January 18, 2025 • 46 mins
Foreign accent syndrome isn't when your mom talks funny when she goes abroad. It's an actual condition where people wake up one day with an entirely different accent, usually from some kind of head trauma. Learn all about this decidedly rare affliction in this classic episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Good afternoon, GUVNA. It's Chucky here on a Saturday, and
I'm going to pick a selection called how.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Foreign Accent Syndrome Works.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
No idea or what this is about, but it is
from March twenty eight, twenty seventeen, and I hope you
enjoy it.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Good day. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production
of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and
there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Jerry's here is always
So it's stuff you should know, Stuff you should know.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
You should have said that in a British accent.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
It's stuff you should know. Ay, how's that?
Speaker 2 (00:52):
It was great? You're a regular rich.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
Little Remember the arrest development little subplot where Charlie's Theren
was thought to be a British spy. Oh yeah, what
was uh for British eyes only?
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Yeah? But what was the name of her character?
Speaker 3 (01:13):
Mister F, mister F. That's right, that's right.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
I knew I had some like They said that every time. Right,
it's pretty funny. She's great, Yes, she was pretty lady, Funny, smart, Yeah,
good actor?
Speaker 3 (01:27):
What else?
Speaker 2 (01:28):
That's all I got on her? She can macro may
Oh really, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
I just assume.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
Okay, this is left to a great start.
Speaker 3 (01:40):
Uh is it's unusual? Odd even you could say that
you suggested I say the intro in a British accent
because we're talking about foreign accents today.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
Chuck, that's right, it was coy m.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
I see now it makes sense.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
Yes, and we're specific not talking about There's a thing
sometimes that certain people do when they meet someone with
an accent different than their own, right where they accidentally
or sometimes purposely adopt it momentarily.
Speaker 3 (02:20):
Yes, it's called code switching.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
My mom's done this before that. I remember it happened
when I was a kid. My brother and I thought
it was so funny.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
Yeah, and it seems like it's usually a parent of
an embarrassed child. Sure is there an explanation behind it?
Speaker 3 (02:41):
Or yeah?
Speaker 2 (02:41):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (02:42):
So this is from what I understand. This is the point. Right, So,
our accents are extremely personal. They're part of like us individually,
but they also signal our membership in different groups. Right, So,
like a farmer is going to talk differently from a stockbroker,
and a farmer from Georgia is going to talk a
(03:03):
lot differently than a stockbroker from Portland, Oregon. Right, okay,
because that's the other stock market seat. Yeah, you thought
I was going to say New York I Nope. So
when we when we code switch, when we meet other
people and take on their their way of talking, it's
(03:25):
called code switching, and I think it's a way of signaling, hey,
we have something in common. I don't want you to
be distracted by it's. Yeah, my overalls with no shirt
on are distracting enough. I don't want you to be
distracted by my accent too. So I think it is
a way of saying, like, hey, i'm, I'm, I'm, we
have something in common. The thing is, accents are such
(03:47):
a part of group identity that if you do that
in front of some other members of your group, whether
it's your family or your friends or whatever.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
They're going to tease you.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
They are going to tease you, guaranteed. And one of
the reasons why is because what they're doing, consciously or
otherwise is maintaining the borders of their own group's identity. Yeah,
they're saying, don't put on airs, don't think you're fancy,
don't think you're just like that guy, You're one of us.
And making fun of somebody who adopts someone else's accent
(04:17):
is a way of doing that. It's a way of
maintaining group divisions and borders. Well, really, when you do
kind of adopt someone else's accent, I think one of
the things that you are doing is trying to make
the foreigner, the stranger feel more comfortable. And having met
your mom, I guarantee that's what she was doing.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
Well. I just remember the only one I remember specifically,
and you know, you just had these random childhood moments
that sort of stick with you was we were in
Florida and we were talking with an Irish woman. I
believe she may have been from England, but I think
she was Irish. And the other thing too, is you know,
(04:57):
I don't think my mom had probably talked to a
lot of our Irish people at that point. You know,
she's from West Tennessee. They moved to Georgia. We didn't
have Irish people all over the place. She wasn't super
well traveled back then, although she is much more now,
so it was probably a bit novel to her. And
I remember very specifically the woman said something about going
to Disney instead of Disney World, and my mom said
(05:20):
she got kind of proper, and she says, you know,
we haven't been to Disney yet. And I remember my
brother and I just thought that was so funny. Instead
of saying Disney World, did.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
You guys make fun of her in front of the woman?
Speaker 2 (05:30):
No, I don't think so. We may have laughed a
little under our breath, but I mean, I don't think
we I don't think we even teased her. I'm teasing
her now a bit, sure, but I don't think like
we made fun of her really. I think we just
kind of, like my brother and I want to do,
very quietly, looked at each other and in that way
that brothers do.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
Right, and then talk to each other like the kids
an Escape from which Mountain?
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Yeah? Were they telepathic? Yeah, but it's funny. I was
listening to the Great Judge John Hodgman podcast, Oh Yeah
with her pal John and Jesse Thorne bailiff Jesse, and
they had an actual case a few weeks ago that
was very funny where this this mom does this on purpose.
She's a trained actor and loves to put on accents
(06:18):
when she goes to places, and the daughter was just
she took her to the internet court and was just
like stop doing this, like you've got to stop doing this.
And the mom's whole thing, she was very just fun
and whimsical and having a lot of fun with it.
So it was really hard to rule against her. But
(06:40):
I think codgmen ultimately did rule against her.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
He's tough but fair.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
Well. I think his whole thing was, like you know,
I think he ruled partially in her favor, like you
got to let him know where you're from. And you
can't do it to like waiters and service people because
their job is to like take your dumb jokes and
have a stiff upper lip about it, and it just
kind of makes their job harder if they think maybe
(07:07):
you're making fun of them, and you know, like you
may not realize the unintended consequence of this is somebody
may feel uncomfortable that they have to put up with this.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
Wow, that was it was like a really serious turn
at the end.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
There, No, it did. I mean, you know this was
great about that show is they're funny cases, but he
adjudicates seriously.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
I think, oh yeah, and then Jesse always shoots his
gun off at the end. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Beeah. So anyway, I just thought that was pretty weird
that this article came up and then that episode had
just aired. But that's different than what we were talking
about totally. Like I started saying, this is not that
at all. This is a legitimate, super rare. This reminded
me of alien hand syndrome and its rarity. Yeah, because
(07:55):
I've seen different numbers, but the most I've seen is
about one hundred and fifty described official cases of foreign
accent syndrome.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
Right, that's super rare for sure.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
And what makes it different from somebody taking on the
affect or dialect or accent of somebody else, someone taking
the piss, right, this is where you can't stop. It's involuntary. Yeah,
and you know it sounds weird, it's an exotic and
you just want to like poke the person who's doing
that in the neck to be like what are you
(08:27):
doing there? But if you really start to dig into
the actual cases, it's sad in a lot of a
lot of cases. Oh yeah, Because again, your accent, what
you sound like, makes up a part of your personality.
So if you are if it changes on you involuntarily,
it can be quite traumatic. For some people, you could
have an identity crisis of sorts.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
Yeah, so I guess we should go ahead and talk
about a couple of cases so people know what we're
talking about. The first one mentioned in our own article
is really interesting for a few reasons, and it's the
most recent case that's documented. Oh I'm sorry it's not
the most recent, but it is fairly recent. A woman
named Lisa Alamia, she had jaw surgery because of an overbite,
(09:11):
and then when she came out of surgery, even though
she was from Texas and had never been to England,
she spoke with a British accent and.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
She's like, right, bloody hell and way, I need our
British listeners to write in and tell me how good
my British accent is.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
Okay, Well, I'm known on the show for doing the
bad accent, so I'm glad you're taking up.
Speaker 3 (09:34):
No, yours are good. I don't know minor.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
They verge on decent at times.
Speaker 3 (09:40):
Well, there's cartoonish and stereotypical, really really good cartoonish stereotypical
versions of accents.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
So she woke up had that accent, and her husband
and three kids thought it was a joke. She had
only been outside the country to go to Mexico and
it was a real thing called foreign accent syndrome.
Speaker 3 (09:59):
Yes, I've ever been to England. She apparently probably had
seen British people on TV kind of thing. But her
case actually is the opposite of what I was saying.
She was apparently quite shy before, and now she has
something to talk about a conversation opener. I guess she's
a little more chatty than before.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
Interesting, Yeah, it is.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
It's the opposite of some other people who have really
experienced a crisis. As a result, she's like, well, I
sound British now, I guess I should talk more than before.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
So she sounds like a drunk cockneque chimney sweep pretty much.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
And she does sound cognity to me.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
Oh really, I didn't hear I didn't see this one
on YouTube.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
So yeah, we should say, you know, this is kind
of like optical illusions. It's one thing to talk about it.
You need to actually go see and hear these people talking. Yeah,
if you just look up Lisa Alamia A La m
i A and you will find plenty of interviews with her.
She's she's, like you said, fairly recent. There's one that's
(11:02):
quite a famous case. Maybe the most famous because it
was the one that put foreign accent syndrome on the map,
even though it was before the term was coined.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
Yeah, this one had a much darker turn because it
was during World War Two. A Norwegian woman named Astrid
suffered injury and the ironies here are really sad. She
suffered a brain injury from shrapnel from a German bomb
and a bombing raid, and then when she came to
(11:31):
she had a German accent. Right, very not fun for her.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
No, because the Germans were occupying Norway at the time, right, Yeah,
so people she didn't really know, we're like, oh, hey,
German spy.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
Yeah you want some milk?
Speaker 3 (11:46):
No milk for you?
Speaker 2 (11:48):
Yeah, she was shunned. She couldn't even speak German, but
she had that accent and was obviously very distraught by this.
And she went to a neurologist name Yorg Rman Monrad Krone.
Nice job, it's a great name. And he coined the
first term for this, which is dysprosody, which is prosody
(12:13):
is like the tone and rhythm of your speech. Yeah,
and the prefix discs obviously is like abnormal or ill,
And that didn't catch on too well.
Speaker 3 (12:22):
It didn't, but as we'll see, he kind of nailed
what the problem was. Yeah, because you know, the non
grammatical parts of speech, the prosody are what is affected
when you have foreign accent syndrome. You have what appears
to be a foreign accent, but usually your vocabulary, your syntax,
(12:46):
your grammar remains unchanged. It's all the little nuances that
make up your accent or your intonation or the rhythm
of your speech that are affected and has changed. So
dysprosody is actually like the perfect name for the syndrome.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
Yeah, but foreign accent syndrome is way more catchy in
that Oh it's sexy. In nineteen eighty two, neurologist named
Harry Whittaker came up with that. So Whittaker coined it
in the eighties. I think nineteen eighty two was when
he coined that official term.
Speaker 3 (13:16):
Right, And he was a neurolinguist who did some pretty
serious research into foreign accent syndrome. He actually came up
with a four point criteria for diagnosing it, and the
number one is that the accent has to be considered
by the patient, the people the patient knows, and the
researcher of the doctor to be to sound like a
(13:37):
foreign accent, right.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
Yeah, pretty straightforward from what they are.
Speaker 3 (13:41):
Yeah, well that's number two. It has to be different
from the patient's former prosody, noticeably different. Number three, it
has to be related to central nervous system damage and
this one has come under fire under the last few years.
And then four it can't be related to to a
patient's ability to speak a foreign language already. Right, So
(14:05):
there's actually a condition, it's astounding to me. It's called
bilingual aphasia, or there's also polyglotaphasia. And apparently if you
suffer a stroke or brain injury or some other trauma
or insult to your central nervous system and you know
more than one language, you may completely lose the ability
(14:26):
to speak one language and completely retain the ability to
speak the other. That's how decentralized our language processes in
the brain.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
Well, yeah, because that's one of the factors in foreign
accent syndrome is you could it's not like in a
case where you might have a stroke and lose the
ability to speak like you still can speak in perfect
dialect whatever that dialect is as far as being you know,
articulate and coherent.
Speaker 3 (14:55):
Oh, right right, Yeah, yeah, so you're yeah exactly, You're
not like luring your speech. You just sound different and
like a foreign person saying the same words would, right, yes,
Oh gotcha. Okay, So there's this four point diagnosis criteria
that's kind of been deconstructed over the years. But the
problem with foreign accent syndrome, it's, like you said, there's
(15:19):
been one hundred, maybe one hundred and fifty cases, So
it's just totally up in the air as to like
how to diagnose it, what qualifies as it. And we'll
talk a little bit about how scientists have dug into
it thus far after his break, So chuck, foreign accent syndrome,
(16:00):
it's kind of all over the place right now, right, Yes,
You've got Lisa Alamiya who woke up from jaw surgery
with it. Apparently people who have strokes can suffer from
foreign accent syndrome. And I actually saw one case where
your foreign accent syndrome and one patient who suffered a
(16:23):
stroke was cured by a second stroke elsewhere in the brain.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (16:29):
So we have like it's very tough to predict what's
going to happen when foreign accent syndrome does come about
and you know, there's been people from Japan who've developed
Korean accents, or there have been people from Scotland who
developed South African accents. It's kind of everywhere and all over.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
Yeah, you can one of the other causes. It can
be from the onset of MS from multiple sclerosis. This
one woman that we'll talk about in more detail suffered
from chronic migraines but had a migraine attack so severe
that it spurred this and we'll get to her. But
all of these in a bucket from some sort of
(17:13):
trauma or an event are called neurogenic type. And for
a long time they used to think that was the
only way that you could get for an accident syndrome.
Speaker 3 (17:25):
Right, because remember that Harry Whittaker nineteen eighty two criteria
specifically says it has to be related to central nervous
system damage.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
Yeah, so there's another kind called psychogenic, also non organic
or functional or psychosomatic. But one of the leading experts
said that they prefer psychogenic. He said because quote this
term has the advantage of stating positively based on an
exploration of its causes, that the disorder is a manifestation
(17:54):
of psychological dis equilibrium like anxiety depression, personality disorder, or
conversion reaction, right, and you know we're talking about could
be bipolar disorder, it could be some other form of
mental illness. And this really kind of rocked. I mean,
(18:14):
it's not a huge community studying this, but the people
that do are obviously super fascinated by it, and it
kind of rocked their world when they found out that
someone that had no head injury, no stroke or anything
like that would could have something like this.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
Yeah, so they developed first it was neurogenic, then they
developed psychogenic, and then there's actually a third one. Now
it's mixed, so apparently it can actually be from a
psychological issue that possibly could arise from say a brain lesion.
So it's both of them together, right, working to create
this foreign accent syndrome, and definitely psychogenic. The psychogenic version
(18:50):
of foreign accent syndrome differs tremendously from the neurogenic in
a lot of ways. And number one is the psychogenic
tends to clear up. It accompanies say like a psychotic
break or a manic episode or something like that, and
as the episode wigans or goes away or clears up,
(19:10):
so too does the foreign accent syndrome. That is not
the case with neurogenic. With neurogenic, they have no cure whatsoever,
and basically the only treatment that they can come up
with is through speech therapy, where speech language pathologists basically
retrained you to talk the way you did before.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
Yeah, it's also the neurogenic is also much more common.
Out of the cases, I think it's about eighty six
percent are from some sort of neurological damage, right, So
what does that leave fourteen percent or no, unless I
guess you're accounting for the new super odd one that
could be both.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
And one of the more famous cases that kind of
demonstrated that psychogenic FAS was an actual thing happened here
in America. There's a woman in her mid thirties who
had a history of schizophrenia and her family and she
was brought to the er after attacking her mom's landlady.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
Yeah, this one's the most recent case actually.
Speaker 3 (20:09):
And she she believed the landlady was practicing voodoo on
her against her and she attacked the woman and throughout
all this during this episode, she had taken on a
British accent and taking a family history, they found that
number one, she had schizophrenia family. She was diagnosed with
schizophrenia as a result of this incident, but that she
(20:31):
had had similar instances before and during these she had
spoken with the British accent.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
Yeah, I wonder. I didn't see anything in there about
her if she had a I mean, is it another personality?
Is it multiple personality disorder?
Speaker 3 (20:44):
I don't believe. So that's not what I took from.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
It, because that would make sense, you know, if you
have a just a British personality that came out that's
violent maybe or something.
Speaker 3 (20:55):
Yeah, well, I mean, remember we I think we've done
one on schizophrenia before, haven't we.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
I don't know, haven't we definitely.
Speaker 3 (21:02):
Did one on dissociative personality disorder, yeah, which is just
absolutely fascinating. But I was like you, I kind of noticed, like, hey,
what about multiple personalities? It doesn't it seems like something
that would be right up that alley.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
I'm sure they've looked into that.
Speaker 3 (21:19):
But apparently apparently that's not part of it.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
Yeah. Another case that I said we were going to
get to, This one is really weird and super sad.
This woman named Sarah Calwell in England. She is the
one that had the migraine that set it off. And
this one is super odd because she's an English woman
(21:41):
who now has a Chinese accent.
Speaker 3 (21:44):
I mean just straight up sounds Chinese.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
And like broken English Chinese.
Speaker 3 (21:51):
Right right, So she sounds like a native I think
Mandarin speaker is probably what we're thinking of who is
speaking English. And if you weren't looking like you would
expect to see, say maybe like a middle aged Chinese
woman when you looked at the video. Yeah, and no,
(22:13):
it's like, I don't know, late to mid thirties Caucasian woman. Yeah,
a native born English speaker who And she's who I
was thinking of when I was saying for some people,
it's a really big problem because it's presented a big
crisis for her identity. She said that she can't look
in the mirror while she's speaking any longer. She just
(22:35):
doesn't feel like herself anymore. It's really hit her hard.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
Yeah, I mean her case is really sad. It was
I think twenty ten when she was diagnosed. After this
migraine incident. In twenty fifteen, she couldn't work anymore, and
she has a lot and more issues going on than
just the speech. With these migraines that have come on,
(23:00):
and she's got a whole range of physical problems that
she's had to stop work. She's in a wheelchair. Even
though her limbs completely work, her brain basically can't tell
her limbs to do what they should do.
Speaker 3 (23:11):
Good Lord, So from migraines.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
Yeah, from I think these really extreme migraines. I think
they even likened it to like having a stroke. They
were so severe. So she's had to sell her house
and I think her husband is afflicted with something too.
It's just a really really sad case. But you know,
you can there's all kinds of interviews with her, and
it's just so strange to hear that accent coming out
(23:38):
of this white lady.
Speaker 3 (23:40):
It is, and from what I gather, she'd be like, yeah, well,
imagine how strange it feels coming out of you.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
Oh yeah, you know. And you know, I saw videos
where they would sit down and play her, and before
I looked up further that she was having even more
troubled times. It seemed like she was getting a little
better throughout the interview through therapy because they were playing her.
One of the things they do is they play old
recordings of herself and she would sit down and listen
(24:06):
to them and try and mimic it, and which kind
of brought up one of my questions is can you
even mimic an accent? Like you know, people can fake
an accent, Like, can you even do that? And I
didn't get an answer on that. But then you're just
mimicking an accent your entire life too, even if you could. Yeah,
you know, so that's problematic on its own. Sure, but
(24:29):
it seemed like she was getting a little bit better
in that interview, but apparently not. It's really sad, Yeah
it is.
Speaker 3 (24:34):
I mean, like it's bad enough you've got migraines and
then to have a crisis of identity. Yeah, it's yeah,
not fair.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
So one of the other things it's really troubling is
you can't just just go to a neurologist and get
it cleared up. They're a whole range of doctors that
you'll probably see along the way, including a neurologist you
talked about, a speech language pathologist. Go to a clinical
psychologist to deal with the fallout from everything, maybe a
(25:04):
neuro psychologist, maybe a radiologist. You might see you six
and eight doctors and still not get anywhere.
Speaker 3 (25:13):
Right, because I can't do a lot for you. We
don't know how to treat strokes very well, and once
damage has occurred in the brain, it can be pretty tough,
if not impossible, to reverse that damage, right, if it's
permanently damaged. So, yeah, the idea that you've now gotten
(25:36):
a foreign accent, they're probably like, that's kind of the
least to your words. You just had a massive stroke
or a huge head injury or something like that. But
what it's revealed to them is not that there's this
huge mystery, and we have kind of played into it
a little bit by not revealing this from the outset.
But you, as a patient with foreign accent syndrome, it
(25:57):
didn't hit your head and wake up with the foreign accent.
It's all in the ear of the beholder. The whole
idea that there is a foreign accent syndrome as the
way that it stated is false, and we'll talk about
that after this break. Okay, Chuck, we're back. Yes, So
(26:41):
I thought I heard you draw in a breath right
before we bro That might have been did you have
something to say?
Speaker 2 (26:47):
I don't know. Yeah, I think I have a little
trouble wrapping my head around this whole idea that it's
only in the ear of the person, because if you
know that lady clearly has a Chinese accent, it's not oh,
I'm just hearing it that way.
Speaker 3 (27:03):
So there've actually been studies where they've played a video
clip of or audio clip of a person with foreign
accent syndrome to different people and said, you know, where
do you think this person's from, And the same person
will get tens of different answers out of tens of
different people.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
Yeah, I don't know which. I mean. That makes sense
in some cases, I think, but I don't see how
anyone could hear this woman and say she sounds British
to me.
Speaker 3 (27:34):
Right, Well, no, no, no, she definitely doesn't sound British. But
that's the point. She sounds Chinese, but she's not actually
speaking in a Chinese accent. She didn't hit her head
and wake up with a Chinese accent. What happened was
she got these series of migraines, probably had some sort
of stroke, and a region of her brain that controls
the really intricate process of prosody, of making your tongue
(27:59):
do certain things to intonate an accent, certain words, in
certain ways that make up your accent and your dialect.
Overall that got damaged, and so now she can't control
it in the way she used to before, it comes
out sounding differently. And to you somebody who has heard
people speak in a Chinese accent before, it sounds like
a Chinese accent. That's the difference.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
Yeah, Lets, I don't get that. What I do get though,
is we take second nature just when we open our
mouth we talk. We don't realize the complex series of
events that's going on to make your voice come out
the way it does. So you know you're well in
the brain, they think, And again, the mysteries of the brain,
(28:44):
how you create speech is really complex and involves all
kinds of areas of the brain, but specifically damaged in
the left hemisphere and the cerebral artery they know a
lot of times can cause foreign accent syndrome. But when
you're speaking, you're using your tongue, using your lips, your jaw,
your larynx, and the way all these things combine and
(29:06):
who you are is gonna make you have and we
should do one on accents, period, but it's gonna control
how your speech comes out. So and the you know,
the one example they use in here is if you know,
you have a little too much to drink those, you know,
you might lose some of that muscle control and you
might slur your words or talk funny er differently. Right,
(29:28):
So that's a pretty pretty basic way of understanding it.
But I know, vowels are are sort of a big
deal when it comes to foreign accent syndrome.
Speaker 3 (29:39):
Yeah, if you if you say ah instead of A,
or you substitute continents like R for L. Right, so
you're you know, what's that? What were they singing jingle
bells on oh no deck the halls?
Speaker 2 (29:58):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (29:59):
Yeah, on a Christmas story? Christmas story. So if you
were a Caucasian English speaker and you damaged your brain
in a way that the part of your brain responsible
for forming l's now formed rs instead. To other English
speakers who'd heard native Chinese speakers, you would sound like
(30:22):
you had a Chinese accent, because that's what people who
speak Chinese do when they're speaking English. So you didn't
actually adopt a Chinese accent, You're just creating sounds in
the same way that somebody who was a native Chinese
speaker would.
Speaker 2 (30:38):
Yeah, I mean I see what they're getting at with
all this. To me, it's a little bit splitting hairs.
I think that's what I'm trying to say.
Speaker 3 (30:48):
I think the difference is this chuck with your accent.
Your native accent, your native dialect is the result of
your exposure to your environment right lifelong, all the people
around you, all the stuff you've learned, all the things
you've heard. It creates your dialect. Right when you suffer
foreign accent syndrome, your dialect, your brain is damaged so
(31:12):
that you can't produce that anymore, and you just kind
of haphazardly producing something else you don't actually follow. So,
like if you took Sarah Calwill's language and had her
read a passage from a book, and then you had
a native Chinese speaker, typical accented Mandarin speaker read that
(31:36):
same passage, it would not be the exact same thing.
There'd be all sorts of derivations and deviations from that
normal Mandarin accent because Sarah Calwell's brain was damaged in
a certain way that makes it a totally unique accent.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
Yeah, I get that, But that happens within the Mandarin
accent between people too.
Speaker 3 (31:56):
You're not letting this one go.
Speaker 2 (31:57):
Are you just don't get it? One thing I do
get is that there's no like and this is probably
what's so frustrated, or one of the things that's so
frustrating is it's not like they wake up with a
new cultural identity either, right. I mean, this woman still
wants to have her tea and biscuits every afternoon. But
when she says that, she says it with Chuck would
(32:20):
call it a Chinese accent. A neurologist would say, well,
you're just hearing that, right, So you know, like you said,
people suffer a bit from their own like sense of self, right,
you know, because I see, here's what I wonder is
in there. Do they hear it in their head as
(32:41):
their own regular accent?
Speaker 3 (32:43):
I don't think so. No. I think it sounds off
to them, and I think it's probably distressing because they're like, wait,
let me say that again, and they still say it
what they perceive is the wrong way, because apparently one
of the hallmarks of foreign accent syndrome is the errors
are the different is that they make pro in their
(33:03):
prosody is predictable, which makes it like an accent. I mean,
that's what an accent is is you're going to drop
your t's or replace the T with the th with
a D just about every time, or add that R
when you say wash, Yeah, exactly Like That's it's a
predictable thing, and that's part of foreign accent senterlemen. It
(33:24):
starts to happen in predictable ways too, So I would guess, yeah,
it sounds off to them as well well.
Speaker 2 (33:31):
Because the reason I say that is because when like
and I think I've talked about this, when my grandfather
had a stroke, he still talked, but it just came
out as gibberish. But in his head he was saying
the things that he was trying to say, which is,
you know, one of the most frustrating things I think
after a stroke victim is I remember seeing him talk
(33:52):
and getting so frustrated. He would just you know, say
things out loud and it would come out as gibbish
to us, but in his head he's still saying you know,
his English words, right.
Speaker 3 (34:03):
It's got to make you feel trapped in your body.
Speaker 2 (34:05):
Yeah. However, fas is a little all over the map
because there have been other weird cases. Because we've been
saying this whole time, there's not a new identity. It's
the same you're saying the same words and everything. But
there have been cases where people do substitute out words,
(34:25):
like you would say lift instead of an elevator.
Speaker 3 (34:29):
Right, that's like the psychogenic version.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
I know. It's just so confusing.
Speaker 3 (34:34):
Well it almost makes me think, like, so before there
was nothing but neurogenic foreign accent syndrome, right, everything else
was you're just crazy. Now they recognize that they're psychogenic
fas as well. I think what's gonna happen with more
and more study, They're gonna just diverge into two totally
different syndromes.
Speaker 2 (34:55):
Now, yeah, that makes sense, you know.
Speaker 3 (34:57):
I think they're gonna be like, that's actually not the
same thing, something totally different. Neurogenic foreign accent syndrome is
its own thing, and psychogenic is something else entirely.
Speaker 2 (35:07):
Yeah, I'll just make up a new name. Yeah. This
one other case I thought was interesting about the Dutch woman,
which one she was Dutch is Dutch, and she developed
a French accent, but she spoke Dutch using French syntax
and occasionally French words as if she was a French
(35:31):
person learning Dutch, and it turns out that she was
a Dutch language teacher who taught French people to speak Dutch. Right,
And I don't know what's her psychogenic or neurogenic.
Speaker 3 (35:43):
It would have to be psychogenic because neurogenic has basically
that original Harry Whittaker criteria.
Speaker 2 (35:50):
Like you, you'd never use different words and things.
Speaker 3 (35:54):
Well, it has to not be related to the patient's
ability to speak a foreign language.
Speaker 2 (35:59):
Oh okay, So like that.
Speaker 3 (36:01):
She would be technically canceled out from neurogenic for that one.
And it would also it didn't have anything to do
with central nervous system damage, which is again that's why
I think it's gonna end up being its own thing.
Speaker 2 (36:16):
Man, So interesting? Is what else you got?
Speaker 3 (36:20):
Uh? That's all I've got? Man, Isn't that enough?
Speaker 2 (36:24):
I think? So?
Speaker 3 (36:25):
Man, any language stuff? Anytime we talk about language in
the brain, I guess neurolinguistics. I just I turned to Goo.
It's so interesting to me. That's what happens when something
interests me. I turned to Goo. If you want to
turn to go and learn more about foreign accent syndrome,
you can type those words in the search bart HowStuffWorks
dot com. And since I said that, it's time for
(36:48):
Chuck administrator detail.
Speaker 2 (36:56):
How was that?
Speaker 3 (36:57):
That was great? Man? So Chuck. Yes, we've got some
more people to thank for sending us some nice stuff.
Speaker 2 (37:03):
That's right. I'm gonna start off with Nathan for Lazzo.
Speaker 3 (37:08):
That's good. Uh.
Speaker 2 (37:09):
He sent us some really lovely hand drawn calendars and
bookmarks and you can find those at wildlife dot Wildlife
dot Marini for Loatso dot com dot au and that's
m A r I N I F E r l
a z z o dot com dot a U. And
(37:31):
it was really really beautiful work and it's it's a
cool thing because a portion of every sale is donated
to a nonprofit wildlife organization.
Speaker 3 (37:39):
Very nice. I think you handled that foreign accent very well.
Speaker 2 (37:42):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (37:43):
I want to say thanks big time to Robert Coombs
or Combs from Whitetail Coffee for the amazing coffees, especially like, seriously,
this is a really good coffee, especially the Laderis and
Lamarella and that's white Tail t a l E coffee.
(38:04):
It's just an amazing coffee subscription service that you should
check out.
Speaker 2 (38:08):
Well, I got a couple of more coffees. I'll just
knock them both out. You have one sitting, actually have
two of them sitting on your desk right now, my friend.
Speaker 3 (38:15):
Wait to go grab them.
Speaker 2 (38:17):
True Stone Coffee Roasters from Saint Paul, Minnesota send us
their medium blend and I can't vouch for the taste
yet because it just got here, but it smells good.
And then Devin from True Coffee Roasters in Fitchburg, Wisconsin
send us dark roasted Sumatra. And in Mexico, Aleutra. I'm sorry, Altura, nice,
(38:38):
thanks a lot, got coffee coming out her ears.
Speaker 3 (38:41):
That's great. That's a good place to be, but we're
not gonna have diabetes. My friend now, Doug Fuch sent
us a beautiful illustrated card. Thanks for that, Doug, thanks
for saying Hi.
Speaker 2 (38:51):
Meg from Seattle, she sent me a card about Laurn's
passing my cat which I lost last year, which is
very very sweet. And while I'm on that, Buckley, my
old boy passed away a couple of weeks ago, and
everyone on Facebook was beyond supportive and sweet and that
really helped out. So thanks for that.
Speaker 3 (39:13):
Yeah, from everybody listening to you, Chuck, we send our condolences.
Speaker 2 (39:17):
Thank you. It was very dark time.
Speaker 3 (39:19):
Yeah, let's see pressed him Pope. He sent us some
amazing chocolates Chuck from V Chocolates V. Just the letter
V Chocolates dot Com. Seriously, it's good stuff. I feel bad.
I feel like I'm running around. I'm a little bit sweet.
Speaker 2 (39:39):
That's okay. We'll always come back to them, Okay. Our
buddy Jeff Barney was kind enough. And I still haven't tried.
It's in my fridge, but you said it's the best.
He sent us QP Japanese mayo.
Speaker 3 (39:51):
Oh it's so good.
Speaker 2 (39:52):
Because of my love for mayonnaise and.
Speaker 3 (39:54):
Chuck, you may never go back to American mayo again.
Speaker 2 (39:58):
Well, I'm finishing up a a gallon of.
Speaker 3 (40:01):
Dukes this afternoon.
Speaker 2 (40:04):
Yeah, I'm just gonna gonna shoot it down, and then
I'm gonna dive into the QP and see what's going
on there. Got to see what the difference is.
Speaker 3 (40:12):
It's subtle, but do you You'll notice You'll say, wow,
this is actually really really good man.
Speaker 2 (40:18):
All right, Well, thanks to Jeff Barney for that.
Speaker 3 (40:21):
Thanks a lot to Tim and Joe from Primer Stories.
I don't know if you remember, but our animal rights
double parter tied into an essay I wrote on Primer
Stories dot com and they sent t shirts to say
thanks for that. So thanks back for you guys. Support.
Speaker 2 (40:39):
Ian Newton of the Baltimore Whiskey Company. Send us some
Ginger Apple Liqueur and jin.
Speaker 3 (40:47):
Yes, thanks a lot. Uh Don Kent who last gave
us some Pliny the Elder before, which was nice.
Speaker 2 (40:54):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 3 (40:55):
Also send us a bunch of soilent, and thank you
also to Soilent. It's so well the company who heard
our soilent episode and said, you guys haven't tried soilent. Here,
here's some soilent, and thank you for that soilent. That
was very nice.
Speaker 2 (41:08):
I think they got what they wanted out of this,
which is for us to say soilent twelve times soilent.
This came in today Thomas Craigil car k R E
G E L. He sent me a friggin' monocle.
Speaker 3 (41:22):
Oh that's neat.
Speaker 2 (41:23):
And he heard me talking about my eyes going and
how I just need him to read things close up,
and he said, buddy, here's what you need to do
because you will one day embarrass your daughter like I
embarrassed my children. You need to rock a monocle.
Speaker 3 (41:38):
And it's a monocle, so is he like a trained
optometrist who can like no, no, So he just gave
you a piece of glass that's going to ruin your
eye over time.
Speaker 2 (41:50):
Yeah, I mean I tried it and it's you know,
it's kind of like a reader. It works about the
same as my prescription. But he uses one. He sent
a little picture of himself. Yeah, I guess I should
plug the company. It's near sights. Monocles is what he used.
Speaker 3 (42:05):
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2 (42:06):
And yeah, I got a monocle now.
Speaker 3 (42:08):
Nice, Chuck, Chuck, I'm gonna use it. Your new nickname
is Pringles Guy. Okay, I've got someone else, Pringles Guy.
Janelle Samara send us a copy of her book Our
Only Hope, Thank you, and congratulations on writing a book.
Speaker 2 (42:24):
Bridget mass Off M A. S. S. O. T. H.
Send us some really cute along with an extra large
handwritten note. So's some really cute Josh and Chuck cutouts,
like kind of paper cut and paste cutouts. Nice, and
yours is on your desk.
Speaker 3 (42:39):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (42:40):
We got to get out of this room, and I
do go over to your desk. You got a bounty,
Francis Dela pause.
Speaker 3 (42:46):
So you know, there's like a whole group of people
out there who believe in writing letters, beautiful letters with
fountain pens and all that, and Francis Dela Pause is
one of them, send us a beautiful handwritten letter, and
you also apparently customarily send what's called a flat gift.
And they sent a postcard the Sad Life of Sad Clown,
(43:07):
which is great. Sad clowns are great.
Speaker 2 (43:10):
Well, I got a few letters. Actually, I'll just knock
those out because Sandra maybe this was because of International
Correspondence Writing Month that we got these, because apparently that happened.
Oh okay, But Sandra sent us a nice handwritten letter
in honor of that specifically, and then Austin from Bakersfield
sent us a very nice handwritten note. And then Kristen
(43:31):
Cook sent us a Valentine's State card to all of us,
including Harry nole Man that not Harry Knowles of ain't
it cool news, but our own Noll who was just
Harry right.
Speaker 3 (43:44):
We got some other ones to chuck. We got a
lighthouse postcard from Big Sable Point from Teresa. We got
a couple of Christmas cards from the Johnson Alloman family
and Tess Sullivan and her family, and I guess in
part because the national what is it National Writing Month
or letter Writing Month?
Speaker 2 (44:03):
International Correspondence Writing Month?
Speaker 3 (44:05):
Exactly. Noel Verosa, No sorry, Noel Versosa, Noel Verzosa.
Speaker 2 (44:14):
It's handwritten. You can't you know?
Speaker 3 (44:15):
I got it that last time, Noel. Noel Verzosa wrote
us a nice hand letter, handwritten letter and fountain pen.
Speaker 2 (44:24):
I've got two more, Megan Moon Waltzman. And that's Megan
with two g's. Oddly, she sent us a copy of
this really cool thing she made. It's a book. It's
called Songbook, a book of music for all levels, all ages,
and it is eleven songs kind of written out as
chords and things and illustrated for different instruments, like there'll
(44:45):
be a song for guitar, an intro song for banjo
and for cello, and it's got these cool pictures and
then you can download these songs and kind of figure
it's I mean, it says for all ages, but it
seems like it'd be great to give a kid, right,
so that out it's very worthwhile.
Speaker 3 (45:02):
I've got two more to finish than two one. Austin
Doyle sent me an amazing oil crayon painting, which I
assume will inflate in value very rapidly once Austin dies.
Speaker 2 (45:15):
Hopefully that doesn't happen, because Doyle is one of our
oldest and I don't mean by age, but one of
our longest time listeners.
Speaker 3 (45:23):
Yeah. He's a great guy. I mean like when he
dies of old age, I just planned to outlive him.
Speaker 2 (45:27):
That's okay, so I can cash.
Speaker 3 (45:29):
In on the painting he made me. And then Ben
and Aaron Gibson send us the Japanese car magnets that
signify an elderly driver or a team driver, which we've
talked about before.
Speaker 2 (45:39):
Oh yeah, yeah, I remember those.
Speaker 3 (45:41):
Thanks dudes.
Speaker 2 (45:42):
I got one more in this one. Boy. You have
no idea what's waiting in there. You just came right
into the recording studio for a change. Yeah, on your
desk right now, Josh, I can't wait. You have a
handmade cutting board. Awesome, and it's really really nice. This
is from Christopher at the timber Wolf, and it's just
(46:02):
you know, it's gorgeous. You send a couple of these
in and they're really really nice. Nice, So you got
to you gotta take care of it though. I left
the instructions for you.
Speaker 3 (46:09):
I got a lot of stuff to carry out of here.
Speaker 2 (46:12):
Yeah, you need a someone needs to send Josh a wheelbarrow.
Speaker 3 (46:15):
Or a radio flyer.
Speaker 2 (46:17):
Oh, I got one of those for my kid. It's nice.
Oh yeah yeah, the old red wagon.
Speaker 3 (46:21):
Like the real one. The radio flyer.
Speaker 2 (46:23):
Yeah, they still make them nice.
Speaker 3 (46:25):
Well, thank you again to everybody who's sent us so
much great stuff. We appreciate it big time, And if
you want to get in touch with this, you can
send us both an emails. The Stuff podcast at housetuffworks
dot com and has always joined us at our home
on the web, Stuff Youshould Know dot com.
Speaker 2 (46:43):
Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Good afternoon, GUVNA. It's Chucky here on a Saturday, and
I'm going to pick a selection called how.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Foreign Accent Syndrome Works.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
No idea or what this is about, but it is
from March twenty eight, twenty seventeen, and I hope you
enjoy it.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Good day. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production
of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and
there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Jerry's here is always
So it's stuff you should know, Stuff you should know.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
You should have said that in a British accent.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
It's stuff you should know. Ay, how's that?
Speaker 2 (00:52):
It was great? You're a regular rich.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
Little Remember the arrest development little subplot where Charlie's Theren
was thought to be a British spy. Oh yeah, what
was uh for British eyes only?
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Yeah? But what was the name of her character?
Speaker 3 (01:13):
Mister F, mister F. That's right, that's right.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
I knew I had some like They said that every time. Right,
it's pretty funny. She's great, Yes, she was pretty lady, Funny, smart, Yeah,
good actor?
Speaker 3 (01:27):
What else?
Speaker 2 (01:28):
That's all I got on her? She can macro may
Oh really, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
I just assume.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
Okay, this is left to a great start.
Speaker 3 (01:40):
Uh is it's unusual? Odd even you could say that
you suggested I say the intro in a British accent
because we're talking about foreign accents today.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
Chuck, that's right, it was coy m.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
I see now it makes sense.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
Yes, and we're specific not talking about There's a thing
sometimes that certain people do when they meet someone with
an accent different than their own, right where they accidentally
or sometimes purposely adopt it momentarily.
Speaker 3 (02:20):
Yes, it's called code switching.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
My mom's done this before that. I remember it happened
when I was a kid. My brother and I thought
it was so funny.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
Yeah, and it seems like it's usually a parent of
an embarrassed child. Sure is there an explanation behind it?
Speaker 3 (02:41):
Or yeah?
Speaker 2 (02:41):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (02:42):
So this is from what I understand. This is the point. Right, So,
our accents are extremely personal. They're part of like us individually,
but they also signal our membership in different groups. Right, So,
like a farmer is going to talk differently from a stockbroker,
and a farmer from Georgia is going to talk a
(03:03):
lot differently than a stockbroker from Portland, Oregon. Right, okay,
because that's the other stock market seat. Yeah, you thought
I was going to say New York I Nope. So
when we when we code switch, when we meet other
people and take on their their way of talking, it's
(03:25):
called code switching, and I think it's a way of signaling, hey,
we have something in common. I don't want you to
be distracted by it's. Yeah, my overalls with no shirt
on are distracting enough. I don't want you to be
distracted by my accent too. So I think it is
a way of saying, like, hey, i'm, I'm, I'm, we
have something in common. The thing is, accents are such
(03:47):
a part of group identity that if you do that
in front of some other members of your group, whether
it's your family or your friends or whatever.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
They're going to tease you.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
They are going to tease you, guaranteed. And one of
the reasons why is because what they're doing, consciously or
otherwise is maintaining the borders of their own group's identity. Yeah,
they're saying, don't put on airs, don't think you're fancy,
don't think you're just like that guy, You're one of us.
And making fun of somebody who adopts someone else's accent
(04:17):
is a way of doing that. It's a way of
maintaining group divisions and borders. Well, really, when you do
kind of adopt someone else's accent, I think one of
the things that you are doing is trying to make
the foreigner, the stranger feel more comfortable. And having met
your mom, I guarantee that's what she was doing.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
Well. I just remember the only one I remember specifically,
and you know, you just had these random childhood moments
that sort of stick with you was we were in
Florida and we were talking with an Irish woman. I
believe she may have been from England, but I think
she was Irish. And the other thing too, is you know,
(04:57):
I don't think my mom had probably talked to a
lot of our Irish people at that point. You know,
she's from West Tennessee. They moved to Georgia. We didn't
have Irish people all over the place. She wasn't super
well traveled back then, although she is much more now,
so it was probably a bit novel to her. And
I remember very specifically the woman said something about going
to Disney instead of Disney World, and my mom said
(05:20):
she got kind of proper, and she says, you know,
we haven't been to Disney yet. And I remember my
brother and I just thought that was so funny. Instead
of saying Disney World, did.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
You guys make fun of her in front of the woman?
Speaker 2 (05:30):
No, I don't think so. We may have laughed a
little under our breath, but I mean, I don't think
we I don't think we even teased her. I'm teasing
her now a bit, sure, but I don't think like
we made fun of her really. I think we just
kind of, like my brother and I want to do,
very quietly, looked at each other and in that way
that brothers do.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
Right, and then talk to each other like the kids
an Escape from which Mountain?
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Yeah? Were they telepathic? Yeah, but it's funny. I was
listening to the Great Judge John Hodgman podcast, Oh Yeah
with her pal John and Jesse Thorne bailiff Jesse, and
they had an actual case a few weeks ago that
was very funny where this this mom does this on purpose.
She's a trained actor and loves to put on accents
(06:18):
when she goes to places, and the daughter was just
she took her to the internet court and was just
like stop doing this, like you've got to stop doing this.
And the mom's whole thing, she was very just fun
and whimsical and having a lot of fun with it.
So it was really hard to rule against her. But
(06:40):
I think codgmen ultimately did rule against her.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
He's tough but fair.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
Well. I think his whole thing was, like you know,
I think he ruled partially in her favor, like you
got to let him know where you're from. And you
can't do it to like waiters and service people because
their job is to like take your dumb jokes and
have a stiff upper lip about it, and it just
kind of makes their job harder if they think maybe
(07:07):
you're making fun of them, and you know, like you
may not realize the unintended consequence of this is somebody
may feel uncomfortable that they have to put up with this.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
Wow, that was it was like a really serious turn
at the end.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
There, No, it did. I mean, you know this was
great about that show is they're funny cases, but he
adjudicates seriously.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
I think, oh yeah, and then Jesse always shoots his
gun off at the end. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Beeah. So anyway, I just thought that was pretty weird
that this article came up and then that episode had
just aired. But that's different than what we were talking
about totally. Like I started saying, this is not that
at all. This is a legitimate, super rare. This reminded
me of alien hand syndrome and its rarity. Yeah, because
(07:55):
I've seen different numbers, but the most I've seen is
about one hundred and fifty described official cases of foreign
accent syndrome.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
Right, that's super rare for sure.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
And what makes it different from somebody taking on the
affect or dialect or accent of somebody else, someone taking
the piss, right, this is where you can't stop. It's involuntary. Yeah,
and you know it sounds weird, it's an exotic and
you just want to like poke the person who's doing
that in the neck to be like what are you
(08:27):
doing there? But if you really start to dig into
the actual cases, it's sad in a lot of a
lot of cases. Oh yeah, Because again, your accent, what
you sound like, makes up a part of your personality.
So if you are if it changes on you involuntarily,
it can be quite traumatic. For some people, you could
have an identity crisis of sorts.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
Yeah, so I guess we should go ahead and talk
about a couple of cases so people know what we're
talking about. The first one mentioned in our own article
is really interesting for a few reasons, and it's the
most recent case that's documented. Oh I'm sorry it's not
the most recent, but it is fairly recent. A woman
named Lisa Alamia, she had jaw surgery because of an overbite,
(09:11):
and then when she came out of surgery, even though
she was from Texas and had never been to England,
she spoke with a British accent and.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
She's like, right, bloody hell and way, I need our
British listeners to write in and tell me how good
my British accent is.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
Okay, Well, I'm known on the show for doing the
bad accent, so I'm glad you're taking up.
Speaker 3 (09:34):
No, yours are good. I don't know minor.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
They verge on decent at times.
Speaker 3 (09:40):
Well, there's cartoonish and stereotypical, really really good cartoonish stereotypical
versions of accents.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
So she woke up had that accent, and her husband
and three kids thought it was a joke. She had
only been outside the country to go to Mexico and
it was a real thing called foreign accent syndrome.
Speaker 3 (09:59):
Yes, I've ever been to England. She apparently probably had
seen British people on TV kind of thing. But her
case actually is the opposite of what I was saying.
She was apparently quite shy before, and now she has
something to talk about a conversation opener. I guess she's
a little more chatty than before.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
Interesting, Yeah, it is.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
It's the opposite of some other people who have really
experienced a crisis. As a result, she's like, well, I
sound British now, I guess I should talk more than before.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
So she sounds like a drunk cockneque chimney sweep pretty much.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
And she does sound cognity to me.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
Oh really, I didn't hear I didn't see this one
on YouTube.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
So yeah, we should say, you know, this is kind
of like optical illusions. It's one thing to talk about it.
You need to actually go see and hear these people talking. Yeah,
if you just look up Lisa Alamia A La m
i A and you will find plenty of interviews with her.
She's she's, like you said, fairly recent. There's one that's
(11:02):
quite a famous case. Maybe the most famous because it
was the one that put foreign accent syndrome on the map,
even though it was before the term was coined.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
Yeah, this one had a much darker turn because it
was during World War Two. A Norwegian woman named Astrid
suffered injury and the ironies here are really sad. She
suffered a brain injury from shrapnel from a German bomb
and a bombing raid, and then when she came to
(11:31):
she had a German accent. Right, very not fun for her.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
No, because the Germans were occupying Norway at the time, right, Yeah,
so people she didn't really know, we're like, oh, hey,
German spy.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
Yeah you want some milk?
Speaker 3 (11:46):
No milk for you?
Speaker 2 (11:48):
Yeah, she was shunned. She couldn't even speak German, but
she had that accent and was obviously very distraught by this.
And she went to a neurologist name Yorg Rman Monrad Krone.
Nice job, it's a great name. And he coined the
first term for this, which is dysprosody, which is prosody
(12:13):
is like the tone and rhythm of your speech. Yeah,
and the prefix discs obviously is like abnormal or ill,
And that didn't catch on too well.
Speaker 3 (12:22):
It didn't, but as we'll see, he kind of nailed
what the problem was. Yeah, because you know, the non
grammatical parts of speech, the prosody are what is affected
when you have foreign accent syndrome. You have what appears
to be a foreign accent, but usually your vocabulary, your syntax,
(12:46):
your grammar remains unchanged. It's all the little nuances that
make up your accent or your intonation or the rhythm
of your speech that are affected and has changed. So
dysprosody is actually like the perfect name for the syndrome.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
Yeah, but foreign accent syndrome is way more catchy in
that Oh it's sexy. In nineteen eighty two, neurologist named
Harry Whittaker came up with that. So Whittaker coined it
in the eighties. I think nineteen eighty two was when
he coined that official term.
Speaker 3 (13:16):
Right, And he was a neurolinguist who did some pretty
serious research into foreign accent syndrome. He actually came up
with a four point criteria for diagnosing it, and the
number one is that the accent has to be considered
by the patient, the people the patient knows, and the
researcher of the doctor to be to sound like a
(13:37):
foreign accent, right.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
Yeah, pretty straightforward from what they are.
Speaker 3 (13:41):
Yeah, well that's number two. It has to be different
from the patient's former prosody, noticeably different. Number three, it
has to be related to central nervous system damage and
this one has come under fire under the last few years.
And then four it can't be related to to a
patient's ability to speak a foreign language already. Right, So
(14:05):
there's actually a condition, it's astounding to me. It's called
bilingual aphasia, or there's also polyglotaphasia. And apparently if you
suffer a stroke or brain injury or some other trauma
or insult to your central nervous system and you know
more than one language, you may completely lose the ability
(14:26):
to speak one language and completely retain the ability to
speak the other. That's how decentralized our language processes in
the brain.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
Well, yeah, because that's one of the factors in foreign
accent syndrome is you could it's not like in a
case where you might have a stroke and lose the
ability to speak like you still can speak in perfect
dialect whatever that dialect is as far as being you know,
articulate and coherent.
Speaker 3 (14:55):
Oh, right right, Yeah, yeah, so you're yeah exactly, You're
not like luring your speech. You just sound different and
like a foreign person saying the same words would, right, yes,
Oh gotcha. Okay, So there's this four point diagnosis criteria
that's kind of been deconstructed over the years. But the
problem with foreign accent syndrome, it's, like you said, there's
(15:19):
been one hundred, maybe one hundred and fifty cases, So
it's just totally up in the air as to like
how to diagnose it, what qualifies as it. And we'll
talk a little bit about how scientists have dug into
it thus far after his break, So chuck, foreign accent syndrome,
(16:00):
it's kind of all over the place right now, right, Yes,
You've got Lisa Alamiya who woke up from jaw surgery
with it. Apparently people who have strokes can suffer from
foreign accent syndrome. And I actually saw one case where
your foreign accent syndrome and one patient who suffered a
(16:23):
stroke was cured by a second stroke elsewhere in the brain.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (16:29):
So we have like it's very tough to predict what's
going to happen when foreign accent syndrome does come about
and you know, there's been people from Japan who've developed
Korean accents, or there have been people from Scotland who
developed South African accents. It's kind of everywhere and all over.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
Yeah, you can one of the other causes. It can
be from the onset of MS from multiple sclerosis. This
one woman that we'll talk about in more detail suffered
from chronic migraines but had a migraine attack so severe
that it spurred this and we'll get to her. But
all of these in a bucket from some sort of
(17:13):
trauma or an event are called neurogenic type. And for
a long time they used to think that was the
only way that you could get for an accident syndrome.
Speaker 3 (17:25):
Right, because remember that Harry Whittaker nineteen eighty two criteria
specifically says it has to be related to central nervous
system damage.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
Yeah, so there's another kind called psychogenic, also non organic
or functional or psychosomatic. But one of the leading experts
said that they prefer psychogenic. He said because quote this
term has the advantage of stating positively based on an
exploration of its causes, that the disorder is a manifestation
(17:54):
of psychological dis equilibrium like anxiety depression, personality disorder, or
conversion reaction, right, and you know we're talking about could
be bipolar disorder, it could be some other form of
mental illness. And this really kind of rocked. I mean,
(18:14):
it's not a huge community studying this, but the people
that do are obviously super fascinated by it, and it
kind of rocked their world when they found out that
someone that had no head injury, no stroke or anything
like that would could have something like this.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
Yeah, so they developed first it was neurogenic, then they
developed psychogenic, and then there's actually a third one. Now
it's mixed, so apparently it can actually be from a
psychological issue that possibly could arise from say a brain lesion.
So it's both of them together, right, working to create
this foreign accent syndrome, and definitely psychogenic. The psychogenic version
(18:50):
of foreign accent syndrome differs tremendously from the neurogenic in
a lot of ways. And number one is the psychogenic
tends to clear up. It accompanies say like a psychotic
break or a manic episode or something like that, and
as the episode wigans or goes away or clears up,
(19:10):
so too does the foreign accent syndrome. That is not
the case with neurogenic. With neurogenic, they have no cure whatsoever,
and basically the only treatment that they can come up
with is through speech therapy, where speech language pathologists basically
retrained you to talk the way you did before.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
Yeah, it's also the neurogenic is also much more common.
Out of the cases, I think it's about eighty six
percent are from some sort of neurological damage, right, So
what does that leave fourteen percent or no, unless I
guess you're accounting for the new super odd one that
could be both.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
And one of the more famous cases that kind of
demonstrated that psychogenic FAS was an actual thing happened here
in America. There's a woman in her mid thirties who
had a history of schizophrenia and her family and she
was brought to the er after attacking her mom's landlady.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
Yeah, this one's the most recent case actually.
Speaker 3 (20:09):
And she she believed the landlady was practicing voodoo on
her against her and she attacked the woman and throughout
all this during this episode, she had taken on a
British accent and taking a family history, they found that
number one, she had schizophrenia family. She was diagnosed with
schizophrenia as a result of this incident, but that she
(20:31):
had had similar instances before and during these she had
spoken with the British accent.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
Yeah, I wonder. I didn't see anything in there about
her if she had a I mean, is it another personality?
Is it multiple personality disorder?
Speaker 3 (20:44):
I don't believe. So that's not what I took from.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
It, because that would make sense, you know, if you
have a just a British personality that came out that's
violent maybe or something.
Speaker 3 (20:55):
Yeah, well, I mean, remember we I think we've done
one on schizophrenia before, haven't we.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
I don't know, haven't we definitely.
Speaker 3 (21:02):
Did one on dissociative personality disorder, yeah, which is just
absolutely fascinating. But I was like you, I kind of noticed, like, hey,
what about multiple personalities? It doesn't it seems like something
that would be right up that alley.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
I'm sure they've looked into that.
Speaker 3 (21:19):
But apparently apparently that's not part of it.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
Yeah. Another case that I said we were going to
get to, This one is really weird and super sad.
This woman named Sarah Calwell in England. She is the
one that had the migraine that set it off. And
this one is super odd because she's an English woman
(21:41):
who now has a Chinese accent.
Speaker 3 (21:44):
I mean just straight up sounds Chinese.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
And like broken English Chinese.
Speaker 3 (21:51):
Right right, So she sounds like a native I think
Mandarin speaker is probably what we're thinking of who is
speaking English. And if you weren't looking like you would
expect to see, say maybe like a middle aged Chinese
woman when you looked at the video. Yeah, and no,
(22:13):
it's like, I don't know, late to mid thirties Caucasian woman. Yeah,
a native born English speaker who And she's who I
was thinking of when I was saying for some people,
it's a really big problem because it's presented a big
crisis for her identity. She said that she can't look
in the mirror while she's speaking any longer. She just
(22:35):
doesn't feel like herself anymore. It's really hit her hard.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
Yeah, I mean her case is really sad. It was
I think twenty ten when she was diagnosed. After this
migraine incident. In twenty fifteen, she couldn't work anymore, and
she has a lot and more issues going on than
just the speech. With these migraines that have come on,
(23:00):
and she's got a whole range of physical problems that
she's had to stop work. She's in a wheelchair. Even
though her limbs completely work, her brain basically can't tell
her limbs to do what they should do.
Speaker 3 (23:11):
Good Lord, So from migraines.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
Yeah, from I think these really extreme migraines. I think
they even likened it to like having a stroke. They
were so severe. So she's had to sell her house
and I think her husband is afflicted with something too.
It's just a really really sad case. But you know,
you can there's all kinds of interviews with her, and
it's just so strange to hear that accent coming out
(23:38):
of this white lady.
Speaker 3 (23:40):
It is, and from what I gather, she'd be like, yeah, well,
imagine how strange it feels coming out of you.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
Oh yeah, you know. And you know, I saw videos
where they would sit down and play her, and before
I looked up further that she was having even more
troubled times. It seemed like she was getting a little
better throughout the interview through therapy because they were playing her.
One of the things they do is they play old
recordings of herself and she would sit down and listen
(24:06):
to them and try and mimic it, and which kind
of brought up one of my questions is can you
even mimic an accent? Like you know, people can fake
an accent, Like, can you even do that? And I
didn't get an answer on that. But then you're just
mimicking an accent your entire life too, even if you could. Yeah,
you know, so that's problematic on its own. Sure, but
(24:29):
it seemed like she was getting a little bit better
in that interview, but apparently not. It's really sad, Yeah
it is.
Speaker 3 (24:34):
I mean, like it's bad enough you've got migraines and
then to have a crisis of identity. Yeah, it's yeah,
not fair.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
So one of the other things it's really troubling is
you can't just just go to a neurologist and get
it cleared up. They're a whole range of doctors that
you'll probably see along the way, including a neurologist you
talked about, a speech language pathologist. Go to a clinical
psychologist to deal with the fallout from everything, maybe a
(25:04):
neuro psychologist, maybe a radiologist. You might see you six
and eight doctors and still not get anywhere.
Speaker 3 (25:13):
Right, because I can't do a lot for you. We
don't know how to treat strokes very well, and once
damage has occurred in the brain, it can be pretty tough,
if not impossible, to reverse that damage, right, if it's
permanently damaged. So, yeah, the idea that you've now gotten
(25:36):
a foreign accent, they're probably like, that's kind of the
least to your words. You just had a massive stroke
or a huge head injury or something like that. But
what it's revealed to them is not that there's this
huge mystery, and we have kind of played into it
a little bit by not revealing this from the outset.
But you, as a patient with foreign accent syndrome, it
(25:57):
didn't hit your head and wake up with the foreign accent.
It's all in the ear of the beholder. The whole
idea that there is a foreign accent syndrome as the
way that it stated is false, and we'll talk about
that after this break. Okay, Chuck, we're back. Yes, So
(26:41):
I thought I heard you draw in a breath right
before we bro That might have been did you have
something to say?
Speaker 2 (26:47):
I don't know. Yeah, I think I have a little
trouble wrapping my head around this whole idea that it's
only in the ear of the person, because if you
know that lady clearly has a Chinese accent, it's not oh,
I'm just hearing it that way.
Speaker 3 (27:03):
So there've actually been studies where they've played a video
clip of or audio clip of a person with foreign
accent syndrome to different people and said, you know, where
do you think this person's from, And the same person
will get tens of different answers out of tens of
different people.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
Yeah, I don't know which. I mean. That makes sense
in some cases, I think, but I don't see how
anyone could hear this woman and say she sounds British
to me.
Speaker 3 (27:34):
Right, Well, no, no, no, she definitely doesn't sound British. But
that's the point. She sounds Chinese, but she's not actually
speaking in a Chinese accent. She didn't hit her head
and wake up with a Chinese accent. What happened was
she got these series of migraines, probably had some sort
of stroke, and a region of her brain that controls
the really intricate process of prosody, of making your tongue
(27:59):
do certain things to intonate an accent, certain words, in
certain ways that make up your accent and your dialect.
Overall that got damaged, and so now she can't control
it in the way she used to before, it comes
out sounding differently. And to you somebody who has heard
people speak in a Chinese accent before, it sounds like
a Chinese accent. That's the difference.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
Yeah, Lets, I don't get that. What I do get though,
is we take second nature just when we open our
mouth we talk. We don't realize the complex series of
events that's going on to make your voice come out
the way it does. So you know you're well in
the brain, they think, And again, the mysteries of the brain,
(28:44):
how you create speech is really complex and involves all
kinds of areas of the brain, but specifically damaged in
the left hemisphere and the cerebral artery they know a
lot of times can cause foreign accent syndrome. But when
you're speaking, you're using your tongue, using your lips, your jaw,
your larynx, and the way all these things combine and
(29:06):
who you are is gonna make you have and we
should do one on accents, period, but it's gonna control
how your speech comes out. So and the you know,
the one example they use in here is if you know,
you have a little too much to drink those, you know,
you might lose some of that muscle control and you
might slur your words or talk funny er differently. Right,
(29:28):
So that's a pretty pretty basic way of understanding it.
But I know, vowels are are sort of a big
deal when it comes to foreign accent syndrome.
Speaker 3 (29:39):
Yeah, if you if you say ah instead of A,
or you substitute continents like R for L. Right, so
you're you know, what's that? What were they singing jingle
bells on oh no deck the halls?
Speaker 2 (29:58):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (29:59):
Yeah, on a Christmas story? Christmas story. So if you
were a Caucasian English speaker and you damaged your brain
in a way that the part of your brain responsible
for forming l's now formed rs instead. To other English
speakers who'd heard native Chinese speakers, you would sound like
(30:22):
you had a Chinese accent, because that's what people who
speak Chinese do when they're speaking English. So you didn't
actually adopt a Chinese accent, You're just creating sounds in
the same way that somebody who was a native Chinese
speaker would.
Speaker 2 (30:38):
Yeah, I mean I see what they're getting at with
all this. To me, it's a little bit splitting hairs.
I think that's what I'm trying to say.
Speaker 3 (30:48):
I think the difference is this chuck with your accent.
Your native accent, your native dialect is the result of
your exposure to your environment right lifelong, all the people
around you, all the stuff you've learned, all the things
you've heard. It creates your dialect. Right when you suffer
foreign accent syndrome, your dialect, your brain is damaged so
(31:12):
that you can't produce that anymore, and you just kind
of haphazardly producing something else you don't actually follow. So,
like if you took Sarah Calwill's language and had her
read a passage from a book, and then you had
a native Chinese speaker, typical accented Mandarin speaker read that
(31:36):
same passage, it would not be the exact same thing.
There'd be all sorts of derivations and deviations from that
normal Mandarin accent because Sarah Calwell's brain was damaged in
a certain way that makes it a totally unique accent.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
Yeah, I get that, But that happens within the Mandarin
accent between people too.
Speaker 3 (31:56):
You're not letting this one go.
Speaker 2 (31:57):
Are you just don't get it? One thing I do
get is that there's no like and this is probably
what's so frustrated, or one of the things that's so
frustrating is it's not like they wake up with a
new cultural identity either, right. I mean, this woman still
wants to have her tea and biscuits every afternoon. But
when she says that, she says it with Chuck would
(32:20):
call it a Chinese accent. A neurologist would say, well,
you're just hearing that, right, So you know, like you said,
people suffer a bit from their own like sense of self, right,
you know, because I see, here's what I wonder is
in there. Do they hear it in their head as
(32:41):
their own regular accent?
Speaker 3 (32:43):
I don't think so. No. I think it sounds off
to them, and I think it's probably distressing because they're like, wait,
let me say that again, and they still say it
what they perceive is the wrong way, because apparently one
of the hallmarks of foreign accent syndrome is the errors
are the different is that they make pro in their
(33:03):
prosody is predictable, which makes it like an accent. I mean,
that's what an accent is is you're going to drop
your t's or replace the T with the th with
a D just about every time, or add that R
when you say wash, Yeah, exactly Like That's it's a
predictable thing, and that's part of foreign accent senterlemen. It
(33:24):
starts to happen in predictable ways too, So I would guess, yeah,
it sounds off to them as well well.
Speaker 2 (33:31):
Because the reason I say that is because when like
and I think I've talked about this, when my grandfather
had a stroke, he still talked, but it just came
out as gibberish. But in his head he was saying
the things that he was trying to say, which is,
you know, one of the most frustrating things I think
after a stroke victim is I remember seeing him talk
(33:52):
and getting so frustrated. He would just you know, say
things out loud and it would come out as gibbish
to us, but in his head he's still saying you know,
his English words, right.
Speaker 3 (34:03):
It's got to make you feel trapped in your body.
Speaker 2 (34:05):
Yeah. However, fas is a little all over the map
because there have been other weird cases. Because we've been
saying this whole time, there's not a new identity. It's
the same you're saying the same words and everything. But
there have been cases where people do substitute out words,
(34:25):
like you would say lift instead of an elevator.
Speaker 3 (34:29):
Right, that's like the psychogenic version.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
I know. It's just so confusing.
Speaker 3 (34:34):
Well it almost makes me think, like, so before there
was nothing but neurogenic foreign accent syndrome, right, everything else
was you're just crazy. Now they recognize that they're psychogenic
fas as well. I think what's gonna happen with more
and more study, They're gonna just diverge into two totally
different syndromes.
Speaker 2 (34:55):
Now, yeah, that makes sense, you know.
Speaker 3 (34:57):
I think they're gonna be like, that's actually not the
same thing, something totally different. Neurogenic foreign accent syndrome is
its own thing, and psychogenic is something else entirely.
Speaker 2 (35:07):
Yeah, I'll just make up a new name. Yeah. This
one other case I thought was interesting about the Dutch woman,
which one she was Dutch is Dutch, and she developed
a French accent, but she spoke Dutch using French syntax
and occasionally French words as if she was a French
(35:31):
person learning Dutch, and it turns out that she was
a Dutch language teacher who taught French people to speak Dutch. Right,
And I don't know what's her psychogenic or neurogenic.
Speaker 3 (35:43):
It would have to be psychogenic because neurogenic has basically
that original Harry Whittaker criteria.
Speaker 2 (35:50):
Like you, you'd never use different words and things.
Speaker 3 (35:54):
Well, it has to not be related to the patient's
ability to speak a foreign language.
Speaker 2 (35:59):
Oh okay, So like that.
Speaker 3 (36:01):
She would be technically canceled out from neurogenic for that one.
And it would also it didn't have anything to do
with central nervous system damage, which is again that's why
I think it's gonna end up being its own thing.
Speaker 2 (36:16):
Man, So interesting? Is what else you got?
Speaker 3 (36:20):
Uh? That's all I've got? Man, Isn't that enough?
Speaker 2 (36:24):
I think? So?
Speaker 3 (36:25):
Man, any language stuff? Anytime we talk about language in
the brain, I guess neurolinguistics. I just I turned to Goo.
It's so interesting to me. That's what happens when something
interests me. I turned to Goo. If you want to
turn to go and learn more about foreign accent syndrome,
you can type those words in the search bart HowStuffWorks
dot com. And since I said that, it's time for
(36:48):
Chuck administrator detail.
Speaker 2 (36:56):
How was that?
Speaker 3 (36:57):
That was great? Man? So Chuck. Yes, we've got some
more people to thank for sending us some nice stuff.
Speaker 2 (37:03):
That's right. I'm gonna start off with Nathan for Lazzo.
Speaker 3 (37:08):
That's good. Uh.
Speaker 2 (37:09):
He sent us some really lovely hand drawn calendars and
bookmarks and you can find those at wildlife dot Wildlife
dot Marini for Loatso dot com dot au and that's
m A r I N I F E r l
a z z o dot com dot a U. And
(37:31):
it was really really beautiful work and it's it's a
cool thing because a portion of every sale is donated
to a nonprofit wildlife organization.
Speaker 3 (37:39):
Very nice. I think you handled that foreign accent very well.
Speaker 2 (37:42):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (37:43):
I want to say thanks big time to Robert Coombs
or Combs from Whitetail Coffee for the amazing coffees, especially like, seriously,
this is a really good coffee, especially the Laderis and
Lamarella and that's white Tail t a l E coffee.
(38:04):
It's just an amazing coffee subscription service that you should
check out.
Speaker 2 (38:08):
Well, I got a couple of more coffees. I'll just
knock them both out. You have one sitting, actually have
two of them sitting on your desk right now, my friend.
Speaker 3 (38:15):
Wait to go grab them.
Speaker 2 (38:17):
True Stone Coffee Roasters from Saint Paul, Minnesota send us
their medium blend and I can't vouch for the taste
yet because it just got here, but it smells good.
And then Devin from True Coffee Roasters in Fitchburg, Wisconsin
send us dark roasted Sumatra. And in Mexico, Aleutra. I'm sorry, Altura, nice,
(38:38):
thanks a lot, got coffee coming out her ears.
Speaker 3 (38:41):
That's great. That's a good place to be, but we're
not gonna have diabetes. My friend now, Doug Fuch sent
us a beautiful illustrated card. Thanks for that, Doug, thanks
for saying Hi.
Speaker 2 (38:51):
Meg from Seattle, she sent me a card about Laurn's
passing my cat which I lost last year, which is
very very sweet. And while I'm on that, Buckley, my
old boy passed away a couple of weeks ago, and
everyone on Facebook was beyond supportive and sweet and that
really helped out. So thanks for that.
Speaker 3 (39:13):
Yeah, from everybody listening to you, Chuck, we send our condolences.
Speaker 2 (39:17):
Thank you. It was very dark time.
Speaker 3 (39:19):
Yeah, let's see pressed him Pope. He sent us some
amazing chocolates Chuck from V Chocolates V. Just the letter
V Chocolates dot Com. Seriously, it's good stuff. I feel bad.
I feel like I'm running around. I'm a little bit sweet.
Speaker 2 (39:39):
That's okay. We'll always come back to them, Okay. Our
buddy Jeff Barney was kind enough. And I still haven't tried.
It's in my fridge, but you said it's the best.
He sent us QP Japanese mayo.
Speaker 3 (39:51):
Oh it's so good.
Speaker 2 (39:52):
Because of my love for mayonnaise and.
Speaker 3 (39:54):
Chuck, you may never go back to American mayo again.
Speaker 2 (39:58):
Well, I'm finishing up a a gallon of.
Speaker 3 (40:01):
Dukes this afternoon.
Speaker 2 (40:04):
Yeah, I'm just gonna gonna shoot it down, and then
I'm gonna dive into the QP and see what's going
on there. Got to see what the difference is.
Speaker 3 (40:12):
It's subtle, but do you You'll notice You'll say, wow,
this is actually really really good man.
Speaker 2 (40:18):
All right, Well, thanks to Jeff Barney for that.
Speaker 3 (40:21):
Thanks a lot to Tim and Joe from Primer Stories.
I don't know if you remember, but our animal rights
double parter tied into an essay I wrote on Primer
Stories dot com and they sent t shirts to say
thanks for that. So thanks back for you guys. Support.
Speaker 2 (40:39):
Ian Newton of the Baltimore Whiskey Company. Send us some
Ginger Apple Liqueur and jin.
Speaker 3 (40:47):
Yes, thanks a lot. Uh Don Kent who last gave
us some Pliny the Elder before, which was nice.
Speaker 2 (40:54):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 3 (40:55):
Also send us a bunch of soilent, and thank you
also to Soilent. It's so well the company who heard
our soilent episode and said, you guys haven't tried soilent. Here,
here's some soilent, and thank you for that soilent. That
was very nice.
Speaker 2 (41:08):
I think they got what they wanted out of this,
which is for us to say soilent twelve times soilent.
This came in today Thomas Craigil car k R E
G E L. He sent me a friggin' monocle.
Speaker 3 (41:22):
Oh that's neat.
Speaker 2 (41:23):
And he heard me talking about my eyes going and
how I just need him to read things close up,
and he said, buddy, here's what you need to do
because you will one day embarrass your daughter like I
embarrassed my children. You need to rock a monocle.
Speaker 3 (41:38):
And it's a monocle, so is he like a trained
optometrist who can like no, no, So he just gave
you a piece of glass that's going to ruin your
eye over time.
Speaker 2 (41:50):
Yeah, I mean I tried it and it's you know,
it's kind of like a reader. It works about the
same as my prescription. But he uses one. He sent
a little picture of himself. Yeah, I guess I should
plug the company. It's near sights. Monocles is what he used.
Speaker 3 (42:05):
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2 (42:06):
And yeah, I got a monocle now.
Speaker 3 (42:08):
Nice, Chuck, Chuck, I'm gonna use it. Your new nickname
is Pringles Guy. Okay, I've got someone else, Pringles Guy.
Janelle Samara send us a copy of her book Our
Only Hope, Thank you, and congratulations on writing a book.
Speaker 2 (42:24):
Bridget mass Off M A. S. S. O. T. H.
Send us some really cute along with an extra large
handwritten note. So's some really cute Josh and Chuck cutouts,
like kind of paper cut and paste cutouts. Nice, and
yours is on your desk.
Speaker 3 (42:39):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (42:40):
We got to get out of this room, and I
do go over to your desk. You got a bounty,
Francis Dela pause.
Speaker 3 (42:46):
So you know, there's like a whole group of people
out there who believe in writing letters, beautiful letters with
fountain pens and all that, and Francis Dela Pause is
one of them, send us a beautiful handwritten letter, and
you also apparently customarily send what's called a flat gift.
And they sent a postcard the Sad Life of Sad Clown,
(43:07):
which is great. Sad clowns are great.
Speaker 2 (43:10):
Well, I got a few letters. Actually, I'll just knock
those out because Sandra maybe this was because of International
Correspondence Writing Month that we got these, because apparently that happened.
Oh okay, But Sandra sent us a nice handwritten letter
in honor of that specifically, and then Austin from Bakersfield
sent us a very nice handwritten note. And then Kristen
(43:31):
Cook sent us a Valentine's State card to all of us,
including Harry nole Man that not Harry Knowles of ain't
it cool news, but our own Noll who was just
Harry right.
Speaker 3 (43:44):
We got some other ones to chuck. We got a
lighthouse postcard from Big Sable Point from Teresa. We got
a couple of Christmas cards from the Johnson Alloman family
and Tess Sullivan and her family, and I guess in
part because the national what is it National Writing Month
or letter Writing Month?
Speaker 2 (44:03):
International Correspondence Writing Month?
Speaker 3 (44:05):
Exactly. Noel Verosa, No sorry, Noel Versosa, Noel Verzosa.
Speaker 2 (44:14):
It's handwritten. You can't you know?
Speaker 3 (44:15):
I got it that last time, Noel. Noel Verzosa wrote
us a nice hand letter, handwritten letter and fountain pen.
Speaker 2 (44:24):
I've got two more, Megan Moon Waltzman. And that's Megan
with two g's. Oddly, she sent us a copy of
this really cool thing she made. It's a book. It's
called Songbook, a book of music for all levels, all ages,
and it is eleven songs kind of written out as
chords and things and illustrated for different instruments, like there'll
(44:45):
be a song for guitar, an intro song for banjo
and for cello, and it's got these cool pictures and
then you can download these songs and kind of figure
it's I mean, it says for all ages, but it
seems like it'd be great to give a kid, right,
so that out it's very worthwhile.
Speaker 3 (45:02):
I've got two more to finish than two one. Austin
Doyle sent me an amazing oil crayon painting, which I
assume will inflate in value very rapidly once Austin dies.
Speaker 2 (45:15):
Hopefully that doesn't happen, because Doyle is one of our
oldest and I don't mean by age, but one of
our longest time listeners.
Speaker 3 (45:23):
Yeah. He's a great guy. I mean like when he
dies of old age, I just planned to outlive him.
Speaker 2 (45:27):
That's okay, so I can cash.
Speaker 3 (45:29):
In on the painting he made me. And then Ben
and Aaron Gibson send us the Japanese car magnets that
signify an elderly driver or a team driver, which we've
talked about before.
Speaker 2 (45:39):
Oh yeah, yeah, I remember those.
Speaker 3 (45:41):
Thanks dudes.
Speaker 2 (45:42):
I got one more in this one. Boy. You have
no idea what's waiting in there. You just came right
into the recording studio for a change. Yeah, on your
desk right now, Josh, I can't wait. You have a
handmade cutting board. Awesome, and it's really really nice. This
is from Christopher at the timber Wolf, and it's just
(46:02):
you know, it's gorgeous. You send a couple of these
in and they're really really nice. Nice, So you got
to you gotta take care of it though. I left
the instructions for you.
Speaker 3 (46:09):
I got a lot of stuff to carry out of here.
Speaker 2 (46:12):
Yeah, you need a someone needs to send Josh a wheelbarrow.
Speaker 3 (46:15):
Or a radio flyer.
Speaker 2 (46:17):
Oh, I got one of those for my kid. It's nice.
Oh yeah yeah, the old red wagon.
Speaker 3 (46:21):
Like the real one. The radio flyer.
Speaker 2 (46:23):
Yeah, they still make them nice.
Speaker 3 (46:25):
Well, thank you again to everybody who's sent us so
much great stuff. We appreciate it big time, And if
you want to get in touch with this, you can
send us both an emails. The Stuff podcast at housetuffworks
dot com and has always joined us at our home
on the web, Stuff Youshould Know dot com.
Speaker 2 (46:43):
Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff You Should Know News
Hosts And Creators
Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
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