RGS Presents: The Future of Exploration
Jun 30, 2026 · 45 min · 12 segments
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…
Matt PycroftHost
Yeah, and I don't think it's possible to have this conversation without looking at the past a little bit.
I mean, I think to begin with, it's an indelible part of this institution's history.
And especially in retrospect, it's very easy actually to pick out what was wrong with the way exploration was done in the past, kind of to the detriment of anything good that might have come out of it.
And there's been a lot of work done here in the last few years to unpick some of that.
And I think quite a big part of that was about looking beyond the individual heroes, and I'm putting a hero in inverted commas, but 200 years ago, people who were doing exploration had all of the same problems that people today have in terms of how do I actually get noticed? How do I appear credible to potential funders? You know, how do I come up with a project that sounds new and innovative? I mean, I'm sure these are things people are asking now.
I'm absolutely sure that the same conversations we're having in Victorian drawing rooms, it's all the same stuff.
And so all of that nuance gets lost when we're just looking at the colonial legacy, and I guess moving into the 20th century, this kind of endless focus on being the first to get somewhere, or some other superlative, you know, where it all kind of starts to get quite self-indulgent sounding.
So yeah, I mean, there's a story there, right? We're now here where we can kind of see that that's the past, and okay, well, what does exploration look like now? Where's it going? Are there things we're still unpacking?
Yeah, and we could stay on this for a long time and do a whole episode on it, but I think there's, you know, whether you're looking at Darwin or Stanley or all these people who did discover, let's use that, you know, they discovered things, amazing things, lots of things.
We can still kind of dine out on those discoveries and build on the shoulders of them whilst also maybe not well, not just not celebrating the methods, but actively push back against the methods and say that was wrong, that was abhorrent, et cetera, et cetera.
Yeah, and I don't think it's possible to have this conversation without looking at the past a little bit.
I mean, I think to begin with, it's an indelible part of this institution's history.
And especially in retrospect, it's very easy actually to pick out what was wrong with the way exploration was done in the past, kind of to the detriment of anything good that might have come out of it.
And there's been a lot of work done here in the last few years to unpick some of that.
And I think quite a big part of that was about looking beyond the individual heroes, and I'm putting a hero in inverted commas, but 200 years ago, people who were doing exploration had all of the same problems that people today have in terms of how do I actually get noticed? How do I appear credible to potential funders? You know, how do I come up with a project that sounds new and innovative? I mean, I'm sure these are things people are asking now.
I'm absolutely sure that the same conversations we're having in Victorian drawing rooms, it's all the same stuff.
And so all of that nuance gets lost when we're just looking at the colonial legacy, and I guess moving into the 20th century, this kind of endless focus on being the first to get somewhere, or some other superlative, you know, where it all kind of starts to get quite self-indulgent sounding.
So yeah, I mean, there's a story there, right? We're now here where we can kind of see that that's the past, and okay, well, what does exploration look like now? Where's it going? Are there things we're still unpacking?
Yeah, and we could stay on this for a long time and do a whole episode on it, but I think there's, you know, whether you're looking at Darwin or Stanley or all these people who did discover, let's use that, you know, they discovered things, amazing things, lots of things.
We can still kind of dine out on those discoveries and build on the shoulders of them whilst also maybe not well, not just not celebrating the methods, but actively push back against the methods and say that was wrong, that was abhorrent, et cetera, et cetera.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.
