The Deets with Duddy

Jay McNeil went from 14 seasons with the Calgary Stampeders to becoming president of the team. Now he’s seeing professional football from a side players rarely get to experience. We get into the business of the CFL, what players don’t see about running a professional football team, player salaries and team finances, changing fan habits, bringing younger Calgarians back to McMahon Stadium, reaching...

What does it really cost to become an Olympic athlete in Canada? Behind every Olympic medal are years of sacrifice, financial struggles, mental pressure, and an entire team working behind the scenes. Gary Davies, President and CEO of Canadian Sport Institute Alberta (CSI Alberta), joins The Deets with Duddy to reveal what most Canadians never see about high-performance sport. From Olympic and Para...

What would make someone walk away from neuroscience to become a stuntwoman? Alleya Bourne went from studying the human brain at the University of Alberta to performing stunts on HBO's The Last of Us and landing a major villain role in the Malayalam film Aadu 3 . It's an unconventional career change that took her from a research lab in Edmonton to film sets around the world. After losing he...

Jessica Janzen has built a life and career around bringing joy into hard places. But that philosophy came from experiences that tested nearly every part of her life. Jessica joins The Deets with Duddy to talk about growing up on a Manitoba farm, feeling unintelligent before discovering she had dyslexia and ADHD, struggling quietly with her mental health, and moving to Calgary with $300 and the cha...

https://www.stoboart.com/ Mandy Stobo has spent more than 20 years making art, but the path there has been anything but straightforward. Before Bad Portraits became an international art project, Mandy was dreaming about working for Disney, spray painting train yards, raising her son, trying to find her place as an artist, and figuring out how to build a career on her own terms. She shares how a ga...

Jade Elephant is built for the stage. Mitchell Brady, Taylor Miles and Kyle Tenove join me to talk about the chemistry behind the Calgary rock trio, why they trust each other enough to take real risks live, and what happens when a mistake becomes part of the show instead of something to hide. We get into recording live off the floor with Russell Broom, making their new record without a click track...

What does it actually take to make a living as a magician? Matt Gore has spent his life figuring that out. From discovering magic as a kid in Cape Town and learning how to command an audience, to performing more than 3,000 shows and competing on some of magic’s biggest stages, Matt has built an entire career around making difficult things look effortless. We get into the years of practice behind a...

What does it actually take to build a film festival? Adam Keresztes is the Lead Shorts Programmer at the Calgary International Film Festival (CIFF), where thousands of submissions, hundreds of decisions, and a whole lot of movie watching eventually become one of Calgary's biggest cultural events. Adam joins The Deets with Duddy to explain how he went from software developer to film programmer,...

Logan Middleton hears a lot of new music. As the host of Xposure on X92.9, he helps spotlight local and independent artists on commercial radio while working across music programming and production at the station. We talk about Logan’s path from being a music-obsessed kid and playing in bands to finding his place in radio, what makes a song immediately stand out, and what he has learned from heari...

Shelby Morisseau is a Calgary-area content creator, UGC creator, and entertainment personality who left a secure corporate social media job to work for herself full time. Shelby talks about growing up in Cochrane, starting as a dancer, struggling with eczema, studying medical aesthetics, and finding her way into content creation through storytelling, small businesses, and social media. She also op...

Pat Kordyback joins The Deets with Duddy to talk about Delta Sweet, Stereos, MuchMusic, Summergirl, and what it means to build a new music chapter with real experience behind you. Pat looks back on the grind before Stereos broke through, the wild overnight shift after MuchMusic’s Disband, and how fast life changed when Canadian television could still turn a band into a national story. He talks abo...

The Royal Foundry have never been interested in staying in one lane. Jared Salte and Bethany Schumacher join The Deets with Duddy to talk about how their very different paths into music eventually became a shared creative life, and how those differences still shape the way they write, produce, perform, and make decisions together. They get into the evolution of The Royal Foundry’s sound, why they’...

Giulia Bruno opened her own restaurant at 19, starting in a Calgary food court before eventually moving Pronto YYC into its current Inglewood home. When paying influencers proved too expensive, Giulia decided to try making the content herself. One of her first pizza videos hit 1.5 million views, and what started as a way to bring local customers through the door quickly grew into an audience of mi...

City Hall affects more of your daily life than most people realize. Adam MacVicar is the City Hall reporter for Global News Calgary, and he has spent years following the decisions, debates, reports and infrastructure issues that shape how Calgary actually functions. In this episode, Adam talks about how he got into journalism, what brought him back to Calgary, and what covering the city has taught...

Tim Tamashiro has lived a few different lives in Calgary. He has been a jazz singer, CBC Radio host, author, speaker, cruise ship presenter, and part-time monk. Through every chapter, he says the same purpose has kept showing up: to delight people. Tim talks about leaving CBC at 52, reinventing himself, and discovering how ikigai connects what you love, what you are good at, what the world needs f...

Food is never just about what is on the plate. Julie Van Rosendaal has spent her career writing cookbooks, talking about food on CBC Radio, and exploring the stories that surround the way people cook, eat, and care for each other. She joins Jeff Dudder to talk about growing up in Calgary, building a career as a food writer, finding her creative voice, and why the most ordinary meals can carry the...

Coyotes are everywhere in Calgary, but most of us do not understand what they are actually doing. Dr. Shelley Alexander is a University of Calgary professor and specialist in wild canid ecology, conservation, and coexistence. In this episode, she joins The Deets with Duddy to talk about coyotes, fear, wildlife conflict, and why so much of what people believe about these animals is shaped by misund...

Maud Salvi is the Executive and Artistic Director of Sled Island, but her life in live music started long before she arrived in Calgary. Originally from France, Maud grew up finding identity, community, and direction through music. That path eventually brought her into festival production, Montreal’s music scene, and then to Calgary, where she took on the role of helping lead one of the city’s mos...

https://www.zenonepp.com/ ZENON is a Calgary soul artist whose music blends blues, R&B, theatre, pop, and lived experience into something deeply personal. In this episode, ZENON talks about growing up around music, performing from a young age, attending Berklee College of Music, and what happened when their relationship with music started to fall apart after returning home. The conversation ce...

Alberta Ballet School is one of Calgary's best-kept secrets. In this episode, Director Ashley McNeil takes us inside one of Canada's premier ballet training institutions and explains how students from Calgary and around the world are preparing for professional careers in dance. We discuss the realities of elite ballet training, balancing academics with artistic development, performance psy...

"To be cringe is to be free." In this episode, Jubs of Shy Friend joins me to talk about building a music community through authenticity, creativity, and unapologetically being yourself. We discuss the evolution of Shy Friend from a solo project into one of Calgary's most unique live acts, how the band's philosophy of "to be cringe is to be free" became the foundation o...

Kue Varo’s new album How Everything Feels and Other Lies is out April 30. In this episode, we go inside the record - how it came together, what changed this time around, and why they approached it differently than anything they’ve done before. Kue talks about stepping away from instruments, writing from instinct, and letting different versions of themselves show up across the album. We get into th...

In this episode, I’m going live with Summer Lilah - streamer, editor, model, and actor - to get into what it actually feels like to be live for hours every day and build a community in real time. We talk about how streaming really works behind the scenes, constantly talking to chat, the pressure of always being on, parasocial relationships, burnout, and why some streamers grow while others stall o...

Trying to build a career in music isn’t as straightforward as it looks. In this episode, Calgary artist and producer Dempsey Bolton talks about what it actually takes to make it work. From putting out over a dozen songs in a year to learning how to move fast, stay consistent, and deal with the pressure of committing years to something uncertain, the conversation goes beyond just the music. Dempsey...

Building something of your own isn’t always clear, easy, or guaranteed to work. In this episode, Alessia Bellusci shares what it was like growing up inside one of Calgary’s most well-known hospitality families, behind restaurants like Mercato, and the moment she realized she wanted to create something for herself. From working in the family business at a young age to stepping away and coming back...