Decoder Ring | Mailbag: Spooky Strings, Phone Menu Options, and Eye Rolls

Hi, it's Willa. For those of you who discovered

“decodering through slow burn, I've got some exciting news for you”

before we share our latest episode. It's a preview of season 11 of slow burn, becoming Justice Gorsuch with premieres on May 13th. The new trailer is dropping here tomorrow. And today, I'm speaking with Susan Matthews, who's the host of

Slow Burn, becoming Justice Gorsuch. Many of you may remember her as the host of the award-winning seven season of Slow Burn, Rovey Wade. And she's here to talk about the new season with me. Hi, Susan. Hi, Willa. Okay, so tell me about this new season.

So we're doing slow burn, becoming Justice Gorsuch. And the reason we picked this topic is because the government is really messed up right now. We all know that we hear about all the problems all the time. But there's one place that is doing a lot.

That place is the Supreme Court. And we really think that this season is going to help you understand why the Supreme Court is putting out all these decisions that really have the most effect on American policy compared to everything else. And we're also going to talk about kind of the personalities of the

Justice is on the court, particularly Neil Gorsuch.

“So I mean, what I think of Neil Gorsuch, I have to be honest that I don't”

like he doesn't strike me as like the flashiest. It doesn't jump out to me as like obviously fascinating. So like, why do Neil Gorsuch like why focus on him? The reason for that is because the moment where Neil Gorsuch ascends to the Supreme Court is in fact the moment that the court

is basically broken and also takes on this new valence of power

in our government. And by that, I mean, you might remember Brett Kavanaugh's nomination, which was extremely contentious. You might remember Amy Coney Barrett replacing Ruth Bader Ginsburg. But what happens with Neil Gorsuch is that he's the one that takes the seat that had been Antonin Scalia's.

And Scalia had died when Barack Obama was still president. Obama tries to nominate Merrick Garland and Republicans just Stonewall, Stonewall, Stonewall for months and months until the election until Trump has elected the first time. And Neil Gorsuch is the one that takes that seat.

And that is a huge shift in the power dynamics for the Supreme Court. It's a totally unprecedented blockade and grab of power. And that's really the moment that we understand started this modern Supreme Court era. And then told me like about Gorsuch, like so he's this pivotal figure,

but is he like interesting in and of himself? He is interesting. He is pretty much a law professor kind of nerd. And we'll talk about that. But the thing about him that's interesting is that he is so committed to his legal theories that he isn't just a partisan ruling with the conservatives

every single time. We have a six three court right now. But if it wasn't so far towards the conservatives, it's Neil Gorsuch who would be the wild card. He's the one who's doing the most surprising things. He's the one who is the most unpredictable. So look, what is he a wild card about?

So one of the most famous ones in 2020, he wrote the ruling in this case called Bostock where he argued for strong protections for gay and trans workers. It was kind of this landmark case that many people said was the biggest protective ruling for trans people in history. And the biggest for gay people since a burger fell.

And Republicans were really, really mad at him about it. And he was just kind of like this is what the law should be. So this term, one of the big cases that we're waiting on, is the trans sports cases of saying, you know, I can people play sports on the gender that they believe themselves to be.

And which way Gorsuch is going to go is very up in the air. And I think is very interesting. He's also sort of famously like the guy who is the most liberal about Native American

issues. Right? Yeah. That's the thing I know about him basically.

And people say that that's because he's a Westerner and he is from Colorado. And he had the first Native American clerk on the high court. And he is by far the furthest left of any justice ever on the court on Native American rights. And there are real reasons for that. And it has to do with his specific legal philosophy,

which is something that we all have to understand in order to understand what's going on with this court.

“And that's what we're going to get into on the series.”

So this series, which I'm really excited to listen to, is it part of like maybe I'm cheating here because I know that it is. But I want you to tell a lot of listeners, is this part of like a larger philosophy about how we should be treating the people that are actually on the Supreme Court? Because I think historically we've sort of been very respectful and gloves on.

And like they're sort of above all of us, they're special. There's a super weird dynamic about how people think about the justices on the high court. And it's very formal and it's totally ludicrous.

they're political actors, and they have tons and tons of power for our lives.

And we don't think of them as politicians. We don't treat them as characters to analyze in the way that we analyze our Presidents or our Senators. But I really think that in order to understand what's happening to our country and why these things are happening.

“You need to understand these people as characters and not just as these justices who are reading the law.”

I'm pumped. I'm there. I hope everyone else does do. It's premiering on May 13th, and you can hear the trailer here tomorrow. Thank you Susan so much for talking to me. Thank you, Willa. Josh Griffey is a Dakota Register from St. Louis, Missouri.

And years ago, he had an experience that terrified him. I had this very vivid memory of his freshman in college, and I went to see a movie that

I think he's basically forgotten, it's called Mama.

As an 18 year old, I watched his movie, the movie theater, and I was terrified of my mind. I was so scared. I remember walking back to my dorm, scared that something was going to jump out at me. I was trying, I had trouble sleeping, and so I just sort of swore off the whole thing. Just the whole, I guess this is just not for me. He was sure he was done with horror movies for good, but then five or six years ago,

Josh began seeing the person he's dating now, and love does some funny things. She was a big horror movie person. She made it a case where like, no, like, he got at least watched Freddy and Jason and Michael Mice. He got to know what these are, you know, and sort of converted me to the lifestyle. So when he wasn't just watching horror movies, he was watching all the horror movies

between her wanting to show me everything, and we wanted to see everything. It's like, well, now we have to do all the mascot horrors. Like, we have to, can you say you've seen the horror movies until you've seen like

“all three Jason's that you need to see to see Jason that is as Jason is, you know?”

So Josh is all in on hard now. He watches classics. He watches trash. He watches everything. And while doing so, he began to hear something so often, something so eerie, and the soundtrack of these films that he felt compelled to email us about it. I noticed that like, sometimes when there's something creepy, but it's such like a ghost kind of creepy, there's this like string plucking thing that happens. And I, I'm, I'm an engineer, I'm not a musician.

I couldn't describe it very well in words, but there's this like, think of like, like, like, sort of like, plucking sound, but it's not like psycho violin, like, you know? Yeah, totally. So when you send the email, my mind immediately was like, oh, he's talking about the E E E E thing. And then only when I read more closely, it was like, oh, no, he's talking about some other thing that is not the same cliche. Right. So like,

“you did like a flinky what was the thing you, you'd be flinky. I think it would be a, okay. So,”

so what do you think, like, if you had to put this musical thing in order to like, what, how would you try to describe it someone? It sounds like someone like plucking the strings on a string instrument like, it sounds like it's just like with the ins of their nails, just like, "Bink, bink, bink, bink, bink." But like really fast, like, "Bink, bink, bink, bink, bink." I know it's something, but I can't name it. Joshua's sure this sound was happening all the time in Scary Movies and in Traillers,

because he couldn't name it. A remember specific examples of where he'd heard it. Google was no great help. He kept trying, though, using all sorts of different combinations of search terms on YouTube. Like, creepy, plucking sound and horror movie goes sound. And finally, he came across a sound effect titled, "One word all in lowercase." Scary violins. And I was like, "That's it. That's the one." Even hearing it just now, like, sounds context. I'm like, "Yeah, the hair's on the back of my

neck or standing up a little bit as I'm listening to this." What is it conjure for you? That means there's a ghost, but you haven't seen it yet. Like, that's kind of the vibe I get.

It's always ghosts. It makes me think of ghosts. I mean, when I hear it back, just now, I'm like,

I also kind of makes you think of spiders. It puts me ill at ease. Like, I am in a place with something that shouldn't be here. It makes me feel like I need to be aware of what's around me, because something is going to happen. As satisfying as it was to finally find the sound effect in a YouTube video, Josh still didn't know how the sound was made, where it came from, or how it became embedded in the language of horror films. But at least now, we had a concrete example of it.

Something that could share and send to the kind of people who might become as obsessed as him

"I know I've heard this before. I know this is like a go-to thing, but I'm like, how did we

“settle on this? Where did it come from?" And he just needs it now.”

And I just had to know. Do you have any guesses? No, I really, I don't think anything would surprise me, other than Josh's is a totally made-up phenomenon. I feel like I'm insulated from that by the fact that we're doing this call. Yeah, yeah. Josh is absolutely right. We have an answer to his question, and two more besides. Because today is Mailbag Day. This is Dakota Ring. I'm Willa Paskin. In this episode, we're answering some fantastic

questions we're lucky enough to have received from you, our listeners. To start, we'll get into the unexpectedly elevated origins of that eerie horror film musical motif. And then we'll be looking at why companies insist on telling collars to listen closely to many options that could not

possibly have changed. And finally, we'll wrap up with the surprisingly recent rise of an

indispensable gesture. All that thanks to you. So today, on Dakota Ring. Let's jump into the Mailbag. (upbeat music) (speaking in foreign language) Flexible, sicher, and ever with the good feeling that someone there is when it comes to it.

(speaking in foreign language) (speaking in foreign language) (upbeat music) (speaking in foreign language) (speaking in foreign language)

(speaking in foreign language)

(speaking in foreign language)

(speaking in foreign language) (speaking in foreign language) (speaking in foreign language) (speaking in foreign language) (speaking in foreign language)

I watch them through my fingers. If I'm watching them at all,

“I haven't seen nearly enough to know the sound”

or listener Josh was talking about. And so for help, I brought our supervising produced our Evan Chung into the conversation.

- So like, first of all, I wanted like,

proof of concept for Willah to show that Josh is not crazy. So here is, for example, the trailer for Jordan Peel's Us. - Who's Jason? - Tell me if this is sort of what you're thinking of. (dramatic music)

- Oh yeah, like right before the logo is like, that's exactly it. - Great, great, this is from season one of the X files. (dramatic music) - Oh yeah.

“- Okay, and this one more, this is not from a foreign movie,”

but because you mentioned spiders, here is classic scene from Raiders The Lost Ark. - See ya. (dramatic music) - With 100% like, creepy horror movie thing,

I've mentioned spiders, it's in Raiders with spiders. Like yeah, it's 100% the thing I'm thinking of. - Okay, so confirmed, Josh is not hallucinating. This sound really is baked into scary movies. And to figure out how that happened, where it came from,

I reached out to someone I thought might know. - Yeah, my name is Frankential, and historical musicologist at the University of Cologne, and one of Frank's areas of research is the music of horror films.

So I played him the scary sound effect video that Josh found on YouTube to see what it brought to mind. - Yeah, well, it's a very typical track which I know from many horror films. - But he recognized it from somewhere else too.

This is a kind of music which originated in the late '50s, early '60s, where composers experimented with composing in music totally different to what is familiar to us. - It turns out the answer to Josh's question

about what this sound is and where it comes from doesn't begin in the world of horror movies. A genre often derided as low-brow and shlocky.

in the world of post-war experimental avant-garde classical music.

“In the wake of the cataclysm that was World War II,”

many composers couldn't go back to the old forms. Tonal music, romantic music, it didn't make sense anymore. Not after the devastation in horror, they'd all just live through. - Many of the composers explicitly see their own music

as a social critique, always breaking taboo's,

always seeking for ways of making music which differ from what is established in society. - They began to experiment wildly with mathematical structures, with electronics. And with creating sounds like nothing ever heard before.

And in that goal, few were successful as the Polish composer, Christoph Pendoretski. - My avant-garde was very, very avant-garde. We were rebelling. - This is Pendoretski in a 2013 interview.

- We wanted the young people wanted to be different, to write, to forget the past, to build future. - Pendoretski seemingly did away with almost all the components that we think of as music. Things like melody, harmony, rhythm, meter.

Instead, what he focused on was texture. You can get a sense of what I mean by listening to Pendoretski's most famous piece, from 1961, named after a real life horror. It's called "Strenity for the Victims of Hiroshima"

and he begins with an instruction to all 52 string players. Essentially, to play the highest note they can as loud as possible. (upbeat music) Then it moves on to the next texture,

one that's quieter and kind of seasick. And soon comes a percussive texture, which I think he might recognize. Most people who are not specialized in music and most people aren't, they will think

“about the horror film instantly, I think.”

But when this sound, the sound Josh was curious about, shows up in a horror movie, Frank Hanchol clocks instantly where it came from originally. It sounds very much like Christoph Pendoretski. With his frenity for the victims of Hiroshima,

Pendoretski was sculpting a soundscape that would memorialize an active violence

never before witnessed by humanity.

And I think he succeeded. He made an eerie, disturbing, frightening sonic weave that no one had ever heard before. But why is it so unsettling? Why is it so effective at being creepy?

But that has a lot to do with how he actually makes that sound. And for that, I turn to Eli Spindell. Eli is the conductor of the string orchestra of Brooklyn, which just performed this piece in concert in April. - What drew me to it is, it is totally unique.

It's challenges you as a performer. It's kind of puzzle also. - So I asked him to come into our studio with his violin for a demonstration, because a key part of Pendoretski's sound

comes from having his musicians play their instruments on usually using what are called extended techniques.

- Extended techniques are basically playing the violin

in non-traditional ways, ways that you didn't learn in your Suzuki books, percussive ways that sound gritty or dirty or eerie and scary, and all that, like, playing wrong, essentially. - So it's starting with the stuff you are taught.

Like, what are the conventional ways,

“what are the basic ways that you learn how to play violin?”

- Sure, I mean, your basic bookstruck is a means of delivering the perfect amount of pressure, speed, and you're working with the contact point, which is where the hair of the bow hits the strings. Put it right between the bridge and the fingerboard,

you get that nice sound, you know. (eerie music) - But if you start to deviate from that perfect speed and pressure and contact point, things start to get a little funky.

Go to light, you get what's called floutondo. (eerie music) Just, you know, the bow floats over the thing, and that's using speed, but not pressure. And if you have pressure, but not speed, you get...

(eerie music) I should have given a warning to that. - So you're pressing hard, but like, bowing slowly. - Pressing hard and bowing slow gives you that. So that's kind of the various things that you can do

which is where the bow hits the strings,

“and the most common one, which goes way back,”

is so ponte cello, it means like on the bridge. You know, the bridge is the thing that's holding up the strings, and that gives it the kind of metallic edge. (eerie music) It kind of alienating effect or distortion kind of thing.

Those are accidents at the beginning that you were trying to avoid, but if you're doing an extended technique, they become things that you can work with. - And Christophe and Ratsky loved working with these things.

He didn't invent them all, even Beethoven used an extended technique here and there for a momentary decoration. But Pendoratsky made them the focus of the entire work, layering them

to create tone colors never heard before,

which meant he had to invent new ways to notate them, too. If you look at one of his scores, they don't really look like normal sheet music. They can look more like readouts of brain activity, which is actually what he based some of his music on.

Instead of giving the performers

“the usual staff marked with specific notes to play,”

he gave them a loose set of often cryptic instructions to follow. - He asks for a very slow vibrato with a one-quarter tone frequency difference produced by sliding the finger, so it will be like,

(upbeat music) - Pendoratsky asks you to play between bridge and tailpiece, that's the wrong side of the bridge. And he's telling you to do things like tremolo on it, which is when you move the bow very, very fast back and forth.

(chimes ringing) The next one is percussion effects, strike the upper sounding board of the violin with the nut or the fingertips, where you're just tapping. (chimes ringing)

- Physically tapping on just the wood itself. - Taping. - If I had fingernails, if I had longer fingernails, it'd sound to be different. You can also tap with the sort of the metal,

at the very end of your bow. People who have nice instruments really don't like to do this kind of thing. (chimes ringing) - You know, all kinds of just strange sounds,

which kind of probably when I'm playing it alone, don't sound like much, but you get 52 people doing that. It creates a kind of massive sound. That's totally unique. And that is what's going on

in those creepy spider-like moments. It's not any one thing. It's a bunch of string players divided into groups, each simultaneously executing a different sequence of plucking, tapping,

bowing in the wrong place, and striking the strings with the wrong side of the bow. Put it all together, and the effect is to make your skin crawl. (chimes ringing)

Pendratsky wasn't the only composer in the 50s and 60s experimenting with extended techniques and crafting ear-e-new soundscapes. But it's his music, more than anyone's, that would make the leap from the classical avant-garde

into the language of horror movies. But that wouldn't happen for another decade or so, not until the early 70s.

And while it's always hard to definitively point

to a single origin, there is at least a clear milestone movie. And that is the exorcist. (chimes ringing) I'll only planning to stay and ring it.

And he'll see rats and lice thinking in the ear. The director William Friedkin, said that he wanted the music in the movie to feel just like a presence, like a cold hand on the back of your neck,

which the Hollywood composer is he was meeting with, didn't seem to get. They were telling him their ideas that he said no, I'm looking for something else. Musicologist Frank Henshal again.

Actually, what you hear in the really uncanny moments, it's mostly Penderetsky. The music is rarely put up front for big scares, but rather it's hovering in the background of transitional scenes filled with mounting anxiety.

Like after a physician tells the mother of Reagan, the possessed girl, that they can find nothing physically wrong with her.

“- I think it's time we started looking for a psychiatrist.”

- That was a cut and you just see her driving home and you get a string quartet by Penderetsky. And this obviously depicts the uneasiness, the dreads, the mother feels, and the experience of something unexplainable.

- It never plays for very long in the exercise.

It's not yet the in your face creepy crawlies, but the movie soundtrack proved to be incredibly influential. Soon other filmmakers began to draw direct inspiration from it, and none more so, than Stanley Kubrick. - How are you, Lair?

Kubrick uses music not so differently from the exercises,

sparsely, quietly, to create a background atmosphere of looming dread. But then he goes to the opposite extreme entirely. And as the movie goes on, the music becomes more intense, Kubrick uses faster and louder music.

- I think we should discuss, Danny.

“I think we should discuss what should be done.”

- I mean, this movie has been called the horror opera. I think the last like 45 minutes, there's always music. 45 minutes of non-stop hand deratsky. Kubrick uses six different works by him in the movie.

Chopped up and collaged into a dense, overlapping assault of frantic activity. - Kubrick even uses two pieces by hand deratsky played at the same time. - Danny!

- What he wanted was stress, tempo, fear, and no moment of quietness in between. And this is really almost exhausting. - Once these chilling soundscapes

“had been unleashed into the world of horror”

by the exorcist, and especially by the shining, they were here to stay. And not just in the artsy films now, but in mainstream movies and shlaki ones too. You hear Pendoratsky inspired music all over

the insidious franchise, and in the conjuring universe. - And as for why? Why it's so effective in horror? Why it continues to make the hairs in the back of our next stand-up?

It's because it sounds so strange, yes, but strangeness alone doesn't make something horrific. A strange sound can be funny, even. Franchential beliefs that what actually makes Pendoratsky's music so chilling is that what's lurking underneath the surface

is less strange than we realize it first.

“- Because I think if you listen to it very closely,”

and analyze it, you find these hidden connections. They're somehow inscribed some elements from the music which is so familiar to us. - Through all the dissonance, a trace of tonality remains.

Out of the alien soundscapes come emotion, drama, expressiveness, and then there are the instruments, not new electronic inventions, but by aliens, violas, cellos. - It's still the traditional romantic orchestra, but then they start at what comes out of it

is not familiar at all. This mixture, this kind of very hidden, distorted familiar elements in the music, they produce this uncanny feeling. The critic Robinwood defined the horror film with this formula. Normality is threatened by the monster.

When we see a 12-year-old girl's body taking over by a demon, or ghosts lurking in the corridors of a luxury hotel, or when we hear unearthly shrieks and plunks emanating from a violin, it threatens what we consider to be explainable.

- I dischoice the order with which we experience and understand reality. And if that happens, then this moment of desorientation results and that leads to the uncanny. (dramatic music)

- When we come back, it's not uncanny, but it is annoying. Why when you call up a company?

Are they always telling you to pay attention

to their menu options? (speaking in foreign language) , or are they so like you? As a family, for two or just two or three years. Flexible, secure and always with the good feeling

that someone is coming from. (speaking in foreign language)

Erfolg, der auf unserer langjährigen Expertise

“und einer vertrauensvollen Partnerschaft basiert.”

Erfolg's Geschichten begin by der Commerzbank, then sprechen wir über ihre. More Infos unter commerzbank.de/effolksgeschichten. Business is in flux. AI and geopolitics are reshaping industries,

and competitors are emerging where you least expect. We are London Business School, where rigorous thinking meets real world impact. We accelerate transformation for organizations, preparing leaders to navigate complexity with confidence,

not just to lead, but to define the future. London Business School. See what we can do for your organization at London.edu. Our next question comes from the listener Nick Hollander

in Atlanta, Georgia, 'cause that's something annoying at him for years now. Here is something I've been wondering about. Why is it that when you call customer service

for virtually any company, the greeting always is,

please listen to our menu options because some of them may have changed. It's the same greeting for virtually every customer service line that you call. Please listen carefully as our menu options

have recently changed. It's just not possible that that would be true for every company that you ever called. It's always in the same cadence with the same prompt. Please listen carefully as our menu options have changed.

Please listen to the following. As our menu options have changed. Please listen carefully to the following menu options as they have changed. We know that's not true because I can call the company back

in a week and their menu options won't have changed. It doesn't make any sense.

“So my question is, why do companies persist in doing that?”

As soon as I heard Nick Hollander's question,

I was as puzzled as he is. Please listen carefully. Menu options have changed is one of the inescapable phrases of modern life, or at least being on hold, along with this call may be recorded

for quality assurance. One thing that's particularly bizarre about please listen carefully as the menu options have recently changed is that you would really have to call a number a lot of times for it to matter

that the menu options have changed. It's very presumptuous that I would have my pharmacies menu items memorized. Nick Green is a writer who's also irritated by this message. If you kind of think that we're fans of the call tree,

when we're really just trying to get help. Also even if you wore a fan or used it all the time and you got it wrong, what would be the big deal? Yeah, they're treating it like it's map directions and you get off the wrong exit, you know?

You're not going to be caught inside the phone

“for the rest of your life because you press the wrong button.”

You can hang up and try again. So the thing is also that I feel I so often end up in the wrong place because it's just like I just want to speak to someone and like it's impossible. But it's not because the options changed.

You know, that's like the least of my option. You just want to speak to a person. And my guess is 90% of people do it. I do it just mash as euro and hope that you say operator. Yeah, operator, operator, operator, operator.

Like an increasingly aggravated, horrific, mean voices. It's like all I do. It turns us into monsters. But you know what? At least we're listening carefully.

[MUSIC PLAYING] Next, smiling now, but in 2017, he heard the phrase, "Please listen carefully because our menu options have recently changed one to many times." That's when he decided to get to the bottom of it

in an article for sleep. I was trying to figure out two things. One would be how often do the menu items change. Right, like how the menu options really change. Yeah, how the options change.

I mean, they seem to suggest they are changing all the time. So I wanted to know exactly how much they change. And I also want to know if that isn't the case, why is this message there? So next, start of at the beginning.

Before this phrase could exist, we needed automated phone messages. A Nick found that pre-recorded messages were being tested at his early as 1957 in hotel rooms. Shared and included that as part of their automated morning wake-up calls.

When sleepy guests picked up the phone, they'd hear a recording of an operator telling them the time and weather and suggesting a breakfast menu in the hotel restaurant. But actually dialing a number and hearing menu options,

that wouldn't be possible until the 1960s when the old rotary phones, the kind with the big circular dial, began to be replaced with touch tone phones. What are you doing? I'm making a phone call.

I was on a touch tone phone. How did you know that? This is touch tone service. The newest fastest way to make a phone call. The technological innovations continued

into the 70s and the 80s when you saw the explosion of things like 1-800 numbers and automatic call distributors,

By the 90s, dialing up a customer service number and being met by a pre-recorded menu had become ubiquitous.

“In 1999, you start to see complaints popping up”

in newspaper columns and New Yorker cartoons about one phrase in particular. Please listen carefully as our menu options have changed. But even all the way back then, it wasn't clear if, in fact, menu options had changed.

In nearly 30 years later, that's still what Nick wanted to know. So to figure it out, he started making a bunch of phone calls.

First, they contacted a local pharmacy in town

that I knew had that message. And when I finally got to an operator, I asked them, "Hey, do you know when the last time your menu items have changed?" And they said, "I have no idea."

And then, about a week later, I decided to call again to see, well, maybe the menu items did change. They hadn't. So for his local pharmacy, at least, no changed menu. But Nick wanted to see if there was some more solid data

out there on phone menu changes overall. Nick, although a company called GetHuman, which monitors customer service lines that helps people navigate them. And the representative there told them

there are certain kinds of businesses that are known to change their menu options fairly frequently. - The companies that do it the most often, tend to be airlines and hotels, do do weather cancellations and things like that.

But they'll put that message right at the front. They won't say, "Oh, the menu items may have changed." They'll say, "This is the big change that the menu is going through right now." - So they're like, "It's a tornado hit one

if you need to rebook your flight." - Yeah, exactly, yes. But again, they don't have to advise you that the menu items might change because they're telling you the important stuff right up front.

“- So why are companies that are not airlines or hotels?”

Companies whose menu options have no reason to be changing all the time constantly telling us that they are?

- Next third step was to go to the source.

To call up the company's responsible for making the phone menus. - Thank you for calling Hold Calm. If you know your party's extension, please enter it now.

- And so we decided to give them a ring, too. - If you need assistance. - Looking for a friend. - This is Andy, can I help you? - Yeah, Andy, this is Willa Paskin from sleep.

- Yes, Willa. - Andy Benoche is the CEO of Hold Calm. We are a very niche company where we produce professional recordings, for businesses, for their phone systems,

whatever they need. - They're the people who actually record the voices you hear when you dial a company's customer service line. - I mean, we work with every brand possible, right? From large enterprise, Verizon Wireless

and NHL, hockey, but we also work with like mom and pops, you know, like automechanics and auto parts distributors and whatnot. Andy told me the work often starts with a client coming to him with a pre-written script

that they think is already to go. And he can only shake his head. - Because we see, you know, we get the scripts from these folks and they're like, this is what we want to say.

And then like, it's our job to kind of say like, do you really want to say this? Like, this is not, you know, the best. You know, don't say, please continue to hold or we appreciate your pace.

No, you're a robot. You don't appreciate your pace. And they just want to get to a person, you know? So totally. - So we are specifically concerned with, I think, you know, this phrase.

- Yes, I know the phrase. Please be advised, your menu options are changed. We recorded it a thousand times, I would say, you know, it's a common phrase, it's kind of gotten baked in, but we advise against it.

We think it's just kind of silly, wasted language. Like, how many people memorize a phone tree that they're going to be like, wait, it's not press one for sales anymore? Like, why are you changing this? Like, that's just so ridiculous, right?

And we're like, well, we advise that you don't put that in there. - So customers literally ask you like, we need to have menu options of change. - Yeah. - Why?

- Well, I feel like it's a little bit of the copycat game. Like, oh, well, this is what all the big guys are doing. Maybe I should do this too, you know?

“- Like, it's just a cliche, you should have.”

- Yeah, it's just become kind of like baked in type thing.

Why do you think this phrase started in the first place?

- Yeah, I think it was probably an attempt to make people listen to the options more. They probably were getting feedback. Like, people don't even listen to the options. They just press zero to get to the operator, right?

Like, hey, listen, these have changed. You need to pay attention to what we're saying here. - And maybe they're right, like, yeah. Because in my experience, I'm like, I don't want to listen.

I literally don't want to listen. Like, I just want to talk to someone, right? But then why wouldn't they just say, like, please listen closely? - I don't know.

Maybe there was one person in the room was like, should we give a reason why they should listen closely? - Like, because like, please listen closely. So condescending, they're like, we can't tell them to listen.

- I'll have to make it important.

Let's say things have changed. And they need to listen.

“So we started telling customers, this is just not working.”

Like, this is old school, sort of like, templated, scripting, you know, like, just remove that. (upbeat music) So the guy who advises companies on this phrase says it's counterproductive and useless

and there's no reason to use it. An Andy Benoche isn't the only expert who says so. When Nick Green was trying to figure out what was going on with this phrase, he spoke with a number of other phone menu companies

in addition to Andy's. They all said, not only have the menu options but likely not changed the message itself serves no real purpose anymore if it ever did.

Nick thinks it's nothing more than a cliche

that people feel they're supposed to include. - People will do things even when their pointless or explicitly advise against doing them because they think it's the thing everyone else is doing. It's acting like an unconscious bison

and a giant herd, Martin Quasifru to play and not knowing why they took a left at a certain place but are just doing it because they're following the well-tried path of those who've gone before them. - I like that you just play as your own metaphor

and so they're just like going with a lemon there. - Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's more known. (laughs) - The only reason we may soon be free

from these hack-need phrases, including pleaseless and closely, is that the phone tree making bison are all about to herd into AI, which will likely replace

“these stock sentences with a simple, how can I help you?”

Despite everything he now knows, Nick will still be all ears. - Did it change how you feel about them? These messages? - No, I still are still annoying

and I know they're pointless, but you know what? I'm kind of a rule follower. So I do find myself before mashing the zero button and screaming operator. I do give them the benefit down.

Do I do listen carefully? (upbeat music) - We'll be back with one more segment about a gesture. The versatile, the cutting, the ubiquitous, no wonder for all.

I roll. (upbeat music) - Sidemear at 150-year-old, begleited the comerzbank Kundin and Kundin with important financial decisions.

If you follow your experiences, you'll find your family or your financial plans. As you do, we take care of your ideas, plans and solutions for real success. The success of our long-awaited expertise

and a successful partnership is based on success. The success begins with the comerzbank, then we talk about your more information about the comerzbank.de/effelksgeschichten. - Business is in flux.

AI and geopolitics are reshaping industries and competitors are emerging where you least expect. We are London Business School where rigorous thinking meets real world impact. We accelerate transformation for organizations,

preparing leaders to navigate complexity with confidence, not just to lead, but to define the future. London Business School. See what we can do for your organization at London.edu.

- Our last question comes from our listener, Jade, and Brooklyn, who's curious about one of my favorite gestures. - I'm fascinated by the I-Roll.

“I think this is a truly brilliant and unique gesture.”

The I-Roll can be used in multitudes of ways as a sign of aggression or even as a weapon against aggression. And I think it's an excellent way to cut somebody down subtly while appearing to take the high road. I think it's also just a really funny gesture.

I love it when Liz Lemon describes her I-Roll as a masterpiece.

- First wedding I ever went to,

I was a flower girl from my Aunt Linda. When they said you may now kiss the bride, I did my first ever I-Roll. And today, I honor that little girl's I-Roll with this masterpiece.

(upbeat music) - I'm confident you're familiar with the I-Roll. Not only for media, but from life. I think I I-Roll at least once a day. So I can't say I'd ever actively wondered about it

until Jaypev. - What is the I-Roll? Where did it come from? Did somebody invent it? How did we all start knowing what it means?

And when did it start meeting? What it means today? (upbeat music) - Before tracking down the answer to this question, I assumed I-Rolling was ancient.

Like so ancient that cave kids rolled their eyes when cave parents asked them to clean their dens.

which came courtesy of an I-Roll expert and practitioner.

- Oh yes, who's I-Roll? Everyone I did it? - Rebecca Cliff did the Senior Lecturer

“in linguistics of the University of Essex.”

She began particularly interested in I-Roll and while watching a church service on the BBC, it was for the rebarial of the bones of King Richard III. - More than 500 years ago,

King Richard III was buried by Francis Kim Frire's a few guys from here. - It's a very, very unpromising environment for an I-Roll. You know, East Argy proper uptight royal ritual. - But there was someone in the front row

who turned to the person next to him and gave a massive I-Roll. And I thought, wow, that is something. And so I started collecting them. - When Rebecca says collecting them,

she means finding as many examples of the I-Roll in action as she possibly could. As I said, Rebecca's a linguist, but she focuses on a subset of the field, what is known academically as embodiment.

- What we think of as body language. - embodiments are all the gestures we use to communicate. Everything from shrugging to slapping your hand over your mouth and you've said something you shouldn't, and thousands more besides. - There's all sorts of things that are hugely expressive

and if we're face to face, we rely on seeing embodiments. - But because we have to see embodiments, they have to be studied differently than other areas of linguistics.

A voice recording, a transcript, it can't capture a shrug or an I-Roll. Only videos do that, which is why, after seeing, that it grew just I-Roll in the middle of a funeral for a long dead king, Rebecca started collecting them.

- Well, it's you still looking for them and just keeping your eye out. They pop up everywhere. - Soon, Rebecca was pouring over historical footage for I-Rolls, like in home movies going back to the 1970s

and looking for them also in online videos. There was Kate Middleton, rolling her eyes at a charity event in New York. There was Angela Merkel, I-Rolling, and Vladimir Putin at a G20 summit.

And there was journalist Anderson Cooper, doing one, while interviewing Trump's advisor, Kellyanne Conway on CNN. - But what I understand, in this kind of a letter,

“why not ask for a special prosecutor at this point?”

- She gave a very, very irrelevance response. - They're confating two things that don't belong together. Thanks to the trip down memory lane, I was on your show often last fall saying, "We were going to win Michigan

"and how we were going to do it."

So that was fun, but here's what happened today.

- But in the middle, I'm just in Cooper, does this my massive, I-Roll, and of course it went viral. You know, it was less than half a second, but some sharp-eyed viewer found it and put it out there. - As Rebecca looked at I-Rolls like this one,

and hundreds more besides, leveled at home on television at funerals, in disgust, impatience, to stain. She began to see a pattern. - The I-Roll turns out to be a protest,

a sort of off-the-record protest to something that should be settled down. - The I-Roll is an expression of dissatisfaction, aggravation, contempt, but it's not just those things. It has more purpose than that.

When you I-Roll, you want those feelings to be known. Anderson Cooper wanted people to know to see how he felt about Kellyanne Conway in that moment. - It's so effective and lethal. - In the sense we immediately know that here is protests,

disapproval, whatever, and it's over in half a second.

It's so fleeting. - It doesn't interrupt the flow of conversation. - Absolutely, yeah. - Like we're gonna play the Anderson Cooper Club and be like, there's nothing to hear.

- Totally, totally.

“That's why it's so beautifully collusive,”

that it doesn't necessarily disrupt the ongoing action, but it is available. It may not, of course, be visible to the person who you're targeting, but it's available to be seen by others. - This meaning of the I-Roll, as a responsive protest,

as something we do in response to the behavior of someone else, for others to observe. It's so embedded in our understanding of the gesture. The Rebecca Assum should be able to find a counts of it in historical writing.

Because film and video only go back so far when scholars of embodiment are looking into the history of a particular gesture, they scour older texts for corroborating descriptions. - The great novelists can catch these things

and trap them. - But as Rebecca began looking at old writing, some of it ancient, she discovered something surprising. I-Rolling, the physical act of showing the whites of one's eyes was mentioned quite often,

- So in the immediate, for example,

“when Dido prepares for suicide, she rolls her eyes.”

- With vivid spots distinguished with her face, red were her rolling eyes and discomposed her face. - Dido was not rolling her eyes because Ania's did something annoying. She's rolling her eyes in sadness,

in stress and fear. And then there's an example from Milton, in which I-Rolling seems to be a signifier of uncontrollable passion and lasciviousness. - In Paradise Lost,

he warns of tempting women who are made, quote, "only for the taste of lustful "appetence to troll the tongue and roll the eye." So aggression lusts definitely. - Last is not an aggravated form of protest.

Neither is terror, though that's exactly what the I-Roll is used to express in a story published by Charles Dickens in the 19th century. It described a woman on her deathbed as rolling her eyes fearfully.

“- In other words, in the historical record,”

the I-Roll was not a response to someone else's behavior. It was a manifestation of one's own inner state. - An expression of high emotion and inner torment, like sterile expression of an inner feeling. - And the I-Roll isn't just an expression

of big passionate feelings in ancient and classical texts. Into the 20th century, it continues to not mean what we think it does. In silent movies, you can see Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin flutteringly rolling their eyes

when a beautiful woman comes by. Or you could just crack open the 1963 bedtime classic where the wild things are. - They roared their terrible roars, and masked their terrible teeth, and rolled their terrible eyes.

- So it's a part of constellation of features really there, showing aggression.

- When do we start to see the first mentions of it

where it seems like it might be familiar to us? - What we do know is that if you just search on I-Rolls on Google Books, there's a huge spike in the 1980s, which is when it appears to be the first capture. - In fact, Rebecca found that in the 1980s,

the sustainable I-Roll was so new. Newspapers had to explain what it meant to their readers. - The Washington Post reported at a breakfast meeting in 1987 that the former defense secretary, Casper Weinberger,

was quote "shearfully rattling on," and some of his listeners are rolling their eyes upward in an unmistakable, oh brother expression. So the fact that that's explained, so just it wasn't an instantly familiar expression at the time.

So of course these days, we instantly recognise what it's doing. - But in 1987, like you needed to explain it. - Yes, yes. - I mean, I guess I just went under a score here

like what you're saying is basically,

it seems as if the I-Roll was not a common feature of how humans communicate before the 1980s. - Yes, the fact that it's become associated seriously with responsive behavior rather than expressive behavior, it's extraordinary.

- I asked Rebecca where she sought this relatively new, responsive usage of the I-Roll might have come from. She said that as with slang, it's likely that it was circulating long before it was observed in something like a newspaper.

And she pointed to an example in Zora Neil Hurston's classic 1937 novel, their eyes were watching God, and which the I-Roll seems to be getting closer to our contemporary understanding of it. Joe Roulder's cigar and his mouth

and Roulder's eyes away indifferently. Seeing this, it could well be sort of a slide towards the I-Roll's protest. - Hurston was black and so were most of her characters. African-Americans are famously generative

when it comes to language. So why not with body language, too? And there's another generative group of talkers that is also closely associated with the I-Roll. Teenage girls, it may be particularly

the valley girl. - Barth out, gag me the spoon, cross. - I asked Rebecca what she made of the idea of the I-Roll might have taken off with them.

“- I think the truth is, we just don't know,”

but when I was looking at I-Rolls, everyone produced them. What I've seen suggests it's not necessarily confined to girls and women, but women might fill themselves in context where they need to deploy it.

'Cause it's not the record way of doing a protest. I think the impression about teenage girls is because maybe parents register them a lot because they're in the context where they're being asked to do the dishes and respond in a particular way, right?

- Teenage girls perhaps more often than the rest of us find themselves in situations where they are required

That participation may come in the form of a chore,

“but it could just be having to partake it in interaction.”

Go to a gathering, listen to some mortifying adults, but teenagers do have a recourse, and so do the rest of us. We all have one weapon at hand. We have the I-Roll. It won't stop anything from happening,

but at least it can communicate how we really feel.

How could we ever have done without it? (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - This is Dakota Ring. I'm Will of Haskin.

“As ever, please consider signing up for Dakota Ring+.”

You get to hear our Dakota Rings back episodes

and skip all the ads and support the work that we do. No joke, it's really serious, and it really helps. You can join by going to the Dakota Ring show page on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or visit slate.com/dicoderringplus.

We appreciate it. This episode was produced by Katie Shepherd

“and Evan Chang, our supervising producer.”

Dakota Ring is also produced by me and Max Raidman. Mara Jacob is senior technical director. Special thanks to Nicole Holiday and Lay. Lay Hua lands a lotty whose website shaken, not stuttered, is a fantastic resource

about extended techniques for strings. If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to code, please email us at [email protected]. You can also call us now at our new Dakota Ring hotline. That number is 347-460-7281.

We love to hear from you guys and we'll see you in two weeks. (upbeat music) (speaking in foreign language) Business is in flux, AI and geopolitics are reshaping industries and competitors are emerging where you least expect.

We are London Business School, where rigorous thinking meets real world impact. We accelerate transformation for organizations, preparing leaders to navigate complexity with confidence, not just to lead, but to define the future.

London Business School. See what we can do for your organization at London.edu.