Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
Speaker 1: There's Charles w Chuck Bryan. There's no our guest producer today,
Speaker 1: which means it's still Stuff you should Know. That's right,
Speaker 1: the Jerry Free edition. Yeah it feels weird. Yeah, She's like,
Speaker 1: I can't do this today. I'm going to the mall.
Speaker 1: She's always leaving us for them all. I know. That's weird.
Speaker 1: Ever since we did that mall episode and she learned
Speaker 1: it was a thing, right, you know, She's like, this
Speaker 1: sounds like my kind of place. How you doing, I'm
Speaker 1: doing pretty good. I'm been wanting to do this one
Speaker 1: for a long time, and I think I started to
Speaker 1: research it and I was like, oh man, I saw
Speaker 1: maybe we went on tour or something like that. I
Speaker 1: got pulled away from it and never went back to it.
Speaker 1: So I'm glad we're doing it finally. So stuttering if
Speaker 1: or in the in North America or Australia and stammering
Speaker 1: if you're in the UK. Perhaps is that how it works?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I know that stammering is what they
Speaker 1: call it in the UK. Do they call it stuttering
Speaker 1: in Australia as well. Yeah, this thing I pulled up
Speaker 1: just said in general it's North American Australia say stutter,
Speaker 1: UK they say stammer. But it's the same thing, right,
Speaker 1: it's basically Uh. I think the way that they get
Speaker 1: around that is calling it disfluency. No one calls it that,
Speaker 1: the scientists do. I never heard that word, sure, disfluency.
Speaker 1: So I think that's actually the clinical name for what
Speaker 1: we call stuttering or stammering, depending on where you are. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And wasn't that Colin Firth movie called The Disfluent Prince
Speaker 1: Who would Be King? Yep? I think that was the
Speaker 1: working title what they call it, The King's Speech? Yeah,
Speaker 1: pretty good movie. That was cute. Cute it was. Any
Speaker 1: time you get Jeffrey Right in there in an inspirational role,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be a cute movie. No, not Jeffrey Right,
Speaker 1: Jeffrey Rush, I don't Jeffrey Wright always plays like the
Speaker 1: super smart, like kind of um, like a deep state guy.
Speaker 1: Jeffrey Right. He was bask yot right, I'm not thinking
Speaker 1: the right guy. Did he play Baskiyat? I think so?
Speaker 1: I don't think so in the movie Basku Yot, Yeah,
Speaker 1: is that Jeffrey right? I don't think so. It is
Speaker 1: Jeffrey right. Jeffrey Wright has been in tons of stuff.
Speaker 1: Just look them up. You'll be like, Oh, that's Jeffrey right.
Speaker 1: This is going terribly already. This is basically like the
Speaker 1: podcast equivalent of stuttering, because chuck stuttering, also known as stammering,
Speaker 1: better known as disfluency, is an interrupted flow of speech. Okay,
Speaker 1: but what when it starts to qualify for what we
Speaker 1: would call like stuttering or stammering, it is. It's really noticeable.
Speaker 1: It's um. It has a an interrupting effect typically on
Speaker 1: the conversation or the communication that's meant to be going on,
Speaker 1: the speaking that's going on. UM, that's on the far
Speaker 1: end of the spectrum, on the on the other end
Speaker 1: of the spectrum. Apparently just about everybody engages in disfluent speech.
Speaker 1: I'm particularly guilty because I say um a lot, and
Speaker 1: that's a form of disfluency. And disfluency chuck comes from
Speaker 1: the idea that um that when you speak fluently, you're
Speaker 1: speaking in a flowing manner that that is easy to
Speaker 1: follow typically and is owner interrupted. But when you start
Speaker 1: adding things like um or pauses or uh that kind
Speaker 1: of thing like that, Uh, that's that's disfluency. And again,
Speaker 1: disfluency is a normal part of communication if it occurs
Speaker 1: about less than ten percent of the time. After that
Speaker 1: you start to get into the stuttering slash stammering spectrum
Speaker 1: or side of the disfluent spectrum. Yeah, and one thing
Speaker 1: I learned, you know, you and I uh both Q
Speaker 1: a quality assure each episode, which means, um, it's a
Speaker 1: little behind the curtain peak. But Jerry will send them
Speaker 1: back to us and you listen to it once and
Speaker 1: then give her any like edit notes or whatever, um
Speaker 1: and thoughts, and then I will listen to it and um,
Speaker 1: generally I have no edit notes, um um um. And
Speaker 1: I found that I know we're both gonna be so
Speaker 1: self conscious about that. Well that's where I was getting too. Though.
Speaker 1: I found early on when listening to these episodes of
Speaker 1: ourselves that it's it doesn't pay to focus on disfluency
Speaker 1: in our own language because it can drive you nuts,
Speaker 1: it really can. And so we have a conversational podcast,
Speaker 1: so we're not trying to you know, we're not Churchill
Speaker 1: or Henry or was it Henry the six No, yeah
Speaker 1: it was, Um, I don't remember. Just call him Firth,
Speaker 1: how about that? Yeah, we're not calling Firth addressing the
Speaker 1: country on the airwaves where it was very important that
Speaker 1: he come across, as you know, a certain had a
Speaker 1: certain fluency. But um, when it comes to stuff like this,
Speaker 1: I think people are used to the fact, like occasionally
Speaker 1: we'll get emails that go you go true do you say,
Speaker 1: like and I'm a lot and we're just like, our
Speaker 1: response is better luck finding a different podcast. This is
Speaker 1: not for you. So anyway, I learned to not drive
Speaker 1: myself crazy with that stuff. No, but it's funny you
Speaker 1: bring that up because I was just yesterday listening to
Speaker 1: um the Stockholm Syndrome episode for Stuff you Should Know Selects,
Speaker 1: and I must have said, like a five time is
Speaker 1: over the span of ten words even to that. But
Speaker 1: even I noticed it. I normally have I'm pretty good
Speaker 1: about tuning it out, but even I noticed at that time.
Speaker 1: And it really kind of raises this issue that that
Speaker 1: the whole thing about starting or stammering is not that
Speaker 1: it's a it's a disorder or disease or a the
Speaker 1: sign of an unintelligent person, or that the person can't
Speaker 1: think of what they mean to say. It's absolutely none
Speaker 1: of those things. It is strictly an interruption in what
Speaker 1: we would consider normal communication, and so attention is drawn
Speaker 1: to it, and it turns out that that just makes
Speaker 1: the problem worse and worse, so it it turns into
Speaker 1: this vicious cycle um to where But that's all that.
Speaker 1: That's all it is. That's it. That's really it. And
Speaker 1: I mean, like there's there's different theories about what's behind
Speaker 1: it or what could make it worse, what could possibly
Speaker 1: make it better, But really all it is is just
Speaker 1: interrupted communication between two people. Because it's not like the
Speaker 1: person who's who's stuttering uh stutters in their head, Like
Speaker 1: it's strictly when they're speaking and communicating with other people.
Speaker 1: So it's it's pretty it's a unique it's a unique condition, yeah,
Speaker 1: and they're they're generally three ways in which that flow
Speaker 1: can be interrupted. UM. One is is repetition UM. So
Speaker 1: if you say the first few um, like the beginning
Speaker 1: of a word, if you repeat it a few times
Speaker 1: in a row and then say the word um. Another
Speaker 1: would be prolongation. So if the word is like you would,
Speaker 1: you would roll that l out by itself for a
Speaker 1: long time, and then the last would be an abnormal stoppage,
Speaker 1: which is just no sound at all coming out. Yeah block, Yeah,
Speaker 1: a complete block. Have you you known anyone with a
Speaker 1: severe stutter? Sure, yeah, I've I've I've known people with
Speaker 1: stutters before. Yeah, I know somebody with a very severe stutter.
Speaker 1: And it's always interesting because I think, and we'll get
Speaker 1: to like what you should and shouldn't do as a
Speaker 1: participant in a conversation with someone who stutters. But before
Speaker 1: I read this, I knew that just as a courtesy,
Speaker 1: what you probably shouldn't do, which is correct, is try
Speaker 1: and complete someone sentence for them, even though that urges there.
Speaker 1: You know, it's just a natural instinct because people do that,
Speaker 1: you know, when speaking all the time, if someone can't
Speaker 1: think of a word or something. But like you said,
Speaker 1: that's not what's going on. No, no, And I mean that,
Speaker 1: And I think that urge also comes from a good place. Typically,
Speaker 1: like you're not you're not saying like, uh, pitch is
Speaker 1: the word stupid. That's not what you're saying when you
Speaker 1: when you when you finish their sentence, you're helping them
Speaker 1: along to to keep the conversation on track, right, But
Speaker 1: what you're also doing is saying you're not communicating effectively.
Speaker 1: I'm jumping in and taking over. Were on your behalf.
Speaker 1: Just sit there and be quiet. So um, yeah, we'll
Speaker 1: talk more about what to do or what to what
Speaker 1: not to do. When you're in a conversation with somebody
Speaker 1: with a stutter, I don't know what you mean. You're trying,
Speaker 1: you're trying to help, You're not trying to like be
Speaker 1: a jerk. Yeah, but it's it's not a help. No,
Speaker 1: it's not. But I imagine they also understand to a
Speaker 1: certain degree to well, it's probably just from being exposed
Speaker 1: to it so much for so long, and some people feel,
Speaker 1: you know, like with anything like this, some people might
Speaker 1: be used to it and have been like, well, you
Speaker 1: know this how I talk. I've tried to correct it
Speaker 1: and I've kind of learned to live with it, and
Speaker 1: other people might still feel really bad about it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I I read a um, I guess an essay, a
Speaker 1: blog post basically by a guy named man I can't
Speaker 1: find it anywhere, great great blog post, um where he said,
Speaker 1: I I recognize and accept my stutter, and it was
Speaker 1: on say dot org. His name is Danny lit wak
Speaker 1: l I t w A c K lit whack. Maybe
Speaker 1: I embrace and accept my stutter. It's great. He talks
Speaker 1: about his UM, his experience with growing up with a
Speaker 1: stutter his whole life, and just what a negative impact
Speaker 1: it had on him for a very long time. And
Speaker 1: I saw this elsewhere. But the first step toward UM,
Speaker 1: either either getting past your stutter or just getting over
Speaker 1: the fact that you have a stutter, is accepting that
Speaker 1: you have a stutter. And that's a That's why from
Speaker 1: what I can gather a really big first step, because
Speaker 1: I think people recognize that they have a stutter to themselves,
Speaker 1: but there's also a m there's they take measures to
Speaker 1: protect against sharing that with other people. So I read
Speaker 1: another UM a story about another person who grew up
Speaker 1: with a stutter and when they got to I think
Speaker 1: college or something. On the first day of this one class,
Speaker 1: everybody went around and said where they were from, and
Speaker 1: this person said that they forgot where they are from
Speaker 1: rather than having to say Wilmington's Delaware because of the
Speaker 1: W and the D. So instead they told the class
Speaker 1: they forgot where where they where they were born and
Speaker 1: grew up, because in that case there were certain triggers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the W and the D, the W and Wilmington's and
Speaker 1: the D and Delaware. So there's like a lot of
Speaker 1: obfuscation that people with with stutters engaging people with stutters
Speaker 1: are not to be trusted in other words, but they
Speaker 1: they have to they have to basically just take steps
Speaker 1: to make it seem like they don't have a stutter.
Speaker 1: And I think what this guy, Danny lit Wack was saying.
Speaker 1: And then, like I said, I saw elsewhere people saying,
Speaker 1: like I have a stutter, like this is how I talk.
Speaker 1: You're gonna have to like either just walk away during
Speaker 1: the conversation or just let me finish my own time.
Speaker 1: But this is me, and this is how I talk,
Speaker 1: and I'm accepting it or learning to and you're gonna
Speaker 1: have to as well. And that's the the first step,
Speaker 1: as I understand it. Once you're an adult, I should say,
Speaker 1: I think there's so many things in life where that's
Speaker 1: the case. Oh yeah, instead of like at a certain point,
Speaker 1: at a certain age, you I think at least I
Speaker 1: got to a point where like, well I can really
Speaker 1: continue to work to try and change this thing, or
Speaker 1: I can just accept that this is kind of who
Speaker 1: I am and be happy. Yeah, don't worry, be happy now.
Speaker 1: So don't ever strive to be better people. Just accept
Speaker 1: how messed up you are, enforce everyone else around you
Speaker 1: to accept it. Should we take a little break here,
Speaker 1: all right, we'll take a break and we'll come back
Speaker 1: and get into some of the stats and um, how
Speaker 1: stutters can develop right after this? All right, so we're
Speaker 1: back promised stats. The stats you shall receive, um, one
Speaker 1: percent roughly of adults in the world stutter. Yeah, but um,
Speaker 1: that is not one percent of children because many times
Speaker 1: have in fact about seventy at a time, um, well
Speaker 1: five percent of children stuttering, about seventy five percent a time.
Speaker 1: They will lose that disfluence as they grow older, leaving
Speaker 1: that at a one percent number as adults. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: so in the U s there's that means there's about
Speaker 1: three million or so, maybe three and a half million
Speaker 1: people adults that stutter. Right, Um, more women, yeah? Uh?
Speaker 1: Is it more women, more men, more men? One it's
Speaker 1: like four to five in childhood and then it was
Speaker 1: too like three or four in adulthood. So by far
Speaker 1: men stutter more than women and um, although in strangely
Speaker 1: boys tend to naturally lose their stutter if they're going
Speaker 1: to lose their stutter in childhood, more than girls. And
Speaker 1: I don't think they found any rhyme or reason to
Speaker 1: that at all. Right, No, man, there's there's like a
Speaker 1: lot of lack of understanding as far as stuttering goes
Speaker 1: scientifically socially, there's just that we just don't know that
Speaker 1: much about it, which is surprising because apparently as far
Speaker 1: back as Moses, people have been stuttering on record, and
Speaker 1: we'll tell that story later, Okay, about sixty There could
Speaker 1: be a genetic basis because about the people who stutter
Speaker 1: have a family member who stutters. Yeah, and I also
Speaker 1: saw that among monos i gotic, also known as identical twins,
Speaker 1: if one twin stutters, there's a nine chance that the
Speaker 1: other one does as well. Interesting, but for diyes eye gotic,
Speaker 1: like fraternal twins, there's only a twenty percent chance. So
Speaker 1: there's clearly a genetic basis to stuttering somehow, right, But
Speaker 1: it's also one of those things where it can be genetic,
Speaker 1: doesn't have to be. Um. Sometimes if you like suffer
Speaker 1: a head trauma, you might develop a stutter, right, Um,
Speaker 1: sometimes it's developmental. Sometimes there it could be obviously with
Speaker 1: something like Parkinson's disease, that could be a symptom. But
Speaker 1: those are to me, I think, probably different kinds of stuttering.
Speaker 1: But right, so, there's basically two main categories. Developmental, which
Speaker 1: is by far the more the one that it counts
Speaker 1: for the most cases of stuttering, and then the others acquired,
Speaker 1: like you said, say from like Parkinson's or they put
Speaker 1: you on a prescription that like suddenly is making you stutter.
Speaker 1: There's also psychogenic, which is supposedly an emotional ama can
Speaker 1: give you a stutter. I don't know if that's just
Speaker 1: left over lore, because apparently they used to think all
Speaker 1: stutters were the result of some psychology and they they
Speaker 1: just say, well, no, it's possible, or some people have
Speaker 1: it and just haven't figured out that it's not the
Speaker 1: case at all, or if there really is a small
Speaker 1: section of people who do have psychogenic stutters. But but
Speaker 1: all of those would fall under acquired, And then the
Speaker 1: other one is developmental. Boy, how about that guy that
Speaker 1: took mushrooms and quit stuttering? Yeah, so interesting. I saw
Speaker 1: Ted talk at his once really yeah. He um. He's like,
Speaker 1: all about mushrooms saving the world. Paul's damn its yeah
Speaker 1: yeah he um. He leads off our article on how
Speaker 1: stuff works and he um, that's of your stutter. H
Speaker 1: was very affected by it, kind of withdrew socially. Went
Speaker 1: camping one time, took a bunch of psychedelic mushrooms and
Speaker 1: climbed a tree, got up there, Uh, decided he could
Speaker 1: not climb down. Um, and then the storm came in
Speaker 1: and got really intense, and he he said he sort
Speaker 1: of felt one with the world, um, which sounds about right.
Speaker 1: And Uh, eventually the storm passed. He came down and
Speaker 1: while he was up there during this intense experience, he
Speaker 1: was like, I will not stutter anymore, and he just
Speaker 1: kept saying that. Came down and he had lost his stutter. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and apparently he didn't relapse, which is pretty unusual, I think.
Speaker 1: So he started studying mushrooms for a living. He became
Speaker 1: a mycologist. Man, I gotta I've said this before, I'll
Speaker 1: say it again. One of the best articles I've ever
Speaker 1: read my life was called blood Spore, and I think
Speaker 1: it was in Harper's and it was um, it was
Speaker 1: about a murder in the world of mycologists. It was
Speaker 1: just so interesting blood spot coming soon to a theater
Speaker 1: naming I hope, so you should write the script. So
Speaker 1: Stammit's was remarkably lucky, and that he just basically decided
Speaker 1: stutter anymore and stop stuttering. Um. Apparently, the fact that
Speaker 1: he didn't relapse is probably what's most remarkable, because I
Speaker 1: think relapsing among stuttering treatments is actually pretty common. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but again, this is once you get out of childhood.
Speaker 1: It's fairly common to have to develop a stutter as
Speaker 1: you're a child, as you're learning to talk, and then
Speaker 1: it's equally common to lose that that stutter as you
Speaker 1: age um usually within eighteen months of developing the onset
Speaker 1: of the stutter. Um. But then as you as you
Speaker 1: acquire this or develop this stutter as you get older,
Speaker 1: apparently becomes more and more set in. And that seems
Speaker 1: to be because of the plasticity of your brain when
Speaker 1: you're a kid start. It's almost like, from what I
Speaker 1: can gather, it's like, if you have a stutter past
Speaker 1: a certain point, it almost gets locked into your brain
Speaker 1: as your neural pathways solidify and cement like you learned
Speaker 1: to have a stutter after a while, and I think
Speaker 1: they say to wait. I think they wait like three
Speaker 1: months before they even start looking into it, because that's
Speaker 1: how fleeting a stutter can be when you're a little kid.
Speaker 1: After three months, they'll say, all right, maybe we should
Speaker 1: start looking into this. Right, you would want to go
Speaker 1: to a speech pathologist who will be able to diagnose it.
Speaker 1: And usually what they're looking for when um, you take
Speaker 1: your child who's developed a stutter to a speech pathologist,
Speaker 1: is um how pronounced it is. There's a guy, um
Speaker 1: and I think the late nineties named Barry Guitar. He
Speaker 1: sounds like he played, you know, guitar for the band Boston.
Speaker 1: He knows all the chords. No way, that's guitar George. Right,
Speaker 1: what's that from? Oh? Come on, guitar George. Is that
Speaker 1: a Ray Stevens song? No, it's from Dark Straits sing
Speaker 1: Oh gotcha? That's a good song. It is a good song.
Speaker 1: Uh So Barry Guitar came with five levels of stuttering development.
Speaker 1: And I already referenced the first. I know his name
Speaker 1: is all just. I already referenced the first level, which
Speaker 1: is you, um, you have blessed than ten percent of
Speaker 1: your speech is disfluent. That's that's anybody walking around like that, right,
Speaker 1: unless you're like the King of England or something. And
Speaker 1: then ironically unless you're that one king who had a stutter.
Speaker 1: Um and then it goes on the from there and
Speaker 1: just gets worse and worse. But one of the things
Speaker 1: that's attendant with these um these different stages of development
Speaker 1: of a stutter are like emotional problems or symptoms like
Speaker 1: co morbid symptoms along with the stutter. So there can
Speaker 1: be things like blinking like um, like like pursing your lips,
Speaker 1: where you're frustrated, where you're angry, where you're fearful, where
Speaker 1: you're anxious, in conjunction with stuttering. And so this is
Speaker 1: the kind of thing that the speech pathologists will be
Speaker 1: looking for to kind of diagnose your kid like now,
Speaker 1: this is just normal kids stuff. For actually this the
Speaker 1: stutters developing faster than we'd like it too, so we
Speaker 1: need to start treating it now. Well, that makes sense
Speaker 1: because dopamine. We've talked a lot about dopamine on the
Speaker 1: show The NEU transmitter. UM. If you have an overabundance
Speaker 1: of dopamine. Um, we talked about in the Tourette's episode,
Speaker 1: is that one of the things that can be co
Speaker 1: morbid with stuttering, because I know too much dopamine can
Speaker 1: lead to a stutter as well. Yeah, supposedly, Um. So
Speaker 1: dopamine controls movement, right, and if you have too much,
Speaker 1: it makes you have ticks. Like Tourette you're saying, well,
Speaker 1: it can. So I noticed this. Um, Parkinson's and dopamine
Speaker 1: are um, I think they're they're like Parkinson's has to
Speaker 1: do with too much dopamine, and Parkinson's is one of
Speaker 1: the ways that you could acquire neurogenically a stutter. So
Speaker 1: that makes total sense that there's something in your brain
Speaker 1: with dopamine transmission to where you have maybe too much
Speaker 1: of it. And so you're you're trying to um, you're
Speaker 1: having trouble but get getting the thoughts in your head
Speaker 1: into the movements that it takes to create a speech. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's a little clumsy the way the brain
Speaker 1: does this. Um, it would be a lot easier if
Speaker 1: it was streamlined and one part of the brain, but
Speaker 1: there are two distinct parts of the brain that deal
Speaker 1: with language processing, and one is the one that processes
Speaker 1: it and one articulates it with UH in a motor
Speaker 1: skill way. And when those two things have done brain
Speaker 1: imaging mapping and they found that there's some sort of
Speaker 1: discontinuity between those two processes going on. There's that's stuttering, right,
Speaker 1: So it could be too much dopamine. That's one thing. Um. Again,
Speaker 1: the research into stuttering is so basic at the moment,
Speaker 1: it's it's really surprising. Um. What they're trying to figure
Speaker 1: out though, is are you born with the stutter like
Speaker 1: you when you're born, You're you're gonna have this problem
Speaker 1: because you're your brain isn't um using dopamine properly, or
Speaker 1: is overproducing dopamine or are you as your brain is developing,
Speaker 1: something goes a little off to the side, to the
Speaker 1: left and your brain has trouble with dopamine from that
Speaker 1: point on. So they're trying to figure out the etiology
Speaker 1: of it. In other words, did you look into this
Speaker 1: uh the genes the four genes, Yeah, a little bit.
Speaker 1: Did you find names for those? I did not? That
Speaker 1: is how basic the research is right now. They're not
Speaker 1: even saying what genes they're finding. Yeah, apparently they did
Speaker 1: discover four different genes that are linked to these proteins,
Speaker 1: and these proteins are sort of like, um, they're responsible
Speaker 1: for what's called cellular trafficking, so they kind of make
Speaker 1: sure that the elements of the cell end up where
Speaker 1: they need to be within that cell um. And they
Speaker 1: said that more than one neurological disorder can be linked
Speaker 1: to this trafficking process. So I guess it's related to
Speaker 1: those proteins in those genes. Yeah, but they're like, who knows,
Speaker 1: It's just like they've gotten to the point where they
Speaker 1: have identified there's something up with these proteins in in
Speaker 1: the cells and it's linked to stuttering somehow. Now just
Speaker 1: give us like ten years to go figure out how right,
Speaker 1: But yeah, they're they're starting to realize now there's some
Speaker 1: sort of genetic basis to this two stuttering. Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think the twin study that says a lot right
Speaker 1: there for sure. You know, um, should we can we
Speaker 1: talk about Moses? I think it's high time we talked
Speaker 1: about Moses. We've been dancing around the burning bush for
Speaker 1: a while now. I can't believe that guy to laugh. Well,
Speaker 1: I was laughing because every time I think of burning bush,
Speaker 1: I think of three Amigos and how funny that singing
Speaker 1: bush was. I never saw that one. Three Amigos. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I could do the three amigo salute, but I never
Speaker 1: saw it. Oh man, that's a classic. Really yeah really? Oh? Sure?
Speaker 1: Why is that surprising? I don't know. I feel like
Speaker 1: I would have seen it if three comedic? You right? Oh,
Speaker 1: I know why I never saw because chevy Chase is
Speaker 1: in it. I'm sure, I'm sure. No. I remember my
Speaker 1: dad raised me to really dislike so I probably wasn't
Speaker 1: allowed to see it. That's because you can see Fletch, right.
Speaker 1: I think I stopped watching Fletch like part way through.
Speaker 1: My dad had a real influence on me. And why
Speaker 1: didn't he like chevy Chase? So I don't. I have
Speaker 1: no idea he had a bone to pick. I I
Speaker 1: guess I think he thought he was a jerk or something.
Speaker 1: Well he was, all right, it turns out right, all right.
Speaker 1: So Moses, um, I know a lot about the Bible, because,
Speaker 1: as listeners know, I was raised in the church, but
Speaker 1: I didn't know this. I don't remember this story at all. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I hadn't heard it either. So apparently Moses uh was
Speaker 1: a little baby at one point, and the Pharaoh said,
Speaker 1: was warned, you know that Moses was was gonna uh
Speaker 1: not be his friend when he grew up. So he said,
Speaker 1: all right, let me try something out. I'm gonna give
Speaker 1: this little baby Moses a choice between a bowl full
Speaker 1: of gold and a bowl full of hot coals. This
Speaker 1: is what you do with babies. Jesus the gold, then
Speaker 1: I'm gonna kill him. Yeah, typical typical Egyptian stuff. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: So of course with a baby, Moses is going to
Speaker 1: reach for the gold. Um. And then apparently an angel
Speaker 1: intervened Todd, Todd the angel and directed, uh, little Moses
Speaker 1: hand to the hot coals instead. A little gruffly if
Speaker 1: you ask Moses. Moses grabbed a hot coal put it
Speaker 1: in his mouth, and that's how he got to the stutter.
Speaker 1: And he's blamed Todd ever since. And here's what I
Speaker 1: don't get is that Moses went to God and was like, hey, man,
Speaker 1: I'm supposed to lead the people out of Egypt. I
Speaker 1: have a bad stutter. Can you you know, can you
Speaker 1: do something for me? God? And God said no, sweat, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he said God, Mr ed, you didn't know that, uh
Speaker 1: he was God? So God said, um, yeah, sure I
Speaker 1: can help you out. Just have your brother Aaron take
Speaker 1: the mic. And Moses is like, I was more thinking
Speaker 1: like you'd perform a miracle on me. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: probably could have thought of having Aaron speak for me
Speaker 1: as well. God, thanks for that, though. I don't know
Speaker 1: how I missed that story. He apparently there's a quote
Speaker 1: I am heavy of mouth and heavy of tongue, and
Speaker 1: I saw some um Bible site where they were debating
Speaker 1: whether or not what they were talking about was a stutter. Apparently,
Speaker 1: some later Hebraic text said that Moses had trouble pronouncing
Speaker 1: th h s thorn sounds um, it sounds more like
Speaker 1: he had a lisp than a stutter. Who knows. Let's
Speaker 1: go with stuttering though, because a lot of people do
Speaker 1: say that Moses had a stutter. But yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: pretty thick. It's I've gotten used to it. But I
Speaker 1: remember at first when we first started doing this, like, man,
Speaker 1: I should not be speaking for a living like this
Speaker 1: is I have a speech impediment, pure and simple. No,
Speaker 1: it's just everyone now just thinks, Hey, that's Josh's voice. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's so grating, smooth and silky Elton history. Uh, let's
Speaker 1: see the emperor Justinian apparently U or no, I'm sorry
Speaker 1: I was wrong. It was um Demosthenes. He was a
Speaker 1: Greek statesman. He apparently was smart enough to say, who
Speaker 1: could help me with a stutter? How about an actor?
Speaker 1: Somebody who speaks broadcast their voice for a living. So
Speaker 1: he hired an actor to help him, and the actor
Speaker 1: had him do things like chew on pebbles and try
Speaker 1: to talk smart. Um, he he's he did his speeches
Speaker 1: while he's walking uphill. I guess to control his breathing.
Speaker 1: This is actually pretty sharp stuff. I think out of
Speaker 1: out of all the historical treatments that we're going to cover,
Speaker 1: this one might most closely resemble, aside from the mouthful
Speaker 1: of pebbles, um, modern treatment for stuttering. Yeah, which is
Speaker 1: to say, uh, speaking exercises. Uh, well, you did say Justinian.
Speaker 1: I don't know if Justinian had the stutter, but his
Speaker 1: at the very least his position. Uh. A. T. S.
Speaker 1: Of Amida was one of the first people to say, hey,
Speaker 1: maybe that the frenulum, you know, that little flap of
Speaker 1: skin under your tongue, the connector to the bottom of
Speaker 1: your mouth. He was the first one that said, why
Speaker 1: don't we start slicing that thing up? Uh, and just
Speaker 1: the tongue in general. Over the years there have been
Speaker 1: all kinds of surgeon that tried variations of slicing the
Speaker 1: frenulum or cutting down of the tongue itself. Now, I
Speaker 1: could probably use that one by H. D. Sgoen. I'm
Speaker 1: sure that's how you say it. The second way, he
Speaker 1: basically said, stuttering as a result of an oversized tongue,
Speaker 1: which I have. Let's just slice and dice a little
Speaker 1: off the sides. But none of this I know, of course,
Speaker 1: it didn't work. It's just horror of thick apparently. Though
Speaker 1: at the same time there were these surgeons who get
Speaker 1: all the press because their stuff is so horrific. But
Speaker 1: there are also other people who were kind of on
Speaker 1: the right track a little more like Moses Mendelssohn in
Speaker 1: the eighteenth century. He thought that there were too many
Speaker 1: ideas or thoughts that were flowing at once, and that um,
Speaker 1: it was basically it was blocking speech. There's too much
Speaker 1: trying to get out, basically like the three Stooges model
Speaker 1: of stuttering. Remember they're all trying to go through the door. Yeah, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so you've got too much to say and you want
Speaker 1: to just get it all out. Interesting, that makes a
Speaker 1: little sense. Um Erasmus Darwin. Uh. He said that it
Speaker 1: was bashfulness, emotions like bashfulness that messed up the process
Speaker 1: of speaking right, definitely onto something there as well. And
Speaker 1: then a psychologist named sand Ow said that it was
Speaker 1: brought on by either a dread of speaking or an
Speaker 1: over eagerness to speak, kind of like what Moses Mendelson
Speaker 1: was saying in the latter example. They brought out by
Speaker 1: two completely opposite things. Yeah, so a lot of this
Speaker 1: actually is kind of in step with our current thought
Speaker 1: about stuttering. And so either that means that these guys
Speaker 1: in the eighteenth century were prescient, or our understanding of
Speaker 1: stuttering is stuck in the eighteenth century. I'm very curious
Speaker 1: to know which one it is. Shall we take a break? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's all right. We're gonna come back after this final
Speaker 1: break and talk about therapies that don't involve cutting your
Speaker 1: tongue apart. Yea, all right, So now we're in the
Speaker 1: modern days and we're not taking scalpels to the frenulum
Speaker 1: any longer. Because they realized that it's not a physical
Speaker 1: affliction of the tongue. It's it's somewhere inside the brain
Speaker 1: most likely. And uh, they have a lot of recommendations
Speaker 1: for when a child um starts to stutter in it
Speaker 1: and it sticks. Um. And you found some other tips
Speaker 1: to which are great for parents, and kind of one
Speaker 1: of the main ones is is give your kid plenty
Speaker 1: of room to talk, plenty of time to talk, make
Speaker 1: sure they express themselves fully, because one of the side
Speaker 1: effects of having a stutter is your child may just
Speaker 1: end up retreating and being super quiet. Yeah. I got
Speaker 1: from this these hips for parents that there's kind of
Speaker 1: this maybe not fully spoken idea that you can actually
Speaker 1: cement your child stutter if you handle it poorly when
Speaker 1: they start to develop it like like which knowing that
Speaker 1: it just makes you even more tense about dealing with
Speaker 1: it correctly, I would guess, which could make the whole
Speaker 1: process even even harder. But there are some pretty brainless
Speaker 1: things to do. This one almost killed me when I
Speaker 1: saw it. Chuck the the site I think Kids Health
Speaker 1: is where I got this one, but it said maintain
Speaker 1: natural eye contact with your child. Try not to look
Speaker 1: away or show signs of being upset. Get like just
Speaker 1: break the arrow off in my heart. That's pretty sad. Like,
Speaker 1: don't look away in disgust when your child is stuttering,
Speaker 1: you monster, Go look in the mirror and take a
Speaker 1: bamboo shoot and put it underneath your fingernail and think
Speaker 1: about what you've done. Another good one is um And
Speaker 1: this feels like something that would be easy to do
Speaker 1: because it seems well intentioned to say, like, you know,
Speaker 1: slow down, son, take your time, take your breath. They
Speaker 1: say to not do that because you know, might make
Speaker 1: things worse. Yeah, because what you're doing then is you're
Speaker 1: drawing attention to the idea that your child is not
Speaker 1: speaking correctly and uh, rather than just apparently letting them
Speaker 1: communicate at their own pace. Right, There's also seems to
Speaker 1: be a suggestion that the child has learned the child,
Speaker 1: your kid has learned to speak to stutter because they're
Speaker 1: trying to get too much out at once, and they
Speaker 1: may have picked that up from you. If you have
Speaker 1: like a rush rush, rush pace in your household. One
Speaker 1: of the things that that they suggest is it just
Speaker 1: kind of slow things down at home. And in addition
Speaker 1: to like like schedule wise and like just taking time
Speaker 1: and just like letting everybody breathe, maybe a little more
Speaker 1: than you guys are um also speaking more slowly, not
Speaker 1: just to your kid, but also to other people. When
Speaker 1: your kids around speaking slowly, you're letting the setting an example,
Speaker 1: it's called modeling your own speech so that your kid
Speaker 1: feels like they don't have to blurt everything out at
Speaker 1: once to get their point across. They they're going to
Speaker 1: be heard no matter how long it takes. You're going
Speaker 1: to sit there and just listen to them speak, yeah,
Speaker 1: and not and like really listen. Another thing that seems
Speaker 1: like a no brainer, but really just try and focus
Speaker 1: on on what they're saying and not the fact that
Speaker 1: they're stuttering those words out. But you know, when your
Speaker 1: kid tells you a story about something that happened at school,
Speaker 1: don't concentrate or even bring attention to the fact that
Speaker 1: it's being said with the stutter, but just take taking
Speaker 1: their story and if it takes a little while longer
Speaker 1: than just respond accordingly. And and in that same vein,
Speaker 1: like don't tell your kid to stop and start over
Speaker 1: when they start stuttering, like like they're they have to
Speaker 1: get the sentence just perfect or else you're not going
Speaker 1: to hear him out and don't tell them to think
Speaker 1: before speaking. That's not helping anything at all. Um, be honest, like,
Speaker 1: don't try and uh mask it and say that, well,
Speaker 1: you don't have a stutter, like this is just you know,
Speaker 1: you're just in a hurry or something like they just
Speaker 1: say to be really honest and say, you know what,
Speaker 1: you you have a stutter and it's a disfluence. It's
Speaker 1: nothing to worry about. And uh, if you'd like, maybe
Speaker 1: we can uh talk to someone that can uh do
Speaker 1: some exercises with you. And you know, just like all
Speaker 1: this sounds like no brainer, not being a monster parent. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but again some of it does. It's like telling your
Speaker 1: kids like, okay, slow down, take a breath. Now, what
Speaker 1: are you saying? Like you think you're helping your kid,
Speaker 1: you're not so so not all some of it is
Speaker 1: is monstrosity. Others is just like this is this is
Speaker 1: what people would naturally do, but it's and it seems intuitive,
Speaker 1: but you're wrong. Your intuition is dead wrong. Just let
Speaker 1: your kids talk and listen to what they're saying, not
Speaker 1: how they're saying it. And apparently this is this is
Speaker 1: a good These are good. This is good advice. Wow,
Speaker 1: it took me a second to get out. Thank you though,
Speaker 1: Chuck for patiently hearing it. Then, um, this is good
Speaker 1: advice to helping your kid just naturally, um shed the stutter,
Speaker 1: the developmental stutter. We should say, all of this we've
Speaker 1: been talking about is is dealing with the developmental stutter,
Speaker 1: although a lot of it just applies to people with
Speaker 1: with adults stutters out in the real world as well.
Speaker 1: Like you can you can take just about all of
Speaker 1: this and apply it to a business conversation if you
Speaker 1: have a coworker who has a stutter, like don't look
Speaker 1: away and discussed. There's there's good advice right there all too.
Speaker 1: Throughout your life when you're when you're watching or listening
Speaker 1: to somebody with the stutter. Yeah, I mean, maybe don't
Speaker 1: do that at all, and you know the life advice,
Speaker 1: but it's it's a good point is if you're sitting
Speaker 1: there and you're and you don't look like you're hurrying
Speaker 1: somebody with the stutter along, You're just engage. You're you're
Speaker 1: into the conversation no matter how long it takes. I
Speaker 1: can't imagine how much that must help. And one thing
Speaker 1: that we didn't really. I think point out that that
Speaker 1: bears pointing out is that people who stutter do not
Speaker 1: necessarily stutter and in the same frequency throughout like their day.
Speaker 1: There's definitely situations that are um that we are going
Speaker 1: to make the stutter way more pronounced. They're almost exclusively
Speaker 1: associated with higher anxiety situations. I think the nationals Stuttering
Speaker 1: Association says that the number one situation where a stutter
Speaker 1: is going to be about as bad as it gets
Speaker 1: is during a job interview. And so employers, please don't
Speaker 1: think that this is how this person talks. This is
Speaker 1: probably as bad as their stutter gets. However, they're stuttering
Speaker 1: in the in the job interview, UM. So if they're
Speaker 1: today at home, UM, and they're just talking to their
Speaker 1: wife or their kid or something, the stutter is probably
Speaker 1: gonna be far less pronounced than it would be if
Speaker 1: they were having to give a speech UM at their
Speaker 1: friend's wedding. You know. Yeah, And I found that UM
Speaker 1: with this person, Emily, and I know that it's UM.
Speaker 1: It can vary a lot within a conversation. UM, it's
Speaker 1: a very severe stutter. And then they will say like
Speaker 1: a couple of sentences straight through with nothing, and then
Speaker 1: I think, oh, man, like it catches me off guard
Speaker 1: because I'm so used to the stutter, and I think, well,
Speaker 1: you know, that's super interesting to me. You just like
Speaker 1: blurted out a couple of two or three long sentences
Speaker 1: with zero stutter or stammer on the same thing. Um,
Speaker 1: I know, but they're fun to say together, aren't they
Speaker 1: They are. I don't know, I just find it really fascinating. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, speech pathology can come a long way. I
Speaker 1: know that there are Well, it's funny. I looked online
Speaker 1: about curing stuttering, and of course there was no like
Speaker 1: patented cure. But Tony Propins after listening to our recording
Speaker 1: our motivational Speaker thing, I saw a video. I didn't
Speaker 1: even watch it. I just saw the title. It said
Speaker 1: Tony Robbins cures a man of a stutter in seven minutes, right,
Speaker 1: So I was like, oh, come on, yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: didn't see anything that said stutter stuttering cures. There's basically
Speaker 1: nine Yeah. I did not look into I didn't have
Speaker 1: time to look into this new device though, did you. Uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: a little bit. It seems pretty untested as far as
Speaker 1: real world application goes, but it makes sense into watively
Speaker 1: and apparently it does help in a clinical setting. So
Speaker 1: basically it's like an like a hearing aid, but it
Speaker 1: changes the person who's speaking's voice a little bit. Does
Speaker 1: it replay it for everybody? Know, just for the person
Speaker 1: in their ear right, Because one of the one of
Speaker 1: the ways that somebody who stutters will be able to
Speaker 1: talk perfectly well is speaking in unison or singing. So
Speaker 1: like you, you can be sitting there talking to somebody
Speaker 1: just one on one, and your stutter could be quite severe.
Speaker 1: But then if you and the person agree to sing together,
Speaker 1: you may not stutter at all the whole time you're singing.
Speaker 1: And I have no no one has any idea why
Speaker 1: that's the case. They just know And this device is
Speaker 1: based on that that when we're talking in unison, or
Speaker 1: someone who has the stutters talking in unison with somebody else,
Speaker 1: their stutter tends to go away. So what this does
Speaker 1: is it creates an echo. There's a bit of a
Speaker 1: lag with their own voice, so they feel like they're
Speaker 1: talking themselves, and so it helps the stutter again, at
Speaker 1: least in a clinical setting. UM, I don't know if
Speaker 1: it would just be too distracting in a conversation or what.
Speaker 1: But I got the impression that they haven't tested it
Speaker 1: fully or proven it fully outside of the lamb. Well,
Speaker 1: the singing makes sense because remember mel Tillis, The name
Speaker 1: sounds familiar. He was a country singer who had a
Speaker 1: really pronounced stutter, kind of around like fifties, sixties and
Speaker 1: seventies seventies is when he was biggest. But yeah, but
Speaker 1: you know he was on like he haw and stuff,
Speaker 1: grand ol opry like a bird and then has has
Speaker 1: had a tough stutter when he was talking to the
Speaker 1: audience and that's what he was known for. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was like you know, obviously wouldn't act, but it
Speaker 1: was a sticky speaking of so um another famous stutter chuck,
Speaker 1: are we there? Uh, Porky Pig. Yeah, so I was.
Speaker 1: I was looking up Porky Pig, right, because you know,
Speaker 1: that's an unusual choice to have a cartoon character whose stutters.
Speaker 1: And it turns out that Porky Pig has a stutter
Speaker 1: because the guy who originally did Porky Pig, Joe Doherty,
Speaker 1: had a stutter in real life. Oh really yeah, pretty sweet? Huh,
Speaker 1: pretty heartwarming? Well wait, there's more. He did Porky Pig
Speaker 1: for the first two years, and then they fired him
Speaker 1: because he kept missing the cues because of his stutter,
Speaker 1: and they brought in a guy who didn't have a
Speaker 1: stutter to do Porky Pig from that point on. But
Speaker 1: he did it with a stutter. Yeah, because it was established.
Speaker 1: Well that's crutty and that's sad. That's sad. Yeah, except
Speaker 1: Porky Pigs trick was to go to a different word, yeah,
Speaker 1: which is a fairly common technique though. Yeah, I imagine. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: if you get hung up on something, just say something else.
Speaker 1: Uh that means the same thing. Yeah, that's a good one.
Speaker 1: Or I think, um people will say, oh, I can't
Speaker 1: remember and just act like they can't remember the word
Speaker 1: when they know full well what we're they're going for.
Speaker 1: They just can't they can't say it, so they just
Speaker 1: pretend like they couldn't or they forgot what they were
Speaker 1: talking about. Should we name all some of these other
Speaker 1: famous stutters, because uh, I think if you're an adult stutter,
Speaker 1: you probably know these people. You may have looked it
Speaker 1: up to feel a kinship, but maybe if you're a
Speaker 1: little kid out there, it might make you feel better.
Speaker 1: To know that. Uh, Darth Vader himself, James Earl Jones
Speaker 1: was the stutter Yeah, big time. Emily Blunt, Yep, she's terrific.
Speaker 1: Samuel Jackson surprising right there. Yeah, because the F bombs
Speaker 1: flow from his mouth. He was born with that talent.
Speaker 1: Who else from pulp fiction? Harvey kit Tell. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: can't see Harvey kite Tell stuttering now. And I guess
Speaker 1: all of these people just went through speech therapy. Huh.
Speaker 1: I would guess so, or else they all took mushrooms
Speaker 1: because it doesn't say whether or not they like stuttered
Speaker 1: as a child or when they overcame it. But Nicole Kidman,
Speaker 1: Albert Einstein, Oh really, um, Carly Simon, and you said
Speaker 1: Winston Churchill earlier too, he had a stutter as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Bruce Willis, Yeah, that's using too. Huh. Check I could see.
Speaker 1: I think I've actually seen Shack stutter before on TV. Really,
Speaker 1: m uh see Bill Walton, Tiger Woods, Charles Darwin, Jane Seymour,
Speaker 1: Dr Quinn herself, Joe Biden, who will hopefully run for president,
Speaker 1: right he overcame his stutter. Yeah, well all of them did,
Speaker 1: which is great. But at the same time, there are
Speaker 1: people out there who have accepted that they have a stutter.
Speaker 1: They've probably spent a lot of time and money trying
Speaker 1: to get rid of it and it hasn't gone anywhere,
Speaker 1: so they've kind have embraced it. So I mean, if
Speaker 1: you've gotten rid of your stutter and you've overcome it,
Speaker 1: that's great. But if you've also embraced it, good for
Speaker 1: you as well. Oh boy, how about this one? You
Speaker 1: want to talk about overcoming a stutter Kendrick Lamar? Oh yeah, wow.
Speaker 1: If you can overcome a stutter and then become Kendrick Lamar,
Speaker 1: then that that should be a shiny example people that
Speaker 1: you can do anything. Yeah, or if you embrace your stutter,
Speaker 1: good for you as well. Agreed, because you could be
Speaker 1: mal tell Us who was the Kendrick Lamar of country music,
Speaker 1: or Porky Pig, the Kendrick Lamar of cartoon. That's right,
Speaker 1: you've got anything else about stuttering? I got nothing else.
Speaker 1: We'd love to hear from people, though, huh, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: UM get in touch with us, and then in the
Speaker 1: meantime you can find more stuff about stuttering, including a
Speaker 1: lot of support and resources for parents, um all over
Speaker 1: the web and there's things like say dot org and
Speaker 1: the National Stuttering Association and all sorts of great resources
Speaker 1: if you are looking for some information. And since I said, uh,
Speaker 1: it's time for a listener mail, all right, I'll call
Speaker 1: this um coming to see you in Chicago, but by
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