Jobs Podcast: Fire Fighter

This transcription discusses the experiences and challenges of being a firefighter in California. It highlights the risks and rewards of the job, including the impact of wildfires on communities. The firefighter interviewed shares insights on their shifts, the range of calls they respond to, and the camaraderie within the fire service. The conversation also touches on the diversity of firefighters and the educational requirements for the job. The firefighter emphasizes the importance of service and teamwork in their role. I am incredibly curious to know about the service and trade jobs that make a good life possible for all of us. But what's it like behind the scenes? What do often underfung people behind these jobs love about their work? And what not so much? Would you like to get into this line of work? Or would you like to be a better client, to make everyone's lives easier, or a better member of the public? Listen in to curious conversations and a bit of background research about jobs that can't be offshore. I've always been incredibly curious about what it's like to be a firefighter. To be honest, I just love the red trucks and I love the sirens. I also live in a very high fire severity zone in the East Bay in Northern California. And while the last couple of years have been wetter than usual, we are looking at a dry winter and a hotter than normal conditions this coming summer, along with increased wind velocities due to climate change. Add to that the long urban wildland boundaries as housing developments push into the beautiful wildlands, and the hilly terrain which affords great views, often with narrow and twisty streets to access those houses, and you have a lethal combination with regard to fire risk. Over the last few years, there have been epic fires. The most deadly was the Paradise Fire or the Camp Fire in 2018, causing 85 deaths and the loss of almost 19,000 structures. The most recent large fire was the January 2025 Palisades Fire in Santa Monica, which caused 12 deaths and the loss of almost 7,000 structures. It was the third most destructive in California history. We in fact now have a fifth season in California from the summer into the late fall, depending on their famous fire triangle. Fire triangle is a mixture of fuel plus oxygen and ignition causing fire. And in the case of wildlands, that's dry vegetation, wind, and a source of ignition. Lightning does cause some fires, and controlled low intensity burns are part of the Native American culture and of our wildland ecosystems in California, which are in fact fire adapted. Policies of vigorous fire suppression until the 1960s and the building of homes into wildland areas have increased the risk of high intensity wildfires. About 85% of wildfires are caused by human activity, power lines sparking, which is what caused the campfire, cigarettes, careless campfires, debris burning, barbecues, and even the sparking of a tow hitch chain dragging on asphalt through a dry forest or grassland. So living with fire is vital to the millions of people living in similar settings around the western United States and abroad. Fire preparedness is key in an almost inevitable emergency, and firefighters are there to help save life and property. So what's it like to be a child's hero? Our heroes, the people riding the big red engines. Today we will meet a firefighter and get a boots on the ground view of the procession. I'm here with Hunter Bolivar. Hunter, could you tell us your job title? Yeah, so I'm a firefighter paramedic with the Contra Costa County Fire Protection District. And we're at your station this morning, and you've just gotten off shift, right? That's correct. So how was your shift today? It was good. We normally do 48 hour shifts. I did two days on the front end on some trades. So I did a 96 hour shift. Okay, on some trades. So you can trade your shift off. So if you have some kind of conflict with your normal shift, another firefighter can work your shift, and then you work their shift without using any vacation or if you're sick, you can use your sick accruals. Okay. So when you work a 96 hour shift, does that mean you're up 96 hours? So it depends on the calls that come in. So if you go to a massive incident that's lengthy, you potentially could be up for four days in a row. But we do have the ability to sleep at night, and it really just depends on how many calls you get during the night, the amount of sleep that you're going to get on any one of your shifts. Have you learned to sleep even though you know you might be woken up at any moment? Yeah. So I was in the military before I joined the fire department, so I can fall asleep pretty much whenever, but it kind of depends on the individual. So it sounds like just being able to sleep easily is like one of the helpful things to be able to find. Oh, yeah, definitely. Definitely a good skill to have if you're working a longer shift. So tell me a little about yourself. Do you work to live or live to work, would you say? Probably somewhere in the middle. I have a wife and a nine-month-old son at home, so I definitely enjoy spending time at home with them, but we also like to do things. What's in particular satisfying for your job as a firefighter, would you say? Serving the communities, obviously. I really enjoy that aspect. I think everyone, for the most part, gets into this job because they enjoy helping members of the community. I think service is an important core value for a lot of the people that work here. And then just the nature of the job. We talked about the shifts earlier, getting to work with people for two to four days at a time. There's a lot of camaraderie in the firehouse. I've had other jobs. I mentioned earlier the military. I sold medical supplies for a year while I was applying for different fire jobs. You can definitely tell the military obviously has a high level of camaraderie because, again, you're with those people for long periods of time. You really get to know them. Not so much in that intermediate job. You just don't get to necessarily form a bond with people when you're working more of a nine-to-five and then coming to the fire service. You definitely get to form a bond with the people you work with, which is great. I realized I was definitely missing it from my past life and getting to come here. I found that again, so that was really nice. It's something I really enjoy about this place specifically and the fire service in general. It sounds kind of amazing, the idea of both teamwork, the sense of being incredibly helpful to your community in times where you're often there with people's worst day they've ever had. Absolutely. And to be able to do something, that sense of meaning sounds amazing. Totally. Do you have a crazy day that stands out for you or an incident or something like that? Not one in particular. There's been days where, if you're at busier stations, this station, we're at station 10 in Concord right now, which is near Dale South. Not particularly busy. It's probably more of a middle-of-the-road station as far as call volume. Any station can have their busy days for sure, but there's been many days when I'm working overtime or on a trade at one of our busier stations and it can run upwards of 20 to 30 calls a day, and it's just almost comical that you're just going from one call to the next since I'm not even making it back to the station. So the kinds of calls you get, could you tell us something about the range of calls that you get? Absolutely. So we're a all-hazard special district. So we go on medical calls. We respond to hazardous materials incidents. If a citizen has fallen and is not able to pick themselves back up, we do public assist. We respond if your smoke alarm or your carbon monoxide alarm is going off. We obviously go to structure fires. I'm sorry, you go to structure fires? We go to structure fires. We go to wildland fires. So we have boats here where if a citizen is in distress on one of our waterways in the county, we'll respond to those on our rescue boats. If a boat's on fire, we have fire boats. So we really do everything here. So you're in the Sassoon Bay area? Yeah. So over there, the Delta, going over the waterway, Sassoon and Benicia, kind of that waterway between Martinez and Benicia. So it sounds like you're not going to get bored. No, definitely not. And you can totally find whatever. We don't have a fire boat here, for example. So you'd want to go to a station that has that particular piece of apparatus, whether it's a rescue, a truck, an engine. So you can definitely find what you're into here. There's just plenty of opportunity, like I said earlier, with busy stations. We have slow stations. If you've got three kids at home that are all under four years old, you can totally go find a slow fire if you need to be a little slower at work. Or if you're really itching to run a bunch of calls, you can get to a busier station. Like I said, there's different pieces of apparatus and different specialties all over the district. So you can totally find what you're into and really dive into that. That sounds amazing. Do you have a whole variety of different people who are firefighters now? Yes. Can women do it on an equal basis to men now? So, yeah, there's no disqualifiers. There's nothing like that, obviously. It really just matters whether you meet the standards of the academy. So everyone that comes here, if you're an entry level, so you don't have – we have a lateral – we have lateral academies as well but there are other paid full-time firefighters coming from other departments to come work here at Confire. Those academies are typically eight weeks long and the entry level academies are 20 weeks. So typically those people have – they're not coming from another fire department. Sometimes they are just because they want the opportunity to come here and they don't want to wait for a lateral academy. So it's a 20-week academy. So as long as you meet the standards that are laid out in the academy. What are the basic sort of educational standards that you need? Technically you need an EMT license, a driver's license, and a high school diploma. Okay, so an EMT license is a big deal. Correct. It gets acquired. And so how does that – so you're an EMT. I'm a paramedic. You're a paramedic. Is an EMT lower than a paramedic? Correct. So there's two different scopes of practice. So EMT is, I guess you'd say, the initial one. I think just let everyone get – well, everyone needs their EMT license to become a paramedic. So that's at the entry level. Lower scope of practice. So less interventions you can do with patients. And then paramedic is a higher scope of practice. So more advanced knowledge for – it's called advanced lifesaving. And generally EMTs are more of a basic lifesaving. So your paramedic can start IVs. They can intubate. They're trained on cardiology. So they understand how to interpret an EKG and how to give medications or how to properly cardiovert or defibrillate a patient if they need to. There's a higher scope of practice, a little more education. We have one paramedic on every piece of apparatus. It's a requirement for all of our units to have ALS capabilities. And does that mean that you get paid a bit more? Yes, there is an incentive for being a paramedic. You're paying slightly more than the EMTs would be for your position. So if the EMT license, is that something that trips a lot of people up who want to be firefighters? What are some of the barriers you think? It can be. A lot of it, honestly, is timing with, like, who is hiring and what they're looking for. Obviously, paramedic being a more challenging and a greater time commitment to become a paramedic. A lot of people don't get their paramedic license. So there's a lot of EMTs and there's very few medics. These departments need paramedics if they're operating on a similar model where they're going to have one paramedic on every apparatus. They're really looking to hire medics. So for the timing piece, some departments will only be hiring four paramedics. They won't be hiring EMTs because they're so low on paramedics. They only want to hire- So that's a tip for people wanting to become firefighters is do your best to get EMTs and paramedics. And you need to practice in ambulances, I imagine. It can be helpful, for sure. It makes you more work experience and then it looks better on the resume. But if you have that paramedic license, it's going to open a ton of doors for you to at least get an interview with any departments that you're looking at. There's so many EMTs. Right. Because it's just the minimum, you're going to struggle to stand out. But if you have the paramedic license, you are much more attracted to a department that is hiring. Interesting. And so there are, I'm sure, lots of other skills. I seem to remember because when my son was thinking about what to do, at that time, it was incredibly difficult to get into the fire service. It was a very attractive job. Is that still true? Is there still a huge competition? It is still competitive, for sure. I applied four or five years ago now is when I started my application process. Nowadays, you know, at recent academies, we've had 300 to 400 people apply online. So, like, a much easier application process, but even less interest for sometimes upwards of 30, 35 slots in an academy. So, it's a bit less. Yeah, your odds are like 1 in 10 at that point. So, it's still really competitive. So, it's still competitive, for sure, but I would say there's become less interest in doing blue collar jobs as well as in the fire service. I mean, just to spread that out. I know that around where I live, and I live in El Sabrante, wildfire is a huge concern. How does wildfire and urban fire suppression, how does that work? It sounds like you do wildfire. We call it a wildland response. Casually, we call them grass fires. Yes, we do respond to those as well. We will bring different pieces of apparatus for that. Our engines are not equipped to drive off-road. And, obviously, with a wildland fire, unlike a structure fire, there's, you know, the structure fire, you're going to generally have hydrants close to the scene. So, you are going to be able to get as much water, hopefully, as you need if the hydrants are functioning properly. Structure fires require much greater gallons of water just because of the fuels that are burning. While, you know, a grass fire is going to require less just because of the composition of the fuels. So, with that, we respond with our, you know, technical and tech-free rigs. We can drive off-road so we can get people closer to where the fire is occurring. Oftentimes, also, you may need to travel greater distances on a wildland fire because it typically is a greater, the acreage of a wildland fire is obviously greater than the house that's burning that's contained to one location. So, typically, you know, a structure fire, you're not going to need 400 feet of hose. It happens, for sure, based on, you know, geography and where the structure is set and our access. A wildland fire, it's not untypical that you need to do 200-300 foot hose lay just to get to where the fire is occurring or at least even hit it and then how massive the incident is. You might need additional hose. So, we have different, point being, we have different pieces of apparatus that respond to wildland versus structure fires. And do you go to other fires, like the Paradise Fire, for example, and other big ones? We can, yes. So, we run strike teams. So, if there's a need for it, the agency will request additional resources. If it's just like here, you know, the entire county was burning and we thought that the units that we had working in the district to include on anyone we could recall that we couldn't handle it and still, even if a massive grass fire is happening, we still have a responsibility to service the citizens of the county. We would levy that request for additional resources. And so, on the Paradise Fire, we did send units down there. We sent two rigs. But we send resources if there's a need. We'll send strike teams out. As long as we're capable of filling the need, we'll totally send resources to all these campaign fires throughout the state. What would you like the public to know about making your job easier? Overall, I mean, for at least the calls that I go on, generally the public does a good job of, and I just think of like not putting themselves in harm's way. A lot of citizens want to be helpful on the scene, which is great. And generally, they do stay in a safe area and allow us to work. But I would just say for the public to ensure, you know, obviously you might ask for a history on a patient or, you know, what happened on a vehicle accident or a scene. But I don't feel like you need to. We're probably not going to ask you for assistance. We have the resources capable of handling the majority of what we go on. If we don't, we're requesting more. Just try and not make the incident worse by, you know, putting yourself in a harmful situation. If dispatch tells you to get out of your house because it's on fire, absolutely get out of your house and stay out. So just whether it's dispatch or any units on scene telling you what to do, we're probably telling you that it's for your safety. What would you say are the most important things people can do to protect themselves and their property, either in urban fire situations but also in wildfire situations? Sure. On the structure side, I mean, a lot of what we see is we've actually had a recent string of fires that have been started by unattended candles. So, yeah, I mean, even we've seen where one candle is totally resulting in a total loss of the structure, so pretty much burned down a few studs. So especially if you have pets at home and you're leaving a candle lit and walking away, whether it's a cat or a dog that gets up on the counter, you can knock the candle over. Not attending food is a big one as well. If people leave certain items in an oven, on a stove, whatever you're cooking with, just make sure you check that it's off and you're not leaving the house with food in the oven or food on the stove just because you never know what could happen if something shorts or your food gets too hot and combusts and catches fire. That can totally extend to the rest of the house. I think that's like 50% or something like that of all house fires caused by cooking in the kitchen. Sure. It's definitely a lot. I don't have 100% of it, but I wouldn't be surprised. As far as the wildland fires, look at where you're storing combustible materials. Putting a gas can next to a barbecue is probably not the best idea, but it happens. Make sure you're storing combustibles appropriately, and then if you do live in an area that's more in what we call the WUI, the Wildland Urban Interface. So living in an area with a lot more vegetation, if you're living out in Clayton and working territory or anywhere that's a little more secluded and kind of more out in the country, just look at defensible space you're creating around the house. If you have trees hanging over your house, you have a bunch of what they call light flashy fuels or grass coming right against your structure. If those things do catch fire, we can do a lot if there's defensible space. We can protect structures. But if you have these very combustible fuel sources up against your house, there's just an incredible risk that that grass fire is going to turn into a structure fire now once it extends into your house. So there's now zone zero legislation, I think that came through in January, requiring a five-foot defensible space around structures in very high-risk zones. Sure. I know some counties and cities in Tahoe and some of the more remote areas, they've posted more like 25 feet of defensible space. Again, definitely keeping combustible liquids away from the house. My parents-in-law had a house in Paradise that burned to the ground. I mean, it was such an intense fire, it actually literally melted their appliances into the ground. And the only thing standing was an American flag on a pole. Wow. And my friend who's a fire ecologist said, oh, that's defensible space for you. Right. But it also means that you would be more likely to save a house where you can actually walk around it. Right. Whereas if it's like very overgrown, it's going to be like, ah. Totally. So that's a really big incentive for me personally because I have bay trees that hang over the house and I'm looking at spending a fair amount of money getting those cut back. Right. Sure. I guess one more thing to say for what – this is, I guess, a bit newer, but lithium ion batteries are starting to become the new hotness. So, you know, we've seen cars that are charging in a garage with a Tesla or any EV, really. The battery goes in a thermal runaway because of an issue with where it's connected and how it's receiving a charge. Those cars and those vehicles and those battery fires are very challenging to put out because water is not going to – water is generally not going to put those battery fires out. Oh, interesting. And we've also seen it with even something as simple as a plug-in lithium ion battery for tools around the house, like a leaf blower. A battery for a leaf blower left in the garage charging somehow or another failure of the system caused the battery to go in a thermal runaway and massive damage to the house. So don't leave your batteries plugged in overnight or when you're not in the house. Oh, okay. I do that in my house. I don't leave any – I don't have an EV, but, you know, I have electric tools. I don't leave them plugged in if I'm not home or I don't leave them plugged in overnight when I'm sleeping and not be able to catch. It can happen to them until it's probably too late. That is an interesting point, and I will look up some more things about safety to how to make sure that that doesn't happen and what kind – I imagine you need a different kind of fire extinguisher for that sort of incident. Sure, and, you know, sometimes they'll just – some of these Tesla's that have caught fire and any EV, sometimes they just bury them in the ground because, you know, the risk of them reigniting is super high. Sometimes they're sitting in these junkyards and they just catch fire again. So sometimes they'll just bury them in the ground. Lithium ion, you know, the byproducts of combustion with those is – we don't really know what it does, but there's been people in different agencies across the state that have been exposed when they weren't wearing respiratory protection, and some of them immediately have been – will have medical issues as a result of inhaling some of that smoke from these batteries, and some of them even got medically retired just because they had such considerable respiratory issues immediately after that. You don't necessarily get with, you know, some of the smoke you naturally get on wildland fires and structural fires. So it's super toxic, and I don't think we've really figured out the whole – how to make these EVs and lithium ion things totally safe. And that's a big deal going forward because we're getting increasing numbers of electric vehicles. Right, totally. Electric scooters and bicycles and on and on. And I just didn't really think of the batteries as being a real hazard like that. There's a lot of cities like, you know, big cities that people use e-bikes. The FDNY runs a lot of lithium ion fires in apartments because they're charging their scooters or e-bikes in their apartment, and then those end up catching fire. So there's, you know, a significant rise in the number of responses they've had in these big city departments. And I think that's going to be the – we're going to see greater numbers here in the county as well, as you said, Sue, as we transition from gas-powered vehicles and equipment to this new, you know, cleaner electric-powered vehicles or equipment. Well, I'm going to look up some research on that and put that in the show notes at the end. Do you have advice about – when I'm watching stuff about disasters all over the place, there's this stereotype of an ornery elderly person going, oh, I'm not going to leave my house. I'm staying here and the floodwaters be dammed or the fire be dammed. It's not going to get my house. What advice do you have to people about, you know, in what conditions should people prepare to evacuate? Do you have advice about evacuation? Well, definitely if you get an evacuation warning, I would heed that warning. They're making that recommendation to the public or mandating it, not because they want to just exert as much power as they can on the citizens. It's definitely for your safety. So I would absolutely heed those warnings. And then I would make a plan ahead of time, especially in some of these areas that are maybe more prone to disasters, whether it's earthquakes, fires, or floods. I would definitely have a plan ahead of time of any kind of evacuation route you would take, maybe a second one as well in case your first one is not tenable. Because when the day does come, and, you know, we will have a major earthquake year again at some point. It might be today. It might be in 100 years. And earthquake and fire are very closely connected as well. For sure, yeah. I mean, definitely could be disastrous. So having a plan only because when you're in it, none of us are going to think as coherently, you know, when we're stressed out and we're potentially fearing for our lives as we will when, you know, we're having a cup of coffee, relaxed, and can think logically. So make that plan ahead of time so you can set yourself up for success if the disaster does ever come. And I'm not telling anyone to, you know, turn into a doomsday prepper and overdo it. But at least having a basic plan of how you can get yourself to maybe out of a flood zone, away from a, you know, a wooey area or a wildland area. And, you know, definitely set yourself up for success when that day eventually does come. Because we have many, many, often quite high-priced housing. I'm thinking of Orinda potentially. Quite a lot of places which are up little tiny lanes with a gorgeous view and with brush right beneath their decks on wooden pilings. And they have one little road like El Toyonal, and that's it for getting out. I would think that you'd want to evacuate as soon as there's a warning. Especially if you're in those places, for sure. You know, I live in a very flat area. I live in Sacramento in Rocklands, so I live in a very flat area where I have many means of, you know, if there's a flood or an earthquake or something, I have plenty of ways to get out of my neighborhood to a different area. But to your point, if you have one way in or one way out, if you wait too long, then hopefully that mean to begress wouldn't be cut off. But if you're living in that situation, definitely heeding the warning before it becomes mandatory, because then we know the incident has escalated at that point, and now people and structures are genuinely threatened at that point. And if people really want to get a visceral sense of that, watch The Lost Bus. Oh, okay. The Lost Bus is really all about the evacuation of Paradise. And there was really one major road that went out of Paradise, and that bus ended up going all these little back roads. And my mother-in-law and her husband, who was 85, managed to get on a little back fire road to Chico. It took them 12 hours to get there. That's crazy. So getting out as soon as you feel like those conditions warrant it is better than waiting to the last minute. Definitely. I've got to go back by my door, which I kind of hate having to do. And yet the fact that my parents-in-law took their insurance documents made a really big difference to them and their passports and a few things like that. I mean, she still had to buy a toothbrush at Target. Right, right, right. And their life. Right. So I was wondering, if you had a magic wand wish to make your job better, what would you wish for? I would probably wish the job didn't affect the home life. That would be awesome. That would be awesome. So obviously we've already talked about lack of sleep potentially, you know, depending on where you're working or how tough your shift was. And it does affect people at home. If you come off two super poor nights of sleep at work, it can be challenging to be present at home. Oftentimes people get off work and spend the first part of their days off with, you know, a nap or sleeping at home. And even then, sometimes it takes people a few days to really kind of return to their baseline from like a fatigue standpoint and energy level. And then there's obviously the exposure risk in this job. We've talked about a ton of hazards today, whether it's hazardous materials, smoke, fire. Obviously with medical calls you could be exposed to people with communicable diseases that you might not know about, they might not know about. So, you know, obviously that would be awesome if we were invincible in that sense that, you know, these exposures didn't have long-term ramifications or we weren't susceptible to fatigue and cortisol and could do our shift and go home and just kind of snap to a, you know, rested regular person. But the job does take a lot out of you. And, you know, firefighters are two times more likely to develop cancer later in life or at any point in life. And the incidents of heart attacks, strokes, you know, the things that generally kill people in older age, we're much more susceptible to having. A lot of it is from lack of sleep and exposures over a career. So if we could be not susceptible to any of those issues, that would be awesome. But it's kind of in the back of your head of, you know, whenever you go to these calls, kind of your exposure level and what you're getting in your lungs or getting on your skin, what you have a job to do. And, you know, you do it gladly. But unfortunately it comes at a cost for a lot of people. Are you afraid often? I personally am not. You know, the exposure risk for a lot of people is definitely concerning. It obviously doesn't outweigh our want to serve the citizens and do the job. Otherwise we wouldn't be here still. But as far as fear goes, I think a lot of us, this is a great department, trained well. We have a high standard around here. So I think people fall back on their level of training and it gives them confidence on the team. And I think rather than being afraid, I think people understand and have the responsibility to act and to do something. And I think the confidence from our training, whether it's in the academy or just once we reach the companies, we do a lot of sustainment training to learn sustainment skills, again, in the academy, and then to build our skill level up. I think people have a lot of confidence from that. And I think that keeps people from being fearful of the result. That makes a lot of sense. And having done the CERT training, I do feel a bit less fearful of the next big disaster because I have at least some sense of what to do. And one of my real horrors is coming across some hideous thing that's happened and not knowing what to do and not knowing how to help. Sure. And so I think that people who are feeling afraid, get some training, get a little bit more knowledge. And in your case, you not only have your training, but you have trusted colleagues behind you. And that seems like something that allows for bravery. Totally. And, you know, to your point, taking any kind of training, even for citizens like CPR, just to have some kind of knowledge if you do come across someone that, you know, no longer has a pulse, isn't breathing, you're going to at least have a baseline of what you can do to at least give that person the best chance of survival until we can arrive and provide advanced life-saving services. You know, doing little things like that that are day-long courses can totally set you up for success, to be helpful early until first responders can arrive, and to be less fearful and feel more confident and confident when those situations arise. And hopefully they don't, but, you know, odds are you probably will come across someone at some point in your life who is in cardiac arrest. And having just like a baseline level of training can totally help you be helpful. To panic. Yeah, right. Because panic is a really dangerous thing. Absolutely. It's not helpful to anyone involved in an incident. Well, thank you so much for your time. It's been such a pleasure to interview you. Yeah, you as well. Thanks for having me. We have extensive show notes for this episode because wildfire and urban fire is such a big risk here in Northern California. Our show notes include flashy vegetation and fuels. In other words, what super combustible landscaping things you should avoid. There's links about CERT training, which is Community Emergency Response. There's information about lithium battery hazards and what to do about that. Evacuation advice. There's pictures from the firehouse and the rigs, of course. How to apply for EMT, paramedic, and firefighting academies. Homeowners, what can you do to harden your home? And how to form a firewise neighborhood group and more. So please share, subscribe, and review this podcast. Podcasts on all kinds of different jobs will be dropping every Wednesday. A big thank you to Jeffrey Byron, the composer and performer of the music called The Slow State used in this podcast. You can see more of his work at JeffreyJByron.com and his YouTube channel. The Slow State used in this podcast.