Waterpeople Podcast

What's a river to you? After cyclone Alfred crossed Australia's East Coast earlier this year, tens of thousands of fish died in our local river, Dave got a persistent staph infection and our community tousled with a...

At age 8, Sterling Spencer was signed to surf sponsorship and then had a successful amateur career before chasing the Pro Tour. He was an early internet adopter who found his stride not in competitive surfing, but in...

Not long ago, Lady Elliot Island was basically unrecognisable. In the late 1800s, it was mined for guano used as agricultural fertiliser. The island was stripped bare. This is a story about what happens when one person...

Grief, love, and lineage shape a rite of passage as our guests recall learnings from storms, stars, mentors, and manta rays at midnight. Ke'ilii Mcevilly is an environmental scientist with a Masters degree in...

A captain wakes in the night certain he’s wrecked in mangroves—only he’s on his own porch. That jarring reentry from a month under sail becomes our portal into a deeper story about attention, tradition, and becoming a...

What does it mean to live a life of service? Pipeline pioneer John Peck was devout to many things over this 81 years, and exploring this question was amongst them. In 2015, we hosted John for what was a precursor to...

Two friends chart a path from pain to agency: Layne Beachley examines the drive behind seven world titles and finds a search for self-worth, while Tess Brouwer turns a hidden spinal injury and a hospital-bed reckoning...

Every mid-aged Aussie bloke's favourite surfer? That's Margo. Widely recognised as the first paid freesurfer - Brenden 'Margo' Margieson is famed almost as much for his gentle demeanour as his explosive power surfing...

How does change happen when we, and the world, seem stuck in our ways? We’re curious about how change happens – and what people are doing on the ground, in our community, to create the causal pathways to shift social...

Is there a particular fear that's still holding you back? Holistic surf therapist and coach Holly Beck talks us through the way she sees terrestrial life play out in the water - in terms of how we behave and how we...

Who's your youngest friend? We just met one of ours: 11-year-old surfer, shaper and filmmaker Hunter Williams. This year, Hunter won the grom shorts category at the Noosa International Surf Film Festival with his movie...

Rites of passage, once central to marking life’s transitions, have faded in modernity. As we navigate rising anxiety, social fragmentation, and a world where technology permeates nearly all aspects of our shared human...

What moves you through the world? In the most literal sense, it's the same answer for all of us: muscle. In On Muscle, Bonnie Tsui brings her signature blend of science, culture, immersive reporting, and personal...

How much has your homebreak shaped you - your life, livelihood, the person you've become? The quirkiness of Dylan Graves ' Puerto Rican homebreak shaped a lifelong obsession, and subsequent career in chasing, riding...

Besides being a professor of chemistry, Dr. Sarah Gerhardt was the first woman to ride one of the world’s most feared waves, Mavericks in icy Northern California. She is a mother of two and acknowledged as the first...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...