Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence

Summary

Stuff You Should Know: Inner Dialogues, Monologues, and Stone Cold Silence – Detailed Summary

Release Date: February 20, 2025

In this enlightening episode of Stuff You Should Know, hosts Josh Clark and Chuck Bryant delve deep into the intricate world of inner speech—exploring its various forms, developmental aspects, and its profound impact on mental health and cognitive functions. Drawing upon contemporary research and personal anecdotes, the duo unravels the complexities of how we converse within our minds and the implications of these internal dialogues.

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1. Introduction to Inner Speech

The episode kicks off with Josh Clark introducing the main theme: the inner voice residing within our minds. He states, “[01:11] Josh Clark: ...the inner voice is in your head, it turns out.” This sets the stage for a comprehensive discussion on the nature and significance of internal dialogues.

2. Understanding Private Speech and Inner Monologue

Josh and Chuck begin by differentiating between private speech and inner monologue. Chuck humorously demonstrates private speech by saying, “[01:29] Chuck Bryant: Oh, Chuck, you're so stupid.” Josh explains that as long as one can hear themselves while talking to themselves, it qualifies as private speech.

Josh further elaborates, “[01:46] Josh Clark: ...inner monologue is a pretty limiting term because that voice in your head... can take all sorts of different shapes.” They introduce the term inner speech as a more encompassing concept, acknowledging its multifaceted nature and the challenges in studying it due to its subjective essence.

3. Types and Varieties of Inner Speech

Drawing upon the work of researchers Simon McCarthy Jones and Charles Fernyhough, the hosts discuss the Varieties of Inner Speech Questionnaire (VISQ). They break down several categories:

• Dialogic Inner Speech: Engaging in a back-and-forth conversation within oneself or imagining dialogue with others. Chuck shares a relatable scenario: “[07:06] Chuck Bryant: ...I was like, who are you talking to?”

• Condensed Inner Speech: Utilizing abbreviations or shorthand, such as mentally noting, “[09:31] Chuck Bryant: ...phone, keys, wallet in your head.”

• Expanded Inner Speech: Rehearsing exact spoken words internally, particularly before significant conversations or actions.

• Other Variants: Including the Faithful Friend, Ambivalent Parent, and Proud Rival, as categorized by Malgorzada Polchaska Wassel. Josh humorously critiques the naming conventions: “[16:24] Josh Clark: ...that doesn't make any sense whatsoever.”

4. Research and Studies on Inner Speech

The hosts highlight pivotal studies and methodologies that have shaped our understanding of inner speech:

• Johan Nedergergerd and Gary Lupien's Study (2024): Investigating the relationship between inner speech and verbal memory, they found that individuals with minimal inner speech tend to perform poorly on memory tasks like remembering grocery lists ([28:20] Chuck Bryant).

• Lev Vygotsky's Theories: Vygotsky posited that inner speech develops from external speech through a child's social interactions, fundamentally altering previous notions by Jean Piaget about cognitive development ([22:08] Josh Clark).

• Russell Hurlburt's Descriptive Experience Sampling: Hurlburt developed a method to objectively capture inner experiences by sampling thoughts at random intervals, revealing the chaotic and multi-layered nature of inner dialogues ([34:50] Chuck Bryant).

5. Inner Speech Development

The conversation traces the evolution of inner speech from childhood, referencing Vygotsky's insights. Initially, children use private speech aloud to guide their actions, which gradually internalizes into silent inner speech around ages six to seven. Josh summarizes, “[23:22] Josh Clark: ...kids develop their brain and their understanding of the world through learning, through this inner dialogue.”

6. Inner Speech and Mental Health

Delving into the psychological implications, the hosts discuss how deviations in inner speech processes can influence mental health:

• Schizophrenia: They explain how impairments in the efference copy mechanism—where the brain predicts and monitors spoken words—can lead to verbal hallucinations, causing individuals to perceive their inner thoughts as external voices ([42:25] Chuck Bryant).

• Anxiety and OCD: Negative self-talk and obsessive inner dialogues can exacerbate conditions like anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Josh notes, “[44:11] Josh Clark: ...when you become aware of it, you can change it, and when you change it, it can have sweeping effects on your entire life.”

• Absence of Inner Speech: The concept of anendaphasia, where individuals lack inner speech, raises questions about cognitive functions such as memory and planning. Chuck relates this to his daughter’s dyslexia, suggesting a possible link between reduced inner speech and certain learning disabilities ([30:47]).

7. Personal Experiences with Inner Speech

Josh and Chuck share their personal interactions with inner speech, illustrating its variability:

• Josh's Experience: Josh describes attempting to think purely in images by picturing a watering can without accompanying words, only to realize he subconsciously invoked verbal tags like “flower pot” ([32:02]).

• Chuck's Experience: Chuck discusses his internal planning related to OCD, where his inner speech revolves around efficiency and order (“*[46:33] Chuck Bryant: ...if you do it all out of order, it's loosey goosey and why even bother to get out of bed?”)

• Ruby's Unique Manifestation: They mention Ruby’s method of alleviating stress by spelling out words with her thumb, showcasing the diverse forms inner speech can take ([24:44]).

8. The Efference Copy and Its Implications

A significant portion of the episode is dedicated to understanding the efference copy—the brain’s predictive mechanism that differentiates between self-generated thoughts and external stimuli. Josh explains, “[39:15] Josh Clark: ...the efference copy is basically a blueprint of what I'm about to say...” This mechanism is crucial in preventing confusion between one’s inner thoughts and external voices, a malfunction of which is implicated in conditions like schizophrenia.

9. Broader Implications and Future Directions

The discussion extends to how deeper insights into inner speech could revolutionize treatments for various mental health disorders. By understanding and potentially modifying negative self-talk, therapies could more effectively address anxiety, depression, and OCD. Josh emphasizes the transformative potential: “[45:32] Josh Clark: ...change it, and it can have sweeping effects on your entire life.”

10. Conclusion and Final Thoughts

As the episode wraps up, Josh and Chuck reflect on the universality and diversity of inner speech. They acknowledge that inner dialogues are not monolithic but exist on a spectrum, influencing how individuals perceive and interact with the world around them. Chuck muses, “[55:48] Chuck Bryant: ...it's a pretty cool name, though. Can we please keep it?” reinforcing the ongoing debates and evolving terminology in the field.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Josh Clark ([01:11]): "...the inner voice is in your head, it turns out."

• Chuck Bryant ([01:29]): "Oh, Chuck, you're so stupid."

• Josh Clark ([02:21]): "...we don't understand it. So those listening to this episode aren't going to understand it by the end of it either."

• Chuck Bryant ([05:13]): "...we don't always have all the answers."

• Josh Clark ([07:06]): "...I saw them talking to herself sometimes. ... that's dialogic because there's someone else involved."

• Chuck Bryant ([17:29]): "...emotional types. ... That's not ambivalent."

• Josh Clark ([22:29]): "...it starts out as private speech, like kids saying things out loud to themselves."

• Chuck Bryant ([24:44]): "...Emily is very, very. She's like, I'm constantly talking to people in my head."

• Josh Clark ([39:11]): "...there's a part of my brain that is pre arranging and planning what I'm about to say."

• Chuck Bryant ([46:33]): "...if you do it all out of order, it's loosey goosey and why even bother to get out of bed?"

• Josh Clark ([45:32]): "...change it, and it can have sweeping effects on your entire life."

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Key Takeaways

1. Inner speech is a multifaceted phenomenon encompassing various forms such as dialogic, condensed, and expanded speech.
2. Research on inner speech is evolving, with significant contributions from scholars like Vygotsky, Hurlburt, and Wassel.
3. Developmentally, inner speech transitions from external private speech in children to an internalized dialogue shaping cognitive functions.
4. Mental health is intricately linked to inner speech, with implications for disorders like schizophrenia, anxiety, and OCD.
5. Personal experiences highlight the diversity in how individuals perceive and utilize their inner dialogues.
6. Future research holds promise for therapeutic interventions targeting negative self-talk and enhancing cognitive well-being.

This episode offers a comprehensive exploration of inner speech, blending scientific insights with relatable narratives to illuminate the silent conversations that shape our thoughts and behaviors.

Transcript

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[Josh Clark]

Why would you do that to me?

[Caroline D'Amore]

Los Angeles, 2021. A friendly neighbor appears out of nowhere and promises to make all my dreams come true.

[Chuck Bryant]

Let's not forget that David Bloom was a professional con artist, so you didn't stand a chance.

[Caroline D'Amore]

But my dreams soon turned into a Nightmare. I'm Caroline D'Amore. Listen as I take down my scammer on Once Upon a con on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Dr. Laurie Santos]

Welcome to Stuff youf Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

[Josh Clark]

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh. And there's Chuck. And Jerry's here, too. And this is stuff you should know. We're. The inner voice is in your head, it turns out.

[Chuck Bryant]

Good job, Chuck.

[Josh Clark]

Good job. You got this. You got this. So what you're engaged in, Chuck, is called private speech.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, Chuck, you're so stupid.

[Josh Clark]

That's so private speech. As long as we can hear you and you're talking to yourself, that's private speech.

[Chuck Bryant]

I get it now. Sure, I was saying it out loud, which means it's not thinner. Monologue or dialogue.

[Josh Clark]

No, I've always heard it called inner monologue, too, or internal monologue. But Anna helped us out with this, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Anna G. She points out that inner monologue is a pretty limiting term because that voice in your head, the way that you talk to yourself, it can take all sorts of different shapes. Rather than you having a conversation, beating yourself up quietly, those are kind of the keys to what we would call inner speech. Or the people who research it would call it inner speech.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Or inner voice. And it turns out this is kind of a tough one in some ways because it's like, I imagine Anna was up against it, because there are many, many, many, many facets to this, and it can serve a lot of different purposes. It's very common. But also some people don't have it. Yeah, we can look at brain scans and say, like, hey, this is lighting up. But it's like, it's also really hard to study and get a consensus on because a lot of it is self reported as far as when people do it and why people do it and what function it could serve or doesn't serve. And if you don't have one, what does that mean? So there's just a lot of different avenues and it's tough to kind of make this a real tidy package.

[Josh Clark]

And it's really impressive that people are figuring out how to research this at all. It's a definitely developing field. It's not established quite yet. So it's kind of the wild west in a lot of ways as far as, you know, psychology goes. But one of the reasons why it's fairly new is because people forever just thought, like, there are such things as inner voices. We'll never be able to study them because they are the definition, definition of subjective. And like you said, self reported tests or how they had studied them before, and that's just not super reliable. William James, the father of American psychology, had a quote, I'll paraphrase him. He basically said, like, trying to study something like inner speech is like turning up the lights to get a good look at what the dark looks like you can't do. It was the end of his speech.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Oh, boy, that makes a lot of sense.

[Josh Clark]

It does. I've heard another one too that I love. Studying consciousness is like trying to use a flashlight to find the shadows.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, I got one too.

[Josh Clark]

Okay.

[Chuck Bryant]

Youth is wasted on the young.

[Josh Clark]

Ooh, that's a good one. That's a good one too. What was Spuds MacKenzie? Party animal. Two words, that's all you need to know.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. This is just a tough one because there are so many little nuggets to uncover. Like after I had done all the research and I was kind of like, all right, let's go do this. I was like, wait, wait a minute though. Like, when my grandfather had a stroke when I was a kid, he had aphasia, which is some stroke patients, you know, can't. You know, they're talking but they're not saying the words that you understand. I was like, I wonder what's going on in their head and what that has to do with your inner voice. And I saw some things that said like, nope, or it completely disturbs your inner voice as well. And then other studies that said, no, your inner speech can be preserved relative to the spoken language if you have aphasia. So it's just, it can be frustrating, but it's also, I shouldn't look at it that way and just think of it as like, just super fascinating and maybe, you know, we don't always have all the answers.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, that's a great way to put it. I think another way to say it is we don't understand it. So those listening to this episode aren't going to understand it by the end of it either.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, yeah. And just in the case of the stroke thing with my grandfather, I remember very specifically being a kid and seeing the frustration and thinking as a 10 year old, like he, in his head he's saying what he's trying to say.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

Like, I can tell because he's getting really frustrated that it's coming out as something that is unintelligible to us. But, you know, all these years later, I got two answers.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, there you go. Full circle, I guess, in that sense.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yes. Not a very satisfying one, but yeah.

[Josh Clark]

So like we said, inner monologue is a little too limiting. We don't want to use that. Inner speech is way better. And inner speech is actually a little limiting, as we'll see too. But it turns out there's a lot of things that our inner speech does besides, like you demonstrated, beating yourself up. It can be used to motivate. That's a good one. You kind of did that at first, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I think that was good, Chuck.

[Josh Clark]

Right. We use it for memorizing things, problem solving. We use it to regulate ourselves, like, okay, Chuck, don't be mean to yourself. Calm down. That kind of stuff. But again, not out loud. And then even more not me saying it, because, dude, if your voice in your head was my voice, oh man, I would be so sorry for you.

[Chuck Bryant]

I dream as you. Is that weird?

[Josh Clark]

That's a little weird. I'd like to hear more about that though, later on.

[Chuck Bryant]

No, I'm just joking. There have been plenty of people that have studied this though, and we're going to talk about some of these people here and there. There was a pair of researchers in 2011, Simon McCarthy Jones and Charles Fernyhough.

[Josh Clark]

Maybe Fernyhough is what I saw or heard.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, like tally ho.

[Josh Clark]

Exactly. But Fernie.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right. They developed a survey where they kind of categorized different varieties of inner speech. And their survey was called the visc. The Varieties of Inner Speech Questionnaire V, I, S, Q. And they also, along with others, have other categories. And we're kind of just going to go through these now. But one can be dialogic, which means you're like. You're having a back and forth with yourself or others. I asked Emily if I could talk about this because she talks out loud, which I guess isn't quite the same thing. But I'll see her talking to herself sometimes. Having a conversation with someone much more common when she was having frustrations with her business, talking out loud to people, but it would be in her head. But then I would also see her talking out loud. And I'll walk into her room and say, who are you talking to? And she'd tell me, but that's dialogic because there's someone else involved. Even if that someone else is another you.

[Josh Clark]

Right. What you can't see is the giant, furry purple monster with googly eyes and a tiki drink.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, man, that'd be great.

[Josh Clark]

So, yeah, dialogic seems to be fairly common too. There's also condensed inner speech that's. It's kind of like a different form of. So this. Okay, here's one of the things that I had trouble with. Chuck, let me just be forthright here. There's not any neat package of. There's this kind, this kind and this kind. And then there's the sub kind of this kind and this kind and this kind. No one's put it together like that, so it's a little confusing. So, for example, dialogic inner speech. You'd think that the next thing would be monologic or something like that. That's not here. Instead, we're talking about condensed inner speech, which is using, like, abbreviations or, like, just words rather than full sentences. And that this is a way that you speak to yourself in a very private manner that you would probably never use to speak out loud. It's just the. The. The kind of shorthand that you use for. For yourself doesn't fit this list at all. And yet here we are.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, Anna's example for that is, you know, you're leaving the house in, you know, phone, keys, wallet, in your head, that kind of thing. Right.

[Josh Clark]

But at the same time, you could be having a conversation with somebody about phone, keys, wallet. So it would be dialogic. Condensed dinner speech. Drives me nuts.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I see your point. Other people is another one. That's when your voice. Not when you're speaking to someone else, but when it's. Takes on the voice of someone else. It could be Abraham Lincoln. It could be Josh Clark. And that's when you're imagining a conversation with someone else where your own inner voice sounds like someone else. It's different than Emily Having a conversation with another person.

[Josh Clark]

Right, for sure. Like, you're the bystander, basically. There's two people talking. Did you see that Guardian article about the. That included the woman who's inner voice was a. Like, a stereotypical Italian couple fighting, arguing.

[Chuck Bryant]

So interesting.

[Josh Clark]

And that's how she works stuff out. Like, the. The wife would be like, no, she needs to quit her job and follow her dreams. And the husband would be like, no, she's got a good job. She needs to keep her feet on the ground. And, like, eventually, one would win the argument, and then that's what she would do. That's what that lady's inner voice is like.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, it's. It's very fascinating. One can be motivational or evaluative. Either am I doing a good job here or do a good job? They found that with sports performance and any kind of public speaking or any kind of performative thing, that inner voice pumping you up can lead to real results. Usually good.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And I saw that that was kind of expanded or changed or kind of cut into subcategories later on, or at some point, there's evaluative critical, which is basically like, you know, did I do a good job? Or why didn't you get 100%? That kind of thing?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

There's also positive regulatory, which kind of ties into what you were just saying. Like, if you imagine yourself, you know, doing really well, practicing shooting baskets, there's some part of you that could be like, keep up the hard work, and you'll be in the NBA in no time. Or, you did a great job. Like, those would fall under positive regulatory.

[Chuck Bryant]

When I play basketball, all I hear in my head is what I hear on the court, which is. Swish.

[Josh Clark]

Nice. I was gonna say. I was waiting for you to say Brick. Cause that's what I hear.

[Chuck Bryant]

Ruby expressed interest in playing basketball the other day, and I had a hard time containing myself. I was like, you know, that's the only sport I was actually pretty good at. Like, I can actually teach you something here.

[Josh Clark]

That's awesome, man.

[Chuck Bryant]

But I didn't want to say it too positively, because then she'd be like.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, maybe not very smart. Boy, you know what you're doing, don't you?

[Chuck Bryant]

I'm working on it. Another is prompted. No, no, no. I'm sorry. Expanded speech, which is like, if you. If you have to have a tough conversation with someone and you're literally kind of just rehearsing that in your head as one or both, that is, like, when you're speaking not in Any kind of abbreviated. Abbreviated way, yeah.

[Josh Clark]

It's the opposite of condensed speech. Like you're thinking in or hearing in your inner voice the exact words with the phonetics and the grammar and everything that you would say out loud.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right. Which. That got me on a sidetrack of like, oh, that's like, why do people. When you hear your voice played on a recording, why does that sound different? Does this have anything to do with that? And I just had to park that. Cause that gets into a whole other thing, which should probably be a shorty.

[Josh Clark]

The efference copy.

[Chuck Bryant]

No, no, no. Like when I listen to a podcast of us, like, why does your voice never match when you hear it out loud as it does in your own brain?

[Josh Clark]

I think your efferent's copy probably.

[Chuck Bryant]

No, it has to do with, like, the way your skull reverberates. Oh, really? Actual physical stuff. But I think that could be a shorty.

[Josh Clark]

Reverberating Skull is a great album name.

[Chuck Bryant]

It is. And we'll get to efferent's copy later on if you go.

[Josh Clark]

I clearly can't wait.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, it's good stuff.

[Josh Clark]

There's. Now we reach a point of the list where coherence starts to emerge. We've got like, basically an it, like a one and then the opposite. I don't know why I just put it so confusingly. So let's just start. There's elicited or prompted, which is inner speech. That's basically triggered by some external factor. Someone comes along and says, here's some pictures of different stuff. Pick out the ones whose names rhyme. So you've got a boot and then, I don't know, a foot or. Or something like that. Like you would pick out the boot and the foot, and depending on how liberal they were with their judgments, they would say, yes, that rhymes.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, but it's a prompt from an outside source. Right. Whereas the next one, which logically follows, thankfully, Pristine or spontaneous. That was Russell Hurl Burt, kind of a mouthful. A researcher that coined this one that's just unprompted. Spontaneous. And it's a part of, like, what makes us us.

[Josh Clark]

Yes. Like, that is your genuine, true inner voice. Sometimes it just comes out of nowhere. Sometimes when you just are talking to yourself and don't even realize you're talking to yourself in your head, like, that's what Hurlburt calls pristine. And there's this really great AON article about your inner voice that was written by Phil Jaeckel, J A E K L. And Phil points out, I'm hopefully hoping I can. We're on first name basis, me and Phil. But he points out that this is leading psychologists to be like, oh my God, oh my God. If we can study pristine inner voices, like that's essentially like the, the external, the exterior of the unconscious. And we would be tapping into people's unconscious and other people are like, I think Fernie Ho is like, whoa, whoa, whoa, let's not get ahead of ourselves here. Let's just kind of take this one step at a time. Old Fernyhoe, that's what he's known as. They call him the brakes.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. Well, except when he gets excited about something, then he yells out ferny Ho.

[Josh Clark]

That's right.

[Chuck Bryant]

Maybe before we break we should talk about these other four because that visc is still. They've been revising it over the years and it's still in use for some researchers. But in 2015 there was another researcher named what a great name. Malgorzada Polchaska. Wassel.

[Josh Clark]

Wasel.

[Chuck Bryant]

Wasel. Maybe that's what I'm going with. They were like, all right, let's categorize it by emotional types. And these are the faithful friend, which has a nice ring to it. That's like your personal strength, positive feelings about yourself, your enabler. Yeah. The ambivalent parent, which is awful. Otherwise known as Gen X parent, associated with strength and love and caring criticism.

[Josh Clark]

So wait a minute, is it the parent of a Gen Xer or a Gen Xer as a parent? I'm confused.

[Chuck Bryant]

I would say the parent. I mean, weren't most of our parents fairly ambivalent about us?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I would think so. Sure. It's like, oh, you're here.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's weird because it associated with strength, love and caring criticism.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's not ambivalent.

[Josh Clark]

So here is another problem with this field. People are naming stuff just way off.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, Willy way off.

[Josh Clark]

That doesn't make any sense whatsoever. And it's hard to remember and understand this stuff if the pieces don't fit together because they're dripping. You know what I mean?

[Chuck Bryant]

That's gross.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, but it's true.

[Chuck Bryant]

I know. What about the others? Emotionally ticking proud rival. Okay.

[Josh Clark]

And then there's one that was initially called Calm Optimist. But Polchaska Weisel did a follow up study testing to see if her initial results were confirmed. And Faithful friend, Ambivalent parent and proud rival were all there again in the second one. But Calm Optimist didn't show up. So she ended up replacing that with something called Helpless child, which apparently is probably the worst of the worst.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, that's a lot.

[Josh Clark]

It is. It was a lot. Do you understand this anymore?

[Chuck Bryant]

Sort of.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, good. Well, we're making headway, Chuck.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, well, we'll take a break and see if we can rein this puppy in right after this.

[Ashlin Harris]

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[Martin Luther King III]

It was a moment that should have broken me, but just because of how I was raised and my bullishness and arrogance to want to be great hardened me, it gave me a platform to be so singularly focused on greatness.

[Dr. Laurie Santos]

We all have moments like this. Something happens that's supposed to break us, but it's in these moments that. That we discover what we're really made of. I promise you, if anyone knows this, it's me. I'm Ashlin Harris.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, Chuck. So one of the things we're talking about with inner speech is it's easy to kind of confuse it with, like, say, private speech where you're actually talking out loud to yourself. Somebody could hear it. But one of the big differences with inner speech and verbal speech is that it's just faster, I guess, allegedly for some people. It's not for me. Mine goes very slow and actually slows me down. It's like. It goes slow. Yeah, my. The part of me that has to process the words slows down the speed that I could conceivably go at.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay.

[Josh Clark]

It just. Yeah, it's. It's like old fernyhough. It just kind of puts the brakes on everything. But. But normally if you compare the two, it should be much faster. Just because a lot of times you're using condensed speech, which you know, again is you're just using shorthand that you can understand. I think that's where I get tripped up. I don't really do that. And then like physically, physiologically, it's just you can think a lot faster than you can speak because you're not moving your mouth, you're not like taking a breath or anything like that. It's just supposedly faster. Is yours faster?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, for sure. There was one person, a researcher, who actually endeavored to find out how fast that can get. This is in 1990. And they found that some participants in the study could think more than 4,000 words a minute. And just for context, the world record for fastest out loud talker as a Canadian guy who went to 655 words per minute. So this is basically you can think up to six times faster than the fastest talker on the planet.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, that's at least twice as much.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I actually did the math. It's roughly six.

[Josh Clark]

Was that the guy from the Dunkin Donuts commercials or the FedEx commercials in the 80s?

[Chuck Bryant]

No, it's unfortunately just some. I mean, hey, I love this guy. Gonna knock him down. His name is Sean Shannon. He's a Canadian guy who did the to be or not to be soliloquy in 23.8 seconds.

[Josh Clark]

Wow. Way to go, Sean.

[Chuck Bryant]

You can't understand anything he's saying. But I think they have judges that are like, yeah, he's still saying those words.

[Josh Clark]

So I guess then we reach another question. How does inner speech develop? Which apparently when they started figuring this out, thanks to a guy named Lev Vygotsky, who we'll meet in a second, it completely changed our understanding of children because up to this point it was like, do kids learn first and then. Or does their brain develop and then they learn first? Or do they learn first by. Or do they develop their brain by learning? Clearly, I did neither. At some point.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

You can kind of get the gist of what I was saying.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I thought this was super interesting. Child development is just fascinating to me, like going through it now, like more than ever, obviously, but for most kids. And by the way, this Lev Vytgotsky, who you said we would meet. You know what, let's just bring him in. Come on in, Lev.

[Josh Clark]

Hey, I'm dead.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, exactly. This is in the 1930s. So he has left us Earth wise. But a lot of this has been Borne out in modern research. But in the 30s, he was looking at, like, basically it starts out as private speech, like kids saying things out loud to themselves. And, you know, first they start talking just to communicate, like, I'm hungry, I need to whatever, go to sleep. Actually, kids never say that I want to stay up. And, you know, that's just social communication. But then as they get older, they start sort of privately talking to themselves as an internal motivator. And then eventually that I think around. That's between like three and four. And then around six or seven is when kids take that private voice inside their head. And that's when the inner monologue kicks off, more or less.

[Josh Clark]

Right. And then they start to. After that, they continue to develop and get good at things like condensed speech and creating their own self shorthand and stuff like that. Yeah, it's pretty cool. So again, I said that this kind of turned things on our head as far as understanding. Piaget, who was a very famous French psychologist, he said, kids are dumb, and then they learn or their brain grows and then they learn. And this showed the exact opposite, that they develop their brain and their understanding of the world through learning, through this inner dialogue. And it was Vygotsky, believe it or not, was a Soviet researcher. So the west wasn't exposed to his ideas until, like, the 50s. And when they finally came out, were translated, it was like, great. Okay, now we finally understand, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

He's the one that coined the term inner voice, right?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, yeah. I'm not sure what that is in Russian, but, yes, apparently it translates to inner voice.

[Chuck Bryant]

I think it's property of the Soviet Union. I don't know why I said that as a German.

[Josh Clark]

It sounded Russian to me in my head.

[Chuck Bryant]

You know, we mentioned that not everyone has inner speech or develops that it exists, like a lot of things do on a spectrum. Some people. Emily is a very, very. She's like, I'm constantly talking to people in my head.

[Josh Clark]

Really.

[Chuck Bryant]

I know. I see it happening. You know the other interesting thing she does, I don't think I've ever mentioned on the show, and she was like, you can say all this. I don't really care. She spells out when she's stressed. She'll spell out things with her thumb.

[Josh Clark]

In cursive, like on a table, like, just.

[Chuck Bryant]

No, just like sitting there, like, we'll be watching a TV show, and I'll know she's stressed and her thumb will be going. And now that I know what she's doing, for years now, I'll be like, what Are you writing? And if it's a scene about like a tense standoff in an office or something, she might spell typewriter or office or something. Just that she sees. It's not always like, I'm nervous. It's never like I'm stressed or anything like that.

[Josh Clark]

So it's a way to alleviate her anxiety, I guess. How interesting. That's cool. I've never heard of that.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Hey, man, I've said it before and I'll say it again. Emily is one of a kind.

[Chuck Bryant]

When you couple up with people and you really dig in, you don't have any of those barriers up. It turns out that we're all just a little strange.

[Josh Clark]

Well, how is her heir penmanship?

[Chuck Bryant]

She's great. I can read it all. I can look at her thumb and I can spell it right out in my head.

[Josh Clark]

Very neat. Wow. Can you really or are you just joking?

[Chuck Bryant]

No, no, no, no.

[Josh Clark]

Okay. I was just gonna say it looks like a. Wow.

[Chuck Bryant]

It looks like thumb's gone wild.

[Josh Clark]

Right? Nice. Too hot for tv. Thumb wild.

[Chuck Bryant]

Anyway, but that's kind of her inner voice too, you know, in a way, just manifesting itself physically. But it's still, you know, not out loud. But some people constantly are doing this kind of thing, talking to themselves. Others sometimes, some never. These two researchers, Johan Nedergergerd and Gary Lupien, if you have zero inner speech, they have termed that anend aphasia. And they say, and this is another kind of frustration, like, oh, between 5 to 10% of people don't have inner speech. Whereas Russell Hurlburt, who we've met, said, no, it's more like 50 to 70%.

[Josh Clark]

Have inner speech or no, don't have inner speech. Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. So that's just. That's wildly different.

[Josh Clark]

It is wild. That's a great term for it. Again, wild. Ferny ho comes in and says, whoa, everybody. I'm not really excited about this having its own term, an endophagia. And an means lack endo, means interphasia speech. Because. And I think he makes a reasonable argument here, when you come up with a term, especially a Latin term for something, a way people behave or think or whatever, it seems to suggest that this is a condition, maybe even a disorder. And he's like, that's not necessarily true, especially if the majority of people don't have this inner voice. So do we really need a name for it? And I think Nettergaard and Lupien were like, it's a pretty cool name, though. Can we please keep it And Fernyhoe is thinking about it right now.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right. Well, that got me thinking. Like, if you have no inner dialogue, does that mean, like, do sociopaths have that? But I found no correlation there. It seems like sociopaths quite often have an inner dialogue saying, like, do this awful thing.

[Josh Clark]

Right, yeah. Should we. Who are you? They have other things, though. Like, it's not like if you don't have an inner voice that there's no thought whatsoever. It can also come in different forms, I think is what they're finding.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And they've also found. This is Nettergaard and Luffian in a study just last year in 2024, where they tested. They wanted to know how it related to memory and apparently verbal memory of groups with very. They tested people with very high and very low rates of inner speech and found that if a very low rate of inner speech, you're not going to be as good at just remembering stuff like your lines in a play or a grocery list or anything.

[Josh Clark]

The poor bastards. The thing is, though, is that seems to be at least as far as they've discovered, really. The only big drawbacks is you don't do well necessarily in memory tests or something like that. But even for somebody who isn't thinking in inner speech, where they're talking to themselves, there's a voice in their head talking. There's other ways that you can think using what is basically some sort of inner. Inner. Well, inner speech is the best way to put it. But imagine that without speech, without language or words, there's inner seeing. Some people think in images, right? Feelings, like just your emotions, which I'm kind of like, okay, does that get you in trouble if that's how you respond and move and behave from the world? Because that's one of the big things from inner speech, is when what we do is we prepare ourselves and come up with a plan of action. What are we going to do next? How are we going to respond to this? So if you're not thinking it over in your head and it's your emotions that drive you, that just seems like it could get scary. Fraught, huh?

[Chuck Bryant]

Like it's fraught.

[Josh Clark]

Fraught, exactly. There's unsymbolized thinking. So you've got like. You're just not. You're not thinking, like, okay, I need to get in that car. You just. I don't know. I don't know. I can't even give you an example here. And then the last one that they've mentioned is sensory awareness, which is just sensing things and then I guess responding essentially like an amoeba, like, oh, this, it's. This stove is hot. So I'm going to move my hand. But imagine nothing in between the heat. The sensation of heat entering your hand and removing your hand. No thought whatsoever between that. That's apparently what sensory awareness is like.

[Chuck Bryant]

Huh. All right. That study from last year where they were talking about verbal memory made me wonder about dyslexia because, you know, my daughter has dyslexia. And I was like, I bet you there's a tie there. And I was actually right on the money with this one. Supposedly, if you have dyslexia, you have very little to no inner voice, really. So fascinating. Yeah. Because a lot of times they think in images and they think in. They call it kind of like 3D thinking.

[Josh Clark]

Gotcha.

[Chuck Bryant]

So it's less word based.

[Josh Clark]

Gotcha. That's pretty cool. I tested myself on this a little bit to find out what I do. Like, I typically just think in words, I guess.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

A lot of times I talk to myself, but I think. I don't know, I think that there's a lot going on in there that I'm not cognizant of. I'm really bad at, like, how I feel and like, just understanding, you know, what's going on in my head at any given time. Like really just introspecting. Like, I. I do it a lot, but I'm not necessarily good at it is what I guess what I'm trying to say.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I know what you're talking about. I can be like that, too.

[Josh Clark]

See, I don't believe that one bit. I think you're a champion at that kind of thing.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, maybe certain kinds. You know how it gets so complicated.

[Josh Clark]

I appreciate you trying to make me feel better, but you're wrong about you not being good at it. So I tested myself to see if I could think in just images without words, because I've never really thought about that. So some part of me told myself to think of a watering can.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay.

[Josh Clark]

And I didn't hear it. It was just like. It wasn't in words. I didn't hear it. No one spoke it. I didn't see it spelled out. It was just. There was some command all of a sudden to think of a watering can. And all of a sudden a watering can came up. And the proof that I was not thinking in words is that I couldn't think of the word for what I was seeing.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, wow.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And then some other part of me came in and was like, you Know, I think you were actually supposed to produce an image of a flower pot. And then I got worried about cognitive decline. And that's no joke. Like, that was the whole process right there.

[Chuck Bryant]

Wow, that is fascinating. And I would imagine hard to do. Kind of like Ghostbusters, you know, don't clear your mind.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

And then you get the saypeth Marshmallow man, like that. If anything is suggested, I will immediately see the word. If it says, like, don't think of the word, I'll think of that word.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I guess I didn't. It was more like not. It wasn't like I was saying, like, don't do this. It was more, do this or try this. So because there wasn't like that blanket prohibition on not thinking about the word, it was easier to do. But just back to Ruby. So did you ask her? She has an inner voice or if she thinks in symbols or whatever?

[Chuck Bryant]

No, she's at school, so it didn't come to me, but I'll ask her later and let you know.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, do let me know. Text me.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. It says. Ruby says that her inner voice just says, find Josh. Kill Josh.

[Josh Clark]

Burn Josh. No.

[Chuck Bryant]

She loves you.

[Josh Clark]

I know. I love her, too. I think she's sweet.

[Chuck Bryant]

I love her, too. I think that's what I thought you were saying.

[Josh Clark]

Hey, did she. No. Did she like Magdalena Bay?

[Chuck Bryant]

She did.

[Josh Clark]

Did she really? I just figured that she hadn't and you were just not mentioning it.

[Chuck Bryant]

No. I thought I texted you back. No. Yeah, Josh, it was very sweet. Got a text and he said, hey, I got this new artist that I've been listening to. I think Ruby might like it.

[Josh Clark]

Well, I'm glad I was right. For some reason, every time I heard it, I would just be like, ruby would really like this. That does not happen every time I listen to something, so I thought I should say something.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, I could have sworn I texted you. But, yeah, we listened to it together and she dug it.

[Josh Clark]

Cool. Cool.

[Chuck Bryant]

So, hey, big plug for Magdalena Bay. Also a nice place to visit from what I heard.

[Josh Clark]

She's. She's great. Is that a place too, or are you joking?

[Chuck Bryant]

No, I'm just kidding, man.

[Josh Clark]

You're getting me all over the place today.

[Chuck Bryant]

Back to Russell Hurlburt. That's just so hard to. It doesn't roll off the tongue.

[Josh Clark]

Sorry, Even in your head it doesn't.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Oh, yeah. In my inner voice, it's hard to say, too. He developed a tool called the Descriptive Experience Sampling. I would call it the Sampler, but D, E, S that is when he sits you down and puts, I guess, a device in the room and just like, hey, just sit there and chill out and do whatever and think about whatever. And anytime you hear a beep, though, you got to write down whatever is in your brain at that exact moment, I guess in the idea of just sorting to try and hit on the randomness of, like, what you might be thinking at any given time and just log those thoughts right then. And then they would talk about those. And he said, maybe this could give me a good framework. And when he got the results back, he was like, wow, this is fascinating how. Just all over the place it was. It's so multilayered. It's so varied. People can be thinking of a watering can and be saying the words flower, pot at the same time with no explanation at all.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

Sometimes you have multiple voices all talking over each other. And he was just like, this is. He just put the device away and, like, walked slowly out of the room, I think.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Yeah. So this is a really big deal that he was able to come up with this, because this is one of the reasons why people were so, I guess, wary of trying to study inner voices because they're so subjective. Hurlburt figured out a way to, like, take as much subjectivity out of it as possible.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

You know, and I think in the.

[Chuck Bryant]

So simply too.

[Josh Clark]

Exactly. And I think in the. More, like, the bigger studies that he came up with, like, you would get a beeper and, like, turned out in the world for, like, a week or two weeks or something, so. So that you would eventually get used to the beeper being there. Wouldn't just be, like, waiting, like, I'm gonna have this awesome thought, like, ready for when the beeper goes off.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's a good way to do it.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. So that you would, like. He was genuinely tapping into whatever random thoughts are in your head. So he also. The process also includes extensive interviews. I saw, like, multiple, like, six, seven minutes on one word, one thought from one entry. And then they're really careful not to lead the person and have them, you know, start to implant memories accidentally, that kind of stuff, or revise what they're actually thinking, but instead kind of dig deeper and deeper and deeper into what else was there at the time. And I think the people who are participants studies like this are actually surprised from these interviews because they didn't realize, like, you know, in addition to thinking this word, wait, there was this image over here, too. And, you know, it just goes on from there.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And he's like Rosebud's got to be more than a wagon.

[Josh Clark]

It was a sled.

[Chuck Bryant]

No, I thought it was a wagon. Was it a sled?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Good Lord, you're the movie guy, too, aren't you? I know, man. Burl Ives just rolled over in his grave.

[Chuck Bryant]

Why did I think it was a wagon? It's a sled, which is really just a wagon with rails.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I guess it is. I think Radio Flyer makes both. So who's going to discriminate?

[Chuck Bryant]

Not me. Shall we take a break?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right. We'll take another break, and we'll talk a little bit about brain areas lighting up right after this.

[Martin Luther King III]

It was a moment that should have broken me, but just because of how I was raised and my bullishness and arrogance to want to be great hardened me. It gave me a platform to be so singularly focused on greatness.

[Dr. Laurie Santos]

We all have moments like this. Something happens that's supposed to break us, but it's in these moments that we discover what we're really made of. I promise you, if anyone knows this, it's me. I'm Ashlyn Harris.

[Chuck Bryant]

Stuff you should know. Okay, buddy, I'm supposed to lead off this segment, but I'm going to hand it right back to you because I know when I say the word efference, you get excited. We're going to talk about efference copies at long last. Take it away.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, okay. I had never heard about this before. Had you?

[Chuck Bryant]

Same.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, so apparently, when we think, when we're about to speak right now, without me being cognizant of it, there's a part of my brain that is pre arranging and planning what I'm about to say. Right. I have no idea that this is going on. I think I'm just talking at this point. But there's a part of my brain that knows exactly what's going to happen. And they set out. They send out what's called. Sorry, my brain apologizes for that. What's called an efference copy, which is basically a blueprint of what I'm about to say to the rest of my brain that includes what movements I'm going to make with my jaw and tongue, a prediction of what it's going to sound like coming out, and then also basically a blanket statement, like what you're about to hear is coming from you. So it keeps us from being startled. It allows us to recognize that what we're saying is coming from us. And the most amazing part about this is that when we think to ourselves, using our Inner voice or inner symbols or whatever, but definitely inner voice. I'm not sure about symbols, now that I mention it. We do the same thing. We get basically a cruder version of the efference copy, but it also includes orders to not move your mouth, to not move your tongue, that there's not going to be a touch sensation, but that everything else is like. The efference copy contains all the other stuff.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, fascinating. And efference copy's not a bad band name.

[Josh Clark]

No, Little Brainy it is, but yeah, I could see. I'm going to go to the old standby. Math Rock.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, yeah, totally.

[Josh Clark]

Okay.

[Chuck Bryant]

So as far as the old wonder machine goes, there obviously have done plenty of studies where they. They always like to see what's lighting up, you know. But these are often disappointing to me when it comes to stuff like this because it's like, I feel like at this point in our show, after so many years, even listeners will say, oh, I bet the temporal cortex lights up. That's associated with memory and hearing and language. And then Broca's area, which we've talked about countless times, it's associated with speech. And yes, those areas light up.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Ta da.

[Josh Clark]

Yes. But at the same time, there's also different regions that light up as well that wouldn't light up when we speak out loud. So it's clear that there are. It has its own thing that inner voice is different as far as the brain is concerned, from speech as well, that they bear a strong resemblance to one another. And then also they found the brain patterns for when we are spontaneously speaking to ourselves. That pristine inner inner talk that Herbert mentioned, that's. That uses. Or. Different regions of the brain light up for elicited types where we're like using. We're. We're. We're rehearsing what we're saying or something like that. Man. My efference copy is.

[Chuck Bryant]

Is it. Is it working slow or fast?

[Josh Clark]

It's a little rough around the edges today.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay. You might be wondering about schizophrenia. This is something that we've talked about on the show before because very sadly, many times you'll see someone suffering from schizophrenia having a conversation out loud, seemingly with someone. So it's very natural to probably wonder, like, oh, what's going on there? They can call those verbal hallucinations is that someone's inner voice. And they have done studies and they found that there can be an impairment of the process that creates efference copies. In those cases, I think it's. Another term is corollary discharge. And if you have schizophrenia, it can make it hard for you to identify that voice as their own. So kind of what it seems like is happening. Seems like that's exactly what's happening.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, that message is not included in the efference copy then also, I failed to mention before, one of the things that the efference copy does is say you don't need to pay attention to what is about to come out of your head. As much like the sound of it, it's not coming from you. You don't have to respond to it as you would if somebody was talking to you. And that's another thing that gets lost in the efference copy as well. They respond to the sound of the voices in their head in a way that, that makes them feel, or they respond to a voice as if somebody walked up and was talking to them. The problem is there's no one there. And they are misattributing their own inner thoughts. That's kind of one of the big postulations for schizophrenia, or at least audio verbal hallucinations associated with schizophrenia, which is. That's a great example right there of why studying inner speech is such a big deal. Like, if we can figure this out, you could conceivably help treat people that much better. You know, I mean, like being plagued with inner voices that you think are coming from somewhere else, especially if they're like commanding you to do things, that's a great thing to learn how to treat. You know, that's debilitating. And then also kind of related to that is the idea that as we start to learn more about inner speech and where it comes from and what it does and all that, that we could conceivably get better at treating things like anxiety or OCD because those things have clearly shown to be associated with negative self talk. That you can increase your own anxiety and stress by basically being mean to yourself or being just having a negative outlook on life. And it's. I mean, just from my own experience, it's nuts how illuminating it can be when you have somebody point out, like, do you hear how you're viewing the world in your own head? Do you hear the things you're saying to yourself? And when you become aware of it, you can change it, and when you change it, it can have sweeping effects on your entire life, one of which is treating anxiety and even depression, I think.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I mean, man, it seems like so much stuff with the human condition can come down to being in touch with yourself and really self aware. But you know, that can. Being too self aware can also be a problem. So it's just. It's. Living life is tough.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, well put, ma'am.

[Chuck Bryant]

With the ocd, you know, I'm a little bit on the OCD spectrum. Mine doesn't manifest, though, in negative self talk. But I was thinking about my inner voice, and I do a lot of. With my ocd, it's like efficiencies I'll talk about in my head. Like, when I'm doing something like cooking in my head, I'm literally saying, all right, you're going to grab the spoon and you're going to take it over here and you're going to grab the salt and then you're going to cut that thing. And I'm kind of planning out stuff that I'm about to do, but in my brain, it's all kind of wrapped up as an efficiency. If I do it in exactly, just this right way, in this order, it's the best way to do that.

[Josh Clark]

I do that, too. I associate that with perfectionism.

[Chuck Bryant]

Interesting.

[Josh Clark]

For me, it is. At least I have to do it as efficiently as possible. And efficiency is a form of perfectionism. And that if you do it all out of order, it's loosey goosey and why even bother to get out of bed?

[Chuck Bryant]

Right. But I'll even do that when it's not like a specific thing. Like, all right, if you're cooking something, I sort of get that. But if I'm at my desk sometimes and it comes and goes, I'll be like, all right, you're going to grab the mouse and click on that thing and you're going to answer that email and then you're going to grab your pen.

[Josh Clark]

Same here, man.

[Chuck Bryant]

Like, how interesting.

[Josh Clark]

All right, I had no idea that we had that in common.

[Chuck Bryant]

Hey, look at us.

[Josh Clark]

Wow. See what happens when you talk about your inner voice, Chuck? We're meant to be. I've been asking you to do this for decades now.

[Chuck Bryant]

I know. I was like, I don't want to look at myself.

[Josh Clark]

Well, that kind of leads us to the purposes of inner speech a little bit. Right. I mean, talking about it clearly helps connect people, but there's things that we gain from talking to ourselves or just being able to do that.

[Chuck Bryant]

Sure. And we've kind of touched on them here and there. You know, when kids are developing it, they believe that it's a way to sort of grow and mature into being responsible. Like, you start out hearing your parents say to go do something. Go clean up your room. And eventually the More you hear that, you'll start thinking, I should really go clean up my room. Or I'm not sure when that's supposed to start, but at some point, eventually that will lead to you saying those things to yourself like you would as a responsible adult. Like, I gotta clean this mess up, right?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And also, I mean, executive functioning, like making decisions, figuring out the best solution to a problem by simulating them, like thinking through your actions before acting, which also oftentimes ties into emotional regulation.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

All of this uses some sort of like inner voice, inner speech, inner hearing is another way that you can experience it. That's a, that's just, that's an enormous role because that's essentially how we navigate life as adults.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And you know, I already mentioned sort of the performance aspect. Like if you're, if you're about to play a game or run a race or something, like talking to yourself, you got this, you're the best, you can do this. You're going to run fast. You might have a routine that you run over in your head. That's all. Inner voice. Yeah, exactly. And that can really pay off. Obviously, much more than negative self talk and motivation.

[Josh Clark]

It's not exactly tied to what you're saying, but what you were mentioning before, how you were planning out which action to do next for cooking and then the one beyond on that, I realized that's why I had to stop playing video games. Because I would walk around thinking about how to do it better next time, even when I wasn't playing the video game, and realized like, this is not no way to spend my mental energy. Like it's one thing to just sit down and relax and play a video game. And if all I, if, if that was it for me and I could leave it there, I would totally play video games still. But I just couldn't leave it there.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, mine comes and goes too. And I haven't thought too much about when or why. So I think that's interesting.

[Josh Clark]

Do they still call them video games? It feels really 80s or 90s.

[Chuck Bryant]

I don't know. I think it's more used as a verb like when I Game.

[Josh Clark]

Gaming, Right. Yeah, I've heard that. I heard that in a magazine.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. But I think if you said, hey, do you play video games? It'd be a very Gen X way to say that.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, I'll watch that.

[Chuck Bryant]

Nothing wrong with that then. If you're wondering about, you know, because we've talked about whether you dream in other languages, if you learn a second language, is that a Mark of fluency. It kind of ties into inner voice. Generally speaking, you think in your. Or you talk to yourself in your first language. But if you are fluent in, you know, let's say I was fluent in German, if only, and I moved to Germany at times there or eventually I could have an inner voice. Zette's talking in a different way.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Not with a German accent, in American, but.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. So also, deaf people, apparently, and I would guess, especially if you were deaf from birth, they see or think in sign language, so they visualize the word, but through signs.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. So cool.

[Josh Clark]

That is super cool. And then other people can actually. They might envision someone, like their face. So they're reading their lips, but they're not hearing anything. I just think that's just fascinating. They also don't speak it themselves.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, yeah, I think that's totally fascinating.

[Josh Clark]

There was also in that same Guardian article with the woman who was featured with the Italian couple bickering in her head. There was a dude and, man, I can't find his name anywhere, but he, I think, is the hero of this entire story. Chuck.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, we don't know his name.

[Josh Clark]

His name is Justin Hopkins. I found it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, okay.

[Josh Clark]

He has this, what he basically calls an island in a sea of void. And the island is his mind. And his mind turns on when it needs to. So an example, because I don't fully understand how this guy, how his mind works, but the best I can say is he. He realizes that he's out of milk, so he needs to go buy milk. So he buys milk. Right. But imagine that being the extent of it. So he. He needs to buy milk, and he goes and buys milk, and he puts the milk back in his refrigerator, and then he doesn't have another thought until the next thing that comes along. He said that he can go hours without a thought, and so he can just sit in front of a sunset and enjoy the sunset in the most basic way that you can enjoy a sunset and just not be thinking about all the problems he has or what he has to do next or how to most efficiently watch the sunset. And this guy is like, I wouldn't want to necessarily live like that all the time because I do enjoy having, like, an inner life. But to just be able to modulate it and do that once in a while, I think that guy's amazing. And apparently in the Guardian article, they said that he says he sleeps like a baby, which I could totally imagine.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, interestingly, I know that I'm drifting towards sleep when my inner voice Gets really weird. Like, I'll be thinking of things, and when I start thinking about things and I can tell that are just absolute weird nonsense. It's almost like pre dreaming. But the problem is now I know that sleep is coming, and I know that's what that signals. So in my brain, I will start inner talking going, all right, baby, I'm about to fall asleep, and that takes me out of it.

[Josh Clark]

So, okay, I'm fascinated by this. Give us an example of how your brain starts just becoming nonsensical or speaking gibberish or whatever that you can recognize you're starting to drift off.

[Chuck Bryant]

Like, I'll be drifting, and all of a sudden, I mean, I'm just making this up because I can't. I don't get up and write it down. What I should do is write it down. But then I've ruined my nap or whatever. But it's, you know, all of a sudden, if I'm just hear words or hear my voice saying words like, you know, the chicken put on a cape and played a little basketball and jumped in a pot of chili, like complete nonsense.

[Josh Clark]

Wow.

[Chuck Bryant]

And I will recognize it's happening and go, all right, that means I'm about there. And then that takes me out of it. And then like, dagnabbit.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. But a lot of times you can just experience it and not note it and just fall asleep or note it.

[Chuck Bryant]

And then just not let it rouse me too much and it'll lead to sleep.

[Josh Clark]

Gotcha. Man, that's amazing. I've never heard of that.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's very hot.

[Josh Clark]

Pretty cool.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, boy. But every time I've said something weird about myself like that on the air, like stepping on cracks with the same place of my foot every time with the ocd, I've had people write in and say I do the same thing.

[Josh Clark]

Right. So, yeah, I think that's. I was going to say, like, I know we've been talking about ourselves a lot, but part of it for me is like, you know, I want to hear from people saying, like, I do that too.

[Chuck Bryant]

Absolutely.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, well. Oh, one other thing before we go. There was a tweet, what's become kind of a famous tweet from a few years back, I think, in 2020, where somebody just basically said, some people have an inner voice and some people don't. And it revealed this commonality among people. If you don't really have an inner dialogue, monologue, inner speech, whatever, you just assume no one else does either. And if you do have it, you just assume everybody has It. And it was really kind of eye opening to people to find, like, that's not the case at all. That it's basically a spectrum.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And I mean, maybe new research was spawned because everyone was like, oh, wait a minute. People are interested in this.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Fernyho said ferny ho.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right.

[Josh Clark]

Well, you got anything else?

[Chuck Bryant]

I mean, there's a bazillion other things, but we'll just park it right here.

[Josh Clark]

Okay. It is parked. And since we just parked it. So everyone who has been listening to the show from the outset knows we've just unlocked listeners.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. I'm gonna call this Toledo. And this is from Alexander Nozar or Alex. Alex says, you know, every time Josh talks about having come from Toledo, I always think about Tony Paco's, which he mentioned in the Fan Theory episode. What wasn't mentioned, however, was. And Tony Pacos is what it was a restaurant.

[Josh Clark]

Right. It's like a hot dog place, very famous in Toledo. And then Jamie Farr made it famous on mash.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. What wasn't mentioned, however, was what makes Tony Pacos awesome. First and foremost. It was founded by a Hungarian immigrant, making it a significant place for Hungarian Americans, especially here in Ohio, which has a pretty large Hungarian population in Dayton, Columbus, Toledo, and, I believe, Cleveland. My family is Hungarian on both sides, with great grandfathers coming over here and the 1900s, early 1900s. Tony Pako serves not just Hungarian food like spaetzle, but they're well known for their homemade pickles and most importantly, their hot dogs. But what makes it truly unique as a fun place to visit is that anytime a celebrity visits, they're asked to sign a hot dog bun, which is then encased in plastic and hung on the wall. It's been a while since I've been there, but I remember Leslie Odom Jr's name and of course, Jamie Farr. So I think you two should go up there on some sort of tour and you can experience our awesome food but also sign a hot dog bun.

[Josh Clark]

I don't think they let us sign the hot dog bun, but I appreciate the thought.

[Chuck Bryant]

Are you kidding me? Didn't you get a key to the city or something?

[Josh Clark]

No, there was a listener years back who was trying to get us actually the key to the city, and I don't think it went anywhere.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, you should get a key to Toledo. I should get a key to Stone Mountain, Georgia. You should sign a hot dog Mun. And I should sign, I guess, Stone Mountain.

[Josh Clark]

Plus also, we should have the hot dogs while they're there, because Alex ain't lying. They're really good. And I have to say, if you're ever in Toledo or apparently Dayton, Columbus, Cleveland, and you aren't in the mood for a hot dog, but there's a Tony Pacos nearby, go get the stuffed cabbage because it is top notch. Like you wouldn't think this hot dog place. Why does it have stuffed cabbage? Well, because it's a Hungarian place and it is. Right. Really good. Like really good. Okay, I'm just gonna say it again. It's really good stuffed cabbage.

[Chuck Bryant]

What's it?

[Josh Clark]

Stuff with love Magic. I'm guessing three kinds of meat, probably awesome. It is. It is very good. Well, thanks a lot, Alex. It's always nice to hear from a fellow Ohioan, I'm guessing.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And if you want to be like Alex and write in and and tell us about something we love like Tony Paco's or whatever, you can send us an email to stuffpodcastheartradio.com.

[Chuck Bryant]

Stuff youf Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever.

[Dr. Laurie Santos]

You listen to your favorite show.

[Josh Clark]

Why would you do that to me?

[Caroline D'Amore]

Los Angeles, 2021. A friendly neighbor appears out of nowhere and promises to make all my dreams come true.

[Chuck Bryant]

Let's not forget that David Bloom was a professional con artist, so you didn't stand a chance.

[Caroline D'Amore]

But my dreams soon turned into a Nightmare. I'm Caroline D'Amore. Listen as I take down my scammer on Once Upon a con on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Dr. Laurie Santos]

I'm Dr. Laurie Santos. And to welcome the new year, my podcast the Happiness Lab is releasing a series of happiness how to guides to help you in 2025. I'll distill the wisdom of world class experts into easy to digest actionable tips. You'll learn how to handle relationships, how to be inspiring, how to find your purpose. The Happiness Lab's how to season starts January 1st. Listen on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Open your free I app. Search for the Happiness Lab and start listening.

[Josh Clark]

Welcome to My Legacy. I'm Martin Luther King III and together with my wife Andrea Waters King and our dear friends Mark and Craig Kilburger, we explore the personal journeys that shape extraordinary lives.

[Chuck Bryant]

Join us for heartfelt conversations with remarkable guests like David Oyelo, Mel Robbins, Martin.

[Dr. Laurie Santos]

Sheen, Dr. Sanjay Gupta and Billy Supporter.

[Josh Clark]

Listen to My legacy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Chuck Bryant]

This is my leg.