Episode 70 with John Rattray, skateboarder, strategist and mental health awareness activist from Aberdeen, Scotland. Together we discussed his life and career, from picking up his first board in Aberdeen in the late 80’s to working in consumer strategy at Nike in Portland, Oregon, and everything in between through surprise questions from long-time friends of his: Colin Kennedy, Danijel Stankovic, Anthony Claravall, Mark Baines, Kaspar Van Lierop, Joel Curtis, Dan Magee, Skin Phillips, Eric Swisher, Diego Bucchieri, Silas Baxter-Neal, Joel Pippus, Kristin Ebeling, John Gardner, Kelly Bird, Rob Mathieson, Benson Kaai, Jon Horner and Michael Burnett.
(00:13) – Intro
(01:13) – Getting started
(09:51) – Mental health advocacy
(11:27) – Would you consider getting a degree in psychology in the future?
(12:20) – Nike SB “Why so sad?” comic video with Jon Horner
(14:55) – Colin Kennedy
(16:22) – Danijel Stankovic
(19:49) – Anthony Claravall
(33:18) – Mark Baines
(36:53) – Kaspar Van Lierop
(40:49) – Joel Curtis
(42:52) – Dan Magee
(47:24) – Skin Phillips
(48:59) – Eric Swisher
(55:13) – Diego Bucchieri
(56:45) – Silas Baxter-Neal
(01:02:15) – Joel Pippus
(01:12:26) – Kristin Ebeling
(01:20:40) – John Gardner
(01:23:38) – Kelly Bird
(01:25:59) – Rob Mathieson
(01:27:21) – Benson Kaai
(01:30:16) – Jon Horner
(01:33:27) – Michael Burnett
(01:36:00) – One flew over the cuckoo’s nest
(01:38:07) – Most valuable lesson learned from skateboarding
(01:38:51) – Conclusion
For more information and resources: https://linktr.ee/beyondboards
Hello and welcome back to Beyond boards a podcast dedicated to the actions and interests of skaters Beyond skateboarding my guest today John ratray does not need much of an introduction John grew up and started skating in Aberdine Scotland in the late ‘ 80s and had an impeccable skate career riding
For blue print skateboards in his Heyday then for zero skateboards until he retired from Pro skating in the early 2010s in 2013 he left Southern California with his wife Philippa for Portland Oregon and transitioned into a career in marketing at Nike since 2017 John has dedicated a lot of time and
Energy to raising awareness around mental health issues through the good egg and the why so sad campaigns so here’s my conversation with John I hope you’ll enjoy it the So what I’ve done is I’ve tried to focus on the friends questions and kind of use them as the bulk for the interview and so I reached out to a bunch of friends of yours people that have been you know like on your skate Journey basically and uh that have kindly provided surprise
Questions for you so so what I’d like to do is just kind of go through them together and these will allow you to share some stories on specific times in your career and life if that sounds okay with you awesome sounds good and before
We we get into that I’d like to try and just give a very quick summary of your life and career so you’re originally from Scotland from Aberdine but you live in Portland you’ve been living in Portland for quite a few years now you grew up in the ‘ 80s in Aberdine you
Started skating around 9 or 10 years old your father unfortunately passed away when you were 13 and I’m just mentioning that because it’s uh it was I guess a pivotal moment in your life and something that kind of resonated throughout your life later and so you
Were skating and stuff and then you went and lived in Glasgow for a few years where you studied physics you did a Bachelor of Science over there and while you were doing that you were getting sponsored you were also I think working at a skate shop over there called Clan
Skates for a few years and you were sponsored by Panic which became blueprint for which you turned Pro all of this is between like 95 and 99 2000 more or less and so during that time you also traveled to the states for the first time I believe at least for
Skating so that must have been the summer of 99 you did a trip between Canada and the states where you filmed that famous rookies part in 411 which was filmed by Anthony clal and Yan Bowman and you’ve mentioned in other interviews that you experienced at that
Time or maybe right after I’m not sure at what point exactly but you experienced your first like episodes of depression and suicidal radiation around that time and um So eventually you you moved to the States because you had started writing for zero I didn’t mention but you were also like shoewise
You were skating for circa back in the day and you went on that famous video radio tour that uh was a transal video back in the day and I think it came out in 2001 and so during that trip uh Jamie Thomas offered you to write for zero I
Think he had uh been uh like offering this to you for a little bit and uh the combination of him and Adrien Lopez like asking you to get on the team eventually convince you to jump ship and and leave blueprint and then you moved to the
States so in the early 2000s I’m not sure exactly what year but I guess around 2003 or 2002 and so then you had like this prolific career until like the early 2010s you were Pro for zero you skated for different like shoe brands and stuff throughout the years aside
From your pro skating career you were also a contributing writer for numerous mags like the skateboard mag Thrasher Transworld between like basically the early 2000 until 2012 around there and in 2011 unfortunately your sister Katrina committed suicide and uh that was obviously a very tragic and pivotal
Moment and around that time I’m not sure exactly at what point but you also went through a knee surgery and you had a lot of stuff that was happening all at once and uh that kind of precipitated your decision to retire from prating and so you started working at New Balance
Numeric when they started their program I think you were the first TM of there for a little bit for like a year or something and eventually you got an opportunity to work at Nike and by that point you had moved to Portland with your wife and since then you’ve been
Working for Nike Nike SB but also like the global Nike uh brand on various positions in marketing and strategic planning and since 2017 you’ve been also working around mental health you did a lot of things around that subject you’ve been uh doing the wi house sad campaign
I think that started in 2017 you organized the first event around that time called The Good Egg where you cycled I’m not sure from where to where exactly but it ended up on the coast on the Atlantic Ocean uh the Pacific Ocean sorry and on that trip I think John
Cardel was part of the crew the point was like to do a 100 mile cycling and end up by doing a neck plant on a transition and that was all to raise funds for the Scottish Association for mental health and you’ve done similar initiatives later like this trip and
Other stuff all of them to raise awareness around mental health and um Suicide Prevention and to raise money for associations that are in that realm and this year earlier this year I think it came out in January Nike SB released a video called the why so sad comic
Video that was like a video adaptation of a comic that you had been working on with um your friend John Herer who illustrated the whole thing I think that might have come out a few years earlier in Thrasher and that was like the the video adaptation of it and you were the
Narrator of the video and uh yeah I guess that cover at least what I was able to find is there anything that you feel that I completely missed or that was a lot you got it we’re done well done there’s a lot of research there no
I think that covers a a lot of moments in the course of my life from being a kid in Aberdine skating Glasgow meeting the crew there working at Clan skates with Jamie Blair and Justin Maul and I think you said Panic became blueprint I don’t know if I would I think they kept
Panic as a brand and changed their F they changed the focus to make blueprint the sort of Premier brand oh I for it moved the team around a little bit and gave McGee some some remit to drive blueprint as the main brand there okay okay I don’t want to be the word police
If we do any work in suicide prevention we tend to try and say we somebody died by Suicide rather than they then they committed it committed just as connotations of like super intentional like bad behavior and it’s like the more you learn about the mechanisms that drive suicidal ideation and attempts
It’s you tend to come to the realization that it’s not necessarily a rational logical decision somebody’s making they’re making it under the duress of a malfunctioning brain so yes exactly it’s hard to call that a clear and rational Choice when somebody’s brain’s doing what it’s doing at that point so you say
Diet by as something happens to people rather than something that they intentionally do mhm yeah yeah thank you for saying that that’s a very true and uh yeah I’ll uh I’ll remember that for sure yeah it’s just a good way of reframing it to help you think through
Like what’s really happening there I talk to friends sometimes about this and I’ve done a lot of thinking about thinking if you like like how does thinking work and then it turns out especially when you do a bit of you know mindfulness is the term that gets thrown
Around but when you do a bit of that sort of ba even the basics the whole thing is about learning to notice the process of thinking and you start to realize a ton of the thoughts that come up in my head I’m not intentionally thinking them they’re just happening
Yeah yeah exactly and when and when you’re when you’re Cal and you’re in a good healthy State then you have the option in your you know rational part of your brain to decide which thoughts are worth keeping or which thoughts you should let go which are good which are
Like dumb you know so yeah I think that’s that’s been an interesting part of the Journey of learning about you know the like I said the mechanisms of the worst case scenario like suicidal ideation but that’s that yeah the Scottish Association for mental health recently rebranded they’re now called
The Scottish action for mental health fun fact okay does your cousin still work there I I read that your cousin Liam had started working there I think after your your sister um died by Suicide and uh that’s a part of why you decided to raise funds for that Association since you had that
Connection there right yeah I mean I was always after Katrina passed I was always thinking about what could I do you know and it’s like you know ideally I would go back in time with a flux capacitor and a DeLorean or however you do it or
Would a bill and teds have did they have a telephone box you know like there’s multiple ways that I’ve seen people travel through time I’d go back and I would do a uh you know bachelor’s in psychology and Psychiatry and Neuroscience and then I would become like a practicing therapist or whatever
But yeah time and money and life being what they are it’s like oh well I guess I have a platform for with a small audience and I have a you know I like to learn things as best I can so I’ll just try and do some advocacy in the space
And at least help there’s plenty professional I say there’s plenty professional people out there doing working in this field there’s still not enough like there’s not enough psychologists psychiatrists and therapists to handle the demand but anyway I’m sure there’s probably other people that U are doing that work of
Course the Ben rers foundation and some other initiatives out there are promoting the those messages but yeah at least from my perspective you’ve become like an ambassador of that movement so to speak yeah I mean that’s I’m just I’ve managed to get through a chunk of it myself done a bit of introspection
And trying to understand how it all worked inside me and done some learning done some as much formal learning as I can and then like extracurricular just reading around the subject there’s a few books I would recommend if people are interested in going on that Learning Journey but yeah then sharing the
Knowledge the point keeping it to yourself and so that we can become a bit more literate when it comes to this subject that’s so easy to shy away from because it’s feels scary at first yes mhm even though when you’re not when you’re not in crisis and you’re like
Learning about this subject it’s just fascinating and that’s the way I kind of look at it when you’re in crisis it’s like okay let’s sort this out what’s going on how can we get you to a doctor how can we get you on whatever needs to be prescribed if that’s the course of
Action to take what’s been happening happening you know and then you once you’re through crisis it’s sort of you know you I sort of have described it as like now I went through that experience I had and I felt like I was stumbling through the dark they’ve said you say
Knowledge is knowledge gives you power over things it’s like you know building a bit of a of a knowledge base around how these things work and there’s plenty of knowledge at this point around it provides somewhat of a map to the landscape that is the human psyche if
You like that’s a question I was keeping for later actually but you just mentioned that if you could go back in time you would you would maybe like consider doing a psychology degree and I I think you’ve mentioned this in other interviews that that was something I
Don’t know if you were contemplating it seriously like doing that getting a degree in Psychology but uh is that something you think you might do in the future or is or do you feel like you wouldn’t want to maybe like do a full 3 to five year course in in Psychology at
This point I don’t know it always goes through my head it’s more just like the time commitment like I don’t really want to commit to something unless I feel feel like I can fully commit to it yes and I live in the United States so money
Becomes an issue I don’t know if that’s an issue in the United Kingdom at this point probably don’t know mhm but either way I just would love to just I’m not it doesn’t feel like I can commit to that right now so at this point I’m the armchair psychologist reading as much as
I can when I can no and you’re doing a great job at it I mean I was watching this video I mentioned earlier the why outad nikb piece that you did with John Horn and Dr Bruce Perry and push to heill and stuff that video is really good I recommend anybody who’s listening
To this to check it out because it’s very easy accessible and it really I don’t know it resonated very strongly with me like I I I really could I don’t know it just made a lot of sense and I was like oh like that’s why in some
Situations I I have these kind of awkward reactions that I don’t really know where they come from and maybe there’s some explanation there you know so uh yeah that was an excellent piece and I I think that piece that’s like a the the culmination at least to that
Point of all the work you’ve done all the reading you’ve done all the conversations you’ve had with different people and that whole field of mental health but uh yeah that that video piece is really excellent thanks yeah I mean yeah I like that the way that that came
Together like you said it was a combination of understanding at that point so it did a did the best job we could do at the time I think it did a pretty good job of kind of summarizing like you said some of the work that Dr
Perry all a lot of the work that Dr Perry’s entire career has has built up too he’s pretty renowned at this point worth checking out his resume but um and he helped draft that and looked at drafts and helped refine the language and the model that he put together the
Ne sequential model is super interesting it sounds super it kind of intimidating at first when you say that but then I kind of I like working with John Herer cuz like the comic world the comic world is sort of disarming and you can throw you can throw science jargon around in
The comic world and it feels more approachable yes yeah it just the comic World lends itself to you know this idea of sci-fi and you can have fun with it like I think the the intro to that comic starts as kind of well it’s a comic so
You try and have fun with it and try and find this the whole why so sad thing is finding a light-hearted way into an intimidating subjects so that project was based on that prerogative mhm mhm but yeah it starts with like misunderstanding or not really understanding what Freud was talking
About when you talk about the subconscious and it’s the ID and all this and then it turns out we have a load of Neuroscience that now helps us understand exactly what’s what where these things are happening in the body and brain and in what order in what sequence your brain is processing
Information which I think is a is kind of a GameChanger to start to realize you know how how that works yeah anyway yeah yeah no very interesting and yes again I highly recommend all the listeners out there to check out the video I’ll put some links up uh when this episode comes
Out but yeah I’d like to share maybe with you this first question from from Colin Kennedy so I have a bunch of questions from different people as I told you and some are about skating some are about mental health we’ll be kind of going through different period of your
Life it’s not necessarily super chronological but this first one again from Colin Kennedy a former blueprint teammate and Nike teammate as well and just friend of course so he said was the backside nose blunt and Levy halfpipe a significant moment for you or just another day of capturing footage for waiting for the
World thank you Colin for such a thoughtful and deep and profound question was it front side ta I remember front side tail slide back nose blun yes exactly I think it was a good day I I wanted to do that trick I love Livy so that it’s not pivotal I don’t think I
Mean back nose blunt in Livy halfpipe where there’s not there’s not any coping it’s not like yes it’s a round kind of lip right yeah yeah it gets a little more there’s a bit more of an edge on the the deep end there the vert sort if
It’s even goes to vert I don’t know mhm all in all I’m saying in my memory it wasn’t that hard at that time okay and so what did he say the other the latter part was was it just another day of collecting food for waiting for the
World exactly the answer is yes it was just another day that was like let’s get some filler basically okay okay I have another question this one is an audio one yo retray juger here hope you’re well my question for you is uh video radio I mean that era was uh pretty golden when
At least for my generation that transville video kind of was different from every anything else we’ve seen we followed a tour and you were on this tour next to musam Penny and you know for that time the Giants uh I just want to hear uh you know how was it to be on
That in that project and on that tour Daniel Daniel sankovic yes Yuga yeah the juger bolts uh okay video radio being on that tour what was it like yeah it’s like he asked basically how was it to be in that project in on that tour yeah I
Mean it was at that point I remember being at the stoar I think we were there was big crowds of skaters young skater kids and yeah mow was was kind of the Superstar yeah him and Jamie that Dynamic that they had was really cool I don’t know if
That I think that was the yeah it was a time where I I really remember the crowds of kids chasing Muska and he’s running away and it’s just all fun and games and he’s running along in my imaginary memory with his Burberry bandana or whatever he was wearing at
The time and that he got in London it was yeah cool to be on and I don’t know when I was on trips like that it was just it was classic tour life it’s you know there’s up time there’s downtime you hit demos you try and do the best
You can and the crowds were big mhm um I think the France demo if I’m thinking about where you are was somewhere south of Paris a fair bit and all yeah didn’t you go to Lum the big Hubers oh yeah I mean we went yeah I mean we went Street
Skating as much as we could as well and it was I think juger said it was not like anything at the time any other videos I guess if he’s looking at video radio John Holland and Greg Hunt put that together mhm so they obviously did
Do a great job and did a great job telling the story I remember that’s like I think Greg had me narrate some of it as well do little voiceover pieces to stitch it together which I thought was funny mhm they’re American so they were like you have cool accent you should do
It I think my accent is just pretty weird so if they if they thought it would work then great do you remember skating with uh I know Tom peny ended up on that tour at some point I don’t I don’t think he was there for the whole
Time but uh maybe he connected with you either in Paris or in another city during the trip do you remember skating with him yeah Tom was on it for a bit I mean Chad was friends with Tom cuz they lived together I think they had a place
In San Diego or wherever they wherever they were somewhere in Southern California so they were they were homies from then Tom came out MET Us in Paris and I think took the train out to Germany with us cuz I remember he had a couple of really good clips of that
Under the bridge spot if it was a bridge I can’t remember the St got under the bridge spot that had the little mini ramp and this sort of slightly downhill run up to the hip he does a Nolly uh Nolly hard flip oh yeah yeah I remember
That yeah yeah but yeah I remember Tom being on it I don’t know that we we chatted a little bit uh it’s a long time ago now I can’t really remember over 20 years ago yeah that was cool though okay I have a a few questions from Anthony
Claraval H the first one is did you think that going on a homie skate holiday to Canada and the states would would end up with you getting on Circa and zero I did not think that no I did not think that I had some money I think
From my student loan uh my final student loan I we used it to get to Canada to visit some friends skate friends who we’d met who also traveled mhm I was on blueprint at the time there’s probably some video where I say blueprint skateboards forever in my head I was
Like I’m down I’m down for life and I think that’s in the 411 yes the intro of the 411 or something yeah I like to say that what I meant was blueprint skateboards I think would be awesome if blueprint skateboards as a brand went on forever not necessarily with me on it
Yes yes okay well it’ll be fine I thought it would be fine with me or not yeah so and and they were yeah cuz like we just mentioned um the video radio tour but that’s when Jam convinced you to get on zero I guess yeah yeah we were
Red a couple of times and I think he’d been asking he asked me to be to if I’d be interested in staying in San Diego and meeting some of the team and skating like when I was at the first Action Sports retail trade show in San Diego
That I ever went to mhm that was all just still really overwhelming though I it like to claraval point did I think that all of that would culminate in a pro career no I wasn’t thinking that at all I was like still in the mindset of
I’ll go home after this trip and apply for internships at Shell oil or something like that and you know have a career like it was not on the cards at all mhm in fact if you mentioned that I had somewhat of a depressive episode or pretty bad depressive episode in my
Early 20s M I’d say the Catalyst for that was the fear of or I didn’t even real you don’t realize what it is at the time it’s just this fear of like what does the future hold cuz I needed to make a clear decision for myself about
Which path am I following here yeah yeah so that was that was part of it plus just you know the anxiety of the unknown life in front of you after un it now you’re challenged with being an adult and you know you haven’t quite managed to be an adolescent and all that so
That’s where I was at that point when Jamie first asked me and then it took it took a year after that before I decided so I like I said I don’t like to decide to do things unless I feel like I am 100% committed to them okay the next
Question from Anthony is your 411 rookies happened pretty randomly from what I remember the interview with the mask was definitely different and the nose blunt Clipper was the cherry on top that part was your introduction to the American skate scene do you trip on how something so unplanned can change the
Trajectory of your life no do I trip on on how unplanned things can change the trajectory of life no what’s really planned at the end of the day even though I make plans for a living like you you yeah and certainly at that point in my early 20s I wasn’t really planning
Very much and I don’t know I I can’t think of examples right now but yeah I think that lot of life on Earth happens at random and we just we just go along with it and then yeah try and take credit when things go right do you remember how how this
Opportunity to film a rookies part for 411 how did that happen was it a Anthony or you that uh offered that to you or that was 100% well I’m not going to say 100% I don’t know in my memory it’s a it’s all you and Bowman we met up with
You and I think we met with you and at vilia skate camp it might not been vilia okay but it was the skate camp that was out in the central California or wherever it is towards yuse in these places that really quite beautiful they had that skate camp mhm and Yan was
Working there and I think we went and I think we gave him a ride home in the van that we had for the road trip that we were on me and my skate friends from Scotland and Yan was just classic Bowman like probably um he had been given a pep
Talk about the opportunities that there are in the skate industry from bod boil and oh yeah took that to heart and told me like you’ve got an opportunity in front of you you need to film a 411 rookies while you’re here mhm and then think he put me in touch with Anthony
And I think he Yan was still working at Noah Bagels at the time so he couldn’t come out skate that much but Anthony was was filming more fulltime at that point so right just kept meeting up with Anthony and Joe Brook at the time and shot photos and filmed as much as we
Could in the couple of weeks that we had in in and around San Francisco I think most of is San Francisco yeah there’s a lot of Clips in this St yes there’s the Clipper one and the I don’t know what that spot is called but the one with the
The big white block so you do a manual kick flip and or kick flip manual and then a Nolly flip from the thing to the ground I don’t know if you know what I’m talking about it’s it’s like by the by the ocean yeah they call those be blocks
Be blocks be blocks that’s it mhm it was down the yeah you carry on down the the Waterfront from like the barcadero and Pier s you keep going down and they’re they all ran along there people skated those for years yeah yeah yeah in fact are they still people still skate them
Do they or no I think so yeah yeah I remember seeing taon doing a back nose blunt on one of those things like uh and like Thiago did a Switchback tail or something of like there’s some [ __ ] up tricks going on these days on these yeah
This spot I feel like maybe a sh skated him not that long ago oh for sure yeah yeah I can’t remember what he did but he definitely did something gnarly there okay the next one from Anthony is I remember after your 411 part came out Jamie Thomas hit me up about you hungry
To know more about you and get you on zero prior to zero your style was more fresh than Hesh in my opinion was there any feeling of Jamie changing your style like he did with Cole not to bag on zero and Jamie at all but did the brand
Resonate with you prior to skating for them I thought that was an interesting question cuz you were an odd I guess an odd choice for zero me I mean since they’re like gnarly Gap and the handrail guys and you you were a bit more like finesse style and nice track selection
And stuff you you of course did nly tricks as well but like with a different a different approach I guess yeah I assume that’s what they were looking for cuz they had hand they had handrails covered so I but I like handrail skate and yeah it definitely resonated with
The brand I thought it was super cool mhm I thought it was like I like the minimalist Vibe of what he was doing like actually in fact the name zero is sort of lends itself to minimalism yes but that and then and then um yeah I
Mean I grew up listening to mat Iron Maiden Killers was the first album I ever bought on audio cassette with my own money so yeah I have a broad uh love of music and then this funny clarel will not ever let that drop he’s always going
In on this one and it’s like I don’t know I just didn’t I stopped I didn’t cut my hair for a while you get in you know you you fit into a certain extent so but I don’t think I I don’t think I went out and bought like vintage Van
Halen t-shirts or something that was like you know not not my deal I mhm it doesn’t feel like you you changed your appearance like Cole kind of did it was a bit more visible I guess in his case I don’t remember the board sponsor he wrote for before maybe enjoy I don’t
Remember which one it was but uh you went from brpl to zero but it doesn’t seem like you Chang either your clothes or even the way you skated you kind of stuck to what you had been doing yeah I mean I bought clothes I think I got I skated in jeans button-up shirt
Some Cardigans like maybe wore more black t-shirts and like I quite liked having long hair cuz then when you do tricks your hair like bounces around and it looks cool in footage so sure fine and I never grew it all out long like Bruce Dickinson from Iron Maiden
Either like that’s going too far and in fact if I think about it when I rode for blueprint in like I remember being in second year at University and not cutting my hair for a while so that was already happening so I don’t know what claraval is talking about plaid
Button-up shirts and jeans that’s pretty much it he also asked I have a few more for him he said how did you go from being the first TM at New Balance numeric to Nike and so I think that was around the time when you moved to
Portland right I’m not sure if you moved to Portland before you started working at New Balance or after but uh yeah I mean the New Balance job was interesting I helped Seb start to put the team together and manag the first couple of Seasons worth of um cuz they were
Working in in Seasons as product shipments were coming in I think they had problems with the first product shipment anyway or production quality or something that was the launch of the numeric brand right like uh they weren’t doing the skate program before no that
Was the the start of it so it was more than just team managing it was like working with Russell and arto on Creative direction and you know working with the mags on ad placement and the Social Media stuff so the whole thing and then Plus or you know organizing
What you you know the bits and pieces the logistical bits and pieces for skate trips in order to get the video stuff together mhm we did that you know the first video placing the sun in LA and then second video piece second video piece in Vancouver where we um we did
This sort of match cut editing Joe pce and I had been on a tear kind of just doing funny little video projects and got super psyched on Match cut edits so that became an entire project mhm did all of that and was living in Portland
At the time anyway and it was like the New Balance gig was a part-time thing I wasn’t making ends financially Nike SB at the time was looking for somebody to help with their digital marketing stuff mhm so uh I think Mar white widely hit
Me up at the time to ask if I’d be interested in applying so I applied and got that role in and just have done various things um at Nike ever since it’s been a Super Rad interesting career journey to learn the ropes of work in a bigger place like that yeah yeah I’m
Sure so that I mean it was just widely reached out if that’s the answer to yeah like how to and it was it was local to where I Wasing anyway it helped me actually properly P the bills and was you know an interest just an interesting opportunity
That didn’t seem like it might come up again so yeah going for it true his next question is you relocated from Scotland to the US to make it in skateboarding do you think it would have been possible to stay living in Scotland and still make it I was thinking about this earlier but
I guess at that time it would have been very hard because there was no social media there was no YouTube In the late ’90s early 2000s of course it’s much easier today easier I don’t know but it’s like more accessible but uh yeah around that time I guess if you didn’t
Go to California at least every now and then it was maybe difficult to have a pro career uh yeah I think it would have been difficult to do to have the career I had I mean I wouldn’t say I ended up my career was particularly lucrative or
Anything I’m not retired by any means I don’t know who goes through a skate career and and ends up with a comfortable retirement out of it I don’t know that that happens but not yet yeah maybe niga well possibly yeah I don’t I don’t know that it would have been no I
Think it wouldn’t have been easy and I remember I think the deal I had through savier was contingent on moving to California so I had to live for a bit okay for the people who are listening savier was the was linked to Nike right was that before Nike SB started or was
It a parallel program I’m not too sure I think it was before it was before yeah it was before and then I it’s a long time ago as well I can’t actually remember if it over I think it overlapped a little bit because I remember seeing like U Stan Janowski and
Ba and Tim O Conor I think all rode for savier before most of them went to Nike right I uh yeah I went on a good fun rad trip with Brian uh Stefan was not there but it was Brian and Brad and then Mike Carol and Rick Howard and O and Aron
Mesa all down to Australia that was one of the the coolest funnest skate trips I did that’s a great crew yeah okay he has one last question he said a higher percentage of blueprint Pros went on to Global tm/ brand manager roles than almost any other brand I can
Think of shy Baines vongh Colin yourself if you include Panic then you in as well why do you think that is if I include Panic then Yan as well y was on blueprint before I was so I think claraval needs to fact check himself um why is that I don’t know
That’s an interesting observation I don’t know why the the British education system at the time I don’t know if any any one of those people would agree with me that that’s part of it I feel like the school I went to was pretty good mhm but I don’t know
That anyone else feels that way uh maybe just being from outside of the United States you have a more of a desire to stay in the industry or less of a I don’t yeah I don’t know what the answer is it’s an interesting it’s an interesting observation though and he
Finished just by saying please tell John I treasure the trips and sessions we went on he’s still one of my favorite skaters and I hope he’s doing well awesome back at him back at you claro okay then I have a question from Mark Baines another blueprint for a teammates
So he said I remember when you left blueprint for zero and I remember being gutted you were leaving but also stoked that you’d been picked up by a brand like zero it seemed like you were a level above the rest of us I remember thinking that after the nose blown down
Clipper anyway what was your thought process when you got approached by Jamie back then and was it a move you’re still happy to have made with the gift of hindsight oh yeah well I told you that earlier my thought process took a year of like from ASR trade show whenever it
Was then I had to have essentially a sort of nervous breakdown and hold up at my mom’s house with the fresh you go to the doctor get prescribed whatever it was it fluoxitine at the time got through that uh I think went back out to San Francisco on a trip with Oliver
Barton and Wick warland which I always think is funny going on a trip with two photographers and no filmer I don’t know why we did that that way that was interesting but maybe Oliver remembers but we did quite a lot still on blueprint for that whole year
We hadn’t finished fil me waiting for the world either when Jamie first sort of approached me so we had to finish that so yeah first of all I had to finish things that needed done like we needed to film waiting for the world before that got on zero and then we did
That premiered it I can’t even remember if I was skating I think it was skating circus and waiting for the world the whole time I think and then I had to and then I was I was living in the God where was I I was I can’t remember I cannot
Remember how it went down all I know is at some point I ended up on that circuit trip video radio oh yeah mhm Jamie asked me to get on then and at that point I’d been to Slam City jam with vaugh and McGee and seen Lopez and I think I said
This before in interview but Lopez also asked if I would ride for zero yeah yeah that’s right that’s when I was like oh there’s actually the team is talking about this so yeah it’s not just Jamie yeah that that made it feel more like they want me there yeah that clenched it
Cuz I mean I was leaving a team that was blueprint that was the homies from the UK we’d been on the road together you know I slept on each other’s mom’s couches you know it’s like that level of you grew up together and had each other’s backs so leaving that leaving
That was tough that definitely was part of my thought process for sure um and there was never that I don’t know there was ever that true camad with the whole team on zero at that point either I was tight with Mumford I think we had sort of shared Heritage from him being from
Oz and me being from the UK there’s like a bit of a a shared cultural kind of thing there but it was more about like making that decision to you know pursue it as a career so that changes the dynamic anyway yeah and I and I moved
Out there with with philipo we got married and stayed together and moved out together so that changed the life situation as well where there was just a different different focus on on what’s most important maybe not always just hanging out with the homies and skating there’s more to life than that as well
And you start to balance things out mhm mhm some of that hindsight some of that was a thought process at the time and then what do you say you’re you grew up in you’re French should to reget reget yes yes like Ed says MH very true I mean you can’t really you’re you’re
Depending on you know what happened to you your brain will try and make you feel bad about all these regrets but they’re gone they’re gone in the wind so yeah need to focus on yeah focus on what’s here and now and count your blessings learn what you learned and try
And enjoy the moment that we’re in okay then I have a few questions from Casper Van who used to work at Nike from Holland but I believe he lives in the states as well maybe he lives in Portland I’m not sure so he asked after being in the
States for uh many many years how do you experience Living in America do you consider Portland home and would you ever move back good question Casper it’s one that he Pro I’m sure Casper wrestles with it you know or ruminates on it or thinks about that one too being far away
From home and far away from you know my mom and my niece and family and old friends I consider Portland home yes partly because I now have a 10-year-old son called ior who is a portlander and who goes to school here and for me moving away from here at this point
Would be something I don’t want to do because I don’t want to disrupt his childhood yeah you know MH I understand if I can pay one thing forward it would be to not have a disrupted childhood so I’ll do my best to give him some
Stability and have a fun nice time as a kid in a home time but yeah I think Portland is a great I like the Pacific Northwest I like Portland I speak to young people I say young people people in their 20s that move here and M Portland’s not the you know
Action-packed town for young people that maybe Manhattan is or other big cities but but I think it’s great I go ride my bike go hiking yeah so you know my kids growing up here so yeah yeah yeah he asked at the end would you ever move
Back is that something like uh in the future do you think you would see yourself maybe one day uh going back to the UK yeah I don’t know the opposite of jret Ren I don’t know what the french is but I don’t know the future so I can’t I
Don’t know I would yeah I would if the circumstances allowed it and it felt like the right move at the time once IV’s a bit older and there was some you know reason or thing drawing me back mhm being able to make a living is is one of
The things that I don’t know what I’d do but that’s you know you solve that as you go but yeah right right now no but in the future maybe like guess I have no crystal ball he asked the last thing Casper he said looking back at your skate career what
Area do you feel is your highlight both from an experience perspective as well as from what you’re most proud of I don’t know it’s cuz you’re a different person in each era and I don’t really think about my skate career all that often to really he’d say what he says
What’s the Highlight I mean waiting for the world was a highlight getting that done and like defining blueprint as like a solid and respected brand that is not rooted in America and there rooted in the UK that was a cool a cool thing to be a part of mhm zero videos I mean
Dying to live getting that part done was was a defining moment mhm there’s I mean it’s so that one was a bit sort of like of a for me not a letdown down but it was like that’s the wrong word it was just I got injured I messed my ankle up
Skating a rail in Barcelona right before like when we still had a month or a couple of months to film so just had to kind of like be done with the part before being done with the part if you like yeah still came out good yeah yeah
Oh for sure and then I don’t I don’t know other highlights I’d say learning 540s was a was a highlight Landing a 540 you know you got your sort of what they call the bucket list type stuff yeah yeah that what year did you the first
One do you remember it was on one of the king the early King of the roads uh oh yeah yeah yeah that’s you know so it was like 05 or 06 yeah mid mid 2000s yes okay um but then like filmed one for a video that ended up being in the friend
Montage in one of the zero video the last spotted zero videos I think the the promo in ‘ 06 yeah that would have been it so okay must have learned them must have learned them right around then mhm that’s a highlight and then then the
Sort of I’d say what the wio sad trips from Recently like learning sad plants that was highlight as well more more recently all right I’ll have you listen to this next one hey quenon this is Joel this is a question for John ratray uh what was your faite favorite zero trip
And what was your favorite blueprint trip and describe how the two were different all right cheers man hope you good TR Curtis man that’s these are these are tough questions cuz it’s like a lifetime ago it feels like I’d say favorite zero trips is anything that had
Keegan and Alysa steamer on it and favorite blueprint trips were I think the filming trips we did to Barcelona were always amazing and fun cuz it was like just awesome Barcelona in the yeah before it blew up yeah and I think we did wait I feel like we did that after
Waiting for the world though we did that for like first broadcast and I was probably skating zero boards at that point and just hanging out so it’s not really a blueprint trip I was on blueprint I was on blueprint I was on blueprint when we did this random trip
To Italy to skate in a contest in yeso and was me Paul shy Carl shitman and Jason Dill that was an interesting and fun trip we ended up like playing a game of football with the locals I won the contest and so got a couple of million L
And bought like a snakes skin belt to a white Fedora and just living that sort of like weirdo weirdo young skater life wow um and then beyond those two any trip with Diego the berer was always and is always awesome oh yeah yeah did you Rite for similar Brands than he did cuz
He wrote for toy machine but uh Diego and I were on Osiris shoes together couple of years and Diego is probably the reason I wrode for that brand for a couple years plus it was a payche oh yeah it was Diego and Jerry Sue and there was like yeah there was some red
People like was that video subject to change that you had a a part in there I didn’t I don’t know if I was in subject to change we did one after that which was called feed the need we had oh maybe maybe that’s the one I’m thinking of yes
Okay yeah the next one is from Dan McGee so he said I guess the one question question that always nags me after watching his rmer foundation interviews is that around the time we would be filming waiting for the world or going on trips afterwards he said he was
Suicidal but naively I don’t think any of us had any idea of how serious it was being young we put it down to John going through a bad patch but he was still very sociable and jovial for a lot of the time was there a large element of
Masking happening at the time to disguise his suicidal feelings and how would he advise his younger self and younger people years to address it now oh that’s a great and interesting question but it’s it’s hard because our the way that we remember things is not the same as the way we experience them
In the moment it’s like our memory our memories compress things and you know there’s mental shortcuts that the brain makes so I need to you know to really know you need to like Journal at the time and consult what you said at the time to know kind of what was happening
My instinct like going through through it and thinking through how it works is no like a lot of the time on those blueprint trips I was dealing with like anxiety and didn’t know what it was and musling through it but not necessarily experiencing suicidal ideation at that
Time the suicidal ideation I had was specifically like coming out of a trip that Colin and I went on in SF and there was just it was the second ASR tradu I’d been at and it was really overwhelming there was a lot going on there and I
Ended up just you know culminating and and essentially having a bit of a a breakdown feeling yeah like out of my social comfort zone not knowing what was happening in the future a bunch of different stuff was happening and so that suicidal idation part was very specific to that and then the feelings
And thoughts kept rattling through my head for a couple of weeks after I got home and just stayed at my mom’s house until ultimately my sister took me to the doctor and I was didn’t I didn’t even at that point verbalize the fact that I was having suicidal thoughts I
Don’t think the doctor just listened to my sister explain what had been happening mhm and said I don’t like to prescribe things and it sounds to me like you have a decision to make in your life that could help you get through the situation that you’re you’re in
Emotionally right now but here’s some flu you do these for two weeks until come back and see how you’re feeling and so I think I think some of the take getting things back in a bit of my own control taking some control that action helped get through that and then getting
Some some distance and perspective on what I needed to do in life decisionwise helped and you know getting back into an environment where I had a trusted crew family and friends helped and it all happened over time once I got you know a handle on my own situation but the yeah
The the the suicidal adiation happened very specifically then not necessarily when I was on like filming trips with Dan and sleep on the catch in London there it was like fine you just you deal with the anxiety that you have dealt with your your whole adolescence it’s
Just it kind of all came to a head at that one trip so yeah yeah yeah okay that’s kind of how that that’s how that played out and that’s I think that’s fairly accurate to memory and uh he asked like how would you advise maybe younger peers to address something
Similar now do you have maybe a word of advice to hand out in that regard yeah it’s advice is difficult to set different it’s a bit different for everyone I think if you’re know know that if you’re experiencing suicidal if thoughts of suicide are coming into your
Head that’s the serious thing and it’s not it’s not something that is necessarily you know those are not necessarily like true thoughts that you need to act on mhm you can talk with trusted people that you are struggling it’s it can be worth voicing the fact that you’re having suicidal thoughts
It’s like I said I don’t like to advise too much it’s different for everyone but I think get into a family do is a good starting point and know that the thoughts and feelings like that are temporary and you can get through it and yeah they’re based on just being in a a
Bad physiological condition that is having an adverse effect on the way that your brain’s working just right now and you can get through it okay so this next one is from uh skin Phillips so he asked who’s the best skater to come out of Scotland and how
Have you tolerated Yan for so long and when are you going to come visit me in Wales o I can’t I don’t know what the answer is to the third one I mean yeah if I had a teleportation device I’d go there tomorrow or today for sure to
Wales um that’ be fun maybe in uh yeah next time I plan a big trip if I have time to do that that would be cool go around and and visit all friends all around the place um Yan I mean Y is just a a force of nature that I don’t get to
See often enough and I just think that I feel like the world is a better place with you and in it so hopefully get to see him again soon as well where does Yan live I’m not sure where he’s based uh I think he’s last time I checked he
Was in the Sacramento area okay and so yeah do you have maybe a favorite skater from Scotland that comes to mind is is there someone that sticks out um I don’t know cuz best is just subjective of depends how you’re depends what we think is good mhm I don’t like to play
Favorites either uh I mean I like Colin Kennedy I think Colin Kennedy is one of the best so we’ll say Colin that’s funny cuz he said he’s going to say Colin Kennedy for sure nice and I don’t know if he still does he still work at Nike with you I
Think so he works yeah he works at Nike he works in what they call Sports Marketing in the Europe office okay all right so the next question is from Eric swisser another former Nike colleague and uh for me the best skateboarding interviewer out there by far so he said
Kind of a heavy question but as a friend I know you struggled with your sister’s tragedy for years and years and rightfully so it was something that you might only bring up after several pints as well as a subject we knew to never breach on our own and to handle with the
Utmost sensitivity what was the turning point for you personally in being able to talk about this openly and using it as a springboard for so many positive efforts going forward and if this has already been covered tell us the significance of the seagull love you
Buddy and proud of you nice um yeah it’s probably been covered it was a Confluence of factors that I mean one of them was the fact that you know the internet evolved to the point where there was these platforms or services like just giving where it was you were
Able to like then be an independent fundraiser really easily so that’s something that the individual people can do in order to contribute to hopefully advancements in fields of they’re choosing whatever is sort of important to people my cousin changed his career path and got a position working for the
Scottish Association of mental health he’s still a suicide prevention manager for what’s now the Scottish action for mental health right m mhm and I think just enough enough time and distance and a bit of perspective on you know the emotional Fallout from losing someone so close to you to something so tragic
There’s three things mhm and the need I hate it’s weird I sometimes think about all of that and I think about that old Thrasher graphic prevent this tragedy which I have no idea what the what the artistic objective of that piece was by whoever made that but it would be nice
To put some work out in the world that maybe uh helps people not have the same outcomes as we had and yeah what about the significance of the seagull I was wondering about that yeah that’s appeared quite a bit in uh like all of the work you’ve been doing with the why
So sad Mission and stuff yeah the sea I just grew up in Aberdine and Aberdine is a coastal town that has a big seagull population that all would nest in the Northeast Coast and now nest in the city as well use the buildings Cliff sides
And I think that the part of the the interest in seagull is a a motif or whatever was that it felt like growing up the seagulls were all always seen by the general populists and even talked about in the local press is somewhat of a nuisance but I mean their existence
And the way that they’ve proliferated is really a result of human the overspill of human glut if you will they like living off spilled chip suppers from drunk people at in the morning yeah and that’s that’s how they get by so it’s really um the fact that they’re there
Flocking around disgu and screaming is is our own fault and it’s a reflection of ourselves interesting I never thought about that so so there’s there’s that plus there’s a scene in the film Harold and Ma where Harold and Ma are sitting looking out to the ocean at some point
Later in the film and I think it’s the scene where Harold looks down and he sees a tattoo on Mod’s wrist and realizes that she was a holocaust Survivor so that’s a reveal and she’s referencing the birds that they can see off off on the horizon and I think she
Talks about draus and there was the draus affair back in the day there was some sort of like you know he was I think he was a political scapegoat at some point and he was intered in a in a prison and she talks about dfish writing about these glorious birds that he would
See was it Devil’s Island or wherever the prison was and he would see these glorious birds and then years later when he was back in britainy he realized they had only been seagulls and mod says but for me they will always be glorious birds so I like that I like the idea of
Reframing like what the general consensus is about something yes and then sort of seeing the underlying truth that seagull are just a really good representation of survival and our human basic survival instincts mhm and also as a skater growing up certainly in the ’90s it always you always felt like you
Were also seen as a nuisance and Vermin in the streets causing Ruckus mhm and so I identified with the seagull from that respect as well okay so that’s the story of the seagull I was wondering this is a side question but uh how was it working
With Eric and how long did you two actually work together it was for a few years I believe right yeah I think from about 2013 till about 2017 or so okay yeah did you know about his uh like his work with chromeball when you met with
Him cuz 2013 I guess it was still quite early in his uh interviews and all the stuff he was doing yeah I feel like he had done quite a lot of scanning on his scanner by that point so there was there was a body of work in existence and I
Certainly was aware of the chromeball incident and thought it was really nicely thought through and and also um diligent diligent scanning I think he’s still a diligent scanner when I interviewed him he he said he has like PTSD whenever he sees a a scanner or
Something he’s like ah I don’t want to I don’t want to look at that thing H yeah okay maybe he’s uh maybe he’s finished with scanning now I think so yeah because he he spent so many hours for so many years like scanning things every
Night every single day and um I think he got fed up with it at some point but yeah I think you might have shared a question for him when I interviewed him for some reason I thought he had interviewed you I was like well for sure he’s interviewed John I’m sure that
Happened but I didn’t check and he told me like no like I haven’t interviewed John he’s like I can’t interview him anymore we know each other too well or something uh yeah it was just just wondering what were your thoughts on that would you like to do an interview
With him maybe one day if he changes his mind or I mean if he would we talked about reframing things if it was just a conversation and not an interview that could be fun I don’t know if I don’t know if he uh prefers to maintain some level of professional
Distance okay let’s do the next one this one is an audio one hey John can you talk about skater life oh Diego yes you recognize him what was his nickname the the butcher correct berer yeah Diego berer um talk about skater life yeah that’s that’s the skater life Diego and
I would live the skater life quite a bit in Barcelona and then on when we were skating together on Skate trips mhm I don’t know how much I can really talk about the skater life the skater life involves always having your board with you okay you know if you’re if you’re
Like going to get in a car and you’re going to sit in the passenger seat and get a ride somewhere then living the true skater life you wouldn’t even put your board in the trunk you would keep your board between your you know in front of you between your legs hold on
To it you’ve always got it you take it to the you take it to the bar later you might stay out all night you know and then you have breakfast and you still got your board and you’re skating in the morning you need to get some sleep at
Some point though yeah um but when you’re young you forget how important that is so I think I don’t know how else I can describe the skater life and not get in trouble it’s skating at all times is the is 90% of of what you care about
Doing and being a part of yeah always ready for a session always ready to skate okay yeah if you have have you interviewed Diego no no but I’d love to interview him as well well you ask you ask Diego about skater life I will I
Will for sure all right then I have a couple questions from Silas bter Neil so he said ask him about riding his bike across New Zealand on a mountain bike while all his comrades rode road bikes actually about that trip he’s done several biking trips to help raise awareness around mental health I’m
Wondering if that trip was an inspiration for those uh yes that trip was an inspiration I didn’t really ride distance very much before that New Zealand trip I think I I bought that it was a mountain bike frame but it was kind of like a city just a bike for
General city bike mhm but it had gears and it was the bike I had so that’s what I used and yeah I remember Dyan doubt like talking to like talking about my bike or my handlebars or something as if I knew or cared like bringing it bringing up like
You should have drop bar so you can change your grip position as if I gave a [ __ ] like you’re an expert or yeah or care to be and I was like yeah this is my bike and I’ll ride it and that’s it okay is just you use what you’ve got you
Play the game with the deck you’re D bike and I think I I think I got that bike with some of the money I got from getting second place at Tampa Pro and it was a reasonable prize purse at that event so what year was that do you
Remember what year you got second at Tempa Pro uh I think it was 2008 but I might be wrong sounds about right I believe that that trip was 09 maybe or 08 yeah it was 08 and silus was skat of the year that year too oh wow yeah okay
And syus came on it a few people came on it and I don’t think any of us actually really fully comprehended that we would just be riding bikes the entire time oh yeah yeah and not really getting in a van and then camping and well we got a
Couple of little hotels along the way that helped us like warm up and and get a shower but yeah that’s the bike I had I didn’t really notice that everybody else had road bikes did they I watched the documentary thing I I couldn’t really tell that your bike was different
I was looking at like some of the clips and I I I couldn’t really see the but I don’t know anything about about bikes so I was uh I’m completely clueless yeah but then we went over a bunch of gravel Trails so bit more mountain bike geometry might be good for that that
Looked like a fun trip though yeah it must have been tiring to get into skat sessions after a long day of cycling but uh it looked like fun yeah I wondered about that I think that you use kind of different muscles it’s like slower slower response muscles for cycling M
And then faster reflects muscle tissue for skating so maybe a balance have it somehow it was a good crew too I remember there was Chris hasslin was on that thing chyo Foster Silas yeah we had uh Alex Craig dirting we we had uh Fred mortan oh that’s right yes yes was he
Filming or shooting photos or or maybe both yeah likely both I think he certainly shot some of the film that was uh used and also uh there was another zero team writer of yours um Keegan Keegan sold yeah Keegan was there yeah it was a a good trip and certainly yeah
An inspiration cuz I ended up continuing to ride that bike and I did not get a road bike until at least 10 years later oh wow so fairly recently yeah yeah the first trip that we did the first cycling trip that we did The Good Egg was either
Was it late 2016 or 2017 it might have even been 2016 we did the actual the actual trip the actual ride from Portland down to the coast I still rode that same bike that I rode in New Zealand oh okay the whole way sick and cardial Cardel made a comment about how
He was like I showed up and they all had like Town bikes yeah he’s like a big uh bike guy right he’s been riding bicycles for a while and so he he knows his [ __ ] yeah he knows his way around some bicycles yeah but he’s a good he’s a
Good sport he didn’t say anything he just jammed along with us and thought it was hilarious uh and I have a last question from Silas he said um also I think he may have a funny take on how he’s raising his kid in this in the US
Compared to his experience as a child in Scotland a funny take um on rais I don’t know my my main concern with raising either here versus my experience growing up is I mean one one of my main missions as a parent is to you know provide him a
Childhood that’s not disrupted by a bunch of chaos and then two the the the big thing that’s different is there’s not so much extended family here or there’s no extended family here I grew up with extended family like my aunt my grand my granddad my cousins and we just
Don’t we just don’t have that here so that’s I don’t know if the trade-off is worth it or as good or as bad or what but we’re doing our best so for sure I don’t know if that’s a funny take but I certainly I certainly experience anxious thoughts about his experience growing up
As a kid here with us with no extended family versus my experience growing up with extended family yeah I mean we do pretty well we have a good little Network of friends and um I know a bunch of people through skating that we hang out with and there’s kids of similar
Ages and the network that you start to get through his school is good but I don’t know it’s different from having options to go to family members house and all that yeah yeah it’s maybe a common theme in this stage of human history I don’t know all right let’s do
This next one hey John this is Joel pippus I’ve been a fan of your skating since I was young and as an adult a fan and thankful for all you’ve done to support conversations around mental health with that in mind what advice would you give to someone who wants to
Be able to talk about mental health but isn’t really sure how to join the conversation whether inside or outside of skateboarding thanks again for all you do yeah thanks Joel good question um I would say you start with your own experience I think that mental health is
A well mental health and physical health are like not separate issues we think of them as separate subjectwise to pull apart complex things and we tend to think of physical health as like your skeleton and your muscles and your organs your heart and whatnot you know
Mhm the big macro things that we think of when we think of like mechanical health and then mental health is sort of this thought of as a separate field but it’s completely related or it’s it’s all one system really so it’s all Health mhm but start with your own experience of it
So mental health I think is your emotions that’s kind of what we would generally term you know or categorize it into mental health and your emotions are driven by a bunch of physical processes you got your nervous system your brain’s operating in a certain way you know and then deploying neurochemicals and all
The rest of it and that creates feelings what we call feelings emotional responses based on how much adrenaline or cortisol or dopamine or whatever else is Flowing around our system at any given time so I’d say start with your own experience of emotions and then if we’re going to think about reading to
Learn a bit more I’d start with reading mhm cuz it start reading is the best way to get words and sentences that map to the experiences that we have when it comes to my own experience I mean I lost my sister to Suicide so a few after it
Was enough time had passed and I could you know spend a bit of emotional energy learning about that side of things I read a book that helped first called Lost connections by Johan Harry that’s a he’s a you know researcher a journalist essentially put together a bunch of
Research on his own exploration of his own mental health that’s a really good a good synopsis of kind of where things are and what our understanding is of depression and its causes it really goes into this idea of social connection and the lack thereof as as like a central
Piece of the puzzle I remember hearing him say somewhere that uh he coined like a a famous sentence that is connection is the opposite of addiction or something like that does that ring a bell yeah he talks about addiction as well and he talks about I mean he talks
About addiction in terms of it’s It’s a symptom of emotional disregulation over you know and I think his point he makes about addiction is that you can end up being addicted to substances because it acts as a surrogate for emotional social connections that you’re lacking mhm I
Think that’s the longest the short of what he’s saying so he’s saying the opposite of addiction is not sobriety the opposite of addiction is connection yes it’s something along those lines mhm so Y and AR’s book lost connections is really good uh then I read waking up
Alive by Richard Heckler and waking up alive which It Was Written in 1994 I think and it’s a a collection of case studies that Richard Heckler who was a counselor in the Bay Area um in California put together based on his work as a counselor therapist and it was
A collection of stories of people who had attempted suicide and failed to die and then woken up alive and gone on to process the emotional issues that had led them to be in that crisis state where they were experiencing suicidal liation to the point of attempting and
Coming through that and coming to terms with you know why they had felt that way in the first place and going on to live healthy and productive lives so it’s really hopeful in that hey these feelings and thoughts that you have when you’re in total crisis that are suicidal
Liation or temporary and you can get through them and identify their sources and grow and learn how to be happy again and live a productive life that’s the point of it or that’s the sort of big the big hopeful takeaway from the the stories because they’re pretty harrowing
And harsh MH obviously people are going through some pretty stressful scenarios in their lives to end up at that point to feeling suicidal yeah the interesting things that he observed like the common themes in all of the case studies were and that he pulled out there was three things there was extreme family
Dysfunction a sense of alienation and traumatic loss those three things okay were the common themes that he saw cropping up in people’s lives so people were able to or the patients that he worked with were able to look back at their lives and think through what had
Happened to them in the past and identify that these feelings that they were having now were based on things that had been imprinted years ago mhm or situation that they were in that were triggering and causing extreme stress in the moment to the point where they were
Driven to feel suicidal and it was interesting because it was written in 1994 before the adverse childhood experience study was was kicked off yeah the adverse childhood experience study was conducted over 1995 to 97 and essentially corroborated what Heckler was saying I mean I don’t think it it
Worked historically like that I don’t know if they even referenced Heckler it was just interesting his work happened in or his Bo book happened in 1994 and then the a study happened after that and had similar findings of like these early traumatic events have a lasting impact
On your brain health basically okay and your body’s ability to deal with stress I don’t know if that answers the question what was Joel’s question was like how would you you know what would you advise somebody that wants to Embark in the convers in the conversation and
It’s like start with your own experience and read some stuff around it so those are two books and then what happened to you by Bruce Perry in Oprah Winfrey is awesome and one of the best current books or recent books that adds a whole Neuroscience layer to everything that
Heckler was observing just through um you know case studies as a as a therapist and then um the adverse childhood experience study you know it was a sort of sociological study the neurosciences built on top of that and really well well described through that book by Bruce Perry and hope Brothers a
Couple other books that Bruce has put out over the years that do a similar job you’ve actually used some of Bruce Perry’s work to make like the comic right with John Herer the wi of sad comic video that we talked about yeah yeah I mean we yeah we that’s been a a
Really rad collaboration really the connection there is Joel who just asked that question Joel works at whole services in right in Calgary Canada in like an oncampus Care Program he runs part of that there’s a program within H called Pathways to prevention and they they work with sort of atrisk Youth I
Imagine youth coming through the Foster system and what not to help keep kids on a on a good path and give them some tools you know emotional and social tools to help them have a better chance at better outcomes yeah yeah and skating push to heal is his project that uses
Skateboarding as one of the the pieces of the puzzle the pieces of the therapeutic web and he uses that to help kids basically learn learn how to learn I guess as part of it Joel would be a good person to speak to to learn a bit
More about the nuts and the bolts of what they do but Hall is um connected with Dr parry and they use the neurosequential model as a basis of kind of how they approach their work so that was where all that connection came from okay and Joel was one Joel was one of
The first people I heard talk about the neurosequential model and help me understand the order of operations in which the brain processes information and how how when the brain’s developing the brain and the nervous system are and the endocrine system and all the rest of it are developing when you’re young y
The level and type of stress that you experience growing up sets the stage for then how your stress response works for the not necessarily for the rest of your life because it can change over time the brain’s malleable sure you know it doesn’t necessarily change radically or it doesn’t no it doesn’t necessarily
Change just of its own accord you sometimes have to actually like make specific efforts to change it in a certain direction or not okay yeah I was listening a few days ago Joel did an interview for another podcast I don’t remember what it’s called but um the
Podcast not about skating it’s about uh I think education and uh he was talking about his program with push to heel and everything and it was uh yeah quite interesting yeah but basically it was super interesting that everything I was talking about with the adverse childhood experience study was then kind of
Corroborated and detail was added on by Neuroscience that’s what I find fascinating it really gives you a practical map you know to use to help navigate what it is that you’re experiencing in terms of emotions cuz they emotions can feel pretty nebulous sometimes and and getting some words and
Some Concepts and some Frameworks to help you kind of like zero in on what it is that you’re feeling at any given time is really really really really helpful for sure it means you know it’s like switching a light on in the dark yeah and then there’s new work we just did
New work there’s a little site that we put together called your brain on Sport with a new comic and so so link to that in the description here people can check it out I’ll put it in my Lincoln bio and Instagram which is where you put things
These days along with other places but uh your brain on sport was um done again in partnership with Joel with Bruce with Megan from the Center for Healing and Justice through Sports and some folks at Nike SB and yeah check it out yeah yeah yeah I haven’t checked it out yeah I
Hadn’t heard about it but I’ll definitely check it out and uh yes the listeners will as well I’m sure yeah I’ll send you I’ll send you the link yes please please absolutely okay the next one I have is from Christen Ebling from skate like a
Girl so she asked a couple things so she said ask John about transitioning to working professionally at Nike post skate career and if he has advice to other folks out there who may be interested in doing the same and or changing careers in general um that’s a
Good question it’s one I don’t really know how to answer cuz it’s going to be different for everyone like anything but if I think about it broadly it was I found it really challenging and difficult I hadn’t particularly planned for the rest of my life beyond Pro
Skating that was the Big Goal as a as a kid sure it’s funny right now I’m doing this sort of journaling exercise that I heard about on the huberman podcast and the idea is to journal for like 15 to 30 minutes just you know get all the
Thoughts out on a subject you can do various subjects but you do it four times for one subject and this the subject I’ve chosen right now is changing careers okay so that’s how hard it’s it was really really turbulent emotionally going through it cuz I it
Was yeah yeah it was the end of a career that I’d wanted to be in since I was like 13 or 14 years old being a pro skateboarder without really a clear path of like what does the rest of life look like you know I didn’t it’s kind of like
Changing identities a little bit because I mean you base your life around around being a pro skater which is an activity but it’s also a lifestyle it’s an identity and you have to kind of renounce that and not necessarily because you don’t want to do it anymore
But just because like you sort of can’t or because you’re just getting older or you you went through some injuries and your body can’t really you know skate at the same level as you used to or something so there’s a bit of a yeah that transition must be rough because
You’re changing identities and it’s not necessarily something that you really want it’s just something you need to do because you just you can’t you know stay as Pro Skater forever you need eventually you need to do something else but yeah I mean you need to pay bills
Yes essentially I think the best the advice would be have backups outside of skating I you know I always stayed creative outside of skating I always was managing my own my own Affairs as a pro skater so I had transferable skills mhm and I’d already at least completed a
Bachelor’s degree so I had that on paper I had that on paper has that sort of like I’ve been through education to that level yep so all of that kind of was helpful I think if if you know that there’s something that you’re passionate about or you’re feeling like a certain
Direction or in terms of vocation is if there is something that you you feel that you’d be good at then I’d say pursue that on alongside skating yeah and I think people that become a pro skater is a real small proportion of of young people out there yes um I don’t
Know if there’s analogist paths that kids take beyond that but becoming proficient at things that you can do beyond the age of 30 that can potentially provide an income is one way to look at it yeah it’s a it’s a hard question to answer I wish I had a better
Answer for it but I actually have another question from someone else after that is linked to this one but we’ll we’ll get to that one in a second but I just have a couple other ones from Kristen She also asked uh what would you like to see change in skateboarding or
In the world in general to better support mental health of individuals uh yeah the yeah it’s like the more you look at things like what would be better in the world what would I like to see change in the world yeah I don’t know like I don’t know the answer
To that I just it’s I don’t know like people just learn more about it be kinder to each other make sure you’ve had a good amount of sleep every single person and I wish just we could all be kinder to each other she asked the last thing she said ask him about his
Experience skating contests back in the day he once told me a funny story about losing to Greg lutka well that’s when I got second at Tampa oh okay he got first he got first yeah okay if there’s a I don’t know there’s a few ways to look at
That one I was I was pretty good at contests I could St especially if it was a contest where it was about stringing a line together y rather than doing some big best trick off some massive set of stairs or hitting a big rail like um I
Wasn’t going to rack up points doing that but I could put together a line that’s why Tamp plent itself St well it was always a fun contest to go to and see what you could do in one line mhm and you know some contest skaters have
Have it all mapped out and planned out and have all their go-to tricks unlock like Greg at the time mhm and some tend to like try and mix it like I just like to mix it up and so I remember I put together a pretty solid run and then
Like the last trick that I had time to do like 10 seconds left was heading backwards towards the little double set that they had um set up there and I remember being ready to switch flip it okay which was a much more guaranteed make but it was like milliseconds and I
Decided fakey heel would be R okay so I switched feet position for for fakey heel and I think I stuck it but just wheel bit cuz oh okay you know then that was it so I think that last trick just didn’t allow didn’t allow the judges to place you first the win yeah
Okay and yeah that was that but skating contest super fun I always liked it like I said especially if it was putting together a line I remember it being pretty intimidating and scary at first mhm when I was young I think to the point of some of the work that Joel does
And some of the work that the neurosequential model has it’s for being involved in contests I feel like from a young age was something where I got to choose if I was going to be in the contest so I had control over the level of stress that I would be under and then
You know I got to I got to learn to manage my own stress response through contests and at least learn how the stress response works and get a sense of what it means to you know manage your own stress response so that starts to give you some tools for managing your
Stress response when it’s kicking off for reasons you haven’t identified yet yeah yeah interesting so that’s me taking Kristen’s question about skating contests and mapping it back to and here’s how in retrospect you know things like skating and contests can be helpful when it comes to learning about mental
Health do you remember what year you did your first contest was that mid to late 90s maybe first contest uh I think there was a couple of like super local Aberdine contests at a skate park that was built in the exit ition Center in the I can’t remember
What time of year that was at but that was when I would have been like 11 years old or 10 years old or something okay but I can’t really remember the feeling or if I even entered the contest there I think I did the first one I remember
Going to and being intimidated by was my mom I think my stepfather Graeme at the time we drove down from Aberdine all the way to Chelmsford near somewhere near London chelsford somewhere in the south of England mhm and there was a contest but it turned out it was a vert contest
And I hadn’t really sked vert before so when it when we showed up and I saw that people were like doing airs on a vert ramp I realized that was out of my Deb yeah again I got CH I got to choose to not enter the contest at that point so
That was that was fine didn’t put myself through that mhm but there was contests at Livingston skate park I remember doing pretty well at so that gave us bit of confidence yeah those would have been the the first ones growing up Livingston stuff contest in dundy the first factory
That they could they called it the factory the older skaters that built the little park in Dundee that was pretty rad remember entering that it was a little article about it in an early ISS in one of the issues of rad magazine or rad yes rad all right let’s do this next one
From so I don’t know if you know this guy John Gardner he was a pro skater until very recently he skated for creature skateboards uh he was skating for DC Shoes I think he was the TM for DC shoes and he’s been doing some work around mental health kind of like you um
Trying to raise awareness around mental health in recent years and he’s actually just stepped down from his activities at DC and as a pro skater to focus exclusively on mental health and so I reached out to him to ask if he had a question for you and so he said stepping
Away from skateboarding as a career has in some ways mirrored the feelings of grief why do you think that is and what can skaters do to prepare themselves for this often inevitable transition yeah that’s a good question that’s similar to what Kristen asked I think about transitioning the career
Transition specific if you’re a pro skater umh I think that’s a really astute and interesting point about how the transition between you know life stages if you like is similar to the experience of grief yeah God if you really want to nerd out there’s a piece
Of work called the CER Ross I don’t know if it’s called the grief curvez I think that the Kubler Ross change curve was based more on work done with people that were diagnosed with a terminal illness and the emotional process that is coming to terms with that so it’s a curve from
You know initial shock and denial to anger through to acceptance and it you know it doesn’t the experience the one the one individual experience doesn’t follow that curve exactly for everyone maybe ever cuz you like go back and you go forward and you’re in different stages at different times but yeah I
Think the point was if you look at you know a big sample of of a bunch of people that are going through some sort of what we can call process of grief then you end up like you end up sort of at some stage along the the way
Experiencing each of the many of the points along that curve mhm and so yeah it’s about transitioning and change and loss cuz you’ve like you said you’ve lost this old identity that you had built yourself up up to consider yourself as this skater and now you have
To find out who else this collection of of molecules that is the human body that you’re in could be in the future yeah yeah yeah so that makes it makes sense to think of it that way like grief you’re processing loss and you’re trying to find A New Path and then advice again
Is have things that you can be good at that are not skating as well as skating yes and focus on those things that you find find some joy in and you get something positive from that you could see yourself doing when you can no longer skate well or no longer skate to
The to the level at a pro level yeah either Pro level or that you’re even happy with yeah okay this next one is from Kelly bird so Kelly asked lately John has been spending a lot of time in a world I assume he never really imagined for himself hopefully he will
Have talked about it in some capacity so the question is what if anything from our world can he hindsight as tangible or intangible skills and experiences that have helped him in this new Endeavor uh okay all right I think bird is talking about just the fact I don’t
Necessarily work directly on Nike SB and you know use all the the knowledge of that world of skate culture skate community and my day-to-day jobs that I’m tked with mhm I’ve been working with a basketball team lately and and doing different bits and pieces with them that’s been super interesting but the I
Think what’s he saying tangible and intangible skills yeah I think some of this some of the stuff that I learned from being involved in skating and involved in PR skating that you wouldn’t always like choke up as something you might write on a resume is came from
Just being in the tour van with the team for weeks on end every summer and like going out on filming trips basically as often as possible cuz you’re always trying to work on on getting some fol or video clip for you know whatever multiple pieces of content that you’re
Putting together for any of the brands you’re working on right but you’re working you’re working and you’re in a van with bunch of kids from you know we’re all kids but young people young youths in our teens and 20s mhm from all variety of different backgrounds coming
From all variety of different you know emotional places and just learning to get along with people no matter what and learning that we’re all human beings at the end of the day and know one person’s better than another like getting that sort of sense of We’re All in This
Together and having this idea that we’re all in this together trying to get after one goal I think that’s a really important life skill to get and it’s I don’t know if you just naturally get that in all paths in life I don’t I don’t think so but I think that what I
Got from being a pro skateboarder and working with the team and yeah just hanging out and meeting people where they are and getting to know each other no matter where we’re from is is huge yeah okay I have this other one from so this one is from Rob matthewson from the
Ben rers Foundation yeah so it’s from him and from the Ben rers foundation in general he just asked a pretty simple but I think interesting question what does the Ben rers foundation mean to you well there’s two things I think the fact that the Ben rers Foundation exists is
Unfortunate because we lost Ben and that’s what happened that led to the formation of the Ben rimers Foundation right unfortunately I think the same as what I’ve ever tried to do is taking something that on the surface is a tragedy and trying to make something trying to make the world a better place
Through learning about why we ended up in that situation where B’s taking his own life right I think trying to make something positive and and help us be better as a community is what the Ben rer Foundation means to me and I think that the work that they do and the work
That they’ve got done in a really quite a short space of time is phenomenal yes and I think it comes from the drive of like Susie and Rob who I you know interacted with the most from the foundation just getting it together and yeah it’s really good stuff yeah so I
Think they they put out a lot of good material and there’s a lot of you know bite-sized pieces of information that you can learn a little bit from and then go deeper if you want to similar to what I try and do with why so sad and and hopefully with your brain on
Sport all right I have just a few last ones this one is from Benson Kai he said if you could have any five people Pastor presence join you on a bike right who would they be and why man I don’t that these are such hard questions like choosing people I don’t know Benson’s
Coming along I when I’m using I want to see if he can use his Arrow bars again he had Arrow bars on the trip that we did then to the coast a few years ago mhm um I don’t I don’t know it’s hard to choose because sometimes the choice is
Like what makes most sense at the time and who’s available is the choice because then they’re they’re there and they’re available and they’re not stressed out I think I would do some I’d love to do something in Scotland and so my old friend Gary Brown would come
Along Mark Foster he came on a trip that we did when we rode from Glasgow to Edinburgh his chain broke right next to JK Ring’s house I think in which is interesting um so Mark and and I did a a good cycle trip with my friend Glen who’s currently a biology teacher in
France as well okay but Glen should come and so should pigy because pigy doesn’t really ride bikes and he’s an old friend who loves metal music and all types of music and we did a ride i’ call it a ride we pushed our bikes a lot of the
Way along the west highland way in Scotland mhm which is not really a bike path at all it’s more for hiking and like a little light bouldering but Glen seem to think that we could easily ride it and I don’t know if he ever said
Easily we did a trip there that was fun I don’t know there’s there’s a few and I have this I have this um this idea of going there’s a indoor vert ramp in O I think it’s in Obin in Scotland called the Highland Hideout and I want to ride
Bikes there and skate that would be cool that sounds like a fun trip yeah go do a couple sat plants or something up there yeah at least one but I was researching for this interview I I didn’t know that but like pivots to fakey on ramps or transition whatever they are they’re
Called Mayes right did I understand that right yeah yeah I think some people older people older skaters might argue that the M had to be you had to be grinding for it oh okay that was never really that was never really confirmed whether it can just be a stalled pivot
To fakey or grinding actually grinding I don’t know okay so I just took it as it can be stalled and that’s fine and it’s the MayDay which is the request for help the classic radio radio distress signal yes it is also became sort of symbolic of the mental health discussion
Certainly if you’re getting to the point of being in some sort of Crisis asking for some sort of help is is a key critical step to take and then finding a way to kind of work through a process what it is that you’re feeling at the
Time that can often start with a family doctor is a good place to start but yeah they Mayday request for help Okay so this one is from John Herer your friend who made all the really cool illustrations for the IC so he said apologies for being a bit basic but what
Is your favorite board graphic of all time and more importantly why oh man Herer that’s a good one that’s not basic there’s nothing basic about John Herer oh John Herer should come on the trip too the cycle trip so it’s not just it can’t just be five people Von it has to
Be just as many people as we as makes sense at the time but John should come too Kristen should come too from scal yeah my favorite board graphic of of all time there’s so many to choose from yeah I can’t remember what piece that was but
A while ago I saw I think was it a maybe a skate hoers episode or something like that where you um you were holding your son in your arms and you were showing some of your boards in your garage or somewhere in your house and one of the
Boards that you showed was a toy machine Unknown Pleasures inspired drawing I don’t know if Ed Templeton did that one or someone else for Toy Machine do you know what which board I’m talking about I do I have it I don’t know if it’s I think it’s a great graphic I think it’s
Funny yeah um and it’s based on the you know the The Unknown Pleasures Joy Division album cover so that’s an interesting one whether it’s one of my favorites of all time I don’t know it’s on my wall because Diego was here and he had a package and couldn’t travel with
It so they ended up my so it’s on my wall is it a Diego pro model or is it a just a team no it was just a team toy machine board okay one the one that Springs to mind old Graphics that spring to mind from when I was a kid that’s not
Necessarily my favorite it I don’t know if I’d put it on my wall but there was nattis had a I think nattis on 101 had a graphic that was just a crack pipe on the ground and I thought that was pretty interesting because oh yeah yeah yeah it
Always it always kind of pops up in my head when I think of skate Graphics as social commentary and but that getting back to that whole idea of identifying with seagulls you know who are spending a lot of time surviving in the streets of our cities and the sort of output of
Humans at their when they’re not at their best I think it was a that was a good representation using board Graphics as a representation of that it reminded me of sort of in art history when the the subject matter of art changed from like being all you know beautiful
Religious iconic imagery or images of like the elite to I think what would be the posst Impressionists like painting pictures of their friends in the bars in Paris and that became sort of the the subject matter of Art became much more almost down to earth and real I thought
That was a kind of cool use of Graphics um so things like things like that have some sort of interesting commentary or I like but which one I don’t know I heard about this graphic you just mentioned the crack pipe graphic I think I might be mistaken but I think it’s Andy
Jenkins that did that one oh okay yeah that makes sense yeah either him or maybe Sean cver or Martin mcke but I I think it’s Andy Jenkins I think I heard this in his latest like nine Club interview or something got it ah it’s interesting yeah well it’s not my I
Don’t know if that’s my favorite because it’s not not really yeah yeah yeah just something that came to mind it comes to mind yeah yeah yeah sure okay then I have a few questions from Michael Bernett he always comes up with some weird questions that I have no
Understanding of but hopefully you will understand him so he said talk about the famous American Entertainer Dart dartman oh right I think my the way that I would speak when I first came to the United States and maybe sometimes still still had speak pretty fast and with a
Bit of an accent so I think I was talking about David lman David lman yes yes and and Michael heard Dart dartman okay F we were saying it okay then he asked under what circumstances should you drive it till it blows um under no circumstances should
You drive it till till it blows if you recognize that there’s something wrong with one of the tires on your minivan then you should fix that problem immed you know as soon as you can that is the answer there okay let’s see name three people outside
Of your family that should want in a postapocalyptic survival setting man more of this name people uh in a post-apocalyptic sating I don’t know someone someone that can help me in the farm to grow some food someone that can help me go and collect water and
Someone that we can you know sit and play guitar and sing songs with cool uh and his last question is describe a time you were concerned for the safety of div Adams oh um well I mean the last time I was concerned for the safety of div was
When Michael got in touch with me and said he was concerned with the safety of div because sounded like he was living a bit Wayward at the time so it’s I think as far as I can tell div is is doing well at the moment he was back at his
Parents house for a bit but but yeah that would have been 6 months ago or something I wasn’t sure who div was is he a former zero writer as well I’m not too sure like what’s the link between you two no div is a skater from carluke in Scotland okay from Scotland friends
With st gra is friends with Stu and well on the car Loop crew and he is a qualified plumber and I think can do gas work too if you need some gas work done um can’t remember if you got coded for gas or not but uh yeah yeah da is an
Awesome Ripper from caruk who gets uh is kind of part of the anti-hero crew a little bit oh yeah yeah okay so I just have two last very last questions I was listening to your bun interview from I don’t remember when that came out maybe
A year ago or something like that a year and a half ago they do the rapid fire at the end you know and they asked you what was your favorite video and whenever they say that to a guest it’s uh kind of assumed it’s going to be a skate video
That they’re going to reference but you actually said one Fu over the kaku’s Nest the movie with Jack Nicholson M that is kind of focused on mental health because it’s entirely filmed while the whole plot is in a like a mental institute so I I just thought it was
Interesting that you you said that like kind of spontaneously that’s the first thing that came to mind so I was wondering like what resonated so much in you with that movie and do you remember maybe the first time you watched that movie cuz like that’s quite an old one I
Think it’s from the maybe late 70s or early 80s around there uh yeah I think I think funnily enough Colin Kennedy and I watched one flow Over the Cuckoo’s Nest at mix Board Shop in Glasgow I think it was at mix mhm and I think that was the
First time I’d sat and watched it it was in one morning when we were in there and there was not that many customers coming in in the morning so we had some time yeah and I think it’s just an amazingly put together story um based on the novel
By kenkey who’s I think from Oregon I think everyone could probably get something from it I think the part of one of the scenes that I think sticks in my head is always the scene when it represents McMurphy RP McMurphy’s character the best of like trying to
Just push back against the system that is oppressing us if you like and goes to he goes to try and like pick up the water fountain so that they can smash out of the place oh yeah and he says you know nobody else stepped up to try and
He said well at least I tried so sometimes sometimes getting up and trying is is the first step of the journey that we just just need to take yes yeah but I mean that performance by Jack Nicholson’s amazing the story the story is amazing the performances are
All amazing um and then I also really like The Princess Bride which is different from one FL over the cuckoo nest I just wanted to ask you this very last question what would you say is kind of the most valuable lesson that you feel you’ve learned from
Skateboarding I think we talked about it earlier it’s that we’re all in this together and you know no one’s B than anyone else here we’re all you know at the end of the day skateboarding is the ultimate equalizer and we’re all going to at some point slam on our faces and
Have to get help from our friends perfect yeah well let’s wrap it up here thank you so much John I appreciate you taking the time to do this thanks so much for the time hopefully it was a good conversation hopefully somebody gets something useful
Out of it yes I know I did but hopefully other people will as well yes thank you John all right thanks Quinton take care that’s it for my conversation with John follow him on Instagram _ y go watch and rewatch some of his classic video Parts in the blueprints
And zero videos among many other ones make sure to go watch the Y soad comic video about skateboarding and mental health made in collaboration with John Herer for Nike SB lastly and in the same vein go check out John’s latest initiative called your brain on Sports which we talked about briefly on the
Dedicated website yb. Nikes sb.com thank you for tuning in see you soon for a new episode of Beyond [Applause] Bo