
The Ice Man
Wim Hof, a Dutchman known as the Iceman, has spent years turning cold exposure and breathing exercises into something close to superpower: he once stayed submerged in ice for one hour and fifty-three minutes without his core body temperature dropping, climbed Everest in shorts, and ran a marathon through the Namib Desert without water. Laboratory tests have shown he can consciously influence his autonomic nervous system and immune response, results doctors previously assumed were involuntary. VICE correspondents Matt Shea and Daisy-May Hudson sign up to learn his method, expecting a straightforward course in breathing and cold tolerance. Instead Hof leads them across Europe toward a specific goal, climbing a freezing mountain in shorts, while pushing the training into territory that feels as much spiritual as physical. The film follows their sessions and reactions as skepticism gives way to visible physical change, using Hof's own record of documented, tested feats to frame the question of how much of this any untrained person can actually learn.