Speaker 1: Ah, Welcome to Behind the Bastards, the podcast where I
Speaker 1: Robert Evans am pulling a power move on Sophie with
Speaker 1: the script of today's episode. Again, you want me to
Speaker 1: send it, Sophie excited, I don't know.
Speaker 2: Do you want pain and suffering? I will drive to
Speaker 2: your house. I will. I will literally end this zoom call.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, you might, you might, you might.
Speaker 3: People can't see it, so if he has an axe
Speaker 3: behind it, I got her that act probably a mistake.
Speaker 2: I'm so nervous to open this.
Speaker 1: Uh uh huh. I know it's it's a Schrodinger's script.
Speaker 1: It could be a fake again, it could be the
Speaker 1: real script. You never know, dead cat, who is the
Speaker 1: real script?
Speaker 2: The real script? Because you're a fucking coward. That's why.
Speaker 1: Well, you don't want to do it every time. I'm
Speaker 1: not going to do it two weeks in a row.
Speaker 1: You'd expect it too much.
Speaker 2: Respect.
Speaker 1: I gotta luw you back into a false sense of
Speaker 1: security and then send.
Speaker 2: Me the right script, you motherfucker.
Speaker 1: This is the one use for chat GPT. I may
Speaker 1: have it write a fake script that looks like on
Speaker 1: the surface like it could be real, and then send
Speaker 1: that to you. Some week and see how long it
Speaker 1: takes before you get really angry.
Speaker 4: I gotta be honest. I've read the first who said
Speaker 4: it's a chat scheep, but you can write that shit.
Speaker 2: You are an artiste.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Thank you. Speaking of art. Our guest for today,
Speaker 1: James Stout, a man whose life is a work of art. James,
Speaker 1: how are you doing today? So much better for that? Roman?
Speaker 1: Thank you? Welcome? Yeah? Sor are your spear gun triggers
Speaker 1: not working ideally? Yeah? Yeah, I'm going to make it work.
Speaker 1: It's okay. The joy of building weapons for yourself is
Speaker 1: the long period through which they don't work, to figure
Speaker 1: out what tiny thing you've gotten wrong, hopefully when it
Speaker 1: discharges into you. Yes, as long as you don't point
Speaker 1: them at yourself. Yeah, they are fun and rewarding. Why
Speaker 1: barrel discipline is key? You know what else is key? James?
Speaker 1: What is that? Root? Breath control and true? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: Today we're talking about a guy who has gotten very
Speaker 1: probably rich, I don't know his exact neck worth, but
Speaker 1: certainly extremely famous for teaching people a series of very
Speaker 1: specific breathing techniques. A fella that you may have heard
Speaker 1: of that most of I'm gonna guess a lot of
Speaker 1: our listeners have heard of named wim Hoff. James, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're you're aware of You're actually the guy who suggested
Speaker 1: this episode. So what am I fucking around pretending like James?
Speaker 1: What do you know about wim Hoff? Yeah? You know,
Speaker 1: you know he's a dangerous grifter. Yes, I'm gonna guess
Speaker 1: most of our audience don't because I really didn't, you know.
Speaker 1: For for me, wim was a guy who you know
Speaker 1: he was, He was on the scene. He's now spent
Speaker 1: a lot of time in like Joe Rogan show, He's
Speaker 1: been on like the Goop pod cast, and he's working
Speaker 1: on a TV show with those people. But prior to that,
Speaker 1: he was also pretty prominent. I back when I worked
Speaker 1: at crack dot com like ten years ago, we featured
Speaker 1: him in an article for some of the stuff he
Speaker 1: would do and broad whim as a guy who like
Speaker 1: uses a series of breathing and meditative techniques that he
Speaker 1: claims basically renders him immune to the cold and capable
Speaker 1: of extreme feats of heretofore thought impossible athletic prowess. He's
Speaker 1: been studied and by scientists and a number of occasions
Speaker 1: there are some things he's done that are impressive, although
Speaker 1: we'll talk about it not in the way that he
Speaker 1: claims usually. But you know, I was somebody who I
Speaker 1: read about him. I read like, saw this video of
Speaker 1: him like submerged in ice, you know, for a crazy
Speaker 1: long period of time, or like hiking up Kilimanjaro in shorts,
Speaker 1: and was like, Oh, that's impressive. Cool. I guess a
Speaker 1: guy figured out some new endurance techniques, nifty, And I
Speaker 1: kind of didn't think about it much more than that, right,
Speaker 1: It was not. It wasn't one of those things. Wim
Speaker 1: was not initially claiming I have cured cancer, you know,
Speaker 1: or I've got like you know, you don't need vaccines,
Speaker 1: just do my exercise techniques. He was just a guy
Speaker 1: who was like, you actually have more control over your
Speaker 1: body's reactions to cold than you think, and here's how
Speaker 1: to do it, which didn't seem to me on the
Speaker 1: service to be something particularly sketchy. And I'm gonna guess
Speaker 1: most people were kind of in that broad bucket where
Speaker 1: you were like, you saw some video of him, you
Speaker 1: read some article, you're like, oh, neat, and then you
Speaker 1: went on with your life. The truth is that he
Speaker 1: is in fact a rather dangerous con man. Now, since
Speaker 1: mister Hoff is a bit of a fame hound, it's
Speaker 1: not hard to find interviews with him, and nearly all
Speaker 1: of them summarize his career in similar ways. To set
Speaker 1: the scene, I'd like to read an excerpt from an
Speaker 1: article in The Mirror, which is a shitty tabloid but
Speaker 1: reasonably representative of the tone a lot of websites use
Speaker 1: when talking about whim Hoff. That's why I'm quoting it,
Speaker 1: not to not because the Mirror is a reliable source on.
Speaker 3: Anything Brinn's left wing press.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Quote, but a daredevil record holder dubbed the Iceman,
Speaker 1: showed he can keep a cool head after scrambling to
Speaker 1: the top of Mount Kilimanjaro in record time. Wim Hoff,
Speaker 1: fifty five, holds a whopping twenty six Guinness World records
Speaker 1: for extreme sports challenges, including running a full marathon above
Speaker 1: the Arctic Circle wearing only a pair of shorts. But
Speaker 1: father of five, whim from Sittard, Holland, proved he has
Speaker 1: ice in his veins after his eighteen strong climbing groups
Speaker 1: scaled Africa's highest mountain in a record time of thirty
Speaker 1: one hours and twenty five minutes.
Speaker 3: Now, James, it does sound by chat GPT. We show
Speaker 3: that that one wasn't. I am absolutely not sure that
Speaker 3: could have been chat GPT, but it is. If it was,
Speaker 3: it's because they cut up a bunch of other newspapers
Speaker 3: talking about whim.
Speaker 1: They all use that kind of tone. Now, James, do
Speaker 1: you want to guess what percentage of the claims made
Speaker 1: in those three sentences are true? Zero? Yeah, zero, every
Speaker 1: single thing. I just read you as a lie. A
Speaker 1: couple of them, my hood, nos like that. That doesn't
Speaker 1: sound right. See, I'm sure about that. But you will
Speaker 1: see those not just repeated by the Mirror. You know,
Speaker 1: for example, the Guardian pretty well respected paper, not someone
Speaker 1: something would consider just like a tabloid generally. And here's
Speaker 1: their summary from a recent article about the Iceman. Wim
Speaker 1: Hoff is known as the Iceman. He earned his name
Speaker 1: after setting twenty six Guinness World records, which includes swimming
Speaker 1: under ice, running a half marathon, a of the Arctic Circle, bear,
Speaker 1: submerging himself in ice for an hour and fifty two minutes,
Speaker 1: and climbing Mount Kilimanjaro in just shorts and sandals. Now,
Speaker 1: this will tell you something about like what good journalism
Speaker 1: is worth versus bad journalism because the amount of things
Speaker 1: that are correct in that sentence is higher than zero percent. Right,
Speaker 1: that's good to hear. Yeah, there are four claims in there,
Speaker 1: and one of them is accurate. Okay, so that's good.
Speaker 1: Well it's we strive. We strive for a little more
Speaker 1: and then you can say two of them are accurate,
Speaker 1: but not in a meaningful way. We'll talk about it later.
Speaker 1: So mind chik. This is probably a significant surprise to
Speaker 1: most people who have kind of casually heard about whim
Speaker 1: because for seven or eight years he's been very good
Speaker 1: at not just performing feats of endurance, but doing it
Speaker 1: while hooked up to equipment monitored by actual scientists from
Speaker 1: like reputable universities who have confirmed some of the health
Speaker 1: benefits of the breathing techniques he claims to have pioneered.
Speaker 1: But the real story behind wim Hoff breathing and the
Speaker 1: man himself is much shadier than that. Now, given that
Speaker 1: he is a semi beloved figure too many, I want
Speaker 1: to start us off by making the states clear. But
Speaker 1: the stake's clear because the breathing techniques that wim uses
Speaker 1: he did not really invent, but they're not bad, right,
Speaker 1: He's not like lying about it. There are uses for
Speaker 1: these techniques. They go back much further than wim Hoff.
Speaker 1: We'll talk about the origins and like, the ice bathing
Speaker 1: stuff that he does is not inherently bad. There are
Speaker 1: some potential health benefits to cold water exposure when you
Speaker 1: do it in certain controlled ways. Right. Again, the way
Speaker 1: he tends to teach people about it is pretty reckless,
Speaker 1: but fundamentally there are aspects of the things he teaches
Speaker 1: that are not like inherently toxic. However, I want to
Speaker 1: start again by making the stakes clear, which is that
Speaker 1: there are multiple allegations in court that the irresponsible training
Speaker 1: methods by Whim and his organization Inner Fire, have led
Speaker 1: to the deaths of between twelve and fifteen people. So yeah,
Speaker 1: we are not talking about like, well he's just like
Speaker 1: bullshits around. We're talking about, like there's body count for
Speaker 1: this episode, right, That's why we're talking about the guy.
Speaker 1: If he was a dude who just got like some
Speaker 1: rich people from Santa Monica to like do ice bats
Speaker 1: and like particularly right, I have a lot of respect
Speaker 1: for that. Yeah, yeah, well that's fine. I don't take
Speaker 1: their money. I don't give a shit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I have a lot of respect for the guy
Speaker 3: on the one wheel who gets rich people to crawl
Speaker 3: on their backs along train tracks.
Speaker 1: He's absolutely, absolutely, like, I got no problem with those
Speaker 1: guys who do those like fake Navy seal trainings that
Speaker 1: convince like, I don't know, finance bros in their thirties
Speaker 1: to like, yeah, crawl backwards over train tracks, like you said, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: finance whatever praxies there, willing has been ten grand to
Speaker 1: do that for four days. Gives a shit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's the best thing they could be doing with
Speaker 3: that time and money, if we're honest.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah now. Wim Hoff was born on April twentieth,
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty nine, in Sittard Limberg, the Netherlands. He was
Speaker 1: one of ten children and is also a twin. In
Speaker 1: his book The Way of the Iceman, he claims he
Speaker 1: came out as something of a surprise. Quote. After his
Speaker 1: mother had given birth to his twin brother Andre, no
Speaker 1: one noticed that a second child was on the way.
Speaker 1: When the doctors had left, his mother started to feel
Speaker 1: contractions coming on again. His mother, a Catholic, prayed the
Speaker 1: second child would also be born healthy. She expressed the
Speaker 1: hope that if it were healthy, the child would grow
Speaker 1: up to be a missionary. WiM's mother told this story regularly,
Speaker 1: and Wim believed the circumstances of his birth and his
Speaker 1: mother's strength had a great influence on him. So that's
Speaker 1: his claim right born to be a missionary. You know,
Speaker 1: his mom prayed him into being divine, he chose, mm hmm. Yeah.
Speaker 1: That just strikes me as something to someone who's parent
Speaker 1: to bullshitting might say, yeah, it does seem like like
Speaker 1: that might be the case with Whim. So he's not
Speaker 1: a great writer. In this book, The Way of the
Speaker 1: Ice Man, he is credited along with Cohen Deong. I
Speaker 1: don't know, you know, you know these names, it's Danish names,
Speaker 1: like I'm doing my best here whatever as the author
Speaker 1: of this book, and I guess the safe assumption is
Speaker 1: that neither of them are good at writing books. His
Speaker 1: stories about his early life are inconsistent, although not necessarily conflicting,
Speaker 1: with the stories that he gives like the stories he
Speaker 1: gives in this book are inconsistent with stories he's given
Speaker 1: in interviews and on podcasts, but they don't necessarily conflict.
Speaker 1: It's just he tells weirdly different stories each time he's
Speaker 1: asked about his background. It's not one of the with
Speaker 1: a lot of grifters, it's like, oh, these are all
Speaker 1: clearly lies, because all of these things can't be true
Speaker 1: with whim. It's more like, why did you ignore that
Speaker 1: detail that you included in your book in this recitation
Speaker 1: of your background, Like that seems kind of using to me.
Speaker 1: In some interviews, he claims that his father died in
Speaker 1: a mountaineering accident when he was a young boy, and
Speaker 1: says that this made him determine to conquer the mountains.
Speaker 1: Bad lesson to learn from your dad dying mountaineering. By
Speaker 1: the way, lesson you should learn is respect the mountains.
Speaker 1: Mountains are very dangerous. You can try and coquer them,
Speaker 1: but yeah, they lie, fight back. They are much older
Speaker 1: than you. Yeah. Yeah, they've seen a few people come
Speaker 1: and go. Yeah's dad. Yeah, including his dad. In the
Speaker 1: way of the ice Man, though he gives a different
Speaker 1: story as to why he decides to get into conquering
Speaker 1: the mountains and doing weird cold weather stuff. Haff was
Speaker 1: fascinated by the cold from a very early age. One
Speaker 1: freezing winter's night when he was seven, a neighbor found
Speaker 1: him in the snow. Strongly attracted by the white landscape,
Speaker 1: Haff had climbed out of bed, crept outside, and fallen
Speaker 1: asleep in the snow. If his neighbor had not discovered him,
Speaker 1: he probably would have frozen to death. I know, man, why, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that seems it's a normal no behavior, seems like congenitally
Speaker 1: bad assessment. Yeah. Yeah, there's something in the water in
Speaker 1: the Hoff household which has him to make poor choices. Yeah,
Speaker 1: something in the Hoff in the male Hoff brain that
Speaker 1: does not want to pass on their genes. He does
Speaker 1: not mention his dad dying at all in this book, though,
Speaker 1: in fact I didn't really come across I'm not going
Speaker 1: to claim I read this thing like fucking Ulysses, but
Speaker 1: I did not come across him even talking about his
Speaker 1: dad here. One thing he is consistent about is that
Speaker 1: he experimented a lot with the cold as an adolescent.
Speaker 1: He does bring this up in every interview that he
Speaker 1: that he discusses. This started with him sitting in the
Speaker 1: snow for hours and hours at a time, sometimes sleeping
Speaker 1: outside in the winter without a tint or a sleeping bag.
Speaker 1: We don't know how much of this is true, but
Speaker 1: as we'll discuss. He makes other claims later about his
Speaker 1: fascination with enduring extreme temperatures. When he was thirteen, Whim
Speaker 1: claims he spent his fall holiday reading a book about psychology,
Speaker 1: and later wrote the psychological terminology gave birth to my
Speaker 1: inquisitive mind and the urge to philosophy everything around me.
Speaker 1: It was then that I began to see the world
Speaker 1: in a different light, all at once. I wanted to
Speaker 1: learn about different cultures, traditions, and new languages. Now in
Speaker 1: the way of the ice Man. He claims that this
Speaker 1: process started when he was nine, and that his interest
Speaker 1: was sparked by his older brother, who had hitchtiked around
Speaker 1: the Middle East and the Far East and came back
Speaker 1: with strange and wonderful tales. Wim goes on to claim
Speaker 1: that he was so impressed by how his brother had
Speaker 1: changed that he stopped listening in church and focused instead
Speaker 1: on meditation techniques that he'd learned from Hindu and Buddhist texts.
Speaker 1: He went to school only with a healthy reluctance. He
Speaker 1: then has his autobiographer describe him as quote a self willed, clever,
Speaker 1: and cheerful young boy, which I do find a little
Speaker 1: bit off putting when you're clearly writing this description of
Speaker 1: yourself as a kid. At least make it up as
Speaker 1: a quote from someone else.
Speaker 3: Bro, Yeah, you've gone down that Rabbi hole, like just
Speaker 3: to continue to fabricate.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So the specific meditative practices that Whim was drawn
Speaker 1: to most is called tumo meditation t ummo, sometimes g tumo,
Speaker 1: g dash t ummo. These are a set of meditative
Speaker 1: breathing techniques that are part of the Vajrayana tantric Buddhist practices.
Speaker 1: Considered in their full context, toumo, which translates to inner
Speaker 1: fire in Tibetan, is a meditative technique that goes along
Speaker 1: with visualizations and rituals that are believed to help alleviate
Speaker 1: mental and physical pain. Tumo breathing has been studied by
Speaker 1: researchers and it has been shown to allow practitioners to
Speaker 1: increase their body temperature and for a long time that
Speaker 1: has been associated with at least temporary relief from a
Speaker 1: number of ailments. Western researchers have been studying tumo breathing
Speaker 1: since the early nineteen eighties, but the practices themselves go
Speaker 1: back a very long time. These are basically different kinds
Speaker 1: of hyperventilation techniques. Right, So these are things, These are
Speaker 1: things that go back a long time, this kind of
Speaker 1: breathing techniques, and there are certain physiological changes that can
Speaker 1: be useful in some ways that they are tied to.
Speaker 1: In most versions of this story, Whim will say that
Speaker 1: his journey from being a guy or to being a
Speaker 1: guy who spends all of his time in the cold
Speaker 1: started me was seventeen and he found himself possessed with
Speaker 1: an inexplicable urge to dive into a half frozen canal
Speaker 1: in Amsterdam. Here's how he related that story to The Guardian.
Speaker 1: I was quite a thinker, a philosopher, but one day
Speaker 1: I felt attracted to the freezing water. I jumped into
Speaker 1: a canal in Amsterdam and thought, this is it. That
Speaker 1: deep connection I felt that day was the starting point.
Speaker 1: Every day for forty five years, I've gone into the cold.
Speaker 1: And this is more things are a little bit weird
Speaker 1: because these don't necessarily conflict that like in the earliest
Speaker 1: versions of his story, he would just say like, yeah,
Speaker 1: when I was seventeen, I just felt this urge to
Speaker 1: jump into a canal, and that got me started doing
Speaker 1: these cold weather exposure, you know, experiments. But in the
Speaker 1: more recent stuff that he's written or said about his background,
Speaker 1: he claims that, like, oh, I was like eight or
Speaker 1: nine and my neighbor just found me sleeping outside in
Speaker 1: the snow. No one could explain it. Like he keeps
Speaker 1: pushing the timeline back. Yeah, and like going from like yeah,
Speaker 1: like a lot of when we have seventeen year old
Speaker 1: boys feel nurge to do stupid shit, right, It's kind
Speaker 1: it's kind of the scene quion of being a seventeen
Speaker 1: year old boy in many ways. But to take it
Speaker 1: from like, yeah, from birth, I was like attracted to
Speaker 1: the cold because I'm specialist. Kind of my version of
Speaker 1: this is that when I was seventeen, I felt an
Speaker 1: overpowering urge to pour an entire pint glass of a
Speaker 1: fucking jim bean and see what happens if I drink
Speaker 1: it all at once. How did I go for you, Robert?
Speaker 1: You know, I developed a new set of meditative breathing
Speaker 1: techniques that I could teach you for just twelve thousand dollars.
Speaker 3: He breathed from the stomach upwards and with the content so.
Speaker 1: Shallowly on my side while while while coughing up vomit. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's the that's the real technique. You will not notice
Speaker 1: if you're in the cold. What's true. Once you're drunk enough,
Speaker 1: once you've alcohol poisoned yourself and becomes secondary concerned alcohol
Speaker 1: poison yourself to better health. That's that's my breathing technique.
Speaker 1: So he goes into a bit more detail about his
Speaker 1: journey here in a Discovery magazine interview from a few
Speaker 1: years ago. Even today, he has a difficult time explaining
Speaker 1: the impulse. I felt this attraction to the cold water,
Speaker 1: he says, and then after I went in, I felt
Speaker 1: this understanding, an inside connection. It gave me a rush.
Speaker 1: My mind was free of gibberish. It was so good,
Speaker 1: in fact, that he returned the next day to take
Speaker 1: the plunge again, and he continued through the winter and beyond,
Speaker 1: along the way, evolving his breathing technique, which is based
Speaker 1: on the centuries old Tibetan Buddhist practice known as Tumo meditation,
Speaker 1: but features none of its spiritual trappings. Now, this canal
Speaker 1: story is present in basically every interview where Wim talks
Speaker 1: about his past, but oddly enough, he doesn't list it
Speaker 1: as part of his journey in the Way of the Iceman.
Speaker 1: There he goes for a more exotic story, claiming that
Speaker 1: he traveled to India as a young adult to find
Speaker 1: a teacher who knew more about what was really important
Speaker 1: in life. His biographer insists to us he was looking
Speaker 1: for a deeper spiritual understanding. And I feel like I
Speaker 1: have to read the next couple paragraphs of this to
Speaker 1: you verbatim so you can truly appreciate how insufferable this
Speaker 1: man is. James. He flew to Karachi and took a
Speaker 1: train to New Delhi in search of yogis. He slept
Speaker 1: in the enormous Berla Mandir Temple complex. He met the
Speaker 1: owner of a tea house and the rebellious son of
Speaker 1: a carpet magnate. There these two men persuaded Hoff to
Speaker 1: accompany them to Rishikesh and Badrinath, two places of pilgrimage
Speaker 1: on the Ganges. This colorful trio set off together a
Speaker 1: strong bearded Sia Kuran, a tea house, a black sheet
Speaker 1: from the carpet industry who could get anything he wanted,
Speaker 1: and he was fed up with the corruption of his
Speaker 1: world and haff They thought Hoff was crazy because he
Speaker 1: went swimming in the Ganges a couple of times a day.
Speaker 1: Hoff even swam across to the other side no mean
Speaker 1: feet given the strong current. He was also impressed. He
Speaker 1: also impressed them with the acrobatic yoga exercises he could do,
Speaker 1: despite never having had a yoga lesson in his life.
Speaker 1: In India, Haff discovered that his autodidactic approach had already
Speaker 1: brought him a long way. He could already stand on
Speaker 1: one leg and put the other leg behind his neck,
Speaker 1: a position many people left to practice for years to master.
Speaker 1: His traveling companions remained behind in an ashram, but Haff
Speaker 1: didn't feel at home there. He didn't like the klingi
Speaker 1: cozy atmosphere of the foreign participants, and although many of
Speaker 1: the yogis had learned very special techniques, he didn't like
Speaker 1: the way they profited from them. He also discovered that
Speaker 1: he could not learn much from them, as he had
Speaker 1: already mastered their tricks. He continued his travels alone on foot,
Speaker 1: just me just the best. Why I went to India,
Speaker 1: But I knew more than all of the teachers, and
Speaker 1: they were doing it for money, which is bad unlike me,
Speaker 1: who's I am pure fucking celebrity guru.
Speaker 3: Now, yeah, I'm soiled killing people in the swimming pools.
Speaker 3: We've all met this guy as well, right, absolutely, anyone
Speaker 3: who has left the United States has encountered this guy
Speaker 3: in some place in the global South.
Speaker 1: They are insufferable. Also, I love that he's like they
Speaker 1: were mystified that I swam in the Ganji. I was like, man,
Speaker 1: I've been to Rishikesh. I have swam in the ganjis
Speaker 1: in the Rishikesh I know exactly where he did. It's
Speaker 1: not that you got to be careful, right, Sometimes the
Speaker 1: current is too much, Right, there are times that you
Speaker 1: don't want to be swimming in the ganjis. But like
Speaker 1: Rishikesh is up in the far north, it's in the
Speaker 1: Himalayan foothills, it's relatively clean. Lots of people swim and
Speaker 1: raft in the gangs up there. Not weird to see
Speaker 1: people doing it. No one's going to be like, oh,
Speaker 1: white man swimming in the Ganges. Like we're not talking
Speaker 1: about being like down like fucking south of Delhi where
Speaker 1: you've got a lot of affluvia in it, and it's
Speaker 1: a lot like less safe to swim in the ganjis
Speaker 1: because like you've got cities and stuff like you are
Speaker 1: talking about a place where a lot of people do this. Anyway, whatever, Whim,
Speaker 1: come on the Hoff.
Speaker 3: Yeah he used his last name, that Hoff, giving himself
Speaker 3: a little stolen hoff Fata.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's right, that's right. So in this version of events,
Speaker 1: Wim describes feeling an overpowering urge to leap under a
Speaker 1: massive waterfall. The water was so cold it stopped him
Speaker 1: from being able to think. Quote, the sensation of a
Speaker 1: strength and power greater than himself took hold of him.
Speaker 1: Since then, he has loved ice cold water. So now
Speaker 1: we're at like three or four different stories about like
Speaker 1: how he came to experiment with ice cold water emerging.
Speaker 1: I guess, yeah, yeah, it does clear the mind. I went, like,
Speaker 1: I remember, I think I have plunged into the waterfall
Speaker 1: he's talking about, if it's the one that's a little
Speaker 1: north of Rishikesh.
Speaker 3: Right, he just didn't turn me into a giant rift.
Speaker 3: Like my first experience with extremely cold water, I think
Speaker 3: was I was pack rafting in Alaska and we stopped
Speaker 3: on like a chunk of an iceberg, and because I'm
Speaker 3: a boy, I pissed from the top of it, right,
Speaker 3: because that's the sort of standard operating procedure. And then
Speaker 3: from there I jumped off it into the water having
Speaker 3: not done up the like the relief zipper on on
Speaker 3: the on the dry suit, and it certainly clears the
Speaker 3: mind when you when you hit water which is like
Speaker 3: just above freezing.
Speaker 1: Yes, it's dangerous too, you know, dangerous out You gotta
Speaker 1: be real careful with the water. In that moment, it
Speaker 1: felt pretty dangerous. I didn't want to go back. That's
Speaker 1: that's that's smart, James. But you know who can never die?
Speaker 3: Uh Elon musk Uh.
Speaker 1: That remains yet to be seen. But our sponsors of
Speaker 1: our podcast, all of them are willing to fight Elon
Speaker 1: in a steel cage at the house. Yeah yeah, at
Speaker 1: their house if if you're in also, I am. By
Speaker 1: the way, Elon, let's let's go, buddy. It has been
Speaker 1: thrown down.
Speaker 5: Yeah yeah, and the weird back.
Speaker 2: I would bet on you.
Speaker 1: Thank you me too, thank you, Sophie. I would also
Speaker 1: bet on me against Elon.
Speaker 3: Would you do it like full duel style? Would you
Speaker 3: like let him pick the weapons and then look, because
Speaker 3: that's that's the if you issue a challenge, he should
Speaker 3: be picking the weapons, right, sure, why not?
Speaker 1: What if he chooses Teslas? Oh then we'll both die? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I got you children? Uh yeah, fine, you'll go down
Speaker 1: a hero. Yeah, yeah, the way I always wanted to. So.
Speaker 1: Soon after which, again, if you're taking the claim that
Speaker 1: he encountered coldwater immersion in fucking India, then soon after
Speaker 1: this he decides to go home, having learned everything he
Speaker 1: can from mysticism in Southeast Asia and decided to go
Speaker 1: home and devote himself to unlocking the powerful spiritual benefits
Speaker 1: of being in cold water. He returns home to Amsterdam
Speaker 1: at age twenty, and he sets up in a squat
Speaker 1: with about ninety other people. By his own description, he
Speaker 1: ate very little food and mostly did yoga, avoiding the
Speaker 1: drugs the other squatters did. Now, I might say that
Speaker 1: starving yourself and doing yoga for twenty hours a day
Speaker 1: could theoretically be less healthy for you than just doing
Speaker 1: some fucking k and eating schwarma, but that's a personal choice.
Speaker 1: People are allowed to do whatever. So he seems to
Speaker 1: have basically spent this time busking by teaching yoga in
Speaker 1: the park, which is again fine. And one day, while
Speaker 1: he's doing this, this thing that he had also criticized
Speaker 1: these Indian yogis for, by the way, kind of worth
Speaker 1: note in taking money. Yeah, he meets his future wife,
Speaker 1: Oleah Fernandez. She moves in with him, and he claims
Speaker 1: for a year they didn't have sex, which I was
Speaker 1: not going to ask about, h yeah in the book. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but he wants us to know. So now we have
Speaker 1: to fucking interrogate this. Yeah, let's go, he says. He
Speaker 1: does explain why they didn't fuck, and it's because, quote
Speaker 1: Hoff's what life was devoted to yoga, and his Spanish
Speaker 1: girlfriend respected that. And I always, I always find it
Speaker 1: a little weird. It's fine if you're like, he met
Speaker 1: his wife, you know, a basque woman from from you know,
Speaker 1: Spain or whatever. Okay, Like that's that's fine for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: Just like the way, just like describing her as his
Speaker 1: Spanish girlfriend, I do find slightly off putting. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: can't exactly tell you why. Yeah, she's like a character
Speaker 1: in a story he's telling him by himself. Yeah, we'll
Speaker 1: be talking about her a bit. So she goes home
Speaker 1: after they're together for like a very sexless year, according
Speaker 1: to Whim, and the next thing that happens in his
Speaker 1: life that he talks about in his book is a
Speaker 1: bike trip to Senegal, which is very spiritual to him.
Speaker 1: I don't care. It's very boring, James. His spiritual journey
Speaker 1: is boring his ass. I much prefer like I don't
Speaker 1: know l Ron Hubbard's. But he claims after Senegal he
Speaker 1: goes back to India and he studies under Yogi's this time,
Speaker 1: I guess he finds someones that have lessons to teach him.
Speaker 1: Still non profit yogis, Yeah, nonprofit yogis. We have no idea,
Speaker 1: no way of knowing if any of this is true.
Speaker 1: But given how inconsistent his story is, I'm going to
Speaker 1: throw serious doubt on this next passage quote. He trained
Speaker 1: his body in mind under extreme conditions. Sometimes he spent
Speaker 1: several days at great heights while enduring temperatures of negative
Speaker 1: two degrees without food negative two degrees celsius without food.
Speaker 1: He discovered a new way to survive the extreme cold,
Speaker 1: controlling his breathing. With breathing exercises, he could transform his
Speaker 1: fear and the negative experience of the cold into a
Speaker 1: powerful form of energy. He saw his body in a
Speaker 1: new way and learned that breathing is an important instrument.
Speaker 1: This was also where he learned his breathing exercises. So
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't believe that, but that's one
Speaker 1: of the claims that he makes about his background. He
Speaker 1: tells different stories in other mediums. In some interviews, he
Speaker 1: claims that he learned to control his body temperature through
Speaker 1: diving in the freezing canals and other cold weather exercise
Speaker 1: in the Netherlands. I'm not sure that's how that works.
Speaker 1: It is not how that works, but here's how he made.
Speaker 1: I want to read a claim that he makes in
Speaker 1: a Reddit ama that this guy sounds powerfully Reddit. He
Speaker 1: makes some fascinating claims in his AMA. So here's iceman Hoff.
Speaker 1: Because our natural ability to withstand cold makes us not
Speaker 1: able to freeze and not go below zero degrees. If
Speaker 1: your cells go below that temperature, you get a reparable damage.
Speaker 1: If you exposure self for that temperature, your body knows
Speaker 1: what to do to not freeze. The body is able
Speaker 1: to go to the extremities besides the core, which remains
Speaker 1: thirty seven degrees. I can do all that stuff. I
Speaker 1: trained with kung fu masters in Beijing and they respected
Speaker 1: me very much. Kung kung fu masters in Beijing just
Speaker 1: throws that out there in the reddit. Enemy. I haven't
Speaker 1: seen that elsewhere, but I guess in between the yogis
Speaker 1: and the top of mountains, he went and trained with
Speaker 1: some kung fu masters stew and then they respected me
Speaker 1: very much. Fuck me. The orientalism is so profound, it
Speaker 1: is out it is outstanding orientalism. He missed travel to
Speaker 1: the eighteen forties to get orientalism like this normally. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this guy could have crushed it and oh my god,
Speaker 1: he would have been huge. Yeah yeah, like he could
Speaker 1: been on some learns for Arabia shit, but he would
Speaker 1: have been almost to god until he died of fucking
Speaker 1: tetanus at age thirty seven ye bacterian infection from the Thames,
Speaker 1: trying to show off his breathing techniques. And it's very so.
Speaker 1: He says that, like I trade with kung fu masters,
Speaker 1: they respected me very much. The response, the one Reddit
Speaker 1: response whom jam Brooklyn is just very inspiring. Thank you.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, fuck me. He's really getting high on his
Speaker 1: own supply here, believably so. And again yeah. So. One
Speaker 1: of the things I find intriguing about whim is that
Speaker 1: this is not the kind of situation we see all
Speaker 1: the time where grifter kind of workshops a version of
Speaker 1: their life story and there are inconsistencies in the past,
Speaker 1: and then they pick a story and stick with it, right,
Speaker 1: And if you dig into it you can find like, oh,
Speaker 1: they used to tell a different story, but they tend to,
Speaker 1: like when they get famous, stick with a version of events, right,
Speaker 1: because that's the smart thing to do. What's interesting to
Speaker 1: me about what he's so inconsistent still to this day
Speaker 1: with like his exact journey and like when he had
Speaker 1: his revelations and when he got inspired to do what
Speaker 1: just very interesting to me how he has drunk guide
Speaker 1: to ba and she has not like experienced scrift or energy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which I think is probably part of what works for
Speaker 1: him is that he does seem a little bit less
Speaker 1: polished than some of these more explicit con men. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's not like aodh and he doesn't look like like
Speaker 1: he's not If people are watching there listening to this,
Speaker 1: and like they haven't looked at wim Hoff, you want
Speaker 1: to look at wim Hoff because it's not the extreme
Speaker 1: mountain athlete you're probably thinking of. No, No, he does
Speaker 1: kind of look like a normal man in his fifties
Speaker 1: from you know this part of the world, so up
Speaker 1: to the present day, he continues to give different anecdotes
Speaker 1: about his path to figuring out his special breathing techniques.
Speaker 1: The Way of the Iceman came out in twenty seventeen,
Speaker 1: but you can find articles from the twenty twenties where
Speaker 1: he tells the Canals story instead. I do find that
Speaker 1: book to be the most interesting version of his backstory,
Speaker 1: in part because of how badly written and off putting
Speaker 1: it is. So after his time in Senegal, Wim breaks
Speaker 1: up the narrative with a message to the reader, which
Speaker 1: basically says, Hey, we know you're probably wondering why we're
Speaker 1: getting all these bullshit stories about spiritualism and shit and
Speaker 1: a book ostensibly about breath control exercises. Don't worry, we'll
Speaker 1: tell you soon. But first quote, we must share the
Speaker 1: sad story of Whim's wife, Olayah. You ready for this, James,
Speaker 1: I don't think I am. You are not ready for this.
Speaker 1: It's impossible to be ready for this. Hit me with
Speaker 1: the Yeah, I'm going to hit you with my best shot,
Speaker 1: so fire away. That is a peculiar way of introducing
Speaker 1: what will prove to be a very dark story. So
Speaker 1: before going back to India to study with Yogi's, maybe
Speaker 1: Haff returned to Amsterdam and met with Oleya. They got
Speaker 1: married and they had a son in nineteen eighty three,
Speaker 1: presumably after he got back from studying in the mountains
Speaker 1: with Yogi's, although he doesn't say. They had two daughters
Speaker 1: soon after. But it was too cold for Olea in
Speaker 1: the Netherlands, so they moved to the Pyrenees and Wilm
Speaker 1: got it a job teaching English. Now. Whim claims that
Speaker 1: he took to mountain climbing up in the Pyrenees with
Speaker 1: basically no gear. He'd go up in like shorts and
Speaker 1: shoes and nothing else and stuff as a hobby, right,
Speaker 1: so that he could he could just feel alive. He's
Speaker 1: got to like go up there without proper safety equipment,
Speaker 1: otherwise he doesn't. He's not on the edge. He's not alive.
Speaker 1: Now this pisses off his wife because they have three
Speaker 1: children together, and she's like, you are taking dumb risks
Speaker 1: with your life for no reason, and like we have
Speaker 1: kids that we're responsible for. Would you give us a
Speaker 1: fact criticism if you're just a dude and your hobby
Speaker 1: is risking your life in unnecessary ways. You got a
Speaker 1: right to do that, you know, Yeah, to a point,
Speaker 1: as long as you're not endangering other people with it.
Speaker 1: When you have three kids with someone, you are kind
Speaker 1: of a dick for continuing to do that is a
Speaker 1: douche move. Yeah, like you have a responsibility. Now, you
Speaker 1: gotta at least get those kids out the door before
Speaker 1: you go back to your suicide.
Speaker 3: How did your father die? Yeah, well he was hiking
Speaker 3: in his box of shorts in the parodies, being a.
Speaker 1: Dumb ass, and so I here him every day by
Speaker 1: continuing his legacy being a stupid asshole in the mouth.
Speaker 3: I like to ghost ride my car.
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly, now now you say that, James, Actually you
Speaker 1: may be unaware of this. Ghost riding the whip is
Speaker 1: the most reliable way to treat uh uh chemo resistant
Speaker 1: forms of cancer. Oh fruscinating. Yeah, doctors agree. It's really
Speaker 1: the most antioxidant rich activity you can engage in. Ghost
Speaker 1: riding your car. Yeah, bigger the car, the better. Just
Speaker 1: rent an eighteen wheeler and and just fucking get that
Speaker 1: thing going downhill and then just tuck and roll. Baby. Okay,
Speaker 1: you you actually okay, you don't go right on top
Speaker 1: of it. You that is actually more terrorism. Actually, hey,
Speaker 1: when I think of it, that.
Speaker 2: This bit is bad. Shut the fuck up.
Speaker 1: Uh huh, that's is that, Sophie. You don't you don't
Speaker 1: like no ghost writing? You don't like ghostwriting?
Speaker 2: No, I don't. I don't like uh fake wink cancer.
Speaker 1: Oh I love a good fake cancer here, Sophie. That's
Speaker 1: like our bread and butter. Yeah, none of us would
Speaker 1: have jobs if people didn't have fakes for answer, Sophie, Yeah, yes,
Speaker 1: but no. Okay, Well, Sophie doesn't like my retirement plan,
Speaker 1: but that's not going to stop me from retiring. Uh
Speaker 1: so where were we? Just like, no one's going to
Speaker 1: stop that wheeler rob it rub the energy of a
Speaker 1: least truck paraly down the freeway, gets pissed at him
Speaker 1: for risking his life when they've got kids together, pointlessly
Speaker 1: uh And eventually he agrees to stop doing his suicide
Speaker 1: climbs and instead devotes his free time to learning how
Speaker 1: to hold his breath underwater. Eventually he gets up to
Speaker 1: six minutes. Now. When I first read that, I was like,
Speaker 1: that sounds like bullshit. I don't think people can hold
Speaker 1: their breath that long. Turns out they can. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: actually totally doable. I was when I was looking this up.
Speaker 1: You know what, the longest anyone's ever held their breath
Speaker 1: for underwater eight minutes twenty four fun. Now, that is
Speaker 1: the longest anyone's done it with oxygen pre breathing. Right, Okay,
Speaker 1: it's not like they're not like raw Dog in it
Speaker 1: right there in Haley pure O two before. But still,
Speaker 1: that's fucking wild. That is wild. It's like whale numbers
Speaker 1: a half man, half dolphin. Yeah, without pre breathing. The
Speaker 1: record is eleven minutes and fifty four seconds, which is
Speaker 1: fucking nuts. That is so long to hold bad.
Speaker 3: Yeah, get bored, like you got to work onto mind
Speaker 3: exercises to think of Sudoku down there, something.
Speaker 1: Taxes or some shit. Yeah, so it's plausible. Whim very
Speaker 1: likely probably can do something like this, given some of
Speaker 1: the other stuff I've seen him do. So I'll give
Speaker 1: them that. In the way of the Ice Man, he
Speaker 1: claims that around this time, while he's spending god knows
Speaker 1: how long preparing to hold his breath underwater, his wife
Speaker 1: starts disappearing for periods of time because she is severely depressed,
Speaker 1: and she will regularly threatened to commit suicide. He says
Speaker 1: that they returned to Amsterdam because he no longer felt
Speaker 1: safe with her in their farmhouse, which is very sad.
Speaker 1: This is to some extent true. They have another kid though,
Speaker 1: while this is all going on, and then after they
Speaker 1: have this last kid, Olea abandons them again for a
Speaker 1: period of time. Now in numerous other storeses sources, he
Speaker 1: says that Oleah was eventually diagnosed with schizophrenia. This includes
Speaker 1: in twenty seventeen in the Way of the Iceman. He
Speaker 1: also will sometimes just say that she was depressed. Obviously,
Speaker 1: both of those things can go together. She does eventually
Speaker 1: commit suicide, and this is very bleak. I want to
Speaker 1: first read to you how that story is related in
Speaker 1: a twenty seventeen Rolling Stone article, and then I'm going
Speaker 1: to read how it's related in his book, because the
Speaker 1: differences between the two of them are fascinating. So here's
Speaker 1: that Rolling Stone article. Okay hit me. One day in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety five, after kissing her four children goodbye, she
Speaker 1: jumped off the eighth floor of an apartment building. A
Speaker 1: bit later, Hoff had a vision in which he saw
Speaker 1: how his breathing technique could help people like his wife.
Speaker 1: I can bring people back to tranquility. He once said,
Speaker 1: my method can give them back control. So that's yeah,
Speaker 1: very paragraph. That's just a choice, that is, that is
Speaker 1: a series of choices. See, man, there, I think i'd
Speaker 1: write that. Yes, fucked up in my mind, but you
Speaker 1: know whatever, not worth getting into too much there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: my judgment on the matter. But here's how he relates
Speaker 1: the same story in his twenty seventeen book The Way
Speaker 1: of the Iceman. One day, when Hoff was alone in
Speaker 1: the mountains, Olea jumped from the eighth floor of her parents'
Speaker 1: house in Pamplona. Olea was dead. Jennam, Isabelle, Laura and
Speaker 1: Michael lost their mother, and Wim lost his wife. He
Speaker 1: felt guilty and the children were devastated. Hoff devoted himself
Speaker 1: to caring for his children, occasionally retreating to be alone
Speaker 1: with nature to recharge his batteries. In those years, he
Speaker 1: was a well known figure in the Vondel Park. With
Speaker 1: ropes and ballet equipment, he showed young children how to
Speaker 1: climb the highest trees. The children learned that they could
Speaker 1: do more than they thought was possible. Hoff enjoyed the
Speaker 1: natural surroundings, even in the heart of Amsterdam. Later, wim
Speaker 1: remarried and had another son, So that's also a paragraph,
Speaker 1: quite a page or whatever that just gets across. First,
Speaker 1: how odd reading Whim's different life stories can be. Again,
Speaker 1: they're not necessarily in conflict with each other, but they
Speaker 1: all are so different in terms of what is emphasized
Speaker 1: and claimed that it does feel peculiar and spoilers. In
Speaker 1: both of those versions of the wim Hoff story, he
Speaker 1: leaves out some very fucking important details which we are
Speaker 1: about to get into. But James, you know what we're
Speaker 1: going to get into first? Is it some advertising? Oh,
Speaker 1: we are sure going to get James, you know what
Speaker 1: I love about capitalism? No? Actually, no, please enlighten me.
Speaker 1: Oh man, oh wow. First off, the fact that content
Speaker 1: can be supported with ads. That's wonderful, which is a
Speaker 1: sustainable situation. I was just thinking the other day, you know,
Speaker 1: it would be a great way to run newspapers, make
Speaker 1: it import That's a stable way to make sure people
Speaker 1: have access to the best news at all times.
Speaker 3: And it helps because they sort of the press holds
Speaker 3: people in power to account. So it's important that it's
Speaker 3: also advertising.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Critical Critical, So be a part of that
Speaker 1: by buying whoever it is you you hear from next
Speaker 1: you know, if it's a Reagan coin, it's the Washington
Speaker 1: State Highway Patrol. Send them money. Just send money to
Speaker 1: a random phone number on Venmo. You know what type
Speaker 1: numbers and VINDI and the spreads and joy spreads and
Speaker 1: joy will you than the Reagan guy if you've got
Speaker 1: a pot of money and you're thinking about what to
Speaker 1: send it random Venmo? James, I don't think it's responsible
Speaker 1: to advise our listeners not to invest in Reagan coins.
Speaker 3: Because they will be quadrupling in value.
Speaker 1: I'm sure it. Is it a crypto type coin or
Speaker 1: is it a physical I don't know. There's fiscal coin.
Speaker 1: I skipped through that ship. You didn't read the pdf.
Speaker 2: Hey, here's an idea.
Speaker 4: How about people don't do that and they they subscribe
Speaker 4: if they are able and want to to cooler zon media,
Speaker 4: and then they don't get any ads.
Speaker 3: Wow, or alternatively these drawings of monkeys that you can
Speaker 3: buy on the internet. That's a great thing to spend
Speaker 3: your money on.
Speaker 2: James, no way.
Speaker 1: I have reinvested the whole company pension plan into smart
Speaker 1: because we have.
Speaker 2: We totally have that, mm hmm.
Speaker 3: And that's why our motto is the fast Diana.
Speaker 1: I got an incredible deal on Jimmy Fallon's monkey dry
Speaker 1: This is it on the boat? Yeah, it could be
Speaker 1: on a boat. That's up to you.
Speaker 4: You can.
Speaker 1: We only write your monkey drawing nice anyway. And I
Speaker 1: must paint and update that bad boy now products we're back.
Speaker 1: So I've just read two different claims or versions of
Speaker 1: the story of Whim's wife, Oliah's suicide, and this brings
Speaker 1: me to a fella named Scott Carney. Now, in addition
Speaker 1: to having a funny name, Scott is an American journalist.
Speaker 1: He is an author and anthropologist who, in my opinion,
Speaker 1: made some serious moral lapses as a reporter when he
Speaker 1: started writing about whim Hoff. We'll be talking about that
Speaker 1: in more detail in Part two. He says that he
Speaker 1: met wim while working on a book about the Enlightenment
Speaker 1: and the spiritualism grift industry. This is a critical book
Speaker 1: about like guru grifters, right, like the guy and the
Speaker 1: guy that wim Hoff is, right, who's writing this book.
Speaker 1: But he becomes kind of enraptured with women, particularly with
Speaker 1: how well his breathing technique works, so he writes an
Speaker 1: article and then eventually a book on wim In Scott's
Speaker 1: work like writing on whim is a big part of
Speaker 1: like why wim Hoff becomes famous, right he Scott plays
Speaker 1: a significant role in sort of the birth of him
Speaker 1: as a major media figure. He has come to regret
Speaker 1: aspects of the role he played here, largely because of
Speaker 1: all those deaths. Well, the people definitely died. It's alleged
Speaker 1: that wim Hoff's training has as and there's fourth cases
Speaker 1: currently continuing. So he seems to have come to regret
Speaker 1: some of this, and he wrote a blog post recently
Speaker 1: called the Rise and Fall of the wim Hoff Empire,
Speaker 1: which we will be referring back to several times in
Speaker 1: these episodes. That article includes a very different story about
Speaker 1: Oliah's death and particularly what happened after. So again in
Speaker 1: you know, just going back to the book, he says
Speaker 1: that you know, well, he was devastated obviously after his
Speaker 1: wife committed suicide, and he devoted himself to caring for
Speaker 1: his children and like teaching other kids in the park
Speaker 1: and whatnot in order to deal with his grief. And
Speaker 1: then later whim we married and had another son. That's
Speaker 1: the version that the book gives, broadly in line with
Speaker 1: what he usually says in interviews. Most versions of the
Speaker 1: wim Hoff story make a big deal about the fact
Speaker 1: that his wife commits suicide and he is left to
Speaker 1: raise their four children alone as a single father. Obviously,
Speaker 1: that is a noteworthy thing about anyone's life who has
Speaker 1: a similar cher. I can imagine very few experiences or
Speaker 1: in situations more difficult in demanding than being left as
Speaker 1: a single parent to raise four kids alone. That's a
Speaker 1: very difficult thing to deal with, very much worth mentioning
Speaker 1: in someone's biography, I would say, much more impressive than
Speaker 1: hiking up a mountain in shorts. Yes, perhaps more beneficial, yes, yeah. Now.
Speaker 1: In a video interview with WMX Presents, currently about two
Speaker 1: point one million views, wim says this about his wife's
Speaker 1: death children. I had with my wife, and I was
Speaker 1: to be with her forever. She was the love of
Speaker 1: my life. She died, She suicided. It's a black hole
Speaker 1: within yourself. It breaks your heart and you don't know why,
Speaker 1: but the train of daily life is going on and
Speaker 1: you've got to catch up otherwise you lose it. So
Speaker 1: I had to be there for my children. And yes
Speaker 1: we created a new nest. My children made me survive
Speaker 1: in that time, but nature healed my wounds. So again,
Speaker 1: very focused on the idea that he bravely takes on
Speaker 1: his kids and they help each other heal after this.
Speaker 1: That is not the version of the story that Scott
Speaker 1: Carney gives in this ride up quote. After his wife's death,
Speaker 1: he began a relationship with a woman in another city
Speaker 1: and left his kids to survive alone in a squat
Speaker 1: house in Amsterdam. The eldest Innam was only fifteen years
Speaker 1: old when he became the family's surrogate dad. Eventually, Hoff's
Speaker 1: relationship with the woman ended, and he found himself with
Speaker 1: a thirty thousand euro tax debt that seemed to be
Speaker 1: the impetus to reconnect with his family. Ah there we go, Oh,
Speaker 1: there we go. Now we got some of that classic
Speaker 1: bas abandoning your family and then coming back to get
Speaker 1: pay your tax bill. Ah, there we go. That's that
Speaker 1: good ship you feel that deep in your that's like
Speaker 1: as like the spiritual equivalent of a nice bowl of
Speaker 1: gaspacho right where you just feel it filling you up,
Speaker 1: nourishing you. Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's what I think about when I think about
Speaker 3: someone abandoning that children.
Speaker 1: That's the exact noise I make. That is why I
Speaker 1: do this podcast. Yeah, the joy that spots in your
Speaker 1: eyes was really made it for me. Now that's that's
Speaker 1: bad person shit, right, Yes, look a douche move. I
Speaker 1: have a lot of empathy for someone who loses a spouse.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of bad behavior, even that can be
Speaker 1: justified by just the madness of grief. But abandoning your
Speaker 1: children to go shack up with somebody else and leaving
Speaker 1: them alone in a squat with your fifteen year old
Speaker 1: not acceptable behavior. You have a possibility to do better
Speaker 1: than that for your kids. Oh wow, Yeah, and then
Speaker 1: you just admit that from all his own rent should
Speaker 1: just start know we saved each other man, you were
Speaker 1: fuck you bounced Tomy. Now it gets even weirder than that, though,
Speaker 1: because once he decided he needed to get back in
Speaker 1: touch with his family, he asks his second oldest son,
Speaker 1: because his oldest son is pissed about being made dad suddenly, yeah,
Speaker 1: he asks his second oldest boy, Michael, to meet him
Speaker 1: in the Vandell Park in Amsterdam. Quote, haff arrived early
Speaker 1: and went for a swim in the park's pond. While
Speaker 1: he was waiting, he paddled out for a fountain and
Speaker 1: positioned himself over the spout to give himself an enema
Speaker 1: he thought would cleanse out all of his destines or is.
Speaker 1: He often likes to say, get the shit out. Well, yeah, well,
Speaker 1: first off, you're a bastard for doing that in a
Speaker 1: public fountain. You don't give yourself an innima in a
Speaker 1: public fountain. You're gonna get your shit everywhere. You fucked
Speaker 1: up that soil.
Speaker 3: Oh, that literally hurts everyone involved, Like what who does that?
Speaker 1: A fucking piece of asshole, A bastard.
Speaker 3: That is not a normal maneuver.
Speaker 1: I'm going to continue that quote. A recording of one
Speaker 1: of our conversations in twenty thirteen, Hoff recounts that he
Speaker 1: had done the park fountain enema at least one hundred
Speaker 1: times to work ray but unbeknownst but that unbeknownst to him,
Speaker 1: the park Service had changed the spigott on the fountain
Speaker 1: to spray the narrower gauge some water, cutting through his
Speaker 1: intestines like a knight filling his bows with dirty water.
Speaker 1: He managed to make it back to store to shore
Speaker 1: while blood and feces leaked from his rectum. Hoff's first
Speaker 1: words to his son in a decade where that he
Speaker 1: needed to go to a hospital.
Speaker 3: I would not welcome that man back into my life
Speaker 3: at that point. I'm just gonna say that walk away.
Speaker 1: Your dad bounces to shack up with somebody you don't
Speaker 1: know and leaves your fifteen year old brother in charge
Speaker 1: after your mom kills herself, and the first time you
Speaker 1: see him, he's crawling across the ground, blood and shit
Speaker 1: looking out of him because he gave himself a fountain
Speaker 1: in a up before hanging out. Yeah, better off done,
Speaker 1: like did walk away? I like to hospital by Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is all you, buddy. I love the Dutch park
Speaker 1: service employee who saw this ninety nine times in red
Speaker 1: lights wasn't going to be one hundred deep and then
Speaker 1: to that shit immediately. I do love ye adding that story. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I want to hear him.
Speaker 3: Someone to a pr for the man who replaced that spigot.
Speaker 3: He's giving on cool people next week.
Speaker 1: So Scott climes that he pressed whim about, like, why
Speaker 1: did you really decide to give yourself a fountain enema? Right?
Speaker 4: Like?
Speaker 1: Because Scott doesn't believe that he would have accidentally hurt
Speaker 1: himself on the fountain without knowing it could be dangerous. Quote.
Speaker 1: I asked Kauf if he had an inclination that the
Speaker 1: fountain maneuver might hurt him, and whether hurting himself before
Speaker 1: meeting his son might have been a way to show
Speaker 1: his remorse for abandoning his children for a decade. You
Speaker 1: get the feeling that you want to kill yourself and
Speaker 1: want to end the story, not deliberately, but unconsciously, stop
Speaker 1: this shit, even if you have to die. Something like
Speaker 1: that was going on. Hoff said, so either if you
Speaker 1: take kind of what they're saying, he felt so bad
Speaker 1: that he felt like he had to do this to
Speaker 1: kind of like express the sorrow in his heart, and
Speaker 1: because he was so guilty for his failures. I kind
Speaker 1: of think maybe he knew that his kids had very
Speaker 1: valid reason to be angry at him, and he fucking
Speaker 1: decided that the best thing he could do was injure
Speaker 1: himself in order that they would feel bad for him,
Speaker 1: so that he wouldn't have to deal with the actual
Speaker 1: guilt that he has for failing them. Like I kind
Speaker 1: of think this was another emotionally abusive thing by him
Speaker 1: where he's like, well, yeah, if I fuck myself up,
Speaker 1: then they can't be angry at me, right because they'll
Speaker 1: have it will have to be dealing with this health problem.
Speaker 3: I will say, that's why the methodology is still fascinating
Speaker 3: to me.
Speaker 1: Either way. Yeah, it's not not good decision making. Nobody's
Speaker 1: gotta claim that.
Speaker 3: You could get your foot run over or somethink that
Speaker 3: he commit to the bit.
Speaker 1: He sure did so. I was curious as to whether
Speaker 1: or not Whim had discussed his Fountain injury with anyone
Speaker 1: else during his many, many precedents, and I found a
Speaker 1: terrible article in my research from a website called High
Speaker 1: Existence by John Brooks. It is a listical titled thirteen
Speaker 1: crazy facts about Iceman wim Hoff that nobody talks about.
Speaker 1: The cover image is a crude photoshop of Whim's head
Speaker 1: on the Night King from Game of Thrones. Now, oh cool,
Speaker 1: get some good shit. Yeah. I this article and I
Speaker 1: hate John Brooks who wrote it, but it is useful
Speaker 1: for our purposes because it is written by a weirdo
Speaker 1: freak who's obsessed with wim Hoff and has spent more
Speaker 1: time listening to his podcast appearances and video interviews than
Speaker 1: I ever will. Here is entry number six on that listicle.
Speaker 1: In the Becoming the Ice Man subreddit, a user asked
Speaker 1: how Wim got the scar over his belly button. He
Speaker 1: received this reply About fifteen years ago. Wim was swimming
Speaker 1: at a fountain at Amsterdam and decided to give himself
Speaker 1: an enema on the nozzle of the jet. He says
Speaker 1: he has done this before, but a few weeks earlier
Speaker 1: the city altered the jet to have a more powerful spout,
Speaker 1: so when he sat on the hose, the water cut
Speaker 1: through his colon and intestines like a water knife. His son, Michael,
Speaker 1: who he was meeting at the park, took him to
Speaker 1: the er. Whim is a pretty good ability to resist pain,
Speaker 1: so the hospital did not tree as him to surgery
Speaker 1: immediately because they didn't understand as serious the injury was.
Speaker 1: After a few hours, he fainted and they realized how
Speaker 1: bad it was. The doctor stitched him up, but rightly
Speaker 1: feared the risk of sepsis. It took him a long
Speaker 1: time to recover. He says that he used no antibiotics.
Speaker 1: Staring recovery a god always a chance for a grift.
Speaker 1: I do love it. They was like, yeah, all they
Speaker 1: say about the fact that this was their first time
Speaker 1: meeting in a decade is his son Michael, who he
Speaker 1: was meeting.
Speaker 3: At the park y Yeah, yeah, are amazing. What an
Speaker 3: amazing way to turn that l into a dub just
Speaker 3: being like, yeah, I owned the self inflicted colon injury.
Speaker 1: And here's the thing, the story we just read about
Speaker 1: him doing this after abandoning his family, that comes from
Speaker 1: Scott Carney's recorded notes, right. Scott also wrote the subreddit
Speaker 1: post that I just read you. Yeah, So here's what
Speaker 1: follows that version of the story in that post on
Speaker 1: the subreddit. How do I know this? I'm Scott Carney,
Speaker 1: author of a book about whim. I didn't include this
Speaker 1: story in the book because how on earth do you
Speaker 1: tell it and not lose track of the main story. Now,
Speaker 1: But that's why you fucking get good at writing, isn't it.
Speaker 1: That's why you get good at writing. Yeah, you don't
Speaker 1: just abandon the fucking story. Like, and again, he's not
Speaker 1: in the subreddit. He's not saying I hid the part
Speaker 1: about him abandoning his family. He's saying I just didn't
Speaker 1: tell about him getting his guts cut up. By a
Speaker 1: water knife, right, But the reality is he hid both
Speaker 1: of those things, right, Scott hides the fact that Wim
Speaker 1: abandons his family and the story about him giving himself
Speaker 1: the death enema. And this is why I think Scott's
Speaker 1: one of our bastards here, right. Yeah, obviously the true story.
Speaker 1: If the version that Scott is now giving is the
Speaker 1: true story, right, we are I have to I assume
Speaker 1: it probably is because Scott is claiming I have this recorded,
Speaker 1: and if he was lying about this, that's a significant
Speaker 1: legal liability, right because Scott's not He's putting this up
Speaker 1: on his blog. He's not publishing this through an outlet
Speaker 1: even who would be, you know, it would be incumbent
Speaker 1: upon them to represent him. So he better you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean yeah, this Connie's Jetty is kind of
Speaker 3: fascinating and I don't know if you can ever treat
Speaker 3: him as truly credible. He has his own kind of
Speaker 3: Oriental origin story that he tells as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I we're not going to get as much
Speaker 1: in that. We'll talk more about him in the next
Speaker 1: episode though, But like, yeah, the truth, assuming that the
Speaker 1: version he is giving now is a true story, it
Speaker 1: paints a story of whom as a profoundly unbalanced man who,
Speaker 1: whatever else you can say about him, should not be
Speaker 1: the source of health and wellness advice. I remember one
Speaker 1: who is habitually giving himself a public enema in a
Speaker 1: public fountain. That's a man you shouldn't take health advice from.
Speaker 3: Yeah you, Yeah, you can be involuntarily constrained for doing
Speaker 3: that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: That none that should happen to him. I'm not saying
Speaker 1: you should be, but you shouldn't be a health guru. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think if you continue to do that after the
Speaker 1: first time, you, yeah, you're not giving good advice to
Speaker 1: the old health Well, you are not someone who can
Speaker 1: be taken seriously on this sort of thing. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe if you try it once when you're dumb and
Speaker 1: young and you learn what a bad idea issue one
Speaker 1: hundred times yeah, yeah times.
Speaker 3: It's only got a one percent fail rate.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, really can you afford not to? But yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it is kind of damning because it's Scott's
Speaker 1: article today, Like the one that he's written now, I
Speaker 1: think is a reasonably good article. It does answer a
Speaker 1: lot of questions about whim, but the fact that he
Speaker 1: hides all this is really fucked up, and he I
Speaker 1: think why he does this is that the business that
Speaker 1: he knows Wim might do as a wellness influencer is
Speaker 1: too enticing to risk fucking up by dropping this story.
Speaker 1: But here is how Scott explains why he had this.
Speaker 1: The story of Hoff abandoning his children and his near
Speaker 1: fatal inemin never made it into my own book because
Speaker 1: both my editor and I wanted to protect Hoff's reputation
Speaker 1: from evidence of his own madness. It's a role that
Speaker 1: many other journalists have also fallen into when they might
Speaker 1: have otherwise doubled down on their fact checking efforts. And like,
Speaker 1: this is not a fact checking issue, Scott, because he
Speaker 1: admits to doing. You just have to tell the story
Speaker 1: he's telling here. Yeah, like they didn't have enough time
Speaker 1: and money to fact check it. Like and then he's
Speaker 1: right that other people should maybe have fact checked it.
Speaker 1: But sure, I'm sure everyone else cited him because especially
Speaker 1: like health and wellness journalism, let's face it, like this,
Speaker 1: people aren't fact checking. No, And it's yeah, I think
Speaker 1: bad of you, Scott.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, I think we can agree. So what a
Speaker 3: good thing to do?
Speaker 1: Yeah, to make the claim that other journalists are just
Speaker 1: as irresponsible as Scott. His next series of quotes from
Speaker 1: a Joe Rogan interview, and of all the Scott's sins,
Speaker 1: that may be the greatest. But we're getting ahead of
Speaker 1: ourselves because James, right now, you know what time? It
Speaker 1: is anema time. Oh James, we could do an anema
Speaker 1: right now. Let's do it. Meet in the par you
Speaker 1: know what. You know what, Yes, James and I are
Speaker 1: going to go do an enema in a public place.
Speaker 1: I'm dangering other people. And you hang out until Thursday.
Speaker 1: You get your own enema, you know. Find a fountain
Speaker 1: out there. Go to Disney World. Yeah, we're saying, go
Speaker 1: to the Aria.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, the big Yeah, musical fountains. I'd have him
Speaker 3: lunch week. If you're in Barcelona, they can go to
Speaker 3: musical fountains. Absolutely, go to Dubai. Give yourself a fountain
Speaker 3: anima in Dubai. God, I bet that the police and
Speaker 3: the Emirates will like that. I was going to say,
Speaker 3: that will not end well for.
Speaker 1: You, James. What have I got to plood? It's interesting.
Speaker 3: I am, despite my better instincts, still on Twitter dot com,
Speaker 3: which you know, James Stout is my name and also
Speaker 3: my Twitter handle. I do a podcast with with you
Speaker 3: and some other wonderful people called it could happen here really, Yeah,
Speaker 3: it happens every day here in your telephone well iPod. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and so Sophia sometimes joined us. We talk about sheep
Speaker 3: and chickens and also Turkish drone strikes in the Autonomous
Speaker 3: Area of North and Eassyria, all kinds of things in
Speaker 3: that in that broad air. Yeah, so that you should
Speaker 3: listen to that. I'm writing a book for ak Press,
Speaker 3: but I'm still writing it, so you can't buy it,
Speaker 3: but buy some other books from Akpress.
Speaker 1: Very nice people. Yeah, all right, everybody, Everything's good.
Speaker 2: Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
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Speaker 2: dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
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