SWIMMING WITH THE POD

Matthew England is Australia’s leading ocean modeller and the world’s foremost authority on the modelling of the Southern Ocean. And an ocean swimmer / surfer from way back! Matthew researches the future health of our oceans under pressures such as climate change and pollution. We also talked about the mysterious tar balls  that washed up on Sydney beaches in 2024 and messages in a bottle thrown o...

Justine Nolan , Director of the Australian Human Rights Institute at UNSW, has swum all 45 of Sydney's glorious ocean pools . Inspired by Places We Swim (have a listen back to our podcast ep with Caroline and Dillon ), Justine journeyed across Sydney at the end of covid, enjoying our newfound freedoms, to explore one of Sydney's most unappreciated yet sublime features. Songs in this episode - all...

Michaela Werner is free diver, who in 2023, set a new world record , becoming the first woman to swim 101 underwater laps of a 25-metre pool in an hour. Born in Slovakia, she moved to Australia at age 19 where she fell in love with freediving. Michaela can swim 200m underwater, can hold her breath for six minutes and is a qualified free-diving instructor and coach.  Songs in this episode - all lic...

Anthony Blazevich is a Professor of Biomechanics in the School of Medical and Health Sciences at Edith Cowan University. He is also the head of the Centre for Exercise and Sports Science Research , so is a fabulous person to talk to about biomechanics, body types and how our physiology affects our ability to move through water . Listen in to hear how you could tweak your stroke for quicker times,...

Rebecca Olive is an ocean swimmer whose academic research explores the role of sport and leisure in human and environmental health. In particular, her work explores the practices and cultures of ocean swimming and surfing to understand how human and environmental well-being interact, as well as our relationships to all things blue-space, such as sharks, animals, plastics, pollution and health. Her...

Michelle O’Shea is a Senior Lecturer at Western Sydney University whose research interests dive into the areas of sport, culture and society, particularly with regard to swimming. She has looked into issues such as why swimming lessons for kids are important , as well as the role of the swimming pool in society. Her research particularly examines issues relevant to gender and diversity, and how th...

Primrose Freestone , Associate Professor in Clinical Microbiology at the University of Leicester and science communicator, is an infectious diseases expert, and has dived into the debate of whether swimming in a pool or in the natural environment  is the safer option. She also takes us through the cleanliness of hot-tubs (hint, they're gross.) Songs in this episode - all licensed under a  Creative...

Seena Mathew is Assistant Professor of Biology, University of Mary Hardin-Baylor. As a neurobiologist, she studies the effects of swimming on the brain, which are many! You can read her article in The Conversation ( Swimming gives your brain a boost – but scientists don’t know yet why it’s better than other aerobic activities)  or tune in here! Songs in this episode - all licensed under a  Creativ...

Episode 50! Swimmer's ear ( acute otitis externa ) is an outer ear infection that many swimmers will have had at some point in their lives. However, it turns out that you don't have to go swimming to get swimmer's ear.  Thomas Schrepfer is assistant professor of head and neck surgery in the University of Florida Department of Otolayrngology, and a keen diver and swimmer. Songs in this episode - al...

Rolf Hut is a hydrological scientist from  Delft University of Technology . Or perhaps he's better described as MacGyver scientist, attacking problems from different and interesting angles. One such problem was the infamous 1962 escape from Alcatraz , in which inmates Clarence Anglin, John Anglin, and Frank Morris escaped from Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary, by tucking papier-mâché versions of thei...

Andy Donaldson is a world-recorder holding open-water swimmer. In 2023, he is attempting to swim the Oceans Seven in one year, and is making a pretty good fist of it, having already swum the English Channel (in a British record time), the North Channel (only 4 minutes off the record), the Cook Strait (in world record time) and the Molokai Channel in Hawaii. At the time of recording, he was setting...

Pedro Ordenes is an Alcatraz legend, having swum the famous route over 1000 times!! Pedro runs Water World Swim that organizes many swims in San Francisco Bay, California and across the world. I was lucky enough to swim Alcatraz with Water World Swim recently in April 2023. Pedro is an exceptionally accomplished open water swimmer, perhaps the highlight being swimming the Strait of Magellan in Sou...

Peta Bradley is a member of the Australian ice swimming team that recently competed at the World Ice Swimming Championships in France . She competed in the 1000m, 500m, and 50m butterfly, bringing home a bronze medal in the 500m. Peta hails from Gilgandra, quite some distance from any coastline, and does a lot of her training in dams. She has also completed the coveted ice mile at Thedbo. Peta is...

Lynne Cox is arguably the most accomplished ocean swimmer of all time. She set the record for the English Channel in 1972, was the first woman to swim the Cook Strait in New Zealand in 1975, famously swam between the US and the USSR in 1987 across the Bering Strait in bone-chilling 3 degree waters, and then even colder in Antarctica and Greenland. She has a list of achievements too long to list he...

Professor Peter Ralph is Executive Director of the Climate Change Cluster in the Faculty of Science at UTS, and is partnering with Australian surf brand Piping Hot to develop textiles made from seaweed for surfwear. Nature-derived alternatives for the fashion industry have the potential to revolutionise products and vastly reduce their impact on the oceans. Apologies for a little bit of building n...

Eli Ball is training to swim the English Channel... butterfly. Yes, you read that correctly. Butterfly. He is an exceptionally accomplished butterflying ocean swimmer, having completed a plethora of marathon ocean swims , including the 20km Rottnest Island swim , along the way setting the butterfly record. Songs in this episode - all licensed under a  Creative Commons License : Butterfly - takashi...

Lauren Tischendorf is the first woman to swim solo around Lord Howe Island - 32.2 km of sharks, currents, 25 knot winds and 2.5 metre swell, finishing in 13 hours 50 minutes and 26 seconds. She has also filmed a documentary of the swim, I just went for a swim , highlighting the spectacular ocean as well as the importance of the empowerment of girls and women. You can watch this film throughout Aus...

Brendan Cullen is training to swim the English channel , but what makes his journey exceptional is that he is a sheep farmer from Kars Station, east of Broken Hill in NSW, and is about 350 km from the nearest coastline. Four mornings a week, Brendan swims in the murky waters of Lake Pamamaroo and Lake Copi Hollow in the Menindee Lakes, where he can't typically see more than 20 centimetres in front...

Peter Hancock has now swum well over 1000 consecutive days, most days in Dumaresq Dam in Armidale, central NSW. Often the temperature is down near freezing. But this is not the first time Pete has conquered an incredible swimming challenge. In 2014, he swam in 333 different locations in the one year, including in the 1.6 degree Fox Glacier River in New Zealand. As a freshwater ecologist, it's not...

Jaimee Rogers hosts the Big Sports Breakfast program on Sky Sports Radio, is a national level swimmer in the 200m breaststroke, and is now tackling the English Channel. She is raising money with Gotcha4life to support mental health programs. You can sponsor her here . Songs in this episode - all licensed under a  Creative Commons License : Balmoral - Peyrius Winter - Datasuck Calais to Dover - Bin...

Jon Stagg has completed the Dark Mofo Nude Solstice Swim every year since its inception. What makes someone swim nude in the middle of the Tasmanian winter? Jon has some fabulous stories - he even did it himself when the event was cancelled during covid! Songs in this episode - all licensed under a  Creative Commons License : Nude Beach - Le Blanche Naked - Pasi Sillanpaa Wobble - Josh Tiong Sapph...

If you live on the east coast of Australia, your ocean swimming season has been rudely interrupted by the weather, with swims cancelled up and down the coast because of high swells and flooding. Australia has just experienced its wettest summer for five years because of a climate cycle known as La Nina.  Associate Professor Andréa Taschetto is an oceanographer and ARC Future Fellow at the Climate...

Associate Professor Anna Clark is an ocean lover, fisher and historian at the University of Technology, Sydney. She has extensively researched the history of beach culture in Australia , an important place for thousands of generations of Indigenous culture,  a place of last resort during the Great Depression, and a place of upheaval during the more recent Cronulla riots. And throughout all that ti...

John Sheely is head gardener at the Warrnambool Botanical Gardens, an acclaimed ocean swimmer who, with pools closed due to covid, has now swum 300 consecutive ocean swims , and is aiming at 365 - a fair achievement when you consider he's swimming without a wetsuit off the coast of Victoria! It will end up being over 1000 km swum. He's also got quite the take on beer and steak as sports nutrition!...

Chloe McCardel is probably the world's best ocean swimmer. She holds the record for the world's longest unassisted ocean swim (124.4 km), has crossed the English Channel 37 times, was inducted into the International Marathon Swimming Hall of Fame in 2016 and was International Marathon Swimmer of the Year, 2014 & 2015. Her achievements are too long to fully describe! She is also an acclaimed coach,...