Erik Antonson interview with Stacy Peralta

[sflinux]

Just when I thought the Progression Project couldn't get any better...
Whether your are a skater, surfer, SUPer, kiteboarder, foiler, do medication, there is something for everyone to appreciate in this interview. 
Loved it, gave me goose bumps. 
Highly recommend.
Enjoy...
https://www.podbean.com/site/EpisodeDownload/DIR1E1D5C376AN8Z
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-progression-project/id1206097336

[sflinux]

Eric: "When did you know that skateboarding was going to take hold?  That could be it for you."
Stacy:
"Well, God it is so hard, well ok, let me throw it this way.
I've been asked so many times why skateboarding. 
Why skateboarding? Why not bowling?
Why not baseball?...
I really had to do some searching in my life
What was it that really got me about this?
And here is what I can tell you.
When I was about 7 years old,
I was skateboarding , I was 7 or 8 skateboarding, around the perimeter of a drug store, that was down the street from my house
And the drug store had this double-wide paved sidewalk around it .
it was perfectly groomed cement, super super smooth with no cracks in it.
I was skateboarding there one Saturday.
And it was a very busy day there was carts coming in and out of the lot.
there was people with baby carriages and market baskets going up and down this sidewalk that I am on.
And I am cruising go through all these people.
Now a skateboard is very different than a bike.
A bike has a seat, it has pedals for both feet, and it has a handlebar, so it is actually a pretty secure thing. 
You are sitting down when you are doing it.
And you have got something to put your hands on, you are holding on the handlebars, and you are steering with the handlebars.
Skateboarding, you are holding onto nothing.
You are standing on something that's moving.
And it's really insecure, it's an unbelievably insecure thing.
if you hit a pebble when you are riding a bicycle nothing happens because you have rubber tires.
When you hit a pebble or a crack in the sidewalk and you are riding clay wheels, which are the same thing as cement, you completely lock up and stop and get catapulted off your board.
So here I am going down this sidewalk around this drug store
and I am aware that at any minute I can be completely destroyed.
I can faceplant into a market basket.
I am weaving out of all these people.
I am looking for rocks and stuff like that.
And I experience this incredible form of stillness.
I am a little kid.
And suddenly amongst this, like mayhem, like I am in a little hurricane of action, I feel still inside...
I was not able to articulate that to myself when I was a kid.
But I know that every time I went back on that board, that is what I was searching for.
Because I remember times just being in a driveway, kick turning all day long, just kick turning.
And feeling that sense of stillness, that inner stillness.
And I got that when I was on a skateboard.
And I've gotten it ever since.
And I've gotten it on a surfboard as well.
That, that inner sense of somehow in the middle of all that crazy action,
you feel the stillness that's within you.
And that is what attracted me to these sports my entire life.
And what keeps attracting me to them is that, what you experience when you balance on something that's moving...
You can fall at any second and somehow, in that, you feel still.
It's a real seductive feeling, really amazing feeling."

[sflinux]

Eric: "I think that as we age we create this incredible filter for life to where you are not really present ever you just kind of
have these automatic programs running and  the reality that you see is a very small subset of the information that is actually coming in because you just filtering it all out.  and I think that flow happens, the feeling happen, when you put yourself in a position where you have to remove the filter to navigate what you are doing."

Stacy: "Can I launch into something?  Launch into something that I have been really thinking about a lot because it has affected my life in such a positive way.
I have been a surfer all my life.  Started when I was 11.  Was a sponsored surfer with the Zepher surf team and that is how the skateboarding team happened, etc, etc
My close friend Sam George, I don't know 24, 25, 23 years ago something like that called me one day and said hey, you've seen Laird Hamilton do this new thing called Stand Up Paddleboard surfing.  I am doing it now.  It is unbelievable.
I got an extra board and paddle I would like to come down and turn you onto it.
I thought that sounds good, new form of surfing
This was something like 24 years ago, maybe longer I don't even know.
But anyway, he comes down and I'm thinking I have been doing this all my life, I am a former professional athlete, this is going to be easy
it was unbelievably difficult.
That first day, I was shocked and how bad I was.
And I had not experienced being a kook in maybe since I was 11.
certainly had not experienced being a kook as an adult
and I was an absolute kook.
I couldn't navigate the board around to go catch a wave, I fell constantly.
I was out of the water after 40 minutes because my ankles were so tired.
i was on the beach watching Sam and it was like watching a matador.
I could see the beauty of what he was doing. and it was right then and there I thought ok,
I am going to buy a board and buy a paddle and I will learn this.
if somebody told me on that beach that it was gonna take me 5 months.
I would have said no I am not going to buy this board, I am not going through that, not going to do that
and I am glad somebody wasn't there because that 5 months was really tough.
And I was shocked that I was that bad.  And that it took me that long.
Well to make a long story short, I eventually got good at it and it provided years of enjoyment
still do it, still love it ok
When I looked back on that 5 month period, I realized something really magic happened.
And I couldn't figure out what it was.
But something during that learning period, even as uncomfortable and as difficult as it was.
something magic happened   And I really wanted to know what it was cause I wanted to do it again.
Well I would get that chance again a couple years later when I learned to kiteboard.
kiteboarding ok, SUP took me 5 months.  kiteboarding took me a year and a half.
because I had never been a windsurfer.  I knew nothing about the wind.
I knew nothing about riding boards that looked like wakeboards
so the whole thing was so new and it can be really dangerous if you are not careful.
so that took a year and half.  This time I really paid attention, what's the magic?
And I found out what it was.  And its totally counterintuitive.
And it is not going to make any sense.  But it is going to play into exactly what you just said.
About we are not paying attention. That we just kind of put a veil over things.
The magic was for that year in a half.  I lived in a state of total uncertainty and insecurity
whether I was ever going to figure this out.
It dominated all of my thinking.  I was constantly problem-solving.
How can I get better at this?  What do I need to do?  this that.  When I was in the water I was problem solving.  When I was at home I was problem solving.  I was so alive to this situation.  Because I wanted to figure it out so badly and I wanted to get good so badly.  And I didn't know if I could.  And all this insecurity and not knowing weighed on me heavy but that weighing on me made me pay attention and step up. it was as if kiteboarding and SUP was looking at me, and saying you want to do this you have to give it everything you got to give it everyday. And I finally got it.  And I became, SUP, quite good at it.  And loving it.  But as I got good at it, it took less and less of me to do it.  Now I can do it in my sleep.  But back then it just took so much and so I really realized I need to be a kook about every 3  to 4 years of my life.  I need to do something that puts me in the kook phase where.
I have to go into that thing of being so bad at something.
that I don't know what is going to happen that I am uncertain, I'm insecure, all of that
because it keeps me incredibly young and it keeps me paying attention.
Now since that time I've done a lot of research and found that psychologically they are finding that people that are willing to put themselves in uncertain situations actually put themselves in healthy situations.  Because when you are facing uncertainty and you go through in it and not retreat from it
you end up breaking rigid thought patterns, neural thought patterns in your brain, and by breaking them and shattering them you make way for newer and healthier ones and so
this is when I got into foiling, that's taking 2 and a half years to figure out.
so I was able to be a kook for 2 and a half years.  in fact, I am probably still a kook.  But nonetheless.  That's the part.  That's the magic.  That is the magic.  Being a kook is magic.  I hope I have explained this right.  I hope I don't sound like a complete idiot."

[eastbound]

all true -- keep learning -- engage discomfort for increased rewards -- live

btw -- loved my powell peralta decks back in the drain a kidney days

[Beasho]

. . . . . SUP took me 5 months.  kiteboarding took me a year and a half.
because I had never been a windsurfer.  I knew nothing about the wind.
I knew nothing about riding boards that looked like wakeboards
so the whole thing was so new and it can be really dangerous if you are not careful.
so that took a year and half.  This time I really paid attention, what's the magic?
. . . . That's the part.  That's the magic.  That is the magic.  Being a kook is magic.  I hope I have explained this right.  I hope I don't sound like a complete idiot."[/b]

This was my favorite part of the interview! 

Better question - How did you get a transcription of the interview?  Is this available somewhere?

[sflinux]

Hey Beasho, Are you still thinking about having your own big wave foil podcast?  I am a big fan of your as well.
For the text posted:
I slowed down the audio in VLC and typed what I heard, repeating several, several, several times.  I love Stacy's voice.

A while back I was really motivated to get transcriptions of the Progression Project podcast because I believed having a searchable text would be invaluable for the community.  I tried this technique of using Google docs and a virtual cable, but it would crash (stop dictating) after ~ 20 min.  Anyone know if MS Word works better?
https://youtu.be/sLlI6WdUsXE?si=cT_-XZcPBj4EvGml
If someone knows of a free workflow that works, I am all ears.  I am motivated enough to transcribe the backlog of his podcasts and post it (on his forum?).
It looks like ChatGPT can be used to fix punctuation:
https://youtu.be/kMKYFk_kaVI?si=fmnH9QGJ7M54bF1a

[sflinux]

Currently testing transcriptions with OpenAI-Whisper:
references:
https://github.com/openai/whisper
https://www.theverge.com/2022/9/23/23367296/openai-whisper-transcription-speech-recognition-open-source
https://goodsnooze.gumroad.com/l/macwhisper
https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2023/transcribing-recorded-audio-and-video-text-using-whisper-ai-on-mac

[sflinux]

Attached is the transcription OpenAI-Whisper produces (default settings), quite impressive.  Not perfect.  But very usesable.

[Beasho]

Currently testing transcriptions with OpenAI-Whisper:
references:
https://github.com/openai/whisper
https://www.theverge.com/2022/9/23/23367296/openai-whisper-transcription-speech-recognition-open-source
https://goodsnooze.gumroad.com/l/macwhisper
https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2023/transcribing-recorded-audio-and-video-text-using-whisper-ai-on-mac

This looks pretty cool.

I just signed up for a "Test" of Amazon's TRANSCRIBE service.  They allow for FREE 1 hour per month transcriptions of Audio to Text from either audio or video files.  You pay after that, but it appears affordable because it is intended to get scripts from Service calls for example, meaning 1,000's of hours of transcription.  It produces a SRT or VTT file that can provide time coded subtitles for insertion into video.  This could be pretty cool for additions, or video overlays.

We'll see how it goes:

https://aws.amazon.com/pm/transcribe/?gclid=CjwKCAjwt-OwBhBnEiwAgwzrUtU_hUJ9al2_1LVJee4Si6rs2Y_WfFxEBmUI5HPdBqJfywnWJfV2BBoCbbkQAvD_BwE&trk=aae0a267-33fa-4d21-a4d5-30b7b3fd731e&sc_channel=ps&ef_id=CjwKCAjwt-OwBhBnEiwAgwzrUtU_hUJ9al2_1LVJee4Si6rs2Y_WfFxEBmUI5HPdBqJfywnWJfV2BBoCbbkQAvD_BwE:G:s&s_kwcid=AL!4422!3!648922763916!e!!g!!amazon%20voice%20to%20text!19597968945!143908652045

[Beasho]

SFLINUX:  You should post your transcription idea on the Progression forum. 

It would be great to have searchable references as you suggested.  The Peralta podcast was getting great reviews there as well.

I would think Erik would be motivated to enhance his product, but ? ? ?

https://forum.progressionproject.com/t/stacy-peralta-podcast/5039/19

[sflinux]

Hey Beasho,
I did.  Erik said that moving forward the podcast will have transripts for future episodes.
I will go through the backlog.
There is a request for Speaker Diarization so you know who says what.
I am testing how do that now with pyrannote.audio.
https://forum.progressionproject.com/t/transcriptions-for-the-progression-project-podcast/5071/4

[sflinux]

With Apple Podcasts, you can view transcripts (for all episodes)
https://appleinsider.com/inside/ios-17/tips/how-to-use-the-new-transcripts-feature-in-apple-podcasts
You can search within the episode's transcript.
Though I wish the select all (to copy) feature worked on Mac, so it could be exported with ease.

[surfinJ]

Just when I thought the Progression Project couldn't get any better...
Whether your are a skater, surfer, SUPer, kiteboarder, foiler, do medication, there is something for everyone to appreciate in this interview. 
Loved it, gave me goose bumps. 
Highly recommend.
Enjoy...
https://www.podbean.com/site/EpisodeDownload/DIR1E1D5C376AN8Z
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-progression-project/id1206097336

Thanks for this, big fan of Stacey. In a world full of amazing piles of crap, some of which really pull me down, it is the meditational side of surfing/skating that keeps me up and smiling.