Speaker 1: Welcome Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, are you welcome to
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow your Mind? My name is Robert Lamb
Speaker 1: and I'm Joe McCormick, and we are back with part
Speaker 1: two of our exploration of the Voytage Manuscript or the
Speaker 1: Vantage Manuscript. We've been saying both this medieval manuscript that
Speaker 1: has fascinated UH scholars cryptographers for for decades now, or
Speaker 1: actually not just decades, for centuries, but especially since it
Speaker 1: was reintroduced to the world around nineteen twelve and has
Speaker 1: become the subject of intense interest because it is full
Speaker 1: of this text that has not been successfully decoded if
Speaker 1: it is in fact a code, or has not been translated,
Speaker 1: if it is in fact a language, accompanied with these
Speaker 1: amazing strange illustrations of alien plants and and women bathing
Speaker 1: in these strange horns with crocodile ten drils. Is this
Speaker 1: absolutely captivating document that is in a library at Yale
Speaker 1: now and today. We wanted to go further by exploring
Speaker 1: the history of people trying to understand this document, to
Speaker 1: come up with a theory of its origin, or to
Speaker 1: explain what it says if it says anything. Yeah, So again,
Speaker 1: definitely listen to part one if you have not. Absolutely
Speaker 1: this is definitely a part one, part two scenario. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think you'll probably be very confused if you try
Speaker 1: to jump in in the middle here, So go back
Speaker 1: to part one first. But so I thought we should
Speaker 1: start off today by separating the different theories of of
Speaker 1: this manuscript into two basic camps. And then within these
Speaker 1: camps there will be different theories. But the two main camps,
Speaker 1: I think we should look at our signal theory and
Speaker 1: noise theory. And so signal theory looks at the Voyage
Speaker 1: manuscript and proposes that there is some underlying meaning to
Speaker 1: the text that it could, at least in theory, actually
Speaker 1: be translated to yield a signal signal or a message.
Speaker 1: And of course it's not necessarily saying that we have
Speaker 1: understood what the messages, or that we ever will understand
Speaker 1: what the messages, but at least in theory it could
Speaker 1: be understood. It says something that's signal theory. Noise theory,
Speaker 1: we would say, proposes that there is no underlying message.
Speaker 1: It's just gibberish, whether intentionally or unintentionally. Yeah, And and
Speaker 1: an indeed, that does cut to the chase. Either this
Speaker 1: is a document that means something or it means nothing,
Speaker 1: and and both are are kind of enthralling possibilities. One
Speaker 1: is filled with wonder and old and and gives way
Speaker 1: to all sorts of you know, conspiracy theories if you
Speaker 1: gaze into it long enough. And the other is is
Speaker 1: kind of equally terrifying that this thing that has captivated
Speaker 1: and just and overwhelmed so many you know, intensely intelligent
Speaker 1: and in many cases that you know, very well educated individuals.
Speaker 1: They could old, but it could ultimately be a work
Speaker 1: of nonsense, that it's just you know, it's kind of
Speaker 1: like just pure chaos. And there could be multiple reasons
Speaker 1: why it could be a work of nonsense or at
Speaker 1: least nonsense to us. And I think we'll explore these individually,
Speaker 1: But first I think we should look at some of
Speaker 1: the possibilities for understanding this document under the signal theory,
Speaker 1: the theory that it actually does say something. So what
Speaker 1: would some of these explanations be. Well, one of the
Speaker 1: big theories is that the cipher theory, the idea that
Speaker 1: the text is protected by a letter based cipher. It's
Speaker 1: a very popular approach to trying to figure out what's
Speaker 1: going on with a vantage manuscript. Right, So the idea
Speaker 1: could be that it's something like a letter substitution system.
Speaker 1: So these characters that we don't recognize, that you know,
Speaker 1: roughly maybe fifteen to twenty five or up to thirty
Speaker 1: characters that are used to make the words in this
Speaker 1: book somehow correspond to letters in a known language, or
Speaker 1: letters in some coded language or or something like that
Speaker 1: that that there's a way of breaking the code and
Speaker 1: it detrains and it can be retranslated into an actual language. Ye.
Speaker 1: Getting into the idea here that it could be in
Speaker 1: a code and it requires a codebook, and since we
Speaker 1: don't have the codebook, it's the cryptographers, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: a goal to try and figure out what the code
Speaker 1: might be. Oh okay, So a codebook could mean that
Speaker 1: it wouldn't even necessarily have to be a straight like
Speaker 1: letter substitution type cipher. It could just be that there
Speaker 1: are you know, like known translations of certain word forms
Speaker 1: or something like that to other known words. Another possibility
Speaker 1: is that it's written in some form of shorthand that
Speaker 1: that we have you know, lost understanding of. There's also uh,
Speaker 1: the the idea of steganography. This is the idea that
Speaker 1: the text itself is meaningless, but key signs would indicate
Speaker 1: hidden useful information, like little details on the illustrations or
Speaker 1: the text itself, or some combination. Um. This would be
Speaker 1: kind of, like, I guess, kind of like a you know,
Speaker 1: a cheap spy novel. Version of this is like counting
Speaker 1: the dotted eyes on a page sort of thing, and
Speaker 1: that tells you something. Sure. Yeah. Another variation that is
Speaker 1: brought up is that you could obtain the necessary info
Speaker 1: info by placing a plate um over the page with
Speaker 1: spaces in that plate to reveal the important characters. Oh yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: so this would be you know, like one of those
Speaker 1: uh uh, you know, decode or ring kinds of things.
Speaker 1: Oh no, that that actually I think is letter substitution.
Speaker 1: There are there are codes like this like this in
Speaker 1: toys and stuff that you can buy that like, you
Speaker 1: put a plate over it's got certain holes on, and
Speaker 1: you read the letters that appear in the holes. Right.
Speaker 1: And it's my understanding that if if those plates were
Speaker 1: random enough, that in and of itself could make it
Speaker 1: extremely difficult, if not impossible, to crack the code. Uh
Speaker 1: you know the vantage managecript. Sure, but then there are
Speaker 1: other theories that are less about code and that might
Speaker 1: still present to us as codes, but maybe it wasn't
Speaker 1: intended as a code. Yeah. Like a big one is
Speaker 1: that it is some form of natural language that has
Speaker 1: been forgotten in various possibilities from Eurasia have been presented. Yea.
Speaker 1: So the idea here would just be we've got no
Speaker 1: other documents written in this language or written in this uh,
Speaker 1: in this transliteration of the language. Right. And then another idea,
Speaker 1: to come back to something we discussed in the last episode,
Speaker 1: is that it could be a constructed language, so like
Speaker 1: a language that somebody made up on purpose, like Klingon
Speaker 1: or doth Rocky, but the fifteenth century version of that
Speaker 1: right now. And now, another intriguing idea, and this was
Speaker 1: apparently presented by Jerry Kennedy and Rob Churchill, that it
Speaker 1: could be a what is what is called a glossal alia. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so this would have been essentially like a work that
Speaker 1: is a stream of consciousness, work that is created via
Speaker 1: speaking in tongues, similar to the work of Christian mystic
Speaker 1: Hildegard of Bingen. Yeah, this would be uh, I mean
Speaker 1: you could look at it as a form of automatic writing,
Speaker 1: you know that that's so there there could be a
Speaker 1: this could be a weird transcription of spoken gloss alia
Speaker 1: like speaking in tongues, or it could be a written
Speaker 1: version of it. Directly, it would be kind of weird
Speaker 1: if it was a transliteration of sounds made orally by
Speaker 1: gloss alia into a script that didn't exist anyway. But
Speaker 1: you can imagine it's certainly being like automatic writing of
Speaker 1: some kind of people, that the spirits are writing through
Speaker 1: my hand. And I think that would mean in this
Speaker 1: case that while it might not be meaningless to the
Speaker 1: person writing it, it would be meaningless to any reader.
Speaker 1: So I think this would fall under the noise category
Speaker 1: right that there would be there is no way to
Speaker 1: understand what this says because there is no underlying signal,
Speaker 1: because in this case, presumably the context for the piece
Speaker 1: would be very personal and then also would probably deal
Speaker 1: a lot with personal reevaluation of the text. You know'd
Speaker 1: be it's almost like like less than a dream journal
Speaker 1: in a way, you know, where the dream is not
Speaker 1: even even taken and put into the into the form
Speaker 1: of language, but like the dream is is in language. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it would be like if if you had a dream journal, yeah,
Speaker 1: where you never translated it into any real language, You
Speaker 1: just made notes about your dreams in random other symbols
Speaker 1: that don't mean anything to anybody else. And then, of course,
Speaker 1: another big idea is that it's simply a hoax, right,
Speaker 1: that it doesn't mean anything. There's no encoded signals, just
Speaker 1: noise because somebody was intentionally trying to create an object
Speaker 1: that would maybe confuse people or trick them, or maybe
Speaker 1: just trick them into thinking that it did say something. Right,
Speaker 1: And if and if that is indeed the reason for
Speaker 1: the origin story of this document, then it is still succeeding.
Speaker 1: It's it's probably succeeded remarkably well, because if it is
Speaker 1: a hoax, it is still tricking people to this day.
Speaker 1: Another idea is that if it were a hoax, if
Speaker 1: it were a completely fraudulent document, you could also make
Speaker 1: a case that it was a you know, a way
Speaker 1: to try and make a quick buck off of, you know,
Speaker 1: a cult fanboys with a lot of money, such as
Speaker 1: the Holy Roman Emperor who who purchased it, so we
Speaker 1: know it was sold to Rudolph the Second. We think
Speaker 1: around fifteen eighty six. That's when the historical records indicate.
Speaker 1: But the carbon dating of the vellums says that this this,
Speaker 1: this parchment at least was probably produced in like the
Speaker 1: early fourteen hundreds. Now maybe maybe we think like it's
Speaker 1: possible to parchment the vellums sat around for a long
Speaker 1: time before it was made into this document. But if
Speaker 1: you think that the creation of the pages on which
Speaker 1: it was written was sometime close to when the document
Speaker 1: was written, then it would have been written long before
Speaker 1: there was a chance to sell it to Rudolph the second,
Speaker 1: So it would be hard to imagine that it was
Speaker 1: created specifically for that purpose. Now, one of the things
Speaker 1: is that people have tried to do various kinds of
Speaker 1: statistical analysis of the text to say, okay, does even
Speaker 1: though we can't translate it yet, does this look like
Speaker 1: a natural language? Does it look like it could somehow
Speaker 1: be decoded to or translated to a natural language? And
Speaker 1: I would say that the answer there is inconclusive. There
Speaker 1: are pieces of evidence pointing both ways, right, Like one
Speaker 1: commonly cited weird feature of the text that really makes
Speaker 1: it look like not a natural language is the fact
Speaker 1: that in some cases words are repeated in line up
Speaker 1: to three times in a row? Is that normal for
Speaker 1: a language? Is that normal? Normal? Normal? Not really really really,
Speaker 1: I mean I don't know poetically lyrically uh shanty shanti shan.
Speaker 1: I mean we can all think of examples from songs
Speaker 1: and poetry and writing where that's interesting. You know, something
Speaker 1: maybe said three times to to add emphasis. But I mean,
Speaker 1: I I am not I'm not the expert comment commenting
Speaker 1: on this from it's saying Sunday, Sunday, Sunday. This does
Speaker 1: remind me though, when I was a kid, sometimes I
Speaker 1: would like trying eight like documents that looked like they
Speaker 1: were you know, magical documents in another language, you know,
Speaker 1: with weird rooms. Um. And actually I do that still sometimes,
Speaker 1: like doodling, you know in the corners of a page,
Speaker 1: if I'm supposed to be taking notes on something. Uh.
Speaker 1: But I even even as a kid, I would I
Speaker 1: would look back at what I had done and I
Speaker 1: would realize, what this This doesn't look like language like,
Speaker 1: it doesn't like there's not enough variety in the the
Speaker 1: the signal, little signals that I've I've concocted, or something
Speaker 1: that just essentially pulled out of my head they're like,
Speaker 1: it's not matching up with what one would expect from
Speaker 1: any kind of writing or coded writing system. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: I mentioned in the last episode there was a good
Speaker 1: article about this from two thousand eleven and skeptical inquirer
Speaker 1: by the German computer scientist Klaus Schmai who who I
Speaker 1: think he looked at a lot of the statistical qualities
Speaker 1: of the text from a cryptography point of view, and
Speaker 1: it seemed like he said, yeah, there there's evidence both ways,
Speaker 1: and we can continue to talk about some of that
Speaker 1: evidence as we go on in the episode. One interesting
Speaker 1: claim I came across. I'm sorry that I feel like
Speaker 1: I can't evaluate whether this is a correct claim or not,
Speaker 1: but at least it's a claim that's made against the
Speaker 1: noise theory or any theory recommending an interpretation of nonsense.
Speaker 1: Is that the document uh at least appears to follow
Speaker 1: something called Ziff's law, which concerns the statistical distribution of
Speaker 1: words and natural languages. So basically, Ziff's law claims that
Speaker 1: in any natural language, the frequency with which a word
Speaker 1: is used will be directly proportional to how how high
Speaker 1: it ranks in the ranking of most common words. So
Speaker 1: the first most common word will be used twice as
Speaker 1: often as the second most common word, three times as
Speaker 1: often as the third most common word, and so forth.
Speaker 1: Now this isn't exactly law in like the physical or
Speaker 1: mathematical sense, but for some reason it does appear to
Speaker 1: hold true for all or almost all natural languages. And
Speaker 1: so if and and the document appears to match this.
Speaker 1: So like if you look at it from a Ziff's
Speaker 1: law distribution, it lines up pretty close. So if the
Speaker 1: frequency count of words in this document follows this law,
Speaker 1: if that is, if that claim is correct, meaning it
Speaker 1: has a similar distribution of words to real documents in
Speaker 1: real languages. That seems to make it a little harder
Speaker 1: to believe it's just total nonsense generated but out of
Speaker 1: somebody's head. Another thing is that different words appear with
Speaker 1: different frequencies in different sections. So remember we've got these
Speaker 1: different sections of the document, like the astrological stuff versus
Speaker 1: the herbal stuff, and so you have some words that
Speaker 1: might appear in the supposed astrological section but not in
Speaker 1: the plants section, and vice versa. This would I think
Speaker 1: be expected if these were written in a real language
Speaker 1: with a real message, like you would have maaze. You
Speaker 1: would probably expect the words star to appear in the
Speaker 1: astrological section, but not in the plants section. So, just
Speaker 1: looking at the symbols, the frequency distribution of symbols and
Speaker 1: how they break out, and how well they resemble a
Speaker 1: real language, it seems like you can push us kind
Speaker 1: of in both directions that we don't get a clear
Speaker 1: reading from either way. From that, and then and again,
Speaker 1: this just comes back to what makes this document so mysterious.
Speaker 1: It's so resistant to unraveling. So and a number of
Speaker 1: theories have been put put forth for the origins and
Speaker 1: the true nature of the text. Uh, you know, so
Speaker 1: much so that in when American cryptologist and computer programmer married,
Speaker 1: the Imperio composed the Voltage Manuscript and Elegant Enigma for
Speaker 1: the U. S Military, which is commissioned by the US
Speaker 1: Military Cryptography. I mean, that's a yeah, of massive state importance.
Speaker 1: It is. Yeah. So this is not like some sort
Speaker 1: of weird you know, Area fifty one type of Shenanigan
Speaker 1: going on here. But in this uh, this paper, which
Speaker 1: is readily available online, you can find a PDF of
Speaker 1: the full thing. She admits that she quote unwittingly retraced
Speaker 1: the steps of all my predecessors, rediscovering their sources, peating
Speaker 1: their experiments, growing excited over the same promising leads that
Speaker 1: excited them, and learning only later that all these things
Speaker 1: had already been tried and had failed, often several times.
Speaker 1: And I found that to just be very, very fitting,
Speaker 1: because this does seem to be a theme, uh is
Speaker 1: that you know, certainly in the last century. Well, it's
Speaker 1: not hard to see why. Again, this is like it's
Speaker 1: sort of the holy grail of of of decoding, right, yeah, yes,
Speaker 1: it's the mount Everest of code breaking. If you could
Speaker 1: crack it, you'd be you would be like the hottest,
Speaker 1: you know, code cracker in the world. Yeah. And so
Speaker 1: code crackers have have tried, have taken a shot at it.
Speaker 1: Linguists have have have taken a shot at it. Various
Speaker 1: scholar all manner of scholars, amateurs, and of course outright
Speaker 1: quacks have taken taken their hand to the Vantage Manuscript.
Speaker 1: I think we alluded to this in the last episode,
Speaker 1: but the Internet is full of people who claim to
Speaker 1: have decoded the Voltage Manuscript to the point where when
Speaker 1: we were preparing for the episode, I mean a lot
Speaker 1: of these were just like, you know, somebody in the
Speaker 1: last year or two has published a you know, a
Speaker 1: YouTube video or or an article somewhere where they're like,
Speaker 1: I did it. I cracked it. Here's the answer. And
Speaker 1: I'm like, I don't know. Maybe one of these people
Speaker 1: actually did and it just hasn't really been analyzed or
Speaker 1: reported on yet. I have no way of knowing because
Speaker 1: I don't have an expertise obviously in the relevant fields,
Speaker 1: so I can't like evaluate it on my own. But
Speaker 1: it's funny, like there's so many people trying and claiming
Speaker 1: to have done it that you somebody could have done
Speaker 1: it and we might not even know for a while
Speaker 1: because it would just get lost in the sea of
Speaker 1: of of all these claims. All right, on that note,
Speaker 1: we're going to take a quick break. When we come back,
Speaker 1: we're going to discuss the possibility, uh pretty much discredited
Speaker 1: possibility that Roger Bacon actually had a hand in creating this.
Speaker 1: Thank you, all right, we're back. Time to talk about
Speaker 1: Mr Bacon. Now, you remember from the last episode the
Speaker 1: it came with a certificate of authenticity. Originally, when rude
Speaker 1: Off the Second the Holy Roman Emperor bought this U
Speaker 1: bought the Voytage manuscript for six hundred ducats or Ducket's
Speaker 1: he it came along with a letter that said, well,
Speaker 1: by the way, Roger Bacon made this. Yeah. And according
Speaker 1: to Josephine Livingstone, who wrote a really nice piece in
Speaker 1: The New Yorker about this, actually a couple of pieces.
Speaker 1: One was kind of a follow up where she talked
Speaker 1: about just internet fascination with the Voytage manuscript. She points out, yeah,
Speaker 1: that this does not seem to be the case though,
Speaker 1: uh though it was a kind of a popular idea
Speaker 1: for a while, or it is like repopularized and you know,
Speaker 1: well before the carbon dating actually took place. But one
Speaker 1: William Romaine new Bold, a professor of intellectual and moral
Speaker 1: philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania. He argued in favor
Speaker 1: of the Bacon origin, believing it to be an anagrammed
Speaker 1: micrographic shorthand it required transposition, abbreviation, and microscopic notation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: his method, from what I've read, was a little over
Speaker 1: the I mean it's like he was like looking inside
Speaker 1: the characters to see little micro like strokes of ink
Speaker 1: that may have indicated actual letters or abbreviations. Of word phonemes,
Speaker 1: and so his his method of decoding it, which he
Speaker 1: claimed was successful, was incredibly complicated. Yeah, but he claimed
Speaker 1: that he had translated, and he provided all these details
Speaker 1: like drawing it into various you know, other writings and
Speaker 1: ideas of Bacon. And he was apparently a brilliant individual.
Speaker 1: But but no one could take his solution and reproduce
Speaker 1: the same results using these methods. Right, it required so
Speaker 1: many subjective judgment calls about what he was seeing on
Speaker 1: the page in these micro notation marks, and what that
Speaker 1: was supposed to correlate to. Yeah. Medieval medievalist John Matthews Manly,
Speaker 1: one of the the Army's chief cryptologists during World War One,
Speaker 1: conclude did that the quote decipherments were not discoveries of
Speaker 1: secret hidden of secrets hidden by Roger Bacon, but the
Speaker 1: products of new Bold's own intense enthusiasm and his learned
Speaker 1: and ingenious subconscious. According to Schmay's article and Skeptical enquire
Speaker 1: new Bold's translation had revealed that Roger Bacon already had
Speaker 1: a telescope in the thirteenth century, predating the known invention
Speaker 1: of the telescope in the first decade of the sixteen
Speaker 1: hundreds by like centuries, and that Bacon had used this
Speaker 1: telescope to discover the spiral structure of the Andromeda galaxy.
Speaker 1: It's just hard to believe though, that like you could
Speaker 1: generate generate text that complex, you know, just by subjective
Speaker 1: interpretations of tiny things. And then of course, as we're saying,
Speaker 1: like nobody else could could come up with the same
Speaker 1: translations based on what he had. So I don't know,
Speaker 1: it just seems like he was he was looking for
Speaker 1: the text he wanted to find, almost like like it
Speaker 1: spells like new Bold is great. Yeah, you know, another great, interesting,
Speaker 1: insightful description of of this. Uh. This incident with new
Speaker 1: Bold comes from Terence McKenna, who wrote about the manuscript
Speaker 1: for Nosis magazine in nine eight in what is, by
Speaker 1: the way, a purely historical linguistic article that has nothing
Speaker 1: to do with any of his writings on psychedelics, although
Speaker 1: I can absolutely see why McKenna would be interested in
Speaker 1: the subject because it's this it's this manuscript that seems
Speaker 1: to sit at the intersection of primitive science and magic
Speaker 1: and plants. Yeah. Uh, this, this particular article is you
Speaker 1: can find it online in PDF form. It's also collected
Speaker 1: in the archaic revival. It is you know, dated. It's
Speaker 1: so he was written prior to carbon dating. But he
Speaker 1: sums up the new Bold case by saying, quote, the
Speaker 1: problem with all of this was no one else could
Speaker 1: extract the same plain text using Professor Newbold's method. It
Speaker 1: involves so many choices from pools of letters at every
Speaker 1: given point along the way that one could demonstrate that
Speaker 1: hundreds of different messages could be extract it from the
Speaker 1: same passages. Nubold died a broken man, disgraced, his career shattered.
Speaker 1: He had gone too far, and the Vontage manuscript had
Speaker 1: claimed its first victim. Now McKenna is not actually arguing
Speaker 1: that there's a curse on the document or anything here,
Speaker 1: but I think he does get a little magic here
Speaker 1: with it. Later on, I mean time Will talks in
Speaker 1: this particular paper. He doesn't really tie it into any
Speaker 1: of his more um you know, spiritual shamanistic ideas. It's
Speaker 1: it's ultimately pretty straightforward, though again a dated piece because
Speaker 1: when it was written, um but but but but he
Speaker 1: does touch in this on this idea of it claiming
Speaker 1: its first victim, on a pattern that one sees to
Speaker 1: this very day in vontage research. It draws so many
Speaker 1: people in and certainly, while there are quacks and conspiracy
Speaker 1: theory makers in the mix, you also see a lot
Speaker 1: of very intelligent, educated, and disciplined people diving into the
Speaker 1: text and initially claiming victory, only to realize that they
Speaker 1: two have failed to see through its mysteries and and
Speaker 1: in some cases are kind of broken on the manuscript. Again. Yeah,
Speaker 1: mckenn i also tell I wish I could remember the
Speaker 1: name of this, but he tells an anecdote. I don't
Speaker 1: know if this is one of the commonly circulated stories
Speaker 1: about the translation attempts, but he tells an anecdote about
Speaker 1: this one aging scholar who was in his nineties who
Speaker 1: claimed to some colleagues to have cracked the code to
Speaker 1: you know, to understand what it says. And then when
Speaker 1: somebody was trying to follow up with him about that,
Speaker 1: they were like, okay, we'll fly down to meet you.
Speaker 1: But by the time they got there, he had died
Speaker 1: of a heart attempt. Yes, that's something he relates in
Speaker 1: the Noses piece as well. So whatever information that expert
Speaker 1: may have had, it was lost with him when they died. Well,
Speaker 1: I think the the implication is that the expert had
Speaker 1: not actually solved it and just happened to die right
Speaker 1: in time to not get found out. Certainly the more
Speaker 1: likely scenario given everything that we've discussed here. Now I
Speaker 1: mentioned John Matthews Manly earlier, the War One Army cryptologist. Well,
Speaker 1: he ends up turning Army cryptographer William F. Friedman onto
Speaker 1: the manuscript. In William and his wife Elizabeth worked on
Speaker 1: the project for forty years. Friedman was considered one of
Speaker 1: the greatest cryptographers of his day. He and his team
Speaker 1: cracked Japan's Code Purple during World War Two, but they
Speaker 1: were never able to figure out the manuscript either. UM,
Speaker 1: though Friedman did seem to believe that it might have
Speaker 1: been an attempt to construct an artificial or universal language.
Speaker 1: Robert S. Brumbach, also of Yale University, took a crack
Speaker 1: at it as well and produced some confusing decipherings that
Speaker 1: ultimately lead nowhere UM. But also Alan Turing apparently took
Speaker 1: a crack at it as well, the King of code breakers,
Speaker 1: and even Turing couldn't make any sense of it. Now.
Speaker 1: Another interesting case here, in one Dr Leo Levitov presented
Speaker 1: the idea that the book was a liturgical man annual
Speaker 1: for the the Catherine religion of the Middle Ages, basically
Speaker 1: the only surviving document of the Catherine heresy, a sort
Speaker 1: of Gnostic revival movement was effectively decimated by the Alba
Speaker 1: GenZ And Crusade of the early thirteenth century, and much
Speaker 1: of our understanding of this religion is lost. But Levitov
Speaker 1: makes the argument that it's a book of Catherine sacraments,
Speaker 1: including a euthan asia practice or perhaps in a ritualized
Speaker 1: act of suicide known as endura um, which of the
Speaker 1: illustrations is supposed to show that the bathtubs, so yeah.
Speaker 1: He Levitov argues that we're seeing a discussion of the
Speaker 1: vantage in the vantage of endura as a right of
Speaker 1: ritual opening of the veins and a hot bath as
Speaker 1: a means of consentually ending one's life in a sacred fashion.
Speaker 1: And this ties into like ideas of the Cathy's believing
Speaker 1: like that the physical body was inherently you know, debased,
Speaker 1: and therefore like the it's part of, you know, the
Speaker 1: of ensuring that a refined soul, you know, travels beyond
Speaker 1: this plane of being, that sort of thing. But then
Speaker 1: he also connects uh, Catholicism to the worship of the
Speaker 1: goddess Isis and he uh, you know, he believed that
Speaker 1: that it was not encrypted at all the manuscript, but
Speaker 1: it was written in this uh this you know, this
Speaker 1: this mixture of medieval Flemish and old Fringe and old
Speaker 1: High German loanwords all kind of you know, formed into
Speaker 1: this amalgamation of language. Um. But while some saw promise
Speaker 1: in Levitov's argument, there are plenty of people who had
Speaker 1: numerous problems with it. A big one is that, uh,
Speaker 1: the enduro was definitely a thing. According to Costas Siamus
Speaker 1: in writing for the Journal Religion and Health in t. Sixteen, quote,
Speaker 1: the enduro was the prerequisite act of repentance that allowed
Speaker 1: the fallen soul to return to heaven. But pretty much
Speaker 1: everybody agrees that it was. It was basically a fast.
Speaker 1: It was not a a tool suicide or euthanasia. So
Speaker 1: another one is this whole isis connection. This doesn't pop
Speaker 1: up anywhere else. And years later, you know, when we'd
Speaker 1: finally get some carbon dating that didn't dismissed. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the idea that a bacon a bacon origin was possible
Speaker 1: and certainly a pre Bacon origin of the text was
Speaker 1: equally unlikely or impossible. Yeah, I'd say that's fairly impossible,
Speaker 1: given that the vellum was not from before the early
Speaker 1: fifteenth century, unless again we're dealing with like a copy
Speaker 1: of an earlier text, which again it doesn't necessarily look like. Now,
Speaker 1: when we look at other theories as to you know,
Speaker 1: where it came from, um, you know, they're there have
Speaker 1: been various and most of them haven't really endured. There
Speaker 1: is the interesting notion that sixteenth century occultist mathematician and
Speaker 1: cryptographer John D along with Edward Kelly, may have been
Speaker 1: involved with the manuscript in some some form or another. Now,
Speaker 1: this is McKennis theory. He's got a complicated argument meant
Speaker 1: that that like, yes, it probably was John D and
Speaker 1: Edward Kelly who wrote this document. Yeah, yeah, McKenna did
Speaker 1: present that idea that he though he also readily admitted
Speaker 1: that it was just more you know, he's more basically
Speaker 1: a conjecture on his part, and he had he had
Speaker 1: not done rigorous work to back it up, and there
Speaker 1: were numerous potential holes in the situation. But but Kelly
Speaker 1: and and D did dabble in not dabble. They'd more
Speaker 1: than dabble than occult practices. So I mean it's again
Speaker 1: it's speculative, but it's not hard to see somebody like
Speaker 1: John D coming up with a with a strange constructed
Speaker 1: document that's got kind of magical suggestions in it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we have two older episodes of stuff to blew your
Speaker 1: mind about John D that will probably be running his
Speaker 1: vault episodes here in the immediate future. But yeah, he was.
Speaker 1: He was one of the most brilliant minds of his day.
Speaker 1: He was involved in cryptography, spycraft, occultism, and mathematics. Edward
Speaker 1: Kelly has accompliced here with an it was an occult
Speaker 1: and and most agree a con man or a scoundrel
Speaker 1: of some fashion. Um it is h It's generally described
Speaker 1: that Edward Kelly's ears were both missing, uh you know,
Speaker 1: his punishment for some deed in his past. But yeah,
Speaker 1: but between the two of them, I often have sort
Speaker 1: of tried to figure out, like, what what is the energy,
Speaker 1: what is the nature of of their collaboration? You know,
Speaker 1: they're in a way they're they're a perfect duo, but
Speaker 1: they're also kind of the strange duo where, uh, you
Speaker 1: know D, there's nobody else like him. And then he wondered, like,
Speaker 1: to what extent is uh is Kelly like taking advantage
Speaker 1: of the situation? Um? Or is he able to to
Speaker 1: actually aid D and in some of his various operations here.
Speaker 1: But again, like the interest in cryptography, was there the
Speaker 1: interest in occultism? They also both wrote of communication with
Speaker 1: angels in the Enochian tongue um, which which we have
Speaker 1: an alphabet for, by the way, so and and it
Speaker 1: is not the aucky in language that we see in
Speaker 1: the Vonage manuscript. But certainly if you're looking for people
Speaker 1: at that time period, people who well, you know, would
Speaker 1: have been traveling in this area and have had contact
Speaker 1: with with the Holy Roman Emperor, Um, you know, these
Speaker 1: are these are two prime suspects. Yeah, and I do think, um,
Speaker 1: maybe you were going to get to the s in
Speaker 1: a minute, But I do think it's a decent hypothesis
Speaker 1: that even if John D didn't write this, that John
Speaker 1: D was the source who brought the Voyage Manuscript to
Speaker 1: the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph the second Yes in the
Speaker 1: in the book by Benjamin Woolley, The Queen's Conjuror, which
Speaker 1: is biography of D that I I read a few
Speaker 1: years back for the Stuff of your Mind episode. The
Speaker 1: author does mention that Rudolph may well have acquired the
Speaker 1: manuscript from D, but he does not entertain or dismissed
Speaker 1: the idea that D was involved in his production. But
Speaker 1: but he at least acknowledges that it's it's possible that
Speaker 1: D is the individual who sold it to the Emperor.
Speaker 1: And if that is the case, like, well then we
Speaker 1: can we can add one more step, you know, to
Speaker 1: the beginning of the history of the book. But we
Speaker 1: still don't know where D acquired it, so the mystery remains.
Speaker 1: But John d is a fascinating individual. I mean, he
Speaker 1: is essentially not only is he the Merlin of the day,
Speaker 1: but a lot of our ideas that we associate with
Speaker 1: the mythical and fictional wizard Merlin kind of stem from D.
Speaker 1: I think it's believed that he was the inspiration for
Speaker 1: Shakespeare's Prospero in the Tempest, Right, I've read that as well.
Speaker 1: Uh So, yeah, an astounding figure, you know, to whatever
Speaker 1: degree he was involved with a vantage manuscript. Um, there's
Speaker 1: still plenty of mysterious and wonderful things about about D himself,
Speaker 1: for instance, to what extent he was involved, uh in
Speaker 1: in state craft and and and worked as a spy. Like.
Speaker 1: There's some that argue that he was like totally a
Speaker 1: spy and that many of these occult manuscripts that he
Speaker 1: was uh, you know, peddling around and discussing occult ideas,
Speaker 1: they were essentially codes for things um and others say that, no,
Speaker 1: he was more purely on the the occultist end of
Speaker 1: the spectrum. I I my read, and I think this
Speaker 1: has been the read of other commentators, is that it
Speaker 1: is probably somewhere in between, you know, one of these
Speaker 1: situations where you know, he was definitely fascinating with with
Speaker 1: the occult. He was definitely and I mean he was
Speaker 1: a poly math, but being a poly math of the
Speaker 1: day and the one that traveled throughout Europe he ended
Speaker 1: up you know, and and also being a devout servant
Speaker 1: to Elizabeth the first you know, he was he was
Speaker 1: more than happy to engage in a little spycraft from
Speaker 1: time to time. Another weird connection I believe John D
Speaker 1: is also supposed to be the inspiration for Christopher Marlowe's
Speaker 1: incarnation of Dr faust Us from from of course Dr
Speaker 1: for you know, who makes a deal with the devil
Speaker 1: to get all knowledge and you know, all earthly scientific power.
Speaker 1: And then Christopher Marlowe, who wrote the English play Dr Faustus,
Speaker 1: was also I believe involved in state often and being
Speaker 1: a spy. I'm fascinating, all right. So there are various
Speaker 1: other um origin stories that we're not going to get into,
Speaker 1: but but just to really drive home how this is
Speaker 1: still a thing, How how people are still not, you know,
Speaker 1: not only attempting to crack the Spanish script, but claiming
Speaker 1: that they did. We should discuss two recent attempts, one
Speaker 1: extremely recent attempts h to crack it that have also
Speaker 1: fallen short. Yeah, it seems like there's at least one
Speaker 1: claim every couple of years that gets picked up by
Speaker 1: real like news sites, and then it always kind of like,
Speaker 1: oh no, never mind. Well, in two thousand seventeen we
Speaker 1: saw just such a case. Um there was a history
Speaker 1: researcher and television writer by the name of Nicholas Gibbs,
Speaker 1: and he published it was published in the Times Literary Supplement.
Speaker 1: He believed he'd identified quote, a common form of medieval
Speaker 1: Latin abbreviations often used in medical treatises about herbs, and
Speaker 1: this led him to illustrations in other texts, and he
Speaker 1: believed resembled those in the Wage manuscript. And so this guy.
Speaker 1: This was widely covered, in large part, of course, because
Speaker 1: it was initially published in the Times Literary Supplement. It
Speaker 1: was picked out by picked up by numerous media outlets,
Speaker 1: including Ours Technica. So and initially at Ours Technica editor
Speaker 1: Annally knew Its wrote quote this is again before it
Speaker 1: became discredited. Quote. Gibbs concluded that it's likely the Vonage
Speaker 1: Manuscript was a customized book, possibly created for one person,
Speaker 1: devoted mostly to women's medicine. Other medieval Latin scholars will
Speaker 1: certainly want to weigh in, But the sheer uh mondanity
Speaker 1: of gibbs discovery makes it sound plausible. Okay, So it's
Speaker 1: always like it helps you with the claim to have
Speaker 1: decoded something if the message you decoded is not delicious.
Speaker 1: I think it does help the other believability, because I
Speaker 1: think that's that's ultimately part of the mystery, right And
Speaker 1: the allure and danger of the mystery is that it
Speaker 1: that it is solved, is it is, It's not going
Speaker 1: to be ground baking anymore like the groundbreaking and the
Speaker 1: amazing thing about the Vonage manuscript is not that it
Speaker 1: contains something definite, but that we just have no ability
Speaker 1: to grasp what it contains. Right. You'd have to be
Speaker 1: more suspicious if it says, like, I know, the location
Speaker 1: of the Holy Grail or something. Yeah, but okay, But
Speaker 1: after this piece came out then experts began to weigh
Speaker 1: in and knew it also wrote an excellent retraction piece,
Speaker 1: uh which you know, citing the various experts who responded
Speaker 1: to that initial Uh Times Literary Supplement paper, and the
Speaker 1: various experts concluded that while they think the text might
Speaker 1: actually turn out to be a medical treatise on women's health,
Speaker 1: like that's not impossible, but they think that his translations
Speaker 1: were not grammatically correct, and that, according to Medical Academy
Speaker 1: of America director Lisa Fagan Davis in the Atlantic quote,
Speaker 1: if they had simply sent it to the Banecki Library,
Speaker 1: they would have rebutted it in a heartbeat. And this
Speaker 1: is the library Yale that actually has the vantage script.
Speaker 1: I think they do wantage scholarship there right, So, um so,
Speaker 1: just I guess that's a little bit of advice out there.
Speaker 1: If you were an editor potential of any kind of
Speaker 1: publication and you're potentially um publishing something about someone cracking
Speaker 1: the Vonage manuscript. Um, make a phone call, send an
Speaker 1: email to the Benneck Library and see if you can
Speaker 1: get somebody to to to weigh in on it before
Speaker 1: you publish. Yeah, I think that would be a smart move. Now,
Speaker 1: have there been any cases this year? Yes, into in
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, UM, this one prop popped up. You might
Speaker 1: have seen this headline Bristol academic cracks Vontage code solving
Speaker 1: century old mystery of a midi of medieval text. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember seeing this one. I want to say that
Speaker 1: it even popped up on a fairly notable like Science
Speaker 1: Release website that I use and was but then was
Speaker 1: later removed. Dr Gerard Cheshire, research assistant at Bristol University,
Speaker 1: claimed that it was a therapeutic reference book written in
Speaker 1: a lost language called proto romance, and this article appeared
Speaker 1: on the university's website, but then was later taken down
Speaker 1: after experts chimed in and question the validity of the research.
Speaker 1: And uh another there had I looked. There hasn't been
Speaker 1: like an additional follow up on that, but it would
Speaker 1: It would seem to be the case that this is
Speaker 1: another situation where, um, you know, someone thought they'd cracked
Speaker 1: it and they had not that they had perhaps, in
Speaker 1: the words of Mary the Imperio, you know, recreated the
Speaker 1: same steps and missteps of those that came before trying
Speaker 1: to crack the Vontage Manuscript. And of course, in addition
Speaker 1: to this, like we said, there's just a lot of
Speaker 1: baseless speculation surrounding the manuscript. Online, it features into historical
Speaker 1: conspiracy theory. Yeah, you'll find it on in YouTube, you'll
Speaker 1: find it on various Reddit boards. Um. According to Raymond Clemens,
Speaker 1: a curator of early books and manuscripts at the Banecki Library,
Speaker 1: one of the most fun examples that they've run across
Speaker 1: is that the Vontage Manuscript is an alien is the
Speaker 1: work of an alien visitor to Earth from the Andromeda
Speaker 1: galaxy who was making notes about our planet and then
Speaker 1: dropped their notebook before they return. But wait, why would
Speaker 1: it be notes about our planet if none of the
Speaker 1: plants can be identified? Maybe alien vision, I vision, you know,
Speaker 1: it's weird. I don't know, maybe they were. There are
Speaker 1: a lot of holes in this theory. Joe's what I'm saying, yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, we need to take one more break, but
Speaker 1: we will be right back with more. All right, we're
Speaker 1: back now. We've talked about evidence going in both directions
Speaker 1: of people who just try to look at the text
Speaker 1: statistically or mathematically as a text and say does it
Speaker 1: look like a text in a real language, even coded
Speaker 1: in a real language, and the answer there is some
Speaker 1: indications kind of point to yes, and some indications kind
Speaker 1: of point to know. I think one thing I wanted
Speaker 1: to look at now is something that was pointed out
Speaker 1: in that in that Skeptical Enquirer article by Klaus Schmay
Speaker 1: who was who he pointed out some interesting research from
Speaker 1: the early two thousands by the British linguist Gordon rug
Speaker 1: So I'm just gonna read this section from SMS article.
Speaker 1: Smy writes quote the British linguist Gordon Rugg is among
Speaker 1: the most reputable voytage researchers. He conducted a most interesting
Speaker 1: cryptological experiment. For his experiment, generated a table with random
Speaker 1: combinations of characters that he used as prefixes, roots, or
Speaker 1: suffixes of new words. He positioned a quadratic stencil like
Speaker 1: the one used for encryption in the sixteenth century over
Speaker 1: the table. In this manner he obtained a sequence of
Speaker 1: letters that bore great resemblance to the text of the
Speaker 1: Voyage Manuscript. Rugg's experiment supports the hypothesis that the manuscript
Speaker 1: is nothing but a compilation of meaningless lines and letters,
Speaker 1: which is of course the hoax hypothesis. And then Schmidt
Speaker 1: also points out a study by the Austrian physicist Andreas
Speaker 1: Shinner that also supports the idea that even though there
Speaker 1: are some things about this that do look like a text,
Speaker 1: it's possible like a real text in a real natural language.
Speaker 1: It's possible to generate a text like this without it
Speaker 1: being based on a real language. And and Shinner's analysis
Speaker 1: I think was primarily based on the fact that there
Speaker 1: are unnatural regularities in the order of words appearing in
Speaker 1: the manuscript that don't mirror sequences of words that appear
Speaker 1: in real languages. So I don't think that completely settles it,
Speaker 1: But that's more fuel back on the on the fire
Speaker 1: of the side that says, Okay, this is just a
Speaker 1: hoax document or glossal alia or something something that somebody
Speaker 1: made up and doesn't correlate to real words. That makes sense.
Speaker 1: But and then ultimately this, Yeah, this gives credence to
Speaker 1: just the its power to break those that that desperately
Speaker 1: seek to find meaning in it. Like it just kind
Speaker 1: of it almost seems like it does point people to
Speaker 1: the you know, near the threshold of madness where they
Speaker 1: they make that leap and they say, I've done it,
Speaker 1: I figured it out, and and believe that they have
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, uh, none of the none of
Speaker 1: the individuals that we've we've named here, um, you know,
Speaker 1: from from the Avontage manuscripts. Uh, you know, recent history.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't think any of them have, you know,
Speaker 1: have have been trying to pull anything over on anyone.
Speaker 1: I think they have. They've reached a point where they
Speaker 1: genuinely think they found the clue they found, you know,
Speaker 1: the missing piece that has enabled us to understand this document. Well.
Speaker 1: As satisfying as it is to solve a puzzle, it
Speaker 1: is equally maddening to work on a puzzle without solving it.
Speaker 1: And I think that can kind of drive people. It's
Speaker 1: like it creates unreasonable incentives in the mind to toil
Speaker 1: over a puzzle or a code for so long without
Speaker 1: breaking it. Like you the desire to have broken it
Speaker 1: becomes incredibly strong. I will say this when a lesson
Speaker 1: I've taken home from all of this is friends don't
Speaker 1: let friends claim they've cracked the Vontage manuscript. That's right
Speaker 1: if you if you know somebody and they're like, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, I think I've I've translated the Vontage manuscript.
Speaker 1: I'm going public with this tomorrow. You know, talk him
Speaker 1: down from that. Maybe maybe you know, to ask him
Speaker 1: just to settle down a little and uh and rethink
Speaker 1: before you go public with this this new translation. I
Speaker 1: just want to say, though this is not conclusive, from
Speaker 1: that interesting article by by Schmi about his conclusion, just
Speaker 1: his opinion is that it's very likely it's it's possible
Speaker 1: that it's a hoax. Of course, he thinks the author
Speaker 1: was probably an anonymous artist living in the first half
Speaker 1: of the fourteen hundreds. Uh, and if it is actually encrypted.
Speaker 1: One thing he points to that I think is interesting
Speaker 1: is he says it's easier to encrypt a text if
Speaker 1: the encrypted text generates far more characters than the original text.
Speaker 1: So if a fifty thousand character original document was encrypted
Speaker 1: in a way that generates a hundred and seventy thousand characters,
Speaker 1: then it's easier to see how it could still be
Speaker 1: hiding its meaning, right if there's there's tons of If
Speaker 1: there are tons of characters in there that don't code
Speaker 1: out to anything like, how do you separate the coding
Speaker 1: letters from the filler letters. So that's a possible explanation
Speaker 1: for if there is a code in there, why it
Speaker 1: hasn't been cracked. Yet, another thing that he does find
Speaker 1: plausible is he finds it plausible that the is an
Speaker 1: artificial created language. Somebody just made up a language of
Speaker 1: their own, and that's why it doesn't translate to anything else.
Speaker 1: Based on whatever. That also seems plausible to me. I
Speaker 1: can imagine this being I don't know, a language unique
Speaker 1: to one person who was, you know, toiling away in
Speaker 1: their turret or something in a monastery, or maybe shared
Speaker 1: by a small number of people for some kind of
Speaker 1: esoteric purpose or some kind of a cult purpose maybe,
Speaker 1: But the key being if it's an invented language rather
Speaker 1: than a code for an existing language, that would explain
Speaker 1: why it doesn't code out well. Whatever its origins, whatever
Speaker 1: it's meaning or lack of meaning, it continues to enthrall
Speaker 1: us and perplexus and uh and i'd likely will continue
Speaker 1: to do so. I don't I do not expect that
Speaker 1: will reach the point where we need to you know,
Speaker 1: add there may be additional you know, arguments, there's some
Speaker 1: new ideas that are brought up. But I am not
Speaker 1: expecting to see anybody crack this uh in in the future. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I will say, as much as I would like to
Speaker 1: see it cracked, my the walls of my skeptical fortress
Speaker 1: here have been fortified. And I now when I see
Speaker 1: an article, as they do tend to pop up once
Speaker 1: every year or two, an article about how somebody has
Speaker 1: cracked the Voytage manuscript, I think now I will probably conclude, Okay,
Speaker 1: I bet that's not right. And then then another thing
Speaker 1: about it too, is like if it was cracked, the
Speaker 1: magic would be gone, like the part of the man
Speaker 1: that the whole reason we're enthralled by this document is
Speaker 1: that we don't know what it's meaning or meaninglessness really
Speaker 1: consists of. Well, it's about it's It's like how you know,
Speaker 1: the best part of a mystery is always the middle.
Speaker 1: It's almost never the end. When you get to the
Speaker 1: end and you find out who done it, it's almost
Speaker 1: always disappointing because there's only so many ways it can
Speaker 1: go right, I'd say, Actually, though, to tie it back
Speaker 1: to the subject, one of the only example counter examples
Speaker 1: I can think of is the Name of the Rose,
Speaker 1: where the solution of the mystery is supremely satisfying. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think there's a strong case to be made there. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: Interesting to the other mystery book that I mentioned, Um,
Speaker 1: the Club Duma by Perez Roverta, also a mystery. That's
Speaker 1: the book that The Ninth Gate was based on. Uh.
Speaker 1: And It's been a while since I've seen The Ninth Gate,
Speaker 1: but I definitely remember enjoying the book. It's a fun little,
Speaker 1: uh you know, ac cult themed filler, a thriller. I've
Speaker 1: never read it. I actually check that out. How's the ending? Um?
Speaker 1: Pretty good, as I recall, Yeah, it's different from the
Speaker 1: movie again based on my my fading memory of it.
Speaker 1: But I'd love to close out here with the one
Speaker 1: one more quote from that Terence mckinnipiece from from Mostes magazine,
Speaker 1: which I think he sums up a lot of the
Speaker 1: like the power and the you know, our fascination with
Speaker 1: this document he said, quote it is a kind of
Speaker 1: Borhesian concept that there must be somewhere an unreadable book,
Speaker 1: and perhaps this is it, the unreadable book. Hence at
Speaker 1: an idea, at the idea that the world is in information.
Speaker 1: We have cognizance of the world by ordering all of
Speaker 1: the information we can't we come upon in relation to
Speaker 1: information that we have already accumulated through patterns. An unreadable
Speaker 1: book in a non English script with no dictionary attached
Speaker 1: is very puzzling. We become like linguistic oysters. We secrete
Speaker 1: around it, we insist it into our metaphysics, but we
Speaker 1: don't know what it says, which always carries with it
Speaker 1: the possibility that it says something that would unhinge our
Speaker 1: conceptions of things, or that it's real message is its unreadability.
Speaker 1: It points to the otherness of the nature of information,
Speaker 1: and it is what is called in structuralism, a limit text. Certainly,
Speaker 1: the Vontage Manuscript is the limit text of Western occultism.
Speaker 1: It is truly an occult book, one that no one
Speaker 1: can read the literal meaning of occult. Yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: mystery in the dark, absolutely all right. So there have it,
Speaker 1: the Vonage Manuscript. Obviously, we would love to hear from
Speaker 1: everybody out there, because I have you have you cracked it?
Speaker 1: I there's it's very possible we will hear from someone
Speaker 1: who believes that they have, or at the very least,
Speaker 1: perhaps you can turn us on to some other wild theories. Uh,
Speaker 1: some of the crazier theories that we didn't get into. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, involving it's its origin. Uh yeah, there's there
Speaker 1: are some other ones we didn't discuss. And what involving
Speaker 1: like the uh you know what, the various other like
Speaker 1: occult conspiracy theories, the Rosicrucians and stuff. McKenna talks about that.
Speaker 1: So certainly, if you have idea, have any of those
Speaker 1: ideas you want to chat with us about, uh, you
Speaker 1: can reach out to us. In the meantime, check out
Speaker 1: more episodes of Stuff to Bow Your Mind at Stuff
Speaker 1: to Well your Mind dot com and make sure that
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Speaker 1: thanks as always to our excellent audio producers, Maya Cole
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Speaker 1: in touch with us with feedback on this episode or
Speaker 1: any other, to suggest a topic for the future, to
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