It's been a quiet year for Broken Oars Podcast in podcast terms. While life happened, we only managed to interview the world's best sports physiologist, the world's best sports psychologist, the man who created the on / off test for EPO and ...

SIR MATTHEW PINSENT!

And yet, it's the End of the Island that's been nominated for best rowing podcast - probably because we didn't get 'round to nominating ourselves. Go on Fergus! 

As we approach Christmas, we should understand that it can be a hard time of year for many (rowers). We get it. The summer regattas seem a long way away. The test regimen is currently brutal. The mileage is high. The weather and the water cold, and bow won't stop dragging their fxcking hands.

And in times like this it's always wise to remember the words of good St. Hodge.

And so with this in mind, the Northern One again reads The Night Before Christmas (for Rowers) - live from Kings.

Get some!

The Northern One releases an album of solo pieces perfect for meditating, journeying, breathwork, or just, you know ... listening to.

Track Listing

Charlotte the Brave and Larissa the Bold

Flatpicker / Sam Bacon’s Blues

Resolution

Cascade

A Deep Sea Diver’s Blues

Stumpy and The Bear (Will You Not Come Back?)

(©℗ A. I. Jackson 2024)

When I lived in Sheffield I got very interested in climbing, its artistry and ethics. A Test Piece is the title given to a climbing line that shows you where you are up to in your journey as a climber. Like a musical line, a climbing line is also an expression of the imagination and ability of the climber who first puts up the route. The lines in Test Pieces reflect my musical imagination and where I was in my life when they were written and recorded. Like a climb, each piece features a crux - this is usually the most difficult move, emotional moment, or technical challenge that connects the line. The album was recorded using climbing ethics: onsite, in one pass, with no rehearsal of moves ahead of time.

This made recording challenging, both the in situ parts and the final production where each piece is contextualised by moments of what was happening around the recording, and insights from people like Johnny Dawes on the links between creativity, performance and personality.

Released as the companion piece to Songs For Separation in November 2024, to find out more about Test Pieces writing, production and release go to Origin(al) Stories.

If you liked this album, tweet us, or bluesky us.

For more information, go to www.thelandingstage.net

After a week away in the North Yorkshire Dales recuperating, your favourite Northen One returns with part three of this autumn's deep dive into art, paintings and songs about poo.

In this episode, we'll talk and learn all about how William Frith's work spawned a craze for 'representative' scenes of modern life, why the term post-modernism is adolescently arsy, pictures as 'texts' to be read, and the commercial possibilities that occur when the 'vulgar mob' (F.W. Fairholt) sees itself positively expressed in your work - which is why critics don't know what they're talking about, Oasis sold more than Blur, and the sound of the sixties wasn't Dylan but Helen Shapiro and Englebert Humperdinck.

We touch on Victorian hypocrisy by noting that all ages are caught between their public faces and private actions, point out that all children are legitimate, mention Harry Clasper again, and come to the birth of the cities that still inform our view of Britain.

And Mancunian exhibitionism.

There's no exhibitionist like a Mancunian exhibitionist.

Look up Frith's The Railway Station (1862), Many Happy Returns of The Day (1856), and For Better, For Worse (1880), George Elgar Hicks' The General Post Office, One Minute To Six (1860), and William Logsdail's The Bank and the Royal Exchange (1887).

Take notes. 

And buy us a coffee.

Your favourite Northern One returns, with the second episode in our Autumn Series of truth and knowledge bombs about stuff that all happened 170 years ago.

In this episode, he sing songs about badgers before expanding on the ideas explored in the first episode in the series. Then, he talked about Turner. In this he talks about William Frith and the rise of the commercial, savvy artist who realised that fame, fortune and mistresses lay not necessarily in representing only the rich and powerful but in capturing and intensifying the world around them.

Yes, for the first time, plebs begin to appear in art! And prostitutes! And pickpockets! And poor people!

To follow along, please look up William Frith's Ramsgate Sands and Derby Darby day; Cruikshank's London Comes to Town; and Rodgers, Hammerstein, Hart, Gilbert and Sullivan's celebrated South Sea Badgers musical.

One of the greatest musicals ever written.

Fact.

Buy us a coffee - and we'll stop doing this stuff.

Maybe.

In our continued effort to bring you, the BrokenOars viewer and listener, valued information, the Southern on has spent the last five weeks mildly toxifying himself in pursuit of a faster ergo score.

There are numerous substances that promise a legal method to greater performance and in this video takes a wonder through a few of them and examines one rower's experience of trying them out.

But not creatine, that stuff is filth.

Better watched than listened to this one I am afraid. But give it a go.

https://youtu.be/eiL5tYGEdHc

Hullo,

Can't sleep?

Me neither.

The Northern One returns with a follow-up to last year's Summer Shorts series.

Inspired by a chat with a medical friend about the advances in technology in their career, your favourite Northern One takes a spin through representation in art. As everything in modern Britain is a footnote to the Victorians, in much the same way that Western Civilisation is a footnote to the Greeks, we go to the nineteenth century to look at how art changed in response to new technology and new social and economic realities.

Specifically, we look at how the invention of the daguerreotype changed the way that painting developed. Liberated from the religious strictures, from the Enlightenment on art had increasingly been about accurate representation and heightened representation - accurate representation meaning being able to accurately express a given scene / landscape / person; and heightened representation meaning being able to express an idea, emotion, or image in doing so.

With the camera increasingly rendering that irrelevant, art then became about the representation of art as a representation of an increasingly complex world.

We look at how that came about amid changing social, cultural and economic realities.

And if that sounds as dull as ditchwater, remember that this is the Northern One talking about this stuff. There's a joke or bad pun coming at any moment.

First - Turner. Now chocolate box, then ... revolutionary.

And determined to fail in order to succeed.

Listen on.

And buy us a coffee.

Did you miss us?

We're back with Robin Parisotto, the scientist behind the on / off EPO test to discuss the history of doping in sport, why testing regimens are set up to show there is a testing regimen rather than to create clean sports, and why clean sport will never happen in the current systems.

Apart from British rowers.

We're clean.

Get some!

Bowside? Do some work. Strokeside are fixing their mascara. Again.

After the glory and the dream that was our crowing achievement (talking to Sir Matthew Pinsent), Aaron and Lewin return in typical Broken Oars fashion.

That's right.

We watch Olympic races and talk about them as they're happening and then post the episode after the Olympics has finished, but before the Para Games begins.

Oh, and it looks like Podbean took all of our episodes down and dumped them back on the stream so it looks like we were really busy on the 9th August. Apologies, but look at all of the goodness you've missed in the last four years!

Dear Listener, thank you for your attention to our podcast, which, unlike many and most activities on the internet is not free to make. Should you be enjoying the podcast and wish to help us make more episode please consider buying us a coffee or purchasing one of our digital downloads at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/brokenoarsd. Thank you again for listening.

Having previously examined the science informing the debate around Trans inclusion in Women's categories in sport, Broken Oars Podcast returns with an updated look at what remains fast-moving, ongoing and highly-contentious issue.

During a recent conversation, Lewin and I turned again to discuss what had happened since our first discussion of these issues, particularly with regards to highly-contentious issue of natal-men being allowed to compete against natal-women in sport; the pressures faced by NGB's to promote a sport-for-all approach in the face of quite incendiary activism on the Trans side and pushback on the women's side; and the questions of fairness and inclusivity that must be at the heart of every discussion.

Upon reviewing our intiial conversation, we decided that, on occasion, we had been too flippant about what is a serious subject. You will know, as regular listeners, that we take very little seriously, including ourselves, and treat everyone as fair game, including ourselves.

On this occasion, however, we realised that given how inflammatory some of the rhetoric, language, case-making and arguments have been in the discussion to date, what was needed was a sober look at the facts and realities of Trans biology, inclusion, and the current policies of rowing's regulatory bodies - and what they mean for the current state of play.

So here it is ...

Full Crew. From backstops. The first movement is down and it doesn't have to be fast. You aren't grabbing the last sausage roll at the party. Attention ...

To purchase a copy of 'Water's Gleaming Gold' with an exclusive Broken Oars Listener discount, please go to: 

https://www.troubador.co.uk/bookshop/biography/waters-gleaming-gold-hb

and quote " BROKENOARS " at the checkout page.

This discount code will allow you to buy the book at a 15% discount - and enjoy one of the great rowing stories! 

This is the audio version of the video we put up on YT some months ago about how to go about and what to look for in the purchasing of rowing coaching. 

The Posh Southern One looks at -

Why you should and shouldn't buy coaching.

• The Pete Plan

What types of coaching and programming you can purchase.

• https://www.rojabo.com/

What your initial interaction with a coach should be like, and the basics of managing the coach athlete relationship.