Igniting Change: Captain Jeremy Norton on Firefighting, Leadership, and the Quest for Inclusivity and Mental Health

Jerry 1: 0:15

Welcome to today's episode of Enduring the Badge Podcast. I'm host Jerry Dean Lund and if you haven't already done so, please take out your phone and hit that subscribe button. I don't want you to miss an upcoming episode. And, hey, while your phone's out, please give us a rating and review. On whichever platform you listen to this podcast on, such as iTunes, Apple Podcasts and Spotify, it helps this podcast grow and the reason why, when this gets positive ratings and reviews, those platforms like Apple Podcasts and Spotify show this to other people that never listened to this podcast before, and that allows our podcast to grow and make a more of an impact on other people's lives. So if you would do that, I would appreciate that from the bottom of my heart. Welcome to Enduring the Badge Podcast. My very special guest today is Jeremy Norton. How are you doing, Jeremy?

Jeremy 2: 0:58

Doing very, very well. Jerry, Thanks for having me.

Speaker 1: 1:01

Yeah, I'm excited to have you on, Jeremy. Introduce yourself to the audience.

Speaker 2: 1:06

Good morning everyone. My name is Jeremy Norton. I'm about to start my 24th year with the Minneapolis Fire Department. We do a full-time department with EMT-level medical response. I've been a fire captain in our version that's in charge of the rig and the station. I've been a captain since 2007. Spent about two years as a battalion chief running district and I really missed the engagement with the patients and the public. I demoted and also the administrative dysfunction got to me. So I demoted back down to the rigs in 217, and I will be there until I retire.

Speaker 1: 1:49

Do you have a retirement idea like timeline? I think most of us do.

Speaker 2: 1:55

Well, no, they're the folks who make the really big. You know, they've got a counter on their well now they've got a counter on their phone Six months, 17 days, 42 hours, and then the rest of us just probably want to do the Irish goodbye. So I will. When it's financially possible, I will. I got one daughter who's just started as a nurse and the other daughter is midway through college. So you know I'm helping her, you know taking care of that. So I got a little bit longer.

Speaker 1: 2:23

There you go, there you go.

Speaker 2: 2:25

But I think the important part is, you know, I like coming to work still and as long as my spirit and my body holds up, but I also don't want to, you know roll off a cliff two days after retirement. So I'm hoping to leave while I can still move and think.

Speaker 1: 2:40

That's always good. It's always good. That was my game plan too when I retired was like to leave as healthy as possible, right, because you put in so much time, effort and your life into this line of work. And then you know you don't. You want to like enjoy life after, right, like you did your heart and grinding and everything. So this time to enjoy life and maybe do something different, that's fulfilling. So I mean to kind of touch on that. I think that's interesting. You kind of brought up there's kind of two versions of goodbye, I feel like on retirement is one, yeah, the countdown clock, and then two, just like peace out, I'm done. You know, I've had, I've had my fill of this place. You know, kiss my ass and I'm done today. So I always think that's very interesting. I was not the guy that just said you know, hey, I'm done today, kiss my ass. I kind of had a little bit of a countdown, but things just kind of propel you to. You know whatever things to propel you to make that decision at a certain time, whether it's home life, work life, the balance of both, who knows. But yeah, so I just thought it was interesting. So you're not going to be the countdown clock guy and you're just going to be the guy that, just like surprise, I've done.

Speaker 2: 3:56

More or less. But I think and this is one of those interesting kind of contrasts or juxtapositions with our work we go every day, we show up at work we have across the country, across the world, emergency responders have no idea what they're actually going to encounter, right? So we have to be flexible, we have to be able to adapt. You know, a call comes in as possible hard it's. This comes in as trouble breathing and it's a chest pain or it's an impalement or it's a dead body, right, we should be flexible. We should also know that most of the people whom we end up seeing had no plans when they started their day. To look up at my Charlie Brown ass looking face, staring down at them, right? So we should know for ourselves that life doesn't go as we expect it to go. So I've had several friends who've wanted to come back from injuries at the end of their career because they had a vision, they were invested. You know several of them because they wanted to have some iconic sign off, final call, sign on the radio, maybe hoping to get viral or whatever. But a lot of it's also just that combination of what we think of as pride in our craft, in our service. But it's the other, also the ego, part of pride, you know, and I think that's so important to recognize that for those of us, all of us, who are veterans, senior Like, we locate ourselves at the center of the narrative. And so when we started and we're, you know, young and not even young, but no, nothing's all, the old guys were talking about the glory of years past and how we were, you know, pale comparisons. And now we're kind of supposedly at 20 odd years. We should be those people and realizing that this department, any department, is not about a 24 year person Like I'm at this point, trying to guide the next generation with what little I know and remember, you know, and so having that humility, that this, like some of our greatest, most like most brash personalities are, most revered firefighters have retired and the world keeps on spinning and, a matter of fact, it doesn't really miss a beat, and so understanding that we are part of, like the flag behind you, part of a larger cloth and that is our sacrifice, and we might identify so profoundly with what we do. But I think that is that kind of, you know, kind of a slightly zen thing, like that ego thing is what trips a lot of us up, right and so kind of accepting the fact that, whether I show up at work or not tomorrow, minneapolis is going to keep on spinning. People are going to answer the call, whether it's me or not, right, and understanding that I can do my best and then life spins on and that and that that's a good, I think, healthy perspective.

Speaker 1: 6:46

Yeah, it's kind of hard to grasp that when you've been with an agency so long in the fire service, so long that you feel like you're embedded into all these different things that are happening in the department. But you're right, right, life is like. You retire, you leave whatever, like boom, yep, the life has to go on right. There's someone's got to step up, right. So, kind of talking about that, there's we're. I was reading in your book about, kind of the savior, kind of complex, because, jeremy, we've kind of forgot that you left out that you're also an author too.

Speaker 2: 7:22

I am. I just this year, a couple of months ago, university of Minnesota Press published my book Trauma Sponges Dispatches from the Scarred Heart of Emergency Response. It's billed as a memoir, but I, you know, I really started writing pretty much even before I started on the streets, when I was trying to get on the job and trying to make sense of the labyrinth of civil service and city politics and department politics. But then I was trying to explain to everyone who asked me including especially family members, what do you all do? And then also to the public who said why is there a fire truck outside my house? I just want to ride to the hospital. I was trying to explain that paramedics are skilled pre-hospital technicians, not Uber drivers, right, and that, and that for most city departments, because of the way our for-profit hospitals and the insurance companies run things, that we as emergency responders, firefighters, emts and paramedics are basically the primary healthcare for so many people. And so, as I spent my career going on these responses, waiting for these huge fires that everyone shouted at me in rookie school I was going to have to do and they would forge me in the crucible of battle and all that crap, and it kept not coming, but I kept going on emergency medical call after medical call after medical call and I really loved it, and then I realized that for me, I think this really is the essence of our public service, right? And so that's created what I think of as kind of an existential conflict for a lot of firefighters and I think we'll come back to that in a couple of minutes in terms of that setup, that kind of that Trojan horrors for our that dissonance hurts us, but I also think that that is actually the best service we offer people is. We are like we put out fires, sure, when they come, but I can, as I said, I've thrown matches and given challenging looks to, you know, wayward teenagers and it doesn't actually get up our fire calls. So while we're waiting, we may as well be of service, and that's really where we find both the best part. Like, I've saved far more lives as an EMT than I have pulling people out of fires, and I've also experienced far, far more trauma, far more tragedy, far more hardship on the DMF side of things than the fire things and I think that dissonance. So that's really what I started writing about and prior to 2020, it was kind of a kaleidoscope or a panorama of emergency response, literally chapters, you know, guns, shootings, alcohol, car wrecks, gravity, impalements, like you know, respiratory. I mean it was just as I say, it was a compendium of sorrow. And then with COVID pandemic and then the killing of George Floyd and the uprest and the aftermath, a lot of what I've been writing about, about the ways that kind of race, class and gender shape who gets helped, how they get helped and who does the helping, that kind of crystallized what I'd already been talking about. But it gave the book a different thrust and so I cut out a lot of the episodic stuff and so and shape the book so that a reader the first half gets a sense of what we do and why the emergency response system is the way it is. And then the second half of the book looks at the deeper sociological issues and within that it's also looking at even if we address a lot of the kind of the cultural and class and kind of race inequalities or challenges we have the fact that remains that for police officers, for paramedics, for firefighters, our careers are spent immersed in the suffering of others and there is no cure for that, whether you're a hard-bitten, hard-drinking old school person who is burning himself on the inside, or someone who's very you know, a very Pilates doing. You know, vegan yogi. We still deal with it all, and how we deal with it is the challenge and the mystery. So, that's a short version.

Speaker 1: 11:46

I mean, I guess let's just kind of talk about this, because I mean, we talked about the George Floyd incident and you also touched on, like you know, going on calls that you don't really, you know know what to expect. Right, your dispatch is something and it's. It may not be what it you know was dispatched as. So, like going on the George Floyd incident, like you had no idea that what you were doing was, you were forgetting yourself into no, sir, not at all.

Speaker 2: 12:16

But for all of us who do this work, we almost never know what it's going to be. And I think part of our challenge is to first be able to parse clues from what dispatch gives us when they can, but also not go into it with this strict literalism. That's where I think firefighter EMTs have more flexibility to take a holistic look at a scene than the paramedics, right, because paramedics have the liability for transport, they have the liability to treat. So they come in and said well, it said chest pain, we're treating this chest pain. I walk in and I'm like this person's obviously in crisis. Like you know, and at this point, with almost 24 years, I've got way more years of experience than the better trained paramedics. So there's a little bit of like the ideas and the theories versus the practice. But yeah, I mean absolutely. The two paramedics who responded to that call they were given only from dispatch because we got the echo of that same of their call delayed, one with a mouth injury, like that was it and they pulled up and there were three officers still kneeling on a handcuff, prone and dead, unresponsive but dead man. So that jarring disconnect and trying to put stuff together and that's one example. But you know we've all been on myriad calls, multiple calls, that didn't receive the same amount of attention.

Speaker 1: 13:47

Right right.

Speaker 2: 13:48

You know, one of the points of my book is you know I've been on other calls that could have become that call because we've been like, because on some of our culture doesn't really look at what goes on and doesn't support any of the emergency responders to do help themselves, do a safer job responding to people in crisis and, frankly, our society doesn't really, in the administration of our society, isn't really interested in addressing how profound the crises on the streets are and the fact that, as I say, police officers, paramedics and firefighters are the ones, like we are all that's left running underneath a tattered safety net trying to catch with skills. You know I write elsewhere. You know police officers want to stop crime and serve the public. Paramedics want to do advanced pre hospital care and help people. Firefighters want to, you know, fight fire and shit right. So that that's what we're told. We go through our training and that's what we get kind of gummed up on and then we get into our careers and it's, it's. And I use social work as small s small w, because we're not trained social workers, you know, but it's. And if you've got life experience and if you've got common sense and if you're good with people. But none of those are in the tests, none of those are in the civil service hiring and certainly none of them are in our operations manual. Right, right and so, but that's what we really are doing, right, that's what we do Like. The majority of our calls is walking in and finding somebody struggling. You know, there's the this, these calls over here that are the acute emergencies. These calls here are the chronic maladies. And then over here's there's the wide realm of mental illness. Yeah, housing, instability, drugs, alcohol, just, you know, despair, anger, like all that crap. You know I mean. And we can or cannot, if you want, like talk about the. What I think is what an indictment of our culture the lack of understanding that two paramedics were found more guilty for responding to, you know, for botching the response to Elijah McClain than the police officers who accosted him and put him into crisis. Right, so that our culture can't wrap their heads around the fact that a man, a tiny man's, walking down the street, gets choked up by the police and that's considered part okay, and the paramedics who misjudged the amount of ketamine to give him are found live more liable than the police. Like, what I want is I don't want anybody hurt. I don't want a police officer hurt, I don't want any paramedic hurt, but I also don't want innocent people killed over and over again and we walk away with it pretending that's okay, right, and so if the cities, the states and the administrations aren't doing a better job educating us, us on the street, we're being, we're going to repeat these things because all we have is our habits and our precedents and all that, and I think that is a moral, that's a real moral flaw in in American society. So I'm not blaming individuals on blaming the system and the structure.

Speaker 1: 16:52

But I mean police academy, fire academy, you know, paramedic school. These classes and certifications and things that you go to only can cover so much. Of course. Right, and there's just, and so there's a lot to be left out to training right on the on the street training.

Speaker 2: 17:14

Yeah, right, well, absolutely. And yet I suggest, and I've talked to some of my, my friends who are captains at the training division, that's very true, and yet we look at what we're actually doing. You know, and it's like like I don't want firefighters panicking and doing bad shit. You know bad stuff in fire, on fire scenes, but again it's, it's a pure culture. It's a lot of we, you know kind of rely on, on cliche and narrative and, and you know, sitting around the table getting you know good and bad advice to stilled, but the same thing for you know, and again that what, what you see often with what we've seen discussed with the police training, is the same, like us versus them. You've got to be on your back, you got to watch yourself, but statistically the officers and reacting are killing, like they're far more white people who are harming police officers than than men of color, but men of color the ones who are getting killed overwhelmingly. So that is a that is something that a data point, that that could be investigated. But and we should also be saying that to add, at a police academy and a paramedic school in a you know, a fire training, understanding that you're going to be dealing with people all the time who are not not presenting normally that mental health issues are the primary thing that drive this culture. At this point, at the emergency response level, that ought to have a priority, because that is really what we're going to be dealing with and those are the people we often end up hurting, right, which causes lawsuits, which causes riots, which causes pain to us, because none of these people join their professions to hurt other people, right, right. So that's what I'm saying. It is, it is a damn problem, a shame, if not a crime, that we have not, at a systemic level, said whoa, police officers aren't coming out to hurt people and it keeps happening and we get, you know I mean, I use this advisedly we get lucky, the system gets lucky that for so long there wasn't body camera and there weren't investigations, that they just took it as well. It was the officer thought he was, you know, was in jeopardy. When really we look at it's like better training, de-escalation and understanding that not everything is the threat you've been told is coming at you every minute, like Elijah McClain. That's absurd. George Floyd was saying from the very get-go he was hyperventilating and just needed chance. He was never fighting them, he was never trying to flee, he was panicked. Killing a panicked person over 20 bogus $20 bill is a failure of our system. Right, and I will say that Minneapolis did nothing at the city level, at the to change how the officer's understanding of mental illness, of responding to people in crisis on drug and I'm including on drugs and alcohol as alteramentation Right. That is a failure of the city and it sets up our officers to struggle, to be to struggle with making the right decision when they don't know what the right decision is Right, and that's something that's a structural thing. That's one of the things I talk a lot about in the book is structural versus individual issues and where, in the confluence of those two, in the overlap, that's where we see a lot of bad things happen. But that's the moral injury talks.

Speaker 1: 20:43

Yeah, I mean, there's just those people you know you talked about the safety net and they know people that are kind of falling behind past the safety net, and then this is where the first responders, you know, come into play to try to save and help them. But you know, there's just not a lot of, I want to say, time and energy put into solving the mental health crisis Right, and I guess who's has to be the solver of the mental health crisis is these first responders that are, well to say, low trained to handle those type of calls right. You don't go to the paramedics school and they don't talk a ton of time about, you know, mental health issues and stuff like that, that things are starting to slowly increase yeah, slowly, but I mean the pendulum is so far over there with the mental health crisis. It's going to take quite a while to get back over there. So, yeah, I think definitely better training and better maybe, I don't know, it's kind of a there's a lot of things that need to be better. I guess it can be overwhelming to pick those things out. To, like, start implementing in society is definitely needed. What in the in your book, you also talk about some of the major points that you would like to talk about. I mean, we talk about discrimination in in your book.

Speaker 2: 22:09

Well, I think one way to look at it is you know so much what we consider normal, right, and you know that if we bring our suppositions, our you know our presumptions, which are often our biases, you know, you think about. Traditionally emergency responders are, you know it's predominantly white either city, you know city, or suburbanites working in urban areas and the people other than those kind of acute, you know car, car wreck is kind of non nonclass status. Everyone crashes, you know, and acute emergencies happen everywhere. But for the people who don't have kind of health, education, finances and resources, those are the people who 911 is the first and last thing. So you know, I saw when, when we started, we had several of the kind of older captains were like you're going to see a lot of people struggling. Just remember they made bad decisions to put them there. And then, it was interesting, some of the other captains, who were particularly people of color, were like you're going to be going into people's homes where this is all they have. They may not have insurance. So don't, just because they're poor, treat their stuff worse than the people who are rich, live in nice homes and have insurance, because those fuckers can get their stuff back. The poor people have nothing else. And so the more I looked at it, realizing that the like I'm not great because I'm a like I'm not great because I've somehow earned my way up the system I've had, you know, I've gotten benefits from being man, being white, all that crap. All these things are both explicit and implicit all my life and not understanding that that has helped that my. You know that my father also benefited that way, you know, and I'm from Irish Mormon stocks. So go back a couple of generations and it's immigrants and scrappy, you know, scrappy second or third class citizens. But it's easier as a, you know, as a white dude to make it up. And I know a lot of people say well, you know, individually I've done this. I'm like, I'm not talking about individual Bob or Jerry or Jeremy, I'm talking about as a group, like, and I talk about for emergency responders, fire department particularly. You know, up until in many states or many cities, you know, up until the lawsuits of the 60s and 70s and 80s, only white men were allowed to apply. Like what? Women weren't just legally not allowed to apply in a fire service and men of color were either not allowed or their applications were jetted. So of course you have an entire history. All the plaques on the wall are all white guys. You know whether it's Irish, italian out here, more Scandinavian, polish like, but it's not because those people were inherently better at doing this job, is because those are the only people who were allowed to do it. And once it went from being a lower tiered, disposable immigrant toil to a privileged job, we kind of pulled the ladder up behind us and so mistaking this idea that these departments have been all white and all male for so long, because it's something essential, rather than this is the result of generations, of a very slanted playing field, right, and I believe you know. And so that that's a pretty simple explanation when we have this distance about. Well, change is hard and you know women are this and that's you know. Or you know men of color are ruining or watering down or all the all the cliches you hear angry, threatened white guys say but it's also like dudes, you're only here because no one else was allowed to apply for the job. So like that's not natural and that's not organic and that's not fair, right, and so it kind of goes the same way when we look at, you know, we can go into the sociology of housing this, then you know, like all the stuff that we end up seeing on the streets, yes, they're absolutely our individual bad choices, but we also are seeing generations of poverty and if you don't have money, you don't have access, you're struggling. And then we see people making desperate bad decisions for so long. And that's what that's our workplace. So if we take it uncritically, it's a lot of white people, generally white suburban men, seeing a lot of people of color struggling and we walk back saying, well, I would never do that. It's like, yeah, but you also have a job that pays you well and you went to school and no one is telling you you can't buy a home in the subdivision for reasons that are kind of dubious, but tough shit, right, so we're not equal, and forgetting that is a real cheap sleight of hand.

Speaker 1: 26:58

Yeah, yeah, there's a lot to could unpack there. You know, kind of going back to maybe, the beginning, do you think it was intentional, you know, to leave certain groups out of being, you know, firefighters? And we'll start with Erica's right there was, firefighters were first.

Speaker 2: 27:18

Well, I mean, I think it as much as we are, you know, whatever, running 10 or 15 years behind, you know, like as a proudly atavistic, profession right, like well, but I think that's you know at any, at almost any place we go in, whether we go into a school, a bank, a business, you know all the photos on the wall prior to 1980 are pretty much are all going to be white men. Like that's just too like. Of course, the good old days were great because guys like you and I ran thin Thanks, right. And we ran things because other people weren't allowed to do it Right, and we worked hard as an American culture to make sure that other people didn't have the same access we did, while pretending that everyone had the same access, right. So it's kind of a point what I think. I just know what, like, minneapolis has its own kind of problematic history with. You know that there were some black men who, of course, had to work at a segregated station because no white men would work. One guy was fired and kind of sued to get his job back and initially, of course, the city council also all white men found against him and then he won his case. But he was like I'm not going back with people who said they're going to let me die in a fire, right. So we talk about the bravest and the most noble and all this stuff. It's like our history, our legacy if you look at the lawsuits that have had to have been filed up until even this year in cities across the country. We are pretty churlish and pretty immature and fairly petty about a lot of stuff. So we're both noble and that's the thing it's like. So I challenge a lot of like yeah, we do great work. Yeah, like, I am so proud and honored to do this job and I know, anywhere I go, strangers will put their lives in line to help me. Right, I know that I crashed my car anywhere in this country. There will be someone who will come out. Even if they hate everything I wrote in this book, they will still pull me out of this car. Yeah, right, that doesn't mean they also aren't unconsciously or consciously participating in a biased and problematic historical context. Right, and erasing that sets us up to deny reality and that's in my book. Like I talk to a lot of the women on our job and a lot of the men of color on our job, and women of color their take on how things are is a lot different from the way the white dudes talk about the brotherhood and how fun and great it is Most of the women have. Almost every woman I know has tons of stories about just big and small episodes of chauvinism, of outward hostility and also just lack of familiarity with women. So not knowing how to behave with a woman as a coworker or supervisor, rather as a sex interest or as somebody dismissible, like that's a cultural issue. It's not just fire department. My mom was a lawyer, joined the law firm, second wave feminist and yeah, it wasn't just being a lawyer and learning how to do her job, it was fighting off both the sexist advances and the sex dismissal in the 70s, like on some level. We see some of that in departments where so few women have gotten through that when suddenly there's a woman in charge, guys just fall apart. We can see that in many places in our country, including, say, the politics. So it's not like I'm not saying it's not something that it's just firefighters, right, it is a cultural thing, yeah.

Speaker 1: 31:01

I do want to have hope that things will work out over time and things shift back and forth and hopefully things will get better over time and not worse. But I mean that's perspective, I guess, where you're coming from, and about being fair and equal rights and things like that. I just don't know why it has to be so difficult for some people just to change right. What if this was your daughter? What if this was your wife? What if this was your family member? How would you treat them? Just think about that. Would you treat them differently than the person you're working with? Because you probably shouldn't. You probably should hold them to the same respect and honor and integrity. And just kind of trips me up a little bit that we're so hard on other people.

Speaker 2: 32:04

Right and I think yeah, and a lot of people don't. But again it's like I don't know that we actually think so much about what we're doing. We don't consider the context Right. So there's absolutely this is like this is a kind of a course and crass workplace and we're hard on everybody. And when you add a kind of a racial or gender or sexuality multiplier, the line between hazing, which we're not supposed to do, versus huffing people up, which is a gray area, like too very specific bias that people may or may not even be conscious of what they're doing, that's one of the problems. But also thinking about that not everyone's the same, like understanding that it's not saying to giving people special treatment, it's treat them fairly, but also realize that not everyone has wanted to do this job since high school or since they were little kids staring up at the state, like understand that on some level it is a hallowed profession and career and it's also a city job. So a lot of the stuff we believe we have to believe in it, but in a lot of that, like a hagiographic, like saying we're some sort of noble saints kind of what we do ignores a lot of the fact that what we do is kind of mundane and routine until it's not. And how we behave inside of our private little cloistered stations is absolutely unprofessional most of the time. And the same thing with the hazing well, it's just to get you tough. That's just to blow off steam. It's like you don't have to be a sociopath. That's like wrapping bullshit behavior up in this. Well, we got to get tough. Or well, we can't have any fun in the fire stations anymore. It's like, yeah, we can. We just, like most of the women who come on this job, are pretty tough to do this job. They just don't want to be called the C word, they don't want to be called a bitch.

Speaker 1: 34:05

They don't want to be ignored.

Speaker 2: 34:07

Every time they walk into a room, every guy gets up and walks away. They don't want to make feel like they're either going to get assaulted in the night, have their gear messed with, or are they going to get dropped in a fire. The Canadian woman you had on that was just so heartbreaking. Listening to Lynette, I believe her name was. That was so heartbreaking listening to you get pulled aside when you're new. I mean, I've had a bunch. I get a lot of rookies and my first thing I say to them is here's the deal. I know you're new. My promise to you today is I'm not going to let you die and we'll get through the rest. There's no need to be a grandstanding and gratuitous tough guy to people who they're actually looking for you, to you for guidance and leadership. I really believe and I've seen the firefighters who know so much more than I do, who are so much better, so small a skill than I am, and with that sort of bemused, avuncular, easy kid, it's going to be all right. And knowing that we're all blood, that we all start where we start, blaming somebody for not having 20 years of experience their first day is a bullshit way of leadership. It's not a genuine leadership. And so I think we get away with a lot because for so long no one knew what we really did and we hid in the stations and we hid in the rags and I think that kind of enabled a lot of less than noble behaviors for a bunch of people who can be really, really noble.

Speaker 1: 35:49

Yeah, yeah, definitely. I was just thinking about, you know, when that story, you know, being talked to by her captain basically not going to help you If something happens. You're on your own, and I just can't imagine doing that to another human Right. You know, at the end of the day, would they really have done it? I don't know. Sure they really leave her in a fire, I don't know. But just having that in someone's mind can't make them successful, and I don't know how you became successful by telling people things like that.

Speaker 2: 36:25

Right, but it's the peer culture right, and that's what you see so much of. Is, you know, like Minneapolis and DERD, one of the longest federal injunctions? Because, within the already high or low bar of firefighter bad behavior, we went that much further that there's a federal injunction because of our racist hiring or racist refusal to hire and in sexist, and so there's a lot of diversity in the classes that got hired with me right at the turn of the century, which is a brutal phrase to say, but it is almost 25 years ago. So the turn of the century you know, it's all the cliches about diversity is ruining this job and all this stuff. But realizing that the few, even with all this diversity, watering everything down, it was still very few women and many of them were like I'm not made to feel welcome. Everywhere I turn, it's firemen, this firemen, that it's a culture, but it's nothing about this is, you know, and it's like, well, we're not going to do it, excuse me, we're not going to bend over to make you feel welcome. You got to fit in, but it's also like I don't feel safe here. And so these people who say that we're, you know, we're all a team in the brotherhood, we're going to do this stuff, they're also actively and if and if the, you know, and if people don't feel safe, they don't perform well. And for all the other people who wanted to fit in, we saw, you know, and I think, because I was a teacher and I've always been kind of an outlier, you know, I watched how many people needed that social connection, and so how many people lapped up all the cliches and did anything to buy in. And so you'd hear people with three months on, heriting the three year guys who are parroting or trying to become the 30 year guys. They didn't know what they are doing. You know, and so it's all you know. And in one hand it's fun to give each other shit, that's great. But knowing that we all are flawed and there's a difference between you know japing and giving each other you know shots, versus actually believing that the crew couldn't find the front door right and or that and, and believing the myths, investing in them so that we feel safe from the safety of a, of a you know a dining room table, like all sitting around talking smack, like doing that as a fun, like doing that with a sense of Merth and knowing we're lying, versus really investing so that, as long as I said Jerry Lund f dot now I wouldn't go anywhere with him, that means no one's looking at me and I'm the one who got lost in a closet or I couldn't find my way out of a bathroom right, yeah, yeah. That that we're so and and that's what I write about too that that leads to so much of the posturing. And the posturing and the fear of saying I don't know what I'm doing or I need help on a call means people go in too far or they don't. They lose sight of themselves and they don't ask for help when they need to. And all the rich studies and are the LLDD studies have shown that or they react badly or on the other side, and this gets more towards kind of your mission. On the mental and psychological help or emotional help part of this, we bottle it up, we white knuckle it. No one asked for help. So then you might have five of the nine people you know in a busy double house having thoughts of despair, having thoughts of imposter syndrome, who go home and either, you know, got pills, have hallucinators, have nightmares, drink themselves to sleep, to hide from their go. You know, none of that's productive and it's all avoidable, right. But because this we put this premium on being tough and stoic and then behind it it's a lot of people really, as what we're seeing now with the rash of PTSD and traumatic issues, it's not a good coping mechanism. And that's the thing that I think and no one's making us do it right. No one is saying but culturally we are uncomfortable and we don't know who we are if we aren't the thing like, if we aren't top firemen. And that's kind of what I said at the beginning of the book and I said as we're starting, if we understood that what we're going to do is far different from what we see Dennis Leary doing on Rescue Me and what we see in Backdraft and what we see, you know, in all the cool rock and roll Instagram videos and say, the most time you're going to be seeing people are suffering, you're going to be witness, and intimate witness, to other people's suffering, right, and we're going to not have easy solutions. So even if you put a wall up and say that's them, they made bad decisions. You know, I take care of myself. Therefore, I'm never going to have a drug problem or an alcohol problem or do something stupid and wreck my car. And yet we are chock full of DWIs and despair and alcohol and drug problems and because we don't have a mechanism to ask for help, it sets us up to failure. So that for, especially for men, saying I need help is the hardest thing to do and it shouldn't be. That's ego, that's conditioned, that's bullshit Like, and yet we clean to that and it sets us up to fail.

Speaker 1: 41:40

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 41:41

And I really and that's the part that I really I really try to, I mean, if I can offer anything to people like that's really what I try to to to lacerate this, this kind of tough guy veneer, because having feelings doesn't make you weak. Be having struggles doesn't make you weak. Not being able to be real and not being able to extend compassion to a coworker, I mean, I know we look at it always like if it's contagious, right?

Speaker 3: 42:08

Jeremy's having a hard time, jerry's like oh fuck that I'm not going near here.

Speaker 2: 42:11

I'm like no, he might that might rub off on me rather than being like, hey, I've had a hard time to, let's sit together with it, Right, and it's such a I think it is such a male thing which goes back to, you know, this notion that men are better at this job than anyone else and white men are better. It's like we have a really shitty track record, Jerry, like of doing it and surviving, Like that's like why do we keep saying we're doing it best and right, when you look at how much we continue to undermine ourselves? Yeah.

Speaker 3: 42:40

Right and that's kind of what.

Speaker 2: 42:42

But, as you said, about some of the sociological stuff, getting our culture, getting our administrations, because so often what they do is they come up with half ass things like. Minnesota legislature passed a great thing of presumptive PTSD in 219, recognizing essentially that from guaranteed every single parametric firefighter and police officer in their career works will will weigh across the threshold for PTSD diagnosis, which means the cities around the hook potentially for 100% of their new hires having a PTSD traumatic diagnosis, the bean counters.

Speaker 1: 43:21

Yeah, that's not gonna work.

Speaker 2: 43:23

So then they start. They've been like up until 219 that they really didn't reject the workers comp, didn't reject many claims because there were so few of them. Since then they've started challenging everyone out of hand, like a regular insurance company will. So now, if you're having trouble, people are having to fight, and it's not everyone's looking to get off the job. A lot of them want to come back. Yeah, they have to go through so many hoops, which then of course exacerbates the problems. That doubt, all that stuff, you know, and it's just that cruelty. And that's outside of a station level, that's outside of even a chain of command level, that's at the city level and the financial level, right, and that's the stuff where, again, systems versus individuals.

Speaker 1: 44:05

Yeah, yeah, that's going to be really tough, you know, if you leave. I mean, I think the intent there right for the legislator is good, right legislation to be good to for that, because it needs to be right. There's a lot of people suffering, but just because you're going through something doesn't mean you can't come out the other side right with some resiliency. So everybody struggles and everybody handles it differently. Some people are more open about their struggles and reaching out for, for help. So I think there's there's got to be some balance there, right? Some? yeah not everybody wants to leave, not sure we shouldn't be challenging everybody. We got to come up with some better maybe criteria of what it looks like and how we can help people get you know, stay on a job and I think also preparation early on. You know, I think we wouldn't have so so many mental health struggles if we had a lot more education early on in our careers and a lot more emphasis within the departments talking about it and coming up with creative solutions so we don't end up with a bunch you know a third of the people that we work with with suicidal ideation like that's. We don't want that.

Speaker 2: 45:17

Sure, and this goes what I, something I said kind of towards the beginning. I said we get back to me. This is my kind of working hypothesis from doing some of the men, fire resiliency training and peer counseling that when I listened to a lot of the men and women talking about their traumatic incidents or their traumatic stress issues, what comes up over and over again is this notion of I couldn't save X or Y, I couldn't save that lady, I couldn't save that boy. You know that baby and of course babies like a dead baby is always depressing. That's life if you're human, right. But what I listened to and I thought but so many of us start out and that in a firefighting context, you know, you're told, you know, are you going to be able to handle the fire? Are you going to be able to pull that 300 pound man out, like the stuff and the reality of it is, we don't fight that many fires across the country right, like smoke detectors. In the 80s, arson did a hell of a job reducing our daily fire load and so as a fire service, we face an existential issue. So, like I had a rookie, we were together four months. We did not have one first in working fire, like, so to say, this is your job, you can you handle this rookie? And you know she's like I don't know, I've never, I haven't seen one yet. Right, like that's. But in the meantime we go to all these emergent medical emergencies. We see so much and I think when you go from, like from your first day, it doesn't matter that you don't know anything. You're in a fire gear, you're on a truck, people expect you to know. So how much that creates this duty to present this posture. So then, if you want to talk about imposter syndrome and panic and feeling like you're not good enough, and then when you and sorry, I thought my wife was hissing at me and then when you, but in the meantime we go to all these medical calls and we're still thinking we should save people, you know, and when I've done some of the peer counseling, listening to people's stories, I'm like did you hit that person? Like did?

Speaker 3: 47:24

you run them over.

Speaker 2: 47:25

You did not Like, you know, as the as the slogan goes, it was already on fire when we got here. Like we are responding to what has happened. And I really believe that some of this notion that we're supposed to be able to solve everything and like and fight everything, and supposed to be the like, the behemoths that we envision ourselves to or want to be but no, we're not, because no one is that sets us up to take risks on fire scenes that we shouldn't and reading line of duty death reports bear saddened out, but I think it it leads to that dissonance of my friends who have, you know, here, who have struggled with traumatic overwhelm or traumatic wounds. So much of it is that dissonance between I can't, I couldn't save that person, you know.

Speaker 1: 48:16

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 48:19

I feel I failed them. I'm like, how did you fail them? Did you not do CPR? Did you drag them by the hair Like you didn't? You did your best, and so it's that balance I'll write about this in the book it's that balance between we show up as fast as we can and we do everything we can to help somebody and we know that we cannot save everyone and you put those two together. It's like I look at people. I'm like this person's probably not going to make it. It was already in place for years, weeks, days or minutes, depending on what sort of issue it is, before we got called and before we arrived. We did everything we can to make it better. And we are not God, we are not superheroes, we are not touch faith healers. We do our best and we try to give everyone the best shot, but as long as I don't do something really stupid I feel really congruent about. I'm witnessing a lot and, as I write in the book, so much of what we see is absolutely causal right Years of drinking, years of smoking, years of not taking your heart medicine right, driving recklessly. This is the human circus and we show up to it. So any day that I think I'm special and of course it hurts. But I have cut out so much of the things that I see other people putting into their blame sack because I'm aware that I can't do anything about it. And this goes to the people like. I'm a severe anti-smoker. So I'll go to people with COPD who are still smoking. I'll say you know, weaning off those heaters will help you. That's an empirical fact. It's also a judgment, but it's an empirical fact and understanding that, that we're going to see people that we can't shift, we can't make them change their human behavior and it doesn't make me, you know and I see. But what's interesting because I see so many people, you're going back to the like we go into poor neighborhoods, we see poor people struggling and we think that's them, that's on them, and we have kind of a wallop of empathy or understanding, right, because if you're immersed in it, if you start thinking about it, it's pretty overwhelming. Like what would I do if I had five kids and no steady job? And I didn't have like, yeah, then I would make that. And I mean, I look at, you know, with our shift work there was a time when my wife and I were both on kind of straight, straight hours and she's an artist and a teacher and a performer and suddenly we were, we were like had to get the kids to daycare on time and we were stuck in traffic and after five days of that I was like holy shit, I thought I was just really well adjusted, you know, super chill dude. So I know it's because I have a work schedule where I'm gone 24 hours and I'm home the rest of the time and I'm like, oh, I suck at this, like stress and daily life, like I'm not doing better than anyone else. I've just got a schedule that allows me to go to work, like I don't deal with fresh hour, and that was a good, humbling reminder. But for us, like you, look at how much people who have a bad call and they blame themselves, yeah Right, and it's like, but you know, I was like my friends, you did nothing wrong, you showed up, you did your best, that's it and this is what happens. Whether it's, you know, it's some congenital issue, whether it is the end of life, well, like it's. And I think accepting that allows me to, I think, kind of look openly at what we're seeing and still try to be compassionate. But it's also a cynical compassion because I know that I'm not saving a lot of these people, but I still treat them with compassion and respect. You know, with the opioid and drug epidemic that's in every city and every city thinks there's the worst, but hell, it's everywhere. You know, I kind of have no judgment. I know that, like drugs are bad for you, don't do them. And if you're going to do them, there are going to be consequences, whether you're rich or poor. You know, if you've got money, you can sell a lot of shit before you have to start stealing. If you don't have money, you start stealing, like, and, but what we're seeing? We revive people and very few of them are going to be like. Thanks, jarrah, I appreciate it. Right, you know I'm going to turn my life around because no, because there are often other issues and also narcotics are addictive, like I can't stop that, and we will revive the same person over and over again. That's life. I'm not like, right, like and that's. And for me, that allows that human connection and it is cynical but it's also compassionate, you know, and that that really condenses down the types of calls that that eat at me. You know and you know, and as we said at the beginning, like, yeah, I responded on, you know, the killing of George Floyd and but, as I say, like I've been on several previous police killing stuff by police officers and those, until the killing of George Floyd became the international event. It was going to be another round filed non event until the video came out and that itself, like, systemically, I suffer far more from seeing our systemic failures than I see individual failures Like I have so much empathy for the two young police officers, jake Jay Alexander King and Tom Lane, who were fresh out of the academy and were given bad guidance. And then they were. They were inculcated into a culture of you don't say anything, you back your boss. And their boss happened to be Derek Chauvin, who had a history of of abusing his power, let's say right. And the department did nothing to address that. And they knew about it because there were multiple complaints about him and had they addressed it, he might have thought a little bit that they, rather than coming in and being a tough guy to show the rookies how not to let some quote street thug get over on them, and so they ignore what's actually happening. And I say that having watched me, having responded, but then having watched the body cam footage and then having been through the trials, like I'm not, like I know a lot about this and but I'm saying it's the human factor, but it's this like. So when people said that must have been so hard for you, I'm like the part that's hard for me is the systemic part, right, that and that's the you know. For me it's like and that's going back to the beginning, I love going to work, I love helping, I love working with all the good cops and paramedics and firefighters. Like I love what we do and I don't. Like I'm not naive. I know that there's a lot of shit out there. We see a lot of, you know, fuckery, as I call it.

Speaker 3: 55:07

Like a lot of you know, a lot of super up.

Speaker 2: 55:09

Humans making good people making bad decisions, bad people making bad decisions. I'm not naive, I don't think I'm a savior, I don't think she like. At the same time, I know that even if we are all trying to do better and this goes with some of the PTSD stuff at the individual level trying to help each other out, but if the system, the administration doesn't support it genuinely, is only looking at a legalistic solution or avoidance. That is some of the moral injuries. So I look at paramedics who aren't allowed to make discretionary decisions on calls because if they don't transport they get in trouble. That is completely undermined their agency, their buy-in and that leads them to burning out when they've got six months on. Like that's atrocious, these officers having no support, no structural support, no guidance, running around worrying that the next call is going to go sideways on them without understanding how to better avoid it going sideways. That's a complete moral failure by the cities to protect the people who are trying to protect the citizens. Like my heart breaks for the officers and the paramedics and for my coworkers, like that's BS and that's a structural. I said, when I can't deal with that, I'll walk away from that. Right, that's the part that's going to make me walk away, because I know I can't change it. I can write a book. I can go on podcasts. I'm nobody and I understand that and that's because it really is money behind it. It's money behind the PTSD piece and they're all looking at liability. They're not like and that's the real hard thing and I think we are getting better. Like to your point, I do really encourage a newer generation of people who are trying to take mental health seriously, a generation of people who think I don't need to be treated like shit to be a human being, like that's all good stuff.

Speaker 1: 57:00

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 57:01

And the TikTok. That's a whole separate issue. But I have no rhythm, I have no voice, I'm not going to be on TikTok but my children have forbidden me. But seriously, like that we are getting. We are doing better. We're recognizing that a lot of the older stuff didn't necessarily serve us well. I just think we haven't been empowered to figure out what we can do better and so we're stumbling forward and I think our best minds are really doing a lot of good work, despite both cultural resistance we don't like change and administrative assistance that costs money. Here's a flyer and a pizza party, and so in between those two, I think the best of us are working hard to find good ways forward.

Speaker 1: 57:44

Yeah, thank you. Yeah, it's going to change. We have to accept it's going to take time to change, I think, to your point. I think the younger generations are have some some good outlook, I think, when it comes to mental health, like trying to prevent the burnout and trying to prevent, you know, some of the other things that come along with the job you know ending up with, you know, maybe PTSD and stuff like that I think they're better about getting help early on and I think that's that's just huge and I think they're to be honest. I think most of them are better about using their time. They use their time to go do fun things and it's not all about work, yeah, so I think that healthier balance is going to make them have a longer career and more healthier career and maybe a more compassionate career to the people that they're helping and maybe people that they're working with. I hope.

Speaker 2: 58:45

Sure. Hey, I got a question for you because you've talked to such a range of people. When you have so much knowledge, what do you see from all you've learned and all you've, all the people you've talked about as kind of productive, practical ways of kind of increasing our resilience for those who are in the like in the stations, as firefighters, medics and EMTs Like how did what? What, if you collect, you have three or four things that have popped up for you that you recommend.

Speaker 1: 59:13

I think one. I guess it would be like peer support. I'm huge on peer support, right, absolutely. I think every department, every agency, every county, whatever if your agency is so small, you know the figure, you can't do peer support and like that then go outside wider, right, I think peer support is huge. I think that's something that can help prevent things from happening and maybe de-escalate things from from happening. I think so peer support is is big. I think another one is as a leader and a company officer. I think you have to understand your people. But you have to understand where people are coming from. You know their perspective, you know their lives and stuff like that. When I grew up in leadership that was like you're the, you just got told what to do and you didn't have any questions, right, and no one cared about your family or who really have a thing, and so you're just kind of more of a, a worker, b, right, not have any opinions or anything like that. So I think as a company officer, just getting to know your people and have perspective and I think my last crew was was really good. I really hate, hated to leave them and retire because they were just like I knew them pretty well. We spent enough time together. Like I know your strength, I know your weakness, you know my strength, you know my weakness and you know I'm going to lean on you when it comes to your specialty. Right, we have some guys that were very great at some things. Like, do I need to be in charge of this? No, not really. Like you can be in charge because you're the expert in that, just because I'm a company officer. So I think using your people, getting to know them and stuff like that, that also helps right with our mental health and stuff like that, because you know kind of what's going on and what to look for. The larger you know people that you're over, that's a little bit harder to do. And I think just education open, honest and vulnerability and education about mental health, what it is, what it isn't like how you can take care of yourself better, like eating better, you know you're sleeping better, like just the education on things, what to watch out for, what to look for, Like you talked about, like the whole you know the I think the savior complex is is massive and I think the reason why it's such a huge problem is because the call is done and completed and then you go back and you rehash it for the next day, week, two weeks, like the couch, you know. You know the quarterback couch thing, you know, type thing. You just analyze it and break it down. But no one knew what you oh, we're on a fire call five minutes before that or whatever, and then this full arrest came out. So we're like all these things that transpired, you know, to get to that call. So it's just like we eat ourselves alive, like both. You know what we could have done better and then we just like it's. The other thing was if we could stop feeding on ourselves as far as like just eat, like we so good at, like jackals. Someone said to me like just your own, like no, we got to stop that. We just got to like build each other up to be the best people we can. They can be right. No matter if you're a leader or not, you're still can build someone up and have them be an amazing person, and I think you do that by just being your genuine self.

Speaker 2: 1:02:22

So I don't know if that answered your question. That's absolutely true and I mean it's consistent. But and you know from what I've seen, you know of your various pods like those points come through and again it's like a lot of this isn't rocket science, but we just we sit there with our kind of our heads in the sand and our fingers in our ears and la la la, we're not listening. This is all confusing. This is, you know, this is impossible, this is going to ruin the fire service. And it's like, you know, men being stoic and hacking from a heart attack, from stress or from drinking themselves to death, or, you know, making a date with their gun because they can't ask for help, that's not successful. Like stoicism, like true stoicism, yes, but what we pass as stoicism is not successful and is not beneficial.

Speaker 1: 1:03:08

I agree with you on that, because I see that sorry to interrupt it I see stoicism coming into play a lot. Right, it's coming kind of back around in some popularity and I think to your point right, there is a point where it stoicism is good and works. But I think to people can be so stoic that they make bad decisions and you know and I'm not asking for help and I feel like they sometimes end up, you know, committing suicide and taking their lives.

Speaker 2: 1:03:42

Well, absolutely, I think that's what I'm saying, making a very clear distinction between what, like the capitalist stoics talked about, versus how we use it now as meaning, you know, being a macho, tough guy, who's you know, who thinks, who isn't beset with the weakness of feelings, and it's like that's not what stoicism is and that also doesn't work with the human model. You know, one thing I want to give, you know, a shout out to Lawrence Gonzalez's book, his trilogy, the Deep Survival trilogy. We, you know the IAFF, did the fireground survival training several years ago and in the manual there were there quotes from Gonzalez's book. But it really is about humans, like human systems, human behavior and how, all the different, and it's resilient. But it's like there isn't a code to crack for resilience and that's kind of what his mission has been from. What I have from reading his three main books on this is how is it that five different people can be in the same situation? Two of them will go nuts, two of them make really dumb, self defeating actions and one of them will walk out fine, like what is it about human? Like what makes us tick? But then also, looking at all the ways that we take risks, you know we normalize risk taking and think we're doing the right thing, and so it's not just about firefighting. But boy, oh boy, does that hit home, like it's looking at the way we normalize risk. But I so for content. I have a 19 year old rookie just started Christmas Eve. 19 years old, younger than my youngest kid Like and so like, and I said to him like it's not my fault that you're 19 years old, but it's also not your fault that you're 19 years old. Your job is to basically you're going to get an education in human systems, human suffering, all this stuff. Your job is to listen well, because there's so much that you're getting that is so far beyond what most 19 year old should know about. And it's my job, our job as crew members, to never forget that you're 19 and to support you in learning and to kind of encourage. And so it's like, hey, he's 19. It's like all I'm thinking of is how much hardship he's going to experience and, of course, being a 19 year old male, like the risk of him having that, you know, prefrontal cortex not firmed up, the risk taking the adrenaline, all that, the wahoo part of the job which is fun, but at the expense of that thinking you're immortal because 19 year olds are, think they're immortal and like how much that sets up. And it's like you know he's working with a bunch of you know, almost everyone else on our station is over 15. We're all creaky and old and half deaf and we've all like struggling to find our cheaters. And you know, this kid is like what the hell's going on but at the same time like we're. That. That's who I can't change, who showed up and so all I can do is try to offer my best to give him data points and also modeling, but it's not even a relevant modeling because he's so I'm older than parents, like you know. But just so that understand that, and and and and bust through the posturing of like shut up, kid, you don't know anything, I'll you know, I'll tell you what to think, like that doesn't actually help people and so, and I think because I was a teacher, I tend to, you know, I give lots of exposition, lots of explanation, hoping that context will save our lives.

Speaker 1: 1:07:19

I don't know if I'm right or not. I try. I think context is better than science.

Speaker 2: 1:07:23

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean I remember I mean, I was, you know, in my 30s when I started I remember getting kind of moved in the middle of a shift to a specialty rig. One day get in and as we're driving to a training, we catch a fire. We're on our way to a fire and I've seen maybe two, three fires at four fires at that point. And we're driving along and his backseat of the specialty rig happens to be four people with less than a year's experience. And then the front guy you know was like, really into being. You know, he'd been like a junior fire explorer, like you know, he loved this idea of being a fireman. And, you know, sit down, shut up, kid, I'll tell you what to think. And as we're going, I said hey, by the way, my name's Jeremy, I don't care. I was like well, if, if I die in this fire, we're going to and you have to meet my wife, you better fucking use my name, right, you know? And this guy like and and, as I got to know him over the next decade, he was a big softy, but he had to. He was so insecure about himself. He postured as being this big, seen it all, done it all, tough guy, you know. And so he, so he invoked and invested in all this kind of the, the back drafts, sort of machismo and deep down. And I'm not like. I'm not like I'm smart enough or I'm perceptive enough like I could see through and I also look at human behavior as kind of a survival skill. So I was like, oh, he's posturing, he's full of shit and he's deeply insecure, but it's like he's the opportunity to be such a good leader and model of good stuff for all the junior people and instead he's this brain ass right and for people who are insecure or people who don't know better, they're going to buy into that. I think that's the way to be and that's the way and you know he ended up really struggling with both, like his insecurities kind of ate him up and I was like that's all avoidable. If someone had helped him not be a brain ass and not invest in this macho culture, he could have actually used all of his real skills to help himself but also help us. Instead he just passed along all the cliches and all the macho posturing and if you're doing it with a wink and then you sit down and tell people, right. But so I make a point like I met a guy, right you know, who had been on 42 years in 2000. So he'd started 1958. He walked up to me, shook my hand and said you look like everybody else, but I'm old. Nice to meet you.

Speaker 3: 1:09:45

I'm chief.

Speaker 2: 1:09:45

Kaufman and he probably said Emmett Kaufman again. He's now dead. But I was like, oh, a 42 year veteran guy looks me in the eye and I'm just another interchangeable white, young, white rookie there are a lot of us and took the time to introduce himself and say welcome. I was like, oh, you don't have to be an asshole, you don't have to say sit in the corner with a mop, don't say anything because you don't exist. And I was like that idea that we have to be the certain way is a toxic lie and it benefits only the insecure and the people who cling to it. But it serves none of us because it doesn't serve the people who try to be tougher than me or tougher than anybody and it doesn't serve the people who are new and trying to learn the fact that this 42 year veteran has the grace to come up and just say hey, and so I made it and I honor that. And it works much better, now that I'm old and I'm half blind, to meet all these new people who all look the same and be like I don't know if I've met you, my name is Jeremy, good to meet you. And they're like, oh, hey, old man, but it's still like. That's like, if we're going to talk about a brotherhood or a sisterhood or this noble calling, that doesn't mean I'm not going to demand stuff from them or expect them to do their job well, but I am going to treat them like a human being and I think my best mentors and the best people I've seen doing this job do that. They love the chaos, they love the mayhem, they treat people right and they try to find ways for all of us to go home better than leave the world better. We found it within a job where most of the people we encounter in emergencies are going to die Right. So that's it. You do your best. You try to give people, as I say, do right and be kind. You try to bring compassion and dignity to the people we see, from the lowest to the richest to the highest, whatever, and then to each other. And when you see somebody suffering, be compassionate. When you see someone silent, try to give them space, but also be direct. Men are often not great about that. So you look like you're having a hard time. I'm fine, I'm fine. I'm like dude. You smell like booze. You're not fine. You're not fine. You're sleeping in your car. You're not fine, it's okay. Let's talk about it Right, instead of kind of the male code of silence and we don't want to press and then letting people suffer and then we either gossip about it or say, wow, we should have done something for them. Yeah, yeah, definitely.

Speaker 1: 1:12:11

And.

Speaker 2: 1:12:11

I think, yeah, that's what some of the best lessons I learned early on, both for good and bad, and I've tried to kind of carry those forward for almost 24 years now.

Speaker 1: 1:12:21

Yeah, that's awesome, jeremy. Where can people find your book and follow you and see what's going on?

Speaker 2: 1:12:30

Well, I appreciate that Trauma sponges is. It's basically in many bookstore. Well, I don't know it's in bookstores in Minnesota, but bookshoporg or if you go to your local bookstore, they'll order it if they don't already have it. I'm at JeremyNortoninfo, which is just it's a simple person's, a non-web person's website, but it's got info on where I'm going to be reading and it's got a bunch of clips. Once we get this one out, the links to this will be there and, yeah, some excerpts are on the book if you want to see what I'm talking about. Yeah, that's it. Otherwise, I'm in Minneapolis, in St Paul.

Speaker 1: 1:13:11

In social media.

Speaker 2: 1:13:12

Yeah, I mean I'm on Instagram but it's whatever. It's half dogs, half me. I was doing selfies in the 80s with my short arms and a regular camera, so it's mostly a joke, but I know I'm old enough that I I try to do some just to spread the word for the book stuff. But I think so much of the hype around having a strong social media presence helps you with books. I don't actually think that's true. I've tried hard, but it's on Instagram. I don't do Twitter or X, but on Instagram it's basically Prolex Gringo. So P-R-O-L-I-X-G-R-I-N-G-O because I'm a wordy MF and but other than that the website has everything else.

Speaker 1: 1:14:02

Awesome. Well, Jeremy, thank you so much for being on today. I really appreciate the conversation.

Speaker 2: 1:14:07

Oh, thank you so much and I really appreciate your mission. I really, I really appreciate much more than you having me on that. You're doing this and you're trying to spread the word and you have. You know, you've opened up to so many people and allowed so many, given so many people a voice, and I think that's super important. So I really appreciate you, jerry, thank you.

Speaker 3: 1:14:24

Yeah, thank you so much Thanks again for listening. Don't forget to rate and review the show wherever you access your podcast. If you know someone that would be great on the show, please get ahold of our host, jerry Dean Lund, through the Instagram handles at Jerry Fire and Fuel or at Enduring the Badge Podcast, also by visiting the show's website Enduringthebadgepodcastcom for additional methods of contact and up-to-date information regarding the show. Remember, the views in a painting expressed during the show solely represent those of our hosts and the current episode's guests.