David Blaine on the One Thing Every Adrenaline Junkie Should Do—Plus His Secret to Getting to the Airport at the Last Minute

Blaine has Enduro bikes on both coasts, and he takes advantage of the little-known free motorcycle parking at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) and New York City’s John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK). He snaps photos from both sides of his bike so he remembers exactly where he parked it. “I’ve been doing that now for 30 years—and it’s always been fine,” he said. 

Blaine’s airport commutes are simply proof that, for him, there’s always a way to defy the odds through careful observation, strategy, and practice. It’s a philosophy he kept close while traveling 105,240 miles through 33 airports in 11 countries across five continents for his six-part National Geographic documentary series David Blaine: Do Not Attempt, which began airing on April 6. 

Filmed over the course of three years, the show follows the New Yorker as he dove deep into cultures around the world, from Southeast Asia to Brazil. Along the way, he met with fellow risk-taking locals to understand their skill sets. He also took on a series of new stunts, like kissing a deadly snake, being covered in 59 scorpions, and putting a knife down his nasal passages. 

“Everybody that we met along the way were all masters,” he said. “They all put thousands and thousands of hours of work, sweat, tears, injuries, failures, and starting again to make what they did seem like magic.” 

Each destination had surprises and delights for Blaine. He was obsessed with the book “Swami Mantra” as a kid, and he learned how to push boundaries during his time in India. “Most of the people we met were doing things based on their faith, so there were no limitations since it was all about a higher power,” he said of his visits to Kurukshetra, Rishikesh, and Jaipur. “In the past, I went to India to perform magic. This time, I went to India to learn and to be a student of a different kind of magic.”

In South Africa, he was blown away by a man named Neville from KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, who peacefully meditates around Black Mambas to prove that snake safety is all about staying calm. He also visited Cape Town’s College of Magic, which has taught magic to a diverse range of kids for decades, even bucking racial segregation laws during the nation’s apartheid period. 

For Blaine, one of the most spectacular chapters of his travels was learning about the sport of spinning, where cars are spun “out of control, but extremely precisely.” Blaine said his jaw dropped when he saw Samkeliso ‘Sam Sam’ Thubane’s Houdini-like trick of disappearing from the vehicle and when he witnessed Kayla Oliphant’s “Suicide Slide” where she leans out of a car, holding on by only her toes.

Over in Japan, he connected with hot dog-eating champion Takeru Kobayashi. He was stunned to learn that Kobayashi uses some of the same techniques during contests that Blaine uses during his magic performances. “He looks at his stomach like a game of Tetris and places the food in it,” Blaine said.

But if there’s one place he’s been that he recommends every traveler visit, it’s the Arctic Circle. “We found so many people that had used their environment, climate, and extreme conditions to turn it into a playground,” Blaine said. “I was under the ice looking up at these ice free divers holding their breaths, dancing upside down, and suddenly you forget that you’re in this extreme environment and forget the cold. It’s otherworldly.”

But there’s plenty that cameras weren’t able to catch—Blaine says the entire crew was so moved by what they were experiencing that they were in tears. “Everywhere we went was a whole new exploration and discovery of these fascinating people that had pushed themselves so far to learn these skills,” he said. “It was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. I was the one watching the magic for the first time.” 

The precision and planning that goes into every one of Blaine’s reality-defying acts is something that he uses in his everyday life and planning. For example, he showed us the packing list he uses for every single trip: He took a picture of 23 items he always travels with, cropped them into mini-icons, and screenshotted them to use as a visual checklist.

Among his requisites are his passport, chargers, toiletries, eye drops, Apple Watch, sunglasses, reading glasses, notebook, and Sharpies. His clothes are fairly simple—black jeans, black t-shirts, underwear, socks, a swimsuit, and a baseball cap. The most essential? Multiple decks of cards.

“Every trip is pretty much identical, but if I’m traveling longer, then I’ll have more decks of cards per day,” he said. Blaine says he uses specially designed decks that he’s created for the right feel—and they also have magic features. In fact, during the production of his latest series, he went through 624 decks of cards.

After hopscotching the globe to learn from fellow death defiers, Blaine has been rooting himself with a residency at the Wynn Las Vegas for his show “David Blaine: Live in Las Vegas,” with dates through November. 

Blaine says he loves Las Vegas because it offers, “a dose of everything from all different places around the world in one small spot in the desert.” But his favorite thing about Sin City is that so many fellow magicians live there. “After every show, I always get to brainstorm and hang out with magicians,” he said. 

That’s the same lesson he took away from the diverse range of risk-takers he met on his journey around the globe for Do Not Attempt. 

“They’re all masters at what they do, but what they all had in common was that they’re all students,” Blaine said. “They’re always trying to learn and become better at what they do. Passion is their driving force, and they’re doing it at such a high level that nothing will ever stop them.”

And clearly, nothing stops Blaine, either.