What makes someone decide they want to shove two feet of steel down their throat? And make a living out of it? In the new To The Hilt podcast, co-hosted and produced by your Weird Historian, Marc Hartzman, and world-famous sword swallower Dan Meyer, you’ll hear a series of fascinating discussions with modern-day swallowers.
The podcast is in support of our new book, To The Hilt: A Sword Swallower’s History of Sword Swallowing, published by Schiffer Publishing.
Guests so far have included:
- The Lizardman: The Modified Marvel and former Jim Rose Circus performer who’s fully tattooed like a lizard.
- George “The Giant” McArthur: The world’s tallest sword swallower who was featured in Tim Burton’s Big Fish.
- Jim Ball: At 90 years old, he’s the world’s oldest sword swallower and longest-performing sword swallower—having started at age 12, when he was the world’s youngest sword swallower.
- Brianna Belladonna: Mistress of Mayhem, who’s swallowed swords on How I Met Your Mother, AMC’s Freakshow, and countless other places.
- Red Stuart: The Living Legend who’s been swallowing swords every day since 1967—not to mention car axles.
- Cyrus Pynn: A swashbuckling sword swallower, juggler, equilibrist, and knife thrower.
- Brad Byers: A sword swallower who also juggles, rides a unicycle and tiny bicycles, balances on the rola bola board, walks on broken glass, yoyos, throws tops, spins suitcases and other large objects on his finger, balances a running lawn mower on his chin, and blows bubbles with a tarantula in his mouth—just to name a few of his stunts.
- Adam Realman: Coney Island’s artistic director and the professor at the Coney Island Sideshow School.
- Franz Huber: The Bavarian Daredevil, who holds nine world records, including swallowing the most curved blade (133 degrees).
Find out what makes them tick, how they learned, what accidents they’ve had, and why they love risking their lives to do it. Where else can you be a fly on the wall as two sword swallowers swap stories and talk shop?
Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and iHeartRadio.
Purchase To The Hilt: A Sword Swallower’s History of Sword Swallowing on Amazon or wherever else you buy books.
