#1527 - David Blaine

David Blaine (0:00)

This is a great collection.

Joe Rogan (0:02)

Yeah, these are all from Plasticelle. Look, even the sunglasses come off on Biggie.

David Blaine (0:07)

Wow.

Joe Rogan (0:07)

Yeah, it's pretty dope.

We got John Wick, John Wick and his pit bull, Richard Pryor. Yeah, I got Kanye, Bruce Lee.

David Blaine (0:19)

But the glasses on Biggie is amazing.

Joe Rogan (0:21)

I know. Well, this guy is amazing. Shout out to Fong from Plasticelle. He makes some dope shit.

Yeah, he's amazing. Not as amazing as that shit you did in the green room, man. David just did some card wizardry.

It's one thing that you see when you see that shit on TV, you're like, if I was there, I'd see some shit. I know what's going on. But when you see it in real life, you're like, what is happening here?

David Blaine (0:47)

Yeah, it's way better in person.

Joe Rogan (0:50)

Oh, yeah. Well, at the end, I don't want to give it any way, but the end, literally, a man is holding one of his wrists and another guy is holding the other wrist, and he still does the card trick, and we still can't figure out what happened.

When did you get started? How old were you?

David Blaine (1:06)

So I was about five years old when I started playing with cards, but I didn't know what they were for, really. So I just had a deck of cards that I carried everywhere. But I liked the way it felt, you know? Just like it felt like something cool.

So eventually, a librarian was like, oh, we got this magic self-working card trick book in. Do you want to learn something? And I was like, yeah, of course. And she shows me that silly self-working mathematical trick that's a long process to do, but it's still a cool outcome. Like, oh, I found your card, right?

And my mother, I used to wait for her at the library, and she'd come get me when she was done. And when she came, I said, can I show you this trick? And the librarian was excited for me to do it to her, which is what I do to my friends' kids. I teach them a trick and make them really good at it. And then I'm so excited to see them do it, you know?

Joe Rogan (2:00)

Right.

David Blaine (2:01)

So my mother comes and I do the trick, and my mom goes crazy. Like, it was the best thing ever.

But that began the love of wanting to learn new tricks, because I wanted to keep making her react, you know, happy. So that was basically the fundamental start of it. And then also, she would take me to Coney Island all the time.

And you know, on the boardwalk there, there's those weird freak show performers. So I'd watch those guys. And to me, it was all like magical. So that was kind of the beginning of it.

Joe Rogan (2:36)

So isn't it funny how one positive experience when you're young can ignite this chain of events?

David Blaine (2:43)

Yeah, that changes your whole life, by the way. And also, so then the librarian, when I would come, she would give me books, and I would start looking at that little magic section that was between like games and puzzles. I thought, I always wished magic would be like not there, like it should be like an art or something, you know? Just, it was always like when you want a magic book, it's always like that silly, like kids' jokey thing. But there's like, so in that section, I pulled out a book, and I was like six years old, and I see a guy chained to the side of a building, staring out, looking like death is upon him, and that was Houdini.

And I didn't know anything about what that all meant. I looked through the pictures, and he was hanging upside down and stuff like that. But when I went to sleep, I would have these dreams of this guy chained to the side of a building.

And that began my curiosity and love of Houdini. And then that began my curiosity of like, not just like the magic trick stuff, but like this stuff that's to me, it's more like real.

Joe Rogan (3:46)

Yeah. How do those two worlds collide? Because some of the things you're doing, they're just insane endurance and mental exercises.

And then other things you're doing are what you would consider magic.

David Blaine (4:00)

Right. So I love both separately, like independently, like I always love, like I had a karate teacher at the YMCA that used to make us all run barefoot in the snow in the winter in Brooklyn, and all the kids were young, we're like six, seven, and all the kids are like, ah, and afraid they were going to cut their feet on glass, whatever. And I would run in it, and I felt like I could do this because I wasn't good at other things physically, like I was more at my feet turned in and stuff like that. So I felt like I could do these things. So then I learned how to hold my breath. And the reason I learned how to hold my breath was simply because I was on the swim team at the Y also and the other kids would swim back and forth and they'd destroy me because my feet didn't function perfectly well.