Decoder Ring | Mailbag: Spooky Strings, Phone Menu Options, and Eye Rolls
Podcast: Slow Burn (Decoder Ring segment)
Host: Willa Paskin
Date: May 6, 2026
Episode Overview
This episode of Decoder Ring is a listener mailbag, tackling three intriguing cultural mysteries submitted by fans. Host Willa Paskin and her team investigate:
- The origins of a distinct eerie string sound in horror movies
- Why customer service phone lines always tell you to "listen carefully as menu options may have changed"
- The surprising history and meaning of the eye roll gesture
Through expert interviews, historical context, and delightful detours, the episode uncovers deeper meanings behind everyday phenomena, all with plenty of curiosity and humor.
Key Discussion Points & Insights
[00:06–05:42] Preview: Slow Burn Season 11 — “Becoming Justice Gorsuch”
A quick conversation with Susan Matthews, host of the upcoming Slow Burn season, about how Neil Gorsuch’s appointment marked a pivotal era for the Supreme Court, exploring his unexpected judicial idiosyncrasies.
Highlights:
- Gorsuch’s ascent coincides with a broken and dramatically empowered Supreme Court (01:30–02:33)
- Known as a legal “wild card,” especially in cases like LGBTQ+ rights and Native American issues (03:12–04:06)
- The need to see justices as complex characters, not just as oracles of the law (04:54–05:34)
Notable Quote:
“He is so committed to his legal theories that he isn't just a partisan ruling with the conservatives every single time... if it wasn't so far towards the conservatives, it's Neil Gorsuch who would be the wild card.” — Susan Matthews (02:39)
[05:56–30:21] Mailbag Q1: The Spooky String Sound in Horror Films
The Listener’s Mystery:
Listener Josh Griffey describes a haunting "string plucking" motif he keeps hearing in horror films. He wants to know where this sound comes from and how it became so iconic. (06:59–10:19)
Key Investigation Steps:
- Producer Alex Evan Chung plays examples from "Us," "The X-Files," and "Raiders of the Lost Ark" to confirm the motif’s consistency (14:18–15:12)
- Interview with musicologist Frank Hentschel (15:25–16:42): traces the sound’s origin to avant-garde classical music, specifically Krzysztof Penderecki’s postwar experiments with "extended techniques"
- Eli Spindel, conductor (19:37–23:48), demonstrates how these string techniques—plucking, tapping, bowing unconventionally—build up the uncanny effect
How It Entered Pop Culture:
- Penderecki’s "Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima" (1961) introduced these sonorities
- Horror filmmakers borrowed these eerie string effects as a sonic metaphor for the breakdown of normal reality (16:06–17:00)
- Milestone film: "The Exorcist" (1973) used Penderecki’s music explicitly (24:46–25:59)
- Stanley Kubrick’s "The Shining" took it further, creating almost a "horror opera" with 45 minutes of near-continuous Penderecki textures (26:17–27:41)
- Now, Penderetsky-inspired music "is baked into scary movies" from the art house to the multiplex
Expert Insight:
- The horror comes partly from the mix of the familiar (traditional string instruments) and the alien (extended techniques), producing "the uncanny" (28:32–29:27)
Notable Quotes:
"It's not any one thing. It's a bunch of string players divided into groups, each simultaneously executing a different sequence of plucking, tapping, bowing in the wrong place and striking the strings with the wrong side of the bow. Put it all together and the effect is to make your skin crawl." — Alex Evan Chung (23:48)
"Because I think if you listen to it very closely and analyze it, you find these hidden connections. They're somehow inscribed—some elements from the music which is so familiar to us…" — Frank Hentschel (28:32)
Memorable Moment:
- The realization that the most unsettling sound in horror comes from the world of high-minded classical experimentation, not B-movie sound studios
[32:23–43:50] Mailbag Q2: “Please Listen Carefully as Our Menu Options Have Changed”
The Listener’s Mystery:
Nick Hollander wonders why customer service lines universally say "our menu options have changed," even though they rarely (if ever) actually do.
Investigation Path:
- Historian Nick Green; he first encountered pre-recorded phone menus in 1957, but automated touch-tone menus only exploded in the ‘70s–‘80s (35:16–36:15)
- Menu messages caught public ire by the late ‘90s, with hardly anyone sure if menu options ever actually changed (36:15–37:10)
- Industry insiders, like Andy Benochet of Holdcom (39:03–41:57), confirm the phrase is mostly pointless—clients insist on using it due to inertia and mimicry
- The phrase likely began as a way to "make people listen" instead of smashing '0' to reach an operator (40:59–41:15)
Expert Insight:
- All the experts agree: it’s just a "baked-in" industry cliche with little practical value.
Notable Quotes:
"They just want to get to a person, you know, so totally." — Andy Benochet (39:42)
"It was probably an attempt to make people listen to the options more. They probably were getting feedback like people don't even listen... Let's make it important. Let's say things have changed and they need to listen." — Andy Benochet (40:59)
Memorable Moment:
- The phrase’s ubiquity is compared to a herd: “It’s acting like an unconscious bison in a giant herd marching across the fruited plain…” — Nick Green (42:32)
[45:17–56:38] Mailbag Q3: The Origin of the Eye Roll
The Listener’s Mystery:
Jade from Brooklyn asks: Where did the eye roll come from? Who invented it, and how did it come to mean what it does today?
Key Investigation Steps:
- Linguist Rebecca Clift (University of Essex) studies “embodiment”, collecting video examples of eye rolls in daily life and media (46:46–48:35)
- Historical research shows that in classical, medieval, and even early modern texts, "eye rolling" denoted intense emotion—grief, terror, lust—NOT the meaning we use today (51:27–53:49)
- As late as the 1970s–early 80s, the exasperated, "oh brother" eye roll was not yet common; so new that the Washington Post explained the gesture’s meaning to readers in 1987 (54:04–54:14)
- The modern, dismissive eye roll is barely 40 years old, possibly first appearing in black literature (Zora Neale Hurston, 1937) and becoming mainstream among teenage girls, especially via ‘80s "Valley Girl" stereotypes (55:30–56:09)
- Today, it's universal, potent, and concise: a quick, off-the-record protest that "turns us into monsters" in the best way (56:40)
Notable Quotes:
"The eye roll turns out to be a protest, a sort of off the record protest to something that's just been said or done." — Rebecca Clift (49:48)
"It’s so effective and lethal in the sense we immediately know that here is protest, disapproval, whatever, and it’s over in half a second." — Rebecca Clift (50:20)
"I mean, I guess I just want to underscore here, like, what you're saying is, basically, it seems as if the eye roll, like, was not a common feature of how humans communicate before the 1980s." — Willa Paskin (54:45)
Timestamps for Notable Segments
- 00:42–05:34 — Preview: "Becoming Justice Gorsuch" with Susan Matthews
- 06:59–10:19 — Listener describes the mysterious “spooky string sound”
- 14:18–15:12 — Producer and listener confirm horror string examples
- 15:25–23:48 — Musicologists and conductor explain origins and techniques of the horror string sound
- 24:46–27:41 — “The Exorcist,” “The Shining,” and mainstreaming avant-garde horror music
- 32:23–33:11 — Listener laments the endless menu message
- 35:16–37:10 — History of automated phone menus and the catchphrase
- 39:03–41:57 — Industry inside scoop: The menu warning is pointless, no one changes menus that often
- 45:23–48:35 — Linguist begins collecting eye rolls, explains gesture’s context
- 51:27–54:45 — Eye roll in historical texts vs. the newly-minted “protest gesture”
- 55:30–56:09 — Connection to black literature, teenage girls, and modern meaning
Memorable Quotes
- “This sound really is baked into scary movies.”—Alex Evan Chung (15:12)
- “He made an eerie, disturbing, frightening sonic weave that no one had ever heard before.”—Alex Evan Chung, on Penderecki (18:39)
- “You’re not gonna be caught inside the phone for the rest of your life because you press the wrong button.”—Nick Green (34:19)
- “It’s just become kind of like a baked in type thing.”—Andy Benochet (40:52)
- “The eye roll turns out to be a protest, a sort of off the record protest to something that’s just been said or done.”—Rebecca Clift (49:48)
- “So the fact that that's explained [in 1987] suggests it wasn't an instantly familiar expression at the time.”—Rebecca Clift (54:14)
Tone & Final Thoughts
The episode is playful, methodical, and crammed with expert testimony and pop-culture references. The team treats even silly irritations with seriousness, making the resulting answers feel both illuminating and delightful. Whether decoding the unnerving shimmer of ghostly violins, demystifying a bureaucratic cliché, or tracing the teenage evolutionary leap of the eye roll, the team brings scholarly rigor and a palpable delight in everyday mysteries.
For new and returning listeners, “Decoder Ring | Mailbag: Spooky Strings, Phone Menu Options, and Eye Rolls” is a treasure trove of unexpected backstories lurking behind the culture we take for granted.
