How much of our own planet have we truly explored?

In this episode of The Future of Exploration, ocean explorer and Nekton Mission Director Oliver Steeds challenges one of our biggest assumptions that the final frontier lies in space. Instead, he argues that the greatest unknown is much closer to home, in the vast, largely unexplored depths of our oceans.

Oliver reveals why we have mapped only a fraction of the seabed, why most marine species remain undiscovered, and how these hidden ecosystems play a critical role in regulating the Earth’s climate and sustaining global food systems. From extraordinary deep-sea discoveries to AI-powered species identification, he explores how new technologies and global collaboration are transforming our ability to understand life beneath the waves.

If we have discovered less than 10% of ocean life, what might still be out there, and can we find it before it disappears?

What does it mean to explore a world that already feels mapped? In this conversation, Tom Allen, explorer, author, and the Society’s current Expeditions and Fieldwork Manager, frames the future of exploration as curiosity in action – the ongoing practice of looking closer, asking better questions, and sharing what we find.

Drawing on years of slow travel, expeditions, fieldwork, and translating these experiences into books, films, even actual trails to follow, Tom argues that the future of exploration lies less in going further and more in going deeper: into places, into cultures, and through that into our understanding of the world today. From citizen science apps to mapping ancient footpaths, he explores how digital technology and global collaboration are reshaping who gets to explore and what effect it has on the world.

The episode takes on the legacy of exploration head-on, highlighting the problematic nature of its historic ties to privilege, extraction and individual heroism and the attention still given to this narrative. Tom envisages a more inclusive, participatory future where anyone can contribute to knowledge and where efforts are judged by their value to society.

Set against a backdrop of global change, this is a timely rethink of exploration as a shared, purposeful practice, and an invitation to see yourself as part of it.

In this live recording, explorer, broadcaster and author Bruce Parry challenges one of the most enduring ideas in exploration: that its purpose is to discover what’s ‘out there’. Instead, he argues, the real frontiers of exploration lie in rediscovering what we as a species have forgotten about ourselves.

Best known for the multiple BBC series that documented his time living with Indigenous communities around the world, Bruce reflects on his personal journey beyond the screen as his motivations evolved from ego-driven adventure to a deeper responsibility to listen, learn, and bring insights home. He discusses the radically different ways of being human that he experienced first-hand: societies built on connection, equality, and an intimate relationship with the natural world. These insights, he argues, are not romantic relics but working models of how humans might once again live sustainably and meaningfully.

At a time of ecological crisis and social fragmentation, Bruce makes a compelling and heartfelt case that the priorities for today’s explorers lie as much in personal and social transformation as in the gathering of scientific data. In incorporating these goals into our explorations and our daily lives, he says, we might more effectively challenge and remould our assumptions about progress, power, and what it means to live well.

Recorded live on stage in the Society’s Ondaatje Theatre with an in-person audience, this is a conversation about humility, responsibility, and the urgent need to reimagine exploration as a force for cultural and planetary repair.