Dan Richards

Dan Richards says his company handled an open-ocean rescue about a month before the conversation. An ocean rowing team was rowing from India to Australia. About halfway there, one teammate was boiling a pot of water and dumped it on his thigh. He had third degree burns over the top of his thigh. Sun and salt in that harsh environment made the burn septic very quickly.

The team reached Dan Richards by satellite phone. His group worked with the Australian Navy and identified a freighter already passing on its way to Australia. They coordinated a rendezvous between the two vessels, got the injured rower aboard, and got him to a hospital a few days later. He was fine. Joe De Sena asked whether

Dan Richards says a one-week Global Rescue membership starts at $119, and that amount gives full access to every service. A helicopter, a fixed-wing aircraft, or a ground team all come with the one-week price.

Global Rescue keeps the major helicopter companies in Nepal under contract and uses the helicopters 20 or 30 times a year. When weather blocks a flight, a ground team travels on foot or with yaks, horses, and Nepalese ponies, and sometimes the rescuers show up on horseback. The medical membership covers a need for hospitalization more than 160 miles from home, plus a field rescue off a mountain, out of a desert, or out of another difficult environment. The security membership covers d

Colonel Tim Nye lived in Hawaii for four years and watched people go up a volcano and then fail to get down. Choppers, state rangers, or the military had to go in. The cost sat on the taxpayer, with no program to reimburse it. Colonel Nye asks why a taxpayer should fund a trip someone took unprepared.

Dan Richards prices a one-week Global Rescue membership at $119. The panel calls that price the inexpensive fix, and a very small percentage of people ever place the call. Bucket-list striving still sends people with no business on the trip after another trophy. Joe De Sena says Spartan Race pushes people to get outside, and running sweep is about getting people off the course safely. Pick the

Ben Gilbert says Michael Richards' racist stand-up remarks in 2006 were a problem for the Seinfeld business. David Rosenthal says they put the business model at risk. Ben Gilbert says owners such as Castle Rock needed people to keep loving the show so the asset would keep going. Ben Gilbert says the episode could have spiraled into a boycott of Seinfeld.

Ben Gilbert says everyone had to walk a tightrope: feelings about the issue, feelings about Michael Richards as a friend, condemning words that deserved condemnation, and still preserving Seinfeld through the public-relations crisis. Ben Gilbert says the line offered in public was that a comedian on stage is not actually that person, but a