0:00

A

0:00

note before we begin, there's a brief

0:02

discussion of a school shooting

0:04

in this episode. If you'd like

0:06

to skip over it, It starts at about

0:08

eleven minutes in. It ends

0:11

around the fifteen minute mark.

0:13

Subtitle is made possible in part

0:15

by a major grant from the national endowment

0:18

for the humanities, exploring

0:20

the human endeavor, hub

0:23

and spoke, audio

0:25

collective,

0:29

Once

0:29

upon a time, something was rotten

0:31

in the state of Denmark, and

0:33

it involved a king

0:34

not Hamlet, but

0:35

a real Danish king who

0:37

lived a century ago. One

0:40

day this king received a threat to his

0:42

life, in the form of a handwritten

0:44

letter.

0:45

Which was written

0:47

beautifully with a beautiful penmanship

0:49

and with a very formal introduction.

0:52

The sender wrote circumstances over

0:55

which I have no control command

0:57

me to inform your majesty, the

0:59

heavy news, that your majesty's

1:02

life is in the gravest danger.

1:08

By today's standards, it sounds fairly

1:11

genteel. We had a date and

1:13

everything and was built up exactly

1:16

like an old letter. This

1:18

is Tanya Corolli Christiansen. I

1:20

am a professor of linguistics and

1:22

Danish language at the University of Copenhagen,

1:24

Denmark. And she researches forensic

1:26

linguistics. So friends and linguistics

1:29

deals with any

1:30

sort of connection or overlap between

1:33

language and the law. And Tanya

1:35

says that this very polished letter

1:37

that was sent to the king of Denmark in nineteen

1:39

ten is exactly what one

1:41

might expect from a death threat of

1:44

that era. Because while

1:46

death threats and other threatening language

1:48

are not normal forms of communication,

1:51

the threatening language of any era

1:54

tends to reflect the norms

1:56

of that era. It's

1:59

fascinating

1:59

to look into threatening language over

2:02

time because we see it

2:04

in the genre of threatening

2:06

messages that they reflect

2:08

the time that they were written in. Humans

2:12

have always threatened each other. Tanya

2:14

says that we were probably doing it even

2:17

before we had language. But

2:19

for most of our existence on this planet,

2:21

your threatner had to be close enough

2:23

for you to hear them yelling

2:25

or gesturing at you We

2:27

didn't get around easily, so chances

2:29

are you also knew the person who was

2:31

threatening you. Then came

2:33

postal delivery. which brought new

2:35

dimensions to threatening language, distance

2:38

and the possibility of anonymity. As

2:41

long as we still have that

2:43

letter format,

2:44

threatening messages actually took the

2:47

form typically of letters.

2:49

So they will have a greeting at the beginning

2:51

sometimes with a slower word for

2:53

the recipient rather than their name, sometimes

2:56

just their name, sometimes a combination.

2:58

And then in sections like

3:00

in typical letters and then a sign

3:02

off at the end. It can even

3:04

be regards or

3:07

even sometimes a kind regards I

3:09

mean, it's very surprising

3:11

to see those norms

3:13

of politeness in written language

3:15

that were especially prominent for that

3:17

letter format carried on into

3:19

the threat.

3:23

Because here's the thing about these messages.

3:26

It's not like anyone sits you down and says,

3:28

Here's how to write a depred. Well, you don't

3:30

know actually how to do it. You've never been taught.

3:33

There's no sort of template anywhere that you

3:35

can look at, you know, you don't have a book as

3:37

you do for a job at location. Right? You can always

3:39

check somewhere. So how does a job application

3:41

look? What should I think about? What should I think

3:43

about when I wanna write a threat to someone?

3:46

No one knows.

3:51

From quiet juice in the linguistic society

3:54

of America, I'm Kavitha Palle,

3:56

and this is subtitle, stories of

3:58

languages and the people who

3:59

speak them.

4:00

And fair warning that in this episode,

4:03

we're going to touch on some dark topics

4:05

to try to better understand what it means

4:08

to live through an era in which issuing

4:10

a death threat is as easy

4:12

as sending

4:12

a tweet. How did we

4:14

get here? And how is the unprecedented

4:17

surge of threatening messages reshaping

4:19

us?

4:26

Cuddy, when I think about written

4:28

death threats, I instantly get

4:31

this image in my head have cut out

4:33

newspaper headlines that that are

4:35

glued to a sheet of paper. I mean,

4:37

is that a common thing?

4:38

Write the arts and crafts approach.

4:41

In a way, this gets at Tanya's

4:43

point that we're not taught how to

4:45

write threats. so we rely on

4:47

what we've seen. And definitely, in

4:49

movies and TV, that hodgepodge

4:52

of single letters and words

4:54

That was a familiar true. It was

4:56

in the bodyguard, which starred

4:58

Whitney Houston as an actress and singer

5:00

who receives death threats from a

5:02

star.

5:03

with a theme song from her last movie, I

5:05

have nothing still big on me. And in

5:07

this scene, her stalker is

5:08

watching her on TV while wielding

5:11

these enormous glinting

5:13

scissors, plus a blade

5:15

to cut up tabloid headlines to

5:17

write out her name and a slur, then

5:21

you have everything I have

5:23

nothing. But time is coming

5:25

when you shall die. And it's

5:27

all very ominous. But

5:29

it's also been played to comedic

5:31

effect. like in the big Nebraska. I

5:33

received this fax this morning.

5:39

You can see It

5:41

is a ransom note. And

5:42

the ransom note is one of these cut and paste

5:44

letters that you mentioned, saying that Mabowski's

5:47

wife is being held

5:48

hostage. for a million dollars.

5:51

Bummer. This

5:54

is the bummer, man. That's That's

5:57

above

5:57

my arm. The writers of these films use

5:59

the

5:59

familiar conventions of the time to

6:02

convey a threat in a way that viewers

6:04

could easily recognize. but

6:06

both the bodyguard and the Big

6:08

Lebowski are very much nineties

6:10

films. By the end of that decade,

6:13

The internet has firmly entered our

6:15

lives and our written communications are

6:17

transforming.

6:18

So if the big Lebowski was

6:21

set today instead of the nineties the

6:23

ransom note might be, I don't know,

6:25

a tweet from anonymous troll or

6:27

something like that. Or it

6:28

would look like a subreted or be

6:30

broken up like a series of texts

6:32

because that's what the vast majority of

6:34

communication looks like today. And it

6:36

would almost certainly be sent from a

6:38

phone or a computer because as

6:41

ordinary written communication moved

6:43

from handwritten and printed materials to

6:45

screens, so did threats.

6:47

And as the internet made communicating

6:50

immediate and more casual, the

6:52

threats also became more immediate and

6:54

casual. And today, because

6:56

so much written communication happens on

6:58

social media. Written threads now

7:00

look like DMs and Facebook

7:02

posts and

7:03

as crazy as it sounds. A

7:05

lot of threats these days include emojis.

7:11

I think I have pretty primal

7:14

sense of what makes a message threatening.

7:16

But I'm not sure if I could define it.

7:19

Yeah. It seems a bit like that old definition

7:21

of pornography. You know it when

7:23

you see it. Tanya

7:25

says that the basic idea of a threat

7:27

is for the sender of the threat to

7:29

communicate future harm

7:30

towards someone else. A

7:33

very simple instance would be I'm

7:35

gonna kill you. So that's

7:37

a right. Everybody can recognize that as

7:39

a threat. And and it has these

7:41

definitional characteristics. It

7:43

has a representation of

7:45

the sender, I, I'm gonna kill

7:47

you. And it has

7:49

the harm, kill, and

7:51

it has the victim, the one that

7:53

you are communicating to you.

7:56

Now someone says, I'm gonna kill

7:58

you. they don't need to follow through for

8:00

you to be scared because

8:02

the main point of a threat is not

8:04

actually to commit you to performing

8:06

the act that you're talking about.

8:09

The main point of a threat is to

8:11

intimidate the recipient. And

8:16

there are many subtle ways to

8:18

intimidate people, so we

8:20

need to look at context. So

8:22

context is everything when we

8:25

are trying to assess whether a threat

8:27

is dangerous or not. For

8:28

instance, Patrick, I could share your address

8:31

publicly because you're having a big party

8:33

and you want lots of people to

8:35

come. Well,

8:35

thank you. You're welcome.

8:38

But the other thing is I could

8:40

share

8:40

your address because I'm angry at you

8:42

and I'm trying to threaten you.

8:44

Oh,

8:44

right. Doxing? Yes.

8:45

Endoxing means releasing someone's

8:48

personal info or their whereabouts

8:50

typically with the intention of harming

8:52

them. Having our information out there

8:54

is a norm of this era. So

8:56

using that information to threaten

8:58

people has also become a norm of this era.

9:00

The threats are on the rise because of the

9:02

Internet, and while we should never

9:04

dismiss a threat against someone, some

9:06

threats are more serious than others. and

9:08

I wanted to know how

9:10

do you separate signal from noise,

9:12

so I talked to a forensic psychologist.

9:15

ironically, when I

9:18

look at movies and

9:21

TV series that depict

9:23

my profession. The

9:25

drama often appears

9:27

far less dramatic than what actually happens in

9:29

real life. This is Lisa Warren.

9:31

She's an Australian forensic psychologist,

9:34

and she specializes in threats to

9:36

kill. I

9:37

don't have car chases

9:39

in my work. I've never kind

9:41

of repelled out of a helicopter. I've

9:43

got a colleague who did that, but it's not

9:45

it's not that kind of drama. It's the

9:48

drama of humans

9:50

trying to find the most effective

9:52

way that I can. to

9:55

convey to those around

9:57

them what it is that is

9:59

bothering them and

9:59

what they need.

10:01

Lisa says that some

10:03

categories of threats are inherently more

10:06

worrisome than others. Domestic

10:08

violence threats are the most concerning.

10:11

But

10:11

after threats by family members, she

10:13

says the highest risk group that she

10:15

deals with are people known as

10:17

persistent complainers.

10:19

Oh, that's interesting, persistent complainers.

10:23

But that kind of sounds more

10:25

annoying than threatening.

10:27

I

10:27

thought the same thing, but it turns

10:29

out a persistent complainer is

10:31

someone who has a grievance and

10:33

they're heavily invested in it being

10:35

addressed. and they'll spend months

10:37

or sometimes years pursuing

10:39

some kind of resolution. And the

10:41

more time they spend without getting the

10:43

outcome that they seek the more

10:45

desperate they get. Lisa

10:47

says that the case that showed just

10:49

how high risk persistent complaining

10:51

can be happened in Scotland in

10:53

the mid nineties, and it involved

10:56

a man named Thomas Hamilton.

10:58

Thomas Hamilton was accused

11:01

of behaving in a appropriately with boys

11:03

that he was taking away on

11:05

outdoor recreation camps.

11:07

And he argued that he did no

11:09

such thing and that it was extremely

11:11

unfair that his reputation was ruined.

11:14

He complained for a very

11:16

long time in a range of different

11:18

ways

11:19

about the damage that had been done to

11:21

his reputation and about

11:23

the damage that had been done to his life

11:25

with these allegations. Thomas

11:28

Hamilton spent four years writing

11:30

letters to parents in the community where he

11:32

lived. He wrote to

11:34

various local and national authorities, including

11:36

the Scout Association. They had barred

11:38

him from their organization years before.

11:41

And in these letters, he also

11:43

mentioned a grudge against a local

11:45

school, the Dunblame Primary School.

11:47

In March nineteen

11:50

ninety six, he wrote

11:52

to the Queen, he

11:53

wrote to the Queen of England? Well,

11:56

he wrote an appropriately formal

11:58

type written letter to Queen

11:59

Elizabeth. He addressed it

12:02

to your majesty. He

12:04

signed it your obedient servant.

12:06

And he was writing to the queen

12:08

because she was the royal patron

12:10

of the Scout Association

12:12

and said to her in the letter

12:15

that she was his last resort

12:17

and that he wanted

12:19

her to support that

12:21

his reputation should be restored.

12:23

That of course didn't happen, and he went

12:25

to the Dunblane kindergarten and

12:28

committed a mess on the side against kindergarten

12:30

children, which is the Dunblane massacre.

12:32

Small town of Dunblane in Central

12:34

Scotland is tonight in

12:36

deep shock and mourning after

12:38

the massacre today of sixteen children

12:41

and their teacher in a local primary

12:43

school. The children aged

12:45

between five Dump Lane really

12:47

stuck in the memory of everyone in the

12:49

UK because I think because

12:51

it was the only mass

12:53

shooting at a school that that has ever

12:55

been in Britain. I mean, imagine

12:57

that. And right afterwards,

12:59

the government made it even more difficult for

13:01

citizens to acquire firearms.

13:03

You know,

13:04

when Lisa said the name Dundblaine,

13:06

I got chills because it was such

13:08

a singular event, but I

13:10

didn't know that the shooter had written to

13:12

the queen. and Lisa

13:14

says that for people like her who

13:16

study threats to kill, Thomas

13:18

Hamilton Writing, I turned to

13:20

you as a last resort

13:22

that was a huge takeaway from the dundling

13:25

massacre. It

13:25

is one that, like a lot of exceptional

13:28

extreme cases, caused us to

13:30

pause and rethink and look at one

13:32

of the risk factors with persistent complainers,

13:34

which is this idea of last resort statements.

13:38

Last resort statements. So

13:41

so are they considered threats? Well,

13:43

for

13:43

folks like Lisa who spend their days trying

13:45

to figure out which threat deserve

13:48

attention and resources. The

13:51

context of a middle aged man

13:53

who is a loner who's been

13:55

shunned from the community for a loathsome

13:57

offense. He spent years

13:59

trying to restore his

13:59

reputation, and then he writes to

14:02

a head of state, saying,

14:04

I turned to you as a last resort.

14:07

So it's not an explicit

14:09

threat like I'm going to kill

14:12

you. But given the context,

14:14

it's an implicit threat.

14:16

Nowadays, of course, figuring

14:18

out whether someone is going to act on a

14:21

threat is a totally different

14:23

proposition.

14:32

It's podcast recommendation time.

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Every other week, Our

14:37

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The hosts of our opinions are correct,

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know where to subscribe, Apple Podcasts,

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and everywhere else.

15:30

With the rise

15:31

of the Internet, it's never been easier

15:33

to fire off a threat. And

15:35

it's also never been easier to

15:37

become the target of one.

15:39

for reasons you might never imagine.

15:41

Take the case of a woman who shared

15:43

a story on Twitter about taking

15:45

her four year old daughter to the dentist,

15:48

her daughter cried when she saw that it was

15:50

a boy dentist. And when

15:52

she found out there were no girl

15:54

dentist at that office, she looked at

15:56

her mom and said, why did

15:58

we come

15:58

here? That

15:59

sounds like a story that might go viral

16:02

on Twitter, but you're telling me

16:04

this in an episode about death

16:06

threats, Kabi. So I'm kinda wired

16:08

now.

16:08

Yeah. It did go viral on Twitter.

16:10

I laughed when I saw it,

16:13

but then within a few

16:15

hours, an American conservative media

16:17

commentator retweeted it and

16:19

said that the mom was letting her

16:21

child believe that sexism was

16:23

widespread. Others jumped on

16:25

that. They accused the mom of having a

16:27

feminist agenda. Someone

16:29

called the child, things that I'm not going

16:32

to repeat. Next thing you

16:34

know, a cute story about a girl going to the

16:36

dentist is drawing threats of

16:38

violence and death threats against

16:40

this family.

16:41

Yikes. I mean, that's scary

16:44

and totally absurd at the same time.

16:46

Right.

16:46

I mean, I don't have to tell you that we

16:48

are in a politically frac of era,

16:50

even a cute story about a child going to the

16:52

dentist, can become a rant

16:54

against feminist. But

16:56

it also comes back to screens

16:58

because interacting with someone on

17:00

a screen is very different from

17:02

being face to face with them. The

17:04

screen itself affect our

17:06

ability to fully understand that

17:08

we're interacting with a human. Tanya

17:11

Korlyk Kristenson explains it

17:13

like this. And we also know from psychology

17:15

that there's something called the disinhibition

17:18

effect. So this means

17:20

that you do some of your

17:22

inhibitions, some of your

17:24

barriers against the ways that you feel that you

17:26

should normally act some of your norms

17:28

for social action,

17:31

you lose them when you sit

17:33

behind the screen. So

17:36

you cannot see the other person face to face. You

17:38

don't have any eye contact typically.

17:41

You don't think of

17:43

them as a person. a

17:45

full person with a full life. Oh,

17:47

that

17:48

sounds a little like road rage.

17:50

Right. That's

17:50

probably our closest precedent, you

17:53

know,

17:53

a machine that can be used

17:55

for good purposes

17:56

or bad, and that little

17:58

bit of glass and

17:59

metal gives us just enough

18:02

distance from

18:02

our fellow drivers to affect

18:04

how we behave towards them. The difference with

18:06

the internet is that

18:08

screens can make our interactions

18:10

less personal and

18:13

more personal social

18:15

media

18:15

media and

18:16

the internet enable us

18:18

to learn so much

18:20

more about each other and each other's

18:23

culture, gender, backgrounds.

18:25

And because of that, Lisa Warren,

18:27

the forensic psychologist, she

18:30

says that threats are taking on a new level

18:32

of specificity and

18:34

personalization. So

18:36

I'm saying threatening statements

18:39

that are increasingly

18:42

personal, but very ad

18:44

hominin, which is an unusual turn

18:46

of events when you're talking about two people that

18:48

have never met one another. This

18:50

could happen

18:50

in any realm. Lisa

18:53

consulted on a university case

18:55

in which a professor was being

18:57

targeted, but not only was

18:59

that professor a target, People seen

19:02

in photos online with that

19:04

professor, that academic, they

19:06

were also being targeted. And it

19:08

was very personal that looked

19:10

at the the academics research talked

19:12

about how they were less

19:14

of a person because they were publishing

19:16

on in this journal and

19:18

not that journal and but it it was

19:20

clearly quite a degree of research that

19:22

had gone into this campaign

19:25

and

19:25

this particular person was targeted

19:27

for a number of months. So we move from

19:29

being in the realm of just

19:31

looking at the threatening behavior to

19:33

being very clear that this is now a

19:36

in

19:36

case. It's

19:41

really

19:41

it's really tough just keeping

19:43

your head around just how much the internet

19:46

has reshaped threats

19:48

in just a matter of a few years.

19:51

Legally speaking, has the law been

19:53

able to keep up? It's

19:55

different in

19:56

different places. In the

19:59

US, there's the added

19:59

element of state laws versus

20:02

federal laws. In all states harassment

20:04

and stalking our crimes, most

20:06

states also specify electronic

20:09

methods of harassment, but not all.

20:12

And it also varies around the world. In

20:14

Denmark, Tanya Kirley Christensen

20:16

notes that there's a specific statute

20:18

that

20:18

concerns serious threats against someone's life

20:20

or well-being. And the benefit of

20:22

having a specific statute like that

20:24

is that you can then collect data

20:27

about it and try to understand patterns. How

20:29

is the growth in online

20:31

platforms affecting threats?

20:33

Are there changes in reporting patterns

20:37

what happens when there's a major

20:39

event like the pandemic, but

20:41

data has its

20:43

limits. And that brings us to the

20:45

eight hundred pound gorilla.

20:47

The

20:47

choices being made inside of Facebook are

20:50

disastrous. For our

20:51

children, for our public

20:53

safety, for our

20:54

privacy and for our democracy.

20:56

And that

20:56

is why we must demand Facebook make

20:59

changes. Frances Hogan

21:00

testified in front of congress

21:02

in October two thousand twenty one

21:05

because she was a data scientist, an

21:07

engineer who worked at Facebook, and

21:09

she came forward with a huge

21:11

trove of documents showing that Facebook

21:13

had the data to prove

21:15

that its platform was being used

21:17

to incite violence around the world. And

21:20

that's everything from the January sixth attack on

21:22

the US capital to religious

21:24

violence in India to

21:26

ethnic violence in Ethiopia.

21:28

Here

21:28

she is testifying to the UK Parliament.

21:31

There might be a place like Myanmar that didn't have

21:33

any misinformation classifiers, like

21:36

labeling systems. no hate speech labeling classifying systems because

21:38

their language wasn't spoken by enough

21:40

people. They allow the

21:42

temperature in these countries to get hotter

21:44

and hot and hotter. And when the pots

21:46

starts boiling over, they're like, oh, no. We

21:48

need to break the glass. We need to slow

21:50

the platform down. Francis

21:51

Hawkins argument is that Facebook

21:54

should not be allowed to make those decisions

21:56

on their own. Right now Facebook and

21:58

all social media, sites

21:59

are allowed

22:00

to govern themselves. and she makes a

22:02

point that we don't let other massive

22:05

industries run themselves without

22:07

government oversight.

22:08

We regulate banks. regulate

22:10

cars, and when an industry

22:12

is shown to be dangerous, we

22:13

put a stop to it. Think

22:15

of big tobacco. Meanwhile,

22:18

Facebook with its nearly three

22:20

billion users is running

22:22

free with no government oversight.

22:25

And we have no idea how

22:27

many threats

22:27

are passing through their platform

22:29

every single day.

22:34

One

22:36

last thing, you you told the

22:39

story right at the beginning of of

22:41

the episode about that Danish

22:43

king who'd received a

22:45

handwritten death threat. Did they ever

22:47

find out who wrote it?

22:49

Yes. That was a threat against

22:52

King Frederick the eighth, and the

22:54

guy who wrote the threat

22:56

demanded ten thousand kroner,

22:57

which

22:57

I guess was a lot of money back in

23:00

the day. He wrote that he wanted to

23:02

move on the other side of the

23:04

ocean to America.

23:07

Who

23:07

knows what happened to the letter writer? The case was never

23:10

solved. And the king

23:12

died a few years later of

23:15

natural causes.

23:16

That's it

23:21

for

23:21

this episode. Special thanks to Michael

23:23

Aldey at Code Black Threat

23:25

Management. to Ulrica Lerna

23:27

at Heidelberg University,

23:28

Tammy Gales at Hoster University,

23:31

and Jim Fitzgerald. Thanks

23:33

also to Alison Reid, and

23:35

everyone at the linguistic society of America. Tina

23:37

Toby

23:37

is our sound designer, and Alison

23:40

Shell manages our social media

23:42

and newsletter. The newsletter comes out

23:44

every couple of weeks. We

23:45

keep it short, and newsy, and a

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bit chunky. You can sign up

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