We Shouldn't Be Friends

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.pdf

https://www.jcu.edu.au/news/releases/2025/july/climate-shifts-extending-sydneys-bull-shark-season

https://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.