In short
Stuff You Should Know: Inner Dialogues, Monologues and Stone Cold Silence
Episode Overview In this episode of Stuff You Should Know, hosts Josh and Chuck explore the concept of inner speech, its functions, and the experiences of individuals who either possess or lack an inner monologue. The discussion dives into psychological research, personal anecdotes, and the broader implications of inner dialogues on our lives and understanding of consciousness.
Key Concepts
Inner Speech vs. Inner Monologue
- Inner Speech: A broader term that includes various forms of internal dialogue, including self-talk and private speech, which can manifest in different ways.
- Inner Monologue: A more limited concept, often perceived as a singular, continuous voice in one's head.
Types of Inner Speech
- Dialogic Inner Speech: Involves back-and-forth conversations with oneself or imagined others.
- Condensed Inner Speech: Utilizes shorthand or abbreviations, such as reminders (e.g., "keys, wallet, phone").
- Motivational or Evaluative Inner Speech: Aims to encourage or evaluate oneself, common in performance settings.
- Pristine Inner Speech: Unprompted, spontaneous thoughts that reveal aspects of one’s unconscious.
Research Insights
- Self-Reporting Limitations: Much of the understanding of inner speech relies on subjective reports, making it difficult to study objectively.
- Studies by Hurlburt: Developed methods to categorize inner speech experiences and their variations among individuals.
- Endophagia: A term proposed to describe individuals who lack inner speech, suggesting a spectrum of inner dialogue experiences.
Psychological and Neurological Connections
- Brain Function: Different areas of the brain are activated during inner speech compared to spoken language, showing that inner dialogue has distinct neural processes.
- Impact of Inner Speech on Mental Health: Negative inner dialogue can contribute to anxiety and depression, while positive self-talk can enhance performance and emotional regulation.
Development of Inner Speech
- Lev Vygotsky’s Contributions: Proposed that inner speech develops in children as they grow, transitioning from external social communication to private thought processes.
- Spectrum of Inner Speech: Some individuals frequently engage in inner dialogue, while others may rarely or never experience it.
Key Takeaways
- Inner speech plays a crucial role in decision-making, emotional regulation, and self-identity.
- The experience of inner dialogue is highly individualized and can differ greatly among people.
- Understanding inner speech can provide insights into psychological disorders and enhance therapeutic practices.
- There is a cultural and developmental aspect to how inner speech is perceived and manifested.
Personal Anecdotes
- Hosts share personal experiences related to their inner voices, revealing the subjective nature of the topic.
- Chuck mentions an interesting ritual his partner uses to alleviate stress by physically spelling words, showcasing diverse expressions of inner dialogue.
Conclusion The episode emphasizes the complexity and variability of inner speech, inviting listeners to reflect on their own experiences and the implications for understanding human thought processes and mental health. Josh and Chuck conclude that while there is much still to learn about inner speech, the exploration of this topic opens doors to understanding ourselves and others better.
Additional Notes
- The episode touches upon the lack of consensus in research regarding the prevalence of inner speech, highlighting the need for more empirical studies.
- The conversation indicates a growing field of psychological research that could lead to improved treatment strategies for mental health issues related to self-talk.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.
0:31app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Dr. Jesse Mills, host of the Mailroom Podcast. Each January, men promise to get stronger, work harder, and fix what's broken. But what if the real work isn't physical at all? I sat down with psychologist Dr. Steve Poulter to unpack shame, anxiety, and the emotional pain men were never taught how to name. Part of the way through the valley of despair is realizing this has happened, and you have to make a choice whether are you going to stay in it or move forward. Our two-part conversation is available now. Listen to The Mailroom on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows.
1:09Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
1:19Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and Jerry's here, too, and this is Stuff You Should Know. where the inner voice is in your head, it turns out. Good job, Chuck. Good job. You got this. You got this. So what you're engaged in, Chuck, is called private speech. Oh, Chuck, you're so stupid. That's still private speech. No way you're going to do a good job. As long as we can hear you and you're talking to yourself, that's private speech. Oh, yeah, I get it now. Sure. I was saying it out loud, which means it's not inner monologue or dialogue. No, I've always heard it called the inner monologue, too, or internal monologue.
1:58But Anna helped us out with this, right? Yeah. Anna G. She points out that inner monologue is a pretty limiting term because that voice in your head, the way that you talk to yourself, it can take all sorts of different shapes rather than you having a conversation beating yourself up quietly. Those are kind of the keys to what we would call inner speech or the people who research it would call it inner speech. Yeah, or inner voice. And it turns out this is kind of a tough one in some ways because it's like. I imagine Anna was up against it because there are many, many, many, many facets to this and it can serve a lot of different purposes.
2:44It's very common, but also some people don't have it. Yeah. We can look at brain scans and say like, hey, this is lighting up. But it's like it's also really hard to study and get a consensus on because a lot of it is self-reported as far as when people do it and why people do it and what function it could serve or doesn't serve. And if you if you don't have one, what does that mean? So there's just a lot of different avenues and it's tough to kind of make this a real tidy package. Yeah, and it's really impressive that people are figuring out how to research this at all. It's a definitely developing field.
3:22It's not established quite yet. So it's kind of the Wild West in a lot of ways as far as, you know, psychology goes. But one of the reasons why it's fairly new is because people forever just thought, like, there are such things as inner voices. will never be able to study them because they are the definition of subjective. And like you said, self-reported tests are how they had studied them before, and that's just not super reliable. William James, the father of American psychology, had a quote. I'll paraphrase him. He basically said, like, trying to study something like inner speech is like turning up the lights to get a good look at what the dark looks like.
4:04Like, you can't do it was the end of his speech. Yeah. Oh, boy. That makes a lot of sense. It does. I've heard another one, too, that I love. Studying consciousness is like trying to use a flashlight to find the shadows. Oh, I got one, too. Okay. Youth is wasted on the young. Ooh, that's a good one. That's a good one, too. What was Spud's McKenzie party animal? Two words. That's all you need to know. Yeah. This is just a tough one because there are so many little nuggets to uncover. Like after I had done all the research and I was kind of like, all right, let's go do this. I was like, wait, wait a minute, though.
4:42Like when my grandfather had a stroke when I was a kid, he had aphasia, which is some stroke patients, you know, can't, you know, they're talking, but they're not saying the words that you understand. Right. I was like, I wonder what's going on in their head and what that has to do with your inner voice. And I saw some things that said like, nope, you're it or it completely disturbs your inner voice as well. and then other studies that said, no, your inner speech can be preserved relative to the spoken language if you have aphasia. So it's just, it can be frustrating, but it's also, I shouldn't look at it that way and just think of it as like just super fascinating and maybe, you know, we don't always have all the answers.
5:21Yeah, that's a great way to put it. I think another way to say it is we don't understand it. So those listening to this episode aren't going to understand it by of the end of it either. Well, yeah. And just in the case of the stroke thing with my grandfather, I remember very specifically being a kid and seeing the frustration and thinking as a 10 year old, like he in his head, he's saying what he's trying to say. Right. Like I can tell because he's getting really frustrated that it's coming out as something that is unintelligible to us. But, you know, all these years later, I got two answers. Yeah.
5:53There you go. Full circle, I guess, in that sense. Yeah, it's not a very satisfying one, but yeah. So, like we said, inner monologue is a little too limiting. We don't want to use that. Inner speech is way better. And inner speech is actually a little limiting, as we'll see, too. But it turns out there's a lot of things that our inner speech does besides, like you demonstrated, beating yourself up. It can be used to motivate. That's a good one. You kind of did that at first, right? Yeah, I think that was good, Chuck. Right. We use it for memorizing things, problem solving. We use it to regulate ourselves, like, okay, Chuck, don't be mean to yourself.
6:38Calm down. Yeah. That kind of stuff. But again, not out loud. And then even more, not me saying it. Because, dude, if your voice in your head was my voice, I would be so sorry for How are you? I dream as you. Is that weird? It's a little weird. I'd like to hear more about that, though, later on. No, I'm just joking. There have been plenty of people that have studied this, though, and, you know, we're going to talk about some of these people here and there. There was a pair of researchers in 2011, Simon McCarthy-Jones and Charles Ferniehow, maybe? Fernieho is what I saw or what I heard. Like Tallyho?
7:19Exactly, but Fernie. Right. They developed a survey where they kind of categorized different varieties of inner speech, and their survey was called the VISC, the Varieties of Inner Speech Questionnaire, B-I-S-Q. And they also, along with others, have other categories, and we're kind of just going to go through these now. But one can be dialogic, which means you're having a back and forth with yourself, or others. I asked Emily if I could talk about this because she talks out loud, which I guess isn't quite the same thing. But I'll see her talking to herself sometimes, having a conversation with someone.
8:03Much more common when she was having frustrations with her business, talking like out loud to people. But it would be in her head, but then I would also see her talking out loud. And I'll walk into her room and say, who are you talking to? And she'd tell me. But that's dialogic because there's someone else involved, even if that someone else is another you. Right. What you can't see is the giant furry purple monster with googly eyes and a tiki drink. Oh, man, that'd be great. So, yeah, dialogic seems to be fairly, fairly common, too. There's also condensed inner speech. speech, that's, it's kind of like a different form of, so this, okay, here's one of the things that I had trouble with, Chuck.
8:48Let me just be forthright here. These, there's not any neat package of this kind, this kind, and this kind, and then there's the sub kind of this kind, and this kind, and this kind. No one's put it together like that. So it's a little confusing. So for example, dialogic inner speech, you'd think that the next thing would be monologic or something like that. That's not here. Instead, we're talking about condensed inner speech, which is using like abbreviations or like just words rather than full sentences. And that this is a way that you speak to yourself in a very private manner that you would probably never use to speak out loud.
9:24It's just the kind of shorthand that you use for yourself. Doesn't fit this list at all. And yet here we are. Yeah. Anna's example for that is, you know, you're leaving the house and, you know, phone, keys, wallet in your head, that kind of thing. Right, but at the same time, you could be having a conversation with somebody about phone, keys, wallet. So it would be dialogic, condensed inner speech. Drives me nuts. Yeah, I see your point. Other people is another one. That's when your voice, not when you're speaking to someone else, but when it takes on the voice of someone else, It could be Abraham Lincoln.
10:00It could be Josh Clark. And that's when you're imagining a conversation with someone else where your own inner voice sounds like someone else is different than like Emily having a conversation with another person. Right, for sure. Like you're the bystander, basically. There's two people talking. There's a, did you see that Guardian article about the, that included the woman whose inner voice was a, like a stereotypical Italian couple fighting, arguing? So interesting. And that's how she works stuff out. Like the wife would be like, no, she needs to quit her job and follow her dreams. And the husband would be like, no, she's got a good job.
10:39She needs to keep her feet on the ground. And like eventually one would win the argument and then that's what she would do. That's what that lady's inner voice is like. Yeah, it's very fascinating. One can be motivational or evaluative, either, you know, am I doing a good job here or do a good job? They found that, you know, with like sports performance and any kind of like public speaking or any kind of performative thing, you know, that inner voice pumping you up can lead to real results, usually good. Yeah, and I saw that that was kind of expanded or changed or kind of cut into subcategories later on.
11:17Or at some point, there's evaluative critical, which is basically like, you know, did I do a good job or why didn't you get 100 percent? That kind of thing. There's also positive regulatory, which kind of ties into what you were just saying. Like, if you imagine yourself, you know, doing really well, practicing shooting baskets, there's some part of you that can be like, keep up the hard work and you'll be in the NBA in no time. Or you did a great job. Like those would fall under positive regulatory. When I play basketball, all I hear in my head is what I hear on the court, which is swish. Nice.
11:57I was going to say, I was waiting for you to say brick because that's what I hear. Ruby expressed interest in playing basketball the other day and I had a hard time containing myself. I was like, you know, that's the only sport I was actually pretty good at. Like I can actually teach you something here. That's awesome, man. But I didn't want to say it too positively because then she'd be like, meh. Maybe not. Very smart. Boy, you know what you're doing, don't you? I'm working on it. Another is prompted. No, no, no. I'm sorry. Expanded speech, which is like if you if you have to have a tough conversation with someone and you're literally kind of just rehearsing that in your head as one or both.
12:35That is like when you're speaking not in any kind of abbreviated way. Yeah, it's the opposite of condensed speech. Like you're thinking in or hearing in your inner voice the exact words with the phonetics and the grammar and everything that you would say out loud. Right. Which that got me on a sidetrack of like, oh, that's like, why do people when you hear your voice played on a recording? Why does that sound different? Does this have anything to do with that? And I just had to park that because that gets into a whole other thing, which is should probably be a shorty. The efference copy? No, no, no.
13:11Like when I listen to a podcast of us, like why does your voice never match when you hear it out loud as it does in your own brain? I think your efference copy probably. No, it has to do with like the way your skull reverberates. Oh, really? Actual physical stuff. But I think that could be a shorty. Reverberating Skull is a great album name. It is. And we'll get to efference copy later on. I clearly can't wait. Yeah, it's good stuff. Now we reach a point of the list where coherence starts to emerge. we've got like basically like a one and then the opposite. I don't know why I just put it so confusingly.
13:47So let's just start. There's elicited or prompted, which is inner speech that's basically triggered by some external factor. Someone comes along and says, here's some pictures of different stuff. Pick out the ones whose names rhyme. So you've got a boot and then, I don't know, a foot or something like that. Like you would pick out the boot and the foot. And depending on how liberal they were with their their judgments, they would say, yes, that rhymes. Yeah. But it's a prompt from an outside source. Right. Whereas the next one, which logically follows, thankfully, pristine or spontaneous, that was Russell Hurlbert.
14:29Kind of a mouthful. A researcher that coined this one that is that's just unprompted, spontaneous. And it's a part of like what makes us us. Yes. Like that is your genuine, true inner voice. Sometimes it just comes out of nowhere. Sometimes when you just are talking to yourself and don't even realize you're talking to yourself in your head. Like that's what Herbert Herlberg calls pristine. And there's this really great Aeon article about your inner voice that was written by Phil Jekyll, J-A-E-K-L. and Phil points out, I'm hoping I can, we're on first name basis, me and Phil, but he points out that this is leading psychologists to be like, oh my God, oh my God, if we can study pristine inner voices, like that's essentially like the external, the exterior of the unconscious and we would be tapping into people's unconscious.
15:23And other people are like, I think Fernie Ho is like, whoa, whoa, whoa, let's not get ahead of ourselves here. Let's just kind of take this one step at a time. Old Fernie Ho, that's what he's known as. They call them the breaks. That's right. And, well, except when he gets excited about something, then he yells out, Fernie Ho! That's right. Maybe before we break, we should talk about these other four. Yeah. Because that visc is still, they've been revising it over the years, and it's still in use for some researchers. But in 2015, there was another researcher named, What a great name. Malgorzata, Polchaska, Wasel, Waisel, maybe.
16:02That's a good one. They were like, all right, let's categorize it by emotional types. And these are the faithful friend, which has a nice ring to it. That's like your personal strength, positive feelings about yourself. Your enabler. Yeah. The ambivalent parent, which is awful, otherwise known as Gen X parent, associated with strength and love and caring criticism. So wait a minute. Is it the parent of a Gen Xer or a Gen Xer as a parent? I'm confused. I would say the parent. I mean, weren't most of our parents fairly ambivalent about us? Yeah, I would think so. Sure. It's like, oh, you're here?
16:40This is weird because it associated with strength, love and caring criticism. Right. That's not ambivalent. So here is another problem with this field. People are naming stuff just way off. Yeah. Way off. That doesn't make any sense whatsoever. And it's hard to remember and understand this stuff if the pieces don't fit together because they're dripping. You know what I mean? That's gross. Yeah. But it's true. I know. What about the others emotionally taking? Proud Rival. Okay. And then there's one that was initially called Calm Optimist, but Polchaska Wazel did a follow-up study testing to see if her initial results were confirmed.
17:20and faithful friend, ambivalent parent, and proud rival were all there again in the second one, but calm optimist didn't show up. So she ended up replacing that with something called helpless child, which apparently is probably the worst of the worst. All right. That's a lot. It is. It was a lot. Do you understand this anymore? Sort of. Okay, good. Well, we're making headway, Chuck. All right. Well, we'll take a break and see if we can rein this puppy in right after this.
18:00New year, new goals, and in this economy, a better money plan is more necessary than ever. I am Matt. And I'm Joel. We are from the How to Money podcast. And every week, we help you to spend smarter, save more, and make sense of what's going on out there. If you want 2026 to be the year you finally feel in control of your money, we're here to give you the tools and advice to help you make it happen. Listen to How to Money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Dr. Priyanka Wally. And I'm Hari Kondabolu. It's a new year, and on the podcast Health Stuff, we're resetting the way we talk about our health.
18:35Which means being honest about what we know, what we don't know, and how messy it can all be. I like to sleep in late and sleep early. Is there a chronotype for that or am I just depressed? We talk to experts who share real experiences and insight. You just really need to find where it is that you can have an impact in your own life and just start doing that. We break down the topics you want to know more about. Sleep, stress, mental health, and how the world around us affects our overall health. We talk about all the ways to keep your body and mind inside and out healthy. We human beings, all we want is connection.
19:13We just want to connect with each other. Health stuff is about learning, laughing, and feeling a little less alone. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey there, this is Dr. Jesse Mills, director of the Men's Clinic at UCLA Health and host of the Mailroom Podcast. Each January, guys everywhere make the same resolutions. Get stronger, work harder, fix what's broken. But what if the real work isn't physical at all? To kick off the new year, I sat down with Dr. Steve Poulter, a psychologist with over 30 years' experience helping men unpack shame, anxiety, and emotional pain they were never taught to name.
19:52In a powerful two-part conversation, we discuss why men aren't emotionally bulletproof, why shame hides in plain sight, and how real strength comes from listening to yourself and to others. Guys who are toxic, they're immature, or they've got something they just haven't resolved. Once that gets resolved, then there comes empathy and some compassion. If you want this to be the year you stop powering through pain and start understanding what's underneath, listen to The Mailroom on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows.
20:28Do, do, do, do, do, do, do stuff you should know. Okay, Chuck, so one of the things we're talking about with inner speech is it's easy to kind of confuse it with, like, say, private speech, where you're actually talking out loud to yourself. Somebody could hear it. But one of the big differences with inner speech and verbal speech is that it's just faster. I guess, allegedly, for some people. It's not for me. Mine goes very slow and actually slows me down. It's like it goes slow. Yeah. The part of me that has to process the words slows down the speed that I could conceivably go at. Oh, okay. Yeah.
21:12It's like old Fernieho. It just kind of puts the brakes on everything. But normally, if you compare the two, it should be much faster just because a lot of times you're using condensed speech, which, you know, again, is you're just using shorthand that you can understand. I think that's where I get tripped up. I don't really do that. And then like physically, physiologically, it's just you can think a lot faster than you can speak because you're not moving your mouth. You're not like taking a breath or anything like that. It's just supposedly faster. Is yours faster? Yeah, for sure. There was one person, a researcher, who actually endeavored to find out how fast that can get.
21:52This was in 1990, and they found that some participants in the study could think more than 4 ,000 words a minute. And, you know, just for context, the world record for fastest out loud talker is a Canadian guy who went to 655 words per minute. So this is basically you can think up to six times faster than the fastest talker on the planet. Yeah, that's at least twice as much. Yeah, I actually did the math. It's roughly six. Was that the guy from the Dunkin' Donuts commercials or the FedEx commercials in the 80s? No, it's unfortunately just some, I mean, hey, I love this guy. I'm not going to knock him down.
22:32His name is Sean Shannon. He's a Canadian guy who did the to be or not to be soliloquy in 23.8 seconds. Wow. Where do you go, Sean? You can't understand anything he's saying, but I think they have judges that are like, yeah, he's still saying those words. So I guess then we reach another question. How does inner speech develop? Which apparently when they started figuring this out, thanks to a guy named Lev Vygotsky, who we'll meet in a second, it completely changed our understanding of children. Because up to this point, it was like, do kids learn first and then – or does their brain develop and then they learn first?
23:11Or do they learn first by – or do they develop their brain by learning? Clearly, I did neither at some point. Right. You can kind of get the gist of what I was saying. Yeah, I thought this was super interesting. Child development is just fascinating to me, like going through it now, like more than ever, obviously. But for most kids, and by the way, this Lev Vitgotsky, who you said we would meet. You know what? Let's just bring him in. Come on in, Lev. Hey, I'm dead. Yeah, exactly. This is in the 1930s, so he has left us earthwise. But a lot of this has been borne out in modern research. But in the 30s, he was looking at like basically it starts out as private speech, like kids saying things out loud to themselves.
23:59And, you know, first they start talking just to communicate like I'm hungry. I need to whatever, go to sleep. Actually, kids never say that. I want to stay up. Right. And, you know, that's just social communication. But then as they get older, they start sort of privately talking to themselves as an internal motivator. And then eventually that I think around that's between like three and four. And then around six or seven is when kids take that private voice inside their head. And that's when the inner monologue kicks off more or less. Right. And then they start to, after that, they continue to develop and get good at things like condensed speech and creating their own self shorthand and stuff like that.
24:42Yeah. It's pretty cool. So, again, I said that this kind of turned things on our head as far as understanding. Piaget, who was a very famous French psychologist, he said kids are dumb and then they learn or their brain grows and then they learn. And this showed the exact opposite, that they developed their brain and their understanding of the world through learning, through this inner dialogue. And it was by Gotsky, believe it or not, was a Soviet researcher. So the West wasn't exposed to his ideas until like the 50s. And when they finally came out, were translated, it was like, great, okay, now we finally understand.
25:22Right. He's the one that coined the term inner voice, right? Yeah. Yeah. I'm not sure what that is in Russian, but yes, apparently it translates to inner voice. I think it's a property of the Soviet Union. I don't know why I said that as a German. It sounded Russian to me in my head. You know, we mentioned that not everyone has inner speech or develops that. It exists like a lot of things do on a spectrum. Some people, Emily is a very, very, she's like, I'm constantly talking to people in my head. Really? I know. I see it happening. You know, the other interesting thing she does, I don't think I've ever mentioned on the show.
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26:01And she was like, you can say all this. I don't really care. She spells out when she's stressed. She'll spell out things with her thumb in cursive. Like on a table? Like just in the air? No, just like sitting there. Like we'll be watching a TV show and I'll know she's stressed and her thumb will be going. And now I don't know what she's doing for years now. I'll be like, what are you writing? And if it's a scene about like a tense standoff in an office or something, she might spell typewriter or office or something just that she sees. It's not always like I'm nervous. Never like I'm stressed or anything like that.
26:39So it's a way to alleviate her anxiety? I guess. How interesting. That's cool. I've never heard of that. Yeah. Hey, man. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Emily is one of a kind. When you couple up with people and you really dig in, you don't have any of those barriers up. It turns out that we're all just a little strange. Well, how is her air penmanship? She's great. I can read it at all. I can look at her thumb and just I can spell it right out in my head. Very neat. Wow. Can you really or are you just joking? No, no, no. Okay. I was going to say, wow. It looks like thumbs gone wild.
27:15All right. Nice. Too hot for a TV thumb wise. But anyway, but that's kind of her inner voice, too, you know, in a way, just manifesting itself physically. But it's still, you know, not out loud. But some people constantly are doing this kind of thing, talking to themselves. Others sometimes, some never. These two researchers, Johan Niedergaard and Gary Lupien, if you have zero inner speech, they have termed that an endophagia. and they say, and this is another kind of frustration, like, oh, between 5 % to 10 % of people don't have inner speech, whereas Russell Hurlburt, who we've met, said, no, it's more like 50 % to 70%.
27:58Have inner speech. Or no, don't have inner speech, right? Yeah. So that's just, that's wildly different. It is wild. That's a great term for it again, wild. So now Fernie Ho comes in and says, whoa, everybody. I'm not really excited about this having its own term, an endophagia. And and means lack. Endo means interphasia speech. Because, and I think he makes a reasonable argument here, when you come up with a term, especially a Latin term for something, the way people behave or think or whatever, it seems to suggest that this is a condition, maybe even a disorder. And he's like, that's not necessarily true, especially if the majority of people don't have this inner voice.
28:47So do we really need a name for it? And I think Nuttergaard and Lupien were like, it's a pretty cool name, though. Can we please keep it? And Fernie Ho is thinking about it right now. Right. Well, that got me thinking, like, if you have no inner dialogue, does that mean, like, do sociopaths have that? But I found no correlation there. It seems like sociopaths quite often have an inner dialogue saying, like, do this awful thing. Right. Yeah. Should we? Who are you? They have other things, though. Like, it's not like if you don't have an inner voice that there's no thought whatsoever. It can also come in different forms, I think, is what they're finding.
29:29Yeah. And they've also found this is Nedergaard and Luffian in a study just last year in 2024 where they tested. They want to know how it related to memory and apparently verbal memory of groups with very they tested people with very high and very low rates of inner speech and found that a very low rate of inner speech. You're not going to be as good at just remembering stuff like your lines in a play or a grocery list or anything. Poor bastards. The thing is, though, is that seems to be, at least as far as they've discovered, really the only big drawbacks is you don't do well necessarily in memory tests or something like that.
30:09But even for somebody who isn't thinking in, like, inner speech where they're talking to themselves, there's a voice in their head talking, There's other ways that you can think using what is basically some sort of inner, well, inner speech is the best way to put it. But imagine that without speech, without language or words. There's inner seeing. Some people think in images. Feelings, like just your emotions, which I'm kind of like, okay, does that get you in trouble if that's how you respond and move and behave from the world? because that's one of the big things from inner speech is when what we do is we prepare ourselves and come up with a plan of action.
30:54What are we going to do next? How are we going to respond to this? So if you're not thinking it over in your head and it's your emotions that drive you, that just seems like it could get scary. Yeah. Fraught. Huh? Like it's fraught. Fraught. Exactly. Yeah. There's unsymbolized thinking. So you've got like, you're just not, you're not thinking like, okay, I need to get in that car. You just, I don't know. I don't know. I can't even give you an example here. And then the last one that they've mentioned is sensory awareness, which is just sensing things. And then I guess responding essentially like an amoeba, like, oh, this stove is hot.
31:41So I'm going to move my hand, but imagine nothing in between the heat, the sensation of heat entering your hand and removing your hand, no thought whatsoever between that. That's apparently what sensory awareness is like. Huh. All right. That study from last year where they were talking about verbal memory made me wonder about dyslexia because, you know, my daughter has dyslexia and I was like, I bet you there's a tie there. And I was actually right on the money with this one. And supposedly, if you have dyslexia, you have very little to no inner voice. Really? So that was fascinating. Yeah, because a lot of times they think in images and they think in, they call it kind of like 3D thinking.
32:25Gotcha. So it's less word based. Gotcha. That's pretty cool. I tested myself on this a little bit to find out what I do. Like I typically just think in words, I guess. Yeah. A lot of times I talk to myself, but I think, I don't know. I think there's a lot going on in there that I'm not cognizant of. I'm really bad at like how I feel and like just understanding, you know, what's going on in my head at any given time. Like really just introspecting. Like I do it a lot, but I'm not necessarily good at it is what I guess what I'm trying to say. Yeah, I know what you're talking about. I can be like that too.
33:05See, I don't believe that one bit. I think you're a champion at that kind of thing. Well, maybe certain kinds. You know how it gets so complicated. I appreciate you trying to make me feel better, but you're wrong about you not being good at it. So I tested myself to see if I could think in just images without words because I've never really thought about that. So some part of me told myself to think of a watering can. Okay. And I didn't hear it. It was just like it wasn't in words. I didn't hear it. No one spoke it. I didn't see it spelled out. It was just there was some command all of a sudden to think of a watering can.
33:44And all of a sudden, a watering can came up. And the proof that I was not thinking in words is that I couldn't think of the word for what I was seeing. Oh, wow. Yeah. And then some other part of me came in and was like, you know, I think you were actually supposed to produce an image of a flower pot. And then I got worried about cognitive decline. And that's no joke. Like, that was the whole process right there. Wow, that is fascinating. And I would imagine hard to do kind of like Ghostbusters, you know, don't clear your mind. Right. And then you get the safe off the marshmallow man like that.
34:20If anything is suggested, I will immediately see the word. If it says, like, don't think of the word, I'll be I'll think of that word. Yeah, I guess I didn't. It was more like not. It wasn't like I was saying, like, don't do this. It was more do this or try this. So because there wasn't like that blanket prohibition on not thinking about the word, it was easier to do. But just back to Ruby. So did you ask her if she has an inner voice or if she thinks in symbols or whatever? No, she was she's at school, so it didn't come to me. But I'll ask her later and let you know. OK, do let me know. Text me.
34:53Yeah. It says Ruby says that her inner voice just says, find Josh, kill Josh. Burn Josh. No, she loves you. I know. I love her, too. I think she's sweet. I love her, too, I think. That's what I thought you were saying. Hey, did she, no, did she like Magdalena Bay? She did. Did she really? I just figured that she hadn't and you were just not mentioning it. No, I thought I texted you back. Yeah, Josh, it was very sweet. got a text and he said, hey, I got this new artist that I've been listening to. I think Ruby might like it. Well, I'm glad I was right. For some reason, every time I heard it, I would just be like, Ruby would really like this.
35:32That does not happen every time I listen to something. So I thought I should just say something. Oh, I could have sworn I texted you. But yeah, we listened to it together and she dug it. Cool. Cool. So hey, big plug for Magdalena Bay. Also a nice place to visit from what I hear. She's great. Is that a place too? Are you joking? No, I'm just kidding. Man, you're getting me all over the place today. Back to Russell Hurlbert. That's just so hard. It doesn't roll off the tongue. Sorry. Even in your head, it doesn't. Yeah. Oh, yeah. In my inner voice, it's hard to say, too. Yeah. He developed a tool called the Descriptive Experience Sampling.
36:11I would call it the sampler, but DES. That is when he sits you down and puts, I guess, a device in the room. And just like, hey, just sit there and chill out and do whatever and think about whatever. And anytime you hear a beep, though, you got to write down whatever is in your brain at that exact moment. I guess in the idea of just sorting to try and hit on the randomness of like what you might be thinking at any given time. And just log those thoughts right then. And then they would talk about those. And he said, maybe this could give me a good framework. and when he got the results back he was like wow this is fascinating how just all over the place it was it's so multi-layered it's so varied uh people can be thinking of a watering can and be saying the words flower pot at the same time with no explanation at all right uh sometimes you have multiple voices all talking over each other and he was just like this is uh he just put the the device away and walk slowly out of the room, I think.
37:13Yeah. Yeah. So this is a really big deal that he was able to come up with this because this is one of the reasons why people were so, I guess, wary of trying to study inner voices because they're so subjective. Hurlburt figured out a way to like take as much subjectivity out of it as possible. Yeah. You know, and I think in the - So simply too. Exactly. And I think in the more like the bigger studies that he came up with, like you would get a beeper and like turned out in the world for like a week or two weeks or something. So so that you would eventually get used to the beeper being there. Wouldn't just be like waiting, like I'm going to have this awesome thought like ready for when the beeper goes off.
37:53That's a good way to do it. Yeah. So that you would like he was genuinely tapping into whatever random thoughts are in your head. So he also the process also includes extensive interviews. I saw like multiple, like six, seven minutes on one word, one thought from one entry. And then they're really careful not to lead the person and have them, you know, start to implant memories accidentally, that kind of stuff, or revise what they're actually thinking. But instead kind of dig deeper and deeper and deeper into what else was there at the time. And I think the people who are participants in studies like this are actually surprised from these interviews because they didn't realize, like, you know, in addition to thinking this word, wait, there was this image over here, too.
38:38And, you know, it just goes on from there. Yeah. And he's like, Rosebud's got to be more than a wagon. It was a sled. I thought it was a wagon. Was it a sled? Yeah. Oh, good Lord. You're the movie guy, too, aren't you? I know. Man, Burl Ives just rolled over in his grave. Why did I think it was a wagon? It's a sled, which is really just a wagon with rails. Yeah, I guess it is. I think Radio Flyer makes both, so who's going to discriminate? Not me. Shall we take a break? Yeah. All right, we'll take another break, and we'll talk a little bit about brain areas lighting up right after this.
39:29New year, new goals, and in this economy, a better money plan is more necessary than ever. I am Matt. And I'm Joel. We are from the How to Money podcast, and every week we help you to spend smarter, save more, and make sense of what's going on out there. If you want 2026 to be the year you finally feel in control of your money, we're here to give you the tools and advice to help you make it happen. Listen to How to Money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
40:21site. You just really need to find where it is that you can have an impact in your own life and just start doing that. We break down the topics you want to know more about. Sleep, stress, mental health, and how the world around us affects our overall health. We talk about all the ways to keep your body and mind, inside and out, healthy. We human beings, all we want is connection. We just want to connect with each other. Health stuff is about learning, laughing, and feeling a little less alone. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey there, this is Dr.
40:58Jesse Mills, director of the men's clinic at UCLA Health and host of the Mailroom Podcast. Each January, guys everywhere make the same resolutions. Get stronger, work harder, fix what's broken. But what if the real work isn't physical at all? To kick off the new year, I sat down with Dr. Steve Poulter, a psychologist with over 30 years experience helping men unpack shame, anxiety, and emotional pain they were never taught to name. In a powerful two-part conversation, we discuss why men aren't emotionally bulletproof, why shame hides in plain sight, and how real strength comes from listening to yourself and to others.
41:33Guys who are toxic, they're immature, or they've got something they just haven't resolved. Once that gets resolved, then there comes empathy and some compassion. If you want this to be the year you stop powering through pain and start understanding what's underneath, listen to The Mailroom on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows.
42:06Okay, buddy, I'm supposed to lead off this segment, but I'm going to hand it right back to you because I know when I say the word efference, you get excited. We're going to talk about efference copies at long last. Take it away. Oh, okay. I had never heard about this before, had you? Same. Okay. So apparently when we think, when we're about to speak right now, without me being cognizant of it, there's a part of my brain that is prearranging and planning what I'm about to say. Right? I have no idea that this is going on. I think I'm just talking at this point. But there's a part of my brain that knows exactly what's going to happen.
42:46And they send out what's called a – sorry, my brain apologizes for that – what's called an efference copy, which is basically a blueprint of what I'm about to say to the rest of my brain. That includes what movements I'm going to make with my jaw and tongue and a prediction of what it's going to sound like coming out. And then also a basically a blanket statement like what you're about to hear is coming from you. So it keeps us from being startled. It allows us to recognize that what we're saying is coming from us. And the most amazing part about this is that when we think to ourselves using our inner voice or inner symbols or whatever, but definitely inner voice, I'm not sure about symbols now that I mention it, we do the same thing.
43:34We get basically a cruder version of the Efference copy, but it also includes orders to not move your mouth, to not move your tongue, that there's not going to be a touch sensation, but that everything else is like the Efference copy contains all the other stuff. Yeah, fascinating. And Efference copy is not a bad band name. No. A little brainy. It is, but, yeah, I could see. I'm going to go to the old standby math rock. Yeah, yeah, totally. Okay. So as far as the old wonder machine goes, they obviously have done plenty of studies where they always like to see what's lighting up, you know. But these are often disappointing to me when it comes to stuff like this because it's like I feel like at this point in our show after so many years, even listeners will say, oh, I bet the temporal cortex lights up.
44:30That's associated with memory and hearing and language. And then Broca's area, which we've talked about countless times, it's associated with speech. And yes, those areas light up. Yeah. Ta-da. Yes, but at the same time, there's also different regions that light up as well that wouldn't light up when we speak out loud. So it's clear that there are, it has its own thing, that inner voice is different as far as the brain is concerned from speech as well, that they bear a strong resemblance to one another. And then also they found the brain patterns for when we are spontaneously speaking to ourselves, that pristine inner talk that Herbert mentioned.
45:17That uses or different regions of the brain light up for elicited types where we're like using – we're rehearsing what we're saying or something like that. My efference copy is – Is it working slow or fast? It's a little rough around the edges today. Okay. You might be wondering about schizophrenia. This is something that we've talked about on the show before because, very sadly, many times you will see someone suffering from schizophrenia having a conversation out loud seemingly with someone. So it's very natural to probably wonder, like, oh, what's going on there? you know they can call those verbal hallucinations is that someone's inner voice and they have done studies and they found that there can be an impairment of the process that creates efference copies in those cases I think it's another term is corollary discharge and if you have schizophrenia it can make it hard for you to identify that voice as their own so yeah kind of what it seems like is happening seems like that's exactly what's happening yeah that message is not included in the efference copy.
46:28Then also, I failed to mention before, one of the things that the efference copy does is say, you don't need to pay attention to what is about to come out of your head as much, like the sound of it. It's not coming from you. You don't have to respond to it as you would if somebody was talking to you. And that's another thing that gets lost in the efference copy as well. They respond to the sound of the voices in their head in a way that that makes them feel where they respond to a voice as if somebody walked up and was talking to them. The problem is there's no one there and they are misattributing their own inner thoughts.
47:08That's kind of one of the big postulations for schizophrenia, at least audio verbal hallucinations associated with schizophrenia, which is, that's a great example right there of why studying inner speech is such a big deal. Like if we can figure this out, you could conceivably help treat people that much better. You know, I mean, like being plagued with inner voices that you think are coming from somewhere else, especially if they're like commanding you to do things, that's a great thing to learn how to treat, you know, that's debilitating. And then also kind of related to that is the idea that as we start to learn more about inner speech and where it comes from and what it does and all that, that we could conceivably get better at treating things like anxiety or OCD because those things have clearly shown to be associated with negative self-talk, that you can increase your own anxiety and stress by basically being mean to yourself or just having a negative outlook on life.
48:14And it's, I mean, just from my own experience, it's nuts how illuminating it can be when you have somebody point out like, do you hear like how you're viewing the world like in your own head? Like do you hear the things you're saying to yourself? And when you become aware of it, you can change it. And when you change it, it can have sweeping effects on your entire life, one of which is treating anxiety and even depression, I think. Yeah, I mean, man, it seems like so much stuff with the human condition can come down to being in touch with yourself and really self-aware. But being too self-aware can also be a problem.
48:53So it's just living life is tough. Yeah. Well put, man. With the OCD, I'm a little bit on the OCD spectrum. Mine doesn't manifest, though, in negative self-talk, but I was thinking about my inner voice. and I do a lot of, with my OCD, it's like efficiencies I'll talk about in my head. Like when I'm doing something like cooking, in my head I'm literally saying, all right, you're going to grab the spoon and you're going to take it over here and you're going to grab the salt and then you're going to cut that thing. And I'm kind of planning out stuff that I'm about to do, but in my brain it's all kind of wrapped up as an efficiency.
49:35Like if I do it in exactly just this right way, in this order, It's the best way to do that. I do that too. I associate that with perfectionism. Interesting. For me, it is at least. Like I have to do it as efficiently as possible. And efficiency is a form of perfectionism. And that if you do it all out of order, it's loosey-goosey. And why even bother to get out of bed? Right. But I'll even do that when it's not like a specific thing. Like, all right, if you're cooking something, I sort of get that. But if I'm at my desk sometimes and it comes and goes, I'll be like, all right, you're going to grab the mouse and click on that thing and you're going to answer that email and then you're going to grab your pen.
50:12Same here, man. Like, how interesting. All right. I had no idea that we had that in common. Hey, look at us. Wow. See what happens when you talk about your inner voice, Chuck. We're meant to be. I've been asking you to do this for decades now. I know. I was like, I don't want to look at myself. Well, that kind of leads us to the purposes of inner speech a little bit, right? I mean, talking about it clearly helps connect people, but there's there's things that we gain from talking to ourselves or just being able to do that. Sure. And we've kind of touched on them here and there. You know, when kids are developing it, they believe that it's a way to sort of grow and mature into being responsible.
50:52Like you start out hearing your parents say to go do something, go clean up your room. And eventually, the more you hear that, you'll start thinking, I should really go clean up my room. Or I'm not sure when that's supposed to start. But yeah, at some point, eventually that will lead to you saying those things to yourself like you would as a, you know, responsible adult, like I got to clean this mess up. Right. Yeah. And also, I mean, executive functioning, like making decisions, figuring out the best solution to a problem by simulating them, like thinking through your actions before acting, which also oftentimes ties into emotional regulation.
51:35Yeah. All of this uses some sort of like inner voice, inner speech, inner hearing is another way that you can experience it. That's a that's just that's an enormous role because that's essentially how we navigate life as adults. Yeah. And, you know, I already mentioned sort of the performance aspect, like if you're if If you're about to play a game or run a race or something, like talking to yourself, you got this, you're the best, you can do this, you're going to run fast, you might have a routine that you run over in your head. That's all inner voice. Yeah, exactly. And that can be, that can really pay off, obviously, much more than negative self-talk and motivation.
52:18You know, it's not exactly tied to what you're saying, but what you were mentioning before, like how you were planning out which action to do next for cooking and then the one beyond that. I realized that's why I had to stop playing video games because I would walk around thinking about how to do it better next time. Oh, interesting. Even when I wasn't playing the video game and realized like this is not – no way to spend my mental energy. Like it's one thing to just sit down and relax and play a video game. And if that was it for me and I could leave it there, I would totally play video games still, but I just couldn't leave it there.
52:53Yeah, mine comes and goes too, and I haven't thought too much about when or why, so I think that's interesting. Do they still call them video games? It feels really 80s or 90s. I don't know. I think it's more used as like a verb, like when I game. Gaming, right, yeah. I've heard that. I heard that in a magazine. Yeah, but I think if you said, hey, do you play video games? It'd be a very Gen X way to say that. Okay. I'll watch my stuff then.
53:28If you're wondering about, you know, because we've talked about whether you dream in other languages, if you learn a second language, is that a mark of fluency? It kind of ties into inner voice. Generally speaking, you think in your or you talk to yourself in your first language. But if you are fluent in, you know, let's say I was fluent in German, if only, and I moved to Germany at times there or eventually I could have an inner voice. Is that talking in a different way? Yeah. Not with a German accent, an American, but yeah. So also deaf people apparently, and I would guess especially if you were deaf from birth, they see or think in sign language.
54:10So they visualize the word but through signs. Yeah, so cool. That is super cool. And then other people can actually, they might envision someone, like their face, so they're reading their lips. Yeah. But they're not hearing anything. I just think that's just fascinating. They also don't speak it themselves. Yeah, yeah. I think that's totally fascinating. There was also in that same Guardian article with the woman who was featured with the Italian couple bickering in her head. And there was a dude, and man, I can't find his name anywhere. But he, I think, is the hero of this entire story, Chuck.
54:49Oh, we don't know his name? His name is Justin Hopkins. I found it. Oh, okay. He has this, what he basically calls an island in a sea of void. And the island is his mind. And his mind turns on when it needs to. So an example, because I don't fully understand how this guy, how his mind works, but the best I can say is he realizes that he's out of milk, so he needs to go buy milk, so he buys milk, right? But imagine that being the extent of it. So he needs to buy milk, and he goes and buys milk, and he puts the milk back in his refrigerator, and then he doesn't have another thought until the next thing that comes along.
55:33He said that he can go hours without a thought. And so he can just sit in front of a sunset and enjoy the sunset in the most basic way that you can enjoy a sunset. And just not be thinking about all the problems he has or what he has to do next or how to most efficiently watch the sunset. And this guy is like, I wouldn't want to necessarily live like that all the time because I do enjoy having like an inner life. but to just be able to modulate it and do that once in a while. I think that guy's amazing. And apparently in the guardian article, they said that he says he sleeps like a baby, which I could totally imagine.
56:15Well, interestingly, I know that I'm drifting towards sleep when my inner voice gets really weird. Like I'll be thinking of things. And when I start thinking about things and I can tell that are just absolute weird nonsense, It's almost like pre-dreaming. But the problem is now I know that sleep is coming and I know that's what that signals. So in my brain, I will start inner talking going, all right, baby, I'm about to fall asleep. And that takes me out of it. So, OK, OK, I'm fascinated by this. Give us an example of how your brain starts just becoming nonsensical or speaking gibberish or whatever that you can recognize you're starting to drift off.
57:00Like what's I'll be drifting and all of a sudden, like, I mean, I'm just making this up because I can't I don't get up and write it down. What I should do is write it down. But then I've ruined my nap or whatever. But it's, you know, all of a sudden, if I'm just hear words or I'm saying hear my voice saying words like, you know, you know, the chicken put on a cape and and played a little basketball and jumped in a pot of chili, like complete nonsense. sense. And I will recognize it's happening and go, all right, that means I'm about there. And then that takes me out of it. And then I'm like, dag nabbit.
57:34Yeah. But a lot of times you can just experience it and not note it and just fall asleep. Or note it and then just not let it rouse me too much and it'll lead to sleep. Gotcha. Man, that's amazing. I've never heard of that. It's very hot. That's pretty cool. Oh, boy. But every time I've said something weird about myself like that on the air, like stepping on cracks with the same place of my foot every time with the OCD. I've had people write in and say, I do the same thing. Right. So. Yeah, I think that's, I was going to say, like, I know we've been talking about ourselves a lot, but part of it for me is like, you know, I want to hear from people saying like, I do that too.
58:10Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Well, oh, one other thing before we go. There was a tweet, it's become kind of a famous tweet from a few years back, I think in 2020, where somebody just basically said some people have an inner voice and some people don't. And it revealed this commonality among people. If you don't really have an inner dialogue, monologue, inner speech, whatever, you just assume no one else does either. And if you do have it, you just assume everybody has it. And it was really kind of eye-opening to people to find like that's not the case at all, that it's basically a spectrum. Yeah, and I mean, maybe new research was spawned because everyone was like, oh, wait a minute, people are interested in this?
58:56Yeah. Fernie Ho said, Fernie Ho! That's right. Well, you got anything else? I mean, there's a bazillion other things, but we'll just park it right here. Okay, it is parked. And since we just parked it, as everyone who has been listening to the show from the outset knows, we've just unlocked Blister Noemail. That's right. I'm going to call this Toledo, and this is from Alexander Nozar, or Alex. Alex says, you know, every time Josh talks about having come from Toledo, I was thinking about Tony Paco's, which he mentioned in the Fan Theory episode. What wasn't mentioned, however, was, and Tony Paco's is what?
59:36It was a restaurant, right? It's like a hot dog place, very famous in Toledo, and then Jamie Farr made it famous on MASH. That's right. What wasn't mentioned, however, was what makes Tony Paco's awesome. First and foremost, it was founded by a Hungarian immigrant, making it a significant place for Hungarian-Americans, especially here in Ohio, which has a pretty large Hungarian population in Dayton, Columbus, Toledo, and I believe Cleveland. My family is Hungarian on both sides, with great-grandfathers coming over here in the 1900s, early 1900s. Tony Paco serves not just Hungarian food like spätzle, but they're well-known for their homemade pickles and, most importantly, their hot dogs.
1:00:17But what makes it truly unique as a fun place to visit is that anytime a celebrity visits, they're asked to sign a hot dog bun, which is then encased in plastic and hung on the wall. It's been a while since I've been there, but I remember Leslie Odom Jr.'s name and, of course, Jamie Farr. So I think you two should go up there on some sort of tour and you can experience her awesome food, but also sign a hot dog bun. I don't think they'd let us sign a hot dog bun, but I appreciate the thought. Are you kidding me? Didn't you get a key to the city or something? There was a listener years back who was trying to get us actually the key to the city, and I don't think it went anywhere.
1:00:50Well, you should get a key to Toledo. I should get a key to Stone Mountain, Georgia. You should sign a hot dog bun, and I should sign Stone Mountain. Plus, also, we should have the hot dogs while they're there because Alex ain't lying. They're really good. And I have to say, if you're ever in Toledo or apparently Dayton, Columbus, Cleveland, and you aren't in the mood for a hot dog, but there's a Tony Paco's nearby, go get the stuffed cabbage. because it is top notch. Like you wouldn't think this hot dog place, why does it have stuffed cabbage? Well, because it's a Hungarian place and it is really good.
1:01:24Like really good. Okay, I'm just going to say it again. It's really good, stuffed cabbage. What's it stuffed with? Love, magic. I'm guessing three kinds of meat probably. Awesome. It is. It is very good. Well, thanks a lot, Alex. It's always nice to hear from a fellow Ohioan, I'm guessing. Yeah. Yeah. And if you want to be like Alex and write in and tell us about something we love, like Tony Paco's or whatever, you can send us an email to stuffpodcasts at iHeartRadio.com.
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