Show Notes
At just 22 years old, British explorer Benedict Allen set out to travel 600 miles through the remote northeast Amazon. It was supposed to be an expedition. Instead, it became a fight for survival. Gold miners hunted him. His canoe capsized, swallowing his supplies. Malaria burned through his body — two types of it, including one that could kill him in 24 hours. Starving, feverish and alone, Benedict made a choice that would haunt him for decades.
He eventually walked out of the jungle. But something inside him forced him to confront his near-death experience and a question he needed to answer: why had he lived?
So he went back. Not to the Amazon, not yet, but to Papua New Guinea. There, he immersed himself in a culture that still held ancient rituals of manhood and underwent a secret ceremony alongside young tribal initiates — to be cut, scarred and beaten, and to try to understand what it meant to survive, to be tested and to be transformed.
This is the story of a young man running towards the very thing that nearly killed him. Of unfinished business in the jungle. Of the price of seeking answers that only survival can provide. And of a man who has nearly died nine times.
This is Part 1 of Benedict Allen's story on What I Survived. SIGNAL AWARDS 2026 VOTE HERE Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
More from What I survived
Zoya Phan was 14 when the Burmese army attacked her Karen village in Burma (Myanmar) and her family fled through the jungle towards Thailand. On What I Survived, Zoya Phan tells her story of surviving ethnic cleansing by Burma's military. We trace the roots of the Karen conflict, one of the longest-running civil wars in the world, from British rule to the military coup, and follow Zoya's family from Manerplaw to a refugee camp on the Thai-Burma border. Settle in, get comfortable, and let us tell you the story of Zoya Phan. SIGNAL AWARDS 2026 VOTE HERE Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In 2009, Australian security contractor Rob Langdon shot and killed an Afghan colleague during a confrontation in Afghanistan. Rob says the man pulled a pistol and that he fired first in self-defence. What happened next would cost Rob seven years of his life.
Former Australian soldier Rob Langdon went to Afghanistan as a private security contractor. He would eventually be convicted of murder, sentenced to death and spend seven years inside one of Afghanistan's most notorious prisons.
After surviving malaria, starvation and near death in the Amazon, Benedict Allen was left with a question he couldn't shake: why had he survived? His search for an answer would take him deep into Papua New Guinea and into a brutal initiation ceremony designed to transform young men into “crocodile men.”
Lost and alone in the Amazon, British explorer Benedict Allen contracted two forms of malaria, including a potentially deadly strain. Starving, feverish and running out of options, the 22-year-old faced a decision that would stay with him for decades.