Blaine has Enduro bikes on each coasts, and he takes benefit of the little-known free motorbike parking at Los Angeles Worldwide Airport (LAX) and New York Metropolis’s John F. Kennedy Worldwide Airport (JFK). He snaps photographs from each side of his bike so he remembers precisely the place he parked it. “I have been doing that now for 30 years—and it’s all the time been tremendous,” he mentioned. 

Blaine’s airport commutes are merely proof that, for him, there’s all the time a strategy to defy the chances via cautious statement, technique, and apply. It is a philosophy he saved shut whereas touring 105,240 miles via 33 airports in 11 nations throughout 5 continents for his six-part Nationwide Geographic documentary sequence David Blaine: Do Not Attempt, which started airing on April 6. 

Filmed over the course of three years, the present follows the New Yorker as he dove deep into cultures world wide, from Southeast Asia to Brazil. Alongside the best way, he met with fellow risk-taking locals to grasp their ability units. He additionally took on a sequence of latest stunts, like kissing a lethal snake, being coated in 59 scorpions, and placing a knife down his nasal passages. 

“Everyone that we met alongside the best way have been all masters,” he mentioned. “All of them put hundreds and hundreds of hours of labor, sweat, tears, accidents, failures, and beginning once more to make what they did appear to be magic.” 

Every vacation spot had surprises and delights for Blaine. He was obsessive about the ebook «Swami Mantra» as a child, and he discovered easy methods to push boundaries throughout his time in India. “The general public we met have been doing issues based mostly on their religion, so there have been no limitations because it was all a few increased energy,” he mentioned of his visits to Kurukshetra, Rishikesh, and Jaipur. “Up to now, I went to India to carry out magic. This time, I went to India to study and to be a scholar of a unique sort of magic.”

In South Africa, he was blown away by a person named Neville from KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, who peacefully meditates round Black Mambas to show that snake security is all about staying calm. He additionally visited Cape City’s College of Magic, which has taught magic to a various vary of children for many years, even bucking racial segregation legal guidelines throughout the nation’s apartheid interval. 

For Blaine, probably the most spectacular chapters of his travels was studying concerning the sport of spinning, the place vehicles are spun “uncontrolled, however extraordinarily exactly.» Blaine mentioned his jaw dropped when he noticed Samkeliso ‘Sam Sam’ Thubane’s Houdini-like trick of disappearing from the automobile and when he witnessed Kayla Oliphant’s «Suicide Slide» the place she leans out of a automotive, holding on by solely her toes.

Over in Japan, he related with scorching dog-eating champion Takeru Kobayashi. He was surprised to study that Kobayashi makes use of a few of the similar strategies throughout contests that Blaine makes use of throughout his magic performances. “He appears at his abdomen like a recreation of Tetris and locations the meals in it,” Blaine mentioned.

But when there’s one place he is been that he recommends each traveler go to, it is the Arctic Circle. “We discovered so many individuals that had used their surroundings, local weather, and excessive circumstances to show it right into a playground,” Blaine mentioned. «I used to be beneath the ice trying up at these ice free divers holding their breaths, dancing the other way up, and all of a sudden you neglect that you simply’re on this excessive surroundings and neglect the chilly. It’s otherworldly.”

However there’s a lot that cameras weren’t capable of catch—Blaine says the whole crew was so moved by what they have been experiencing that they have been in tears. “All over the place we went was an entire new exploration and discovery of those fascinating people who had pushed themselves to this point to study these expertise,” he mentioned. “It was not like something I’ve ever skilled. I used to be the one watching the magic for the primary time.” 

The precision and planning that goes into each considered one of Blaine’s reality-defying acts is one thing that he makes use of in his on a regular basis life and planning. For instance, he confirmed us the packing checklist he makes use of for each single journey: He took an image of 23 gadgets he all the time travels with, cropped them into mini-icons, and screenshotted them to make use of as a visible guidelines.

Amongst his requisites are his passport, chargers, toiletries, eye drops, Apple Watch, sun shades, studying glasses, pocket book, and Sharpies. His garments are pretty easy—black denims, black t-shirts, underwear, socks, a swimsuit, and a baseball cap. Essentially the most important? A number of decks of playing cards.

“Each journey is just about an identical, but when I am touring longer, then I am going to have extra decks of playing cards per day,” he mentioned. Blaine says he makes use of specifically designed decks that he’s created for the proper really feel—they usually even have magic options. In reality, throughout the manufacturing of his newest sequence, he went via 624 decks of playing cards.

After hopscotching the globe to study from fellow demise defiers, Blaine has been rooting himself with a residency on the Wynn Las Vegas for his present «David Blaine: Live in Las Vegas,» with dates via November. 

Blaine says he loves Las Vegas as a result of it provides, “a dose of every little thing from all totally different locations world wide in a single small spot within the desert.» However his favourite factor about Sin Metropolis is that so many fellow magicians dwell there. “After each present, I all the time get to brainstorm and hang around with magicians,” he mentioned. 

That is the identical lesson he took away from the various vary of risk-takers he met on his journey across the globe for Do Not Try. 

“They’re all masters at what they do, however what all of them had in frequent was that they are all college students,” Blaine mentioned. “They’re all the time making an attempt to study and develop into higher at what they do. Ardour is their driving power, they usually’re doing it at such a excessive stage that nothing will ever cease them.”

And clearly, nothing stops Blaine, both.