The Art of Manliness - April 09, 2016


#190： A Thousand Naked Strangers

Topics
paramedic training and experiences ems and paramedic experiences tourists in EMS
Hosted by
Brett McKay
Mentioned
Bruce Willis
#189： The Classical Education You Never Had #191： Finding the Work You Were Meant To Do

Episode Stats


Length

47 minutes

Words per minute

208.27

Word count

9,898

Sentence count

—

Harmful content

Misogyny

11

sentences flagged

Toxicity

6

sentences flagged

Hate speech

7

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

He s the author of the book A Thousand Naked Strangers: A Paramedic s Wild Ride to the Edge and Back, a memoir of his time as a paramedic in Atlanta, Georgia, and the story of how he became one.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast so have you ever
00:00:18.980 thought your life was too routine and safe maybe you've felt like you've never had the chance to
00:00:23.880 test your mettle and see how you respond in a chaotic situation i mean would you break or
00:00:28.840 would you rise to the challenge i think it's a common experience for many men well my guest today
00:00:33.720 on the podcast had those same feelings and decided to do something about it by becoming a paramedic
00:00:38.420 in atlanta georgia instantly he was thrown into a world that often goes unseen violence addiction
00:00:44.380 and mangled bodies became a regular part of his existence his name is kevin hazard and he's the
00:00:49.180 author of the book a thousand naked strangers a paramedic's wild ride to the edge and back and
00:00:54.340 today on the podcast kevin gives us an inside look into the hidden world of paramedics and
00:00:58.820 shares what he's learned during his 10 years of service as a paramedic about himself as well
00:01:04.100 as the human condition a great show fascinating when you're done make sure to check out the show
00:01:09.500 notes at aom.is hazard and that's spelled h-a-z-z-a-r-d kevin hazard welcome to the show thanks
00:01:24.540 i'm glad thank you for having me on it's great to be here so your book is called a thousand
00:01:28.420 naked strangers a paramedic's wild ride to the edge and back it's a memoir of your time as a
00:01:33.460 paramedic in atlanta and the backstory of how you became a paramedic is fascinating because before that
00:01:39.440 you uh were a novelist you had written a fiction book you were a newspaper reporter and then out of
00:01:45.280 the blue you decide to become an emt and that's a huge career change and i figure you know someone with
00:01:51.600 your background they'd probably become like a high school english teacher or something so what drew
00:01:56.580 you to become a paramedic yeah that is a huge change um and you know it uh there are a few
00:02:03.680 different factors that were involved in that and the first was you know and they're not in any way
00:02:09.160 necessarily even related um the first was that while i was in college i'm at school in in south
00:02:14.380 carolina and lived in charleston and um while i was in college i i had the summer job where i led jet
00:02:20.620 ski tours and one afternoon i had these two guys in one of the tours i was leading that were kind of
00:02:26.520 spraying each other with the jet skis and um they wound up crashing into one another and the one ski
00:02:33.980 kind of jumped up in the air the one guy was knocked into the water and the jet ski came down and hit the
00:02:38.640 one guy in the face and i mean pretty much everything below the nose was gone and so here
00:02:44.160 he is he's floating in 75 feet of water he's missing half of a face i mean this is a horrible
00:02:48.900 you know this terrifying life-threatening moment i am 19 years old i'm hopeful hopelessly outgunned by
00:02:56.120 the situation and i did the only thing that bystanders are asked not to do in the event of emergency i
00:03:03.300 totally panicked and so that was my sort of one experience with an emergency was just not handling
00:03:09.780 it well and just having this horrible feeling of you know god this is this is what it's like when
00:03:15.080 things go wrong and then so i graduate um i was supposed to have gone to the peace corps but i met
00:03:22.100 this girl who you know essentially changed my whole world and i was like all right i guess i'm not going
00:03:26.860 on i'm going to stay home to be with her so i had to figure out what i was going to do from there
00:03:31.100 and i wound up being a reporter which was great because in so many ways it fit exactly what i
00:03:35.640 wanted to do the problem was i had this intention all along of going off to live this adventure and
00:03:44.460 to do something that was much larger than myself and and you know be part of of something you know
00:03:50.740 at least in my mind that would have mattered and now i found myself covering you know city council
00:03:56.020 meetings and highway budget meetings and it just felt the opposite of everything that i thought i
00:04:01.760 was going to do and then 9-11 happens and because i had gone to the citadel which is a military college
00:04:07.340 in charleston a lot of my friends were in the military and they are marching off to iraq and
00:04:12.360 afghanistan one of them was one of the first marines to go into iraq during that invasion
00:04:16.380 and they you know i'm hearing from them and they're telling these unbelievable stories and i just know
00:04:22.820 without even having to speak to them that you know they are involved in this huge thing this massive
00:04:27.740 moment that's going to define our generation and i am at home covering a city council meeting
00:04:33.820 and it just all the all those things kind of came together at the exact same moment the
00:04:39.900 the constant wondering if i am no more than someone who panics at a time of of emergency the feeling that
00:04:47.660 you know i thought i was going to do something larger than myself and now i'm not and then just
00:04:52.360 the general i guess malaise of of being a 22 year old kid who suddenly finds himself really bored with
00:04:58.160 where he is and all those things happening and i just realized there's got to be something more than
00:05:04.400 what i'm doing this isn't this isn't what i want to be and around that time i covered a tunnel collapse
00:05:10.260 and in the subsequent articles both from witnessing these guys the night of that disaster and then
00:05:18.180 talking to them afterward i saw something in them that i realized could address all these things that
00:05:25.680 that i had been you know these these voids i guess that i that i had and it was just this epiphany
00:05:32.440 moment of oh wow like right here under my nose at home is something that i can do that that satisfies all
00:05:39.900 these needs and um i i couldn't shake the thought and so my wife who is you know very typical type a 1.00
00:05:46.940 personality you know and it's just like don't talk about it if you want to do it just do it you know
00:05:51.140 shut up and do it and that's what she said one morning when i was talking about she said if you 0.62
00:05:54.860 want to do it just quit your job and go to school just just do it and so i did that's really interesting
00:05:59.440 so this is the art of manliness podcast and i hate playing armchair psychologist but i think what
00:06:04.660 you experienced i think a lot of men have gone through that sort of thing where they they feel like
00:06:08.560 they're missing something and they want to know if they're competent in times of emergency that they
00:06:15.080 they have this idea to be a man they have to know what to do when things go wrong you do you think a
00:06:20.900 little bit of that was going on in you as well or do you just yeah absolutely i mean there's a huge
00:06:26.100 a huge part of it that you know and i think that's the word competent um i remember way back when i read
00:06:35.520 uh black hawk down and the description that one of the the widows gives of her husband who had been
00:06:42.800 one of the the delta snipers and that you know she was concerned that she was never going to be able
00:06:48.120 to you know how can you ever replace a guy who has that level of competency and that no matter what he
00:06:53.180 entered into she felt confident that that he could do it you know whether it was fixing the refrigerator
00:06:57.740 or sewing a halloween costume or heading off to mogadishu to be a delta sniper like he was that guy who
00:07:03.220 could just handle any situation and when you haven't been put in that situation when you haven't
00:07:10.520 forced yourself into that situation when you haven't you know done anything to say you know i want to
00:07:16.600 test myself under extreme conditions you know you you you don't know and you you do have no way of even
00:07:23.040 gauging where you would fall um in that line so that was a huge part of it and and that was a big part
00:07:28.900 of what i noticed in these guys you know that they were this sort of special rescue tactical team that
00:07:34.060 you know go out for various types of of incidents including you know the tunnel collapse um and there
00:07:40.360 was there was a there was the way in which they carry themselves suggested that that they were
00:07:46.140 supremely confident in their abilities and that they had been there before would have to go again
00:07:51.400 and knew that they could handle it and that was something i envied and certainly wanted to have in my own
00:07:56.000 mind so your wife was really supportive in all this and said you know just do it quit talking
00:08:00.960 about becoming a paramedic and just go do it so you did it can you walk us through the job of a
00:08:06.820 paramedic because i think it's a it's a big mystery for a lot of civilians they just don't know what's
00:08:12.160 involved in becoming a paramedic or what the job is really like you know so for example i always
00:08:16.880 imagine that a paramedic's training would be really really intense you know emts paramedics these are
00:08:22.360 the people who are the first responders on call when people are dying or there's big trauma so you're
00:08:27.740 going to expect that these are highly and rigorously trained medical specialists so is the training very
00:08:33.020 rigorous to become an emt yeah you know the the training is a funny thing um emt you know it's
00:08:41.120 different for a paramedic uh you know the difference between emt and paramedic the easiest way to say it is
00:08:46.020 imagine the emt is the nurse and the paramedic is the doctor it's that sort of hierarchy and
00:08:50.640 difference in training um but the emt training is really kind of a funny thing uh unlike other
00:08:58.260 branches of public safety it isn't something that you have to be first hired by the city and go
00:09:03.320 through the city's hiring practices you know if you want to be a cop that's what you have to do you
00:09:07.020 have to apply with the city and it's this long byzantine process and then you go to the city's
00:09:12.100 academy same thing if you want to be a firefighter well ems in most places although it's starting to
00:09:18.360 change a lot more and more municipalities are are pairing fire and ems into one service but
00:09:24.020 uh it essentially you know anyone who wants to sign up for night school can come out registered as
00:09:31.380 an emt and you don't have a job you just simply have a certificate that says you know i went to six
00:09:36.200 months of school now i am an emt i passed this nationally administered exam and you know and i i i have
00:09:45.040 the requirements to be an emt should somebody want to hire me so in that regard it's kind of different
00:09:51.280 that you can just go to the school and and and be it and so you know there's not a ton of standardized
00:09:56.820 training you know the test is standardized but how people are trained how regular rigorously they're
00:10:02.860 trained it's kind of all over the board and you know when i got there my class my teacher was very
00:10:09.120 good um and he'd been in ems for a long time and uh you know he had a huge class i mean i think there
00:10:14.820 were 60 some odd of us in there and so he had a hard time um you know i think keeping us in line
00:10:20.680 because he had a bunch of like a lot of 22 year old kids who were just goofing off um so some of it
00:10:25.820 was just trying to herd cats and keep us moving but he was very good and and you know i when i walked
00:10:31.740 out of that i felt as prepared as somebody could be but the training essentially is you know you're
00:10:37.120 taking people with zero experience and you're trying to teach them to handle every single
00:10:42.300 emergency that could possibly happen so you know it's almost like western civ you know that you
00:10:47.600 take in college it's like there's no way you're really going to be able to learn a thousand years
00:10:51.620 of western history so they just touch on really the big points um and it's it's a lot like that you
00:10:57.020 know we did uh you know there's the cpr heimlich section um there's some stuff on uh you know bleeding
00:11:04.420 control you get an overview on stuff like seizures and diabetic emergencies and strokes and heart
00:11:09.800 attacks just enough so you have some clue of what's happening around you um and you you know
00:11:14.740 we uh uh did some work on you know how to read the signs on the side of tractor trailers so if you
00:11:21.620 know you know if a tractor trailer has tipped over and you've been called out to it you should at least
00:11:26.800 go to look at it and say hey the stuff in there is really flammable and we should be careful
00:11:30.380 so that's kind of what it is it's this massive overview of everything that could possibly happen
00:11:35.960 you know as well as a couple weeks of anatomy and physiology crammed in there and you know there's
00:11:41.480 some practical skills that you have to learn like you know ivs and um you know using airways and using
00:11:48.640 various types of splints and stuff but i mean it's essentially a sprint through you know emergency
00:11:54.720 medicine and then you come out after six to eight months and and then you're luckily in most cases
00:12:00.820 you know you're the junior member so ideally you're working with someone with some experience who can
00:12:05.060 say okay remember that stuff you learned well here's here's how you put it into practice can you tell us
00:12:09.480 about your classmates i mean what walks of life do they come from do they cover a spectrum of
00:12:14.400 socioeconomic classes uh do you have doctor who are students going through the paramedic training
00:12:19.940 uh you said uh 22 year old kids who just didn't really know what to do in their lives
00:12:25.520 uh were there as well is that the type of people who went to school yeah we had all sorts of people
00:12:30.500 in my class um you know i noticed in general in ems you have sort of a wide swath of of the american
00:12:37.760 public um from you know whether it's uh like someone who went to duke and is trying to get into med school
00:12:43.740 but screwed around too much in school and so now has to try to bolster their their application there are
00:12:48.960 people like that but my class in particular is you know very much a blue collar group the oldest guy
00:12:54.480 i think was 65 wow yeah he'd been a truck driver um and one day a car full of nuns i mean you can't
00:13:01.800 pick it would be hard to pick a worse scenario than this a car full of nuns runs a stop sign and he t-bones 0.99
00:13:08.200 and it kills them all i mean like of all the things you can do to kill a car full of nuns and even that 0.96
00:13:16.280 wasn't his fault he just couldn't drive a truck anymore that was it like that that was his moment
00:13:20.640 he said i was done but he was sufficiently impressed with the guys who showed up on the
00:13:25.320 scene to say well maybe this is something i could do now he was in his mid-60s heavy smoker in horrible
00:13:30.940 shape none of us had any illusion that this guy was actually able to do this but i think it was just
00:13:36.480 some sort of therapeutic step he was trying to take after having just killed a carload of nuns 0.99
00:13:40.400 so he was the oldest um and the youngest was probably about 21 he was this part-time mailman
00:13:48.420 he looked like he was 13 and everywhere in between or everyone else seemed to fall somewhere in
00:13:55.940 between you know a lot of it was people who just graduated from high school a few years ago had been
00:14:02.000 kind of bumping around from one odd job to another and somehow or another had had heard about this and
00:14:07.760 thought well you know i can do three nights a week for six months and and you know maybe that'd be a
00:14:13.080 good career field for me and so they kind of entered into it you know a little bit capriciously
00:14:17.380 thinking hey you know maybe this would be maybe this would be kind of cool and and there's a handful
00:14:21.340 of people who you know they are fanatical like they have wanted to be an emt since they were a kid
00:14:26.480 and here's their moment and they're ready to rush off and do it but it's it's people from all walks of
00:14:32.000 life that get into it right i guess so yeah it's interesting um so it's interesting that everyone had
00:14:37.000 their different reasons for doing it like they had existential reasons and reasons they didn't
00:14:41.660 really have reasons they just decided to do it yeah i was i was surprised you know i kind of i
00:14:47.040 expected it to be something of an outcast coming in because i had no clue really what it was i you
00:14:51.740 know i had some understanding that that ambulances existed but i didn't really know what they did and
00:14:56.660 um you know i didn't really know what the job was that the first night that i walked into class i
00:15:01.400 remember distinctly saying to myself am i going to do this like is this is this some weird thing that
00:15:06.660 i'm just going to try for a week and just you know i had entered into it so almost accidentally that
00:15:12.800 there was it was hard for me to even imagine that i was going to make it all the way through and then
00:15:17.000 of course there was a specter of of me panicking back in 97 and then i'm flipping through the textbook
00:15:22.560 and i'm looking at these horribly mangled bodies and getting lightheaded and thinking man this might
00:15:29.340 not be for me what i thought was surprising the book was when you talk about getting your first job
00:15:34.060 you went through the classes you got certified and then you go out there to look for a job and i knew
00:15:39.420 that you know ems had a high turnover rate because it's a tough job but you had a hard time finding a
00:15:44.800 job at first why was that what's going on there and also can you talk a little bit about i don't know
00:15:50.620 about the the different levels of ems jobs that exist out there yeah yeah so you know as i said before
00:15:56.400 some in some cities the ems department has been enveloped by the fire department and they kind
00:16:04.080 of exist and and as i said those are those are tough jobs to get to get in with a fire department not
00:16:09.560 that you know necessarily that the standards for hiring are are any different necessarily it's just
00:16:15.720 that cities tend to hire those kind of jobs once or twice a year so you have to really be patient you
00:16:23.280 know and you have to understand that hey they might not be hiring for another six months
00:16:26.660 and then when they do there might be 750 applicants for four jobs you know that's kind of that's kind
00:16:34.660 of how it how it goes with these with these you know people who get into that job tend to you know
00:16:39.560 they tend to retire and so there's not a ton of openings so that was one area that was pretty much
00:16:44.300 immediately i realized okay i'm not going to get into the fire department and there's no you know it's so
00:16:48.620 difficult to do that nor did i really have any interest in fighting fire you know it just wasn't what i was
00:16:53.020 there to do so then you look at all right who provides non-on-one ems in atlanta and if you're
00:16:58.640 in atlanta frankly if you're in georgia the place you want to be is great it's this massive public
00:17:03.460 hospital it's one of the largest trauma centers in the u.s it's very well known and they run the
00:17:09.420 ems department for the city of atlanta and so if you want to work in atlanta that's where you want
00:17:15.140 to be there's no doubt and of course that's what i wanted to do but i went and applied to them and they
00:17:20.620 said yeah no you need experience we're not going to hire anyone without experience so all right well
00:17:25.340 how do i get experience and i i started looking around at some of the other ems providers you know
00:17:31.060 whether it's full county or different counties different cities and i did find one who said oh
00:17:36.440 man i wish you had you know called me two days ago we just got done hiring which was you know one of
00:17:42.200 those gut-wrenching moments and then i got to the private ambulance services which i didn't even know
00:17:48.600 existed until this moment and essentially you have two types of ems services you have 9-1-1 which
00:17:55.240 obviously you dial 9-1-1 and on the other end of that call ultimately is an ambulance with an
00:18:00.520 EMT and a paramedic and the other one are the private services and their main role is to
00:18:07.040 take people to and from appointments so they will if you live in a nursing home they'll pick you up and 0.93
00:18:13.020 take you to a doctor's appointment or there are people who live at home that you know they can't sit
00:18:18.460 up in a car or whatever and so they need they need an ambulance to take them there obviously without
00:18:24.740 even having to be told you know that that is not going to attract the prime talent right it's either
00:18:30.700 going to be people who are looking for the easiest possible job or people who wanted to be a 9-1-1 and
00:18:37.640 either can't because they don't yet have the experience or got there did not do a good job and had to
00:18:43.060 leave and so you it's a very weird mix of people a very strange crew and the thing that happens is
00:18:52.620 nursing homes oftentimes will sort of use a non-emergency service these private ambulance
00:18:57.820 companies to fudge their math and so let's just say your grandmother is living in a nursing home 0.65
00:19:02.820 and she falls one night or she has a stroke or she chokes on a piece of chicken or she has a super
00:19:07.860 high fever because she has a urinary tract infection that they didn't catch if they dial 9-1-1 and her
00:19:15.220 paperwork is going to say we had to call 9-1-1 which immediately suggests to anyone reading it hey there
00:19:21.040 was an emergency but if they call this non-emergency service they can say oh you know it wasn't a big
00:19:26.200 deal it was something minor we caught it early you know and we just called it was so minor a fact that
00:19:31.200 we didn't even have to call 9-1-1 we called a non-emergency service even though this woman may have 1.00
00:19:36.200 maybe having a stroke and this could be a life-threatening situation they often do that
00:19:40.220 and so now to this emergency arrive someone who never wanted to be a 9-1-1 and his partner who was
00:19:49.880 someone who tried to be a 9-1-1 but couldn't handle it and got washed out and now they're arriving in
00:19:55.100 this poorly equipped ambulance and doing a really terrible job and that happens quite often and i worked
00:20:01.780 for one of those places it was a it's kind of a shady place to be perfectly frank in my job interview
00:20:06.760 they never bothered to verify that i actually was an emt they took my word for it um they uh you know
00:20:14.300 and in the interview there i was assured that look i know you've heard the rumors about possible
00:20:18.880 medicare fraud we've been investigated and the government so far can't find any evidence
00:20:22.840 so for your potential employer to say you know we aren't doing anything illegal as far as a government
00:20:29.260 can prove in a job interview it's kind of it's not it's not the sort of thing that immediately
00:20:34.320 bestows a lot of confidence but that was the only thing i could get so i took it and uh you know i
00:20:40.340 had some weird partners i mean i had one who used to every night she'd bring her girlfriend in and two 0.78
00:20:44.700 of them would would play cards and drink beer um i had another who used to disappear at night in the
00:20:51.260 ambulance to go pick up prostitutes uh you had another who used to get homeless men to you know
00:20:58.620 pay him a few bucks to clean out the ambulance i mean it was a it was a strange crew of people that
00:21:04.300 worked there and i i was always looking around going i cannot believe that this is where i am right now
00:21:09.320 what weird world have i stumbled into yeah after i read about the private emergency service i started
00:21:14.920 seeing them uh when i was driving around because it was on my radar so uh there's one there's this
00:21:21.600 ambulance that i saw that looked like the ghostbusters car it was like a hearse but it was a private ems
00:21:27.600 and uh that's not 9-1-1 uh so thanks to your book i'm aware of this thing did you get any experience
00:21:34.780 there that would help you move on to what you eventually were wanting to do which was 9-1-1 ambulance
00:21:40.220 or was it just a lot of taking old people who had strokes at the hospital uh was that just it
00:21:45.160 you know there were in doing that and taking those because you know that's about a lot of 9-1-1 is is
00:21:52.160 is people old people within medical emergency and so the fact that these nursing homes so often would
00:21:58.040 use these non-emergency services to sort of cover for the fact that they hadn't noticed
00:22:01.840 that your granddad you know had a stroke four hours ago um that gave me a lot of experience you know
00:22:09.200 because it would be me and some some other emt so both of us are emts um you know there's no
00:22:14.500 paramedic involved it's just two emts and uh the person i was partnered with oftentimes didn't know
00:22:20.900 what he was doing maybe knew less than i did um or maybe thought he knew he was doing and was just
00:22:25.600 really bad at his job and so it kind of forced me very early to you know put me in control of a
00:22:33.380 situation i was not prepared to be in control of and of course you learn from that you know you
00:22:37.540 you gain experience in terms of dealing with an emergency and uh and then trying to be involved
00:22:43.020 which is you know it's kind of funny because then i switched to 9-1-1 service and now like nobody would
00:22:48.040 dream of of putting me in the back with one of those patients you know i didn't have i had neither
00:22:52.140 the training nor the experience to do that so i went from this world where if anything went wrong i
00:22:57.240 just would be the one to take over because i knew my partner knew even less than i did to one in which
00:23:02.920 you know i was considered nowhere near experienced or trained enough to handle it so i did learn some
00:23:07.560 stuff for sure after you went from a private medical private emergency service after that you
00:23:13.280 went to the county fulton county correct i did is that when you first saw your first traumatic
00:23:18.300 accident you talked about in your training uh in your certification course you would get
00:23:23.160 lightheaded looking at the pictures uh in the the manual did you encounter something like that when
00:23:28.920 you were at fulton yeah that was where you know that was a regular 9-1-1 service so you know right
00:23:33.960 away you begin to you know right away you're you're you're that's what you're doing so i think my
00:23:38.780 very first call um working full and county ems was uh a guy who he was mowing his lawn it was morning
00:23:47.400 and it was a it was a slight hill and a little slope in the backyard and he was you know he went down
00:23:55.120 and then was backing up which is you know the one thing you should never do a lawnmower especially in
00:23:59.740 wet grass uphill he slips and essentially just pulls a lawnmower over his foot and um you know
00:24:06.580 there go your toes in a hurry and so that was the first call was for a guy who had cut his toes off
00:24:11.240 with a lawnmower and so there i am at 8 15 in the morning i'm brand new and i'm kneeling in this
00:24:17.600 guy's grass looking for looking for toes and i was i couldn't have been happier than i was at that
00:24:24.060 moment it was you know i got here i am you know doing it i'm i'm in the mix and something crazy
00:24:29.180 has happened and i'm the one that that was called and that is an incredibly especially in the beginning
00:24:34.220 it's an incredibly heady intoxicating feeling to know that like whatever you're doing you might be
00:24:39.820 sitting down eating lunch you might be you know at work checking off that you have everything that
00:24:45.040 you need but to know that if anything goes wrong i'm the person that they're going to call
00:24:50.320 to handle it and that's just really this incredible feeling that no matter what happens around me i'm
00:24:55.780 going to go and i'm going to be there i'm going to witness it i'm going to be part of it so if
00:24:59.360 there's a shooting or explosion or you know a child is born or some massive car wreck or a plane crash
00:25:06.460 i mean who knows whatever happens i'm i'm going to be there um i mean that's just it it's once you
00:25:11.960 get your head around that uh it's it's really a pretty pretty wild experience so yeah it's going
00:25:18.240 back to that sense of competency right that sense that i can handle whatever this situation is
00:25:22.420 i'm curious did that sense of mastery we would say like in your career as an emt and paramedic did
00:25:30.160 that carry over to other aspects of your life or was it very domain specific like you feel great and
00:25:35.400 confident when you're looking for toes and patching people up but when you're out with your wife at
00:25:40.480 home did was there carryover there yeah you know it's funny um it didn't initially i didn't have
00:25:47.920 that feeling you know because one i was new but two you know as the emt you are essentially
00:25:54.040 you're almost a glorified witness um and i don't mean that and anyone who is an emt you know i'm not
00:26:02.200 trying to knock anyone but anyone who's worked the job knows that ultimately the decisions all come
00:26:07.340 down to the paramedic so it isn't until you become an experienced paramedic and and have to make those
00:26:13.040 decisions by yourself and have to live with the consequences by yourself that you can really begin
00:26:18.200 to feel that level of confidence and like yeah i've got this and i can handle it so initially of
00:26:22.920 course you know just as an emt it wasn't there it was just you know it was just fun i just wanted to
00:26:27.400 be a part of as many things as i could possibly be a part of so that when i came out of paramedic
00:26:32.160 school you know i'd be ready to roll but when it did come and you know it did as i was had been
00:26:39.980 you know it's around the time i was finishing paramedic school i'd been at that point in the
00:26:43.600 job about a year and a half and i started to feel very confident because you know i'd done a bunch of
00:26:47.860 things and uh and yeah it does it comes into other aspects of your life because you begin to realize
00:26:53.560 okay one i can handle pressure uh two you know i'm not the kind of person who panics um i can deal
00:27:01.800 with multiple things at once ems is a lot like it's like trying to arm wrestle three different
00:27:06.220 people at once you just never have enough hands to get done everything that needs to get done
00:27:10.360 and so you have to know how to work really quickly how to multitask how to go from one thing to another
00:27:14.900 and you know you're opening packages with your teeth and you're moving things around with your feet
00:27:19.740 and you're grabbing and you're dropping and you're moving and meanwhile of course there's this
00:27:22.800 patient and you're in an ambulance that's moving 65 miles an hour down the highway you know if
00:27:28.120 you've ever stood up in a car or in a you know in any kind of vehicle you realize every time it turns
00:27:32.780 you go flying and so to learn how to do all that and and operate under that kind of uh that kind of
00:27:38.940 pressure and in an austere environment like that yeah it does huge things for your confidence and
00:27:45.400 you know you you just realize okay i can i can handle a lot more than i ever thought i was capable of
00:27:50.760 and you know that it'd be very hard i think for for that not to translate to other areas of your life
00:27:56.140 in the book you talk about there's different types of emts or paramedics you refer to one group as
00:28:01.840 tourists and the other as true believers what do you mean by that uh what made an emt a tourist and can
00:28:09.700 you give uh any notable examples from your career of tourists that you had worked with during your time
00:28:14.460 yeah and you see it a lot with with part-timers um but you know you see with all sorts of people
00:28:21.960 because ems is such a strange thing because you can do a few months of a night course and then go
00:28:29.020 and work somewhere it it attracts people who are doing other things with their lives and so you might
00:28:35.260 have a landscaper who just needs benefits and a full-time check because he doesn't do any work in
00:28:41.400 the winter i had a friend who was a sommelier and he was trying to get a business off the ground
00:28:45.760 and again he needed money and there were people like me who you know medicine was not a natural
00:28:53.420 calling for them but they found the world of ems to be very intriguing and exciting and fulfilling and
00:28:59.240 they went to it uh you know i had a one of my early partners um was a bodybuilder and he's a good
00:29:07.220 guy he was a good medic he'd been at it for a long time but really what he was and what how he
00:29:11.240 identified himself was not as a paramedic even though he'd been doing it for 20 years he identified
00:29:16.860 himself as a bodybuilder and he was a strange character who uh you know he i i never worked
00:29:24.320 with him when he was getting ready for a show but he you know he he was he worked out all the time and
00:29:31.540 you know he had all his protein shakes and all his muscle magazines and you know was always talking
00:29:37.860 about some philosophy and you know it's weird because there's a whole like you know uh questions
00:29:42.960 about which type of can is better natural tan or or a sunbed tan and and you know which oils really
00:29:50.640 accentuate your muscles the best and uh you know and he he was this enormous guy who put away a ton of
00:29:57.280 food and of course you know when he was getting ready for a show he'd you know he'd tear his diet
00:30:02.500 down and be you know and tons of diuretics and all that kind of stuff but on a normal basis he would
00:30:07.640 eat you know this ungodly amount of food because he was just so big uh but that's why he was there
00:30:12.300 you know he needed he needed the flexibility when he was getting ready to do a show to be able to
00:30:17.100 work less and work out more and you know he was kind of a perfect example of of what a tourist was
00:30:22.940 someone who was doing the job but it wasn't their primary focus were you a tourist for a while would
00:30:28.020 you describe yourself as a tourist yeah i i would i would because i was there for reasons that were
00:30:32.700 totally about me in the beginning you know and uh that's you know not something that i don't say that
00:30:39.780 with any great level of pride or embarrassment it's just it was just the way it was like i went there
00:30:44.700 um you know seeking something about myself as opposed to going there to be part of to be a you know
00:30:52.840 one step in in in the health care ladder i went you know i went there to you know sort of
00:30:58.400 seek all the things that that young men seek out in in life and uh it took me a while to realize that
00:31:06.540 it wasn't about me that that there were people on the other end of that you know on the other end of
00:31:12.520 the ambience there was someone whose life was you know theoretically hanging in the balance and and i was
00:31:18.760 there to take care of them and once i kind of focused less on myself and more on the patient
00:31:24.060 i found that i had this natural um ability for the job that i was i was to my surprise i was a very
00:31:33.000 good medic and to my surprise i was very patient and i kind of surprised myself with how caring i could
00:31:38.480 be these are you know aren't things that in your early 20s you would normally characterize yourself as
00:31:43.420 you know and uh it brought out a lot of great things in me that i never realized were there
00:31:47.520 so i think you mentioned a part in your book where your wife were walking you and your wife were
00:31:53.340 walking out in public and you saw someone a homeless person that you had treated frequently
00:31:57.060 and your wife even noticed that you had become kinder and more yeah and i know i think there are a lot
00:32:02.740 of things that are in us all the time um you know just like the ability to handle pressure
00:32:07.400 it's like i learned it through this job it's either in you or it isn't there are plenty of people
00:32:12.580 who do the job who can handle pressure and you can see it you see them break down and everybody knows
00:32:17.620 it and you know there's a sort of black mark over their name where we all say oh boy don't work with
00:32:22.320 him you know he's gonna he's gonna panic when it comes down to it uh and yeah that that you know
00:32:27.880 that compassion and that empathy was something that the job brought out and you know that particular
00:32:33.120 case you're referring to is a woman uh that we ran all the time who you know essentially she you know 1.00
00:32:40.300 there are a lot of people like this where she had massive substance abuse issues but they were 0.55
00:32:46.660 part of that was was a long and um untreated psychological history and and she had some
00:32:54.520 pretty serious mental issues and and because she didn't have any kind of support system she wound up 0.99
00:33:00.020 on the streets and and you know being in the streets is a place where people tend to get into
00:33:04.640 prostitution and drugs and and that's really what she was i mean you know to to the average person 1.00
00:33:09.640 walking down the street she you would just say well this is just a crack whore um and that's kind of 1.00
00:33:15.320 how she described herself but she was she was a good person and we used to joke and laugh and i picked 0.76
00:33:20.260 her up quite a bit and she got to know me she got to know my wife or at least by name and so yeah one
00:33:26.400 day we were tailgating at a football game and uh and i see her picking through the trash and it was
00:33:31.620 this weird moment it wasn't that often that my professional personal life uh lives collided like that
00:33:38.640 but there was the prime example of it and there she was and so i stopped and uh i said hey what's
00:33:44.900 going on she came right over and you know gave me this hug and you know my friends are kind of they
00:33:49.600 know me at this point they know they've heard all the stories so they're sort of staring trying to
00:33:53.140 figure out who who is this person who's the you know which which of the stories have we heard
00:33:57.140 um is she a part of and and and she sees my wife and instantly says oh you know it starts talking to 1.00
00:34:03.380 her and knows her by name and knows all these things about her and uh and then she sort of
00:34:09.300 she she takes my wife by hand and says come on i want you to meet my boyfriend and you know 0.98
00:34:13.560 sabrina looks at me and i was like well this you know probably not safe and i a friend of mine
00:34:18.160 was standing there who worked with me a really uh a very big guy and he was like i'll walk with her
00:34:23.220 and so they walk sort of across the field and um she meets you know introduces my wife to her
00:34:29.480 boyfriend which is ultimately just her pimp and and the guy sort of looks at my wife and says uh
00:34:33.940 smiles at her and says you know holler at me if you ever want to make some money because with a mask
00:34:37.540 like that we can we can make things happen and she was very you know sort of an eye-opening experience
00:34:44.020 for my wife of course um but that was kind of a day in the life for me and you spent so much time
00:34:48.800 dealing with people like that and in really dangerous neighborhoods and bad areas and that was
00:34:53.700 just sort of the you know um your clientele so to speak and uh you know she was just surprised by
00:35:01.160 i think that the degree to which i sort of accepted those people without judgment but
00:35:07.300 you know i think that's part of the job as part of what would make you a good medic
00:35:11.780 that's really there's a really poignant moment uh in the book you and your wife go to new york city
00:35:18.800 to go to the 9-11 memorial and there were discounts for police firemen military first responders but
00:35:25.560 there weren't any for paramedics or emt even though that you point out during in your book that during
00:35:30.840 the 9-11 tax 43 emts and medics died trying to rescue people i think that speaks to a larger topic
00:35:37.940 of why emts or paramedics don't get the same sort of respect as other first responders do uh there are
00:35:44.620 the people these are the people like i said earlier that when it's 22 o'clock in the morning and
00:35:48.240 grandma's having a stroke they're often the ones who get there first yeah and ultimately they're
00:35:53.860 the ones who you know the ambulance is where a life is saved or not you know nobody nobody goes to
00:35:58.900 hospital by fire truck you know it's just not the way it works it's paramedics and emts are the ones
00:36:03.980 who who do that um you know i think there's several reasons for it first is that the paramedic the field
00:36:11.420 you know the title paramedic did not exist until the late 60s and they didn't exist in practice until
00:36:16.880 about 1970 and since then it's been sort of a strange road where people have been trying to
00:36:22.900 figure out you know what the field is and how to use it best and and so there's it's kind of new and
00:36:28.520 you know it's a bit misunderstood and and not always properly used by the cities then there's the fact
00:36:35.040 that it's medicine you know and you know people have a fear of doctors and would rather not even think
00:36:39.780 about that um you know and of course firefighters and police even even as much you know trouble as
00:36:47.040 police find themselves in today they still occupy rarefied air in american society and firefighters
00:36:53.840 as well and uh you know even though you know in commercials you see them joke about you know
00:36:58.760 firefighters rescuing a cat from a tree there's still nobody who you know a fire engine goes by in a
00:37:04.980 parade and you know people wave and and and they they there it's implicit immediately in that
00:37:10.760 interaction between the parade and all these things that we we revere and the fire engine you you get
00:37:16.120 it you know that is a part of of these people are there to save us should their house burn but that
00:37:21.220 recognition doesn't exist when you see an ambulance it's just it's just this other thing and uh you know
00:37:27.100 it's never been portrayed i don't think the correct way in popular culture and if you imagine
00:37:30.780 if you think about when you see an ambulance in a movie it's at the end right when bruce willis's
00:37:36.620 partner is badly burned and shot in the stomach and half dead and you know but bruce has saved the
00:37:41.680 day and these two faceless medics jump out in their little white cloaks and they load bruce willis's 0.62
00:37:48.320 partner into the back of the ambulance and then of course you know bruce has to double tap the doors 0.98
00:37:52.860 to say hey guys you can drive off now you know i give you my blessing as if they're too dumb to even 0.82
00:37:57.300 know when to drive away uh and that's kind of the only way they're really ever portrayed and um
00:38:03.440 there's it's just generally speaking i think we have sort of looked past it we try not to focus on
00:38:08.720 it for i think all those reasons has there been any uh popular television shows about paramedics
00:38:14.460 yeah there was a show in the 70s and frankly this is what created a big boom in this field because
00:38:20.820 you figure 69 jacksonville florida's first city to really figure out how to use a paramedic
00:38:26.600 and then other cities start using that model through the early 70s but of course you know
00:38:30.960 you got to devote some budget to it so it was slow happening but in the mid to late 70s this show
00:38:37.440 called emergency came on and it was about this group of of this pair of paramedics working in la
00:38:43.200 and that you talk to people who were in their 40s and 50s about how they got into ems they will tell
00:38:50.200 it was that show and you know it was essentially an ems version of dragnet these two guys um going out
00:38:58.680 you know working hard doing everything they can to try to save lives and get things done
00:39:03.740 you know it was sort of you know perfectly fit the era um but it also certainly glorified the field but
00:39:11.720 that's the only thing that's ever existed and you know as the world has become more complicated and
00:39:17.920 more accepting of complicated stories the uh ems is sort of the one thing that has never been given
00:39:23.520 that that treatment you know that we're the humor of it all the darkness and the sort of cohen
00:39:29.860 brothers side of of our story has never been told and of course that was a big part of why i wanted to
00:39:35.220 write the book yeah as i was reading the book uh that's what i thought i thought this would make a
00:39:39.680 great tv show like the wire for paramedics or something yeah law and order to disagree with that
00:39:45.580 you know it's you you see that sort of um you know you kind of see that version of it all the time i
00:39:52.680 mean you know if you look at essentially what the sopranos did to the mob story i mean they
00:39:57.680 they de-glorified it you know there's the godfather on the one end which is you know impossible to even
00:40:04.120 imagine ever existed in any way um you know but that's sort of how it was portrayed in a lot of cases and
00:40:10.080 the sopranos comes along it gives you a much more flawed you know uh look at it where you know this
00:40:16.720 mob boss is you know practically scared of his own shadow and has so many issues um and i feel like
00:40:23.140 there's you know the time is right for for the ems version of that to show what it is really like
00:40:29.300 so you did this job for 10 years right i did 10 years yeah yeah i mean it's it's the schedule's
00:40:35.460 grueling you saw carnage on a regular basis the people you dealt with uh you talk about in your
00:40:40.480 book they're often very difficult sometimes you had to fight with people physically who you're
00:40:44.300 trying to rescue often physically a lot of times emotionally exhausting so what kept you going
00:40:50.100 you know why did you stay so long because you talk about in the in the book a lot of people are
00:40:54.760 in it for a little bit and then they're out but why did you stay so long yeah yeah you know
00:41:00.180 they're sort of a there are a couple factors but i think they all boil down to the same thing
00:41:05.780 um a lot of people leave and come back and they say well you know i just missed it you know i missed
00:41:09.800 being part of medicine and i missed you know being here and um but you know you can work medicine
00:41:15.060 anywhere else in any other brand of medicine and be paid a lot more for it than you do in ems and i
00:41:19.800 i think that there are a couple things that really keep people rooted in the field and one is a bond that
00:41:26.340 you have between the person you work with um i was actually emailing back and forth this morning
00:41:30.720 with it with a guy that i haven't seen in years who's an old partner of mine and the affection that
00:41:36.260 we have for each other is to be to be difficult to understand um for someone who's never done it you
00:41:41.760 know you you find yourself in a situation and this guy in particular is a perfect example he and i get
00:41:46.800 called out late at night horrible part of town for this girl who's been injured and we get to the
00:41:52.820 door and there's 25 30 people in a room and they are drunk and they are fired up and then come these
00:41:58.560 two guys and they look at us and you know we don't look like them we don't come from their world
00:42:03.260 and they immediately get angry with us and the situation gets violent and thankfully he was a big
00:42:08.760 enough guy to be able to stand up and and you know calm them down with his physical presence
00:42:14.200 um but he we had multiple instances where we had to you know fight patients and we're wrestling
00:42:19.700 around with people and you know you you have that moment um where you get called out to someone
00:42:26.040 and the guy gets violent and you are fighting with him and his family is yelling at you and people are
00:42:31.660 jumping in and some neighbor saying i'm going to go and call the police and or i'm going to go and get
00:42:35.480 a gun and you know the cops are there and it's just mad scene and you're trying to just get this
00:42:41.360 guy to all you want to do is help this guy get him to the hospital but you wound up in a full-blown
00:42:44.720 fistfight with him and you got him on your stretcher and you got him tied down and you are sweaty
00:42:49.220 and your clothes are ripped and you've got scratch marks on your face and you're exhausted and you
00:42:55.060 just sort of look at each other and smile there's this little moment of a of a smirk at you that
00:43:00.740 passes like i can't believe that just happened and damn we did it again and um and that sort of
00:43:10.360 you know being in that situation over and over again having to rely so heavily on somebody
00:43:14.780 it it creates a strange bond you know then for the 40 minutes or so that it takes to run a call
00:43:19.700 that other person is the only person in your universe you know your partner is the only other
00:43:24.520 resource that you have and you know there are a lot of dangerous situations a lot of difficult
00:43:30.360 situations there are a lot of times where you know you have the ability to save someone's life but
00:43:36.600 you need your partner to help you and and when they do and the two of you are able to work together
00:43:41.420 to save somebody and and they come through at that exact moment you need them to come through
00:43:46.220 and do their end of the job perfectly you just you get it just creates an incredible bond and and that
00:43:55.040 is is really a big part of it the friendships that we have and how tight we are with one another
00:43:59.340 even though how hard we are on with one another and you know there's pc does not exist there and uh
00:44:05.380 the things people say to each other you know it the humor is very dark and very you know very
00:44:10.360 aggressive um so that's a huge huge part of it and of course the other thing is that working in
00:44:16.320 that in that field and sitting out on a friday night when the weather is nice and you're in this bad
00:44:21.940 part of town and you hear the distant pop pop of a gun and and there are people walking around and
00:44:27.780 they're kind of you know drug dealers communicate with this sort of almost like a cat call bird call
00:44:33.200 whoop whoop to each other and um and you're you're parked in this vacant lot and you're just
00:44:40.200 watching all this go on around you and you know that whatever happens tonight and you can just tell
00:44:44.280 it's going to be a crazy night that you and your partner are going to be called out to it there's a
00:44:48.840 i mean that's just a i mean it's just a fun it's an exciting job and so those moments um you know go a
00:44:56.180 long way and they really you know even in the the boring times when it's raining and you're just running
00:45:01.480 nothing but nothing and uh you know you remember those exciting moments and it's those i think
00:45:07.080 those things come together that the incredible bond and then the highs that you have when the job is
00:45:12.440 really good uh i don't you know i think you know that once you leave you aren't going to get those
00:45:17.420 back you did leave eventually uh do you miss it um i i my career i think ran its course so i don't
00:45:27.380 miss the job but i do miss those two aspects i do more than anything i miss that close relationship
00:45:33.640 to have with those people of showing up at work and finding out that someone you really like you
00:45:37.720 get along with really well is going to be your partner that night and knowing man this is going
00:45:42.200 to be a great night i'm right away and getting in the ambison too you just start talking and goofing
00:45:46.540 around and and you know and and especially the those those exciting times those really those great
00:45:53.620 calls that you you love to run where you they're really hard but you you know you get it done
00:45:58.140 it'd be hard not to to say you don't miss that um but it's it's such a strange thing you know once
00:46:04.580 you get out of it you realize very quickly that you know i'm not at the level i you know it's sort
00:46:09.520 of like a fighter that stops training you you get out of fighting shape very quickly and um it's not
00:46:14.680 like i could hop on an ambulance tonight and do that do that job i you know i'm no longer in that
00:46:19.940 condition hey kevin this has been a really fascinating discussion where can people learn
00:46:23.600 more about you and your book uh there's a website kevinhazard.com and uh there's stuff there's you
00:46:30.960 know some some things that didn't make the book there are some pictures and reviews and and links
00:46:35.520 to places that uh that you can buy the book kevin hazard thank you so much for your time it's been a
00:46:40.100 pleasure thank you i really appreciate it my guest today was kevin hazard he's the author of the book
00:46:44.800 a thousand naked strangers you can find it on amazon.com go check it out it's uh really poignant
00:46:50.360 graphic detailed and also there's points where it's just laugh out loud hilarious you can find
00:46:55.880 more information about kevin's work at kevinhazard.com and that's hazard with two z's and also you can
00:47:01.880 check the show notes for this podcast at aom.is slash hazard well that wraps up another edition of
00:47:10.080 the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice make sure to check out the art of manliness
00:47:14.300 website at artofmanliness.com and if you enjoy this podcast and have gotten something out of it
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00:47:27.340 and until next time this is brett mckay telling you to stay manly