David Blaine and Diana Nyad on the Art of Endurance

Outside Podcast

Sports, Wilderness

4.4 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 9 July 2025

⏱️ 64 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

For decades, legendary magician David Blaine has completed record-breaking stunts that defy the impossible: He has held his breath for more than 17 minutes, was buried alive for seven days, frozen alive for three days, fasted for 44 days, caught a bullet fired from a gun in his mouth, and so much more. In his new National Geographic series David Blaine: Do Not Attempt, he travels the planet to learn from extraordinary performers. What drives him to probe our capacity for fear, risk, and pain? There’s nobody better to talk to Blaine about this than Diana Nyad, the first person to swim from Cuba to Florida without the aid of a shark cage, covering 110.86 miles in just under 53 hours. In this riveting conversation recorded at the 2025 Outside Festival, these two icons explore the art of human endurance.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the Outside Podcast with Paddyo.
0:12.3	Welcome to the ideas program at the Outside Festival.
0:16.5	The next session will begin in five minutes.
0:19.7	Please take your seats and silence your mobile devices.
0:23.8	Howdy, pals, we've got something extra fun for you today.
0:27.8	And to help explain the auditory delicacy we're about to serve up to you is a voice I'm sure you'll remember from the podcast days of your my good friend Mike Roberts.
0:39.1	Did we get to Good Friend?
0:40.9	Are we still working towards that maybe?
0:43.5	So rude, so rude.
0:45.4	Okay.
0:45.8	I just wanted to ask.
0:47.2	Moving along.
0:48.7	So anyways, Mike, used to host this show, but now you have a new super cool creative gig at Outside.
0:56.0	Can you tell us how you spend your days now, please?
0:58.0	Yeah.
0:58.2	So I get to build the conversations that happen at the Outside Festival and Summit.
1:02.5	So that means I spend my days reaching out to athletes and explorers and storytellers and artists and activists and explain what we're building out there in Denver
1:12.2	and try to convince them to come join us and take part in these conversations.
1:16.8	And so there's a lot of matchmaking of trying to put interesting pairs and groups together
1:22.4	for what are supposed to be really inspiring conversations to get people who come to the event
1:27.2	to think bigger
1:28.5	about their own life and, of course, get off the couch and get outside. And you do an incredible
	...

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