Speaker 1: No, really, no, really, Hello everybody, Welcome back to another
Speaker 1: episode of Really Know Really, the podcast with your host
Speaker 1: Jason Alexander.
Speaker 2: And I got my name. I got tired of doing it.
Speaker 2: And this is the show where Peter and I explore
Speaker 2: things that make us say really no, really, yeah.
Speaker 3: Like our relationship.
Speaker 2: Know why we even bother to get together, why we
Speaker 2: have these conversations, why we tolerate each other? Really no, really,
Speaker 2: this is a This is an interesting episode. And I
Speaker 2: know this is going to speak very much when you
Speaker 2: say that.
Speaker 4: When you say that, it does imply all the others
Speaker 4: were rather not interesting.
Speaker 3: Just pointing that out. Just a little note.
Speaker 2: You don't draw on my pages, always drawing on my pages.
Speaker 2: I read a little Tidman and the Charlotte Observer that
Speaker 2: there was a school student, I believe, junior higher high
Speaker 2: schools student in Tennessee, who is suing the Board of
Speaker 2: ed because they refuse to pass a law that would
Speaker 2: ban gum chewing in school. Now, it is not that
Speaker 2: she doesn't like, you know, gum, or that she is
Speaker 2: offended in some way by people chewing gum. It's that
Speaker 2: she suffers from a thing called mesophonia, and the sound
Speaker 2: of gum chewing drives her to distraction, if not to
Speaker 2: the point of breaking. And that's right.
Speaker 5: So this is something that pardon the interruption, but listener note, Jason,
Speaker 5: unbeknownst to Peter, has begun rhythmically clicking on a ballpoint
Speaker 5: pen to test how sensitive Peter's mesophonia is.
Speaker 4: You brought that up, and I said, I have that.
Speaker 4: I didn't realize that I had misophonia. And everybody I
Speaker 4: mention it too, that we're going to do an episode
Speaker 4: starts wondering if they have it, because over twenty percent
Speaker 4: of the population has it. As a matter of fact,
Speaker 4: one of our producers mentioned, we talked about what episode one.
Speaker 3: I think we talked the episode.
Speaker 4: He's been getting push notice find out since that episode, right, me,
Speaker 4: so funny, and we only mentioned he only mentioned it once.
Speaker 4: I heard it mentioned once, and it's been coming out forever, right.
Speaker 2: And you claim you claim sir, to suffer from it.
Speaker 4: So I didn't realize what it was until a couple
Speaker 4: of years ago. But yeah, you're doing with the clicking
Speaker 4: the pet. It's making me crazy. I can't it's so
Speaker 4: distracting to me that it's.
Speaker 2: Not just so this actually does I didn't think you
Speaker 2: would notice because you went at a moment and it
Speaker 2: looked like it. I really I was only doing it
Speaker 2: to see if you would pick up on it. So
Speaker 2: you really did, right.
Speaker 4: But the weird thing, and if you're listening, and we're
Speaker 4: going to talk about the world getting which is incredible,
Speaker 4: how much noisier the world has gotten, and why okay,
Speaker 4: and how many people are afflicted with things now because
Speaker 4: how much noisier the world is and how dangerous that's becoming,
Speaker 4: above and beyond me so phonny, But I think people listening.
Speaker 4: David Googlehin when we were talking about it, said, wait
Speaker 4: a minute, my daughter may everybody starts asking questions because
Speaker 4: I for years just thought I was in the You
Speaker 4: just think you're annoyed by noises, all right, Well it's
Speaker 4: to some degree everybody, everybody everything, Yeah, but the reaction
Speaker 4: is different, and I thought I was just it was
Speaker 4: just me a mess. We would be riding in the car,
Speaker 4: my wife and I'd be talking to this front and
Speaker 4: my kids would be talking in the back, and I
Speaker 4: would be going my stunt. My chest would get tight.
Speaker 4: I could feel my heart beat. It would make me nuts.
Speaker 4: I couldn't I couldn't fight the noise. You couldn't. You
Speaker 4: couldn't get rid of that. That pen cut through everything else. Right,
Speaker 4: my brain focuses on that and I start losing it.
Speaker 4: Loud talkers make me create, like at another table, it's maddening, laughter, laughter,
Speaker 4: at restaurants like like ha ha ha ha. I'm looking
Speaker 4: at them like you're wrong. There's something going on there,
Speaker 4: rustling paper. If it's got a cadence to it, once
Speaker 4: or twice, no, but if it's got a cadence to it,
Speaker 4: me crazy. The kid in the pool, Remember I did
Speaker 4: the thing where the kid was going, look at me,
Speaker 4: look at me, look at me, look at me, Look
Speaker 4: at me, Dad, look at me, look at me.
Speaker 3: And I was the one who yelled out at the
Speaker 3: pool look at him because of me. I just wanted
Speaker 3: to say again it now, listen.
Speaker 2: I used to think you were crazy. You had mentioned
Speaker 2: that you wanted to explore this, and I thought it's
Speaker 2: not a thing. And then you and I were flying
Speaker 2: home the other day. We were flying home from Las Vegas,
Speaker 2: sorry from Saint Louis, so it was a four hour
Speaker 2: flight and you had a lollipop in your mouth on
Speaker 2: a plane, and I have headphones on, but I'm sitting
Speaker 2: next to you, and every five to eight seconds I
Speaker 2: would hear, and I thought, I have to see. This
Speaker 2: is going to be a contest with myself. Now, how
Speaker 2: long can I take this? Well, I outlast the lollipop?
Speaker 2: How long can this long?
Speaker 3: There's no way.
Speaker 2: And after thirty I timed it. After thirty two minutes,
Speaker 2: lost it And he turns to me out of nowhere
Speaker 2: and said, I'm either gonna shove that down in your
Speaker 2: throat or yank it out of your mouth.
Speaker 4: Goddamn lollipop. Did you ever feel that about anything else
Speaker 4: with the sound? Did sound to ever make you creative?
Speaker 4: I'm not sure that I suffer quite from this, but
Speaker 4: I feel that within seconds of and and the other
Speaker 4: thing that's really weird that I didn't notice until we
Speaker 4: were talking about this episode, Like leaf Blower, to me,
Speaker 4: it was all noises and cadence. But we have an
Speaker 4: elderly dog who's fifteen and a half and he's on
Speaker 4: medication and he's doing okay, but at night he licks
Speaker 4: the floor and paces. My wife can watch him all
Speaker 4: night long, doesn't do anything to her. I go out
Speaker 4: of my mind because of the patient. The Cadence are pacing. Literally,
Speaker 4: I can't watch TV. I get so distracted about.
Speaker 2: You need a team of psychologists and psychiatrists. No, we're
Speaker 2: not working around the clock. Twenty four second This was
Speaker 2: a line on Seinfeld that was said from Jerry to George.
Speaker 2: It was, you need a team of therapist working around
Speaker 2: the clock to help you.
Speaker 3: I have one of them.
Speaker 4: We found out yes, over twenty that we know of. Yes,
Speaker 4: over twenty percent of the population deals with this. But
Speaker 4: like me, didn't know to bring it up, because what
Speaker 4: do you say to your wife. I want to stronger
Speaker 4: you and put a pillow over your face and kill
Speaker 4: you if you eat another pistachial.
Speaker 2: That's nice, that's a nice way, But you're just being honest.
Speaker 4: It's like it's like to somebody else, if you're at
Speaker 4: home right now, pick the worst sound you could ever
Speaker 4: think of that makes you crazy, like talkboard. You know
Speaker 4: how you feel. That's how I feel when she's feeling this.
Speaker 2: That's how I feel walking with you constantly. Let's talk
Speaker 2: to someone who might be able to help you. We
Speaker 2: are happy to welcome doctor Jane Gregory, who is a
Speaker 2: clinical psychologist and a mesophonia researcher. Peter and I founded
Speaker 2: the first two mesophonia clinics, one in London and one
Speaker 2: in Oxford, and at the end of this episode, I'm
Speaker 2: sending you to the one of your choice. She has
Speaker 2: co authored the S five, the world's first valid and
Speaker 2: reliable questionnaire that captures the complexity of the mesophonia experience.
Speaker 2: As She's also the author of the book Sounds Like Me.
Speaker 2: He'son how to stop small sounds from causing extreme almost reactions.
Speaker 3: That's almost a comedy titles sound like right, And.
Speaker 2: I'm actually delighted to introduce her, but then I feel
Speaker 2: like I should shut up because I'm worried that every
Speaker 2: sound I'm making is driving her up the wall. Welcome,
Speaker 2: Welcome to you, doctor Gregory.
Speaker 6: Nice to have you here on really, no, really, thanks
Speaker 6: for having me, and thanks for starting with the sound
Speaker 6: that drives me mad. Yeah, flashbacks to exams in high
Speaker 6: school with people just clicking it.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: It was our it was our producer David Guggenheim that
Speaker 2: said you should try and figure out what's going to
Speaker 2: get Peter and get him going on. I went, yeah,
Speaker 2: but what if the doctor and.
Speaker 3: He didn't care.
Speaker 2: He was callous to your needs and concern.
Speaker 3: May I just say, but I actually I was.
Speaker 2: I was testing to see because when Peter was focused
Speaker 2: on starting the show, I wanted to see specifically if
Speaker 2: it's something that you have to be focused on, is
Speaker 2: it Is it happening only when you know you're not
Speaker 2: focused or where any stimulation could get to you, or
Speaker 2: or you know, is it something that could cut through
Speaker 2: even when he was focused on something else? What do
Speaker 2: you find is the truth to that? Do people generally
Speaker 2: if they have this, no matter what they're doing, where
Speaker 2: they are, what they're focused on, it will cut through.
Speaker 6: I think there are some sounds that will probably cut through,
Speaker 6: Like eating sounds are the biggest ones, and it's just
Speaker 6: it's almost like their brains are waiting for it to happen,
Speaker 6: and so once it starts, it's there. But there was
Speaker 6: actually a studies, and I think it was at Concordia
Speaker 6: University where they had people with low levels of misophonia
Speaker 6: as in not misophonia and high misophonia, and they masked
Speaker 6: a sound with another sound, and so that once they
Speaker 6: took the other sound away, eventually the trigger sound would
Speaker 6: be detectable and there was no difference at the point
Speaker 6: at which they detected the trigger sound, really and so
Speaker 6: it's probably more that they're listening out for sounds. They're
Speaker 6: more likely to be looking for sounds or listening out
Speaker 6: for sounds than actually there being a mechanism that makes
Speaker 6: them be able to detect it sooner. But the other
Speaker 6: thing is that once they've heard it, aren't tune it out,
Speaker 6: whereas somebody without misophonia might hear that click not even
Speaker 6: register it because they've tuned it out so quickly. Whereas
Speaker 6: if once I've heard a pen clicking or a clock
Speaker 6: ticking is another yeah, I've everyone needs to know which
Speaker 6: office I was in when I was working, because I
Speaker 6: would either leave the clock out the door and so
Speaker 6: it would just be sitting outside the door, or I
Speaker 6: would take the batteries out and then forget to put
Speaker 6: them back in because the clocks were.
Speaker 3: Just what are the sounds? Do you have a list?
Speaker 3: Give me your list of stuff that really sets you?
Speaker 6: Well, my biggest one, so those sort of like clicky,
Speaker 6: ticky sounds, the classic eating sounds, really heavy breathing sounds,
Speaker 6: which I mean that's obviously a bit creepy anyway, But
Speaker 6: and then the weirdest one for me is the sound
Speaker 6: of pigeons, that repetitive kind of we're not quite cooling
Speaker 6: sound that pigeons make.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's sort of almost like throat thing.
Speaker 3: Well, I get woodpeckers kill me.
Speaker 4: If a woodpecker's really going at it, I really it's
Speaker 4: your okay, also owls, owls, the whot it makes me nuts,
Speaker 4: the neighbor's alarm as it goes off, be backup when
Speaker 4: trucks are backing up.
Speaker 6: Yeah, alarms and reverse sounds. They're actually designed for you
Speaker 6: not to ignore them, so they're meant to not be ignored,
Speaker 6: whereas with misophonia it sounds that most people would be
Speaker 6: able to eventually tune them out, but people with misphonia can't.
Speaker 2: For instance, going back to eating sounds, is it equally
Speaker 2: disturbing to you or other people if you are the
Speaker 2: person making the sound.
Speaker 6: No, it doesn't affect me.
Speaker 7: Why would that be.
Speaker 6: There's something to do with control, Like if I'm in
Speaker 6: control of the sound, I know I can stop it
Speaker 6: at any time. Like if I could pause the person
Speaker 6: eating opposite me, I would probably be fine. That's one
Speaker 6: of the things I actually do in therapy, just to
Speaker 6: sort of regain a sense of control is get the person,
Speaker 6: pretend you've got a remote control and pause and fast
Speaker 6: forward and slow it down, and it just helps to
Speaker 6: just create new associations in the brain where it sort
Speaker 6: of makes you feel more in control of the sound,
Speaker 6: even though ultimately you won't be. But your brain now
Speaker 6: is almost like tricked into thinking you've got a bit
Speaker 6: more control over sounds than you really.
Speaker 3: Have you ever lost it?
Speaker 4: Because by the pool we went to a we had
Speaker 4: kids and we wanted to go somewhere where there are
Speaker 4: no kids, not because we don't like kids, but it
Speaker 4: just we wanted to get away young kids. And we're
Speaker 4: in Palm Springs at the swimming pool and there were
Speaker 4: a couple of kids and there was one like I said,
Speaker 4: that's eight, and he's in the pool, and he was going, Dad,
Speaker 4: look at me, Look me, Dad, look at me, Look
Speaker 4: at me, Look at me. By the fifth look at me,
Speaker 4: I'm now almost in a rage. No one else cares,
Speaker 4: it seems. By the fifteenth look at me is when
Speaker 4: I yelled out look at him because I couldn't control myself.
Speaker 4: Have you ever lost it where you just went went over?
Speaker 6: Not since I was a kid, in that way most
Speaker 6: of the time. Now, I would just remove myself from
Speaker 6: the situation or try and deal with it if I can.
Speaker 6: But also I've done a lot of work to try
Speaker 6: and not get to that point where it drives me
Speaker 6: that insane, and I can tolerate these sounds now. If
Speaker 6: I have to, I will. But that example, there's something
Speaker 6: else going on there, Like there's something about the meaning
Speaker 6: behind the sound as well, because that's a kid that's
Speaker 6: being ignored, and so it's not just the acoustics of it.
Speaker 6: There's actually like, oh, this this kid is trying to
Speaker 6: get someone's attention and they're not being listened to. So
Speaker 6: there's a sort of an emotional you didn't care about.
Speaker 3: That couldn't cure a lessons that it was stop trying
Speaker 3: to I hated it. I wanted to stop at please
Speaker 3: just stop it.
Speaker 2: So you know what's interesting, because I just thought of
Speaker 2: a sound that I do think drives just about anyone
Speaker 2: into a state of at least stress, of not distress,
Speaker 2: and yet I think the natural reason for the sound
Speaker 2: was not to do that, and that is the sound
Speaker 2: of a baby crying. You know, we like on a plane.
Speaker 2: We know why they're crying, their ears are stuff. They
Speaker 2: can't take the pressure, or they're uncomfortable. We get it,
Speaker 2: we're sympathetic, but the average person on a plane will
Speaker 2: get to the point of, you know, almost getting hostile
Speaker 2: if it's such a strange reaction to that kind of
Speaker 2: stund So I guess what I'm trying. I don't have this.
Speaker 3: I am.
Speaker 2: I am sympathetic to having the notion of sounds that
Speaker 2: create emotional response.
Speaker 6: Yes, and that's a really good example of like a
Speaker 6: really conflicting emotional experience because you are feeling compassion for
Speaker 6: this poor baby. But I think most people are probably
Speaker 6: getting angry at the parents. It's like the parents should
Speaker 6: be doing something to make this stop and make my
Speaker 6: experience more comfortable. And as Peter said, you can't escape that.
Speaker 6: And so for the same reason, if someone starts to
Speaker 6: get a little bit panicky on a plane, they're much
Speaker 6: more likely to have a full blown panic attack because
Speaker 6: there's nowhere to go. You can't get away from that.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So, because because everybody and before you came on you
Speaker 4: mentioned when wherever you go, when you start talking about this,
Speaker 4: there's always somebody who goes, wait a minute, sent me
Speaker 4: the Queen Queen Elizabeth ready for this would demand that
Speaker 4: she had you probably.
Speaker 8: Know this about the ice ice.
Speaker 4: That she had rounded ice cubes. She had me round
Speaker 4: it riding ice cubes because square ice cubes may clink
Speaker 4: and they make noise, and she could not take it.
Speaker 4: She only had rounded ice cubes. How about that, and
Speaker 4: rounded ice cubes don't make the different sound. Well, son
Speaker 4: of a good she have discovered that.
Speaker 3: Well, you're queen, and.
Speaker 6: There's there's also some people who react to the sound
Speaker 6: of hot water being poured, but not cold water because
Speaker 6: there's also a de slightly.
Speaker 3: I'm kidding, I'm kidding.
Speaker 4: Franz Kafka lined his this is this is such a
Speaker 4: great story if it's true, lined his bedroom walls with
Speaker 4: cork for sound, and then developed an allergy to cork,
Speaker 4: which I just love that you go to that trouble
Speaker 4: because you're out of your mind with the sounds and
Speaker 4: then you get sick from the cork. Yeah, oh j
Speaker 4: This thing is really affects a lot of people. Doctor
Speaker 4: is it?
Speaker 2: Is it only repetitive sounds or could it be as like,
Speaker 2: for instance, has anyone ever had this reaction to music
Speaker 2: other than just a certain note just music playing with that.
Speaker 6: Some people have it to certain types of music, so
Speaker 6: sometimes it's music that is repetitive, like a really heavy
Speaker 6: bass or something like that. But also quite a few
Speaker 6: people have said with jazz because it feels so unpredictable
Speaker 6: and it doesn't follow.
Speaker 2: Music With Peter at show tunes, I love you know
Speaker 2: minus and I'm embarrassed to say it.
Speaker 4: But if you're going to cruise and they decide to
Speaker 4: play every song you've ever loved on steel drum, I
Speaker 4: want to kill myself. I'm gonna kill myself. Sunshine of
Speaker 4: your love on a steel drum should be banned? Shouldn't be.
Speaker 3: Why? Why is that the only instrument on they can't
Speaker 3: buy it.
Speaker 4: I'll pitch in for a guitar, I'll pitch in for
Speaker 4: a flu but steel drum?
Speaker 3: Really yesterday?
Speaker 2: Are you doing it as any?
Speaker 3: So generally, when.
Speaker 2: Now that it is determined to be a condition, when
Speaker 2: do people find they get diagnosed?
Speaker 3: Right when you know.
Speaker 6: There's still no confirmed diagnostic criteria for it. We see
Speaker 6: patients in the NHS, in the National Health Service in England,
Speaker 6: and for us to consider something a disorder and inverted commas,
Speaker 6: it needs to cause significant distress and have some kind
Speaker 6: of ongoing impact or interference in late life.
Speaker 3: How dare you.
Speaker 2: And so does has it not qualified yet under that term?
Speaker 6: It's still very newly recognized. Like there was this paper
Speaker 6: that came out It was just last year, the Consensus Definition,
Speaker 6: which was a panel of experts who came together to say,
Speaker 6: this is how we define it based on what we
Speaker 6: know currently that there's been more research on this in
Speaker 6: the last two years than there ever was in total before.
Speaker 6: So we're still very much at the beginning of understanding this.
Speaker 6: So we don't know is it an audiological problem, is
Speaker 6: it a psychological problem, Is that a neurological problem. It
Speaker 6: could be a combination of all of those things. We
Speaker 6: just don't have the research to be able to categorize
Speaker 6: it and classify it in that way.
Speaker 2: How do am I understanding that this questionnaire is something
Speaker 2: that you helped to develop that helps to diagnose it.
Speaker 6: Basically that's mainly used a for research purposes. So we
Speaker 6: can look at the severity of the symptoms and we
Speaker 6: can use that to compare it to other items on
Speaker 6: other questionnaires, so we can see, well, how does it
Speaker 6: relate to depression symptoms? For example, or anxiety or something
Speaker 6: like that, or we can see how it changes over time,
Speaker 6: and we also use it in therapy to monitor change
Speaker 6: as a result of therapy. There is now a cutoff
Speaker 6: score for that to say over that cut off score,
Speaker 6: someone is likely to have misophonia. That that cutoff score
Speaker 6: is for what we'd call subclinical as well as clinical mesophonias.
Speaker 6: That's people who would have this extreme reaction and wouldn't
Speaker 6: be able to tolerate it for very long, but it
Speaker 6: doesn't necessarily cause that day to day impact. We don't
Speaker 6: have the research hasn't been done yet to find that
Speaker 6: cutoff score for a disorder level of miscephonia, So we
Speaker 6: don't know what the prevalence is where it's that extreme,
Speaker 6: but we know that there are a lot of people
Speaker 6: out there who are really really suffering. On a day today, bab, I.
Speaker 4: Often wonder when I see an act of violence, like
Speaker 4: a neighbor loses it and you hear about it that
Speaker 4: there was a bark in the dog drove the crazy,
Speaker 4: or someone would cut somebody off and hanked at them
Speaker 4: in traffic or did I always wonder if that's an
Speaker 4: outcropping of this because the person just couldn't take it anymore.
Speaker 4: Because you're living next door to a neighbor. We're in
Speaker 4: a different world as far as personal space. There are
Speaker 4: more people being loud with their car stereos, with their
Speaker 4: devices because we're carrying stuff than I've ever heard before.
Speaker 4: And the guys are walking on their phone going yeah,
Speaker 4: how the meeting is and I got to hear there's
Speaker 4: no and that kind of makes me crazy too. I'm
Speaker 4: wondering the most extreme cases have they been diagnosed ever
Speaker 4: with that that the reason they went off is because
Speaker 4: of the noise and because of the cadence and the rhythm.
Speaker 2: Or a mesaphonia defense. I'm serious.
Speaker 6: Someone There has been a few newspaper articles where it
Speaker 6: says or they had misophonia and they exploded. If someone's
Speaker 6: also like that, disregulated, that they can't control themselves and
Speaker 6: they're harming people, then that it's not just misophonia. There's
Speaker 6: something else going on there, and it wouldn't be helpful
Speaker 6: to make that direct connection because that then stops people
Speaker 6: from getting help. Bor mezophonia, because I think gets associated
Speaker 6: with violence and extreme behavior.
Speaker 4: The bigger issue to this is this doesn't feel like
Speaker 4: twenty percent of the public, this feels much bigger. And
Speaker 4: an article, a lot of articles I've read said most
Speaker 4: Americans have grown more sensitive to noise since the pandemic.
Speaker 4: So if that's the case, more than foreign town have
Speaker 4: become more sensitive to loud music. I mean it's increasing. Yeah,
Speaker 4: what is that about? And how does that affect this?
Speaker 2: And is that sensitivity the same as mean as if
Speaker 2: funny or is it just the normal only there's more noise.
Speaker 6: Two fantastic questions. So the first one, and we've actually
Speaker 6: collected data from before the pandemic, and we can now
Speaker 6: collect more data to compare because we ask We've go
Speaker 6: people a long list of sounds and ask them, do
Speaker 6: you have a negative reaction to this? How does it
Speaker 6: make you feel? And how intense is that feeling? So
Speaker 6: we will we go back to those people now we'd
Speaker 6: be able to compare whether there are more people now
Speaker 6: reacting to these sounds. But the key difference here is
Speaker 6: that so for example, in our study on the general
Speaker 6: population in the UK, eighty five percent of people said
Speaker 6: they didn't like the sound of loud eating. So that's
Speaker 6: really really normal not to like that sound. But in
Speaker 6: that study it was mostly they would feel irritation or
Speaker 6: discussed at that sound, whereas in the misophonia group that
Speaker 6: we studied, it was ninety nine percent. So they didn't
Speaker 6: like this sound about eating and it was anger and
Speaker 6: panic were the two most popular reactions. So the nature
Speaker 6: of the reaction is really different. It's not just irritation,
Speaker 6: it's not just oh, that's disgusting. It's more of this
Speaker 6: fight or flight kind of reaction, like feeling rage, anger,
Speaker 6: feeling passed.
Speaker 4: That's hard when you say it. It's hard to explain
Speaker 4: to some when you say discussed. It's against you. It's
Speaker 4: not something that you're consciously doing. It's like the pat
Speaker 4: it's crept.
Speaker 3: In there, man.
Speaker 4: And I was like, uh oh, which is why I
Speaker 4: left when you said the lollipop thing, because if you
Speaker 4: were doing that, I probably would have straggled. You understand,
Speaker 4: I couldn't have taken it as long as you did,
Speaker 4: especially if there's a cadence to it. Oh my god,
Speaker 4: do you have any of that, Laurie, any that you do?
Speaker 4: So this is feeling starting to feel a little bit
Speaker 4: familiar to you. Yeah, and David, let's say google him,
Speaker 4: jump on. He usually didn't come on this early.
Speaker 3: But it's funny.
Speaker 4: It was such a reaction when I'm preparing it and
Speaker 4: talking to people, David goes, wait, oh, and he's never
Speaker 4: done this before. Hold on, I think my daughter may
Speaker 4: have it. So why don't you ask we have the
Speaker 4: expert here, why don't you ask you a question about
Speaker 4: your daughter with behavior, because that's fascinating, Davy.
Speaker 9: I believe that the doctor actually addressed it because it's
Speaker 9: this dinner time thing and she's thirteen, and then my
Speaker 9: other kids are eight, and the chewing with your mouth open,
Speaker 9: she gets angry and.
Speaker 2: That's the visual, not talking about the smacking sound right,
Speaker 2: Oh oh yeah.
Speaker 9: Yeah, not the visual at all. They know they're little
Speaker 9: cute mouths. But yeah, she gets very very angry.
Speaker 10: And their kids and they're not able to necessarily do it,
Speaker 10: and sometimes she just sort of almost storms out out
Speaker 10: of the dinner table because people aren't listening and she's
Speaker 10: being driven so crazy.
Speaker 3: That's amazing, unbelieve.
Speaker 6: So is that a lot of families who you have
Speaker 6: to eat separately because someone in the in the house
Speaker 6: can't stand the sound of eating at the table.
Speaker 2: Does it ever get so bad that, I mean, are
Speaker 2: we like putting noise canceling headphones on people so they
Speaker 2: can be in the same company.
Speaker 6: With absolutely or having music at the dinner table. Like
Speaker 6: for me, we just sort of take it in turns
Speaker 6: to pick a song from siies just so that there's
Speaker 6: a bit of ambient background.
Speaker 4: Wait a minute, you and your husband, who we should
Speaker 4: say as does comedies a writer. Correct, you have to
Speaker 4: put the side on. You don't talk during dinner. You
Speaker 4: have Siri for music.
Speaker 6: We also talk, we have.
Speaker 3: About your relationship.
Speaker 7: We're doing fine.
Speaker 2: What are what are the therapies? What are the things
Speaker 2: that you are recommending for people to try and.
Speaker 3: Deal with this.
Speaker 6: It's hard to recommend because nothing has been really rigorously
Speaker 6: studied yet. We don't really understand what the sort of
Speaker 6: key mechanisms are that make this what it is, and
Speaker 6: we don't know if it can be cured. We don't
Speaker 6: know if we can just help people with the distress
Speaker 6: or help people with strategies. In our clinic, we do
Speaker 6: cognitive pavia therapy, but it's very much focused on helping
Speaker 6: people to create new associations with the sound. So it's
Speaker 6: based on this theory that you might not ever be
Speaker 6: able to ignore these sounds. You'll probably always dislike the sounds,
Speaker 6: but the fight or flight reaction is maybe because your
Speaker 6: brain has made some kind of association with this sound
Speaker 6: and some kind of danger or threat or violation or
Speaker 6: just a fear of being overwhelmed by that sound. So
Speaker 6: that's what we're working on, is sort of helping people
Speaker 6: to create new associations with the sound and play around
Speaker 6: with sounds a little bit to feel like you've got
Speaker 6: a bit more control and bring it back to that
Speaker 6: level where, yeah, I don't like that sound. I wouldn't
Speaker 6: be able to do an exam if I had to
Speaker 6: listen to that sound, But I don't have to run
Speaker 6: out of the room if I hear it. I can
Speaker 6: maybe tolerate it for a little bit long.
Speaker 2: Can you give any kind of a specific example of
Speaker 2: altering a sound you know in your head in order
Speaker 2: to tolerately associate you.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so, well, sometimes it's doing something like playing and
Speaker 6: recording and then playing around with it's like software to
Speaker 6: distort the sound and drag it out and then speed
Speaker 6: it up and just listen to it in different ways.
Speaker 6: And doing that when you're in control of it, when
Speaker 6: you could stop it at any time, and hearing it
Speaker 6: in different ways can help your brain just get used
Speaker 6: to that sound being something that is not dangerous.
Speaker 2: So literally taking a recording of what I was doing
Speaker 2: with the pen and giving Peter the ability to alter
Speaker 2: that sound could do it and form a different relationship
Speaker 2: with it.
Speaker 4: Is it one of the biggest theories because I'd seen
Speaker 4: that that science thought or thinks that it is an
Speaker 4: association that, just like a fetish, is just like anything else.
Speaker 4: At some point at your age, you had an event
Speaker 4: that triggered that and you didn't realize it and associated
Speaker 4: that sound to some negative and then years later it
Speaker 4: has embedded and now it's like a fight flight syndrome
Speaker 4: without you even knowing why.
Speaker 6: I think it's probably part of the problem, not the
Speaker 6: only explanation. There are some people who go through a
Speaker 6: really clearly traumatic event and then develop a sensitivity to
Speaker 6: certain sounds, and that could be directly related to the trauma,
Speaker 6: and that's a really normal thing for the brain to
Speaker 6: do to try and protect you from that raumatic event.
Speaker 6: So say you had a car accident and the indicator
Speaker 6: was on, then that ticking sound of the indicator would
Speaker 6: be something that is trying to protect you from danger.
Speaker 6: But for most people with mesophoneire. It starts around sort
Speaker 6: of the age of eight or nine and then gets
Speaker 6: worse and sometimes gets better over time. But we don't
Speaker 6: think there's just one explanation for this. This is just
Speaker 6: one way of bringing down the intensity of the reaction
Speaker 6: and helping people to be able to live their lives again.
Speaker 4: And what about you know, so many kids use ADHD
Speaker 4: and add medications for focus. They found that it doesn't
Speaker 4: necessarily work, but there are documentaries on this where parents
Speaker 4: are putting their kids on so they can get better grades,
Speaker 4: et cetera.
Speaker 3: It's about focus.
Speaker 4: Do you think this enters into that that part of
Speaker 4: THED or ADHD problem could be the mesophony issue.
Speaker 6: It's really interesting. There's a master's student that I was
Speaker 6: working with was looking at that exact question, and so
Speaker 6: she looked at traits of ADHD and traits of misophonia
Speaker 6: and whether they were associated or as your score or
Speaker 6: goes up on ADHD, does your score go up in mesophonia?
Speaker 6: And it did, but once you accounted for general sensory sensitivity,
Speaker 6: which is a feature of both misophonia and ADHD, the
Speaker 6: association disappeared. So it could be explained by an overlap
Speaker 6: in general sensory sensitivity, but otherwise there's that That is
Speaker 6: what explains the relationship between ADHD and mesophonia. But if
Speaker 6: someone has both, then it's going to be much more
Speaker 6: of a problem because they're going to be much more
Speaker 6: distractable rights begin with.
Speaker 2: Has there been any connection that you found between musophonia
Speaker 2: and I think what it's called is an auditory hallucination
Speaker 2: where people are either hearing things that most people can't
Speaker 2: detect at all, or are creating a sound somehow internally
Speaker 2: that they are experiencing as an external sound.
Speaker 6: As far as I know, that hasn't been studied and
Speaker 6: certainly hasn't been something that people have reported to me.
Speaker 6: But I do have some people who have said that
Speaker 6: when they're once the sound has stopped, they feel like
Speaker 6: they can still hear it, and so that's sort of
Speaker 6: more like an echo of the sound.
Speaker 2: Like a phantom limb or something exactly, And.
Speaker 6: So that might just last for a little while afterwards,
Speaker 6: but it's not exactly the same as auditory hallucination.
Speaker 4: Well, well, you know what, since you're here, what we
Speaker 4: usually do is after the guest we do what we
Speaker 4: call a second act. We illuminate some other stuff. But
Speaker 4: since you're here anyway, I would love to do it
Speaker 4: with you here.
Speaker 3: Why not? Right?
Speaker 4: So the interesting thing that I found about the world
Speaker 4: getting louder. Started looking and saw how much more disruptive
Speaker 4: kids are in school cognitive behavior. And one of the
Speaker 4: things is they found out that city birds are singing louder.
Speaker 4: Frogs that live near highways have marked vocal variations. And
Speaker 4: what that has done is altered their mating ability, are
Speaker 4: their mating habits. So it's affecting nature. And the Park
Speaker 4: Service says that even outdoors, the sound of outdoors doubles
Speaker 4: or triples every thirty years. It gets louder and louder
Speaker 4: and louder, which I never I had no idea about this.
Speaker 3: And then you add to it the Internet and the.
Speaker 4: Fact that Ericsmith is a great quote in twenty ten
Speaker 4: he said, every two days, we now create as much
Speaker 4: information as we did from the dawn of civilization up
Speaker 4: until two thousand and three. So our bodies are being
Speaker 4: exposed to so much noise.
Speaker 2: And I hate to make that calculation.
Speaker 3: How did he make it? I'll I'll call him answer.
Speaker 2: I'll call him that seems a pretty answer. Know what,
Speaker 2: what people were coming up with in the year of
Speaker 2: eleven ninety four. That's a you know, I don't want
Speaker 2: to undercut. Are undercut, Eric Schmidt?
Speaker 3: Or you and your Google? Anyway?
Speaker 2: Oh, that was an annoying sent by the way, that
Speaker 2: triggered me.
Speaker 4: But there's more, As my brother would say, there's money.
Speaker 4: I don't love the phrase. But we only have so
Speaker 4: much bandwidth. So the noise does I mean right? The
Speaker 4: noise is impacting us in ways that.
Speaker 3: We're not aware.
Speaker 4: And and by the way, diabetes increase, hypertension increase that
Speaker 4: they attribute to the noise that we're not even aware
Speaker 4: that we're getting. Plus, there's a hum. There is a
Speaker 4: hum that they say a worldwide home. Anybody here raise
Speaker 4: your hand. Four percent of the public, even when you're
Speaker 4: lying about and quiet, nothing's on whatever, can hear this
Speaker 4: kind of hum that the earth puts out. Do you
Speaker 4: ever hear that?
Speaker 6: I know about the hum? Yeah, And it's stronger in
Speaker 6: certain places near certain sort of manufacturing plants and things
Speaker 6: like that. There's a greater hum. But we still don't
Speaker 6: know exactly what it is and why. Some people can
Speaker 6: hear it, and some people can.
Speaker 2: My wife, she has a very heightened she hears stuff
Speaker 2: that I don't here, And she said, and by the way,
Speaker 2: all her senses she tastes with an acute sense, her
Speaker 2: sense of smells.
Speaker 3: And yet extreme one. I guess.
Speaker 2: I'm so busy using your senses, she didn't use your sense.
Speaker 6: The stress around that, like you were saying about the
Speaker 6: environmental sound and the stress that that causes. And then
Speaker 6: they impact the knock on effect that has on health.
Speaker 6: And most people when they're going to move someone noisy,
Speaker 6: but you're getting I don't even I don't even hear
Speaker 6: it anymore. But if the sound is there and you
Speaker 6: are not hearing it, your body is having to process.
Speaker 6: So it creates a lot of stress in the body.
Speaker 4: And that's why I wanted to do this topic because
Speaker 4: it really it affects everybody listening. It is like they know,
Speaker 4: attribute everything, the inflammation in the body. Your body is
Speaker 4: fighting this constantly.
Speaker 2: You know, the military is developing sound as weapon. There
Speaker 2: was a whole bunch of controversy for a while that
Speaker 2: when people were getting sick down in Cuba. I believe right,
Speaker 2: they thought it was some sort of auditory you know,
Speaker 2: or sonic weapon. You know. We did, for instance, my
Speaker 2: grandson My little grandson has a thing that he falls
Speaker 2: asleep to. It's essentially a white noise machine, but it
Speaker 2: also has a heartbeat on it. And we have no
Speaker 2: idea of this little kid. You know, he can't communicate
Speaker 2: to us how he feels about. He is falling asleep
Speaker 2: to that it seems to soothe him. But if he
Speaker 2: has any semblance of this, he's got this repetitive sound.
Speaker 2: But going on and on, we take for granted that
Speaker 2: that sound is out there to soothe us, and yet
Speaker 2: we're all getting crazy. I remember, everybody will remember this.
Speaker 2: If you if you spend any time in the dorm room,
Speaker 2: that baseline, just the baseline coming through this cinder block wall,
Speaker 2: you wanted to kill yourself. You used to get more
Speaker 2: of the car behind you. If it's somebody who's decided
Speaker 2: to share their music selections.
Speaker 4: So I'm doing morning drive radio when younger, way way back,
Speaker 4: and the kids are young, and I'm trying to sleep
Speaker 4: during the day. And two things my wife does which
Speaker 4: I love so much. When I'm trying to sleep, say
Speaker 4: the kids.
Speaker 3: Hey, DoD's trying to which are by the way, not helpful.
Speaker 4: But the other thing he came through the walls, Bert
Speaker 4: and friggin Ernie. Those voices I wanted to kill a muppet,
Speaker 4: strangle a muppet was okay, none of them, none of
Speaker 4: none of none.
Speaker 3: Of they would come through the wall. I would just like,
Speaker 3: it didn't matter.
Speaker 2: If I almost think you like puppets, I think that's
Speaker 2: the issue, and we're getting your anti puppet. You're an
Speaker 2: anti anti puppet. My head got triggered. We we did
Speaker 2: the Seinfeld reference about your an anti dentite but anti puppet,
Speaker 2: but we did a whole episode. Actually directed the one
Speaker 2: episode of Seinfeld that I directed. We did an episode
Speaker 2: based on a true story where the sound of Mary
Speaker 2: Hart's voice, the co somebody on Entertainment Tonight at that
Speaker 2: time triggered someone into an eft eleptic seizure, and in
Speaker 2: our started aving seizures based on a true story. And
Speaker 2: you know, so we talk about sound pitch that is
Speaker 2: just a pitch that was able to trigger that the
Speaker 2: note itself.
Speaker 3: There you go.
Speaker 4: By the way My dad used to do so I
Speaker 4: just thought of this too. I'd be sitting at home
Speaker 4: trying to study and and he would whistle. Whistling is
Speaker 4: another one to get.
Speaker 6: You, especially bad whistling nobody whistling.
Speaker 4: There's only a couple good whistlers in the world.
Speaker 3: Okay, everybody else's can you whistle? Go whistle? She's already
Speaker 3: unhappy she's here. I already did the pen clicking.
Speaker 4: I want to I want to see how much if
Speaker 4: he bothers her more than me?
Speaker 3: God, oh my god.
Speaker 4: And by the way, yell out a number from one
Speaker 4: to ten. He's in a whistle. You yell out of
Speaker 4: number that bothers you. Here we go ahead, five, five,
Speaker 4: going to six, y seven seven, seven, yeah, seven, yeah, wow.
Speaker 6: Yeah, And not just the whistling itself, but the whistling coming.
Speaker 6: I can hear it both through the air and through
Speaker 6: the headphones, so I can kind of hear two different whistles.
Speaker 2: And you know what else, there's anything to do with
Speaker 2: tunes selection and also what bothers me if I had
Speaker 2: down how earnestly you were doing it.
Speaker 3: It's the fact that you were zipping it along. I
Speaker 3: also wanted to give you. It's like that person who's
Speaker 3: zipp and you do not you go?
Speaker 7: You did?
Speaker 3: You did? So go go home? What do you? I
Speaker 3: was likely to trust your daughter's issue. That was kind
Speaker 3: of cool.
Speaker 7: Yeah, yes, thank you. Thank you for that.
Speaker 3: You're very welcome, and she charges by the hours. Yeah
Speaker 3: you'll get a bill.
Speaker 7: Well, yeah, you want, you want your Google.
Speaker 11: Actually I sort of decided to go a little bit
Speaker 11: opposite because we've been talking about noises today, so I
Speaker 11: wanted to go to the quietest places unearned.
Speaker 3: Look at you deciding to do something that we don't
Speaker 3: what you do to do on your own?
Speaker 7: Yes, exactly what I thought. Maybe you'll give you some
Speaker 7: no There is a.
Speaker 9: Place in Maui, Hawaii called the quietest place on Earth.
Speaker 9: Lourie actually has been there. It's a let's see Holley Akla.
Speaker 7: Actually it's a climb.
Speaker 9: You have to go down into the crater, the dormant crater,
Speaker 9: and that is one of the quietest, if not.
Speaker 10: The quietest places naturally occurring on Earth.
Speaker 7: Apparently it's quite a hike.
Speaker 9: It's it's like they say, there's like four climate don't
Speaker 9: you hear when you're there?
Speaker 3: People from New York one? So this is supposed to
Speaker 3: be the quietest.
Speaker 4: But you're hearing that all the tourists talking.
Speaker 2: Which where I've been to the to the rim of
Speaker 2: the volcanic because you can go up there and watch
Speaker 2: the sunrise and then bicycle down. And I've done that
Speaker 2: with my children on a number of occasions. And I
Speaker 2: will tell you, even with groups of tourist standing there
Speaker 2: at the rim, not in there is when you speak,
Speaker 2: there is a sort of compression on it, a damper
Speaker 2: on it. I have noticed that.
Speaker 3: Come on, So wait, so why did you?
Speaker 4: I'm curious because we go to Maui and I don't
Speaker 4: want to work that hard by climbing up and going
Speaker 4: down whatever.
Speaker 3: But you did it because.
Speaker 12: Well we all went to the top and then you
Speaker 12: ride the bikes down right, Okay, So.
Speaker 8: I became hysterical and I did it for.
Speaker 3: The cerical cry.
Speaker 12: Well, I said, I'm going to do it, and then
Speaker 12: I got on the bike and I started going down,
Speaker 12: and I realized, this is what they tell.
Speaker 8: You, And maybe they told you this. People die on
Speaker 8: the way down.
Speaker 3: When did they tell you that as you're going?
Speaker 12: As you're going, and a woman had a bee come
Speaker 12: into her helmet and then she crashed and died.
Speaker 8: And they have a lot of people who died. They
Speaker 8: don't tell you that.
Speaker 3: You know what, no one take the rock. They're not
Speaker 3: sign the waiver.
Speaker 12: Yeah, But so I started and then I was like,
Speaker 12: this is too much, so I there's a van that
Speaker 12: follows you.
Speaker 8: So I just popped into the van because it's terrifying.
Speaker 3: It's not the quiet.
Speaker 2: But you didn't go into the crater, did you?
Speaker 6: No? No?
Speaker 8: Did you just ride the bike you went into the crater.
Speaker 2: No, he's talking about.
Speaker 8: You don't go into the crater.
Speaker 7: You can go into the crater. You can go into
Speaker 7: the crater.
Speaker 3: That's where the.
Speaker 6: Like like the Dad in Freaks and Geeks. It's like,
Speaker 6: do you know what happens to people who go to
Speaker 6: quiet places?
Speaker 4: They died.
Speaker 3: If they had that understand where you sign up. Don't
Speaker 3: think a lot of people be going to go.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 8: I have to tell you something about David though.
Speaker 12: While the guys in there were hysterical, he was practicing
Speaker 12: saying holliokola while you were there, and he was like,
Speaker 12: Holly law.
Speaker 8: Did and we're going to play we do that again.
Speaker 3: Five breath.
Speaker 8: Actually has a now I have a horrible voice, you do.
Speaker 6: Have you heard about the rooms that are designed to
Speaker 6: be completely silent, and they're like trying to mimic that
Speaker 6: the quiet place on earth that people who go into
Speaker 6: those rooms they don't last because they're driven mad by
Speaker 6: the sound of their own like internal probyn.
Speaker 2: If you speak in those rooms, you can't hear your
Speaker 2: own it's dead.
Speaker 6: But you can hear your own heartbeat. You can hear your.
Speaker 3: Digestive inside of me because I know stuff's going right.
Speaker 2: That's the sound again sometimes when I lie, if your
Speaker 2: arm is under your head, when you're lying on the pillar,
Speaker 2: and you hear the blood moving through your veins.
Speaker 7: Oh, I don't like that.
Speaker 3: I'm still left under Laurie Bale that got into the
Speaker 3: van because the people went to the quiets on Earth.
Speaker 3: You're hearing a van and Lurie going, I can't, I can't.
Speaker 12: Now.
Speaker 4: All right, on that note, have you in here, professor
Speaker 4: who studies something just major and we've now we reduced it.
Speaker 3: Ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 2: If you'd like to know more about doctor Jane Gregory
Speaker 2: and her work, please go to her website. Sounds like mesophonia.
Speaker 2: That's m I s O P h O N I
Speaker 2: A sounds like mesophonia dot com. You can also find
Speaker 2: her at at sounds like meso on Instagram and Twitter.
Speaker 2: So much you're joining us.
Speaker 3: And you're just sport of course, because you're married.
Speaker 4: To a comedian, So what does he do you off?
Speaker 6: He's a really loud breath.
Speaker 2: Let's comedians are their mouth breathing when you're sleeping.
Speaker 3: You want to put the pillow for sid and kill.
Speaker 6: Were sleeping separate rooms now because it's too loud.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, that's fine, but.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's really by the way you keep just as
Speaker 4: a doctor, I'm just honestly just saying, you keep saying
Speaker 4: we're doing fine, old lot.
Speaker 2: Really, you can learn more about us and communicate with
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Speaker 2: Listen carefully, you'll hear us coming.
Speaker 4: My wife says that all the time. No, no, we're good. No,
Speaker 4: we're good, just like you. It's a plea for help.
Speaker 6: I'm not touching that.
Speaker 2: My wife says that f