The Art of Manliness - #141： The Science of Freediving and Holding Your Breath With James Nestor

00:00:00.000 we're at mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast so

00:00:18.760 when i was a kid one of my heroes was harry houdini and he was known for a lot of his feats

00:00:23.300 of escape getting out of handcuffs and straight jackets and things like that but he could also

00:00:27.440 hold his breath for an incredibly long time because sometimes his tricks required him to be

00:00:32.800 underwater for a long time so i think his record was a little over three minutes is how long he

00:00:36.920 could hold his breath anyways a few weeks ago i did some research and published an article about

00:00:41.220 how to hold your breath for a really long time inspired by harry houdini and in my research i

00:00:45.300 came across a book that was written by my guest today it's called deep free diving renegade science

00:00:51.200 and what the ocean tells us about ourselves and it was by james nester and in this book james follows

00:00:56.540 a group of renegade athletes and scientists who use free diving as both a competition sport

00:01:03.880 as well as a tool to do scientific research and so what free diving is is you basically just take

00:01:09.920 one big breath and go down underwater at great depths all in one breath and get back up uh the

00:01:16.480 competitive sport some of these people are going down 300 feet on one breath and then in the research

00:01:21.160 aspect they're using free diving to get up close and personal with whales and dolphins just with

00:01:26.960 their breath they're not using submarines because that spooks out the animals anyways uh in his

00:01:31.400 research james discovered that in a lot of ways our body is designed to be in the water and to hold

00:01:38.000 our breath for a long time because some weird stuff starts happening when we do that so today on the

00:01:42.760 podcast we're going to discuss the science of free diving what happens to your body when you hold

00:01:47.740 your breath for a long time and then how scientists are using this capability to uncover some mysteries

00:01:54.460 of the ocean really fun podcast a lot of fascinating insights uh you're going to learn how to hold your

00:01:59.420 breath for a long time so that's something you want to do you'll know how to do that in the podcast

00:02:02.700 so without further ado james nester deep

00:02:05.840 james nester welcome to the show thanks a lot all right so your book deep is about this world of

00:02:20.620 free diving and we'll get into some of these characters who are involved in this world i didn't

00:02:25.800 know much about this before i read your book how did you discover the world of free diving uh did you

00:02:33.280 have an interest in the research what's going on in the oceans or was it the the oddities of the human

00:02:38.520 body that led you to it how did that happen well i grew up near the ocean in illustrious orange county

00:02:45.480 down in southern california and uh had always spent much of my free time in the water but all of that

00:02:52.380 free time was spent at the surface of surfing or body surfing or boogie boarding when i was young that

00:02:58.940 kind of thing and so um a few years ago outside magazine who i write for um asked me to go cover

00:03:06.200 something called the world free diving championship now this is a very weird competition in which

00:03:12.400 competitors challenge one another to see how deep they can dive and come back to the surface conscious

00:03:19.720 um i'd never seen anyone free dive before had certainly never done it myself didn't know anyone who

00:03:26.480 did it so i remember on the first day of the competition sitting out on this boat i was the

00:03:31.500 only journalist out there and watching this guy take a single breath and completely disappear into the

00:03:38.580 water and he didn't return until four minutes later and he had just dived about 300 feet on a single

00:03:46.860 breath so this completely blew my mind um i thought the competitive aspect of free diving was pretty

00:03:53.720 ridiculous people were coming up blacked out with blood on their faces one guy came up technically

00:03:59.760 dead for two minutes but something about the human body being able to do this really stuck with me and

00:04:07.640 one thing led to another and i ended up uh pursuing it for the next two years and writing a book about it

00:04:15.740 okay so yeah i mean this this sport it's sort of renegade uh there's it's it's sort of on the

00:04:20.780 outskirts of sport uh because it is so dangerous it's very dangerous and the competitive freedivers

00:04:26.700 don't seem to want to admit that it's dangerous because if you have that kernel of doubt while you're

00:04:32.560 doing it um you won't be able to do it it's a it's a mental sport more than anything else but i was lucky

00:04:39.960 enough at the competition to meet some other freedivers who took a more holistic and sane

00:04:46.780 approach to freediving who showed me this completely other side of freediving that had

00:04:52.820 nothing to do with competitions um but you know it was almost more of a yogic practice and that's

00:04:59.020 the side of freediving i focused on but my entree into this world was through the competition and i

00:05:07.000 could give you a zillion stories of just how crazy that stuff is yeah yeah and you talk a lot about those

00:05:12.220 in the book i'm curious like how is it that the human body is able you know we're land animals

00:05:18.100 right yes how is it that we're able to people are able to hold their breath four minutes some people

00:05:24.180 are about like 20 minutes on a single breath uh and then go down to depths of 300 400 feet when the

00:05:31.540 just the pressure is just crushing down on your body but they're able to come back and live what's

00:05:37.160 going on in our bodies when we hold our breath for that long and go underwater that deep well this

00:05:42.880 was something that just completely blew my mind and convinced me that there was something uh in

00:05:48.680 freediving that i wanted to spend more time researching it and really exploring it uh i learned

00:05:54.060 about something that i'd never heard before called the mammalian dive reflex and these are a series of

00:06:01.020 triggers in the human body that occur the second we put our faces in the water so um you know the old

00:06:10.780 tradition of splashing your face with cool water to get you to calm down it's not just psychological

00:06:16.380 it's physiological what happens is the second your face touches water your heart rate's going to lower

00:06:22.840 about 30 of its normal resting rate and blood is going to start coursing in from your extremities

00:06:29.260 into your uh chest area into your core and the deeper you go in water the more pronounced these

00:06:35.820 reflexes become free divers have recorded heart rates as low as seven beats per minute um which is

00:06:43.860 by far the lowest anyone has ever recorded a heart rate and according to physiologists a heart rate that

00:06:49.400 low can't support consciousness yet deep in the water it does and so as the pressure mounts every 33 feet

00:06:56.920 the pressure doubles in water um and you feel this uh your chest will shrink up to about half its size

00:07:04.440 at around 300 feet but the body has all of these incredible mechanisms that only occur in water that

00:07:11.600 protect us from from uh the deep water's pressures um and they're the exact same reflexes that dolphins

00:07:19.680 and whales and seals have to protect themselves from diving you know thousands and thousands of feet

00:07:26.120 deep so we have those two so we're we're really born to do this yeah you call it the uh the master switch

00:07:32.560 right that's right uh some scientists uh named it the master switch because um our whole body is like we

00:07:39.620 turn from terrestrial beings to almost aquatic beings the deeper and deeper we go into the water i know

00:07:47.100 this sounds totally crazy like some new age dream but this is all hard science and people have been

00:07:52.780 studying this for over 50 years and once i learned about that it it's just really uh the fact that i

00:08:00.200 had never heard of it before and that there was so much more to learn and to research about it really

00:08:05.680 convinced me that there might be an interesting book in here and is it because we you know for a literal

00:08:11.020 sense come from the water right um we we don't know exactly why just like with all evolution it was

00:08:17.700 sort of a messy route to get to where we are now um you know some some markers indicate that that very

00:08:24.160 well could be the case uh the blood right now and in your veins and my veins and everyone else's veins

00:08:30.340 is about 98 percent similar to seawater and the amniotic fluid in which a fetus develops is about

00:08:38.340 99 seawater so uh you know is it a coincidence well maybe but that seems a little too close for me

00:08:45.860 and uh you know a lot of people say that we've developed these these skills because in the past

00:08:50.880 we needed them uh people have been freediving for as long as you know there's been uh people have

00:08:56.720 been recording history so and even even before that there's evidence of freediving 20 000 years ago

00:09:02.480 all over the world it's just recently that we've stopped uh freediving because we no longer need to go

00:09:08.320 to the sea floor to to get food we have fishing boats and nets to do that so you know it's really

00:09:14.280 been a part of our human evolution is being in water and being deep in the water are there uh still any

00:09:20.000 group like you know traditional i guess quotation uh cultures that still use freediving for a practical

00:09:26.340 purpose like it's part of their livelihood yeah well um you know in the past uh about 400

00:09:33.700 400 500 years ago the largest fishing fleet in the world was this group of japanese women uh called

00:09:41.500 the ama and um and they just spent their lives from the time they were teenagers still they were very old

00:09:48.040 um harvesting urchin and and abalone and fish and all those good things on the seafloor and all of the

00:09:55.260 pearl divers from the past those were all free divers sponge divers in greece all free divers the vikings

00:10:01.880 were pretty pretty good free divers they used to go over to enemy ships and bore holes in the ships

00:10:06.920 uh when they weren't looking so um you know as far as the any of these cultures being around most people

00:10:12.680 do it recreationally now but um i was i was asking myself the same question about a year and a half ago

00:10:18.040 um and i went to japan and actually found some of these ama divers the the last ama divers who actually do

00:10:25.440 this for a living one of them was a 82 years old and she'd been diving every day since she was 16

00:10:31.840 and she was just like the biggest badass you've ever seen so uh it was great to see that you know

00:10:39.240 they were keeping the tradition alive at least for now who knows how long it'll last but um

00:10:44.260 and and see these people that was just so intimately connected to the ocean yeah and it was really

00:10:49.420 interesting to see their approach compared to like when you said the competitive free divers where

00:10:54.260 they're just going they're just crazy um these ama were able to do phenomenal things but they didn't

00:11:00.480 have that i don't know it's like a chip on their shoulder this weird drive they just seemed more like

00:11:04.980 at one with the ocean yeah i think that's a really good way of putting it um you know the ama in in all of

00:11:12.380 their recorded history and there's quite a lot of it there's no record of them ever competing and there

00:11:18.220 was no record of them ever having an accident ever blacking out or dying from doing this i met

00:11:24.100 you know half a dozen ama who had been literally diving since they were teenagers they said every

00:11:29.500 day and they were in their 70s and 80s so this stuff can be practiced in a sane manner and they just

00:11:35.880 think competitive diving is the stupidest thing of all it would be like competitive yoga or something

00:11:41.900 like you know seeing how far your back can bend before you break it um their respect of the ocean and

00:11:49.340 their place in the ocean um really added a different uh you know a different element and a different

00:11:56.500 layer to to free diving it was that sort of free diving this respectful meditative free diving that

00:12:03.760 i really glommed on to and and uh tried to explore in the book yeah and i thought it was interesting is

00:12:10.000 that you you highlight besides these free divers and uh competitive free divers and the ama you highlight

00:12:14.960 this band of and they're like really ragtag scientists they're independent scientists they don't

00:12:20.960 often they don't work with universities they're just doing this stuff on their own and they're using

00:12:25.940 free diving as a tool in their research and they're exploring things like sharks whales and dolphins what

00:12:33.500 kind of research are these free diving scientists doing with dolphins and whales and sharks that are uh

00:12:39.760 helping us learn new things about the ocean that we didn't know yeah well that's what i thought was so

00:12:44.760 cool to to discover along my my many travels for this book is this isn't only just like a recreation

00:12:52.220 um something that people did in the past and you know something or people are doing just for their

00:12:57.860 their own edification um i i discovered a number of people who are free diving and using this for

00:13:05.520 scientific research because something else amazing happens when when you're diving not only does your body

00:13:11.000 transform but a paradigm shift occurs in in the water when you sort of try to explore other oceanic

00:13:20.200 animals with scuba or with submarines uh and i'm sure many of your listeners have have done this most of

00:13:26.500 the time everything swims away from you scuba is very loud um and same with submarines and boats but when

00:13:33.620 you free dive you are completely silent so you no longer become a viewer into this other world but

00:13:41.340 an active part of it and instead of all these animals swimming away they start surrounding you

00:13:46.920 and enveloping you in their shoals and it gets very very weird very quickly so um a few researchers were

00:13:54.620 using free diving to get closer to whales and dolphins than anyone has before and because they

00:14:02.620 have this this such intimate access to these animals they're recording data that no one else has

00:14:08.460 collected and so that's what i ended up focusing on a lot of like how much we're learning about these

00:14:14.160 animals and our connection to them and their language and all that through this free diving free

00:14:19.940 diving as a tool not not just as a recreation and especially not as a sport yeah so the the stuff

00:14:26.600 coming out about dolphins in their language and and whales as well was crazy you're reading and you're

00:14:32.740 like man this is like you know ripley's believe it or not type stuff or things you'd see on the

00:14:37.520 learning channel at two o'clock in the morning so there's thing there's this theory one of these

00:14:41.580 free diving um researchers has this theory about what is going on with dolphins when they're

00:14:47.460 communicating with one another and that they're actually transmitting holographic images through

00:14:53.460 this this is like ancient alien stuff going on so can you explain a little bit what what's i mean

00:14:57.980 that that theory yeah it if it sounds insane to everyone then then uh it sounded equally as insane

00:15:06.380 to me and so uh we're all in the same boat um what happened is uh in the 1960s scientists were

00:15:15.160 absolutely convinced that dolphins and whales were communicating so they took them into labs the u.s

00:15:21.140 navy did tons of research into dolphin communication they're still doing it they at one time they

00:15:26.980 apparently translated a bunch of dolphin words and sentences were holding these stunted conversations

00:15:32.480 with them they had a lab in the bahamas and they were holding english immersion workshops with

00:15:39.800 dolphins i mean i felt bad for the lady that was uh that was the english teacher yeah well you know

00:15:46.860 what she was uh it was fully consensual dolphin sex well we'll leave the details you know in the book

00:15:53.500 but but uh i don't really feel bad i mean she she kind of was was the one instigating it so

00:15:59.620 so she knew what she was doing um and uh maybe i feel bad for her now yeah the next morning something

00:16:06.580 like that must must uh feel a little strange but um what they and so for wow this is so complicated

00:16:14.120 but i'm going to try to give you the cliff notes version here um dolphins and whales don't hear

00:16:19.760 sounds with two ears with two points of to collect data but with literally tens of thousands of points

00:16:27.120 underneath their jaws so they have the equivalent of tens of thousands of years and we know they're

00:16:32.620 viewing the world through sonographic images this is scientifically proven something called

00:16:37.220 echolocation they send out a click they wait to hear all of the data from that click how it comes

00:16:43.100 back and they form a picture in their mind from that um all of these researchers believe that they're

00:16:48.420 also able to send these sonographic images to one another they're already viewing the world this way

00:16:54.700 um they're probably sending the the equivalent um uh holographic sonographic images to one another

00:17:01.700 so uh this is not something some crazy new age theory people have been studying this or trying to study

00:17:08.380 it for so long but no one's been able to get close enough to these animals to do any real research

00:17:13.740 and these freediving researchers are the first people able to get close enough to them in their

00:17:19.680 wild environment to really research them and so currently right now we've got a team of physicists

00:17:26.020 mathematicians coders you name it and um they're building the equipment and next year we're going

00:17:33.440 to be doing this um collecting these sonographic images and shooting them back to them trying to have

00:17:39.540 a conversation not with words and sentences but with shapes crazy yeah yeah but it's it's happening

00:17:48.020 it's real it's science it's not some flaky thing and uh it could be a really big deal if we don't all

00:17:55.100 die yeah it's all all because of freediving and what does like like mainstream like universities and

00:18:00.680 researchers and scientists think of these freediving are they sort of welcomed in that community they're

00:18:04.940 sort of like no those guys are sort of the weird cousins at the family reunion we don't

00:18:08.900 really associate with well uh a little of both it's starting to change a few years ago um many

00:18:15.980 researchers thought what these guys were doing was uh extremely cruel to the animals they thought oh

00:18:21.720 the animals should be left alone study them from a boat but what they didn't get is it's always the

00:18:28.140 dolphin and the whale's choice to free dive and to swim with us like at any time they can turn around

00:18:35.400 and take off and dive so when you study them you get in the water a boat drops you off you get in the

00:18:41.680 water the boat takes off and it's just you in the water and they can either choose to come to you or

00:18:47.380 choose to go away so they're they're willingly having these encounters and these encounters last

00:18:52.520 like four hours they surround you they orient themselves vertically like all this weird shit

00:18:59.020 starts happening so um that that's one thing and another thing is institutional researchers can't swim

00:19:06.580 swim uh with these animals a they don't know how to free dive b um they would never be able to do that

00:19:13.520 um you know for insurance reasons you can't swim with a 60 foot long animal with eight inch long teeth

00:19:20.280 uh you know no university is going to allow research assistants to do that so these guys are working

00:19:26.100 completely independently and they can do whatever the hell they want um which is fantastic and that's why

00:19:32.380 they're making such fast progress right now and how are they making how do they get their funding for this

00:19:37.300 stuff well that's always a tricky thing um they get a lot of their funding uh from donations and they've

00:19:45.360 also gotten some funding because they're starting to film these encounters in 360 for virtual reality

00:19:51.880 because all of these headsets if uh people don't know what that is oh you will come christmas time

00:19:57.560 uh because sony samsung you know facebook they're all releasing virtual reality headsets

00:20:03.760 so uh and they work jobs uh you know and that that to me is what was so cool about what they were doing

00:20:10.020 they're not doing it for money uh it's something that they've just already invested so much of their

00:20:15.280 time and own money in doing it they're doing it because no one else is going to do it and they've got

00:20:20.600 access to these animals that uh no one else has had before and to me it's like incredibly exciting

00:20:26.720 i spent you know a few expeditions with them saw their research swam with with dolphins and whales

00:20:34.740 and um and now i really get what they're trying to do it's a pretty profound experience being next to

00:20:41.080 this animal which could eat you in a freaking second but instead chooses to sit there and send you

00:20:47.720 communication clicks yeah we want to talk about your own experience the uh the whales doing free

00:20:52.540 diving but bringing back this idea that we're somehow connected to the ocean or these connected

00:20:57.360 to these animals in some way like this ability to use sonar to guide yourself around the world isn't

00:21:04.760 just unique to bats or dolphins or whales like humans can do it too yeah that's right um and it seems

00:21:12.040 pretty abstract when you start thinking about oh you know how can a dolphin and whale really see with

00:21:19.200 the frequencies of sound how can they use this echo location well it turns out there's a bunch of

00:21:24.300 blind activists in la that have been doing this for for a decade and uh teaching a bunch of other

00:21:31.180 blind people how to do it just the same and what they do is they use the exact same practice as as

00:21:37.660 dolphins and whales they send out a click from their mouths just like a and they listen for how

00:21:45.260 that click echoes off of everything uh around them and they form a picture from that and um these guys

00:21:51.980 have are are able to ride their bike um in um sorry i'll start that over and these guys are able to ride

00:22:02.180 their bikes in busy city streets just clicking and listening to goes they camp alone in the woods i saw

00:22:10.160 this guy ride down a flight of stairs on his mountain bike uh they're able to live completely

00:22:16.180 independent lives by using this echolocation the same echolocation that dolphins and whales use and

00:22:24.160 something really interesting is that some researchers took them put them in an fmri and looked at what was

00:22:31.860 happening in their brains as they were using this echolocation and they found that their visual cortexes

00:22:38.840 lit up so there was really no difference from what these guys were seeing with the frequencies of

00:22:45.140 sound to what you and i and other sighted people can see with the frequencies of light it was the same

00:22:51.280 thing in their brains and um and they were literally able to see with their eyes closed it really blew my

00:22:57.620 mind crazy so you start the book off i want to talk about because i thought it was funny it made me laugh

00:23:01.980 uh there was or i think there still is now because they got funding again this underwater

00:23:07.240 research facility and when i read about it it reminded me going back to like when i was a kid

00:23:13.460 i remember reading these science books back in the 80s about the future would be like we live in these

00:23:18.500 underwater cities and like we drive submarines to like different locations to see grandma and it'd be

00:23:24.620 awesome uh was it as awesome as these science fiction books made them out to be well i don't want to ruin

00:23:33.080 that dreamy vision you have in your head so maybe you should just plug your ears right now when i tell you

00:23:38.800 the true reality of it it's uh it's really hard to live underwater there's this place called aquarius which

00:23:46.620 is about the size of a winnebago and it's under about 60 feet of water in the florida keys and scientists

00:23:54.960 live down there for up to 30 days at a time and um and it was one of the strangest places uh i've ever

00:24:03.220 been in my life um there are so many challenges to living underwater there's the pressure there's the

00:24:10.120 fear that everything might go wrong all of a sudden and you have to bail out there's the bends

00:24:16.100 um if these people are stay in this pressurized capsule so uh if they chose at any time to suddenly

00:24:24.200 just freak out and go to the surface their blood would literally boil in their veins they had to be

00:24:31.200 very slowly decompressed over a number of days in order to go back to the surface so that was my first

00:24:39.020 entree into uh sort of institutional research you know they're doing very very cool stuff down

00:24:46.100 there it's it's really neat um but then again i just felt so completely removed from uh the ocean

00:24:55.600 and that connection with the ocean um you know you're always in scuba you're always in a wetsuit

00:25:00.700 you're behind three inches of steel looking out of a window and it's a pretty big difference going from

00:25:07.180 that to being free diving in a pair of swim trunks you know with a bunch of whales and just having these

00:25:13.480 face-to-face interactions so that seemed like a much more direct approach was to follow the more

00:25:19.340 renegade line of research which is what i did but no more so no future underwater cities well you know

00:25:25.940 they tried to do that in the 60s and 70s custo had a place uh it's still off the coast of sudan

00:25:33.240 so you can go there and uh you can actually live in his little underwater hut it's still there it's just

00:25:39.460 like traveling in sudan right now it was really sketchy yeah that's why i've been there but germany

00:25:45.060 had them italy had them japan had them u.s had many of them and everyone was just like okay we're

00:25:51.480 gonna colonize the ocean and then once everyone spent a couple days down there in this damp humid

00:25:57.600 environment eating dried food and looking out this little window into a dark mass everyone was like

00:26:04.000 screw this let's go to space yeah and and that's what happened that's funny all right so let's get

00:26:10.040 back to this idea of direct experience with the ocean so you weren't just um writing about these

00:26:16.080 guys you were you actually trained to become a free diver um what was that training like and what was

00:26:22.960 the culmination of that for you yeah i had uh the first couple of assignments when i went out to see

00:26:29.940 what they were doing um researching sharks and researching dolphins and whales i was stuck

00:26:36.020 on the boat the whole time and i was watching these guys from the boat in this like crystal clear water

00:26:41.680 having these experiences and i thought damn that looks pretty good um and i also thought like if i'm

00:26:50.020 gonna write about this stuff i need to experience it myself i didn't want to be lazy sit behind a desk

00:26:54.920 and write about it i wanted to get in there so um i did uh start training for free diving and i'll just

00:27:01.840 make something clear to the readers this free diving uh it gets lumped in with base jumping all the time

00:27:08.560 and these two activities are so like but base jumping you have to jump off a cliff or an antenna or a bridge

00:27:16.180 and each time you base jump is dangerous but free diving people don't get you don't need to go down

00:27:21.840 300 feet to do it you can go down 10 feet or 15 feet or five feet or whatever depth is comfortable

00:27:29.640 for you um and so you know i learned about that and i also learned that this is a very it's a mental

00:27:37.580 activity our our bodies are built to dive deep we have all these reflexes we're born to do this

00:27:43.960 but getting your mind to convince yourself that you can stay underwater for four minutes takes a bit of

00:27:50.280 time um but eventually i was able to get there and uh it's just the coolest thing i've ever done in my

00:27:57.760 life and you know since the book came out i've been free diving more now than than i ever have i just

00:28:03.240 think about it all the time oh so you're still doing it all the time yeah this wasn't some some

00:28:08.940 flighty thing where i was just like oh i'm gonna check that out and then you know move on to to driving

00:28:13.920 race cars uh although that would be cool agents out there i'm i'm here i'm ready to roll but uh

00:28:20.780 you know for me it was once i had the experience of of actually feeling all of those reflexes within

00:28:29.020 my own body and learning what i was capable of learning how easy this stuff was um learning that

00:28:35.660 it could be done in a very safe and respectable and and meditative way um it's it's just it's such

00:28:43.680 an incredible experience i'll never be able to afford intergalactic travel um but you know this is

00:28:51.280 about as close as you can get there's no gravity down there or you're entirely weightless you can do

00:28:58.200 whatever you want uh animals come up to you it's just it's uh it's a very magical experience and uh

00:29:05.460 it's something i just can't wait to repeat and i'm going free diving in a couple weeks uh in in japan

00:29:11.640 to to do exactly that so that's all i mean if someone who's listening to this how do you get

00:29:15.540 started with that right are there schools you can go to uh how do you start with free diving the best

00:29:21.520 thing to do is to take a course because they teach you about the safety they teach you this is not

00:29:26.260 some reckless extreme thing where you push yourself to your limit and come back out of breath you know

00:29:32.240 it's it's a meditative practice it's a yogic practice you have to respect your body and your

00:29:37.420 place in the ocean so a course is the best thing i think performance free diving international

00:29:43.000 teaches great courses it's really no bullshit um they teach you about safety first and then they just

00:29:50.540 take you step by step through the process um you know a lot of people do this uh with friends

00:29:56.240 too uh but it's it's better to me to know the mechanics of your body and and how to breathe

00:30:02.140 up properly and and all of the safety first so i took a course with uh pfi performance free

00:30:08.840 diving international really really liked it and i know some other people that did as well cool so

00:30:13.760 james what are you working on neck what's your next big project you can explore some other facet of

00:30:19.200 human physiology that's mind-blowing we're right now working on a documentary of deep focused on

00:30:26.280 on the cetacean uh dolphin and whale communication and what we're hoping to do is to film these

00:30:32.840 experiments as they happen um so i've been dedicating most of my time to that um you know for about three

00:30:41.220 or four months we've been writing proposals and trailers and all that i also have another book idea

00:30:45.700 which i'm cooking up right now but uh i haven't found too much time to do that and uh you know uh

00:30:52.100 i just want to stay in the ocean a little bit longer i'm not quite ready to to hop into something

00:30:56.700 else and uh i think the potential of these free diving researchers to really make historical

00:31:03.960 scientific breakthrough here is is going to be very possible in the next couple of years and i'd love

00:31:09.540 to assist them and be a part of that awesome well james nester thank you so much for your time it's been

00:31:14.400 a pleasure thanks a lot our guest today was james nester he's the author of the book deep free

00:31:19.540 diving renegade science and what the ocean tells us about ourselves and it's available on amazon.com

00:31:24.700 well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice

00:31:32.280 make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com and if you enjoy

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00:31:40.120 that'll help get the word out about the podcast and one of the best compliments you could give us

00:31:44.160 is if you would recommend the podcast to a friend or family member really appreciate it thanks for all

00:31:50.080 your support until next time this is brett mckay telling you to stay madly

00:32:03.260 you

00:32:10.120 you

00:32:10.980 you

The Art of Manliness - September 24, 2015

#141： The Science of Freediving and Holding Your Breath With James Nestor

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