April 20, 2023 • 23 mins
In 2012, Melania Trump tweeted a photo of a smiling beluga whale and captioned it “what is she thinking?” Eleven years later, Sabrina Imbler, a journalist at Defector Media, decided to try to answer that question.
You can read Sabrina Imbler’s full story, “What Was She Thinking? An Investigation,” here: https://defector.com/what-was-she-thinking-an-investigation
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
I'm Sabrina Embler, and I wrote what was She Thinking?
An investigation for Defector and it's the story of the week.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
On a Friday morning in twenty twelve, back when her
husband was just the host of The Apprentice, Malania Trump
went on Twitter and did something strange. Milania basically posts
two categories of things, the vegetables that she almost exclusively
eats and pictures of herself. But this was different. She
(00:49):
tweeted a picture of a beluga whale. This thing's like
a headshot for this blubbery, smiling whale with a mouthful
of teeth and a heartful of love. And most bizarre
of all, she wrote this caption that said what is
she thinking? The post became a huge meme because it
was so odd, brand so bizarre. Maybe it was just
(01:11):
a moment of genuine curiosity from an otherwise cryptic figure.
Looking at it, we all couldn't help but ask what
was she thinking?
Speaker 3 (01:27):
Writing is hard? Who's got that kind of time when
you're already busy trying to be You all stand so
it turns on a mike. Maybe the twitle is enough
because a journalist friend has got in that gible Times
single story. Just listen to Smart People Speak conversation film
(01:48):
with Information. It's the story of the week.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Sabrina Imbler, who covers the creature beat for Defector Media,
cracked open this eleven year old cold case and tracked
down the actual whale that Malania tweeted a picture of
and got pretty close to figuring out what this whale
might have been thinking the moment that photo was snapped.
Sabrina Imbler, thank you so much for coming on. I
(02:23):
think you're are first creatures writer that we've had on
the show. That's how Bob Woodward started, right.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
Oh I didn't know that, didn't he was? He was
on the creature Oh okay, I would have been deeply inspired.
Thank you for having me. I think more people should
be on the creature beat.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
And there are a lot of creatures out there compared
to even humans. We really overcover humans absolutely. Okay, why
were you looking through old Malania Trump tweets?
Speaker 2 (02:50):
This story actually came to me because one of my
coworkers at Defector, Drew McGarry, who's a very funny guy,
DMed me and he said he wasn't high, so I'll
take him at his word.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
That's the first sign that someone's high.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
Absolutely, he was like, hey, remember that Malania tweet like
what do beluga whales think about? And it was a
really interesting question because I think, you know, the first
time I saw that tweet, I was like, how funny,
how surreal? Like why did Malania tweet that? But right,
she really had her finger on the pulse of a
(03:24):
question that a lot of scientists think about, which is
what do you animals? Yeah? Yeah, I mean, and also
probably just people who are high as well who can
be philosophers.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
Such a thin line between those two things.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
Absolutely, and I decided that it could be really fun
to take this question and investigate it as seriously as
I possibly could.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
Is there any chance that she plagiarized this tweet from Michelle?
Speaker 2 (03:48):
Oh, mama, that is a very good question that I
honestly should have incorporated into my investigation.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
Okay, describe beluga whales. I actually didn't really know what
they looked like until your story. They're they're not whale sized.
They're like bigger than a dolphin, but smaller than what
I think it was a whale. And they're they're kind
of a light color. They're very smooth there, they have
these kind of sparkly eyes and this hump in the front.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
Yeah, so blucas they have a big, a big hump
in the front kind of on their forehead and it's
called their melon, which is so cute. And the melon
at the front helps them sense the world through echolocation,
which is really helpful if you're living under vast sheets
of ice, but you are a mammal that needs to
breathe air, and so they use their melon to sort
of identify in the vast distance of the Arctic places
(04:40):
in the ice sheet where there are gaps where they
can sort of come up to breathe. So it is
a very crucial tool for their lifestyle.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
That seems insane now that you're saying it, Like they
have to breathe like we do, but they're stuck underwater
under ice, like that's my nightmare.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Absolutely, Yeah, it's not a point of panic at all,
which is truly wild to me, terrifying to us. But
for a bluga whale, like their whole world is sound
and clicks and echo location, so they're again not bothered,
which bless them. That is my nightmare, trapped under icy
water in infinite darkness.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Again, this gets to what is she thinking. This is
the question that Malania is posing, and it's the same
question This incredibly famous philosophy essay called what is it
Like to Be a Bat? That Thomas Nagel wrote in
nineteen seventy four asks, and it's really attempting to solve
what's now called like the hard problem of consciousness, Like
can you ever know what anyone besides yourself is thinking?
(05:37):
And he tries to get people to think about what
it's like to be a bat. We could kind of
like imagine what it's like to fly or not be
able to see what our visual perception, but we don't
know what that feels like, right, Like we can objectively
know what they're doing, but that doesn't get us close
to what it feels like to be that other being.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
Yeah, we can never know, however much we learn about echolocation,
about the way that they fly, about what it is
like to hang upside down for like a really long
period of time or eat bugs, like, we'll just never know.
And that's kind of what Malania was getting at.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
Perhaps unknowingly, I have no idea what goes on in
her mind any more than a bats, So maybe she
was having this deep thought right.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
Maybe I better understand what it's like to be a
bat than I do to be Malania Trump.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
So one of the first ways you went about trying
to answer this question is to do that objective work
of knowing what a bluego whale. Objectively, you know what
their life is like. So what did you find out
that kind of helped you?
Speaker 3 (06:39):
Well?
Speaker 2 (06:40):
As I was writing this story, I was thinking a
lot about the idea of an umlaut, which is like
an individual animal or species perception of the world. And
all of our oommelts are different as humans, like we
can rely on vision, but can we see ultraviolet light
like No? Like can we perceive echolocation?
Speaker 1 (07:00):
No?
Speaker 2 (07:00):
And so we sort of have We each have these
slivers of the world that we're able to sense and perceive.
And yeah, within a species even like we all sort
of are more tuned to different parts of that sliver.
Some of us are blind and so we rely more
on hearing or other senses.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
What is the umwhalt of a bluego whale?
Speaker 2 (07:19):
So the umwelt of a bluego whale is primarily sound
for being able to sense prey at a distance, being
able to sense other beluga whales at a distance, like
they're very social. Sometimes there will be aggregations of like
thousands of belugas and it's so loud because they're all
calling to each other. They're all, you know, vocalizing, and.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
What does it sound like when there's a bunch of
bluega whales together.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
One of the researchers I spoke to. Her name is
Valeria Vergara, and she's a great name. Yeah, she's she's amazing,
But she was basically like, it feels like you're walking
in a jungle with like thousands of birds that are
all calling, Like it's just a cacophony. Like it's so
so loud.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
And they have individual names that they respond to or
that they how does that work?
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Yeah, so that's another thing that I learned. So names
are pretty rare in the animal kingdom. Like we obviously
have our own name, and to sort of communicate with us,
other people will call.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
Out our name, like Valaria Nara. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
Yes, some animals like bottlenose dolphins and perhaps belugas like Valaria.
Is still working on this research, but it has been
confirmed in bottle nose dolphins that they have sort of
signature whistles so to announce themselves. They'll like vocalize their
signature whistle, and then everyone who hears that will be like, oh,
that's that specific dolphin, not just like, oh that's a dolphin.
(08:45):
And so this sort of helps beluga whales understand who's
around them. It's very sophisticated.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
Okay, but Malania is not asking about beluga whales in general.
She's asking about this beluga whale at this very moment.
So how do you possibly go about answering that?
Speaker 2 (08:59):
So I reverse image searched the photo that she tweeted,
and so that actually came up with this German news
site called Der Spiegel.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Oh Der Spiegel's like, uh it is like the Time
magazine of Germany.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
Oh okay, amazing. So I had not heard of them
before this investigation. But it was basically like, did you
know that the US Navy like uses marine mammals as spies.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
There's so many shocking things you just told me, but
perhaps the biggest is that Malania Trump is reading Derspiegel.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
I mean, if it's the Time magazine of Germany, like,
good on her.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
So she's reading Der Spiegel while her husband's you know,
taping The Apprentice, and she runs across this fascinating story.
Did you know that militaries employee like sea mammals.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
I did know that they had used dolphins, but I
didn't know that they had used beluga whales.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
So when are we talked about the military budget? This?
This explains it.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
Yeah, I mean it's enormous. It's enormous. A lot of
a lot of animal science is actually funded by the
Department of Defense, which is a weird truth that I
think about every day.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
This is crazy. So, of course, now you need to
call the Navy in I do need.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
To call the name.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
I emailed a wonderful spokesperson named Darien Wilson, and I said, hello,
I'm a serious reporter working on a story about bluego whales.
Do you recognize this bluego whale? Within a day, Darien,
bless his heart, responds, yes, it was incredible.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
When we come back, we'll find out how this particular
beluga whale decided to enlist with the US Navy. But first,
our advertisers are going to tempt you with an exotic
vacation to go whaling. Wait, this can't be right. They
must mean whale watching. No, it says whaling. So once
(10:54):
you found out that this whale was part of the
Navy Marine Mammal Program. You actually found this specific whale
in the picture that Malania tweeted.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
Yes, Darien, the spokesperson for this program, responds and he says,
that's a picture of our navy mail blue. No Sum
also known as No C. Why No s The researchers
nicknamed him No C after these biting midges called no
Sums because I think they're really small and they bite you.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
Yeah, they're in Florida.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
No C was one of six beluga whales that were
captured legally in nineteen seventy seven off the coast of Manitoba.
And this was a time in the US Navy Marine
Mammal Program where they were trying to experiment to see
like what sea creatures work well, not as spies, but
(11:44):
as you know, as troops.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
I definitely do not know what do you mean as troops.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
So, like they were working with bottlenose dolphins to do
like mind detection and recover torpedoes. And if you have
the power of echolocation, like you, you are so good
at finding those things in a way that our human
technology has yet to catch up with. I also learned
like they worked with sea lions, They tried to work
with sea turtles, and sort of after this period they
(12:09):
sort of winnowed down the marine animals that they were
interested in working with.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
Oh okay, now, did Nosey do a good job as
a troop?
Speaker 2 (12:20):
So it seems like he did, although the Navy eventually
stopped working with beluga whales because I think they were
just kind of too big and like it was easier
to work with dolphins which were smaller.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
Wait, they fat shamed Nosey.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
Yeah. Yeah, They're truly powerful and also blubbery creatures in
a way that is it's astounding, and nose I hope
was proud of his theft anyway, So he he worked
as a troop for a little bit, and they sort
of transitioned him into just research studies because obviously, like
bluego whales are really hard to study in the wild,
(12:55):
and so a lot of our knowledge comes from captive whales.
They sent him on a couple of missions like how
deep can you die? And they like put a little
tag on him. None of the studies around him were
super consequential, except for this one paper that came out
long after his death. Wait, Nosey's dead unfortunately. Nosey did
(13:18):
die unfortunately of meningitis in nineteen ninety nine. I think
nose was twenty three, and in the wild bluega whales
lived to like fifty sixty seventy years old. But Nosey
kind of became famous after his death because there was
a paper that came out in this journal Current Biology
in twenty twelve where the researchers who worked with him
(13:40):
published a series of vocalizations that he had made while
he was in a tank. And the vocalizations, the researchers realized,
sounded like Nosey was trying to talk like a person.
They did not sound like any other bluega whale vocalization
and sort of mimicked like the pitch and rhythm of
human voices to the extent that like he was in
(14:02):
his tank kind of swimming around and there was a
diver in with him, and the diver heard someone say
get out of the tank, and so he like surfaced,
but there was no person around. It was just him
and no sy.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
Wait, you're saying that the bluega whale said in English,
get out of the tank.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
I think he just sort of the way that he
was mimicking human voice, like it just sounded human.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
We actually have audio of Nosy talking, which you published
in your piece. Do you want to listen to it
with me and we could determine how human we think
it sounds.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
I would love that.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
There's a lot of kazoo going on, for sure.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Absolutely. I mean it makes me think of like, I
don't know, like a hot dog marker at like a
sports game of someone you know, trying to speak above
the noise of being like Horrah, good dog here, good
hot dogs.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
That is what it sounds like. But it also sounds
like a little bit of making fun of humans.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
Yes it does. So that's not what beluga whales normally
sound like. But that is what no C sounded like
when he was doing his human voice. But it's it's wild.
They're very good mimics.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
Wow, So you think no C is either imitating or
mocking or both the humans that know C's dealing with.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
So it seemed clear that NOC was trying to mimic
a human. He lived in a tank with a couple
of other dolphins and other beluga whales, but he never
made these sounds when it was just them. He only
made these sounds like when there were people present, but
they don't know, like why NOC was trying to do this,
if you know he was trying to build connection or
(15:51):
make fun of us or communicate with us like that, again,
is just kind of unknowable. But it was just this
wild period of his life where he did his human voice.
He did it for about seven years and then he
I think became sexually mature and stopped making the human voice.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
That's what guys do.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
He had other things to think about.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
Boys basically stopped talking at puberty. Why do you think
NOC was doing this? Because this is the central question,
Like what was he thinking? So he's speaking in human like,
what do you think was going on his head at
that moment?
Speaker 2 (16:27):
Yeah, I mean, it's just a very different life, and
we can guess and speculate, like maybe he was lonely,
Like maybe he was seeking some kind of connection, Like
probably he was bored, you know, just to live in
a small enclosure for his whole life, and like I
can't help but speculate that he was looking for something
to do. But again, that's just what I think.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
Yeah. Ugh, So how did you feel when you found
out that this blueg of whale that you've been tracking
and thinking about has been dead all this time.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
It was incredibly depressing. I was I was sad, I
was bummed, and I was also frustrated by the idea that,
like most of what we know about this whale is
him trying to mimic us, and it is absolutely like
an innovation of sorts that he was able to do that.
But it didn't really feel to me like I was
(17:18):
learning anything about the whale himself and the things that
he was interested in and like the things that he did.
But then I came across this paper that was published
after Noci died, when the researchers who worked with him
noticed No Sa and two other belugas like in their
oceanic enclosure in the San Diego Bay, right under the
(17:42):
light of like a floodlight on the dock. And when
you have light, a lot of plankton will come to
it in the ocean, and then the fish will come
to eat those plankton. So there was like this kind
of feeding frenzy that was happening between these schools of
anchobies feeding on plankton that were attracted to the light
and no Sea and this other beluga whale who was
(18:03):
also in this netted Enclosure eight, like the entire school
of Anchobies, like the Reason, which were like at the
end of the hour, there and no more Anchovy's left,
and they had just basically been eating Anchovi's for like
a full hour. And the researchers who were observing this
dropped a hydrophone which can record sounds in the ocean,
and they heard this distinctive noise basically like a high
(18:25):
pitched buzzing noise, which is also called a victory squeal,
and so it sounded almost like they were like celebrating,
And I think that was where I was, like, I
think I found this little glimpse into Nosey's life that
I wanted to have that wasn't related to the Navy
or to humans or to whatever, just like a moment
(18:45):
of perhaps joy. But again I can't say if it
was joy.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
But if I know anything from reporting in Vegas, like
an hour after the All you Can Eat buffet, knows
he's not so happy.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
Those are dark times. So this original question you asked,
what is this bluego whale thinking? Does it make you
sad that in the end you just don't know because
it kind of implies that we can't know what it's
like to be anyone else, not our spouses, not our children.
It's a really lonely conclusion that Nagel comes to in
(19:21):
his bad essay and that you come to in yours.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
Oh, I really don't find it depressing or lonely at all,
Like I really, I think just reporting on creatures and
spending a lot of time with creatures who are so
strange and so different from me, Like, I find so
much beauty in that strangeness and that difference, and I
think there's something sacred about that space between us. But
(19:49):
I don't know, Like I think it would be overwhelming
to experience every creature's like experience on Earth, right, Like
they're a fish in the deep sea that like live
in temperatures close to freezing, and that's fine for them,
But it's like, I don't know, like I like to
learn about that, I don't need to. I don't need
to be there with them.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
Are those creatures that are right on the thermal hot
springs deep under the water, which is basically like living
in the Earth's core.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
Nor do I want that life, but I respect it,
and like I find it so incredible that there are
so many ways of living and being on this earth.
I'll never know what it's like to be able to
gu whale, but I'll also like never know what it's
like to be another person. And I don't know. I
guess I just I'm thinking about a lot of these things,
being like a trans journalist and sort of thinking about
(20:34):
objectivity and fighting for different modes of how that can exist.
And I'm happy that this is making people think both
about volugas but also about the experiences of people who
are different from them.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
What do you think being trans like affects your desire
to look into how creatures think?
Speaker 2 (20:54):
I mean, insects are like a great model right for
bodily change and metamorphosis. I wish that the medical institutions
that we have would make those changes like more accessible
to everyone. I guess I haven't really thought about, like
whether being trends specifically makes me interested in creatures, but
I think I am interested in the ways that people
(21:15):
sort of are quick to call certain organisms like strange
or weird or bizarre, and use that same language to
describe different groups of people.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
Sabrina Imbler, thank you so much for answering all my
questions as dumb as they were about Beiligo whales and
Melania Trump. And for writing these awesome stories that everyone
should read.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
Thank you so much for having me Joel. And if
I've learned anything from this story, it's the fact that
no questions are dumb questions.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
Occasionally and just for a moment, I will stop talking.
This apparently concerns my lovely wife Cassandra so much that
as soon as it happens, she often asked me, what
are you thinking about? Oh, this is a horrible question.
It feels more invasive than asking someone what kind of
porn they watch. We can only exist in a society
(22:01):
if we're all ignorant about what each other is thinking,
or worse, how little they think about us. So let
me be the first podcast host in history to ask
you not to post reviews of this show on Apple Podcasts.
Keep it to yourself. But you can still give us
five stars. It really helps.
Speaker 3 (22:23):
At the end of the show, what's next for Joel Stein?
Maybe you'll take a napper poker round online.
Speaker 1 (22:30):
Our show is produced by Joey fish Ground, Mola Board
and Nishavenka. It was edited by Lydia Jenan Kopp. Our
engineer is Amanda kay Wang and our executive producer is
Catharine Cheradah. Our theme song was produced by Jonathan Coleman.
A special thanks to My Voice coach Vicky Merrick am
I consulting producer Laurence Alasnik. To find more Pushkin podcasts,
(22:53):
listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your podcasts. I'm Joel Stein, and this is
story of the Week.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
So many creatures rely on the stars to navigate, Like
I just published a story about dung beetles. And dung beetles,
there's one species that is nocturnal and they use the
Milky Way to navigate where to roll their dung to.
Isn't that amazing? Like not true, it's incredible.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
That's the thing about being a creature's reporter. You can
make up anything. Beetles use the milky Way to bury
their dung. Like you just make stuff up. No one
knows
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
I'm Sabrina Embler, and I wrote what was She Thinking?
An investigation for Defector and it's the story of the week.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
On a Friday morning in twenty twelve, back when her
husband was just the host of The Apprentice, Malania Trump
went on Twitter and did something strange. Milania basically posts
two categories of things, the vegetables that she almost exclusively
eats and pictures of herself. But this was different. She
(00:49):
tweeted a picture of a beluga whale. This thing's like
a headshot for this blubbery, smiling whale with a mouthful
of teeth and a heartful of love. And most bizarre
of all, she wrote this caption that said what is
she thinking? The post became a huge meme because it
was so odd, brand so bizarre. Maybe it was just
(01:11):
a moment of genuine curiosity from an otherwise cryptic figure.
Looking at it, we all couldn't help but ask what
was she thinking?
Speaker 3 (01:27):
Writing is hard? Who's got that kind of time when
you're already busy trying to be You all stand so
it turns on a mike. Maybe the twitle is enough
because a journalist friend has got in that gible Times
single story. Just listen to Smart People Speak conversation film
(01:48):
with Information. It's the story of the week.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Sabrina Imbler, who covers the creature beat for Defector Media,
cracked open this eleven year old cold case and tracked
down the actual whale that Malania tweeted a picture of
and got pretty close to figuring out what this whale
might have been thinking the moment that photo was snapped.
Sabrina Imbler, thank you so much for coming on. I
(02:23):
think you're are first creatures writer that we've had on
the show. That's how Bob Woodward started, right.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
Oh I didn't know that, didn't he was? He was
on the creature Oh okay, I would have been deeply inspired.
Thank you for having me. I think more people should
be on the creature beat.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
And there are a lot of creatures out there compared
to even humans. We really overcover humans absolutely. Okay, why
were you looking through old Malania Trump tweets?
Speaker 2 (02:50):
This story actually came to me because one of my
coworkers at Defector, Drew McGarry, who's a very funny guy,
DMed me and he said he wasn't high, so I'll
take him at his word.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
That's the first sign that someone's high.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
Absolutely, he was like, hey, remember that Malania tweet like
what do beluga whales think about? And it was a
really interesting question because I think, you know, the first
time I saw that tweet, I was like, how funny,
how surreal? Like why did Malania tweet that? But right,
she really had her finger on the pulse of a
(03:24):
question that a lot of scientists think about, which is
what do you animals? Yeah? Yeah, I mean, and also
probably just people who are high as well who can
be philosophers.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
Such a thin line between those two things.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
Absolutely, and I decided that it could be really fun
to take this question and investigate it as seriously as
I possibly could.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
Is there any chance that she plagiarized this tweet from Michelle?
Speaker 2 (03:48):
Oh, mama, that is a very good question that I
honestly should have incorporated into my investigation.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
Okay, describe beluga whales. I actually didn't really know what
they looked like until your story. They're they're not whale sized.
They're like bigger than a dolphin, but smaller than what
I think it was a whale. And they're they're kind
of a light color. They're very smooth there, they have
these kind of sparkly eyes and this hump in the front.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
Yeah, so blucas they have a big, a big hump
in the front kind of on their forehead and it's
called their melon, which is so cute. And the melon
at the front helps them sense the world through echolocation,
which is really helpful if you're living under vast sheets
of ice, but you are a mammal that needs to
breathe air, and so they use their melon to sort
of identify in the vast distance of the Arctic places
(04:40):
in the ice sheet where there are gaps where they
can sort of come up to breathe. So it is
a very crucial tool for their lifestyle.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
That seems insane now that you're saying it, Like they
have to breathe like we do, but they're stuck underwater
under ice, like that's my nightmare.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Absolutely, Yeah, it's not a point of panic at all,
which is truly wild to me, terrifying to us. But
for a bluga whale, like their whole world is sound
and clicks and echo location, so they're again not bothered,
which bless them. That is my nightmare, trapped under icy
water in infinite darkness.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Again, this gets to what is she thinking. This is
the question that Malania is posing, and it's the same
question This incredibly famous philosophy essay called what is it
Like to Be a Bat? That Thomas Nagel wrote in
nineteen seventy four asks, and it's really attempting to solve
what's now called like the hard problem of consciousness, Like
can you ever know what anyone besides yourself is thinking?
(05:37):
And he tries to get people to think about what
it's like to be a bat. We could kind of
like imagine what it's like to fly or not be
able to see what our visual perception, but we don't
know what that feels like, right, Like we can objectively
know what they're doing, but that doesn't get us close
to what it feels like to be that other being.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
Yeah, we can never know, however much we learn about echolocation,
about the way that they fly, about what it is
like to hang upside down for like a really long
period of time or eat bugs, like, we'll just never know.
And that's kind of what Malania was getting at.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
Perhaps unknowingly, I have no idea what goes on in
her mind any more than a bats, So maybe she
was having this deep thought right.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
Maybe I better understand what it's like to be a
bat than I do to be Malania Trump.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
So one of the first ways you went about trying
to answer this question is to do that objective work
of knowing what a bluego whale. Objectively, you know what
their life is like. So what did you find out
that kind of helped you?
Speaker 3 (06:39):
Well?
Speaker 2 (06:40):
As I was writing this story, I was thinking a
lot about the idea of an umlaut, which is like
an individual animal or species perception of the world. And
all of our oommelts are different as humans, like we
can rely on vision, but can we see ultraviolet light
like No? Like can we perceive echolocation?
Speaker 1 (07:00):
No?
Speaker 2 (07:00):
And so we sort of have We each have these
slivers of the world that we're able to sense and perceive.
And yeah, within a species even like we all sort
of are more tuned to different parts of that sliver.
Some of us are blind and so we rely more
on hearing or other senses.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
What is the umwhalt of a bluego whale?
Speaker 2 (07:19):
So the umwelt of a bluego whale is primarily sound
for being able to sense prey at a distance, being
able to sense other beluga whales at a distance, like
they're very social. Sometimes there will be aggregations of like
thousands of belugas and it's so loud because they're all
calling to each other. They're all, you know, vocalizing, and.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
What does it sound like when there's a bunch of
bluega whales together.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
One of the researchers I spoke to. Her name is
Valeria Vergara, and she's a great name. Yeah, she's she's amazing,
But she was basically like, it feels like you're walking
in a jungle with like thousands of birds that are
all calling, Like it's just a cacophony. Like it's so
so loud.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
And they have individual names that they respond to or
that they how does that work?
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Yeah, so that's another thing that I learned. So names
are pretty rare in the animal kingdom. Like we obviously
have our own name, and to sort of communicate with us,
other people will call.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
Out our name, like Valaria Nara. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
Yes, some animals like bottlenose dolphins and perhaps belugas like Valaria.
Is still working on this research, but it has been
confirmed in bottle nose dolphins that they have sort of
signature whistles so to announce themselves. They'll like vocalize their
signature whistle, and then everyone who hears that will be like, oh,
that's that specific dolphin, not just like, oh that's a dolphin.
(08:45):
And so this sort of helps beluga whales understand who's
around them. It's very sophisticated.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
Okay, but Malania is not asking about beluga whales in general.
She's asking about this beluga whale at this very moment.
So how do you possibly go about answering that?
Speaker 2 (08:59):
So I reverse image searched the photo that she tweeted,
and so that actually came up with this German news
site called Der Spiegel.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Oh Der Spiegel's like, uh it is like the Time
magazine of Germany.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
Oh okay, amazing. So I had not heard of them
before this investigation. But it was basically like, did you
know that the US Navy like uses marine mammals as spies.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
There's so many shocking things you just told me, but
perhaps the biggest is that Malania Trump is reading Derspiegel.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
I mean, if it's the Time magazine of Germany, like,
good on her.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
So she's reading Der Spiegel while her husband's you know,
taping The Apprentice, and she runs across this fascinating story.
Did you know that militaries employee like sea mammals.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
I did know that they had used dolphins, but I
didn't know that they had used beluga whales.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
So when are we talked about the military budget? This?
This explains it.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
Yeah, I mean it's enormous. It's enormous. A lot of
a lot of animal science is actually funded by the
Department of Defense, which is a weird truth that I
think about every day.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
This is crazy. So, of course, now you need to
call the Navy in I do need.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
To call the name.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
I emailed a wonderful spokesperson named Darien Wilson, and I said, hello,
I'm a serious reporter working on a story about bluego whales.
Do you recognize this bluego whale? Within a day, Darien,
bless his heart, responds, yes, it was incredible.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
When we come back, we'll find out how this particular
beluga whale decided to enlist with the US Navy. But first,
our advertisers are going to tempt you with an exotic
vacation to go whaling. Wait, this can't be right. They
must mean whale watching. No, it says whaling. So once
(10:54):
you found out that this whale was part of the
Navy Marine Mammal Program. You actually found this specific whale
in the picture that Malania tweeted.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
Yes, Darien, the spokesperson for this program, responds and he says,
that's a picture of our navy mail blue. No Sum
also known as No C. Why No s The researchers
nicknamed him No C after these biting midges called no
Sums because I think they're really small and they bite you.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
Yeah, they're in Florida.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
No C was one of six beluga whales that were
captured legally in nineteen seventy seven off the coast of Manitoba.
And this was a time in the US Navy Marine
Mammal Program where they were trying to experiment to see
like what sea creatures work well, not as spies, but
(11:44):
as you know, as troops.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
I definitely do not know what do you mean as troops.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
So, like they were working with bottlenose dolphins to do
like mind detection and recover torpedoes. And if you have
the power of echolocation, like you, you are so good
at finding those things in a way that our human
technology has yet to catch up with. I also learned
like they worked with sea lions, They tried to work
with sea turtles, and sort of after this period they
(12:09):
sort of winnowed down the marine animals that they were
interested in working with.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
Oh okay, now, did Nosey do a good job as
a troop?
Speaker 2 (12:20):
So it seems like he did, although the Navy eventually
stopped working with beluga whales because I think they were
just kind of too big and like it was easier
to work with dolphins which were smaller.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
Wait, they fat shamed Nosey.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
Yeah. Yeah, They're truly powerful and also blubbery creatures in
a way that is it's astounding, and nose I hope
was proud of his theft anyway, So he he worked
as a troop for a little bit, and they sort
of transitioned him into just research studies because obviously, like
bluego whales are really hard to study in the wild,
(12:55):
and so a lot of our knowledge comes from captive whales.
They sent him on a couple of missions like how
deep can you die? And they like put a little
tag on him. None of the studies around him were
super consequential, except for this one paper that came out
long after his death. Wait, Nosey's dead unfortunately. Nosey did
(13:18):
die unfortunately of meningitis in nineteen ninety nine. I think
nose was twenty three, and in the wild bluega whales
lived to like fifty sixty seventy years old. But Nosey
kind of became famous after his death because there was
a paper that came out in this journal Current Biology
in twenty twelve where the researchers who worked with him
(13:40):
published a series of vocalizations that he had made while
he was in a tank. And the vocalizations, the researchers realized,
sounded like Nosey was trying to talk like a person.
They did not sound like any other bluega whale vocalization
and sort of mimicked like the pitch and rhythm of
human voices to the extent that like he was in
(14:02):
his tank kind of swimming around and there was a
diver in with him, and the diver heard someone say
get out of the tank, and so he like surfaced,
but there was no person around. It was just him
and no sy.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
Wait, you're saying that the bluega whale said in English,
get out of the tank.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
I think he just sort of the way that he
was mimicking human voice, like it just sounded human.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
We actually have audio of Nosy talking, which you published
in your piece. Do you want to listen to it
with me and we could determine how human we think
it sounds.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
I would love that.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
There's a lot of kazoo going on, for sure.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Absolutely. I mean it makes me think of like, I
don't know, like a hot dog marker at like a
sports game of someone you know, trying to speak above
the noise of being like Horrah, good dog here, good
hot dogs.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
That is what it sounds like. But it also sounds
like a little bit of making fun of humans.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
Yes it does. So that's not what beluga whales normally
sound like. But that is what no C sounded like
when he was doing his human voice. But it's it's wild.
They're very good mimics.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
Wow, So you think no C is either imitating or
mocking or both the humans that know C's dealing with.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
So it seemed clear that NOC was trying to mimic
a human. He lived in a tank with a couple
of other dolphins and other beluga whales, but he never
made these sounds when it was just them. He only
made these sounds like when there were people present, but
they don't know, like why NOC was trying to do this,
if you know he was trying to build connection or
(15:51):
make fun of us or communicate with us like that, again,
is just kind of unknowable. But it was just this
wild period of his life where he did his human voice.
He did it for about seven years and then he
I think became sexually mature and stopped making the human voice.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
That's what guys do.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
He had other things to think about.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
Boys basically stopped talking at puberty. Why do you think
NOC was doing this? Because this is the central question,
Like what was he thinking? So he's speaking in human like,
what do you think was going on his head at
that moment?
Speaker 2 (16:27):
Yeah, I mean, it's just a very different life, and
we can guess and speculate, like maybe he was lonely,
Like maybe he was seeking some kind of connection, Like
probably he was bored, you know, just to live in
a small enclosure for his whole life, and like I
can't help but speculate that he was looking for something
to do. But again, that's just what I think.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
Yeah. Ugh, So how did you feel when you found
out that this blueg of whale that you've been tracking
and thinking about has been dead all this time.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
It was incredibly depressing. I was I was sad, I
was bummed, and I was also frustrated by the idea that,
like most of what we know about this whale is
him trying to mimic us, and it is absolutely like
an innovation of sorts that he was able to do that.
But it didn't really feel to me like I was
(17:18):
learning anything about the whale himself and the things that
he was interested in and like the things that he did.
But then I came across this paper that was published
after Noci died, when the researchers who worked with him
noticed No Sa and two other belugas like in their
oceanic enclosure in the San Diego Bay, right under the
(17:42):
light of like a floodlight on the dock. And when
you have light, a lot of plankton will come to
it in the ocean, and then the fish will come
to eat those plankton. So there was like this kind
of feeding frenzy that was happening between these schools of
anchobies feeding on plankton that were attracted to the light
and no Sea and this other beluga whale who was
(18:03):
also in this netted Enclosure eight, like the entire school
of Anchobies, like the Reason, which were like at the
end of the hour, there and no more Anchovy's left,
and they had just basically been eating Anchovi's for like
a full hour. And the researchers who were observing this
dropped a hydrophone which can record sounds in the ocean,
and they heard this distinctive noise basically like a high
(18:25):
pitched buzzing noise, which is also called a victory squeal,
and so it sounded almost like they were like celebrating,
And I think that was where I was, like, I
think I found this little glimpse into Nosey's life that
I wanted to have that wasn't related to the Navy
or to humans or to whatever, just like a moment
(18:45):
of perhaps joy. But again I can't say if it
was joy.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
But if I know anything from reporting in Vegas, like
an hour after the All you Can Eat buffet, knows
he's not so happy.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
Those are dark times. So this original question you asked,
what is this bluego whale thinking? Does it make you
sad that in the end you just don't know because
it kind of implies that we can't know what it's
like to be anyone else, not our spouses, not our children.
It's a really lonely conclusion that Nagel comes to in
(19:21):
his bad essay and that you come to in yours.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
Oh, I really don't find it depressing or lonely at all,
Like I really, I think just reporting on creatures and
spending a lot of time with creatures who are so
strange and so different from me, Like, I find so
much beauty in that strangeness and that difference, and I
think there's something sacred about that space between us. But
(19:49):
I don't know, Like I think it would be overwhelming
to experience every creature's like experience on Earth, right, Like
they're a fish in the deep sea that like live
in temperatures close to freezing, and that's fine for them,
But it's like, I don't know, like I like to
learn about that, I don't need to. I don't need
to be there with them.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
Are those creatures that are right on the thermal hot
springs deep under the water, which is basically like living
in the Earth's core.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
Nor do I want that life, but I respect it,
and like I find it so incredible that there are
so many ways of living and being on this earth.
I'll never know what it's like to be able to
gu whale, but I'll also like never know what it's
like to be another person. And I don't know. I
guess I just I'm thinking about a lot of these things,
being like a trans journalist and sort of thinking about
(20:34):
objectivity and fighting for different modes of how that can exist.
And I'm happy that this is making people think both
about volugas but also about the experiences of people who
are different from them.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
What do you think being trans like affects your desire
to look into how creatures think?
Speaker 2 (20:54):
I mean, insects are like a great model right for
bodily change and metamorphosis. I wish that the medical institutions
that we have would make those changes like more accessible
to everyone. I guess I haven't really thought about, like
whether being trends specifically makes me interested in creatures, but
I think I am interested in the ways that people
(21:15):
sort of are quick to call certain organisms like strange
or weird or bizarre, and use that same language to
describe different groups of people.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
Sabrina Imbler, thank you so much for answering all my
questions as dumb as they were about Beiligo whales and
Melania Trump. And for writing these awesome stories that everyone
should read.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
Thank you so much for having me Joel. And if
I've learned anything from this story, it's the fact that
no questions are dumb questions.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
Occasionally and just for a moment, I will stop talking.
This apparently concerns my lovely wife Cassandra so much that
as soon as it happens, she often asked me, what
are you thinking about? Oh, this is a horrible question.
It feels more invasive than asking someone what kind of
porn they watch. We can only exist in a society
(22:01):
if we're all ignorant about what each other is thinking,
or worse, how little they think about us. So let
me be the first podcast host in history to ask
you not to post reviews of this show on Apple Podcasts.
Keep it to yourself. But you can still give us
five stars. It really helps.
Speaker 3 (22:23):
At the end of the show, what's next for Joel Stein?
Maybe you'll take a napper poker round online.
Speaker 1 (22:30):
Our show is produced by Joey fish Ground, Mola Board
and Nishavenka. It was edited by Lydia Jenan Kopp. Our
engineer is Amanda kay Wang and our executive producer is
Catharine Cheradah. Our theme song was produced by Jonathan Coleman.
A special thanks to My Voice coach Vicky Merrick am
I consulting producer Laurence Alasnik. To find more Pushkin podcasts,
(22:53):
listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your podcasts. I'm Joel Stein, and this is
story of the Week.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
So many creatures rely on the stars to navigate, Like
I just published a story about dung beetles. And dung beetles,
there's one species that is nocturnal and they use the
Milky Way to navigate where to roll their dung to.
Isn't that amazing? Like not true, it's incredible.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
That's the thing about being a creature's reporter. You can
make up anything. Beetles use the milky Way to bury
their dung. Like you just make stuff up. No one
knows
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