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Speaker 1 Welcome to Aaron Menke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim and Mild.

Speaker 2 Our world is full of the unexplainable. And if history is an open book, All of these amazing tales are right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.

Speaker 2 Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.

Speaker 2 Ancient gods are more than just superstitions. They reflect how people of the past felt about the lands they lived in.
The terror of a thunderstorm, the shock of an earthquake, the beauty of a sunset.

Speaker 2 These things are just as impressive to us now as they were to ancient peoples. When you're as small as a human being, the sheer power of nature cannot help but feel divine.
Take the land of Hawaii.

Speaker 2 This chain of islands would not exist if not for volcanic activity. And by the time people settled there, it's unsurprising that the volcano would become a fixation of their mythology.

Speaker 2 Literally and figuratively, volcanoes towered over their lives, and no one knew when an eruption might consume a village.

Speaker 2 Nobody in the Hawaiian pantheon is as beloved and feared in equal measures as Pele, the goddess of volcanoes. She lives in the heat of Mount Kilauea, a volcano that remains active to this day.

Speaker 2 According to Hawaiian oral tradition, Pele came from Tahiti in search of a home. Her journey mirrors that of many Polynesian peoples, traveling across the great expanse of the Pacific Ocean.

Speaker 2 Pele was pursued by her older sister, the goddess of the sea. She settled on the furthest Hawaiian island, Ni'ihau, but her sister extinguished her flame.

Speaker 2 So she continued east from island to island until she created a volcano so powerful that the sea could not put it out. Pele's nature is a volatile one.

Speaker 2 Like many deities, she is both a creator and a destroyer.

Speaker 2 Volcanic soil is extremely fertile, but eruptions lay waste to countless acres, causing sweeping wildfires, destroying plants, animals, and people alike.

Speaker 2 Kilauea's most recent eruptions paused in August of 2025, but it's still very much an active volcano.

Speaker 2 Of all the gods and goddesses of the ancient world, Pele is one of the few whose power is still alive, still worth fearing.

Speaker 2 It's an impressive example of how culture follows the patterns of the natural world, but that doesn't mean that humans have no power in redefining a goddess.

Speaker 2 There's a specific legend about Pele, one you will hear if you ever visit Volcanoes National Park on the big island of Hawaii. It comes in the form of a warning.

Speaker 2 If anyone takes any lava rocks from the national park, you will invoke Pele's curse, and bad luck will follow you back to the mainland.

Speaker 2 Like many classic superstitions, it's not hard to find anecdotes that speak to its existence. The stories go like this.

Speaker 2 A non-Hawaiian tourist comes to the mainland to escape from the drudgery and stress of their daily life. While visiting the big island, they take a bus tour up to Volcanoes National Park.

Speaker 2 Awed by the majesty of the twin volcanoes Kilauea and Mauna Lona, they want to take a souvenir of the experience.

Speaker 2 Maybe it's just a single volcanic rock or a small bottle of black sand, nothing that a park ranger will notice, of course. But upon coming home, their life will be in shambles.

Speaker 2 Maybe they will lose their job or perhaps a long-term relationship will collapse or their finances will crumble.

Speaker 2 Whatever the outcome might be, all these stories end the same, with the unlucky individual mailing their souvenir back to Hawaii. with an apology attached.

Speaker 2 Park Rangers continue to receive letters from repentant tourists. They estimate that thousands of pounds of volcanic rocks and sand are returned every year.

Speaker 2 Regularly, a ranger will take a supply of debris and dump it back in the park. It's become a crucial, if irritating, part of working at Volcanoes National Park.

Speaker 2 And in a way, it might actually be a problem they created for themselves.

Speaker 2 You see, Hawaii Volcanoes National Park was first officially established in 1916, 111 years ago, and 18 years after the annexation of Hawaii.

Speaker 2 Sometime in the 1940s, it's said that the locals who dealt with tourists grew frustrated with the disrespect that visitors showed to the island.

Speaker 2 So, the tour bus drivers began spreading the story, saying that if you took a rock, you would anger the goddess who lived in the crater.

Speaker 2 Whether you believe in Pele's curse is up to you, but a volcano doesn't care if you believe in it or not. All it cares about is reshaping the world one eruption at a time.

Speaker 2 And that is the true power of Pele.

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Speaker 2 It's 1989, and the U.S. and the Soviet Union are in the midst of the Cold War.

Speaker 2 As the war escalates and both sides start deploying more and more nuclear submarines to keep tabs on one another, the United States looks for any advantage it can get in the deep seas.

Speaker 2 The nation uses a variety of listening devices throughout the Atlantic and Pacific to monitor for Russian submarines.

Speaker 2 There are listening posts and ships that tow their own listening devices and hydrophones deep at the bottom of the ocean. Through a combination of these technologies, U.S.

Speaker 2 forces detect a strange signal off the Pacific coast. It's at 52 Hz, the low end of human hearing.
It almost sounds like whining, a low, continuous cry for help, like a giant puppy crying.

Speaker 2 It doesn't sound like any submarine they have ever heard before.

Speaker 2 A few years later, with the fall of the Soviet Union, the sound is finally declassified and taken to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts.

Speaker 2 Marine scientist Bill Watkins studies the sound and comes to one conclusion. It's a whale.

Speaker 2 At the time, this didn't make sense to scientists because whales communicate at frequencies even lower than 52 Hz, which meant that this whale, whatever it was, was talking to itself in a unique language.

Speaker 2 This was even sadder when considering that its call was only detected during whale mating season from December to March.

Speaker 2 So it was a whale speaking its own language, trying to find a mate, and getting no response. And scientists continued to detect it, year after year.
They were never able to actually lay eyes on it.

Speaker 2 And this isn't surprising, as its potential territory is massive, covering hundreds of miles of ocean and significant depths.

Speaker 2 Military submarines can go about 1,500 meters down, while some whales have been recorded at 3,000 meters.

Speaker 2 But all that to say, the ocean is big, and actually finding this whale would be like finding a needle in a haystack. But its legend has only grown over the years.

Speaker 2 As news stories about the whale permeated the media, it came to be known as 52 Blue.

Speaker 2 It inspired several popular songs, with people relating to its loneliness and its persistence in looking for a mate.

Speaker 2 And while a few of those songs have been mildly popular, the most recent is the 2015 BTS song Whaley in 52.

Speaker 2 In it, the Korean boy band sings about how being mega celebrities isolates them like the whale, leaving them all alone in the dark where they can't truly connect with anyone.

Speaker 2 Ultimately, though, I think I feel more sorry for the whale. But recent scientific developments suggest that we might all be projecting way too much onto 52 Blue.

Speaker 2 Researchers have pointed out that just because other whales don't speak the same language doesn't mean they aren't hearing it.

Speaker 2 They hear everything in their territory, and it's possible that the other whales are able to communicate back to Blue in other ways.

Speaker 2 It's even possible he has a mate who just doesn't answer back at 52 Hz.

Speaker 2 And yes, scientists do know that Blue is a he, based on his vocal register, and further analysis of his call has revealed something else important his potential species it seems likely that blue is actually what's called a fin blue hybrid or a mix between a blue whale and a fin whale blue whales are the longest whales and fin whales are the fastest and second longest so 52 blue might be quite large and quite dynamic in the water This also might explain his unique call.

Speaker 2 These hybrids are becoming better documented and it's possible that blue was just ahead of his time. In fact, there was a shocking development in 2010 that gave all 52 Blue fans hope.

Speaker 2 Scientists detected the 52Hz signal at two very different places in the Pacific Ocean at roughly the same time. This means that there is potentially more than one 52Hz whale.

Speaker 2 We just haven't heard them at the same time as often as we have thought. But sadly, there haven't been any double recordings ever since.

Speaker 2 Overall, It doesn't hurt to be curious about this unique creature and where it comes from. But ascribing human emotions and conditions to it isn't a great idea.

Speaker 2 We have no clue what a whale's internal life is like or what 52 Blue's actual family situation is deep beneath the ocean.

Speaker 2 Curious fans of the whale might claim to be worried about his loneliness, but often in their search for him, they reveal that they are a little bit lonely as well.

Speaker 2 I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts or learn more about the show by visiting CuriositiesPodcast.com.

Speaker 2 This show was created by me, Aaron Mankey, in partnership with How Stuff Works. I make another award-winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show.

Speaker 2 And you can learn all about it over at theworldoflore.com. And until next time, stay curious.

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