CANStutter Podcast

This week on the podcast, we’re joined by author, speaker, and stand-up comedian Joze Piranian to discuss his new book, Stop Holding Back. We talk about the lessons behind the book, his journey from overcoming a lifelong stutter to performing stand-up comedy and speaking around the world, and the power of taking action despite fear. Along the way, Joze shares the story behind a memorable on stage Star Wars joke, offers plenty of laughs, and leaves us with some sage advice on courage, growth, and getting out of our own way. This is a conversation full of humour, insight, and inspiration.

The 2nd installment of the CanStutter Podcast. Lisa Wilder interviews Greg O'Grady. Greg O'Grady grew up in Newfoundland and moved to Toronto in 1974. After a 35-year career in management with the City of Toronto Long-Term Care Homes and Services, he retired in 2017 and moved back to his home province with his husband. For more than 20 years he has volunteered to helping people who stutter. He founded the "Million Things I need to Say" Walk/Run for Stuttering Awareness, and co-founded of the Newfoundland and Labrador Stuttering Association (NLSA). Through these groups he has raised tens of thousands of dollars to help people who stutter get stuttering treatment and provided group settings for them to get support from others who share the same challenges. Greg is author of "Surviving Stuttering! 'a white-knuckle roller coaster ride: my story."

Tess Casher: Scholar, Writer and Person who StuttersBorn in Canada, Tess Casher spent most of her childhood in Whitehorse, Yukon. She stuttered from a young age, and got help when she entered the treatment program at the Institute for Stuttering Research in Edmonton, Alberta – an experience that inspired her to write and publish a novel aimed at young people about a junior high school girl who stutters. While attending Mount Allison University in New Brunswick she was the recipient of numerous academic awards, and in 2023 she became her University’s 54th Rhodes Scholar, and moved to Oxford, England to continue work on her masters degree in Modern and contemporary English literature. She currently does graduate level teaching and research in the English and Film Studies Department of the University of Alberta, and she plans to apply to PhD programs to study how literary representations of speech disfluency contribute to or disentangle stammering stereotypes and how the stuttering approach to communication can provide new avenues into writing and the literary field.