This episode dives into what it really means to “do safety” when your job is inherently dangerous, like military, police, or even things like aviation.

The strategy has to be at least a little better than Live Fast, Die Young (that's the title of this episode, and for once it's not NOFX, but if you're cool, you know this one, too).

Ben, Ron, David, and their guest James Kolozsi (who’s got cred from his time in the military, police, municipal, and oil & gas) kick things off with the usual eight minutes of bullshit or so, but eventually get into the meat of the topic: in some jobs, you can’t pretend risk doesn’t exist. Instead, you have to own it, plan for it, and train like hell to deal with it.

James shares how, in the military, you don’t get to hit pause and fill out a risk assessment when things go sideways. Instead, it’s all about situational awareness, understanding threats (not just risks), and being ready to adapt on the fly. It's sort of about doing what you signed up for, too, but not applying that same logic to folks who aren't willing participants.

The boys talk about how, in these high-risk worlds, safety isn’t just a checklist or a pile of paperwork—it’s baked into the core of operations.

Training is relentless, and the focus is on building real capability, not just compliance. There’s a lot of talk about how this mindset is different from what you see in most industries, where safety can sometimes feel like a box-ticking exercise.

The conversation also hits on the limits of procedures and the importance of sharing practical know-how; those “rules of thumb” that only come from experience. In the end, the takeaway is that in jobs where danger is part of the deal, you can’t eliminate risk, but you can give people the tools, training, and support to successfully adapt to it. And maybe the rest of the safety world could learn a thing or two from that approach.

DISCLAIMER: You probably shouldn't take anything in this podcast too seriously. Punk Rock Safety is for entertainment only. It's definitely not a replacement for professional or legal advice, and the fair amount of piss-taking, shithousery, and general ridiculousness ought to clue you into the fact that no one - and no organization - is endorsing (or un-endorsing, if that's a thing) any products, ideas, or other things. Except NOFX. We definitely endorse them.

Oh, and give your money to Punk Rock Saves Lives. They're a rad organization that works in mental health, addiction, and human rights. And they're awesome people who can use your help to keep on kicking ass at what they do.

https://www.punkrocksaveslives.org/

Let us know what you think at info@punkrocksafety.com or on our LinkedIn page.

Merch at punkrocksafetymerch.com

Ian Madison rolls in with a background of ethically hunted animals (that's what he told us), evidence of like eight million Bad Religion shows, and some serious desire to talk about how traditional safety measurements are about as useful as a broken guitar string. Not a bass string, because a broken bass string is about as useful as the rest of them anyway.

Seriously, though. Check out the video on YouTube to see what Ian has going on behind him.

The episode title is one of the best punk albums of all time, The Process of Belief, from Bad Religion. It's a shoutout to Ian, and it's also a reference to the way we get hung up on our beliefs about what makes us safer and how we know. More on that in a minute.

We've already had an episode on metrics, but Ian was driving this one, and even though it sounds like a lot of measurement talk and bashing on TRIR, it's really an episode about the things that take attention away from what matters. And bashing TRIR. Weirdly, Ian can get away with a lot more than Ron on that topic.

Matt Hollowell and the CSRA get name-dropped for actually making sense, too. Not sure this podcast was the publicity they want, but you get what you get sometimes.

The boys cover a lot of ground on this one: spiders, tailgate-to-person ratio, donuts and cheeseburgers, and whiskey. It moves almost as fast as Smelly's foot during Linoleum. And that's pretty fast.

Back to the episode. It's seriously good. Like, just some dudes in a bar talking about safety stuff good. Ian has a way of simplifying concepts, smashing them into a story, and bringing people along in a way that makes a lot of sense. This episode has got a lot of exactly that.

And the boys may have talked him into joining the Second Annual Punk Rock Safety Field Trip in LA this October.

DISCLAIMER: You probably shouldn't take anything in this podcast too seriously. Punk Rock Safety is for entertainment only. It's definitely not a replacement for professional or legal advice, and the fair amount of piss-taking, shithousery, and general ridiculousness ought to clue you into the fact that no one - and no organization - is endorsing (or un-endorsing, if that's a thing) any products, ideas, or other things. Except NOFX. We definitely endorse them.

Oh, and give your money to Punk Rock Saves Lives. They're a rad organization that works in mental health, addiction, and human rights. And they're awesome people who can use your help to keep on kicking ass at what they do.

https://www.punkrocksaveslives.org/

Let us know what you think at info@punkrocksafety.com or on our LinkedIn page.

Merch at punkrocksafetymerch.com

Even though they're not really into punk rock, Michael and Taylor from Imperial Oil are pretty badass (and the title of this episode is a NOFX song that Michael somehow remembered, so we'll take it). And they're movie stars in a video from Energy Safety Canada about the 4Ds from Learning Teams, Inc.

The Imperial boys are the first to tell you they aren't safety people - they're field ops guys just trying to solve some problems. Pretty fucking punk, right? Shit wasn't going the way it should, so they just figured out what would work. Not perfection, but progress. "If you just go in and do it, and you do it from a place of caring," people are going to be on board.

What the hell are the 4Ds Michael and Taylor are talking about (5 if you count Provan, because he's a D for sure)? They're questions about what folks see at work that are dumb, difficult, different, or dangerous.

Turns out talking to people about work does some other stuff too: like a 53% reduction in absenteeism and massive increases in time-on-tool productivity. Weird, right? Figuring out how work gets done and addressing it like an adult helps make work suck less.

For a lot of people, punk rock is a catalyst for being heard, for building family, and for expressing how they feel. For the teams at Imperial, using something like the 4Ds was a catalyst, too. Sometimes, it identified some problems that looked a whole lot like the supervisors and leaders in the organization. Those are tough conversations (like how bass players and ska bands are the problem a lot of times, too), but the boys took the conversations on and did the hard yards to figure out how to make leadership better.

Asking questions isn't the solution, though, and that's why you should check out the rest of the episode. Michael and Taylor have got a lot more to share about how they started learning about performance, labels, and leadership. They're pretty punk without even trying, and that's "The punkest mother fucker I ever did see. Ah hell, he's even more punk than me." Got a NOFX quote in there after all, punks. Shoulda gone for Propaghandi, since they're a Canadian band, but whatever.

The Energy Safety Canada video on the 4Ds

The Learning Teams, Inc. folks, home of the 4Ds, are here

DISCLAIMER: You probably shouldn't take anything in this podcast too seriously. Punk Rock Safety is for entertainment only. It's definitely not a replacement for professional or legal advice, and the fair amount of piss-taking, shithousery, and general ridiculousness ought to clue you into the fact that no one - and no organization - is endorsing (or un-endorsing, if that's a thing) any products, ideas, or other things. Except NOFX. We definitely endorse them.

Oh, and give your money to Punk Rock Saves Lives. They're a rad organization that works in mental health, addiction, and human rights. And they're awesome people who can use your help to keep on kicking ass at what they do.

https://www.punkrocksaveslives.org/

Let us know what you think at info@punkrocksafety.com or on our LinkedIn page.

Merch at punkrocksafetymerch.com