¶ Intro / Opening
before my hands start to shake.
No.
I'm a cybernetic organism.
🎵 Music
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¶ Introducing David Blaine's Enduring Feats
Why hello boys and girls, this is Tim Ferris, and welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferris Show, where it is my job to deconstruct world-class performers, whether they are entertainers like Jamie Foxx. Military like General Stan McChrystal or Jocko Willink. Chess prodigies like Josh Waitskin or everybody and anyone in between who is the best at what they do. And this episode is no different. It is a bit of a hybrid
I am interviewing the master illusionist and endurance artist you have asked for for years, David Blaine. And it is a really fun conversation, at least I had a blast. And it is composed of outtakes. What does that mean? Well These are bits and pieces. I'd say about 90% of it. is from a T V show that I filmed. And we filmed for three hours and it got cut down to an hour long T V episode. And you can see this episode on a T V show called Fearless.
And you can see the entire episode, which does not really overlap with this audio, at at.net forward slash fearless. and I highly recommend that you check it out. People have been really buzzing about it. And this is all extras. So you will hear all sorts of stories and bonus bits that didn't make it in.
We jump around quite a lot to various conversations, stories, and lessons with David, and the very first conversation begins with the two of us talking about Uh my second book, The Four Hour Body and Learning to Hold My Breath, which he taught me at the Ted Med conference ages ago, and I went from a max breath hold of forty five seconds to three minutes and thirty seconds or slightly longer.
So I am going to try to keep this somewhat short, but two things. Number one, I would love for you to check out the TV show. The entire season is filmed. And you can find out where you can see all of the episodes at tim.blog forward slash fearless. That's Tim.blog forward slash fearless. That has trailers, all the guests, everything else. And if you want to see the entire first episode, at least for a short period of time, with David Blaine, just go to ATT dot net forward slash fearless.
And there are some issues, it seems, viewing it with Chrome to try Safari or Firefox or something else. And that is it. So I hope you enjoy this conversation and experience. as much as I did. Please say hi to David. On the socials, he's easy to find. Blaine B-L-A-I-N-E. He does not disappoint. Thank you.
Welcome to Fearless! I'm your host, Tim Ferris. And on this stage, we'll be deconstructing world-class performers of all different types to uncover the specific tactics and strategies they've used to overcome doubt, tackle their hardest decisions, and ultimately succeed on their own. So let's take a look at my guess by the number.
Seventeen minutes four seconds. His world record setting breath hold. If you can believe that, it's true. Forty-four days, how long he survived without food in a plexiglass box. 63 hours, 42 minutes, and 15 seconds, the amount of time he spent encased in a block of ice. For nearly 20 years, he has risked his life for your entertainment. Please welcome to the stage world-renowned illusionist and endurance artist David Blaine.
🔊 Applause
¶ Primo Levi's Influence and Stoicism
You wrote about it in your book. I did. Which I was super excited about.
I had to pull it. Okay, so let me explain what happened. It turns out that I guess if you have an audience of X number of people, let's say it's a million people, one out of every thousand is not going to read directions. It turns out. So I had people who just weren't reading the warrant. But what made me want to put it in the book so badly is that it takes this impossible
I can't do X and just obliterates it. Then I remember I think it was the very next time that I met you after that and I paid a lot of attention to your performances, but then I started tracking you a lot more closely. Not like a stock creepy way, but in a very uh diligent Fanway and we met at I don't even remember where it was, might have been at uh one of these summit events in DC. But I sat down, I noticed you had a tattoo on the uh is it on the inside of your form?
Yeah.
So he has some numbers here. What are those numbers?
It's Primo Levi's Holocaust numbers. And he's He's one of my favorite writers because even though he went through such a terrible and horrific experience, he wrote about it without any bias actually. It's almost like he recorded it with a video camera. And just documented what he went through in the concentration camp.
And because he was a chemist, he didn't look at, you know, you are different than me or this Nazi is different than this Jew. He looked at everybody as biological compositions of molecule you know, so so everything is just a part of life. So therefore he just studied humanity and it's it's one of its most atrocious incidents. And he would say th he would write things that you would and by the way, he started to write this book.
as soon as he got out and his arm was working, he immediately you know, he was able to write, he immediately began to write. And people didn't believe him and, you know, because a lot of people thought the Holocaust was still made up at that time. And he would say things that because he was a chemist, so before he went to Auschwitz, he was a great chemist in a paint factory is where he worked.
but he would observe what certain people did to survive. So he explained like you had to sleep with your head here, your feet here, your head here, your fill, you know, packed like sardines basically. And he would explain that Somebody that might survive would be the the guy laying in the bunk at night that could listen to the level of the latrines. The latrines would be you know, were the toilets in the middle of the bunk.
And when you would hear the latream was filled to the top, if you were able to sleep just enough but stay awake enough that you could listen, when it was full to the top, you'd say to the two people to your side, if you have to go to the bathroom, don't go now.
And he would say that because he would listen to the level of the latrines, know how full it was, and then if they would have to go to the bathroom, then they'd have to go empty it two miles away. And while walking, they would spill the urine and the crap all over their feet.
And so when they came back and you and you had to sleep with your head next to it, you'd get sick and when you get sick in a camp, you're killed. You're done. So it was like he he would explain things that you'd never think about. And then when he became a very respected writer like Philip Roth and Italo Calvino, all these guys say he's one of the most important nonfiction writers of all time.
he went back to working in the paint factory. He never moved out of the apartment in Torino, Italy that he grew up on. He never traveled for luxury. He was a really impressive and interesting person.
Well, I remember asking you what you learned from the book because I noticed the tattoo, then you mentioned the book and I said, What did you learn? And you said everything and I was like, Whoa I think I need to buy a book. So I went out and I bought If This Is a Man and the Truth.
Come on. Those are amazing.
And I have to tell you guys. You want to talk about beautiful, insightful writing? I think the highlights in that book alone are the next ten combined on my shelf. I still have it facing out on my bookshelf in my living room.
Yeah, it's amazing. And after you read it, when you open your refrigerator, you're you're never gonna think about food or anything the same way'cause you're gonna put wow, I'm so lucky. It's kind of like the stoic philosophers, like Marcus Reelease, all these people.
It they they use negative visualization and what they do with that is they imagine the worst possible scenario. So let's say somebody has a daughter, he's gonna imagine that tomorrow his daughter might die and he might not see her ever again.
So therefore the time that he's with his daughter, he's gonna be very connected to her. He's not gonna be looking through his iPhone or watching T V. He's gonna be paying full attention to her, which is I think an amazing point of view, whereas the father that assumes, Oh, my daughter's gonna outlive me and she'll be here forever
when they're together he might be sitting there staring at the T V or reading the newspaper and not really giving her the full attention. So an and it's also the same the way he thinks about like a glass of water.
So you'd think like instead of saying like, oh this glass is half empty, it'd be like, wow, I'm lucky that I have water. Not just am I lucky to have water, but I have it in a glass that actually will hold it. And I'm not gonna get lead poisoning from this glass and it's gonna be clean and it's gonna taste good. So it's like
And I mean on top of that, you just mentioned the Stoics, which is one of my favorite topics. I'll not talk about it for the next like seventeen hours to save you guys. But the fact that they viewed it as practical. It was it was trainable. So it was a regular practice.
¶ Mastering Breath and Cold Endurance
I mean you have one hell of a collection of what most people would consider pretty strange practices. I want to talk about cold for a second. So I I don't know If this is correct me if this is not accurate, but I'm I know Laird Hamilton and those guys. Laird is the undisputed king of big wave surfing and he's married to Gabby Reese, who's equally impressive.
Yeah, they're amazing. Hilder.
Volleyball player, amazing parents. And they have these workouts at their house in uh in Southern California, so this neck of the woods, and they have a custom pool with stairs that go down to the bottom and people do weight training underwater, among other things. And then they have
an ice bath, which is a real ice bath. You get in and you have to wedge yourself through the ice into the ice bath and then a sauna that's 220 degrees and they cycle through all three of these. I remember at one point somebody at one of these workouts said, oh man, you should have been here last week. Wim Hof was here. Wim Hof, he was called the Iceman. He's this Dutch daredevil. He has twenty something world records for the world.
He's incredible. Yeah.
He climbed up to death altitude at Everest in boots and shorts, nothing else. Pretty impressive guy on a lot of levels.
Has a record swimming under ice.
Yeah, he swam under ice until his retina froze. I mean not recommended by the way, no matter how good your eyesight might seem. So I was told that you guys started trading ideas and then started doing all sorts of wacky stuff. Is that
What happened or like fun. But I had actually never tried holding my breath under water and ice, which I you know, I could I could resist really cold temperatures for a pretty good good amount of time. But I didn't I always thought okay, so when I first tried to learn how to hold my breath.
I actually read about the boy that fell under the icy river and he was trapped for forty five minutes. He blacked out. They pulled him up and he was brought to full recovery. So my f my initial thinking was, okay, if I put myself in a really in an ice bath. And I drop my core temperature, then I'll be able to hold my breath long. But it was before I really learned the technique. So I got in this ice bag.
I was shivering. And then I tried to do the breath holding. It was you know, it was a bust. Yeah. But that was years ago. But then when I hung out with with Vim, he was like, Let's let's try it. Let's let's try it this way. And I did it his way under the ice bath and it was incredible. Yeah.
What was his trick? Was it the breathing beforehand or did he do something?
You know what it is? Here's what it is. When you see somebody else do it, it's like you suddenly realize, oh wait, there's a way to do this. So then you can push yourself to do things that you don't think are possible because you've seen somebody else do it.
Well it's like you and the breath holding and then suddenly I'm there doing the breath holding and I remember at one point interviewing uh Robert Rodriguez, I don't know if you guys know, director, writer, everything extraordinaire, and he studies artists. He loves studying artists.
And he found this artist, I think a German artist, and he wanted to figure out how he did his technique. So he flew all the way over to Europe, sat down, asked the guy to give him a lesson. So the guy's doing this, this, and this, like a dash on the chin, a dash on the nose, and he goes, How do you know which one is next? This is what Robert asked him. And he goes,
You don't. It's different every time. And Robert's like, what the hell? I flew all the way here and this is my lesson? Are you kidding me? And then he sat down, he tried it, and he could do it. Just because he saw someone do it. Wow. And it was possible now in his subconscious mind. And so he got out of his own way. So we talked about ice. I wanna flip that and talk about fire. So we're gonna rewind the clock.
¶ Childhood Resilience and Early Life
Did you have one or more?
Multiple?
homes burned down?
Yeah, as as a kid I had uh three three fires in the buildings I lived in. So I I mean obviously we got out but Two of them I didn't even wake up. My mother carried me out, r run down the stairs and I didn't see any of it. I just found out the next day.
Did you lose your stuff or
Yeah. That's and that's why I have so few pictures and stuff like that from my childhood is from those fires.
Oh I see. Yeah, because we have a handful of photos, but uh
A very limited collection of ph photos.
Did you did that affect how you relate to material possessions at all?
Or no, my mother never really placed high value on material possessions, so I think she taught me that.
Yeah, she'd tell you before the fire.
Yeah.
So we talked a little bit about potentially using cold to hold your breath for longer. And then you mentioned fasting.
Wait, the call doesn't, it doesn't help you hold your round.
It does not.
But it's it's just an interesting concept that you can hold your breath while you're freezing.
So the fasting
Um I also read Kafka The Hunger Artist. And in The Hunger Artist, the guy is a dime circus performer and nobody wants to see him. and he does his show and nobody ever shows up so he decides he's gonna sit in a little cage and he's gonna go I think for a month or no, a month and a half without food. No, forty days I think without food. And he gets in this little cage and and he starts fasting.
People start to come. And then as he starts fasting, he starts to get skinny, skinny, skinny skinny and crowds start to come. And at the end of the Kafka story, there's tons of people there, but he's gone. He's just shriveled away to nothing. So no one could see him. But it was, you know
Kafka explains the whole curve of doing one of those things in a in a really poetic and interesting way. So I think that plus the curiosity plus you just love let go, you kind of your brain changes because you're not thinking about w you know, oh w like we spend a lot of time during our day planning our next meal. Like what am I gonna eat later? What am I gonna eat now? What am I gonna eat tonight? And when you take that away
'Cause'cause we're you know, we uh we are able to go a long time. I don't recommend it, but y I think we can go very long time without food. And when you take that away it's like your brain starts to see things in a really beautiful way actually.
And we have a a mutual friend, uh fantastic stand-up comedian and actor named Brian Callan. We'll come back to Brian. But uh one of his questions was, you know, or suggested topics to explore was suffering. Because you correct me if I'm wrong, you grew up you had asthma. And
And and recently I found out that I have my my right coronary artery Well I've never said this to anybody, but it it takes an irregular path between my aorta my aorta and my pulmonary artery. So it's getting stenosis, fifty percent stenosis. So my heart gets basically fifty percent of the blood flow that you get or anybody gets. So
It's it's very dangerous, obviously. But at the same time I think that might be why I'm able to hold my breath for such an extended period of time before I started training.
If you were to describe, say how you interacted with other kids, teachers or otherwise, what were you like? I was a hyperactive little weirdo, but I I mean I that's not why we're here today. So I'm not gonna talk about that. But I'm glad there was We didn't have as much medication. have been drugged out of my mind. Not the anyway. Leave that alone. Not gonna go down the drug rabbit hole. Continue. Uh yeah, how were you as a kid?
I mean I was definitely not hyperactive. I was like I was like your polar opposite. I was probably like no. But um I think I was Kind of similar. I was very curious. I loved magic. I loved learning. I loved reading. Um I had to build a lot of, you know, walls really quick. In Brooklyn in the late seventies it was it's a tough it was a tough environment back then. So I learned how to defend myself. I would take the subway alone to school when I was five or six.
Um I was m much more mature probably as a kid than now. Um
Yeah.
But I was also the kid that that would get, you know, really good grades but then the teacher would mark class clown parent teacher conference needed. And my mom would come in and say, I don't get it. Why does he has these grades? Why does he have to why do we and she's like, Well, he's he's a bit of a clown. I yeah, I was a crazy kid. Uh
Now I I I read, correct me if I'm wrong here, did you trade punches with kids and like walk to school in your shorts in the winter?
Yeah. Did I talk I talked about that sometime?
I guess you must have a little bit more. Did you decide to do any of that?
Pff no the hold on. So the barefoot in the snow running. Yep. I had a karate teacher also at the YMC named Print. And he's and he for some reason he just liked me, well, or didn't let nobody liked me. So he would run barefoot through the snow and I would just do it with him. And then I started doing things like that on my own. And then I would go all winter with just T shirts on and I kind of liked enduring it, you know, is yeah. So that
¶ Developing Magic and Performance Skills
What l what led to that? I'm just so curious. I mean I I had a couple of weird things that I would do just to see if I could endure it. I mean I was I was a runt in school, so the only sport I ended up being able to play with any success was wrestling, so it was weight class based. But I just got my ass kicked.
Up until.
Like sixth grade. So I did weird coping things to try to like cut down on bullying. So I would like put my hand flat on I don't know, I've never talked about this either. Put my hand flat on a table. Don't do this at home. Uh and just let people hit the hand, or I would do the the aliens, you know, like bishop moves.
Yeah.
And people are like, okay, I can kick his ass, but he's just crazy enough that I'm gonna go after an easier target. Right? So but what led to the the enduring of the cold? Do you like do you remember deciding to do that or was it just to s after Prince's influence?
Well no, now that I think about it, uh uh technically speaking. uh my mother got remarried when I was about ten years old. We moved to New Jersey and and and her husband o was always worried about, you know, sick and things like that. So He would always want, you know, layered up. So I think part of like my rebellion against having to follow any specific directions was to do the opposite. Go around all winter with a T shirt.
Okay. We'll definitely come back to your mom because she's such a a critical an influential piece of this whole puzzle. Uh but did she introduce you to chess?
My mother had a boyfriend at the time who's now my godfather and he taught me chess when I was really young. And I think my biological father might have also, but I don't know'cause I didn't see him much. But
How are you drawn to magic? And the the chess was sort of a I was thinking if you're a master of mystic. I mean and we can certainly talk about that, but
Chess is similar.
Did that develop there or did that come later?
Well I I mean I you know, a deck of cards has so many different you know, uh the the you can shuffle a dick and the odds of shuffling it in the same order y you could have um you know a a trillion people shuffling cards for years and years and years and you'll never match the same one. I mean it's just so I think there there's so many algorithms and mathematical
features built into cards and as a magician that's that's what you use in the beginning. So it's like the first tricks I started doing with cards were simple mathematical tricks and my mother would go crazy and so I started to really want to learn different things and and I started working on it. And I think I think that was the love of math, I think the l love of science, logic, chess. Yeah, I think it's all all very
And when did it become uh did it just gather steam steadily from there, or were there particular inflection points for you?
No, I I think I just kept working on it and working on it. I'm still working on it the same way. So it's just a nonstop Learning new things and trying things and becoming obsessed and obsessed. W you learn a lot in the environment. You learn so much about performance'cause you learn
And I guess it's related to salesmanship almost. Like you learn if you're too close to the people that are sitting down and you walk up to them and you wanna do magic, you're too close, you're kind of like they're like, Oh Right. Or but if you're too far away they kinda
will throw you away very easily. So there's like that balance point that you learn of how close you need to be to the table, who to approach first, and you do the magic. Then they're engaged and you have'em. And, you know, I think there's so much psychology applied to that.
I wanna ask about picking the right person at the table. So you walk into a restaurant You figured out kind of the the personal space. You figured out how to befriend the alphas in jail and then you get everybody else, right? Like chimpanzee politics. Yeah, that works. So when you go to a table in a restaurant and you said picking the right person, how do you pick the right person?
I it's so hard to explain that.
Yeah.
Yeah. It's like after you do it a thousand times and you get rejected enough times you start to learn. It's it's amazing.
It's not scandalous, don't worry. That when you're working as a waiter, at some point people would give you tips and you'd give the tips back and say, I'm not doing it for the money.
That it why you did your research.
Well, yeah.
Get too much. No, because yeah, I would do I would do magic, but just'cause I like to do the magic. So they would often leave I was working at a health food restaurant in New York, but back then in like ninety one there wasn't it was the only one. It was called Sue N.
And I would do magic to the people and they would leave me like fifty percent to a hundred a hundred percent double the bill and tip and I would give it back to them and I would say, J just give me twenty percent'cause I didn't do magic for that, but just come back. And so they would all come back and and they became, you know, r regulars at the restaurant. But yeah, I I I just didn't I didn't want people to think that like, oh, this is for this so which it wasn't.
¶ Cervantes' Life and Isolated Practice
the the book that belows me away beyond anything Yeah, and it's hard to explain it. Cervantes. Cervantes. Yeah, and that guy his life for so he wrote Don Quixote and his life was the most in for a writer, his life is what writers dream for, even though it was a horrific and terrible life. So
Cervantes was the son of a surgeon in Spain and the uh he died in sixteen sixteen the same year as Shakespeare. But back then you were very poor. So when he was uh I think eighteen or something he joined the military to fight for his country. He got shot and was maimed on the left side, so was paralyzed on his left arm, but he won the equivalent of the Purple Heart, so the king gave him a letter. On their trip back home in the boat, pirates basically
took them captive. He was made into a slave for five years, and while they were trying to get ransom because he had this letter from the king, so they thought he was so important and so wealthy, which he wasn't, they would just abuse and torture him. Finally his brother got the monks to raise enough money five years later, so he went back home and the only job that he could get was as a tax collector, right? The government giving him this job.
But because that guy had such a big heart, he didn't want to take taxes from a mother with five babies that couldn't feed them, so he wouldn't do his job the way the government wanted to, so they put him in prison. And he spent twelve years in prison.
and while in prison he started writing Don Quixote. He finished it when he got out, and it became the number one bestseller in Europe. It was one of the most respected books. Shakespeare wrote an entire play about one character that was burned in the fire call about Cardinio. But even with all the success, the publisher screwed him over, so he never saw a penny. So Cervantes died completely broke and he's one of the greatest and most influential writers to this day. But when you read the book,
it makes sense because the character's about a guy that wants to make the world a better place and he's delusional because there's no way he it's very difficult to do that. So he's, you know, k fighting windmills and and
Art imitating life, life imitating. How many times have you read that book? That was an incredible recap.
Well that's his life. That's not
Book. All right. So the book is not I was like, Oh my god.
The book is even crazier. Yeah. So I I try not to read it when I'm on an airplane'cause if there's people sitting next to me it's like When I'm on one page I'm like laughing hysterically and then I'm crying, but I'm laughing hysterically, so I seem like a real s you know, real freak of myself. But it's yeah, that book is incredible.
As a kid, did you feel like a loner or Lonely or did you feel something else? And it's I you mean d it seems like you did a lot on your own. I'm just curious
I I feel m most of my friends that are that are magicians are usually not of the norbs. They usually don't necessarily fit in in the n you know, in the in the typical way. So there is a lot of time spent alone but That time spent alone is when you learn how to do these things that you would never do if you were out having fun with you know, so it's like you're working on one move repetitiously for
hours on end for days and weeks and months and years. So yeah, there is a lot of time that you spend isolated.
¶ Mother's Fight, Daughter's Magic
So you get into magic around five. At what point at what age did your mom pass away?
She got sick when I was uh seventeen years old and she fought for a couple of years and and and died three years later and and and it was a
Thank you.
very ambitious fight and struggle and she tried to overcome it and did everything in her power from the macrobiotic diet to, you know, acupuncture and just Chinese medicine, just everything plus the normal route. And the doctors gave her, I believe, six months to live at one point and she did It was called Michio Kushi, wrote it he was called Michoushi, wrote a book called The Macrobiotic Way.
and basically what she did she eliminated all excess from her diet and just ate food that was rich in micronutrients and had all the things that are necessary. And what happened was the tumor started to disappear because She started to I guess when you don't have excess, you know, fat, you're just getting the micronutrition that you need. She started to probably
digest or whatever, the tumors start to just dissipate and sift out and sh and she actually was on the road to beating the cancer. And then And then I guess when she did go into remission, she started to eat, you know, the the normal foods and then phew came back really fast.
And
We used to tell me, you know, that y you know, w when I do this, when I when I eat ca you know, th back then kale wasn't the popular thing. So kale and seaweed and all these different things. She's she told me that, you know, the the way the Chinese do it, their hair is black for a very long time. They don't go gray.
And she went from grey to full color back at one point. So doing all that. So I s I saw it as so many amazing changes take place and and her approach and her And her belief that, you know, and I'm sure part of it is mental that she could beat it was until recently when I had a daughter, but it was like it was because that loss was so overwhelming and so like horrific. that I never wanted to put myself at
i in that place. Yeah. So it was really I was always very, you know, difficult to get through. But now I have a five year old and it it's it's a it's the most the most amazing experience in my life. And it's beyond anything that words could ever explain. And she's doing magic, but I didn't teach her. She just they just walk she knows she just watches. She just watches and then she starts doing. I'm like, oh no, I don't want her to do magic'cause I don't want her to do the crazy things but
Do as I say, not as I do.
Yeah.
Daddy says don't put the ice pick through your hand.
Yeah, I encourage the piano to sing it. And she teases me, she's like, Well, I'm gonna do things too. I'm gonna stand on buildings. I'm like, No, you're not. No. And she says, Yep, yep, yep I am. I say, Nope.
It's incredible how the uh in some cases the apple just does not fall far from the tree.
Well they just observe. They abs they absorb everything.
I wonder how much of it is just also innate. Like you're somehow programmed towards magic. I really wonder because I have a friend. fantastic guy. If you if you haven't met him, you should meet him at some point. Josh Waitskin. So Josh Waitskin was the basis for searching for Bobby Fisher, both the book and the movie. So he was the little kid who was the chess prodigy.
And he had a very tough time being thrown into the public light and with the movie as a fourteen or fifteen year old. It was just very challenging for him and it uh interfered with his chess career and so on and so forth. So he never he never pulls out a chess.
Ever. Wow.
And at one point his son just found some type of who's around the same age as uh as your daughter, uh, an online chess program and he just sat there for hours. In hours and got better and better and better and he was just like
Yes. That's crazy. Well m well maybe he saw maybe he was somehow'cause my daughter uses the iPad when she's allowed to, she'll push the button and say, She has a French accent, show me pictures of David Blaine. And then like all these things.
That's not me. In that globe right there in the water. No, that's not me.
But but maybe there's some sort of you know, maybe he saw something or he you know but but who knows, maybe it is just intuitive.
¶ Navigating Celebrity and Opportunity
There has to be, and I know because I've seen you work a room, not work room, that sounds weird, but I've seen you at a at a party, let's just say, and you can navigate, you can surf that space really, really well. And Your story is so incredible because it's like, all right, he was in restaurants and they did this and then he saw this one person and did this trick to them and then it led to this and then it led to that.
And so I want to bring up I guess two two parts to that. So one is Do you have aside from like the spider sense, is there anything else that helps you to decide which people to engage with in a cer in a situation?
No, because I kinda just do it to everybody. Yeah, I'm not
You scratch off a lot a lot of your teeth.
Yeah, no, I just I just love doing it. I just like the process of doing it. So I just do it all the time, you know.
But you've been very good at at capitalizing on the opportunities that have presented themselves. And so so one of them that I I wanted to get a little bit of backstory on'cause it seems like a pivotal moment and if it wasn't, I want you to tell me, but going to Saint Tropez, I guess.
Yeah, I was I was hired. by this amazing man, his name was Jeffrey Steiner, and just a very powerful self made billionaire.
And you were young at the time, right?
young, yeah, I was like nineteen or twenty maybe, and I was doing magic at this bar mitzvah. I did magic to this man. He was very intrigued and he said, Have you ever been to Saint Tropez? Yeah. I said, What? W well I can never hurt I don't even know what it is really. So I said, No. He said, Here's my card, call me. So You know, I I called him and and he asked me to He asked me to come to his office to to to meet with them.
'Cause he was gonna have me, you know, possibly come during the summer and work. And I remember sitting in his office in the waiting room. And it was so fancy and incredible. And there was a security guard standing in the corner and he was reading a newspaper. I I think he had a newspaper. He was standing there reading the paper. And I was just sitting there waiting. It was like five minutes, ten minutes just waiting.
And I and I look at the security guard, I'm like, excuse me. And the guy doesn't budge. Excuse me. He doesn't budge. So I walk up to him. And I and I touched them and it was one of those like Madame Tussaud wax figures. But I didn't even know people had those types of things sitting around.
That's kind of
It was amazing. So anyway then then he asked me to go and and and really the the learning lesson was watching how he you know uh uh the just the the way he deals with everybody the same. Like he there's no judgments. He doesn't judge me as this kid or th you know, this powerful everybody's kind of treated in in a very similar way and very elegantly and very caring. And
you know, I I I kind of learned from him as well that that really all people are the same. So it's not like he believed that there's a divide because somebody's, you know, rich or powerful or present and and I quickly learn that And I was lucky to learn at that point that that all people are the same. Not I mean obviously there's differences between ever each individual, but I learned not to judge.
I learned not to judge somebody for any reason because everybody ultimately is a human being. So that I mean I learned that also from my mother, but when you see it in a different context, it's it's a very valuable lesson.
Yeah, it well it reinforces it. So let's talk about a a yet different context.
Yeah.
mister Steiner interacting with people. And then How do you bump into Jack Nick?
Well, yeah, it was there. And uh yeah, so he was also one of my favorites, obviously. And I I was, you know, doing magic to him. And I ended you know, it was I I remember I w I was like an unknown kid at the time. And I remember the it was in in this club there and they turned the music off to say, Tonight we have Jack Nicholson and David Blank you know, so I was like, whoa, that's pretty crazy. Like suddenly I was like known and in in that cohort.
Headline of Jackels. Pretty good for a nineteen.
Yeah, yeah. So when I came back when I came back to uh America after that it was kind of like, you know, the because I was around you know, Jack Nicholson and people like that, once again I I realize that, you know, it would be possible to to to create these things I want to do because
y you meet this guy Jack that you looked up to and and and he's incredible, one of the best in the world, and you realize that but he's also still just another person. So that it it's demystifying in a weird way, but it's also like It's incredible because you realize that there is no it's not it's like if you work hard and you pursue something you can you can get there if if you just don't quit and you're relentless. So
¶ Early Career and Magic Mentorship
Well you put in the reps too, right? I mean how many people do you think you'd approached or demonstrated magic to before you hit Nicholson?
Yeah.
Bye.
Starting as a kid. So I would stand up on chairs and perform when I was five in front of people, my mother's friends and random strangers and stuff like that. So yeah, j just the time put in over and over.
What is the approach? So I'm I'm curious. I I I read about uh I think you used to go out with a friend named Adam whose last name I can't pronounce, gigbot gigbot.
Oh yeah, yeah. Adam Gibb godfather to his children. Yeah. Adam Gibb
So you guys would How do they
That that was early on he would crash into w we would sneak into different, you know, cool events, you know. And Adam would just walk up and and and and act like he was best friends with everybody and say, Oh, David's gonna do magic for you and then I would just start doing magic to everybody and it was yeah, it was like back then that
Yeah, I think people started writing stories. There was a guy named A. J. Benza who was with the Daily News, which I met through Mickey Rourke back then, and he he basically You know, he kind of like started putting me out there, just writing little s oh David did this to this person, that person.
D now did he pick up on that because you did magic to him or did he just start hearing about it through the grapevine?
I think like Back then I think it was just a New York scene thing. Yeah. Yeah, and also magic wasn't not everybody it was it was rare to it was rare to come across a magician back then. There was a little group of magicians that hung out in a deli called Rubens on Madison Avenue in New York every Saturday and it was like this little dirty back room of a coffee shop.
And we would just sit there and brainstorm ideas and the most incredible magicians from all over the world would just show up and walk in and blow everybody's minds and then I would, you know, engage my favorite ones and convince them to teach me one thing. And that you know, that was a
What were some of the things that you picked up from Rubens. Can you think back to any of the particular lessons or any particular moment that blew your mind? Like
Yeah I mean there's so many. There's so many different moments. There was a guy named Frank Garcia who was an amazing magician. I was really young and he s he said to me, he said one day All of the magicians are gonna be really mad at you, hate you, they're gonna be jealous of you. I'm gonna tell you right now'cause you're gonna do things that that are that are just gonna drive them off. So when I did do that I didn't I didn't take it personally.
Right. He predicted it. And uh no but I I met magicians there like one of my best friends and and basically my brother at this point, Bill Calush, who was this incredible technician. But he didn't do magic so he could impress people. He didn't do magic to perform. He would just sit there alone day and night and just practice moves for himself. And he's phenomenal, like one of the best in the world. And
So I say to him, So what do you do? You do the magic s in the and go, Holy how how did I do that? But it's no, but for him it's it's almost like he says Yeah, it's like it's like a painter. He says like a painter paints'cause he needs to express something. So he plays with cards because he needs to express something or or just work something out in a digital fixation or something like that.
¶ Intrigue with Mavericks and Extreme Feats
You don't have Adam as your wingman. You just cold approach a celebrity, what do you what how how do you make it happen?
No, I think when you d when you when I do magic it's pretty much the same thing. It's just kind of like
Would you would you just walk up and say, I wanna show you something? And just
I mean it it varies.
Have you who have you been intimidated to approach? Does anybody come to mind? Or if the answer's nobody.
You know, speaking you know, ac actually but uh One of the people I did speak to on the phone for the end of his life for for quite a while. I spent maybe two years on and off talking to was Bobby Fisher.
No kidding.
I I pursued him. The girl that was working for me, Denise Albert, knew somebody
One of the most famous chess players of all time.
They're the movie Searching for Bobby Fisher's and but anyway, this woman Denise Albert that was working for me, who's amazing at just getting through to anything or anybody tracked him down in Iceland, found somebody that tried to get an interview with and then somehow got a message. I wanted to talk to him. Somehow we start speaking and then and then we start talking. But and then we start talking all the time about everything.
uh uh amazing stories and history and chess stories and I actually have some of that. I I like a friend here one time. But that was one of the people I was most oh intrigued by. Intrigued by one of the you asked me like who was who was I like the most excited to get to. He was one of them. The other guy that I was th that I would love to meet
is this mathematician named Gregory Perlman. Gregory Perlman. He lives outside of St. Petersburg, I believe, and he solved one of the most difficult conundrums of the last century, and they offered him a million dollar prize, which he refused. because when he gave the solution, basically it took all the other mathematicians twelve years to even realize that he was right. So he was so disappointed in mathematicians that he was like, forget this and he quit doing math.
turned the prize down and went and moved back in with his mother. And they said he yeah, and he lives in this like This little apartment they say his his mattress is on the floor. He's almost like cockroach infested. And uh so the guardian tried to reach him in an interview and when the guardian got through And they're like, Why did you refuse a million dollars? And he said, Please don't bother me, I'm busy picking mushrooms. He hung up the phone. So that's a guy I love to meet.
You're kind of guy.
Yeah. I think I'd have to like stay in front of his house for a couple of weeks and somehow I don't even know how. There was a an old trick where you know you would it's called a needle through arm. And I'd seen magicians do it where they pretend to push it through their arm and it bleeds and stuff like that. And I started thinking, well wait, there must be a way to do something similar. Bye.
in a in a more magical way, but actually do it. And then I started working on, you know, what points in the body could you do it? The craziest one is a guy named Mirandayo. When he used to take rapiers and he'd have them push straight through his body, like through his lungs and through his b and then he would go jogging with those things in him. Nobody believes him.
Through the body isn't enough.
Nobody believed him so Time Life finally covered him and in front of, you know, all of the doctors and scientists which they think, no, there's no way this could be possible because we know that when a sword or rapier goes through you're gonna die. He was just able to do it over and over like nothing. And he'd have it pushed through. He'd go jogging and he would pull it out. There was nothing. But then he started to get really cocky.
He started to think he was invincible. So he decided that he was gonna drink uh swallow like one of those big sailing needles. He swallowed this this big sailing needle and then he was gonna push it through his stomach, but he couldn't get it out. He fell asleep and it ruptured his iorid and he bled out and died. Yeah.
No sailing needles, audience.
¶ Reflections on Life, Sleep, and Attention
All right. What would be the one piece of advice you would give your twenty five year old self? And if you could tell us at twenty five you are and what you're doing or roughly.
I would say to to enjoy where you are because you're always trying to think ahead and plan ahead and I was I was you know, I was young producing my first TV show and working so diligently to try to get to a place that you never ever get to because you're always trying to get to another place. So a good thing to do is to just sit back and and kind of, you know, breathe in and be like, Wow, this is pretty awesome you know.
So go'cause you don't it was rare that I you ever stop and just appreciate the the now.
Yeah.
Uh I wasn't planning on going into this, but I'll tell you so in college I actually went six days with it. And I did it because I was studying neuroscience at the time and we used uh well, there were a number of labs that used cat. They studied cats because they sleep so often. So you could really look at their RAM sleep cycles and uh serotonin was one of the neurotransmitters they could look into and I became very fascinated by
We're going to get out there for a second, folks. The similarities between, and I'd never used it at this point, but uh LSD-induced experiences and REM. And I wondered how if I completely I I wondered what would happen if I completely deprived myself of Arya. hence the experiment. Uh wasn't fantastic. I called it to a close because I was walking to class and just effectively blacked out. Like my mind went blank and then I woke up.
about two hundred steps later after I'd crossed a street and I was like, yeah, I think I need to stop doing this right now. But uh I am fascinated by sleep deprivation, particularly the Vision Quest version of that. So
You did he get any of those visions as well?
I did. I I did have uh not not the good kind or productive kind. Uh what ended up happening to me is things would jump out. I'd see f flashes of rapid movement in my peripheral vision, which was really terrifying.
Yeah.
And that was the most common is I'd see a jerking motion right in my peripheral vision. Uh haven't done too much of that recently, but I am interested in things like modafinol, just studying that. And by the way, folks, if someone says there are no side effects of a given drug, that's just because they haven't found them yet. So give it time.
There's a short story by David Sidaris called Naked. And it's hilarious. No, it the book is called Naked, but the short story is called Plague of Ticks. And it's amazing. It's about this this this kid that has all these insane ticks that he just can't stop and it's it's a great short story about what we're talking about.
I thought you meant plague of ticks like the
Tick.
I grew up with in Long Island. I was like, oh my God, that's mine I'm Uh Plague of Tixederis is a fantastic.
Yeah, this is one of my favorites.
Magic is all about capturing or diverting attention. What are some basic tactical ways to divert someone's attention for the purpose of performing simple magic tricks?
I think just really communicating with somebody. 'Cause if you're really talking to somebody that they're gonna look here. I mean Ye but then again, the magic that that I like the most is stuff that you don't need people to look away. So I would work on things that it doesn't matter who's looking at what for the most part.
So if you're not trying to divert, let's just say in some of your early environments, which like you said were not ideal environments, loud, clubs, people yelling, how do you what are some good ways to get someone's attention?
You have to adjust the magic to the environment. So
Depends on the circumstance. Yeah. Well, what are you trying to learn?
¶ Oppenheimer, Ethics, and Global Threats
Always learning. But what I'm currently reading is American Prometheus about Oppenheimer. And this is one of the more fascinating men that I've read about. He created the atomic bomb and it was a race between Japan, Germany, and America. So he developed this weapon And it basically stopped Japan or Germany from having an atomic bomb, which who knows what they would have done, I mean, to the world t to this day.
And after he created and it was used, he he realized he created the ultimate weapon of death. And it's horrible. It's the worst thing that you could ever do. And this is a guy that grew up with poetry and art and studying Picasso and and he started being very vocal about how awful this weapon of mass destruction was. And Hoover had just become president and Hoover was very pro military, pro weapons, pro building better bombs.
and they went after him in a witch hunt and destroyed him. Destroyed Oppenheimer. They they like Galileo like just took everything away from embarrassed him, shamed him. uh isolate everything that you could imagine, but he was in court and they asked him in court, they said, how many people would it take to sneak an atomic bomb into New York? And his answer was three. Just three people that are willing to take that risk. Okay, how would you find that bomb? And he said with a screwdriver.
'Cause you have to open every single nut and bolt in the city to to detect it'cause there's no way to. So the idea of that, you know, that anybody could take a dirty bomb, put it in any city, and there's nothing that that could be done about that. I think, you know, that that's something that I think a real, real i human issue. So anyway, that's that's what I've learned recently is just th they're ha I don't know how it relates to
No, no, this this actually all of the books that we've or that you've talked about so far have a component of tragedy. You look at Cervantes, you look at this, the Primo Levi, like there's some element of tragedy or suffering in these books. Is is that is that just coincidence that those are the books that came up or do you tend to pick books that have that element?
One of my favorite books is Man's Search for Meaning. And at the end of that book he says since Auschwitz we know what man is capable of, and since Hiroshima we know it's at stake. So I've been obsessed with and they say, you know, one of the TED talks I love is about what happens if a dirty bomb goes off and he says he says it's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when.
So it's like I do think we're at a critical time where we need to really, you know, analyze w why there are so many weapons of mass destruction, why why they're trying to make bigger ones again. Anyway, you know, so I think that's a real concern and and I like to read about these things because Yeah, I do think it's important to think about these things and then address them on some level.
For sure. I mean also you look at say like electromagnetic pulse weapons in like the Great Lakes area, knocking out communications in Chicago. I mean, this is uh also one of those questions of probably when, not if.
Really, really pleasant topic.
¶ Unconventional Passions and Philosophies
Pleasant topics to talk about, but uh to to maybe focus on. If you had so you gave a fantastic TED talk, if you had to give a TED talk on something that you're not known for at all. Like some other obsession that you have that maybe people don't know about. What would you what would you give it on?
Wow, that's a great question. What the hell would I talk about? Something I don't know about. That seems so scary.
Or something you know about that people don't know.
Do you know the reason do you know the reason people are horrified of giving speeches in public? So I was reading a book of public speaking, I forget by who. And he said basically when you're standing on a stage with lots of eyeballs looking at you, it goes back a million years. If you were in Africa and you were living in a in a in a protected, let's say a cave or a shelter of some sort
When you won't when you went out into an open field or a plateau and suddenly there were lots of eyes on you, you had to be worried because those were predators that were gonna eat you. So it's like when you're standing basically exposed where everybody can see you. you're suddenly an open target. So your wiring of your brain is I don't want to stand up here with everybody staring at me because it's
counterintuitive to what we've learned to survive over the last, you know, one point five million years or even longer, whatever, you know, whatever it is. So that's the reason. So anyway, if I had to give a public talk about something I didn't know about, I would talk At the TED Conference. About my favorite food. Well there's a pizza shop in Brooklyn. Actually okay the see no no no. It's called the forest.
And the guy has made over a million and a half pizzas. To me, he's an artist. And it looks like a soup kitchen. And when you go in there, it it's like the everything is kinda like messy, nothing fancy. And there's like these things that his kids stuck on the wall and they're like crooked and sideways. And it's like reviews that he's gotten where the New York Times puts him on the cover and says this isn't
Pizza, this is art, or it's a cover of timeout saying he's the most underrated thing in New York. You know, so it's like all these amazing reviews. And when you go there, the guy, he's made over a million and a half pizzas. He's been doing it for fifty some years and his hands look like polar bear hands because he's no no, because he's reached into that oven so many times and pulled out pieces bare barehanded.
that you that you couldn't even eat for five minutes because it's too hot. And the guy just loves doing what he does. He's he's a perfectionist. He won't sell out, he won't go do it anywhere else. He stays at this little sho so you know, I'm fascinated with people like that. You know, people that just get so obsessed with their thing and wanna do it right and they're not in it for the
profit or making money. He's just in it for the love of making the greatest pizza. So it's like the reason I fluctuate, I stay away from that.
I think that would be a good time to-
Yeah, just no, but I'd like to talking about people that are so amazing at what they do that just have this passion that have done he like he basically the the mozzarella's fresh he the the the basil is from Israel or he grows it in his garden sometimes and he has like all these incredible rich ingredients and when the when when the when the dough is out the sh the the shop is closed and you don't know if it's gonna be open when you get there.
When you do get there there's a huge line at you know.
I'll be in New York soon. That's right.
First stop. D I F A R A the Faraz Play Faraz.
We could totally do a TED talk on that. I'd listen for twenty minutes to you talking about pizza. Do you have a quote you have a you seem to have a very good memory for what you've read. And this doesn't have to be from something you've read, but do you have a quote that you live by or think of often or any quote?
You were before talking about quotes from Siddhartha. Soft is stronger than hard. Water is stronger than stone. So those I I think that's how it goes. I think that that's that's that's one of my favorite pieces of that book. I like the Abraham Lincoln quote. When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. And that's my religion. You know, that that quote I like. There's so many. One of my favorites is Michelangelo. He says, beauty is the purgation of superfluity.
And basically when he made the David they asked him, How did you make this beautiful thing out of the slab of marble and he said, well the beauty was inside, it just had to cut away all the the crap, basically. So beauty is the purgation of superfluities. I remember I had to look up all the words to understand what it meant.
But
It's so poetic and incredible.
If you were, say, teaching a ninth grade class or a freshman class at college and you could teach anything, what would you teach?
Hmm, I guess magic. Yeah.
Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Uh
¶ Embracing Failure and Future Aspirations
Moving on. Yeah, that was all right. That's that's a good that's that's the right answer. Uh can you think if you look back on your life, your career, you can answer either of these. Do you have a favorite failure of yours?
Okay.
or a failure that actually really sowed the seeds of a later success.
Well, that's the other quote that I love is the Churchill quote where he says, Success is the ability to move from one failure to another with enthusiasm.
Thank you.
So I look at everything I never look at anything really as a success. I always look at it as It's a work of a work in progress. I'm always trying to figure out how to so so I don't see it as a failure necessarily. I I see it as practice and work in progress, but
So so therefore then everything is not right until it's right, which means it's never gonna be right. So everything technically is kind of a failure on some but not really. So I and I don't look at failure as a bad thing at all. Yeah, that's I'm lucky with that. It's like work and the and the more failures the better you become. So it's like, you know, as long as you don't die f you know, something like that killing it. But but no, it's like it's all a work in progress. So
I think failure is like one of the best way building your m muscles. Mm-hmm. It's like reading books is the best way to build the the brain is like working out. It's like the more you read, the more the brain starts to really absorb information and think about new ideas and Stuff like that.
Seems it seems to me also when I was reading Primo Levi's books that as a chemist he was trained to look at things in a very experimental mindset. It was just feedback. It was like hypothesis test feedback. And so like you were mentioning, having the ear for the latrine and just picking up patterns like that. I mean it seems like it strikes me that you think about failure in the way that a scientist might think about it. I mean you're testing a lot all the time.
I think that's a good place to put. an exclamation or I shouldn't say an exclamation point, probably just a a poetic period. And um what's what's next for David Blaine?
That little tour that I've been telling you I'm working on. Hopefully I'll I'll I'll I'll eventually get it to feel sort of right and then I'll start taking it out across the country and through the world and I'll try to build a a magic show that I I would actually wanna see.
David Blaine, you're amazing. Guys, give it up for David Blaine.
Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you.
All right, thank you guys. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun? before the weekend and Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things.
I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered, it could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the uh the world of the esoteric as I do. It could include
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