You Might Also Like: Wayfinder: Life-Changing Travel

**Daniel Scheffler** (0:04)
Ruby As children, many of us dream of living in places we've only seen on TV. For some, it's the SoCal Beach towns, or the bustling streets of London and Madrid. But for a select few, imaginations lead somewhere wilder, into the forest, immersed in adventure, and face to face with creatures we only know from storybooks. But what if there was a place that offered all of this at once, and could turn our childhood musings into a real life experience?
This is Wayfinder, Life-Changing Travel.
The Young Turks goes beyond the guidebooks into the heart and soul of real life travelers as they journey around the world. I'm your host, Daniel Scheffler. Today, I'm joined by wildlife educator and adventurer, Coyote Peterson, who alongside his YouTube channel, Brave Wilderness, has ventured across the globe in search of extraordinary encounters with the natural world. Together, we'll explore Queensland, Australia, a unique and underappreciated region where, from UNESCO rainforest to tropical coastlines, Coyote will show us just how far his wonder pulls him into experiencing the natural world.

**Nathaniel Peterson** (2:10)
My real birth name is Nathaniel. Coyote is a nickname I've had since I was about eight years old, which was given to me by my mom because I would follow roadrunners around in the desert out in Arizona, hoping that they would lead me to lizards that I could catch. So like the famous Warner Brothers cartoon, she started calling me the Coyote like Wile E. Coyote from that cartoon. And sure enough, it's stuck, which I guess works pretty well for a guy that runs around chasing animals and tries to catch them.

**Daniel Scheffler** (2:37)
100%. That makes total sense.

**Nathaniel Peterson** (2:39)
Yeah. And I've gotten very close to death many times and have actually fallen off cliffs. So my parallel existence with Wile E. Coyote is pretty on par.
Some of my earliest memories and traveling in the outdoors really began when I was super young. My mom used to travel myself and my younger sister across the United States every summer. So we would pack up in this little old Sierra Scotty Sportsman trailer pulled by her 1988 Chevy Suburban. And my mom's a tiny lady. She's like five foot one, if that. And she driving this huge truck, pulling this trailer. And we would just head off across the United States. I spent countless summer vacation weeks exploring the great outdoors of the United States, completely unbridled. I look back at it now and I'm like, man, mom, you would just let me wander into nature by myself between the ages of like eight and 15 with no parental supervision for hours at a time, hoping that I would find my way back to our campsite. I mean, I was catching snakes, turtles, lizards, getting way closer to large ungulates like bison that I probably should have been. So I had a very early introduction to the great outdoors in a very exploratory way that was not overly guarded by any parental supervision. And I think that truly made me who I am today.

**Daniel Scheffler** (4:01)
So what led you to create your YouTube channel and start documenting your journeys online?

**Nathaniel Peterson** (4:09)
We began documenting wildlife experiences on our Brave Wilderness YouTube channel, really to bring people, animals and adventure in a way that was inspired by the late great Steve Irwin. He was a huge influence on me growing up, as have been a number of other wildlife presenters. And when Steve passed away, we realized that there was this big void in the market for people getting up close with wildlife and delivering a high caliber of entertainment, but also being able to work in great education and conservation at the same time. It's without question that our most viral, notable episodes are me being intentionally bitten or stung by something to show you what happens. Obviously, there's a level of entertainment that comes with that, but we always work in a clever thread of education at the same time. But what we really like to hang our hat on at the end of the day is the big conservation pieces that we do, where we work with different initiatives or groups that are protecting certain species, whether that's wolves, black rhinos, Tasmanian devils, I mean, you name it, if there's a good conservation story to be had, that is our bread and butter. But you've got to have the entertainment if you want people in the digital stratosphere to be clicking on your content. So it's a bit of a balance between the two. And while I am more than happy to put myself in momentous amounts of pain, I much prefer to get behind the scenes working with professionals when it comes to getting up close with the animals that we're trying to save versus avoid getting bitten or stung by.