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Swimmingpod

Swimmingpod is a podcast series from Stanley Ulijaszek, life-long swimmer. I speak with outdoor swimmers of many persuasions, about their swim-projects, how they got into swimming and what the get out of it. Across all seasons and all outdoor swimming pleasures.

The music is Noe Noe, Vienna Beat, and Watercool Quiet, by Blue Dot Sessions.

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The Sophie Etheridge, Adaptive Athlete, and Swimming the 21 miles of the Two-Way Windermere

I am truly humbled by Sophie Etheridge, and will never ever complain again about the aches and pains in my joints. Sophie is an adaptive athlete, who developed complex regional pain syndrome after a car knocked her off her bike as she was travelling to triathlon training. Now a wheelchair user, Sophie is tough, determined, an achiever, who won back her swimming identity stroke by stroke, swimming through the pain. In 2021 she swam the Two-Way Windermere, all 21 miles of it. She set up the ⁠Adaptive/Disabled Open Water Swimmers (ADOWS)⁠ group on Facebook and was astonished by the demand for open water swimming community among those with disabilities. She has only recently started writing about this life-changing accident and how it felt, and about the huge importance of swimming in her life now. I am honoured that she has been open to sharing her experience here on Swimmingpod.

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Tom Elliott and Richard Flint Talk About Swimming and the Making of Swim-Film ‘As You Lake It’

Tom Elliott and Danny Longman swam all the lakes of the Lake District in four days, and Richard Flint filmed them. In this podcast, Richard, maker of the film ‘As You Lake It’, talks about the process of filming them do it, and Tom talks doing it - swimming the lakes of the Lake District.

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Dylan Friedmann - A Year (and counting) of Swimming and Dipping Daily in Lake Ontario, Canada

Toronto-based Dylan Friedmann is an inspiration. She undertook, January 1st, 2021, to swim (or dip) in Lake Ontario every single day of the year to raise money for the charity Kids Help Phone, helping with adolescent mental health in Canada right now when help is needed. Air temperature on some of her dips dips to minus thirty Celsius, the water close on zero. She completed her daily swims in 2020, all 365 of them, and she continues on, swimming and dipping, even when in February she has to dig through the ice for water.

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The Second Great Stink? UK Swimming Rivers in a Mess, by Stanley Ulijaszek

The Second Great Stink? UK Swimming Rivers in a Mess, by Stanley Ulijaszek

The Thames, right now is not the universally clean and sparkling river of my dreams. This podcast is about trying to understand, as a swimmer, the problems surrounding rivers in the UK right now – the dumping of raw sewage, of pollution. How did we get into this watery mess? If it were simple, it would have been solved - so what is going on?

Charles Sprawson's 'Haunts of the Black Masseur' at 30 years - A Discussion with John Von

Charles Sprawson's 'Haunts of the Black Masseur' at 30 years - A Discussion with John Von

This podcast, with German nationally-acclaimed playwright, essayist, dramaturge and prize-winning novelist John von Düffel and acclaimed film-maker James Norton, considers Charles Sprawson’s classic book about the history and cultures of swimming, some thirty years after it was first published. Both John and James are passionate about this book, John having adapted it for a German-speaking audience in 2002. The discussion ranges from swimming heroes, to romanticism, and to environmental degradation, as well as James' and John's own swimming passions. The book remains as current as ever, but is about so much more than the issues we discuss. Had we recorded the podcast on another day, it might well have been different. Like open water swimming itself – each day is different.

Duncan Goodhew, Olympic Gold Medalist, and the State of Swimming in the United Kingdom

Duncan Goodhew, Olympic Gold Medalist, and the State of Swimming in the United Kingdom

Duncan Goodhew is a life-long swimmer and champion of swimming in more ways than one. He won Olympic Gold and Bronze in the 100 meters breaststroke and 100 meter medley relay respectively, in the Moscow 1980 Olympics. He has promoted swimming at all levels ever since.
He is President of Swimathon, the swimming charity that brings together swimmers of all ages and abilities with two simple aims: to spread the joys and benefits of swimming whilst raising money for some of the UK’s most needful charity work. He was awarded the Humane Award for administering life-saving cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) to Lord Sheldon – he learned CPR as an adolescent, with the Learn to Swim Programme. He is one of the founding trustees of what is now SportsAid, a charity which enriches the lives of talented young athletes by recognizing and nurturing their abilities through and beyond sport. He was awarded MBE in 1983 for services to sport. Ever since struck gold and bronze in Moscow, he has been very keen to give back - swimming saved him, gave him direction, from being a wayward and headstrong teenager, to being a champion in every sense of the word, across his adult life.
In this podcast we talk about those early years, about his achievements, and about the important and good work he has done ever since.

Swimming, Leptospirosis, and Me

I was hospitalized with leptospirosis, Weil’s Disease, in August 2021. The risk of this disease sits at the back of the mind of many river and lake swimmers, but it very rarely materialises. It did so in my mind too, until. Until the intense burning and body chills, head and body aches, falling and falling blood pressure took me to hospital and intensive care. The clinical descriptions of the disease do not do justice to the metabolic and physiological roller-coaster I went on. This took me to some strange places in my head, and subsequently made me revisit the risks of contracting this vile disease. This podcast is an account of my treatment-seeking experience, real and hallucinatory, as my condition worsened, into sepsis, and out again, with the expertise and integrated hard work of the medical staff of the University of Oxford’s John Radcliffe Hospital. Heroes all.

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Pauline Barker, and the Polar Bear (and Penguin) Challenge

Pauline Barker talks about the origins of the Polar Bear Challenge, and how it has expanded. She describes how many people got through the UK COVID-19 winter through swimming, dipping or equivalent challenges. Most importantly, she talks about what’s in store for the coming winter of 2021-22. Winter swimming has probably never been so popular in the UK as it is now, and Pauline Barker, one of the most experienced people in this field anywhere.

Anette Frisch and Mindful Swimming

Anette Frisch and Mindful Swimming

I talked with Anette Frisch about life, work, swimming, the future and the past and it became a podcast. We recorded it when the COVID-19 future looked less certain than it does now. The future – ‘it will come’. Life as normal - ‘It will come’. Anette’s swimming life has been on pandemic pause, and there is air of melancholy to the conversation we have which lights up, glistens, when we talk about outdoor swimming pools and their very special resonance. Anette Frisch lives in Germany, in Dusseldorf. She is one of the most mindful swimmers I know, and this podcast very much became about exactly that – mindful swimming. It wasn’t planned that way, it just happened. Which is part of the magic of mindful swimming – it just happens.

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Ben Cousins and Free-diving in the South African Kelp Forest

Ben Cousins is 72 years old and is passionate about the ocean – he has surfed it, swum in it, and now free dives in and around the ocean kelp forest south of Simonstown, south of Capetown, South Africa. At the start of our conversation in this podcast. Ben quotes poet Emily Dickenson - ‘That it will never come again - Is what makes life so sweet’. Ben lives life to the full, and strives to understand this mysterious world by keeping a diary for every swim - shark, octopus, stringray, and all the creatures big and small that make up this unique ecology.

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Grumpy Old Swimming, with Judith Holder

Judith Holder is a bestselling comedy writer, TV producer and speaker, who originated the BBC series and stage shows 'Grumpy Old Women' which have sold worldwide. She is passionate about outdoor swimming. In this podcast she talks about her love for swimming, comedy, and her podcast series with friend and comedian Jenny Eclair.

Berlin Swimming Spree - Caitlin Kraemer and Swimming in the City

Caitlin Kraemer is a graduate student in Berlin and has written an article 'Swimming in the City'. In this podcast we talk about Berlin as an outdoor swimming city, and city swimming in general. A citizen-swimmer, she knows a lot about the Flussbad Berlin, which will open up the Spree Canal to open water swimming right in the heart of the city.

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Anna Deacon and her co-authored book 'Taking the Plunge'

Anna Deacon is co-author, with Vicky Allen, of the book 'Taking the Plunge', She is a photographer of considerable repute, and has a number of swimming-oriented projects on the go. She talks about these, and more.

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Darrin Roles and the Lock-to-Lock Swim Series

Darrin Roles started and runs the Lock-to-Lock series of events in the Thames in Oxfordshire. This has grown and grown. In the first year from Eynsham to King’s Lock (4 kilometers), then in subsequent years from Farmoor to King’s Lock (6 kilometers) and from Farmoor to Godstow Lock (10 kilometers). In the course of setting up and running these swims, he revived the Oxford Mile (renamed the Oxford Classic Mile) and set up two swim-runs, along the same stretch of the River Thames as the Lock-to-Lock swims. The additional music links are improvisions by Darrin Roles.

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Juliet Turnbull - Swimming The Thames her Way

Juliet Turnbull is a very accomplished swimmer, and an artist who turns ideas that churn in her mind as she swims, into art-textiles and embroider-work, works that evoke the sensorial nature of being in the water. She lives on the Thames and swims in it. She is swimming the length of it in sections with her friend Fiona Irwin; she also sings under bridges. The musical link is Abba's 'SOS'. This podcast was recorded in January, when we were both in dry robes, recovering after swimming in a snow flurry, she near Hampton Court, London, me at Eynsham Lock, Oxfordshire.

Sian Richardson, Founder of Bluetits Chill Swimmers

Sian Richardson is a force, a year-round outdoor swimmer who took her passion for winter swimming in Wales, at the beach near the farm where shehas lived all her life, to a world-wide phenomenon. The Bluetits Chill Swimmers are a social enterprise set up by Sian, now with more than 6,000 members. According to Sian, The Bluetits are ‘Primarily an informal group of adults (mostly women, but men are not excluded) who come together to relax and enjoy time together talking joyful nonsense while setting the world to rights and enjoying time together in the water way from constraints imposed by work and home life’.

Alex Foster's Anthropology of the Serpentine Swimming Club, London

Alex Foster spent the winter months of 2019-2020 learning about winter swimming and cold water immersion at the Serpentine Swimming Club, in Hyde Park, London. This is podcast is about his immersion in the club and its waters, and his MPhil thesis in Medical Anthropology on this topic.

Lake Bled 2020 - Stanley Ulijaszek and Jeremy Wellingham

Lake Bled Winter Swimming World Championships 2020 - a nostalgia podcast with Stanley Ulijaszek and Jeremy Wellingham

Frost Swimmers of Gothenberg - 100dagarkallabad

Three women in Gothenberg, Sweden who swim every day, and bring joy, candles, bubbles and yoga on a surf-board, as well as their friends, to their project of a hundred swims into winter.

Sandy Burnett, Musician and Broadcaster, on Water, Music, Music and Water

Sandy Burnett is one of the most authoritative classical music broadcasters in the UK. He is an outdoor swimmer, summer and winter. We discuss great rivers -Thames and Rhine, the ocean at Aldeburgh, Suffolk, and music that has been inspired by the flow of water.

Women who Swim - Kristie Waller and Judy Pearsall

Judy Pearsall and Kristie Waller are two women who swim together regularly in Oxford and Oxfordshire. They both have a passion for swimming and they share some of their swimming thoughts, memories and plans.

Swimming Copenhagen style with Anne Katrine Kleberg Hansen

Anne Katrine Kleberg Hansen is an all-seasons swimmer in Copenhagen, a city of the future where outdoor swimming is not just allowed, but encouraged. she talks about her passion for swimming, about how and where she swims.

Swim the Thames, with Chris Dalton, Sef Penrose, Jeremy Wellingham and Sharon Curtis

Between 2011 and 2013 a group of outdoor swimmers swam the length of the non-tidal Thames, in stretches from the source to Teddington. This is their story.

Helen Edwards - 4 years of dip-a-day, every day

Swimming outdoors every single day for more than 4 years, mostly in and around beautiful Oxford.

Craig Holmes and Jo Jones - British Ice Swimming 500m Champions

Defending British Ice Swimming 500m champions, talking with Stanley Ulijaszek about their swimming achievements, aspirations, and how they got into cold water swimming. They offer lots of practical advice, if you haven't done it before and want to.

Pauline Barker, Founder and Organiser of the Polar Bear Challenge

Pauline Barker in conversation with Stanley Ulijaszek, about her winter swimming achievements, what it takes to make a Polar Bear swimmer, and her mission to make winter swimming open to everyone that wants it.

Welcome to Swimmingpod

Welcome to swimmingpod, a podcast series about outdoor swimming across the seasons. This introductory episode starts as the leaves turn and winter swimmers turn to winter swimming. Put on your togs under your pyjamas, make some porridge, settle into the season and listen.

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