From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Bob Carlson and this is unfictional.

Unfictional is KCRW's program of Stories and Original Documentaries.

It's a part of the Independent Producer Project.

And today we're going to listen to a program

originally produced a couple of years ago,

featuring long-distance swimmer Diana Nyad.

What exactly happens to your brain when you swim for over two days straight?

You are truly left alone with your own thoughts.

After a while, your left brain... left alone with your own thoughts.

After a while your left brain doesn't function anymore.

You're over in your dream state, right brain,

and it's kind of like you were watching yourself dream. We have an uneasy

relationship with the ocean, but despite the dangers, despite the vast size,

despite the very unknowingness of the ocean and probably because of it we want to go back in.

Look at surfers for example.

Surfers have made something of a religion around being in the ocean.

No one dances with the power and the

danger of the ocean like a surfer. My name is Greg Rochelle, I'm president of the Black Surfing Association.

Surfers get to see a side of the ocean of a wave that others can't.

When it happens just right, it's so amazing that you never forget it.

I do remember the first time I got in the tube on a wave. Yeah. It's the tube, the barrel, the shack, the green room, the keg, the pit, the womb. It's one of the coolest things you can do in surfing. What it is, the waves, sometimes they kind of fold on each other,

but sometimes if the wind is right, the wave actually makes a hollow tube

...