The Checkup with Doctor Mike - How A Quadriplegic Man Became A Pro Racecar Driver | Torsten Gross

Episode Date: August 6, 2025

I'll teach you how to become the media's go-to expert in your field. Enroll in The Professional's Media Academy now: https://www.professionalsmediaacademy.com/Huge thanks to Torsten Gross for joining me! Follow him here and check out his new series on Amazon "Just Hands":JUST HANDS: https://www.primevideo.com/detail/Just-Hands-For-the-Love-of-Racing/0SIUO0CPYS7RW5R6POZZ9XQ4ZFDONATE: https://www.justhands.org/donateIG: https://www.instagram.com/torstenfgross/?hl=en00:00 Intro01:14 His Death9:46 His Motivation13:11 Health Insurance16:50 His Mother21:30 Physical and Emotional Rehab28:30 Hardest Challenges35:10 US vs German Medical Care45:25 "Disabled" and Representation58:17 Inappropriate Assumptions1:05:26 How He Races1:12:05 How Other Drivers Feel1:14:00 His Broken Foot1:17:09 His Amazon Show1:22:20 Meeting His Wife1:28:05 Dating In A Wheelchair1:32:55 Fame1:35:17 Worst Assumptions1:42:12 Just Hands FoundationHelp us continue the fight against medical misinformation and change the world through charity by becoming a Doctor Mike Resident on Patreon where every month I donate 100% of the proceeds to the charity, organization, or cause of your choice! Residents get access to bonus content, an exclusive discord community, and many other perks for just $10 a month. Become a Resident today:https://www.patreon.com/doctormikeLet’s connect:IG: https://go.doctormikemedia.com/instagram/DMinstagramTwitter: https://go.doctormikemedia.com/twitter/DMTwitterFB: https://go.doctormikemedia.com/facebook/DMFacebookTikTok: https://go.doctormikemedia.com/tiktok/DMTikTokReddit: https://go.doctormikemedia.com/reddit/DMRedditContact Email: [e-mail] Producer: Doctor MikeProduction Director and Editor: Dan OwensManaging Editor and Producer: Sam BowersEditor and Designer: Caroline WeigumEditor: Juan Carlos Zuniga* Select photos/videos provided by Getty Images *** The information in this video is not intended nor implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. All content, including text, graphics, images, and information, contained in this video is for general information purposes only and does not replace a consultation with your own doctor/health professional **

With Amex Platinum, access to exclusive Amex pre-sale tickets can score you a spot trackside. So being a fan for life turns into the trip of a lifetime. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Pre-sale tickets for future events subject to availability and varied by race. Turns and conditions apply. Learn more at amex.ca. The twisted tale of Amanda Knox is an eight-episode Hulu Original Limited series that blends gripping pacing with emotional complexity,

offering a dramatized look as it revisits the wrongful conviction of Amanda Knox for the tragic murder of Meredith Kircher and the relentless media storm that followed. The twisted tale of Amanda Knox is now streaming only on Disney Plus. During the Volvo Fall Experience event, discover exceptional offers and thoughtful design that leaves plenty of room for autumn adventures. And see for yourself how Volvo's legendary safety brings peace of mind to every crisp morning commute.

This September, Lisa 2026 X-E-90 plug-in hybrid from $599 bi-weekly at 3.99% during the Volvo Fall Experience event. Conditions supply, visit your local Volvo retailer or go to explorevolvo.com.

Wait, I didn't get charged for my donut. It was free with this Tim's rewards points. I think I just stole it. I'm a donut stealer. Ooh. Earn points so fast, it'll seem too good to be true.

Plus, join Tim's rewards today and get enough points for a free donut, drink, or timbits. With 800 points after registration, activation, and first purchase of a dollar or more, see the Tim's app for details at participating in restaurants in Canada for a limited time. This episode is brought to you by MewMew, introducing Mutein,

the new feminine fragrance by the iconic fashion house. Mutein captures the youthful, unconventional essence of the Mewew-Mew Girl, brought to life by a Gormon, intimate and enveloping scent of wild strawberry and brown sugar accords. Mutine is not a statement, but a knowing glance, a sweet rebellion, lighthearted and laced with wit, a gesture made for oneself. Discover the new fragrance, Mutine, now available in Canada.

It is the only sport on the planet that makes us equal to able-bodied people. The freedom of that, the liberation of actually competing against everybody, not just a subsect of humanity. I did 12 marathons in 12 months. I'm the only quadriplegic that's a rescue scuba diver. I do a lot of fun stuff. This was the first time where I was like, I'm equal. Today, I finally welcome a badass pro race car driver to the checkup podcast with a really cool story to share. Torsten Groh suffered a life-altering injury at just 15 years old and has spent the last 30 years living with C6 quadriplegia. This means, means that he has no control over his lower body

and limited movement below his neck, so no pedals for this legend. Because of his drive to win and a drive to drive, Torsten has become an icon in the racing world documented in a new series on Amazon called Just Hands. On this episode, Torsten tells me all about that traumatic injury, the rigorous rehab he had endured in the US and Germany, and how badly he'd kick my butt on a track when we race.

We'll see about that. But please join me in welcoming Torsten, to the Checkup podcast. This episode is brought to you by Square. You're not just running a restaurant. You're building something big. And Square's there for all of it. Giving your customers more ways to order,

whether that's in person with Square kiosk or online. Instant access to your sales, plus the funding you need to go even bigger. And real-time insights so you know what's working, what's not, and what's next. Because when you're doing big things, your tools should to. Visit Square.

to get started. Summer's here, and you can now get almost anything you need for your sunny days, delivered with Uber Eats. What do we mean by, almost? Well, you can't get a well-groom lawn delivered, but you can get a chicken parmesan delivered. A cabana? That's a no.

But a banana? That's a yes. A nice tan? Sorry, nope. But a box fan? Happily, yes. A day of sunshine? No.

A box of fine wines? Yes. Uber Eats can definitely get you that. Get almost, almost anything delivered with Uber Eats. Order now. Alcohol and select markets. Product availability may vary by reach. agency app for details.

This episode is brought to by Tron Aries. For the first time the captivating world of Tron breaks out of the grid. Aries, a highly advanced program, journeys into our world on a dangerous mission, marking humankind's first encounter with AI beings. Featuring

an electrifying original soundtrack by 9-inch nails. Tron Aries is a must-see movie event, filmed for IMAX and made for the big screen. Experience it only in theaters, October 10. Get tickets now. Oh, hi, buddy.

Who's the best? You are. I wish I could spend all day with you instead. Uh, Dave, you're off mute. Hey, happens to the best of us. Enjoy some goldfish cheddar crackers. Goldfish have short memories. Be like goldfish.

The white chocolate macadamia cream cold brew from Starbucks is made just the way you like it. Handcrafted cold foam topped with toasted cookie crumble. It's a sweet summer twist on iced coffee. Your cold brew is ready at Starbucks. You're setting a lot of firsts for our podcast today. First number one, our first race car driver on the channel, which is exciting, given I have a lot of passion for driving cars. And you're also, I believe, the first person on the podcast to have died,

which is a miracle that you're here. it's yeah or science or science but let's talk about how we got here yeah what was the situation that culminated to you losing your life being brought back to life and now sitting here chatting with us today yeah it's that that day let me let me think about what that day actually was uh so 711 my wife and i went to sorry my mother and i went to the bahamas okay and i dove in the ocean unfortunately it was only three feet deep i thought it was about seven feet deep So when the sun beats down on very clear water, it magnifies it. So I thought it was exponentially deeper than it was.

And did a deep water dive instead of a shallow water dive, which everyone thinks that sand is soft, soft for about an inch, maybe two inches, and then it becomes soft again in China when you go all the way through the earth. But before that's real hard, right? And so that's how I broke my neck, my C6. And I drowned. and that's uh that's wow and then were you found instantly that was this witness what was the situation there so we were only in the bahamas for about an hour and a half and literally a touchdown of the

plane i separated myself from my mother where she went to go unpack and i went to play volleyball on the beach and i was playing volleyball with a newlywed couple and uh i before i even dove into the water i was playing with them but i was like i want to go dive in first dive it happened right so they thought I was kidding around that I was just kind of floating there. And how old were you at the time? I was 15. Wow, okay.

And you were excited in good shape, ready to swim away? Yeah, very, very good. I mean, I dove in the ocean thousands of times, right? Like, this wasn't something new, but because of the magnification, it wasn't something that I, or it was the thing where I thought

it was way deeper than I actually was. And then talk about miracles, though, the, they pulled me out. The couple. The couple did. and they basically wanted me to shake it off, right? And after they resuscitated me. But there happened to be an anesthesiologist 100 feet down the beach.

And he came running. I was like, no, no, no. If you move his head, he will undoubtedly die because the shards of my neck were so close to my aorta that I would have immediately bled out, immediately. So, no, no, no, stable, right? Stable head. This is how we're going to move him. And, you know, there were multiple factors that had to come together that bring me to

today. But I will also finish off this and saying that I believe in hindsight was the best day of my life. Wow. That's heavy. Heavy statement to make. What did the resuscitation look like? Obviously, you weren't aware of it, but what was the information given to you after the fact? Good question. I actually don't even know, right? Because it happened so quickly from club med down there to the hospital, the hospital to, I was transported up to Valhalla. Medical Center from the Bahamas because they didn't have what was really needed for me to be triaged, if you will. And again, this is from a 31-year-old, a 31 years post account, right? So pretty sure some of what I'm saying may be, maybe wrong, but going to the ER there, it was

get him stable, get him ready to be moved. And then, again, if I recall correctly, it was 18 hours later that I was in Valhalla Medical Center in a prop plane you know going where is that in Valhalla and uh white plains or Westchester so about wow okay about I'd say 30 to 45 minutes away from here north of New York City so that's a far flight it was was that a medical transport it was wow okay and to their chagrin uh you know I was really hot and and they didn't want to give me any food because if I swallowed potential of one of the shards to do something inside my body. And so they kept giving me ice and they said,

well, you need to suck on this. And what did I do? I just kept swallowing them because they drugged you up so much that I didn't know what I was doing. But that was, I do remember that. That was an adventurous flight. Wow. Do you remember a lot of pain in that moment or nothing?

I mean, from what I understand when you have a spinal cord injury, that a lot of the fluid in you, your spine will just wrap itself around the spinal cord. And that's from what I know is protection. So I actually couldn't feel anything from my neck down. Even though now I'm chest down, right? But it was your body's protective mechanism that allowed me to not feel anything at all.

And actually while I was laying there, they would say, do you feel this? Do you feel this? Until they got to hear and I was able to see that. And I smiled and I said, Oh, looks like I'm not getting up from this one, huh? Like, you know, not the line you would expect a 15-year-old to say. But it is what it is.

It just, it happened. I kind of went along with it. But that was the moment I realized, all right, I'm not, I'm not getting up and shaking this one off. Despite the fact that you were being joky, not as serious in speaking to the medical professionals, were you scared? No, I mean, you have a lot of adrenaline, right? And adrenaline isn't just when something obviously happens that's really intense. Adrenaline is there to also protect your body and protect your mind. And I'm sure I had a massive jolt of adrenaline where was it scary mildly?

Like, you know, is more curiosity and not knowing why they're doing this, that, and the other thing that I wanted to know. I can't feel it. Why? What are they doing? That's weird. But it was never a fear thing because also you just don't know. Right.

They never tell you, right, at that moment, you are now a C6 quadriplegic, you, this is now what's going to be your life, this is what's going to happen. It just becomes this, well, who knows, things could change. Let's just get you stable. Okay, cool. And then you get stable and then go, okay, now we're going to do the surgery. Now we're going to get you to rehab. Things are going to change.

Okay, cool. You know, it just keeps going on on like that. And I can imagine that might frustrate some people. not getting clear answers, but the reality what the medical team did with you was the right thing in a sense, because whenever you have a neurologic injury, especially one as serious as that, you don't know what the outcomes will be. And the only way you'll know is through the clinical presentation, the clinical recovery, not based off of imaging or lab tests, where in some conditions, perhaps you can give a clearer prognosis based on labs or imaging here. You have to

just wait and see. And that is so frustrating to patients and families. But it seemed like you weren't frustrated. You were saying they don't know. I don't know. Let's see what happens. Well, I mean, it takes two to three years for regeneration to happen in your spinal cord. So you always have to wait that one out, right, to see what happens. I agree that progression in rehab is a thing. But it took me eight years to put my socks on myself. Right. So progression continues to happen. But I would argue that the same thing happens in life, right? You know, when you're young to middle to old, like things are changing,

maybe not as obvious as it was for me, right? But everything continues to change. And they say the only thing that doesn't change is change itself, right? And so I think I learned how to manage that fairly well. That change is just going to happen, you know? Did you always have that? I mean, as a 15-year-old, that's a mature place to be, man.

Like most 15-year-olds that I have as patients, my nephews, they're not, uh, that opens and changes. It seems like you might have been. No, no, I'll take the compliment, but it's not deserved because I think, uh, there was an insight given to me by my wife that, that is very smart. And that is, uh, I am somebody who needs to rebel against what's expected of me. And how that manifested itself is I grew up in Greenwich, a, in Bronxville and in Germany, a fairly, well-to-do lifestyle, right? Not rich by any means, but doing okay. So what was expected of me is be a good student,

be a proper student, go to a good school, et cetera, et cetera. So what did I do? I tried my best to be a bad student, right? I tried my best to do everything that they didn't want. But how that manifested itself on the other side is as a quadriplegic, they're like, well, you're never going to live alone by yourself. You were always going to have an aid. this is what you're never going to be as good as a paraplegic, so on and so forth.

I'm like, you know what? Thank you. Right. Like, how fast did that paraplegic put on his pants? Watch me put it on faster, right? And so I, since my accident, my rebellion has been against what the expectations are of me as a quad. That's big fuel, especially for a 15-year-old, right? You want to tell me no?

Go ahead. It's so interesting because I like study. what motivates people, especially when it comes to my career as a family medicine physician where I'm trying to help people make healthy changes in their life. And a lot of times they're perhaps bullied or told that they can't or people are fatphobic around them if it's in regards to their weight. And that demotivates them. But you're one of those individuals that is almost motivated by that negative energy or the opposite energy. Why do you think that is? I mean I see my wife rolling her eyes right now right like I just I feel that wherever she is

right now she's going yeah um you know you grow up with the last name gross torsden you are gross as your middle initial is you know like and I was always the youngest kid I was picked on quite a bit and so you get this uh you get this proving attitude where like well if you're going to say I can't do it I need to prove it to you Right. And I think that's what it was. But you also have to remember at 15, you're going through multiple life stages. Right. Right. And things are changing in and of themselves.

And you're moving. It sounds like you move from Germany. We were moving, right, to Germany and then back again. You know, and people ask me, they're like, oh, you're 15 is that, was that hard, you know, to have an accident. I would say it's actually harder when you're older. Adaptation isn't as good. exactly right you're after like 25 to 28 you've got kids you've done your you've started a career things are fairly regimented right before that middle school to high school high school to college

college first career then your first real girlfriend or boyfriend right your things change the change the wheelchair went with me on the change right so I didn't have to adapt to the chair because I was adapting to the situation that sure happened to be there. When you're a little bit older, I think that's a little harder to do, right? And so if you have that mindset already, that things are changing and I'm moving to Germany, changing, moving now to Greenwich, changing, right? You just kind of accept it. Yeah.

I'm always curious from the insurance side of things, if insurance treats patients well, if it covers what conditions they have. Weva on the channel even covered some individuals who, like, teacher, young, healthy, had a heart attack, unplanned, even though lived a healthy lifestyle was an athlete, ended up going to an out-of-network hospital. Insurance said we're not paying, and it doesn't make any sense because covered, healthy, how is this happening, how are they in debt? It ended up getting cleared out because media got involved, obviously.

But I'm curious taking a plane from ClubMed to New York, it's an emergency medical plane. How does that impact insurance coverage? Did you have travel insurance? That curiosity from the audience is definitely there on that. Yeah, this is the moment where I say I am incredibly fortunate to have the family that I did growing up. It is nothing more than that. I had, my mom was a stay-at-home mom, and she fought daily with the insurance companies. And that's not an exaggeration, daily, and she wouldn't give up.

Because they weren't willing to pay or what was happening? Yeah, for certain things, right? Like, you know, you won't pay for that. Well, I'm just going to go in on you and I'm going to make it that you will pay for that. It's a full-time job going after the insurance companies because they are, from what I can see from the outside conditioned to say no as many times as they can until they are pressured to say yes um that's not great right and that's that's very unfortunate not everyone has a mother that would be able to stay home and make that make it her full-time job or again fortunate

it's very humbling does have to say this and if they wouldn't pay for it you know have a father that in a family that could afford what I needed and again that's not beyond me to understand that that's not a normal situation you know and I'm I'm grateful for that because I was able to go to multiple different rehabs right sometimes on our dime sometimes on theirs I was able to get the best medical equipment with very good doctors and as a C6 quad that lives alone now you know or has the ability to be independent I can't say that that would be true if I was not fortunate. Yeah, that's really tough.

And obviously you share a lot of gratitude with your family and those who have supported you, not just financially, but the fact that your mom was there making those arguments on your behalf, which I encourage all my patients to do, whenever there is a dispute, keep fighting, keep fighting. I know that sounds terrible that they have to do that, but that is the best advice I can give. The fact that you even have someone to advocate for you. A lot of my patients are single parents, living.

on their own, perhaps have mental health conditions, and I'm trying to, they're already demotivated from what's going on in their life. I'm trying to motivate them to fight, to get things covered. It's a losing battle sometimes, and it's very, very disappointing is probably too soft of a word there. Look, two things to that. One is you only do the hard thing if the thing you are doing is harder than the change, right? Like, you will change if, you know, if what you normally do is too hard, then you'll change. But I will also say my, I don't have actually a relationship with my mom anymore because it took such a toll on us.

Like I used to be a mama's boy. And it took such a toll on us because she wouldn't tie my shoes. She wouldn't put on my socks. She wouldn't do certain things. She made me do it. and at 15, 16, 17, 18, even into college, you know, when you come home, that creates massive stress on a relationship, massive. I didn't have respect for that when I was younger, right, that the toll it's taking on the

family, not just me. It's a hard thing to admit to say that, you know, a relationship takes its toll. Not a, I mean, you can cut this out, not a message that, you know, you want to portray to your audience because. then people are wondering, well, if I do attack the situation, will I lose that person? I would argue that it is worth it, right? Because it is getting somebody to where they need to be and sometimes tough love is just necessary. But the outcome of tough love can be very difficult.

I've never said that publicly before. Yeah, I mean, look, not only is it normal. within a family to have discourse to varying degrees. Sure. Add the level of stress and not just the severity of the stress, but the duration of that stress and the adaptation that needs to happen to such stress, that would put a toll on anyone and anyone's relationship. So I can understand why that happened.

But if I may, you know, one of the things I say is that everybody has got a wheelchair, whether you have depression or PTSD or you lost a child or you have Tourette's right everybody's got that thing that holds them back right but that thing is also the thing that permeates to their family as well right depression that affects the whole family right not just the person that has has depression Tourette's well many people know it Tourette's is the world doesn't imagine being in the world and you're screaming bad words right you look like a jerk right that affects the family as well and they can't do anything about it and depression you can't do anything about it right so i would argue that everybody's got their wheelchair everybody's got their

thing that i went through mine just happened to be instantaneous right mine was a moment in time that i can look back and go 7-1194 in the morning in the bahamas depression you can't do that right Tourette's you're born with as far as i i know um you know losing a child yeah there's a date to that but like those are things that really weigh on a family so all these things change the dynamics mine

happened also come when I was 15 and I was a very precocious and difficult child and so that just added exponential more stress do you think there is ever a possibility of that relationship rebuilding or changing? For the last 10 years mentally she's been kind of maybe let's call five years she's been deteriorating. And so unfortunately no, I don't think so. But I've also come to

terms with that, right? Like relationships, whether they're blood or not, like I go into them going, I'm either going to come out neutral from this conversation or better. If I come out negative every single time, then that is the situation of a relationship that I'm not going to keep moving forward with. And it's something that, you know, I'm saying within a few minutes of a conversation, but took months and years to come to terms with. Right. Right. So it's not like saying, well, we don't have a relationship and that was an easy choice. It was certainly hard. And I respect her to no end, right? Like she did, you know, you know, the job with me that nobody could have done,

she was probably the only person who was fit for it. And I'll forever be grateful for that, forever. But you have to question that how a relationship works even after that. You can't just look at a situation and go, well, they did that, and therefore I should forget everything else. Right. It's a hard one. Yeah.

You know what I mean? Very hard. And probably going through your rehab journey. She was a big part of that. It seems like she was motivating you with tough love. What was the rehab journey like? When did you realize this would take enormous effort on your part? Life would change. What was that moment like early on for you? Yeah, it's a good question. So I did five months, I think, in Burke rehab. So we were on the way to moving to Germany when this happened. Right. So we actually didn't have a house anymore. So my mother had to stay with friends in their basement while I went to Burke rehab. From Burke rehab, they transferred me over outside of Hamburg, Germany, to another rehab that I went for three or four months as well. So, and mind you, this is 31 years ago. The amount of rehab is necessary.

The BS rehab that exists right now in the world of let's get them triaged, let's just put them in an everyday chair, and let's get them out within a month. And I guarantee you, I'm going to yell that going a month is even way too long, right? I guarantee you it's two or three weeks. I don't understand that. I really don't understand that because your brain is still working through this, like, what's happening? Your body is changing. Your body first digresses, right?

Like you're losing your muscles and all that. Your organs are changing and whatnot to figure out the situation that it's in. Great. now once that slows down a little bit, now you can start your rehab. At that point, you're already out, right? And I was really fortunate to have almost a year. But I then went back to the,

then I went to the international school in Hamburg. As a, at that point, 16-year-old kid, you have nothing else to think about. You're just thinking about school. No, I wasn't thinking about school. Girls. Okay. And hanging, right?

You know, hanging out. pretty obvious you know objectives for a 15 year old um and so your brain is not wheelchair wheelchair wheelchair your brain is let me do what everybody else is doing and i'll figure it all out later and i think that's actually a good thing you know if you dwell that'll just eat you live it'll eat other students or the emotion emotions to me right like if i just sat there and thought about it you know one of the reasons why I keep busy is not because of my disability. That's so long gone, right? It's now just normal for me. But idle hands, right, devil's playground. Like, if I just sit and do nothing, I become destructive, first to myself, right, and then to others. And I think we all do that,

right, because you start to question things, wallow, right, and self-pity. Why do I need that, right? So I never really have the chance. You know what I mean? do you think had you had that chance it would have helped hurt or been neutral I think if you allow yourself too long to think about something you actually don't allow yourself to fail and what I mean by that is I'm a big proponent of failure I love failure in our society we don't allow ourselves to fail right so think about when you win it's like yes I won here's what I won here's what we're why I won. When you fail an hour-long dissertation as to why you failed, right? Which is so silly

because no one wins without failing a lot. But if you sit there just thinking, thinking, thinking, you're going to think about every reason why you fail, right? Every reason why what you're planning is not going to work. I'm somebody who just kind of go, I tell everybody what I want to do. At that point, it's too late. I've not told you what I want to do. And then I just go figure it out. and if I wait too long, if I let things stir too much, I'm talking myself out of everything that I want to do. Actually, this here says courage over confidence. And to me, I've always said in my life that how can you have courage without trying, right?

So courage comes on the other side of trying. And this is a step forward to that, right? where until I have courage to go do something, I can never be confident in it. I'll just never be confident. How can you be? You've never tried it. So I think one of my strengths is the acceptance of failure

and the courage to keep moving on from that. So failure before confidence. Always, right? And to me, if you start with the, expectation of failure, you actually can't fail. But then you do it once, even if you failed, then you realize, huh, that was easier than I thought it would be. And the fear of doing something is always greater than the thing itself. And Sam's going to know this because he just followed

me on Instagram and I literally posted this yesterday. So literally, because when I give talks, this is one of the biggest things I talk about, right? That we, I've been fired four times, right? And life's been good for me, you know, work-wise. Who says that they got fired four times? I did. On a resume, that kind of, that's awesome. I'm okay with that, right? Because I was just trying different things. I learned different ways. So to me, stopping is deadly. You said an important qualifier that I think is good for the audience to focus on. It seems like you're not saying don't think about what happened to you, don't have some self-pity, don't reflect on what has happened. It's don't reflect on it for too long. You said too long or too much. And I think that's an

important point because if you start getting into that cycle of not moving forward, of not taking that next step to put on your shoes and do something, it can actually end up be the reason why you're holding yourself back. A hundred percent. So I think that's an important quality. And it's my reality, right? Like I think we like to, to, to, to, to, cloak our realities, right? Like, this is never going to change, right? And I always got the tilted, tilted head and the awe, right? And I'm like, why? Like, cool, this is now my life moving on. We all our lives have changed from when we were 15 to adulthood, right? That's okay. It's not accepting reality that that holds you back. So, yeah, I definitely had to accept it. Are there hard times?

Yes. Tell me about one of those hard. times um look there's there were moments in my life when especially when i was younger where travel was definitely harder where you know going on vacations with friends where they're going to beaches i'm not the best on sand right like or they're they're climbing or they're doing something very uh a physical activity i can't go right that since changed right like I now, I mean, I was on plane almost every other day for a couple of years, right? So I know how to travel. I know how to get to where I want to go, right?

Which I think we'll talk about that a little later, right? Like, and especially if you tell me no, like, you know, I'll figure it out. But that becomes hard not to be able to do what other people can do, especially when you're younger. Is it because of the isolation component of that? no it's the the uh it's the jealousy component right like look dead people want to be quadriplegic quads want to be paris paris want to walk walking people want to be Arnold Schwarzenegger and he wants to be god right like so so there is always there's always a level above you right that we're always looking for and it's so destructive to only be looking up right right when if i take a moment

and look down I go wow I am so grateful just like this is I live a life that I never thought I'd be living whoa right but like but what do I do I only look up and I go oh I want to want to be that guy you know and like I want that car um that to me is what we all have right foam all fear of missing out that I'm like well I want to be with them I want to do that even if they come back and they're like, that vacation was horrible. I'm like, you know, I wish I had a horrible vacation like you did. You know what I mean?

Like that's still what's going through my head. So it's more that than isolation. I'm the last to be isolated. I talk too much and I'm way too A-type and way too much of an extrovert to ever feel lonely. So does that mean you're more focused on the present than you are on perhaps the past or the future? I am now very I now concentrate on the present and that is only a 10 year old thing and that's because I do

transcendental meditation right which is what my tattoo is and the tattoo actually says it's Sanskrit for take it easy take it as it comes because I didn't take things easy nor did I take things as they came, right? So when Maharishi or Maharishiogi said this, right, the one of the, or the founder, I think, of TM, that resonated with me greatly because that basically says concentrate on the present, right? You're right here right now. Take it easy, right? They're going to come at you. Do I have goals for the future? Yes, I'm incredibly future driven. But it doesn't mean that I don't have hyper respect of the current moment. And also no regret for the past. because I did what I did.

And I could stew on my accident and have massive regret for jumping into the water. I did it. Why am I going to stew over that? It happened. And so does everything else in life, right? Do I wish things had changed for differently? 100%. You're allowed to respect that part of your life, right?

But it doesn't mean that I need to regret it. and only use it to change moving forward. And the only way you can change is by the present. How do you hold those two thoughts simultaneously? Because I think that's very interesting. I struggle with this a lot. The idea that, sure, you wish things have gone differently, but at the same time, at the beginning of the conversation,

you said you're so grateful for what happened that day. Those thoughts seem like they're counterintuitive to one another, to coexist. Because one is, I wish things were different. And the other one's like, no, I'm so happy things. happened this way. So how do you hold both of those beliefs? You're thinking of them of them on a equally on a whole timeline. Do I wish things had been different that day? Yeah, I'd still be walking, right? But when I think about all the things that I've

gotten to do, I now look at them and go, wow. Like, that's, even I impress myself. Like, I, that sounds like, but like, even, even I look back and go, I did what? Like, what? You know, like, how is that possible that I did that? Um, without my accident, without having had happened, what happened, I wouldn't be who I am today. That includes personality, too, right? I wouldn't, I wouldn't, I wouldn't be with my wife, right? Like I wouldn't have the life that I live if it weren't for my chair, right? And so we look at things as 100%, but they're never always 100%. Right.

Right. And that you're allowed to have, I wish, differences, while also saying that it's a great day because I'm fortunate to what I get to be able to do. It's when you want one or the other. That's where things start to struggle in your mind. Right. So you're saying it micro, you might have wished something was different, but macro, you're grateful the journey.

100%. Yes. Because I wouldn't be who I am. I wouldn't be sitting here. I wouldn't have the friends that I have. Look, I was a bad kid that had bad grades that was most likely going to do something that didn't, you know, didn't amount to much. And not to say that my legacy hopefully will be a whole lot better than that, but I hope it because now I get to help other people

doing a whole lot of things that make them grateful and happy. And me and two, right? That I get to do things that make me grateful and happy. I don't think I would be doing that for a walking. Now, I also don't know. Right. And that's the important thing to go,

well, if I just dwell on that, maybe I could have been Arnold Schwarzenegger, you know? Like, chances are probably not, but maybe. Yeah. But how futile of an effort is that to dwell on that? that's silly makes sense there's a lot i want to get to uh outside of your current journey of where you are athletically now um your wife before we get to that i want to ask someone who received medical care here in the united states and someone who received medical care in germany what are

the differences germany all day long wow zero question about that the medical system over there well they might complain about it they don't live here uh you know the grass is always greener, right? Nope, the grass is definitely greener over there. Let's be honest. Okay. We get called out for socialism and, and, you know, Obamacare is BS and blah, blah, and taxes, taxes. I'm like, what are your taxes paying for? Right? Like, what bothers me is that that something happens to you, you now go to the hospital and you're like, well, I've got this big debt that I now need to pay. Cool. In Germany, you don't. Right? Like in Germany, things are taken care of. If I sneeze too hard, they'll give me a tissue, right? Like, there's,

again, they will probably argue that they have to argue for things, but until you live here and understand that you're arguing for everything, over there, their taxes pay for that. And everybody has a medical incident, whether it's breaking their neck or something in between, right, or sneezing too hard, and it's like in between, everybody's got a thing. And then we complain that our insurance premiums are too high and that they won't cover anything. Well, because you're not paying for it. How are they going to pay for that? So in Germany, all day long, they didn't question rehab for me.

They didn't question my second rehab that I went to. They didn't question my out-patient rehab. There was really nothing. I mean, I'm probably simplifying it a little too much. Well, you're talking about it from the insurance health care side. Yes. I'm curious about the actual medical care. Any differences there?

from providers' sake, hospital's sake, facility's sake. I mean, my first thought wanted to say, well, it's a first world country like we are, and so therefore there's a lot of overlap, right? But now that I'm thinking about, though, I went through, call it non-traditional techniques as well, like Reiki and Voitra, that was something that was. something here or there there that's something that would never happen here and i wish other people would right can i tell you exactly what happened with rakey and voichita that that made things a little

bit different for me no because i was on my on my journey of getting better so it's hard to know what to what what factors helped and did not help in that journey but i went through it and boy did i learn a lot there and at least it gave me other perspectives that other things are possible and not just popping a pill. Interesting. Yeah, I mean, there's vocal supporters of those alternative therapies and complementary therapies here in the United States. The problem in the United States being that we're a capitalist nation and so heavy capitalists in some regards that it starts with good intention, a lot of these complementary care procedures, like helping someone who's undergoing a serious diagnosis or a serious accident.

And then it starts spreading to what can we sell to the majority of the public and trick them away from regular medicine. And that's where the snake oil stuff starts really creeping into the now creating harms as opposed to creating benefits. So I can understand how from your perspective, it's like we need to do better with it in the United States. Yet on my channel, I sometimes am very negative soundbites. At least I've said negative things about some of those treatments because I've seen.

the flip side where I can name you literally one patient I have right now who has pretty advanced prostate cancer is under the firm belief that he should not get it surgically removed despite the advice of multiple surgeons who say he should because he believes that it will spread if they cut into it which hasn't been borne about by scientific evidence and he went to see an Ayurvedic practitioner who is now infusing his bladder with herbs and telling him avoid traditional medicine and potentially shortening his lifespan, making things worse, giving guidance that really doesn't make medical sense. And I worry about this individual. Have they fallen victim to one of these practitioners? Yes, but at least when he pees, it's going to smell like basil.

right you know so there's their benefits to everything right look i think uh uh anecdote isn't plural for data right so yes i there are outliers to a degree for absolutely uh but i think your point is also valid that in our society now we are actually not further apart from each other than we were 30 years ago what we are though is we have access to information that that actually justifies our good or bad thinking more so than we had 30 years ago. So now I've got 100 sources that say that the world is flat. So the world is flat, right? Because I have 50 sources that'll tell you that it is.

But I have 50 sources that I'll tell you that it's round. These beliefs still happened way back when, but like the digging your heels in has become exponentially more because of, let me use the air quotes fact. Right? Because what's fact these days, unfortunately? Yeah. What is truth? What is reality has become tough to decipher. In the age of social media, I think that's fueled a lot of the discourse. Because in order to become popular on social media,

you either have to challenge a fact, you have to create your own fact, create outrage surrounding a fact. And that's how you get a lot of viewership. Which one did you do? I fought back in defense of fact. Okay. Which has been a weird journey because initially it started with a lot of, lot of this is boring basic science stuff we actually got fired when we started our YouTube channel after the first year by a production partner and then as time went on we just bought into

this notion and we hit success not because people suddenly said okay now we want to hear from a doctor because we adapted to what the platforms and what the audience wanted sure we gave them content in the forms that they wanted to see it we paired it with pop culture we made it funny I was self-deprecating. Sure. And that's what made it watchable. Not the fact that we're talking about facts. I wish the media would have a different tone when they talk about, you know,

actress has breast cancer, eats grapes every day, you know, for a year and no longer has breast cancer, you know, or whatever silly thing that is. Sensational headlines. Is sensationalism of it because now people are taking analogy and or anecdote and making that data. Yeah. No, that's a, that's a person that did that. Pretty sure if they didn't eat grapes, probably would have got rid of the best answer. You know what I mean?

And that's, that's important to understand, but that's not where we're at today. Yeah, it's very hard to separate truth from fiction in, as a non-scientific person. Because in science, we have really core rules where you kind of, separate fact for fiction. There is a hierarchy of evidence. And if that's not taught universally, it's easy to say, well, if this person said it in, you're saying it, why should I trust you over them? I disagree with you, though. Look at what's happening right now in the government, right? There's loads of data that's out there, yet we are still saying no vaccines, right? Or you don't need to vax or removing certain things from society because fact is being spun. While I'd like to agree with you

that that one plus one is two and that that is just the accepted fact. Unfortunately, it's not because I could say, well, four minus two is still two and now it looks completely different. Right. Right. And that's the unfortunate part. I wish fact were actually fact and respect to this fact. It's just not. You know, so. Yeah, I guess words have different definitions to a lot of people. And that's the problem, right? And not only definitions, though, it depends on how you're how you're receiving the information as well. I mean, we all come with our own internal bias. Right.

You know, however that was formed, right? And so no matter what, if I think that vaccines are not good and you're going to tell me vaccines are good, it's going to be hard pressed for me to believe you. And that's what's scary to me. Especially if people make it part of their identity. Especially with that, right? Because you can't unlage yourself from that. Yeah.

Speaking of identity, I have a close personal friend, Pamela Schuller. I met her. I did a conference in MIT leadership conference, and I didn't know this going in. It was a disability conference where you spend, I don't know if it was a week or several days, learning how to be a better leader in the digital age. And I didn't know that it was a disability conference. I got invited. I said, oh, I'd love to attend.

I want to be a better leader online. And it ended up being a disability conference. And then everyone in the group had some share of disability, either visible or invisible. And they asked me on like the second day, you know, Mike, what's your disability? And I said, well, look, I didn't know that this was a disability conference, which was uncomfortable to say, but I think important. But I think what is valuable in me being here is I think I can get the message out of how those with disabilities want to be treated by medical providers. how we can better improve our medical education to residents of how to interact with those with disabilities. And I think it was a learning experience for everyone in that scenario. At least I hope it

was for them because it was certainly for me. Miller Light, the light beer brewed for people who love the taste of beer and the perfect pairing for your game time. When Miller Light set out to brew a light beer, they had to choose great taste or 90 calories per can. They chose both. because they knew the best part of beer is the beer. Your game time, tastes like Miller time. Learn more at millerlight.ca. Must be legal drinking age.

Ontario, the weight is over. The gold standard of online casinos has arrived. Golden Nugget online casino is live, bringing Vegas-style excitement and a world-class gaming experience right to your fingertips. Whether you're a seasoned player or just starting, signing up is fast and simple. And in just a few clicks, you can have access to our exclusive library of the best slots and top-tier table games.

Make the most of your downtime with unbeatable promotions and jackpots that can turn any mundane moment into a golden opportunity at Golden Nugget Online Casino. Take a spin on the slots, challenge yourself at the tables, or join a live dealer game to feel the thrill of real-time action, all from the comfort of your own devices. Why settle for less when you can go for the gold at Golden Nugget Online Casino. problem call connects Ontario 1866 531-260-19 and over physically present in Ontario eligibility restrictions apply see golden nugget casino.com for details please play responsibly bank more on course when you switch to a scotia bank banking package learn more at scotia bank dot com slash banking packages conditions apply Scotia bank you're richer than you think when I found out my friend got a great deal

on a wool coat from winners, I started wondering. Is every fabulous item I see from winners? Like that woman over there with the designer jeans. Are those from winners? Ooh, are those beautiful gold earrings? Did she pay full price? Or that leather tote? Or that cashmere sweater?

Or those knee-high boots? That dress, that jacket, those shoes. Is anyone paying full price for anything? Stop wondering. Start winning. Winners, find fabulous for less. How do you feel with people who don't like the word disability,

don't like the word handicapped. I know you made a joke about it earlier off camera, but I'm curious, what's your sort of underlying message or overlying message on that? I'll answer it, but I'm going to come back to you in a second. I have a love-hate word with disability or handicap. Okay. Because it is a descriptor, it's easy to use,

it is what I am, disability. disabled, fine, right? Like, makes things really easy. Why I specifically don't like it is because you make things accessible for disabled people. What does that mean? You've got blind, you've got deaf, you've got, I'm a quadriplegic that has different needs than a paraplegic, that has different needs than someone with spinibifida and multiple sclerosis and on and on and on, right?

So now you want to make things accessible. you want to you want to cater for disability i don't understand that right like because so let's let's make a a place accessible the first thing you think of is no steps easy but then what about blind people right they're often forgotten you know deaf right you move into this into this building and well do you have alarms that uh light up right because you because deaf are not going to hear it, right? Or have less of a chance of hearing or feeling of vibration. So automatically, just by those three things,

I've now shown you, you know, three different things you need to do just to do accessibility for disabled. So it's weird to me, right? Because it's just a catch-haul. But at the same time, it just means different, right? Like, and maybe not able-bodied. And I'm okay with that.

You can call me wherever you want. I mean, at the end of the day, I really don't care. right i mean chip bag asshole douche maybe i prefer not those yeah no i kind of kind of it's true you know and and i get it uh so i to me words don't mean anything right like the the the context does right so if friends of mine drop cripple jokes i think it's funny all day long because i do if somebody comes up to me though and you know says hey cripple different right so intent and delivery and context to me are massive massive so i really don't mind so how do you feel about people police and comedians these days so so you know who lelampinelli is

yes so she used to be my coach okay so i've done stand up at every single comedy club in manhattan wow okay uh when i was younger the reason actually why i left comedy is because the only way comedians make a biggest through a movie or a TV show, really. Not Instagram or I mean podcast or something? This is 30 years ago, right? I'm old. So back then, that's how they made it. I wasn't about to be a martyr for that cause because disability is still a humor is still humor that no one wants to talk about. You can't become black. You can't become gay. You can't become a woman or a man. You can't become different things. You can become disabled. So it's the one thing people are reticent to joke.

about. Name me a mainstream movie actor that has been the lead in a movie that's in a wheelchair and not put in a wheelchair like John Luke Picard was, you know, an X-Men. I'll wait. Yeah, I struggle to. Now, give me one in cartoons. Joe from Family Guy or South Park. It's because that's not real. And so they get to make wheelchair jokes there. But in real life, you don't, taboo. You can't make those jokes. I find silly, by the way, but you can't make those jokes. It can still happen to you.

We're very scared about laughing about things that can happen to you, right? So the fact that we may be in that position, we're more hesitant to joke about it. I mean, it's my assumption, right? I don't know any other reasons why. Well, what about those with disabilities becoming upset about certain things? I've seen disability organizations come out against certain comedians for making jokes about. Sure, like Seinfeld, when they did two episodes, and that was in a different time. That was 30 years ago, or almost 30 years ago, my rebuttal to that would be, yeah,

but there's going to be a faction that is going to be angry at anything you say. Right. So a lesbian group is going to be angry at lesbian comedians and black on black comedians and gay on gay media, you know, all of that is going to have some retribution or some type of, of response. Got it. And, you know, that, I wouldn't want to be a comedian these days, right? That is a very hard line to walk. Personally, I think I find humor and truth.

And if it's true, I am in a wheelchair. I did win the Christopher Eve look-like contest. Because you're not looking at my body. You're just looking at the guy in the wheelchair, right? Like I do understand that reality is reality and it's not going to change. So why not laugh at what you can't change? Here's the thing, though. If you make fun of my intelligence, that I then get a little annoyed by it

because that's something I can change. That's something I have bearing on. But being in a wheelchair, I don't have a choice with that. So let's mock it. You don't have a choice being brunette, right? like there they're so let's just mock it right like who cares and i think the fuse is way too short at this point right so i don't envy comedians right now i think cancel culture uh while i do believe it's gone too far to degree um i understand why it exists but i also need to go back to intent

and context right that there are people that don't understand context. And if you make a joke and they misinterpret it, that's where danger starts to happen. Does that make sense? Yeah, absolutely does. My friend Pam dislikes when frequently you'll see on Twitter video go viral. A basketball team will sub in a child with Down syndrome to make a bucket. Everyone doesn't play defense. They make a bucket. Crowd cheers. She hates it. I hate it. I'm also speaking for her i probably shouldn't but i'll speak for her pam you and me i get it i get it pam yeah so tell me uh your thoughts on that i don't want to be placated right like i i i but doesn't con i'm playing solely devil's advocate here doesn't context matter aren't they doing it in a positive way

to support this person it's a fair response that's a that's a that's a that's a that's a fair response. I think when it, I think there's a difference between cognitive and physical. From a cognitive perspective, maybe, you know, and they're doing it for them, something that they can never do. But physical, I'm finding ways to do cool stuff physically. And I don't need you to pull me on a basketball court with, you know, with the Knicks just to make a shot that I know I don't belong there, right? Like, hop into a race car with me, bro. Like, you know, then, that, then we'll see uh you know i actually take back the one i said i think that's you're you're right about context and i hate that you're using my words against me um yeah it's that's a hard one to answer

yeah because i i try and wrap my head around what's happening and i understand that to some it may look like you're cheering as if they that's all they can accomplish you're belittling their successes or their challenges that they've had ahead of them but at the same time are people doing it out of goodwill because they're cheering and celebrating a person having a good time or those people looking and comparing themselves and saying oh thank god i'm not like that and that's why they're cheering so i think more needs to be figured out about what's happening as a whole in the audience a hundred percent i also think it goes a step further where i i hate the word inspiration hate it because if you and i both land at the same spot i'm the inspiration

why because society already is putting me below you so i have now overcome more than you did right why like because society says that i'm worse than you as a human i don't want to be an inspiration i want to be motivation right and there's a difference between the two right and so If I can be motivational to get people to go, oh, if he can do it, then I can do it. Great. If it's sad, sack, inspiration stuff. So as a great example. And I'm in the ad world.

Wheelchair guy gets pushed by his mom in the back of a TV commercial. Disability check, right? We're now, we know diversity. That's silly to me, right? Like just putting that in there because now you are, you're marginalizing them as well versus what I said to Penzoil when they called me. I was like there's a difference between me being a race car driver that happens to be in a wheelchair versus a guy in a wheelchair that's a race car driver sounds very, very fine, a very fine difference. It's actually a massive

difference, right? Because I do want to be seen as a race car driver. So is this going back to the conversation where we had about identity, how people sometimes make the anti-vax thing their identity you don't want to be your disability as your identity oh i'll take the disability all the time but it's how it's treated in the media because when you do wheelchair first it becomes a sad sack story it becomes this pity story becomes this yay raw story right when i'd rather be bad ass story right oh he's in a chair badass right that he can do this um still wheelchair still me still race car driver but one's coming out from the cocked head the awe like i feel so bad bad for you perspective, good job for being a race car driver and the other one's coming from

an empowering perspective. That's the importance to me. Yeah, I feel like a lot of this comes from the brain trying to simplify things from limited information. And it's good that our brains do that because it would be difficult to function the real world without simplifying basic things. So part of that, like if you said between me and you, if we achieved the same thing, people might give you more credit because they assume you went through more. But even that might not be true, right? So someone, just because they don't have a disability, could have faced tremendous invisible challenges that might be invisible to you. But now on the flip side, if people... And that's their wheelchair. Exactly. So they might have a different wheelchair that's not visible to the general

problem. So you don't want the wheelchair to be the sole wheelchair in the conversation. I'm okay with being the sole wheelchair in the conversation as long as it's not from a context of pity. Right? That's where it goes. It is the where am I starting. Do you view the pity as a is a negative emotion that people have? Massively. Because it's also where how people then relate to you, how people talk to you. They talk to me slower.

What? Like, are you talking to me? I'm the only one here and you're talking, oh, should I speak slower to you? Right? And that, I'm like, why are you talking slower? I don't understand. Because every person in a wheelchair has cognitive issues as well.

So I get, I do also understand that having had an accident of 15, I didn't know the difference between a paraplegic, quadriplegic, or hemiplegic, or a spina bifida, whatever. I didn't understand. So I can't actually expect anyone else to understand. Right. What I want is that people listen and then they just, when I tell them and accept what I'm saying is kind of normal. That's number one. Number two is, and here is where I get a little controversial, and that is, I think everybody should ask questions. I don't think that's kind of, I think that's great

advice. I got my ass handed to me. By who? Yeah. So there was somebody who is black who, when I was giving a speech at the Hammerstein ballroom, and I said, you should ask questions. And she raised her hand, she said, I'm really sick and tired of answering questions. And the difference is, for me, it's 30 years for her long legacy of answering questions. And I could hear in her voice just like it's tiring. And I never, ever under, never took that account into consideration. Sure.

And she's totally right. We ended up, I wish I had this, this response when I was on stage, but I didn't. And that is, unfortunately, you still need to stay tired. And the reason why is there's so much misinformation out there, right? The Michigan militia loves you. Jews. They love Jews. They just want them in a different place and maybe to die, right? Like they're, but when you go to their website, go Jew, right? Like, so now if somebody's Jewish

going, you need to go do your research and I don't want to answer your questions. Wow, I'm really scared of that. Right. Like I'm really scared of the answers that they might get. Or I'm a quadriplegic versus a paraplegic. Are they going to start looking up paraplegic? Are they going to start looking up para and quad and then come up with spina bifida or something else just because we look the same. So it's tiring and it's not for everybody. I think that the, so in the beginning of the conversation I asked you, how do you hold these two thoughts in your mind at the same time? And you rightfully explain that one is a micro thought in a single moment in time and one

is a more macro view. So I think macro view asking questions is good. Microview, you're allowed to get tired of people asking questions. like you're just allowed to be frustrated and annoyed and tired of people so i think it both can exist there too i totally agree i would also use the word context again yeah right where if somebody at a racetrack asks me can i get out of my car in 14 seconds you know for egress it's context right can i race with somebody else do i have the stamina to race with somebody else context somebody randomly comes up to me in a shopping center and goes, how fast can you get out of a car?

What? Yeah. Like, what are you talking about? Sure. And those become obtrusive questions, right? I always get annoyed about being the token, right? So the guy in the room that like when we were talking about consumers and whatnot, they'd be like, and what do people in wheelchairs think?

I'm like, I can tell you what I think. Yeah. Right. But pretty sure there are other people in chairs that think differently, right? or somebody who's gay or somebody's black. Like, what do all black people think? What do you, how is that a question you're asking me? And that's because of tokenism, right?

Because we just kind of go, you speak for the population because you're all the same. You're not all the same, right? And but if there's context to it, there's a reason for asking, then I think things are appropriate. So I think we're both in agreement where we're finding that middle ground, right?

Where it's, why are you asking? And then I'm okay with answering the question. Yeah, especially for me as a doctor, when I walk into a room, a lot of times I don't know what to expect, especially working in an urgent care setting where you don't know your patients, you're coming in. If I don't ask the question, it's going to just be a lot more awkward if I don't ask the question, or someone will get offended because I'll do something that will be an assumption. And if you assume, you make an ass out of you and me. And I got to tell you the amount of assumptions that were made about me.

and then things that consequently happened after that is why I have the perspective I do. What are some of those assumptions? So early in my career, I had an interview with somebody more senior to me and I nailed the interview. Nailed it. Totally me.

Didn't get the job. Okay, it happens. Years later, I was out for drinks with this person and I actually became more senior to this person at that point. And I had said to them, I'm just really curious, why didn't you hire me?

And the person said, well, I didn't think you can travel as much as strategists needs to travel. And I didn't think I'd be allowed to ask that question. From a hiring standpoint, people are so scared about asking different questions, right? And can you do this? Can you not do this?

that to me is like you don't go to Alaska I won't go to Alaska go I want to go chop down some trees without them going can you walk out there because I don't know how you're going to get there right appropriate contextual question right same guy in an airport just says can you walk like not contextual question so she she did not hire me because she thought she was not allowed to ask the question now she was allowed to actually but she made an assumption on my behalf now sliding doors things ended up being okay right and and i'm very happy with how they ended up but that was one of those moments i just wish somebody said hey we got to travel a lot what's your scoop can you travel it's that simple so there have been many you know racing is a great one

people make assumptions that i can't get out of the car fast enough for egress if something happens on track. Ask me. Just ask me and I'll show you the video, right? Like I can get out real fast. Assumptions, I'm more scared of assumptions than I am of being tired of asking, answering questions. Because the assumptions are way more deadly and maybe I'm deadly are disproportionately affect me their assumptions than it does them. so ask the question that's a good point to remember we didn't talk about yet the the racing journey how did that come about what journey were you always into racing age 15 before the accident no i'd been pulled over i've refrained from saying how many times i've been pulled over let me give

you this example take the amount of times you think i've been pulled over and go four times with that Multiply by four. Before the accident? No, I was 15 when I'm my accident, right? I don't know what the Connecticut rules are for driving. 16 years old, right? And so, no, unfortunately, up until even last year. But I get out of all of them because I'm in a wheelchair

and I pour water on my lap and say I couldn't find a handicapped bathroom. So there's that. Really hoping that doesn't make it into the cut. Just saying. I think it should. Yeah, it should. Every cop is going to be like, so, where's the water bottle of? No, I have a pension for speed, and I actually don't know anything about cars. And I mean that legitimately, where only two years ago I found out what a radiator is.

And most people chuckled that, and I go, well, I never had a dad that was super interested in cars, and I never had friends that turned wrenches, right? So there was really no reason for me to understand the dynamics and the functionality of a car. Driving I always knew I was good at, right? And I always drove fast, but I always drove clean, and I always, my brain just works that way. So when we move full time to Sharon Connecticut, upstate Connecticut, which is near Lime Rock, which is one of the most strategic racetracks in this country. And on our anniversary, my wife got me a track day, which, small side note, same anniversary, same gift I gave her motorcycle lessons.

I mean, the perfectness right there, right? I'm kind of like, either that is like, I hope you die. I hope you die. And I hope our life insurance is good, up to date, right? Is it? Okay, good. You can go do it. So she got me that.

And I had never, if you can't see it, you can't be it, right? So I'd never seen anybody in a chair racing before. It just wasn't a thing that I knew was possible. And she got it for me and was like, go. And Don, my first instructor there, he treated me like anybody else. There's, it was. And at that point, you already were doing hands only driving? Well, so I've been using my hands to drive since day one, right?

Since 16 years old. And so what's the process of learning that? Like, I'm not familiar with it at all. Yeah, I mean, they're handicapped driving schools, right? They're driving schools that have hand control cars in them. It's kind of that simple. And how does the accelerator break work? Yeah, so on mine specifically, I turn for gas and I push for brake on my right hand and then I steer with my left.

But because I have no dexterity in my left hand, I have kind of two posts that go up on the side of my wrist and then one that goes up inside of my finger. So I can do a full turn without ever releasing the steering wheel. So I'm racing with one arm and I'm brake throttling with one arm. Okay. So. And is that customizable to depending on the level of, let's say, your cervical spine injury? Because some people might have flexion injuries, extension injuries. You can change that around.

Let's call it anything C5, C6 or lower, you know, is all kind of the same, right? They're for everyday cars that I also use in my race car, although I adapted mine a little bit. But they're all the same, right? There are guys like Robbie Wickems who have, he races, he's, Pro racer, who have these elaborate setups that are $30,000, $40,000, take two weeks to install. Might cost $3,000 and takes two hours to install. So I can actually go to any race team and race with anybody, which is pretty, pretty great. So I had had my Audi that, you know, one of our street cars that I just went there and

tried a track day. Which Audi? This one was the S6. Great car. not a horrible car. I'm an Audi Porsche and Volkswagen Loyalist. And Lamborghini, right? Pardon? And Lamborghini. Yeah. And if they want to give me a Bentley, I'll be that too. Well, no, I'm saying it's in the same family. It's in the same family. I'll take whatever percentage off, preferably a bigger percentage. I'll take it. But I, so I did my first track date.

And there was, there was a precarious moment on the track. And where, where it should have, have stopped me from wanting to race. We got into the pits, I'm pretty sure Don was thinking, like, well, he's just gonna quit now, right? Like that, that was something that would wiggle most people out of the, let's do this in the future. And I took off my helmet and I said, I need to buy a race car. And the reason why is it is the only sport on the planet

that makes us equal to able-bodied people. If you think about it, car doesn't care that I'm in a chair, No one on track knew that I was in a chair, unless they saw me in the paddock beforehand. The freedom of that, the liberation of actually competing against everybody, not just a subsect of humanity, right, other people in chairs.

That emotion was overwhelming. And look, I'm somebody who, I mean, I say it fairly quickly, but I did 12 marathons in 12 months. I'm the only quadriplegic that's a rescue scuba diver. I skydive. I do a lot of fun stuff. This was the first time where I was like,

I'm equal. Then immediately I go, screw equal. I want to be first. But that moment really meant something to me. And less than a month later, I had my first track car. Wow, what was your first track car? An M3 Lime Rock edition. Okay.

Coincidental at Lime Rock, because again, I didn't know anything about cars, right? So here I've got this Lime Rock edition showing up at Lime Rock and people are waving at me, and I'm like, I know I'm good looking, but like this is just undue, undue adulation that I'd never experienced before. Yeah, because you're driving an orange car

that's a Lime Rock edition at Lime Rock, right? There are only two under those. And that's how I got into it. Into racing, it was the understanding that you get to be equal to other people. You and I will never do a marathon in the same division. You and I will never play tennis in the same division. You and I will never play basketball,

division you and I will never ski in the same division racing I'll destroy you racing doesn't matter right that is epic and that's why I had to start the just dance foundation and do the show because I had to show people that we are only different from a physicality standpoint we are not different from an accomplishment standpoint and do I have to be creative with with how I set things up Yes, but I would also argue that every car is representative of their driver. Every car is different, right? They look the same from the outside, but every race car driver sets their car up differently. So do I.

I just happen to use hand controls. That means a lot to me. What's the attitude like from other drivers, open, joking, hating, jealous, angry, what emotions are you? Yes. All of it. I have people that are pissed when I beat them. You have no idea. Like they're they're more pissed than if you weren't in a wheelchair.

Yeah, I mean. Because I mean everyone's pissed when someone beats them. No, no, no. They are, they are, I've heard things like, so I leave my paddock, my wheelchair in the paddock. I've heard from friends that were standing next to people that when I'm pulling into the paddock, they go, he better not be getting into that thing, referencing my wheelchair. I pull up next to it and I hop into the paddock.

chair and the rage right but these are also people that get angry at like women drivers like it's so silly you know it's so silly um but then and i'd say for the most part it is a very welcoming group very welcoming group they are interested in how i drive and they they want to come up and see and i love that right because i want to go to their car and see how their stuff is set up as well right no they don't have hand controls but they have other things that i'm really curious about um so for the most part, that being said, there was a league that would not let me participate with them because they said that I couldn't get out fast enough. And my response was the average age of your driver is 100 years old, 300 pounds pre-diabetic. You better see if they can get out of the car

quick enough, right? And watch how quickly your participation drops. But then I had other leagues like international GT that said, well, I don't care what your hair color is, right? Like being in a wheelchair as insignificant as a hair color, right? That they were super welcoming. I think as long as you can prove that you can drive well and that you can get out of the car so you're not endangering anyone else like corner workers game on right and so uh it was a very interesting very interesting experience getting into it i will give you a fun story love those uh this is the why tors and a stupid story they i get my m3 and they i get my m3 and they I said race breaks are really hard.

Okay, race brakes are really hard. So I go do Auto Cross, which is at Lime Rock, you know, a lot of tight turns. You're learning how to balance the car. And I'm jamming on the brakes, jamming and jamming on the brakes. Great day. Come home and my right foot starts to swell. And I have no idea why.

Oh, no. Something got caught. And I happen to have a GoPro. That was right behind me. We looked down my right leg slid under the brake pedal. and I'm jamming down and I broke my foot in two places. I can't feel it. So sweet, cool.

Now, lessons learned. So the lesson learned is now we Velcro are, I Velcro my legs to the car. Okay. Now, in a half inch Velcro, so if I need to be extracted from the car because of an incident, it'll just rip it'll rip immediately, right? Because they won't know that it's on there. But G-Forces aren't that hard that it's going to rip that type of. a Velcro, but enough to keep my legs for not moving around. Lessons learned. Sweet.

Did you feel like the brake was underperforming when you were on Autocross? No, because they said that the brakes are really hard. So you were like, oh, well, yes. So I'm like, this is hard. This is harder. Harder. Right? Like, bang. Oh, it stops now. Yeah. You know. It's funny. I had a similar incident. You broke your foot? No. It's actually not similar at all, but it's similar in this sense. I have a driver's sim, and when I first got these new pedals, it was pedals that were supposed to mimic

what a GT car is like better. No, they're, it starts with an M. SimQ, oh. It's not SimQ, but not Moxie. Whatever, I forgot the name of it. Moza. Yeah, yeah, sure. Moza race pedals.

So I'm jamming it. I'm like, Jesus, jamming these so hard. I opened the pedal up after, because apparently you could change out the little pads to add or lessen the pressure. And I realized the pad like completely squished itself and it was on a different angle. And I was just destroying the pedals. I was pressing them. So clearly when you're learning how to do pressure, it's easy to overdo it or underdo it. Well, I think it's interesting. In fact, even with SIM, like there's so much stimulus coming at you when you're racing, right?

It's not just, I'm on the highway and I'm looking for my next exit, right? The amount of stimulus is so complex that there are certain moments where you just decide not to prioritize, you know, certain feelings. You weren't prioritizing that because you were looking forward. You were looking at being safe. You're looking like gym and just go. I need 90% pressure. Exactly. Trail, trial, trail. Yeah. And so now my team is like, is the car on fire? No. Are the wheels still on? Yes. Keep going. Right. Like, so we have to focus in different ways. So even from a sim perspective, I completely understand that for sure. So what, uh, What was the goal of filming all of this as a series?

What have you hoped to achieve? And what is going to be the outcome on July 30th, July 31st? 31st, yeah. So I had been working with Penzoil who I had said to them, or we had had this discussion, that the majority of the stuff in the auto world is all for car nerds and machismo and whatnot. I'm like, I'm not that guy.

and all racing stuff is all especially for disabled either somebody that was able body got disabled and now their comeback or it's just they're great at racing let's do a documentary on them I said there's nobody that looks like me and I don't just mean wheelchair I mean like somebody that doesn't know much about cars but is still interested is still proactive it has still has an opinion um and I'm getting into racing Why wouldn't you follow that, right? So we started looking for, for partners to do that. And that's when, you know, we started filming that show, the show.

And the, it was, it was interesting because I had went through from just training to time trials, time trials to my first race, and then an endurance race. And that was interesting because. right before a week before my first race at Lime Rock, I was training and I hit a wall at over 60 miles an hour broke my femur, three ribs and puncture my lung. On a Yelp review, I'd give that a one

because you can't give it a zero, but not great. Benefit of wheelchair didn't feel breaking the worst bone in your body. So check. But that was, look, there are only two types of drivers, ones that have crash and ones that will.

And now I got that out of the way, but that happened right before my first race, a week before. That delayed things for a little bit. I then, so we've done Watkins Glen, Lime Rock, Virginia International, Daytona, where I did 24-hour. And then the 24-hour classic. And then World Racing League Finals at Coda, Circular the Americas, the Formula One track.

And the end goal of why I went into this is the easy thing to say to you is to inspire people and chairs to, sorry, motivate. Good catch. The goal of the show is to, I'll start again. The easiest way to look at this is I get to motivate people in chairs to. to go race. But it's far greater than that. Because everybody's car is different and because we all have creativity in our cars, I just hope that people see knee racing with arms as another thing that is creative. Just a creative way at it. And I want to motivate people to go, well, I didn't think I could do X, but I can. Not even car racing, just in general. And it was an, it was a

interesting experience because here we got my wife, you know, saying what she thought, you know, and bless her heart going through, you know, a crash like that and, but she's hyper supportive. So all in all, I think the series hopefully will get people to stop thinking of a no and more thinking of how do I do it. And, you know, and, you know, But secondarily, how do I fail and then keep going? Because again, I think failure is awesome. Yeah. And there were a lot of things I tried that didn't work.

Okay, onward and upward from there. Yeah. Do you think just hands is a bit of a misnomer? Tell me more. Just arms? Because you said you're arm driving? I'm driving with my hands. But are you driving with your hands or are you using the arm muscles?

Is the hand not part of the arm? Do we have a doctor in the house? Because I need a doctor. You said you were driving with your arms. I can't. I mean, you can spin all you. I'm just asking for the name of the sake of the accuracy. My, my, I have data that shows that my hand is on the brake and throttle.

My hand is on the steering wheel. And then my handbone is connected to my forearm bone. Forearm, connected to my upper arm bone. So, yeah, just hands work. By the way, we went through an exhaustive thing of like, is it only hands? No. Is it, you know, like things get really handsy real quick with Just Hands or with the hand world. So Just Hands was also the easiest way of not getting into trouble.

Fair. You mentioned your wife quite a number of times throughout our conversation. She's amazing. Tell us about this love story. When I went down to Florida to be a judge of an advertising competition for college students, and she was one of them and I looked to the judge to my right and I said, I have to meet her.

And weeks later, we were together and we've now been together for 18 years. Wow. And she is just as imperfectly perfect as I want her to be. Like we, you know, no one's perfect, right? But for me, she is. And she is smart.

She is funny. She doesn't take me she doesn't just say yes to everything she supports everything i do but that is i think where we are perfect together i support everything she does she's a former triathlet like she runs six to 12 miles a day well right she uh is a partner at one of the big four consultancies and is killing it she is one of the sweetest humans on the planet and uh i get i mean i'm i'm emotional thinking about the person i get to spend every day with right like which is we're very fortunate and uh i i legitimately could not do this without her because there have been times where as positive i've been in this

conversation, there are times when you go, I just don't know. Not I can't, but I don't know. And to have somebody that goes, okay, get over, like, let's figure it out. The value in that person, to not give an answer, to not demand that you do something, but be there to push a little bit, you know, and give you the confidence or give you the courage, right, to go do something. We were in the emergency room when I broke my femur after the crash and I said, baby, I promise, I won't do this anymore. And she goes, you're so hopped up on adrenaline right now. Do not, do not say that. Let's talk tomorrow. And I didn't bring it up. She brought up the next day and she said, I think you need to keep doing this. I'm,

laid up right now like things are hurting and you're telling me to keep doing this and her two responses were one you love it and you're good at it and two if this had happened on the street you'd be dead right like because these race cars are built to be to be very safe um she's like but you love doing it why would you stop doing that

I mean I could have said because I almost died like you know that that might have been an appropriate response but we we support each other in what we want to do going, look, you're hyper smart. You're going to make the right decisions. I'm going to be there to support that one. That's it. Did you watch the movie Goodwill Hunting?

One of my favorite movies. Same. Do you remember the scene that Robin Williams talks about when he first met his wife? And I didn't mind that I missed the home run. Yeah. It's 100% that. What? Because I can't ask Robin Williams that.

obviously because he passed but also because he was reading lines what did you feel in that moment that you decided i need to meet this person this person is something special to me i don't have any words to answer that actually i think it's just a feeling that you you have you look at someone and you go that's the thing And as eloquent as I'd like to think I am, you know, with my words, thing is probably not an appropriate thing to say, but like there's just a thing there. And when you don't want to hang out with anybody because you just want to be alone, but that person's not there and that makes you sad, that says a lot.

Right. Like we go on vacations by ourselves, right? we support that but then we do a lot of vacations together because she doesn't want to be able to race track all the time right so I'll go do that you know and she'll do her things I think um as long as one supports and then doesn't have any expectations in response so I could sit next to her for days and just not say anything

and I'm more happy than if I were alone that says something to me so she's your biggest fan terms of racing or is that you the arrogance if i say it's me uh damn right it's me i'm awesome uh is she my biggest fan she's my biggest supporter and and i think there's a difference between that fandom and support are a little bit different um she's there to support whatever choices i even if I were to stop tomorrow. I think she would support that.

I think she would go, you just wasted a lot of money, you know, just to quit. But she would support that too, right? So a fan would go to every event. She does not. When you first initially met to early dating, any awkward interactions while being on a wheelchair,

courting someone? What's that thing? It's a very, very good question, very astute question. I love being in a chair and dating. Well, formerly dating before I was married, okay? I love it because I have a filter that nobody has. You start dating somebody and then six months later you find out that they don't like people in wheelchairs or they don't like something, right? You're like, well, you're just a bad person, right?

I have that immediately. You either like me or you don't, or you want to date me or you don't. I don't. I love that filter because I don't want to wait six months to find out that you don't like people, right? That you have biased against people, that you, you know, there's a subsect of humanity that you don't want to be next to. No. Like I love that, right? I would say 80% of the world's people, or females at least, that I've encountered are fine with it. You know, there's an interesting theory. if you will. So there are three reasons why people and chairs are interesting to able-bodied folks, especially from a dating perspective. One is especially females are more interested after personality than they are after looks. So I think anybody who goes out in a chair must have a strong personality, right?

It's not that easy to just go out or they think it's not that easy. So a lot of people in chairs stay home. So you must have a strong personality. you must have something, right? That's good. Two is they're curious. Women are way more curious than they, than men are. Right.

So there's a curiosity involved in every aspect that's definitely going through your head right now in all the aspects. And third is we're not threatening. I can't physically do something to a woman, right? like physically fat i'm a very safe choice right very safe choice okay uh and then you get me in the sack and i become devil like it's it's those three things are just things that i've heard over time that you know dating somebody chairs is has and brings to the table but i love the fact

that if they don't want anything to do with me does it hurt one's feelings maybe a little bit but but as an able-body person, if somebody doesn't like you, you kind of feel bummed about that too, right? And then you always make up the excuses, oh, they don't like me because I'm wearing glasses or because I've got a white shirt on, right? Or because whatever, we come up these dumb stories to justify oneself and to make oneself feel better.

I've got a great screener. And I kind of like that. And that got me to finding the perfect human for me. That's really cool. I'm happy that you have that. That's a great thought, Because for me, as someone who's in the social media space, I find when you have popularity, because I, again, I grew up as a regular person in terms of not having fame.

And then as the social media stuff developed, I saw how people started acting differently. And obviously it's not the same as if I had a disability, but it almost worked in the opposite way. People assumed I had superpowers or they became interested solely because of the popularity. I don't just mean from dating world. I just mean even from communicating with average individuals. And it almost worked the opposite way, where it felt like people didn't like me for me, they almost liked something else.

Versus on your side, you're like, well, if they like me right now, I know that they're already a better human. Versus for me, I'm like, well, do you really like me? Are you a good human? Are you just liking the fame? Which I understand. I actually find very, there's a crazy duality for you because I can understand that from a big screen perspective.

You are creating a character. You're playing a character. You are that thing that we want you to be. And so I'm falling in love with that person. But your ethos is you asking questions, right? And you're not playing a character. You're not putting that ethos on. So the irony of public notoriety without the cloak of what happens on screen must be even weirder for you. It's weird because then some people actually know real facts. I yes yeah and not salacious facts because you're actually saying them right versus what happens on the big screen it's like did you hear what he you know yeah I can I mean look I'm the fame that I'm gonna get it's just crazy you know like people are gonna run after me well tell me about the fame that you've experienced I mean you obviously have a social media presence you are doing this series how has it changed anything if it's changing I'll say if I may I'm gonna alter that question a little bit, and that is it's not about fame. It's about being spotted. You can see my profile all a mile away, right? You know it's me at the track. Everybody knows my name because I'm the guy

in the chair. Easily spotted. Somebody has probably said, hey, you know, that guy drives with his hands, you know, that kind of stuff. They know me. So their conversation to me is always incredibly familial. Now I'm like, hey, so I've actually changed from nice to meet you, do nice to see you, because you can say that to people that you don't know or do know, right? So it's always nice to see you. Sorry if I met you before, but that's what you're going to get. And so it's weird because they're also creating assumptions as to who I am, what I can do. So it's not a fame thing necessarily, but it's an assumption thing. based on what they've heard.

Sometimes that works in one's favor. Sometimes that works against one. You know, it's a weird thing. Fun story. Broke my femur. I'm in the emergency room. Sorry, in the OR. About to get my surgery.

Two things happen. One, I said, well, you're about to do the left leg. Can you do the right leg two? Because I'm pretty sure I'm going to crash again. Let's just fortify it. He didn't find that. not amusing. But the anesthesiologist leans over and he goes, I know you, excuse me. He goes, you drive an E92 Lime Rock edition at Lime Rock, don't you? And I'm like, this is weird. Yes,

I do. And he goes, I follow you on Instagram. I'm like, so if you kill me, you have to leave a comment on my Instagram. Be like, sorry you died, bro. We did all we could. You know, like, but that was a weird moment of somebody going, I know you. I'm like, you're about. to do weird stuff to me under the knife, like weird moment, but kind of cool at the same time. Yeah. It shows how small the world can be sometimes. So small, right? So small.

You talked about assumptions just now. What's the worst misconception that people can have of seeing someone driving a race car while in a wheelchair? You know, that's a great question because no one ever puts a fine point on why they don't want to be on track with me. The one thing is egress, right? so I get that I can do that. Fine, I've proven it.

But nobody has ever said, here's why I don't want to do it. Which is silly, right? Because it's like, well, I don't want to race with women. Why? They could do the exact same thing. And by the way, women are fundamentally better drivers than men because they actually accept lessons and they want to learn where men are like, me strong, me go fast, right?

Like, and they don't want to learn. So, but there's never a just, as to why you don't want a woman to drive or why you don't want someone who's disabled to drive. The egress is probably the biggest issue. Other than that, I couldn't, I don't know the answer to that, which is actually sad, right? Because there are those preconceived notions that he just can't.

Why can't he? Because he can't. Why can't he? Because he can't. That this is a circle that doesn't make sense to me, right? Again, what I'm hoping the show will show that you want me to do an endurance race at CODA in a GT4 club sport MR that has manual breaks to it? Yeah, I will.

In my head, I'm going, there's no way I'm doing this. There's no way with their cameras on me, so I better go do this. It's a very fair question. I don't know what they're... What about outside of the racing world, day to day? Tell me more. What misconceptions do you think people have of you? That I can't do so.

I'm not smart enough that I can't get to different places, that my life is so complicated that I can't do what they are expecting me to do. But there's something even bigger to that, though. And that is that I think they're just scared. of saying the wrong thing to me. There's a really weird decorum that happens around me where people will go, why don't we go walk over? I mean, mozy over there. I'm like, when's the last time you mozied, right? Like, are we in boardwalk empire? Like, let's go take a stroll. Like, I don't change my colloquial terms, right? I will still say to you, let's go walk over there, right? Let's

take a walk. I'm physically not walking, but my colloquials don't change. My colloquial terms don't change. But if you were to say to anybody else, let's go walk over there. But if you were to say to anybody else, let's go walk over there, you wouldn't challenge the word walk, which means to me that when you're talking to me, there's always something in your mind about worrying about offending me or not offending me, right? Imagine bringing that into the work world, that people are nervous that that might say something wrong or what if he can't do X? We can't ask him. You shouldn't ask him. So I think it's just a fear of not knowing. Should people not have that fear? What should it be replaced with. I will ask anybody any question if the job needs to get done. Can you do this? You're my

doctor, or if you're my doctor. So I broke my arm. Do you know how to do surgery to put together my arm? Yes or no? If the answer is no, then we are good. I'm moving on, right? Fair question. I want to know if somebody can do something, just like they should know, can I travel? Can I do the job? Even smarts-wise, am I smart enough to do the job? Be damned if you're going to get me to do anything mathematical, right, or anything clinical. Hell no. Does that have anything to do with my disability?

Zero. But you need to ask that. So not being afraid to ask certain questions, what about the fear of saying something like, oh let's walk over there oh my god i said walk i'm not i hope i'm not offending should that fear be there and how should one act in lieu of that fear okay i love this question because to me it's about the reaction so to me if if somebody says something that i think is on the bubble of discriminatory or on the bubble of wrong i will i will actually say what did you mean by that i need to give you the moment to answer that because you might not even know that you said something wrong right so i used

to say hun a lot honey hey hun until i had somebody turn around and be like how dare you call me honey whoa sorry in the south that's just a word that's being used now i'm not from the south but that that's a term of endearment right i didn't know now had she turned around and said what did you mean by that I would have been like, well, the same thing. What up, bro? What up, dude? I didn't mean anything by it, right? And so I understand that words are incredibly loaded,

and sometimes you need to give somebody the permission to explain what they're talking about. You can tell very quickly, though, if somebody is being derogatory. Because if they say it in a malicious way, you can tell that their response is going to be in a malicious way. Or they're not going to be able to dodge the response, right?

So all day long, If somebody messes up in front of me, I will actually normally joke about it because I also want to deflate the room. The room is so heavy at that moment, right? And just let's make a joke about that and let's address it and go, by the way, pretty sure you didn't mean it that way. Don't worry about it. All good, right?

That's my responsibility, I believe, or I take on that responsibility because I don't want the other person to feel bad for the rest of the conversation or our relationship. right you know and by the way we all get to mess up yeah we all get to say stupid stuff right like at what point also is what word okay we started the conversation with with terminology right idiot is mental retardation we call people idiots now but that used to be like the N word or cripple right that was a very bad word cripple really bad retard you're not allowed to say retard but the the clinical definition is mental retardation that's confused using, right? So we do put people on their, on their heels a little bit from a terminology

perspective. But again, I want to give people the benefit of the doubt that they weren't referring to me in a negative and a derogatory context. But we're using words that they felt were right at that moment. And now it's my turn to say, maybe a little different. That's fair. You talked to us about the series. Tell us about the foundation. So, three months after the first time on track is when I started Just Hands Foundation. That's how pivotal and how life-changing it was for me. That three months in, I went back to my wife and I said, we need to buy another race car.

And she's like, over my dead body. We're buying another race car. I'm like, what's the loophole? Actually, I said to her then, oh, this car is not going to be for me to drive. She's like, even more so, no. Like, you know, what? I'm like, but I've been so fortunate where other people have supported me in marathons or in sailing or in any other sports that I've skiing, any other sports that I've done,

I'm in an incredibly fortunate position that I get to help other people now. So I had to start Just Hands Foundation. So people get to experience what I get to experience because the disability tax is real. And here's what the disability tax is. You want to go do a marathon. You buy $80 running shoes. You walk out your front door. You're doing a marathon for $80.

You want to go play basketball. You buy a basketball. You go to a public court. You start shooting hoops. We buy a $2,000. marathon chair. We buy a $4,000 basketball chair, right? So any, the barrier of entry for somebody in a chair is really high.

Now do that inside motorsports and we do both mountain biking and we just started mountain biking and motors and car sports, motor sports, the expense there is astronomical. But I had to start that in order to get people in and here's how I can define success. 60 drivers last year, 20 of them bought their own track. car when's the last time you did something once and you're like i'm gonna pay 10 20 50 100 grand to do it again yeah i'll wait right never you know that just shows how amazing it is and if i may i'll tell you another story and that is the second driver that was there that we ever had his wife was there with his nine-year-old son and four-year-old daughter and she approached me with her tears in her eyes

and she said that sons see their fathers as heroes when my husband's When my husband landed in a wheelchair, it was blatantly obvious that he lost his hero. He started treating my husband differently in disrespect, like just differently. Now my son is running after my husband saying, I want to be like daddy. I want to be a race car driver. You brought back hero to my husband. I was like, I'm not crying, you're crying. That was a moment where here I thought like, well, I just make people go fast.

And I've heard multiple stories like that of families coming and going, I can't even do that, right? I'm able body. I can't even do that. That, I mean, that's just so worthwhile. Sure. It's just so amazing to be able to do that. And I don't have any kids that I know of.

And I would never expect that that would have been one of the outcomes. It's amazing. right it's just it's absolutely amazing um so we partnered with lime rock and so they're a huge supportive of ours they let us use the track they let us keep the car there um we started with a Porsche came in and we're because of Volkswagen we're now adding a Volkswagen GTI which we are unveiling at the the premiere of the show on on July 31st in Connecticut um we are We're so fortunate to be able to offer this. And then we also started mountain biking because it's got an engine on it

or an assisted motor. We're just growing it. And it's incredible how it's growing. You know, to have the support of Pensville, to have the support of Volkswagen, to have supportive mobility innovations that helps me with hand controls. The people that come out that just want to help is humbling. Is the only word I can give for that.

without them were nothing and so that's uh that's why i'm excited for the show to come out because hopefully it'll give visibility to the charity to the foundation um which is pretty going to be pretty great how can people support either by volunteering or financially yeah we we can always use people from volunteer perspective, the biggest thing is financial, right? Our financial gap, like, it's almost $1,000 a day to run the program. That's not an inconsequential amount of money. And we only accept $50 from the driver. We are, again, to have the support of Penzo and Volkswagen is nothing short and I'm leaving I'm leaving just so many people out like all the people that are running through my head right now you know that I want to thank is unfortunate because we don't

have the time right and and we wouldn't be doing what we're doing without them so where do people make a financial contribution so just hands dot org there's a donate button or reach out to us if you want to get around the the the paying for the fee of whatever you know PayPal and Venmo and all that stuff is but we that that's how they donate to our foundation Awesome. And where can people follow along for the journey? On Instagram, I'm at Torsten F Gross. And on YouTube, we're at Just Hands. Amazing. So people follow along. And today, I'd love to make a $10,000 donation to the Just Hands Foundation to keep supporting the mission. And I'd love to join you at Lime Rock. Bring one of my cars and race along with you. I think that would be so fun. Can't move on from that quickly. That's, that's, that's, thank you.

Of course. No, thank you for, because I think it often heroes that are confident, and I know you said you're not machismo, I feel like you are, and I feel like you're a confident gentleman that deserves the praise of starting a foundation that is helping so many people. And in ways that you probably don't even see. And I know that as someone who is on social media, and I see how content can impact lives across the world. And I think what you're doing phenomenal and I hope people learn from that. I appreciate that and thank you. And I look forward to destroying you on track.

Like, I'm not going to take it easy. You're going to feel so bad about yourself. I'm also preparing to become a race car driver, not professionally, but in the Ferrari Challenge race series. Oh, you're one of those duches. Cool. I am. So tell me more because you better have multiple cars behind you because you go into each other

all the time. One of my instructors is a Ferrari Challenge. coach, because I'm doing Porsche's Sprint Challenge next year. Okay. And tell me more with your own car or with somebody else's car. So for the first year, you have to do Corso Poloto, which is like their school. They have multiple levels. I'm finishing the last one in Laguna Seca in September, at which point I have to make

the decision, do I buy my own challenge card to race in the challenge series next year? And I think I will. And I don't have a lot of track experience. So far I've raced, I race Cota with my team. dad. I took him for Father's Day with the Audi School, actually. That was really fun. I went to Sonoma with Ferrari Sport. I did thermal with Ferrari Evo. And then actually this weekend, I have Ferrari Sport again with one of my colleagues, Luis Espina, who was a doctor on this channel as well in Montreblanc in Canada. Love that track. Never been there before. So very excited for that. And then

obviously Laguna Secrets finish off the year. So I'm excited to do Lime Rock, though. We've got a So what kind of cars do you have? I have a Pista, a 458 special, a Roma, a 360 Modena, a Raveldo, Lamborghini, and 296. So none of those numbers mean anything to me because I don't know anything about cars. Let me ask the question again. They're all Ferraris or one Lamborghini. Okay, so they're all Ferraris.

Yeah. Got it. I'm a fan boy. obviously if not you doish fanboy yeah douche fanboy or else you're doing really weird shit with your purchase behavior um so bring one of those up to a limrock drivers club day the i went from just doing hpd e's high performance driver education to becoming a member of limerick drivers club and i'm now an instructor there and it is it will fundamentally change your drive style when you are not doing the classes that you're doing we have five hours of open track time

with pro instructors that what's really nice that maybe they're doing this in the schools that you're doing but you can literally go out for two laps come in change the pound pressure like in the back by one pound go back out try that right and then keep playing with that because the problem is the track changes over an hour right so if you started to do the tires a little differently you're not doing a one-to-one on what the change actually can do um it's it's mind-blowing that's like it's incredible on a practical note my insurance car insurance doesn't cover if i take my cars to track opentrack.com is there like a separate insurance you can get there is HPD insurance oh okay i have a really good guy that does it um okay and steve cats also big supporter of just hands by the way

so uh you know you would be supporting somebody that supports us as well awesome but and he's a race car driver really good one um but yeah you can you can either sponsor a day or you can either um pay for a day or for a year um they do not cover races though so racing is outside of like a registration fees separate no i mean literally just the insurance so on on an hPD day high performance driver education day they will insure it your car if you do a race they will not and here here's an awesome way I can tell you about lessons learned is the day that I had my crash, the next weekend I was going to have a race, so not insurable. Then I would have had two weeks off and then on the third week I would have HPD it again.

So I was like, why get insurance for one track day when I can't get, you know, when I'd have to wait a month and I'm just going to ruin a year's worth or month of insurance. So let's get it in three weeks. Yeah, went into a wall on that one and of having to rebuild a Porsche. Note to self. Don't try and pay the insurance. So, yeah, that's how you find out

that your wife is really gracious when you put a Porsche into a wall and what her response is. But yeah, definitely come up. It's so much fun up there and all really good humans up there as well. Okay, cool. You'll see me soon.

I love it. Thank you, sir. Appreciate your time. And thank you again. I appreciate it too. Of course. Torsten is such a badass and really open my eyes to what's possible out there on the racetrack. I really hope he and I can go head to head one day.

I've actually linked his foundation just hands down below and would be so grateful if you go and donate just like I did. If you enjoyed this episode, please give us a five-star review. Perhaps leave a comment as it's the best way to help us find new listeners. And make sure to follow us too so you get to see all our other episodes. Speaking of, Sophie Grace Holmes was a previous guest on the show, and her story is so interesting. She ran 36 marathons and 36 days while living with cystic fibrosis. She told me all about how she pulled it off, so scroll on back, find it, add it to your cue, and as always, stay happy and healthy.