A shorter newsletter from me this week, as I’m hoping you’ll take the time you normally spend here watching Episode #327 of COVIDCalls – linked below – instead.
I’ve been lucky enough to be a guest on this daily discussion a few times over the past year, and I’ve featured the creator, historian Scott Gabriel Knowles, in a past
Q&A. This episode was particularly special for me, though, as it allowed me to revisit some reporting I’ve done this year. I was joined on the show by Sarah Miller, an emergency manager who spoke with me for an
article I wrote about burnout in that profession, and Luke Mayfield, Vice President of the Grassroots Wildland Firefighters, which is an organization I featured in a
piece about the structural challenges wildland firefighters face.
Over the course of the hour, both Miller and Mayfield offered deeply personal insights into how this past year has pushed the professionals we rely on as a society to stay safe to their breaking points. I think voices like theirs are essential to hear right now as a growing list of people across the U.S. deal with compounding crises, so enough from me – give them a listen: