Making Safety Sexy (ft. Special Guest Max Trescott of the Aviation News Talk podcast)
In this week’s episode, Tony and his guest—Max Trescott, host of the Aviation News Talk podcast—discuss prioritizing safety and the tensions between safety and production as seen in the fallout from a fatal Hudson River crash of a New York Helicopter tour on April 10. Following the accident, the Director of Operations prioritized safety by suspending flights, but was immediately fired by the CEO who resumed operations, but the FAA then mandated they stop again. The two also review the situational awareness and security response of elephants at the San Diego Zoo during last week’s earthquake, before moving on to discuss the importance of safety amidst the ongoing generational handoff occurring in aviation (and many other industries), and how best to make people care enough to prioritize that often unglamorous but always critical topic.
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42:57
Worker Safety and Exploitation, UBI, and Technology Detox
In this week’s episode of Only Human, Dr. Kern covers a couple of stories involving basic OSHA required safety precautions that were ignored in three incidents. The first involves a worker who fatally fell from a scaffold in Madison, WI, the second a hazardous chemical spill at a plant in Toledo, OH, and the last a grain elevator explosion in Nebraska. He also covers worker issues involving companies disguising the efforts of exploited call center workers in the Philippines as “AI” and arguments on both sides of the issue of Universal Basic Income (UBI) as a potential solution to raise people above the “basic survival” level of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs to improve personal performance, self-actualization, and better contribute to society. Finally, he muses on the necessity of modern “technology detox” retreats versus building better daily habits which include breaks from technology to improve our focus and mental health.
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31:46
Only Human – News, Analysis, and Insights from the World of Human Performance
The podcast is re-branding! Over the last few years, we’ve pursued the goal of bridging the gap between who you are today and who you are capable of being by focusing on reducing human error and improving human performance from a mostly philosophical stance. Starting today, we’re centering practical application and real-world scenarios through the lens of the strategies and techniques we’ve been discussing. In this episode, Tony reviews an altercation between on-duty air traffic controllers at Ronald Reagan Airport, the experiences shared recently by the astronauts who were stranded on the International Space Station for the last nine months, and what both of these stories have to teach us about being Only Human.
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19:21
How to Survive and Thrive in a World of Relentless Uncertainty
Uncertainty is a major feature of the modern world. We have unprecedented access to a connected network of global information that we must constantly parse, analyze, and decipher. This adds a relentless complexity that our brains did not evolve to handle and creates a Petri dish of self-induced stress. In this week’s Only Human with Dr. Tony Kernpodcast, our host uses a personal fishing story to explore the ways that extra information and complexity creates stress even in places where we once felt peace. He also shares ways that uncertainty can be good for us by encouraging flexibility in our thinking and how we approach problems. Finally, he shares his four-step process to survive and thrive in a world of relentless uncertainty. There’s a lot of information available out there—much of it unhelpful—but you don’t want to miss these valuable insights.
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27:17
How Precise Actions Produce Meaningful Impacts
Modern technology enables instant global communication, microwave meals, and AI-generated artwork… but conveniences like these also come at a cost. In this episode of Only Human with Dr. Tony Kern, we explore why so many people find it difficult to connect the dots between their individual actions and any sort of meaningful impact, resulting in an epidemic of indifference. Far too often, we only make that connection when our actions or inactions lead to terrible consequences—for our personal lives, for our careers, and occasionally in the form of tragedies like January’s midair collision above Reagan National airport. Tune in to hear Tony’s thoughts on this accident and how the solution to all these problems is something we’ve lost in the Age of Apathy and Convenience: the pursuit of high precision performance.
About Only Human – News, Analysis, and Insights from the World of Human Performance
Over the last few years, we’ve pursued the goal of bridging the gap between who you are today and who you are capable of being by focusing on reducing human error and improving human performance from a mostly philosophical stance. Starting today, we’re centering practical application and real-world scenarios through the lens of the strategies and techniques we’ve been discussing. In this episode, Tony reviews an altercation between on-duty air traffic controllers at Ronald Reagan Airport, the experiences shared recently by the astronauts who were stranded on the International Space Station for
Listen to Only Human – News, Analysis, and Insights from the World of Human Performance, Begin Again with Davina McCall and many other podcasts from around the world with the radio.net app
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