(air whistles)
- Watch this.
(upbeat music)
I'm Mike Corey.
I'm an explorer and a biologist.
I travel the world to carve a path
for those who aren't afraid to leave the trail.
(upbeat music)
Let's go on an uncharted adventure.
(upbeat music)
I am the host of a new adventure travel TV show
premiering November 7th, like right now,
on The Weather Channel.
And as a guy who had a phobia of public speaking
for most of his life, it all feels a little crazy.
More on that in a second, though.
Let's jump in.
[Anthony] Away we go.
(Mike yells)
You've never seen anything like this before.
Wow, how is this a real place?
Adventure level, very high.
It looks incredible and you're not going to want to miss it.
(upbeat music ends)
- Show premiers tonight, November 7th, 9:00 PM Eastern
and 8:00 PM Central,
And then we'll repeat every Sunday after that
for the full eight episodes.
My favorite episode's probably number two,
where we repel down into the black hole of Belize.
Don't get confused with the blue hole, we went there too.
But the black hole is basically a collapsed mountain.
We went down to the bottom, found a cave,
and inside that cave,
crystallized skulls from Mayan sacrifices.
We ended up camping there and a hammock too,
at the bottom of this giant hole in the jungle,
and it was crazy.
And that's coming up in episode two.
But listen, now that I am the host
of my own one hour adventure travel TV show,
words I never thought I'd say,
I have to tell you something really important.
The name of the channel is called Fearless and Far,
but my friends, I am far from fearless.
If anything, the name might make you think
that I don't have any fears, but I have so many,
My entire life, I've been wrought with fear.
And 10 years later after me deciding to conquer my fear,
not my fear, sorry, my phobia of public speaking,
here I am, and I have this opportunity,
and I can barely believe it.
And I know people don't believe me when I say that.
You see the after version.
But now that we're here, let's talk about the before.
When I was young, we're talking like grade four.
I had a teacher who, let's say she wasn't the nicest.
There are other words we could use,
but she wasn't the nicest or most considerate
or empathetic teacher I ever had.
I woke up one morning and my hamster was dead.
Traumatizing for a little young boy.
And I go to school and I'm sad.
So I'm sitting at my desk, head down,
sad that my poor pet hammy died,
and the teacher sees that I'm sad,
asks in front of the class what's wrong.
I don't want to talk about it.
She brings me to the front of the class
and makes me explain to the class in French,
it was my first year of French immersion,
a language I did not know,
why I was sad because my hamster had just died.
I didn't know the words.
I barely knew bonjour.
Je suis Mike Corey, not this morning I woke up
to find a hamster massacre on my bedside.
Didn't have those words yet.
So that was my introduction to public speaking
in front of the class, tears dripping down my face,
explaining why my hamster died.
And I took that forward by entire life until I was like 25,
a long time.
And then through some disastrous circumstances,
a death in the family, a bad breakup,
and a few other terrible things all at once,
I decided to do something crazy.
I wanted to travel the world
to get as far away as possible from where I was,
because where I was wasn't feeling that great.
But I couldn't go alone.
No way, that was way too scary to travel alone.
So I found a friend and we joined a fundraising committee
to go on a volunteer project
to the other side of the planet,
where we thought there was no problems over there.
The day came to pay the deposit.
I sat there with my shaking hands,
giving them a fistful of money,
thousands of dollars to book my spot to Indonesia,
of all places.
And I was going to meet my friend in the pub
after for a drink.
I pay the deposit, go down there and wait.
One hour, two hours, he didn't show.
He didn't pay the deposit,
and I had locked myself on a one-way ticket to Indonesia,
the opposite side of the planet, by myself.
And I almost shit a brick
because I didn't know the language,
didn't know what they ate,
didn't know anything about the country at all, at all.
And now I had to go,
I was going to be there for three months on an island,
off an island, off an island.
And I remember saying goodbye on that airplane to my family
and thinking I was never going to see them again.
I got there to the island,
and I had the best three months of my entire life
to that point.
And I realized, hm, maybe this fear thing,
this thing I was so afraid of,
maybe this thing is a bully
and it doesn't always speak the truth.
Maybe it's all in my head.
But that wasn't the moment I decided to make YouTube videos.
Years later, after traveling
and finding these new experiences,
I stubbed my toe
and I ended up getting flesh eating disease,
a MRSA, two terrible bacteria in my toe.
And I was on a couch for three months
because just the blood pressure to stand up,
the blood pressure in the toe was so excruciating,
I couldn't really walk around.
They almost had to snip it.
I was on my fourth antibiotic.
After two surgeries, they couldn't heal it.
And the final one worked.
Otherwise I'd be called nine toed Mike.
As I was getting better, I had another friend who was like,
"Dude, you should enter this competition.
It's a travel video competition.
The winner gets to travel the world
and it's all paid for, and they get a camera."
And I love traveling the world.
But speaking on camera, hell no, never.
I would never do that.
That's fricking terrifying.
My friend sent me a text back after me being like,
"No, bro."
Trying to be all cool, right?
"No, man, I don't do that stuff, so not for me.
You know, I just travel, I don't like traveling with gear.
You know, F Facebook."
That kind of the travel attitude.
And he said, "Okay, well,
I mean, then what are you going to do,
spend another four months on a couch?"
Because at that point I was in on employment insurance
in Canada, could not work, had no savings, could not travel.
And so out of desperation, I made my first video ever, ever,
and it sucked.
I did like 45 takes of my own name.
I couldn't even say where I was from.
I would stutter and sputter.
But the thing is, after beating myself up in a corner
of a room like this for long enough,
you do 47 takes of your name, one of them looks pretty good.
You take that, you do 48 takes of where you're from,
you take the best one, you Frankenstein something together,
and there's your application for a video program.
And then what happened, people were like,
"Hey, you're pretty good at this."
Meanwhile, I sucked, but they didn't know.
I sucked in private,
but now I had like a reputation
of being pretty good at this stuff.
Even though I was silently pulling out what hair I had
at the time in my closet,
my shitty old university apartment, basically.
Anyway, a lot has happened since then.
And I didn't call myself fearless and far
because I am fearless and I fear nothing.
No, because I realized that fearlessness
is simply feeling the fear and doing it anyway.
I was so scared to travel the world
and I was so scared to speak in public, on camera,
in front of friends.
I used to stutter.
I used to choke on my first word.
I'd have to start it twice,
because the anxiety of starting a sentence was too much.
I would trip.
I'd have to say everything twice.
Now it's my freaking job.
And it's unbelievable for me.
I guess the reason why I wanted to say all this is
because if you're afraid of something,
you should probably do it
and it should make your heart race
when you think about doing it,
I just want you to know I was a guy who had a phobia
of public speaking,
and now I have a successful YouTube channel
with almost a million subscribers, I have a podcast
with almost 3,000 4.8 star reviews on Apple right now,
and now I have my own travel TV show.
One hour, doing what I love, all because 10 years ago,
I decided to do the exact thing
I was bone-shaking, blackout terrified to do.
That's the only reason that this guy standing here today,
yelling at this piece of plastic and metal,
about to be on television.
That's all.
So the show premieres tonight, 9:00 PM Eastern,
8:00 PM Central on The Weather Channel,
and we have eight episodes,
and they'll probably be some reruns along the way, too.
I would love if you could support it and watch it
if you're in the USA.
It will probably reach a bigger audience at some point.
I think they'll be putting some pieces on social media,
but for now, you'll have to watch it in the USA
on The Weather Channel.
Guys, thank you for everything.
The encouragement over these past 10 years on the channel,
sticking with me, sticking with this video
and hearing my story that is much deeper
than some daredevil dude who goes
and does jackass type stuff around the world.
I love speaking about fear because I am the embodiment
of what happens when you do chase that fear
with your hands shaking, and your heart beating,
and you still go for it anyway.
That's the lesson in all of this
and I hope bits and pieces of that reach you guys at home.
So enough being serious.
I'd love if you would watch the show.
Share it with a friend, share it with a family member.
If you watch it, let me know.
I'll be trying to stream it.
I'm in Georgia, the country, Georgia, not the state.
And I think I'll be able to watch it.
I hope I can.
I haven't seen the full episodes yet,
just bits and pieces here and there.
And thank you again for your support
and everything along the way.
Almost 1 million dragons here on my channel
And I can't wait to share with you what's next.
Great stuff, I promise.
Check it out, fearless dragons,
and I'll catch you in the next episode on Fearless and Far.
These are my favorite kinds of adventures,
where you can kind of choose your own path.
Here we go.
Whoa!
(Mike yells)
There's an alligator,
just maybe like 15 feet that way, or more than that,
maybe 15, maybe 20 feet.
Welcome to Louisiana.
(laughs)
(inhales deeply)
In this water right here has the highest concentration
of bioluminescent algae in the world.
It looks like there's a shower of sparks.
Aw guys, this is incredible.
Look at that.
See if we can get inside.
And guys, welcome to Fort Proctor.
Looks like this is the end of the road.
Let's grab the other camera and explore.
- [Anthony] Three, two, one.
(Mike yells)
- Oh my god!
Anthony, you devil!
(Mike laughs)
(upbeat music)