Selects: How Stuttering Works
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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 15th, 2017. 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 Noel.

our guest producer today, which means it's still Stuff You Should Know. - That's right, the Jerry Free edition. - Yeah, feels weird. - Yeah. - She's 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 you doing? - I'm doing pretty good. Been wanting to do this one for a long time. - Yeah.

And I think I started to research it and 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? Yeah.

And stammering, if you're in the U.K., perhaps, is that how it works? I don't know. I know that stammering is what they call it in the U.K. Do they call it stuttering in Australia as well? Yeah. This thing I pulled up just said in general it's North American, Australia say stutter. Gotcha. In the U.K. 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. Right.

No one calls it that. The scientists do. I never heard that word. Sure. Dysfluency. So I think that's actually the clinical name for what we call stuttering or stammering, depending on where you are. Yeah. And wasn't that Colin Firth movie called The Dysfluent Prince, Who Would Be King? Yeah. I think that was the working title. Yeah.

What did they call it? The King's Speech? Yeah, pretty good movie. Yeah, it was cute. Cute. It was. Anytime you get Jeffrey Wright in there in an inspirational role, it's going to be a cute movie. No, not Jeffrey Rush. Jeffrey Rush. Yeah, agreed. Jeffrey Wright always plays like the super smart, like kind of like deep state guy. Jeffrey Wright, he was Basquiat, right? Am I thinking of the right guy? Did he play Basquiat?

I think so. I don't think so. In the movie Basquiat? Yeah. Isn't that Jeffrey Wright? I don't think so. Who's Jeffrey Wright? Jeffrey Wright has been in tons of stuff. Just look him up. You'll be like, oh, that's Jeffrey Wright. Okay. This is going terribly already. No, it's great. This is basically like the podcast equivalent of stuttering. Because, Chuck, stuttering, also known as stammering, better known as disfluency, is stuttering

An interrupted flow of speech. Okay. But when it starts to qualify for what we would call like stuttering or stammering, it's really noticeable. 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. Okay.

That's on the far end of the spectrum. On the other end of the spectrum, apparently, just about everybody engages in disfluent speech. I'm particularly guilty because I say um a lot, and that's a form of disfluency. And disfluency, Chuck, comes from

The idea 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 um 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 time.

less than 10% 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. And I found that... I know we're both going to 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

that it doesn't pay to focus on disfluency 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 VI? No. Yeah, it was...

I don't remember. Just Colin 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, 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 guys should say like and um a lot. Right. And we're just like our 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 yesterday.

five times over the span of ten words you can't even don'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

It really kind of raises this issue that the whole thing about stuttering or stammering is not that it's a disorder or a 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 speech.

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 turns into this vicious cycle to where...

But that's all it is. That's it. That's really it. And I mean, like, there's different theories about what's behind it or what could make it worse or 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 stuttering stutters in their head.

Like it's strictly when they're speaking and communicating with other people. So it's pretty, it's a unique, it's a unique condition. Yeah, and there are 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.

um another would be prolongation so if the word is like you would you would roll that l out by itself for a long time right and then the last would be an abnormal stoppage which is just no sound at all coming out yeah block yeah a complete block um have you you know anyone with a severe stutter sure yeah i've i've known people with starters before yeah i i know somebody with a very severe stutter and it's always

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. Right. But, uh,

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, it's just a natural instinct because people do that when speaking all the time. Yeah. 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, I think that urge also comes from a good place typically. Like you're not saying like –

Pitch is the word stupid. That's not what you're saying when you finish their sentence. You're helping them along 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. Right.

So, yeah, we'll talk more about what to do or what not to do when you're in a conversation with somebody with a stutter. I know what you mean. You're trying to help. You're not trying to, like, be a jerk. Yeah. But 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 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, this, how I talk, I've tried to correct it and I've kind of learned to live with it and other people might still feel really bad about it. Yeah. I, I read a, uh, um, I guess an essay, a blog post basically by a guy named, uh,

Man, I can't find it anywhere. Great blog post where he said, I recognize and accept my stutter. Yeah. And it was on say.org. His name was 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, 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 a... They take measures to protect against sharing that with other people. So I read another...

A 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 born and grew up. Because in that case, there were certain triggers? Yeah, the W and the D, the W in 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. Right.

But 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 like I said, I saw elsewhere, is

people saying like, I have a stutter. Like, this is how I talk. You're going to 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 going to 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 this thing or I can just accept that this is kind of who I am. Right. And be happy. Yep. 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 some of the stats and

and how stutters can develop right after this.

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Check out more national sales event deals when you visit buyatoyota.com. Toyota, let's go places. All right, so we're back. I promised stats. Yeah. The stats you shall receive. 1% roughly of adults in the world stutter. Yeah. But that is not 1% of children because...

Many times, in fact, about 75% of the time, well, 5% of children stutter and about 75% of the time they will lose that disfluence as they grow older. Right. Leaving that at a 1% number as adults.

Yeah. And so in the U.S., there's that means there's about three million or so, maybe three and a half million people, adults that stutter. Right. More women. Yeah. Is it more women? No, no, no. More men. More men. Four to five to one.

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, 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 like a lot of lack of understanding as far as stuttering goes. Scientifically, socially, we just don't know that much about it, which is surprising because apparently as far back as Moses goes,

people have been stuttering on record. Yeah, we'll tell that story later. Oh, okay. There could be a genetic basis because about 60% 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 90% chance that the other one does as well. Oh, interesting. But for dizygotic, like fraternal twins, there's only a 20% 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 stuttering. Right. So there's basically two main categories, developmental, which is by far the more, the

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. That's so interesting. I saw a TED Talk of his once. Oh, really? Yeah. He's like all about mushrooms saving the world. Paul Stamets? Yeah. Yeah. 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.

Um, and then the storm came in and got really intense and he, he said he sort of felt one with the world, um, which sounds about right. And, uh, 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. Man, I've said this before, I'll say it again. One of the best articles I've ever read in 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 theater near you. I hope so. You should write the script. Yeah. So Stamets was remarkably lucky in that he just basically decided not to stutter anymore and stopped stuttering. Yeah. Apparently...

And 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 develop a stutter as you're a child, as you're learning to talk. And then it's equally common to lose that stutter as you age. Yeah.

usually within 18 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.

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, that makes sense. 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 who will be able to diagnose it. Yeah. And usually what they're looking for when...

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 90s 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, Sultans of Swing. Oh, gotcha. That's a good song. Yeah.

It is a good song. I love it. So, Barry Guitar came with five levels of stuttering development. And I already referenced the first. I know his name's off. I just can't get over that. I already referenced the first level, which is you have less than 10% of your speech is disfluent. That's anybody walking around like that, right? Yeah. Unless you're like the king of England or something. Sure. And then ironically, unless you're that one king who had a stutter. Yeah.

And then it goes on 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 pursing your lips where you're frustrated, where you're angry, where you're fearful, where you're anxious, right?

in conjunction with stuttering. And so this is the kind of thing that the speech pathologist will be looking for to kind of diagnose your kid like, no, this is just normal kid stuff or actually this stutter's developing faster than we'd like it to, so we need to start treating it now. Well, that makes sense because dopamine, we've talked a lot about dopamine on the show, the neurotransmitter. 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 tics like Tourette's, you were 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. 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 having trouble getting the thoughts in your head right.

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 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. When 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 really surprising.

What they're trying to figure out, though, is are you born with the stutter? Like when you're born, you're going to have this problem because your brain isn't using dopamine properly or is overproducing dopamine. Or are you, as your brain's developing, something goes a little off to the side, right?

to the left and your brain has trouble with dopamine from that point on. So they're trying to figure out the ideology of it in other words. Did you look into this, the genes, the four genes?

Yeah, a little bit. Did you find names for those? I did not. I didn'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 and those genes? Yeah, but they're like, who knows? Right. 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 10 years to go figure out how. Right. Yeah.

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 got a 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 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 three comedic icons you're right

Funny movie? Oh, I know why I never saw it, because Chevy Chase is in it. Oh, you don't like it? No, I remember my dad raised me to really dislike Chevy Chase. Oh, that's right. So I probably wasn't allowed to see it. That's right, because you didn't see Fletch, right? I think I stopped watching Fletch partway through.

My dad had a real influence on me. And why didn't he like Chevy Chase though? I have no idea. He had a bone to pick? I guess. I think he thought he was a jerk or something. Well, he was. 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 was a little baby at one point, and the Pharaoh was warned that Moses was going to 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 bowl full of gold and a bowl full of hot coals. This is what you do with babies. If he chooses the gold, then I'm going to kill him. Typical Egyptian stuff. Yeah.

Um, so of course with a baby, Moses is going to reach for the gold. Um, and then apparently an angel intervened. Todd. Todd the angel and directed, uh, 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 do something for me? Right. Because you're God. And God said, no sweat. Yeah. He said, God, Mr. Ed. Yeah.

You didn't know that? That's why that horse could talk. 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 site 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 THs, thorn sounds. It sounds more like he had a lisp than a stutter. But who knows? Let's go with stuttering though. Because a lot of people do say that Moses had a stutter.

Well, you have a thick tongue, a famous thick tongue. Yeah, it's pretty thick. 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. No, you don't. 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. Who else in history, Josh?

Let's see. The Emperor Justinian apparently had one. Or, no, I'm sorry. I was wrong. It was Demosthenes. He was a Greek statesman. Mm-hmm.

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 the actor had him do things like chew on pebbles and try to talk. Yeah.

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.

uh well you did say justinian i don't know if justinian had the stutter but his at the very least his physician uh atheist 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 uh the connector to the bottom of your mouth he was the first one that said why don't we start slicing that thing up uh and just the tongue in general over the years there have been all kinds of surgeon that

tried variations of slicing the frenulum or cutting down of the tongue itself. Now, I could probably use that one by H.D. Chigouin. I'm sure that's how you say it, the second way. He basically said stuttering is a result of an oversized tongue, which I have. Let's just slice and dice a little off the sides. But none of these has worked. I know. 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 Mendelsohn in the 18th century. He thought that there were too many ideas or thoughts that were flowing at once that

And that it was basically, it was blocking speech. There was 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 all out. 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 or

of speaking or an over eagerness to speak, kind of like what Moses Mendelsohn was saying in the latter example. So it can be 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 18th century were prescient or our understanding of stuttering is stuck in the 18th century right i'm very curious to know which one it is uh shall we take a break yeah let's all right we're going to come back after this final break and talk about therapies that don't involve uh cutting your tongue apart

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The more you save, do not delay, dear listener. Experience the fashion revolution that is snag and visit snagtights.us today. All right, so now we're in the modern days and we're not taking scalpels to the frenulum any longer because they realize that it's not a physical affliction of the tongue. It's somewhere inside the brain, most likely. Yes. And...

They have a lot of recommendations for when a child starts to stutter and it sticks. And you found some other tips too, which are great for parents. And kind of one of the main ones 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 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 when they start to develop it. Which, knowing that, just makes you even more tense about dealing with it correctly, I would guess, which could make the whole process even harder.

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 Kids 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 in 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, take a deep 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 properly.

to stutter because they're trying to get too much out at once. And they may have picked that up from you. If you have like a rush, rush, rush pace in your household, one of the things that they suggest is to just kind of slow things down at home. And in addition to 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, right?

but also to other people when your kid's around. 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'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

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, don't concentrate or even bring attention to the fact that it's being said with a stutter. Right. But just 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, 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, oh, 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, some of it is monstrosity. Others is just like this is what people would naturally do, and it seems intuitive, but you're wrong. Your intuition is dead wrong. Right.

Just let your kid talk and listen to what they're saying, not how they're saying it. And apparently, this is good advice. Wow, that took me a second to get out. Thank you, though, Chuck, for patiently hearing it. 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 adult stutters out in the real world as well. Like 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 good advice right there all throughout your life when you're watching or listening to somebody with a stutter. Yeah, I mean, maybe don't do that at all. Yeah.

Right. Real jerk. Yeah. You know? Yeah. Life advice. But it's a good point is if you're sitting there and you don't look like you're hurrying somebody with the stutter along, you're just engaged. 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 bears pointing out is that people who stutter –

do not necessarily stutter in the same frequency throughout their day. Right, yeah. There's definitely situations 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 reason

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 job interview. So if they're, say, at home,

and they're just talking to their wife or their kid or something, the 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 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, 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. I just find it really fascinating. Yeah.

You know speech pathology can come a long way. I know that there are It well, it's funny. I looked up online about curing stuttering and of course there is no like patented cure but Tony Robbins After listening to her or recording our motivational speaker thing. I saw a video didn't watch it I just saw the title. It said Tony Robbins cures a man of a stutter in seven minutes Sounds like oh, come on. Yeah, I

Yeah, I didn't see anything that said 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? 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 a hearing aid. Right. But it changes the person who's speaking's voice. A little bit. Does it replay it?

Yeah. Out loud for everybody? No, just for the person in their ear, right? Oh, okay. Because 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 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. Okay.

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 is 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 unison with themselves. 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 Tellis?

The name sounds familiar. He was a country singer who...

uh had a really pronounced stutter uh kind of around like the 50s 60s and 70s 70s is when he was biggest but yeah but you know he was on like hee-haw and stuff grand ole opry something like a bird and then uh has has a 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 it was obviously what an act but it was his shtick yeah

Speaking of, so another famous stutterer. Chuck, are we there? Oh, yeah. Porky Pig.

Yeah. So I was looking up Porky Pig, right? Because, you know, that's an unusual choice to have a cartoon character who stutters. 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. Yeah.

He did Porky Pig 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 stutter to do Porky Pig from that point on. But he did it with a stutter. Yeah. Because it was established. Right.

Well, that's cruddy. Isn't that 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 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 stutterer 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 stutterer. 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. Right. Who else from Pulp Fiction? Harvey Keitel? Yeah. I can't see Harvey Keitel 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. Yeah.

because it doesn't say whether or not they were like stuttered as a child or when they overcame it yeah but uh nicole kidman albert einstein uh oh really um carly simon and you said winston churchill earlier too he had a stutter as well yeah bruce willis yeah that's surprising too huh shack i could see i think i've actually seen shaq stutter before on tv really mm-hmm uh see bill walton tiger woods charles darwin

Jane Seymour, Dr. Quinn herself. Yeah. Joe Biden, who will hopefully run for president. Right. He overcame his stutter. 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 spent 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, 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 is the Kendrick Lamar of country music. Or Porky Pig. The Kendrick Lamar of cartoon. That's right.

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.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 listener mail. All right. I'll call this, um, coming to see you in Chicago. But by this point will 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. No, I want to write and say, thank you for putting together a really great podcast, long time listener and fan. And I even mentioned you in my work bio.

I checked it out and she did. That's awesome. I really appreciate that stuff you should know is informative, funny, and family friendly all at the same time. This was especially valuable when my fiance and I took his 10-year-old brother on a road trip from Chicago to Wisconsin Dells.

In the car, we listened to a playlist of SYSK episodes that I put together to suit his 10-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 us to the tops, huh? Higher than marijuana? 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.

Yeah. And thank you very much for supporting us in our live shows. We appreciate that tremendously. For sure. If you want to get in touch with us like Mara did or Mara, we're going to go with Mara. You can send us all an email, including Noel and including Jerry and Frank, the chair, to stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com. Thank you.

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