Shadowing Practice: Red Herring | Radiolab Podcast - Learn English Speaking with Video
בחר מצב תרגול
כל מצב פותח חדר תרגול במסך מלא.
223 משפטים
אם המשפטים קצרים או ארוכים מדי, לחץ על ערוך כדי להתאים אותם.
1
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.
2
LULU: ...From her bathroom. ANNIE: I'm actually, like, straddling the bathtub here, so ... LULU: Perfect.
3
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...
4
MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Yeah, okay. ANNIE: Thank you, Magnus!
5
ANNIE: ... Magnus. MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Not a problem. Yeah.
6
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.
7
ANNIE: What do you say? MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Well, that also depends. In Sweden, it's Val-bery. ANNIE: Oh, wow.
8
MAGNUS WAHLBERG: But in Denmark, it becomes a bit more like Vale-bough or something. ANNIE: Wow.
9
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.
10
MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Yeah. ANNIE: So let's start off in 1981.
11
MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Yes. ANNIE: Well, let's go back to that time.
12
MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Yeah. So that's a defining year. ANNIE: Just how old were you then?
13
MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Yeah, so I was 13 years old. ANNIE: Thirteen.
14
MAGNUS WAHLBERG: And I was living in Stockholm, the capital of Sweden.
15
ANNIE: Okay. MAGNUS WAHLBERG: And it was an extremely tense period. ANNIE: Because in Stockholm ...
16
MAGNUS WAHLBERG: You know, we have the Baltic Sea right in front of us.
17
ANNIE: There was only about 140 miles of water separating Sweden from ...
18
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.
19
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.
20
We didn't really know even what was there. ANNIE: Just this mysterious nothingness.
21
MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Yeah, and not very far away. ANNIE: Now Magnus says it's important to know ...
22
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.
23
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 ...
24
MAGNUS WAHLBERG: There is this big Russian sub standing there.
25
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.
26
ANNIE: What was it doing there? MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Exactly.
27
What was it doing there? So ... ANNIE: The fisherman called the navy.
28
MAGNUS WAHLBERG: And we all woke up to the news. ] ANNIE: Soviet submarine beached on Sweden's shores.
29
] 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.
30
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?
31
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.
32
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!
33
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.
34
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.
35
ANNIE: So the Swedish military sent a bunch of ships out to the sub, pulled it off the bottom.
36
And they, you know, returned it to international waters, and it left.
37
LULU: Okay. ANNIE: And for a 13-year-old Magnus ...
38
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?
39
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 ...
40
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.
41
MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Sounds propagate very well on the water.
42
ANNIE: We're just gonna listen for the subs. MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Yeah.
43
ANNIE: Does that mean they like, they hung hydrophones on buoys out in the water?
44
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 ...
45
MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Very close to Stockholm. ANNIE: ... right outside of a Swedish naval base.
46
MAGNUS WAHLBERG: People started to see periscopes.
47
ANNIE: One after another after another after another popping up out of the water.
48
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.
49
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?
50
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.
51
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!
52
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?
53
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.
54
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.
55
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?
56
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?
57
Like, come on, crying wolf a little bit? MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Yeah.
58
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.
59
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.
60
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.
61
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?
62
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.
63
No one knows . ANNIE: Could be anything.
64
LULU: Okay. MAGNUS WAHLBERG: And then you have, like, rank one is a definite sub. ANNIE: Definitely a sub.
65
LULU: Okay. ANNIE: Now, the thing is, for a rank one, definitely a Soviet sub, pretty much every time in the report it said ...
66
MAGNUS WAHLBERG: We heard a typical sound. ANNIE: The typical sound?
67
MAGNUS WAHLBERG: We heard a typical sound. LULU: What is a typical sound?
68
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.
69
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 ...
70
ANNIE: I'm sorry. Go. LULU: And do we know what that sounds like?
71
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 ...
72
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.
73
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.
74
MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Twenty, thirty incidents every year.
75
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.
76
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...
77
MAGNUS WAHLBERG: You know, at that time, I was a university student.
78
ANNIE: He's studying underwater biological sounds.
79
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.
80
ANNIE: That's Hakan. HAKAN WESTERBERG: Retired oceanographer and fisheries biologist. I started with telemetry, acoustic tracking in the '70s.
81
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.
82
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?
83
MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But we had a very collegial relationship.
84
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.
85
ANNIE: And then he and Hakan are on a train to Stockholm.
86
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?
87
MAGNUS WAHLBERG: You can sort of open the rocks, and you go in there with your boats.
88
ANNIE: What? MAGNUS WAHLBERG: And you can have huge ...
89
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?
90
MAGNUS WAHLBERG: ... locks or something like that. Yeah. Yeah, something like that.
91
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.
92
MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Long tunnels. HAKAN WESTERBERG: Two Navy captains were our liaisons. MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Yeah.
93
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.
94
MAGNUS WAHLBERG: You have a world map, and they can follow the whole world from in there.
95
ANNIE: Kind of like mission control at NASA. MAGNUS WAHLBERG: It was super exciting.
96
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 ...
97
MAGNUS WAHLBERG: Yeah, 15 years. ANNIE: For 15 years.
98
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?
99
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!
הורד אפליקציה
כל מה שאתה צריך כדי לדבר בשטף
הגיית AIציון לכל משפט
תרגול IPAשלוט בכל צליל
אוצר מיליםבנה את מאגר המילים שלך
משחק אוצר מיליםלמד תוך כדי משחק
אותו ערוץ
FOR YOU
המלץ על סרטון
C11
263 משפטים
THE MAGNUS ARCHIVES #73 – Police Lights
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
C11
396 משפטים
Something is jamming GPS over Europe. Here's what we found
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C12
45 משפטים
RE2 Unit 10B
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
C11
305 משפטים
The Magic Shop by H.G. Wells | Audiobook
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B24
272 משפטים
Olivia Colman & Alexander Skarsgård Ask Rapid-Fire Questions | Off The Cuff | Vogue
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B21
371 משפטים
English Listening Practice: Lost for 85 Years! (English Like A Native Podcast)
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
C11
863 משפטים
CBS RADIO MYSTERY THEATER -- "TERROR IN THE AIR" (8-22-75)
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B21
203 משפטים
One of these celebs used to work for the CIA
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B21
20 משפטים
Rosamund Pike takes on the Audible 8!
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
C1412 משפטים
You Don’t Mess With Reddington | Red’s Most Badass Moments | THE BLACKLIST
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
C1653 משפטים
maybe I'm the alien
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B21
109 משפטים
Tina and Mask on the date | The Mask
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
Why This Video Is Perfect for English Speaking Practice
This clip from the "Red Herring" podcast is a goldmine for english speaking practice. The casual, conversational tone—with interruptions, laughter, and natural pauses—mimics real-life dialogue, making it ideal for shadow speech. The mix of storytelling, interviews, and technical terms (like "hydrophones" and "periscopes") exposes learners to diverse vocabulary, while the pacing is slow enough to follow but dynamic enough to challenge. It’s a great example of how to learn english with youtube by blending engagement with practical skill-building.
Breaking Down Natural Speech Patterns
Let’s look at 3 key lines that sound authentic and why:
- "Oh, hello. I'm actually, like, straddling the bathtub here, so..." The filler word "like" and the casual phrase "straddling the bathtub" make this feel unscripted. It teaches how to use conversational markers to sound relaxed.
- "Yeah, so I was 13 years old. And I was living in Stockholm, the capital of Sweden." The repetition of "I was" and the pause after "Yeah" create a natural flow. This shows how to connect ideas without rushing.
- "You know, we have the Baltic Sea right in front of us." The phrase "You know" invites the listener in, a common tactic in spoken English. It’s a simple way to make dialogue feel interactive.
A Simple Shadowing Routine for This Clip
Use this shadowspeaks practice to boost pronunciation and fluency:
- Watch the video once to understand the story. Focus on the speakers’ intonation and pauses.
- Play a 5-second segment, pause, and repeat it aloud, mimicking the tone and rhythm. Pay attention to words like "Val-berg" (with its varied pronunciations) to improve english pronunciation.
- Record yourself and compare it to the original. Note where your pace or stress differs—this helps refine natural delivery.
- Gradually increase the segment length to 10-15 seconds. Focus on phrases like "taken with their pants down" to master idiomatic speech.
This routine turns passive listening into active learning, making the most of your learn english with youtube sessions.
דקדוק בסרטון הזה
המבנים שהדובר משתמש בהם הכי הרבה, עם המילים המדויקות מהסרטון:
| מבנה | בסרטון |
|---|---|
| הווה מושלם ממושך (Present perfect continuous) have/has been + -ing — פעולה שהתחילה בעבר ועדיין נמשכת עכשיו | they've been recording · have been washing · have been eating |
| הווה מושלם (Present perfect) have/has + past participle — פעולה שקרתה בעבר ועדיין יש לה חשיבות או השפעה עכשיו | has been · have bought · have detected |
| סביל (Passive voice) be + past participle — הדגש הוא על מה שקורה, לא על מי שעושה את הפעולה | is called · weren't involved · was called |
| משפטי זיקה (Relative clauses) who / which + clause — מידע נוסף על אדם או דבר | people who will · bladder, which is · gills, which means |
מהי טכניקת השאדואינג?
שאדואינג היא טכניקת למידת שפה מבוססת מדע שפותחה במקור להכשרת מתורגמנים מקצועיים ופופולרית על ידי הפוליגלוט ד"ר אלכסנדר ארגואלס. השיטה פשוטה אך עוצמתית: אתה מקשיב לאודיו באנגלית ילידית וחוזר עליו בקול רם מיד — כמו צל העוקב אחרי הדובר עם עיכוב של 1–2 שניות בלבד. בניגוד להאזנה פסיבית או תרגילי דקדוק, שאדואינג מכריח את המוח והשרירים בפה לעבד ולשחזר דפוסי דיבור אמיתיים בו זמנית. מחקרים מראים שזה משפר משמעותית את דיוק ההגייה, האינטונציה, הקצב, הדיבור המחובר, הבנת השמיעה ושטף הדיבור — מה שהופך אותו לאחת השיטות היעילות ביותר להכנה לIELTS Speaking ולתקשורת באנגלית בעולם האמיתי.