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.

We’re abject pro surfing fans over here, and when something like what’s about to happen in Fiji comes along, there’s no way we’re letting it just slide by. The WSL’s ten best surfers, vibing each other and themselves into one of the world’s best surf zones, with a world title on the line? One way or another, pretty much everyone’s eyes are gonna be on this madness, so we’re putting together a special two-episode collector’s series of WSBF just to rip it all to pieces. First up, Nick and Hannah are joined on the couch by none other than Nick’s little brother and self proclaimed “source”, Tom Carroll, for a ruthless and completely imaginary heat by heat analysis — and a shot at predicting the titles.

Surf-lit is a wobbly field at the best of times, mostly because the writer tries to turn surfing into something it sorta isn’t. Something kooky your daughter’s doing on her summer hols (“Gidget”)? Psycho B-Grade movie cheese (“Point Break”, “The Surfer”)? Scary death metaphor (“The Dogs Of Winter”)? Erin Hortle is a glorious exception to this dismal rule. Erin is one of Australian literature’s rising stars, and in her outstanding second novel, surfing plays out just as it does for most of us — as part of her key characters’ lives. In a very special episode, the Tasmanian author of “The Octopus And I” and “A Catalogue Of Love” tells Nick and Hannah about Nigel the gannet, writing 40,000 words on a broken ankle, and how she decided to write about surfing in such a clear and unaffected way.

Presenting yourself in public is not as easy as it seems. When you’re simultaneously presenting as a manic super-frother, a cool headed CT analyst, a party-time ringmaster and  a semi rock star, it could easily turn pretty pear-shaped. Yet Vaughan Blakey contains multitudes, and there’s a very calm and considered person in the centre of this Swellian/mag editor/film producer/extraordinary Australian character. Nick and Hannah sit Vaughan-o on the other side of the mic for a fascinating trip behind the froth. Plus! A ridiculously simple tip on how to self-check your surfing style from the inside — no video required.

The first week of August was fantastic wherever you looked. Indonesia, Tahiti, south shore Hawaii, and the whole east coast of Australia — where wasn’t pumping. But what happened next left us feeling vaguely ick. These amazing surf zones were mined mercilessly for clicks: single-ride superwaves dumped endlessly on top of each other across social media, till it felt like you’d seen too much of something you shouldn’t. Is surf culture unintentionally reducing gold to lead here? Is this surfing or just cheap pornography? Nick and Hannah semi-seriously rip through a trend as grating as it is understandable.

“The Big Sea” is one of the surf culture’s films of the year. It’s won awards, most recently at the Noosa Film Festival, for its harrowing portrayal of the toll taken on a Black community in Louisiana, USA, by a nearby petrochemical factory that makes the base ingredient for neoprene. “Cancer Alley”, it’s called. The implication that surfing is somehow connected to Cancer Alley is clear: according to film-makers Chris Nelson and Lewis Arnold, this is “surfing’s dirty little secret.” But when we watched the film, we were surprised to find no direct, on-the-record link being made between the Louisiana nightmare and any surf wetsuit maker. Did anyone make you a wetsuit from the stuff that’s killing people in Cancer Alley? What actually happened here? Chris volunteered to explain some of the facts behind the film.