Looking Sideways Action Sports Podcast

In this episode of Looking Sideways, I speak to Julie Maughan and Chris Hines about Dirty Business, the recent Channel 4 drama exposing the state of the UK’s water industry since privatisation, and the real-life tragedy at its centre. The story of eight-year-old Heather Preen, who died after contracting E. coli following a sewage spill on a Devon beach, forms the emotional core of the series, and...

Welcome to the final episode of my three-part Winter Olympics series, in which we’re tackling one of the biggest controversies surrounding the recent Winter Olympics: fossil fuel sponsorship. This episode focuses on the Ski Fossil Free campaign, initiated by activists Calum McIntyre and Nikolai Schirmer, which seeks to end fossil fuel partnerships across IOC and FIS events. This incredibly effecti...

Welcome to the second of three post–Winter Olympics episodes in which I am examining the recent Winter Olympics from a variety of different perspectives. In this second episode, I’m joined by Lesley McKenna, one of snowboarding’s great original thinkers. A pro skier, snowboarder, coach and team manager, she is herself a three-time Olympian, and helped run GB Park & Pipe in the years when Jenny Jon...

Welcome to the first of three post–Winter Olympics episodes in which we’ll examine the recent Games from a number of different perspectives. As a lifelong snowboarder, I’ve always had a complicated relationship with the Olympics. The performances and spectacle are incredible. But beyond the hype, there are bigger cultural conversations worth having. That’s what this short series is about. In this...

Alice Sainsbury is a designer, writer and speaker who in 2015 was diagnosed with an acute neurological condition called transverse myelitis. Since then, she’s been on a mission to break down the barriers that stop people with disabilities participating in the outdoor sports and activities that so many of us take for granted. In this episode, we explore the reality of life for a disabled person in...

Oscar-winner, snowboarder, and one of the most influential documentary filmmakers working today, Orlando von Einsiedel makes his return to the show, nearly eight years after his first appearance. In that time, films such as Virunga, The White Helmets and The Lost Children have set a new standard in gripping, immersive documentary story-telling. Recorded live at the 2025 Kendal Mountain Festival in...

If you ask me, this week’s guest Axel Pauporte is one of the most influential snowboarders of the 1990s and 2000s. Even if you don’t know his name, you’re living in a snowboarding culture that he helped shape. Especially if you’re a European snowboarder.  To qualify this rather bold claim, it helps to remember how singular an outlier Axel truly was.  Back in the early 90s, professional snowboarder...

It’s December 24th. Which must means it’s time for my much-loved Festive Special with close friends-of-the-show Tim Warwood and Adam Gendle! This might well be the conversation I look forward to the most each year. If you’re new to the show, some background: I go back thirty years with these boys, who I first met through the very close British snowboarding community we’re so lucky to be an integra...

Use LOOKINGSIDEWAYS10 for 10% off anything from Finisterre -- Adam Skolnick is a journalist, none-fiction writer, famed Roll On podcaster, and the author behind the brilliant new novel - his first! - American Tiger. American Tiger (a work that has been gestating for years) is a milestone for Adam in more ways than one. As his first published novel it is, of course, the latest stage in his evolutio...

In this latest follow-up episode to The Announcement, I’m joined by activist, entrepreneur, engineer, and policy researcher Len Necefer for a conversation in which we discuss the tension between ideological purity and pragmatic action when it comes to genuine environmental and social change. Len, a proud member of the Navajo Nation, works at the intersection of Indigenous peoples, natural resource...

Use LOOKINGSIDEWAYS10 for 10% off anything from Finisterre -- Filmmaker, surfer, seeker and - OK, then - influencer: Seth Hughes is one of British surfing’s most thought-provoking creative presences. We’ve been friends for a few years now, and like everybody who follows him on Instagram, over the last few years I’ve been following his ‘apprenticeship to the land and sea’ with fascination and inter...

Use LOOKINGSIDEWAYS10 for 10% off anything from Finisterre -- Skateboarder, photographer, artist, Toy Machine company owner - Ed Templeton is one of skateboarding’s most influential and beloved influences.  And as a 14-year-old who obsessively wore out their copy of 1281 back in the day, he was a real and important influence on me personally when it came to working out how to express myself as a c...

Use LOOKINGSIDEWAYS10 for 10% off anything from Finisterre -- Legendary surf and skate film-maker Thomas Campbell’s new film Yi-Wo has been ten years in the making. So when TC got in touch to ask if he could come back on the podcast to talk me through the decade-long creative process that went into the making of this instant classic, I was in. I’ve had the good fortune to see Yi-Wo a few times now...

In this fourth follow-up episode of The Announcement, which was recorded live at MAD Fest in early July 2025, I’m exploring a question that is directly related to the topics I explored in The Announcement series proper - what does effective activism for brands actually look like? MAD Fest is a huge festival for brands and agencies that takes place each year in East London, and I was invited to tak...

Use LOOKINGSIDEWAYS10 for 10% off anything from Finisterre -- 250 episodes of Looking Sideways! And to mark the occasion, I invited the great Jeremy Jones back for this second visit, six years after we recorded our first conversation for the podcast. Much has changed in Looking Sideways land since that first chat. Back then, the show was basically me interviewing famous action sports types about t...

I have my 250th episode of Looking Sideways coming up! And I’m also very close to hitting a rather large Substack subscriber milestone, which itself feels like a nicely significant moment. To mark the big 250, I thought it’d be fun to revisit some favourite articles and podcast episodes from the last eight years of Looking Sideways: continuing with this classic interview with legendary skater Jami...

Use LOOKINGSIDEWAYS10 for 10% off anything from Finisterre -- As America's current democratic crisis has unfolded over the last few months, I’ve pondered an increasingly uncomfortable question: where is the meaningful opposition from our community as fundamental institutions and public lands face unprecedented assault? How to account for the relative silence from community leaders, athletes, ambas...

In this third follow-up episode of The Announcement, I'm sharing my original January 2024 conversation with John Elkington and Louise Kjellerup Roper of Volans in its entirety. This conversation addresses perhaps the most significant yet under-discussed aspect of the Patagonia ‘Earth is our only shareholder’ story - its relevance as a model for most businesses, especially publicly-traded or shareh...

Use LOOKINGSIDEWAYS10 for 10% off anything from Finisterre -- What happens when one of the world's foremost documentary filmmakers turns her lens on the world of action sports and mountain culture in vital films such as Mountain Queen and The Crash Reel? That’s the question at the heart of this conversation with the brilliant Lucy Walker, a filmmaker who I think is one of the most important nonfic...

In this second follow-up episode of The Announcement, I explore a crucial counterbalance to the billionaire-driven change narrative: the power of citizenship and grassroots movements in reshaping our collective future. I'm joined by Jon Alexander, co-founder of the New Citizen Project and co-author of the increasingly influential book Citizens - a work that offers a compelling, necessary vision ab...

Use LOOKINGSIDEWAYS for 15% off anything from Db Journey. -- The notion of the visionary founder is the most ubiquitous of modern tropes. It is also one of the most harmful, as one glance at the madness that unfolds on LinkedIn on any given day ably demonstrates. And in a way the idea that the founder is fuelled by a weird diet, 4am starts and a particularly itchy social media trigger-finger remin...

In this first follow-up Announcement episode, I explore a question which I began to examine in episode two of The Announcement, and which is now at the centre of global politics: are billionaires fundamentally damaging to democracy, regardless of their political leanings? I'm joined once again by Carl Rhodes, academic and author of Woke Capitalism: How Corporate Morality is Sabotaging Democracy an...

Use SIDE25WAVES10 for 10% off anything from session at The Wave in Bristol! -- “A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play, his labour and his leisure, his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves other to determine whether he is working or paying. To...

Use SIDE25WAVES10 for 10% off anything from session at The Wave in Bristol! -- Packing it all in to lead your dream lifestyle in an exotic location is a fantasy every traveller has indulged in at some point. Few make it a reality. And yet that’s exactly what the inspirational Ed Templeton - no, not that one - and his wife Sofie have accomplished with the brilliant Soul & Surf community they have c...

“Well, I think the simple answer, and nothing here is simple, is that capitalism dies with its mistakes.” - John Elkington, Founder, Volans Patagonia’s September 2022 decisions to make ‘Earth’ the company’s only shareholder was huge news, particularly in the worlds of climate activism, business, philanthropy, the outdoors, and action sports. And at the heart of this decision, as the company made c...