Why are some octogenarians still surfing, while others struggle to walk up the stairs? It isn’t luck.

Harvard and Stanford trained Orthopaedic surgeon Kevin R. Stone, MD, believes that injuries present as opportunities to better our athletic potential - they can make us fitter, faster, and stronger than before. He is the author of Play Forever: How to Recover From Injury and Thrive.

Dr. Kevin Stone is a waterman and a world-renowned expert in biologic joint replacement. He founded The Stone Clinic and is Chairman of the Stone Research Foundation.

Dr. Stone has served the US Ski Team, the US Pro Ski Tour, the Marin Ballet, the Smuin Ballet, the Modern Pentathlon at the US Olympic Festival, and the US Olympic Training Center. His innovative work in the orthopaedic arena has led to multiple awards, publications, and grants and has resulted in approximately fifty issued US patents.

Dr. Stone talks us through a recent injury, the vulnerabilities of a surfing body, new paradigms of ageing, the remarkable regenerative capacity of our bodies, and why play should be part of every day.

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Listen with Lauren L. Hill & Dave Rastovich

Sound + Video Engineer: Ben J Alexander

Theme song: Shannon Sol Carroll

Additional music by Kai Mcgilvray + Ben J Alexander

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How to fund a pro surfing career in the 1980s? Sell stickers, Levi’s jeans, bicycles, whatever. Sleep in your board bag. Live on a diet of mushrooms and bread. World Champion Pauline Menczer got resourceful and hustled however it took to get her to the next stop of the tour.

“In the 80s and 90s, surf culture was toxic, especially towards women. Pauline was a dirt-poor, chronically ill teen from Bondi, who defied insults and intimidation to make a name for herself in the surfing world.

When Pauline's determination propelled her onto the pro tour, her battle for acceptance and equality didn't end there. The endemic sexism of the industry meant prize money for women was a pittance, while sponsors ignored her because she was gay and didn't have the stereotypical surfer girl look that male marketing managers were after. Despite these challenges, Pauline became the 1993 World Champion and played a key role in bringing greater equality to the sport.

Pauline recently penned a memoir called Surf Like a Woman. Through it we see clearly the unfairness of a sexist surf industry, and the rise of a modern surf shero who won the world title — and has made a life of sharing the gifts of a surfing despite physical, emotional and financial adversities.

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Listen with Lauren L. Hill & Dave Rastovich

Sound + Video Engineer: Ben J Alexander

Theme song: Shannon Sol Carroll

Additional music by Kai Mcgilvray + Ben J Alexander

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When is surfing about more than just selfish wave hoggery?

Mozambique’s first professional surfer, Sung Min Cho, or ‘Mini’ for short, is writing a new story for surfing – he’s part of a burgeoning surf culture rising from the wake of three decades of armed conflict in the region.

In 2018, Mini co-counded Tofo surf club, Mozambique’s outpost of Surfers Not Street Children, which empowers street kids through surf coaching and mentorship. The effort has been funded in part by Pope Francis.

Mini is on a mission to earn representation for his country in the Olympics — and spoke to us passionately about his love of surfing – not just for himself, but as a tool to lift up others, especially kids -- and as a lens for Mozambiqucans to write and tell their own stories in their own words. Stories about a nation brimming with natural beauty, resilient people and very good surf.

photo credit: Alan Van Gysen

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Theme song: Shannon Sol Carroll

Additional music by Kai Mcgilvray + Ben J Alexander

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Ever want to pack up normalcy and set sail over the horizon? What’s it really like to live at sea for a year and rarely be further than 35 feet from your new significant other?

Torren Martyn and Aiyana Powell talk us through the peaks and troughs of life aboard Calypte, a borrowed 35-foot sailing boat that they spent 12 months sailing 9,000-kilometres - from Pattaya in the Gulf of Thailand to Lombok, an Indonesian island east of Bali - a journey chronicled in their new independent film Calypte.

With little practical sailing experience, Torren and Aiyana learned as they went – how to be fisherfolk, navigators, meteorologists, and mechanics to take care of running repairs — and still found plenty of surf along the way.

Torren and Aiyana talk us through the happenstance of meeting, their time aboard Calypte – the trials of trust and communication at sea— and their newest adventure – starting a family together.

Photo credit: Ishka Folkwell

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Theme song: Shannon Sol Carroll

Additional music by Kai Mcgilvray + Ben J Alexander

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The loudest human-made sounds: Nuclear Bomb (224 dB), Rocket launch (204 dB). And clocking in at 260 underwater decibels is the seismic blast, part of a process for exploring for oil and gas in the ocean. Unlike bombs and rockets, however, seismic blasts "fire approximately every 10 seconds around the clock for months at a time."

For eight years, Marine Biologist Annie Ford worked onboard seismic blasting vessels, and felt the relentless explosions and reverberations from her bed at night. She has since peddled away from the fossil fuel industry and become one of its most creative whistleblowers.

Annie is a mountain biking world record holder and has spent time surfing and sailing around the world, including multiple expeditions to Antarctica.

Today, Annie is the National Campaign Manager for the Surfrider Foundation Australia, where she is currently working to halt the largest marine seismic blasting project ever proposed. It is slated to take place off the coast of her home island of Lutruwita (Tasmania) – and will emit some of the loudest human made noises ever created – to the detriment of an entire ecosystem.

We caught up with Annie as she completed a 4,000 km bike ride (that about 2,500 miles) to talk about endurance, optimism, changing careers, and her entwined commitment to kindness, climate action and adventure.

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To get a download of the seismic blasting audio file to share at your community event, school, or tense family gathering, please send us an email: waterpeoplepodcast@gmail.com

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Photo Credit: Rod Drury

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Are you investing in yourself and your curiosities? At 63, Sally Parkin sold her home to spend the better part of 2023 surfing in Australia with her family.

Sally is known for "single handedly" reviving the 100 year old tradition of English surfing on wooden bodyboards. She first surfed one at age 5, and decades later, when her family's quiver started to break, she realised there was only one local maker of traditional boards remaining.

She founded The Original Surfboard Company to both produce timber boards and to recover the lost art of English prone surfing.

Joined by surf historian and shaper extraordinaire Tom Wegener, we met up with Sally on her tour of Australia, and she talked us through the logistics of reviving a nearly-lost art, researching the great novelist Agatha Christie's surfing adventures, and the joys of adaptive bottom contours.

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Photo Credit: Celia Galpin

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Injuries are mostly out of our control. But recovery offers many choices. Will we allow the scar tissue to stiffen or soften us?

Stu Nettle is the editor of Swellnet, one of Australia's leading independent surf media and forecasting sites, where he has written about board design, surf industry happenings, surf science, and coastal geology since 2008.

Stu is a lifelong surfer but late-comer to surf media. He “had many unrelated life chapters, business failures, social experiments, and surf adventures before he ever got a word published.”

We first encountered Stu’s work amongst the lively pages of Kurangabaa, an academic – leaning surf journal he helped to found and run in the early 2000s. It was a trove of thoughtful essays, along with poetry, fiction and interviews – and part of a larger, exciting, indepedent DIY surf culture of that time.

We wanted to know: what kind of life has shaped the voice and perspective of one of Australia's most prolific surf journalists?

Stu talks us through the Sunset Beach hold down that changed him, the value of knowing our history, gender politics at Swellnet and the the future(s) of surf media.

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Theme song: Shannon Sol Carroll

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Listen with Lauren L. Hill & Dave Rastovich

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Theme song: Shannon Sol Carroll

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Raised on a diet of deep ecology and the DIY spirit of her single mom, Pacha Light earned her first surfboard busking as a tween. She then forged her way into professional surfing as a teenager on Australia’s Gold Coast: signing a big endemic sponsor, training every day, and making a name for herself as a competitor and surf model.

Until she couldn’t do it any longer. She felt she was not fully in alignment with her values.

Still, along the way, Pacha found her storytelling voice, bringing depth and meaning to her surf travel by weaving in local social and environmental projects wherever she went. Her three part Women of the Sea series dove into the rich aquatic cultures adjacent to surfing in Japan and South Korea.

Now in her early 20s, Pacha talks us through what led her to say “thanks, but no thanks” to her long-time surfing sponsor. She shares about the search for belonging after her father’s passing, vying for a spot in the Olympics, and “understanding that we are called to be a part of the Earth protecting itself.”

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Photo Credit: Unknown (If you took this photo please reach out)

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Listen with Lauren L. Hill & Dave Rastovich

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