Waterpeople Podcast

What's lost when we hand over skills or experiences to technology ? 

We sat down with localisation pioneer Helena Norberg-Hodge to learn more about the waves of radical economic and social changes she has experienced first hand. 

In 1975, as a student of linguistics amongst the glacial melt of the Himalayas, Helena witnessed the rapid erosion of traditional culture that followed the introduction of Western ideas and economics to the isolated territory of Ladakh, or "Little Tibet." 

 As an economist, linguist and filmmaker, Helena has worked to popularise an economics of happiness for more than 30 year...

How do we make magic boards last longer?

Gary McNeill and Dave have been experimenting with alternative, non-petrochemical materials for the last decade. The front runner in their experiments? Flax cloth, for board strength and durability.

Stab recently ran The Electric Acid Surfboard Test, to explore the validity of their flax tinkerings.

This episode features the flax master himself, shaper Gary McNeill.

Gazza absolutely fizzes about all things board design. He's an accomplished competitive surfer and has worked as production manager and/or ghost shaper for some of surfing’s most we...

How do you better a culture?  How do we better surf culture?

Dr. Krista Comer is a scholar of American literature and cultural politics. She has written widely about women and surfing as a way "to build bridges between university and community, or subcultural knowledges. Because we need each other to understand the worlds we inhabit, and to make better worlds. I need bridges to stay true to who I am, my own histories and hopes for the future."

Dr. Comer offers clarifying perspectives on the gendered realities of modern surf culture - and has b...

Many professional athletes struggle to transition from their sport-as-career. The highs are often out of reach for pedestrian life - especially for pro surfers who spend their years in whirlwinds of hedonistic wave chasing.

For Puerto Rican tube connoisseur Otto Flores, the key to transition was community.

After many national titles and a spell on the World Qualify Series, Otto veered away from competitive surfing and toward chasing perfect waves of consequence, a decision that landed him on the covers of all the mainstream surf mags through the early 2000s. 

 Today, Otto is ba...

Called the "most underrated sports person in Australia" and the "greatest Bells surfer of all time”  Gail Couper has been both: at the centre and the sideline of surf culture and sport for the better part of her 77 years. She's seen a lot change, and helped to lay the foundation for Aussie surf culture as we know it today.

Gail is a five-time national champion, and 10-time winner of the prestigious Bells Beach/Djarrak event.  In the year 2000, she was inducted into the Australian Surfing Hall of Fame and awarded the Australian Sports Medal for lifetime achievement.
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How many kids from Tennessee end up devoting their life to the world's heaviest waves? At least one. That's Lane Davey: Pipe Disciple, PhD, journalist and college lecturer at UH Mānoa. 

Lane has dedicated much of her adult life to being present in the line-up at Pipeline – she was long the lone woman amongst the sword fight. We trace her unlikely trajectory from growing up in Tennessee, to breakdancing, and surfing some of the most notorious waves on the planet.

Lane talks us through the importance of acknowledging fuller histories of surfing, the role she’...

We’re getting tangential. This episode is part of a three episode slip slide behind the scenes of a project that Dave’s been working on for the better part of 2024: The Electric Acid Surfboard test. 

It's a series that explores “alternative” surfboard design. Basically, iconic surfers on left-field, experimental surf craft. 

Our very own aquatic wombat, renowned question repeater, one David Rastovich, is this year’s test pilot.

It's no secret: the stuff we use to go surfing is pretty toxic. Neoprene, wax, swimwear, surfboards. Most are petroleum products in one form or another...

When was the last time you followed a spark of curiosity all the way to some distant shoreline?

Kiana Weltzien's ocean adventures began in 2016 when she left her real estate career in Miami for a year of travel. Along the way, she met a mentor and moved onto his boat; a replica Polynesian double-canoe. She sensed that this was her new way of life.

In 2018, Kiana acquired her own boat, Mara Noka, a modern Polynesian double-canoe. Despite her limited sailing knowledge, Kiana navigated challenging passages, often sailing alone to avoid the responsibility of others.
<...

Who modelled kindness for you? Who showed you how to be kind and curious in the face of difference?

Before he was a Fulbright Scholar, Jamie Brisick surfed on the ASP world tour from 1986 to 1991, and has since documented surf culture extensively.

His writings and photographs have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, and The Guardian. 

Jamie hosts the podcast Soundings and is the author of several books, including We Approach Our Martinis With Such High Expectations, and Becoming Westerly:  The transformation of surfing champion Peter Drouyn into We...

Longevity in any career begs for reinvention. With more than a decade at the pro surfing game, Josie Prendergast has been navigating new waters in her career - by taking the reins on her own storytelling. 

Born in Siargao and raised in both Australia and the Philippines, Josie is a standout surfer on any craft – from 10+ gliders to fishes – and she’s expert at nasal navigation on heavy logs. 

We caught up with Josie for her first podcast experience between surfs in Byron – where she talked us through finding early commercial success in the surf industry...

Did sailing have more to do with early human locomotion than the wheel? Hanneke Boon, head of James Wharram Designs, suggests that may be so. 

Born in the Netherlands, Hanneke grew up in a sailing family. She was building and sailing Polynesian Catamarans at the age of fourteen and joined the James Wharram team at the age of 20.

A gifted artist / graphic designer / craftworker, she became James Wharram's co-designer. For half a century, all Wharram Designs have been marked with her signature.

According to Yachting World, “Despite this unique pencil stroke, she has rem...

Over the last half century, Bob McTavish has shaped thousands of custom surfboards. 

Always an innovator in surfboard design and technology, Bob pioneered cutting edge changes to the basic concept of a surfboard. 

In 1965,  he started tinkering with rail and bottom design to maximise performance. This was part of the movement that would become known as the shortboard revolution, in which Bob’s role was pivotal, but only part of his ongoing contribution to the evolution of the surfboard.

Now in his eighth decade, Bob continues to push the limits of surfboard design acros...

Did you feel safe in your childhood home? If not, were you able to leave, or did you have to stay? 

Ruby Southwell hit the road, travelling solo for years, searching for guidance. What she found was a deep and clear inner well - and a renewed love for riding waves. 

At age 22, Ruby moved to Indonesia’s remote Mentawai Islands, where she surf guided, taught herself how to tube ride, and lived offgrid with a local family for just over two years.  

Ruby is known as a wildly talented navigator of weighty situa...

What's the most challenging experience you've faced? Did it ultimately hinder or heighten your self-clarity?

Brett Burcher is a heavy water specialist - a slab hunter who chases the thickest waves to some of the most far flung locations. He was given an irrevocable invitation to learn to lay down, be still and breathe when he hit the reef and suffered a spinal cord injury in remote South Australia.

We wanted to talk story with Brett not only for his crazy stories of stretching the edges of his genre of wave riding, but also because...

As a follow up to our episode with heavy water specialist Brett Burcher we wanted to share a couple of breathwork practices that Brett found most practical in his own life - whether he’s dealing with insomnia, or about to drop into a bomb set wave.

This is a levelling breath practice— not an upper or downer -- just a way to reconnect with a gentle balanced breath state. 

Send us a text

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Listen with Lauren L. Hill & Dave Rastovich

Sound + Video Engineer: Ben J Alexander

Theme...

In this bonus episode slab hunter Brett Burcher takes us through an energising breath practice that he’s found useful when you need a little extra pep in your step.  

This is your reminder: breathe like you mean it. 

Send us a text

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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

Join the conversation: @Waterpeoplepodcast

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Get monthly musings and behind the scen...

“Whether or not you think you belong to the Earth is irrelevant, for you simply do. By virtue of breathing in you receive a gift of oxygen given by the tree and soil, by virtue of breathing out you gift carbon dioxide to the kelp so the fish may have their home. To accept our shared responsibility to the Earth, IS to remember our belonging.” – Nidala Barker

Nidala is a surfer, musician and custodianship educator. She traces part of her ancestral roots to the Djugun and Jabirr-Jabirr people of the Kimberley in Australia’s  North West, where she was i...

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...

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, h...

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 O...

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 Aiya...

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 i...

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...

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 live...

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 t...

Have you ever felt like something was wrong, but you weren't quite sure how to name it?

Tyler Wilde is a teacher and bodysurfer from southern California. In 2017, Tyler won the prestigious International Surf Festival bodysurfing contest and was later voted into the Gillis Beach Bodysurfing Association as one of their youngest members.

As a physical education teacher, his goal is to help his students "feel more embodied."

Tyler went through a lengthy bout with depression and anxiety, and like many of us, he struggled to pinpoint the underlying causes. Getting back to...

A little fire can keep you warm; a big fire can burn your house down. 

Two time ASP World Surfing Champion Tom Carroll speaks candidly about his struggles to harness the power that made him famous. From the highs of professional surfing to addiction and meditation, his large life is a study in harnessing and honing one's power in mind and body. 

Few surfers ever perform a wholly memorable maneuver . Tom broke down that norm in 1991 when he threw down a turn under the heaving lip of Pipeline - "a move that was so beautiful an...

Many of us dream of laying roots in some balmy, wave-rich location far from where we sprouted - to grow food and let the ocean dictate the day. Few of us do it.

Christian and Ka'ale Sea have spent the last 21 years together - surfing, diving, planting, growing a family. They have three daughters, all homeschooled on the remote West Coast of Sumba Island, Indonesia, where they own and operate Ngalung Kalla retreat. 

Christian started life in the Atlantic, on the 48-foot wooden sailboat his father rebuilt. Launching from their homestead on St. Thomas, Christian c...

Around 500,000 people were displaced by the 2018 earthquake that rocked the island of Lombok in Indonesia. It was estimated that 80% of all structures were levelled on the North of the island.

At the time, Flora Christin Butarbutar, then in her early 20s, had taken up surfing on the Island of Bali. Originally from Sumatra, Flora was shaken by the need for help on the neighbouring island of Lombok. She put her budding surfing life aside, and harnessed her social media notoriety as Indonesia's first competitive female longboarder to garner aid for those in need on Lombok. She helped...

Can a single wave really change your life? For Hawaiian waterwoman  Moana Jones Wong, one wave changed everything.  She shares about the fated, sparkling bomb at Pipeline that altered both her sense of self, and her surfing career. 

Moana made history by winning the first ever Women’s Championship Tour event at Pipeline.  As a North Shore local, she cut her teeth in heavy water, earning her the title  “Queen of Pipe.”

Moana was also the first to earn a bachelor’s degree in  Hawaiian and Indigenous Health and Healing. She co-stars in the Prime Video series ...

What do neoprene  wetsuits have to do with Cancer Alley ? 

The global wetsuit industry is valued at around $2.8 Billion USD.

"The vast majority of wetsuits on sale today are made of a synthetic rubber called Neoprene. Neoprene – the commercial name for chloroprene rubber – is the product of a toxic, carcinogenic chemical process.

There is only one chloroprene plant in the US. It is owned by Japanese chemical company Denka and lies in the predominantly black, low income town of Reserve, Louisiana – in the heart of an area known as Cancer Alley. Rising from the site...

If you only had 10 healthy years left of life, would you choose to know it ?

Big wave surfer Felicity Palmateer is known for her paddle-ins at Peahi, commentating WSL events, starring in Australian Survivor (twice) and holding the record for largest wave ever ridden by an Aussie woman.

Parallel to her successful surfing career, Felicity has navigated tumultuous familial seas.  She talks us through losing her mum to early onset dementia in 2021  — her 50/50 chance of inheriting the gene mutation that causes it - and how grief and loss have inspired her over the ledge at some...

“Each of us occupies a singular ecological niche in the web of life that is uniquely ours, and when we restore ourselves to health and vitality, we contribute to the health and vitality of our entire planet.” Such is the philosophy of psychiatrist and surfer Dr. Elizabeth Nguyen.

Dr. Nguyen specialises in cross cultural psychiatry, the intersection of spirituality and mental health, and the healing power of water. She coined the term ‘human ecological restoration’ to describe the work she does to help her patients “clear out” psychological debris from trauma, both personal and ancestral.

Elizabeth wa...

With gender norms up in the air, what does it mean to be a dad today? For Chris Del Moro, it means showing up for it all - good, bad, and messy -  and maintaining stability for his family. 

Chris is an artist, surfer and devoted father to his two boys. He shares about the pivotal experiences with his own fathers and mentors that shaped him into the steadfast man he is today. 

Chris spent more than a decade as a professional freesurfer, featured in movies including "Sliding Liberia, "The Present”  and the biographical Bella Vita b...

When was the last time you refused to take 'no' for an answer ? Belen Alvarez Kimble shares about the life-changing instance when she pushed against cultural norms and expectations to lay down her life's path. 

Belen occupied one of the very few positions as a professional freesurfer through the early 2000s and worked with surf brands as an ambassador for unifying women’s surfing around the globe. She stands amongst the longboarding icons of the Blue Crush era that saw the resurgence of women to the line-up.  

Belen grew up in a traditional Mexican household in s...

What's possible in the eighth decade of life?  Rusty Miller will be 80 this year - and he's still rocking off at Lennox Point and taking off on the best set waves. 

Born in Southern Californian, Rusty was the 1965 United States Surfing Champion. He moved to Byron Bay Australia in 1970, where he has since lived, surfed, taught, and written about surfing -- and been an integral member of the community. 

Rusty was amongst the first surf travellers to venture to Sri Lanka, Lebanon, Israel, Egypt and Portugal in the mid-1960s. In 1971, he was featured in Alb...

Welcome back for the 5th Season of The Waterpeople Podcast.

Listen in as Dave and Lauren turn the mic on one another and get set for 16 fresh episodes of ocean-centric storytelling.

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Listen with Lauren L. Hill & Dave Rastovich

Sound Engineer: Ben Alexander

Theme song: Shannon Sol Carroll

Additional music by Dave & Ben

Join the conversation: @Waterpeoplepodcast 

Send us a text

...

Listen with Lauren L. Hill & Dave Rastovich

Sound + Video Engineer: Ben J Alexander

Theme song: S...

Is your mouth open or closed right now ? There is nothing more essential to our health and well-being than breathing: we take air in, let it out, and repeat 25,000 times a day. But most of us have forgotten how to do it properly.

Journalist, aquanaut, surfer and author James Nestor's latest book BREATH: the New Science of a Lost Art  explores the million-year-long history of how the human species has lost the ability to breathe properly and why we’re suffering from a laundry list of maladies—snoring, sleep apnea, asthma, autoimmune disease, allergies—because of it. He trav...

Lore of the Waikiki Beach Boys is well known – those legendary Hawaiian watermen like Duke Kahanamoku and Rabbit Kekai who regulated the turf of one surfing’s most fabled beaches. But where were the wahine ?

Today we’re in conversation with original Waikiki Wahine Beach Boy Laola Lake, champion outrigger paddler, surfer and ocean safety advocate. 

Laola grew up in the ocean front cottages of the Royal Hawaiian hotel, where her mother worked, and received her Waikiki Beach Boy license in 1970. She helped found the Hawaii women’s Surfing Hui, which was part of opening the door...

How will we choose to spend this one wild and precious life? Rick Ridgeway has devoted his seven decades to adventuring  Earth's widest seas and tallest peaks -- and working to protect the wildness that remains.

Rick's  earliest adventures were oceanic – sailing and surfing – but he’s recognized amongst the world’s foremost mountineers.

In 1976 he joined the American Bicentennial Everest Expedition, and in 1978 he and three others made the first American ascent of K2 – the second highest peak on Earth—they were the first team to do it without oxygen; Rick made the first documented tra...