It's been almost five years since I first heard this story. I love writing, words, and interpreting data, so it's natural that this episode of RadioLab always stuck with me. What if you could pinpoint the moment a person's health started to decline, just from what they wrote? This episode does just that, with the work of the influential detective novelist Agatha Christie.
He wanted to analyze a more modern author, so he looked at Agatha Christie, who was the most published author at the time. Lancashire is analyzing 50 years worth of her writing. Christie has written over 80 books and sold a billion of them. The computer that her books were scanned into is looking for word choice, word frequency, vocabulary, etc.
The computer found that her vocabulary and structure was consistent for the first 72 books.
"Something happened on Book #73. Something drastic." -- Jad Abumrad (host)Her use of indefinite words (something, anything, etc.) increased 6 times. Her vocabulary went down by 20 percent.
"That is astounding. That's 1/5 of her vocabulary lost." -- Ian Lancashire, University of TorontoPerhaps Christie knew somethings in her mind was slowing down? the 73rd book was titled Elephants Can Remember, about an aging female novelist with memory loss who helps a detective solve a crime.
This book shows the beginning of her Alzheimer's, which was never officially diagnosed. This shows that writing from anyone can hold clues to what can come in your health. What can we determine from our writing skills?
This is just fascinating! I cant believe there is a study that can be done to see when your health starts to decline just by looking at your writing over the years. Really great podcast! what they found through this study is very interesting and yet it makes a lot of sense! Thanks for sharing!
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