THIS IS CURRENT A ROUGH AUTO TRANSCRIPT
[MUSIC starts - Bassbeat by Alex Norton: "Funky and upbeat, jangling guitars, a fat bassline and a full horn section create the perfect soundtrack to a late summer block party."]
FRAN: Hello, I am Francesca and you are listening to On the Outside.
For those of you who are listening on a podcast app, you might notice that this episode is a little bit shorter than most of them. This is going to be a very brief catch up with you, the Listener, because on the outside has very recently turned one year old. So we launched our first episode back on the 30th of July, 2021, and we weren't going to have a full episode this month, but I did want to drop into your podcast feed with a little bit of a celebration and just a recognition and a look back over the past year to see what we've done so far. Now this is going to be a very quick episode because pretty much everybody on the panel is pretty busy this month. So to give you a bit of an idea, I am recording this whilst I'm on a trip to Scotland.
I'm going to be up there for two weeks working on another podcast in the Tremula Network, Wild For Scotland. We are doing some very exciting episodes. So in this episode you don't have a conversation, but what you do have is a couple of voice notes from two of our panelists who I managed to pin down and for today, you have some thoughts from Aga Jesu and Annie Patas. Thank you very much to both of them for taking the time to give us some thoughts because Annie actually recorded this just before her wedding and agai recorded this while she is in Madeira on the Black Girls Hike retreat. I asked both of them a couple of questions about what we have done over the past year and what we want to see in the future. So let's start off with Annie's faults.
ANI: My favorite moment on the show has to be when we did the quiz on the Kinder Scout trespass episode mainly because it got really competitive. I think I picked on VII a bit too much and it was really fun. It was something different.
FRAN: My last question in this little quick quickfire round, how many people do you think took part in the original kinder trespass? The, I'm coming to you first.
V: I'm going to say like hundred and something
ANI: Than that.
<laughing>
FRIT
No, it was just the "and something" like <inaudible>
V Fran asked for a guess. I'm giving my wildest gift. So
FRAN: We have a hundred and something
V: From V.
ANI: Okay. I'm not taking that because V could potentially get anything from 109, a hundred to 199. It's not happening. I needed a specific number here and now please.
V: 175. There we go.
FRAN: 175, but we locked in on 175 fee. All right.
V: Maybe let's go with 145. No,
FRAN: 175
ANI: Lockton
V: <laugh>. Right. Ok. Yes, let's lock that in. I dunno the answer, so I may as well say something.
ANI: I think the outdoor space has changed a small amount and I will say it is a small amount. I think because we are seeing more diverse conversations happening. Some brands are really highlighting different topics, but I don't think it's going deep enough and to a good extent. I'd say the most pressing issue in the outdoor community right now would be public transport access if you don't drive or you can't afford to drive, especially with the rising cost of fuel. And also we're trying to reduce the amount of travel we do in cars for climate change. I think affordable public transport, good infrastructure, regular schedules and not needing to change four or five times on a three hour journey to do a two hour hike would be fantastic. I think I would like to see more guests attend the podcast episodes. As much as I love talking to the panelists, it'd be really great to hear things straight from the people that we're talking about get their views and opinions and maybe share our own. And I think I could learn a lot more that way, which I really enjoy doing.
OGE: So what's been my favorite moment on the show? That's really hard. I think I'm going to go with the first ever episode we recorded where we talked about swimming in the outdoors. I think there was just so many unknown things about it, but it ended up being a really great episode and it just really inspired me to want to do more. It's so important because I was having a conversation today with my cousins and we kind of listed five kind of life skills that you should have and swimming was one of them and I think it's so important to give children that accessibility to be able to swim. So when I was growing up, we had the kind of block primary school sessions that you have, but then after that it was just we were left in the wind and I really do regret not learning how to swim when I was younger because it is such a life skill that I think everyone should have the access or accessibility to be able to have.
ANI: Do you feel
FRAN: Comfortable in the water now? Do you go swimming at all or is that something that you do avoid?
OGE: I don't go swimming, but funny story, I love to go scuba diving. Well, I've been scuba diving and snorkeling on holiday, but I just dunno how to swim and there's a part of me that fears going into the water because I'm like, I don't know what to do and it's just this strong force that can take me out at any minute. So it's like I avoid just going in. Even when we had sorry, A B G H weekender and we did paddle boarding and kayaking and I would just felt so cautious of wanting to stand on the paddle board just in case I fell in and I just didn't know what to do with myself. So I do have that kind of fear of drowning.
FRAN: I'm the same, I'm, like I say, I'm not a confident swimmer at all, but I did go swimming last week because I was down by the beach for the first time in a while and I went swimming in the sea, which was very, very exciting for me. And I was on a lifeguarded beach, you'll be glad to know Eden. So I felt very safe. But I did read before I went away about the southern water dumping sewage into the oceans and I learned that this is something which is quite common.
OGE: Do I think the outdoor space has changed since we started the show? It's hard. I think there's been pockets of areas in the outdoors that have really changed, but I kind of feel like people are slipping back into the status quo. I do think that the conversations can go a little bit further and deeper and I'm looking forward to that happening too. What would I say is the most pressing issue in the outdoors community now? I would say two things. Accessibility and remuneration for those who advocate and who do the work of making the outdoors more representative and more accessible. I think we're a long way off from making the outdoors as accessible for different abilities, different bodies, all of that stuff. I think we're a long way off from reaching that mark. And also I think they're still kind of the onus on those who are in kind of marginalized communities being asked to teach and not being fairly or adequately remunerated for it.
What would I like to see us do and what am I looking forward to doing? I would really love to see us do more kind of interview style episodes. This that the one that we did with AMI that was really interesting. We got to bring on a guest that inspires us that we are really interested in their work talk to them ask 'em a few questions and really explore different topics with them. So I, I'm really looking forward to doing that. I can't believe that we are one and so I've just been so happy and excited to be a part of the podcast and really look forward to what more we can do in the future as well.
FRAN: So hearing the answers from Annie and Agai there, I would be remiss if I didn't actually answer those questions for myself as well. So let me just find the questions. First off, that's something which is going to be useful to say the least, but looking back over the past year of making on the outside, what has been your favorite moment of the show is so difficult? It's asking me to choose between my children a little bit, but one of the moments I really enjoyed listening back to and always makes me smile was in the second episode where Soraya was talking about the pentathlon. It's something I had very little idea about going into the episode, but I loved the legend of how a pentathlon came about and why those really random sports got put together. I think Soraya told it beautifully and the outdoor legend is something which very much sticks in my mind as a really fun story. When you said you wanted to talk about this one and the modern pentathlon, and I think I sent you a text back, which was how effing niche is that sport? Seriously, because as you said, they're very, it seems like a very odd mix of things to put together but one of the articles that I read about it was the idea that it was the modern soldier. It was how a soldier should be in the early 19th se early 20th century and that kind of thing.
SORAYA: Well, there is a legend, which is that a young French cavalry officer had to go on horseback to deliver a message that he had to ride, fence, swim, run, and shoot during his journey, which I think somebody is definitely made up all of the pentathlon originally though right back in the day, not to go into too much modern pentathlon and pentathlon details, but the original thing was in 7 0 8 B c e. I just had to check that because I couldn't remember. And it actually was running the length of the stadium, throwing a spear, throwing a discus long jump and wrestling and it was like the conclusion to the games. It was like it's a thrilling climax but when it was brought back, the idea was that it was like this elite athlete that could do everything and that's why it was so exciting.
FRAN: I like that. Urban legend, urban
SORAYA: Legend, outdoor legend, legend.
FRAN: I think we should definitely stick with that outdoor legend. Do you think the outdoor space has changed since we started the show? I would agree very much with the others that yes, it has changed and I think it's changing for the better for most part, but there are still so many aspects which are perhaps just performative, especially when it comes to brands, especially when it comes to the kind of stories that are being told as we heard from the last episode. If we're talking about outdoors podcast in particular, it is a major gripe of mine that the stories that we're hearing, if it is a marginalized community, if it is somebody that has had barriers or difficulties to get into the outdoors, I think there is still far too much emphasis on the trauma and those barriers on the outside still has a very small listenership and thank you very much. If you are are, of course you're a listener, you're listening to this. Thank you very much for listening, but we do have a long way to go to make sure that we are moving forward positively and we have stories that want to be told that need to be told because they haven't been so far. What would you say is the most pressing issue in the outdoors community right now?
I am very torn with this answer because
To be honest with you, I realize how much of a closed question it is because there are so many different aspects of the outdoors community which need changing. I was very tempted to go with Annie's choice because as somebody who doesn't drive literal access to what we consider the outdoors is so difficult in this country and it's difficult in other countries as well, but the UK with public transport is awful to be honest with you. And I completely agree with AGA's answer that we need to look at where the money is because we know that the money is out there and who is getting the money and what they're getting the money for is something which really needs looking at in detail. But I think for myself,
The most pressing thing that is happening across the country at the moment, and that comes down to politics, so many of the things that we have talked about in the podcast over the past year things like southern water, dumping sewage, things like the public transport, the climate consciousness are links to Afghanistan and how we helped those refugees. So much of it comes down to politics and I really think that however much we work as individuals to try and change these spaces, we are always going to come up with barriers when the political system and the people in charge of making the decisions at the top level are either not aware of the difficulties or they're choosing to focus on their own things. So what can we do as individuals in this kind of situation? It's really difficult. I personally come up against a large amount of despair sometimes when I see a thing that needs to be changed in the outdoors.
And then there is this barrier that comes up at the highest political level, and I know so many different people that are working on different campaigns that come across the same thing. One thing that always sticks in my mind is start starting small and starting there. It's something that agai said very nicely in the climate consciousness episode and it works exactly the same at all levels. Look to local politics, we only have a certain amount of control over global politics, national politics, but if you look to local politics, you look to your local counselors and see what you can do there, whether that is asking them to stop trimming the wildflowers or whether that is looking to see if there are local grants that you can use for your own events and that kind of thing. Local politics is something which is so overlooked and as somebody who used to work in the local council in the libraries, I know how complicated it is and how dense it is for people to understand how it works and how to access local politics. But there is so much that can be gained from understanding how that works and understanding what is in charge of what when it comes to the outdoors that is near to you.
The last question, what would you like to see us do and what am I looking forward to doing? The answer to that is very simple. I would like to see more episodes and I'd like to see us do more. At the moment, this podcast is still self-funded in my own time and the capacity for making episodes is quite low, but every single one that I do, I think has let me learn more and I want to keep doing that and keep doing more episodes. So that's it. Those are my answers to the questions as well as my call to action for today. I would ask you to think about what your favorite part of the podcast has been over the past year, and please do send that over to us. You can send an email to on the outside pod@gmail.com. You can send us a message on Instagram at on the outside pod, and you can also send us a WhatsApp message on 0 7 8 8 3 9 0 5 3 3 6. So you can send that as a text or as a voicemail. It would be really nice to hear some of your voices. Let me know what your favorite part of the podcast has been so far and I will try and share them on social media or on the next episode.
Thank you to all of our panelists over the past year and of course, thank you all for listening.
END