Very excited about this.
Last week after 35 years and four attempts our next guest
made the historic 110 mile swim from Cuba to the Florida
Keys in just 53 hours.
And again, I'm reminding you she's 64 years old.
Please welcome Diana Nyad.
[CHEERING]
Hi.
All right, so this really just happened not too long ago.
And you seem like it didn't happen recently.
You seem completely healthy and fine.
A few-- can I say first.
Yes.
I have my choices of shows.
I know.
Everybody wanted you.
And I chose you.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
I'm honored.
We all know for a long time, the comedic timing is brilliant,
and the likability quotient is high.
But I bet your fans would tell you that it's your big heart,
and where you put it in the right place.
[CHEERING]
And that's why I wanted to be with you.
Thank you.
All right, so let's talk about you.
When did you-- it was like a week ago, right?
It was Labor Day.
I finished Labor Day.
All right, so you--
how do you train for something like this?
It's grueling.
I love sports, and I've been a sports reporter.
I respect them all.
But I don't know that there's another sport that's
this taxing, grueling, boring.
I mean, I start in the Caribbean in January,
and we're doing 12 hour swims, and then 14 hours.
The 18, 20, 24 hour swims just getting ready for this one.
So it's intense.
So when you say like a 12 hour, you mean you're in the ocean
and you do not stop swimming for 12 hours straight?
The rules of the sport are, you're next to a boat.
The boat has nutrition, electrolyte drinks, power bars,
whatever you need.
And that boat is navigating, and you're swimming next to it
and tracking it and going, but you can come close to the boat
and get your stuff to drink.
If a doctor had to give you a shot,
you can roll over on your back and literally give
a shot in your buttocks.
But you can never touch the boat, nor get out on the boat,
or touch any other person.
So you are in the sea, on your own.
Right.
And what are you thinking about when you're in there
by yourself, in the sea?
You know, Ellen, it's a real extreme state
of sensory deprivation.
Unlike mountain climbing or cycling or running
where you at least have nature, you can chat with a friend,
you are alone with your own thoughts.
And so bathing cap, goggles, you're
turning your head 50 times a minute.
You're in a woo.
So I read a lot of Stephen Hawking, those things,
the cosmos, the meaning of the universe.
I sing a lot of songs, I have a huge playlist of 85 songs.
I count numbers.
Just anything to keep yourself sane and then after a while
you're not sane, and you're way off in hallucination land.
Like what were you hallucinating?
What were you seeing?
This time, last year on the last attempt I had done in 2012,
I was looking under, and I never thought that the Wizard of Oz
was anything particularly meaningful to me.
But all of a sudden, I was looking under,
and I saw the yellow brick road.
I saw it.
But it wasn't those Wizard of Oz people,
it was those little guys who hold the hi ho, hi ho.
And so I saw them.
Wait, I think those are the dwarves.
They were the dwarves.
OK, they're not in The Wizard of Oz.
That's what I mean.
It was odd to see them there.
All right.
Yeah.
And I said to Bonnie my head trainer,
and I said Bonnie, the little guys with the hi ho
are on the yellow brick road.
She said, that's right.
They're going right where you're going.
So you follow them.
So they don't try to talk you out of the hallucinations.
They just go with them.
Right, so all right.
So you're-- and when you say a doctor giving you a shot,
like what kind of shot would you need?
You know, you're terribly seasick,
so you may have some nausea medicine at times.
You've got huge muscle aches so you
may have some pain medicine.
You've just got a whole plethora of medical backup.
And so you swam.
This was what-- because when you came out, you did look,
and I didn't realize you were wearing this.
I was like, well, she's changed since I saw her last.
So this is a mask to keep the jellyfish
from biting your face.
Yeah, a prosthetist here in LA, he makes masks for people.
And it's beautiful.
And I was so, so protected to have it.
And what did you do to keep yourself going?
I mean, I know it was important to you,
but you could have stopped, and you could have
said this is just too hard.
I mean it would be hard for any human being, much
less a 64-year-old woman.
Like I don't know.
I'm so-- I can't believe you did this.
But what kept you going?
You know, Ellen, when I turned 60,
I decided it wasn't really about this swim, or this record,
or the athletic feat of it.
It was about how do I want to live my life.
I want to get to the end with no regrets.
I want to be a bold person and a fierce person.
And I want to live as though I'm going
to find a way to get through every obstacle that's
there for me, which is emotionally, physically,
or whatnot.
And this swim was a test of that.
And I feel that I and my team survived it,
and we didn't give up.
Last year we didn't make it, the year before we didn't make it.
1978 I didn't make it.
So what was it that made me say, I just still believe.
And I think it's a way to live life.
Is just to say, it doesn't matter how hard.
Don't ever give up.
Amazing.
So when you're getting-- so you've been swimming for 53
hours, and you can't-- it's not official until you actually are
on land.
You can see it's hard for you to even walk and get your bearings
because you've been floating in the water for that long.
Yeah, sea legs.
Yeah.
So you're trying to walk, and no one could touch you.
You could see everybody holding everybody back
because it doesn't count until you're on the shore.
There's Bonnie.
So unbelievable.
Yeah, you've got to go until there's
no more seawater beyond.
But you know what?
I was so emotional at that moment,
because it's a long, long road.
The hard work, the people involved, the belief in it
for so many years.
I believed this in my 20s, and to have it
finally come to fruition.
But those people on the beach, they had it in their eyes.
They were like, I need to witness this story that says,
you don't give up.
And says that it doesn't matter what your age is,
keep chasing your dreams.
And I saw it in their eyes as I came up.
It was such a wonderful connection with those people.
What an inspiration.
I mean, you really are truly, truly an amazing human being.
Thank you, Ellen.
And I'm so honored that you chose to come here and tell
your story.
And I wish we had more time, but come back any time.
Thank you so much.
All right, you can see Diana's journey in her new documentary.
It's called the other shore.
It's available September 26th.
For more information, go to our website.
We'll be back.