The AMP'D UP211 Podcast

Twenty days. That’s how long Chef Zack Wannawong lay in a medically induced coma while surgeons fought a rare and aggressive infection that was tearing through his body. When he finally woke up, his right leg was gone. Just months earlier, Zack was a rising force in the culinary world, leading kitch...

What if the future amputees have imagined for decades is no longer theoretical? I'm sitting down with Dr. Chris Duncan, Chief Medical Officer at BIOS, Biologic Input Output Systems, a company working at the frontier of neural interface technology. What they are building sounds like science fiction, ...

What does it take to lose everything, and then earn it all back? In this episode of The AMP’D UP211 Podcast, Rick Bontkowski sits down with Deputy Sheriff Matt Swartz, a military veteran, law enforcement veteran, instructor, and amputee who returned to full-duty police work after a catastrophic cras...

In this episode of The AMP’D UP211 Podcast , I sit down with Gini Thomas , a creator, advocate, and unapologetically real voice in the amputee community. Gini is best known for her transparent, often humorous look into life as an amputee. Through social media, she educates, challenges assumptions, a...

On this episode of The AMP’D UP211 Podcast , host Rick Bontkowski; amputee, advocate, drummer, and storyteller, sits down with one of the most unexpectedly extraordinary people you’ll ever meet: Mark Watson . Mark isn’t a celebrity. He isn’t a decorated athlete. He isn’t a world-traveling motivation...

She didn’t just rewrite the rules, she built an entirely new playbook.  Viktoria Modesta, the world’s first amputee pop star and one of the most iconic creative forces in modern culture, sits down with Rick Bontkowski for a rare, revealing conversation. From medical trauma to global stages… From sil...

What if a retired prosthetic could be more than a memory? What if it could become a knife that honors a veteran’s story… or fund a child’s new leg… or even help an amputee climb a 14,000-foot mountain? In this inspiring episode, Rick Bontkowski sits down with Jason Dickens, founder of ReDefined Pros...

On this episode of The AMP’D UP211 Podcast, host Rick Bontkowski welcomes Katy Grainger, a sepsis survivor whose life changed forever in the span of just a few days. What began as a small cut on her thumb quickly escalated into septic shock, organ failure, and a medically induced coma. When Katy awo...