S17, Ep5 Bear Grylls on turning fear into courage

05/31/23 • 57 min

1 Listener

Bear Grylls has achieved worldwide fame as one of the most recognized faces of survival and outdoor adventure. A former SAS soldier, he has climbed Everest, circumnavigated the British Isles on a jet ski, rowed naked in a bathtub along the Thames and once broke his back in a parachuting accident.
But he's most famous for his TV career. He starred in seven seasons of the Discovery Channel’s Emmy Award-nominated Man vs. Wild TV series and hosted Running Wild, which has featured Bear taking President Obama, Julia Roberts, Roger Federer, Will Ferrell, Channing Tatum, and Kate Winslet on extreme adventures.
I'm so thrilled to have him on How To Fail because Bear has been talking about the need for bravery to co-exist with fear for as long as he's been in the public eye. He's got a really enlightening take on failure - and our need to learn from it.
He joins me to talk about losing his Dad young, failing SAS selection and the cancellation of his first TV show.
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Never Give Up by Bear Grylls, is out now and available to order here.
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How To Fail With Elizabeth Day is hosted and produced by Elizabeth Day. To contact us, email [email protected]
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Social Media:
Elizabeth Day @elizabday
How To Fail @howtofailpod
Bear Grylls @beargrylls

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Previous Episode

S17 BONUS EPISODE: Rachel Cargle on reimagining the life we want to live.

TW: A heads-up that we talk about racism in this episode, and that we mention the murder of George Floyd and how this impacted Rachel's anti-racism work.
Rachel Cargle is a public academic, activist and author. Her debut book, A Renaissance of Our Own, is out TODAY and asks us to have the courage to live life according to our own values, rather than the ones we might have inherited or been conditioned to believe in. She joins me to talk about her anti-racism work, the 'weathering' effect such work has on Black bodies and her new-found understanding ease and joy have to form part of the same fight for equity. We also discuss her upbringing as the child of a disabled single mother, her divorce, her decision to be childfree, what happened when she dropped out of conventional academia, as well as her failures in business and what they have ended up teaching her about who she is.
Rachel is one of those people I just want to sit and listen to for hours. I barely had to ask any questions because I realised, very quickly, that the most powerful thing was simply for me to shut up and hear her speak.
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Rachel's book, A Renaissance of Our Own, is out today and available to order here.
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How To Fail With Elizabeth Day is hosted and produced by Elizabeth Day. To contact us, email [email protected]
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Social Media:
Elizabeth Day @elizabday
How To Fail @howtofailpod
Rachel Cargle @rachel.cargle

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Next Episode

S17, Ep6 Diana Evans: the bestselling author on writing routines, dealing with her inner critic and living life to the fullest

TW: Suicide
Diana Evans is the award-winning, bestselling author of A House for Alice, Ordinary People, The Wonder and 26a. Her third novel, Ordinary People, was one of my favourites of the year when it was published in 2018 - and it was shortlisted for the Women's Prize.
Now, she's written a critically acclaimed follow-up, A House for Alice, set against the backdrop of the Grenfell Tower tragedy. Diana joins me to discuss how she writes (and manages failure in her writing), the curse of perfectionism, the importance of tackling social justice in fiction and her abject inability to complete her list of '10 Things To Do Before I'm 50' in time. She also talks movingly about the death of her twin sister by suicide and how this forever shapes the life she now lives.
Thank you Diana, for opening up to me and for the magical words you put on the page.
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A House for Alice by Diana Evans is out now.
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How To Fail With Elizabeth Day is hosted and produced by Elizabeth Day. To contact us, email [email protected]
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Social Media:
Elizabeth Day @elizabday
How To Fail @howtofailpod
Diana Evans @dianaevansop