Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
Speaker 1: the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
Speaker 1: for tuning in. Let's give a shout out to our
Speaker 1: super producer, the one and only mister Max white Pants Williams.
Speaker 2: Who Rah and guy that write that time, Ben, I
Speaker 2: didn't say who uh or no, No, there's.
Speaker 1: A tsky We got it, we got it. We're working live.
Speaker 2: I really thought I was getting it right here. Who
Speaker 2: rah just embedded in my mind.
Speaker 1: It's a good thing to yell. It's a hussah for
Speaker 1: you know, situationally dependent hussah.
Speaker 3: We are period accurate.
Speaker 1: We are also we are also so excited, so fortunate
Speaker 1: to be returning to part two of trade Craft Puzzles
Speaker 1: with our good friend member of the Ridiculous History Expanded Universe,
Speaker 1: none other than the author, the now podcaster, the thought leader. Uh,
Speaker 1: mister A. J. Bahamas Jacobs aj. You said off air,
Speaker 1: you said, guys, I got an intro for part two
Speaker 1: of this, and then you.
Speaker 3: Started really sinister like you did.
Speaker 1: There were some ellipses that we could hear, and then
Speaker 1: and then you, uh, you're a brilliant, very kind in person.
Speaker 1: So you started telling Nolan and I like, Nolan me
Speaker 1: rather what uh what the intro would be like? And
Speaker 1: we both immediately I apologize for this. We both immediately
Speaker 1: vetoed that.
Speaker 3: Extra jut throat us. We were we.
Speaker 1: Were like, just do it on air. So so we
Speaker 1: must we must uh pass the order of operations to you,
Speaker 1: dear friend wield.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we'll yield to you as some sort of overlord.
Speaker 2: Sure so uh utah Mulberry's side, how are we getting
Speaker 2: into this part of the conversation.
Speaker 4: Well, this is sort of a continuation of our episode
Speaker 4: on spying and puzzling. And while we were on break,
Speaker 4: I had remembered that a few years ago I have
Speaker 4: been poking around the CIA, the official CIA dot gov website,
Speaker 4: like you do, just to make sure that they know
Speaker 4: I'm here, and they and there's a kids corner. There
Speaker 4: is a whole section called Spy Kids. And I went
Speaker 4: to see just now if it was still there.
Speaker 3: It's not.
Speaker 4: It's bigger, it's more expanded, so I and it's all
Speaker 4: these puzzles and games.
Speaker 3: Is it also.
Speaker 4: Is a little bit of a recruitment tool and I
Speaker 4: actually had a it was kind of fun. I mean,
Speaker 4: some of them are very basic. There's a word search
Speaker 4: where kids can look for asset and surveillance and mission.
Speaker 3: There's kids kids food menu kind of stuff, you know, yeah.
Speaker 4: Kids food menu. There's a jigsaw you put together and
Speaker 4: it's the Seal of the CIA. But actually one that
Speaker 4: you should check out was I enjoyed. It was called
Speaker 4: Aerial Analysis, and it's a picture of port with some ships,
Speaker 4: and it's a bunch of questions like what time is it?
Speaker 4: Is it noon or is it six pm? And I
Speaker 4: was like, and then it was six pm because of
Speaker 4: the long shadows. So it's actually it was you know,
Speaker 4: if I were a cats make.
Speaker 2: Just in my head, I thought that was the CIA
Speaker 2: outsourcing aerial photographs of like picking out assets to children.
Speaker 1: Is also shout out. You'll find this of interest AJ,
Speaker 1: if you're not already aware. I recently learned a few
Speaker 1: weeks back that the CIA has a long running extracurricular
Speaker 1: creative writing group staffed like I shouldn't say staffed, but
Speaker 1: everybody in the group is an active member of the CIA.
Speaker 1: The name of the group. What you're gonna love is
Speaker 1: get this invisible ink.
Speaker 3: Oh that's nice. And the stories are nine ciphers.
Speaker 1: They're all in code. Yeah, yeah, they're they're the club discussion. No, obviously,
Speaker 1: I can never tell you their their book Club discussion
Speaker 1: is all in code. They We do know that the
Speaker 1: CIA does love puzzles, like any any kind of intelligence
Speaker 1: operation worth its salt. Ciphers are a part of the business,
Speaker 1: a part of the craft. And when we left off
Speaker 1: in episode one, we're talking a little bit about, uh,
Speaker 1: the ancient history of trade craft, a little bit about crosswords,
Speaker 1: and then you led Nola and I through a rabbit
Speaker 1: hole on times crosswords went wrong, and we ended with
Speaker 1: an extremely fascinating thing that history has yet to figure.
Speaker 4: Out right, And this episode we are going to get
Speaker 4: to my visits to the CIA headquarters to try to
Speaker 4: crack one of the most famous unsolved puzzles ever. But
Speaker 4: first let me just do a couple of more nuggets
Speaker 4: on this fascinating crossover between spies and puzzles. And we
Speaker 4: had mentioned in last time about some World War two puzzles.
Speaker 4: There's one more World War two puzzle that we should
Speaker 4: talk about, which is that the Nazis actually tried to
Speaker 4: use crosswords for evil.
Speaker 2: So what yes, nineties doing evil stuff? The humble crossword?
Speaker 4: I know they will not even lave a own the crossword.
Speaker 4: This was nineteen forty five and Nazi planes flew over
Speaker 4: London and dropped leaflets containing crossword puzzles that had propaganda answers.
Speaker 4: So the answers were anti us, anti ally. So, for instance,
Speaker 4: one of the clues was he wants all You've got
Speaker 4: and the answer that was the clue. The answer was Roosevelt,
Speaker 4: so they were saying he and The New York Times
Speaker 4: described the clues as feeble and heavy handed.
Speaker 3: Oh that is such a New York Times roussy. I
Speaker 3: love it especially.
Speaker 1: I love that, especially given that that you taught us earlier.
Speaker 1: The New York Times was a prominent anti crossword institution
Speaker 1: for some time. And now they may better.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly, and they show, yeah, they are better than
Speaker 4: the Nazis at making crossword puzzles.
Speaker 3: I love that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they just slammed the not only the Nazis are
Speaker 4: the most evil people.
Speaker 2: But.
Speaker 1: Constructed crosswords. That's and really, isn't that the great villainy
Speaker 1: of the Nazi part? No one in fact check us
Speaker 1: on that one. But the there's there's another thing on
Speaker 1: the break. This reminded me of of a great a
Speaker 1: great sequence in fiction, first in novels, but then later
Speaker 1: in film adaptations. Uh, in the Silence of the Lambs series, right,
Speaker 1: Silence of the Lamb where they follow they follow the
Speaker 1: more of the quint essential serial killer figures of American literature,
Speaker 1: Hannibal Lecter, and we learn that Lecter is communicating with
Speaker 1: a serial killer named the Red Dragon or once we
Speaker 1: called the Red Dragon through personal through essentially a cipher
Speaker 1: where they're taking out back when people used to read, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, print magazines and newspapers, taking out classified ads
Speaker 1: which contain coded meanings. Yeah, I think they were classified.
Speaker 1: I can't remember, but.
Speaker 2: Yeah, either cloud one of those things you can pay
Speaker 2: a couple bucks to put a little tiny graph, you know,
Speaker 2: in the back of the newspaper. Even in the Silence
Speaker 2: of the Lambs, that that was the Red Dragon that
Speaker 2: was read sounds to the Lambs he does, you know,
Speaker 2: He feeds Clarice Starling a few kind of incorrect clues
Speaker 2: that are actually themselves ciphers, like miss Moffetts or something
Speaker 2: like that, and I forget it's to translated like it's
Speaker 2: an anagram for something. And then one of them is
Speaker 2: an anagram or I believe the cipher for pyride for
Speaker 2: fools gold, and it's basically showing that they're barking up
Speaker 2: the wrong tree if I'm not mistaken.
Speaker 4: Well, speaking of classified ads, that reminds me in the
Speaker 4: Victorian England in the eighteen hundreds that was huge. Lovers
Speaker 4: would send secret messages through the classified ads. They'd put
Speaker 4: these ciphers in the ads. It was sort of like
Speaker 4: the sexting of the time, but he had to encode
Speaker 4: it just a little healthy. They were not that I've
Speaker 4: I've read a bunch of them, and h there are
Speaker 4: things like I have the most handsome horse in the land,
Speaker 4: now I need the most handsome lady.
Speaker 2: That kind I write that probably get results.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Also that that feels like you have given us
Speaker 1: a lead on a great uh on a great future episode.
Speaker 1: Right the precedents for sextem you've been around for so long?
Speaker 3: Who was it the writer who wrote all those gnarly
Speaker 3: lovely Joyce? James Joyce?
Speaker 4: Yeah, a great episode.
Speaker 3: On him wealthy.
Speaker 1: He wrote some of some of the best literature in
Speaker 1: the English language, and then he also wrote Finn against Wake.
Speaker 1: But he also how do you really feel about Jesus anyway?
Speaker 3: But it was a fart poet. Yes, turns out love.
Speaker 4: They were amazing. They were Yeah, I was astounded. That
Speaker 4: is Yeah, maybe my favorite writing by Teams joy.
Speaker 1: That's where Cynasthasia really comes to bear.
Speaker 2: Flippity floppity never mind, Oh gosh, yeah that Uh.
Speaker 1: Substitute teachers listening in the crowd, any high school teacher
Speaker 1: who might be thinking it's time to take the day
Speaker 1: easy and play an episode of ridiculous history for your students,
Speaker 1: It is not the James Joyce episode unless you wish.
Speaker 3: To be bold, unless your students are very mature.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's what that would interest the students. I mean,
Speaker 4: that is a way to get kids into James Joyce
Speaker 4: our poetry.
Speaker 1: You guys might hate novels, but who likes farts?
Speaker 4: Uh?
Speaker 3: Why do we have sexy farts? Aha? But you never
Speaker 3: thought that was a thing there.
Speaker 1: It is, so got a lot to learn, kids, So
Speaker 1: the there's an interesting thing that we should just we
Speaker 1: should spend one moment on here, which is that perhaps
Speaker 1: the reason the propaganda crossword bombing failed is due to
Speaker 1: the act that by nineteen forty five, the nomenclature of
Speaker 1: clues and crosswords had already been pretty well established, right,
Speaker 1: Like if you are just all things aside, just objectively,
Speaker 1: you're playing a crossword. The clue he wants all you've
Speaker 1: got sounds incredibly misleading. There is not a way logically
Speaker 1: to like a is yourself into Roosevelt there.
Speaker 2: That is a good point, or you know it definitely
Speaker 2: any more broad like God or like Jesus or something,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean, Like even that would be
Speaker 2: a pretty lazy clue, right, Yeah, well that's specificity.
Speaker 4: It reminds me they weren't the only ones who did propaganda.
Speaker 4: The New York Times also ran an article about in
Speaker 4: nineteen fifty. So now we're in the Cold War and
Speaker 4: the Soviet Union was trying the same trick where they
Speaker 4: would produce these crosswords and spread them around us with
Speaker 4: anti US propaganda and their clues. I don't think we're
Speaker 4: much better. Well, you know what, take it back. This one,
Speaker 4: you could almost say is half witty. The clue is
Speaker 4: what is General MacArthur's concept of a courtesy call? And
Speaker 4: the answer is a four letter word raid.
Speaker 2: So they're gonna say bomb, but like we were, Yeah,
Speaker 2: those are both good, So.
Speaker 4: There you go.
Speaker 2: So it sounds a little feeble and heavy handed to
Speaker 2: the New York Times. Ah yeah, try harder, yeahdition out,
Speaker 2: but you can't take it New York Times.
Speaker 4: Oh no, no, that wasn't the Times. That was a
Speaker 4: Soviet Union crossword puzzle maker being mentioned in the New
Speaker 4: York Times.
Speaker 1: At that point, The New York Times is clearly has
Speaker 1: clearly done a one eighty on their previous anti crossword stance,
Speaker 1: and now they're like, crosswords are one of the most
Speaker 1: important American cultural institutions.
Speaker 3: And we will one day be intrinsically linked to the
Speaker 3: concept of the crossword puzzle. These are New York Times.
Speaker 3: It is odd we're taking we.
Speaker 1: Are super good at the thing we.
Speaker 2: Hated inevitably become the thing you hate. You know, it's
Speaker 2: just well, that's.
Speaker 1: That's like a Nietzschean observation thing.
Speaker 3: I know, it's not true. It doesn't have to be true.
Speaker 3: It doesn't have to be.
Speaker 1: Folks, we have your back, and we also we also
Speaker 1: have maybe a moment here before we get to like
Speaker 1: our big star.
Speaker 3: Of the day.
Speaker 1: The hence this up to now unsolvable puzzle of the CIA.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: There are so many Cold War shenanigans. I love that
Speaker 1: you're mentioning the Cold War aj because this is back
Speaker 1: in the time. This is like the looking at old
Speaker 1: spycraft or trade craft. At this time we see again
Speaker 1: the Seinfeld problem.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: The number one criticism of Seinfeld, which Noel and I
Speaker 1: talked about all the time off air, is that many
Speaker 1: of the many of the plots the gang gets involved
Speaker 1: in could easily have been solved if they had cell
Speaker 1: phones and the trade craft. In this time, from the
Speaker 1: fifties to let's say the early eighties, everything a lot
Speaker 1: of things were still analogue. So these are the days
Speaker 1: of weird code words, which are like another puzzle, right.
Speaker 4: Yes, well, now we do have computers and high speed computers.
Speaker 4: They haven't cracked everything, though they've held there's the famous
Speaker 4: one of the most famous unsolved puzzles are the Zodiac killers.
Speaker 3: In Zodiac Thank you.
Speaker 2: If we didn't get there, I was going to bring
Speaker 2: it up, please, Sally Forth.
Speaker 4: So, yeah, this was a serial killer in the seventies.
Speaker 4: I'm not an expert on it, but he he sent
Speaker 4: a lot of letters with codes to the police with
Speaker 4: clues and several of them were unsolved. But last year,
Speaker 4: just last year, there was a group of people who
Speaker 4: solved using computers along with people. It was sort of
Speaker 4: a a nice meshing of humans and computers that was
Speaker 4: able to crack this. And part of the reason why
Speaker 4: it was so hard to crack is this guy was terrible.
Speaker 4: He made all of these mistakes. No, it's not consistent,
Speaker 4: and so yeah, terrible person for killing and for also being.
Speaker 3: You exactly.
Speaker 4: I'm taking a stand.
Speaker 2: You know, the Zodiac film by David Fincher, I think
Speaker 2: is one of his finest films and I rewatch it
Speaker 2: just about every year, and it deals with a lot
Speaker 2: of the stuff and the you know, the guy that
Speaker 2: ultimately goes on to kind of write the book about
Speaker 2: the whole thing, which is named Gray Smith, I believe,
Speaker 2: played by Jake Gillenhall. He's the one who's like a cartoonist,
Speaker 2: you know, working for the San Francisco Chronicle who starts
Speaker 2: kind of solving these ciphers and it's because he's a
Speaker 2: puzzle nerd.
Speaker 3: He's like that this is like his his wheelhouse.
Speaker 2: You know, he just does crosswords for fun and then
Speaker 2: he ends up kind of being the one that sort
Speaker 2: of pushes that stuff forward. But I do love the
Speaker 2: idea that he just made tons of mistakes. That's really funny.
Speaker 1: And I love the point about the necessity for hybrid
Speaker 1: problem solving concurrently because right now, and shout out to
Speaker 1: the Puzzle Palace, of course, right now, there are tremendously
Speaker 1: robust algorithms and other computerized approaches that can tackle puzzles
Speaker 1: and codes very very well. However, those are those are
Speaker 1: still not going to be able to get you across
Speaker 1: the fence on their own one hundred percent of the time.
Speaker 1: We know, like I'm thinking back in the days of
Speaker 1: analog trade craft. One thing, like there are two examples
Speaker 1: that still always work when deployed correctly, even in this
Speaker 1: the Amazing Future twenty twenty four. One of them would
Speaker 1: be numbers stations, right, and related to number stations, there's
Speaker 1: the other code, which is the thing that requires you
Speaker 1: like it's a descendant of the Caesar cipher, the Arnold cipher.
Speaker 1: You have a one time code book that you have
Speaker 1: to hear and right, that's how the that's the other
Speaker 1: end of the key es, yes, yeah, and without that
Speaker 1: you are a drift. There is no there is simply
Speaker 1: no way to solve those things unless you have that
Speaker 1: that old school crypto key, right, shout shout out.
Speaker 4: To bitcoin and the number stations is that's the one
Speaker 4: where they just list off seemingly random numbers all day
Speaker 4: long and no one has actually solved. Yes, is that right?
Speaker 1: Yes, that is absolutely correct. It is related to USSR
Speaker 1: now Russian intelligence activities abroad. It may be related to
Speaker 1: the so called dead hand system, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: deploying all the nukes at once. If let's just let's
Speaker 1: play yeah, let's play one clip so everybody can hear
Speaker 1: at number station.
Speaker 4: N five two eight run five seven two.
Speaker 1: Run five.
Speaker 2: Egg.
Speaker 3: It's such a creepy thing.
Speaker 2: And I'm pretty sure that Lost, the folks behind Lost,
Speaker 2: used that sort of mysterious idea of transmissions, you know,
Speaker 2: for some of the uh, the radio signals that are
Speaker 2: intercepted by the Islanders if anyone remembers Lost.
Speaker 4: Are there any theories that it's just a total hoax
Speaker 4: and some guy is just reading numbers in to waste
Speaker 4: all of these people's time.
Speaker 1: There are definitely, uh, there are definitely some clear like
Speaker 1: copycat guys. There's some you know, ham radio enthusiasts who
Speaker 1: just have a lonely you know, Saturday night and hop
Speaker 1: on and say some stuff but but in general, I
Speaker 1: think for our purposes here, uh, this is illustrative of
Speaker 1: one of the big differences between a puzzle and tradecraft,
Speaker 1: or a code and tradecraft, and a puzzle in popular media,
Speaker 1: which is that if you are propagating a puzzle in
Speaker 1: popular media, you want people to be able to solve it,
Speaker 1: and some of these tradecraft things simply do not have
Speaker 1: an answer by design. And this is what leads us to,
Speaker 1: uh to the legendary the legendary puzzle known as cryptose
Speaker 1: with a case.
Speaker 4: Exactly because it sort of straddles both of those sides.
Speaker 2: That's like the name of the last boss in the
Speaker 2: puzzle video game. Yeah, now you must face cryptos.
Speaker 4: It's like, yeah, yeah, it's a little you know, this
Speaker 4: was back in nineteen eighty eight, so maybe it seemed
Speaker 4: a little spookier back.
Speaker 3: And they probably seen some Transformers cartoon, but.
Speaker 1: They like, okay, so AJ, can you introduce us to
Speaker 1: cryptos Because one thing people want to be clear here.
Speaker 1: You might have heard us talking about this and you
Speaker 1: might think that the CIA said, well, we've solved most
Speaker 1: of the puzzles, but there's this one that we have
Speaker 1: no idea about, and it might surprise folks to realize
Speaker 1: that the CIA themselves asked for this puzzle. Is that correct, right?
Speaker 3: Are you cryptos.
Speaker 4: The thorn in their side?
Speaker 1: It really is. It's the self created it's exactly commissioned thorns.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Well, this was the end of the Cold War nineteen
Speaker 4: eighty eight, and they the CIA, they have a portion
Speaker 4: of their budget, like all government agencies, for art, so
Speaker 4: they commissioned what turned out to be one of the
Speaker 4: greatest unsolved puzzles of all time, and it's a sculpture.
Speaker 4: They commissioned a sculpture from an artist named Jim Sanborn,
Speaker 4: and they teamed him up with a retiring cryptographer from
Speaker 4: the CIA, and they teamed up and created this art
Speaker 4: piece called Crypto. And I went to see it. It's amazing.
Speaker 4: It's a big wall, a big metal.
Speaker 1: Wall, and anyone can go visit, by the way, Well.
Speaker 4: No, it took me like a year and a half
Speaker 4: to get permission to visit.
Speaker 1: Are you really Yeah? I thought anyone could go.
Speaker 4: Oh no, it's right in the middle of Langley. It's
Speaker 4: like in the courtyard.
Speaker 2: Okay, so it was not easy, Like if you have minders,
Speaker 2: oh I had tons of minders. You probably had a
Speaker 2: background check too, Oh they had.
Speaker 4: Yes, no, they you know, everything like anything I brought
Speaker 4: in had to be thoroughly vetted. And then they told
Speaker 4: me I can't talk about the vetting in my book.
Speaker 3: So but they to wait.
Speaker 1: So the book just goes from like page forty seven
Speaker 1: to page fifty three.
Speaker 4: No comic, Yeah, well I did. Yeah, I had some
Speaker 4: descriptions of like what they did to me to try
Speaker 4: to get me through, and they're.
Speaker 3: Like, you can sketch what you see, but only for
Speaker 3: five ten seconds.
Speaker 4: Yeah. No, I couldn't take photographs. But it was so
Speaker 4: they commissioned this sculptor and this cryptographer, and it's a
Speaker 4: metal wall with hundreds of letters and symbols on it,
Speaker 4: and it contains the secret code. And thirty five years later,
Speaker 4: it has still not been fully cracked, not even by
Speaker 4: the CIA itself or the NSA. And they'd actually thought
Speaker 4: when they put it up, the CIA is like, oh,
Speaker 4: our guys will crack it in two days a week.
Speaker 4: And it's been thirty five years now I will say
Speaker 4: part of it has been cracked. So there are four
Speaker 4: sections in Cryptos, four different messages on the wall, and
Speaker 4: three of the four have been cracked by CIA employees,
Speaker 4: but also by all of these amateurs who look at
Speaker 4: it online, look at the photos.
Speaker 2: Given the hoops you had to jump through just to
Speaker 2: look at the thing, you think they would have pre
Speaker 2: solved it before they let them build it.
Speaker 3: I don't know why. Maybe that was sort of the points.
Speaker 2: But I love the idea of this retired CIA cryptographer
Speaker 2: cryptologists just did this thing, and then he's like, cryptos out,
Speaker 2: you know, and.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Mike drop for sure. Also, uh, in the interest
Speaker 1: of transparency very much, not the CIA vibe, but in
Speaker 1: the interest of transparency.
Speaker 3: I think I was.
Speaker 1: I was under the impression that this was slightly easier
Speaker 1: to visit because all of the photographs I've seen of
Speaker 1: Cryptos the sculpture are it's in a plaza, right, like
Speaker 1: it's outside and and like you said, I think it's.
Speaker 3: Uh the inter sanctum.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the fourth passage or the fourth side is unsolved.
Speaker 1: But dude, even reading I remember this, I can't quote
Speaker 1: him off the dome, but I remember reading the like
Speaker 1: solutions to the first three and there they themselves seem like.
Speaker 4: Riddles to me, like exactly help.
Speaker 1: It seems like you found another clue or something.
Speaker 4: Well, that is most people think. And the stim Sandber
Speaker 4: and the sculptor has said that the all the four
Speaker 4: when you add them together, it's a clue to another puzzle.
Speaker 4: It sounds like it's a barriage treasure or a hidden treasure,
Speaker 4: possibly on the CIA, because one of the solutions does
Speaker 4: include longitude and latitude. Another one is a quote from
Speaker 4: the guy who discovered King Tut's tomb about the wonders
Speaker 4: that he discovered in there. So they are all leading
Speaker 4: to part five, but since we still haven't style part four,
Speaker 4: we don't know.
Speaker 2: Well, when they inevitably saw it. I hope it's not
Speaker 2: like one of those Heraldo moments where they just like
Speaker 2: open the vaults and there's just like a bag of
Speaker 2: chips or some trash.
Speaker 1: I hope it's a Christmas Story moment, you know, where
Speaker 1: the kid finally gets his decoder ring, not what he
Speaker 1: thought of. The answer is drink more ovaltine.
Speaker 3: I can't wait. It's just an for CIA.
Speaker 1: It's an ad for CIA weld t shirts. Can you imagine? Like, Okay,
Speaker 1: so the people working at the CIA very smart, very
Speaker 1: brilliant people, but there's still just people, so they still
Speaker 1: get lunch. You know, their lunch break is probably shorter
Speaker 1: than they like. So I love this image of some
Speaker 1: CIA folks, crypto nerds going out with you know, their
Speaker 1: brown bag lunch and standing in front of that sculpture
Speaker 1: and eating your sabwich and thinking, okay, king tye, and
Speaker 1: it's like a.
Speaker 3: Nice place to pick a nick. It sounds like there's
Speaker 3: there's a lawn something.
Speaker 2: Were you saying, aj that you had folks reaching out
Speaker 2: to you and they found out that you were doing this,
Speaker 2: like telling you giving you inside tips on other stuff
Speaker 2: to look for.
Speaker 3: That was on the piece itself.
Speaker 4: So I'm on this message board for cryptos because there
Speaker 4: are thousands of people still trying to solve it thirty
Speaker 4: five years later. And first of all, I give them
Speaker 4: credit for the grit. Like when I'm helping my kids
Speaker 4: with their math homework, I'm I'm like, after a minute
Speaker 4: and a half, I'm like, I get like, this is
Speaker 4: thirty five years so and every day I get messages, Oh,
Speaker 4: I think it's gonna the key is Moby Dick or
Speaker 4: the key is it's something to do with Navajo wind talkers,
Speaker 4: And every every day there's a new theory. And I
Speaker 4: was on the board and I said, I just got
Speaker 4: permission to go visit Cryptos in person. And since only
Speaker 4: a couple of them had actually done that, they were
Speaker 4: all at Twitter, and they gave me all of these
Speaker 4: these projects that I had to do, these secret projects.
Speaker 4: Study the patterns in the grass and bring a compass
Speaker 4: to see if the magnetic if there's any weird magnetic energy,
Speaker 4: and look underneath to see how the screws are are positioned.
Speaker 4: So it was hilarious and I did it. I you know,
Speaker 4: I made a full report on it. Has not led
Speaker 4: to the solution yet or or.
Speaker 1: Is it a thing where you can't tell us?
Speaker 4: Oh exactly, I did solve it, and I'm trying to
Speaker 4: get sneak back in and.
Speaker 3: They will come for you in the night.
Speaker 1: Oh no, let's hope the next book is it the
Speaker 1: Year of Livy with the CIA.
Speaker 4: So living in get Mo, well, I will. I will say.
Speaker 4: One of my favorite parts I got to interview the
Speaker 4: sculptor Jim Sanborn, and he is he's a character and eccentric,
Speaker 4: and one of my favorite parts is he's he's been
Speaker 4: this has been going on for three decades, so he
Speaker 4: still gets emails every day from people saying is this
Speaker 4: it is that knows the sculptor and the cryptographer know it.
Speaker 4: Two people in the world know it.
Speaker 3: That's it. That's it.
Speaker 4: They have the allegedly they have the solution somewhere in
Speaker 4: a safe on the CIA, but only two people in
Speaker 4: the world know it.
Speaker 2: Well, really quickly, what kind of echelon of sculptor do
Speaker 2: you have to get to to be invited to create
Speaker 2: an unsolvable you know, the modern art, you know, piece
Speaker 2: on the grounds of the CIA.
Speaker 1: I don't want to sound I don't want to sound
Speaker 1: like I'm telling tales out of school. But if I
Speaker 1: recall correctly, Sanborn has has like grew up with family
Speaker 1: members in the political class, right, or like he's like
Speaker 1: a DC guy.
Speaker 2: I guess I just think about that all the time
Speaker 2: when you see these giant government sanctioned works of art, Like,
Speaker 2: who is this artist that is like a totally cool
Speaker 2: with the government, you know, because our artists tend to
Speaker 2: be a little prickly sometimes about things like that, and
Speaker 2: they're just down for it. And also the government is
Speaker 2: like this artist is both interesting and safe.
Speaker 4: Well, I will say he, I mean, he was supposed
Speaker 4: to have told the head of the CIA at the
Speaker 4: time what the solution was, because I guess the CIA
Speaker 4: didn't want it to be like some Naudie Limerick or something.
Speaker 1: Well, you don't want the.
Speaker 3: Guy at the top to be like I should.
Speaker 1: I don't know either.
Speaker 4: It's a but the thing is, but Sanborn hints that
Speaker 4: he really didn't tell the guy the actual full answer,
Speaker 4: so so really it is still those two who know it.
Speaker 4: But here's one thing that I love about Sanborn as
Speaker 4: a writer, because he gets all of these emails of
Speaker 4: saying is it this?
Speaker 1: Is it that?
Speaker 4: And he got six so he decided he will tell
Speaker 4: you whether his solution is correct, but only if you
Speaker 4: pay him fifty dollars. People wow, right in, they said, exactly.
Speaker 4: I mean he's the highest paid writer per word, I
Speaker 4: think in America because he just has to say nope,
Speaker 4: not it, and that's fifty bucks.
Speaker 2: How do you know if he's even telling Okay, I
Speaker 2: don't mean to besmirch Sanborn's honor, but.
Speaker 3: People just be like, you know, no, man, I got
Speaker 3: to keep the grift going, exactly.
Speaker 4: There are people. There are people that reminds me of
Speaker 4: the the worst.
Speaker 1: So I don't really understand casinos like the gambling Itch
Speaker 1: but I was trying to think of casino games, and
Speaker 1: it feels to me like I figured out the dumbest
Speaker 1: casino game that I think people would still play. It's
Speaker 1: called pick a Number, and so you you pay you know,
Speaker 1: five to fifty bucks or whatever numbers game, and then
Speaker 1: you just guess a number and the dealer says yes
Speaker 1: or no. That's like, I feel like we could sell that.
Speaker 1: But also it feels like Jim got in front of us.
Speaker 4: On that one exactly is yeah exactly.
Speaker 2: It's like how many things am I holding up by
Speaker 2: my back? You know, like, yeah, it's exactly. I mean
Speaker 2: early early gambling probably very much included things like sure, but.
Speaker 1: You're you're welcome MGM, Grand et cetera, and the Mafia
Speaker 1: to our new game pick a number. We'll tell you
Speaker 1: if it's right, as long as you send us fifty bucks.
Speaker 1: There is one thing that I think is really interesting
Speaker 1: to share with our fellow ridiculous historians here, guys, which
Speaker 1: is one mention you made Aj Navajo wind talk.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: It's a great example.
Speaker 2: It's something we've talked about on stuff that I want
Speaker 2: you to know for sure, And honestly, the details are
Speaker 2: a little fuzzy, but I know it involved Native Americans
Speaker 2: using Native American characters and words in ways to embed
Speaker 2: super difficult to crack codes, isn't that right?
Speaker 4: Right? Yeah, I a little fuzzy on this end as well,
Speaker 4: But from what I remember, first of all, they made
Speaker 4: a movie about it, all right, But the idea was
Speaker 4: that this was a language unrelated to any other on Earth.
Speaker 4: So that was like a unicorn, you want that language
Speaker 4: because that way, it's very hard to crack a code.
Speaker 4: When and then they took not only that language, but
Speaker 4: then they encoded the language at least one other time
Speaker 4: and made it even trickier. So yeah, again another unsung here.
Speaker 4: I love these unsung heroes of World War Two.
Speaker 1: I think one of my favorite facts I learned from
Speaker 1: from reading about the wind Talker program was like, you're
Speaker 1: saying that the double twist of encoding a very obscure
Speaker 1: language for the access power certainly, or for like, you know, whatever,
Speaker 1: the global superpower rivals.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: One of the things that was really interesting to me is,
Speaker 1: I will posit there's a third coding iteration because the
Speaker 1: Navajo language didn't have specific words for a lot of
Speaker 1: military things, so like.
Speaker 3: That makes sense.
Speaker 1: You're you're, you're, Like the Navajo language does not, I imagine,
Speaker 1: incorporate something for a word like P fifty two bobber
Speaker 1: or submarine.
Speaker 2: Right right, Well, if you anybody listening feels like poking
Speaker 2: around and on the CIA's website, like aj was, so
Speaker 2: they can see that you're around as well. List there's
Speaker 2: some good writing on that website about the Navajo. Code
Speaker 2: talkers is another term for them, and also on Intelligence
Speaker 2: dot gov, which is the website of the Office of
Speaker 2: the Director of National Intelligence. And I'm reading a little
Speaker 2: blurb here where it says I'm just going to quote
Speaker 2: from it. This system enabled the code talkers to translate
Speaker 2: three lines of English in twenty seconds, not thirty minutes
Speaker 2: as was common with existing code breaking machines. The code
Speaker 2: talkers participated in every major marine operation in the Pacific theater,
Speaker 2: giving them marines a critical advantage throughout the war. They
Speaker 2: apparently were hugely credited for the victory at Ewajima and
Speaker 2: transmitted more than eight hundred messages without error, which is
Speaker 2: a big deal.
Speaker 1: That's amazing. Also, I do want to point out speak
Speaker 1: at this while we're doing references to unsung heroes. If
Speaker 1: you go to American Indian dot SI dot edu. You
Speaker 1: will find an example of the linguistic parker that they
Speaker 1: had to do. Submarine, you guys, is not a word
Speaker 1: in Navajo, so it is translated to iron fish.
Speaker 3: That yeah, yeah, that is.
Speaker 4: And speaking of unhung heroes, I'm looking on the CIA
Speaker 4: website again and the kids section, and they have a
Speaker 4: lot on animals who helped about that.
Speaker 3: There was like a cat, there was definitely a cat.
Speaker 3: There was a catnge devices. That was a whole yep.
Speaker 2: And gosh, now I'm thinking of dolphins with laser beams
Speaker 2: mounted their heads. But that's from from us to powers.
Speaker 3: Gosh, that was a really fun episode, but it was
Speaker 3: a ways back.
Speaker 2: So maybe you know, we're actually about to start doing
Speaker 2: a thing where we re released some classics.
Speaker 3: So maybe we can do it where we actually pair
Speaker 3: them in some ways with things that come up.
Speaker 2: If that's ever, you know, appropriate, then I think this
Speaker 2: might be a good one to make one of our
Speaker 2: first classes.
Speaker 1: It's a beautiful idea. And here we are, we're ending
Speaker 1: with a puzzle. I want to be careful how we
Speaker 1: say this that is solvable but has not yet been solved.
Speaker 1: We're talking to one of the very few people who
Speaker 1: actually went and got to hang out with the CIA.
Speaker 1: So cool, such a yeah, why is that not at
Speaker 1: the top of your bio? Right?
Speaker 2: Uh?
Speaker 1: So h with this, we have to we have to
Speaker 1: ask one thing that I think a lot of our
Speaker 1: our listeners will be very interested in learning. We have
Speaker 1: now done four episodes together on ridiculous history regarding your
Speaker 1: your love of puzzles, your love of analyzing these things,
Speaker 1: and and you have a lot of social commentary as
Speaker 1: well in both your book The Puzzler and the podcast
Speaker 1: The Puzzler. Uh what do you what do you hope
Speaker 1: people take away from these conversations about ciphers, puzzles and
Speaker 1: these thought experiments.
Speaker 4: One thing that I always talk about is the puzzle mindset,
Speaker 4: which is all about curiosity, and I think that is
Speaker 4: a great way to go through life. Quincy Jones, great producer,
Speaker 4: great musician. He has an awesome saying. He says his
Speaker 4: Flay philosophy is I don't have problems, I have puzzles exactly.
Speaker 4: I love that because if you look at problems are
Speaker 4: just so negative and intimidating and stress inducing, whereas puzzles,
Speaker 4: it's like, all right, let's roll up our sleeves and
Speaker 4: try to solve this. So I try to look at
Speaker 4: my problems in my family and my marriage and my business.
Speaker 4: These are puzzles, and I'm going to try to solve them.
Speaker 2: So it's funny you say that I'm in the process
Speaker 2: of doing final mixes on a record. I do that,
Speaker 2: you know, when I'm not podcasting for a kind of
Speaker 2: a psychedelic rock band. And you know, when you have
Speaker 2: such a big thing with so many pieces, like every
Speaker 2: drum has its own microphone, every little element, you are
Speaker 2: carving away frequencies to make the most impactful final products,
Speaker 2: and you have to figure out how to slot these
Speaker 2: things together. And sometimes it's not something you can do
Speaker 2: in one go. You have to think about it in
Speaker 2: stages and in pieces. And that's where like a good
Speaker 2: producer gets their workflow from. And what separates a really
Speaker 2: good one from like a mediocre one is you kind
Speaker 2: of have experience in doing that, but every time it's
Speaker 2: a little different and you have to tailor you know,
Speaker 2: the solutions to the quote unquote problem or I guess
Speaker 2: the puzzles, you know. And I love thinking of using
Speaker 2: puzzle as a stand in for problems. Let's think about
Speaker 2: that just in general in our lives moving forward. And
Speaker 2: that's really smart.
Speaker 4: That is when I's same thing when I'm writing or
Speaker 4: and I'm podcasting, I'm trying to think of it as
Speaker 4: a puzzle and put the pieces together.
Speaker 1: And if you would like to join us in this
Speaker 1: continuing enterprise to solve everything, or at least understand why
Speaker 1: we as humans are so driven to make that attempt,
Speaker 1: then please do check out the puzzler with Aj Bahamas Jacobs.
Speaker 1: I don't think they put Bahamas in there yet, but
Speaker 1: we're we're holding out home.
Speaker 4: We're gonna it's gonna happen, and.
Speaker 1: We're never gonna explain why, and uh still don't know why.
Speaker 1: So it's so we are we are mentally we are
Speaker 1: I mentally again, Aj over the moon that you would
Speaker 1: join us here. As you said, you can hear luminaries
Speaker 1: such as Ofira Eisenberg, Roy Wood Junior, Lisa Lobe, and
Speaker 1: Noel Brown.
Speaker 3: Yeah what about nine stories? Did they get included?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Not yeah, but a great idea.
Speaker 1: Well, AJ, talk about the like you went to school
Speaker 1: with Lisa or something I did.
Speaker 4: I went to college with Lisa Lobe and you only
Speaker 4: hear what I want to AJ. She out very soon
Speaker 4: after college and we were like, oh wow, she was.
Speaker 2: She was among that like that jewel kind of coffee
Speaker 2: shop like elevated coffee shop era where like you know,
Speaker 2: people were getting discovered playing in Granwich village like coffee
Speaker 2: shops and stuff, and oh yeah, that was the and
Speaker 2: then they had movies like you know that they were
Speaker 2: on the soundtrack.
Speaker 3: I think she blew up because it was like reality bites,
Speaker 3: I want to say.
Speaker 4: And she was friends with with Ethan Hawk, yes exactly.
Speaker 2: That was the golden time for singer songwriters and for
Speaker 2: our purposes. Uh.
Speaker 1: She is absolutely great at solving puzzles, which you can.
Speaker 4: See is a puzzle. She's a puzzle Uh, a ficionado.
Speaker 3: Excellent glasses game too, by the way, two.
Speaker 4: Can buy she has.
Speaker 3: So the hustle.
Speaker 1: Spoiler alert, folks. We're hoping that we can get AJ
Speaker 1: back on the show in the near future to talk
Speaker 1: about a book that is near and dear to our hearts,
Speaker 1: the forthcoming year of living constitutionally. Uh, if if it's
Speaker 1: not imposing too much, AJ, could you, uh could you
Speaker 1: give us just like a blurb for our fellow ridiculous historians.
Speaker 3: What is this about.
Speaker 4: I am very excited about us coming out in May.
Speaker 4: And it's called the Year of Living Constitutionally. And I
Speaker 4: try to understand our founding document by getting inside the
Speaker 4: minds of the founding fathers and living the Constitution as
Speaker 4: literally as possible. So I bear a musket in the
Speaker 4: streets of New York. I write pamphlets with a quill
Speaker 4: pen to express my first amendment. I quarter a soldier.
Speaker 4: I apply to be a government sanctioned pirate. And it
Speaker 4: was an amazing experience, and I learned so much about
Speaker 4: the Constitution and hopefully how we can save this country
Speaker 4: which is so insanely divided. And I will say one
Speaker 4: of the joys was having people I respect read it.
Speaker 4: And both Ben and Noel were super supportive and helpful
Speaker 4: in reading the manuscript. So you are in the book.
Speaker 3: You are oh well acknowledgement, very very kind.
Speaker 2: I got to ask you the name of these projects
Speaker 2: you've got biblically now constitutionally that come from the Peter
Speaker 2: Weir movie The Year of Living Dangerously with.
Speaker 4: Mel Gibson said, I love that movie.
Speaker 3: I've actually have not seen it, but it made me
Speaker 3: google that I like, is that a thing?
Speaker 2: I think that's a thing, and it certainly is from
Speaker 2: the guy that directed Master and Commander, which people also love.
Speaker 3: And picnic it Hanging Rock, which I've also heard is
Speaker 3: great seventies.
Speaker 4: I've never seen that.
Speaker 2: I haven't, but I've heard it's like a mystery thriller
Speaker 2: kind of thing. But yeah, you're living dangerously and I
Speaker 2: needed to films Storry mel Gibson.
Speaker 4: Right, And no one even really remembers that, so it's
Speaker 4: a reference that doesn't resonate.
Speaker 3: Does Now you're bringing it back. We're bringing it back.
Speaker 1: We're bringing it back, and we're gonna bring you back
Speaker 1: in the near future.
Speaker 3: I love it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, folks, thank you so much for tuning in. Thank
Speaker 1: you to the legendary one and only mister A. J. Jacobs.
Speaker 1: And oh and thanks to our super producer mister Max Williams,
Speaker 1: who still does own a pair of white pants.
Speaker 3: It's true, never forget the white pants.
Speaker 2: A huge thanks to Alex Williams, who composed our theme
Speaker 2: and is also related by.
Speaker 3: Blood to mister Max Williams and his white pants by marriage.
Speaker 2: Chris Rociotis and he's Jeff Coat here in spirit and
Speaker 2: Ben but ever so not leastly in fact. Firstly, but somehow, lastly,
Speaker 2: thank you Ben for a yeah, this being my master
Speaker 2: and commander.
Speaker 3: Wait no, no too much, that's too much.
Speaker 1: Au Shuxley, thanks as well to Jonathan Strickland, a k a.
Speaker 1: The Quizter. I contacted him earlier. I was like, we
Speaker 1: got this guy you got to meet. He's called the
Speaker 1: Puzzler and Jonathan. Jonathan's response was something just like, I.
Speaker 2: See puert, you have my interests, sir, love it. But
Speaker 2: last lastly, first, foremostly, but last still somehow, thank.
Speaker 3: You AJ for being here and we look forward to
Speaker 3: having you back real soon.
Speaker 4: Oh my pleasure. It's a joy. I love it so
Speaker 4: thank you.
Speaker 3: We'll see you next time. Folks.
Speaker 2: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows