Stuff You Should Know - Selects: How Foreign Accent Syndrome Works

Episode Date: January 18, 2025

Foreign accent syndrome isn't when your mom talks funny when she goes abroad. It's an actual condition where people wake up one day with an entirely different accent, usually from some kind of head trauma. Learn all about this decidedly rare affliction in this classic episode.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The new year is the perfect excuse to reset, refocus, and try something new, like drinking more mindfully with Seedlip Non-Alcoholic Spirits. Seedlip is a non-alcoholic spirit carefully crafted from a unique blend of botanicals and spices, made to be mixed in your favorite non-alcoholic cocktails. Ask your local bartender to shake up a Seedlip cocktail for you or craft your own at home. Kick off 2025 right by visiting SeedlipDrinks.com to check out special dry January deals, recipes, and more. That's S-E-E-D-L-I-P-D-R-I-N-K-S.com.

Joel, the holidays are a blast, but the financial hangover, that can be a huge bummer. If you are out there and you're dreading the new statement email that reveals the massive balance that you may have racked up, well, you could use our help. That's right. I'm Joel. And I am Matt. And we're from the How to Money Podcast. Our show is all about helping you make sense of your personal finances so you can ditch your pesky credit card debt once and for all, make real progress on other crucial financial goals that you've got,

and just feel more in control of your money in general. You know it. For money advice without the judgment and jargon, listen to How to Money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Good afternoon, Guvda. It's Chokir 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. Hey, how was that? It was great.

You're a regular rich little Remember the arrest development little subplot where Charlie's Theron was thought to be a British spy. Oh Yeah, what was uh? For British eyes only yeah, but what was um the name of character? Mr. F. Mr. F. That's right. That's right. I knew I had some. Like they said that every time, right?

Mm-hmm. That was pretty funny. She's great. Yes, she was. Pretty lady. Mm-hmm. Funny, smart. Yeah.

Good actor. What else? That's all I got on her. She can macrame. Oh, really? I don't know. I just assume. 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 Hmm. 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 a 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 apparent of an embarrassed child. Yeah. Yeah. And it seems like it's usually a parent of an embarrassed child. Sure. Is there an explanation behind it? Yeah. Yeah. So this is from what I understand. This is the point, right? So our accents are extremely personal. They're part of like us individually, but they also signal our membership in different groups,

right? So like a farmer is going to talk differently from a stockbroker and a farmer from Georgia is going to talk a lot differently and 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. Nope. 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, yeah, 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 like, 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, 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 Well, really when you do kind of adopt someone else's accent I think one of the things that you are doing is trying to make the foreigner the stranger feel more comfortable and having met your mom

I guarantee that's what she was doing. Yeah, 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 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 mean, I don't think we even teased her. I'm teasing her now a bit. Sure. But I don't think we made fun of her really. I think we just kind of, like my brother and I, wanted to do, very quietly looked at each other in that way that brothers do. Right, and then talk to each other like the kids and escape from which mountain Yeah, or they telepathic. Yeah

But it's funny. I was listening to the great judge John Hodgman podcast Oh, yeah with our pal John and class at Jesse Thorne bailiff, Jesse And they had an actual case a few weeks ago. That was very funny where this this mom Does this on purpose she's a trained actor and loves to put on accents when she goes to places. And the daughter was just, she took her to the internet court and was just like, stop doing this. Like you've got to stop doing this. And the mom's whole thing, she was very just fun and whimsical and having a lot of fun with it. So it was really hard to rule against her.

But I think Hodgman 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 him know where you're from and you can't do it to like waiters and service people because their job is to like take your dumb jokes and 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... took a really serious turn at the end there. No, it did. I mean, you know, this was great about that show is it's... 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! Yeah. Beee-haw! gun off at the end. Yeah.

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. Because I've seen different numbers, but the most I've seen is about 150, um, 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 where you can't stop. It's involuntary. Yeah. And, you know, it sounds weird and exotic. 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 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. Woman named Lisa Alamea, 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 Wait, wait, I need our British listeners to write in and tell me 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 up No, yours are good. No. I don't know. Mine are... They verge on decent at times. Well they're cartoonish and stereotypical but they're really really good cartoonish stereotypical versions of accents. So she woke up, had that accent and her husband and three kids thought it was a joke. She had only been outside the country to go to Mexico and it was a real thing called Foreign Accent Syndrome. 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 quite shy before and now she has something to talk about, a conversation opener, I guess. And she's a little more chatty than before. Well, that's interesting. Yeah, it is. 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, cockneyed chimney sweep. Pretty much, and she does sound cockneyed to me. Oh really? I didn't hear, I didn't see this one on YouTube. So yeah, we should say, you know, this is kind of like optical illusions. It's one thing to talk about it.

You need to actually go see and hear these people talking. If you just look up Lisa Alamia, A-L-A-M-I-A, and you will find plenty of interviews with her. She's, like you said, fairly recent. There's one that's 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. Right. 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 Jörg-Erman Monrad-Krone. Nice job.

It's a great name. And he coined the first term for this, which is dysprosody, which is, prosody is like the tone and rhythm of your speech, and the prefix dys 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. Yeah. Because, you know, the non-grammatical parts of speech, the prosody, are what is affected. When you have foreign accent syndrome, you have what appears to be a foreign accent, but usually your vocabulary, your syntax, 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. little nuances that make up your accent or your intonation or the rhythm of your speech that are affected and has changed. So, dysprosody is actually like the perfect name for the syndrome. Yeah, but foreign accent syndrome is way more catchy in that. Oh, it's sexy. In 1982, 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 or the doctor to be a, 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 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 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. Right. 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, 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. Okay. 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 a hundred, maybe a hundred and fifty cases. So it's just totally up in the air as to like how to diagnose it, what qualifies as it. And we'll talk a little bit about how scientists have dug into it thus far after this break. The New Year is the perfect excuse to reset, refocus, and try something new, like drinking

more mindfully with seedlip non-alcoholic spirits. Seedlip is a non-alcoholic spirit carefully crafted from a unique blend of botanicals and spices made to be mixed in your favorite non-alcohol cocktails. Ask your local bartender to shake up a Seedlip cocktail for you or craft your own at home. Kick off 2025 right by visiting Seedlipdrinks.com to check out special dry January deals, recipes, and more.

That's S-E-E-D-L-I-P-D-R-I-N-K-S.com to check out special dry January deals, recipes, and more. That's S E E D L I P D R I N K S.com. 2025 is bound to be a fascinating year. It's going to be filled with money challenges and opportunities. I'm Joel. Oh, and I am Matt. And we're the hosts of How to Money. We want to be with you every step of the way in your financial journey this year, offering the information and insights you need to thrive financially. Yeah, whether you find yourself up to your eyeballs in student loan debt or you've got a sky-high credit card balance because you went a little overboard with the holiday spending or maybe you're looking to optimize your retirement accounts so you can retire early.

Well, How to Money will help you to change your relationship with money so you can stress less and grow your net worth. That's right. How to money comes out three times a week, Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays for money advice without the judgment and jargon. Listen to how to money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Do you want to understand an invisible force that's shaping your life? I'm Osvaldo Loshan, one of the new hosts of the long running podcast Tech Stuff. I'm slightly skeptical but obsessively intrigued. And I'm Kara Price, the other new host. And I'm ready to adopt early and often.

On Tech Stuff, we travel all the way from the mines of Congo to the surface of Mars to the dark corners of TikTok to ask and attempt to answer burning questions about technology. One of the kind of tricks for surviving Mars is to live there long enough so that people evolve into Martians. Like data is a very rough proxy for a complex reality. How is it possible that the world's new energy revolution can be based in this place where there's no electricity at night?

Oz and I will cut through the noise to bring you the best conversations and deep dives that will help you understand how tech is changing our world and what you need to know to survive the singularity. So join us. Listen to tech stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast. And this January, we're going on the road to beautiful Las Vegas, Nevada, to cover the Consumer Electronics Show, Tech's biggest conference.

Better Offline's CES coverage won't be the usual rundown of the hottest gadgets or the biggest trends, but an unvarnished look at what the tech industry plans to sell or do to you in 2025, interrogating their narratives alongside a remarkable cast of industry talent and award-winning journalists. We'll have daily episodes, on-the-ground interviews, and special panels covering everything from the BS of AI to the ways in which race and gender play into how people are treated in the tech industry and at these conferences. I'll be joined by David Roth of Defecta and the writer Edward Ongweiso Jr. with appearances from Behind the Bastards Robert Evans, It Could Happen Here's Gare Davis,

and a few surprise guests throughout the show. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you get your podcasts from. And check out betteroffline.com. 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 in one patient who suffered a stroke

was cured by a second stroke elsewhere in the brain. So we have like, it's very tough to predict what's going to happen when foreign accent syndrome does come about and you know there's been people from Japan who've developed Korean accents or there have been people from Scotland who develop South African accents. It's kind of everywhere and all over. Yeah, you can, one of the other causes, it can be from the onset of MS, from multiple sclerosis. This one woman that we'll talk about in more detail suffered from chronic migraines, but had a migraine attack so severe that it spurred this, and we'll get to her, but all of these in a bucket

from some sort of trauma or an event are called neurogenic type. And for a long time they used to think that was the only way that you could get for an accident syndrome. Right. Because remember that Harry Whittaker, 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." 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 accident syndrome. And definitely the psychogenic version of foreign accident 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 Accident Syndrome. That is not the case with neurogenic.

With neurogenic with neurogenic They have no cure whatsoever. And basically the only treatment that they can come up with is Through speech therapy where speech language pathologists basically retrained you to talk the way you did before 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 leave? 14% or unless I guess you're accounting

for the new super odd one that could be both. One of the more famous cases that kind of demonstrated that psychogenic FAS was an actual thing. It 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 the British accent. Yeah, I wonder, I didn't see anything in there about her.

If she like 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. I know, because that would make sense, you know, if you have a 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.

Another case that I said we were going to get to, this one is really weird and super sad. 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 video. And no, it's like, I don't know, late to mid 30s Caucasian woman, native born English speaker who, and she's who I was thinking of when I was saying for some people it's a really big problem because it's presented a big crisis for her identity. She said that she can't look in the mirror while she's speaking any longer. She just 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 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 that she's had to stop work, she's in a wheelchair, even though her limbs completely work, her brain basically can't tell her limbs to do what they should do. 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. Mm-hmm. So she's had to sell her house, and I think her husband is afflicted with something, too. It's just a really, really sad case. But, you know, you can...there's all kinds of interviews with her and it's just so strange to hear that accent coming out 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. And before I looked up further that she was having even more troubled times, it seemed like she was getting a little better throughout the interview through therapy because they were playing her, one of the things they do is they play old recordings of herself and she would sit down and listen to them and try and mimic it. 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 um 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 neuro-psychologist. Maybe a radiologist. You might see, you know, six and eight doctors and still not get anywhere. Right, because can't do a lot for you. We don't know how to treat strokes very well. And once damage has occurred in the brain, it can be pretty tough if not impossible to reverse that damage, right? If it's permanently damaged.

So yeah, the idea that you've now gotten a foreign accent, they're probably like, that's kind of the least of your worries. You just had a massive stroke or a huge head injury or something like that. But what it's revealed to them is not that there's this huge mystery and we have kind of played into it a little bit by not revealing this from the outset.

But you as a patient with foreign accent syndrome, 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 And we'll talk about that after this break. The New Year is the perfect excuse to reset, refocus, and try something new, like drinking more mindfully with Seedlip non-alcoholic spirits. Seedlip is a non-alcoholic spirit carefully crafted from a unique blend of botanicals and spices made to be mixed in your favorite non-out cocktails. Ask your local bartender to shake up a Seedlip cocktail for you or craft your own at home. Kick off 2025 right

by visiting Seedlipdrinks.com to check out special dry January deals, recipes and more. That's S-E-E-D-L- N K S.com 2025 is bound to be a fascinating year. It's going to be filled with money challenges and opportunities. I'm Joel. Oh, and I am Matt and we're the hosts of how to money. We want to be with you every step of the way in your financial journey this year, offering the information and insights you need to thrive financially. Yeah whether you find yourself up to your eyeballs in student loan debt or you've got a sky-high credit card balance

because you went a little overboard with the holiday spending or maybe you're looking to optimize your retirement accounts so you can retire early well how to money will help you to change your relationship with money so you can stress less and grow your net worth. That's right. How to Money comes out three times a week, Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays for money advice without the judgment and jargon. Listen to How to Money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Do you want to understand an invisible force that's shaping your life? I'm Osvaldo Loshan,

one of the new hosts of the long running podcast Tech Stuff. I'm slightly skeptical, but obsessively intrigued. And I'm Kara Price, the other new host. And I'm ready to adopt early and often. On Tech Stuff, we travel all the way from the mines of Congo to the surface of Mars to the dark corners of TikTok to ask and attempt to answer burning questions about technology. One of the kind of tricks for surviving Mars is to live there long enough so that people evolve into Martians.

Like data is a very rough proxy for a complex reality. How is it possible that the world's new energy revolution can be based in this place where there's no electricity at night? Oz and I will cut through the noise to bring you the best conversations and deep dives that will help you understand how tech is changing our world and what you need to know to survive the singularity. So join us. Listen to tech stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast. And this January, we're going on

the road to beautiful Las Vegas, Nevada, to cover the Consumer Electronics Show, Tech's biggest conference. Better Offline's CES coverage won't be the usual rundown of the hottest gadgets or the biggest trends, but an unvarnished look at what the tech industry plans to sell or do to you in 2025, interrogating their narratives alongside a remarkable cast of industry talent and award-winning journalists. We'll have daily episodes, on-the-ground interviews, and special panels covering everything from the BS of AI to the ways in which race and gender play into how people are treated in the tech industry and at these conferences. I'll be joined by David Roth of Defecta and the writer Edward Ongweiso Jr.

with appearances from Behind the Bastards' Robert Evans, It Could Happen Here's Gare Davis, and a few surprise guests throughout the show. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you get your podcasts from. And check out betteroffline.com. 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 if, you know, that lady clearly has a Chinese accent, it's not, oh, I'm just hearing it that way. 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 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 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 this 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. So, you know, you're, well, in the brain they think, and again, the mysteries of the brain, how you create speech is really complex and involves all kind 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, but it's going to control how your speech comes out So and you know the one example they they use in here is if you know you have a little too much to drink Those you know you might lose some of that muscle control and you might slur your words or talk funny or differently right so that's a pretty 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? No, no deck the halls. Yeah on a Christmas story Christmas story fire. Oh, yeah so if you were a

Caucasian English speaker and you damaged your brain in a way that the the part of your brain responsible for Forming L's now formed ours 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 foreign 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.

You don't actually follow. So like if you took Sarah Calwills 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?

I 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 that's so frustrating is it's not like they wake up with a new cultural identity either. Right. I mean, this woman still wants to have her tea and biscuits every afternoon, but when she says that, she says it with, Chuck would call it a Chinese accent, a neurologist would say, well, you're just hearing that. Right.

So, you know, like you said, people suffer a bit from their own, like, sense of self. Right. You know? Because see, here's what I wonder, is in their, do they hear it 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 is the wrong way. Because apparently one of the hallmarks of foreign accent syndrome is the errors or the differences that they make in their prosody is predictable. Which makes it like an accent. I mean, that's what an accent is,

is you're going to drop your T's or replace the T with the TH with a D just about every time. Or add that R when you say wash. Wash? 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 Like and I think I've talked about this when my grandfather had a stroke. He still talked But it just came out as gibberish But in his head he was saying the things that he was trying to say Which is you know, one of the most frustrating things I think 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 his English words. Right, it's gotta 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, a 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 gonna happen with more and more study they're gonna 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 foreign accent syndrome is its own thing, and psychogenic is something else entirely as well. Yeah, they'll just make up a new name. 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, was her psychogenic or neurogenic? It would have to be psychogenic because neurogenic has basically that original Harry Whitaker criteria in 1982. Like you never use different words and things? Well, it has to not be related to the patient's ability to speak a foreign language. Oh, okay, yeah, right.

So, like, she would be technically cancelled out from neurogenic for that one, and it would also, it didn't have anything to do with central nervous system damage. Right. Which is, again, that's why I think it's going to end up being its own thing. Man, so interesting. It is. What else you got? 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 neuro linguistics, I just, I turn to goo. It's so interesting to me. Yeah. That's what happens when something interests me, I turn 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 how stuff works.com and since I said that it's time for chuck Administrative details

details. How was that? That was great, man. So Chuck, 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. He sent us some really lovely hand drawn calendars and bookmarks. And you can find those at wildlife.mariniiferlazo.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. I want 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 Lideris and La Marella,

and that's White Tail, 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 Devon from true coffee roasters in Fitchburg, Wisconsin Sinus a dark roasted Sumatra and a Mexico Alutra. Nice. I'm sorry, Altura. Nice, thanks a lot. We got coffee coming out of our ears. That's great.

That's a good place to be. But we're not gonna have diabetes, my friend. No. Doug Fuke sent us a beautiful illustrated card. Thanks for that, Doug. Thanks for saying hi. Meg from Seattle, she sent me a card about Laurent'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. Thank you. It was a very dark time. Yeah. Let's see, Preston Pope, he sent us some amazing chocolates, Chuck, from Vee Chocolates. Vee, just the letter Vee, Chocolates.com. Seriously, it's good stuff. I feel bad, I feel like I'm running around on little bit sweets. Oh, 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 QP 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 gonna gonna shoot it down. Yeah, and then I'm gonna dive into the QP and see what's going on there Gotta see what the difference is. It's subtle, but you you. You'll say, wow, this is actually really really good mayonnaise. Alright, 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 your, 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. Oh yeah. 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, you know, it's kind of like a reader. It works about the same as my prescription But he uses one he sent a little picture of himself. Yeah, and I Guess I should plug the company. It's near sights Monocles is what he used. Yeah for sure and Yeah, I got a monocle now. Nice job Chuck. I'm gonna 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, sent us 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 gotta get out of this room and go over to your desk. You gotta 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.

Yeah. 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 Sag Clown, which is great. Sag Clowns are great.

Well, I got a few letters actually. I'll just knock those out because Sandra, maybe this was because of International Correspondence Writing Month that we got these because apparently that happened. Oh, okay. But Sandra sent us a nice handwritten letter in honor of that specifically. And then Austin from Bakersfield sent us a very nice handwritten note.

And then Kristen Cook sent us a Valentine's Day card to all of us, including Harry Knoll. 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 Veroza. No, sorry. Noel Versoza. Noel Verzoza. I got it.

It's handwritten. It's handwritten. You can't, you know. I got it that last time no No, very Zosa wrote us a nice hand Letter handwritten letter and fountain pen. I've got two more Megan Moon Waltzman, that's Megan with two G's oddly. She sent us a copy of this really cool thing. She made It's a book. It's called songbook a book 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 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, that's all. 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 this. Thanks dudes. I got one more in this one Boy, you have no idea what's waiting in there. You just came right into the recording studio for a change. Yeah On your desk right now Josh. I can't wait you have a

Handmade cutting board. Awesome. And it's really, really nice. This is from Christopher at The 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 got to take care of it though.

I left the instructions for you. I got a lot of stuff to carry out of here. Yeah, you need a, someone needs to send Josh a wheelbarrow. Or a radio flyer. Ooh, I 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 stuffpodcast at how stuff works calm And as always join us at our home on the web stuff. You should know calm Stuff you should know is a production of I heart radio for more podcasts my heart radio visit the I heart radio app

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