Nate Boyer Talks the 'Incredible' Social Experiment at the Heart of 'Survive the Raft' (Exclusive)

Even Survive the Raft host Nate Boyer didn't expect just how unpredictable Discovery Channel's new survival show would be. The U.S Army Green Beret and NFL player opened up to PopCulture.com about the "incredible" result of the new series that premieres Sunday, July 30, and is based on a 1973 behavioral study done by Mexican anthropologist Santiago Genovés.

To see if people from diverse cultures and backgrounds could set aside their differences and work together for the common good, Genovés placed participants on a raft called the Acali for a 101-day voyage. And while the makeshift crew at the end of the day did succeed, it was not without near-mutiny on the Acali itself. To recreate Genovés' experiment, Discovery built the Acali II – almost an exact model of the original – and placed nine people of wildly different backgrounds on board for a 21-day journey. 

"These people have to work together, they live together, they eat together, they fight. There's no escaping one another," Boyer told PopCulture. Adding to this next generation of the social experiment are challenges and missions that can earn the crew money towards a communal cash pot that will be divided equally by those who make it to the end. But crew members can also make decisions to benefit themselves over the group, begging the question, will the good for all outweigh the good for one?

"At the end of the day, they are thrust into this situation, and there's different challenges that arise and
we get to watch their true colors come out," Boyer shared, adding that it was "incredible" to see people grow and change throughout the experiment. "I think, with the intent of what we started out wanting to see, our eyes were opened as well," he continued. "And these people just surprised us time and time again." With a crew that's "such a microcosm of America," Boyer admitted he had his own ideas about who he thought "would be more open to changing and learning and growing and listening." And with those initial impressions, Boyer admits he was "wrong many times." 

In a country that's become "increasingly divided" over the past several years, he said it was an important experiment to see who could truly be open-minded to their fellow crew members. "It's tough to be an American in a lot of ways and feel like your opinion is valued by other people, even if it differs from them, or at least that people are even willing to listen to you," he noted. "And then within yourself, are you willing to listen to others? Are you willing to accept the fact that their beliefs are based on their experiences, and they lived a very different life than you, and it doesn't make them necessarily wrong or bad? That's a tough thing."

"You'll be so surprised about who is willing to be open like that, who's willing to listen and learn, and who's willing to change," Boyer added. "And yeah, it was emotional. ... it just really opens you up and there's just a rawness to it that's hard to find." Survive the Raft premieres on Sunday, July 30 at 9 p.m. ET on Discovery Channel.