This episode is sponsored by Transcend, a veteran
-owned and operated performance optimization
company that I introduced recently as a sponsor
on this show. Well, since then I have actually
been using my products and I have had incredible
success. There was initial blood work that was
extremely detailed and based on that they offered
supplementation. So I began taking DHEA. BPC
-157 for inflammation based on the fact that
I've been a stuntman, a martial artist and a
firefighter my whole life. Lots of aches and
pains. Dihexa to help cognition after multiple
punches to the head and shift work and peptides.
Four months later they did a detailed blood work
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of the peptides because my body had responded
so well to just one of them that it was optimized
at that point. So I cannot speak highly enough
of the immense range of supplementation that
they offer, whether it's male health, female
health, peptides to boost your own testosterone,
which I would argue is needed by a lot of the
fire service, or whether it's exogenous testosterone
needed, especially after TBIs or advanced age.
Now, as I mentioned before, the other side of
this company is an altruistic arm called the
Transcend Foundation, which is putting veterans
and first responders through some of their protocols
free of charge. Now, Transcend are also offering
you, the audience, 10 % off their protocols.
And you can find that on jamesgearing .com under
the Products tab. And if you want to hear more
about Transcend and their story, listen to episode
808 with the founder, Ernie Colling. or go to
transcendcompany .com. This episode is sponsored
by TeamBuildr, yet another company that's doing
great things for the first responder community.
As a strength and conditioning coach myself,
who also trains tactical athletes, dissemination
of wellness information is one of the biggest
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to collate health and wellness data. It integrates
with wearables. And I think one of the most important
things is obviously it tracks. To me, it's imperative
that we as a profession start tracking our people
from day one and then over the full span of their
career, therefore catching potential wellness
issues and injuries before they happen. Now,
if you want to try Team Builder, they are offering
you, the audience of the Behind the Shield podcast,
a free 14 -day trial to experience all of the
features. And if you want to take a deeper dive
into TeamBuildr, listen to episode 1032 with
Melissa Mercado or go to teambuilder .com. And
I'll spell that to you because it's not as you
think, T -E -A -M -B -U -I -L -D -R .com. Welcome
to the Behind the Shield podcast. As always,
my name is James Gearing, and this week it is
my absolute honor to welcome on the show first
responder, movie stunt performer, stunt scientist,
and the man behind Team Wildfire, Steve Wolf.
Now, in this conversation, we discuss a host
of topics from his unique journey into the world
of Hollywood, pyrotechnics, special effects,
his work on the Discovery Channel. using science
to help the wildland community, podcasting, and
so much more. Now, before we get to this incredible
conversation, as I say every week, please just
take a moment, go to whichever app you listen
to this on, subscribe to the show, leave feedback,
and leave a rating. Every single five -star rating
truly does elevate this podcast, therefore making
it easier for others to find. And this is a free
library of well over 1 ,000 episodes now. So
all I ask in return is that you help share these
incredible men and women's stories so I can get
them to every single person on planet Earth who
needs to hear them. So with that being said,
I introduce to you Steve Wolf. Enjoy. Well, Steve,
I want to start by saying thank you so much for
taking the time and coming on the Behind the
Shield podcast today. Hey, thanks so much for
having me, James. And it was a pleasure having
you on the fire break. Yeah, and I appreciate
that, too. So where on planet Earth are we finding
you this afternoon? This afternoon, you'll find
me in Boulder, Colorado. But hopefully you won't
find me because I'm really not looking to be
found today. All right. Well, let's start at
the very beginning of your story. You've got
a really interesting background. A lot of your
story is similar to mine as well. Tell me where
you were born and tell me a little bit about
your family dynamic, what your parents did, how
many siblings. Sure. My port of entry to the
U .S. was the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Actually,
port of entry to the Earth, I suppose. So born
in Manhattan. Lived in New York City until I
was six. Then we moved to Switzerland. My dad
at the time was an international banker who turned
TV food reporter. And my mom was an art and antiques
appraiser. I'm the oldest of three boys. My middle
brother was the lead videographer for CNN for
many years. and my youngest brother has developed
innovative ways to use bamboo for housing furniture
and bicycles so everyone's doing something interesting
and my youngest brother and i work together fairly
frequently when we're doing technology innovation
and movie work so movie work to say that i've
worked as a special effects coordinator on numerous
feature films television shows music videos for
the last 30 i'll just say 30 plus years that
could be plus 15 who knows but um i worked for
tom cruise worked for james cameron working as
a pyrotechnician blowing things up and simultaneously
running a program called science in the movies
where i teach stem concepts to school -aged children
using movie stunts and special effects as the
examples So, James, this was interesting that
we had both worked as stunt performers in the
special effects field and entertainment and both
found ourselves moving across over into fire.
Absolutely. Well, I want to go back firstly to
Switzerland. I think it's always. I want to go
back to Switzerland too. It's so interesting
when people have been in different parts of the
world, especially if they live there, because
you can then glean, okay, what about that culture
did you like? Maybe other parts of the world
could learn from. And then conversely, were there
any things that were the opposite? So when you
reflect back, what was it like being a young
American growing up in Switzerland? It was really
great. A big change from New York City where
it was all buildings. This was a lot of open
space, a lot of sky, cows and green pastures,
unpolluted lakes. So that would be the first
thing that would strike you would be just simply
the geography of the area being extremely beautiful.
The air being clean and the Swiss being precise.
So as a fledgling scientist, I was very impressed
with how. accurately everything is handled in
Switzerland. When you go to pick up your shirts
at the dry cleaner, they're all perfectly folded.
They're all 62 .5 centimeters wide at the fold.
They pride themselves on that precision. When
I was in fourth grade, we took a trip to CERN,
which was the nuclear accelerator facility that
surrounds Geneva. That was the first time I saw
you know, massive scale scientific technology
at use for the purpose of discovering, I'm not
sure what, but I think they had an idea. And
it was the first time I heard the word Google.
And at the time it was simply referring to numerical
quantity, not a search engine, because I don't
think the internet was a thing then. When you
reflect back, was there any discussion or any
part of your education that told the story of
how Switzerland was able to remain neutral when
war was all around it in the 40s? Well, largely
because not only was war all around it, but mountains
were all around it. And unless you planned some
type of an aerial attack, Switzerland has the
natural barriers of mountains all around it.
The Romans were the first to find out how difficult
it would be to take Switzerland as they tried
moving from Italy across the Alps. Until the
tunnel was put in, there really wasn't an easy
land route into Switzerland. So that's one of
the things that helped maintain neutrality. The
other one is that wealthy people from around
the world have their money stored there and they
don't want their money screwed with. So if you
mess with Switzerland, you're going to be messing
with a lot of very powerful, wealthy people that
you can't even imagine. That's interesting and
kind of sad in a way that you can, in theory,
buy your way out of a war. Well, they simply
don't take sides. I don't know that they buy
their way out. They just don't participate. They
have amazing chocolate, great watches, clean
mountain air, delicious food. So what's to go
to war over? If other people have differences
and they can't settle them amicably, that's their
problem, as the Swiss would think. And we're
going to go back and eat some chocolate and some
cheese. When I think of precision, I lived in
Japan for 15 months. And again, very precise
people. And when you look at a lot of the industry
over there, it is their excellence when it comes
to attention to detail and diligence, I think
that creates a superior product in many areas.
What was it about the Swiss upbringing that created
the same ethos? For me, I attended the Lycée
des Nations and then the École Internationale
in Geneva. And the ethos there is a combination
of forward -looking progress, attention to detail
and respect for the past. And I think that the
sense of place that you have in Europe with regard
to time is very different than in many other
places. When you walk around Europe, you know,
you could be living in a building from the 1600s
as we did when we first moved to Geneva. We were
in the Vieilleville and you look out over the
rooftops and you realize that, you know, you're
the 20th generation to live in that building
or the 50th generation to walk down those streets
or the cobblestones. And so there's a sense of
respect that you get for the area as a function
of your little time in it, who you inherited
it from, and who you're leaving it to. The farmhouse
I grew up in dated back to the 1600s. It was
crazy. And that was just my house. It didn't
seem like anything out of the ordinary. So it's
amazing when you go back home to Europe. I mean,
there's so much history there. And it's interesting
because when Americans say that, they'll be like,
oh, we don't have much history there, here. And
then I'm sure the Native Americans are looking
around going, wait a second, what was that you
just said? Right. Well, unfortunately, our culture
is very dismissive of other cultures, different
cultures, foreign cultures, and Native cultures.
So in the United States, we tend to simply look
forward. Here's where we are and here's where
we're going. And without a sense of where we've
been, we lack a place, a sense of place and time.
Where do we fit in to the human story? And one
of the consequences of looking backwards and
seeing where you came from is it enhances an
awareness. That there's a future going forward
and that the decisions we make are going to impact
our children and our grandchildren. And this
was something actually that was the native cultures
here in the U .S. were quite known for is the
concept of the seventh generation, that every
decision we make is done weighing the impacts
on seven generations forward. And I'm really
not sure why they excluded the importance of
the eighth and ninth generation, but. We don't
even look forward to one generation. So that
would be a huge improvement in our culture. Where
do you think that comes from? It's interesting.
Not only you in the science world, you had a
childhood in Switzerland, but I've reflected
on this a lot recently. We are starting to see
somewhat of a full circle where we're finally
acknowledging ancient wisdom and whether it's
stoicism being extremely popular in literature
and podcasts now, whether it's realizing that
not. covering your foods with chemicals and feeding
your animals hormones and antibiotics is actually
much healthier for the human being but in in
medicine especially which is obviously my world
there's been a lot of arrogance like if you're
not doing it the the 2020 way then you know you
don't know what you're talking about and there's
a disregard through some eyes of a millennia
of human wisdom and all these things that we've
learned so what is it about some of these kind
of entities that have created such a disdain
from the very knowledge we should be learning
from? I can't tell you what's created the disdain
for it. I can tell you that I don't participate
in it. Humans are about 200 ,000 years old in
our relatively similar form. And we've been taking
notes along the way. And that accumulated wisdom
is... is held both within our bodies and our
minds and in our cumulative knowledge bodies.
When we talk about science, people think that
we have to have invented something new for it
to be valid. When most science has already been
proven, the laws of physics are the same in every
part of the galaxy that we know of. And so much
thought has been put into science by people who
were a lot less busy than we are. People who
had a lot more time to contemplate, to ponder,
to really think about the universe, about science,
about humans, about our place here, about health.
And much of that wisdom was discarded with a
type of a not invented here mentality. You know,
as we discover new things, we're finding that
the source of them is often in antiquity. So
when we go out to look for new cancer drugs,
where do we go? We go to the Yumba Indians in
the Amazon. We look at what their diets are.
How do they treat things? How have they preserved
this collective body of wisdom, experiential
knowledge? What gave us the idea that, you know,
that if we ate the bark of a particular tree,
it would cure a headache, right? That's where
aspirin was right now. Bayer didn't come up with
that. You know, that this was something that
had been developed through hundreds and thousands
of years of evolutionary knowledge. You know,
you ate this thing, it killed you. You ate that
other thing, it cured your stomach ache. You
ate that other thing, it took away your headache.
You ate too much of that thing, you got too fat,
right? So we've learned this, but we've largely
discarded a lot of that knowledge. And that's
unfortunate because, unfortunately, what we found
now is there's no money to be made in keeping
people healthy. We don't have a health care system.
We have an illness treatment system. And so if
you don't present with illnesses, you're not
a financial opportunity to our health care system
as it exists in the U .S. where in many countries
the focus is on health preservation, health enhancement,
health maintenance. And here we largely lack
a concept of what healthy is. Health is not simply
the absence of illness. So there's a huge chasm
there to be forged with regard to how we think
about health. Absolutely. Well, I've always said
this. I mean, this is at its origin. The country
I came from had national health care. And so
back then, when you have a tax based health care
system, purely tax based, that then creates a
real desire to make your nation as healthy as
possible because the healthier they are, the
less they use the health care. And it's now for
newborns and the elderly and traffic accidents
and, God forbid, cancers. But then you look at
the American model. And just like you said, I
say this all the time, there's no profit in healthy
or dead people. But if you can keep people in
between, you've got a drug addict for life. And
this is not a conspiracy theory. It's just pure
economics. We have a profit -based healthcare
system. So the more sick people we have, and
we've seen this because 70 % of our population
is overweight or obese, the greater percentage
of the pie that you can keep on these drugs or
need these surgeries. the more money your company
makes. So until we have a national awakening
on the very things that you just talked about,
it's just going to get worse and worse and worse.
And then alongside that, we have a national security
crisis because now you've only got 30 % of the
people that are actually even able to put on
a uniform and defend this country now. So it's
a massive, massive conversation that needs to
be had. Well, very much. If we were to prioritize
enemies by the degree to which they threaten
American lives, Domestic diet would probably
be far higher than the threats posed by any foreign
national entity. We kill 600 ,000 Americans through
heart disease every year. Companies that are
selling billions of dollars of statins every
year have no interest in funding the messaging
that if you were to eat less meat, you'd have
less heart disease. So messaging costs money.
And money is paid for by things that are profitable
and treating diseases profitable. The thing is
that it's not sustainable because we can't continue
to spend $40 billion a year on cardiac care,
ignoring the fact that 99 % of that is completely
avoidable as a function of diet and lifestyle
changes. Now, I understand that doctors are largely
dissuaded by their patients' behavior. from preaching
nutrition because people simply don't listen.
I knew a doctor who informed a diabetes patient
that she was going to lose her feet. And they
asked, well, why didn't you tell her to change
her diet? And he said, I've said that so many
times, people stop listening, I just stop saying
it. So people have accepted illness as a chronic
state. And the healthcare industry's not done
much to change that. With regard to wildfire,
the threat is largely airborne. That wildfire
smoke is 15 times more dangerous to health than
ordinary pollutants, than the smog that people
breathe in large cities, because it contains
heavy metals and it contains... large quantities
of things that we just normally don't breathe.
Like as a mobile species, when an area was threatened,
we left. When there was no food, we left. When
it was on fire, we left. Well, now we have permanent
homes. So when there's a nearby fire, we don't
leave. We just close the windows and hope that
we can get a decent HEPA filter to protect us.
But while that may work for people who do have
the luxury of staying at home, it doesn't work
for the firefighters on the line. They're exposed
to toxins at levels that really are impermissible.
And that's with both wildfire and structural
firefighting. You know better than anyone, James,
what the death rates are from chemical exposure
to agents that people were told were safe. We're
justified by saying, well, what do you want to
do, lose the whole city? A few firefighter deaths
is nothing compared to losing the whole city.
Well, if you're a firefighter or that firefighter's
family, it's the worst thing that could happen.
Absolutely. Well, speaking of health, I just
want to go back to your journey into the film
and the special effects world. When you were
young, this could be the States and or Switzerland,
what were you playing as far as sports and exercise
back then? Well, that's a great question. I don't
know if you've seen a movie called The Boys in
Company C. It was the predecessor to Full Metal
Jacket, even starring the same people, although
it got far less credit because it was an independent
movie rather than a studio film. But in that
movie, which is about a bunch of young kids from
the States who are drafted and being sent to
Vietnam, one of their drill instructors tells
them that he believes that people are influenced
by the games they play as children. He said that
in the United States, they play baseball and
you play from a fixed position and you have a
fixed series of sequences that you perform in
order to score a home run. Whereas people in
Europe and Asia play soccer, which was a fluid
and dynamic game where wherever the ball is,
that's where the game is. And you're constantly...
In a new game every minute, the ball is here,
it's one game, the ball is there, it's a new
game. Right now you're not engaged, the next
minute you are engaged. And that type of fluid
dynamic training that comes from playing games
like soccer creates people who are much more
adaptable to change because that's what they
grew up with. Once you've had your at -bat in
baseball, you know you're not up until the next
whatever. nine plays or something. Whereas in
soccer, you could be out in left field and there's
nothing happening. And then all of a sudden,
boom, the actions come to you. So I think that
that type of early experiences with fluid dynamic
games are really important for people who are
in tactical situations. Because this is one of
the things that, you know, that kills firefighters
is like, well, you know, the fire's inside, I'm
outside. Yeah, that's fine until the facade collapses
on you. And now it's a whole new ballgame. or
the transitions that we're seeing between structure
fires or urban fires and wildland fires. Well,
now with 40 % of the homes being in the wildland
-urban interface, a structure fire can quickly
become a wildfire, and a wildfire can quickly
create a structure -to -structure conflagration,
which we unfortunately call or mistakenly call
wildfires. Downtown Los Angeles is not. a wildland
environment. It's an urban environment. Even
worse, it's a suburban environment. And when
a fire triggers through there, we categorize
the type of fire based on what started it, which
is really not helpful information. So if a nearby
wildland fire started it, we say, well, a wildfire
is driving through the city. If a trash fire
started it, we don't characterize it. We just
say it's a fire. But it really doesn't matter
what the ignition source is when you have a structure
to structure fire, that's what you're fighting.
So when you call it a wildfire, that makes people
want to respond to it with wildfire tactics,
personnel and equipment, which are completely
unsuited to structure to structure complication.
So this leaves people trying to fight a fire
that they have misclassified. and therefore approach
incorrectly with the results that you see. You
know, hundreds and hundreds of thousands of homes
lost. Because the structure fire, people are
thinking, well, it's not a building fire. The
wildland people are thinking, well, it's not
really a wildland fire. So nature wins by lobbing
the ball right between the two areas of responsibility
and each thinking, oh, I thought you had that
shot. So we really need a new approach to...
It's a conflagration attack, which should largely
be focused on prevention. However, I lived in
the States long enough to know that the United
States is not a prevention culture. There's no
money for prevention, whether it's health care,
fire prevention, anything else. But there is
unlimited money for response. So unfortunately,
I think we're going to have a better chance of
dealing with these fires if we developed. better
response capabilities simply because i think
that prevention while it may be a better choice
is just not a direction that americans are going
to go in people won't go outside and pick up
their leaves they won't clean the gutters they
won't clear that zero to five foot space They
won't participate in programs actively with their
neighbors to create safer communities. These
are all things that community risk reduction
people know are effective or would be effective,
but such an uphill battle to get people to change
their habits and be proactive and very little
funding for that. So that's where we are, James.
In your research, being worldly and again in
the science, space, are there areas in the world
where they are able to to story tell the importance
of that? And there is a lot more community involvement
that results in less loss of homes and life during
some of these wildfires. You know, Europe is
certainly more advanced on that. If you've ever
driven or flown across the United States, you'll
see we have vast areas. of unused space. A fire
in Phoenix is not going to impact a fire in Flagstaff
because things are so spread out. So you might
lose a city, but you're not going to lose a nation.
In Europe, the villages are very close together.
They're stacked fairly contiguously. The buildings
are close together. And so when a fire starts,
if you don't stop it, you'll not only lose that
city, you'll lose all the cities downwind of
it. So they're very proactive in terms of what
they can do to prevent fire from starting and
spreading. And they're very proactive in how
they respond to fires as well. So there are certainly
models out there for how that can be done. But
necessity being the most important teacher, the
lesson's gone to the people who need it, and
it has been lost on the people who didn't need
it. In the United States, we haven't needed that
so much because of the space between areas. Well,
we're going to get to the technology that you
developed in a little bit. What was funny on
this, going back to the ancient ways, I had Jason
Ramos on the show and he's a smoke diver and
also developer as well. And one of the biggest
innovations that he said that he's seen recently
is the use of donkeys. I'm sorry, goats, to literally
graze the areas that would have been in a high
fuel load. And again, now here we are circling
back to ancient times where I'm sure whether
it was Native Americans or other places in the
world that they, of course, would have, you know,
if that was used as grazing, then they would
know they would be relatively safe from a wildfire
risk back then. Right. And so if you were to
look at the budget for, let's say, California.
It continues to have the worst fires in the U
.S. How much money was spent on one firehawk
helicopter versus a goat grazing program? Goat
grazing is still considered an experimental thing
that's done by a fringe community and not at
all funded. And yet, you know, there's $30 million
when they want to buy a new helicopter. which
is grounded, by the way, during wind -driven
fires, which is when you need the most. So they've
invested the most money in the technology that's
the most frail on game day. Absolutely. Well,
let's dive into the movie world, and then we'll
kind of circle around to the first responder
professions. When you were in the school age,
were you dreaming about going into special effects
on the screen, or was there something else in
your mind first? As into photography and first
responder stuff, I worked as a medic at the New
York City Marathon. I was a photographer, worked
at a camera store, very interested in how we
document the world around us. Because photographs
allow you to preserve an instant in time and
then to study it. Whereas a continuous flow of
information allows for very little study. and
therefore very little opportunity to learn from
it so i was fascinated by that um and and of
course i had never stopped nurturing the five
-year -old boys infatuation with fire that that
most boys could relate to so i had been given
some early advice from my dad who he said if
you want to be happy figure out what you like
to do first and then figure out how to get paid
for it well My favorite toys were my chemistry
set. And as far as I knew, its only purpose was
for blowing things up. And then there were all
the other chemicals that we threw out. But I
got suspended from high school for a week once
for doing the unauthorized experiment in the
fume hood, where I was mixing sodium hydroxide
with aluminum powder and then squirting it with
water to set it on fire. And I thought that was
fascinating, the idea that you could start a
fire with a squirt gun. It was worth five days
of dismissal or whatever that was, suspension,
in order to see that lesson. And the capability
of fire always fascinated me and eventually led
me to become a pyrotechnician in the film industry.
So walk me through that path. I went to drama
school. Very long story, very short. I went because
I was... trying to be close to my girlfriend
at the time. So I got into drama school. I am
hands down the worst actor on planet earth, but
I found myself, I was good at the stage fight
and I was a martial artist. So the stunt side
started to kind of form. Um, but when I, I wasn't
a stunt man yet, I was just a actor, a terrible
actor with good sword skills. So then I got into
the real world and then it's that double -edged
sword of, you need an agent to get a job. You
need a job to get an agent. So how, and then
it was, you know, it was maddening. It was a
spinning wheel until I found the world of stunts.
How did you find yourself getting into the entertainment
industry with that specific set of skills? Well,
I was in college. I went to Columbia University
in New York where I studied Shakespeare and 18th
century British literature and freelanced as
an EMT working on movie sets. I had started a
company called Cinematics, providing paramedics
and related medical services. two movie sets
where dangerous stunts were being performed.
So when they're doing a high fall airbag jump
or they're doing a full body burn or a motorcycle
stunt, production companies will, out of abundance
of safety and legal requirement, have an ambulance
standing by so that if people get hurt, they
can be treated quickly. Treatment time is the
difference between success or lack of success
in the outcomes of an accident. So I had bought
a small ambulance, used it on sets in New York
City. And many times I would look at the stunt
that they were setting up. And it was obvious
that some critical aspect of physics had been
ignored. That if you plan to jump your motorcycle
up this ramp because you want to land it inside
this window and you fail to account for the parabolic
nature of. trajectories as a function of gravity,
you can't simply line it up with the window and
that's where you're going to go. So I would occasionally
suggest to the stunt department, hey, if you
move that ramp back a little bit, then you'll
catch the downward arc and you'll end up in the
window instead of near the window in the bricks.
And that was frequently greeted with things like,
hey, let's agree on a division of labor. We'll
do the stunts. You drive the ambulance. So I
said, all right, fine. I'll see you in the back
of the ambulance in 10 minutes. When you hit
the wall. Yeah. And invariably, off they go,
take off, boom, two knees slamming into the windowsill,
two broken legs in the back of the ambulance.
And eventually, I was able to convince producers
that if they would let me apply a little bit
more science and a little bit less cowboyism,
we could make filmmaking less expensive by reducing
the number of injuries. And so that... created
an opportunity for me to begin work as a stunt
coordinator. And then I found out really that
stunt people are really the human payload at
the end of a physics experiment that's largely
set up by the special effects department and
that there was more science and less cowboyism
in the effects department. So I transferred over
and started to work my way up again from a special
effects assistant to a special effects coordinator.
largely with the help of a mentor. When I realized
I wanted to do special effects, I started reading
the credits of movies to see, well, who are the
people in this business? And there was one name
that had popped up repeatedly, a gentleman named
Gary Zeller. He invented something called Zell
Gel. And Zell Gel is the aqueous liquid gel that
stunt people put on their bodies when they light
themselves on fire. to act as a heat sink to
catch heat so that you don't burn up. And he
actually sold a lot of this to fire departments
too, because in structural fires, people would
burn their ears frequently. And they found that
if they put a little bit of this Zell gel, fire
stunt gel on, they could prevent that. So I called
Gary out of the blue, you know, on a landline
telephone. And after having him looked him up
in the white pages, these are things that are
no longer concepts. But I called Gary and I said,
hey, Gary, this is Steve Wolf. You don't know
me, but I'm a big fan of your work. And starting
next Monday, I would like to come be your apprentice,
carry your bags, help you wire up whatever you're
wiring up, get your coffee. Whatever you need
done, I'm there to help and I'm not looking for
a job. You don't have to pay me. I just want
the experience of working with you. And he said,
fine, I'll be in the city next week. We're going
to be setting up an episode of True Blue. We're
going to launch the largest fireworks show ever
launched inside an apartment building in New
York City, all directed to the outside. It's
supposed to be a fireworks warehouse explosion.
So we're going to be wiring this up. If you have
a hot melt glue gun, bring it. We're going to
be going through a lot of stuff. So I showed
up and kept showing up. And after a couple of
weeks, Gary put me on payroll. We eventually
formed a company together, producing special
effects intensive ads and sequences for movies.
We worked for Bruce Willis. We had a lot of good
things going on. Because I was able to explain
to Gary that... 200 people who just learned how
to shoot, you know, use a camera or a sound machine
filming this thing that you've spent 30 years
learning how to do. You should be paid more than
any of them. They're there. You can find another
camera guy. You can find another sound guy. You
can't find another pyro guy who knows how to
make this effect happen. So I helped him raise
his prices and we started working together. And
then one day he got a phone call from Tom Cruise's
production company. They were going to do a movie
called The Firm shooting in Memphis. And he answered
the phone and he just handed it to me. And he
said, this one's for you. And that was my first
job as the special effects coordinator. So that
was after three years of interning. He thought
that I was ready to do that. And he was ready
to get out of the business because. You can only
spend so much of your life trying to create entertainment
for people. If you have legitimate science chops,
eventually you want to use them for something
good, not just to watch people shoot each other
up in a movie for an hour and a half. So he moved
off into working in environmental science, developing
polymeric roof coatings for... you know, better
UV rejection on structures, figuring out how
to use the 250 ,000 tires that we generate every
day in America for housing, you know, and a lot
of things that were good that, you know, I had
to get my career in first before I could turn
around to doing something good. But he really
created that opportunity for me. And that was
such an important lesson. that I think for other
people who want to know, how do you get into
the business? How do you get your break? You
make it by showing up. If you keep showing up
and you're not a pain in the neck and you provide
some value to the people around you, they'll
hire you. You're not going to get into the film
industry by going to film school. You're not
going to get into stunt work by going to stunt
school. People hire people who they know, like,
and trust. If you don't take the time to get
to know people and have them like you and trust
you, it's going to be a hard shot at getting
in. Absolutely. That's how I got my first stunt
job. I was traveling with my girlfriend at the
time and we were in Australia and Universal Studios
Japan was looking for everyone. They were opening
a theme park from scratch and it was about showing
up. happened to have the skill set, but also
look like Robert Patrick from T2. So between
those two, you know, that was it. I didn't have
stunt school. I had martial arts. I had stunt
training as far as the sword work, but that really
wasn't needed for this particular role. You just
needed to be, you know, a physical actor and
have the right face basically. So yeah, if I'd
never shown up for that interview, I probably
would never have become a stunt man in the first
place. Right. Yeah. This is something that's
really been hard for me to explain to people
that Jobs are not awarded over the internet.
Jobs aren't awarded to people who email their
resume in. They're given to people to show up
and put their face in front of the other face.
You talked about, you know, you need an agent
to get work and you can't get work if you don't
have an agent. The catch -22 there, you know,
I got acting and stunt work in New York in my
late 20s by putting my face in the agent's office
every single day. print your headshots, print
your resume, walk out there. And if you're standing
in front of the person when their phone rings,
hey, we need a guy to do X, Y, Z. Hey, Wolf,
you want to try doing this? I just got a call,
right? That's how you get the work. They're not
going to go through their Rolodex or their files
and happen to say, oh, look, this guy would be
really great for that. Like people are always
doing the easiest thing and the easiest things
to put the person to work who's standing right
in front of you. Talk to me about. the element
of being unorthodox as well when i started the
podcast you know there were even though it was
pretty early days it was you know eight and a
half years ago now but um yeah you could go on
there and say this is how to start a podcast
this is how to do this this is how to do that
and i looked at it and go yeah i'm just going
to do it my way and you know it's either going
to work or it's not going to work but you know
i know that i want to do long form you know there
was even then they were talking about if you
just do short ones you can put all this sponsorship
all over it and i'm like well i'm not trying
to make money from it i'm trying to help people.
So it's not about short, choppy, Insta -famous
things. It's about a long, deep conversation.
But it ended up working. It became unique. And
I think even with the books and then the show
that I'm getting ready to make, and I'm being
very, very optimistic with that sentence, but
it will happen. It's going to be something that
people haven't seen before because it's coming
from a different perspective. It sounds like
you've had that element in the way that you've
viewed everything from the initial stunt world
to the innovation that you've just come up with.
So what was it that made you stay your ground
and be the quote unquote weirdo in that space?
Well, I preface this by saying not to be dismissive
of everything else in the world, but most things
are done in a pretty crappy way. But people who
don't put a lot of thought into them, this is
simply true, right? And for almost any problem
that you want to tackle, there's probably a better
way to solve it than the way it's being solved
now. So I remember in 1992, I saw a news story.
Tom Brokaw was talking about how the United States
had come in 19th out of 20th in international
science testing standards. And I was incredulous.
You know, as a six -year -old, I stared at my
television. I watched a man walk on the moon,
plant that American flag. And I was like, how
can the country that put a man on the moon be
failing basic science and math? And that really
irked me. And I decided that I wanted to change,
you know, how education was conducted in science.
And so people would say, oh, well, you're going
to have to go get a degree in education. Then
you're going to have to get a master's in science
education, early science teaching. And I thought,
well, that's just being part of the system that
doesn't work. Kids haven't gotten stupider. There's
been no de -evolution. So if kids are failing
science, it's because the schools are failing
to teach it to them in a way that engages them.
So I started this program called Science in the
Movies that I ran for upwards of 20 years, where
I took six movie stunts and special effects,
which included lighting myself on fire, hanging
the principal from the ceiling, filling the gymnasium
with smoke, burning down a house, and all these
things that I knew. would engage kids. And I
used that as the basis for teaching them the
science, the physics and the chemistry that makes
these types of stunts and special effects possible.
And, you know, within a decade, I had won the
science teacher of the year award twice. Because
this method, which had nothing to do with mainstream
education, it was strictly an assembly that came
in to schools was working. I was getting a lot
of checks from schools in Texas where I was living
at the time, which prompted the comptroller for
the state of Texas to do an audit and say, why
are all these companies writing checks to science
in the movies? What's going on with that? And
so she called me up and she said, what are you
doing? Why are you getting all these checks?
And I said, well, I'm just doing a science assemblies.
She didn't tell me about it and told her what
the shows were about. She did her research and
she found that. In any two side -by -side schools,
the one at which I had spoken was scoring 30
% higher in their science exams. And it was simply
the impact of one hour of inspiration. So you
don't have to have amazing science education
every single day. What you have to do is inspire
people to want to learn on their own. And the
impact of that is far greater than the impact
that you could have in a diluted, long campaign.
When I thought back to my own high school years,
I remember very little of it, but I remember
some of the speakers who came and did assemblies.
And that really convinced me that the presence
of someone who takes their time to come to your
school because they're so excited about what
they're doing and presents an assembly is really
powerful. And so that was really the genesis
of starting the Science in the Movies program,
which brought me all around the world to Saudi
Arabia, to Serbia, to keynote for the World Science
Festival. And it was based on the idea that not
every kid has to invent the light bulb. You only
need one Thomas Edison for everyone to have light.
And so science is not going to be everyone's
thing. But if you can reach a few people and
inspire them. To pursue that journey of learning
how the world works, that could have monumental
impact for everyone. So working as a pyrotechnician,
people say, what have you lit on fire? I believe
that the most important thing that you could
ignite is a child's imagination. Because once
that imagination takes off, especially with the
resources kids have access to now on the Internet.
Once they're curious about something, they will
learn more about it than their teachers could
ever teach. And they can become experts in fields
that didn't exist. What do people make billions
of dollars on now? Search. If you asked me in
high school, what is search? You know, it's a
game you play at a party, right? Hide and go
seek. So, but you know, but because of Sergey
Brin and his... His friends had this fascination
with this thing. They created something that
became the most dominant economic and knowledge
force on the planet. So as much as humanity has
done, there's still vastly more to do. There
are entire realms of knowledge yet to be explored,
to be invented. And going at it as an outsider
gives you a unique advantage because you're not
coming up with the same answer that everyone
else came up with. I would never go to an engineering
school to have them solve a problem because they
all took the same classes, they all learned to
solve a problem the same way, and they're all
coming up with the same non -functional answers.
So I think you're much better off working with
people who are outside the system that have a
unique perspective because it's that unique idea
that's going to be different. I read something
yesterday on LinkedIn about a... put out by a
marketing girl who does marketing for a company
in Israel. And she said, different is better
than better. And I thought that was really interesting
that when you're asked, you know, why is your
product better? The answer is that it's different,
that there are many ways to solve problems. Some
of them might be better. But the fact that you're
doing something different is really as important.
Because as environmental conditions change, we
don't know what's going to work. Is it better
to be tall or short? I don't know. Depends what
the food source is, how tall the grass is, and
how much food is available. If you live in a
place where food is scarce, it's better to be
short. If you live in a place where you have
to run from the animals, it's better to be tall.
But we don't know what the environmental factors
are going to be that decide what's the more survivable
trait. until the environmental pressure is exerted.
And it's the same thing knowledge -wise. We don't
know what the best answer to a problem is going
to be because we don't know what form the question
is going to take. So as we look forward to things
like wildfire, we know that the way we used to
approach that problem is not the way we're going
to successfully approach it in the future. What
will be the best answer? The best way is try
a lot of things and see what works. Absolutely.
It's interesting, again, with that different
perspective. This is what I've been trying to
do in the fire service is getting to look at
sleep deprivation and the work week. When it
comes to cancer, it's all focused on carcinogens
in our gear from the fires. And when it comes
to mental health, it's, oh, it's what they saw.
They had that call. And they're completely ignoring
the fact that, you know, that. If you make the
human resilient, they can actually deal with
a lot of stuff. But if you break them down through
sleep deprivation, we have these 56, 80 -hour
work weeks if we're forced to work another shift.
And it's not my work. I'm not a sleep medicine
guru. I didn't discover this. I just found it
on someone else's podcast and realized this is
what we need to be talking about. But just like
you said, it's different. And because of that,
my profession is so resistant to something being
different, whether it's a helmet or whether it's
a shift. But that's our biggest enemy because,
you know, as I said, ego is the enemy. We have
to have the humility to go. Things have changed.
Things are not the same as they used to be, you
know, 80 years ago when we were just responding
to maybe one fire a week. Now we're out there
constantly. So taking a step back and going and
considering that different way of looking at
it is how we move forward. Yeah. I mean, our
body has recognized that a cancer cell doesn't
belong there and does its best job to attack
it. George Carlin had a very funny routine about
the immense military -like capabilities of the
immune system. But you lose all that benefit
when you don't have the sleep that's necessary
for the immune system to work properly. And that
leaves you vulnerable to a host of illnesses.
Absolutely. Well, I want to get to the wildfire
side, but just before we do, we kind of stopped
at the movie. What was some of the most memorable
stunts, special effects that you worked on in
that space? Let's see. We burnt a house down
for several. Burning houses down is fun, especially
when you have the challenge that it's a historic
house and you can't actually burn it down. Then
you have to figure out how do you insulate the
house from the inside, project flames out through
the windows. create the illusion that you're
burning a house down. Fire stunts have always
been very interesting. It led me to believe that
a stunt person is a scientist who believes so
strongly in their theory that they're willing
to risk their own life to prove it. And this
is the case whether you're jumping off a building
into an airbag, understanding the physics of
deceleration and the human limits of deceleration,
the difference between and splat, exposure to
heat. It's one thing to invent a chemical that
you think is going to act as an insulative barrier
between you and the fuels. It's another thing
to put the fuels on your body and light yourself
on fire. As an astronomer, you could be vastly
wrong about the speed at which the universe is
expanding and still maintain your professorship.
If you're a stunt person, you're wrong about
the thermal dynamics of a given insulator or
fuel, you get burned to death. So the consequences
of being wrong are pretty high, both for yourself
and the people you work with. But that doesn't
mean that you aren't eager to try them. One of
the real challenges in the film industry has
been sameness, right? We want bullet hits. We
want the car to flip. We want this. They want
the same thing over and over again. They want
what's new, but they don't know what the new
thing is. So the challenge for me was to not
get bored by doing the same thing the same way.
And this led me to want to do the same stunt
or special effect in a different manner every
time. to make unavailable to me the answers I'd
come up with before, but rather to use the knowledge
I'd gained from those experiences to make it
better every time. And I have a very short attention
span for repetitive tasks. So when the task itself,
when the outcome is repetitive, the method has
to be novel. And that's been great because it
led me to discover a lot of new, technologies
in science that could then be applied to movies.
And just to clarify that, movie stunts and special
effects is not magic and it's not machismo or
anything like that. A special effects coordinator
is basically a handyman who happens to work on
a movie set and knows how to do stuff. A stunt
person is a professional athlete who happens
to use their athletic in the service of the entertainment
industry. So there's nothing miraculous about
this. You know, you can't tell somebody, oh,
could do a stunt for me. Like there's a lot of
thought that goes, that'd be like telling an
architect, oh, build a building for me. Okay,
well, it's not that easy. There's a lot that
goes into it. A lot of foresight and planning
and materials and participation with a lot of
other people. But always wanting to do something
a new way has been really useful, particularly
now as it applies to the way I envision wildfire
management. What about near misses? We've had
some tragedies on movie sets over the last, you
know, since the beginning of stunts, really.
But when you reflect now, were there any near
misses where, you know, you realize that someone
narrowly escaped something horrendous? Yeah,
I was one of those people. I was standing by
a car. The car got sideswiped. The transpo people
hadn't put the car in park. They'd left it in
neutral. And so when it got sideswiped, it came
right for me. And I fell to the ground and curled
up and let the car go over me, you know, hiding
between the wheels. But everyone who saw that
thought that I had been run over. Could not understand
how I got up after. But, you know, I experienced
that. I forgot what it's called, but the distortion
of time that happens in an emergency where everything
seems to slow down and that buys you the time
to figure out how you're going to get yourself
out of this situation. So I've had those and
you'll learn a lot from them. Mostly you learn.
to slow down and think through what you're doing
much more before you do it. You know, there's
a, on your keyboard, you have a one and you have
an asterisk. And I've seen patches that are composed
of the one and the asterisk. And it's just, it's
a reminder. You only have one asterisk. So. It
took me a moment. Yeah. Did you watch The Fall
Guy, the new film? Loved it. Loved it. I watched
the show when I was little and that absolutely
had me wanting to be a stuntman, but I was on
a farm in England at that time. It wasn't the
natural path to become a stuntman, but then obviously
I ended up getting into the industry. And it's
kind of sad because as we progress through, you
see now CGI. being used for so much and you've
got these stunt robots that you know fall hilariously
and fail um but there's no substitute at times
of course there's it's great if you can you know
completely reduce the risk of someone if they're
doing you know some of these descender falls
and things that are replacing a traditional high
fall but there's definitely a detriment too on
screen and the moment a cgi is recognized it
pulls you it snatches you from the story then
yes and i loved the fact that the fall guy paid
tribute to the original stunts and you had, you
know, this record -breaking car jump and this
incredible high fall. So what is your perspective
of that line between the danger of a real stunt
and maybe the kind of the lag in technology to
truly, truly replace it at the moment? Yeah,
well, it's certainly not anywhere near ready
to replace it, except in a jarring way. uh that
pulls you out of the story so i don't think we're
in any danger of that but you know people said
why why do you why are you blowing up cars in
real life why aren't you just doing that with
cgi say well because i could show up on set at
eight o 'clock i could blow up that car 30 times
before lunch and by noon the director can choose
the best part of each explosion and piece it
together and they're done it would take more
than three hours just Explain to the CGI people
what you're trying to do, let alone set it up
all on the computers, let alone two weeks on
a render farm where it's rendering every frame
and every pixel. So it's not only not an efficient
way to do things, it's not a good way to do them.
It takes a long time. And then if the director
doesn't like it, three more weeks back on the
render farm. Really, do we need to use computers
for pixelating flame progression or blades of
grass moving? It's silliness. Point a fan at
the grass and film it blowing. So the problem
largely is really as a function, as you were
speaking earlier about the games kids play when
they grow up, that you and I grew up playing
physical games, learning how the world... works
from a physics standpoint and how we interrelate
with it. But now people grow up and all their
games are played with their thumbs. And so their
bias is to think that software is the solution
to everything. But you couldn't figure out how
to change an outlet or how to lift something
with a pulley. There's so many basic science,
physics concepts that are so... necessary every
day that kids have no idea how they work. I am
absolutely sure that if I brought a pulley into
a classroom with kids right now, they'd have
no idea what it was. Let alone that Archimedes
invented it 2 ,500 years ago and what its function
is. I said, well, you might need this if you
wanted to change the engine in a car. And they're
like, well, why would I need to do that? Just
bring it back to the Tesla shop. We needed to
be a firefighter. You're going to rescue someone
off the side of a building. Right, exactly. You
need to understand what the tensile strength
properties of the rope are, what the flammability
properties of the rope are, what your own capabilities
are. A lot, right? A lot of things that we think
about that really aren't largely taught. But
I think that kids who do have the benefit of
being taught this way of thinking and how the
physical world works. are in a pinch at a great
advantage over the rest. Well, speaking of that,
one more area before we go to the wild land specifically.
I know you did a show on the Discovery Channel
as well. So you've done this kind of in -person
on the school side. How did you find yourself
in the kind of pseudo myth -busting world teaching
this on Discovery Channel? I've done several
series for Discovery. I did a show called Houdini's
Last Secret. where we recreated four of Houdini's
most famous escapes, physically built them to
the best of our knowledge, replicating what Houdini
had created, and then had a magician escape from
them. And that was interesting because if we
don't really know how Houdini did these things,
all we could do is our best guess and solve these
problems the way we would. How would we just
figure out how to get immersed in a tank of water
and escape? Catch a bullet with your teeth or
these things that he did, which were illusions,
but we had to figure out how to do them our way.
That was fun science. I did a show called What
Destroyed the Hindenburg, where the Discovery
Channel gave us the budget to replicate three
10th scale Hindenburgs. And when normally we
would say 10th scale, that's got to be tiny.
A 10th scale Hindenburg is 14 feet tall and 80
feet long. Oh, wow. I was thinking much more
than that. Yeah, no, it was able to lift me.
I could easily fly on our replicas. And they
were filled with hydrogen, just like the original
was. And then what we did is we destroyed each
one by implementing one of the three most common
theories of how the Hindenburg blew up. And then
we compared our footage to the archival footage
of the actual disaster. And then we were able
to conclude that the method of destroying it,
the method of igniting it, that produced a result
that looked closest to the real thing, was most
likely the way it happened. What was that point
in failure? Hubris. It was the Nazis who had
taken over the construction of the dirigible.
Thinking that because they had a superior intellect,
they would be able to master this incredibly
flammable hydrogen gas while the rest of this
inferior mortals would simply be consumed by
it. But they knew better. And so they thought
they could do it. They were told to use rubber
or vinyl for containing the hydrogen. But the
only source of that was the Goodyear plant in
the United States. Knowing that they were about
to go to war with the US, they decided not to
have the US as a vendor. And so they built the
enclosure capsules for the hydrogen out of cotton,
out of fine Egyptian cotton, which had to be
kept wet in order to not leak. And yet they knew
it still leaked a little bit anyway. So they
had to carry way more hydrogen they would need
so they could keep replacing it. And they carried
water ballasts to counter the lift effect. So
as they would lose lift by losing hydrogen, they
would drop water. So it was this incredibly complex
balancing act. And the fact that they were able
to get it around the world several times and
make some big international trips was really
a tribute to their scientific ability. But you
could only play with things like that for so
long before they bite you. So they had built
these ventilation shafts in between each of the
14 donuts so that the excess hydrogen could escape.
When the hydrogen entered those channels and
would go up, it would create a vacuum at the
bottom where fresh air was drawn in. So at the
bottom of these ventilation shafts, you had pure
air. And at the top, you had almost straight
hydrogen. And then along the column, you had
everything in between. And at a certain percentage
point, a mix between hydrogen and air, you don't
get a flammable effect. You get a detonation
effect. So as this hydrogen mix was leaking across
the top, you had an arcing effect where static
discharge from air running across the skin would
cause this coronal discharge from the tail. And
when the stream of hydrogen gas reached that
coronal discharge, it ignited it and created
a fuel chain which chased down to the inside.
When it hit that 37 % spot, it detonated and
the whole thing was gone in less than a half
a minute. But the opportunity to explore science
like that, to have the budget for that, and not
only to learn about how things like that happen,
but to learn about it in a public forum where
you get to share that with other people is really
fascinating. So I've done several shows like
that. And I think that's fascinating because
I really think that the key to the future is
inspiring kids to be curious about science. Absolutely.
I mean, if you look, I've said this many times,
you look at our news, you look at a lot of television,
you look at even like the remaking of films that
were already good from the 80s and 90s didn't
need to be remade. It really is a dumbing down
of creativity. You know, I think that where I'm
seeing a beautiful kind of flourishing is in
the world of documentaries and obviously podcasts
too. But there is a hunger for learning and people
are able to circumnavigate these kind of hurdles
and barriers and get to the source. So whether
they listen to, you know, horrible history on
the podcast or, you know, the Discovery Channel
or some, even, you know, our science channels,
they started being about. crab fishermen and
you know it became a soap opera rather than learning
about science so i think that there is a hunger
now and i think it's it's great to see this uh
you know these things that you've done that have
inspired kids but i think you're 100 right i
think we have to remove that kind of idiocracy
element that we really have been moving towards
and get to who are the young innovators. And
I worked on Idiocracy, okay? Lay off there. Oh,
did you? That was so funny. I was seeing one
of those videos on social media a while ago,
and it was talking about the costume designer.
And I think it was a female, and she was looking
for a shoe that no one would ever wear because
this is Idiocracy. And that shoe was Crocs. You
look around now, everyone is in Crocs. So not
only have we got, I would argue, the same kind
of people in power, I mean, both sides of the
aisle, and the dumbing down, you know, through
tweets and texts and emojis of evil, simple,
you know, communication, but even the damn shoes
from that film are absolutely spot on. So it
was supposed to be a comedy, ended up being a
documentary, technically. Well, I think, unfortunately,
social media in the way it's... consumed most
often is bad for society. Not particularly because
of the content itself, although there's not much
to be learned from watching your grandparents
dance, but really more from what it does to our
attention span. As we shorten our attention spans,
we shorten our ability to wrestle with problems.
And unfortunately, tough problems require serious
attention over a long period of time. You don't,
for the most part, solve problems in 30 -second
bytes. You solve them, for me, typically working
in three -hour blocks over the course of years.
And then you are able to make inroads on a serious
problem. But if we deprive people of the ability
to have an attention span, then we limit their
ability to be effective. And I've seen this in
myself. If you've got a busy mind, you can't
critically think. And we saw it in COVID. I mean,
no better example. You get everyone all scared
and stressed out. Then they become vehemently
opposed to whatever the other side is rather
than standing in the middle and going, maybe
we should make America healthier while we're
going through this thing. So I've seen that.
The Instagram, the TVs in every bar and restaurant,
it's just this constant. stimulus. And when I've
had my most, you know, inspiring moments is when
I've been leaning into my meditation and I put
my phone away and I'm walking my dog and, you
know, trying to open that mind because there's,
you know, all the great philosophers in the past
were not having these aha moments between tweets.
They were sitting, you know, pondering for a
long, long time. You cannot ponder if your mind
is busy. Right. You know, Einstein really popularized
the idea of the thought experiment. Well, You
can't have the thought experiment without having
thought. And you can't think while you're constantly
distracted. So to the degree that you are able
to divorce yourself from social media and actually
take a moment to let your mind wander and ponder,
that really is, I think, the limiting factor
in your ability to solve problems. COVID was
great for me, by the way. I had the good fortune
to be in a very remote location, 6 ,500 feet
up. mountain overlooking Boulder with no neighbors,
no distraction, no work to go to. And I took
advantage of that quiet time to do some deeply
reflective science work. And it was at that time
that I took an idea that I had been carrying
around for 10 years and translated into a patent
for a product that I wanted to invent for fighting
wildfire. So, and I know that in the normal busy
pre -COVID or post -COVID world, I never would
have had the time to have devoted to focus that
type of continuous effort on this project. Absolutely.
I wrote my first book during COVID. I happened
to have started it right before and then it happened.
And I was like, okay, well, this is good timing,
I guess. I mean, it's horrible for everyone that
lost people. And I'm not saying that at all.
But if you're going to make the most of this
isolation, then, you know, let's do something
good with it. You talked about the innovation
then. So walk me through. What made you even
start pondering the wildland space? What was
the problem that you were seeing? And then let's
talk about the solution that you've created.
Well, the problem is that the world is burning
up because the physical conditions, regardless
of how you attribute them, are hotter, drier,
and windier. So lower moisture, more oxygen,
and more heat. are three primary contributors
to anything's flammability. Fire takes four things.
You have to have fuel, you have to have oxygen,
you have to have heat, you have to have a chemical
reaction. So when the environment provides more
of those things, you get more fire. Preventatively,
when I lived in Austin, where the government
doesn't get in your business so much, I would
burn off my land a few times a year. So that
if a wildfire encroached, my land had already
burned and I didn't have to worry about the fire
consuming it. And so I lit these wildfires, which
are contained to my 22 acres, and I would manage
the fire. And if the wind whipped up, the fire
would become very hard to manage. And I didn't
want to stop the burning process because I knew
it was beneficial to the land and to safety.
But I wanted to figure out how I could stay on
top of the fire when the winds whipped up or
conditions changed. So that started me thinking
just from a personal use standpoint of what do
we need in order to contain fire? I had worked
as a volunteer firefighter, and I couldn't believe
that. When we have a fire that risks structures,
neighborhoods, communities, potential billions
of dollars of damage, the tools that are issued
to the firefighter are what I would characterize
are medieval gardening tools. A rake, a hoe,
a pick. You look really smart. You can have a
chainsaw. But these tools are woefully inadequate
compared to... the power of the fire and the
dollar value of the destruction of the fire,
not to mention the threat to life. So I couldn't
believe that technology has advanced so far in
so many other areas and not in fire suppression.
So I asked the firefighters I was working with,
if we actually wanted to stop this fire, what
would we do? And they laughed and they said,
well, it would take a hurricane. And so I took
that literally. Okay, well, what size hurricane?
What wind speed would be required? What water
volume would be required? Because when James
Cameron says, make a hurricane for me, I don't
laugh. I say, okay, well, what do you need? How
far do the winds have to blow? Do you need 100
miles an hour? you know, 400 feet from the nozzle.
Like, what is it exactly from a physics standpoint
that you need to achieve this? And so I started
to really pursue this with the firefighters.
So firefighters respond to wildfires, but for
the most part, the control of the fire is up
to the wind. The wind controls the fire. And
so I was just simply thinking in terms of hierarchy,
if you want to control a wildfire, you have to
control the wind. So I thought there was a lot
of wisdom what they said, that you would need
a hurricane, but I didn't dismiss the idea that
we could bring the hurricane. And so this really
led to the idea of creating a hurricane on wheels,
where we could get massive, high -speed, high
-volume airflow generated by jet engines, mount
the jet engines on trucks, equip the jet engines
with large tanks full of retardant. pump the
retardant into the exhaust of the jet engine,
and then use the jet engine to disperse the retardant
with tremendous speed and force over large areas
very quickly. And that, in my mind, would be
a tool that could actually fight a big wildfire.
That if you need a coverage rate of, let's say,
50 gallons per acre of retardant, and you're
pushing this thing out there with a 3 ,000 horsepower
jet engine, You can cover 20 acres in a minute,
which would mean that you could create a massive
fire break using technology that has nothing
to do with a rake, a hoe, a pick, or an ax, or
a shovel. That we throw people at this problem
with the same success that we throw the TSA at
airline security. Not very effectively. It was
a physical problem that was beyond human scale
that was going to require large, powerful technology
to get ahead of. And so there were really six
or seven things that I thought needed to be done
by this technology. We had to be able to create
fuel breaks very quickly, not with vegetative
removal, but with vegetation treatment, which
is... to say we're leaving the fuel in place,
we're just treating it chemically so that it's
no longer available to interact with oxygen and
create fire. We need to create evacuation routes
or do what's called evacuation route hardening.
Currently that's also done largely with vegetation
removal. Basically these high -speed gardening
crews push through areas chopping down the trees
and other things that people find to make their
communities attractive. So there's a lot of resistance
to vegetation removal. But they, on a good day,
could do a mile a day with a crew of 40 people
and a big chipping operation in this. That's
fine if you're an urban planner and you're thinking
about how you're going to do 50 years of evacuation
route hardening over the next four years. That's
not an effective plan on the day when you see
the ember starting to come across the hill. and
you know people are going to need to get out,
you don't want them to die in their cars the
way they have in numerous fires, you have to
figure out how are you going to make an evacuation
route very quickly. By driving the jet engine
at the vegetation on both sides and coating it
with retardants, you can provide that gauntlet
of safety. The next thing we have to do is asset
protection. How are we going to keep the things
that we love and that are insured from burning?
And that's by laying a perimeter, a protective
chemical barrier around them of retardant. This
is not firefighting at this point, right? This
is simply turning fuels into non -combustibles.
We need to create safety zones. So when most
people are leaving the fire, firefighters are
showing up, right? Like they said in 9 -11, right?
When everyone was running out, we were running
in. So when fire teams aggregate at the site
of a fire, They have to have an area where it's
safe for them to be, and that's called a safety
zone. If we can make that safety zone truly safe,
it protects people. Those areas still typically
can be overrun. So they look for blacktop or
big parking lots or stuff where they stage all
the equipment. But if we could surround those
areas with retardant very quickly using the jet
dispersion method, we could create a safety zone
on the fly wherever. It was needed, not wherever
it happened to be. The next thing firefighters
need is escape routes. We're fighting the fire.
The winds change. Something has gone south for
us. We need to be able to get out. So you have
to be able to build a fuel -stripped, chemically
-treated path from the area of danger to the
area of safety. A jet engine can do that. When
you point the jet engine down, you can literally
blow the fuels off the ground, the trees, the
debris, the limbs, all the flammable vegetation.
Hurricanes remove vegetation. We know that. If
you've ever looked at footage from a hurricane,
you'll see the trees are removed, the ground
is removed, the buildings are removed. So jet
engine could do that while simultaneously treating
the area around it with retardant. And then direct
attack. There are times where we don't have time
to get in front of the fire two miles ahead of
it because the fire is right at the thing that
we're trying to protect. In that case, we need
to suppress the fire and push the fire back.
Fire, despite its devastating capabilities, is
a fragile chemical reaction. It requires just
the right amount of fuel, the right amount of
oxygen, the right wind speed. for providing the
oxygen. And if you disrupt that with too much
wind, like blowing out a birthday candle or changing
the humidity, spitting on the candle, raining
on the fire, you can stop that reaction. And
the jet engine offers you the horsepower to do
that at scale. And the last thing that we need
to do is be able to contain prescribed burns.
The wildfire problem is a problem that we will
have to burn our way out of. We are going to
have to pre -consume the fuels in a controlled
way so that they're not consumed in a random
chaotic and devastating way by wildfire, which
means that we're going to have to do prescribed
burns over much larger areas much more frequently.
Not only a prescribed burn, but you could think
of this also as prescribed smoke. You can either
have a wildfire where so much smoke comes through
a community that no one can breathe, or you can
release the smoke a little bit at a time through
these prescribed events. People are hesitant,
however, to do prescribed burns because of the
risk that the fire could get out of control.
And so they allow fuels to accumulate year after
year, creating an extremely dangerous fuel load
on the ground because they're afraid something
could happen. when they go to do a prescribed
burn. This is just bad thinking. If you can define
an area where you want to do a prescribed burn,
and then you could lay out a 600 foot perimeter
of retardant around that, then you could substantially
reduce the risk of a wildfire prescribed burn
escaping. So this was rummaging around in my
head for a dozen years. And it was, you know,
when that COVID break came that i was able to
congeal this into an engineering diagram and
write a patent for it and then after covid i
went through the techstars program so i could
learn to combine some technical knowledge with
some business knowledge and was then able to
go out and raise four million dollars for the
use of the design engineering and prototyping
of the idea so we now sit with two Small -scale
prototypes that are UTVs that are equipped with
jet engines. UTVs are really cool because they
can get in between houses. They can treat the
backyards. They can get places where you can't
get with a Type 1 truck. And six weeks from now,
we'll have the full -scale Hurricane with the
massive jet engine and 2 ,500 -gallon tank on
board. And I think this will be really a game
-changer. in terms of our ability to repel and
contain fire. So that's been my 24 -7 focus for
the last five years. My family has paid the price
of my absence considerably while I have obsessed
with this problem. And then I hope that... Acting
like the solid rocket booster engines on the
space shuttle, I could put all my energy into
this for a short amount of time, and then it
will launch, and then pilots can take over the
project. But to turn any project from an idea
into reality requires an intense level of constant
energy that I like to bring to projects. It makes
so much sense. And so even when you were talking
about prescribed burns, that's what I was thinking
about before you even said it. You literally
contain that burn, so you get to burn off everything
in between, but it doesn't have the chance to
jump the line then. And it's funny, Jason was
talking about the firebots, and obviously we've
got the goats. I mean, there's bringing, again,
ancient knowledge and then modern technology
in. But you're right. I mean, putting these men
and women... in dangerous way with hand tools,
you know, even though, yes, in certain times
it's effective, I would argue maybe on a, on
a less acute fire. Right. If you listen about
Jason talking about the fire shelter, he's like,
the answer isn't the shelter. The answer is not
putting these men and women there in the first
place. So I've got another friend who talks about
checkering. Where I used to work, they had all
this dense woodland and it was a theme park.
So the fireworks would always go in there and
they'd be fighting muck fires for weeks. And
he's like, you just go in and you checker. That
way you've got a small square that's on fire
and everything else isn't. But again, it's a
resistance from the facade. But, you know, it's
such a false economy. And obviously with Paradise
Fire and some of these other ones. And I don't
know if there was resistance on prescribed burns
in that particular incidence, but if there is,
the price when that fire comes to your doorstep
far outweighs some discomfort from a prescribed
burn. But being able to do it safely with the
technology that's out there, including yours,
I mean, that's an absolute game changer. You
mentioned about the retardant. PFAS is now a
big conversation. You're not only in us, and
there's some good news. I've had some scientists
on that are developing a probiotic that will
actually pull it from our body. I've never heard
before, but it's something that we want to avoid.
What is the retardant that you're using in this
particular instance? There are a lot of retardant
products on the market. I have my own preference,
which is a product called Citrotec. There's many
things I like about Citrotec. One is that the
active ingredient is potassium citrate, which
I ingest on a regular basis when I eat my citrus
fruits and vegetables. If I go to the doctor
and I have a low potassium level, they would
give me potassium citrate pills to take. So this
is a food grade medical product that simply improves
your potassium levels, which happen to counteract
the effect of high sodium levels in your blood
pressure. So there's that. And then there's an
enteric coating on it, which is just like what's
on an aspirin to stop the pills from dissolving
too soon in your stomach. So when potassium citrate
solution is applied to vegetation, it soaks in,
the water evaporates off, it leaves the potassium
citrate in the vegetation, and then the enteric
coating resists leaching from rain so that it
can maintain that high potassium citrate level.
So I like that. I also like the fact that when
you look at the MSDS on it, there's nothing hidden
under the heading of trade secrets. All the ingredients
are listed and you can tell right away, okay,
this is what's in here. I feel comfortable with
this or I don't feel comfortable with that. But
you know what you're dealing with. And virtually
every other retardant out there, they don't tell
you what's in it. They just say, it's safe. Trust
me. Phrases like benign by design. Like, okay,
that's cute and all, but I want to see the fish
reports. I want to see. the 18 -month trials.
I want to see the science behind it. And Steve
Conboy at Citratech has been incredibly transparent
with that process. So that makes me comfortable
with that. Also, it's a product, just like if
you have saltwater and you leave it there for
10 years, the salt doesn't come out. It's always
saltwater. So Citratech doesn't ever fall out
of solution. It doesn't have to be agitated.
And from a... From fluid dynamics perspective,
it's just like water. So any tests that you could
do about the broadcast distance, the particle
size, the particle density, the effective range,
the coverage area that you could test with the
product, you could test just as effectively with
water. So there's my two cents on the science
side on the retardant. Brilliant. I mean, it's
great to hear. I mean, there's an alternative.
You saw in the Palisades fire, I mean, all the
AFFF being dropped, all these red clouds. It's
terrible. Yeah, it's putting out some of the
fire, but that's going to be in the ground now
for millennia. And it's so sad. Yeah. And even
as they scale back the PFAS and they just move
to other elements like phosphorus. If you go
into an area that typically has a low phosphorus
soil and then you start dropping all this phosphorus
on it, you're changing the nature of the soil.
And when you change the soil, you change what
can grow in it. So now the only things that would
grow in that area would be vegetation that has
a high tolerance to phosphorus or performs well
in phosphorus. Those plants are typically more
flammable than the plants that would grow in
the low phosphorus soil. So now you are... Putting
out the fire, yes, while creating a problem for
the next 20 years of growing only flammable vegetation
there. Not to mention that phosphorus feeds the
organisms that are in water that cause algae,
causes algae over bloom. So as if wildfires weren't
bad enough for the hydrology system, now we're
adding chemicals that make it even worse. When
you lose a mountainside of trees and you lose
that root system, what happens next? The next
time it rains, that all slides down, plugs up
the rivers, clogs the intakes for water systems.
So there's a cascading effect from these wildfires.
It's not just what burns on the day. It's how
the environment is impacted after the hydrology,
how that is impacted. And not to mention... the
lung health of all of the people downrange of
that fire. So we have this country, Canada, just
to our north. I refer to it as the country that
can't keep its smoke to itself. Is that the one
that we're supposed to take over along with Greenland
and the Gulf of Mexico? I think all I could do
is give you an enthusiastic no comment. Again,
idiocracy. Anyway, I digress. There you go. Yeah.
I mean, I was bemoaning the fact this morning
to my girlfriend that how hesitant people are
now to say what's stupid and what's not because
of fear of political reprisal. And I am sure
that is not why my grandparents moved to this
country. Very, very sad to say, to see. I don't
think most people would ever dream that. Let's
say the same way as most Russians never dreamed
of going into Ukraine either. You know, this
is what's done by some of these people that call
themselves leaders does not reflect the majority
of the people in that country. No. In fact, when
we when we build the future iterations of the
hurricane, I wanted to have them built in Canada
by a company called Tiger Cat. When I spoke with
the CEO of Tiger Cat last week, I felt the need
as an American to apologize. And he said, you're
not the first. I just spent the weekend with
a few Canadians. This is last week, I mean, and
it was the same thing. It was just a whole lot
of face palming, basically. Yeah, right. Embarrassing.
But, you know, we're resilient people. We've
gotten through other things. Yes. You know, you
had asked about. para -entertainment activities
and injuries that happen on set. So one of the
things I've done a great deal of is work as an
expert witness in lawsuits involving cases of
people being injured on movie sets. Because it's
almost always a matter of oversight or rushing
or ignoring available safety information. I was
an expert witness against Alec Baldwin in the
killing of Helena Hutchins. And several other
high -profile cases. And usually, you know, the
knowledge is there. We just ignore it. Yeah.
Yeah. So I go into... So the other thing, though,
is, of course, as you're around something more,
you have a very different sense of what's dangerous
and what's not. So if you've never been to a
gun range, you might say, going to a gun range,
that's got to be really dangerous. You're around
all these guns. It's like, oh, well. I've been
around gun rangers my whole life. I have no feeling
that they're dangerous. Explosions, isn't that
dangerous? I set off explosions where I'm standing
eight feet away on a regular basis. It's not
dangerous because people who do that, they possess
specialized knowledge where they're able to evaluate
the risk with much more precision and an informed
basis than people who don't do it for a living.
So I'm sure you know from your stunt work that
you've done a lot of things that people said,
oh, my God, that's so dangerous. But because
you have personal knowledge of how it's set up,
you have no feeling that it's particularly dangerous
or reckless. Yeah. Yeah, it's definitely calculated.
It's dangerous, but it's calculated. And it's
funny because firefighters are impressed by the
stunt side. And it's like, well, we do stunts
for a living, though. We throw on gear that,
as you said, we trust implicitly and then run
into burning buildings or hang off the side of
a bridge on a rope to get rescue, you know, whatever.
We'll go down a pipe or, you know, climb through
a mangled car that's teetering and, you know,
trying to pull someone out. I mean, it is, those
are stunts, but the thing is we don't get to
set those up. We have to mitigate all the dangers
as you're talking about soccer, you know, as
the game progresses, it's an ongoing dynamic
fluid situation. Yeah. Very interesting. So I
cut you off because you were just about to talk
about Canada. You said, you know, the smoke from
the north. So I'll carry on. I was just saying
that, you know, if they get some fires that become
unmanageable there, there they are with literally
millions of hectares vulnerable to fire and on
fire and a fire force of about 2000 people. So
they have to make some very difficult decisions
about where they apply their forces. I got a
call during that summer where they said, there
are 450 villages that we know won't be here next
year. We don't have the resources to protect
any of them. We have to focus our resources on
the large communities, so these towns will be
gone. And we're just interested in what type
of technology can you provide to assure them
a safe way out. The response was limited to evacuation
route hardening, not to the preservations of
towns. They didn't have the ability to do it.
But in the process of all that going on, 120
million Americans downstream of that are breathing
the smoke. The day that New York City became
unlivable with these images of orange skies was
a day that I really celebrated. Not because a
lot of people are having to breathe toxic air,
but because it brought the reality to the East
Coast and to Wall Street that wildfire is not
a regional issue. Wildfire is not a Canadian
problem. It's not a West Coast problem. It's
a world problem. Because while there may be 147
different countries, there's one atmosphere and
we all breathe it. And anything that happens
in one part of the world impacts the atmosphere
for all of us. We can't ever really take the
idea that wildfire is someone else's problem
just because it originates on their soil. Any
more than we could say, you know, COVID was a
Chinese problem because it started in China.
It's the problem of everyone who's impacted by
it. And we're all impacted by it. So I think
we all have a stake in wildfire control. And
I would never say, you know, wildfire elimination,
let's stop wildfires. That would be ridiculous.
And that'd be like saying, let's stop lightning.
Like wildfires are a fact of nature. They start
thousands of times a day. They always have. They
always will. So we're not trying to fight wildfires.
We're trying to fight wildfire destruction and
wildfire devastation. We're trying to minimize
the impacts of wildfire on the built environment.
And that is... That is a scalable problem solution.
We can do that. We just have to put a little
bit more thought into where we build, how we
build, how we mitigate, where we allow fuels
to grow and where we contain them and where we
treat them. So it's solvable. Like any other
problem, it's simply a matter of collective will.
It has to be an interesting question to ask you
because you are coming from a very strong science
background. And going to the politicization of
anything when it comes to global warming, you
know, you've got one side that says it's killing
everything, got the other side that dismisses
it as gibberish. And then again, normal people
standing in the middle like a tennis match looking
left and right going, why are these crazy people
even talking? When you look at COVID and you
see the reports of the Nile clearing up, of,
you know, the smog in London and LA clearing,
you know, the ozone layer starting to close again.
And that's just an obvious benefit. So we know
that there is an impact of all our pollution
globally. And I know it's not just the States,
not just UK. I mean, India and China and some
of these other places, I know, are big contributors
to the pollution. But when it comes to global
warming, that term, people kind of poo -poo it,
even though they literally watched the air in
their city get cleaner when the cars came off.
What is your perspective? I know it's just one
of the contributing factors, but what is your
perspective of the impact of global warming on
this wildfire issue? Because so many of the men
and women on the boots on the ground, the actual
blue -collar firefighters are all seeing this
getting worse and worse, hotter and hotter. Right.
They describe it as hotter, drier, and windier.
These are measurable phenomena. The thermometer
has no political leaning. It simply tells you
what the temperature is, which is the average
velocity of the molecules. So there's really
not any debate in the science community about
attributing what we see to global warming. That's
strictly political theater. And regardless as
to whether it was happening. by natural causes
or man -made causes, we still have to deal with
the consequence. And so while we could reduce
our contribution to the phenomena, we nonetheless
have to deal with the phenomena. The phenomena
is hotter, windier, drier, more extreme fires
with more frequency. I think it's just not that
the United States is a response culture, but
really every culture responds to fear because
that's an innate human characteristic. Fire is
fear -inducing. News stories are merely anxiety
-provoking. And therefore, we respond to the
scary thing more than sometimes the more dangerous
thing if it happens to be less visceral. So when
you watch the news, you're watching an amalgamation
of what the most visceral experiences that took
place in the community were, not what the most
important ones were. An abandoned barn that burns
down 50 miles from nowhere is the lead story,
while cutting $50 million from the education
budget doesn't even make the news that night.
So there's a big difference between impact, importance,
and... public awareness. But in this case, wildfire
is both a subject of importance that's both visceral
and important, which in my mind makes a great
business. Absolutely. Well, I'm sure some people
listening are probably wondering the same thing.
When I think of jets, I think of propulsion and
planes. How are you able to Change the physics
so these vehicles that these engines are mounted
on aren't getting shot the opposite way of where
you're trying to disperse this fire suppression
foam. Well, friction is your friend. Friction
is what allows your car to stop. When a jet is
placed on an airplane. It's shooting gases back,
and that creates that equal and opposite reaction
of pushing the plane forward. Because the plane
is in the air, and to the degree possible in
thin air at higher altitudes, it provides less
resistance to that propulsive force. When you
put that propulsive force on a 7 -ton truck,
to which you've added 10 ,000 pounds of water,
and you have six tires on the ground, all with
aggressive tread, you simply have to set up a
dynamic where the resistance provided by the
weight and the friction on the ground is greater
than the propulsive force of the jet. So, you
know, when I spit on something, right, I'm creating
a pulsar force this way, but it doesn't knock
me over because I weigh 170 pounds. So it's the
same thing here. It's scaling the jet to the
capabilities of the vehicle you put it on. Amazing.
Legitimate question. And could you point the
jet straight backwards and put the truck in neutral
and get the heck out of there faster if you needed
to? You absolutely could. That would be so cool.
Come on. Watching a frigging 10 -ton truck flying
up the side of a mountain to get away from a
fire. Right? Yeah. Although I envision pointing
the jet forward more often so that we can clear
territory like we would with a plow. You know,
dozers. And dozer lines are a commonly used tool
in fire containment. But when fires are creating
ember cast two to 40 miles away that's starting
new fires, what is really the benefit of creating
this eight -foot break? I don't see it. Maybe
in fires of yesteryear, then yesterday's technology
did something, but I don't think that's really
effective right now. So I think being able to
clear a 1 ,200 foot wide path by using distributed
retardant is going to be a lot more effective,
a lot faster, and have a less permanent negative
impact on the area after the fire. for as much
money as we spend to have dozers clear a line
down to what they love to call mineral soil.
Then they have to come back after the fire and
they have to put dirt back down or else they
have these huge dozer scars across the land.
So there's a new or better way. And while I'm
not sure that my current iteration is the way,
I think it's certainly in the right direction.
And that as we apply it more often, we'll continue
to perfect it. Absolutely. I mean, it sounds
amazing. And this is the thing, you know, we're
in 2025. You know, we all have microcomputers
that are in our pocket. You know, people are
driving electric cars everywhere. And then there's
areas of the fire service we're doing. I mean,
like I always talk about even our helmets are
almost 100 years old, you know, and there's a
resistance changing that. So, you know, when
this... is available and it just makes more sense
why would you not try it why would you not get
a few out there and get it going and then compare
resistance to change right so we're champions
of them yeah the things that are going uh against
that resistance right now are one the impact
on the real estate and the insurance industry
of these fires um if you can't get insurance
you can't build if you can't get insurance you
can't sell you can't get insurance you can't
buy So until we figure out how to make areas
safe where insurance companies are willing to
come in and underwrite that risk, we're going
to see huge impacts on those industries. And
when people can't sell their house because it's
in a declared wildfire zone, what happens to
the property values? They drop. When the property's
values drop, what happens next? The tax base
drops. When the tax base drops, the cities can't
offer the services that they can. previously
and then neighborhoods go into decline so there's
a much larger economic ripple impact from these
fires than you would gather just from watching
the fire on tv and so the ability to make dangerous
areas livable through the use of retardants and
vegetation removal and vegetation treatment is
going to have a big impact on whether communities
you know survive and thrive or decline and perish
Absolutely. Well, where can people learn more
about Team Wildfire and the hurricane? Everywhere.
You can go to teamwildfire .com, click on that
media page. You'll see a six -minute story from
the Today Show that we did in April, a recent
story on CBS San Diego. There's a lot of coverage
of it because, as I said, it's a visual story.
It's a visual solution to a visual problem. So
I wouldn't flaunt the fact that we have a lot
of coverage as evidence to say that this is a
great idea, but it certainly works well on TV.
It's a popular idea really because people are
desperate for a new solution. And so far the
solutions in that space have really been incremental
when what we need is solutions that are exponential.
Absolutely. All right. Well, I want to throw
some quick closing questions at you before I
let you go. All right. Is it the lightning round?
Yeah, not quite. The first one, is there a book
or other books that you love to recommend? It
can be related to our discussion today or completely
unrelated. Man's Search for Meaning. I've got
it right next to me. I love it. Viktor Frankl.
I played him in a movie. Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah.
The movie's called Bending Light. It's a 15 -minute
short. And you can find it online. Brilliant.
Well, that covers my next one, and we'll make
that the film, seeing as you worked on so many.
Oh, no, the film? The film is The Right Stuff.
The Right Stuff, that's your favorite one? Absolutely.
I think every day in college. All right. Well,
the next question, is there a person that you
recommend to come on this podcast as a guest
to speak to the first responders, military, and
associated professions of the world? I would
put Dave Winokur on the show and I would put
Tom Guzman on the show. Dave probably has the
most articulate vocabulary in describing fire
-related phenomena, both proactively during and
after of anyone I've spoken with. Brilliant.
All right. Thank you. And the very last question
before we make sure everyone knows where to find
you specifically, what do you do to decompress?
I live in the mountains over Boulder. I have
a hot tub and I get in the hot tub and just stare
at the mountains and appreciate the natural beauty
around me, both during the day and particularly
at night. I think looking up at the stars and
seeing what your place in the cosmos is helps
put the problems that keep you up at night into
perspective. where you realize, yeah, not only
will the neighborhood near me eventually burn
down, the whole planet will be consumed by the
sun one day and none of this will matter. So
divide your time between focusing on the problems
that will make the world better for you and your
family and your next generation and taking care
of the people who are in your life right now.
100%. All right. Well, then for people, if they
want to learn more about you specifically or
reach out to you, where are the best places,
LinkedIn, that kind of place? LinkedIn is where
I spend a fair amount of my time. So you could
read about the project at teamwildfire .com or
please reach out to me on LinkedIn. I think it's
linked, what is it? LinkedIn .in .whatever slash
Wolf Steve, something like that. I'll give you
a link to it, but I'm not hard to find on there.
Beautiful. Well, Steve, I want to thank you so
much. It's been such an amazing conversation.
I mean, firstly, you know, your entrenchment
in the science side, but yet thinking outside
the box, but also this parallel stunt and, you
know, EMS fire journey that you've had as well.
It's been fascinating. So I want to thank you
so, so much for being so generous with your time
and coming on the Behind the Shield podcast today.
Well, James, thank you for being such a great
interviewer and for your persistent curiosity.
And for the way that you focus your curiosity
on solving such an important problem. There's
a reason we're designed to spend a third of our
lives asleep. And when that's interrupted, nothing
else escapes being a casualty of it. So thank
you for that.