Looking Sideways Action Sports Podcast

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 b...

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 ta...

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 com...

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 invol...

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 impacte...

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 t...

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 a...

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 2...

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 brillia...

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 Story...

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 ...

I go back 25 years with these Adam Gendle and Johno Verity, my guests this week. We met back in the late 90s through snowboarding. But looking back, making things and creativity were equally as important. Music and writing in my case; film-making and art for Gend and Johno.

I’ve had a ringside seat as they’ve developed as artists and film-makers over the last two-and-a-half decades, so to see them have a hit on their hands with thei...

Paid subscribers! This episode comes with an extra 15 minute bonus section with me and Ray so make sure you have your paid podcast feed set-up.

Free subscribers! Don’t worry! You’ll still be able to listen to the main interview with me and Ray (that’s the ‘free preview’), but to hear the bonus chat about Ray’s music and next record, a...

Welcome to the latest in an irregular series of bonus episodes of the Looking Sideways Action Sports podcast.

No fuss, no fanfare, just a non-traditional episode banged out every now and again when this opportunity comes up.

This episode you’re about to listen to is the full live chat with Schoph, Andrew Cotton, Helena Long, Marcus Chapman from Tour de Test Valley and Simon Gunning, CEO of CALM, which I hosted at the Vans store in Lo...

The average professional surf, skate or snow career tends to follow a pretty set path. Five-to-ten years at the top, usually from the mid-teens to late-twenties, before time, injuries, and the shifting vagaries of the industry draw things to a close, and the rider heads off back into obscurity.

Any pro hoping for a career longer than this simple arc better find another string to their bow quickly, ideally something marketable alongs...

Looking Sideways is proudly ad-free and reader and listener supported. Thanks to all my paid subscribers, who help keep the podcast and newsletter free for everybody. To support Looking Sideways with a free or paid subscription, sign up via www.lookingsideways.substack.com

It’s been a long time coming - five years since I first contacted him - but in July 2023 I finally caught up with artist, director and all-round creative legend T...

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 repr...

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 ...

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, s...