Joanna Sokol, A REAL EMERGENCY: Stories from the Ambulance

Totally Booked with Zibby

Zibby Owens

Connection, Inspiration, Moms, Entertainment, Arts, Reading, Books, Parenting, Literary

4.4 • 602 Ratings

🗓️ 27 June 2025

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Zibby chats with writer Joanna Sokol about A REAL EMERGENCY, an introspective, richly layered, and surprisingly hopeful memoir about the best and worst parts of her career as a paramedic. Joanna shares gripping insights into the realities of 911 calls, the broken systems behind emergency medical services, and the emotional toll and camaraderie that define life in the ambulance. They discuss everything from the beauty of always showing up—no matter who calls or why—to the burnout and low pay that plague the profession. Finally, Joanna shares how this memoir came to be, after years of collecting stories and needing to get them out of her system.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, this is Zibi Owens, and you're listening to Totally Booked with Zibby. Formerly, moms don't have time to read books. In my daily show, I interview today's latest, best-selling, buzziest, or underrated authors and story creators, whose work I think is worth your time. As a bookstore owner, publisher, author, and obviously podcaster, I get a comprehensive
0:24.0	look at everything that's coming out and spend my time curating the best books so you don't
0:29.3	have to.
0:30.3	Stay in the know, get insider insights, and connect with guests like I do every single day.
0:36.2	For more information, go to zibbimedia.com and follow me on Instagram
0:40.2	at Zibby Owens. Joanna Sokol is the author of A Real Emergency Stories from the ambulance.
0:49.9	Joanna has worked on a 911 ambulance for 10 years along the beach in Santa Cruz in the desert
0:55.6	of Reno and on the streets of San Francisco. Before that, she spent time as a ski patroller,
1:00.3	wilderness EMT, and medical standby for raves and music festivals. She holds a paramedic license
1:06.0	and a bachelor's degree in biological sciences from the University of California at Santa Cruz. During her time at the
1:12.4	San Francisco Fire Department, she received an award for clinical excellence and served as a member of
1:17.4	the Street Crisis Response Team. Her literary work has appeared in Reader's Digest, Paca, and Haslett,
1:23.2	and she received a Sydney Award in 2019. Born and raised in Oakland, California. She currently
1:29.2	lives in Santa Cruz with her boyfriend and a very stubborn dog. Welcome, Joanna. Thank you so much
1:35.0	for coming on Totally Booked with Sydney to talk about a real emergency, a memoir. Congrats.
1:41.2	Thank you so much. I'm really excited. Oh my gosh. Your book was so good. I've learned so much. I had no
1:48.5	idea about the real state of affairs of this whole industry. And I'm like sort of shocked still.
1:56.4	But anyway, tell everybody what your book is about and we'll go from there. Yeah, okay.
2:01.5	This is kind of the hardest question for me because I have to think of a good 30 second pitch.
2:06.6	It's about ambulances and EMTs and paramedics.
2:09.9	I spent 14 years as an EMT and then as a paramedic, about 10 of that in the 911 system,
2:16.1	full time on an ambulance.
	...

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