GENERAL INTERVIEW

Looking Sideways: Not just an action sports podcast…

Published on August 31, 2023

Have You Heard? is where the Pod Bible team meet the people behind the podcasts you may not have heard of yet. Today we’re finding out more about one of the podcasts recommended in the Oh My Pod section of Issue #028 of the magazine. Looking Sideways is a show that uses ‘action sports’ as a way into something bigger and more interesting…

Who are you and what’s your podcast about?

I’m Matt Barr, and I make a podcast called Looking Sideways, in which I interview people from the world of action sports and other related endeavours, as my unofficial tagline has it.

Although as a listener once said in a review they left, “Looking Sideways is ‘just’ about action sports in the same way that Moby Dick is ‘just’ a book about a load of blokes in a boat chasing a whale”. Which is the kind of slightly poncey, highfalutin’ literary metaphor I can get behind (and frequently employ on the show).

What was the first podcast you ever listened to?

Probably Guardian Football Weekly. I’m a football fan, and I still listen to a lot of football podcasts, and that was what initially got me hooked. I still listen to it every week to this day.

Why did you decide to start podcasting in the first place?

A couple of reasons really. Firstly, I just thought it was a good idea to try and do something slightly cerebral based around action sports. I’ve been working in that industry since the mid-90s, and when the digital shift came in the early 2000s, the media in the industry was decimated pretty quickly, and replaced by a lot of lowest common denominator view-chasing clickbait. Which has it’s place, for sure, but I always thought there was room for something a bit more thoughtful. A podcast like Looking Sideways seemed like the perfect vehicle for it.

I was also pretty bored, after twenty years of working as a journalist, of having to battle to get my ideas published. So I thought I’d cut out the middle man and just do something where I got to unapologetically explore my own ideas. Six years later, I continue to be completely amazed at how into it people are, and how loyal my audience is.

Which podcasts do you take inspiration from?

Scriptnotes was really what gave me the idea for Looking Sideways. I was writing a film script at the time, and I was impressed with the way presenters John August and Craig Mazin were so unapologetically geeky and incredibly open and generous about their craft and knowledge. I also loved the way they involved their similarly geeky audience, to create a real sense of community. That was a big influence when I decided to start Looking Sideways.

Who’s your dream guest for the podcast?

Probably somebody like author Jon Krakaeur, who wrote Into Thin Air and Into The Wild, I’ve wanted him on for years. He’s a passionate snowboarder and backcountry skier, as well as somebody with a quietly looming influence over outdoor culture. Musician Ben Howard is also somebody I’d love to chat to, mainly because I’m lucky enough to count him as a friend, I’ve been asking him for years and he always says no, and I know he has a brilliant story that would surprise people.

I’m always being asked to interview people such as Kelly Slater or Tony Hawk, but there are plenty of big shows out there that do that, so I’m not too interested in that personally.

Which episode would you say is the perfect introduction to your podcast?

I’d say my conversation with astronaut and surfer Christina Koch, soon to be the first woman to go to the moon, is perfectly representative of what I’m trying to do with Looking Sideways. Christina is a passionate surfer who spent her spare time on the ISS taking pictures of her favourite surf shots from orbit. So I contacted her through Nasa and asked if she’d be up for a chat. She did and we had this incredible conversation about how it felt to spend 328 days in space, the moral implications of space travel, and how exactly you take a photo of Pipeline while travelling at 17,000 mph on the International Space Station. So ‘action sports’ are just a way into something bigger and more interesting, which is why I’ve been so fascinated and into surfing, skating and snowboarding my whole life.

Where can the Pod Bible readers find out more about you?

My Substack page www.lookingsideways.substack.com would be a great place to start. Switching everything that back in June 2022 was pretty transformative for the podcast, as it was a way I could combine the audio with writing. I also began to offered paid subscriptions, as I’ve always been pretty militant about not having awful, sub local radio adverts that everybody skips on the show to pay for it. So Substack has been brilliant for me.