Rachel Carlson

Me, myself, and my voice.

Yeah, totally.

This is Russell Hurlburt, a psychologist at the University of Nevada.

And Russ is a legend in the field for being one of the first to gather data on inner experiences through a beeper.

So he ditched the questionnaires and instead told participants every time the beeper goes off, write down what's going on internally in your own words.

Russ called this technique descriptive experience sampling.

It was illuminating, sometimes even life-changing for the participants involved.

But Russ is the first to say how highly imperfect his method is.

Yeah, like how do you check for accuracy?

Like he believes that people do not fully know the characteristics of their inner experience, including me.

That was humbling to hear.

So today on the show, how far can the science go in the quest to know thyself?

Okay, short wavers.

Rachel and I are here with Charles Ferniho.

He's a professor of psychology at Durham University and studies inner speech, which is one of many kinds of internal experiences.

Wow.

You're saying basically, like, because we're born into this social world with all these people around, like my niece's little

when she's like talking to herself will eventually become internalized and that is her inner speech.

What kind of scanner, like a CT scanner, an MRI scanner?

Wow.