Find your American Express card and start earning rewards with cash back and bonus points on your everyday purchases.
Like dining in or eating out, shopping at your favorite retail stores, or picking up groceries, you can earn rewards when you use Amex.
See if you pre -qualify with no impact on your credit score.
Learn more about our offers at americanexpress .com slash check -4 -offers.
Your credit score may be impacted if you submit an application.
Terms apply. Why would you do that to me?
Los Angeles, 2021. A friendly neighbor appears out of nowhere and promises to make all my dreams come true.
Let's not forget that David Bloom was a professional con artist, so you didn't stand a chance.
But my dreams soon turned into a nightmare.
I'm Caroline DeMory.
Listen as I take down my scammer on Once Upon a Con on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Good afternoon, Gabda.
It's Chuck here on a Saturday and I'm going to pick a selection called How Foreign Accent Syndrome Works.
No idea what this is about, but it's from March 28, 2017, and I hope you enjoy it.
Good day. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
hey and welcome to the podcast i'm josh clark and there's charles w chuck bryant and jerry's here as always so it's stuff you should know stuff you should know you should have said that in a british accent it's stuff you should know a how's that was great you're a regular rich little remember the Arrested
Development little subplot where Charlize Theron was thought to be a British spy oh yeah what was Four British Eyes Only yeah but what was the name of her character Mr.
F Mr. F that's right that's right I knew I had some like they said that every time right mhm it was pretty funny she's great yeah she was pretty lady mhm Funny, smart.
Yeah. Good actor. What else?
That's all I got on her.
Chicken macrame. Oh, really?
I don't know. I just assumed.
Oh, okay. This is off to a great start.
It's unusual, odd even, you could say that you suggested I say the intro in a British accent because we're talking about foreign accents today, Chuck.
That's right. It was coy.
I see. Now it makes sense.
Yes. And we're specifically not talking about...
There's a thing sometimes that certain people do when they meet someone with an accent different than their own.
Right. Where they accidentally or sometimes purposely adopt it momentarily.
Yes. It's called code switching.
My mom's done this before.
that I remember it happened when I was a kid.
My brother and I thought it was so funny.
Yeah. Yeah, and it seems like it's usually a parent of an embarrassed child.
Sure. Is there an explanation behind it?
Yeah, so from what I understand, this is the point, right?
So our accents are extremely personal.
They're part of us individually, but they also signal our membership in different groups, right?
So like a farmer is going to talk differently from a stockbroker and a farmer from Georgia is going to talk a lot differently than a stockbroker from Portland, Oregon, right?
Okay. Because that's the other stock market seat.
You thought I was going to say New York?
I did. So when we code switch, when we meet other people and take on their way of talking.
It's called code -switching, and I think it's a way of signaling, hey, we have something in common.
I don't want you to be distracted by— Yeah, it's a welcoming thing.
Yeah, my overalls with no shirt on are distracting enough.
I don't want you to be distracted by my accent, too.
So I think it is a way of saying, hey, we have something in common.
The thing is accents are such a part of group identity that if you do that in front of some other members of your group, whether it's your family or your friends or whatever, they're going to tease you.
They are going to tease you, guaranteed.
And one of the reasons why is because what they're doing consciously or otherwise is maintaining the borders of their own group's identity.
They're saying, eh, don't put on airs.
Don't think you're fancy.
Don't think you're just like that guy.
You're one of us. And making fun of somebody who adopts someone else's accent is a way of doing that.
It's a way of maintaining group divisions and borders.
Where really, when you do kind of adopt someone else's accent, I think one of the things that you are doing is trying to make the foreigner, the stranger, feel more comfortable.
And having met your mom, I guarantee that's what she was doing.
Well, I just remember the only one I remember specifically, and, you know, you just have these random childhood moments that sort of stick with you was we were in Florida and we were talking with an Irish woman, I believe.
She may have been from England, but I think she was Irish.
And the other thing, too, is, you know, I don't I don't think my mom had probably talked to a lot of Irish people at that point.
She's from West Tennessee.
They moved to Georgia.
we didn't have Irish people all over the place she wasn't super well traveled back then although she is much more now so it was probably a bit novel to her and I remember very specifically the woman said something about going to Disney instead of Disney World and my mom said she got kind of proper and she
says you know we haven't been to Disney yet and I remember my brother and I just thought that was so funny instead of saying Disney World Did you guys make fun of her in front of the woman?
No I don't think so we may have laughed a little under our breath, but I mean, I don't think we even teased her.
I'm teasing her now a bit, but I don't think we made fun of her really.
I think we just kind of, like my brother and I are one to do, very quietly looked at each other in that way that brothers do.
Right, and then talked to each other like the kids in Escape from Witch Mountain.
Were they telepathic?
Yeah. But it's funny, I was listening to the great Judge John Hodgman podcast with our pal John and Jesse Thorne, Bailiff Jesse.
And they had an actual case a few weeks ago that was very funny where this mom does this on purpose.
She's a trained actor and loves to put on accents when she goes to places.
And the daughter was just, she took her to the internet court and was just like, stop doing this.
Like, you've got to stop doing this.
and the mom's whole thing she was very just fun and whimsical and having a lot of fun with it so it was really hard to to rule against her but i think hajman ultimately did rule against her he's tough but fair well i think his whole thing was like you know i think he ruled partially in her favor like
you got to let them know where you're from and you can't do it to like waiters and service people because their job is to like take your dumb jokes and have a stiff upper lip about it and it just kind of makes their job harder if they think maybe you're making fun of them and you know like you may not realize
the unintended consequence of this is somebody may feel uncomfortable that they have to put up with this.
Wow, that was, it took a really serious turn at the end there.
No, it did. I mean you know that's what's great about that show is they're funny cases but he adjudicates seriously, I think that's why it works.
And then Jesse always shoots his gun off at the end.
Yeah. Beehaw! So anyway, I just thought it was pretty weird that this article came up and then that episode had just aired.
But that's different than what we were talking about.
Totally. Like, I started saying, this is not that at all.
This is a legitimate, super rare, this reminded me of alien hand syndrome and its rarity.
Yeah. Yeah. Because I've seen different numbers, but the most I've seen is about 150 described official cases of foreign accent syndrome.
Right. That's super rare for sure.
Yeah. And what makes it different from somebody taking on the affect or dialect or accent of somebody else?
Someone taking the piss.
Right. This is this is where you can't stop.
It's involuntary. Yeah.
Yeah. And, you know, it sounds weird.
It's an affliction.
And you just want to like poke the person who's doing that in the neck to be like, what are you doing there?
But if you really start to dig into the actual cases, it's sad in a lot of a lot of cases.
Oh, yeah. Because, again, your accent, what you sound like, makes up a part of your personality.
So if you are if it changes on you involuntarily, it can be quite traumatic for some people.
you could have an identity crisis of sorts.
Yeah. So I guess we should just go ahead and talk about a couple of cases so people know what we're talking about.
The first one mentioned in our own article is really interesting for a few reasons.
And it's the most recent case that's documented.
Oh, I'm sorry. It's not the most recent, but it is fairly recent.
A woman named Lisa Alamia.
She had jaw surgery because of an overbite.
And then when she came out of surgery, even though she was from texas and had never been to england she spoke with a british accent and she's like right bloody hell and uh wait wait i i need our british listeners to write in and tell me how how good my british accent is okay well i'm known on the show
for doing the bad accent so i'm glad you're taking no yours are good no no no minor they verge on decent at times well there's cartoonish and stereotypical, but they're really, really good cartoonish, stereotypical versions of accents.
Uh, so she woke up, had that accent and her husband and three kids thought it was a joke.
Um, she had only been outside the country to go to Mexico and it was a real thing called foreign accent syndrome.
Yeah. She'd never been to England.
She apparently probably had seen British people on TV kind of thing, but her case actually is the opposite of what I was saying.
She was apparently um quite shy before and now she has something to talk about a conversation opener i guess she's a little more okay chatty than before interesting yeah it is it's it's the opposite of some other people who have really experienced a crisis as a result she's like well i sound british
now i guess i should talk more than before so she sounds like a drunk cockney chimney sweep pretty much and she does sound cockney to me oh really i didn't hear i didn't see this one on youtube so uh yeah we should say you know this is kind of like optical illusions it's one thing to talk about it you
need to actually go see and hear these people talking yeah um if you just look up lisa alamia a -l -a -m -i -a and you will find plenty of interviews with her um and she's she's like you said fairly recent there's one that's a quite a famous case maybe the most famous because it was the one that put foreign
accent syndrome on the map even though it was before the term was coined.
Yeah, this one had a much darker turn, because it was during World War II, a Norwegian woman named Astrid suffered injury, and the ironies here are really sad, she suffered a brain injury from shrapnel from a German bomb in a bombing raid, and then when she came to, she had a German accent.
Very not fun for her.
No, because the Germans were occupying Norway at the time, right?
Yeah. So, people she didn't really know were like, oh, hey, German spy.
Yeah. You want some milk?
No milk for you. Yeah, she was shunned.
She couldn't even speak German, but she had that accent and was obviously very distraught by this.
And she went to a neurologist named Jorg Hermann Monrad Krohn.
Nice job. It's a great name.
and um he coined the first term uh for this which is uh dysprosity which is prosody is like the tone and rhythm of your speech yeah and the prefix dis obviously is like abnormal or ill and that didn't catch on too well it didn't but as we'll see he kind of nailed what the problem was because, you know,
the non -grammatical parts of speech, the prosody, are what is affected.
When you have foreign accent syndrome, you have what appears to be a foreign accent, but usually your vocabulary, your syntax, your grammar remains unchanged.
It's all the little nuances that make up your accent or your intonation or the rhythm of your speech that are affected and has changed.
So dysprosity is actually like the perfect name for this syndrome.
Yeah, but foreign accent syndrome is way more catchy.
Oh, it's sexy. In 1982, a neurologist named Harry Whitaker came up with that.
So Whitaker coined it in the 80s.
I think 1982 was when he coined that official term.
Right, and he was a neurolinguist who did some pretty serious research into foreign accent syndrome.
He actually came up with a four -point criteria for diagnosing it.
And the number one is that the accent has to be considered by the patient, the people the patient knows, and the researcher, the doctor, to sound like a foreign accent, right?
Yeah, foreign from what they are.
Yeah, well, that's number two.
It has to be different from the patient's former prosody.
Sure. Noticeably different.
Number three, it has to be related to central nervous system damage.
And this one has come under fire under the last few years.
And then four, it can't be related to a patient's ability to speak a foreign language already, right?
So there's actually a condition.
It's astounding to me.
It's called bilingual aphasia or there's also polyglot aphasia.
And apparently, if you suffer a stroke or brain injury or some other trauma or insult to your central nervous system and you know more than one language, you may completely lose the ability to speak one language and completely retain the ability to speak the other.
That's how decentralized our language process is in the brain.
Well, yeah, because that's one of the factors in foreign accent syndrome is you could, it's not like in a case where you might have a stroke and lose the ability to speak.
Like, you still can speak in perfect dialect, whatever that dialect is, as far as being, you know, articulate and coherent.
Oh, right. Right. Yeah.
Yeah. So you're you're yeah, exactly.
You're not like slurring your speech.
You just sound different and like a foreign person saying the same words would.
Right. Yes. Oh, gotcha.
OK. So there's this four point diagnosis criteria that's kind of been deconstructed over the years.
The problem with foreign accent syndrome, it's like you said, there's been 100, maybe 150 cases.
So it's just totally up in the air as to how to diagnose it, what qualifies as it.
And we'll talk a little bit about how scientists have dug into it thus far after this break.
Thank you. more than $2 billion, saving an estimated 200 ,000 lives.
GiveWell's research is free, helping donors make informed decisions.
Donations to recommended funds are tax -deductible, and GiveWell takes no cut.
If you've never used GiveWell to donate, you can have your donation matched up to $100 before the end of the year or as long as matching funds last.
To claim your match, go to givewell .org and pick Podcast, and enter Stuff You Should Know at checkout.
Make sure they know that you heard about GiveWell from Stuff You Should Know to get your donation matched.
Again, that's givewell .org to donate or find out more.
Why would you do that to me when I thought we were friends?
We are friends. Los Angeles, 2021.
A friendly neighbor appears out of nowhere and promises to make all my dreams come true.
Let's not forget that David Bloom was a professional con artist, so you didn't stand a chance.
But my dreams soon turned into a nightmare.
Bloom generally targeted people with money.
And I was not alone.
He took over 100 people for over $15 million.
One of the victims was his own grandmother.
I was married to David for almost 10 years.
It was insane. I was barely functioning.
And I just had this realization that he will not stop until he kills me.
Getting a con artist to pay for their crimes isn't easy.
I'm Caroline DeMora.
Listen as I take down my scammer on Once Upon a Con on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
This is David Eagleman, host of the science podcast Inner Cosmos.
For Valentine's Day, we're diving into the question, what is love from the brain's point of view?
What does love have to do with how you were raised or the symmetry of someone's face or the smell of their underarms?
Why does the character of love change throughout our lives?
Why is heartbreak like drug withdrawal?
And what does any of this have to do with sweaty t -shirts or rom -coms or monogamous animals and the future of love and AI?
Join me for this week's Inner Cosmos for a deep dive into the neurobiology of love.
Listen to Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
The best person to talk to your child about vaping is you.
To start the conversation, visit TalkAboutVaping .org.
Brought to you by the American Lung Association and the Ad Council.
So, Chuck, foreign accent syndrome, it's kind of all over the place right now, right?
Yes. You've got Lisa Alamia who woke up from jaw surgery with it.
Apparently people who have strokes can suffer from foreign accident syndrome.
And I actually saw one case where your foreign accident syndrome and one patient who suffered a stroke was cured by a second stroke elsewhere in the brain.
Wow. Yeah. So it's very tough to predict what's going to happen when foreign accent syndrome does come about.
And, you know, there's been people from Japan who've developed Korean accents, or there have been people from Scotland who develop South African accents.
It's kind of everywhere and all over.
Yeah. One of the other causes, it can be from the onset of MS from multiple sclerosis.
This one woman that we'll talk about in more detail suffered from chronic migraines, but had a migraine attack so severe that it spurred this, and we'll get to her.
But all of these in a bucket from some sort of trauma or an event are called neurogenic type.
And for a long time, they used to think that was the only way that you could get foreign accident syndrome.
Right. Because remember that Harry Whitaker 1982 criteria specifically says it has to be related to central nervous system damage.
Yeah, so there's another kind called psychogenic, also non -organic or functional or psychosomatic.
But one of the leading experts said that they prefer psychogenic.
He said because, quote, this term has the advantage of stating positively based on an exploration of its causes, that the disorder is a manifestation of psychological disequilibrium, like anxiety, depression, personality disorder, or conversion reaction, end quote.
And we're talking about it could be bipolar disorder.
It could be some other form of mental illness.
And this really kind of rocked...
I mean, it's not a huge community studying this, but the people that do are obviously super fascinated by it.
And it kind of rocked their world when they found out that someone that had no head injury, no stroke or anything like that could have something like this?
Yeah. So they developed, first it was neurogenic, then they developed psychogenic.
And then there's actually a third one now.
It's mixed. So apparently it can actually be from a psychological issue that possibly could arise from, say, a brain lesion.
So it's both of them together working to create this foreign accent syndrome.
And definitely the psychogenic version of foreign accent syndrome differs tremendously from the neurogenic in a lot of ways.
And number one is the psychogenic tends to clear up.
It accompanies, say, like a psychotic break or a manic episode or something like that.
And as the episode wanes or goes away or clears up, so too does the foreign accent syndrome.
That is not the case with neurogenic.
with neurogenic, they have no cure whatsoever.
And basically the only treatment that they can come up with is through speech therapy, where a speech language pathologist basically retains you to talk the way you did before.
Yeah. It's also the neurogenic is also much more common.
Out of the cases, I think it's about 86 % are from some sort of neurological damage.
So what does that 14 percent or unless I guess you're accounting for the the new super odd one that is could be both.
One of the more famous cases that kind of demonstrated that psychogenic FAS was an actual thing happened here in America.
There was a woman in her mid -30s who had a history of schizophrenia in her family and she was brought to the ER after attacking her mom's landlady.
Yeah this one's the most recent case actually.
And she believed the landlady was practicing voodoo on her against her, and she attacked the woman.
And throughout all this, during this episode, she had taken on a British accent.
And taking a family history, they found that, number one, she had schizophrenia in her family.
She was diagnosed with schizophrenia as a result of this incident, but that she had had similar instances before.
And during these, she had spoken with a British accent.
Yeah, I wonder, I didn't see anything in there about her if she had a, I mean, is it another personality?
Is it multiple personality disorder?
I don't believe so.
That's not what I took from it.
Because that would make sense, you know, if you have just a British personality that came out that's violent maybe or something.
Yeah. Well, I mean, remember, I think we've done one on schizophrenia before, haven't we?
I don't know. Have we?
We definitely did one on dissociative personality disorder, which is just absolutely fascinating.
But I was, like you, I kind of noticed, like, hey, what about multiple personalities?
It seems like something that would be right up that alley.
I'm sure they've looked into that.
But apparently that's not part of it.
Yeah. Another case that I said we were going to get to, this one is really weird and super sad.
Yeah, this woman named Sarah Caldwell in England, she is the one that had the migraine that set it off.
And this one is super odd because she's an English woman who now has a Chinese accent.
I mean, just straight up sounds Chinese.
And like broken English Chinese.
Right. Right. So she sounds like a native, I think, Mandarin speaker is probably what we're thinking of, who is speaking English.
And if you weren't looking, like you would expect to see, say, maybe like a middle aged Chinese woman when you looked at the at the video.
Yeah. And no, it's like, I don't know, late, late to mid 30s Caucasian woman.
native born English speaker and she's who I was thinking of when I was saying for some people it's a really big problem because it's presented a big crisis for her identity she said that she can't look in the mirror while she's speaking any longer she just doesn't feel like herself anymore and it's really
hit her hard yeah I mean her case is really sad it was I think 2010 when she was diagnosed after this migraine incident And in 2015, she couldn't work anymore.
And she has a lot more issues going on than just the speech with these migraines that have come on.
She's got a whole range of physical problems.
She's had to stop work.
She's in a wheelchair.
Even though her limbs completely work, her brain basically can't tell her limbs to do what they should do.
Good Lord. From migraines.
Yeah, from I think these really extreme migraines.
I think they even likened it to like having a stroke.
They were so severe.
So she's had to sell her house and I think her husband is afflicted with something too.
It's just a really, really sad case.
But, you know, there's all kinds of interviews with her and it's just so strange to hear that accent coming out of this white lady.
it is and from what i gather she'd be like yeah well imagine how strange it feels coming out of you oh yeah you know and you know i saw videos where they would sit down and play her uh and before i looked up further that she was having even more uh troubled times it seemed like she was getting a little
better throughout the interview through therapy because they were playing her one of the things they do is they play old recordings of herself and she would sit down and listen to them and try and mimic it.
And which kind of brought up one of my questions is, can you even mimic an accent like, you know, people can fake an accent.
Like, can you even do that?
And I didn't get an answer on that.
But then you're just mimicking an accent your entire life, too, even if you could.
Yeah. You know, so that's problematic on its own.
Sure. But it seemed like she was getting a little bit better in that interview, but apparently not.
It's really sad. Yeah, it is.
I mean, like, it's bad enough you've got migraines and then to have a crisis of identity.
Yeah. It's, yeah, not fair.
So one of the other things that's really troubling is you can't just go to a neurologist and get it cleared up.
There are a whole range of doctors that you'll probably see along the way, including a neurologist.
You talked about a speech -language pathologist.
You might go to a clinical psychologist to deal with the fallout from everything.
maybe a neuropsychologist, maybe a radiologist.
You might see six and eight doctors and still not get anywhere.
Right, because it can't do a lot for you.
We don't know how to treat strokes very well, and once damage has occurred in the brain, it can be pretty tough, if not impossible, to reverse that damage, right, if it's permanently damaged.
um so yeah the the idea that you're you've now gotten a foreign accent they're probably like that's kind of the least of your words you just had a massive stroke or a huge head injury or something like that but what it's revealed to them is not that there's this huge mystery and we we have kind of played into
it a little bit by not revealing this from the outset but you you as a patient with foreign accent syndrome you didn't hit your head and wake up with the foreign accent, it's all in the ear of the beholder.
The whole idea that there is a foreign accent syndrome as the way that it's stated is false.
And we'll talk about that after this break.
Why would you do that to me when I thought we were friends?
We are friends. Los Angeles, 2021.
A friendly neighbor appears out of nowhere and promises to make all my dreams come true.
Let's not forget that David Bloom was a professional con artist, so you didn't stand a chance.
But my dreams soon turned into a nightmare.
Bloom generally targeted people with money.
And I was not alone.
He took over 100 people for over $15 million.
One of the victims was his own grandmother.
I was married to David for almost 10 years.
It was insane. I was barely functioning.
And I just had this realization that he will not stop until he kills me.
Getting a con artist to pay for their crimes isn't easy.
Charge David Blum! I'm Caroline Desmore.
Listen as I take down my scammer on Once Upon a Con on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
This is David Eagleman, host of the science podcast, Inner Cosmos.
For Valentine's Day, we're diving into the question, what is love from the brain's point of view?
What does love have to do with how you were raised or the symmetry of someone's face or the smell of their underarms?
Why does the character of love change throughout our lives?
Why is heartbreak like drug withdrawal?
And what does any of this have to do with sweaty t -shirts or rom -coms or monogamous animals and the future of love and AI?
Join me for this week's Inner Cosmos for a deep dive into the neurobiology of love.
Listen to Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
How serious is youth vaping?
A reversible lung damage series, one in 10 kids vape series, which warrants a serious conversation from a serious parental figure like yourself.
Not the seriously know -it -all sports dad or the seriously smart podcaster.
It requires a serious conversation that is best had by you.
No, seriously, the best person to talk to your child about vaping is you.
To start the conversation, visit TalkAboutVaping .org.
brought to you by the American Lung Association and the Ad Council.
I'm Dr. Laurie Santos, and to welcome the new year, my podcast, The Happiness Lab, is releasing a series of happiness how -to guides to help you in 2025.
I'll distill the wisdom of world -class experts into easy -to -digest, actionable tips.
Struggling with tough emotions?
We have a how -to guide.
Worried that you're not enough?
We got you. Self -obsessed and want to get over yourself?
There's a guide for that too.
The ability to approach somebody and make them experience desire for you in minutes or even hours is a rare and rather unnecessary skill, historically speaking.
The Happiness Lab's how -to season starts January 1st.
Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Okay, Chuck, we're back.
Yes. So I thought I heard you draw in a breath right before we broke.
I might have been. Did you have something to say?
I don't know. Yeah, I think I have a little trouble wrapping my head around this whole idea that it's only in the ear of the person because, you know, that lady clearly has a Chinese accent.
It's not, oh, I'm just hearing it that way.
Okay. So, there have actually been studies where they've played a video clip of, or an audio clip of a person with foreign accent syndrome to different people.
Yeah. And said, you know, where do you think this person's from?
And the same person will get tens of different answers out of tens of different people.
Yeah, I don't know.
I mean, that makes sense in some cases, I think.
but I don't see how anyone could hear this woman and say she sounds British to me.
Right. Well, no, no, no.
She definitely doesn't sound British, but that's the point.
She sounds Chinese, but she's not actually speaking in a Chinese accent.
She didn't hit her head and wake up with a Chinese accent.
What happened was she got these series of migraines, probably had some sort of stroke, And a region of her brain that controls the really intricate process of prosody, of making your tongue do certain things to intonate an accent, certain words in certain ways that make up your accent and your dialect
overall, that got damaged.
And so now she can't control it in the way she used to before.
It comes out sounding differently.
And to you, somebody who has heard people speak in a Chinese accent before, it sounds like a Chinese accent.
That's the difference.
Yeah, I still don't get that.
What I do get, though, is we take second nature just when we open our mouth, we talk.
We don't realize the complex series of events that's going on to make your voice come out the way it does.
While in the brain, they think, and again, the mysteries of the brain, how you create speech is really complex and involves all kinds of areas of the brain.
but specifically damaged in the left hemisphere and the cerebral artery, they know a lot of times can cause foreign accent syndrome.
But when you're speaking, you're using your tongue, you're using your lips, your jaw, your larynx.
And the way all these things combine in who you are is going to make you have, and we should do one on accents, period.
Agreed. It's going to control how your speech comes out.
And the one example they use in here is if you have a little too much to drink, you might lose some of that muscle control and you might slow your words or talk funny or differently.
Right. So that's a pretty basic way of understanding it.
But I know vowels are sort of a big deal when it comes to foreign accent syndrome.
Yeah, if you say ah instead of a, or you substitute consonants like R for L, right?
So you're, you know, what's that?
What were they singing?
Jingle bells on, oh no, Deck the Halls on A Christmas Story.
A Christmas Story. Farah rah rah rah, right?
So if you were a Caucasian English speaker and you damaged your brain in a way that the part of your brain responsible for forming L's now formed R's instead to other English speakers who'd heard native Chinese speakers, you would sound like you had a Chinese accent because that's what people who speak
Chinese do when they're speaking English.
So you didn't actually adopt a Chinese accent.
you're just creating sounds in the same way that somebody who was a native Chinese speaker would.
Yeah. I mean, I see what they're getting at with all this.
To me, it's a little bit splitting hairs.
I think that's what I'm trying to say.
I think the difference is this, Chuck.
With your accent, your native accent, your native dialect is the result of your exposure to your environment, right?
lifelong all the people around you all the stuff you've learned all the things you've heard it creates your dialect right when you suffer for an accent syndrome your dialect your brain is damaged so that you can't produce that anymore and you just kind of haphazardly producing something else yeah you
don't actually follow so like if you took uh sarah cal calwell's language and had her read a passage from a book.
And then you had a native Chinese speaker, typical accented Mandarin speaker, read that same passage.
It would not be the exact same thing.
There'd be all sorts of derivations and deviations from that normal Mandarin accent because Sarah Caldwell's brain was damaged in a certain way that makes it a totally unique accent.
Yeah, I get that. but that happens within the mandarin accent between people too you're not letting this one go are you just don't get it all right one thing i do get is that there's no like and this is probably what's so frustrating or one of the things so frustrating is it's not like they wake up
with a new cultural identity either right i mean this woman still wants to have her tea and biscuits every afternoon but when she says that she says it with chuck would call it a chinese accent a neurologist would say well you're just hearing that right yeah uh so you know it like you said people suffer
a bit from uh their own like sense of self right you know because uh see here's what i wonder is in in their do they hear in their head as their own regular accent i don't think so no i think it sounds off to them and i think it's probably distressing because they're like, wait, let me say that again.
And they still say it, what they perceive as the wrong way.
Because apparently one of the hallmarks of foreign accent syndrome is the errors or the differences that they make in their porosity is predictable, which makes it like an accent.
I mean, that's what an accent is.
You're going to drop your T's or replace the TH with a D just about every time or add that R when you say wash.
um yeah exactly like that's it's a predictable thing and that's part of foreign accident syndrome it starts to happen in predictable ways too so i would guess yeah it sounds off to them as well well because the reason i say that is because when um like and i think i've talked about this when my grandfather
had a stroke he still talked uh but it just came out as gibberish but in his head he was saying the things that he was trying to say which is you know one of the most frustrating things, I think.
Yeah. After a stroke victim is I remember seeing him talk and getting so frustrated.
Yeah. He would just, you know, say things out loud and it would come out as gibberish to us.
But in his head, he's still saying, you know, his English words.
Right. It's got to make you feel trapped in your body.
Yeah. However, FAS is a little all over the map because there have been other weird cases.
Because we've been saying this whole time there's not a new identity.
It's the same. You're saying the same words and everything.
But there have been cases where people do substitute out words, like you would say lift instead of an elevator.
Right. That's like the psychogenic version.
I know. It's just so confusing.
Well, it almost makes me think like, so before there was nothing but neurogenic foreign accent syndrome.
Right. Everything else was you're just crazy.
Now they they recognize that they're psychogenic FAS as well.
I think what's going to happen with more and more study, they're going to just diverge into two totally different syndromes now.
Yeah, that makes sense.
You know, I think they're going to be like, that's actually not the same thing.
That's something totally different.
Neurogenic for an accident syndrome is its own thing.
And psychogenic is is something else entirely.
Yeah, they'll just make up a new name.
Yeah. This one other case I thought was interesting about the Dutch woman.
Which one? She was Dutch, is Dutch, and she developed a French accent, but she spoke Dutch using French syntax and occasionally French words as if she was a French person learning Dutch.
And it turns out that she was a Dutch language teacher who taught French people to speak dutch right and i don't know is her psychogenic or neurogenic it would have to be psychogenic because neurogenic has basically that original um harry whitaker criteria like you never you'd never use different words
and things well it was it has to not be related to the patient's ability to speak a foreign language oh okay yeah right so like that she would be technically canceled out from neurogenic for that one and um it would also it didn't have anything to do with with central nervous system damage right which is again it's why
i think it's going to end up being its own thing man so interesting it is what else you got uh that's all i've got man isn't that enough i think so man any language stuff anytime we talk about language in the brain I guess, neurolinguistics, I just, I turned to goo.
It's so interesting to me.
Yeah. That's what happens when something interests me.
I turned to goo. If you want to turn to goo and learn more about foreign accent syndrome, you can type those words in the search bar at HowStuffWorks .com.
And since I said that, it's time for Chuck.
Administrative details.
How was that? That was great, man.
So, Chuck. Yes. We've got some more people to thank for sending us some nice stuff.
That's right. I'm going to start off with Nathan.
Details. How was that?
That was great, man.
So, Chuck. Yes. We've got some more people to thank for sending us some nice stuff.
That's right. I'm going to start off with Nathan Ferlazzo.
Oh, that's good. He sent us some really lovely hand -drawn calendars and bookmarks.
and you can find those at wildlife .marinifirlazzo .com .au And that's M -A -R -I -N -I -F -E -R -L -A -Z -Z -O .com .au And it was really, really beautiful work and it's a cool thing because a portion of every sale is donated to a non -profit wildlife organization.
Very nice. I think you handled that foreign accent very well.
Thank you. Wanted to say thanks big time to Robert Combs from Whitetail Coffee for the amazing coffees.
Especially, like seriously, this is a really good coffee.
Especially the Ladaris and La Morella.
And that's Whitetail, T -A -L -E, coffee.
It's just an amazing coffee subscription service that you should check out.
Well, I got a couple of more coffees.
I'll just knock them both out.
You have one sitting—actually, you have two of them sitting on your desk right now, my friend.
Can't wait to go grab them.
True Stone Coffee Roasters from St.
Paul, Minnesota sent us their medium blend.
And I can't vouch for the taste yet because it just got here, but it smells good.
And then Devin from True Coffee Roasters in Fitchburg, Wisconsin sent us Dark Roasted Sumatra and a Mexico Alutra.
Nice. I'm sorry, Altura.
Nice. Thanks a lot, guys.
We've got coffee coming out of our ears.
That's great. That's a good place to be.
But we're not going to have diabetes, my friend.
No. Doug Fuchs sent us a beautiful illustrated card.
Thanks for that, Doug.
Thanks for saying hi.
Meg from Seattle, she sent me a card about Laron's passing, my cat, which I lost last year, which is very, very sweet.
And while I'm on that, Buckley, my old boy, passed away a couple of weeks ago.
And everyone on Facebook was beyond supportive and sweet, and that really helped out.
So thanks for that.
Yeah, for everybody listening to you, Chuck, we send our condolences to you.
Thank you. It was a very dark time.
Yeah. Let's see. Preston Pope, he sent us some amazing chocolates, Chuck, from V Chocolates.
V, just the letter V, chocolates .com.
Seriously, it's good stuff.
I feel bad. I feel like I'm running around on Little Bits sweets.
That's okay. We'll always come back to them.
Okay. Our buddy Jeff Barney was kind enough, and I still haven't tried it.
It's in my fridge, but you said it's the best.
He sent us Kewpie Japanese mayo.
Oh, it's so good. Because of my love for mayonnaise.
Chuck, you may never go back to American mayo again.
Well, I'm finishing up a gallon of Dukes.
This afternoon? Yeah.
I'm just going to shoot it down.
And then I'm going to dive into the QP and see what's going on there.
Got to see what the difference is.
It's subtle, but you'll notice.
You'll say, wow, this is actually really, really good mayonnaise.
All right. Well, thanks, Jeff Barney, for that.
Thanks a lot to Tim and Joe from Primer Stories.
I don't know if you remember, but our animal rights double parter tied into an essay I wrote on primerstories .com.
and they sent t -shirts to say thanks for that so thanks back for you guys' support Ian Newton of the Baltimore Whiskey Company sent us some ginger apple liqueur and gin yes thanks a lot Don Kent who last gave us some Pliny the Elder before which was nice also sent us a bunch of Soylent and thank you
also to Soylent itself the company who heard our Soylent episode and said, you guys haven't tried soylent?
Here, here's some soylent.
And thank you for that soylent.
That was very nice.
I think they got what they wanted out of this, which is for us to say soylent 12 times.
Soylent. This came in today.
Thomas Kregel, K -R -E -G -E -L.
He sent me a friggin' monocle.
Oh, that's neat. And he heard me talking about my eyes going and how I just need him to read things close up.
And he said, buddy, here's what you need to do.
because you will one day embarrass your daughter like I embarrass my children.
You need to rock a monocle.
And it's a monocle.
So is he, like, a trained optometrist who can, like— No, no.
So he just gave you a piece of glass that's going to ruin your eye over time?
Yeah, I mean, I tried it, and it's kind of like a reader.
It works about the same as my prescription.
But he uses one. He sent a little picture of himself.
Yeah. And I guess I should plug the company.
It's Nearsight's Monocles is what he used.
Yeah, for sure. And yeah, I got a monocle now.
Nice job, Chuck. I'm going to use it.
Your new nickname is Pringles Guy.
Okay. I've got someone else, Pringles Guy.
Janelle Samara sent us a copy of her book, Our Only Hope.
Thank you and congratulations on writing a book.
Bridget Massoth, M -A -S -S -O -T -H, sent us some really cute, along with an extra -large handwritten note.
Some really cute Josh and Chuck cutouts, like kind of paper cut -and -paste cutouts.
Nice. And yours is on your desk.
Thank you. You've got to get out of this room and go over to your desk.
You've got a bounty.
Francis De La Paz. So, you know, there's like a whole group of people out there who believe in writing letters, beautiful letters with fountain pens and all that.
And Francis De La Paz is one of them, sent us a beautiful handwritten letter.
and you also apparently customarily send what's called a flat gift and they sent a postcard The Sad Life of Sad Clown which is great.
We think Sad Clowns are great.
Well, I got a few letters actually.
I'll just knock those out because Sandra, maybe this was because of International Correspondents Writing Month that we got these because apparently that happened.
Oh, okay. But Sandra sent us a nice handwritten letter in honor of that specifically And then Austin from Bakersfield sent us a very nice handwritten note.
And then Kristen Cook sent us a Valentine's Day card to all of us, including Harry Knoll.
Man, that's nice. Not Harry Knolls of Ain't It Cool News, but our own Knoll, who was just Harry.
Right. We got some other ones too, Chuck.
We got a lighthouse postcard from Big Sable Point from Teresa.
We got a couple of Christmas cards from the Johnson Alleman family and Tess Sullivan and her family.
And I guess in part because of National, what is it?
National Writing Month or Letter Writing Month?
International Correspondents Writing Month.
Exactly. Noel Verosa.
No, sorry. Noel Versosa.
Noel Versosa. It's handwritten.
It's handwritten. You can't, you know.
I got it that last time.
Noelle Verazosa wrote us a nice handwritten letter and fountain pen.
I've got two more. Megan Moon Waltman, that's Megan with two Gs, oddly, she sent us a copy of this really cool thing she made.
It's a book. It's called Songbook, a book of music for all levels, all ages.
And it is 11 songs kind of written out as chords and things and illustrated for different instruments, Like there'll be a song for guitar, an intro song for banjo, one for cello, and it's got these cool pictures.
And then you can download these songs and kind of – I figure it's – I mean, it says for all ages, but it seems like it'd be great to give a kid.
Right. So check that out.
It's very worthwhile.
I've got two more to finish than two.
One, Austin Doyle sent me an amazing oil crayon painting, which I assume will inflate in value very rapidly once Austin dies.
Hopefully that doesn't happen because Doyle is one of our oldest, and I don't mean by age, but one of our longest time listeners.
Yeah, he's a great guy.
I mean like when he dies of old age.
I just plan to outlive him.
Oh, okay. So I can cash in on the painting he made me.
And then Ben and Aaron Gibson sent us the Japanese car magnets that signify an elderly driver or a teen driver, which we've talked about before.
Oh, yeah, yeah. I remember those.
Thanks, dudes. I got one more.
And this one, boy, you have no idea what's waiting in there.
You just came right into the recording studio for a change.
Yeah. On your desk right now, Josh.
I can't wait. You have a handmade cutting board.
Awesome. And it's really, really nice.
This is from Christopher at The Timbered Wolf.
And it's just, you know, it's gorgeous.
He sent a couple of these in, and they're really, really nice.
Nice. So you've got to take care of it, though.
I left the instructions for you.
I've got a lot of stuff to carry out of here.
Yeah, someone needs to send Josh a wheelbarrow.
Or a radio flyer. Ooh, I've got one of those for my kid.
It's nice. Oh, yeah?
Yeah, the old red wagon.
Like the real one? The radio flyer?
Yeah, they still make them.
Nice. Well, thank you again to everybody who sent us so much great stuff.
We appreciate it big time.
And if you want to get in touch with us, you can send us both an email to stuffpodcasts at howstuffworks .com.
And as always, join us at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow .com.
Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
why would you do that to me los angeles 2021 a friendly neighbor appears out of nowhere and promises to make all my dreams come true let's not forget that david bloom was a professional con artist so you didn't stand a chance but my dreams soon turned into a nightmare i'm caroline Listen as I take down
my scammer on Once Upon a Con on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
How serious is youth vaping?
Irreversible lung damage serious.
One in ten kids vape serious, which warrants a serious conversation from a serious parental figure like yourself.
Not the seriously know -it -all sports dad or the seriously smart podcaster.
It requires a serious conversation that is best had by you.
No, seriously. The best person to talk to your child about vaping is you.
To start the conversation, visit TalkAboutVaping .org.
Brought to you by the American Lung Association and the Ad Council.
