In this very short not-an-episode, Tony announces that the podcast will be taking a hiatus for 4–6 weeks while he moves across the country and adjusts to some new professional responsibilities. Listen in for Tony's explanation, along with a few more details. This isn't an end to the podcast—just a short break before new beginnings. Thank you all for tuning into the podcast and we plan to see you again sometime in October!

In some settings, just mentioning the phrase “professional ethics” makes the hairs on people’s arms stand up… but it shouldn’t. Part of the unease might stem from the fact that the term is often poorly defined or understood, leaving a nebulous gray area that makes people not only unsure of where they stand, but also where they should be standing. In this episode, Tony reviews a New York Post article on pilots who lied about medical conditions that would have disqualified them from flying and then demystifies the concept of professional ethics by offering some key metrics for standards of conduct in areas such as honesty, integrity, loyalty, and accountability, along with a set of definitions to identify those behaviors that meet or exceed the standard and those that don’t. Nobody’s perfect, but at least with clear definitions we can all shoot for a standard and know when we’re not meeting it. Even if—especially if—we’re the only ones measuring it or recognizing when we’ve fallen short.

In case you didn’t know, August 19th is National Aviation Day, when we honor the birthday of Orville Wright, whose name should be familiar to even the non-aviation listeners of the podcast. But for those less familiar with the history of aviation, Tony covers some of the historical milestones that showcase how the human spirit pushes through boundaries, breaking free of the limits of the past, shaping the possibilities of the present, and weaving the tapestry of our future. From that initial flight at Kitty Hawk through early transcontinental flights, military applications in both world wars, and eventually achieving spaceflight, we choose to celebrate the history of aviation because it remains the most potent example in the last century of ordinary human beings achieving truly extraordinary things.