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There are some people whose misfortune is so total, so macabre, and so unique that their names become bywords for the worst things that can happen to a human in the outdoors. Timothy Treadwell became one of those people in 2003 when, after a decade of living around bears in Katmai National Park, a grizzly killed and ate him and his girlfriend, a story Werner Herzog would later immortalize in his film Grizzly Man.
When we discovered that Associate Editor Emma Veidt had never seen Grizzly Man, we recruited Wes Larson, a bear biologist and cohost of Tooth and Claw podcast, to watch it with her and provide live commentary. Larson, an expert in bear-human interactions, had studied the grizzlies of Katmai, even flying with the same bush pilot who dropped off Treadwell. In this clip from their watch-through, he discusses what he hopes viewers take away from Treadwell’s story. Read the whole interview, or find more bruin stories and safety tips from Backpacker and Tooth and Claw in Bear Month 2025.—Adam Roy, Editor-in-Chief
From 2025