Looking Sideways Action Sports Podcast

I go back 25 years with these Adam Gendle and Johno Verity, my guests this week. We met back in the late 90s through snowboarding. But looking back, making things and creativity were equally as important. Music and writing in my case; film-making and art for Gend and Johno. I’ve had a ringside seat as they’ve developed as artists and film-makers over the last two-and-a-half decades, so to see them...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.wearelookingsideways.com Paid subscribers! This episode comes with an extra 15 minute bonus section with me and Ray so make sure you have your paid podcast feed set-up. Free subscribers! Don’t worry! You’ll still be able to listen to the main interview with me and Ray (that’s the ‘free preview’), but to hear the bonus chat about Ray...

Welcome to the latest in an irregular series of bonus episodes of the Looking Sideways Action Sports podcast. No fuss, no fanfare, just a non-traditional episode banged out every now and again when this opportunity comes up. This episode you’re about to listen to is the full live chat with Schoph, Andrew Cotton, Helena Long, Marcus Chapman from Tour de Test Valley and Simon Gunning, CEO of CALM, w...

The average professional surf, skate or snow career tends to follow a pretty set path. Five-to-ten years at the top, usually from the mid-teens to late-twenties, before time, injuries, and the shifting vagaries of the industry draw things to a close, and the rider heads off back into obscurity. Any pro hoping for a career longer than this simple arc better find another string to their bow quickly,...

Looking Sideways is proudly ad-free and reader and listener supported. Thanks to all my paid subscribers, who help keep the podcast and newsletter free for everybody. To support Looking Sideways with a free or paid subscription, sign up via www.lookingsideways.substack.com It’s been a long time coming - five years since I first contacted him - but in July 2023 I finally caught up with artist, dire...

When legendary surf writer Matt George got in touch asking if he could come on the show to chat about his new book In Deep, I was all in. In Deep is a hand-picked collection of Matt’s era-defining surf writing that spans well over 30 years. But, as I discovered during our conversation, for Matt it symbolises much more than this. It’s a flag-in-the-ground moment to memorialise a passing moment in s...

July 23rd note There's no new episode this week, so I thought that just this one I would lift the paywall on the first episode of Rondtable, the new discussion show which will usually be exclusively for paid subscribers. Looking forward to hearing what everyone thinks! A few months ago, my pal and staunch Looking Sideways supporter Jon Weaver asked me if I’d ever considered doing a Housekeeping Co...

I’m on quite a run at the moment when it comes to chatting to wise, inspiring and talented women, and this ace chat with my pal Gilly Macarthur continues this sequence in fine style. Gilly is a snowboarder, swimmer, open water swim coach, climber, event organiser, speaker - you get the picture. Basically, she’s a proper force of nature, a proper catalyst and peerless communicator who gets stuck ri...

Welcome to a classic lifer episode of Looking Sideways with my pal Melody Sky! If you’re somebody who scans the name of the guest and thinks ‘never heard of them, I’m not going to bother’, I implore you not to make that mistake here, but Melody Sky has surely had one of the most fascinating careers in European action sports media. Sure, she’s a photographer, filmer, artist and all-round creative l...

Easkey Britton alert! Yep, I’ve got my old pal Easkey back on the show this week for her second visit, a mere six years after we first chatted for the pod. We’ve stayed in touch, and over the years I’ve watched the evolution of her singular, insightful career as a surfer, academic and writer with awe. So when Easkey got in touch to say she’d be in London in mid May to do a talk at the Finisterre s...

I welcomed one of snowboarding’s modern greats back onto the show for this episode: Elias Elhardt. If you’ve heard our previous conversation, or watched any of his films, you’ll know Elias is a true snowboarding original. On the snow, he’s one of our most highly-regarded freeriders, respected by peers such as Travis Rice, and with the CV to prove it. But it’s off the snow that he is arguably havin...

“I don't consider myself a world traveller because I haven't travelled the world. I literally found the 10 places I love and just keep going back. Because I would rather go deep and immersive with a culture, and understand it and its issues, than just fill myself with dopamine every time I get a stamp of my passport to shoot images out the car window at 60 miles an hour, which I've done.” Earlier...

After episode 204’s polarising conversation with Steven Kotler, regular service resumes this week, with this lovely chat with surfers and film-makers Lucy Small and Maddie Meddings about their new film Yama Surf. Regular listeners will recall my previous conversation with Lucy back in 2021, after she achieved notoriety for speaking up about gender equality in surfing in a famous post-contest speec...

Everything we know about ageing is wrong - and action sports are the perfect tool through which to test this hypothesis. At least, that’s the contention of Steven Kotler, this week’s guest and author a new book called Gnar Country. Kotler, who tends to be described as an ‘expert in human performance’, made his name as the doyen of all things flow thanks to books such as The Rise of Superman and Th...

Type 2 is a podcast from Looking Sideways in association with Patagonia that explores the intersection between the outdoors, action sports and activism. And after four years - this is the final ever episode of Type 2! And what a fitting guest I’ve got for this landmark episode - Jenna Johnson, current President of Patagonia Inc. Jenna is a Ventura lifer, a proud product geek, and somebody who has...

“I don't consider myself a world traveller because I haven't travelled the world. I literally found the 10 places I love and just keep going back. Because I would rather go deep and immersive with a culture, and understand it and its issues, than just fill myself with dopamine every time I get a stamp of my passport to shoot images out the car window at 60 miles an hour, which I've done.” Paid sub...

How do we choose the stories we tell? Who gets to write the histories we decide sum up our collective past? And what’s the impact when equally valid versions of the past are written out of these histories? All questions I explored with legendary snowboarding photographer Stan Evans in this fascinating conversation, recorded during my recent trip to LA. Back when I was working in the snowboard medi...

Lifer alert! Yep, this conversation with my old pal and current head of creative at Patagonia in Ventura Alex Weller is another classic of this quintessential LS genre, recorded in California during my recent trip to the Golden State. And it was proper batten down the hatches and don the sou’wester time. - I was in LA during the wettest, stormiest weather the state had experienced in a decade. It...

Listen now (57 min) | This week I am reposting my summer 2020 conversation with none binary trans skater Leo. The search for our authentic self is a lifelong process. And not always a successful one. It takes a huge amount of self honesty, and a willingness to embrace consistent and at times not always comfortable evolution. It’s something we all have to face, whether consciously or not. But imagi...

It’s the first leg of an impromptu south west omnibus as I catch up with my pal and Finisterre founder Tom Kay who is returning visit to the pod for the first time in six years! Tom was one of my first guests back in the early days of the show. Back then, we had a swim on Brighton beach and then recorded the episode on the pebbles over a pint or two. This time around, we had a great day, starting...

Milestone alert! 200 episodes! Yep, six years and countless HKC rants later, episode 200 is finally here. And I’ve decided to mark this landmark occasion with the usual double header. Next week, I’m releasing a special bonus episode 200 conversation with my old pal and most-capped Looking Sideways alumnus Ed Leigh for paid subscribers only. Today, for this instalment, I’ve invited surfer and Wave...

“Give people a personal relationship with nature and they’re not going to commodify it. There is something more sacred out there, and that is nature. But we’re killing it because we don’t have a relationship with it.” Type 2 is a podcast from Looking Sideways in association with Patagonia that explores the intersection between the outdoors, action sports and activism. This week’s guest is Nick Hay...

Looking Sideways is proudly ad-free and reader and listener supported. Massive thanks to all my paid subscribers, who help keep the podcast and newsletter free for everybody. To consider supporting what I do with a free or paid subscription, click below Episode 199! How on earth did that happen? I’ve had a couple of admin and R&R focussed weeks since I released the Festive Special, but now I’m bac...

A special Housekeeping Corner bonus episode about why I am shifting the entire podcast and newsletter over to Substack and introducing a partial paywall. Find out more: www.lookingsideways.substack.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.wearelookingsideways.com

How does it feel to go into space? What does it make you feel about the future of our planet, and your own place in the universe? What are the moral implications of space travel? And just how do you take a picture of Pipeline from the International Space Station as it flies overhead at 17,000 mph? All questions that I discussed with this week’s guest Christina Koch , a surfer and – yes – astronaut...