Red Herring

Summary

Radiolab – "Red Herring" (August 7, 2026)

Podcast: Radiolab (WNYC Studios)
Hosts: Lulu Miller, Latif Nasser
Reported by: Annie McKeown
Main Guests: Magnus Ormstad, Haakon Westerberg
Theme: Underwater Mysteries, Cold War paranoia, and how science solved a decades-old military mystery.

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Episode Overview

Red Herring transports listeners back to the Cold War era in Sweden, unraveling a real-life spy thriller: a nation tormented by mysterious underwater sounds believed to signal Soviet submarines. A whodunit involving periscopes, hydrophones, and military intrigue ultimately takes a delightfully absurd twist when unlikely scientific heroes and a school of fish change the course of Swedish defense history. The story is playful, suspenseful, and at its heart offers a cautionary tale about human error and the often-unexpected answers curiosity brings.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

The Cold War Context in Sweden

[02:20]

• Magnus Ormstad (then 13) recalls the tension in Stockholm in 1981, with the Baltic Sea representing the thin barrier between Sweden and the Soviet Union.
• The Swedish populace lived in a state of "daily worry" over nuclear war and Soviet threat.

  “There was just this fear of what was on the other side of the water.” – Magnus Ormstad [02:50]

The Beached Soviet Submarine Incident

[03:58–06:47]

• October 1981: A fisherman discovers a Soviet submarine stranded in Swedish waters at dawn.
• The event stuns the Swedish government and citizens. Military interrogates the crew; Soviet commander blames malfunctioning navigation.

  “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.” – Magnus Ormstad [06:48]

• Sweden, untested by war for generations, becomes fixated on submarine detection and coastal defense.

The Escalating Submarine Hunts

[07:17–11:24]

• Sweden deploys underwater microphones (hydrophones) and listens more intensely for submarines.
• Repeated alarms in subsequent years, especially around Stockholm: sightings of periscopes, mysterious underwater sounds, bombings from helicopters, but never catches or concrete evidence.

  “Through the 1980s, every half a year, every year, we would have these submarine chases... helicopters, bombs. Nothing really.” – Magnus Ormstad [10:10]

• The military and public remain on edge, with fear of “the Russian bear coming” [10:47].

The “Typical Sound” and Military Certainty

[11:24–13:40]

• The Swedish military creates a ranking system for submarine sightings; “Rank 1” requires hearing the “typical sound”—supposedly the characteristic noise of a Soviet submarine.
• The sound itself is classified and only available to military personnel.

  “Anytime the Swedish military encountered that sound, it was automatically giving a one.” – Annie McKeown [12:16]

• Even after the fall of the Iron Curtain (1989), reports of the sound persist—prompting angry diplomatic exchanges with Russia.

Bringing in Civilian Scientists

[14:19–16:43]

• The continuing mystery prompts the military to form a secret committee, inviting civilian experts Magnus Ormstad and Haakon Westerberg.
• The scientists are ushered into a secret submarine base inside the rocks for their first exposure to the “typical sound”.

  “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...” – Magnus Ormstad [16:43]

The Underwhelming but Mysterious Sound

[17:29–18:23]

• The scientists expect a sonar-like ping but instead hear a strange squeaky, bubbly noise.

  “It sounds a bit like a few Donald Ducks at a very long distance... like an old shoe... squeaky...” – Magnus Ormstad [18:17]

• The military asks the scientists to figure out its origin.

The Fish Fart Hypothesis

[22:11–27:54]

• Outside, comparing notes, Magnus and Haakon agree: it doesn’t sound mechanical; it sounds biological—specifically, like air bubbles.
• They recall that herring have a unique ability to expel air from their swim bladder via a canal leading to the anus—effectively, they “fart.”

  “The herring is special because they have a canal straight from the swim bladder to the anal opening.” – Magnus Ormstad [26:16]

• Lulu Miller injects humor, musing on the universality and oddity of flatulence:

  “They connect us all immediately.” – Lulu Miller [27:54]

Experimentation and Confirmation

[28:17–31:28]

• The scientists squeeze dead herring in a lab (unsuccessful), then record wild herring (nearly successful), then realize a true field test requires a massive school.
• Out on a fishing boat, they record a net full of stressed, bubbling herring. The result matches the “typical sound” perfectly.

  "Victory. The typical sound... The whole box was just singing of these sounds. It was just incredible. It was just this cacophony of herring." – Magnus Ormstad [31:10]

The Aftermath: National Security Built on Fish Farts

[31:28–33:52]

• The Swedish navy had spent over a decade confusing herring schools with invading Soviet submarines.
• Magnus explains how military secrecy and lack of scientific openness contributed to the error.
• The navy’s sonar operators even interpreted the schooling and splitting of herring shoals as “submarines dividing into smaller sub-units”—believing they’d discovered Soviet super-submarines.

Reflections and Humility

[33:56–34:21]

• Magnus cautions that today's certainties may tomorrow become punchlines:

  "You can always laugh at it and say how wrong they were. But I wonder what people will think about us in 20 years." – Magnus Ormstad [33:56]

• Annie asks, “What is the fish fart of today?” [34:10]

Final Thoughts: Herring Get the Last Laugh

[34:21–35:28]

• The story closes on a poetic note: for centuries, humans hunted herring, but for a brief era, herring outwitted humanity—causing national security panic through nothing but bubbles.

  "It's almost like in the end, this story is just a very long winded fart joke on us humans." – Annie McKeown [35:10]
  "Yeah, exactly. It is. That's what it is." – Magnus Ormstad [35:18]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “I remember this still in the school, you know, you had a map ...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.” – Magnus Ormstad [03:00]
• “They asked kindly, can we come in and have a look? ...they said, no, no, of course not.” – Magnus Ormstad (on Swedish navy's polite interception) [05:36]
• “It sounds a bit like a few Donald Ducks at a very long distance... and like an old shoe that’s squeaky.” – Magnus Ormstad [18:17]
• “These are not farts because they do not come from like, digestive gases.” – Annie McKeown [26:56]
• “The whole box was just singing of these sounds.” – Magnus Ormstad (on recording a school of herring) [31:15]
• “...they had people investigating... How can it be that Russia can build a sub that can sort of be decomposed into two, into four and then back.” – Magnus Ormstad [33:34]
• “What is the fish fart of today?” – Annie McKeown [34:10]
• “It's almost like in the end, this story is just a very long winded fart joke on us humans.” – Annie McKeown [35:10]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [02:20] – Setting the Cold War scene in Stockholm, 1981
• [03:58] – Discovery of stranded Soviet submarine
• [07:17] – Swedish response: hydrophones and intensified listening
• [10:10] – The endless submarine chases and mounting paranoia
• [12:16] – Introduction of the “typical sound” as defining evidence
• [16:43] – Scientists invited to hear the typical sound
• [18:17] – First civilian impressions: "ten Donald Ducks at a distance"
• [22:23] – The fish fart hypothesis emerges
• [26:16] – Anatomy of the herring’s “swim bladder” and its special canal
• [31:10] – Eureka! Matching the herring chorus to the military’s “submarine” sound
• [33:34] – Sonar confusion: “submarines” splitting merge back again
• [34:10] – Reflection: what’s our “fish fart” today?
• [35:10] – Final poetic twist—herring get the last laugh

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Summary Tone and Style

The episode is playful and suspenseful, filled with suspenseful investigative beats, silly banter (particularly around the universal awkwardness of farts), and sharp observational wit. The hosts and guests maintain both curiosity and humility, finding humor and caution in the frailty of human knowledge.

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Takeaway

"Red Herring" is a Cold War mystery with an unexpectedly comic resolution: a whole nation’s military paranoia, budgets, and alarms were triggered not by enemy craft, but by the literal bubbles of a fish. Through expert journalism and a rare blend of humor and insight, Radiolab turns this story into a meditation on scientific humility, the pitfalls of secrecy, and the unpredictable punchlines of nature.

Transcript

[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 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 a 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, many a bunker. And I didn't see the answer coming. Enough out of me. Let's jump into. This tale comes from the archives, was reported by Annie McKeown, and it is called Red Herring.

[Magnus Ormstad]

Wait, you're listening? See?

[Haakon Westerberg]

All right.

[Annie McKeown]

Okay.

[Magnus Ormstad]

All right.

[Annie McKeown]

You're listening to Radiolab from wnyc. Rewind.

[Lulu Miller]

Hello, I'm Lulu Miller, this is Radiolab. And today, Boom, boom.

[Annie McKeown]

Oh, hello.

[Lulu Miller]

Hi. A story from producer Annie McKeown from her bathroom.

[Annie McKeown]

I'm actually, like, straddling the bathtub here, so. Good thing I did yoga last night.

[Lulu Miller]

I do think our thing is, like, underwater mysteries from the 90s.

[Annie McKeown]

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 Miller]

All right, I am grabbing my popcorn. Take me away.

[Annie McKeown]

Yeah. Okay, let's begin with.

[Magnus Ormstad]

Yeah, okay.

[Annie McKeown]

Thank you, Magnus. Magnus. No problem.

[Magnus Ormstad]

Yeah.

[Annie McKeown]

How do you pronounce your last name?

[Magnus Ormstad]

It depends on where you come from. So most Americans would say Walberg or Walburg or something like that. Yeah.

[Annie McKeown]

What do you say?

[Magnus Ormstad]

Well, that also depends. In Sweden, it's Val Bari.

[Annie McKeown]

Oh, wow.

[Magnus Ormstad]

But in Denmark, it becomes a bit more like Vale Bau or something.

[Annie McKeown]

Wow.

[Magnus Ormstad]

Yeah.

[Gabby Santis]

Okay.

[Annie McKeown]

Anyway, Magnus is an associate professor at the University of Southern Denmark, where he studies underwater sound.

[Magnus Ormstad]

Yeah.

[Annie McKeown]

So let's start off in 1981.

[Magnus Ormstad]

Yes.

[Annie McKeown]

Let's go back to that time.

[Magnus Ormstad]

Yeah. So that's a defining year. How old were you? I was 13 years old. I was living in Stockholm, the capital of Sweden. And it was an extremely tense period

[Annie McKeown]

because in Stockholm, you know, we have

[Magnus Ormstad]

the Baltic Sea right in front of us.

[Annie McKeown]

There was only about 140 miles of water separating Sweden from

[Magnus Ormstad]

the Soviet Union.

[Annie McKeown]

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 Ormstad]

I remember this still in the school, you Know, you had a map so you could see all the details of the Western Europe.

[Annie McKeown]

Small towns, all these roads, the. The colors of different countries.

[Magnus Ormstad]

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 McKeown]

Just this mysterious nothingness.

[Magnus Ormstad]

Yeah. And not very far away.

[Annie McKeown]

Now, Magnus says it's important to know

[Magnus Ormstad]

Sweden was this kind of island politically, because Sweden was neutral, but because of

[Annie McKeown]

a lot of this mystery, a fear of communism, there was always this sense that one of their greatest threats was the Soviet Union.

[Magnus Ormstad]

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 McKeown]

So 1981, the defining year. It's late October, sort of when it

[Magnus Ormstad]

gets really dark here, you know, and. And cold and damp.

[Annie McKeown]

It's about 4 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.

[Magnus Ormstad]

There are rocks like granite islands everywhere.

[Annie McKeown]

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 Ormstad]

there is this big Russian sub standing there.

[Annie McKeown]

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 Ormstad]

It's insane.

[Annie McKeown]

What was it doing there?

[Magnus Ormstad]

Exactly? What was it doing there?

[Annie McKeown]

So the fishermen called the navy, and

[Magnus Ormstad]

we all woke up to the news.

[Annie McKeown]

Soviet submarine beached on Sweden's shores. It's a huge story. Like, all the papers write about it,

[Magnus Ormstad]

and everyone is like, what on earth is going on?

[Annie McKeown]

So the military comes down and there are helicopters circling overhead. Many, many boats.

[Magnus Ormstad]

But at this time, Sweden was. People would also say we were incredible naive because we didn't have any wars for, you know, the last war was like 18 years. It was like, yeah, it was like Napoleon wars. We didn't really were involved in anything.

[Annie McKeown]

So Magnus said the military sent some guys out to the submarine and, you

[Magnus Ormstad]

know, we kind of knocked on the door of the submarine.

[Annie McKeown]

They knocked on the side of the sub.

[Magnus Ormstad]

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, okay. 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.

[Annie McKeown]

Oh, scary.

[Magnus Ormstad]

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. 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 McKeown]

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 Ormstad]

Sort of, sorry, we navigated wrongly, you

[Annie McKeown]

know, we lost our way, we ran ashore. Like we made a mistake.

[Magnus Ormstad]

Yeah.

[Annie McKeown]

So the Swedish military sent a bunch of ships out to the sub, pulled it off the bottom and. And they returned it to international waters and it left.

[Lulu Miller]

Okay.

[Annie McKeown]

And for a 13 year old Magnus,

[Magnus Ormstad]

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. 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? And, you know, it's not an easy thing to do.

[Annie McKeown]

It's a huge coastline over a thousand miles. So how do you like patrol that?

[Magnus Ormstad]

And an obvious way to do that is with sound.

[Annie McKeown]

Forget ships and sonar.

[Magnus Ormstad]

Sounds propagate very well underwater.

[Annie McKeown]

We're just going to listen for the subs.

[Magnus Ormstad]

Yeah.

[Annie McKeown]

Does that mean they like, they hung hydrophones on buoys out in the water all along the coast, like just a

[Magnus Ormstad]

whole bunch of them? Well, not everywhere, of course, but they started to listen into the 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 McKeown]

This time in this big harbor very close to Stockholm, right outside of a Swedish naval base.

[Magnus Ormstad]

People started to see periscopes, one after

[Annie McKeown]

another after another after another popping up out of the water. And the Swedish military was like, we

[Magnus Ormstad]

have detected them and we have them.

[Annie McKeown]

So this time the Swedes send in

[Magnus Ormstad]

a bunch of ships with nets, these

[Annie McKeown]

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 Miller]

And what does that sound like?

[Annie McKeown]

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 that would hit the water, sink down to a predetermined depth, and then big explosion.

[Lulu Miller]

Okay.

[Annie McKeown]

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.

[Magnus Ormstad]

Hmm.

[Annie McKeown]

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?

[Lulu Miller]

Did they just. Did they somehow get out of the barricade?

[Annie McKeown]

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 Ormstad]

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 really. And then six months would pass. Once it was right outside the Royal Castle in Stockholm.

[Annie McKeown]

So were people getting annoyed? Like, come on, crying wolf a little bit, or are people still very afraid?

[Magnus Ormstad]

I think, you know, the Cold War is still going on.

[Annie McKeown]

Magnus said there was just this fear,

[Magnus Ormstad]

the bear is coming. You know, the Russian bear is coming. We just have to spend more money to find them.

[Annie McKeown]

Were they still seeing periscopes?

[Magnus Ormstad]

Yeah. So that's the thing.

[Annie McKeown]

What did they say or what? What were they hearing and seeing?

[Magnus Ormstad]

So. So they started to ask people, if anyone sees something, you should report it. Call this number, call the Swedish military. And they got tons of calls, many thousands of observations. But then. 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?

[Annie McKeown]

So what the Swedish military did is they came up with this ranking system for observations. On one end you had rank six.

[Magnus Ormstad]

Six is. We cannot tell. No one knows.

[Annie McKeown]

Could be anything.

[Gabby Santis]

Okay.

[Magnus Ormstad]

And then you have, like, rank one is a definite sub, Definitely a sub.

[Gabby Santis]

Okay.

[Annie McKeown]

Now the thing is, for a rank one, definitely a Soviet sub. Pretty much every time in the report,

[Magnus Ormstad]

it said, we heard the typical sound.

[Annie McKeown]

The typical sound.

[Magnus Ormstad]

We heard a typical sound.

[Lulu Miller]

What is a typical sound?

[Annie McKeown]

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. Huh. And so anytime the Swedish military encountered

[Magnus Ormstad]

that sound, it was automatically giving a one.

[Annie McKeown]

It meant that encounter was 100% a sub. And then the pol. Oh, sorry, go.

[Lulu Miller]

And do we know what that sounds like?

[Annie McKeown]

Well, not yet, because it's classified.

[Magnus Ormstad]

Yeah. No one could listen to this sound, and no one could knew what it was.

[Annie McKeown]

But all the hydrophones were picking up this.

[Magnus Ormstad]

They were picking up the typical sound.

[Annie McKeown]

For years, the Swedish military kept hearing this secret Soviet sub sound in their waters.

[Magnus Ormstad]

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.

[Annie McKeown]

The Iron Curtain falls, the Berlin Wall falls.

[Magnus Ormstad]

You know, everything opened up. And all of a sudden, over one night, basically, basically, the world changed for us.

[Annie McKeown]

Changes which are sweeping across this continent.

[Magnus Ormstad]

Something unreal for me, all these places that had been almost impossible to go to were all open.

[Annie McKeown]

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 Ormstad]

20, 30 incidents every year.

[Annie McKeown]

And Magnus said by 1994, at that

[Magnus Ormstad]

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 McKeown]

We're sick of this.

[Magnus Ormstad]

Stop.

[Annie McKeown]

But Boris Yeltsin's like, I don't know what you're talking about.

[Magnus Ormstad]

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.

[Annie McKeown]

He denies everything. So as this whole mystery is unfolding, Magnus is watching from the sidelines. And by 1996, you know, at that

[Magnus Ormstad]

time I was a university student.

[Annie McKeown]

He's studying underwater biological science sounds.

[Magnus Ormstad]

Oh, and I got a job in the fishery department because my mentor, he was sort of the. He was called Haakan Westerberg. He still is. He's still around.

[Haakon Westerberg]

Yeah, let's hope so. That's Hakan, retired oceanographer and fisheries biologist. I started with telemetry, acoustic cracking in the 70s.

[Magnus Ormstad]

And he was one of the few in Sweden who really was an authority on underwater biological sounds.

[Annie McKeown]

And one day, Magnus is standing in Hawkins office.

[Magnus Ormstad]

I was quite fresh on my job

[Annie McKeown]

when the phone on Hawkins desk rings.

[Magnus Ormstad]

He was not there, so. And I just took the. I just took his phone and they.

[Annie McKeown]

You just answered the phone on his desk?

[Magnus Ormstad]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But we had a very collegial relationship.

[Haakon Westerberg]

Yeah.

[Annie McKeown]

And on the other end of the line, it's the Royal Swedish Navy calling.

[Magnus Ormstad]

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, this top secret

[Annie McKeown]

government investigation, and they would like me

[Magnus Ormstad]

and my boss to be part of that.

[Annie McKeown]

So they say, yes, there's a background check.

[Magnus Ormstad]

Yeah. And cleared by the secret police.

[Haakon Westerberg]

They were very secretive.

[Annie McKeown]

And then he and Haakon are on

[Magnus Ormstad]

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.

[Annie McKeown]

Wait, what?

[Magnus Ormstad]

You can sort of open the rocks and you go in there with your boats and you can have.

[Annie McKeown]

How do you open the rocks?

[Magnus Ormstad]

Boats inside? Yeah. I don't know, you have some big rock door or something like that. Yeah, yeah, something like that.

[Haakon Westerberg]

What?

[Magnus Ormstad]

So we went in there and, you

[Annie McKeown]

know, so Magnus and Haakon, who are not totally sure why they're there, are winding their way through this military base.

[Magnus Ormstad]

Long tunnels.

[Haakon Westerberg]

Two navy captains were our liaisons.

[Magnus Ormstad]

Yeah.

[Annie McKeown]

And eventually

[Magnus Ormstad]

you come into this meeting room with all these electronic, you know,

[Haakon Westerberg]

gadgets, a lot of recording equipment.

[Magnus Ormstad]

They have a world map and they can follow the whole world from in there.

[Annie McKeown]

Kind of like mission control at NASA.

[Magnus Ormstad]

It was super exciting.

[Annie McKeown]

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 Ormstad]

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

[Haakon Westerberg]

sound, this famous sound.

[Magnus Ormstad]

So now we will actually play the typical sound for you.

[Annie McKeown]

So it's been top secret for the last 15.

[Magnus Ormstad]

15 years.

[Annie McKeown]

For 15 years, yeah.

[Magnus Ormstad]

No one has been. No one outside the military was able or allowed to listen to it.

[Gabby Santis]

Wow.

[Annie McKeown]

So were you excited?

[Magnus Ormstad]

Extremely. Of course. This was like, wow.

[Annie McKeown]

Now, what Magnus said he expected to hear was something like bing, bing. You know, what he'd heard in the movies.

[Magnus Ormstad]

You know these movies when they sit around? So I was thinking, must be something like that, right?

[Annie McKeown]

But then one of the Navy officers turns to a tape recorder and hits play. And this is what comes out,

[Lulu Miller]

huh?

[Annie McKeown]

God. Is it.

[Lulu Miller]

Are they picking up voices or, like, radio static? So that's always what it sounds like?

[Annie McKeown]

Yeah. This is the sound they've been recording every year since that first sub showed up.

[Lulu Miller]

It's intriguing.

[Magnus Ormstad]

It sounds a bit like a few Donald Ducks at a very long distance.

[Annie McKeown]

What do you mean?

[Magnus Ormstad]

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. It has this kind of squeaky part to it. And then we are sitting there with all these generals, and they were playing this sound.

[Annie McKeown]

Did you look around the room at the table of scientists and military people?

[Magnus Ormstad]

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 boss, he's more like. He's a very relaxed guy.

[Haakon Westerberg]

You know, I think we looked at each other with a very confused gaze,

[Magnus Ormstad]

but we were kind of keeping a stiff face also.

[Annie McKeown]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Gotta play it cool.

[Magnus Ormstad]

Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

[Annie McKeown]

So after they played the sound, the naval officers turn 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

[Haakon Westerberg]

to the bottom of what this typical sound was about.

[Annie McKeown]

And even in that moment, sitting at the table, Hawken and Magnus turn to each other and they don't say anything,

[Magnus Ormstad]

but they're both thinking, this is very strange. This is definitely not the sub.

[Lulu Miller]

Don't. Don't.

[Annie McKeown]

Don.

[Lulu Miller]

After the break, Magnus and Hawkin follow their intuition deep into a cloud of mystery. And they get to the Bottom of it. Oh, they get right up close

[Magnus Ormstad]

to

[Lulu Miller]

the bottom of the mystery. Radio Lab will be back in just a second. Stay with us. Radiolab is supported by Capital One with no fees or minimums on checking accounts. It's no wonder the Capital One bank guy is so passionate about banking with Capital One. If he were here, he wouldn't just tell you about no fees or minimums. He'd also talk about how Capital One cafes are open seven days a week to assist with your banking, even on weekends. It's pretty much all he talks about in a good way. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See capitalone.com bankeye Capital One NA member FDIC Radiolab is supported by Bombas. Summer's here and it is time for all things outdoors, from hikes to runs in the park to just kicking up those feet on the grass. You can make the most out of your summer plans with Bombas supporting the base of your plans, of you, of your feet.

[Magnus Ormstad]

Get it?

[Lulu Miller]

I don't know. Anyway, they've got a whole line of pro level sports specific socks for golf, yoga at the gym, and socks for every kind of runner. These socks are soft and cushioned right where you want it. Plus they're airy sweat wicking so your feet will feel as good at the end of your workout as they did at the start. Head over to bombas.com Radiolab and use code RADIOLAB for 20% off your first purchase. That's B O M B-A-S.com Radiolab code RADIOLAB at checkout Every episode of Planet

[Magnus Ormstad]

Money begins with a question. Can we help people rise out of poverty by improving the neighborhood where they live?

[Annie McKeown]

What would you build on a piece of land when all the normal rules

[Magnus Ormstad]

go out the window?

[Annie McKeown]

What do robot chefs mean for the restaurant industry? Planet Money helps you find answers by

[Magnus Ormstad]

going to places, watching people, and sometimes robots at work and asking questions.

[Annie McKeown]

Listen to Planet Money on the NPR

[Magnus Ormstad]

app or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Lulu Miller]

Radiolab, Lulu, Annie. Military crises trying to be averted by biologists.

[Annie McKeown]

So after the meeting, Magnus and Haakon are standing outside, just standing there, having a cigarette, talking about the sound.

[Magnus Ormstad]

It sounds a bit like a popping

[Haakon Westerberg]

sound, the sound when you fry bacon.

[Annie McKeown]

And both of them thought that this

[Haakon Westerberg]

must be a biological sound.

[Gabby Santis]

But what?

[Magnus Ormstad]

And then I remember saying to Hawking, air bubbles.

[Annie McKeown]

This sounds like air bubbles.

[Magnus Ormstad]

If you think of a scuba diver who gets a hole pinched in his and one of his pipes, God forbid, like an air bubble stream coming out of a hose, it Sounds a bit like that.

[Annie McKeown]

So their question is, like, which animal releases air under the water?

[Haakon Westerberg]

And we had kind of this hunch.

[Magnus Ormstad]

Yeah, yeah.

[Annie McKeown]

Now, incredibly, you can actually find this hunch in New York City, but it helps stuff a car and a friend. So I called up producer Matt Kilty, who's a friend with a car.

[Magnus Ormstad]

You have a bucket.

[Annie McKeown]

And I also brought a large bucket.

[Magnus Ormstad]

What a ridiculous bucket.

[Annie McKeown]

Okay, so.

[Gabby Santis]

Okay.

[Annie McKeown]

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

[Magnus Ormstad]

Okay. So we're taking the bridge.

[Annie McKeown]

We drove through Brooklyn over the Manhattan Bridge.

[Magnus Ormstad]

Okay, so now that we.

[Annie McKeown]

Is there a cup? Is this the cup holder?

[Magnus Ormstad]

It's my one cup holder.

[Annie McKeown]

Drove up Manhattan up to the riverfront. We can sneak and look for parking. Now, there's a fire hider right there for a while. What if I could park a long while? It's a red light.

[Magnus Ormstad]

How many fire hydrants do you need on one block?

[Annie McKeown]

It's a red light.

[Lulu Miller]

Oh, my God.

[Magnus Ormstad]

That's a spot on Riverside. We're on Riverside Drive.

[Annie McKeown]

Okay, let's go up here. There's no breaking anytime. This is not going to work.

[Magnus Ormstad]

Well, how long are we going to be here?

[Annie McKeown]

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

[Magnus Ormstad]

I don't even know what we're doing. I'm looking for parking.

[Annie McKeown]

Okay.

[Lulu Miller]

What are you.

[Annie McKeown]

Can you just. What are you looking for?

[Lulu Miller]

What was a hunch?

[Annie McKeown]

Yes. Okay. Okay. So we got down to, like, the rocky shoreline of the Hudson River. There's a piece of a dead fish that might be a whole fish where we found it.

[Magnus Ormstad]

Herring.

[Haakon Westerberg]

Herring.

[Annie McKeown]

A herring fish.

[Magnus Ormstad]

I think that evening we were like, let's try herring.

[Annie McKeown]

Oh, my gosh.

[Magnus Ormstad]

Can we get down there?

[Annie McKeown]

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. Could be pollution. It could be water temperature, but still unclear exactly why that happened.

[Lulu Miller]

But you know what you're looking for. Like, what exactly does a herring look like?

[Annie McKeown]

Oh, okay. Yeah. So how are we gonna pick it up? That is the question. I picked up this dead one we found. Guess I'll just put my hands around it and. Very slippery. Whoa. Herring are very big. I don't know, maybe 10 inches. Big dead fish. Shiny.

[Magnus Ormstad]

They are the silver of the oceans because there are all these reflections from their scales.

[Annie McKeown]

They Just kind of look like, like if a kid drew a fish, it would be this fish.

[Magnus Ormstad]

Yeah.

[Annie McKeown]

But the really important thing about a herring, the whole reason why Magnus and Hawken had this hunch, is because of what is going on inside side 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? Um,

[Lulu Miller]

I don't think I have actually wondered that.

[Annie McKeown]

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

[Magnus Ormstad]

The swim bladder?

[Annie McKeown]

The swim bladder, which is basically this

[Magnus Ormstad]

tiny sack filled with gas that regulates the fish's buoyancy, similar to the buoyancy tank of a submarine.

[Annie McKeown]

So if you're a fish and you want to, you know, 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.

[Magnus Ormstad]

Yeah, the herring is special because they have a canal straight from the swim bladder to the anal opening.

[Annie McKeown]

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

[Magnus Ormstad]

will have this sort of small string of air bubbles, which he had a

[Annie McKeown]

hunch might just sound like bubbles coming out of a hose underwater.

[Magnus Ormstad]

Yeah.

[Lulu Miller]

So his guess is like this submarine sound is actually just bubbles that come out their butt.

[Annie McKeown]

Uh huh.

[Lulu Miller]

So his guess is fish farts. Yeah.

[Annie McKeown]

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

[Lulu Miller]

Okay.

[Annie McKeown]

But this makes me feel better.

[Lulu Miller]

I feel like I can continue to engage with this story.

[Annie McKeown]

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

[Lulu Miller]

Yeah.

[Annie McKeown]

Like, I just.

[Lulu Miller]

Are you not?

[Magnus Ormstad]

No.

[Annie McKeown]

Well, I mean, no. Why are you. It's like even saying the word makes me like, I'm like, I don't want

[Lulu Miller]

to be in this space, even linguistically, let alone aromatically.

[Annie McKeown]

This is like, wow, that's so interesting. I would never.

[Lulu Miller]

How are you not?

[Annie McKeown]

Because they're the funniest thing in the world. Because they're, they're a thing. We all do if we can't. That's up setting. 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 immediately.

[Lulu Miller]

They Connect us all.

[Annie McKeown]

Okay. I, I, you're.

[Lulu Miller]

I'm. I, I, I just appreciate the meaning. You draw while also being simultaneously relieved these are not actual farts. Carry on.

[Annie McKeown]

Okay, so Haakon 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?

[Haakon Westerberg]

And we approached that rather crudely.

[Annie McKeown]

Basically, Magnus went to a fish shop,

[Haakon Westerberg]

bought a couple of herrings that were dead, went to the lab, rigged up the hydrophone.

[Annie McKeown]

Okay, you hold. You hold. And then Magnus took this herring, submerged

[Magnus Ormstad]

it underwater, and I squeezed it.

[Annie McKeown]

It's so weird to squeeze a fish, though.

[Magnus Ormstad]

It's very weird, but I squeezed it pretty hard.

[Annie McKeown]

I don't think anything's coming out. And he just kept squeezing it so

[Magnus Ormstad]

it was like, kind of.

[Lulu Miller]

Oh, what is.

[Annie McKeown]

Oh, it's pooh. I made it poop.

[Magnus Ormstad]

It was like a really big blur of, you know, hearing poo and things coming out.

[Haakon Westerberg]

I'm sorry.

[Gabby Santis]

Fish.

[Magnus Ormstad]

Okay, toss them over.

[Annie McKeown]

So then you want to squeeze one. Hawkin tried. You should get this feeling. It's a weird feeling. Maybe this will be the lucky.

[Magnus Ormstad]

I got the magic touch.

[Annie McKeown]

Wait, I got them.

[Lulu Miller]

Fart fingers.

[Annie McKeown]

He put the herring in the water, squeezed it gentle.

[Gabby Santis]

Gently.

[Haakon Westerberg]

Squeezing gently.

[Gabby Santis]

Gentle.

[Annie McKeown]

One little butt. And then. Oh.

[Lulu Miller]

Oh, bubbles.

[Haakon Westerberg]

Such bubbles.

[Magnus Ormstad]

It was a tiny little bubble.

[Annie McKeown]

Okay, that's. That's good. You do have furred fingers.

[Magnus Ormstad]

And then you would hear this kind of very airy, poppy sound. This kind of the perfect, typical sound. We thought.

[Annie McKeown]

Turns out they thought wrong, 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 Ormstad]

Absolutely not.

[Annie McKeown]

This is just becoming very depressing.

[Magnus Ormstad]

But, I mean, this is a dead fish in an aquarium.

[Annie McKeown]

So then they went out into a

[Magnus Ormstad]

bay with this little tube connected to a vacuum pump.

[Annie McKeown]

Oh, no. Managed to get a wild herring in there. Got it to fart.

[Magnus Ormstad]

Yeah.

[Annie McKeown]

That sound didn't match.

[Magnus Ormstad]

No.

[Annie McKeown]

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.

[Magnus Ormstad]

These schools can be huge, like a square kilometer.

[Annie McKeown]

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. Like, a lot. A lot.

[Magnus Ormstad]

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 a net, they get stressed and the net starts boiling. They said, whoa.

[Annie McKeown]

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 Ormstad]

I put the hydrophone in the water and. Victory.

[Haakon Westerberg]

The typical sound.

[Lulu Miller]

Yaw.

[Magnus Ormstad]

Yaw. The whole box was just singing of these sounds. It was just incredible. It was just this cacophony of herring.

[Haakon Westerberg]

Wow.

[Annie McKeown]

Their findings were harder for some members of the navy than others to accept.

[Haakon Westerberg]

I mean, there were people that their whole career was chasing submarines.

[Annie McKeown]

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. Oh, my God. Together.

[Haakon Westerberg]

Okay, so that was the end of the typical sound.

[Annie McKeown]

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. That would have any of your experience? Or, like, why was it.

[Magnus Ormstad]

Yeah, so I think. 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. 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 McKeown]

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

[Magnus Ormstad]

split apart, divided into two.

[Annie McKeown]

Oh.

[Magnus Ormstad]

And then divided into four, and then it could go back into one again.

[Lulu Miller]

Whoa.

[Annie McKeown]

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, so they must have thought, this subs are like super high tech.

[Magnus Ormstad]

Exactly. They had people investigating. How can it be that Russia can build a sub that can sort of be decomposed into two, into four and then back.

[Annie McKeown]

No way.

[Magnus Ormstad]

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, that. It doesn't make any sense.

[Annie McKeown]

That is amazing.

[Magnus Ormstad]

I think this is something to look after also in our times that you can, you can always laugh at it and say how wrong they were. But I wonder what people will think about us in 20 years.

[Annie McKeown]

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

[Magnus Ormstad]

Yeah, yeah.

[Annie McKeown]

Like, what is the fish fart of today?

[Magnus Ormstad]

Exactly.

[Annie McKeown]

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 Ormstad]

Yeah.

[Annie McKeown]

Like, really fished.

[Magnus Ormstad]

All these Scandinavian countries, they were built on herring, basically. It's been what people have been eating and fishing for for thousands of years.

[Annie McKeown]

Right. And not just that, like cities have been founded on it, cultures have been founded on it. Like millions have been made, and these fish have just been like running for their lives for millennia.

[Magnus Ormstad]

Yeah.

[Annie McKeown]

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, and just for once, they had the power and the upper hand.

[Magnus Ormstad]

It played an important part of a country's foreign policy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Annie McKeown]

It's almost like in the end, this story is just a very long winded fart joke on us humans.

[Magnus Ormstad]

Yeah, exactly. It is. That's what it is.

[Lulu Miller]

When did see what you did there, McEwen? This very long winded fart joke was bravely reported by Annie McKeown and beautifully produced by Matt Kilty, Annie McKeown and Sara Kari, 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 Timmelstad, Klaas Helmerson and Meg Bols. Catch you on the flip, friends. May your sanity stay intact and your wind broken.

[Gabby Santis]

Hi, 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 sandbach is our executive director. Our managing editor is pat walters. Dylan keefe is our director of sound design. Our staff includes jeremy bloom, w. Harry fortuna, david gable, maria paz, gutierrez, sindhu nainasambandan, matt kielty, mona maudgaukar, alex neeson, sara khari, natalia ramirez, joanna strogatz, anisa vitza, arian wack, molly webster and jessica young, with help from gabby santis and maya applebee melamed. Our fact checkers are diane kelly, emily krieger, natalie middleton, angeli mercado, and sophie semay.

[Annie McKeown]

Leadership support for Radiolabs 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.

[Lulu Miller]

Radiolab is supported by Capital One with no fees or minimums on checking accounts, it's no wonder the Capital One bank guy is so passionate about banking with Capital One. If he were here, he wouldn't just tell you about no fees or minimums. He'd also talk about how Capital One cafes are open seven days a week to assist with your banking needs. Even on weekends, it's pretty much all he talks about in a good way. What's in your wallet terms apply. See capitalone.com BankGuy Capital One NA Member FDIC

[Gabby Santis]

Back to School comes with surprises. Luckily, Uber Eats can help with the last minute ones because you can order school supplies for $5 or less.

[Magnus Ormstad]

Mom.

[Gabby Santis]

So when exploding science projects happen, don't panic. Get glue sticks and everything you need for Back to School today from brands like Staples on Uber eats. Order now ends 97. $5 or less before taxes and fees. Select items only. Availability varies. See app for details.