Waterpeople

What do you need to change to still be surfing in 20 years? Performance and longevity coach Rodrigo Perez is practical about what it takes to keep surfing as we age, from mindset and community to the unglamorous basics of strength and mobility. He is the author of The Art of Longevity. Rod’s path to coaching is built on lived experience. He grew up in Brazil and struggled with respiratory issues that kept him sidelined from sport. He learned firsthand how movement, breath control, and p...

When everything is taken from you at once, what is left? Shaun Tomson is the 1977 World Surfing Champion, the author of Surfer's Code, and a keynote speaker whose work has reached Harvard, Google, Disney, and SEAL teams. He was shaped by his upbringing in South Africa, by the pro tour's formative years, and by the loss of his son Matthew at fifteen years old. In this conversation, Shaun connects surfing to faith and prayer through his Jewish heritage and his mother's World War II survival sto...

Have you had someone believe in your potential before you could see it yourself? Laura Crane is a big wave surfer from North Devon. She came of age in a surf industry that measured her worth by how much exposure her image could earn. Laura stepped away from pro surfing in her early twenties, took a turn at reality TV, then returned to surfing whole-heartedly when a mentor called out something she'd never fully faced. Laura set her sights on heavy water. She is the first British wo...

Who has the right to speak on behalf of water? Who carries that responsibility? Drawing on her lineage of wayfinders and traditional music makers, Whaia regularly takes the stage of international political gatherings – like the United Nations Climate Summit – to invoke the voice of water. She is a Māori vocalist, surfer, multi-instrumentalist, and cultural producer whose work moves between the sacred and the political, the intimate and the global. Born on the East Coast of Aotearo...

Has something astronomical ever made you reassess your life's trajectory? Jon Swift is an astrophysicist and lifelong surfer with a PhD from UC Berkeley. He runs a research observatory at The Thatcher School in Ojai, California, teaches math and science, and his music has featured in cult surf films from the 2000s, like Shelter and The Drifter. Jon shares his story of living alone in Mexico after finishing a physics degree, and the cosmic event under a desert sky that lit his path forward.&nb...