All Episodes
Episodes
SH137: Stop making stupid mistakes. If only they’d follow the rules
In this episode, we explore a diving incident that highlights the critical importance of understanding human factors in high-risk activities like technical diving. A diver survived an oxygen toxicity seizure thanks to...
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SH136: Nine ways to stop your dive team improving
Effective communication is critical for safety and performance in diving, yet many divers struggle to speak up due to fear of judgment, peer pressure, or an adversarial culture. This silence can lead to mistakes,...
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SH135: 17 Cognitive Biases which Contribute to Diving Accidents
Cognitive biases and mental shortcuts significantly impact decision-making, especially in high-risk environments like diving, where errors can have critical or fatal consequences. Factors such as narcosis, reduced...
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SH134: Human Error in Diving: Is it really that simple?
This episode explores the complexities of human error in diving incidents, challenging the oversimplified blame often placed on individuals. Drawing on James Reason’s Swiss Cheese Model, we examine how both active...
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SH133: Blood, Banks and Diving: The value of knowledge, experience and training
This episode dives into the importance of investing in skills and experience to prepare for unexpected challenges in diving and life. Using an analogy of red and white blood cells, we explore the balance between...
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SH132: Leadership in Diving? Why is it needed, it is only a sport...
This episode explores the critical role of leadership in diving, drawing on a challenging night dive on the Abu Nuhas reef and lessons from military aviation. The dive highlighted the importance of accountability,...
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SH131: With Errors: Aviation Blames The System, The Diving Community Often Blames the Individual
This episode dives into the lessons the diving community can learn from aviation safety practices, using the near-disaster of Air Canada Flight AC759 at San Francisco Airport as a starting point. In aviation,...
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SH130: The Power of One
In this episode, we explore how authority gradients—the imbalance of power or experience between individuals—can lead to critical mistakes in diving and other high-stakes environments. Drawing lessons from aviation,...
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SH129: We judge based on outcomes, not on process
In this episode, we dive into the role of social conformity, biases, and decision-making in diving safety. Humans naturally seek group belonging, but this can lead to harsh judgments when incidents occur, particularly...
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SH128: I am biased...you are biased...we are all biased...!
In this episode, we explore how cognitive biases—mental shortcuts that influence our decisions—affect our actions in complex and dynamic situations. Whether things go right or wrong, biases like overconfidence,...
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SH127: Can divers learn from the US Forest Service?
This podcast episode explores how the U.S. Forest Service uses structured Learning Reviews to improve safety in high-risk environments by focusing on understanding the context, mindset, and systemic factors behind...
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SH126: Why did he make such an obvious mistake...?
In this episode, we dive into the complexities of decision-making in high-risk environments, focusing on why some choices that lead to accidents might seem baffling but are understandable in context. We discuss Todd...
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