Today’s guest is Dr. Brian Keating. Brian is a Chancellor’s Distinguished Professor of physics at the Center for Astrophysics & Space Sciences at the University of California, San Diego. He’s also a public speaker, inventor, and an expert in the study of the universe’s oldest light, the cosmic microwave background (CMB). We dive into a fascinating conversation about space, time, aliens, time travel and all kind of other things that make my head explode. Buckle up!

On being an astrophysicist:

“I was but I didn’t even think it was possible to be an astrophysicist. I thought it was like being a wizard or being an ice cream taster, jobs that people you won’t pay you for. It turns out they will pay me for this, not terribly well but I’m a state employee at the University of California. Just don’t tell the governor I would do it for free! It’s the most fun job in the world, punctuated sometimes by sheer frustration. But mostly it is incredibly fun. I get to study the universe and think about how did the universe come to be? Where is it heading? How is it evolving? What is the ultimate fate? Not just humankind but the whole universe. It really is the most thrilling thing I can think of doing.”

On what he does:

“I try to think about things how they would relate to an ordinary person. Part of the problem is that most people don’t think about it that much. I think that’s cultivated by science done by specialist people operating in a specialized environment that people can’t understand. But then we ask people for money so we can fund our research. I think it’s a vicious cycle that needs to come to an end. I am trying to demystify science and the biggest concepts in the universe. Not by dumbing it down, I never do that. Instead, I want to take people on a journey in a language that they can understand, and deconstruct these massive concepts. So for example, I will ask you Chris, what is your favourite day of the year?”

Chris: I’ll go with Christmas.

“So what is Christmas? It commemorates the birth of Jesus Christ. Although I am Jewish, but he is still a pretty good Jew. It’s not just the beginning of his life, but the entire beginning of Christianity, which benefits millions of people around the world. So it’s an origin. For me, I think about my birthday, anniversary, my kid’s birthday and think what is that? It’s an origin. If it’s your origin, you didn’t see yourself born, you have to rely on the testimony of others.”

On his early love of space:

“So what about the origin of time? From an early age I was fascinated by origin stories. How did the Earth come to be and the Moon? Eventually how did the Universe come to be? It’s a work in progress that I’m still grappling with to this day. But the more you learn, the more fascinating it gets. As an astronomer, I encountered a telescope at age 12 and it really set the course in motion for my career. My mission in life is to get every kid on Earth a telescope. Maybe one day I will have my own brand. Wherever you are in the World, you can see the same Moon craters and rings of Saturn. You can recreate the psychological emotion and feeling that Galileo had in 1609, looked at the moon and went ‘Wait. The moon has craters?’ My one takeaway is get your kids a telescope. It can inspire a career or just inspire an evening.”

On it being a daunting task:

“Yeah. Well there are all sorts of reasons that it gives me hope. You see, science, unlike The Emmys behind you Chris, or a Nobel Prize, it is not a finite gain. You won an Emmy and someone lost an Emmy. That is a finite gain and a zero sum gain in a sense. Science does have those, such as getting into a good college or winning a Nobel Prize. But at the same token, it’s an infinite gain. You can never win science and go, yeah I did it, I got it. The way I think about it is that you are on an island, and that island represents knowledge. The island can grow and get bigger, but the boundary where it encounters the ocean of ignorance gets bigger too. But the line is much bigger than the area of the island. You make progress and you win. Mother nature is receding, but sometimes she will let you see a little bit of her secret. I think those moments of discovery where no human being on Earth knew what I knew now, that is the object of a scientist. We love that kind of state of uncertainty. Because uncertainty means opportunity.” 

How old the universe is:

“We have a very accurate analysis of the Earth’s composition, what it’s made of, how many galaxies there are and how many stars there are. It has come so far in the 21 years since I was a graduate student. When I was a graduate student, we didn’t know the age of the universe, it was uncertain. It could have been 10 billion years old or 20 billion years old. There were certain objects in the universe, very old stars, whose age we knew very accurately to be, say 11 billion years. People were saying “Well that’s kind of weird, there’s a star that is older than the age of the universe?” It’s like if you were older than your dad, you would be asking mom some questions. In this case now, we know that the universe is 13,798,000,000 years old, with an uncertainty of less than a percent. In other words, it’s like I can guess your age, but imagine I guess your age, I guess the day you were born, the hour you are born, the minute you’re born, as opposed to, well, you could have been born in 1990. Or you could have been born in 1960. Like, that’s crazy. Now we know it incredibly precisely, along with a host of other cosmological fascinating properties of our universe, including what’s likely to happen to it billions of years from now.”   

On if other life out there:

“Well, it’s very, very, very fascinating to me. Because we have no evidence of life on other planets or even within our solar system as of yet. We may have hints and there’s possibilities, and there’s water and there’s carbon and oh, well, water and carbon, given enough time, it’ll make you know about, you know, bacteria pop out. Now, that’s not really as well understood as people would think. So actually, just the sheer possibility. Imagine you say, well, America is really big, right? So there’s got to be people everywhere in America, but if you’ve ever been to the desert, there’s nobody out there. If you go 20 miles from LA, and you can be somewhere and there’s nobody around. So yeah, just the sheer potential for life doesn’t by no means guarantee the existence of life. And I have some thoughts about what it would mean if we definitively found the existence of alternative life in the universe, including intelligent life. And I don’t think humans really are capable of understanding how we would react because even scientists don’t know how we would react in terms of what a mysterious phenomena like UFO is. We don’t have any unified approach to that the way we do about how particles are formed, or how galaxies are formed. It’s much more open to kind of broad speculation, even at this point.”

On the odds being high on life out there:

“Yeah. So that’s a very, very often spoken of analogy, and I think there’s some merit to it. But again, imagine there were just like three things that you needed to make to make this conversation happen. Sure, you needed a universe to come into existence. That universe had to produce certain types of elements like hydrogen and helium that comprise the very first stars that ignited in the universe. Those then grew and made heavier elements like carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, all the things that we need for life for DNA. And then imagine that the DNA, the chemicals, just pure chemicals, assembled into molecules. Those molecules eventually were like amino acids and then proteins and DNA and then those evolved. So let’s say there’s five or six, let’s say let’s call 10 different steps…

The universe started, first stars form. Then they die and second stars form, they form elements, elements form molecules, molecules form amino acids, amino acids form proteins, and this is very simplified. Then that evolves to nonsense. Then oh, by the way, the first thing is that formed were kind of like fish, and then they’re like dinosaurs. And then an asteroid had to come and kill the dinosaurs for us to really become prolific as mammals on Earth, let’s say there’s 10 of those things. Each one has a one in 1000 chance of happening by random fluctuation, natural selection, and whatever. So that’s 10, that’s 1/1000 to the 10th power, that’s smaller than that than the total number, that’s larger than the number of stars in the observable universe by a very large amount. So even though you might, there are many, many stars in the universe, there’s by no means all the conditions necessary as as input conditions like I just outlined. By the way, there’s probably like 10,000 different properties, each one with a probability of one in a million of happening by random. So we just are not equipped to handle those kinds of analyses. And so we just kind of default to, well. that’s a lot or that’s a little and that’s where we get our emotions from.”

On alternate universes:

“It’s so interesting that there are scientists now for the first time and in my understanding in human history, who say, not only is there a multiverse, like multiple universes. But for us to speak about a universe is prejudiced and biased. In other words, the natural state should be multiple universes, just like the natural state is multiple planets, multiple stars, etc. So because of that, they say no, you have to prove it’s a universe not a multiverse.”

On The Matrix being real:

There are people that have done a great amount of research and books about this. There are equally people that think about, well, let’s say that that is true, and they make what’s called a reductio ad absurdum, like a logical extrapolation. So they’ll say “Well, if that’s true, then there was somebody that could simulate that civilization.” It could be something to a matrix on a matrix on a matrix, it just matrix ad infinitum. And then at some point, you run out of particles in the universe, like, are you going to make a computer out of every single particle in the universe? Use a particle of light and a particle of matter, and it becomes absurd. So for those reasons we look at it. I should say that it’s not quite true that computers can grow, you know, exponentially, right? We only have so much material on Earth. We only have so much in this galaxy, in terms of energy. So it can’t go infinite. Like we think about this thing like a singularity, but there’s actually no physical object known to science that has an infinite Liebig value, or an infinitely small value. In other words, negative infinity or you know, zero, even a particle has some width and length to it, and so too does, the universe. It does not have any place where there’s infinite temperature, infinite density, infinite pressure, those things don’t exist, except in the human brain. In other words, if you try to type in the number one divided by zero, which is fun to do on your smartphone. I won’t ask Siri “”What’s one divided by zero?” But it’s pretty fun to hear what Siri says.

On time travel being possible:

“So in terms of physical time travel, it’s very hard to resolve these various paradoxes that come up. When you talk about time travel, the famous one is, let’s say, you go back in time Chris, and you go back 80 years ago, and you kill your great, great, great grandfather. So would you be born? Who knows? Well, maybe you would. But maybe you wouldn’t, maybe you would be totally different. So then how did you go back in time if you were killed and you never existed? So there are all these paradoxes that come up with time travel that involve what’s called causality. How does a cause lead to an effect to take place? And without knowledge of how that could be really obtained, we’re left with kind of real speculation as to whether or not it’s possible. So right now we can talk about teleportation, we can teleport certain things in space, and they can arrive, and they can have certain properties that are almost like travelling at the speed of light. So some people say, well, it’s just kind of a small jump from taking a proton and getting all of its properties, and then transmitting the 10s of trillions of trillions of trillions of protons that you’re made of and teleporting all of them. But I think we’re a long way away from being able to understand that.”

On the possibility of teleportation:

“I say we already have a good means of teleportation, would you like to know what it is? So they’re called children. So children, whether or not their biological, adopted, ideological, are the only known methods that I can think about, or writing and stuff like that, where you can teleport. You can transmit your ideas, your essence, your values, even to the future, you can’t go back in time, you can go forward in time. But you can’t go, that’s the catch, you’re not able to go. Because 100 years from now, maybe medical science will advance and you can go, but most likely, it can’t. But you can teleport your values, and you can influence people as mentors. You’re doing this with millions, you know, thousands, hundreds of thousands of people are being influenced by you, and this will carry on digitally, into the future forever. So that’s why it’s very important to think about the influence that people have. And you’re saying you’re insignificant, no, you’re very significant, you’re able to influence the future, what else could you want?”

On losing a Nobel Prize:

“So we had made for the first time in history this detector, this telescope, which would be able to observe the earliest epoch in the universe’s history period of time called the Big Bang. So if the universe began at a single instant, then we would be essentially seeing shrapnel and the aftershocks. That’s not technically correct, but just as a way of saying kind of colloquially, that process could be witnessed for the first time by a telescope of the kind that I invented. And that telescope would not only see the beginning of the universe, but everything that’s happened in the universe since that time. What it’s made of, when it’s made, how it’s evolving and really demonstrates for the first time how the universe began. For that reason, we were told even from the very beginning, that we would win the highest honour equivalent to an Oscar in science called the Nobel Prize. That was like an idol to me and was something that I worshipped as a younger person. More people have been to space in the last year than have won the Nobel Prize over the last five years. It’s just unbelievably prestigious, and yet, it’s created by a single guy, Alfred Nobel, over 120 years ago. And it was his thought that he would make it to inspire people to create inventions that would improve the human condition and make humankind better.”

“Along the way, it’s kind of taken on this other role, like more like the Oscars are to incentivize. It was created to reward stuff not to incentivize stuff. It’s becoming not just a reward mechanism, but an incentivization mechanism. So I wanted to kind of talk about that in the book really. My publishers were kind enough to put these three chapters that talk about the Nobel Prize. It’s kind of like a choose your own adventure. If you don’t care about the Nobel Prize and you just want to learn about cosmology, telescopes and stuff, you can read it. So I was happy about that. So we built this telescope at the South Pole, Antarctica. So the very bottom of the world we had to travel to for reasons I talked about here, to observe this flash of creation. We claimed that we did do it, but then we had to retract it, because we actually made a type of error. When we analysed the results, we didn’t leave the lens cap on or get our thumb in the picture. Instead, it was that we interpreted a signal as being attributed to the beginning of time. But actually, it was caused by something much more prosaic in the universe, literally, this dust that fills our cosmos. “

“We had to basically kind of eat humble pie and retract that claim. It was a remarkable story immediately, headlines in New York Times, CNN, everything all around the world. And then eventually, we had to retract it and rewind it. And so I want to tell the story of why it was so important, how it touches these notions of origins and creation myths and stories. And also, what does it like to be an experimental scientist, not a theoretical scientist like Stephen Hawking, or Albert Einstein.”

On his new book: Think Like A Nobel Prize Winner:

“So that book started really because of the pandemic. If the pandemic had any positive side effects amidst all the tragedy of cause, it’s that we’re kind of locked in and scientists couldn’t really travel. A lot of them had books and things coming out. I had always been interested in the life of the mind as a scholar’s intellectual, interviewing as many people as I can, and kind of downloading their knowledge into my brain. A book is like a total hack to do years and years of worth of wisdom and experience into a couple hours to read. I interviewed nine Nobel Prize winners in the course of the last year. I decided I would take all those and this and edit the conversations, add some supplementary materials, some custom drawings, and really make it into something that you could digest at your own leisure. With a podcast you kind of listen linearly, you can’t randomly access stuff. This was like, you want to learn about how mentors influence people? Or how does the imposter syndrome, which features really heavily in this book, asks how does that, you know, affect my career as a car salesman in Nebraska? I’m not a scientist. So I wrote it, and especially not for scientists and some of the early readers that have been reading it and saying I didn’t think I would understand it.”

“But there’s no science in it, just you know, description of why they won it. But what I want to do is take what we call science, which in Latin means knowledge, it doesn’t mean wisdom. I feel like wisdom is much, much rarer, much, much less common than knowledge. And Wikipedia has a lot of knowledge, but I’m not going to ask it like, what do I do when my kid wants to, you know, drop out of college. So in that case, what I wanted to do is distil their wisdom. This book is out and its intent is to really demystify scientists and the process of science show sciences as human beings producing working in collaboration. Even though they might be rivals, competitors, fight, and warring to win this finite game prize. But at the same time they’re also battling this infinite game to understand our universe, and how we fit into it in the limited amount of time that we all have.”

On what he is grateful for:

“My health, to be in America and getting fired. Because I could then get a new job and I eventually met my wife and had children.”

The Kindle version of Brian Keating’s new book, Think Like a Nobel Prize Winner, is available for just 99¢ this week only here.

Subscribe to Dr. Brian Keating’s YouTube channel here.

Featured image: Jordan Harbinger

The wrestling world has been peppered with the appearance of stars over the years.

From musicians such as Kid Rock, actors like David Arquette and influencers such as Kim Kardashian, stars have benefited from mixing it with the WWE and vice versa. Of course, the obvious crossover is other fighters, with plenty of famous boxers making cameo appearances. Mr T, Evander Holyfield and James ‘Buster’ Douglas are three who have appeared in one form or another.

There are benefits of using fighters in WWE scenarios; they can get involved in the action. Few could imagine Seth Green being laid out on the canvas by the Big Show, but when Floyd Mayweather stepped into the ring with him, there was an air of believability, certainly as much as you can expect from sports entertainment.

However, real fighters have competed legitimately in the WWE in some instances, either as special guests or fully-fledged stars. So, here are three of the best that have taken to the squared circle.

Ken Shamrock

Ken Shamrock trained as a wrestler under Buzz Sawyer, and after a stint in Japan, made his way to the WWE. He famously feuded with Vader, Bret Hart and The Rock. Those associations made him a main event draw, and he even fought the British Bulldog for the European Championship. He won the 1998 King of the Ring and held the Intercontinental title too. Whilst fans loved seeing him in the WWE, he was also highly regarded in the UFC. He’d been an MMA fighter since 1993, starting in Japan, and is now widely considered one of the greatest fighters in MMA history. His feud with Royce Gracie is as well-known in the UFC as any of the kayfabe battles he had in WWE.

Tyson Fury

Tyson Fury is pure WWE material, despite currently being the WBC Heavyweight Champion. He was set to face Anthony Joshua in what would be a main event in any sport, but as ESPN report, that bout is now not likely to happen after his fellow Brit fell to defeat against Oleksandr Usyk. He is set for a rematch with Deontay Wilder, the third in a trilogy, and one he is favorite with Bwin to win. That proves he is a boxer at the top of his game, with the skills to match the personality. That’s already led him to the WWE, a journey he is sure to take again at the end of his career. He fought Braun Strowman at WWE Crown Jewel, taking home $15m in the deal. He then teamed up with the same fighter in Manchester, defeating Bo Dallas and Curtis Axel.

Eric ‘Butterbean’ Esch

Eric Esch is such a hybrid he has two names; Eric Esch in the boxing world and Butterbean in the WWE universe. In 1997 he won the IBA World Super Heavyweight Championship, which he held onto for several years. He was well known for losing to Larry Holmes in 2002, but bounced back for his own trilogy of bouts against Kenny Craven. It wasn’t quite Fury/Wilder, but it was a headliner nonetheless. He also fought as a kickboxer and in MMA, plus he starred in the WWE. As Butterbean, the busy brawler defeated Marc Mero before being placed in a legitimate shoot fight at WrestleMania XV with Bart Gunn. He knocked the wrestler out in 34 seconds, having had him on the canvas before delivering the deadly punch. Sometimes, it pays not to mix sports entertainment and real fighting; just ask Bart Gunn!

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons

Credit: Megan Elice Meadows, Lesnar kimura lock, CC BY-SA 2.0

Jonah [FKA Bronson Reed in WWE] is an Australian professional wrestler known for his time in NXT where he is a former North American champion. He joins Chris Van Vliet from his home in Orlando, FL to talk about growing up as a wrestling fan in Australia, the influence of his fellow Australian pro wrestlers like Tenille Dashwood, Buddy Murphy, Cassie Lee & Jessica McKay, what’s next after being released from his WWE contract, thoughts on AEW, IMPACT & New Japan, his new podcast called JONAHDROME, his favorite movies and much more!

On his workouts:

“When I started in the wrestling business, I didn’t work out at all. I was sort of a bit of a scrawny teenager. Then my original coach made me do wrestling workouts, lots of squats and lots of push-ups. Then from there he was like ‘You should get into some form of weightlifting, whether it is bodybuilding or whatever.’ I sort of did my own bodybuilding for a few years, which wasn’t really getting me anywhere. I decided to invest in a coach and do some powerlifting and learned some strongman movements. That’s now where I am today, it’s power building, a hybrid of bodybuilding and power lifting.”

On handling the release and what’s next:

“Well it was very shocking at first. I would be lying if I would say I wasn’t upset and angry and all the emotions that come with something like this. It’s like the 7 stages of grief. Even though I didn’t physically lose anyone, it was kind of like Bronson Reed had died. I’d spent the last few years investing in myself and becoming that character of Bronson Reed. But now that’s over and I have to look to something new. I am bringing back a little bit of what I did before WWE and becoming Jonah again, but it was hard. I have been able to deal with it pretty well though. I’ve had hardships in life and in the professional wrestling business before that have sort of prepared me for if this day was to come. I just didn’t think it would be any time soon.”

On a contract extension before the release:

“I started at the start of 2019 on a 3 year deal. Only at the start of this year I signed a new 3 year deal. I was blindsided that halfway through the year that I was released. Also with where I was placed in the card and how I was utilized, I didn’t think it was coming.”

On the WWE release:

“It was definitely shock. I got the call while I was watching SmackDown. I was under the impression the last few months with WWE that I would be moving to a SmackDown or a RAW. When I got the call, I assumed it was about going to RAW or going to SmackDown. I was quite happy on the phone and ready to hear that news. When the call was that I was getting released, that mood completely changed. I was in shock and awe. I made sure to question why and they didn’t really give me a reason at all, which is even more frustrating, because then you question yourself, like what happened?”

On his reaction:

“I think shock was the initial reaction, but then I was more angry than upset. There was a lot more that I could have done, but that got taken away. But now I see that it is an avenue for me to do that somewhere else.”

On possibly wrestling somewhere else:

“Yes. I am in talks with the major promotions that you would expect me to be in talks with. Nothing is set in stone yet but there will be soon.”

On immigration issues:

“That’s a big thing that unless you are from a foreign country, you don’t realize. A lot of people who were released the same time as me, after the 30 days, straight away onto some independent shows. I have a lot of fans reaching out and saying ‘you should do this show…’ I’ve also had a lot of independent promotions reach out to me, but legally I will get in a lot of trouble if I do this. There are processes you have to do when you are a foreigner and I am working on that.”

On what he was taught in NXT:

“The biggest thing was working for TV. That was the biggest change for me, learning where the cameras are. They want to see more facial expressions. When you are working the independents, it is all about how the crowd is involved. When you start working TV, you forget that it’s about what the people at home can see and how they can get involved.”

On where the name Bronson Reed came from:

“I did actually. I pitched Jonah maybe 100 times [laughs]. My name was Jonah Rock, and they didn’t want the Rock part, obviously. I pitched all different last names for Jonah, and they just wanted to get rid of Jonah. So I came up with a bunch of different first names and a bunch of different last names. They picked Bronson and Reed and they put it together. I feel that that’s how a lot of people recently got their names.”

On becoming North American Champion:

“Before winning the North American Championship I was doing well. Luckily for me, Hunter sort of had his eye on me, and then in his mind it was hey we want to make you one of our top guys on our show. He had that discussion with me that I was going to eventually become the North American Champion. Then they had more things planned for me towards the end of the year, which are not happening anymore. But in the wrestling business, things chop and change so much. Even though I was told things numerous times, I always thought well let’s wait and see. Even winning the North American Championship, I was like I will wait until it actually happens. But Hunter saw something in me, which I appreciated. But when I became the North American Champion, I was a made man. Becoming that sort of champion, I think that people notice it.”

On his NXT theme song:

“I loved it as well. So I was lucky enough to work with the music people and Road Dogg, who was overseeing the music at that time. I had the generic, free music for a while on NXT TV. There was a huge list of songs that you could choose out of, and I recon I spent an hour or an hour and a half trying to find the best thing I could. I am under the impression that the theme means a lot. Your entrance music sets the tone for who you are and as you’re coming out, so I wanted something good. What I had was good, but I needed something custom and different. When they decided I could have new entrance music, I was very hands-on with Road Dogg. I was like I want a siren at the start. I wanted it to feel like a Godzilla movie. There needed to be deep bass like in hip hop. It sets the tone for the big guy coming out, and what they did produce was fantastic.”

On his finisher:

“I had been doing the splash off of the top rope and I said to Wade [Barrett] ‘I call it the Tsunami. It’s not just a big splash, it’s even bigger.’ I came up with that and we had different announcers at the time, and they were good. But as soon as Wade got his hands on it, and he didn’t tell me he was going to say it like that, I was like wow that’s great. Then it sort of became a thing. I definitely miss the way he calls it, becasue he calls it great.”

On what he can and can’t use following his release:

“Yeah I made sure when I was getting released to ask as many questions as possible, so going forward it makes it easier. Not just with wrestling but with the immigration side of things. I asked the things to do with intellectual property and Bronson and those sort of things. I’m glad that I did. At the time I was going to go back to Jonah or call myself Bron. Now I am glad that I didn’t, because now Bron Breakker is on NXT 2.0. I made sure to get a discussion with those things on what I can and can’t do.”

On his future goals:

“I want to be very active in the wrestling world. I also want to be on North American television, so that people back home can watch me. It shows that the current direction that WWE and NXT have said they are going in, I think it has deflated a lot of people back home that are indie wrestlers. They are like ‘Hey what do I do now? This was my goal.’ I want them to see that there are other avenues you can take and be successful. My goal is that you can prove that you can be successful but don’t have to be in WWE.”

On what he is grateful for:

“My wife, all the support from my followers and Starbucks.”

Bronson Reed can be found on Twitter here and Instagram here.

Featured image: Give Me Sport

The start of a journey:

The Journey of a Thousand Miles Begins with a Single Step” I’m sure you’ve heard this Chinese proverb before. But the problem is a lot of people never take that first step. They look at that long journey in front of them and start coming up with excuses why they could never possibly complete a thousand mile journey. So they don’t even bother to start. Does this sound familiar? Of course you’re not LITERALLY taking a thousand mile journey. But maybe it’s your fitness journey…. or your journey into finding a new job… or into taking those steps toward a relationship. Or that podcast or YouTube channel or business that you’ve always wanted to start.

Let me ask you this: What are you waiting for?! Like seriously. What is standing in the way between you starting right now. Not next week or next month or tomorrow. Today? What’s stopping you from taking that first step? Instead of just talking about it or dreaming about it? Why not start doing it? What is the excuse you’re telling yourself? Because if you want it bad enough, you’ll find a way. If not, you’ll find an excuse. And let’s be honest any reason that’s holding you back from you actually doing it. Is an excuse. It’s as simple as that.

I’m sure you’ve heard me say it all the time, but if somebody else is doing what you want to be doing… that means there’s a path carved out for you to do it too. So, little Storytime for you.. For years I had been toying with the idea of starting boxing lessons. I grew up playing every sport imaginable. I started playing baseball at 4 years old. Hockey at 6, which feels like it’s mandatory when you grow up in Canada. I was on the volleyball team, basketball team, cross country team and track and field team in elementary school. The 100 meter and 200 meter were my best events until about age 12, and then it seemed that everyone got faster and I just stayed the same speed. In high school, I joined the wrestling team. I was always intrigued by boxing, but aside from throwing the odd terrible shot at a punching bag in the corner of the gym, I never really did it.

How Chris’ boxing journey started:

Over the last year or so, I really started thinking about starting up. But then those excuses started creeping in. You’re too old to start NOW! How much do you think that will cost? You’re going to be awful for the first year or two. That’s just SOME of the self talk that was going on. It’s like I had given up on the idea before even starting. Then I asked myself: What am I waiting for? Do I really want to do this or not? The next day, the craziest thing happened. I was working out and in between sets, I noticed a guy working out next to me with a shirt that said “Boxing Coach” on the back of it. I couldn’t believe it! What are the odds? I thought about it, did another set and then I struck up a conversation with him. As his shirt advertised, he was indeed a boxing coach and he lived in the same building as me. This was a sign. We exchanged contact information. And if you follow me on Instagram, you know that I now train at least once a week. I’ll admit I’m not very good, but I’m a heck of a lot better than I was before our serendipitous meeting. By the way, you can check out my coach on Instagram, his name is Salman and he’s @Salman.Boxing on there. But how easy would it have been for me to just keep telling myself I’m too old to start now? Or what’s the point? Or can’t you just do another workout that doesn’t cost anything?

Any regrets?

I was blown away when I read about a study out of Cornell University that asked people at the end of their life what their single biggest regret was. It wasn’t something that they did, but rather something they DIDN’T do. 76% of people said it was “Not living their ideal self”. Can you believe that? 3/4 of people on their deathbeds look back on their life and think about the things they didn’t do and the chances they didn’t take. Do you want to be part of the 24%, or are you ok falling into that 76%? What is standing in your way?

You’re never too old!

By the way, if you think you’re too old: Stan Lee, for instance, didn’t create “Fantastic Four” until he was just shy of 39. Julia Child wrote her first cookbook at 50. Colonel Sanders didn’t become a professional chef until he was 40. Didn’t franchise KFC until he was 62, was broke at 65 and didn’t become an icon until after he sold his company at 75. Is today going to be day one or just another day. You decide. It’s completely up to you. So there we go! Share this with a friend who need to hear this. And shoot me a message on Instagram or Twitter and let me know what you thought of this episode. There’s many more to come! Until then… Be great, be grateful and we’ll see you on the next one for some more insight!

More episodes of Insight can be found here.

Dr. Laurie Santos is a cognitive scientist and Professor of Psychology at Yale University. She is also the host of the extremely popular podcast called “The Happiness Lab” which is on the Apple Top 100 charts. She joins Chris Van Vliet to talk about the science of being happy, 3 simple things we can do in our daily life to be happier, the course she teaches at Yale University called “Psychology and The Good Life” and how you can take her course for free on Coursera, how Covid has affected our well-being and much more!

On whether happiness is a science or an art:

“I think in some ways it is both. The reason why I air on the scientific side is because so many of the scientific works study the kind of things that make us a little bit happier. You might not think that it is a scientific topic, how do you study happiness? But when you start to think about it then it’s an easy thing to do. Basically researchers bring people into the lab who are happy, and then they reverse engineer what these people are doing. How are they spending their time? You can then bring other folks into the lab who are not feeling so happy, then make them engage with the practices the happy people are doing in a controlled environment. You can then see if that improves people’s wellbeing. These studies have been done for the last few decades.”

3 things to make us happier:

“It’s not the things we think like winning the lottery. The fastest thing you can do to improve your happiness is to get in some social connection. Even really simple studies show talking to someone on your commute can boost your positive mood. That is just with a stranger, yet alone connecting with your best friend or someone you haven’t spoken to in a while. We forget the sheer power of social connection in boosting our mood. Secondly is gratitude, something that all of us can do. If we focus on the blessings and not the gripes we can be happier. Thirdly is presence. Feel what it is like to be breathing right now or sitting in a chair. Even if you are not feeling good, just being with that can improve your wellbeing in a great way.”

On why people don’t necessarily feel happy:

“I don’t think we were built to happy. Natural selection and evolution had a plan for us but it wasn’t for us to be happy. It was to survive and pop out some kids. Evolution did not care if we were anxious or sad, it just wanted us to get the job done. I think a big thing is a lot of us are defying natural selection by trying to be happy. We wind up doing it wrong because we are focusing on the wrong things. We focus on accolades, achievements and money. Research shows that none of that makes us happy, and if it does it is only briefly. We peruse all those things at the opportunity cost to the things that actually make us happy.”

On how the science of happiness started:

“I’ve been a psychologist basically forever. The specific interest in happiness came to me when I took on this new role at Yale campus. I’ve been teaching at Yale for an embarrassingly long time. In the last few years I took on a new role as head of college on campus. Yale is like Harry Potter where there are schools within the school. I’m the head of Silliman College, which does sound like it is from Harry Potter. This new role meant I was a faculty member living with students on campus. When I signed up for the role I thought it would be great. Young, happy minds all running around.”

On the wellbeing of students:

But there is a national students health crisis right now. 40% of students feel like they are too depressed to function. Over 60% report feeling overwhelmingly anxious. Right now, 1 in 10 students have considered suicide in the last year. I didn’t know this stuff until I started interacting with students. We have students who are in dire straights, but then we have the students who are just so stressed out. I was watching the students fast forward this time of their lives and I felt for them. My interest in happiness started becasue I wanted to help my students. I decided to pull it all together and teach the students this stuff in the context of a class. I didn’t expect the class to go as viral as it did, it was the largest class in the 300 year history of Yale.”

On what is in the class:

“So you walk into this big concert hall. The class really is like a psychology class. The students are hearing about specific studies and there are exams and grades. It’s one thing to tell students to be grateful and to get enough sleep, but until you show them the graph of mood score after 5 hours sleep. Students then see that and don’t want to be in that zone. I think there is something about seeing the scientific effects. This is true with nutrition and exercise too. When we see what really works, it can supercharge our change in behaviours.”

On how you can take the class for free:

“The class went so viral on campus and off campus. We had national and international news outlets coming in, filming the class and talking about it. I was so taken by the mental health crisis at Yale, but it’s not just the students. Adults everywhere need this. So we put the class online [link here]. You can log on and get the short version for free.”

On how Laurie manages her happiness:

“One of the things is that it is nice to be happiness expert becasue you have to practice what you preach. If not, people will call you out on that, especially students. I have to be the person who is trying these strategies out, and that has been huge for navigating all these changes in my life. I say no to a lot of things becasue I am trying to protect my time allowance. If I say yes to something, I may have to say no to downtime with my husband. It is hard and goes against the hustle culture, but it has made me a lot happier.”

On how COVID affected people’s happiness:

“When COVID first hit in March 2020, there was a huge amount of depression and anxiety. But I think that everybody expected that and for it continue. In practice, it has been bad but not as bad as people first thought. Many people have gone back to baseline. This thing that we could not get used to, it’s not fun but we did get used to it. Just like we think good things like money will make us better, we think that bad things will make us worse. It does in the short term, but our psychological immune system kicks in to make us feel better. We rationalise stuff and start to form coping mechanisms. We do stuff to feel better, a lot of these things have kicked in during COVID. Statistically, this pandemic did not affect us all mentally as we first thought.”

On what Dr. Laurie Santos is grateful for:

“My husband, my students and my health.”

Dr Laurie Santos can be found on Twitter here.

The Happiness Podcast can be found here.

Featured image: The Happiness Lab

The Voros Twins, Chris and Patrick Voros, are professional wrestlers and TikTokers based in Vancouver, BC. They recently celebrated 1.3 million followers on TikTok which makes them the most followed active wrestlers on the account and the 4th most followed behind Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Lana and Ryback. They talk to Chris Van Vliet about their goals in wrestling, being invited to a WWE Tryout, the benefits of being identical twins, how they were able to grow their TikTok so quickly, the importance of physically writing out goals and much more!

On how to tell the brothers apart:

Chris: “I think it’s just gambling. You have to guess and stuff.”

Patrick: “There are little things. Usually Patrick wears red and Chris wears blue. I guess that’s the main one.”

On being more famous for Tik Tok than wrestling:

Chris: “Yeah it’s crazy! We just hit 1.3 million people on Tik Tok.”

Patrick: “We are the most followed active wrestlers on Tik Tok. The Rock is ahead of us, but he doesn’t wrestle. There is also Ryback, but he takes other people’s videos and posts them on his account. Then there’s Lana and then there’s us.”

On if wrestling is still the main goal:

Chris: “Yes definitely. It was so hard with wrestling when we didn’t have it.”

Patrick: “I know some places in America opened up sooner than here in British Colombia. There was no wrestling here literally for 5 months. It came back a little bit, but the total shutdown for 8 months. It was a big break with no wrestling. A lot of wrestlers in the area kind of stopped posting content and disappeared. We did the opposite, we just threw things at the wall and see what stuck.”

On their first memory of wrestling:

Patrick: “I think our older brother got us into it. We watched it with him a lot.”

Chris: “But it was 2003, I remember Brock Lesnar’s Shooting Star at the highlight reel of RAW, because we didn’t see WrestleMania.”

Patrick: “I remember having the WrestleMania 17 TLC match on VCR tape, we would watch that over and over!”

On wanting to become wrestlers:

Chris: “So we did the backyard wrestling thing. Our company was called NXW, which is one letter off of NXT. We were revolutionary.”

Patrick: “But after high school, we didn’t start at 18. After high school we didn’t finish college, becasue it wasn’t for us.”

Chris: “We didn’t like being in debt. That was scary for us.”

Patrick: “But then a wrestling school opened up right by our house. We always wanted to be wrestlers, so it just kind of started from there.”

On being a tag team from day one:

Patrick: “I think we have had under 20 singles matches in total.”

Chris: “Even then, one of us is managing the other. We have been in a couple of Fatal 4 Ways and Fatal 5 Ways, but we just teamed up in the match. I’m not going to hit him!”

On the greatest wrestling brothers:

Patrick: “The greatest team would be The Hardy Boyz. But the team we look up to is The Usos. They are fraternal twins and have never wrestled each other. We look up to The Young Bucks in AEW a lot too. But there’s a lot of twin tag teams that we want to wrestle. D-Von Dudley’s kids are twins.”

On their WWE try-out:

Patrick: “So it was in August 2019 during SummerSlam weekend in Toronto. It was the first and only Canadian try-out in WWE, we were super fortunate to be a part of the 42 people involved. I think it went really well.”

Chris: “I think we crushed it. Personally, we felt like we did great. We trained for it and were in the ring every day for a month.”

Patrick: “We had all the basics down with all the rolls and stuff. The only thing we wish was that there was only one ring there, we wanted to do the whole 7 rings. There was a little bit less cardio, which we feel like we could have done really well at. When we left they said that we have a good look and to just keep wrestling and work on our social media.”

Chris: “We feel like we have done both. We are in the best shape of our lives right now.”

On being able to work in the USA:

Chris: “It’s definitely a challenge.”

Patrick: “We have done a few shows in Seattle and stuff, but it is hard crossing the border. But we make it work somehow.”

On dealing with negative comments:

Chris: “It doesn’t bother us but I can see why it would bother a lot of people.”

Patrick: “When we were going through some family stuff, should we get into this?”

Chris: “So our dad passed away in March, and we are still not fully done with [grieving]. Some people were saying some rude comments about our dad.”

Patrick: “That has been the only time we have been affected by hate comments. But it’s just as easy as a block, it was a tough time.”

On what they are grateful for:

Chris: “Our optimism.”

Patrick: “We are healthy and the Da Vinki meme.”

The Voros Twins can be found on Tik Tok here and Instagram here.

Featured image: Pro Wrestling Tees

Randy Couture is a UFC Hall of Famer, actor and former US Army Sargeant. His new movie called “The Manson Brothers Midnight Zombie Massacre” is available in theaters and on VOD. He joins Chris Van Vliet to talk about his Hall of Fame career in the UFC, transitioning into becoming an actor, his role in “The Expendables” franchise, his thoughts on how Jake & Logan Paul are changing fighting, whether or not he would want to fight again, his match against Brock Lesnar for the UFC Heavyweight Championship, his legendary matchups with Chuck Liddell and much more!

On when it was time to retire from UFC:

“You never really know. It took me a long while to warm up the idea to walk away from the sport that I had been involved in so long. I’d had every injury that I have ever had flare up again. It was the first time I remember my brain saying to me ‘Hey. Maybe you should do something else.’ Once that conversation starts, you’ve got to take it seriously. But I was comfortable that I was making the right decision for me. I was walking away from the sport on my own terms. I didn’t have a doctor or a promotor telling me I shouldn’t do it anymore. That transition for a lot of people is a huge task. It’s a big problem and a big piece of your identity.”

On what was next for him:

“Thankfully I had acting. I had been acting for 15 years at that point. So I could just shift my focus from getting ready for another fight and grinding out another camp to getting another movie.”

On how to prepare for a role:

“You are reading the story, understanding your character and how your character fits into the story. You have to find a way to relate to that character. At the end of the day, you are trying to find a way to tell the truth. If you are trying to act, nobody is going to buy it, it’s not going to work. You look at some of the best actors you can name, a lot of their characters are very similar. That has been the biggest challenge for me as an actor. I have spent my whole life as an athlete and boxing up my emotions. Now I want to let all of that stuff out, so it’s a little weird. But it’s been fun and fun learning so much about the process. I continue to get better each and every time I put myself out there.”

On the similarities between fighting and acting:

“I think you have to be coachable. They are both competitive. In acting you go in for a read and it is a competitive industry, especially right now with the Marvel films. But that taps into the fight mindset I had before. I can be as prepared as I can be and it’s like one hand washes the other. Being diligent, rested, ready to go. I like to be the first on set and know exactly what we are doing that day. Those are all things that came from fighting, wrestling and being in the service. You look at the world in a particular way becasue of those experiences, and you apply that to everything you face.”

On his future acting goals:

“I want to be challenged. Everyone always puts me in that box of ‘Oh yeah he is one of those fighters…’ It does bring the physicality to those action roles. And I love that genre, but I want the challenge. I want to do the romantic comedies, the westerns, things that people wouldn’t normally see me in. That’s the cool thing about The Manson Brothers Midnight Zombie Massacre, it’s outside the box for me. It’s comedic, and if I tried to be funny it would never sell. But that’s the good writing of Mike and Chris in developing that script. I had a great time doing that.”

On a possible career in WWE:

“You know they [WWE] never really approached me. I never received a message, they never asked me to come to a show. I don’t know becasue of my amateur wrestling background that I wasn’t going to be too interested in that. But it’s hard to say. I know the amateur and Olympic wrestling ranks as well as anybody. I chased that dream for 16 years. But the professional wrestling never really bit me. I watched it as a kid, but I knew it didn’t seem right. It wasn’t something that tickled me.”

On not being a mean guy:

“I think some of that comes from my wrestling mentality. I had to wrestle people who were my friends for a spot on the team. One of us was going home p*ssed off. It’s just the way it is in wrestling. I was never one of those guys who had to generate a bunch of animosity or run my mouth. For me, it was just an expansion of wrestling. There was a little bit of difference in the rules of engagement, but a very similar tactical sport. I just applied that wrestling mindset to that and kept that same attitude. I just wanted to be me, I didn’t want to create a persona or the things that other guys were doing to market themselves. So I kept it simple and I think a lot of the fans appreciated that.”

On crossover stars in the fighting world:

“These crossover fights… The only person to come the other way was James Toney in 2008 in Boston. That was a huge fight and a fight that I took very seriously. I felt like the reputation of our sport was on the line in some ways in that fight. I had a lot of respect for James a fighter. But the real question was how much MMA was he going to be able to learn. We answered that question very quickly!”

On Jake and Logan Paul:

“I’m not a fan of all the antics and the rhetoric from the Paul brothers. But if they are doing something, it is poking Dana White and shining a light on the disparaging difference between fighters pay in MMA and fighters pay in boxing. There is no transparency in MMA. How are you supposed to negotiate your fair value in the marketplace if no one knows how much money is being made in the sport in each and every event? That transparency is in boxing becasue of the Ali Act that was implemented in 1996, to protect boxers from the promoters that were taking advantage of the boxing world. We [MMA fighters] don’t enjoy that protection. It’s a simple fix, we have been lobbying hard to trying to get it to a vote in Congress and in The Senate. But the relationship between Trump and Dana White, it was difficult to get that done. We are not in that administration anymore, and still not having much success with it.”

On Dana White:

“I don’t have a relationship with UFC and that is largely down to Dana White. He thought I was the enemy quite a while ago when they bought the company. We butted heads immediately on ancillaries and contract rights. Nobody else was paying attention at that time and we were not getting along well, but they were stuck with me. I was the World Heavyweight Champion and signed with new management. We started pointing out a lot of issues in a 17 page document they call a contract. We kind of forced them to adjust a few things. But the backlash was they made the contracts even worse. That sucks for all the other fighters that didn’t have the leverage. But if it takes a guy like Jake Paul to get behind that, I’m all for that.”

On a possible comeback:

“Honestly it doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. I retired and came back once, I can’t see myself doing that again. I am 58, so 10 years out and I haven’t been in fight shape for so long and that is a whole different animal. To think that I am going to go back out to do one of these crossover boxing matches, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. I have put my body through a lot of wear and tear with all the fighting. Now I have come to terms with that, going out on my terms is a good thing, I want to stick to that.”

On what he is grateful for:

“My mother, my kids and the opportunities bestowed upon me.”

Click below to check out the video version of this interview:

Randy Couture can be found on Instagram here and Twitter here.

Featured image: Bleacher Report

Gabby Scampone is a Veterinary Technician, Wildlife Educator and Alligator Trapping Agent. She joins Chris Van Vliet from her home in Sunrise, FL to talk about the incredible work that she does with alligators. She discusses how she rescues what are called “nuisance alligators” in Florida and safely relocates them while other companies would kill them. She also talks about how much alligators are misunderstood and what we can learn from them!

On what Gabby is currently doing:

“So I am still rescuing them. I’ve been a state registered alligator trapping agent for four years, since I moved to Florida basically. I’m still rescuing them from people’s back yards. This month alone we got 3 babies out of swimming pools.”

On how they get the call to a job:

“So the way I explain it is the same way that a police officer has their own jurisdiction and their own area. I do Northern Broward County in Florida with two other people, it’s a very small team. But you can’t call us directly, you have to call The Alligator Nuisance Hotline. Isn’t that funny that we have an Alligator Nuisance Hotline here in Florida? So you call them, and they will issue out the permit to whoever is in that area. If it’s in Broward County, we will get the permit and we respond.”

On what most trappers do:

“Most trappers choose to kill the alligator. In Florida, you don’t get paid to be an alligator trapper due to liability. If you go out and get your arm ripped off, you get a get well soon card, you don’t get paid. That’s how most trappers get paid, so they will catch the alligators a bit differently if they are just going to kill them. The trappers will put out a baited hook, the alligator will swallow it and the hook get stuck in their stomach. Then the trappers will shoot it.”

On how her method is different:

“The way we do it, we have to be physically there when the alligator is there. We use a really big fishing pool with a treble hook, we cast over their back and we snag hook them. It definitely takes a lot of skill. Usually you are fighting with the alligators in the water for like 20 minutes. They are just so strong. They are death-rolling and trying to get away. Once you pull them up, most of the time they are pretty exhausted. When we get them on land, we noose them and we pull them up. You can then put a towel on their head so they cant see. Then you get on their back and carefully tape the jaw shut. Then it goes in my Honda Civic and we drive it to the sanctuary.”

On if catching alligators makes money:

“I do not get paid. I pay for all my gas, all my tolls, the wear and tear on the car, everything.”

On being a lifelong animal lover:

“I have loved animals my whole life. Even as a child I would go out catching turtles and frogs in New York. As I got bigger the animals got bigger. I would go out and start catching really big snapping turtles and go looking for rattlesnakes and stuff. I started volunteering at a nature center when I was 15. Ever since then I have always been volunteering somewhere with animals. I got to the point where I was driving an hour north 2 times a week and an hour south 2 times a week just to volunteer with animals, because it is so limited in New York. I started following people on Instagram who were messing with alligators in Florida, and I thought, I could do that. So I came down and visited, and there is so much wildlife in Florida. I moved here in 2017 and started volunteering at The Everglades Outpost. That was where I met Paul, who taught me everything I know about trapping.”

On people’s perception that alligators are dangerous:

“It’s the same as with pit bulls. You only see the bad things on the news. There are 2 million alligators in the state of Florida. If they wanted to kill people, there would be hundreds of people dying every day, but people don’t think like that. Everyone still refers to the little kid that got killed at Disney World a few years ago. That’s all I hear about. It does happen, especially when you put a small child in knee deep water at dusk where they will be alligators. But they are not chasing you down the street or breaking into homes. They don’t want anything to do with people.”

On what is a “Nuisance Alligator”:

“Any alligator that is deemed a threat to a person, a pet or livestock. If an alligator is out back in a canal and minding its own business, but you don’t want it there, it is a nuisance. If so, I will put it in my Civic and most go to The Everglades Outpost.”

On what is the ultimate goal:

“To have my own sanctuary, I want to rescue animals full time. I feel like I am almost there though. My full time job is a veterinary technician, I don’t get paid for any of the rescues that I do. We recently started a YouTube channel a couple of years ago so that we can share what we do and get attention. We are hoping that one day our YouTube channel can support our rescue and fund our lives rescuing these animals.”

On any animals she is not a fan of:

“I don’t like spiders and I don’t like crabs. I don’t know what it is about crabs, I like them from a distance.”

On her favourite animals:

“My favourite animal to work with is an alligator. I know that sounds cliché but I just love alligators. I love them and I love the work that I do. I’ve always wanted to work with otters. Recently I got a chance to meet some otters, but I don’t know if I want to work with them anymore [laughs]. They are really stinky, like really bad! They are rally cute and I’m glad that I got to meet them but I don’t know if I want to work with them anymore. I really want to meet a binturong. They are kind of like a bearcat and smell like hot butter popcorn.”

On some lesser known alligator facts:

“Depending on their size, they can hold their breath for potentially up to 8 hours. They breathe by lowering their heart rate. Also, they can shut off some of their organs to save oxygen. They also don’t need to eat very often. A large alligator can go 8 to 9 months without eating. It could eat something like a deer beforehand. It would suck, it’s not fun for them but they can do it.”

On what Gabby Scampone is grateful for:

“My parents, my boyfriend and all of my personal animals.”

Gabby can be found on Instagram here.

Featured image: Elite Readers

Brock Johnson is an Instagram Expert and in this episode, he breaks down some helpful DO’s and DON’T to help you gain more followers and exposure on social media. Earlier this year, he gained 100,000 followers in 3 months by utilizing “reels” and he explains how you can do the same and also how you can start to make money from your content. If you have been struggling to grow your account, this episode is absolute MUST LISTEN for you.

On how to be successful on social media:

“I can boil it down to three things. Step one is having a very clear niche. I have been on Instagram since 2012. My first 5 or 6 years on Instagram, I didn’t have a business, so there was no niche. It was just pictures of me playing sports or with my friends. Then for the first 2 years of my business, I started to niche down, but it was kind of all over the place. It was marketing then Snapchat, Instagram, Tik Tok, it was all over the place. In the last 2 years I focused on Instagram, in the past 2 years I hyper focused on Instagram Reels. My focus is how to help businesses grow using Instagram Reels.”

Growing the brand:

“It’s just being consistent and showing up every day. The more you post, the more you grow. Over the last 4 to 5 months, I have averaged 2 posts a day to my feed, along with dozens of posts to my stories. That is the secret sauce to my growth.”

On growing a personal profile:

“I think the struggle with that is if I have a personal brand, I have a lot of different interests and hobbies. So how do I niche down? And ultimately, we are not in the days of the 2014/2015 influencer craze, where people were blowing up and having big followings becasue they had some pretty filters on their photos. Nowadays, even these influencers who are posting about parenthood or their family or their life or whatever, they still have a niche. They are still talking to one primary demographic. Or they are focusing on one specific thing. It could be gluten free recipes or parenting toddlers. Whatever it may be, I still think focusing in and picking out one of your passions is the best way to grow on social media.”

Instagram saying they are not a photo sharing website:

“It sent shockwaves amongst the Instagram coaching community. But it wasn’t that big of a surprise to me. This was not Instagram making a random decision. They didn’t wake up one day and say ‘We are not doing photos, we are doing videos.’ This was driven by the consumers. Instagram is a business, and they are going to respond to what the consumers want. Overall, people are more engaged when they are watching a video. People love watching videos, and Instagram realized that. So they went OK, we are going to keep promoting videos. It doesn’t mean that photos are dead. You can still post photos and have success with posting photos. The announcement meant they are focusing on video because we are focusing on videos.”

On Instagram stories:

“Stories will not help you grow your following. That might shock some people listening. What stories do, is help you with the relationships. They build trust, build likeability and credibility. They are also a great place to sell. You can add the link sticker to do that. But to grow your following, you need to post to your feed. The best place to do that is Reels, but photos can still be effective. If I post a still image, it will get more likes than a Reel. This is becasue of variability. People love it if you shake things up, be different to the status quo.”

On how he grew his following:

“My first 6 years on Instagram were just whatever. But in 2017 I launched my first business, which was how moms can keep their kids safe on Snapchat. In 2017, Snapchat was as hot as Tik Tok is now. People were concerned about it, so it was my original business. That quickly morphed into moms growing their business on Snapchat. I taught people how to market using Snapchat. Then Instagram launched their stories and I followed suit. I taught myself how to grow my business and then taught people to do the same.”

On the Instagram algorithm:

“The algorithm is all about attention. Do you have your audience’s attention? Another word for that is engagement. Are people watching your videos and liking your posts? Are they saving, sharing and commenting? If so, you are holding your audiences attention, and Instagram will reward you for it. Instagram is a business, who makes money by selling advertising. They want people who are increasing attention. If you can create posts that increase those things, the algorithm will reward you, and the cycle goes uphill or downhill.”

On using giveaways and competitions as a tool:

“I think they should be done inconsistently. If you do them all the time, it loses its lustre. I do one either once or twice a year. When people see it, they have to enter becasue they don’t know when the next one will be. I also say don’t ask people to follow you to try to win. That’s a huge mistake and I see everyone doing. Here’s what happens, you get the spike from the giveaway, then 2 things happen. Either they will unfollow you, or they will remain a follower but don’t care about your stuff. If Instagram shows a post of yours, they won’t engage. That leads to a low engagement rate and low reach. I say to share a post, becasue if they decide to follow me, it’s from their own free will. The following is just so they want to follow along.”

On how to make money on Instagram:

“Sell less. Here is why. Most of us listen to the things we have talked about getting more reach, and think it is a perfect time to sell. But there is a reason we don’t watch commercials on TV. We change the channel or wait to press a skip button on YouTube. When your Instagram is a commercial, they are changing the channel. My feed posts are to serve and entertain my audience. The stories are where I build my relationships, like my dogs or me snowboarding. You get to know me and trust me. I would say 3% or less of the time I would promote something. What I like to do is get people to send me a direct message or have a poll sticker. For anyone who says yes, I reach out via direct message. It requires more time and effort, but it is higher converting and not selling to the masses.”

On people striving for perfect Instagram posts:

“Here’s what happens when we value quality the most. Quality doesn’t mean good or bad, quality means good vs. perfect. So when you are looking for a quality post and you trying to make a high quality Reel, you are trying to make something that is perfect. We then get stuck in procrastination and overthinking, then we never post. People are trying to make 3 perfect posts. I let go of that perfectionism and shoot for good enough. I can crank out slightly above average posts every day. If I go for perfect it would take all week.”

On what he is grateful for:

“The team around me, my fiancée and the opportunity that social media provides.”

Brock Johnson can be found on Instagram here.

Featured image: Impact & Growth Summit

Bas Rutten is a UFC Hall of Famer, actor, commentator and retired mixed martial artist. His new movie called “The Manson Brothers Midnight Zombie Massacre” is available in theaters and on VOD on September 10, 2021. He joins Chris Van Vliet to talk about his legendary career, how he found success by failing forward, how a Bruce Lee film inspired him to become a fighter, his fights with Ken Shamrock, thoughts on Jake & Logan Paul changing the face of boxing, how he prepares for a film role, his attention to detail and much more!

On why he started wrestling:

“As a kid I was a very sick kid. I had a skin disease and really bad asthma, so I was the leper at school. That’s where my fighting comes from, because they were bullying me. I saw Enter The Dragon with Bruce Lee, started training, knocked my first bully out and then everything stopped. 95% of the people stopped bullying me. Some poor b*stards who didn’t hear the story would still try, but they would soon go [laughs]. But when you are bullied for 7 years, you want payback and heads to roll.”

On how the pieces fell into place:

“If I didn’t have my diseases then I wouldn’t have started fighting. That set me up and then I went off to see the Bruce Lee movie. But everything happens for a reason, I am a big believer in that. It just lit a fire under me, I found I was good at it and it went from there.”

On becoming a professional fighter:

“I never thought I could make a living from it, that was just pure luck. I was a striker and a Thai boxer, but I retired for a while becasue I was just knocking people out. So I hadn’t trained for 3 years, I was drunk at a party and someone asked me if I wanted to face this new guy. He had just come out of prison, he was training in there, [named] Frank ‘The Animal’ Lobman. I agreed to fight him, but I had no idea that I had said that. Weeks and months later they call me and they said ‘Hey who do we send these posters to?’ I said ‘What do you mean? Who is fighting?’ They said I was. I say ‘Who am I fighting?’ They tell me Frank Lobman, you told us on New Year’s Eve. I then realized I did talk to him and I had to keep my word.”

On how people viewed him after the fight:

“The fight was 3 weeks later and I hadn’t trained for 3 years. I was a bouncer at the time, you know the club closes at 5am, then we go to party. I was not living the healthiest lifestyle, I should never have taken this fight, but I am a man of my word. Of course I lost the fight, and everyone in Holland spat me out. They forgot about all of my previous knockouts, and that got to me. I said to myself I’m never going to fight again.”

On bouncing back:

“My wife in 1992 said to me ‘You’re going to be a fighter in Japan.’ I told her I wasn’t going to fight again. Then she said ‘Yes in Holland, but you’re going to Japan.’ I thought that as a weird comment, who would say that? 8 months later and there is a try-out in Amsterdam. It was a bunch of Japanese guys looking for new talent. I got into a brawl with a guy and I knocked him out. The guys pointed and said we want him, 2 months later that was it. September 1993 I am in Japan and I became a professional.”

On if his accent affected his acting career:

“No, and if someone would say anything it would be good. If I studied the lines, I can get rid of it. But there is a lot of ad-libbing, my grammar is backwards becasue I still speak a lot of Dutch at home. It was never a problem but I did try to fix it. But if it’s a problem then write that my character is from Holland. Boom, problem fixed.”

On YouTube stars Jake and Logan Paul breaking into the boxing world:

“I think it’s good. Now when there is a fight there is big money to be made. Hopefully they will now put their feet down, especially if you are a good fighter, look at what Conor McGregor did. They had to pay him, becasue he was going to bring in so many people. But guys like that have a lot of pull, people will come to him and buy pay per views for him. I have respect for those guys, they are not boxers they are YouTube stars. They really commit to the sport and I have the upmost respect for that.”

On how he became a commentator:

“So it was in 1999/2000 and the Pride Fighting Championships was going to be broadcast in the States. I was there with a few fighters and I was the trainer. We are in the dressing room and waiting for the main event. We are watching the TV and some people from the Pride Fighting Championships are there. I say ‘Oh he’s going to get him in an armbar.’ They go ‘What? Nothing is going on.’ I respond ‘Give it 10 seconds.’ 10 seconds later, boom, armbar. The next fight it happened again with a knee bar. I know the setups. They came to me and asked if I wanted to be a commentator and I said sure.”

A happy accident:

“I had no clue that I had to wear a suit. I have never looked at the commentators, I was such an idiot at the time. So I was standing there in shorts, flip flops and a Hawaiian shirt at the bus ready to go to the event. They say ‘Where’s your suit?’ I go ‘What suit?’ They started laughing because they thought I was joking. Nobody told me to bring a suit. Then of course I have to do the openings, I didn’t think of that. We had to fid a way to incorporate me with my Hawaiian shirt. Our producer was great and we made a skit out of it. I sat backstage, girls fanned me down and I tell war stories. That became a hit, they loved it. Every opening for Pride Fighting Championships had a skit, all becasue I forgot to bring a suit.”

On what he is grateful for:

“My family, everyone is healthy and just having enough.”

Bas Rutten can be found on Twitter here and Instagram here.

Featured image: MMA Fighting

Ivelisse Vélez is a professional wrestler known for her time with WWE, AEW and Lucha Underground. She joins Insight with Chris Van Vliet from her home in Tampa to talk about her time in AEW and being released by the company, her issues with Thunder Rosa, why she feels she is misunderstood, the evolution of women’s wrestling and much more!

On not doing many interviews:

“I’ve kind of done it purposely that way. Even before I didn’t do a lot of interviews, becasue I am so invested in the performance aspect of it. For me these past months have been really difficult to process, emotionally an mentally in every way, shape and form. More importantly becasue of what happened a couple of months ago and everything around it. Just the culmination of a lot of things, even before being signed with AEW. I had a fire where I had lost everything that I had worked for. It was actually right before the Dynamite match. Then after that happened, it continued into the tag team tournament. It was non-stop how everything affected everything, including my household. Then there was the person inside in AEW, just everything all together was a big culmination. The the cherry on top was online and Twitter. That’s why I have stayed away from interviews, to maintain my mental stamina.”

On being misunderstood:

“Yes, definitely. Becasue I am the type of person who has come from nothing, and I have so many components against me. It doesn’t even give me the time to explain myself. My whole life I have been in hustle mode, so I have never had a chance to fix the misunderstandings. Also I am a female, and there is a lot of progress in the world and in general when it comes to sexism. that is one of the issues that is very far behind. Being a female in a male dominated business, I feel there is so much left to go. Also being a minority, there’s a lot of things about who I am and my identity that people won’t understand. That is what helps me to not take it as personally. I just keep pushing to fight for all that I stand for.”

On the mistreatment of female veterans:

“Of course it is inevitable to say that there has been a lot of progression. The only thing is that some parts are still far behind. The treatment towards female veterans, who are such an important part towards propelling all those changes. The changes are giving more time and more opportunities and more chances to shine. The exposure is where the changes are happening. But there is only so much that will do if the other changes are so far behind. Everything like how you treat females, how you value the veterans and perceive the women in general. That is what’s missing. The important part is the structure to propel them and move them forward.”

On Mickie James being an NWA producer:

“Yes that’s one. That’s why I was excited in seeing a female veteran [producing]. That is awesome and that is a step in the right direction. Politics will try and fins their way in anywhere. But when it is a female veteran of that calibre, it’s still a bigger component than politics. I feel that will over ride that enough to keep that momentum moving forward.”

On whose fault the incident was:

“To me, the blame of who [is at fault] is irrelevant, it’s business. The way I see things is that communication is the solution to anything and everything. I feel like that was the most disappointing part. I know in my mind that it was a misunderstanding between a group of individuals. The only way to move forward from that is to talk. If you don’t talk then nothing get resolved. That was the most disappointing part. There was a lot of reasons why it didn’t happen, but hopefully it gets to happen eventually. To me, it’s a matter of resolving the misunderstandings.”

On issues with Thunder Rosa:

“It’s a culmination of a lot of things from her part. It all started in the past on Lucha Underground. It was the same thing that happened in the match [in AEW] that happened on Lucha Underground. I thought that was learned, because when we encountered again in the indies, in that match she didn’t do any of that. When it comes to anything personal outside, I’m the type to just let it go. Once you are in the ring, that needs to disappear. You focus and do what works for the match. But outside of the Lucha Underground match I had heard a lot of things. In my mind we weren’t working so I didn’t need to worry about it. But that match happened outside and it didn’t happen again, so maybe she did learn. But then AEW comes, and never in my wildest dreams did I think it would happen, and it did. I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me. Maybe becasue she was the champ it gave her more courage. But you are still wrestling a veteran and you are a professional, it doesn’t mean you can be unprofessional.”

On online backlash:

“Of course, and you know it’s Twitter. And this is not even new. They took advantage of the vulnerable moment and all these years of gunning for me on twitter. But I ignore it, which can contribute to people’s perceptions of me. But I don’t have time for it, because I am always hustling. But it was kind of crazy how they turned me into the unprofessional. Anyone with a brain would have seen first of all, you don’t disrespect the veteran. Also, I was the signed talent and you are coming from the outside company! Thirdly, in the match, they [the audience] could see how it starts. It’s like with the Charlotte vs. Nia. I watched it neutrally and as a professional I can understand what happened more accurately. But it’s Twitter and a massive chunk was taking advantage.”

On leading up to that match and the match itself:

“The fire had damaged my gear. So when I got to AEW, I had to buy new gear with what little money I had left. The insurance screwed me over, it was a mess. I had to buy gear from out of nowhere. It was a non-stop bamboozling of going to hotels, driving back and forth and trying to find my way. That night was like [sighs] but then it’s ‘Tomorrow night you are wrestling so and so.’ I am like man, I don’t have the mental stamina to go with that. But whatever is in the tank, you gotta give the people what they want. When they announced it, everyone went crazy. So push it all aside and execute as much as you can. When the day came, she didn’t want to do anything. I’m like what? No this match will be awesome. But I’m also trying to knock it out of the park. Even at the start, with the slap, we went over that 1 million times, we knew. She forgets what comes after, I had no choice but to nudge her face, that’s when the shoot stuff happened. I’ve trained MMA, you can’t pull that on me. I just didn’t want to allow that negativity. I didn’t want to be pulled into that, she tried and tried though. Also I was already signed, why would I do that? Somehow I was made into the bad guy though. There is nothing that can be done about that, but the bigger issue is not understanding what kind of an asset I could be.”

On online abuse and ignoring it:

“Honestly I feel like the only way I can handle that, how I always handle it, is to not give them ammunition. No matter what I do or don’t do, they will do it regardless. I can only control me. I will be careful not to give them that ammunition, but at the same time they will not impact my goals and my purpose and who I am in general. I am going to keep fighting for it regardless.”

On what changes she wants to see in women’s wrestling:

“A big part is wanting to see those changes in women’s wrestling. When I saw Lita and Trish main event RAW, I was like wow I want to see more of this. I want to see them get the respect for the work that they put in, regardless of gender. That is a massive motivator for me. But wrestling is an escape from this personal world. But I have also tried to educate myself in psychology and managing traumatic experiences. I have tried as much as possible to use as many psychology techniques as possible. There’s a lot about me that no on knows as a person.”

On what she is grateful for:

“Life, health and support from others.”

Ivelisse can be found on Instagram here.

Featured image: Wrestling Inc

Alexander Wolfe (Axel Tischer) is a professional wrestler known best for his time in WWE and NXT UK. He joins Chris Van Vliet from his home in Germany to talk about what’s next for him after being released from his WWE contract, being part of SAnitY, what he learned from Eric Young, his thoughts on Nikki ASH’s new gimmick, how he got discovered and signed by WWE, the original gimmick they had planned for him and more!

On learning English:

“Of course you start in school. I think it was maybe in the 6th grade, no sorry 4th grade here. It was mainly just colors and counting. You really have the topic in school at 5th grade. But I believe that I really got into English in the early 2000’s when I got into professional wresting. I was watching it and screaming all of the catchphrases, but I did not know what they meant. I would say ‘If you smell what The Rock is cooking.’ and I would believe it was the coolest thing ever. That and torturing my English teacher with ‘What?’ So many phrases in English make no sense in German.”

On learning to wrestle at a young age:

“I started wrestling training at 13. So in Germany, wrestling is uncategorized. It is not with sport and it is not with art. It is right in between but you can’t say that it is either. In Germany, they still don’t get it. They love their soccer and badminton, but they don’t get wrestling. Becasue of that, you can train early becasue it is under the radar. When people realized that wrestling was fake here, they stopped going to the shows back in the day. It took a long time to get back after that. But now, especially after COVID, the scene has been growing. WXW had 3 shows where there was over 1,000 people in the building each night.”

On loving wrestling at an early age:

“I started watching wrestling at 5 or 6 years old. My parents used to watch it and I was fascinated right away, I’ve always been a fan of anime and comics. I remember the first pay per view I watched was WrestleMania 9, from there I just fell in love with wrestling. I had to stop watching it becasue of school, but I got back into it in 2000. So I always had the goal of not being the normal 9 to 5 worker, I want to become a professional wrestler. The reality was I had to finish school and study something. But then I realized I can have wrestling as a side job and make a living. Not a fortunate living but have a kind of income from it. When I got to sign with WWE that was the dream come true.”

On getting to WWE:

“So WXW is the biggest promotion in Germany. Before 2015 when I started my journey with WWE, I started in 2009 and regularly with WXW in 2011. The company grew becasue we did tours around Germany. We did the weekend on the east part, then the north part etc. In one month you had one free weekend, but in that weekend you are on other shows. The commentator for WXW sent me an email saying that WWE are looking for German talent, would I like to do a try-out in London? It was 2014, I had a lot of time to create myself as a wrestler due to all the experiences I collected. Then WWE contacted me, I sent some promo pics and they invited me to a try-out. We had 2 days of drills, I guess I did a great job becasue 2 months later I got invited to NXT.”

On returning to Germany after his WWE release:

“I had my plan B ready. I tried to ask them if I could completely move back to Germany. The plan B was what if? What if that happens? Nothing is for sure and nothing is guaranteed, especially in WWE. There is no guaranteed contract becasue they can release you like that [clicks fingers], and we have seen this in the past week. I’m not stupid, I know I have to plan for the future, especially with a wife and a kid. I can’t rely on empty promises, and I did that too many times in WWE. That being said, when I got the call and they let my contract expire, I said I wanted to move back to Germany. I did not have the time to talk to Hunter about that. So they gave me my wish earlier but with the slight difference of not renewing my contract.”

On travelling back and forth:

“The majority of my work was in England with NXT UK. I was in Germany from December 2019 over the holidays, then we decided to stay in Germany, it was nice to stay home. My wife said to get an apartment here in Germany. For 6 months in the winter we would live in Florida, in the summer we got to Germany. That was the plan but we had to travel to America, but couldn’t becasue of COVID. But then the rules changed. If you have a child born in America, which my son is, you can move back and forth. We did that becasue I lived in Miami and payed a lot of rent for that house. I tried to stay busy, talked with Shawn, asked to do stuff with the guys in Imperium. But a couple of months ago I got the call to not renew my contract. But I tried to talk to them and move back to the States.”

On signing with another big promotion:

“Yeah I would love to. Why not? In the end that is the goal. I am happy with having my freedom back, but also it is the goal of every wrestler to have the big contract with guaranteed money. Also where the work is appreciated and they have a good spot. If I want to go back to WWE, if the contract is good then sure. But right now it is not that interesting. I am more interested in Japan and somewhere where I can be myself. WWE tried to kill my passion for it and they were nearly successful at it. I learned a lot over my 6 years there, like empty promises. If it is not written on a piece of paper then it is not guaranteed. There’s NWA, IMPACT, ROH, but that’s just the States. There are promotions in England and Europe, it’s just such an exciting time for me. But international travel is not that open right now. But there are so many great promotions and talents, so if the right fit is there then maybe.”

On the coaches at NXT and how they influenced him:

“Specifically for me, it’s not that I couldn’t do what I wanted to do, but sometimes somebody telling me not to do something becasue it is not right or not good. But the good part is you never stop learning, when I watch back matches from 2015 I hate myself. You evolve as a performer and learn new techniques. being around the amazing coaches like Shawn Michaels, William Regal, Bobby Brookside, Fit Finlay, Norman Smiley. Finlay is amazing, he is the guy to go to if you want to learn how to wrestle the proper way and learn the European style. Shawn teaches you the psychology and how to get people involved in the match, get it in the right order and get the most out of the match. Being able to do that and not think about it too much, I am forever grateful.”

On losing his passion in wrestling:

“But losing the passion is sometimes someone telling you something isn’t going to happen. But it is not necessarily their fault. With COVID, they had big plans for everything, but then they had to switch plans. Right now we have to follow the protocols. If someone get tested positive then we can’t do the story. After 7 weeks the story is not good anymore. It’s a passion killer but nobodies fault. What I think is their fault is making empty promises, especially during my time at SmackDown. They made a lot of unrealistic promises, which never happened, but they always tried to keep you positive. In Germany, we have a very honest way of doing things, we don’t beat around the bush. But it was a case of someone saying ‘I was in a meeting, and somebody in that meeting said that you were sh*t.’ OK now I have to follow the lead and best case go to that guy. But they don’t want to be honest with you becasue it is not professional. Also things like ‘Don’t worry, everything is fine.’ Like when we lost our debut match they said that and people will forget. But it’s the internet, no one forgets.”

On Nikki Cross now becoming Nikki A.S.H.:

“I love it. Nikki is such an amazing person in life, she is one of my best friends. I toured with her together. I never met her before, but I met Damo [Nikki’s husband and fellow wrestler] before. They are both awesome people. When Nikki came to NXT, I knew that was Damo’s fiancée. We clicked right together and became best friends. Then when she joined us in Sanity it was the perfect fit. Seeing what she is doing right now on RAW as the Women’s Champion, having this gimmick where you are like superhero? But then when you see it, it’s perfect for WWE. Everyone can be a superhero if you believe in yourself and work hard. That message is so powerful and fits perfect for WWE.”

Praise for Eric Young:

“I loved it. I learned to work the crowd better. Eric has done everything in TNA, he was even a Women’s Champion and Super Eric the superhero. He taught me about promos and working the cameras. Before that I would just be doing dark matches and live shows. But starting as a member of Sanity, having him in the group was a big advantage. he told me to follow a camera, wait a bit, just little details I didn’t know. He is a perfectionist in a lot of things. I love what he is doing now in IMPACT, it is his version of Sanity. he is painting his canvas under the IMPACT umbrella. I think without him, Sanity would not have been so successful.”

On the origin of his name:

“When I got to WWE, the wrestling scene is Germany was so small. I did wrestle some of the guys before, like Apollo Crews in WXW. In Germany I was one of the top 5, but nobody knew me in America. The company that hired me just mentioned I was a good wrestler and I was a German soldier. So I did not come in with the big buzz like some American or English people did. I remember they pitched some names to me, which were utter nonsense. One was Hans Von Wuss, something like that. I do not remember the whole list, but you wear a uniform and wear a sign that is forbidden in Germany and should be forbidden around the world. It was just the stereotypes, but Germany has more history than the war. [Chris asked if it was similar to a Nazi gimmick] Probably not that they said. But I have a name from that time, Germany is very sensitive about that topic.”

“Patriotism is not that big in Germany. I think it’s a good thing but I understand why people in Germany do not wave that flag. It’s good if Germany wins in soccer, but if not it can feel like it’s from the right side. A lot of times if I did something on TV that was German, the people in the comments mentioned a Nazi character. I wore a grey coat on one occasion, no Germany colors, but people thought I was a Nazi officer. It’s a weird topic, but anyway, WWE did not say they wanted to have a soldier gimmick. I remember with Imperium, Triple H did not want to get into the military section. This is becasue people will think an Austrian guy, a German and an Italian… He was like don’t use bombs or any military in promos, he did not want that material. I told Matt Bloom I did not want to have any of those names. It’s an old school name and if people are still alive from that time, they may think WWE made me a Nazi character, which I would have refused 100%. But I had a name list, the first name had Alexander, the second had Wolf, no E on the end. Luckily they said they wanted to use Alexander Wolfe, becasue they can copyright Wolfe.”

On having more to prove following his departure from WWE:

“For sure. My time in WWE was great. But before I switched over to NXT UK, I never had a singles match on TV. In Sanity I was between the leader and the big guy, so I was the weak link. I always felt left on the side, but that’s the role. I always tried to showcase myself and the group. When I went to NXT UK I had a chance to show off my wrestling ability. I never really had the chance to have bigger matches. I tried to get on a TakeOver with Ilja Dragunov, but we were in the position of just highlight the shows more instead of the TakeOvers. But right now I have a lot to prove, I want to get myself in the indies as an established brand, thanks to my time in WWE.”

On what he is grateful for:

“My family, my wife and still being healthy.”

Alexander can be found on Twitter here and Instagram here.

Featured image: The Sportster

Zion Clark is an amateur wrestler and track star born without legs due to a condition called Caudal Regression Syndrome. He joins Chris Van Vliet for an in-person interview in Los Angeles to share his amazing story of overcoming every obstacle that has been put in front of him including being placed in several different foster homes for the first 17 years of his life. He is now chasing his dream to become a Olympian and also a professional MMA fighter. Make sure to check out the documentary short about his life on Netflix called “Zion” and his new book is called “Unmatched”.

On his disability:

“It’s called Caudal Regression Syndrome, it’s a very rare disease. Me personally, I’ve only ever met one other person in my life with the same condition, which is crazy. With a lot of disabilities you can find a lot of people with those disabilities, not mine. Mine is so rare that it is like 1 out of every couple of hundred thousand are born with it each year. That being said, me growing up the way I did and just being me was very different. You are lower to the ground. As a child I was only about 2 feet tall.”

On how Caudal Regression Syndrome affects the body:

“I’ve seen the birth records 2 or 3 times. I think it was like 3 lbs. Very very small. But just because you have Caudal Regression Syndrome, it doesn’t mean that you won’t have legs. It might mean that you have a spinal issue. It’s mainly a spinal issue and how it affects the rest of your body. Your nervous system goes through your spine and goes out through your entire body. If those signals are not being sent right, it can come out in birth defects. In my case, I wasn’t born with legs and I am missing the lower portion of my spine. That’s what I had to deal with. I met a lady in my first track meet that was missing the same part of my spine plus another 4 inches. She didn’t have legs, but had a harder time moving around because the condition was a lot more severe than mine.”

On his mother’s pregnancy:

“Yeah my birth mother, she was a drug addict and in and out of jail constantly. When I was born, I had pretty much every party drug in my system that you can think of. Most kids don’t survive after that first day, especially if the mother is marinating their unborn child in such drugs.”

On his birth parents:

“I actually don’t know who my father is, but my birth mother [I have met]. It was after high school, I had trained for my first season of track and field and came out with 2 state titles. I remember being the third person in my school’s history to become a 2 time champion. There’s billboards all around the city, newspapers, magazines. I am up there with the guys who make history. I’m on the bus and this lady gets on the bus and she walks in with 1 leg and sits down next to me. I’m thinking nothing of it I’m just minding my own business. She looked at me and she said ‘Zion.’ I looked at her and said ‘How do you know my name?’ She said my full name that I was given at birth. The only people who knew that were my adopted mom, me and my case worker. When she said that, I was like who are you? She said ‘My name is Melanie and I am your mother.’ I was in shock. I was 18 at the time. I didn’t know what to say. She was like ‘I missed you, I’ve been looking for you.’ Well yeah I’ve been on ESPN. When she said I’ve been looking for you for years, that rubbed me the wrong way.”

On having a rough childhood:

“I definitely felt unwanted growing up. A lot of the families I was with, they didn’t know how to raise me or they didn’t know how to care for me, becasue I was different. I had to wear these prosthetics. They looked like regular legs and I had to sit in this brace. I would get sent to school with it. The early stages of my life, wearing the prosthetics, they were to straighten my spine out. Once I got to middle school, I am 12 or 13, I started to realize I am moving around just fine, why do I have to wear these? I am wearing them for 18 out of the 24 hours in a day. It got to the point where it was a punishment. I was like I am my own person. If something broke on the prosthetics, the nurse would call and I would get punished at home. Over the top punishment for something that could happen to anyone. If I was a parent and had a kid like me, once their body was repaired I would let them make the choice. They don’t need to look like everyone else.”

On there being a happy ending:

“The dark beginning is what lifts people up and inspires people. A lot of people who go through similar things, they don’t have the same mindset. Even today, people that go through what I go through don’t make it out. They don’t all see the brighter side of things and put the past in the past. Some hold on to it and it brings them back to jail or onto the streets. It sucks so much that the world is like that. Me being who I am today, I am strong the way I am, move like a boss. I am a survivalist and I will survive. Unless you are born into a family that is struggling, life is not as hard as the rest of the world. You can’t put someone like me with someone who has had everything and expect us to be friends.”

On nearly missing out on adoption and praise for his adopted mother:

“I got adopted at 17. I was almost too late. If I would have waited 7 months, it would have been too late. It changed my life. I had been adopted 2 times before. They say it’s your forever family, but they still get rid of you. One of the last families I was with got rid of me on the day I should have been adopted. A lot of kids go through what I have been through and they struggle a lot. I have had my family support me and we live by example. If I got in trouble with the law, my foster mom just sat me down and spoke to me. I have never had that before. With my mom doing parenting the way that she did, if she didn’t do that I wouldn’t be here. There is no success, no wrestling, no track.”

On how he travels around the country:

“I walk on my hands, I have a wheelchair and I can drive, I drove here. I have hand controls. The thumb is the gas, there’s a lever for the break and just steer with the wheel. I remember going in there and they are like ‘Sir do you have your own vehicle?’ I did then they asked how was I driving. Is it OK with my doctor? I finally take the test, ace it and I’m like, bye!”

On his future goals:

“Track and field world champ, Olympic Champ, wrestling world champ. We are talking 2024 here. Also MMA, if we can figure out a way for me to get into Bellator, I want to be world champ.”

What he is grateful for:

“I have a family to call my own, the people in my life that have helped me propel myself and I am here to inspire people.”

Zion Clark can be found on Instagram here.

Zion’s book, Zion Unmatched can be purchased here.

Featured image: Amazing Cool Pictures

Steve Maclin (aka Steve Cutler) is a professional wrestler and former Marine. He joins Chris Van Vliet from his home in Orlando, FL to talk about being released from WWE, signing with IMPACT Wrestling, working with his girlfriend Deonna Purrazzo, being part of “The Forgotten Sons” with Jackson Ryker and Wesley Blake, serving in the United States Marine Corps, how he got his start in professional wrestling and much more!

On his WWE release:

“It’s funny, anyone that gets released everyone is like ‘Oh man that sucks, that’s not good.’ Everyone has that heartfelt thing. But a lot of talent that has been let go, especially in the past year is so fricking talented. A lot of the times they are not allowed to flourish there just because of the way that creative is. It’s a work in progress and that’s the TV that they want. When you get out you are able to spread your wings out there on your own and be free and do what you want to do. But being able to express yourself on how you want to look is a different world.”

On how Deonna Purrazzo got his foot in the door at IMPACT:

“So I actually flew in the week that she had Slammiversary, it was her first match back there where she won the title. That was kind of cool. I didn’t go for the show or anything, I just wanted to get away from Florida at that time. A year later, me getting let go and going the same route. A week after I got let go I went with her to IMPACT tapings. Not looking for a job or anything, I just wanted to get away. I needed to get away from the PC [Performance Center] era bubble. She said ‘Just come to the show.’ I’m like yeah OK no problem.'”

On how they got the ball rolling at IMPACT:

“I just hit it off and started chatting to [Tommy] Dreamer. Not about wrestling, just New York Giants and the history of Giants football. It was a good spot for me to land and I am very happy to be there.”

How he signed for IMPACT:

“It really didn’t come about at that day. Obviously word came about towards the company as well. Once they asked me when my 90 days was up, I was on a phone call speaking with D-lo Brown and Scott D’Amore. That’s just kind of how we went about it. After that we just played the waiting game on my 90 days. Originally I was told after Slammiversary I would be making a debut, and then not even 2 days after that the phone rings. They say ‘Hey, we’re gonna bring you in before Slammiversary and get the ball rolling.’ I was like ‘No problem. I’m ready to go to work.’

On the Steve Maclin character:

“So for me as Steve Maclin, Cutler is dead! He is dead and gone now. But as Steve Maclin, I already had the ideas of where I wanted to go for years. I was pitching in the Performance Center and the creative process there and I always had ideas. I had notepads and notes on my phone. Also I just have all these ideas and old promos where I just wanted to put together what I am and how I envision myself. So I took a little bit from The Punisher and I took who I am and did it all in one, mixing in the background of being a marine. Taking the dark side of The Punisher, trying to manipulate it into myself and just be me. The fun part is just being me.”

On joining The Marines:

“9/11 is what got me into wanting to join. I was a freshman in high school, I think at that time I knew what I wanted to do after high school. 9/11 is one of those moments in my life that had a big impact, being a kid from Jersey and seeing the Twin Towers and watching them fall. It’s one of those things where I knew my calling was going to and I did it. I was on leave one weekend and my buddy was at this bar with Darren Young. He said ‘Hey, you wanna talk to one of my buddies that’s in WWE?’ I’m like hell yeah! He knew I loved wrestling growing up. He always tried to get me into a ring but I was like there was no way it would happen. I’m not 6 foot 3, 255lbs and above. I’m not Stone Cold, there’s no way.”

On how he got into wrestling:

“Speaking with Fred [Rosser, known as Darren Young in WWE], it was one of those things where he got that idea in my head. He was like ‘When you get out, you will have a really good story. Just give it a shot and if it’s something you want to do then go all in.’ One of the few things he did tell me was never change who you are. Just stick to who you are and don’t let people change you. It’s something that has stuck with me and something I try to pass down. Once I got out the marine core, I moved back in with my parents and found The Monster Factory. I got in the ring and fell in love with it instantly.”

When he decided to join The Marines:

“I tried college for a year. My mom begged me, becasue I was ready to go to the recruiter in college. It was 2005 and Iraq was awful at that time and It was all over the news. So my mom begged me ‘Please try college.’ I did and I didn’t like it at first. It wasn’t for me. One day I was working at my dad’s supply office and a recruiter was down the street. One day said screw it. I walked in and I wanted to leave after Thanksgiving, I want to do infantry, you don’t have to sell me on anything. It was an easy process. My stepdad knew what I wanted to do and my mom was upset. But it all changed after I went to boot camp and graduated. She saw me in my uniform and the rest is history.”

On crafting his character and his early work:

“Early on I was just being me, which is something that Dusty wanted to do in promo classes. They had classes on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays, I would go to all of those. Wednesday’s were the classes for those that were on TV. So you just sit and watch and learn. But the people who were there when I first started are either not there anymore or on top of the company. So it’s crazy to see. For me, crafting the character was just going to the movies, watching movies and picking pieces, seeing what works. I tried to do America’s greatest son. I would be a heel veteran who would be like ‘Oh you want to thank me for my service now?’ Just being an ass. being a heel is the best thing in the world.”

Where the Steve Cutler name came from:

“At the time it was lists. Byron Saxton was in the office at the time and in charge of getting everyone’s names together. I remember turning in 50 names on a list 3 different times. On the final list I got back it was either Alton Wolfe or Steve Cutler. I was like I’ll take Steve Cutler, it’s got my actual name in it. I wanted Duke something as my first choice, becasue I love the name Duke, I was thinking GI Joe and comical stuff. When Steve Cutler came back, you put it in a list of names and see what fits. You go ‘Shawn Michaels, Bret Hart, Alton Wolfe..’ It doesn’t quite fit. You want something that lasts a long time. I think now it works more than an over the top name.”

On Jackson Ryker joining Blake and Cutler:

“I’ll blame Steve Corino for that one. We were on a live event, I want to say it was in Maryland. We just had to do a 6 man and it was great. So we came back are were like what do you think? Corino said ‘You guys kind of all look good together. He’s got the beard, he’s grungy looking.’ OK cool. We got back to TV the following week for tapings and Hunter said ‘Hey we’re gonna go with this.’ OK, whatever you say boss. No problem. We took a little bit more time to wait and to debut. We debuted against The Street Profits in October that year when we became The Forgotten Sons.”

On the Jackson Ryker controversy:

“To be fair when I got the texts from everybody on what was going on we were literally walking the dogs. It’s a crappy situation, because that’s just the way the world is now and how you view things and what you say is wither going to offend somebody or nor offend somebody. In that sense he can have his viewpoints on the world and that’s why [Wesley] Blake and I distanced ourselves from him very quickly, becasue we don’t feel that way. Nothing against him, he’s allowed to say what he wants to say. He’s a free man and that’s the point of social media, you can say what you want to say. But obviously in today’s cancel culture things don’t work out that way. Do I agree with the things he said? Not at all. But I also stand on the way I feel, which is why we distanced ourselves very quickly. Looking back now it’s a situation that sparked to where I am nowadays. At the time I was angry and now I couldn’t care less, becasue I am a lot happier and a lot freer.”

On Jackson Ryker derailing the momentum as a group:

“We were about to win the tag titles. We were about to wrestle with New Day and have a good little program. It was going that way. Blake and I would have been the SmackDown Tag Team Champions at some point. But what could have been…”

On his goal in IMPACT:

“Currently my goal is the X-Division Championship. Right now the holder of that belt is Josh Alexander. I’m really looking forward to something down the road with him and see if he wants to step up. But right now my eyes are set on Petey Williams. He was interfering with my stuff so I dropped him on his head.”

On plans after wrestling:

“They used to have financial people come into the PC to prepare you for life after wrestling. But at the time my goal is wrestling. It’s 100% on wrestling. I would love to be more involved in the veteran community and helping out that way. When I was let go I was applying to a bunch of different jobs at the Veteran’s Association. I would love to get more involved in the counselling. I’ve been there where I have been down in the dumps. That’s kind of where The Forgotten Sons came from, and those are the people you shouldn’t forget.”

What he is grateful for:

“My family, my house and wrestling in general.”

Steve Maclin can be found on Twitter here and Instagram here.

Featured image: Cage Side Seats

It’s the phrase that has completely changed my life. Vague goals get vague results. In this episode I break down exactly what that means, where it came from and how can you apply it to your own life. Stop making excuses and start crushing your specific goals.

As Greg Reid says: “A dream written down with a date becomes a goal. A goal broken down into steps becomes a plan. A plan backed by action makes your dreams come true.”

Let me know what your goals are so we can all cheer you along. Tag me on Instagram or Twitter @ChrisVanVliet and use the hashtag #VagueGoalsGetVagueResults

Well how are you my friends? Welcome back! Thanks for checking this out. Today I want to dive into the phrase that has completely changed my life. Vague goals get vague results.

Where it come from? What exactly does it mean? And how can it help you in your own life?

These are all great questions — and hopefully by the end of this, this will be a phrase that changes YOUR life as well. OK!

VAGUE GOALS GET VAGUE RESULTS.

I’m sure you’ve heard me say it before… I mean, hey, I even put it on a t-shirt. [get your Vague goals get vague results T-shirt here]. And it came from the idea that a lot of people set goals with no real direction.

Stop me if you’ve heard one of these before:

• I’m going to lose some weight this year.
• I want to read more often.
• I’m going to be more active.
• I want to make more money.

Maybe you’ve even said one of these before. All of these are perfect examples of extremely vague goals. It’s like getting into your car without knowing where you’re heading. You’ll just drive around aimlessly because you don’t have a destination. How long will that drive be? Will you end up in Tennessee or Tijuana?

Take that first one for example, I’m going to lose some weight this year. Well if you lose ONE pound at some point over the calendar year, Congratulations, you’ve accomplished your goal of losing some weight this year. But I’m guessing that’s probably not what that person meant when they said that.

The opposite of vague goals get vague results is specific goals get specific results. A better version of that weight loss goal would be something like “I am going to lose 10 pounds by July 31” or “I am going to lose 25 pounds before my birthday.” A specific number by a specific date. Instead of saying “I want to make more money.” A better version would be “I want to make an extra $100 a week, every week for the rest of the year.”

My specific goal:

You’ve seen me do this all this time…. most recently, I did it here on the podcast. I didn’t say “my goal is to get more reviews this year”. I set a very specific number and a very specific date — I said let’s hit 2000 reviews before my birthday, which is May 19. And guess what, with your help. We did it! We are well over 2,000 now. But what was so cool about that, is we could all watch it go from 1500 reviews to, 1550… to 1600, to 1700 and so on. We knew exactly what we were headed for.

And I think what really helped that goal get accomplished, was I made it public.. I put it out there on the podcast and also on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram… so now I needed to be accountable for it. Now we are all in this together and how much further we had to go!

And think about that with whatever goal it is that you’re headed towards. If it’s something to do with your diet or weight loss -make it public, now you’ve got a team of supporters to cheer you on and also to keep you in line when they see you with a donut in your hand or in line for your 4th helping at Golden Corral. But hey, I get it, that Chocolate Wonderfall is incredible.

Where the phrase came from:

The great Brian Tracy said it best when he said , “A goal without a plan is only a dream”.

And Greg Reid took it one step further when he said:
“A dream written down with a date becomes a goal. A goal broken down into steps becomes a plan. A plan backed by action makes your dreams come true.”

This has been a theme throughout my whole career. I’m incredibly grateful for the fact that I’ve been working in TV since 2005.

When I was about to graduate from college, I went to Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, I knew I needed an internship to get my foot in the door and hopefully have that give me the real world experience to get a job. I reached out to every station and I heard crickets. I knew there was a TV station an hour away from my hometown, CHEX TV in Peterborough, Ontario. So I googled and found the name and email address of the general manager. So I sent him an email saying I would be there on spring break and wanted to talk about an internship. This was a total lie, I had no intention of going there. But he wrote back and said “Well if you are going to be in the area then come on by.” That internship turned into a job, and the rest is history.

So maybe… your goal is career oriented, perhaps it’s something to with your relationship, maybe it’s your family, maybe you want to spend more time with your kids. Perhaps it’s fitness related and you want to lose weight or run a marathon. Maybe you want more subscribers on YouTube, followers on Instagram. Maybe you want to start making money from your podcast. Whatever it is, get specific about it.

The takeaway:

Figure out what that goal is… and what the path is to get there and write it down. Today. In fact, put it out there on Twitter or Instagram, and tag me so we can all cheer you along as you crush that specific goal.

You’ve got this! If somebody else is doing what you want to do, that just means that you can do it to. Reverse engineer their path back to where you are. And most importantly, don’t make excuses. If you want to do it, you’ll find a way. And if you don’t, you’ll find an excuse.

Let me know your goals on Twitter with the hashtag #Vaguegoalsgetvagueresults