The Story presents: Planet Hope - Steve Boyes on resilience, recovery and Africa’s great rivers
The Story
The Times
3.9 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 8 November 2025
⏱️ 37 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This is Planet Hope, a podcast from The Times and The Sunday Times in paid partnership with Rolex and its Perpetual Planet Initiative. Each episode is hosted by The Story released as a bonus weekly series on Saturdays.
Explorer and Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative partner Steve Boyes has spent decades navigating Africa’s wild rivers. He tells Adam Vaughan how illness and resilience has reshaped his outlook and why protecting rivers, landscapes and communities has become his life’s mission.
Planet Hope is brought to you in paid partnership with Rolex and its Perpetual Planet Initiative.
Guest: Steve Boyes, conservationist and National Geographic Explorer.
Host: Adam Vaughan, environment editor, The Times
Series Producer: Priyanka Deladia
Sound Designer: David Crackles
This podcast is advertiser funded.
This podcast was brought to you thanks to subscribers of The Times and The Sunday Times. To enjoy unlimited digital access to all our journalism subscribe here.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, it's Manveen. Today on the story, we're bringing you an episode from Planet Hope, |
| 0:04.9 | where Environment Editor Adam Vaughn meets the people finding bold answers to global challenges, |
| 0:11.3 | from revealing climate change hidden in Arctic caves, to safeguarding pristine coastlines. |
| 0:18.2 | These are the stories of hope and possibility, and we think you'll like it. Here's Planet Hope. |
| 0:28.9 | Planet Hope is brought to you in paid partnership with Rolex and its perpetual Planet Initiative. |
| 0:37.5 | In the 1930s, Rolex founder Hans Wilsdorf saw the world as a testing ground, |
| 0:44.1 | sending watches to the highest mountains or the deepest oceans, |
| 0:48.0 | and supporting explorers who pushed the limits of what was possible. |
| 1:00.0 | Over time, the company has moved from championing exploration for the sake of discovery to protecting the planet by supporting individuals and organisations working to safeguard the natural world. |
| 1:07.0 | From ocean conservation to wilderness restoration, |
| 1:10.0 | it's a long-term commitment towards the planet's future, |
| 1:13.1 | which includes the work we'll hear about in this episode. |
| 1:35.7 | Hello, I'm Adam Vaughan, Environment Editor at the Times, and this is Planet Hope. |
| 1:46.3 | So far in this series, we've followed dolphins in the Amazon, dive deep into the oceans of Australia's Ningaloo coast and scaled icy caves in Greenland. |
| 1:49.6 | But today's episode is something different. |
| 1:59.0 | We're heading into the heart of Africa, to the great rivers that thread across the continent, |
| 2:02.3 | and to the man who's dedicated his life to protecting them. I'm an explorer, a scientist, and I just want to be in the wild with wild people |
| 2:09.5 | celebrating our innate wildness, and that's in all of us. You and me, it's what we seek out |
| 2:15.4 | every day in our lives, in the city or any way we are. |
| 2:20.3 | Steve Boyes is a conservation biologist who spent decades navigating the Okavango Delta and its surrounding basins, |
| 2:28.3 | documenting biodiversity, advocating for indigenous communities, and building one of Africa's largest environmental research efforts. |
| 2:37.0 | But more recently, Steve's journey has taken on a more personal dimension. |
... |
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