29 Dec 2012
The Year in Review and Predictions with Dr. Tom Weidig from the Stuttering Brain (380)
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Dr. Tom Weidig, the brain behind the Stuttering Brain blog, joins Peter Reitzes to discuss the year in stuttering, his predictions made in 2011 for 2012 and his predictions for 2013.
Dr. TOM WEIDIG is an independent voice in the stuttering community whose blog, The Stuttering Brain, receives more than 100,000 visits a year. Dr. Weidig has volunteered for the British Stammering Association as a former trustee and past chair of its research committee. Tom’s scientific background is in theoretical physics and finance. Dr. Weidig has studied at the University of Cambridge and Imperial College London and was a visiting scholar at Trinity College.
For 2013, Dr. Weidig predicts that basically nothing much will happen in stuttering. Tom states that at this time he views genetic research as the only or main constructive research. Dr. Weidig states that he currently is very cautious and has little hope in pharmaceutical research and deep brain stimulation research. Tom is much more optimistic about current outreach work by self help organizations and those in the stuttering community.
Dr. Weidig discusses his predictions made at the end of 2011 for 2012:
- A Dutch study (or the findings) due out soon will show no difference between Lidcombe treatment for preschoolers and a Demands and Capacities treatment approach.
- More input from mainstream scientists on stuttering research relating to genes and biochemistry.
- More trials on drugs but nothing much happening.
- Discussions on blogs and podcasts might switch more to social media, especially Facebook.
- The results from the large long-term Phase IIb trial on Pagoclone will be released. They will show that the control group (who took a placebo pill) show significant improvements. The study of this effect will force us to reconsider all outcome studies ever done and compare them to the control groups’ improvements.
Tom has been a guest on StutterTalk numerous times. His appearances are archived here.
13 Jan 2013
Facing Stuttering and Not Giving Up with Kelly Snow (381)
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Kelly Snow, a longtime veteran of the stuttering community, joins Peter Reitzes to discuss employment challenges, being a reporter who stutters, being the father of two children who stutter, facing stuttering during junior high school, how his faith helps him cope with stuttering, his experience being the second person ever to have a SpeechEasy device and so much more. Kelly and Peter even role play a job interview to hear how Kelly talks openly and positively about stuttering during challenging situations.
KELLY SNOW is 34-years old and a lifelong stutter. Kelly has been a sportswriter and editor and is currently the sports editor of his hometown newspaper — The Courier-Times in Roxboro, NC. During his 12-year journalism career, Kelly has received 13 state press association awards.
During today’s episode we played an edited audio excerpt from this video titled speecheasy. We also discussed these two awesome short essays written by Kelly when he was in high school which are archived at the Stuttering Homepage.
Your Everyday Senior?
Peter mentioned this StutterTalk episode featuring Mark Babcock and this video: