Even though they're not really into punk rock, Michael and Taylor from Imperial Oil are pretty badass (and the title of this episode is a NOFX song that Michael somehow remembered, so we'll take it). And they're movie stars in a video from Energy Safety Canada about the 4Ds from Learning Teams, Inc. The Imperial boys are the first to tell you they aren't safety people - they're field ops guys just trying to solve some problems. Pretty fucking punk, right? Shit wasn't going the way it should, so ...
Jul 09, 2025•58 min•Ep. 35
"Sometimes work just fucking sucks" That's what David Strano said back on the Decline episode, and if you're not careful, saying smart things gets you volun-told for a guest appearance on the pod. David's a former touring roadie turned HSE director. That basically means he knows a lot about both parts of the PRS podcast, so the boys are considering just handing over the reins. Shit, he even knows what episode number we're on. It's a rare episode when there's not a NOFX song title involved, but t...
Jun 25, 2025•55 min•Ep. 34
This week, the boys are talking about theory and practice, because, as the listener who submitted the question says, "fuck you, that's why." It's true, there's a lot of safety literature out there that's gotten more head-up-its-own-ass. Moralizing about safety is cool until it isn't, and the question is a good one (it was something like wanting to hear more about decision-making and doing things instead of recycling ideas as a career by itself). It can feel like things get way too academic and m...
Jun 11, 2025•49 min•Ep. 33
"I think the context was kind of like, how do you go about trying to maybe introduce or convince your organization on some of the more contemporary ideas, when your organization is deeply rooted in zero harm and... Well, I think that's mostly it. Or something like that." It's our first *official* episode dedicated to a listener question, and Dave totally nailed the summary with the leadoff quote. So what happens when people in authority are focused on zero? Well, for one, you name the episode af...
May 28, 2025•51 min•Ep. 32
It was sort of like a NOFX show. People had the wrong time, Ron rolled in when he felt like it, a lot of friends were there, and a few hooligans showed up to make sure we actually did something. Seriously, though, thanks to the gang for ideas and discussion. It wasn't quite as messy as inviting Fletcher on stage, but we've got time to work up to it. With the faithful there (and Ron later on), the discussion started out by asking: "Is any of this actually new?" There is a sense sometimes that the...
May 14, 2025•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 31
First off, every new episode is sort of a surprise, but making it to Episode 30 is about 29 more than the boys expected. And of course the title is from a NOFX album. In celebration of Ron's (new) real job at a bit of a startup, we thought that talking about how you'd build your safety empire from scratch might look. The boys' discussion centers on starting with executive leaders to create a vision for what really good safety would look, sound, and feel like. There's - shockingly - a fair bit of...
Apr 30, 2025•57 min•Ep. 30
Two-thirds of the dickheads on this podcast are consultants, so an episode about consulting seemed like a good idea. Also, there's a lot of chatter at conferences, online, and probably in bars that play ska music about how safety has just become commoditized and monetized. Usually, it's a consultant trying to sell something who's saying that. Ben, Ron, and Dave head into the dimly lit back alleys where consultants apparently live to look at the good, the bad, and the sometimes fucked up realitie...
Apr 16, 2025•54 min•Ep. 29
It's almost a theme at this point, but if you guessed the episode title is also a NOFX song, you're the winner. It's a pretty deep cut from the Backstage Pass album, but it gets right to the point of this episode - that culture shapes meaning. And safety can mean a lot of different things when we aren't careful to understand it in the context of culture. We could have gone with the Pennywise song "Society," but we didn't. It's cool if you like that one better. In this episode of the PRS podcast,...
Apr 02, 2025•50 min•Ep. 28
Hey, you guessed it - a title from a NOFX song. This time, the boys are talking about power. It's a pretty punk rock topic, because there's a lot of music about subverting power. The conversation starts with the same BS as usual - you're welcome. Eventually, it moves to the good stuff of complexities of power and politics in safety and the importance of decentralized decision-making and deference to expertise. The boys discuss the impact of power imbalances on team dynamics, communication, and s...
Mar 19, 2025•55 min•Ep. 27
Like the Sex Pistols song, but with more cowboys and stuff. There's been some talk of abolishing the health and safety regulator - OSHA - in the US. It's pretty punk to think of full-scale safety anarchy, but is that what would really happen? Maybe leaving safety performance up to companies wouldn't be so bad. After all, things were going great before regulation, right? It was a magical place where FSMM reigned supreme. At least sometimes. The boys haven't been good about predicting the future s...
Mar 05, 2025•50 min•Ep. 26
Ron is back! Turns out that even a punk band needs a lead guitar, no matter how simple some people say it is to play. In this episode, the boys stumble onto the topic of whether safety can be a simple formula. There are some recent publications that represent it that way, but it's sort of like trying to define punk music. There are probably a million ways to describe it, and in the end, it doesn't matter anyway. We've already covered safety metrics on PRS, but this is a little different. It's ab...
Feb 19, 2025•57 min•Ep. 25
Josh Bryant joins the pod for this episode because Ron's out doing real work, apparently. Joshie is a big-time safety and risk guy in the mining industry, and he's Australian, so this episode gets a Frenzal Rhomb song title to match. Not wanting to disrupt the norm of unpreparedness, the boys figured it out on the fly (even though it was Josh's job, and if he cared more, he'd have done it better). The topic: "What's going on out in industry with all this safety stuff?" The two guys without actua...
Feb 05, 2025•58 min•Ep. 24
Shit. Things are crazy, man. As the Bad Religion song says, "Los Angeles Is Burning." Link to the song below, if you're into that sort of thing. Seriously, though, if you're one of the 11 listeners and you're out in LA and need help, drop PRS a line at info@punkrocksafety.com. Punks help punks - always. In the middle of all the chaos out on the West Coast of the US, there are some really cool stories of resilience. So, that's what the boys are talking about in this episode. Resilience isn't some...
Jan 22, 2025•54 min•Ep. 23
Don't you think Punk Rock Safety isn't taking safety seriously enough? Making jokes about safety is surely a sign that some idiot doesn't care enough, right? Uhhh, no. And that applies to safety pros who are having a good time, laughing, and joking as they do their jobs, too. Why aren't people saying, "Whoa, this is fucking awesome!" when the safety folks come around? If the seriousness that a lot of people think is associated with safety was working, we wouldn't be fighting to get folks' attent...
Jan 08, 2025•59 min•Ep. 22
It's a Christmas miracle! We made it to 21. Seriously, though, this episode is coming out on Christmas or the day after, depending on where you are in the world. You're welcome. Man, some weird shit's been going down in the world of CEOs lately. We promise we have nothing to do with it. But this episode does. First, it's important to point out it's not a NOFX reference this time. It is a song from Crass, though, so this one's for you if you like old-school shit. There are a lot of references in ...
Dec 25, 2024•53 min•Ep. 21
Sometimes bad shit happens to good people. We know it's weird, but here's another episode with a NOFX title. This time, it's a song about Tony Sly's (from No Use For a Name) death. Good dude and an awesome musician, but dead way too early. What about when organizations that are trying really hard to do safety stuff have an accident? Or a fatality? That can feel tough to reconcile, even though we can (and should) separate outcomes from building systems that effectively reduce safety risk. What do...
Dec 11, 2024•54 min•Ep. 20
We keep forgetting (except for now, because we're definitely mentioning it) to say that there's some evidence that Fat Mike from NOFX loves the podcast. We'd go so far as to say it's his favorite pod. We're the "Seal Team 6 of podcasts," says Ron, because there's no prep at all except Provan. That guy has always been pre-gaming. So, the boys take on the topic of evidence-based safety, whether safety is a science or if we're just doing it for The Cause (see, there's a NOFX reference). Who gets to...
Dec 03, 2024•1 hr•Ep. 19
Yet another NOFX inspired title, huh? Yep. We're a one-trick pony around here. The boys have finally gotten around to human error, which is a theme for this podcast anyway. Maybe there's a difference between fuck-up and error, though? It's been a "squishy" part of understanding safety, incidents, performance, efficiency, etc. for a long time. Mostly, Ron just likes saying "squishy." So, what is human error? Is it a legitimate concern or a red herring? Where does intent and context come into the ...
Nov 13, 2024•56 min•Ep. 18
This one's a little different. The title may give some of that away (and it's a Bad Religion song). None of your three hosts are tech wizards, but Collette Alexander joins the pod, and she is (even though she might argue that). Colette has been a professional cellist, worked in software engineering at Spotify, and earned a Master's degree from Lund University in Human Factors. She's got a lot of tattoos, too. There's a lot of banter, but the thing this episode really looks at is how reliability ...
Oct 30, 2024•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 17
It's Episode 16, punks. The boys start this one with a peek behind the curtain into just how much prep goes into the pod. Spoiler: not a lot. It's sort of like a punk show that way. The topic for 16 is regulators, which means it's a great time for Pennywise's Fuck Authority (link in the show notes). That's probably not a great way to handle regulation, though. So what can you do? Are all regulations important? Do we have to respond to each one with some sort of 'thing' we can point to to satisfy...
Oct 16, 2024•54 min•Ep. 16
In punk, being a sellout means you've abandoned the punk rock culture: anti-authority, DIY, non-conformity, and tearing apart systems that don't work for the people. So what happens if you shake up the idea of safety culture as a cornerstone? Fucking sellouts. The boys talk about culture, some new publications on it, and how it's used as a lazy response to issues with safety or resilience. And there are some discussions about how to make the culture something more than just an excuse when shit g...
Oct 02, 2024•57 min•Ep. 15
When's the last time the outcome of a risk assessment was a surprise? Thought so. So why do we do risk assessments, anyway? Are we really making decisions based on them? It doesn't sound like it. Is it a social process, then? Shit, man, that's a lame party. The boys try to sort through the mess of matrices, JHAs, JSAs, safety risk committees, and all that to get to what we actually expect from an assessment of risk. Oh, and don't forget the 1st Annual PRS Field Trip October 4-6 in LA at the Punk...
Sep 18, 2024•58 min•Ep. 14
Fine. You're right. The title is also the name of a NOFX album. NOFX is rad, though, so we're keeping it. This week, we're talking to a kickass guest, Sam Goodman, about making safety less sucky. Sam even wrote a book about it. The truth is, a lot of people have experienced working with safety folks that just come across as assholes, or buzzkills, or cops, or knobs. It's not a surprise that most people aren't super-stoked to hear the safety person is on-site next week, right? There are a few thi...
Sep 04, 2024•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 13
It's episode 12, and we've got a new quote for a T-shirt, and instead of "goal conflicts," we just went with the title of the episode. Watch the merch store; we'll get it sorted. So, safety first, right? Maybe. Sometimes. Definitely, when someone asks, I guess. Like we say in the episode, there's probably not a room of executives who hate everything safety. It'd be a weird party, though. The boys talk through some stories, goal conflicts, impossible positions, error traps, and some other stuff t...
Aug 21, 2024•57 min•Ep. 12
Snake eyes, MFers! It's episode 11, and with a minute of prep or so, we settled on figuring out if people really are the solution to things, especially safety things. Toxic Narcotic has a song called "People Suck" I mean, sometimes, people are assholes, right? Or dumb? Or aren't they? Sometimes some moron tries to smash a can of triple-expanding foam with a forklift. We don't really think people suck, to be clear. We humans are actually pretty cool. But maybe we're not the only cool thing or the...
Aug 07, 2024•58 min•Ep. 11
The fact that we've made it to episode 10 is sort of miraculous. Like a stage diver, you don't have to want it, but it's happening. We're talking about contractor management—or, as Ron calls it, "cross-boundary joint activity." Ron talks about agents and stuff like that, not even in the context of Agent Orange, which is probably a better conversation. Ok, what we're really looking at is some of the mismatch between why we hire contractors to begin with. How do we reduce friction between clients ...
Jul 24, 2024•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 10
By the time this episode comes out, Ron will have defended his doctoral dissertation, a whole lot like Milo from The Descendents did. Except Ron is cooler. We're talking about investigations in this episode. What are they for? Ron thinks they're a little different than Dave and Ben do, but the consensus from the boys is that a lot of the espoused values of investigating don't make it into practice. Is it a process of creating closure or are we just dumb? There's some leftover conversation after ...
Jul 10, 2024•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 9
We said we were going to livestream, but we definitely didn't. Sorry. This shit's harder than it seems like it should be. You should 100% check out the YouTube on this one. Other Ben did some sweet background editing because we were in a hotel meeting room with gold striped fabric walls that looked like a United Nations briefing room. That made it really fucking hard to switch the background, and Other Ben did some solid work here, so give him some love. Uhhhh. Did we mention Ron's defense is on...
Jun 26, 2024•50 min•Ep. 8
There's no better title than to make sure we've got Diane's name in it. Why? If you have to ask, go find out, then listen to the episode. There's a punk band called FEAR. Diane hasn't seen them. Anyway, fear of something different is sort of the topic for this episode. We're posting a little early because the CHOL conference is happening this week, and we'll be live there, too. Back to the important stuff: DCJ is kind of a big deal. Even bigger than Ron, and that's saying something. Diane shames...
Jun 10, 2024•59 min•Ep. 7
Ron's halfway done with a dissertation draft, too, so that's a pretty important advance. Don't forget to check out merch at www.punkrocksafetymerch.com We'll be at CHOL in Henderson, Nevada in a few weeks, so catch up with us there, and look for a live stream episode during the conference! DISCLAIMER: You probably shouldn't take anything in this podcast too seriously. Punk Rock Safety is for entertainment only. It's definitely not a replacement for professional or legal advice, and the fair amou...
May 29, 2024•1 hr•Ep. 6
