Inner Experience of...
(Samples of everyday inner experience)

Russell T. Hurlburt
University of Nevada, Las Vegas



Part I: Lena
Do I have internal monologue? Apparently not!


Part II: Ryan Langdon
We explore Ryan's own inner experience


Part III: Sadie Dingfelder
A case of face-blindness (prosopagnosia) who has written Do I Know You?, a hilarious and informative book about faceblindness and her participation here.


Part IV: Olivia R.
Inner experience of a well-known podcaster. Listen to her Twenty Thousand Hertz podcast "The Voice Inside".


Part V: Amber G., a college senior, plus
Masterclass conversations about DES


Part VI: Phil Jaekl, Ph.D., a neuroscience writer
who writes about this DES experience in Nautilus.


Part VII: Joe Jebelli, Ph.D., a neuroscientist and writer who will write about DES in his upcoming book The Quiet Mind.


Part VIII: Gabriel H., a college senior interested in philosophy (includes discussions of philosophical issues).


Part IX: Michael Pollan, the New York Times best-selling author.


Part X: Mel May: Comparing an outsider's (Julian Bass-Krueger's) view of DES to the originator's (Russ Hurlburt's). The interviews are like one long master class about DES. At most of Mel's samples, there was nothing (or at least nothing in particular) in her experience.


Part XI: Kerry U. (Mel's friend). Mel (see part X) wanted to see DES interviews from a participant whose experience is different from her own. She recruited her friend Kerry, who believed herself to have constant (or at least frequent) inner speech.

Ryan Langdon's January 28, 2020 blog "Today I Learned That Not Everyone Has An Internal Monologue And It Has Ruined My Day" drew 10,000,000 views by the end of February and sparked a firestorm of conversations around the globe.

Psychology professor Russ Hurlburt is the originator of Descriptive Experience Sampling (DES), a research method that uses a beeper to trigger the investigation of inner experience. His results are what ruined Ryan's day: Hurlburt has found that whereas some people do experience constant internal monologues, many (perhaps most) people do not.

Many have wondered how DES works, wondered about the basis of Hurlburt's claims. He has written six books and many articles on the topic, but has never opened the process up to real-time examination from beginning to end--until now. This site publicly unfolds the DES process as it occurs, first with Lena (who believed herself to have ubiquitous inner monologue), then with Ryan Langdon himself, then with a variety of other participants.

These materials may be valuable to those interested in experience, awareness, perception, feelings, subjectivity, consciousness, cognition, introspection, experience, self-reflection, thought, conscious experience, phenomenology, consciousness studies, mind, philosophy of mind, mind-body relation, 'the voice in my head', inner dialogue, inner monologue, and other topics in psychology.

For more information:
Russell T. Hurlburt, Ph.D.
Descriptive Experience Sampling online materials

©2025 Russell T. Hurlburt
Updated April 21, 2025