Jason Kubiak (The British Fire Service, Knife Crime and First Responder Mental Health) - Episode 1184
Behind The Shield
James Geering
4.9 • 695 Ratings
🗓️ 4 January 2026
⏱️ 130 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Jason Kubiak is a serving Leading fire fighter with over 27 years in the UK Fire and Rescue Service, having worked across multiple brigades including Buckinghamshire and London Fire Brigade. We discuss his journey into firefighting, mixed martial arts, career calls, the Grenfell fire, his powerful mental health journey, prioritising family, the UK knife crime epidemic and much more.
Jason is open about his experiences with mental health and PTSD, shaped by years on the frontline, and now focuses on maintaining wellbeing through honesty, structure, and support. Jason is married and a proud father of two daughters.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | A prerequisite to be a sponsor on the Behind the Shield podcast is you have to bring a solution |
| 0:04.8 | to one of our problems. And today's sponsor, Ease Alert, does exactly that. Founded by the son |
| 0:10.1 | of a firefighter, Blake Richardson watched the impact of sleep deprivation on his father's health |
| 0:15.7 | and decided to use modern technology to address that problem. As you've probably heard me |
| 0:20.6 | mentioned many times, |
| 0:21.7 | it is pure insanity that we wake an entire fire station for one crew to respond. And the way |
| 0:27.8 | that we're alerted makes the firefighter stress go from zero to 100. Now, EZ Alert has a host of |
| 0:34.3 | solutions, the first of which is the wearable tack pod, which alerts the first responder of an incoming call through vibration in the wrist. |
| 0:42.3 | So as you can imagine in a communal bunk room, only the crews that need to respond will be woken up. |
| 0:48.3 | Now they also have the bunk alert system, which puts vibration into the bunk itself. There's LED lighting, a turnout timer, |
| 0:58.0 | station automation where you can program bay doors to close |
| 1:02.0 | or gas stoves to turn off. |
| 1:04.0 | An understanding that sleep deprivation is behind so many things at ALS, |
| 1:09.0 | a recent study showed that EASAL ease alert improves health impacts by 169%. |
| 1:14.6 | So if you want to hear more about ease alert, you can listen to my conversation with Blake on |
| 1:20.4 | episode 1168 of the Behind the Shield podcast or go to ease alert.com. |
| 1:28.4 | Welcome to the Behind the Shield podcast. As always, my name's James Gearing and this week |
| 1:32.2 | it is my absolute honor to welcome on the show, British firefighter and MMA fighter Jason |
| 1:38.6 | Kubiak. Now in this conversation, we discuss a host of topics from his journey into the UK Fire and Rescue Service, some of his career calls, the Grenfell fire, his own powerful mental health story, prioritizing family, the knife crime epidemic in the UK, and so much more. |
| 1:59.7 | Now, before we get to this incredible conversation as I say every week, |
| 2:03.4 | please just take a moment. Go to whichever app you listen to this podcast on. Subscribe to the show, |
| 2:10.4 | leave feedback and leave a rating. Every single five-star rating truly does elevate this podcast, |
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