Use my Intersport discount code LOOKINGSIDEWAYS for huge savings on ski and snowboard rental this winter. -- One of the odd things about podcasting (at least the way I do it, anyway) is when a episode you’re convinced is one of the best, most enjoyable conversations you’ve ever had doesn’t get the pick up it deserves. That was very definitely the case with my autumn 2022 conversation with legendary ski film-maker Greg Stump. Which is why, four years later, I am re-running it so that recent...

Use SIDEWAVES10 for 10% off anything from session at The Wave in Bristol! -- As anybody who’s watched your typical softball chat-show conversation will be aware, interviews with people at a certain level of fame and renown, such as this week’s guest Jordy Smith, tend to unfold in one of two ways. There’s the filtered, on-message, and generally uninteresting stuff we’ve all heard countless times before. And then, very rarely, there’s what happened here: which is a really an insightful and...

Use SIDEWAVES10 for 10% off anything from session at The Wave in Bristol! -- What a treat to welcome the great Jamie Brisick back for his third Looking Sideways appearance. The occasion? The release of The Life and Death of Westerly Windina, his brilliant documentary collaboration with Australian director Alan White about the life and times of Peter Drouyn and Westerly Windina. But also, a welcome chance to catch up with one of surfing’s sharpest, brightest minds. My friendship with Jamie...

Use SIDEWAVES10 for 10% off anything from session at The Wave in Bristol! -- Over the last year, it’s been one of the biggest stories in British surfing. How Croyde’s own Laura Crane headed to Nazare, and surfed the biggest waves ever snagged by a British woman. No wonder if’s been covered by everybody from Carve to BBC Radio Five Live. But if you’ve been listening a little bit more closely, you’ll realise that there’s actually much more to Laura’s story than this admittedly incredible...

Use LOOKINGSIDEWAYS for 15% off anything from Stance socks. -- I’m joined by one of THE all time greats this week: Tommy Guerrero, legendary skateboarder and musician; and one of the select few to have shaped the way we collectively view this entire sideways culture. Tommy was, of course, part of the original Bone Brigade crew, alongside Tony Hawk, Steve Caballero, Mike McGill, Lance Mountain and Rodney Mullen. His parts in Future Primitive, Ban This and Public Domain basically defined the...

Use LOOKINGSIDEWAYS for 15% off any Db luggage or bag - and click here to see my other discounts. -- Hallvard Kolltveit describes himself as ‘the surf photographer that doesn’t know how to swim properly’. It’s a good line, and one that sums up Hallvard’s witty and self-deprecating take on his own unconventional route through action sport and outdoor media. If you’re unfamiliar with his work, he's one of the first really popular post-Burkard cold water surf photographers to blow up on...

Use LOOKINGSIDEWAYS for 15% off any Db luggage or bag - and click here to see my other discounts. -- Nick Russell is one of those rare snowboarders who combines grace and intellect in equal measure, pushing the boundaries of what's possible in the high alpine with a distinctly cerebral approach. I've been following Nick's career since I first interviewed him for Curator Magazine, and it's been a joy to watch his subsequent evolution into one of our most innovative and pioneering riders. And...

Use SIDEWAVES10 for 10% off any session at the Wave - and click here to see my other discounts. -- How do you find an original angle with somebody who’s discussed the same story hundreds of times? Especially when that person is one of the best-loved and most-interviewed people in their field? That’s the challenge I faced when approaching this interview with the great Captain Liz Clark. The occasion was the paperback release of Swell, Liz’s much-loved book about her decade-long voyage around...

Use LOOKINGSIDEWAYS for 15% off any Stance socks - and click here to see my other discount codes. -- Regular listeners will know that British skateboarding institution Read and Destroy occupies an important place in the Looking Sideways firmament, both for me personally and for British sideways culture in general. I've talked about it at length over the years, but Read and Destroy was hugely important to me when I was growing up. Not just because it was the main UK skate mag at the time....

Use LOOKINGSIDEWAYS for 15% off any Db luggage - and click here to see my other discount codes. -- Ever wondered how you get one of those weird, none-conventional jobs? Ever wondered how people ACTUALLY ended up making a living doing something creative, and a little less ordinary? Harbour ambitions to make the leap and give it a go yourself? Then today’s bonus episode, a special Looking Sideways x Db Journey roundtable, is for you. It’s the first half of the London Live Creative Exchange...

Welcome The Wave - the latest additions to HKC Discount Club! They’ve joined my other partner brands Finisterre, Stance, Albion, Vivo and Db to offer Looking Sideways listeners and readers yet another an exclusive discount code: this one offering 10% off ANY session at our favourite inland lake. Just drop the code SIDEWAVES10 at checkout to get the goods, and click here to see the other discounts. -- As regular listeners will know, I don't often cover mountaineering and climbing on Looking...

HUGE thanks for Db for kicking off my new HKC Discount Club with a whopping 15% off for Looking Sideways listeners and readers. Use my Db Journey discount code LOOKINGSIDEWAYS at checkout for 15% off. I’ve been really enjoying the recent online ‘Creative Exchanges’ I’ve been doing with my friends at Db Journey. They’re such a brilliant idea that I’m not surprised they’re going down so well. The premise is really simple - Db gather together some of their ambassadors and creatives to form a...

When Freddie Meadows finally surfed RÁN, it signified more than the biggest wave ever surfed in Scandinavia. It was also the fulfilment of a lifelong ambition; the endgame of a ten-year search; and the symbolic culmination of Freddie’s singular career as a surfer of proud Scandinavian and Swedish heritage thus far. No wonder he named it after the Norse goddess of the sea. But then, the long, thoughtful and myth-strewn trip that led to RÁN is emblematic of Freddie’s wider path through...

Why is direct action important? Why is there such apathy as our democratic right to protest is being removed? How can the outdoor community and industry enact a more impactful and effective type of protest and activism? All topics I discussed with snowboarder, activist and campaigner for Just Stop Oil Calum Macintyre. You might not know Calum, but he has a vital story to tell about how our democratic right to protest is carefully being steadily and stealthily dismantled in the age of the...

HUGE thanks for Db for kicking off my new HKC Discount Club with a whopping 15% off for Looking Sideways listeners and readers. Use my Db Journey discount code LOOKINGSIDEWAYS at checkout for 15% off, or this link to have it added at checkout I’ve been really enjoying the recent online ‘Creative Exchanges’ I’ve been doing with my friends at Db Journey. They’re such a brilliant idea that I’m not surprised they’ve had such a great take up. The premise is really simple - Db gather together...

HKC Club has launched! Click here for exclusive discounts from some of my partner brands such as Db Journey and Goodrays. Eric Blehm is a journalist and author who has had one of the most interesting and quietly-influential careers in snowboarding. As one of the original and most high-profile American snowboard journalists, he certainly had an influence on my own career. His work at Transworld Snowboarding, in particular, where he combined a none-more-geeky passion for snowboarding with an...

This week’s guest, Matt Olsen, is the Founding Director of Explore Corps, the non-profit that founded Gaza Surf Club back in 2008. Although he described himself as ‘just some dude from Washington’ in a recent Inertia interview, Matt’s roots in Gaza and Israel go back to his childhood, when his Dad was stationed in Israel while working as a diplomat. He’s been visiting Gaza since he was a surf-mad teen, and has been intimately involved with the Israeli and Gazan surf communities ever since....

If you’ve been following Looking Sideways for a while, you’ll know that I’ve covered the conversation around chloroprene rubber and Yulex extensively over the last year or so - through my conversation with Big Sea documentary film-makers Chris Nelson and Lewis Arnold (below), for example, as well as blogs such as this one. If you aren’t yet aware of the connection between neoprene and higher rates of cancer among one hugely impacted Louisiana community, find out more by clicking those...

It's a return visit for friend-of-the-show Thomas Campbell this week, who is, as I said last year, ‘one of surfing and skateboarding’s most important influences thanks to classic films such as The Seedling, and a singular aesthetic and approach that has an outsized influence on what it means to be creative in our world’. I think it’s fair to say myself and Thomas got on pretty well first time around, and we’ve stayed in touch over the months. This redux episode came about after I asked him if...

Photographer Skin Phillips, this week’s guest, has had one of the most extraordinary careers in British skateboarding. Completely self-taught, and driven by a thirst for knowledge and a desire to experience life behind the borders of his hometown of Swansea, Skin came up in the late 80s and early 90s. Initially published in RaD and mentored by the great Tim Leighton-Boyce, he soon followed in footsteps of Bod Boyle, Steve Douglas and Don Brown by heading to the States, where he embarked upon...

Ah, Christmas. A time of friends, family and tradition - which in Looking Sideways world means the much loved Festive Special with my close pals and stalwart podcast supporters Tim and Gendle! Yep, we’re back once again with our very own addition to the Christmas canon -even if, this year, we managed not to get blind drunk while recording this one. Apart from that, it was the usual story - our highlights of the year, our hopes for 2024, the usual quiz (spoiler alert: I lost yet again), and a...

The roadshow continues! Following my recent Roundtable live, recorded at the Kendal Mountain Festival, I’m back with yet another special panel discussion, this one recorded live at the London Surf Film Festival in November 2023. I was lucky enough to be official media partner for this year’s festival, part of which was hosting this special workshop with four brilliant film-makers and creatives: Rebecca Coley, director of the brilliant Point of Change, which scooped Best British Film; Maddie...

Welcome to an extra-special episode of Roundtable, free for all subscribers, and a collaboration with my pal and podcasting peer Matt Pycroft of the brilliant Adventure Podcast, recorded live in front of an audience at the 2023 Kendal Mountain Festival. This conversation came about when Kendal founder and friend of the show Steve Scott asked myself and Matt to pull together a panel for a discussion on the topic of The Power of Storytelling - New Perspectives. We invited our pals Adam Rajah,...

If you follow what I do at all closely, whether through my newsletter or my podcast, you’ll know that ‘how we talk about activism and the climate’ has been a bit of a preoccupation for me these last few months. I’m loosely connected to what you might call the wider activism movement, which has become a proper industry these days. And much of it leaves me cold. From my slightly remote perspective, it seems to be an echo chamber full of impenetrable language, where activism tends to be cast as...