We Shouldn't Be Friends

Talking for a living isn’t the cakewalk people assume. This is especially true in sport. Even if you have something to say, it can be spun by circumstance — maybe you don’t mesh with the commentary team, maybe nerves mess up your message, maybe your voice is just plain unpleasant! None of this is true of Flick Palmateer. In the WSL CT broadcast machine, she brings a sharp mind to the game, along with that rare ability to warm up the room — when Flick’s talking, you’re in no doubt there’s a fellow human being present. Plus she’s in the midst of a career expansion you don’t often see, from pro surfer locked in the surf culture to a public figure with bigger goals. Plus she has Nick and Hannah’s favourite quality: she doesn’t muck around!

Ever been sacked from a job you love? Even better — ever thought you might be sacked, and had to hang around for days in the office corridor waiting to find out? This is what a coupla handfuls of professional surfers just went through at Merewether Beach, with the tiny little addition of it all being on full, worldwide, public display. Competition surfing might be the only kind of surfing capable of making a surfer actually cry, and it sure did in Newcastle. So…why do it, and how do you accommodate the mad rushes of feeling around winning and losing long enough to make a career out of it? We asked the fantastic Pam Burridge to help us understand this carnage.

While we’re on the subject…competition! In case you haven’t tried it, Hannah’s recently gone there on your behalf, and she’s rapidly finding out what a triple-edged sword it can be. You THINK you’re ripping, everyone TELLS YOU you’re ripping, you KNOW you’re the best … and you come third in your heat. Imagine going through this ego-mincer for a living. Well, over the coming week, the citizens of the fine city of Newcastle are about to see it in all its awkward glory, as a few handfuls of surfers try to jump levels — from the Challenger series to the big game. They have a week to show it or blow it. Who are they, and how will they survive this nonsense?

In the past four days, we’ve seen a classic, vaguely farcical, perhaps even hilarious story play out at the very top end of organised competitive surfing. On the surface it looks pretty simple: the WSL CT pros are cut up over a new Olympic selection criteria issued by the International Surfing Association for LA28. The criteria looks like a kick in the teeth for the CT crew, limiting their selection to just 10 of the 48 slots on offer. Couple that with the fact that nobody at the ISA asked for their opinion, and blammo! Angry surf stars everywhere. But behind this brouhaha lies a deeper saga: an epic, long running power play over what’s become the most precious prize in the sport: an Olympic gold medal. Nick and Hannah go to town on it with the help of the fantastic and very clear-minded Leo Fioravanti, who knows from experience what a medal shot feels like.

2026 is pro surfing’s 50th anniversary, and it’s been fifty years of epic carnage. 28,000 surfers. Over a billion dollars of investment. You can love it, hate it, or just not care about it, but you can’t really deny it — since 1976, the world tour has grown from very scrappy beginnings into one of surfing’s most potent cultural forces. In these special episodes, Hannah and I look at what’s driven this wild ride, who’s done the driving, and why they even bothered. This one delves into how the groundwork was semi-accidentally laid for a tour to occur — sponsored by a cigarette company, an enthusiastic vodka marketer, and the Australian bottlers of a black fizzy drink.

It’s not secret to anyone who’s tried it: comedy is HARD. And given the number of people who’ve tried it and failed, comedy based on surfing is even harder. It’s weird, because we all know a heap of funny shit happens in the water all the time, but how do you dig it out and show it to the world? Enter Luke Cederman, the dryly witty NZ goofyfoot responsible for the Raglan Surf Report. Luke’s skits lampoon pretty much every social pretension in the culture, and he rarely spares himself a bit of mockery in the process. Nick and Hannah have been waiting for a chance to drag Luke into the studio, and now his home town is suddenly a WSL mega CT venue! So let’s fucking go!

The gossip mills began churning about a year ago. Liberty Brands, the retail curator arm of US private equity play Authentic Brands — which owns most of the surf industry’s most familiar brand names — fell over, taking well over 100 “surf” shops with it. This seemed the final straw for an industry that had done its best to define surf culture for 60 years. But… was it? Or was it part of a much needed clean out of the old to make way for the new-ish? Culture vultures Nick and Hannah, with the help of special guests Ryan Scanlon from needessentials and the inimitable Josh Kerr, try to figure out just what happened here, and if this is a question of scorched earth or surprisingly green shoots.

Four attacks. Numerous in-water sightings. A whole coastline of surfers wondering — who’s next? It’s safe to say this has not been the January anyone in NSW was expecting. But what’s behind the past few days of mayhem, and the strange stillness that’s followed as surfers stayed out of the water despite very solid, very non-January surf? Turns out the animal involved has changed its behaviour for a very simple and predictable reason. Nick and Hannah dig into that reason and the wild circumstances it’s triggered. See below for links to some info we used to present this episode — they might just help.https://www.sharksmart.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/1447730/Bull-Shark-fact-sheet.pdfhttps://www.jcu.edu.au/news/releases/2025/july/climate-shifts-extending-sydneys-bull-shark-seasonhttps://fish.gov.au/docs/SharkReport/2023_FRDC_Carcharhinus_leucas_Final.pdf

“Longevity.” It’s a word more and more surfers are throwing around as an aspiration. Well how about eternal youth? At 82, Bonza Bob McTavish has a deeper well of surfing memory than maybe any other surfer in the world, yet he still exudes the stoke and buzz of someone who lives right here with us, in the moment. Truly, he is our very own Santa Claus, yet the gift he gives us is his very own self. Nick and Hannah spent a fabulous afternoon in Bob’s shaping bay tucked away in Byron’s industrial estate, where McTavish and his son Ben have assembled the most highly talented pack of Millennial/Gen Z surfboard workers we’ve ever seen, and listened to Uncle Bob tell us how he got here.

When winter comes to the north shore of Oahu, every swell is shrouded in myth. The Pipeline! Sunset! Waimea Bay! The outer reef spots that nobody ever actually names. But these swells and spots are just like anywhere else. They’re ridden and held down by human beings, just like you and us, and the experience is more down to earth than most of us might imagine. Mark Healey is as down to earth a human as you’d ever want to meet, yet he also hunts barrels at Waimea lefts, surfs the Pipeline with 25 years of knowledge behind him, and is a generational surfing talent in this hallowed surf zone. Nick and Hannah got hold of him after he’d spent a bit of pre winter time in NZ with his mates shooting red deer, and talked with him about Valhalla.

Recently the World Surf League has been dropping world champ comebacks like they’re on sale. Carissa, Stephanie, John, Gabriel! That’s 19 world titles rolling up almost out of the blue for the 2026 tour. They’ll change the game for sure. But in the meantime, what about the current men’s champ? Universally hailed as a great winner at Cloudbreak back in September, the magnificently chill Yago Dora has nevertheless not featured in any Western surf media since that win. Nick and Hannah thought this was very weird, so we asked Yago if he’d mind joining us to explore his life as a super-kid in Florianopolis, Brazil, how he made the transition from free-surf star to elite competitor, stepping out on his own at title level, and how he produced that searingly confident Finals performance.

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.

In this episode, Hannah and Nick go super-nerd on the WSL CT’s big-hitting Teahupo’o event. This is the last straight up CT of 2025, and nothing is quite as it seems! While the top women seem to have sorted out who’s who, they face an extremely dangerous wildcard in Vahine Fierro. And on the other side of the gender gap, things are all over the shop. At least eight surfers are in the hunt for the final five, none of them have really owned the year, and THEY face not just one wildcard in Olympic champion Kauli Vaast, but the terrifying spectre of likely injury wildcard Gabriel Medina. It’s a car crash waiting to happen. We also reflect on a couple of other grand finales: Jack McCoy and Clyde Aikau, and the meaning of the paddle-out.

It’s a difficult situation, for sure. You’re the only world professional surfing champ from your country in HISTORY, and a kid 30 years your junior is not super far from a shot at the title. No wonder Shaun Tomson weeps when Jordy Smith loses a heat! But that’s far from the only thing on the mind of this legendary king of tube riding. While our last guest, MR, cuts blanks for a living, fellow ‘70s superstar Shaun spends his life encouraging people to be the very best they can — including Hannah, who is given an awful task to complete! Plus: the vexed moral issue of the double pump bottom turn, and more.

We asked the great Mark Richards to join us because it suddenly struck us: here’s someone who won four world titles in a row with no coaching, no diet advice, no personal strength trainer, and a bunch of self-shaped twin-fins. How many might he have won with all of that?? But there’s so much more to MR than coaching or any of that stuff. In this, his very first podcast appearance, the humble and clear-minded Mark explores the Cone of Silence, Gerry Lopez’s artistic power planing skills, his two week apprenticeship with Dick Brewer, why he loves wave pool contests, his lifelong surf trip jinx, and sends Nick and Hannah away convinced that he’s their favourite world champion ever.

A Special Live Podcast from Seas The Day“Hey mate, I’m a 66 year old woman and I’m struggling! And you’re taking my wave!” Here’s how the fantastic Toni Sawyer describes calling an errant hassler to account recently on a small day at Cabarita, NSW. Toni is part of one of Australia surfing’s great generations — think Pam Burridge, Pauline Menczer, Jodie Cooper — and she’s been finding her place in lineups for over 50 years. Be enthralled as she and the equally fantastic Liliana Bowrey join Nick and Hannah at the recent Seas The Day festival, and clamber through a huge time of change in the water.

One of the great surfing lives recently came to an end with the passing of Hawaii’s Clyde Aikau. On the eve of his memorial paddle-out ceremony at Waikiki next week, Nick and Hannah recall their encounters with the amazing, larger-than-life Clyde, and his astonishing efforts over many years to share the legacy of his brother Eddie with the world, through the Eddie Aikau Invitational, the greatest surf gathering of all time. You can honor Clyde’s legacy wherever you are, on ceremony day, June 26, just by catching one last wave for Uncle Clyde. Please post your ride, memories or special video tribute to social media on the day using this hashtag: #LastRideWithUncleClyde or email your clip (Please limit to 15 seconds) to [email protected] . By submitting or tagging clips on social media you are granting permission to the Aikau Family to include your content in Uncle Clyde’s tribute video.

Seas The Day is the world’s warmest surf festival. Which is weird since it happens on winter solstice weekend. It should be freezing! But it won’t be, because Seas The Day’s purpose is not aligned with cold. On June 21-22 at Kingscliff, NSW, it draws together some of surfing’s smartest and most involved women for two days of inspiration, stoke and fun. But how do things like Seas The Day fit into a surf culture that’s constantly evolving? Nick and Hannah drag in festival pioneer Belén Alvarez Kimble to find out.

Of the world’s many pro surfing tragics, few are as tragic as your unlikely hosts. Maybe that’s why we’re so tweaked by the WSL’s much-surfed yet little understood Challenger Series, where 14 year old supergrommets, old school ex-superstars, and dozens of hopeful nationalities do battle in search of the CT limelight. What little surfing society is this, and how come it’s just been given a ticket to none other than the Coliseum itself, Pipeline? The gracious and super skilled Jacob Willcox joins Nick and Hannah from Newcastle, NSW to help us all understand the Changa that much better.

Learning about each other in the surf is the basis of our wacky friendship. It’s why this poddy even exists! But conversations about the lineup often seem so basic — let’s face it, is there anything more tedious than complaining about crowds? There’s a lot more going on out there. In this fantastic and very challenging episode, Nick and Hannah talk with brilliant surfer/academic Dr Rebecca Olive, who takes us into some very deep water indeed.

After 10 days at Burleigh Heads, Nick and Hannah stagger back home with their heads full of WSL gossip. But what’s actually happening at the sport’s pointy end, what calls are being made and who’s making ‘em? We enlist one of pro surfing’s happiest back room operators, Christian Bessera of the surfers’ organisation WPS, to explore how the surfers make it all work the way they want.

In this very special episode, we head north to the land of right-hand pointbreaks, the southern Gold Coast, and ask four fantastic guests to explain for us what makes it home. Recorded live at the Coolangatta Sands with Jay Phillips, Dean Morrison, Sally Paxton and Jesse Starling. First of a series from Australia’s great surf towns, supported by Flotsam Festival and Surfing World magazine.

When a huge easterly gale forms off New Zealand and points shotgun-like at the whole NSW coast, Nick talks it up like a wildman while Hannah gets ready to shoot her brains out. But Tom’s stolen the jetski! What happens next?

Professional surfing has been around for almost 50 years! It’s like Nick and Hannah’s middle sibling. Here we explore one of surfing’s most divisive yet inescapable subjects, and answer a vital question: why is Hannah such a fan?

Complete with jet-ski and little brother Tom, Hannah and Nick hurtle northward to meet the mighty Tropical Cyclone Alfred head-on, and end up with minor bruising and special guests, Lilliana Bowrey and Clint Kimmins!

Hannah and Nick met-cute through of all things, surf media! Here we invite our very first guest, the legendary surf journo Sean Doherty, to help us understand just what it is we all got ourselves involved with.

This wacky friendship didn’t just fall out of the sky. Hannah and Nick take a look at surfing’s past, at the times when they could have been friends — and the times when they definitely couldn’t.