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as a magician I try to create images
that make people stop and think I also
try to challenge myself to do things
that doctors say are not possible I was
buried alive in New York City and a
coffin buried alive in a coffin in April
1999 for a week I lived there with
nothing but water and it ended up being
so much fun that I've decided I could
pursue doing more of these things the
next one is I froze myself in a block of
ice for three days and three nights in
New York City that one was way more
difficult than I had expected the one
after that I stood on top of a hundred
foot pillar for 36 hours
I began to hallucinate so hard that the
buildings that were behind me started to
look like big animal heads so next I
went to London in London I lived in a
glass box for 44 days with nothing but
water it was for me one of the most
difficult things I've ever done but it
was also the most beautiful there were
so many skeptics especially the press in
London that they started flying
cheeseburgers on helicopters around my
box to tempt me
so I felt very validated when the New
England Journal Medicine actually used
the research for science
my next pursuit was I wanted to see how
long I could go without breathing like
how long I could survive with nothing
not even air I didn't realize that it
would become the most amazing journey of
my life as a young magician I was
obsessed with Houdini and his underwater
challenges so I began early on competing
against the other kids seeing how long I
could stay underwater why they went up
and down to breathe you know five times
I stayed under on one breath by the time
I was a teenager I was able to hold my
breath for three minutes and thirty
seconds I would later find out that was
Houdini's personal record in 1987 I
heard of a story about a boy that fell
through ice and was trapped under a
river he was underneath not breathing
for 45 minutes when the rescue workers
came they resuscitated him and there was
no brain damage his core temperature had
dropped to 77 degrees as a magician I
think everything is possible and I think
if something is done by one person it
can be done by others I started to think
if the boy could survive without
breathing for that long there must be a
way that I could do it so I met with the
top neurosurgeon and I asked him how
long is it possible to go without
breathing like how long could I go with
that air and he said to me that anything
over six minutes you have a serious risk
of hypoxic brain damage so I took that
as a challenge basically
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my first try I figured that I could do
something similar and I created a water
tank and I filled it with ice and
freezing cold water and I stayed inside
of that water tank hoping my temper my
core temperature would start to drop and
I was shivering and my first attempt to
hold my breath I couldn't even last a
minute so I realized that was completely
not going to work so I went to talk to a
doctor friend and I asked him what how
could I go how could I do that I want to
hold my breath for a really long time
how could it be done and he said David
you're a magician create the illusion of
not breathing it'll be much easier
so he came up with this idea of creating
a rebreather with a co2 scrubber which
was basically a a tube from Home Depot
with the balloons duct-taped to it that
he thought we could put inside of me and
somehow be able to circulate the air and
rebreathe with this thing in me that
this is a little hard to watch but this
is that attempt
so that clearly wasn't gonna work
then I actually started thinking about
liquid breathing there's a chemical
that's called per flu Bron and it's so
high in oxygen levels that in theory you
could breathe it so I got my hands on
that chemical filled the sink up with it
and stuck my face in the sink and tried
to breathe that in which is really
impossible it's basically like trying to
breathe as a doctor said while having an
elephant standing on your chest so that
idea disappeared
then I started thinking would it be
possible to hook up a heart-lung bypass
machine and have a surgery where it was
a tube going into my artery and then
appear to not breathe while they were
oxygenating my blood which was another
insane idea obviously then I thought
about the craziest idea of all the ideas
to actually do it
to actually try to hold my breath past
the point that doctors would consider
you brain-dead so I started researching
into pearl divers you know because they
go down for four minutes on one breath
and when I was researching Pro Bevers I
found the world of freediving it was the
most amazing thing that I ever
discovered pretty much there's many
different aspects to free diving there's
there's depth records where people go as
deep as I can and then there's static
apnea that's holding your breath as long
as you can in one place without moving
that was the one that I studied the
first thing that I learned is when
you're holding your breath
you should never move at all that wastes
energy and that depletes oxygen and it
builds up co2 in your blood so I learned
never to move and I learned how to slow
my heart rate down I had to remain
perfectly still and just relax and think
that I wasn't in my body and just
control that and then I learned how to
purge purging is basically
hyperventilating you blow in and out
you do that you get lightheaded you get
tingling and you're really ridding your
body of co2 so when you hold your breath
it's infinitely easier then I learned
that you have to take a huge breath if
you just hold it relax and never let any
air out and just hold and relax through
all the pain every morning and this is
four months I would wake up and the
first thing that I would do is I would
hold my breath for out of 52 minutes I
would hold my breath for 44 minutes so
basically what that means is I would
purge I'd breathe really hard for a
minute and then I would hold immediately
after for five and a half minutes then I
would breathe again for a minute purging
as hard as I can then immediately after
I would hold again for five and a half
minutes I would repeat this process
eight times in a row out of 52 minutes
you're only breathing for eight minutes
at the end of that you're completely
fried your brain you feel like you're
walking around in a daze when you have
these awful headaches basically I'm not
the best person to talk to what I'm
doing that stuff I started learning
about the world-record holder his name
is Tom zaebis and this guy is perfectly
built for holding his breath he's six
foot four he's a hundred and sixty
pounds and his total lung capacity is
twice the size of an average person I'm
six foot one in fat we'll say big-boned
I had to drop 50 pounds in three months
so everything that I put into my body I
considered as medicine every bit of food
was exactly what it was for its
nutritional value
I ate really small controlled portions
throughout the day and I started to
really adapt my body
the thinner I was the longer I was able
to hold my breath and by eating so well
and training so hard my resting heart
rate dropped to 38 beats per minute
which is lower than most Olympic
athletes in four months of training I
was able to hold my breath for over
seven minutes I wanted to try holding my
breath everywhere I wanted to try it in
the most extreme situations to see if I
could slow my heart rate down under
duress
I decided that I was gonna break the
world record live on prime-time
television the world record was eight
minutes and 58 seconds held by Tom Z the
SEC guy with the whale lungs I told you
about I assumed that I could put a water
tank at Lincoln Center and if I stayed
there a week not eating I would get
comfortable in that situation and I
would slow my metabolism which I was
sure would help me hold my breath longer
than I had been able to do it I was
completely wrong I entered the sphere a
week before the scheduled air date and I
thought everything seemed to be on track
two days before my big breath-hold
attempt for the record the producers of
my television special thought that just
watching somebody holding their breath
and almost drowning is too boring for
television
so I had to add handcuffs while holding
my breath to escape from this was a
critical mistake because of the movement
I was wasting oxygen and by seven
minutes I had gone into these awful
convulsions by 708 I started to black
out and by 7 minutes and 30 seconds they
had to pull my body out and bring me
back
I had failed on every level
so naturally the only way out of the
slump that I could think of was I
decided to call Oprah I told her that I
wanted to up the ante and hold my breath
longer than any human being ever had
this was a different record this is a
pure o2 static apnea record the guinness
had set the world record at 13 minutes
so basically you breathe pure o2 first
oxygenating your body flushing out co2
and you're able to hold much longer I
realized that my real competition was
the beaver
in January of OE Oprah gave me four
months to prepare and train so I would
sleep in a hypoxic tent and every night
a hypoxic tent is a tent that simulates
altitude at 15,000 feet so it's like
base camp Everest what that does is you
start building up the red blood cell
count in your body which helps you carry
oxygen better every morning again after
getting out of that tent your brain is
completely wiped out my first attempt on
pure o2 I was able to go up to 15
minutes so it was a pretty big success
the neurosurgeon pulled me out of the
water because in his mind at 15 minutes
your brain is done your your brain did
so he pulled me up and I was fine there
was one person there that was definitely
not impressed
it was my ex-girlfriend while I was
breaking the record underwater for the
first time she was sifting through my
blackberry checking all my messages my
brother had a picture of it Lisa
I then announced that I was going to go
for C this is record publicly and what
he did in response as he went on Regis
and Kelly and broke his old record then
his main competitor went out and broke
his records so he suddenly pushed the
record up to 16 minutes and 32 seconds
which was three minutes longer than I
had prepared you know it was longer than
the record now I wanted to get the
science times to document this I wanted
to get them to do a piece on it so I did
what any person seriously pursuing
scientific advancement would do I walked
into the New York Times offices and did
card tricks to everybody
so I don't know if it was the magic or
the lore of the Cayman Islands but John
Tierney flew down and did a piece on the
seriousness of breath-holding while he
was there I tried to impress him of
course and I did a dive down to 160 feet
which is like you know basically the
height of a 16-story building and as I
was coming up I blacked out underwater
which is really dangerous I'll tell you
drown
luckily Kirk had seen me and he swam
over and pulled me up so I started full
focus I completely trained to get my
breath hold time up for what I needed to
do but there was no way to prepare for
the live television aspect of it being
on Oprah but in practice I would do it
facedown floating on the pool but for TV
they wanted me to be upright so they
could see my face basically the other
problem was the the suit was so buoyant
that they had to strap my feet and to
keep me from floating up so I had to use
my legs to hold my feet into the straps
that were loose which is a real problem
for me that made me extremely nervous
raising the heartrate then what they
also did was which we never do before is
there was a heartrate monitor and it was
right next to the sphere so every time
my heart would be I fear that you know
the ticking really loud which is making
me norm more nervous and there's no way
to slow my heart rate down so normally I
would start at 38 beats per minute and
while holding my breath it would drop to
12 beats per minute which is pretty
unusual
this time it started at 120 beats and it
never went down I spent the first five
minutes underwater desperately trying to
slow my heart rate down I was just
sitting there thinking I've gotta slow
this down I'm gonna fail I'm gonna fail
and I was getting more nervous and the
heart rate just kept going up and up all
the way up to 150 beads basically it's
the same thing that created my downfall
Lincoln Center was a waste of o2 when I
made it to the halfway mark at eight
minutes I was 100% certain that I was
not going to be able to make this there
was no way for me to do it so I figured
Oprah had dedicated an hour to doing
this breath-hold thing if I had cracked
early it would be a whole show but how
depressed I am so
so I figured I'm better off just
fighting and staying there until i black
out at least and they can pull me out
take care of me and all that I kept
pushing to ten minutes of 10 minutes you
start getting all these really strong
tingling sensations and your fingers and
toes and I knew that that was blood
shunting when the blood rushes away from
your extremities to provide oxygen to
your vital organs at 11 minutes I
started feeling throbbing sensations in
my legs and my lips started to feel
really strange at minute 12 I started to
have ringing in my ears and I started to
feel my arm going numb and I'm a
hypochondriac and I remember arm numb
means heart attacks I started to really
get really paranoid then at 13 minutes
maybe because of the hypochondria might
like I started feeling pains all over my
chest it was it was awful it 14 minutes
I had these awful contractions like this
urge to breathe
fifteen minutes I was a suffering major
Oh to deprivation to the heart and I
started having a schema to the heart my
heartbeat would go from 120 to 50 to 150
to 40 to 20 to 150 again it would skip a
beat it would start it would stop and I
felt all this and I was sure that I was
gonna have a heart attack so it's 16
minutes what I did is I slid my feet out
because I knew that if I did go out if I
did have a heart attack
they'd have to jump into the body and
take my feet out before pulling me up so
I was really nervous so I let my feet
out and I started floating to the top
and I didn't take my head out and I was
just floating there waiting for my heart
to stop just waiting
they had doctors with the you know
sitting there waiting and then suddenly
I hear screaming and I think there's
some weird thing that I had died or
something had happened and then I
realized that I had made it to 1632 so
with the energy of everybody that was
there I decided to keep pushing and I
went to 17 minutes and four seconds
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as though that wasn't enough what I did
immediately afters I went to quest labs
and had them take every blood sample
that they could the test for everything
and to see where my levels were so the
doctors could use it once again I also
didn't want anybody to question it I had
the world record and I wanted to make
sure it was legitimate so I get to New
York City the next day and this kid
walks up to me I'm walking out of the
Apple Store this kid walks up to me he's
like yo D I'm like yeah he said if you
really held your breath that long why'd
you come out of the water dry and that's
my life so as a magician I try to show
things to people that seem impossible
and I think magic whether I'm holding my
breath or shuffling a deck of cards is
pretty simple it's practice it's
training and it's accessible it's
practice it's training and experimenting
while pushing through the pain to be the
best that I can be and that's that's
what magic is to me so thank you
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