Steve Backshall on Surviving Near Death, Fatherhood and What Really Matters (E365)
The High Performance Podcast
High Performance
4.8 • 4.7K Ratings
🗓️ 11 August 2025
⏱️ 62 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Steve Backshall is no stranger to the edge. As a BAFTA-winning naturalist, adventurer, and presenter of Deadly 60, he’s spent his life in some of the world’s most extreme environments, from dense jungles to deep caves. In this raw and gripping episode, Steve opens up about what really happens when you face death head-on.
He takes us through one of his most terrifying moments: being trapped underwater in Bhutan for over four minutes. Steve also dives deep into how the brain shifts gears in life-or-death moments, revealing the strange clarity and focus that can emerge at the edge.
Beyond survival, Steve reflects on why humans are wired to chase risk and adventure. He talks about fear, not just feeling it, but using it, and the powerful difference between facing hard-earned challenges versus easy wins.
This episode explores the razor-thin line between danger and discovery, and what it teaches us about our own minds.
Steve's new podcast That's Just Wild is out now. Amazing animal facts, fascinating science and stories of real-life, wildlife adventures, wherever you get your podcasts.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Available now on the high-performance app, a deep dive into elite health with well-being performance nutritionist James Collins. |
| 0:08.4 | We should have aborted, we should have just found a way out of that situation. |
| 0:12.1 | Instead, we decided to run it blind. |
| 0:14.7 | And it was a mistake that very nearly cost me my life. |
| 0:16.9 | If I'd gone in and let people know that at the weekend I've been out birdwatching and, you know, looking at eggs and nests, I would have been beaten black and blue. |
| 0:25.3 | With a natural world, we have an absolute overdose of that. |
| 0:28.4 | There are so many things in the outdoors, in beautiful landscapes that can just leave your jaw on the floor with awe. |
| 0:36.0 | That is the voice of Steve Batchel, world-renowned explorer, naturalist, someone who's come |
| 0:40.7 | closer to death than almost anyone we've ever spoken to on this show. |
| 0:44.3 | And you might know Steve from hit TV shows like Deadly 60 or Expedition, but the truth is that |
| 0:50.2 | Steve has been trapped underwater in freezing rapids. |
| 0:53.0 | He's had polar bears stalk his kayak. |
| 0:55.3 | He's triggered rock slides while climbing remote cliffs, yet somehow he's still standing, or in this |
| 1:00.6 | episode, sitting and talking to us, more curious and more committed to living with purpose than ever |
| 1:06.0 | 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. |
| 1:19.0 | How he learned to find clarity, not panic in extreme environments. |
| 1:22.5 | The voice inside his head when he's alone with sharks, scraps in caves or confronted with failure. |
| 1:27.4 | And why he believes that when you think you've finished, scraps in caves or confronted with failure, and why he believes |
| 1:28.5 | that when you think you've finished, you're actually just at 50% of your capacity. He also talks |
| 1:34.2 | about his emotional reflections on fatherhood, his marriage to Olympic champion Helen Glover, and the |
| 1:39.1 | identity struggles he faced growing up where he had to pretend to be someone else just to fit in, and how that |
| 1:44.9 | still impacts him to this day. Honestly, this is a really rare insight into how to stay calm |
... |
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