The Lunatic Fringe Podcast

Another kick ass mid-week reboot with Ivo Ninov!   A climber since he was very young, Ivo Ninov had to learn to overcome his fear of heights in order to follow his passion, and overcome he did. Without any real pretense or ego Ivo will tell you about his countless climbs in Yosemite, setting record after record up some of the most formidable rock on the planet. As member of "The Stone Monkey's", H...

Now a rightful and somewhat overdue inductee to the prestigious skydiving Hall of Fame, the one and only Omar Alhegelan takes the opportunity to sit down and talk about his origins in the sport and incredible opportunities along the way, as well as those he continues to push towards. From his almost predestined beginnings helping to mold what has become modern day freeflying to helping guide such...

Another kick ass mid-week reboot with Luigi Cani! Fear.  It's the one thing that the best in our sport have had to contend with, but for Luigi Cani it was almost too much.  Having started his skydiving career with static line jumps that terrified him, he couldn't understand why something inside him kept pushing him back into the airplane, regretting it almost every time. Yet it was that same fear...

Full send. Even before that was a thing, that was Jamie Leibert. Not one to mince words, he'll be the first to tell you he's had more than his fair share of trouble and the first to take responsibility. Starting out young breaking bones on the back of a bike, it wasn't school or sports that drove him, it was trouble. Fighting, parties and drugs were his path, and it turned out to be a path that le...

Another kick ass mid-week reboot with Curt Bartholomew! Embry-Riddle. Not exactly what you would naturally think of as the training grounds for a world class canopy pilot. Perhaps a world class airline jock, or in his case even an air traffic controller, but not the founding member of one of the sports longest lived and most accomplished canopy pilot teams in the sport of skydiving.  Curt Bartholo...

Not even on the map. Skydiving was so far outside what Marie Clark thought possible that when the opportunity finally did arrive, she was both incredibly excited at the prospect and scared to the point of drafting a will. As expected, landing from that first jump set Marie on a path, but it was one that was derailed almost as soon as it truly began with medical issues that saw her not just in the...

Another kick ass mid-week reboot with Jyro's Julien Peelman!   He might not be the best known name in the sport, and you've not seen him standing atop a podium after a sick canopy competition, but he's been there none the less.  Julien Peelman wasn't just creative in how he began his time in skydiving or even in how he got his gig with NZ Aerosports, but it's that exact creativity and training tha...

Twenty six years and still going strong. When Matt Yount got his start in skydiving, tandems were just becoming a normal way to enter the game, and now… Now not only does Matt find himself a tandem examiner but he finds himself traveling the globe helping to share our sport with individuals and skydiving federations worldwide. With trips to incredible places like Nepal, Iceland, the Maldives, Egyp...

Another kick ass mid-week reboot with Highlight Pro Skydiving Team's one and only Kaz Sheekey! Proper scared. Kaz Sheekey started out like I imagine a fair amount of us do in skydiving, but for her, just like most of us who decide to make a life out of it, that fear she felt on jump one became a positive driving force, not a deterrent. Immediately attracted to the lifestyle as well as her love of...

Dani Roman. There's a lot of things that can be said, but by now that pretty much sums it up. It may have been from humble beginnings, but his career has been anything but ordinary and he has no intentions of going back. Through volcanos, check. Under bridges, check. In freefall below your landing altitude, check. Yes. You read that correctly, freefall below landing altitude! Dani Roman is a prime...

Another kick-ass re-boot with Espen Fadnes! Born and raised in a part of Norway where sport wasn't just another choice, but a way of life, Espen Fadnes grew up roped up and climbing or skiing almost before he was walking. Being on the rock and in the mountains was beyond second nature, as were all the other terrestrial adventures Norway had to offer. Yet with Espen, from a young age, reaching the...

Running outside every time he heard his neighbors airplane flying low over his family farm, there was no doubt that aviation sparked something inside Dan Kluge, and the opportunity to watch a demonstration skydive was exactly the kick he needed to head out to the dropzone and start his own adventure. Running through his beginnings like most "working" skydivers do, Dan found himself chucking drogue...

Another mid-week reboot with the amazing Hannah Betts! If you're not the type to stay until the credits have all rolled, then you may just miss her name, but chances are, you know her work!  From an active duty police officer to a UK National and then World 4-way champion turned professional skydiving instructor, Hannah Betts is not a woman scared of change; so when the opportunity knocked, she de...

1959 may have been when she was able to successfully make her first jump, but Kim Emmons Knor had been trying to get out of planes for as long as she could remember. Never caring much about what society may or may not expect of her, it was somewhere around switching majors for her forth time her freshman year of college that luck and circumstance helped finally get her out on the strut. It may hav...

Another kick ass reboot with the one and only Bill Booth! - Photo by James Macca Macdonald.   William Booth. Bill Booth. Bill "Lord of the Three Rings" Motherfuckin' BOOTH! Astounding is all I have to say.  When you stop to think about literally all of the game changing inventions this man has brought to our sport, any one of which would put him deep in the Hall of Fame, and then put them all toge...

A third generation skydiver with an origin story stemming all the way back to World War II, Luke Aikins was literally born to be a skydiver. Growing up surrounded by skydiving in the beautiful Pacific Northwest, he had always known that his future would undoubtedly take place in the sky, but even back then he could have never predicted the amazing career he would carve out for himself. Both behind...

Another kick ass mid-week reboot with Ryan Graney! Teen climbing instructor and a bit of a lost soul, to a 200,000 a year oil and gas man, Ryan Graney made it pretty big pretty young, and exceeded expectations in more ways than one. A hard charging BASE jumper and professional party guy, you'd be surprised at just how much thought has gone into his crazy antics over the years. Articulating his des...

Another alumni from the epic (or infamous) Cross Keys, Mr. Simeon Lott got his start with a very last minute decision brought about by an almost chronic Point Break viewing habit.  Skydiving courtesy of Her Majesty's military, his transition from regimented to out of control was pretty abrupt with his first week at CK seeing both awesome change and tragedy. Having now traveled the globe and having...

Another kick ass mid-week reboot with DJ Marvin! DJ Marvin, host of the successful Gravity Lab Radio Podcast, founder and owner of the Ratings Center, long time skydiver and professional shit shooter sits down to talk to me about his beginnings in the sport, the podcasting world and where it's all led him. A love not only of skydiving itself but the community in which its based have been the drivi...

A second-generation skydiver born to a father who’d managed to make hundreds of jumps back when “sex was safe and skydiving was dangerous”, Ellen Pulford had grown up with the lure skydiving even though both her jumping parents had hung it up before she was around. Late to the game by some standards, it had been the corporate game she’d been playing and playing well without much distraction, right...

It's another mid-week reboot With Olga and Cornelia!   On this episode of The Lunatic Fringe I get the opportunity to sit down with World Champion canopy pilot Cornelia Mihai and up and comer Olga Naumova about what its like to work, play and compete in what up until recently has been a male dominated corner of the skydiving world.  Funny and insightful, these two are happy and hardcore!

I mean, what can you say… Back in the can for another chat about all things nylon and Jyro, it's the man with an incredibly long job title who manages to have a great time pretty much every step of the way. The Athlete coordinating, social media creating, canopy swooping, rebranding man of the hour, Chris Stewart and The Lunatic Fringe.

Another Mid-Week Reboot with Mike Wittenburg! Semi Professional snowboarder turned professional competitive skydiver, Mr. Mike Wittenburg has a whole lot to brag about with more medals and championship teams than most; yet if you were to ask him what his greatest accomplishment was, he's more likely to start telling you about his kids accomplishments than his own. Listen in to find out just how a...

In need of direction. Like a lot of us, Connor Meyer didn't come out of school with any real plan or fire in his belly. His father, a proud US veteran who worked hard to provide his son opportunities made it clear that Connor was expected to put in the work, so put in the work he did. Graduating from military academy and serving in the United States Army as a commissioned officer, Connor learned e...

Another Mid-Week Reboot with Andy Ford! Having covered skydiving from almost every angle, Andrew "Fordy" Ford had the opportunity to compete at a world class level in Skysurfing in its heyday courtesy of a proper military grooming, watch the creation of wingsuits from the beginning, and earn and exercise instructional ratings all over the world. As the story goes, "It all started with a beer. It a...