#100 – Dave Salmoni on Living With Lions, Life Threatening Fear, Fatherhood, and Staying Calm Under Pressure
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Dave Salmoni spent 26 years as one of the world’s most recognized large predator experts — sleeping inside lion prides, teaching captive tigers to hunt in the African wild, and filming some of the most dangerous wildlife encounters in television history for Discovery Channel and Animal Planet.
In this episode of State of Mind, Dave shares the story of the moment a lion broke his ribs, had his forearm in its mouth, and was dragging him toward the ground — and what happened next. He unpacks what real fear actually feels like (versus the rollercoaster version most people confuse it for), and the mental preparation system that kept him alive for 26 years in the wild.
But the wildest chapter might be what came after the cameras stopped rolling. When he retired, the conservation groups he’d helped fund for decades stopped returning his calls overnight. The celebrity doors closed. Dave found himself starting over — sitting in lectures with 20-year-olds, earning the grades required to begin a PhD, and learning that new things are supposed to feel scary.
You’ll hear about: the blow-by-blow of a lion attack that nearly killed him, the difference between real fear and rollercoaster fear, the preparation framework he built around extreme scenarios, what losing his platform overnight taught him about identity, and the Boyd Vardy retreat that changed how he thinks about happiness.
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