Kelly Slater: Honey Badger Don't Care
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That's 15% off at SaatchiArt.com. S-A-A-T-C-H-I-Art.com. Ever wish your favorite TV show had twice as many episodes? Everyone knows that feeling. And so does Discover. Everyone wants more of their favorites. That's why Discover doubles another favorite thing, cash back. That's right.

Discover automatically doubles the cash back earned on your credit card at the end of your first year with Cash Back Match. Now that's a real crowd pleaser. Everyone knows how it ends. Double the cash back. See terms at discover.com slash credit card. Kelly, I'm so excited to have you on, man. This is going to be so much fun. Yeah, good to see you, man. Been a while. Hey, everybody. It's literally and it is me, Rob Lowe. I'm geeking out, man.

I get to talk. A lot of everybody's talking about people being the GOAT. Tom Brady's the GOAT. Tiger Woods, the GOAT. They're GOATS. They're GOATS. But they're not THE GOAT. Today we have THE GOAT. Kelly Slater, the greatest surfer who ever lived. 11-time world champ. Youngest world champ. And then oldest world champ. No one has dominated a sport, in any sport, individually ever in history.

than Kelly in surfing. Maybe he can teach me to be a better surfer. Let's find out. I think I haven't seen you since the Book of Mormon. Didn't I see you there in 2011? I know, man. We were early to the Book of Mormon. You're like the last person I expected to see at a Broadway show, a Book of Mormon. I was like, yeah, we should. We've never met in the water. We meet at Broadway, just because I tell you. Yeah. This is the first time I'm using a fake backdrop.

And in your honor. I like that. It looks a little blown out though behind me, I think. A little bit. If you don't move, I can't really tell. That's right. But when I move, you see it's really. Yeah, you see like that digital thing around your hair. Yeah. What part of the world am I catching you in today?

Apparently you're in Hawaii or Cayman Islands or something. I'm in Hawaii. North Shore? I am, yeah, but it's not what you would imagine. It's been rainy and very windy and small surf for about five weeks now, maybe more, maybe six weeks. It's been a really bad season here for us surf-wise. But yet the eddy was nuts, right? Yeah, ever since the eddy we've had small swells. So we had the eddy, Icao, and

mid-late January, and then it felt like that storm took all the energy out of the Pacific, and we've had a high pressure over us for about six weeks now, and it's just made crazy wind and small swell. So the Eddie Icow, for those of you who don't know, is probably... I mean, there's so many great events in the world, and we'll talk about them, but that one is...

is so fascinating because it only gets called when it's a triple X swell, right? Yeah. On average over the

I think the first one was in maybe around 1990 or 1988, somewhere around there. I think the first one was actually held at Sunset Beach in honor of Eddie, but then they realized, they came up with the idea that it was going to be just on the biggest day and best days at Waimea where Eddie was a lifeguard and saved countless lives. And for people who don't know, Eddie disappeared in the Pacific Ocean in

when he was sailing from Oahu to Tahiti on the Hokulea and it capsized in big choppy seas about 10-12 miles south of Oahu. And they were drifting out of the shipping lanes and they were concerned that they wouldn't be found and you know we didn't have phones and all that stuff back then so I guess a mayday went out but they weren't sure whether they were going to be found and Eddie decided to paddle

back to Oahu on a surfboard that he had brought. And the captain made him put a life vest on, which Eddie was opposed to. He put it on and paddled off, and as he was paddling off, he took it off and it floated back by the boat is the story. But Eddie was never found. His brother Solomon was on a search chopper

with a number of other people. I believe Ben Ipa, who was also a legend in the surf world, was also on that chopper, but they were a bunch of helicopters looking and they spotted his surfboard and they dropped down and saw the surfboard.

but they weren't within direct range of radio signals, so they went up to 1,000 or a couple thousand feet to make a call, and they went back down, and they couldn't find his surfboard. So Eddie was lost at sea. The crew was saved later that day, I believe, and everyone else lived. So it was a sad but sort of fitting end to a waterman that lived his life trying to save people. And you see the iconic bumper stickers everywhere.

in t-shirts that say Eddie would go. Yeah. Which is probably one of the greatest phrases in sports. So the term Eddie would go was taken from, I believe from Mark Fu, who passed away at Mavericks. I thought it was from Marvin Foster, but I think it was from Mark Fu actually. And they were asking one day when they were first going to run the Eddie Eckhout, why may I? It was really big and it was a giant day, maybe almost too big and messy for it. And

they were asking different competitors, what do you think? And he said, I'll go. Eddie would go. You know, and so it's always been this kind of

kind of call sign for everyone. If you're doubting yourself in big waves and you need a little bit of extra something, you just think Eddie would go and you're doing it for him and for, you know, everyone who loves big waves and big ocean. Does everyone wear inflatable vests now in big waves? Is that pretty much accepted now? Yeah, pretty much everybody does. It's actually rare now that somebody doesn't have one on a big surf. So the inflatables for people who aren't aware of our inflatable vests, it's...

Shane Doran, who's a best friend of mine. We grew up surfing together since we were about 12 years old. Widely regarded as probably the best big wave surfer ever at this point, at least paddling big waves. And Shane was surfing Mavericks one day in about 2013 and he had a wipeout, a really, really bad wipeout. He was on there for two or three waves, almost, I think about a minute underwater and was starting to black out and he just popped up.

But he's got a family, wife and two kids, and he loves his life. So he just started thinking there's got to be some better way than just doing it, just trying to build our cardio and strength up. And he came up with the idea and started investigating different bladders that you could put air into and testing them out underwater. And he eventually came up with these

pull tabs on an inflatable suit using CO2 cartridges that are compressed air, about 25 or 35 grams of air that's compressed and it's basically more than you could ever put in your lungs in one breath and that air will take you to the surface much quicker than you can swim. So you don't want to rely on that but I mean you want to go out in the big surf thinking you don't need it and you're capable physically but

Once in a while, you got to pull that thing and just make sure you keep yourself safe. Have you ever had to pull yours? I've pulled mine a couple of times. Is it like when you're scuba diving and you inflate your BC? Is that what it feels like? Yeah, exactly. It just immediately start rising and it happens immediately. And that thing just puffs up about this big to where you feel like you're kind of in a neck brace almost.

They're being built to where that inflation's in the front, so if you do pass out, you'll be face up when you hit the surface. It's an amazing invention. It's already saved a bunch of lives, countless lives. It's also directly responsible for almost every giant wave that's surfed in the world at this point because we've been able to push this boundary that's way past what just paddling was and in a way that you have a backup, a safety net

Not too different. They have a similar thing in the snow where you have a vest. And the boundary of big waves and tow-in, was that just a function of at a certain height, there's so much water going up the face that you physically can't paddle down it? Is that really what it is? It's more of the speed. It's really the logistics of an open ocean swell. So Mark Fu, I mentioned before, he used to talk about the unridden realm, and that was a wave.

over a certain size that they just didn't think it could catch because of the sheer speed and mass or whatever of the wave. But we found a whole bunch of new waves in the past 30 years, big giant waves that you can surf and some you need a jet ski, some you can paddle. The physics and speed and

And what goes into each of those different locations is pretty unique to each one. I mean, a lot of people have seen Nazaré, which, I mean, guys are regularly catching 70-foot-plus waves there almost every swell in the wintertime. And not to sidetrack too much, but the mechanics of Nazaré is that there's a deep underwater canyon thousands of feet deep on one side of the beach. Just there's a cliff with a point and a lighthouse that goes out, and that cliff –

Drop straight off hundreds of feet into the ocean on one side and the other side is the beach where you're surfing, which is sand, which is not even reef. It's just sand. But on the on the south side of that is a sheer cliff underwater that's thousands of feet deep off the edge of it. So the swells swells in the ocean. If you can imagine like the east coast of the US is really shallow off the coast. So the swells drag and they get small and they get slow.

And that's basically what happens when a wave hits a reef or a bottom, it fills the bottom, it starts to drag that energy slower and push it up in the air. So instead of the energy just moving forward, it's starting to get pushed up and that's slowing the energy in a wave. And what happens at Nazare is the open ocean swells kind of go out into the deep water

And then when they hit the beach on the north side, they kind of slow down. And the ones that are coming around the south through that canyon, they get pulled back on to the bottom. They feel the bottom and they bend the swell. And that swell will meet the next wave. And basically you get double-sized waves. So if the swell is, say, 20 feet, that place would be 40 feet. It really is just...

It's just two waves coming together and doubling their size. What's the one that's off, sort of off Santa Barbara that you have to take the boat out to that was only recently discovered? I don't know that you could say it's off Santa Barbara. You could just say it's off California because it's 105 miles from the coast. It's actually closest to data point. Who is it? It's about 60 miles or 50 miles out past San Clemente Island, which is another...

Oh, it's at like 80 miles past Catalina. And it's a reef that was discovered when I believe it was a Navy ship ran aground on it decades ago and caused tens of millions of dollars of damage to the ship. But fishermen have known about it for a long time. And if you look at the California coast, you see all those mountains, it's an underwater mountain that just doesn't quite reach the surface. And so it's hard to picture...

the underwater landscape in the ocean, but it really looks like whatever the land looks like where you're at. So in California, you might be hundreds of feet from the water, above the water, right on the ocean, but the same thing's going on underneath. So you've got these huge valleys and drop-offs, and you have mountains under there that are essentially sticking up, and the peak of Cortez would be essentially like the tip top of a summit that just hasn't hit the surface. Yeah.

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Qualifying plan required. Wi-Fi were available on select U.S. airlines. Deposit and Hilton Honors membership required for 15% discount terms and conditions apply. What is your favorite break in California? Well, I live in... And you can't say Trestles because you've dominated Trestles so much. You don't get to say that. It's Trestles. It's Trestles. Yeah, exactly. My girlfriend is from San Clemente, California.

When we're in California, we stay there. And I pretty much only surf trestles. I only surf lowers in California for the most part. And occasionally I get up to surf Santa Barbara and I'll surf a few of the points up there, which I like. I lived in Santa Barbara for years. Around the time I met you, actually, I was living up there for a few years. And I love Santa Barbara. I think it's one of the great places in the world to live.

It would be maybe the greatest if there weren't Channel Islands out in the wave blocking the surf. I know, man. It's very rare that we get it. In fact, you realize I'm going to your wave park tonight. I heard something like that. Yeah, I heard you're going this week or soon. Yeah, I'm leaving. Well, actually, no, I'm leaving Friday night. Sorry, I forgot what day it was. But just a sidebar, Kelly, your surf ranch is a man-made wave that is...

billed as the most perfect wave in the world. And it's invite only. There's amazing food. There are surf instructors. There's jacuzzis and massages and video breakdowns of your surfing. And you get into the pool and you get multiple waves over the course of multiple hours. And you just work on your surfing on the world's greatest wave.

But I got my very first barrel ever there. And the thing about like, well, can you serve barrel? What's your barrel? Like, well, first of all, you have to have a wave that actually barrels. That's for openers. Yeah. And that's super hard to find around where I live with any consistency. And you guys have the greatest photographers and drones taking your pictures. And then you go in and the coaches critique your form and everything.

We're actually implementing a new video system too that tracks each wave from on the foil. So that'll be fun. Really? Yeah, so you'll be able to see it. So it'll look like you're not really moving. You're just like, in relation to the camera, you're not really moving. And it's super top secret. I think the way you designed the wave is, I know you guys really, really, really protect it. How...

How much time and money and effort went into designing the perfect man-made wave? Well, there's only so much secret you can have in the world when you have patents. So you can go look up the patents. But we were, I would say we were only secret in the infancy stage because my partner Jeff and I

we went and found these properties and Jeff was a pro water skier in the 80s and pro water skiing has basically gone belly up um in the in recent decades so he knew of these properties that were basically defunct and um inoperative so he went and found one and um that was this property in Lemoore and it was so far from the ocean two good things about that is um

No surfers were kind of peering in, wondering what we're doing, asking questions because we were just trying to focus on the build and

We wanted to keep it secret in case it didn't work. Just put some sand over that thing and let's go home. Yeah, exactly. And the property costs are much less up in that area. So we were able to get an affordable property that had the water and power and permitting. Permitting is a big part of it, is getting a permit for that type of use. We originally were looking at a property in Bakersfield that was a fish pond.

And so very few people either own one of these shirts or stickers or know the story, but originally Surf Ranch was called Fish Pond, and that's what we actually called it before we named it Surf Ranch. So only people in the early know Fish Pond. And the permit was so that we actually could be permitted with that original one in Bakersfield if we just had a single fish in the water.

I've surfed with dolphins. I've had dolphins in my wave. It would be fun to have a guppy. So there was a little, we were skewing the rule there a minute if we had built that one, but that's not the way it was at L'Amour. But that was the original idea. We were like, how do we do this? Where do we get these permits? But having been already a sport complex, I guess you would call it, because it was a ski lake, it already had the permitting available.

Well, I went my first time last summer and it was great. Literally, it was 112 degrees. Yeah. And the water was perfect.

I'm going now in the middle of the winter in the coldest snap. How cold is it going to be? Am I going to regret it or am I going to be okay? It's so hot in the summer. I want to put a sign up that says, welcome to Florida. It's going to be freezing. But, you know, I generally, I almost every year go second week of February for my birthday.

Really? Yeah, because I play the Pebble Beach golf tournament most years. And then I literally drive straight there right after. It's always right around my birthday. So I book a day right around my birthday every year. I didn't do it this year because I was competing here in Hawaii. And yeah, it just wasn't in the wheelhouse for me. But yeah, the water is going to be really cold. It's basically if you look at the mean temperature between high and low for the past week, it's going to be somewhere in between that water temperature wise.

Um, and you know, it's not like an ocean. It doesn't stay temperate at one, at one, uh, one temperature, one number. It really, it'll change overnight. If there's a big 30, 40, even 50 degree water, um, air temperature change from night to day, which you can get in the central Valley, you know, it might be,

maybe it'll be 50 degrees at night and 80 degrees in the day the water's going to be somewhere probably in the mid 60s but it might be almost 60 in the morning and almost 70 in the afternoon

but it'll fluctuate. I'll be thrilled if it's that. Anything below 55 degrees, to me, is just too damn cold. Yeah, you just need... We got the rubber there. We got the neoprene and the wetsuits, so you'll be fine. I just put on gloves, a hood, booties, the whole thing. I'd rather be too warm than not warm enough. For sure. You know, I started stand-up paddling mostly. And really, that's what I do most.

Unless I'm going to your surf ranch. So it's funny. I'll go from not surfing at all, like not even a little bit, to being on that wave. It's a huge...

learning curve for me. The good thing about it from the difference from other pools is the wave is so long, right? So once you're up, you've got a 45, 50 second ride. Whereas a lot of the other waves, they offer things we don't. So like you might get a better air section. Like for young guys who want to be doing big airs and stuff, other pools are preferable because you can, you get a different launch angle and it's built strictly for that. Whereas

I built our wave to be like Superbank or RingCon. Yeah. The idea was to get this perfect wave that peels forever, you know, like watching Bruce's Beauties in Endless Summer. Yeah.

Yeah. I will. Rincon is Rincon is obviously right in Santa Barbara. I never surf it. It's too busy. I don't like crowds at all. It must be amazing for you to pull into any lineup and people realize it's you. They, it was like, they part like the red sea. I'm, I'm, it's funny. People assume that as if we're like, um, you know, as if we're golfers pulling up at Augusta to play the masters, it's not really how it works, you know? Um,

Everyone's a member at Rincon. Right. In some ways, yes. In some ways, you're correct. There are people who make more room for me, but you're exactly off in other ways because there's other people who are just like, oh, I'm going to test this guy. It's just the nature of people. It's the way it is. Do people drop in on you? Sometimes, but that's not the norm. Look, we're all...

Most surf lineups know the rules and we all kind of get in line and do our thing and, you know, wait your turn as best you can. And not everyone does that. Not all of us do that. I'll include myself in that. I don't always wait my turn, but there should be a psychological study on surf lineups and the headspace that goes into catching waves and being a part of that. So when I moved to California from Ohio,

I was 13. I loved the ocean. The first boogie board, literally it said boogie board came out. And I learned to boogie board because nobody would let me surf. The Point Doom, Little Doom,

What was their name? The Point Doom Bombers. They were really super gnarly, really gnarly, loked out, and they would not let me come out. They wouldn't. There's no way like a 13-year-old kid who didn't know how to surf was going to be let out there. In fact, they'd beat the shit out of you if you tried. So I didn't learn to surf until I was 40 years old and –

paddled out for the first time at Little Doom when I was 41 years old. Now they call me the honey badger. That's my nickname there because the honey badger don't care. Honey badger drops in on fucking everybody there now. I'm like, I'm making up for lost time.

Did you know Danny Motor? Of course. Julia's husband? Yeah. So Danny tells me, because Danny and Julia bought a house right up there, right? Built a house. Yeah, of course. And he goes, man, this is crazy. He goes, when I was a kid, I had to sneak in here and they didn't even want me surfing here. And now I live on the point. And it's a different time for absolutely for sure. Back then, localism was alive and well.

And cameras and none of that stuff worried anyone. There was no digital era to expose people for kicking you out of the water. Kicking you out of the water. Gromit abuse. Yeah.

grommet abuse. But it's like, it just blows my mind. Now you'll go out and it's like every sort of like mommy who's just dropped her kid off from school getting pushed in a foam top by a surf instructor. It's just a zoo. It's so different than what I grew up with. It's a funny thing, right? Because like a topic in the world now is inclusion, right? Of all people in all things. And in surfing, it's

It's great because there's such a walk of life out there in the water. Everyone from young to old and every ethnicity is surfing and every job role or whatever, there's just so many people. But I think once you start to fall in love with surfing and if you had a lineage back to surfing before the crowds were big, you would have a strong opinion about the crowd that we have now because there's not a real...

border in a lot of lineups, you know, there's just people kind of just inadvertently going everywhere taking whatever wave not waiting their turn and the most obvious place you might see it is like somewhere like Malibu but Malibu's but Malibu's been crowded since the 50s So that's nothing new but all the crowds that are expanding out to all the other smaller locations now But like you said point doing back and it was like a secret spot and you had to kind of walk in and sneak in to get there or whatever and

And, um, I remember even the late nineties when I first started surfing around Point Doom, um, it was still, still had that feel about it, you know, but, um, there is just something special to have something to yourself. You know, if you, if you were to go on a hike and you were going to go way out in the mountains somewhere to some special spot with a waterfall and you knew no one had been there for five years and, oh, we're going to go to this special place and you show up and there's a party of 50 people. How would you feel?

Oh, listen, I know people, like the first time I went to Indonesia to surf, you're on the plane, it takes forever. You got the jet lag, you can't believe it. And you go out and there's, there could be 70 people on a peak. Oh, at Uluwatu, yeah. Yes. Yeah, you get to Uluwatu. I was there last year and I was there during COVID in 2020. Here's the thing, like since you've been there, you would understand to get from Canggu to Uluwatu is two and a half hours because of traffic.

The thing was during COVID, the traffic wasn't bad. So you could get there and that would be less than an hour on a motorbike or whatever, as it should be. If the roads were well built, you know, whatever. The crowds are crazy on those roads. But during COVID, everyone wasn't working. It was really sad. I mean, you'd go to Nakuta and for two blocks, you wouldn't see a person, not one person, maybe a dog.

There was no one. All the businesses were closed, even coffee shops or whatever. And just so people understand, Cuda Beach is about as densely crowded of a shopping area as you'll ever find anywhere in the world. And everything was closed down. So there weren't people on the roads, but in the water it was crowded.

I mean, I'd go to, I was staying around Uluwatu and there were days regularly 50 to 70 people out at Ulu. And everyone's going, God, how empty is it? It must be amazing over there. And I'm like, you wish. Like, I mean, I went to Karama's a couple mornings and at daybreak there was 50 people out. So...

Yeah. For our two favorite sports, both you and I share a love of golf and surfing and the explosion in both because of COVID is huge. Which is great. People have discovered golf and they've discovered surfing. Maybe you've come back to it or put it on the shelf, but it's markedly, markedly, markedly different in terms of crowds now. I think Australia, they were saying it went up just in one year, surfing went up population by like 30% in a year.

And I was regularly trying to go play golf courses that there's a couple part three courses and little short executive courses around this area that I used to live. You used to be able to walk up any time of day, any day of the week and just go out and play. And I'd show up and there'd be five groups on the tee waiting. And it was like, well, everyone plays golf now. And you'd have to, if you called, they're like, we have no tee times today. So you just have to show up and see if you can jump in a group. But I mean, golf's fun. So I understand it.

I'm surfing is better. So you're, you, you have 11 time world champion. So everybody out there, think about this. I think, and I'm not, I was going to say this in the intro when you weren't on. Uh, but since you're here, I'm going to say it anyway. I think if you look at the facts, you're the greatest athlete in history, non team sport athlete in history. You have 11, 11 world titles in,

at every age, youngest and oldest who's ever been. And it's funny because I go, well, I was like, I got to look back at all those Sports Illustrated covers. And you realize we love surfing, but a guy, an 11-time champion like you, I don't think you've been on the cover of Sports Illustrated. No, I haven't been. But I understand it. I mean, that's not a...

surf specific magazine surfing is at best an afterthought in sports illustrated which is fine they've actually um done i've had i think i had an eight page article in a swimsuit issue one year and uh i've been in yeah in the swimsuit swim suit well that's how i met walter yost who became a lifelong friend of mine he he photographed it but walter had taken photographs i think at

every Super Bowl for 40 or 50 years, something like that. And he did Jordan's rare air book. He had endless number of Sports Illustrated covers. But I mean, their money in advertising is not coming from the surf world. So it's understandable. It's not a sport that they're typically covering, which is totally fine.

I say, well, you're very nice to say that. I say boo to Sports Illustrated. But I will tell you, I'd rather be in the bathing suit issue than be on the cover any day of the week. So it sounds like you actually win to me.

My favorite photo I've seen of you, and I've seen a lot of them, is maybe Annie Leibovitz photographed you surfing a door. Oh, that was Walter Yost. That was him. It's a funny story. It's a great story. Tell us the story. There's a saying in surfing that he surfs so good he can surf a door. Trying to surf a door is a completely different story. How do I tell this story? So when Jack Johnson was in...

at UCSB. He was a film major and Jack, I used to stay at Jack's, I literally would rent Jack's room while he was away at college in the wintertime and stay with his parents. And Jack was home for Christmas and he said, I have this idea for my film class. He goes, I want to, I want to make a film of you surfing on a door in a wet, in a suit, an actual suit, like you're going to work. But then the, you know, the funny thing is the surfing the door part to show you have skills or whatever.

And so Jack made this little five minute movie on me. And during it, he saw some ants on the beach and he started filming the ants up close and just following this ant over the footsteps and stuff. He put the film together and I don't remember what music he put to it. He might have written a little something for it, but...

He said that when he showed it in class, everyone thought there was a subliminal message in the ants. And he kind of kept them thinking, like, oh, I can't really tell you. I don't know. That's kind of how I remember Jack telling me it.

Fast forward to Walter. That was in 2008, I think, or 2010. And he said the same thing. He goes, I want to get a picture of you at work. I want you in a suit. I want you riding a door because people say you can't surf on a door. But you might be able to. And he got this hollow door at Home Depot that weighed like five pounds. Like thin sheets. But it's hollow. So as soon as I got that thing in the water, it just filled up with water and it weighed about 100 pounds. And the whole inside, it was like a...

Like a container for water. And so I tried to catch a couple waves, and we went and surfed just north of Santa Barbara, just trying to find a little place. I think we went up to El Cap, and the waves were about maybe knee-high on the biggest waves, like not breaking. So I was kind of riding in on the rocks. And the thing I remember most about that day, though, is driving back, Walter's following me. I said, oh, we would always go and get sushi. So I said, let's go to...

let's go to the sushi place on on state street and uh he's following me and this this cop comes off we're by ucsb and the the two highways come together right there and this cop flies onto the highway past me going about 90 miles an hour from the other one and merges into ours and i was thinking i wonder why that cop didn't have his lights on he's going so fast he must be on a call but he's just i got i think he realized that he slowed down and eventually i caught up to him and

You know when you see a cop, you're like, oh, what's the speed limit? What's the speed limit? So I look over, I see, oh, it's 65 miles an hour. I look at mine, I'm going about 60, 59, 60, 61, somewhere in there. But I used to have this, and this isn't my style, I used to have this big giant jacked up truck with dark tinted windows. It was a King Cab Tundra with a thing over the back. Anyways, I end up passing the officer and Walter's right behind me, like right on my tail.

And as I go past the cop, I look over at him and he looks at me. He instantly puts his brakes on, pulls behind me and pulls me over. And I'm thinking, oh, God, I wonder what it's for. And I'm thinking, he must not like the tint. And the guy pulls me over and he goes, you know why I pulled you over? I said, no, I don't know. He goes, I got you going 75 in a 65. And I'm like, dude.

Are you serious? I'm like, I go, I, I was like equally like laughing and angry. And so I, but I kind of went angry on him. I'm like, that's, it's impossible. I was said, I was going, I go, I think I was going 61. I go, I was, I go, why would I pass an officer on the road, look at him and be speeding by 10 miles an hour? I'm like, that doesn't even make sense. You got to show me something. The guy goes, no, I got you going 75. And then he goes, um,

And how about your tin? Have you had it checked? And I go, yeah, I have had it checked. And he goes, what did they say? And I said, well, it's too dark and I haven't had it fixed. He goes, why didn't you get it fixed? And I said, well...

I travel a lot and I don't have the time. And he goes, well, I'm going to give you a ticket for both. And I said, well, I'll see you in court. And I tried to go to court with him. And they set a court date that was when I was traveling more than not. And I just couldn't get my court date to go talk about it. But that was where I remember about my day surfing on a door.

Why didn't you say, I travel a lot because I'm an 11-time world champion MF-er, and then maybe he's a surfer, and maybe he lets you go? Because I think at that time I was only about eight-time champ. Oh, yeah. Well, eight-time. I didn't forget that. I think that would be very douchey of me to say. That's probably why I didn't.

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Let me ask you this. We had surfing in the last Summer Olympics? Yeah, they're in the next Olympics. No, we had it in Japan. By the way, who knew Japan had surf? You must have. There's good surf in Japan. There's actually amazing surf in Japan. Not all the time, but at the right time of year, there's amazing surf. All those super typhoons you hear about?

Good waves. Is there ever a chance that they would use the wave pool as an Olympic event? So all the waves are. How would you feel about that, by the way, having a competition where every wave is the same and so surfers are judged under the same conditions? I actually think the Olympics is probably the perfect place for that.

because it's so controlled. It's like having a kayak, like a whitewater rapids, right? And they control the flow, so then it's exactly the amount of gallons per minute or whatever that flows down the rapids. And it would be really understandable for people who don't surf to see why this is better than that, because they're on the same exact stage. I actually think the Olympics is the perfect place for it. Surfers don't love...

I generally love watching the events. Like the hardcore sort of grassroots fans don't love it as much because they feel like, I guess the ocean in a way sort of picks who it wants to win. I don't know. We have this sort of, I guess, spiritual way of looking at it, but.

When a person reads the ocean right, it was almost like they got picked that day. And so a lot of winning contests is picking the right waves at the right time. Something that stands out, either the best waves or something that stands out from the other person. And you can't really do that in a wave pool, but being such a controlled environment and potentially going to countries that don't have surfing or don't have an ocean,

France is a tough one that time of year. That's the middle of summer. They have great surf and they have giant surf in France, but that time of year, they can get flat spells for a month without a wave. So we're going to Tahiti because Tahiti is a French island. So we are going to go to Chopu for the Olympics.

What? Wait a minute. How did I not know this? Well, you know it now. That's insane. 24 Olympics at Chopu, so you should probably go. I've never been to Chopu. The big, huge swell this year, I was in Bora Bora. I just happened to be there. Oh, wow. And I was like, I should make the trip. I had to get back, but it was...

pumping in Bora Bora. I can't even imagine what Chopu is like. Is that, what, what wave scares you the most? Like what wave do you not want to wipe out on pipe or Chopu? I always say there's no, there's no, there's nowhere to hide at Chopu. I can hide in the line of it pipeline. There's a lot of exits. There's a lot of places to get safe. Um, whereas at Chopu you're,

You're either safe or you're in a bad place. There's kind of no in between. And the reason for that is pipeline breaks and then it washes into shallowish water. Chopo breaks and goes on a dry reef. So when you get caught, you're getting caught and getting caught and you're going to probably hit the reef.

you're probably going to get cut. The breeze is a lot sharper there than it is at pipeline. The mechanics of all that water coming out of really deep water, pipeline goes, pipeline's sort of deep and goes pretty shallow. Chopo is very deep and goes very shallow. And so each wave is almost like a mini tsunami, like a mini tidal change, you know, so it doesn't have time to get really tall. It has time to, all that energy goes up and out.

It doesn't go up. It doesn't go up like this goes forward and out. It's more of like a surge than it is a wave a lot of times, especially if you have a big interval, which big interval means a long period of time between each wave. So somewhere typical, like a swell in Santa Barbara, a typical swell would be somewhere between 10 and 15 seconds, 10 and 12 seconds, something like that. But a big swell would be like 14 to 20 seconds.

And so those swells, when you get a swell, it has a lot of energy. It has a long period between waves and each of those waves has a lot more energy and a lot more speed than a smaller swell. But when you get those big intervals, the swells are moving so quickly, they don't have time to get tall. They don't have time to slow down and grow. They just move themselves right over the reef. And it is like every wave is almost like a tidal surge, like a mini little tsunami. Yeah.

That's so there's the great YouTube clip running around there from this year of the tourist boat almost eating shit. The bad chopo you mean? Yeah. Yeah. So those are like the photographer boats. You might have an odd tourist or somebody who just coming along for the ride. There was a famous one years ago, about 20 years ago, one photographer friend of ours was on the boat with his girlfriend and one driver and their engine died or something and he jumped off and left her on the boat.

They're not together. They're not still together. They didn't make it? No, they didn't make it. The boat didn't exactly go over like this. It almost made it over and then got sucked and pulled back. And as it went, it kind of came over the back of the wave. A friend of mine from Hawaii here, he actually won the Etiakau in 99, Noah Johnson. He was caught inside by that wave.

And the boat was right there coming over on his head. And he said underwater, the boat hit him in the foot. He wasn't riding the wave. He was just caught inside. And he said underwater, he got hit in the foot by the boat. So he like almost got killed. I did. I had never done the proper Hawaiian paddling in the canoes on big waves. About seven years ago on Kona, they had this massive storm. And my friend got me out with all with with the locals. I just sat there and held on for dear life.

But you think of eating it on an outrigger, and that's my fear is having that thing come over your head. That's gnarly. Yeah. But they know what they're doing. No, but you just hold on. Yes. You want to stay with it at the same speed and velocity as the boat. You don't jump away from it and then it hits you. So the idea is to hug that thing and stay close to it and you become a part of that unit.

Ugh. By the way, there are people listening to this interview going, those guys are crazy. Like, I know people who don't want to be, have anything to do with the ocean. I don't get it at all. I do too. I know a lot of people. I meet a lot of people who are like, I'm scared of sharks. I don't know what's down there. I don't want to.

Yeah. Yeah, it's, I think, and I had a conversation with Steven Spielberg about it. He blames himself. He's super sad, actually. Like, I'm not, this is not a comedy. Hey, he ruined my childhood. You could tell him that. He knows it already. I used to be so scared of sharks, I wouldn't go in the deep end of a pool. I was so freaked out by Jaws when it came out. And, but God, what a great film. Yeah, he, by the way, probably one of the greatest movies of all time, but he's legitimately...

legitimately super sad about the long legacy of Jaws in terms of people don't want to go in the ocean and people think sharks are bad and all of that stuff. But, you know, Santa Barbara's got great whites all over it now. Oh, yeah. Everywhere. But Jaws is one of the most iconic films that will ever exist. Ever. I mean, it's literally like E.T. or...

He made that too? He made that too. Listen, you made an album. I didn't realize that with a surfing legend, Rob Machado and Peter King. It's called The Surfers, right? You made an album in like 1998. Is that right? We were called The Surfers, obviously because it was too literal, but because we couldn't think of a name because PK likes punk music, Rob likes Jimi Hendrix, and I like sort of

all sorts of stuff from country to rap to pop to, I like sort of everything. But we didn't really have like a sort of mantra that worked for all of us. Eventually what happened was in the studio, they kept just going, oh, the surfers are coming in tonight. So it just became like this, oh, the surfers, because none of us go, we're gonna name this, um,

Yeah, it's good. Projects will name themselves. Some projects will name themselves and that's what you want. Yeah, I guess. Every name. I mean, think of how silly the Beatles sounded when they said the Beatles, right? I mean, when somebody first heard the Beatles, they were kind of goofy thing. So, but I was, I was really like, I don't want to be called the surfers. I actually wanted to be called ThoughtSpace.

Because that was like how I thought about music. It was just my thinking coming out. But then Rob. My favorite is the title of the album, Songs from the Pipe. My bet is, was it Pipeline Pipe or the pipe you guys were smoking out of?

Well, it was kind of like people mistook it as a double meaning, right? But like the irony is I don't, I don't smoke and I never smoked. So, but now you're also the world's greatest surfer and never, and don't smoke. What the heck? Don't smoke. Jeff Spicoli, the world's second greatest surfer. I ran into Sean Penn one night in, in, in LA when I was like, I would have been like 22 years old. And, um,

He and other people owned this restaurant and I ended up going to this restaurant and kind of going to this party and he was there and I got to meet him. I was really drunk and we sat across the table from each other talking about surfing and specifically about Fast Times at Ridgemont High because it's my favorite movie of all time.

Willy Wonka and Fast Times are my two all-time favorite films. Good choices. I told Sean, I said, listen, I don't know what you think about it. I don't know your thoughts on that movie. I go, that's the greatest film that was ever made. And I think you were the greatest character in the movie. So you're the greatest character in the greatest movie that was ever made, was my thought. I would support that. And I only recently did Sean do an interview where he came clean on what I had always suspected.

that Spicoli was based on. A surfer. This one particular dude. He told me. That we all grew up with. Yeah, Bud Donatoni. The guy who lived in the colony. Yep. Because he would come into school with a bathing suit and a bagel tucked into the top of his bathing suit. I literally saw him do that. And of course, that's that great scene where Spicoli walks into the classroom with a bagel stuffed down his pants. So good.

So good. How great is it when he's being interviewed by Stu Nahan in his dream sequence after winning the surf contest? That's... Yes. Right?

You could never make it today. You could never make that. All it is is cool buzz, tasty waste. Yeah, no, it's just incredible. Where'd you get that jacket? The network got it for me. You hear that? It's my skull. My skull. That is too good. I think you and I should do the 50th anniversary DVD just and talk about. Oh, we've got to talk about golf really quick. So how many times have you played in the AT&T Pro-Am?

I actually don't know. Probably a dozen or so. A dozen. Okay. So I need to do it, right? Like I, I, I got a car. It's like a no brainer. I've got to finally commit and just go do it for sure. Right. You'd love your golf. Love it. Okay. The two tournaments you need to play are the ATC Pebble. Well, that's the third one. That's an individual. As an individual, you got to play Tahoe. It's super fun. It's, it's a good challenge. And, um,

And if you can play golf, you could contend there. But it's not handicaps, but it's a point accumulation. And it's actually a really fun tournament. But the elevation throws me off every time. I can't get my yardages right and my irons. No, the Dunhill. The Dunhill links at St. Andrews, Carnoustie, and Kingsbarns. And so if you want to play that, I'll just...

put you on text with the guys who run the thing, but you should play that. To me, that's the greatest amateur pro-am experience in golf because you feel very much a part of the tournament. And you do also, you also do an AT&T. It's great. Pebble Beach has been incredible. It's been some of my funnest ever golf experiences. I love the courses. So Kelly, there are so many people I think would love our sport. And I think they're intimidated by...

How to do it, where to do it. I want to know your thoughts. My thoughts are always, first of all, learn where the water's warm. That's number one, number one, two, three, and four. Be somewhere where the water is warm. Yeah, a close fifth is what, Rob? A close fifth. A close fifth would be...

You want to learn where it's consistent. So you're getting multiple waves in your lesson. Yep. Right? So that's why Waikiki was always great. There's some stuff, I think, in Puta Mita, Mexico, I learned there. What are your thoughts for people who want to pick it up? For people who want to pick it up, I think what you should do is get interested at 13 and start at 40. Yeah.

That's me, baby. Yeah, that's you. Yep. No, like you said, it's access to surf. If you can't deal with the cold water, you got to be somewhere warm. But I mean, wetsuits are pretty good these days and keep you pretty warm. And there's a lot of, you know, the latest craze in health is cold water plunging anyway. So the cold water is actually really healthy for you. And like even when you're working out, dip your hands and feet in cold water in between sessions.

doing this exercise and that exercise. There's all these studies on this stuff now to improve your strength and muscle mass and testosterone and all sorts of things. But look, I'm a Florida boy. You don't need to talk me into a good time in warm water. I like when the water's 85 degrees and I'm super happy about it. Yeah.

California drove me nuts as a kid because first off, the wetsuits for kids were terrible. And I just hated getting cold in the middle of summer. Why am I wearing a full suit? This doesn't make sense to me. You're not that far north of Florida. It didn't make sense in my head about the cold water versus warm water streams. We got the Gulf Stream coming up out of the Gulf, so it's...

It's just warming Florida. In the coldest days of winter, the water's still, you know, sometimes the water's literally like smoking, like mist coming off it because the Gulf Stream comes a quarter mile from the beach in West Palm and the water will be 76 degrees and it can be 30 degrees outside. So you just get this crazy, sort of almost like it looks like the ocean's boiling water.

But yeah, I love warm water. It's just so much more pleasurable to learn. I think as a young kid, though, if it's something you want to do, you just do it. You don't really worry about the cold. It just becomes a part of the process. What if you're an adult, though? You're like somebody... The people come up to me, or maybe because they're my age, but I feel like there's a whole group of... First of all, we don't want more surfers in the water. What I really want to say is don't learn. You'd hate it. Stay away. That's really what I... There was a great ad campaign by a company called Gotcha back in the 80s.

And it would show the first page. It would be one page and you'd have to turn and see another full page ad. And they'd be on the same side and it would say, it would show like just some random person who obviously wasn't a surfer and it would say, if you don't surf, don't start.

and you'd open it and it would be, look they weren't trying to pander to anyone to get them to buy clothes. And then you turn it over and the next page will say, "If you surf, never stop." And it would be one of their team riders. But I thought it was such a cool-- - Oh that's sick. - You know for surfing, it was such a grassroots campaign. And Gotcha was really like, they were in the 80s, they had the greatest surf team of anyone, maybe ever.

but um you know that was how surfing was it was very insular and it wasn't trying to sell to the outside world it was um it was really a culture to itself at that time but i mean there's no holding back the pandora's box surfing is like the funnest thing in the world so everyone wants to do it and i understand why i mean i've committed basically every second of my life to it since i was single digits and um

Golf's the only thing that slightly pulls me away sometimes because I like it. Well, I think the same... I think there's a reason why so many surfers like golf because you're always chasing the perfect wave, the perfect shot, and it's...

it's never going to happen. Yeah, they're a balance. They're a balance and they're almost the opposite. Whereas in the ocean, everything's moving. On the golf course, nothing's moving, right? It's just pestering you. So it's almost giving you some balance after surfing, I think. And no, you're probably not going to hit your best shot every day you go play golf. I got a friend all the time. He's kind of hard on himself and he'll hit something. He goes, oh, it's not my best. And I said, you're going to hit your best one time in your life

That's it. The single time you're going to hit your one best shot ever. And it'll probably go in the hole and you'll be happy. Other than that, you're chasing your own levels. You're always trying to chase this level that you have and just be happy where it's at. Have you ever had a hole-in-one? My hole-in-one came at Holme Park. Do you know where that is? I feel like I should know. Is that a pitch-and-putt? It's in Beverly Hills. It's a pitch-and-putt in like Bel Air or Beverly Hills. Yeah, it's a dog park and it costs $2 to play.

Wait a minute. Okay, wait. I'm literally a block and a half from it right now. I'm at Fox Studios. Yeah, there you go. I'm going to go. It's right. Okay. I'm going to. Oh, unreal. Yeah. And it's right near LA Country Club, actually. But it's funny. So you take a wedge and a putter out there and the longest hole is about 100 yards and most of them are about 50 to 70. And it's $2 to play. And me and my two friends I was playing with, we had an ongoing bet.

It used to be for years, anytime you're playing together and you get a hole in one, it's $1,000 from everyone who's in the bet. And then they, funny enough, about a month before that, they changed it to $100. I still wanted it to be $1,000. I was like, how about anything under 100 yards is $100 and anything over 100 yards is $1,000. Anyways. That's a better bet. But we got in the 18th hole, it was about a 75-yard shot, and I pulled my wedge left and it hit the collar and kicked it 90 degrees right and went in the hole, and they had to pay me $100. Wow.

That's my only hole in one. A carom hole in one. Yeah. But I have a double eagle and I have a bunch of hole outs for eagle, but don't have a longer hole in one than that. Sick. Well, I'm psyched to go up to Surf Ranch. I'll say hello to everybody for you. Yeah. I'll send you some footage. I just started getting comfortable in the barrel when I left last time. So now I'm super psyched to really- I don't even know if you're a regular goofy foot.

I'm regular. Okay. That's better for Surf Ranch because typically the wind is offshore on the right, as you know. We had zero wind, not a ripple when I was there last time. Oh, that's nice. It was literally the perfect. So, all right, my man. Thank you for taking the time. I'm glad we were able to put this together. Yeah, no problem, man.

All right. I'm double inspired now to put on 75 layers of wetsuit to go to this damn surf park, which is so great. This is going to be so fun. Anyway, I hope you guys had fun. Don't pick up a surfboard, please. There are too many people doing it. Really. I love you. I want you to listen to every podcast I ever do. I hope that at this point we've established a bond as an audience. I think we have, but don't surf.

Too crowded. Anyway, next week, a really good podcast on deck. Don't forget to give us a nice review if it occurs to you on Apple because it really is important to the life of the show. All my best to you and I will see you next week on Literally.

You've been listening to Literally with Rob Lowe, produced by me, Nick Liao, with help from associate producer Sarah Begar, research by Alyssa Graw. The podcast is executive produced by Rob Lowe for Low Profile, Adam Sachs, Jeff Ross, and myself at Team Coco, and Colin Anderson at Stitcher. Booking by Deirdre Dodd, music by Devin Bryant. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time on Literally with Rob Lowe.

This has been a Team Coco production in association with Stitcher.

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