Freediving Champion William Trubridge: How To Not Panic

William Trubridge is one of the greatest freedivers of all time. He’s set 18 world records. Won six world championship titles. In 2016 he became the first person to reach 102 metres on a single breath with no fins and no rope.

In 2019 he crossed Cook Strait entirely underwater, in a series of 934 breath holds over nine hours and fifteen minutes, to draw attention to New Zealand's critically endangered Hector's and Māui dolphins.

When you’re 100 metres underwater, panic burns the oxygen you need to get home. So he’s spent decades building a system for not panicking — and it turns out the system works in a queue, in traffic, and in the conversation you're dreading.

WHAT'S COVERED

- Sailing the Pacific as a toddler — a boat was home until he was ten

- The poem he wrote on an Auckland dance floor a year before he'd heard of freediving

- Two failed world record attempts — and the word that made all the difference for the third

- Risk vs stakes — and why refusing every dangerous thing is itself massively risky

- What actually happened at 127 metres, and why his lungs stayed dry

- The mental immune system

- Why the muscles you breathe with decide how you feel

- Nine hours underwater across Cook Strait