Truth and Transparency: My Experience with Discovery Channel

Transcript

The following is a transcription of Truth and Transparency: My Experience with Discovery Channel, which is part of my practice of coming into full truth and transparency.

For the full series and depth to this practice visit: My Commitment to Truth and Transparency.

Hello Dear Friends,
Today I am going to share with you my experience of working with Discovery Channel. I started to work with Discovery Channel in 2014, 10 years ago. So I was living a different life, then to a large degree than I am now. But even then, there were ways where it was just not in alignment with my integrity, with my truth, and where I was not transparent. I’ve been wanting to share about this for a long time. I had written about this for over 10 years, about 10 years ago probably. And here I am finally sharing it with you. It’s going to be a relief to share, and for many of you, I’m sure you’ll find this to be interesting. It’s not only a peek into the life that I live of integrity and my seeking of integrity, but also a little bit of a window into working with television and Discovery Channel in general.

Now, before you watch this video, if you haven’t watched the Introduction to the Truth Series, I really encourage you to watch that first. Because it’s going to help you to understand what my purpose, what my intention behind this series is, and it’s going to help you to get more out of this.

How my experience with Discovery Channel all began really goes back to when I first woke up in 2011. I decided that I was going to use my life to be a messenger, to be of service, to share messages of living in harmony with this Earth. From an early time, I set out with the goal that I wanted to have my own television show within five years of beginning my activism. 2013 is when my activism really began, and my first TV show with Discovery Channel came in 2014.

How it came about was, actually a friend of a friend knew what I was up to, and they were casting for a show called “Tethered,” which was a spin-off sort of “Naked and Afraid.” They reached out to me and said that there would be a lot of interest in me doing the show. So I decided to put in my interest, and they got back to me, and they, indeed, wanted to have me on the show called “Tethered.” So that was the beginning. It was just a sort of a by chance connection from college that led to Discovery. I might as well show you also right now, I have my notebook here with notes to help me to tell this story. I want to make sure to get all the details. So, when I’m looking down, that’s what I’m doing. I’m looking at my notes.

So, 2014, I was selected to be on “Tethered,” and I was very excited. At the time, one of my biggest inspirations was Bear Grylls, and the idea of being on Discovery Channel was a very big deal to me. It was totally in alignment with my life trajectory, with my mission, and it was happening sooner than I had even really hoped to break into the TV world. It was summer of 2014, and I was selected to be in the bayous of Louisiana, the swamps of Louisiana. At the same time, I was actually on a bike ride. I was about to embark on a bike ride across the country. So I was able to bike from San Diego right up to the set in Louisiana. I think it was about a month and a half, two-month bike ride, and I was very excited. I had done my research of what, you know, interacting with the alligators and what to eat in the bayou and yeah, how to survive. I mean, it was a survival-type show. So I was feeling quite prepared, very excited.

I was 100% there to do this in integrity, for it to be totally real, to not get involved in anything staged whatsoever. And, the first night they isolated me from who would be my person that I’d be tethered to. So we were put into separate hotel rooms, and I was there about two days in advance. And it started off well. I mean, there was the integrity of us not knowing who each other were or anything about the other person. after I think I was there for two nights, they dropped me off in the Louisiana bayou on a jet boat. And then shortly later, they brought in my partner Kevin. And the idea of “Tethered” is that we were tied together or tethered together by a six-foot rope or metal chain, if I recall, with, I think it had plastic over the top of it. And the idea was we had to survive together and get through this 10-day excursion together, six feet apart, the entire time – sleeping, going to the, well, there was no toilet out there, so pooping and peeing outside, finding food. This idea was this extreme endeavor of survivalism. But, also, of course, the drama of two human beings. I always knew drama was going to be a big part of it. And it didn’t take very long for me to start to see there were some major holes in the idea of this being real. I went into this thinking it was going to be very real.

So we got to select three items, and they also gave us a map. And the selection of the items was already a little shoddy because they gave us strike-anywhere matches, and we didn’t have anywhere to strike them — a UV pen for purifying water, but we had no container. So I could already see – like have they really thought this out? How were we going to be able to do this? It’s the swamp; there are no rocks for the strike-anywhere match. So very quickly, I was questioning how much had they really thought this out. when it really hit me pretty early on was the map. The map was a fake map, and already we were expected to, you know, pretend with this map. I don’t remember the exact details. I don’t think at the time it was like this clear giveaway, but it was already within an hour – within minutes possibly, that I was seeing a challenge of being able to be in integrity.

We set out across the swamp, and we actually – there was a lot of realness to this. The being with the alligators was very real. The first two nights, not being able to sleep, or maybe three nights because of the mosquitoes being some of the most extreme mosquitoes I’ve ever experienced – very real. However, the production team was very willing to cut whatever cost, cut what other corners there were to make a show. Just 12 hours into the day, Kevin, my partner, decided to quit. And he actually took off the tether that was supposedly locking us together. At the beginning of the show, they show – they show us locking us together.

Well, in reality, there was a quick release valve. So you could take it off in an instant. And there he did. He took it off right there, and he walked over and told the people “I quit.” Now the problem was that normally they’d have a backup and they’d be able to bring someone in. Well, they had no backup, and so their job became to convince him every single day to stay. basically, they needed to get him to stay for five days to get enough content. And so that became the whole thing – is getting Kevin to stay. Now, the narrative shows that it was really me trying to get him to stay, but really, it was many, many, many hours of the camera people, the producers, or directors, or what have you convincing Kevin to stay. Often through somewhat, I would say, manipulative type ways, like trying to say like, “What’s your family going to think?” and such. So they were the ones that were really trying to keep him there.

I wanted him to stay because it was important to produce a show. I was there to produce a show. This was one of my, you know, early breakthrough opportunities to get my name out there. One of the early-on issues is that they told us we were not allowed to use any trash as resources. So if we found a plastic bottle, for example, the idea was that we looked like we were more deeply in the wild.
That was a big issue because if we were really surviving, we would use whatever resources that we could find. And then very quickly, after we made it a few miles of walking through the flotant – I think is how you say it, the floating swamp material on top, we came to this, I think maybe you would call it a levee or a road, and we literally could have walked right out on that road. I don’t know how many miles it would have been, but we could have been out that night. But we were not allowed to use the road, so already it was like this big fake endeavor. And I’ll talk a little bit more about how not all TV shows are fake, by any means, and from what I learned of my time with Discovery Channel is, it really comes down to who the producers are. Some are in very high integrity, and some aren’t. But with that being said, I was able to still live in integrity and that I was surviving. Now, a couple of days in, one of the people came over to me. We hadn’t really eaten for the first couple of days, if I recall. And they said something like, “You should go look over there.” And I was like, “Why?” And they didn’t really tell me why. And I went over, and I looked over there, and then sure enough, I found a snapping turtle.

Now when I say found, I’m pretty sure they placed it, and it was moving so slowly that they might even have had it in a cooler to keep it moving slowly. ‘Cause I was able to pick it right up. And I, you know, I had to still kill the snapping turtle and cook the snapping turtle. And oh, that reminds me, I think even they had to help us with starting the fire because there was absolutely nowhere to use the strike-anywhere matches. We had plastic zippers, so there was genuinely nowhere. So, if I recall, they started the fire as well.

Also, I look back at that eating of the turtle with a great level of mourning, because if I was in a true survival situation, I would eat a snapping turtle, but otherwise, I don’t really have a calling to eat turtles. They are very much an animal that I hold close in a way that I don’t eat them. I hold all animals close, but there’s something about turtles that dates back to – it didn’t feel really an integrity for me. That said, nothing is black and white, and there’s certainly areas where turtles are in a high population abundance. Where it is within the ecosystem balance to be able to harvest them. And there are people who have lived in harmony with Earth for a very long time that have harvested and eaten turtles. But it did not feel good for me to be eating that turtle.

Now on another note, of all the things that I’ve been – I’d be the most embarrassed about of the public seeing something that I actually did on TV, was that I ate the beating heart of the turtle, which that feels wonderful for me. No issue with that whatsoever. But I said the reason that I was doing it, something along the lines of this is what Native Americans would do or do. And I don’t know where I got that idea, where that was coming from, and you know, I look back at that definitely with embarrassment. But the embarrassment comes from – it wasn’t from a place of integrity, of really knowing. It may have been some sort of, you know, entertainment. And I have a lot of Native American friends, a lot of indigenous friends, and it would be very embarrassing for me to have that be seen. So, that’s one of the embarrassing things that I’m sharing.

So that snapping turtle was basically faked to a large degree. And then another thing they did is they actually placed a 100-pound alligator snapper that was somebody’s pet, or I think the stunt person had some animals that would be used for TV, and they placed it. That was staged as well. Towards the end, we ate some crawfish. They pulled those out of a cooler, that were on ice, and put them in the water, and then I harvested those and cooked them and ate them. That was a big fallacy. Then, towards the end, also, we had to cross this canal, and they wanted to add a lot of drama. So, although there were actual alligators there, and that was real, they actually caught an alligator, placed it behind us. I believe, if I recall, I don’t know if Kevin was blindfolded or if we were just looking the other way. And then we looked back, and there was an alligator right behind us. And that’s that moment of – I was scared, I was scared too. But they placed that alligator there.

I remember, there’s also a shot where there’s an alligator that you can tell is moving really weird. It’s ’cause they had it on some sort of leash. You know, it slowly but rather quickly developed into a big fallacy. And, it was challenging because I was stuck, you know? I was there, I wanted to produce this show. I was somewhat at their mercy, but also I could have walked out of there. I take full responsibility for it. I think at that time, I believed that it was more important for me to grow my message and get out there, even if that meant sacrificing part of my integrity. You know, looking back, I don’t have a right or wrong belief on that, but that’s what I was doing. And I’m just being transparent with what I was doing and what my thoughts were at the time. I was there to make the TV show, and I followed through and made the TV show.

Another thing that they did was they changed the narrative to say that Kevin was actually convinced to stay by me. So they actually staged me saying, like, “What would your boys think?” And I felt so inauthentic ’cause I didn’t care what his boys thought; that wasn’t important to me. But I was, you know, five days in and struggling. And I think there was some element of doing just what I needed to do to get through it at that time.

So they challenge your integrity intentionally to get you to follow their narrative a lot of the times. I’d say, at the essence of who I was, when I watched the show, I felt like it represented my true self, and there was a lot that I was grateful for. I felt like I was able to get my message out there quite a bit, and at the time I felt that it was worth it – the lack of integrity. They also, once I watched the show, the numbers, like the temperatures, the mileage that we walked – all of those were false. I just want to say, though, that don’t let this skew your entire belief of all TV. So, that was my experience with my first show with Discovery Channel in 2014. And now I want to share with you how that led me into having my own TV show on Discovery Channel.

I felt a very strong belief that I could do this in a very high integrity. Before I move on to talking about my continued experience with working with Discovery Channel, I want to share why I didn’t speak truthfully about this in 2014. And, I can’t say for sure, being that it’s 10 years ago, but I’m pretty sure that what it was is I wanted to continue working with Discovery Channel. And if I had been fully transparent and honest about it, I don’t think Discovery Channel would have wanted to continue working with me. So, I was again willing to not be truthful and to not be coming from a high place of integrity because I didn’t want to burn my bridges with Discovery Channel. Because I wanted to have my own TV show. It’s possible there was even something in the contract about non-disclosure – something like that, but I don’t recall.

So moving on to the, to what happened next, when I had finished biking across the country, they actually invited me into the Discovery Channel headquarters to host a little event with many of the staff that had been working on “Tethered.” And on that day, I got to meet … I believe it was the CEO of Discovery Channel or the COO, and I met numerous people that were higher up. And I put it out there: I said, “I’d like to do a – I’d like to do a real show with you. I’d like to have my own show, and I think I have some real value to bring.” And they agreed pretty quickly, and they put me in touch with one of their production companies that they work with. The production company went to my website, looked at some of what I had done, and they said, “How about we do this?” Where I had traveled with no money. I had flown to Panama with no money, with just the clothes on my back and my passport, and had to make it back to the United States on the kindness of others, as well as my resourcefulness skills. So we put together a teaser reel, pitched it to Discovery, and they went for it. And relatively, relatively quickly signed a contract to be working with Discovery Channel. Now, the big difference with this is that I was the one leading the show. And so, now I believed that I could have a substantial amount of integrity.

That was the central discussion with the production company that was based out of London – was integrity. We were talking about going really far. We were talking about breaking down the third wall, having the cameraman be visible so people could see what was really going on there. I had such an incredible in-depth list of things of what I wouldn’t do, what I would do, how we would create one of the most integral shows that Discovery Channel had. And I felt really good about it. I remember going to London, I believe twice. They flew someone out to San Diego once who ended up being the cameraman, James. And everything was looking really, really good to do an incredibly authentic and genuine adventure. I think it was late 2015, or so, summer 2015 – so maybe less than a year after the “Tethered” show had been filmed.

I landed in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and really set out for a 10-week adventure: 70 days of traveling from Rio to Panama with no money, with just the gear on my back, just the basic gear, and getting no support from the crew whatsoever. We set up a very solid system where I would get no support. The cameraman, James, would be with me almost, you know, attached at the hip – like almost always. And he would actually be immersing in it as well. That’s what they decided. Now, he ended up immersing in it, as in he was on the entire challenge. Originally, it was supposed to be just that he was immersed in it some – not that we were both going to be doing it together. But that’s what they ended up slipping in, without my consent. Maybe without being really honest about it, if I recall. Now that I think about it, they were never honest about it. It was always … he was going to be like, 10%. So we broke down that third wall. We had the transparency. But I was still doing my thing. Well, the way they did it is they brought in him as basically a 50/50 character. Well, the big challenge is that James did not have the same intentions as I did. Early on, he realized he had the wrong sized sleeping mat, so the crew gave him a different sleeping mat. Now, if you’re traveling with no money, you don’t have a crew to give you a sleeping mat.

So from the very beginning, I was having challenges with integrity. Because now he was 50/50, but he wasn’t living in the integrity. And this was now my integrity that I was feeling pain over. And you know, it was very important to me. This is a message that was reaching millions of people. For example, when he would get a beer, and here I was showing that, you know, we’re traveling with no money, so I’m not going to be getting a beer. We have so little. And then also, this was a beer that was just a major name brand, that is not a brand of integrity, that’s a part of exploitation and destruction. So I was thrown into this whole thing of having to balance, how to do a show of integrity, when they dumped a new narrative on me without consent and here I am trying to survive. I’m having to find, you know, food, water, transportation, earn some money, places to sleep. And the hardest part about the entire show ended up being none of that. It ended up being the many, many meetings that I was having with the production team, and the number of times that they were trying to get me to break my integrity and create drama. They were really pressuring the drama a lot.

You know, there were other areas where I think they really were trying to make James and I not get along and to fight. And they really didn’t share the truth of the story. For example, one time, James said on camera, “I’m starving.” And I had to say, you know, we’re in front of national TV or international TV, and I said, “You’re not starving, James; you’re hungry.” And the way they framed it was just me being, you know, kind of mean to James. But this is very important! There’s genuinely people in the world that are starving, and we were not starving. We had eaten some 12 hours prior; he was hungry, not starving. So it was a challenge! And they really again turned largely the show into a big drama, whereas we had the real content.

We had a beautiful opportunity. This had stemmed from my previous trip, and I had created a video – I traveled through Central America with just the clothes on my back and my passport. But I was making a short film, and how I did that was the people that I met along the way … they filmed and emailed the footage. And at the end of the, I think it was a 37-day trip, I had footage from about 28 people. And we patched that together into a short film of about five minutes. And, at that time, it got over 25 million views. The concept was proven that we could reach people through what I was doing in a way that really spread positive messages. But they decided to turn it into one big drama, and it was such an incredible disappointment. At the time, I was still – and still am today – really working on compassionate communication skills. I was far from as compassionate as I would have liked to have been with James and with teammates. And it was a big struggle! So much of that struggle was that the truth wasn’t shown. The fact that I was being hammered with trying to be convinced to do things outside of my integrity, and that was my greatest survival – was surviving the production team. But none of that was on the camera, which made the whole narrative have a lot of fallacy to it. But with that being said, I’m really grateful for how I managed to stick through with my integrity. I really think overall I managed to do so. I can’t remember really saying anything that wasn’t true. I never accepted help from the production team, even when I could have very often. I never accepted money from them, or rides from them, or water from them, or first aid from them, or anything of those sorts. But when I watched this show, I was pretty disappointed with it. I was very disheartened, pretty deflated, and probably pretty frustrated at the time because I put in so much energy, and we had so much what I thought to be honest and transparent communication. I think they were being honest, the production company, but it just did not pan out. And because the show was so substantially just a big drama, I didn’t really even want people to watch it. I would say overall it was probably one of the things that I was the least proud of and was least in alignment.

The shows that I had with Discovery Channel were so far from being the things that I was the most excited to get out in the world and share with the world. And it was so ironic because the same concept I had done for a couple hundred dollars, flying one way and producing a video that reached tens of millions of people. The whole thing cost me in the hundreds of dollars. This whole show, I believe the budget ended up being closer to $2 million for the six episodes. I think it was about $300,000 an episode. So between a million-and-a-half and $2 million dollars. And I don’t think it reached as many people as the simple video that I did with my trip. So that was a disappointment. And another really big thing of lack of truth on their end is that it was going to be in the United States, that was certain. Might not have been in the contract, but we had absolute plans, and then one day they just were like, “Oh no, it’s not playing in the United States.” It was International, Discovery International, but we had very set conversations that it was. So there was a lot of dishonesty working with them. But I also know there’s a lot of people in integrity, and there were a lot of people that I really enjoyed being with. A lot of people I felt a strong connection with, and a lot of love for. And James, my teammate, definitely felt a lot of love for him, and we stayed in touch for years. Lastly, again I’ll say that my biggest point of integrity that wasn’t there was that I didn’t share all this. I held this in because primarily I think I wanted to hold on to my relationship with Discovery Channel. And not just Discovery Channel. If other networks saw that I was so truthful, I don’t think they’d have wanted to work with me. And with complete transparency, as I’ve come into this place of such a level of truth and transparency, over the last years, I have way fewer production companies and opportunities reaching out to me. I used to get so much of that, and now I don’t know if they can see that I’m not going to go with their lies or, you know, their facade, their fallacies.

So, I’m really grateful to have been able to share my experience of working with Discovery Channel with you. I hope that for you, this was meaningful, seeing a bit of a connection to my past and ways in which I wasn’t living in my highest level of truth and integrity and transparency. As you know, this whole series is about bringing my entire life, the essence of my being, into complete transparency – having nothing to guard, nothing to hide, nothing to hold back – and that’s part of integrity. Integrity is much more greatly encompassing. And one area that I’ve held my integrity is that from the beginning, I made a commitment that 100% of my media income would be donated directly to nonprofits. And it was in both of my contracts with Discovery Channel that the money was going to be donated directly to nonprofits. And that it was. Not a single penny went to me. And I had to work hard to get them to do that. I don’t even know if that was fully legal for them to do, for me to be the person, but the contract be that the money was donated directly away from me; directly to the nonprofits, and not to me. That was really hard work, working with a big company like Discovery Channel. It was $30,000 for “Free Ride.” That was the name of the show – or “Viajeros Sin Dinero,” “Travelers Without Money” in Spanish, and 100% – not a penny of that went to me, and I held in that integrity. And I’ve held in that continuously. That’s a lifetime vow: to donate 100% of my media income from books, TV shows, etc., to nonprofits, to activists, to organizations doing the work. The first show I think was around $1,500 – less than $2,000 for “Tethered.”

So, thank you for being here, Dear Friends. I love you very much, and I’m grateful to be on this journey of truth, integrity, and transparency with all of you. And there is more to come. Letting go of everything that no longer serves me and does not serve me in being of service to you.

Articles referred to:
My Commitment to Financial Transparency
My Vows to Humanity 2024-2028
My Experience with Nonviolent Communication (NVC) / Compassionate Communication

The following is a transcription of Truth and Transparency: My Experience with Discovery Channel, which is part of my practice of coming into full truth and transparency.

For the full series and depth to this practice visit: My Commitment to Truth and Transparency.