,
21:35
Speaker 1: were you were you able to explain what you were
21:38
Speaker 1: seeing and feeling the whole time? Everything voices talking to
21:42
Speaker 1: through people appearing in the ice, everything that you can
21:45
Speaker 1: imagine that you're dreaming of, just and just everything goes
21:49
Speaker 1: through your mind, your body, and it's it's hyper real.
21:53
Speaker 1: It's it's it's like having dreams but you're awake and nightmares.
21:58
Speaker 1: Have you do you have cameras on you the whole time? Yeah? Yeah,
22:02
Speaker 1: I was scared the whole time. Have you ever gone
22:05
Speaker 1: back when you look at it, it's scary. My eyes
22:08
Speaker 1: are like really really really, it's scary scary footage. Yeah,
22:14
Speaker 1: you saim wondering how much of your perception was what
22:19
Speaker 1: was actually happening? Do you know what I'm saying? Like,
22:23
Speaker 1: are there things that you imagine that happened that didn't? Yeah,
22:29
Speaker 1: for sure, But but like lots of people like my brother,
22:32
Speaker 1: my best friend Josie, people that were there were looking
22:37
Speaker 1: at me and they knew that this was this was
22:40
Speaker 1: not me. It was pretty scary. But at the same time,
22:45
Speaker 1: when I reflect back, I would never do that one again.
22:48
Speaker 1: But there's something about that part of it. It was
22:51
Speaker 1: like one of the most incredible and scary but beautiful
22:55
Speaker 1: states that I've ever been in. We'll be right back
22:57
Speaker 1: with more of Rick's conversation with David Blaine. We're back
23:04
Speaker 1: with Rick Rubin and David Blaine. So what was the
23:07
Speaker 1: one after the ice? After the ice was two thousand
23:13
Speaker 1: oh Vertigo when I stood on the pillar two thousand
23:16
Speaker 1: and two and Brian Park, which once again, you know,
23:19
Speaker 1: we had these old things to handle things that would
23:22
Speaker 1: come up and I was able to hold it. Wasn't
23:24
Speaker 1: that tough that one. I still started to hallucinate just
23:27
Speaker 1: because I didn't I think standing up in one place
23:29
Speaker 1: for a long time, plus the stress of the body
23:32
Speaker 1: not sleeping and all that stuff. You were up really high,
23:36
Speaker 1: probably like ninety feet. I wanted it to be a
23:40
Speaker 1: hundred and then I trained to jump, which was my
23:43
Speaker 1: favorite part ever, jumping one hundred foot into cardboard boxes
23:47
Speaker 1: which not into an air bag, you know, which was
23:50
Speaker 1: my favorite part. But I trained them was so specific
23:52
Speaker 1: and knew I was going to jump off and exactly
23:55
Speaker 1: hit the mark. But because I had a mic on
23:59
Speaker 1: and they opened it so I couldn't tell. Everybody stopped
24:01
Speaker 1: with adding these boxes and they all got freaked out
24:04
Speaker 1: because the buildings behind me when I would look because
24:08
Speaker 1: I was hallucinating, they started to look like animal heads.
24:11
Speaker 1: So I would see like a lion, and I was like, wow,
24:13
Speaker 1: I didn't know those buildings were shaped like lions. And
24:15
Speaker 1: they'd be like, they're not. Then they thought I was.
24:18
Speaker 1: They thought I wasn't going to jump into the box
24:20
Speaker 1: likes that made this huge thing and anyway, so that
24:24
Speaker 1: kind of upset me, but that's all right. The other
24:26
Speaker 1: one upset me was on the Drown the Live I Want.
24:29
Speaker 1: I said, no matter what, if I don't get to
24:31
Speaker 1: the record, you guys, do not pull me out, period,
24:35
Speaker 1: because I want to go for the record. And it
24:37
Speaker 1: like I cracked early and I started black I'm about
24:41
Speaker 1: to black out, and one of my best friends was
24:43
Speaker 1: in the front and he yells get out because he
24:46
Speaker 1: was so freaked out. So they jumped in and pulled
24:48
Speaker 1: me out before I got to like the number because
24:51
Speaker 1: the number is what's important to me, you know, and
24:53
Speaker 1: all the stunts, the numbers are so important. Oh and
24:58
Speaker 1: that's part of it also, is if you use numbers,
25:00
Speaker 1: like use numbers to get there, like, oh, I'm gonna
25:03
Speaker 1: quate this, so I'm gonna do I'm gonna get to halfway.
25:05
Speaker 1: The I'm gonna get to halfway, I'm gonna go backwards
25:07
Speaker 1: and I have this much and this much and then
25:09
Speaker 1: eight them and you start working it backwards by numbers,
25:12
Speaker 1: and it really helps. So even when I'm running like training,
25:14
Speaker 1: if I'm running around the loop at Central Park, you
25:17
Speaker 1: know the six point two miles. But what I do is,
25:20
Speaker 1: I'll I count the steps, so I'm like, okay, it's
25:23
Speaker 1: actually forty four hundred right feet steps. I would count
25:26
Speaker 1: the steps to get around and then you can keep
25:28
Speaker 1: going because it's a number scap so you can get
25:30
Speaker 1: halfway start to count again. So that that's another thing
25:33
Speaker 1: that helps me get focused. As numbers. Yeah, it's really
25:37
Speaker 1: interesting with numbers. I have a technique that i'll i'll
25:40
Speaker 1: share with to prolong things and I find that it
25:45
Speaker 1: works in um you can do it with when you're exercising,
25:48
Speaker 1: but I also use it when I'm in the ice tub.
25:51
Speaker 1: Let's say I can do forty slow breaths when I'm
25:58
Speaker 1: in the ice Yeah, forty slow breaths is like on
26:02
Speaker 1: a typical day, maybe five between five and six minutes.
26:06
Speaker 1: And if you change the way you count. Instead of
26:11
Speaker 1: counting every breath is one death, now I count, I
26:15
Speaker 1: use the number one for each of the first four breaths,
26:20
Speaker 1: and then I use the number two for the next
26:24
Speaker 1: four breaths. Yeah, yeah, And it's great. And after you've
26:29
Speaker 1: done it for a while, getting to the number forty
26:32
Speaker 1: and if you don't allow yourself to do math, which
26:35
Speaker 1: is a real key to it, you can't allow yourself
26:38
Speaker 1: to figure out what it is. But something about keeping
26:43
Speaker 1: the numbers lower even though you're doing it longer in
26:47
Speaker 1: your mind, Yeah, you haven't been in that long. There's
26:51
Speaker 1: part of you, the brain part of it doesn't kick
26:55
Speaker 1: in a feeling like you're getting towards the end. So
26:59
Speaker 1: it's good. It's a good technique. And if you really
27:01
Speaker 1: think about it's like, even when we push it at
27:03
Speaker 1: the highest level, we're only pushing like forty percent. So
27:06
Speaker 1: if you really max out, you're like sixty percent. You know,
27:10
Speaker 1: a hypothetical ustimated numbers. But the max out would be
27:13
Speaker 1: your breaking point, right, So, but which nobody ever gets to.
27:16
Speaker 1: But I'm saying so, if you can trick your brain,
27:18
Speaker 1: you can override your body and deal with the pain
27:21
Speaker 1: of wanting to quit or shut down by fooling yourself.
27:25
Speaker 1: That's exactly what I do. Don't You don't You're not
27:28
Speaker 1: as aware of how hard it is, so soon it
27:32
Speaker 1: takes away one of the rick. That's how I do
27:36
Speaker 1: everything everything. And by the way, the only other thing
27:39
Speaker 1: that I add to it is I never stop at
27:41
Speaker 1: the mark. I always have to go at least one
27:43
Speaker 1: over always, because you train yourself to never quit before
27:47
Speaker 1: you get to the goal. I have a lot of friends.
27:50
Speaker 1: They'll run like, oh, let's run a five k, and
27:52
Speaker 1: they'll stop at three miles. I'm like, you just have
27:54
Speaker 1: to go that little extra bit, you got it, and
27:57
Speaker 1: then go more because someone you have to do the
27:59
Speaker 1: real task. You have that in your mind, like I'm
28:02
Speaker 1: not gonna quit until I not just get there, but
28:04
Speaker 1: pass it. So it's a numbers game. Okay, So now
28:09
Speaker 1: we're up to the So you've done the pillar and
28:14
Speaker 1: you say it's easy, but still standing on your feet
28:16
Speaker 1: for how many hours? Was it? That was only thirty
28:19
Speaker 1: six hours. You were standing ninety feet in the air.
28:22
Speaker 1: So there's the yeah, high train for that. Put a
28:27
Speaker 1: flower pot. I lived on the sixteenth floor of a
28:29
Speaker 1: building in New York. I just put a flower pot
28:31
Speaker 1: in the little corner of the roof and just stand
28:33
Speaker 1: there all the time, just stare down. That was it.
28:36
Speaker 1: So I just, oh I could. It's like, let's say
28:39
Speaker 1: you had to do it, if you had to stand
28:40
Speaker 1: up on a book, what's the big deal you have
28:46
Speaker 1: to stand up on a book for you could do
28:48
Speaker 1: it right. So it's just that if that book is
28:50
Speaker 1: up one hundred feet it changes your brain. But really,
28:53
Speaker 1: if you're committed to I'm gonna stand on this platform
28:56
Speaker 1: for thirty six hours, you're just you're just canmitting to it.
29:00
Speaker 1: So then you have to override the brain's impulses and
29:03
Speaker 1: you know, oh this is too much. You just gotta
29:06
Speaker 1: figure So I just built I built that one up slowly.
29:08
Speaker 1: I'll just stand on flower pots on the top of
29:11
Speaker 1: the roof. By the way, from one time the flower
29:13
Speaker 1: pots shattered on the top of that was crazy. What's
29:19
Speaker 1: after the pillar? That was two thousand and two and
29:23
Speaker 1: two thousand and three, I went to London to forty
29:26
Speaker 1: four days in a box that one. Once again, I
29:32
Speaker 1: probably pushed it a little too much. But once you
29:34
Speaker 1: get over that point, once you get where you lose
29:37
Speaker 1: all temptation, all sense, you know everything that all of
29:42
Speaker 1: your dopea means you're adorned, everything goes away and you're
29:45
Speaker 1: just on this sort of steady serotonin level where everything
29:49
Speaker 1: you start to see colors like you've never imagined st blue.
29:52
Speaker 1: It's like you cry when you see like wow, when
29:55
Speaker 1: you see somebody smile, just a stranger, you both cry.
29:59
Speaker 1: It's like it's this connective state where you have no
30:02
Speaker 1: It's like you enter the spiritual and you completely leave
30:06
Speaker 1: the flesh behind. And that that is a Yeah, that's
30:11
Speaker 1: that's an experience, one of the most important, other than
30:15
Speaker 1: everything related to my door, but that's one of the
30:17
Speaker 1: most important experiences in my life. Do you attribute it
30:21
Speaker 1: to the fact that you weren't in the other ones
30:24
Speaker 1: we're talking about, there's you're more uncomfortable, there's more of
30:28
Speaker 1: a sense of pain. This one, the forty four days,
30:32
Speaker 1: was more just about the duration than the discomfort. I think,
30:35
Speaker 1: is that right? I mean you start to feel pain. Basically,
30:40
Speaker 1: if you read any book about extended fasting, it kind
30:43
Speaker 1: of hits the notes. It's like it about a month
30:45
Speaker 1: or twenty eight days, you really do you start to
30:48
Speaker 1: have this sweet taste in your mouth. So I was
30:50
Speaker 1: drinking water the whole time, but around day twenty eight
30:54
Speaker 1: I started questioning harmony and everybody there. It's like Bill,
30:57
Speaker 1: I was like I would pour the water because I
30:59
Speaker 1: had to, but it was pure h to us, so
31:01
Speaker 1: it was like no minerals, no nothing in it. And
31:03
Speaker 1: I would have a tube come down and I would
31:05
Speaker 1: drink it. I think that like the people that supported
31:08
Speaker 1: this in London, my Channel four, I was thinking, they
31:11
Speaker 1: must want this to keep going. So they're spiking my
31:14
Speaker 1: water with glucose, you know, I tasted. I'd make Harmony
31:18
Speaker 1: band build my brother. I'd pour the water down to
31:21
Speaker 1: my say taste this right now. They're sugar in it.
31:24
Speaker 1: Pour it down, they drink it, you know, and I
31:27
Speaker 1: think that they were all in on it. So I'd
31:29
Speaker 1: get like a random stranger. I'd say, bring him all
31:31
Speaker 1: the way up, do you have a copy the cup?
31:34
Speaker 1: And then I'd pour the water down the catch it
31:37
Speaker 1: the cup and taste is it water? So all the
31:40
Speaker 1: guide put things of what happens during the fast, it
31:43
Speaker 1: really did actually happen exactly. The information I had on
31:49
Speaker 1: how long I could do it for came from a
31:51
Speaker 1: physiologist at NASA, so he was you know, they want
31:55
Speaker 1: to protect the astronauts, so they do all the due diligence,
31:58
Speaker 1: all the research. They look into the terrible records from
32:02
Speaker 1: World War two, things that most people wouldn't go into morally,
32:05
Speaker 1: it's rang or ethically, so he would really just to
32:08
Speaker 1: save nastro outsized say okay, how long can he human
32:11
Speaker 1: actually go without food? How long can you human go
32:13
Speaker 1: with just water? And they had really accurate specific notes
32:17
Speaker 1: of what could be tolerated. And it pretty much worked
32:21
Speaker 1: out exactly as I had assumed it. And what was it?
32:25
Speaker 1: What were the most difficult parts of that? So many
32:29
Speaker 1: amazing things happened. I have to say, if I was
32:32
Speaker 1: doing that fast by myself, it would have been impossible,
32:37
Speaker 1: which is why I put it in public, so public,
32:41
Speaker 1: all sides visible. I knew I would just have to
32:43
Speaker 1: do it. There's no cheating because you're you're as exposed
32:46
Speaker 1: as it gets. But if I was trying to do
32:48
Speaker 1: it by myself, forget it. But the only real difficulties
32:52
Speaker 1: is little things that you don't think about. Like after
32:55
Speaker 1: that amount of time, even though I had fasted and
32:58
Speaker 1: cleaned out my system, your body is processing, and you
33:02
Speaker 1: know I helped. I held there was barely, but I
33:04
Speaker 1: helped the number two and for the entire time, obviously
33:08
Speaker 1: most of at least through sweat and through your breath
33:10
Speaker 1: and all that stuff. But and then you you override
33:12
Speaker 1: it and then you don't have to go over again.
33:14
Speaker 1: But that duration of that and then the only other
33:17
Speaker 1: real real difficulty I think was as you start to
33:21
Speaker 1: become really weak, your you know, your body goes into
33:25
Speaker 1: this sort of like you're very stable almost you're very
33:28
Speaker 1: you know, minimalistic and all that stuff, but your heart's
33:32
Speaker 1: moving differently because I guess from you know, you're you're
33:35
Speaker 1: you're eating, you start to eat your organs, and my
33:38
Speaker 1: bone mass and VEX decrease thirty troops. And also and
33:41
Speaker 1: then what happens, you know, the London nurse, not the lone,
33:44
Speaker 1: the media blue you know, start to make this supporting
33:47
Speaker 1: forty four days in this let's make this a story.
33:49
Speaker 1: So people would like fly like toy helicopters or cheeseburgers
33:53
Speaker 1: on them around But that's been bother me. But what
33:54
Speaker 1: would happen is people would like it in the middle
33:57
Speaker 1: of a night, like shoot pink balls at the box
34:00
Speaker 1: and it was really cool looking, you know, it's like
34:02
Speaker 1: this color month, but it was like that noise because
34:05
Speaker 1: you don't think about that the way it echoes. I
34:08
Speaker 1: wake up to that you know, so that kind of
34:09
Speaker 1: thing just is a little crazy. But that's not the
34:12
Speaker 1: difficult part. Difficult part is I think around day thirty
34:18
Speaker 1: seven when I started to get the heart started to
34:23
Speaker 1: feel like it was gonna it wasn't right right because
34:27
Speaker 1: it's decreased in size by a third or whatever it
34:30
Speaker 1: is that it lost, and we have those records. Just afterwards,
34:34
Speaker 1: I went to the hospital. We had the New England Journal, Medicine,
34:36
Speaker 1: Oxford Journal. We studied all the stuff. I gave the results,
34:39
Speaker 1: you know, the science, just because most people that do
34:42
Speaker 1: these things are like striking or hunger strikes. But anyway,
34:46
Speaker 1: so around that time, around day thirty seven, day thirty eight,
34:50
Speaker 1: the heart starts to going. It starts to get really
34:53
Speaker 1: really difficult because you think that you're going to collapse.
34:55
Speaker 1: You know, you get dizzy everything you do, any movement.
34:59
Speaker 1: And and my mother passed away when I was young.
35:02
Speaker 1: But um, before she died, she said to me, God
35:06
Speaker 1: is loved. That was that was the last words that
35:10
Speaker 1: she said. And she died in my arms. It was like,
35:12
Speaker 1: I said, the most difficult and most beautiful that she
35:15
Speaker 1: could have given me. But um, so it around that
35:18
Speaker 1: exact time, I was like I said in my head,
35:24
Speaker 1: I said, mom, if you think I should keep going,
35:27
Speaker 1: give me a sign. And Rick, the tower bridge was
35:31
Speaker 1: in front of me. Over there, these kids start young. Damn, damn,
35:35
Speaker 1: I see them right when I said that. In my head,
35:37
Speaker 1: I'm saying that exact moment. And they have a rolled
35:40
Speaker 1: up white thing, right, and they open it up and
35:45
Speaker 1: they start walking down towards me. When they get close
35:48
Speaker 1: to me, they keep open up. They open it all
35:50
Speaker 1: the way. They're holding it, like three of them, I think,
35:53
Speaker 1: and it says God is loved. I was like, yeah,
35:58
Speaker 1: I started crying, you know. But so that and then
36:00
Speaker 1: you know those kind of signs is simple. You know,
36:03
Speaker 1: are coinsida, whatever it is that's enough to keep going,
36:06
Speaker 1: or if you know, or if the energy esus out there,
36:09
Speaker 1: and you know, energy is never just so something she
36:12
Speaker 1: put out there that just happened to connect at the
36:14
Speaker 1: right moment, you know, those types of things. So I
36:17
Speaker 1: kept going and pushed to the end, and you know
36:20
Speaker 1: that was but like I said, it was. And so
36:23
Speaker 1: it's like when you get the chance in the vertigo
36:26
Speaker 1: I had it too, in the box, when you get
36:29
Speaker 1: the chance to just really watch the sun go up,
36:32
Speaker 1: go over the sky. Watch it the whole way up,
36:35
Speaker 1: watch it the whole way down, and all the way around.
36:38
Speaker 1: Watch the river go up and down. It's amazing. It's
36:42
Speaker 1: funny that we never get to do that in real life.
36:44
Speaker 1: And then as soon as I was done with the stunt,
36:46
Speaker 1: I was in the hospital recovering. You know, somebody sent
36:49
Speaker 1: me a box from Harrods of food and I shouldn't
36:51
Speaker 1: have eaten for a couple of weeks because that's the
36:53
Speaker 1: most dangerous part. It's the refeeding syndrome, which is the
36:57
Speaker 1: paper that we published was about that. As soon as
36:59
Speaker 1: the doctor, who thought I was also cheating, by the way,
37:02
Speaker 1: and Bill wanted me to take glucose vitamins with sugar,
37:06
Speaker 1: said no, Bill, and I was right because my body
37:08
Speaker 1: did go into starvation mode, so it was in the
37:11
Speaker 1: metabolic great change to protect me. But anyway, so as
37:15
Speaker 1: soon as I started that, like taking from the box,
37:18
Speaker 1: taking the crisp and eating you know, the bagels, that
37:21
Speaker 1: would as soon as you do that, the animal state returns.
37:24
Speaker 1: Everything changes and then it's like your note, the spiritual
37:27
Speaker 1: part of it, which is the most amazing part, fades
37:30
Speaker 1: away very fast. So you go from like this this
37:34
Speaker 1: state of like pure there's no body, there's nothing, the colors,
37:39
Speaker 1: the wind, the sky, the sun, the earth, and then
37:42
Speaker 1: back into the you know the normal world. So it
37:48
Speaker 1: is something that I wish like everybody could experience on
37:51
Speaker 1: because it is. And I think that's why those yogis
37:54
Speaker 1: and monks, why they do those bomb fasts, because they
37:57
Speaker 1: find that place where serotonin is riding their rain levels.
38:00
Speaker 1: There's no one darkness, there's no dopamines. It's just a solid,
38:03
Speaker 1: steady stay and you and you find something that you
38:06
Speaker 1: could never you could never imagine or explain it. So
38:12
Speaker 1: what was after the box? After the glass box two
38:16
Speaker 1: thousand and three, After that was the drowned a lot
38:20
Speaker 1: the water thing. That was my favorite one by far,
38:24
Speaker 1: just the favorite across the board. I started holding my
38:26
Speaker 1: breath when I was five years old. I was on
38:29
Speaker 1: the swim team. At my feet turned in you know,
38:33
Speaker 1: single mother Brooklyn Ymca, all the kids beating me instead
38:36
Speaker 1: of swimming like normal like them, because when you have
38:40
Speaker 1: to turn hit, I would just swim straight and I
38:42
Speaker 1: suddenly I'm able to keep up because I'm not breathing.
38:45
Speaker 1: So then I start going back and forth and I
38:47
Speaker 1: start really as Wow, I could do it, and the coaches,
38:49
Speaker 1: I don't do that. It's like, I can do it.
38:51
Speaker 1: And I did do it. And then the older kids
38:54
Speaker 1: would come to see me do laps about breathing. That
38:56
Speaker 1: was kind of like that, and then they would compete
38:59
Speaker 1: against me. So going water and I beat them all
39:01
Speaker 1: the older older kids. So I'd say, listen, you can
39:05
Speaker 1: go up and down as many times as you want.
39:06
Speaker 1: I'll stay under the whole time. So I was able
39:08
Speaker 1: to while they went up and down. I was able
39:10
Speaker 1: to last like six of theirs. But they didn't know
39:12
Speaker 1: the tech me. You know, going up and down and
39:15
Speaker 1: doing that, it's not as efficient. It's just staying calm, right,
39:18
Speaker 1: which is what I was doing. So the breath hole
39:20
Speaker 1: began there and then I loved it. And then I
39:25
Speaker 1: discovered Houdini at that age as well. I was reading
39:27
Speaker 1: his books and he was the underwater King. He had
39:29
Speaker 1: a record of three and a half minutes, so young teen,
39:33
Speaker 1: I was able to do three and a half minutes,
39:36
Speaker 1: no problem. I'd get out of the pool and blackout.
39:40
Speaker 1: By the way, he didn't know that that's what was
39:41
Speaker 1: going on. And then had the idea of putting a
39:45
Speaker 1: spear shape the aquarium in the middle of Lincoln Center
39:49
Speaker 1: and just living there like the human aquarium type then,
39:53
Speaker 1: but like it's like a yeah, just a ball in
39:56
Speaker 1: the middle of New York. Then seeing how long I stay.
39:59
Speaker 1: So it was all so the longest that somebody would
40:01
Speaker 1: submerged underwater continuously, it was seven days. So I spoke
40:05
Speaker 1: to a guy that had the record that lived under
40:07
Speaker 1: a lake and he gave me all the tips and
40:10
Speaker 1: text He stayed under the boy for like five days,
40:13
Speaker 1: and he's like, here's what you need to do. So
40:15
Speaker 1: I kind of listened to him, studied what he was saying,
40:17
Speaker 1: and then yeah, I just did it. Didn't anticipate what
40:21
Speaker 1: would happen to the hands and feet that you know,
40:23
Speaker 1: it's pretty the pain is pretty intense because all the
40:27
Speaker 1: oils that protect you leave and then you know, the
40:30
Speaker 1: wrinkled that extraordinarily, you know, beyond anything conceivable that that's
40:36
Speaker 1: and the pain that comes with it with them being
40:38
Speaker 1: that wrinkled and just some expansion and all that stuff
40:41
Speaker 1: is crazy. But um, drinking liquids through a two you know,
40:46
Speaker 1: stayed there seven Oh. Another thing you didn't anticipate sun
40:52
Speaker 1: that spears like a magnifying glass, big piece of glass
40:55
Speaker 1: filled water. Son's going to it actually burned a hole
40:58
Speaker 1: in the metal walkway. It was so I was in
41:02
Speaker 1: there for a week. My back was burnt, but like
41:05
Speaker 1: not just burnt like red, I mean like like burnt,
41:09
Speaker 1: like burnt burnt. And it stayed like that for like
41:12
Speaker 1: seven months or something. You know, it's just like, yeah,
41:15
Speaker 1: it was, and the pain it's just insane, but you
41:17
Speaker 1: don't think about those things, and you're on water, so
41:20
Speaker 1: it kind of and the gates it on some level.
41:22
Speaker 1: Until after where did where did you end up with
41:25
Speaker 1: the breath holding? Uh? Well I did actually with oxygen,
41:30
Speaker 1: I did twenty minutes in two seconds, and just straight
41:33
Speaker 1: breath holding. I had gotten up to seven forty seven.
41:36
Speaker 1: The record was nine o eight. You can get the
41:39
Speaker 1: guy had a huge advantage over me, not that that matters,
41:42
Speaker 1: but he was very skinny, very tall tom Zetis, you know,
41:46
Speaker 1: and and and his lung capacity, his total lung capacity
41:49
Speaker 1: was almost double Line who was pretty extraordinary Sonny. But
41:53
Speaker 1: that doesn't matter, you know. But anyway, I thought somehow,
41:57
Speaker 1: what I thought was by living in this sphere, which
42:00
Speaker 1: is why I decided to do the sphere before it
42:03
Speaker 1: by living there would acclimate become condition. But also I
42:06
Speaker 1: thought that by not eating for that amount of time,
42:09
Speaker 1: metabolic rate would slow down and suddenly I'd be able
42:11
Speaker 1: to hold my breath much longer. That's what I was
42:13
Speaker 1: hoping for, But it doesn't really well. I started cracking
42:17
Speaker 1: at seven away, so it doesn't really work like that.
42:20
Speaker 1: Then I went back trained to pure oxygen. Hypothetical record
42:25
Speaker 1: at that time was ten minutes. There was no real
42:29
Speaker 1: visuals on it, so I just started training just static
42:32
Speaker 1: acting of breath holding with oxygen. So and then I
42:37
Speaker 1: got my first try, and I had a bunch of
42:39
Speaker 1: friends there that were top narrow bascular surgeons and doctors pulmonaris,
42:43
Speaker 1: and when they saw that I was under for fifteen
42:46
Speaker 1: minutes or nothing, they pulled me out because in their
42:48
Speaker 1: mind it's like the body can endure that. That's not possible.
42:51
Speaker 1: And I was like, why did you do that? I
42:52
Speaker 1: was fine and came in with pulmonary expert with telemetry
42:56
Speaker 1: and everything attached. I had done a twenty minute and
42:59
Speaker 1: two se I can breath hold before the OPRAH one,
43:02
Speaker 1: which was seventeen oh four twenty minute and two second
43:05
Speaker 1: breath hold. Heart rate dropped to eight beats curve minute
43:11
Speaker 1: and they'd never seen that, and so they pulled me
43:13
Speaker 1: out once again. I was like, why did you do that?
43:15
Speaker 1: They were like, because you were about to go into
43:17
Speaker 1: cardiac at cardiac death, I was like, perfectly fine. The
43:21
Speaker 1: body does things, it adjusts, it adapts, and I don't
43:25
Speaker 1: know if there's something to just accepting the situation and
43:28
Speaker 1: riding it through the Alps, but it was. It was
43:31
Speaker 1: pretty amazing. And so when I had to do the
43:34
Speaker 1: world record, which Tom Zetis pushed it right before I did.
43:37
Speaker 1: He went on Regius and Kelly and pushed it to
43:39
Speaker 1: sixteen thirty two from a hypothetical thirteen. So I was like, okay,
43:42
Speaker 1: I got to nail this. So when I got to
43:44
Speaker 1: twenty or two, I felt like when I do Oprah,
43:46
Speaker 1: I'd be okay. Getting to the seventeen past sixteen thirty two.
43:50
Speaker 1: In a long breath hold, what are the phases of
43:54
Speaker 1: what's going on? Mentally? You want to ideally it sounds silly,
43:59
Speaker 1: but you want to keep your eyes closed. You want
44:01
Speaker 1: to do it. Your brain takes a lot of energy,
44:04
Speaker 1: so you want to kind of minimize on everything just
44:06
Speaker 1: to preserve o' too. So you want to shut everything
44:09
Speaker 1: down as much as possible. What I do is I
44:11
Speaker 1: just I used to go through the alphabet, go to
44:14
Speaker 1: the names, visit all different places, absorbed, drift under the ocean,
44:18
Speaker 1: going to the abyss of the ocean, and just kind
44:20
Speaker 1: of go all over. Then when so when I did
44:22
Speaker 1: it on stage and stuff like that in my show,
44:25
Speaker 1: I didn't do that. I move, I go upside down.
44:27
Speaker 1: But going upside down I realized because Zudini used to
44:29
Speaker 1: do it upside down, and I realize why, I think
44:32
Speaker 1: while he was doing it is because if you think
44:35
Speaker 1: about the way mammals that are underwater creatures, they big
44:40
Speaker 1: breath and they die this way. So if you think
44:42
Speaker 1: about it, when you're upside down head first, your lungs
44:45
Speaker 1: aren't forcing the air out. They're forcing it's that position
44:49
Speaker 1: the air is going into lung So it's like by
44:51
Speaker 1: being upside down, it is a much easier position to
44:54
Speaker 1: hold your breath. The only problem is getting there takes
44:56
Speaker 1: a little bit of energy and then getting out of it.
44:58
Speaker 1: But when I'm upside down in the water tank, I
45:00
Speaker 1: can kind of relax and almost go to sleep. Not
45:03
Speaker 1: go to sleep, I mean go to that place you know,
45:08
Speaker 1: so what was the last one. Well after that, when
45:11
Speaker 1: I got really cocky and my trainer working on it,
45:14
Speaker 1: It's like, you can never do a stunt that you
45:15
Speaker 1: didn't prepare for. You need to do it and understand
45:18
Speaker 1: what you're doing. I did this upside down thing, and
45:20
Speaker 1: I figured I had done, like, you know, six hours
45:23
Speaker 1: upside down. I was like, I could do sixty hours this.
45:26
Speaker 1: As soon as I go upside down, I'm up to
45:28
Speaker 1: six hours. I didn't try peeing upside down for the
45:30
Speaker 1: first time. Pee It's like, oh, you know, nightmare, I'm
45:33
Speaker 1: upside down. And anyway, that that one was a disaster,
45:37
Speaker 1: public disaster. Then I shut down for a long time.
45:41
Speaker 1: I did something after that with the electricity where I
45:44
Speaker 1: was in a Tesla coil seventy three hours standing up,
45:47
Speaker 1: which was really hard because the expansion of the ankles
45:50
Speaker 1: started to riff through the metal chain mail Faraday suit
45:52
Speaker 1: that I was wearing. And you know, one time and
45:55
Speaker 1: I had electrolyte water I was drinking and when I
45:57
Speaker 1: spit it out, the arc hit it the water one
46:02
Speaker 1: and just blasted into my heart and even I think
46:05
Speaker 1: I burn marks on my toes. So that that one
46:08
Speaker 1: was a really really difficult one, and that's the last
46:11
Speaker 1: one I did. My daughter was born. I was like,
46:13
Speaker 1: I'm not doing anything anymore like this, and I'm done.
46:16
Speaker 1: So I just went kind of back to, you know,
46:18
Speaker 1: the magic stuff. But something I've been working on has
46:22
Speaker 1: been that has been so fun and amazing. Right now,
46:27
Speaker 1: it's obviously, you know, we're just working it out and
46:30
Speaker 1: dreaming about it, playing with it and thinking about it.
46:32
Speaker 1: But there is one that I love that's the opposite.
46:35
Speaker 1: It's not about you know, survival, and it's more about
46:38
Speaker 1: the opposite end of that's more about poetry and beauty
46:41
Speaker 1: and you know things like that, hopefully, right. But still
46:45
Speaker 1: even in the shows that I've seen, I've seen you
46:47
Speaker 1: do stuff when you still end up, you know, being
46:50
Speaker 1: in a tank of water for a really long time. Right, Well, yeah,
46:55
Speaker 1: I mean I can't. Yeah, I love those things. I
46:57
Speaker 1: love and to me, because oh, how's that magic? To me?
46:59
Speaker 1: That's the real magic. Like to me, it's like the
47:01
Speaker 1: body's capable of doing things that we can't even imagine
47:05
Speaker 1: that the body could, withstand ard do that's magic. A
47:08
Speaker 1: human can go without air for twenty minutes and two
47:10
Speaker 1: seconds or now the records twenty four minutes and three seconds.
47:14
Speaker 1: That's magic. How does the body do that? Any of
47:19
Speaker 1: the things that you've done, Just think about any techniques
47:23
Speaker 1: or anything that you've learned that are helpful in terms
47:27
Speaker 1: of people who are facing a struggle. I think rule
47:30
Speaker 1: number one is accept everything just the way it is.
47:33
Speaker 1: So that's rule number one, and then try everything in
47:39
Speaker 1: your power to understand and to solve for what the
47:44
Speaker 1: best possible approach to fixing the situations. I think a
47:48
Speaker 1: lot of it starts with like correcting little things that
47:53
Speaker 1: you can manage yourself. Beautiful cool man, Thank you for
47:57
Speaker 1: telling me stories, do Rick. Thanks again to David Blaine
48:05
Speaker 1: for jumping on a zoom call with Rick. David's latest special,
48:08
Speaker 1: The Magic Way, aired on ABC early this month. Check
48:11
Speaker 1: out ABC dot com for details. Brooken Record is produced
48:15
Speaker 1: with help from Jason Gambrell, mil LaBelle, Leah Rose, Matt Laboza,
48:19
Speaker 1: and Martin Gonzalez Pushkin Industries. Our theme musics by Kenny Beats.
48:24
Speaker 1: I'm justin Richmond. Thanks for listening.