The typical reaction to watching a David Blaine magic trick, illusion, or survivalist stunt is to stand stunned into silence, baffled by what you just watched. So it’s wild to see Blaine himself doing the same thing while watching another person.
In David Blaine Do Not Attempt, the famous magician travels the world, experiencing different cultures’ versions of the feats that defy all laws of physics and logic—or, in other words, can be described as magic. The highlights of his journeys are when he discovers the people who do things that he can’t do—or not even thought of doing—himself.
Two new episodes of the series, which airs on National Geographic and streams on Disney+ and Hulu, were released this week, tracking Blaine as he travels to India and the Arctic Circle. It’s in Norway where he meets up with Ken Stornes, an adventurer who Blaine first encountered on Instagram—and who may be as close to an old-world Viking, according to how we mythologize the group, as is alive today.
In this exclusive clip, Stornes shows off one of his brute skills: leaping off a snowy cliff into an iced-over pool of water that would ordinarily kill a normal human. But those epic swan dives are Stornes’ specialty: into snowbanks, lakes, and ice all over the Scandinavian wilderness.
If the viking comparisons weren’t obvious enough, you can see Stornes wielding an axe during his leap.
“Ken joked that if he didn’t land in the exact center of the ice hole, it would be a really bad day for him,” producer Ursula Fahy tells The Daily Beast’s Obsessed. “He was trying to be lighthearted about the jump, but we all knew the risk. It was definitely a tense moment on the shoot. I think we were all holding our breath until we saw him pop out of the water waving his ax.”
For more “human beings shouldn’t be doing this” content, tune into David Blaine: Do Not Attempt, to watch stunts involving scorpions, cobras, knives, fire, bees, and frozen lakes—and then, for the love of God, do not attempt.
