For over two decades, David Blaine has been showcasing his prowess as both a magician and performance artist. Whether it's making a card disappear from a deck or sticking an ice pick in his hand, Blaine continues to push the boundaries of what the human body can endure. Many believe that his performance pieces are what separate him from other magicians, like Criss Angel and David Copperfield.
When he sat down to speak on Joe Rogan's podcast, David Blaine explained to everyone that certain stunts have seriously detrimental effects on the human body. Specifically, he detailed his traumatizing experience standing in a block of ice for over 63 hours.
As mentioned earlier, David Blaine has done many stunts over his well-documented career. He explained to Rogan how his love and admiration for Harry Houdini inspired his desire to do stunts. However, David never wanted to do the same tricks that Houdini had done. Since Houdini never got the chance to bury himself alive, David buried himself alive as his first public performance piece. In 2000, after surviving being buried alive, David set out to remain frozen in a block of ice for 72 hours.
As David explains to Joe, he wasn't able to sleep during the performance because touching the ice with any part of his body for a long period would have caused frostbite. However, not sleeping for hours took a serious toll on David. He explains that once "hour 55" passed, his "eyes went out." In other words, he began hallucinating, saying, "things are moving, spiders going up my arm, and I see people in the ice... voices are talking to me, and I'm talking back to them." While all of this was problematic, David felt that he was in serious trouble when he thought a few hours had passed by, when in reality, only one minute had passed. Soon after this realization, he gave up on the stunt and fell 9 hours short of his goal. Following his traumatizing hallucinations, he told Joe, "the one stunt I never did was sleep deprivation."
While David may not be performing sleep deprivation in the near future, he is gearing up for his newest stunt. On August 31st, David Blaine will attempt to float across the Hudson River using helium balloons. Needless to say, David Blaine plans to be awake for that.
