Now that President Obama has endured six years of inside-the-beltway battering, he’s decided to test his survival skills in another hostile environment: the Alaska wilderness.
While in Alaska this week for the Global Leadership in the Arctic Summit, Obama will spend part of Tuesday with survival expert Bear Grylls for a special edition of the show “Running Wild with Bear Grylls,” NBC and producer Electus announced Monday. Obama is in Alaska to highlight how climate change is affecting the Arctic.
The episode, which will air on NBC later this year, will try to call attention to claims about the impact of climate change on the area while giving the president a crash-course in survival skills.
NBC hasn’t released details about exactly what wilderness challenge Obama has agreed to face with Grylls. The show, which is in its second season, has featured Kate Winslet eating earthworms after parachuting into the beautiful mountains in Wales, and “Modern Family’s” Jesse Tyler Ferguson descending a frozen waterfall in the Italian Alps. The season finale, which airs Sept. 7, will feature New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees, according to report in Variety.
The Grylls segment is just the latest example of the president utilizing some unconventional media opportunities to promote his agenda. In July, the president visited a federal prison for an event that will appear in a Vice documentary, and in late June during a swing through Los Angeles he appeared on Marc Maron’s “WTF” garage podcast, where he famously used the “n-word” in a discussion about race relations.
In May, Obama sat down with naturalist David Attenborough in an interview for BBC America, in which the pair talked about the future of the planet and what countries can do to protect it.
