From the independent producer project of KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Bob Carlson and this is Unfictional.

Unfictional is a program of true stories and personal documentaries and today on the program

The Fragile Brain.

I thought that the world was about to end and that I was being broadcast live on

primetime television on all the channels. It's only protected by a couple of layers of

tough membrane and your hard but brittle skull. Meanwhile it has to fight off attacks from toxins, chemical imbalances,

traumas of all sorts.

Quite a lot of erase from my memory.

It's a bit of a gray zone. Once your brain is damaged, you risk

losing the main thing you've got to make sense of yourself and the world. On this

episode of unfictional, two stories about a brain under attack.

Beginning with the story of the deepest man on Earth.

Do you remember swimming in a pool as a kid

and competing with all the other kids

over who could set the record for holding their breath the longest

underwater?

Well, without realizing it, you were unofficially competing in a sport called

free diving. There are, in fact, about eight categories of free diving, each with its own set of rules

from the kind where you stay still in a swimming pool under water without moving

for as long as possible all the way up to the ocean discipline known as no limits free diving.

Weights and ropes can be used to descend.

And the diver comes up with inflatable bags or a canoe-shaped compartment called a sled

...