From the warm waters of Durban's Indian Ocean coastline … to the biggest, most dangerous breaks on Hawaii's North Shore, this episode traces the extraordinary journey of 1977 world surfing champion Shaun Tomson. 

Steve Morris travels to Santa Barbara to sit down with the man once ranked among the top ten surfers in history — and finds someone far warmer than the stern competitor he remembers from old photographs. Shaun opens up about his childhood in a beach-obsessed family shaped by his mother's survival of the WWII siege of Malta and his father's own shark-attack-defying love of the ocean, and how those early lessons in resilience and freedom set him on a path toward reshaping surfing forever.

The conversation moves through the birth of professional surfing itself — the fierce cultural clashes on Hawaii's North Shore, the founding of his apparel brand Instinct, and the discipline required to walk away from competition on his own terms in 1989. 

But this episode's heart lies in what came after the trophies: the devastating loss of his teenage son Matthew, and how Shaun transformed unimaginable grief into a mission of purpose. Out of that darkness came the Surfer's Code — twelve simple lines, each beginning with ”I will” — a tool he's since carried into classrooms, boardrooms, prisons, and Ivy League leadership programs around the world.

This is a story about stoke, identity, and what happens when the thing that defines you disappears — and the deliberate choices that fill the space it leaves behind. Whether you're an athlete facing life after sport or simply someone standing at your own crossroads, Shaun's message is disarmingly simple: write your code, take the drop with commitment, and always paddle back out.