Eddie is an ex-IFSC photographer, who worked with them from 2014-2020. In this episode, we’ll get his thoughts on the ethics and purpose of photojournalism, hear about the chaos behind the scenes traveling around for world cups, and discuss ideas on how to get athletes better paid.

Charlie is a broadcaster and writer who preceded Matt Groom as an IFSC commentator and EpicTV host. In this episode, we’ll learn about his rough start to IFSC commentating in 2016, ways that he thinks the IFSC could improve competitions, and get some insight into what it’s like traveling around with athletes. He also shares his unique story about traveling to North Korea!

Cloe is a French/American boulderer who has competed for team USA in the international youth and elite circuit. She’s had some up and down seasons due to expectations and injuries, but her psych for comp-style climbing and the gym stays strong!

Tyler is a fellow competition climbing nerd and podcaster, who has been involved in the space much longer than I have, and you may be familiar with his channel, Plastic Weekly! If you enjoy this style of comp climbing podcast be sure to check out The Debrief, which is Tyler’s podcast on Plastic Weekly.

Cody is the USA national chief routesetter, and in the 2023 IFSC season he had the opportunity to set boulders in Hachioji, Prague, Innsbruck, and the Bern world champs! This is a super long episode but he gives AMAZING insight into the boulders at each of these world cups.

Carlie is the FIRST female chief setter at an IFSC world championship, where she led a team of 5 to set the world paraclimbing championships in Bern 2023! She has been climbing for over 20 years and setting for almost just as long. If you’ve ever wondered how to set for a wide variety of disabilities, this is the episode!

Anita Aggarwal (UK) and Christiane Luttikhuizen (Netherlands) are both paraclimbers in the RP3 sports class, which stands for limited reach, power or stability. While they are both in the same sports class, they still have wildly different experiences dealing with climbing and competing.

Staša is a boulder and lead climber (specializing in boulder) from Serbia who has been competing in international cups since 2011 as a youth climber. Her experience is quite unique, being the one of the only Serbian competitors right now. As a result, she has lived in Slovenia in the past to train, and currently lives in Germany (just finished up her masters degree in power engineering as well!).

Sam is only 17 years old, yet he has already won gold at a world cup, holds the speed climbing record in the US, and recently secured his Paris 2024 Olympic ticket at the PanAm Qualifiers. In this episode, we’ll get more insight into speed climbing at the highest level, his experience at the PanAm Games, how he juggles personal life, school, and climbing, and we need your help in figuring out how he can up his social media game!

Campbell represents team Australia and is one of the Oceania region’s top competitors for moving onto the Olympics in the boulder and lead combined category. He also recently got elected to the IFSC athlete’s commission, so in this episode we’ll talk about causes he’d like to champion through that, what it’s like competing as an Australian, and he also opens up about his past struggles with eating disorders, as well as why he was partially missing in Olympic qualifiers in 2020.

Matt Groom is a freelance commentator best known for being the lead commentator at IFSC world cups. You may also find him hosting EpicTV Climbing Daily, writing for UKC, or commentating at other climbing competitions. There's a lot of talk online about Matt, and in this EXCLUSIVE interview we go over his response to criticism as well as his explanation for some of the mistakes caught on audio.

Zoe is a program manager for GB Climbing and is an expert in organizing and running climbing competitions! Her FIRST world cup event was Edinburgh 2022 and it was definitely…eventful. She also has experience organizing paraclimbing competitions and Bern world champs. There’s much more going on behind the scenes of climbing competitions than you’d expect, so tune in to learn more about what it takes!

Allegra is a Youtuber, mental climbing coach, and co-founder of ClimbInFlow, which provides services for climbing mind training. She has experience coaching all types of climbers, from beginners to world cup youth athletes. She recently came home from coaching at the youth world champs in Korea, where she helped Geila Macia Martin podium in boulder and lead! Allegra has also competed a bit herself, competing in Swedish Lead Championships after only 2 years of climbing.

You may have seen Albert's old viral Youtube videos where he does deep-dive analyses into great comp climbing beta-break moments. Nowadays, he is spending more time working on his own training to hopefully make the USA national team, as well as working as a speed climbing coach. You may know some of the athletes he works with, such as Grace Crowley and Sam Watson!

Grace is a speed climber on the Australian team who only started climbing in late 2015 and has been competing in world cups since 2019 at the age of 15 year old (only 4 years of climbing before becoming world level?!?!). Grace is also open about sharing their experience being a non-binary athlete within competitive sports.

You may have seen a couple of Jonathan's viral Youtube videos lately, such as I trained like a pro climber for 6 months, where he opens up about his dream of becoming a professional competition climber and documents his journey of trying to make the Hong Kong national team. His effort is all the more impressive once you find out he only started climbing in 2019 and managed to send v11 after only 2 years.

Maya is an outspoken IFSC volunteer + former world cup judge currently living in Japan who has helped out with world cups in Edinburgh, Morioka, and Hachioji. She has some great behind-the-scenes context into world cups, what team Japan is like behind the wall, and she has some spicy takes on the IFSC organization (even got blocked once by their social media)…

Niki is a routesetter with over 20 years of experience, setting for both commercial gyms and competitions. He’s known for setting “parkour-style” boulders that require creative movement rather than raw power. We’ll hear from him about what it’s like setting for world cup level climbers, how the IFSC chooses holds and setters, different competition formats, and how to improve the future of competition climbing.

Just Jinni being a podcast gumby.