Bikes & Big Ideas

BLISTER

Bikes & Big Ideas is the weekly podcast from BLISTER that's dedicated to the most interesting conversations and ideas from the bike world — and beyond.

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Top 10 Bikes & Big Ideas Episodes

Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best Bikes & Big Ideas episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to Bikes & Big Ideas for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite Bikes & Big Ideas episode by adding your comments to the episode page.

Continental on Designing, Developing, & Testing Their Overhauled Tire Lineup

Bikes & Big Ideas

02/15/24 • 52 min

Continental’s overhauled gravity tire lineup has had a lot of success, both on the World Cup Downhill circuit and with everyday riders (we’ve personally been huge fans of the Kryptotals).

It’s a big departure from their prior offerings, with 5 new tread patterns to go with overhauled casings and rubber compounds, and we sat down with Alexander Hänke, the product manager behind the lineup, and Dan Brown, the CEO of Atherton Bikes and Team Director of Continental Atherton Racing, to talk all about their development, hear their takes on what makes a good tire, and a whole lot more.

RELATED LINKS:

BLISTER+ Membership

BLISTER+ Real World Testimonials

Blister Labs

This Week’s Gear Giveaway

Blister Mountain Bike Buyer’s Guide

TOPICS & TIMES:

Introducing Alex and Dan (1:46)

Where to start when overhauling a complete tire lineup? (4:02)

Designing tires for World Cup Downhillers vs. mere mortals (9:24)

Beginning the development process (13:12)

Starting with casing designs & their importance (16:42)

Tread pattern design (22:38)

Splitting the Kryptotal into front and rear models (25:08)

The Continental gravity tire lineup (28:32)

Rubber compounds & why softer doesn’t always equal more grip (33:56)

Choosing which variants to offer (42:02)

OUR OTHER PODCASTS

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Trek on the New High-Pivot Slash

Bikes & Big Ideas

09/07/23 • 39 min

Trek’s new sixth-generation Slash has changed a lot from the prior-generation bike — including a high-pivot suspension layout, some big updates to the geometry and suspension kinematics, and a default mixed-wheel size setup — and we sat down with Matt Yerke, the lead engineer on the new Slash, to learn all about it. Matt walked us through the design goals for the Slash; their early experiments with high-pivot Trail bikes, including prototyping the layout on what would become the current Fuel EX; a ton of the design considerations that went into the new bike; how he sets up his personal Slash; and a whole lot more.

TOPICS & TIMES:

Introducing the new Slash (1:33)

Matt’s role at Trek (1:59)

Goals for the new Slash (2:52)

The first prototypes, and dialing in front-rear balance (4:01)

High-pivot bikes & choosing to go that route on the Slash (5:54)

Anti-squat & pedaling performance (10:38)

Idler pulleys and drag (14:20)

Geometry & other details (15:08)

Mullets & their tradeoffs (18:59)

Chainstay lengths for mullets vs. 29ers (22:35)

Axle paths & suspension kinematics (25:48)

Frame adjustability (33:33)

Matt’s personal Slash setup (36:18)

RELATED LINKS:

BLISTER+ Membership

BLISTER+ Real World Testimonials

Blister Labs

This Week’s Gear Giveaway

Blister Mountain Bike Buyer’s Guide

OUR OTHER PODCASTS

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2020: Gear in Review

Bikes & Big Ideas

01/07/21 • 22 min

We talk with Blister’s bike editor, David Golay, about some of the gear he’s recently been testing; some of the most surprising products of the past year; some of the standout products of 2020; and a few predictions for 2021.

TOPICS & TIMES:

Canyon Stoic (2:36)
Ohlins suspension (8:13)
Most Surprising Products of 2020 (9:36)
Standout products of 2020 (11:56)
Predictions for 2021 (17:15)

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Cassie Abel on Wild Rye, Women-Led Wednesday, & More

Bikes & Big Ideas

03/18/21 • 56 min

Cassie Abel is the co-founder and CEO of Wild Rye, which is a company that creates apparel for women-identifying outdoor-lovers, regardless of age, background, size, or skill level. But Cassie is not only running a women's apparel company, she is working to change the entire business landscape for women.

TOPICS & TIMES:

What is Wild Rye & why the name? (2:11)
Cassie’s background (3:49)
Operating out of Ketchum, Idaho (10:48)
Call-out culture (24:50)
Sustainability (31:47)
Women-Led Wednesday (33:17)
Receiving the Tory Burch Foundation Fellowship (38:36)
Pivot Cycles x Wild Rye collab (42:14)
Another big idea from Cassie (50:53)

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Reviewer Reports: Longer-Travel Enduro Bikes

Bikes & Big Ideas

04/04/21 • 23 min

We talk to Blister bike editor, David Golay, about 4 longer-travel enduro bikes from Privateer, Santa Cruz, Rocky Mountain, & Marin that he’s been spending time on in the PNW.

TOPICS & TIMES

Privateer 161 Update (1:10)
Rocky Mountain Altitude (3:25)
Marin Alpine Trail (8:01)
Santa Cruz Nomad (13:53)
Bikes & Ice Cream (19:01)

RELATED LINKS

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Mojo Suspension & Geometron Bikes founder, Chris Porter

Bikes & Big Ideas

05/06/21 • 73 min

Chris Porter has long been known as one of the earliest and most vocal proponents of the longer/lower/slacker trends in mountain bike geometry, and his Geometron bikes have pushed the envelope further than just about anything else out there. Chris has opinions on a whole lot more than just bike geometry, though, and in our recent conversation we got his takes on wheel sizes, eBikes, suspension tuning, Vladimir Putin(?), and a whole lot more.

TOPICS & TIMES:

Background & motorcycles (2:16)
Founding of Mojo & trashing a rental house (5:46)
Experimenting with geometry (10:24)
Mondraker & Fabien Barel (17:47)
Partnership with Nicolai (26:42)
Trail Nirvana (34:35)
“eBikes ruined it” (36:37)
Geometron Bikes (44:32)
Tradeoffs in bike design (50:38)
Craft vs. Math in bike setup (55:58)
Wheel sizes & the death of 27.5? (58:12)
Chris’ Big Idea (1:11:51)

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Fanatik on Custom Bikes, Gear Trends, & the Bellingham Bike Scene

Bikes & Big Ideas

05/05/22 • 34 min

We sat down with Rich Frough of Fanatik, our Blister Recommended Bike Shop in Bellingham, WA to talk about bike gear trends, the local mountain bike scene, and Fanatik’s amazing custom bike and wheel building programs.

TOPICS & TIMES:

Fanatik’s history (1:25)
Rich’s role at Fanatik (3:11)
The Fanatik customer (4:47)
Bellingham’s mountain bike scene (7:13)
Gear trends — locally and globally (9:08)
Fanatik staff’s favorite gear (20:59)
Service (25:30)
Rich’s Big Idea (32:37)

RELATED LINKS:

OUR OTHER BLISTER PODCASTS

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Over The Edge on Trail Building, Travel, & Rampage

Bikes & Big Ideas

07/21/22 • 44 min

We sat down with Troy, Paul, Pierce, and Jonah from Over The Edge — our Blister Recommended Shop in Fruita, CO; Hurricane, UT; Todos Santos, Mexico; and Melrose, Australia — to talk about the unique history of OTE; building trails in the early days of mountain biking; the development of mountain bike towns; travel & MTB destinations; servicing bikes at Rampage; and a whole lot more.

TOPICS & TIMES:

Over The Edge’s origin story (4:13)
Expansion & the growth of MTB towns (6:12)
Trail building (13:25)
Paul’s involvement & maturation (20:50)
The OTE customer (25:30)
Service turnarounds & saving trips (30:11)
Travel & MTB towns (32:39)
The Hurricane shop (35:53)

RELATED LINKS:

OUR OTHER PODCASTS

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Reynolds on the Environmental Footprint of Bike Manufacturing

Bikes & Big Ideas

08/18/22 • 48 min

Reynolds is one of the biggest names in steel and titanium bike frame tubing, and they’ve just released a very interesting report on the environmental impact of their various product lines. So we sat down with their General Manager, Martin Shepherd, to talk about why Reynolds went through the effort to produce the study and what they hoped to learn from it; what Reynolds is doing to curb their own emissions; how and why all recycling isn’t created equal; and along the way we get into Spitfire airplanes, Jaguar race cars, Roman swords, and a whole lot more.

TOPICS & TIMES:

Starling Cycles & the impetus for Reynolds’ study
Spitfires, Jaguar race cars, & the lifecycle of steel
Goals for the study
What Reynolds learned
Recycling, bulletproof cars, and Roman swords
Reynolds’ next steps
Where other companies should start
Steel vs. other materials
Martin’s Big Idea

RELATED LINKS:

OUR OTHER PODCASTS

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Casey Brown, Vaea Verbeeck, and Hannah Bergemann on Women at Rampage

Bikes & Big Ideas

10/12/23 • 49 min

When it was announced that Red Bull Formation wasn’t happening in 2023, there was a lot of hopeful speculation that, in its place, there would be women competing at Rampage for the first time. But that didn’t happen either, so we sat down with three of the top freeriders in the world — Casey Brown, Vaea Verbeeck, and Hannah Bergemann — to get their thoughts on how we got here, why they want a women’s category at Rampage (and what they’re doing to make it happen), why representation at the top tiers of the sport is important, and a whole lot more.

TOPICS & TIMES:

Vaea Verbeeck: (1:31)

How we got here (1:55)

Postponing Formation (4:32)

Formation as a stepping stone to Rampage (7:30)

How to get to a women’s category at Rampage (12:05)

Hannah Bergemann: (19:49)

Working behind the scenes to organize the riders (20:10)

Advancing the state of women’s freeride (21:57)

Structuring a women’s category at Rampage (23:43)

The growth of women’s freeride (26:14)

How to move forward (28:31)