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How Bear Grylls Weaves Sustainability into Running Wild Interview by Robert Yehling
Bear Grylls and Anthony Mackie climb a via ferrata. (National Geographic/Ben Simms)
Catching up with Bear Grylls is an exercise in itself. The host and star of the Disney +/ NatGeo series Running Wild with Bear Grylls, and appointment adventure TV fixture for the past decade, even turns interviews into transcontinental wind sprints of sorts. After interviewing Bear in person in 2019, we sought him out again as Running Wild with Bear Grylls began its sixth season. The show continues to draw millions of viewers with its format, which combines Bear’s personality and survival prowess in forbidding places, the human drama aspect of a celebrity companion
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SUSTAINABILITY TODAY | SUMMER 2021
often engaging in such adventure for the first time, and the truly dangerous, death-defying moments that come out of their excursions. The locations for Season Six are quite as widespread around the world as in previous seasons, owing to the travel and location challenges associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. The season opened with Bear and Terry Crews on forbidding mountains in the Icelandic Highlands. Then, he took auto racing superstar Danica Patrick to Utah’s beautiful Moab Desert and its uber-challenging red rock formations. Next up was Rainn Wilson, who
engaged in some survival hiking with Bear in Utah’s little-explored La Sal Mountains. The show shifted back to Iceland, this time into its highly active lava fields; the island is literally increasing square mileage daily from an ongoing eruption. Keegan-Michael Key and Bear lightened up a hard slog with plenty of comedy in the oft-hilarious episode, which also featured major personal breakthroughs for Key. Then, Bear gave movie and TV tough guy Danny Trejo his own taste of the Moab Desert. The season wraps with fellow NatGeo series star Bobby Bones and Caitlin Parker trying to stay alive in
