Swift Water Rescue with Captain Charles Boswell

We break down all of the Fire Department tv shows & movies of our lifetime. Scripted network tv shows from “9-1-1” to “Rescue Me” to “Emergency”. We tell you why things hit or miss & how dumb technical mistakes can ruin these shows for firefighters & paramedics. We tell you why the great ones are so great, & what would make a perfect show for us. Then we do the same thing with movies, we tell you which ones were the best & worst & why Backdraft is still the goat. We also talk about emergency driving & some disturbing trends Danny is seeing in the streets 

We talk about unexpected things in life, like more crazy airline incidents after our last airport episode, planes coming apart midflight, an earthquake on vacation, auto fire operations gone wrong, Danny's first fire, the Katt Williams interview, Hollywood child actor life, & Harvey Weinstein. Plus, Danny tells his "Weekend at Bernies" call story of a guy partying with his not alive friend for a while before calling 911, Ben gets bit by a dog, & we learn how to get banned from 911. 

We're joined by LAFD Firefighter Dan Meier, who joined the department at the ripe age of 48. Dan is super interesting & has worked literally every firefighting job you can think of: US Forestry, Bureau of Land Management, Air Force, dispatcher, Airport firefighter, aircraft firefighting instructor, & even the airport police. Dan tells us about working as a dual firefighter/policeman at the Ontario Airport, where he would work single shifts split between being a firefighter and being a cop. He worked with the DEA. He tells us how to spot people flying with drugs, what its like to work undercover, running into Snoop Dogg, responding to helicopter crashes, eridicating drug crops, landfills full of weed, aircraft firefighting, landing gear malfunctions, sliding down the rear chute, why you shouldnt wear high heels on a flight, older rookies, & more. This episode lands successfully.

We come back after taking most of last year off & catch up on all kinds of stuff: Dannys pool, the economy, the good and bad of too much overtime, staffing crisises at both of our jobs, stacking PTO vs using it up, flunking a paramedic intern, open neck wounds, freezing on calls, what its like being a Fire Inspector, Grey's Anatomy, promoting vs being happy at work, missing your partner, real life Weekend at Bernies situations, the difference between co star, guest star, top of show guest star, & why it sucks to go back to co star, & finally, dog bites in unimaginable places. This is a good start to the new year.  

We’re back with a deep philosophical dive into focus on the job, how you view interactions with patients & coworkers, flow state on the fireground, holographic multiverse, aging, synchronicity, losing weight, how we got into fitness, Mexican psychic readings, zen philosophy, & the final update on Danny’s pool (it’s done). 

We're joined by Army Veteran, & veteran Fresno County paramedic Mario Torralva. Mario was enjoying the county fair with his wife and friends, when he began to feel ill. He rapidly got worse, & his wife called for help and had him transported (by his coworkers) to the nearest ER. Doctors assumed he had a stroke based on his symptoms, but all scans were negative. When Mario would improve and be close to being released home, he would suddenly become very ill again and was even transferred back to the ICU. Mario winds up staying in the hospital for 3 weeks, baffling teams of doctors as they try to find out what his actual illness was. He has to endure exploratory surgery attempts, a 2.5 hour MRI, a lumbar puncture, a Nasogastric tube insertion, & more. Mario describes all the emotion of the hospital stay & trying to figure out his own diagnosis as well. You wont believe what it winds up being, how they discover it, & how his surgery goes. On top of that, he finds out how much damage was done, and has even more complications post surgery.  Mario explains it all from the perspective of a veteran paramedic, & discusses his recovery, & how it changed the extent to which he listens to his body. This is a real life episode of "House".

We're joined by LAFD Firefighter, fitness influencer, & business owner Crystal Reneau (@ketowithcrystal) who tells us what its like to be one of the "faces" of the LAFD after a year on the job. We learn what its like to be a rookie when everyone in your new station already knows who you are. How to hold a relationship together during your rookie year. How every new firefighter featured on the LAFD Instagram hears from Danny and learns about PRC. We hear how super hard firefighting is, & how you start and run your own business during all of this. 

Friend and comedian Alex Hooper (Americas Got Talent, Comedy Central) is back on our show after telling us a hilarious story on episode 26 (Anaphylaxis). While we're happy to have him back, unfortunately that means something else has happened to him if he wound up on PRC twice. Alex was diagnosed with Hodgkins Lymphoma in August of 2022. He shares his whole journey. From symptoms at a music festival, to testing, to treatment. He talks about the toll on himself, and on his new wife (he was married in April 2022). He's super honest & candid about everything he went thru and shares all the emotion surrounding the setbacks that led him to over a month long hospital stay. Resulting in a new beard, a huge appreciation for the little things in life, like sunshine, as well as an epic reunion with his Pugs. This episode shows how a positive mindset can really save your life. 

We talk to LA County Firefighter Trevor Williams, inventor of the Williams Key, a very cool and effective forcible entry tool used by firefighters everywhere. We talk about how he came up with this tool, but we take a long and windy road to get there cuz Trevor is SUPER INTERESTING. He tells us about growing up in Zaire in a missionary family during a civil war & a genocide, then returning to the US at age 8 for a few years to ride bikes and go to the movies. Then at age 12 his family moves, to Haiti, where he lives until his senior year of high school when he moves to LA, while his family moves back to Haiti. He goes back to visit his family in Haiti a couple years later when, while hes visiting, a devastating earthquake destroys the country. Trevor tells us first hand what this was like, thinking his family had died, and staying for weeks to provide aid and search for victims. We eventually get to him inventing the Williams Key, we also get a cool story from Danny, who fought fire on the Venice beach boardwalk a couple days before. 

We examine 3 significant recent cases that made national news involving PD & EMS that had tragic outcomes. The first case happened right by Danny's station in Venice, CA. LAPD struggle with an agitated guy after a traffic collision, who dies hours after being tased multiple times. We discuss whats seen on the extensive body cam coverage of the incident, as well as the different ways this incident was shown in social media. We also discuss the horrifying Tyre Nichols video, and why the EMT's who responded to help him were rightfully fired from their jobs. Then we discuss an incident in Ohio where the responding paramedics have been charged with first degree murder. We break down what went wrong in all of these cases and where the mistakes were made. We also talk about how you can do the right thing as a first responder no matter what is happening before you arrive on scene.