Todd Conklin and Bob Edwards discuss Solutions for Patient Safety (SPS), a grassroots movement of learning teams that used operational learning to dramatically reduce harm in pediatric care.

The episode covers emotional stories from the SPS meetings, practical methods like soak time and learning teams, the power of continuous improvement, and the real-world impact of saving thousands of young lives.

In this episode, Todd Conklin questions whether risk can ever truly be removed or if it simply moves around. He distinguishes between hazards and risk, discusses how organizations shift risk through contracting and worker practices, and argues that while hazards can be managed, risk remains dynamic and persistent. Todd also highlights the role of controls, barriers, and margin in starting work safely, and teases upcoming conversations on psychological safety, AI and safety, and leadership.

Todd Conklin interviews Martha Acosta, a pioneer in human performance and instructional design, about using organizational "pain points" and paradoxes as early indicators of system failures. They discuss why near misses and workplace frustrations are valuable signals and how leaders can turn those tensions into opportunities for learning and improvement.

The episode offers practical advice for managers: be present, look for pressure points across roles, and treat minor pains as diagnostic cues to prevent larger incidents. Martha translates high-level ideas into actionable steps leaders can use tomorrow.

Todd Conklin reviews Erik Hollnagel’s new book "Incremental Safety Practices" and explains the core idea that safety efforts fall into two approaches: reductive (removing hazards) and inductive (building resilient systems). He urges listeners to view safety as an ongoing capacity managed in everyday work rather than a static goal achieved after eliminating risks.

The episode invites organizations to reflect on whether their programs focus on hazard removal, resilience building, or both, and emphasizes paying attention to incremental improvements (or erosions) in safety culture and practice.

Host Todd Conklin talks with Daniel Hummerdahl about his new book, An Invitation to Safety Conversation, exploring how everyday safety talks can move beyond scripted checklists to become learning moments that bridge leaders and workers.

The episode shares practical stories and techniques for asking better questions, listening more, and scaling conversational practices across organizations to improve safety, trust, and performance.

Coming into this episode, Todd Conklin welcomes Al Thomson to discuss safety in the primary sector, focusing on migrant Pacific workers and a human-centered approach. Al shares how Monarch Platform blends pastoral care, cultural understanding, and contemporary safety (HOP) to support a diverse workforce across New Zealand’s agriculture and horticulture industries.

The conversation covers cultural differences in risk perception, village success planning, measuring workforce capacity with role-specific “bingo” competencies, and the importance of humility, vulnerability, and leadership in creating meaningful safety outcomes.

Host Todd chats with Mousa Yassin about shifting safety culture from blaming individuals to designing systems that tolerate failure and recover quickly. They cover life-saving rules, the concept of recoverability, lessons from software engineering like chaos testing, and the importance of learning over punishment.

The episode emphasizes practical ways to build resilient systems, nurture learning teams, and make safety training engaging and effective.

Todd Conklin tells the origin story of "learning teams," sparked by a self-reported near-miss at Los Alamos involving a postdoc and an arcing wrench. Rather than pursuing a punitive investigation, a group of workers gathered to identify what needed to be learned, uncovering broader gaps in postdoc training and safety planning.

The episode explains how learning teams prioritize asking better questions, collecting the right data, and designing system-focused solutions. Conklin describes how this approach spread across the lab and why it remains a fast, effective tool for operational improvement.

Todd Conklin talks with Corey Pitzer about fatality prevention, Human and Organizational Performance (HOP), and how safety thinking has shifted globally.

They explore controversial views—treating workers as problem-solvers, tensions between engineering/energy-based approaches and systemic/new-view thinking—and use real examples to show why designing systems that absorb variation matters more than trying to eliminate risk.

Todd interviews Professor David Woods about recent NASA mishaps and a growing cultural shift toward "cheaper, faster" decision-making that sacrifices safety. They explore how past safety gains have lost vitality, highlight cascading modern risks (the "messy nine"), and argue for mutual assistance and revitalized resilience practices.

Wood's most recent writing on this is available in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists called:  Cheaper, Faster, and Who Gives a Damn about Anything Else.

The episode connects space, aviation, cloud outages, and AI-driven engineering to show why coordinated foresight and cross-disciplinary cooperation are essential to prevent far-reaching harm in today’s complex systems.

In this episode, Todd Conklin joins Amir Shahzad to discuss human and organizational performance, resilience, and how to design systems that allow failures to be caught and recovered before they become disasters. They explore the gap between work as imagined and work as done, the value of learning from everyday work, and practical steps leaders can take to create safer, more resilient workplaces.

They also cover cultural change, the role of procedures, adaptive behavior, and the potential—and risks—of AI in safety, all delivered with a mix of practical advice and light-hearted rapid-fire questions.