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 surf culture, as the analogue age represented by Matt himself and the culture and writers he so...

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 Corner episode for paid subscribers. I was intrigued, but after chatting to Jon and kicking the...

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 right in whatever she’s doing. Plus, she raised the bar for all past and future LS guests by...

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 legend, but these descriptions really don’t do justice to the sheer range of accomplishments and...

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 store about her new book Ebb and Flow, I packed the podcast kit, called up Tozer to take care of...

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 having the biggest impact on the culture. He’s one of our great thinkers, somebody for whom...

“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 this year, I interviewed Chris Burkard at a special event in London organised by my agency All...

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 speech that went viral. In the intervening years, Lucy has continued to lead this conversation on her...

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 The Art of Impossible, and his work as Executive Director of the Flow Research Collective. In Gnar...

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 ascended the ranks from shopfloor to her current status at the very top of the company. Today,...

“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 subscriber special! Last week, I interviewed Chris Burkard at a special event in London organised by...

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 media, Stan had one of the highest profiles in the games, shooting Travis and Romain at Chad’s Gap,...

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 meant that normally flawless line-up of spots resembled my local here in Brighton, and that...

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 imagine undergoing this entire process as a world-renowned skateboarder – while also trying to juggle...

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 with a fun surf at Tom’s local Chapel Porth, before heading up to Finisterre HQ to sit down and...

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 founder Nick Hounsfield onto the show for his second visit. Why? Because if you ask me, there’s...

“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 Hayes, an illustrator, graphic novelist, political cartoonist, and author of The Book of Trespass....

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 back and raring to go with a lovely, timely chat with photographer, musician and snowboarder...

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’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lookingsideways.substack.com/subscribe

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 who spent 328 days in space aboard the International Space Station, setting a new record for the...

Festive Special! Mince pies. Carols. Mistletoe. The John Lewis ad. Festive tunes on endless repeat. Yep, Christmas is a time of tradition. And in Looking Sideways land, that means it’s time for the annual Tim and Gendle Christmas Special, our very own addition to the Christmas canon. Although…this year, we approached things a little differently. Of course, we sat down and chatted for a couple of hours, discussed how 2022 was for us, our hopes for 2023, and answered the many listener questions...

This week’s episode is a double header with my friends Lewis Arnold and Chris Nelson, two absolute stalwarts of the UK surf community who for the last three years have been working hard on their investigative film The Big Sea. And it really is an extraordinary piece of work - an investigation into surfing’s ‘dirty little secret’, as they put it: the industry’s relationship with neoprene. Neoprene is the market name for chloroprene. Chloroprene is produced by a company called Denka in a...

“Death isn't scary to me. Dying isn’t scary to me. I’ve seen it, and I’ve been close to it.” When my friend at Whitelines magazine asked me to chat to snowboarder Kimmy Fasani about her cancer diagnosis for this year’s annual, we decided to join forces on a print/audio double-header. The print version of our conversation was released last week, followed by the full audio version of our conversation on the podcast. The result was a hugely affecting conversation that moved me greatly. As I...

Lifer alert! It’s been a while since I had a good, honest lifer chat on the show, and this episode with my pal James Joiner is a rambling comfort blanket of a conversation in the classic Looking Sideways fashion. James is a journalist, photographer, podcaster and all-round creative doer who I first met when I was a guest on his own 1% For The Planet podcast a few years back. We hit it off real well and have since stayed in touch. And James has become a huge supporter of Looking Sideways,...

Over the years, I’ve been lucky enough to interview people who’ve had a real influence on my life. But Chris Moran, this week’s guest, has probably had more of an influence on my life than any guest I’ve yet had the pleasure of chatting to. Thanks for checking out this episode! Subscribe for free so you don’t miss an episode or newsletter Let’s get the snowboarding out of the way first. Chris is certainly one of the most influential figures in early British snowboarding history. He came up on...