Hold On

SPEAKER_01: This episode is brought to you by Progressive.Most of you aren't just listening right now.You're driving, cleaning, and even exercising.But what if you could be saving money by switching to Progressive?Drivers who save by switching save nearly $750 on average and auto customers qualify for an average of seven discounts.Multitask right now.Quote today at progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates.National average 12-month savings of $744 by new customers surveyed who saved with Progressive between June 2022 and May 2023.Potential savings will vary. Discounts not available in all states and situations. SPEAKER_23: You're listening to Radiolab from WNYC. SPEAKER_11: All right. SPEAKER_14: We are going to start with a phone call. SPEAKER_07: Hello?Hey, is this Donovan?This is.Hey, Donovan Simon here.How are you? SPEAKER_23: I'm good.How are you? SPEAKER_07: I'm all right.And producer Simon Adler.You're back at school today, right?Do I have that?Am I remembering correctly? SPEAKER_23: Yeah, today's the first day back.Although we're not back in person, they moved everything online for today because of the temperatures. SPEAKER_07: Yeah, so a little while back, I gave this guy Donovan a call. SPEAKER_23: Donovan McBride.And I'm a law student in Chicago, Illinois. SPEAKER_07: On a day the weather was just awful. SPEAKER_23: It's somewhere around negative 30 outside. SPEAKER_07: Oh, Jesus. SPEAKER_23: Yeah, I know.Some of the trains were breaking down because of how cold it was. SPEAKER_07: Lulu, you can attest to that? SPEAKER_14: I can.Schools were canceled for cold alone.Yeah. SPEAKER_07: Okay.So I called him on a very cold and dark day to talk about a pretty dark moment in his life. SPEAKER_23: Yeah.So it would have been the summer of 2020.Okay.I had graduated college during the pandemic.So I spent the last semester of college online for the most of it. And I moved to Chicago for a job and I was also working that job virtually.And it was awful. SPEAKER_07: What were you doing? SPEAKER_23: So I was a project assistant at a law firm, which basically means if 1000 documents need to be renamed, you do that.If you need to call the same hospital every day and argue with someone to get medical records pulled, you do that, you know, and things like that. SPEAKER_07: Not really the life after college he'd imagined.Right.And then, you know, on top of that, this is the summer of 2020, so COVID... Is full swing.COVID's full swing. SPEAKER_23: And every day just kind of felt shut in, boxed out, hopeless, you know, depending on the day.And so, you know, there was a despondency lurking until probably August of 2020.And I had a series of a couple of days where I... barely could move from bed.You know, I was feeling very like physically heavy, like I couldn't move.Like I felt very far away from people physically, but then also emotionally.And all my thoughts were centered on like the rest of my existence is going to be this boring little job while the world falls apart around me.Um, It was what I now know is basically a major depressive episode.And, you know, certainly in the moment, I felt like it can't keep being like this. To the point, he says, that one evening... I felt, quite honestly, I think, closer to death than ever before.And there was kind of a switch that flipped where I was like, Either tomorrow I'm getting out of bed and I'm going to find a way to be part of the world again or I'm not.Like, this is the point.Like, this is the moment. SPEAKER_11: Whoa. SPEAKER_07: Yeah.And he says that at that moment, he remembers thinking. SPEAKER_23: Is there someone that's basically required to talk to me right now? SPEAKER_07: Like, I think I need help, but I don't know.I don't want to bother my family or scare my friends. SPEAKER_23: And I realized that there was someone technically who would be required to talk to me, which is, you know, the 988 number. SPEAKER_07: 988 is the federal government's response to the suicide crisis in the United States.It's basically 911, but for mental health emergencies.That's great. SPEAKER_14: It is great.I didn't know it was federal government. SPEAKER_07: Yeah.They've had a suicide crisis phone number for 15 years, 20 years, maybe.Wow, I'm really glad that that exists. SPEAKER_13: Yeah. SPEAKER_07: It's awesome.It's amazing that they do this.And so, you know, Donovan, he picks up his phone. SPEAKER_23: I'm in my bed crying at that point. And I called. SPEAKER_07: And lying there, living through possibly the worst moment of his life, this is what he hears. SPEAKER_22: You've reached the 988 suicide and crisis lifeline.We are here to help.Please remain on the line while we route your call to a lifeline crisis counselor. Your call may be monitored and recorded for quality assurance purposes. Your call is important to us.Please continue to hold.If you feel like you are about to act on thoughts of suicide now, please contact 911 for emergency help.For tools to help cope with emotional distress, please visit 988lifeline.org or vibrant.org forward slash safe space.Thank you for your patience. SPEAKER_11: No. SPEAKER_23: No.No.It was truly, truly a wild moment.Like, I'm attempting to confront one of the biggest personal challenges I've ever confronted.And, like, it's just, I just feel like I'm, like, in the waiting room, you know? SPEAKER_07: A waiting room with a robot voice and some snazzy jazz music. SPEAKER_23: Which, in retrospect, is objectively hilarious. SPEAKER_07: That's ridiculous.That's like maddening.It's like painfully toned down.It's a Monty Python sketch. SPEAKER_13: I know.That's offensive. SPEAKER_07: Yes, but Donovan, he did stay on the line. SPEAKER_13: Okay. SPEAKER_07: Eventually got connected. SPEAKER_23: Yeah, I remember she picked up the line and kind of just asked, well, what brings you here?Like, what do you want to talk about?And I don't know.It was very, very comforting. SPEAKER_14: Oh, good.That's great. SPEAKER_07: Totally.But like Donovan, you know, he's not everybody.Something like 3 million people call 988 every year and hear this.And 13% of them, almost 400,000 people, they just hang up.Yeah.Almost half a million not getting help. Yeah, they're left feeling alone right in the moment they need help most. SPEAKER_14: Yeah.That's the kind of feeling that could compound, you know?Yeah.It's such a dangerous moment. SPEAKER_04: If you've been on hold, I'm someone who doesn't like those automatic messages, and I'm the person yelling, like, operator, operator, operator, into the phone whenever I can. SPEAKER_07: So this is Stephanie Grosser. SPEAKER_04: Technology lead for 988 at SAMHSA within the Health and Human Services Department. SPEAKER_07: And what does that mean, a technology lead?And just a heads up, I will be interrupting you a good chunk, but that's not because you're doing anything wrong.It's just the way we sort of do it. SPEAKER_04: Okay, great. SPEAKER_07: So, yeah, what is the technology lead? SPEAKER_04: Technology Lead looks at improving how the government is interacting with the public.In the case of 988, that means what does the experience look like for people calling 988?And so how can we do better, right?We don't want a 90% answer rate.Obviously, we want to improve access to care. SPEAKER_07: And she says, you know, the easiest way to do this would be to just hire more people to answer the phones.But... Funding, right?Funding for mental health is hard to get.And so they're stuck putting people on hold in the worst possible moment.However, right around two years ago, Stephanie and a couple of her colleagues, they started wondering... If we could actually improve the experience, would that help people hold longer? Like, could they get more people to sit through being on hold simply by changing the automated message and replacing the hold music with a new song? SPEAKER_04: That's right. SPEAKER_07: Or said another way, could they swap in a song and literally save lives?Oh, man.It's like the highest stakes hold music situation in the universe. SPEAKER_04: Yeah, that's a great way to frame it. SPEAKER_14: All right, so this is Radiolab.I'm Lulu Miller. SPEAKER_09: I'm Latif Nasser. SPEAKER_14: And today, the search for this holy grail of hold music, a song that could accomplish the impossible and get people to stay right when they are thinking of leaving. SPEAKER_07: But to start, not to be glib here, but whose idea was it to make suicidal people sit on hold?The story of how we got here. SPEAKER_06: Well, you could take it way, way back, but I think really it began with a guy named Ed Schneidman.Okay, that's author and historian George Colt.I spent quite a bit of time with Ed researching my book, and he sort of... Wait, why laugh?Why laughter?You have to explain that laughter.Well, he's just quite a character.He was this small, compact bull in a china shop, but a very, very intelligent bull.Anyway, the way he got things kicked off was in 1949, he was a psychologist working in the Los Angeles Veterans Center.He was a psych PhD and a World War II veteran, actually studying schizophrenia. And he was asked by his boss to write letters of condolence to two veterans who had killed themselves. And so he went to the coroner's office to find out more about these two people.Coroner said their records should be down in the basement.And in that dusty basement room, he found suicide notes. SPEAKER_07: And not just in the folders of the guys he was there to learn about. SPEAKER_06: No.Ed liked to push things to the limit.And so he ended up looking through almost every folder in the room.And what he essentially found was 721 suicide notes. So all of these folders had suicide notes in them. SPEAKER_07: Now, Ed, he hardly knew anything about suicide.It wasn't something that psychologists really studied. SPEAKER_06: Suicide was not even a word that people wished to utter in public.There were so many different euphemisms for it, to make away with oneself, to do away with oneself.The whole topic was so taboo that the general treatment, and I use that word in quotes, was just to take away, you know, anything sharp and hope they wouldn't take their own lives. SPEAKER_07: But Ed, being a young, ambitious research psychologist, he was suddenly intrigued. SPEAKER_06: He realized that this was just a cache of research material.As he said to me, I felt like a Texas millionaire coming home and stumbling into a pool of oil. SPEAKER_24: I don't know why I'm bothering to write this.I'm leaving out so much. SPEAKER_07: This is Ed, years later, reading through one such note in an oral history. SPEAKER_24: It's probable I won't be able to explain myself even if I took the time to write reams of material.It's just that it's so difficult to transmit information, to get through others' preconceived notions. SPEAKER_07: And in this note and others, he noticed the authors trying and struggling to articulate why they were about to kill themselves. SPEAKER_24: No, I'm not going to try.To hell with it.If I want to commit suicide, it's my privilege, damn it. SPEAKER_07: And he thought maybe that by reading enough of these notes, he could decipher why people killed themselves and help stop others in the process. SPEAKER_24: Suicide prevention.I mean, there was no question.I wanted to be a little ahead of the time and push the issues. SPEAKER_06: But to do that, he knew he was going to need help.And so he got in touch with a friend of his named Norman Farborough, who was also a Veterans Administration psychologist.And sort of the yin to his yang.I mean, if Ed was a little, tightly wound ball of energy... Farborough was tall, slim, reserved, quiet, dignified.And while Schneidman was sort of the big idea guy... Farborough was wonderful at assembling data, at doing research. SPEAKER_07: And quickly, Farborough was like, these suicide notes, they are fascinating, but they're sort of all over the place. SPEAKER_06: One of the notes, for instance, was, Dear Mary, I hate you.Love, George. SPEAKER_07: I mean, there just wasn't that much to be gleaned about why these folks took their own lives. And so Favreau said, we're going to need more data. SPEAKER_06: And so they began this incredibly vast examination.They combed through records at psychiatric hospitals, diaries, therapy records, sorted through all of this stuff, and then began to make some conclusions.And they really did find some of the concepts that still hold true today.For instance, suicidal people... are often ambivalent.There's a part of them that wishes to kill themselves, perhaps, and a part of them that wishes to stay alive. SPEAKER_07: And if you can get them through what's called a suicidal crisis... Essentially, an overwhelming but oft-times brief flash where the desire to die overtakes the desire to live. SPEAKER_06: If you can get them through the crisis, they can find other alternatives to suicide. SPEAKER_07: And they discovered the best way to do that totally by accident. SPEAKER_06: What happened was that as they were gathering all this data, much of it from hospitals, you know, nurses would say, gee, would you mind go talking to this fellow over in you know, room 102, he's suicidal and we really don't know how to handle him.And so Schneidman and Farbrough would say, well, okay.And sitting down with these people.Schneidman and Farbrough thought that they were just doing research, but they discovered that these suicidal people, just by having somebody to talk to, the part of them that wished to kill themselves was relieved and Listening. SPEAKER_07: The very thing nobody was willing to do was the thing these folks needed. SPEAKER_06: It was this simple notion of listening will help.And so Schneidman and Favreau said, goodness, we've got to do something about this. So they got some money.They got a five-year grant.Brought on a third guy.A fellow named Robert Littman, director of the psychiatric unit at Cedars-Sinai Hospital.And on September 1st, 1958, these three perhaps nutty psychologists opened the Los Angeles Suicide Prevention Center. SPEAKER_10: I wish you'd stick around. SPEAKER_07: The very first of its kind.Trying out this treatment of just listening to folks in their moment of crisis.With one phone line and a staff of five.And it worked.Or at least people were eager to talk to them.Especially as they advertised their phone number, more and more people began calling in searching for a sympathetic ear. But I mean, these guys were based in L.A.and it was all still pretty local to L.A.Until that is... SPEAKER_00: One of the most famous stars in Hollywood history is dead at 36. SPEAKER_06: The Marilyn Monroe case. SPEAKER_00: Her housekeeper, Eunice Murray, noticed that Miss Monroe still had her bedroom light on at midnight.A physician hurriedly summoned, broke a bedroom window, found the actress dead in bed with an empty bottle of sleeping pills nearby. SPEAKER_07: August 1962. SPEAKER_06: The chief coroner asked Farborough and Littman to help him determine what caused Marilyn Monroe's death. SPEAKER_07: And two weeks later, sitting in front of a bank of microphones, Schneidman, Farborough, and the coroner, they held a press conference. SPEAKER_17: Ladies and gentlemen, now that the final toxicological report and that of the psychiatric consultants have been received and considered, it is my conclusion that the death of Marilyn Monroe was caused by a self-administered overdose of sedative drugs... And that the mode of death is probable suicide. SPEAKER_07: And that word hit like a lightning bolt. SPEAKER_06: Suicide. SPEAKER_07: You could say that it got the nation's attention.The New York Times, the New York Mirror, the Daily Mirror, all did stories on her death. SPEAKER_17: She has unwittingly played the greatest role of her career in focusing attention on the gravity of suicide. SPEAKER_07: And they named Schneidman, Farborough, Lipman, and the work they were doing. SPEAKER_17: Attempting to help those who contemplate self-destruction. SPEAKER_07: And as their names bounced around the country, their idea that just listening to someone over the phone could save their life... It did too. SPEAKER_06: There were actually movies about this.Dial Hotline and The Slender Thread. SPEAKER_21: I just want somebody to talk to. SPEAKER_19: Maybe I can suggest somebody for you to see.No. SPEAKER_06: Dramatized volunteering at prevention centers.Jeez.People were excited at the notion that all I need to do is open up a phone line, listen, and I could save lives. And so by 1969, there were more than 100 prevention centers with different names.We Care, Dial a Friend, Learn Baby Learn, Lifeline, Help, Rescue Inc.I mean, this network of independent and amateur call centers.It grew like hotcakes, or perhaps more like a spider's web, or more like a, I don't know, what's a good phone line?Ah. It went viral.And what happened there actually was not necessarily a good thing because you have to understand that at the LASBC, the Los Angeles Suicide Prevention Center, Schneidman and Farborough and Littman prided themselves on their professionalism and their very carefully trained volunteers. SPEAKER_07: But at a lot of these other newer centers, that was just not the case. SPEAKER_06: Many of them.They'd open up without really any training.And I think things got a little bit, dare I say, out of control. SPEAKER_07: This is a recording from one of those centers.First voice you'll hear is the caller's.She's slurring her speech a little bit, clearly exasperated. SPEAKER_10: Now, just a moment.I'll tell you right now.I intend to do something tonight and morning. SPEAKER_07: And there you hear the volunteer chiding her, saying, We can't be your fairy godmother.Here's the caller again.And again, the volunteer. SPEAKER_10: We can't be there holding your hand, she says.I spent hours listening to those at home. SPEAKER_07: Again, Ed Schneidman. SPEAKER_02: I had one reaction to them.I was absolutely dismayed.More than... I was flabbergasted.I was stunned.These are just horrendous examples of what not to do on the telephone.I felt in part impotent.I couldn't go into Alabama or Georgia and tell people what to do. SPEAKER_07: I mean, when he heard recordings like that one... he began to worry that these centers were actually doing more harm than good. SPEAKER_06: So he tried desperately to get hold over these proliferating lines across the country. But there was no way to enforce the notion that you had to have standards. SPEAKER_07: Which brings us back to today, because in the years that followed, the federal government decides like, OK, we got to get our arms back around this.And the way we're going to do that is by centralizing everything.And basically what that has meant is a system where when someone calls 988, the suicide crisis hotline, The person who answers it is patient and is empathetic and well-trained and professional.But because there's not unlimited funding to train these people, to hire these people for mental health in this country, when you call, you first get this. SPEAKER_14: This is oversight.This is standardization. SPEAKER_07: Yes.So how on earth do you make this an experience someone thinking of ending their own life will sit through? SPEAKER_22: We'll get to that after a short break. SPEAKER_14: Radiolab is supported by BetterHelp.Whether it's already 2am on a fun night out, graduation time, a new year, we can find ourselves wishing we had more time, wondering where it all went.But there's a question.If we were magically given that time back, what would we do with it? Perhaps you'd spend more time with a friend that you've lost touch with or petting your dog or just noticing the sweetness of doing nothing.The best way to let those special things into your life is to know what's important to you so that you can make it a priority going forward.A therapist can guide you through the process of defining your values and understanding your priorities so you know what things you can spend your time on that will really fulfill you. BetterHelp offers convenient, affordable online therapy that comes to you.Start the process in minutes and switch therapists anytime.Learn how to make time for what makes you happy with BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelp.com slash Radiolab today to get 10% off your first month.That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash Radiolab. SPEAKER_12: I'm Terrence McKnight.Join me for a new season of the podcast where people tell stories about the classical music that shaped their lives.I'm Tom Hiddleston. SPEAKER_18: My name is Natalie Joachim.I'm Maren Alsop.And you're listening to The Open Ears Project. SPEAKER_12: You're going to meet some incredible people and maybe, like them, fall in love with a piece of music.The Open Ears Project.Listen wherever you get podcasts. SPEAKER_09: Hello again.I'm Latif Nasser. SPEAKER_14: And I'm Lulu Miller.This is Radiolab.Before the break, producer Simon Adler had just told us the story of how three professionals built and then lost control of a nationwide network of crisis hotlines, of suicide crisis hotlines.How the federal government swooped in and built its own network to restore order.And how the consequence of that safer, standardized network is folks in crisis sitting on hold. SPEAKER_07: Yeah, that's right.And so two years back, with an influx of cash, 988 brought in these two tech wizards to try to solve this problem. SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so we both worked for the United States Digital Service, and I was at DSAC, and DSAC really likes to support SAMHSA. SPEAKER_07: Jesus Christ, so many acronyms.I know.Also, DSAC is just not a very nice one.Like, SAMHSA sounds so much nicer than DSAC. This is wizard number one, Melissa Eggleston. SPEAKER_03: User researcher and designer. SPEAKER_07: And wizard number two. SPEAKER_04: So from a technology perspective. SPEAKER_07: Stephanie Grosser we met back at the top of the episode.And as Stephanie explained to me, they were able to use big data to tackle this big hold music problem. SPEAKER_04: Because we're centralized, we have the ability to track a lot of information about the calls coming in and our answer rates across the country. SPEAKER_07: I mean they could actually see precisely when people were hanging up and could talk to callers who had volunteered to give feedback. SPEAKER_04: So, for example, this call may be monitored and recorded for quality assurance purposes.There was a spike of hangups during that part.And talking to people with lived experience, they said, you know, when we call 988 thinking about suicide, we need to hear affirmations, things like we want to talk to you.Please stay on the line. SPEAKER_07: And so with all this data, they started tweaking the script, going back and forth on different words, how many syllables were in different phrases.They hired someone to be the new voice of 988. SPEAKER_03: This person, Jan. SPEAKER_07: Amazing isn't just a place you take yourself.It's where that place takes you. SPEAKER_03: Who sounded a little bit like a yoga teacher. SPEAKER_07: And happens to have been the voice of... EnjoyIllinois.com.Illinois tourism. SPEAKER_03: Yeah.And from there... Everybody was very clear, like, this jazz music has got to go. SPEAKER_07: It was time to tackle the hold music. Okay, so what the hell do you do next?Like, how do you set up to try to make this better? SPEAKER_03: We worked to determine, like, what are the characteristics that this should reflect? SPEAKER_04: And it's things like human and hopeful and calm and reassuring and warm.But not too peppy.And so it was really like a fine line that we were trying to have between calming but also uplifting.And so we have a routing company and they actually have a bank of music.And so we went to them to get between like 30 and 50 songs.And we had people independently listen and rank them. And we compared everyone's rankings to come up with the top four that we would bring to our public research. SPEAKER_14: Okay.What are the four options?And like, can we hear each one briefly? SPEAKER_07: Yes. SPEAKER_14: Perfect. SPEAKER_07: Okay.Okay. SPEAKER_14: Copy Dropbox link. SPEAKER_07: Okay.It is in the... Okay. SPEAKER_14: Lovely.Okay.Should we do number one? SPEAKER_07: Hit it. SPEAKER_14: Okay. I'm a Home Depot commercial for outdoor rugs. SPEAKER_11: Outdoor rugs is pretty good.Okay. SPEAKER_14: Okay.So that's number one.Right.Okay. SPEAKER_07: Number two. SPEAKER_09: It feels too generic somehow.Like it's like this feels like therapist office.Yeah.And maybe that's good.I don't know.Okay.Three?Three. SPEAKER_14: I'm not sure.I feel the cosmos. This is so subjective.There's a searching darkness I don't mind in this one. SPEAKER_09: But it's just so hard to know what will feel right to someone at that moment.Yeah, this is one of the challenges. SPEAKER_07: But last but not least, number four. SPEAKER_14: Oh, fuck, no, not this one. I don't mind it.You don't mind that it's like a commercial for Wonder Bread's new brand of wheat Wonder Bread?Like, piano is offensive.It's just like, tweedle-deedle-deedle, everything is fine. SPEAKER_09: Well, those are your choices. SPEAKER_14: Okay, out of those, what are you doing? SPEAKER_09: I feel like I'm going to make it an unpopular choice.I think number one, maybe? SPEAKER_14: Oh, the Home Depot outdoor rugs?Yeah, I think so.Too many sunflowers.I feel assaulted and forced into being in a good mood by somebody who doesn't understand me. SPEAKER_09: Okay, fair, fair, fair.Lulu, where do you fall? SPEAKER_14: I'm going three.I'm like, okay. SPEAKER_09: Okay, wait.Can you play three again?Sorry, just for one second. SPEAKER_14: That's fine.There's like a little bit too much club encouragement for me to dance. SPEAKER_07: Yeah. SPEAKER_14: But of all of them, it's the most neutral, which I appreciate. SPEAKER_07: Well, okay.So what we just did right now is basically what Stephanie and Melissa set out to do. SPEAKER_04: Literally, we went to the National Mall in Washington, D.C.and stopped people walking on the mall.Really?Yes.I put on my 988 t-shirt.Great.We had granola bars to hand out. And we had people listen live through our phones and vote on which one they liked the best.And so we did a little tally of what people voted on.And by and large, everyone really agreed on the same music choice. SPEAKER_07: OK, so yeah, what did they... Both of you will be disappointed to know that... Neither of us?Nope.Sorry. SPEAKER_04: People really liked the inspirational piano music.Oh, the Wonder Bread? SPEAKER_07: With one massive caveat. SPEAKER_04: We had certain limitations that we were working in. SPEAKER_07: Okay. SPEAKER_04: We're actually limited to, without going through an approvals process, we're limited to talk to nine people. SPEAKER_07: Wait, sorry.That's crazy.What?Nine people?What does that mean?What does that look like?You've got nine people and those are the only nine people you can ask?Yeah. SPEAKER_13: Yeah. SPEAKER_09: That's ridiculous. SPEAKER_13: That's it?Like the mental health of millions of people depends on these nine strangers in the mall? SPEAKER_07: Yes.So thanks to the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1980, which was passed to minimize the amount of paperwork the government could ask you and I to fill out. If Stephanie and Melissa wanted to talk to more than nine people, they would have to go through this months-long, potentially years-long process to get approval.However, you know who isn't bound by the Paperwork Reduction Act?Okay, one, two, three, four, five.One, two, three, four, five.Me.Start talking to people.So I took a recorder out to New York's National Mall, Times Square.Can I ask you a few questions? And just like Melissa and Stephanie, I asked... SPEAKER_03: Hey, we're trying to improve our national suicide hotline. SPEAKER_07: I'm wondering if you would be willing to listen to some hold music?Sure.Or Spanish.Yo hablo espanol.Hablo espanol. SPEAKER_14: How many did you ask? SPEAKER_07: Sixteen. SPEAKER_14: Oh, wow.Okay, so you doubled their samples. SPEAKER_07: Yeah, I'd hand them my phone.You can just hold this right next to your ear and just tell me what your thoughts are as it goes. And first of all, my biggest takeaway was... I don't know, I don't like it. SPEAKER_18: That's depressing.Just sounds kind of hard on the ears. SPEAKER_24: That sounds like some hotel lobby elevator music. SPEAKER_18: No. SPEAKER_07: People hated it. SPEAKER_18: I don't like any of them. SPEAKER_07: All of them. SPEAKER_18: If I'm on hold, I want something that I like. SPEAKER_07: But, and granted, these were just random people on the street.But when I forced them to pick their favorite.Probably number four is the best one. SPEAKER_02: The fourth is the best of the four.I like that, the best out of all of them. SPEAKER_07: The fourth one. SPEAKER_02: Number four is what I'm going to decide on. SPEAKER_07: I replicated their results.People preferred four. SPEAKER_02: Oh, my God.What was the least? SPEAKER_07: People hated number one. SPEAKER_09: Hated number one.Wow. SPEAKER_14: I wonder how the sample, how the result would be influenced by people who have like struggled with suicidal thoughts. Which I'm just only laughing because I'm trying to be right. SPEAKER_13: And I'm like, I think my opinion matters more than either of yours as having publicly written about my struggle with suicidal thoughts.I think they should take my account.My opinion should matter more. SPEAKER_07: Yeah, I think that's actually totally fair and right.And to the extent that they were allowed to, they did take feedback from folks who have called 9-8-8 and lived through this experience. But I don't know.That's just one of like the huge challenges of this project.You can't ask somebody in the middle of a crisis, how does this music make you feel? SPEAKER_14: No, but like what I think is so painful about all of these options is like they are exactly, they are the same, they hold the same problem that the original jazzy old music held, which is like you can feel their music-ness, that you can feel their corporateness, their coldness. SPEAKER_09: The question is broad.Like, you can't go—you can't hit a broad thing with a specific thing that's going to turn off half the people. SPEAKER_14: And you are—you're also— But I don't know.But go—yes, I agree something broad and, like, somewhat innocuous or ambiguous or neutral would be good.Like, I agree with that.These just all sound so manicured and soulless that that's, like, often— that distance, that, like, apartness from humanity is often part of what's going on.Like, just give something a little human. SPEAKER_07: I will pass your criticism along. SPEAKER_14: Thank you. SPEAKER_07: Please do.Anyhow, they did have one way to see how people who actually called in might react. After they narrowed it down, they cut the country in two and did a month-long national A-B test. SPEAKER_11: Oh, cool. SPEAKER_07: Where half the callers would receive the old snazzy jazz experience.And half would get the new one. SPEAKER_21: We are checking for a counselor who is available to talk.You'll hear music while we do this. And we'll give you an update in 30 seconds.You are not alone.We care and want to support you.Someone will be with you soon. SPEAKER_07: Okay.And are the results in yet? SPEAKER_04: We are done.Yes.It was live for the country in the month of August. SPEAKER_07: Okay. SPEAKER_04: And so we had a four-week test. SPEAKER_07: After all this, they managed to increase people staying on by 0.7%.Okay. It's not great.Sure, but also, like, think about it again.We're just talking about a huge number of people here, so 0.7%. SPEAKER_14: That's, like, how many people a year? SPEAKER_07: So, like, 36-ish thousand people. SPEAKER_14: Man, it's just, like, all that effort, all that time.But with those, in my opinion, doomed choices to begin with, I don't know.I just... I think they could have got a better result with better options. SPEAKER_07: That's fair.But maybe it's helpful to keep in mind that despite how big of an effort this was and how modest of a change, like each of those 36,000 people is a person whose life is hanging in the balance. Hello?Hey, is this Porochista? SPEAKER_15: Yes, hi, how are you? SPEAKER_07: A person like Porochista Kapoor here.I'm good.How was your, did you get to have a long weekend? SPEAKER_15: It was kind of a crazy weekend because we're still unpacking in her apartment. SPEAKER_07: Porochista is a writer here in New York City. SPEAKER_15: I always wanted to live in New York.I wanted to be a writer, and luckily I was able to do that. SPEAKER_07: Moved here when she was 18. SPEAKER_15: From California, the San Gabriel Valley specifically. And pretty much since then, I've been mostly here. SPEAKER_07: And the other constant in her life, she says, has unfortunately been mental health challenges. SPEAKER_15: Yeah, I go pretty in and out of severe depression often, but I never felt a moment of suicidal ideation like I did on Christmas Eve this year. SPEAKER_07: At the time, she and her boyfriend were months into trying to find a new apartment.Work was particularly stressful.And, you know, as a writer, she's got a bit of an online following and was just getting an extra dose of shit from people on the Internet. SPEAKER_15: About how this next book of mine, like, nobody cares, like, hateful stuff.So it was just like a perfect storm. Sorry if I'm getting a little emotional. SPEAKER_11: No, you're fine. SPEAKER_15: It was a mess.And then I happened to see this tweet that said, hey, friend, if you feel like you're in emotional danger tonight, please call 988.So I remember I was in bed.I've been crying for so many hours.And my boyfriend had just brought me like some takeout food.And I just called just to see what would happen.And there was just something from the beginning that made me feel really comfortable. SPEAKER_07: By December, the new hold experience was the hold experience for everyone.And so I have to ask, do you remember the hold music? SPEAKER_15: It's such an interesting question.I'm trying to think.Well, it was something somewhat pleasant.And I was just very surprised because years before I called some sort of old school suicide hotline and I'd gotten off the phone pretty fast. Because it just didn't feel right.But this call with 988 felt different than that.Everything from the music all the way to the person, it felt really natural.It didn't feel like a scripted government anything.And I guess that's why it worked. SPEAKER_07: That's the best you can ask for.That's the dream.Not that the music's good, I guess, but that it's almost invisible. SPEAKER_15: Yeah.I didn't fix everything.It wasn't like, okay, now you have no problems.But it kind of reset my brain.It made me feel like I could buy some more time before I make this horrific decision. so so SPEAKER_07: But one more thing before we go.I gotta say, like, as great as it is that 988 got 36,000 more people to stay on the line, like, to your earlier point, Lulu, I do still feel like we could do better here.Yes!Me too.I'm with you.Like, no shame to 988, to Melissa, to Stephanie.True.Props to them.Fighting the fight from within. They were working within some crazy constraints, like the Paperwork Reduction Act, like having to use music from a library of hold music.And so, as I was finishing up reporting this, I started wondering, like, could I find somebody to make a song for? that would work even better.Hello.Hello, Sean.How are you?I'm well.How are you?I'm all right.Where am I speaking to you at? SPEAKER_08: I'm at home in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. SPEAKER_07: So I reached out to musician Sean Carey here because, well, he makes the antithesis of hold music. SPEAKER_11: Daily I still feel the silk sun shower SPEAKER_07: probably best known for being an original and current member of the band Bon Iver, but he makes his own just haunting, heartbreaking music, like this song, Sunshower, under the name S. Carey. SPEAKER_08: I'm not trying to write sad music.I'm just trying to write, like... Beautiful music, I would guess.Yeah, that's definitely more the vibe. SPEAKER_07: And, you know, I told him the whole story about 988, and then I asked him, like, would you be willing to try writing something for this? SPEAKER_08: Is that something you'd be interested in?I could definitely try that, yeah.Probably what I would do is I would experiment and really try to empathize with being on the other side of that line. You know, you want soothing, you want warmth.And so I guess I would think about human voice, maybe using that as an instrument and white noise.Like you can play with it so it sounds like waves or sleeping on the beach or something.So I guess that's where I would start and see what happens. SPEAKER_07: A week later, I called him back up. SPEAKER_08: It was definitely one of the more challenging things I've ever done, I think.It was just hard to know what to do.I mean, when I actually got in there and was creating, just trying to create a hug.Just like, okay, what's going to feel like a hug in audio form coming through a phone? SPEAKER_07: He says, in essence, what he ended up going for was hold music that feels like it actually holds you. SPEAKER_08: So, I don't know.I mean, that became more of the goal.But who knows?I think for some people, they might despise it.I don't know. SPEAKER_07: And here it is.It's called You Are Not Alone.And Melissa, Stephanie, everyone at 988, if you're interested, be in touch. Thank you. Thank you, S. Carey.And thank you, Simon Adler. SPEAKER_09: This episode was reported and produced by Simon Adler and edited by Pat Walters.Fact-checking by Natalie Middleton. SPEAKER_14: If you are having thoughts of suicide, you can call or text 988 to be connected, after only a brief hold, to a living, breathing human.Or go to speakingofsuicide.com slash resources for a list of additional resources.Special thanks this episode to Dr. Matt Ray at Temple University, Sherbert Willows, SPEAKER_09: Danny Bennett and Monica Johnson, Sherry Sinwelski and the folks at DD Hirsch, Jag Jaguar Records, and George Colt for sharing his cassette-taped interviews of Ed Schneidman with us. SPEAKER_14: And big special thanks again to S. Carey for his original song, You Are Not Alone, and for all his other work, which you can go listen to wherever you listen to the musics. SPEAKER_09: That's it. SPEAKER_14: Thanks so much for listening and for sticking with us.Catch you next week. SPEAKER_05: Hi, I'm Raeed and I'm from Pittsburgh.Radiolab was created by Jad Abinrad and is edited by Soren Wheeler.Lula Miller and Latif Nasser are our co-hosts.Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Our staff includes Simon Adler, Jeremy Blue, Becca Bressler, Ekedi Foster-Keys, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gable, Maria Paz Gutierrez, Cindy Nianasambungam, Matt Kielty, Annie McEwen, Alex Neeson, Sara Khary, Sarah Sandbeck, Ariane Wack, Pat Walters, and Molly Webster.Our fact checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger, and Natalie Middleton. SPEAKER_16: Hi, this is Ellie from Cleveland, Ohio. Leadership support for Radiolab science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation.Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. 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