#120 No.1 Inner Speech Expert: NPCs, Hallucinations, Imaginary Friends, Prayer and Experiential Crossing
From The Giants Shoulder by Evan McGloughlin
May 14, 2026 · 1h 9m · Season 2 · Episode 119
About this episode
The episode features Charles Fernyhough discussing the complexities of inner speech and its implications on creativity and perception.
Do you really inner speak? Join my Skool community and find out: https://www.skool.com/the-giants-shoulder-6526/about Charles Fernyhough is the world's leading Inner Speech Researcher, Cambridge-trained Psychologist, and author of *The Voices Within*. His three decades of research have uncovered something most people never suspect: the voice in your head isn't a monologue — it's a compressed conversation between internalised versions of everyone you've ever spoken to, and when that compression fails, you hear voices. Expect to learn why inner speech is a Swiss army knife you use against yourself as often as you use it to plan your day, what "thinking in pure meanings" actually feels like when language gets stripped away, why spontaneous inner speech lights up completely different brain regions than scientists expected, how the dialogic structure of your inner voice explains human creativity, why 1 in 7 fiction readers hear characters as vividly as a real person in the room, what experiential crossing is and why a reader walked into Starbucks as Mrs Dalloway, why prayer might just be a specific kind of inner speech, and much more… Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 02:30 Inner Speech as a…
People in this episode
Host: Evan McGloughlin
Guest: Charles Fernyhough
Topics covered
- inner speech
- psychology
- creativity
- hallucinations
- prayer
- experiential crossing
Keywords
- inner speech
- psychology
- hallucinations
- imaginary friends
- prayer
- experiential crossing
- brain scans
- thinking
- creativity
Mentioned in this episode
Books & works: The Voices Within
More episodes of The Giants Shoulder
- #128 - Meet the Neuroscientist Proving Scientists Got Conscious Ai WRONG · June 11, 2026 · 1h 50m
- #127 Meet the Neuroscientist Who Gave A Brain to Michael Levins Xenobot’s · June 8, 2026 · 1h 10m
- #126 - Michael Levin & Earl Miller: Bioelectricity, Platonic Spaces, Cell Intelligence & Neurobots · June 4, 2026 · 1h 39m
- #125 Meet The World’s Greatest Endogenous DMT Psychedelic Scientist · June 2, 2026 · 1h 47m
- #124 - Meet the Professor of Paranormal Consciousness - DMT Entities, Telepathy Tapes & OBE's · May 28, 2026 · 1h 46m
- #123 - Meet The Most Persuasive Panpsychist Alive Today · May 26, 2026 · 1h 17m
Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the The Giants Shoulder podcast page.