In this episode, we are joined by Magician, magician, and all-around great guy, David Fong. We talk about how he got started in magic, how he fell in love with the craft, and how he became a self-taught Magician. We also talk about the origin story of David's love of magic and how it led him down a path that took him to where he is today. David is a card wizard, an actor, a comedian, a writer, and a whole lot more. We hope you enjoy this episode and that it inspires you to go out there and do some magic of your own. If you like the episode, please HIT SUBSCRIBE on Apple Podcasts and leave us a rating and review! Thanks to our sponsor, PlastiCel! We'll see you in the next episode with a new episode! 5 Starz 6 Starz is a production of Native Creative Podcasts 7 Starz Media 8 Starz Radio 9 Starz TV 10 Starz Music 11 Starz Records 12 Starz Entertainment 13 Starz PR 14 Starz Studios 15 Starz Video 16 Starz Marketing 17 Starz Merch 18 Starz Social Media 19 Starz Distribution 21 Starz Promotions 22 Starz New York, New York Music 26 Starz International 20 Starz LA 27 Starz Recording 24 Starz Road 25 Starz Co 28 Starz Digital 29 Starz Studio 30 Starz Atlantic 35 Starz Park 36 Starz B 31 32 33 34 37 38 39 40 45 41 42 47 43 44 46 49 ( ) , 48 51 5 & # 4 . 50 Theme song by ) Music by Music is by (Sonic Need You Can I Have a Song by , 35 or Get in Touch Me Out? Use This? & We'll Be In The Booth Leave Us Out & We Will See You On The Track 52
00:00:51.000Well, at the end, I don't want to give anything away, but at the end, literally, a man is holding one of his wrists, and another guy's holding the other wrist, and he still does the car trick, and we still can't figure out what happened.
00:02:45.000By the way, and also, so then the librarian, when I would come, she would give me books, and I would start looking at that little magic section that was between, like, games and puzzles.
00:02:56.000I always wished magic would be, like, not there.
00:02:59.000Like, it should be, like, an art or something, you know?
00:03:01.000It was always, like, when you want a magic book, it's always, like, that silly, like, kid's jokey thing.
00:03:10.000I pulled out a book and I was like six years old and I see a guy chained to the side of a building staring out looking like death is upon him and that was Houdini and I didn't know anything about what that all meant I looked through the pictures and he was hanging upside down and stuff like that but when I went to sleep I would have these dreams of this guy chained to the side of a building and that began my curiosity and love of Houdini and then that began my curiosity of like Not just
00:03:40.000like the magic trick stuff, but like this stuff.
00:04:13.000And all the kids like, ah, you know, and afraid they were going to cut their feet on glass or whatever.
00:04:17.000And I would run in it and I felt like I could do this because I wasn't good at other things physically.
00:04:23.000Like I was born with my feet turned in and stuff like that.
00:04:26.000So I felt like I could do these things.
00:04:29.000So then I learned how to hold my breath.
00:04:31.000And the reason I learned how to hold my breath was simply because I was on the swim team at the Y also.
00:04:36.000And the other kids would swim back and forth and they'd destroy me because my feet didn't function perfectly well.
00:04:42.000And what I learned is that if I didn't breathe, if I just swam, it would save me time because I didn't have to move my head, dip it out, you know, right?
00:06:27.000And then when I wanted to do the water tank stunt and I started learning about freediving and stuff like that, I suddenly realized blacking out is pretty straightforward.
00:06:35.000Like, you black out and then you get your head above the water and if you're supervised, you're fine.
00:06:39.000So when I went to San Diego with the SEALs, I watched what they do and I actually did it, but I didn't black out.
00:06:44.000I went back and forth a few times in the pool.
00:06:46.000But they have that viewing pool and they rope the SEALs up to some 45-pound weights and they have to walk across the bottom of the pool and the instructors are swimming above them.
00:06:55.000And when the seals black out, they cut the rope, bring them up to the top, and they're fine.
00:07:00.000But what that teaches you is that you do not need to worry about being underwater.
00:07:05.000Because if you're with a team, and by the way, nobody should try this.
00:07:09.000There is extreme dangers to shallow water blackouts, which lead to death.
00:08:52.000Back to what I was saying is the reason besides the Navy SEAL story that I knew that it made sense was because you hear about the kids in the news like in 1984 or whatever it was, a kid was under an icy river for 45 minutes with nothing.
00:09:08.000Blacked out, unconscious, underwater for 45 minutes.
00:09:12.000They rescue him out, pull him back, recover him, and full recovery.
00:09:18.000So there's something that the body does that we don't understand.
00:09:22.000But if you actualize, so because he blacked out and because it was so cold, the blood shunting occurred.
00:09:27.000We're all like the same as when you get cold.
00:09:29.000The blood rushes away from the extremities and protects the vital organs.
00:09:32.000And because he didn't inhale the water because he was completely out of it, when they recovered him, they didn't even have to get water out of his lungs and he was perfectly fine.
00:09:43.000But that just shows you that there's like certain levels of what the body can tolerate that we have no idea.
00:09:51.000So you, in learning how to swim and learning how to go all the way back and forth and holding your breath, this started this idea of holding your breath for an extreme long period of time.
00:10:01.000Like what had been the record before you had, like 20 minutes and how many seconds?
00:10:11.000Okay, so when I was a kid, I heard, as I start reading about Houdini, his, like, proud record of his lifetime, and he's the underwater escape king for 100 years ago, and he had, he was around the best swimmers, and he had access to, and he got up to three and a half minutes.
00:10:42.000So I was like, okay, that 3.30 seems like the edge.
00:10:46.000But then when I started working on the actual concept of like how long can you hold your breath for, then I started looking into it and I'm like, oh wow, there's like people that can do five minutes, six minutes, seven minutes.
00:10:57.000And then there was a hypothetical record of a hypothetical...
00:11:05.00013 minute record, but no evidence of it.
00:11:08.000And that was on Pure O2. So it was a hypothetical Pure O2 record of 13. When you say on Pure O2, what's the process?
00:11:14.000That flushes everything out and oxygenates your body.
00:11:17.000So you start Pure O2, you hold on to Pure O2, and then you go under?
00:11:24.000Which gets rid of the CO2 and gives you more room for oxygen.
00:11:27.000And by the way, I just went up to 25,000 feet in an airplane, ascending at 500 feet per minute, doors open and everything, no oxygen.
00:11:36.000And I was with Luke Aikens who jumped from 25,000 feet with no parachute and landed in that.
00:11:42.000He was with me and two other, the pilot and two other guys.
00:11:44.000We just right under 25, it was a 24-7, whatever.
00:11:50.000I said, let's see who goes hypoxic first, right?
00:11:53.000No, no, no, but you have to take the O2 monitors, you have to be on them, right?
00:12:01.000And I was already in a hypobaric chamber with the FAA at Oklahoma City, and I started purging just to see what it would do, and my oxygen level shot up, which nobody believes is possible.
00:12:12.000So I get into the airplane, and we put the monitors on, and everybody's around the same.
00:12:55.000That's what he wrote on the paper next to the levels because he was recording it.
00:12:58.000So I took his monitor off of his finger and he took mine.
00:13:03.000I put his monitor on my finger, put mine on his, bang!
00:13:08.000His was dropping around 70 and mine was 98, 99. Then I switched with everybody on the plane and the oxygen levels with the breathing all the way up to that altitude.
00:13:19.000And I'm not recommending this because I haven't tested enough, but they did stay up at 98, 99. And so my evidence for that was You hear about all the Sherpas that go up to the top of Everest, up to 29,000 feet, and they're not bringing oxygen.
00:14:54.000And Houdini was like king of cards as well, but he's a guy that's doing real things.
00:14:58.000And then I like guys that are like, as I go to the Museum of Broadcasting because there was no YouTube or whatever.
00:15:04.000So I'd look at like these magic, you search magic, and I'd find like guys that would like drink a gallon of water, drink a liter of kerosene.
00:15:12.000He would float all the kerosene on top of the water, and then he would spit out kerosene out of his mouth, look like a human dragon, and then put the fire out with a gallon of water.
00:16:37.000Then he does these weird sounds and movements, which is part of his show, right?
00:16:41.000And then he brings it up, spits it out, and...
00:16:46.000The film canister is sealed, and in it is the water and the fish, and it's sealed with the signature.
00:16:53.000So to me, that's like the coolest magic.
00:16:56.000Because when you see a trick, you know, like, oh, that's cool, but it's a trick.
00:17:01.000So it's like you're being removed from being able to, like, absorb.
00:17:04.000But when you see somewhere, somebody's doing something crazy, and it seems like a trick, but it's also like, wait, this is real because he's really doing this.
00:17:12.000It's just way more exciting, you know?
00:17:43.000And I'm going to do a really amazing piece about him because he is incredible.
00:17:48.000But he also was on like Johnny Carson shows.
00:17:51.000What he would do Is he would take a pack of cigarettes, throw them into his mouth one at a time, light them on fire, bring them back out, and then throw them into his mouth one at a time, eat all the cigarettes.
00:19:46.000So another, the guy I was telling you about, that's like my favorite card, the guy that showed me the Navy Seal, but just an amazing magician.
00:19:54.000He's like this genius that if he came here, which he never would because he would never show anybody anything, but if he did, And he showed you a couple of moves.
00:20:03.000Like the first move he showed me was actually a card move called Ascension where he makes the card float right through the deck.
00:20:09.000And like the greatest magician of all time, the card magician said it was one of the greatest tricks ever done.
00:20:14.000You won't be able to find it anywhere because it's not a video.
00:20:16.000But he only does it to a couple of magicians.
00:20:20.000So he performs for like, you know, a handful of his friends.
00:20:24.000He shows a move and it's mind-blowing.
00:20:27.000And luckily he showed me stuff when I was young.
00:20:54.000But he doesn't believe that it's not to him, it's not a performance.
00:20:58.000To him, it's just about the technical love and feel of that.
00:21:02.000Well, there's a Japanese phrase for that, about doing something...
00:21:06.000Over and over and over and over the exact same thing over and over again to achieve a level of perfection that is almost physically unattainable to mere mortals.
00:21:17.000You bypass what a person thinks the body would be capable of doing.
00:22:07.000All day long for 30 years, and most people just aren't willing to do that.
00:22:10.000But if you do do that, there are some levels that you can reach that are just unattainable to a normal person.
00:22:18.000And even if you would talk to scientists and doctors, it is attainable.
00:22:25.000When somebody gets paralyzed or something, right?
00:22:27.000I've seen people that the doctors say, you're done, you have no shot.
00:22:30.000And they spend all day of every single waking moment trying to get like a little moment, just like a tiny bit of movement in their little toe.
00:22:39.000And eventually, if they do what you're saying.
00:22:55.000Like when I was watching you move the cards around, it's interesting, like, you ever watch a movie where a guy's smoking a cigarette, you know, that guy doesn't really smoke.
00:23:06.000You're moving these cards around like your edge detection, like your understanding of where the edge...
00:23:13.000It's very interesting to watch your fingers move because they're so educated.
00:23:19.000You know, because of all the commentary that I do with martial arts and my years in martial arts, I'm fascinated by how different people move and they do the same thing.
00:23:30.000It looks different when other people do it.
00:23:33.000There's certain people that will throw a punch and you just walk at it and you go, Jesus!
00:23:36.000There's something about the fluidity of the motion that's stunning even to this day.
00:23:42.000And when I was watching you move your fingers and watching you move the cards, I was like, this motherfucker has shuffled a lot of cards.
00:23:49.000There's a weirdness to the movement of your hands.
00:25:17.000Meaning, this is the guy that the reason that Vegas has those, instead of the dealer peeking the down card, they have to put it into a machine and push a button.
00:25:30.000He's the guy that the movie Casino was built around with the computer in the shoe.
00:26:40.000They have such force going around this way that when they hit the wall, one die won't break the number.
00:26:44.000And he can throw it exactly to this part of the table, missing this from across the table so that one die locks in every time he can guarantee that number.
00:26:54.000He did that every day for almost a decade until he could throw dice better than any other human being in the world.
00:27:02.000Then he went and got a job at one of the casinos that techs for car cheats and worked in the craps tables.
00:27:10.000And as soon as he turned 21, he went out, travels the world, and wins the exact amount of money that he should win playing craps where you're not detected, but you can- What is the exact amount?
00:27:22.000I mean, under, you know- Under a million?
00:27:25.000Yeah, probably a few million a year or so.
00:27:27.000I'm saying it's not like he's going in and getting greedy.
00:27:49.000But they've kicked him out of casinos because he's won a lot of money, but he's also lost a lot of money, which is bizarre to me that you can go to a place and do really well, and they're like, you're doing too well, you've got to get out of here.
00:27:58.000Well, they also, it says by and every day, we have the right to refuse anybody, which is important.
00:28:03.000But do they do that with dice, is the question.
00:28:06.000I get how they would do that with cards.
00:28:08.000Okay, so do you want to hear a dice story?
00:29:17.000The pit-ball, they make a joke, and then the woman pit-ball comes out, she says, well, if you take your shirt off, we'll let you throw the dice.
00:30:03.000So you have to roll like a five, let's say.
00:30:06.000And then I'm like, oh no, I need to roll another five, which is statistically much more difficult than a seven because seven is the most common number to come up.
00:30:14.000So if you roll a 5, you're like, uh-oh, that's hard because you can only get a 2-3 or a 3-2 on both dice or a 1-4 or a 4-1.
00:30:22.000So you have a 4 out of 36, so it's a 1 and 9. So you're probably going to crap out before you get the number.
00:30:28.000That's why the game is to their favor.
00:30:31.000So I'm throwing the dice and it's two and a half hours later.
00:31:40.000But it does make sense that if you look at what that is, that that's a physical thing, and then if you develop a touch, you develop a feel, you do something over and over and over again.
00:31:51.000Well, this is different, but here, look, take the die, and can you like...
00:33:08.000That must be a rush for you though, just to blow people's minds like that all the time.
00:33:12.000But see, so it's not, you know, I don't think of it...
00:33:15.000So what happens is the digital fixation part of like the love of just like learning something new and exciting.
00:33:20.000That's like really the stimulus is like that fixation almost.
00:33:25.000It's like the meditative thing that you're talking about.
00:33:28.000But as a magician that is performing and trying to make TV shows, it's really difficult because you have to like keep coming up with new things, which is...
00:33:40.000How did you convince someone to let you try this on television?
00:33:43.000Well, so back in those days, the only magic that you could see, and like I said, it was pre, you couldn't go watch it or get it or anything.
00:34:00.000So what happened was all those World's Greatest TV specials were playing and they were called World's Greatest Men and I would watch them and they were like the opposite of that.
00:34:13.000It was like glossy, big, dynamic and illusionist.
00:34:17.000It's so far away from the whole thing.
00:34:19.000So I'm like, there's nothing magical about all this.
00:34:24.000So okay, I think about it and I'm like, But I'm doing magic everywhere all the time.
00:34:33.000So one of the ways I'm making money is I'm going into those fancy restaurants in New York City, like those upper park avenues, and I do magic to the manager, to this.
00:35:36.000What I had to learn quickly was like little things that are so important, like distance, like how close should you be to the table or how far?
00:35:45.000And then you start to really understand the psychology of the magic is way more important than the tricks, right?
00:35:50.000So if you're too close, you're like...
00:37:16.000I want to show that people are all the same, you know?
00:37:20.000Sure, there's some that are horrific and do horrible, but at the core of everybody, there's like an innocent kid somewhere, maybe got really far lost, and magic just pulls that out of people.
00:38:13.000And it makes sense, that feeling that you get when you show someone, like the card trick you did in the other room, and everybody's like, oh!
00:38:21.000That O, the O that you get out of people, that rush, that is, because at that moment, no one's thinking of anything else.
00:38:29.000At that moment, they're like, what the fuck?
00:38:51.000Okay, so after the TV show comes out, stuff like that, I get more known.
00:38:54.000By the way, it's the World's Greatest City, but then I was like, okay, let me do the opposite of that, so I called it Street Magic, because I was trying to come up with the lowest name.
00:39:01.000Like, I was trying to come up with set the expectations as low as possible, right?
00:39:05.000Because World's Greatest, and you see, like...
00:39:40.000They couldn't get into their car, right?
00:39:42.000But I know that that's not what's going on.
00:39:44.000It's freezing, so I understand the situation.
00:39:47.000So I go, Doug, stop one second, and I... Walk up next to this group, walk up to the car, pull the door open, but I like, it made it look like I'm just pulling it, but I was giving it for, the door opens up and it looks like I did nothing.
00:40:02.000And then I get back in the car and leave and I hear, they go, Dad, Steve!
00:40:26.000He says, if you just said, reach in your pocket, now there's a ham sandwich, that's a good trick.
00:40:31.000But if you were like, man, I'm hungry, I would love a ham sandwich, and I'd already put it there, and I'm like, reach in your pocket, and then there's...
00:41:35.000Yeah, we can all get too accustomed to things.
00:41:38.000So, you first get on television, you first do these things, and then your magic evolves, and your magic goes from being just magic to some of the more insane things you've done, like standing in a block of ice.
00:43:00.000I always wanted to do, like, Houdini-like things, but I never wanted to copy.
00:43:05.000But that one he never did, so I was kind of like, well, that's interesting, but what if instead of doing it the way he did it, what if I did it and everybody could see that I was buried alive?
00:43:15.000So what if I was really just buried alive?
00:43:39.000And then I pushed the idea of doing the Buried Alive and convinced people to let me do it publicly.
00:43:47.000Like, firemen and stuff, like, would come to the stunt in the middle of the night, and they would shine, like, holograms at me and their lights and stuff.
00:45:00.000You would never anticipate this being the hard part, but if you're not used to peeing while standing in front of lots of people staring at you...
00:47:48.000It's just because if I'm going to do it, I want to actually do it, right?
00:47:52.000And if I would have taken those vitamins, I feel like my metabolism wouldn't have gone into starvation mode and I might have had irreversible damage.
00:48:00.000So the fact that I actually did it, I went into starvation mode and the body protects itself.
00:48:05.000But what I was saying is the starvation expert that now I have a paper published in the New England Journal of Medicine with him, which I'm pretty proud about, but he didn't believe me.
00:48:15.000So he put me on an IV and right away the phosphate levels reacted and I almost went into shock.
00:48:19.000So I almost actually did die when they fed me.
00:48:23.000So his paper is called the Refeeding Syndrome.
00:48:26.000They say like after World War II when they rescued the – from the camps, the Jews and everybody was starving in the camps and a lot of soldiers gave them like candy bars and stuff and all of a sudden their systems went into shock and they died from not being refed the right way.
00:48:41.000So what is the correct way to refeed someone if they haven't eaten?
00:48:44.000You have to slowly bring them back so that you don't have what happened to me, which is phosphate levels go all crazy.
00:50:41.000And now there's also something great about it.
00:50:43.000So it was a warm November, so the air coming through was like, you know, it happened to be a 68-degree three-day spread, which led to the ice keep dripping the cold on me and it's radiating this way.
00:50:57.000But I'm also standing up in one spot completely still and you can't sleep because if you fall asleep and you're present to ice, you get frostbite.
00:51:10.000On hour 55, exactly, I look back at all of it and my friends knew, my eyes just go out and I'm now hallucinating like you could never ever, no hallucinogenic drug will ever give you those kind of hallucinations.
00:51:28.000First of all, it's amazing, but it's also when it goes into that nightmare part, it's scary.
00:51:33.000But there's also that amazing part of it.
00:51:36.000And if you have people after that stunt, now whenever I hallucinate on stunts, I have friends there that I say I'm going to start hallucinating.
00:55:01.000It was like when that connection and then the hallucinations were just rampant and my eyes were all crazy when the chainsaw was coming through.
00:56:01.000Then when I get to this point, even when I run on a treadmill, I'm like, okay, I have to get to this point, which means let me get to the halfway point and I'll consider that...
00:56:07.000When I'm holding my breath, I do the same thing.
00:56:09.000Like, okay, I need to get to 15 minutes, so let me get to 7, and I'll start at 7. Then at 7, I'm like, okay, I'm at 7 left.
00:56:16.000I have to get to another 3.5, then 3.5.
00:56:18.000And then what I always do is whenever I'm training, I always go past it, so it's the same thing.
00:56:23.000So, like, when I'm running a treadmill, I'm like, if I have to do, let's say, like, you know...
00:56:27.0003.1, whatever it is, I set that as my target, but then I always go another half a mile past it.
00:56:34.000You can't quit before because then you'll be in the mindset that, okay, I can stop before.
00:56:38.000So anything that I do, I use numbers to get there.
00:56:41.000I get halfway, and then I push the goal further every single time, no matter what.
00:56:46.000So it's a mathematical system, ironically.
00:56:48.000So you don't necessarily have any sort of meditative techniques.
00:56:53.000You're just concentrating on the numbers.
00:56:55.000Meditation for breath-holding all the time.
00:59:06.000And then some guy was in a parachute upside down on a tree in Italy, and he was in the hospital because he was three days upside down in the tree.
00:59:15.000And I was trying to speak to him, but he was like not...
00:59:19.000Didn't want to talk at all, and then they were like, his situation's really bad.
00:59:23.000So it kind of like set the tone before I did the thing.
00:59:52.000My stunt guy who taught me to jump off the pole, he's like, you can never ever just go wing something and not dial it in and rehearse and figure it out.
01:01:31.000So there is a guy that flies balloons and there's a guy like Longchair Larry that went up on balloons with like a lawn chair and a bunch of beer.
01:01:38.000That was his ballast and he like popped balloons with a gun.
01:01:44.000So it's not like a complete hypothetical.
01:01:46.000This one has like, okay, so what if I could take the balloons, that idea, and just have the innocent image of a kid like we all dream of just holding the balloons and drifting up and into the sky?
01:02:42.000Okay, so it starts with just the idea of that.
01:02:45.000But now, I have to go get a hot air balloon pilot license.
01:02:49.000So I go meet with the best hot air balloon pilot instructor and also flyer.
01:02:54.000But isn't that the different situation than a hot air balloon because you don't have the ability to control...
01:02:59.000You have to first get your hot air balloon pilot license.
01:03:02.000So you have to learn how to fly and land a balloon, which is amazing, right?
01:03:05.000And then you have to take that written test.
01:03:07.000And I don't have time because I'm trying to do so much.
01:03:10.000So I had to cram study the whole written test in eight hours with a guy helping me.
01:03:16.000I studied the whole thing, went to the airport, took the test, got that.
01:03:19.000Then you need to go get your gas restriction lifted, which means because – and very few people even ever bothered to do this because who's flying hydrogen or helium nowadays?
01:03:28.000So I went and met this guy, Bert Padelt, who's the best gas balloonist in the world.
01:03:33.000He's the one that built around the world in 80 days.
01:03:35.000He's built every balloon that's done the longest flights and you fly.
01:03:38.000Now, a hot air balloon, you're like – right?
01:03:42.000You have to control it and it's – helium and hydrogen, you're just part of the wind.
01:03:48.000You're literally just floating away and it'll keep going up to 84,000 feet until they pop there.
01:03:58.000I can't explain that feeling of floating.
01:04:02.000Anyway, so I had to go learn how to fly and land hydrogen balloons and use hydrogen because helium is more expensive and stuff like that.
01:04:09.000Now, we have to go test the whole rig.
01:04:12.000So now, And at the same time, I have to also try to get as close to 500 jumps out of an airplane because I need to be really comfortable in the air.
01:04:21.000If I have to jump out and land, I need to land safely.
01:09:16.000We have to airdrop because it's going slow.
01:09:17.000Airdrop is better because it's going slow.
01:09:19.000Well, I just want to send this one that shows how spectacular, but I could just send this one that's not as big, which explains what's going on.
01:15:03.000It was never even possible until YouTube said, okay, we'll back this.
01:15:07.000Because the idea is like all of my other stunts, there's like the budget's pretty very, you know, you couldn't afford to do something like this.
01:15:14.000This is to build, test the flight, build an actual aircraft, fly it, land it, get all the jumps, learn how to do everything, get all the skill set.
01:26:47.000By the way, the reason there's pink balloons in this one is because I was showing her all the balloons and she went, is there going to be pink?
01:26:52.000And I was like, of course there's going to be pink.
01:29:10.000So what I was able to do with the stage show is I bring people up on stage and I have the cameras with the big screen so you see people reacting to this stuff.
01:29:37.000This one I used to do through the hand, and I developed so much scar tissue that when I move my fingers a certain way, I get a shooting pain.
01:29:43.000So I stop doing the hands and I switch to here.
01:30:43.000So now, this is not a new ice pick, and usually I do it with new ones, which means this isn't as sharp as it needs to be, so it means the push is going to be a little more difficult, I guess.
01:31:57.000So if he kept it in there, he would have lived?
01:31:59.000Right after that, a 70-year-old man was on his boat and a stingray jumped up out of the water, stung him in the heart, and then the stingray was gone.
01:32:13.000But the fact that you can actually do this is what's crazy.
01:32:17.000Like, the body can, with your mind, you can override it.
01:32:21.000And then the thing is, he got so cocky, though, that he thought he could do anything, and then he ate one of these things, he swallowed it, and it killed him.
01:40:52.000He's in a lot of pain, but he wouldn't let the audience down, so he wouldn't quit his show.
01:40:57.000So he did his show, and at the end of the show, he's upside down in the water tank, everything else when he shouldn't have been.
01:41:02.000He should have been in the hospital, but instead, he did the show that night, collapsed on the stage, was not from the water tank, but right after the water tank, was rushed to a hospital and then died in the hospital.
01:41:23.000So, I mean, that's the thing about someone who does something that pushes it to the edge like that.
01:41:30.000I mean, when someone sees you hold your breath for 20 minutes, what's fascinating about it is not just that it's hard to do, but that you might die.
01:42:08.000There's a danger, but I feel like if you rehearse and practice and put the best team and don't just do crazy things without a plan, then I feel like the danger is like, sure, the danger's there, but I also rode my motorcycle here, which is also extraordinary.
01:42:21.000I've lost a lot of friends on bikes, right?
01:42:24.000So, sure, I get what you're saying, and I understand all that.
01:45:29.000There's a guy called the Human Aquarium.
01:45:33.000So, the thing about most of the acts that I'm doing, by the way, like night after night, usually the people that did them, it was like their one acts.
01:45:40.000There was one guy called the Human Aquarium, and he was the guy that could swallow frogs and bring them up.
01:45:44.000But he would do it, you'd see him swallow them, and then you'd see him bring them up.
01:45:47.000So it wasn't magical, it was like a skill set.
01:45:50.000I would, usually what I would do is I'd put them in my stomach, keep them in there for like two hours, and then bring them up and freak you out, right?
01:48:24.000Okay, so it's part of what the Aquanauts and Aquarius are trying to find out.
01:48:28.000They're also trying to crack the more mystical marine riddles, like the secret behind coral's telepathic communication.
01:48:37.000This is so crazy what he writes about.
01:48:39.000Every year, on the same day, at the same hour, usually within the same minute, corals of the same species, although separated by thousands of miles, will suddenly spawn in perfect synchronicity.
01:48:54.000The dates and times vary from year to year for reasons only the coral knows.
01:49:00.000Stranger still, while one species of coral spawns during one hour, another species right next to it waits for a different hour or a different day or a different week before spawning in synchronicity with its own species.
01:49:16.000If you broke off a chunk of coral and placed it in a bucket beneath a sink in London, that chunk would, in most cases, spawn at the same time as other coral of the same species around the world.
01:49:30.000Like, you could take a piece of coral, break it off, put it in London, and another coral of the same species will in synchronicity spawn at the exact same time.
01:50:07.000Researchers have found that if the spawning is just 15 minutes out of sync, coral colonies' chances of survival are greatly reduced.
01:50:14.000Coral is the largest biological structure on the planet and covers 175,000 square miles of the seafloor, and it can communicate in a way far more sophisticated than anyone ever thought.
01:50:27.000And yet, coral is one of the most primitive animals on Earth.
01:50:31.000Coral has no eyes, no ears, and no brain.
01:51:15.000Well, have you read about the mycelium and the fungus underneath the soil that actually the trees utilize it through their root structures and they communicate through that?
01:51:30.000Yeah, there's some sort of a mycorrhizal relationship that fungus has with these trees.
01:51:37.000And they actually somehow or another communicate through each other as well.
01:51:54.000And these trees and different plants actually through their root structure communicate.
01:52:00.000And use the fungi that live in the soil.
01:52:06.000Paul Stamets, who's a wizard when it comes to mycology and talking about fungus, and he's got some amazing work that he's done just his whole life studying mushrooms.
01:55:02.000When they first put these dams in place, these salmon would just pool up and they try to redistribute them to other places and then they're like, nope, I need to go back to where I'm from.
02:08:38.000So it started with like, you know, how much water could I put in, then how could I spout the water out to use it to put out the fire, then could the kerosene float on top, then I went to lamp oil.
02:09:50.000So let me get back to the question that I had before you ran off because you were worried about your arm.
02:09:57.000You've done so many insane stunts and so many really of these bizarre things that require so much of you.
02:10:07.000Do you like have a thing in your mind that you have to keep ramping it up and that do you have a place that you would ultimately like to get to with these things?
02:10:17.000No, I just constantly like kind of try to figure out like what things have been done in the past historically and then I try to figure out how to make them interesting and then I figure out how to make them kind of modern.
02:11:36.000Do you enjoy doing these big things, or do you enjoy the live shows, or do you enjoy freaking people out, just random people out with magic?
02:12:02.000So it's like you look into the history of things that have been done, like Haji Ali, the human fire hydrant, and you find these.
02:12:08.000There's a great book that Ricky Jay wrote, who's an amazing magician, where he discusses and explains everything.
02:12:13.000You learn all these things, put them together, and then What I do that Ricky thought was amazing and insane is like actually take these ideas that seem impossible but magical and that's what the amazing part is taking them from a hypothetical image and then learning how to do them.
02:12:32.000So that's like what's amazing about the whole process to me.
02:12:36.000In Ricky's book called Learn the Pigs and Fire Pigs, there's so many bizarre but amazing acts that exist in there, so it's like you look at them and you're like, no, that can't be real, but it was real, if you believe it was real.
02:13:20.000You're going to this weird realm of what the fuck is he doing?
02:13:22.000Well, the thing is I like to use the body as the prop.
02:13:25.000So I like to figure out how to do things where like your body is magic.
02:13:28.000And I think that comes from like I didn't have like...
02:13:31.000You know a lot of many resources to like oh go get which is lucky because then I was like, okay, so what can I do with like what's around?
02:13:37.000Okay an ice pick or a bunch of water or force you to be industrious.
02:13:41.000Yeah, yeah, yeah, but like you have to figure it out.
02:13:45.000But you also have do you balance it out with like I mean you obviously develop some problems from not eating at one time and you know you've you've got these stunts where they have this possibility of physically injuring you permanently Yeah.
02:14:01.000So you have to balance out the risks and the rewards.
02:14:04.000There's not that many of those people out there.
02:16:12.000I'm glad you're out there, first of all, because I think you're very entertaining, but also because I love when there's a new type of person that I meet.
02:16:23.000I've met a lot of people, but you're in this new, like, oh, and then there's this guy.
02:16:28.000This is like a totally new frequency of human.
02:16:38.000But, I mean, it's a very strange path that you're on.
02:16:44.000I mean, ultimately, it's like, at the end of the day, it's trying to just figure out how to make things seem as close to magic as possible.
02:16:53.000And the process is really difficult and tricky and difficult.
02:16:59.000But you seem like a very joyful person because of all this.
02:17:32.000You're pushing your body to do things that most people...
02:17:35.000Basically, you're living in a place where you have to override discomfort and you have to override what your body's trying to tell you not to do, and you push yourself.
02:17:47.000And it's that whole journey of pushing yourself to do things that you physically don't think you can do or to set a goal that that's the best part.
02:17:56.000I'm fascinated by people that are really far down on a path.
02:18:02.000Have we ever brought up that woman Stephanie Millinger on the podcast before?
02:18:08.000I follow her on Instagram and I know I've posted some of her stuff on Instagram, but she's like a contortionist and she has like incredible balance and core strength.
02:18:18.000And she's this very small woman who does insane things with her body.
02:18:23.000Like she did this one, she's on a handstand and she bends her back so that her butt touches her head.
02:18:29.000Like her spine is so flexible that you look at some of the things that she does and they don't seem to be, like watch this, look at this.
02:19:02.000Against the top of her head in the craziest way like it doesn't seem like a person should be able to do that and the amount of physical strength that it takes to move your body like this and Balance while you're doing it.
02:19:13.000It's just It's the the years and the amount of time.
02:19:18.000Yeah This is what I'm saying like she's so far down the path See if you can find the one where she bounces on the plates that one in the middle where you see the plate watch this So she takes a, this is like a standard Olympic weightlifting plate, right?
02:19:32.000So she puts it down, so it's on its edge, and then she stands it on top of a bar, right?
02:19:40.000So you've got this bar that's like a small chin-up bar.
02:19:45.000So it's a round thing bouncing on another round thing.