David Blaine (magician and mentalist)

22:18And lots of my magician friends would fight me on the stunts. Like, who cares about these stunts? There's nothing magic. When you jump off the pillow, you need to disappear and end up in the bottom and then appear back up top. And I was like, no, but that's not fun. It's an illusion that you spend money building. So I was like, I'd rather just really bury myself. And eventually I buried myself alive. How does one train? We went to the cemetery where Houdini was buried, which is out in Queens. They sold caskets there. So we bought a coffin and we brought it back to his apartment, put it in the living room and I would just practice how long could I go.

22:50And what I really became obsessed with, which I had always practiced as a kid, was fasting. When you remove everything, your brain starts to change and things become much more meaningful that you would normally just ignore. So you become more sensitive to colors, emotion, to everything. And it's kind of amazing. Okay, so you're in this plastic box under three tons of water for seven days. And is the fasting because my first question, of course, is how do you poop? Yeah, you can. So you have to fast for a week before. So I had a trucker's tube. It's called what truck drivers that go long distance have.

23:22And then since I wasn't eating. You didn't have to go poop. Right. Even in the 44 days, I had the same setup. And it was fine, except that my stomach shut down. And afterwards, recovery was terrible. Did it start getting attention day one? Or when did it start getting massive attention? And did you have a goal of how many days? I went in for my birthday and then came out a week later, basically. So I set the time, which was seven days, seven nights. I think what happened was lots of magicians were so against it. and they were saying, oh, this is all a hologram. It's not real. He's not really doing it.

23:52I remember the amazing Randy went on Entertainment Tonight. So he's a trickster. It's not real. There's no way he's doing it. So people would show up, firemen and people. They'd shine lasers at me. And then I'd be like, what are you doing? Because the laser wasn't going through. It was me. And then I would wave and then they'd wave back. But what happened was that magician, Randy, they flew him to New York and he looked at him and went, yeah, it's real. So then the vibe on it shifted to, oh, wow, This is a guy that's really doing something. Was that like day four? Yeah. I think that's when I became aware of you.

24:21I would have been 22. And I'm like, what a dude. That hit my radar. So it was in a tank? I was in a coffin and it was buried, I would guess, like nine feet deep. And then three feet above me, there was a see-through plexi water tank. And that was six feet deep. So when you look through the water, I was there right below it. And then there was air pumping in and out. That was my big concern was what if the air supply something goes wrong? For sure. Yeah, but we had a very good team and they were in charge and careful. And did you self-fund that? Jimmy Niederlander, who was a Broadway producer that I'm still close to.

24:55And when I do a show, he will be the producer of it. He backed it. Oh, how does one monetize this? I haven't monetized any of the stunts ever. Only the ones that are on TV. No, those cost more than the budget. I always lose off of all the stunts. I usually have to work and do gigs like the next year to pay back the money. Yeah. No, no, I never monetize them. I wasn't accusing you of it. No, I don't advertise it and say I don't monetize them. But even when I do like the balloons, I say I don't want a penny. I look at them as like performative because when I was a kid, I was so struck by strong visuals.

25:28Like the balloons, for example, I always imagined if I was a kid and I was at PS230 and I saw a guy flying over my head on a rig of balloons, it would make my brain go crazy. Well, that's the dream. When you hold a helium balloon, your next thought is how many would I have to hold before it lifted me off the ground? That's right. So the next is in 2000 frozen in time. This is a fail, but it's a hysterically successful fail, which is you were going to go for 72 hours encased in a block of ice. But you made it 63 hours and 42 minutes. We started late. That was the issue. Everything was not right.

26:01So it delayed the start time. This was maybe the most difficult recovery after you got out of there. My training was I'd sit in ice baths and see if I could endure that. And then I would go into ice lockers in Nyack and I would stay in them for as long as it was always difficult. But I was like, OK, I can do this. It's going to be ice around me. It'll have the igloo effect. It was a warm November. So the air pumping through was 68 degrees. So I was like, this is no problem. And I was completely wrong. That's a stunt that to this day messed me up the most. And I could never, ever redo that one.

26:32So what went wrong? It wasn't just the standing. It's like the constant radiation of the cold from the ice that you don't think about. Standing in one place, the edema that occurs, everything swells down here. No sleep. And the hallucinations started kicking really hard. And it became a living nightmare. And to this day, it was the most difficult stunt that I've ever done. Then there was the drip of the cold. Yeah, it's like waterboarding. Yeah. How hard was it for you to surrender? No, I didn't surrender because the goal was to finish. We went live on ABC and they were going to break you out at the end.

27:05My original idea was I'm going to break myself out, which is ridiculous. So they cut in with a chainsaw. We had made it almost to the end. The vision of this stunt was something that I thought was going to be much better, of course. So you didn't have to signal them like, I'm not making it 72. It was on a schedule. No, everybody there that knew me started saying you have to cut him out now because I was tripping out of my mind. But when they started going through the ice with the chainsaw, I started grabbing at it. Oh my God. Because I didn't know what it was. My brain, I was out of it. And that has to be from the temperature because you've spent that much time by yourself.

27:37It's the combination of the extreme environment, the standing up, no sleep. Did you catch yourself falling asleep? No, you can't because if you fall into the ice, your face will freeze. You get frostbite. That would be a disaster. So no, I stayed awake. Did you fall asleep when you were buried alive? Yeah, I'd wake up and I wouldn't even know I was there. I'd be on like a boat in the middle of the ocean sometimes. Why? Okay, vertigo. This one's really nuts. You stood on a hundred foot high pillar. Like 90 foot, but yeah. Just under two feet wide without a harness. They had the things that could go up and down though.

28:13So there's those handles. If it got windy, I had stability, but I could have easily had something go wrong. And at the end, I started to hallucinate really hard again. So I was supposed to jump into this little bit of boxes because they were so worried that I was hallucinating because I thought the buildings behind me were shaped like animal heads, but they were just New York City buildings. Yeah, so some gargoyles. So they started to build the boxes really high and as close to me as possible, thinking that I was going to fall off wrong or early. You were standing for 35 hours, a day and a half.

28:45The big problem with that one actually was my dear friend James Purse. The designer? Yeah. Oh, we love James Purse. You want an extra strong t-shirt? That was extra soft. He made me something really cool. This hoodie with this design, what I wasn't prepared for because it was the end of May in New York City. It was 39 degree nighttime. So now you're again battling the cold and you're standing up there shivering the whole time. So your energy is just depleting quickly. So that's something I wasn't prepared for. So I think that's what threw that one off for me is just I took a beating that I wasn't ready for.

29:19And did you ever find yourself wobbly? No, if there was any time of wobble, those things would just come out. Yeah. This is a dumb question, but are you scared up there? No. So I lived on 11th Street and 5th at the time. And I would just stand up on the corner of my building and I would put like a flower pot upside down on the edge of the building. I would just stand there. Lots of times in the beginning, an ambulance would show off or the fire door. But then they knew it was me and I wasn't going to fall off or jump. But that's how I trained myself. So I just changed my brain so whether it's up there or down here, it's the same.

29:50Like if I said to you, you have to stand here for 36 hours or you will die. You're going to do it. you'll figure it out. Well, now that I have kids, but I might have given up. No, you would. If you trained yourself and just 160 feet up stood there and looked down and made yourself comfortable that you could rewire your brain. And that's part of the thing that I love about all these challenges is you do learn to rewire your physiology or your brain or the way you think about things from a wiring point of view. So that's why they say when you're looking out of an airplane, you're not afraid. But when you stand on the edge of a building, you're afraid.

30:20It's because your hardwiring is like, you know this height. Standing on a cliff looking down, you understand it. My analogy is like I've skydived and it's not scary. Bungee cord is very scary because you can see the ground and you decide to dive at it. Your brain understands those heights. But through evolution, we were never up 30 ,000 feet. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

30:51What is happening in the internal narrative? Because this is my assumption is there is a dedication to doing something novel and unique that no one can do. And I'm going to prove it. What is the identity piece of all this? So I think for me, it starts from a visual because I was struck by those visuals of Houdini when I was a kid. Like standing on that pillar. I was with Guy Osiru at a cafe. and he's like, oh, look at that pole right out there. That's kind of cool looking. And right at that moment, a bird landed on top of it. And I was like, oh, that's gotta be my next thing. And then I obsessed over that idea of just like a tall column.

31:30And then I started researching and I found San Simeon and all the pillar saints, all the people that lived up on the pillars. And I became obsessed with it. But then the fun part for me was learning how to jump because you start at five feet, then 10 feet, constantly trying to learn new things, challenge myself and override the inherent fears that we have. I think that's part of the thing that I love. But again, do you like it because you go like, there's an infinite possibility that I'm discovering. Is there a freedom of, oh, I think I have these limits, but in fact, I have a much more infinite scope.

32:03Can you articulate what the joy is? Part of that is proving that we are capable of more than we think. I think even to be drawn to magic, you kind of want more out of life. You want life to be magical and you want it to have more out there than is just presented to you. You're like starving for more. As you're saying all this, I'm seeing stranger in a strange land over your head, which is funny. And then above that is brave, not perfect. All these titles are great. Oh, no, don't get any ideas from this room. No, no, no. But I think it's much more simple than that. For learning magic, it was just I loved how cards felt in my hands.

32:42And then I loved how I could change the course of my mother's day with a simple trick. The endurance thing was just being able to override and do something that was unique to me. Once I started to come up with these, how do I make this into a visual? How do I make this into something striking? That was where the love of performance are intersecting with magic was exciting. Even for the series, I said, only give me ideas that when you say them, it's going to make me uncomfortable. I want to do things that make me uncomfortable. I want to learn. I want to break the comfort zone. Because I related to you a ton.

33:11Again, I'm projecting, but I'm watching you watch a guy break a bottle on his head. And I can see in your face, you're like, fuck, I don't want to do this. And I'm going to have to do this because I can't not do this now that I know it can be done. I understood that there's a technique, but I also understood that there's a great risk to this. Yes. And I also understood that you could easily slice your eye. You could do anything. And then normally I have a learning curve. I'm like, well, I don't really have a learning curve. Everything was happening quickly during the last year of filming. And I was like, can I do it?

33:44And at that moment, my daughter called. And when she called, somebody was holding my phone. I was like, yeah, I'm not doing this. But I still couldn't get it on my mind because the way he does it just makes no sense to me. It's so fucking disturbing, I want to add. He started with some water bottles and you're like, okay. But then he goes to a fucking square whiskey bottle and I'm like, this is nuts. I would watch it over and over and try to understand how does this make sense? Because it's so counterintuitive. So it was something that wouldn't leave my mind. So then is it more not about bravery?

34:18Is it about intelligence? Are you like, you're smart enough to figure this out? Figure this out. That's such a good question. I think it has to do with it's an idea that just gets stuck in my head. And then I can't get it out. It's like an OCD thing. Yes. Thank you. That's more what we got there. So it's not that deep. It's obsessive compulsion. Yes. It's an idea gets stuck in my head and I'm trying to work out the mechanics of it. I'm trying to understand it. That makes sense. I needed an explanation. Thank you. I don't think it's a Bravo type of thing. I think it's more internal. Yeah. There's an angst until that is solved.

34:54Yeah. Do you feel relief when you're done with one of those or do you feel elation? I just love Deepak so much that I was so happy to let him teach me something. things you've completed yourself when you're done, when they let you out of the ice. Well, I guess your brain is kind of fucked up. But is the feeling relief or is it? Yes, I did it. It's never a yes, I did it. That's true. Do you get peace from it? I had this obsession. That's a really good question. I've now done it and now I have peace until I think of the next idea. But they're not all based on that obsession. One time it's like, oh, 15 minutes.

35:26One time 20 minutes and two seconds underwater. Heartbeat was eight beats per minute. They had telemetry on me. So it was like this fascination with what's possible. Some of it is that. Some of it is an idea gets stuck in my head. Some of it is just the visuals is so compelling that I just want to do that. The pole one is interesting because I once saw in Australia on a trip an orangutan. They just put telephone poles up for them to play on. And these big orangutans, they would just sit at the very top and they were so peaceful. And it is such a disturbing image. Oh my God, that thing likes being 60 feet in the air.

35:58Right. And it's very memorable and terrifying to a terrestrial creature like us. Also, when you're up there, there's a stillness now all of a sudden. And there's no phones. There's no distractions. There's no food. There's nothing about what I'm going to eat. So suddenly you're kind of like still. Present. You're present. You feel everything. You see the sun go all the way across the sky. You see things that you would never normally stop and pay attention to. And they're amazing. There's so many different things that drive for each individual thing. But to Monica's question, I think I have a bit of an answer.

36:33And which is, again, this is what I always say that I love about the track on a motorcycle. Your mind can't wander. If it thinks of something else for one second, you'll go off. And so my addiction to it is just I go for eight hours. They're 20 minute sessions. And I cobble together like four hours of being dead present, which is so rare for me. My brain is so fucking busy. Right. So I'm imagining maybe there's also this relief from maybe a noisy brain otherwise. Or it's a heightened sense of awareness. And that can be very pleasurable. Yeah. People, when they're getting into accidents, they say they see everything in slow motion.

37:03And it's because everything else is gone. So you're aware of everything. And you're taking in more data, too. That's right. Okay, above, below. We got to talk about that one. So as we said, 44 days in a 7x7 plexiglass box hovering 30 feet in the air. There was a webcam so people could watch the entire time. Yeah. As you already said, you had fasted for that so you don't have to go duty. For that long? Yeah, it was like a 47-day fast. You drank nothing but pure H2O. 1.2 gallons of water a day. Yeah, 4.5 liters. Where? In London? On the River Thames, right by the Tower Bridge. So it was the most beautiful view ever of the river.

37:41It was pretty amazing and surreal. As a layperson, my thoughts are, what does it feel like to starve? because you really go into starvation at that point. Yeah, I'd read all the books from people that had done extreme fasts or protests where they would fast against the government, like Bobby Sands when he died in 66 days or so. But then I started speaking to people who had done fasts and you're always curious, are they really doing the fast like they say? Yeah. Or are they taking some sort of glue? Because it's hard to believe that the body can't. I did go right to the breaking point. I do think going that long is too much on the body.

38:16Yeah. But the things that I had read about were all exact. They said in about 28 days, in about a month, you start to have this pear taste in your mouth. You switch from breaking up muscle tissue and then the organs and you start to eat your own body, of course. But then it starts to taste sweet. And I was so paranoid because I had water that was coming up. But again, pure H2O, no minerals, no nothing. And when I was drinking it, it became sweet in like 28 days exactly when it said it would. And if I hadn't read that, I would think that they were putting sugar into the water. But I still thought that.

38:50I would make people stand below me and I'd pour water out into their cup. I'd say, taste this. Is there sugar in it? I didn't trust my own team with it. I thought they were all trying to save me. Yeah. Is there sugar in it? They're like, no, it's water. By the way, if you're on his team, you're like, he's fucking lost his mind. He's like, don't even let us taste the water. And they'd say, oh, it's just water. But that happens. And then around 40 days, I started having really bad heart palpitations. It's really bad on your heart, right? It's tough on every organ. How long does the hunger part last?

39:20That's gone in two days. I would have dreams of eating certain foods. Yeah, did you start planning? Because even when I have a flu that lasts like four days and I haven't eaten and I can't eat, I start thinking about McDonald's french fries like day three. And I just start obsessing about when I get to eat those. Did you have a meal planned? So in the beginning, I was dreaming of smoked salmon on a bagel with cream cheese. But then as it evolved, I started dreaming of soup. And I would wake up in the middle of the night after like day 30. I'd have vivid dreams. I left the box, got out. I was eating a meal and I'd wake up.

39:53Panicked, you cheated and ruined it. Yeah. Failed. Yes. Yeah, yeah. These are like relapse dreams. I had a great starvation expert, Dr. Jeremy Powell-Tuck. We published a paper in New England Journal of Medicine. We were very proud about the effects of the refeeding syndrome because when I came out of the box, he assumed when I was going in, my team even tried to give me sugar vitamins, which by the way, I probably would have died if I had taken them because the metabolism, your body wouldn't shut down and go into starvation, but to preserve itself. I wouldn't take them, of course. So I did the entire 44 days.

40:25When I went to the hospital, he didn't believe it was real. He thought I was cheating as well, which is what everybody assumed because I'm a magician. Oh, what's the trick? So he put me on an IV right away and my phosphate levels went, and I almost went into shock. Yeah, I just want to frame this. So what was most dangerous about this whole thing was refeeding. I think so. I think the whole thing is dangerous once you go over 30 days. So I would never recommend anything like that to anybody. Because if you had gotten out and eaten a pepperoni pizza, you would have died? I don't know. But I know that when they put me on the IV, my phosphate level just...

40:59Why did it? The body can't handle it. Walk me through the refeeding process. I went on the IV and then boom, a friend has sent a trunk from Harrods full of food to my room. And I was giving it to all the doctors and nurses and everybody. And then two days later, I was so hungry. There was a bag of potato chips in there. And I was like, what the hell? I opened it and ate. Agony. The worst stomach. Like horrible pain. And then they had to readjust and take care of me again. eventually I got back to eating and then everything comes back in full force. Okay. So there was the starvation part. And then how do you deal with boredom?

41:40I always say to everybody, boredom is a choice. And I kept writing that and I would journal in a pen. That's all I had in there. And I wrote over and over boredom is a choice and everything is perspective. Everything is how you see it. So I think you choose to be bored. And if you want to be bored, that's fine. But the mind has so many things, you know, Rainer Marie Rilke in his book, Letters to a Young Poet. I remember reading that when I was younger. And he says, you know, So even if you're locked up in the most solitary prison confinement, you can still imagine where you are, what you're doing.

42:07You can see your friends. So that's, I guess, my question. How much of your day were you floating off into the ether of imagination? I have to say a lot of what I do, and I think with magic as well, is based on numbers and logic. I was breaking it up. It was 1 ,056 hours, 44 days. I was breaking everything up into time, numbers. And then I would say, okay, I just need to get to the halfway point. 22 days, which I would then break up to 11 days. And then when I got to 22, I was like, okay, this is now the starting point. So I only have to do that again. And then I would write all of these logic puzzles and things in the journal and things that I just love doing to occupy my mind.

42:45And then also the people that would come that would walk by to work every day. I became friends with all, you know, I was like communicating. Were you up? It was like 30 feet in a completely glass box. So people could hear you? No, but they could on that camera that was up there if they wanted to. I think that was one of the first continual live stream. Right. It's very similar to an Olympic athlete. Training your brain to just keep going and pushing. Ignoring every signal you're receiving. No, I think Olympic, they have to work much harder. No. I think you're working much harder than they are, really.

43:18No, but I think this is more along the lines of accepting the conditions. But also it's different when you know the beginning and the end. Then it's just how do you get there? But that's a mindset that you know the end. You hope you know the end, but you might not because you don't know how your body's going to really react. That's true. You anticipate the end, which I think athletes do that. Okay. Now, you say it was exaggerated in the media, but I must know these. So people did start vandalizing, or there were at least a handful of someone threw eggs, someone threw balloons full of paint. Yeah, that was really cool, actually.

43:51Someone attempted to cut you down. He tried to cut my water supply off. Oh, yeah, there we go. Oh, God. He was angry. What do you think those few vandals were reacting to? Because I have a very strong opinion about what it was. No, I want to hear your opinion. I think there's something in us as a social primate that feels like we need to police how much attention people get. There's just a guy who's getting all this attention, and now people are stopping. Also, it was a see-through box. So it was kind of like what you're saying exactly. Was there any women that did this shit? You got to imagine it's dudes that were throwing shit.

44:26Yeah, for sure. Yeah, so I just think there's this like, whoa, why is this guy getting so much attention? He didn't do X, Y, and Z. You get attention for X, Y, and Z. And why is he getting this attention? And fuck this guy. There was this one guy that used to come every day because his girlfriend wanted to come see it. Oh. And he'd be behind her. And every day he would walk up and go like this to me, but behind her. She'd be waving and he'd go like this. But when he would come, which was almost every day, he would make my day. I would laugh so hard because he was so passionately angry. Yeah. So when he would come, I would smile and wave at him.

44:59Yeah, yeah. So he started to come on his own. Then I'd have full communication. He provided such an incredible distraction that he became a very relevant part for me. We became friends. At the end when I got out, he was waiting in the hospital. I was so excited to meet him. Yes. Well, again, that's that other social primary thing. It's like, I don't like this guy's getting all this attention. Wait, this guy kind of likes me. I'm a part of the attention. Now I'm in. Yeah, people don't like being on the outside of something or feeling like I can't do that. But I also think there's a part to it of what you're saying.

45:30That's weird. It makes no sense. And why is he doing it? You paint your own version of what the reason is. You're projecting what you feel onto that. Last thing before full show is Vegas residency for 10 months at Resort World and then now at The Wynn. And I guess I was maybe shocked to read that your very first residency was 2023. Yeah. Were you not tempted to just go grab those bags of cash? Before. I mean, I've already learned, frustratingly so, you don't seem motivated by money. Not at all. I don't trust you. I'm not complaining. I do fine. But money's never been the decision-making factor.

46:08So my mother taught me when I was young, because she grew up with extreme privilege, but left everything, did everything by herself and was much happier than when she lived in a big house in Scarsdale. She said, the way I think about things is if you would do it for a dollar, she would say penny, but if you would do it for a dollar, then you should do it for whatever. And if you won't do it for a dollar, then you shouldn't do it for whatever. When I think about things like, would I do this if it was a dollar? Yes or no. And that's how I decide on almost everything. And it could just be the person or the team and that's enough of a decision-making process.

46:42Right. And so your residency, you're doing three days a month. Is that right? Because physically you can't. Well, that's what I was going to say. This is where your act sucks. Whereas if you're just doing a bunch of other shit, you could do it 30 times a month. But that wouldn't be fun for me. I wanted to show that I know anything can go wrong. Stakes. Yes. I know that I'm giving everything I have to the audience. And I think that was a problem with Houdini. He was so driven by satisfying the people that were coming to see him that he pushed himself to the breaking point. Yeah, he didn't have the type of act that you could do 20 times a month, but he did it 20 times a month.

47:16Right. That's why he was always in incredible shape. And that whole dime circus vaudevillian performing. They were the toughest of the tough. Seven shows in a row. I was obsessed with Buster Keaton for a long time. And yeah, he grew up as a little kid in vaudeville acts and getting thrown. His family would kick him or put him in a suitcase and chuck him into the audience. The physicality of that stuff. Oh, what a fucking genius that guy was. So when I made my first TV show, I was studying Buster Keaton a bunch. And I remember his thing was he tried to do everything in one take, no cuts. So that led to what I was trying to do with Street Magic, was try to get one take, do the magic, get the reaction without cutting.

47:52That was inspired by him. He was a phenomenon. Athletically, like he's the first Jackie Chan. Jackie Chan in his best day is just Buster Keene. Supposedly Houdini gave him the name, although that's been disproven. But he had said that Houdini named him Buster when he was five because his parents used to throw him on the board of the main stages into the wall. Yeah, kick him like a soccer ball. Yeah, that very most famous stunt of his that people can picture in their mind, which is the front of the building falling. He's in front of a house he built himself. And then, of course, the last frame is it falls flat.

48:23And there's one window open on the second floor of the face of the building, and it falls perfectly around him. And he had like four inches on each side. It's amazing. And half of his crew quit. They were like, we're not sticking around to watch you get flattened by the face of this building. Okay, so the Nat Geo show, it's called David Blaine, Do Not Attempt. And I watched India. That's the one you watched? Yeah. It's the hardest. Oh, man. By the way, though, that's first when I get the link. Southeast Asia would be the one I would say to watch first. The starter piece. Then Brazil. Then all the others.

48:56And then at the tail end, if you're like, okay, that's it. Then, okay, I'll watch India, but carefully. And I also think lots of them should be watched by adults. Watch it first. Make sure you understand. because there's some things that are scary. Like I push a steak knife into my nasal. Yeah, which is crazy. And then like he said, the bottle breaking thing, which is what woke me up in the middle of the night, which is why I called the show Do Not Attempt, horrified of the idea of somebody trying to imitate that. This is my great heresy with you young magicians. It's like no one will tell anyone their tricks.

49:27How the fuck are you supposed to learn? You hound them until they tell you. Or books. The secrets get told. Yeah, or you reverse engineer it like a logic puzzle. You figure it out diligently. And then you come up with your own version by doing so. You got Deepak to pull a string you put in your mouth out of the side of your face. Yeah. And I figured that out by watching the URZ festival. So they were pushing things through. And I was like, wait, so there's a passage there. And that led to trying to figure out how to turn it into a magic trick. Yeah. So do you feel any compulsion? Like what I like is you're really upfront about generally what's magic and what is an endurance thing.

50:06or just a pain threshold. But some of your tricks, will you always declare whether they're magic or not? Yeah, yeah. So the one I saw where you put a string in your mouth and he pulls it out the side of your face, is that magic? No, it's real combined with magic, which is the stuff that I like. Because then it makes the magic more believable because then you're not like, oh, what's the trick? You're like, but wait, that thread is really coming out of his skin. Yeah, what part is the illusion? Right. It's the exciting part. That's right. The stunts themselves are not tricks. It's a different thing.

50:34You'd think you'd have like all these holes in your face. You're not in great shape, right? You've damaged some stuff. Damaged, yeah, big time. And I go up and down, up and down. Right now I'm on the up. I've definitely messed up my body and my metabolism and everything else. Yeah, what is the thing that is hardest of all the fallout from these things? What's the thing that you're like, fuck, I kind of wish I didn't do that? Now it's like I'm starting to feel the effects of everything. Are you 53? 51. You know that logic puzzle? It's two days ago, he was 18 years old. Next year, he turns 21 years old.

51:08How is that possible? Okay, two days ago. Two days ago, he was 18 years old. So he has to be 19. Next year, he turns 21 years old. How is that possible? Well, that's easy because if he's born on January. Bingo. Yeah. So two days ago, he was 18. Yeah. But yesterday on December 31st, he turns 19. The last day of this year, he turns 20. But next year on the very last day, he turns 21. I was helped by having a January 2nd birthday. It felt very natural to me. Two days ago, he was 18. Now, they do a lot of impaling, the fakirs. That's kind of their signature, or maybe I'm wrong, but that seemed to be what I saw the most.

51:51Putting skewers through the inside of the arm and pushing them out. Popping their eyeballs out with a sword. That was the craziest thing I've ever seen. I called my optometrist. I was like, what are your thoughts on this? He's like, you're going to degenerate your vision. I was like, yeah, no. But yeah, they go in and pull their eyes significantly out, but it's very difficult to watch. Even the way you're reacting, that's just from hearing it. But seeing it, I couldn't even believe that this was real. Yeah, so someone might be inclined to think because you are willing to put these skewers through your own hand that it might be easy for you to watch it.

52:23But then watching you, I don't think it is. It was very difficult for me. I got to say what's really fun is these guys are doing this incredible stuff. and the guy's jumping into glass and everything and then the bottle. But David's got like some tricks up his sleeve that even they haven't done. So it's like after all the glass, he's like, hand me a piece of that glass. And then he just starts eating glass. And they're like, whoa, it must be fun. It's funny to me that you think what they're doing is wild. To me, it's the same. Eating glass and cracking a bottle. In fact, cracking a bottle over your head to me is like it happens at a bar.

52:57You got to see it. Okay, okay. You really got to see it. But what you're saying is right. It does come off as that, but the way he does it is his guru teaches him a method and he learns how to do it. And it is precision. It is something that he's done repetitively and it's flawless when he does it. It's kind of like, how is that possible? Like, how does he do it? And there's no bump. It's more like watching a gymnast land a crazy trick. You go like, oh yeah, there's a total technique here. But eating glass is the same, just so you know, from an audience perspective. I mean, you saw it. So maybe to you, you could say it differently.

53:29I prefer to try to see glass than hit myself in the head with that whiskey bottle. I would say don't do either. If you were recommending one over the other, I think you'd agree with me. I don't recommend either. Can I chew the glass up fine enough? I have no enamel on my teeth. My nerves are exposed. It hurts all the time. Hot and cold. Sends pains into my head. So I don't recommend either. Like I said, that episode is the one that the show is titled, Do Not Attempt Because of That. We should make a fine point. That's the one that's like the most extreme. Well, not mine. I'm not telling anyone to eat glass.

54:02But in my mind, I'm like, yeah, I could grind glass up in my mouth fine enough to where it's back to sand. And then it's so easy to just cut. Slice up your gums. So you're doing it and you're not bleeding. No. When you eat glass. Wow. But it's something I don't recommend at all. I always tell magicians, if you want to get into magic, do card tricks. And ironically, that's the stuff people like the most, right? The other stuff is I'm obsessed with finding things out that seem impossible and then trying to figure out how to do those things and combine them with magic. For the first time, I'm showing the process of that learning curve.

54:33I'm showing what I normally would never share. And by having the real part of it exist with magic, it kind of stops the audience or the viewer or the spectator from just writing it all off right away, which is what you said you didn't like about some of the magic that you've seen. It's like immediately like, sure, what's the trick? Maybe I should have told you this at the very beginning. I don't like magic. Monica loves magic. And we have debates about all of them. And I've gone with her numerous times to see magic. I've even hired a magician for her birthday one time. Yeah, I've had two magician birthday parties as an adult.

55:08Yeah, and you'd like more. I love it. I went to a really good magic show in New York. Now I don't remember his name. Ossie Wind? No, it was at the Nomad Hotel. Oh, Dan White. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love Dan. Oh my God, it was so good. I cried. Do you get on with other magicians? Yeah, yeah. Dan used to work with me. He's great. I have to say most of my best friends are magicians. That's who I spend all my time with. I put you guys in a category with really great guitar soloists, which is one only can get this skill by being in their bedroom by themselves for very long periods of time. And I think that's a personality type.

55:46But also magic's a little different because the performative part of it is just like you're always doing magic. If you do it to the same person over and over, they're going to get bored. So you're always looking for new people. The plane flying heroes do magic to half the flight. How lucky to be on a fucking flight and David Blaine's on it. But people say, oh, do you feel bad saying no? I'm like, no. I mean, this is how I practice. This is how I improve. This is how I'm constantly training. And this is a part of the process that I like the most is that constant tweaking, learning, changing, modifying, adding things.

56:18Have you thought about what the shelf life of your own skill set is? Do you think there'll be a peak and a decline like all trades or no? Is this one impervious to decline? Do you think you're getting better? Yeah, I do think I keep learning more and more. And I have two of my favorite tricks I've done for the last 30 years. And just recently, a few weeks ago, I realized that you can combine the two. And how did I not realize that for 30 years, these two things combine beautifully? Now, one of my favorite magicians, he was doing this incredible trick that I saw him do when I was 18. It was just a card trick, but it was so good.

56:55He did it in front of a small room of people that I was laughing and crying at the same time. And he stopped doing magic because he said he was doing that trick that he's done probably 100 ,000 times. Who knows how many times? And in the middle of it, he forgot what he was doing. His brain couldn't process anymore, so he stopped doing magic at that point. It would be a cognitive thing, probably. Not a physical thing. Maybe. Who knows? What seems interesting is overnight, so many people are attracted to you in this very intense way. That's not anyone else's normal experience like in high school.

57:30Fiona Apple, who I'm watching her video over and over again, I know is dating this magician. And I go, wow. That's really funny. She could be with Leonardo DiCaprio. She could be with any movie star. She's with this magician. She's just brilliant. The way she thinks and the way she absorbs information. Were you even yourself a little shocked with like, oh, wow, I'm dating Fiona Apple? I mean, I was lucky and amazed to be around, but I had met her before. And I was blown away by her and thought she was incredible. Yeah, we all were. But I met her before she was famous. Oh, before she was famous.

58:03Yeah, yeah, yeah. Isn't she a California person? She was. She grew up in Venice, but not anymore. I still speak to her. Oh, you do? She's one person I've never met that I'm still dying to meet. Yeah, she's amazing. I one time heard you on Stern. You've done Stern several times, yeah? Two maybe? Okay, well then I've heard both of them. Okay. I've tried in the past to explain it to Monica and I really can't. But I thought the most fascinating part of the interview is you were talking about being able to convince people you can read their mind. Cold reading, which is just generalizing kind of information.

58:36Making high probabilistic guesses. Yeah, I think that psychology applied to psychics or tarot card readers. I think what they're doing is they're estimating what's normal, what you represent, and then kind of feeling out that information. You look at me, you're like 50 year old white guy, but he likes World War Two documentaries. And I'm like, that's right, I do. But also you could go into the characteristics of a person as well, what they've been through, what struggles they've been through. How did you learn this? I was so fascinated when I was listening to you talk about that, I guess, 20 years ago.

59:07There was a book that I read, which was called King of the Cold Readers, the fundamental book of information on how to read people. It's so old now. It's kind of outdated. Now, the way to access information is just so incredible. It's such a different game now. Because of the Internet? Just the techniques that are employed are incredible. But I'd love to do magic, but you might have to sit here. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, good. We'll get Monica there. I'll show you the new trick that I was talking about. If you're listening and you want to see the magic that's coming next, and you can go over to YouTube and watch Magic Tricks with David Blaine and Monica, and maybe me.

59:44Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

1:00:19Well, David Blaine, this was incredible. team and we all gave it our all. Yeah, that's very obvious. And also when we went into these places, I wanted to show not like the fancy beaches and resorts. I wanted to show the things that most people never get to see. So we went into places that nobody would go or would want to go or things nobody would want to do and showed the beauty in what they do and all the things that you're seeing. It's like they've really put their thousands of hours into those feats that they're doing. That's why to me it's magic. It's because of the invisible work that goes in that you don't equate for.

1:00:51You don't think about the amount of work and faith and diligence and practice and failure and repeating that they put into it to make it look so simple. Yeah, yeah. And so that's why I think this is kind of like a discovery of people. And they're constantly a student. They never see themselves as masters. They're searching for the next learning curve, the next thing, the next challenge. and they keep pushing themselves. And it was pretty amazing to have a glimpse into that world. Yeah, it's admirable. It's really neat. Yeah, you're looking at someone who has funneled thousands of hours into five minutes, eight minutes, nine minutes.

1:01:28And you're like, wow, they just funneled it and refined it and pointed it. And it's very cool to see that. Do you have a favorite episode? For me, it's more like the characters. We don't show this, but I'm like in tears every time. I'm so excited and I'm so amazed by everybody that I'm meeting. And I would say it's not a favorite episode. The people you love. Oh, yeah. Things that I saw and witnessed and was given an insider into their world. So it's like there's so many things in each thing. Ramesh, the guy who built his fire act, but he's a rickshaw driver by David. His passion is fire. David puts fire all over his head.

1:02:03That part's beautiful. Yeah. And I've seen him before and I was blown away by his act. So then going and meeting him real time and then having him give me a like crash course. Yeah. All right. Well, good luck with the show. It's truly great. I can tell you guys spent so much time on it and it's a pleasure meeting you. Yeah. Thanks for coming. Thank you. Yay. Now you guys want to see the real magic? Oh my God. I'm going to turn this off and I'll show you the good stuff. Yeah.

1:02:32Hi there. This is Hermium Hermium. If you like that, you're going to love the fact check of Miss Monica. Okay, I have an update. Something wild happened yesterday. Oh my goodness. After we worked? Mm-hmm. I went somewhere. I won't say where. Okay. I went somewhere and I basically witnessed this person. I don't know. I thought he was just very, very, very drunk. Uh-huh. But then I was told that maybe he was on like a drug by someone who could tell. Okay. And it was so scary. Oh. He was like falling. This other girl was like, that was really scary. Seen this person there before. And I do sometimes wonder in general like.

1:03:28What's happening? Yeah. Is this person okay? But nothing has ever been this extreme. And it was really, really crazy. Were they vocally obnoxious? Yes. What kind of stuff were they saying? I mean, they were on the phone and kind of just screaming on the phone. But just like stumbling around the whole place and falling down. Like it was. That's not like an atmosphere where. Yeah. People are acting. What time of day? The day after we recorded. So like 3.30. On a Tuesday. Yeah. Oh, boy. It was really scary. Uh-huh. And then my friend went up and said to the manager, just, hey, you need to keep an eye on this person.

1:04:23Really doesn't seem okay. Yeah. And the manager said, do you know who he is? Uh-huh. Uh, and then what does that though mean? Exactly. Yeah. And that to me is what I've just been sitting with. Like, so, and obviously I can't give too many details, but this is a person that they, I don't want to lose, I guess, as a client. Maybe. Was that the subtext? Or was the subtext like, you know, that's so-and-so. They're, they're a fuck up. Oh, no. I don't think it was that. Because that's a vibe where we're from, where you'd go, oh, that's Mike. He's a fuck. You know, he's a lush. Just look the other way.

1:05:10Yeah, let him do his thing. But that would be at, like, a certain type of bar, something you could do that, but not here. At a nice place. Yeah. Yeah. And it, like, it was scary to me. It was scary to another guest. Like, it was causing concern. And so this idea that like, do you know who that is, was very upsetting to me because I was like, so you're going to let him die? Right. Because you don't want to say anything? Yeah. It was really scary. And then my friend was like, I don't care who it is. I mean, he knew who it was, but he was like, I don't care who it is. People are scared. I also know who your friend is.

1:05:50It's very obvious. I know. I know. But I was really glad he said that. Yeah, yeah. But I think it does point out no one needs to be sympathetic to an addict. They don't need to be sympathetic to anyone famous. They don't need to be sympathetic to someone with means. But I will argue it can be harder for those people to get sober because they don't have the consequences. There's so many consequences that would normally make you reevaluate. Exactly. And like losing friendships. Well, people with status and means can be pretty—the people won't— Push back. They won't abandon them because they want to be a part of the status.

1:06:33I know. Yeah, places will put up with them because of whatever. And I just—I do wonder sometimes—I worked with a famous, super talented dude who was so fucked up on this movie. And I hated him at one point in the movie. And then, you know, he did this fucking thing where he made me laugh so hard. He's so powerful. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He made me laugh so fucking hard. He was assigned a cop on set. He had to have a cop with him on set. And so he was running through this store and the police officer was chasing him and he was screaming, chase me, chase me. Oh, God, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I was like, I had been just seething about this person for like three weeks.

1:07:21And then all of a sudden I was like, oh my God, this is the fucking funniest thing I've ever seen. And it really disarmed me. And I was like, yeah, good luck to him getting sober because he has a superpower. He can win you back immediately. I know. I feel really freaked out by it. I bet you weren't the only one. You do get into your personal stuff. I do. Which is like addict stuff is very scary to you and for good reason. Yeah. And I don't know if it's addict, but it's more like this deeper, that person might die. Right. And I might see it or I might have like been not a part of it, but kind of a part of it.

1:08:02Should have sounded the alarm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It reminds me of when I was in high school and I went to the mall with Callie and we saw this like weird thing happen where this woman was wheeling her husband in a wheelchair. But then like something was happening with the woman and the guy got out and the woman got in the wheelchair. And I was like, yeah, they had to switch. I didn't know if she was having a heart attack. And of course, like, you know, the people were running out of the stores to like help. And I thought about, I still have that memory and I thought about it for weeks. Like I could not, it's almost OCD.

1:08:43Yeah. Like it becomes an obsession. Right. You just can't stop thinking about it. Yeah. It keeps popping up into your head. Yeah. I don't know why that wheelchair fiasco did remind me of, do you remember we were working in New York and we were at the Carlisle Hotel? I'll be there in a couple days. And we would have to walk every day to the parking garage. And there was this dude with cerebral palsy. Oh, yeah. And he, like, was shuffling down the street. And it was, like, so heartbreaking. Yeah. And really bad. And this woman gave him money. And then the woman turned the corner. And then he started walking normal.

1:09:28No. And I threw my coffee at him. He threw a fucking coffee out of him. We were going to beat the shit out of him. You sick motherfucker. That is so low. Yeah. Oh, my God. It was a show like you had never seen before. You'd want to cry when you saw this guy. I'm like, at the beginning, I'm like, I'm probably going to give this guy a buck. No, I'm going the other way. I'm 23 and I met you deceptive. What is the money actually cured? You don't know. Oh, fuck. Yeah, you didn't think about that. I didn't think about it. It is possible that he was just$5 away from a cure. Yeah, you never know. You know, I had a similar, when I had my bar, there was crazy situations at my bar.

1:10:16So it wasn't this place and it wasn't a nice place. But things still could get escalated to that point where I'd have to make the decision and not a famous person spending a bunch of money and bringing all of his people, but like a drug dealer that was responsible for a lot of money being thrown around in there and this and that. And then thought he fucking ran the place. Like a whale at a casino. Yeah, but then once everyone is so uncomfortable in this situation, you can only let it go so much. and you have, like, guess what? They come back after you kick them out. Right. But, like, enough's enough.

1:11:00When you have that business, you gotta fucking take a stand. Exactly. I mean, that's interesting. Like, buddy, you're driving away from everyone else. The trade-off, like, when do I lose money after this person's here? What's the line that you draw at a bar or something? Because, yeah, people are there a little fucked up. I mean, that's the point of the place, you know? So it's tricky. It's highly regional, though. Like, you—I've—rarely, rarely, rarely have I seen anyone in L.A. at a bar or a club. That fucked up. That is like asleep on a table, throwing up on the dance floor. Yeah. That is much more common in Michigan, and I can say also Chicago.

1:11:47Like, if you go out in Chicago, you see people, like, falling through tables and fucking falling out of the— Georgia, too. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's really, like, regionally cultural. It also just—it depends on the place itself. Also, what do you do? You tell them to leave, and what if they drive home? Well, there's only so much you can do. That's my question. Like, what do you do? You just go—if they're on a motorcycle, you go, wear a helmet. Yeah. Dumbass. Ride fast, but ride safe. Yeah. Oh. Yeah. Anyway. As fast as you can. Yeah. Yeah, we're on like such opposite ends of the spectrum with our comfort level with that stuff.

1:12:25Yeah. Just, I think, from exposure. Yeah. Yeah, probably. I mean, my friend didn't feel the way I felt. He wasn't worried. Right. He wasn't like that person's going to die like I was. Right. He was more like this is an unacceptable thing to be happening at this establishment. I love all the little adventures you and Jess get into, I gotta say. I really do, because there was the episode with someone saying to Anna, someone's so gay. Oh, yeah. And then Jess had to get involved, but he didn't. But he didn't get involved enough. But he does. I know. I know. Little mini adventures all the time. It's such a fucking funny duo, too.

1:13:08You're one feet tall, he's eight feet tall. I know. I think a lot of people think we're together. and in some ways we are I guess I think of it as like the cartoon with the really little dog and the big dog that are friends and the big dog's always the little dog's picking fights and being mouthy and then the big dog's well actually I brought you up so we left to go to dinner and it was really like I was frazzled exactly because of everything so I was feeling a little like I could tell that I was getting annoyed, but it was because of this other thing. I just like didn't feel good. Yeah. So I had to tell myself like, don't take it out on Jess.

1:13:54Like don't take this feeling out on him right now. She's like the easiest person for me to take it out on. So don't do that. And I feel like I didn't, but then we got to the restaurant and the server was so amazing, like so nice, so awesome. and Jess was just being like his like gregarious, he was just being his gregarious self and being funny and making jokes. And I was like,

1:14:24why can't you just not have to do that? Like, why can't you just say thanks instead of doing this whole joke? Yeah, yeah. And then, and I like looked at him and I said, it's so interesting that I am obviously, I am attracted, drawn to people who can't stop themselves from putting on a show. That's right. I leave the house. It's showtime. Yes. There are so many times we're sitting in here and I'm like, why are you not stopping? Yes, yes, yes. And it's the same thing with him. And it's clear that it's me that needs or likes it. Yeah. Even though on the surface, I don't. Yeah. It's weird. That is interesting.

1:15:20I'm thinking, of course, of the time I was putting on a show. Because sometimes you're in and sometimes you're out, right? Sure. Like the time in New York City. What? I just tap out. Like, I like it for a second. But both of you sometimes just. Yeah, but remember my suitcase bit in New York? which is probably the most extreme and obnoxious bit I've ever done. That was funny to me. And you loved it the whole time. I had a roll-on bag, or maybe we even had, like, recording gear. Maybe. Because we were going around the city and interviewing people. Yeah, it had wheels. And any street we were on that had a slight decline, I would let the bag go, and then I would be screaming, my bag, my bag, and I'd be chasing it, but the bag wasn't going very fast, and I would let it, like, go between people.

1:16:07And every single block, I would, like, run and scream, like, my bag, my bag, my bag. And then I would look back, and Monica would be, like, half a block away laughing really hard. I did think that was funny. I don't know what the line is. But that was really extra. It was. Like, if you're just walking down the street, and some guy's like, my bag, my bag. And he's chasing a bag that clearly he could cut. Yeah. I know. I don't really know. Well, he does silly things like that that don't. it's when it involves other people. Yeah, maybe there's more exploration to get like really granular about what, when does it tip for you?

1:16:45What is the exact thing? This is admittedly annoying, like admittedly annoying, but I think you enjoy this or you don't like, Aaron and I lived for, we would put on, Aaron would put on his baseball pants from sixth grade baseball and a half shirt that had a pony on it that was yellow that Carrie got me. And then I would be in an insane outfit and we would go to White Castle. It was showtime. Oh, White Castle. And we had like a pipe. We had chewing tobacco. We had playing cards. We had a radio. Yeah. And we would really just go, let's go be as weird as possible at this White Castle. And we just enjoyed it so much.

1:17:28And I think you do or you don't enjoy that kind of thing. Well, oh, my God, this is back to yesterday's fact check or last week's fact check with the three of us. We're ultimately, I think maybe I feel like, why do you get to do that? Ah, here we go. Here we go. I think that's what it is. Yes, because you were kind of trying. I had to. That's right. I had no option. There was no option for me to be like, my bad. Of the money, you have to admit, we don't know. I know you're right. We don't know. But I definitely understand how you were like, I'm just trying to not get fucked with and called out and pointed at.

1:18:12Being a weirdo is like the last thing I could be. And you had this freedom to wear sixth grade clothes and a fucking, I would wear the crazy hat that the Chinese people wear when they're picking rice. You know, I got it at a Salvation Army. It was like three feet wide and be smoking a pipe. And I just, it was so fun because from my perspective, there's something really fun about like, oh, here are the rules of life. But who's to say, what if you're not participating in those rules? And they're not like, it's not like we're pushing people or anything. No, I know. You're not hurting anyone. It's just like, oh, you're supposed to look a certain way.

1:18:51Well, let's see if you don't look that way. It just kind of like wakes you up in a way that I find I've always found really. Carrie was very much that way. We would go into 7-Elevens and we would have fake fights and stuff. Yeah. Like we would sit at the restaurant and what you're supposed to do is eat your food. But we'd be going. Oh, God. See, you say that's not hurting people, but I think it is. We did some stuff. That's disturbing. You're right. You're right. We did definitely ruin some people's. But I got to tell you, Monica, I do think I'm objective about this. We amused more. Sure, I agree.

1:19:32More people were really laughing at their boots, looking at us, trying to wonder, are these guys, like, are they gotten out of a hospital? Are people looking for these, too? Why don't they have so much stuff? And we've gotten Aaron got punched over at once. Oh, yeah, that was for making noises. Yeah. Once in a while, it doesn't work out. But for the most part, it does. It's a high wire act. When it's working, it's really fun. And I think it's just a huge bonding thing. It's like some expression that like I myself can't go sit at White Castle with the huge hat on and all this stuff and make noises.

1:20:11I would be. Well, you probably wouldn't chase your suitcase without Monica there. I wouldn't. I wouldn't. That's true. There's like this declaration that like all these people might think I'm crazy. But because you know, and this is for you and Aaron and I's was for each other. There's a very bonding thing about that. Yeah, that makes sense. Like as long as I have your approval, I'm willing to throw everyone else's away. And again, it's very indulgent and selfish. I get it. I can admit it. But it was also, I do promise it was highly amusing to most people. Like people thought we were funny. I'm sure they did.

1:20:49Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

1:21:01I'm going to change gears. Okay. But Erin and I have a favorite restaurant. We went to it last night with old friends that happened to be in town from Detroit. Oh, fun. Who witnessed many of these outfits. They're fully functional adults with a business now, and it's wonderful. It worked out for everyone. Um... But this happens one in four or five times I eat at this restaurant. Or I eat, I go hard. By the way, I was thinking about what it was this morning, potentially. Did you eat any of the asparagus? Mm-hmm. You did? Okay. I haven't gone yet. Oh, okay. I also had a huge scoop of Metamucil before we went, fiber.

1:21:37I didn't have that. I knew I was going to eat a lot of steak. But anyways, about four minutes after we got done eating, I had to pee. and I'm peeing and I think I have to I gotta go sit down. Yeah, you have Hannes. Epic Hannes. This is when we're together it's been like I think a 50 50 shot. Okay, it's more like one and two. Well, I mean but I know you you go without me so and you don't experience it. No, I'm jealous. Which is crazy. Yeah, I love watching it like I love the like really fast walking to the Yeah, sure. Yeah. Like it's about to start spraying. Yeah, yeah. So it was, it was. I mean, the meal has just left the table.

1:22:21Just got taken away. Yeah. Right. Fast actin to an actin. To the point where I was like, oh, there is listeria on the. Oh, but not every time you go. And apparently not because you ate the asparagus as well. Anyways, it's an epic thing. So come back to the table. I don't announce it at that point because our friends that are visiting, they don't know this pattern. and I'm guessing Aaron might have put it, but I was very quick. Did you know the first time I went to pee that that had happened? No. Okay. So then we're sitting there talking and now we're wrapping it up and I've paid the bill and I'm thinking, oh man, I think I got to go again, but I'll be able to wait till I get home.

1:22:58And I'm like in the middle of a sentence and I go, I got a harness. And then I - That was the one I noticed. Then I really booked it to the bathroom. Thank God the dining room was dead empty. Oh, wow. Went back in there another, wow, this is epic. If there was a bathroom attendant, like, you'd have to be like, dude, can you just, here's$100. Can you just leave? Yeah. Fucking wake up for a while. Yeah. Oh. So no one was in there? No one was in there. Thank God. But all to say, I come back to the table. Now we've only got five more minutes, and then we're out the door, and we're in the car, and I was like, I pray I make it home.

1:23:33Yeah. Three. Three. Wow. That's a lot. There probably was, there's probably just something you're allergic to in that food. Or just too much fat. Such a good meal. It is, it is. Yeah. We both get a ribeye and then we split the lamb chops. Our friends split a ribeye. We both got a ribeye and lamb chops. Oh, God. And left it all at the restaurant. Yeah, a public bathroom situation, I don't like it. Yeah, but sometimes tonka. Sometimes you got it. Sometimes your meal turns you to tonka. But that wasn't a public bathroom. That was a private. No, I know. That was your private car. My car. This is for David Blaine.

1:24:20Oh, wonderful. And actually, Aaron was here. Yeah, I was like, damn it, I wish I could have watched some of this. I know. Watched all the magic. God, it was such a cool thing. His show is awesome. Yeah. Don't attempt this. I don't really want to. Yeah, do not attempt. Do not attempt. What's it on? Hulu. Nat Geo. Okay. Hulu. It's on Hulu too. Yeah, I watched one last night. You did? Yeah, yeah. Do you watch India? No, I started with the first one where he puts the knife into his nose. Oh, yeah. He said don't watch India. Yeah, that's why I waited. Yeah, I guess you're supposed to build up to India, but I started with India.

1:24:59Yeah, of course. And it's freaking wild. Yeah. Guys jumping onto big piles of broken bottles. Fuck that. Dude, a guy who's breaking this huge whiskey bottle over his head. I don't know why for some reason. I just have to watch it because the way both of you were talking about it is with such like horror. Yeah. And for some reason, that doesn't sound that bad to me. Is it because I'm Indian? Wow. And it just kind of feels like a natural activity. Yeah. Jump on a big mound of broken bottles. That is like one of the worst things I could imagine. Really? Yeah. I'm abnormally afraid of glass. Yeah.

1:25:39Oh. Me too. Yeah. And I'll slice up. Oh, God. Man, I don't like glass, but it. It just cuts so weird. Why do you think when, like, I don't believe in Satan, but for some reason when a magician is real good, I think. Dark arts. Dark arts. Is involved. Like, all of a sudden I believe in Satan. You do? Sure, sure. Yeah. Oh, so he's Satan. Instead of like he's Dumbledore, like the happy one. But that's what historically people have thought, that they practice the dark art. I go right there. David signed a card for me that's up there that's really exciting. Oh, yeah, David Blaine. Oh, I see it. The ace of dimes.

1:26:23Now, the really crazy thing he did, and maybe we should talk about it because it's not on video. Yeah, it's not. We might be getting video because when David's publicist was here and she took video, so hopefully we'll get it. But yeah, there was a trick that happened after the cameras were off. That was think of a category. Oh, that one. Okay. I think that's the craziest one. How does he know? Watch is craziest. I don't because, okay, he says like think of a category, Monica. Okay, great. It could be like food, nature. Sure. Now think of a specific thing from that category. Erin, listen to this and tell me this, how on earth this could be done.

1:27:04Okay, think of a, so you have it? Yes, I have it. Okay, and then how did he start doing the, oh, he was asking for states that start with vowels. Yeah. And he goes like, oh, there's, oh, we have Ohio. And then he writes on these other vowels. And he wrote down these words and he wrote down like, seven words or whatever. Right. And he's like, I don't know. And then Georgia, let's put Georgia on there. And then he goes, is this your thing? And he shows her a list of these seven words or whatever it was. He said, does this have anything to do with your thing? Right. And she said, no. And then he circled the outside thing and he said, does this?

1:27:48And it said gossip. Because my English gossip girl She thought television as a category. And then the specific show, Gossip Girl. Oh, and there was one more piece. So it was like, think Gossip Girl. Then give a clue. So like I had to say a clue to you. You were technically supposed to be guessing. And I had to give you a clue that wasn't a big giveaway. And what was your— And I said The Met, I think. Oh, my God. Yeah. So I would think art. Then I would think Picasso. Yeah, and then I don't remember then how we got into him writing the words, but then, yeah, it was gossip. Yeah. It was insane. I'm like, how does he know she thought of Gossip Girl?

1:28:32Out of the millions of TV shows. And even TV, out of the millions of categories. Yes. Basically infinite. Yeah. Every object in the world. Yeah. It was scary. What? Yeah. And then, you know, there was a card trick, Aaron, where it was like, I wasn't even involved. Oh, man. And it was under my watch. Yes, I love that, too. And, like, I had picked the card. It wasn't that—because everyone I tell this to, they're like, did he hug? It's like, no, no, no, no. This was way late into the game. You may be hugged when you walked in, maybe. But I picked the card during the trick, and then it's unfolded up under his watch.

1:29:13Well, let us not forget that in his Netflix special—was it Netflix? Yeah. You know, Harrison Ford, he tells Harrison Ford to pick an apple up off of the fucking fruit basket, cut it in half. And when he cuts it in half, the cards folded up in there that he himself had written, Harrison Ford had written his name on. Like, how does that? He got it into the apple. And how do you even get, fuck it. Even if he said, I'm going to put your card in this apple and there'll be no evidence of it, I'd go, that can't be done. I know. If that was the trick and he got it inside of an apple, that would be plenty for me.

1:29:49I know. And then Harrison Ford cut the apple and he goes, get the fuck out of my house. He got so scared. It was great. It was definitely a, like, that's a once in a lifetime moment to get magic from David Blaine. Wow. One-on-one. Very, very cool. Okay, a couple facts. Bobby Sands, he died in 66 days hunger strike. He was a member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army, the IRA. And he helped plan a bombing. Yeah. Monica and I were talking about this, and I think this is a great opportunity to realize that you're racist. Because do you remember how you felt about the IRA? I had no feelings about it.

1:30:43Yeah. Well, also you're Irish. Right. I'm from a very Irish family. Yeah. But weren't you kind of supportive? Always. Yeah. And I was like, isn't that interesting? These are a group of men blowing shit up and killing people. When they're brown, I'm like, those are terrorists. Right. Yeah, it's the same thing. Unfortunately, it's the same thing. And it's just they're white. Yeah. And I think that's the difference. That's insane. Yeah. And by the way, I'm not in support of it anymore. Yeah, yeah, same. But yeah, I thought it was cool. I thought it was. Fighting the power. Yeah. I felt like the American Revolution.

1:31:25Rebellion. I could relate. It's the same country we revolted from. Yeah. Right. Yeah. But yeah, blowing folks up is not great. Just give them their freedoms. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, right. But then when you see, you know, Al-Qaeda trying to have their own state. Yeah. Their caliphate. Yeah. You're like, no, those guys are monsters. Okay. After 28 days of fasting, he said you get a pear taste in your mouth, which we are kind of jealous of. A pear taste? Yeah. Yeah. Like, you know, what's the longest he fasted for? He did 30-something days. He was in a glass box. Yeah. Hanging above the Thames. in England.

1:32:07And he just didn't eat for 36 days. There's no trick. That's just, he really didn't. He lost half his body weight. Yeah, he almost died because then he went to the hospital after and all his phosphate levels were like completely. And you can kill someone by giving them food too fast. Yeah. Which is crazy. But yeah, you start tasting pear and we thought that sounds gross. Yeah, if you hadn't eaten. And I'm expecting some really gross taste. It's like a metallic taste. That's what I would say, yeah. Like you just say tasting your blood because your body's eating its blood or something. Ew. He did 44 days.

1:32:4444 days. That's why it's so funny because when he's talking about the Indian guys who do the bottle over the head, he's like, he's shocked. And I'm like staring at him like, are you kidding me? You didn't eat. You buried yourself alive. That's shocking. That's way crazier. Okay, so when fast... What is this alarm telling me to do? Oh, you got one today? That's a ding, ding, ding from last week. Both of you just letting your alarms run rampant. I took a nap before this. Oh, both were nap related. Yeah, and I set it to the wrong time. Thank God I woke up on my own. Yeah. Did he tell you, did Dex tell you about my nap?

1:33:33That actually happened yesterday after we... That happened. I got a video. It was great. I fucking crashed hard. Like it was... Because I'm going to skip the sauna and take a 20-minute nap. Uh-huh. And then three hours later... No!

1:33:50This is so great. I text him like, hey, time to go to dinner. And then I start thinking, I wonder if he read that text. And then I come out to the guest house and look at this.

1:34:09look how his legs are his legs are his feet are the bottom of his feet are touching and he's in i guess that's a lotus position exactly his hips are wide open i'm shocked that you could sleep like that that's very flexible actually it's impressive yeah and I thought his hand was in his pants, under his pants. And I thought those were his underwear. There's his swimsuit. He had great intentions. Yeah. And then I said, it was like on the time I tried to wake my Papa Bob up. I was like, Aaron, Aaron, Aaron, it's time to go. Aaron, Aaron, it's time to go. And I'm like, oh, my God, I got to touch him.

1:34:46I got to touch him. So then I caressed his knee and that got him away. You didn't have to put washcloths over his face? Thank God. No, but that's what I escalated to. Oh, three hours. Three-hour tour. A little nap before dinner. Did you have a long time going to sleep last night? No. Oh, good. Oh, wow. I was a little worried. And then you napped today. Yeah, I got home from drop-off. I did some, like, email stuff, and I was on my bed, and I was going to get changed to go work out. And then I just thought, I have two hours. I'm going to sleep for one of the hours. And then that turned into, I didn't fall asleep for half an hour, and then I slept till 1030.

1:35:26Wow. Yeah. And I just had, I kept laying there going, it's okay if you don't work out. Yeah. It's okay. It is. Your body needs a rest. Yeah. It needed a rest. You had traumatic diarrhea. That is why probably. Might be related to the harness. Traumatic evening.

1:35:45Okay. Buster Keaton. So he said that Houdini, that there's a rumor that Houdini named him Buster, but that that's been debunked. But it says that on PBS.org. God, I trust PBS. Can I trust PBS.org? Yeah. Who doesn't? So I think— Is PBS going to go away? Because of Trump? Yeah, I think it's on the— Chopping block? Yeah. Oh, my gosh. I don't know what I'll do without Frontline. He's a monster. Yeah, Joseph Francis Keaton got his name when at six months he fell down a flight of stairs, reaching the bottom unhurt and relatively undisturbed. He was picked up by Harry Houdini, who said the kid could really take a buster or fall.

1:36:25From then on, his parents in the world knew him as Buster Keaton. By the age of three, Keaton joined the family's vaudeville act, which was renamed the Three Keatons. For years, he was knocked over, thrown through windows, dropped downstairs, and essentially used as a living prop. Yeah. He could really take a Buster, huh? Yeah. They would put him in a suitcase and just chuck him into the audience. That's weird. Oh, man. Great. Oh, my God. You know, he was obviously during the silent picture days and then no one had ever heard his voice. And then when talkies came around, he was in Sunset Strip or Sunset Boulevard, that famous movie.

1:37:02It was the only time anyone ever heard him talk. And he's in a scene playing Bridge and he had this crazy low voice that no one was expecting. He was a little guy. Oh, my God. Oh, man. Okay. How many times did David Blaine do Stern? Eight. He's done it eight times. Have you heard Blaine Unstern? Yeah. Yeah, they're very memorable, aren't they? Yeah. That's what I was thinking about the water, too. That was Unstern. I remember they were sending, during his show, they were sending, like, you know, Baba Booey down there. Yeah, yeah. People to fuck with them. Yeah, they have fun with them. Yeah. That's it.

1:37:39That's it? That's it for David. Oh, okay. Well, that was really, really fun. Love you guys. Love you. Love you.

1:37:51You