Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is stuff you
Speaker 2: should know, where the inner voices in your head. It
Speaker 2: turns out, no, good job, Chuck, good job, you got this.
Speaker 3: You got this.
Speaker 2: So what you're engaged in, Chuck, is called private speech.
Speaker 3: Oh you're so stupid.
Speaker 2: That's still private good job. As long as we can
Speaker 2: hear you, and you're talking to yourself.
Speaker 1: Yes, I get it now, sure saying it out loud,
Speaker 1: which means it's not the inner monologue or dialogue.
Speaker 2: No, I'm always heard it called the inner monologue too,
Speaker 2: or internal monologue. But Anna helped us out with this, right, yeah,
Speaker 2: Ana g. She points out that inner monologue is a
Speaker 2: pretty limiting term because that voice in your head, the
Speaker 2: way that you talk to yourself, it can take all
Speaker 2: sorts of different shapes rather than you having a conversation
Speaker 2: beating yourself up quietly, those are kind of the keys
Speaker 2: to what we would call inner speech, or the people
Speaker 2: who research it would call it inner speech.
Speaker 3: Yeah, or inner voice.
Speaker 1: And it turns out this is kind of a tough
Speaker 1: one in some ways, because it's like I imagine Ana
Speaker 1: was up against it because there are many, many, many,
Speaker 1: many facets to this and it can serve a lot
Speaker 1: of different purposes. It's very common, but also some people
Speaker 1: don't have it. Yeah, we can look at brain scans
Speaker 1: and say like, hey, this is lighting up. But it's like,
Speaker 1: it's also really hard to study and get a consensus
Speaker 1: on because a lot of it is self reported as
Speaker 1: far as when people do it, and why people do it,
Speaker 1: and what function it could serve or doesn't serve, and
Speaker 1: if you don't have one, what does that mean. So
Speaker 1: there's just a lot of different avenues and it's tough
Speaker 1: to kind of make this a real tidy package.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's really impressive that people are figuring out
Speaker 2: how to research this at all. It's a definitely developing field.
Speaker 2: It's not established quite yet, so it's kind of the
Speaker 2: wild West in a lot of ways as far as
Speaker 2: you know psychology goes. But one of the reasons why
Speaker 2: it's fairly new is because people forever just thought like
Speaker 2: there are such things as inner voices, will never be
Speaker 2: able to study them because they are the definition of
Speaker 2: subjective and like you said, self reported tests are how
Speaker 2: they had studied them before, and that's just not super reliable.
Speaker 2: William James, the father of American psychology, he had to
Speaker 2: quote a paraphrase, I mean basically said, like trying to
Speaker 2: study something like inner speech is like turning up the
Speaker 2: lights to get a good look at what the dark
Speaker 2: looks like. You can't do it, was the end of
Speaker 2: his speech.
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh boy, that makes a lot of sense, it does.
Speaker 2: I've heard another one too that I love. Studying consciousness
Speaker 2: is like trying to use a flashlight to find the shadows.
Speaker 3: Oh, I got one too. Okay, youth is wasted on
Speaker 3: the young.
Speaker 2: Oh that's a good one. That's a good one too.
Speaker 2: What was spuds? Mackenzie? Party? Animal? Two words? That's all
Speaker 2: you need to know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is just a tough one because there's so
Speaker 1: many little nuggets to uncover. Like after I had done
Speaker 1: all the research and I was kind of like, all right,
Speaker 1: let's go do this, I was like, wait, wait a minute, though,
Speaker 1: Like when my grandfather had a stroke when I was
Speaker 1: a kid, he had a phasia, which is some stroke
Speaker 1: patients you know, can't you know they're talking, but they're
Speaker 1: not saying the words that you.
Speaker 3: Understand, right.
Speaker 1: It was like, I wonder what's going on in their
Speaker 1: head and what that has to do with your inner voice.
Speaker 1: And I saw some things that said like, nope, your
Speaker 1: are it completely disturbs your inner voice as well, and
Speaker 1: then another other studies it said, no, your inner speech
Speaker 1: can be preserve herbed relative to the spoken language if
Speaker 1: you have a phasia. So it's just it can be frustrating,
Speaker 1: but it's also I shouldn't look at it that way
Speaker 1: and just think of it as like just super fascinating
Speaker 1: and maybe you know, we don't always have all the answers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a great way put I think. Another way
Speaker 2: to say it is we don't understand it, so those
Speaker 2: listening to this episode aren't going to understand it by
Speaker 2: the end of it either.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and just in the case of the stroke thing
Speaker 1: with my grandfather, I remember very specifically being a kid
Speaker 1: and seeing the frustration and thinking as a ten year
Speaker 1: old like he in his head, he's saying what he's
Speaker 1: trying to say, right, Like I can tell because he's
Speaker 1: getting really frustrated that it's coming out as something that
Speaker 1: is unintelligible to us. But you know, all these years later,
Speaker 1: I got two answers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there you go, full circle, I guess in that sense.
Speaker 3: Yes, not a very satisfying one.
Speaker 2: But yeah, so so, like we said, inner monologue is
Speaker 2: a little too limiting, we don't want to use that.
Speaker 2: Inner speech is way better. And inner speech is actually
Speaker 2: a little limiting, as we'll see too. But it turns
Speaker 2: out there's a lot of things that our inner speech does. Besides,
Speaker 2: like you demonstrated beating yourself up, it can be used
Speaker 2: to motivate. It's a good one. You kind of did
Speaker 2: that at first.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, I think that was That was good, Chuck.
Speaker 2: Right. We use it for memorizing things, problem solving, We
Speaker 2: used it to regulate ourselves, like, okay, Chuck, don't be
Speaker 2: mean to yourself all down. Yeah, that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: But again not out loud, and then even more not
Speaker 2: me saying it, because dude, if your voice in your
Speaker 2: head was my voice, oh man, I would be so
Speaker 2: sorry for you.
Speaker 3: I dream as you. Is that weird?
Speaker 2: That's a little weird. I'd like to hear more about
Speaker 2: that though later on.
Speaker 3: Now I'm just joking.
Speaker 1: There have been plenty of people that have studied this,
Speaker 1: so and you know, we're going to talk about some
Speaker 1: of these people here and there. That was a pair
Speaker 1: of researchers in twenty eleven, Simon McCarthy Jones and Charles
Speaker 1: Fernie Howe.
Speaker 2: Maybe Fernie Hoe is what I saw. I heard, Yeah,
Speaker 2: like Tally Ho exactly, but Fernie right.
Speaker 1: They developed to survey and where they kind of categorize
Speaker 1: different varieties of inner speech, and their survey was called
Speaker 1: the VISC the Varieties of Inner Speech Questionnaire y I SQ.
Speaker 1: And they also, along with others, have other categories and
Speaker 1: we're kind of just gonna go through these now. But
Speaker 1: one can be dialogic, which means you're like you're having
Speaker 1: a back and forth with yourself.
Speaker 3: Or others.
Speaker 1: I asked Emily if I could talk about this because
Speaker 1: she talks out loud, which I guess isn't quite the
Speaker 1: same thing, but she'll I'll see her talking to herself
Speaker 1: sometimes having a conversation with someone much more common when
Speaker 1: she was having frustrations with her business, talking like out loud.
Speaker 3: To people, but it would be in her head.
Speaker 1: But then I would also see her talking out loud,
Speaker 1: and I'll walk into her room and say are you
Speaker 1: talking to and she'd tell me in but that's dialogic
Speaker 1: because there's some someone else involved, even if that someone
Speaker 1: else is another you.
Speaker 2: Right, what you can't see is the giant, furry purple
Speaker 2: monster with googly eyes and a tiki drink.
Speaker 3: Oh man, that'd be great.
Speaker 2: So, yeah, dialogic seems to be fairly fairly common too. Yeah,
Speaker 2: there's also condensed inner speech. That's it's kind of like
Speaker 2: a different form of so this. Okay, here's one of
Speaker 2: the things that I had trouble with, Chuck. Let me
Speaker 2: just be forth right here these there's not any neat
Speaker 2: package of this kind, this kind, and this kind, and
Speaker 2: then there's this sub kind of this kind and this
Speaker 2: kind and this kind. No one's put it together like that,
Speaker 2: so it's a little confusing. So, for example, dialogic inner speech,
Speaker 2: you'd think that the next thing would be monologic or
Speaker 2: something like that. That's not here. Instead, we're talking about
Speaker 2: condensed inner speech, which is using like abbreviations or like
Speaker 2: just words rather than full sentences. And that this is
Speaker 2: a way that you speak to yourself in a very
Speaker 2: private manner that you would probably never use to speak
Speaker 2: out loud. It's just the kind of shorthand that you
Speaker 2: use for yourself doesn't fit this list at all, and
Speaker 2: yet here we are.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And as example for that is, you know you're leaving
Speaker 1: the house and you know phone, keys, wallet in your head,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing.
Speaker 2: Right, But at the same time, you could be having
Speaker 2: a conversation with somebody about your own case, wallet, so
Speaker 2: it would be dialogic condensed inner speech drives me nuts.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I see your point other people as another one.
Speaker 1: That's when your voice, not when you're speaking to someone else,
Speaker 1: but when it takes on the voice of someone else.
Speaker 1: It could be Abraham Lincoln, it could be Josh Clark.
Speaker 1: And that's when you're imagining a conversation with someone else,
Speaker 1: where your own inner voice sounds like someone else. Is
Speaker 1: different than like Emily having a conversation with another person.
Speaker 2: Right for sure, Like you're the bystander. Basically there's two
Speaker 2: people talking. There's a did you see that Guardian article
Speaker 2: about the that included the woman whose inner voice was
Speaker 2: a like a stereotypical Italian couple fighting arguing, so interesting
Speaker 2: and that's how she works stuff out. Like the wife
Speaker 2: would be like, no, she needs to quit her job
Speaker 2: and follow her dreams, and the husband would be like no,
Speaker 2: she's got a good job. She needs to keep her
Speaker 2: feet on the ground, and like eventually one would win
Speaker 2: the argument and then that's what she would do. That's
Speaker 2: what that lady's inner voice is.
Speaker 1: Like, Yeah, it's very fascinating. One can be motivational or
Speaker 1: a value to either you know, am I doing a
Speaker 1: good job here?
Speaker 3: Or do a good job?
Speaker 1: They found that, you know, with like sports performance and
Speaker 1: any kind of like public speaking or any kind of
Speaker 1: performative thing. You know, that inner voice pumping you up
Speaker 1: can lead to real results, usually good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I saw that that was kind of expanded
Speaker 2: or changed. You're kind of cutt into sub categories later
Speaker 2: on or at some point. There's evaluative critical, which is
Speaker 2: basically like you know, did I do a good job
Speaker 2: or why didn't you get one hundred percent? That kind
Speaker 2: of thing. Yeah, there's also positive regulatory, which kind of
Speaker 2: ties into what you were just saying, Like if you
Speaker 2: imagine yourself, you know, doing really well practicing shooting baskets,
Speaker 2: there's some part of you that could be like keep
Speaker 2: up the hard work and you'll be in the MBA
Speaker 2: in no time. Where you did a great job, like
Speaker 2: those would fall under positive regulatory.
Speaker 1: When I play basketball, all I hear in my head
Speaker 1: is what I hear on the court, which is swish.
Speaker 2: Oh nice, I was gonna say. I was waiting for
Speaker 2: you to say brick, because that's what I hear.
Speaker 1: Ruby expressed interest in playing basketball the other day, and
Speaker 1: I had a hard time containing myself. I was like,
Speaker 1: you know, that's the only sport I was actually pretty
Speaker 1: good at. Like I can actually teach you something here.
Speaker 2: That's awesome, man.
Speaker 1: But I didn't want to say it too positively because
Speaker 1: then she'd be like, yeah, maybe not.
Speaker 2: Very smart boy. You know what you're doing.
Speaker 3: Don't to I'm working on it.
Speaker 1: Another is prompted no, no, no, I'm sorry expanded speech, which
Speaker 1: is like if you have to have a tough conversation
Speaker 1: with someone and you're literally kind of just rehearsing that
Speaker 1: in your head as one or both. That is like
Speaker 1: when you're speaking not in any kind of abbreviate, abbreviated way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's the opposite of condensed speech, like you're thinking
Speaker 2: in or hearing in your inner voice the exact words,
Speaker 2: with the phonetics and the grammar and everything that you
Speaker 2: would say out.
Speaker 1: Loud, right, Which that got me on a side track
Speaker 1: of like, Oh, that's like, why do people when you
Speaker 1: hear your voice played on a recording?
Speaker 3: Why does that sound different? It's just has anything to
Speaker 3: do with that.
Speaker 1: And I just had to park that because that gets
Speaker 1: into a whole other thing, which should probably.
Speaker 2: Be a shorty, the efference copy.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, like when I listen to a podcast
Speaker 1: of us, like, why does your voice never match when
Speaker 1: you hear it out loud as it does in your
Speaker 1: own brain?
Speaker 2: I think your efference copy probably no.
Speaker 1: It has to do with like the way your skull reverberates. Oh,
Speaker 1: really actual physical stuff. But I think that could be
Speaker 1: a shorty.
Speaker 2: Reverberating Skull is a great album name.
Speaker 3: It is, and we'll get to efference copy later on it.
Speaker 2: I clearly can't wait.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's good stuff.
Speaker 2: There's now we reach a point of the list where
Speaker 2: coherence starts to emerge. We've got like basically like a
Speaker 2: one and then the opposite. I don't know why I
Speaker 2: just put it so confusingly, So let's just start. There's
Speaker 2: elicited or prompted, which is inner speech that's basically triggered
Speaker 2: by some external factor. Someone comes along and says, here's
Speaker 2: some pictures of different stuff, pick out the ones who's
Speaker 2: named rhyme. So you've got to write a boot and
Speaker 2: then I don't know, a foot or something like that.
Speaker 2: Like you would pick out the boot and the foot,
Speaker 2: and depending on how liberally they were with their their judgments,
Speaker 2: they would say, yes, that rhymes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it's a prompt from an outside source, right,
Speaker 1: whereas the next one, which logically follows thankfully pristine or spontaneous.
Speaker 1: That was Russell hurl Bert, kind of a mouthful researcher
Speaker 1: that coined this one. That is that's just unprompted, spontaneous,
Speaker 1: and it's a part of what makes us us.
Speaker 2: Yes, Like that is your genuine true inner voice. Sometimes
Speaker 2: it just comes out of nowhere, sometimes when you just
Speaker 2: are talking to yourself and don't even realize you're talking
Speaker 2: to yourself in your head. Like that's what Herbert Herlbert
Speaker 2: calls pristine. And there's this really great Aon article about
Speaker 2: your inner voice that was written by Phil Jacole j A. E.
Speaker 2: K L. And Phil points out, I'm hopefully hoping I can.
Speaker 2: We're on first name basis, me and Phil. But he
Speaker 2: points out that this is leading psychologists to be like, oh,
Speaker 2: my god, oh my god. If we can study pristine
Speaker 2: inner voices, like that's essentially like the external, the exterior
Speaker 2: of the unconscious, and we would be tapping into people's
Speaker 2: unconscious and other people are like, I think Fernio is like, whoa, whoa.
Speaker 2: Let's not get ahead of ourselves here, Let's just kind
Speaker 2: of take this one step at a time. Old Ferniho,
Speaker 2: that's what he's known nas. They call him the breaks.
Speaker 1: That's right and well, except when he gets excited about
Speaker 1: something then he yells out Fernie hoo. Maybe before we break,
Speaker 1: we should talk about these other four because that visc
Speaker 1: is still they've been revising it over the years and
Speaker 1: it's still in use for some researchers. But in twenty
Speaker 1: fifteen there was another researcher name what a great name,
Speaker 1: mal Gorzada a Polchaska wasl wasil wasel. Maybe they were like,
Speaker 1: all right, let's categorize it by emotional types, and these
Speaker 1: are the faithful friend, which has a nice ring to it.
Speaker 1: That's like your personal strength, positive feelings about yourself.
Speaker 2: You're a neighborer.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: The ambivalent parent, which is awful otherwise known as gen
Speaker 1: X parent, associated with strength and love and caring criticism.
Speaker 2: So wait a minute, is it the parent of a
Speaker 2: gen xer or a gen x er as a parent.
Speaker 2: I'm confused.
Speaker 1: I would say the parent. I mean, weren't most of
Speaker 1: our parents fairly ambivalent about us?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I would think so. Sure, It's like, oh, this.
Speaker 1: Is weird because associated with strength, love and caring criticism, right,
Speaker 1: that's not ambivalent.
Speaker 2: So here is another problem with this field. People are
Speaker 2: naming stuff just way off.
Speaker 3: Yeah, wily way off.
Speaker 2: That doesn't make any sense whatsoever. And it's hard to
Speaker 2: remember and understand this stuff if the pieces don't fit
Speaker 2: together because they're dripping, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: That's gross. Yeah, but it's true. I know. What about
Speaker 3: the others emotionally ticking proud rival?
Speaker 2: Okay, And then there's one that was initially called calm optivist,
Speaker 2: but Pulchasca Waizl did a follow up study testing to
Speaker 2: see if her initial results were confirmed, and faithful friend,
Speaker 2: ambivalent parent, and proud rival were all there again in
Speaker 2: the second one, but optimist didn't show up, so she
Speaker 2: ended up replacing that with something called helpless child, which
Speaker 2: apparently is probably the worst of the worst.
Speaker 3: All right, that's a lot.
Speaker 2: It is, It was a lot. Do you understand this anymore?
Speaker 2: Sort of okay, good, well, we're making headway, Chuck.
Speaker 1: All right, well we'll take a break and see if
Speaker 1: we can rain this puppy in right after this.
Speaker 2: Uh okay, Chuck. So, one of the things we're talking
Speaker 2: about with inner speech is it's easy to kind of
Speaker 2: confuse it with like say, private speech, where you're actually
Speaker 2: talking out loud yourself somebody could hear it. But one
Speaker 2: of the big differences with inner speech and verbal speech
Speaker 2: is that it's just faster. I guess allegedly for some people.
Speaker 2: It's not for me. Mine goes very slow and actually
Speaker 2: slows me down. It's like it goes slow. Yeah, the
Speaker 2: part of me that has to process the words slows
Speaker 2: down the speed that I could conceivably go at.
Speaker 3: Okay, it's just.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's like old erniho. It just kind of
Speaker 2: puts the brake on everything. But normally, if you compare
Speaker 2: the two, it should be much faster, just because a
Speaker 2: lot of times you're using condensed speech, which you know
Speaker 2: again is you're just using shorthand that you can understand.
Speaker 2: I think that's where I get tripped up. I don't
Speaker 2: really do that. And then like physical physiologically, it's just
Speaker 2: you can think a lot faster than you can speak
Speaker 2: because you're not moving your mouth, You're not like taking
Speaker 2: a breath or anything like that. It's just supposedly faster.
Speaker 2: Is yours faster?
Speaker 3: Yeah? For sure.
Speaker 1: There was one person, a researcher who actually endeavored to
Speaker 1: find out how fast that can get. This is in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety and they found that some participants in the
Speaker 1: study could think more than four thousand words a minute.
Speaker 1: And you know, just for context, the world record for
Speaker 1: fastest out loud talker as a Canadian guy who went
Speaker 1: to six hundred and fifty five words per minute.
Speaker 3: So this is wow.
Speaker 1: Basically you can think up to six times faster than
Speaker 1: the fastest talker on the planet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's at least twice as much.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I actually did the math. It's roughly six.
Speaker 2: Was that the guy from the uh dunkin Donuts commercials
Speaker 2: or the FedEx commercials in.
Speaker 3: They at now?
Speaker 1: It's unfortunately just some I mean, hey, I love this guy.
Speaker 1: It's been a knock him down. His name is Sean Shannon.
Speaker 1: He's a Canadian guy who who did the to be
Speaker 1: or not to be soliloqually in twenty three point eight seconds.
Speaker 2: Wow, well it goes sean.
Speaker 1: You can't understand anything he's saying, but he can't have
Speaker 1: judges you know that are like, yeah, he's still saying
Speaker 1: those words.
Speaker 2: So I guess then we reach another question, how does
Speaker 2: inner speech develop? Which apparently when they started figuring this
Speaker 2: out thanks to a guy named Lev by Gotsky who
Speaker 2: will meet in a second, it completely changed our understanding
Speaker 2: of children, because up to this point it was like,
Speaker 2: do kids learn first and then or does their brain
Speaker 2: develop and then they learn first? Or do they learn
Speaker 2: first by did they develop their brain by learning? Clearly
Speaker 2: I did neither at some point. Right, you can kind
Speaker 2: of get the gist of what I was saying.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I thought this was super interesting. Child development is
Speaker 1: just fascinating to me, like going through it now, like
Speaker 1: more than ever obviously, but for most kids. And by
Speaker 1: the way, this Lev that got Ski he said we
Speaker 1: would meet you know what, let's just spring them and
Speaker 1: come on in love.
Speaker 3: Hey I'm dead, yeah exactly.
Speaker 1: This is in the nineteen thirties, so he has left
Speaker 1: us earthwise, but a lot of this has been born
Speaker 1: out in modern research. But in the thirties he was
Speaker 1: looking at like, basically, it starts out as private speech,
Speaker 1: like kids saying things out loud to themselves. And you know,
Speaker 1: first they start talking just to communicate like I'm hungry,
Speaker 1: I need to whatever, go to sleep. Actually kids never
Speaker 1: say that, I want to stay up right, and you know,
Speaker 1: that's just social communication. But then as they get older,
Speaker 1: they start sort of privately talking to themselves as an
Speaker 1: internal motivator. And then eventually that I think around that's
Speaker 1: between like three and four, and then around six or
Speaker 1: seven is when kids take that private voice inside their
Speaker 1: head and that's when the inner monologue kicks off more or.
Speaker 2: Less right, and then they start to After that they
Speaker 2: continue to develop and get good at things like condensed
Speaker 2: speech and creating their own self shorthand and stuff like that. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's pretty cool. So again I said that this kind
Speaker 2: of turned things on our head as far as understanding PJA.
Speaker 2: He was a very famous French psychologist. He said kids
Speaker 2: are dumb and then they learned, or their brain grows
Speaker 2: and then they learn. And this showed the exact opposite
Speaker 2: that they they developed their brain and their understanding of
Speaker 2: the world through learning. Through this inner dialogue, and it
Speaker 2: was by Goatsky, believe it or not, was a Soviet researcher,
Speaker 2: so the West wasn't exposed to his ideas until like
Speaker 2: the fifties, and they when they finally came out We're translated,
Speaker 2: it was like, great, okay, now we finally understand.
Speaker 3: Right, he's the one that coined the term InterVoice.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, yeah, I'm not sure what that is in Russian,
Speaker 2: but yes, apparently it translates the inner voice.
Speaker 1: I think it's a property of the Soviet Union. Why
Speaker 1: I said that as a German.
Speaker 2: It sounded Russian to me in my head.
Speaker 1: You know, we mentioned that not everyone has in her
Speaker 1: speech or develops that it exists, like a lot of
Speaker 1: things do on a spectrum some people. Emily is a
Speaker 1: very very She's like, I'm constantly talking to people in
Speaker 1: my head.
Speaker 3: Really, I know, I see it happening. You know.
Speaker 1: The other interesting thing she does I don't think I've
Speaker 1: ever mentioned on the show. And she was like, you
Speaker 1: can say all this, I don't really care. She spells
Speaker 1: out when she's stressed. She'll spell out things with her
Speaker 1: thumb in.
Speaker 2: Cursive like on a table, like just no, just.
Speaker 1: Like sitting there, like we'll be watching a TV show
Speaker 1: and although she's stressed and her thumb will be going,
Speaker 1: and now I'll not on the not what she's doing
Speaker 1: for years now, I'll be like, what are you writing?
Speaker 1: And if it's a scene about like a tense standoff
Speaker 1: in an office or something, she might spelled typewriter or
Speaker 1: office or something just that she sees huh. It's not
Speaker 1: always like I'm nervous. It's never like I'm stressed or
Speaker 1: anything like that.
Speaker 2: So it's a way to alleviate her anxiety. I guess
Speaker 2: how interesting. That's cool. I've never heard of that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, hey man.
Speaker 2: I've said it before and I'll say it again. Emily
Speaker 2: is one of a kind.
Speaker 1: We couple up with people, it's and you really dig in.
Speaker 1: You don't have any of those barriers up. It turns
Speaker 1: out that we're all just a little strange.
Speaker 2: Well how is her air penmanship?
Speaker 1: She ge'ez great. I can read it all. I can
Speaker 1: look at her you know, thumb and just I can
Speaker 1: spell it right out in my.
Speaker 2: Head very neat. Wow, can you really are you just?
Speaker 2: Just no, no, no, no, okay.
Speaker 3: It looks like a wow, it looks like some's gone wild.
Speaker 2: Right, nice, too hot for a TV thumb one.
Speaker 1: Anyway, But that's kind of her inner voice too, you know,
Speaker 1: in a way, just manifesting itself physically, but it's still
Speaker 1: you know, not out loud. But some people constantly are
Speaker 1: doing this kind of thing, talking to themselves, others sometimes,
Speaker 1: some never. These two researchers, Johann Nedergert and Gary Lupien,
Speaker 1: if you have zero inner speech, they have termed that
Speaker 1: an end of phasia. And they say, and this is
Speaker 1: another kind of frustration, like between five to ten percent
Speaker 1: of people don't have inner speech, whereas Russell Hurlbert, who
Speaker 1: we've met, said, no, it's more like fifty to seventy percent.
Speaker 2: Have inner speech or no, don't have inner speech.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, so that's just that's wildly different.
Speaker 2: It is wild. That's a great term for it again. Wild.
Speaker 2: So now Ferni Hooe comes in and says, whoa, everybody,
Speaker 2: I'm not really excited about this having its own term
Speaker 2: anendophasia and means lack endo means innerphasia's speech because and
Speaker 2: I think he makes a reasonable argument here when you
Speaker 2: come up with a term, especially a Latin term, for
Speaker 2: something the way people be or think or whatever. It
Speaker 2: seems to suggest that this is a condition, maybe even
Speaker 2: a disorder. And he's like, that's not necessarily true, especially
Speaker 2: if the majority of people don't have this inner voice.
Speaker 2: So do we really need a name for it? And
Speaker 2: I think Netderguard and Lupian were like, it's a pretty
Speaker 2: cool name, though, can we please keep it in ferni
Speaker 2: hoo's thinking about it right now?
Speaker 3: Right? Well?
Speaker 1: That got me thinking, like, if you have no inner dialogue,
Speaker 1: does that mean like do sociopaths have that?
Speaker 3: But I found no correlation there.
Speaker 1: It seems like sociopaths quite often have an inner dialogue
Speaker 1: saying like do this awful thing?
Speaker 2: Right? Yeah? Should we?
Speaker 3: Who are you?
Speaker 2: They have other things though, Like so it's not like
Speaker 2: if you don't have an inner voice that there's no
Speaker 2: thought whatsoever. It can also come in different forms, I think,
Speaker 2: is what they're finding.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they've also found this is Netderguard and Lepian
Speaker 1: and it studied just last year in twenty twenty four
Speaker 1: where they tested they wanted to know how it related
Speaker 1: to memory, and apparently a verbal memory of groups with
Speaker 1: very They tested people very high and very low rates
Speaker 1: of inner speech and found that you have a very
Speaker 1: low rate of inner speech.
Speaker 3: You're not going to be as good.
Speaker 1: At just remembering stuff like your lines in a play
Speaker 1: or a grocery list or anything, the poor bastards.
Speaker 2: The thing is, though, is that seems to be at
Speaker 2: least as far as they've discovered. Really the only big
Speaker 2: drawbacks is you aren't You don't do well necessarily in
Speaker 2: memory tests or something like that. But even for somebody
Speaker 2: who isn't thinking in like inner speech, where they're talking
Speaker 2: to themselves, there's a voice in their head talking, there's
Speaker 2: other ways that you can think using what is basically
Speaker 2: some sort of inner inner Well, inner speech is the
Speaker 2: best way to put it, but imagine that without speech,
Speaker 2: without language or words, there's inner seeing. Some people think
Speaker 2: in images, right, uh, feelings like just your emotions, which
Speaker 2: I'm kind of like, okay, is that does that get
Speaker 2: you in trouble? If that's how you respond and move
Speaker 2: and behave from the world, Because it's one of the
Speaker 2: big things from inner speech is what we do is
Speaker 2: we prepare ourselves and come up with a plan of action.
Speaker 2: What are we going to do next? How are we
Speaker 2: going to respond to this? So if you're not thinking
Speaker 2: it over in your head, and it's your emotions that
Speaker 2: that drive you. Like that just seems like it could
Speaker 2: get scary. There's fraut huh, like it's fraud, fraud exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 2: there's unsim unsymbolized thinking. So you've got like you're just
Speaker 2: not you're not thinking like Okay, I need to get
Speaker 2: in that car. You just I don't know, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I can't even give you an example here. Uh. And
Speaker 2: then the last one that they've mentioned is sensory awareness,
Speaker 2: which is just sensing things and then I guess responding
Speaker 2: essentially like an amoeba like that, Oh this it's this
Speaker 2: stove is hot, so I'm going to move my hand.
Speaker 2: But imagine nothing in between the heat, the sensation of
Speaker 2: heat entering your hand and removing your hand, no thought
Speaker 2: whatsoever between that. That's right. Apparently what sensory awareness is.
Speaker 3: Like huh all right.
Speaker 1: Uh. That that study from last year where they were
Speaker 1: talking about verbal memory made me wonder about dyslexia because
Speaker 1: you know, my daughter has dyslexia, and and I was like,
Speaker 1: I bet you there's a tie there, And I was
Speaker 1: actually right on the money with this one. Supposedly, if
Speaker 1: you have dyslexia, you have very little to know inner
Speaker 1: voice really, so it was fascinating. Yeah, because a lot
Speaker 1: of times they think in images and they think and
Speaker 1: they call it kind of like three D thinking.
Speaker 3: Gotcha, So it's less word based, gotcha.
Speaker 2: That's maybe cool. I tested myself on this a little
Speaker 2: bit to find out what I do, Like, I typically
Speaker 2: just think in words.
Speaker 3: I guess, Yeah, a lot.
Speaker 2: Of times I talk to myself, but I think I
Speaker 2: don't know. I think that there's a lot going on
Speaker 2: in there that I'm not cognizant of. I'm really bad at,
Speaker 2: like how I feel and like just understanding, you know,
Speaker 2: what's going on in my head at any given time,
Speaker 2: like really just introspecting, like I do it a lot,
Speaker 2: but I'm not necessarily good at is I guess what
Speaker 2: I'm trying to say.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I know what you're talking about. I can be
Speaker 3: like that too.
Speaker 2: See, I don't believe that one bit. I think you're
Speaker 2: a champion at that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: So well, maybe certain kinds. You know how I get
Speaker 1: so complicated.
Speaker 2: I appreciate you trying to make me feel better, but
Speaker 2: you're wrong about you not being good at it. So
Speaker 2: I tested myself to see if I could think in
Speaker 2: just images without words, because I've never really thought about that.
Speaker 2: So some part of me told myself to think of
Speaker 2: a watering can, okay, And I didn't hear it. Was
Speaker 2: just like there wasn't in words. I didn't hear it.
Speaker 2: No one spoke it, I didn't see it spelled out.
Speaker 2: It was just there was some command all of a
Speaker 2: sudden to think of a water and cant, and all
Speaker 2: of a sudden, a water and cant came up. And
Speaker 2: the proof that I was not thinking in words is
Speaker 2: that I couldn't think of the word for what I
Speaker 2: was seeing.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, Yeah.
Speaker 2: And then some other part of me came in and
Speaker 2: was like, you know, I think you were actually supposed
Speaker 2: to produce an image of a flower pot. And then
Speaker 2: I got worried about cognitive decline. And that's no joke,
Speaker 2: Like that was the whole process right there.
Speaker 1: Wow, that is fascinating, And I would imagine hard to do,
Speaker 1: kind of like a Ghostbusters, you know, don't clear your
Speaker 1: mind right and then you get the safe up marshmallow
Speaker 1: man like that. If anything has suggested, I will immediately
Speaker 1: see the word if it says like don't think of
Speaker 1: the word, I'll be I'll think of that word.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess I didn't. It was more like not.
Speaker 2: It wasn't like I was saying like, don't do this.
Speaker 2: It was more do this or try this. So because
Speaker 2: there wasn't like that blanket prohibition, I'm not thinking about
Speaker 2: the word. Yeah, it was easier to do. But just
Speaker 2: back to Ruby, So, did you ask her she has
Speaker 2: an inter voice or if she thinks in symbols or whatever.
Speaker 1: No, she's at school, so it didn't come to me.
Speaker 1: But I'll ask her later and let you know, Okay,
Speaker 1: to let me know, text me she yeah, this says
Speaker 1: Ruby says that her inner voice just says find Josh
Speaker 1: kill Josh.
Speaker 2: Burned, Josh, No, she loves you. I know. I love
Speaker 2: her too. I think she's sweet.
Speaker 3: I love her too. I think that's what I thought
Speaker 3: you were saying.
Speaker 2: Hey, did she know did she like Magdalena Bay?
Speaker 3: She did?
Speaker 2: Did she really? I just figured that she hadn't and
Speaker 2: you were just not mentioning it.
Speaker 3: Now. No, I thought I texted you back. No, yeah, Josh,
Speaker 3: it was very sweet.
Speaker 1: Got a text and he said, Hey, I got this
Speaker 1: new artist that I've been listening to.
Speaker 3: I think Ruby might like it.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm glad I was right. For some reason. Every
Speaker 2: time I heard it, I would just be like, Ruby
Speaker 2: would really like this. That does not happen every time
Speaker 2: I listened to something, so I thought I should love
Speaker 2: to say something.
Speaker 1: Oh I could have sworn I texted you, but yeah,
Speaker 1: we listened to it together and she dug it cool.
Speaker 3: Cool, so hey, big plug for Magdalena Bay. Also a
Speaker 3: nice place to visit.
Speaker 2: From what I hear, she's great. Is that a place too?
Speaker 2: Are you joking? No, I'm just kidding me, and you're
Speaker 2: getting me all over the place today.
Speaker 1: Back to Russell Hurlbert, that's just so hard to It
Speaker 1: doesn't roll off the tongue. Sorry, even in your head
Speaker 1: it doesn't. Yeah, oh yeah in my inner voice. It's
Speaker 1: hard to say too.
Speaker 3: That.
Speaker 1: He developed a tool called the Descriptive Experience Sampling. I
Speaker 1: would call it the sampler, but DES that is when
Speaker 1: he sets you down and puts I guess a device
Speaker 1: in the room and it's like, hey, just sit there
Speaker 1: and chill out and do whatever and think about whatever.
Speaker 1: And anytime you hear beep, though, you got to write
Speaker 1: down whatever is in your brain at that exact moment.
Speaker 1: I guess in the idea of just sorting to try
Speaker 1: and hit on the randomness of like what you might
Speaker 1: be thinking at any given time and just log those
Speaker 1: thoughts right then and then they would talk about those
Speaker 1: and he said, maybe this could give me a good framework.
Speaker 1: And when he got the results back, he was like, wow,
Speaker 1: this is fascinating. How just all over the place it was.
Speaker 1: It's so multilayered, it's so varied. People can be thinking
Speaker 1: of a watering can and be saying the words flower
Speaker 1: pot at the same time with no explanation at all. Right,
Speaker 1: sometimes you have multiple voices all talking over each other.
Speaker 1: And he was just like this is he just put
Speaker 1: the device away and walk slowly out of the room.
Speaker 2: I think, yeah, yeah, So this is a really big
Speaker 2: deal that he was able to come up with this,
Speaker 2: because this is one of the reasons why people were
Speaker 2: so I guess wary of trying to study inner voices
Speaker 2: because they're so subjective. Hurlbert figured out a way to
Speaker 2: like take as much subjectivity out of it as possible. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, and I think exactly, And I think in
Speaker 2: the more like the bigger studies that he came up with,
Speaker 2: like you would get a beeper and like turned out
Speaker 2: in the world for like a week or two weeks
Speaker 2: or something, so that you would eventually get used to
Speaker 2: the beeper being there, wouldn't just be like waiting like
Speaker 2: I'm right to have this awesome thought like ready for.
Speaker 3: When the deeper goes off, you know, good way to do.
Speaker 2: It, Yeah, so that you would like he was genuinely
Speaker 2: tapping into whatever random thoughts are in your head. So
Speaker 2: he also the process also includes extensive interviews. I saw
Speaker 2: like multiple like six seven minutes on one word, one
Speaker 2: thought from one entry. And then they're really careful not
Speaker 2: to lead the person and have them, you know, start
Speaker 2: to implant memories accidentally that kind of stuff for revise
Speaker 2: what they are actually thinking, but instead kind of dig
Speaker 2: deeper and deeper and deeper into what else was there
Speaker 2: at the time. And I think the people who are
Speaker 2: participants studies like this are actually surprised from these interviews
Speaker 2: because they didn't realize, like, you know, in addition to
Speaker 2: thinking this word, wait, there was this image over here too,
Speaker 2: and you know it just goes on from there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he's like Rosebud's gotta be more than a wagon.
Speaker 2: It was a sled.
Speaker 3: I thought it was a wagon. Was it a sled? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Good lord, you're the movie guy too, aren't you. Man?
Speaker 2: Burl Lives just roll over in his grave.
Speaker 3: Why did I think it was a wagon? It's a slid,
Speaker 3: which is really just a wagon with rails.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess it is. I think radio fire makes both.
Speaker 2: So who's gonna discriminate? Not mean?
Speaker 3: Shall we take a break?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: All right, we'll take another break and we'll talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about brain areas lighting up right after this. Okay, buddy,
Speaker 1: I'm supposed to lead off this segment, but I'm going
Speaker 1: to hand it right back to you because I know
Speaker 1: when I say the word efference you get excited. We're
Speaker 1: going to talk about efference copies at long last take
Speaker 1: it away.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, I had never heard about this before, had
Speaker 2: you same? Okay, So apparently when we think when we're
Speaker 2: about to speak right now, without me being cognizant of it,
Speaker 2: there's a part of my brain that is pre arranging
Speaker 2: and planning what I'm about to say. Right I have
Speaker 2: no idea that this is going on. I think I'm
Speaker 2: just talking at this point, but there's a part of
Speaker 2: my brain that knows exactly what's going to happen, and
Speaker 2: they set out, they send out what's called sorry, my
Speaker 2: brain apologizes for that, what's called an efference copy, which
Speaker 2: is basically a blueprint of what I'm about to say
Speaker 2: to the rest of my brain. That includes, but what
Speaker 2: movements I'm going to make with my jaw and tongue,
Speaker 2: and a prediction of what it's going to sound like
Speaker 2: coming out, and then also a basically a blanket statement
Speaker 2: like what you're about to hear is coming from you,
Speaker 2: So it keeps us from being startled. It allows us
Speaker 2: to recognize that what we're saying is coming from us.
Speaker 2: And the most amazing part about this is that when
Speaker 2: we think to ourselves using our inner voice or inner
Speaker 2: symbols or whatever, but definitely inner voice, I'm not sure
Speaker 2: about symbols now that I mention it, we do the
Speaker 2: same thing. We get basically a cruder version of the
Speaker 2: efference copy, but it also includes orders to not move
Speaker 2: your mouth, to not move your tongue, that there's not
Speaker 2: going to be a touch sensation, but that everything else
Speaker 2: is like the efference copy contains all the other stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, fascinating, and efference copy is not a bad band name, No,
Speaker 1: little brainy it is.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I could see I'm gonna go to the
Speaker 2: old standby mathrock.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, totally okay, So as far as the old
Speaker 1: Wonder Machine goes there obviously have done plenty of studies
Speaker 1: where they they always like to see what's lighting up,
Speaker 1: you know, but these are often disappointing to me when
Speaker 1: it comes to stuff like this, because it's like I
Speaker 1: feel like, at this point in our show after so
Speaker 1: many years, even listeners will say, oh, I bet the
Speaker 1: temporal cortex lights up.
Speaker 3: That's associated with.
Speaker 1: Memory and hearing in language, and then broke his area,
Speaker 1: which we've talked about countless times, is it's associated with speech,
Speaker 1: and yes, those areas light up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, da da yes. But at the same time, there's
Speaker 2: also different regions that light up as well that wouldn't
Speaker 2: light up when we speak out loud. So it's clear
Speaker 2: that there are it has its own thing, that inner
Speaker 2: voice is different as far as the brain is concerned
Speaker 2: from speech as well, that they bear a strong resemblance
Speaker 2: to one another. And then also they found the brain
Speaker 2: patterns for when we are spontaneously speaking to ourselves that
Speaker 2: Christine in her talk that Herobert mentioned that that uses
Speaker 2: or different regions of the brain light up for elicited
Speaker 2: types where we're like using where we're we're we're rehearsing
Speaker 2: what we're saying, or something like that. Man, my efference copy.
Speaker 3: Is is it is it working slow or fast?
Speaker 2: It's a little rough around the edges today.
Speaker 1: Okay, you might be wondering about schizophrenia. This is something
Speaker 1: that we've we've talked about on the show before because
Speaker 1: very sadly, many times you will see someone suffering from
Speaker 1: schizophrenia having a conversation out loud, seemingly with someone. So
Speaker 1: it's it's very natural to probably wonder like, oh, what's
Speaker 1: going on there?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 1: They can call those verbal hallucinations. Is that someone's inner voice,
Speaker 1: And they have done studies and they found that there
Speaker 1: can be an impairment of the process that creates efference
Speaker 1: copies in those cases. I think it's another term as
Speaker 1: corollary discharge, and if you have schizophrenia, can make it
Speaker 1: hard for you to identify that voice as their own.
Speaker 1: So yeah, kind of what it seems like is happening,
Speaker 1: seems like that's exactly what's happening.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that message is not included in the efference copy
Speaker 2: then also I've failed to mention before. One of the
Speaker 2: things that the efference copy does is say, you don't
Speaker 2: need to pay attention to what is about to come
Speaker 2: out of your head as much like the sound of it.
Speaker 2: It's not coming from you, you don't have to respond
Speaker 2: to it as you would if somebody was talking to you.
Speaker 2: And that's another thing that gets lost in the efference
Speaker 2: copy as well. They respond to the sound of the
Speaker 2: voices in their head in a way that makes them
Speaker 2: feel where they respond to a v as if somebody
Speaker 2: walked up and was talking to them. The problem is
Speaker 2: there's no one there, and they are misattributing their own
Speaker 2: inner thoughts. That's kind of one of the big postulations
Speaker 2: for schizophrenia, at least audio verbal hallucinations associated with schizophrenia,
Speaker 2: which is that's a great example right there of why
Speaker 2: studying inner speech is such a big deal. Like, if
Speaker 2: we can figure this out, you could conceivably help treat
Speaker 2: people that much better, you know, I mean, like being
Speaker 2: plagued with inner voices that you think are coming from
Speaker 2: somewhere else, especially if they're like commanding you to do things,
Speaker 2: that's a great thing to learn how to treat you
Speaker 2: know that's debilitating. And then also kind of related to
Speaker 2: that is the idea that as we start to learn
Speaker 2: more about inner speech and where it comes from, what
Speaker 2: it does, and all that, that we could conceivably get
Speaker 2: better at treating things like anxiety or OCD because those
Speaker 2: things have clearly shown to associated with negative self talk,
Speaker 2: that that you can increase your own anxiety and stress
Speaker 2: by basically being mean to yourself or being just having
Speaker 2: a negative outlook on life. And it's I mean, just
Speaker 2: from my own experience, it's nuts how illuminating it can
Speaker 2: be when you have somebody point out like do you
Speaker 2: do you hear like how you're how you're viewing the world,
Speaker 2: like in your own head, Like do you hear the
Speaker 2: things you're saying to yourself? And when you become aware
Speaker 2: of it, you can change it. And when you change
Speaker 2: it, it can have sweeping effects on your entire life, one
Speaker 2: of which is treating anxiety and even depression.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, I mean, man, it seems like so
Speaker 1: much stuff with the human condition can come down to
Speaker 1: being in touch with yourself and really self aware. But
Speaker 1: you know that can being too self aware it can
Speaker 1: also be a problem. So it's just it's like living
Speaker 1: life is tough. Yeah, well, you know what, man with
Speaker 1: the OCD. You know, I'm a little bit on the
Speaker 1: OCD spectrum. Mine doesn't manifest though in negative self talk.
Speaker 1: But I was thinking about my inner voice, and I
Speaker 1: do a lot of with my OCD. It's like efficiencies
Speaker 1: I'll talk about in my head, Like when I'm doing
Speaker 1: something like cooking. In my head, I'm literally saying, all right,
Speaker 1: you're gonna grab the spoon and you're gonna take it
Speaker 1: over here, and you're gonna grab the salt, and then
Speaker 1: you're going to cut that thing. And I'm kind of
Speaker 1: planning out stuff that I'm about to do. But it's
Speaker 1: in my brain. It's all in the in the like
Speaker 1: kind of wrapped up as an efficiency, like if I
Speaker 1: do it in exactly just this right way, in this order,
Speaker 1: it's it's the best way to do that.
Speaker 2: I do that too. I associate that with perfectionism.
Speaker 3: M interesting for me.
Speaker 2: It is at least like I have to do it
Speaker 2: as efficiently as possible, and efficiency is a form of perfectionism,
Speaker 2: and that if you do it all at all order,
Speaker 2: it's lucy goosey and why even bother to get out
Speaker 2: of bed.
Speaker 1: Right, But I'll even do that when it's not like
Speaker 1: a specific thing, like all right, if you're cooking something,
Speaker 1: I sort of get that. But if I'm at my
Speaker 1: desk sometimes and it comes and goes, I'll be like,
Speaker 1: all right, you're gonna grab the mouse and click on
Speaker 1: that thing, and you're going to answer that email and
Speaker 1: then you're going to grab your pen here man, Like,
Speaker 1: how interesting? All right, I had no idea that we
Speaker 1: had that in common.
Speaker 3: Hey, look at us.
Speaker 2: Wow, see what happens when you talk about your inner voice? Chuck,
Speaker 2: We're meant to be I've been asking you to do
Speaker 2: this for decades now.
Speaker 3: I know it's like I don't want to look at myself.
Speaker 2: Well, that kind of leads us to the purposes of
Speaker 2: inner speech a little bit, right, I Mean talking about
Speaker 2: it clearly helps connect people. But there's there's things that
Speaker 2: we gain from talking to ourselves or just being able
Speaker 2: to do that.
Speaker 3: Sure, and we've kind of touched on them here and there.
Speaker 1: You know, when kids are developing it, they believe that
Speaker 1: it's a way to sort of grow and mature into
Speaker 1: being responsible. Like you start out hearing your parents say
Speaker 1: to go do something, go clean up your room. And
Speaker 1: eventually the more you hear that, you start thinking I
Speaker 1: should really go clean up my room or I'm not
Speaker 1: sure when that's supposed to start, but yeah, at some
Speaker 1: point eventually that will lead to you saying those things
Speaker 1: to yourself like you would as a you know, responsible adult,
Speaker 1: like I gotta clean this mess.
Speaker 3: Up, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And also I mean executive functioning, like making decisions,
Speaker 2: figuring out the best solution to a problem by simulating them,
Speaker 2: like thinking through your actions before acting, which also oftentimes
Speaker 2: ties into emotional regulation. Yeah, all of this uses some
Speaker 2: sort of like inner voice inner speech. Interheering is another
Speaker 2: way that you can experience it. That's a that's just
Speaker 2: that's an enormous role because that's essentially how we navigate
Speaker 2: life as adults.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, I already mentioned sort of the
Speaker 1: performance aspect, like if you're if you're about to play
Speaker 1: a game or run a or something like talking to yourself,
Speaker 1: you got this, you're the best, you can do this.
Speaker 3: You're gonna run fast. You might have a routine that
Speaker 3: you run over in your head.
Speaker 1: That's all your voice, Yeah, exactly, And that can be
Speaker 1: that can really pay off obviously, much more than negative
Speaker 1: self talk and motivation.
Speaker 2: You know, it's not exactly tied to what you're saying,
Speaker 2: but what you were mentioning before, like how you were
Speaker 2: planning out which action to do next for cooking, and
Speaker 2: then the one boat beyond that. I realized that's why
Speaker 2: I had to stop playing video games, because I would
Speaker 2: walk around thinking about how to do it better next time,
Speaker 2: and even when I wasn't playing the video game, and
Speaker 2: realize like, this is not no way to spend my
Speaker 2: mental energy. Like it's one thing to just sit down
Speaker 2: and relax and play a video game. And if all
Speaker 2: I if that was it for me and I could
Speaker 2: leave it there, I would totally play video games still,
Speaker 2: but I just couldn't leave it.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, mine comes and goes too, And I haven't thought
Speaker 1: too much about when or why so that I think
Speaker 1: that's interesting.
Speaker 2: Do they still call them video games? It feels really
Speaker 2: eighties or nineties.
Speaker 3: Uh, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think it's more used as like like a verb,
Speaker 1: like when I game gaming?
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, I've heard that, but I heard that on
Speaker 2: in a magazine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I think if you said, hey, do you
Speaker 1: play video games? It'd be a very gen x way.
Speaker 3: To say that.
Speaker 2: Okay, I'll watch wrong with that.
Speaker 1: If you're wondering about you know, because we've talked about
Speaker 1: whether you dream in other languages, if you learn a
Speaker 1: second language, is that a mark of fluency kind of
Speaker 1: ties into inner voice? Generally speaking, you think in your
Speaker 1: or you talk to yourself in your first language. But
Speaker 1: if you are fluent, and you know, let's say I
Speaker 1: was fluent in German, if only and I moved to
Speaker 1: Germany at times.
Speaker 3: There or eventually I could have an inner voice.
Speaker 1: Is that just talking in a different way. Yeah, not
Speaker 1: with a German accent an American.
Speaker 2: But yeah. So also deaf people apparently, and I would guess,
Speaker 2: especially if you were deaf from birth, they see or
Speaker 2: think in sign language, so they visualize the word but
Speaker 2: through signs. That is super cool. And then other people
Speaker 2: can actually they might envision someone like their face, so
Speaker 2: they're reading their lips, but they're not hearing anything. I
Speaker 2: just think that's just fascinating. They also don't speak at themselves.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I think that's totally fascinating.
Speaker 2: There was also in that same Guardian article with the
Speaker 2: woman who was featured with the Italian couple bickering in
Speaker 2: her head. There was a dude and man, I can't
Speaker 2: find his name anywhere, but he I think is the
Speaker 2: hero of this entire story. Chuck, his name is Justin Hopkins.
Speaker 2: I found it. He has this what he basically calls
Speaker 2: an island in a sea of void, and the island
Speaker 2: is his mind, and his mind turns on when it
Speaker 2: needs to. So an example, because I don't fully understand
Speaker 2: how this guy how his mind works, but the best
Speaker 2: I can say is he realizes that he's out of milk,
Speaker 2: so he needs to go buy milk. So he buys milk, right,
Speaker 2: but imagine that being the extent of it. So he
Speaker 2: needs to buy milk, and he goes and buys milk,
Speaker 2: and he puts the milk back in his refrigerator, and
Speaker 2: then he doesn't have another thought until the next thing
Speaker 2: that comes along. He said that he can go hours
Speaker 2: without a thought, and so he can just sit in
Speaker 2: front of a sunset and enjoy the sunset, and the
Speaker 2: most basic way that you can enjoy a sunset and
Speaker 2: just not be thinking about all the problems he has
Speaker 2: or what he has to do next, or how to
Speaker 2: most sufficiently watch the sunset. And this guy is like,
Speaker 2: I wouldn't want to necessarily live like that all the time,
Speaker 2: because I do enjoy having like an inner life, but
Speaker 2: to just be able to modulate it and do that
Speaker 2: once in a while. I think that guy's amazing. And
Speaker 2: apparently in the Guardian article they said that he says
Speaker 2: he sleeps like a baby, which I can totally imagine.
Speaker 1: Well, interestingly, I know that I'm drifting towards sleep when
Speaker 1: my inner voice gets really weird.
Speaker 2: It's like.
Speaker 1: I'll be thinking of things, and when I start thinking
Speaker 1: about things and I can tell that are just absolute
Speaker 1: weird nonsense. It's almost like pre dreaming. But the problem
Speaker 1: is now I know that's that sleep is coming, and
Speaker 1: I know that's what that signals. So in my brain
Speaker 1: I will start inter talking, going all right, baby, I'm
Speaker 1: about to fall asleep, and that takes me out of it.
Speaker 2: So okay, okay, I'm fascinated by this, Like, give us
Speaker 2: an example of how your brain starts just becoming nonsensical
Speaker 2: or speaking gibberish or whatever that you can recognize you're
Speaker 2: starting to drift off.
Speaker 1: Like I'll be drifting and all of a sudden, like
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm just making this up because I can't.
Speaker 1: I don't get up and write it down. What I
Speaker 1: should do is write it down, but then I've ruined
Speaker 1: my or whatever.
Speaker 2: Help you.
Speaker 1: But it's, you know, all of a sudden, if I'm
Speaker 1: just here words or I'm saying here my voice saying
Speaker 1: words like you know, you know, the chicken put on
Speaker 1: a cape and played a little basketball and jumped in
Speaker 1: a pot of chili, like complete nonsense, and I will
Speaker 1: recognize it's happening and go all right, that means I'm
Speaker 1: about there, and then that takes me out of it
Speaker 1: and then like nab it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but a lot of times you can just experience
Speaker 2: it and not note it and just fall asleep.
Speaker 1: Or note it and then just not let it rouse
Speaker 1: me too much, and it'll lead to sleep.
Speaker 2: Gotcha, man, that's amazing. I've never heard of it. Very
Speaker 2: pretty cool.
Speaker 3: Oh boy.
Speaker 1: But every time I've said something weird about myself like
Speaker 1: that on the air, like stepping on cracks with the
Speaker 1: same place of my foot every time with the OCD,
Speaker 1: I've had people write in and say I.
Speaker 2: Do the same thing, right, So yeah, I think that's
Speaker 2: that's I was going to say, Like, I know, we've
Speaker 2: been talking about ourselves a lot, but part of it
Speaker 2: for me is like, you know, I want to hear
Speaker 2: from people saying like.
Speaker 3: I yeah, that too, absolutely.
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, oh, one other thing before we go, There
Speaker 2: was a tweet what's become kind of a famous tweet
Speaker 2: from a few years back, I think in twenty twenty,
Speaker 2: where somebody just basically said some people have an inner
Speaker 2: voice and some people don't. And it revealed this this
Speaker 2: commonality among people if you don't really have an inner dialogue, monologue,
Speaker 2: inner speech, whatever, you just assume no one else does either.
Speaker 2: And if you do have it, you just assume everybody
Speaker 2: has it. And it was really kind of eye opening
Speaker 2: to people to find like that's not the case at all,
Speaker 2: that it's basically a spectrum.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I mean maybe new research will spawned because
Speaker 1: everyone was like, oh wait a minute, people are interested in.
Speaker 2: This, Yeah, Fernio said Fernie, ho ooh that's right. Well
Speaker 2: you got anything else?
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a bazillion other things, but we'll just
Speaker 1: park it right here.
Speaker 2: Okay, it has parked. And since we just parked it,
Speaker 2: it's everyone who has been listening to the show from
Speaker 2: the outset knows we've just unlocked listen new Now.
Speaker 1: That's right, I'm gonna call this Toledo and this is
Speaker 1: from Alexander Nozar or Alex Alex says, you know, every
Speaker 1: time Josh talks about having come from Toledo, always thinking
Speaker 1: about Tony Pacos, which he mentioned in the Fan Theory episode.
Speaker 1: What wasn't mentioned, however, was and Tony Paco's is what
Speaker 1: it was a restaurant.
Speaker 2: Right, It's a like a hot dog place, very famous
Speaker 2: in Toledo, and then Jamie Farr made it famous on
Speaker 2: mash That's right.
Speaker 1: What wasn't mentioned, however, was what makes Tony Pacos awesome.
Speaker 1: First and foremost, that was founded by a Hungarian immigrant,
Speaker 1: making it a significant place for Hungarian Americans, especially here
Speaker 1: in Ohio, which has a pretty large Hungarian population in Dayton, Columbus, Toledo,
Speaker 1: and I believe Cleveland. My family is Hungarian on both sides,
Speaker 1: with great grandfathers coming over here in the nineteen hundreds
Speaker 1: early nineteen hundreds. Tony Paco serves not just Hungarian food
Speaker 1: like Spetzel, but they're well known for their homemade pickles
Speaker 1: and most importantly they're hot dogs. But what makes it
Speaker 1: truly unique as a fun place to visit is at
Speaker 1: anytime a celebrity visits, they're asked to sign a hot
Speaker 1: dog bun, which is then encased in plastic and hung
Speaker 1: on the wall. It's been a while since I've been there,
Speaker 1: but I remember Leslie Odom Junior's name, and of course
Speaker 1: Jamie Farr. So I think you too should go up
Speaker 1: there on some sort of tour and you can experience
Speaker 1: our awesome food, but also sign a hot dog bune.
Speaker 2: I don't think they've let us sign a hot dog bune,
Speaker 2: but I appreciate the thought. Kid me, didn't you get
Speaker 2: a key to the city or something. There was a
Speaker 2: listener years back who was trying to get us actually
Speaker 2: the key to the city, and I don't think it
Speaker 2: went anywhere.
Speaker 1: Well, you should get a key to Toledo. I should
Speaker 1: get a key to Stone Mountain, Georgia. You should sign
Speaker 1: a hot dog bun, and I should sign a Stone Mountain.
Speaker 2: Plus also we should have the hot dogs while they're there,
Speaker 2: because Alex ain't lying and they're really good. And I
Speaker 2: have to say, if you're ever in Toledo or apparently Dayton, Columbus,
Speaker 2: Cleveland and you aren't in the mood for a hot dog,
Speaker 2: but there's a Tony Pacos nearby, Go get the stuff
Speaker 2: cabbage because it is top notch, Like you wouldn't think
Speaker 2: this hot dog place. Why does it have stuff cabbage? Well,
Speaker 2: because it's a Hungarian place and it is really good,
Speaker 2: like really good. Okay, I'm just gonna say it again.
Speaker 2: It's really good stuff cabbage.
Speaker 3: What's it? Stuff with love.
Speaker 2: Magic, I'm guessing three kinds of meat, probably it is.
Speaker 2: It is very good. Well, thanks a lot, Alex is
Speaker 2: always nice to hear from a fellow Ohiooo. I'm guessing yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: And if you want to be like Alex and right
Speaker 2: in and tell us about something we love, like Tony
Speaker 2: Paco's or whatever, you can send us an email to
Speaker 2: Stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts, my heeart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows