Lewis Pugh frightens us a little. We would never attempt the swims he has done, and we're glad there hasn't been some surge in the population to follow in his strokes. He describes swimming at the north pole and high on Everest (without, mind you, a wetsuit?)
Glad to see that someone has done it because that's a lovely human achievement, but we wonder if the humility he developed for his final swim could have been acquired through some other process?
Never mind us for seeming critical of Mr. Pugh. Truly, at heart we aren't. It's that humility that we like most about this TEDTalk, and perhaps we're compensating for being a little desensitized to incredible human feats? Shocker stories sell papers.
Image: “Baigneur s'apprêtant à plonger” by Gustave Caillebotte, 1878 via Wikimedia Commons