303. Steve Backshall Reveals His Deadliest Animal, Near Death Experiences & Fake Videos!

39:46And luckily, you know, she's still a really, really good friend and I get to thank her a lot, but not enough. I mean, everything that I've done since that day is only because of Sal and because she, you know, managed to save my life. Because people say that, but it's like when they order you an Uber and your phone's out of charge and end of the night out. Oh, you're a lifesaver. Yeah. My life lost night, but now this is actually legit. Yeah. Yeah.

40:09Chip:Is there like an expedition or a trip maybe that you really want to complete, but you've never yet had the, I don't want to say the balls because you seem to have the balls to do a lot of these things. But in the same way that you mentioned about that Great White Shark, where it's almost 20 years of training and building up to do that. Is there something that you've still got that you're training and working up towards? um there isn't at the moment but it's swimming with a hippo perhaps it's it's really really interesting that you mentioned that though because there was there was a mountain that i tried to do in 2005 uh it's it's in the himalayas you can see everest from it but it's it's much more technical peak and i was climbing with it with a group of friends and it just kind of everything went wrong we had um we had terrible weather for a bit we were snowed under sat in a tent four of us in a teeny tiny tent ran out of food um we got to a high point on the mountain and by then we were all a bit tired and a little bit out of psych and we we turned around and we we gave up and it was a beautiful blue sky sun shiny day and if we had just sat down for another half an hour and gone come on guys what are you talking about what are you talking about let's just just sort ourselves out and go and do it then we would have then we would have done it we were five weeks in the himalayas and we didn't summit because basically we all wimped out and when i got back i had a picture of the summit ridge above us blown up into a poster and i put it on my wall in my bedroom so that every morning when i woke up the first thing i saw would be that poster and would be a reminder of how it felt to to you know basically wuss out on something and for at least 10 years that was my motivation every morning i got up and i went i'm never doing that again i'm never doing that again because the regret that i had from that was was monstrous even talking to you now today it it slightly gets under my skin so would you not go back yeah i would actually yeah i would let's do it let's bring us along mate we'll we'll do a podcast in the summer it'll be fine we'll have a good time yeah i mean i feel like if that's something that you've had up there you've got you've got to go in and get it done i mean is it is it one of those things like was it just a pure exhaustion and just being really too tired or did you genuinely feel like had you had gone up there in the state that you'd been like there was a good chance of something really bad happening no i think that um so there were four of us and two of the guys i know they won't mind me saying this but two of the guys have been out a little bit longer than the other the other two of us and they were a little bit more knackered one of them was suffering from a bit of pulmonary edema had had like fluid on the lungs just wasn't wasn't very well and we got to this high point and we just sort of like talked ourselves into we've done enough we don't need to go any further and we and as soon as we turned around and started heading back myself and my partner were like oh oh God, we've just screwed this and we are going to regret this.

43:19And yeah, that is the one that will always, till the day I die, unless I go back and I do it. You've got to go. I mean, the way you still feel about it now,

43:29Chip:it's not like you're not asked about it. You're still asked about it. Yeah, this is true. You've got to take that off. Have you ever done Everest? No, I've done the mountain next to Everest, which is Choayu, which is 8 ,200 meters. And I didn't frankly enjoy it very much. which is which is why i've not gone back and tried everest a lot of my friends have and they come back and it's an amazing achievement and huge huge you know um shout out to all of my pals who've done everest um but a lot of them are kind of coming back going oh do you know what we managed managed to miss the majority of the crowds and you know we didn't get stuck in the queue i've heard about that's just not what mountaineering is about to me feeling if there's just a queue for your photo you're like oh everyone's done it i guess that's a cool thing about getting somewhere like those floating islands where it's like it actually feels like you're the first person there yeah yeah like a real discovery yeah that's um i mean um you know he recently passed away but nims the um the mountaineer who was it six peaks was that his netflix the original he didn't do all 14 it was 14 sorry yeah that was it i mean that is you hear about the stories of like if anybody hasn't watched that i would highly recommend watching it's such an amazing sort of documentary but for me beforehand when somebody would mention like mountaineering or something like you know in my head i'm thinking i know a couple of them lads that did do v at school like yeah they're climbing up mountains and stuff but then when i watched that i went oh this is actually extremely badass and like it just your body i mean he was like genetically modified to be an incredible mountaineer and then after i watched that was like oh i actually really really respect anybody that goes on these sort of expedition and these adventures because when people say oh like i climbed up that mountain i'm they're like give me a decent pair of shoes i'm probably doing the same thing after watching all that though and they're like i'm not so interested in doing a lot of this stuff the whole thing is just like if you want to back out it's still so long down like once you're in it you're in it that that's the thing it's not like you just oh we're off it's still like getting getting out is a whole mission in itself it's yeah it's a big commitment yeah i know i need to i need to do the three peaks challenge which is often spoken about here have you have you bothered doing that yeah yeah i did i did that a couple of times quite quite a long time ago now uh-huh yeah it's i mean the the thing about the three peaks is that in the areas where you have the three peaks are dozens of other mountains all of which are absolutely sensational and you know amazing to climb and if you go at a time when the three peaks is being done then ben nevis scarfell and snowden are going to be covered with people right if you were to go a mile in any direction you'd be on a mountain completely on your own so i i wouldn't do the three peaks again and i i rarely go to those three big mountains apart actually that that's not true because uh ben nevis has got some extraordinary winter mountaineering on it like some of the greatest in the world still uh on the north base of the ben so yeah but the the the three peaks is is a slog and you're going to have a lot of company yeah you know what do a fellow special doing the three yeah i know but i wonder you know what would be even better right so we've spoken about this on the podcast our original thing was there like we were thinking about going and doing a special where similar to the way joe went and survived like 72 hours in the amazon we'd go document all of our training we'd go and do that we spoke to joe he said it was truly one of the worst experiences of his life but he was doing like full primitive you know the full work the only noodles and stuff yeah i was thinking like i need my pot noodles i need like all this but um so we've spoken about okay we could do that we've mentioned previously about doing like three p challenge but i'd love to get from you what do you think okay and we usually have another co-host um very similar to us minimal outdoor experience despite the look of the set um minimal outdoor experience but we want to go and complete a challenge that definitely has some level of risk to it and that is quite impressive off the top of your head what do you think three absolute novices and we will take some time to train and do it but what do you think would be really entertaining for the cameras and we almost want to dub this your challenge to us this isn't this isn't to say that we're going to do that's what we need yeah we do need and i don't want it to be something like you know for example the three peaks where loads of people are doing it i want this to be your challenge you know do you want it in the uk no no no we can go amazon we can go i will i'll go anywhere in Yes.

48:10Chip:Yeah. Truly. It's got to be like a fair level. But give us a genuine challenge. What do you think? Three novices. Oh my gosh. I would love to see. I would love to see the three of you try and live like Neanderthals. Try and live like proper Stone Age lives without any modern accoutrements whatsoever. No clothes. i mean that that is that is a different program but i i'd love to see you surviving from scratch make i mean even making fire is going to take you hours uh making your own shelter so not like what what's the flint um flint steel flint still's easy you want to try doing it with with the outer so you mean just like really i mean proper grizz it out old-fashioned caveman style so where would be the perfect place where's the perfect terrain I want to send you to the Arctic oh no no no no oh yeah but with no clothes we're just stood there shivering like right where's the fire here then we need to because if we did that in the UK we're not going to catch any food are we really I mean we can fish I guess but where do you think we would be most entertaining to complete a challenge somewhere like somewhere like the Welsh Valleys or the Highlands of Scotland the Cairngorms send you to the Cairngorms if you want something like the three peaks but better than the three peaks yeah i would say the welsh three thousanders so the welsh three thousanders is is essentially all of the mountains in snowdonia done in a wanna from start to finish it is staggeringly beautiful you will be on your own for most of it uh there's quite a bit of navigation to to get involved with it's hardcore it will absolutely mess you up and and and you know it's one that only only kind of like uh you know fell runners and adventure athletes kind of know about it's not so it would be a massive flex people would be people in my world would be really impressed if he did the welsh 3000ers and we've got to get it filmed so unfortunately what that means is the lads behind here they got to do the whole thing but just with the camera on their back i good luck you all yeah i mean that's one thing i always find so funny um when watching a lot of like the nature documentaries and stuff like this they always go like the presenters they're all well and good but then my thought is always bloody hell think about the cameraman that's had to lug all the kit up there and then go and like get ready and set up for filming i mean the team that you work with is it always the same team is it a different team have there must have been times where they just go look like steve i'm turning i can't hack this have you had people like sort of quit on you in mid expedition or mid filming?

51:00We've had people that have had to be had to be taken out usually because of injuries or illness. It's not it's not that common. The people I work with are are so tough and they tend to be the absolute best in the business. It's quite a small pool of people. So if, for example, I was going to be doing a first descent whitewater kayaking expedition and you're going to have someone who is an amazing kayaker has uh you know first responder first aid skills um and also can film as well you're looking at like three people in the world you can't go on indeed it's not like it's not like you're looking at a list of hundreds of people and then once you've done an expedition with that that person if you have not basically torn each other to pieces and hated each other by the end of it then you're probably incredibly close friends because you've you've gone through something really really tight together and so you know people that i've done expeditions with in the past we either will never speak again or we are you know very very best friends and have probably done a dozen expeditions together so it's not the exact same crew every time but it tends to be a lot of the same people and for the most part they are they're incredibly positive competent the skill level is absolutely terrifying you look at the cvs of quite a lot of people who are behind the camera on our shoots and they're so intimidating and you know they're people who will put up with absolutely anything who will you know actively enjoy pain and so the chances of them pulling

52:35Chip:out oh boys what are you to lock in you gotta go brazil and put your hand in those gloves we need to get some bullet ads bring them into the office he's really made for it exactly but I should say, I mean, we also, we don't hide that. So in my programs, the people who are behind the camera are very much featured. We don't try and frame them out. They're a part of the team and they're very visible on camera as well. I think that's important. And it adds to the whole sense that what we're doing is real too. You know, if you're always cutting away to a wide shot, there's just me standing in the middle of nowhere, completely on my own, and the camera crew is not there.

53:10Then I think that people are sort of thinking, well, clearly you are, this is not real. this is not authentic exactly yeah and i think being able to show no it's just it's just the four of us it's just us in the middle of nowhere but this is how we're living this is how we're doing things and this is how we're capturing the footage as well i think is is really valuable

53:29Chip:yeah i mean that's yeah convincing i guess like you said if you've got those people that you know then convincing them like i can imagine like right i've come up with this idea i'm gonna have to approach them about this idea right sit down opposite there right we're gonna go into the amazon we're gonna go and do this and they just say like oh not again or but but it sounds like those sort of people are really up for it and they get excited about the the prospect of that yeah i'll have to approach that slightly differently with these boys um i've got a question i wanted to ask you which is really stupid question but it was big on tiktok for a while yes 100 men versus gorilla have you heard about this i have heard about it yes what happens you're the man to ask it's a really difficult one because you know gorillas for the most part are not particularly aggressive animals.

54:14But if they decide to go loopy, they would mess up a good few people. I don't think there's any one single human around who would be able to go toe-to-toe with a gorilla. I mean, a hundred people all jumping on a gorilla all at once. It's a mad, mad thought. It is. There is a teeny tiny part of me would love to see it happen. Yeah.

54:39Chip:that's a mad tv show yeah i don't know if the cbbc will put that one on i don't think so no yeah i would want the gorilla to win as well i don't know if that's bad if i'm a traitor for that but i would want the gorilla to just just go through them all i just don't i think it genuinely though i think it would take quite a lot of coordination and tennis because if you're just going one by one by one you're just hoping that his cardio runs out yeah just be swatted into the stratosphere. Yeah. Almost like the Hulk in a way. Yeah. Okay. So your verdict, you think the hundred people would probably win that or what's your verdict?

55:16I mean, I don't, if I really start to think about it and talk about this too much, I'm going to get myself in so much trouble. Oh, right. Okay, fine, fine. I'm just going to say that one single male mountain gorilla has a freakish amount of strength and power the musculature is extraordinary okay and you know it were you to put tyson fury or aj face to face with the mountain gorilla there is only one winner and it is not the guy yeah so yeah fine no

55:46Chip:i'm more than happy with that actually um one of the things that we wanted to do with you um was just go through that your survival chances again so let's say it's it's one-on-one like what are my chances of surviving yeah the lineup it doesn't look good what my chances of surviving on a scale of um zero being you've got no chance of surviving and 10 you you you're definitely going to make it out it's fine looking at this lineup i have a feeling i know which side of the uh the scale we're going to land on for a lot of them we've just talked about gorilla yes um we're we're putting that quite low.

56:26Gorillas in most situations are, are not aggressive. Right. And for the most part, if you were to face up to a gorilla, it would give you a bit of a slap to let you know who's boss. And then it would leave you alone. The, the chance of being actually killed by a gorilla is very,

56:42Chip:very slight. So we're, we're, we're on that. If, if, if I encountered it in a wild space, I wasn't, I wasn't attacking it. Oh, I would say zero, zero. Really? Yeah. I would say so, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Next one is a chimpanzee. Chimpanzee is one of the most frightening animals. Oh, really? And I think that there's something deeply sinister about watching, and even worse, hearing a chimpanzee hunt. So I've been present. They eat each other, don't they, as well? Well, they can be cannibalistic. Yeah. They are extraordinarily violent in the way they hunt other primates and other mammals.

57:20the sound of it is so chilling so prehistoric and i think feeds back into something way back in the back of our caveman reptile brain that it i i challenge anyone to hear it and not be thoroughly creeped out and hear that sound in their nightmares for the rest of their life um i i watched chimpanzees um killing several monkeys up in the canopy and it will stay with me forever it was so horrific they are they're supernaturally strong for an animal of their size they are much more aggressive than gorillas are um the the chance of one actually wanting to confront you in the wild is very very slender but if one was backed into a corner and you were facing up to it it would

58:04Chip:tear you to shreds right one of the biggest uh or like the scariest sounds i've ever heard not necessarily a chimpanzee but is a howler monkey yeah those are mortifying

58:20sounds like a dragon fruit yeah yeah from miles away i think that's um i was in costa rica and i heard those and i was there like i don't really want to be here this is pretty terrifying

58:31Chip:all right so chimpanzee uh zero to ten where are you where you put sort of three three okay Okay. A lion. Lions. For the most part, lions will ignore you if they are very hungry and you are up close. It very, very rarely happens nowadays. But a pride of lions against a person, you don't have any chance. but you know people have wandered past prides of lions and they've not been in the hunting mood and they will just lie sleeping in the shade and completely ignore a person uh there are even groups of tribes that live in africa who will drive lions off their prey and if it's the wrong time and that lion just isn't particularly hungry and you come in with enough attitude and confidence they they can be driven away from from their food i'm not gonna try that i i wouldn't either no No.

59:24Chip:What number would you give that? Let's go six. All right. Okay. Smaller than the chimp. The grizzly bear. So grizzly bears are really interesting. Grizzly bears, brown bears across the whole of the northern hemisphere, for the most part, are feeding on berries and insects and then things like salmon in the height of the summer. They rarely take mammals like us as prey. sometimes they'll hunt things like like like moose and and and deer um which are massive by the way which are massive yeah absolutely but for the most part grizzly bears will will avoid an interaction a negative interaction with a person and truly predatory interactions with people are are incredibly rare um and there is there's a saying amongst naturalists who work in the north of america that um if it's if it's brown lie down yeah if it's uh if it's black fight back and if it's white good night good night yeah absolutely and um you know i personally have never been attacked by any of them but i have i've stood as close as i am to you to grizzly bear feeding on salmon and there's never been any sense that that there is anything bad going to happen we've even had a grizzly bear that we inadvertently cornered and it was a massive male grizzly bear and it turned and walked away to get away from us rather than confronting us it's a lot of it female ones with females with cubs is more dangerous um but you know there are a lot of people live within brown bear territory and very very few get get harmed i feel like even if it's rare that would be one of the most brutal ways maybe i'm just going off the revenant best yeah the whole revenant thing that's crazy doesn't it yeah yeah yeah i think about it i mean polar bears is a different story is it have you been semi-close to a polar bear like what's that like um that's really frightening right because polar bears as obligate predators and predators of primarily mammal prey will target you yeah and they will they will target you very very deliberately um i have had a polar bear swim after me in my kayak which was a intriguing moment yeah i saw this clip actually yes that was that was uh that was a moment that kind of heightens the senses we also had one on a beach in the arctic that that came really really close to our camp and we were we were on foot we didn't have any any skidoos or any way of getting away and you know we were banging pots and pans and in the end get into the stage of like firing bullets into the ground and things um to to try and get rid of this thing and and had we not had those bullets it would without question have tried to scoff one of us um and they are very very big they're very very fast and you know prey is so sparse where they live that they are kind of programmed to check out anything that might be food and as a warm-blooded walking mammal you are choice chow for them so a polar bear is is a proper one one of the very few animals that will actively hunt target and eat a person i'm glad they're down there yeah yeah yeah give away can we just go onto youtube really quickly there is a polar bear clip of somebody in a cage in like the glass cage gordon buchanan oh okay right great so you oh you know the poor fella that was in that i know him very very well yeah absolutely yeah this one oh god this is this is one of the most terrifying experiences.

1:03:11Chip:Gordon is just the godfather. Worst FPL forfeit, did you say? Yeah. So yeah, this is a very, very famous encounter. He sat there in that pod for God knows how long before a bear finally came and paid any interest. This was the whole plan. Oh yeah, that was what they were hoping to do. That's what the pod was built for. And you can see it. It's testing out the weakness in the structure to try and find if there's any way that it can get in to its uh its tinned dinner which would have been gaudy yeah oh my gosh at this point you really are they're like i hope these sides are built this yes exactly one screw loose and it could be curtains look at him like even just a little gap in there like he's getting his nose in that this and this is like the ultimate tease really isn't it yeah i think even the environment just makes them so much more scary it's just like nothing there's nowhere to hide absolutely yeah like what are you running what you're running from yeah it's done isn't there like villages in like sybeira i don't even know where but there's like villages in russia or whatever where polar bears have just come through and just gone through villages there's a surprising amount of people living within the the range of of polar bears um in northern america canada uh and russia and even parts of scandinavia you can get polar bears coming into into human habitat and it's it's not good when that happens because if they start picking up on the fact that people might equal prey they can become incredibly dangerous um and there's there's a lot of places in the world where where people live and basically never go out without a gun because you know any time you might go for years and never see a polar bear but anytime you step out your front door you might um and that's the point where it's just like just move bro just get out of there yeah not worth it polar bear out of 10 i mean that's by the sounds of it can i give it i'll go i'll go nine because i have had encounters with polar bear where they have just wandered away right and where they where they've not been kind of like fully focused but if one was and you had nowhere to run and you had no tools no weapons you have no chance yeah um let's talk about hippos because this is i don't know why maybe i've just been in in the world of hippos lately but there's been a lot of hippo talk and it feels like people are finally waking up to the fact that these things are psychopaths mental yes they are they are and and they well my first question actually before we get into the fact that they could just eat somebody i've seen videos of them swimming right where they chase after it is it true that they're not actually swimming there's running on the on the bottom exactly true so that so they don't swim they just run really fast under underwater yes yeah they do so all the water that they have to run in it they got to make sure they can reach the bottom yes yeah but but most of the time they they very much do reach the bottom and i mean you know sometimes they'll be in relatively deep water and they drop down to the bottom and they bounce and they bounce up to the top and they take a breath and then they drop down under.

1:06:13Oh, you think so bad. I've seen that clip of it chasing after that speedboat and it just looks like that's got a motor attached to the back of it. Anyway, I didn't notice you were lagging it on the bottom. Yeah. Wow. They're such a weird, they look so, not harmless, but they just, you just think you just. That's a lot of the problem. You know, they just look like a nice big cuddly creature you want to go over

1:06:33Chip:and give a nice big snuggle to. That's not doing anyone harm. Honestly, if you were there at the time and you saw the speed that animal was running at, bearing in mind that that is three tons and each one of its tusks could be as long as my arm. I guarantee there is no human sprinter that could outrun that. And then once they get in the water, how they manage to travel that fast against the pressure of water is still completely beyond me. And yeah, so that one there, that is going to be bouncing off the bottom up to the surface and back down to the bottom again and then back up again. Even the strength to do that is just absurd.

1:07:08And given the opportunity, they will mash you. The males, if you watch two male hippos fighting, it's one of the most ferocious things you'll ever see. There's blood and spit going everywhere. They are smashing each other. And then the females, they're quite a lot smaller, but they are, like the grizzlies, super protective of their youngsters. Get in between a hippo mum and her calves, and you've got big trouble. They are faster than you would imagine. they're bigger stronger they're highly unpredictable they're a nightmare i i absolutely hate working around hippos um my youtube search could be so weird tonight yeah

1:07:48Chip:steve back's all hippo yeah yeah woman hippo fight

1:07:55Chip:yeah these things are are savages so you've you've you've been in the vicinity of of this or I've been, I've filmed this relatively close. Um, I've been chased several times. Um, and it's terrifying. Absolutely. So it's normal to be chased after these things. Not really. It's not something that you want to happen. Um, but, but yes, we've, um, I've been chased in my kayak at the surface and we did also have one, uh, one moment where completely by accident, we were diving in the area where we were diving with the crocodiles and came face to face with one of those on the bottom of the swamp. So you weren't even there for the hippo.

1:08:34We weren't even there for the hippo. We were very much not there for the hippo. It was the worst surprise ever. And that was, when I look back on it, that I think is the one moment with animals where you just toss a coin, whether we lived or not. And I think that because that animal had never seen a couple of human scuba divers breathing out bubbles before, we were just something really surprising and unusual and it hesitated. And that gave us the chance to get out.

1:08:59Chip:And so the moment you see that, So you see the hippo when you're diving. Are you literally just off the other way? We were. Yeah, we were gone. And it's one of the few times when you can hear my voice. And normally when I'm presenting, even if I'm frightened, I'm usually quite calm in how I present. And you hear my voice and I'm kind of like, here's a hippo, here's a hippo. And there's no disguising it. I am absolutely losing my mind. Because I've seen that clip and you're down there with one other as well. Yeah, there were two of us. There were two of you. Yeah. And God, yeah, I mean, yeah. It's my poor cameraman, Johnny, who is also the guy that I had the experience with with an old crocodile.

1:09:39So why he still works with me is anyone's guess. That's a real one, yeah.

1:09:43Chip:Yeah, oh my gosh. If one's chasing you on land, you just have to kind of like try break its ankle, just kind of run around a tree. It's only more nimble than that. Yeah, so this is going down the bottom of this swamp. I saw these footprints and I was turning around to Johnny and saying, these look like the footprints of a hippo and to see one here would be catastrophic and then there it was it's a demon but um are you saying in the uh if i remember are you talking about their eyesight being poor underwater their eyesight is poor underwater yeah so that could maybe have that could again have been another reason why you maybe yeah are still here it's way more scary bro you have way too many like near-death experiences i know it is a miracle i'm still here particularly when i'm going through all this stuff with you guys are you just starting to realize hold on a second maybe i need a change of career yes that's it wow yeah just completely hit the jets gone and the the um there's a woman on the boat above above water there yeah and she must have she wouldn't have seen it her language was quite blue at that point right yeah like you guys should again i think it's valid all of it is i think that's a time for it um all right hippo um You gave the polar bear a nine.

1:10:58Chip:Where does the hippo sit in this? So we have been able to film hippo up relatively close with them not charging. It doesn't happen all the time. So I can't give them a nine or a ten. I'm going to go down at like eight. I'll give them an eight. Eight's pretty solid. I think we had one more on there, which was a Komodo dragon. Yes. These things, I've watched quite a few documentaries where they get a solid feature because they are a scary looking reptile. What's your thoughts on the Komodo dragon? Komodo is one of my favorite animals in the world. I first saw them in 1990 when I went out solo traveling to Komodo and I've been back there a dozen times since and I love the place.

1:11:45There is nowhere that feels more like going back in prehistory. That's where you've got to go. That's what you've got to do. This is my challenge. Your challenge. That's what you've done. Oh my gosh. That is absolutely, You've got to go to Komodo Island and experience the dragons for yourself. Don't go to Komodo. Go to Rincha or Podar or Motong, the islands that are around it. So are we surviving on one of these? That would blow your mind. Right.

1:12:05Chip:Talk to us about it. What are we in for then? Well, the thing is, apart from Komodo itself, where the cruise ships rock up and there are a fair few people now, the other small islands of the archipelago are uninhabited, apart from a few ranger stations. And it honestly feels like going back in time. It feels like you've gone back into prehistory. And you've got what appears to be an actual living dinosaur wandering around. And on those islands, they're relatively common. You see them, you know, kind of all around the place. In terms of their actual danger, they spend 95 % of their time just lying in the sun or in the shade to warm up or cool down.

1:12:42And they don't tend to feed very often. And they are triggered by certain things that if you don't do those things, then you can pretty much sit alongside. I mean, I've got loads of photos. Can we know those things? Could you tell us those things, please? Yeah, I mean, basically, don't have any raw meat in your pockets. Okay. As long as you're not carrying around. Yeah, you leave the pepperoni.

1:13:06Chip:Fridge Raiders stinking the whole eye.

1:13:12Okay, so no raw meat.

1:13:14Chip:Yeah. They're lazy. Komodo dragons are super, super lazy. If you don't give them any reason to think that they're going to get a free feed out of you, then they will just lie there and do absolutely nothing. Are they venomous or am I wrong about that? Yes, they are. They're the world's biggest venomous creature. And is it true that their skin is bulletproof? That is not true. That's not true. Okay, so I'll keep... No, no, no. People get an AI one. Do they shoot lasers from their eyes? Yeah, I don't know. You know what? I do watch a lot of animal videos at the moment and all the comments are like, it's AI, it's AI, and I'm like, it fully got me.

1:13:46Like, a lot of them are just believable.

1:13:48Chip:Oh, look, here we go. Animal AI videos. at the start of this even was spread awareness oh okay so you've you've been seeing these videos as well yeah do you know it's starting to get really scary i did do a big thing on it um either early this year or last year because there's so much content content out there that is that is ai yeah it's creating a very weird construction of what animals are and what animals do and i wanted to try and get get get in a few things that people could look for that could give them an idea of what might be constructed and what what is real the scariest thing is that even now just a few months later i as a qualified zoologist i'm looking at ai content and thinking oh god i'm not entirely sure i know yeah i give it another year and i i guarantee there's going to be stuff that is going know have me hoodwinked so how what what chance does everyone else have you know yeah and i mean i'm i'm kind of there i can look at things like this and there are things in it that i absolutely can spot but you know this was probably six months ago now and i i know that there are things i see today and i go oh crumbs i'm not 100 sure about that and and it it's it's it's just evolving so fast that it's just way too quick for our brains to keep up with yeah when i'm a granddad like i'm done yeah i'm believing everything yeah yeah yeah honestly my parents sending me all sorts of ai videos i can't believe this and it's like bro this is the most ai stuck on the water marker yeah let's try yeah yeah exactly yeah one thing i want to uh chat to you about is the deadly live stuff that you're that you're doing right now talk to me about this are you are you wheeling a polar bear out on stage like how's this work we actually do huh we actually do okay now this is another one you're gonna i mean it no it's not it's not ai but so the the animals that we have on stage in deadly live are um animatronics puppets um inflatables all to scale and all like a scientific representation of what that animal is so it's the proper size and appearance we don't have an actual polar bear on stage i mean i never get that but um yeah so it starts starts off at the kind of beginning of life and comes all the way through to modern times.

1:16:07We have dinosaurs and ice age animals. And then we have, you know, the snakes, the spiders, the scorpions, the sharks, all the things that are kind of like the core of Deadly. And we analyze them and sort of break them down and illustrate them using circus skills and slap stick and stage science. And it's tremendous fun. We did it last year for the first time and it went to arenas all over the country, sold out the O2, 10 ,300 people. That's insane. Which is the most mental thing. This time around, we're doing Wembley. What, Wembley Stadium? Oh no.

1:16:41Chip:I wish. Oh my God, I was going to say. Now, then you can actually wheel out a polar bear there though. Yeah, yeah. You've got the space for it. That's absolutely true. But Wembley Arena, and I still very much intend to come out and be like, hello, Wembley! Yeah, yeah, yeah. You kind of got to, haven't you? Yeah, yeah. So do you have any of live animals there? is it all no it's just too much we're we're um the most amazing thing about these these tours and i didn't know about any of this until we we did this for the first time is that everything gets packed up on trucks they drive overnight to the next venue we sleep on a bus we wake up the next next day at the next place they pack it all out they completely create this show from scratch in an arena that day before could have had a rock band in there could have had like you know dancing on ice whatever and they turn it into deadly live in about four or five hours we do the show the second i walk off stage they break it all down and we move on to the next place so that i don't think that you could ethically do that with live animals it would be you know really sketchy just traveling they get way too stressed out so what we do instead is we have real life dinosaurs that are like striding across the stage and ripping each other apart on stage the kids love that and it's um yeah and there's lots of audience participation and games and all that kind of stuff and it's been it's been amazing fun it's very very different from my day job obviously yeah i really enjoyed it last year so i'm looking forward to doing well now that there's actually not actual snakes there it's a lot more appealing because my biggest fear is just oh my god i wish i'd known that before i come here because i would 100 % have turned up with a snake no no no no no Yeah, that would be so good.

1:18:16Chip:Genuinely, it's like the number... In fact, it's weird you should say that because we've... No, we haven't. No, oh my God. That's the type of shit these all would pull off as well. Just like someone comes around with a mega anaconda. For example, the one video that I couldn't watch to the end of is where you go swimming and you find the anaconda swimming. Yes. Which in the video, you talk about how it was just being so difficult to find this, this like a massive anaconda swimming in a in a river yeah and i watched the first few bits and then when you actually see it and the size of this thing i just clicked off on there i'm sure this is like really entertaining and you'd spent a lot of time looking for it but that's just where i have to draw the line and now now i'm genuinely devastated that i haven't got an actual anaconda at this point absolutely no you know on a random guest episode we'll just have you come out the toilet and yeah no no no um and so the just on the topic of anacondas what is the biggest snake that you've seen is it that one from that video because that was massive it was huge um i would say that's probably the biggest wild snake that i've seen um we've seen bigger in captivity and i think you know one of the things about we're all absolutely obsessed about how big um yeah sharks and snakes and crocodiles get to be and it's actually quite well recorded in recent times and a lot of the biggest snakes have been in captivity because they just get like super super fed and they get to be enormous um and there are a lot of anacondas and reticulated pythons that get to be just about seven meters and are you know two and a half three times my body weight and that is that is a serious serious snake i've not seen anything quite that big in the wild i've seen things that are getting on for six meters in length in both anacondas and reticulated pythons and that is an animal that can eat a crocodile without taking a bite out of it just swallowing the whole thing whole that is so absurd yeah yeah and do you think because it mainly happens at least from the the content that i consume and the people that that i watch there's always like myths of certain animals and like you know uh speaking about what is it the black caiman in the amazon and like the size that they get up to is there a particular myth or something that hasn't yet been proven or shown that you almost believe to be like i reckon that's real i just haven't come across it yet do you know what i mean oh that's a really really good question I mean, I think that in terms of giants that there have been in the past and that there easily could be today some outliers that are enormous, absolutely massive.

1:21:09That, you know, the vast majority of crocodiles that we found, the biggest crocodiles, have all been between five and six metres. I don't think there's any doubt that there have been in the past crocs at seven, maybe even eight. but they are they are they are absolutely ridiculously rare they're as rare as a seven and a half foot human is that doesn't mean the seven and a half foot human never happens and it's the same with with big animals you know i've been swimming with blue whales which are absolutely vast at 15 meters 16 meters long the biggest ever recorded recorded was 32 meters long there are always 32 meters long yeah i want to see a blue whale yeah i yeah my on my list is uh

1:21:51Chip:swimming with whales and any type of whale i just really where where do you think is best i looked at like tonga is like a really popular place extraordinary yeah where if i wanted to go and do this where do you think would be best if you wanted to do it as this challenge that we've now come up with three different iterations. No, I love, I love the ocean. I would, I would say, um, orca up in Northern Norway coming up to, you could do that this year. You could head up in November and you guys could drop into the water with the Northern lights rippling across the sky in the Arctic and swim with killer whales.

1:22:29Uh, that, no, no, no, no, no, no.

1:22:32Chip:I'd rather agree. Cause that for me, I love killer whales. Like whales are by far for me, the way snakes are on this side of the scale, whales, any whales, killer whales, orcas, they're on this side for me. I think we might have found our challenge then because even just going there, the cold black water, like the whole, but they have no recorded attempts on huge, I know they're really smart and stuff, but it's still doesn't make me, you know, it's, it's one of the most special wildlife experiences there is. It's a proper challenge because you know, the water's like one degree, two degrees centigrade, Like you say, it is dark water.

1:23:09And the animal is one that is one of the most extraordinary predators that's ever lived. But everything about it is just, you will come back as a changed human being in a good way. That's our challenge. There you go. That's it. I'm setting it for you. Go and swim with Orca in the Arctic.

1:23:26Chip:You've given us three challenges. Yes. And I reckon in the next three years, we've got to tick off one per year. Strong. We've got the, was it the 3 ,000? Welsh 3000 Welsh 3000 we've got we're heading to Komodo or the ones near Komodo Island to go and come face to face with a Komodo dragon and then finally swimming with orca which is brilliant because we've got one where we're at the top of the world one we're on land with the Komodos and then we're going in the water as well I'll be honest you've given us three really good challenges the one I'm most excited for is the killer whale you know I've said like I've genuinely said like my worst nightmare is like that dark cold water with orcas that i've said that so you've got to face your fears there you go that's it yeah just to capitalize your nightmare as well

1:24:13AB:i don't know if you saw this trailer came out like literally this week um he lives inside the whale because he swallows him whole is this real yeah no no i was gonna say by the thing on the right there i'm not sure it's a creature feature we're whaleful right okay just to make your fears come to life ab yeah you should watch this tonight but it's all because it get me it's the whole look of like they're beautiful but it's just like you can't really see where their eyes are i know how smart they are i know they like play with their food i know i'm not food but i've seen them just flip seals off and just they just have too much fun with killing it's just i just don't like it

1:24:50Chip:and what do you think if we if i was to go on one of these uh killer whale expeditions what are my chances of of seeing them and being able to jump in like you mentioned northway is quite high very strong yeah yeah very good yeah i mean it it's um it depends how long you can give to it and what the conditions are like but the amount of orca that are focused in those fjords at that time of the year is absolutely phenomenal there are there are hundreds of animals and they're all so focused on the herring which is there in just ridiculous amounts that they are disinterested for the most part in us and they will just cruise on past and having an orca just the most dynamic dramatic iconic animal cruising on past you and then coming back up to the surface and you know going and having a sauna under the northern lights i mean it's just it's wicked you will love it i'm trying to talk myself into it now yeah that sounds class mate it does sounds class until i'm on the boat i i would agree that that would be my fear is i'm giving it large here yeah and then i'm seeing a pod and you're just looking to pitch black and then you go right cal this is your moment mate you were chatting big on the pod with steve jump in and i'm there like you go and then great white sharks liver for fun i have a good number i reckon of the three ones that i've mentioned i think that's the one i do think it's the one that's the one okay we're going snake island instead then we'll all have our own um great wonderful so if people do want to go and watch your um deadly live tour um what we'll do is we'll leave a little link on screen but also in the show notes in the description to go and check it out are there still there's still tickets for sale have they gone on sale yes yeah there are yeah they have um great and that starts towards the end of october um is there a venue or location that you are most excited to do do you have like a home show that you do um i mean i mean wembley's gonna be pretty special i'm gonna i'm gonna kind of completely alienate everybody else right yeah i mean you know wembley i i am an i am a british kid and you know wembley has been an iconic name that's been in my family's lexicon since i was born my dad went to the to the world cup final in 66 right so yes to go to wembley my family will be there everyone i know will be there that's going to be pretty awesome all right well guys if you are interested do go and check that out it sounds absolutely unreal um and look steve it's been an absolute pleasure having you on thank you so much for coming in sharing your stories um and i do truly feel now that you've given us um the challenge like it's rude not to do it maybe i do think we're really going to struggle with our other co-host who just naturally has a fear of the ocean anyways but with your words there you don't go in the ocean in video games you can't even do that in video games you won't go in the ocean this is going to be a tough sell we'll get him in we'll get him in but yeah thank you so much for coming on really appreciate it like i said guys if you do want to check out the deadly live tour we'll leave links where they usually are and if you haven't already make sure you subscribe to the youtube channel you give us a rating over on spotify and we'll see you guys on the next episode in a bit