Lauren McCallum Bonus Episode!
If I have one major regret in the four years I’ve been doing the podcast, it’s around the way I handled the topic of Terje Haakonsen’s history of homophobia in my conversation with him for episode 121. The feedback I received from some listeners, who felt like my deliberate editorial approach was alienating, made it clear to me that I still have much work to do when it comes to shepherding these conversations in the right way.
This is also why I found the debate around Terje’s recent public apology for these remarks so interesting. My initial reaction, if I’m being honest, was that his apology was fine and to be applauded. But it soon became clear that many members of the LBGT+ community completely disagreed with this perspective, finding the apology to be ill-thought out at best and disingenuous at worst. These contrasting reactions told me that here, yet again, was an opportunity to try and understand that difference in perspective I’d unwittingly perpetuated in episode 122.
These gaps of understanding are really the territory that interests me. If you’re open to it, they provide us with an opportunity to learn and examine our own often buried prejudices - which is really what the entire podcast is ‘about’. After all, action sports is as handy lens as any through which to examine these issues.
So I asked my old friend and erstwhile podcast guest Lauren MacCallum to come back on the show to discuss the entire brouhaha for a bonus episode of the show. As is always the case when I talk to Lauren, this was a hugely enjoyable and at times challenging conversation. I learned a lot from it. Perhaps you will too.
Any views on the issues raised in this episode?
Bonus Episode: Lauren MacCallum