The Careless Talk Climbing Podcast

Legend of British Climbing Ben Bransby joins us on the pod this week! Ben is definitely not someone to blow his own trumpet but he has climbed very hard in trad, sport in boulder over the years. He's also put up some incredible first ascents, gone on winter expeditions and even competed! He's done it all so we thought we'd ramble on about some of it for a bit. Make sure you listen t...

A true ramble pod this week bordering on the irreverent in the opening 20 minutes but we do calm down and have a proper discussion eventually! Amongst some wildly off-topic rambles we chat about climbing genetics and we eventually get to the main topic of the podcast which was to attempt to choose which decade of climbing we would have most liked to have been a part of.  If you're enjoying th...

Tom is back! Tom is a nutritionist that has worked extensively with climbers from all across the grade spectrum. He has a huge wealth of knowledge with all things nutrition but he also has a gift for cutting through the sciencey mumbo-jumbo and offering well simplified and usable advice. We cover a bunch of topics relating to body composition, how to fuel to maximise your training time and we also...

This week we were really excited to be joined by Sean Bailey! Sean is one of the world's best climbers. He is right at the cutting edge in both bouldering and sport climbing. We didn't go much into any of that though! We had a general chat about the state of climbing, including comps, grading and media. Definitely one of our 'we do chats not interviews' pods! Hope you enjoy! If...

Could a guest be much better suited to our favourite topics and recurring themes throughout the pod history? Ethan enthusiastically joins us on our tangents and rambles into psychology, Newtonian physics and other topics we don't know enough about to be qualified to give an opinion on. But fear not, we get some questions in from time to time and Ethan shares some gems from his already long, a...

We're going back in time to the halcyon days of a couple of months ago this week! An episode we recorded and then forgot about! Shockingly the climbing world hasn't moved on unrecognisably in two months so it's all still relevant. We chatted about climbing at night, Sam's time in Font and ideal chalk strategies.  Hope you enjoy, there's a longer version on the Patreon as w...

This week we're joined by a voice you'll probably recognise! Steven Dimmitt, the host of The Nugget joins us to chat about podcasting as well as his personal climbing and we all ramble on about our personal climbing philosophies and what motivates us. We get to hear how being the host of a successful climbing podcast has changed Steven's relationship with his own climbing and what h...

Something a little different this week as instead of focusing on a climber we're focusing on a crag! Magic Wood is one of the most famous climbing destinations in the world. It's seen development from too many icons to name over the years and has been incredibly popular for many years. With such popularity has come some challenges though. The crag is home to lots of polished rock and ero...

The author of the Lake District (Aidan's home area) boulder guide, Greg Chapman joins us this week. We have a wide ranging discussion covering lots of things that relate to the writing of guidebooks and developing boulders. This episode is a little more esoteric than most as a lot of the conversations pertain to the Lake District but I think it mostly all carries over to any other boulder are...

Aidan and I this week chatting about a bunch of stuff. I'm in Magic Wood and Aidan is in Finland so we chat about that. If we could build the best climber in the world using attributes from existing climbers, who would we use?  If you're enjoying the podcast and would like to hear the extended edition of this podcast then do check out our Patreon page :) https://www.patreon.com/user?u=70...

No pies are safe from Seb's fingers! Sébastien is an incredibly accomplished climber. He's climbed at an elite level across a range of climbing disciplines and he's doing it all in an eco friendly way.  In the episode we talk about his recent mission to climb 100 font 7As in a day, sailing the Atlantic to climb the Dawn Wall, free climbing the nose and climbing James Pearson's...

In this episode, amongst other things, we're pondering about the remuneration for top climbers. Are they being exploited? Are they underpaid? Should they just be grateful to be able to climb for a living and accept that they can't expect to be set up for the future? We dive in, in a roundabout sort of way... If you're enjoying the podcast and would like to support us, we have a Patr...

The great Ashima Shiraishi joined us for a chat this week! Ashima has been on the climbing scene in a big way for what feels like forever, but somehow she's still in her early twenties! Ashima broke many records on her way through the grading scale as a young climber which culminated in her climbing V15 at just 14 years old! She has also competed on the world cup circuit and has been in the s...

This week we were excited to be joined by Emil Abrahamsson! You probably know Emil from his exploits on YouTube, his sends of hard rock climbs and perhaps from his competition days as well. He's an accomplished climber both inside and outside but he's also a really lovely and super psyched guy with a nice optimistic take on lots of things around climbing. Join us for a nice wide ranging...

It's a good episode for the Aidan fans this week as Aidan has sent his projects and has learnt a great deal in the process. Perfect time to stick a microphone in front of the chap and press go. Hope you enjoy! If you're enjoying the podcast and would like to support us please check out our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=70353823 Support the show

It was great to be joined by Bernd Zangerl this week! A true legend of bouldering he's been involved in the development of loads of classic areas like Ticino and Magic Wood and has been climbing elite level boulders for over twenty years. In more recent times Bernd has been pouring everything he has learned into the development of Rakchham in the Indian Himalayas. We talked about that as well...

Something very different for you all this week. Nettie & Dave a.k.a The Climbing Backpackers are on an adventure climbing across Asia. They might be on their dream climbing trip but they're also setting out to prove that just because you don't have a huge chunk of savings that doesn't preclude you from living an adventurous lifestyle. To prove the point they are living on a budg...

Simon Lorenzi on the pod this week! Simon is the first man to have climbed 3 9A boulders with Soudain seul, Alphane and Burden of Dreams. He's also a mainstay on the world cup circuit and has made finals on more than one occasion. Despite being one of the best boulderers in the world Simon is slightly more under the radar than most of his peers and so it was great to be able to sit down with...

The renowned coach and climber David Mason is back this week! This time we nerd out about some training ideas, talk about how he is mentally dealing with a recent serious knee injury and we ponder how much of climber's finger strength is really within their control at all.  There's some interesting topics of conversation in there to  wonder about!  If you're enjoying the podcast and...

Neil is one of the original performance coaches in rock climbing, known for his elite level trad ascents as well as his efforts to demystify the obscure and hazy world of climbing training and his ability to deliver it in a way that makes sense. We chatted about a wide range of topics from social media, the online trad climbing mob, the stresses of grading and training for climbing. Perhaps one da...

Noah jumps on the pod this week! He's recently repeated some of the hardest test pieces the US has to offer and in relatively quick time whilst sporting at least 5 or 6 taped tips! We chatted a bunch about Sleepwalker and Defying Gravity, how the style in which he climbs lends itself well to flashing hard boulders, his training, how his meteoric rise in climbing grades might not be quite as f...

Oh yes, it's a grades pod. Aidan's least favourite subject, and it's hardly in Sam's top 10 either. We end up having a bunch of discussions relating to grades, getting a history lesson from Aidan for first of the grades (possibly all wrong) and we give some recommendations for climbs at each grade bracket... Or at least some that came to mind without thinking about it for all t...

It was a treat to have living legend Ben Moon on the pod this week. A lot of ground covered in an absolutely whistle-stop tour of Ben's career and replete with a fine selection of totally random tangents and rambles. Bailing from O levels because of too much physics, dossing in a cave, the birth of sport climbing, training and board climbing, how comps paid better in the 80s than they do toda...

A follow-along survey for the role of climbing in our lives: Sam and Aidan are joined by Mimi White a climber and psychologist as she collects data and runs us through her recently published survey (now closed). Complex and thought provoking, we both had to really think hard to answer these and it really got us pondering as we tried to cobble together our thought processes. I hope you enjoy trying...

We're joined by the man Alex Megos described as the strongest on the world cup circuit! We had a great evening chatting with Yannick about rocks, comps and training. Give it a listen to hear some brilliantly quotable lines from one of the strongest climbers on the planet. Our personal favourite was 'bouldering is not a physical sport'. Top guy and really enjoyable to listen to, than...