Stuff You Should KnowDespite as much as one percent of the adult population having the condition, science doesn't actually know how stuttering works. The best it's come up with so far: there seems to be an issue between the physical process of speaking and the thought process that underlies it. Find out what science means by this in this classic episode.
Hi everyone, it's Chuck here. I'm going back in time. Let's all go back in time together. In fact, this Saturday for our select episode to Summertime, August fifteenth, twenty seventeen. And this one is about stuttering, how stuttering works. It is pretty interesting, actually, so check it out. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W Chuck Bryant, and there's no our guest producer today, which means it's still Stuff you should Know.
That's right, the Jerry Free edition.
Yeah, it feels weird. Eh. She was like, I can't do this today. I'm going to the mall. She's always leaving us for the mall.
I know, that's weird. Ever since we did that mall episode and she learned it was a thing.
Right, you know, She's like, this sounds like my kind of place.
How are you doing.
I'm doing pretty good. I'm been wanting to do this one for a long time. Yeah, And I think I started to research it and I was like, oh man, maybe we went on tour or something like that. I got pulled away from it and never went back to it, So I'm glad we're doing it finally.
So stuttering if you're in North America or Australia and stammering if you're in the UK. Perhaps is that how it works?
I don't know. I know that stammering is what they call it in the UK. Do they call it stuttering in Australia as well?
Yeah? This thing I pulled up just said. In general, it's North America and Australia say stutter. In UK they say stammer But it's the same thing.
Right, it's basically I think the way that they get around that is calling it disfluency. No one calls it that, the scientists do.
I never heard that word.
Sure, disfluence, So I think that's actually the clinical name for what we call startering or stammering, depending on where you are.
Yeah, And wasn't that Colin Firth movie called The Disfluent Prince Who Would Be King?
Yep? I think that was the working title what they call it, The King's Speech?
Yeah, pretty good movie. That was cute, cute it was.
Anytime you get Jeffrey right in there in an inspirational role, it's gonna be a cute movie. No, not Jeffrey right, Jeffrey Rush Yeah, I agreed. Jeffrey Wright always plays like the super smart, like kind of like a deep state guy.
Jeffrey Wright. He was Baskeocht right, I'm not thinking of the right guy.
Did he play basket Yacht?
I think so.
I don't think so in the movie Baskeocht.
Yeah. Isn't Jeffrey Wright.
I don't think so.
It's Jeffrey Wright.
Jeffrey Wright has been in tons of stuff. Just look him up. You'll be like, oh, that's Jeffrey right.
Okay, this is.
Going terribly already. This is basically like the podcast equivalent of stuttering, because Chuck stuttering, also known as stammering better known as disfluency, is an interrupted flow of speech. Okay, but what when it starts to qualify for what we would call like stuttering or stammering, it is it's really noticeable. It's it has an interrupting effect, typically on the conversation or the communication that's meant to be going on, the speaking that's going on that's on the far end of the spectrum, on the on the other end of the spectrum. Apparently just about everybody engages in disfluent speech. I'm particularly guilty because I say a lot, and that's a form of disfluency. And disfluency Chuck comes from the idea that that when you speak fluently, you're speaking in a flowing manner that is easy to follow typically and is uninterrupted. But when you start adding things like or pauses or that kind of thing like that, that's disfluency. And again, disfluency is a normal part of communication if it occurs about less than ten percent of the time. After that you start to get into the stuttering slash stammering spectrum or side of the disfluent spectrum.
Yeah, and one thing I learned, You know, you and I both QA quality assure each episode, which means it's a little behind the curtain peak. But Jerry will send them back to us and you listen to it once and then give her any like edit notes or whatever and thoughts, and then I will listen to it and generally I have no edit notes.
Found that I know we're both gonna be so self conscious about that.
Well, that's where I was getting to though. I found early on when listening to these episodes of ourselves that it's it doesn't pay to focus on dysfluency in our own language because it can.
Drive you nuts, it really can.
And so we have a conversational podcast, so we're not trying to you know, we're not Churchill or Henry or was it Henry the six now.
Yeah it was, I don't remember. Just Calin Firth, how about that.
Yeah, we're not Colin Firth addressing the country on the airwaves, where it was very important that he come across as you know, a certain had a certain fluency. But when it comes to stuff like this, I think people are used to the fact, like occasionally we'll get emails that go you go to say like an am a lot right, and.
We're just like response, is better luck finding a different podcast?
Yeah this is not for you. No, So anyway, I learned to not drive myself crazy with that stuff. No.
But it's funny you bring that up because I was just yesterday listening to the Stockholm Syndrome episode for stuff you should know selects right, and I must have said like five times over the span of ten words.
You can't even listen to that, But.
Even I noticed it. I normally have I'm pretty good about tuning it out, but even I noticed at that time, and it really kind of raises this issue that the whole thing about starting or stammering is not that it's a it's a disorder or disease, or the sign of an unintelligent person, or that the person can't think of what they mean to say. It's absolutely none of those things. It is strictly an interruption in what we would consider normal communication, and so attention is drawn to it, and it turns out that that just makes the problem worse and worse, so it it turns into this vicious cycle to where but that's all that, That's all it is. That's it, that's really it. And I mean, like there's there's different theories about what's behind it or what could make it worse and what could possibly make it better, but really all it is is just interrupted communication between two people. Because it's not like the person who's who's stuttering stutters in their head, like it's strictly when they're speaking and communicating with other people. So it's it's pretty it's a unique. It's a unique condition.
Yeah, and they're they're generally three ways in which that flow can be interrupted. One is repetition. So if you say the first few like the beginning of a word, if you repeat it a few times in a row and then say the word, another would be prolongation. So if the word is like you would, you would roll that l out by itself for a long time, and then the last would be an abnormal stoppage, which is just no sound at all coming out. Yeah, block, yeah, a complete block. Have you you know anyone with a severe stutter?
Sure? Yeah, I've known people with stutters before.
Yeah, I know somebody with a very severe stutter. And it's always interesting because I think, and we'll get to like what you should and shouldn't do as a participant in a conversation with someone who stutters. But before I read this, I knew that just as a courtesy, what you probably shouldn't do, which is correct, is try and complete someone's sentence for them, even though that urge is there. You know, it's just a natural instinct because people do that, you know, when speaking all the time if someone can't think of a word or something. But like you said, that's not what's going on.
No, no, And I mean that, And I think that urge also comes from a a good place typically like you're not You're not saying like, uh, pitch is the word stupid. That's not what you're saying when you when you when you finish their sentence, you're helping them along, right, to keep the conversation on track, right, But what you're also doing is saying you're not communicating effectively. I'm jumping in and taking over on your behalf. Just sit there and be quiet. So, yeah, we'll talk more about what to do or what to what not to do when you're in a conversation with somebody with a stutter and I.
Don't know what you mean. You're trying, you're trying to help. You're not trying to like be a jerk. Yeah, but it's it's not a help.
No, it's not.
But I imagine they also understand to a certain degree.
Too well, probably just from being exposed to it so much, Yeah, for so.
Long, and some people feel, you know, like with anything like this, some people might be used to it and have been like, well, you know, that's how I talk. I've tried to uh correct it, and I've kind of learned to live with it, and people might still feel really bad about it.
Yeah, I read a a I guess an essay a blog post basically by a guy named man I can't find it anywhere, great great blog posts where he said I recognize and accept my stutter, and it was on say dot org. His name is Danny Litwack l I t w A c K Litwack. Maybe I embrace and accept my stutter. It's great. He talks about his his experience with growing up with a stutter his whole life and just what a negative impact it had on him for a very long time. And I saw this elsewhere. But the first step toward either either getting past your stutter or just getting over the fact that you have a stutter, is accepting that you have a stutter. And that's a that's from what I can gather, a really big first step, because I think people recognize that they have a stutter to themselves, but there's also are they take measures to protect against sharing that with other people. So I read another story about another person who grew up with a stutter and when they got to I think college or something. On the first day of this one class, everybody went around and said where they were from, and this person said that they forgot where they were from, rather than having to say Wilmington, Delaware because of the W and the D. So instead they told the class they forgot where they were they were born and grew.
Up because in that case there were certain triggers.
Yeah, the W and the D, the W and Wilmington and the D in Delaware. So there's like a lot of obfuscation that people with stutters engage in. People with stutters are not to be trusted in other words, but they have to they have to basically just take steps to make it seem like they don't have a stutter. And I think what this guy Danny Litwack was saying. And then, like I said, I saw elsewhere people saying, like I have a stutter, like this is how I talk. You're gonna have to like either just walk away during the conversation or just let me finish on my own time. But this is me and this is how I talk, and I'm accepting it or learning to and you're gonna have to as well. And that's the first step, as I understand it. Once you're an adult, I should say.
I think there are so many things in life where that's the case. Oh yeah, man, Instead of like at a certain point at a certain age, you, I think, or at least I got to a point where like, well, I can really continue to work to try and change the thing, or I can just accept that this is kind of who I am, right and be happy.
Yeah, don't worry, be happy now.
So don't ever strive to be better people. Just accept how messed up you are.
Right, and force everyone else around you to accept it.
Should we take a little break here, All right, We'll take a break and we'll come back and get into of the stats, and house stutters can develop right after this, all right, so we're back. I promise stats. Yeah, the stats, you shall receive one percent roughly of adults in the world stutter. Yeah, but that is not one percent of children, because many times have in fact, about seventy five percent of the time, well five percent of children stutter, and about seventy five percent of time they will lose that disfluence as they grow older, right, leaving that at a one percent number as adults.
Yeah, and so in the US there's that means there's about three million or so, maybe three and a half million people adults that stutter. Right, More women, is it? More women, and more men and more men more men, and it's like four to five in childhood and then it goes to like three or four in adulthood. So by far, men stutter more than women. And although in strangely boys tend to naturally lose their stutter if they're going to lose their stutter in childhood more than girls.
Yeah, and I don't think they found any rhyme or reason to that at all.
Right, No, man, there's there's like a lot of lack of understanding as far as stuttering goes scientifically socially, there's just we just don't know that much about it, which is surprising because apparently as far back as Moses, people have been stuttering on record.
We'll tell that story later. Oh, okay, about sixty There could be a genetic basis because about sixty percent of people who stutter have a family member who stutters.
Yeah, and I also saw that among monozygotic also known as identical twins, if one twin stutters, there's a ninety percent chance that the other one does as well. Oh interesting, But for die zygotic, like fraternal twins, there's only a twenty percent chance. So there's clearly a genetic basis to stuttering.
Somehow, right, But it's also one of those things where it can be genetic, doesn't have to be. Sometimes if you like suffer a head trauma, you might develop a stutter. Right. Sometimes it's developmental. Sometimes it could be obviously with something like Parkinson's disease, that could be a symptom. But those are to me, I think, probably different kinds of stuttering, but still shuttering.
Right. So there's basically two main categories. Developmental, which is by far the more the one that accounts for the most cases of stuttering. Yeah, and then the others acquired, like you said, say from like Parkinson's or they put you on a prescription that like suddenly is making you stutter. There's also psychogenic, which is supposedly an emotional trauma can give you a stutter. I don't know if that's just leftover lore, because apparently they used to think all stutters were the result of some psychology.
Yeah, and they.
Just say, well, no, it's possible, or some people have it and just haven't figured out that it's not the case at all, or if there really is a small section of people who do have psychogenic stutters, but all of those would fall under acquired and then the other one is developmental boy.
How about that guy that took mushrooms and quit stuttering? Yeah, so interesting.
I saw a Ted talk at his once.
Really.
Yeah, he's like all about mushroom saving the world.
Paul's dammit.
Yep.
Yeah. He he leads off our article on how stuff works and he had a severe stutter. Was very affected by it, kind of Withdrew socially. Went camping one time, took a bunch of psychedelic mushrooms and climbed a tree, got up there, decided he could not climb down, and then the storm came in and got really intense, and he he said he sort of felt one with the world, which sounds about right. And eventually the storm passed. He came down and while he was up there during this intense experience, he was like, I will not stutter anymore, and he just kept saying that. Came down and he had lost his stutter.
Yeah, and apparently he didn't relapse, which is pretty unusual, I think.
So he started studying mushrooms for a living.
Yeah, he became a mycologist. Yeah, man, and I gotta I've said this before, I'll say it again. One of the best articles I've ever read my life was called blood Spore, Yeah, and I think it was in Harper's and it was about a murder in the world of mycologists. It was just so interesting.
Blood Spore coming soon to a theaternew I hope so you should write the script.
Yeah. So Stamids was remarkably lucky in that he just basically decided not to stutter anymore and stop stuttering. Apparently the fact that he didn't relapse is probably what's most remarkable, because I think relapsing among stuttering treatments is actually pretty common. Oh yeah, yeah, but again, this is once you get out of childhood. It's fairly common to have to develop a stutter as you're a child, as you're learning to talk, and then it's equally common to lose that that stutter as you age, usually within eighteen months of developing the onset of the stutter. But then as you acquire this or develop this stutter as you get older, it apparently becomes more and more set in. And that seems to be because of the plasticity of your brain when you're a kid.
Yeah.
Start, it's almost like, from what I can gather, it's like if you have a stutter past a certain point, it almost gets locked into your brain as your neural pathways solidify and cement. Yeah, like you learned to have a stutter after a while.
Yeah, And I think they say to wait. I think they wait like three months before they even start looking into it, because that's how fleeting a stutter can be when you're a little kid. Right after three months, they'll say, all right, maybe we should start looking into this.
Right, you would want to go to a speech pathologist to be able to diagnose it. Yeah, And usually what they're looking for and you take your child who's developed a stutter to a speech pathologist is how pronounced it is. There's a guy in I think the late nineties named Barry Guitar. He sounds like he played, you know, guitar for the band Boston.
He knows all the chords. No, wait, that's guitar George.
Right, Sorry, what's that from?
Oh?
Come on, guitar George? Is that a Ray Stevens song?
No, it's from Dire Straits Sultan's of Swing.
Oh gotcha. That's a good song. Yeah, it is a good song. I love it so very Guitar came with five levels of stuttering development. And I already referenced the first I know his name's all that. I already referenced the first level, which is you you have less than ten percent of your speech is disfluent. That's that's anybody walking around like that, right, Yeah, unless you're like the King of England or something. And then ironically unless you're that one king who had a stutter. Yeah, and then it goes on the from there and just gets worse and worse. But one of the things that's attendant with these different stages of development of a stutter are like emotional problems or symptoms like comorbid symptoms along with the stutter. So there can be things like blinking, like like pursing your lips, where you're frustrated, where you're angry, where you're fearful, where you're anxious, in conjunction with stuttering. And so this is the kind of thing that the speech pathologists will be looking for to kind of diagnose your kid like, no, this is just normal kid stuff. Or actually the stutters developing faster than we'd like it too, so we need to start treating it now.
Well, that makes sense because dopamine. We talked a lot about dopamine on the show The neud Transmitter. If you have an overabundance of dopamine we talked about in the Tourette's episode, Right, is that one of the things that can be comorbid with stuttering because I know too much dopamine can lead to a stutter as well.
Yeah, supposedly, so Dopamine controls movement, right, Yeah, and if you have too much, it makes you have ticks like Tourette you're.
Saying, well, it can.
So I noticed this that Parkinson's and dopamine are I think they're like Parkinson's has to do with too much dopamine. Yeah, and Parkinson's is one of the ways that you could acquire neurogenically a stutter. Yeah, So that makes total sense that there's something in your brain with dopamine transmission to where you have maybe too much of it, and so you're trying to you're having trouble but getting the thoughts in your head into the movements that it takes to create the speech.
Yeah. I mean it's a little clumsy the way the brain does this. It would be a lot easier if it was streamlined in one part of the brain, but there are two distinct parts of the brain that deal with language processing, and one is the one that processes it and one articulates it with in a motor skill way. And when those two things have done brain imaging mapping and they found that there's some sort of discontinuity between those two processes going on. Right, Well, there's a stutter.
That's stuttering, right, so it could be too much dopamine. That's one thing again, the research into stuttering is so basic at the moment, it's it's really surprising. What they're trying to figure out, though, is are you born with the stutter like you when you're born, You're you're going to have this problem because your your brain isn't using dopamine properly or overproducing dopamine, or are you as your brain's developing, something goes a little off to the side to the left and your brain has trouble with dopamine from that point on. So they're trying to figure out the etiology of it.
In other words, did you look into this the genes the four genes?
Yeah, a little bit.
Did do you find names for those?
I did not?
That isn't either.
That is how basic the research is right now. Yeah, they're not even saying what genes they're finding.
Yeah, apparently they did discover four different genes that are linked to these proteins. And these proteins are sort of like they're responsible for what's called cellular trafficking, so they kind of make sure that the elements of the cell end up where they need to be within that cell. Right, And they said that more than one neurological disorder can be linked to this trafficking process, So I guess it's related to those proteins in those genes.
Yeah, but they're like, who knows, Well, just like they've gotten to the point where they have identified there's something up with these proteins in the cells and it's linked to stuttering somehow. Now just give us like ten years to go figure out how, right, But yeah, they're starting to realize now there's some sort of genetic basis to this to stuttering.
Well, I mean, I think the twin study that says a lot right there for sure. You know, yep, can we talk about Moses.
I think it's high time we talked about Moses. We've been dancing around the burning bush for a while now. I can't believe that guy will laugh.
Well, I was laughing because every time I think of burning Bush, I think of three Amigos and how funny that singing Bush was.
I never saw that one.
Three Amigos.
Yeah, I could do the three amigo salute, but I never saw it.
Oh man, that's a classic. Really yeah?
Really?
Oh sure? Why is that surprising? I don't know.
I feel like I would have seen it if free comedic icons.
You're right, funny movie.
Oh I know why I never saw because chevy Chase is in it. Oh, I'm sure, I'm sure.
No.
I remember my dad raised me a really dislike chill That's right, so I probably wasn't allowed to see it.
That's right.
You see Fletch, right, I think I stopped watching Fletch like part way through. My dad had a real influence on me. And why didn't he like chevy Chase.
Though, I have no idea you had a bone to pick.
I guess I think he thought he was a jerk or something.
Well he was all right.
It turns out dad was right, all right.
So Moses, I know a lot about the Bible, because, as listeners know, I was raised in the church. But I didn't know this. I don't remember this story at all.
Yeah, I hadn't heard it either.
So apparently Moses uh was a little baby at one point, and the Pharaoh said was warned, you know that Moses was was gonna not be his friend when he grew up. So he said, all right, let me try something out. I'm going to give this little baby, Moses, a choice between a bowlful of gold and a bowlful of hot coals.
That's what you do with babies.
Jesus the gold, then I'm going to kill him.
Yeah, typical typical Egyptian stuff.
Yeah, so of course with a baby, Moses is going to reach for the gold. And then apparently an angel intervened Todd Todd the angel and directed little Moses' hand to the hot coals instead.
A little gruffly, if you ask Moses.
Moses grabbed a hot coal put it in his mouth, and that's how he got to the stutter.
And he's blamed Todd ever since.
And here's what I don't get is that Moses went to God and was like, hey, man, I'm supposed to lead the people out of Egypt. I have a bad stutter. Can you you know, can you do something for me for God?
And God said no sweat.
Yeah, he said God, mister ed.
You didn't know that, yeah, because he was God.
So God said, yeah, sure I can help you out. Just have your brother Aaron take the mic.
Right, And Moses was like, I was more thinking like you'd perform a miracle on me, but yeah, I probably could have thought of having Aaron speak for me as well. God, thanks for that, though.
I don't know how I missed that story.
He apparently there's a quote I am heavy of mouth and heavy of tongue, and I saw some Bible sight where they were debating whether or not what they were talking about was a stutter. Apparently, some later Hebraic text said that Moses had trouble pronouncing th h's thorn sounds it sounds more like he had a lisp than a stutter. Who knows. Let's go as stuttering though, because lot of people do say that Moses had a stutter, but he over king. Yeah, it's pretty thick. It's I've gotten used to it, but I remember at first when we first started doing this, like, man, I should not be speaking for a living like this is I have a speech impediment, pure and simple.
No, it's just everyone now, just thinks, Hey, that's Josh's voice.
Yes, it's so grating, smooth and silky.
M hm. Who else in history.
Josh, let's see the emperor Justinian apparently, or no, I'm sorry I was wrong. It was Demosthenes. He was a Greek statesman. He apparently was smart enough to say, who could help me with a stutter? Oh? How about an actor? Somebody who speaks broadcasts their voice for a living. So he hired an actor to help him, and that actor had him do things like chew on pebbles and try to talk.
Yeah.
Smart, he's He did his speeches while he's walking uphill. I guess to control his breathing. This is actually pretty sharp stuff. I think out of all the historical treatments that we're going to cover, this one might most closely resemble, aside from the mouthful of pebbles, modern treatment for stuttering.
Yeah, which is to say speaking exercises.
Right.
Well, you did say Justinian. I don't know if Justinian had the stutter, but his at the very least his physician, Atis of Amita, was one of the first people to say, Hey, maybe that the frenulum, you know, that little flap of skin under your tongue right the connector to the bottom of your mouth. He was the first one that said, why don't we start slicing that thing up and just the tongue in general. Over the years there have been all kinds of surgeon that tried variations of slicing the friend or cutting down of the tongue itself.
Now, I could probably use that one by HD Chiguine chegouine. I'm sure that's how you say it the second way. Yeah, he basically said, stuttering as a result of an oversized tongue, which I have. Let's just slice and dice a little off the sides. But no, of course it didn't work. It's just horrific apparently. Though at the same time there were these surgeons who get all the press because their stuff is so horrific. But there are also other people who were kind of on the right track a little more like Moses Mendelssohn in the eighteenth century. He thought that there were too many ideas or thoughts that were flowing at once, and that it was basically it was blocking speech. There's too much trying to get out, basically like the three Stooges model of stuttering. Remember they're all trying to go through the door.
Yeah yeah, yeah, so you've got too much to say and you want to just get it right. Interesting, that makes a little sense.
Erasmus Darwin. He said that it was bashfulness, emotions like bashfulness that messed up the process of speaking, right, okay, definitely onto something there as well. And then a psychologist named Sandow said that it was brought on by either a dread of speaking or an over eagerness to speak, kind of like what Moses Mendelssohn was saying in the latter example.
Can they brought out by two completely opposite things?
Yeah, yeah, So a lot of this actually is kind of in step with our current thought about stuttering. And so either that means that these guys in the eighteenth century were prescient, or our understanding of stuttering is stuck in the eighteenth century, right, I'm very curious to know which one it is.
Shall we take a break? Yeah, all right, We're going to come back after this final break and talk about therapies that don't involve cutting your tongue apart. All right. So, now we're in the modern days and we're not taking scalpels to the frenulum any longer because they've realized that it's not a physical affliction of the tongue. It's somewhere inside the brain most likely. Yeah, and they have a lot of recommendations for when a child starts to stutter in it and it sticks. And you found some other tips too, which are great for parents, and kind of one of the main ones is is give your kid plenty of room to talk, plenty of time to talk, make sure they express themselves fully, because one of the side effects of having a stutter is your child may just end up retreating and being super quiet.
Yeah. I got from this these tips for parents that there's kind of this maybe not fully spoken idea that you can actually cement your child's stutter if you handle it poorly. Yeah, when they start to develop it, which knowing that just makes you even more tense about dealing with it correctly, I guess, which could make the whole process even even harder. But there are some pretty brainless things to do. This one almost killed me when I saw it. Chuck the site I think Kid's Health is where I got this one, but it said maintain natural eye contact with your child. Try not to look away or show signs of being upset. Yeah, get like just break the arrow off in my heart.
Yeah, that's pretty sad.
Like, don't look away and disgust when your child is stuttering, you monster, Go look in the mirror and take a bamboo shoot and put it underneath your fingernail and think about what you've done.
Another good one is and this feels like something that would be easy to do because it seems well intentioned to say, like, you know, slow down, son, take your time, taking your breath. They say to not do that, yeah, because you know, might make things worse.
Yeah, because what you're doing then is you're drawing attention to the idea that your child is not speaking correctly and rather than just apparently letting them communicate at their own pace. Right. Yeah, there's also seems to be a suggestion that the child has learned the child, your kid has learned to speak to stutter because they're trying to get too much out at once. Yeah, and they may have picked that up from you if you have like a rush rush rush pace in your household. Yeah, one of the things that they suggest is it just kind of slow things down at home. And in addition to like like schedule wise, and like just taking time and just like letting everybody breathe, maybe a little more than you. Guys are also speaking more slowly, not just to your kid, but also to other people when your kid's around. Yeah, speaking slowly, setting an example. It's called modeling your own speech so that your kid feels like they don't have to blurt everything out at once to get their point across. They they're going to be heard no matter how long it takes. You're going to sit there and just listen to them speak.
Yeah, and like really listen. Another thing that seems like a no brainer, but really just try and focus on what they're saying and not the fact that they're stuttering those words out. But you know, when your kid tells you a story about something that happened at school, right, don't concentrate or even bring attention to the fact that it's being said with a stutter, but just take take in their story and if it takes a little while longer, then just respond accordingly.
Yeah, And in that same vein, like, don't tell your kid to stop and start over when they start stuttering. Yeah, Like like they have to get the sentence just perfect or else you're not going to hear them out, and don't tell them to think before speaking. That's not helping anything at all.
Be honest. Yeah, like, don't try and mask it and say that, well, you don't have a stutter, like this is just you know, you're just in a hurry or something like. They just say to be really honest and say, you know what, you have a stutter and it's a disfluence and it's nothing to worry about and if you'd like, maybe we can talk to someone that can do some exercises with you. And you know, just like all this sounds like no brainer, not being a monster parent.
Yeah, but again some of it does like telling your kid like, okay, slow down, take a breath. Now, what are you saying? Like you think you're helping your kid, you're not so so not all some of it is monstrosity. Others is just like this is this is what people would naturally do, but it's and it seems intuitive, but you're wrong. Your intuition is dead wrong. Just let your kid talk and listen to what they're saying, not how they're saying it. Right, and apparently this is this is a good These are good, This is good advice. Wow, it took me a second to get out. Thank you, though, Chuck for patiently hearing it. Then sure, this is good advice to helping your kid just naturally shed the stutter, the developmental stutter. We should say, all of this we've been talking about is is dealing with a developmental stutter, although a lot of it just applies to people with with adult stutters out in the real world as well. Like you can you can take just about all of this and apply it to a business conversation if you have a coworker who has a stutter, like, don't look away in disgust. There's there's good advice right there all throughout your life when you're when you're watching or listening to somebody with the stutter.
Yeah, I mean maybe don't do that at all, and like, yeah, you know, yeah, life advice.
But it's it's a good point is if you're sitting there and you're and you don't look like you're hurrying somebody with the stutter along, You're just engage, You're you're into the conversation no matter how long it takes. I can't imagine how much that must help. And one thing that we didn't really, I think point out that that bears pointing out is that people who stutter do not necessarily stutter in this same frequency throughout like their day.
Right.
Yeah, there's definitely situations that are that are going to make the stutter way more pronounced. They're almost exclusively associated with higher anxiety situations. I think the National Stuttering Association says that the number one situation where a stutter is going to be about as bad as it gets is during a job interview. And so employers, please don't think that this is how this person talks. This is probably as bad as their stutter gets. However, they're stuttering in the in the job interview. So if they're say at home and they're just talking to their wife or their kid or something, this stutter's probably going to be far less pronounced than it would be if they were having to give a speech at their friend's wedding, you know.
Yeah, And I found that with this person, Emily, and I know that it's it can vary a lot within a conversation. It's a very severe stutter. And then they will say like a couple of sentences straight through with nothing, and then I think, oh man, ok, it catches me off guard because I'm so used to the stutter, and I think, well, you know, that's super interesting to me. You just like blurted out a couple of two or three long sentences with zero stutter or stammer on the same thing.
I know, but they're fun to say together, aren't they They are?
I don't know, just find it really fascinating. You know, speech pathology can come a long way. I know that there are Well, it's funny. I looked online about curing stuttering, and of course there is no like patented cure. But Tony Robbins after listening to our or recording our motivational speaker thing, I saw a video. I didn't watch it. I just saw the title. It said Tony Robbins cure's a man of a stutter in seven minutes.
So I was like, oh, come on, Yeah, yeah, I didn't see anything that said stutter stuttering cures. There's basically none.
Yeah, I did not look into I didn't have time to look into this new device though, did you.
Uh, yeah, a little bit. It seems pretty untested as far as real world application goes, but it makes sense intuitively, and apparently it does help in a clinical setting.
So basically it's like an ear like a hearing aid, right, but it changes the person who's speaking's voice and a little bit does it replay it? Yeah, out loud for everybody.
No, just for the person in their ear right. Because the one of the ways that somebody who stutters will be able to talk perfectly well is speaking in unison or singing. Oh okay, so like you, you can be sitting there talking to somebody just one on one, and your stutter could be quite severe. But then if you and the person agree to sing together, you may not stutter at all the whole time you're singing. And I have no one has any idea why that's the case. They just know. And this device is based on that that when we're talking in unison, or someone who has a stutter's talking in unison with somebody else, their stutter tends to go away. So what this does is it creates an echo. There's a bit of a lag with their own voice, so they feel like they're talking in unice.
With themselves, and.
So it helps the stutter again, at least in a clinical setting. I don't know if it would just be too distracting in a conversation or what. But I got the impression that they haven't tested it fully or proven it fully outside of the lab.
Well, the singing makes sense because remember mel Tillis, the name sounds familiar. He was a country singer who had a really pronounced stutter, kind of around like the fifties, sixties and seventies. Seventies is when he was biggest. But yeah, but you know he was on like Hehaw and stuff, randall aupry Bird and then has has had a tough stutter when he was talking to the audience and that's what he was known for. Oh yeah, yeah, it was like you know, obviously wouldn't act, but.
It was his stick.
Yeah.
Speaking of so another famous stutter chuck, are we there? Yeah yeah, Porky Pig. Yeah yeah, so I was I was looking up Porky Pig, right, because you know, that's an unusual choice to have a cartoon character who stutters U And it turns out that Porky Pig has a stutter because the guy who originally did Porky Pig, Joe Doherty, had a stutter in real life. Oh really yeah pretty sweet? Huh? Pretty heartwarming? Well wait there's more. Yeah, he did Porky Pick for the first two years, and then they fired him because he kept missing the cues because of his stutter, and they brought in a guy who didn't have a starter to do Porky Pig from that point on.
But he did it with a stutter, Yeah, because it was established right, Well, that's creddy and that's sad. That is sad. Yeah, except Porky Pig's trick was to go to a different word.
Yeah, which is a fairly common technique though.
Yeah, I imagine. So yeah, like if you get hung up on something, just say something else that means the same thing.
Yeah, that's a good one. Or I think people will say, oh, I can't remember and just act like they can't remember the word when they know full well what word they're going for. They just can't they can't say it, so they just pretend like they couldn't or they forgot what they were talking about.
Should we name off some of these other famous stutters, because I think if you're an adult stutter, you probably know these people. Sure you may have looked it up to feel a kinship, but maybe if you're a little kid out there, it might make you feel better to know that Darth Vader himself, James Earl Jones was a stutter, yeah, big time. Emily Blunt, Yep, she's terrific. Samuel Jackson surprising right there. Yeah, because the F bombs flow from his mouth. He was born with that talent. Who else from pulp fiction, Harvey Kayitel.
Yeah, I can't see Harvey Kytel stuttering.
No, And I guess all of these people just went through speech therapy. Huh.
I would guess so, or else they all took.
Mushrooms because it doesn't say whether or not they were like stuttered as a child or when they overcame it. But Nicole Kidman, Albert Einstein, Oh really, Carly Simon, and.
You said Winston Churchill earlier too, he had a stutter as well.
Yeah, Bruce Willis.
Yeah, that's kysing too. Huh. Shack I could see. I think I've actually seen Shack stutter before on TV.
Really see Bill Walton, Tiger Woods, Charles Darwin, Jane Seymour, doctor Quinn herself. Yeah, Joe Biden, who will hopefully run for president, right, you became his stutter?
Yeah, well all of them did, which is great. But at the same time, there are people out there who have accepted that they have a stutter. They probably spend a lot of time and money trying to get rid of it and it hasn't gone anywhere, so they've kind of embraced it. So I mean, if you've gotten rid of your stutter and you've overcome it, that's great. But if you've also embraced it, good for you as well.
Oh boy, how about this one? You want to talk about overcoming a stutter Kendrick Lamar?
Oh yeah, wow.
If you can overcome a stutter and then become Kendrick Lamar, right, then that should be a shining example people that you can do anything.
Yeah, or if you embrace your stutter, good for you as well.
Agreed, because you could be Mel Tillis, who was the Kendrick Lamar of country music, or Porky Pig, the Kendrick Lamar of cartoon.
You got anything else about stuttering?
I got nothing else. We'd love to hear from people, though, huh.
Yeah, for sure. Get in touch with us. And in the meantime, you can find more stuff about stuttering, including a lot of support and resources for parents all over the web, and there's things like say dot org and the National Stuttering Association and all sorts of great resources if you are looking for some information. And since I said, uh, it's time for the listener mail, all right, I'll.
Call this coming to see you in Chicago, but by this point we'll be I went to see you in Chicago.
Right and was disappointed.
Hey, guys, want to write in and say what a great show I just saw? NOD. I want to write and say thank you for putting together a really great podcast, longtime listener and fan and not even mentioning you in my work bio and I checked it out and you did.
That's awesome.
I really appreciate that. Stuff you should know is informative, funny, and family all at the same time. This was especially valuable when my fiance and I took his ten year old brother on a road trip from Chicago to Wisconsin Dell's. In the car, we listened to a playlist of SYSK episodes that I put together to suit his ten year old taste. How spiders work, how ice cream works, and, most importantly, because we were going to Wisconsin, Dell's self proclaimed water park capital of the World, how water slides work nice, which oddly is one of our highest performing shows ever.
People love water Slides, man, they love hearing about them, they love looking at pictures of them.
It got shared or something. It was so weird. I can't remember, but I went to look at our download numbers one time and I was like.
Water Slides is the top? Huh higher than marijuana?
Well higher than marijuana.
Hilarious.
Those episodes really entertained him and introduced him to the concept of podcasts for the very first time. Thanks for everything you do, and she said, they're going to see the fiance and Mara or Mara are going to see the Chicago show. So I hope you had a good time.
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