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This Is Your Captain Speaking · Revisionist History

0:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin.
0:20
Speaker 2: A few weeks ago, when the leaves had just started
0:23
Speaker 2: to turn up here in Hudson, one of our revisionist
0:26
Speaker 2: history producers, Ben the daph Haffrey, came by the offices
0:31
Speaker 2: of Pushkin North in the grand tradition of revisionist history.
0:35
Speaker 2: He'd recently been flying around the country working on a
0:37
Speaker 2: story when an unexpected encounter got him thinking about something
0:43
Speaker 2: entirely different.
0:45
Speaker 3: I had a really unlucky day of travel a couple
0:48
Speaker 3: of weeks ago. I was in San Francisco and I
0:50
Speaker 3: was trying to get to Los Angeles. But I had
0:53
Speaker 3: to rebook my flight because of an urgent work meeting
0:55
Speaker 3: that got moved. And when I got to the airport,
0:57
Speaker 3: I realized i'd rebooked it two weeks after I was
1:00
Speaker 3: trying to fly and I was trying to save money.
1:03
Speaker 3: I got the cheapest ticket possible, so I could not
1:06
Speaker 3: change the fight, and so I just had to rebook
1:08
Speaker 3: on the cheap flight I could find, which was a
1:11
Speaker 3: Southwest flight from San Francisco to Los Angeles via Las Vegas,
1:17
Speaker 3: which makes no sense, absolutely no sense. So then I
1:22
Speaker 3: got on the air train going the wrong way. I
1:24
Speaker 3: wound up in this like median strip of the highway
1:26
Speaker 3: that was coming from a wedding, and my suit bag broke,
1:29
Speaker 3: my suit was flying all over the place, and just
1:32
Speaker 3: a bad luck day. But you know, I made the flight,
1:35
Speaker 3: wound up in Vegas and they had all these slot
1:37
Speaker 3: machines in the airport, just a dreadful airport. As you've
1:40
Speaker 3: recently pointed out, This was my first time in Vegas,
1:44
Speaker 3: and I had exactly one dollar in my pocket, and
1:49
Speaker 3: I thought, you know, my luck has been so bad,
1:53
Speaker 3: surely it's time for it to change. And so, having
1:56
Speaker 3: never played a slot machine before, I put the dollar
1:59
Speaker 3: in this like kung fu slot machine and just promptly
2:04
Speaker 3: lost it. Just lost my dollar entirely, so defeed it.
2:09
Speaker 3: I got on my flight on Southwest where they let
2:11
Speaker 3: you choose your seat, so I was just walking resignably
2:15
Speaker 3: down the aisle and then I see an open seat
2:20
Speaker 3: next to an off duty pilot, which suddenly made me
2:24
Speaker 3: think that my luck was changing, because I was like,
2:28
Speaker 3: here is a chance for me to finally ask a
2:30
Speaker 3: question that I have for a very long time been
2:33
Speaker 3: obsessed with answering. Yeah, why do all pilots have the
2:38
Speaker 3: same voice?
2:41
Speaker 2: Welcome to Revision's history, my show about things Overlooked and Misunderstood.
2:46
Speaker 2: Today's episode is a conversation with Ben Adaf Haffrey, digging
2:50
Speaker 2: into whether and why all pilots sound the same and
2:55
Speaker 2: what that might tell us about aviation and human nature.
3:05
Speaker 3: All Right, so I'm on this unnecessary flight from Vegas,
3:08
Speaker 3: Los Angeles, saying next to an off duty pilot who
3:10
Speaker 3: I had later learned was named Rob.
3:12
Speaker 1: Wait, how do you How do you know he's a pilot?
3:14
Speaker 3: So you know he's a pilot because he's got like
3:15
Speaker 3: the apolets on his shoulder, the stripes, short sleep button
3:19
Speaker 3: and shirt, and also a lanyard that said like Pilots
3:21
Speaker 3: Association or something like that. Yeah, you could, you could
3:24
Speaker 3: tell immediately. So I see my golden opportunity. And I
3:27
Speaker 3: asked Rob about pilot voice.
3:30
Speaker 4: Do you have a sense that all people think pilots
3:32
Speaker 4: have the same voice.
3:33
Speaker 5: I definitely have a sense that there's a idea that
3:40
Speaker 5: we kind of make certain noises on the intercome Jack,
3:43
Speaker 5: But it's this, I guess. My My first question to
3:47
Speaker 5: you is do you do you share this sense? If
3:49
Speaker 5: I were to ask you, what does a pilot sound like?
3:51
Speaker 5: Is there a voice in your mind?
3:54
Speaker 2: I mean, it's the it's the the analogy is to
3:58
Speaker 2: you know, in medicine, it's bedside manner, and what is
4:02
Speaker 2: bedside manner? A lot of bedside manner is just the
4:06
Speaker 2: the way in which the doctor addresses you.
4:09
Speaker 3: But there's not I don't feel like there is a
4:12
Speaker 3: doctor's voice in the same way as there is a
4:14
Speaker 3: pilot's voice. No, no, Like I think there's a cultural
4:18
Speaker 3: understanding of what a pilot sounds like that doesn't exist
4:21
Speaker 3: for hardly any other social role. I mean, so I
4:25
Speaker 3: was thinking about this. You have all these pilots in
4:27
Speaker 3: the media, like Quagmire on Family Guy.
4:30
Speaker 5: Good afternoon, ladies, and gentlemen.
4:32
Speaker 6: This is your captain, Glenn Quagmire.
4:35
Speaker 5: We're looking about a four and a half hour flight
4:37
Speaker 5: time today.
4:39
Speaker 3: Giggity Man Damon on thirty Rock, Well back.
4:43
Speaker 7: It looks like it's gonna be about another half hour
4:45
Speaker 7: and then we'll.
4:45
Speaker 8: Be on our way.
4:48
Speaker 1: Yeah.
4:48
Speaker 2: So the U sound is a universal component of pilot voice.
4:52
Speaker 3: Yeah, universal. And I mean this is the thing I
4:55
Speaker 3: talked about with Rob like he does OZ all the time. Okay,
4:58
Speaker 3: so where does that come from? I think there's some
5:02
Speaker 3: truth to it.
5:03
Speaker 5: I mean, obviously it sucks, completely true. But yeah, we're
5:07
Speaker 5: up there, we're multitasking, and we get get a little busy,
5:10
Speaker 5: and we're trying to make an announcement, and uh, you know,
5:13
Speaker 5: sometimes you don't really think about completely what you're gonna say.
5:16
Speaker 5: You know, the basics, but your brain's still putting it together,
5:20
Speaker 5: you know, so just human nature.
5:22
Speaker 3: You know, your brain's taking a pause. And in fact,
5:24
Speaker 3: he even copped to the fact that sometimes he does
5:26
Speaker 3: an extra long uh like he will actually draw out not.
5:29
Speaker 5: All right, I have a couple of times, not often,
5:32
Speaker 5: but I have kind of drawn that out on purpose
5:35
Speaker 5: whatever you would call that sound, just for fun, you know.
5:39
Speaker 5: But like you said earlier, I have no idea if
5:41
Speaker 5: anybody in the in the back laughed or even picked
5:44
Speaker 5: up what I was throwing down.
5:45
Speaker 3: You've like actually done an extra long uh ridiculously long.
5:51
Speaker 4: It's just enough to what's like an average line.
5:57
Speaker 5: Maybe, but you have to do it a little bit
6:00
Speaker 5: of a lower tone than that, though, you know, well,
6:02
Speaker 5: I just want like it's gotta have that lower lower tone.
6:05
Speaker 1: Oh God, rob Is, God said Rob Is. I.
6:09
Speaker 3: It had such a bad day. And then I sat
6:11
Speaker 3: next to Rob and I was like, I am I
6:13
Speaker 3: am being blessed right now. And I got off the
6:16
Speaker 3: plane and I swear to God. When I was at
6:17
Speaker 3: the baggage claim, I walked by these two people who
6:20
Speaker 3: were talking in LA and one of them was saying
6:22
Speaker 3: to the other person like, well, you know the ancient
6:24
Speaker 3: notion of the wheel at fortune right, And the guy
6:26
Speaker 3: was like, no, what's that. He's like, well, it's like
6:28
Speaker 3: Fortune's a wheel, so you have like your bad luck,
6:30
Speaker 3: and then it comes around to good lock. I swear
6:32
Speaker 3: to God. I just I was like, what is good
6:34
Speaker 3: you like die in Las Vegas? And then like this
6:36
Speaker 3: is just purgatory is bouncing between these two airports. But
6:42
Speaker 3: then when I landed in Los Angeles, I was like,
6:46
Speaker 3: I should actually figure out if it's just me having
6:48
Speaker 3: watched too many movies and not flown in enough planes,
6:51
Speaker 3: and talk to some people and see what they say.
6:55
Speaker 3: What does a pilot sound like?
6:59
Speaker 4: What does a pilot sound like? Yeah? Like is there
7:01
Speaker 4: a pilot's voice? Yes, it's going and robotic. It's used
7:06
Speaker 4: for impersonation. Oh you're gonna do it.
7:09
Speaker 3: I'm sorry ladies and gemen, please fasten your seatbelts. Apologize
7:14
Speaker 3: for the rough air, but we should be through it
7:16
Speaker 3: here in about ten minutes or so.
7:17
Speaker 8: And then you got to drag them out, like, aw,
7:20
Speaker 8: we should be riding about ten minutes or so.
7:22
Speaker 4: All the time is seven o'clock. All this consistent when
7:25
Speaker 4: you're when you're a sense of the pilot's worse. She'd right,
7:28
Speaker 4: it's like robotic.
7:30
Speaker 9: Typically they sound the same.
7:32
Speaker 6: I don't know how or why.
7:34
Speaker 10: Is it just they've heard other pilots do it and
7:37
Speaker 10: they feel this is how I've got to talk.
7:40
Speaker 4: What I'm wondering is like, do all pilots sound the same? Yes?
7:44
Speaker 4: They do? They do?
7:45
Speaker 1: They always say folks, folks.
7:48
Speaker 10: Yes, I think in general, yes, they have like the
7:51
Speaker 10: same type of tone, and they're all like pretty polished
7:55
Speaker 10: like whenever they come on like on like on the planet,
7:57
Speaker 10: like Banacom or whatever, they all sound the same.
7:59
Speaker 4: What does a pilot sound like.
8:02
Speaker 10: Like a robot?
8:03
Speaker 4: Do you think all pilots sound the.
8:05
Speaker 10: Same, Yes, except for the black ones.
8:08
Speaker 4: Except the ones? Interesting? What did they sound like? Lat
8:12
Speaker 4: and the rest sound.
8:13
Speaker 11: Like yo people?
8:15
Speaker 4: Yeah?
8:19
Speaker 2: Wait a minute, you know about what Tom Wolfe says
8:21
Speaker 2: about this and the right stuff.
8:22
Speaker 1: It's Jaeger. It's all Chuck Yeger.
8:25
Speaker 3: Yeah, racking the.
8:26
Speaker 9: Sound barrier, and the X one marked another milestone in
8:29
Speaker 9: av ah in history Good Time October fourteenth, nineteen forty seven,
8:34
Speaker 9: No Pilots Captain and.
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Speaker 3: Chuck Jeger Chuck Yeger, the famous test pilot from West
8:40
Speaker 3: Virginia who in nineteen forty seven breaks the sound barrier.
8:44
Speaker 3: The X one was mine because I was trained in
8:47
Speaker 3: maintenance and I understood systems, and obviously he could fly
8:51
Speaker 3: an airplane. So Yeah, Tom Wolf writes The Right Stuff
8:54
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy nine. Later it becomes a big movie, and
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Speaker 3: he identifies this phenomenon that all pilots sound the same
9:00
Speaker 3: and specifically attributes it to the sounding like Chuck Yeger.
9:04
Speaker 2: And in The Right Stuff, there's that moment where Yeah,
9:09
Speaker 2: played by Sam Shefferd says when he's dismissing astronauts, they're
9:16
Speaker 2: spam in a can.
9:19
Speaker 1: And it's pilot voice.
9:21
Speaker 2: Tell you what else.
9:22
Speaker 7: Anybody goes up and the damn thing is gonna be
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Speaker 7: spam in a can.
9:29
Speaker 3: Actually brought the passage from the Right Stuff if you
9:31
Speaker 3: want to read.
9:32
Speaker 2: It, Okay, here goes Anyone who travels very much on
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Speaker 2: airlines in the United States soon gets to know the
9:39
Speaker 2: voice of the airline pilot coming over the intercom with
9:43
Speaker 2: a particular drawl, a particular folksiness, a particular down home
9:48
Speaker 2: calmness that is so exaggerated it begins to parody itself.
9:53
Speaker 2: The voice that tells you, as the airliner is caught
9:56
Speaker 2: in thunderheads and goes bolting up and down a thousand
9:58
Speaker 2: feet at a single gulp, to check your seatbelts because
10:02
Speaker 2: it might get a little choppy. Who doesn't know that voice,
10:06
Speaker 2: and who can forget it even after he has proved
10:08
Speaker 2: right and the emergency is over. That particular voice may
10:12
Speaker 2: sound vaguely Southern or Southwestern, but it is specifically Appellationian
10:17
Speaker 2: in origin. It originated in the mountains of West Virginia,
10:21
Speaker 2: in the coal country in Lincoln County, so far up
10:24
Speaker 2: in the hollows that as the saying went, they had
10:27
Speaker 2: to pipe in daylight. In the late nineteen forties and
10:30
Speaker 2: early nineteen fifties, this up hollow voice drifted down from
10:34
Speaker 2: on high, from over the high desert of California, down down, down,
10:39
Speaker 2: from the upper reaches of their brotherhood into all phases
10:42
Speaker 2: of American aviation. It was amazing. It was pygmalion in reverse.
10:49
Speaker 2: Military pilots and then soon airline pilots, pilots from Maine
10:53
Speaker 2: and Massachusetts and the Dakotas in Oregon and everywhere else,
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Speaker 2: began to talk in that poker hollow West Virginia drawl,
11:00
Speaker 2: or as close to it as it could bend their
11:02
Speaker 2: native accents. It was the drawl of the most righteous
11:05
Speaker 2: of all the possessors of the right stuff.
11:08
Speaker 1: Chuck ying the Tomolf is so.
11:17
Speaker 3: Just amazing, so good.
11:21
Speaker 1: He's just it's just like it's Tumolf is just the best.
11:25
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I like that. He's just you know, he
11:27
Speaker 3: was not in airports asking everybody if they agreed that
11:31
Speaker 3: all pilots sounded this way. He was just like, yeah,
11:33
Speaker 3: I got it. But I don't actually think that's a
11:36
Speaker 3: sufficient explanation for what pilot voice is, partially because like,
11:40
Speaker 3: when was the last time you you listened to Chuck Yeger.
11:42
Speaker 1: I don't think I ever have.
11:43
Speaker 3: I know, Sam Shepard, it's not the pilot voice. I
11:55
Speaker 3: believe there's some essential Jaeger nests that is preserved in
11:59
Speaker 3: the pilot's voice, but it's not like a note for
12:02
Speaker 3: note replication of that thing.
12:05
Speaker 2: You I'm as interested in a word choice. So folks
12:10
Speaker 2: is clearly.
12:12
Speaker 3: Huge there's a Someone at LAX also pointed this out specifically.
12:16
Speaker 2: What are other vocabulary choices that are central to pilot voice?
12:20
Speaker 3: Well, I think the euphemisms are huge. So the near
12:23
Speaker 3: miss Bumpierre, Choppier.
12:25
Speaker 2: Diminutives a little bit of turbulent, It got a little
12:28
Speaker 2: bit of Ye, it's not lackadaisical, but it is. They
12:34
Speaker 2: want to they do want to signal that these problems
12:36
Speaker 2: are so trivial that they can barely muster, you know,
12:40
Speaker 2: normal levels of enthusiasm to It's just everything's just kind
12:44
Speaker 2: of I've seen it all before, kind of Yeah, there's
12:48
Speaker 2: a Can I do a little thing about the evolutionary
12:51
Speaker 2: basis for a pilot voice? So stress, one of the
12:58
Speaker 2: things that stress does is raise your voice. Right, So
13:04
Speaker 2: one of the signatures of someone who is under a
13:08
Speaker 2: great deal of stress, for experiencing a high anxiety moment,
13:11
Speaker 2: is their voice rises in is it pitch?
13:15
Speaker 3: It's also probably like I bet your vocal cords titan,
13:18
Speaker 3: and then you become less resonant.
13:20
Speaker 2: Yes, So I would suspect there's and so we're conditioned
13:25
Speaker 2: evolutionarily to interpret somebody with a kind of a high
13:29
Speaker 2: fast speech cadence as being terrified. So the pilot necessarily
13:36
Speaker 2: has to be the person who speaks slowly and low
13:40
Speaker 2: if he's trying to communicate calm.
13:42
Speaker 3: You think you think people are you're you think people
13:44
Speaker 3: are making hires based in part on whether or not
13:48
Speaker 3: you have the right pilot voice.
13:50
Speaker 2: We already know that in every other job some aspect
13:54
Speaker 2: of physical presentation matters hugely and who gets who gets
13:58
Speaker 2: hired or not right, So when it comes to hiring pilots,
14:03
Speaker 2: you would be if you're the hiring person even unconsciously
14:06
Speaker 2: powerfully disposed to hire someone who who conformed to pilot stereotype.
14:13
Speaker 2: I mean, look at the way that there was a
14:14
Speaker 2: whole separate set of things for years that governed what
14:17
Speaker 2: a stewardess.
14:17
Speaker 1: Was supposed to be.
14:18
Speaker 2: A flight atten was supposed to be right, it was
14:20
Speaker 2: right down. They would like measure there. They would do
14:24
Speaker 2: body measurements of women who are trying to be flood
14:26
Speaker 2: attens in the You had to look a certain way,
14:29
Speaker 2: have a certain shape, you know, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. We
14:32
Speaker 2: don't think that applies to pilots, the one actually flying
14:35
Speaker 2: the plane.
14:36
Speaker 3: Well, like a lot of the pilot voice thing, the
14:38
Speaker 3: first thing people say is is just the speakers. And
14:41
Speaker 3: the second thing people say is is because they're all
14:43
Speaker 3: white guys.
14:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, the most hierarchical institutions in our society are still
14:47
Speaker 2: all dominated by white guys, particularly tall, tall, middle aged
14:51
Speaker 2: white guys. That's what CEOs are, That's what pilots are,
14:54
Speaker 2: that's what neurosurgeons are, that's what you know presidents are.
14:58
Speaker 1: That's what I make it go on.
14:59
Speaker 3: It's like, yeah, the same stereotyping and bias is applied
15:02
Speaker 3: in piloting, and it is statistically true, like about ninety
15:06
Speaker 3: five percent of pilots are white and about ninety five
15:09
Speaker 3: percent of pilots are male, at least as of twenty
15:11
Speaker 3: twenty two numbers. That is changing, but historically it has
15:16
Speaker 3: always been a very white male profession and it continues
15:19
Speaker 3: to be so. But like, not every white guy sounds
15:22
Speaker 3: the same. And similarly, a lot of pilots were in
15:24
Speaker 3: the Air Force, but not every veteran sounds the same.
15:27
Speaker 3: So this has some explanatory force, but not total explanatory force.
15:33
Speaker 3: There's still some weird extra kind of convergence happening even
15:36
Speaker 3: within this group. So this is where I think this
15:39
Speaker 3: all leaves us. There is an idea at least that
15:43
Speaker 3: there is a pilot voice. Tom Wolfe says it's Jeger,
15:45
Speaker 3: But I really don't think it's enough to say that
15:47
Speaker 3: all pilots are imitating Chuck Yeger. I mean, it is
15:50
Speaker 3: clear to me that there's an attitude of Jaeger that
15:53
Speaker 3: has been preserved, but it's not really his voice. And
15:56
Speaker 3: I mean Rob had not even heard Chuck Yeger.
15:59
Speaker 5: I certainly don't know what his voice sounded like. I can't,
16:02
Speaker 5: I can't think of it.
16:05
Speaker 4: Yeah, I.
16:07
Speaker 5: Don't think it was anything that I consciously was doing.
16:13
Speaker 5: But I think you've got me thinking maybe I dropped
16:17
Speaker 5: my voice down a pitch. I think I do they
16:20
Speaker 5: even realize?
16:24
Speaker 3: So something's up. It's not just Chuck Yeger. What I'm
16:28
Speaker 3: interested in is what does that voice represent and how
16:32
Speaker 3: did it happen that they all sound alike.
16:35
Speaker 2: We'll be right back. Can do another analogy here, believe.
16:48
Speaker 2: So I was thinking about this as you're talking, which
16:50
Speaker 2: is there's a whole literature on contrition in the cases
16:58
Speaker 2: of accused criminals. So you're in court, you're making your statement,
17:03
Speaker 2: or you're talking and jury's listening. One of the things
17:06
Speaker 2: that jury's way that heaviest is whether or not they
17:11
Speaker 2: feel like the accused is displaying contrition. Right, they have
17:17
Speaker 2: an expectator, there's an expectation about a certain mode of
17:21
Speaker 2: self presentation. Now, no one really knows what contrition looks like.
17:27
Speaker 2: Is there actually isn't you know? We know what happiness
17:29
Speaker 2: looks like, we know what anxiety looks like, we know
17:32
Speaker 2: what anger looks like. We don't really know what contrition
17:35
Speaker 2: looks like. All we know is that contrition is really, really,
17:37
Speaker 2: really important, and in its absence, juries deliver much harsher penalties,
17:45
Speaker 2: much more likely to call you guilty, or the judge
17:47
Speaker 2: is much more like col to give you a long sentence.
17:49
Speaker 2: So there's a kind of this is there's a feedback
17:52
Speaker 2: loop between the party that's giving a presentation and the
17:56
Speaker 2: part is listening, And I wonder what the pilot is
17:59
Speaker 2: expected to communicate? Is competence and reassurance? Right now? Do
18:05
Speaker 2: we have a formal definition of what those things are?
18:08
Speaker 2: Not really known, not not any more than we do
18:10
Speaker 2: for contrition. But that doesn't mean that we don't spend
18:13
Speaker 2: a huge amount of time communicating it. And we kind
18:16
Speaker 2: of know it when we you know, this is a
18:18
Speaker 2: vague thing that we know of when we see it.
18:20
Speaker 2: People certainly can say he did not you hear all
18:22
Speaker 2: the time Jerry's saying it.
18:24
Speaker 1: Did not seem right? Contrite right?
18:27
Speaker 2: Anyway, This is all like a long way of saying,
18:29
Speaker 2: is there is this? Like I would just I agree
18:33
Speaker 2: with everything I say, I would just say I would
18:34
Speaker 2: add this that it's a loop with the audience expectation.
18:39
Speaker 3: Well, so there are these clear ingredients in the pilot
18:42
Speaker 3: voice as it's used by pilots and expected by passengers.
18:45
Speaker 3: You got the drawn out oz, the slow pace, maybe
18:48
Speaker 3: a bit of southern drawl. But I want to get
18:50
Speaker 3: into the mechanisms by which a whole profession could converge
18:53
Speaker 3: on a specific voice. So I talked to this speech psychologist,
18:57
Speaker 3: Jennifer S. Pardo, who's the director of the Speech Communication
19:01
Speaker 3: Laboratory at Montclair State University, you know, called her up,
19:05
Speaker 3: said I want to talk to you about pilot voice.
19:07
Speaker 3: Ever hear of it?
19:08
Speaker 8: I actually asked my husband about it yesterday. He used
19:12
Speaker 8: to actually do flight training for a while, just you know,
19:16
Speaker 8: as a hobby, and he said, oh, yeah, there's definitely
19:19
Speaker 8: definitely pilot voice. Well, what did he and he's like, oh, yeah,
19:23
Speaker 8: it's totally from Chuck Yeager. Yeah, he definitely felt like
19:28
Speaker 8: there was I wouldn't say pressure, but he definitely felt
19:31
Speaker 8: the need to get into this mode of speaking when
19:36
Speaker 8: he was in flight training, to you know, to show
19:39
Speaker 8: that he was.
19:39
Speaker 11: Part of the group here. I was like, really, why
19:42
Speaker 11: did you never.
19:43
Speaker 1: Tell me this?
19:46
Speaker 3: So Jen specifically works on something called phonetic convergence and
19:50
Speaker 3: also communication accommodation theory, which is basically it's this, it's
19:56
Speaker 3: a theoretical frame for a thing that most of us experienced.
19:59
Speaker 3: Like you go to London as an American, You're there
20:02
Speaker 3: for two weeks, and by the end of the two weeks,
20:03
Speaker 3: you start maybe there's some British mannerisms work their way
20:07
Speaker 3: out your speech. Communication accommodation is the study of the
20:12
Speaker 3: way what the mechanism of that is, how you sort
20:14
Speaker 3: of modify your way of speaking to belong to an
20:18
Speaker 3: in group or to distinguish yourself from an out group.
20:20
Speaker 3: And for pilots, it's something that could be happening basically
20:23
Speaker 3: unwinningly because of how much else they're doing in the cockpit.
20:26
Speaker 8: So research and pinetic convergence is trying to really pinpoint
20:30
Speaker 8: some of these internal cognitive mechanisms and how they play
20:34
Speaker 8: around with each other, and this idea of cognitive load
20:37
Speaker 8: and multitasking. Right, if it's an automatic process, it's something
20:41
Speaker 8: that would be harder to suppress when you're multitasking.
20:45
Speaker 3: Jen studies this. So she actually looked at like roommates
20:48
Speaker 3: who live together in college and their does the way
20:52
Speaker 3: they speak converge over the course of a semester, which
20:55
Speaker 3: often it does, But she said an interesting thing, which
20:58
Speaker 3: is we tend to think of communication as a one
21:01
Speaker 3: way thing, like broadcasting functionally, but it is it is
21:05
Speaker 3: a two way thing. So half of it is how
21:07
Speaker 3: you're communicating. Half of it is how you're being perceived.
21:10
Speaker 8: Like if you really were to look at it, like
21:12
Speaker 8: really really look at it, like take you know, take
21:15
Speaker 8: a recording, compare the recording right to other recordings, put
21:19
Speaker 8: it in a scientific setting, in a scientific experiment, you'd
21:23
Speaker 8: probably find more differences than similarities, but the similarities matter
21:29
Speaker 8: maybe more. Right, So there is this other thing going
21:34
Speaker 8: on where socially or psychologically, because we believe it to
21:39
Speaker 8: be true, we look for evidence that it's true every
21:44
Speaker 8: time we hear it. And if we don't get the
21:47
Speaker 8: evidence from one aspect of the way the person is talking,
21:50
Speaker 8: we might see it in another aspect of the way
21:53
Speaker 8: that the person is talking right. If it's not there
21:55
Speaker 8: in the vocabulary, it might be there in something about
21:59
Speaker 8: the sentence structure. Or it might just be that they
22:01
Speaker 8: all went up right. It could just be one little
22:05
Speaker 8: thing that they're all doing and we're like, Okay, they
22:07
Speaker 8: did it right, they did the thing.
22:10
Speaker 3: I do think that is a crucial element to the
22:13
Speaker 3: pilot voice thing. Of course, it's not true that all
22:16
Speaker 3: pilots have exactly the same voice, But insofar as the
22:19
Speaker 3: majority of people I've spoken to, most people you come
22:22
Speaker 3: across on the street, if you ask them this question,
22:24
Speaker 3: what does a pilot sound like? Have the same voice
22:26
Speaker 3: in their mind? Some of that is just projection. And
22:29
Speaker 3: I think it's projection from a place of needing security.
22:34
Speaker 3: Having the question in the back of your mind of
22:36
Speaker 3: your pilot, that Tom Wolf question, do they have the
22:38
Speaker 3: right stuff? Yeah? And so there is that kind of
22:42
Speaker 3: that's that's part of this projection thing you're referring to
22:45
Speaker 3: as well, like the expectation thing. But it's interesting because
22:49
Speaker 3: you see and interact with flight attendants, but you typically
22:54
Speaker 3: do not see the pilot until the plane has safely landed,
22:59
Speaker 3: so the only point of contact you have with your
23:01
Speaker 3: pilot until then is the voice. Yeah, which they're also
23:04
Speaker 3: aware of. And also it's this, it's this crazy situation
23:07
Speaker 3: of they are speaking the several hundred people, all of
23:10
Speaker 3: whom have some kind of background anxiety about flying, which is,
23:13
Speaker 3: you know, in my opinion, just a completely unnatural thing
23:16
Speaker 3: to do, Like we were not given wings for a reason,
23:18
Speaker 3: so you're rocketing through the air in this metal tube
23:21
Speaker 3: and human error is the number one cause of plane accidents.
23:26
Speaker 3: So you only have the pilot's voice as a way
23:30
Speaker 3: of judging how competent this person is at their actual job,
23:33
Speaker 3: which is something they also are aware of. I actually
23:36
Speaker 3: talked to a captain who named Karen, who's been flying
23:38
Speaker 3: for a few decades, and she was perfect for this because,
23:41
Speaker 3: in addition to being a captain, she teaches that something
23:44
Speaker 3: called the Fear of Flying Clinic, which is ironic because.
23:48
Speaker 11: My last name is not a great pilot thing, so.
23:53
Speaker 12: You want to my last name is Stall and even
23:56
Speaker 12: though there's an age in it, it sounds the exact same,
23:59
Speaker 12: so people will hear.
24:01
Speaker 11: So I never say this is Captain Stall.
24:04
Speaker 9: I always say this is the captain speaking, but I
24:07
Speaker 9: always break that up just so that if there is
24:10
Speaker 9: someone back there who's feeling the you know, nervous about flying,
24:13
Speaker 9: that can be like, Okay, that's a sign I gotta
24:15
Speaker 9: get out.
24:15
Speaker 3: Of here, Captain Stall. Yeah, that's that's really unfortunate.
24:20
Speaker 1: I met. It's hilarious.
24:22
Speaker 3: Captain Stall airline pilot, also an expert on why people
24:26
Speaker 3: are terrified of flying, something she can empathize with because
24:30
Speaker 3: she herself really dislikes public speaking. Can I ask when
24:33
Speaker 3: you were starting, did you feel when you made your
24:37
Speaker 3: first PA's okay, I know what a pilot's supposed to
24:40
Speaker 3: sound like, and how do I do my version of
24:42
Speaker 3: the voice or how conscious were you of this thing?
24:46
Speaker 9: Oh?
24:46
Speaker 12: I was terrified because I would imagine everybody's listening tuned
24:51
Speaker 12: in and going, oh my gosh, who is that? And
24:55
Speaker 12: her voice doesn't sound like what I'm expecting up there?
24:58
Speaker 12: And also not even just that, I just wasn't comfortable
25:03
Speaker 12: with a microphone in my hand. So I guarantee you
25:07
Speaker 12: my voice was not reassuring when I was making my
25:09
Speaker 12: first feel because I was too nervous. I was very
25:12
Speaker 12: comfortable with the flying part, but not with them making.
25:15
Speaker 12: I would also say it's always the male that you
25:17
Speaker 12: hear as a pilot voice when when somebody's talking about
25:20
Speaker 12: the pilot voice. So that's one thing about, you know,
25:23
Speaker 12: being a woman in this job is trying to get
25:28
Speaker 12: that voice out there for the girls and for them,
25:32
Speaker 12: for the boys, for just people in general, to know
25:35
Speaker 12: it's not all just guy's flying point.
25:39
Speaker 2: You know, she has a great voice, doesn't she.
25:43
Speaker 3: She does have a great voice.
25:45
Speaker 1: She's funny too, though.
25:46
Speaker 2: I wonder what I wonder is what, like, do we
25:50
Speaker 2: like the fact that she seems to have a little
25:52
Speaker 2: bit of a sense of humor.
25:54
Speaker 1: I think we do.
25:55
Speaker 3: Yeah, I feel like there is a certain kind of
25:57
Speaker 3: humor that's not trying to make you laugh, but it
26:00
Speaker 3: shows that the person finds the situation amusing. It's like
26:04
Speaker 3: more a reflection of the fact that they're kind of
26:06
Speaker 3: amused by everything than that they're you know, trying to
26:08
Speaker 3: be a median or something. You just you want somebody.
26:11
Speaker 3: You want somebody who's got like a pretty upbeat view
26:13
Speaker 3: of the world and is unharried.
26:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right, Yeah, she has that. That is that
26:19
Speaker 2: kind of one eyebrows slightly raised.
26:25
Speaker 3: Yeah, like she gets what's funny about her name, for instance.
26:27
Speaker 3: But where it leads to me is it does seem
26:30
Speaker 3: like there's an awareness in pilots that you have to
26:32
Speaker 3: communicate competence sound like a pilot, because you're answerable to
26:36
Speaker 3: the people on the back who don't have any other
26:38
Speaker 3: way of telling if you're doing a good job, like
26:40
Speaker 3: they don't know at all what it means to fly
26:43
Speaker 3: the plane, right, yeah.
26:45
Speaker 1: Yeah.
26:46
Speaker 11: And then in terms of conveying to people, one thing
26:50
Speaker 11: that I've found it's very helpful for people to hear
26:52
Speaker 11: your voice when there is triberlains because people just want
26:56
Speaker 11: to hear your voice and then they can go like,
27:00
Speaker 11: oh o good. So for me, it's just trying to be.
27:06
Speaker 12: Natural and comfortable and making pas that are reassuring to people.
27:11
Speaker 3: That's the goal.
27:12
Speaker 1: It's going to be.
27:13
Speaker 7: More what the message is and the tone of voice
27:16
Speaker 7: so that it's not something that's going to make somebody fearful,
27:19
Speaker 7: just in the fact that if my voice sounded fear
27:22
Speaker 7: inducing in some way.
27:24
Speaker 3: But then the question I had after Gen Pardo and
27:27
Speaker 3: Captain Stall is how are all these pilots arriving at
27:30
Speaker 3: essentially the same answer for how to convey these basic
27:33
Speaker 3: assurances with their voice. And I talked to a pilot
27:36
Speaker 3: who said that everything in flying is either technique or procedure,
27:39
Speaker 3: and that most of flying is procedure, including you know,
27:44
Speaker 3: when you're descending you call out the altitude at certain points,
27:49
Speaker 3: or when you put the gear down you say gear down.
27:51
Speaker 3: It's like you say a specific thing at a certain moment.
27:54
Speaker 3: That's procedure. Technique is things like we have to lose altitude.
27:57
Speaker 3: There's a number of ways a pilot could do that.
27:59
Speaker 3: But also it's communicating with your passengers. There is no
28:03
Speaker 3: script or set of things that you have to do
28:07
Speaker 3: when communicating with the passengers for something that they are
28:10
Speaker 3: guidelines or samples of what you might say, but it's
28:12
Speaker 3: not so strictly prescribed as other parts of flying are.
28:16
Speaker 3: So part of what I think is going on here
28:19
Speaker 3: is these are intensely rule bound people who are used
28:23
Speaker 3: to following standard operating procedure and nearly everything that they do.
28:28
Speaker 3: They know it's a really high stakes job. They know
28:30
Speaker 3: that communicating with the passengers is a really high stakes thing,
28:33
Speaker 3: and so when they speak to the passengers, it's like
28:36
Speaker 3: it's procedure masquerading as technique, and they're actually in their
28:41
Speaker 3: minds like reaching for what does a pilot sound like?
28:43
Speaker 3: What does a pilot say? This sort of thing that's
28:46
Speaker 3: totally unnecessary, but it is a kind of competence theater.
28:50
Speaker 2: So why is Tom Cruise allowed to break all the
28:52
Speaker 2: pilot rules?
28:55
Speaker 3: Why is Maverick allowed to?
28:57
Speaker 1: In general?
28:57
Speaker 2: Though Tom Cruise even a mission impossible? You know, he
29:01
Speaker 2: instead of playing the kind of cool, calm, unflappable, he's
29:06
Speaker 2: always sprinting madly from one thing to the next, and like,
29:10
Speaker 2: but it's a persona that he brings to one movie
29:14
Speaker 2: after another, including his pilot roles, where he gets to
29:18
Speaker 2: deviate from what we normally he's a hero who gets
29:22
Speaker 2: to he's essentially a jackass in these movies.
29:24
Speaker 3: Well, Tom Cruise plays Tom Cruise. I mean, like that's
29:28
Speaker 3: the part of it is, like you just know it's
29:30
Speaker 3: him in every role, and there is this kind of
29:33
Speaker 3: I remember there's there's one I forget what movie they
29:36
Speaker 3: were reviewing. I think it was a New York Times
29:38
Speaker 3: review of a Tom Cruise movie. It's like, this has
29:41
Speaker 3: nothing to do with the pilot thing, but so much
29:43
Speaker 3: of the cultural narrative around him right now is he's
29:46
Speaker 3: the last movie star. Like he cares so much about movies.
29:50
Speaker 3: He's going to do all his own stunts and get
29:52
Speaker 3: us to come back to the theater just by his charisma
29:55
Speaker 3: because he has that thing that we've lost from our
29:58
Speaker 3: culture in all of this, you know, Marvel movie mayhem.
30:02
Speaker 3: But the fact is Tom Cruise used to be really charming,
30:06
Speaker 3: like it used to be in the eighties. I feel
30:08
Speaker 3: like eighties and nineties Cruise was really charming on screen.
30:11
Speaker 3: And now he is functionally just a Marvel movie but
30:15
Speaker 3: in human form, like he does the Marvel thing, but
30:18
Speaker 3: just with his own body as opposed to with VFX.
30:20
Speaker 3: He just is kind of an impressive athlete.
30:24
Speaker 2: Well he's but this this does tell you what we're
30:26
Speaker 2: talking about because his part of a key part of
30:30
Speaker 2: his persona is visible effort, yes, right, whereas what we
30:34
Speaker 2: want pilot voice is about invisible effort.
30:37
Speaker 3: No.
30:37
Speaker 1: Yes, the pilot never lets on that he is.
30:41
Speaker 2: He never says, folks, you know we got a we
30:44
Speaker 2: got an intense next ten minutes. I'm not going to
30:46
Speaker 2: talk to you because I'm gonna be so overwhelmed with
30:48
Speaker 2: what I'm doing but we're gonna we're gonna try really hard,
30:51
Speaker 2: and I'm sick. We're gonna pull this out like gotta go.
30:54
Speaker 2: Like Tom Cruise essentially is saying, can't talk now, gotta go,
30:58
Speaker 2: got to solve this problem, like all right, I'm talking
31:02
Speaker 2: about it, you know, Whereas like that's the antithesis. It's
31:05
Speaker 2: only he's allowed to do that. Everyone else has got
31:08
Speaker 2: to do pilot.
31:08
Speaker 3: I think that's true. And also I think this is
31:11
Speaker 3: part of what's going on with the UH. Yeah, the UH.
31:15
Speaker 3: One explanation for it is they get all the information
31:18
Speaker 3: that they're reading out to the passengers, all the unnecessary
31:22
Speaker 3: information nobody cares about, like, oh, that's like too many knots.
31:25
Speaker 3: I wish there were fewer knots. And when the New
31:27
Speaker 3: York City like it, they are translating it in some
31:31
Speaker 3: cases from whatever code it's in, and they're thinking, and
31:34
Speaker 3: they don't want to let they don't want to let
31:36
Speaker 3: dead air happen, so they just stretch out the UH.
31:39
Speaker 3: So the UH is when some sort of mental effort
31:41
Speaker 3: is taking place, but it's not being disclosed.
31:44
Speaker 2: Why you assume the AH was just a deliberate affectation
31:48
Speaker 2: to suggest that they are in a hurry.
31:50
Speaker 3: I think that's what it is. But it also fills
31:52
Speaker 3: space when they are doing something else. Yeah, so it's
31:56
Speaker 3: it's yeah, yeah, so I think there is. There's a
32:00
Speaker 3: few things going on to the UH. I think a
32:01
Speaker 3: lot of it is this communication accommodation theory thing. It's
32:04
Speaker 3: like that is you're doing with your voice. I am
32:07
Speaker 3: part of an in group, and you notice, I mean
32:10
Speaker 3: a lot of people I asked about the pilot voice thing,
32:12
Speaker 3: They're like, well, it's just the speakers. It's the it's
32:14
Speaker 3: the phones and headsets and the speakers. I don't think
32:18
Speaker 3: it is true that that thins out the voice. But
32:22
Speaker 3: everyone you hear on a plane is speaking through the
32:24
Speaker 3: same speaker, the same technology, and they don't all sound
32:27
Speaker 3: the same. So I think there's a kind of like
32:29
Speaker 3: the pilot also, only with their voice. It's like vocal apulettes,
32:33
Speaker 3: like they've got to show with their voice that they
32:35
Speaker 3: are not other crew members. And then it's us also,
32:40
Speaker 3: you know, orally auditioning them of like can you can
32:43
Speaker 3: you fly this thing?
32:46
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've got a few more questions, but let's take
32:49
Speaker 2: a short break then and then we'll be right back.
33:01
Speaker 1: Okay, we're back.
33:03
Speaker 3: I do. There's there's one other thing that that's interesting
33:05
Speaker 3: to me. Are you familiar with the sterile Cockpit Rule gone.
33:10
Speaker 3: This is a regulation that came about after a famous
33:13
Speaker 3: crash in nineteen seventy four. This is actually this is
33:17
Speaker 3: the plane that Stephen Colbert's father and two of his
33:20
Speaker 3: brothers were on when it crashed.
33:22
Speaker 1: Wow.
33:23
Speaker 3: And when the regulators reviewed the fight records, listened to
33:27
Speaker 3: the block box. One of the things they concluded is
33:30
Speaker 3: that they were the crew was distracted by conversation and
33:35
Speaker 3: specifically by small talk. I think the line is something
33:38
Speaker 3: like on everything from used cars to politics. And this
33:42
Speaker 3: was one of a series of accidents that had happened
33:45
Speaker 3: in this way, and so in response to this, the
33:49
Speaker 3: FAA created a rule or a set of rules called
33:53
Speaker 3: that are colloquially known as the sterial Cockpit Rule, which
33:56
Speaker 3: is just about what it takes to create a distraction
33:58
Speaker 3: free environment in the cockpit during crucial moments of flight.
34:01
Speaker 3: To this day, most of the violations of the sterile
34:04
Speaker 3: Cockpit Rule are conversation. So there's like like this, this
34:08
Speaker 3: is why citation this very senior captain was about to
34:11
Speaker 3: leave on a scuba diving trip and talked NonStop to
34:14
Speaker 3: his female jump seat rid upon discovering she was also
34:17
Speaker 3: a diver. This altitude deviation could have been prevented entirely
34:20
Speaker 3: if this particular captain had paid attention to his job
34:23
Speaker 3: and observed some approximation of the stial cockpit below ten
34:26
Speaker 3: thousand feet. This, I think feeds into the technique versus
34:29
Speaker 3: precedure thing of if you are a pilot, you are
34:32
Speaker 3: aware that even though what you say to the passengers
34:35
Speaker 3: is not scripted and rule bound, your communication is an
34:38
Speaker 3: incredibly high stakes thing, which I think is another factor
34:42
Speaker 3: in why you might sort of subconsciously reach for a
34:45
Speaker 3: cultural script about how you should sound and what you
34:48
Speaker 3: should say. And it's partially because you know this is
34:50
Speaker 3: your captain speaking, so much of the voice is about
34:53
Speaker 3: projecting authority over this mini society in the air.
34:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, and made even more pronounced by the fact that
35:00
Speaker 2: post nine to eleven now the pilot's not allowed to
35:03
Speaker 2: leave the cockpit. So pre nine elevee you saw the pilot.
35:09
Speaker 2: He was often standing by the door when you came in,
35:12
Speaker 2: and he was most definitely there when you left, and
35:15
Speaker 2: sometimes one of them would come back. I remember they
35:17
Speaker 2: would come back mid flight say hello, you know around
35:22
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I mean so he was, but he was
35:26
Speaker 2: still he was very much he's in he's he's also
35:29
Speaker 2: in character.
35:30
Speaker 1: In those moments.
35:31
Speaker 2: You know, he's in that uniform, the and he's he's
35:35
Speaker 2: dispensing the same kind of aw shuck's reassurance and wisdom.
35:40
Speaker 2: But the disabodied voice is a really modern it's the
35:43
Speaker 2: last twenty years.
35:44
Speaker 3: That's really interesting that. I mean, that would suggest that
35:46
Speaker 3: there's more pressure. Theoretically there would be an increase in
35:50
Speaker 3: pilot voice. Yeah, that you in the last twenty years.
35:52
Speaker 2: Or at least you would explain persistence of pilot voice.
35:56
Speaker 3: Right, even as it becomes a more diverse profession, Right.
36:00
Speaker 1: It's it persists because that's all it got, right.
36:03
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I wonder if I mean it's it's
36:06
Speaker 3: it's a crazy time to be flying right now, though
36:09
Speaker 3: like the past summer was one of like a historically
36:11
Speaker 3: bad time to fly. There's all this nutty weather, there's
36:14
Speaker 3: all these delays. There was the New York Times investigation
36:18
Speaker 3: that showed near misses are happening way more often than
36:20
Speaker 3: anyone thinks, and then a Washington Post investigation like a
36:23
Speaker 3: week later that said, thousands of pilots are claiming disabilities
36:28
Speaker 3: to the VA that if they were disclosed to the FAA,
36:31
Speaker 3: would make them unfit to fly. So it feels very
36:34
Speaker 3: much like like flying is a is a house of cards.
36:39
Speaker 3: Right now, it's it's a it's it's it's not dangerous.
36:42
Speaker 3: It is not actually dangerous to fly. It's statistically quite
36:45
Speaker 3: safe to fly, but it is a highly pressurized moment
36:50
Speaker 3: in flight, which is why I think it's kind of
36:52
Speaker 3: an interesting time to think about the pilot's voice thing,
36:54
Speaker 3: Like there's a lot of pressure on that voice right now.
36:57
Speaker 3: There's also a really big pilot shortage, and then there's
37:00
Speaker 3: also the rise of AI. Simultaneously, there are companies that
37:04
Speaker 3: are basically trying to replace pilots. And I was reading
37:07
Speaker 3: this NASA presentation that was like that raised the question
37:12
Speaker 3: of whether we should go automate pilots because human error
37:15
Speaker 3: is once again the number one cause of flight accidents.
37:18
Speaker 3: And what he concluded was pilots may cause problems, but
37:22
Speaker 3: they also, through their human ingenuity and their ability to
37:26
Speaker 3: basically have the right stuff, can fix problems too. And
37:30
Speaker 3: like a lot of flying is already on autopilot So
37:34
Speaker 3: when you really need a pilot is when something unexpected happens,
37:37
Speaker 3: when your luck changes and something goes totally wrong, which
37:43
Speaker 3: you know, brings me to the last thing I want
37:46
Speaker 3: to play you today, which is have you ever listened
37:48
Speaker 3: to the flight deck audio of the Miracle on the
37:51
Speaker 3: Hudson of Sully communicating?
37:53
Speaker 1: No, no, I never have.
37:55
Speaker 3: It's not him communicating to his passengers, but it is
37:58
Speaker 3: him communicating from the flight deck. This was the famous
38:01
Speaker 3: emergency landing in two thousand and nine when Captain Sully
38:04
Speaker 3: Sellenberger landed his Airbus A three twenty in the Hudson
38:08
Speaker 3: River after some birds got caught in the engines. And
38:11
Speaker 3: to me, it illustrates the ideal that I think the
38:13
Speaker 3: pilot voice isn't its essence conveying not a Chuck Yeager
38:17
Speaker 3: impression or some classic male stereotype, but a human ideal
38:21
Speaker 3: about our ability to solve even the hardest problems under
38:24
Speaker 3: the greatest stress.
38:27
Speaker 6: This is a cactus fifteen thirty nine, hit first through frost.
38:31
Speaker 2: Through us and both returning back towards Laguaria.
38:34
Speaker 6: Okay, yeah, you need to return a logbody turn left,
38:36
Speaker 6: heading up a two to zero two to zero stopping
38:41
Speaker 6: to Parker's got emergency returning It was a fifteen point
38:45
Speaker 6: nine the bird strike. He lost all engines. He lost
38:48
Speaker 6: to thrust in the engines. He's returning immediately Actus fifteen
38:51
Speaker 6: to twenty nine Witch engines. He lost thrusts in both engines.
38:54
Speaker 6: He said, got it back is fifteen twenty nine if
38:59
Speaker 6: we can get it. See do you want to try
39:00
Speaker 6: to land one on one's break?
39:02
Speaker 7: Really?
39:03
Speaker 6: Well, we landed the nuts I kat fifteen point nine.
39:07
Speaker 6: It can be left traffic runway three one.
39:11
Speaker 3: That the unable fantastic is that is like that is
39:15
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, Dave, I can't do that is the robot voice.
39:17
Speaker 3: That's one hundred two thousand and one of the space
39:19
Speaker 3: out to see unable.
39:22
Speaker 7: Way.
39:23
Speaker 3: What's the word to write anything in New Jersey?
39:25
Speaker 4: Maybe teeter borow?
39:26
Speaker 6: Okay, yeah, off your right side. It's Peterborough Airport. Do
39:29
Speaker 6: you want to try to go to Teeterborough? Yes, Peterborough pampire.
39:35
Speaker 6: Actually look why the parks guy emergency and then hey, guys,
39:38
Speaker 6: kack is fifteen twenty nine? Or did George watching Bridge
39:40
Speaker 6: wants to go to the airport right now?
39:42
Speaker 4: Won't show hour for checks?
39:43
Speaker 3: If you need assistance.
39:44
Speaker 6: Yes, sEH, it was a birch. Can I get him
39:46
Speaker 6: in for runway one? One way one?
39:48
Speaker 4: That's good, Kack is.
39:49
Speaker 6: Fifteen twenty nine, turn right two way too, I.
39:51
Speaker 3: Can land run.
39:51
Speaker 6: I wanted Peterborough.
39:53
Speaker 4: We can't do it.
39:54
Speaker 6: Okay, which one way would you like at Teterborough? I'm sorry,
40:01
Speaker 6: say again, Kats.
40:03
Speaker 3: We're gonna be in the Hudson.
40:05
Speaker 1: So awesome.
40:06
Speaker 3: It is incredible, unable.
40:10
Speaker 1: The unable. The unable is my favorite unable.
40:13
Speaker 3: And just in case any listeners aren't familiar, the end
40:16
Speaker 3: of all this is that Sully Lance's plane in the
40:19
Speaker 3: Hudson with no fatalities. So it's an incredible artifact, and
40:23
Speaker 3: I think it takes us back to where we started today.
40:27
Speaker 3: You might get unlucky, misbook your flight, rip your suit bag,
40:30
Speaker 3: lose your money in Vegas, get a bird in your
40:32
Speaker 3: plane engines, But if all else fails in this crazy
40:37
Speaker 3: over attack system we're stuck with right now, you could
40:40
Speaker 3: still get lucky with the right person flying the plane,
40:43
Speaker 3: no matter what their voice sounds like.
40:46
Speaker 2: The one thing I couldn't stop thinking about Ben throughout
40:49
Speaker 2: this whole episode is whether you have a good pilot's voice.
40:53
Speaker 3: Well, yeah. Someone in the airport said she thought that
40:56
Speaker 3: as ther was a pilot's out like she was like,
40:58
Speaker 3: you sound like a pilot, and I really don't think
41:02
Speaker 3: that I do. But do you think you have a
41:04
Speaker 3: good pilots for us?
41:06
Speaker 2: Do I think I do? I do too much, too
41:12
Speaker 2: many volume shifts. Yeah, so it's not I need my
41:16
Speaker 2: hands as well to communicate properly. There's all kinds of
41:19
Speaker 2: reasons I think I would fail as a pilot, those
41:23
Speaker 2: being a principle with.
41:24
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think I would chiefly fail at flying a plane.
41:29
Speaker 2: By one, I flew a plane only once, and my
41:33
Speaker 2: you know, in the presence of an experienced co pilot,
41:36
Speaker 2: and my co pilot was a was a rabbi flies
41:40
Speaker 2: on the side. And I have to say, the only
41:43
Speaker 2: thing more reassuring than a kind of chuck yeger person
41:47
Speaker 2: next to you is a rabbi because he comes from
41:50
Speaker 2: a tradition of intellectual rigor, and you feel like if
41:52
Speaker 2: there is something to something obscure that he would need
41:55
Speaker 2: to know about the plane, you feel like he would
41:57
Speaker 2: know that this.
41:58
Speaker 3: Is like the Talmudic theory of flying. It's it's it's
42:02
Speaker 3: you know, the technique, procedure thing again.
42:05
Speaker 2: Rashi said this about you know, flying in bad conditions.
42:08
Speaker 1: He knows that that's amazing.
42:11
Speaker 3: All right, well, thanks for this welcome all right, Ben, oh,
42:15
Speaker 3: I have one last bit of rob to play a
42:18
Speaker 3: sound any any any pilot voices sign offs?
42:23
Speaker 5: Oh well, folks, I'd like to thank you for flying
42:28
Speaker 5: with what was it? Authentic history? Revision is History. I
42:35
Speaker 5: will see you next Sam, Yes.
42:39
Speaker 4: Thanks so much, folks.
42:47
Speaker 13: This episode for Vision's History was produced by Ben and
42:51
Speaker 13: d Af Haffrey, Jacob Smith and Taliamma, editing by Sarah Nix,
42:56
Speaker 13: original scoring by Luis Garra, mastering by Jake Krsky, and
43:01
Speaker 13: engineering by our very own Neil Lawrence.
43:05
Speaker 1: Special thanks to.
43:07
Speaker 13: Richard does Patrick expise, folks, I'm your captain, Malcolm Gravel.
43:16
Speaker 4: M mm hmmmm