Speaker 1: I'm John Cipher and I'm Jerry O'Shea. I was a
Speaker 1: CIA officer stationed around the world in high threat posts
Speaker 1: in Europe, Russia, and in Asia.
Speaker 2: And I served in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East
Speaker 2: and in war zones. We sometimes created conspiracies to deceive
Speaker 2: our adversaries.
Speaker 1: Now we're going to use our expertise to deconstruct conspiracy
Speaker 1: theories large and small.
Speaker 2: Could they be true? Or are we being manipulated?
Speaker 1: This is Mission implausible. Welcome back to Mission Implausible. Our
Speaker 1: producer John Stern is here with us today and he's
Speaker 1: going to introduce our guests. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Sometimes Adam Davidson brings on one of his friends and
Speaker 3: everyone's very impressed.
Speaker 2: Everyone meaning Jerry. But today I.
Speaker 3: Am bringing on someone who is going.
Speaker 2: To blow all of Adam's guests away.
Speaker 3: The actually is one of my favorite people, same as
Speaker 3: AJ Jacobs. He's had a number of what I believe
Speaker 3: John Stewart called method writing books. Do you remember Aj
Speaker 3: would when you were writing The Year of Living Biblically
Speaker 3: you met me for lunch on the Upper West Side.
Speaker 3: I didn't know you were writing the book, and you
Speaker 3: showed up in a white robe, long beard long hair
Speaker 3: and barefoot.
Speaker 4: I commit to the bit, that's right.
Speaker 3: He also has a very fun and fascinating book called
Speaker 3: The Puzzler and his podcast called The Puzzler, and his
Speaker 3: most recent book is The Year of Living Constitutionally aj
Speaker 3: as is. His want was living the Constitution in practical terms.
Speaker 3: Aj When you got a cold, did you get like
Speaker 3: leeches to be bled?
Speaker 2: Is that what you did?
Speaker 1: Well?
Speaker 4: First of all, I just want to say thank you
Speaker 4: for that lovely introduction and thanks for having me on
Speaker 4: the show. I love the show. Yes, I did try
Speaker 4: to order leeches and my wife put a cabash on it.
Speaker 4: I also when I went to the dermatologist and had
Speaker 4: to have a mole removed, I did request no no,
Speaker 4: no anesthetic, no anesthetic, and she said for insurance reasons
Speaker 4: she couldn't. So that's my excuse for why I never
Speaker 4: did blood letting or the tobacco smoke enema, which was
Speaker 4: a very cutting edge and popular medical procedure of the
Speaker 4: day where they would literally blow smoke up your butt.
Speaker 4: That's where the phrase comes from. Most likely did insurance
Speaker 4: cover it, Ben, But what was the insurance situation they
Speaker 4: had for the founders? Carey quid Ben Franklin is considered
Speaker 4: to have started some insurance like thing, but I don't
Speaker 4: know if that was covered.
Speaker 2: So getting into the weird intersection between puzzles and codes
Speaker 2: and espionage and conspiracy theories, I'm going to throw a
Speaker 2: story at you. This has to do with espionage and
Speaker 2: it has to do with codes. It's one of my favorites.
Speaker 2: I've been looking for an excuse to use it. So
Speaker 2: let's go back to the fifteen twenties. Elizabeth the Second
Speaker 2: is she's Queen of England and she has a spymaster,
Speaker 2: a guy by the name of John d Dee, and
Speaker 2: he goes around Europe collecting intelligence for the Queen. Now
Speaker 2: d is a puzzle master like you, and he's also
Speaker 2: very big to numerology, and he's decided that he should
Speaker 2: be represented by the number seven. It was his lucky number,
Speaker 2: and when he would write to the Queen, it was
Speaker 2: for her eyes only, so he would put zero zero,
Speaker 2: one for each eye, and then he would actually put
Speaker 2: in like a little eyeball, a little dot, and then
Speaker 2: number seven so she would know it was for her
Speaker 2: eyes only, and it was from number seven, So he
Speaker 2: was the first seven and when she responded to him.
Speaker 2: She didn't write out Queen Elizabeth Majesty Rex. She just
Speaker 2: wrote M and so this is where from out of Cambridge,
Speaker 2: this is where seven comes from it.
Speaker 4: I love this story. First of all, why didn't I
Speaker 4: interview you for my book? This is fantastic. So here's
Speaker 4: another one. World War two saw some interesting overlaps between
Speaker 4: puzzles and spying. The Telegraph newspaper in England in nineteen
Speaker 4: forty one, I believe, printed a very hard They love
Speaker 4: in England. They love their super tricky wordplaye crosswords. They're
Speaker 4: harder than in America. No offense to America. And they
Speaker 4: printed one and they said, if you solve this in
Speaker 4: less than twelve minutes, get in touch. And it turned
Speaker 4: out that it was a recruiting tool for what would
Speaker 4: become the Bletchley Park, where Alan Turing and his code
Speaker 4: breakers helped win US World War two by solving the
Speaker 4: Nazi Enigma code. So this is sort of like, are
Speaker 4: you good enough to be a code breaker? And I'll
Speaker 4: give you one example, just to give you an example
Speaker 4: of how tricky these were. They're almost like dad jokes
Speaker 4: on steroids. They're like a clue for seventeen across. In
Speaker 4: this famous puzzle was is this town ready for a flood? Question?
Speaker 4: Mark is this town ready for a flood? And at
Speaker 4: six letters it starts with So the way to think
Speaker 4: about what do you think about when you think of
Speaker 4: a flood? What comes to mind? What's the most famous
Speaker 4: blood ever?
Speaker 2: Noah?
Speaker 4: Noah? And what did he use?
Speaker 2: What did he use?
Speaker 4: An arc? So if you're ready for a flood, you
Speaker 4: don't want an old arc, you want a newer Newark.
Speaker 4: So that's the kind of level of wordplay that they
Speaker 4: were going for. So I love that. And there was
Speaker 4: weirdly a sequel to that, because the Telegraph was involved
Speaker 4: in another spy puzzle incident at the end of World
Speaker 4: War Two. They printed these crosswords and the crosswords had
Speaker 4: in them the answers included words like oh, Maha and
Speaker 4: Utah and neptune and mulberry. And someone noticed this and
Speaker 4: those were secret code words used by the Allies during
Speaker 4: D Day, and they freaked out and they said, oh
Speaker 4: my god, there is a leak in the crossword puzzle.
Speaker 4: And they rested this nerdy school master who had written
Speaker 4: the crosswords, and they thrilled them. But it turned out
Speaker 4: most people think It was a weird coincidence, because those
Speaker 4: coincidences do happen. But whatever, the British spy Service got
Speaker 4: involved and arrested this poor guy and it turned out.
Speaker 2: Ayja, you seem to be pretty supportive of nerdy puzzle guys.
Speaker 4: Yes, I am very pro nerdy puzzle people. I think
Speaker 4: more nerdy puzzle people would make the world a better place.
Speaker 4: And I'll defend that, not physically because I'm nerdy.
Speaker 1: So well. Here in the US, our short of first
Speaker 1: code breaking organization who I was tied to the Army,
Speaker 1: and it was in a building near where I'm living
Speaker 1: now in northern Virginia, near Washington. It's now the State
Speaker 1: Department's Preparation and Training school. And of course in the
Speaker 1: United States now the main sort of code breaking organization
Speaker 1: is the n essay, the National Security Agency.
Speaker 4: In my book, I did actually go to Langley to
Speaker 4: the headquarters of this to see one of the great
Speaker 4: unsolved puzzles of all time right there at the headquarters
Speaker 4: of the CIA.
Speaker 1: Cryptos yam, quick question, did you go to the Dunkin
Speaker 1: Donuts or did you go to the Starbucks? That's how
Speaker 1: we divide people there. Yeah, and which are you tribes,
Speaker 1: Dunkin Donuts, I'm Dunkin Okay good.
Speaker 2: And it's Starbucks. When they say what name do you want?
Speaker 2: You can't give them your real name, right if you're
Speaker 2: under cover, you got to give them a fake name.
Speaker 2: And the baristas have to get security clearances.
Speaker 4: It was a weekend, so I actually did not get
Speaker 4: to do either. But as you know, Cryptos is this
Speaker 4: sculpture that was commissioned in nineteen eighty eight to spruce
Speaker 4: up the CIA headquarters. And it was done by a
Speaker 4: sculptor named Jim Sandborn in collaboration with a cryptographer who
Speaker 4: used to work at the CIA. And it contains like
Speaker 4: hundreds of these characters, these letters, and they are a code,
Speaker 4: and some of the code has been broken, but not
Speaker 4: all of it. There's one section at the end that
Speaker 4: has not been broken. And there are thousands, literally thousands
Speaker 4: of people whose passion, whose hobby is to try to
Speaker 4: break Cryptos number four, as it's called. And I'm on
Speaker 4: this bulletin board where every day I get like ten
Speaker 4: emails about, Oh, I think I got it. It's the
Speaker 4: wind Talkers, that's the It's actually no, it's from Moby Dick.
Speaker 4: All these crazy theories, and of course none of them
Speaker 4: are right yet. So yeah, I just visited it, but
Speaker 4: you worked there. So what was it like from the inside,
Speaker 4: having this mysterious sculpture.
Speaker 2: We have different tribes inside of the CIA, and so
Speaker 2: John and I were like the operators, right, we handle spies,
Speaker 2: we recruit spies, and quite frankly, we just look at
Speaker 2: it and go.
Speaker 1: We we're the knuckle draggers, that's right.
Speaker 2: But there we do hear people who are like the
Speaker 2: science and technology guys and the code guys, and like
Speaker 2: they're in there looking at it, and we're like, basically,
Speaker 2: it's beyond us. We don't even truck.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was beyond me. But what I found interesting
Speaker 4: about it, First of all, I loved going to the
Speaker 4: CIA because getting vetted for it was a hilarious and
Speaker 4: crazy long process. And then when I announced on the
Speaker 4: board that I was going to visit in person, they
Speaker 4: got all excited and they're like, look and see what
Speaker 4: the color of the grass is on this section? Is
Speaker 4: the water in the whirlpool? Which way is it going
Speaker 4: clockwise or counterclockwise? Are the bolts in any particular? So
Speaker 4: they had all of these ideas, and to me, cryptos
Speaker 4: is a very good example of a phenomenon that is
Speaker 4: related to both puzzles and conspiracies, and that is apenia.
Speaker 4: And appenia is our tendency to find patterns where there
Speaker 4: are no patterns, to find signal in the noise. So
Speaker 4: if you see Jesus's face on a piece of French toast,
Speaker 4: that's apathenia, or maybe not, maybe as who knows, maybe
Speaker 4: it is a miracle, but it is at the heart
Speaker 4: of so much conspiracy. You're seeing all of these connections
Speaker 4: that aren't there. You see, Ah, the word CP in
Speaker 4: these emails. That doesn't stand for cheese pizza. They're not
Speaker 4: ordering cheese pizza. That's child pornography. And that was literally
Speaker 4: one of the big breaks that QAnon came up with.
Speaker 4: And I think as humans were built to see patterns,
Speaker 4: which was good from an evolutionary standpoint. When there was
Speaker 4: a rustle in the grass, you wanted to believe that
Speaker 4: it was a snake because the cost of being mistaken
Speaker 4: was pretty minimal, whereas the cost of being mistaken the
Speaker 4: other way. You thought it was wind, but it was
Speaker 4: really a snake. That is costly, that'll get you killed.
Speaker 4: So we have this tendency to apophenia, but now in
Speaker 4: the age of social media, not a good thing. That's
Speaker 4: where we get QAnon and all because we're seeing all
Speaker 4: of these connections that don't exist. And my theory is
Speaker 4: that puzzles are a safe outlet for your apathenia because
Speaker 4: there is an actual connection and you can find it,
Speaker 4: but it's not going to inspire you to storm the capitol.
Speaker 4: It is a puzzle and it is for fun, and
Speaker 4: it also teaches you how to be wary of apia
Speaker 4: because you have to be very open minded and say
Speaker 4: you give me as much evidence as you want, doesn't matter.
Speaker 4: I am still going to stick with this crazy hypothesis.
Speaker 3: Let's take a break, we'll be right back.
Speaker 1: Let me switch and ask you about another one of
Speaker 1: your books about the Constitution that you wrote in your
Speaker 1: study the Constitution, So, what conspiracy theories were prevalent among
Speaker 1: the founding fathers. In fact, I've heard some British scholars
Speaker 1: suggest that the country was founded on a false conspiracy
Speaker 1: that King Georgia was much more oppressive than in fact
Speaker 1: he was. In those type of things. So I'm interested
Speaker 1: in your thoughts about conspiracies and defunding fathers.
Speaker 4: It depends on which historian you talk to. I loved
Speaker 4: these British historians who I heard giving a lecture and
Speaker 4: they were saying just that the colonists were very conspiracy minded.
Speaker 4: They were paranoid. They thought the British were out to
Speaker 4: get them, whereas these British historians argued, no, actually, if
Speaker 4: you look at the data, the colonists were paying ten
Speaker 4: percent of the taxes that the British people were in
Speaker 4: the British homeland, so we were actually getting off easily.
Speaker 4: I found it. It was hilarious because I got my patriotism up.
Speaker 4: I'm like, you, British bastard, I can't believe your call.
Speaker 4: You know, this was a fight for freedom, but it
Speaker 4: was fascinating to see their point of view. As with
Speaker 4: many things, I'm sure it was a mixture, but I
Speaker 4: do think after a while they were seeing the worst
Speaker 4: in what Britain did. And there were people who like
Speaker 4: John Dickinson, who didn't want to go to war. And
Speaker 4: Dickinson's like, let's just calm down, let's just take a breath,
Speaker 4: but he lost out in the end.
Speaker 2: Yeah, do you have any sense of the culpeper written?
Speaker 2: So this was George Washington's espionage network in New York
Speaker 2: and up the East Coast, and they had ad a
Speaker 2: guy's name was Talmadge came up with this elaborate code
Speaker 2: with like seven to eight hundred different sort of codes.
Speaker 2: George Washington was seven to point one famously in the code.
Speaker 2: But they ran espionage operations that allowed for the numerically
Speaker 2: inferior and qualitatively inferior US forces defeat the British over
Speaker 2: and over again because we had better spy networks.
Speaker 4: I love that.
Speaker 2: And five years the Culpeper Ring operated inside of then
Speaker 2: British occupied New York and they were never hot and
Speaker 2: the British several times were able to acquire some of
Speaker 2: the messages, but they couldn't break the code.
Speaker 4: And by the way, I believe that one of the
Speaker 4: centers of espionage and the Revolutionary War was France's tavern
Speaker 4: in downtown New York, where you can still go and
Speaker 4: have a pint. I know that one of the most
Speaker 4: famous codes is called the Arnold Code or the Arnold cipher,
Speaker 4: based on Benedict Arnold, and it's what he used to
Speaker 4: communicate with the British, and that one you probably know,
Speaker 4: it's you both have the same book, so maybe it's
Speaker 4: the Bible, maybe it's a history book. And then the
Speaker 4: code is you give the page number, you pick a
Speaker 4: word that you need, so say the word is fort.
Speaker 4: You know that they're going to storm a fort, and
Speaker 4: you find it in the book, and you say the
Speaker 4: page number, so that like forty three then five lines down,
Speaker 4: four words in, so fifty three five four would be
Speaker 4: the word fort. I actually just watched The Sympathizer on Netflix,
Speaker 4: which is about Vietnamese spies, and they used the Arnold
Speaker 4: czeipher even then. But I think, well, he certainly got caught.
Speaker 4: I don't know. I don't think. I don't think it
Speaker 4: was the thrilling that one book.
Speaker 2: My wife is British, by the way, she mixes up
Speaker 2: as like the Patriot and the Trader, which one was
Speaker 2: which Arnold or Joel Washington is.
Speaker 4: Like I've heard people try to defend Arnold, like, you know,
Speaker 4: you revisionist history, like sort of the wicked view of
Speaker 4: history where the wicked witch was actually the good person
Speaker 4: and that he was unfairly looked over because he runs
Speaker 4: a brilliant general. I'm not really buying it. I'm not
Speaker 4: a huge fan of Benedict Arnold. So I am glad
Speaker 4: that we caught.
Speaker 1: Him going back to the thing with the Constitution and
Speaker 1: trying to tie it to today. From your study of
Speaker 1: the Funding Fathers and the Constitution, where do you see
Speaker 1: us shifting away from their intent? Now?
Speaker 4: Thank god, we don't follow the way they followed the Constitution,
Speaker 4: because we're parts of it that were great in that time.
Speaker 4: But we are in a different era, and so that
Speaker 4: was part of the point of the book is to
Speaker 4: show the evolution of our morals. And my method was
Speaker 4: I decided to try to get inside the heads of
Speaker 4: the Founding Fathers by using the technology and mindset from
Speaker 4: the seventeen eighties. And that meant carrying a musket, eighteenth
Speaker 4: century musket around New York for my Second Amendment rights.
Speaker 4: It meant writing the book with a quill pen. And
Speaker 4: it was fascinating. And there were parts of the Constitution
Speaker 4: and the Founding Father's vision that are wonderful. I'm so
Speaker 4: grateful for the idea of community and responsibility. But at
Speaker 4: the same time, it was a very different world. And
Speaker 4: so those who say that we should go back and
Speaker 4: live like the Founding Fathers intended, even they are not
Speaker 4: really following it. So, for instance, the First Amendment. I'm
Speaker 4: a journalist, so I love the First Amendment. I love
Speaker 4: free speech, but our vision of free speech is not
Speaker 4: based on the seventeen eighty nine version of free speech,
Speaker 4: which was much more constrained. So back then they believed
Speaker 4: that you could be punished for what you said and
Speaker 4: what you wrote. And there were the sedition Acts from
Speaker 4: John Adams where they arrested dozens of people, including some
Speaker 4: poor guy who made an ass joke or more technically
Speaker 4: an art's joke about John Adams, and so they were
Speaker 4: much more restrictive. And only in the twentieth century did
Speaker 4: we get this idea that it's an American value to
Speaker 4: be able to say whatever we think. I am glad
Speaker 4: that we have shifted. But neither side, neither conservatives or
Speaker 4: liberals would want to go back to that original one
Speaker 4: because the liberals would hate things like there were laws
Speaker 4: against blasphemy in New York. You got fined thirty seven
Speaker 4: and a half cents for saying the word damn or
Speaker 4: the F word. You would be find the same amount.
Speaker 4: So liberals wouldn't like the original free speech, but conservatives
Speaker 4: wouldn't either because it would never have covered something like
Speaker 4: the idea that corporations giving money to politicians is considered
Speaker 4: free speech. The Founders would have been appalled by that idea.
Speaker 4: They were very concerned about money corrupting politics. So the
Speaker 4: idea is, let's take some of the spirit of the
Speaker 4: Founding fathers, their best parts, but let's not try to
Speaker 4: stick to the letter of the Constitution because it's such
Speaker 4: a different world we live in and our technology and
Speaker 4: our morals have changed.
Speaker 2: So I live here in Hawaii and the military here
Speaker 2: every year they have a big celebration and a dinner.
Speaker 2: It is to celebrate the Battle of Midway. And Midway
Speaker 2: was of course the turning point, and we're two where
Speaker 2: we could have lost, and Midway basically boiled down to
Speaker 2: we lure the Japanese into a trap, and we did
Speaker 2: this through a code. And we knew that the letters
Speaker 2: AF for the sound AF, that for the Japanese. That
Speaker 2: meant that was their target. And so we didn't know
Speaker 2: the whole code, but we knew if it was AF
Speaker 2: like AF Malaysia, that meant they were attacking Malaysia. And
Speaker 2: so we had Midway put out in the open false
Speaker 2: statements saying that they were short on water, that they
Speaker 2: didn't have enough drinking water, and the Japanese picked that
Speaker 2: up and in their code they said af the place
Speaker 2: that didn't have enough water. And so the United States
Speaker 2: bet the farm that the Japanese fleet was heading out
Speaker 2: to take Midway, and it was a bet that won
Speaker 2: us the war. And so when you'd sit down to
Speaker 2: talk with Navy personnel, for them, code breaking, espionage, and
Speaker 2: victory at sea are all wound into one.
Speaker 4: And I also love spreading those false information disinformation I
Speaker 4: guess it would be, and that is one of my
Speaker 4: favorite I shouldn't say favorite parts of warfare, but I
Speaker 4: always find it fascinating. You know, Napoleon would print fake
Speaker 4: newspapers in the Russian I believe to throw off the
Speaker 4: Russians at D Day. They made these fake planes that
Speaker 4: looked like they were real planes when you were overhead,
Speaker 4: because they wanted to get the Germans to think that
Speaker 4: we were attacking from a different place.
Speaker 2: Do you know who was put in charge of that
Speaker 2: fake army patent? Germans thought they would never do that,
Speaker 2: yet he was.
Speaker 1: In the dog house. He was in trouble, but the
Speaker 1: Germans thought he was the main commander and so they
Speaker 1: put him in charge of that. So the Germans would think, oh,
Speaker 1: he's gonna be in charge of this attack to.
Speaker 4: Klais, imagine how angry he must have been. I can't
Speaker 4: even he seems like a because.
Speaker 1: He did want to Let's take a break. We'll be
Speaker 1: right back. I'm going back to the fact that you've
Speaker 1: studied so many different things. I recall that you also
Speaker 1: at one point got involved like heavy duty exercise and
Speaker 1: health and fitness, and one article you talked about calling
Speaker 1: yourself a germa full. You know, nowadays it seems like
Speaker 1: there's so much misinformation about health and things out there,
Speaker 1: and obviously RFK Junior is now going to.
Speaker 4: Be our own My goodness.
Speaker 1: Yeah, can you talk a little bit about misinformation, possibly
Speaker 1: conspiracies and things that you learned in the health, fitness
Speaker 1: and science area.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, I love this topic because it's so important.
Speaker 4: Ninety percent of health advice could be summed up in
Speaker 4: a paragraph. Get enough sleep, don't stress, have a group
Speaker 4: of friends, exercise in a way you like, don't eat
Speaker 4: processed foods, don't smoke, don't hit yourself in the face
Speaker 4: with an axe. Yeah, just very obvious stuff. But the
Speaker 4: problem is if you're a health health journalist or a
Speaker 4: health writer or a health influence So that's boring. No
Speaker 4: one's going to tune in to you saying that paragraph.
Speaker 4: Every week. You have to come up with new ideas
Speaker 4: that they are keeping secret, the real secret. Here's the
Speaker 4: real herb that's going to make you live another one
Speaker 4: hundred years. And it's just ninety eight percent of it
Speaker 4: is bullshit. It's tied to our desire for new and
Speaker 4: secret information like that is exciting. We don't want to
Speaker 4: hear the same thing, even if it's true. I talk
Speaker 4: about the single study syndrome. Don't fall for the single study.
Speaker 4: You can always find a study in health that says
Speaker 4: something like bacon is good for you and make you
Speaker 4: live forever. But that's just one study. You've got to
Speaker 4: look at the thousands of other studies that say, you
Speaker 4: know what, bacon is probably not good for you. So
Speaker 4: look at the big picture. But if you're in health journalist,
Speaker 4: you're gonna look at that one study that's exciting and
Speaker 4: counter and inuitive and new and be like, oh, look
Speaker 4: at this, bacon is good for you. And that's where
Speaker 4: so much of the misinformation comes from.
Speaker 1: Well, so you're blaming the media on this one. All right.
Speaker 4: I'm a part of the media and I fully blame
Speaker 4: the media.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but could you go deeper on it and go
Speaker 5: into like specific conspiracy theories, especially when it comes to
Speaker 5: like getting vaccines and things like that, and that is
Speaker 5: a Those are conspiracy theories.
Speaker 2: Conspiracies, and they're really harmful to our politics, but more
Speaker 2: importantly to the general health situation.
Speaker 4: It's so frustrating to see the anti vax movement have
Speaker 4: so much power. And as for why, I think it
Speaker 4: goes back to this idea that people love secrets. They
Speaker 4: love to assume that authorities are out to get them,
Speaker 4: and sometimes they are. Sometimes authorities are, but often they're not.
Speaker 4: Paranoia is it feels good. It feels good to be like, oh,
Speaker 4: they're out to get make I actually talk about the
Speaker 4: opposite of paranoia is called pro noya, which is the
Speaker 4: idea that people are secretly plotting to make your life better.
Speaker 4: And I do think there are people in the government
Speaker 4: who I should be pronoyed about. There are people who
Speaker 4: are trying to make our lives better, but that's not
Speaker 4: as exciting a story as that these secret authorities are
Speaker 4: out to get us, so that I think plays a
Speaker 4: big part in this anti vax.
Speaker 2: My sense is people are out to get them, but
Speaker 2: it's not the government people. It's the people trying to
Speaker 2: sell them snake oil. I don't really watch Alex Jones,
Speaker 2: but I've tuned in a couple of times to see
Speaker 2: what it's about. You know, he's selling you vitamin supplements
Speaker 2: that will help you live. He's stoking the fear of
Speaker 2: government that doesn't defend itself. And what he's doing, he's
Speaker 2: making money of it, and he's gaining influence, and there's
Speaker 2: a whole industry, right.
Speaker 4: It's interesting. I think it's I see it as a
Speaker 4: little more nuanced. I think that there are certainly some
Speaker 4: quacks who are out to get you, But I think
Speaker 4: quacks believe what they're selling. They believe their snake oil
Speaker 4: is good. And I think scientific literacy needs to be
Speaker 4: taught in schools more. We need to tell people this
Speaker 4: is how you read a study. But a lot of
Speaker 4: these people say, oh, I gave this guy in my
Speaker 4: snake oil and six months later he was cured. Oh
Speaker 4: could that be a correlation and not causation? Probably the
Speaker 4: same with astrology and people who read poems. I think
Speaker 4: most of them actually believe that they are telling the
Speaker 4: truth and providing a service. And I don't know how
Speaker 4: to battle that is, except for teaching people scientific literacy.
Speaker 1: Nowadays it's about typing just some stuff into the Google machine.
Speaker 1: And I know one of the things that you wrote
Speaker 1: about it is that you had read the encyclopedia from
Speaker 1: front to back. And there's probably people now that don't
Speaker 1: even know what an encyclopedia is, and they would probably think, well,
Speaker 1: did you read the whole Internet? But I saw a thing.
Speaker 1: A teacher tried to expose her children to the encyclopedia
Speaker 1: and they really jumped in and they said, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: we know how to do that. And then when she said, okay,
Speaker 1: look up D day or something, they started looking under
Speaker 1: W for what is D day? Because that's how you look,
Speaker 1: That's how you look on the computer. Right.
Speaker 4: That is hilarious. I love it. Yeah, I did it.
Speaker 4: I read this book was about twenty years ago, and
Speaker 4: it was at the very tail end of physical encyclopedias
Speaker 4: of a year or two later they stopped. And that
Speaker 4: is it's a big problem because at the time that
Speaker 4: was seen as an authoritative source and they did try
Speaker 4: to be objective and they didn't always succeed, but they tried.
Speaker 4: Whereas now with online everything is flat, so it's very
Speaker 4: hard to tell what is authoritative and what is not.
Speaker 4: I have a few heuristics that I use. You know,
Speaker 4: if it's dot edu, it gets like a plus one
Speaker 4: in my book. If they admit their mistakes, you get
Speaker 4: you're like, okay, then maybe that's something. If I don't
Speaker 4: use forty two exclamation points, that's probably a good thing.
Speaker 4: That's my job is to try to figure out what
Speaker 4: information is right and what is not. And for me
Speaker 4: it's a struggle. So if you don't have the time
Speaker 4: and it's not your job, I feel for you. And
Speaker 4: there needs to be some sort of you know how
Speaker 4: bonds and securities have a rating. I think we need
Speaker 4: something like that on the internet.
Speaker 2: No discussion of espionage and conspiracy theories and codes is
Speaker 2: complete without at least touching on a recent story that's
Speaker 2: come out. This is on cryptos a gay and it's
Speaker 2: it's it's all out and out. It was like incredibly
Speaker 2: secret CIA German B and D operation where the question
Speaker 2: was how do you defeat all the different codes? And
Speaker 2: the answer is you make the code machine. And so
Speaker 2: this Swiss company Cryptos, I gay it's been around for
Speaker 2: a long time. And CIA's ag in English, Jerry age.
Speaker 2: That's right. So one hundred and twenty countries around the world,
Speaker 2: they had the most intricate codes that puzzle breakers aja,
Speaker 2: not even you could perhaps break. But they see I
Speaker 2: didn't even need to break them because they were making
Speaker 2: the codes. So they had basically all the countries and
Speaker 2: maybe not Russian, but all the other countries in the
Speaker 2: world all used this one machine and the Germans and
Speaker 2: Americans had a backdoor into it.
Speaker 4: Well it is yeah, it's a perpetual cat and mouse
Speaker 4: game of will the code breakers be able to break
Speaker 4: the ultimate code? And that was why we won World
Speaker 4: War two as we broke the German Enigma code thanks
Speaker 4: to Alan Turing and thanks to the Polish. I have
Speaker 4: Polish ancestors. They used to tell Polish jokes back in
Speaker 4: my childhood, but no more. They helped us win World
Speaker 4: War Two.
Speaker 1: The Poles and Finns who passed on some that code
Speaker 1: material from the Jerseys, the friends.
Speaker 2: We stolen a Nigma machine in Washington, d C. We
Speaker 2: had a woman basically she slept with the German code
Speaker 2: clerk for her country.
Speaker 4: But I do think I guess we do need codes
Speaker 4: because I did once and our on something called radical honesty.
Speaker 4: And this was a psychologist in Virginia who believed that
Speaker 4: the world would be a better place if everyone was
Speaker 4: totally honest all the time, but more than that, if
Speaker 4: whatever was on their brain came out of their mouth.
Speaker 4: So the classic you look fat in this dress, you
Speaker 4: would just say it, and he thought that's a more
Speaker 4: authentic and there would be bumps, but it's a more
Speaker 4: authentic way to live. I tried it for a month
Speaker 4: and it was disastrous. It was just a horrible you know,
Speaker 4: it was awkward and our There were moments that were
Speaker 4: liberating and lovely and made my life better and made
Speaker 4: my friend's life better, but overall I don't recommend it.
Speaker 4: What do you all think of radical honesty? Do you
Speaker 4: think we could ever get to a society where we
Speaker 4: don't need secrets and the CIA would not be necessary?
Speaker 2: No, not if people were involved there.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I agree.
Speaker 1: You know you're a polymath rights. We've talked all about
Speaker 1: the Constitution, and we've talked about health, and we've talked
Speaker 1: about puzzles. You also I think did a book on
Speaker 1: the Bible. Can you tell us about some conspiracies or
Speaker 1: misinformation or things you learned in that study.
Speaker 4: Well, first of all, there is a famous conspiracy, or
Speaker 4: a few famous conspiracies in the Bible and code. You
Speaker 4: know the word shibboleth. It's a word that you can
Speaker 4: use to identify who is and who is not part
Speaker 4: of your tribe. And it was based on the word shibboleth,
Speaker 4: which I think the Philistines could not properly pronounce, so
Speaker 4: the Hebrews would say it. And if you said it correctly,
Speaker 4: then you were part of the tribe. What I tried
Speaker 4: to try do was follow the Bible as literally as possible,
Speaker 4: to try to explore how literally should we take the Bible.
Speaker 4: And I went a little overboard, as it's might want.
Speaker 4: And so I you know, I wore a robe, and
Speaker 4: I couldn't shave the corners of my beard because the
Speaker 4: Bible says that you can't shave your corner. I didn't
Speaker 4: know where the corners were, so I let the whole
Speaker 4: thing grow. I stoned adulterers. I used very small stones,
Speaker 4: but I was able to stone some adulters. But a
Speaker 4: lot of it is about how metaphorical are these words
Speaker 4: and how literally should we take them? And so I
Speaker 4: spent time with creationists who believe that the world is
Speaker 4: five thousand years old and that evolution is a false
Speaker 4: conspiracy by these intellectuals to try to bring down society.
Speaker 4: The problem is that they say, if one part of
Speaker 4: the Bible is proved to be metaphorical or wrong, then
Speaker 4: then why follow any of it? Why follow the parts
Speaker 4: about loving your neighbor? But I think that's a very
Speaker 4: black and white view of the Bible. I think you
Speaker 4: can people talk about cherry picking like it's a bad thing,
Speaker 4: but we all cherry pick. We have to cherry pick.
Speaker 4: We pick the good cherries, and so pick the cherries
Speaker 4: about loving your neighbor, don't pick the cherries about homosexuality
Speaker 4: is a sin. So that was one of the points
Speaker 4: of the book.
Speaker 1: Pronouncing Shibbaleth correctly is a way you could see which
Speaker 1: Triber and I didn't realize that. Do you know how
Speaker 1: you could do that? In the CIA? There's a couple
Speaker 1: of things that you can tell when someone doesn't have
Speaker 1: a connection to CIA.
Speaker 4: Oh I want to know, I want to know.
Speaker 1: Well, one is we don't say the CIA, we always
Speaker 1: just say when I was at CIA or CIA did this?
Speaker 4: We never say the good.
Speaker 1: The other one is people always make the mistake and
Speaker 1: call people like us that worked over the agents say,
Speaker 1: were you a CIA agent? Agents are our sources that
Speaker 1: people re recruit to spyflace officers were CIA officers or
Speaker 1: case officers? Is there's some things that like Lacare wrote,
Speaker 1: like the word mole. Apparently we never re used the
Speaker 1: word mole. He used it in his writing, and then
Speaker 1: all of a sudden it became the way to talk
Speaker 1: about a spy inside your own service.
Speaker 4: Oh, I didn't know that.
Speaker 2: One of my favorite codes. So I lived in India
Speaker 2: for a long time, and back in the eighteen forty
Speaker 2: he is a guy the named Charles Napier. He hunkeered
Speaker 2: a whole hunk of India, this western part of it
Speaker 2: called the sin Si n d H. Right, it's just
Speaker 2: Pakistan of India. He wasn't supposed to conquer it. He
Speaker 2: was just supposed to go in and put down this
Speaker 2: local uprising. And so he went beyond his brief and
Speaker 2: he basically defeated the enemy and took it all over,
Speaker 2: annexed it for queen and country and he needed to
Speaker 2: send back a message, but he didn't want to send
Speaker 2: it back in English, and he didn't have a code
Speaker 2: handy because the messengers would be you know, the local
Speaker 2: maharajas would stop and read the letter and andy he
Speaker 2: didn't want them to know before brittened it. So he thought, well,
Speaker 2: how do I do this? And of course they're all
Speaker 2: classically educated then, and so he wrote one word at tave, which,
Speaker 2: of course my Latin is rusty, but in Latin that
Speaker 2: means I have sinned, si n n ed. When they
Speaker 2: got it, they're like, I have sinned. Is like, oh
Speaker 2: he's got I have SI and d age. He's freaking conquered,
Speaker 2: like a big honk, you know, a thousand square miles
Speaker 2: that we didn't want and don't need. So that's a
Speaker 2: good hunk of Pakistan today.
Speaker 4: Oh it's a great sorry plus a double meaning. I mean,
Speaker 4: he did sin He went against his orders, so he
Speaker 4: sinned and he got sinned. So it's a confession. It's
Speaker 4: a great story. I love that.
Speaker 1: Well, a Jay, it's so nice to talk to you.
Speaker 1: You seem to know everything about everything, So thank you
Speaker 1: so much for spending time with us and putting up
Speaker 1: with our crazy questions.
Speaker 4: No, my pleasure. First of all, that statement is huge misinformation.
Speaker 4: I know some things about some things, and some of
Speaker 4: those things are true, and some of them I think
Speaker 4: are true. But I love curiosity, and I do think
Speaker 4: that is at the heart of all of my books,
Speaker 4: and I think it's at the heart of what we
Speaker 4: as a society need to do to save democracy. Well,
Speaker 4: thank you, this was a delight, I really and I
Speaker 4: can't wait for you to come and puzzle with us.
Speaker 1: On the puzzle of our pleasure.
Speaker 4: I'll be gentle, I'll be general.
Speaker 3: Mission Implausible is produced by Adam Davidson, Jerry O'shay, John Cipher,
Speaker 3: and Jonathan Stern. The associate producer is Rachel Harner. Mission
Speaker 3: Implausible it is a production of Honorable Mention and Abominable
Speaker 3: Pictures for iHeart Podcasts.