Thanks for listening to my first podcast. I will be discussing why I decided to podcast, and different considerations when you are assessing the risk of a certain hazard.

Deciding to do a podcast

has been a big decision for me

I am comfortable

presenting in front of large audiences

I have no problem

discussion complex scientific issues with people of varying opinions

But until this point I

have been comfortable working with my peers

However, recently I

have begun to notice how often the world around us sells so much fear

It seems like

everywhere I turn there are voices telling me how afraid I should be of waking

up tomorrow

Given my scientific

background and especially my skills at assessing risk, it has been relatively

easy for me to silence the voices applying the scientific method and reason

I’ve also been able to

share my insights with friends and family and I have enjoyed seeing them learn

to judge risk on their own

Lately, I’ve realized

that my sphere of influence is really really small

I don’t claim to have

all the answers or even that my assessments are always 100 percent accurate,

but I’ve felt like there is a larger audience out there who might value  being able to put risks into perspective

To be honest, I’ve

always avoided technology as much as possible

But the more I thought

about it, the more I felt compelled to share what I have learned via a podcast

Learning a new media

has been more difficult that I had originally imagined

Learning how to build a

website, use recording software, editing properly, deciding how to best use

social media have all had steep learning curves

There are many true

dangers out there, but for every true danger there are many perceived dangers

that are actually pretty minor

I envision a community

where we can use data, science, and logic to help each other really understand

the true natures of the dangers that surround us

I hope you will be

patient with me as we learn together in this new media

While trying to clarify

for myself exactly what I wanted to achieve with this podcast I came up with

the following analogy

I enjoy doing outdoor

activities

Being cooped up in the

house for more than a few hours is almost painful

I, like many of you,

live in an area where  the weather

changes significantly day to day

The weather can have a

significant impact on how much I enjoy my limited time outdoors

For many years I would

rely on the latest weather forecast to try and get the most out of my time

What I found was that I

was more often than not disappointed in the accuracy of the forecast

One day, I was looking

at the radar map for the past few hours

As I watched it, I

realized that I could roughly see what might be happening in my area for the

next few hours

As I tried it out, I

wasn’t always 100% successful in my predictions, but I was consistently better

than the forecaster who was predicting for the whole region rather than my

specific area

Now I almost never look

at the weather forecast,