Steve Backshall on Surviving Near Death, Fatherhood and What Really Matters (E365)

We should have aborted, we should have just found a way out of that situation. Instead, we decided to run it blind and it was a mistake that very nearly cost me my life. If I'd gone in and let people know that at the weekend I'd been out bird watching and, you know, looking at eggs and nests, I would have been beaten black and blue. With a natural world, we have an absolute overdose of that. There are so many things in the outdoors.

in beautiful landscapes that can just leave your jaw on the floor with awe. That is the voice of Steve Baxhall, world-renowned explorer, naturalist, someone who's come closer to death than almost anyone we've ever spoken to on this show. And you might know Steve from hit TV shows like Deadly 60 or Expedition, but the truth is that Steve has been trapped underwater in freezing rapids. He's had polar bears stalk his kayak. He's triggered rock slides while climbing remote cliffs.

Yet somehow he's still standing or in this episode sitting and talking to us, more curious and more committed to living with purpose than ever before. But in this conversation, Steve's about to reveal what really happens in your mind at the edge of survival as he opens up about the four and a half minutes underwater in Bhutan where he genuinely thought it was all over. How he learned to find clarity, not panic, in extreme environments, the voice inside his head when he's alone with sharks, claps in caves or confronted with failure, and why he believes that when you think you've finished, you're actually just at 50% of your capacity. He also talks about his emotional reflections on fatherhood, his marriage to Olympic champion Helen Glover, and the identity struggles he faced growing up, where he had to pretend to be someone else just to fit in, and how that still impacts him to this day. Honestly, this is a really rare insight into how to stay calm under pressure, find meaning in discomfort, and go beyond what you think is possible physically and mentally.

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