April 9, 2024 • 42 mins
You might have heard a few weeks ago, Laura recommended we all watch Nyad on Netflix. Nyad was nominated for an Oscar and the film told the story of Diana Nyad, who first attempted to swim over 100 miles, which is 170 km, from Cuba to Florida in her 20s.
One her first attempt, she was unsuccessful.
At the age of 60, she decided to complete the feat she wasn’t able to when she was 28. She decided to do it without a shark cage. She also had to navigate dangerous marine creatures like box jellyfish, which can transfer enough toxin to paralyse and kill you.
On her 5th attempt, at the age of 64, Diana completed the 170km swim alongside her best friend and coach Bonnie.
This is a story of resilience, defying society's limitations of age and one of female friendship!
Diana also shares why she spoke publicly about the s*xual assault that she experienced at the hands of her coach from age 14 in an effort to help other victims not live in shame and be able to find their voice too.
Diana has such an energetic and inspirational attitude to life!
You can find Diana's website here
You can find Diana's instagram here
You can read Diana's op ed that Laura mentioned here
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Life on Cut acknowledges the traditional custodians of country whose
lands were never seated.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
We pay our respects to their elders past and present,
Always was, always will be Aboriginal Land. This episode was
recorded on Drug Wallamata Land. Hi guys, and welcome back
to another episode of Life Uncut.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
I'm Laura and I'm producer Keisha filling in for Bred
and I'm so so excited for this interview today. I'm
so glad that you brought this into my life.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Okay, so today's episode. If you listened to ask on
Kat a couple of weeks ago, you might remember me
saying that my recommendation was Nayad. It's a Netflix movie.
It's based on the true story of Diana Nayad, who
swam from Cuba to Florida. To put that into perspective
for you, that is one hundred and sixty seven kilometers
which she swam over fifty five hours, continuously without stopping,
(00:58):
without sleeping, totally unassisted. She had a team in a
boat next to her, but she was in the ocean
amongst all the elements, making it across the waterways.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
A lot off the back of your recommendation, I watched
the movie on Netflix. It's absolutely incredible. It was nominated
for an Oscar and Diana went to the Oscars with Bonnie,
who is her best friend, and that is a large
part of Diana's success and this friendship that has existed
for the past forty four years of her life.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
I mean, the thing that I love about this story
so much, and I genuinely am, like so excited for
you guys to listen to it is because so I'm
someone who I don't care a lot about sports normally,
and I probably shouldn't say that at the start of
an episode where we're interviewing someone who is an absolute
sporting icon. But it's not the story of the sport
that I think absolutely grabbed me. It's the story of resilience.
(01:48):
And the thing we haven't said yet is that she
was sixty four years old when she set this record.
It is a record that she set out to try
and achieve when she was only twenty eight, and when
she was twenty eight she failed at that attempt, and
then when she turned was turning sixty, she had the
idea and the resolution that it was her goal and
that she wanted to achieve this and despite society's expectations
(02:08):
and limitations on the things that we can achieve as
we age. At sixty years old, Diana decided that she
was going to swim from Cuba to Florida and she
was going to be the first person to set that record.
And it took her for additional swims to achieve that goal.
And this was in the face of being stung by
box jellyfish and almost dying, being almost attacked by sharks.
(02:31):
There were so many near death experiences that happened in
this and nothing stopped her from wanting to achieve this.
It's the mental resilience that I honestly just think is
so incredibly aspirational. It's the conversation around the limitations of age.
But then also there's another very very important conversation which
we have on this episode, and it is something that
(02:53):
Diana is very passionate about and very vocal about not
remaining silent, and that is that she was the victim
of sexual life assault at the hands of her coach
from the time that she was only fourteen years old.
The reason why she's so vocal about it. She's written
an incredible op ed in The New York Times she's
spoken about it in Ted Talks is because she doesn't
want to live with the shame or it's shrouded in secrecy,
(03:14):
and she is a voice for so many other victims.
This woman is truly incredible and I cannot wait for
you to listen to this interview.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
I also love that Diana is such a ball of energy.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
You know.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
I think when we talk about these types of episodes
or maybe conversations, for me, I can feel as though
they may make me look at parts of myself where
I'm like, well, I'm just not that resilient or I'm
just not wired that way.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
Well, it makes you feel like you're not achieving things. Okay,
when she talks about like all the things she manages
to fit in the day, I was like, I need
to spend less time on Instagram.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
Well, she doesn't do it from it. What I'm saying
is like, she doesn't do it from a perspective of
you know, this is how I do it, and so
that's how you should do it. It's just she's got
this beautiful energy about her that makes you feel encouraged
to like get up and do shit.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
Yeah that makes sense, And I think for me, finishing
this interview, I was like, I want to live life
in a way that when I get to the end
of my life, I feel proud of that. I feel
as though I filled it with everything I possibly could
fill it with. And that is, I think the true
beauty of what Diana brings. Diana, Welcome to life on
cart Keisha, Laura, it's my pleasure.
Speaker 3 (04:19):
Good day to you down under.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
No, it is our pleasure to have you. Okay, I
need to start this by asking, is it actually true
that you get up at four point thirty in the
morning to play the bugle just to piss off your neighbors?
Speaker 3 (04:31):
You know that's couched a little bit inaccurately. I don't
get up with the goal of pissing off my neighbors.
So Ya you say, do you get up just to
piss off your name your motivator in life? That's not,
in fact the goal. I get up to greet the
sun and to work out hard in the morning, and
I play the bugle and just the added delight of
it that is, or that it pisss off all the neighbors.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
You're honestly, I can't tell you how much I enjoyed,
and I hadn't heard your story before watching the Netflix
movie and that I was absolutely entranced. And since then,
I have watched all your Ted talks, I have written
your op ed, I've written I've read your op ed.
I genuinely just think you are such an incredible inspiration.
And one of the things that we speak about a
(05:14):
lot on this podcast is this idea about society's boundaries
on our age, this defining thing, especially as a woman,
that this this expectation that we conform to the age
of which we are, whether that's you know, motherhood at
a certain age, or whether that's you know, working within
a certain type of career role. And you have rewritten
(05:34):
all of those rules. Before we get into your story.
We do something with every single one of our guests,
and I hope maybe you can think of one. It's
called an accidentally unfiltered story, and that is your most
embarrassing story.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
The big one that comes to mind is that I
was going with Billy Jean King and Martina Navertlovin a
bunch of world class athletes to the White House because
Title nine, our law that protects both in academics and
in sports, was under assault. Billy Jean thought, if we
go to the White House and we get in and
we all talked to Hillary Clinton, who was you know,
(06:09):
Bill Clinton's wife at that time. She wasn't a senator,
she wasn't the vice you know, President Cannon and all that.
You know, we'll convince her to go out and pound
the pavement and get congressmen and everybody to support Title nine.
So the night before, I don't know why, I've never
done this in my life, before or after, but I
let this group of women athletes who know nothing about
(06:31):
couture and air, I let them give me a permanent.
They rolled my hair and tiny little curls this way,
and you've never seen hair like it. My hair was
three feet to the wide on the side, and the
top didn't take it all. It was flat like Tom Petty.
It was the most bizarre hair you've ever seen. Then
(06:52):
they all started taking manicure scissors and trying to make
it look better. It got worse. Then they put a
hat on me. W it's made everything flatten out like this.
There's a picture of me and Hillary Clinton at the
White House where I had my three minutes with her.
We all went one at a time to tell her
about the law and the legal cases and what was
happening at universities. And this is Hillary Clinton looking from
(07:13):
the side, shaking my hand three minutes. She couldn't take
her eyes off my hair. She couldn't. And I've seen
her since. She's been very supportive of me. When she was,
you know, the head of the State Department. She helped
us get into Cuba. She's been very kind about my
book and et cetera. So I seen her sense. And
(07:34):
when I first saw her, like twenty four years later,
I started to say, I'm sure you don't remember, and
before I could even point to hair, she said, oh,
I remember, and that that's a hairdo that is impossible
to forget. It's imprinted in my memory. It was we
was right up there.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
Okay, Well, after the finishes, I'm gonna ask you to
dig out that photo because I desperately need to say this,
as I will.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
You need to see it. It's eye opening, Hillary Clinton.
I've said at the time, she's been all over the
world into the huts of you know, Inuit people, what
she'd never seen air like that. Diana.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
I want to get into your swim because it's something
it's a journey that started when you were well before
you were twenty eight years old, this incredible swim from
Cuba to Florida. What was it about this specific record,
this specific fate that drove you to want to complete it?
Speaker 3 (08:24):
You know, honestly, it was way before it became something
in the world of sports. People had been trying since
nineteen fifty. I was born in forty nine, so basically
since I was born, good open water swimmers had been
trying this crossing. Young men, women, strong, fast, they've been
trying it. It is called the Mount Everest of the Associans.
(08:45):
It's a near impossible crossing. So it already was a
sporting event, but to me it was something much more
cultural and personal. I grew up in that town, Fort Lauderdale,
which is very close right up the beach from Miami,
and literally on the day of the start of the
Cuban Revolution, when Sha Gevara and Fidel Castro rode on
(09:07):
horses down into Havana and took over the city. They
decided to take Cuba from a country of the very
rich and the very poor into a country of a
middle class that everybody had education, everybody had opportunities, and
that was their original you know, it wasn't a communist thing.
It was an equalizing thing in the beginning, and literally overnight,
(09:31):
in twenty four hours, Cubans, if they didn't want to
live under this new regime, they had twenty four hours
to lead to go to the bank and get all
the money they could carry, to take their personal possessions,
and they came to my hometown. So all of a sudden,
I was a little champion swimmer, pool swimmer already at
age nine, but already now Cuba that we knew very well.
(09:53):
My parents had dance salsa in the Hotel Nacional in Cuba.
We all knew Cuba very well. Now that island was forbidden.
We're not allowed to go there. It's absolutely, you know,
a horrible place, and nobody can come here. We can't
go there. And I stood on the beach at age
nine and I said, Mom, where's Cuba. I can't see it,
(10:14):
And she was franch She said, well, it's just this way.
It is just across the horizon there. As a metal
of fact, it's so close. It's so close that you,
you little champions swimmer, you you could almost swim there.
And I'm telling you, at age nine, that phrase went
into the back of my imagination and later twenty years later,
(10:37):
when I was a champion open water swimmer, that is
the swim. That's the swim that's stuck with me. It
wasn't that it was about the sports part. It was
about I want to connect our two countries back together.
When I got to meet President Obama, whom I admire terribly,
in the White House after I did the swim, he said,
(10:58):
you just showed us. You just left one shore and
two days later you touched the other shore. You showed
us that our two countries can come back together. So
we haven't yet, but it was one of the things,
one of the things, besides all the personal stuff, one
of the reasons I wanted to always do that swim.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
One of the incredible things about this, though, is that
you started this when you were twenty eight, and then
there was reasons why you weren't able to complete the
swim at that age, and then you abandoned it for
so many years, and it wasn't until you were approaching
sixty that you decided you needed to do it again.
And I would say that society's expectations would probably have said, well,
you're sixty, I don't think you're going to be able
(11:40):
to do this. What was it about that age and
that specific challenge that made you want to go back
and give it a second, third, fourth, and then fifth shot.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
Well, there were life experiences that were happening at that time.
My mom just died and she was eighty two. And
even though I'd kept in you know, sort of you
might call superlative fitness shape my whole life, I thought, well,
what if it's just genetics, what if I really only
have twenty two short leaders to live? And several other
(12:10):
things happened at the same time right about that age
approaching sixty, and I'll tell you I have never I mean,
you got to get real, you know, when you have
big goals. Let's just take an absurd example. Let's say
I told you today that I've never played the violin
in my life, never picked one up. I don't know
(12:31):
how to play it, I don't have any background in
any classical music. But if I said to you today,
you know what, I'm going to take it up with ferocity.
I'm going to get the best teacher in the world.
I'm going to practice eight hours a day, and in
five years I'm going to be in the New York
Philharmonic Orchestra playing the violin. Well, that's ridiculous. You know,
there's no background in it. That's it's not real. But
(12:54):
once you get something that is even touching on reality,
and you've got the guts and you got the team,
and you've got the smarts to pursue it, who is
there to tell you can't? So you know, as you
put it, well, you know, the whole world says, this
event's probably impossible anyway, but it's certainly going to be
impossible for a sixty year old. And I say, who says,
(13:16):
who's making? Are you calling the Healthcare Department of America
to find out what sixty year olds are possible you know,
are possible of doing. I set my own standards. I
take a look in the mirror and I say, can
you do this? And you know what more importantly that
do you care if you fail? It takes courage to fail.
(13:36):
So let's say I picked something that's going to be unlikely,
maybe impossible, but certainly unlikely, and I picked many of them.
In my life, I've failed at many things, but the
journey to try to get there, the grit that it
took to try to get there has been worthwhile. And
so you know, the Cuba swim I failed four times.
(13:56):
I don't even like to call it failures. The team
and I we took that journey, and when we came home,
we learned we had new science, we had new intel,
we had new contacts. We looked at it a different way.
We studied it, We got down to the nitty gritty
of what it would take to get across. Everybody who
ever tried that swim never came back and tried it again.
(14:17):
We did five times, and that's why we made it.
You know, it wasn't didn't have to do with my age,
Like I do. Get real, I'm seventy four now, I'm
a pretty fit, strong seventy four. I do. I think
just about anything I did when I was younger. But
I get real. I'm not going to be playing violin
for the New York Philharmonic. I'm just not.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
You will play the bugle, though, Oh.
Speaker 3 (14:41):
You know, I'm not going to win any awards or
you know, be granted into any symphony for playing my
bugle playing. I guarantee you.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
Well, I think, Diana, it's interesting because when you talk
about picking up new hobbies as you get older. I
think a lot of the reason that we are adverse
to it, or we kind of hesitate on it, is
because we don't want to be shit at them. I
don't want to go through the process of needing to
learn how to become good at something because it requires
patience and it requires resilience. And they are two things
(15:10):
that we saw so much throughout your swims. And when
I was watching the film, Einstein's quoted with this whole
like doing the same thing over and over again and
expecting a different result is what insanity is or something
I'm paraphrasing.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
Was there a part of.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
You that thought, I'm going insane because I'm doing the
same thing over and over again. We're having a similar result.
Maybe this is not achievable.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
Never because we didn't do things just the same way.
And this is true of all major excursions, you know,
expeditions that go out on the planet Earth. People try
to snowshoe across the entire continent of Antarctica. People certainly
try year after year, not making it mostly because of weather,
not training, but training too to summit the highest peaks
(15:56):
and a Purna k two, Mount Everest and they don't
come back usually if they're going to be successful. Just
like us, We didn't come back from every cube of
failure and say, oh, you know, this is the definition
of insanity. We just keep going out and doing the
same thing. We weren't doing the same thing at all.
We had entire new protocols. We went to the world's
(16:16):
leading scientific expert on the box jellyfish, doctor Angel Jani Guihara,
after I was stung, you know, pretty seriously, could have
should have died that night. So we didn't just say, oh,
let's go again and just use the same jellyfish protection
we used. We'll be okay this time. You know, we're intelligent,
you know, we went and got the world's leading expert
(16:38):
and devised a silicone face mask and a suit that
was legal to the sport, but would had a cross
hatch stitching that wouldn't allow the tentacles to penetrate. So
we went out with an entirely new sense of science
and intelligence and protocols and even new personnel. Every expedition
(16:58):
was your ratchet and up in knowledge. Knowledge is power,
and every expedition we went higher and higher in our
level of knowledge. And that's why we finally made it
on the fifth attempt.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
You had everything behind you in terms of science, in
terms of your team, and that was very, very evident
in the way that you speak about how this wasn't
just a solo sports and like you got out there,
jumped in the water and swam all the way there
without having all of the infrastructure around you. But was
there ever a point and you know, you said you
could have died, you probably should have died by being
(17:33):
hit by a box jellyfish. Was there ever a point
in your mind where you thought that was a very
real outcome that you might die trying to do this.
Speaker 3 (17:41):
You'd be a fool after being stung the way I
was stung that box It has a tentacle that is
no thicker than a strand of human hair. It's just
a little wisp of a thing. And if one tentacle
and you know, in Australia, you guys are familiar with
the iraq Anji syndrome. In the box jellyfish, people do die.
(18:03):
We saw a reporter in cans you know, standing out
in like thigh deep water and she had her microphone
and she said, you know, in her Aussie accent, you know,
doing a story in the books Jellyfish to Die. And
she started in pretty good sound South Africa. Maybe it
(18:23):
was South Africa, but it was Australia. And she started
in and she was stung right then. Doing that report.
You could see the cameraman at her like this, and
she went down. You didn't see her, and you heard
her screaming. You saw him come around to the front
and he was trying to call whatever your nine to
one to one emergency number is. And she died. She
died right there in Cairns. And so we knew a
(18:45):
lot of these stories, and we knew that when I
got stung that badly, the tentacles wrapped around the neck,
around the biceps, around the back, and was screaming the bonnie.
I was out of breath. I can't breathe the end
of that Irikanji syndrome, that venom that they inject into
your skin, It goes and tries to paralyze your spinal cord.
(19:10):
It takes down your breathing apparatus to anaphylactic shock. So
I made it through the night, but now I was weak.
Now I wasn't stroking hard across that current, because you know,
I'm trying to go north. The current's trying to go east,
and that's one of the big difficulties of this swim.
But anyway, I really thought that night I might die.
(19:32):
And this is gonna sound really bizarre, but I didn't
care because we were in something. I had my sort
of titanium, will you know, set around my brain before
I started that swim. Each time I would say, and
each training swim, I would say, it doesn't matter, it
doesn't matter what unknown hits you. You know, on this swim,
(19:55):
your body may fall apart. You are going to keep
the right arm and the left arm. I'm coming over
again and again. So I did think I might die
that night. I thought I might, but it didn't keep
me from pursuing on even that night, even though we
were unsuccessful.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
Where does that mental resilience come from? Because for most
people there would have been a time where their mind
would have tapped out before their body did. Where does
that come from?
Speaker 3 (20:22):
For you?
Speaker 2 (20:23):
And I guess in terms of where you see your strength,
is it in your physical strength or is it in
your mental strength?
Speaker 3 (20:29):
You know, I think there's a bit of both of that.
I think that the people do who do extraordinary physical things,
they usually have some physical genetic talent for it, and
we often think of genetic talent for quicker, faster things.
If you're the best tennis player in the world, along
with working hard, along with good coaching and all that,
you probably have all the right you know, white cells
(20:52):
that will fire in your muscles and make you quicker
off the mark and make you more powerful in your
serve and all that. And in a distance sport it's
a little different, but the talent comes in because your
heart and your lungs have a capacity to work constantly
for days and days and days without tiring. And then
(21:12):
the training comes in after that. Then the mental aspect
takes all the physical that you have genetics and training,
and it takes it to a higher and higher and
higher level, which is probably true in everything everything that
all people do in life. It comes down to is
it your persistence? Is it your refusal to give up?
(21:33):
When you get knocked down? Do you get back up?
You know? Do you refuse to quit and you learn
from what you just went through and you're better the
next time, and you get knocked down again and you
refuse to quit. And one day, if that's your philosophy,
I refuse to quit. One day, You're gonna make it
to your other shore, whatever that other shore is.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
Danna a lot of your swims and for the entire
of your team. You know, it wasn't just you. When
you achieve something this great, it involves a lot of sacrifice,
whether that be in the preparation of the swim, whether
it be the actual time that it takes that you're
attempting the swim, financial as well, yep, financial sacrifice. What
sacrifices did you and the team make in order to
(22:17):
complete the swim successfully?
Speaker 3 (22:19):
Well, I'm glad you asked that, because you know what
could seem like the most solitary thing you could do,
and that is swim for fifty three hours and not
to mention the attempts forty eight hours this time, fifty
one hour, not to mention all the training swims, hundreds
of hours of fourteen hours this day, sixteen hours this day.
(22:40):
And it looks like there's only one set of arms
doing this work. You know, nobody else is involved, as
just me. But the truth is without Bonnie right there. Fifteenth,
imagine you two, if you put yourselves apart by about
ten minutes and you decided to breathe this way, turn
your head towards each other fifty three times a minute.
(23:02):
And you did that for fifty two hours and fifty
four minutes, and all you saw was each other. Well,
all I saw was Bonnie. She peed and I don't
mean it in a humorous way, right over the side
of the boat. She would not leave my gaze. She
was my soldier, She was my dedicated person. She was
in charge of my life. If sharks were coming. She
(23:24):
needed to communicate with me after the shark team spotted
something and I've got to get close to the boat
without touching the boat or getting out. She needs to
know if you know, my right shoulder is dying and
something's happened, and get the medical team over to help
me get through this. She needs to know that if
I'm hallucinating, it's not real and I can snap out
(23:44):
of it and I can get back to my clear head.
You know. She was the captain of this expedition, but
next to her were thirty nine other people. The shark team,
the jellyfish team, the navigation team, the medical team, the
nutrition team, and a are boats and boat captains who
took care of all those people to make sure they
were fed, they slept, they were rested, and they had
(24:07):
all the you know, maps and tools they need they needed,
so we were truly a team. And I guarantee you,
I guarantee you right now, I never ever would have
gotten to that other shore in Florida if it hadn't
been for those team members, all forty of them.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
I think part of this that's so incredible as well,
is that Bonnie didn't have necessarily the experience in swimming
that you might expect from a coach who's a long
distance and trying to take you that far. What was
it about your friendship and about Bonnie specifically that made
you know that she was the person that you needed
alongside you in order to complete this.
Speaker 3 (24:44):
Yeah, I love your pointing us to that fact, because athletes,
you know, sold that Bonnie lived a lot of the
people who had been on my boat before had known
about marathon swimming, and they knew about currents in the water,
but they had never been an athlete themselves. And so
Bonnie and I think we are the only case in
(25:05):
the annals of human sports history, men and women where
when I met Bonnie, I had just retired. It was
forty four years ago April first, so we're right at
that point right now. I had met Bonnie and I
had just retired from long distance swimming. She had heard
about me, but had not been involved with any of
my swims, and she was number three on the professional
(25:27):
racquetball tour. It was very big in the eighties in
this country, and you know, all the athletes, all the
good racquetball players had their own contracts, you know, with
sneaker companies and racket companies and all that. And I
became her coach. She didn't know much about fitness. I
became her driving fitness coach, and she was fierce on
the court. And then thirty five years later, I think
(25:50):
it's the only time ever in the history of sports
we flipped positions and I became the athlete and she
became the coach. But I think that that spirit of
an athlete, that knowing what hard work is, that knowing
she knew me so well she knew and all the
other coaches I had before. If we decided to do
a fourteen hour day for training, and it's really me
(26:12):
who makes that decision. I know what I need during
the year to get ready, so that no stone is
unturned and when we're standing in Havana, I can tell
that team. I will not be the one who raises
my hand in the middle of this and says, I'm tired.
I just can't do it. It's too much for me.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
I don't think you've ever said that in your life,
Diana's I don't think that those words are in your vocabulary.
Speaker 3 (26:35):
I don't know those words. And I promised my team
that all the training. So Bonnie knew other trainers I
had had if we said it's a fourteen hour day
and we finished and we're ten minutes short because we
already reached the dock, they're tired. They want to get
off that boat and go get a shower and a meal.
But Bonnie knew that that's not me. If we finished
(26:56):
two minutes before, at thirteen hours and fifty eight minutes,
she knew that I wouldn't be happy, and she'd blow
the whistle and say, Diana, swim back out one minute.
I'll blow the whistle again and you come in because
we're going to get a true fourteen hours. Nobody else
understood that that if you make a little concession, you know, well,
(27:18):
you know I'm not feeling great today. I'm not going
to do that. Then next time you're going to make
a little bigger concession, like, who cares, that's my training schedule.
You know, nobody's there to tell us what we should do.
But Bonnie knew, Bonnie knew that I needed to get
fourteen full hours. If that's what we planned.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
What is your friendship black now?
Speaker 3 (27:39):
Well, you know it's like it's always been where. You know,
we're all lucky. You know you guys are young. I
don't care what age you are, though. We're lucky. If
we have parental love, if we have sibling love, if
we have dog love, if we have a children's love,
we're lucky. And a best friend forty four years now,
(27:59):
of going through every dog's death, of going through both
of all our parents' deaths together, training together, and being
disappointed and losing out at certain things together, of all
of our arguments and getting somewhere and coming back together.
It's woven a very rich tapestry of sharing a life
with somebody. It has And I don't think in films
(28:22):
you see two women as best friends too much. You know,
you see men they go to war together, they play
sports together, they save the a coupla ellips together, but
not to women. To women are always you know, supporting
the men in their lives in some way, and in
this movie they really allowed us to be just two women,
(28:42):
best friend badasses.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
It was honestly one of the most beautiful parts of
the story. And I think we so much in life
we undervalue or we devalue friendships, especially in comparison to
say romantic relationships or to relationships with our kid like
other relationships seem to take priority. But then when you
say the love, the support, the adoration and the commitment
(29:06):
of a lifelong friendship, I think it was one of
the not just your team successes in what you managed
to achieve. That was for me, one of the absolute
standouts in your story. It's really really beautiful to.
Speaker 3 (29:17):
Say thank you. I agree, and I think the whole
world degrees you know we are I don't exaggerate. We
are now hearing from thousands of people around the world,
from China, from Chile, from New Zealand, from everywhere. And
there are two things that they write in they email,
they write actual letters, they send videos, and the two
(29:39):
things they say are I want to be that unapologetic
about chasing my dreams. I want to be that person
that a Net Benning plays in that movie. And the
second thing they say is I have a Bonnie. Yeah,
I have, or I want a Bonnie in my life.
I want someone who's that dedicated, who's that entwined in
(30:01):
every day of one's life. So I tell you, every
day I count my lucky stars for my Bunnie. Diana.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
You wrote an incredible op ed in the New York Times,
and I know this is a bit of a shift,
but it's something that I think is so important because
not many people ever speak about it because of the
shame that is absolutely enshrouded in it, and you spoke
very openly. We'll link it in the show notes around
an experience we'll not even experience about being molested by
(30:31):
your coach when you were very young, and I don't
want to get into the details of it. But what
I want to ask you is why was it important
to you to speak so publicly about this and to
be a voice for so many victims who have experienced
it themselves.
Speaker 3 (30:44):
Well, all those words you're using are what you made
it important for me to speak out, And the New
York Times our ed was, you know, many years after
I'd been out about this story. It happened to me
all through my young teenage years by this coach who
is dead now, but he is enshrined in the International
Swimming Hall of Fame, and I just think that's unjust.
(31:07):
There are people in there, from Mark Spitz to Michael
Phelps who shouldn't have their pictures and their goggles on
the same walls as this perpetrator. But we're living in
a good old boy's regime still, and the Swimming Hall
of Fame will not hear of it. They say he
was a great man and a great coach, and I
wasn't the only one he molested. Believe me. It's a
(31:28):
series of young girls at that time from my high school.
But all those words you're using, you know, like shame
and silence, those are the words that truly eat into
even a young, strong, happy individual. And I can tell
you all these decades later, I'm pretty happy, I'm pretty together,
(31:49):
I'm very I'm proud of the life I live. I
get to it every day. I go to sleep every
night saying wow, I couldn't have done anymore with that day,
could I have? But there there is an edge. It
comes out. It gets triggered every now and then of
the shape, there's still an edge. And I think that
it's important to have words, to be able to speak out,
(32:11):
to speak your truth because you haven't been believed before,
or even if you've been believed, it hasn't mattered to anybody.
I actually want to start Probably it would be a website,
but I'd like to start an archive called Safe Harbor,
and it would be a place for survivors of sexual
abuse to go have their words listen to. They can
(32:33):
make videos, they can write things, they can go back
in and then edit as they evolve through life. Maybe
they're involved in court cases. Maybe they've never told family
members and now they have they can go back to
their place in Safe Harbor and add to their original
statements or edit, or they can drop out if they want.
But I think that having your words heard at being
(32:55):
respected for what you went through is an absolutely crucial
move that we need to do in this country and
all around the world for survivors of sexual abuse.
Speaker 1 (33:06):
Diana, having such a painful experience happened from your swimming coach,
Did it take a love for swimming away?
Speaker 3 (33:12):
How did you?
Speaker 1 (33:13):
I guess I'm curious as to how you remained to
be in love with a sport when it was intertwined
with so many really painful and traumatic memories for you.
Speaker 3 (33:23):
Well, you know, I can understand that question. It comes
from logic. But the truth is the place I felt
safest couldn't be touched, the place I felt strongest. I'm
good at it. I moved through the water, you know,
beautifully and with power. That's the place that made me
feel safe and alive. So you know, I didn't want
(33:44):
to go I never had never occurred to me to
go away from the one activity that was helping me
at the time, you know, even though to show up
at the pool deck with him on the pool deck.
And of course I didn't know about the other girls
until many years later, you know, when we all sort
of do two of us wound up talking to each other,
and then we found others. And now there have been
(34:06):
others of different generations after us, you know, who have
come in with their stories do and he's still in
the International Swimming all of fame. So I'm doing something
about it. I'll tell you to want to spend my
whole life admired in negativity, you know, I want to
do positive things every day. But I'm doing something about
getting him out of the International swimming all of fame.
(34:27):
But I think it's a fair question you asked, didn't
you just want to get away from swimming and then
and never think about it? But it was my safe
place I needed swimming, Diana.
Speaker 2 (34:37):
Before I let you go, I just want to ask
one last question, and it pertains to age and the
limits that we put on ourselves. I think so many
people can be fearful of or think that, you know,
the best use of their life are XYZ, how do
you perceive age now seventy four years old, with all
the things that you've achieved in your life and all
the things that you're going to go on to continue
(34:57):
to achieve, what does it?
Speaker 3 (35:01):
Well? You know, I am quite clearly closer to the
end of my life than I am to the beginning
of my life. At seventy four. I'm pretty darn vital.
I've got a lot of energy. I keep a you know,
a really superlative level of fitness, you know, going all
the time. But let's face it, I'm not going to
live to one hundred and fifty, am I. So I
(35:22):
think the point for me is, and it always has been.
I'm nothing special, you know, nobody is. We're all the
same on this earth, you know, just trying to try
to live the best days we can. But for me,
sort of unusual for a really young person, a child,
I used to be afraid and fixated on how short
(35:43):
this life was going to be.
Speaker 2 (35:45):
It's funny you said that, Diana, because even last night
I have a four year old and she last night
was crying from her bed and I went into that
and I was like, what's going on? And she said, Mommy,
I'm so upset because one day you're going to be
old and you're going to die. And I was like,
you'll fall. You've got a long time.
Speaker 3 (36:02):
Yeah, see that, So age four already, you know, sort
of a macro vision of this life and the fact
that we never get to do any day again. So
it became imperative to me, as a very young person
and now as an older person, to not worry about
what is my age and what have I done with
(36:25):
my past? What regrets do I have? What am I
going to do with the future? If I take care
of this day, if I go to sleep tonight and
when my head hits that pillow, if I can say
I made this day meaningful, I made this day worthwhile.
I didn't sit around unconsciously and just let hours go
by that I can't even remember what I was doing.
(36:48):
I'm engaged. I'm engaged with the people of my own
personal life, of my community, of my country, of the
world at large, and I'm in it. I'm in it
full tilt. And the day that I take my last breath,
if I can say, you know what, I couldn't do
it all. It was too short. Your daughter is right,
(37:09):
you're gonna get old one day and you're gonna die.
And she, her four year old, is right about that.
But if we can all say at the end, at
that last breath, and I'm so much closer to it
than you guys, it's hard to relate to, but I
can picture it. I can picture getting older and having
some limitations as I get older. I can picture dying
(37:29):
one day. I want to take that last breath, and
I'm gonna say I didn't do it all. I couldn't
meet all the people I wanted to meet, couldn't help
all the people I wanted to help, couldn't have all
the experiences I wanted to have. It went by so
darn fast. But at least I can say I lived
every waking moment of every day to the ultimate of
(37:49):
how I could live it. That's where I am in
the quality of it, not like, oh, what can I
not do at this age? And frankly, I can't think
of anything I can't do at this age you talked
to me. In ten years, twenty years, maybe I'll think
of a few things, but right now I can't think
of anything. Diana.
Speaker 2 (38:06):
You are truly incredible. It is a privilege to talk
to you. This is the interview I have been most
excited about this year, and I in the more condensed
time that what we would normally have, I couldn't be
genuinely more thrilled with everything that you have given us.
Thank you for your honesty, thank you for your vulnerability,
and also just thank you for the lessons around resilience
(38:28):
and life, your joy.
Speaker 3 (38:29):
Well, Tisha, Laura, thank you so much. And you know,
I appreciate your being very kind about my time today,
but I liked very much the time we spent together,
so I hope it works out for your audience as well.
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (38:42):
Actually we should end this. It's a Friday, so we
need to do your music Friday.
Speaker 3 (38:48):
Yeah. Yeah, Well, you know, I've been thinking about tomorrow
because I like my little you know, if nobody else
cares about them, I find them very funny. But I
was going to do you know, Lionel Richie's Hello.
Speaker 1 (38:59):
I know Lionel Richie sing me a bit.
Speaker 2 (39:01):
I don't know songs.
Speaker 3 (39:04):
Da by your Door, da Forever. So it's a it's
a song. It's really about a man who's fallen in
love with a blind woman and he walks by her
house and he hopes she's waiting for him, you know,
to go by. But I am actually I'm not a
band singer, but I'm a really good whistler. So that
(39:25):
song has a lot of flats in it, and flats
are beautiful for whistling. So I think for tomorrow I'm
gonna rehearse on you right now. I won't do the
whole song, but it goes a little bit like this,
(39:58):
and it goes on from there.
Speaker 2 (39:59):
But it amazing beautiful whistler. An amazing whistler.
Speaker 3 (40:04):
Is it? The beauty is that?
Speaker 2 (40:07):
Now?
Speaker 3 (40:07):
Yeah? The view of the three talents. Actually, I'm a
pretty good dancer. I'm a good whistler. I'm a pretty
good singer and I'm a very mediocre horn player, so
people forgive me. Sometimes I get that over and I
go and I go, and sometimes I go. It doesn't
come out right, but people forgive me.
Speaker 2 (40:27):
Diana, you will laugh at these We've got one thing
in common. I did Dancing with the Stars in Australia
and you did Dancing with the Stars in the States,
so I'm.
Speaker 3 (40:35):
Also part of the alumni. Hello, how do you do
fucking terrible? You should say me trying to do a job.
Speaker 1 (40:41):
One of the judges said that she looked like a
Braymntis on acid.
Speaker 3 (40:47):
Well, as you probably know, I was kicked off the
show quite early in the second week, but I must
say that I'm not a bad dancer, and I felt
the people who win it, you know, are fantastic, totally,
you know, they're really good. Like, oh, gosh, I forget
her name right now, but she was the Olympic ice dancer.
Speaker 2 (41:05):
Oh of course she was gonna be good beating No,
I mean ies are doing it on ice, of course
she can do it on a feat totally. I mean,
is there anything that this woman can't do?
Speaker 3 (41:16):
Diana, We're gonna let you go.
Speaker 2 (41:17):
We know you're a busy, busy, busy person who needs
to a million things into the day, but thank you
so much for taking the time for this interview today.
Speaker 3 (41:25):
I enjoyed it. I truly did you guys take care.
Maybe I'll see you down under one day.
Speaker 1 (42:00):
The Kabapayokabaai
Life on Cut acknowledges the traditional custodians of country whose
lands were never seated.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
We pay our respects to their elders past and present,
Always was, always will be Aboriginal Land. This episode was
recorded on Drug Wallamata Land. Hi guys, and welcome back
to another episode of Life Uncut.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
I'm Laura and I'm producer Keisha filling in for Bred
and I'm so so excited for this interview today. I'm
so glad that you brought this into my life.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Okay, so today's episode. If you listened to ask on
Kat a couple of weeks ago, you might remember me
saying that my recommendation was Nayad. It's a Netflix movie.
It's based on the true story of Diana Nayad, who
swam from Cuba to Florida. To put that into perspective
for you, that is one hundred and sixty seven kilometers
which she swam over fifty five hours, continuously without stopping,
(00:58):
without sleeping, totally unassisted. She had a team in a
boat next to her, but she was in the ocean
amongst all the elements, making it across the waterways.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
A lot off the back of your recommendation, I watched
the movie on Netflix. It's absolutely incredible. It was nominated
for an Oscar and Diana went to the Oscars with Bonnie,
who is her best friend, and that is a large
part of Diana's success and this friendship that has existed
for the past forty four years of her life.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
I mean, the thing that I love about this story
so much, and I genuinely am, like so excited for
you guys to listen to it is because so I'm
someone who I don't care a lot about sports normally,
and I probably shouldn't say that at the start of
an episode where we're interviewing someone who is an absolute
sporting icon. But it's not the story of the sport
that I think absolutely grabbed me. It's the story of resilience.
(01:48):
And the thing we haven't said yet is that she
was sixty four years old when she set this record.
It is a record that she set out to try
and achieve when she was only twenty eight, and when
she was twenty eight she failed at that attempt, and
then when she turned was turning sixty, she had the
idea and the resolution that it was her goal and
that she wanted to achieve this and despite society's expectations
(02:08):
and limitations on the things that we can achieve as
we age. At sixty years old, Diana decided that she
was going to swim from Cuba to Florida and she
was going to be the first person to set that record.
And it took her for additional swims to achieve that goal.
And this was in the face of being stung by
box jellyfish and almost dying, being almost attacked by sharks.
(02:31):
There were so many near death experiences that happened in
this and nothing stopped her from wanting to achieve this.
It's the mental resilience that I honestly just think is
so incredibly aspirational. It's the conversation around the limitations of age.
But then also there's another very very important conversation which
we have on this episode, and it is something that
(02:53):
Diana is very passionate about and very vocal about not
remaining silent, and that is that she was the victim
of sexual life assault at the hands of her coach
from the time that she was only fourteen years old.
The reason why she's so vocal about it. She's written
an incredible op ed in The New York Times she's
spoken about it in Ted Talks is because she doesn't
want to live with the shame or it's shrouded in secrecy,
(03:14):
and she is a voice for so many other victims.
This woman is truly incredible and I cannot wait for
you to listen to this interview.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
I also love that Diana is such a ball of energy.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
You know.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
I think when we talk about these types of episodes
or maybe conversations, for me, I can feel as though
they may make me look at parts of myself where
I'm like, well, I'm just not that resilient or I'm
just not wired that way.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
Well, it makes you feel like you're not achieving things. Okay,
when she talks about like all the things she manages
to fit in the day, I was like, I need
to spend less time on Instagram.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
Well, she doesn't do it from it. What I'm saying
is like, she doesn't do it from a perspective of
you know, this is how I do it, and so
that's how you should do it. It's just she's got
this beautiful energy about her that makes you feel encouraged
to like get up and do shit.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
Yeah that makes sense, And I think for me, finishing
this interview, I was like, I want to live life
in a way that when I get to the end
of my life, I feel proud of that. I feel
as though I filled it with everything I possibly could
fill it with. And that is, I think the true
beauty of what Diana brings. Diana, Welcome to life on
cart Keisha, Laura, it's my pleasure.
Speaker 3 (04:19):
Good day to you down under.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
No, it is our pleasure to have you. Okay, I
need to start this by asking, is it actually true
that you get up at four point thirty in the
morning to play the bugle just to piss off your neighbors?
Speaker 3 (04:31):
You know that's couched a little bit inaccurately. I don't
get up with the goal of pissing off my neighbors.
So Ya you say, do you get up just to
piss off your name your motivator in life? That's not,
in fact the goal. I get up to greet the
sun and to work out hard in the morning, and
I play the bugle and just the added delight of
it that is, or that it pisss off all the neighbors.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
You're honestly, I can't tell you how much I enjoyed,
and I hadn't heard your story before watching the Netflix
movie and that I was absolutely entranced. And since then,
I have watched all your Ted talks, I have written
your op ed, I've written I've read your op ed.
I genuinely just think you are such an incredible inspiration.
And one of the things that we speak about a
(05:14):
lot on this podcast is this idea about society's boundaries
on our age, this defining thing, especially as a woman,
that this this expectation that we conform to the age
of which we are, whether that's you know, motherhood at
a certain age, or whether that's you know, working within
a certain type of career role. And you have rewritten
(05:34):
all of those rules. Before we get into your story.
We do something with every single one of our guests,
and I hope maybe you can think of one. It's
called an accidentally unfiltered story, and that is your most
embarrassing story.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
The big one that comes to mind is that I
was going with Billy Jean King and Martina Navertlovin a
bunch of world class athletes to the White House because
Title nine, our law that protects both in academics and
in sports, was under assault. Billy Jean thought, if we
go to the White House and we get in and
we all talked to Hillary Clinton, who was you know,
(06:09):
Bill Clinton's wife at that time. She wasn't a senator,
she wasn't the vice you know, President Cannon and all that.
You know, we'll convince her to go out and pound
the pavement and get congressmen and everybody to support Title nine.
So the night before, I don't know why, I've never
done this in my life, before or after, but I
let this group of women athletes who know nothing about
(06:31):
couture and air, I let them give me a permanent.
They rolled my hair and tiny little curls this way,
and you've never seen hair like it. My hair was
three feet to the wide on the side, and the
top didn't take it all. It was flat like Tom Petty.
It was the most bizarre hair you've ever seen. Then
(06:52):
they all started taking manicure scissors and trying to make
it look better. It got worse. Then they put a
hat on me. W it's made everything flatten out like this.
There's a picture of me and Hillary Clinton at the
White House where I had my three minutes with her.
We all went one at a time to tell her
about the law and the legal cases and what was
happening at universities. And this is Hillary Clinton looking from
(07:13):
the side, shaking my hand three minutes. She couldn't take
her eyes off my hair. She couldn't. And I've seen
her since. She's been very supportive of me. When she was,
you know, the head of the State Department. She helped
us get into Cuba. She's been very kind about my
book and et cetera. So I seen her sense. And
(07:34):
when I first saw her, like twenty four years later,
I started to say, I'm sure you don't remember, and
before I could even point to hair, she said, oh,
I remember, and that that's a hairdo that is impossible
to forget. It's imprinted in my memory. It was we
was right up there.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
Okay, Well, after the finishes, I'm gonna ask you to
dig out that photo because I desperately need to say this,
as I will.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
You need to see it. It's eye opening, Hillary Clinton.
I've said at the time, she's been all over the
world into the huts of you know, Inuit people, what
she'd never seen air like that. Diana.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
I want to get into your swim because it's something
it's a journey that started when you were well before
you were twenty eight years old, this incredible swim from
Cuba to Florida. What was it about this specific record,
this specific fate that drove you to want to complete it?
Speaker 3 (08:24):
You know, honestly, it was way before it became something
in the world of sports. People had been trying since
nineteen fifty. I was born in forty nine, so basically
since I was born, good open water swimmers had been
trying this crossing. Young men, women, strong, fast, they've been
trying it. It is called the Mount Everest of the Associans.
(08:45):
It's a near impossible crossing. So it already was a
sporting event, but to me it was something much more
cultural and personal. I grew up in that town, Fort Lauderdale,
which is very close right up the beach from Miami,
and literally on the day of the start of the
Cuban Revolution, when Sha Gevara and Fidel Castro rode on
(09:07):
horses down into Havana and took over the city. They
decided to take Cuba from a country of the very
rich and the very poor into a country of a
middle class that everybody had education, everybody had opportunities, and
that was their original you know, it wasn't a communist thing.
It was an equalizing thing in the beginning, and literally overnight,
(09:31):
in twenty four hours, Cubans, if they didn't want to
live under this new regime, they had twenty four hours
to lead to go to the bank and get all
the money they could carry, to take their personal possessions,
and they came to my hometown. So all of a sudden,
I was a little champion swimmer, pool swimmer already at
age nine, but already now Cuba that we knew very well.
(09:53):
My parents had dance salsa in the Hotel Nacional in Cuba.
We all knew Cuba very well. Now that island was forbidden.
We're not allowed to go there. It's absolutely, you know,
a horrible place, and nobody can come here. We can't
go there. And I stood on the beach at age
nine and I said, Mom, where's Cuba. I can't see it,
(10:14):
And she was franch She said, well, it's just this way.
It is just across the horizon there. As a metal
of fact, it's so close. It's so close that you,
you little champions swimmer, you you could almost swim there.
And I'm telling you, at age nine, that phrase went
into the back of my imagination and later twenty years later,
(10:37):
when I was a champion open water swimmer, that is
the swim. That's the swim that's stuck with me. It
wasn't that it was about the sports part. It was
about I want to connect our two countries back together.
When I got to meet President Obama, whom I admire terribly,
in the White House after I did the swim, he said,
(10:58):
you just showed us. You just left one shore and
two days later you touched the other shore. You showed
us that our two countries can come back together. So
we haven't yet, but it was one of the things,
one of the things, besides all the personal stuff, one
of the reasons I wanted to always do that swim.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
One of the incredible things about this, though, is that
you started this when you were twenty eight, and then
there was reasons why you weren't able to complete the
swim at that age, and then you abandoned it for
so many years, and it wasn't until you were approaching
sixty that you decided you needed to do it again.
And I would say that society's expectations would probably have said, well,
you're sixty, I don't think you're going to be able
(11:40):
to do this. What was it about that age and
that specific challenge that made you want to go back
and give it a second, third, fourth, and then fifth shot.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
Well, there were life experiences that were happening at that time.
My mom just died and she was eighty two. And
even though I'd kept in you know, sort of you
might call superlative fitness shape my whole life, I thought, well,
what if it's just genetics, what if I really only
have twenty two short leaders to live? And several other
(12:10):
things happened at the same time right about that age
approaching sixty, and I'll tell you I have never I mean,
you got to get real, you know, when you have
big goals. Let's just take an absurd example. Let's say
I told you today that I've never played the violin
in my life, never picked one up. I don't know
(12:31):
how to play it, I don't have any background in
any classical music. But if I said to you today,
you know what, I'm going to take it up with ferocity.
I'm going to get the best teacher in the world.
I'm going to practice eight hours a day, and in
five years I'm going to be in the New York
Philharmonic Orchestra playing the violin. Well, that's ridiculous. You know,
there's no background in it. That's it's not real. But
(12:54):
once you get something that is even touching on reality,
and you've got the guts and you got the team,
and you've got the smarts to pursue it, who is
there to tell you can't? So you know, as you
put it, well, you know, the whole world says, this
event's probably impossible anyway, but it's certainly going to be
impossible for a sixty year old. And I say, who says,
(13:16):
who's making? Are you calling the Healthcare Department of America
to find out what sixty year olds are possible you know,
are possible of doing. I set my own standards. I
take a look in the mirror and I say, can
you do this? And you know what more importantly that
do you care if you fail? It takes courage to fail.
(13:36):
So let's say I picked something that's going to be unlikely,
maybe impossible, but certainly unlikely, and I picked many of them.
In my life, I've failed at many things, but the
journey to try to get there, the grit that it
took to try to get there has been worthwhile. And
so you know, the Cuba swim I failed four times.
(13:56):
I don't even like to call it failures. The team
and I we took that journey, and when we came home,
we learned we had new science, we had new intel,
we had new contacts. We looked at it a different way.
We studied it, We got down to the nitty gritty
of what it would take to get across. Everybody who
ever tried that swim never came back and tried it again.
(14:17):
We did five times, and that's why we made it.
You know, it wasn't didn't have to do with my age,
Like I do. Get real, I'm seventy four now, I'm
a pretty fit, strong seventy four. I do. I think
just about anything I did when I was younger. But
I get real. I'm not going to be playing violin
for the New York Philharmonic. I'm just not.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
You will play the bugle, though, Oh.
Speaker 3 (14:41):
You know, I'm not going to win any awards or
you know, be granted into any symphony for playing my
bugle playing. I guarantee you.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
Well, I think, Diana, it's interesting because when you talk
about picking up new hobbies as you get older. I
think a lot of the reason that we are adverse
to it, or we kind of hesitate on it, is
because we don't want to be shit at them. I
don't want to go through the process of needing to
learn how to become good at something because it requires
patience and it requires resilience. And they are two things
(15:10):
that we saw so much throughout your swims. And when
I was watching the film, Einstein's quoted with this whole
like doing the same thing over and over again and
expecting a different result is what insanity is or something
I'm paraphrasing.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
Was there a part of.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
You that thought, I'm going insane because I'm doing the
same thing over and over again. We're having a similar result.
Maybe this is not achievable.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
Never because we didn't do things just the same way.
And this is true of all major excursions, you know,
expeditions that go out on the planet Earth. People try
to snowshoe across the entire continent of Antarctica. People certainly
try year after year, not making it mostly because of weather,
not training, but training too to summit the highest peaks
(15:56):
and a Purna k two, Mount Everest and they don't
come back usually if they're going to be successful. Just
like us, We didn't come back from every cube of
failure and say, oh, you know, this is the definition
of insanity. We just keep going out and doing the
same thing. We weren't doing the same thing at all.
We had entire new protocols. We went to the world's
(16:16):
leading scientific expert on the box jellyfish, doctor Angel Jani Guihara,
after I was stung, you know, pretty seriously, could have
should have died that night. So we didn't just say, oh,
let's go again and just use the same jellyfish protection
we used. We'll be okay this time. You know, we're intelligent,
you know, we went and got the world's leading expert
(16:38):
and devised a silicone face mask and a suit that
was legal to the sport, but would had a cross
hatch stitching that wouldn't allow the tentacles to penetrate. So
we went out with an entirely new sense of science
and intelligence and protocols and even new personnel. Every expedition
(16:58):
was your ratchet and up in knowledge. Knowledge is power,
and every expedition we went higher and higher in our
level of knowledge. And that's why we finally made it
on the fifth attempt.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
You had everything behind you in terms of science, in
terms of your team, and that was very, very evident
in the way that you speak about how this wasn't
just a solo sports and like you got out there,
jumped in the water and swam all the way there
without having all of the infrastructure around you. But was
there ever a point and you know, you said you
could have died, you probably should have died by being
(17:33):
hit by a box jellyfish. Was there ever a point
in your mind where you thought that was a very
real outcome that you might die trying to do this.
Speaker 3 (17:41):
You'd be a fool after being stung the way I
was stung that box It has a tentacle that is
no thicker than a strand of human hair. It's just
a little wisp of a thing. And if one tentacle
and you know, in Australia, you guys are familiar with
the iraq Anji syndrome. In the box jellyfish, people do die.
(18:03):
We saw a reporter in cans you know, standing out
in like thigh deep water and she had her microphone
and she said, you know, in her Aussie accent, you know,
doing a story in the books Jellyfish to Die. And
she started in pretty good sound South Africa. Maybe it
(18:23):
was South Africa, but it was Australia. And she started
in and she was stung right then. Doing that report.
You could see the cameraman at her like this, and
she went down. You didn't see her, and you heard
her screaming. You saw him come around to the front
and he was trying to call whatever your nine to
one to one emergency number is. And she died. She
died right there in Cairns. And so we knew a
(18:45):
lot of these stories, and we knew that when I
got stung that badly, the tentacles wrapped around the neck,
around the biceps, around the back, and was screaming the bonnie.
I was out of breath. I can't breathe the end
of that Irikanji syndrome, that venom that they inject into
your skin, It goes and tries to paralyze your spinal cord.
(19:10):
It takes down your breathing apparatus to anaphylactic shock. So
I made it through the night, but now I was weak.
Now I wasn't stroking hard across that current, because you know,
I'm trying to go north. The current's trying to go east,
and that's one of the big difficulties of this swim.
But anyway, I really thought that night I might die.
(19:32):
And this is gonna sound really bizarre, but I didn't
care because we were in something. I had my sort
of titanium, will you know, set around my brain before
I started that swim. Each time I would say, and
each training swim, I would say, it doesn't matter, it
doesn't matter what unknown hits you. You know, on this swim,
(19:55):
your body may fall apart. You are going to keep
the right arm and the left arm. I'm coming over
again and again. So I did think I might die
that night. I thought I might, but it didn't keep
me from pursuing on even that night, even though we
were unsuccessful.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
Where does that mental resilience come from? Because for most
people there would have been a time where their mind
would have tapped out before their body did. Where does
that come from?
Speaker 3 (20:22):
For you?
Speaker 2 (20:23):
And I guess in terms of where you see your strength,
is it in your physical strength or is it in
your mental strength?
Speaker 3 (20:29):
You know, I think there's a bit of both of that.
I think that the people do who do extraordinary physical things,
they usually have some physical genetic talent for it, and
we often think of genetic talent for quicker, faster things.
If you're the best tennis player in the world, along
with working hard, along with good coaching and all that,
you probably have all the right you know, white cells
(20:52):
that will fire in your muscles and make you quicker
off the mark and make you more powerful in your
serve and all that. And in a distance sport it's
a little different, but the talent comes in because your
heart and your lungs have a capacity to work constantly
for days and days and days without tiring. And then
(21:12):
the training comes in after that. Then the mental aspect
takes all the physical that you have genetics and training,
and it takes it to a higher and higher and
higher level, which is probably true in everything everything that
all people do in life. It comes down to is
it your persistence? Is it your refusal to give up?
(21:33):
When you get knocked down? Do you get back up?
You know? Do you refuse to quit and you learn
from what you just went through and you're better the
next time, and you get knocked down again and you
refuse to quit. And one day, if that's your philosophy,
I refuse to quit. One day, You're gonna make it
to your other shore, whatever that other shore is.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
Danna a lot of your swims and for the entire
of your team. You know, it wasn't just you. When
you achieve something this great, it involves a lot of sacrifice,
whether that be in the preparation of the swim, whether
it be the actual time that it takes that you're
attempting the swim, financial as well, yep, financial sacrifice. What
sacrifices did you and the team make in order to
(22:17):
complete the swim successfully?
Speaker 3 (22:19):
Well, I'm glad you asked that, because you know what
could seem like the most solitary thing you could do,
and that is swim for fifty three hours and not
to mention the attempts forty eight hours this time, fifty
one hour, not to mention all the training swims, hundreds
of hours of fourteen hours this day, sixteen hours this day.
(22:40):
And it looks like there's only one set of arms
doing this work. You know, nobody else is involved, as
just me. But the truth is without Bonnie right there. Fifteenth,
imagine you two, if you put yourselves apart by about
ten minutes and you decided to breathe this way, turn
your head towards each other fifty three times a minute.
(23:02):
And you did that for fifty two hours and fifty
four minutes, and all you saw was each other. Well,
all I saw was Bonnie. She peed and I don't
mean it in a humorous way, right over the side
of the boat. She would not leave my gaze. She
was my soldier, She was my dedicated person. She was
in charge of my life. If sharks were coming. She
(23:24):
needed to communicate with me after the shark team spotted
something and I've got to get close to the boat
without touching the boat or getting out. She needs to
know if you know, my right shoulder is dying and
something's happened, and get the medical team over to help
me get through this. She needs to know that if
I'm hallucinating, it's not real and I can snap out
(23:44):
of it and I can get back to my clear head.
You know. She was the captain of this expedition, but
next to her were thirty nine other people. The shark team,
the jellyfish team, the navigation team, the medical team, the
nutrition team, and a are boats and boat captains who
took care of all those people to make sure they
were fed, they slept, they were rested, and they had
(24:07):
all the you know, maps and tools they need they needed,
so we were truly a team. And I guarantee you,
I guarantee you right now, I never ever would have
gotten to that other shore in Florida if it hadn't
been for those team members, all forty of them.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
I think part of this that's so incredible as well,
is that Bonnie didn't have necessarily the experience in swimming
that you might expect from a coach who's a long
distance and trying to take you that far. What was
it about your friendship and about Bonnie specifically that made
you know that she was the person that you needed
alongside you in order to complete this.
Speaker 3 (24:44):
Yeah, I love your pointing us to that fact, because athletes,
you know, sold that Bonnie lived a lot of the
people who had been on my boat before had known
about marathon swimming, and they knew about currents in the water,
but they had never been an athlete themselves. And so
Bonnie and I think we are the only case in
(25:05):
the annals of human sports history, men and women where
when I met Bonnie, I had just retired. It was
forty four years ago April first, so we're right at
that point right now. I had met Bonnie and I
had just retired from long distance swimming. She had heard
about me, but had not been involved with any of
my swims, and she was number three on the professional
(25:27):
racquetball tour. It was very big in the eighties in
this country, and you know, all the athletes, all the
good racquetball players had their own contracts, you know, with
sneaker companies and racket companies and all that. And I
became her coach. She didn't know much about fitness. I
became her driving fitness coach, and she was fierce on
the court. And then thirty five years later, I think
(25:50):
it's the only time ever in the history of sports
we flipped positions and I became the athlete and she
became the coach. But I think that that spirit of
an athlete, that knowing what hard work is, that knowing
she knew me so well she knew and all the
other coaches I had before. If we decided to do
a fourteen hour day for training, and it's really me
(26:12):
who makes that decision. I know what I need during
the year to get ready, so that no stone is
unturned and when we're standing in Havana, I can tell
that team. I will not be the one who raises
my hand in the middle of this and says, I'm tired.
I just can't do it. It's too much for me.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
I don't think you've ever said that in your life,
Diana's I don't think that those words are in your vocabulary.
Speaker 3 (26:35):
I don't know those words. And I promised my team
that all the training. So Bonnie knew other trainers I
had had if we said it's a fourteen hour day
and we finished and we're ten minutes short because we
already reached the dock, they're tired. They want to get
off that boat and go get a shower and a meal.
But Bonnie knew that that's not me. If we finished
(26:56):
two minutes before, at thirteen hours and fifty eight minutes,
she knew that I wouldn't be happy, and she'd blow
the whistle and say, Diana, swim back out one minute.
I'll blow the whistle again and you come in because
we're going to get a true fourteen hours. Nobody else
understood that that if you make a little concession, you know, well,
(27:18):
you know I'm not feeling great today. I'm not going
to do that. Then next time you're going to make
a little bigger concession, like, who cares, that's my training schedule.
You know, nobody's there to tell us what we should do.
But Bonnie knew, Bonnie knew that I needed to get
fourteen full hours. If that's what we planned.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
What is your friendship black now?
Speaker 3 (27:39):
Well, you know it's like it's always been where. You know,
we're all lucky. You know you guys are young. I
don't care what age you are, though. We're lucky. If
we have parental love, if we have sibling love, if
we have dog love, if we have a children's love,
we're lucky. And a best friend forty four years now,
(27:59):
of going through every dog's death, of going through both
of all our parents' deaths together, training together, and being
disappointed and losing out at certain things together, of all
of our arguments and getting somewhere and coming back together.
It's woven a very rich tapestry of sharing a life
with somebody. It has And I don't think in films
(28:22):
you see two women as best friends too much. You know,
you see men they go to war together, they play
sports together, they save the a coupla ellips together, but
not to women. To women are always you know, supporting
the men in their lives in some way, and in
this movie they really allowed us to be just two women,
(28:42):
best friend badasses.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
It was honestly one of the most beautiful parts of
the story. And I think we so much in life
we undervalue or we devalue friendships, especially in comparison to
say romantic relationships or to relationships with our kid like
other relationships seem to take priority. But then when you
say the love, the support, the adoration and the commitment
(29:06):
of a lifelong friendship, I think it was one of
the not just your team successes in what you managed
to achieve. That was for me, one of the absolute
standouts in your story. It's really really beautiful to.
Speaker 3 (29:17):
Say thank you. I agree, and I think the whole
world degrees you know we are I don't exaggerate. We
are now hearing from thousands of people around the world,
from China, from Chile, from New Zealand, from everywhere. And
there are two things that they write in they email,
they write actual letters, they send videos, and the two
(29:39):
things they say are I want to be that unapologetic
about chasing my dreams. I want to be that person
that a Net Benning plays in that movie. And the
second thing they say is I have a Bonnie. Yeah,
I have, or I want a Bonnie in my life.
I want someone who's that dedicated, who's that entwined in
(30:01):
every day of one's life. So I tell you, every
day I count my lucky stars for my Bunnie. Diana.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
You wrote an incredible op ed in the New York Times,
and I know this is a bit of a shift,
but it's something that I think is so important because
not many people ever speak about it because of the
shame that is absolutely enshrouded in it, and you spoke
very openly. We'll link it in the show notes around
an experience we'll not even experience about being molested by
(30:31):
your coach when you were very young, and I don't
want to get into the details of it. But what
I want to ask you is why was it important
to you to speak so publicly about this and to
be a voice for so many victims who have experienced
it themselves.
Speaker 3 (30:44):
Well, all those words you're using are what you made
it important for me to speak out, And the New
York Times our ed was, you know, many years after
I'd been out about this story. It happened to me
all through my young teenage years by this coach who
is dead now, but he is enshrined in the International
Swimming Hall of Fame, and I just think that's unjust.
(31:07):
There are people in there, from Mark Spitz to Michael
Phelps who shouldn't have their pictures and their goggles on
the same walls as this perpetrator. But we're living in
a good old boy's regime still, and the Swimming Hall
of Fame will not hear of it. They say he
was a great man and a great coach, and I
wasn't the only one he molested. Believe me. It's a
(31:28):
series of young girls at that time from my high school.
But all those words you're using, you know, like shame
and silence, those are the words that truly eat into
even a young, strong, happy individual. And I can tell
you all these decades later, I'm pretty happy, I'm pretty together,
(31:49):
I'm very I'm proud of the life I live. I
get to it every day. I go to sleep every
night saying wow, I couldn't have done anymore with that day,
could I have? But there there is an edge. It
comes out. It gets triggered every now and then of
the shape, there's still an edge. And I think that
it's important to have words, to be able to speak out,
(32:11):
to speak your truth because you haven't been believed before,
or even if you've been believed, it hasn't mattered to anybody.
I actually want to start Probably it would be a website,
but I'd like to start an archive called Safe Harbor,
and it would be a place for survivors of sexual
abuse to go have their words listen to. They can
(32:33):
make videos, they can write things, they can go back
in and then edit as they evolve through life. Maybe
they're involved in court cases. Maybe they've never told family
members and now they have they can go back to
their place in Safe Harbor and add to their original
statements or edit, or they can drop out if they want.
But I think that having your words heard at being
(32:55):
respected for what you went through is an absolutely crucial
move that we need to do in this country and
all around the world for survivors of sexual abuse.
Speaker 1 (33:06):
Diana, having such a painful experience happened from your swimming coach,
Did it take a love for swimming away?
Speaker 3 (33:12):
How did you?
Speaker 1 (33:13):
I guess I'm curious as to how you remained to
be in love with a sport when it was intertwined
with so many really painful and traumatic memories for you.
Speaker 3 (33:23):
Well, you know, I can understand that question. It comes
from logic. But the truth is the place I felt
safest couldn't be touched, the place I felt strongest. I'm
good at it. I moved through the water, you know,
beautifully and with power. That's the place that made me
feel safe and alive. So you know, I didn't want
(33:44):
to go I never had never occurred to me to
go away from the one activity that was helping me
at the time, you know, even though to show up
at the pool deck with him on the pool deck.
And of course I didn't know about the other girls
until many years later, you know, when we all sort
of do two of us wound up talking to each other,
and then we found others. And now there have been
(34:06):
others of different generations after us, you know, who have
come in with their stories do and he's still in
the International Swimming all of fame. So I'm doing something
about it. I'll tell you to want to spend my
whole life admired in negativity, you know, I want to
do positive things every day. But I'm doing something about
getting him out of the International swimming all of fame.
(34:27):
But I think it's a fair question you asked, didn't
you just want to get away from swimming and then
and never think about it? But it was my safe
place I needed swimming, Diana.
Speaker 2 (34:37):
Before I let you go, I just want to ask
one last question, and it pertains to age and the
limits that we put on ourselves. I think so many
people can be fearful of or think that, you know,
the best use of their life are XYZ, how do
you perceive age now seventy four years old, with all
the things that you've achieved in your life and all
the things that you're going to go on to continue
(34:57):
to achieve, what does it?
Speaker 3 (35:01):
Well? You know, I am quite clearly closer to the
end of my life than I am to the beginning
of my life. At seventy four. I'm pretty darn vital.
I've got a lot of energy. I keep a you know,
a really superlative level of fitness, you know, going all
the time. But let's face it, I'm not going to
live to one hundred and fifty, am I. So I
(35:22):
think the point for me is, and it always has been.
I'm nothing special, you know, nobody is. We're all the
same on this earth, you know, just trying to try
to live the best days we can. But for me,
sort of unusual for a really young person, a child,
I used to be afraid and fixated on how short
(35:43):
this life was going to be.
Speaker 2 (35:45):
It's funny you said that, Diana, because even last night
I have a four year old and she last night
was crying from her bed and I went into that
and I was like, what's going on? And she said, Mommy,
I'm so upset because one day you're going to be
old and you're going to die. And I was like,
you'll fall. You've got a long time.
Speaker 3 (36:02):
Yeah, see that, So age four already, you know, sort
of a macro vision of this life and the fact
that we never get to do any day again. So
it became imperative to me, as a very young person
and now as an older person, to not worry about
what is my age and what have I done with
(36:25):
my past? What regrets do I have? What am I
going to do with the future? If I take care
of this day, if I go to sleep tonight and
when my head hits that pillow, if I can say
I made this day meaningful, I made this day worthwhile.
I didn't sit around unconsciously and just let hours go
by that I can't even remember what I was doing.
(36:48):
I'm engaged. I'm engaged with the people of my own
personal life, of my community, of my country, of the
world at large, and I'm in it. I'm in it
full tilt. And the day that I take my last breath,
if I can say, you know what, I couldn't do
it all. It was too short. Your daughter is right,
(37:09):
you're gonna get old one day and you're gonna die.
And she, her four year old, is right about that.
But if we can all say at the end, at
that last breath, and I'm so much closer to it
than you guys, it's hard to relate to, but I
can picture it. I can picture getting older and having
some limitations as I get older. I can picture dying
(37:29):
one day. I want to take that last breath, and
I'm gonna say I didn't do it all. I couldn't
meet all the people I wanted to meet, couldn't help
all the people I wanted to help, couldn't have all
the experiences I wanted to have. It went by so
darn fast. But at least I can say I lived
every waking moment of every day to the ultimate of
(37:49):
how I could live it. That's where I am in
the quality of it, not like, oh, what can I
not do at this age? And frankly, I can't think
of anything I can't do at this age you talked
to me. In ten years, twenty years, maybe I'll think
of a few things, but right now I can't think
of anything. Diana.
Speaker 2 (38:06):
You are truly incredible. It is a privilege to talk
to you. This is the interview I have been most
excited about this year, and I in the more condensed
time that what we would normally have, I couldn't be
genuinely more thrilled with everything that you have given us.
Thank you for your honesty, thank you for your vulnerability,
and also just thank you for the lessons around resilience
(38:28):
and life, your joy.
Speaker 3 (38:29):
Well, Tisha, Laura, thank you so much. And you know,
I appreciate your being very kind about my time today,
but I liked very much the time we spent together,
so I hope it works out for your audience as well.
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (38:42):
Actually we should end this. It's a Friday, so we
need to do your music Friday.
Speaker 3 (38:48):
Yeah. Yeah, Well, you know, I've been thinking about tomorrow
because I like my little you know, if nobody else
cares about them, I find them very funny. But I
was going to do you know, Lionel Richie's Hello.
Speaker 1 (38:59):
I know Lionel Richie sing me a bit.
Speaker 2 (39:01):
I don't know songs.
Speaker 3 (39:04):
Da by your Door, da Forever. So it's a it's
a song. It's really about a man who's fallen in
love with a blind woman and he walks by her
house and he hopes she's waiting for him, you know,
to go by. But I am actually I'm not a
band singer, but I'm a really good whistler. So that
(39:25):
song has a lot of flats in it, and flats
are beautiful for whistling. So I think for tomorrow I'm
gonna rehearse on you right now. I won't do the
whole song, but it goes a little bit like this,
(39:58):
and it goes on from there.
Speaker 2 (39:59):
But it amazing beautiful whistler. An amazing whistler.
Speaker 3 (40:04):
Is it? The beauty is that?
Speaker 2 (40:07):
Now?
Speaker 3 (40:07):
Yeah? The view of the three talents. Actually, I'm a
pretty good dancer. I'm a good whistler. I'm a pretty
good singer and I'm a very mediocre horn player, so
people forgive me. Sometimes I get that over and I
go and I go, and sometimes I go. It doesn't
come out right, but people forgive me.
Speaker 2 (40:27):
Diana, you will laugh at these We've got one thing
in common. I did Dancing with the Stars in Australia
and you did Dancing with the Stars in the States,
so I'm.
Speaker 3 (40:35):
Also part of the alumni. Hello, how do you do
fucking terrible? You should say me trying to do a job.
Speaker 1 (40:41):
One of the judges said that she looked like a
Braymntis on acid.
Speaker 3 (40:47):
Well, as you probably know, I was kicked off the
show quite early in the second week, but I must
say that I'm not a bad dancer, and I felt
the people who win it, you know, are fantastic, totally,
you know, they're really good. Like, oh, gosh, I forget
her name right now, but she was the Olympic ice dancer.
Speaker 2 (41:05):
Oh of course she was gonna be good beating No,
I mean ies are doing it on ice, of course
she can do it on a feat totally. I mean,
is there anything that this woman can't do?
Speaker 3 (41:16):
Diana, We're gonna let you go.
Speaker 2 (41:17):
We know you're a busy, busy, busy person who needs
to a million things into the day, but thank you
so much for taking the time for this interview today.
Speaker 3 (41:25):
I enjoyed it. I truly did you guys take care.
Maybe I'll see you down under one day.
Speaker 1 (42:00):
The Kabapayokabaai
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