The Careless Talk Climbing Podcast

Wow it's been a while since Huffy was last on! Generally considered the foremost climbing physio in British circles, Huffy really knows his stuff and is also one of the nicest and easiest people you could hope to meet so it was a pleasure to have him back. Lots of good stuff, give it a listen! If you want to hear more from Huffy then check out his podcast 'The Climbing Injury Podcast&apo...

I can't remember the last time I had a faster two hours than during this conversation. We had a long (mental) list of things to talk about and after asking a couple of questions I looked down and discovered we'd run out of time. We mostly talked about Eric's time as a Yosemite climbing ranger and his film-making and I still can't quite believe we didn't get to anything els...

Two return guests coming back for a new look round table. We chat about a range of topics from social media, awkward crag interactions, Hamish's new not for profit, what climbing means to us, Dean Potter and of course our new favourite Ebird comes up from time to time. It's a bit of a sprawling chat and we have to chase Ethan down a few rabbit holes but we got somewhere in the end, actua...

A home team episode, just us chatting about some various bits and pieces. Most of the bits and pieces are in the title and in the episode description so I probably shouldn't write them out here again should I? Maybe I should, but that's starting to feel like hard work so I won't... It's just dawned on me that in the time it took me to write that I could have just written a prop...

Long overdue, but we managed to get Tristan on the podcast. We've wanted him to come on for a long time. Tristan is a really strong climber from the south east who also has a witty and dry sense of humour which we really appreciate. Known for his hot takes and funny way of phrasing things he was great fun to have on and we enjoyed the chat immensely. Tristan recovered from Leukaemia a couple...

Yannick did it! I've been saying for a while we need to see some 9As get downgraded (and potentially some 8Cs/8C+s upgraded) and Yannick has helped to get the ball rolling. He's always fun to talk to, you never feel far away from a clipable comment or quote that would make us serious bank on instagram if I could be bothered to clip it and post it. He's honest and he says what he thi...

It's our 200th episode! To celebrate we're doing absolutely nothing out of the ordinary! Just Aidan and I this week, chatting about Squamish, media we've watched, some stats from the pod and we play a silly game where we have to draft 9A boulderers for some challenges.  If you're enjoying the pod and would like to support us: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=70353823 Support the...

This week we were joined by four time overall boulder world cup winner Natalia Grossman. Natalia is in the thick of an unfortunate set of injuries, having initially ruptured her ACL she now has picked up a nasty shoulder injury. Despite these debilitating setbacks she came back and won American nationals! On the face of it that sounds like an amazing comeback story but there's a lot more goin...

We had a great time doing 75% of a round table. Alas no Benn this time, but Katie has done a hard new boulder in Yosemite so that gave us something to talk about. We got to talking about confidence in the projecting process, comparison to others, how much pride we feel about our achievements and I throw a bunch of hypotheticals at them at the end! If you're enjoying the podcast and would like...

We had a great time chatting to Connor for this week's episode. I feel like you have to really make waves in the Trad world for us to know that much about you and Connor has done just that. After sending what was potentially the hardest ever trad pitch Connor went around the world to try the other contenders for the title, and in so doing, discovered that yes, it's probably the hardest e...

Jana Švecová joins us this week! We've been trying to get this sorted for a while so glad it finally came together. Jana is a super impressive climber, and has climbed multiple 8C boulders (she climbed another one since we recorded this episode). We chat to her about those projects, coming back from injuries, her long term battle with Terranova, Czech climbing and we also run through some des...

This episode is just the home team having a bit of a round up. We talk about Aidan's yosemtie season and I push a little harder to get his thoughts behind how it all went than I normally do. Then we just have a little catch up about some of the goings on in the climbing world and finally return to our desert island boulders, this time with more examples to plagiarise.  If you're enjoying...

This week we had a great time chatting to Bruce Zou. Bruce is a very charismatic chap who is incredibly passionate about his climbing. He has climbed up to 8C and has also developed an affinity for climbing barefoot. His opinions about what climbing means to him and how they have changed were really interesting and we also talked about the pros and cons of grade chasing. Really enjoyable chat, som...

*Warning the sound quality in the first 5 minutes is pretty dodgy but improves after that :) We had one of our favourites back on the pod for this week's episode! Max Milne has recently won the new Pro Climbing League after qualifying as a wild card and he's been putting in great performances on the World Cup circuit for a while now. He's also dabbled in rock climbing, flashing The...

A round table with Benn and Katie again this week. We had to talk about Ondra a bit because he's been busy! Then the main goal was to fill out a D&D style alignment chart we stole from Reddit. We had a laugh with it and I tried to herd the cats as best I could but it all got a bit messy! If you're enjoying the pod and would like to support us please consider checking out our Patreon...

Fan favourite Allison is back on the pod this week! Thankfully Allison had a phenomenal run of form recently, culminating in some big sends, namely The Mantra, a three move V14 on tiny crimps, and The Expanse, a V15 boulder that had previously only been climbed by some of the tallest men in the sport! Climbing either of these boulders would be a good enough excuse to ask Allison to come back on th...

Keenan is back! A pod favourite for sure and someone Aidan has spent a lot of time with over the past few years. Keenan has been putting up more incredible first ascents, which we chat a bit about, namely Dreadnought but he also came equipped with a few of his own talking points! I've recently learnt that some more professional podcasts actually ask this of their guests the cheaters! Whilst w...

We got stood up! Some say we should send links and reminders to our guests but we've never bothered before, and now it's cost us! So Aidan and I just chatted happily amongst ourselves. Largely about the Pro Climbing League which is a new competition format that recently happened in London. Could this be the new more exciting competition format we've been hoping for? If not could it...

A bit of a messy round table for you this week. A few decent talking points hidden away amidst a mess of off-topic rambles and general merriment. I hope you get something out of it, they're definitely fun to record! Looking forward to seeing how AI segments the 'chapters'... If you're enjoying this and want more, there are deleted scenes on the Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/...

Wow, what form Zach Galla is in! Recent sends of Hypnotised Minds, Devilution, Return of the Sleepwalker and Shaolin, could be the most impressive run of ascents ever recorded. We really wanted to try and discern what could have led to such form, is it a mentality thing or improvements in strength? What is the optimum level of confidence for repeat sending? Knowing that rich veins of form are ofte...

We're back! Just the reunited home team this week. Shockingly we hadn't spoken that much for a month so we had quite a lot to catch up on. Aidan is hard focussed on his 6 degrees project but has also had a couple of trips, and Sam continues his expansionary quest for global domination by having another child and building another board. We chat about outdoor climbing comps and weigh up wh...

So, I never intended to make this episode. When I did the episode with independent gym owners I felt like I should probably reach out to a CEO of a chain gym for comment. I should have, but I didn't. I was planning to leave that thread as it was, but Ged from the Hangar got in touch to say he'd listened to it and would be up for having a chat to offer his thoughts from the other side of...

It's the 'Sam can't record anything this week' special! Where one of the knights of our round tables Katie hosts an ask me anything with questions from our Patroons (Patreon members). If you want to be one of the people throwing questions out then you too can join our fantastic community of Patroons via our Patreon page. Lots of insights into the inner workings of Aidan's...

Hello all, I come to you with a different offering this week. There's no Aidan this week, it's just me chatting to three different independent climbing gym owners in London. Sounds a bit niche but I was hoping to get a bit of a conversation going and I thought that there would be good parallels to other areas of the climbing world.  What do you reckon? Please leave your thoughts in the c...

The ever popular Jim Pope is back on the pod for his third time this week. A chap said to me he only knows Jim as a board climbing aficionado, which is quite funny really when in reality he is the hardest climber to put in a box that we know of. It's impossible to tell what he'll do next but he tends to do it pretty well and it's fun to talk to him about it afterwards.  If you'...