Jed Smith (left) and Adam “Vaughan” Blakey have created a formidable team. And an influential one at that. Photo: Ain’t That Swell//YouTube
The first series of the Ain’t That Swell podcast began in 2017 with a focus on surfing culture, history, and personalities. A few years later, when the journalist and broadcaster Jed Smith was asked where it was headed, he said, “Down a garden path, lit by a kaleidoscopic strobe light, surrounded by a thick, translucent cloud of bong smoke, into an ever-expanding world of laughter, irony, hypocrisy, banter, and taking Le Piss.”
In 2025, the podcast is entrenched as one of surfing’s most popular and peculiar cultural entities, and that mission statement hasn’t changed. Backed by a ferocious fanbase known as “The Swellians” and an annual run of sold-out live shows, Ain’t That Swell ain’t going anywhere. I talked to Jed Smith from the ATS podcast booth and HQ. That’s a unit in an industrial estate just outside of Byron Bay that he and his co-host and business partner, Adam “Vaughan” Blakey share with Simon Jones of Morning of the Earth Surfboards. If you’ve ever listened to Jed, you’ll know to expect some fruity language.
Talk us through the arc of the Ain’t That Swell success story?
Well, they say an overnight success is usually 10 years in the making, and that’s how it has panned out for us for sure. It’s so crazy when I look at the kind of grand arc of it all. I started my career in the media as a 15-year-old on a Polynesian community radio show on the Indigenous Radio network in Sydney. My first journalism gig was doing a little crummy sports report I called “Return of the Jedi,” which was done in a fucking lounge room full of bong smoking Polynesians. The whole reason I got the gig is because my mom bought pot off one of the guys who was doing the show. So it’s come full circle; the Ain’t That Swell podcast I see as essentially community radio.
What were the key points along the way?
I always surfed growing up. I was also writing like shitty articles for the community newspaper about our Bondi Boardriders Club. Then I got a job at Tracks because the Deputy Editor, Luke Kennedy, was in the club. I did a couple of days a week there, and then got a gig at Stab, and did two years with them. I was an early adopter of podcasts, but when I started Ain’t That Swell, I’d been having a real crack at being a mainstream newspaper journalist. Julian Assange was in prison, and I felt very connected to that guy. He was a truth-teller who had been put in prison for exposing the darkest secrets of the world. So I spent years charting similar terrain with news articles in all the major newspapers in Australia. I aimed at the inevitable system failures of capitalism that were all around us; the greed, the corruption, the inequality of wealth. I mean it’s fish in a barrel, right?
Eventually, after about five years, I just ran out of favor with the editors. There’s just only so much of that kind of news that they’re willing to publish before the big dogs, the corporate fucking overlords start knocking on their door. But as I started doing the podcast, I realized there were no fucking gatekeepers and that we could say whatever we want. So that’s where it kind of cross-pollinated. I believe surfing had a truth-telling kind of culture. If you sit down with the ’70s OGs like Wayne Lynch or whoever, they’re gonna talk about board design and waves, but I guarantee you, at some point, the convo is also gonna detour into war, capitalism, and class.
And yet that sounds like a very different podcast from ATS?
Well, at the same time, the surf media had become alienated from its audience because it didn’t authentically address the culture. Whether it be the kind of drugs and innuendo and degeneracy and shenanigans, and the inevitable mental health issues that come on the back of all that, it was ignoring all those issues.
It also didn’t address some of the glaring hypocrisies and contradictions about surfing being such a product and consumer-driven industry. So there was this gaping void for honest conversations where we were able to reflect and take the piss out of Australian surf culture as we knew it.
I had no problems speaking some hard truths and not lying about it. And there were times when my mental health was bottoming out, and I was just dead honest about where I was in life. And all that resonated.
How early did you think it could have sustained success?
I always knew that the concept was undeniable, and I guess it just took time. Even the first one or two series before Vaughan came on, we got paid for that. In those first two seasons, every episode had three high-profile surfers. I’d just call them up or interview them in person. In my job at Stab, I realized that getting to hear the voices of surfers and listening to an intimate conversation with them was amazing. It was something that I got to do every day, and I felt the surf public should get that same experience. And then the technology came along that allowed for that.
I can remember in the early days when I was pitching the idea to Sam McIntosh at Stab. Maybe 2013 or so. He said, “Why would you want to go back to radio? That’s old technology. It’s already out of date.” That hasn’t aged well, has it Sammy?
But the point was, it was old school. I grew up digging holes listening to Big Sports Breakfast on 2KY. Three hours a day, every day of fucking sports chat. I thought why shouldn’t laborers and workers get three hours of fucking surf chat every day?
What do you reckon are the other key ingredients?
The first live shows, which were an absolute fucking piss-take of the biggest degenerate debacles ever, really seemed to crystallize the appeal. It showed the power of the project and the passion of the people who had come through listening to the podcasts.
Part of that was that most punters rarely get to interact with a pro surfer in their lives. Look, maybe there’s a local pro at their beach, but maybe there’s not. So when these hardcore fans got to sit in a room with one of these guys and girls, we bridged that gap. It was such a sick thing for so many people to sit in a room with Tom Carroll or Kelly Slater or Ross Clarke Jones, and then get to go up and have a yarn afterwards.
It was crazy for them, but it was just as crazy for the surf legends. It blew Steph Gilmore, Ethan Ewing and Kelly’s minds. They couldn’t believe the energy and the knowledge of the crew.
Those surfers rarely put themselves in that position. They don’t tend to like slightly chaotic environments and interacting with fans.
For sure, and maybe that’s why they liked it. And the Australian surf public, they don’t take shit. They fucking cut you down if you’re a wanker. But they’re knowledgeable, they’re passionate, and a lot of ‘em rip. They live and breathe the culture. Credit to the Hawaiians for showing us how to do it, and it’s been a style of cultural exchange. But we do surfing and surf culture really good down here. It’s ingrained.
But now, you might be seen as not just reflecting the culture but influencing it. Does moving the dial affect the appeal? Are you in too deep?
I still feel like I’m just a conduit for the demands and the tastes of the Australian surfing public. I’m still immersed in it as a punter. You know, all my mates surf, and I’m surrounded by cultural inputs and feedback, so I just try to relay that through the podcast.
But I’m not going to ignore that we have had some influence. I would say the WSL has taken on, if not the nomenclature, then at least some of the show’s architecture. Competitive surfing is the showpiece of the sport in a lot of ways, and it’s where all the best talent is, and we love it.
And we have a good sense of history and the legacy. We remember the Bugs era, the Dream Tour, and when Occy and TC were ruling. Like we love those eras, but we’re determined not to see surfing go backwards. It’s a futurist culture.
The key is we’re totally independent. We can say whatever we want, and people listen. They can take our advice, or they can leave it. And we’re not always right, and we admit that all the time. But we have WSL heavyweights that come to a lot of our live shows, which are run alongside the big WSL venues and events. So, there’s interaction and we bring the cultural underground component to it. So maybe they are now paying more attention to the quirky underground, bizarre fucking culture that we all know exists. And it’s cool to see it come to life in a room. And look at Vaughan, he’s now front and centre of the Championship Tour broadcasts, and he is just being himself.
Speaking of Vaughan, how important is the dynamic between you two?
In many ways, it’s the perfect partnership, but that’s been built over a decade of trial and error with various twists and turns in our personal and business lives. But we’ve both arrived here at a magical point in our partnership. The ancient Greeks say someone’s not your friend until you’ve drunk a liter of salt with them. You’ve got to go through the hard times with someone before you can call them a true friend and a true partner. And we’ve been through hard times and, um, we’ve come out the other side intact, and we’re so much stronger for it. And I feel like we’re only just getting started. I feel as energized, optimistic, and full of ideas as ever before. Like, we’ve got so much up our sleeves for this next chapter. Bring it on, you know. There’s so much more weird shit to come.
