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Speaker 3 Hey, this is Radio Lab. I'm Letif Nasser.
Over the last year, there has been a cascade of headlines about scientists trying to use AI to translate animal languages into a form we can understand.

Speaker 3 At this very moment, brilliant scientists and sophisticated algorithms are trying to decipher the snuffles of pigs, the honks of geese, the squeaks of mice, the barks of dogs, the caws of crows, the moos of cows, the clucks of chickens, the chirps of fruit bats, the meows of cats, and the songs of sperm whales.

Speaker 3 Those are just the ones that have been reported in the last year or so. But turns out, people have been trying to listen and talk across the species divide for way longer than that.

Speaker 3 Today, we bring you a Radiolab story originally broadcast in 2014 about what is, I would argue, the greatest and most shocking of these stories.

Speaker 3 And what's even better is, it's told by a human in the first person, someone who is right there.

Speaker 3 Might not be appropriate for younger kids or more sensitive listeners. Um,

Speaker 3 but with that warning, here you go: hello from Radiolab.

Speaker 3 That's how you say enjoy in Dolphinies,

Speaker 20 I think.

Speaker 20 Wait, you're listening.

Speaker 15 You're listening

Speaker 15 to Radio Lab.

Speaker 22 Radio Lab from

Speaker 23 WNYC.

Speaker 15 Sales.

Speaker 21 Rewind.

Speaker 9 Hello, this is Lynn. Someone on the other side of this?

Speaker 15 Hey, Lynn.

Speaker 23 So, a couple months ago, our producer Lynn Levy did an interview with this woman.

Speaker 9 Yeah, her name is Margaret Lovett. Yes.
And this was Margaret's first time doing a radio interview.

Speaker 24 That magic voice.

Speaker 15 This so fun.

Speaker 9 But this was definitely not her first time talking into a microphone.

Speaker 25 1, 2, 3, 4, this is the yellow mic.

Speaker 26 1, 2, 3, 4, this is the orange mic.

Speaker 9 Almost exactly 50 years ago.

Speaker 26 The following recording was made on November 19, 1964

Speaker 26 at 2,300 hours.

Speaker 9 Margaret was at the center of this amazing, weird experiment.

Speaker 22 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 9 Who were you at that time? Like, what were you like?

Speaker 24 Well, I've always had a bit of: if everybody's going left, I'll go right.

Speaker 9 She tried college for a while.

Speaker 24 Tulane University for a year.

Speaker 19 But she dropped out.

Speaker 24 And I was, what, 20 or 19 or something at that point.

Speaker 9 And moved to St. Thomas in the Caribbean.

Speaker 24 I'd never been to an island.

Speaker 9 Got a job at this hotel.

Speaker 24 Did menus, checked people in and out.

Speaker 9 And one day she hears about this strange research facility on the other side of the island.

Speaker 24 And I thought, I wonder what that is about. And I asked a few people, and they said, oh, no, no.
They don't like people there.

Speaker 15 Can't go there.

Speaker 24 And I was told not to go there, so I went there.

Speaker 27 there.

Speaker 27 Hmm.

Speaker 24 And that's how it all started.

Speaker 23 And that's how we're going to start this show. I'm Jad Ab Umran.

Speaker 28 I'm Robert Krillowich.

Speaker 23 Today on Radio Lab, producer Lynn Levy brings us a couple of close encounters, although not with aliens.

Speaker 29 No, it's not in outer space.

Speaker 14 It's much closer to home in this case.

Speaker 23 Although they are kind of alien-like.

Speaker 13 Yes, alien-like.

Speaker 23 Not

Speaker 13 alienate. You know, it's a dolphin.

Speaker 15 Yes, that's

Speaker 31 shows about dolphins.

Speaker 23 Hey. We're calling this hour.

Speaker 15 Hello.

Speaker 9 So when Margaret got to this mysterious place, there were dolphins there. And

Speaker 9 what happened was she ended up becoming roommates with a dolphin.

Speaker 23 Do you mean in the like Betsy one-bedroom apartment sense?

Speaker 9 Sort of, yeah. She did end up living with a dolphin for many months in this apartment.

Speaker 19 I-E-A-E.

Speaker 15 Big apartment apartment? Mm-hmm.

Speaker 9 Had a little desk, had a little kitchen area with a stove.

Speaker 24 I think it was a little two-burner stove or something, and a pot and a tea kettle.

Speaker 9 But the thing that's a little bit weird about the apartment is that the whole apartment was filled with water.

Speaker 15 It was completely filled?

Speaker 24 Well, I wasn't submerged, but I was in water up mid-thigh, sort of.

Speaker 9 It was just flooded with water.

Speaker 31 Just about there.

Speaker 9 So she could share it with this dolphin.

Speaker 17 A young male Peter.

Speaker 25 His Royal Highness Peter.

Speaker 9 Peter was a 10-foot-long bottlenose dolphin, young adolescent male. And he lived there with Margaret.
And like he would, you know, he could like swim under the desk and there was a balcony.

Speaker 9 He could like swim swim out onto the balcony.

Speaker 23 And the balcony was flooded too?

Speaker 9 The balcony was also flooded. Yeah, it's really cool.

Speaker 28 And what was the idea?

Speaker 23 I mean, to try and study a dolphin?

Speaker 9 To study the dolphin,

Speaker 9 first of all, and take a lot of notes.

Speaker 24 Extensive notes.

Speaker 9 Did you have waterproof paper?

Speaker 12 No.

Speaker 24 I had a typewriter on this board hanging from the ceiling. They also had microphones everywhere.

Speaker 9 And specifically, the task she was given

Speaker 9 was to teach Peter to speak English.

Speaker 23 And she was supposed to teach the dolphin English? Yep.

Speaker 15 Really?

Speaker 24 Well, I mean, this was John Lilly's project.

Speaker 9 Just for some context, you know how people get all like a little bit crazy these days about dolphins?

Speaker 9 They have like, you know, shirts with dolphins and necklaces with dolphins, and everybody has like dolphin hairbands, dolphin blacklight posters, right?

Speaker 9 So this all kind of sort of comes from this guy, John Lilly, who was a scientist, a researcher starting in the 40s.

Speaker 30 A total right stuff physics major kind of guy out of Caltech.

Speaker 9 Man's man, according to Graham Burnett.

Speaker 10 I'm a historian of science.

Speaker 9 But then, according to Graham, John Lilly has this epiphany.

Speaker 32 During the Second World War.

Speaker 9 At the time, people just weren't thinking that much about dolphins in general. Like, there was not this idea that they were sort of extraordinary beings.
They were just like big, dumb fish.

Speaker 9 You know, they were shot for sport. So, John Lilly is doing this research about brain mapping, and he ends up working with dolphins.

Speaker 9 And the story that he's told goes that he was experimenting on these dolphins, and as he's working with them, you know, kind of like shoving things into their brains, they make noises, as would anyone.

Speaker 9 And when he listens back to the noises, which he's recorded, it sounds to him like the dolphins are trying to speak to him,

Speaker 9 to say something to him in not in a, not in a dolphiny way, but in a human way, like trying to speak English to him.

Speaker 19 Really? Yeah.

Speaker 23 What did he say the dolphin was trying to say to him?

Speaker 9 I don't think that we know that, but it sounded to him enough like human speech that he thought like something's going on here. This is important.

Speaker 9 According to Graham, he said later that it made him realize like we're not.

Speaker 30 We're not the only intelligent organisms out there.

Speaker 9 Like we have company.

Speaker 32 That maybe humans humans are what happens when high intelligence evolves in an animal that also has hands.

Speaker 32 And dolphins are what happens when comparably, if not still more extravagant intelligence, evolves in an animal without hands.

Speaker 9 What do hands get you?

Speaker 32 Well, hands basically get you an appetite for punching people in the head.

Speaker 32 You know, it makes us tool users, but the distance between, you know, the hammer that you use use to knock open your coconut and the hammer that you use to knock open the head of that other Cro-Magnon you were never that keen on is, in fact, zilch.

Speaker 32 There's no difference at all.

Speaker 32 By the time it got to the 60s, with you know, like peace and love, it was exciting to think the dolphins and the whales have these huge brains, but they don't like, they're not after anything.

Speaker 30 They're not doing anything with it.

Speaker 32 They're not trying to hurt anybody. They're not building cities.

Speaker 15 They're just like being, man.

Speaker 9 And keep in mind, this is on the verge of the Vietnam War, where you have all this anxiety about

Speaker 9 overpopulation, environmental destruction.

Speaker 19 What have they done to our fair system?

Speaker 9 So very quickly, the dolphins become like this vision.

Speaker 30 Of how we might ourselves be so different

Speaker 32 than we'd come to feel we were, tragically.

Speaker 30 Does that make sense?

Speaker 9 So John Lilly was one of the first people to get swept up in all this.

Speaker 9 He quits his government job, moves to the Caribbean, and sets up this lab, John Lilly's Communication Research Institute, to try to talk to dolphins, which is where Margaret ended up.

Speaker 24 And my feeling was this, that everybody was talking about how bright they were and how smart they were, and it was dolphins, dolphins, dolphins, and then it was the hot topic.

Speaker 24 And yet every day, everybody at that building would get in their car and go home.

Speaker 19 Yeah.

Speaker 24 And I thought, what is that?

Speaker 9 So she volunteered to stay. Yeah.
Yeah. Her bed was on this kind of wooden platform in the middle of the apartment.

Speaker 24 I was maybe two and a half, three inches above the water. And Peter was right there.
And Peter could flip me a little water and wake me up at any point. And that was the whole point of it.

Speaker 24 I mean, this wasn't just sleep all night and then, excuse me, work in the day and then sleep again all night and then do some work in the day. I might as well go home.

Speaker 24 So I eventually,

Speaker 24 I didn't really shave my head, but I buzzed it, whatever it's called now, really close because any, you know, the hair getting wet thing in the middle of the night night was very annoying yeah of course so i just got rid of the hair and and that was helpful and then when peter would come and squirt some water or want to play or throw something at me then i could just roll off this elevator into the water and be with him and do whatever she says he was fascinated by the things she brought with her a piece of cloth a tea bag tea bag was a fascinating thing i drank i drink tea

Speaker 24 and the tea bag would fall into the water and he would come and get it and

Speaker 24 sonar it, this creaking noise they make when they're sonaring. And he'd look at it and take the string over his beak and sort of swim around very proudly with his tea bag.

Speaker 24 And then he'd throw it up against a wall and it would stick. And then he'd squirt water on it and it would come back down into the water.
And he would play with this tea bag.

Speaker 24 Eventually, of course, he would bite it. He has very sharp teeth and it would break.
And that was a very exciting thing when the tea bag finally broke open.

Speaker 24 It had babies, as it were, gazillions of tea leaves floating around, and he was sown on them all and want to count every single one of them.

Speaker 9 And what did you think you would find out?

Speaker 27 I didn't know.

Speaker 24 You know, I was not coming at this from a science

Speaker 24 point of view. That's not what I was bringing to the table.

Speaker 22 Yeah.

Speaker 24 I just, I just, I had no idea. I was

Speaker 24 programmed by John to work on the speech.

Speaker 33 A-E-I-O.

Speaker 24 He had sort of declared that they could probably speak.

Speaker 27 A E-I-O.

Speaker 24 Look, when you're trying to have a conversation with someone,

Speaker 24 one person speaks,

Speaker 24 and the other one listens. And then you speak, and I listen.
And people sort of normally do that back and forth.

Speaker 24 But when you start with a dolphin making airborne sounds, once they get the idea, there's a lot of screaming that goes on.

Speaker 24 They're very show-offy and they want to override you.

Speaker 24 No, Peter. No no.

Speaker 24 So you have to spend a lot of time getting it down to, I'm talking now. I can speak now.

Speaker 24 And now it's your turn.

Speaker 24 I can speak now.

Speaker 24 And yet if he's upset about something, he'll override you.

Speaker 25 Peter. And it's annoying.
Now listen again.

Speaker 25 No,

Speaker 25 eh, what's this? Come on, Peter.

Speaker 25 One, two, three.

Speaker 19 Three.

Speaker 25 Now start again.

Speaker 25 One, two, three.

Speaker 24 but he learned very quickly to listen to me.

Speaker 25 One, two, three, four.

Speaker 19 Yes, baby.

Speaker 24 Good.

Speaker 24 And not to pick up my instructions. If I would say, no, no, no, Peter, I don't want you to do that.
I want you to do this, this, this.

Speaker 24 He would give me back this, this, this.

Speaker 24 A parrot will often say, no, no, no, Polly want a cracker. They will repeat the whole thing of whatever you said.

Speaker 24 But Peter would would pick up what I wanted when he was being a good student.

Speaker 9 And he was a good student.

Speaker 24 There seemed to be,

Speaker 24 with this one dolphin anyway, it can't speak for all of them, an interest in what we were doing.

Speaker 24 He wanted to practice. He wanted to get it right.

Speaker 24 There was a mirror and he would spend long periods of time by himself, didn't want me to be part of it. And he would practice whatever it was we had been doing in the lesson that day.

Speaker 24 Over and over and over and over. He wanted to get it right.

Speaker 24 And he would work at that for no reason. He's not getting fish.
I'm not interacting with him.

Speaker 24 He just wants it right.

Speaker 9 Like doing homework.

Speaker 24 Like homework, exactly.

Speaker 9 And after a few months of this,

Speaker 9 Peter did start to sound really different.

Speaker 25 One, two, three.

Speaker 25 One, two, three.

Speaker 24 He kept getting better. It's extremely difficult for them.
Hello.

Speaker 24 They just have a blowhole. They do not have the apparatus to really.

Speaker 24 S's are almost impossible.

Speaker 24 I would feed him my name.

Speaker 25 Malgurit.

Speaker 24 And M is very hard. He would eventually roll over almost into the water with the blowhole to muffle a

Speaker 9 kind of a thing. Really? You're saying he would use the water as a way to help him make the sound? Yes.

Speaker 19 Maulwit.

Speaker 33 With that word.

Speaker 19 And

Speaker 9 he knew that was your name?

Speaker 9 I don't know.

Speaker 24 But nevertheless, we were a pretty good match.

Speaker 24 I knew his mood, his temperament, and he knew mine. He knew when I was sick and I would get sick.
And you're in the water all the time, you're bound to get a cold or something.

Speaker 24 He just loved my anatomy. He wanted to know what my knees were doing.

Speaker 24 He would go behind my knee and sonar and look at it and feel it and push it and find out which way it would and wouldn't go. He just, and I gave him the time,

Speaker 24 because I wasn't going home,

Speaker 24 to look at my knee, to look at my feet. He was enormously interested,

Speaker 24 oddly enough, in this space. between my fingers.
Really?

Speaker 24 Not the fingers so much, but he would, I mean, you know, his beak could just barely fit there, but he wanted to put in between each finger and see what that was all about. The same with the toes.

Speaker 24 He didn't have any spaces anywhere. Yeah.
You know, he had solid flippers, but no space in between them.

Speaker 9 Do you think he was so interested in your fingers and toes because he didn't have any?

Speaker 24 Yes, I do.

Speaker 9 Margaret and Peter ended up spending about nine months living together. But towards the end, things kind of started to unravel.
First of all, there weren't really results from this experiment.

Speaker 9 They never were able to publish any scientific papers. And there were other problems.
Lily got very involved in drugs, especially.

Speaker 24 LSD, he did bring it down. He did

Speaker 24 give LSD. He says he did, I believe him two, to two of the dolphins.
I would not let him give LSD to Peter. I wouldn't allow that.

Speaker 9 Why would he give them LSD? Well,

Speaker 9 it's not 100% clear, but it seems like he was trying to find a way to get the dolphins to open up, to connect, maybe to talk. In any case, by 1965, 66, his funding had started to dry up.

Speaker 9 And when people heard about Margaret's work, they tended to focus on like one particular part of the story. You don't have to answer, but a lot has been made of your

Speaker 9 sort of sexually engaging with Peter. And I just want to ask, because you don't seem like a shrinking violet, I just want to ask, is there anything you want to to say about that?

Speaker 24 What would I like to say about that? I think

Speaker 24 the sensational side of it is.

Speaker 9 Here's what Margaret told me. Peter was a young dolphin.
He was horny, and he would hump her leg a lot, kind of like a dog might do, which was getting in the way of their work.

Speaker 24 So eventually I just said the heck with it.

Speaker 9 And she'd use her hand to, you know.

Speaker 24 And it would quickly satisfy him, and then we could go back to doing what we were doing. And I never really gave it another thought.
I I never thought, ooh, don't let anybody know.

Speaker 24 I never thought, ooh, this shouldn't be. I never thought that.

Speaker 9 But because of details like this and the drugs, this experiment became extremely controversial,

Speaker 9 almost untouchable. People didn't want to be associated with Lily.
Nobody wanted to fund anything that sounded like Lily. It just got this like aura of

Speaker 13 Don't go there. Don't go there.

Speaker 9 Even people who wanted to do really rigorous work with human dolphin communication had a tough time getting any funding.

Speaker 9 And that lasted for a long time.

Speaker 9 And the thing is, even though there are so many reasons to disapprove of this experiment,

Speaker 9 when you talk to Margaret, you can't

Speaker 9 help but want to be in that apartment with them.

Speaker 24 He would come over and when he was in what I call his sweet mood, and Peter had a lot of very, very sweet mood to him,

Speaker 24 he would sink to the bottom and take my foot in his mouth. And he wasn't sonaring, and he wasn't looking at anything.
It was almost like a little kid comes and just wants to hold your hand.

Speaker 24 And he would just sink to the bottom and close his eyes and just hang on to my foot.

Speaker 24 And then he'd have to come up and

Speaker 24 breathe. And then he'd go back down and he'd just grab my foot.

Speaker 24 And he would do this for a good while.

Speaker 29 We'll be back in a moment with another encounter.

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Speaker 28 Hey, I'm Jad Applemrod. I'm Robert Krowich.

Speaker 23 This is Radiolab, and today...

Speaker 19 Hello.

Speaker 14 Yes. Or as a dolphin might say.

Speaker 23 How would a dolphin say it?

Speaker 28 I don't know. Well, you know what?

Speaker 23 That is exactly kind of the question of this next segment. I mean, the dream that a human being can talk to a dolphin or any animal, really, get in their heads and cross that gap.

Speaker 29 This is a dream that humans have had since, like, forever.

Speaker 23 Yeah, St. Francis of Assisi goes way back.
Now, insofar as dolphins are concerned, after the John Lilly situation, researchers did get a little tepid.

Speaker 13 Yeah, but they didn't stay tepid, as you say, for long.

Speaker 38 No.

Speaker 23 Because along came this woman. Dr.

Speaker 40 Denise Hersey, director of the Wild Dolphin Project.

Speaker 23 Who basically decided to take John Lilly's experiment and flip it. Rather than have the dolphin speak English, let's have the humans speak dolphin.

Speaker 23 Or at the very least, let's create a shared language where humans and dolphins can speak.

Speaker 9 Or at least whistle.

Speaker 42 Well, you know, it's about finding finding a place you can meet.

Speaker 23 Back to producer Lynn Levy.

Speaker 9 Okay. So for Denise, this dream of finding that meeting spot, it goes back to when she was a little girl.

Speaker 39 Well, when I was 12 years old, I used to page through the Encyclopædia Britannica in the days when we had books, and I would always stop at the whale and dolphin page, look at the dolphins, and go, wow, I wonder what their brains are like because they've evolved in the water.

Speaker 9 Were you thinking that when you were 12? I was.

Speaker 38 I was a total nerd.

Speaker 39 In fact, I entered this contest in Minnesota, like, what would you do for the world if you could do something?

Speaker 34 And I actually wrote, oh, I would build a human-animal translator so we could figure out what was going on in the minds of animals.

Speaker 39 So, yeah, I don't know. I got the bug early, and here I am.

Speaker 29 Were you having a fantasy about what you might learn?

Speaker 15 A fantasy?

Speaker 40 No, I was just curious.

Speaker 39 So, I don't know. You look in their eyes, there's definitely something behind there.

Speaker 33 You just want to know what it is.

Speaker 9 Fast forward many years, Denise got a boat.

Speaker 19 And I went out to the Bahamas.

Speaker 9 She was like, if I'm going to study these dolphins, I'm going to do it in the wild. That's where they live.
So she tracked down a pod of wild dolphins. Yep, yep.
And she just tried to blend in.

Speaker 33 I actually anchored the boat in one spot most of the time.

Speaker 9 This spot in the Bermuda Triangle.

Speaker 41 In the middle of, I call it the Dolphin Highway.

Speaker 9 Where dolphins come and go.

Speaker 42 They could come by if they wanted to, and if they didn't, they didn't.

Speaker 9 When they would come by, She and her team would just slip into the water.

Speaker 45 And behave ourselves.

Speaker 9 Just sort of watch, paying attention to who was who, which dolphin had a crooked fin, which one didn't.

Speaker 42 And when they'd leave, we'd get out, and that's really how we operated for the first five years.

Speaker 45 And it worked.

Speaker 13 Five years? She spent five years just watching?

Speaker 28 Not doing anything else? Yes.

Speaker 29 Doesn't this take an enormous amount of patience?

Speaker 38 Well, sure.

Speaker 39 I mean, but after about five years, they started realizing, well, these guys aren't gonna grab us and poke us and prod us. So they started just going about their own business.

Speaker 9 Like feeding, mating, nursing, and talking.

Speaker 9 Or at least making a lot of noises.

Speaker 9 Which she and her team would record.

Speaker 9 Wow, that's all dolphin sounds. Well, dolphin makes they make all these things.
Yeah, like that. That's like there's like a clicking, kind of queaking sound that they make.

Speaker 38 It sounds like a zipper. Zipper, yeah.

Speaker 9 Yeah, they make like whistles that are more kind of distinct, and then they make sounds that are like longer and weirder.

Speaker 23 do you have any sense that each of these sounds means something different?

Speaker 9 Well, that's exactly what we don't know.

Speaker 39 I could tell you what kinds of sounds are correlated with fighting and with mating or disciplining a calf.

Speaker 42 What we don't know is: are there detailed kind of words in there?

Speaker 44 Is there more kind of encoded information?

Speaker 9 But what they do know is that each dolphin seems to have its own kind of signature whistle, which is basically a name.

Speaker 40 Every individual has its own name.

Speaker 24 Peter had a name.

Speaker 9 Nobody's ever asked me that. Here's Margaret again.

Speaker 24 And his name name was...

Speaker 24 Really? It is almost saying Peter here. Right.

Speaker 39 So I can call you Lynn by your whistle and you Robert by your whistle.

Speaker 14 So if I could be a dolphin going,

Speaker 29 Lynn.

Speaker 13 Exactly. Do they do that?

Speaker 43 They do. Huh.

Speaker 9 Not only that, apparently dolphins will use the names of other dolphins who aren't even around, like they can't see them.

Speaker 23 Like they'll talk about each other behind their backs?

Speaker 9 Yes, maybe.

Speaker 23 Well, that means that they're using representations of things which aren't in front of them, which is sort of like the beginning of language.

Speaker 9 If that's what they're doing, and we don't know, but if that's what they're doing, then yeah, that's kind of like the edge of language.

Speaker 45 So, you know, it gives us hope that there's probably more information going on there than we know.

Speaker 9 And now,

Speaker 9 finally,

Speaker 9 she has that

Speaker 9 device.

Speaker 9 Which device, again? The magical, you know, human-animal translator device that she was dreaming of writing about when she was 12.

Speaker 9 She has this box that can generate dolphin noises and it can recognize dolphin noises. And if it works the way that she's dreaming it'll work, it could be the first

Speaker 9 real two-way back-and-forth conversation between a human

Speaker 9 and a wild animal.

Speaker 39 So we're looking forward to this summer and getting out and getting more data and really exercising the boxes and see what happens.

Speaker 39 Good, we're ready.

Speaker 9 So I beg my way aboard. Everybody good? Seasick pills and tubbies?

Speaker 31 We left on July 8th from Florida

Speaker 9 and headed for the Bahamas to see this pod that she has been following kind of forever.

Speaker 39 Almost 30 years now.

Speaker 9 The boat is called the RV Stinella.

Speaker 9 Stinella is the scientific name for this particular type of dolphin, the spotted dolphin. Have you seen a spotted dolphin? I've never seen one in person.

Speaker 23 What is this boat like?

Speaker 9 It's like not a tiny boat, but it's not a big boat. And it was just absolutely full of humans.

Speaker 14 And

Speaker 14 who are your humans?

Speaker 9 Well, there's Denise, obviously. That's a god.
And you got a captain.

Speaker 46 My name's Kier Smith.

Speaker 9 First mate. Danielle.
Research assistants. Allison Myers.
Les Mason.

Speaker 38 Bethany Ollier.

Speaker 9 Nathan Skripchek. Volunteers.

Speaker 31 Drew Mayer.

Speaker 9 There's an acoustics expert.

Speaker 20 Matthias Hoffman.

Speaker 9 For a long time, I couldn't even figure out where everybody was sleeping because the boat seemed so small. I was like, there's not room for all these people on this boat.

Speaker 20 Behind you, there's a hot soldering iron next to the fridge.

Speaker 9 And I haven't even gotten to this guy. Don't get into him.

Speaker 9 His name is Thad Starner. So you didn't have any dolphin experience before this, right?

Speaker 19 Oh, hell no.

Speaker 9 He's one of the guys who invented Google Glass.

Speaker 20 I became a computer programmer, so I'd never have to leave air conditioning,

Speaker 20 And I'm out here in, what is this, 100-degree weather.

Speaker 9 To do what? So his job on the boat is to, he's in charge of these boxes.

Speaker 20 Those boxes probably cost us 100K at this point.

Speaker 19 We're looking for funding.

Speaker 20 Looking for funding.

Speaker 9 So he's the tech whiz. When he came down to visit my lab, I was telling about the two-way work and the difficulty with underwater stuff.

Speaker 40 And he said, oh, I build wearable computers.

Speaker 34 I says, oh, can you build me an underwater wearable computer?

Speaker 20 That shouldn't be hard.

Speaker 14 Four years later. What does this machine look like that you...

Speaker 9 It looks like a toaster, like one of those fancy chrome toasters, except you wear it on your chest.

Speaker 14 Are they silvery in fact?

Speaker 9 They are silvery. They have a bunch of sort of knobs and buttons and speakers on them.

Speaker 39 It's got pre-programmed whistles in it.

Speaker 43 I can punch a key and it projects.

Speaker 39 Whistle A. Here, whistle B.

Speaker 34 Here, whistle C.

Speaker 9 She's programmed in signature whistles of some of the dolphins.

Speaker 21 Rat, Palette, Bijou.

Speaker 19 And

Speaker 42 we made signature whistles for ourselves.

Speaker 19 Oh.

Speaker 23 She can call their names and they can call her names. That's what you're saying?

Speaker 9 That is the idea, yeah. And if they do call her name, this name that she's made for herself, then the box should be able to recognize it and can tell her that she's been called by name.

Speaker 9 It'll actually say into her ear in English, Denise.

Speaker 42 Huh.

Speaker 33 This is real-time, I call it real-time sound recognition, but it's real-time whistle recognition underwater.

Speaker 23 How does, if she's made up this name for herself, how is it that they're going to know that that's her name?

Speaker 9 Well, the idea is that they're learning. So she gets into the water over and over and she says, you know, the equivalent of, hi, I'm Denise.
Hi, I'm Denise, over and over and over. And they learn it.

Speaker 9 You know, they develop this.

Speaker 23 Oh, like maybe they'll just start to use it and call her.

Speaker 34 Yeah. So you hope, you hope they call you.

Speaker 40 I'd be really sad if they didn't call my name.

Speaker 23 But I guess at the very least, she could call their names and see how they react.

Speaker 13 Right.

Speaker 29 Well, see, that would be a Eureka moment, I think, if you hit the Lolita button and Lolita suddenly turned and looked right at you with a shock of a signal.

Speaker 22 Exactly.

Speaker 13 What the heck?

Speaker 43 Wow, that human called me by my signature whistle.

Speaker 19 Whoa.

Speaker 17 Has that happened yet?

Speaker 39 It hasn't happened yet.

Speaker 9 And this is something I just did not appreciate. For a while, I was on this boat.
I was like, why is this so hard? Like, this seems like it should be, these people are so smart.

Speaker 9 Like, this should be easy, but they're just like constantly being defeated by the ocean, basically, which and the ocean is like a

Speaker 9 worthy foe. But it's like the first year.

Speaker 20 First year was a complete disaster trying to get the harbor to work.

Speaker 19 What happened the first year?

Speaker 20 Everything broke.

Speaker 9 It was Leak City. Basically, the boxes just kept shutting down as soon as they would get in the water.

Speaker 15 That's not good.

Speaker 9 It's not good. That's sort of not what you want.

Speaker 17 No. And last year...

Speaker 20 We had the boxes working, but then we couldn't find the dolphins.

Speaker 9 The dolphins just disappeared.

Speaker 14 Where did they go?

Speaker 39 You know, they went 100 miles away to another location.

Speaker 9 They don't know why.

Speaker 20 I kept up with my side of the DLD Days.

Speaker 23 Your dolphins stood you up.

Speaker 9 And one of the reasons I was on the boat is it felt like everybody was thinking,

Speaker 9 This is it, this is the year. We're gonna go out there, we're gonna find some dolphins, and we're gonna make some history.

Speaker 9 You ready?

Speaker 34 Ready, excited.

Speaker 9 Now,

Speaker 9 any minute now. now.

Speaker 9 Okay, it turns out it's not that easy to find these dolphins. They're not tagged.
You know, they're wild dolphins. So you just, like, you go to where you think they might be.

Speaker 46 Did you know that song?

Speaker 9 You stare at the water and you wait.

Speaker 9 Yeah, what is that?

Speaker 9 For the first three days, pretty much, we were were just driving around.

Speaker 19 Game of Thrones.

Speaker 9 In circles, like literally in circles. You know, I feel like I had

Speaker 9 a five-hour conversation about Game of Thrones. I've never even seen an episode of Game of Thrones.
Any dolphins? Any dolphins anywhere?

Speaker 19 Oh, right.

Speaker 9 No.

Speaker 9 There's nothing else to do.

Speaker 46 Dolphins, come on, dolphins. We need you now.
Come on, dolphins. Come on, dolphins, come on, dolphins.

Speaker 19 To kick in. Dolphins.

Speaker 27 Dolphins.

Speaker 9 See a piece of seaweed, it would look like a dolphin.

Speaker 19 Dolphins, come on, dolphins.

Speaker 9 A wave that looks like a dolphin. I have to say that I'm like, everything looks like a dolphin to me right now.
There are days like that.

Speaker 19 Dolphins. Dolphins.

Speaker 19 Oh yeah, they are right there.

Speaker 9 All of a sudden out on the water we see one fin, two fins, three fins. Five, six, seven, eight, nine.

Speaker 9 Oh, there's so many of them, and they're so cool. As we're all standing there watching them, Denise turns to me and she goes, You want to go in?

Speaker 9 I don't know. Do you recommend it?

Speaker 9 And I was not prepared for her to say that. And also, I was holding recording equipment and everything.
And so I just, I ended up just having to go in like in my clothes.

Speaker 9 Like, just like wearing like my shorts and like a bra. And I had like, all modesty aside, like thrown aside.
They were like, you can go in.

Speaker 19 And I was like, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay go in

Speaker 19 jesus christ here it goes

Speaker 19 other species um

Speaker 9 we'll be right back

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Speaker 8 It's 1972. A young British family is attempting to sail around the world when disaster strikes.
Their boat is hit by killer whales and it sinks in seconds.

Speaker 8 All they have left is a life raft and each other.

Speaker 8 This is the true story of the Robertson family and their fight to survive, hosted by me, Becky Milligan. Listen to Adrift, an Apple original podcast produced by Blanchard House.

Speaker 8 Follow and listen on Apple podcasts.

Speaker 23 Hey, I'm Jada Bumra.

Speaker 28 I'm Robert Krulwich.

Speaker 23 This is Radio Lab, and today.

Speaker 30 The show's called Hello.

Speaker 23 Back to Lynn.

Speaker 9 I mean, it's a total sensory shift.

Speaker 9 The temperature changes, everything goes quiet.

Speaker 9 It almost feels like this, like, classic through-the-looking glass moment

Speaker 9 where you like you go through the looking glass and like everybody's walking on the ceiling.

Speaker 9 And I jumped in, and there were two pretty big dolphins coming right

Speaker 9 at me,

Speaker 9 like maybe two feet from my head,

Speaker 9 and staring at me. And I was like, uh,

Speaker 31 I don't know what I know.

Speaker 9 What did you do? I stayed very still. I

Speaker 23 pretty much froze. Now, how far were they from you?

Speaker 9 Two feet.

Speaker 23 Oh my god. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 9 Dolphins are not small, and they were looking at me in a way that was like, we see you. And also,

Speaker 9 they make these

Speaker 9 sort of clicking, sonar-y sounds, which are like...

Speaker 14 Do you think they were talking to you or just talking about you?

Speaker 9 Well, no, I mean, what I think they were doing is

Speaker 9 sonaring me. Sort of looking at me with sound.
I mean, my head was vibrating.

Speaker 9 They can see not just body shape, they can see your bones.

Speaker 9 They can see into you. Like, you really feel looked at.
Wow. It was heart-stopping.

Speaker 19 That was unfing believable.

Speaker 19 That was so cool.

Speaker 31 At that point, I was like, the trip could end now, and I go home happy.

Speaker 9 You know, and everybody was like, calm down. Those weren't even the right dolphins.
What do you mean? Well, those were bottlenose dolphins. Denise studies spotteds.

Speaker 15 But

Speaker 9 the next day. All right, onward for spotteds.

Speaker 41 Spotteds are bust.

Speaker 9 We set out again.

Speaker 9 Go for a few hours.

Speaker 9 Bethany does this dolphin dance.

Speaker 9 And

Speaker 34 got some. Yeah!

Speaker 24 The dance works!

Speaker 46 You saw them, right?

Speaker 9 Yeah, right there.

Speaker 46 Yeah, there we go.

Speaker 9 Gotta be spotted. So then,

Speaker 9 everybody's like, you know, it's like all hands-on deck situation.

Speaker 9 Everybody's like strapping on the boxes and strapping on the headphones.

Speaker 29 What are you doing? So there's a lot of scrambling.

Speaker 19 There's so, so much scrambling.

Speaker 38 Oh, there's one off the bow here.

Speaker 9 It's like a fire. It's like a fire drill.

Speaker 33 Now, if I'm putting on my box, here's the problem.

Speaker 39 So I'm just testing.

Speaker 9 Unlike a captive dolphin, wild dolphins, they have other things to do. They have, you know, fish to catch, you kind of have to entice it into having a conversation.
Otherwise, it'll just swim away.

Speaker 9 But how do you do that when you don't know its language?

Speaker 9 Well, turns out dolphins are just crazy for scarves. Scarf high.

Speaker 24 Scarf low.

Speaker 9 When you throw them a scarf, they sweep it up with their tail fin and then they let it go and it wafts through the water and another dolphin comes up and sweeps it up with their rostrum.

Speaker 9 So the idea is you use the scarf as kind of like a bridge. Denise and another diver will get in the water with a scarf.
We'll get in the water and we'll just start passing it back and forth.

Speaker 39 It's human to human.

Speaker 9 Like, hey, look at this fun thing we're doing.

Speaker 42 Let them watch. If they want to get in the game, we let them in the game.

Speaker 45 Sometimes we'll take the toy over to them, show it to them, and press the word for scarf.

Speaker 34 Say, hey, this is a scarf.

Speaker 23 They just made up a whistle for scarf?

Speaker 9 Yep, and ideally, and this is the key, the dolphins will pick up the word and use it too to ask for the scarf. If and when they do that,

Speaker 9 then you've got like a tiny bit of common ground that you can build on.

Speaker 9 Okay, who you got?

Speaker 25 We have four spotted dolphins.

Speaker 9 We have our little candidates, Kristen and Palette. Yes, we've been waiting for them, right? We have.
Just before they jump in, Denise walks another diver through the game plan. Oh, I'm gonna go.

Speaker 9 So you're gonna hold it and you're not gonna give it to them.

Speaker 41 Okay. You're gonna entice it with him?

Speaker 34 You're gonna be like, oh, this is so nice.

Speaker 41 Like, dive down with it and like wave it or.

Speaker 9 Yeah, first start at the surface and just really get them with you. Moments later, all clear?

Speaker 9 Good, we're ready.

Speaker 9 Denise jumps in, followed by three other divers.

Speaker 23 Four in the water. Were you in the water at this time?

Speaker 9 No, I actually had to watch the whole thing from the deck and like you could see from the surface three or four adolescent dolphins. See, Denise is right up next to one of them.

Speaker 9 You see the back of her head and her little snorkel.

Speaker 20 That's good.

Speaker 28 She's surrounded right now.

Speaker 19 What are they doing? I'm not sure.

Speaker 9 Oh, they're kind of like twisting around each other. I will say this.
She is

Speaker 9 tremendously graceful in the water. She gets in the water and she's like totally at home.

Speaker 29 So maybe she is a dolphin.

Speaker 9 She might secretly be a dolphin. Going like around and around.

Speaker 39 As she goes under.

Speaker 19 Man, what is happening under there?

Speaker 9 This is what it sounds like underwater.

Speaker 23 This is the actual sound from the scarf dance?

Speaker 9 They record everything that goes on under there.

Speaker 9 I mean, a lot of that is the dolphins just doing whatever they're doing.

Speaker 9 But some of it is Denise with the box making this scarf whistle over and over, like, scarf?

Speaker 38 You want the scarf?

Speaker 25 Yeah?

Speaker 19 Scarf?

Speaker 23 Because she's like trying to get the dolphin to say the word, right?

Speaker 13 Yeah.

Speaker 9 Eventually, she and the dolphins surface, and

Speaker 19 he's got the scarf.

Speaker 9 One of the dolphins is holding the scarf. Hey, it's like this flash of red.

Speaker 9 And then they all go back under.

Speaker 20 And if Denise comes back up with it, that's real good.

Speaker 9 Alright, wait and see.

Speaker 9 After about a minute, she surfaces.

Speaker 20 I think Denise has it now. Got it.

Speaker 9 She dives one more time.

Speaker 9 A minute later, the dolphin has the scarf.

Speaker 9 And this went on and on. They were passing it back and forth so fluidly that I thought maybe the dolphin has begun to ask for the scarf by name.

Speaker 9 Eventually, Denise gets

Speaker 9 hauled back up onto the boat.

Speaker 9 And we all just sort of gather around, like, well, well.

Speaker 41 Yeah, the two juveniles picked up the scarf right away and played some signage whistles and played some scarf whistles and then some sargassum came floating by.

Speaker 9 Piece of seaweed.

Speaker 41 Showed him that and played the sargassum whistle.

Speaker 9 You think you got a name image?

Speaker 41 Nothing that triggered the system, but you know, we'll see what it looks like.

Speaker 41 It's exhausting.

Speaker 23 Wait, she didn't get anything?

Speaker 9 Well, I mean, nothing the box recognized as a match. You know, nothing that indicated the dolphin, like, learned a word.

Speaker 15 Aww.

Speaker 23 It sounded like they were right there.

Speaker 23 But

Speaker 9 there was this one thing that happened. She said that when she...

Speaker 9 addressed one of the dolphins by its name,

Speaker 9 The dolphin turned around and looked at her and kind of cocked its little dolphin head.

Speaker 13 Really? Yes.

Speaker 15 I was hoping that you'd say that.

Speaker 15 Wow.

Speaker 9 Also, there was this moment where Thad and Celeste were looking at the data later. Who was that? And they saw that right after Denise made her signature whistle.

Speaker 20 Is that somebody responding with their signature whistle?

Speaker 9 Another dolphin made its signature whistle.

Speaker 13 Sweet.

Speaker 19 Whoa, that's pretty cool.

Speaker 23 You mean like she said hi and it said hi back?

Speaker 29 Yeah. That's amazing.

Speaker 9 Well, maybe. I mean, the thing is, dolphins make their signature whistles all the time.

Speaker 9 So it could be nothing.

Speaker 9 Or it could be this

Speaker 13 moment.

Speaker 9 I mean, she's a very rigorous scientist. Like, she wants that to happen another 30 times before even starting to take it seriously.
But still,

Speaker 9 it does make you think about the possibilities. What do you want to ask?

Speaker 26 I don't know. I want to ask everything.
So.

Speaker 38 Like what?

Speaker 39 Oh, I'd like to know what their lives are like when we're not around. I mean, how do you spend your day?

Speaker 43 You know, do they think about things? I mean, do they think about the future? Do they think about the past?

Speaker 44 I mean, we know they have long-term memories, you know.

Speaker 39 Do they remember their calves from 10 years ago?

Speaker 9 Do they think about death?

Speaker 42 Yeah, they certainly see it.

Speaker 42 It'd be anything you'd ask your friends, right?

Speaker 42 Hmm.

Speaker 23 Although part of me wonders, like,

Speaker 28 are they ever going to even get there? What do you mean?

Speaker 23 Well, if the goal is to have a conversation, and you're going to do it this way where you're in the wild and you can't touch them, and you've got to verify every whistle 35 times, well, are they ever actually going to have a conversation?

Speaker 13 Well, because this is like day one of the language lesson.

Speaker 29 I could get away with that.

Speaker 23 Yeah, I get it, but like, don't you feel like Margaret was

Speaker 23 all the problems of that experiment aside, was she was actually getting somewhere with Peter? Like, they were actually having a real exchange?

Speaker 13 In the moment, perhaps, but thinking forward, I believe that what you can accomplish by talking, by having a two-way conversation,

Speaker 29 is just infinitely greater.

Speaker 23 And I totally agree. But if it's taken her 30-something years to get to

Speaker 23 a maybe hello, she doesn't even know if she got to hello yet.

Speaker 23 And if all she has is just a limited amount of time with these dolphins every summer, then 50 more times is going to take her 50 more years.

Speaker 23 And I'm just like, oh, God, the planet's going to be 17 degrees warmer by that point. The dolphins are going to have all migrated to some other spot.
It just feels like, oh, come on.

Speaker 23 Just get in a pool and hold, let the dolphin hold your foot.

Speaker 13 She's already got the hello going for her, maybe.

Speaker 29 So that's like a start. And then, yes, in 50 years, she may have moved past hello to a three-word sentence.
How's your mackerel today?

Speaker 9 Yeah, I think that too. A three-word sentence, yes.
I would put money on a three-word sentence in 50 years. The question is, do we ever get to the point of

Speaker 13 exploring death?

Speaker 29 Yeah. Yeah, I don't know.
Lynn, do you have faith?

Speaker 15 I have faith that

Speaker 9 if Denise continues with what she's doing, that we'll be able to talk about concrete things. We'll be able to talk about seaweed and we'll be able to talk about

Speaker 9 coral and we'll be able to have a scintillating conversation about scarves. I do believe that, and that is not nothing.

Speaker 9 I mean, that is pretty impressive in its own way.

Speaker 23 Big thanks this hour to our producer, Lynn Levy.

Speaker 23 I'm Chad Abum Rod.

Speaker 18 I'm Robert Krolich.

Speaker 23 Thank you guys for listening.

Speaker 18 Hi, I'm David, and I'm from Baltimore, Maryland. Radio Lab was created by Jad Abumrod and is edited by Soren Wheeler.
Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser are our co-hosts.

Speaker 18 Dylan Keefe is our Director of Sound Design. Our staff includes Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, W.

Speaker 18 Harry Fortuna, David Gable, Maria Paz Gutierrez, Sindhu Nyanam Sambandan, Matt Kielty, Annie McEwen, Rebecca Lacks, Alex Neeson, Sara Kari, Sarah Sandback, Arianne Wack, Pat Walters, and Molly Webster.

Speaker 18 Our fact checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger, and Natalie Middleton.

Speaker 47 Hi, this is Susanna calling from Washington, D.C.

Speaker 47 Leadership support for Radiolab science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation.

Speaker 47 Foundational support for Radio Lab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

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