As a magician, I try to create images thatmake people stop and think.

I also try to challenge myself to do thingsthat doctors say are not possible.

I was buried alive in New York City in acoffin, 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 Idecided I could pursue doing more of these things.

The next one is I froze myself in a blockof ice for three days and three nights in New York City.

That one was way more difficult than I hadexpected.

The one after that, I stood on top of ahundred-foot pillar for 36 hours.

I began to hallucinate so hard that thebuildings 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 44days with nothing but water.

It was, for me, one of the most difficultthings I'd ever done, but it was also the most beautiful.

There were so many skeptics, especially thepress in London, that they started flying cheeseburgers on helicopters aroundmy box to tempt me.

So, I felt very validated when the NewEngland Journal of Medicine actually used the research for science.

My next pursuit was I wanted to see howlong I could go without breathing, like how long I could survive with nothing,not even air.

I didn'trealize that it would become the most amazing journey of my life.

Video 2

As a young magician, I was obsessed withHoudini and his underwater challenges.

So, I began, early on, competing againstthe other kids,

seeing how long I could stay underwaterwhile they went up and down to breathe, you know, five times, while I stayedunder on one breath.

By the time I was a teenager, I was able tohold my breath for three minutes and 30 seconds.

I would later find out that was Houdini'spersonal record.

In 1987 I heard of a story about a boy thatfell through ice and was trapped under a river.

He was underneath, not breathing for 45minutes.

When the rescue workers came, theyresuscitated him and there was no brain damage.

His core temperature had dropped to 77degrees.

As a magician, I think everything ispossible.

And I think if something is done by oneperson, it can be done by others.

I started to think, if the boy couldsurvive without breathing for that long, there must be a way that I could doit.

So, I met with a top neurosurgeon.

And I asked him, how long is it possible togo without breathing, like how long could I go without air?

And he said to me that anything over sixminutes you have a serious risk of hypoxic brain damage.

So, I took that as a challenge, basically.

My first try, I figured that I could dosomething similar, and I created a water tank, and I filled it with ice andfreezing cold water.

And I stayed inside of that water tank hopingmy core temperature would start to drop.

And I was shivering. In my first attempt tohold my breath, I couldn't even last a minute.

So, I realized that was completely notgoing to work.

I went to talk to a doctor friend

and I asked him, "How could I dothat?"

"I want to hold my breath for a reallylong time. How could it be done?"

And he said, "David, you're amagician, create the illusion of not breathing, it will be much easier."

So, he came up with this idea of creating arebreather, with a CO2 scrubber,

which was basically a tube from Home Depot,with a balloon 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.

This is a little hard to watch. But this isthat attempt.

So, that clearly wasn't going to work.

Then I actually started thinking aboutliquid breathing.

There is a chemical that's calledperflubron.

And it's so high in oxygen levels that intheory you could breathe it.

So, I got my hands on that chemical, filledthe sink up with it,

and stuck my face in the sink and tried tobreathe that in, which was really impossible.

It's basically like trying to breathe, as adoctor said, while having an elephant standing on your chest.

So, that idea disappeared.

Then I started thinking, would it bepossible to hook up a heart/lung bypass machine

and have a surgery where it was a tubegoing into my artery,

and then appear to not breathe while theywere oxygenating my blood?

Which was another insane idea, obviously.

Then I thought about the craziest idea ofall the ideas: to actually do it.

To actually try to hold my breath past thepoint that doctors would consider you brain dead.

So, I started researching into pearldivers.

You know, because they go down for fourminutes on one breath.

And when I was researching pearl divers, Ifound the world of free-diving.

It was the most amazing thing that I everdiscovered, pretty much.

There is many different aspects tofree-diving.

There is depth records, where people go asdeep as they can.

And then there is static apnea.

That's holding your breath as long as youcan in one place without moving.

That was the one that I studied.

The first thing that I learned is whenyou're holding your breath, you should never move at all; that wastes energy.

And that depletes oxygen, and it builds upCO2 in your blood.

So, I learned never to move. And I learnedhow to slow my heart rate down.

I had to remain perfectly still and justrelax 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 gettingling.

And you're really ridding your body of CO2.

So, when you hold your breath, it'sinfinitely easier.

Then I learned that you have to take a hugebreath,

and just hold and relax and never let anyair out, and just hold and relax through all the pain.

Every morning, this is for months, I wouldwake up and the first thing that I would do is I would hold my breath

for, out of 52 minutes, I would hold mybreath for 44 minutes.

So, basically what that means is I wouldpurge, I'd breathe really hard for a minute.

And I would hold, immediately after, forfive and a half minutes.

Then I would breathe again for a minute,purging as hard as I can,

then immediately after that I would holdagain for five and a half minutes.

I would repeat this process eight times ina row.

Out of 52 minutes, you're only breathingfor eight minutes.

At the end of that you're completely fried,

your brain. You feel like you're walkingaround in a daze. And you have these awful headaches.

Basically, I'm not the best person to talkto when I'm doing that stuff.

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I started learning about the world-recordholder.

His name is Tom Sietas.

And this guy is perfectly built for holdinghis breath.

He's six foot four.

He's 160 pounds.

And his total lung capacity is twice thesize of an average person.

I'm six foot one, and fat.

We'll say big-boned.

I had to drop 50 pounds in three months.

So, everything that I put into my body, Iconsidered as medicine.

Every bit of food was exactly what it wasfor its nutritional value.

I ate really small controlled portionsthroughout the day.

And I started to really adapt my body.

The thinner I was, the longer I was able tohold 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 mostOlympic athletes.

In four months of training, I was able tohold my breath for over seven minutes.

I wanted to try holding my breatheverywhere. I wanted to try it in the most extreme situations to see if I couldslow my heart rate down under duress.

I decided that I was going to break theworld record live on prime-time television.

The world record was eight minutes and 58seconds, held by Tom Sietas, that guy with the whale lungs I told you about.

I assumed that I could put a water tank atLincoln Center

and if I stayed there a week not eating, Iwould get comfortable in that situation

and I would slow my metabolism, which I wassure 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 thescheduled air date.

And I thought everything seemed to be ontrack.

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 holdingmy breath, to escape from.

This was a critical mistake.

Because of the movement, I was wastingoxygen.

And by seven minutes I had gone into theseawful convulsions.

By 7:08, I started to black out.

And by seven minutes and 30 seconds, theyhad to pull my body out and bring me back.

I had failed on every level.

So, naturally, the only way out of theslump that I could think of was, I decided to call Oprah.

I told her that I wanted to up the ante andhold my breath longer than any human being ever had.

This was a different record. This was apure O2 static apnea record that Guinness had set the world record at 13minutes.

So, basically you breathe pure O2 first,oxygenating your body, flushing out CO2, and you are able to hold much longer.

I realized that my real competition was thebeaver.

In January of '08, Oprah gave me fourmonths to prepare and train.

So, I would sleep in a hypoxic tent everynight.

A hypoxic tent is a tent that simulatesaltitude at 15,000 feet. So, it's like base camp, Everest.

What that does is, you start building upthe red bloodcell count in your body, which helps you carry oxygen better.

Every morning, again, after getting out ofthat tent, your brain is completely wiped out.

My first attempt on pure O2, I was able togo up to 15 minutes.

So, it was a pretty big success.

The neurosurgeon pulled me out of the waterbecause in his mind, at 15 minutes your brain is done, you're brain dead.

So, he pulled me up, and I was fine.

There was one person there that wasdefinitely not impressed.

It was my ex-girlfriend.

While I was breaking the record underwaterfor the first time, she was sifting through my Blackberry, checking all mymessages.

My brother had a picture of it. It isreally --

I then announced that I was going to go forSietas' record, publicly.

And what he did in response, is he went onRegis and Kelly, and broke his old record.

Then his main competitor went out and brokehis record.

So, he suddenly pushed the record up to 16minutes and 32 seconds.

Which was three minutes longer than I hadprepared. It was longer than the record.

I wanted to get the Science Times todocument this. I wanted to get them to do a piece on it.

So, I did what any person seriouslypursuing scientific advancement would do.

I walked into the New York Times officesand did card tricks to everybody.

So, I don't know if it was the magic or thelure of the Cayman Islands, but John Tierney flew down and did a piece on theseriousness of breath-holding.

While he was there, I tried to impress him,of course.

And I did a dive down to 160 feet, which isbasically the height of a 16 story building,

and as I was coming up, I blacked outunderwater, which is really dangerous; that's how you drown.

Luckily, Kirk had seen me and he swam overand pulled me up.

Vedio4

So, I started full focus.

I completely trained to get my breath-holdtime up for what I needed to do.

But there was no way to prepare for thelive television aspect of it, being on Oprah.

But in practice, I would do it face down,floating on the pool.

But for TV they wanted me to be upright sothey could see my face, basically.

The other problem was the suit was sobuoyant that they had to strap my feet in to keep me from floating up.

So, I had to use my legs to hold my feetinto the straps that were loose, which was a real problem for me.

That made me extremely nervous, raising theheart rate.

Then, what they also did was, which wenever did before, is there was a heart-rate monitor.

And it was right next to the sphere.

So, every time my heart would beat, I'dhear the beep-beep-beep-beep, you know, the ticking, really loud.

Which was making me more nervous. And therewas no way to slow my heart rate down.

Normally, I would start at 38 beats perminute, 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 itnever went down.

I spent the first five minutes underwaterdesperately trying to slow my heart rate down.

I was just sitting there thinking,"I've got to slow this down. I'm going to fail."

And I was getting more nervous. And theheart rate just kept going up and up, all the way up to 150 beats.

Basically it's the same thing that createdmy downfall at Lincoln Center. It was a waste of O2.

When I made it to the halfway mark, ateight minutes, I was 100 percent certain that I was not going to be able tomake this.

There was no way for me to do it.

I figured, Oprah had dedicated an hour todoing this breath-hold thing,

if I had cracked early, it would be a wholeshow about how depressed I am.

So, I figured I'm better off just fightingand staying there until I black out, at least then they can pull me out andtake care of me and all that.

I kept pushing to 10 minutes.

At 10 minutes you start getting all thesereally strong tingling sensations in your fingers and toes.

And I knew that that was blood shunting,when the blood rushes away from your extremities to provide oxygen to yourvital organs.

At 11 minutes I started feeling throbbingsensations in my legs, and my lips started to feel really strange.

At minute 12 I started to have ringing inmy ears, and I started to feel my arm going numb.

And I'm a hypochondriac, and I remember armnumb means heart attack. So, I started to really get really paranoid.

Then at 13 minutes, maybe because of thehypochondria, I started feeling pains all over my chest. It was awful.

At 14 minutes, I had these awfulcontractions, like this urge to breathe.

At 15 minutes I was suffering major O2deprivation to the heart.

And I started having ischemia to the heart.

My heartbeat would go from 120 to 50, to150, to 40, to 20, to 150 again.

It would skip a beat. It would start. Itwould stop. And I felt all this.

And I was sure that I was going to have aheart attack.

So, at 16 minutes what I did is I slid myfeet out because I knew that if I did go out,

if I did have a heart attack, they'd haveto jump into the binding and take my feet out before pulling me up.

I was really nervous.

I let my feet out, and I started floatingto the top.

And I didn't take my head out.

But I was just floating there waiting formy heart to stop, just waiting.

They had doctors with the "Pst,"you know, sitting there waiting.

And then suddenly I hear screaming.

And I think that there is some weird thing-- that I had died or something had happened.

And then I realized that I had made it to16:32.

So, with the energy of everybody that wasthere, I decided to keep pushing. And I went to 17 minutes and four seconds.

As though that wasn't enough, what I didimmediately after is I went to Quest Labs and had them take every blood sample

that they could to test for everything andto 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,I'm walking out of the Apple store, and this kid walks up to me

he's like, "Yo, D!" I'm like"Yeah?"

He said, "If you really held yourbreath that long, why'd you come out of the water dry?"

I was like "What?"

And that's my life. So --

As a magician, I try to show things topeople that seem impossible.  

And I think magic, whether I'm holding mybreath or shuffling a deck of cards, is pretty simple.

It's practice, it's training, and it's --(Sobs) It's practice, it's training and experimenting,

while pushing through the pain to be thebest that I can be.

And that's what magic is to me, so, thankyou.