Red Herring

Red Herring

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] (https://radiolab.org/podcast/atomic-artifacts) * Neither Confirm Nor Deny [https://radiolab.org/podcast/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 Sign up for our newsletter!! It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Signup [https://radiolab.org/newsletter] (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)! Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab [http://members.radiolab.org] (https://members.radiolab.org/) today. Follow our show on Instagram [http://instagram.com/radiolab], Twitter [http://twitter.com/radiolab] and Facebook [http://facebook.com/radiolab] @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing radiolab@wnyc.org [radiolab@wnyc.org]. Leadership 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. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com [https://pcm.adswizz.com] for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Shoe Thrower

When no one seems to be listening, how far do you go to be heard? In December 2008, George W. Bush made a surprise visit to Baghdad for a press conference. And at the very end of his remarks, a shoe came flying past his head.  It was “the shoe heard around the world,” and countless jokes and memes ensued.  But in the pandemonium, many missed the story of the man at the center: Muntadhar Al-Zaidi, a weary journalist trying to get the world to see the Iraq War in a different light. Even fewer people know what happened to him after.  Nearly two decades later, Radiolab reporter Sarah Qari tracked Al-Zaidi down to learn the story of his life. What she found was a story about grief, anger, and the line where journalism ends and protest begins. Special thanks to Azmat Khan and Mustafa Salim. EPISODE CREDITS: Reported by Sarah Qari, with help from Mariam Dwedar Translation by Mais Al-Bayaa and Mariam Dwedar Produced by Sarah Qari Sound design contributed by  Sarah Qari  Mixed by Jeremy Bloom Editing help from Annie McEwen Fact-checking by Emily Krieger and Heba Elorbany LATERAL CUTS: If you liked this episode and want to hear more fascinating deep dives we’ve done on The War on Terror, check out our episode: * 60 Words [https://radiolab.org/podcast/60-words] (https://radiolab.org/podcast/60-words), * or our series The Other Latif [https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/other-latif] (https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/other-latif) EPISODE CITATIONS: Collaborator’s Work -  * Mariam Dwedar [https://www.mariamdwedar.com/] (https://www.mariamdwedar.com/) * Made in Palestine [https://www.nowness.com/series/craft-work/made-in-palestine-hirbawi] (https://zpr.io/JBAuqi5zyZMT) - a documentary short * @mariamdwedar [https://www.instagram.com/mariamdwedar/] - Instagram handle * Mais Al-Bayaa [https://icct.nl/people/mais-al-bayaa] * Iraq Uncovered [https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/documentary/iraq-uncovered/] (https://zpr.io/ebuUcjSFcUJp [https://zpr.io/ebuUcjSFcUJp]) - documentary * Iraq’s Secret Sex Trade [https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/documentary/iraqs-secret-sex-trade/] (https://zpr.io/u9HnCWmnQggG [https://zpr.io/u9HnCWmnQggG]) - documentary * Go Back to Where You Came From [https://www.channel4.com/programmes/go-back-to-where-you-came-from] (https://zpr.io/J8rxafGCCgUA [https://zpr.io/J8rxafGCCgUA]) - documentary * @maisalbayaa [https://www.instagram.com/maisalbayaa/] - Instagram Journal Articles _ * The Art of Shoe-Throwing: Shoes as a Symbol of Protest and Popular Imagination [https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1750635209104655] (https://zpr.io/6gmuuavLWuHu [https://zpr.io/6gmuuavLWuHu]),  by Yasmin Ibrahim Films -  * The President’s Cake [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt36580119/] (https://zpr.io/bjFeNa2qFYvD [https://zpr.io/bjFeNa2qFYvD]) - A story of life in Iraq under sanctions during the 1990s. Inspired by the shoe throw -  * Photos of shoe protests around the world [https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/shoe-protests-around-the-world/] (https://zpr.io/QsMGyWeK8MRR) * This music video [https://x.com/Gstaad_S/status/1964784249338482692?s=20] (https://zpr.io/Xi5XhHYmWFHv [https://zpr.io/Xi5XhHYmWFHv]) * This Halloween costume [https://x.com/UpdateTheGrids/status/1983920299939692656?s=20] (https://zpr.io/fH97iB4fjL9U [https://zpr.io/fH97iB4fjL9U]) * This play [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xI6ztkEjwaA] (https://zpr.io/Naj7vWaYfzpv [https://zpr.io/Naj7vWaYfzpv]) If you want more fun facts that didn’t make it into the story, follow Sarah at @bysarahqari [https://www.instagram.com/bysarahqari/] on Instagram, where she’ll be sharing more in the coming weeks. Sign up for our newsletter!! It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Signup [https://radiolab.org/newsletter] (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)! Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab [http://members.radiolab.org] (https://members.radiolab.org/) today. Follow our show on Instagram [http://instagram.com/radiolab], Twitter [http://twitter.com/radiolab] and Facebook [http://facebook.com/radiolab] @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing radiolab@wnyc.org [radiolab@wnyc.org]. Leadership 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. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com [https://pcm.adswizz.com] for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Return of Alpha Gal

Several years ago, in 2016, we told a story about Amy Pearl. For as long as she could remember, Amy loved meat in all its glorious cuts and marbled flavors. And then one day, for seemingly no reason, her body wouldn’t tolerate it.  No steaks. No brisket. No weenies. It made no sense: why couldn’t she eat something that she had routinely enjoyed for decades?  It turned out Amy was not alone. And the answer to her mysterious allergy involved maps, a dancing lone star tick, and a very particular sugar called Alpha Gal.  In this update, we discover that our troubles with Alpha Gal go way beyond food. We go to NYU Langone Health hospital to see the second ever transplant of a kidney from a pig into a human, talk to some people at Revivicor, the company that bred the pig in question, and go back to Amy to find out what she thinks about this brave new world. The original episode was reported by Latif Nasser, and produced by Annie McEwen and Matt Kielty. Sound design and scoring from Dylan Keefe, Annie McEwen, and Matt Kielty. Mix by Dylan Keefe with Arianne Wack. The update was reported and produced by Sarah Qari. It was sound designed, scored, and mixed by Jeremy Bloom. LATERAL CUTS: * How does a tick bit can cause a red meat allergy? [https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/tick-bite-red-meat-allergy/]- An episode from our friends over at Science Friday, who had a recent conversation with the researcher who discovered the connection, decades ago.   Support Radiolab by becoming a member today at Radiolab.org/donate.    Sign up for our newsletter!! It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Signup [https://radiolab.org/newsletter] (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)! Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab [http://members.radiolab.org] (https://members.radiolab.org/) today. Follow our show on Instagram [http://instagram.com/radiolab], Twitter [http://twitter.com/radiolab] and Facebook [http://facebook.com/radiolab] @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing radiolab@wnyc.org [radiolab@wnyc.org]. Leadership 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. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com [https://pcm.adswizz.com] for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Neither Confirm Nor Deny

In an episode we first ran back in 2014, we explore how a sunken nuclear submarine, a crazy billionaire, and a mechanical claw gave birth to a phrase that has hounded journalists and lawyers for 40 years and embodies the tension between the public’s desire for transparency and the government’s need to keep secrets.   Whether it comes from government spokespeople or celebrity publicists, the phrase “can neither confirm nor deny” is the perfect non-denial denial. It’s such a perfect deflection that it seems like it’s been around forever, but reporter Julia Barton [http://www.juliabarton.com/] takes us back to the 1970s and the surprising origin story of what’s now known as a “Glomar Response.” With help from David Sharp and Walt Logan, we tell the story of a clandestine CIA operation to lift a sunken Soviet submarine from the ocean floor and the dilemma they faced when the world found out about it. It’s an episode we first released in 2014, but given some things in the news recently, it resonated with us again. In the 40 years since that operation, the Glomar Response has become boilerplate language from an array of government agencies. With help from ProPublica editor Jeff Larson and NPR’s Dina Temple-Raston, we explore the implications of this ultimate information dodge. ACLU lawyer Jameel Jaffer explains how it stymies oversight, and we learn that, even 40 years later, governmental secrecy can be emotionally painful. More information about Glomar: After 40 years, many of the details of Project Azorian are only now coming to light. The US government’s default position has been to keep as much of it classified as possible. It took three years for retired CIA employee David Sharp to get permission to publish his account [https://kansaspress.ku.edu/9780700619412/the-cias-greatest-covert-operation/] of Project Azorian. And FOIA played an indirect role in that, as Cold War historians got the CIA to release, in redacted form, an internal history of the mission [http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nukevault/ebb305/]. After that and a threat of legal action, Sharp was finally able to publish his manuscript in 2012. We mentioned conspiracy theories that have swirled around Project Azorian filling the void where official silence has reigned. One of them is promulgated in the 2005 book “Red Star Rogue” by Kenneth Sewell and Clint Richmond. [https://www.simonandschuster.net/books/Red-Star-Rogue/Kenneth-Sewell/9781476787879] They posit that the K-129 was taken over by rogue Stalinist KGB agents in order to start a nuclear conflict. But the conflict was to be between the US and China, as, according to the authors, the sub had powers to disguise its sonic signature as a Chinese Navy vessel. This book is the basis of the 2013 drama “Phantom,” [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1922685/] which features Ed Harris and David Duchovny as Soviet military officers who sip vodka in a very un-Russian way. Russian Naval historians, like Nikolai Cherkashin, are not only insulted by this take on the cause of the K-129’s demise, they say the true cause is much easier to pinpoint: They say an American vessel, possibly the USS Swordfish, collided with the Soviet submarine. [http://english.pravda.ru/news/russia/10-09-2007/96959-sunken_submarine-0/] Despite the fact that the US government has turned over many documents about Project Azorian and what it found to the Russian government, many in the Russian Navy stand by their theory that it was far too easy for the US to locate the K-129 on the bottom of the Pacific, given the technology of the time. According to these theories, Project Azorian was nothing more than an elaborate cover-up disguised as ... an elaborate cover-up. We can neither confirm nor deny that we exactly understand how that would have worked in practice or execution. It’s one of the more solemn moments of the Cold War, and one that the Glomar Response helped keep a secret for a very long time. LATERAL CUTS: What Lies Beneath [https://radiolab.org/podcast/what-lies-beneath] (https://radiolab.org/podcast/what-lies-beneath [https://radiolab.org/podcast/what-lies-beneath])  EPISODE CREDITS:  Reported by - Julia Barton Sign up for our newsletter!! It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Signup [https://radiolab.org/newsletter] (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)! Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab [http://members.radiolab.org] (https://members.radiolab.org/) today. Follow our show on Instagram [http://instagram.com/radiolab], Twitter [http://twitter.com/radiolab] and Facebook [http://facebook.com/radiolab] @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing radiolab@wnyc.org [radiolab@wnyc.org]. Leadership 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. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com [https://pcm.adswizz.com] for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Holy Shiver

Lauren Brown gets goosebumps. A lot. Sometimes several times a day. When her partner, writer Carmen Maria Machado, noticed it...she couldn't stop thinking about it. Why does she get them in so many different situations? What’s happening in her body and what does it mean? We take that question and run with it. We face chilly winds, sudden frights, and moments when the world seem to shift under your feet to figure out what the little bumps on our skin might be trying to tell us.   Special thanks to Rachel Gross, Gregory Rupik EPISODE CREDITS: Reported by Maria Paz Gutierrez Produced by Maria Paz Gutierrez, Sindhu Gnanasambandan Fact-checking by Angely Mercado EPISODE CITATIONS: Website -  * Institute for Advanced Consciousnehttp://www.advancedconsciousness.org [http://www.advancedconsciousness.org]ss Studies (advancedconsciousness.org) - If you want to check out more of the work Felix and Nicco are conducting. Software - * Rewire website [https://rewire.bio] (https://rewire.bio) - Check out Felix and Nicco's Holy Shiver generator and signup for early access to their app. Videos -  * Hallelujah [https://zpr.io/PcYbN] (https://zpr.io/6ak2f), performed by Rufus Wainwright, accompanied by 1500 singers * De Ushuaia a La Quiaca [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGPUJMke1kk] (https://zpr.io/PcYbN [https://zpr.io/PcYbN]) * Alysa Liu wins the Olympic gold medal for the United States [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVmCfiFjoVE&t=307s] (https://zpr.io/Q7pPNkYSTGVd [https://zpr.io/Q7pPNkYSTGVd]) Books - * Her Body and Other Parties [https://carmenmariamachado.com/her-body-and-other-parties], by Carmen Maria Machado * On Muscle: The Stuff That Moves Us and Why It Matters [https://www.bonnietsui.com/],  by Bonnie Tsui (https://www.bonnietsui.com/ [https://www.bonnietsui.com/]) Sign up for our newsletter!! It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Signup [https://radiolab.org/newsletter] (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)! Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab [http://members.radiolab.org] (https://members.radiolab.org/) today. Follow our show on Instagram [http://instagram.com/radiolab], Twitter [http://twitter.com/radiolab] and Facebook [http://facebook.com/radiolab] @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing radiolab@wnyc.org [radiolab@wnyc.org]. Leadership 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. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com [https://pcm.adswizz.com] for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.