Dr. Love
August 28, 2020
Today on The Jay Allen Show, we speak with Dr. Love. Dr. Love is also known as Leonard “Al” Jones is the Air Force Risk Management Program Manager, Air Force Safety Center, Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M. He is charged with designing, managing, and providing senior advice and counsel regarding USAF Risk Management (RM) and associated operational and occupational mishap prevention that apply to all missions, activities, and personnel within the Air Force.
In addition,Dr. Love chairs the USAF RM Working Group, and conducts RM process staff assistance visits at the MAJCOM level ensuring compliance, standardization, and functional application of RM processes as related to AF RM policy and guidance. He also ensures inputs are provided to Air Education and Training Command (AETC), Air University (AU), and the United States Air Force Academy (USAFA) for RM related course development, integration, and sustainment.
Enjoy the conversations from the doctors on the Jay Allen Show,
See Dr. Love videos here.
Today on The Jay Allen Show, we speak with Dr. Love. Dr. Love is also known as Leonard “Al” Jones is the Air Force Risk Management Program Manager, Air Force Safety Center, Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M. He is charged with designing, managing, and providing senior advice and counsel regarding USAF Risk Management (RM) and associated operational and occupational mishap prevention that apply to all missions, activities, and personnel within the Air Force.
In addition, Dr. Love chairs the USAF RM Working Group, and conducts RM process staff assistance visits at the MAJCOM level ensuring compliance, standardization, and functional application of RM processes as related to AF RM policy and guidance. He also ensures inputs are provided to Air Education and Training Command (AETC), Air University (AU), and the United States Air Force Academy (USAFA) for RM related course development, integration, and sustainment.
Enjoy the conversations from the doctors on the Jay Allen Show,
See Dr. Love videos here.
[00:00:00] spk_1: you're listening to Safety FM, This is what this show is brought to you by safety. Well, it's Friday, so you already know this is going to be a safety of them. Many episode due to the popularity of last week's Let's Try Something Different again. This episode of the broadcast and the podcast is brought to you by safety focused moments. It's they're consultants that want to help you get the safety culture you've been looking for. For more information, go to safety. Focus moment dot com Well, hello and welcome to safety FM Mini. But then again, it's not gonna be a mini today. Today Oh my, do we have something really special for you today? I have the under the honor, the honor of speaking to Leonard Dr Love Jones. If the name sounds familiar, you might be involved in some way, shape or form with the United States Air Force or the military. Let me tell you a little bit about Dr Love. Four moment Leonard. Dr Love Jones is the Air Force Risk Management Programme Manager and Air Force Safety Center, Kirkland Air Force Base. Your advice regarding mint and associated operational and occupational mishap prevention that apply to all missions, activities and personnel within the Air Force. In addition, Dr Love chairs the United States Air Force Risk Management Working Group and conduct risk management process staff assistant visits and verifying compliance, standardization and functional application of risk management process as related to the Air Force Risk Management. Positive Guidance. He also ensures inputs are provided to air education and training. Command Air University and the United States Air Force Academy for risk management related to course development integration into steaming. Besides that, he does infotainment videos that could be seen throughout all of the United States Air Force. So it is my privilege to welcome Dr Love to the jail in jail. Look, doctor, a lot of I'm so excited about having you want. You don't know what this means.
[00:02:36] spk_0: Well, that would be great. That's a good opportunity, I think. Well, and
[00:02:39] spk_1: then I have to know, Do I call you add a land or call your doctor loved or talking? Call you Mr Jo's. I mean, how do you want to go about this?
[00:02:47] spk_0: Dr. Love is fine. That's probably the white people would recognize me at least from any viral our stuff, but I go by I'll or Dr Love.
[00:02:55] spk_1: So how did it all start? How does this whole thing start for you? Is it? The Air Force? First is the is the love for safety. How did it all happen?
[00:03:03] spk_0: Well, the, uh, my career I came in as a crew dog, if you will. I was a navigator back in the days of celestial navigation, and ah, and so I really wasn't involved with safety for the first Ah, approximately 20 years of my Air Force career, then, uh, other than being a safe crew dog, Hopefully. But my last assignment was safety. I came to the safety center as a crash investigator working military crashes, particularly the human factor side of it. And, ah, when I retired, I was able to stay on and ah, I kept working human factors. But then I moved over to risk management about 45 years ago, but backing up when I first got here, we did our own travel booking through a new Internet type of ah program. And it was difficult to understand I was the newest person. So they said you'll be here the longest, probably, and I was still military at the time, so they had me be the guru for this defense travel system. It was called and so I had to continually send out notes to people that you're doing it wrong. You need to always do this or that. So instead of just sending out the notes, we decided to use a little humor. And we created Doctor loves advice for the lovelorn, And I would create letters that were sent in to me talking about personal problems, and then I'd always were lay him back to the travel problem. Like to be a friend or toe have a friend. You've got to be a friend, just like in DTs. If you file file your voucher, you need to include your receipts. So that's how Dr Love got started.
[00:04:54] spk_1: You know, I thought you're gonna turn around and tell me there was a love for this kiss song that came out or you really like Dr Pepper one or the other.
[00:05:02] spk_0: Well, you don't think so in to be honest, although I do have a little bit of a musical background. I wasn't overly familiar with the with the Doctor Love song, but that has come up on more than one occasion when I'm speaking somewhere.
[00:05:14] spk_1: So let me ask what year we talking about where you started developing this, and then is the character created in a lab or how does it come about?
[00:05:21] spk_0: No, it's Ah, yeah. In the military, particularly within the flying world, most of us have call signs. Think of a maverick and goose on Top gun. And so when I started using the doctor love theme, um, that just became my natural call sign. And this was before any of the videos or anything that we did. So when I came over to work risk management, we were concerned about getting a quick, short, little message out to our audience. And we wanted to use a little bit of humor cause to be honest, most people are not coming to a safety meeting, all excited about getting to talk about safety so they have. How can that be? There is no way it is a shock. But as I tell a lot of our instructors of such, you've got to bring your own energy and we try to normalize some of the safety aspects we talk about safety is not some separate program from life. Most of us do a pretty good job risk management. Most of us will look left to right before you cross the street because it's worth it. We'll spend three or four seconds looking. If we identify a hazard, which would be a car coming toward us, will come up with a mitigation, the mitigation, maybe just to stand there to the car passes. If we're down in New York City and it's non stop traffic at least before Cove in, it may make sense to mitigate the traffic hazard by walking down to the corner where there's a red light and wait until there's a walk signal. So what we're really trying to do with Dr Love and with our messaging is Hey, we're not the enemy safety meetings or not the enemy. We just want to do life a little bit better. Risk management in particular, is not even a safety program. It's just a decision making process, and it works particularly well for safety. So as we started having some success, that's what we tried to stay geared toward. Is the doctor love theme? We did. We call it risk management in 45 seconds or less. The truth. ISS. These spots generally run either Ah, 30 seconds or 60 seconds. So because unexpected tow us, we have some very good results with the American Forces Network, particularly in the Pacific and in Europe running our spots. So now when we produce the spot, we produce something that a squadron level or a wing level one of our different bases can use for their training. But it's also something that can play on the American Forces network.
[00:08:10] spk_1: So what? It's so when you come up with the concept originally and say, OK, we're gonna go into the video aspect. What is the first video look like? What are we would be talking about? Do you remember what even the first segment was about?
[00:08:22] spk_0: I do. Um, the very first segment was just trying to introduce the concept of risk management. And to be honest, we had a great P A shop here, our public affair shop, and I tell people we're not a low budget out that were a no budget. You're you're no,
[00:08:42] spk_1: but you're no budget. Looks very well. I'm going to throw that out
[00:08:45] spk_0: there on But I've got a caveat this by saying these air, our public affairs specialist and we have some folks that have worked with combat camber and they've got a pretty extensive background. So we just went outside the safety center to the light to red light right near the center. And we just produced one little short video on risk management and how it was just a normal way of living and making decisions. And we used the concept of looking left or right before you cross the street. And we ended that segment with a little bit of humor, as I remember we were talking about, um uh, you know, call your mama and Danker for teaching you how to cross the street. You know, you you know, your mama wants you to call, and then we started Ah, thinking, you know, at the end of every one of these, if we can put a little bit of humor talking to our psychologist, we have here at the safety center Ah, way came up with, Ah, the idea that it's already out there, that if you present something and people are laughing at the end, kind of the there's a better chance off Ah, retaining that information So we always try to throw a little bit of humor. Now, granted, we have a little bit of censorship. We can't just go crazy. So some of the humor is a little bit corny, but even that's okay if they say that sure was a corny ending. Dr. Love used when he was talking about seatbelts. That's okay. That's a win because they walk away remembering it was on seatbelts.
[00:10:30] spk_1: Well, I'll tell you, I don't even know how to tie this, and this is gonna sound terrible. So let me kind of backtracked even if they end corny. The ones that I've seen online, I think they're really good. You pull it off very nicely on how you set them up.
[00:10:42] spk_0: Uh oh. Thanks. And that there is part of the process when we look at ah, we're scripting out what we're going to say. We've gotta say things very fast to get it in a 30 or 62nd format, get one central idea across, and we do try to in the in the original scripting come up with the ending right from the get go. So we know what we're building toward. Ah Teoh. Try to leave him with a bit of humor. And in all honesty, the more we have done this, I think the better we've gotten at ah, at ideas and trying something. You Ah so we lucked out pretty well.
[00:11:22] spk_1: Why? I don't know if its luck. I definitely consider it skill based on the ones that I've seen. Now I've seen some on social media that are interesting. Just cover some different segments now are there one said are released in that are not being able to be seen through the general public because the subject matter of the charges covering
[00:11:37] spk_0: no, no, By and large not we certainly don't handle classified type of information. As a matter of fact, I speak at the National Safety Council. In places like that, we show the videos. We encourage the public to use our videos. You anybody can get the video on w w w dot safety dot a. F. For air force dot mil www dot safety dot air force dot mil. Additionally, you can find him on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook. But we highly encourage people. Teoh take him and use him If people are being safe anywhere. That's a win for us.
[00:12:23] spk_1: That's a great way to look at it, because I wasn't. I know that I had found him on Facebook and I was just like, I don't know how far I can go. And I was like, I will ask the question before I go down down that path in particular. Now, when you're doing the set up and you have everything good and ready to go, do you have, like, multiple scriptwriters or you kind of sitting in your room, filling it allowed by yourself?
[00:12:43] spk_0: Well, you know, I'm a shower thinker. A lot of good I trained in the shower. There
[00:12:49] spk_1: is a video from the shower as well, I might add
[00:12:51] spk_0: way aptly did that, But the way we come up with a script, there's a couple ways we may have a major command in the Air Force. A major command might be fighter aircraft or cargo aircraft are people that do lab work. If a major command is having a problem with the safety area or with some incidents, we may write one specifically for them. We also look at our trending analysis. We have the air Force safety automated system where we load all of our mishaps that occur so we can do tracking and trending. If we see a trending problem, we can also attack that via a script. Additionally, before covert, at least I did a lot of travelling speaking on risk management in teaching classes. If I was traveling to Alaska to speak, we would talk with the local public affair shop there and they would provide ah, camera person and, ah, we'd go out and shoot a video on cold weather or maybe camping in the Alaskan wilderness. Likewise, if I was down at a Panama City or Fort Walton, one of our basis, we do 10 na riptides or rip currents are something like that. So there's multiple ways that we come up with. What is the topic going to be? And to be honest, a lot of our incidents mirror the same thing that happens in the civilian world. Slips, trips, falls, fatigue, those kind of items also, So that's another way would come up with it. When we get a topic. When we get a topic, I will write a lot of it. However, the public affairs team here helps may, but ah, lot of times we turn to the safety center itself. Now we do safety for aircraft. We do safety for a ground occupational. We do weapons safety. I've got all kind of expertise. So when I get the rough Ah, draft of the script written, I would generally give it to one of those professionals and make sure that we're saying things correctly for what? Whatever area of expertise we're diving into.
[00:15:14] spk_1: So, roughly what year did you start doing this? I know that she said that you had retired, but what you are you roughly starting this as Dr Love and then you do the first video. What are we talking about here?
[00:15:25] spk_0: Probably 2014. I retired a za military member. I was getting on up a little bit in age. They're so I retired in 2007 and joined the safety center as a G s. A government service. Civilian employees and I kept working human factors and crashed type in Ah, a mishap investigation. On 2014 I moved over to risk management. And that's when we did our first video. And ah, it's just started rolling assay were used more people were asking for them. We started producing Mawr, and right now we have over 150 videos.
[00:16:06] spk_1: Wow! Wow! Wow! Wow, that's That's quite a few. So what were you averaging? Pre co vid on frequency?
[00:16:13] spk_0: Um, maybe two or three a month.
[00:16:19] spk_1: But, I mean, that keeps you busy, because, I mean, even though that's the fun part, because when you start taking a look at it and you go, OK, there's 30 to 45 seconds. There's so much work that goes into him before you're even able to get them up.
[00:16:31] spk_0: Yeah, you're exactly right. And I take my part is being a relatively small. I mean, we ride him, we have to come up with him. I'm in front of the camera. But a lot of work is done on and post, as you probably well know, to get these down and make the timing that we need to make and have it all work, Um and then have edits that are done afterwards because maybe we didn't say something exactly right. Or for whatever reason, there's a lot of work that goes into it years active, and we do have the pros doing that force.
[00:17:07] spk_1: Well, I have to tell you, I was watching the wine a few days ago with you in the skateboard. How you're you're standing on the top of the ramp. I love how it ends. I'll put it that way. That way, if anybody goes looking for, I don't want to ruin it for but I'm just amazing. Some of the angles and the positions that you put yourself in anywhere from a car accident and so on.
[00:17:26] spk_0: I tell you that the skateboard is so funny because, you know, if you've seen the video, we kind of made one. The one that we made to show how shoddy they were was much better than the ones were you originally used. I remember taking a two by four and again taking a skate apart, using a hammer and nail. What have you You know, we're lucky we were alive tonight.
[00:17:50] spk_1: Aren't you glad they're putting you at the risk position on doing that?
[00:17:55] spk_0: Well, again, it's not as dangerous as it looks. Ah, lot of things I won't do. Uh, just because you, you know, and what? That's just risk management. The older you get when you get hurt the longer it takes to heal. So so we take a pretty good look at what we're doing. And ah, luckily, we do have some very talented young people were working mawr them into the scripts. We just did a bicycle to include mountain biking video. It's not released yet, but we have a very talented people showing us out a ride. Mountain bikes.
[00:18:29] spk_1: So as you're doing these, what has been the thing that has surprised you the most? In regards of now you're known as Dr Love. You've been doing these videos. What out of the ordinary has happened that June and expect to happen from these?
[00:18:40] spk_0: Well, the viewership is very interesting. While I did expect Air Force members Teoh, over a certain period, they are different and they should stand out in somebody's memory. I expected that toe happen, but Aziz, they have been released in the American Forces Network. We've got people all over the world seeing them and I was in Germany, I think, was a year ago, a Dobey. So we have a base exchange, which is basically like a big Walmart or something on base, and I was walking Ah, in though, is the store and a mother was walking by me with a child that I took to be three or four years old. I don't know. On We had released a video at the time that was of May kayaking while I was kayaking in an indoor pool. And that comes to light at the very end where, ah, you think I'm not be somewhere a big body of water. But the owner of the house is yelling at me, Dr Love kayak out of the pool. So was walking down a small This little child, it must be three or four years old, looks up at me and says, Dr Love kayak out of the pool. So I don't know if that helps about how much TV they're watching or not. But that was the most surprising thing that that I've had lately, at least
[00:20:05] spk_1: well, it's pretty interesting on how it actually works and how well your impacting the market, because especially because it looks like you have a lot wider reach didn't just a social media video because if you would have told me, Hey, I'm having impact in Germany, I would have never known unwto. You just made the statement here. So you also referenced earlier that you go into speak at the National Safety Council. Now, are we talking about their big events they put on once a year? Are you talking like the regional chapters or how does that
[00:20:31] spk_0: work? I generally go the Congress that once a year this year is being delayed until next March, and by the way, it may be a virtual even when they do it there. But I will speak it some regionals, but But generally I'm going to go to the Congress every year and speak their the other reach that we get about a two million. Ah, person Reach would be through the American Forces Network because those play ah seven times a day over there. We even ah, when they run programs on the American Forces Network, they don't show regular commercials. Eso When they were running the Super Bowl Ah, few years ago, they put one of our commercials in there for real time play on the Super Bowl, which I didn't know to. Ah, somebody else told me on the base.
[00:21:21] spk_1: So you know, you have that you we have we have the frame that a little bit better. You are in a Super Bowl ad. We don't have to see how it got there. It was
[00:21:28] spk_0: well, I was in a network Super Bowl that again. You know, I had to go into the details, but the American Forces Net network runs these things for us seven times a day, and there's two or three different videos running. But what that does for us, it's not. Not only do I get a specific message out, it kind of normalizes safety. High safety is a normal part of life. Ah, that's a win. Also, not the specific thing, but the fact that we, ah, that we're just pushing safety in general and again with the American Forces Network. Not only do we, ah cover the Air Force, we also cover Army, Navy, Marines, space on civilians around the world. So and we have some local nationals that even on the watch.
[00:22:20] spk_1: So when you take a look at this, do you look back and go? You guys were creating a piece of content that you are deemed infotainment.
[00:22:27] spk_0: Yeah, I think that's a That's a fair case. We want to stay relaxed. I mean, what we're talking about is deadly serious, right? On a couple of counts. We owe it to our airman to keep them a safe as we possibly can because it's the right thing to do. But we also owe it to the taxpayers to keep our people safe. We spend money training people for vary Ah, very specialized. Our work task. We have all kind of very valuable equipment to include ah, very expensive aircraft. Eso we take it seriously From the standpoint off, what we do is very important. We lighten it a bit, so we hope people are really going to listen to it. They get required safety after required safety after required safety courses. So if we can pull back a little bit and maybe give them something they don't even know they're getting when they're getting it, that's a wind force.
[00:23:28] spk_1: Now, do you ever teach any of the required safety courses?
[00:23:32] spk_0: Oh, yeah. I I enjoy platform instruction. Tell you, when I came in the Air Force, I taught celestial navigation, which was amazing to make because it actually works most of the time. It worked for me, but I started teaching that about the third time, I told it, really understood it, and I really found myself enjoying platform instruction. So I still do some. I still occasionally teach our board president's course where we teach on Ah, higher ranking individuals how to run a safety investigation if we have a crash or something like that. And I also teach a couple of risk management courses. But I I absolutely love Ah, platform instruction.
[00:24:17] spk_1: So when you look overall at your career, what you've done in the military will now what you're doing now, what have you enjoyed the most?
[00:24:25] spk_0: It's hard to say, boy,
[00:24:27] spk_1: it's like picking your favorite child. I know I asked some terrible questions when it comes to that, but I always want to know.
[00:24:32] spk_0: I would say a Sfar is just the job. Uh, I love celestial navigation cause I had students for six weeks, and I teach him day celestial and night celestial. Now, back in those days, at least, everybody didn't get through, and it was kind of heartbreaking to have somebody that really wanted to get their wings and get through the program that didn't that was bad. But to be able to bring somebody through that. You really you really felt like you accomplished something. Now it's forest location goes Okinawa was pretty good, But also I was a commander of the Arctic Survival School for several years up in Alaska, and that's just absolutely beautiful country up there.
[00:25:15] spk_1: So as you look around and now listen, I don't know for the people that might have not seen you, you do not. How can I phrase this properly without it sounding terrible? You don't have the, um, very short hair. Do not, as most military op operators dio of, ah, lot of people that I've shown your picture to the reference Doc Brown from back to the future. And I'm sure you get that quite
[00:25:38] spk_0: a bit. We do, and it's funny. I mean, back in the day, I'm talking to sixties and seventies when I was in high school. In such, I played in bands and I had long hair back then, which, by the way, my my mother, God rest her soul, always hated my long hair, so she loved it. When I had a 25 year career as an active duty Air Force member, I did always have the Ah, your hair. Yeah, it was well short for the Air Force. The brains and the Army would have some arguments about that. But anyway, I still enjoyed Ah, speaking. And I've got to do some musical things for the Air Force and such. So in my heart, my hair was still long and once I retired, everybody laughs about it around here, but, you know, immediately started rolling my hair out again. But yeah, we get some people that are find it curious that I was, ah, that I'm not actually a retiree. And when I use my retiree card in some places to get on and such, they there's a little bit of a lengthy
[00:26:43] spk_1: another's wouldn't picture online of you that your that your hair's kind of slightly back, not all the way back, but in your pointing your finger in that picture, for some reason, always sticks out. Every time that I see it, I look at it and I go. That is such a great cover art that you have there. I'm sure that was not the purpose on how it was made, but it definitely does stick out
[00:27:01] spk_0: that way. Well, actually, That was kind of the purpose we get our public affairs specialist. We went down to We have a little studio here at the safety center, but we wanted something. And I'll have to give my the credit to this to the p A staff we intentionally were trying to brand. We wanted to brand Dr Love and Ah, and that was part of it. So they did some great photography and there and, ah, little bit of post work there. Get rid of a wrinkle or two or record. Yeah, that was that was targeted.
[00:27:33] spk_1: So, Aziz, you go through this. Now, where do you see this going? I mean, now, with everything going on with Kobe, did you see? How long do you think you'll be continuing to do this? And are you going? Are you making small minions at the same time to tow the kind of pick up of what you're doing at the same time?
[00:27:47] spk_0: Well, a lot of this is personality driven, as you may guess. So it to find somebody with the safety background and, ah, little bit of the comfort in front of a camera. Plus, you got to write your own scripts. It's a little complicated, but yeah, we keep our eyes open for that now, as far as the code goes, I've got green screen capability at home leaving his stuff. And before we were working in the office at all, we produce several of videos via the house, talking about working at home and some of the safety aspects of that. So this hasn't slowed us down too much. We're still producing about two or three videos. Ah, ah, ah, month. And what we're seeing is reflective. I think in society here in the States, at least. Ah, lot of bicycle injuries. People are doing things they can do alone or with some distance. You can hardly buy a bike now to go out anywhere so and camping. We're seeing a lot of camping stuff going on as we move into the winter months. I'm very concerned about people out there camping, snowmobiles, cross crunchy skiing. I think we're going to see a little up surge and incidents in those different areas, so we still got a job to do. Ah, and we're able to do it. It's a little more challenging, setting up the videos and getting the film, but they're still a message that needs to get out there.
[00:29:20] spk_1: Now, Have you done any videos that have been mass related? If you don't mind me asking, I'm sorry that there have been mass
[00:29:26] spk_0: related. I don't think we've done one yet. Although I say that we've worked. Ah, Seen or two in where? Were wearing mask. We don't wanna washing hands s. Oh, yes, we've got a few. Ah, few like that,
[00:29:43] spk_1: Dr Love. If people want to find out more information about you in the stuff that you're doing working the gift
[00:29:47] spk_0: well again. The best places. Probably our website www dot safety dot f dot mil. If they want to pull a video from there I've learned Mawr. All of our safety stuff sewn there. There's a risk management section they can look at and again. If you've got nothing but YouTube, you can search Dr Love risk management. Don't just search for Dr Love. You're gonna get the wrong videos altogether. But
[00:30:16] spk_1: should I ask what kind of
[00:30:17] spk_0: video the audience entertained? But it wouldn't want trust. So risk management Doctor. Dr Love will get you what you need. And but the safety central website not only doesn't have good risk management information there, there's all kind of safety products there that people could pull off and used in all kind of good information about various saw various kinds of safety.
[00:30:41] spk_1: Well, Dr Love, I truly do appreciate you coming on to the show today.
[00:30:44] spk_0: Well, it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much. Enjoyed my time here and hopefully we can do it again.
[00:30:50] spk_1: So you have to tell me, what did you think about Dr Love? Great information provided during the interview. I have to tell you, if you want to see some of his work, please go to www died safety dot f dot m i l That's safety dot f dot m i l the troop Riddler speaking to Dr Love today and listening to the different things that he has going on from hidden to neck of the woods. Anyways, thank you for always being the best part of safety FM and that is the listener. Safety of them is the home of real safety talk. Don't worry. We'll be back with another episode of the J. Allen show before too long. Goodbye for now. Okay.
[00:31:39] spk_0: The views and opinions expressed on this podcast or those of the host and its guest, and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the company. Examples of analysis discussed within with podcast are only example. It's not be utilized in the real world at the only solution available as they're based only on very limited. Undated Open source. Information. Assumptions made within this analysis or not reflective of the position of the company. No part of this podcast may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means mechanical Elektronik, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission of the creator of the podcast, J. Allen,
[00:00:00] spk_1: you're listening to Safety FM, This is what this show is brought to you by safety. Well, it's Friday, so you already know this is going to be a safety of them. Many episode due to the popularity of last week's Let's Try Something Different again. This episode of the broadcast and the podcast is brought to you by safety focused moments. It's they're consultants that want to help you get the safety culture you've been looking for. For more information, go to safety. Focus moment dot com Well, hello and welcome to safety FM Mini. But then again, it's not gonna be a mini today. Today Oh my, do we have something really special for you today? I have the under the honor, the honor of speaking to Leonard Dr Love Jones. If the name sounds familiar, you might be involved in some way, shape or form with the United States Air Force or the military. Let me tell you a little bit about Dr Love. Four moment Leonard. Dr Love Jones is the Air Force Risk Management Programme Manager and Air Force Safety Center, Kirkland Air Force Base. Your advice regarding mint and associated operational and occupational mishap prevention that apply to all missions, activities and personnel within the Air Force. In addition, Dr Love chairs the United States Air Force Risk Management Working Group and conduct risk management process staff assistant visits and verifying compliance, standardization and functional application of risk management process as related to the Air Force Risk Management. Positive Guidance. He also ensures inputs are provided to air education and training. Command Air University and the United States Air Force Academy for risk management related to course development integration into steaming. Besides that, he does infotainment videos that could be seen throughout all of the United States Air Force. So it is my privilege to welcome Dr Love to the jail in jail. Look, doctor, a lot of I'm so excited about having you want. You don't know what this means.
[00:02:36] spk_0: Well, that would be great. That's a good opportunity, I think. Well, and
[00:02:39] spk_1: then I have to know, Do I call you add a land or call your doctor loved or talking? Call you Mr Jo's. I mean, how do you want to go about this?
[00:02:47] spk_0: Dr. Love is fine. That's probably the white people would recognize me at least from any viral our stuff, but I go by I'll or Dr Love.
[00:02:55] spk_1: So how did it all start? How does this whole thing start for you? Is it? The Air Force? First is the is the love for safety. How did it all happen?
[00:03:03] spk_0: Well, the, uh, my career I came in as a crew dog, if you will. I was a navigator back in the days of celestial navigation, and ah, and so I really wasn't involved with safety for the first Ah, approximately 20 years of my Air Force career, then, uh, other than being a safe crew dog, Hopefully. But my last assignment was safety. I came to the safety center as a crash investigator working military crashes, particularly the human factor side of it. And, ah, when I retired, I was able to stay on and ah, I kept working human factors. But then I moved over to risk management about 45 years ago, but backing up when I first got here, we did our own travel booking through a new Internet type of ah program. And it was difficult to understand I was the newest person. So they said you'll be here the longest, probably, and I was still military at the time, so they had me be the guru for this defense travel system. It was called and so I had to continually send out notes to people that you're doing it wrong. You need to always do this or that. So instead of just sending out the notes, we decided to use a little humor. And we created Doctor loves advice for the lovelorn, And I would create letters that were sent in to me talking about personal problems, and then I'd always were lay him back to the travel problem. Like to be a friend or toe have a friend. You've got to be a friend, just like in DTs. If you file file your voucher, you need to include your receipts. So that's how Dr Love got started.
[00:04:54] spk_1: You know, I thought you're gonna turn around and tell me there was a love for this kiss song that came out or you really like Dr Pepper one or the other.
[00:05:02] spk_0: Well, you don't think so in to be honest, although I do have a little bit of a musical background. I wasn't overly familiar with the with the Doctor Love song, but that has come up on more than one occasion when I'm speaking somewhere.
[00:05:14] spk_1: So let me ask what year we talking about where you started developing this, and then is the character created in a lab or how does it come about?
[00:05:21] spk_0: No, it's Ah, yeah. In the military, particularly within the flying world, most of us have call signs. Think of a maverick and goose on Top gun. And so when I started using the doctor love theme, um, that just became my natural call sign. And this was before any of the videos or anything that we did. So when I came over to work risk management, we were concerned about getting a quick, short, little message out to our audience. And we wanted to use a little bit of humor cause to be honest, most people are not coming to a safety meeting, all excited about getting to talk about safety so they have. How can that be? There is no way it is a shock. But as I tell a lot of our instructors of such, you've got to bring your own energy and we try to normalize some of the safety aspects we talk about safety is not some separate program from life. Most of us do a pretty good job risk management. Most of us will look left to right before you cross the street because it's worth it. We'll spend three or four seconds looking. If we identify a hazard, which would be a car coming toward us, will come up with a mitigation, the mitigation, maybe just to stand there to the car passes. If we're down in New York City and it's non stop traffic at least before Cove in, it may make sense to mitigate the traffic hazard by walking down to the corner where there's a red light and wait until there's a walk signal. So what we're really trying to do with Dr Love and with our messaging is Hey, we're not the enemy safety meetings or not the enemy. We just want to do life a little bit better. Risk management in particular, is not even a safety program. It's just a decision making process, and it works particularly well for safety. So as we started having some success, that's what we tried to stay geared toward. Is the doctor love theme? We did. We call it risk management in 45 seconds or less. The truth. ISS. These spots generally run either Ah, 30 seconds or 60 seconds. So because unexpected tow us, we have some very good results with the American Forces Network, particularly in the Pacific and in Europe running our spots. So now when we produce the spot, we produce something that a squadron level or a wing level one of our different bases can use for their training. But it's also something that can play on the American Forces network.
[00:08:10] spk_1: So what? It's so when you come up with the concept originally and say, OK, we're gonna go into the video aspect. What is the first video look like? What are we would be talking about? Do you remember what even the first segment was about?
[00:08:22] spk_0: I do. Um, the very first segment was just trying to introduce the concept of risk management. And to be honest, we had a great P A shop here, our public affair shop, and I tell people we're not a low budget out that were a no budget. You're you're no,
[00:08:42] spk_1: but you're no budget. Looks very well. I'm going to throw that out
[00:08:45] spk_0: there on But I've got a caveat this by saying these air, our public affairs specialist and we have some folks that have worked with combat camber and they've got a pretty extensive background. So we just went outside the safety center to the light to red light right near the center. And we just produced one little short video on risk management and how it was just a normal way of living and making decisions. And we used the concept of looking left or right before you cross the street. And we ended that segment with a little bit of humor, as I remember we were talking about, um uh, you know, call your mama and Danker for teaching you how to cross the street. You know, you you know, your mama wants you to call, and then we started Ah, thinking, you know, at the end of every one of these, if we can put a little bit of humor talking to our psychologist, we have here at the safety center Ah, way came up with, Ah, the idea that it's already out there, that if you present something and people are laughing at the end, kind of the there's a better chance off Ah, retaining that information So we always try to throw a little bit of humor. Now, granted, we have a little bit of censorship. We can't just go crazy. So some of the humor is a little bit corny, but even that's okay if they say that sure was a corny ending. Dr. Love used when he was talking about seatbelts. That's okay. That's a win because they walk away remembering it was on seatbelts.
[00:10:30] spk_1: Well, I'll tell you, I don't even know how to tie this, and this is gonna sound terrible. So let me kind of backtracked even if they end corny. The ones that I've seen online, I think they're really good. You pull it off very nicely on how you set them up.
[00:10:42] spk_0: Uh oh. Thanks. And that there is part of the process when we look at ah, we're scripting out what we're going to say. We've gotta say things very fast to get it in a 30 or 62nd format, get one central idea across, and we do try to in the in the original scripting come up with the ending right from the get go. So we know what we're building toward. Ah Teoh. Try to leave him with a bit of humor. And in all honesty, the more we have done this, I think the better we've gotten at ah, at ideas and trying something. You Ah so we lucked out pretty well.
[00:11:22] spk_1: Why? I don't know if its luck. I definitely consider it skill based on the ones that I've seen. Now I've seen some on social media that are interesting. Just cover some different segments now are there one said are released in that are not being able to be seen through the general public because the subject matter of the charges covering
[00:11:37] spk_0: no, no, By and large not we certainly don't handle classified type of information. As a matter of fact, I speak at the National Safety Council. In places like that, we show the videos. We encourage the public to use our videos. You anybody can get the video on w w w dot safety dot a. F. For air force dot mil www dot safety dot air force dot mil. Additionally, you can find him on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook. But we highly encourage people. Teoh take him and use him If people are being safe anywhere. That's a win for us.
[00:12:23] spk_1: That's a great way to look at it, because I wasn't. I know that I had found him on Facebook and I was just like, I don't know how far I can go. And I was like, I will ask the question before I go down down that path in particular. Now, when you're doing the set up and you have everything good and ready to go, do you have, like, multiple scriptwriters or you kind of sitting in your room, filling it allowed by yourself?
[00:12:43] spk_0: Well, you know, I'm a shower thinker. A lot of good I trained in the shower. There
[00:12:49] spk_1: is a video from the shower as well, I might add
[00:12:51] spk_0: way aptly did that, But the way we come up with a script, there's a couple ways we may have a major command in the Air Force. A major command might be fighter aircraft or cargo aircraft are people that do lab work. If a major command is having a problem with the safety area or with some incidents, we may write one specifically for them. We also look at our trending analysis. We have the air Force safety automated system where we load all of our mishaps that occur so we can do tracking and trending. If we see a trending problem, we can also attack that via a script. Additionally, before covert, at least I did a lot of travelling speaking on risk management in teaching classes. If I was traveling to Alaska to speak, we would talk with the local public affair shop there and they would provide ah, camera person and, ah, we'd go out and shoot a video on cold weather or maybe camping in the Alaskan wilderness. Likewise, if I was down at a Panama City or Fort Walton, one of our basis, we do 10 na riptides or rip currents are something like that. So there's multiple ways that we come up with. What is the topic going to be? And to be honest, a lot of our incidents mirror the same thing that happens in the civilian world. Slips, trips, falls, fatigue, those kind of items also, So that's another way would come up with it. When we get a topic. When we get a topic, I will write a lot of it. However, the public affairs team here helps may, but ah, lot of times we turn to the safety center itself. Now we do safety for aircraft. We do safety for a ground occupational. We do weapons safety. I've got all kind of expertise. So when I get the rough Ah, draft of the script written, I would generally give it to one of those professionals and make sure that we're saying things correctly for what? Whatever area of expertise we're diving into.
[00:15:14] spk_1: So, roughly what year did you start doing this? I know that she said that you had retired, but what you are you roughly starting this as Dr Love and then you do the first video. What are we talking about here?
[00:15:25] spk_0: Probably 2014. I retired a za military member. I was getting on up a little bit in age. They're so I retired in 2007 and joined the safety center as a G s. A government service. Civilian employees and I kept working human factors and crashed type in Ah, a mishap investigation. On 2014 I moved over to risk management. And that's when we did our first video. And ah, it's just started rolling assay were used more people were asking for them. We started producing Mawr, and right now we have over 150 videos.
[00:16:06] spk_1: Wow! Wow! Wow! Wow, that's That's quite a few. So what were you averaging? Pre co vid on frequency?
[00:16:13] spk_0: Um, maybe two or three a month.
[00:16:19] spk_1: But, I mean, that keeps you busy, because, I mean, even though that's the fun part, because when you start taking a look at it and you go, OK, there's 30 to 45 seconds. There's so much work that goes into him before you're even able to get them up.
[00:16:31] spk_0: Yeah, you're exactly right. And I take my part is being a relatively small. I mean, we ride him, we have to come up with him. I'm in front of the camera. But a lot of work is done on and post, as you probably well know, to get these down and make the timing that we need to make and have it all work, Um and then have edits that are done afterwards because maybe we didn't say something exactly right. Or for whatever reason, there's a lot of work that goes into it years active, and we do have the pros doing that force.
[00:17:07] spk_1: Well, I have to tell you, I was watching the wine a few days ago with you in the skateboard. How you're you're standing on the top of the ramp. I love how it ends. I'll put it that way. That way, if anybody goes looking for, I don't want to ruin it for but I'm just amazing. Some of the angles and the positions that you put yourself in anywhere from a car accident and so on.
[00:17:26] spk_0: I tell you that the skateboard is so funny because, you know, if you've seen the video, we kind of made one. The one that we made to show how shoddy they were was much better than the ones were you originally used. I remember taking a two by four and again taking a skate apart, using a hammer and nail. What have you You know, we're lucky we were alive tonight.
[00:17:50] spk_1: Aren't you glad they're putting you at the risk position on doing that?
[00:17:55] spk_0: Well, again, it's not as dangerous as it looks. Ah, lot of things I won't do. Uh, just because you, you know, and what? That's just risk management. The older you get when you get hurt the longer it takes to heal. So so we take a pretty good look at what we're doing. And ah, luckily, we do have some very talented young people were working mawr them into the scripts. We just did a bicycle to include mountain biking video. It's not released yet, but we have a very talented people showing us out a ride. Mountain bikes.
[00:18:29] spk_1: So as you're doing these, what has been the thing that has surprised you the most? In regards of now you're known as Dr Love. You've been doing these videos. What out of the ordinary has happened that June and expect to happen from these?
[00:18:40] spk_0: Well, the viewership is very interesting. While I did expect Air Force members Teoh, over a certain period, they are different and they should stand out in somebody's memory. I expected that toe happen, but Aziz, they have been released in the American Forces Network. We've got people all over the world seeing them and I was in Germany, I think, was a year ago, a Dobey. So we have a base exchange, which is basically like a big Walmart or something on base, and I was walking Ah, in though, is the store and a mother was walking by me with a child that I took to be three or four years old. I don't know. On We had released a video at the time that was of May kayaking while I was kayaking in an indoor pool. And that comes to light at the very end where, ah, you think I'm not be somewhere a big body of water. But the owner of the house is yelling at me, Dr Love kayak out of the pool. So was walking down a small This little child, it must be three or four years old, looks up at me and says, Dr Love kayak out of the pool. So I don't know if that helps about how much TV they're watching or not. But that was the most surprising thing that that I've had lately, at least
[00:20:05] spk_1: well, it's pretty interesting on how it actually works and how well your impacting the market, because especially because it looks like you have a lot wider reach didn't just a social media video because if you would have told me, Hey, I'm having impact in Germany, I would have never known unwto. You just made the statement here. So you also referenced earlier that you go into speak at the National Safety Council. Now, are we talking about their big events they put on once a year? Are you talking like the regional chapters or how does that
[00:20:31] spk_0: work? I generally go the Congress that once a year this year is being delayed until next March, and by the way, it may be a virtual even when they do it there. But I will speak it some regionals, but But generally I'm going to go to the Congress every year and speak their the other reach that we get about a two million. Ah, person Reach would be through the American Forces Network because those play ah seven times a day over there. We even ah, when they run programs on the American Forces Network, they don't show regular commercials. Eso When they were running the Super Bowl Ah, few years ago, they put one of our commercials in there for real time play on the Super Bowl, which I didn't know to. Ah, somebody else told me on the base.
[00:21:21] spk_1: So you know, you have that you we have we have the frame that a little bit better. You are in a Super Bowl ad. We don't have to see how it got there. It was
[00:21:28] spk_0: well, I was in a network Super Bowl that again. You know, I had to go into the details, but the American Forces Net network runs these things for us seven times a day, and there's two or three different videos running. But what that does for us, it's not. Not only do I get a specific message out, it kind of normalizes safety. High safety is a normal part of life. Ah, that's a win. Also, not the specific thing, but the fact that we, ah, that we're just pushing safety in general and again with the American Forces Network. Not only do we, ah cover the Air Force, we also cover Army, Navy, Marines, space on civilians around the world. So and we have some local nationals that even on the watch.
[00:22:20] spk_1: So when you take a look at this, do you look back and go? You guys were creating a piece of content that you are deemed infotainment.
[00:22:27] spk_0: Yeah, I think that's a That's a fair case. We want to stay relaxed. I mean, what we're talking about is deadly serious, right? On a couple of counts. We owe it to our airman to keep them a safe as we possibly can because it's the right thing to do. But we also owe it to the taxpayers to keep our people safe. We spend money training people for vary Ah, very specialized. Our work task. We have all kind of very valuable equipment to include ah, very expensive aircraft. Eso we take it seriously From the standpoint off, what we do is very important. We lighten it a bit, so we hope people are really going to listen to it. They get required safety after required safety after required safety courses. So if we can pull back a little bit and maybe give them something they don't even know they're getting when they're getting it, that's a wind force.
[00:23:28] spk_1: Now, do you ever teach any of the required safety courses?
[00:23:32] spk_0: Oh, yeah. I I enjoy platform instruction. Tell you, when I came in the Air Force, I taught celestial navigation, which was amazing to make because it actually works most of the time. It worked for me, but I started teaching that about the third time, I told it, really understood it, and I really found myself enjoying platform instruction. So I still do some. I still occasionally teach our board president's course where we teach on Ah, higher ranking individuals how to run a safety investigation if we have a crash or something like that. And I also teach a couple of risk management courses. But I I absolutely love Ah, platform instruction.
[00:24:17] spk_1: So when you look overall at your career, what you've done in the military will now what you're doing now, what have you enjoyed the most?
[00:24:25] spk_0: It's hard to say, boy,
[00:24:27] spk_1: it's like picking your favorite child. I know I asked some terrible questions when it comes to that, but I always want to know.
[00:24:32] spk_0: I would say a Sfar is just the job. Uh, I love celestial navigation cause I had students for six weeks, and I teach him day celestial and night celestial. Now, back in those days, at least, everybody didn't get through, and it was kind of heartbreaking to have somebody that really wanted to get their wings and get through the program that didn't that was bad. But to be able to bring somebody through that. You really you really felt like you accomplished something. Now it's forest location goes Okinawa was pretty good, But also I was a commander of the Arctic Survival School for several years up in Alaska, and that's just absolutely beautiful country up there.
[00:25:15] spk_1: So as you look around and now listen, I don't know for the people that might have not seen you, you do not. How can I phrase this properly without it sounding terrible? You don't have the, um, very short hair. Do not, as most military op operators dio of, ah, lot of people that I've shown your picture to the reference Doc Brown from back to the future. And I'm sure you get that quite
[00:25:38] spk_0: a bit. We do, and it's funny. I mean, back in the day, I'm talking to sixties and seventies when I was in high school. In such, I played in bands and I had long hair back then, which, by the way, my my mother, God rest her soul, always hated my long hair, so she loved it. When I had a 25 year career as an active duty Air Force member, I did always have the Ah, your hair. Yeah, it was well short for the Air Force. The brains and the Army would have some arguments about that. But anyway, I still enjoyed Ah, speaking. And I've got to do some musical things for the Air Force and such. So in my heart, my hair was still long and once I retired, everybody laughs about it around here, but, you know, immediately started rolling my hair out again. But yeah, we get some people that are find it curious that I was, ah, that I'm not actually a retiree. And when I use my retiree card in some places to get on and such, they there's a little bit of a lengthy
[00:26:43] spk_1: another's wouldn't picture online of you that your that your hair's kind of slightly back, not all the way back, but in your pointing your finger in that picture, for some reason, always sticks out. Every time that I see it, I look at it and I go. That is such a great cover art that you have there. I'm sure that was not the purpose on how it was made, but it definitely does stick out
[00:27:01] spk_0: that way. Well, actually, That was kind of the purpose we get our public affairs specialist. We went down to We have a little studio here at the safety center, but we wanted something. And I'll have to give my the credit to this to the p A staff we intentionally were trying to brand. We wanted to brand Dr Love and Ah, and that was part of it. So they did some great photography and there and, ah, little bit of post work there. Get rid of a wrinkle or two or record. Yeah, that was that was targeted.
[00:27:33] spk_1: So, Aziz, you go through this. Now, where do you see this going? I mean, now, with everything going on with Kobe, did you see? How long do you think you'll be continuing to do this? And are you going? Are you making small minions at the same time to tow the kind of pick up of what you're doing at the same time?
[00:27:47] spk_0: Well, a lot of this is personality driven, as you may guess. So it to find somebody with the safety background and, ah, little bit of the comfort in front of a camera. Plus, you got to write your own scripts. It's a little complicated, but yeah, we keep our eyes open for that now, as far as the code goes, I've got green screen capability at home leaving his stuff. And before we were working in the office at all, we produce several of videos via the house, talking about working at home and some of the safety aspects of that. So this hasn't slowed us down too much. We're still producing about two or three videos. Ah, ah, ah, month. And what we're seeing is reflective. I think in society here in the States, at least. Ah, lot of bicycle injuries. People are doing things they can do alone or with some distance. You can hardly buy a bike now to go out anywhere so and camping. We're seeing a lot of camping stuff going on as we move into the winter months. I'm very concerned about people out there camping, snowmobiles, cross crunchy skiing. I think we're going to see a little up surge and incidents in those different areas, so we still got a job to do. Ah, and we're able to do it. It's a little more challenging, setting up the videos and getting the film, but they're still a message that needs to get out there.
[00:29:20] spk_1: Now, Have you done any videos that have been mass related? If you don't mind me asking, I'm sorry that there have been mass
[00:29:26] spk_0: related. I don't think we've done one yet. Although I say that we've worked. Ah, Seen or two in where? Were wearing mask. We don't wanna washing hands s. Oh, yes, we've got a few. Ah, few like that,
[00:29:43] spk_1: Dr Love. If people want to find out more information about you in the stuff that you're doing working the gift
[00:29:47] spk_0: well again. The best places. Probably our website www dot safety dot f dot mil. If they want to pull a video from there I've learned Mawr. All of our safety stuff sewn there. There's a risk management section they can look at and again. If you've got nothing but YouTube, you can search Dr Love risk management. Don't just search for Dr Love. You're gonna get the wrong videos altogether. But
[00:30:16] spk_1: should I ask what kind of
[00:30:17] spk_0: video the audience entertained? But it wouldn't want trust. So risk management Doctor. Dr Love will get you what you need. And but the safety central website not only doesn't have good risk management information there, there's all kind of safety products there that people could pull off and used in all kind of good information about various saw various kinds of safety.
[00:30:41] spk_1: Well, Dr Love, I truly do appreciate you coming on to the show today.
[00:30:44] spk_0: Well, it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much. Enjoyed my time here and hopefully we can do it again.
[00:30:50] spk_1: So you have to tell me, what did you think about Dr Love? Great information provided during the interview. I have to tell you, if you want to see some of his work, please go to www died safety dot f dot m i l That's safety dot f dot m i l the troop Riddler speaking to Dr Love today and listening to the different things that he has going on from hidden to neck of the woods. Anyways, thank you for always being the best part of safety FM and that is the listener. Safety of them is the home of real safety talk. Don't worry. We'll be back with another episode of the J. Allen show before too long. Goodbye for now. Okay.
[00:31:39] spk_0: The views and opinions expressed on this podcast or those of the host and its guest, and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the company. Examples of analysis discussed within with podcast are only example. It's not be utilized in the real world at the only solution available as they're based only on very limited. Undated Open source. Information. Assumptions made within this analysis or not reflective of the position of the company. No part of this podcast may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means mechanical Elektronik, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission of the creator of the podcast, J. Allen,