Stuff You Should KnowForeign 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.
Good afternoon, GUVNA. It's Chucky here on a Saturday, and I'm going to pick a selection called how.
Foreign Accent Syndrome Works.
No idea or what this is about, but it is from March twenty eight, twenty seventeen, 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 is 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. Ay, how's that?
It was great? You're a regular rich.
Little Remember the arrest development little subplot where Charlie's Theren was thought to be a British spy. Oh yeah, what was uh for British eyes only?
Yeah? But what was the name of her character?
Mister F, mister F. That's right, that's right.
I knew I had some like They said that every time. Right, it's pretty funny. She's great, Yes, she was pretty lady, Funny, smart, Yeah, good actor?
What else?
That's all I got on her? She can macro may Oh really, I don't know.
I just assume.
Okay, this is left to a great start.
Uh is 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 m.
I see now it makes sense.
Yes, and we're specific 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?
Or 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 than a stockbroker from Portland, Oregon. Right, okay, because that's the other stock market seat. Yeah, you thought I was going to say New York I Nope. So when we when we code switch, when we meet other people and take on their 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 it's. 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, i'm, I'm, I'm, 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. Yeah, 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.
Well. I just remember the only one I remember specifically, and you know, you just had 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 our Irish people at that point. You know, 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 I don't think we even teased her. I'm teasing her now a bit, sure, but I don't think like we made fun of her really. I think we just kind of, like my brother and I want to do, very quietly, looked at each other and in that way that brothers do.
Right, and then talk to each other like the kids an Escape from which Mountain?
Yeah? Were they telepathic? Yeah, but it's funny. I was listening to the Great Judge John Hodgman podcast, Oh Yeah with her pal John and 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 codgmen 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 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 was like a really serious turn at the end.
There, No, it did. I mean, you know this was great about that show is they're funny cases, but he adjudicates seriously.
I think, oh yeah, and then Jesse always shoots his gun off at the end. Yeah.
Beeah. So anyway, I just thought that 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 one hundred and fifty 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, it's an exotic 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 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 way, 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. I don't know minor.
They verge on decent at times.
Well, there's cartoonish and stereotypical, 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.
Yes, I've ever 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 she's a little more chatty than before.
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 cockneque chimney sweep pretty much.
And she does sound cognity 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. Yeah, if you just look up Lisa Alamia A La m i A and you will find plenty of interviews with her. She's 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 Two. 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 and 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, we're 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 name Yorg Rman 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. Yeah, and the prefix discs 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. 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 nineteen eighty two, neurologist named Harry Whittaker came up with that. So Whittaker coined it in the eighties. I think nineteen eighty two 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 of the doctor to be to sound like a foreign accent, right.
Yeah, pretty straightforward from what they are.
Yeah, well that's number two. It has to be different from the patient's former prosody, 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 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 polyglotaphasia. 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 processes 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 yeah exactly, You're not like luring 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. But the problem with foreign accent syndrome, it's, like you said, there's been one hundred, maybe one 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 his break, So chuck, foreign accent syndrome, it's kind of all over the place right now, right, Yes, You've got Lisa Alamiya who woke up from jaw surgery with it. Apparently people who have strokes can suffer from foreign accent syndrome. And I actually saw one case where your foreign accent syndrome and one patient who suffered a stroke was cured by a second stroke elsewhere in the brain.
Wow.
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 developed 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 nineteen eighty two 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 dis equilibrium like anxiety depression, personality disorder, or conversion reaction, right, and you know we're talking about 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 would 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, right, working to create this foreign accent syndrome, and definitely psychogenic. 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 wigans 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 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 eighty six percent are from some sort of neurological damage, right, So what does that leave fourteen percent or no, unless I guess you're accounting for the new super odd one that could be both.
And one of the more famous cases that kind of demonstrated that psychogenic FAS was an actual thing happened here in America. There's a woman in her mid thirties who had a history of schizophrenia and 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 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 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 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 a just a British personality that came out that's violent maybe or something.
Yeah, well, I mean, remember we I think we've done one on schizophrenia before, haven't we.
I don't know, haven't we definitely.
Did one on dissociative personality disorder, yeah, which is just absolutely fascinating. But I was like you, I kind of noticed, like, hey, what about multiple personalities? It doesn't it seems like something that would be right up that alley.
I'm sure they've looked into that.
But apparently 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. This woman named Sarah Calwell 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. Yeah, and no, it's like, I don't know, late to mid thirties Caucasian woman. Yeah, a 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. It's really hit her hard.
Yeah, I mean her case is really sad. It was I think twenty ten when she was diagnosed. After this migraine incident. In twenty fifteen, she couldn't work anymore, and she has a lot and more issues going on than just the speech. With these migraines that have come on, and 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, So 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, 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, 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 it's really troubling is you can't just just go to a neurologist and get it cleared up. They're a whole range of doctors that you'll probably see along the way, including a neurologist you talked about, a speech language pathologist. Go to a clinical psychologist to deal with the fallout from everything, maybe a neuro psychologist, maybe a radiologist. You might see you six and eight doctors and still not get anywhere.
Right, because I 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 to 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 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, it 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 stated is false, and we'll talk about that after this break. Okay, Chuck, we're back. Yes, So I thought I heard you draw in a breath right before we bro That 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've actually been studies where they've played a video clip of or 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 which. 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, Lets, I 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 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, using your lips, your jaw, your larynx, and the way all these things combine and who you are is gonna make you have and we should do one on accents, period, but it's gonna control how your speech comes out. So and the you know, the one example 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 er differently. Right, So that's a pretty pretty basic way of understanding it. But I know, vowels are are sort of a big deal when it comes to foreign accent syndrome.
Yeah, if you if you say ah instead of A, or you substitute continents 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?
Yeah?
Yeah, on a Christmas story? Christmas story. 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 rs 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 Calwill'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 Calwell'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? One thing I do get is that there's no like and this is probably what's so frustrated, 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 I see, here's what I wonder is in there. 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 are the different is that they make pro 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, Yeah, exactly Like That's it's a predictable thing, and that's part of foreign accent senterlemen. 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 after a stroke victim is I remember seeing him talk and getting so frustrated. He would just you know, say things out loud and it would come out as gibbish 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 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 gonna be like, that's actually not the same thing, something totally different. Neurogenic foreign accent syndrome is its own thing, and psychogenic is something else entirely.
Yeah, I'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 what's her psychogenic or neurogenic.
It would have to be psychogenic because neurogenic has basically that original Harry Whittaker criteria.
Like you, you'd 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, So like that.
She would be technically canceled out from neurogenic for that one. And it would also it didn't have anything to do with central nervous system damage, which is again that's why I think it's gonna end up being its own thing.
Man, So interesting? 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. That's what happens when something interests me. I turned to Goo. If you want to turn to go and learn more about foreign accent syndrome, you can type those words in the search bart HowStuffWorks dot com. And since I said that, it's time for Chuck administrator detail.
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 gonna start off with Nathan for Lazzo.
That's good. Uh.
He sent us some really lovely hand drawn calendars and bookmarks and you can find those at wildlife dot Wildlife dot Marini for Loatso dot com dot au and that's m A r I N I F E r l a z z o dot com dot a U. And it was really really beautiful work and it's it's a cool thing because a portion of every sale is donated to a nonprofit wildlife organization.
Very nice. I think you handled that foreign accent very well.
Thank you.
I want to say thanks big time to Robert Coombs or Combs from Whitetail Coffee for the amazing coffees, especially like, seriously, this is a really good coffee, especially the Laderis and Lamarella 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 have two of them sitting on your desk right now, my friend.
Wait to go grab them.
True Stone Coffee Roasters from Saint Paul, Minnesota send 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 send us dark roasted Sumatra. And in Mexico, Aleutra. I'm sorry, Altura, nice, thanks a lot, got coffee coming out her ears.
That's great. That's a good place to be, but we're not gonna have diabetes. My friend now, Doug Fuch sent us a beautiful illustrated card. Thanks for that, Doug, thanks for saying Hi.
Meg from Seattle, she sent me a card about Laurn'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, from everybody listening to you, Chuck, we send our condolences.
Thank you. It was very dark time.
Yeah, let's see pressed him Pope. He sent us some amazing chocolates Chuck from V Chocolates V. Just the letter V Chocolates dot Com. Seriously, it's good stuff. I feel bad. I feel like I'm running around. I'm a little bit sweet.
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'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 and.
Chuck, you may never go back to American mayo again.
Well, I'm finishing up a a gallon of.
Dukes this afternoon.
Yeah, I'm just gonna gonna shoot it down, and then I'm gonna dive into the QP and see what's going on there. Got to see what the difference is.
It's subtle, but do you You'll notice You'll say, wow, this is actually really really good man.
All right, Well, thanks to 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 Primer Stories dot 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. Send us some Ginger Apple Liqueur and jin.
Yes, thanks a lot. Uh Don Kent who last gave us some Pliny the Elder before, which was nice.
Oh yeah.
Also send us a bunch of soilent, and thank you also to Soilent. It's so well the company who heard our soilent episode and said, you guys haven't tried soilent. Here, here's some soilent, and thank you for that soilent. That was very nice.
I think they got what they wanted out of this, which is for us to say soilent twelve times soilent. This came in today Thomas Craigil car 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 embarrassed 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, 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, Chuck, Chuck, I'm gonna use it. Your new nickname is Pringles Guy. Okay, I've got someone else, Pringles Guy. Janelle Samara send us a copy of her book Our Only Hope, Thank you, and congratulations on writing a book.
Bridget mass Off M A. S. S. O. T. H. Send us some really cute along with an extra large handwritten note. So's some really cute Josh and Chuck cutouts, like kind of paper cut and paste cutouts. Nice, and yours is on your desk.
Thank you.
We got to get out of this room, and I do go over to your desk. You got a bounty, Francis Dela pause.
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 Dela Pause is one of them, send 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. 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 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 State card to all of us, including Harry nole Man that not Harry Knowles of ain't it cool news, but our own Noll who was just Harry right.
We got some other ones to chuck. We got a lighthouse postcard from Big Sable Point from Teresa. We got a couple of Christmas cards from the Johnson Alloman family and Tess Sullivan and her family, and I guess in part because the national what is it National Writing Month or letter Writing Month?
International Correspondence Writing Month?
Exactly. Noel Verosa, No sorry, Noel Versosa, Noel Verzosa.
It's handwritten. You can't you know?
I got it that last time, Noel. Noel Verzosa wrote us a nice hand letter, handwritten letter and fountain pen.
I've got two more, Megan Moon Waltzman. And 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 of music for all levels, all ages, and it is eleven 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 and 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 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 planned to outlive him.
That's okay, so I can cash.
In on the painting he made me. And then Ben and Aaron Gibson send us the Japanese car magnets that signify an elderly driver or a team driver, which we've talked about before.
Oh yeah, yeah, I remember those.
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 timber Wolf, and it's just you know, it's gorgeous. You send a couple of these in and they're really really nice. Nice, So you got to you gotta 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.
Oh, 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's sent us so much great stuff. We appreciate it big time, And if you want to get in touch with this, you can send us both an emails. The Stuff podcast at housetuffworks dot com and has always joined us at our home on the web, Stuff Youshould Know dot com.
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