if i'm way off base or this seems ableist let me know

I think you're good, though I think it also depends a lot on what "the old Matt" means, since yeah he's different now, but it seems possible (especially hearing his poetry and about his book) that much of his actual personality, though it might have been changed by the trauma and hardship he's experienced, was not destroyed by the stroke. It comes across very differently because his tools for communicating were absolutely fucked, but a lot of what's actually in there in terms of who he is seems to have survived. Not that I knew him or know him, of course.

But if you mean not "Matt" the human but "Matt" the podcast persona, then I agree that that's probably mostly gone because it was so defined by his idiosyncratic communication style, his speed, his range of expression, and so on. It's super parasocial of me, but I'm mostly just glad that Matt the human seems to have held on to himself despite what he went through.