Part One: Wim Hof's Surprisingly Deadly Story

discharges into you. Yes, as long as you don't point them at yourself. Yeah, they are fun and rewarding. Why barrel discipline is key? You know what else is key? James? What is that? Root? Breath control and true? Yeah? Yeah, Today we're talking about a guy who has gotten very probably rich, I don't know his exact neck worth, but certainly extremely famous for teaching people a series of very specific breathing techniques. A fella that you may have heard of that most of I'm gonna guess a lot of

our listeners have heard of named wim Hoff. James, Yeah, you're you're aware of You're actually the guy who suggested this episode. So what am I fucking around pretending like James? What do you know about wim Hoff? Yeah? You know, you know he's a dangerous grifter. Yes, I'm gonna guess most of our audience don't because I really didn't, you know. For for me, wim was a guy who you know

he was, He was on the scene. He's now spent a lot of time in like Joe Rogan show, He's been on like the Goop pod cast, and he's working on a TV show with those people. But prior to that, he was also pretty prominent. I back when I worked at crack dot com like ten years ago, we featured him in an article for some of the stuff he would do and broad whim as a guy who like uses a series of breathing and meditative techniques that he claims basically renders him immune to the cold and capable

of extreme feats of heretofore thought impossible athletic prowess. He's been studied and by scientists and a number of occasions there are some things he's done that are impressive, although we'll talk about it not in the way that he claims usually. But you know, I was somebody who I read about him. I read like, saw this video of him like submerged in ice, you know, for a crazy long period of time, or like hiking up Kilimanjaro in shorts,

and was like, Oh, that's impressive. Cool. I guess a guy figured out some new endurance techniques, nifty, And I kind of didn't think about it much more than that, right, It was not. It wasn't one of those things. Wim was not initially claiming I have cured cancer, you know, or I've got like you know, you don't need vaccines,

just do my exercise techniques. He was just a guy who was like, you actually have more control over your body's reactions to cold than you think, and here's how to do it, which didn't seem to me on the service to be something particularly sketchy. And I'm gonna guess most people were kind of in that broad bucket where you were like, you saw some video of him, you read some article, you're like, oh, neat, and then you went on with your life. The truth is that he

is in fact a rather dangerous con man. Now, since mister Hoff is a bit of a fame hound, it's not hard to find interviews with him, and nearly all of them summarize his career in similar ways. To set the scene, I'd like to read an excerpt from an article in The Mirror, which is a shitty tabloid but reasonably representative of the tone a lot of websites use when talking about whim Hoff. That's why I'm quoting it, not to not because the Mirror is a reliable source on.

the Arctic Circle wearing only a pair of shorts. But father of five, whim from Sittard, Holland, proved he has ice in his veins after his eighteen strong climbing groups scaled Africa's highest mountain in a record time of thirty one hours and twenty five minutes.

their summary from a recent article about the Iceman. Wim Hoff is known as the Iceman. He earned his name after setting twenty six Guinness World records, which includes swimming under ice, running a half marathon, a of the Arctic Circle, bear, submerging himself in ice for an hour and fifty two minutes, and climbing Mount Kilimanjaro in just shorts and sandals. Now, this will tell you something about like what good journalism is worth versus bad journalism because the amount of things

that are correct in that sentence is higher than zero percent. Right, that's good to hear. Yeah, there are four claims in there, and one of them is accurate. Okay, so that's good. Well it's we strive. We strive for a little more and then you can say two of them are accurate, but not in a meaningful way. We'll talk about it later.

So mind chik. This is probably a significant surprise to most people who have kind of casually heard about whim because for seven or eight years he's been very good at not just performing feats of endurance, but doing it while hooked up to equipment monitored by actual scientists from like reputable universities who have confirmed some of the health benefits of the breathing techniques he claims to have pioneered. But the real story behind wim Hoff breathing and the

man himself is much shadier than that. Now, given that he is a semi beloved figure too many, I want to start us off by making the states clear. But the stake's clear because the breathing techniques that wim uses he did not really invent, but they're not bad, right, He's not like lying about it. There are uses for these techniques. They go back much further than wim Hoff. We'll talk about the origins and like, the ice bathing

stuff that he does is not inherently bad. There are some potential health benefits to cold water exposure when you do it in certain controlled ways. Right. Again, the way he tends to teach people about it is pretty reckless, but fundamentally there are aspects of the things he teaches

that are not like inherently toxic. However, I want to start again by making the stakes clear, which is that there are multiple allegations in court that the irresponsible training methods by Whim and his organization Inner Fire, have led to the deaths of between twelve and fifteen people. So yeah, we are not talking about like, well he's just like bullshits around. We're talking about, like there's body count for this episode, right, That's why we're talking about the guy.

If he was a dude who just got like some rich people from Santa Monica to like do ice bats and like particularly right, I have a lot of respect for that. Yeah, yeah, well that's fine. I don't take their money. I don't give a shit.

second child would also be born healthy. She expressed the hope that if it were healthy, the child would grow up to be a missionary. WiM's mother told this story regularly, and Wim believed the circumstances of his birth and his mother's strength had a great influence on him. So that's his claim right born to be a missionary. You know, his mom prayed him into being divine, he chose, mm hmm. Yeah.

That just strikes me as something to someone who's parent to bullshitting might say, yeah, it does seem like like that might be the case with Whim. So he's not a great writer. In this book, The Way of the Ice Man, he is credited along with Cohen Deong. I don't know, you know, you know these names, it's Danish names, like I'm doing my best here whatever as the author of this book, and I guess the safe assumption is

that neither of them are good at writing books. His stories about his early life are inconsistent, although not necessarily conflicting, with the stories that he gives like the stories he gives in this book are inconsistent with stories he's given in interviews and on podcasts, but they don't necessarily conflict. It's just he tells weirdly different stories each time he's

asked about his background. It's not one of the with a lot of grifters, it's like, oh, these are all clearly lies, because all of these things can't be true with whim. It's more like, why did you ignore that detail that you included in your book in this recitation of your background, Like that seems kind of using to me. In some interviews, he claims that his father died in a mountaineering accident when he was a young boy, and says that this made him determine to conquer the mountains.

Bad lesson to learn from your dad dying mountaineering. By the way, lesson you should learn is respect the mountains. Mountains are very dangerous. You can try and coquer them, but yeah, they lie, fight back. They are much older than you. Yeah. Yeah, they've seen a few people come and go. Yeah's dad. Yeah, including his dad. In the way of the ice Man, though he gives a different story as to why he decides to get into conquering the mountains and doing weird cold weather stuff. Haff was

fascinated by the cold from a very early age. One freezing winter's night when he was seven, a neighbor found him in the snow. Strongly attracted by the white landscape, Haff had climbed out of bed, crept outside, and fallen asleep in the snow. If his neighbor had not discovered him, he probably would have frozen to death. I know, man, why, Yeah, that seems it's a normal no behavior, seems like congenitally bad assessment. Yeah. Yeah, there's something in the water in

the Hoff household which has him to make poor choices. Yeah, something in the Hoff in the male Hoff brain that does not want to pass on their genes. He does not mention his dad dying at all in this book, though, in fact I didn't really come across I'm not going to claim I read this thing like fucking Ulysses, but I did not come across him even talking about his dad here. One thing he is consistent about is that he experimented a lot with the cold as an adolescent.

He does bring this up in every interview that he that he discusses. This started with him sitting in the snow for hours and hours at a time, sometimes sleeping outside in the winter without a tint or a sleeping bag. We don't know how much of this is true, but as we'll discuss. He makes other claims later about his

fascination with enduring extreme temperatures. When he was thirteen, Whim claims he spent his fall holiday reading a book about psychology, and later wrote the psychological terminology gave birth to my inquisitive mind and the urge to philosophy everything around me. It was then that I began to see the world in a different light, all at once. I wanted to learn about different cultures, traditions, and new languages. Now in

the way of the ice Man. He claims that this process started when he was nine, and that his interest was sparked by his older brother, who had hitchtiked around the Middle East and the Far East and came back with strange and wonderful tales. Wim goes on to claim that he was so impressed by how his brother had changed that he stopped listening in church and focused instead on meditation techniques that he'd learned from Hindu and Buddhist texts.

He went to school only with a healthy reluctance. He then has his autobiographer describe him as quote a self willed, clever, and cheerful young boy, which I do find a little bit off putting when you're clearly writing this description of yourself as a kid. At least make it up as a quote from someone else.

mental and physical pain. Tumo breathing has been studied by researchers and it has been shown to allow practitioners to increase their body temperature and for a long time that has been associated with at least temporary relief from a number of ailments. Western researchers have been studying tumo breathing since the early nineteen eighties, but the practices themselves go back a very long time. These are basically different kinds

of hyperventilation techniques. Right, So these are things, These are things that go back a long time, this kind of breathing techniques, and there are certain physiological changes that can be useful in some ways that they are tied to. In most versions of this story, Whim will say that his journey from being a guy or to being a guy who spends all of his time in the cold started me was seventeen and he found himself possessed with an inexplicable urge to dive into a half frozen canal

in Amsterdam. Here's how he related that story to The Guardian. I was quite a thinker, a philosopher, but one day I felt attracted to the freezing water. I jumped into a canal in Amsterdam and thought, this is it. That deep connection I felt that day was the starting point. Every day for forty five years, I've gone into the cold.

And this is more things are a little bit weird because these don't necessarily conflict that like in the earliest versions of his story, he would just say like, yeah, when I was seventeen, I just felt this urge to jump into a canal, and that got me started doing these cold weather exposure, you know, experiments. But in the more recent stuff that he's written or said about his background, he claims that, like, oh, I was like eight or nine and my neighbor just found me sleeping outside in

the snow. No one could explain it. Like he keeps pushing the timeline back. Yeah, and like going from like yeah, like a lot of when we have seventeen year old boys feel nurge to do stupid shit, right, It's kind it's kind of the scene quion of being a seventeen year old boy in many ways. But to take it from like, yeah, from birth, I was like attracted to

the cold because I'm specialist. Kind of my version of this is that when I was seventeen, I felt an overpowering urge to pour an entire pint glass of a fucking jim bean and see what happens if I drink it all at once. How did I go for you, Robert? You know, I developed a new set of meditative breathing techniques that I could teach you for just twelve thousand dollars.

the impulse. I felt this attraction to the cold water, he says, and then after I went in, I felt this understanding, an inside connection. It gave me a rush. My mind was free of gibberish. It was so good, in fact, that he returned the next day to take the plunge again, and he continued through the winter and beyond, along the way, evolving his breathing technique, which is based on the centuries old Tibetan Buddhist practice known as Tumo meditation,

but features none of its spiritual trappings. Now, this canal story is present in basically every interview where Wim talks about his past, but oddly enough, he doesn't list it as part of his journey in the Way of the Iceman. There he goes for a more exotic story, claiming that he traveled to India as a young adult to find a teacher who knew more about what was really important in life. His biographer insists to us he was looking

for a deeper spiritual understanding. And I feel like I have to read the next couple paragraphs of this to you verbatim so you can truly appreciate how insufferable this man is. James. He flew to Karachi and took a train to New Delhi in search of yogis. He slept in the enormous Berla Mandir Temple complex. He met the owner of a tea house and the rebellious son of a carpet magnate. There these two men persuaded Hoff to accompany them to Rishikesh and Badrinath, two places of pilgrimage

on the Ganges. This colorful trio set off together a strong bearded Sia Kuran, a tea house, a black sheet from the carpet industry who could get anything he wanted, and he was fed up with the corruption of his world and haff They thought Hoff was crazy because he went swimming in the Ganges a couple of times a day. Hoff even swam across to the other side no mean

feet given the strong current. He was also impressed. He also impressed them with the acrobatic yoga exercises he could do, despite never having had a yoga lesson in his life. In India, Haff discovered that his autodidactic approach had already brought him a long way. He could already stand on one leg and put the other leg behind his neck, a position many people left to practice for years to master. His traveling companions remained behind in an ashram, but Haff

didn't feel at home there. He didn't like the klingi cozy atmosphere of the foreign participants, and although many of the yogis had learned very special techniques, he didn't like the way they profited from them. He also discovered that he could not learn much from them, as he had already mastered their tricks. He continued his travels alone on foot,

just me just the best. Why I went to India, But I knew more than all of the teachers, and they were doing it for money, which is bad unlike me, who's I am pure fucking celebrity guru.

raft in the gangs up there. Not weird to see people doing it. No one's going to be like, oh, white man swimming in the Ganges. Like we're not talking about being like down like fucking south of Delhi where you've got a lot of affluvia in it, and it's a lot like less safe to swim in the ganjis because like you've got cities and stuff like you are talking about a place where a lot of people do this. Anyway, whatever, Whim, come on the Hoff.

I guess, yeah, yeah, it does clear the mind. I went, like, I remember, I think I have plunged into the waterfall he's talking about, if it's the one that's a little north of Rishikesh.

because that's the sort of standard operating procedure. And then from there I jumped off it into the water having not done up the like the relief zipper on on the on the dry suit, and it certainly clears the mind when you when you hit water which is like just above freezing.

of being in cold water. He returns home to Amsterdam at age twenty, and he sets up in a squat with about ninety other people. By his own description, he ate very little food and mostly did yoga, avoiding the drugs the other squatters did. Now, I might say that starving yourself and doing yoga for twenty hours a day could theoretically be less healthy for you than just doing some fucking k and eating schwarma, but that's a personal choice.

People are allowed to do whatever. So he seems to have basically spent this time busking by teaching yoga in the park, which is again fine. And one day, while he's doing this, this thing that he had also criticized these Indian yogis for, by the way, kind of worth note in taking money. Yeah, he meets his future wife, Oleah Fernandez. She moves in with him, and he claims for a year they didn't have sex, which I was not going to ask about, h yeah in the book. Yeah,

but he wants us to know. So now we have to fucking interrogate this. Yeah, let's go, he says. He does explain why they didn't fuck, and it's because, quote Hoff's what life was devoted to yoga, and his Spanish girlfriend respected that. And I always, I always find it a little weird. It's fine if you're like, he met his wife, you know, a basque woman from from you know, Spain or whatever. Okay, Like that's that's fine for whatever reason, Just like the way, just like describing her as his

Spanish girlfriend, I do find slightly off putting. Yeah, I can't exactly tell you why. Yeah, she's like a character in a story he's telling him by himself. Yeah, we'll be talking about her a bit. So she goes home after they're together for like a very sexless year, according to Whim, and the next thing that happens in his life that he talks about in his book is a bike trip to Senegal, which is very spiritual to him. I don't care. It's very boring, James. His spiritual journey

is boring his ass. I much prefer like I don't know l Ron Hubbard's. But he claims after Senegal he goes back to India and he studies under Yogi's this time, I guess he finds someones that have lessons to teach him. Still non profit yogis, Yeah, nonprofit yogis. We have no idea, no way of knowing if any of this is true. But given how inconsistent his story is, I'm going to throw serious doubt on this next passage quote. He trained

his body in mind under extreme conditions. Sometimes he spent several days at great heights while enduring temperatures of negative two degrees without food negative two degrees celsius without food. He discovered a new way to survive the extreme cold, controlling his breathing. With breathing exercises, he could transform his fear and the negative experience of the cold into a powerful form of energy. He saw his body in a new way and learned that breathing is an important instrument.

This was also where he learned his breathing exercises. So I don't know. I don't believe that, but that's one of the claims that he makes about his background. He tells different stories in other mediums. In some interviews, he claims that he learned to control his body temperature through diving in the freezing canals and other cold weather exercise in the Netherlands. I'm not sure that's how that works. It is not how that works, but here's how he made. I want to read a claim that he makes in

a Reddit ama that this guy sounds powerfully Reddit. He makes some fascinating claims in his AMA. So here's iceman Hoff. Because our natural ability to withstand cold makes us not able to freeze and not go below zero degrees. If your cells go below that temperature, you get a reparable damage. If you exposure self for that temperature, your body knows what to do to not freeze. The body is able to go to the extremities besides the core, which remains

thirty seven degrees. I can do all that stuff. I trained with kung fu masters in Beijing and they respected me very much. Kung kung fu masters in Beijing just throws that out there in the reddit. Enemy. I haven't seen that elsewhere, but I guess in between the yogis and the top of mountains, he went and trained with some kung fu masters stew and then they respected me very much. Fuck me. The orientalism is so profound, it is out it is outstanding orientalism. He missed travel to

the eighteen forties to get orientalism like this normally. Yeah, this guy could have crushed it and oh my god, he would have been huge. Yeah yeah, like he could been on some learns for Arabia shit, but he would have been almost to god until he died of fucking tetanus at age thirty seven ye bacterian infection from the Thames, trying to show off his breathing techniques. And it's very so. He says that, like I trade with kung fu masters, they respected me very much. The response, the one Reddit

response whom jam Brooklyn is just very inspiring. Thank you. Oh yeah, fuck me. He's really getting high on his

own supply here, believably so. And again yeah. So. One of the things I find intriguing about whim is that this is not the kind of situation we see all the time where grifter kind of workshops a version of their life story and there are inconsistencies in the past, and then they pick a story and stick with it, right, And if you dig into it you can find like, oh, they used to tell a different story, but they tend to, like when they get famous, stick with a version of events, right,

because that's the smart thing to do. What's interesting to me about what he's so inconsistent still to this day with like his exact journey and like when he had his revelations and when he got inspired to do what just very interesting to me how he has drunk guide to ba and she has not like experienced scrift or energy. Yeah, which I think is probably part of what works for him is that he does seem a little bit less

polished than some of these more explicit con men. Yes, yeah, he's not like aodh and he doesn't look like like he's not If people are watching there listening to this, and like they haven't looked at wim Hoff, you want to look at wim Hoff because it's not the extreme

mountain athlete you're probably thinking of. No, No, he does kind of look like a normal man in his fifties from you know this part of the world, so up to the present day, he continues to give different anecdotes about his path to figuring out his special breathing techniques. The Way of the Iceman came out in twenty seventeen, but you can find articles from the twenty twenties where

he tells the Canals story instead. I do find that book to be the most interesting version of his backstory, in part because of how badly written and off putting it is. So after his time in Senegal, Wim breaks up the narrative with a message to the reader, which basically says, Hey, we know you're probably wondering why we're getting all these bullshit stories about spiritualism and shit and a book ostensibly about breath control exercises. Don't worry, we'll

tell you soon. But first quote, we must share the sad story of Whim's wife, Olayah. You ready for this, James, I don't think I am. You are not ready for this. It's impossible to be ready for this. Hit me with the Yeah, I'm going to hit you with my best shot, so fire away. That is a peculiar way of introducing what will prove to be a very dark story. So before going back to India to study with Yogi's, maybe

Haff returned to Amsterdam and met with Oleya. They got married and they had a son in nineteen eighty three, presumably after he got back from studying in the mountains with Yogi's, although he doesn't say. They had two daughters soon after. But it was too cold for Olea in the Netherlands, so they moved to the Pyrenees and Wilm got it a job teaching English. Now. Whim claims that he took to mountain climbing up in the Pyrenees with

basically no gear. He'd go up in like shorts and shoes and nothing else and stuff as a hobby, right, so that he could he could just feel alive. He's got to like go up there without proper safety equipment, otherwise he doesn't. He's not on the edge. He's not alive. Now this pisses off his wife because they have three children together, and she's like, you are taking dumb risks with your life for no reason, and like we have

kids that we're responsible for. Would you give us a fact criticism if you're just a dude and your hobby is risking your life in unnecessary ways. You got a right to do that, you know, Yeah, to a point, as long as you're not endangering other people with it. When you have three kids with someone, you are kind of a dick for continuing to do that is a douche move. Yeah, like you have a responsibility. Now, you gotta at least get those kids out the door before you go back to your suicide.

thing going downhill and then just tuck and roll. Baby. Okay, you you actually okay, you don't go right on top of it. You that is actually more terrorism. Actually, hey, when I think of it, that.

so where were we? Just like, no one's going to stop that wheeler rob it rub the energy of a least truck paraly down the freeway, gets pissed at him for risking his life when they've got kids together, pointlessly uh And eventually he agrees to stop doing his suicide climbs and instead devotes his free time to learning how to hold his breath underwater. Eventually he gets up to six minutes. Now. When I first read that, I was like, that sounds like bullshit. I don't think people can hold

their breath that long. Turns out they can. Yeah, it's actually totally doable. I was when I was looking this up. You know what, the longest anyone's ever held their breath for underwater eight minutes twenty four fun. Now, that is the longest anyone's done it with oxygen pre breathing. Right, Okay, it's not like they're not like raw Dog in it right there in Haley pure O two before. But still, that's fucking wild. That is wild. It's like whale numbers

a half man, half dolphin. Yeah, without pre breathing. The record is eleven minutes and fifty four seconds, which is fucking nuts. That is so long to hold bad.

and she will regularly threatened to commit suicide. He says that they returned to Amsterdam because he no longer felt safe with her in their farmhouse, which is very sad. This is to some extent true. They have another kid though, while this is all going on, and then after they have this last kid, Olea abandons them again for a period of time. Now in numerous other storeses sources, he says that Oleah was eventually diagnosed with schizophrenia. This includes

in twenty seventeen in the Way of the Iceman. He also will sometimes just say that she was depressed. Obviously, both of those things can go together. She does eventually commit suicide, and this is very bleak. I want to first read to you how that story is related in a twenty seventeen Rolling Stone article, and then I'm going to read how it's related in his book, because the differences between the two of them are fascinating. So here's

that Rolling Stone article. Okay hit me. One day in nineteen ninety five, after kissing her four children goodbye, she jumped off the eighth floor of an apartment building. A bit later, Hoff had a vision in which he saw how his breathing technique could help people like his wife. I can bring people back to tranquility. He once said, my method can give them back control. So that's yeah, very paragraph. That's just a choice, that is, that is a series of choices. See, man, there, I think i'd

write that. Yes, fucked up in my mind, but you know whatever, not worth getting into too much there. Yeah, my judgment on the matter. But here's how he relates the same story in his twenty seventeen book The Way of the Iceman. One day, when Hoff was alone in the mountains, Olea jumped from the eighth floor of her parents' house in Pamplona. Olea was dead. Jennam, Isabelle, Laura and Michael lost their mother, and Wim lost his wife. He

felt guilty and the children were devastated. Hoff devoted himself to caring for his children, occasionally retreating to be alone with nature to recharge his batteries. In those years, he was a well known figure in the Vondel Park. With ropes and ballet equipment, he showed young children how to climb the highest trees. The children learned that they could do more than they thought was possible. Hoff enjoyed the

natural surroundings, even in the heart of Amsterdam. Later, wim remarried and had another son, So that's also a paragraph, quite a page or whatever that just gets across. First, how odd reading Whim's different life stories can be. Again, they're not necessarily in conflict with each other, but they all are so different in terms of what is emphasized

and claimed that it does feel peculiar and spoilers. In both of those versions of the wim Hoff story, he leaves out some very fucking important details which we are about to get into. But James, you know what we're going to get into first? Is it some advertising? Oh, we are sure going to get James, you know what I love about capitalism? No? Actually, no, please enlighten me. Oh man, oh wow. First off, the fact that content can be supported with ads. That's wonderful, which is a

sustainable situation. I was just thinking the other day, you know, it would be a great way to run newspapers, make it import That's a stable way to make sure people have access to the best news at all times.

send it random Venmo? James, I don't think it's responsible to advise our listeners not to invest in Reagan coins.

started writing about whim Hoff. We'll be talking about that in more detail in Part two. He says that he met wim while working on a book about the Enlightenment and the spiritualism grift industry. This is a critical book about like guru grifters, right, like the guy and the guy that wim Hoff is, right, who's writing this book.

But he becomes kind of enraptured with women, particularly with how well his breathing technique works, so he writes an article and then eventually a book on wim In Scott's work like writing on whim is a big part of like why wim Hoff becomes famous, right he Scott plays a significant role in sort of the birth of him as a major media figure. He has come to regret aspects of the role he played here, largely because of

all those deaths. Well, the people definitely died. It's alleged that wim Hoff's training has as and there's fourth cases currently continuing. So he seems to have come to regret some of this, and he wrote a blog post recently called the Rise and Fall of the wim Hoff Empire, which we will be referring back to several times in these episodes. That article includes a very different story about

Oliah's death and particularly what happened after. So again in you know, just going back to the book, he says that you know, well, he was devastated obviously after his wife committed suicide, and he devoted himself to caring for his children and like teaching other kids in the park and whatnot in order to deal with his grief. And then later whim we married and had another son. That's the version that the book gives, broadly in line with

what he usually says in interviews. Most versions of the wim Hoff story make a big deal about the fact that his wife commits suicide and he is left to raise their four children alone as a single father. Obviously, that is a noteworthy thing about anyone's life who has a similar cher. I can imagine very few experiences or in situations more difficult in demanding than being left as

a single parent to raise four kids alone. That's a very difficult thing to deal with, very much worth mentioning in someone's biography, I would say, much more impressive than hiking up a mountain in shorts. Yes, perhaps more beneficial, yes, yeah. Now. In a video interview with WMX Presents, currently about two point one million views, wim says this about his wife's death children. I had with my wife, and I was to be with her forever. She was the love of

my life. She died, She suicided. It's a black hole within yourself. It breaks your heart and you don't know why, but the train of daily life is going on and you've got to catch up otherwise you lose it. So I had to be there for my children. And yes we created a new nest. My children made me survive in that time, but nature healed my wounds. So again, very focused on the idea that he bravely takes on his kids and they help each other heal after this.

That is not the version of the story that Scott Carney gives in this ride up quote. After his wife's death, he began a relationship with a woman in another city and left his kids to survive alone in a squat house in Amsterdam. The eldest Innam was only fifteen years old when he became the family's surrogate dad. Eventually, Hoff's relationship with the woman ended, and he found himself with a thirty thousand euro tax debt that seemed to be

the impetus to reconnect with his family. Ah there we go, Oh, there we go. Now we got some of that classic bas abandoning your family and then coming back to get pay your tax bill. Ah, there we go. That's that good ship you feel that deep in your that's like as like the spiritual equivalent of a nice bowl of gaspacho right where you just feel it filling you up, nourishing you. Yeah, I love it.

not acceptable behavior. You have a possibility to do better than that for your kids. Oh wow, Yeah, and then you just admit that from all his own rent should just start know we saved each other man, you were fuck you bounced Tomy. Now it gets even weirder than that, though, because once he decided he needed to get back in touch with his family, he asks his second oldest son, because his oldest son is pissed about being made dad suddenly, yeah, he asks his second oldest boy, Michael, to meet him

in the Vandell Park in Amsterdam. Quote, haff arrived early and went for a swim in the park's pond. While he was waiting, he paddled out for a fountain and positioned himself over the spout to give himself an enema he thought would cleanse out all of his destines or is. He often likes to say, get the shit out. Well, yeah, well, first off, you're a bastard for doing that in a public fountain. You don't give yourself an innima in a

public fountain. You're gonna get your shit everywhere. You fucked up that soil.

while blood and feces leaked from his rectum. Hoff's first words to his son in a decade where that he needed to go to a hospital.

this is all you, buddy. I love the Dutch park service employee who saw this ninety nine times in red lights wasn't going to be one hundred deep and then to that shit immediately. I do love ye adding that story. Yeah, I want to hear him.

this shit, even if you have to die. Something like that was going on. Hoff said, so either if you take kind of what they're saying, he felt so bad that he felt like he had to do this to kind of like express the sorrow in his heart, and

because he was so guilty for his failures. I kind of think maybe he knew that his kids had very valid reason to be angry at him, and he fucking decided that the best thing he could do was injure himself in order that they would feel bad for him, so that he wouldn't have to deal with the actual

guilt that he has for failing them. Like I kind of think this was another emotionally abusive thing by him where he's like, well, yeah, if I fuck myself up, then they can't be angry at me, right because they'll have it will have to be dealing with this health problem.

get some good shit. Yeah. I this article and I hate John Brooks who wrote it, but it is useful for our purposes because it is written by a weirdo freak who's obsessed with wim Hoff and has spent more time listening to his podcast appearances and video interviews than I ever will. Here is entry number six on that listicle. In the Becoming the Ice Man subreddit, a user asked how Wim got the scar over his belly button. He

received this reply About fifteen years ago. Wim was swimming at a fountain at Amsterdam and decided to give himself an enema on the nozzle of the jet. He says he has done this before, but a few weeks earlier the city altered the jet to have a more powerful spout, so when he sat on the hose, the water cut through his colon and intestines like a water knife. His son, Michael, who he was meeting at the park, took him to

the er. Whim is a pretty good ability to resist pain, so the hospital did not tree as him to surgery immediately because they didn't understand as serious the injury was. After a few hours, he fainted and they realized how bad it was. The doctor stitched him up, but rightly feared the risk of sepsis. It took him a long time to recover. He says that he used no antibiotics. Staring recovery a god always a chance for a grift.

I do love it. They was like, yeah, all they say about the fact that this was their first time meeting in a decade is his son Michael, who he was meeting.

tell it and not lose track of the main story. Now, But that's why you fucking get good at writing, isn't it. That's why you get good at writing. Yeah, you don't just abandon the fucking story. Like, and again, he's not in the subreddit. He's not saying I hid the part about him abandoning his family. He's saying I just didn't

tell about him getting his guts cut up. By a water knife, right, But the reality is he hid both of those things, right, Scott hides the fact that Wim abandons his family and the story about him giving himself the death enema. And this is why I think Scott's one of our bastards here, right. Yeah, obviously the true story.

If the version that Scott is now giving is the true story, right, we are I have to I assume it probably is because Scott is claiming I have this recorded, and if he was lying about this, that's a significant legal liability, right because Scott's not He's putting this up on his blog. He's not publishing this through an outlet even who would be, you know, it would be incumbent upon them to represent him. So he better you know.

But here is how Scott explains why he had this. The story of Hoff abandoning his children and his near fatal inemin never made it into my own book because both my editor and I wanted to protect Hoff's reputation from evidence of his own madness. It's a role that many other journalists have also fallen into when they might have otherwise doubled down on their fact checking efforts. And like, this is not a fact checking issue, Scott, because he admits to doing. You just have to tell the story

he's telling here. Yeah, like they didn't have enough time and money to fact check it. Like and then he's right that other people should maybe have fact checked it. But sure, I'm sure everyone else cited him because especially like health and wellness journalism, let's face it, like this, people aren't fact checking. No, And it's yeah, I think bad of you, Scott.

I'm dangering other people. And you hang out until Thursday. You get your own enema, you know. Find a fountain out there. Go to Disney World. Yeah, we're saying, go to the Aria.

that in that broad air. Yeah, so that you should listen to that. I'm writing a book for ak Press, but I'm still writing it, so you can't buy it, but buy some other books from Akpress.