Overthink25 Nov 2025

Surfing

Hang loose! In episode 149 of Overthink, Ellie and David talk about all things surfing. They explore the long history of wave-riding across the globe, from Peru to West Africa, and consider how surfing helps us to reimagine social issues and what surfing reveals about the connection between flow and freedom. Is surfing the pinnacle of human life? How has the sportification of surfing directly contravened surfing’s anti-capitalist ethos? Why is the average surfer an image of white masculinity? And how is this image tied to indigenous erasure? In the Substack bonus segment, your hosts discuss the similarities between surfing and skating, surfing as an art, and the existential risk of surfing.

Works Discussed

Daniel Brennan, Surfing and the Philosophy of Sport

Kevin Dawson, Undercurrents of Power: Aquatic Culture in the African Diaspora

William Finnegan, Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life

Aaron James, Surfing with Sartre: An Aquatic Inquiry Into a Life of Meaning

Peter Kreeft, I Surf, Therefore I Am: A Philosophy of Surfing

Aileen Moreton Robinson, “Bodies That Matter: Performing White Possession on the Beach”

Peter J. Westwick and Peter Neushul, The World in the Curl: An Unconventional History of Surfing

Wade in the Water: A Journey Into Black Surfing and Aquatic Culture (2023)

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