Split Peak Soup
Split Peak Soup
Podcast Description
**** Neal, fill this out with your word skills ****
Podcast Insights
Content Themes
The podcast centers on themes related to surfing culture and personal anecdotes, covering topics such as professional surfing dynamics, mentorship, the emerging surfers from places like Santa Cruz, technological advancements like wave pools, and personal experiences related to fatherhood.
Welcome to Split Peak Soup Podcast! I’m your host, Neal Kearney. I feel very blessed to have been born and raised here in Santa Cruz, California. Santa Cruz is a hotbed for talented individuals, including, but not limited to: professional surfers and skaters, master surfboard shapers, internationally renowned artists, expert musicians, boundary pushing intellectual thinkers, and out-of-this-world explorers of consciousness.
Working as a professional journalist for the past twenty-plus years, I’ve had the opportunity to sit down with these extraordinary humans and in-depth and insightful chats. While these discussions have helped inform many written pieces that I’m proud of, I oftentimes felt that I was leaving a lot of meat left on the bone, as the few quotes I’d incorporate into my writing oftentimes seemed to strip my interviewees of their own authentic voices.
Luckily, we are entering a brave new world, where the podcast has risen as a popular form of storytelling and media consumption. From Joe Rogan to Conan O’Brien, podcasters have officially taken over. And now, I’m joining the fray. The Split Peak Soup Podcast is my way of using my skills as a story-teller to offer long format conversations with those whose stories deserve to be told.
So, what are you waiting for? Pull up a cozy chair, grab a napkin and your favorite spoon, and get ready to dig into another savory serving of Split Peak Soup!
Like most young surfers growing up in Santa Cruz, California, Kyle Buthman had his eyes set on becoming a professional surfer. Not only did he have perfect waves in his backyard and tons of talented peers to push his performance, he had access to a variety of action packed surf films to study before and after his sessions. The 1990’s were a peak era in terms of surf media production, and while guys like Kelly Slater and Rob Machado were showing the world what was possible in films produced by Taylor Steele, we had a fair share of videographers bringing the goods locally, as well.
Tony Roberts, Chris Klopf, Josh Pomer, and Graham Nash all put out a number of iconic surf films during Buthman’s rise as an amateur surfer, and he studied them endlessly. What was so impactful for the young surfer was the fact that not only could he watch someone like Peter Mel rip waves at Steamer Lane, he could go out there and join him afterwards
As fate would have it, after an injury to his Achilles Tendon at age 14, Buthman found himself behind the lens. To kill the boredom during his recovery, and to keep himself close to the action he was missing out on, the talented regular footer grabbed the family handycam and posted up at the waters edge, capturing the explosive surfing taking place in and around Pleasure Point. He put all the footage together in a short edit, entitled, “Trix are 4 Kids,” and never looked back.
While he never made it big as a pro surfer, Buthman was able to enjoy sponsorships enabled him to travel the world, and he always brought his camera along with him. He leveraged his relationship with Quiksilver to get access to their fabled accommodations on Oahu’s North Shore, where he produced edits featuring their team riders. Before long, his talent behind the lens established him as an elite storyteller, eventuating in his “Get Rad” trilogy, and other notable productions, such as “Tattle Tales”, and his “Brain Works” series.
In this podcast, Buthman and I chatted about how his surf-centric work evolved into a career that veered into unfamiliar territory, such as the UFC and professional competitive gaming, also known as Esports. We also touched on his love life, affinity for Mainland Mexico and alternative surfboards, the challenge and rewards of shooting from the water, and how he deals with missing out on epic sessions when traveling for paid shoots.
Buthman and I go way back, and it was a pleasure getting to shoot the shit with one of the most heavily barreled surf videographers on Earth.
Dig in!
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