PreAccident Investigation Podcast

Avsnitt

• PAPod 605 - When a Meeting Becomes an Emergency: Restoring the Room 04.07.2026 25min

  This episode recounts a medical emergency that occurred during a large conference and explains how a quick critical incident stress debrief helped restore the group and the organization.Todd outlines a simple restoration framework—who's hurt, what they need, and who will help—and walks through a seven-step debrief process that turns trauma into learning, supports people emotionally, and improves future response.
• PAPod 604 - On the Edge: Risks, Resilience, and Red Bull’s Adventure Athlete 27.06.2026 32min

  Host Todd Conklin interviews Red Bull athlete Will Gadd about adventure sports, recent tragic incidents (a parachute crash in Butler, Mo., a Moab base-jump, and a bungee failure), and how the outdoor world approaches risk. The episode explores the difference between being robust and being resilient, the limits of individual skill, and how controls, recoverability, and community learning can reduce harm in high‑hazard activities.
• PAPod 603 - Procedures: The Double-Edged Sword of Safety 20.06.2026 20min

  In this episode Todd Conklin explores the paradox of procedures: they keep work stable but also limit flexibility. He explains how procedures can be both necessary and constraining in high-risk, high-consequence environments. Todd highlights the value of incremental safety—making small, thoughtful changes over time—while building communities of practice to better prepare organizations for an uncertain future. He closes with practical advice: treat procedures as thresholds rather than one right way, focus on learning from everyday work, foster resilient systems, and remember to take care of yourself while having some fun.
• PAPod 602 - From Brazil with Safety: Gilval and the New View Revolution 13.06.2026 33min

  Todd Conklin talks with Gilval Menezes about Brazil’s growing movement to adopt the New View of safety: translating resources into Portuguese, building community, publishing a field guide, and running learning teams to shift culture away from blame.They discuss practical work on HOP implementation, the cultural challenges of translation, the urgency driven by workplace fatality rates, and the push to develop methods that fit Brazil and wider Latin America.
• PAPod 601 - Rethinking Safety: AI, Pre-Jobs, and the Power of Listening 06.06.2026 35min

  Todd chats with Ron Gantt about the future of safety — from AI-driven pre-task tools to the limits of rote checklists — and why listening to frontline workers matters more than ever. They explore leadership’s role in shaping responses to incidents, bridging power gaps with contractors, and designing systems that actually support real work. Through examples from healthcare to construction and candid anecdotes, the episode argues for intentional, human-centered change: test tools in context, focus on creating success, and set leaders up to respond thoughtfully when things go wrong.
• PAPod 600 - The Future of Safety: Learning Teams, Storytelling, and Not-Knowing 30.05.2026 24min

  In this part two conversation, Todd Conklin and Bob Edwards explore what the future holds for operational learning and safety. They discuss learning teams, storytelling, the power of curiosity and not-knowing, and how the people closest to the work provide the best solutions.The episode highlights successes from pediatric patient safety, the Navy, and industry examples, and emphasizes cultural shifts away from quick fixes and metrics toward continuous, practical improvement and clearer stop-work practices.
• PAPod 599 - Learn Like Bob: How Pediatric Teams Saved 30,000 Babies 23.05.2026 31min

  Todd Conklin and Bob Edwards discuss Solutions for Patient Safety (SPS), a grassroots movement of learning teams that used operational learning to dramatically reduce harm in pediatric care.The episode covers emotional stories from the SPS meetings, practical methods like soak time and learning teams, the power of continuous improvement, and the real-world impact of saving thousands of young lives.
• PAPod 598 - What If Risk Never Leaves? Exploring Transportable Hazards 16.05.2026 16min

  In this episode, Todd Conklin questions whether risk can ever truly be removed or if it simply moves around. He distinguishes between hazards and risk, discusses how organizations shift risk through contracting and worker practices, and argues that while hazards can be managed, risk remains dynamic and persistent. Todd also highlights the role of controls, barriers, and margin in starting work safely, and teases upcoming conversations on psychological safety, AI and safety, and leadership.
• PAPod 597 - From the way, way, way, way, back machine...Pain as a Predictor: Martha Acosta on Finding the Signals Before Failure 09.05.2026 21min

  Todd Conklin interviews Martha Acosta, a pioneer in human performance and instructional design, about using organizational "pain points" and paradoxes as early indicators of system failures. They discuss why near misses and workplace frustrations are valuable signals and how leaders can turn those tensions into opportunities for learning and improvement.The episode offers practical advice for managers: be present, look for pressure points across roles, and treat minor pains as diagnostic cues to prevent larger incidents. Martha translates high-level ideas into actionable steps leaders can use tomorrow.
• PAPod 596 - Incremental Safety Practices: Reductive vs. Inductive Safety 02.05.2026 20min

  Todd Conklin reviews Erik Hollnagel’s new book "Incremental Safety Practices" and explains the core idea that safety efforts fall into two approaches: reductive (removing hazards) and inductive (building resilient systems). He urges listeners to view safety as an ongoing capacity managed in everyday work rather than a static goal achieved after eliminating risks.The episode invites organizations to reflect on whether their programs focus on hazard removal, resilience building, or both, and emphasizes paying attention to incremental improvements (or erosions) in safety culture and practice.
• PAPod 595 - Beyond Checklists: How Conversations Transform Safety Culture 25.04.2026 30min

  Host Todd Conklin talks with Daniel Hummerdahl about his new book, An Invitation to Safety Conversation, exploring how everyday safety talks can move beyond scripted checklists to become learning moments that bridge leaders and workers.The episode shares practical stories and techniques for asking better questions, listening more, and scaling conversational practices across organizations to improve safety, trust, and performance.
• PAPod 594 - Bridging Cultures: Safety, Migrant Workers, and the Heart of Agribusiness 18.04.2026 30min

  Coming into this episode, Todd Conklin welcomes Al Thomson to discuss safety in the primary sector, focusing on migrant Pacific workers and a human-centered approach. Al shares how Monarch Platform blends pastoral care, cultural understanding, and contemporary safety (HOP) to support a diverse workforce across New Zealand’s agriculture and horticulture industries. The conversation covers cultural differences in risk perception, village success planning, measuring workforce capacity with role-specific “bingo” competencies, and the importance of humility, vulnerability, and leadership in creating meaningful safety outcomes.
• PAPod 593 - Young Voices, System Thinking: A Conversation on Safety with Mousa Yassin 11.04.2026 32min

  Host Todd chats with Mousa Yassin about shifting safety culture from blaming individuals to designing systems that tolerate failure and recover quickly. They cover life-saving rules, the concept of recoverability, lessons from software engineering like chaos testing, and the importance of learning over punishment. The episode emphasizes practical ways to build resilient systems, nurture learning teams, and make safety training engaging and effective.
• PAPod 592 - How a Near-Miss Sparked the Learning Team Movement 04.04.2026 28min

  Todd Conklin tells the origin story of "learning teams," sparked by a self-reported near-miss at Los Alamos involving a postdoc and an arcing wrench. Rather than pursuing a punitive investigation, a group of workers gathered to identify what needed to be learned, uncovering broader gaps in postdoc training and safety planning.The episode explains how learning teams prioritize asking better questions, collecting the right data, and designing system-focused solutions. Conklin describes how this approach spread across the lab and why it remains a fast, effective tool for operational improvement.
• PAPod 591 - Workers Are the Solution: A Conversation with Corey Pitzer 28.03.2026 32min

  Todd Conklin talks with Corey Pitzer about fatality prevention, Human and Organizational Performance (HOP), and how safety thinking has shifted globally.They explore controversial views—treating workers as problem-solvers, tensions between engineering/energy-based approaches and systemic/new-view thinking—and use real examples to show why designing systems that absorb variation matters more than trying to eliminate risk.
• PAPod 590 - Gird Your Loins: NASA, Risk, and the Return of Recrudescence 21.03.2026 59min

  Todd interviews Professor David Woods about recent NASA mishaps and a growing cultural shift toward "cheaper, faster" decision-making that sacrifices safety. They explore how past safety gains have lost vitality, highlight cascading modern risks (the "messy nine"), and argue for mutual assistance and revitalized resilience practices. Wood's most recent writing on this is available in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists called:  Cheaper, Faster, and Who Gives a Damn about Anything Else. The episode connects space, aviation, cloud outages, and AI-driven engineering to show why coordinated foresight and cross-disciplinary cooperation are essential to prevent far-reaching harm in today’s complex systems.
• PAPod 589 - Failing Safely: Todd Conklin on Resilience, Recovery, and Real Work 14.03.2026 38min

  In this episode, Todd Conklin joins Amir Shahzad to discuss human and organizational performance, resilience, and how to design systems that allow failures to be caught and recovered before they become disasters. They explore the gap between work as imagined and work as done, the value of learning from everyday work, and practical steps leaders can take to create safer, more resilient workplaces.They also cover cultural change, the role of procedures, adaptive behavior, and the potential—and risks—of AI in safety, all delivered with a mix of practical advice and light-hearted rapid-fire questions.
• PAPod 588 - Weak Signals, Big Consequences: The RaDonda Story 07.03.2026 25min

  Hosts Todd and Brent discuss an upcoming restorative workshop centered on RaDonda Vought's account of the Emory Hospital event. The episode highlights how normal performance variability can combine into serious failures, the value of storytelling, and the importance of learning and building resilience across complex systems. The workshop in Santa Fe (March 31–April 1) invites healthcare and high‑risk industry professionals to move from “what” happened to “how” to apply lessons in practice. For more information or to register, contact officetoddconklin@gmail.com.
• PAPod 587 - Start in the Black: How Sleep Debt Impacts Safety 28.02.2026 27min

  Host Todd Conklin interviews fatigue expert Mark Rosekind, PhD about his path from sleep research to roles at NASA, the NTSB, and NHTSA, and how sleep science applies across transportation and safety-critical work. Key takeaways: think of sleep like a bank account (sleep debt), "start in the black" before major schedule changes, the benefits of strategic naps, and systemic ways organizations can reduce fatigue to improve performance, health, and safety.
• PAPod 586 - VUCA, Uncertainty, and the Case for Innovation 21.02.2026 18min

  Todd Conklin discusses VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Adaptation) and argues that innovation and safety improve when organizations embrace uncertainty and gather more diverse information and perspectives.He mixes personal travel and Olympics anecdotes, touches on aviation and healthcare examples, and invites listeners to a hands-on workshop to explore these ideas further.