Firefighters are exposed to death on a scale the public never sees.

Victor Stagnaro has spent his career making sure the fire service never forgets its own, and fighting to shrink the list of names read each year.

Victor is the CEO of the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation and leads its affiliate, the First Responder Center for Excellence. Before that: 25 years with the Prince George's County Fire/EMS Department, and a relationship with the Foundation dating back to the late 1990s as incident commander for the National Fallen Firefighters Memorial Weekend.

Recorded live at the FRCE Health and Wellness Symposium at the University of Iowa, this conversation goes to the places the fire service is only now learning to talk about: cancer and suicide now recognized as line-of-duty deaths, and why the number of names honored each year is growing. The scholarships and children's grief camp that carry Fire Hero families forward. The culture conversation about risk and the cowboy mindset. What daily exposure to death does to firefighters and the people who love them. And what actually works when a department decides to build peer support, told through the story of Charleston and the FDNY.

His challenge to every firefighter at the symposium: don't just come to learn. Decide what you're going to do with it.

Support the mission:

National Fallen Firefighters Foundation: firehero.org

First Responder Center for Excellence: firstrespondercenter.org

This episode is brought to you by SPOKE, our Founding Premier Sponsor and Film Partner. Watch the trailer at spokemovie.com

"The bottom line is I care because I'm tired of losing my friends."

Chief Frank Leeb spent more than three decades in the FDNY, rising to Deputy Assistant Chief and serving as Chief of the Fire Academy, Chief of Training, and Chief of Safety before retiring in 2024. He has been a volunteer firefighter with the East Farmingdale Fire Department on Long Island since 1983. Today he leads the First Responder Center for Excellence, and he has one message for the fire service: if leadership is not protecting its people from what they cannot see coming, leadership is not doing its job.

Greg and Amy sit down with Chief Leeb at FRCE 2026 in Iowa to talk about the toll nobody puts on a recruiting poster: friends lost to suicide, careers hollowed out by PTSD, and cancer moving through firehouses in numbers the fire service is only beginning to confront. They discuss the World Health Organization's reclassification of firefighting as a Group 1 carcinogen, why the dangers of this job do not discriminate between career and volunteer, and what it actually means for a chief to protect a firefighter's blind side.

Chief Leeb is the author of the best-selling book Cornerstones of Leadership: On and Off the Fireground and co-author of 30 Fires You Must Know.

This episode discusses suicide and mental health. If you or someone you know is struggling, call or text 988 (Suicide and Crisis Lifeline), or call the Fire/EMS Helpline at 1-888-731-3473.
You are not alone.

GUEST LINKS

Cornerstones of Leadership (book): https://fireengineeringbooks.com/frank-leeb/

First Responder Center for Excellence: https://www.firstrespondercenter.org

RESOURCES MENTIONED

IARC classification of firefighting as Group 1 carcinogen (WHO, 2022): https://www.iarc.who.int

Firefighter Cancer Support Network: https://firefightercancersupport.org

Unseen Exposures is presented by SPOKE, a documentary about occupational cancer in the fire service. Learn more at https://www.spokemovie.com

Follow the show, and if this episode moved you, a rating and review helps more firefighters and families find it.

Music: White Mountains by Zambolino

Source: https://freetouse.com/music

Royalty Free Music (Free Download)

Most people know what firefighters run into. Few understand what they carry home.

In the first episode of Unseen Exposures, hosts Greg Kelley and Amy Chapman explain why this podcast exists and how it connects to the upcoming documentary SPOKE.

Greg is a second-generation firefighter with 15 years on the job. Amy is a civilian, documentary producer, and mother who entered the fire-service world while helping make the film. Together, they bring two different perspectives to the same conversation: what the job looks like from the inside and what the public rarely gets to see.

They discuss the calling that draws people into the fire service, how the job has changed, and why the risks extend far beyond the emergency itself. Cancer, cumulative trauma, disrupted sleep, poor recovery, family strain, and the pressure to keep going can follow firefighters long after the call is over.

Greg and Amy also share how SPOKE grew from the story of retired fire captain and three-time cancer survivor Rudy Pospisil into a much larger examination of firefighter health, culture, family, and survival.

This episode sets the foundation for the conversations ahead, featuring firefighters, family members, fire-service leaders, scientists, health experts, and members of the team behind the film.

This show is for the people doing the job, the people who love them, and the people who depend on them without knowing the full cost.

• Why the public often sees the rescue, but not what happens afterward
• Greg’s path from advertising and sales into the fire service
• Amy’s role as the public’s voice and translator
• How modern fires and all-hazard response have changed the job
• The origins of SPOKE and Rudy Pospisil’s story
• The physical and emotional exposures firefighters carry
• Humor, crew culture, and the difficulty of asking for help
• Sleep, nutrition, recovery, and their effects on family life
• Why healthier firefighters create healthier departments and communities
• What listeners can expect from future episodes

00:40 Why this podcast exists
01:02 Meet Amy Chapman
02:03 What the public does not see
05:20 The history and evolution of the fire service
08:01 Why modern structure fires burn differently
14:15 How the documentary SPOKE began
17:01 The hidden exposures of the job
19:28 Why firefighter health affects the entire community
22:04 Humor, crew culture, and asking for help
28:10 The changing face of the fire service
32:23 Firehouse staffing, shifts, and sleep loss
38:48 Firefighting as a craft
42:07 Who this podcast is for
44:12 Cancer, trauma, recovery, and future topics
48:49 The mission of Unseen Exposures

SPOKE Documentary: www.spokemovie.com
Unseen Exposures: www.unseenexposures.com
Follow the podcast: @unseenexposurespodcast

This episode includes conversations about occupational cancer, cumulative trauma, firefighter death, mental health, and the effects of emergency-response work on families.