The QuadCast

This episode is a first for me here at The QuadCast. It features an "actual long time listener" of this podcast, one who understands exactly what living with a spinal cord injury is like. I had the absolute pleasure speaking with Richie Redsicker, learning all about him, his injury, remarkable family, and his life in general. I know you will enjoy getting to know him as much as I did! Speaking of...

Matt and Jen Hellstern are my guests this week on the QP. Find out how a seemingly innocuous fender bender one day on the way to work changed their entire family's life forever! They share their personal experiences of navigating a new normal following Matt's SCI. From the confusion of how it all came to be, to hours and hours of PT and OT, his participation in numerous clinical trials, and more....

Cristina Cortez Author, Poet, Independent Researcher, Advocate & Speaker  Cristina Cortez is a first-generation Latin-American BIPOC author, poet, memoirist, disability advocate, public humanities educator, and interdisciplinary scholar whose work explores the intersections of disability, identity, memory, mythology, travel, literature, and cultural inheritance through poetry, memoir, hybrid n...

Summary In this heartfelt interview my guest, Steve Zutty shares his inspiring journey through spinal injuries, rehabilitation, and the importance of resilience, family, and community support. You'll hear how he navigates life's challenges with humor, determination, and a positive outlook. You're going to LOVE Steve, this is a fun episode! Takeaways Importance of long-lasting friendships and famil...

The boys are back! John McAleavey, Barry Munro, and Sasha Rabchevsky, (3 Men & A SCI), are thrilled to have Dr. Trevor Dyson Hudson, Director of The Center For Spinal Cord Injury Research, Kessler Foundation join the band for a frank discussion on the alarming lack of knowledge in SCI care among emergency room personnel, and medical professionals in general. We highlight the challenges faced b...

Ian Mackay is my guest on the latest edition of The QuadCast. He chronicles his journey from growing up in beautiful San Diego county to how he endured his life-changing cycling accident. In spite of his SCI, Ian has truly made his mark on the world. You'll learn how he worked with Apple on their iPhone's voice recognition system, which not only impacted his independence and connection to nature,...

The latest episode of The 3 Men & A SCI Podcast has dropped. In this edition, John McAleavey, Barry Munro, and Sasha Rabchevsky, had the pleasure of speaking with Matthew Roderick, Executive Director of The Unite 2 Fight Paralysis Foundation. Their conversation delves into the SCI landscape, the impact of advocacy and activism, understanding the difference between the two, engaging the SCI com...

Kenny Salvini is my guest on the latest edition of the QP. Following his spinal cord injury, the result of a skiing accident, he took six years to process his new life/situation. However, meeting a fellow quad, one who had been injured for many years and was married, showed him what was still possible. Kenny is now married himself, has a young daughter, and is the cofounder of the Here and Now Pro...

The latest episode of the QP features an amazing young man, Owen Weiss. He is a wheelchair athlete, educator, and storyteller, whose life changed after a rare spinal Arteriovenous Malformation (AVM) led to three spinal surgeries. He recovered fully from the first two, but following the third (after walking himself into the operating room), he woke unable to move his legs, and with major loss of se...

Terry McGhee's life has been defined by service; service to his family, his fellow soldiers/officers, and his country. He was kind enough to chronicle all of this and much more in the latest episode of the QP. You'll learn about Terry's childhood and upbringing, his career in the NYPD, involvement in counterterrorism operations, and the life-changing spinal cord injury he sustained during a deploy...

Vanessa Osman is a voice-over artist, actress, model, writer, peer-mentor, quadriplegic, and my guest ,on the very first episode of 2026. She is a dynamo, I can't wait for you to hear her story!  

The boys are back! Barry Munro, John McAleavey, and Sasha Rabchevsky, three men with over 100 years of lived experience with spinal cord injury, have teamed up to share our knowledge on all things SCI related. Today's episode is dedicated to bladder management. We chronicle how each of us manages our situation (they're completely different), while also highlighting areas of need, concern, hope, an...

Welcome to 3 Men & A SCI — where lived experience challenges convention, and science meets reality. We’re Barry Munro, John McAleavey, and Sasha Rabchevsky — three men living with chronic spinal cord injury, and who’ve spent decades immersed in the world of SCI: as researchers, advocates, educators, and survivors. This podcast was born from a simple truth: those living with SCI are too often t...

So, how many of you out there are the subject of an Amazon Prime Docuseries? Me neither. My guest today, Torsten Gross is, and on today's episode of the QuadCast, you will hear all about it. He is a motivational speaker, brand ambassador, husband, dog dad, chief marketing officer, mountain biker, scuba diver, racecar driver, and did I mention C6 quadriplegic? As if that weren't enough he is also t...

I had the wonderful opportunity of speaking with Maggie Goldberg, President and CEO of the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation, for this week's episode of The QuadCast. Following a C2 injury at 16 years old, one that she fully recovered from thank goodness, Maggie seemed destined to work on behalf of the paralysis community. She started at the Reeve Foundation in 2000, and has held numerous po...

Erawadi Singh grew up sleeping on a sofa in the living room of her family's one-bedroom apartment in one of New Jersey's most difficult neighborhoods. Determined to give back, she would complete her schoolwork on the floor of her parents' bedroom, earning academic scholarships for higher educational pursuits while working to contribute to school tuition and helping care for her grandmother as she...

Stacey Frigerio Mahdavian graduated from UMass Amherst in 1989. She planned to work as a camp counselor that summer and then travel a bit. Unfortunately, life had another idea. On a gravel road in the middle of nowhere Wyoming, the car in which she was riding, fishtailed and then flipped four times. In between the third and fourth flip, she was thrown 100 feet from the car and sustained a spinal c...

Ian Ruder, editor-in-chief of New Mobility, is a writer, editor, connector, who prides himself on bringing a well-rounded, people-first approach to all of his work. As the Editor of New Mobility, he works to ensure the voice of people with mobility-related disabilities are authentically represented in all of their content. A wheelchair user himself, he's a passionate advocate for the community who...

Imagine being on vacation in a foreign country, having an amazing time sightseeing, trying new foods, and immersing yourself in the culture. Then in a split second, everything changes and you are a C-6 quadriplegic. Well, that is exactly what happened to my guest this week, Laura Taylor, following an automobile accident in Spain. Her injury has certainly not stood in her way however, as she is thr...

When Jenny Smith was 16 years old, she sustained a C6-7 spinal cord injury, leaving her paralyzed from the chest down. After completing her master’s degree in counseling psychology, she distributed wheelchairs for eight years in developing countries. For over 13 years, she supported cross-cultural workers as they served overseas By coming alongside people with spinal cord injuries and chronic phys...

Karen Olson is the founder and CEO emeritus of Family Promise, a national nonprofit organization dedicated to helping homeless and low-income families. Her organization has trained and mobilized over one million volunteers over the past thirty years to provide services to homeless families. Olson has received many awards for her remarkable social service contributions, including the 1992 Annual Po...

M.B. Paradise has always been a fan of stories, Santa, and the beach… so combining the three made perfect sense. A chance encounter on the beach with her children over 10 years ago with a man who looked like Santa Claus gave her the idea to one day write a book. As it were however, life got in the way and the idea was put on the back burner until, she discovered that Eric LeGrand was opening a cof...

Have I got big news for you on the first episode of 2025... The QuadCast has officially spawned another exciting and informative podcast! Yes, and on today's episode, I interview my co-contributors in this new venture, the "3 Men And A SCI" Pod. Below are very brief bios of both amazingly accomplished gentlemen. I look forward to working with them on this exciting venture, and hope you'll join us...

On July 8, 2004 at the age of 18, weeks away from beginning his freshman year at Georgetown University, Taylor Price was involved in a catastrophic accident while vacationing with his family on Long Island. After diving into the ocean and hitting an unforeseen sandbar, he was instantly rendered a C5-C6 quadriplegic. Even though many people said it would be impossible, he proudly graduated cum laud...

Gabriel Rodreick, whose stage name is Freaque, is a multidisciplinary artist from Minneapolis, MN. He injured his C5 vertebrae in a diving accident at the age of 15 in 2008. He has been living with quadriplegia ever since. Gabriel’s music, dance, poetry, and visual art has been his way of learning how to live in a new body post injury. His dark, dank, and dirty artistic voice tells stories of life...