A Gainesville man and his family have hit the roads as they travel the continental United States while also producing a new podcast from an ambulance that has been converted into a recording studio.
Brandon Sullins recently spoke with Bill Maine on WDUN's Mornings on Maine Street and said his podcast, Worst Day Best Day, focuses on shining a light on first responders, and will feature interviews from a variety of those in the profession from across the country.
"Unfortunately, the [public] opinion of people that hold these positions like police and fire, military, nurses ... seems to be on a downward turn," Sullins said. "I fear that retention and recruitment numbers are going to take that same downward slope ... Hopefully it's therapeutic for the storyteller. It's going to be therapeutic for other first responders that hear the podcast, and I hopefully am able to educate the public on what their neighbors do every day."
Sullins said he owned an ambulance company in Gainesville until June and has converted one of his ambulances into a fully functional traveling podcast space. He has worked as an EMT Paramedic for 20 years.
The ambulance is also towing a camper as his family travels the country. In total, Sullins is joined by his wife, four daughters and two dogs on the journey.
"My wife has a traveler's heart, so my job was to hopefully create a way for us to get paid while we travel," Sullins said. "This is something that I'm passionate about, that I love with everything I have. So it was a way for me to kind of accomplish both goals."
Sullins said he was actively accepting emails from first responders who would like to tell their stories on the show. Anyone interested can contact Sullins at [email protected].
Additionally, Sullins' wife has also created a YouTube channel about the travel journey itself, titled GrowinUp Atlas.
"As you can imagine, me on the road with five women and two dogs, living in a camper, pulling it with an ambulance, there are some interesting days," Sullins said. "I agreed to doing the blog and vlog only if we did it my way, and I didn't want it to look like rainbows and unicorns. Every time somebody looked, I wanted it to be real. So we post the good, the bad and the ugly."
