We Shouldn't Be Friends

The gossip mills began churning about a year ago. Liberty Brands, the retail curator arm of US private equity play Authentic Brands — which owns most of the surf industry’s most familiar brand names — fell over, taking well over 100 “surf” shops with it. This seemed the final straw for an industry that had done its best to define surf culture for 60 years. But… was it? Or was it part of a much needed clean out of the old to make way for the new-ish? Culture vultures Nick and Hannah, with the help of special guests Ryan Scanlon from needessentials and the inimitable Josh Kerr, try to figure out just what happened here, and if this is a question of scorched earth or surprisingly green shoots.

Four attacks. Numerous in-water sightings. A whole coastline of surfers wondering — who’s next? It’s safe to say this has not been the January anyone in NSW was expecting. But what’s behind the past few days of mayhem, and the strange stillness that’s followed as surfers stayed out of the water despite very solid, very non-January surf? Turns out the animal involved has changed its behaviour for a very simple and predictable reason. Nick and Hannah dig into that reason and the wild circumstances it’s triggered. See below for links to some info we used to present this episode — they might just help.

https://www.sharksmart.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/1447730/Bull-Shark-fact-sheet.pdf

https://www.jcu.edu.au/news/releases/2025/july/climate-shifts-extending-sydneys-bull-shark-season

https://fish.gov.au/docs/SharkReport/2023_FRDC_Carcharhinus_leucas_Final.pdf

“Longevity.” It’s a word more and more surfers are throwing around as an aspiration. Well how about eternal youth? At 82, Bonza Bob McTavish has a deeper well of surfing memory than maybe any other surfer in the world, yet he still exudes the stoke and buzz of someone who lives right here with us, in the moment. Truly, he is our very own Santa Claus, yet the gift he gives us is his very own self. Nick and Hannah spent a fabulous afternoon in Bob’s shaping bay tucked away in Byron’s industrial estate, where McTavish and his son Ben have assembled the most highly talented pack of Millennial/Gen Z surfboard workers we’ve ever seen, and listened to Uncle Bob tell us how he got here.

When winter comes to the north shore of Oahu, every swell is shrouded in myth. The Pipeline! Sunset! Waimea Bay! The outer reef spots that nobody ever actually names. But these swells and spots are just like anywhere else. They’re ridden and held down by human beings, just like you and us, and the experience is more down to earth than most of us might imagine. Mark Healey is as down to earth a human as you’d ever want to meet, yet he also hunts barrels at Waimea lefts, surfs the Pipeline with 25 years of knowledge behind him, and is a generational surfing talent in this hallowed surf zone. Nick and Hannah got hold of him after he’d spent a bit of pre winter time in NZ with his mates shooting red deer, and talked with him about Valhalla.

Recently the World Surf League has been dropping world champ comebacks like they’re on sale. Carissa, Stephanie, John, Gabriel! That’s 19 world titles rolling up almost out of the blue for the 2026 tour. They’ll change the game for sure. But in the meantime, what about the current men’s champ? Universally hailed as a great winner at Cloudbreak back in September, the magnificently chill Yago Dora has nevertheless not featured in any Western surf media since that win. Nick and Hannah thought this was very weird, so we asked Yago if he’d mind joining us to explore his life as a super-kid in Florianopolis, Brazil, how he made the transition from free-surf star to elite competitor, stepping out on his own at title level, and how he produced that searingly confident Finals performance.

It’s a sporting truism: once you’re a world champ, you’re forever a world champ. But that’s not all you are, and in this classic extended-play run-on from our chat with him during the WSL Finals, Kelly lets his mind wander freely across the new landscape of his life. Hip surgery — which he put off for years while resolving his time on the CT — is on the near horizon, his businesses are sending him to actual work, the grommet is running around all over the place. It’s a long way from the retirement he once imagined, hanging out in Cocoa Beach going fishing — or is it? Here’s an unusually relaxed and revealing yap with a surfer we’ve all known forever.

She challenged every surfing stereotype. Beat Andy and Bruce in their local Kauai juniors, charged Pipeline before it was for the fucken girls, towed Teahupo’o on Code Red day. Went on tour, made the top five while hiding her sexuality, then wore it on her sleeve. Built a big wave free-surfing career on the back of credit card debt and mad instinct, then re-built her life around a far more lucrative career as a DJ. To their great delight, with the North Shore surf season preparing itself, Nick and Hannah drag the amazing KK in front of a mic and find this fabulous human being as sardonic and brilliant as ever … while also seeming surprisingly content.

Surf magazines look like fun, but if you end up with one as your very own baby, it’ll kill ya. The beloved Sean Doherty has been dying on the altar of Surfing World magazine every three or so months for five years now. In the process Sean has made and kept making the grittiest, closest-to-the-curl, most beautiful and well, just the best surf magazine in the world. Yet we are talking about something that was first published 63 YEARS AGO. This is no baby! How have Nick and Hannah been recruited into Seano’s wild yet seemingly eternal creative masterpiece? Here the three dive into what makes SW tick, and where they hope to go with it.

What’s it like to be 22 years old and coming home a world champion? On the way back from a very happy arvo with Molly Picklum and the absolutely stoked North Shelly Boardriders crew, Nick and Hannah dig in to what actually happened at Cloudbreak last week, and how it’s likely to wash through into a very different tour set-up in 2026. And Molly herself drops us a few thoughts about how it all looks now she’s back on Cenny Coast home turf.

In part two of our special Finals series, Nick and Hannah are joined direct from Tavarua by two people who know the place inside out — literally. Resort director and barrel master Jon Roseman, and the phenomenally skilled GOAT of all GOATs, Kelly Slater. Listen as Jon picks Kelly to win, and Kelly picks apart the whole thing, scenario by scenario, while munching on Tavarua bacon and keeping half an eye on his infant son. Enjoy! And see if Kelly changes your fantasy picks. Because he might.