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 professional surfing. I’ve been following him for years, and have always been fascinated by the way he has look ..read more

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 some of their ambassadors and creatives to form a loose panel to discuss that week’s topic. We then extend t ..read more

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 insatiable curiosity about the wider world, inspired me to think it might be a path that I could also fol ..read more

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. As such has a really nuanced understanding of the relationship between these two communities, as well as ..read more

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 links. It’s through those conversations that I first made contact with Liz Bui, CEO of Yulex, the natural rubb ..read more

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 he’d be up for taking part on one of my Open Threads, in which guests (such as the great Jeremy Jones ..read more

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 a truly remarkable career in the US industry. He was a staff photographer at Transworld, and eventually ..read more

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 freewheeling catch for our annual Yuletide review. As ever, wherever you’re listening to this, grab a f ..read more

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 Meddings, director of Yama, which won Best International Short; Chris Nelson, writer and producer of The ..read more

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, Soraya Abdel-Hadi and Roundtable regular Lauren MacCallum to join us, and this conversation is the resul ..read more