“Whenever anybody with that level of wealth and power moves money into an opaque system, we should wave our red democracy flag, and say, ‘However virtuous they may be, we want to hold you to a higher standard’."

Patagonia’s September 2022 decisions to make ‘Earth’ the company’s only shareholder made headlines around the world.

So perhaps understandably, it wasn’t long before commentators began to scrutinise the details of the announcement.

Was it all just an elaborate tax dodge? What are the ethical implications of billionaire philanthropy on this scale?

And where does The Announcement sit within the context of the long history of corporate philanthropy?

The Announcement is a new three-part podcast documentary series from Looking Sideways, hosted by Matt Barr.

Episode 3 will be released on Monday January 27th.

For bonus and behind-the-scenes material, click here.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.wearelookingsideways.com/subscribe

“Going purpose, not going public.”

Patagonia’s September 2022 decisions to make ‘Earth’ the company’s only shareholder was huge news, particularly in the worlds of climate activism, business, philanthropy, the outdoors, and action sports.

Here was the most influential company in the outdoor world, and one of the most influential businesses on the planet per se, relinquishing control of their profits for the greater good.

But … what did this actually mean? Why did the company do it? How was the decision made? Who was involved?

And is this really a critical moment in the history of capitalism, as Patagonia believe?

The Announcement is a new three-part podcast documentary series from Looking Sideways, hosted by Matt Barr.

Episode 2 will be released on Monday January 20th.

For bonus and behind-the-scenes material, click here.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.wearelookingsideways.com/subscribe

"Earth is our only shareholder.”

In September 2022, Patagonia's billionaire owner Yvon Chouinard relinquished control and made 'earth' the company's only shareholder.

But … what did this actually mean? Why did he do it? What about the scrutiny the company received? And is this really a critical moment in the history of capitalism, as Patagonia believe?

The Announcement is a new three-part podcast documentary series from Looking Sideways, hosted by Matt Barr.

This is a story about legacy, purpose, what we leave behind, and courageous people doing things differently.

It’s about capitalism, democracy, the movement of money, and the history of giving it away.

Above all, it’s about the power of symbolism, and the importance of storytelling when it comes to helping us get our heads around something as vast and conceptual as the climate crisis, and our own role in it.

Episode 1 will be released on Monday January 13th.

Find out more here.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.wearelookingsideways.com/subscribe

Use LOOKINGSIDEWAYS massive discounts on ski and snowboard hire from my friends at Intersport Rent.

--

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!

If you’re new here (and many thousands of you subscribed anew this year), I’ve known Tim Warwood and Adam Gendle, two incredibly funny and talented broadcasters, commentators, TV presenters, directors and all round media polymaths, for coming up to three decades now. We met through the extremely tightknit British snowboarding community, and spent a very fortunate decade snowboarding and travelling the world together.

It was a wondrous run that forged bonds to last a lifetime. So when I launched Looking Sideways back in 2017, I invited the boys on to record a freewheeling special to mark the festive season.

That episode was so well received that it soon evolved into something of a Christmas Looking Sideways tradition: all of which means that we are back once 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 2025, the usual quiz (spoiler alert: I lost yet again), and a freewheeling catch up for our annual Yuletide review.

As ever, wherever you’re listening to this, grab a festive drink and a mince pie, don the Santa hat, and join us as we wax festive for a couple of hours. I’ve been fortunate enough to enjoy another brilliant Looking Sideways year, so huge thanks for listening and supporting what I do. I’ll be back refreshed, rested and ready to go once again in 2025 - in the meantime, have a brilliant break 🎄

--

To find out more about what I do, you can sign up as a subscriber to my Substack newsletter here. There's a brilliant community and much more than just the podcasts.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.wearelookingsideways.com/subscribe

Use SIDEWAVES10 for 10% off anything from session at The Wave in Bristol!

--

Regulars who’ve been following Looking Sideways at all closely for the last two years will be familiar with the name Chris Nelson. Alongside Demi Taylor and Lewis Arnold, he’s one of the triumvirate of creative talents behind the brilliant Big Sea, which I’ve been championing since I saw the first cut back in November 2022.

But I actually go way, way back with Chris. To the mid-1990s, in fact, when we were both young journalistic tyros from either side of the Pennines, keen to forge creative careers based around our respective passions of surfing and snowboarding.

In many ways, our careers have followed similar trajectories. And one of the things I’ve always admired about Chris in the decades I’ve known him is the strong sense of editorial and moral integrity that has always been such a clear hallmark of his work.

Whether it’s the early years as a start-up publisher inspired by terrace fanzine culture, the hugely influential Footprint books that redefined surf travel for a generation, his trailblazing work as one of the co-founders of the London Surf Film Festival, or the four-year mission to bring The Big Sea from idea to the big screen, this thread has guided his work since the beginning.

Chris has been an influence on my own work and approach since we became friends back in the mid-1990s, and the release of The Big Sea seemed like the perfect occasion to sit down and cast a reflective eye on his unique career.

--

To find out more about what I do, you can sign up as a subscriber to my Substack newsletter here. There's a brilliant community and much more than just the podcasts.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.wearelookingsideways.com/subscribe

Use my Intersport discount code LOOKINGSIDEWAYS for huge savings on ski and snowboard rental this winter.

--

One of the odd things about podcasting (at least the way I do it, anyway) is when a episode you’re convinced is one of the best, most enjoyable conversations you’ve ever had doesn’t get the pick up it deserves.

That was very definitely the case with my autumn 2022 conversation with legendary ski film-maker Greg Stump. Which is why, four years later, I am re-running it so that recent subscribers to Looking Sideways can listen to my conversation with one of the most quietly influential figures in action sports.

I’m going to come right out and say it: Greg Stump is as influential a guest as I’ve yet had on the show. Now, if you’re unfamiliar with Greg’s oeuvre (and in recent years his achievements have been shamefully overlooked) this might seem like a fairly wild claim. But when you consider the success of an era-defining smash like his film The Blizzard of Aaahhs, and look seriously at the lasting impact of his work, who can really doubt it?

Greg, a skier, snowboarder and film-maker, first came to prominence with low-key ski film hits such as Maltese Flamingo and A Fistful of Moguls. But the success of 1998’s Blizzard changed everything. Here was a genuine pop cultural crossover success that redefined the ski film for a new generation, gave snowboarding a new platform, saw stars Glen Plake and Scott Schmidt appear on The Today Show, and set the ‘extreme’ agenda that still resonates to this day.

On a personal level, Greg certainly changed my life. My first viewing of Blizzard as a skate and snow-obsessed Mancunian teenager in 1990 introduced me to a new world, where dirtbag skiers and snowboarders chased the snow in beguiling sounding-locations such as Telluride, Squaw Valley and Chamonix. For me, it was as exotic as the smooth Californian pavements I wished I could skate, and it put me on the path I am still following to this day.

All of which goes some way to explain why, when I sat down to speak with Greg, excitement levels were high - on both sides of the Zoom call.

After all, it isn’t often you get to chat to a legit hero and tell them what an impact their work had on your life.

The resulting conversation was a riot - funny, warm, extravagant and shamelessly vain - a little like those films that changed so many lives. Hope you enjoy this one as much as I did.

--

To find out more about what I do, you can sign up as a subscriber to my Substack newsletter here. There's a brilliant community and much more than just the podcasts.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.wearelookingsideways.com/subscribe

Use SIDEWAVES10 for 10% off anything from session at The Wave in Bristol!

--

As anybody who’s watched your typical softball chat-show conversation will be aware, interviews with people at a certain level of fame and renown, such as this week’s guest Jordy Smith, tend to unfold in one of two ways.

There’s the filtered, on-message, and generally uninteresting stuff we’ve all heard countless times before.

And then, very rarely, there’s what happened here: which is a really an insightful and frequently hilarious chat that certainly captures the personality of one of surfing’s modern greats, as well as the experience of life on the modern tour.

Jordy was in town (at the Wave, specifically) to take part in the regular O’Neill Rookie Rippers event, so I headed over to grab him for an hour to record this chat.

As soon as Jordy clocked the Looking Sideways approach, he was straight into it, and what followed was a quick fire and super enjoyable romp through his life and times as one of African surfing’s modern greats.

--

To find out more about what I do, you can sign up as a subscriber to my Substack newsletter here. There's a brilliant community and much more than just the podcasts.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.wearelookingsideways.com/subscribe

Use SIDEWAVES10 for 10% off anything from session at The Wave in Bristol!

--

What a treat to welcome the great Jamie Brisick back for his third Looking Sideways appearance.

The occasion? The release of The Life and Death of Westerly Windina, his brilliant documentary collaboration with Australian director Alan White about the life and times of Peter Drouyn and Westerly Windina.

But also, a welcome chance to catch up with one of surfing’s sharpest, brightest minds. My friendship with Jamie has been one of the great pleasures of this whole Looking Sideways business. As has been watching his career continue to blossom in the years since his first appearance on the show.

His Soundings podcast, for example, produced in conjunction with The Surfer’s Journal, is six seasons in and rightly beloved around the world. And his journalism continues to hoik the bar higher with every passing year.

Jamie has also been a very generous cheerleader for my own work, acting as a welcome sounding board as I’ve worked on The Announcement, and encouraging me in all my own weird little creative endeavours.

So it was that we caught up one evening in October to catch up, compare notes, and discuss the Westerly project, Soundings and The Announcement in detail.

What follows is a digressive, self-indulgent catch up in the finest Looking Sideways tradition. I enjoyed it immensely, and I hope you do to.

--

To find out more about what I do, you can sign up as a subscriber to my Substack newsletter here. There's a brilliant community and much more than just the podcasts.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.wearelookingsideways.com/subscribe

Use SIDEWAVES10 for 10% off anything from session at The Wave in Bristol!

--

Over the last year, it’s been one of the biggest stories in British surfing.

How Croyde’s own Laura Crane headed to Nazare, and surfed the biggest waves ever snagged by a British woman.

No wonder if’s been covered by everybody from Carve to BBC Radio Five Live.

But if you’ve been listening a little bit more closely, you’ll realise that there’s actually much more to Laura’s story than this admittedly incredible feat.

And it’s this aspect of the story, the bit that most surf media seems to have missed, that I was interested in discussing when we caught up for this conversation at the end of August 2024.

Because the truth is that Laura’s professional surfing career has been as much about rejecting the preordained role the surf industry demands of its women professionals as it has been about the actual surfing.

It’s been about understanding the personal impact of this institutionalised toxicity - in Laura’s case bulimia.

And it’s been an ongoing battle to balance her love of surfing with the demands a predominately male surf media and industry make on female bodies and identities.

As anybody who has been paying attention will realise, this is a depressingly familiar story when it comes to women’s professional sport, no matter how high the profile.

Think of Naomi Osaka, Simone Biles, or Serena Williams, for example; women with about as much agency as it’s possible to have in the world of professional sport, and yet who have still had to constantly fight to establish their own physical and mental boundaries.

And it’s here that we find the real power in Laura’s story. Her account of the reality of the professional surfing dream, and its impact on her, is one we just don’t hear very often. That’s why it is so important.

Ultimately, it’s a story of reclamation, in which Laura has remade her own story, and shaped her surfing future, on her own terms.

Yes, it has taken her to Nazare. But what’s really going to be exciting is seeing where it takes her next.

--

To find out more about what I do, you can sign up as a subscriber to my Substack newsletter here. There's a brilliant community and much more than just the podcasts.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.wearelookingsideways.com/subscribe

Use LOOKINGSIDEWAYS for 15% off anything from Stance socks.

--

I’m joined by one of THE all time greats this week: Tommy Guerrero, legendary skateboarder and musician; and one of the select few to have shaped the way we collectively view this entire sideways culture.

Tommy was, of course, part of the original Bone Brigade crew, alongside Tony Hawk, Steve Caballero, Mike McGill, Lance Mountain and Rodney Mullen.

His parts in Future Primitive, Ban This and Public Domain basically defined the concept of modern street skating. In tandem, he also established a career as a hugely influential musician, which continues to this day.

In short, Tommy well and truly justifies the ‘legend’ epithet. And yet, as is so often the case, I found him on wry, reflective form: as happy to geek out on Sudanese jazz as he was to discuss those legendary video parts; and ruminate on how growing up without a father influenced his life and career.

Sometimes this gig is a total privilege and delight, and this was one of those occasions. Thanks to Tommy for taking the time, and to our mutual pal Thomas Campbell for the intro.

--

To find out more about what I do, you can sign up as a subscriber to my Substack newsletter here. There's a brilliant community and much more than just the podcasts.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.wearelookingsideways.com/subscribe