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Explore every episode of the podcast Inside SLP

Dive into the complete episode list for Inside SLP. Each episode is cataloged with detailed descriptions, making it easy to find and explore specific topics. Keep track of all episodes from your favorite podcast and never miss a moment of insightful content.

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1–25 of 25

TitlePub. DateDuration
23: What Happened to “Within”?22 Sep 202600:28:29

What does it actually mean to “work within the system”? Megan traces the history of member voice and decision-making within ASHA, from Richard Adler’s 1990 address to the Legislative Council to the governance changes that eventually eliminated it. Along the way, she asks what happens when a profession gets better at questioning authority without necessarily building better ways to disagree, deliberate, and act together. What would it take to build a profession that can hear disagreement without needing to eliminate it?

Sources:

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22: Who Gets to Decide?18 Sep 202600:28:51

In this episode of Inside SLP, Megan looks beyond speech-language pathology to ask how professions decide where authority should live. From AOTA’s decision to separate certification from its professional association to decades of antitrust challenges involving ASHA and other professions, this episode explores what happens when certification, advocacy, accreditation, and professional representation overlap. Who gets to speak for a profession? What makes that authority legitimate? And what mechanisms exist to challenge it when practitioners want something different?

Sources:

  • Bogus v. American Speech & Hearing Association, 582 F.2d 277 (3d Cir. 1978).
  • National Board for Certification in Occupational Therapy, Inc. v. American Occupational Therapy Association, 24 F. Supp. 2d 494 (D. Md. 1998).
  • Palazzi et al. v. National Court Reporters Association, No. 2:25-cv-00077 (D.N.J. filed Jan. 3, 2025).

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21: The Oregon Workaround04 Jun 202600:32:07

For the first 20 episodes of Inside SLP, we explored the history of speech-language pathology and the systems that shape our profession today. We looked at how licensure, certification, clinical training, and professional identity evolved over time, and how decisions made decades ago continue to influence clinicians, students, employers, and patients.

As we begin this next chapter of the podcast, we're turning our attention to a recent controversy in Oregon that sparked questions far beyond a single state licensing board.

At first glance, it looked like a debate about the CFY.

But as I dug deeper, it became clear that the conversation was really about something much larger: Where clinical training happens, who is responsible for it, and what assumptions we've inherited about how new clinicians become competent practitioners.


This isn't a call to action, and it isn't an attempt to tell you what to think.

It's an invitation to better understand the systems we're all participating in, and to consider what role each of us plays in what comes next.


We explore:

  • The CFY, the CCC, and licensure: Why so many clinicians struggle to untangle where one system ends and another begins.
  • The hidden training model: How the profession came to rely on employers and workplace mentorship to help complete the transition from student to clinician.
  • The CFY lottery: Why two clinicians can have dramatically different fellowship experiences while meeting the same requirements.
  • Beyond Oregon: How a proposed workaround to a Medicare billing problem uncovered deeper questions about training, competency, and professional responsibility.

Guests:

  • Kerry Mandulak, PhD, CCC-SLP, immediate Past President of the Oregon Speech-Language & Hearing Association (OSHA)
    and Professor and Chair of the Graduate Admissions Committee at Pacific University in the school of Communication Sciences and Disorders
  • Jordan Tinsley, PhD, CCC-SLP, current President of OSHA and Clinical Assistant Professor at Pacific University in the school of Communication Sciences and Disorders
  • Teigan Beck, MS, CCC-SLP, VP of Legislative Affairs for OSHA

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20: An Invitation09 Jan 202600:13:28

For twenty episodes, we’ve been examining the architecture of a profession under strain, including its history, its blind spots, and the pressures it was never designed to hold. In this final episode, we step back from diagnosis and turn toward orientation. Not a to-do list, and not a call to fix what’s broken, but an invitation to understand where we’re standing, and what it means to be a stakeholder in what comes next.

We explore:

  • The beauty of the boring: Why slow, rigorous data, like the PACT survey, matters more than outrage when systems lose touch with lived experience
  • No-blame cultures: What aviation and nursing can teach us about designing systems that tolerate human error instead of punishing it.
  • Internal architecture: How to hold professional dignity while working inside institutions that move slowly by design.
  • The wire: Why staying present with complexity may be harder (and more generative) than choosing a side.

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19: The Iceberg of Professional Grief09 Jan 202600:13:33

Anger can feel clarifying, but without context, it rarely leads anywhere new. In this episode, we step back from the outrage cycle to examine what’s sitting underneath it: systemic grief, misaligned training models, and the shame many clinicians carry inside a profession that was never fully built to hold them.


We explore:

  • The arsonist parable: Why chasing villains distracts from the work of rebuilding.
  • A profession at its Flexner moment: What medicine’s shift away from the generalist model reveals about where SLP may be headed.
  • The normalization of shame: How outdated training structures offload systemic gaps onto individual clinicians.
  • The paradox of the nine: What becomes visible when we hold multiple professional perspectives at once.

Sources:

  • Duffy, T. P. (2011). The Flexner report―100 years later. The Yale journal of biology and medicine, 84(3), 269.

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18: What People Are Actually Arguing About09 Jan 202600:16:58

The intensity in SLP spaces right now isn’t a sign of collapse. It’s the friction of a profession that has grown faster than the structures built to support it. In this episode, we slow the noise down to examine what’s actually underneath the debates, through data, psychology, and the real set of options the field keeps circling.

We explore:

  • The preparation gap: What the 2020 Ad Hoc report acknowledges about the limits of our current training model.
  • Displaced aggression: Why frustration so often turns inward when systems feel unreachable.
  • The doctorate conversation: How the push for an SLPD reflects a hunger for depth, not just status.
  • The domino effect: What changes like abolishing the CCC, unionizing, or rethinking undergraduate training would actually set in motion.

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17: Apparently, You Can Do That09 Jan 202600:11:34

In 1968, the ASHA Convention became a moment of rupture. Not because of disorder, but because long-standing tensions were finally named. This episode examines what happened when Black clinicians challenged the limits of a profession that defined itself as “neutral,” and what that moment revealed about power, voice, and professional growth.

We explore:

  • The Denver moment: Why ASHA leadership responded to internal and external dissent with heightened security.
  • The “birdwatcher” debate: Whether a professional association can remain technically neutral in a socially unequal world.
  • Exit and voice in action: How the National Black Association for Speech-Language and Hearing emerged.
  • Clinical consequences: How this advocacy reshaped the profession’s understanding of difference versus disorder.

Sources:

  • Malone, R. (1999). The first 75 years: An oral history of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.
  • Williams, R., & Wolfram, W. (1977). Social dialects: Differences vs. disorders.

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16: Optional Membership Is the Point09 Jan 202600:15:52

Many SLPs experience ASHA membership as essential to survival even when, structurally, it is designed to be optional. This episode examines why that tension exists, and what it reveals about how professions stay healthy as they grow.


Rather than framing optional membership as a threat, we look at how it functions as a stabilizing feature in mature professional systems and why the fear of “splintering” often signals growth, not collapse.

We explore:

  • The rootbound analogy: How a structure built for a smaller profession can start to constrain adaptation.
  • Exit and voice: Why meaningful participation depends on the possibility of choice.
  • The 96% signal: What ASHA’s own internal report reveals about shared concern and institutional inertia.

Sources:

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15: Bogus, But Not Like That02 Jan 202600:17:48

How did ASHA come to link membership and certification? And what happened when that structure was challenged? In the 1970s, one SLP brought that question into federal court. While Bogus v. ASHA didn’t end with a dramatic verdict, it quietly reshaped the professional architecture we still live inside today.


We explore:

  • The tying logic: Why the court viewed the CCC as a unique form of economic influence, even when labeled “optional.
  • The quiet settlement: How the case unfolded largely out of public view, including within ASHA’s own leadership.
  • Member vs. certificate holder: How the center of gravity shifted from association to credential over time.
  • The price of friction: Why the narrow gap between member and non-member options reflects institutional risk management, not indifference.

Sources:

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14: Before the CCC Meant Anything02 Jan 202600:14:22

In the 1940s, the idea that a private organization could define professional eligibility was so controversial it sparked accusations of communism. This episode traces the early decades of the CCC, when certification was fragile, contested, and anything but inevitable. We follow how it gradually became the central organizing force of the profession.

We explore:

  • The ivory tower era: Why ASHA’s early focus on academic legitimacy left frontline clinicians largely unsupported.
  • The “advanced” shift: The human consequences of consolidating certification standards in pursuit of medical recognition.
  • The dining room committees: How certification functioned before modern infrastructure and what that reveals about scale and control.
  • The stamp effect: How the CCC came to serve as a proxy for consistency in an uneven training landscape.

Sources:

  • Malone, R. (1999). The first 75 years: An oral history of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.
  • Duchan, J. F., & Hewitt, L. E. (2023). How the charter members of ASHA responded to the social and political circumstances of their time. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 32(3), 1037-1049.

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13: Following the Money Without Losing the Plot02 Jan 202600:14:49

When we ask why change inside SLP feels so difficult, we often look to policy debates or leadership decisions. This episode looks instead at the financial architecture underneath it all and why long-term obligations shape what an institution can realistically risk.


To understand ASHA’s caution, we examine the scale of the organization and the financial commitments that anchor it in place.


We explore:

  • The 5-to-1 gap: What ASHA’s financial scale looks like compared to the American Occupational Therapy Association.
  • Long-term commitments: How maintaining a defined benefit pension plan created enduring revenue requirements.
  • Exit costs: Why unwinding decades-old obligations isn’t as simple as restructuring fees or programs.

Sources:

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12: What ASHA Can’t Legally Do02 Jan 202600:17:23

In moments of professional frustration, it’s easy to confuse visibility with authority and to assume that the loudest voice is also the one holding the gavel. This episode looks beneath that assumption, tracing the legal boundaries that shape what a national association can (and cannot) actually do.

We explore:

  • The HOA analogy: Why ASHA operates as a private association, not a regulatory body and why it doesn’t have enforcement power over employers.
  • The tying intervention: How the U.S. Department of Education forced a separation between accreditation and certification.
  • The jurisdiction map: Where different kinds of power actually live, from state legislatures to licensing boards to universities.
  • Fiduciary duty: How the law directs boards to protect institutional continuity, even under intense professional pressure.

Sources:

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11: There Was Money Around02 Jan 202600:12:49

In the early 1960s, SLP leaders described trips to Capitol Hill as terrifying, migraine-inducing encounters with a world they didn’t yet understand. A few decades later, the profession had built enough political infrastructure to partner with McDonald’s and influence federal definitions of disability.

This episode traces how speech-language pathology moved from academic outsider to institutional insider and what was gained, lost, and locked into place along the way.

We explore:

  • How federal rehabilitation funding after WWII and Vietnam reshaped who counted as a “qualified provider.”
  • The quiet fight to keep language from being absorbed into the definition of Specific Learning Disability and why that boundary still causes friction today.
  • How the CCC shifted from a professional marker to a billable requirement in Medicare and Medicaid.
  • What it actually takes, organizationally, to put accessibility tools into 8,700 restaurants nationwide.

Sources:

  • Malone, R. (1999). The first 75 years: An oral history of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.

Connect:

10: Who Actually Holds the Pen?02 Jan 202600:19:15

Welcome to Systems Literacy 101. In this episode, we step out of the social media noise and into the architecture of speech-language pathology, tracing how authority moves from accreditation to certification to licensure, and where responsibility begins and ends.

We explore:

  • Why accreditation (CAA) and certification (CFCC) were legally required to separate (and what that changed).
  • How ASHA’s leadership structure evolved, including why academic representation dominates and why executive stability is often cited as exceptional.
  • Why state licensing boards (not national associations) hold the only enforceable regulatory power.
  • How the interstate compact is stress-testing existing structures and quietly embedding national standards into state law.

Sources:

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09: Audiology Pivots Away19 Dec 202500:12:36

Audiology and SLP share a common history, but they did not share the same future. This episode traces the critical divorce of the 1980s, starting with a 1987 convention session in New Orleans that changed everything. We look at how audiologists identified the "Competency vs. Certification" trap and decided to rebuild their professional infrastructure from the ground up.

  • The New Orleans spark: How a minority group within ASHA realized they would never achieve autonomy inside the existing majority.
  • Competence vs. revenue: Why audiology had to separate from a "certification-first" model to create the AuD.
  • The 2020 mirror: How the same "bursting seams" found in audiology 30 years ago are now documented facts in the SLP master's degree.

This is a story about system literacy in action.

Sources:

Special thank you to Dr. Ian Windmill (former President and Fellow of the American Academy of Audiology, former Professor and Director of the Division of Communication Science at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, and former partner in University Surgical Associates) for being a primary source for this podcast series.


The Crabby Audiologist Column (published in Hearing Health and Technology Matters)

08: The Under-Built House19 Dec 202500:09:59

Are you failing, or is the system failing you? This episode explores the psychological and political costs of an under-built profession. Using the 2020 ASHA Ad Hoc Report, we look at how a lack of a unified competency framework leads to arbitrary power dynamics and gratitude compliance. We also discuss the looming generational shift in state associations and the danger of leaving a vacuum of power that insurance lobbyists and competing disciplines are eager to fill.

  • Subjective gatekeeping: Why competence feels like a personal judgment without objective rubrics.
  • The certainty market: How structural gaps in grad school created an influencer economy that sells confidence as a product.
  • The power vacuum: Why the decline in professional volunteering is a threat to our scope of practice.

This is an invitation to stop personalizing the friction and start seeing the architecture.

Sources:

07: Why the Degree Never Changed19 Dec 202500:10:20

Why has the speech-language pathology entry-level degree remained unchanged for over 70 years while the medical world evolved around it? This episode excavates the critical turning points of 1963 and 1983, where the profession repeatedly chose academic purity and economic convenience over clinical readiness. 


We dive into the 2020 Ad Hoc Committee Report, a document that effectively pulled the fire alarm on our current training model.

We also cover:

  • The Highland Park standoff: Why 1960s leaders feared a vocational degree and institutionalized the workaround we now call the Clinical Fellowship. 
  • The 1983 economic pivot: How the profession crunched the numbers and chose a model that favored immediate paychecks over university-owned clinical residencies. 
  • The modern crisis: Why 47% of modern graduate programs admit they may not have the capacity to teach the full scope of practice across the lifespan. 
  • The subtext of survival: A look at the faculty deserts and the hidden revenue needs that keep our accrediting systems anchored to a 1960s architecture. 

This episode is about policy and also about removing the shame of the training gap by seeing it as a documented structural failure rather than a personal one.

Sources:

  • Malone, R. (1999). The first 75 years: An oral history of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.
  • Final Report, Ad Hoc Committee on Graduate Education for Speech-Language Pathologists, March 2020
  • Graduate Education in Speech Pathology and Audiology: Report of a National Conference Highland Park, Illinois, April 29 Through May 3, 1963.
  • National Conference on Undergraduate, Graduate, and Continuing Education (1983 : Saint Paul, Minn.); Rees, Norma S.; Snope, Trudy L.
06: A Training Model Unlike Any Other19 Dec 202500:13:09

SLP is the only allied health or education-adjacent profession that completes most of its clinical training after the degree. This episode unpacks how unusual that structure is and how it shapes hiring, supervision, billing, and professional identity. We explore why it affects nearly every tension we feel in the field today.

05: The Patchwork Profession19 Dec 202500:12:11

Across the United States, speech-language pathology licensure looks wildly different from state to state. It's a patchwork of rules shaped not by a single national authority but by thousands of individual decisions over decades. This episode traces how school systems, state agencies, and clinician-run boards created a maze of inconsistent standards. And it reveals the surprising truth at the center of it all: The people regulating SLPs… are SLPs.

Sources:


Before you continue...19 Dec 202500:03:26

A short note from Megan.

Inside SLP Trailer13 Dec 202500:00:49

Inside SLP is a short, weekly podcast about the systems that shape speech-language pathology.


In ten minutes at a time, we explore how training, credentialing, licensure, and professional power came to look the way they do—and why so much of this structure remains unseen in day-to-day practice.


This isn’t a podcast about outrage or quick fixes.
It’s a slower, more reflective look at a complex profession we all work inside.


Each episode offers an idea to sit with. Something that adds context, surfaces tension, or helps the system come into focus.

The episodes build on one another, so if you’re new, I recommend starting with Episode 1.

I’m Megan Berg, and this is Inside SLP.

04: It’s 1969 in Florida12 Dec 202500:09:09

In 1969, Florida became the first state to license speech-language pathologists and audiologists, which reshaped the entire profession. But the fight for licensure started years earlier, fueled by fraud, unqualified practitioners, and the dawning realization that ASHA had no legal authority to protect the public or the profession. This episode dives into the drama, resistance, and grassroots organizing that led clinicians in Florida to say: “If we don’t regulate ourselves, someone else will.”

Sources:

Malone, R. (1999). The first 75 years: An oral history of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.


03: How the CCC Came to Be12 Dec 202500:10:07

Every system has an origin story. In Episode 3, we step back in time to examine how the CCC was created, what problems it was meant to solve, and why it once made sense. This episode traces the early structure of certification in speech-language pathology and follows how its meaning and function evolved as the profession expanded, state licensure emerged, and training pathways shifted. Rather than asking whether the CCC is “good” or “bad,” this episode asks a quieter question: What happens when a solution outlives the moment it was built for?

Sources:
Duchan, J. F., & Hewitt, L. E. (2023). How the charter members of ASHA responded to the social and political circumstances of their time. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 32(3), 1037-1049.

Malone, R. (1999). The first 75 years: An oral history of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.

02: Fixing vs. Contemplating12 Dec 202500:10:06

In this episode, I talk about the pull of certainty and how reassuring it can feel to believe there are clear answers, fixed structures, and someone who has it all figured out.


We explore how professional cultures reward confidence over curiosity, how uncertainty often gets smoothed over rather than examined, and why so many clinicians sense something doesn’t quite line up but struggle to name it.

Special thank you to Dr. Angela Louvenbrouk (former President of the American Academy of Audiology, ASHA Fellow, former ASHA board member, and recipient of Honors of the Academy—AAA’s highest award—2019) for being a primary source for this podcast series.

01: START HERE: The Summer I Failed the Test12 Dec 202500:11:21

In 2015, a paperwork mistake and a failed jurisprudence exam left me living in a tent in Montana and questioning everything I thought I knew about becoming a speech-language pathologist. This episode tells the story of my first encounter with the profession’s hidden architecture and how that experience opened a decade-long journey of trying to understand the system we all work inside of.

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