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Swimmingpod

Stanley Ulijaszek

Swimming in the outdoors - lakes and lidos, rivers and oceans, especially the people that swim in them.

Music - 'Noe Noe', 'Aeronaut', ' Vienna Beat', and 'Watercool Quiet', from Blue Dot Sessions.

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  • 24 episodes
  • Avg 22 min
  • English

Episodes 24

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  • Wednesday · 30 min

    Swimming and Cake in Hampstead with Susanna Bowers and Stanley Ulijaszek

    In this episode of Swimmingpod, Stanley Ulijaszek is with cake and pastry expert Susanna Bowers in Hampstead, London. Swimming at the Heath’s Mixed Pond, followed by cake and pastries at Sourdough Sophia, indispersed with readings from two books about The Ponds. The first is ‘Pondlife. A Swimmers Journal’ by late poet, author, literary critic, andswimmer Al Alvarez, who swam here regularly. The second is ‘Swimming at the Hampstead Ladies Pond’, a compilation of short essays about different women’s reflections on swimming at the Kenwood Ladies Pond.

  • October 9 · 27 min

    Swimming in Zurich, with Stanley Ulijaszek

    Zurich is a happy place for me. I recall swimming in Lake Zurich, day after day, at the age of 19 years, just a fewkilometers south of Zurich itself. Enjoying the mild sting on getting into the water, cool, but not cold, easily accommodated. Enjoyed the majestic background of mountains still snow-laden, its ridges crisply defined by a still low morning summer sun. I thought then I could make a habit of this, swimming in a lake. Which I did, decades later. I never got to swim in Zurich itself then. That was something that started in my 60s, when I was invited to lecture, and to doresearch in St Gallen, just an hour or so away, by train from Zurich. I had been blown away by how much a swimming city Zurich is, right into the city, mostly in the lake but also in the River Limmat. This podcast is about swimming in three places in Lake Zurich, in the city itself, each swim very different,despite only being separated from each other by very few kilometers.

  • September 11 · 8 min

    Swimming in Custard, with Maddalena Borsato and Stanley Ulijaszek

    Doing research is like swimming in custard. That’s the take-home from Maddalena Borsato in this podcast. She is a researcher in aesthetics at the University of Gastronomic Science, Pollenzo, Italy, and she combines pastry making withphilosophy in her website aristortele.it, where she philosophises with a spoon and creates thoughtful pastry recipes. In this podcast she describes the French dessert Iles Flottante, islands of soft meringue floating in a lake of custard,and the lone swimmer – me – making steady progress in research, or a life of swimming in custard. Its not swimming as we usually know it, nor is it pastry or cake, strictly speaking. But life is full of hybrids, and here is another.

  • August 10 · 27 min

    Rebecca Olive, Researching Urban Swimming in Australia

    Dr Rebecca Olive is Vice Chancellors Senior Research Fellow at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. Her research explores how every-day, recreational sport and leisure activities are experienced through cultural politics, ecological encounters, social media production and consumption, and much more. Her Fellowship at RMIT University involves research into recreational sport and leisure in urban bodies of water - oceans, estuaries, rivers, and outdoor pools – in short, urban swimming. She has three foci - public safety, climate resilience, and urban regeneration. She has produced a StoryMap, Swim Melbourne, which maps places to swim across the city, sharing stories of risk, safety, and community. In this podcast we discuss all of these things, and more.

  • July 17 · 19 min

    Swimming at Murder Central with Stanley Ulijaszek, in Australia and the UK

    Murder doesn’t often feature in swimming. In this podcast, two places are linked through this theme: Ballarat and St George’s Lake, in Australia, with Wallingford and the River Thames in Oxfordshire, in the UK. Both places have factual andfictional claims to being ‘murder central’ in their respective countries. Both have good swimming, and both have murder mysteries attached to their locale. In addition, Ballarat has seen several real-life, gruesome murders in recent years. It shouldn’t put you off swimming in its nearby lakes though.

  • July 16 · 14 min

    Lyn Wilks and Swimming in Ballarat, Australia

    Swimming is in the DNA in Australia. Even in inland places, lakes, human-made and natural, form ideal swimming places. Human-made lakes include dammed waterways for reservoirs and goldmining works in mid- to late-nineteenth century Victoria, during the period that Australians moved toward self-determination as a country. I explore these lakes and the ideas that came with them, in and around Ballarat, Victoria, with resident Lyn Wilks.

  • July 7 · 19 min

    Sibylle van der Walt, Swimming in the Moselle River and Metz Ville d’Eau

    Before the pandemic, some friends in Metz, a mid-sized city in France, near Strasbourg, were looking for somewhere to swim outdoors. The Moselle River flows through Metz, on its way to the North German wine country, before joining with the Rhine at Koblenz. This seemed the right place to make a new swimming place, in the Moselle River in and around Metz. Sibylle van der Walt was one of this group of friends. From this desire to swim in the local river, which was often contaminated in the ways that so many rivers in the Global North are, came a group, Metz Ville d’Eau, Metz City of Water. Sibylle was central to this group, with the intention of making the Moselle at Metz much more regularly swimmable. Metz Ville d’Eau continues, going from strength to strength. Since then. Metz Ville d’Eau has joined hands with other environmental groups, city councils and water-focussed agencies in the Swimmable Cities Alliance, where organizations across the world coordinate activities for making cleaner and accessible urban waterways more available to citizens who swim, and for blue spaces more generally. Sibylle van der Walt is central to the development and growth of the Swimmable Cities Alliance, which had its first Summit in Rotterdam in June 2025. In this podcast we discuss how Metz Ville d’Eau has been fashioned as a model campaign for urban river swimming.

  • June 26 · 32 min

    Swimming, Water and Music, with Romy Martinez

    Dr Romy Martinez is a Paraguayan singer, researcher, and ethnomusicologist, with two award-winning albums with the Purahéi Trio, including Songs by the Riverbanks, inspired by river landscapes and cultural exchange between Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil. She received the 2025 Latin GRAMMY Cultural Foundation Research Grant for Guaranía in Translation, promoting Paraguayan music in Europe. She is the first Paraguayan woman in ethnomusicology, and is a postdoctoral researcher in cultural diplomacy at Leiden University College, Netherlands. She is passionate about swimming. In this podcast we discuss how her music and research flow together, and how swimming shapes everything she does.

  • June 12 · 15 min

    Laura Reineke, Champion Endurance Swimmer, and Friends of the Thames

    Laura Reineke is triple crown swimmer from Henley, UK, completing the Santa Catalina channel swim, the English Channel and the 20 Bridges swim of Manhattan Island. Locally, she is a Henley Mermaid, a group that swims for socialjustice, and founder of Friends of the Thames. She is Sue Ryder Woman of Achievement 2016. In this podcast I am with her in Henley, Oxfordshire, to discuss her swimming achievements, Henley Mermaids and her campaigning work for a clean River Thames.

  • May 20 · 30 min

    Simon Griffiths, of Outdoor Swimmer Magazine, and Swim Wild and Free

    Simon Griffiths is the author of Swim Wild and Free: A PracticalGuide to Swimming Outdoors 365 Days a Year, and founder of Outdoor Swimmer magazine. He is a life-long swimmer, swims year-round in the Thames and regularly takes part in open water and pool races. His swimming adventures havetaken him around the world. He was part of the team that created the STA Open Water Swimming Coaching qualification. In this podcast we discuss his latestbook, as well as his magazine, how to become a better all-round swimmer, and swimming at Teddington, London.

  • March 23 · 19 min

    Toby Robinson, Olympian Marathon Swimmer, Paris, and Bringing Swimming back to the Thames in London

    Toby Robinson is an international swimmer, representing England at the 2022 Commonwealth Games, and Great Britain at the Paris Olympic Games 2024. He is passionate about swimming, especially in open water. He is a staunch advocate and campaigner for clean open water in the UK, especially the River Thames in London. In September 2025, he was a key participant in a Thames relay swim from the source to London, highlighting sewage pollution in UK waterways. He is an ambassador for "Friends of the Thames", which promotes the restoration and protection of the river. In late 2025 he swam in the revived historic Lords and Commons race in the Thames in London. He discusses all of these things in this podcast.

  • March 18 · 18 min

    Happy 5th Birthday, Swimmingpod. With Stanley Ulijaszek and Guests

    Swimmingpod celebrates its 5th birthday, with guests Helen Edwards, Tom Kearney, Anette Frisch, Charlotte Sawyer, Tess Bird, Vera Prokopieva, and Carl Tysom. 65 episodes, covering styles and cultures of swimming in the outdoors and open water. Swimming heroes and everyday swimmers, politics and ecology of open watee. Swimming in health, disease and disability. Water and poetry, prose, music, visual arts and film. Swimming events, challenges, clubs, and groups. A lot of water has flowed under the bridge since the first episode in 2020.

  • March 3 · 20 min

    Sian Richardson – Events and Adventuring with the Bluetits

    Sian Richardson is founder of the Bluetits Chill Swimmers, a social enterprise that has gone global. In this episode of Swimmingpod, Sian talks about how she got into winter swimming events and about Bluetits in Tallinn and at Lake Bled.

  • February 23 · 17 min

    Lord James Bethell and a Vision for a Swimmable Thames in London

    James Bethell is a Lord of the British realm. A former Health Minister and member of the House of Lords. He is a passionate open water swimmer, whose passion has extended to bring open water swimming back to the River Thames in London. In this episode of Swimmingpod, Lord Bethell, James Bethell, talks about his open water passion, and a vision for a swimmable River Thames.

  • Dec 16, 2025 · 18 min

    Stanley Ulijaszek on Swimming and Summer Solstice Rituals

    A warm June, 2025; a similarly warm June 2020, but in very different circumstances, both times greeting the solstice sun with a swim. Five years since the pandemic, Stanley Ulijaszekreflects in this podcast on summer solstice swimming and other rituals attached to this time of year at Oxford, both then, and now.

  • Nov 26, 2025 · 32 min

    Swimming and Cake in London, with Susanna Bowers and Stanley Ulijaszek

    In this episode of Swimmingpod, Stanley Ulijaszek is with cake and pastry specialist Susanna Bowers, swimming at the London Fields and Brockwell Lidos , and eating cake and pastries at Pophams Bakery, Maya’s Bakehouse, and the lido cafe at Brockwell. In doing so, they explore the intimate connection between swimming and cake in London, a city of lidos and bakeries. They read from the Lido Guide, by Janet Wilkinson and Emma Pusill, and from Libby Page's novel The Lido, set in Brixton and Brockwell Lido. There is a literarytheme too – with Tolkein and Lord of the Rings, and Lewis Carroll and Alice inWonderland.

  • Nov 17, 2025 · 22 min

    Swimming and Cake in Oxford, with Susanna Bowers and Stanley Ulijaszek

    Swimming and cake is a natural combination for many outdoor swimmers. In this episode of Swimmingpod, food expert Susanna Bowers joins Stanley Ulijaszek in Oxford to explore both. They swim at Port Meadow from the Dodo Tree; and later from the Tolkien Bench in the University Park, close by Parsons Pleasure and what was once Dames Delight. Cake is eaten before swimming, then at St Cross College after the first swim, and at the Randolph Hotel after the second swim. Water and food in the fiction works of University of Oxford Professors Charles Dodgson (better known as Lewis Carroll) and J.R.R. Tolkien – Alice in Wonderland, Alice Through the Looking Glass, Lord of the Rings – come to the surface repeatedly.

  • Oct 17, 2025 · 30 min

    Swimming and Leptospirosis - Stanley Ulijaszek

    I never expected to suffer from leptospirosis, although I know that it is a risk. A comment I sometimes hear from passers-by while swimming in the river is “you know you can get Weil’s Disease, don’t you?” My internal response, never spoken, is “Yes, but…” it is so rare that it is hardly on my swimmer’s radar. In retrospect I am surprised by how it took me by surprise when I got it, even though I thought I knew what it looks like. The lived experience of a disease is always very different to what it says in the textbook, although the textbook is essential to knowing how to treat it. So, despite knowing the symptoms of leptospirosis (through reading and talking with other open water swimmers) it surprised me how quickly it took hold of me, how quickly it became distressing, and how quickly I started to lose my mind while at the same time thinking that I was holding it together. This podcast is about that experience, back in 2020.

  • Oct 10, 2025 · 26 min

    Amelie Schlemmer and the Donaukanal Swimming Club, Vienna

    Amelie Schlemmer swims in Vienna. She is co-founder of SVDK – Swimmverein Donaukanal – the Donaukanal (Danube Canal) Swimming Club. This was founded in 2020 by four students of the Social Design program at the University of Applied Arts, Vienna, as an artistic practice. It soon turned into an open, non-profit cultural association with the ambition of revitalizing urban swimming culture along the Danube Canal. With over 300 members, the association is active along the Danube Canal as it passes through Vienna, and collaborates with various initiatives and institutions within Vienna and internationally. In this podcast we discuss the resurgence of swimming in the Danube Canal in Vienna, and the design work that SVDK have undertaken tomake this happen. Learn more at https://schwimmvereindonaukanal.org/ Cover image by Sarah Tasha Hauber

Showing 1–20 of 24 episodes