The Surfer's Journal presents Soundings with Jamie Brisick

Born in Hawaii in 1983 and raised in a beachfront home on the North Shore, with a view out to Pipeline, Jamie O'Brien started surfing at age three.
As an amateur, he went on a contest trajectory—making the finals of the menehune division of the 1995 and '96 US Surfing Championships, and the finals in the 1999 and 2000 World Junior Championships. Most impressive, though, was his close relationship with Pipeline. He seemed to toy with the world's deadliest wave. In 2003, he won the Hansen's Energy Pipeline Pro. In 2004, he won the Pipe Masters.
In the aughts, O'Brien revealed his defiant side when he burned an ASP rulebook in a Red Bull-sponsored video. He took his career into his own hands, starring in the videos Freak Show, Freak Side, and Who is JOB?, the latter of which led to a web series. In it, he was self-effacing, absurdist, and refreshingly not serious. 
The videos resonated with viewers, and soon O'Brien became his own brand, making YouTube clips that would shoot into the million-views realm. He rode soft tops at big Pipe. He pulled wild stunts, including famously bringing pyrotechnics to Teahupoo.
Now 42, O'Brien lives just down the beach from the house he grew up in. He's recently founded a surf school, The Jamie O'Brien Experience. And he's still charging, playing, and documenting it all.
In this episode of Soundings, O'Brien talks with Jamie Brisick about growing up on the North Shore, the hierarchy at Pipeline, his relationship to competition, getting creative in the lineup, and documenting his day-to-day life on camera. 
Produced by Jonathan Shifflett.
Music by PazKa (Aska Matsumiya & Paz Lenchantin).

Born in Tustin, California, James Nestor spent his teens surfing and playing in a straight-edge punk band called Care Unit. After graduating high school, he moved to the Bay Area, where he studied art and literature and earned an MFA. 
Nestor's professional life began as a copywriter. Soon he moved into magazine journalism. His essays and features have appeared in Outside, Scientific American, The New York Times, The Atlantic, Dwell, The Surfer's Journal, and many others.
His 2014 book, DEEP: Freediving, Renegade Science, and What the Ocean Tells Us About Ourselves, follows clans of extreme athletes, adventurers, and scientists as they plumb the ocean's depths and uncover surprising new discoveries.
But his big book is, of course, 2020's Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art, which explores the million-year-long history of how we humans have lost the ability to breathe properly, and why we're suffering from various maladies because of it. Along with drawing on thousands of years of medical texts and recent cutting-edge studies in pulmonology, psychology, biochemistry, and human physiology, Nestor also found answers in the muddy digs of ancient burial sites, secret Soviet facilities, New Jersey choir schools, and the smoggy streets of Sao Paulo. In sum, Breath turns the conventional wisdom of what we thought we knew about our most basic biological function on its head.
Nestor has been a guest speaker at Stanford Medical School, Harvard Medical School, Yale School of Medicine, and the United Nations. He currently lives in Portugal. 
In this episode of Soundings, Nestor talks with Jamie Brisick about the fundamentals of breathwork, Ocean Beach, growing up in Orange County, his early days as a reporter, the values of freediving, and writing books.
Produced by Jonathan Shifflett.
Music by PazKa (Aska Matsumiya & Paz Lenchantin).

Born in 1955, hailing from Durban, South Africa, Shaun Tomson won the IPS world title in 1977. He did 14 seasons on the world tour, and won 12 events, including the 1975 Pipeline Masters, in which he made giant leaps for backside tube riding. He starred in many '70s and '80s surf films, among them Free Ride, where he's seen pumping through the barrel at Backdoor and Off the Wall—an entirely new thing at the time.
But Tomson's surfing was only part of the equation. He was business minded, and in the late '70s launched a clothing label, Instinct, and in 1985 a surf shop, Surfbeat, in Santa Monica. He holds a BA in Business Finance. In 1991, Australia's Surfing Life mag named him as the world's all-time best tube rider. Tomson co-produced Bustin' Down the Door, a 2008 documentary film chronicling the rise of pro surfing in the early '70s. He's the author of the best-selling Surfer's Code: 12 Simple Lessons for Riding Through Life.
In this episode of Soundings, Tomson sits down with host Jamie Brisick to talk about transformative experiences in the tube, growing up in South Africa, the influence of his father, the highs and lows of his professional career, writing his book, and the passing of his son.
Produced by Jonathan Shifflett.
Music by PazKa (Aska Matsumiya & Paz Lenchantin).

Born in 1976, hailing from Narrabeen on the northern beaches of Sydney, Oscar "Ozzie" Wright burst onto the scene in the mid-1990s and swiftly ascended to global surf fame—never in contests, but nearly always doing something imaginative, like flying through the air, doing spell-casting things with the tube, or surfing remote Indo in a pair of handcrafted bat wings.  
Wright appeared in a number of Volcom-produced videos, among them BS!, Psychic Migrations, Lobotomy, and One Hundred and Fifty Six Tricks. A prolific maker of artwork in a variety of mediums including painting, drawing, sculpture, collage, ceramics, furniture, skate ramps, film, and video, Wright is also lead singer of the Goons of Doom, an experimental, piss-taking punk band.
In this episode of Soundings, Wright sits down with host Jamie Brisick to talk about the differences between North and South Narrabeen, airs, childhood memories, the influence of grunge, dealing with criticism, style, unlocking the self through creativity, going on tour with his band, and finding fun in subpar waves.
Produced by Jonathan Shifflett.
Music by PazKa (Aska Matsumiya & Paz Lenchantin).

Born in Hawaii in 1961, Danny Kwock rode his first waves at Waikiki when he was ten. Surfing took a brief hiatus when he moved with his family to the San Fernando Valley, but picked up soon thereafter when they moved to Newport Beach, right at Wedge, which is where Kwock made his mark, charging big waves and becoming one of the brightest, flashiest surfers of the Echo Beach scene, wearing pink boardshorts and riding polka dot twin-fins when most Californians followed a far more understated ethos. 
Kwock was featured on the cover of Surfer and Surfing magazines in the early 1980s, did a short stint on the world pro tour, but soon became a forerunner to what we now know of as a professional "freesurfer." But he also saw the virtues of the long game. When the opportunity arose to work in a behind-the-scenes role at Quiksilver, he jumped at it, and he hit his straps as the marketing director, a position he held from the early 1980s up until the mid-aughts. (It should be noted that Kwock's relationship with Quiksilver began a few years earlier, when he and his Echo Beach buddy Preston Murray got caught stealing boardshorts from the warehouse.) Kwock's early team captain/marketing position started in what were wild days. The industry grew fast, and he played an instrumental role in that growth. 
In this episode of Soundings, Kwock talks with Jamie Brisick about meeting Duke Kahanamoku, surfing Wedge, the Echo Beach era, fashion, negotiating contracts, Andy Warhol, the wild days of the surf industry, and signing Kelly Slater to Quiksilver. 
Produced by Jonathan Shifflett.
Music by PazKa (Aska Matsumiya & Paz Lenchantin).