Episode 58: Point Break and the political history of surfing with Scott Laderman

This week we invite Scott Laderman to talk about Point Break (1991) and his book Empire in Waves: A Political History of Surfing. We talk about depictions of surfing in this film and others along with the origins of the pursuit, its commodification and commercialization, how surfers responded to genocide and apartheid in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, the greatest surfing movies of all time, and greatest surfers of all time. This is a really fun and deep dive into surf and film history. I think you're gonna dig it.

About our guest:
Scott Laderman  broadly explores the various ways that Americans have encountered and ascribed meaning to the rest of the world. His first book, Tours of Vietnam: War, Travel Guides, and Memory (Duke University Press, 2009), examines issues of tourism and memory in postcolonial Vietnam. His second monograph, Empire in Waves: A Political History of Surfing (University of California Press, 2014), combines the passion for wave-riding he developed while growing up in California with his professional interest in the history of U.S. foreign relations. His most recent book, The “Silent Majority” Speech: Richard Nixon, the Vietnam War, and the Origins of the New Right (Routledge, 2019), uses Nixon’s most famous presidential address to probe the last years of the war in Vietnam and the rise of the modern right-wing political movement.

With Edwin Martini, he co-edits the Culture and Politics in the Cold War and Beyond book series for the University of Massachusetts Press, and he has written for numerous popular publications, including the New York Times, Washington Post, South China Morning Post, and Star Tribune.