Walking The Dog with Emily Dean - Steve Backshall (Part Two)

Episode Date: October 16, 2025

In part two of Emily and Ray’s walk with the wonderful Steve Backshall, the naturalist and Deadly 60 presenter shares more fascinating insights from his life exploring the wild.If you haven’t already, be sure to listen to part one, and don’t miss Steve’s first ever UK arena tour, Deadly Live, coming to venues across the country this autumn. You can also dive into his brilliant new book Deadly: My Ultimate Lethal Beasts, packed with mind-blowing animal facts and adventures.Head to Steve's website for tickets, books and beyond.Follow Emily: Instagram - @emilyrebeccadeanX - @divine_miss_emWalking The Dog is produced by Will NicholsMusic: Rich Jarman Artwork: Alice LudlamPhotography: Karla Gowlett Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to part two of Walking the Dog with the fabulous Steve Baxhill. Do go back and listen to Part 1 if you haven't already and do make sure to catch Steve in his first ever UK arena tour. His show Deadly Live will be playing at venues all over the country and you can get your tickets now at deadlylivetore.com. And you can also read Steve's new book, Deadly My Ultimate Lethal Beasts. Really hope you enjoy part two of my chat with Steve and do give us a like and a follow so you can catch us every. week. Here's Steve and Ray Way. So this adventurer and residence job ended up, as we know, leading to a hugely successful career as an explorer, naturalist, adventurer and a very successful long-running career with the BBC. Yes. Your series, Deadly 60, I don't want to tell you,

but you have overshot the 60, which it was originally going to be. We were kind of hoping no one would notice that. You got away with it until I mentioned it. And it's an absolutely brilliant kid show. And I'm not going to call it a kid show actually because I love it, Steve. I was telling you when we met, you said, oh, Series 6 is up now. And I said, I know, I've already binged them all. And it's so fascinating because what I love about what you've done is I feel like you called it deadly 60,

because we all know that's how you hook kids. You know, when I was growing up my favourite book, The Nautiest Girl in the School. It's the same principle. I wouldn't have read a book called A Lot of Quite Nice Girls. But it got me into reading. And I think it's the same thing with this, that you know, you understand kids, you know, like,

this is what they want. But when you watch those shows, it's not sensationalist. It's not saying, be scared of animals. It's saying, these are deadly animals in their world and we should understand about their world. world. Yeah, absolutely. I think there's a couple of things that have meant that Deadly has done so well and worked for so long, one of which is that we tend to go for the kind of animals

that everyone, no matter whether they think their internatural history or not, is going to be interested in. So, you know, you might not be the kind of person who might be obsessed with butterflies or songbirds, but if we're talking about sharks and snakes and crocodiles and birds of prey and big cats, then everyone pricks their ears up. So that's a good start. One of the other things is that right from the beginning, I had a particular style about the way that I make my programs. And we don't take the crew out. Everyone is involved from the start. We rock up with cameras rolling.

And we do things for real. We never retake things. We never set things up. Everything is as it seems. The process is inherent in the whole making of it. So it is real. It's as close to being real as a television program can ever be. And people like that.

People take to it. They can see that, you know, the biggest word in the media nowadays is authenticity. Well, right from the start, that was, you know, taken as granted on Deadly 60. So people watch it and they know they're not being fib to. They know we're not making stuff up. They know that what they're seeing is real. And they really like that. And I think what I've really noticed about your show is.

is that it feels, it's quite visceral, which I like. It doesn't feel polished, I suppose. And I don't mean that in an insulting way, because guess what, the natural world isn't polished. Absolutely. Yeah, that's exactly right. And I think, you know, so if, for example, we go out looking for a particular kind of animal

and put in an enormous amount of effort, and we don't find it, that is very much a part of the story. And because of that, and because someone has gone through the travise of going out, you know, 20 hours in a day searching for a mountain lion and not seeing it, they trust you. They trust you and they go with you. And so when you do find it and when you are bouncing off the walls with excitement, they feel that excitement too. Well, also, Steve, I mean, I saw one episode recently and you were walking back to the car park and you just randomly say, oh my God, look at this python. And it swallowed a bat. Yeah. Well, it was totally unexpected. We'd been out searching for snakes all night,

hadn't really found very much. And on the way back to the car park, just 100 metres away from the car, in the middle of the road, was a whacking great amicestine python with a huge bulge in its head where it was swallowing a fruit bat hole. And clearly it had been up in the tree above our heads,

grabbed a hold of this bat, lost control of itself and fallen into the road. and it was now eating this fruit bat, and I lay down on the road alongside it and watched it consuming this bat and just the thrill, the overwhelming excitement at seeing something so macabre and gruesome but real.

You could see the bat in its mouth. Oh, yeah. You could. There's no getting... I mean, we had to be quite sensitive about how we framed it because otherwise we'd have given all the kids' nightmares. But yeah, yeah, you could fully see it. And how long will it take to digest that? Steve, do you reckon? The digestion process can take a long time. Tell me about it. So quite often a snake like that, it's had a really good size meal,

there's going to have to take itself away somewhere where it's going to be safe, where it can't be, you know, attacked by another predator, and it could take weeks that are just a big meal. That's fascinating. Is that partly why? Because when Raymond takes his food, he sometimes takes it treats into a corner. Is that an animal instinct thing? So you're not... That's a wolf thing. So particularly wolves, if they were together in a pack would be feeding around a carcass, they take a big chunk and if they got it, they've got to make sure no one else is going to have it. So they'll take it away from the main feeding site and they will turn their back on all the other animals in the pack and feed because they know someone's going to come in and try and pinch it at some point. I mean, to be fair,

Steve, it's not a carcass. It's a venison treat from a posh store in Chelsea. Who's he trying to kid? But this series is so brilliant. And because it's so brilliant and kids absolutely love it, There have been so many multiple spin-offs. Yeah. You're doing a tour. That's right. Which we're going to talk about. And you've also had a book out called My Ultimate Deadly Beasts.

Yes. And I love that book. I learned so much, Steve. And I'll tell you what I'm fascinated by is hippos. Yes. Because, I mean, who is doing hippos branding and marketing? Because they are doing a fantastic job. Because hippos enjoy this reputation as, oh, I'm just fluffy and goofy and cuddly and silly.

But I've learnt from you. They're terrifying. Yes, I would argue possibly the most frightening animal. I mean. Yeah. And I guess, you know, that sense of perception is part of that. It's something they share slightly with the dolphins. You know, dolphins, we have this image of dolphins as being this grinning,

comedic character and they are the most potent predator on our planet by a mile. And if you see dolphins at work, you know, God forbid the biggest kind of dolphin, which is an orca, it's utterly terrifying. And you could argue that they are the cruelest of all animals as well. Just because they're really smart, they're really intelligent, they've got a lot in common with us. And then with hippos, this is dolphins, and particularly orca, but you're absolutely spot on, the hippo has this image of being, you know, this kind of tubby, slightly, slightly curious comic character. And they're terrifying. They're absolutely terrifying. You know, they could be three tons in weight, yet they could run fast in the Olympic sprinter,

and they really can. They are very, very grumpy. They're unpredictable. The males are super territorial. The females are incredibly protective of their carbs. And Being anywhere near a hippo is just a horrifying experience. Well, you met, I think this must have been a long time ago, but I'm sure I remember seeing one deadly 60 where you met a woman who had sort of tamed a hippo. Yeah, Jessica. Yeah.

And that fascinates me, because how do you feel about that? People domesticating wild animals. And I suppose the reason I ask, I'm not talking about illegal trading. That's obviously, we would all agree that's terrible. Yeah. I mean, situations like that which are complicated because sometimes, let's say, an animal is suffering from ill health or that person is really doing the right thing by them, how do you square that? Because presumably we'd all think all animals are better off in the while, but then that's an act of kindness sometimes. In the specific case with Jessica, she was orphaned as a baby. If she hadn't been taken in by this human family, then she would have died for sure. My personal feeling is that they should have ushered her out into the wild an awful lot earlier on.

She did have the opportunity to go back into the wild, but, you know, she was being fed and taking great care of and everything. And so she hung around. And we always felt that something was going to go wrong there, that this animal was going to at some point. Yeah. Turn bad. Jessica broke bad. I mean, that is always, that is always a risk. Another thing you touch on in your book is spiders. Yes.

And I thought you might be interested in this, Steve, that I'm a very fearful person. I would not be someone you would want on your expeditions. You would say, please, find a way to get this woman sent back home, because I'd go, oh, literally at the first sight of anything. However, I'm very tolerant of spiders, never been remotely scared of them, find it weird when people are, and I honestly Honestly think that's because I grew up in Australia, we were educated about spiders. So I grew up in Sydney, you know, and you do get funnel webs and redbacks and whatever. So we were tall and it was almost very matter of fact.

It was like, right, these are funnel webs, these are redbacks, these are huntsmen, you don't need to be scared of them. They look scary, they're largely harmless. What do you felt? I think what that tells me is that I think Aussie kids are a bit more desensitized to all that stuff. They don't, we saw spiders as, okay, if you see a non-venomous spider, that's a cause for celebration. And I read in your book that there are over 50,000 different types of spider. That's right.

And only 30 of them are potentially harmful to us. That's correct. And none of those are in this country. Well, with the exception of the false widow, which could bite, but not bite in a bad way. Yeah, I think I agree. I think that, you know, we in this country definitely pick up a fear of spiders quite early on, and we tend to pick it up from those around us. You know, I used to do a lot of animal introductions when I was in the earlier stages of my career. I had lots of animals at home, and I'd take them to scout groups and to schools and things like that.

And you could always see that if one kid in the class was scared, or even worse, if the teacher was scared, then all of the others would pick up on that fear. and they start to mirror it. And actually, you know, it's a fear that can paralyze us, but that is, in this country, at least, completely irrational. 10 seconds. Well, I think that's why I think the work you're doing is so important, you know, because as well as being entertaining,

I think the more kids learn about the natural world, you know, to have that passion for it and the less fearful they are of it. Yeah, I agree. I think that's one area in my career that I've had to be quite steadfast about because actually there's no doubt that in the media it is a much better cell

and it gets a much better reaction if you are prepared to try and make the animal scary. Yeah. And there's always been pressure throughout my career for me to, try and accentuate the risks to talk up how monstrous and demonic the animals are, because that, frankly, is better viewing. And I've stuck to my guns. I've refused to do that for 27 years. And because of that, you know, I'm not a multi, multi-millionaire. I'm not kind of, you know,

I don't have 10 million followers on TikTok, but I've stayed true to what I believe when it comes to animals and I think that that is really, really important. I think, you know, not being frightened is one of the most important things with embracing the natural world. And because of that, I know that there are an awful lot of young people who've switched on to the wild world

through something as simple as watching Deadly 60. And, you know, if that's all that I've managed to achieve, then my work here is done. Well, I can't imagine what you'd be frightened of. seem pretty fearless. What does scare you, Steve? Well, I mean, now that I've got young kids, everything scares me. Right. You know, because I see, I see everything as being a potential threat to them. But without wanting to get too heavy, you know, the things that I am most fearful for are absolutely not things in the natural world. They're things in modernity and in technology.

Those are the things that I fear most for my youngsters. Right. Do you cry, Steve? Oh, God, yes. Yeah, I'm a, I'm a super emotional person. Does nature make you cry? Nature makes me cry. I've had quite a few teary moments after encounter. Particularly if you have an encounter with an animal on their terms, they've sought out your company and they want to interact with you, a wild animal. I see that. Like with a silverback, I imagine it feels a bit like that, does it? Absolutely, yeah, absolutely. Well, I had one with a baby.

mountain gorilla, which actually we were never allowed to show. It was way, way back in the early days of the really wild show. And we were filming mountain gorillas up in the mountains of Uganda. And this little baby, tiny baby, can't have been more than a few weeks old, saw me and went, oh, what's that? That's interesting. And it came over and sat in my lap and just put his hand on my arm. And I still have the footage somewhere. It's absolutely stunning. But we weren't allowed to use it because, you know, you're not, you're supposed to keep your distance, right? But I, after that, after it left, after it walked away, I cried my eyes out. Did you? Yeah. Yeah. That's really lovely. I think it's great that you say that. Do you know why? Because I suppose a lot of people would

look at you and because you do a high adrenaline job, a sort of daring job, a job that I would associate with a sort of, you know, I'm not frightened of anything. Someone's got a lot in common with the military in some ways. Yeah. And I love the fact that someone like you says, oh yeah, I cry out about gorillas and things all at time. I love that. I think that means a lot to hear that for me.

You didn't like that fire engine. Are you noise sensitive, Steve? I think probably, you know, living as I do in the countryside, that those kind of piercing sounds probably hit me harder now than they, than they used to. And this is with your, I love the story of, well, I don't really know the story

of how you got together, but I'm very invested in your relationship. I love you too. It just feels so perfect. Yeah. And you met your wife. How did you meet your wife? Did you make the first move?

I did, yes. We met at a sport relief event, not long after the, she won her first Olympic gold at the London Olympics. Yeah. And, yeah, we've been married for nine years. I proposed to her in the deserts of Namibia.

Of course you did say. Yeah, and we now have three kids, Logan, Kit and Bo, twins at five, Logan at seven. And everything has become about them and about trying to make sure that they get to have the same kind of childhood that we did. Which I love and I think is so important, you know. And I'm sure, sorry, Steve, I'm sure you are both brilliant parents to them.

Just from that point of view of, I can't imagine they're the kind of kids that sit indoors playing games or, you know, on their iPad all day. No. I suspect you're quite, you and Helen quite strict about screen time. We have, I would say, less screen time than just about any other parents. I know of for their age, but it doesn't particularly feel like we're strict about not giving it, more so that we're very, very,

very enthusiastic about providing other things instead. Right. So, yeah, I mean, we're not, we're not going to be, you know, evangelical about lack of screen time. We were when they were very young. But now it's more about constantly finding things, particularly outside, that they can do,

because you can see how much. much more energized they are the second they're doing active things in the outdoors. I want to talk a bit about your show, which Raymond and I are going to come and see. Oh, amazing. I'm going to sneak him in. Don't tell anyone. No one will notice. Are you going to come to the O2? Yeah, because that's one of your dates, isn't it? And this is the big Deadly live shows you're doing this autumn. And it's going to be, it sounds fabulous, Steve. I can't wait. Because if you're a fan of Deadly, This is sort of the 360 amazing live experience of it all, is it?

Yes. Yeah, I'm really excited about this. I've spent a year writing the show and it has everything in it, right from the genesis of life on earth all the way through to now, the present day, how deadliness came to be. You know, how predators first evolved, complex eyesight, how they first came to have big scary teeth and venom and poisons, will have life-sized dinosaurs.

on stage. There'll be life-size modern predators on stage, bloopers and outtakes and stage science and all kinds of craziness. And it's just, it's an opportunity for me to express myself, to come up with all sorts of wild and crazy things to make it entertaining. But essentially, it's still packed full of science and lots and lots of information and knowledge too. I can't wait. Well, it sounds, do you know what strikes me about you, Steve? Well, I'm going to tell you, because you've also written multiple books. I don't even have. It would take an entire podcast to mention them all.

But give me a rough ballpark figure. I think I'm at 16. 16, right? Yeah. So that's... Never troubled the bestseller list, so you'd say. Well, what I would say, I think you're a brilliant writer and communicator. And I also think for most full-time writers, 16 is a lot of books.

to publish. You're fitting that in with grappling with cobras and being hunted down by polar bears. Yeah. Answer me honestly. Amazing work ethic or slight workaholic? I would say it was definitely the latter until more recent years. Right. So right up until...

Has Helen and the kids help with that? Do you think of this? it's made it inevitable. You can't really be a complete workaholic and still be a good dad to three young kids. But for probably 20 years of my adult life, everything I did in some way came back to the job. So if I had time that I wasn't working,

I'd be doing training that directly connected to the work. And there was literally nothing else in my life apart from this job. saying that still leads it at a massively diverse. Well, yeah, exactly. But, you know, if I wasn't out filming the bats of the grids, I'd be learning about them. Yeah.

Or I'd be, you know, doing climbing training or medical courses or scuba diving courses or whatever that I needed to be able to do the job. So I was definitely a workaholic for at least two decades. Now I have to have a very, very disciplined and very intense work ethic because, you know, the kids and family life is more important. I have to make sure that I make time for that, make real proper quality time for that. And that means that I have to work harder and having to work harder when you've been a work a hollet your whole life. Yeah.

You've got a lot of drive, though. You're driven by something. Yeah. And it's a really interesting, that one, because I would have said that I was quite a searcher. I was quite kind of looking for the meaning of life for most of my years. And then I sort of found that with fatherhood. I sort of found that fatherhood was the thing that kind of, I guess, resonated with me more than anything else. And that's...

Isn't that lovely? Yeah. Yeah, it is. But I mean, it does kind of make a slight mockery of the 20-odd years that I spent exploring the planet and the world's wildest place is looking for something, which... you know, just lay in such a simple thing. What about the poor pythons, just mere sloppy seconds now? Yes, exactly. They can never compete with the children.

Steve, what a thoroughly lovely man you are. You have a very good energy. Well, thank you. Have you ever been told that? I think you're quite popular, aren't you? Are you quite liked? Be honest. I mean, how do I answer a question like that?

There is no likable way of answering that question, is there? It's like saying to someone, are you modest? Yeah. Do you think you get that from your parents? Do you think that you just came out like that? Yeah, I mean, I think that mum and dad are a very, very humble people. They definitely value humility while at the same time being prepared to do all kinds of, you know, crazy things in life. Yeah.

And so I've come to value that too, I think. Yeah, I mean, I certainly think my values, all of the real sort of core values that I have, I would trace back to mum and dad. Let's cross here, Steve. I think you'd actually rather be faced with like six polar bears, Nat. There is absolutely no question that I was. Steve? Yes.

Would a polar bear inevitably kill me? So polar bears are one of the very few animals that will almost, almost without question, track, hunt, kill and eat a human being. And there are very, very few animals that you can say that about. You know, a big crocodile, some of the big cats. And even those, you know, a lot of the time a big cat won't really pay you much interest, but a polar bear will. And it's down to their diet, which is almost entirely meat.

But they don't understand that we're human or not really? Could we just may as well be? They would see us as a. another potential warm-blooded meal. God, that's so insulting, isn't it? Don't even recognise our humanity. How rude. Yeah, but, you know, they live out on the Arctic ice

where anything to eat is few and far between. And so, yeah, they are one of the only animals that you can say that about. So what is the encounter that you've had with an animal that's most... emotionally affected you. So I think there was there was one particular one relatively recently actually where we were filming humpback whales and their calves or trying to in French Polynesia. And we had two weeks out there to try and film this encounter underwater free diving.

And it just wasn't working. You know, every time we came anywhere close with the boat, the whales were just turning away from us, moving away. And you could tell from their body language that they weren't interested. They're not surprising, you know. The females are there nursing their carbs. It's a very particular time of their lives. And for whatever reason, they just didn't want us around.

And so we bided our time, started to get quite nervous because, you know, the time was ticking on. And we didn't have the sequence we'd come out there to get. Yeah. And then on the penultimate morning, we left harbour and were no more than, couple of hundred meters away from the jetty when this young calf, which was no more than a few weeks old, turned away from its mum, swam straight over to our boat, and the cameraman and I slipped over the side into the water. And for an hour and a half, this baby humpback whale calf just played with us. It just swam around and around and around.

It was reaching out to touch us with its giant pectoral fins. It was copying my movements underwater. it was the longest interspecies play date in history and utterly, utterly magical. And when Rob, the cameraman and I got out the water, for the rest of the day, we were so moved that we almost couldn't talk. And we both, without sort of saying anything to each other,

we both took ourselves away and just had a couple of hours, a quiet time of just kind of allowing it to sink in what had just happened to us. Yeah. You know? I couldn't see that. It was really, really moving, really, really emotional. Because it suddenly feels so much bigger than you, you know, in a way I can imagine in

that when, I know you've talked in the past before about, you know, you've had a few near-death experiences and the line of what you do, frankly, it's not out of the ordinary for that to happen. And how that sort of changes you. Yeah. In this similar way that, you know, you need to go away and reflect. And it does change you that, doesn't it? It does. It does.

Steve, we're getting back to your hotel now. What a thoroughly lovely time Raymond and I have had with you. We love you, Steve. Oh, bless you. Thank you so much. Well, I'm very glad you're going to come along to the tour. Yeah. And we're going to keep watching Deadly 60, which we love.

Thank you. I think we've got one more episode to watch. but we're absolutely loving it. Did you see the marine weirdos one? The one with the bobbet worm and the mimic octopus and the hairy frogfish. I think that might be my favourite. It's so fascinating.

Because the sea terrifies me. I mean, it terrifies me just in the sense. I have this, I have, and I know a lot of people have this, Steve, but I think it's their manner. I don't want to get involved with their manner. And there are so many weird creatures there, aren't there? Oh, let's cross over. But you're making me like the ocean more.

Oh, good. You know, I feel less afraid of it. It is. So you're going to go back to Land's End after you've done all this to Helen and the kids. That's right. And I should establish, are we allowed to establish the animal, what's the current animal status back at Backshall Towers? Yes, so we have the dog. My little boy has a camellia.

some geckos and a snake because of course he does I love your little boy yeah so you know what that's reminding me of at the beginning of this interview you were telling me about some parents who set up a little small holding yeah and there were lots of animals running around and it's actually making me cry because i love that you're doing this for your kids yeah Steve what a lovely man you are and what do you think of roman I love him it's very quiet isn't He's divine. He is divine. He's a real introvert, Steve. But do you know what? It's so fascinating how he's responded to Steve.

You do have a gift with animals. Do you know what? And humans. Thank you. Bye, Steve. Bye, bye. Bye, Raymond. It's been a joy. I really hope you enjoyed that episode of Walking the Dog. We'd love it if you subscribed. And do join us next time on Walking the Dog wherever you get you.

your podcasts.