Stab Podcasts

It's not who you think... Mikey and Buck discuss the recently departed Rip Curl Pro Portugal, a new Stab film, a Stab Edit of the Year entry, WSL vs. ISA beef, the Australian storm and more.

Dave Rastovich has travelled the globe campaigning for porpoise welfare. He helped pioneer Shipsterns, appeared in some of the most impactful surf films of a generation, and managed to make surfing pay without getting too involved in the business of making surfing pay. He's also managed to go uninfected by internet brain rot. Never been exposed to the psychic debris of being online. He knows nothing of the daily nonsense that occupies the rest of us, and seems to have suffered no great loss as a result. Anyway, Rasta has made it to the StabMic desk. It’s a rare sighting beyond his Northern Rivers property of abundance, this time in California to tour Sensing Home, his new film with Patagonia. Dave talks about getting stoned in Mundaka and realising he wasn’t going to pursue the tour, the parallels between surfing and sex (and why the viewing experience of both can be a little disheartening), and how surfing can be simultaneously meaningless and essential to a good life. Mostly, though, it’s two of surfing’s…

Everything we know (for now) about the allegations against Al Cleland Jr, and a Rip Curl Pro Portugal preview.

The sun never sets in the EAST, and New York City never sleeps. A match made in insomnia, and we figured the two ought to meet. Last week, we gathered at Vans Skate Space in Brooklyn for the finale of EAST starring Harry Bryant, where we crowned Ashton Pickle heavyweight champion of the weird. The next day, we took the party to 90th Street, where attendees got to test drive Haz’s EAST quiver. Having made a day of the beach, we made an evening of the bar. Ashton, Harry and Dooma took the hot seat at Bungalow Bar retired for a live StabMic, with special appearances from Mikey Feb, Danny Johnson and Dugong breeder, Will Solly. Our thanks to Kona Big Wave and Vans for bringing EAST to New York, and to Red Bull, Dome Dust, TurtleBox, Visit Dominican Republic, Devium, Yucca Fins, Roark, and Vaer for making StabMic possible.

Who said it? If you watched the EAST finale with Harry Bryant, you already know the answer. If not, have a listen here as Mikey and Buck discuss the spectacular way in which our annual alt board fiasco concluded. Genuine shock and awe thanks to the wizardry of Danny Johnson (and a bit of Haz). Also in this ep: - Does Japan have the best localism? - How many rails is too many rails? - Which surfer is owning 2026? And more.

In Episode #33 of StabMic, Hunter Martinez, Dane Reynolds, and Jake Kelley sit down with Dooma to talk through the making of DEFECT. We let the film run, and we let the boys talk to it. Stories of great value ensue: misadventures in an Indonesian corner named after the phallic appendage of one sailor-surfer, the music choices, the trips, and an additional clip of Dane running shirtless through a cemetery, narrated by Chris Hemsworth. This is DEFECT, explained by the chefs themselves. For those keeping score, we missed a week. DEFECT was meant to be Episode #32, but music licensing issues threatened to consign it to the dustbin of digital history. Happily, the threat has passed, and DEFECT shall remain on the internet for eternity. Thanks to our partners at Red Bull, Dome Dust, TurtleBox, Visit Dominican Republic, Devium, Yucca Fins, Roark, Colby +, and Vaer for making StabMic possible.

What's off limits in 2026? Mikey and Buck discuss our members' response to Steko's divisive new film 'Fudo'— namely, the "crimes "of IP theft and sex appeal. Also on the docket: a Quik Fest review, an EAST Fest pump up (more below), a Stab High announcement, interviews with the Lowers winners, our first 2028 Olympians and more. PS: If you're in NYC, join us this Friday, Oct 2 and Saturday, Oct 3 for EAST Fest with Harry Bryant, Mikey Feb and Mason Ho. October 2 is the world premiere of Harry Bryant’s EAST finale at Vans Skate Space 198. Doors open at 6 pm. Live music to follow, and Kona Big Waves available for those 21+. October 3 is a group surf day at 90th st. in Rockaway Beach, followed by a live Stab Mic recording. Times TBD, check our IG for more info.

“I look back on that moment as the single most important moment of my life.” Quite a thing to say about the day you died. On December 21, 2012, Greg Long suffered a three-wave hold-down at Cortez Bank and clinically drowned. Greg was wearing the first iteration of the flotation vest developed by Shane Dorian and Billabong. He yanked the trigger, but it didn’t inflate. He tried again. And again. Nothing. No air came. The vest was faulty. His team found him, and he was brought back from the brink. The vest emerged around 2012, as paddle surfing began pushing into territory that had previously been reserved for tow surfing. Sion Milosky’s death made the risks harder to dismiss. If the pursuit was going to continue, they needed a way out when things went bad. Greg eventually began working with Patagonia. After years of R&D, they released the first PSI vest to the public in 2017. Nobody has drowned while wearing one. Now, nearly a decade later, they’re releasing its second iteration. Alongside the new vest,…

When the sun sets on one lineup (Lowers), it rises in another (La Graviere). This week, Mikey and Buck discuss the last CT event before the post-season plus the non-sanctioned event that is currently taking France by storm (Quik Fest). Also: Ageist theory from the latest EAST ep + how many hours you need to improve at surfing, according to Nate Florence.

“I’m not sure if I’m allowed to tell this story… But I’m gonna do it anyway.” The best stories tend to live on the wrong side of the velvet rope, and every so often a gentleman must ignore the bouncer and let the public in. Parko, being a gentleman of considerable repute, has brought several such stories with him. Bisous! Fresh off the Surf100 $100k Finale, where the public judges may have been a touch less charitable than the man deserved, Parko joins Dane and Dooma at the StabMic desk to unpack the experience of putting a jersey back on, and what he’s been doing since hanging it up for good in 2018 after almost two decades on tour. There’s an obvious bit of crossover here, too. Joel spent the entirety of Dane’s relatively brief CT career on tour, before Dane left the building and Joel eventually did the same. Between them, they’ve seen enough of the institution from the inside to have developed some opinions on how the thing is constructed. It’s a good old-fashioned trip down the rabbit hole. The contents…

Surf100 spoilers + a Lowers preview. Mikey C is joined by Buck and Stace.

Cloudbreak just concluded with more questions than answers... Who was actually surfing well, and who was doing the bare minimum? Who gets priority when skis are involved? And how does the Abu Dhabi news affect the world's best surfers? Stace G and Mikey C investigate.

Coming into this year’s Surf100 Challenger Series, Zeke Lau’s reputation preceded him. Part of the calculation in casting him was that his history of hyper-competitive, occasionally confrontational surfing might make for good television. Zeke as antagonist, Zeke as disruptor, Zeke as villain. But, as anyone who’s been keeping up with the show knows, Zeke doesn’t really seem to be that guy anymore. He was also only a kid when he was on tour. Now he’s a dad, humble in defeat, generous with the other contestants, and enthusiastic about drinking beer. Josiah even wrote an essay about how much he loves him. Here, in episode 30 of StabMic, Zeke revisits both the John John incident at Bells and the Jacob Willcox incident at Margaret River, offering previously unknown context around what led to each, alongside a little insight into his upbringing and psychology that might explain why he did what he did. And looking back eight years on, does anyone even still have a problem with Zeke big-dogging John? Sport is, after…

A Drop of epic proportions. Harry Bryant fin discourse, a Dane vs. Joel Tudor music beef, Shane Dorian's tips on aging and an interview with the Hog? Yep, all inside.

Though not quite as internet-breaking as Kim Kardashian’s bare-cheeked, gravity defying Paper Magazine shoot back in 2014, nor inspiring quite the same conspiratorial energy as the great Slater-Mann affair of early 2026, the first episode of Harry Bryant’s EAST produced a similarly divided response. Some hot and bothered, taking a long, appreciative look at the unusual shapes, admiring the more exaggerated features; others left jostled by the jarring exhibit, muttering that they’d seen enough. Not entirely dissimilar from Kimmy, actually. Before filming, Haz was our most requested EAST pilot, and in episode one he certainly came in hot. Direct and matter-of-fact, he offered his opinions on boards with the bluntness of a mechanic telling you what’s wrong with your car. It was the kind of thing Mikey Feb was heavily criticised for in the opposite direction: being too polite with his feedback. Haz, well, he’s certainly on the other end of the spectrum, and the comments section was quick to let him know. “It…

How does it feel to jump from a two-story building onto three feet of reef? We asked Cole Houshmand after a recent Cloudbreak hiding... from the sands of Tavarua Island Resort. Finally, Stace G and Mikey C dive into their Cloudbreak picks and predictions. Comp starts tomorrow!

“Between Christmas 2003 and New Year 2024, packages of cocaine started washing up along the beaches of Southwest France. National television news reports carried the story of the coke de la plage — the beach cocaine, around a month after the first local rumours of finds emerged. One TV report on France 2, 30th Jan 2004, stated one-and-a-half tonnes had been recovered along French and Spanish coasts that month. If that’s just what the authorities had found, it’s safe to assume lots, lots more had been picked up by members of the public, mostly surfers.” - Paul Evans. Our guest this week is WSL commentator, Surf Europe editor, Stab contributor, and, as of a couple of weeks ago, the creator, producer and host of a long-form narrative podcast about cocaine. It was late 2003, and Paul had recently moved to southwest France from the UK, initially seduced by the prospect of good, uncrowded waves and rumours of mystics like Tom Curren and Robbie Page having made a life there. A few months later, bundles of pure…

We could all use a little Yolanda in our lives. This week, Buck confronts Mikey C on his failed QS campaign. Then the boys chat Tahiti, EAST with Harry B, cocaine spoons, the best surf bikinis and more.

“Everyone’s trying to sell the core thing, so we actually went for corny.” Kolohe Andino and his brand, Steko, have a new surf film, Fudo, coming to theatres in late August, followed by a run of premieres before eventually landing on Stab Premium shortly thereafter. From the trailers and clips released so far, it’s clear a serious amount of effort has gone into making the thing: week-long setups for elaborate concept shoots, multiple international trips, a hired snake, and a deliberate move away from what Kolohe sees as an increasingly exhausted aesthetic — the Y2K-heavy, aggressively “core” fetishisation of surfing that has dominated the last five years or so. In its place is something Kolohe thinks surfing has lost, but which was abundant when he was coming up during the Joe G and Kai Neville era: style, artifice, mystique, and, above all, the simple biz of making surfers look cool. Fudo wears those influences openly, with the trailer borrowing liberally from the visual grammar and, in places, the actual…

Why did Kelly win that heat against Gabriel Medina? It wasn't for his thousands of fans, his young family, or even himself. It was for Ronnie Nelson. Let's drop in.

For most non-human animals, if you think about it hard enough, you can place yourself inside their brains and assume their experience of the world based on their behaviour. We observe, infer motivation, project our own experience onto theirs, and arrive at some rough approximation of an inner life. The further down the mammalian ladder you go, the easier this can seem. A small mammal wants food, wants sex, wants to avoid being eaten. A reptile might want much the same. Strip away the elaborate machinery of human society, and it’s not really all that different from our own lives, at the end of it all. If there is something it is like to be something, something we can relate to through our own experience, then bang, you’re in the territory of consciousness. Or so said Thomas Nagel in his 1974 essay, What Is It Like to Be a Bat? The essay became one of the foundational attempts to articulate the problem of consciousness: not simply what a brain does, but what it is actually like to be the thing possessing it.…

Remember when thousands of kilos of cocaine washed up on the shores of Hossegor, France, in the early 2000s, upending the entire surf community for years to come? Paul Evans does. In this Stab Premium podcast series, Paul speaks with dozens of people involved in southwest France's cocaine scandal and how it affected their no-longer sleepy surf village — and pro surfing as a whole. Episode 1 is available for free above. Episodes 2-4 will be available exclusively on the Stab Premium app, dropping every Friday starting on August 14. This is Hossegor Beach Cocaine.

Stace G and Mikey C provide our Tahiti preview and picks, presented by Betonline.ag. Make your own picks here: https://www.betonline.ag/sportsbook/futures-and-props/surfing/surfing-events

Who is JOB, really? One of the greatest surfers of his generation, for one. At Pipe, he’s right there in the best-ever conversation, on any respectable list. In terms of pure comfort at one of the deadliest waves on the planet, he’s the prize mattress in the showroom. Five stars, perfect lumbar support. He toys with Pipe like the reef beneath him is a foam pit rather than a death trap, riding colourful pool toys and soft tops through a place that has humbled generations of very serious adults. Naturally, he’s now selling his own soft-top brand, Fun Days Surf. If you’re going to spend your life doing something ridiculous, you may as well own the factory. Build a business around your bad habits. The venture marks a clean break from Catch Surf, the brand he helped build. Jamie gets into the split in this episode, and he has plenty to say about how it all unfolded. “Sometimes people forget about the value you bring to the brand,” he says. “When they forget about that, it’s time to forget about them.” And though…

Let's play a game of surf BINGO. Cards ready. This week Mikey and Buck touch on: - sharks - the WSL - the ISA - the Olympics - John Florence - the US Open - river surfing - stand-up paddling - beer - the deeper meaning of tuberiding Any winners yet?

“Anyone who does surfing is going to do it in their own way.” “The WSL does it in their own way, Stab does it in their own way. Obviously Louis Vuitton is going to do it in their own way. It’s going to be extra and over the top.” The question, really, is not whether Michael February belongs in a Louis Vuitton campaign. The question is whether any other surfer make the whole proposition look quite so fabulous. When the images dropped online, Mikey clad in a magnificent yellow knit, clutching a man-purse, the surf world was, you might say, a little divided. Some lamented the death of core surfing. Others accused LV of appropriating surf culture, or of repackaging the cultural myth of the Hollywood surf movie through an entirely outsider perspective. Rushing to the defence of Mikey and the great French luxury conglomerate were the wizened souls of Evan Slater and Joel Tudor. “It is so wild to me all the shit talking going on about the recent LV surf fashion line,” wrote Joel. “Yall are some hypocritical…

Albee Layer and Torrey Meister got water-herded by a shark in Maui, and he's still a staunch proponent of sharks' rights. The same can't be said at Fred Pawle — to some the star, to many others the villain of our currently-running Shark Week. Keep your ears peeled for a snippet of the Great Shark Debate inside. Also in this ep we announce our new EAST surfer (presented by Kona Big Wave and Vans), dissect the financial realities of the Challenger Series, and why tradesmen actually have better surfing lives than the "pros". PS, we're throwing a US Open party with Quiksilver this Saturday night, July 25th at Bungalow in HB. Get there.

What's the best film section of all time? Mikey and Buck believe they've found it. Also in this week's ep: - drama in the latest Surf100 ep - the great fin debate - sharks v ketamine darts - and more!

A conversation with one of the most opinionated and influential surfers of the last twenty-five years, Joel Tudor. After running through a class at Studio 540, the jiu jitsu studio Joel is heavily invested in, Joel and Stab's Editor in Chief Ashton Goggans sit down at his North County San Diego residence of over two decades and discuss many a matter near and dear to Joel's heart: jiu-jitsu; Pipeline, and his early days on the North Shore; the small army of icons and legends of the sport who took him under wing at a young age; weed, cocaine, creativity and jock mentality; skateboarding, longboarding, and the secrets to longevity, and much, much more. Music: "Son of Neckbone," The Beastie Boys. From "The In Side From Way Out." 1995.

The Drop #004 - The World Title Race, Kelly Slater, Jaws, Wave Pools and more by STAB

The Drop #003 - Jake Paterson by STAB

The Drop #002 - Ronnie Blakey by STAB

The Drop #001 - Kolohe Andino by STAB

The Drop #004 - Christian Fletcher by STAB

“I used to just drift through the world and have all these magic moments surfing. Now, I try so hard to make them happen, and it’s just so rare. I can’t believe how lucky I was.” For those suffering from Dane deficiency, some numbers: in the average StabMic episode, Dane accounts for roughly 15% of the single-camera shots. This time, he's north of 50%. Which is to say: this is the most Dane-heavy conversation we've ever released. For the starving, for the long winter, for the Reynolds romantics, here's your feed in full. First, a few bones from the carcass before we hand you the entire beast. Y2K is out. “It’s cool to get inspiration from the past, but to completely replicate it is weird.” On the fear of being stuck in the past: “Sometimes I wonder if I'm playing in a dated format, making surf films. But making 15-second clips for Instagram just doesn’t excite me.” On the architecture of a good surf film: “You’ve gotta create some sort of a narrative or a storyline. A lot of the time I like to edit body…

A WSL mid-season update, featuring Stace G and Mikey C. The boys look back at the last six CT events, peer ahead to the next seven, give some world title updates, discuss the CS succumbers and more.

Why is Griffin Colapinto quoting Theodore Roosevelt? Why did his mother spend his formative years threatening him with homelessness? What are Gabby Medina’s hobbies? And why has Griff's romantic life, at various points, become a subject of interest among anonymous Instagram accounts? This week on the StabMic, we get them answers. Griff occupies a strange place in modern surfing. He's one of the best surfers on Earth, deeply spiritual, relentlessly positive, shares his journal entries on social media, quotes dead American presidents, and has also accumulated an online anti-fanbase. According to Griff, none of it ever really got to him. Years of hard-won self-love saw to that. It did, however, get to his mum, who apparently took the pile-ons personally. Speaking of his mother, she may also be responsible for much of his success, thanks to a particularly motivating parenting strategy: "My mum always told me I was going to be homeless. And I was like, 'No I'm not. Watch this.'" Griff insists he's mostly just a…

And an incredible right at that. Perhaps the new best high performance stop on tour? This week, Mikey and Buck discuss the recent Cloud 9 announcement along with the best accessories in surfing, a new Surf100 x Pacifico) ep, crowd control issues at Teahupo'o, the entirely real and globally recognized World Cup of Surfing with special guest Paul Evans.

“This is surfing. The meanest people in the world get into making surfboards.” Surprising, then, that perhaps the most cartoonishly cheerful man in surfing right now also happens to be a board builder: Dan Mann. Dan’s been something of a hot industry topic in recent months, following his contentious victory in Stab In The Dark X, when Kelly Slater elected to crown his own shaper the best of the decade, prompting several weeks of the surfing world accusing him of being a self-licking ice cream cone. But Dan would get a chance to respond soon enough. A month later, in the rapidly assembled Stab In The Dark starring Ethan Ewing, Dan’s board, the same model, just scaled up to accommodate the mass and velocity of the Smooth Gorilla, made it all the way to the final, narrowly losing out to Hayden Shapes. Place some respect on the Mann’s name. This episode also features Stab co-founder Sam McIntosh, filling the chair usually occupied by Dane Reynolds. Before you oil your pitchforks, here’s the situation. It’s…

We mean the waves, of course. Head high? Double over? 30 ft? 100? An Irish beer brand will be the judge of that, in 3-4 business years. After discussing the new How Surfers Get Paid ep, Mikey and Buck debate whether or not Saquarema is a good wave and discuss the passing of San Diego surfer Patrick Phillips after an accident at Teahupo'o.

Prerequisites for riding for Former: – Must be able to hang on trips – Must be willing to sleep on the floor of a warehouse That’s about it. Before you volunteer your soul, there’s also the unspoken requirement that Dane Reynolds and Craig Anderson respect your surfing. Yep. It’s alright. Sit back down. There’s a seat here, still warm, right next to me. Since this weekly chat began, we’ve been trying to pry the story of Former out of Dane. He usually gives us a few scraps before laughing about the various ways the business nearly imploded. This week he’s joined by longtime friend and business partner, Craig Anderson, a relationship that stretches back to the Modern Collective days, before the birth of their long-running creative alliance at Quiksilver. The pair unpack the many occasions Former almost failed, did fail, or found itself staring directly at the abyss. At one point the company was hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt and operating out of Dane’s garage. Despite a career spent brushing up…

A Saquarema CT preview featuring Stace G and Mikey C. Make your surf picks here: https://www.betonline.ag/sportsbook/futures-and-props/surfing/surfing-futures

Buck sits down with the recent CT winner from Rome to dissect the 28-year-old's competition mindset and broader thoughts on modern-day surfing. Later, Mikey C joins Buck to discuss the new episode of Surf100 x Pacifico, Tom Lowe's near-death experience, and two Film of the Year nominees. This ep is presented by Slowtide and Pacifico. Shop the new Steph Surf Shop collab towels here: https://slowtide.co/collections/steph-surf-shop-x-slowtide

If you ain’t the one, you the prototype. Every institution has its creation myth. Rome had Romulus and Remus, Apple had the garage, The Beats had the 1944 murder. StabMic, in its larval stage, had no posters, sponsors, or Danny from the booth. It wasn’t even StabMic yet. It was just an idea, and perhaps the defining idea of the modern male condition. We should start a podcast. This was sometime around the end of 2024. Dane and Dooma never got around to settling on a name, though several contenders emerged from the primordial soup: Shit Salad, Off The Pulse, Sucking Dick For Beer Money, Unemployable, and Nonsense. Fine names, in my opinion, if slightly difficult to monetise. History is written by the victors and unfortunately, so are algorithm-friendly podcast titles. On moving day at the old Chapter 11 store in Ventura, they filmed a pilot episode, an early hominid in the StabMic evolutionary timeline. Consequently, the recording is punctuated by customers wondering if the store was still trading, people…

Can anyone stop a one-legged Italo? Doesn't seem like it, but we'll find out soon. Before dissecting the elite surfer massacre in El Sal, Mikey and Buck get into this week's news: - Surf100's first loser - The truth about El Niño - An (actually) unbiased wavepool review - When it's ok to paddle in (never?)

Round up a dozen of the world’s best shapers. Lock them in their respective sheds and ask them to solve the same problem twelve different ways. Gather whatever they create, paint the rails blue and ship them off to Sumbawa. Acquire Ethan Ewing. Clear his schedule, handle him with care. Ship him to Sumbawa too. Point a few cameras at him, put him in warm water, let him loose. Set the Smooth Gorilla free. Make a film about it. Actually, make a TV series. Market him as a man inconvenienced by language itself. Send along Taj Burrow to help translate. Let him surf too. Then crack the whole thing open. Let the kid talk. Show that we’re all bags of meat with galaxies inside, even the quiet ones. Ask him to pick a favourite board. Don’t discourage him from choosing outside the aristocracy. Not one of the big dogs, in his words. Let him repeat it, too. How cool, he says, for an underling to win. Follow his travel schedule, hold premieres in its wake. Let the people gather in dark rooms and watch. Then, finally, sit…

World number 1 just copped another surfer's fin to the knee and received eight stitches(!). Will he be well enough to compete at Punta Roca? Time will tell, but for now, Stace and Mikey pontificate on everything else around stop number five on the 2026 Championship Tour.

Our new Stab in the Dark winner is surprising to say the least. Mikey and Buck break down Ethan's final ep with all its twists and turns, explain the new Surf100 season, discuss Gabriel Medina's foam infidelity, announce the best boardshorts in the world (according to you) and more.

How do you measure success? Money? Conquests? Desires fulfilled? You know you’ve really made it when your name ends up in the dictionary describing a certain type of behaviour. An eponym is what we’d call it, if we were trying to sound intelligent. Which we are. So that’s what we’ll call it. Machiavellian, from Niccolò Machiavelli — describing someone willing to do nasty things in pursuit of an outcome. The end justifies the means. Real serpent behaviour and definitely nothing like the current moment we live in. Orwellian, from George Orwell — used to describe authoritarian control, surveillance, dystopian systems, and definitely nothing like the current moment we live in. Eithaning, from Eithan Osborne — coined by Dane Reynolds. A more contemporary addition to the discourse. Not yet recognised by major dictionaries, though give it time. Used to describe a specific type of erratic lineup behaviour that creates mass irritation, destroys all peace, and makes surfers question their instincts, positioning, and…

What is happening on the CT right now? We're a third of the way through the season, and there are four Brazilian goofies atop the men's rankings. On the women's side, no one seems to have found the world champ pace. At least we got to see the CTers go left for once. Stace G and Mikey C break down everything from the recent event at Raglan, before Buck comes on to bash seals, drag boy band members, and reveal a few state secrets from the Stab camp. PS, come watch Ethan Ewing's Stab in the Dark finale with us: When: Thursday, May 28th at 7 pm PST (finale starts at 8 pm). Where: Salud Studios at Tremont Collective, Oceanside, CA (602 S Tremont St Suite 104, Oceanside, CA 92054). Or online, only on Stab Premium.