The Kyle Thiermann Show

Grant Washburn (@Biggwalsh) is a pioneering Northern California big-wave surfer best known for having surfed more sessions at Mavericks than anyone on earth. Originally from Connecticut, he moved to San Francisco after college, drawn by the challenge of bigger surf. He became a regular at Mavericks and a prominent voice on its history and culture. Washburn’s work extends beyond the water. He co-directed and produced the 1998 documentary Maverick’s, helped film Stacy Peralta’s Riding Giants, and co-wrote and edited the book Inside Maverick’s: Portrait of a Monster Wave. He also served as surf coordinator and consultant on the 2012 film Chasing Mavericks, helping train Gerard Butler and coordinate surf scenes. Known for his deep knowledge of Mavericks and its formidable conditions, Washburn has helped document the break as both a surfer and filmmaker. He has also competed in Mavericks events and surfed internationally, including at Dungeons in South Africa.If you dig this podcast, will you please leave a short review on Apple Podcasts? It takes less than 60 seconds and makes a difference when I drop to my knees and beg hard-to-get guests on the show. I read them all. You can watch this podcast on my YouTube channel and join my newsletter on Substack. It’s glorious. My debut book, ONE LAST QUESTION BEFORE YOU GO, is available to order today. Get my article in the Surfer’s Journal. Get full access to Kyle Thiermann at thiermann.substack.com/subscribe

Adam Delehanty is the founder of Ghost, a ghostwriting agency that helps business leaders find the language their ideas deserve. He started his career in politics, learning how the right words can move people to action. Since then, he’s spent a decade partnering with some of the most brilliant minds in technology and culture, including Duolingo, Hinge, GLG, and R/GA. He's based in New York, holds a B.A. in English from Brown and an MBA from Columbia, and his background is a mix of go-to-market strategy, brand storytelling, and copywriting. Ghost is best known for culture books: long-form artifacts that capture how the most innovative organizations think. As Justin McCleod, Founder & CEO, Hinge said, “Adam and his team changed Hinge forever. They helped us nail our values and transform our story into a book that defines our culture to this day.”If you dig this podcast, will you please leave a short review on Apple Podcasts? It takes less than 60 seconds and makes a difference when I drop to my knees and beg hard-to-get guests on the show. I read them all. You can watch this podcast on my YouTube channel and join my newsletter on Substack. It’s glorious. My debut book, ONE LAST QUESTION BEFORE YOU GO, is available to order today.Kyle Thiermann is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. I also take payment in surf wax. Get full access to Kyle Thiermann at thiermann.substack.com/subscribe

Forest Troop is a new story I wrote for Adventure Journal about a trip I took to remote British Columbia with a group of female pro surfers. The editor, Stephen Casimiro, kindly let me read the story to my podcast audience here. Adventure Journal is a quarterly print magazine with the weight and quality of a coffee table book. The sensibility is literary and unhurried, with long-form essays and photography on skiing, climbing, surfing, overlanding, and the psychology of why people chase adventure at all. Regular contributors include Terry Tempest Williams, Robert Macfarlane, Peter Heller, Chris Burkard, and David Roberts. You can subscribe to Adventure Journal here. You won’t regret it. If you dig this podcast, will you please leave a short review on Apple Podcasts? It takes less than 60 seconds and makes a difference when I drop to my knees and beg hard-to-get guests on the show. I read them all. You can watch this podcast on my YouTube channel and join my newsletter on Substack. It’s glorious. My debut book, ONE LAST QUESTION BEFORE YOU GO, is available to order today.Kyle Thiermann is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. I also take payment in surf wax. Get full access to Kyle Thiermann at thiermann.substack.com/subscribe

Christopher Ryan, Ph.D is a big thinker buddy of mine who is a van lifer, wisdom dispenser, troublemaker, host of the podcast Tangentially Speaking, and co-author of Sex at Dawn and Civilized to Death. Even before co-authoring the New York Times best-seller, Chris was on a wild ride. After receiving a BA in English and American literature in 1984, he spent the next two decades traveling around the world, pausing in unexpected places to work at decidedly odd jobs (e.g., gutting salmon in Alaska, teaching English to prostitutes in Bangkok and self-defense to land-reform activists in Mexico, managing commercial real estate in New York’s Diamond District, helping Spanish physicians publish their research). In his mid-30s, Chris decided to pursue doctoral studies in Psychology. Drawing upon his multi-cultural experience, Chris’ research focused on distinguishing the human from the cultural, first by focusing on shamanism and ethnobotany—studying how various societies interact with altered states of consciousness and the sacred plants that provoke them—and later, by looking at similarly diverse cultural perspectives on sexuality.If you dig this podcast, will you please leave a short review on Apple Podcasts? It takes less than 60 seconds and makes a difference when I drop to my knees and beg hard-to-get guests on the show. I read them all. You can watch this podcast on my YouTube channel and join my newsletter on Substack. It’s glorious. My first book, ONE LAST QUESTION BEFORE YOU GO, is available to order today.This is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Or just drop a coin in a fountain and wish me one year of good luck. Get full access to Kyle Thiermann at thiermann.substack.com/subscribe

Steve Hawk is a longtime surf and outdoor journalist, former editor of Surfer magazine, Sierra, and Stanford Business magazines. His first novel, Nearshore, is out today. Described as a churning mix of literary suspense and coastal noir, where the clash between land and sea unearths Silicon Valley’s darkest secret, the book is both a window into NorCal’s insular surf culture as well as the plausible threat of a terrorist attack on San Francisco. Hawk will be doing a bunch of book events in the coming months where you can go see him in person, including Bookshop Santa Cruz on August 19th. In this podcast, we explore Hawk’s writing process, his jump from non-fiction to fiction, and how a health scare taught him the new meaning of a deadline. If you dig this podcast, will you please leave a short review on Apple Podcasts? It takes less than 60 seconds and makes a difference when I drop to my knees and beg hard-to-get guests on the show. I read them all. You can watch this podcast on my YouTube channel and join my newsletter on Substack. It’s glorious. My first book, ONE LAST QUESTION BEFORE YOU GO, is available to order today. Get full access to Kyle Thiermann at thiermann.substack.com/subscribe