Steven Cheah traces his lost inner monologue to 2010

By JR·1 min read
Steven Cheah traces his lost inner monologue to 2010

TLDR: On the November 11 Yak, Steven Cheah said he has no inner monologue and named the moment he lost it: a 2010 men's league basketball tournament in Toronto.

Plenty of people don't have an inner voice. Steven Cheah says he can tell you exactly when his went away.

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Steven Cheah doesn’t have an inner monolog and he can pinpoint the time in his life where he lost it

Here's his story. It's 2010, he's playing in a men's league basketball tournament in Toronto, and he passes up a shot. The coach calls timeout and asks him why he passed instead of shooting. According to Cheah, that's when the voice in his head went quiet, and it never came back.

The room didn't buy it. The others on set react with pure disbelief, which is fair. Most people who say they don't have an inner monologue describe it as something they were born with. They don't usually point to one timeout in a rec-league gym.

That's what makes it such a good Yak bit. The show has done the inner monologue question before, back in 2025, and it always splits the room. What's new here is how specific Cheah gets. He doesn't say he never had one. He says he lost it, and he gives you the year, the city and the play.

Is a men's league coach yelling about shot selection really enough to wipe out a man's inner voice? Probably not. But Cheah was fully committed to it, and on a show built on guys picking apart each other's weirdest claims, committing is what counts. Expect the Yak crew to keep asking him what's going on in his head. If he's telling the truth, the answer is nothing.

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