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52 Hertz · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

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  Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
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  Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of
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  Speaker 1: the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all
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  Speaker 1: of these amazing tales are right there on display, just
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  Speaker 1: waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
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  Speaker 1: Ancient gods are more than just superstitions. They reflect how
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  Speaker 1: people of the past felt about the lands they lived in.
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  Speaker 1: The terror of a thunderstorm, the shock of an earthquake,
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  Speaker 1: the beauty of a sunset. These things are just as
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  Speaker 1: impressive to us now as they were to ancient peoples.
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  Speaker 1: When you're as small as a human being, the sheer
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  Speaker 1: power of nature cannot help but feel divine. Take the
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  Speaker 1: land of Hawaii. This chain of islands would not exist
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  Speaker 1: if not for volcanic activity, and by the time people
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  Speaker 1: settled there, it's unsurprising that the volcano would become a
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  Speaker 1: fixation of their mythology. Literally and figuratively. Volcanoes towered over
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  Speaker 1: their lives, and no one knew when an eruption might
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  Speaker 1: consume a village. Nobody in the Hawaiian pantheon is as
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  Speaker 1: beloved and feared in equal measures. As Pele, the goddess
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  Speaker 1: of volcanoes, she lives in the heat of Mount Kilauea,
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  Speaker 1: a volcano that remains active to this day. According to
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  Speaker 1: Hawaiian orld tradition, Peley came from Tahiti in search of
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  Speaker 1: a home. Her journey mirrors that of many Polynesian peoples
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  Speaker 1: traveling across the great expanse of the Pacific Ocean. Peley
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  Speaker 1: was pursued by her older sister, the Goddess of the Sea.
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  Speaker 1: She settled on the furthest Hawaiian island, Ni, how but
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  Speaker 1: her sister extinguished her flame, so she continued east from
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  Speaker 1: island to island until she created a volcano soap powerful
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  Speaker 1: that the sea could not put it out. Pay's nature
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  Speaker 1: is a volatile one. Like many deities, she is both
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  Speaker 1: a creator and a destroyer. Volcanic soil is extremely fertile,
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  Speaker 1: but eruptions lay waste to countless acres, causing sweeping wildfires,
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  Speaker 1: destroying plants, animals, and people alike. Kilawe has most recent
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  Speaker 1: eruptions paused in August of twenty twenty five, but it's
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  Speaker 1: still very much an active volcano. Of all the gods
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  Speaker 1: and goddesses of the ancient world. Peay is one of
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  Speaker 1: the few whose power is still alive, still worth fearing.
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  Speaker 1: It's an impressive example of how culture follows the patterns
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  Speaker 1: of the natural world. But that doesn't mean that humans
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  Speaker 1: have no power in redefining a goddess. There's a specific
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  Speaker 1: legend about Pele one you will hear if you ever
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  Speaker 1: visit Volcano's National Park on the Big Island of Hawaii.
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  Speaker 1: It comes in the form of a warning. If anyone
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  Speaker 1: takes any lava rocks from the national park, you will
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  Speaker 1: invoke Pea's curse and bad luck will follow you back
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  Speaker 1: to the mainland. Like many classic superstitions, it's not hard
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  Speaker 1: to find anecdotes that speak to its existence. The stories
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  Speaker 1: go like this, a non Hawaiian tourist comes to the
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  Speaker 1: mainland to escape from the drudgery and stress of their
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  Speaker 1: daily life. While visiting the Big Island, they take a
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  Speaker 1: bus tour up to Volcanoes National Park. Awed by the
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  Speaker 1: majesty of the twin volcanoes Kilauea and Mount Alona, they
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  Speaker 1: want to take a souvenir of the experience. Maybe it's
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  Speaker 1: just a single volcanic rock or a small bottle of
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  Speaker 1: black sand, nothing that a park ranger will notice, of course,
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  Speaker 1: but upon coming home, their life will be in shambles.
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  Speaker 1: Maybe they will lose their job, or perhaps a long
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  Speaker 1: term relationship will collapse, or their finances will crumble. Whatever
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  Speaker 1: the outcome might be, all these stories end the same,
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  Speaker 1: with the unlucky individual mailing their souvenir back to Hawaii
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  Speaker 1: with an apology attached. Park rangers continue to receive letters
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  Speaker 1: from repentant tourists. They estimate that thousands of pounds of
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  Speaker 1: volcanic rocks and sand are returned every year. Regularly a
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  Speaker 1: ranger will take a supply of debris and dump it
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  Speaker 1: back in the park. It's become a crucial, if irritating
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  Speaker 1: part of working at the volcano's National Park, and in
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  Speaker 1: a way, it might actually be a problem they created
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  Speaker 1: for themselves. You see. Hawaii Volcanos National Park was first
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  Speaker 1: officially established in nineteen sixteen, one hundred and eleven years
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  Speaker 1: ago and eighteen years after the annexation of Hawaii. Sometime
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  Speaker 1: in the nineteen forties, it's said that the locals who
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  Speaker 1: dealt with tourists grew frustrated with the disrespect that visitors
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  Speaker 1: showed to the island, so the tour bus drivers began
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  Speaker 1: spreading the story, saying that if you took a rock,
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  Speaker 1: you would anger the goddess who lived in the crater.
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  Speaker 1: Whether you believe in Pale's curse is up to you,
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  Speaker 1: But a volcano doesn't care if you believe it or not.
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  Speaker 1: All it cares about is reshaping the world, one eruption
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  Speaker 1: at a time, and that is the true power of Pele.
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  Speaker 1: It's nineteen eighty nine and the US and the Soviet
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  Speaker 1: Union are in the midst of the Cold War. As
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  Speaker 1: the war escalates and both sides start deploying more and
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  Speaker 1: more nuclear submarines to keep tabs on one another, the
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  Speaker 1: United States looks for any advantage it can get in
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  Speaker 1: the deep seas. The nation uses a variety of listening
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  Speaker 1: devices throughout the Atlantic and Pacific to monitor for Russian submarines.
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  Speaker 1: There are listening posts and ships that tow their own
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  Speaker 1: listening devices, and hydrophones deep at the bottom of the ocean.
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  Speaker 1: Through a combination of these technologies, US forces detect a
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  Speaker 1: strange signal off the Pacific coast. It's at fifty two hertz,
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  Speaker 1: the low end of human hearing. It almost sounds like whining,
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  Speaker 1: a low, continuous cry for help, like a giant puppy crying.
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  Speaker 1: It doesn't sound like any submarine they have ever heard before.
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  Speaker 1: A few years later, with the fall of the Soviet Union,
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  Speaker 1: the sound is finally declassified and taken to the Woods
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  Speaker 1: Whole Oceanographic Institutes in Massachusetts. Marine scientist Bill Watkins studies
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  Speaker 1: the sound and comes to one conclusion. It's a whale.
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  Speaker 1: At the time, this didn't make sense to scientists because
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  Speaker 1: whales communicated frequencies even lower than fifty two hertz, which
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  Speaker 1: meant that this whale, whatever it was, was talking to
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  Speaker 1: itself in a unique language. This was even sadder when
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  Speaker 1: considering that its call was only detected during whale mating
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  Speaker 1: season from December to March. So it was a whale
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  Speaker 1: speaking its own language, trying to find a mate and
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  Speaker 1: getting no response, and scientists continue to detect it year
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  Speaker 1: after year. They were never able to actually lay eyes
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  Speaker 1: on it. And this isn't surprising, as its potential territory
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  Speaker 1: is massive, covering hundreds of miles of ocean and significant depths.
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  Speaker 1: Military submarines can go about fifteen hundred meters down, while
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  Speaker 1: some whales have been recorded at three thousand meters, but
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  Speaker 1: all that to say, the ocean is big, and actually
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  Speaker 1: finding this whale would be like finding a needle in
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  Speaker 1: a haystack. But its legend has only grown over the
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  Speaker 1: years as news stories about the whale permeated the media,
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  Speaker 1: it came to be known as fifty two Blue and
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  Speaker 1: inspired several popular songs, with people relating to its loneliness
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  Speaker 1: and its persistence in looking for a mate. And while
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  Speaker 1: a few of those songs have been mildly popular, the
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  Speaker 1: most recent is the twenty fifteen BTS song Whali in
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  Speaker 1: fifty two. In it, the Korean boy band sings about
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  Speaker 1: how being mega celebrities isolates them like the whale, leaving
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  Speaker 1: them all alone in the dark where they can't truly
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  Speaker 1: connect with anyone. Ultimately, though, I think I feel more
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  Speaker 1: sorry for the whale. But recent scientific development suggests that
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  Speaker 1: we might all be projecting way too much onto fifty
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  Speaker 1: two Blue. Researchers have pointed out that just because other
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  Speaker 1: whales don't speak the same language doesn't mean they aren't
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  Speaker 1: hearing it. They hear everything in their territory, and it's
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  Speaker 1: possible that the other whales are able to communicate back
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  Speaker 1: to Blue in other ways. It's even possible he has
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  Speaker 1: a mate who just doesn't answer back at fifty two hurts.
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  Speaker 1: And yes, scientists do know that Blue is a he
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  Speaker 1: based on his vocal register, and further analysis of his
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  Speaker 1: call has revealed something else important his potential species. It
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  Speaker 1: seems likely that Blue is actually what's called a thin
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  Speaker 1: blue hybrid, or a mix between a blue whale and
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  Speaker 1: a fin whale. Blue whales are the longest whales, and
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  Speaker 1: fin whales are the fastest and second longest, so fifty
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  Speaker 1: two Blue might be quite large and quite dynamic in
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  Speaker 1: the water. This also might explain his unique call. These
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  Speaker 1: hybrids are becoming better documented, and it's possible that Blue
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  Speaker 1: was just ahead of his time. In fact, there was
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  Speaker 1: a shocking development in twenty ten that gave all fifty
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  Speaker 1: two Blue fans hope. Scientists detected the fifty two hurt
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  Speaker 1: signal at two very different places in the Pacific Ocean
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  Speaker 1: at roughly the same time. This means that there is
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  Speaker 1: potentially more than one fifty two Hurtz whale. We just
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  Speaker 1: haven't heard them at the same time as often as
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  Speaker 1: we have thought, But sadly there haven't been any double
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  Speaker 1: recordings ever since Overall, it doesn't hurt to be curious
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  Speaker 1: about this unique creature and where it comes from, but
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  Speaker 1: ascribing human emotions and conditions to it isn't a great idea.
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  Speaker 1: We have no clue what a whale's internal life is like,
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  Speaker 1: or what fifty two blues actual family situation is deep
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  Speaker 1: beneath the ocean. Curious fans of the whale might claim
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  Speaker 1: to be worried about his loneliness, but often in their
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  Speaker 1: search for him, they reveal that they are a little
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  Speaker 1: bit lonely as well. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided
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  Speaker 1: tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on
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  Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by visiting
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  Speaker 1: Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by me
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  Speaker 1: Aaron Mankey in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make
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  Speaker 1: another award winning show called Life, which is a podcast,
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  Speaker 1: book series, and television show, and you can learn all
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  Speaker 1: about it over at Theworldoflore dot com. And until next time,
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  Speaker 1: stay curious.