August 15, 2017 • 50 mins
Despite as much as one percent of the adult population having the condition, science doesn't actually know how stuttering works. The best it's come up with so far: there seems to be an issue between the physical process of speaking and the thought process that underlies it.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
There's Charles w Chuck Bryan. There's no our guest producer today,
which means it's still Stuff you should Know. That's right,
(00:21):
the Jerry Free edition. Yeah it feels weird. Yeah, She's like,
I can't do this today. I'm going to the mall.
She's always leaving us for them all. I know. That's weird.
Ever since we did that mall episode and she learned
it was a thing, right, you know, She's like, this
sounds like my kind of place. How you doing, I'm
(00:43):
doing pretty good. I'm been wanting to do this one
for a long time, and I think I started to
research it and I was like, oh man, I saw
maybe we went on tour or something like that. I
got pulled away from it and never went back to it.
So I'm glad we're doing it finally. So stuttering if
or in the in North America or Australia and stammering
(01:04):
if you're in the UK. Perhaps is that how it works?
I don't know. I know that stammering is what they
call it in the UK. Do they call it stuttering
in Australia as well. Yeah, this thing I pulled up
just said in general it's North American Australia say stutter,
UK they say stammer. But it's the same thing, right,
it's basically Uh. I think the way that they get
(01:26):
around that is calling it disfluency. No one calls it that,
the scientists do. I never heard that word, sure, disfluency.
So I think that's actually the clinical name for what
we call stuttering or stammering, depending on where you are. Yeah.
And wasn't that Colin Firth movie called The Disfluent Prince
(01:49):
Who would Be King? Yep? I think that was the
working title what they call it, The King's Speech? Yeah,
pretty good movie. That was cute. Cute it was. Any
time you get Jeffrey Right in there in an inspirational role,
it's gonna be a cute movie. No, not Jeffrey Right,
Jeffrey Rush, I don't Jeffrey Wright always plays like the
(02:13):
super smart, like kind of um, like a deep state guy.
Jeffrey Right. He was bask yot right, I'm not thinking
the right guy. Did he play Baskiyat? I think so?
I don't think so in the movie Basku Yot, Yeah,
is that Jeffrey right? I don't think so. It is
Jeffrey right. Jeffrey Wright has been in tons of stuff.
(02:35):
Just look them up. You'll be like, Oh, that's Jeffrey right.
This is going terribly already. This is basically like the
podcast equivalent of stuttering, because chuck stuttering, also known as stammering,
better known as disfluency, is an interrupted flow of speech. Okay,
(02:59):
but what when it starts to qualify for what we
would call like stuttering or stammering, it is. It's really noticeable.
It's um. It has a an interrupting effect typically on
the conversation or the communication that's meant to be going on,
the speaking that's going on. UM, that's on the far
(03:20):
end of the spectrum, on the on the other end
of the spectrum. Apparently just about everybody engages in disfluent speech.
I'm particularly guilty because I say um a lot, and
that's a form of disfluency. And disfluency chuck comes from
the idea that um that when you speak fluently, you're
speaking in a flowing manner that that is easy to
(03:43):
follow typically and is owner interrupted. But when you start
adding things like um or pauses or uh that kind
of thing like that, Uh, that's that's disfluency. And again,
disfluency is a normal part of communication if it occurs
about less than ten percent of the time. After that
(04:04):
you start to get into the stuttering slash stammering spectrum
or side of the disfluent spectrum. Yeah, and one thing
I learned, you know, you and I uh both Q
a quality assure each episode, which means, um, it's a
little behind the curtain peak. But Jerry will send them
back to us and you listen to it once and
(04:26):
then give her any like edit notes or whatever, um
and thoughts, and then I will listen to it and um,
generally I have no edit notes, um um um. And
I found that I know we're both gonna be so
self conscious about that. Well that's where I was getting too. Though.
I found early on when listening to these episodes of
ourselves that it's it doesn't pay to focus on disfluency
(04:52):
in our own language because it can drive you nuts,
it really can. And so we have a conversational podcast,
so we're not trying to you know, we're not Churchill
or Henry or was it Henry the six No, yeah
it was, Um, I don't remember. Just call him Firth,
(05:15):
how about that? Yeah, we're not calling Firth addressing the
country on the airwaves where it was very important that
he come across, as you know, a certain had a
certain fluency. But um, when it comes to stuff like this,
I think people are used to the fact, like occasionally
we'll get emails that go you go true do you say,
like and I'm a lot and we're just like, our
(05:37):
response is better luck finding a different podcast. This is
not for you. So anyway, I learned to not drive
myself crazy with that stuff. No, but it's funny you
bring that up because I was just yesterday listening to
um the Stockholm Syndrome episode for Stuff you Should Know Selects,
and I must have said, like a five time is
(06:00):
over the span of ten words even to that. But
even I noticed it. I normally have I'm pretty good
about tuning it out, but even I noticed at that time.
And it really kind of raises this issue that that
the whole thing about starting or stammering is not that
it's a it's a disorder or disease or a the
(06:26):
sign of an unintelligent person, or that the person can't
think of what they mean to say. It's absolutely none
of those things. It is strictly an interruption in what
we would consider normal communication, and so attention is drawn
to it, and it turns out that that just makes
the problem worse and worse, so it it turns into
(06:46):
this vicious cycle um to where But that's all that.
That's all it is. That's it. That's really it. And
I mean, like there's there's different theories about what's behind
it or what could make it worse, what could possibly
make it better, But really all it is is just
interrupted communication between two people. Because it's not like the
person who's who's stuttering uh stutters in their head, Like
(07:11):
it's strictly when they're speaking and communicating with other people.
So it's it's pretty it's a unique it's a unique condition, yeah,
and they're they're generally three ways in which that flow
can be interrupted. UM. One is is repetition UM. So
if you say the first few um, like the beginning
of a word, if you repeat it a few times
(07:32):
in a row and then say the word um. Another
would be prolongation. So if the word is like you would,
you would roll that l out by itself for a
long time, and then the last would be an abnormal stoppage,
which is just no sound at all coming out. Yeah block, Yeah,
a complete block. Have you you known anyone with a
(07:54):
severe stutter? Sure, yeah, I've I've I've known people with
stutters before. Yeah, I know somebody with a very severe stutter.
And it's always interesting because I think, and we'll get
to like what you should and shouldn't do as a
participant in a conversation with someone who stutters. But before
I read this, I knew that just as a courtesy,
(08:16):
what you probably shouldn't do, which is correct, is try
and complete someone sentence for them, even though that urges there.
You know, it's just a natural instinct because people do that,
you know, when speaking all the time, if someone can't
think of a word or something. But like you said,
that's not what's going on. No, no, And I mean that,
And I think that urge also comes from a good place. Typically,
(08:39):
like you're not you're not saying like, uh, pitch is
the word stupid. That's not what you're saying when you
when you when you finish their sentence, you're helping them
along to to keep the conversation on track, right, But
what you're also doing is saying you're not communicating effectively.
I'm jumping in and taking over. Were on your behalf.
(09:01):
Just sit there and be quiet. So um, yeah, we'll
talk more about what to do or what to what
not to do. When you're in a conversation with somebody
with a stutter, I don't know what you mean. You're trying,
you're trying to help, You're not trying to like be
a jerk. Yeah, but it's it's not a help. No,
it's not. But I imagine they also understand to a
certain degree to well, it's probably just from being exposed
(09:24):
to it so much for so long, and some people feel,
you know, like with anything like this, some people might
be used to it and have been like, well, you
know this how I talk. I've tried to correct it
and I've kind of learned to live with it, and
other people might still feel really bad about it. Yeah.
I I read a um, I guess an essay, a
blog post basically by a guy named man I can't
(09:50):
find it anywhere, great great blog post, um where he said,
I I recognize and accept my stutter, and it was
on say dot org. His name is Danny lit wak
l I t w A c K lit whack. Maybe
I embrace and accept my stutter. It's great. He talks
about his UM, his experience with growing up with a
(10:13):
stutter his whole life, and just what a negative impact
it had on him for a very long time. And
I saw this elsewhere. But the first step toward UM,
either either getting past your stutter or just getting over
the fact that you have a stutter, is accepting that
you have a stutter. And that's a That's why from
(10:34):
what I can gather a really big first step, because
I think people recognize that they have a stutter to themselves,
but there's also a m there's they take measures to
protect against sharing that with other people. So I read
another UM a story about another person who grew up
(10:55):
with a stutter and when they got to I think
college or something. On the first day of this one class,
everybody went around and said where they were from, and
this person said that they forgot where they are from
rather than having to say Wilmington's Delaware because of the
W and the D. So instead they told the class
they forgot where where they where they were born and
grew up, because in that case there were certain triggers. Yeah,
(11:18):
the W and the D, the W and Wilmington's and
the D and Delaware. So there's like a lot of
obfuscation that people with with stutters engaging people with stutters
are not to be trusted in other words, but they
they have to they have to basically just take steps
to make it seem like they don't have a stutter.
And I think what this guy, Danny lit Wack was saying.
(11:39):
And then, like I said, I saw elsewhere people saying,
like I have a stutter, like this is how I talk.
You're gonna have to like either just walk away during
the conversation or just let me finish my own time.
But this is me, and this is how I talk,
and I'm accepting it or learning to and you're gonna
have to as well. And that's the the first step,
(12:00):
as I understand it. Once you're an adult, I should say,
I think there's so many things in life where that's
the case. Oh yeah, instead of like at a certain point,
at a certain age, you I think at least I
got to a point where like, well I can really
continue to work to try and change this thing, or
I can just accept that this is kind of who
I am and be happy. Yeah, don't worry, be happy now.
(12:24):
So don't ever strive to be better people. Just accept
how messed up you are, enforce everyone else around you
to accept it. Should we take a little break here,
all right, we'll take a break and we'll come back
and get into some of the stats and um, how
stutters can develop right after this? All right, so we're
(13:08):
back promised stats. The stats you shall receive, um, one
percent roughly of adults in the world stutter. Yeah, but um,
that is not one percent of children because many times
have in fact about seventy at a time, um, well
(13:29):
five percent of children stuttering, about seventy five percent a time.
They will lose that disfluence as they grow older, leaving
that at a one percent number as adults. Yeah, and
so in the U s there's that means there's about
three million or so, maybe three and a half million
people adults that stutter. Right, Um, more women, yeah? Uh?
(13:51):
Is it more women, more men, more men? One it's
like four to five in childhood and then it was
too like three or four in adulthood. So by far
men stutter more than women and um, although in strangely
boys tend to naturally lose their stutter if they're going
(14:14):
to lose their stutter in childhood, more than girls. And
I don't think they found any rhyme or reason to
that at all. Right, No, man, there's there's like a
lot of lack of understanding as far as stuttering goes
scientifically socially, there's just that we just don't know that
much about it, which is surprising because apparently as far
(14:35):
back as Moses, people have been stuttering on record, and
we'll tell that story later, Okay, about sixty There could
be a genetic basis because about the people who stutter
have a family member who stutters. Yeah, and I also
saw that among monos i gotic, also known as identical twins,
(14:55):
if one twin stutters, there's a nine chance that the
other one does as well. Interesting, but for diyes eye gotic,
like fraternal twins, there's only a twenty percent chance. So
there's clearly a genetic basis to stuttering somehow, right, But
it's also one of those things where it can be genetic,
doesn't have to be. Um. Sometimes if you like suffer
(15:18):
a head trauma, you might develop a stutter, right, Um,
sometimes it's developmental. Sometimes there it could be obviously with
something like Parkinson's disease, that could be a symptom. But
those are to me, I think, probably different kinds of stuttering.
But right, so, there's basically two main categories. Developmental, which
(15:40):
is by far the more the one that it counts
for the most cases of stuttering, and then the others acquired,
like you said, say from like Parkinson's or they put
you on a prescription that like suddenly is making you stutter.
There's also psychogenic, which is supposedly an emotional ama can
give you a stutter. I don't know if that's just
(16:03):
left over lore, because apparently they used to think all
stutters were the result of some psychology and they they
just say, well, no, it's possible, or some people have
it and just haven't figured out that it's not the
case at all, or if there really is a small
section of people who do have psychogenic stutters. But but
(16:23):
all of those would fall under acquired, And then the
other one is developmental. Boy, how about that guy that
took mushrooms and quit stuttering? Yeah, so interesting. I saw
Ted talk at his once really yeah. He um. He's like,
all about mushrooms saving the world. Paul's damn its yeah
yeah he um. He leads off our article on how
(16:43):
stuff works and he um, that's of your stutter. H
was very affected by it, kind of withdrew socially. Went
camping one time, took a bunch of psychedelic mushrooms and
climbed a tree, got up there, Uh, decided he could
not climb down. Um, and then the storm came in
and got really intense, and he he said he sort
(17:06):
of felt one with the world, um, which sounds about right.
And Uh, eventually the storm passed. He came down and
while he was up there during this intense experience, he
was like, I will not stutter anymore, and he just
kept saying that. Came down and he had lost his stutter. Yeah,
and apparently he didn't relapse, which is pretty unusual, I think.
(17:27):
So he started studying mushrooms for a living. He became
a mycologist. Man, I gotta I've said this before, I'll
say it again. One of the best articles I've ever
read my life was called blood Spore, and I think
it was in Harper's and it was um, it was
about a murder in the world of mycologists. It was
just so interesting blood spot coming soon to a theater
(17:51):
naming I hope, so you should write the script. So
Stammit's was remarkably lucky, and that he just basically decided
stutter anymore and stop stuttering. Um. Apparently, the fact that
he didn't relapse is probably what's most remarkable, because I
think relapsing among stuttering treatments is actually pretty common. Yeah,
(18:18):
but again, this is once you get out of childhood.
It's fairly common to have to develop a stutter as
you're a child, as you're learning to talk, and then
it's equally common to lose that that stutter as you
age um usually within eighteen months of developing the onset
of the stutter. Um. But then as you as you
(18:40):
acquire this or develop this stutter as you get older,
apparently becomes more and more set in. And that seems
to be because of the plasticity of your brain when
you're a kid start. It's almost like, from what I
can gather, it's like, if you have a stutter past
(19:01):
a certain point, it almost gets locked into your brain
as your neural pathways solidify and cement like you learned
to have a stutter after a while, and I think
they say to wait. I think they wait like three
months before they even start looking into it, because that's
(19:21):
how fleeting a stutter can be when you're a little kid.
After three months, they'll say, all right, maybe we should
start looking into this. Right, you would want to go
to a speech pathologist who will be able to diagnose it.
And usually what they're looking for when um, you take
your child who's developed a stutter to a speech pathologist,
(19:43):
is um how pronounced it is. There's a guy, um
and I think the late nineties named Barry Guitar. He
sounds like he played, you know, guitar for the band Boston.
He knows all the chords. No way, that's guitar George. Right,
what's that from? Oh? Come on, guitar George. Is that
(20:06):
a Ray Stevens song? No, it's from Dark Straits sing
Oh gotcha? That's a good song. It is a good song.
Uh So Barry Guitar came with five levels of stuttering development.
And I already referenced the first. I know his name
is all just. I already referenced the first level, which
(20:26):
is you, um, you have blessed than ten percent of
your speech is disfluent. That's that's anybody walking around like that, right,
unless you're like the King of England or something. And
then ironically unless you're that one king who had a stutter.
Um and then it goes on the from there and
just gets worse and worse. But one of the things
(20:47):
that's attendant with these um these different stages of development
of a stutter are like emotional problems or symptoms like
co morbid symptoms along with the stutter. So there can
be things like blinking like um, like like pursing your lips,
where you're frustrated, where you're angry, where you're fearful, where
(21:08):
you're anxious, in conjunction with stuttering. And so this is
the kind of thing that the speech pathologists will be
looking for to kind of diagnose your kid like now,
this is just normal kids stuff. For actually this the
stutters developing faster than we'd like it too, so we
need to start treating it now. Well, that makes sense
because dopamine. We've talked a lot about dopamine on the
(21:30):
show The NEU transmitter. UM. If you have an overabundance
of dopamine. Um, we talked about in the Tourette's episode,
is that one of the things that can be co
morbid with stuttering, because I know too much dopamine can
lead to a stutter as well. Yeah, supposedly, Um. So
dopamine controls movement, right, and if you have too much,
(21:53):
it makes you have ticks. Like Tourette you're saying, well,
it can. So I noticed this. Um, Parkinson's and dopamine
are um, I think they're they're like Parkinson's has to
do with too much dopamine, and Parkinson's is one of
the ways that you could acquire neurogenically a stutter. So
(22:15):
that makes total sense that there's something in your brain
with dopamine transmission to where you have maybe too much
of it. And so you're you're trying to um, you're
having trouble but get getting the thoughts in your head
into the movements that it takes to create a speech. Yeah,
I mean it's a little clumsy the way the brain
(22:37):
does this. Um, it would be a lot easier if
it was streamlined and one part of the brain, but
there are two distinct parts of the brain that deal
with language processing, and one is the one that processes
it and one articulates it with UH in a motor
skill way. And when those two things have done brain
imaging mapping and they found that there's some sort of
(23:00):
discontinuity between those two processes going on. There's that's stuttering, right,
So it could be too much dopamine. That's one thing. Um. Again,
the research into stuttering is so basic at the moment,
it's it's really surprising. Um. What they're trying to figure
out though, is are you born with the stutter like
(23:21):
you when you're born, You're you're gonna have this problem
because you're your brain isn't um using dopamine properly, or
is overproducing dopamine or are you as your brain is developing,
something goes a little off to the side, to the
left and your brain has trouble with dopamine from that
(23:43):
point on. So they're trying to figure out the etiology
of it. In other words, did you look into this
uh the genes the four genes, Yeah, a little bit.
Did you find names for those? I did not? That
is how basic the research is right now. They're not
even saying what genes they're finding. Yeah, apparently they did
discover four different genes that are linked to these proteins,
(24:07):
and these proteins are sort of like, um, they're responsible
for what's called cellular trafficking, so they kind of make
sure that the elements of the cell end up where
they need to be within that cell um. And they
said that more than one neurological disorder can be linked
to this trafficking process. So I guess it's related to
(24:29):
those proteins in those genes. Yeah, but they're like, who knows,
It's just like they've gotten to the point where they
have identified there's something up with these proteins in in
the cells and it's linked to stuttering somehow. Now just
give us like ten years to go figure out how right,
But yeah, they're they're starting to realize now there's some
(24:51):
sort of genetic basis to this two stuttering. Well, I mean,
I think the twin study that says a lot right
there for sure. You know, um, should we can we
talk about Moses? I think it's high time we talked
about Moses. We've been dancing around the burning bush for
a while now. I can't believe that guy to laugh. Well,
(25:14):
I was laughing because every time I think of burning bush,
I think of three Amigos and how funny that singing
bush was. I never saw that one. Three Amigos. Yeah,
I could do the three amigo salute, but I never
saw it. Oh man, that's a classic. Really yeah really? Oh? Sure?
Why is that surprising? I don't know. I feel like
(25:37):
I would have seen it if three comedic? You right? Oh,
I know why I never saw because chevy Chase is
in it. I'm sure, I'm sure. No. I remember my
dad raised me to really dislike so I probably wasn't
allowed to see it. That's because you can see Fletch, right.
I think I stopped watching Fletch like part way through.
(26:00):
My dad had a real influence on me. And why
didn't he like chevy Chase? So I don't. I have
no idea he had a bone to pick. I I
guess I think he thought he was a jerk or something.
Well he was, all right, it turns out right, all right.
So Moses, um, I know a lot about the Bible, because,
as listeners know, I was raised in the church, but
(26:23):
I didn't know this. I don't remember this story at all. Yeah.
I hadn't heard it either. So apparently Moses uh was
a little baby at one point, and the Pharaoh said,
was warned, you know that Moses was was gonna uh
not be his friend when he grew up. So he said,
all right, let me try something out. I'm gonna give
this little baby Moses a choice between a bowl full
(26:44):
of gold and a bowl full of hot coals. This
is what you do with babies. Jesus the gold, then
I'm gonna kill him. Yeah, typical typical Egyptian stuff. Yeah. Um.
So of course with a baby, Moses is going to
reach for the gold. Um. And then apparently an angel
(27:06):
intervened Todd, Todd the angel and directed, uh, little Moses
hand to the hot coals instead. A little gruffly if
you ask Moses. Moses grabbed a hot coal put it
in his mouth, and that's how he got to the stutter.
And he's blamed Todd ever since. And here's what I
don't get is that Moses went to God and was like, hey, man,
(27:30):
I'm supposed to lead the people out of Egypt. I
have a bad stutter. Can you you know, can you
do something for me? God? And God said no, sweat, Yeah,
he said God, Mr ed, you didn't know that, uh
he was God? So God said, um, yeah, sure I
(27:54):
can help you out. Just have your brother Aaron take
the mic. And Moses is like, I was more thinking
like you'd perform a miracle on me. But yeah, I
probably could have thought of having Aaron speak for me
as well. God, thanks for that, though. I don't know
how I missed that story. He apparently there's a quote
I am heavy of mouth and heavy of tongue, and
(28:15):
I saw some um Bible site where they were debating
whether or not what they were talking about was a stutter. Apparently,
some later Hebraic text said that Moses had trouble pronouncing
th h s thorn sounds um, it sounds more like
he had a lisp than a stutter. Who knows. Let's
(28:35):
go with stuttering though, because a lot of people do
say that Moses had a stutter. But yeah, it's it's
pretty thick. It's I've gotten used to it. But I
remember at first when we first started doing this, like, man,
I should not be speaking for a living like this
is I have a speech impediment, pure and simple. No,
(28:56):
it's just everyone now just thinks, Hey, that's Josh's voice. Yes,
it's so grating, smooth and silky Elton history. Uh, let's
see the emperor Justinian apparently U or no, I'm sorry
I was wrong. It was um Demosthenes. He was a
(29:20):
Greek statesman. He apparently was smart enough to say, who
could help me with a stutter? How about an actor?
Somebody who speaks broadcast their voice for a living. So
he hired an actor to help him, and the actor
had him do things like chew on pebbles and try
to talk smart. Um, he he's he did his speeches
(29:43):
while he's walking uphill. I guess to control his breathing.
This is actually pretty sharp stuff. I think out of
out of all the historical treatments that we're going to cover,
this one might most closely resemble, aside from the mouthful
of pebbles, um, modern treatment for stuttering. Yeah, which is
to say, uh, speaking exercises. Uh, well, you did say Justinian.
(30:07):
I don't know if Justinian had the stutter, but his
at the very least his position. Uh. A. T. S.
Of Amida was one of the first people to say, hey,
maybe that the frenulum, you know, that little flap of
skin under your tongue, the connector to the bottom of
your mouth. He was the first one that said, why
don't we start slicing that thing up? Uh, and just
(30:30):
the tongue in general. Over the years there have been
all kinds of surgeon that tried variations of slicing the
frenulum or cutting down of the tongue itself. Now, I
could probably use that one by H. D. Sgoen. I'm
sure that's how you say it. The second way, he
basically said, stuttering as a result of an oversized tongue,
(30:51):
which I have. Let's just slice and dice a little
off the sides. But none of this I know, of course,
it didn't work. It's just horror of thick apparently. Though
at the same time there were these surgeons who get
all the press because their stuff is so horrific. But
there are also other people who were kind of on
the right track a little more like Moses Mendelssohn in
(31:14):
the eighteenth century. He thought that there were too many
ideas or thoughts that were flowing at once, and that um,
it was basically it was blocking speech. There's too much
trying to get out, basically like the three Stooges model
of stuttering. Remember they're all trying to go through the door. Yeah, Yeah, yeah,
(31:35):
so you've got too much to say and you want
to just get it all out. Interesting, that makes a
little sense. Um Erasmus Darwin. Uh. He said that it
was bashfulness, emotions like bashfulness that messed up the process
of speaking right, definitely onto something there as well. And
then a psychologist named sand Ow said that it was
(31:57):
brought on by either a dread of speaking or an
over eagerness to speak, kind of like what Moses Mendelson
was saying in the latter example. They brought out by
two completely opposite things. Yeah, so a lot of this
actually is kind of in step with our current thought
about stuttering. And so either that means that these guys
(32:20):
in the eighteenth century were prescient, or our understanding of
stuttering is stuck in the eighteenth century. I'm very curious
to know which one it is. Shall we take a break? Yeah,
it's all right. We're gonna come back after this final
break and talk about therapies that don't involve cutting your
tongue apart. Yea, all right, So now we're in the
(33:08):
modern days and we're not taking scalpels to the frenulum
any longer. Because they realized that it's not a physical
affliction of the tongue. It's it's somewhere inside the brain
most likely. And uh, they have a lot of recommendations
for when a child um starts to stutter in it
(33:31):
and it sticks. Um. And you found some other tips
to which are great for parents, and kind of one
of the main ones is is give your kid plenty
of room to talk, plenty of time to talk, make
sure they express themselves fully, because one of the side
effects of having a stutter is your child may just
(33:54):
end up retreating and being super quiet. Yeah. I got
from this these hips for parents that there's kind of
this maybe not fully spoken idea that you can actually
cement your child stutter if you handle it poorly when
they start to develop it like like which knowing that
(34:19):
it just makes you even more tense about dealing with
it correctly, I would guess, which could make the whole
process even even harder. But there are some pretty brainless
things to do. This one almost killed me when I
saw it. Chuck the the site I think Kids Health
is where I got this one, but it said maintain
(34:40):
natural eye contact with your child. Try not to look
away or show signs of being upset. Get like just
break the arrow off in my heart. That's pretty sad. Like,
don't look away in disgust when your child is stuttering,
you monster, Go look in the mirror and take a
bamboo shoot and put it underneath your fingernail and think
(35:03):
about what you've done. Another good one is um And
this feels like something that would be easy to do
because it seems well intentioned to say, like, you know,
slow down, son, take your time, take your breath. They
say to not do that because you know, might make
things worse. Yeah, because what you're doing then is you're
(35:23):
drawing attention to the idea that your child is not
speaking correctly and uh, rather than just apparently letting them
communicate at their own pace. Right, There's also seems to
be a suggestion that the child has learned the child,
your kid has learned to speak to stutter because they're
(35:45):
trying to get too much out at once, and they
may have picked that up from you. If you have
like a rush rush, rush pace in your household. One
of the things that that they suggest is it just
kind of slow things down at home. And in addition
to like like schedule wise and like just taking time
and just like letting everybody breathe, maybe a little more
(36:05):
than you guys are um also speaking more slowly, not
just to your kid, but also to other people. When
your kids around speaking slowly, you're letting the setting an example,
it's called modeling your own speech so that your kid
feels like they don't have to blurt everything out at
once to get their point across. They they're going to
(36:26):
be heard no matter how long it takes. You're going
to sit there and just listen to them speak, yeah,
and not and like really listen. Another thing that seems
like a no brainer, but really just try and focus
on on what they're saying and not the fact that
they're stuttering those words out. But you know, when your
(36:46):
kid tells you a story about something that happened at school,
don't concentrate or even bring attention to the fact that
it's being said with the stutter, but just take taking
their story and if it takes a little while longer
than just respond accordingly. And and in that same vein,
like don't tell your kid to stop and start over
when they start stuttering, like like they're they have to
(37:07):
get the sentence just perfect or else you're not going
to hear him out and don't tell them to think
before speaking. That's not helping anything at all. Um, be honest, like,
don't try and uh mask it and say that, well,
you don't have a stutter, like this is just you know,
you're just in a hurry or something like they just
say to be really honest and say, you know what,
(37:29):
you you have a stutter and it's a disfluence. It's
nothing to worry about. And uh, if you'd like, maybe
we can uh talk to someone that can uh do
some exercises with you. And you know, just like all
this sounds like no brainer, not being a monster parent. Yeah,
but again some of it does. It's like telling your
(37:52):
kids like, okay, slow down, take a breath. Now, what
are you saying? Like you think you're helping your kid,
you're not so so not all some of it is
is monstrosity. Others is just like this is this is
what people would naturally do, but it's and it seems intuitive,
but you're wrong. Your intuition is dead wrong. Just let
your kids talk and listen to what they're saying, not
(38:13):
how they're saying it. And apparently this is this is
a good These are good. This is good advice. Wow,
it took me a second to get out. Thank you though,
Chuck for patiently hearing it. Then, um, this is good
advice to helping your kid just naturally, um shed the stutter,
the developmental stutter. We should say, all of this we've
(38:36):
been talking about is is dealing with the developmental stutter,
although a lot of it just applies to people with
with adults stutters out in the real world as well.
Like you can you can take just about all of
this and apply it to a business conversation if you
have a coworker who has a stutter, like don't look
(38:56):
away and discussed. There's there's good advice right there all too.
Throughout your life when you're when you're watching or listening
to somebody with the stutter. Yeah, I mean, maybe don't
do that at all, and you know the life advice,
but it's it's a good point is if you're sitting
there and you're and you don't look like you're hurrying
(39:16):
somebody with the stutter along, You're just engage. You're you're
into the conversation no matter how long it takes. I
can't imagine how much that must help. And one thing
that we didn't really. I think point out that that
bears pointing out is that people who stutter do not
necessarily stutter and in the same frequency throughout like their day.
(39:41):
There's definitely situations that are um that we are going
to make the stutter way more pronounced. They're almost exclusively
associated with higher anxiety situations. I think the nationals Stuttering
Association says that the number one situation where a stutter
is going to be about as bad as it gets
(40:02):
is during a job interview. And so employers, please don't
think that this is how this person talks. This is
probably as bad as their stutter gets. However, they're stuttering
in the in the job interview, UM. So if they're
today at home, UM, and they're just talking to their
wife or their kid or something, the stutter is probably
(40:23):
gonna be far less pronounced than it would be if
they were having to give a speech UM at their
friend's wedding. You know. Yeah, And I found that UM
with this person, Emily, and I know that it's UM.
It can vary a lot within a conversation. UM, it's
a very severe stutter. And then they will say like
a couple of sentences straight through with nothing, and then
(40:47):
I think, oh, man, like it catches me off guard
because I'm so used to the stutter, and I think, well,
you know, that's super interesting to me. You just like
blurted out a couple of two or three long sentences
with zero stutter or stammer on the same thing. Um,
(41:07):
I know, but they're fun to say together, aren't they
They are. I don't know, I just find it really fascinating. Um.
You know, speech pathology can come a long way. I
know that there are Well, it's funny. I looked online
about curing stuttering, and of course there was no like
patented cure. But Tony Propins after listening to our recording
(41:28):
our motivational Speaker thing, I saw a video. I didn't
even watch it. I just saw the title. It said
Tony Robbins cures a man of a stutter in seven minutes, right,
So I was like, oh, come on, yeah, yeah, I
didn't see anything that said stutter stuttering cures. There's basically
nine Yeah. I did not look into I didn't have
(41:49):
time to look into this new device though, did you. Uh, yeah,
a little bit. It seems pretty untested as far as
real world application goes, but it makes sense into watively
and apparently it does help in a clinical setting. So
basically it's like an like a hearing aid, but it
changes the person who's speaking's voice a little bit. Does
(42:12):
it replay it for everybody? Know, just for the person
in their ear right, Because one of the one of
the ways that somebody who stutters will be able to
talk perfectly well is speaking in unison or singing. So
like you, you can be sitting there talking to somebody
just one on one, and your stutter could be quite severe.
(42:33):
But then if you and the person agree to sing together,
you may not stutter at all the whole time you're singing.
And I have no no one has any idea why
that's the case. They just know And this device is
based on that that when we're talking in unison, or
someone who has the stutters talking in unison with somebody else,
their stutter tends to go away. So what this does
(42:55):
is it creates an echo. There's a bit of a
lag with their own voice, so they feel like they're
talking themselves, and so it helps the stutter again, at
least in a clinical setting. UM, I don't know if
it would just be too distracting in a conversation or what.
But I got the impression that they haven't tested it
fully or proven it fully outside of the lamb. Well,
(43:16):
the singing makes sense because remember mel Tillis, The name
sounds familiar. He was a country singer who had a
really pronounced stutter, kind of around like fifties, sixties and
seventies seventies is when he was biggest. But yeah, but
you know he was on like he haw and stuff,
grand ol opry like a bird and then has has
(43:40):
had a tough stutter when he was talking to the
audience and that's what he was known for. Oh yeah, yeah,
it was like you know, obviously wouldn't act, but it
was a sticky speaking of so um another famous stutter chuck,
are we there? Uh, Porky Pig. Yeah, so I was.
(44:02):
I was looking up Porky Pig, right, because you know,
that's an unusual choice to have a cartoon character whose stutters.
And it turns out that Porky Pig has a stutter
because the guy who originally did Porky Pig, Joe Doherty,
had a stutter in real life. Oh really yeah, pretty sweet? Huh,
pretty heartwarming? Well wait, there's more. He did Porky Pig
(44:25):
for the first two years, and then they fired him
because he kept missing the cues because of his stutter,
and they brought in a guy who didn't have a
stutter to do Porky Pig from that point on. But
he did it with a stutter. Yeah, because it was established.
Well that's crutty and that's sad. That's sad. Yeah, except
Porky Pigs trick was to go to a different word, yeah,
(44:46):
which is a fairly common technique though. Yeah, I imagine. So, yeah,
if you get hung up on something, just say something else.
Uh that means the same thing. Yeah, that's a good one.
Or I think, um people will say, oh, I can't
remember and just act like they can't remember the word
when they know full well what we're they're going for.
They just can't they can't say it, so they just
(45:07):
pretend like they couldn't or they forgot what they were
talking about. Should we name all some of these other
famous stutters, because uh, I think if you're an adult stutter,
you probably know these people. You may have looked it
up to feel a kinship, but maybe if you're a
little kid out there, it might make you feel better.
To know that. Uh, Darth Vader himself, James Earl Jones
(45:31):
was the stutter Yeah, big time. Emily Blunt, Yep, she's terrific.
Samuel Jackson surprising right there. Yeah, because the F bombs
flow from his mouth. He was born with that talent.
Who else from pulp fiction? Harvey kit Tell. Yeah, I
(45:53):
can't see Harvey kite Tell stuttering now. And I guess
all of these people just went through speech therapy. Huh.
I would guess so, or else they all took mushrooms
because it doesn't say whether or not they like stuttered
as a child or when they overcame it. But Nicole Kidman,
Albert Einstein, Oh really, um, Carly Simon, and you said
(46:16):
Winston Churchill earlier too, he had a stutter as well. Yeah,
Bruce Willis, Yeah, that's using too. Huh. Check I could see.
I think I've actually seen Shack stutter before on TV. Really,
m uh see Bill Walton, Tiger Woods, Charles Darwin, Jane Seymour,
(46:37):
Dr Quinn herself, Joe Biden, who will hopefully run for president,
right he overcame his stutter. Yeah, well all of them did,
which is great. But at the same time, there are
people out there who have accepted that they have a stutter.
They've probably spent a lot of time and money trying
to get rid of it and it hasn't gone anywhere,
(46:59):
so they've kind have embraced it. So I mean, if
you've gotten rid of your stutter and you've overcome it,
that's great. But if you've also embraced it, good for
you as well. Oh boy, how about this one? You
want to talk about overcoming a stutter Kendrick Lamar? Oh yeah, wow.
If you can overcome a stutter and then become Kendrick Lamar,
then that that should be a shiny example people that
(47:20):
you can do anything. Yeah, or if you embrace your stutter,
good for you as well. Agreed, because you could be
mal tell Us who was the Kendrick Lamar of country music,
or Porky Pig, the Kendrick Lamar of cartoon. That's right,
you've got anything else about stuttering? I got nothing else.
We'd love to hear from people, though, huh, yeah, for sure.
(47:40):
UM get in touch with us, and then in the
meantime you can find more stuff about stuttering, including a
lot of support and resources for parents, um all over
the web and there's things like say dot org and
the National Stuttering Association and all sorts of great resources
if you are looking for some information. And since I said, uh,
(48:04):
it's time for a listener mail, all right, I'll call
this um coming to see you in Chicago, but by
this point will be I went to see you in
Chicago and was disappointed. Hey, guys, want to write in
and say what a great show I just saw? No,
(48:24):
I want to write and say thank you for putting
together a really great podcast, long time listener and fan,
and I even mentioned you in my work bio and
I checked it out and did I really appreciate that
stuff you sh know is informative, funny, and family friendly
all at the same time. This was especially valuable when
my fiance and I took his ten year old brother
on a road trip from Chicago to Wisconsin Dells. In
(48:47):
the car, we listened to a playlist of s Y
s K episodes that I put together to suit his
ten year old tastes, How Spider's Work, how ice cream works, and,
most importantly, because we were going to Wisconsin Dells, self
proclaimed water park apple of the World, how water Slides Work,
which oddly is one of our highest performing shows ever.
People love Water Slides, man, they love hearing about them,
(49:09):
they love looking at pictures of them. It got shared
or something. It was so weird. I can't remember, but
I went to look at our download numbers one time
and I was like, Water Slides is to the top.
So higher than marijuana, well higher than marijuana. Hilarious. Uh.
Those episodes really entertained them and introduced them to the
concept of podcasts for the very first time. Thanks for
(49:32):
everything you do, and she said, they're going to see
the Fiancee and Mara or Mara are going to see
the Chicago show. So I hope you have a good time. Yeah,
and thank you very much for supporting us in our
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to get in touch with us like Mara did, or
Mara We're gonna go with Mara. Um. You can tweet
(49:55):
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(50:16):
on the Web Stuff you Should Know dot com. For
more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it
how stuff works dot com
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
There's Charles w Chuck Bryan. There's no our guest producer today,
which means it's still Stuff you should Know. That's right,
(00:21):
the Jerry Free edition. Yeah it feels weird. Yeah, She's like,
I can't do this today. I'm going to the mall.
She's always leaving us for them all. I know. That's weird.
Ever since we did that mall episode and she learned
it was a thing, right, you know, She's like, this
sounds like my kind of place. How you doing, I'm
(00:43):
doing pretty good. I'm been wanting to do this one
for a long time, and I think I started to
research it and I was like, oh man, I saw
maybe we went on tour or something like that. I
got pulled away from it and never went back to it.
So I'm glad we're doing it finally. So stuttering if
or in the in North America or Australia and stammering
(01:04):
if you're in the UK. Perhaps is that how it works?
I don't know. I know that stammering is what they
call it in the UK. Do they call it stuttering
in Australia as well. Yeah, this thing I pulled up
just said in general it's North American Australia say stutter,
UK they say stammer. But it's the same thing, right,
it's basically Uh. I think the way that they get
(01:26):
around that is calling it disfluency. No one calls it that,
the scientists do. I never heard that word, sure, disfluency.
So I think that's actually the clinical name for what
we call stuttering or stammering, depending on where you are. Yeah.
And wasn't that Colin Firth movie called The Disfluent Prince
(01:49):
Who would Be King? Yep? I think that was the
working title what they call it, The King's Speech? Yeah,
pretty good movie. That was cute. Cute it was. Any
time you get Jeffrey Right in there in an inspirational role,
it's gonna be a cute movie. No, not Jeffrey Right,
Jeffrey Rush, I don't Jeffrey Wright always plays like the
(02:13):
super smart, like kind of um, like a deep state guy.
Jeffrey Right. He was bask yot right, I'm not thinking
the right guy. Did he play Baskiyat? I think so?
I don't think so in the movie Basku Yot, Yeah,
is that Jeffrey right? I don't think so. It is
Jeffrey right. Jeffrey Wright has been in tons of stuff.
(02:35):
Just look them up. You'll be like, Oh, that's Jeffrey right.
This is going terribly already. This is basically like the
podcast equivalent of stuttering, because chuck stuttering, also known as stammering,
better known as disfluency, is an interrupted flow of speech. Okay,
(02:59):
but what when it starts to qualify for what we
would call like stuttering or stammering, it is. It's really noticeable.
It's um. It has a an interrupting effect typically on
the conversation or the communication that's meant to be going on,
the speaking that's going on. UM, that's on the far
(03:20):
end of the spectrum, on the on the other end
of the spectrum. Apparently just about everybody engages in disfluent speech.
I'm particularly guilty because I say um a lot, and
that's a form of disfluency. And disfluency chuck comes from
the idea that um that when you speak fluently, you're
speaking in a flowing manner that that is easy to
(03:43):
follow typically and is owner interrupted. But when you start
adding things like um or pauses or uh that kind
of thing like that, Uh, that's that's disfluency. And again,
disfluency is a normal part of communication if it occurs
about less than ten percent of the time. After that
(04:04):
you start to get into the stuttering slash stammering spectrum
or side of the disfluent spectrum. Yeah, and one thing
I learned, you know, you and I uh both Q
a quality assure each episode, which means, um, it's a
little behind the curtain peak. But Jerry will send them
back to us and you listen to it once and
(04:26):
then give her any like edit notes or whatever, um
and thoughts, and then I will listen to it and um,
generally I have no edit notes, um um um. And
I found that I know we're both gonna be so
self conscious about that. Well that's where I was getting too. Though.
I found early on when listening to these episodes of
ourselves that it's it doesn't pay to focus on disfluency
(04:52):
in our own language because it can drive you nuts,
it really can. And so we have a conversational podcast,
so we're not trying to you know, we're not Churchill
or Henry or was it Henry the six No, yeah
it was, Um, I don't remember. Just call him Firth,
(05:15):
how about that? Yeah, we're not calling Firth addressing the
country on the airwaves where it was very important that
he come across, as you know, a certain had a
certain fluency. But um, when it comes to stuff like this,
I think people are used to the fact, like occasionally
we'll get emails that go you go true do you say,
like and I'm a lot and we're just like, our
(05:37):
response is better luck finding a different podcast. This is
not for you. So anyway, I learned to not drive
myself crazy with that stuff. No, but it's funny you
bring that up because I was just yesterday listening to
um the Stockholm Syndrome episode for Stuff you Should Know Selects,
and I must have said, like a five time is
(06:00):
over the span of ten words even to that. But
even I noticed it. I normally have I'm pretty good
about tuning it out, but even I noticed at that time.
And it really kind of raises this issue that that
the whole thing about starting or stammering is not that
it's a it's a disorder or disease or a the
(06:26):
sign of an unintelligent person, or that the person can't
think of what they mean to say. It's absolutely none
of those things. It is strictly an interruption in what
we would consider normal communication, and so attention is drawn
to it, and it turns out that that just makes
the problem worse and worse, so it it turns into
(06:46):
this vicious cycle um to where But that's all that.
That's all it is. That's it. That's really it. And
I mean, like there's there's different theories about what's behind
it or what could make it worse, what could possibly
make it better, But really all it is is just
interrupted communication between two people. Because it's not like the
person who's who's stuttering uh stutters in their head, Like
(07:11):
it's strictly when they're speaking and communicating with other people.
So it's it's pretty it's a unique it's a unique condition, yeah,
and they're they're generally three ways in which that flow
can be interrupted. UM. One is is repetition UM. So
if you say the first few um, like the beginning
of a word, if you repeat it a few times
(07:32):
in a row and then say the word um. Another
would be prolongation. So if the word is like you would,
you would roll that l out by itself for a
long time, and then the last would be an abnormal stoppage,
which is just no sound at all coming out. Yeah block, Yeah,
a complete block. Have you you known anyone with a
(07:54):
severe stutter? Sure, yeah, I've I've I've known people with
stutters before. Yeah, I know somebody with a very severe stutter.
And it's always interesting because I think, and we'll get
to like what you should and shouldn't do as a
participant in a conversation with someone who stutters. But before
I read this, I knew that just as a courtesy,
(08:16):
what you probably shouldn't do, which is correct, is try
and complete someone sentence for them, even though that urges there.
You know, it's just a natural instinct because people do that,
you know, when speaking all the time, if someone can't
think of a word or something. But like you said,
that's not what's going on. No, no, And I mean that,
And I think that urge also comes from a good place. Typically,
(08:39):
like you're not you're not saying like, uh, pitch is
the word stupid. That's not what you're saying when you
when you when you finish their sentence, you're helping them
along to to keep the conversation on track, right, But
what you're also doing is saying you're not communicating effectively.
I'm jumping in and taking over. Were on your behalf.
(09:01):
Just sit there and be quiet. So um, yeah, we'll
talk more about what to do or what to what
not to do. When you're in a conversation with somebody
with a stutter, I don't know what you mean. You're trying,
you're trying to help, You're not trying to like be
a jerk. Yeah, but it's it's not a help. No,
it's not. But I imagine they also understand to a
certain degree to well, it's probably just from being exposed
(09:24):
to it so much for so long, and some people feel,
you know, like with anything like this, some people might
be used to it and have been like, well, you
know this how I talk. I've tried to correct it
and I've kind of learned to live with it, and
other people might still feel really bad about it. Yeah.
I I read a um, I guess an essay, a
blog post basically by a guy named man I can't
(09:50):
find it anywhere, great great blog post, um where he said,
I I recognize and accept my stutter, and it was
on say dot org. His name is Danny lit wak
l I t w A c K lit whack. Maybe
I embrace and accept my stutter. It's great. He talks
about his UM, his experience with growing up with a
(10:13):
stutter his whole life, and just what a negative impact
it had on him for a very long time. And
I saw this elsewhere. But the first step toward UM,
either either getting past your stutter or just getting over
the fact that you have a stutter, is accepting that
you have a stutter. And that's a That's why from
(10:34):
what I can gather a really big first step, because
I think people recognize that they have a stutter to themselves,
but there's also a m there's they take measures to
protect against sharing that with other people. So I read
another UM a story about another person who grew up
(10:55):
with a stutter and when they got to I think
college or something. On the first day of this one class,
everybody went around and said where they were from, and
this person said that they forgot where they are from
rather than having to say Wilmington's Delaware because of the
W and the D. So instead they told the class
they forgot where where they where they were born and
grew up, because in that case there were certain triggers. Yeah,
(11:18):
the W and the D, the W and Wilmington's and
the D and Delaware. So there's like a lot of
obfuscation that people with with stutters engaging people with stutters
are not to be trusted in other words, but they
they have to they have to basically just take steps
to make it seem like they don't have a stutter.
And I think what this guy, Danny lit Wack was saying.
(11:39):
And then, like I said, I saw elsewhere people saying,
like I have a stutter, like this is how I talk.
You're gonna have to like either just walk away during
the conversation or just let me finish my own time.
But this is me, and this is how I talk,
and I'm accepting it or learning to and you're gonna
have to as well. And that's the the first step,
(12:00):
as I understand it. Once you're an adult, I should say,
I think there's so many things in life where that's
the case. Oh yeah, instead of like at a certain point,
at a certain age, you I think at least I
got to a point where like, well I can really
continue to work to try and change this thing, or
I can just accept that this is kind of who
I am and be happy. Yeah, don't worry, be happy now.
(12:24):
So don't ever strive to be better people. Just accept
how messed up you are, enforce everyone else around you
to accept it. Should we take a little break here,
all right, we'll take a break and we'll come back
and get into some of the stats and um, how
stutters can develop right after this? All right, so we're
(13:08):
back promised stats. The stats you shall receive, um, one
percent roughly of adults in the world stutter. Yeah, but um,
that is not one percent of children because many times
have in fact about seventy at a time, um, well
(13:29):
five percent of children stuttering, about seventy five percent a time.
They will lose that disfluence as they grow older, leaving
that at a one percent number as adults. Yeah, and
so in the U s there's that means there's about
three million or so, maybe three and a half million
people adults that stutter. Right, Um, more women, yeah? Uh?
(13:51):
Is it more women, more men, more men? One it's
like four to five in childhood and then it was
too like three or four in adulthood. So by far
men stutter more than women and um, although in strangely
boys tend to naturally lose their stutter if they're going
(14:14):
to lose their stutter in childhood, more than girls. And
I don't think they found any rhyme or reason to
that at all. Right, No, man, there's there's like a
lot of lack of understanding as far as stuttering goes
scientifically socially, there's just that we just don't know that
much about it, which is surprising because apparently as far
(14:35):
back as Moses, people have been stuttering on record, and
we'll tell that story later, Okay, about sixty There could
be a genetic basis because about the people who stutter
have a family member who stutters. Yeah, and I also
saw that among monos i gotic, also known as identical twins,
(14:55):
if one twin stutters, there's a nine chance that the
other one does as well. Interesting, but for diyes eye gotic,
like fraternal twins, there's only a twenty percent chance. So
there's clearly a genetic basis to stuttering somehow, right, But
it's also one of those things where it can be genetic,
doesn't have to be. Um. Sometimes if you like suffer
(15:18):
a head trauma, you might develop a stutter, right, Um,
sometimes it's developmental. Sometimes there it could be obviously with
something like Parkinson's disease, that could be a symptom. But
those are to me, I think, probably different kinds of stuttering.
But right, so, there's basically two main categories. Developmental, which
(15:40):
is by far the more the one that it counts
for the most cases of stuttering, and then the others acquired,
like you said, say from like Parkinson's or they put
you on a prescription that like suddenly is making you stutter.
There's also psychogenic, which is supposedly an emotional ama can
give you a stutter. I don't know if that's just
(16:03):
left over lore, because apparently they used to think all
stutters were the result of some psychology and they they
just say, well, no, it's possible, or some people have
it and just haven't figured out that it's not the
case at all, or if there really is a small
section of people who do have psychogenic stutters. But but
(16:23):
all of those would fall under acquired, And then the
other one is developmental. Boy, how about that guy that
took mushrooms and quit stuttering? Yeah, so interesting. I saw
Ted talk at his once really yeah. He um. He's like,
all about mushrooms saving the world. Paul's damn its yeah
yeah he um. He leads off our article on how
(16:43):
stuff works and he um, that's of your stutter. H
was very affected by it, kind of withdrew socially. Went
camping one time, took a bunch of psychedelic mushrooms and
climbed a tree, got up there, Uh, decided he could
not climb down. Um, and then the storm came in
and got really intense, and he he said he sort
(17:06):
of felt one with the world, um, which sounds about right.
And Uh, eventually the storm passed. He came down and
while he was up there during this intense experience, he
was like, I will not stutter anymore, and he just
kept saying that. Came down and he had lost his stutter. Yeah,
and apparently he didn't relapse, which is pretty unusual, I think.
(17:27):
So he started studying mushrooms for a living. He became
a mycologist. Man, I gotta I've said this before, I'll
say it again. One of the best articles I've ever
read my life was called blood Spore, and I think
it was in Harper's and it was um, it was
about a murder in the world of mycologists. It was
just so interesting blood spot coming soon to a theater
(17:51):
naming I hope, so you should write the script. So
Stammit's was remarkably lucky, and that he just basically decided
stutter anymore and stop stuttering. Um. Apparently, the fact that
he didn't relapse is probably what's most remarkable, because I
think relapsing among stuttering treatments is actually pretty common. Yeah,
(18:18):
but again, this is once you get out of childhood.
It's fairly common to have to develop a stutter as
you're a child, as you're learning to talk, and then
it's equally common to lose that that stutter as you
age um usually within eighteen months of developing the onset
of the stutter. Um. But then as you as you
(18:40):
acquire this or develop this stutter as you get older,
apparently becomes more and more set in. And that seems
to be because of the plasticity of your brain when
you're a kid start. It's almost like, from what I
can gather, it's like, if you have a stutter past
(19:01):
a certain point, it almost gets locked into your brain
as your neural pathways solidify and cement like you learned
to have a stutter after a while, and I think
they say to wait. I think they wait like three
months before they even start looking into it, because that's
(19:21):
how fleeting a stutter can be when you're a little kid.
After three months, they'll say, all right, maybe we should
start looking into this. Right, you would want to go
to a speech pathologist who will be able to diagnose it.
And usually what they're looking for when um, you take
your child who's developed a stutter to a speech pathologist,
(19:43):
is um how pronounced it is. There's a guy, um
and I think the late nineties named Barry Guitar. He
sounds like he played, you know, guitar for the band Boston.
He knows all the chords. No way, that's guitar George. Right,
what's that from? Oh? Come on, guitar George. Is that
(20:06):
a Ray Stevens song? No, it's from Dark Straits sing
Oh gotcha? That's a good song. It is a good song.
Uh So Barry Guitar came with five levels of stuttering development.
And I already referenced the first. I know his name
is all just. I already referenced the first level, which
(20:26):
is you, um, you have blessed than ten percent of
your speech is disfluent. That's that's anybody walking around like that, right,
unless you're like the King of England or something. And
then ironically unless you're that one king who had a stutter.
Um and then it goes on the from there and
just gets worse and worse. But one of the things
(20:47):
that's attendant with these um these different stages of development
of a stutter are like emotional problems or symptoms like
co morbid symptoms along with the stutter. So there can
be things like blinking like um, like like pursing your lips,
where you're frustrated, where you're angry, where you're fearful, where
(21:08):
you're anxious, in conjunction with stuttering. And so this is
the kind of thing that the speech pathologists will be
looking for to kind of diagnose your kid like now,
this is just normal kids stuff. For actually this the
stutters developing faster than we'd like it too, so we
need to start treating it now. Well, that makes sense
because dopamine. We've talked a lot about dopamine on the
(21:30):
show The NEU transmitter. UM. If you have an overabundance
of dopamine. Um, we talked about in the Tourette's episode,
is that one of the things that can be co
morbid with stuttering, because I know too much dopamine can
lead to a stutter as well. Yeah, supposedly, Um. So
dopamine controls movement, right, and if you have too much,
(21:53):
it makes you have ticks. Like Tourette you're saying, well,
it can. So I noticed this. Um, Parkinson's and dopamine
are um, I think they're they're like Parkinson's has to
do with too much dopamine, and Parkinson's is one of
the ways that you could acquire neurogenically a stutter. So
(22:15):
that makes total sense that there's something in your brain
with dopamine transmission to where you have maybe too much
of it. And so you're you're trying to um, you're
having trouble but get getting the thoughts in your head
into the movements that it takes to create a speech. Yeah,
I mean it's a little clumsy the way the brain
(22:37):
does this. Um, it would be a lot easier if
it was streamlined and one part of the brain, but
there are two distinct parts of the brain that deal
with language processing, and one is the one that processes
it and one articulates it with UH in a motor
skill way. And when those two things have done brain
imaging mapping and they found that there's some sort of
(23:00):
discontinuity between those two processes going on. There's that's stuttering, right,
So it could be too much dopamine. That's one thing. Um. Again,
the research into stuttering is so basic at the moment,
it's it's really surprising. Um. What they're trying to figure
out though, is are you born with the stutter like
(23:21):
you when you're born, You're you're gonna have this problem
because you're your brain isn't um using dopamine properly, or
is overproducing dopamine or are you as your brain is developing,
something goes a little off to the side, to the
left and your brain has trouble with dopamine from that
(23:43):
point on. So they're trying to figure out the etiology
of it. In other words, did you look into this
uh the genes the four genes, Yeah, a little bit.
Did you find names for those? I did not? That
is how basic the research is right now. They're not
even saying what genes they're finding. Yeah, apparently they did
discover four different genes that are linked to these proteins,
(24:07):
and these proteins are sort of like, um, they're responsible
for what's called cellular trafficking, so they kind of make
sure that the elements of the cell end up where
they need to be within that cell um. And they
said that more than one neurological disorder can be linked
to this trafficking process. So I guess it's related to
(24:29):
those proteins in those genes. Yeah, but they're like, who knows,
It's just like they've gotten to the point where they
have identified there's something up with these proteins in in
the cells and it's linked to stuttering somehow. Now just
give us like ten years to go figure out how right,
But yeah, they're they're starting to realize now there's some
(24:51):
sort of genetic basis to this two stuttering. Well, I mean,
I think the twin study that says a lot right
there for sure. You know, um, should we can we
talk about Moses? I think it's high time we talked
about Moses. We've been dancing around the burning bush for
a while now. I can't believe that guy to laugh. Well,
(25:14):
I was laughing because every time I think of burning bush,
I think of three Amigos and how funny that singing
bush was. I never saw that one. Three Amigos. Yeah,
I could do the three amigo salute, but I never
saw it. Oh man, that's a classic. Really yeah really? Oh? Sure?
Why is that surprising? I don't know. I feel like
(25:37):
I would have seen it if three comedic? You right? Oh,
I know why I never saw because chevy Chase is
in it. I'm sure, I'm sure. No. I remember my
dad raised me to really dislike so I probably wasn't
allowed to see it. That's because you can see Fletch, right.
I think I stopped watching Fletch like part way through.
(26:00):
My dad had a real influence on me. And why
didn't he like chevy Chase? So I don't. I have
no idea he had a bone to pick. I I
guess I think he thought he was a jerk or something.
Well he was, all right, it turns out right, all right.
So Moses, um, I know a lot about the Bible, because,
as listeners know, I was raised in the church, but
(26:23):
I didn't know this. I don't remember this story at all. Yeah.
I hadn't heard it either. So apparently Moses uh was
a little baby at one point, and the Pharaoh said,
was warned, you know that Moses was was gonna uh
not be his friend when he grew up. So he said,
all right, let me try something out. I'm gonna give
this little baby Moses a choice between a bowl full
(26:44):
of gold and a bowl full of hot coals. This
is what you do with babies. Jesus the gold, then
I'm gonna kill him. Yeah, typical typical Egyptian stuff. Yeah. Um.
So of course with a baby, Moses is going to
reach for the gold. Um. And then apparently an angel
(27:06):
intervened Todd, Todd the angel and directed, uh, little Moses
hand to the hot coals instead. A little gruffly if
you ask Moses. Moses grabbed a hot coal put it
in his mouth, and that's how he got to the stutter.
And he's blamed Todd ever since. And here's what I
don't get is that Moses went to God and was like, hey, man,
(27:30):
I'm supposed to lead the people out of Egypt. I
have a bad stutter. Can you you know, can you
do something for me? God? And God said no, sweat, Yeah,
he said God, Mr ed, you didn't know that, uh
he was God? So God said, um, yeah, sure I
(27:54):
can help you out. Just have your brother Aaron take
the mic. And Moses is like, I was more thinking
like you'd perform a miracle on me. But yeah, I
probably could have thought of having Aaron speak for me
as well. God, thanks for that, though. I don't know
how I missed that story. He apparently there's a quote
I am heavy of mouth and heavy of tongue, and
(28:15):
I saw some um Bible site where they were debating
whether or not what they were talking about was a stutter. Apparently,
some later Hebraic text said that Moses had trouble pronouncing
th h s thorn sounds um, it sounds more like
he had a lisp than a stutter. Who knows. Let's
(28:35):
go with stuttering though, because a lot of people do
say that Moses had a stutter. But yeah, it's it's
pretty thick. It's I've gotten used to it. But I
remember at first when we first started doing this, like, man,
I should not be speaking for a living like this
is I have a speech impediment, pure and simple. No,
(28:56):
it's just everyone now just thinks, Hey, that's Josh's voice. Yes,
it's so grating, smooth and silky Elton history. Uh, let's
see the emperor Justinian apparently U or no, I'm sorry
I was wrong. It was um Demosthenes. He was a
(29:20):
Greek statesman. He apparently was smart enough to say, who
could help me with a stutter? How about an actor?
Somebody who speaks broadcast their voice for a living. So
he hired an actor to help him, and the actor
had him do things like chew on pebbles and try
to talk smart. Um, he he's he did his speeches
(29:43):
while he's walking uphill. I guess to control his breathing.
This is actually pretty sharp stuff. I think out of
out of all the historical treatments that we're going to cover,
this one might most closely resemble, aside from the mouthful
of pebbles, um, modern treatment for stuttering. Yeah, which is
to say, uh, speaking exercises. Uh, well, you did say Justinian.
(30:07):
I don't know if Justinian had the stutter, but his
at the very least his position. Uh. A. T. S.
Of Amida was one of the first people to say, hey,
maybe that the frenulum, you know, that little flap of
skin under your tongue, the connector to the bottom of
your mouth. He was the first one that said, why
don't we start slicing that thing up? Uh, and just
(30:30):
the tongue in general. Over the years there have been
all kinds of surgeon that tried variations of slicing the
frenulum or cutting down of the tongue itself. Now, I
could probably use that one by H. D. Sgoen. I'm
sure that's how you say it. The second way, he
basically said, stuttering as a result of an oversized tongue,
(30:51):
which I have. Let's just slice and dice a little
off the sides. But none of this I know, of course,
it didn't work. It's just horror of thick apparently. Though
at the same time there were these surgeons who get
all the press because their stuff is so horrific. But
there are also other people who were kind of on
the right track a little more like Moses Mendelssohn in
(31:14):
the eighteenth century. He thought that there were too many
ideas or thoughts that were flowing at once, and that um,
it was basically it was blocking speech. There's too much
trying to get out, basically like the three Stooges model
of stuttering. Remember they're all trying to go through the door. Yeah, Yeah, yeah,
(31:35):
so you've got too much to say and you want
to just get it all out. Interesting, that makes a
little sense. Um Erasmus Darwin. Uh. He said that it
was bashfulness, emotions like bashfulness that messed up the process
of speaking right, definitely onto something there as well. And
then a psychologist named sand Ow said that it was
(31:57):
brought on by either a dread of speaking or an
over eagerness to speak, kind of like what Moses Mendelson
was saying in the latter example. They brought out by
two completely opposite things. Yeah, so a lot of this
actually is kind of in step with our current thought
about stuttering. And so either that means that these guys
(32:20):
in the eighteenth century were prescient, or our understanding of
stuttering is stuck in the eighteenth century. I'm very curious
to know which one it is. Shall we take a break? Yeah,
it's all right. We're gonna come back after this final
break and talk about therapies that don't involve cutting your
tongue apart. Yea, all right, So now we're in the
(33:08):
modern days and we're not taking scalpels to the frenulum
any longer. Because they realized that it's not a physical
affliction of the tongue. It's it's somewhere inside the brain
most likely. And uh, they have a lot of recommendations
for when a child um starts to stutter in it
(33:31):
and it sticks. Um. And you found some other tips
to which are great for parents, and kind of one
of the main ones is is give your kid plenty
of room to talk, plenty of time to talk, make
sure they express themselves fully, because one of the side
effects of having a stutter is your child may just
(33:54):
end up retreating and being super quiet. Yeah. I got
from this these hips for parents that there's kind of
this maybe not fully spoken idea that you can actually
cement your child stutter if you handle it poorly when
they start to develop it like like which knowing that
(34:19):
it just makes you even more tense about dealing with
it correctly, I would guess, which could make the whole
process even even harder. But there are some pretty brainless
things to do. This one almost killed me when I
saw it. Chuck the the site I think Kids Health
is where I got this one, but it said maintain
(34:40):
natural eye contact with your child. Try not to look
away or show signs of being upset. Get like just
break the arrow off in my heart. That's pretty sad. Like,
don't look away in disgust when your child is stuttering,
you monster, Go look in the mirror and take a
bamboo shoot and put it underneath your fingernail and think
(35:03):
about what you've done. Another good one is um And
this feels like something that would be easy to do
because it seems well intentioned to say, like, you know,
slow down, son, take your time, take your breath. They
say to not do that because you know, might make
things worse. Yeah, because what you're doing then is you're
(35:23):
drawing attention to the idea that your child is not
speaking correctly and uh, rather than just apparently letting them
communicate at their own pace. Right, There's also seems to
be a suggestion that the child has learned the child,
your kid has learned to speak to stutter because they're
(35:45):
trying to get too much out at once, and they
may have picked that up from you. If you have
like a rush rush, rush pace in your household. One
of the things that that they suggest is it just
kind of slow things down at home. And in addition
to like like schedule wise and like just taking time
and just like letting everybody breathe, maybe a little more
(36:05):
than you guys are um also speaking more slowly, not
just to your kid, but also to other people. When
your kids around speaking slowly, you're letting the setting an example,
it's called modeling your own speech so that your kid
feels like they don't have to blurt everything out at
once to get their point across. They they're going to
(36:26):
be heard no matter how long it takes. You're going
to sit there and just listen to them speak, yeah,
and not and like really listen. Another thing that seems
like a no brainer, but really just try and focus
on on what they're saying and not the fact that
they're stuttering those words out. But you know, when your
(36:46):
kid tells you a story about something that happened at school,
don't concentrate or even bring attention to the fact that
it's being said with the stutter, but just take taking
their story and if it takes a little while longer
than just respond accordingly. And and in that same vein,
like don't tell your kid to stop and start over
when they start stuttering, like like they're they have to
(37:07):
get the sentence just perfect or else you're not going
to hear him out and don't tell them to think
before speaking. That's not helping anything at all. Um, be honest, like,
don't try and uh mask it and say that, well,
you don't have a stutter, like this is just you know,
you're just in a hurry or something like they just
say to be really honest and say, you know what,
(37:29):
you you have a stutter and it's a disfluence. It's
nothing to worry about. And uh, if you'd like, maybe
we can uh talk to someone that can uh do
some exercises with you. And you know, just like all
this sounds like no brainer, not being a monster parent. Yeah,
but again some of it does. It's like telling your
(37:52):
kids like, okay, slow down, take a breath. Now, what
are you saying? Like you think you're helping your kid,
you're not so so not all some of it is
is monstrosity. Others is just like this is this is
what people would naturally do, but it's and it seems intuitive,
but you're wrong. Your intuition is dead wrong. Just let
your kids talk and listen to what they're saying, not
(38:13):
how they're saying it. And apparently this is this is
a good These are good. This is good advice. Wow,
it took me a second to get out. Thank you though,
Chuck for patiently hearing it. Then, um, this is good
advice to helping your kid just naturally, um shed the stutter,
the developmental stutter. We should say, all of this we've
(38:36):
been talking about is is dealing with the developmental stutter,
although a lot of it just applies to people with
with adults stutters out in the real world as well.
Like you can you can take just about all of
this and apply it to a business conversation if you
have a coworker who has a stutter, like don't look
(38:56):
away and discussed. There's there's good advice right there all too.
Throughout your life when you're when you're watching or listening
to somebody with the stutter. Yeah, I mean, maybe don't
do that at all, and you know the life advice,
but it's it's a good point is if you're sitting
there and you're and you don't look like you're hurrying
(39:16):
somebody with the stutter along, You're just engage. You're you're
into the conversation no matter how long it takes. I
can't imagine how much that must help. And one thing
that we didn't really. I think point out that that
bears pointing out is that people who stutter do not
necessarily stutter and in the same frequency throughout like their day.
(39:41):
There's definitely situations that are um that we are going
to make the stutter way more pronounced. They're almost exclusively
associated with higher anxiety situations. I think the nationals Stuttering
Association says that the number one situation where a stutter
is going to be about as bad as it gets
(40:02):
is during a job interview. And so employers, please don't
think that this is how this person talks. This is
probably as bad as their stutter gets. However, they're stuttering
in the in the job interview, UM. So if they're
today at home, UM, and they're just talking to their
wife or their kid or something, the stutter is probably
(40:23):
gonna be far less pronounced than it would be if
they were having to give a speech UM at their
friend's wedding. You know. Yeah, And I found that UM
with this person, Emily, and I know that it's UM.
It can vary a lot within a conversation. UM, it's
a very severe stutter. And then they will say like
a couple of sentences straight through with nothing, and then
(40:47):
I think, oh, man, like it catches me off guard
because I'm so used to the stutter, and I think, well,
you know, that's super interesting to me. You just like
blurted out a couple of two or three long sentences
with zero stutter or stammer on the same thing. Um,
(41:07):
I know, but they're fun to say together, aren't they
They are. I don't know, I just find it really fascinating. Um.
You know, speech pathology can come a long way. I
know that there are Well, it's funny. I looked online
about curing stuttering, and of course there was no like
patented cure. But Tony Propins after listening to our recording
(41:28):
our motivational Speaker thing, I saw a video. I didn't
even watch it. I just saw the title. It said
Tony Robbins cures a man of a stutter in seven minutes, right,
So I was like, oh, come on, yeah, yeah, I
didn't see anything that said stutter stuttering cures. There's basically
nine Yeah. I did not look into I didn't have
(41:49):
time to look into this new device though, did you. Uh, yeah,
a little bit. It seems pretty untested as far as
real world application goes, but it makes sense into watively
and apparently it does help in a clinical setting. So
basically it's like an like a hearing aid, but it
changes the person who's speaking's voice a little bit. Does
(42:12):
it replay it for everybody? Know, just for the person
in their ear right, Because one of the one of
the ways that somebody who stutters will be able to
talk perfectly well is speaking in unison or singing. So
like you, you can be sitting there talking to somebody
just one on one, and your stutter could be quite severe.
(42:33):
But then if you and the person agree to sing together,
you may not stutter at all the whole time you're singing.
And I have no no one has any idea why
that's the case. They just know And this device is
based on that that when we're talking in unison, or
someone who has the stutters talking in unison with somebody else,
their stutter tends to go away. So what this does
(42:55):
is it creates an echo. There's a bit of a
lag with their own voice, so they feel like they're
talking themselves, and so it helps the stutter again, at
least in a clinical setting. UM, I don't know if
it would just be too distracting in a conversation or what.
But I got the impression that they haven't tested it
fully or proven it fully outside of the lamb. Well,
(43:16):
the singing makes sense because remember mel Tillis, The name
sounds familiar. He was a country singer who had a
really pronounced stutter, kind of around like fifties, sixties and
seventies seventies is when he was biggest. But yeah, but
you know he was on like he haw and stuff,
grand ol opry like a bird and then has has
(43:40):
had a tough stutter when he was talking to the
audience and that's what he was known for. Oh yeah, yeah,
it was like you know, obviously wouldn't act, but it
was a sticky speaking of so um another famous stutter chuck,
are we there? Uh, Porky Pig. Yeah, so I was.
(44:02):
I was looking up Porky Pig, right, because you know,
that's an unusual choice to have a cartoon character whose stutters.
And it turns out that Porky Pig has a stutter
because the guy who originally did Porky Pig, Joe Doherty,
had a stutter in real life. Oh really yeah, pretty sweet? Huh,
pretty heartwarming? Well wait, there's more. He did Porky Pig
(44:25):
for the first two years, and then they fired him
because he kept missing the cues because of his stutter,
and they brought in a guy who didn't have a
stutter to do Porky Pig from that point on. But
he did it with a stutter. Yeah, because it was established.
Well that's crutty and that's sad. That's sad. Yeah, except
Porky Pigs trick was to go to a different word, yeah,
(44:46):
which is a fairly common technique though. Yeah, I imagine. So, yeah,
if you get hung up on something, just say something else.
Uh that means the same thing. Yeah, that's a good one.
Or I think, um people will say, oh, I can't
remember and just act like they can't remember the word
when they know full well what we're they're going for.
They just can't they can't say it, so they just
(45:07):
pretend like they couldn't or they forgot what they were
talking about. Should we name all some of these other
famous stutters, because uh, I think if you're an adult stutter,
you probably know these people. You may have looked it
up to feel a kinship, but maybe if you're a
little kid out there, it might make you feel better.
To know that. Uh, Darth Vader himself, James Earl Jones
(45:31):
was the stutter Yeah, big time. Emily Blunt, Yep, she's terrific.
Samuel Jackson surprising right there. Yeah, because the F bombs
flow from his mouth. He was born with that talent.
Who else from pulp fiction? Harvey kit Tell. Yeah, I
(45:53):
can't see Harvey kite Tell stuttering now. And I guess
all of these people just went through speech therapy. Huh.
I would guess so, or else they all took mushrooms
because it doesn't say whether or not they like stuttered
as a child or when they overcame it. But Nicole Kidman,
Albert Einstein, Oh really, um, Carly Simon, and you said
(46:16):
Winston Churchill earlier too, he had a stutter as well. Yeah,
Bruce Willis, Yeah, that's using too. Huh. Check I could see.
I think I've actually seen Shack stutter before on TV. Really,
m uh see Bill Walton, Tiger Woods, Charles Darwin, Jane Seymour,
(46:37):
Dr Quinn herself, Joe Biden, who will hopefully run for president,
right he overcame his stutter. Yeah, well all of them did,
which is great. But at the same time, there are
people out there who have accepted that they have a stutter.
They've probably spent a lot of time and money trying
to get rid of it and it hasn't gone anywhere,
(46:59):
so they've kind have embraced it. So I mean, if
you've gotten rid of your stutter and you've overcome it,
that's great. But if you've also embraced it, good for
you as well. Oh boy, how about this one? You
want to talk about overcoming a stutter Kendrick Lamar? Oh yeah, wow.
If you can overcome a stutter and then become Kendrick Lamar,
then that that should be a shiny example people that
(47:20):
you can do anything. Yeah, or if you embrace your stutter,
good for you as well. Agreed, because you could be
mal tell Us who was the Kendrick Lamar of country music,
or Porky Pig, the Kendrick Lamar of cartoon. That's right,
you've got anything else about stuttering? I got nothing else.
We'd love to hear from people, though, huh, yeah, for sure.
(47:40):
UM get in touch with us, and then in the
meantime you can find more stuff about stuttering, including a
lot of support and resources for parents, um all over
the web and there's things like say dot org and
the National Stuttering Association and all sorts of great resources
if you are looking for some information. And since I said, uh,
(48:04):
it's time for a listener mail, all right, I'll call
this um coming to see you in Chicago, but by
this point will be I went to see you in
Chicago and was disappointed. Hey, guys, want to write in
and say what a great show I just saw? No,
(48:24):
I want to write and say thank you for putting
together a really great podcast, long time listener and fan,
and I even mentioned you in my work bio and
I checked it out and did I really appreciate that
stuff you sh know is informative, funny, and family friendly
all at the same time. This was especially valuable when
my fiance and I took his ten year old brother
on a road trip from Chicago to Wisconsin Dells. In
(48:47):
the car, we listened to a playlist of s Y
s K episodes that I put together to suit his
ten year old tastes, How Spider's Work, how ice cream works, and,
most importantly, because we were going to Wisconsin Dells, self
proclaimed water park apple of the World, how water Slides Work,
which oddly is one of our highest performing shows ever.
People love Water Slides, man, they love hearing about them,
(49:09):
they love looking at pictures of them. It got shared
or something. It was so weird. I can't remember, but
I went to look at our download numbers one time
and I was like, Water Slides is to the top.
So higher than marijuana, well higher than marijuana. Hilarious. Uh.
Those episodes really entertained them and introduced them to the
concept of podcasts for the very first time. Thanks for
(49:32):
everything you do, and she said, they're going to see
the Fiancee and Mara or Mara are going to see
the Chicago show. So I hope you have a good time. Yeah,
and thank you very much for supporting us in our
lives shows. We appreciate that treamendously. H If you want
to get in touch with us like Mara did, or
Mara We're gonna go with Mara. Um. You can tweet
(49:55):
to us I'm for Real at josh um Clark and
at s Y s K podcast. You can hang out
with Chuck on Facebook dot com slash stuff you Should
Know or slash Charles W. Chuck Bryant appropriately enough. You
can send us all an email, including Noel and including
Jerry and Frank Pitcher to stuff podcasts at how stuff
works dot Com has always joined us our at home
(50:16):
on the Web Stuff you Should Know dot com. For
more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it
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