Radiolab - Slow

Episode Date: October 18, 2011

Kohn Ashmore’s voice is arresting. It stopped his friend Andy Mills in his tracks the first time they met. But in this short about the power of friendship and familiarity, Andy explains that Kohn’s voice isn't the most striking thing about him at all.

Wait, you're listening. Okay. All right. All right. You're listening to Radio Lab. Radio Lab. Shorts. From W. N. Y.

C. C? Yes. And NPR. Three, two, one. Let me now propose that I'll never count backwards again. No, I'm serious. Hey, I'm Chad Aboumrod.

I am Robert Cullivan. This is Radio Lab. The podcast. And today on the podcast, A story about a friendship, really. Because in almost any friendship. There'll be a moment where you're looking across at this person, you think you know very, very well,

and he or she will suddenly say something or do something or think something. That just throws everything in the question. Everything up in the air. You think, what? What? This is a friendship with a big, fat, what in it? And the guy that's going to tell us the story is Andy Mills, and I am a freelance radio producer.

And the other guy, you'll meet him in a minute. So maybe we should just say, like, how did you meet? Like, where did you lay eyes on each other? Well, it was my sophomore year of college, and it was the time that the freshmen are all moving into the dorms. And I was meeting new people, welcoming the freshmen. Oh, you're an RA or you're some sort of... No, no. Just one of those chatty people in the dorm.

You're like, what's your name? Exactly. And as I was talking, actually, to a group of freshmen in my room, I hear this, like, strange noise from the room next door. It was this kind of low drone. So I kind of peeked over and saw, you know, an 18 to 19-year-old kid in a wheelchair, dark curly hair. And this noise I'd been hearing was his voice. Not even a week later, I run into him in the hallway, and I introduced myself. I say, hi, I'm Andy.

What's your name? And he said, My name is Kahn Ashmore, K.O.A.C. Khan Ashmore. Khan Ashmore. Yeah. I was on the way to eat lunch, and I invited him to join me. We sit down in the corner, and I know he brings the fork to his mouth, like, really slowly.

Everything about him is slow. down but I also noticed like he's witty observant and so at a certain point in the conversation I asked him what's wrong like why why do you move and talk so slowly you just asked him flat out yeah was he offended no I think he was he was relieved to find somebody who was willing to admit that it's a little bit weird yeah well and then he tells me the story. The day was...

He started at the beginning. November 15th. He said, I was eight years old. I was out in the backyard. I had this dog. The dog had run off. Bro close of his chain. I ran out into the street, and...

The next thing I knew, I was wicket. up from a coma. Yeah. Five months later. He got hit by a car. Yeah. And when you woke up, what had happened to you? What were the injuries he suffered?

Well, I couldn't talk. Couldn't move. And then he comes out of it slowly and slowly. But the thing is, he stays slower. Slow? Very slow. So this is a man who has slowed down globally? Right, except for, of course, his mind.

Really? Oh, yeah. He does well in school. He's smart. He has a great sense of humor. And we connected, you know. I was his neighbor in the dorm, and we had a lot in common. We liked a lot of the same music.

We used to stay up late. I'd play my acoustic guitar, and he would sing Matchbox 20 songs from the 90s, you know? You must slow down your playing? Is that what happened? My playing is not exactly. rock star material or anything. I love that song. It wasn't long before

we ended up having these really deep conversations into the middle of the night. But what? The fact that both of our parents are divorced and how we both grew up in households that were fighting all the time and having to sleep at grandmas is like a regular part of both of our lives.

Kahn's parents started fighting a lot after he came out of the coma. The mom blamed the dad for not watching Khan and yeah we talked a lot about how like that impacted our life growing up and we just became really close

the level situation tell me what you had for breakfast today you know I've known Khan for almost a decade but it wasn't until last summer that I decided to interview Khan on tape and it was in the middle of this interview that

Khan tells me this story that completely changed the way that I think about Khan and his slowness. So I really... The story starts off with him in junior high. First Big Crush. Julie. Her name was Julie. And he's trying to think of something romantic to do to catch her attention.

And he really loves music. He was listening to his Walkman one night, and he realized that that's what he wants to do. He would make her a mixtape. a romantic mixtape, and that would be the thing. So he makes this tape, and then he decided that I should try sing a love song to Julie. So he writes the song, records it, puts the tape back in the stereo.

And when I play it back, Woman, I remember being horrified. Just only if I scream. He felt embarrassed, he felt confused. Screaming, crying. Wait, why? Well, it turns out that was the first time that he had ever heard his voice, the way that you and I hear his voice. Wait, the wait.

First time. What does that even mean? He never heard a recording of himself, or? Well, no, not only had he never heard a recording of himself, but when he talks... I hear myself like I hear you. What do you mean by that? Like, I mean... He tells me that he actually didn't know that his voice was slow.

How is that even? possible. I mean, does that mean his brain is speeding up his voice, but not yours? Yeah, he hears me talk normal, and then he hears himself talk normal as well. He think he's slow and speeding up, or do you think he just thinks he's regular? It's not like he speeds both of us up. Does he mean, like, your, your voice just, or his voice just feels normal, or does he mean it actually sounds normal? It sounds exactly the same, is what I'm saying. Like, he could be sitting here right now. He would hear you talk, you'd hear me talk, and then he would say something. and in his head, it's all the same speed.

But that doesn't make sense because it's like variable speed, you know? I don't think his, no, I think he thinks he's just normal. I'm normal inside. So we went back and forth and back and forth on this. Until finally, we need a specialist at this point. Guess we'll take our positions. We ended up calling this guy who we've had on the show before. All right, so Andy, Oren's here.

Orrin Davinsky, Neurologist, NYU Medical Center. He's the doctor. Hi, Andy. Hi, Oren. Does Oren know anything? I know, yeah, I listen. I'm college educated. I mean, how does...

Anyhow, Annie ran him through the whole story. Yeah, well, he was eight years old, and he was, I believe, everything you've just heard. And here was Oran's reaction. Yeah, so I guess, you know, just, it's a fascinating case, and my first clinical question would be, did he know he moved slowly? Absolutely, yeah. But it was only for his own voice that he was unaware that he was different than everybody else. Right. So he does have feedback on himself. The one area he's not getting feedback on is his voice production, which, which interestingly happens in post-encephalytic Parkinson's patients. They're slow in all their movements. They're slow getting up out of a chair. They're slow walking. But as with Khan, there are some cases where they just get little focal areas that they don't see their slowness. So Oliver Sacks, when he took care of his awakenings patients at Beth Abraham Hospital in the Bronx, who would sometimes record their voices and,

play it back and they'd say, that's not me. You're fiddling with a tape machine. That's not my voice. Because the voice to them would sound too slow. Too slow. Too slow. Yeah, that's exactly, Khan. Do you think his inner voice, his inner mental speed is truly as fast, or is that also slow? Oh, it's absolutely normal. Okay. Khan and I both went to a Christian college. We both made an exodus from that kind of fundamentalist Christian world around the same time, which involved a, you know, long talks about what we believe and what we think we might believe next. And there was never a point where I was having to like wait for Khan to make some, you know, mental exercise before he'd respond. And those are some pretty complex things dealing with faith and belief. What I don't

understand fully is why he hears you, Andy speaking at three times his pace and feel you're normal. But something about his own voice feeding back to his own brain, he never perceived that at a different speed than your voice and everyone else's. Do you then trust it? Do you wonder about the... Would you suspect that if you met him, you'd learn something different than you... Yeah, no, in medicine, you should always trust the patient's report, but keep in the back of your head a drop of skepticism.

But my gut as a clinician is more than 95% it's real. Now, keep in mind, that was not a true clinical diagnosis. That was just Orrin-Divinsky giving us his gut opinion. Well, I have a theory. I have a theory. unscientific though it may be. Well, that's what we specialize. Welcome to the club.

I think that it has something to do with familiarity. Like, when I first met Khan and I heard his voice, it was so foreign and so strange, and I could hardly make out what he was saying. But now I'm surprised when people say, what did he just say? And I think, well, he just said he was horrified. You know, I've grown so familiar to his voice.

Is it sort of like going into a Shakespeare? your play in an act one scene on act one scenes you don't know what's going on but somehow in the second act it begins to click exactly it's that familiarity and if i have it i mean imagine what he must have yeah i've grown accustomed to hearing something different but what i don't get is like this went on for years so how how could no how come no one told him his parents and his siblings and his have never turned to him and say, hey, what, you know, come on, speed it up. They've never, ever said that. Well, no, his parents being deaf, you know, cross them out.

They couldn't have told him. His parents are deaf. Both of them. Both of them. And Khan thinks that everyone else just assumed that he knew what his own voice sounded like. Really? Like when you talked to his friends. Hello.

Hey, Haley. Hey. Hello. Hey, Dave. What's up? Oh, not much. What's up, Andy? I mean, and you told him the whole thing.

What was their reaction? Honestly, most of them didn't believe me. You're kidding. Did you know this at all? No, I had no. And so his, when he speaks, he just thinks that it sounds just like anyone else? Yeah, that's what I'm telling you. Oh, that's so sad.

Yeah. So after he found out about his voice, which I guess was the one thing he thought was normal. What did he do? Well, he said, I'm never going to talk again. Um, did he, did he talk again? Obviously he did, right?

Well, that's the same question I asked him. After you heard that you were different, how long did you go before talking again? And he told me... I do remember going back to school. And he... And he doesn't recall, like, the first conversation exactly that he had, but he thinks it went something like...

Childup and leave me the hell alone. He didn't want to talk, but gradually he realized that he kind of had to. And what about singing? You said he liked to sing. Well, eventually he got comfortable to get him with the idea. of having his voice recorded, his singing voice recorded. And so after the interview was over, he mentioned the song that he actually had been singing a lot.

And so I turned the recorder back on and asked if he would sing it for a right. So tell me the name of the song and then just sing away. This is Grey Room by Damien Rice. Well, I've been here before. Sad on the floor in a gray room. It was actually pretty emotional for us, both. And as I'm sitting there hearing him sing this song,

I'm just wondering like, what does this sound like in his head? So after I got the tape recorded, I brought it back to my friends in Chicago in a band called Hudson Branch, and all of them no Khan. And I asked them, like, do you think that we could maybe play some music to this?

So the music could kind of give us a peek into the way that Khan hears it and the way that Khan feels it, and maybe we could feel it too. Stuck by the phone. Well, I've been here before. Side on the floor in a gay room.

Who? Gray. Gray. What did Kahn say? I felt good to you. Gray, gray. What did Kahn say when he heard it, by the way? Did it remind him of anything, like what he feels? Yeah, I mean, when he heard it, he said hell fucking yes.

There's a quote for me, but yeah No, he loves it Thanks to producer Andy Mills Who just received an award At the Third Coast Festival for a shorter version of that piece And thanks also, of course, to Khan Ashmore And the band Andy Ann, Matt Bull, Jacob Bull,

Cory Beanert, Kobe Beanard, Becky Bailey, Becky Bailey Enoch Kim They call themselves Hudson Branch Becky joined them out of bees Bull Bull, Beehner, Beanert, and Bailey Right You know Hudson Branch could be the name of a rock band that's also a law firm.

Is it good? Anyhow, you can find out more about them at RadioLab.org or at the Hudson Branch.com. I'm Robert Crowley. I'm Chad Abunrod. And thanks so much for listening. Message.

Supported, foundation, enhancing, public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. about Sloan at www. Sloan.org.

Yeah.