Mailbag: Spooky Strings, Phone Menu Options, and Eye Rolls
Decoder Ring
Slate Podcasts
4.6 • 2.2K Ratings
🗓️ 6 May 2026
⏱️ 48 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
We are lucky to get fantastic questions from our listeners here at Decoder Ring, and in this episode, we’re going to open up our mailbag to answer three of them. What are the origins of an eerie horror film string motif? Why do companies insist on telling callers to “listen closely” to menu options that could not possibly have changed? And when did we start using the indispensable eye roll?
In this episode, you’ll hear from historical musicologist Frank Hentschel, as well as Eli Spindel, artistic director of the String Orchestra of Brooklyn. We also speak with writer Nick Greene, Holdcom CEO Andrew Begnoché, and linguist Dr. Rebecca Clift.
This episode was produced by Katie Shepherd and Evan Chung, our supervising producer. Decoder Ring is also produced by Max Freedman. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director.
Special thanks to Nicole Holliday, and to Leilehua Lanzilotti, whose website Shaken Not Stuttered is a fantastic resource about extended techniques for strings.
If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at DecoderRing@slate.com or leave a message on our hotline at (347) 460-7281.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Josh Griffey is a Dakota-Rig listener from St. Louis, Missouri. |
| 0:09.0 | And years ago, he had an experience that terrified him. |
| 0:12.4 | I had this very vivid memory who was a freshman in college, and I went to see a movie that, I think, it's basically forgotten. |
| 0:17.1 | It's called Mama. |
| 0:18.3 | Where is she now? |
| 0:20.2 | Is she here in this house? |
| 0:23.0 | Mama, stop it! You promise! |
| 0:26.4 | As an 18-year-old, I watched this movie in the movie theater, and I was terrified out of my mind. |
| 0:30.4 | I was so scared. I remember walking back to my dorm, scared that something was going to jump out |
| 0:35.3 | at me. I had trouble sleeping. And so I just sort of |
| 0:37.8 | swore off the whole thing. I guess that's just not for me. He was sure he was done with horror |
| 0:44.3 | movies for good. But then five or six years ago, Josh began seeing the person he's dating now. |
| 0:49.6 | And love does some funny things. She was a big horror movie person. She made a case for like, no, like, you got to at least watch Freddy and Jason and Michael Myers. You got to know what these are, you know, and sort of converted me to the lifestyle. So when he wasn't just watching horror movies, he was watching all the horror movies. Between her wanting to show me everything and we wanted to see everything, it's like, well, now we have to do all the mascot horrors. Like we have to, can you say if you see in the horror movies. Between her wanting to show me everything and we wanted to see everything, |
| 1:11.1 | it's like, well, now we have to do all the mascot horrors. Like we have to, can you say |
| 1:14.0 | you've seen the horror movies until you've seen like all three Jason's that you need to see to |
| 1:17.9 | see Jason that is as Jason is, you know? So Josh is all in on horror now. He watches classics. He watches |
| 1:27.0 | trash. He watches everything. And while doing so, |
| 1:30.8 | he began to hear something so often, something so eerie in the soundtrack of these films that he |
| 1:37.0 | felt compelled to email us about it. I noticed that like sometimes when there's something creepy, |
| 1:43.3 | but especially like a ghost kind of creepy, there's this like string plucking thing that happens. |
| 1:50.2 | And I, I'm an engineer. |
| 1:51.9 | I'm not a musician. |
... |
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