Welcome back. It's so great to have you joining
us for another deep dive today. Really glad to
be here. So today we are taking a phrase that,
I mean, you have probably used a hundred times,
maybe even today when you were, I don't know,
leaving a restaurant or heading out to your car.
Absolutely, yeah. We are looking at the phrase,
let's roll. And our mission for this deep dive
is to basically unpack the incredible... multi
-layered journey of these two really simple words.
Two words, yeah. Right, exactly. We are going
to explore how a completely mundane, everyday
colloquialism transformed almost overnight into
one of the defining battle cries and really cultural
touchstones of the 21st century. Because, you
know, language is never static. It's this living,
breathing thing. And the goal today is to look
at not just when this phrase was used throughout
history, but why it matters to you and really
to... All of us. Yeah. When you look closely
at the source material we are working with today,
which gives us a really comprehensive historical
and cultural breakdown of the phrase, you see
how language actually acts as a mirror. It really
does. Right. It reflects a society's resilience,
its collective grief, its shifting culture, its
history. We are essentially tracing the life
cycle of an idiom today. OK, let's unpack this.
Yeah. Because the central premise here is that.
A phrase we just casually toss around has this
hidden, heavy, and incredibly profound history.
It perfectly illustrates how human events basically
force language to evolve. Now, going into this,
I assume the phrase was a product of maybe the,
I don't know, the 1980s or 90s action movies.
Well, that's what most people think, yeah. But
it goes back way further than that. How did this
actually start? So you have to picture the American
West in the 1800s. You had these massive wagon
trains getting ready to cross the frontier right.
The leaders at the head of the train would literally
shout wagons roll to get the journey start. I
mean, think about the actual mechanics of the
time. The wheels had to physically literally
roll to move that immense weight forward to get
through the mud and dirt. Exactly. It was all
about overcoming physical inertia. Yeah. And
from there. The terminology naturally became
a bit less formal. People shortened it. They
adapted it. That's really the beginning of the
transition from a literal command about wooden
wheels to a metaphorical command about starting
a collective mission. So we start with wagons
pushing across the frontier. How does it make
the leap from pioneers into the broader cultural
lexicon? Did people just start using it in cities?
It actually sneaks into the broader culture through
the military first. Yeah. And then through fiction.
Oh, interesting. Yeah. As early as 1908, the
phrase pops up in a military cadence song. It's
the one we now know as the army goes rolling
along. Oh, sure. I know that one. Right. And
the sources note that this usage likely extended
into how early tank crews and artillery units
communicated with each other. A great example
of this is the phrase's connection to the role
of the caissons. Okay, let's pause there for
a second because I think a lot of people, when
they hear the word caisson, they picture something
vaguely military but might not know exactly what
it is. Right, a caisson is essentially a highly
reinforced chest on wheels. It's used to carry
artillery ammunition. Got it. So when you are
moving heavy, dangerous... explosive equipment
with horses or early trucks, rolling isn't just
about simple movement. It's life or death. Exactly.
It's about keeping a massive, unstoppable rhythm
going across a chaotic battlefield. That unstoppable
momentum is the core DNA of the phrase. Which
explains why writers who focused on military
or gritty subjects picked it up later on. You
see it bleed into fiction around the mid -20th
century, right? Precisely. In 1940, the legendary
sci -fi writer Robert A. Heinlein wrote a story
called The Roads Must Roll. Classic. Yeah, and
in that story, he references a reworded version
of those old military cadences, calling it the
road songs of the transport cadets. Then a decade
later, in 1950, Ernest Hemingway adopts it. And
Neymar, of course. Right in his novel Across
the River and Into the Trees, the protagonist
is Colonel Dick Cantwell. Now, Cantwell was actually
based on a real World War II commander named
Charles Buck Lanham. Hemingway has Cantwell use
the phrase, let's roll. when giving a direct
no -nonsense command to his driver. Having a
gritty, battle -hardened Hemingway character
use it really solidifies the phrase association
with moving forward with serious purpose. And
it anchors it. Yeah, but what is so wild about
the timeline is that while the military and these
intense literary figures were using it with all
this gravity, everyday industries and pop culture,
were adapting it for entirely different, much
lighter reasons. Yeah, mid -century American
culture was becoming completely obsessed with...
speed industry, and forward momentum. You start
to see military jargon turn into upper -class
slang. Give me an example of that. A perfect
example is the 1937 supernatural comedy film
Topper. Okay. You have Cary Grant playing this
suave protagonist. He turns to his wife, played
by Constance Bennett, and says, let's roll. He
isn't commanding a tank or starting a wagon train.
He just wants to indicate that they should immediately
escape their friend's incredibly stuffy office
and go find a cocktail. That is the ultimate
contrast. And it wasn't just actors saying it
on screen, right? It was happening behind the
camera, too. Right. The whole industry. The entire
film and audio recording industry adopted the
verb roll to signal the beginning of a recording.
I mean, you hear directors shout rolling on movie
sets to this very day. If we connect this to
the bigger picture, whether it is Cary Grant
trying to get a drink, an audio engineer starting
a tape reel, or a tank commander moving out.
The word inherently implies that a state of rest
is ending. Action is beginning. That built -in
subconscious meaning of collective action is
exactly what made it the perfect vehicle for
the much heavier meaning it would take on decades
later. Which brings us to September 11th, 2001.
And I want to shift the tone here because the
events we are about to discuss are incredibly
heavy. But they also represent a story of unimaginable
courage. They absolutely do. We are looking at
the events aboard the hijacked United Airlines
Flight 93. This is the defining moment. It changed
not just the country, but how this specific phrase
will be remembered for the rest of history. When
you look at the events of that morning passenger,
Todd Beamer was on that flight. In the midst
of this terrifying, chaotic situation, he tries
to place a call to his family using one of the
seat back earphones. Right. But the phone system
is so overwhelmed or he misstyles in the stress
of the moment and the call doesn't go where he
expects. He actually gets routed to a customer
service representative first, who then passes
him on to a supervisor in Chicago named Lisa
Jefferson. Put yourself in Lisa Jefferson's shoes
for a moment. You are sitting at a customer service
desk. And suddenly you are on the line with an
ordinary citizen who is communicating vital real
time intelligence during a completely unprecedented
national crisis. And Beamer remains incredibly
clear headed as he gathers and reports this intel.
He tells Jefferson that one passenger has already
been killed. He relays that a flight attendant
informed him both the pilot and the co -pilot
had been forced from the cockpit and that they
might be gravely injured. Just horrifying to
hear. He is on the phone with Jefferson narrating
the events when the plane makes a quick, violent
turn. He is experiencing the hijacking in real
time, effectively acting as the eyes and ears
for the ground at a moment when the entire nation's
airspace was in total confusion. Crucially, the
passengers on Flight 93 were communicating with
people on the ground, so they eventually learned
about what had happened at the World Trade Center
and the Pentagon. They pieced the puzzle together.
They did. They realized this wasn't a traditional
hostage situation where the plane would just
land at an airport and demands would be made.
They realized it was a suicide mission. Beamer
tells the operator that he and some of the other
passengers are formulating a plan. They're going
to attack the hijackers and try to regain control
of the aircraft. It is an extraordinary. an air
pivot. They recognize the terrible reality of
their situation, and they make a collective,
immediate decision to fight back to save the
lives of unknown people on the ground. The moment
of action arrives. According to Lisa Jefferson,
the supervisor on the other end of that air phone,
Todd Beamer's last audible words before dropping
the phone to storm the cockpit were, are you
ready? Okay, let's roll. What you are witnessing
here linguistically, aside from the sheer breathtaking
bravery of the act. is a profound transformation.
A casual phrase, something used to leave a boring
conversation or to cue a film camera, was instantly
transfigured. In that single breath, let's roll.
became an immortal statement of extraordinary
courage and sacrifice spoken by ordinary people
facing the unthinkable. It left that airplane
and entered the national consciousness in a way
no one could have ever predicted. It became this
massive rhetorical shift for the entire country.
How quickly did it move from a private phone
call into the public sphere? Almost immediately.
But I want to be very clear before we look at
how the phrase was adopted politically and militarily.
It's really vital to look at this strictly as
historians. Okay. Regardless of where anyone
falls on the political spectrum, left or right,
we are not endorsing or validating any specific
political viewpoints here. Of course not. Watching
how quickly a phrase moves from a tragic flight
into presidential addresses simply shows how
desperately the nation was searching for a unifying,
active rallying cry in the face of profound trauma.
We are neutrally observing how political figures
and institutions utilize the immense cultural
weight of this newly minted battle cry. And the
timeline shows that President George W. Bush
invoked Beamer's words very shortly after the
attacks. In an address from the World Congress
Center in Atlanta, Georgia, on November 8th,
2001, President Bush told the crowd, quote, Some
of our greatest moments have been acts of courage
for which no one could have been prepared. But
we have our marching orders. My fellow Americans,
let's roll. He elevated it from a moment of civilian
bravery to a national directive. He used it again
a few months later in the 2002 State of the Union
address. The source quotes him saying, For too
long our culture has said, if it feels good,
do it. Now America is embracing a new ethic and
a new creed. Let's roll. By positioning the phrase
as a new ethic and a new creed, the government
was essentially taking a deeply personal moment
of sacrifice and turning it into a unifying national
doctrine for the ensuing war on terror. Language
operates as a coping mechanism, and the nation
needed a phrase that implied fighting back. The
military took that doctrine very literally. The
sources show that in early 2002, the United States
Air Force Chief of Staff General John P. Jumper
issued a highly specific order. This is a fascinating
detail. He mandated that one airplane in every
single USAF squadron, plus all the USAF demonstration
planes, had to bear a specific image. It was
an eagle on an American flag accompanied by the
words, Let's Roll and Spirit of 9 -11. That nose
art was ordered to remain on the planes until
the first anniversary of the attack. Notice the
full circle moment there. The phrase started
with literal military usage tanks and horse -drawn
caissons in 1908, and almost a century later
it is painted on the side of supersonic fighter
jets. Except this time it isn't just a cadence,
it is a memorial to civilian bravery. Here's
where it gets really interesting to me, because
it didn't just stay in political speeches or
or painted on military bases. The explosion of
this phrase into pop culture is staggering. It's
saturated the media landscape, crossing over
into incredibly diverse platforms. Society was
trying to process an enormous collective trauma.
And because this phrase perfectly captured the
transition from victimhood to action, it became
the primary tool for processing that grief across
almost every creative medium. The sheer variety
of musical genres that adopted the phrase is
wild. Just two months after the attacks in November
2001, rock legend Neil Young released an immediate
visceral single simply titled Let's Roll, which
later ended up on his album Are You Passionate?
A classic songwriter having a real -time reaction
to a historical event. But it wasn't just legacy
rock artists. Not at all. The next year you see
it everywhere. The hard rock group L .A. Guns
put out a track called OK Let's Roll on their
album Waking the Dead. Then you have the country
music duo the Bellamy Brothers releasing Let's
Roll America on their album Redneck Girls Forever.
Think about the emotional and spiritual need
of the country at that time. Different genres
serve different psychological purposes for their
listeners. That is perfectly illustrated by the
Christian rock group DC Talk. They were actually
on an extended hiatus at the time. They broke
their hiatus specifically to record and release
a single entitled Let's Roll. Breaking hiatus
to release one specific song speaks volumes about
the cultural weight the phrase carried. For a
religious music group, the phrase likely represented
a form of spiritual processing, framing Todd
Beamer's actions as a definitive example of laying
down one's life for others. And it kept going
over the next few years, touching genres you
just wouldn't expect. In 2003, the Montreal indie
walk band The Stills included a song with the
title on their debut album. You had electronic
artist Johnny L releasing a track that actually
sampled President Bush's 2002 State of the Union
address. Wow. Yeah. In 2004, the country and
novelty artist Ray Stevens released a self -penned
song called Let's Roll that directly referenced
Todd Beamer in the lyrics. He ended up putting
that track on multiple albums over the years.
It is a fascinating cross -section of artistic
intent. You have artists like Ray Stevens using
the phrase as a direct literal tribute to Beamer,
while electronic artists are using it to sample
and reflect the political rhetoric of the era.
We can't forget Melissa Etheridge either. Her
2004 song Tuesday Morning was written in honor
of another Flight 93 passenger, Mark Bingham,
and she consciously concludes that song with
the phrase, let's roll. It became an undeniable
cultural touchstone in music, but it also entered
other areas of public life where the integration
wasn't always as smooth. especially in sports.
This is where we run into the inherent tension
of commodifying tragedy. Yeah. When a phrase
holds that much sacred weight, utilizing it for
entertainment purposes becomes ethically fraught
very quickly. The sources point out that even
though the phrase was in common use long before
September 11th, many people soon tried to lay
claim to it as a trademark after the attacks.
In the 2002 college football season, the Florida
State Seminoles decided to use let's roll as
their official team slogan. it immediately caused
a massive uproar. You can entirely understand
the backlash there. Taking a phrase born from
the realization of imminent death to save others
and pasting it onto a college football season
to hype up a defense, it clashes harshly with
the reverence people felt for the sacrifice on
Flight 93. They misjudge the raw emotional recency
of the event. The conflict was eventually resolved
when the Todd M. Beamer Foundation officially
licensed the trademark to the team. The foundation
had actually been granted a trademark for uses
of the phrase specifically regarding audio and
music, like pre -recorded CDs and tapes. That
licensing step is incredibly telling. It highlights
the family and the foundation attempting to maintain
some level of stewardship over the phrase. They
were trying to ensure that even as it exploded
into pop culture and commercial ventures, its
origin wasn't entirely... diluted or disrespected.
Once that precedent of respectful usage was set,
it popped up in other sports as a genuine tribute
rather than just a hype slogan. NASCAR driver
Bobby Labonte drove a 9 -11 tribute car with
the words, let's roll, painted on the hood at
Dover. Detroit Red Wings goaltender Jimmy Howard
had the inscription, let's roll, put on the back
of his goalie helmet as a reference to Flight
93. Those examples feel much closer to the military
jets we talked about earlier. They are quiet.
personal acts of memorialization. Beyond music
and sports, the phrase just completely permeated
screen media. Lisa Beamer Todd's Widow published
a book in 2003 titled Let's Roll Ordinary People,
Extraordinary Courage. There was a dramatized
film reconstruction of the events called Let's
Roll the Story of Flight 93. It even made its
way into blockbuster sci -fi. Optimus Prime says
it in the 2009 movie Transformers Revenge of
the Fallen. From a hijacked airplane to a blockbuster
movie about giant robots. It proves how deeply
the phrase had woven it. itself into the fundamental
fabric of American hero speak. I want to talk
about one of the most surprising inclusions in
the sources, because it captures the final stage
of how a culture processes a heavily saturated
concept dark humor. I am talking about HBO's
Curb Your Enthusiasm. Ah, yes. Season four, episode
nine, The Survivor. This is a perfect milestone
in the linguistic lifecycle. It is such a classic
Larry David setup. Larry and his wife are getting
ready to go out and renew their vows, and Larry
inadvertently says to his rabbi, Let's roll.
The rabbi gets instantly offended. He snaps at
Larry saying, you knew my brother -in -law died
on September 11th. How dare you say something
like that? The rabbi automatically assumes Larry
is making light of the tragedy, specifically
because of the inescapable cultural connection
to the phrase. But Larry being Larry, he takes
issue with the rabbi's outrage. Because as Larry
points out, the rabbi's brother -in -law wasn't
killed in the terrorist attacks. He died on September
11th because he was hit by a bike messenger.
It was a complete coincidence of the calendar.
When a tragedy's rhetoric can be referenced in
In an HBO comedy, without canceling the show,
it signifies a cultural milestone. It means the
phrase has fully integrated into the broader
complex linguistic landscape. It's evolved again.
Exactly. If we synthesize this sprawling list,
from Neil Young's immediate grief to Florida
State's sports hype to Optimus Prime and finally
to Larry David's satire, it shows you the entire
life cycle of collective trauma processing. Society
uses language first for heartfelt tribute, then
for motivation, and eventually it processes that
intense saturation through dark humor. So what
does this all mean when we look back at the whole
journey? We started this deep dive looking at
wagon trains dragging heavy wooden wheels west.
We looked at the suave Cary Grant trying to escape
a boring conversation in the 1930s and rugged
Hemingway characters barking orders. We watched
that very same phrase get picked up by Todd Beamer
on Flight 93, resulting in his ultimate selfless
sacrifice. From there, it became a ubiquitous
cultural, political, and musical symbol that
dominated an entire decade of American life.
It serves as a powerful reminder to you, the
listener, that the words you use every single
day are alive. They aren't just sounds you make
to get through your routine. They carry the immense
weight of history. They absorb the courage, the
politics, the grief, and the media of the generations
that speak them. And I want to leave you with
a thought to mull over. The next time you casually
tell a group of friends. Let's take a second
to ask yourself, what other ordinary phrases
in your vocabulary are secretly carrying the
ghosts of monumental historical events just waiting
to be uncovered? I love that. I am definitely
going to be paying way more attention to the
things I say without thinking. Thank you so much
for joining us on this deep dive. Keep questioning
the everyday world around you. Keep looking for
those hidden histories, and we will catch you
next time.