Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence

Does everyone have an inner monologue? What purpose do they serve? What if you don't have one? Listen in to find out these answers and MORE. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

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• 0:04Josh Clark?

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• 1:36Speaker 00

  Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.

• 1:47Josh 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 voices in your head, it turns out. Oh, good job, Chuck.

• 1:58Speaker 03

  Good job. You got this. You got this.

• 2:01Josh Clark?

  So what you're engaged in Chuck is called private speech.

• 2:05Speaker 03

  Oh, Chuck, you're so stupid.

• 2:07Josh Clark?

  That's still private speech.

• 2:11Josh Clark?

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

• 2:16Speaker 03

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

• 2:21Josh Clark?

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

• 2:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:29Josh 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.

• 2:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, or inner voice. And it turns out this is kind of a tough one in some ways because it's like,

• 3:03Speaker 03

  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.

• 3:16Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 3:17Speaker 03

  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, 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.

• 3:42Josh Clark?

  Yeah. 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. Of subjective and like you said, self-reported tests are 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,

• 4:27Josh Clark?

  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.

• 4:35Speaker 03

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

• 4:38Josh 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.

• 4:46Speaker 03

  Oh, I got one, too.

• 4:48Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 4:49Speaker 03

  Youth is wasted on the young.

• 4:51Josh Clark?

  Ooh, that's a good one. That's a good one, too. What was Spud's Mackenzie party animal? Two words. That's all you need to know.

• 5:00Speaker 03

  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.

• 5:20Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 5:21Speaker 03

  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, you're, or it completely disturbs your inner voice as well. And then in other studies, it 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.

• 5:48Josh 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.

• 5:57Speaker 03

  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.

• 6:10Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 6:11Speaker 03

  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.

• 6:20Josh Clark?

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

• 6:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's not a very satisfying one, but yeah.

• 6:27Josh Clark?

  So, um, 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?

• 6:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think that was, that was good, Chuck.

• 6:54Josh Clark?

  Right. Um, we, uh, we use it for, um, memorizing things, uh, problem solving. We use it to regulate ourselves, like, okay, Chuck, don't, don't be mean to yourself. Calm down.

• 7:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 7:07Josh Clark?

  That kind of stuff. But again, not out loud. And then even more, not me saying it, because dude,

• 7:12Speaker 03

  Right.

• 7:12Josh Clark?

  if your voice in your head was my voice.

• 7:15Speaker 03

  Oh, man.

• 7:16Josh Clark?

  I would be so sorry for you.

• 7:19Speaker 03

  I dream as you. Is that weird?

• 7:21Josh Clark?

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

• 7:25Speaker 03

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

• 7:41Josh Clark?

  Maybe? Fernyhough is what I saw, or what I heard. Yeah.

• 7:45Speaker 03

  Like tally ho?

• 7:46Josh Clark?

  Exactly, but Ferny.

• 7:48Speaker 03

  Right. Uh, they developed a survey and, uh, where they kind of categorized different varieties of inner speech. And their survey was called the VISQ, the Varieties of Inner Speech Questionnaire, V I S Q. Uh, and they also, along with others, have other categories. And we're kind of just gonna go through these now. But, um, one can be dialogic, which means you're, like, you're having a back and forth with yourself. Um, or, uh, others. I asked Emily if I could talk about this, because she talks out loud, um, which I guess isn't quite the same thing. But she'll, I'll see her talking to herself sometimes, having a conversation with someone. Uh, much more common when she was having frustrations with

• 8:33Speaker 03

  her business, talking, uh, like, out loud to people. Uh, but it would be in her head, but then I would also see her talking out loud. And I'll, I'll walk into her room and say, who are you talking to? And she'd tell me, and... But that's dialogic because there's someone else involved, even if that someone else is another you.

• 8:49Josh Clark?

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

• 8:55Speaker 03

  Oh, man, that'd be great.

• 8:57Josh Clark?

  So, yeah, dialogic seems to be fairly, fairly common, too.

• 9:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 9:03Josh Clark?

  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 this subkind 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.

• 9:45Josh Clark?

  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 yourself. Doesn't fit this list at all, and yet, here we are.

• 9:59Speaker 03

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

• 10:06Josh Clark?

  Right, but at the same time, you could be having a conversation with somebody about phone, keys, wallet. So it would be dialogic condensed inner speech. Drives me nuts.

• 10:15Speaker 03

  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 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 like Emily having a conversation with another person.

• 10:42Josh Clark?

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

• 10:57Speaker 03

  So interesting.

• 10:58Josh 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.

• 11:15Speaker 03

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

• 11:38Josh 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.

• 11:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 11:56Josh 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.

• 12:17Speaker 03

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

• 12:23Josh Clark?

  Nice. I was gonna say, I was waiting for you to say brick, because that's what I hear.

• 12:29Speaker 03

  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.

• 12:39Josh Clark?

  That's awesome, man.

• 12:41Speaker 03

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

• 12:45Josh Clark?

  Very smart. Boy, you know what you're doing, don't you?

• 12:47Speaker 03

  I'm working on it. Another is prompted, no, no, I'm sorry, expanded speech, which is like, 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 way.

• 13:07Josh Clark?

  Yeah, 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.

• 13:21Speaker 03

  Right, uh, which that got me on a sidetrack of like, oh, that's like, why do people's, 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 because that gets into a whole other thing, which is, should probably be a shorty.

• 13:36Josh Clark?

  The Efference copy?

• 13:38Speaker 03

  No, no, no, like, uh, 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?

• 13:47Josh Clark?

  I think your Efference copy, probably.

• 13:49Speaker 03

  No, it has to do with like, the way your skull reverberates.

• 13:52Josh Clark?

  Oh, really?

• 13:53Speaker 03

  Actual, physical stuff, but I think that could be a shorty.

• 13:56Josh Clark?

  Reverberating Skull is a great album name.

• 13:59Speaker 03

  It is, and we'll get to Efference Copy later on.

• 14:01Josh Clark?

  I clearly can't wait.

• 14:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's good stuff.

• 14:04Josh Clark?

  There's, now we reach a point on the list where coherence starts to emerge. Um, we've got like, basically a, 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, um, here's some pictures of, uh, different stuff. Pick out the ones whose names rhyme. So you've got a boot and then a, I don't know, a foot or something like that? Like, you would pick out the, the boot and the foot? And depending on how liberal they were with their, um, their judgments, they would say, yes, that rhymes.

• 14:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, but it's a prompt from an outside source.

• 14:48Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 14:48Speaker 03

  Uh, whereas the next one, which logically follows, thankfully, pristine or spontaneous, uh, that was Russell Hurlbert. Kind of a mouthful, um, a researcher that coined this one. That is, uh, that's just unprompted, uh, spontaneous, and it's a part of like, what makes us us?

• 15:06Josh Clark?

  Yes, like, that is your genuine, true inner voice. Sometimes it just comes out of nowhere. Sometimes when you're just are talking to yourself and don't even realize you're talking to yourself in your head, like, that's what, what Herbert, Hurlbert calls pristine. And there's this really great Aon article about, um, your inner voice that was written by Phil Jaekel, J A E K L. And Phil points out, I'm Hopefully, I can run 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 external, the exterior of the unconscious, and we would be tapping into people's unconscious.

• 15:51Josh Clark?

  And other people are like, I think Ferny 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 Ferny Ho, that's what he's known as. They call him the breaks.

• 16:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's right. And well, except when he gets excited about something, then he yells out, Ferny Ho.

• 16:07Josh Clark?

  That's right.

• 16:10Speaker 03

  Maybe before we break, we should talk about these other four.

• 16:13Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 16:14Speaker 03

  Because that visk 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, Mal Gorzada, Polchaska Wassel?

• 16:28Josh Clark?

  Wiesel?

• 16:29Speaker 03

  Wiesel, maybe?

• 16:30Josh Clark?

  That's something.

• 16:31Speaker 03

  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.

• 16:42Josh Clark?

  Your enabler.

• 16:43Speaker 03

  Yeah. The ambivalent parent, which is awful, otherwise known as Gen X parent,

• 16:51Speaker 03

  associated with strength and love and caring criticism.

• 16:54Josh Clark?

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

• 16:59Speaker 03

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

• 17:04Josh Clark?

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

• 17:07Speaker 03

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

• 17:11Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 17:11Speaker 03

  That's not ambivalent.

• 17:12Josh Clark?

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

• 17:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:19Josh Clark?

  Way off. 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?

• 17:30Speaker 03

  That's gross, yeah.

• 17:31Josh Clark?

  But it's true.

• 17:32Speaker 03

  I know. What about the others emotionally ticking?

• 17:35Josh Clark?

  Proud rival.

• 17:37Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 17:38Josh Clark?

  And then there's one that was initially called Calm Optimist, but Polchaska Weasel 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.

• 18:01Speaker 03

  All right. That's a lot.

• 18:04Josh Clark?

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

• 18:09Speaker 03

  Sort of.

• 18:09Josh Clark?

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

• 18:12Speaker 03

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

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• 20:29Josh 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.

• 21:04Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 21:04Josh Clark?

  It just, yeah, it's like old Furniho. 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?

• 21:38Speaker 03

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

• 22:03Josh Clark?

  Wow.

• 22:04Speaker 03

  Basically, you can think up to six times faster than the fastest talker on the planet.

• 22:10Josh Clark?

  Yeah, that's at least twice as much.

• 22:13Speaker 03

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

• 22:15Josh Clark?

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

• 22:19Speaker 03

  No, it's unfortunately just some, I mean, hey, I love this guy. I'm not 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.

• 22:32Josh Clark?

  Wow. Way to go, Sean.

• 22:34Speaker 03

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

• 22:41Josh 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 Vitgotsky, 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 is there, 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.

• 23:10Speaker 03

  Right.

• 23:11Josh Clark?

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

• 23:14Speaker 03

  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 Vitgotsky, who you said we would meet, you know what, let's just bring him in. Come on in, Lev.

• 23:31Josh Clark?

  Hey, I'm dead.

• 23:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly. This is in the 1930s, so he has left us, earthwise. 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. Uh, as, 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 need, I want to stay up.

• 24:01Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 24:01Speaker 03

  Uh, 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. Uh, 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.

• 24:24Josh Clark?

  Right. And then they start to, after that, they continue to develop, and get good at things like condensed speech, and create, creating their own self shorthand and stuff like that.

• 24:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 24:36Josh Clark?

  It's pretty cool. Um, so, again, I said that this kind of turned things on the, on our head, as far as understanding. Piaget, who was a very famous French psychologist, he, 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, they, they develop their brain and their understanding of the world through learning, through this inner dialogue. And it was, Weygatzky, believe it or not, was a Soviet researcher. So, the West wasn't exposed to his ideas until like, the 50s. And when they, when they finally came out, got, were, were translated, it was like, great, okay, now we finally understand.

• 25:15Speaker 03

  Right. Now, he's the one that coined the term inner voice, right?

• 25:18Josh Clark?

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

• 25:24Speaker 03

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

• 25:29Josh Clark?

  It sounded Russian to me, in my head.

• 25:34Speaker 03

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

• 25:46Josh Clark?

  Really?

• 25:46Speaker 03

  I know, I see it happening. Uh, 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, in cursive.

• 26:03Josh Clark?

  Like on a table, like just in the air?

• 26:05Speaker 03

  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, 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.

• 26:27Josh Clark?

  Huh.

• 26:27Speaker 03

  Uh, it's not always like, I'm nervous, never like, I'm stressed or anything like that.

• 26:32Josh Clark?

  So it's a way to alleviate her anxiety?

• 26:35Speaker 03

  I guess.

• 26:36Josh Clark?

  How interesting. That's cool. I've never heard of that.

• 26:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, I, hey, man.

• 26:41Josh Clark?

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

• 26:44Speaker 03

  When you couple up with people, it's, and you really dig in, you don't have any of those barriers up.

• 26:49Josh Clark?

  Mm-hmm.

• 26:50Speaker 03

  Uh, it turns out that we're all just a little strange.

• 26:53Josh Clark?

  Well, how is her air penmanship?

• 26:56Speaker 03

  She's, she's great. I can read it. I can look at her, you know, thumb and just, I can spell it right out in my head.

• 27:02Josh Clark?

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

• 27:04Speaker 03

  No, no, no.

• 27:05Josh Clark?

  Okay, I was gonna say, wow.

• 27:07Speaker 03

  It looks like thumb's gone wild.

• 27:08Josh Clark?

  Right, nice. Too hot for a TV thumb, why?

• 27:11Speaker 03

  Uh, anyway, um, but that's kind of her inner voice too, you know, in a way, just manifesting itself physically. Uh, but it's still, you know, not out loud. Uh, but, uh, some people constantly are doing this kind of thing, talking to themselves. Others sometimes, some never. Uh, these two researchers, Johan Nedergaard and Gary Lepien. Um, if you have zero inner speech, they have termed that an endophagia. And they say, and this is another kind of frustration, like, oh, between five to 10% of people don't have inner speech, whereas Russell Hurlbert, who we've met, said, no, it's more like 50 to 70%.

• 27:51Josh Clark?

  Have inner speech. Or no, don't have inner speech, right?

• 27:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, so that's wildly different.

• 27:58Josh Clark?

  It is wild. That's a great term for it again, wild. So now Fernyhoe comes in and says, whoa, everybody. I'm not really excited about this having its own term, an endophasia. And and means lack, endo means inner phasia's 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?

• 28:42Josh Clark?

  And I think Nedergaard and Lupien were like, it's a pretty cool name, though. Can we please keep it? And Fernyhoe's thinking about it right now.

• 28:51Speaker 03

  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.

• 29:04Josh Clark?

  Right, yeah. Should we? Who are you?

• 29:09Josh Clark?

  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.

• 29:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, and they've also found, this is Nedergaard and Lupien 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.

• 29:48Josh Clark?

  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 like, 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.

• 30:21Josh Clark?

  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.

• 30:29Speaker 03

  Right.

• 30:30Josh Clark?

  Feelings, like just your emotions, which I'm kind of like, okay, is that, 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 that drive you like, that just seems like it could get scary.

• 30:59Speaker 03

  There's Fraud?

• 31:00Josh Clark?

  Huh?

• 31:01Speaker 03

  Like it's fraud?

• 31:02Josh Clark?

  Fraud, 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 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.

• 31:46Josh Clark?

  That's apparently what sensory awareness is like.

• 31:49Speaker 03

  Huh, all right. That that study from last year where they were talking about verbal memory made me wonder about dyslexia.

• 31:58Speaker 03

  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.

• 32:12Josh Clark?

  Really?

• 32:12Speaker 03

  Which I thought was fascinating. Yeah, because a lot of times they think in images and they think in, they call it kind of like 3D thinking.

• 32:18Josh Clark?

  Gotcha.

• 32:19Speaker 03

  So it's less word based.

• 32:21Josh 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.

• 32:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 32:33Josh Clark?

  A lot of times I talk to myself, but I think, I don't know. I think 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.

• 32:46Josh Clark?

  You know, what's going on in my head at any given time? Like really just introspecting. Like I do it a lot, but I'm not necessarily good at it is what I guess what I'm trying to say.

• 32:55Speaker 03

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

• 32:58Josh Clark?

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

• 33:04Speaker 03

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

• 33:08Josh 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.

• 33:25Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 33:25Josh 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.

• 33:47Speaker 03

  Oh, wow.

• 33:48Josh 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.

• 34:01Speaker 03

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

• 34:09Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 34:10Speaker 03

  And then you get the safe mouth 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 be, I'll think of that word.

• 34:19Josh 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 if she has an inner voice or if she thinks in symbols or whatever?

• 34:41Speaker 03

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

• 34:44Josh Clark?

  Okay, do let me know. Text me.

• 34:46Speaker 03

  She, yeah, it says Ruby says that her inner voice just says, find Josh, kill Josh.

• 34:53Josh Clark?

  Burn Josh.

• 34:54Speaker 03

  No, she loves you.

• 34:55Josh Clark?

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

• 34:59Speaker 03

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

• 35:02Josh Clark?

  Hey, did she, uh, no, did she like Magdalena Bay?

• 35:06Speaker 03

  She did.

• 35:07Josh Clark?

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

• 35:11Speaker 03

  No, I thought I texted you back.

• 35:12Josh Clark?

  No.

• 35:13Speaker 03

  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.

• 35:20Josh Clark?

  I, 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 just say something.

• 35:30Speaker 03

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

• 35:34Josh Clark?

  Cool.

• 35:35Speaker 03

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

• 35:40Josh Clark?

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

• 35:43Speaker 03

  No, I'm just kidding.

• 35:44Josh Clark?

  Man, you're getting me all over the place today.

• 35:47Speaker 03

  Back to Russell Hurlbert. That's just so hard to, it doesn't roll off the tongue, sorry.

• 35:52Josh Clark?

  Even in your head, it doesn't.

• 35:54Speaker 03

  Yeah. Oh, yeah. In my inner voice, it's hard to say too.

• 35:57Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 35:59Speaker 03

  He developed a tool called the descriptive experience sampling. I would call it the sampler, but DES. 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 gotta 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.

• 36:30Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 36:30Speaker 03

  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 multi-layered, 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.

• 36:55Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 36:56Speaker 03

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

• 37:05Josh Clark?

  Yeah. He, yeah. So, um, 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, um, I guess wary of trying to study inner voices because they're so subjective. Hurlbert figured out a way to like, take as much subjectivity out of it as possible.

• 37:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 37:25Josh Clark?

  You know, and I think in the-

• 37:26Speaker 03

  So simply too.

• 37:27Josh Clark?

  Exactly. And I think in the more, um, 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. It wouldn't just be like waiting, like, I'm gonna have this awesome thought like ready for when the beeper goes off.

• 37:46Speaker 03

  That's a good way to do it.

• 37:47Josh 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 in studies like this are actually surprised from these interviews because they didn't realize like,

• 38:28Josh Clark?

  you know, in addition to thinking this word, wait, there was this image over here too. And, um, you know, it just goes on from there.

• 38:34Speaker 03

  Yeah. And he's like, rosebud's gotta be more than a wagon.

• 38:39Josh Clark?

  It was a sled.

• 38:41Speaker 03

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

• 38:43Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 38:44Speaker 03

  Oh, good lord.

• 38:45Josh Clark?

  You're the movie guy too, aren't you? Man, Borough Lives just rolled over in his grave.

• 38:51Speaker 03

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

• 38:57Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I guess it is. I think Radio Fire makes both. So who's gonna discriminate? Not me.

• 39:04Speaker 03

  Uh, shall we take a break?

• 39:05Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 39:06Speaker 03

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

• 39:25Speaker 03

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• 39:39Josh Clark?

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• 39:56Speaker 03

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• 40:04Speaker 04

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• 40:46Speaker 03

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

• 40:58Josh Clark?

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

• 41:02Speaker 03

  Same.

• 41:02Josh 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 gonna happen. And they set out, they send out what's called, uh, 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, um, what movements I'm gonna make with my jaw and tongue.

• 41:44Josh Clark?

  Um, and a prediction of what it's going to sound like coming out. And then also a, um, 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.

• 42:27Josh Clark?

  But that everything else is like, the efference copy contains all the other stuff.

• 42:33Speaker 03

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

• 42:37Josh Clark?

  No.

• 42:37Speaker 03

  Little, little brainy.

• 42:39Josh Clark?

  It is, but yeah, I could see, uh, I'm gonna go to the old standby math rock.

• 42:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, totally.

• 42:45Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 42:46Speaker 03

  Uh, so as far as the old wonder machine goes, there obviously have done plenty of, um, studies where they, they, they always like to see what's lighting up, you know? Uh, 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, 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, is the, it's associated with speech. Um, and yes, those areas light up.

• 43:22Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 43:22Speaker 03

  Ta-da.

• 43:23Josh 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. But 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 talk that Hurobert mentioned. That uses, or different regions of the brain light up for elicited types where we're like using, we're rehearsing what we're saying or something like that.

• 44:08Josh Clark?

  My efference copy is.

• 44:13Speaker 03

  Is it, is it working slow or fast?

• 44:15Josh Clark?

  It's a little rough around the edges today.

• 44:17Speaker 03

  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 will 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? You know, 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.

• 45:00Speaker 03

  So kind of what it seems like is happening seems like that's exactly what's happening.

• 45:05Josh 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, where 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.

• 45:48Josh Clark?

  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,

• 46:30Josh Clark?

  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 like how you're viewing the world like in your own head? Like, 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,

• 47:15Josh Clark?

  one of which is treating anxiety and even depression, I think.

• 47:19Speaker 03

  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.

• 47:36Josh Clark?

  Yeah, well put, man.

• 47:39Speaker 03

  Uh, with the OCD, you know, I'm a little bit on the OCD spectrum. And mine doesn't manifest, though, in negative self-talk, but I was thinking about my inner voice. And I do a lot of, um, 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, alright, you're gonna grab the spoon, and you're gonna take it over here, and you're gonna grab the salt, and then you're gonna cut that thing. And I'm kind of planning out stuff that I'm about to do, but it's, in my brain, it's all in the, in the, and like, kind of wrapped up as an efficiency. Like, if I do it in exactly just this right way, in this order, it's, it's the best way to do that.

• 48:20Josh Clark?

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

• 48:25Speaker 03

  Hmm, interesting.

• 48:26Josh Clark?

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

• 48:38Speaker 03

  Right. But I'll even do that when it's not like a specific thing, like, alright, 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, alright, you're gonna grab the mouse and click on that thing, and you're gonna answer that email, and then you're gonna grab your pen.

• 48:51Josh Clark?

  Same here, man.

• 48:53Speaker 03

  Like, how interesting, alright.

• 48:54Josh Clark?

  I had no idea that we had that in common.

• 48:56Speaker 03

  Hey, look at us.

• 48:58Josh Clark?

  Wow. See what happens when you talk about your inner voice, Chuck?

• 49:01Speaker 03

  We're meant to be.

• 49:02Josh Clark?

  I, I've been asking you to do this for decades now.

• 49:05Speaker 03

  I know. It's like, I don't wanna look at myself.

• 49:08Josh Clark?

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

• 49:22Speaker 03

  Sure. Uh, 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, um, sort of grow and mature into being responsible. Like, you, you start out hearing your parents say to go do something, go clean up your room, and eventually, uh, 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 yeah, at some point, eventually, that will lead to you saying those things to yourself like you would as a, you know, responsible adult, like, I gotta clean this mess up.

• 49:57Josh Clark?

  Right, 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.

• 50:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 50:15Josh 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.

• 50:29Speaker 03

  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 gonna run fast, you might have a routine that you run over in your head. That's all inner voice. Yeah, exactly. And that can be, that can really pay off, obviously, much more than, than negative self-talk and motivation.

• 50:57Josh Clark?

  You know, it's not exactly tied to what you're saying, but, but what you were mentioning before, like, how you were planning out which action to do next for cooking, and then the one but beyond 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.

• 51:15Speaker 03

  Oh, interesting.

• 51:16Josh Clark?

  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.

• 51:33Speaker 03

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

• 51:39Josh Clark?

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

• 51:47Speaker 03

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

• 51:52Josh Clark?

  Gaming, right, yeah. I've heard that. I heard that in a magazine.

• 51:57Speaker 03

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

• 52:02Josh Clark?

  Okay. I'll, I'll watch my step then.

• 52:07Speaker 03

  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, oh, if only, and I moved to Germany, at times there, or eventually I could have an inner voice, "Zet is talking in a different way."

• 52:34Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 52:35Speaker 03

  Not with a German accent, an American, but, yeah.

• 52:39Josh Clark?

  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.

• 52:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, so cool.

• 52:55Josh Clark?

  That is super cool. And then other people can actually, they might envision someone, like their face, so they're reading their lips.

• 53:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 53:04Josh Clark?

  But they're not hearing anything. I just think that's just fascinating. They also don't speak it themselves.

• 53:10Speaker 03

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

• 53:12Josh 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.

• 53:28Speaker 03

  Oh, we don't know his name?

• 53:31Josh Clark?

  His name is Justin Hopkins, I found it.

• 53:33Speaker 03

  Oh, okay.

• 53:34Josh 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 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.

• 54:17Josh Clark?

  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. He, 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.

• 54:55Speaker 03

  Well, interestingly, I know that I'm drifting towards sleep when my inner voice gets really weird.

• 55:05Speaker 03

  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, 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.

• 55:24Josh Clark?

  So, okay, I, okay, I, I'm, I'm fascinated by this. Like, 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. Like, what's?

• 55:40Speaker 03

  I'll be drifting and all of a sudden it like, 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, is write it down, but then I've ruined my nap or whatever. Uh, but it's, you know, all of a sudden, if, if I'm just hear words or I'm saying, hear my voice saying words like, you know, uh, you know, the chicken put on a cape and, uh, and played a little basketball and jumped in a pot of chili, like complete nonsense. And I will recognize it's happening and go, all right, that means I'm, I'm about there. And then that takes me out of it and then like, dang, nab it.

• 56:13Josh Clark?

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

• 56:19Speaker 03

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

• 56:24Josh Clark?

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

• 56:26Speaker 03

  It's very odd.

• 56:26Josh Clark?

  That's pretty, pretty cool.

• 56:28Speaker 03

  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 OCD, I've had people write in and say, "I do the same thing."

• 56:38Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 56:39Speaker 03

  So.

• 56:40Josh Clark?

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

• 56:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 56:51Josh Clark?

  Okay, well, oh, one other thing before we go. There was a tweet, a very, it'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, 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.

• 57:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, and I mean, maybe new research was spawned because everyone was like, "Oh, wait a minute, people are interested in this?"

• 57:36Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Ferny Ho said, "Ferny Ho!"

• 57:39Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 57:41Josh Clark?

  Well, you got anything else?

• 57:43Speaker 03

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

• 57:46Josh 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 listener mail.

• 57:57Speaker 03

  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.

• 58:13Speaker 03

  What wasn't mentioned, however, was, and Tony Paco's is what, it was a restaurant, right?

• 58:17Josh Clark?

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

• 58:23Speaker 03

  That's right. What wasn't mentioned, however, was what makes Tony Paco's 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 in the 1900s, early 1900s. Tony Paco's serves not just Hungarian food like szpetsel, 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.

• 59:06Speaker 03

  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 their awesome food, but also sign a hot dog bun.

• 59:17Josh Clark?

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

• 59:22Speaker 03

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

• 59:24Josh 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.

• 59:29Speaker 03

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

• 59:39Josh Clark?

  Plus also, we should have the hot dogs while they're there, because Alex ain't lying, and 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 Paco's 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 really good. Like, really good. Okay? I'm just gonna say it again. It's really good, stuffed cabbage.

• 1:00:09Speaker 03

  What's it stuffed with?

• 1:00:10Josh Clark?

  Love, magic, I'm guessing three kinds of meat, probably.

• 1:00:15Speaker 03

  Awesome.

• 1:00:16Josh Clark?

  It is, it is very good. Well, thanks a lot, Alex. It's always nice to hear from a fellow Ohioan, I'm guessing.

• 1:00:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:00:25Josh Clark?

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

• 1:00:39Speaker 00

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