Latest Episode
269 - Fire investigations and the scientific method with Vincent Brannigan
A fire scene looks like a puzzle, but it’s a puzzle where the pieces melt, burn, and get hauled away before anyone can measure them. On the 25th anniversary of 9/11, I sit down with Professor Vincent Brannigan to ask a questions - does a fire investigation truly use the scientific method, or are we doing something else and calling it science?
Vincent brings a rare mix of experience as a fire protection engineer, a lawyer who has seen cases up close, and a historian of science who cares deeply a
Recent Episodes
Sept. 16, 2026
269 - Fire investigations and the scientific method with Vincent Brannigan
A fire scene looks like a puzzle, but it’s a puzzle where the pieces melt, burn, and get hauled away before anyone can measure them. On the 25th anniversary of 9/11, I sit down with Professor Vincent Brannigan to ask a questions - does a fire investigation truly use the scientific method, or are we doing something else and calling it science? Vincent brings a rare mix of experience as a fire protection engineer, a lawyer who has seen cases up close, and a historian of science who cares deeply a
Sept. 9, 2026
268 - Is critical velocity that critical?
Critical velocity is supposed to be the clean moment when tunnel smoke control flips from unsafe to safe. But after too many real projects and too many review battles, I am very sure that such a single number cannot be a sole proxy of what is safe or unsafe... So why it has so much power over my design? In this solo episode I walk through why critical velocity became the world's favorite proxy for tunnel fire safety: it’s simple, it’s calculable, and it gives verifiers something rigid to check.
Sept. 2, 2026
267 - Modelling Fire Growth with Stephen Welch
Pretty CFD flames are something we got used to, but they usually are a product of our design assumptions - the design fire. While they give us a lovely illusion of being "real" fires, predicting real compartment fire growth is a completely different game. We’re joined by Dr. Stephen Welch (University of Edinburgh) to get honest about what “modeling fire spread” actually means, how quickly results can become believable but wrong, and why validation has to be the foundation of any serious CFD fire
Aug. 26, 2026
266 - Compartment fire framework with Vinny Gupta
A compartment fire is more than just “a fire in a room.” The moment flames, smoke, and heat are trapped by walls and fed through openings, the physics changes and so do the hazards we design for. We sit down with Dr. Vinny Gupta (University of Waterloo) to rebuild compartment fire thinking from the ground up, from what the enclosure does to airflow and smoke layers to why those effects still anchor modern structural fire safety. We trace the roots of today’s design tools through post World War
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