Shadowing-Übung: Red Herring | Radiolab Podcast - Englisch Sprechen Lernen mit Video

LULU MILLER: Hey, it's Lulu. This is Radiolab. And it's summer. In the past there has been hot girl summer, there's been hot vax summer, this summer, arguably is kinda turning into hot diarrhea summer, the one that no one wanted. But we here at Radiolab are offering you something different, which we are calling Cold War Summer or I'm calling it that, because we just realized this will be our third story that involves the Cold War in a month. This one is really special, we're bubbling it up from the archives. It's a tale of espionage, it's a real whodunnit that involves submarines, periscopes, hydrophones, many a bunker. And I didn't see the answer coming. Enough out of me, let's jump into this tale. It comes from the archives as reported by Annie McEwen, and it is called Red Herring. oh wait you re listening okay all right okay all right you re listening to Radiolab Radiolab from w n y c LULU: Hello. I'm Lulu Miller. This is Radiolab. And today boom boom! ANNIE MCEWEN: Oh, hello. LULU: Hi.

LULU: ...From her bathroom. ANNIE: I'm actually, like, straddling the bathtub here, so ... LULU: Perfect.

ANNIE: Good thing I did yoga last night. LULU: I do think our thing is, like, underwater mysteries from the '90s. ANNIE: Yes. Okay, so today I have a story. It's like a Tom Clancy international underwater spy thriller with a little spicy science thrown in. LULU: All right. I am grabbing my popcorn. Take me away. ANNIE: Yeah. Okay, let's begin with...

MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Yeah, okay. ANNIE: Thank you, Magnus!

ANNIE: ... Magnus. MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Not a problem. Yeah.

ANNIE: How do you pronounce your last name? MAGNUS WAHLBERG: It depends on where you come from. So most Americans would say Val-berg or Wal-berg or something like that. Yeah.

ANNIE: What do you say? MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Well, that also depends. In Sweden, it's Val-bery. ANNIE: Oh, wow.

MAGNUS WAHLBERG: But in Denmark, it becomes a bit more like Vale-bough or something. ANNIE: Wow.

MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Yeah. ANNIE: Okay. Anyway, Magnus is an associate professor ... MAGNUS WAHLBERG: At the University of Southern Denmark. ANNIE: ... where he studies underwater sound.

MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Yeah. ANNIE: So let's start off in 1981.

MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Yes. ANNIE: Well, let's go back to that time.

MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Yeah. So that's a defining year. ANNIE: Just how old were you then?

MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Yeah, so I was 13 years old. ANNIE: Thirteen.

MAGNUS WAHLBERG: And I was living in Stockholm, the capital of Sweden.

ANNIE: Okay. MAGNUS WAHLBERG: And it was an extremely tense period. ANNIE: Because in Stockholm ...

MAGNUS WAHLBERG: You know, we have the Baltic Sea right in front of us.

ANNIE: There was only about 140 miles of water separating Sweden from ...

MAGNUS WAHLBERG: The Soviet Union. ANNIE: And Magnus said to him and a lot of other Swedes, there was just this fear of what was on the other side of the water.

MAGNUS WAHLBERG: I remember this still in the school. You know, you had a map. You could see all the details of the Western Europe. ANNIE: Small towns, all these roads, the colors of different countries. MAGNUS WAHLBERG: And then across the Baltic, it was just white. There was just nothing. And that was Soviet Union.

We didn't really know even what was there. ANNIE: Just this mysterious nothingness.

MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Yeah, and not very far away. ANNIE: Now Magnus says it's important to know ...

MAGNUS WAHLBERG: That Sweden has this kind of island politically, because Sweden was neutral. ANNIE: But because of a lot of this mystery, a fear of communism, there was always the sense that one of their greatest threats was the Soviet Union. MAGNUS WAHLBERG: We heard about it all the time.

We were even practicing a little bit in school. And we were really living in a time when we were worrying about a nuclear war almost daily. ANNIE: So 1981, the defining year. It's late October. MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Sort of when it gets really dark here, you know, and cold and damp. ANNIE: It's about four in the morning, pitch black. A fisherman leaves his home, gets in his boat and heads off to check his nets. Sweden has this, like, super-long coastline that's filled with these really complex inlets. MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Full of islands. There are rocks, like, granite islands everywhere. ANNIE: And just as the sun is starting to come up, this fisherman makes his way into one of these rocky inlets. And all of a sudden, out of the darkness, looming up out of the water right in front of them ...

MAGNUS WAHLBERG: There is this big Russian sub standing there.

ANNIE: It's huge. It's like this long, almost bullet, dark bullet in the water. And it is, like, towering out of the sea, just sitting there. MAGNUS WAHLBERG: It's insane.

ANNIE: What was it doing there? MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Exactly.

What was it doing there? So ... ANNIE: The fisherman called the navy.

MAGNUS WAHLBERG: And we all woke up to the news. ] ANNIE: Soviet submarine beached on Sweden's shores.

] ANNIE: It's a huge story. Like, all the papers write about it. MAGNUS WAHLBERG: And everyone is like, what on Earth is going on? ANNIE: So the military comes down with their helicopters circling overhead, many, many boats. MAGNUS WAHLBERG: But at this time, Sweden was people would also say we were incredibly naive, because we didn't have any wars for you know, the last war was, like ... ANNIE: Oh, you're soft.

MAGNUS WAHLBERG: It was like yeah, it was, like, Napoleon Wars. We didn't really weren't involved in anything. ANNIE: So Magnus said the military sent some guys out to the submarine. MAGNUS WAHLBERG: And, you know, we kind of knocked on the door of the sub and said ... ANNIE: Wait. They knocked on the side of the sub?

MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Yeah. I don't know if they knocked. But, you know, they kind of asked kindly, can we come in and have a look? And they said, no, no, of course not.

ANNIE: Okay. MAGNUS WAHLBERG: You know, and then they said, oh, okay, sorry about that. But some there were some clever physicists. They parked a small boat beside of the sub, and through some clever measurements, they could measure that there were nuclear, you know, weapons inside. ANNIE: Oh, scary!

MAGNUS WAHLBERG: You know, we have these defining moments for a nation. In the states, you have, like, the Kennedy murder, the 9/11. ANNIE: Yeah.

MAGNUS WAHLBERG: And, you know and this is one of those for Swedes. And people started immediately to say, hey; this is war. Like, we are in war. And eventually because, again, maybe we were too soft ... ANNIE: What happened is that the commander of the Soviet sub told the Swedish military that all of their navigation instruments on board had malfunctioned all at once. MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Sort of sorry, we navigated wrongly. ANNIE: You know, we lost our way. We ran ashore. Like, we made a mistake. MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Yeah.

ANNIE: So the Swedish military sent a bunch of ships out to the sub, pulled it off the bottom.

And they, you know, returned it to international waters, and it left.

LULU: Okay. ANNIE: And for a 13-year-old Magnus ...

MAGNUS WAHLBERG: It was super weird because you could see that adults and the politicians, everyone were completely how to say, like, taken with their pants down, right?

ANNIE: MAGNUS WAHLBERG: It was like, what? Like, no one could, of course, explain this. So the navy, of course, they got a lot of money, so they became more vigilant. They had to now start to see if they could you know, could they protect the Swedish coasts? ANNIE: And, you know ...

MAGNUS WAHLBERG: It's not an easy thing to do. ANNIE: ... it's a huge coastline, over a thousand miles. So how do you, like, patrol that? MAGNUS WAHLBERG: An obvious way to do that is with sound. ANNIE: Forget ships and sonar.

MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Sounds propagate very well on the water.

ANNIE: We're just gonna listen for the subs. MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Yeah.

ANNIE: Does that mean they like, they hung hydrophones on buoys out in the water?

MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Yeah, yeah. ANNIE: All along the coast? Like, just a whole bunch of them? MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Yeah. Some yeah, well, not everywhere, of course. But they started to listen into this more carefully after this. All the politicians promised us that now we have bought all these gears, and now we are ready to tackle this problem and, you know, no problem. And, you know, then we went into sleep again. And then in October '82, we had the next wake-up call. ANNIE: This time in this big harbor ...

MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Very close to Stockholm. ANNIE: ... right outside of a Swedish naval base.

MAGNUS WAHLBERG: People started to see periscopes.

ANNIE: One after another after another after another popping up out of the water.

And the Swedish military was like ... MAGNUS WAHLBERG: We have detected them, and we have them. ANNIE: So this time, the Swedes send in a bunch of ships. MAGNUS WAHLBERG: With nets.

ANNIE: These big metal nets that they use to block the exits of the harbor so there's no way a big sub can get out. And then they send in a bunch of helicopters that have hydrophones, and they dip those hydrophones into the water and they start listening for submarines. And before long, one of those hydrophones would pick up the unmistakable sound of a Soviet sub. LULU: Hmm! And what does that sound like?

ANNIE: I'm gonna get to that. But what happened is when the Swedes heard this sound, they would drop a bomb from the helicopter that would hit the water, sink down to a predetermined depth. And then boom!. LULU: ANNIE: Big explosion. LULU: Okay.

ANNIE: And the helicopters and the ships, they would just wait to see if the explosion would like, would damage or scare one of these Soviet subs up to the surface. And so they waited and waited. And nothing. LULU: Hmm!

ANNIE: No Soviet sub emerged, not even a piece of one. And the Swedish military kept this up for a month, chasing down subs they hear, dropping bombs. And by the end of the month, nothing comes of it. They don't capture a single submarine. LULU: What?

ANNIE: I know. Isn't that crazy? LULU: Did they just did they somehow get out of the barricade? ANNIE: They don't know. They don't know. I mean, I guess, they could even be down there today. They could have hurt the sub.

The sub fell. The sub, you know, filled with water. Like, they could be down at the bottom of the harbor. I guess these are just this is just a huge harbor, and they just couldn't really find any evidence of any Soviet sub. MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Yeah, it just ended in nothing.

And then it things started to get more and more bizarre. So through the 1980s, every half a year, every year, we would have these submarine chases. All of a sudden somewhere on the coast, the military would give an alarm oh, there is a sub. And then you would have these helicopters, bombs nothing. ANNIE: Really?

MAGNUS WAHLBERG: And then six months would pass. Once it was right outside the Royal Castle in Stockholm. ANNIE: So were people getting, like, annoyed?

Like, come on, crying wolf a little bit? MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Yeah.

ANNIE: Or are people still very afraid? MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Yeah. I think, you know, the Cold War is still going on. ANNIE: Magnus said there was just this fear.

MAGNUS WAHLBERG: The bear is coming. The you know, the Russian bear is coming. We just have to spend more money to find him. ANNIE: Were they still seeing periscopes? MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Yeah.

So that's the thing. What do they see ... ANNIE: ...The whole of the '80s? Or what were they hearing and seeing? MAGNUS WAHLBERG: So they started to ask people, if anyone sees something, you should report it. Call this number. Call the Swedish military.

ANNIE: And they got tons of calls. MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Many thousands of observations. But then, the problem is, it's just like in on a crime scene. If you ask people to say what they saw, it's a long structure sticking up from the water. So is that a periscope, or is it a boat? Could be a small whale. It could be a sub. But who knows?

ANNIE: So what the Swedish military did is they came up with this ranking system for observations. On one end, you had rank six. MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Six is we cannot tell.

No one knows . ANNIE: Could be anything.

LULU: Okay. MAGNUS WAHLBERG: And then you have, like, rank one is a definite sub. ANNIE: Definitely a sub.

LULU: Okay. ANNIE: Now, the thing is, for a rank one, definitely a Soviet sub, pretty much every time in the report it said ...

MAGNUS WAHLBERG: We heard a typical sound. ANNIE: The typical sound?

MAGNUS WAHLBERG: We heard a typical sound. LULU: What is a typical sound?

ANNIE: So when the so the typical sound is basically when like, when the Swedes were sure that they were encountering a Soviet sub, those hydrophones in the water would always pick up this particular sound. It was called the typical sound because it was believed to be the sound that, you know, just, like, a typical Soviet sub would make.

LULU: Huh! ANNIE: And so anytime the Swedish military encountered that sound ... MAGNUS WAHLBERG: It was automatically given a one. ANNIE: ... it meant that encounter was 100 percent a sub. And the ... LULU: And do we ...

ANNIE: I'm sorry. Go. LULU: And do we know what that sounds like?

ANNIE: Well, not yet because it's classified. MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Yeah. No one could listen to the sound, and no one could know what it was. ANNIE: But all the hydrophones were picking up this sound. MAGNUS WAHLBERG: They were picking up the typical sound. ANNIE: For years ...

MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Yeah. ANNIE: ... the Swedish military kept hearing this secret Soviet sub sound in their waters. MAGNUS WAHLBERG: So then the strange thing happens, right? In 1989, everything is changing. ANNIE: The Iron Curtain falls, the Berlin Wall falls. MAGNUS WAHLBERG: You know, everything opened up. And all of a sudden, over one night, basically, the world changed for us.

MAGNUS WAHLBERG: All these places that had been almost impossible to go to were all open. ANNIE: It's as if that white blank space on the map was starting to actually get some color and shapes and names. But while all of this is going on, something very weird is happening, because the Swedish military is continuing to report hearing the sounds of Russian submarines invading their waters.

MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Twenty, thirty incidents every year.

ANNIE: And Magnus said by 1994 ... MAGNUS WAHLBERG: At that time, we had the prime minister, Carl Bildt. And he got so upset about this, he wrote a very angry letter to Boris Yeltsin saying now you really have to stop. Now you have created your own country, and the first thing you do is to try to occupy Sweden. ANNIE: We're sick of this.

MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Stop! ANNIE: But Boris Yeltsin's like, I don't know what you're talking about. MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Yeltsin said, well, we are, of course, not there. We don't you can see, all of our subs are on land. What are you talking about? You're crazy. ANNIE: He denies everything. So as this whole mystery is unfolding, Magnus is watching from the sidelines. And by 1996...

MAGNUS WAHLBERG: You know, at that time, I was a university student.

ANNIE: He's studying underwater biological sounds.

LULU: Oh! MAGNUS WAHLBERG: And I got a job in the fishery department because my mentor, he was sort of the he was called Hakan Westerberg. He still is. He's still around. HAKAN WESTERBERG: Yeah, let's hope so.

ANNIE: That's Hakan. HAKAN WESTERBERG: Retired oceanographer and fisheries biologist. I started with telemetry, acoustic tracking in the '70s.

MAGNUS WAHLBERG: And he was one of the few in Sweden who really was an authority on underwater biological sounds. ANNIE: And one day, Magnus is standing in Hakan's office. MAGNUS WAHLBERG: I was quite fresh on my job.

ANNIE: When the phone on Hakan's desk rings. MAGNUS WAHLBERG: He was not there, so and I just took his phone. And they ... ANNIE: You just answered the phone on his desk?

MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But we had a very collegial relationship.

HAKAN WESTERBERG: Yeah. ANNIE: And on the other end of the line, it's the Royal Swedish Navy calling. MAGNUS WAHLBERG: They said they wanted to talk to my boss, of course. But then because he wasn't there, they started to talk to me. And they said, well, they are forming this committee. ANNIE: This top-secret government investigation. MAGNUS WAHLBERG: And they would like me and my boss to be part of that. ANNIE: So they say yes. There's a background check. MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Yeah, I'm cleared by the secret police. HAKAN WESTERBERG: They were very secretive.

ANNIE: And then he and Hakan are on a train to Stockholm.

MAGNUS WAHLBERG:To this huge naval base. It's just like in a James Bond movie. You have a whole submarine base inside the rocks. ANNIE: Wait. What?

MAGNUS WAHLBERG: You can sort of open the rocks, and you go in there with your boats.

ANNIE: What? MAGNUS WAHLBERG: And you can have huge ...

ANNIE: How do you open the rock? MAGNUS WAHLBERG: ... boats inside. Yeah, I don't know. You have some big, you know ... ANNIE: Rock door?

MAGNUS WAHLBERG: ... locks or something like that. Yeah. Yeah, something like that.

ANNIE: What? MAGNUS WAHLBERG: So we went in there and, you know. .. ANNIE: So Magnus and Hakan, who are not totally sure why they're there, are winding their way through this military base.

MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Long tunnels. HAKAN WESTERBERG: Two Navy captains were our liaisons. MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Yeah.

ANNIE: And eventually ... MAGNUS WAHLBERG: You come into this meeting room with all these electronic, you know, gadgets. HAKAN WESTERBERG: A lot of recording equipment.

MAGNUS WAHLBERG: You have a world map, and they can follow the whole world from in there.

ANNIE: Kind of like mission control at NASA. MAGNUS WAHLBERG: It was super exciting.

ANNIE: Finally, they take their seats at a long table. And sitting there around the table are a bunch of other academic types like them. MAGNUS WAHLBERG: But there are also some very high-ranked military people. So it was really like a wow moment for me. And we were sitting down there, and then they said, "Well, ladies and gentlemen, you are the first civil people who will listen to the sound." HAKAN WESTERBERG: The typical sound. This famous sound. MAGNUS WAHLBERG: So now we will actually play the typical sound for you. ANNIE: So it's been top secret for the last ...

MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Yeah, 15 years. ANNIE: For 15 years.

MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Yeah. No one has been no one outside the military was able or allowed to listen to it. ANNIE: Wow! So were you excited?

MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Extremely, of course. This was like, wow!

100

ANNIE: Now what Magnus said he expected to hear was something like ...

101

MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Bing, bing ... ANNIE: You know, what he'd heard in the movies.

102

MAGNUS WAHLBERG: You know, these movies where they're sitting around a sub.

103

ANNIE: Oh yeah. MAGNUS WAHLBERG: So I was thinking, it must be something like that, right? ANNIE: But then one of the Navy officers turns to a tape recorder and hits play. And this is what comes out.

104

LULU: Huh! God, is it are they picking up voices or, like, radio static? So that's always what it sounds like? ANNIE: Yeah. This is the sound they've been recording every year since that first sub showed up.

105

LULU: It's intriguing! MAGNUS WAHLBERG: It sounds a bit like a few Donald Ducks at a very long distance. ANNIE: What? What do you mean?

106

MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Well, you know, like, Donald Duck, this kind of his voice. If you imagine you had, like, 10 Donald Ducks and they would be ... ANNIE: MAGNUS WAHLBERG: ... maybe, like, 100 meters away or so, I think it would be something like that. And it also sounds a bit like an old shoe that kind of gets like .

107

ANNIE: Oh, yeah. Okay. MAGNUS WAHLBERG: It has this kind of squeaky ...

108

ANNIE: MAGNUS WAHLBERG: ... part to it.

109

And then we are sitting there with all these generals. And they are playing this sound. ANNIE: Did you look around the room at the table of scientists ... MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Yeah.

110

ANNIE: ... and military people, and you guys ... MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Well, everyone is sitting there.

111

And, you know, all these professors, they were kind of stiff upper lip. So they were just sitting there and listening kind of carefully. But my boss, he's more like he's a very relaxed guy, you know? HAKAN WESTERBERG: I think we looked at each other with a very confused gaze. MAGNUS WAHLBERG: But we were kind of keeping a stiff face also. ANNIE: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Cool, cool got to play it cool. Yeah. MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

112

ANNIE: So after they played the sound, the naval officers turned to the scientists and say basically, okay, now that you've heard the typical sound, we'd like each of you to try to figure out who or what is making it. HAKAN WESTERBERG: To get to the bottom of what this typical sound was about. ANNIE: And even in that moment sitting at the table, Hakan and Magnus turned to each other. And they don't say anything, but they're both thinking ... MAGNUS WAHLBERG: What this is very strange. This is definitely not a sub. LULU: Dun dun dun. After the break, Magnus and Hakan follow their intuition deep into a cloud of mystery. And they get to the bottom of it.

113

Oh, they get right up close to the bottom of the mystery. Radiolab will be back in just a second. Stay with us. LULU: Radiolab. Lulu, Annie. Military crisis trying to be averted by biologists. ANNIE: So after the meeting, Magnus and Hakan are standing outside. MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Just standing there, having a cigarette. ANNIE: Talking about the sound.

114

MAGNUS WAHLBERG: It sounds a bit like a popping sounds.

115

HAKAN WESTERBERG: The sound when you fry bacon. ANNIE: And both of them thought ...

116

HAKAN WESTERBERG: That these must be a biological sound.

117

ANNIE: But what? MAGNUS WAHLBERG: And then I remember saying to Hakan, air bubbles. ANNIE: This sounds like air bubbles.

118

MAGNUS WAHLBERG: If you think of a scuba diver who gets a hole pinched in his ...

119

ANNIE: His pipes? MAGNUS WAHLBERG: ... one of his pipes God forbid.

120

ANNIE: MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Like an air bubble stream coming out of a hose. It sounds a bit like that. ANNIE: So their question is, like, which animal releases air under the water? HAKAN WESTERBERG: And we had kind of this hunch.

121

MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Yeah. Yeah. ANNIE: Now incredibly, you can actually find this hunch in New York City. But it helps to have a car.

122

MATT KIELTY: Oh, my! ANNIE: Hello.

123

ANNIE: And a friend. So I called up producer Matt Kielty, who's a friend with a car.

124

MATT: You have a bucket. ANNIE: Yeah.

125

ANNIE: And I also brought a large bucket. MATT: What a ridiculous bucket.

126

ANNIE: Okay, so ... MATT: Okay.

127

ANNIE: ... I only told Matt we were driving to the Hudson River. That was it.

128

MATT: Okay, so we're taking the bridge. ANNIE: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

129

ANNIE: We drove through Brooklyn, over the Manhattan Bridge.

130

MATT: Okay, so now that we've ... ANNIE: Wait, is there a is this the cup holder?

131

MATT: It's my one cup holder. ANNIE: Okay. Well, I need ...

132

ANNIE: Drove up Manhattan, up to the riverfront. MATT: We can sneak.

133

ANNIE: And looked for parking ... ANNIE: No, there's a fire hydrant right there! ANNIE: ... for a while.

134

MATT: I wonder if I could park ... ANNIE: A long while.

135

ANNIE: It's a red light. MATT: How many fire hydrants do you need on one block? ANNIE: Matt, it's a red light.

136

MATT: Oh, my God, that's a spot. ANNIE: Get on Riverside.

137

MATT: We're on Riverside Drive. ANNIE: Okay, let's go up it.

138

MATT: We'll just park here. ANNIE: It says no parking any time. This is not going to work. MATT: Well, how long are we gonna be here?

139

ANNIE: I don't know! We need to wander around a bit.

140

MATT: I don't even know what we're doing. ANNIE: We need ... MATT: I'm looking for parking! LULU: Okay, what are you can you just ...

141

ANNIE: LULU: What are you looking for? What what was the hunch? ANNIE: Yes. Okay, okay. So we got down to, like, the rocky shoreline of the Hudson River. ANNIE: There is a piece of a dead fish!

142

MATT: That might be a whole fish. ANNIE: Where we found it.

143

MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Herring. HAKAN WESTERBERG: Herring.

144

ANNIE: A herring fish. MAGNUS WAHLBERG: I think that evening, we were like, "Let's try herring." ANNIE: Oh, my gosh. Can we get down there?

145

ANNIE: So for reasons that will become clear very soon, I tried to buy herring, but you can't buy fresh herring in New York City in December. And so I dragged Matt out to the Hudson River, because I had read in an article that herring fish have been washing up dead on the shores of the Hudson and nobody really knows why. It could be pollution. It could be water temperature. But still unclear exactly why that happened, but ... LULU: And you know what you're looking for? Like, what exactly does a herring look like? ANNIE: Oh, Okay. Yeah. So ...

146

ANNIE: How am I gonna pick it up? That is the question.

147

ANNIE: ... I picked up this dead one we found. ANNIE: I guess I'll just put my hands around it. Eww! ANNIE: And ...

148

ANNIE: Very slippery. Whoa! ANNIE: ... Herring are ...

149

ANNIE: Very big. ANNIE: ... I don't know, maybe 10 inches.

150

ANNIE: A big dead fish. ANNIE: Shiny.

151

ANNIE: Wow! MAGNUS WAHLBERG: They are the silver of the oceans, because there are all these reflections from their scales.

152

ANNIE: They just kind of look like it's like if a kid drew a fish, it would be this fish.

153

MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Yeah. ANNIE: But the really important thing about a herring, the whole reason why Magnus and Hakan had this hunch, is because of what is going on inside of a herring. Now Lulu, I know you've written a whole book about why fish should not be called fish, but have you ever, like, wondered, how does a fish just float around in the water?

154

LULU: Um, I don't think I have actually wondered that.

155

ANNIE: Let me go ahead and tell you. So it turns out in most fish, they have this thing called ...

156

ANNIE: ... the swim bladder, which is basically this tiny sac.

157

ANNIE: So if you're a fish and you want to go up or down in the water column, you do this by either pulling air into your swim bladder sac or pushing it out. And most fish do this through their bloodstream and their gills, which means it's quiet, silent, like, basically invisible. But not the herring. The herring is different.

158

MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Yeah, the herring is special because they have a canal straight from the swim bladder to the anal opening. ANNIE: So when a herring needs to get air out of its swim bladder, it basically pushes it through this canal, out its butt, into the water.

159

And Magnus says when this happens ... MAGNUS WAHLBERG: You will have this sort of small string of air bubbles. ANNIE: Which, he had a hunch, might just sound like bubbles coming out of a hose underwater. MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Yeah.

160

LULU: So he his guess is, like, this submarine sound is actually just bubbles that come out their butt. ANNIE: Uh-huh.

161

LULU: So his guess is fish farts? ANNIE: Yeah.

162

LULU: Okay. ANNIE: Technically, these are not farts because they do not come from, like, digestive gases. LULU: Okay.

163

ANNIE: But... LULU: This makes me feel better. I feel like I can continue to engage with this story without feeling so gross.

164

ANNIE: Oh, are you, like, anti-fart or something? LULU: I'm just very grossed out by them, yeah.

165

ANNIE: What? LULU: Like, I just are you not?

166

ANNIE: No. Well I mean, no. LULU: How are you ...

167

ANNIE: What? Why are you? LULU: It's like, even saying the word makes me, like... ANNIE: Fart.

168

LULU: I'm like, I don't want to be in this space even linguistically, let alone aromatically.

169

ANNIE: My God, this is like wow, that's so interesting. I would never ...

170

LULU: How are you not? ANNIE: Because they're the funniest thing in the world? Because they're a thing we all do. If we can't, that's upsetting. They make you feel better immediately. LULU: ANNIE: Like, even animals, like, find them funny, kind of. I don't know. They're just they're wonderful. They connect us all. LULU: They make you feel better immediately. They connect us all. Okay. I your I just appreciate the meaning you draw while also being simultaneously relieved these are not actual farts. Carry on. ANNIE: Okay. So Hakan and Magnus, they now had their, like, fish fart theory. But now they needed to figure out, did the fish fart actually sound like the submarine sound? HAKAN WESTERBERG: And we approached that rather crudely. ANNIE: Basically, Magnus went to a fish shop.

171

HAKAN WESTERBERG: Bought a couple of herrings. ANNIE: That were dead.

172

MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Went to the lab. HAKAN WESTERBERG: Rigged up the hydrophone. MATT: Okay.

173

ANNIE: You hold him. ANNIE: And then Magnus took this herring, submerged it underwater. MAGNUS WAHLBERG: And I squeezed it.

174

ANNIE: It's so weird to squeeze a fish, though. It's very weird!

175

MAGNUS WAHLBERG: But I squeezed it pretty hard. ANNIE: I don't think anything's coming out!

176

ANNIE: And he just kept squeezing it. MAGNUS WAHLBERG: So it was like kind of pbbbt!

177

ANNIE: Oh! MATT: Oh. What is .

178

ANNIE: It's poo . I made it poop! MAGNUS WAHLBERG: It was like a really big blur of, you know, herring poo and things coming out. ANNIE: I'm sorry, fish.

179

MATT: Okay, toss him over. ANNIE: Oh.

180

ANNIE: So then ... ANNIE: You want to squeeze one?

181

ANNIE: ... Hakan tried. ANNIE: You should get this feeling. It's a weird feeling. Maybe this will be the lucky one. MATT: I got the magic touch.

182

ANNIE: Wait. Wait. MATT: I got them fart fingers ANNIE: He put the herring in the water. HAKAN WESTERBERG: Squeezed it.

183

ANNIE: Gentle gently squeezing. HAKAN WESTERBERG: Gently.

184

ANNIE: Gentle. Come on, little butt ANNIE: And then ...

185

ANNIE: Oh! MATT: Oh.

186

ANNIE: ... bubbles. HAKAN WESTERBERG: Such bubbles.

187

MATT: It was a tiny little bubble. ANNIE: Okay. That's good.

188

You do have fart fingers! MAGNUS WAHLBERG: And then you would hear this kind of very eerie poppy sound, this kind of the perfect typical sound, we thought.

189

ANNIE: Turns out, they thought wrong. LULU: ANNIE: Because when they look at the recording of the fish fart compared to the recording of the sub sound, they just they don't really match. MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Absolutely not.

190

ANNIE: This has just become... MATT: Okay.

191

ANNIE: ... very depressing. MAGNUS WAHLBERG: But I mean, this is a dead fish in an aquarium. ANNIE: So then they went out into a bay with this little tube. MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Connected to a vacuum pump.

192

ANNIE: Oh no! ANNIE: Managed to get a wild herring in there, got it to fart. MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Yeah.

193

ANNIE: That sound didn't match. HAKAN WESTERBERG: No.

194

ANNIE: But then they had this thought: We need to get more realistic here. We need to get out into the wild, because herring aren't solo fish. They travel together in schools.

195

MAGNUS WAHLBERG: These schools can be huge, like a square kilometer.

196

ANNIE: Like, sometimes we're talking billions of fish all traveling together. And so they thought if we're right about this, the sound we're looking for isn't the sound of one fish farting. It's the sound of a lot of fish farting. LULU: Eww!

197

ANNIE: Like, a lot, a lot. MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Yes. And, you know, we were working for the fishery science in Sweden, so we knew a lot of fishermen. And they would tell us when herring goes into nets, they get stressed, and the net starts boiling, they said.

198

LULU: Whoa! ANNIE: So Magnus follows this clue onto a boat and out to a fishing trap. Beneath him, in the shadow of the boat, he could see thousands of herring just swimming around down there. MAGNUS WAHLBERG: I put the hydrophone in the water. And victory. HAKAN WESTERBERG: The typical sound.

199

MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Ja! HAKAN WESTERBERG: MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Ja! The whole box was just singing...

200

ANNIE: Wow! MAGNUS WAHLBERG: ... all these sounds. It was just incredible. It was just this cacophony of herring.

201

LULU: Wow! ANNIE: Their findings were harder for some members of the navy than others to accept. HAKAN WESTERBERG: I mean, there were people that their whole career was chasing submarines. ANNIE: But finally, in 1999, it became official.

202

The typical sound that had haunted the Swedish Navy for over a decade was not made by Soviet submarines. Instead, for over a decade, the Swedish Navy had been straining their ears to hear the sound of thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of herring, all farting ...

203

LULU: Oh my God! ANNIE: ... together.

204

LULU: Okay! HAKAN WESTERBERG: So that was the end of the typical sound. ANNIE: Man, I just can't believe, like, you guys so quickly had all these ideas, but why did the military not think for 15 years? Like, are there no scientists in the military that would have ...

205

MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Yeah. ANNIE: ... any of your experience? Or, like, why was it ... MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Yeah, I think they didn't have to knowhow. And the other thing is this whole thing of the military having this culture that you keep things secret, which means that it's very hard to have, like, an open and it's very top-down.

206

So it's very hard to have an open discussion about like, a scientific discussion going on around these topics. I mean, now I make it sound like they are very different from the rest of us, but in a way, they are just human beings. And you can easily wind yourself up in some kind of explanation. If you have a few authorities telling you how things are, you can easily start to collect evidence that that must be how it was. ANNIE: Magnus told me that the Swedish military actually used sonar to investigate this sound. And what they saw on the screen in front of them was that sound coming from an object, and then they would watch that object split apart.

207

MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Divided into two. ANNIE: Oh!

208

MAGNUS WAHLBERG: And then divided into four. ANNIE: What?

209

MAGNUS WAHLBERG: And then it would go back into one again.

210

ANNIE: Whoa! ANNIE: And now we can guess that what they were probably seeing was a school of herring splitting apart, splitting apart again.

211

But at the time, this was a Soviet sub. ANNIE: So they must have thought these subs are, like, super-high-tech. MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Exactly. They had people investigating. How can it be that Russia can build a sub that can sort of be decomposed into two and to four and then back into one? ANNIE: No way!

212

MAGNUS WAHLBERG: You have, like, military scientists sitting and trying to build a model of Russian sub that can sort of disintegrate into four. I mean, it doesn't make any sense. ANNIE: That is amazing!

213

MAGNUS WAHLBERG: I think this is something to look after in our times that you can always ...

214

ANNIE: Oh yeah. MAGNUS WAHLBERG: ... laugh at it and say how wrong they were, but I wonder what people will think about us in 20 years.

215

ANNIE: Oh, totally. I think about that all the time.

216

MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Yeah. Yeah. ANNIE: Like, what is the fish fart of today?

217

MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Exactly. ANNIE: There's just one more little thing that I take away from this story because as I was doing research, I learned that herring have just been fished forever. MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Yeah.

218

ANNIE: Like, really fished. MAGNUS WAHLBERG: All these Scandinavian countries, they were built on herring, basically . It's kind of ...

219

ANNIE: Right! MAGNUS WAHLBERG: It's been what people have been eating and fishing for thousands of years. ANNIE: Right, and not just that. Like, cities have been founded on it. Cultures have been founded on it.

220

MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Yeah. ANNIE: Millions have been made, and these fish have just been, like, running for their lives for millennia.

221

MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Yeah. ANNIE: And it's like, in this one moment, or in this one decade or period of time, like, herrings just got back at humans in some way and, like ...

222

MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. ANNIE: ...Sort of gave them a wild chase, you know? MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Yeah. Yeah. You could say that, yeah. ANNIE: And just for once, they had the power and the upper hand. MAGNUS WAHLBERG: They played an important part of a country's foreign policy. ANNIE: Totally, yeah.

223

MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. ANNIE: It's almost like in the end, this story is just a very long-winded fart joke on us humans. MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Yeah, exactly. It is. That's what it is LULU: Winded. I see what you did there, McEwen. This very long-winded fart joke was bravely reported by Annie McEwen and beautifully produced by Matt Kielty, Annie McEwen and Sarah Qari with sound design by Jeremy Bloom. Reporting and translation help from Magnus Ormstadt. Huge thanks to Ben Wilson, who's done his own fascinating research into the herring toots, and to Ola Tunander, Hans Gordon, Andreas Timmelstad, Klaus Helmersen and Meg Bolz. Catch you on the flip, friends. May your sanity stay intact and your wind broken. Bye!

✨ Empfohlenes Video

46 Sätze

Never double-cross Reddington | The Blacklist (Season 2, Episode 3)

Business EnglishDaily ConversationUniversity Students

65 Sätze

Snowclones and Clichés and Memes, Oh My! | Otherwords

Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults

86 Sätze

First reactions | Francis Halzen, Nobel Prize in Physics 2026 | telephone interview

Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults

1030 Sätze

Für wen ist dieses Video geeignet?

Dieses Video eignet sich perfekt für fortgeschrittene Englischlerner, die an realistischen Dialogen üben und ihr Verständnis von komplexen Geschichten verbessern wollen. Es hilft, Hörverstehen in informellen, aber strukturierten Gesprächen zu trainieren – ideal für die Praxis von shadow speech oder Englisch Shadowing, da die Rednerinnen und Redner eine klare, aber natürliche Aussprache verwenden.

Wörter und Redewendungen, die man klauen sollte

Red herring: Ein Ablenkungsmanöver (im Video der Titel der Geschichte, die eine Fälschung enthüllt).
Taken with their pants down: Überrascht werden (z. B. "Die Politiker waren total taken with their pants down").
Bubbling it up from the archives: Einen alten Beitrag wiederaufführen (nützlich für Podcasts oder Artikel).
Whodunnit: Ein Kriminalfall (aus "Who done it?", ideal für Gespräche über Thriller).

Wie man die Aussprache richtig bekommt

Um die Aussprache in diesem Video zu üben, konzentriere dich auf Englische Aussprache verbessern durch shadowspeak. Achte auf die natürliche Pausen von Lulu Miller und Annie McEwen – sie sprechen flüssig, aber mit klaren Silben. Beachte auch die Betonung in Wörtern wie "submarine" (SUB-muh-reen) oder "hydrophone" (HY-droh-fohn). Übe, die Intonation in fragenden Sätzen nachzuahmen, z. B. "What was it doing there?" – die Stimme steigt am Ende. Nutze Englisch Shadowing, indem du die Sätze direkt nachsprichst, um Rhythmus und Klang zu internalisieren. So trainierst du nicht nur die Aussprache, sondern auch das Fließen von gesprochenem Englisch.

Grammatik in diesem Video

Die Strukturen, die der Sprecher am häufigsten verwendet, mit den genauen Worten aus dem Video:

Struktur	Im Video
Present Perfect Continuous have/has been + -ing – eine Handlung, die früher begann und noch andauert	they've been recording · have been washing · have been eating
Bedingungssätze if + Satz, will/would + Verb – eine Bedingung und ihre Folge	if the explosion would like
Present Perfect have/has + Partizip Perfekt – eine vergangene Handlung, die jetzt noch wichtig ist	has been · have bought · have detected
Passiv be + Partizip Perfekt – wichtig ist, was geschieht, nicht wer es tut	is called · weren't involved · was called

Was ist die Shadowing-Technik?

Shadowing ist eine wissenschaftlich fundierte Sprachlerntechnik, die ursprünglich für die professionelle Dolmetscherausbildung entwickelt und durch den Polyglotten Dr. Alexander Arguelles populär gemacht wurde. Die Methode ist einfach aber wirkungsvoll: Du hörst englisches Audio von Muttersprachlern und wiederholst es sofort laut — wie ein Schatten, der dem Sprecher mit nur 1–2 Sekunden Verzögerung folgt. Anders als passives Hören oder Grammatikübungen zwingt Shadowing dein Gehirn und deine Mundmuskulatur, gleichzeitig echte Sprachmuster zu verarbeiten und zu reproduzieren. Studien zeigen, dass es Aussprachegenauigkeit, Intonation, Rhythmus, verbundene Sprache, Hörverständnis und Sprechflüssigkeit signifikant verbessert — was es zu einer der effektivsten Methoden für die IELTS Speaking-Vorbereitung und reale englische Kommunikation macht.

Shadowing-Technik: die vollständige Schritt-für-Schritt-Anleitung lesen →

Shadowing-Übung: Red Herring | Radiolab Podcast - Englisch Sprechen Lernen mit Video

Never double-cross Reddington | The Blacklist (Season 2, Episode 3)

Snowclones and Clichés and Memes, Oh My! | Otherwords

First reactions | Francis Halzen, Nobel Prize in Physics 2026 | telephone interview

Stephen Fry Discovers The Hidden History Of New England

What 30 Days in Sweden Taught Me About Happiness as an American

Do not answer if you hear your name in a cemetery.

When an Axeman Fought a Tank

The Hidden Habit That's Quietly Wasting Your Life

2026 09 30 The Archers Soap Opera: Lower Loxley Secrets & Village Gossip

He’s getting impeached…

The Love Hypothesis 💋 | Animated Summary | Pt. 1

Camping in an Alaskan Survival Cabin

Für wen ist dieses Video geeignet?

Wörter und Redewendungen, die man klauen sollte

Wie man die Aussprache richtig bekommt

Grammatik in diesem Video

Was ist die Shadowing-Technik?