Endless Thread - The American Lean

Episode Date: July 26, 2024

It's an idea that pops up on Reddit from time to time: that Americans have a unique propensity lean on things. Walls. Chairs. Anything to keep from holding up our own body weight. In fact, some posit that leaning is so uniquely American, the CIA has to train spies not to do it. Is this baloney? Where did the idea that only Americans lean come from? Credits: This episode was produced by Ben Brock Johnson. Mix and sound design by Emily Jankowski. It was hosted by Ben Brock Johnson and Amory Sivertson.

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Or rather, are you leaning on anything? I have one wrist leaning on the table in front of me. All right, I'm going to share something with you that blew my mind. Okay? Okay. It is unsurprisingly a Reddit thread. Okay. Title of the Post?

What's something that's universally understood by all Americans that non-Americans just don't understand? And because they don't understand, they unrightfully judge us harshly for it. Whoa, that's a big one. Yeah, it was like a Fourth of July thing kind of, you know, like it popped up. Top comment, whoa. The top comment has 10,000 upvotes.

That is quite a lot. Okay, leaning on stuff when standing is great. That's so ridiculously specific. Someone, well, the first response to that, which is 5,000 upvotes, I read about this a few days ago and caught myself doing at work today, like, damn it, they were right. But standing in the door feels imposing, leaning on the door jam of my co-worker's office just feels right. Another person is like leaning on stuff is American. The fuck.

Which is kind of my response to. That was my response too. Yeah. And then someone then says, I never realized how American this is until I learned the CIA actually specifically trained spies not to do this as it's a dead giveaway. Somebody is American. So wait. Okay. This was the mind-blowing comment to me.

Okay. Yeah, that is. That's crazy. Yeah. Because when I was at first reading this, I was like, I was a little skeptical, right? Like I was like, okay, leaning on stuff, the fuck? That was also me.

Yeah. But this CIA comment I found to be pretty fascinating. It is, but I also find myself already confused about like, wait a minute. We Americans lean. Americans lean. If you're an American spy who does not want to be identified as American and wants to be identified as something else. Don't lean.

You're not supposed to lean on things. You get right up straight. Either sit or stand. Those are your only choices. It's like that thing in Inglorious Bastards when the guy goes three with like his second, third, and fourth finger, when the Germans would do the third, fourth, and fifth finger.

That's such a good, oh my God, that's an amazing comparison. Well done. I've never forgotten that. Oh, all the ways in which I would give myself away, not even knowing it. And apparently, leaning is another one. You might be a leaner. I don't know if you're a leaner. Are you a leaner?

Probably. Okay. I'm an American, aren't I? Now I'm going to be very conscious of it, whereas now I can't tell you if I lean or not. Right. It sends you down this thing of like, wait, am I a leaner? Do I lean? Like, what do I lean on?

And like, I've been to other countries and have I ever noticed that nobody else is leaning. Yeah. Like, it's like weird. So I mentioned this the other day in an endless thread meeting and sound designer, extraordinary Emily Jenkowski said, oh yeah, I've seen that post on Reddit. And I was like, what? Like you and I are reading the same threads on Reddit, which I guess is maybe not that

surprising. But this isn't just a random comment with like a few thousand upboats, right? Like it's been on Reddit frequently, apparently. according to Emily, at least. It's almost like meme status or at least common legend that the CIA has trained people not to lean. That specific fact? Yes. Huh.

What's your next question? I mean, I immediately want to call the CIA. I want to get top agents on this. And I'm assuming that's what you've done, right? Our man and Danang. Yeah, totally. That's what I've spent all my time doing is calling the CIA. Nobody picks up. I mean, I will. I'll leave this taping right now and give them a call. Admittedly, I did not call the CIA. I did something much more difficult, which is look around on the Internet.

Okay. Well, I guess, I mean, I have several questions, but one of them is, has anyone ever been swiftly taken off? to prison in a foreign country because they leaned lent they leaned on something. Those files are sealed. I can tell you, but I'll have to kill you. But no, I, so you are asking very good questions. I never got to any of those questions. I asked the stupidest question possible, which was, is this real? That was my question, right?

Like, is this a real thing? Yeah. Is it real? The fuck part. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So like, you know, and also like where does this come from? Like where does this idea that the CIA does this actually come from?

And either because AI is creating a massive pile of trashy information or for some other reason. When I did the bare minimum and Googled this, the results did not give me a lot of confidence in this as being a fact. But I will share some of them with you anyway. Just so you get a sense of like, you know, the quality of sources that we're dealing with here. Okay, this is a post on medium. It says 15 ways to spot an American abroad. From leaning habits to love of small talk. Americans are known for leaning on things when standing still.

This is a habit that the CIA even trains Americans to unlearn when training to be a spy. So it's basically, again, like the same. fact, right? Yeah, I mean, I see some things on this list that they're not, not true. But is this like, because there are no sources cited, it just feels like someone, you know, brainstormed a list of like, we like ice in our water in America. We like sweet treats for breakfast. We're constantly looking in the mirror.

We're known for saying y'all, which like, no, a fraction of us are known for saying. y'all. We love our baseball caps. I'd say this is largely baloney. Okay. So I've shared another one with you. Another of the top results. Okay. This is from Bored Panda. Someone asks, quote, what's an obvious sign that someone is American and 30 people? Don't hold back. Okay. So now we have sources in the form of 30 people. To me, this is like another like kind of like, it's like a BuzzFeed listicle, right?

Yes. Yes. This is listical status. Yep. And look, I'm not trying, I'm not trying to cast dispersions on BuzzFeed's fact checking department or anything here, right? But again, like, I, or board Panda for that matter. But like, you know, I'm not seeing the origin of this, right? This sounds like a, like we crowdsourced a list at a dinner party. Yeah. The next top result, you know, TikTok, which is, of course, Amory, the source of all truth. This is from user Danielle Grobman, who offers some griping.

Something I don't understand why Europeans don't actually take up is the American lean. I have the European friends that are so quick to say, oh, I can tell us an American, you're fucking leaning on everything. Excuse me. I'm comfortable right now. What are you doing? I don't know why I'm so triggered. Yeah, and I like this one because she recasts it as the American Leaning. which like I kind of like that. It's not a drink. It's just a behavior.

Remember when standing desks became a thing? Do I? When everyone was like, sitting is the new smoking. And I noticed that I was definitely doing a lot of flamingoing. I was like standing, he was standing on one leg. And then I'd prop my foot of the other leg on the chair behind me.

Okay. Kind of a reverse, a reverse Captain Morgan, if you will. Sure. Suffice it to say we still don't know whether this CIA comment is real. We could find this out. Well, I've got great news. But first, I would love for you to hear from our sponsors. At Radio Lab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science, neuroscience, chemistry.

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The other TikTok is you will be shocked to find from another podcast. Okay. And you will be shocked to learn that this podcast appears to be a bunch of dudes with microphones just shooting the shit. Okay. All right. So take a look at this one. All right. Let's see if we get any further.

Okay. The other thread I just read was it was about like things that Americans do that Americans don't know. It's just them who do it. And someone said that the CIA, one of the first things they teach spies, is how to unlearn leaning. Because a leaning is something only Americans do. Believe it or not. That's not true.

Everybody all starts sitting up here. Nobody leans what are you talking about? What do you talk? Like, I mean. Like, you'll never catch a Spaniard. How often you see Bond just like smoking that thing, lean in, bro? Yeah. Yeah, bro.

They stay leaning, bro. But he's a spy, bro. Maybe he's trying to blend it. He's a British spy. Yeah, yeah. He's trying to look American. Yeah, and by the way, if I saw somebody not leaning, I'd be like, look at this spy over here.

Yeah. That's what you stay like this. Do you also now feel slightly dumber for having listened to that? No offense to these guys? Who apparently go by KFC Radio. It actually makes me realize, like, oh, yeah. we can just talk about random stuff like this. That's what we're doing.

It's entertaining because it's relatable. That's what we're doing. We're talking about people talking about leaning. We're just a couple of bros listening to a couple of bros talk about a couple of bros. That's right. Look in the comments from that link. Oh, I already closed it so swiftly because I was like, never going to need that again. But I will.

I will look at the comments. Okay. I don't feel like I lean on things very often. As a spy myself, you can lean anytime. Well, I mean, look, like even endless thread when we're just a bunch of bros sitting around with our marcophones talking about leaning, you know, at least we care about the origin of what is purported to be fact, right?

And I think I found the origin of what is purported to be this fact. Oh, okay. Not on Reddit. Not on TikTok or bored panda or upworthiest or medium. I found it on NPR. Hey-oh. Shout out Ted Radio Hour. And it's from a show that came out two years ago, and it references Wired magazine.

Wired. This is from 2018. The headline is, how the CIA trains spies to hide in plain sight. Okay. So we got the answer, I think. This is from a book by the CIA's disguise chief, John A Mendez, who is a spy giant in her own right,

but whose husband, Tony Mendez's story in the CIA, was also the basis for the movie Argo about a spy crisis in Iran. So there's some famous CIA people here. Here is the money quote from this wired piece. Americans have a certain way of standing. Wait on one foot or the other. And if they're trying to pass themselves off as European, it helps if they stand squarely on both feet.

But that's not quite lean, right? Like that's just kind of like Americans, they might be flaminguing. Yeah, or like leaning this, I guess, I've never have I thought so much about the the intricacies of the definition of leaning. But like, does leaning imply leaning on something? Or is it just like, yeah, popped a hip a little bit? Yeah.

Because that's more the like weight. That's how you would tell that the weight, unless they are flamingoing, that's how you would tell that their weight is more on one foot than on the other foot. So I found another piece about this book. The book is called The Moscow Rules. And it's about CIA spy work in the Soviet era. And Mendez has another quote from another piece.

This is her, again, talking about the book. She says, and this might be a direct quote from the book. It says, they think that we are slouchy, a little sloppy. And they think they can almost see that in our demeanor on the street. She's apparently talking about the enemies of the U.S. here. Because they stand up straight. they don't lean on things, Mendez said. That's maybe the comment that leads to all of this.

Yeah. But it's this one thing she says in a book, and it becomes this common legend, which gets repeated over and over across the internet. And I don't think there's a lot of proof of this. So, like, maybe I want to go back to the bros in the podcast. You know, it's just one spy saying one thing in a book, one time. that they were trying to sell.

And let's be honest, can we trust spies trying to sell books? I don't know. I know what we need to do. We need to, with all those big public radio dollars, we need to fly to Europe. We need to conduct a thorough on-the-ground investigation, minimum three months, right, just to be safe? Three to five months.

Get a couple apartments, yes. We need a large pastry budget. Yeah. Yep. Yes, we do. And we need to get to the bottom of this. I completely agree. And also, while we're at it, we can just become CIA spies and get some training.

No problem. Well, while you were earlier in this recording session, your computer was, you know, having a moment like it often does. Yeah. finicky setup. You called the CIA and got real answers. I called the CIA. No, you'll be maybe slightly disappointed in me that I responded to that commenter who first writes about the learning about the CIA's training. I love that.

And I just said, wait, this is fascinating. Where did you learn that? So who knows? I mean, this is the post itself. It's from almost a month ago. Who's the commenter? Inevitable Waluigi. Inevitable Waluigi?

Yeah. So if inevitable Waluigi gets back to me and cites their source, I didn't want to come across as like, cite your source person. But if they get back to me and they cite NPR or Wired or. Source. Am spy and CIA. I'm spy. Right. I'm currently spy and CIA.

I'm currently trainee just finished boot camp in CIA. I will let you know. Okay. Okay. That's cool. All right. Great. Thanks so much.

That was under the assumption that we will not be granted the three-month European embedded experience, investigative experience. I'll talk to the business office. Sounds good. So to review, what we know is that this idea of the American Lean is all over the internet, Reddit, TikTok, medium, news aggregation websites. But there seems to only be one source for this idea, which is a book that the former head of the CIA's disguise program wanted us all to buy and read. And I mean, she is a good source, but she's the only one. And this is journalism. So, you know, we'd like to have three sources, ideally.

In other words, we're still looking. All right, Amory. Thanks for coming on this journey. And, you know, let's go lean on something just to keep it cash. Yeah, thank you for taking me on this slanted journey. Yeah, and listeners, other than the inevitable Walloichi, if you have thoughts or sources, we'd love to know. And cite them.