00:01:54.660He gets right up next to the microphone.
00:01:56.360I hear you can almost hear the eyelashes hit each other.
00:01:59.320You've never seen Italy so quiet as when the Pope gets up to wink on Halloween.
00:02:04.840Listen to Artists on Artists on Artists on Artists every Thursday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:02:12.380Floyd is the most brilliant fighter that ever lived.
00:02:15.140You think you could do some magic and get me the rest of my paycheck?
00:23:07.220First off, wait, hold on, hold on, hold on.
00:23:08.720i walked in and you were you were doing some training meditative breathing and you were
00:23:16.380breathing in and out yeah deep slow breath which is what i do all the time yep yep and i interrupted
00:23:21.840you and i said here's what i was gonna say here's what i was gonna say after the breath work welcome
00:23:26.920back to impulsive the number one podcast in the world thank you guys for listening watching viewing
00:23:29.980and subscribing look this episode's crazy it's it's a format we've never we've never seen before
00:23:34.260we have david blaine here on set he just did a bunch of magic but i'll be honest dave you walked
00:23:39.140in and you just commandeered everything you just you just took over and and showed us tricks i've
00:23:45.500i've never i don't understand like my brain feels like it's in a mental pretzel i was i was telling
00:23:51.560this to mike but like you know i wasn't sure what to expect maybe sometimes you have to fabricate
00:23:56.400reactions this is the best magic i've ever seen in my life and i guess it makes sense you're the
00:23:59.920best magician in the world uh and uh there's a lot of great great magicians that are much better
00:24:06.260than me some are in this room yeah so david has a team of magicians all in the room and his mentor
00:24:12.700who won't go on camera and actually won't even perform ever is here as well uh but i mean i
00:24:18.260don't even know what i don't even know where to start david you're incredible you're an endurance
00:24:22.080artist you're you're a magician a top tier magician you're an amazing performer we came
00:24:28.600opening night here in vegas jumping 80 feet jumping 80 feet off a off a ledge onto cardboard
00:24:36.080boxes the other week you broke your or dislocated your shoulder doing it popped it out popped it
00:24:42.160back in in the middle of the show and continue the performance because i see these clips on twitter
00:24:46.080also you have the one where you have the cups and the nail under the cups and you hit the nail once
00:24:52.500on accident yep by mistake my daughter was here and she came running up to the stage like i'd seen
00:24:57.300the ghost but by the way that took me out for 40 seconds the dislocated shoulder stopped the show
00:25:03.780for about 30 minutes but there was an orthopedic surgeon convention in vegas and five surgeons
00:25:09.740came onto the stage and popped it back into place which was mind-blowing one was a shoulder specialist
00:25:14.900so i i owe them big time you uh you didn't make any deals with the devil or anything like that
00:25:20.840no no what i was trying to explain to you guys is what magic is is very straightforward it's
00:25:26.000Just practice, repetition, failure, math, logic, science, performance, all put into one incredible art form that I've been in love with my whole life, as have most of my dear magician friends.
00:25:40.600And then the other part that I like is as a kid, I would watch Harry Houdini do these death-defying escapes and challenges.
00:25:47.600And I was always inspired by him in a different kind of way.
00:25:50.640and i like the idea of not just the magic tricks but like kind of putting together real and magic
00:25:57.740yeah and mixing them and those are the guys i was drawn to and i feel like as a kid i didn't have
00:26:02.680magic kits because i grew up in brilliant single mother so the magic that i learned was always
00:26:07.440stuff that i could relate to so it was things that you could do with the human body things
00:26:11.920with the deck of cards simple objects and and i've never left that that path i guess but you
00:26:17.980also introduced an interesting new vertical the magic which was how you present it visually and
00:26:25.120digitally to a internet audience or a or a broadcast audience watching you today is insane
00:26:33.000watching him not only focus on how he manipulates us or how he provides magic to us but also watching
00:26:40.740him puppeteer an entire group of people who are filming in a certain way or viewing in a certain
00:26:45.540way you're not a magician you're you're a director at the highest level it's it's it's mind-blowing
00:26:51.940to watch how you control so many different aspects of the craft at one time he's a conductor
00:26:57.040correct yeah it's just crazy so how i mean you you pioneered a lot of that space would you say
00:27:03.600street magic stuff yeah it was different back in the day because you know the only camera crew that
00:27:07.820was around would be your own camera crew but so getting the trick and the reaction in one shot
00:27:13.920was you know something i was always obsessed with how do you how do you do that without a cut
00:27:18.240but now every single person has a phone so when you do magic there's every single direction and
00:27:26.060so now the magic had to change you know so it's a fun i like the switch i like that can you know
00:27:32.140the the challenge never never stops that is so interesting because someone could just go home
00:27:36.660and like play in slow motion and see like maybe where the card is or how you did your trick you
00:27:41.280make me feel like i don't have free will which is definitely not true are you sure yeah definitely
00:27:47.120okay because how did you get that eight to appear in the picture inside your wallet no that one is
00:27:54.760the that's the craziest thing i've ever seen in my life that's the craziest thing i've ever seen
00:27:58.680because the problem with that trick is we both are sentient human beings we have consciousness
00:28:05.380right i know what happened i he knows what happened we were both there i was there and we
00:28:11.260we took the picture with nothing in the wallet like together friends showed the world and the0.90
00:28:18.160picture developed with the fucking card man so what i'm not asking you to explain it but like0.91
00:28:24.480like how do you expect us to now go out of this room and continue living does that make sense no0.91
00:28:30.660i mean i that's why i like what you do because it's very you know you take what there is and
00:28:35.940then study the the history of it study the greats hang out with the people that are the best in the
00:28:41.520world and then you process it and make it your own and that's that's part of the the the fun you
00:28:47.220know that's the excitement of it i don't even i don't even know like where to go with this or0.87
00:28:52.060like what to do you blew my mind and now i see why we did the magic this podcast fucking lame0.50
00:28:56.280no okay but you're also an endurance artist i think i think i think oh the first time i met you0.76
00:29:05.620you were met the cryogenic chamber right yeah yeah yeah no so there was one time before i don't know
00:29:11.680if you remember that was like the official meeting and you were preparing for your your up yeah stunt
00:29:16.120yeah that's right and you were freezing yourself in the cryo chamber for like 20 minutes at a time
00:29:19.940it was supposed to be zero degrees up there but that wasn't a difficult part of it what was the
00:29:25.960difficult part about jumping the difficult part was because the fa was there and because i started
00:29:30.620to go hypoxic they started to remote pop the balloons with the squib so i couldn't go i wanted
00:29:36.420to go higher than anything on earth so i wanted to go as high as mount everest which is 29,072
00:29:41.840feet and again they were pop pop pop pop so i couldn't keep going up so i was stuck at 25,000
00:29:46.720feet and i had to jump so that was that was what bummed me out but then when i watched the back
00:29:51.940i did realize that they were right in the sense that i was going hypoxic but you don't know you're
00:29:57.760going hypoxic yeah yeah no you you you push your body but the first time that i unofficially met
00:30:03.780you was like this intimate gathering i think it was for some billionaire you and you did the frog
00:30:09.860trick and afterwards you did a little q a and i said hey david uh if you know someone in this room
00:30:16.820wanted to do the frog trick like how would they go about doing it i remember that oh wow that was
00:30:22.620me yeah that was me yeah it was a peter teal thing that was it that was wow some billionaire
00:30:27.400that's amazing you were there for that's when i first started working on that yeah that it was
00:30:33.500when it was going crazy and you did it live and dude in front of man there's probably 30 people
00:30:38.780in that room i couldn't believe he he this was also the most impressive part about it he dragged
00:30:43.900like 10 bottles of water in three minutes beforehand and then throw up throw up the frogs
00:30:49.540yeah i could put up to a gallon of water in my stomach and then i can keep that in the stomach
00:30:55.640for enough time at the right temperature that the frogs are very comfortable and i create an
00:31:01.360aquarium in my stomach but that's not magic no so the guy there was a guy that did it a century ago
00:31:07.200named mac norton the human aquarium and harry houdini wrote about him doing it okay and when
00:31:12.780i read harry houdini writing about mac norton and miracle mongers in the book that he wrote
00:31:17.200i went oh well this guy must have really been doing it because he's not going to fool houdini
00:31:21.760backstage you know so that was enough of a justification from a century ago to a trick
00:31:28.840that disappeared to think oh well maybe there's a way to do it and then i just he took his secrets
00:31:34.300to the grave so i literally started by just finding the best frogs that are the least toxic
00:31:40.520they're the most durable which ended up being northern leopard frogs and then i just started
00:31:44.920putting them in my mouth just to get comfortable and make sure they were okay and i realized that
00:31:50.040they actually you can they can rest at comfort and everything is fine but some of them have
00:31:57.660salmonella so i got really sick the first time then i didn't try it for a couple weeks i did it
00:32:03.340again was it was really really tough and then finally i i uh i went and got a fluoroscopy
00:32:10.820and i realized that you could actually make an aquarium in your stomach and you could have
00:32:15.960koi fish creatures or anything live there i always wondered that yeah and i've never wondered that
00:32:22.160and then how did that conversation with the doctor go like hey so did the results come back from the
00:32:27.060fluoroscopy am i able to produce an aquarium for koi fish in my stomach or no like imagine being
00:32:32.000that doctor and be like what the fuck well well you couldn't so i had to say that i swallowed
00:32:37.700something by mistake because they otherwise they can't really just do a fluoroscopy so i said i0.66
00:32:43.580think i got something stuck in my stomach and then we did the floss and she's like well there's a
00:32:47.940bunch of living creatures like moving around in your stomach and i went oh so this can work and
00:32:53.840then i realized that you could just have them come up one at a time on their own you told me
00:32:58.600after i asked you if i if i could do the trick you said i wouldn't recommend it
00:33:02.740that was what you said then i then i pushed back and i and i think a lot of the guys that did the
00:33:07.720real stuff that was crazy i think they took their secrets to the grave specifically because they
00:33:13.160didn't want other people to do it because they didn't want other people to harm themselves or
00:33:17.100doing so so there's a rhyme and reason to why you know i say to people the best thing that you can
00:33:23.200do if you're curious about becoming a magician is practice card tricks and and as you see we did
00:33:27.840all card tricks and nobody got hurt but that's the stuff people like the most by the way like
00:33:32.260the card tricks are the things that people or you know the the straightforward magic is ironically
00:33:37.720my show has that in it but i like doing the jumping from nine stories or doing all the different
00:33:44.020things but really the audience is the the happiest one it's the simple magic and the people's
00:33:50.980reactions up on stage i don't know like the the glass eating the needle through different parts
00:33:56.780of your body like actual body this doesn't it just doesn't feel like magic it feels real well
00:34:06.300that's why i say you're an endurance artist essentially like didn't you didn't you go around
00:34:10.940finding people who could regurgitate water like a like a like a waterfall almost yeah i traveled
00:34:17.120to africa to find a guy that that was on youtube on one small video that went viral but it took me
00:34:25.940forever to find him because it was it was it was shot by a missionary and he was living in a mud hut
00:34:32.020so it took us five years to track him down then i finally found him and spent a couple of weeks
00:34:37.180learning from him and then i learned it see that he was there he was there with me that's what i
00:34:42.660was gonna ask craziest thing i've ever seen and also just like not only like devoting yourself
00:34:46.980to the craft but also like i'm just so curious about this like community of magicians and like
00:34:53.180you were talking about you're like oh he never would have been able to fool houdini backstage
00:34:56.320like like is it is it almost like like comics like what would you compare it to the most this
00:35:02.400like community that you exist in i think it's it's it's a pretty amazing field because if a
00:35:09.720magician it could be one guy that sits in a basement in the middle of nowhere and if he
00:35:15.300works really hard on one move he'll find somebody and that somebody will take him to one of my
00:35:21.160magician friends then my magician friend will be like oh you got to see this kid that does this
00:35:25.500move and then i'll see the move and then that kid will become part of the team or he'll be traveling
00:35:30.540with us come to the show and any magician that's really good that works really hard can be in any
00:35:36.860part of the world and other great magicians will host him put him up take him so there is an
00:35:43.100incredible community of magicians is there equity in the trick itself like if you see a new trick
00:35:51.420it does it get around in the magic community like this up-and-comer has got a crazy exactly yeah
00:35:57.120like like i watched the prestige have you seen that movie yeah one of my favorite movies
00:36:01.700and uh they had the the twin trick right the teleporting man right and it was like the trick
00:36:07.440do you have or have you seen uh a trick recently that is just blows your mind that not even you
00:36:15.580david blaine know what's going on i mean there's yeah there's tons of that i mean we just found a
00:36:21.360kid i was in uh indonesia i think and we found a kid that just did this incredible mind-blowing
00:36:29.720stuff and and was willing to share the secrets and he's actually flying to vegas to come what
00:36:35.200to do work with the team well i'm not gonna spill it but what's the what's the closest you've ever
00:36:40.920been to death because you're you're you're you're towing the line i feel like frequently no this
00:36:45.680show should be once a year because normally the stunt guys that do that that kind of jump
00:36:50.220it's not something they would do once or twice a month it's something you would do once a year i
00:36:55.060was wondering when i saw you that's the problem you were going to replicate it that's right
00:36:58.740that's a problem and by the 10th show i've been seriously injured three of them oh you got a
00:37:04.120pretty serious hit rate on the injuries it's just the show itself that's like a third of the time
00:37:08.820do you do you keep uh adding new stuff in uh more for the pursuit of pushing your own limits and
00:37:18.300learning magic to you know grow your legacy or for the actual show from a business standpoint
00:37:25.740like are you still are you still are you still completely enthralled in magic as like a as like
00:37:30.760a um a hobby and as a passion oh yeah that's no that's all yeah that's all i do that's all i think
00:37:36.580about that's that's i mean other than with my daughter everything being a full-time but as a
00:37:41.700magician that that is that is the drive that's the love that's the passion that's i think same as
00:37:48.540what you do which is just you're always coming up with ideas that excite you that but you know
00:37:53.740it's not like you do this oh what's the business model you do it like this is this is this is what
00:37:59.860i need to do it's just so interesting because you're right like that energy i think fuels
00:38:04.460anyone who uh is is great in a in a vertical like they love what they do they really love
00:38:10.340what they do it's like kind of all they think about but i i said this when you were uh away
00:38:14.700i did magic dude for for years when i was a kid which is which is why i think i became such a fan
00:38:19.080because i i i wanted to be a magician like like genuinely for a while but then i got like bored
00:38:25.240of it and impatient like i didn't have the patience to learn the tricks right and and and
00:38:29.980stick with this craft because i did i liked it but i didn't love it you need lots of patience
00:38:36.720and it's it's you're talking about you know my friend i told you he worked on one move it would
00:38:43.920be six eight hours a day on one move over and over and over for years and years before he shares
00:38:53.320i'm a little different in the sense that i come up with an idea or i have friends that help me
00:38:57.760brainstorm ideas i'm inspired by something i start playing with it right away and i put it
00:39:02.060into play and i start trying yeah yeah pretty aggressively and then i fail fail fail fail and
00:39:07.360then it starts to make sense i'm like oh this is interesting oh what if i had this oh what if it
00:39:11.000becomes and so it grows and it evolves quickly which i think is more current with how things
00:39:17.060are today whereas back in the old days so the old school magicians like you have to practice in the
00:39:22.900mirror you spend years before you go out and try the trick and then when you're finally sure it's
00:39:27.980perfect but i feel like that doesn't allow the natural evolution of the interactive part of the
00:39:32.760trick and that's so important that's what i'm most intrigued by the reaction from would you would
00:39:37.340you rather get a a crazy reaction from a audience at resorts world at a at a show or from your
00:39:44.160favorite fellow magician in the community i like all of it really we all like to mess with each
00:39:49.960other that's that's a big part of the fun so the thing i did to your friend with the nine of diamonds
00:39:55.120that's a trick that's meant for magicians so those those are the types of things that we like to do
00:40:00.180oh okay you know the one that you did with him yeah yeah yeah yeah those are like magician foolers
00:40:05.480you know are you ever are you ever like scared to death before you try something for the first
00:40:10.540time like what what's the most scared you've ever been before one of your tricks
00:40:15.700no i usually i'm so excited by the idea and then i come up with the backwards process of how do you
00:40:25.260learn it so i don't fear doesn't play into it it's it's more of a problem solve it's like oh i want
00:40:31.040to do this how do i do this oh well there's a guy that was able to hold his breath apparently for 10
00:40:36.740minutes there's a kid that trapped himself under a frozen river and was was nowhere for 45 minutes
00:40:43.620Oh, there must be a scientific explanation for this. Now let me backward, you know, try to understand the process and slowly test it and then slowly assemble a great team and then do the research, read the medical papers and eventually come up with a way.
00:41:00.860I'm going to try to voice this thought I'm having right now, but I think part of the reason I found you so and find you so inspiring and a lot of people do as well is the way you just described reverse engineering a feat of human nature makes it feel kind of like anything is possible.
00:41:21.880Whereas I, I, I would have thought that a regular person can't hold their breath for
00:41:51.880no i think what you just said is dead on you just work no you just work really hard failure doesn't
00:41:57.700stop you you push as hard as you can you you you you learn you try you practice you push a little
00:42:05.500further you find more little clues onto how you can do this thing and you don't give up because
00:42:11.240it might take you 20 years to get there which many of my things did that but that's that's so long
00:42:16.620have you seen the meme have you seen the meme of the two guys digging for diamonds
00:42:19.620there's this meme i just i just sent it to my boy where he's like one inch away from the
00:42:24.040yeah it's it's about it's about it's about persevering and and never uh never realize
00:42:28.840how close you are to your goals because if you keep going and going and going but 20 years is
00:42:33.140so long that i don't think a lot of people are are willing to spend that amount of time to hit
00:42:38.360their goal because at what point does it feel futile your efforts feel futile yeah that's great
00:42:44.640but it's good right but you kept going you hit the diamonds after 20 years yeah but yeah i
00:42:49.600i mean no the process it never stops it's a you just keep going you oh and that's what's great
00:42:54.860about magic is it's like there's so many secrets and so many discoveries that it just never ever
00:43:01.860slows down do you know what the biggest thing and the reason why he's able to do this stuff is
00:43:06.540he talked about this like backwards thinking critical approach scientists finding the right
00:43:10.840team you know practice practice practice i bet you well we know for a fact he goes into every
00:43:16.700one of those new feats with the attitude of i can do this i can do this i've seen it get done and i
00:43:22.860can do this but it's like a relentless perseverance but it has to start right with the belief that
00:43:28.660real deep-seated belief inside you that you can actually get it done yeah right if there's even
00:43:35.040a shredded doubt one percent of doubt in your mind that you can't do it no you might not ever
00:43:39.580get it done i i agree with that and my theory is what you said before i believe something is done
00:43:44.480by one it can be done by others so i don't look at someone and say oh only this but no i say oh
00:43:49.620wait how did how was that possible okay so question not to not to offend your friend but
00:43:54.260we were talking about alex honnold do you think if you worked hard enough you could free solo
00:43:58.620el capitan no i'm not gonna mess it up no way but how do you decide what to latch on to and just go
00:44:06.980for it like have you had anywhere you you just by the way alex would be the first to tell you
00:44:11.600If somebody starts and trains and works hard and is very, you know, careful about what they're doing in the process, that they will eventually figure out how to get there.
00:44:20.200And it looks insane what you see him do, but he's really cut it down to the deepest understanding of his core in a way that I think, you know, a magician would be with a deck of cards or somebody, you know, it's a science.
00:44:37.040Yeah, and also his body is formed for it.
00:44:39.400I give him a deck of cards once you look at his hands on a deck, the fingers, and he won't take the powder off, and it's like the fingers are meant for digging into rocks.
00:45:03.780Would you ever think about climbing with him?
00:45:06.480Yeah, I mean, I love the idea of that.
00:45:08.480But I usually – so for what I do, I usually like to find – yes, but not like he does.
00:45:15.160But what I like to do is I like to find the magic part of, let's say, what he does and say, how would this relate to magic, like to something that would excite me as a performer or as an endurance guy or whatever.
00:45:30.720And resonate with your audience as well.
00:45:32.340Yeah, or just something that would get me – that feels unique to me.
00:45:36.500you know yeah today i watch you uh manipulate cards manipulate my mind a room full of people
00:45:42.260you're not really manipulating with cards it's like you're uh you've just understood it so
00:45:49.160deeply that you know what you're trying well that's that's what i'm saying like watching you
00:45:53.140it's very clear you have this like weird understanding of human psychology and and uh
00:45:59.100an ability an uncanny ability to read the room like literally like you're you're paying the
00:46:05.260fuck attention you could read minds imagine how good he could probably gaslight
00:46:08.760you're not no but you're not reading it doesn't have to do with that it's just that if you've
00:46:18.640done something 10 000 times which is me with cards you kind of know comes muscle muscle memory
00:46:25.340yeah that's right did you always want to have a family well as soon as as soon as you have a
00:46:30.260daughter your whole the way you think about everything changes because you guys just watched
00:46:36.100her on something she's been working on and what i learned by having a daughter is that
00:46:42.340the female brain and the ability to focus is much greater than the male brain because i
00:46:49.720when i'm doing i'm practicing mags or something i'll take breaks i'll get distracted but she'll
00:46:54.800go four hours and she doesn't want to pause she doesn't want to take a sip of water she doesn't
00:46:59.400want to look at a phone nothing will distract her so i i have a very you know incredible respect for
00:47:06.400her that i watch her do things i've never been able to do and she's 12 she's it's insane i just
00:47:12.000just watched her she's she's wildly impressive and the talent obviously runs in the family
00:47:16.160uh uh did what i was no i was just imagining her watching these feats i that was a part of
00:47:22.760the balloon one right like her her reactions to happening yeah do you did did you have to rethink
00:47:30.660how far you were willing to go for a feat once you had a a life form that you had brought into
00:47:36.000the world well what i did is i had to do 500 jumps in a very short span of time i think like six
00:47:42.880months before doing the real event when she was going to come in for it so i i did 12 jumps a day
00:47:49.200repetitiously that's where i started to mess up the shoulders from plfing over and over
00:47:55.780yeah repetitively but i did the jumps got the pro rating which then allowed me to jump over
00:48:02.260any congested area i would jump and land on the back lot of a walmart and uh so by the time she
00:48:08.420came i knew that i wasn't gonna have any real issues per se but it's just funny because i
00:48:14.480talked to these people like that you know have been traveling with djs for 25 years and they're
00:48:18.720like dude i used to get on any jet it didn't matter if it had a engine in it if it took off
00:48:23.800it could land i'd get in it then i had a kid now i don't feel safe ever yeah that's right
00:48:28.200right changes everything yeah you're careful yeah that's right you don't want to die yeah you can't
00:48:33.460die and houdini died at 52 doing a water breath hold i thought he got punched in the stomach or
00:48:39.480something he did before and then he should have gone to the hospital because he didn't felt
00:48:43.300feel so great but instead he did his show did the water tank did the breath hold collapsed
00:48:48.640when he came off the stage, was rushed to the hospital, and then he died.
00:48:53.240So I've promised my daughter I won't let the show kill me.
00:48:56.900So even though it seems crazy, I am being careful.
00:49:00.400This might be a little twisted question,
00:49:02.700but do you have a vision for like a final act, the last act of David Blaine?