Withstanding Electricity?

My nephew showed me this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phmFjCjIYZc&feature=youtube_gdata_player About a man who can apparently store electric potential in his body. I see many things wrong with the video but am not able toprove my point without access to the man for testing. Can you make a more educated argument for me/him that doesnt require access to the subject? Thanks, Dave
- Dave Knave (age 49)

The video of course shows nothing. The man seems to be wearing shoes with thick rubber or plastic soles. These would be insulating and ordinarily able to withstand 240 V (which appears to be the voltage to ground) with no breakdown problems- they would remain insulating. Now if the two different contacts that he touched with his hands had potentials differing by 240 V, that would seem to be an impossibly high voltage to withstand. We not only aren't shown any such difference, we aren't even told there's any voltage difference between them. 

So this brings up a more general procedure. If somebody claims something very different from what's consistently found elsewhere, they had better have very solid evidence. In this case, they really haven't given any.

Mike W.

p.s. I'm not sure what you mean by "store electrical potential" but it isn't needed to answer about the video. The caption about "a human superconductor" is nonsense- they obviously don't know what a superconductor is. 

(published on 07/16/2013)