Dr. Mike Wahl, professor of BioMedicine at Memorial University, has officially announced season 2 of the WAHL Show, a 12-part docu-series that explores health and wellness as it relates to Newfoundland.
The upcoming season, now titled “Health Explored,” aims to take viewers on a journey exploring health and wellness across multiple countries, including New Zealand, India, Bhutan, Japan, and the USA.
While the first season was titled “The WAHL Show,” with WAHL standing for ‘Wellness and Healthy living,’ the same as his radio show, Wahl says they opted to call the second season ‘Health Explored’ because “[He] didn’t want people to think it was about [him] when it’s not.”
He says he wants it to be clear that the focus of the show is the exploration of wellness and healthy living.
Early career
Wahl originally got his master’s in Applied Exercise Physiology at Memorial and then pursued a PhD in endocrinology and epidemiology with MUN’s Faculty of Medicine.
While completing his PhD, Wahl started a wellness company training executives who later approached him asking if he would consider doing corporate wellness.
His company then transitioned to working with clients in heavy industries like mining, construction, and oil & gas. Eventually, as the company grew, it was approached to be acquired by large-scale Canadian medical company the ‘Medysis Health Group’ and then by Telus as well.
Before the company was acquired, Wahl bought out his business partner and later decided to go back to MUN and teach.
“I’ve only been a prof full-time for about three years,” he explains, “but I’ve been teaching at the university for twenty.”
Research
While the majority of his research has a heavy focus on community outreach, including his radio show and TV series, Wahl recently completed a study surrounding cannabis impairment and how long impairment lasts.
“I did the first of it’s kind cannabis impairment trial on humans— we did that this year,” says Wahl. “When I was in industry, they had all these rules around cannabis impairment on the job site, and they had these rules like you can’t have cannabis in your system at all, and you know cannabis lasts for about a month. We were looking at how long impairment lasts, so we had our first study on that. But most of my work is community outreach.”
Wahl also chairs the undergraduate Human Physiology course and does a lot of teaching in the undergraduate medical program.
The WAHL Show podcast
His podcast, “The WAHL Show,” began back in the first week of COVID.
“I was planning on travelling to Costa Rica to record my first podcast episode with this big sustainability guy,” explains Wahl. “But COVID happened, so I had my associate dean Mike Grant and a couple of other experts on and talked about COVID and what it was. So, that’s when I first started, we’ve done 156 episodes since then, and that’s quite a few. It’s been going pretty solid for almost three and a half, four years.”
Wahl says his interest in starting the podcast stemmed from having met numerous incredible people during his time working with his Wellness company, and his desire to share everything he had learned from them.
Adding to that, he says, “When I worked in corporate wellness in particular, I realized there’s a real lack of health literacy, so why not do topics on all sorts of diseases or mental health or physical health or just good things happening in the community. Most of the stuff we do is positive, and I don’t get into anything controversial or any pseudoscience. It’s community health.”
After having spent a lot of time working with the general population, Wahl says he began to notice the look of confusion on people’s faces when an expert was explaining a particular concept. His podcast and TV series enable him to act as a translator, to interpret what experts say and make it more digestible for the public.
He then worked with Braeden King, photographer and founder of There Media— who later became the Director of the docu-series, to film a promo video for the podcast.
Wahl says that once the video was released, “People saw it and were like, ‘That’s really nice, way better than you’d expect’”
From there, he got the idea for the upcoming season, saying, “We didn’t really think too much, we just went for it, and we ended up finding the right people, like you would— and we put together a pretty good program. That’s how it started. We started with the radio show and then saw what the visuals with the content could look like and were like, this could really work.”
Biggest challenge
Wahl says the biggest challenge while filming the TV show was making sure the topics were relevant to everybody and then finding out how they could be applied here, locally, to their viewing audience, as well as figuring out all the logistics.
“We had 33 days, and we had morning and afternoon shoots minimum every day,” says Wahl. “So, every day was ‘get up, drive, interview, go to the next one, go to the next one,’ we had to have all the questions ready to go and send them off, plus organize and coordinate spots.”
Health Explored
By visiting New Zealand, India, Bhutan, Tokyo, and Okinawa, and interviewing various experts, Wahl and his team were able to explore the meaning of health in different countries and cultures.
Of all the episodes filmed, Wahl says one of his favourites is the one focused on happiness.
“My dad told me to find happiness before he passed away, it was his last wish for me,” he explains.
He was then inspired to travel to Bhutan, where they study Gross National Happiness (GNH), rather than Gross Domestic Product (GDP). On their way back from Bhutan, Wahl explains they got stuck in Montreal and had to drive to Fredericton before flying home to Newfoundland.
While in Fredericton, they made an impromptu stop for an interview.
“While we were there, we interviewed my mom,” he says, “and my mom told the story of how before my father passed away, he wanted me to find happiness. Now she’s the main guest of the happiness episode. So, sometimes things just happen, and it comes off being much more organic.”
Advice for students
When asked if there is any advice he has for Memorial students, Wahl emphasizes the importance of following something that really gets you excited, saying, “That’s the only way you’re going to be able to really achieve and grow.”
“In Okinawa, they have what’s called Ikigai, and Ikigai is when you do something you love, do something you’re good at, do something you get paid for, and do something the world needs,” says Wahl. “If every student could find their Ikigai and get paid to do something they loved, something the world needs, and something they’re good at, then they would be very fortunate in life.”
Editor’s note: Special thanks to Dr. Mike Wahl for taking the time to speak with the Muse, and congratulations on the new season.