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Pushkin. I'm Malcolm Gladwell, and I'd like to take a moment to talk about an amazing new podcast I'm hosting called Medal of Honor. It's a moving podcast series celebrating the untold stories of those who protect our country. And it's brought to you by LifeLock, the leader in identity theft protection. Your personal info is in a lot of places that can accidentally expose you to identity theft.
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Lenovo Pro is a partnership that will help you understand and utilize tech trends. It works with you over time to take advantage of offers and resources that are right for your business. So, to join Lenovo Pro, visit Lenovo.com. That's Lenovo.com. A few weeks ago, when the leaves had just started to turn up here in Hudson, one of our revisionist history producers, Ben-Nadav Haffrey, came by the offices of Pushkin North.
In the grand tradition of revisionist history, he'd recently been flying around the country working on a story when an unexpected encounter got him thinking about something entirely different. I had a really unlucky day of travel a couple weeks ago. I was in San Francisco and I was trying to get to Los Angeles, but I had to rebook my flight because of an urgent work meeting that got moved. And when I got to the airport, I realized I'd rebooked it two weeks after I was trying to fly. And I
I was trying to save money. I got the cheapest ticket possible, so I could not change the flight. And so I just had to rebook on the cheapest flight I could find, which was a Southwest flight from San Francisco to Los Angeles via Las Vegas.
Which makes no sense. No sense. Absolutely no sense. No sense. So then I got on the air train going the wrong way. I wound up in this like median strip of the highway. I was coming from a wedding and my suit bag broke. My suit was flying all over the place. And just a bad luck day. But, you know, I made the flight, wound up in Vegas. And they have all these slot machines in the airport. Just a dreadful airport, as you've recently pointed out. This was my first time in Vegas. Yeah.
And I had exactly one dollar in my pocket. And I thought, you know, my luck has been so bad. Surely it's time for it to change. And so having never played a slot machine before, I put the dollar in this like kung fu slot machine and just promptly lost it. Just lost my dollar entirely. Okay.
So defeated, I got on my flight on Southwest where they let you choose your seat. So I was just walking resignedly down the aisle. And then I see an open seat next to an off-duty pilot, which suddenly made me think that my luck was changing because I was like, here is a chance for me to finally ask a question that I have for a very long time been obsessed with answering. Yeah.
Why do all pilots have the same voice? Welcome to Revisionist History, my show about things overlooked and misunderstood. Today's episode is a conversation with Ben Nadav Haffrey, digging into whether and why all pilots sound the same and what that might tell us about aviation and human nature.
All right, so I'm on this unnecessary flight from Vegas to Los Angeles, and I'm sitting next to an off-duty pilot who I later learned was named Rob. Wait, how do you know he's a pilot? So you know he's a pilot because he's got, like, the epaulettes on his shoulder, you know, the stripes, short-sleeved button-down shirt, and also a lanyard that said, like, Pilots Association or something like that. Dead giveaway. Yeah, you could tell immediately. So I see my golden opportunity, and I ask Rob about Pilot Voice. ♪
Do you have a sense that all people think pilots have the same voice? I definitely have a sense that there's a idea that we kind of make certain noises on the intercom. Jackpot. It's...
I guess my first question to you is, do you share this sense? If I were to ask you, what does a pilot sound like? Is there a voice in your mind? 100%. I mean, the analogy is to, you know, in medicine, it's bedside manner. And what is bedside manner? A lot of bedside manner is just the way in which the doctor addresses you.
But there's not, I don't feel like there is a doctor's voice in the same way as there is a pilot's voice. No, no. Like, I think there's a cultural understanding of what a pilot sounds like that doesn't exist for hardly any other social role. I mean, so I was thinking about this. You have all these pilots in the media, like Quagmire on Family Guy. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. This is your captain, Glenn Quagmire. We're looking about a four and a half hour flight time today. Uh...
Giggity. Or Matt Damon on 30 Rock. Well, folks, we're on the flight deck. It looks like it's going to be about another half hour and then we'll be on our way. Yeah, so the uh sound is a universal component of pilot voice. Yeah, universal. And I mean, this is the thing I talked about with Rob. Like, he does ahs all the time. Okay, so where does that come from?
I think there's some truth to it. I mean, obviously it's not completely true, but we're up there, we're multitasking, and we get a little busy, and we're trying to make an announcement, and sometimes you don't really think about completely what you're going to say. You know the basics, but...
your brain's still putting it together, you know? So it's just human nature, you know, your brain's taking a pause. And in fact, he even copped to the fact that sometimes he does an extra long, uh, like he will actually draw out an uh. All right. I have a couple of times, not often, but I have kind of drawn that out on purpose, whatever you would call that sound.
just for fun you know but like you said earlier I have no idea if anybody in the back laughed or even picked up what I was throwing down you think you've like actually done an extra long uh not ridiculously long but just enough what's like an average length maybe something like that that was long but you have to do it a little bit of a lower tone than that though
Well, I just want to have that lower, lower tone. Oh, my God. Rob is godsend. Rob is. I had such a bad day. And then I sat next to Rob and I was like, I am I am being blessed right now. And I got off the plane. I swear to God, when I was at the baggage claim, I walked by these two people who were talking in L.A. And one of them was saying to the other person, like, well, you know, the ancient notion of the wheel of fortune, right?
And the other guy was like, no, what's that? He's like, well, it's like fortunes a wheel. So you have like your bad luck and then it comes around to good luck. I swear to God. I just I was like, what is like die in Las Vegas? And I'm like, this is just purgatory is bouncing between these two airports. But then when I landed in Los Angeles, I was like, I should actually figure out if it's just me having watched too many movies and not flown in enough planes and talk to some people and see what they say.
What does a pilot sound like? What does a pilot sound like? Yeah, like is there a pilot's voice? Yes. It's monotone and robotic. I think he's looking for an impersonation. Oh, you're going to do it. Let me start. Ladies and gentlemen, please fasten your seatbelts. I apologize for the rough air, but we should be through it here in about 10 minutes or so. Then you've got to drag them out like, aw.
We should be there in about 10 minutes or so. The time is 7 o'clock. Is this consistent with your sense of a pilot's voice? She was right. It's like robotic. Stereotypically, they sound the same. I don't know how or why. Is it just...
They've heard other pilots do it and they feel, "This is how I've gotta talk?" What I'm wondering is, like, do all pilots sound the same? Yes. They do? They do. They always say "folks." Folks? Yes. I think in general, yes, they have, like, the same type of tone. And they're all, like, pretty polished. Like, whenever they come on, like, on the plane, like, the intercom or whatever, they all sound the same. What does a pilot sound like?
Like a robot. Do you think all pilots sound the same? Yes. Except for the black ones. Except for the black ones. Interesting. What do they sound like? And the rest sound like... Yo people. Yeah, thank you.
Wait a minute, wait a minute. You know about what Tom Wolfe says about this in The Right Stuff? It's Jaeger. It's all Chuck Jaeger. Yeah. Chuck Jaeger, the famous test pilot from West Virginia who, in 1947, breaks the sound barrier.
The X-1 was mine because I was trained in maintenance and I understood systems and obviously could fly an airplane. So yeah, Tom Wolfe writes The Right Stuff, 1979. Later, it becomes a big movie. And he identifies this phenomenon that all pilots sound the same and specifically attributes it to sounding like Chuck Yeager. And in The Right Stuff, there's that moment where Yeager, played by Sam Shefford,
when he's dismissing astronauts, they're spam in a can. And it's pilot voice. I'll tell you what else, anybody who goes up in that damn thing is going to be spam in a can. I'll drink to that. I actually brought the passage from The Right Stuff if you want to read it. Okay, here goes.
Anyone who travels very much on airlines in the United States soon gets to know the voice of the airline pilot, coming over the intercom with a particular drawl, a particular folksiness, a particular down-home calmness that is so exaggerated it begins to parody itself. The voice that tells you as the airliner is caught in thunderheads and goes bolting up and down a thousand feet at a single gulp to check your seatbelts because it might get a little choppy.
Who doesn't know that voice? And who can forget it even after he has proved right and the emergency is over? That particular voice may sound vaguely southern or southwestern, but it is specifically Appalachian in origin. It originated in the mountains of West Virginia, in the coal country in Lincoln County, so far up in the hollows that, as the saying went, they had to pipe in daylight.
In the late 1940s and early 1950s, this Apollo voice drifted down from on high, from over the high desert of California, down, down, down, from the upper reaches of the Brotherhood into all phases of American aviation.
It was amazing. It was Pygmalion in reverse. Military pilots and then soon airline pilots, pilots from Maine and Massachusetts and the Dakotas and Oregon and everywhere else began to talk in that poker hollow West Virginia drawl, or as close to it as it could bend their native accents. It was the drawl of the most righteous of all the possessors of the right stuff, Chuck Yeager.
Tom Wolf is so just amazing. So good. He's just, it's just like, Tom Wolf is just the best. Yeah. And I like that he's just, you know, he was not in airports asking everybody if they agreed that all pilots sounded this way. He was just like, yeah, I got it. But I don't actually think that's a sufficient explanation.
for what pilot voice is. Partially because, like, when was the last time you listened to Chuck Yeager? I don't think I ever have. I ain't no Sam Shepard. It's not the pilot voice. I believe there's some essential Yeagerness that is preserved in the pilot's voice, but it's not like a note-for-note replication of that thing. I'm as interested in
A word choice. So folks is clearly huge. Someone at LAX also pointed this out specifically. What are other vocabulary choices that are central to pilot voice? Well, I think the euphemisms are huge. So the near miss, bumpy air, choppy air. Diminutives. A little bit of turbulent. Got a little bit of... Yeah. It's not lackadaisical, but it's...
It is. They do want to signal that these problems are so trivial that they can barely muster, you know, normal levels of enthusiasm to... Yeah. It's just everything's just kind of... I've seen it all before. Yes. Kind of... Yeah. There's a... Can I do a little thing about the evolutionary basis for a pilot voice? Yeah. So, stress...
One of the things that stress does is raise your voice, right? So one of the signatures of someone who is under a great deal of stress or experiencing a high anxiety moment is their voice rises in, is it pitch?
It's also probably like, I bet your vocal cords tighten and then you become less resonant also, I would suspect. And so we're conditioned evolutionarily to interpret somebody with a kind of high, fast speech cadence as being terrified. So the pilot necessarily has to be the person who speaks louder.
slowly and low if he's trying to communicate calm. You think people are making hires based in part on whether or not you have the right pilot voice? A hundred percent. We already know that in every other job, some aspect of physical presentation matters hugely in who gets hired or not, right? So when it comes to hiring pilots, you would be, if you're the hiring person, even unconsciously powerfully disposed to hire someone who
who conformed to Pilate's stereotype. I mean, look at the way that there was a whole separate set of things for years that governed what a stewardess was supposed to be, a flight attendant was supposed to be, right? It was right down, they would like measure their,
They would do body measurements of women who were trying to be flight attendants. And you had to look a certain way, have a certain shape, you know, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. We don't think that applies to pilots? The one actually flying the plane? Well, like a lot of the pilot voice thing, the first thing people say is it's just the speakers. And then the second thing people say is it's because they're all white guys. Yeah. The most hierarchical institutions in our society are still all dominated by white.
White guys, particularly tall, middle-aged white guys. That's what CEOs are. That's what pilots are. That's what neurosurgeons are. That's what, you know, presidents are. That's what, I mean, go on. It's like...
changing, but historically it has always been a very white male profession and it continues to be so. But like not every white guy sounds the same. And similarly, a lot of pilots were in the Air Force, but not every veteran sounds the same. So this has some explanatory force, but not total explanatory force. There's still some weird extra kind of convergence happening even within this group.
So this is where I think this all leaves us. There is an idea, at least, that there is a pilot voice. Tom Wolfe says it's Jaeger, but I really don't think it's enough to say that all pilots are imitating Chuck Jaeger. I mean, it is clear to me that there's an attitude of Jaeger that has been preserved, but it's not really his voice. And I mean, Rob had not even heard Chuck Jaeger. I certainly don't know what his voice sounded like. I can't think of it. Um...
I don't think it was anything that I consciously was doing, but I think you've got me thinking maybe I dropped my voice down a pitch. I think I do. I didn't even realize it. So something's up. It's not just Chuck Yeager. What I'm interested in is what does that voice represent and how did it happen that they all sound alike? We'll be right back.
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whether you're a startup or a mature business. So to join Lenovo Pro, visit Lenovo.com. That's Lenovo.com. Can I do another analogy? Yeah, yeah, please. So I was thinking about this as you were talking, which is there's a whole literature on contrition in the cases of accused criminals. So you're in court, you're making your statement, or you're talking and the jury's listening, right?
One of the things that juries weigh the heaviest is whether or not they feel like the accused is displaying contrition, right? They have an expectation about a certain mode of self-presentation. Now, no one really knows what
contrition looks like. There actually isn't. We know what happiness looks like. We know what anxiety looks like. We know what anger looks like. We don't really know what contrition looks like. All we know is that contrition is really, really, really important. And in its absence, juries deliver much harsher penalties, much more likely to call you guilty or the judge is much more likely to give you a long sentence. So there's a kind of, there's a feedback loop between the
party that's giving a presentation and the party that's listening. And I wonder what the pilot is expected to communicate is competence and reassurance, right? Now, do we have a formal definition of what those things are? Not really. No, not any more than we do for a contrition. But that doesn't mean that we don't spend a huge amount of time
And we kind of know it when we, you know, this is a vague thing that we know when we see it. People certainly can say he did not. You hear all the time juries saying he did not seem contrite. Right. Anyway, this is all like a long way of saying this. There is this like I would just I agree with everything I say. I would just say I would add this that it's a loop with the audience expectation. Right.
Well, so there are these clear ingredients in the pilot voice as it's used by pilots and expected by passengers. You got the drawn out Oz, the slow pace, maybe a bit of Southern drawl. But I want to get into the mechanisms by which a whole profession could converge on a specific voice. So I talked to this speech psychologist.
psychologist, Jennifer S. Pardo, who's the director of the Speech Communication Laboratory at Montclair State University. You know, called her up, said, I want to talk to you about pilot voice. Ever hear of it? I actually asked my husband about it yesterday. He used to actually do flight training for a while, just, you know, as a hobby. And he said, oh, yeah, there's definitely definitely pilot voice.
And he's like, oh, yeah, it's totally from Chuck Yeager. Yeah, he definitely felt like there was, I wouldn't say pressure, but he definitely felt the need to get into this mode of speaking when he was in flight training to, you know, to show that he was part of the group. I was like, really? Why did you never tell me this?
So Jen specifically works on something called phonetic convergence and also communication accommodation theory, which is basically, it's a...
theoretical frame for a thing that most of us experience. Like you go to London as an American, you're there for two weeks. And by the end of the two weeks, you start maybe... There's some British mannerisms work their way into your speech. Communication accommodation is the study of the way, what the mechanism of that is, how you sort of modify your way of speaking to belong to an in-group or to distinguish yourself from an out-group.
And for pilots, it's something that could be happening basically unwittingly because of how much else they're doing in the cockpit. So research in phonetic convergence is trying to really pinpoint
some of these internal cognitive mechanisms and how they play around with each other. And this idea of cognitive load and multitasking, right? If it's an automatic process, it's something that would be harder to suppress when you're multitasking. Jen studies this. So she actually looked at like roommates who live together in college and does the way they speak converge over the course of a semester, which often it does.
But she said an interesting thing, which is we tend to think of communication as a one-way thing, like broadcasting functionally. But it is a two-way thing. So half of it is how you're communicating. Half of it is how you're being perceived.
like if you really were to look at it, like really, really look at it, like take, you know, take a recording, compare the recording, right, to other recordings, put it in a scientific setting, in a scientific experiment, you'd probably find more differences than similarities. But the similarities matter maybe more, right? So there is this other thing
thing going on where socially or psychologically, because we believe it to be true, we look for evidence.
that it's true every time we hear it. And if we don't get the evidence from one aspect of the way the person is talking, we might see it in another aspect of the way that the person is talking, right? If it's not there in the vocabulary, it might be there in something about the sentence structure, or it might just be that they all went, uh, uh, uh, right? It could just be one little thing that they're all doing and we're like, okay, they did it, right? They did the thing.
I do think that is a crucial element to the pilot voice thing. Of course, it's not true that all pilots have exactly the same voice. But insofar as the majority of people I've spoken to, most people you come across on the street, if you ask them this question, what does a pilot sound like, have the same voice in their mind. Some of that is just projection. And I think it's projection from a place of
needing security, having the question in the back of your mind of your pilot, that Tom Wolfe question, do they have the right stuff? And so there is that kind of... That's part of this projection thing you're referring to as well, like the expectation thing. But it's interesting because you do... You see and interact with flight attendants, but you...
typically do not see the pilot until the plane has safely landed. So the only point of contact you have with your pilot up till then is the voice. Yeah. Which they're also aware of. And also it's this crazy situation of they are speaking to several hundred people, all of whom have some kind of background anxiety about
flying, which is, you know, in my opinion, just a completely unnatural thing to do. Like we were not given wings for a reason. So you're rocketing through the air in this metal tube and human error is the number one cause of plane accidents. So you only have...
have the pilot's voice as a way of judging how competent this person is at their actual job, which is something they also are aware of. I actually talked to a captain named Karen who's been flying for a few decades, and she was perfect for this because in addition to being a captain, she teaches at something called the Fear of Flying Clinic, which is ironic because... My last name is not a great pilot name, so...
You want to share your last name? My last name is Stahl. And even though there's an H in it, it sounds the exact same. So people will hear it. So I never say this is Captain Stahl. I always say this is the captain speaking. But I always break that up just so that if there is someone back there who's feeling, you know, nervous about flying, they're going to be like, okay, that's a sign. I got to get out of here. Captain Stahl. Yeah, that's really unfortunate. Yeah.
I think it's hilarious. Captain Stahl, airline pilot, also an expert on why people are terrified of flying. Something she can empathize with because she herself really dislikes public speaking. Can I ask, when you were starting, did you feel when you made your first PAs, okay, I know what a pilot's supposed to sound like and how do I do my version of the voice? Or how conscious were you of this thing? I was terrified.
Because I would imagine everybody's listening, tuned in and going, oh my gosh, who is that? And her voice doesn't sound like what I'm expecting up there. And also not even just that, I just...
wasn't comfortable with a microphone in my hand. So I guarantee you my voice was not reassuring when I was making my first PA because I was too nervous. I was very comfortable with the flying part, but not with the making PAs. I would also say it's always male that you hear as a pilot voice when somebody's talking about the pilot voice. So that's one thing about being a woman in this job is
Trying to get that voice out there for the girls and for the boys, for just people in general to know it's not all just guys flying the plane. You know, she has a great voice, doesn't she? She does have a great voice. She's funny, too, though. I wonder what I wonder is what like do we do we like the fact that she seems to have a little bit of a sense of humor?
I think we do. Yeah, I feel like there is a certain kind of humor that's not trying to make you laugh, but it shows that the person finds the situation amusing. It's like more a reflection of the fact they're kind of bemused by everything than that they're, you know, trying to be a comedian or something. You just, you want somebody, you want somebody who's got like a pretty upbeat view of the world and is unharried. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, she has that. That is that kind of...
one eyebrow slightly raised. Yeah, like she gets what's funny about her name, for instance. But where it leads me is, it does seem like there's an awareness in pilots that you have to communicate competence, sound like a pilot, because you're answerable to the people on the back who don't have any other way of telling if you're doing a good job. Like they don't know at all what it means to fly the plane, right? Yeah, yeah. And then in terms of conveying to pilots
To people, one thing that I have found, it's very helpful for people to hear your voice when there is turbulence because people just want to hear your voice and then they can go like, oh, oh good. So for me, it's just trying to be
natural and comfortable and making PAs that are reassuring to people. That's the goal. It's going to be more what the message is and the tone of voice so that it's not something that's going to make somebody fearful just in the fact that if my voice sounded fear-inducing in some way.
But then the question I had after Jen Pardo and Captain Stahl is, how are all these pilots arriving at essentially the same answer for how to convey these basic assurances with their voice? And I talked to a pilot who said that everything in flying is either technique or procedure, and that most of flying is procedure.
Including, you know, when you're descending, you call out the altitude at certain points. Or when you put the gear down, you say gear down. It's like you say a specific thing at a certain moment. That's procedure. Technique is things like we have to lose altitude. There's a number of ways a pilot could do that. But also, it's communicating with your passengers. There is no script there.
or a set of things that you have to do when communicating with the passengers. Like for some things, there are guidelines or samples of what you might say, but it's not so strictly prescribed as other parts of flying are.
So part of what I think is going on here is these are intensely rule-bound people who are used to following standard operating procedure in nearly everything that they do. They know it's a really high-stakes job. They know that communicating with the passengers is a really high-stakes thing. And so when they speak to the passengers, it's like,
It's procedure masquerading as technique. And they're actually in their minds, like, reaching for what does a pilot sound like? What does a pilot say? This sort of thing that's totally unnecessary, but is a kind of competence theater. So why is Tom Cruise allowed to break all the pilot rules? I mean, why is Maverick allowed to? In general, though, Tom Cruise, even in Mission Impossible, you know, instead of playing the kind of cool, calm...
unflappable. He's always sprinting madly from one thing to the next and like
But it's a persona that he brings to one movie after another, including his pilot roles, where he gets to deviate from what we normally... He's a hero who gets to... He's essentially a jackass in these movies. Well, Tom Cruise plays Tom Cruise. I mean, like, that's... The part of it is, like, you just know it's him in every role. And there is this kind of... I remember there's...
There's one I forget what movie they were reviewing I think was the New York Times review of a Tom Cruise movie who it's like the this has nothing to do with the pilot thing but So much of the cultural narrative around him right now is he's the last movie star like he cares so much about movies He's gonna do all his own stunts and get us to come back to the theater just by it by his charisma Because he has that thing that we've lost from our culture and all of this, you know Marvel movie mayhem
But the fact is, Tom Cruise used to be really charming. Like, it used to be in the 80s. I feel like 80s and 90s, Tom Cruise was really charming on screen. And now he is functionally just a Marvel movie, but in human form. Like, he does the Marvel thing, but just with his own body as opposed to with VFX. He just is kind of an impressive athlete. Well, he's... But this does tell you what we're talking about because his...
A key part of his persona is visible effort. Yes. Right? Whereas what we want, pilot voice is about invisible effort. No, yes. The pilot never lets on that he is... He never says, folks, you know, we got to...
We got an intense next 10 minutes. I'm not going to talk to you because I'm going to be so overwhelmed with what I'm doing. But we're going to try really hard. And I'm sure people are going to pull this out. Like, got to go. Tom Cruise essentially is saying, can't talk now. Got to go. Got to solve this problem ahead of us. Yes, 100%. Like, all right, I'll talk to you later. You know, whereas like that's the antithesis. It's only he's allowed to do that. Everyone else has got to do pilot.
I think that's true. And also, I think this is part of what's going on with the uh. Yeah. The uh, one explanation for it is they get all the information that they're reading out to the passengers, all the unnecessary information nobody cares about. Like, oh, that's like too many knots. I wish there were fewer knots and wind in New York City. Like, they are translating it
in some cases, from whatever code it's in. And they're thinking, and they don't want to let dead air happen. So they just stretch out the uh. So the uh is when some sort of mental effort is taking place, but it's not being disclosed. I assume the uh was just a deliberate affectation to suggest that they are in no hurry. I think that's what it is, but it also fills space when they are doing something else.
Yeah. So it's it's yeah. But yeah. So so I think there is there's a few things going on with the I think a lot of it is this communication accommodation theory thing. It's like that is you're doing with your voice. I am part of an in group. And you notice I mean, a lot of people I asked about the pilot voice thing. They're like, well, it's just the speakers. It's the it's the phones and headsets and the speakers.
I don't think it is true that that thins out the voice, but everyone you hear on a plane is speaking through the same speaker, the same technology, and they don't all sound the same. So I think there's a kind of like the pilot also only with their voice. It's like vocal epaulettes. Like they've got to show what their voice that they are not other crew members. And then it's us also, you know, orally auditioning them of like, can you can you fly this thing?
Yeah, I've got a few more questions, but let's take a short break, Ben, and then we'll be right back. I'm Malcolm Gladwell, and I'd like to take a moment to talk to you about an amazing new podcast I'm hosting called Medal of Honor. It's a moving podcast series celebrating the untold stories of those who protect our country. Brought to you by LifeLock, the leader in identity theft protection.
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How would a simple change make your life and theirs simpler? Let's talk about what it takes to keep your business competitive. Of course, you need to be responsive to your customers, but it's just as important to look out for the needs of your employees. They're the ones who keep things humming along and fuel your company's success. So let the experienced professionals at the Hartford provide the quality benefits that your employees deserve.
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So keep your workforce moving forward with group benefits from the Hartford. The buck's got your back. Learn more at thehartford.com slash benefits. This is Michael Lewis from Against the Rules with Michael Lewis. If you have a small business or work as a freelancer, every little decision matters. So it's important to get those decisions right. Lenovo Pro has the expertise and resources to help you get them right. And it's free.
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whether you're a startup or a mature business. So to join Lenovo Pro, visit Lenovo.com. That's Lenovo.com. Okay, we're back. I do. There's one other thing that's interesting to me. Are you familiar with the sterile cockpit rule? Keep going.
This is a regulation that came about after a famous crash in 1974. This is actually the plane that Stephen Colbert's father and two of his brothers were on when it crashed. Oh, wow. And when the regulators reviewed the flight records, listened to the black box, one of the things they concluded is that the crew was distracted by conversation.
And specifically by small talk, I think the line is something like on everything from used cars to politics. And this was one of a series of accidents that had happened in this way. And so in response to this, the FAA created a rule or a set of rules that are colloquially known as the sterile cockpit rule, which is just about what it takes to create a distraction-free environment in the cockpit during crucial moments of flight.
To this day, most of the violations of the sterile cockpit rule are conversation. So there's like, this is one citation. This very senior captain was about to leave on a scuba diving trip and talked nonstop to his female jump seat rider upon discovering she was also a diver. This altitude deviation could have been prevented entirely if this particular captain had paid attention to his job and observed some approximation of the sterile cockpit below 10,000 feet.
This, I think, feeds into the technique versus procedure thing of if you are a pilot, you are aware that even though what you say to the passengers is not scripted and rule bound, your communication is an incredibly high stakes thing, which I think is another thing.
factor in why you might sort of subconsciously reach for a cultural script about how you should sound and what you should say. And it's partially because, you know, this is your captain speaking. So much of the voice is about projecting authority over this mini society in the air. Yeah. And made even more pronounced by the fact that post 9-11, now the pilot's not allowed to leave the cockpit. So pre-9-11, you saw the pilot...
He was often standing by the door when you came in, and he was most definitely there when you left. And sometimes one of them would come back. I remember they would come back mid-flight, say hello, you know, walk around. Oh, yeah. I mean, so he was, but he was still, he was very much, he's also in character in those moments. You know, he's in that uniform, and he's dispensing the same kind of aw shucks
reassurance and wisdom. Right. But the disembodied voice is a really modern, it's the last 20 years. That's really interesting. I mean, that would suggest that there's more pressure. Theoretically, there would be an increase in pilot voice. Yeah. In the last 20 years. Or at least it would explain persistence of pilot voice. Right. Even as it becomes a more diverse profession. Right. It persists because that's all it got. Right. Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, I wonder if, I mean, it's a crazy time to be flying right now. The past summer was a historically bad time to fly. There's all this nutty weather, there's all these delays. There was the New York Times investigation that showed near misses are happening way more often than anyone thinks. And then a Washington Post investigation like a week later that said thousands of pilots are claiming disabilities to the VA that if they were disclosed to the FAA would make them unfit to fly.
So it feels very much like flying is a house of cards right now. It's not dangerous. It is not actually dangerous to fly. It's statistically quite safe to fly. But it is a highly pressurized moment in flight.
which is why I think it's kind of an interesting time to think about the pilot's voice thing. Like, there's a lot of pressure on that voice right now. There's also a really big pilot shortage. And then there's also the rise of AI simultaneously. There are companies that are basically trying to replace pilots. And I was reading this NASA presentation that was like, that raised the question of whether we should automate pilots because human error is, once again, the number one cause of flight accidents. And what he concluded was,
Pilots may cause problems, but they also, through their human ingenuity and their ability to basically have the right stuff, can fix problems too. And like a lot of flying is already on autopilot. So when you really need a pilot is when something unexpected happens, when your luck changes and something goes totally wrong. Which, you know,
Brings me to the last thing I want to play you today, which is, have you ever listened to the flight deck audio of The Miracle on the Hudson of Sully communicating? No, no, I never have. It's not him communicating to his passengers, but it is him communicating from the flight deck.
This was the famous emergency landing in 2009 when Captain Sully Sullenberger landed his Airbus A320 in the Hudson River after some birds got caught in the engines. And to me, it illustrates the ideal that I think the pilot voice is in its essence conveying, not a Chuck Yeager impression or some classic male stereotype, but a human ideal about our ability to solve even the hardest problems under the greatest stress.
This is Cactus 1539, it's returning back towards LaGuardia. Okay, you need to return to LaGuardia. Turn left heading up 220. 220.
Got it.
Unable.
That, the unable, fantastic. Is, that is like, that is, I'm sorry Dave, I can't do, that is the robot voice. That's 100% 2001 The Space Odyssey. Unable. Okay, yeah, off your right side is Peterborough Airport. Do you want to try to go to Peterborough? Yes.
We can't do it. We're going to be in the Hudson.
I'm sorry. Say again, Cactus? We're going to be in the Hudson. He's so awesome. It is incredible. This is unable.
The unable. The unable is my favorite. Unable. And just in case any listeners aren't familiar, the end of all this is that Sully lands his plane in the Hudson with no fatalities. So it's an incredible artifact. And I think it takes us back to where we started today. You might get unlucky, missbook your flight, rip your suit bag, lose your money in Vegas, get a bird in your plane engines. But
If all else fails in this crazy overtax system we're stuck with right now, you could still get lucky with the right person flying the plane, no matter what their voice sounds like.
The one thing I couldn't stop thinking about, Ben, throughout this whole episode is whether you have a good pilot's voice. Well, yeah, someone in the airport said she thought that, you know, I asked her what does a pilot sound like. She was like, you sound like a pilot. And I really don't think that I do. But do you think you have a good pilot's voice? Do I think I do? I do too much, too many volume shifts.
Yeah. So it's not... I need my hands as well to communicate properly. There's all kinds of reasons I think I would fail as a pilot. Those being the principal ones. Yeah. I think I would chiefly fail at flying a plane. I flew a plane only once, and my
you know, in the presence of an experienced co-pilot. And my co-pilot was a rabbi who flies on the side. And I have to say, the only thing more reassuring than a kind of Chuck Yeager...
person next to you is a rabbi. Because he comes from a tradition of intellectual rigor, and you feel like if there is something obscure that he would need to know about the plane, you feel like he would know that. This is like the Talmudic theory of flying. It's the technique versus procedure thing again. Rashi said this about flying in bad conditions, and he knows that. That's amazing.
All right. Well, thanks for this, Malcolm. All right, Ben. Oh, I have one last bit of Rob to play us out. Any pilot voices, sign-offs? Well, folks, I'd like to thank you for flying with, what's it, Authentic History? Revisionist History. Ah, Revisionist History. We'll see you next time. Yes. Thanks so much, sir. I really appreciate it.
Folks, this episode of Prohibitionist History was produced by Ben-Denaf Haffrey, Jacob Smith, and Tali Emman. Editing by Sarah Nix. Original scoring by Luis Guerra. Mastering by Jake Gorski. And engineering by our very own Nina Lawrence. Special thanks to Richard Doze and Patrick Smith. Folks, I'm your captain, Malcolm Grabo. Music
I'm Malcolm Gladwell, and I'd like to take a moment to talk about an amazing new podcast I'm hosting called Medal of Honor. It's a moving podcast series celebrating the untold stories of those who protect our country. And it's brought to you by LifeLock, the leader in identity theft protection. Your personal info is in a lot of places that can accidentally expose you to identity theft.
And not everyone who handles your personal info is as careful as you. LifeLock makes it easy to take control of your identity and will work to fix identity theft if it happens. Join the millions of Americans who trust LifeLock. Visit LifeLock.com slash metal today to save up to 40% off your first year. This is Michael Lewis from Against the Rules with Michael Lewis.
If you have a small business or work as a freelancer, every little decision matters. So it's important to get those decisions right. Lenovo Pro has the expertise and resources to help you get them right. And it's free. Lenovo Pro is a partnership that will help you understand and utilize tech trends. It works with you over time to take advantage of offers and resources that are right for your business. So to join Lenovo Pro, visit Lenovo.com. That's Lenovo.com.
Choosing employee benefits can be hard. Keep your business competitive by looking out for your employees' needs with quality benefits from the Hartford. The Hartford Group Benefits Team makes managing benefits and absences easy while providing your employees with a streamlined, world-class customer experience that treats them like people, not like policies.
From supplemental health benefits to coverage for life and loss, the Hartford has flexible products and personalized service solutions to meet the needs of your employees. Keep your workforce moving forward with group benefits from the Hartford. Learn more at thehartford.com slash benefits.