PODCAST · sports
Swimmingpod
by Stanley Ulijaszek
Swimming in the outdoors - lakes and lidos, rivers and oceans, especially the people that swim in them.Music - 'Noe Noe', 'Aeronaut', ' Vienna Beat', and 'Watercool Quiet', from Blue Dot Sessions.
Episodes
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Swimming in Zurich, with Stanley Ulijaszek
Zurich is a happy place for me. I recall swimming in Lake Zurich, day after day, at the age of 19 years, just a fewkilometers south of Zurich itself. Enjoying the mild sting on getting into the water, cool, but not cold, easily accommodated. Enjoyed the majestic background of mountains still...
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Swimming in Custard, with Maddalena Borsato and Stanley Ulijaszek
Doing research is like swimming in custard. That’s the take-home from Maddalena Borsato in this podcast. She is a researcher in aesthetics at the University of Gastronomic Science, Pollenzo, Italy, and she combines pastry making withphilosophy in her website aristortele.it, where she…
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Rebecca Olive, Researching Urban Swimming in Australia
Dr Rebecca Olive is Vice Chancellors Senior Research Fellow at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. Her research explores how every-day, recreational sport and leisure activities are experienced through cultural politics, ecological encounters, social media production and consumption, and much...
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Swimming at Murder Central with Stanley Ulijaszek, in Australia and the UK
Murder doesn’t often feature in swimming. In this podcast, two places are linked through this theme: Ballarat and St George’s Lake, in Australia, with Wallingford and the River Thames in Oxfordshire, in the UK. Both places have factual andfictional claims to being ‘murder central’ in their...
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Lyn Wilks and Swimming in Ballarat, Australia
Swimming is in the DNA in Australia. Even in inland places, lakes, human-made and natural, form ideal swimming places. Human-made lakes include dammed waterways for reservoirs and goldmining works in mid- to late-nineteenth century Victoria, during the period that Australians moved toward...
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Sibylle van der Walt, Swimming in the Moselle River and Metz Ville d’Eau
Before the pandemic, some friends in Metz, a mid-sized city in France, near Strasbourg, were looking for somewhere to swim outdoors. The Moselle River flows through Metz, on its way to the North German wine country, before joining with the Rhine at Koblenz. This seemed the right place to make a…
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Swimming, Water and Music, with Romy Martinez
Dr Romy Martinez is a Paraguayan singer, researcher, and ethnomusicologist, with two award-winning albums with the Purahéi Trio, including Songs by the Riverbanks, inspired by river landscapes and cultural exchange between Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil. She received the 2025 Latin GRAMMY…
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Laura Reineke, Champion Endurance Swimmer, and Friends of the Thames
Laura Reineke is triple crown swimmer from Henley, UK, completing the Santa Catalina channel swim, the English Channel and the 20 Bridges swim of Manhattan Island. Locally, she is a Henley Mermaid, a group that swims for socialjustice, and founder of Friends of the Thames. She is Sue Ryder Woman…
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Simon Griffiths, of Outdoor Swimmer Magazine, and Swim Wild and Free
Simon Griffiths is the author of Swim Wild and Free: A PracticalGuide to Swimming Outdoors 365 Days a Year, and founder of Outdoor Swimmer magazine. He is a life-long swimmer, swims year-round in the Thames and regularly takes part in open water and pool races. His swimming adventures havetaken…
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Toby Robinson, Olympian Marathon Swimmer, Paris, and Bringing Swimming back to the Thames in London
Toby Robinson is an international swimmer, representing England at the 2022 Commonwealth Games, and Great Britain at the Paris Olympic Games 2024. He is passionate about swimming, especially in open water. He is a staunch advocate and campaigner for clean open water in the UK, especially the…
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Happy 5th Birthday, Swimmingpod. With Stanley Ulijaszek and Guests
Swimmingpod celebrates its 5th birthday, with guests Helen Edwards, Tom Kearney, Anette Frisch, Charlotte Sawyer, Tess Bird, Vera Prokopieva, and Carl Tysom. 65 episodes, covering styles and cultures of swimming in the outdoors and open water. Swimming heroes and everyday swimmers, politics and...
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Sian Richardson – Events and Adventuring with the Bluetits
Sian Richardson is founder of the Bluetits Chill Swimmers, a social enterprise that has gone global. In this episode of Swimmingpod, Sian talks about how she got into winter swimming events and about Bluetits in Tallinn and at Lake Bled.
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Lord James Bethell and a Vision for a Swimmable Thames in London
James Bethell is a Lord of the British realm. A former Health Minister and member of the House of Lords. He is a passionate open water swimmer, whose passion has extended to bring open water swimming back to the River Thames in London. In this episode of Swimmingpod, Lord Bethell, James Bethell,...
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Stanley Ulijaszek on Swimming and Summer Solstice Rituals
A warm June, 2025; a similarly warm June 2020, but in very different circumstances, both times greeting the solstice sun with a swim. Five years since the pandemic, Stanley Ulijaszekreflects in this podcast on summer solstice swimming and other rituals attached to this time of year at Oxford…
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Winter bathing at Umeakallbad, Sweden, with Dan Allen-Hörnfeldt and Elvira Lundgren
Daniel Allen-Hörnfeldt and Elvira Lundgren swim in Umea, Sweden. A place known for its magnificent wilderness, green and blue spaces, and swimming and winter swimmingscene. They run a very successful local winter bathing place called Umeakallbad. This is their story.
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Swimming and Cake in London, with Susanna Bowers and Stanley Ulijaszek
In this episode of Swimmingpod, Stanley Ulijaszek is with cake and pastry specialist Susanna Bowers, swimming at the London Fields and Brockwell Lidos , and eating cake and pastries at Pophams Bakery, Maya’s Bakehouse, and the lido cafe at Brockwell. In doing so, they explore the intimate...
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Swimming and Cake in Oxford, with Susanna Bowers and Stanley Ulijaszek
Swimming and cake is a natural combination for many outdoor swimmers. In this episode of Swimmingpod, food expert Susanna Bowers joins Stanley Ulijaszek in Oxford to explore both. They swim at Port Meadow from the Dodo Tree; and later from the Tolkien Bench in the University Park, close by…
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Swimming and Leptospirosis - Stanley Ulijaszek
I never expected to suffer from leptospirosis, although I know that it is a risk. A comment I sometimes hear from passers-by while swimming in the river is “you know you can get Weil’s Disease, don’t you?” My internal response, never spoken, is “Yes, but…” it is so rare that it is hardly on my...
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Amelie Schlemmer and the Donaukanal Swimming Club, Vienna
Amelie Schlemmer swims in Vienna. She is co-founder of SVDK – Swimmverein Donaukanal – the Donaukanal (Danube Canal) Swimming Club. This was founded in 2020 by four students of the Social Design program at the University of Applied Arts, Vienna, as an artistic practice. It soon turned into an…
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Swim For Your Life - Lake Bullen Merri, Australia
The volcanic Lake Bullen Merri is in Victoria, Australia, cloverleafed in shape. A little over two and a half kilometers across. Swimming here, Stanley Ulijaszek was struck by its deep history, and the history of the aboriginal Djargurd Wurrung peoples here, who were resettled in the late...
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Swimming stories and histories with Mike Lapworth and Hywel Davies
Mike Lapworth was the inspiration for my 65 swims at the age of 65 years. He had swum 50 swims at the age of 50 years. Hywel Davies I have swum with across the years, having met while swimming the length of the non-tidal River Thames (in stretches, not all in one go). We original met, Mikeand I…
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Kara Meyer, + POOL and New York City
Kara Mayer’s mission is to make river swimming around NewYork City safe and free. With her development of + POOL, a water-filtering floating pool for safe recreation in urban waters, she has ignited a series of policy changes that will open up access to the rivers for all New Yorkers. Thisis…
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Grace Wright-Arora, on Water (In)Justice and the River Avon
Why we swim can often be political, and swimmer Grace Wright-Arora has completed research on pollution, activism and alternative water knowledges among users of the River Avon, near Bristol. Central to this work is understanding why people swim in the Avon, despite knowing of the often high risks...
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Swimmable Cities Summit, Rotterdam, June 2025
Hot town, summer in the city, and a meeting like no other. For an urban swimmer, to have a bathing platform outside the conference venue, starting on Day 1, World Bathing Day, 22nd June, with a jump into the very clean waters of the Rijnhaven, Rotterdam, is a perfect start to two days of...
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Luke Belfield, and Marathon Swimming with Childhood Arthritis
Luke Belfield is a force, undertaking feats of running and swimming which would tax any mortal. As someone who developed arthritis in childhood, with some remissionand then resumption in early adult life, he could have accepted the ruling of the ancient Greek three sisters of fate. But he didn’t....
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Shark Bait Swimming in Australia, with Tony Forbes and Col Ritchie
Tony Forbes and Col Ritchie are regulars at the annual Pierto Pub ocean swim in Lorne, Victoria. This can be a fierce race, when swimming can be a contact sport. Notwithstanding this, this fearsome duo amount nearly a century and a half of life experience between them, and swimming enough Pier...
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Sarah Quinn and Amenah McDonald, swimming and surfing at Ocean Grove, Victoria, Australia
Sarah Quinn taught me to say ‘You never regret a swim’ and Ihave been saying it now for decades. And I don’t and nor does she and nor does Amenah McDonald. Sarah and Amenah have a beautiful connection through the ocean atOcean Grove, Australia. Amenah plans her week around how the surf is going…
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Stanley Ulijaszek and Swimming in Australia at Queenscliffe
Stanley Ulijaszek offers some reflections about swimming in Victoria in Australia on the coast at Queenscliffe. On a beautifulbeach, long and stretching towards a point to the left and another to theright, at Point Lonsdale. A swim with a Hopper-esque sailboat sailing in gentlebut business-like...
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Swimming around Bristol, with Stanley Ulijaszek
There is a lot of good swimming to be had in the Bristolregion, with several vibrant and active outdoor swimming scenes in the region - in the city itself, but also in the nearby River Avon, in the River Brue, in the Avon estuary, and in the sea at sand point. If you can go a mile or ten out of...
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Charlotte Sawyer and Aggie Nyagari, with their swim film ‘Rave on for the Avon’
Charlotte Sawyer is a documentary film maker and photographer who captures cinematic stories that cross cultures and boundaries. She has worked in conflict zones and places vulnerable to climate change, notably Iraq, Ethiopia and Nigeria. Aggie Nyagari is a Kenyan film and TV director, who brings...
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Tom Kearney, on Transformation and Swimming at Hampstead Heath Men’s Pond
Tom Kearney is a Hampstead resident of over a quarter of a century and year-round swimmer at the nearby Ponds. He has a life well lived. In this podcast we talk about that life and the very special place that swimming in open water has in it. The late Al Alvarez, poet and author of the book ‘Pond...
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Stanley Ulijaszek and London Open Water Swimming
This podcast is about open water swimming in London – given how urban this global city is, it is not immediately obvious that this is a great place for open water swimming. Indeed, there is a thriving open water swimming scene. More accurately, there are several open water swimming scenes in…
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Sarah Giles, on Oxford, Swimming, and Inequality
Sarah Giles lives and swims in open water in Oxford. She is Programme Development Manager at SportExcel UK, a sports organisation working with people with learning disability across the UK in performance/elite sport. She is a passionate open water swimmer all days and all seasons, and a powerful...
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Swimming in Oxford with Stanley Ulijaszek
There is a strong tradition of outdoor swimming in Oxford. Writer Iris Murdoch said something like this “On hot days in the Oxford summer my husband and I manage to slip into the Thames, a mile or two above the city. The art is to draw no attention to oneself, but to cruise quietly by the reeds...
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Darrin Roles and the Lock to Lock Swim Series
Darrin Roles started the Lock to Lock a single swim event in the Thames in 2015, and it has grown into a series of events and distances. The first year the event was from Eynsham to King’s Lock (4 kilometers), and in subsequent years, swims from Farmoor to King’s Lock (6 kilometers) and from...
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Stanley Ulijaszek Swimming to Work by the River Thames
This podcast is about my practice of swimming to work, the last of which took place in 2022 when I retired. A swim to work for me was 8 kilometers, from Eynsham Lock to Port Meadow, Oxford. My final swim to work was on a Friday, when I had been accompanied by several friends, to make it a…
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Swimming Haiku with Mike Harris and Jeremy Wellingham
Jeremy Wellingham and Mike Harris are both open water swimmers, Jeremy in Oxfordshire, Mike in London. Both swim nationally and internationally too. Both write swim-inspired haiku. In this podcast they talk about their swimming experiences, and what it takes to write this Japanese short-form...
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Stanley Ulijaszek, and Swimming in The Shire
This podcast is about swims in The Shire - Tolkein’s Oxfordshire. I have no idea if Tolkien was a swimmer, but there is plenty of evidence to suggest that he liked water. In Lord of the Rings, The Elves have close affinity to water; while Ulmo is the Lord of Water. Ulmo is also the enemy of evil...
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West Oxfordshire Swimming Lake with Emma Gibbard and Carl Tysom
Emma Gibbard and Carl Tysom are both passionate about open water swimming, and both have been involved in overseeing swimming at the West Oxfordshire Sailing Club, where there is a lake with a one kilometer track, and dedicated members who swim on a regular basis, many of them through winter,...
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Stanley Ulijaszek - Memories Like Water
Five years ago, Stanley Ulijaszek undertook 65 swims in different places at the age of 65 years. The book 'Memories Like Water’ is a personal account of these swims. A lot of things happened in that year. Going to swim in places known, in places new. Lakes, rivers, oceans. Revisiting places and…
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Helen Edwards’ River-Based Exhibition in Oxford ‘Breathing of Life’
Helen Edwards is an ecological artist, dancer, and swimmer. I am with her at her solo exhibition at Oxford’s North Wall Arts Centre, entitled Breathing of Life. She has danced and swum in natural landscapes all her life. Connecting body, breath and imagination, she makes aesthetic connections…
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Stanley Ulijaszek's 70th Birthday Swim Party
Swimming outdoors every day, Stanley Ulijaszek celebrated his 70th birthday recently, obviously with a swim and a song, a picnic and cake. Will his guests still swim at 70? This what they said, in turn: Gemma Ferrier, Jeremy Wellingham, Lizanne Christopher, Blan Walker, Lisa Keeping, Jess…
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Free Diving and Diving Deep, with Sam Millward
Sam Millward is a scuba and freediving instructor, fascinated by the mental, physical and experiential benefits that all forms of immersion can give. In this podcast he describes the different world that free diving is a gateway to. He also describes deep diving, with equipment, and the…
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Swimming and Enablement with Level Water CEO Ian Thwaites
Level water means equal rights. In the case of Ian Thwaites and the charity Level Water, this is right to water, which swimming is a gateway to. He set up this charity with the mission of giving children with disabilities the opportunity to learn to swim, and by extension, empowers them to take...
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Ramin Cyrus, Marathon Swimming Without Sight
Ramin Cyrus has swum a channel relay, the Thames Marathon at Henley and other big swims, all great achievements. Powerful achievements, given that he is visually impaired. While for most open water swimmers, sighting is a matter of looking up, to work out where they are and to set their course,...
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Wild Swimming and Student Life. Vera Prokopieva and Annie Liddell in Conversation with Stanley Ulijaszek
Vera Prokopieva and Annie Liddle were undergraduate students at the University of Oxford. They both took up wild swimming together while at Oxford. Annie grew up on a farm in Hampshire while Vera grew up in Bulgaria. Both had a love of swimming before coming to Oxford, and both have taken their...
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Paul Atherton, Outdoor Swimming and Creativity
Paul Atherton is a filmmaker and Londoner. He produced and directed The Ballet of Change, four short films that were projected onto London landmarks, most famously Piccadilly Circus in 2007. His video-diary Our London Lives is in the permanent collection of the Museum of London. He took up…
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Karen Throsby, and a Sociology of Marathon Swimming
Karen Throsby is a swimmer and a sociologist. She is passionate about marathon swimming, and her CV of international distance swims is truly outstanding, taking in the Catalina Channel and Twenty Bridges Swim around Manhatten, as well as the English Channel. In 2008, as she started training for…
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Social Exclusion and Swimming, with Georgie Milner
Access is an important issue everywhere. People of all creeds and backgrounds swim. Georgie Milner is a life-long swimmer and is very keen to improve the inclusivity of sport settings. She graduated in Human Sciences from the University of Oxford in 2022, where she completed her dissertation on…
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Francesca Forno, Trento University, talks about 'From grassroots to platform: The reconfiguration of alternative food provisioning in the online world'
Francesca Forno, of Trento University, Italy, gives a presentation entitled 'From grassroots to platform: The reconfiguration of alternative food provisioning in the online world'
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Swimmingpod have?
Swimmingpod currently has 82 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Swimmingpod about?
Swimming in the outdoors - lakes and lidos, rivers and oceans, especially the people that swim in them.Music - 'Noe Noe', 'Aeronaut', ' Vienna Beat', and 'Watercool Quiet', from Blue Dot Sessions.
How often does Swimmingpod release new episodes?
Swimmingpod has 82 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to Swimmingpod?
You can listen to Swimmingpod on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Swimmingpod?
Swimmingpod is created and hosted by Stanley Ulijaszek.
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