Ep 180: Health and Safety in the Backcountry, with Matt Matzek
Matt Matzek is a board certified flight paramedic with Flight for Life Colorado and lifelong outdoorsman. In this episode, we discuss what to carry in a backcountry first aid kit, general safety and preparedness, the “know before you go” philosophy, what search and rescue looks like if you need it, and much more.
Instagram: Fly_Fishing_Lore
-
Katie
You're listening to the Fish Untamed Podcast, your home for fly fishing the backcountry. this is episode 180 with Matt Matzek on health and safety in the backcountry. well if you listen to the show you know how I start I like to get a background on my guests and how they got into the outdoors and specifically into fishing I think I saw that you're newer to fly fishing than you are to the outdoors in general. So walk me through that whole process.
Matt
Yeah. So I am from Mississippi originally, now have moved out to Colorado Springs, me and my wife three, four years ago. And so yeah, growing up in Mississippi, always fishing was always kind of my number one. But you know, not a lot of fly fishing out there, but it was, you know, largemouth bass, bluegill, other kinds of like sunfish and panfish. catfish you know jugging for catfish that was always great fun I've never done any like noodling or grappling but my brother does that every now and again and he he catches some big ones so that's cool but you know grew up well whitetail hunting my granddad raised bob white quail and sold hunts so we would do that sometimes that was that was fun got into duck and turkey hunting later in life like you know high school and and beyond and then I don't know what you know maybe if like I watch a river runs through it as a kid or you know just something something about like the mountains in the American west had always you know that's like the ultimate outdoors you know locale to to do things and then you know I just always had this picture in my head of fly fishing in mountain streams would just be the coolest thing ever. And after I moved out here and started doing it, I was right. It is the coolest thing ever. So, yeah, I do enjoy that a lot. I did used to like, I think what really started it was, I used to get like the Cabela's like Christmas catalog. Oh, yeah, I remember that. I would get that in the mail. And then I would plan these, you know, I'm like 10, And I'm planning like these, you know, $100,000 worth of gear and trips, you know, like, oh, yeah, I need the wall tent and the this and the that. We're going to go hunt moose. And, you know, so that was just a fantasy of mine as a kid.
Katie
I was in the same boat. I remember getting the Cabela's catalog and doing the same thing. I was like, I need to get into building lures. Like, I'm going to buy like a spinner building kit and build all this stuff. And I'm like, and I don't think I ever used any of it. But it just like looking at all the pictures and being like all the different colors, all the different options. I was just, you know, enthralled by it. What's the duck hunting like in Mississippi? Just selfishly, I'm also big into duck hunting and I've never been down to your part of the country.
Matt
So definitely if you're going to travel, you need to go. So I'm more from like the eastern side of the state. So, you know, the delta is the way to go. So the west side of the state or like eastern Arkansas, you know, all that farmland is, you know, there's so many swampy areas and sloughs that you can get into public or private out that way. But you really, you know, on the eastern side, it's not as great as if you were to go to the Delta. So we did a lot of like wood duck hunting out there. Right. And that was always fun. But it was harder to get those bigger groups of birds in because they just weren't, you know, they were all following the river by that point. Right. So but yeah, it's it's tons of fun. You know, duck hunting is is a whole animal in and of itself. Right. It's takes a lot of skill, a lot of gear. Right. Like so when people, you know, when I tell people about it, it's a lot to kind of get started in it. And even then, you still need a group of people that have the know-how and the gear to get started. But, you know, we may do. It's fun. I highly recommend it.
Katie
Yeah, I found it. So we just got into it in the last, like, three or four years. And I agree. I think, you know, people are kind of daunted by big game, especially, like, Western big game elk and deer. And don't get me wrong. That does take a lot of gear and a lot of skill. But I think the idea of it is a lot, it's just easier to comprehend to the average person. Cause like you could just grab a gun, walk around the woods and you could stumble across an elk and take a shot and be done. Whereas ducks, it's like, it's kind of hard to just stumble into success duck hunting. Like you kind of have to do things a specific way and it's not necessarily an intuitive thing. Like you don't just stumble upon putting decoys out and, you know, getting a good hide and all that kind of stuff. the same way that you could just walk around the woods and like you might you might come across a deer you might come across an elk or a moose or whatever
Matt
yeah there's a an art to it for sure as well as kind of a science but you know that's why the people I mean you know the people that are obsessed with it are absolutely obsessed with it right it's like a lot of these outdoor pursuits right like you you get people that hyper focus on that one thing and they know what they're talking about. The elk hunting, I'm trying to get into that too soon, just Western big game hunting in general. So maybe this year will be the year that I've pulled the trigger on it. I've been doing a lot of scouting already.
Katie
And are you more of a, it sounds like you're kind of a jack of all trades more than, like you talked about having that like expertise in one thing, but it sounds like in the outdoor world, you are kind of a generalist. You do kind of everything a little bit.
Matt
Yeah, I suck at everything like equally good, right? So yeah, I'm definitely not specializing in any one area. So I just choose to suck at multiple things.
Katie
No, I feel like I'm with you. I like to do a little bit of everything, but I wouldn't say I'm the best at any of it. One other thing I wanted to touch on before we kind of move on to the meat of what we're going to talk about is you mentioned jugging for catfish. And I just like don't get a chance to talk to southerners very often, especially like fly fishing is so Western focused and like New England focused that I haven't talked to a lot of people from the Southeast. And that kind of like fishing culture just kind of fascinates me because I know nothing about it. So if you could just give me like a brief overview of like what is involved in jugging for catfish.
Matt
So we used to go a lot. My dad had a work friend who just had this little farm pond on his property that he stocked blue cats in. And, you know, some of them were small enough. We could literally take a, you know, like a 16 ounce Coke bottle, you know, just an empty plastic bottle and tie a cord to it with a hook and whatever. Catfish kind of eat, you know, anything. You could slab peanut butter on a hook and, you know, catfish might eat it. And then it was it was so fun to do that because it had a little dock that went out on that pond and we would get in this little canoe they had and set these milk jugs and Coke bottles out. and then just wait on the dock for one of them to start moving. And then it was like a race to swim to the bottle to pull the catfish in. So that was a lot of fun. But, you know, out on bigger rivers, it's more about like leaving it overnight, I feel like is a big thing that people do. A lot of people use like pool noodles rigged up certain ways to fish for these. But, I mean, you know, catfish can be two pounds and up to, you know, 50 pounds plus. So you can get some good sized fish doing that, just hand lining them like that.
Katie
In the river, what is keeping the jug in place? Do you tie it to like a tree or something? Or is it like the weight of whatever's at the bottom? I know nothing about this. So this is probably a dumb question.
Matt
They don't like, at least especially like the bigger ones, they're not going to be in the channel, like the main channel where the current is and plus these are not fast moving bodies of water anyway even the main part of the channel for the most part so you know they're going to be back in the slower oh you're practically dead water these sloughs so you know they are bottom feeders they hug the bottom and just cruise around especially at night so that's why you know you can look up recipes for homemade catfish bait and it's always you know the stinkiest that you can come across, right? Like rotten chicken livers and stuff. You know, they like that kind of, that scent carries in the water and that's what brings them into it.
Katie
Gotcha. Well, you reached out to me today with a topic that I think is like really useful for probably the majority of people who listen to this. We're not gonna be talking a ton about fly fishing today, but we're gonna be talking about backcountry safety, which is probably something I should have covered by now in like 170 some episodes I've done. But I'll let you kind of take it away here And just tell me how you got your start kind of in the like outdoor safety medical space. And we can go from there with kind of some tips for people and things like that.
Matt
Yeah. So I am a board certified flight paramedic. I work for Flight for Life Colorado here in Colorado Springs. So that's a very well-known EMS flight program. We serve a lot of the front range out to the west, that way out to the east. A lot of those, especially more rural areas, very hard to get up in the mountains. So I started as an EMT, an emergency medical technician, working on an ambulance. The whole time I was doing that, I worked full-time nights while I was in paramedic school. And then graduated from paramedic school, passed my national registry, and now I'm a paramedic. And worked all of my ground ambulance experience was in Mississippi. Worked some bigger places and then some a lot more rural counties that, you know, super long transports. Every patient you picked up was two, three hours away from a hospital. And then when we moved out to Colorado, I had I had the years to apply and I got the job as a as a flight medic. So it's awesome. It's great fun. Really gets worse of the worst patients. And that's kind of why people get into it. I feel like you really get to see a little bit of everything.
Katie
What kinds of things when you say a little bit of everything? I know that means that there isn't probably a typical, but like if you could give kind of like a typical situation you might be responding to.
Matt
Yeah. So even here where I work in Colorado Springs, the majority of what we do are transports, inner facility transports. So we'll go out to a smaller community hospital, to their ER that does not have the capabilities of taking care of a very sick trauma patient, a very sick medical patient. And we'll take them to these bigger hospitals in Colorado Springs or Denver, wherever that facility has lined up for this patient to go that has the more specialized services that they need. Trauma services, a burn center, cardiac services, neurology, what have you. So that's probably 70 percent of what we do. The rest of it is we do respond to scene calls. So somebody is at their house on the side of the road, wherever, they call 911 and they need emergency medical services. And we will respond to those sometimes at the behest of the ambulance crew on scene if they know that this patient is not something that they are equipped to take care of or that this patient needs to get to a hospital faster than they can get them there by ground. Because even, you know, take right along the Front Range, take Colorado Springs, for example, there's communities just on the other side of Pikes Peak that are, you know, these people are a two, three hour ambulance ride, but it takes us 15 minutes to get them to the hospital that they need to go to. So, you know, certain conditions are more time sensitive than others. A stroke, for example. So, you know, these ambulance crews know this patient needs to get to the hospital ASAP and they would call us. Or if they're just overwhelmed, you know, there's multiple patients on the scene and one of them is particularly bad and they can handle the other ones, you know, one with two or three additional ambulances. And then we would take, say, the sicker one somewhere. So but we see all kinds of patients, a lot of, you know, different medical issues, strokes, heart attacks, diabetic problems, GI problems, tons of stuff. But then also our fair share of trauma as well. Right. So we do carry at my program, we carry a couple of units of whole blood equivalents because we are stationed at a hospital. so we can swap that blood out with the lab at the hospital so that it goes in rotation. Blood products have a very short shelf life and they have to be kept at certain temperatures. But we do carry them everywhere that we go. So, you know, if a patient needed blood, I can give them blood.
Katie
Now, do you also do search and rescue?
Matt
We assist a lot with, say, El Paso County SAR here. So we have programs where we can take a SAR member in the helicopter, say from their base, which is here in town, to the top of Pikes Peak because it would take them hours to get up there any other way, driving or hiking or whatever. But we can drop them off at a trailhead or a landing zone closer to where they know or suspect a person in need is. And then we may or may not transport the patient. You know, sometimes people just get lost and they need a SAR member to help them, you know, get back to the trail. We help them do aerial searches. That's especially good at night because we do have NVGs that the pilots and the med crew will wear. And, you know, we can, if we know a patient is in, say, you know, a certain ridge line, a certain valley, with those NVGs on, I can see your phone screen, you know, from. Yeah. Oh, yeah. It's, you know, they illuminate, I think, up to like 10,000 times that the light illumination that's around. So we had one instance one time where, you know, we had two different SAR teams on this ridge. They had a general idea of where this person was at that they were looking for. And we get up there and, you know, we're flying around the valley and we see three lights. And so we tell the SAR members over the radio, cut your lights off. The one that's left is the person that they're looking for. So then we were able to direct them to that patient who was just, yeah, who was just lost and needed. You know, it was dark and they didn't know where they were at.
Katie
And how often are you doing some of these kind of more backcountry things versus kind of the urban setting?
Matt
It definitely happens. Summer is more often. We kind of call it trauma season. Right. So as the weather warms up, it is seasonal. Right. So we don't go out too, too much when, you know, anywhere on Gold Camp Road around here because, you know, it's mostly impassable in various places. But then, you know, there's not a lot of ski areas around Colorado Springs. So we do have our our base that's in Frisco. They go a lot to Breckenridge, Aspen and all the big ski resorts for ski related injuries. We also have a base down in Durango. They do that a lot. So they do a little more of the more backcountry stuff because they are located a little more up in the mountains than, say, we are here. So they do a lot of avalanche training. They have avalanche search beacons that can search for avalanche beacons out of the side of the helicopter. So they do a lot at those two bases in particular. We do all tend to take those classes and become somewhat competent in it. But I've never done an avalanche search and rescue. It just it doesn't happen around the springs. you know but it you know there are plenty of flight programs where you know they that's probably a huge bulk of what they do
Katie
you listed kind of a set of topics that you want to cover and I don't know if there's really a an order that they need to go in because they're all kind of you know they're all important and and one isn't necessarily more kind of general or specific than the next but I'm just gonna go kind of in the order that you wrote them down, since that's the order I have them written down. And this would be, I guess, a good one because it starts at home. But the type of things you'd want to pack in a first aid kit when you're going out in the backcountry, because that's something you want to have prepared ahead of time, obviously. So walk me through what you would carry in a backcountry first aid kit, kind of the big rocks, at least, and the purpose of them. Because if you have a kit that you don't know how to use anything in, it's not super useful.
Matt
Exactly. And that's what I would say before we talked about what was in the kit is, Full disclaimer here, I am not a physician. I cannot give you a first aid course over the course of this podcast. So you need to, as a listener of the show, you need to educate yourself before you take any of this stuff and try to use it on anybody else, especially, but including yourself. So I think if you recreate a lot outdoors, you absolutely need to take a wilderness first aid course. It will be a day, maybe two days. There's tons of them out there. I'm not affiliated with any kinds of with there. There's plenty out there. You can Google them. I'm not affiliated with any of them. You know, so I can't and I've never had to take one. But you so I can't recommend any over the other. But, you know, Google is your friend on this. But you need to educate yourself on how to keep yourself safe, how to keep others in your party safe. So that is the most important thing. Do not carry any piece of gear, medical gear especially, that you do not know how to use and then expect to try to use it on somebody. This is a recipe for a disaster potentially. But I think as far as med kits go, I think first and foremost, you need a tourniquet. You need a tourniquet and chest seals are the two single most important pieces of gear because I carry tourniquets in my car within access of, you know, in the door of my car so that I could access it if I needed it to place it on myself. And when you go out and, you know, all of this stuff you can buy at Walgreens, CBS, order off of Amazon, all of this stuff that I carry in my own first aid kit that I take with me everywhere I go. Not everything is created equal. There are there are tourniquets with a plastic windlass and tourniquets with a metal windlass. You know, I've professionally I've used both. I have broken plastic windlasses on tourniquets, but only like training models that were in like the training room that you, you know, that were cycled dozens, hundreds of times. It's a single use item, you know, so, you know, I'm not going to say that it's going to break on you when you need it most, but there is a chance there. A metal windlass is not going to break. So that would be my suggestion. So I carry a soft T tourniquet, a SOFT tourniquet. So they have a metal windlass and all of this stuff, everything that you would put in a first aid kit, you need to practice with it. You need to know how to use it. So that tourniquet, you know, buy a couple, buy multiple, take one out of the pack, see how it works. Put it on your leg. Don't tighten it up all the way, but just see how it works. Nothing, you know, none of this stuff do you want the first time that you ever see it out of the package, open it, use it, needs to be the time that you need it. You know, you need to know how this thing works before you go playing with it in the mountains. Right. So that would be for bleeding of the limb, a tourniquet. And then a chest seal is going to be for penetrating trauma to the chest, which, you know, I think is pretty common injury in the backcountry. I would feel like, you know, you need to know what that device does, when to use it, how to use it. All of this you would learn in a wilderness first aid course. But and once again, by multiples and practice with one of them. So I think, you know, those are two very important things.
Katie
What causes penetrative trauma to the chest in the backcountry? I think of gunshots, but that's the only thing I think of when I think of what would basically poke a hole in your chest. What else do you see?
Matt
Falls.
Katie
Okay.
Matt
Yeah. So even just a – you fall on a rock on a very rocky surface from a great height up. It can absolutely penetrate because also you fall and break some ribs. your rib can, you know, poke through and now be a, a penetrating chest wound. You know, sticks, I guess, hiking poles. I've never personally seen that, but you do kind of hear about that. Trekking poles can, you know, absolutely cause those kinds of issues, but yeah, yeah. Gunshots, you know, accidental, especially if you're a hunter, you know, stuff happens. So especially if you're hunting in a group or on public land, you know, where there might be other people. So that would be two very important pieces of kit. But, you know, really and truly all of it's important. I have my kit here and it's not a lot. I don't know how much it weighs. I should have weighed it. But, you know, this isn't the time for you to start thinking with that ultralight mindset, right? You know, you need what you need. It doesn't have to be too big. You know, you're not carrying the kitchen sink with you. But the more that you play with this kind of stuff, you know, and through taking the course, You'll see what's important and what's not. Another big piece of kit, very important, is some nitrile gloves, some nitrile exam gloves that you would see at your doctor's office at the hospital. You know, having a box of these around the house is fantastic. I wear them, you know, just cleaning stuff, food prep. You know, this is a great tool just to have around the house. But for your med kit, you're going to want, you know, three, four pair, roll them up like a pair of socks and stuff them in there. So you need, you know, that'll help keep any open wounds from getting all the little squid words on your hand in the open wound as well as, you know, protecting yourself from, you know, pathogens, blood borne pathogens that, you know, somebody in your party or somebody, you know, that you just come across that needs help might have. So obviously I wear gloves constantly at work and that's the, that's the first thing you learn in EMT school is BSI, scene safe. You, you isolate yourself, right? So wear your gloves. That's really all it comes down to. You don't want to touch anybody's blood period. So a couple of those, I carry a CPR mask. If a first aid course should probably also teach you like AHA, American Heart Association, BLS CPR. If it doesn't, I would recommend taking a CPR class as well. So I carry a CPR mask that will just, that mouth to mouth, you know, somebody you don't know, they got blood on their mouth. You don't necessarily want that in your mouth either. So, you know, that'll keep you isolated from somebody that you're trying to help out and sort of give you the confidence to know that you can help them without potentially harming yourself. I also carry a few different bandaging materials, some four-inch by four-inch gauze pads, individually wrapped, a couple of those. So those can be fashioned into bandages, slapped on a bleed and be used to hold direct pressure. I carry some gauze bandaging, Curlex, that can be used to then secure a four-by-four to a laceration, for example. also carry coban cohesive bandaging some people know it as vet tape that's a great piece of kit right there sticks to itself it's stretchy and that can be used to secure bandaging and also a sam splint sam splint you can find these on amazon they're great they're like a flexible foam splint and any of those things that curlex that coban can be used to secure that splint or a splint that say you fashioned out of, you know, some sticks, trekking poles, whatever that can be, you know, both of those items can be used to secure that. But Sam's Splint's great for certain long bone fractures, an ankle sprain or fracture. And the way that you would fashion that would be another thing that you would need to learn in a course. But the Sam's Splint's great because it also has how to fashion it, for certain injuries printed on the phone. So that's why I really like that.
Katie
And thankfully that one's not going to be like a life-saving, like the tourniquet, you don't want to be reading instructions on a tourniquet when you need to use it. A splint, I mean, the person getting a splint, it's probably not going to be having a great day, but unless it's a very extreme case, a broken arm's not going to kill them. You've got time to read the instructions if you need to.
Matt
Yeah, that's fair. They're also fun to play with. I do it to my kids sometimes because I feel like I need to practice for things that I don't just see all the time. So I'm like, hey, come here, and I'll do things to them. So that way, if I had a patient that was their age, I would be confident in doing it. So yeah, practice makes perfect, right? So those are some big things. And all this stuff you can get off Amazon. It's available to you, easily accessible. A couple other things in here. This is where I keep my moleskin for those blisters and stuff. You know, great little piece of kit. Keep an emergency blanket in here. If you have a person who's – one of the things we talk about in emergency medicine a lot, right, is the trauma triangle, which is actually now found out to be the trauma square. But the fourth piece of that is you're not going to solve that, you know, just from a first aid perspective. So, you know, don't worry about that. But one of those is hypothermia, right? So a patient that is truly bleeding out, they're going to get cold and it is actually going to make their condition worse. Hypothermia causes the blood to not be able to clot as well. So keeping that person warm is paramount. We do that a lot. We have several devices that we use to keep people warm. We have a fluid warmer that we also put the blood products that we carry on. So they are a little higher than normal body temp when they come out and go into a patient. But we also, you know, keep them wrapped up is a big thing. So I keep a survival blanket in here in case I had to use it on somebody who was mass exsanguinating. A couple of other things, just, you know, just simple, simple bandages, like, you know, just a couple of little band-aids. Because, you know, not everything is, you know, this life altering, potentially fatal injury, right? So, but you do want to, you know, there are, there are injuries that are trip enders for sure. Right. Where it's like, we are no longer concerned about, you know, finishing this hike or getting to the river to fish. But now we are, you know, this person is fighting for their life. But then there are things that are like, well, you know, maybe I want to turn back to the truck now, especially if it's an extended trip. You know, a little cut out in the wilderness can get infected if it's not covered. So trip extenders are fine too. So I got a couple of little Band-Aids in here. Got some alcohol swabs, some iodine swabs.
Katie
I was wondering if you were going to mention Band-Aids because I have heard the argument that there's people who don't put things in their first aid kit if they couldn't basically save their life, you know, because they are like it's adding weight. And I've always been of the mindset that the most likely thing that I'm going to need in this first aid kit is a Band-Aid. Like I pull Band-Aids out of first aid kits all the time. I've never had to use a splint or tourniquet. Like, thankfully, that doesn't mean don't carry them. But I've never had to use those things. I've used Band-Aids a hundred times. So I'm not going to give up something that is, like, far and away the most used item. And like you said, it can turn what would be, like, a not fun day anymore into back to where I started. You know, you get a bad cut in your hand and it's bothering you. It's catching on things. You're reaching into the water. It could get infected. And, you know, having a Band-Aid on there is like, okay, now I'm kind of, like, back to where I was. And I can enjoy the rest of my day without being, like, bothered by this little cut. so I was glad you mentioned that because I was I was wondering if you were going to be of the mindset that you know those aren't going to save your life it's not worth bringing them along
Matt
no no like that's why I put like moleskin in here right like just cover up a little blister that's going to make me be okay the height farther right so yeah you know a trip extender is you know I was kind of what I think is a good way to look at it so but also I have them in here and not say like in like a possible spouse, like it's like, this is like my medical kit. Right. So all the medical stuff goes in here, you know, it's not necessarily life-saving first aid kind of stuff. So that's, that's the way I view it. And also I do, you know, I, I feel like I do carry a little more than would be, you know, then say like the average lay person probably should carry, but only because like, you know, if I'm in a group, I'm like, you know, I'm the group medic, Right. Like, so everybody, you know, you're going to ask me to bandage you, you know, you know, maybe not like a little cut on your finger, but something else, you know, so that's that's like my role. Right. So I can carry a little more of this and, you know, everybody's better off for it in a group setting. So you need some. Oh, yeah. You need some shears, some trauma shears. Don't get the fancy Leatherman Raptor $100 folding trauma shears. I've used them. I've had them over the years. You can get a pack of a dozen of them off of Amazon for $10. Just get those. I carry around the cheap Amazon flight medic approved, the cheap Amazon trauma shears. That's all you need. It truly is. So, you know, a good pair of those. But that's like, you know, help cut bandages into size, remove clothing to, you know, get better access to bleeding or something. A couple other things in the pack. Some burn cream would be good. And AAA, like some antibiotic ointment. You know, just put a little squirt of that in there, cover up even those minor cuts, right? Like, you know, just do yourself a favor. Help out. keep that thing clean. You can, you know, if a, if a cut's pretty good too, or, or like a scrape, you know, you fell on the trail and you got a good little scrape and you've got some debris in there, some little rocks, you know, you can wash that out, but use filtered water, I would suggest, you know, don't just go dunking it in the river, you know, any anything to keep all the little squid words from, from getting in your body. That's, that's the idea. Also really good is just some over-the-counter meds. You know, Tylenol, Advil, Aspirin, some like Pepto-Bismol makes little tablets. So, you know, those are just pretty common things on the trail that you might run into. Just small aches and pains. Maybe you got a little upset stomach from something. So that'll help you. Diarrhea is a trip ender for sure. You know, maybe you accidentally got a hold of some bad water that wasn't filtered properly or, you know, you do not want to be several days in the backcountry and then get some cryptosporidium in you. You're going to have a bad time and potentially fatal, but at the very least a bad time getting back home. So, you know, a couple of things like that, just those for, you know, superficial pains. I carry them in a little peel bottle. They're, you know, you can get some things that are like in those individual foil packs. So I think that's good for those over-the-counter meds. And everything else too, like all the bandaging and everything. I vacuum seal a lot of my stuff. Cuts down on that bulk, you know, just gets all that extra air out, keeps it waterproof, saves on that space, you know, kind of probably makes the longevity of these items a little longer, too. So, you know, I think that's a hot little tip because a lot of this stuff, you know, it'll be hopefully never used, but, you know, it can go in here and be there for a while. So do inspect your stuff occasionally. A lot of the stuff, you know, these cotton bandages, a lot of medical supplies comes from the factory with an expiration date. But, you know, a cotton bandage is not going to go bad if it's stored properly. You know, if it's out in the sun, if it gets wet, you know, if it if it gets discolored, it's you know, it's time to replace it. But if you store this stuff well, it's it's going to last a long time.
Katie
I really like that tip about the vacuum sealing because that's my big problem with my first aid kit. I know you didn't recommend any classes specifically, but we did the Knolls Wilderness First Responder course, which is like a 10-day course, and you have to re-up it every couple of years with a two- or three-day course. At the end of that, I came out so gung-ho. I was going to get all this stuff in my first aid kit, and the thing is just overflowing. It's so huge. Being able to vacuum seal, what specifically are you vacuum sealing? Is it like the, you know, the pads, like cotton pads and gauze and stuff like that?
Matt
So I have my Curlex's vacuum sealed in with my 4x4 gauze pads. So that's a big, you know, that's like a main sort of bulky thing, right? Because those are bulky dressings. I have an ABD pad, which is known as a bulky trauma dressing. So I have that vacuum sealed. The things that are kind of like they're vacuum sealed is like my, this survival blanket. It's folded down. You know, that thing folds out. I don't even know how big it is, but it's huge. And it's in a super compact form. The triangle bandage that I carry is vacuum sealed. That's another good one to have on you. So hot tip, if you ever wreck your mountain bike and you forgot your first aid kit, in the truck with your...
Katie
Or if your friend did. Not you, I'm sure. I'm sure this wasn't you.
Matt
Yeah, totally was not me. And did not have your triangle bandage on you to make a sling for your broken collarbone and dislocated shoulder. You can make a sling out of the inner tube of your mountain bike and hike out. I did do that this past August and I did have to make that sling and hike myself out. Yeah, don't recommend that. So, you know, do as I say, not as I do. Bring your first aid kit with you wherever you go in the wilderness.
Katie
I'm going to add one more, you know, what I consider a hot tip. And I actually thought you were about to mention it when you said AAA for like the cream. I thought you're going to say AAA batteries because I keep an extra set of batteries for my headlamp. Because if something like this happens at night and you run out of light, then it's going to be really hard to use all this stuff. So if your headlamp can take, you know, AAA batteries or whatever, I always like to keep an extra set of those around anything that's kind of like my emergency kit. Just because like in an emergency, I don't want to be worried about trying to use my phone as like a light to try to, you know, splint somebody's arm or something.
Matt
Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, that is a solid tip. Maybe I'll throw a couple in here for that express purpose or even, you know, an extra small little light of some kind. Yeah, absolutely. You know, you can you can sort of think of things all day long, you know, as long as you I think it's it's one of those knowledge is power things. You need to know how to use the stuff you're carrying and you need to know where it is. Right. Like if this is your kit that you're building, you need to know what you got in here and how to use every bit of it. I think it's the most important thing. Right. Oh, yeah. I got a little pair of tweezers in here. That's really handy to have, you know, splinters, sticks, what have you. So that's another one. But, yeah, as far as equipment goes, that's really about it of stuff that I would recommend the layperson carrying. Oh, an Israeli bandage. That is also one of the vacuum sealed things I have. That's a really great one. I have it right next to my tourniquet. Not every bleed is going to require a tourniquet. If you take a class, you would learn that in there, right? like, you know, direct pressure being the first line of saying like, okay, does this control this bleeding or not? In fact, I had a, I was at a conference in a, an ER doc. He said just, it's one of those like so dumb that it's smart sort of things in medicine that I learned where I was like, wow, you know, people think about this as being this whole big thing, but it's, it's so simple. But he was like, you know, if you have an arterial bleed and that patient's systolic blood pressure is 90 millimeters of mercury well it takes 91 millimeters of mercury to stop that bleeding and that's not you know just a ton of pressure right so you know you don't have to just press on somebody like so you know it so I just I thought that's always stuck with me is you know you don't wear yourself out like trying to hold this bleeding in place it doesn't take all that much so a lot of this stuff so you know it's it's kind of starting from the bottom and then working your way up is one of the things that you would hopefully pick up on in a class like that. So that's why I have an Israeli bandage. It's not as invasive as a, well, I don't know if invasive is the correct word, but, you know, as a tourniquet. So, you know, if the bleeding is controlled with something like that, you know, it doesn't require something like that because something like a tourniquet, because, you know, absolutely a tourniquet can kill somebody just as dead as a lead potentially. And so, oh yeah, that's also why, you know, if you do carry a tourniquet, you should have a, carry a permanent marker with it. You're going to need to notate the time that that was applied. That is very important for that receiving trauma team because they can be, you know, releasing a tourniquet prematurely can be fatal. So.
Katie
Gotcha. Well, I think that's a good kind of transition to kind of like more the action side versus the kit. So obviously having a first a good first aid kit is really important but ideally you never use it. That's probably not realistic especially for small things like bandages but in an ideal world you go out and you've been smart the whole time and you don't actually get hurt and need to access your first aid kit. So having this packed at home bringing it along obviously great but when you're actually planning to go out into the field I want to transition a little more toward just kind of like backcountry safety and like the decisions you make going into it and along the way that can kind of prevent you from needing to hopefully use this first aid kit
Matt
so yeah know before you go right like that's that's going to be the biggest thing if you're in avalanche country you need to know what the avalanche conditions are like and you need you need to trust them right those things are there for a reason because the the people that that come up with those numbers are the people who are coming to get you if you know if that that were to happen so that's one example but you know just generally it's your life is not worth that fish right so I know I do it the same as everybody else where I sit there you know that that one piece of that one creek is way down in that canyon and it's you know you're sitting there looking at that like I could probably hop to this boulder and then go, you know, down here and then like cut across here. And like there, there's fish in that pool. I just know it. You know, your life is not worth catching that, that little six inch fish. It's not. So making, making good decisions starts with yourself mixing alcohol and the outdoors. That's a recipe for disaster. You know, we, we do see that a lot. A lot of people like to recreate under the influence of something or the other. and operate unenclosed vehicles with no safety equipment on. We go on more of those, I feel like, than most anything else. So that's a bad one. It's kind of those things that everybody knows, or they say they know, but then they don't follow it. it's you, you are responsible for your own safety before anybody else's. And if you get yourself in a bad spot where you cannot be rescued, it's on you for the most part. You got to know where you're going. You got to let somebody know where you're going, what time you're going to be back. And if you're out of cell range, which, you know, most of the places we like to go are, and that's fine. It's nice to get away from everything, But it does help a lot to have some mode of getting in touch, making good decisions with your group, having a plan, having plan B will always help, especially if, you know, the weather can turn on a dime in the mountains, especially in the, you know, certain parts of the summer, right? If you're hiking up those trails, going at those high alpine lakes, you know, you got to be prepared to cut that trip short as soon as the weather starts to turn. So just knowing that your life is more important than that particular day's recreation. You want to live to be able to go do it again.
Katie
It's funny we were talking today. I came across, well, my friend sent me two articles today, both backcountry emergency situations. One, which is what made me just think of this, was that the idea of checking things before you go out, checking the weather. You know, that's not that the weather can't change in an instant, but you can at least get a feel for what you should be up against. They're not going to be calling for 80 degrees and then it ends up being 20 degrees. A storm can roll through, but you can get a good feel for things before you go out. It was a group of skiers that got caught. They were hiking to a hut or skinning into a hut and got caught in, you know, negative whatever temperatures. And, you know, hypothermia was happening and frostbite was happening. And I don't know all the details, obviously. But knowing that it's going to be that cold is something that you can kind of prepare for. There's days where you go skinning and, you know, just going up the hill is enough to keep you so hot that you're shedding layers. But I doubt that the weather forecast was saying it was going to be balmy when it's, you know, below zero. it's probably something you can kind of be aware of ahead of time. And the other one was a guy who went up Mount Quandary, apparently, in the middle of the night without a headlamp and was using his phone as a light and also got, you know, in a sticky situation was calling search and rescue. And both these things just seem pretty preventable by just taking some precautions ahead of time and going in prepared and not just putting yourself out there in an unprepared situation. Obviously, accidents pop up, but you should be at the mercy of accidents, not at the mercy of things that you could have totally seen coming.
Matt
Exactly, exactly. And that, you know, both of those things happen. You know, people get, you know, situations totally out of their controls, totally not their fault. And there are just as many people who, you know, who can say, you know, kind of armchair quarterbacking it sometimes. But, you know, sometimes it's like, well, the logical conclusion to this was that you were not prepared and you were going to get lost. So, yeah, it does happen a lot when people come from just come visiting from out of state and they, you know, they don't necessarily have the respect of the distance, the altitude, the, you know, the weather conditions. And, you know, at the same time, that's, you know, that's still on them for not trying to learn beforehand what, you know, hiking up Pikes Peak is going to be like in whatever month they're in.
Katie
I saw you listed in the document ahead of time, like resources for kind of like first aid education and stuff. I know you're not affiliated with anybody, but do you have any resources, either classes people could take or just like resources online? Like what people would want to like the kinds of skills that people would want to have when they go into the backcountry?
Matt
As far as like the first aid things, all of this stuff, like all of this equipment here, this, you know, how to apply a split. Oh, that's YouTube. You know, how to apply a tourniquet. All that stuff's on YouTube. You can you can learn that. And then if you get the knowledge online and then practice with it enough, I won't say it's going to replace a comprehensive in-person course like Knowles, like you said. Actually, I found their book, one of their books on at a thrift store for like two dollars. And I picked it up because I was like, let's see, you know, it's got some decent information in there. So those kind of resources, you know, Google is your friend. But nothing's going to replace taking an in-person course for sure and then just expanding your knowledge from there. So highly, highly recommend the longer you spend outdoors. You know, you absolutely need to take a course like this. And then every so often, you know, probably do a little refresher because, you know, you don't live it every day like I do. It's not, you know, it's not what you do for work. So and, you know, I kind of lovingly call this kind of stuff Boy Scout medicine because it is that, you know, we're not reinventing the wheel in first aid. Right. So emergency medicine is a whole branch of medicine that a lot of really smart people work really, really hard to figure out what's best for people. But basic first aid is we're not, like I said, we're not reinventing the wheel. Bleeding is bad. Blood stays inside the body. That's really all there is to it. Stop the bleeding, right? The more nuanced things, yeah, let the trauma surgeon figure that out. But, you know, for the most part, this kind of stuff is the same that it's been for decades now. So, yeah, like it doesn't take you don't have to be an emergency medicine physician to be up to date on this kind of medicine. You really don't.
Katie
Yeah, I remember that being something they focus on in in Wilderness First Responder. It was I mean, there are things that you can do that can save someone's life. Obviously, a tourniquet is one of those things that can save someone's life. But they really kind of hammered home that what you're doing is still all kind of like rudimentary stuff. Like you're not going to heal the person and have them just be fixed. They're still probably mostly going to end up going to a medical facility if it's something serious. And your job is to make it so they can get to that medical facility. So you're not trying to fix their broken bone. You're trying to keep their broken bone from getting worse until they can get actual medical help. And so it kind of takes some of the pressure off you that like you're doing your best with the resources you have, which are admittedly going to be limited in a backcountry setting, but getting familiar with those resources so you can get the person to the help they actually need. It kind of takes the pressure off. Like you don't have to heal this person. You just have to keep them alive and capable of getting to help.
Matt
A hundred percent. Absolutely. And that's, you know, here I, you know, we're high speed, low drag, cool helicopter, millions of dollars in medical equipment. I'm still taking them to a hospital and then washing my hands. Like there, I don't just take them home and say, you know, oh, yeah, I solved your problem. That's that's not that's not what any of this is. You know, some of this stuff in this first aid kit, the second it goes on their body, this person for weeks from now is going to be in a hospital. Right. Potentially, potentially not, you know, not set in stone, but they are going to an emergency room and they might end up in a trauma ICU somewhere. They might end up in surgery somewhere. So the yeah, that's absolutely right. Like, don't feel bad being a layperson with, you know, minimal medical training that you couldn't solve this problem. Well, it takes a big team of highly specialized people to solve, quote unquote, this problem. Right. A true medical emergency. You know, I mean, yeah, we take a bad trauma into one of our level one trauma facilities. It's 30 people in the room when you drop this patient off and every one of them has a different job. Right. So yeah, you're not going to do this on the side of the mountain.
Katie
I wanted to reiterate what you said about keeping up with your training, because I keep hammering like we took wilderness first responder, which I would recommend for folks. That was the 10 day course. They also do like wilderness first aid, which I think is maybe three to five days. Don't quote me on that. But I'm sure that is great, too, especially for basic stuff. But, you know, We came out of that 10-day class being like, we are experts. We will never see a problem that we can't figure out. And I feel like weeks later, I was like, I've forgotten most of this. I don't know how you can be that dedicated to a class for 10 hours a day for 10 days straight and then feel like you've lost it so quickly. By the end of the course, we were smooth sailing, like a well-oiled machine doing the scenarios and stuff. But we came back for a refresher two years later. And it came back very fast, but it wasn't there until they kind of repeated it to us we weren't practicing it. You know, we haven't gotten in a lot of bad situations, which is, which is great, but it means we're not practicing. So just as somebody who has done refreshers on this, I could attest to the fact that it doesn't, it doesn't just stick with you if you're not putting effort into kind of retaining that information.
Matt
Yeah. And that's, and that's why they offer those refresher courses, right? So I know some of the courses will have, you know, they'll have like the in-person course that's a couple of days and then, you know, it'll be like access to their online library, right? And that's fine. That's fine. Especially, you know, if there was something in particular that you just feel like you did not, you know, pick up on in a class quite as easily. And, you know, just, yeah, moving forward, like on down the road, like I said, you know, it's hard for me because, yeah, this is my life, right? Like this is the only thing that, you know, when I go to work, this is the only kind of stuff that we're talking about that I'm thinking about. And, but even, even then, you know, we take refresher courses on things. We, we have certifications that we have to keep up on. And those, you know, every single one of those certifications is a refresher course in a year or two. So, and that's, that's all medicine, right? Like that's anybody who works in healthcare, they're constantly taking refresher courses. That's, you know, you have to, you don't, if you don't use it, you have to. And so it is especially difficult in emergency medicine because you have to be, you know, your, your medical knowledge is a mile is a lake that's a mile wide, but an inch deep sort of thing. Right. So I have to be just as competent in taking care of a really bad backcountry trauma as I do with assisting in the delivering of a baby in somebody's house. or, you know, and just as competent as I have to be in cardiac emergencies and neurological emergencies. It's, you know, it's a huge, you know, the list of things that go wrong with the human body are endless. And, you know, you got to be at least aware of most of them.
Katie
Right. Different from the person who's doing like the same elective surgery at a clinic, like over and over again, you know, like they're doing that. They're doing the same thing over and over every day. They're going to get their practice just at work. But when you don't know what your work is until the call comes in, then you've got to be kind of ready for that. The last thing you had listed was, what does it look like if you need search and rescue? And how you contact search and rescue, I'm sure, could be different. We carry an in-reach. I think phones are probably getting to the point where they're going to be able to start contacting search and rescue for you since they can now do satellite stuff. I think we're moving in that direction. Maybe you have cell service and you can just call for help. But, you know, once you call for search and rescue, I know it's probably different also in different areas and different teams, but generally what does that look like? You know, you're stuck on the side of a mountain, maybe you have a broken leg and you can't get out. You call search and rescue. What goes, what happens from there?
Matt
More, you know, I've never done like the dispatching side of things, but, you know, from what I do know, like the county sheriff's department, the dispatchers, you know, they are going to get notified of this. And then, you know, a big thing of their job is delegating the necessary resources. So whether that is contacting SAR, whether that is calling for a fire department, police, ambulance, a helicopter, they are going to contact these resources and coordinate, you know, an initial response. So sometimes, so let's just say, for example, you know, SAR comes across a patient and, you know, the information is just not always correct. The dispatch information, you know, or maybe they, a patient got worse in the time that it took for a true first responder, a SAR member to get there. And then, so they are going to have communications with them, a radio, cell service, whatever. And if, you know, they are going to then determine if they need additional resources, if we're, you know, this person is going to need an ambulance, if they're going to need a helicopter. And then, you know, it's a it's a big effort. You know, there's sometimes on a call, there's multiple agencies, there's multiple fire departments, there's multiple counties search and rescue, multiple police departments. or might be a sheriff's deputy or two highway patrol. You know, when you're out in the field, especially in the back country where the lines get a little blurry on exactly where you're at, you know, it's a it's a big group effort sometimes to access somebody and get them out. But we have a dispatch center at Flight for Life. They are in Denver and they coordinate with us and county dispatchers, local fire departments, and they will send us who we will also be in radio contact with. They'll give us the information that we need to contact whoever's on the ground that is requesting us.
Katie
Last thing I wanted to ask, which I know I kind of discussed with you a little bit, we're not going to discuss the cost of search and rescue operations because it's different across the board. It's not something that you can speak to. But I didn't want people to think that we just forgot to cover that because that's a big concern for a lot of people, myself included. I'm always like, if I press this button, how much in the hole am I? So we're not going to cover that specifically. But I know you kind of mentioned to me that people have used that as a reason not to call search and rescue. And that is not the answer, regardless of how much it costs, whether it's zero dollars or tens of thousands of dollars. The answer is not to just ignore your life-threatening emergency. So I'll let you speak to that for just a brief sec.
Matt
Yeah. It's, you know, your results may vary is also the thing, right? Like it just, it's so much depends on where you are at and then who is coming to get you.
Katie
Sure.
Matt
You know, and there's just, there's just no one answer for it. It, you know, it, and if it's a true, yeah, if it's a true life-saving emergency, you cannot put a price on your own life. somebody else's life. It's, you know, it's just not, and you know, some places, yeah, it'll be nothing, you know, it'll be literally $0 for you to fly. If you have, you know, if you have health insurance, we don't charge, you know, patients don't, you know, just at my company in particular, do not get billed these exorbitant amounts that you hear about. I don't handle the billing side of things, of course, but it's, you know, and plus at the very least you're going to a hospital and there's going to be a team of doctors who are treating you as well. So, you know, it's the state of healthcare in this country, you know, love it, hate it, whatever, it is what it is. And your life is potentially in the balance. So it's, you know, you just can't, really put a price on it. And the results vary so greatly from location to location, state to state, county to county, that it's just, you know, it's really not something that any one person can definitively speak on. And so, you know, and you might be surprised. I think that that is it too, right? Because also, especially just like, say, with SAR in particular in Colorado, Like, you know, you're, you know, it's like a public fund that like, you know, you pay like a couple of dollars when you get a fishing license. Right. And, you know, supposedly that covers the cost. I don't know. You know, I literally don't know. But that's what that's what you hear, at least.
Katie
Yeah, I just didn't want people to think that we had somehow forgotten to cover that because I know it is on a lot of people's minds when they call. But yeah, I think the main point here is you're probably not going to know what that number is until you go through it. And you shouldn't be thinking about that number when you're deciding if your life is worth it. So not to minimize the impact that could have, but you shouldn't let yourself die over the fact that you might have to pay more money than you'd like to.
Matt
Yeah. And billing departments, you know, in general, you do hear a lot, too, about like, you know, billing departments at hospitals will work with you based on on things, you know, your your insurance might get, you know, it's a it's a headache. I get it. It was a headache, you know, dealing with with my injury and my surgery. But, you know, what was I going to do? Just not have a clavicle that was in place? No. So, you know, like it's it just it is what it is. It's an aspect of most of us as Americans lives that, you know, thankfully not a lot of us really have to deal with. But if it is a true emergency, it should not be the thing that's on your mind. And like I mentioned to you, there absolutely are people who would otherwise be alive today if the bill that they were going to get from the hospital wasn't a concern of theirs. And, you know, like I said, it might not have even been an issue. We just, you know, you don't know. You don't. You really don't. So, yeah, that's why, you know, that's why, you know, health care is a business. There is a whole business of health care. And, you know, believe me, I am not making commission off of like going and picking people up. You know, somebody else gets that money, but it ain't me. So it's, you know, the boots on the ground people are not the ones to be questioning about that sort of thing. Because, you know, I get paid by the hour, not by the call.
Katie
Right. Well, just wrap up. Is there anything that we didn't cover that you think would be just kind of like a good message to leave folks with? Just kind of anything in general backcountry safety related?
Matt
I think we covered like some some pretty big ones. And, you know, it's about it's about educating yourself. Right. So I'm just trying to inform people on the things that they probably did not know that they didn't know. So, you know, educating yourself. But as far as, you know, a message to all the people out there in radio land is just be excellent to one another. You just, you never know.
Katie
Yeah, and this is kind of off topic, but you need to think of it. And I'm glad you brought it back up, the educating yourself thing. This is something that's bothered me a lot. I've noticed it a lot more. Maybe I'm just noticing it more because people talk online more. But, you know, someone will share something online. And usually when I notice it, it's in the context of doing something they didn't know was illegal. And it's like in the duck hunting world or in the fishing world, like they kept, they shot a duck species that they shouldn't have. They kept too many fish or something that wasn't big enough or whatever. And when people call them out, they're like, well, I didn't know. Why are you harassing me instead of educating me? And I've always been like, yeah, but it's your job to educate yourself on the laws before you go shoot a duck. You know, like that's, it's not, it's not the internet's job to, you know, pat you on the back and say you tried and, and make you feel good about it. You know, yes, you'll probably learn when you mess up, but at the end of the day, it's not anyone else's job to teach you the things that you should have known before you went out. And that sounds kind of harsh, but at the end of the day, your safety is your responsibility. And it's great to, to know these things so you can help others, but you can't expect that someone else is going to just take care of it for you. At the end of the day, you are really in charge of your own health and safety.
Matt
Yeah. Yeah, that's that's a very poignant way to put it. You can't be expected to know everything, certainly. And you need to know when you need help to be sure. And, you know, that's what people like me are here for. You know, it is my job to come and help you. One thing we do see on scene a lot, too, though, this, you know, more so when I was on the ground ambulance side of things is, you know, I'm responding to a 911 call and then I get there. and now you're giving me lip about a whole bunch of things that I'm trying to do but it's like you know you called me you know
Katie
you get like flack for what you're trying to do to help people?
Matt
yes people think that they know things that they don't necessarily know
Katie
well if they knew it maybe they shouldn't have called you for help
Matt
exactly yeah like you called me I didn't you know I wasn't just driving around in this ambulance being like who wants to go to the hospital So, you know, that happens more often than you think.
Katie
Really? Okay.
Matt
Yeah. And kind of on that same note, if you are, you know, a lay person who recreates outdoors and then you need SAR or an ambulance crew or, you know, a helicopter ambulance crew, you know, once they get there, you know, let them do their thing. You know, you might not understand it, but, you know, that doesn't mean that what they're doing is wrong or negligent. You know, you just might not know what's going on. It's OK not to know everything. So, you know, give them some space if if they're trying to work on somebody. They'll, you know, believe believe me, like I will. You know, I have absolutely directed, you know, family members of patients where I'm like, here, I need you to hold this bag. I need you to hand me this thing when I tell you to hand it to me. So, you know, if they need your help, they will ask you for your help. But if there's a bunch of rescue type people there, you know, you're low on the list for people that they're going to ask for help.
Katie
Yep. Well, Matt, is there anything you anything you want to share? I think I saw that you didn't have like a huge social media presence. But if you want to share anything or plug anything, feel free. Otherwise, we can go ahead and wrap this up.
Matt
Yeah, I mean, I have an Instagram. I posted on it like a couple of times. You can see the pictures of my mountain bike crash on there and my little improvised sling fly underscore fishing underscore lore. Real original. But that is me. I will probably occasionally be posting, you know, fly fishing and cool helicopter related things there. But yeah, I'm not a big like social media guy. You know, it's I don't know. It's just not my my scene. I don't post on it a lot and I don't look at content on it a lot either. But, you know, yeah, that's it. I don't have any type of class or anything like I'm not affiliated with with anybody. You know, it's not something that I would be disinterested in, like teaching this kind of stuff. But I just I don't have anything like that. set up maybe, you know, maybe in the future I will. And in that case, you know, look, look for my, my stuff on online, I guess.
Katie
All right. Sounds great. Well, thank you again, Matt, for coming on. This was hopefully useful for folks and in an ideal world, they won't have to use much of what you talked about today, but if they need it, I hope they get some value out of this. So just thank you for coming on.
Matt
Thank you for having me.
Katie
All right. That's a wrap. Thank you all for listening. If you want to find all the other episodes as well as show notes, you can find those on fishuntamed.com. You'll also find a contact link there if you want to reach out to me. And you can also find me on Instagram at fishuntamed. If you want to support the show, you can give it a follow on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcasting app. And if you'd like to leave a review, it would be greatly appreciated. But otherwise, thank you all again for listening. I'll be back here in two weeks with another episode. Take care, everybody.
Note:
These transcripts were created using AI to help make the podcast more accessible to all listeners, including those who are deaf or hard of hearing, or anyone who prefers to read rather than listen.
While I’ve reviewed each transcript to correct obvious errors, they may not be 100% accurate. In particular, moments with overlapping speech or unclear audio may not be transcribed word-for-word. However, every effort has been made to ensure that the core content and meaning are accurately represented.
Thank you for your understanding, and I hope these transcripts help you enjoy the podcast in the way that works best for you.