Released 12.12.25

The Conversation

In a riveting discussion instilled with the passion of a man who can make acolytes out of stones, Steve Boyes unpicks his lifelong passion for exploration, inspired by National Geographic. He takes us back to his boyhood, and his first academic obsession: conserving the Cape Parrot, which has seen a population increase from less than 800 to over 2,000.

That history in ornithology leads him to create the Okavango Wilderness Project, which aims to protect Botswana’s Okavango Delta and its biodiversity. And as a stream becomes a river, so too does Steve’s work expand with his most recent initiative: the Great Spine of Africa project, which involves 200 expeditions over eight years to study the continent’s major river systems — “the largest non military expeditionary mobilisation in modern African history,” says Steve.

Steve talks about the importance of dreams, spirituality in wilderness, and the indigenous insights that make sense of his existence: when you talk to your ancestors, he says, it's not in the past tense; it's in the present tense.

He speaks candidly about the magic and mysteries of working with director Werner Herzog on ‘Ghost Elephants’ — a new film, shot in Angola, which will be released in March. “After meeting Steve Boyes,” says Herzog, “an unexpected project that felt like the hunt for Moby Dick, the White Whale, came at me with great urgency. Like many of my films, this is an exploration of dreams, of imagination — weighed against reality. The film took me to what the local tribesmen call the Land at the End of the Earth."

A very special episode which you will want to listen to under a starlit sky. Or at least with your eyes closed. There’s a conjuring in Steve’s gift for storytelling, which makes it easy to imagine those African riverine landscapes Steve is fighting so passionately to protect. 

Image: copyright James Kydd

Books discussed:

Steve Boyes
— Okavango and the Source of Life: Exploring Africa's Lost Headwaters

Robert Macfarlane
— Is A River Alive?

Films discussed:

Werner Herzog
— Ghost Elephants