Introducing The Announcement

Going Off!, the snowboarding history podcast conceptualised and presented by Jen Sherowski and Tricia Byrnes, is a brilliant concept. Each episode, they take key stages in snowboarding's history and development and dip into their enviable black book of contacts to tell the story expertly and even-handedly. Together they've made Going Off! into something different: not yet another four-hour interview show, but an oral history of snowboarding's early days, pieced together from the people who were actually there. And they make a great team - Jen with her journalistic and storytelling chops honed through years in the snowboard mag and creative industry trenches, and Tricia with her unimpeachable connections to snowboarding roots and history; both through her own career - she won the US Open halfpipe as a 17-year-old amateur in 1992, and rode for the US at Salt Lake in 2002 - and her links in the East Coast snowboarding firmament. Thanks to snowboarding, and the places it has taken me, I have known them both for years, so when they got in touch with me back in April 2025 when Going Off! was still in the planning stages and were canvassing a few people for advice on how to set it up, I was intrigued to hear more. I thought it was a great idea then, and having watched them pull it off since it launched last October, I still do. So when I came back to the podcast this summer, after a four-month break, they were the obvious choice for my first recording. We sat down in July, and as a way back into Looking Sideways it was a perfect conversation for me. With magazines like TransWorld gone, as they discuss in their latest episode, The Birth And Glory Of Snowboard Magazines, somebody has to tell these stories. I'm very glad it's these two. --- This week's codes for some big old savings, all kept up to date at wearelookingsideways.com: FINISIDEWAYS26 for 10% off any full-price order from Finisterre LOOKINGSWSXDB for 15% off anything from Db LOOKINGSIDEWAYS2026 for 15% off any full-price Albion purchase LOOKINGSIDEWAYS for 15% off full-price Stance orders LOOKINGSIDEWAYS for 10% off anything from Goodrays PASSENGER-SIDEWAYS10 for 10% off at Passenger LS27 for money off ski and snowboard hire at Intersport 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. 00:00 Introduction 04:19 80% Accurate 20:05 Skateboarder First 31:08 Transworld and the Olympics 44:01 Memory, AI and Archives 1:02:52 What Snowboarding Forgets 1:07:20 No Patreon, No Ads 1:19:28 Clip Culture 1:35:05 Housekeeping Corner

Wildlife filmmaker and presenter Dan O’Neill has spent his career exploring an important question: who gets to tell the story of a wild place? And that’s one of the key themes of this conversation, recorded live at Kendal Mountain Festival in November 2025. Access was a key topic across the entire weekend. The day before, the Oscar-winning filmmaker Orlando von Einsiedel had explained to me that the ethics of access are among the most important parts of his work. On the Sunday, Dan picked up the same thread through the lens of his pioneering wildlife filmmaking. For him, working with the communities he films among isn’t just part of the job: “That is the work.” A lot has happened for Dan in the months since our chat. In June, his show Tiger Island went out on BBC One. How to Live on Earth, presented by Benedict Cumberbatch, is out now on YouTube, and has further boosted Dan’s profile. In this riotous conversation, recorded in front of a very game audience, as the rain hammered on the roof, myself and Dan talked snow leopards, his pet hawk, who pays for wildlife TV now, the BBC, AI, and what it meant to be the first openly gay presenter to front a wildlife series for a major network. Then the audience took over. --- This week's codes for some big old savings, all kept up to date at wearelookingsideways.com: FINISIDEWAYS26 for 10% off any full-price order from Finisterre LOOKINGSWSXDB for 15% off anything from Db LOOKINGSIDEWAYS2026 for 15% off any full-price Albion purchase LOOKINGSIDEWAYS for 15% off full-price Stance orders LOOKINGSIDEWAYS for 10% off anything from Goodrays PASSENGER-SIDEWAYS10 for 10% off at Passenger LS27 for money off ski and snowboard hire at Intersport 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. 00:00 Introduction 02:45 Snow Leopards and Mongolia 22:33 The Pet Hawk 31:49 Paying for Wildlife TV 38:17 AI and Advocacy 48:51 Audience Questions 1:00:45 Housekeeping Corner

If you’ve spent any time on the internet recently you will have no doubt seen the man in the pink hat, Johno Verity. As it happens, Johno is one of my oldest and dearest friends. We first met back in 1998, in the first weeks of my first season in Meribel, and he’s been one of my closest friends ever since. Not that it’s always been smooth sailing. Me and Johno are both big personalities, with plenty of ego and vulnerabilities, and there have been times we’ve really clashed, and almost fucked it up. But one of the great joys of getting old are the consolations of old friendships, and in the past couple of years myself and Johno have dealt with all that and come out of it stronger and better friends than ever. And this latter period has also coincided with the unlikely season of his great recent internet fame. We’ve been chatting about recording a Looking Sideways x Man in the Pink Hat episode for a while now, in London, or Croyde at various points. In the end we made it happen in mid August 2026, in my new hometown of Bracklesham, at the height of the fifth heatwave, and during a particularly febrile and emotional week for me. So it was that at 5.30am one hot morning we set off on a cycling and walking mission around Bracklesham and East and West Wittering, recording this conversation as we went. And it was a beautiful and, for me, vital morning: emotional, life-affirming, and a reminder of the great power of the consolation of lifelong friendship, with the Solent, the Isle of Wight, Hayling Island and Portsmouth in the distance, all burnished by the rising sun as myself and Johno chatted. We laid some ghosts to rest, reminisced about our shared history, and I got to find out more about this long, strange recent trip Johno is on as the man in the pink hat. This conversation came along at just the right time for me. Thanks Johno. I love you like a brother. --- This week's codes for some big old savings, all kept up to date at wearelookingsideways.com: FINISIDEWAYS26 for 10% off any full-price order from Finisterre LOOKINGSWSXDB for 15% off anything from Db LOOKINGSIDEWAYS2026 for 15% off any full-price Albion purchase LOOKINGSIDEWAYS for 15% off full-price Stance orders LOOKINGSIDEWAYS for 10% off anything from Goodrays PASSENGER-SIDEWAYS10 for 10% off at Passenger LS27 for money off ski and snowboard hire at Intersport 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. 00:00 Introduction 03:25 Daddy Issues 19:11 The Pink Hat Accident 33:36 History and the Pushback 48:06 In Bed With Meta 1:01:06 Tenacity Over Talent 1:15:39 London Empty at Dawn 1:22:29 30 Years of Friendship 1:29:08 Housekeeping Corner

What happens when you achieve everything you want in life, as musician Liam Ivory of Maribou State has, and still find yourself with an itch that remains unscratched? That's the question at the heart of my conversation with the brilliant Liam, one half of one of the UK's most successful electronic music acts, and somebody who, I learned, has also been grappling with a conundrum every Looking Sideways listener will recognise: how to strike a balance between 'the creative life, and finding moments to get out and ride'. As a sentence that defines the Looking Sideways ethos, this is pretty much unbeatable. Even better, it's a direct quote from an Insta DM Liam sent me back in February, when he generously got in touch to tell me how much he was enjoying listening to the show and its celebration of the balancing act that has become increasingly important to him. Naturally, like any good journalist, I immediately asked him to come on the show. So it was that on the eve of Maribou's biggest ever show, at LIDO Festival in Victoria Park, we met in London and sat down to go over the whole thing: that elusive search for balance; how board sports have been the defining anchor of his life; the seven-year gestation of Hallucinating Love; the twenty-year creative partnership that Liam describes as a marriage; and the highs and lows of an extraordinary career in music. The resulting conversation is certainly a peerless insight into the creative reality of sustaining the type of career that eventually leads to a Glastonbury headline slot. But it's also yet another reminder, as if we needed it, that notions of success truly lie in the eye of the beholder. And that even the most outwardly prolific creative people are just like the rest of us. Fuelled by a search for meaning - and a desire to go riding as much as they possibly can, whatever the circumstances… --- This week's codes for some big old savings, all kept up to date at wearelookingsideways.com: FINISIDEWAYS26 for 10% off any full-price order from Finisterre LOOKINGSWSXDB for 15% off anything from Db LOOKINGSIDEWAYS2026 for 15% off any full-price Albion purchase LOOKINGSIDEWAYS for 15% off full-price Stance orders LOOKINGSIDEWAYS for 10% off anything from Goodrays PASSENGER-SIDEWAYS10 for 10% off at Passenger LS27 for money off ski and snowboard hire at Intersport 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. 00:00 Introduction 03:36 Liam the Looking Sideways Fan 12:16 Feeling Flat After Perfect Waves 28:03 Leaving London 32:26 Headlining Glastonbury 44:04 Why Creative Partnerships Are Like Marriages 1:09:05 The Crossroads 1:16:11 Housekeeping Corner

In this episode of Looking Sideways, I speak to Julie Maughan and Chris Hines about Dirty Business, the recent Channel 4 drama exposing the state of the UK’s water industry since privatisation, and the real-life tragedy at its centre. The story of eight-year-old Heather Preen, who died after contracting E. coli following a sewage spill on a Devon beach, forms the emotional core of the series, and is what really makes this such a powerful piece of storytelling. Because what Dirty Business does so effectively is remind you that behind all of this - the corporate failure, the regulatory collapse, the wholesale extraction of profits, the outrageous cynicism - there are devastating, long-lasting human consequences. Julie, Heather’s mother, has spent nearly 30 years campaigning for justice. Alongside environmentalist Chris Hines, she has worked tirelessly to hold those responsible to account and bring national attention to the issue. In this essential, riveting conversation, we explore Heather’s story, the long-term impact on her family, and the wider context: how the UK’s water system reached this point, why it has been allowed to continue; and what it reveals about privatisation, regulatory failure, accountability, and public apathy. This is an urgent look at an issue that affects us all, and what might be the most emotionally impactful and important episode of Looking Sideways I’ve ever recorded. Don’t miss it. -- 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.