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How Foreign Accent Syndrome Works · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
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Speaker 1: So get on board the dry pod train. Welcome to
0:44
Speaker 1: Stuff you should know from how Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
0:53
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's
0:56
Speaker 1: Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Jerry's here is always So
1:00
Speaker 1: it's stuff you should know. Stuff you should You should
1:04
Speaker 1: have said that in a British accent. It's stuff you
1:08
Speaker 1: should know. Hey, how was that? It was great? You're
1:13
Speaker 1: a regular rich little remember the arrest development little subplot
1:19
Speaker 1: where Charlie Starren. It was thought to be a British spy.
1:25
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, what was for British eyes only? Yeah? But
1:29
Speaker 1: what was um? The name of her character, mr F
1:33
Speaker 1: mr F. That's right, that's right. Anyw I had some
1:36
Speaker 1: like they said that every time. Right, it was pretty funny.
1:39
Speaker 1: She's great. Yeah, she was pretty lady, funny, smart, Yeah,
1:44
Speaker 1: good actor? What else? That's all I got on her?
1:49
Speaker 1: She can macrom Oh really, I don't know. I just assume. Okay,
1:56
Speaker 1: this is after a great start. Uh uh is it's unusual?
2:02
Speaker 1: Odd even you could say that. You suggested I say
2:06
Speaker 1: the intro in a British accent because we're talking about
2:10
Speaker 1: foreign accents today, Chuck, that's right, it was COI mm hmm.
2:16
Speaker 1: I see now that makes sense. Yes, and we're specifically
2:19
Speaker 1: not talking about um. There's a thing sometimes that certain
2:24
Speaker 1: people do when they meet someone with a an accent
2:29
Speaker 1: different than their own, where they accidentally or sometimes purposely,
2:36
Speaker 1: adopted momentarily. Yes, it's called code switching. My mom has
2:42
Speaker 1: done this before that I remember. It happened when I
2:46
Speaker 1: was a kid. My brother and I thought it was
2:48
Speaker 1: so funny. Yeah. Yeah, And it seems like it's usually
2:52
Speaker 1: apparent of an embarrassed child. Sure, um and is there
2:58
Speaker 1: an explanation behind it? Yeah? Yeah? So? Um so this
3:03
Speaker 1: is from what I understand, This is the point. Right. So,
3:05
Speaker 1: our accents are extremely personal. They're part of like us individually,
3:10
Speaker 1: but they also signal our membership in different groups. Right. So,
3:15
Speaker 1: like a farmer is gonna talk differently from a stockbroker,
3:19
Speaker 1: and a farmer from UH, Georgia is going to talk
3:22
Speaker 1: a lot differently than a stockbroker from UH Portland, Oregon,
3:26
Speaker 1: right because it's the other stock market seat. They thought
3:30
Speaker 1: I was gonna say New York. Nope. Um. So when
3:35
Speaker 1: we when we code switch, when we meet other people
3:39
Speaker 1: and take on their their way of talking, it's called
3:44
Speaker 1: code switching. And I think it's a way of signaling, hey,
3:47
Speaker 1: I we have something in comment. I don't want you
3:49
Speaker 1: to be distracted by Yeah my my overalls with no
3:53
Speaker 1: shirt on are distracting enough. I don't want you to
3:56
Speaker 1: be distracted by my accent too. So I think it
3:58
Speaker 1: is a way of saying, like, hey, I'm, i'm, I'm,
4:02
Speaker 1: we have something in common. The thing is, accents are
4:05
Speaker 1: such a part of group identity that if you do
4:08
Speaker 1: that in front of some other members of your group,
4:11
Speaker 1: whether it's your family or your friends or whatever, they're
4:14
Speaker 1: gonna tease you. They are going to tease you, guaranteed.
4:17
Speaker 1: And one of the reasons why is because what they're doing,
4:20
Speaker 1: consciously or otherwise is maintaining the borders of their own
4:24
Speaker 1: group's identity. They're saying, don't put on airs, don't think
4:28
Speaker 1: you're fancy, don't think you're just like that guy, You're
4:31
Speaker 1: one of us, and and making fun of somebody who
4:34
Speaker 1: adopts someone else's accent as a way of doing that,
4:37
Speaker 1: it's a way of maintaining group divisions and borders where really,
4:42
Speaker 1: when you do kind of adopt someone else's accent, I
4:45
Speaker 1: think one of the things that you are doing is
4:47
Speaker 1: trying to make the foreigner, the stranger feel more comfortable.
4:50
Speaker 1: And having met your mom, I guarantee that's what she
4:53
Speaker 1: was doing. Well. I just remember the only one I
4:56
Speaker 1: remember specifically, and you know, you just said these random
5:00
Speaker 1: eildhood moments that sort of stick with you, was we
5:02
Speaker 1: were in Florida and we were talking with uh, an
5:06
Speaker 1: Irish woman. I believe she may have been from England,
5:10
Speaker 1: but I think she was Irish. And the other thing too, is,
5:13
Speaker 1: you know, I don't. I don't think my mom had
5:17
Speaker 1: probably talked to a lot of Irish people at that point.
5:20
Speaker 1: You know, she's from West Tennessee and moved to Georgia.
5:23
Speaker 1: We didn't have Irish people all over the place. She
5:25
Speaker 1: wasn't super well traveled back then, although she is much
5:27
Speaker 1: more now. Um so it was probably a bit novel
5:31
Speaker 1: to her. And I remember very specifically, the woman said
5:34
Speaker 1: something about going to Disney, uh instead of Disney World,
5:38
Speaker 1: and my mom said, she got kind of proper and
5:40
Speaker 1: she says, you know, we haven't been to Disney yet.
5:42
Speaker 1: And I remember my brother and I just thought that
5:44
Speaker 1: was so funny instead of saying Disney World. Did you
5:47
Speaker 1: guys make fun of her of the woman? No, I
5:50
Speaker 1: don't think so. We may have laughed a little um
5:54
Speaker 1: under our breath, but I mean, I don't think we.
5:56
Speaker 1: I don't think we even teased her. I'm teasing her
5:58
Speaker 1: now a bit, but um, I don't think like we
6:01
Speaker 1: made fun of her. Really. I think we just kind of,
6:04
Speaker 1: like my brother and I want to do, very quietly,
6:06
Speaker 1: looked at each other and in that way that brothers do, right,
6:10
Speaker 1: and then talk to each other like the kids and
6:12
Speaker 1: escape from which mountain? Yeah, or they telepathic? Uh, but
6:17
Speaker 1: it's funny. I was listening to um the Great Judge
6:19
Speaker 1: John Hodgman podcast with our pal John in Class Jesse
6:24
Speaker 1: Thorne Bailiff Jesse, and they had an actual case a
6:26
Speaker 1: few weeks ago that was very funny where this this
6:30
Speaker 1: mom um does this on purpose. She's a trained actor
6:35
Speaker 1: and loves to put on accents when she goes to places,
6:39
Speaker 1: and the daughter was just she took her to the
6:41
Speaker 1: uh Internet court and was just like stop doing this,
6:46
Speaker 1: like you've got to stop doing this. And the mom's
6:49
Speaker 1: whole thing, she was very just fun and whimsical and
6:54
Speaker 1: having a lot of fun with it. So it was
6:56
Speaker 1: really hard to to rule against her. But I think
7:00
Speaker 1: Jaman ultimately did rule against her. He's tough, but well,
7:05
Speaker 1: I think his whole thing was, like, you know, I
7:07
Speaker 1: think he ruled partially in her favor, like you gotta
7:10
Speaker 1: let him know where you're from. And you can't do
7:12
Speaker 1: it to like waiters and service people because their job
7:17
Speaker 1: is to like take your dumb jokes and and have
7:22
Speaker 1: a stiff upper lip about it, and it just kind
7:24
Speaker 1: of makes their job harder if they think maybe you're
7:26
Speaker 1: making fun of them, and you know, like you may
7:29
Speaker 1: not realize the unintended consequence of this is somebody may
7:33
Speaker 1: feel uncomfortable that they have to put up with this. Wow,
7:37
Speaker 1: that was It was a really serious turn at the
7:39
Speaker 1: end there, you know it did? I mean, you know
7:41
Speaker 1: that what's great about that show is it's they're funny cases,
7:43
Speaker 1: but he adjudicates seriously. I think, well, yeah, and then
7:47
Speaker 1: Jesse always shoots his gun off at the end. Yeah. Yeah.
7:52
Speaker 1: Uh So, anyway, I just thought it was pretty weird
7:55
Speaker 1: that this article came up and then that episode had
7:58
Speaker 1: just aired. But that's different than what we were talking
8:00
Speaker 1: about totally. Like I started saying, this is not that
8:04
Speaker 1: at all. This is a legitimate, super rare. This reminded
8:09
Speaker 1: me of alien hand syndrome and its rarity, um because
8:13
Speaker 1: I've seen different numbers, but the most I've seen is
8:16
Speaker 1: about a hundred and fifty um described official cases of
8:21
Speaker 1: foreign accent syndrome. Right, That's that's super rare for sure.
8:26
Speaker 1: And what makes it different from somebody taking on the
8:29
Speaker 1: affect or dialect or accident of somebody else. Someone's taking
8:32
Speaker 1: the piss, right, this is this is where you you
8:36
Speaker 1: can't stop. It's involuntary. Yeah, and you know it sounds weird.
8:41
Speaker 1: It's an ecdotic, and you just wanted to like poke
8:44
Speaker 1: the person who's doing that in the next to be
8:46
Speaker 1: like what are you doing there? But if you really
8:49
Speaker 1: started to dig into the actual cases, it's sad and
8:52
Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of cases. Yeah, Because again,
8:56
Speaker 1: your accent, what you sound like, makes up a part
8:58
Speaker 1: of your personality. So if you are if it, if
9:01
Speaker 1: it changes on you involuntarily, it can be quite traumatic
9:05
Speaker 1: for some people. You could have an identity crisis of sorts. Yeah. So, um,
9:09
Speaker 1: I guess we should just go ahead and talk about
9:11
Speaker 1: a couple of cases so people know what we're talking about. Um.
9:14
Speaker 1: The first one mentioned in our own article is really
9:16
Speaker 1: interesting for a few reasons. Uh. And it's the most
9:19
Speaker 1: recent case that's documented. Um. I'm sorry it's not the
9:22
Speaker 1: most recent, but it is fairly recent. Woman named Lisa
9:25
Speaker 1: Ala mia Um. She had jaw surgery because of an overbite,
9:30
Speaker 1: and then when she came out of surgery, even though
9:33
Speaker 1: she was from Texas and had never been to England,
9:36
Speaker 1: she spoke with a British accent and she's like, right,
9:38
Speaker 1: bloody hell and h any way, I I need our
9:44
Speaker 1: British listeners right in and tell me how how good
9:47
Speaker 1: my British accented. Okay, well, I'm known on the show
9:50
Speaker 1: for doing the bad accent, so I'm glad you're taking
9:52
Speaker 1: up now. Yours are good. I don't know minor. They
9:56
Speaker 1: verge on decent at times. Well there's carto iss and stereotypical,
10:01
Speaker 1: but really really good continuous stereotypical versions of accents. Uh.
10:06
Speaker 1: So she woke up had that accent in her husband
10:08
Speaker 1: and three kids. I thought it was a joke. Um,
10:11
Speaker 1: she had only been outside the country to go to
10:13
Speaker 1: Mexico and it was a real thing called foreign exit syndrome. Yeah,
10:18
Speaker 1: she'd never been to England. She apparently probably had seen
10:22
Speaker 1: British people on TV kind of thing. But her case
10:25
Speaker 1: actually is the opposite of what I was saying. She
10:28
Speaker 1: was apparently, um, quite shy before, and now she has
10:34
Speaker 1: something to talk about a conversation opener. I guess she's
10:37
Speaker 1: a little more chatty than before. Yeah, it is. It's
10:41
Speaker 1: it's the opposite of of some other people who have
10:45
Speaker 1: really experienced a crisis. As a results, she's like, well
10:48
Speaker 1: I saw him British. Now I guess I should talk
10:50
Speaker 1: more than before. So she sounds like a drunk cockney
10:53
Speaker 1: chimney sweep pretty much. And she does sound cockney to me. Really,
10:56
Speaker 1: I didn't hear I didn't see this one on YouTube,
10:58
Speaker 1: so yeah, we should say. You know, this is kind
11:01
Speaker 1: of like optical illusions. It's one thing to talk about it,
11:04
Speaker 1: you need to actually go see and hear these people talking. Um.
11:08
Speaker 1: If you just look up Lisa Alamia A l A
11:11
Speaker 1: M I A and you will find plenty of interviews
11:14
Speaker 1: with her. Um, she's she's, like you said, fairly recent.
11:20
Speaker 1: There's one that's a quite a famous case, maybe the
11:22
Speaker 1: most famous because it was the one that put foreign
11:25
Speaker 1: accent syndrome on the map, even though it was before
11:27
Speaker 1: the term was coined. Yeah, this one had had a
11:30
Speaker 1: much darker turn, um because it was during World War Two.
11:35
Speaker 1: A Norwegian woman named Astrid suffered injury. Um. And the
11:40
Speaker 1: ironies here are really sad. She suffered a brain injury
11:43
Speaker 1: from shrapnel from a German bomb and a bombing raid,
11:48
Speaker 1: and then when she came to she had a German accent. Right,
11:52
Speaker 1: very not fun for her, No, because the Germans were
11:56
Speaker 1: occupying Norway at the time, right, so people she didn't
12:00
Speaker 1: really know, we're like, oh, hey German spy, Yeah you
12:04
Speaker 1: want some milk? No milk for you? Yeah, she was shunned. Um.
12:09
Speaker 1: She couldn't even speak German, but she had that accent
12:12
Speaker 1: and was obviously very distraught by this, and she went
12:16
Speaker 1: to a neurologist. Name your Erman, Monrad Crohne. Nice job,
12:23
Speaker 1: it's a great name. And um he coined the first
12:26
Speaker 1: term uh for this, which is uh this prosody, which
12:31
Speaker 1: is a prosody is like the tone and rhythm of
12:33
Speaker 1: your speech, and the prefixed discs obviously is like abnormal
12:37
Speaker 1: or ill um And that didn't catch on too well.
12:41
Speaker 1: It didn't, but as we'll see, he kind of nailed
12:45
Speaker 1: what the problem was because you know, the the the
12:50
Speaker 1: non grammatical parts of speech, the prosody or what is affected.
12:55
Speaker 1: When you have foreign accent syndrome. You you have what
12:58
Speaker 1: appears to be a foreign accent, but you're usually your vocabulary,
13:04
Speaker 1: your syntax, your grammar remains unchanged. It's all the little
13:08
Speaker 1: nuances that make up your accent or your intonation or
13:12
Speaker 1: the rhythm of your speech that are affected and has changed.
13:15
Speaker 1: So this prosody is actually like the perfect name for
13:18
Speaker 1: the syndrome. Yeah, but foreign accent syndrome is way more
13:22
Speaker 1: catchy and that it's sexy in uh, neurologist named Harry
13:27
Speaker 1: Whittaker came up with that um so A Whittaker coined
13:30
Speaker 1: it in the eighties. Uh, I think two was when
13:33
Speaker 1: he coined that official term, right, and he he was
13:36
Speaker 1: a neuro linguist who did some pretty serious research into
13:40
Speaker 1: foreign accent syndrome. He actually came up with a four
13:43
Speaker 1: point criteria for diagnosing it. And the number one is
13:47
Speaker 1: that the accent has to be considered by the patient,
13:50
Speaker 1: the people the patient knows, and the researcher the doctor
13:54
Speaker 1: to be to sound like a foreign accent, right for
13:58
Speaker 1: pretty straightfor from what they are. Yeah, well that's number
14:01
Speaker 1: number Two. It has to be different from the patient's
14:06
Speaker 1: former prosody, noticeably different. Number three it has to be
14:10
Speaker 1: related to central nervous system damage and this one has
14:13
Speaker 1: come under fire under the last few years. And then
14:16
Speaker 1: four it can't be related to a patient's ability to
14:20
Speaker 1: speak a foreign language already. Right, So there's actually a condition,
14:25
Speaker 1: it's astounding to me. It's called bilingual aphasia, or there's
14:30
Speaker 1: also polyglott aphasia. And apparently if you suffer a stroke
14:35
Speaker 1: or brain injury or some other trauma insult to your
14:38
Speaker 1: central nervous system, and you know, more than one language.
14:43
Speaker 1: You may completely lose the ability to speak one language
14:46
Speaker 1: and completely retain the ability to speak the other. That's
14:49
Speaker 1: how decentralized our language processes in the brain. Well, yeah,
14:56
Speaker 1: because that's one of the factors in for UH accent
15:00
Speaker 1: syndrome is you could it's not like UH in a
15:03
Speaker 1: case where you might have a stroke and lose the
15:05
Speaker 1: ability to speak like, you still can speak in perfect
15:09
Speaker 1: dialect whatever that dialect is as far as being you know,
15:12
Speaker 1: articulate and coherent. Oh right, right, yeah, yeah, so you're
15:16
Speaker 1: you're yeah, exactly, You're not like slurring your speech. You
15:20
Speaker 1: just sound different and like a foreign person saying the
15:23
Speaker 1: same words would. Right, Oh, gotcha. Okay, So there's this
15:27
Speaker 1: four point diagnosis criteria that's kind of been deconstructed over
15:32
Speaker 1: the years. Um. But the problem with foreign accent syndrome it's,
15:35
Speaker 1: like you said, Um, there's been a hundred, maybe a
15:39
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty cases, So it's just totally up in
15:43
Speaker 1: the air as to like how did diagnose it, what
15:45
Speaker 1: qualifies as that? And we'll talk a little bit about
15:48
Speaker 1: how scientists have dug into it thus far after this break,
16:17
Speaker 1: so chuck forign accent syndrome. It's kind of all over
16:20
Speaker 1: the place right now. Right You've got um Lisa Lamia
16:25
Speaker 1: Um who woke up from jawl surgery with it. Apparently
16:29
Speaker 1: people who have strokes can um can suffer from foreign
16:34
Speaker 1: accent syndrome. Uh. And I actually saw one case where
16:38
Speaker 1: your foreign accent syndrome and one patient who suffered a
16:42
Speaker 1: stroke was cured by a second stroke elsewhere in the brain.
16:47
Speaker 1: So we have like it's very tough to predict what's
16:52
Speaker 1: going to happen when foreign accent syndrome does come about.
16:55
Speaker 1: And you know, there's been people from Japan who developed
16:59
Speaker 1: Korean act sense, or there have been people from Scotland
17:03
Speaker 1: who developed South African accents. Um. It's it's kind of
17:09
Speaker 1: everywhere and all over. Yeah, you can. One of the
17:12
Speaker 1: other causes. It can be from the onset of MS
17:16
Speaker 1: from multiple sclerosis. UM. This one woman that we'll talk
17:19
Speaker 1: about in more details suffered from chronic migraines but had
17:24
Speaker 1: a migraine attack so severe that it it's spurred this
17:27
Speaker 1: and we'll get to her. But all of these in
17:30
Speaker 1: a bucket from some sort of trauma or an event
17:34
Speaker 1: are called uh neurogenic type. And for a long time
17:38
Speaker 1: they used to think that was the only way that
17:41
Speaker 1: you could get for an excellent syndrome, right, because I
17:44
Speaker 1: remember that Harry Whittaker two criteria specifically says it has
17:49
Speaker 1: to be related to central nervous system damage. Yeah. So
17:52
Speaker 1: there's another kind called psychogenic, also non organic or functional
17:58
Speaker 1: or psychosomatic. But um, one of the leading experts said
18:02
Speaker 1: that they prefer psychogenic. Uh. He said because quote this
18:06
Speaker 1: term has the advantage of stating positively based on an
18:09
Speaker 1: exploration of its causes, that the disorder is a manifestation
18:13
Speaker 1: of psychic psychological dis equilibrium like anxiety depression, personality disorder,
18:19
Speaker 1: or conversion reaction in quote um, and you know we're
18:23
Speaker 1: talking about could be bipolar disorder, it could be some
18:27
Speaker 1: other form of mental illness. And UM, this really kind
18:31
Speaker 1: of rocked. I mean, it's not a huge community studying this,
18:34
Speaker 1: but the people that do are obviously super fascinated by it,
18:38
Speaker 1: and it kind of rocked their world when they found
18:40
Speaker 1: out that someone that had no head injury, no stroke,
18:43
Speaker 1: or anything like that would could have something like this. Yeah.
18:47
Speaker 1: So they developed UM first was neurogenic, then they developed psychogenic,
18:51
Speaker 1: and then there's actually a third one now it's mixed.
18:53
Speaker 1: So apparently it can actually be from a psychological issue
18:58
Speaker 1: that possibly could arise from, say a brain lesion. So
19:01
Speaker 1: it's both of them together working to create this foreign
19:04
Speaker 1: accent syndrome and definitely psychogenic. The psychogenic version of foreign
19:09
Speaker 1: accent syndrome differs tremendously from the neurogenic in a lot
19:14
Speaker 1: of ways, and number one is the psychogenic tends to
19:17
Speaker 1: clear up and accompanies say like a psychotic break or
19:21
Speaker 1: a manic episode or something like that UM, And as
19:26
Speaker 1: the episode wanes or goes away or clears up, so
19:29
Speaker 1: too does the foreign accent syndrome. That is not the
19:32
Speaker 1: case with neurogenic. With neurogenic, they have no cure whatsoever,
19:36
Speaker 1: and basically the only treatment that they can come up
19:39
Speaker 1: with is UM through speech therapy, where speech language pathologists
19:44
Speaker 1: basically retrained you to talk the way you did before. Yeah,
19:48
Speaker 1: it's also, uh, the neurogenic is also much more common
19:52
Speaker 1: out of the cases I think it's about are from
19:55
Speaker 1: some sort of neurological damage, right, So what does that
19:59
Speaker 1: leave for to percent or unless I guess you're accounting
20:02
Speaker 1: for the new super odd one that is could be both. Um.
20:07
Speaker 1: One of the more famous cases that kind of demonstrated
20:11
Speaker 1: that psychogenic f A S was an actual thing. UM
20:14
Speaker 1: happened here in America. There's a woman in her mid
20:17
Speaker 1: thirties who had a history of schizophrenia and her family
20:21
Speaker 1: and she was brought to the e R after attacking
20:24
Speaker 1: her mom's landlady. Yeah, this one's the most recent case actually,
20:27
Speaker 1: and she um. She she believed the landlady was practicing
20:32
Speaker 1: voodoo on her against her, and she attacked the woman.
20:35
Speaker 1: UM and throughout all this, during this episode, she had
20:39
Speaker 1: taken on a British accent and taking a family history,
20:43
Speaker 1: they found that number one, she had schizophrenia or family
20:45
Speaker 1: She was diagnosed with schizophrenia as a result of this incident,
20:49
Speaker 1: but that she had had similar instances before and during
20:52
Speaker 1: these she had spoken with the British accent. Yeah. I wonder,
20:56
Speaker 1: I didn't see anything in there about her if she
20:58
Speaker 1: like had a I mean that another personality. Is that
21:01
Speaker 1: multiple personality disorder? I don't believe. So that's not what
21:05
Speaker 1: I took from it, because that would make sense, you know,
21:08
Speaker 1: if you have a just a British personality that came
21:11
Speaker 1: out that's violent maybe or something. Yeah, well, I mean
21:15
Speaker 1: we remember we I think we've done one on schizophrenia before,
21:18
Speaker 1: haven't we. I don't know, haven't we. We definitely did
21:21
Speaker 1: one on dissociative personality disorder UM, which was just absolutely fascinating.
21:27
Speaker 1: But I was I like you, I kind of noticed, like, hey,
21:31
Speaker 1: what about multiple personality? So it doesn't it seems like
21:34
Speaker 1: something that would be right up that alley. I'm sure
21:36
Speaker 1: they've looked into that, but apparently apparently that's not part
21:40
Speaker 1: of it. Yeah. Um, another case that I said we
21:43
Speaker 1: were going to get to those, This one is really
21:45
Speaker 1: weird um and super sad. This woman named Sarah Calwill
21:49
Speaker 1: in England. She is the one that had the migraine
21:53
Speaker 1: that set it off. And uh, this one is super
21:57
Speaker 1: odd because she's an English woman who now has a
22:01
Speaker 1: Chinese accent. I mean just straight up sounds Chinese and
22:07
Speaker 1: like broken English Chinese right right, So she sounds like
22:12
Speaker 1: a native UM. I think Man Mandarin speaker is probably
22:17
Speaker 1: what we're thinking of. Who um is speaking English? And
22:22
Speaker 1: if you weren't looking like you would expect to see,
22:25
Speaker 1: say maybe like a middle aged Chinese woman. Uh when
22:29
Speaker 1: you looked at the at the video and no, it's
22:32
Speaker 1: like I don't know, late late to mid thirties. Um,
22:37
Speaker 1: Caucasian woman, native born English speaker. Who. Um, and she's
22:43
Speaker 1: who I was thinking of when I was saying for
22:45
Speaker 1: some people, is is a really big problem because it's
22:48
Speaker 1: presented a big crisis for her identity. She said that
22:51
Speaker 1: she can't look in the mirror while she's speaking any longer.
22:54
Speaker 1: She just doesn't feel like herself anymore. It's really hit
22:57
Speaker 1: her hard. Yeah, I mean she her case is really sad.
23:00
Speaker 1: It was I think two thousand and ten when she
23:02
Speaker 1: was diagnosed after this migraine incident and in um she
23:10
Speaker 1: couldn't work anymore. Uh, and she she has she has
23:13
Speaker 1: a lot and more issues going on than just the
23:15
Speaker 1: speech with these uh migraines that have come on. She's
23:20
Speaker 1: um got a whole range of physical problems that she's
23:22
Speaker 1: had to stop work. She's in a wheelchair. Even though
23:25
Speaker 1: her limbs completely work, her brain basically can't tell her
23:29
Speaker 1: limbs to do what they should do. So um from migraines. Yeah,
23:34
Speaker 1: from I think these really extreme migraines. I think they
23:37
Speaker 1: even likened it to like having a stroke. They were
23:40
Speaker 1: so severe. Um. So she's had to sell her house,
23:43
Speaker 1: and I think her husband is afflicted with something too.
23:47
Speaker 1: It's just a really really sad case. But um, you know,
23:50
Speaker 1: you can there's all kinds of interviews with her, and
23:53
Speaker 1: it's just so strange to hear that accent coming out
23:56
Speaker 1: of uh, this white lady. It is from what I gather,
24:00
Speaker 1: she'd be like, yeah, well, imagine how strange it feels
24:03
Speaker 1: coming out of you. Oh yeah, you know. And you know,
24:06
Speaker 1: I saw videos where they would sit down and play her.
24:09
Speaker 1: Uh and before I looked up further that she was
24:12
Speaker 1: having even more troubled times, it seemed like she was
24:15
Speaker 1: getting a little better throughout the interview through therapy because
24:18
Speaker 1: they were playing her. One of the things they do
24:21
Speaker 1: is they play old recordings of herself and she would
24:24
Speaker 1: sit down and listen to them and try and mimic it,
24:27
Speaker 1: and um, which kind of brought up one of my
24:29
Speaker 1: questions is can you even mimic an accent? Like you
24:32
Speaker 1: know people can fake an accent, Like can you even
24:35
Speaker 1: do that? Uh? And I didn't get an answer on that,
24:38
Speaker 1: but um, then you're just mimicking an accent your entire
24:43
Speaker 1: life too, even if you could you know. So that's
24:45
Speaker 1: problematic on its own. But um, it seemed like she
24:48
Speaker 1: was getting a little bit better in that interview, but
24:50
Speaker 1: apparently not. It's really sad, Yeah it is. I mean,
24:53
Speaker 1: like it's bad enough you've got migraines and then to
24:55
Speaker 1: have a crisis of identity. Yeah, it's yeah, not fair.
25:00
Speaker 1: So one of the other things it's, um really troubling
25:03
Speaker 1: is you can't just just go to a neurologist and
25:07
Speaker 1: get it cleared up. Um. They're a whole range of
25:10
Speaker 1: doctors that you'll probably see along the way, including a neurologist.
25:15
Speaker 1: Um you talked about a speech language pathologist. You might
25:18
Speaker 1: go to a clinical psychologist to deal with the fallout
25:21
Speaker 1: from everything. Uh, maybe a neuro psychologist, maybe a radiologist.
25:27
Speaker 1: You might see you know, six and eight doctors and
25:30
Speaker 1: still not get anywhere, right because I can't do a
25:35
Speaker 1: lot for you. We don't know how to treat strokes
25:37
Speaker 1: very well. And once damage has has occurred in the brain,
25:43
Speaker 1: it can be pretty tough, if not impossible, to reverse
25:46
Speaker 1: that damage. Right, it's permanently damaged. Um. So yeah, the
25:52
Speaker 1: the idea that you're you've now gotten a foreign accent.
25:56
Speaker 1: They're probably like, that's kind of the least of your words.
25:58
Speaker 1: You just had a massive stroke or a huge head
26:00
Speaker 1: injury or something like that. But what it's revealed to
26:04
Speaker 1: them is not that there's this huge mystery, and we
26:07
Speaker 1: we have kind of played into it a little bit
26:10
Speaker 1: by not revealing this from the outset. But you you,
26:14
Speaker 1: as a patient with foreign accent syndrome, it didn't hit
26:16
Speaker 1: your head and wake up with the foreign accent. It's
26:19
Speaker 1: all in the ear of the beholder. The whole idea
26:23
Speaker 1: that there is a foreign accent syndrome is as the
26:27
Speaker 1: way that it stated is false, and we'll talk about
26:31
Speaker 1: that after this break. Okay, Chuck, we're back. So I
27:00
Speaker 1: thought I heard you draw in a breath right before
27:02
Speaker 1: we bro That might have been did you have something
27:05
Speaker 1: to say? Yeah, I think I have a little trouble
27:10
Speaker 1: wrapping my head around this whole idea that it's only
27:13
Speaker 1: in the ear of the person, because if you know
27:17
Speaker 1: that lady clearly has a Chinese accent, it's not oh,
27:20
Speaker 1: I'm just hearing it that way. So they've actually been
27:24
Speaker 1: studies where they've played a video clip of her, audio
27:29
Speaker 1: clip of a person with foreign accent syndrome to different
27:31
Speaker 1: people and said, you know, where do you think this
27:34
Speaker 1: person is from? And the same person will get tens
27:39
Speaker 1: of different answers out of tens of different people. Yeah,
27:43
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean that makes sense in some cases,
27:46
Speaker 1: I think, But I don't see how anyone could hear
27:49
Speaker 1: this woman and say she sounds British to me, right, well, no, no, no,
27:54
Speaker 1: she she definitely doesn't sound Bridge. But that's the point.
27:57
Speaker 1: She sounds Chinese, but she's not actually speaking in a
28:00
Speaker 1: Chinese accent. She didn't hit her head and wake up
28:03
Speaker 1: with a Chinese accent. What happened was she got these
28:06
Speaker 1: series of migraines, probably had some sort of stroke, and
28:09
Speaker 1: a region of her brain that controls the really intricate
28:14
Speaker 1: process of prosody, of making your tongue do certain things
28:19
Speaker 1: to intonate an accent, certain words in certain ways that
28:23
Speaker 1: make up your accent and your dialect. Overall that got damaged,
28:28
Speaker 1: and so now she can't control it in the way
28:29
Speaker 1: she used to before. It comes out sounding differently. And
28:32
Speaker 1: to you, somebody who has heard people speak in a
28:35
Speaker 1: Chinese accent before, it sounds like a Chinese accent. That's
28:39
Speaker 1: the difference. Yeah, so they don't get that. What I
28:42
Speaker 1: do get though, is we take second nature just when
28:47
Speaker 1: we open our mouth we talk. We don't realize the
28:49
Speaker 1: complex series of events that's going on to make your
28:53
Speaker 1: voice come out the way it does. So you know
28:56
Speaker 1: you're you're well in the brain, they think, um, and
29:00
Speaker 1: again the mysteries of the brain, they're there. What how
29:03
Speaker 1: you create speeches really complex and involves all kind of
29:07
Speaker 1: areas of the brain, but UH specifically damaged in the
29:10
Speaker 1: left hemisphere and the cerebral artery they know a lot
29:13
Speaker 1: of times can cause foreign accent syndrome. But when you're speaking,
29:17
Speaker 1: you're using your tongue, you're using your lips, your jaw, uh,
29:21
Speaker 1: your larynx, and the way all these things combine and
29:25
Speaker 1: who you are UH is gonna make you have and
29:28
Speaker 1: we should do one on accents period. But um, it's
29:32
Speaker 1: gonna control how your speech comes out. So and the
29:36
Speaker 1: you know, the one example they use in here is
29:38
Speaker 1: if you know you have a little too much to
29:39
Speaker 1: drink those you know, you might lose some of that
29:42
Speaker 1: muscle control and you might slow your words or talk
29:45
Speaker 1: funny or differently. So that's a pretty pretty basic way
29:51
Speaker 1: of understanding it. But um, I know, vowels are are
29:55
Speaker 1: sort of a big deal when it comes to foreign
29:56
Speaker 1: accent syndrome. Yeah, if you if you say ad and
29:59
Speaker 1: stay a um, or you substitute consonants like R for L. Right,
30:06
Speaker 1: so you're um, you know, uh, what's that? What were
30:12
Speaker 1: they singing jingle bells on? Um? Oh? No? Deck the
30:17
Speaker 1: halls on a Christmas story? Ra. Right. So if you
30:22
Speaker 1: were a Caucasian English speaker and that you damaged your
30:26
Speaker 1: brain in a way that the the part of your
30:29
Speaker 1: brain responsible for forming l's now formed ours instead. To
30:35
Speaker 1: other English speakers who had heard um native Chinese speakers,
30:40
Speaker 1: you would sound like you had a Chinese accent, because
30:43
Speaker 1: that's what people who speak Chinese do when they're speaking English.
30:47
Speaker 1: So you didn't actually adopt a Chinese accent. You're just
30:50
Speaker 1: creating sounds in the same way that somebody who was
30:54
Speaker 1: a native Chinese speaker would. Yeah, I mean, I see
30:58
Speaker 1: what they're getting at with all this. To me, it's
31:02
Speaker 1: a little bit splitting hairs. I think that's what I'm
31:07
Speaker 1: trying to say. I think the difference is this chuck
31:10
Speaker 1: with your your accent, your native accent, your native dialect
31:14
Speaker 1: is the result of your exposure to your environment right lifelong,
31:19
Speaker 1: all the people around you, all the stuff you've learned,
31:21
Speaker 1: all the things you've heard. It creates your dialect. Right
31:25
Speaker 1: when you suffer foreign accent syndrome, your dialect, your brain
31:30
Speaker 1: is damage so that you can't produce that anymore, and
31:33
Speaker 1: you just kind of haphazardly producing something else you don't
31:37
Speaker 1: actually follow. So, like if you took uh Sarah cal
31:41
Speaker 1: Calwill's language and had her read a passage from a book,
31:48
Speaker 1: and then you had a native Chinese speaker, typical accented
31:52
Speaker 1: Mandarin speaker read that same passage, it would not be
31:56
Speaker 1: the exact same thing. There'd be all sorts of derivations
31:59
Speaker 1: and deviations from that normal Mandarin accent because Sarah Colwell's
32:05
Speaker 1: brain was damaged in a certain way that makes it
32:08
Speaker 1: a totally unique accent. Yeah, I get that, but that
32:12
Speaker 1: happens within the Mandarin accent between people too. You're not
32:15
Speaker 1: letting this one. Just don't get it. One thing I
32:18
Speaker 1: do get is that there's no like. And this is
32:22
Speaker 1: probably what's so frustrating, or one of the things so
32:24
Speaker 1: frustrating is it's not like they wake up with a
32:27
Speaker 1: new cultural identity either, I mean, this woman still wants
32:32
Speaker 1: to have her tea and biscuits every afternoon, but when
32:36
Speaker 1: she says that, she says it with Chuck would call
32:39
Speaker 1: it a Chinese accent. A neurologist would say, well, you're
32:42
Speaker 1: just hearing that right, Uh So you know, it's like
32:47
Speaker 1: you said, people suffer a bit from uh their own
32:52
Speaker 1: like sense of self, you know, because see here's what
32:56
Speaker 1: I wonder, isn't in there Do they hear it in
32:59
Speaker 1: their head as their own regular accent? I don't think so. No.
33:03
Speaker 1: I think it sounds off to them, and I think
33:04
Speaker 1: it's probably distressing because they're like, wait, let me say
33:08
Speaker 1: that again, and they still say it the what they
33:11
Speaker 1: perceive is the wrong way, because apparently one of the
33:14
Speaker 1: hallmarks of for an accent syndrome is the errors or
33:18
Speaker 1: the differences that they make, uh pro in their prosody
33:23
Speaker 1: is predictable, which makes it like an accent. I mean,
33:26
Speaker 1: that's what an accent as is. You're going to drop
33:29
Speaker 1: your ta s or replace the T with the th,
33:31
Speaker 1: h with the D just about every time I add
33:34
Speaker 1: that are when you say wash um yeah exactly, Like
33:39
Speaker 1: that's it's a predictable thing, and that's part of foreign
33:42
Speaker 1: accent syndroma. It starts to happen in predictable ways too,
33:45
Speaker 1: so I would guess, yeah, it sounds off to them
33:49
Speaker 1: as well well. Because the reason I say that is
33:51
Speaker 1: because when um, like, and I think I've talked about this,
33:55
Speaker 1: when my grandfather had a stroke, he still talked, but
33:59
Speaker 1: it just came as gibberish. But in his head he
34:02
Speaker 1: was saying the things that he was trying to say,
34:04
Speaker 1: which is, you know, one of the most frustrating things
34:07
Speaker 1: I think after a stroke victim is I remember seeing
34:10
Speaker 1: him talk and getting so frustrated. He would just you know,
34:13
Speaker 1: say things out loud and it would come out as
34:15
Speaker 1: gibberish to us, but in his head he's still saying,
34:18
Speaker 1: you know, his English words, they's gotta make you feel
34:23
Speaker 1: trapped in your body. Yeah. Um. However, f A S
34:28
Speaker 1: is a little all over the map because there have
34:31
Speaker 1: been other weird cases. Because we've been saying this whole time,
34:35
Speaker 1: there's not un new identity. It's the same, Uh, You're
34:38
Speaker 1: saying the same words and everything. But there have been
34:40
Speaker 1: cases where people do substitute outwards, like you would say
34:46
Speaker 1: lift instead of an elevator, right, That's like the psychogenic version.
34:51
Speaker 1: I know, it's just so confusing. Well it almost makes
34:54
Speaker 1: me think, like, so before there was nothing but neurogenic
34:58
Speaker 1: foreign accent syndrome, right, everything else was you're just crazy.
35:03
Speaker 1: Now they they recognize that they're psychogenic f A S
35:06
Speaker 1: as well. I think what's gonna happen with more and
35:09
Speaker 1: more study, They're gonna just diverge into two totally different syndromes. Now, Yeah,
35:15
Speaker 1: that makes sense, you know. I think they're gonna be like,
35:17
Speaker 1: that's actually not the same thing. That's something totally different.
35:20
Speaker 1: Neurogenic for an extent syndrome is its own thing, and
35:23
Speaker 1: psychogenic is is something else entirely. I'll just make up
35:27
Speaker 1: a new name. Yeah. Uh. This one other case I
35:29
Speaker 1: thought was interesting about the Dutch woman, which one she
35:36
Speaker 1: was Dutch is Dutch and she developed a French accent,
35:41
Speaker 1: but she spoke Dutch using French syntax and occasionally for
35:45
Speaker 1: in French words as if she was a French person
35:50
Speaker 1: learning Dutch. And it turns out that she was a
35:54
Speaker 1: Dutch language teacher who taught French people to speak Dutch.
35:58
Speaker 1: And I don't know it's her psychogenic or neurogenic. It
36:02
Speaker 1: would have to be psychogenic because neurogenic has basically that
36:06
Speaker 1: original um Harry Whittaker criteria use different words and things. Well,
36:13
Speaker 1: well it was it has to not be related to
36:15
Speaker 1: the patient's ability to speak a foreign language. So like
36:20
Speaker 1: that she would be technically canceled out from neurogenic for
36:24
Speaker 1: that one, and um it would also it didn't have
36:28
Speaker 1: anything to do with with central nervous system damage, which
36:31
Speaker 1: is again that's why I think it's gonna end up
36:33
Speaker 1: being its own thing. Man. So interesting it is? Uh,
36:40
Speaker 1: that's all I've got. Man, isn't that enough? Man? Any
36:44
Speaker 1: language stuff? Anytime we talk about language in the brain,
36:47
Speaker 1: I guess neural linguistics. I just turned to Google. It's
36:51
Speaker 1: so interesting to me. Yeah, that's what happens when something
36:55
Speaker 1: interests me. I turned to Google. If you want to
36:58
Speaker 1: turn to Goo and learn are about foreign accent syndrome.
37:01
Speaker 1: You can type those words in the search bar at
37:03
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. And since I said that,
37:06
Speaker 1: it's time for Chuck administrated details. How was that? That
37:16
Speaker 1: was great? Man? So Chuck, Yes, we've got some more
37:20
Speaker 1: people to thank for sending us some nice stuff. That's right.
37:23
Speaker 1: I'm gonna start off with Nathan for latso Uh, he's
37:28
Speaker 1: sent some really lovely hand drawn calendars and bookmarks. Um.
37:32
Speaker 1: And you can find those at Wildlife dot Wildlife dot
37:38
Speaker 1: Marini for Latso dot com dot au. And that's M
37:42
Speaker 1: A R I and I F E R l A
37:46
Speaker 1: z z O dot com dot Au. And um, it
37:50
Speaker 1: was really really beautiful work and it's it's a cool
37:52
Speaker 1: thing because a portion of every sale is donated to
37:55
Speaker 1: a nonprofit wildlife organization. Very nice. I think you handle
38:00
Speaker 1: at Foreign Accent very well. Thank you. Um. I want
38:03
Speaker 1: to say thanks big time to Robert Combs or Combs
38:07
Speaker 1: from White Tail Coffee for the amazing coffees. Um, especially
38:13
Speaker 1: like seriously, it's a really good coffee, especially the Ladaris
38:17
Speaker 1: and Lamarella. Um. And that's white Tail t A L E. Coffee. Uh.
38:23
Speaker 1: It's just an amazing coffee subscription service that you should
38:26
Speaker 1: check out. Uh. I got a couple of more coffees.
38:28
Speaker 1: I'll just knock them both out. You have one sitting,
38:31
Speaker 1: actually have two of them sitting on your desk right now,
38:34
Speaker 1: my friend, wait to grab them. True Stone Coffee Roasters
38:37
Speaker 1: from St. Paul, Minnesota, Sin. It's their medium blend and
38:41
Speaker 1: I can't vouch for the taste yet because it just
38:42
Speaker 1: got here, but it smells good. And then devon from
38:45
Speaker 1: True Coffee Roasters in Fitchburg, Wisconsin, Sinus uh dark roasted
38:51
Speaker 1: Sumatra and in Mexico Alutra. I'm sorry, altera nice, thanks
38:57
Speaker 1: a lot coffee coming out our ears. It's great. That's
39:01
Speaker 1: a good place to be. But we're not gonna have diabetes.
39:03
Speaker 1: My friend now, Doug Fuchs, sent us a beautiful illustrated card.
39:08
Speaker 1: Thanks for that dog, Thanks for saying hi. Meg from Seattle,
39:12
Speaker 1: she sent me a card about Lauren's passing my cat
39:14
Speaker 1: which I lost last year, which is very very sweet.
39:17
Speaker 1: And while I'm on that, um Buckley, my old boy
39:21
Speaker 1: passed away a couple of weeks ago, and um, everyone
39:25
Speaker 1: on Facebook was beyond supportive and sweet and that really
39:30
Speaker 1: helped out. So thanks for that. Yeah, from everybody listening
39:33
Speaker 1: to you, Chuck, we send our condolences. Thank you. It
39:36
Speaker 1: was very dark time. Um. Let's see Preston Pope. He
39:42
Speaker 1: sent us some amazing chocolates Chuck from the Chocolates V.
39:47
Speaker 1: Just the letter v Chocolates dot Com. Uh, seriously, it's
39:51
Speaker 1: good stuff. I feel bad. I feel like I'm running around.
39:55
Speaker 1: I'm a little bit sweets that's okay, that we'll always
39:59
Speaker 1: come back to them, okay, Uh buddy, Jeff Barney was
40:03
Speaker 1: kind enough, and I still haven't tried it's in my fridge,
40:06
Speaker 1: but you said it's the best. He sent us QP
40:09
Speaker 1: Japanese mayo. Oh it's so good because of my love
40:12
Speaker 1: for mayonnaise, and um, chuck, you may never go back
40:15
Speaker 1: to American mayo again. Well, I'm finishing up a gallon
40:20
Speaker 1: of dukes this afternoon. Yeah, I'm just gonna gonna shoot
40:25
Speaker 1: it down and then I'm gonna dive into the QP
40:27
Speaker 1: and see what's going on there. I gotta see what
40:30
Speaker 1: the difference is. It's subtle, but do you You'll notice,
40:34
Speaker 1: You'll say, wow, this is actually really really good mayonnaise.
40:37
Speaker 1: All right, Well, thanks Jeff Barney for that. Um. Thanks
40:40
Speaker 1: a lot to Tim and Joe from Primer Stories. I
40:42
Speaker 1: don't know if you remember, but our animal rights double
40:46
Speaker 1: parter tied into an essay I wrote, um Primer Stories
40:50
Speaker 1: dot com and they sent t shirts to say thanks
40:54
Speaker 1: for that. So thanks back for you guys. Support. Ian
40:58
Speaker 1: Newton of the Baltimore Ski Company send us some ginger
41:02
Speaker 1: Apple liqueur and gin. Yes, thanks a lot. Uh, Don Kent,
41:09
Speaker 1: who last gave us some Pliny the Elder before, which
41:12
Speaker 1: was nice, also sent us a bunch of soilent, and
41:16
Speaker 1: thank you also to Soilent itself, the company who heard
41:20
Speaker 1: our soiling episode and said, you guys haven't tried soilent. Here,
41:23
Speaker 1: here's some soilent, and thank you for that soilent. That
41:26
Speaker 1: was very nice. I think they got what they wanted
41:28
Speaker 1: out of this, which is for us to say soilent
41:30
Speaker 1: twelve times soilent. Uh. This came in today Thomas Craig
41:35
Speaker 1: ol car k R E g L. He sent me
41:39
Speaker 1: a frigging monocle. Oh that's neat. And he heard me
41:43
Speaker 1: talking about my eyes going and how I just need
41:45
Speaker 1: him to read things close up. And he said, buddy,
41:49
Speaker 1: here's what you need to do because you will one
41:52
Speaker 1: day embarrass your daughter like I embarrassed my children. You
41:55
Speaker 1: need to rock a monocle. And it's a monocle. So
41:59
Speaker 1: is he like a trained optometrist who can like no, no,
42:04
Speaker 1: So he just gave you a piece of glass that's
42:07
Speaker 1: gonna ruin your eye over time. Yeah, I mean I
42:10
Speaker 1: tried it and it's you know, it's kind of like
42:11
Speaker 1: a reader. It works about the same as my prescription,
42:15
Speaker 1: but he uses one. He sent a little picture of
42:17
Speaker 1: himself and uh, I guess I should plug the company.
42:21
Speaker 1: It's near sites. Monocles is what he used. And UM, yeah,
42:26
Speaker 1: I got a monocle now, job, I'm gonna use it.
42:29
Speaker 1: Your new nickname is Pringles Guy. Okay, I've got someone else,
42:35
Speaker 1: Pringles Guy. Janelle Samara send us a copy of her
42:38
Speaker 1: book Our Only Hope, Thank you and congratulations on writing
42:41
Speaker 1: a book. Bridget mass Off in a S. S O. T. H.
42:46
Speaker 1: Send it's some really cute along with an extra large
42:49
Speaker 1: handwritten note s and it's some really cute Josh and
42:52
Speaker 1: Chuck cutouts, like kind of paper cutting paste cutouts, and
42:57
Speaker 1: yours is on your desk. Thank you. We gotta get
42:59
Speaker 1: out of this room and over to your desk. You
43:01
Speaker 1: got a bounty, uh, Francis Della Pause. So you know,
43:05
Speaker 1: there's like a whole group of people out there who
43:07
Speaker 1: believe in writing letters, beautiful letters with fountain pens and
43:11
Speaker 1: all that, and Francis Della Pause is one of them.
43:14
Speaker 1: Sent us a beautiful handwritten letter. And you also apparently
43:18
Speaker 1: customarily send what's called the flat gift. And they sent
43:22
Speaker 1: a postcard the Sad Life of Sad clown which is great.
43:28
Speaker 1: Sad clowns are great. Well, I got a few letters. Actually,
43:30
Speaker 1: I'll just knock those out because Sandra maybe this was
43:33
Speaker 1: because of International Correspondence Writing Month, Uh that we got
43:38
Speaker 1: these because apparently that happened. But Sandra sent us a
43:42
Speaker 1: nice handwritten letter and honor that specifically. And then Austin
43:45
Speaker 1: from Bakersfield sent us a very nice handwritten note. And
43:49
Speaker 1: then Kristen Cook sent us a Valentine State card to
43:53
Speaker 1: all of us, including Harry Noel that Harry Knowles of
43:59
Speaker 1: ain't it cool? New is? But our own Nuel who
44:01
Speaker 1: was just paring. We got some other ones to chuck.
44:05
Speaker 1: We got a lighthouse postcard from Big Sable Point from Teresa. Um,
44:09
Speaker 1: we got a couple of Christmas cards from the Johnson
44:13
Speaker 1: Alaman family and Test Sullivan and her family. Uh. And
44:18
Speaker 1: I guess in part because the national what is it
44:21
Speaker 1: National Writing Month or letter writing month? International Correspondence Writing month? Exactly.
44:25
Speaker 1: Noel Verosa, no sorry, Noel veris Soza, Noel Veri Zosa.
44:32
Speaker 1: It's hand written. You can't you know? I got it
44:35
Speaker 1: that last time, Noel Noel Veri Zosa wrote us a
44:38
Speaker 1: nice hand letter, handwritten letter in fountain pen. I've got
44:43
Speaker 1: two more. Um, Megan Moon Waltzman. That's Megan with two g's. Oddly,
44:49
Speaker 1: she sent us a copy of this really cool thing
44:51
Speaker 1: she made. It's a book. It's called Songbook, a book
44:54
Speaker 1: of music for all levels, all ages, and it is
44:57
Speaker 1: eleven songs, uh, kind of written out as chords and
45:01
Speaker 1: things and illustrated for different instruments, like there'll be a
45:04
Speaker 1: song for guitar, an intro song for banjo, one for cello,
45:08
Speaker 1: and it's got these cool pictures and then you can
45:10
Speaker 1: download these songs and kind of figure it's I mean,
45:14
Speaker 1: it says for all ages, but it seems like it'd
45:15
Speaker 1: be great to give a kid, right, So check that out.
45:19
Speaker 1: It's very worthwhile. Um, I've got two more to finish
45:22
Speaker 1: than two. One. Austin Doyle sent me an amazing oil
45:27
Speaker 1: craned painting um, which I assume will inflate and value
45:32
Speaker 1: very rapidly once Austin dies. Hopefully doesn't doesn't happen, because
45:35
Speaker 1: Doyle is one of our oldest uh and I don't
45:38
Speaker 1: mean by age, but one of our longest time listeners. Yeah,
45:42
Speaker 1: he's a great guy. I mean like when he dies
45:44
Speaker 1: of old age, I just plan to outlive him. That's okay,
45:47
Speaker 1: so I can catch in on the painting he made me. Uh.
45:50
Speaker 1: And then Ben and Aaron Gibson sent us the Japanese
45:53
Speaker 1: car magnets that signify an elderly driver or a team driver,
45:57
Speaker 1: which we've talked about before. Oh yeah, yeah, I remember this, dudes.
46:01
Speaker 1: I got one more and this one. Well, you have
46:04
Speaker 1: no idea what's waiting in there. You just came right
46:06
Speaker 1: into the recording studio for a change. Um on your
46:09
Speaker 1: desk right now, Josh, I can't wait. You have a
46:13
Speaker 1: handmade cutting board. Awesome, and it's really really nice. It's
46:16
Speaker 1: from Christopher at the Timbered Wolf, and um, it's just
46:21
Speaker 1: you know, it's gorgeous. He sent a couple of these
46:23
Speaker 1: in and they're really really nice. Nice. So you gotta
46:26
Speaker 1: you gotta take care of it Though'll left the instructions
46:28
Speaker 1: for you. I got a lot of stuff to carry
46:30
Speaker 1: out of here. Yeah, you need a someone needs to
46:32
Speaker 1: send Josh a wheelbarrow or a radio flyer. Who I
46:36
Speaker 1: got one of those for my kid. It's nice. Oh yeah, yeah,
46:39
Speaker 1: the old red wagon like the real one. The radio flyer. Yeah,
46:42
Speaker 1: they still make them nice. Well, thank you again to
46:45
Speaker 1: everybody who's sent us so much great stuff. We appreciate
46:48
Speaker 1: it big time. Uh and UH. If you want to
46:50
Speaker 1: get in touch with us, you can tweet to us.
46:52
Speaker 1: I'm at josh Um Clark and s Y s K podcast,
46:57
Speaker 1: Chuck's at Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Stuff. He's you
47:00
Speaker 1: know on Facebook, and you can send us both in
47:02
Speaker 1: emails to stuff podcasts at how stuff Works dot com
47:05
Speaker 1: and has always joined us at our home on the web,
47:07
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know dot com For more on this
47:14
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics because at how stuff Works
47:17
Speaker 1: dot com