Can you tell us your name, age, hometown and passion.
My full name is George Kourounis. I’m 38 years old and my hometown is Toronto, Ontario, Canada. My passion is seeing Mother Nature at her most extreme.
What dream are you currently living out?
Actually being able to make a career out of my passion for exploring the planet, and going to where the earth is in extreme transition. For example, when the hurricane is making landfall or the volcano is erupting.
People think I either have the best job on Earth or that I’m completely crazy. My job is other people’s nightmare. As I’m pursuing these natural phenomena, people are sitting in front of the TV saying, “I’m sure glad that is not me!”
Where were you before you decided it was possible to pursue your dream?
I used to be the technical manager for the biggest sound facility for film and television here in Toronto. It was a great job, a very regular job, lots of hours and lots of stress, unfortunately. When I would take my vacation time I would always go storm chasing. I was able to actually negotiate my way around work so that I could bank my overtime, and then take extra time off. If there was a hurricane brewing in the Atlantic, it got to the point where my boss would come up to me and say, “Why are you still here?”
I was doing more and more of this and then when I landed the television series, Angry Planet in 2006, I was able to quit my job entirely. Now I am one of the worlds only full time professional Storm Chasers.
Did you have an epiphany or shift in mindset when you realized it was possible? When/what happened?
It wasn’t really a one single ‘epiphany’ event. I started off slowly and built momentum over the years. As I would find these new phenomena, and explore different parts of the world, I started to get more attention from the media. Soon I was doing newspaper interviews, magazine articles, and I was appearing in documentaries and news programs. Over the span of years, it slowly shifted my whole paradigm for work: from engineering to my storm chasing passion. The real epiphany was landing the television series because overnight my life changed and my career path took a completely different swing, but it took awhile to reach that point.
How did that happen?
It came about because I attracted the attention of a production company here in Toronto, through a newspaper article about my experience in Hurricane Katrina. I was right at ground-zero when Katrina hit. It was one of the most life-changing experiences, being there and experiencing the full wrath of that storm.
The producer approached me about the idea of doing a show. We sat down and we hashed out different ideas of what we wanted to do. We originally had ideas for six episodes. We brought it to the network though and they said, “Don’t do six episodes, do thirteen.” So I had to dream up another batch of crazy ideas.
Now we are on our 3rd season, and will be up to 39 episodes when this season ends. The show is broadcasted in over 35 countries all over the world including the Travel Channel in Europe, The Weather Channel in Australia, and the Outdoor Life Network in Canada.
How was it to stand inside hurricane Katrina? What was going through your mind?
Many things were going through my mind. I drove from Toronto down to Mississippi, and I was on the east side of the storm, which was the strong side. The day before the storm hit, I was in a steel reinforced parking garage. I was reading warnings coming out of the National Weather Service that were speaking of apocalyptic conditions: buildings collapsing, wide spread flooding, livestock dying, etc. It sounded like the end of the world.
We were just trying to determine whether or not the building we were in was going to survive. We didn’t know if we were going to make it through the next 24 hours. We were relying on all of our year’s worth of experience and skills to make sure that we were in a relatively safe place.
While the storm was going on, it was literally like being in a blender for eight or ten hours: debris flying through the air, winds traveling at over 120 miles an hour, the flood waters invading the entire city around us. To give you an example of how powerful this water is, before the storm, there was a floating casino. During the storm I couldn’t see across the street and after the storm, the floating casino building was gone, lifted by the waves and dropped into its own parking lot. That was just one small example of the entire scene. It was basically a small piece of the end of the world and very scary.
You are in an interesting situation, a paradox of sorts. Your passion is dangerous and could potentially kill you. Did you initially have any mental barriers that you had to overcome and how do you perceive this paradox?
There are absolutely mental barriers. The most obvious one is self-preservation. The fear in your mind is: I am going to a dangerous place, probably the most dangerous place in the world at this moment, and I am putting myself very close into harms way; how close is too close? Being able to overcome fear has been a tremendous advantage for me in doing what I do. I sort of embrace the fear because if I don’t have it, I tend to make mistakes and forget how dangerous a situation I’m actually in. It is that little bit of fear in the back of your mind that helps keep you alive. There are other fears though: Am I doing something foolish? Will I be able to make a career out of this? No one gets to do this! If you let those fears pile up then you never pursue anything. Being able to overcome that is as important to me as overcoming the actual fear of death.
Do you often think about that fear of death?
I have added a few grey hairs to my mother, my wife and my family. I’ve had a few very close calls. I’ve been actually caught inside a tornado in Oklahoma where I literally had to drive through flying 2×4’s, and hide behind a shopping mall as the tornado passed right in front of me.
I was in a cave in Kenya recently and this cave is known for two reasons: elephants go underground and scrape the wall with their tusks to chew the salt, and the cave is also known as a place where Marburg hemorrhagic fever is found, a close relative to the Ebola virus. While I was in this cave with a biologist, we were capturing bats and one of them turned around and bit through my glove. No one knows how this virus gets into humans, and this cave had been the epicenter for two different outbreaks of it. The people that caught it did not survive. It takes about a week for the symptoms to show up.
Here I am in this cave on the side of a volcano in Kenya, a bat just bit through my glove, and I don’t know if I have a week to live or not. It made for a great TV show because we were filming the whole time. That is my way of laughing it off, but it was the scariest event I’ve been though.
What kind of feedback or advice were you given and how did you perceive it?
There have been a couple of different types of feedback: people think I’m crazy or they think I do the coolest thing ever. I hear a lot of conflicting messages. There has been encouragement from friends and family. There have also been colleagues, other storm chasers, who have sent bitter emails to me saying what I’m doing is ridiculous, and I will never make a living doing this. Some of that jealousy creeps in.
The other question I get from some people is, “How can you go into a disaster area where people are being killed or dying?” When I am in a disaster zone, if someone needs help, the chase is over and I am helping. That is the first priority. By sharing my experiences through my website and TV show and showing the world how bad these storms actually get, the better-prepared people can be.
What inspired you to reflect on your former circumstances, being an engineer, and then begin to define how you wanted to live your life?
I loved my job and I was making a good living at it, but there were days when I just did not want to go to work. There are millions of people who live their life doing that. I just didn’t want to be that person, and I cannot imagine going back to that job. Looking back, I’m surprised I lasted as long as it did.
I’m not sure what I am going to do when this show eventually runs its course. Looking back and looking forward, I cannot believe how much my life has changed. Literally in the past few years, I have gone from working in a regular work-type environment, to living like Indiana Jones. I am just trying to keep up with the ‘Jones’!’ (laughs)
How has doing what you are doing changed how you s
ee future possibilities and challenges?
The main thing that I have learned is that I have only scratched the surface of what I am able to accomplish. When you really set your mind to something, when you follow a dream and really, really pursue it, there is almost nothing that you can’t do and accomplish. I have a list of things I want to do in my life and I have done so many of them. Not only have I done it, but the network has paid for many of them and I’ve turned a profit doing it. It’s just not a matter of crossing thingsoff your list. I’ve been able to do it and make a living at doing it.
It’s taught me that there are a lot of opportunities out there. If you really follow your dream and believe that it is possible, it’s amazing what you can achieve. That is one of the toughest things though, allowing yourself to believe that it is possible.
What is your next dream?
The next trip coming up is to Antarctica; this allows me to check off three things that were on my life list. The first was to hit all seven continents by the time I turn 40. I’m going there twice actually, once with the show and then I’m going back with a friend of mine, Nik Halik. He is even more inspirational than I am. He is a self-made multi-millionaire from Australia, and he just finished his cosmonaut training. He is scheduled to be one of the next tourists to fly to the international space station. He is so inspiring to me. He has taken a submarine down and had lunch on the deck of the Titanic. He has done so many incredible things. Ever since I had first heard about this guy, I have wanted to go on an adventure with him. A few weeks ago he sent me a text message that said, ‘Hey George, come with me to Antarctica.’ He contacted me about a year and a half ago and we have been corresponding since. We are always crisscrossing and finally we are going to meet up. We feel like we are brothers, separated at birth.
When did you start your list?
Unofficially, my list has been running for almost 2 decades, but only in the past 2.5 years, have I actually stated to put things down on paper. My list has about 35 or 40 items on it and whenever I accomplish an item, I just put DONE by it; I don’t take it off my list. When I look at the list of things I want to do in the future, I can see what I have accomplished in the past, and that helps to reinforce. My numbers extends beyond the actual things on the list. When I accomplish one, I add two more. I never, ever want to complete everything on my list; I want to keep adding and adding.
You had your list for 20 years, why did you start writing things down 2.5 years ago?
I don’t even know. Part of it comes from my friend, Nik Halik. He had done a very similar type of thing, and one of the things he had on his list was to go into space. This guy has spent years, and 30 million dollars, to go into space. It was so inspiring that I decided I could do that too. I made up my own list. Every month or two I end up checking a thing or two off my list.
Just in the past year, 2008, I have been to: Italy, Iceland, Timbuktu in Mali, Indonesia, India, all over the United States, Costa Rica, Uzbekistan, Chernobyl. It’s unbelievable! There are pros and cons to that of course. I get to do all these amazing things and travel but I miss my wife. I’m on the road two hundred nights of the year.
What are your strengths and weaknesses and which are you trying to improve upon?
One of my greatest strengths is my ability to visualize what I want to accomplish and then get there. A weakness is sometimes I focus too much on something, and I will end up neglecting other areas of life. I certainly spend way too much time away from my family. It gets lonely when you are traveling out on the road.
What have you learned about life from your journey?
I have learned that people, no matter where you are, are basically the same. They all want to belong to their community, and they all have their own dreams and desires. It is just that some people have the opportunities to pursue them.
Probably the most important thing I’ve learned is that opportunity meets preparation. There is a certain amount of luck involved, but when it comes to the big things in life, you make your own luck. People say, “You are so lucky.”’ Do you know how much work goes into being lucky? A lot.
How do you perceive society?
From my type of unique perspective, I’ve learned that society tends to not learn its lessons very well. I can’t tell you how many times I have gone into a disaster zone, for example, along the coastline of the United States where it has been ravished by a hurricane. What do they do? They rebuild, putting the same type of building there and another hurricane comes in and destroys it again. That is just one small example of how humans are not very good at learning lessons. History repeats itself. I find that is a common theme around the world, no matter the society, country or culture. I think that we are learning more and more about this all the time.
We all know that we are polluting the water and air; we are destroying the very conditions on our planet that brought about life itself. We are the first species, in the 4 billion year history of the Earth, that are actually capable of that. It is a sad reflection on society that when this life form, known as humans, becomes so destructive and powerful that we may actually destroy the Earth’s ability to create life.
There is hope though. There is a lot of interest and awareness now. One thing I know for sure is that it is not the Earth that is in danger; it is humans that are in danger. We will become extinct ourselves long before we destroy the Earth. The Earth we will save itself, and we may never even know that humans were here.
What is most important to you in life?
My family and wife are extremely important to me. 
My passion to go out and explore the extremes of the Earth is so overwhelming that it too, is certainly one of the most important things in my life. I will continue to explore this world as long as I have the ability to do so. Just as important as doing it, is the ability to share those experiences. I find it would be selfish to go and experience these incredible places and not share it with the world. I have put this responsibility on myself.
What are you most proud of in your life?
I’m most proud of my ability to accomplish what I have in my mind, and I’m very proud of those accomplishments. I’m proud to be able to call myself an “explorer.” I really like to use that term. In our world, the poles have been reached and the highest mountains have been climbed. There are very few places left to explore in this world. I kind of consider myself a 21st century explorer. I go to these parts of the world that are under extreme transition, the temporary places or circumstances that are only momentarily there, and then they are gone. For me that is the new realm of exploration in the 21st century, and I am very proud to be a leader in that.
What would be your advice to other people who want to live out their dreams?
It doesn’t matter what it is that you want to do, but have a very clear picture in your mind of the specific things that you want to accomplish. Then, every single day take a small step towards those goals. This is a philosophy that I apply religiously to my own life. I try to make sure that I advance myself, at least a small bit, everyday. It can be something as trivial as doing research on the Internet, or sending an email to someone asking them a question. It’s incredible how these small steps can pile up and the next thing you know, you are riding this wave of forward motion and you inevitably will end up at your goal, as long as you know what you want. You have to know what you want though. If you don’t aim your gun at the target, how are you going to hit it? People know what they don’t want, but they don’t know what they want to pursue. Once you know that, take the small steps and you will get there, it just takes time and effort.
By setting small goals you feel the momentum and a sense of accomplishment. I always tell people, think bigggg! People are afraid though. It’s the same thing; it just takes more steps. Next thing you know you are on a ship to Antarctica with a multi-millionaire astronaut.
Is there anything else you want to add?
Certainly, if you can picture it in you mind, you can do it; you just have to figure out how. I look for inspiration in so many different places and sources. It’s amazing how you can get ideas from teachers, economists, politicians, or someone you meet on the street. Keep you mind open. Think big but take small steps.
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