Omid Rahimi spent a couple of years in law enforcement, nearly a decade as a wildland firefighter, mostly on hotshot crews, and more years as a city firefighter and EMT, with helicopter rappelling, high-angle rescue and extrication work along the way. Sitting down with Pete and Professor Lucas Rubbo, he tells of leading a crew to an Alaska wildfire, where the airboat driver turned back in thick smoke. Omid and his assistant jumped into the river, waded ashore to defend a cabin, and twice sheltered in the water as a wall of fire passed overhead. The lesson he draws from it is what firefighters call stress inoculation.

Omid explains how that calm is built in small, controlled steps, and remembers a veteran hotshot who steadied him through his first towering night burn by saying they were okay until he saw him run. He describes the false confidence of a strong athlete erased the day a bigger teammate controlled him completely from closed guard, and why "you cannot substitute experience with knowledge." After leaving the fire service to raise his child, he started jiu-jitsu at 42 and found the brotherhood of his old crew again on the mats. Lucas adds his own story of starting at 13 among adults.

In this episode

• 0:00 Welcome
• 1:08 Staying calm when mistakes can be lethal
• 3:21 Law enforcement, hotshot crews and rescue
• 6:31 Trapped by a wildfire in Alaska
• 15:09 How panic spreads to everyone nearby
• 17:19 Stress inoculation, one step at a time
• 22:34 Okay until you see me run
• 28:00 What jiu-jitsu could have taught him younger
• 32:23 Humbled from closed guard
• 40:56 Lucas on starting at 13 with adults
• 50:33 Knowledge versus experience
• 52:41 From hotshot crew to stay-at-home dad
• 59:07 Lucas on learning from his students

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