Extreme weather can cause desperate situations. So, what can survival experts teach us about navigating wildfires, hurricanes, flooding, and severe winter storms? Can we prepare for these natural events without turning into full-fledged preppers or giving into the assumption of doom? How do we adapt to a changing climate?
Les Stroud is a filmmaker, musician, and author best known for Survivorman, the pioneering documentary series that launched Survival Television as a genre. He is also the author of the new children’s book Wild Outside: Around the World with Survivorman and the creator of the forthcoming PBS special Surviving Disasters with Les Stroud. On this episode of Reversing Climate Change, Les joins Ross to share his mission around connecting people with nature and using film as an outlet to teach bushcraft and primitive earth skills.
Les explains how his work is ‘changing into the future’ to help people adapt to climate change, stressing the general skills of resilience and ingenuity, and reminding us that the truth of survival is in community. Listen in to understand how Wild Outside encourages kids to have adventures in their own backyard (be it the back forty or an urban park) and learn how to prepare for natural events so that they don’t turn into disasters.
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Resources
Survivorman Les Stroud on YouTube
Wild Outside: Around the World with Survivorman by Les Stroud
Survive! Essential Skills and Tactics to Get You Out of Anywhere—Alive by Les Stroud with Michael Vlessides
Surviving Disasters with Les Stroud
The 10 Bushcraft Books by Richard Graves
Primitive Technology on YouTube
Full Transcript
Ross Kenyon: Hello and welcome to the Reversing Climate Change podcast. I’m Ross Kenyon. I am Nori’s creative editor. Nori is a carbon removal marketplace. And I am so pleased to have with me Les Stroud, the auteur behind Survivorman, musician, and author of his latest book, Wild Outside Around the World with Survivorman. How are you doing, Les?
Les Stroud: Good. Very good. Thank you very much.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah. Yeah. Happy to have you here. I’ve long been a fan of your work. I think I’ve watched all of Survivorman and the various other adjacent shows that you’ve produced. I grew up being a Boy Scout. I’m actually an Eagle Scout and I grew up reading boys I guess I suppose yes, I do. But then again, no, I don’t. The reason why the answer goes in both directions is
Les Stroud: Is because I don’t think me being any kind of a continuum of what’s been taught in survival was ever motivation for me. That wasn’t the idea. But by virtue of what I did, I suppose I became that. And what I did was simply love teaching the skills. And that’s really Survivorman itself. You know, I mean, ostensibly Survivorman was the Beginning and the creative behind the entire genre of survival television. Without Survivorman, you don’t get a lot. You don’t get any of these other shows, quite frankly.
So what I did was I simply found another outlet for teaching survival skills and teaching bushcraft and primitive earth skills. And the outlet was through filmmaking. And you say, well, there were people doing a few things, but they were terrible. And they needed a professional touch. They needed a quality to them that said, no, this can be Really properly edited and properly filmed and we could hear it all and all the rest of it. And so what I endeavored to do was to teach what I love, but do it professionally for filmmaking.
And that landed me in this spot, yeah.
Ross Kenyon: The genre has certainly blown up in recent years, too. The bushcraft books are very popular. The Primitive Technology channel on YouTube and book that came out of that was a really big deal. And then I also connect this to survivalist literature has also had its own. I mean, sometimes it takes a darker, fantastical angle on survival. I almost feel like when I read survivalist stuff, they almost wish it would happen so they could test it.
Les Stroud: Oh, I think that’s a big part of every person who’s ever gotten deeply into survival stuff or as an instructor is we always have this mean, not in terms of the apocalypse or Armageddon or disaster stuff, but more, sure, there was always like, what if I was actually lost in the jungle? Do I have all the skills? So we have that little weird thing. The irony is, of course, the better you get at survival, the less likely that’s ever going to happen because you do the right things before you go out.
Also, the more you get involved in survival, you realize just how painful it is. And it’s not something you desire anymore. What was a fantasy of, yeah, it wouldn’t be kind of cool if I was actually lost in the middle of nowhere, as opposed to doing it on purpose. Yeah, that’s faded over the years. Like, no, no, that’s okay. I’m good.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah. There’s also shows like Walking Dead and Zombie Apocalypse stuff and Max Brooks' work and World War Z. Maybe it’s a sign of how comfortable we’ve gotten that our fantasies include such great degrees of pain and discomfort and danger.
Les Stroud: I think we should be careful we don’t create a self-fulfilling prophecy. Max is a friend of mine, actually. I’ve interviewed him for my new special for PBS, which is called Surviving Disasters with Les Stroud. You know, I think it’s when life imitates art. I think, you know, a lot of the art that we’ve been doing for, you know, starting with George Orwell’s 1984, it’s like probably more others before him, but it starts to compound. And then, yeah, and then you wonder, are we going to hit a tipping point where it’s actually going to happen because we made it happen, because we wanted it to happen?
I know people that would love anarchy to reign right now. I know people who For example, I have a friend who specifically voted for Donald Trump in 2016 because he wanted to see America go to civil war. So, you know, I think they’re now whack jobs. Yeah, definitely. These people are wacky. That is a thing. You know, you can see it. You can you can feel it. If a fight is going to break out in a bar or at a party, you can feel that energy developing before it happens.
It doesn’t just spontaneously erupt. The energy starts to build and, oh, things are not going down well. This looks like it might be a fight. Boom, now there’s a fight. That’s a little mini analogy of like... You start to feel and think that even me doing this new special on surviving disasters, you just think like, and I know the title of your podcast, Climate Change and all is like, when is the really big one going to happen? Well, we’re kind of in it right now with the pandemic, you know, that’s been worn for a long time.
And it’s like, yeah, you know, we can dream about it and make movies about it. But, you know, it won’t really happen. Well, actually, yes, it will.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah. And if you’re listening and you’re not exactly sure where we’re going with this episode, that’s a big hint. We definitely want to talk about adapting to climate change. Loss, we tend to be optimistic. We’re looking for solutions. We feature a lot of people who are working on dealing with ecological and climate crisis. But I think I do want to talk about some of the skills that you might want to impart. To what degree do you think your work is relevant to a climate changed world?
Would you change anything in the face of what’s happening currently? I just gave you a whole slew of options. You can take it any direction you like.
Les Stroud: Yeah, you left me a wide open field there. And I think that I am also eternally optimistic, but primarily I’m eternally optimistic about me and myself and about my life. I always get up again, you know, kind of thing after I’ve been knocked down. So I do have that eternal optimism, but I also have a nice little streak of DNA in me that is cynical and negative at times. And how would that have changed what I’ve done over the years as far as the current scenario and situations?
I don’t think I would change a thing when it comes to Survivorman. And in fact, in many ways, if you think about it, even on Survivorman, if I was teaching a specific skill, I would point out that the garbage you find on an ocean coastline As disgusting and horrifying as it is, is also useful in a survival situation. You can make use of this piece of plastic or this piece of glass. But what I was doing, the subtext of what I was doing was showing that, yeah, and by the way, the ocean coastlines are littered with So much so that you could help yourself survive.
But I don’t think I would change anything of what I did. I think it would be more a matter of, I love changing into the future. So it would be a matter of what am I doing now and progressing into what I’m going towards. My surviving disaster special, Is obviously somewhat, and I’m not a climate scientist, so I cannot speak to this, but it feels related to the current climate and wildfires, for example. I have one six miles from my home. And so it is timely that I, if you say, what would I change or what am I changing now?
It is timely that I’m doing that work right now. And then we have the current scenario of the pandemic and this strange, maybe not so strange when you look at it from the big picture, but everybody’s going back outdoors again, and specifically in North America. Why? Well, because they can’t go to Brazil, because they can’t go cycling in Italy. They can’t go to the restaurant. They can’t go to see Sting play or some new band. You can’t do any of this. But they can go camping.
And so it’s exploding. And hence in time for the book we’re going to discuss, The Wild Outside, my children’s book, which is I’ve already done, you know, the manual on survival and outdoor books and all of my film work. This is a chance, though, for me to speak directly to children. Why? Because they’re all going outside again, you know, and some say, no, they’re not. They’re on their iPhones and they’re on their gaming. That’s very true. But their moms and dads are forcing them into going camping in Yosemite this year, you know, that kind of thing.
And so now I’m all, you know, it’s like, well, and I started that book long before the pandemic, but it’s really about helping people adapt to exploring things. The natural world, when we have climate issues, pandemics, an onslaught of numbers of people that’s unheard of simply because they can’t go cycling in Italy. They can’t take that trip to Fiji or they’re staying here. That’s all happening all at the same time. So the work that I do, if I stick with my instinct, it always seems to be right place, right time.
So, you know, I’m lucky that way. And that’s where I am now.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, okay. We can talk about the book now too. I wanted to ask you about the book in the context of an urbanizing world where more and more people around the world and in America too Are moving into cities and leaving sort of the hinterland. And I think that’s a trend that will continue throughout the century. It’s projected to, I think in some ways it makes it your work. It might seem less relevant since they’re going to be city dwellers, but since they don’t have any of those outdoor skills because they don’t live in it, seemingly it’s a lot more relevant because they’re going to go out there for recreation and find themselves in serious hardship.
And so you’re trying to communicate these skills to children specifically.
Les Stroud: But you have to take a look at what the angle of the book is. And the thing that I point out is they have adventures in their backyards. So notwithstanding those who live in condominiums and apartments, even if you live downtown Manhattan, you can still go to Central Park. There is still nature. There are still trails. And so actually, Wild Outside is a way of showing kids who live in urban environments how they can have adventures. And That, you know, if they happen to live in suburbia and they’ve got a backyard, there’s a whole world of exploration out there that they can not only enjoy, but they can also encourage in that they can encourage the nature in their own backyard.
So actually, my goal is definitely connecting to urbanites in a very big way because I want, I mean, my underlying mission from everything from day one that I’ve ever done is to connect people to nature. Now, my point is you don’t have to go to Peru and climb the Andes to do that. You can do it in your backyard. I’m talking to you, but I can see trees from where I’m sitting. And there’s an exploration right there with one tree in front of me. So that is my point, is that the urbanites and the city dwellers If anything, they need nature connectedness more than anybody else.
Someone who lives in a rural area might be out walking the trails all the time. They take their dogs out and walk in the back 40 kind of thing. So they got it. On the other hand, some of them take it for granted and still don’t go out. It’s not to me. Well, I guess it is ironic, but it’s obvious to me. You could take 12 teenagers from an inner city school in Toronto, Ontario or New York City. And they will know more about nature and doing canoeing than 12 kids taken from a rural community in America anywhere.
That’s nonsense, Les. There’s no way they’re going to know more than the kids who live up in the country. No, it is because the kids up in the country They don’t have the outers programs and the things because the schools there are like, well, they live in the outdoors, so we don’t need to do a canoe trip this spring for the group. We don’t need an outers club. And so they actually don’t go. There’s no organization. The scouts are very active more in the inner cities than they are in the middle of, you know, in small towns sort of thing.
And it’s a mistake. And so people, kids who live in rural settings get left behind and kids in the city, well, they’ve already done like four canoe trips because every year they join an outers club and their geography teachers takes them out on a canoe trip for two weeks and they learn the skills of everything. So it’s a there’s a strange irony there.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, that is quite a twist. There’s a lot in this book that seems to encourage a basic awareness, a noticing in your own backyard. I’ve been in my backyard a lot and there’s tonnes of bird life and I just sort of love zooming in that way and that basic biophilic reflection. And it seems like your book is very beautifully designed and it’s also split between sort of these extreme, you know, face to face with the Jaguar type stories. And then also this, what you can do in your backyard.
To what degree do you see your work as, like when I want to be reminded of the beauty of nature, I read some poems of Mary Oliver or something like that. And that opens my eyes to do that. I don’t think that reads as strongly in your work since you’re oftentimes swatting thousands of mosquitoes at yourself. But do you feel like you are trying to remind people about the beauty and less so the danger?
Les Stroud: Yeah. And, you know, part of me, you know, in dealing and Anik Press was phenomenal as a publisher for this. But the stigma I have to always get past is people want me to go right to the jaguar chasing me. Right to the thousands of mosquitoes all over me. Right to the dangerous thing in the Amazon. That’s what they want me to go to. But if you actually watch every Survivor Man episode, almost every single one of them, I reference how beautiful the place is where I am.
You know, I talk about that. And I did soak that up when I produced those shows. I think it comes out. I do sometimes have to push it a little more. In dealing not with the networks when I do my film work, but say in publishing this book, it’s like, let’s remember that this is also a beautiful thing. So for example, if you take the story of my encounter with the Lynx, it’s a very beautiful story. If I said I was face-to-face with the Lynx, the first thing is, oh my gosh, what happened?
No, actually, it was beautiful. The Lynx sniffed me and walked away. I definitely try to impregnate, if you will, my more sensational stories of survival and adventure with the beauty that you experience in the process and even in a horrible survival situation, there’s still beauty. It’s ugly and horrible for what it’s doing to your body and your mind, but where you are is utterly beautiful. If you’re lost in the middle of the Amazon, it’s going to be spectacular. I do think it’s there and I agree with you.
I’m a closet ornithologist. I’ve got 26 bird feeders. I can see several of them from where I’m sitting. I’ve got 14 birdhouses. I put all of those up. So clearly I’m a closet, you know, bird net because that’s the beautiful part of, you know, meanwhile, I’m, you know, I’m inside working in my little editing suite or my recording studio and I’m on a laptop even talking to you right now. But yet right outside my door, all I have to do is put up a couple of bird feeders, throw in some finch feed.
And now I have literally I have upwards of 70 finches that come every day. So, you know, yeah, I’m always connecting the beauty to the adventure big time. It has to be, which I’ll go a little further and say this is why. In outdoor activities, one of the reasons why I love scouting is because it doesn’t do this other thing. This other thing I’m about to reference is, you know, it’s great to go and do ropes courses and all these challenges and that, but you have to recognize there’s a difference between being in nature and using it as a backdrop to your rock climbing or ropes coursing thing.
And being with nature and just being there and being part of it and forest bathing, experiencing it. I’m very big on the ladder. I’m always cautious when the activity overrules the beauty that’s there. I run in nature. When I’m running up this hill behind my house, which I will do in a few hours, I’m not really connecting with nature at that moment. I’m not. I’m running my dogs and I’m getting exercise. There’s a difference between that and if I go up that hill and sit for an hour.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, that’s a good contrast. I like that between using nature or being in it and experiencing it and letting it wash over you, forced bathing cell. Yeah, that’s a good distinction to make. I want to hear about this PBS special that you’re working on, especially because I imagine many of our listeners are city dwellers and we talk about Wendell Berry and outside stuff, but a lot of us are fakers. What might we learn from your work about disasters in an urban environment? How should we prepare?
What should we do?
Les Stroud: Well, I mean, it goes back to one of your early questions, too. The skills that I really teach, if you want to boil them down, are just simply the skills of resilience and ingenuity, adaptability. That’s it. Because in the case of handling an urban disaster or surviving a wilderness survival scenario or adventuring, as we have in the children’s book, If you’re resilient and you persevere and you use your ingenuity and you learn to adapt, everything’s covered at that point. Everything’s covered because that’s what’s required of us.
So the skills in a generic sense, that’s really it right there. And specifically speaking with the Surviving Disaster Special, I get right into it. How much water should you have and where should you keep it and how should you keep it? How about food? What about communication? Well, I have seniors living with me. What about my kids? What about pets? What about transportation? I have to drive. Did you realize that after a hurricane, you think, well, my car is protected.
I’m going to be able to drive out of here. Yeah, no, there’s 14 million drywall nails on the roads right now. And they’re not going to be cleaned for, you know, it’s going to take three weeks before we even get those cleaned. So you’re not driving anywhere, you know, without flat tires. So there’s specific skills that are really interesting and good to learn. It’s stuff I’ve learned while doing this special. And then, as I said, there’s the generic. But in the end, I’m very big on self-reliance, not like a prepper.
I don’t have a bunker. In fact, I’ll tangent and say I often speak out. Sort of against it, because I say, yeah, everybody thinks they’re going to be sitting on their porch with a shotgun when Armageddon strikes, and they’re going to have their bunker full of a year’s worth of food, or even three years, who knows. But in the end, it’s like, no, you’re not. Because your daughter’s going to come to you and say, Dad, my best friend’s parents, they’re in a bad way. Their house was blown over by the storm.
Can they come and stay here? Well, you’re not going to say no. So now your year’s supply of food is only six months. And someone else comes in, now it’s only three months. And for the odd freak who would sit there with their shotgun, well, fine, forget about them. They’re very rare. Most of us are going to want to help our fellow person. And that’s the thing that in talking with Max Brooks, we talked a lot about is the magic is in community.
The magic of survival is really, and forget that word magic, the truth and reality of survival is in community. You should know your neighbors now. If you know you’re going to be, well, you’re in LA. So that’s earthquake central. You’re all waiting for the big one. When it happens, you’re going to need to bond together with people who live pretty close to you, whom you’ve never met before. And that could be a nightmare. So you want to find out now who’s resourceful. And so community is really the answer to survival.
I mean, in wilderness survival, I’d rather be with two people or six people than by myself. You know, I’d rather have the community. So yeah. Anyway, I think that’s a big part of the answer for urban survival. You stole my thunder because that’s what I was going to ask you is I’ve always heard that the best thing you can do in a survival situation is to know your neighbors. Huge. We kind of hovered on that for a while that, and it’s kind of, it’s weird.
I, you know, sort of know most of my neighbors, but I kind of don’t want to in some cases, but I should. But, uh, so it’s, it’s a, it’s a hard pill to swallow really, but when it does hit the fan, If you don’t know who’s all around you and what they have, you’re really at a disadvantage, both in a nefarious way, a dark way, but also in a helpful way. There could be someone 600 yards away who could really help you out a lot, and you don’t even know that.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, I think that’s good for many other reasons, too, about just living in an environment that is nourishing and healthy. And in the United States, especially, we have a lot of people pulling apart. It’s a very polarized country. I think many of your neighbors may not agree with you on everything, but it’s good to know them because... There are things that you can work together on and maybe in some small way talking together on these practical issues, I think depolarizes in an important fashion. So there are like a million different reasons to know your neighbors and it comes on the show a lot.
I’ll just interrupt you too and just remember that an earthquake and a hurricane, they don’t care which politics you follow. They do not.
Les Stroud: They really don’t care. And all of those. And the thing about natural disasters is a natural event is inevitable. A natural disaster is not because it is preparable for. You can prepare or avoid.
Ross Kenyon: That’s a good point. Les, I know you have to run fairly soon, but I have to ask one very indulgent question. I hope you will allow me to do so. What was it like with The Office doing an episode based on your work?
Les Stroud: Well, let me give you the full story. It was a weird time for me. Because Survivorman had taken off. Then, because what I do and what I did was authentic and real, I was unable to produce lots and lots of episodes. Just couldn’t keep going out there. It’s like, kill myself doing that. So that frustrated the networks. And after a long time of them trying to get me to cheat my show, and I wouldn’t, they came up with an alternative, which then, you know, and more alternatives.
And then just the whole thing just kind of mushroomed off of that. I kept staying authentic in what I was doing. And the reason why I tell that story is because at that time, I’d actually, I think in the same week, I’d gotten a call from Oprah and a call from the office. And I The Oprah call, I was set to go on her show. And then the network decided it wanted to back the new boy. And they actually interceded and got my interview canceled.
And the new boy got on the Oprah show. I was pretty livid. But in the same breath, I got this email from the people from the office. And what had happened there was they asked me if I’d be interested, A, in being on the show, and B, if they could show a clip from Survivorman on Michael Scott’s TV screen, which I was over the moon, of course, you know. And just a few days or a week or whatever later, the writer’s strike hit. And basically they said, we’re really sorry, but because of unions and liabilities and legalities, we have to stick with the original script we have written, which Steve wrote.
He’d only ever written two scripts for that entire series. And one of them was my episode, which is called Survivorman. And so they said that, you know, that, you know, but they were happy to speak with me and I say, well, I’m still thrilled. Fast forward to when it finally aired and I was actually sitting and I actually got to watch it for the first time on air, on television, sitting there and thinking to myself. And at this point, this was the highest rated comedy film.
Series of all time at this point. And this was the highest rated episode of their entire series. And I’m sitting there watching it. And I thought, well, maybe I’ve arrived. Maybe I actually did something good here because, wow, this is vindication. So yes, the short answer, it was an honor and a thrill. And I still love it. It’s still a big episode. The Steve Carell bobblehead, the Michael Scott bobblehead, Is him in his Survivorman torn-legged garb. So, yeah, that was a big thrill for me.
It always is. King of the Hill did as well. They dedicated a whole episode to me. And when I say that, they start, I mean, the opening line is, that Survivor guy is the greatest American hero ever born in Canada. And then they go on and Dale tries to be me for the episode. So when those things happen, listen, man, I’ve got a performance thing. Oh, that’s great. That’s fine. That’s what gets me up on stage and in front of the camera.
Man, it’s always an honor and a thrill and a humbling. And I’m still just a guy from Canada who loves nature, loves teaching the skills. It’s why I’m hugely connected to the scouts. I’ve signed hundreds of Eagle Scout letters. And I spoke to a scout group just last week. We just did a Zoom chat because they were going to go out and do a winter survival thing. So I primed them for an hour kind of thing. So that’s still just me. So when those things happen, like the Michael Scott thing, It’s a little surreal.
And you’re like, okay. It’s like playing on stage with Slash or Alice Cooper, actually. I’m like, okay, I can’t believe I’m here right now, but I’m going to soak this up because this is awesome.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, that’s got to be surreal seeing your work reflected in such a way, especially in such a widely viewed kind of fashion too. That episode is still so funny. I love Michael talking about what a beautiful fabric his polyester pants are, cutting off the leg and turning it into a hat.
Les Stroud: You can see him literally, and I’m not being... Too much of an egomaniac here, but come on. The guy is literally mimicking me in every scene out there. And I’m just like, I’m watching Steve Carell mimic me? How does that happen in somebody’s life? So I will always be honored. I’ve never met the man. I hope one day to bump into him or be in a situation where I can go, hey, He won’t even know who I am. He’ll look at me and go, who are you?
And I’ll go, it’s Les Strout, Survivorman. And he’ll remember, but yeah, I’m hoping for that one day.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah. I want to ask you too, just briefly, one thing you mentioned about the new boy. I have a feeling I know who you’re referring to. And I’ve seen episodes of other survival shows where it’s like, oh, well, I need to get down this river. I guess I should jump off this cliff into the river and float down it. I’m like, Les would never do this. Les is so conservative in the way that you approach this. Don’t take unnecessary risks. And some survival shows, they sort of glamorize it in a way I find irresponsible potentially.
Do you feel that way too?
Les Stroud: Well, I would go, I can go a hundred steps further. I mean, I think they all entirely sensationalize and glamorize and they’re all about the drama and all that drama is scripted and written by the producers. It’s all of those shows are fake. Right down to all of Naked and Afraid’s, you know, dual survival, Man vs. Wild with Bear, of course. And alone, they actually are doing it. They actually are suffering. Some of them actually are excellent survival instructors, as was, you know, Cody and Matt on Duel.
Those guys know what they’re doing, but the show was faked, horribly faked. And they’re pretending to be this and that. Well, on a loan, the disconnect happens after they’ve done their stint because then the producers still manipulate the edit so that you’re all captivated at home. I know a guy who’s on a loan who caught five fish. They never showed it. Because it made it look like he wasn’t suffering. All of that, I think it’s all crap. I think it’s ridiculous. But it is what it is.
I still carry a badge of pride that what I started with Survivorman has gone on so humongously, that’s a word, around the world. But nobody’s ever done it the way I’ve done it. They can’t. And that includes Ed Stafford. Same thing there. I mean, with his stuff, Why I disdain that work like First Man Out is because that’s competition. That’s not survival. No true survival instructor considers survival competition. You’re a scout. When you went out and were learning all the various things for scouting and Eagle Scouting, were you taught to go up against and fight against your fellow scouts?
Not at all. This is always about cooperation, always about working together. So I have a lot of disdain for those shows. I don’t Hold the entertainment value against people. Hey, if you like being entertained by it, so long as you do realize and do accept and do know that it’s completely fake. If you think it’s real, then you’re an idiot and you need to, you know. But then I have my opinions about reality TV in general. I can’t stand reality TV. What I did was a documentary series.
Everything else after that was a spin on reality and reality TV. And so, yeah, I think what the Scouts do, what Survivorman did, Credit where credit’s due. Ray Mears, fantastic. Because Ray Mears loves the skills. You don’t see Ray Mears doing any single competition show or jumping on any of those shows either. Or an old one, the Bush Tucker Man from Australia, loved that same thing, just teaching the skills. And you can call us overly earnest. You can call us boring if you like.
We’re the real deals. So these other shows are reality nonsense and they’re worth hundreds of millions of dollars and Godspeed to them, but that’s not my thing.
Ross Kenyon: But I think that’s why people connect with your work so strongly is there is this, it’s, if you’re listening, you’ve never seen Survivor, man. Les is just out there. You’re by yourself. You’re recording yourself. You’re setting up cameras, walking back and then walking ahead to get the shot. It’s just you. I know there’s a team that is sort of making sure You don’t die and they’re somewhere in the vicinity potentially, but it’s not a highly produced show. It feels really like a small scale documentary that you are shooting yourself.
And that’s why I connect with it. That’s why I’m a fan of your work. But I guess you could say that hasn’t been the trend overall.
Les Stroud: No. And the thing is too difficult. It’s too difficult. It does not seem easy. It seems like a pain. Yeah, it is a huge pain. And you can’t produce that many. And the networks are all about quantity, not quality. It’s all about money and ratings, right? This is not a new story. Everybody knows this. And so they pump them out. So I chose to remain authentic in what I do. And look, we all know I’m coming home.
I know I’m coming home. I know I’ve got to run a camera and make this film. So how can I make it as close to the real deal as possible? Well, not having a camera crew is a big thing. You’re not doing anything with a camera crew beside you. It’s not surviving. And you know what? If I’d had a camera crew, I would have cheated. I’m human. If the camera guy had said on day four, hey, you want my Mars bar?
Here, nobody’s looking. Take my Mars. I would have taken it. I’m just human, so that’s why I had It was hard to have nobody there. Had to be authentic. And again, I think that’s why so many scouting groups connect with Survivorman. And I get the call to, I’ll do a Zoom call with a scouting group just to talk to their boys and girls because they’re about to go out and do, like I say, some sort of winter survival. Even one time there was a group, Colorado Troop 16 have been doing, coincidentally for 16 years, a Survivorman weekend.
And two years ago, I showed up and surprised them. And they didn’t know it was coming. I literally walked out into the woods to everybody where they were at their side. I said, hi. I mean, literally walking over the hillside, you could see like they were trying, their brain was trying to fathom what was going on here because Survivorman was walking out of the woods saying hello to these scouts working on their first aid skills or something. It was fantastic. So, you know, that’s what this is all about for me.
Ross Kenyon: That’s probably a great surprise for them. It sounds very fun. Well, if someone wants to keep up with your work, if they want to buy the new book, if they want to watch for the new PBS special, where should they go? What should they look for?
Les Stroud: All the usual suspects in terms of social media. I would suggest right now, my biggest thing is my YouTube channel, Survivorman Les Stroud. All of my content’s going up there for free. All the past episodes, everything I’ve ever done is going up there right now. You must have been smart on the distribution deals that you cut. Predominantly, I own everything I’ve ever done. There’s still some licenses out there, but... So there’s Survivorman Les Stroud YouTube channel. It’s got everything. That’s the place you really want to go.
But of course, I’m on the usual suspects of Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Mostly those just keep telling you, go watch stuff on the YouTube channel. And then for the books, it’s with Anik Press, Wild Outside, Around the World with Survivorman, releases in March of 2021. And it’ll be everywhere. It’s online. You can pre-order it right now on Amazon or books.org or whatever. So it’s out there. And then the other thing is my new PBS special. So I have a brand new series called Wild Harvest where that highlights local foraging and turning all of that food into wonderful, sumptuous meals.
So it’s not survival. It’s local foraging. It’s called Les Stroud’s Wild Harvest on a PBS station near you. Right now, 13 episodes, they’re airing. And then the new special on PBS stations, again, presented by American Public Television, is my special Surviving Disasters with Les Stroud. It was supposed to come out on March. The pandemic’s really slowed things down. It’ll be probably for sure on air by June.
Ross Kenyon: Okay, great. So many options. Do you have a sense of what you might do once you’re moving past these projects, what you’re looking forward to, or is that too far ahead?
Les Stroud: No, lots more music. I’ve got a ton of music coming out this year. I’m having fun with my YouTube channel and it’s direct access, no network contracts. Love it. I hate the business of my business. So I would suggest in the future, it’s going to be more YouTube stuff. I’d love to do a follow-up to Wild Outside, a second children’s book. I adore doing it and I’ve got so many more stories. So I’m talking with them about that right now. So yeah, lots more stuff always.
Ross Kenyon: I think it’s a great book. I enjoyed it reading as an adult. And if I had kids, I would certainly be passing it to them. So thank you. Yeah. If you’re listening and you have kids and you think this stuff is cool, I imagine they will too. Kids in general like this stuff. I remember like loving it, being obsessed with these stories as a kid. And I don’t know how many kids or that many people I’ve talked to that did not love this stuff as kids either.
It sort of, it has these sort of universal evergreen appeal, I think.
Les Stroud: And I think that’s the thrill for me to be writing this book directly in the language and to the ears of the children, of the kids, was important for me. And I love that. I’m not writing it to adults, but yet the adults, I’m hearing that they’re loving it too. So that’s, yeah. I mean, they have a lot less inhibitions than we have.
Ross Kenyon: Definitely. Well, links to all of those things are in the show notes if you’d like to support Les' work. And thanks so much for being here, Les.
Les Stroud: My pleasure. We’ll do this again. Thank you.
Ross Kenyon: Thank you. Well, thank you so much for listening. If you like the show, please rate and review it in Apple Podcasts and or Stitcher. It really helps us a lot to get this content to a wider audience. If you think what we’re doing is useful, interesting, fun, hopefully all three, we’d certainly appreciate your rating and review. You can keep up with Nori at nori.com where there is a newsletter. That’s nori.com slash subscribe. There’s podcast. There’s a whole bunch else. Or you can send us an email at podcast at nori.
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