You Vs the World: The Bear Grylls Guide to Never Giving Up

Product Information

Bear spent time as a soldier in the SAS, honing his survival skills. After his military career he became one of the youngest climbers ever to reach the summit of Mount Everest. His Emmy Award-nominated Man vs. Wild TV series grew to be one of the most-watched shows on the planet, reaching an estimated 1.2 billion viewers. Since then he has gone on to host more extreme adventure TV shows across more global networks than anyone else in the world, including six seasons of the global hit TV show Running Wild with Bear Grylls. The show has included notable personalities including; President Obama, Prime Minister Modi and Julia Roberts, to name a few.

We knew you should probably not go out on that ice. Bear was like, “If you crawled, you’d be alright, but I wouldn’t walk across it.” And we were like, “In this case, Bear, the viewer is making a mistake.” So he walked across it and eventually, sure enough, he fell through. We are thrilled to bring you the Programme for Schools live this year, with in-person events for pupils in Key Stage 2 on Thursday 25 May and Key Stages 3 & 4 on Friday 26 May.I always like that quote that says, ‘you never want to arrive at the end of your life in a perfectly preserved body’. That’s a waste. You want to come skidding in sideways, covered in scars, beaten up and screaming, ‘Yahoo! What a ride!’” he laughs. This makes me feel better, because I poisoned him several times over the course of watching the show.

The best writers are often said to be enthusiastic life-long readers, and that’s definitely the case for children’s author SF Said. A passionate campaigner for literacy, libraries and reading for pleasure, he is the writer behind Varjak Paw and its sequel The Outlaw Varjak Paw, a duology about a cat who learns a secret martial art. Said will share his love of stories with us, explaining how he went from being a young reader and lover of books to an award-winning author and campaigner for stories for all. But ask the 48-year-old whether his high-octane career has taken its toll and he will admit these days “everything hurts”. Bear is a number one best-selling author, having written over 90 books, selling in excess of 20 million copies worldwide. He is an Honorary Colonel to the Royal Marines Commandos, the youngest ever UK Chief Scout, and the first ever Chief Ambassador to the World Scout Organisation, representing a global family of some 57 million Scouts. That’s true. It’s probably like pro sports, right? The fans and the stats will tell you when you’re too old for this shit. I don’t see him ever not doing it until it’s just not an option for him. He loves it so much. You get him out in the wild, he just comes alive. Related It’s a combination of Bear and the medics’ judgment call. You could make this show as extreme as you want to, and it could be very dangerous for the host. You could kill the host if you wanted to. We just had to draw that line. When Bear told us, for instance, “If I was really out here, I would figure out a way to start a fire, and I would likely survive. But do we really want to film for the next three hours, me freezing and hopefully starting a fire?” Also, with Netflix, we didn’t want to depict Bear failing mortally. We didn’t want to scare kids. So rescue by helicopter was always an option. When we get to that line when we’d ask Bear if he had any options left, he’d say, “Not really, dude.” And we’d say, “cool, let’s film a rescue sequence.”Watching Bear Grylls as he jumps out of helicopters and crosses white-water rapids on tree trunks, you’d be forgiven for thinking the TV adventurer is superhuman.

What about the parts where he has to choose between two things to eat? He seems to actually eat the bad mushroom, and also the raw bird eggs. Did he find those and say, “Should I eat these?” How did that work? Bear's lessons from the wild are transposed to everyday settings, helping kids to develop emotional resilienceYou’re out there for five days shooting one of these stories. What are the most challenging moments? Enjoy two days of fun and inspiration with exciting writers and thought-provoking performances for young people. Totally. It was a real challenge, and there were times when I was pining for the days of the simple, linear, unscripted TV show producing. That being said, I really liked the challenge and I’d love to do more. There are so many places in the world were we could take Bear.

For the episodes that have more of a story frame, like the one where he has to rescue the dog, how much did Bear know going in? Did he know where the dog was going to be, or did he figure that out in real time?I’ve always loved bringing my sons up to embrace risk, embrace danger. I want them to become ninjas at handling everything.”