Julia Bradbury | Extraordinary Life Stories

0:10Hello, my name is John Reynolds. Welcome to Extraordinary Life Stories. On this episode I'm talking with Julia Bradbury. Julia is a renowned television presenter, journalist and environmental advocate, best known for her work on popular nature and travel documentaries like Countryphile and Britain's Best Walks. In 2021, Julia faced a personal battle when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Following a successful recovery, she has openly shared her journey, writing Walk yourself happy highlighting the healing power of nature and the positive impact it can have on our mental and physical health.

0:50I'm really looking forward to talking with Julia so let's get into it. Julia thank you for joining me. It's a pleasure I'm yeah just honoured to be part of this. Yeah it's cool yeah and I know how busy you are so I really really value the fact that you've come to talk to me today. It's a pleasure. Tell me who is Julia Bradbury? Gosh that's a tricky one I bet everybody starts with a bit of a tongue-in-the-cheek rolling eyes answer to that so Julie Bradbury is an Irish Greek Welsh television presenter who's been on British screens for 25 years and started life in the TV world in the entertainment space so my first big break was working out in Los Angeles for what is now GMB it was called something else back then because I've been around for that long that it's even changed its name and I was a young reporter I was ambitious I'd made my my first couple of breaks into television and they got this big break to go out and be this this Hollywood correspondent that must have been cool it was hugely cool and daunting and frightening and I was very very green and didn't quite know how to tread the politics and handle all of that but steep learning curve and yes definitely some great notes for the memoirs you know interviewing George Clooney and Arnold Schwarzenegger and Tom Hanks and Michael Douglas, buying my pants next door to Julia Roberts on Melrose, all sorts of great little little gems, very unimportant in the life-scale theme of things but quite not many people can say they've done that though right?

2:24quite nice to tell your grandkids or your kids that you've done that kind of stuff and then I came back to the UK and I won't give you a long-putted boring history of my career but I ended up having a pivot and I think it's important in any career to have a pivot and recognise the momentum of that pivot and know where it's taking you and how you can expand your growth on the basis of that and I started making some series in the Lake District which were following in the footsteps of a walker, a hiker called Alfred Wainwright who's very well known in the outdoor circle. He's a god. He's written these 13 beautiful pictorial guides.

3:00He is somebody who himself fell in love with the Lake District. So this was sort of a mashup of Alfred Wainwright walks with me in doing the Alfred Wainwright bit in his steps. And the audience just loved them. They were just very responsive. There was a really warm connection to them and to me immediately. And from that point on, the outdoor space became something that I realised was very important to people. I would get letters and emails from 90-year-old men who loved what I was doing because they couldn't do it anymore and they liked to see me fresh-faced and all sort of wide-eyed doing this thing.

3:39I got women saying, I'm going walking now because of you. I'm taking on my own challenges and everything in between. So I was reaching quite a broad audience and then I sort of started a franchise of my own walks and I've taken them to almost every channel and they're sort of Julia Bradbury's whatever walk they are. It's an anonymous review isn't it but what about the acting and not the acting, the presenting and the TV side of things because I wanted to really know the background on the love of the outdoors and the walking but also the kind of the whole wanting to be in that sort of limelight in the Hollywood world and so where did that come from who and what influenced that?

4:17So I didn't really want to be in the limelight. I recognised fairly early on that I wasn't bothered by any of this. I don't care that the microphone is here, that the lights are on. You and I were talking about it before we began speaking. This never bothered me. You're totally at home. and still doesn't bother me. So I can be myself to a degree. Were you in all the school plays? We're all different versions of ourselves. So yeah, I did school plays. And my first professional gig was as a mermaid at the Sheffield Crucible Theatre in a version of Peter Pan. How old were you then? I was like 11 or 12.

4:53Yeah, so this was early. Yeah, this was early doors. That's what I wanted to know, because I could imagine that, but I didn't know that. I went to drama school. My mum sent me to drama school. I wasn't very good at school academically, so she saw that I needed an outlet and I needed to find something that I was good at and something I enjoyed. So I did all of those things. I'm a bit of a classic case when you look at lots of us like that. Yeah, not great at academics, but a bit of a show off. Yeah, yeah. I think that's awesome because school doesn't necessarily teach you that. The education curriculum.

5:19And yet also, I know you're super bright and I've listened to some of the podcasts, the little bit of positive, the whole through 2020, right? There's a natural vibe and positivity that comes from you. Have you always had that? I think I've always been very, very curious. I'm quite disillusioned with the educational system anyway because it's a bit like the medical world that says one size fits all, take this pill, you'll be fixed. Here, do this system and it works for most. And it doesn't work for most because we're all individuals, of course, but we all have strengths and weaknesses that we need to play to.

5:55I genuinely, yes, there are students who are fantastic at sitting inside for eight hours a day at a desk learning and can get through the exams. Certainly there are. But I think if you took even those students out of that environment, put them into an outdoor environment, say, and taught them the same curriculum, but in a different way and in an outdoors world, I think they would benefit as well. But I know that the whole other population of students would flourish and thrive in a way that they don't in a classroom. Simple things. I mean, from a scientific point of view, if a child is sitting in a classroom and does an exam at the end of the day, the air quality is not as pure, it's not as clean and it's denser, it's laden with carbon dioxide.

6:40Their concentration levels are going to be worse. Simple, simple fix. don't do exams in the afternoon and don't do them in rooms crammed with 100 students because you're all literally sucking the oxygen from each other and not giving everybody an even playing field no and actually this taps into something that's really close to your heart as well the whole getting out natural light or fresh air you know there's there's no kind of clear structure at schools you know apart from short breaks and so on to really encourage the whole embracing nature yeah and sport you can because you can slip out of that that's my point so if you're interested in music you can do music instead of sport and so on whereas you and I know just how important it is to keep physically fit to keep mentally stimulated yeah I mean children none of us are taught in school how to down regulate we're not taught how to concentrate we're not taught how to calm our stressful nervous systems we're not talk about we're not taught about breath work we're not talk about meditation.

7:41I don't mean meditation as in losing yourself to another world and going into a transcendental state. I mean the meditation of sitting with yourself, even if it's just for two minutes, to bring everything inwards, to calm yourself, to then move forward with your task. How valuable would that be, particularly with ADHD on the up and all these neuro... And then put them outside to do that. You've touched on it. Natural light, hugely beneficial to us, way beyond where it helps us create vitamin D. When you get the morning light in your eyes within the first half hour of waking up, you actually kickstart a hormone cascade in your body.

8:16Your retina corresponds to a part of the brain called the SCN, the central bit of the brain, which then delivers a message to your whole body. And your hormones start to operate in the way that they're meant to, getting you ready, not just for the day ahead, but for the night ahead. So melatonin is affected because you need melatonin to sleep well. That morning light has an impact on that. Serotonin is important because it helps you. It's one of the many, I hate to label them in very simplistic terms, but one of the happy hormones. Serotonin comes from your gut. That's impacted by morning light.

8:49Your whole mood and your biochemistry is impacted if you get the morning light and if you move within the first half hour of waking up. And of course, this is ancient wisdom. This isn't something that our ancestors ancestors needed to be taught because that's what they did. They got up out of the caves. Hunter-gatherers. Hunter-gatherers, fireside chats, social fitness, eating not sugar all the time because it wasn't abundantly available. What I like about the period of time that we're in now is that we are finally recognising that there is so much of ancient wisdom that makes sense on a scientific level.

9:27The science is catching up with what our ancestors have known for thousands of years. And what I dislike is that we need to have it scientifically backed because scientific studies can be biased and tipped in all sorts of different directions, depending on who's funding the study, who's the cohort of the study, what's their physical and mental health during the study, all of this stuff. I could pull apart any study that you show me. I also use them for my own benefit sometimes, saying, look, walking's good for you. But you can really you can really sort of needle into studies and and as I said pick them apart um but we all need to be outside we all need nature we're designed to be right and although there's the embracing of that yes it's a bit yeah fresh air and exercise but here's the biggest challenge I'm finding and I'm guilty of it myself and I and I must say this to you sort of positive negative I get outside in the morning it's the first thing I do I leave my gym stuff by the side of the bed I have a gym at home, but I have to go outside to get to the gym.

10:24It's all deliberate, right? And then I've got an outside area. So I love it when the weather is actually nice because I can do it outside. Although it doesn't have to be nice. No, very true. But pouring rain, I'll leave the doors open, fresh air, but I've got to do it slightly differently. I hope occasionally then after your workout you stand outside in the pouring rain and you do it in bare feet because you're getting the negative ions from the rain, which enhances your mood. Bare feet's interesting. Grounding. Yeah, this is what I want to tap into. But the biggest challenge I find, and if I'm finding it a challenge, then I know so many other people are social media and the smartphone kind of.

10:58And this extends to my daughters as well, right? Because I've been so looking forward to this conversation because I'm talking about the benefits because I can feel it myself. I know I feel better. I've set myself up for the day and it's habit forming. There's days when I don't feel like doing what I just said, but I'll do it because I know I feel better for it. but there's a trend that's probably incredibly popular with too many people which is to go on your phone as soon as you wake up and then you've lost half an hour because you're checking this and then you lose the time how do you yeah as Julie Bravery how do you put all that out of your head and just say this and what is your actual routine so I've set myself a rule and that rule is I do not get out of bed and check my phone first I don't have the phone in the bedroom I don't let my children eliminate it eliminate it my children don't have phones yet my son is 13 and my daughters are nine have you had any resistance yeah of course but I've held I've held off and at the moment it's manageable and still works I tell them that it's not going to be until they're 16 and I hope to stand by that there are a couple of things that are happening first of all for you when you you know it or for somebody who looks at their phone first thing in the morning you are instantly getting your dopamine response just on a roller coaster.

12:09That's the way the algorithms are designed. These smartphones are incredibly smart because they're outfoxing you and me. They are designed. So the algorithm knows, show me something about nature, show me a study about cancer, show me a motivational quote. It knows what to do. So it knows as soon as I go on, it goes boom and I'm like oh gosh I need that for work oh gosh let me save that one I mean I've got so many saved I've never gone back to look at because the algorithm knows they know you know there's a science behind this so you have to set yourself some rules I did talk to somebody in broadcast the other week and she said but I'm on the news desk and if somebody calls me I said you know what there's this really clever thing on your phone where if it's a if it's a particular number it can get through, everything else goes dead.

13:00So you can have an emergency number, so if it's the news desk with that one in 20 or 35 incidents of we're going into World War III or somebody's been shot or the president's dead or the primate, whatever it is, that person can get through to you but nothing else gets through. You can do that, you can set that for yourself. What you do have to do is to recognise in order to lead a healthy, positive, fulfilling life, you are going to have to sacrifice some things. And it's quite hard because you have to sacrifice the scrolling, you would probably have to sacrifice the box set of continually watching late night.

13:42And have you noticed that streaming services in the last, I don't know how long it's been going on, let's say five years, it's probably been a little bit less than that. Now you don't even have to click for the next episode to happen because they've done the science there's a there's a there's a lab out near vegas and they've worked out human behavior and they know that if you get the first two seconds of the next episode you're hooked in so you don't even have to just one more i've been guilty i have no time you don't even have to go just one more it's there yeah and that's all designed to suck you in it is and i find that quite motivating to to to back off because i'm You understand it though.

14:22Yeah, exactly. But I go, you're not going to fool me. I'm not going to do that. You are not going to suck me in because I know that's what you're trying to do. And for me, it's much more important for me to be mentally alert, there for my children, feeling more positive, get that daylight, sort out my hormones. I had a hormone positive breast cancer. So I'm very, very motivated to take care of my health. And I don't think we talk enough about the fact that all of these things come under the banner of health. They don't come under the banner of leisure time. They don't come under the banner of, oh, a little bit of what you fancy does you good.

14:55And they don't come under the banner of, oh, everything in moderation. All of that's crap. That is not, none of those things, you know, well, eat cake, but I only have it once a day. I'm sorry, if you're eating cake every single day, the way I was three times a day, your glucose levels are going up and up and up and up and up. and as you get older, you become less able to handle that glucose in your body and you are heading to type 2 diabetes. Just that one piece of cake a day or that one kind of fizzy pot a day. And I live like that. My wife lives like that. I think we're bringing up our kids to be like that.

15:27So I'll catch them. I'll come into the kitchen and there's a bag of minstrels or something. It's the only thing I've eaten today, Dad. And I'm like, you had a donut yesterday. It's the only thing I had yesterday, Dad. And I'm going with that. And you have, from your lived experience perspective, just touching on the kind of almost the before and after of the breast cancer. Yeah. Are you saying that that really shifted your knowledge and understanding of what you were doing to now what you would absolutely not do? Yeah, soon as I started doing a deep dive into health, which I explored in my book Walk Yourself Happy, and that book, by the way, wasn't meant to be about that.

16:01It was meant to be about mental health and walking. And then I got my cancer diagnosis and the book went on the back burner. And when I came back to the book, I went, right, how can I... take the best possible care of myself going forward. How can I reduce the risk of reoccurrence and how can I lead a healthier life? Because I was not leading a healthy life, despite doing all the walks on television and everything else. That's what I was going to say, because I mean, I knew of you clearly before and you certainly seemed healthy. But I... Yeah, exactly. I look thin and I am slim and I've never put on weight apart from a time in my 20s.

16:33So I'm that horrible human being that can eat all the brownies. That's... Yeah. Yeah. But I'm running at a thousand mile an hour. Your adrenaline is going through the roof. Your cortisol is going through the roof. We are what you call, we are thin on the outside, fat on the inside, toffees. And that is damaging in itself. You are causing DNA damage. You are aging yourself. You are heading for some sort of burnout. And this, from the brilliant doctor, Dr. Peter Attire, this really hit home for me with the sugar because I was this massive sugar addict. the difference between you and the person next door to you who is a type 2 diabetic that's got to the stage where they are now losing limbs so you know that's one of the things that can happen with type 2 diabetes you can start to lose digits you can start to lose your toes then it goes up to the leg I have someone in my family that this is happening to it's a it's a really serious disease you have an increased risk of cancers you have an increased risk of all sorts you wouldn't want any of this right?

17:37Other diseases because you've got type 2 diabetes and the difference between you and this person is one teaspoon of sugar in the blood. So we all have glucose fructose, we all have a teaspoon running throughout our body because we need it for energy. We do burn glucose fructose for energy as well as fats and as ketones as well. But if you tip it by just one teaspoon, you are doubling the amount that your body is capable of handling and your liver starts to struggle, your insulin resistance becomes poor and that's when inflammation kicks in and that's your downward cascade of chronic illness. You take whatever flavor you want, the type 2 diabetes, the cardiovascular disease, sticky blood, they're talking about Alzheimer's, they're calling it type 3 diabetes linked to a very high refined sugary carb diet?

18:33I mean early days in that research but certainly worth taking note of. You're scaring me, you're frightening me. I mean I think we are quite similar in context of the fact that I'm charging around. I live in the New Forest here in London, there's a thousand things going on and I take it for granted that I've always had a metabolism and again the guy that's hated by all his friends is like one day if your metabolism changes you'll be massive. It hasn't happened. But I do keep fit and I do try and manage my diet but not to the point where there's plenty going in on a daily basis that really shouldn't.

19:05I want to talk to you about the mental health side of things. It feels like you were clearly and are super positive and a real kind of trailblazing personality doing all these different things. But when you got diagnosed, where did you go and what kind of coping mechanisms pulled you through that? And I know a big part of that is walk yourself happy but I'm also talking about you mentioned meditation and so what are the what are the key things that got you through such a tough period so it's interesting I'm going through all sorts of testing with a clinic at the moment for my next book and one of the tests is a psychological assessment and you fill in a questionnaire and then you spend two hours with this brilliant psychologist who picked apart my answers and there were two interesting things that came out from her point of view.

19:54My resilience score, this is her description, not my description, my resilience score was through the roof. She described it as Olympic. She said, I have this ability to turn a negative, not just into a positive, but to thrive in that scenario. Somehow I find something to flip. My overall wellbeing score was low, way lower than she would have liked. So the way that she put it to me is, had I seen the wellbeing score on its own, I'd have been very worried about you. Having seen the two scores next to each other and now spent this time with you, I'm not as worried. But what I would tell you is, because I see your ability to apply yourself with this resilience, I'm going to tell you to apply yourself to your wellbeing in the same way, because I know you have the ability to do it, because I can see it from your results and from talking to you.

20:49But you need to switch that and you need to focus on it. So it's a conscious effort. So it is a conscious effort. I think I am, as you said, naturally positive. And I'm like, I'll get through it. I can push through it. I've got this energy. I can. And part of the Wook Self Happy movement and doing this, making my documentary that I made, Breast Cancer and Me for ITV, part of that was a coping mechanism. And I could deflect a little bit and I could almost look at me as one of my stories. Oh there's this TV presenter and she's got breast cancer and she does all these walks and she's healthy on the outside and it was almost like I was another project and that was a way of me coping by separating myself from the very real pain and fear that I went through when I was told you've got cancer.

21:35I'm now out of the other side and I'm really working on the emotional side of me, the vulnerable side of me and the side of me that has to acknowledge that I got cancer and anything else could happen to me. So how am I going to take care of myself in the best possible way, not just using this resilience tool? What other tools can I learn and what else can I apply to calm myself, to survive and to move forward? I'd like this second half, the second act, to be calmer, more measured, less frantic, and more applied. I can tell and actually you talk about almost like the second chapter my experience of people I've been fortunate enough to talk to on X-Wing Life stories that have been through huge trauma or near-death experience stared death in the face.

22:28It's a shame we need that to make these changes. Oh my god you took the words out of my mouth and they are the most alive people I've ever met you included. Have you felt that? Do you now have that value on time and value on what you do to the point where I'm super privileged to be talking to you because you You know, you choose what you do now carefully compared to, dare I say, a younger version of Julia. Oh, the younger Julia, the Hollywood correspondent running down red carpets, coming back to the UK, launching three television channels, working seven days a week. Oh, I'd like to have children now.

22:56Oh, I can't have children. Let me do IVF. Oh, all that didn't work. Let's do another round. Boom, boom, boom, boom. Get through it, get through it, get through it. You're absolutely spot on. Now it's more measured. now it's the importance of the projects that I'm doing of course I'm still ambitious and of course finances are still a still play an important role in my life I've got three young children you know and a mortgage so yeah of course earning a living is still important but I was talking to Chris Evans the radio broadcaster about this the other day and as he said every currency isn't money there are so many other currencies and one of the lines I use all too often is if you don't make time for your health, you will be forced to make time for your illness.

23:41So it doesn't matter who you are and what you're doing and what you're, we're all motivated, we all need things, we all need to survive, we all need, you know, to bring home the bacon as it were. But if you continue really just pushing yourself 100 % all the time, there's a very real chance that something's going to go wrong with you. And that could be a heart attack or a stroke or cancer or a breakdown, then how do you take care of your family? Then how do you deliver? Then how do you... you're useless. It's the cliche oxygen mask needed. And you may not be lucky enough to get past it. So then there's no turning back.

24:20Like, you know, sitting here with you now, we both know that there's people that have been diagnosed and are not sat here. So there's a humbleness about that, but also slightly out of context, but I wanted to bring up success because it's entwined with being happy. It's entwined with the fact that you beat cancer. You've got a successful broadcasting career, media career, entrepreneur. Sitting here now, how do you define success?

24:49Success is not money. That I would agree. There's no question that money eases things and can ease problems. I've had financial issues. I've been there I have you know I have faced where's the next paycheck coming from how am I gonna look after my children this month how does the mortgage get get paid I've been there and face that and understand that so I'm not I'm not being glib and you know and I think it's it's always it's quite interesting when you listen to lots of entrepreneurial shows all these billionaires say yeah money isn't doesn't make you happy like well you can say that because you're sitting on outside 20 billion and now you can do your yoga and your meditation and it doesn't matter how your day is structured.

25:32Tell a younger version of themselves that right? Yeah. No chance. No chance. So but I think success is much more rounded than that. It's not just the money. Of course that is part of it. I think it's very much the same way that I look at health. Health is not physical fitness. Health is not mental fitness. Health is not social fitness or any one of those jigsaw pieces. It's all of them. And that is what success is. Success is having a rounded, fulfilled life that you can manage and drive. I'm not saying it's always going to be easy. Life is all about the challenges. It's about how do you face the challenges?

26:16How do you go around the challenges? What do you do when your back's against the wall? and how do you motivate yourself to do things in the face of adversity. But success is having a group of friends that you can phone up at any time and say, John, I'm really struggling at the moment. Can you help me? I just need to talk to somebody. Or I've hit this brick wall in my business. Do you know anybody who could give me some advice? Or do you know an investor who might be able to? Or at school, if you're an academic, it's who are the bright kids? Go and find them. Who are the nerds and the geeks and make friends with them and learn from them?

26:54You can learn this from a very, very young age. You're not using people. You're utilising your skills to learn from other people. We should all have mentors. We should all have people we admire. We should all have people that we can look up to. You can be 90 and still have a mentor. 100%. As an entrepreneur, that's huge. And I'm enjoying, I've sort of just turned 47 and realising there's mentoring going on now to different people that come through. And I've sort of been humbled by the fact that you sort of realise you have learned a lot. And it comes back to that being curious. You never stop being curious and never stop wanting to learn.

27:29And a big part of what you just said there is about your tribe, your community, reaching out to people. And actually, that's a big part of what I've seen with your social media. And we gave it a hard time earlier, right? Kids and the negatives, right? Yeah, but it is a connecting device. And I think that's why I wanted to bring it up in a really positive way. because obviously I've known of you, Miles Leonard, who connected us. Yeah, lovely Miles. Yeah, and so then I'm following you on social media. And it's all, I'm going to say, sort of educational and positive, and it's all inspiring. And your engagement from your community, many of you who don't even know you will probably feel like they know you.

28:07And I don't know if you feel that. I really do, and I feel a great sense of responsibility towards that platform. because I am an old school TV journalist I have been brought up in the media world to look at every side of the story to really try and knuckle down into the facts and to remain open-minded about stories there's always there's always your side of my side in a divorce some people are friends with the wife some people are friends with you know or you know two women two men whatever it is somebody's this partner's friend and somebody's this partner's friend and they all believe your side of the story.