Smooth talker just listens to the voice inside his head.

• Position: People - East Carolina University professor Joe Kalinowski's SpeechEasy device

Flash back 22 years: Joe Kalinowski walks up to a woman in a bar in Boston. "W-w-w-w-would y-y-you l-l-l-like to d-d-d-d-dance?" She zaps him in the face with pepper spray. "It was one of my most humiliating experiences. It hurt right to the bone."

Today, the 44-year-old East Carolina University professor gives interviews about his research on television and radio without a hint of a stutter. The reason for the interviews -- and for his ability to speak without stuttering -- is a device he invented called the SpeechEasy. It's worn in the ear, much like a hearing aid.

The SpeechEasy, manufactured and marketed by Greenville-based Janus Development Group, records someone's speech and instantaneously plays it back, as if he's singing or reciting as part of a group. Stutterers often find they can speak just fine in such situations. Kalinowski got the idea from his own experiences in church.

He wears the device every waking moment and quickly shows a listener the difference when he removes it. "I p-p-p-p-p-pledge alleg-g-g-g-g-g-giance ..." He sounds as if he's using every bit of control and breath that he can muster. When he inserts the SpeechEasy, words come without hesitation.

About 200 SpeechEasys, priced at $4,000 each, have been sold since they hit the market in the summer of 2001. ECU holds the patent and licenses its use to Janus. Kalinowski and two partners own a 3% stake in Janus but have no official role there.

Kalinowski grew up in a blue-collar family in Maynard, Mass. He went to a Catholic elementary school, where nuns punished other kids for picking on him. But when he went to a public junior high, he wanted to drop out because of the abuse from classmates. "My dad told me to hit them, but there were too many. One time, I asked God if he'd cut off my arm in exchange for not stuttering."

High school was better because Kalinowski was captain of the football and basketball teams. He went to the University of Connecticut on a football scholarship, played defensive tackle and graduated in 1981 with a bachelor's in business.

He tried to get a job at a computer company. The interviewer, upon hearing him speak, just stared. Later, when told he didn't get the job, he asked if it was because of his stuttering. "The guy told me he hadn't noticed. That was the biggest insult of all."

He went back to school and got a master's in social work from Northeastern University in Boston in 1985 and a doctorate in speech therapy at the University of...