Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: A few weeks ago, when the leaves had just started
Speaker 2: to turn up here in Hudson, one of our revisionist
Speaker 2: history producers, Ben the daph Haffrey, came by the offices
Speaker 2: of Pushkin North in the grand tradition of revisionist history.
Speaker 2: He'd recently been flying around the country working on a
Speaker 2: story when an unexpected encounter got him thinking about something
Speaker 2: entirely different.
Speaker 3: I had a really unlucky day of travel a couple
Speaker 3: of weeks ago. I was in San Francisco and I
Speaker 3: was trying to get to Los Angeles. But I had
Speaker 3: to rebook my flight because of an urgent work meeting
Speaker 3: that got moved. And when I got to the airport,
Speaker 3: I realized i'd rebooked it two weeks after I was
Speaker 3: trying to fly and I was trying to save money.
Speaker 3: I got the cheapest ticket possible, so I could not
Speaker 3: change the fight, and so I just had to rebook
Speaker 3: on the cheap flight I could find, which was a
Speaker 3: Southwest flight from San Francisco to Los Angeles via Las Vegas,
Speaker 3: which makes no sense, absolutely no sense. So then I
Speaker 3: got on the air train going the wrong way. I
Speaker 3: wound up in this like median strip of the highway
Speaker 3: that was coming from a wedding, and my suit bag broke,
Speaker 3: my suit was flying all over the place, and just
Speaker 3: a bad luck day. But you know, I made the flight,
Speaker 3: wound up in Vegas and they had all these slot
Speaker 3: machines in the airport, just a dreadful airport. As you've
Speaker 3: recently pointed out, This was my first time in Vegas,
Speaker 3: and I had exactly one dollar in my pocket, and
Speaker 3: I thought, you know, my luck has been so bad,
Speaker 3: surely it's time for it to change. And so, having
Speaker 3: never played a slot machine before, I put the dollar
Speaker 3: in this like kung fu slot machine and just promptly
Speaker 3: lost it. Just lost my dollar entirely, so defeed it.
Speaker 3: I got on my flight on Southwest where they let
Speaker 3: you choose your seat, so I was just walking resignably
Speaker 3: down the aisle and then I see an open seat
Speaker 3: next to an off duty pilot, which suddenly made me
Speaker 3: think that my luck was changing, because I was like,
Speaker 3: here is a chance for me to finally ask a
Speaker 3: question that I have for a very long time been
Speaker 3: obsessed with answering. Yeah, why do all pilots have the
Speaker 3: same voice?
Speaker 2: Welcome to Revision's history, my show about things Overlooked and Misunderstood.
Speaker 2: Today's episode is a conversation with Ben Adaf Haffrey, digging
Speaker 2: into whether and why all pilots sound the same and
Speaker 2: what that might tell us about aviation and human nature.
Speaker 3: All Right, so I'm on this unnecessary flight from Vegas,
Speaker 3: Los Angeles, saying next to an off duty pilot who
Speaker 3: I had later learned was named Rob.
Speaker 1: Wait, how do you How do you know he's a pilot?
Speaker 3: So you know he's a pilot because he's got like
Speaker 3: the apolets on his shoulder, the stripes, short sleep button
Speaker 3: and shirt, and also a lanyard that said like Pilots
Speaker 3: Association or something like that. Yeah, you could, you could
Speaker 3: tell immediately. So I see my golden opportunity. And I
Speaker 3: asked Rob about pilot voice.
Speaker 4: Do you have a sense that all people think pilots
Speaker 4: have the same voice.
Speaker 5: I definitely have a sense that there's a idea that
Speaker 5: we kind of make certain noises on the intercome Jack,
Speaker 5: But it's this, I guess. My My first question to
Speaker 5: you is do you do you share this sense? If
Speaker 5: I were to ask you, what does a pilot sound like?
Speaker 5: Is there a voice in your mind?
Speaker 2: I mean, it's the it's the the analogy is to
Speaker 2: you know, in medicine, it's bedside manner, and what is
Speaker 2: bedside manner? A lot of bedside manner is just the
Speaker 2: the way in which the doctor addresses you.
Speaker 3: But there's not I don't feel like there is a
Speaker 3: doctor's voice in the same way as there is a
Speaker 3: pilot's voice. No, no, Like I think there's a cultural
Speaker 3: understanding of what a pilot sounds like that doesn't exist
Speaker 3: for hardly any other social role. I mean, so I
Speaker 3: was thinking about this. You have all these pilots in
Speaker 3: the media, like Quagmire on Family Guy.
Speaker 5: Good afternoon, ladies, and gentlemen.
Speaker 6: This is your captain, Glenn Quagmire.
Speaker 5: We're looking about a four and a half hour flight
Speaker 5: time today.
Speaker 3: Giggity Man Damon on thirty Rock, Well back.
Speaker 7: It looks like it's gonna be about another half hour
Speaker 7: and then we'll.
Speaker 8: Be on our way.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So the U sound is a universal component of pilot voice.
Speaker 3: Yeah, universal. And I mean this is the thing I
Speaker 3: talked about with Rob like he does OZ all the time. Okay,
Speaker 3: so where does that come from? I think there's some
Speaker 3: truth to it.
Speaker 5: I mean, obviously it sucks, completely true. But yeah, we're
Speaker 5: up there, we're multitasking, and we get get a little busy,
Speaker 5: and we're trying to make an announcement, and uh, you know,
Speaker 5: sometimes you don't really think about completely what you're gonna say.
Speaker 5: You know, the basics, but your brain's still putting it together,
Speaker 5: you know, so just human nature.
Speaker 3: You know, your brain's taking a pause. And in fact,
Speaker 3: he even copped to the fact that sometimes he does
Speaker 3: an extra long uh like he will actually draw out not.
Speaker 5: All right, I have a couple of times, not often,
Speaker 5: but I have kind of drawn that out on purpose
Speaker 5: whatever you would call that sound, just for fun, you know.
Speaker 5: But like you said earlier, I have no idea if
Speaker 5: anybody in the in the back laughed or even picked
Speaker 5: up what I was throwing down.
Speaker 3: You've like actually done an extra long uh ridiculously long.
Speaker 4: It's just enough to what's like an average line.
Speaker 5: Maybe, but you have to do it a little bit
Speaker 5: of a lower tone than that, though, you know, well,
Speaker 5: I just want like it's gotta have that lower lower tone.
Speaker 1: Oh God, rob Is, God said Rob Is. I.
Speaker 3: It had such a bad day. And then I sat
Speaker 3: next to Rob and I was like, I am I
Speaker 3: am being blessed right now. And I got off the
Speaker 3: plane and I swear to God. When I was at
Speaker 3: the baggage claim, I walked by these two people who
Speaker 3: were talking in LA and one of them was saying
Speaker 3: to the other person like, well, you know the ancient
Speaker 3: notion of the wheel at fortune right, And the guy
Speaker 3: was like, no, what's that. He's like, well, it's like
Speaker 3: Fortune's a wheel, so you have like your bad luck,
Speaker 3: and then it comes around to good lock. I swear
Speaker 3: to God. I just I was like, what is good
Speaker 3: you like die in Las Vegas? And then like this
Speaker 3: is just purgatory is bouncing between these two airports. But
Speaker 3: then when I landed in Los Angeles, I was like,
Speaker 3: I should actually figure out if it's just me having
Speaker 3: watched too many movies and not flown in enough planes,
Speaker 3: and talk to some people and see what they say.
Speaker 3: What does a pilot sound like?
Speaker 4: What does a pilot sound like? Yeah? Like is there
Speaker 4: a pilot's voice? Yes, it's going and robotic. It's used
Speaker 4: for impersonation. Oh you're gonna do it.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry ladies and gemen, please fasten your seatbelts. Apologize
Speaker 3: for the rough air, but we should be through it
Speaker 3: here in about ten minutes or so.
Speaker 8: And then you got to drag them out, like, aw,
Speaker 8: we should be riding about ten minutes or so.
Speaker 4: All the time is seven o'clock. All this consistent when
Speaker 4: you're when you're a sense of the pilot's worse. She'd right,
Speaker 4: it's like robotic.
Speaker 9: Typically they sound the same.
Speaker 6: I don't know how or why.
Speaker 10: Is it just they've heard other pilots do it and
Speaker 10: they feel this is how I've got to talk.
Speaker 4: What I'm wondering is like, do all pilots sound the same? Yes?
Speaker 4: They do? They do?
Speaker 1: They always say folks, folks.
Speaker 10: Yes, I think in general, yes, they have like the
Speaker 10: same type of tone, and they're all like pretty polished
Speaker 10: like whenever they come on like on like on the planet,
Speaker 10: like Banacom or whatever, they all sound the same.
Speaker 4: What does a pilot sound like.
Speaker 10: Like a robot?
Speaker 4: Do you think all pilots sound the.
Speaker 10: Same, Yes, except for the black ones.
Speaker 4: Except the ones? Interesting? What did they sound like? Lat
Speaker 4: and the rest sound.
Speaker 11: Like yo people?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Wait a minute, you know about what Tom Wolfe says
Speaker 2: about this and the right stuff.
Speaker 1: It's Jaeger. It's all Chuck Yeger.
Speaker 3: Yeah, racking the.
Speaker 9: Sound barrier, and the X one marked another milestone in
Speaker 9: av ah in history Good Time October fourteenth, nineteen forty seven,
Speaker 9: No Pilots Captain and.
Speaker 3: Chuck Jeger Chuck Yeger, the famous test pilot from West
Speaker 3: Virginia who in nineteen forty seven breaks the sound barrier.
Speaker 3: The X one was mine because I was trained in
Speaker 3: maintenance and I understood systems, and obviously he could fly
Speaker 3: an airplane. So Yeah, Tom Wolf writes The Right Stuff
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy nine. Later it becomes a big movie, and
Speaker 3: he identifies this phenomenon that all pilots sound the same
Speaker 3: and specifically attributes it to the sounding like Chuck Yeger.
Speaker 2: And in The Right Stuff, there's that moment where Yeah,
Speaker 2: played by Sam Shefferd says when he's dismissing astronauts, they're
Speaker 2: spam in a can.
Speaker 1: And it's pilot voice.
Speaker 2: Tell you what else.
Speaker 7: Anybody goes up and the damn thing is gonna be
Speaker 7: spam in a can.
Speaker 3: Actually brought the passage from the Right Stuff if you
Speaker 3: want to read.
Speaker 2: It, Okay, here goes Anyone who travels very much on
Speaker 2: airlines in the United States soon gets to know the
Speaker 2: voice of the airline pilot coming over the intercom with
Speaker 2: a particular drawl, a particular folksiness, a particular down home
Speaker 2: calmness that is so exaggerated it begins to parody itself.
Speaker 2: The voice that tells you, as the airliner is caught
Speaker 2: in thunderheads and goes bolting up and down a thousand
Speaker 2: feet at a single gulp, to check your seatbelts because
Speaker 2: it might get a little choppy. Who doesn't know that voice,
Speaker 2: and who can forget it even after he has proved
Speaker 2: right and the emergency is over. That particular voice may
Speaker 2: sound vaguely Southern or Southwestern, but it is specifically Appellationian
Speaker 2: in origin. It originated in the mountains of West Virginia,
Speaker 2: in the coal country in Lincoln County, so far up
Speaker 2: in the hollows that as the saying went, they had
Speaker 2: to pipe in daylight. In the late nineteen forties and
Speaker 2: early nineteen fifties, this up hollow voice drifted down from
Speaker 2: on high, from over the high desert of California, down down, down,
Speaker 2: from the upper reaches of their brotherhood into all phases
Speaker 2: of American aviation. It was amazing. It was pygmalion in reverse.
Speaker 2: Military pilots and then soon airline pilots, pilots from Maine
Speaker 2: and Massachusetts and the Dakotas in Oregon and everywhere else,
Speaker 2: began to talk in that poker hollow West Virginia drawl,
Speaker 2: or as close to it as it could bend their
Speaker 2: native accents. It was the drawl of the most righteous
Speaker 2: of all the possessors of the right stuff.
Speaker 1: Chuck ying the Tomolf is so.
Speaker 3: Just amazing, so good.
Speaker 1: He's just it's just like it's Tumolf is just the best.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I like that. He's just you know, he
Speaker 3: was not in airports asking everybody if they agreed that
Speaker 3: all pilots sounded this way. He was just like, yeah,
Speaker 3: I got it. But I don't actually think that's a
Speaker 3: sufficient explanation for what pilot voice is, partially because like,
Speaker 3: when was the last time you you listened to Chuck Yeger.
Speaker 1: I don't think I ever have.
Speaker 3: I know, Sam Shepard, it's not the pilot voice. I
Speaker 3: believe there's some essential Jaeger nests that is preserved in
Speaker 3: the pilot's voice, but it's not like a note for
Speaker 3: note replication of that thing.
Speaker 2: You I'm as interested in a word choice. So folks
Speaker 2: is clearly.
Speaker 3: Huge there's a Someone at LAX also pointed this out specifically.
Speaker 2: What are other vocabulary choices that are central to pilot voice?
Speaker 3: Well, I think the euphemisms are huge. So the near
Speaker 3: miss Bumpierre, Choppier.
Speaker 2: Diminutives a little bit of turbulent, It got a little
Speaker 2: bit of Ye, it's not lackadaisical, but it is. They
Speaker 2: want to they do want to signal that these problems
Speaker 2: are so trivial that they can barely muster, you know,
Speaker 2: normal levels of enthusiasm to It's just everything's just kind
Speaker 2: of I've seen it all before, kind of Yeah, there's
Speaker 2: a Can I do a little thing about the evolutionary
Speaker 2: basis for a pilot voice? So stress, one of the
Speaker 2: things that stress does is raise your voice. Right, So
Speaker 2: one of the signatures of someone who is under a
Speaker 2: great deal of stress, for experiencing a high anxiety moment,
Speaker 2: is their voice rises in is it pitch?
Speaker 3: It's also probably like I bet your vocal cords titan,
Speaker 3: and then you become less resonant.
Speaker 2: Yes, So I would suspect there's and so we're conditioned
Speaker 2: evolutionarily to interpret somebody with a kind of a high
Speaker 2: fast speech cadence as being terrified. So the pilot necessarily
Speaker 2: has to be the person who speaks slowly and low
Speaker 2: if he's trying to communicate calm.
Speaker 3: You think you think people are you're you think people
Speaker 3: are making hires based in part on whether or not
Speaker 3: you have the right pilot voice.
Speaker 2: We already know that in every other job some aspect
Speaker 2: of physical presentation matters hugely and who gets who gets
Speaker 2: hired or not right, So when it comes to hiring pilots,
Speaker 2: you would be if you're the hiring person even unconsciously
Speaker 2: powerfully disposed to hire someone who who conformed to pilot stereotype.
Speaker 2: I mean, look at the way that there was a
Speaker 2: whole separate set of things for years that governed what
Speaker 2: a stewardess.
Speaker 1: Was supposed to be.
Speaker 2: A flight atten was supposed to be right, it was
Speaker 2: right down. They would like measure there. They would do
Speaker 2: body measurements of women who are trying to be flood
Speaker 2: attens in the You had to look a certain way,
Speaker 2: have a certain shape, you know, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. We
Speaker 2: don't think that applies to pilots, the one actually flying
Speaker 2: the plane.
Speaker 3: Well, like a lot of the pilot voice thing, the
Speaker 3: first thing people say is is just the speakers. And
Speaker 3: the second thing people say is is because they're all
Speaker 3: white guys.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the most hierarchical institutions in our society are still
Speaker 2: all dominated by white guys, particularly tall, tall, middle aged
Speaker 2: white guys. That's what CEOs are, That's what pilots are,
Speaker 2: that's what neurosurgeons are, that's what you know presidents are.
Speaker 1: That's what I make it go on.
Speaker 3: It's like, yeah, the same stereotyping and bias is applied
Speaker 3: in piloting, and it is statistically true, like about ninety
Speaker 3: five percent of pilots are white and about ninety five
Speaker 3: percent of pilots are male, at least as of twenty
Speaker 3: twenty two numbers. That is changing, but historically it has
Speaker 3: always been a very white male profession and it continues
Speaker 3: to be so. But like, not every white guy sounds
Speaker 3: the same. And similarly, a lot of pilots were in
Speaker 3: the Air Force, but not every veteran sounds the same.
Speaker 3: So this has some explanatory force, but not total explanatory force.
Speaker 3: There's still some weird extra kind of convergence happening even
Speaker 3: within this group. So this is where I think this
Speaker 3: all leaves us. There is an idea at least that
Speaker 3: there is a pilot voice. Tom Wolfe says it's Jeger,
Speaker 3: But I really don't think it's enough to say that
Speaker 3: all pilots are imitating Chuck Yeger. I mean, it is
Speaker 3: clear to me that there's an attitude of Jaeger that
Speaker 3: has been preserved, but it's not really his voice. And
Speaker 3: I mean Rob had not even heard Chuck Yeger.
Speaker 5: I certainly don't know what his voice sounded like. I can't,
Speaker 5: I can't think of it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I.
Speaker 5: Don't think it was anything that I consciously was doing.
Speaker 5: But I think you've got me thinking maybe I dropped
Speaker 5: my voice down a pitch. I think I do they
Speaker 5: even realize?
Speaker 3: So something's up. It's not just Chuck Yeger. What I'm
Speaker 3: interested in is what does that voice represent and how
Speaker 3: did it happen that they all sound alike.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back. Can do another analogy here, believe.
Speaker 2: So I was thinking about this as you're talking, which
Speaker 2: is there's a whole literature on contrition in the cases
Speaker 2: of accused criminals. So you're in court, you're making your statement,
Speaker 2: or you're talking and jury's listening. One of the things
Speaker 2: that jury's way that heaviest is whether or not they
Speaker 2: feel like the accused is displaying contrition. Right, they have
Speaker 2: an expectator, there's an expectation about a certain mode of
Speaker 2: self presentation. Now, no one really knows what contrition looks like.
Speaker 2: Is there actually isn't you know? We know what happiness
Speaker 2: looks like, we know what anxiety looks like, we know
Speaker 2: what anger looks like. We don't really know what contrition
Speaker 2: looks like. All we know is that contrition is really, really,
Speaker 2: really important, and in its absence, juries deliver much harsher penalties,
Speaker 2: much more likely to call you guilty, or the judge
Speaker 2: is much more like col to give you a long sentence.
Speaker 2: So there's a kind of this is there's a feedback
Speaker 2: loop between the party that's giving a presentation and the
Speaker 2: part is listening, And I wonder what the pilot is
Speaker 2: expected to communicate? Is competence and reassurance? Right now? Do
Speaker 2: we have a formal definition of what those things are?
Speaker 2: Not really known, not not any more than we do
Speaker 2: for contrition. But that doesn't mean that we don't spend
Speaker 2: a huge amount of time communicating it. And we kind
Speaker 2: of know it when we you know, this is a
Speaker 2: vague thing that we know of when we see it.
Speaker 2: People certainly can say he did not you hear all
Speaker 2: the time Jerry's saying it.
Speaker 1: Did not seem right? Contrite right?
Speaker 2: Anyway, This is all like a long way of saying,
Speaker 2: is there is this? Like I would just I agree
Speaker 2: with everything I say, I would just say I would
Speaker 2: add this that it's a loop with the audience expectation.
Speaker 3: Well, so there are these clear ingredients in the pilot
Speaker 3: voice as it's used by pilots and expected by passengers.
Speaker 3: You got the drawn out oz, the slow pace, maybe
Speaker 3: a bit of southern drawl. But I want to get
Speaker 3: into the mechanisms by which a whole profession could converge
Speaker 3: on a specific voice. So I talked to this speech psychologist,
Speaker 3: Jennifer S. Pardo, who's the director of the Speech Communication
Speaker 3: Laboratory at Montclair State University, you know, called her up,
Speaker 3: said I want to talk to you about pilot voice.
Speaker 3: Ever hear of it?
Speaker 8: I actually asked my husband about it yesterday. He used
Speaker 8: to actually do flight training for a while, just you know,
Speaker 8: as a hobby, and he said, oh, yeah, there's definitely
Speaker 8: definitely pilot voice. Well, what did he and he's like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 8: it's totally from Chuck Yeager. Yeah, he definitely felt like
Speaker 8: there was I wouldn't say pressure, but he definitely felt
Speaker 8: the need to get into this mode of speaking when
Speaker 8: he was in flight training, to you know, to show
Speaker 8: that he was.
Speaker 11: Part of the group here. I was like, really, why
Speaker 11: did you never.
Speaker 1: Tell me this?
Speaker 3: So Jen specifically works on something called phonetic convergence and
Speaker 3: also communication accommodation theory, which is basically it's this, it's
Speaker 3: a theoretical frame for a thing that most of us experienced.
Speaker 3: Like you go to London as an American, You're there
Speaker 3: for two weeks, and by the end of the two weeks,
Speaker 3: you start maybe there's some British mannerisms work their way
Speaker 3: out your speech. Communication accommodation is the study of the
Speaker 3: way what the mechanism of that is, how you sort
Speaker 3: of modify your way of speaking to belong to an
Speaker 3: in group or to distinguish yourself from an out group.
Speaker 3: And for pilots, it's something that could be happening basically
Speaker 3: unwinningly because of how much else they're doing in the cockpit.
Speaker 8: So research and pinetic convergence is trying to really pinpoint
Speaker 8: some of these internal cognitive mechanisms and how they play
Speaker 8: around with each other, and this idea of cognitive load
Speaker 8: and multitasking. Right, if it's an automatic process, it's something
Speaker 8: that would be harder to suppress when you're multitasking.
Speaker 3: Jen studies this. So she actually looked at like roommates
Speaker 3: who live together in college and their does the way
Speaker 3: they speak converge over the course of a semester, which
Speaker 3: often it does, But she said an interesting thing, which
Speaker 3: is we tend to think of communication as a one
Speaker 3: way thing, like broadcasting functionally, but it is it is
Speaker 3: a two way thing. So half of it is how
Speaker 3: you're communicating. Half of it is how you're being perceived.
Speaker 8: Like if you really were to look at it, like
Speaker 8: really really look at it, like take you know, take
Speaker 8: a recording, compare the recording right to other recordings, put
Speaker 8: it in a scientific setting, in a scientific experiment, you'd
Speaker 8: probably find more differences than similarities, but the similarities matter
Speaker 8: maybe more. Right, So there is this other thing going
Speaker 8: on where socially or psychologically, because we believe it to
Speaker 8: be true, we look for evidence that it's true every
Speaker 8: time we hear it. And if we don't get the
Speaker 8: evidence from one aspect of the way the person is talking,
Speaker 8: we might see it in another aspect of the way
Speaker 8: that the person is talking right. If it's not there
Speaker 8: in the vocabulary, it might be there in something about
Speaker 8: the sentence structure. Or it might just be that they
Speaker 8: all went up right. It could just be one little
Speaker 8: thing that they're all doing and we're like, Okay, they
Speaker 8: did it right, they did the thing.
Speaker 3: I do think that is a crucial element to the
Speaker 3: pilot voice thing. Of course, it's not true that all
Speaker 3: pilots have exactly the same voice, But insofar as the
Speaker 3: majority of people I've spoken to, most people you come
Speaker 3: across on the street, if you ask them this question,
Speaker 3: what does a pilot sound like? Have the same voice
Speaker 3: in their mind? Some of that is just projection. And
Speaker 3: I think it's projection from a place of needing security.
Speaker 3: Having the question in the back of your mind of
Speaker 3: your pilot, that Tom Wolf question, do they have the
Speaker 3: right stuff? Yeah? And so there is that kind of
Speaker 3: that's that's part of this projection thing you're referring to
Speaker 3: as well, like the expectation thing. But it's interesting because
Speaker 3: you see and interact with flight attendants, but you typically
Speaker 3: do not see the pilot until the plane has safely landed,
Speaker 3: so the only point of contact you have with your
Speaker 3: pilot until then is the voice. Yeah, which they're also
Speaker 3: aware of. And also it's this, it's this crazy situation
Speaker 3: of they are speaking the several hundred people, all of
Speaker 3: whom have some kind of background anxiety about flying, which is,
Speaker 3: you know, in my opinion, just a completely unnatural thing
Speaker 3: to do, Like we were not given wings for a reason,
Speaker 3: so you're rocketing through the air in this metal tube
Speaker 3: and human error is the number one cause of plane accidents.
Speaker 3: So you only have the pilot's voice as a way
Speaker 3: of judging how competent this person is at their actual job,
Speaker 3: which is something they also are aware of. I actually
Speaker 3: talked to a captain who named Karen, who's been flying
Speaker 3: for a few decades, and she was perfect for this because,
Speaker 3: in addition to being a captain, she teaches that something
Speaker 3: called the Fear of Flying Clinic, which is ironic because.
Speaker 11: My last name is not a great pilot thing, so.
Speaker 12: You want to my last name is Stall and even
Speaker 12: though there's an age in it, it sounds the exact same,
Speaker 12: so people will hear.
Speaker 11: So I never say this is Captain Stall.
Speaker 9: I always say this is the captain speaking, but I
Speaker 9: always break that up just so that if there is
Speaker 9: someone back there who's feeling the you know, nervous about flying,
Speaker 9: that can be like, Okay, that's a sign I gotta
Speaker 9: get out.
Speaker 3: Of here, Captain Stall. Yeah, that's that's really unfortunate.
Speaker 1: I met. It's hilarious.
Speaker 3: Captain Stall airline pilot, also an expert on why people
Speaker 3: are terrified of flying, something she can empathize with because
Speaker 3: she herself really dislikes public speaking. Can I ask when
Speaker 3: you were starting, did you feel when you made your
Speaker 3: first PA's okay, I know what a pilot's supposed to
Speaker 3: sound like, and how do I do my version of
Speaker 3: the voice or how conscious were you of this thing?
Speaker 9: Oh?
Speaker 12: I was terrified because I would imagine everybody's listening tuned
Speaker 12: in and going, oh my gosh, who is that? And
Speaker 12: her voice doesn't sound like what I'm expecting up there?
Speaker 12: And also not even just that, I just wasn't comfortable
Speaker 12: with a microphone in my hand. So I guarantee you
Speaker 12: my voice was not reassuring when I was making my
Speaker 12: first feel because I was too nervous. I was very
Speaker 12: comfortable with the flying part, but not with them making.
Speaker 12: I would also say it's always the male that you
Speaker 12: hear as a pilot voice when when somebody's talking about
Speaker 12: the pilot voice. So that's one thing about, you know,
Speaker 12: being a woman in this job is trying to get
Speaker 12: that voice out there for the girls and for them,
Speaker 12: for the boys, for just people in general, to know
Speaker 12: it's not all just guy's flying point.
Speaker 2: You know, she has a great voice, doesn't she.
Speaker 3: She does have a great voice.
Speaker 1: She's funny too, though.
Speaker 2: I wonder what I wonder is what, like, do we
Speaker 2: like the fact that she seems to have a little
Speaker 2: bit of a sense of humor.
Speaker 1: I think we do.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I feel like there is a certain kind of
Speaker 3: humor that's not trying to make you laugh, but it
Speaker 3: shows that the person finds the situation amusing. It's like
Speaker 3: more a reflection of the fact that they're kind of
Speaker 3: amused by everything than that they're you know, trying to
Speaker 3: be a median or something. You just you want somebody.
Speaker 3: You want somebody who's got like a pretty upbeat view
Speaker 3: of the world and is unharried.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right, Yeah, she has that. That is that
Speaker 2: kind of one eyebrows slightly raised.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like she gets what's funny about her name, for instance.
Speaker 3: But where it leads to me is it does seem
Speaker 3: like there's an awareness in pilots that you have to
Speaker 3: communicate competence sound like a pilot, because you're answerable to
Speaker 3: the people on the back who don't have any other
Speaker 3: way of telling if you're doing a good job, like
Speaker 3: they don't know at all what it means to fly
Speaker 3: the plane, right, yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 11: And then in terms of conveying to people, one thing
Speaker 11: that I've found it's very helpful for people to hear
Speaker 11: your voice when there is triberlains because people just want
Speaker 11: to hear your voice and then they can go like,
Speaker 11: oh o good. So for me, it's just trying to be.
Speaker 12: Natural and comfortable and making pas that are reassuring to people.
Speaker 3: That's the goal.
Speaker 1: It's going to be.
Speaker 7: More what the message is and the tone of voice
Speaker 7: so that it's not something that's going to make somebody fearful,
Speaker 7: just in the fact that if my voice sounded fear
Speaker 7: inducing in some way.
Speaker 3: But then the question I had after Gen Pardo and
Speaker 3: Captain Stall is how are all these pilots arriving at
Speaker 3: essentially the same answer for how to convey these basic
Speaker 3: assurances with their voice. And I talked to a pilot
Speaker 3: who said that everything in flying is either technique or procedure,
Speaker 3: and that most of flying is procedure, including you know,
Speaker 3: when you're descending you call out the altitude at certain points,
Speaker 3: or when you put the gear down you say gear down.
Speaker 3: It's like you say a specific thing at a certain moment.
Speaker 3: That's procedure. Technique is things like we have to lose altitude.
Speaker 3: There's a number of ways a pilot could do that.
Speaker 3: But also it's communicating with your passengers. There is no
Speaker 3: script or set of things that you have to do
Speaker 3: when communicating with the passengers for something that they are
Speaker 3: guidelines or samples of what you might say, but it's
Speaker 3: not so strictly prescribed as other parts of flying are.
Speaker 3: So part of what I think is going on here
Speaker 3: is these are intensely rule bound people who are used
Speaker 3: to following standard operating procedure and nearly everything that they do.
Speaker 3: They know it's a really high stakes job. They know
Speaker 3: that communicating with the passengers is a really high stakes thing,
Speaker 3: and so when they speak to the passengers, it's like
Speaker 3: it's procedure masquerading as technique, and they're actually in their
Speaker 3: minds like reaching for what does a pilot sound like?
Speaker 3: What does a pilot say? This sort of thing that's
Speaker 3: totally unnecessary, but it is a kind of competence theater.
Speaker 2: So why is Tom Cruise allowed to break all the
Speaker 2: pilot rules?
Speaker 3: Why is Maverick allowed to?
Speaker 1: In general?
Speaker 2: Though Tom Cruise even a mission impossible? You know, he
Speaker 2: instead of playing the kind of cool, calm, unflappable, he's
Speaker 2: always sprinting madly from one thing to the next, and like,
Speaker 2: but it's a persona that he brings to one movie
Speaker 2: after another, including his pilot roles, where he gets to
Speaker 2: deviate from what we normally he's a hero who gets
Speaker 2: to he's essentially a jackass in these movies.
Speaker 3: Well, Tom Cruise plays Tom Cruise. I mean, like that's
Speaker 3: the part of it is, like you just know it's
Speaker 3: him in every role, and there is this kind of
Speaker 3: I remember there's there's one I forget what movie they
Speaker 3: were reviewing. I think it was a New York Times
Speaker 3: review of a Tom Cruise movie. It's like, this has
Speaker 3: nothing to do with the pilot thing, but so much
Speaker 3: of the cultural narrative around him right now is he's
Speaker 3: the last movie star. Like he cares so much about movies.
Speaker 3: He's going to do all his own stunts and get
Speaker 3: us to come back to the theater just by his charisma
Speaker 3: because he has that thing that we've lost from our
Speaker 3: culture in all of this, you know, Marvel movie mayhem.
Speaker 3: But the fact is Tom Cruise used to be really charming,
Speaker 3: like it used to be in the eighties. I feel
Speaker 3: like eighties and nineties Cruise was really charming on screen.
Speaker 3: And now he is functionally just a Marvel movie but
Speaker 3: in human form, like he does the Marvel thing, but
Speaker 3: just with his own body as opposed to with VFX.
Speaker 3: He just is kind of an impressive athlete.
Speaker 2: Well he's but this this does tell you what we're
Speaker 2: talking about because his part of a key part of
Speaker 2: his persona is visible effort, yes, right, whereas what we
Speaker 2: want pilot voice is about invisible effort.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 1: Yes, the pilot never lets on that he is.
Speaker 2: He never says, folks, you know we got a we
Speaker 2: got an intense next ten minutes. I'm not going to
Speaker 2: talk to you because I'm gonna be so overwhelmed with
Speaker 2: what I'm doing but we're gonna we're gonna try really hard,
Speaker 2: and I'm sick. We're gonna pull this out like gotta go.
Speaker 2: Like Tom Cruise essentially is saying, can't talk now, gotta go,
Speaker 2: got to solve this problem, like all right, I'm talking
Speaker 2: about it, you know, Whereas like that's the antithesis. It's
Speaker 2: only he's allowed to do that. Everyone else has got
Speaker 2: to do pilot.
Speaker 3: I think that's true. And also I think this is
Speaker 3: part of what's going on with the UH. Yeah, the UH.
Speaker 3: One explanation for it is they get all the information
Speaker 3: that they're reading out to the passengers, all the unnecessary
Speaker 3: information nobody cares about, like, oh, that's like too many knots.
Speaker 3: I wish there were fewer knots. And when the New
Speaker 3: York City like it, they are translating it in some
Speaker 3: cases from whatever code it's in, and they're thinking, and
Speaker 3: they don't want to let they don't want to let
Speaker 3: dead air happen, so they just stretch out the UH.
Speaker 3: So the UH is when some sort of mental effort
Speaker 3: is taking place, but it's not being disclosed.
Speaker 2: Why you assume the AH was just a deliberate affectation
Speaker 2: to suggest that they are in a hurry.
Speaker 3: I think that's what it is. But it also fills
Speaker 3: space when they are doing something else. Yeah, so it's
Speaker 3: it's yeah, yeah, so I think there is. There's a
Speaker 3: few things going on to the UH. I think a
Speaker 3: lot of it is this communication accommodation theory thing. It's
Speaker 3: like that is you're doing with your voice. I am
Speaker 3: part of an in group, and you notice, I mean
Speaker 3: a lot of people I asked about the pilot voice thing,
Speaker 3: They're like, well, it's just the speakers. It's the it's
Speaker 3: the phones and headsets and the speakers. I don't think
Speaker 3: it is true that that thins out the voice. But
Speaker 3: everyone you hear on a plane is speaking through the
Speaker 3: same speaker, the same technology, and they don't all sound
Speaker 3: the same. So I think there's a kind of like
Speaker 3: the pilot also, only with their voice. It's like vocal apulettes,
Speaker 3: like they've got to show with their voice that they
Speaker 3: are not other crew members. And then it's us also,
Speaker 3: you know, orally auditioning them of like can you can
Speaker 3: you fly this thing?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've got a few more questions, but let's take
Speaker 2: a short break then and then we'll be right back.
Speaker 1: Okay, we're back.
Speaker 3: I do. There's there's one other thing that that's interesting
Speaker 3: to me. Are you familiar with the sterile Cockpit Rule gone.
Speaker 3: This is a regulation that came about after a famous
Speaker 3: crash in nineteen seventy four. This is actually this is
Speaker 3: the plane that Stephen Colbert's father and two of his
Speaker 3: brothers were on when it crashed.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: And when the regulators reviewed the fight records, listened to
Speaker 3: the block box. One of the things they concluded is
Speaker 3: that they were the crew was distracted by conversation and
Speaker 3: specifically by small talk. I think the line is something
Speaker 3: like on everything from used cars to politics. And this
Speaker 3: was one of a series of accidents that had happened
Speaker 3: in this way, and so in response to this, the
Speaker 3: FAA created a rule or a set of rules called
Speaker 3: that are colloquially known as the sterial Cockpit Rule, which
Speaker 3: is just about what it takes to create a distraction
Speaker 3: free environment in the cockpit during crucial moments of flight.
Speaker 3: To this day, most of the violations of the sterile
Speaker 3: Cockpit Rule are conversation. So there's like like this, this
Speaker 3: is why citation this very senior captain was about to
Speaker 3: leave on a scuba diving trip and talked NonStop to
Speaker 3: his female jump seat rid upon discovering she was also
Speaker 3: a diver. This altitude deviation could have been prevented entirely
Speaker 3: if this particular captain had paid attention to his job
Speaker 3: and observed some approximation of the stial cockpit below ten
Speaker 3: thousand feet. This, I think feeds into the technique versus
Speaker 3: precedure thing of if you are a pilot, you are
Speaker 3: aware that even though what you say to the passengers
Speaker 3: is not scripted and rule bound, your communication is an
Speaker 3: incredibly high stakes thing, which I think is another factor
Speaker 3: in why you might sort of subconsciously reach for a
Speaker 3: cultural script about how you should sound and what you
Speaker 3: should say. And it's partially because you know this is
Speaker 3: your captain speaking, so much of the voice is about
Speaker 3: projecting authority over this mini society in the air.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and made even more pronounced by the fact that
Speaker 2: post nine to eleven now the pilot's not allowed to
Speaker 2: leave the cockpit. So pre nine elevee you saw the pilot.
Speaker 2: He was often standing by the door when you came in,
Speaker 2: and he was most definitely there when you left, and
Speaker 2: sometimes one of them would come back. I remember they
Speaker 2: would come back mid flight say hello, you know around
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I mean so he was, but he was
Speaker 2: still he was very much he's in he's he's also
Speaker 2: in character.
Speaker 1: In those moments.
Speaker 2: You know, he's in that uniform, the and he's he's
Speaker 2: dispensing the same kind of aw shuck's reassurance and wisdom.
Speaker 2: But the disabodied voice is a really modern it's the
Speaker 2: last twenty years.
Speaker 3: That's really interesting that. I mean, that would suggest that
Speaker 3: there's more pressure. Theoretically there would be an increase in
Speaker 3: pilot voice. Yeah, that you in the last twenty years.
Speaker 2: Or at least you would explain persistence of pilot voice.
Speaker 3: Right, even as it becomes a more diverse profession, Right.
Speaker 1: It's it persists because that's all it got, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I wonder if I mean it's it's
Speaker 3: it's a crazy time to be flying right now, though
Speaker 3: like the past summer was one of like a historically
Speaker 3: bad time to fly. There's all this nutty weather, there's
Speaker 3: all these delays. There was the New York Times investigation
Speaker 3: that showed near misses are happening way more often than
Speaker 3: anyone thinks, and then a Washington Post investigation like a
Speaker 3: week later that said, thousands of pilots are claiming disabilities
Speaker 3: to the VA that if they were disclosed to the FAA,
Speaker 3: would make them unfit to fly. So it feels very
Speaker 3: much like like flying is a is a house of cards.
Speaker 3: Right now, it's it's a it's it's it's not dangerous.
Speaker 3: It is not actually dangerous to fly. It's statistically quite
Speaker 3: safe to fly, but it is a highly pressurized moment
Speaker 3: in flight, which is why I think it's kind of
Speaker 3: an interesting time to think about the pilot's voice thing,
Speaker 3: Like there's a lot of pressure on that voice right now.
Speaker 3: There's also a really big pilot shortage, and then there's
Speaker 3: also the rise of AI. Simultaneously, there are companies that
Speaker 3: are basically trying to replace pilots. And I was reading
Speaker 3: this NASA presentation that was like that raised the question
Speaker 3: of whether we should go automate pilots because human error
Speaker 3: is once again the number one cause of flight accidents.
Speaker 3: And what he concluded was pilots may cause problems, but
Speaker 3: they also, through their human ingenuity and their ability to
Speaker 3: basically have the right stuff, can fix problems too. And
Speaker 3: like a lot of flying is already on autopilot So
Speaker 3: when you really need a pilot is when something unexpected happens,
Speaker 3: when your luck changes and something goes totally wrong, which
Speaker 3: you know, brings me to the last thing I want
Speaker 3: to play you today, which is have you ever listened
Speaker 3: to the flight deck audio of the Miracle on the
Speaker 3: Hudson of Sully communicating?
Speaker 1: No, no, I never have.
Speaker 3: It's not him communicating to his passengers, but it is
Speaker 3: him communicating from the flight deck. This was the famous
Speaker 3: emergency landing in two thousand and nine when Captain Sully
Speaker 3: Sellenberger landed his Airbus A three twenty in the Hudson
Speaker 3: River after some birds got caught in the engines. And
Speaker 3: to me, it illustrates the ideal that I think the
Speaker 3: pilot voice isn't its essence conveying not a Chuck Yeager
Speaker 3: impression or some classic male stereotype, but a human ideal
Speaker 3: about our ability to solve even the hardest problems under
Speaker 3: the greatest stress.
Speaker 6: This is a cactus fifteen thirty nine, hit first through frost.
Speaker 2: Through us and both returning back towards Laguaria.
Speaker 6: Okay, yeah, you need to return a logbody turn left,
Speaker 6: heading up a two to zero two to zero stopping
Speaker 6: to Parker's got emergency returning It was a fifteen point
Speaker 6: nine the bird strike. He lost all engines. He lost
Speaker 6: to thrust in the engines. He's returning immediately Actus fifteen
Speaker 6: to twenty nine Witch engines. He lost thrusts in both engines.
Speaker 6: He said, got it back is fifteen twenty nine if
Speaker 6: we can get it. See do you want to try
Speaker 6: to land one on one's break?
Speaker 7: Really?
Speaker 6: Well, we landed the nuts I kat fifteen point nine.
Speaker 6: It can be left traffic runway three one.
Speaker 3: That the unable fantastic is that is like that is
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, Dave, I can't do that is the robot voice.
Speaker 3: That's one hundred two thousand and one of the space
Speaker 3: out to see unable.
Speaker 7: Way.
Speaker 3: What's the word to write anything in New Jersey?
Speaker 4: Maybe teeter borow?
Speaker 6: Okay, yeah, off your right side. It's Peterborough Airport. Do
Speaker 6: you want to try to go to Teeterborough? Yes, Peterborough pampire.
Speaker 6: Actually look why the parks guy emergency and then hey, guys,
Speaker 6: kack is fifteen twenty nine? Or did George watching Bridge
Speaker 6: wants to go to the airport right now?
Speaker 4: Won't show hour for checks?
Speaker 3: If you need assistance.
Speaker 6: Yes, sEH, it was a birch. Can I get him
Speaker 6: in for runway one? One way one?
Speaker 4: That's good, Kack is.
Speaker 6: Fifteen twenty nine, turn right two way too, I.
Speaker 3: Can land run.
Speaker 6: I wanted Peterborough.
Speaker 4: We can't do it.
Speaker 6: Okay, which one way would you like at Teterborough? I'm sorry,
Speaker 6: say again, Kats.
Speaker 3: We're gonna be in the Hudson.
Speaker 1: So awesome.
Speaker 3: It is incredible, unable.
Speaker 1: The unable. The unable is my favorite unable.
Speaker 3: And just in case any listeners aren't familiar, the end
Speaker 3: of all this is that Sully Lance's plane in the
Speaker 3: Hudson with no fatalities. So it's an incredible artifact, and
Speaker 3: I think it takes us back to where we started today.
Speaker 3: You might get unlucky, misbook your flight, rip your suit bag,
Speaker 3: lose your money in Vegas, get a bird in your
Speaker 3: plane engines, But if all else fails in this crazy
Speaker 3: over attack system we're stuck with right now, you could
Speaker 3: still get lucky with the right person flying the plane,
Speaker 3: no matter what their voice sounds like.
Speaker 2: The one thing I couldn't stop thinking about Ben throughout
Speaker 2: this whole episode is whether you have a good pilot's voice.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah. Someone in the airport said she thought that
Speaker 3: as ther was a pilot's out like she was like,
Speaker 3: you sound like a pilot, and I really don't think
Speaker 3: that I do. But do you think you have a
Speaker 3: good pilots for us?
Speaker 2: Do I think I do? I do too much, too
Speaker 2: many volume shifts. Yeah, so it's not I need my
Speaker 2: hands as well to communicate properly. There's all kinds of
Speaker 2: reasons I think I would fail as a pilot, those
Speaker 2: being a principle with.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think I would chiefly fail at flying a plane.
Speaker 2: By one, I flew a plane only once, and my
Speaker 2: you know, in the presence of an experienced co pilot,
Speaker 2: and my co pilot was a was a rabbi flies
Speaker 2: on the side. And I have to say, the only
Speaker 2: thing more reassuring than a kind of chuck yeger person
Speaker 2: next to you is a rabbi because he comes from
Speaker 2: a tradition of intellectual rigor, and you feel like if
Speaker 2: there is something to something obscure that he would need
Speaker 2: to know about the plane, you feel like he would
Speaker 2: know that this.
Speaker 3: Is like the Talmudic theory of flying. It's it's it's
Speaker 3: you know, the technique, procedure thing again.
Speaker 2: Rashi said this about you know, flying in bad conditions.
Speaker 1: He knows that that's amazing.
Speaker 3: All right, well, thanks for this welcome all right, Ben, oh,
Speaker 3: I have one last bit of rob to play a
Speaker 3: sound any any any pilot voices sign offs?
Speaker 5: Oh well, folks, I'd like to thank you for flying
Speaker 5: with what was it? Authentic history? Revision is History. I
Speaker 5: will see you next Sam, Yes.
Speaker 4: Thanks so much, folks.
Speaker 13: This episode for Vision's History was produced by Ben and
Speaker 13: d Af Haffrey, Jacob Smith and Taliamma, editing by Sarah Nix,
Speaker 13: original scoring by Luis Garra, mastering by Jake Krsky, and
Speaker 13: engineering by our very own Neil Lawrence.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to.
Speaker 13: Richard does Patrick expise, folks, I'm your captain, Malcolm Gravel.
Speaker 4: M mm hmmmm