Radiolab - Hold On

Episode Date: March 1, 2024

Two years ago, the United States did something amazing. In response to the mental health crisis the federal government launched 988 - a nationwide, easy to remember phone number that anyone can call anytime and talk to a counselor. It was 911 but for mental health and they hoped that it would save lives. However, if you call 988 today the first thing you hear isn’t a sympathetic counselor. What you hear is hold music.Today, the story of the highest stakes hold music in the universe, the three men who created suicide prevention and the two women trying to fix it. Special thanks to Dr. Matt Wray, Sherbert Willows, Dani Bennett & Monica Johnson, Shari Sinwelski & the folks at Didi Hirsch, David Green, Jay Kennedy S. Carey & JagJaguwar Records,  and George Colt for sharing his cassette taped interviews of Ed Schneidman with us.EPISODE CREDITS: Reported by - Simon AdlerProduced by - Simon AdlerFact-checking by - Natalie Middletonand Edited by  - Pat WaltersOur newsletter comes out every Wednesday. It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today.Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing [e-mail] support for Radiolab’s 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.

Hey, just a note that today's episode does contain discussions of suicide. Please listen with care. Wait, you're listening. Okay. All right. Okay. All right. You're listening to Radio Lab.

Lab. Radio Lab. From WNYC. What's this? See? Yep. Alright, we are gonna start with a phone call. Hello? Hey, is this Donovan?

This is. Hey, Donovan Simon here. How are ya? I'm good, how are you? I'm alright. And producer Simon Adler. You're back at school today, right? Do I have that? Am I remembering correctly? Yeah, today's the first day back. Although we're not back in person. They moved everything online for today because of the temperatures. Yeah, so a little while back I gave this guy Donovan a call. Donovan McBride, and I'm a law student in Chicago, Illinois. On a day the weather was just awful.

It's somewhere around negative 30 outside. Oh, Jesus. Yeah, I know. Some of the trains were breaking down because of how cold it was. Lulu, you can attest to that. I can. Schools were canceled for cold alone. Yeah. Okay. So I called him on a very cold and dark day to talk about a pretty dark moment in his life. Yeah. So it would have been the summer of 2020. 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. What were you doing? So I was a project assistant at a law firm, which basically means if 1,000 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. 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. 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 gonna be this boring little job

while the world falls apart around me. It was what I now know is basically a major depressive episode. And, you know, certainly in the moment I felt like like it can't keep being like this. To the point he says that one one evening I felt quite honestly I think closer to death than ever before and there is kind of a switch that flipped where I was like, either tomorrow I'm getting out of bed and I'm gonna find a way to be part of the world again

or I'm not. Like this is the point, like this is the moment. Well. Yeah. And he says that at that moment, he remembers thinking. Is there someone that's basically required to talk to me right now? Like, I think I need help, but I don't know. I don't want to bother my family or scare my friends. And I realized that there was someone technically who would be required to talk to me,

which is, you know, the 988 number. 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. It is great. I didn't notice federal government. Yeah. They've had a suicide crisis phone number for 15 years, 20 years maybe.

Well, I'm really glad that that exists. Yeah. It's awesome. It's amazing that they do this. And so, you know, Donovan, he picks up his phone. I made my bed crying at that point. And I called. And lying there, living through possibly the worst moment of his life.

This is what he hears. You've reached the 988 suicide and crisis lifeline. This is what 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 988 lifeline.org or vibrant.org forward slash safe space. Thank you for your patience. No, no. It was truly, truly a wild moment. Like I'm attempting to confront one of the biggest personal challenges that are confronted. And like it's just I just feel like I'm like in the waiting room, you know, a waiting room with a robot voice and some snazzy jazz music, which in retrospect is objectively hilarious.

That is that's ridiculous. That is... That's ridiculous. That's like maddening. It's like painfully toned up. It's a Monty Python sketch. I know. That's like offensive. Yes, but Donovan, he did stay on the line. Okay. Eventually got connected.

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. Oh, good, that's great. Totally, but like Donovan, you know, he's not everybody. Something like three 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. Yeah. That's the kind of feeling that could compound, you know? Yeah. It's such a dangerous moment. If you've been on hold, I'm someone who doesn't like those automatic messages and I'm the person yelling like, Does anyone? Operator, operator, operator. Exactly. It's like a telephone whenever I can. So this is Stephanie Grocer. Technology lead 4988 at SAMHSA within the Health and Human Services Department. 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. Okay, great. So yeah, what is the technology lead? 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. 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 un-hold? Simply by changing the automated message and replacing the hold music with a new song. That's right. Or said another way, could they swap in a song and literally save lives? Oh man. Well, it's like the highest stakes hold music situation in the universe.

Yeah, that's a great way to frame it. All right, so this is Radiolab. I'm Lula Miller. I'm Latif Nasser. 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. 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. 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 laugh there? You have to explain that laughter.

Well, he's just quite a character. He was this small, compact, Bolina Chinashok, 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 in 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. And not just in the folders of the guys he was there to learn about. 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. Now, Ed, he hardly knew anything about suicide. It wasn't something that psychologists really studied.

Suicide was not even a word that people wish 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 anything sharp and hope they wouldn't take their own lives. But Ed, being a young, ambitious research psychologist, he was suddenly intrigued. 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. I don't know why I'm bothering to write this. I'm leaving out so much. This is Ed years later reading through one such note in an oral history. It's probably 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. And in this note, in others, he noticed the authors trying and struggling to articulate why they were about to kill themselves.

No, I'm not going to try to help with it. If I want to commit suicide, it's my privilege, damn it." 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. Suicide prevention. I mean, there was no question. I wanted to be a little ahead of the time and push the issue. 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 veteran's 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. And quickly, Farborough was like these suicide notes, they are fascinating, but they're sort of all over the place. One of the notes, for instance, was, Dear Mary, I hate you, love George. I mean, there just wasn't that much to be gleaned about why these folks took their own lives.

And so, Farbrough said, we're gonna need more data. 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. And if you can get them through what's called a suicidal crisis. Essentially, an overwhelming but off-times brief flash where the desire to die overtakes the desire to live. If you can get them through the crisis, they can find other alternatives to suicide. And they discovered the best way to do that totally by accident. 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 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. Listening. The very thing nobody was willing to do was the thing these folks needed. It was this simple notion of listening will help. And so Schneidman and Farbrough 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 Lippmann, director of the psychiatric unit Cedar Sinai Hospital, and on September 1st, 1958, these three, perhaps nutty, psychologists opened the Los Angeles Suicide Prevention Center. 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 LA and it was all still pretty local to LA. Until that is. One of the most famous stars in Hollywood history

is dead at 36. The Marilyn Monroe case. Her housekeeper, Eunice Murray, noticed that Miss Monroe still had her bedroom light on at midnight. A physician hurriedly summoned both the bedroom window Monroe case. August 1962. The Schneidman, Farberow, and the Coroner, they held a press conference. 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." And that work hit like a lightning bolt. 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. She has unwittingly played the greatest role of her career in focusing attention on the gravity of suicide. And they named Schneidman, Farber O, Lipman, and the work they were doing. Attempting to help those who contemplate self-destruction. 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. There were actually movies about this, Dial Hotline and the Slender Thread. I just want somebody to talk to. Maybe I can suggest somebody for you to see. No. Dramatized volunteering at prevention centers. Geez.

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. 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 Farberow

and Littman prided themselves on their professionalism and their very carefully trained volunteers. But at a lot of these other newer centers, that was just not the case. 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. This is a recording from one of those centers. First voice you'll hear is the callers. She's slurring her speech a little bit, you'll hear is the callers. She's slurring her speech a little bit, clearly exasperated. And there you hear the volunteer chiding her, saying, we can't be your fairy godmother. What you're missing to me is...

Here's the caller again. Now I am far down from saying this without butchability. You just get me for your problem. And again, the volunteer. We can't be there. Oh, yeah. You can see yourself. I spent hours listening to those at home. Again, Ed Schneidman. Uh, I had one reaction to them.

I was absolutely dismayed. More than I was flabbergasted. I was stumped. These are just horrendous examples of what not to do on the telephone. I felt in hard infancy, I could go into Alabama or Georgia and tell people what to do. I mean, when he heard recordings like that one, he began to worry that these centers were actually doing more harm than good. 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. Which brings us back to today because in the years that followed, the federal government decides like, okay, 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.

This is oversight. This is standardization. Yes. This is oversight. This is standardization. Yes. So, how on earth do you make this an experience someone thinking of ending their own life will sit through? Thank you for continuing to hold. We apologize for the delay. We'll get to that after a short break. I'm Lula 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. 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. Yeah, so we both worked for the United States Digital Service, and I was at DSAC,

and DSAC really likes to support SAMHSA. Jesus Christ, so many acronyms. I know. Also DeSac is just not a very nice one. Like SAMHSA sounds so much nicer than DeSac. I know, I mean, I will. This is wizard number one, Melissa Eggleston. User researcher and designer.

And wizard number two. So from a technology perspective. Stephanie Grocer, 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. 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. I mean, they could actually see precisely when people were hanging up and could talk to callers who had volunteered to give feedback. So for example, this call may be monitored or recorded. It may be 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. 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. This person, Jan.

Amazing isn't just a place you take yourself. It's where that place takes you. You sounded a little bit like a yoga teacher. And happens to have been the voice of Enjoy Illinois dot com. Illinois Tourism. Yeah. And from there.

Everybody was very clear like, this jazz music has gotta go. It was time to tackle the whole music. Okay, so what the hell do you do next? Like how do you set up to try to make this better? We work to determine like, what are the characteristics that this should reflect? And it's things like human and hopeful and calm and reassuring and warm.

But not too peppy. It was really a fine line that we were trying to have between calming but also uplifting. We have a routing company and they actually have a bank of music. 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. OK, what are the four options?

And like, can we hear each one briefly? Yes. Perfect. OK. Copy Dropbox link. OK, it is in the... OK, lovely. OK, should we do number one? Hit it. Okay. It is in the, it is in the. Okay. Lovely. Okay. Should we do number one? Hit it. Okay. I'm a home Depot commercial for outdoor rugs. Outdoor rugs is pretty good.

Okay. Okay. So that's number one. Right. Okay. Number two. It feels too generic somehow. Like it's like this is this feels like therapist office. Yeah.

And maybe that's good. I don't know. Okay. Three. Three. Three. I'm not sure. I feel the cosmos. There's a subject darkness. I don't mind in this one. Like it's, it's just so hard to know what'll searching darkness I don't mind in this one. It's just so hard to know what'll feel right to someone at that moment. Yeah, this is one of the challenges.

But last but not least, number four. 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 like tweedle, little, little, everything is fine. Well, those are your choices. Okay, what, out of those, what are you doing? I'm, I feel like I'm gonna make it an unpopular choice.

I think number one, maybe? Oh, the Home Depot outdoor rugs. Yeah, I think so. Too much, too many sunflowers. I feel assaulted and forced into being in a good mood by somebody who doesn't understand me. Okay, fair, fair, fair. Lammu, where do you fall?

I'm going three, I'm like, okay. Okay, wait, can you play three again? Sorry, just for one second. ["The Last Song of the Year"] That's fine. There's like a little bit too much club encouragement for me to dance, but of all of them, it's the most neutral, which I appreciate.

Well, okay. So, um, what we just did right now is basically what Stephanie and Melissa set out to do. Literally, we went to the national mall in Washington, DC, 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, um, 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. Okay, so yeah, what did they- Both of you will be disappointed to know that- Neither of us? Nope, sorry. People really liked the inspirational piano music.

Oh, the Wonder Bread. With one massive caveat. We had certain limitations that we were working in. OK. We're actually limited to, without going through a approval process, we're limited to talk to nine people. 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, yeah. Hmm. That's ridiculous. That's it? Like the mental health of millions of people depends on these nine strangers on the mall.

Yes. So, um, 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 month's 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, four, five, one, two, three, four, five. Me.

I'm gonna 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, Hey, we're trying to improve our national suicide hotline. I'm wondering if you would be willing to listen to some old music. Sure. All right.

Spanish. You speak Spanish? I speak Spanish. How many did you ask? 16. Oh, wow. OK, so you doubled their samples. 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. That's depressing. It just sounds kind of hard on the ears. That sounds like some hotel, lobby, elevator music. No.

No. People hated. I don't like any of them. All of them. If I'm on hold, I want something that I like. But, and granted, these were just random people on the street. But when I forced him to pick their favorite. Probably number four is the best one.

The fourth is the best of the four. I like that the best out of all of them. The fourth one. Number four is what I'm going to decide on. I replicated their results. People preferred four. Oh my god, I'm going to decide on. I replicated their results. People preferred four. Oh my God. What was the least?

People hated number one. Aided number one. Wow. I wonder how the results would be influenced by people who have like struggled with suicidal thoughts, which I'm just only laughing because I'm trying to like get I'm trying to be right. 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.

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've called 988 and lived through this experience. But I don't know, that's just one of the huge challenges of this project. You can't ask somebody in the middle of a crisis, how does this music make you feel? No, but what I think is so painful about all

of these options is they are exactly, they are the same, they hold the same problem that the original jazzy hold music held, which is like you can feel their musac-ness, that you can feel their corporateness, their coldness. But the question is broad, like you can't go, you can't hit a broad thing with a specific thing that's gonna turn off half the people.

And you are, you're all, you are 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 a Partness from humanity is often part of what's going on. Like just just give something a little human. I will pass your criticism along. Thank you. Please do.

But 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. Oh, cool. Okay. Where half the callers would receive the old snazzy jazz experience. And half would get the new one. 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. Okay, and are the results in yet? We are done, yes. It was live for the country in the month of August. Okay.

And so we had a four week test. After all this, they managed to increase people staying on by 0.7%. Okay. Not great. Sure, but also like think about it again. We're just talking about a huge number of people here. So 0.7%.

That's like how many people a year? So like 36-ish thousand people. Oh, 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.

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? Yes. Hi, how are you? A person like Porochista Kapoor here. I'm good. How was your, did you get to have a long weekend?

It was kind of a crazy weekend because we're still unpacking in her apartment. Porochista is a writer here in New York City. I always wanted to live in New York. I wanted to be a writer and luckily I was able to do that. Moved here when she was 18. From California, the San Gabriel Valley specifically. And pretty much since then, I've been mostly here. And the other constant in her life, she says,

has unfortunately been mental health challenges. 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. 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. It's 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. No, you're fine. It was a mess. And then I happened to see this tweet that said, hey, friend, do you feel like you're in emotional danger tonight? Please call 988. So I remember I was in bed, I'd 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. By December, the new hold experience was the Hold Experience for everyone. And so I have to ask, do you remember the Hold Music? Yeah, 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 I 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's felt really natural It didn't feel like a scripted government anything and I guess that's that's why it worked Mmm And it's like that was that's the best you can ask for. That's the dream. Yeah, yeah.

Like, not that the music's good, I guess, but that it's almost invisible. Yeah. It 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, you know, it makes this horrific decision. But 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 old music.

And so, as I was finishing up reporting this, I started wondering, like, could I find somebody to make a song that would work even better? Hello. Hello, Sean. How are you? I'm well. How are you? I'm all right. Where are my speaking to you at? I'm at home in El Clair, Sean. How are you? I'm well. How are you? I'm all right. Where are my speaking to you at? I'm at home in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.

So I reached out to musician Sean Kerry here because, well, he makes the antithesis of old music. You're the set up sun shower 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, Sun Shower Under the name S.Carrie I don't want myself before I knew you. 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 of the vibe. 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? 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 emphasize with being on the other side of that line. 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. A week later, I called him back up. It was definitely one of the more challenging things I've ever done, I think. It was just hard to know what to do.

When I actually got in there and was creating, I just tried to create a hug. What's going to feel like a hug in audio form coming through a phone? He says, in essence, what he ended up going for was hold music that feels like it actually holds you. So I don't know. I mean, that that was that became more of the goal. but who knows? I think for some people they might despise it. I don't know. And here it is. It's called You Are Not Alone. And Melissa, Stephanie, everyone at 988,

if you're interested, be in touch. నినినినినినినినినినినినినినినినినినినినినినినినినినినినినినినినినినినినినినినినినినినినినినినినినినినినినినినిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిలిల� Thank you, Eskari. And thank you, Simon Adler. This episode was reported and produced by Simon Adler and edited by Pat Walters, fact-checking by Natalie Middleton. 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, Sherbet Willows,

Danny Bennett and Monica Johnson, Sheri Sainwelski and the folks at DD Hirsch, Jag Jaguar Records and George Colt for sharing his cassette taped interviews of Ed Schneidman with us. And big special thanks again to S.Kerry for his original song, You Are Not Alone, and for all his original song, You Are Not Alone, and for all his other work, which you can go listen to, wherever you listen to the music. That's it. Thanks so much for listening, and for sticking with us.

Catch you next week. Hi, I'm Raeid and I'm from Pittsburgh. Radio Lab was created by Jad Abinrod and is edited by Soren Wheeler, Lula Miller and Latif Nasser Arkaus. Dylan Keith is our director of sound design. Our staff includes Simon Adler, Jeremy Blue, Becca Brestler, Ikedi Foster Keys, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gable, Maria Paz Gutierrez, Sandin Nianna Sambungam, Matt Kielty, Annie McEwen, Alex Neeson, Sara Carrey, Sarah Sandbeck, Arianne Wack, Pat Walters, and Molly Webster. Our fact checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger, and Natalie Middleton.

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 Simon Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.