Steve Backshall on sharks, quicksand, and getting his fingertips eaten by piranhas
The adventurer, broadcaster, scientist and writer Steve Backshall joins the Country Life podcast.

The adventurer, broadcaster, scientist and writer Steve Backshall has been a fixture on TV screens in Britain for nearly three decades — and we're absolutely thrilled that he joined James Fisher on the Country Life Podcast.
Steve talks through some of the highlights of his amazing career, from coming face-to-face with tigers and great white sharks to discovering ancient ruins while diving in flooded cave systems.
Subscribe to the Country Life Podcast
But as well as a globetrotting naturalist with a gift for overcoming his natural fears, he's also a natural raconteur who shares and why he's determined that his kids should have a wonderful childhood spent outdoors — just as he did.
Steve is now sharing his lifetime of adventures on a new podcast called That's Just Wild, which he presents alongside biologist Lizzie Daly and environmental journalist Sarah Roberts, with two episodes each week from wherever you get your podcasts.
Steve Backshall (right) with co-presenters Lizzie Daly (left) and Sarah Roberts (centre)
Episode credits
Host: James Fisher
Guest: Steve Backshall
Exquisite houses, the beauty of Nature, and how to get the most from your life, straight to your inbox.
Editor and producer: Toby Keel
Music: JuliusH via Pixabay
Toby Keel is Country Life's Digital Director, and has been running the website and social media channels since 2016. A former sports journalist, he writes about property, cars, lifestyle, travel, nature.
-
'I found myself in a magical world of a sun-dappled forest, speckled with wild flowers of kaleidoscopic colours and brilliant mosses': Solo walking in the Pyrenees
The Pyrenees reserves its best treasures for walkers prepared to venture off the well-beaten trail, says Teresa Levonian Cole, on a solo holiday in Ribes de Freser.
-
Rainforests, exotic pets and Winston Churchill's peerage: Country Life Quiz of the Day, July 16, 2025
Plus Isaac Newton, the Monopoly board and more in Wednesday's quiz.
-
Sophia Money-Coutts: Is there even any point in setting an out of office, these days?
Setting an out of office email only to reply anyway is a vicious cycle, writes our columnist.
-
The truth about P.G. Wodehouse: Robert Daws on playing England's greatest comic writer
The actor Robert Daws starred alongside Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie in Jeeves and Wooster back in the 1990s, and the work of P.G. Wodehouse has been part of his decades-long career ever since. He joined the Country Life Podcast.
-
Don't judge a plant by its smell: Why 'the little stinkers of the natural world' are just doing their job
Reminiscent of love and with an unmistakable odour of death, the little stinkers of the natural world might incite repulsion, but they are only doing their job, pleads Ian Morton
-
What everyone is talking about this week: Are people marrying younger?
Week in, week out, Will Hosie rounds up the hottest topics on everyone's lips, in London and beyond.
-
Puffins and shearwaters, skuas and terns, gannets and gulls and guillemots and wings, these are a few of our favourite things (seabirds)
From a heroic long-distance swimmer to a producer of spectacularly eerie sound effects, the seabirds seen swooping and diving over British waters have all manner of singular skills.
-
The red kite is a soaraway success story, having escaped extinction to become a familiar sight in our skies again
Unhurried in flight and with a sideline in stolen goods, the handsome red kite is the gentleman thief of the raptor world, writes Mark Cocker.
-
‘This isn't just silver — it's a story of a man who fell in love with a woman who society deemed unworthy': The large silver sculpture of rutting stags that scandalised Victorian society
George Harry Grey, the 7th Earl of Stamford, was shunned when he married a circus performer. This sculpture was his way of showing the world that he was a fighter — and it's now been acquired by the National Trust.
-
'Never willing to pardon where I had a power to revenge’: The history of the duelling class
Settling a dispute with swords, pistols and, if legend is to be believed, sausages and guitars, has long been a matter of honour even among modern-day rock stars, discovers John F. Mueller.