# People With Superhuman Abilities That Defy Explanation

An episode of [Be Amazed](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1687637469), 15 Dec 2025, 28 min.

Audio: https://audio4.redcircle.com/episodes/cc0679a1-0087-4ace-8636-5d5d31b40c3c/stream.mp3

All around us, regular looking people with incredible abilities have pushed themselves to the extremes. Ready to be awestruck and inspired? You should be, because I’ve rounded up some terrifically talented genius-savants and burling brutes for your entertainment pleasure. This one’s seriously gonna blow your mind as we look at some of the most dedicated individuals with superhuman skills that defy explanation. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

## Transcript

[0:00] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Have you ever seen a man run to the moon, or grandma who's immune to physical pain?
[0:05] \[SPEAKER_00\]: All around us, regular looking people with incredible abilities have pushed themselves to the extremes.
[0:11] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Ready to be all struck and inspired?
[0:14] \[SPEAKER_00\]: You should be because I've rounded up some terrifically talented genius of vance and burling broots for your entertainment pleasure.
[0:22] \[SPEAKER_00\]: This one's seriously gonna blow your mind as we look at some of the most dedicated individuals with superhuman skills that defy explanation.
[0:43] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Want to know my superhuman ability?
[0:45] \[SPEAKER_00\]: My killer smile.
[0:47] \[SPEAKER_00\]: These pearly whites have supernatural effects on the ladies.
[0:51] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But Malaysian velou Ratha Krishna's teeth pull something way cooler than all the honey's.
[0:57] \[SPEAKER_00\]: In 2003, his Goliath Nashers took two KTM commuter trains weighing an incredible 574,000 pounds.
[1:07] \[SPEAKER_00\]: wowsers.
[1:08] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And here's me thinking he bit of more than he could chew.
[1:12] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Still, how does a man pull nearly £600,000 of carriage with nothing but his daring denticles?
[1:19] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Surely that's impossible.
[1:21] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But you're not actually moving all that way.
[1:23] \[SPEAKER_00\]: That would be lifting.
[1:25] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Instead, you only have to generate enough force to counter the ruling resistance in the tires.
[1:30] \[SPEAKER_00\]: See all tires squish a little beneath the weight of whatever they're rolling, and more squish means more resistance.
[1:37] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Train wheels are super hard and have less than one tenth of the resistance of car wheels so are easier to pull.
[1:43] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Does that make V-Lose feet any less impressive?
[1:46] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Heck no.
[1:48] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Now I gotta be responsible and say don't try chopping your dead civic off the driveway kiddos.
[1:53] \[SPEAKER_00\]: These guys are pros.
[1:54] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And good dentist don't come cheap.
[2:00] \[SPEAKER_00\]: every year about 1.1 million people complete a marathon.
[2:04] \[SPEAKER_00\]: That's about 0.01% of the world's population.
[2:08] \[SPEAKER_00\]: For many that 26.2 mile race is the peak of athletic achievement, but some insane folk like Yannis Kuro's crave something a little more extreme.
[2:20] \[SPEAKER_00\]: He completed his first marathon in
[2:23] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And by just 1983, he'd run a remarkable 25 races, but Yanis wanted more, so he began to look towards Ultramarathons.
[2:34] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Yeah, those are a thing.
[2:36] \[SPEAKER_00\]: His first Ultra event was the Spartathlan.
[2:39] \[SPEAKER_00\]: where runners follow the round of fine dippities, an Athenian messenger who in 490 BC was said to have run from Athens to Sparta in a single day.
[2:49] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Organizers expected the grueling 153 mile race would take roughly 27 hours for the winner to complete.
[2:57] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Yanis cruised home in just 21 hours in 53 minutes.
[3:01] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Whoa!
[3:03] \[SPEAKER_00\]: He was so fast, organizers accused him of cheating.
[3:06] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So he came back a year later and finished the race in 20 hours and 25 minutes.
[3:11] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Holy smokes!
[3:13] \[SPEAKER_00\]: If you think that's impressive in 2005 at the Grand Old Age of 49, he broke his own world record for the Clif Young Six Day Race, which he'd set a whopping 21 years earlier.
[3:24] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Over the course of six grueling days,
[3:30] \[SPEAKER_00\]: far more than any of his competitors.
[3:33] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Dang.
[3:34] \[SPEAKER_00\]: When asked about the key to his success, he said, when other people get tired, they stop.
[3:39] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I don't.
[3:40] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I take over my body with my mind.
[3:42] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I tell it that it's not tired, and it listens.
[3:45] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Sheesh.
[3:46] \[SPEAKER_00\]: This guy's the real life forest gump.
[3:48] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Only in the movie, Forest Random, measly 15,000 miles in total.
[3:53] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Ultra-running fanboys have calculated that now 67-year-old Yannis has totaled up enough miles to run to the moon.
[4:01] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Shit!
[4:02] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Mind-blown!
[4:04] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Alan Spiring is that.
[4:06] \[SPEAKER_00\]: You know what kind of makes me want to down the old running shoes?
[4:09] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I'm so unfit I get out of breath just tying my laces.
[4:12] \[SPEAKER_00\]: 990!
[4:12] \[SPEAKER_00\]: 990!
[4:13] \[SPEAKER_00\]: 9!
[4:13] \[SPEAKER_00\]: 1,000!
[4:19] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Phew!
[4:20] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Just getting my push-ups in for the day, and I only do three, but I start counting from 998 to trick my muscles into thinking they've worked harder.
[4:29] \[SPEAKER_00\]: One day I hope to be as tough as the Makoshi Bears in Japan.
[4:34] \[SPEAKER_00\]: These heroic Hong's holloportable Shinto shrine known as a Makoshi across all sorts of terrain on long wooden bowls held up by their shoulders.
[4:43] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And that's no easy feat.
[4:45] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Makoshi's can weigh upwards of an eye-watering 2,400 pounds, which is about the same as a Toyota Prius.
[4:53] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Yikes!
[4:54] \[SPEAKER_00\]: As you can imagine, carrying something the weight of a small car on your shoulder takes a huge physical strain on your body.
[5:01] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Frequent bears of the Makoshi-developed giant cows' known as Makoshi-Dako on their shoulders.
[5:07] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Whoa, that's dedication.
[5:09] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Rather than an undesirable deformity, Makoshi-Dako are a symbol of pride, showing the enduring efforts of these devoted citizens.
[5:17] \[SPEAKER_00\]: and this isn't just in Japan.
[5:20] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Every year, Naples during the Catholic Fest that they glee, giant obelists are carried around on, you guessed it, more people's shoulders.
[5:29] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Despite being over 80 feet tall and weighing a knee-buckling 5,500 pounds, they've got some crazy suspension.
[5:37] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The man who carried the waiter known as Kulatori, and just like the Makoshi Bears, they develop huge calluses on their backs.
[5:45] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The physical dedication shown towards their respective religions is truly inspiring.
[5:50] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Tomorrow, I might start counting my push-ups from 997, just to work that little bit harder.
[5:57] \[SPEAKER_00\]: If I went without snacks for longer than a day, I'd need my own hair.
[6:01] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But Pralad Johnny and Indian monk made the extraordinary claim that he'd lived without food or water for over a staggering 70 years.
[6:11] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Uh, what?
[6:12] \[SPEAKER_00\]: See Johnny practiced something called britharianism.
[6:15] \[SPEAKER_00\]: A kind of French spirituality which preaches that the body can fully sustain itself from sunlight air and nothing else.
[6:23] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Right.
[6:24] \[SPEAKER_00\]: At the age of 12, Johnny had a powerful spiritual experience and claimed that the goddess Amba provided him water which trickled down through a hole in his palate.
[6:33] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Now, theoretically, the body can survive without food for up to a couple of months.
[6:39] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But without water, you'll be a dried-up saltine cracker in the dirt after a mere week.
[6:44] \[SPEAKER_00\]: However, Johnny underwent testing on two separate occasions.
[6:47] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The first time for 10 days, and the second time for 15 days, and both times he stayed physically normal despite consuming absolutely nothing.
[6:57] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The only surprising thing was his levels of left-in and green, two hormones that regulate appetite, which suggested Johnny had an extreme adaptation to starvation and water restriction.
[7:14] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Other breatherians have made similar claims and they've all been exposed as frauds, and some of the test conditions were dubious at best.
[7:24] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Who's to say he wasn't ordering in and out on the slide?
[7:27] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Ever heard the story of the three little pigs?
[7:29] \[SPEAKER_00\]: You know, the big bad wolf blows their houses down?
[7:32] \[SPEAKER_00\]: That's just a story, right?
[7:34] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Surely no one's breath is actually that powerful.
[7:38] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Step up, Brian Jackson.
[7:40] \[SPEAKER_00\]: This sensational stuntman has become a bit of a cold figure for his exhilarating exhale.
[7:46] \[SPEAKER_00\]: He blows hot water bottles up like party balloons.
[7:50] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Still, that's not his coolest trick.
[7:52] \[SPEAKER_00\]: In 2014, he huffed and he puffed and he blew 3,640 pounds of car.
[7:57] \[SPEAKER_00\]: three inches off their ground.
[8:00] \[SPEAKER_00\]: He what?
[8:00] \[SPEAKER_00\]: By blowing into a tube attached to an inflatable bag placed beneath the car, Brianx held with enough force to lift a flip and vehicle.
[8:09] \[SPEAKER_00\]: That's crazy.
[8:11] \[SPEAKER_00\]: This guy could blow his wife a kiss from like eight miles away.
[8:15] \[SPEAKER_00\]: However, there are disadvantages to having such phenomenal blowing power.
[8:20] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Many glass blowers develop large, puffy cheeks as a result of their work.
[8:24] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Because they spend so much time forcing air really hard through a tube, the bucinator muscles which pull back the mouth and hold the cheeks to the teeth get to form.
[8:33] \[SPEAKER_00\]: This causes big pockets of air to collect inside the cheeks.
[8:37] \[SPEAKER_00\]: One of the most famous cases was trumpet player Dizzy Gillespie.
[8:41] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Whilst learning his instrument, he never kept his cheeks tucked in.
[8:45] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So when he played his cheeks and neck would puff up to wild proportions.
[8:50] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Whoa!
[8:51] \[SPEAKER_00\]: It's cool, but it kind of gives me the heavy jibis.
[8:54] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Honestly, I can fall asleep anywhere.
[8:57] \[SPEAKER_00\]: In the supermarket, getting a haircut, heck, sometimes I can't even make it up the stairs.
[9:02] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But for Niac Ty from Vietnam, a good night's sleep has been exceedingly hard to come by.
[9:08] \[SPEAKER_00\]: After catching a fever as a young man, he claims to have not slept in over 60 years.
[9:14] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Oh, my lanta!
[9:15] \[SPEAKER_00\]: How is that possible?
[9:17] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I pulled all nighters in my college days and I felt horrific.
[9:21] \[SPEAKER_00\]: After about 72 hours when those sleep, your brain will be so fried you'll hallucinate and hear things that aren't there.
[9:28] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So is Niac just totally tripping balls?
[9:32] \[SPEAKER_00\]: No, shockingly he seems healthy.
[9:34] \[SPEAKER_00\]: He spends his extra evening hours working on his farm or making rice wine, which he sells making about a dollar a day.
[9:40] \[SPEAKER_00\]: As for why this is happening to him, no one really knows.
[9:44] \[SPEAKER_00\]: He's never seen a doctor about his condition and refused thousands of dollars from various TV networks to film his life.
[9:51] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Hmm, is that a little sus?
[9:54] \[SPEAKER_00\]: On the one hand, he could be hiding something, but if so, he's not cashing in on his lie.
[9:59] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Then again, 60 years of no sleep might have made him a little grouchy, and he just doesn't want people poking around his bays.
[10:06] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But the chances are, in the axe experiencing something called micro sleep.
[10:10] \[SPEAKER_00\]: It's a protective measure where our brain kinda goes offline for a few seconds at a time if we're too sleep deprived.
[10:17] \[SPEAKER_00\]: We've all got that one friend who's a bit of a dumb dumb.
[10:21] \[SPEAKER_00\]: If you're thinking, not me and my friends are all smart, bad news, it's you.
[10:27] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But even my infinite wisdom has nothing on true geniuses like Daniel Tammett.
[10:32] \[SPEAKER_00\]: This brainy Brit memorized the first 22,514 digits of pie in just 5 hours and 9 minutes.
[10:39] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And he said it was easy.
[10:41] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Crazy.
[10:42] \[SPEAKER_00\]: See, Daniel has savant syndrome, or someone demonstrates abilities far and excess of what the average human is capable of.
[10:50] \[SPEAKER_00\]: He suffered epileptic seizures as a young boy after which he started showing extreme mental capabilities.
[10:56] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Daniel doesn't see numbers as digits like you and me, instead in his mind each number up to 10,000 has a unique color, shape and texture.
[11:05] \[SPEAKER_00\]: 117 is tall linking handsome.
[11:08] \[SPEAKER_00\]: 289 is particularly ugly, and one is a flashing white light.
[11:15] \[SPEAKER_00\]: That's fascinating.
[11:17] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But what sets Daniel apart from other savants is that he can describe his thought processes.
[11:22] \[SPEAKER_00\]: usually savants are mentally impaired and unable to communicate.
[11:26] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But Daniel can clearly put into words exactly how he feels.
[11:30] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And not just in English, he speaks 11 languages, including Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Lithuania, Esperanto, Spanish, Romanian, Welsh, and Icelandic, which he learned in just a week.
[11:44] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Man, I nearly flapped out a high school Spanish.
[11:46] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The only thing I remember is, ah, yo soy una grande parito caliente por favor.
[11:52] \[SPEAKER_00\]: As I go through life, I often see people who act like they've taken one too many blows to the head.
[11:58] \[SPEAKER_00\]: You know what I mean?
[11:59] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Well, pro wrestler John Ferrero also known as Gino Martino doesn't have to worry about that.
[12:05] \[SPEAKER_00\]: His goal is 2.3 times thicker than the average human.
[12:12] \[SPEAKER_00\]: At a whopping 16mm thick, he can bog his bonds off almost anything.
[12:17] \[SPEAKER_00\]: He smashed sender blogs, hammered in nails, and even sent the world record for breaking 45 concrete slabs over his head by dropping multiple 16-pound bowling balls onto them from 10 feet above.
[12:28] \[SPEAKER_00\]: That's oddly specific.
[12:31] \[SPEAKER_00\]: John became aware of his colossal cranium as a teenager.
[12:34] \[SPEAKER_00\]: After getting in a fight with his brother, he chased him around the house and accidentally charged through a solid oak door without any injury to himself.
[12:41] \[SPEAKER_00\]: His mom must have been raging.
[12:44] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But if you think you're not going to suffer than John's, I've got good news for you.
[12:48] \[SPEAKER_00\]: He runs a headbud competition and will pay anyone that can successfully knock him out $5,000.
[12:53] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Whaa-hoo!
[12:57] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Guess I better pack my bags, I'm going on vacation.
[13:00] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Oh, I forgot to mention, John is currently 11 and 0 undefeated.
[13:04] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Wait, who am I again?
[13:09] \[SPEAKER_00\]: If you could have any super power, what would you choose?
[13:12] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Super speed, super strength?
[13:15] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Me?
[13:16] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I want a time travel under the future by a week, then return so I can place bets on winning sports games.
[13:22] \[SPEAKER_00\]: It's a genius ruse.
[13:24] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Still, Russian native Natasha Dymkina claims to have one of the coolest super powers ever.
[13:30] \[SPEAKER_00\]: X-ray vision.
[13:32] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Awesome.
[13:34] \[SPEAKER_00\]: More accurately, she can look inside the human body
[13:39] \[SPEAKER_00\]: When analyzing a woman who'd recently been in a car crash, Natasha was able to locate the woman's fractures and metal pens, just by looking at her.
[13:48] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Whoa!
[13:49] \[SPEAKER_00\]: She also managed to detect an ulcer in a doctor's stomach.
[13:53] \[SPEAKER_00\]: That's insane.
[13:55] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Or is it?
[13:57] \[SPEAKER_00\]: See Natasha actually gets a lot wrong.
[14:00] \[SPEAKER_00\]: In fact, some of her critics suggest she never detects the main problem.
[14:05] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Instead, they say that the problem Natasha diagnosis is always different to the issue the patients originally came in for.
[14:12] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Often, patients only focus on the comments she makes that are true and dismiss the false ones in the same way someone might approach a psychic reading.
[14:20] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So chances are, it's all just luck.
[14:23] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Darn, that would be a pretty cool power though, right?
[14:26] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I could finally figure out if my dog ate my TV remote.
[14:29] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The rumors are true.
[14:31] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I'm pretty tough.
[14:33] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I do tip-gast of lag, roll my T-shirts leaves up, and butt bears.
[14:38] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Sure, they're teddy bears, but they were four of them.
[14:42] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Even so I'm never going to be as tough as my hero.
[14:45] \[SPEAKER_00\]: She might be the toughest person who's ever lived.
[14:48] \[SPEAKER_00\]: This is Joanne Cameron.
[14:51] \[SPEAKER_00\]: How hold on, I know what you're thinking.
[14:53] \[SPEAKER_00\]: This is just a sweet old lady.
[14:55] \[SPEAKER_00\]: and you're right, but Joanne's super power makes her one of the most remarkable people to ever live.
[15:01] \[SPEAKER_00\]: She's almost completely immune to pain.
[15:05] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Whoa.
[15:06] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Due to a mutation in the FAAH and FAAH-O-U-T genes, which establish internal pathways for pain in an anxiety, the activity levels of the enzymes which communicate these feelings are significantly reduced.
[15:20] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Now you'd think Joe would be in the know about her super mutation, but she had no idea she was special until the grand old age of 65.
[15:29] \[SPEAKER_00\]: After having surgery on her hand, Dr.'s worn sheet experience some moderate pain.
[15:33] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But the grandest deal woke up absolutely fine.
[15:37] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Hold on.
[15:38] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Remember earlier when I said it was the system controlling pain and anxiety?
[15:43] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Well, Joanne doesn't really get emotional pain either.
[15:46] \[SPEAKER_00\]: She doesn't feel anxious or afraid, doesn't get adrenaline and never gets depressed or stressed.
[15:52] \[SPEAKER_00\]: She's just a super chill upbeat and happy lady.
[15:55] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I can't help but think she's missed out on a very lucrative career as a stunt woman.
[16:00] \[SPEAKER_00\]: water, air, earth, long ago the four nations lived together in harmony.
[16:07] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Then everything changed when unlikely avatar professor Norman Gary mastered a controversial new fifth element.
[16:16] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Bees.
[16:18] \[SPEAKER_00\]: From henceforth he was known as the last bee bender.
[16:24] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Well at least that's when I'm going to call him.
[16:27] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Okay, so Avatar Gary's army of bees can't protect us from the fire nation, but he does some unbelevable stuff.
[16:36] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I know, I know.
[16:37] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Listen though, he can coax a swarm of a hundred thousand of the fuzzy little fellas all over his body with them getting stunned once.
[16:46] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Pretty cool.
[16:48] \[SPEAKER_00\]: See bees only get aggressive if you threaten their hives, but that's not all.
[16:52] \[SPEAKER_00\]: He can also command a swarm of 1 million bees to follow him wherever he goes.
[16:58] \[SPEAKER_00\]: What?
[16:58] \[SPEAKER_00\]: How?
[17:00] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Basically Avatar Gary has two methods.
[17:02] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The first is a food reward system.
[17:05] \[SPEAKER_00\]: If B successfully follow instructions, they're rewarded with a special sugar solution flavored with plant extracts.
[17:12] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The second involves creating a formula of powerful queen B fair amount which makes B's irresistibly abstracted to the wearer.
[17:27] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Although Avatar Geary doesn't get stung anymore, he estimates he's been stung in eye-watering 75,000 times over his be-bending career.
[17:36] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Ouchy!
[17:36] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Ain't no amount of lotion going to make that hurt less.
[17:40] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Us humans are a competitive bunch, we always try to come out on top.
[17:44] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Whether that's too wrestling, extreme ironing, or perhaps weirdest of all, competitive sauna.
[17:50] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Entrance must sit in a 230-degree Fahrenheit sauna for as long as their bodies can physically take being steamed like a restaurant lobster.
[17:59] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Every 30 seconds more water is added to a coal stove in the room, which evaporates and makes it hotter and hotter.
[18:06] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The last person to walk out is the winner.
[18:10] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Sounds like fun, right?
[18:12] \[SPEAKER_00\]: No.
[18:13] \[SPEAKER_00\]: It sounds like the stupidest competition I've ever heard in my life.
[18:17] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But hey, some people like baseball.
[18:19] \[SPEAKER_00\]: All great sports need great champions, and in the world of sauna, that's Finland's Timo Calkin' Inn.
[18:25] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Who's the greatest, uh, sauna, or ever?
[18:29] \[SPEAKER_00\]: In the 11-year history of the championship, he's one of shocking five times and holds the record for the longest sauna with an outrageous time of 16 minutes and 15 seconds.
[18:40] \[SPEAKER_00\]: What's his trick?
[18:42] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Well, nothing, just sheer dumb will.
[18:44] \[SPEAKER_00\]: He's not immune to heat, just very very tolerant to high temperatures.
[18:49] \[SPEAKER_00\]: After his last event in 2010, however, 70% of his skin was damaged, as were his lungs in respiratory system, and he was placed into a coma for six weeks.
[19:00] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Cribes.
[19:01] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Why would you do that to yourself?
[19:04] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Though Timo luckily survived, not everyone was so fortunate.
[19:08] \[SPEAKER_00\]: A tragic fatality at the event led to competitive sauna being justifiably canceled, meaning Timo's record is now untouchable.
[19:16] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But why do you want to try is beyond me?
[19:19] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So that's the king of hot, but what about the king of cool?
[19:22] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Well apart from me, the undisputed chili champ is famous, Dutch extreme athlete Wemhoff.
[19:29] \[SPEAKER_00\]: He's broken countless records for cold exposure.
[19:32] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Running a half marathon in the snow wearing nothing but shorts?
[19:35] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Check.
[19:36] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Sitting in a nice bath for nearly two hours?
[19:39] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Check.
[19:40] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Oh, how about swimming in freezing water, but beneath the layer of ice, for over 200 feet?
[19:45] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Your god damn right.
[19:49] \[SPEAKER_00\]: See Wim Hof came up with a special breathing technique he imaginatively called the Wim Hof method.
[19:55] \[SPEAKER_00\]: A combination of relaxation and deep breathing, saturates his blood with oxygen and releases feel good chemicals like dopamine into the body.
[20:03] \[SPEAKER_00\]: These can make seriously cold temperatures go from feeling uncomfortable to practically you foric.
[20:08] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Along with daily exposure to the cold, wham-hoff is trained himself to be able to withstand and even thrive in extreme temperatures.
[20:16] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Awesome.
[20:18] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Uh, not for me.
[20:19] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I get my euphoric response from sitting under a blanket.
[20:22] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I can't look at my phone for one minute without being bombarded with images of muscular men and strapping seniority dies.
[20:31] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Oh my!
[20:32] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But flexing in the gym mirror is so last year.
[20:35] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Want to know what real strong people do?
[20:38] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Look no further than John Holtam.
[20:40] \[SPEAKER_00\]: He was born in Denmark in 1845, but it wasn't until the 1870s he'd perfected his act of being shot at by a cannon.
[20:50] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Excuse me?
[20:52] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Oh yeah, you heard.
[20:53] \[SPEAKER_00\]: His assistant would load a cannon with a 50 pound ball on one side of the stage and light it.
[20:59] \[SPEAKER_00\]: After a deafening explosion, the ball would fire towards Holton, who stood on the other side of the stage wearing just the chest pad and gloves.
[21:07] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Now I can't be sure, but I'm gonna say he had pants on too.
[21:11] \[SPEAKER_00\]: It'd be a nod time to when he'd put it in a cannonball is gonna make anything look small.
[21:16] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Anyway, old John would then go and catch the ball.
[21:20] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Oh, even with gloves on, he still had to immediately throw it to the ground because it was so seringly hot.
[21:27] \[UNKNOWN\]: Ha ha ha.
[21:27] \[SPEAKER_00\]: you wouldn't want to hurt yourself after being shut up by a freaking cannon now, would you?
[21:32] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Unsurprisingly, a minor miss-hat whilst learning the skill left hold to my few fingers lighter on one hand, however he wasn't deterred.
[21:39] \[SPEAKER_00\]: In fact, in his day, he was something of a celebrity and his death-defying antics made him quite popular with the ladies.
[21:46] \[SPEAKER_00\]: In fact, many of his female fans were so worried their honko-holtam would injure himself that they grew together to try and ban his performance.
[21:54] \[SPEAKER_00\]: John, you dug?
[21:57] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Now was their trickery at play?
[21:59] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Possibly.
[22:00] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But John offered a hearty 3000 francs, over $19,000 today, to anyone who performed a similar trick, and no one was brave enough to try.
[22:09] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Can you blame them?
[22:11] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Even $100,000 wouldn't be enough money for me to look like a bagel.
[22:15] \[SPEAKER_00\]: When I was a boy, I dreamed of running off with the circus, but my dad said, we've already got a bearded lady at your grandma's house.
[22:23] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Rude, still Graham Graham has nothing on Hajiyali.
[22:28] \[SPEAKER_00\]: This mysterious baldville performance artist is believed to have come from Egypt, but we can't be sure.
[22:34] \[SPEAKER_00\]: His act was much more impressive than growing a beard though.
[22:37] \[SPEAKER_00\]: It revolved around swallowing objects and then regurgitating them all back up and whatever order he pleased.
[22:44] \[SPEAKER_00\]: There's no trick here, it's just repeated training of the stomach and throat muscles to clench it will.
[22:49] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But for this young hustler, it was a chance to tour the world.
[22:53] \[SPEAKER_00\]: He trained himself to regurgitate anything and everything from live goldfish to watches, coins, stones, and even pool balls.
[23:02] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I wouldn't want to go to his birthday cookout, although he never gained wide-stream success, I'll lead to the chief and all together different wide-stream.
[23:11] \[SPEAKER_00\]: His peace day was his thoughts involved checking water followed by a load of flammable care scene, and then acting as a kind of human flamethrower come fire extinguisher, as he vomited fire onto a stage prop.
[23:23] \[SPEAKER_00\]: That's insane.
[23:26] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I wouldn't want front row seats to this Vodvillian volcano, that'd be scared about losing my eyebrows.
[23:32] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Let's face it, we all want to be remembered for being good people, but some wangle their names into the history books are being downright weird.
[23:40] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Take Joseph Puhl, shortly after he graduated high school he discovered a rather remarkable bodily function.
[23:48] \[SPEAKER_00\]: While swimming in the sea, he held his breath and stuck his head below the surface when he noticed a rather, uh, foreign feeling.
[23:56] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I see cold sea water was flooding into his, uh, um, dairy air.
[24:01] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Puhull had discovered that by controlling his abdominal muscles he could suck in through his, well, let's just say exit hole and control the release coming back out again.
[24:12] \[SPEAKER_00\]: That's the worst superhero origin story I've ever heard.
[24:16] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Let Puhol's Barbie party trick somehow took him to the heights of the Mulan Rouge in Paris in the 1890s, where he took to the stages, Le Petomann, or the Fordo maniac.
[24:29] \[SPEAKER_00\]: His fabulous flatchalan season included playing in Ocarina through a tube and certain to his, uh, yeah.
[24:35] \[SPEAKER_00\]: and blowing out a candle from several yards.
[24:38] \[SPEAKER_00\]: You want to see him in action?
[24:40] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Imagine taking the stage after that guy.
[24:43] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Well, here's the thing.
[24:44] \[SPEAKER_00\]: It's not digestive gas, it's just air.
[24:47] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So there's no smell.
[24:49] \[SPEAKER_00\]: That's why he could extinguish the candle without any fear becoming a farting flamethrower.
[24:54] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But a last pool hole's two-ting days didn't last forever.
[24:57] \[SPEAKER_00\]: After the break out of World War I, he retired his act and opened a biscuit factory into lawn.
[25:03] \[SPEAKER_00\]: No, shut!
[25:04] \[SPEAKER_00\]: This guy's rich from air biscuits to real ones.
[25:07] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Ha!
[25:08] \[SPEAKER_00\]: That's the way the cookie crumbles.
[25:11] \[SPEAKER_00\]: We've spoken about some incredible circus performers, but none of them could scratch Mirandaho.
[25:16] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Literally.
[25:17] \[SPEAKER_00\]: This Dutch performer had a bizarre spiritual awakening at the age of 33 and professed his body was totally invulnerable.
[25:25] \[SPEAKER_00\]: He was able to take a rapier, a very long-thin sword, and essentially turn himself into a big old human kebab.
[25:31] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And not a nice kebab, either.
[25:33] \[SPEAKER_00\]: We're talking all heart-long and kidney, no peppers, if you catch my drift.
[25:38] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Doctors were flumicked by this and repeatedly ran test on him to try and understand how he was even alive.
[25:44] \[SPEAKER_00\]: One time Dahu demonstrated his death-defying trick, then walked all the way through the hospital to the X-ray theater without an issue.
[25:52] \[SPEAKER_00\]: What?
[25:53] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The X-ray results came back and showed that although the sword was there, he suffered no injuries.
[25:58] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Huh.
[25:59] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Once it was removed apart from the tiny as Mark on a scan, Dahu was fine.
[26:04] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Wild.
[26:05] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Truthfully, no one knows how Dahoe was able to perform this trick.
[26:09] \[SPEAKER_00\]: He'd spent time in India with fackiers, a kind of mystic who performed similar, uh, feats on themselves, but none of them achieved anything near this scale.
[26:18] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Dahoe's accomplishments defy the laws of nature.
[26:22] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Not content with being a human pencushion, Dahoe continued to push weirder and more ambitious boundaries, one of which proved tragically fatal.
[26:32] \[SPEAKER_00\]: This won't come as a surprise, but Tahoe was a little loopy.
[26:36] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Like even more than you'd expect from someone who pokes holes in themselves?
[26:41] \[SPEAKER_00\]: On May 11, 1948, he alleged voices in his head told him to eat a steel needle.
[26:47] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Oh boy, surgeons and Zurich removed it two days later and kept Tahoe in hospital to monitor him while he recovered.
[26:54] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Then when he was released he proved his good health by strolling around Zurich like nothing happened, incredible.
[27:02] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So he got away with it then.
[27:03] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Well, no.
[27:05] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Only 10 days later he was laying in bed when he slipped into a strange translike state.
[27:11] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Another two days later he passed from an aortic rupture.
[27:14] \[SPEAKER_00\]: His heart had mysteriously torn apart.
[27:18] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Dao's career had lasted just three years, but his stunts and his demise still have people scratching their heads today.
[27:25] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Well, what a crazy guy!
[27:28] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Thanks for listening to the podcast, we'll see you again next time you'll want to be amazed.

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