“100 years ago, there was a guy that converted his stomach into an aquarium. Where he could store live creatures, and then he could bring them up at will. I mean, if it was possible…”
In 2016, on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, the audience watched David Blaine follow up on his words, regurgitating and spitting out a live frog. Beyond the initial shock that his opening stunt elicited, anyone remotely familiar with their own anatomy automatically wondered—how? In fact, magicians across the globe remained stumped by this trick—with some accounts remarking that he regurgitates one of the same three frogs every time—until the realization soon dawned that it wasn’t magic. By training his body to safely hold a frog in his stomach, he had “successfully” converted his stomach into an aquarium.
That wasn’t the last time that people would see David Blaine, nor was it the first. Blaine’s sleight of hand compromised just a fraction of his career, and pales next to his spectacular array of stunts.
On April 5th, 1999, he embarked on a week-long challenge in a coffin buried alive, surviving on nothing but water. Come November 27th, 2000, he trapped himself in a large block of ice for 63 hours, enduring hallucinations, sleep deprivation, and freezing temperatures. In 2002, he stood on a 100 foot tall pillar in Bryant Park for 35 hours. His hallucinations in the final hours made the skyscrapers around him appear to be animal heads. Just a year later, Blaine sealed himself in a suspended Plexiglas box in London, fasting for 44 days and 44 nights, which was documented in the reputable New England Journal of Medicine, leading to scientific research.
By February 10th, 2008, the world record underwater breath-hold was held by Peter Colat, who held his breath for 16 minutes and 32 seconds. Blaine shortly surpassed this record with his own 17 minutes and 4.4 seconds in April that same year, live on the Oprah Winfrey Show with doctors, experts, and the Guinness World Records team present.
In an interview on The Tim Ferriss Show in 2017, Ferriss asked, “Were any of your performances… easier than expected?” to which Blaine promptly responded, “Nope.”
Blaine’s long-held curiosity for the impossible stems directly from his mother. As he recalled on The Tim Ferriss Show, when he first declared “I’m going to be a magician one day,” his mother, Patricia White, responded enthusiastically, “That’s amazing!” propelling him through the beginning steps of his career. Although his mother who nurtured his dream and fostered his imagination, never lived to see his incredible achievements, he knows it was her constant encouragement that helped him to succeed.
As Blaine discovered through his mother’s journals, before she went out on her own, she had been a part of a wealthy Jewish mafia family, whose life revolved around East coast night clubs and real estate. Eventually, she would flee from that lifestyle and pursue her own happiness, becoming a schoolteacher and conceiving a child.
His father, on the other hand, has been referred to as a deeply traumatized Vietnam veteran who was eventually hooked on heroin. David Blaine never grew up with his father, although he recalled one incident as a child where he was instructed to walk on a board between two windows, his father tightly clutching his hand. He told Graham Bensinger in an interview, “I think he was teaching me [that] you don’t need to have fear, but it might have worked. So maybe that whole psychology of him teaching me not to be afraid [was] because he was probably so traumatized and so afraid in war.” Later in his life, he received a call from the police informing him that his father had overdosed on heroin, although Blaine hardly knew him enough to truly grieve his death.
The first time that Blaine performed a trick for his mother, she freaked out with excitement. She then made him perform it for all her friends, who responded just as ecstatically. A critical moment in Blaine’s story came when he stumbled across a book describing Houdini and began exploring his impressive stunts and tricks. From then on, in the manner in which Blaine typically describes Houdini’s effect upon him, Houdini’s stunts created enticing mental images that he could not get rid of. A man bound in chains, suspended in midair, or occasionally caught on fire—these images permanently etched into Blaine’s mind.
By the time Blaine turned 16, his mother fell ill with cancer, and he felt his life shatter upon her death 4 years later.
In fact, it was the suffering that his mother endured, which never swayed her optimistic outlook, which was exemplified in his first stunt Buried Alive. “My mother’s strength made me believe that anything is possible.”
Blaine’s 1996 debut, David Blaine Street Magic, was recorded all over the country, approaching all walks of life and performing close up magic. This was the first time that the magic focused on the audience reaction instead of the magician. It was the ability to do magic with everyday objects, including a deck of cards and a quarter from a stranger, which would make people scream, jump, and run away.
By the early 2010s, it was near-impossible not to have heard of David Blaine. During this period, he rose steadily to fame, releasing David Blaine: Real or Magic in 2013, then David Blaine: Beyond Magic in 2016. Blaine consistently performed around the world, including performing magic for Presidents and well known celebrities such as President Bush, President Clinton, President Obama, Harrison Ford, Margot Robbie, Dave Chappelle, Michael Jordan, Michael Jackson, Lebron James, Steph Curry, Jennifer Lawrence, Will Smith, Emma Stone and many more.
Despite his burgeoning success and proliferating prominence, he has often remarked that he did not pursue magic for profit, and he has denied almost every advertising opportunity offered to him.
Today, however, the David Blaine whom most audiences recognize appears in a different format. Through his new 2025 National Geographic show David Blaine Do Not Attempt, no longer is Blaine the star of the show, but the one in awe of magic performed by masters around the world. There is something beautiful about recognizing not only your personal strength, but the near-limitless capabilities of humans. From divers, to tight-rope walkers, to snake-masters, to plenty more highlights, the viewers are permanently in awe from the start to the end of the show. However, the essence of Blaine’s love to achieve the impossible is still there–both attempting the stunts he is taught and creating his own feats of endurance and spectacle.
In an era when magic is often relegated to children’s birthday parties and CGI-drenched movies, Blaine has insisted on making it raw and dangerous again—dragging it into the streets, into glass boxes over the Thames, and into the airspace of Arizona where he floated into the sky holding helium balloons like a modern-day Icarus. His approach is not about dazzling people with flashy tricks; it’s about redefining what is humanly possible in a world that increasingly takes wonder for granted. Blaine doesn’t just perform magic. He dares us to remember what it feels like to believe in it.
There is a lot to learn from David Blaine. Beyond his capabilities, and beyond the incredible people he meets, he inspires some to actualize their own potential. Ironically, against the warning “Do Not Attempt,” there is something else that Blaine hopes for the viewers to try at home—to find their own limits, and then break them. While that should not mean attempting to replicate Blaine’s stunts, it might mean sitting still with discomfort, confronting fear, or pursuing a goal that seems just beyond reach.
Through each performance, Blaine’s message remains the same: don’t try to be him. Try to be more you than you ever thought possible. And unlike his stunts, that is the kind of magic that anyone can attempt.
Thank you David Blaine for editing this article.
Through each performance, Blaine’s message remains the same: don’t try to be him. Try to be more you than you ever thought possible. And unlike his stunts, that is the kind of magic that anyone can attempt.