In short
Cold War-era Swedish submarine scares. In 1981 and throughout the 1980s, Sweden repeatedly detected “Soviet submarines” near its coast and even inside harbors, using hydrophones and periscope reports. A mysterious classified hydrophone signature called “the typical sound” supposedly meant a guaranteed Soviet sub. After the Cold War, Swedish and academic investigators eventually traced the sound to biological noise: massive schools of herring producing air bubbles from their swim bladders via a canal to their anal opening (“fish farts”), especially when stressed in fishing nets.
Guests
Magnus Wahlberg, associate professor at the University of Southern Denmark studying underwater sound; and Håkan Westerberg, retired oceanographer and fisheries biologist and an authority on underwater biological sounds (Magnus’s mentor). Reported by Annie McEwan; produced by Matt Kilty.
Key claims/examples
Soviet sub beached near Sweden (1981); repeated periscope/hydrophone incidents (including near Stockholm’s Royal Castle); “typical sound” classified for ~15 years; sonar screens showed objects splitting (later interpreted as fish schools). In 1999, the Navy officially concluded the “typical sound” was herring, confirmed by hydrophone recordings from fishing traps.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOIntroducing the Cold War Mystery
0:45 to 1:44
A teaser about an espionage story from the Cold War involving submarines.
“I do think our thing is like underwater mysteries from the 90s.”
Setting the Scene in 1981
1:44 to 2:56
A recollection of life in Sweden during a tense Cold War period.
“So most Americans would say Wahlberg or Wahlberg or something like that.”
The Fisherman's Discovery
2:56 to 5:48
A fisherman stumbles upon a Soviet submarine beached near Sweden.
“Small towns, all these roads, the colors of different countries.”
Military Response and Public Panic
5:48 to 7:18
Swedish military's reaction to the submarine incident and public fears.
“They parked a small boat beside of the sub.”
Submarine Sightings and Military Drills
7:18 to 10:15
Ongoing submarine sightings lead to increased military vigilance.
“And an obvious way to do that is with sound.”
The Mystery of the Typical Sound
10:15 to 12:34
Exploration of the mysterious sound associated with Soviet submarines.
“So through the 1980s, every half a year, every year, we would have these submarine chases.”
Political Tensions and Denials
12:34 to 14:00
Political tensions rise as Sweden confronts supposed Soviet incursions.
“For years, the Swedish military kept hearing this secret Soviet sub-sound in their waters.”
The Secret Sound Investigation
14:00 to 20:20
Learn about Magnus and Håkan's involvement in a top-secret investigation into mysterious underwater sounds.
“But Boris Yeltsin's like, I don't know what you're talking about.”
Fish Fart Theory
21:41 to 28:00
Explore how Magnus and Håkan developed a theory linking herring sounds to submarine noises.
“And we are the co-hosts of You Could Make This Beautiful, where we talk to actors.”
The Fish Fart Experiment Begins
28:00 to 29:56
Learn about the quirky experiment to determine if fish farts sound like submarines.
“Like even animals like find them funny kind of, I don't know, they're just, they're wonderful.”
Show all 13 chapters
The Search for the Real Sound
29:56 to 31:56
Discover how researchers sought the true sound of herring in the wild.
“But I mean, this is a dead fish in an aquarium.”
A Decade of Misunderstanding
31:56 to 32:20
The Swedish Navy mistook fish sounds for submarines for over a decade.
“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 together.”
Cultural Impact of Herring
32:20 to 35:19
Explore how herring have shaped cultures and economies throughout history.
“So that was the end of the typical sound.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:02Hey, it's Lulu. This is Radiolab and it's summer. In the past, there has been hot girl summer. There's been hot vac summer. This summer, arguably, is kind of 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 whodunit that involves submarines, periscopes, hydrophones, a bunker.
0:38And I didn't see the answer coming. Enough out of me. Let's jump into this tale. It comes from the archives. It was reported by Annie McKeown. And it is called Red Herring. Wait, you're listening. Okay. All right. Okay. You're listening to Radiolab Radiolab From WNYC
1:05Rewind
1:11Hello, I'm Lulu Miller This is Radiolab And today, boom boom Oh, hello Hi, a story from producer Annie McEwan From her bathroom I'm actually like straddling the bathtub here. So good thing I did yoga last night. I do think our thing is like underwater mysteries from the 90s. 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. All right. I am grabbing my popcorn. Take me away. Yeah. Okay. Let's begin with. Yeah. Okay. Thank you, Magnus. Magnus. No problem. Yeah. How do you pronounce your last name? It depends on where you come from.
1:55So most Americans would say Wahlberg or Wahlberg or something like that. What do you say? Well, that also depends. In Sweden, it's Wahlberg. Oh, wow. But in Denmark, it becomes a bit more like Välbäu or something. Wow. Yeah. Okay. Anyway, Magnus is an associate professor. At the University of Southern Denmark. Where he studies underwater sound. Yeah. So let's start off in 1981. Yes. Let's go back to that time. Yeah, so that's a defining year. How old were you then? I was 13 years old. And I was living in Stockholm, the capital of Sweden. Okay. And it was an extremely tense period. Because in Stockholm...
2:36You know, we have the Baltic Sea right in front of us. There was only about 140 miles of water separating Sweden from... The Soviet Union.
2:50And 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. I remember this still in the school, you know, you had a map, you could see all the details of the Western Europe. Small towns, all these roads, the colors of different countries. And then across the Baltic, it was just white.
3:09There was just nothing. And that was Soviet Union. We didn't really know even what was there. Just this mysterious nothingness. Yeah, and not very far away. Now, Magnus says it's important to know... Sweden was this kind of island politically, because Sweden was neutral. But because of a lot of this mystery, a fear of communism, there was always this sense that one of their greatest threats was the Soviet Union. 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. So, 1981, the defining year, it's late October.
3:54Sort of when it gets really dark here, you know, and cold and damp. 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. Full of islands. There are rocks, like granite islands everywhere. 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.
4:32There is this big Russian sub standing there.
4:39It'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. It's insane. What was it doing there? Exactly. What was it doing there? The fishermen called the Navy. And we all woke up to the news.
5:02Soviet submarine beached on Sweden's shores. It's a huge story, like all the papers write about it And everyone is like, what on earth is going on? So the military comes down and there are helicopters circling overhead, many, many boats 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 18 Ah, you're soft It was like, yeah, it was like Napoleon Wars We didn't really, we're involved in anything So Magnus said the military sent some guys out to the submarine. And, you know, we kind of knocked on the door of the sub.
5:39Wait, they knocked on the side of the sub? 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. And, you know, and then they said, oh, OK, sorry about that. But 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. Oh, scary. You know, we have these defining moments for a nation. In the States, you have like the Kennedy murder, the 9-11th, and you know, and this is one of those for Swedes.
6:13And people started immediately to say, hey, this is war. Like, we are in war. And eventually, because again, maybe we were too soft. 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. Sort of, sorry, we navigated wrongly. You know, we lost our way. We ran ashore. Like, we made a mistake. Yeah. 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. Okay. And for a 13-year-old Magnus. 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?
7:01It 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? And, you know, it's not an easy thing to do. It's a huge coastline over a thousand miles. So how do you like patrol that? And an obvious way to do that is with sound. Forget ships and sonar. Sounds propagate very well underwater. We're just going to listen for the subs. Yeah. Does that mean they hung hydrophones on buoys out in the water all along the coast? Like just a whole bunch of them?
7:38Well, not everywhere, of course. But he 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. This time in this big harbor. Very close to Stockholm. Right outside of a Swedish naval base. People started to see periscopes. One after another, after another, after another. Popping up out of the water. And the Swedish military was like... We have detected them, and we have them.
8:17So this time, the Swedes send in a bunch of ships. With nets. 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. And what does that sound like? I'm going to get to that, but what happened is when the Swedes heard this sound, they would drop a bomb from the helicopter. They would hit the water, sink down to a predetermined depth, and then...
9:10Big explosion. Okay. And the helicopters and the ships, they would just wait to see if the explosion would damage or scare one of these Soviet subs up to the surface. And so they waited and waited and nothing. 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. What? I know. Isn't that crazy? Did they somehow get out of the barricade? They don't know. They don't know. I mean, I guess they could even be down there today.
9:55They 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 this is just a huge harbor, and they just couldn't really find any evidence of any Soviet sub. Yeah, it just ended in nothing. And then 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. And then six months would pass.
10:33Once it was right outside the Royal Castle in Stockholm. So were people getting like annoyed? Like, come on, crying wolf a little bit? Or are people still very afraid? I think, you know, the Cold War is still going on. Magnus said there was just this fear. The bear is coming. You know, the Russian bear is coming. We just have to spend more money to find them. Were they still seeing periscopes? Yeah, so that's the thing. What did they see? Or what were they hearing and seeing? So they started to ask people, if anyone sees something, you should report it. Call this number, call the Swedish military.
11:05And they got tons of calls. Many thousands of observations. But then the problem is, it's just like 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? So what the Swedish military did is they came up with this ranking system for observations. On one end, you had rank six. Six is, we cannot tell. No one knows. Could be anything. And then you have like rank one is a definite sub. Definitely a sub. Okay. Now, the thing is, for a rank one, definitely a Soviet sub, pretty much every time in the report, it said...
11:46We heard the typical sound. The typical sound. We heard the typical sound. What is the typical sound? So the typical sound is basically 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. And so anytime the Swedish military encountered that sound. It was automatically giving a one. It meant that encounter was 100 % a sub. Oh, sorry, go. And do we know what that sounds like? Well, not yet, because it's classified.
12:30Yeah. No one could listen to this sound and no one could know what it was. But all the hydrophones were picking up this sound. They were picking up the typical sound. For years, the Swedish military kept hearing this secret Soviet sub-sound in their waters. So then the strange thing happens, right? In 1989, everything is changing. Thousands and thousands of West Germans come to make the point that the wall has suddenly become irrelevant. The Iron Curtain falls, the Berlin Wall falls. You know, everything opened up and all of a sudden, over one night basically, the world changed for us. Changes were just sweeping across this continent.
13:06It's something unreal for me. All these places that had been almost impossible to go to were all open. 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. 20, 30 incidents every year. And Magnus said by 1994... At that time, we had the prime minister, Karl Bildt, and he got so upset about this, he wrote a very angry letter to Boris Yeltsin saying, now you really have to stop.
13:55Now you have created your own country, and the first thing you do is to try to occupy Sweden. We're sick of this. Stop. But Boris Yeltsin's like, I don't know what you're talking about. Yeltsin said, well, we are, of course, not there. We don't, you can see all our subs are on land. What are you talking about? You're crazy. He denies everything. So as this whole mystery is unfolding, Magnus is watching from the sidelines. And by 1996, you know, at that time I was a university student. He's studying underwater biological sounds. Oh. And I got a job in the fishery department because my mentor, he was sort of the, he was called Håkan Westerberg.
14:33He still is. He's still around. Yeah, let's hope so. That's Håkan. Retired oceanographer and fisheries biologist. I started with telemetry, acoustic tracking in the 70s. And he was one of the few in Sweden who really was an authority on underwater biological sounds. And one day Magnus is standing in Hawkins' office. I was quite fresh on my job. When the phone on Hawkins' desk rings. He was not there, and I just took his phone. Oh, you just answered the phone on his desk? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But we had a very collegial relationship. And on the other end of the line, it's the Royal Swedish Navy calling.
15:16They 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. This top secret government investigation. And they would like me and my boss to be part of that. So they say yes. There's a background check. Yeah, and cleared by the secret police. They were very secretive. And then he and Håkon are on a train to Stockholm. To this huge naval base. It's just like in a James Bond movie. You have a whole submarine base inside the rocks. Wait, what? You can sort of open the rocks and you go in there with your boats.
15:55And you can have huge boats inside. How do you open the rock? Yeah, I don't know. You have some big, you know. Rock door? Or something like that. Yeah, yeah, something like that. What? So we went in there and, you know... So Magnus and Håkon, who are not totally sure why they're there, are winding their way through this military base. Long tunnels. Two Navy captains were our liaisons. Yeah. And eventually... You come into this meeting room with all these electronic, you know, gadgets. A lot of recording equipment. They have a world map and they can follow the whole world from in there. Kind of like mission control at NASA.
16:33It was super exciting. Finally, they take their seats at a long table. And sitting there around the table are a bunch of other academic types like them. But there were 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 this sound. The typical sound. this famous sound. So now we will actually play the typical sound for you. So it's been top secret for the last... 15 years. For 15 years. Yeah, no one outside the military was able or allowed to listen to it.
17:16Wow. So were you excited? Extremely, of course. This was like, wow. Now, what Magnus said he expected to hear was something like... Bing. Bing. You know, what he'd heard in the movies. You know, these movies when they're sitting around the sub. So I was thinking, it must be something like that, right? But then, one of the Navy officers turns to a tape recorder and hits play.
17:45And this is what comes out.
17:51Huh.
17:55God, is it... Are they picking up voices?
18:01Or like radio static?
18:08Huh, so that's always what it sounds like? Yeah, this is a sound they've been recording every year since that first sub showed up. It's intriguing. It sounds a bit like a few Donald ducks at a very long distance. What? What do you mean? Well, you know, like Donald Duck, this kind of his voice. If you imagine you had like 10 Donald Ducks and they would be 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... Oh, yeah. It has this kind of squeaky part to it. and then we were sitting there with all these generals and they were playing this sound did you look around the room at the table of scientists and military people like you guys well everyone is sitting there and you know all these professors they were kind of stiff upper lips so they were just sitting there and listening kind of carefully but my my my boss he's more like he's a very relaxed guy you know i think we looked at each other with a very confused gaze but we were We're kind of keeping a stiff face also.
19:17Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Cool, cool. Gotta play it cool. Yeah, exactly, yeah. 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. To get to the bottom of what this typical sound was about. And even in that moment, sitting at the table, Håkon and Magnus turn to each other. And they don't say anything, but they're both thinking, This is very strange. This is definitely not the sub. Don't, don't, don't. After the break, Magnus and Hawken follow their intuition deep into a cloud of mystery.
20:05And they get to the bottom of it. Oh, they get right up close. to the bottom of the mystery. Radio Lab will be back in just a second. Stay with us.
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Read the full transcript
22:21Radio Lab, Lulu, Annie, military crises trying to be averted by biologists. So after the meeting, Magnus and Hawken are standing outside. Just standing there having a cigarette. Talking about the sound. It sounds a bit like a popping sound. The sound when you fry bacon. And both of them thought. that this must be a biological sound. But what? And then I remember saying to Håkan, air bubbles. This sounds like air bubbles. If you think of a scuba diver who gets a hole pinched in his pipes, one of his pipes, God forbid, like an air bubble stream coming out of a hose. It sounds a bit like that. So their question is like, which animal releases air under the water?
23:02And we had kind of this hunch. Yeah, yeah. Now, incredibly, you can actually find this hunch in New York City. But it helps set up a car. Oh my! And a friend. So I called up producer Matt Kilty, who's a friend with a car. You have a bucket. And I also brought a large bucket. What a ridiculous bucket. Okay, so I only told Matt we were driving to the Hudson River. That was it. Okay, so we're taking the bridge. We drove through Brooklyn, over the Manhattan Bridge. Okay, so now that we... Is this the cup holder? It's my one cup holder. Drove up Manhattan, up to the riverfront. We can sneak. And look for parking.
23:45No, there's a fire hydrant right there! For a while. I wonder if I could park. A long while. It's a red light. How many fire hydrants do you need on one block? It's a red light. Oh my God, that's a spot. Get on Riverside. We're on Riverside Drive. Okay, let's go up it. There's no parking anytime. This is not going to work again. Well, how long are we going to be here? I don't know. We need to wander around a bit. I don't even know what we're doing. Wait. I'm looking for parking. What are you? Can you just, what are you looking for? What was the hunch? Yes. Okay, okay. So we got down to like the rocky shoreline of the Hudson River.
24:19There is a piece of a dead fish. That might be a whole fish. Where we found it. Herring. Herring. A herring fish. I think that evening we were like, let's try herring. Oh my gosh. Can we get down there? 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 herringfish 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.
24:53And you know what you're looking for? Like, what exactly does a herring look like? Oh, OK. Yeah. How am I going to pick it up? That is the question. I picked up this dead one we found. I guess I'll just put my hands around it. Very slippery. Herring are, I don't know, maybe 10 inches. This is a big dead fish. Shiny. They are the silver of the oceans because there are all these reflections from their scales. They just kind of look like if a kid drew a fish, it would be this fish. Yeah. But the really important thing about a herring, The whole reason why Magnus and Haken had this hunch is because of what is going on inside of a herring.
25:32Now, 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? Um, I don't think I have actually wondered that. Let me go ahead and tell you. So it turns out in most fish, they have this thing called the swim bladder, which is basically this tiny sack filled with gas that regulates the fish's buoyancy, similar to the buoyancy tank of a submarine. 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 sack or pushing it out.
26:16And 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. Yeah, the herring is special because they have a canal straight from the swim bladder to the anal opening. 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. And Magnus says when this happens... You will have this sort of small string of air bubbles. Which, he had a hunch, might just sound like bubbles coming out of a hose underwater. Yeah. So his guess is like this submarine sound is actually just bubbles that come out their butt.
27:04Uh-huh. So his guess is fish farts. Yeah. Okay. Technically, these are not farts because they do not come from like digestive gases. Okay. But this makes me feel better. I feel like I can continue to engage with this story. Are you like anti-fart or something? I'm just very grossed out by them. Yeah. Like I just, are you not? No. Well, how are you? Why are you? It's like even saying the word makes me like, I'm like, I don't want to be in this space, even linguistically, let alone aromatically. This is like, wow, that's so interesting. I would never think. But how are you not? Because they're the funniest thing in the world because they're a thing we all do.
27:56If we can't, that's upsetting. They make you feel better immediately. Like even animals like find them funny kind of, I don't know, they're just, they're wonderful. They connect us all. They make you feel better immediately. They connect us all. Okay, I just appreciate the meaning you draw while also being simultaneously relieved. These are not actual farts. Carry on. Okay, so. Hawken and Magnus, they now had their fish fart theory. But now they needed to figure out, did the fish fart actually sound like the submarine sound? And we approached that rather crudely. Basically, Magnus went to a fish shop.
28:37Bought a couple of herrings. that were dead. Went to the lab. Ringed up the hydrophone. Okay. And then Magnus took this herring, submerged it underwater. And I squeezed it. It's so weird to squeeze a fish, though. It's very weird. But I squeezed it pretty hard. I don't think anything's coming out. And he just kept squeezing it. So it was like kind of... Oh! Oh, what is... Oh, it's poo! I made it poo. It was like a really big blur of, you know, hearing poo and... things coming out. I'm sorry, Fee. Okay, toss them over. So then... You want to squeeze one? Hawken tried. You should get this feeling.
29:16It's a weird feeling. Maybe this will be the lucky one. I got the magic touch. I got them fart fingers. He put the herring in the water. Squeezed it. Gentle. Gently squeezing. Gently. Gentle. One little butt. And then... Oh! Oh! Did it? Bubbles. Such bubbles. It was a tiny little bubble. Okay, that's good. You do have fart fingers. And then you would hear this kind of very airy, poppy sound. This kind of the perfect, typical sound we thought. Turns out they thought wrong. Because when they look at the recording of the fish fart, compared to the recording of the subsound, they just, they don't really match.
29:56Absolutely not. This is just becoming very depressing. But I mean, this is a dead fish in an aquarium. So then they went out into a bay with this little tube. Connected to a vacuum pump. Oh no. Managed to get a wild herring in there, got it to fart. Yeah. That sound didn't match. No. 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. These schools can be huge, like a square kilometer. 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.
30:33It's the sound of a lot of fish farting. Ew. Like a lot, a lot. 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 a herring goes into a net, they get stressed and the net starts boiling, they said. Whoa. 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. I put the hydrophone in the water.
31:18And...
31:23Victory! The typical sound. Ja! Ja! The whole box was just singing of these sounds. It was just incredible. It was just this cacophony of hearing. Wow.
31:42Their findings were harder for some members of the Navy than others to accept. I mean, there were people that their whole career was chasing submarines. But finally, in 1999, it became official. 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 together. Okay. So that was the end of the typical sound. 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?
32:34Like, are there no scientists in the military that would have any of your experience or like, why was it? Yeah. So I think they didn't have the know-how. 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. 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're 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.
33:03If you have a few authorities telling you how things are, you can easily start to collect evidence that that must be how it was. 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. Divided into two. Oh. And then divided into four. And then it could go back into one again. Whoa. And now we can guess that what they were probably seeing was a school of herrings, splitting apart, splitting apart again. But at the time, this was a Soviet sub.
33:45So they must have thought these subs are like super high tech. Exactly. 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. No way. You have like military scientists sitting and trying to build a model of a Russian sub that can sort of disintegrate into four. I mean, it doesn't make any sense. That is amazing. I think this is something to look after also in our times that you can always laugh at it and say how wrong they were. But I wonder what people will think about us in 20 years. Oh, totally.
34:20I think about that all the time. Yeah, yeah. Like, what is the fish fart of today? Exactly.
34:36There'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. Yeah. Like, really fished. All these, it's kind of even countries, they were built on herring, basically. It's kind of, it's been what people have been eating and fishing for, for thousands of years. Right. And not just that, like cities have been founded on it. Cultures have been founded on it. Millions have been made and these fish have just been like running for their lives for millennia. Yeah. 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 sort of gave them a wild chase, you know?
35:15And just for once, they had the power in the upper hand. They played an important part of a country's foreign policy. It's almost like in the end, this story is just a very long-winded fart joke on us humans. Yeah, exactly. It is. That's what it is.
35:42Winded See what you did there, McEwan This very long-winded fart joke Was bravely reported by Annie McEwan And beautifully produced by Matt Kilty Annie McEwan and Sarak Hari With sound design by Jeremy Bloom Reporting and translation help from Magnus Ormstad Huge thanks to Ben Wilson Who's done his own fascinating research into the herring toots, and to Ola Tunander, Hans Gordon, Andreas Timmerstad, Klaas Helmersen, and Meg Bowles. Catch you on the flip, friends. May your sanity stay intact and your wind broken. Bye.
36:36Hi, I'm Gabby. I'm from the Bay Area, California, and here are the staff credits. Radiolab is hosted by Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser. Soren Wheeler is our executive editor. Sarah Sandback is our executive director. Our managing editor is Pat Walters. Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design.
37:22Our staff includes Emily Krieger, Natalie Middleton, Anjali Mercado, and Sophie Semay.
37:38Leadership support for Radiolab's science programming is provided by the Simons Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
37:55Thank you.
From the publisher
It was the early '80s, the height of the Cold War, when something strange began happening off the coast of Sweden. The navy reported a mysterious sound deep below the surface of the ocean. Again, and again, and again they would hear it near their secret military bases, in their harbors, and up and down the Swedish coastline. After thorough analysis the navy was certain. The sound was an invasion into their waters, an act of war, the opening salvos of a possible nuclear annihilation. Or was it? Today, Annie McEwen pulls us down into a deep-sea mystery, one of international intrigue that asks you to consider the possibility that maybe, just maybe, your deepest beliefs could be as solid as...air.
Special thanks to Ben Wilson, Ola Tunander, Hans Gordon, Andreas Timmelstad, Klaus Helmersen, and Meg Bolz.
LATERAL CUTS -
- Atomic Artifacts (https://radiolab.org/podcast/atomic-artifacts)
- Neither Confirm Nor Deny (https://radiolab.org/podcast/confirm-nor-deny)
EPISODE CREDITS:
Reported by - Annie McEwin
with help from - Magnus Ormstadt
Produced by - Annie McEwin, Matt Kielty, Sarah Qari
Original music and sound design contributed by - Jeremy Bloom
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