WEBVTT - Who Was the Woman Behind American Codebreaking? 0:00:00.160 --> 0:00:02.680 Guess what, mango? What's that? Will? All right? So tell 0:00:02.680 --> 0:00:05.000 me this doesn't sound like a great premise for a movie. 0:00:05.519 --> 0:00:08.119 About a century ago, a young woman from a small 0:00:08.160 --> 0:00:11.280 town in Indiana heads off to college to study poetry 0:00:11.280 --> 0:00:14.360 and philosophy. Now she does this against her father's will, 0:00:14.440 --> 0:00:17.920 by the way, So she finishes college, travels to Chicago 0:00:17.960 --> 0:00:20.400 to figure out what to do with her life. Already 0:00:20.400 --> 0:00:23.440 following so far, because here's where the crazy plot twist 0:00:23.520 --> 0:00:25.960 comes in. She's about to give up, and then she's 0:00:26.000 --> 0:00:29.920 discovered and hired by this really eccentric tycoon, makes a 0:00:30.000 --> 0:00:32.559 major shift in her life and realizes she has this 0:00:32.680 --> 0:00:36.159 remarkable ability to break codes. She then goes on to 0:00:36.200 --> 0:00:39.160 become one of the greatest code breakers in history, helps 0:00:39.200 --> 0:00:41.640 the US win World War One, helps US defeat the 0:00:41.720 --> 0:00:44.560 Nazis in World War Two, and plays a major role 0:00:44.560 --> 0:00:47.680 in building the foundation for the intelligence agencies in the 0:00:47.800 --> 0:00:51.319 USA today. Boom, what do you think about this? I'd 0:00:51.360 --> 0:00:53.760 watched that movie, yeah, and it should be a movie. 0:00:53.800 --> 0:00:56.800 But here's the thing, it's all true and thanks to 0:00:56.880 --> 0:00:59.840 the years of research and writing by Jason Fagoni, we 0:01:00.080 --> 0:01:02.440 now have a brilliant book. It's called The Woman who 0:01:02.480 --> 0:01:06.080 smashed codes and it tells the story of Elizabeth Smith Friedman. 0:01:06.560 --> 0:01:11.840 I can't stop thinking about this story, so let's dive ina. 0:01:28.280 --> 0:01:30.920 Hey there, podcast listeners, Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm 0:01:30.959 --> 0:01:32.959 Will Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good 0:01:32.959 --> 0:01:35.480 friend Mangesh Ticketer and on the other side of the 0:01:35.520 --> 0:01:39.800 soundproof glass obsessing over his new decoder ring and what's 0:01:39.800 --> 0:01:42.319 he doing. He's he's like he's communicating with us in 0:01:42.680 --> 0:01:45.039 some sort of new language of signals. He and he's 0:01:45.040 --> 0:01:48.520 always so impressive. Mango, that's our that's our friend and 0:01:48.560 --> 0:01:51.760 producer Tristan McNeil. Now today we're talking about one of 0:01:51.760 --> 0:01:56.080 the most fascinating people history almost forgot and honestly might 0:01:56.160 --> 0:01:58.360 have forever had it not been for the book we're 0:01:58.360 --> 0:02:01.919 talking about today. I know it's it's just this incredible story. 0:02:01.960 --> 0:02:04.160 And when you started telling me about it, I'll be honest, 0:02:04.200 --> 0:02:06.720 I really didn't think it could be true. I mean, 0:02:06.760 --> 0:02:10.040 like this poet learning code breaking and then taking down 0:02:10.200 --> 0:02:13.600 Nazis and gangsters and cracking codes with pretty much this 0:02:13.720 --> 0:02:17.600 relative ease, like it just sounded too good. And especially 0:02:17.680 --> 0:02:19.280 since you know, we've done a lot of stories and 0:02:19.360 --> 0:02:22.720 I've never really heard of Elizabeth Smith Friedman before I 0:02:22.760 --> 0:02:25.680 know it's it's honestly why I can't stop talking about 0:02:25.680 --> 0:02:27.840 that story. You really haven't stopped talking about it for 0:02:27.840 --> 0:02:30.240 a while. Well, I'm thrilled we finally have the right 0:02:30.240 --> 0:02:32.200 person on the line to talk about this story, and 0:02:32.240 --> 0:02:36.160 that's the author of The Woman Who Smashed Codes, Jason Fagoni. So, Jason, 0:02:36.200 --> 0:02:38.880 welcome to Part Time Genius. Hey, thanks, guys, I'm glad 0:02:38.919 --> 0:02:42.080 to be here. Well, Jason, I want to jump straight 0:02:42.080 --> 0:02:45.440 into this this really bizarre break that Elizabeth got, you know, 0:02:45.520 --> 0:02:47.720 becoming a code breaker, And of course we want to 0:02:47.760 --> 0:02:50.320 ask you about how you even stumbled into this story. 0:02:50.360 --> 0:02:52.240 But first, can you set the scene a little bit 0:02:52.280 --> 0:02:54.840 and just talk about what her early life was like 0:02:54.960 --> 0:02:57.480 before she got this big break. Yeah. So it's one 0:02:57.480 --> 0:03:00.040 of these kind of classic American tales. You have a 0:03:00.040 --> 0:03:02.360 a hundred years ago, a young woman in her early 0:03:02.400 --> 0:03:05.800 twenties is bored with her life and board with her job. 0:03:05.960 --> 0:03:09.720 She lives in a small town, uh in Midwest, in 0:03:10.080 --> 0:03:13.919 rural Indiana where she's from. She's teaching high school and 0:03:14.480 --> 0:03:18.240 for a bright young woman in nineteen fifteen, nineteen sixteen, 0:03:18.320 --> 0:03:20.280 this is kind of the end of the line right there, 0:03:20.600 --> 0:03:23.760 there is not really um a lot of opportunity beyond 0:03:23.800 --> 0:03:29.120 teaching school. Elizabeth was extremely intelligent, ambitious, and brave, and 0:03:29.240 --> 0:03:32.359 she decided in June nine, sixteen, to take a risk. 0:03:32.720 --> 0:03:35.040 She quit her job teaching school and she moved to 0:03:35.040 --> 0:03:39.960 the big city, to Chicago, to look for something more unusual. 0:03:40.040 --> 0:03:41.840 And that was really all she wanted, was something a 0:03:41.880 --> 0:03:45.720 little bit more unusual. That brought her to a library 0:03:45.720 --> 0:03:49.240 in Chicago, the Newberry Library that happened to have a 0:03:49.400 --> 0:03:52.520 rare volume of Shakespeare from sixteen twenty three was the 0:03:52.560 --> 0:03:57.000 Shakespeare First Saffolio. And she happened to love Shakespeare. She 0:03:57.040 --> 0:04:00.720 had studied Shakespeare in school. She was a poet by training, 0:04:01.000 --> 0:04:04.240 literature scholar, and she just kind of wanted to see 0:04:04.680 --> 0:04:08.040 this rare book. She she hadn't had any luck finding 0:04:08.040 --> 0:04:09.840 a job in Chicago. She spent about a week, week 0:04:09.880 --> 0:04:11.760 and a half they're looking for work, had no luck. 0:04:12.080 --> 0:04:13.960 She was about ready to go back home and move 0:04:14.040 --> 0:04:17.880 in with her parents back in Indiana, but she made 0:04:17.920 --> 0:04:19.960 this one final stop at this library to see this 0:04:20.240 --> 0:04:23.280 Shakespeare book, and she happened to have a chance meeting 0:04:23.320 --> 0:04:26.800 there with an eccentric tycoon named George Fabian that that 0:04:27.040 --> 0:04:31.000 ended up transforming her life, but not just her life, Uh, 0:04:31.240 --> 0:04:34.240 it ended up changing the shape of the twentieth century. 0:04:34.520 --> 0:04:37.960 And to be clear, like she hadn't studied any code breaking, right, 0:04:38.040 --> 0:04:40.600 Like she was um more a liberal arts type, is 0:04:40.600 --> 0:04:42.840 that right? Yeah, absolutely she was. She was a poet 0:04:42.839 --> 0:04:45.200 in a literature person. So and this is one of 0:04:45.200 --> 0:04:47.000 the surprising things about the story and one of the 0:04:47.000 --> 0:04:48.880 things that pulled me in from the from the first 0:04:48.960 --> 0:04:50.760 day I began to read her letters, is that I 0:04:50.760 --> 0:04:54.400 think we we kind of think of code breakers as mathematicians. 0:04:54.440 --> 0:04:56.839 We have this image of the code breakers as someone 0:04:56.880 --> 0:05:01.479 like allan turning professional mathematician, math professor. But the fact 0:05:01.600 --> 0:05:04.880 is code breakers often come from unusual places because the 0:05:04.920 --> 0:05:08.760 core thing about code breaking is it's really about seeing patterns. 0:05:09.040 --> 0:05:12.640 The code breaking is the science of solving a secret 0:05:12.680 --> 0:05:16.160 message without knowing the key. Um. It's akin to if 0:05:16.160 --> 0:05:18.159 you've ever solved the cryptogram and the in the puzzle 0:05:18.200 --> 0:05:20.920 page in the paper. Um. Elizabeth was doing this at 0:05:20.920 --> 0:05:24.240 a sort of more sophisticated level than than most people. 0:05:24.279 --> 0:05:26.800 But it's the same principle. You you you sort of 0:05:26.839 --> 0:05:30.080 take a block of letters that looks like gobbledygook. You 0:05:30.200 --> 0:05:32.799 chop them into their constituent parts, you whirl them around, 0:05:33.040 --> 0:05:35.880 count them and measure them and rearrange them into their 0:05:35.880 --> 0:05:42.160 original order. And um, Elizabeth was a genius at seeing patterns. 0:05:42.160 --> 0:05:44.839 Even though she wasn't mathematically trained, she she had a 0:05:44.839 --> 0:05:47.640 genius for seeing patterns. And that, uh, that's one of 0:05:47.680 --> 0:05:50.240 the things that made her one of the one of 0:05:50.279 --> 0:05:53.320 the most important code breakers of her era. And before 0:05:53.360 --> 0:05:56.800 she was doing the code breaking, that obviously, you know, 0:05:56.880 --> 0:05:59.680 changed the world. And in many ways, it was an 0:05:59.680 --> 0:06:02.000 interest first project. I mean, can you talk a little 0:06:02.000 --> 0:06:05.440 bit about Fabian because he seemed like such a bizarre character, 0:06:05.560 --> 0:06:08.000 and and how this meeting came to be, and and 0:06:08.160 --> 0:06:10.360 and what she was actually asked to do in her 0:06:10.400 --> 0:06:14.160 first assignment with him. So Elizabeth went to this library, 0:06:14.200 --> 0:06:17.200 the Newberry Library, to see this rare book of Shakespeare, 0:06:17.200 --> 0:06:20.320 and she having to fall into conversation with the librarian 0:06:20.320 --> 0:06:22.360 there who saw that she was interested in Shakespeare. The 0:06:22.400 --> 0:06:24.760 librarian comes over and says, you know, it's funny, but 0:06:24.839 --> 0:06:27.240 there's this odd, rich guy who keeps coming to the 0:06:27.279 --> 0:06:30.920 library looking at the same book of Shakespeare. He's convinced 0:06:31.000 --> 0:06:35.560 that there are secret messages embedded inside inside this book 0:06:36.000 --> 0:06:38.279 that have been planted there by the true author of 0:06:38.279 --> 0:06:41.359 Shakespeare's plays. He thinks that the true author is actually 0:06:41.440 --> 0:06:45.400 this guy who is a contemporary of Shakespeare's named Francis Bake. 0:06:46.200 --> 0:06:50.320 So the librarian is telling Elizabeth this, and the librarian says, uh, 0:06:50.360 --> 0:06:52.800 this rich guy, George Fabian. He says he's been looking 0:06:52.800 --> 0:06:55.080 for a research assistant. Would you be interested in something 0:06:55.120 --> 0:06:58.800 like that? Elisabeth says, oh, sure, you know, maybe possibly. 0:06:59.800 --> 0:07:02.640 The librarian makes a phone call to the George Fabian. 0:07:03.040 --> 0:07:07.040 George Fabian ends up coming to the library immediately, bringing 0:07:07.200 --> 0:07:10.200 bringing his chauffeurg limousine. He pulls up in front of 0:07:10.200 --> 0:07:13.320 the Newberry Library and this limo and he tumbles out 0:07:13.320 --> 0:07:16.160 of the limousine and Elizabeth Smith looks at George Fabian 0:07:16.200 --> 0:07:18.320 for the first time, and what she sees is an 0:07:18.440 --> 0:07:23.800 enormous human being. He is six foot for two pounds, 0:07:23.920 --> 0:07:27.320 big iron gray beard. Uh. He just he just sort 0:07:27.320 --> 0:07:31.360 of stomps towards her. Uh. He has big red face, 0:07:31.480 --> 0:07:34.520 and he's sort of full of energy and intent, and 0:07:34.520 --> 0:07:37.360 he's basically towering over her. Because Elizabeth is very petite. 0:07:37.400 --> 0:07:39.920 She's about five ft three and about a hundred and 0:07:39.960 --> 0:07:43.280 ten pounds um. And he looks at her and he says, 0:07:44.000 --> 0:07:46.320 would you like to come to Riverbank and spend the 0:07:46.400 --> 0:07:49.280 night with me? This is you know, this is a 0:07:49.280 --> 0:07:53.040 completely scandalous question. Uh. You know, Elizabeth's from this from 0:07:53.040 --> 0:07:56.080 a fairly devout Quaker family, and and um, and she 0:07:56.120 --> 0:07:57.560 doesn't even know what to say to this. She doesn't 0:07:57.560 --> 0:07:59.600 know what Riverbank is, and said she she kind of 0:07:59.600 --> 0:08:01.400 stammers reply, and she says, well, sir, I don't have 0:08:01.400 --> 0:08:03.800 anything to to sleep in. I don't have any of 0:08:03.800 --> 0:08:06.800 my nightclothes or my or my or my toiletries or 0:08:06.800 --> 0:08:08.600 anything like that. And he says, oh, don't mind that. 0:08:08.680 --> 0:08:10.440 We'll we'll set you up with all of that. Come on, 0:08:10.520 --> 0:08:13.720 and and and this guy, George Fabian, grabs her by 0:08:13.760 --> 0:08:15.560 the arm and sort of walks her out to his 0:08:15.640 --> 0:08:19.760 limousine and and takes her to the Chicago and Northwestern 0:08:19.840 --> 0:08:23.280 train station. And from there, Uh, she has brought to 0:08:23.320 --> 0:08:27.320 this place called river Bank. And what river Bank is 0:08:27.320 --> 0:08:30.560 is one of the most bizarre institutions in America at 0:08:30.560 --> 0:08:34.199 that time, nineteen sixteen. So George, baby, and it turns 0:08:34.200 --> 0:08:39.360 out is a Chicago textile multimillionaire. He's made his fortune 0:08:39.520 --> 0:08:42.320 by selling different kinds of cloth, and he has kind 0:08:42.320 --> 0:08:44.720 of a marketing genius for selling different kinds of cloth 0:08:44.760 --> 0:08:48.440 to department stores. Um. Classic kind of self made guys. 0:08:48.520 --> 0:08:51.320 He's a high school dropout, he's not educated, but he 0:08:51.360 --> 0:08:53.560 has a lot of money, and he has kind of 0:08:53.600 --> 0:08:56.680 the ability in the Gilded Age to build a kingdom 0:08:56.720 --> 0:08:58.800 around himself and to and to kind of set the 0:08:58.840 --> 0:09:02.640 rules for everybody in his orbit. And um, he's a 0:09:02.679 --> 0:09:05.960 lot like someone like Andrew Carnegie or William Randolph Hurst, 0:09:06.080 --> 0:09:07.959 these these guys with that era who just had more 0:09:07.960 --> 0:09:11.680 money than God. What distinguished George Fabian from those guys 0:09:11.840 --> 0:09:14.600 is that, you know, instead of spending his money on 0:09:14.720 --> 0:09:18.400 French Impressionist paintings or you know, building a big castle, 0:09:18.800 --> 0:09:23.160 what really interested George Fabian was discovering the secrets of nature. 0:09:23.240 --> 0:09:25.720 He was really into science. He wanted to discover things 0:09:25.760 --> 0:09:29.240 about nature that had never been discovered. And so he 0:09:29.320 --> 0:09:34.360 turned his private estate, which was called River Bank, into 0:09:34.440 --> 0:09:38.840 a kind of half rich man's fantasy land and half 0:09:39.000 --> 0:09:44.120 private scientific laboratory, very much like Thomas Edison's Menlo Park, 0:09:44.320 --> 0:09:47.040 New Jersey or Nikola Tesla's Lab in New York. It 0:09:47.080 --> 0:09:51.280 was a place where, you know, a single committed person 0:09:51.320 --> 0:09:54.440 with a lot of money had built a scientific laboratory 0:09:54.480 --> 0:09:57.560 and institution to investigate secrets of nature. And there was 0:09:57.600 --> 0:10:00.360 all kinds of experiments happening at Riverbank to There was 0:10:00.920 --> 0:10:06.800 genetics experiments, agriculture experiments, acoustical experiments, and then there was 0:10:06.920 --> 0:10:10.439 this project that George Fabian wanted Elizabeth Smith to work on, 0:10:10.480 --> 0:10:15.360 which was the Bacon Cipher Project, the project of discovering 0:10:15.400 --> 0:10:19.480 these secret messages inside the works of Shakespeare, ripping them 0:10:19.480 --> 0:10:24.240 out and translating them into the plain text, and revealing 0:10:24.280 --> 0:10:26.800 the secrets of this Shakespeare book to the world. And 0:10:26.840 --> 0:10:29.480 that's that's what he told Elizabeth he wanted her to 0:10:29.520 --> 0:10:31.960 do when he went that day, when he met her 0:10:31.960 --> 0:10:35.040 in the library and whisked her off on the train 0:10:35.120 --> 0:10:38.680 to Riverbank. He wanted her to help him discover the 0:10:38.720 --> 0:10:41.440 secrets that were indebted in Shakespeare and sort of sort 0:10:41.480 --> 0:10:45.520 of transformed the history of English literature. It's just it's 0:10:45.559 --> 0:10:47.680 just unbelievable to think about. I think about the number 0:10:47.720 --> 0:10:50.120 of hours, Mango, that you and I spent just sitting 0:10:50.160 --> 0:10:55.079 in libraries hoping that some eccentric tycoon would come along 0:10:55.120 --> 0:10:58.640 and discover us and lisk us away and it just 0:10:58.800 --> 0:11:02.120 it never happened, but it was. It's it's fascinating to 0:11:02.120 --> 0:11:04.480 read about it, to to think about our fantasy of that. 0:11:05.320 --> 0:11:09.040 But yet, so so that project, that's Shakespeare project didn't 0:11:09.040 --> 0:11:12.839 exactly go you know, anywhere big from there. But but 0:11:12.840 --> 0:11:14.440 but can you tell us, like, how did she end 0:11:14.520 --> 0:11:18.080 up making this transition from trying to figure out the 0:11:18.120 --> 0:11:20.720 code within Shakespeare and seeing if there was any truth 0:11:20.800 --> 0:11:23.800 to this too what she eventually ended up doing and 0:11:24.160 --> 0:11:26.880 some of the very serious code breaking. Sure, that's a 0:11:26.880 --> 0:11:30.319 great question. So so she's brought out to Riverbank, knowing 0:11:30.320 --> 0:11:35.440 nothing about code breaking. She's immediately plunged into this project 0:11:35.480 --> 0:11:40.000 to find secret messages in Shakespeare. And she can't find them. 0:11:40.400 --> 0:11:42.840 And she's there for months and months and months, and 0:11:42.880 --> 0:11:47.360 she's still having having trouble, you know, discovering these secret messages. 0:11:47.800 --> 0:11:52.160 Ultimately she concludes that it's all a wild goose chase, 0:11:52.200 --> 0:11:56.040 it's all kind of a grand delusion. The secret messages 0:11:56.040 --> 0:11:58.920 aren't actually there. What's happening is that George Fabian and 0:11:58.920 --> 0:12:01.480 the people who believe what he believe are kind of 0:12:01.520 --> 0:12:04.400 seeing what they want to see. This is the thing 0:12:04.480 --> 0:12:06.880 about human beings is that we're we're very good at 0:12:07.440 --> 0:12:09.520 seeing patterns. Were all kind of born to do it. 0:12:09.679 --> 0:12:12.120 And sometimes we're so good at seeing patterns that we 0:12:12.200 --> 0:12:15.600 end up seeing patterns that aren't really there, right, and uh, 0:12:15.640 --> 0:12:17.600 and this is what was happening. They thought they saw 0:12:17.640 --> 0:12:20.160 these messages in the works of Shakespeare that weren't really there. 0:12:20.760 --> 0:12:24.720 Elizabeth had to figure this out. Um. But what that 0:12:24.800 --> 0:12:28.160 experience did is, you know, being dropped into this kind 0:12:28.200 --> 0:12:31.320 of delusion. It made her very interested and well, if 0:12:31.320 --> 0:12:34.640 I wanted to find patterns that really were there, and 0:12:34.679 --> 0:12:36.480 if I wanted to be sure that they were there, 0:12:37.000 --> 0:12:39.280 how would I do that? How would I develop a method? 0:12:39.360 --> 0:12:41.840 How would I develop a system to make sure that 0:12:41.920 --> 0:12:46.040 I wasn't tricking myself? And so, beginning in this kind 0:12:46.040 --> 0:12:50.960 of world of delusion um inspired her to try to 0:12:51.000 --> 0:12:54.600 create a true method and a true scientific system for 0:12:54.760 --> 0:12:58.040 discovering patterns in in these blocks of gobbledygook. And that's 0:12:58.080 --> 0:13:01.880 what launched her on her code breaking career, sort of 0:13:01.960 --> 0:13:04.720 in confluence with this other thing that happened, which is 0:13:05.080 --> 0:13:07.760 a year after she got to River Bank, America, entered 0:13:07.800 --> 0:13:12.200 World War One, so April nineteen seventeen, you know, America 0:13:12.320 --> 0:13:15.560 enters the war, and at that point, you know, it's 0:13:15.600 --> 0:13:18.480 amazing for me to go back and learn this history 0:13:18.559 --> 0:13:21.600 because you know, I had always kind of assumed that 0:13:21.640 --> 0:13:24.600 the American intelligence community that we that we know today 0:13:24.640 --> 0:13:28.360 that's mighty and powerful, the National Security Agency, the CIA, 0:13:28.520 --> 0:13:31.559 the FBI. I had always assumed that these institutions are 0:13:31.559 --> 0:13:35.000 always kind of always powerful and had always existed. But 0:13:35.440 --> 0:13:38.040 you know, in nineteen seventeen, when America entered World War One, 0:13:38.360 --> 0:13:41.080 there really was no American intelligence community. There was no 0:13:41.200 --> 0:13:43.800 n s A, there was no CIA, and the FBI 0:13:43.960 --> 0:13:45.880 was very young. And one of the things that you 0:13:45.920 --> 0:13:48.280 need to do when you're going to war is, you know, 0:13:48.400 --> 0:13:50.640 you need to read the secret messages that the enemy 0:13:50.720 --> 0:13:52.720 is sending. You need to know what they're saying and 0:13:52.760 --> 0:13:55.320 what they're doing so you can have an advantage. The 0:13:55.360 --> 0:13:57.720 thing is, you know, when America went to World War 0:13:57.840 --> 0:14:01.120 in World War One in nineteen seventeen, uh, it had 0:14:01.160 --> 0:14:03.720 no ability to do that. There were maybe five people 0:14:03.720 --> 0:14:06.920 in the entire United States who even knew what a 0:14:07.000 --> 0:14:10.520 code or a cipher and so, uh it just so 0:14:10.640 --> 0:14:14.360 happened that some of these five people were Elizabeth and 0:14:14.360 --> 0:14:18.520 her colleagues at Riverbank Laboratories, this bizarre private institution run 0:14:18.520 --> 0:14:20.600 by a crazy rich guy on the Illinois Prairie. It's 0:14:20.600 --> 0:14:22.440 one of these things, you know, truth is stranger than fiction, 0:14:22.480 --> 0:14:25.160 and American history is very, very weird. It gets very 0:14:25.240 --> 0:14:28.040 very weird, very very fast when you get beyond the surface. 0:14:28.360 --> 0:14:31.000 So what happened is, you know, through the urgency of war, 0:14:31.080 --> 0:14:34.600 the necessity of war, you know, the War Department, the 0:14:34.720 --> 0:14:37.720 Army realized they didn't have any code breakers and they 0:14:37.760 --> 0:14:41.840 needed code breakers very quickly. So, uh, just out of desperation, 0:14:41.960 --> 0:14:46.400 they ended up kind of annexing Riverbank Laboratories, which became 0:14:46.480 --> 0:14:51.000 kind of the first national security agency. The War Department 0:14:51.040 --> 0:14:53.800 and other departments of the U. S. Government began to 0:14:53.960 --> 0:14:58.200 send uh, secret messages that they couldn't read out to Riverbank, 0:14:58.640 --> 0:15:02.720 and Elizabeth and her colleagues they're working for this crazy tycoon, 0:15:03.000 --> 0:15:05.360 would solve the messages and send them back to Washington. 0:15:05.400 --> 0:15:07.240 And for the first eight months of World War One, 0:15:07.800 --> 0:15:11.920 UM Riverbank, Elizabeth and her colleagues, they're handled the entire 0:15:12.000 --> 0:15:15.080 code breaking burden for the U. S. Government. While it 0:15:15.200 --> 0:15:17.640 was at war, which is which is incredible to think about, 0:15:17.640 --> 0:15:21.160 because you know, you've got to realize Elizabeth is four 0:15:21.200 --> 0:15:23.400 years old at this time, and she has just learned 0:15:23.400 --> 0:15:25.640 about code breaking in the last year, but all of 0:15:25.680 --> 0:15:39.760 a sudden she was the expert and she had to perform. 0:15:39.800 --> 0:15:42.200 Welcome back to Part Time Genius. We're chatting with Jason Fagoni, 0:15:42.360 --> 0:15:44.960 the author of The Woman who Smashed Codes. So, Jason, 0:15:45.200 --> 0:15:48.080 the whole thing about um, that code breaking really wasn't 0:15:48.160 --> 0:15:50.680 a thing before is is just kind of stunning to 0:15:50.720 --> 0:15:53.400 be because I always think about like things in the paper, 0:15:53.480 --> 0:15:56.640 like the cryptograms, or you think about like uh, Lewis 0:15:56.680 --> 0:15:59.360 Carroll and anagrams and people playing with words and in 0:15:59.400 --> 0:16:02.560 crazy ways, But that this art isn't the thing is 0:16:02.720 --> 0:16:05.240 is just kind of amazing. She also wasn't alone in 0:16:05.240 --> 0:16:08.160 this endeavor, right, She had a sort of a love 0:16:08.200 --> 0:16:11.000 interest and partner during this time exactly. She met a 0:16:11.080 --> 0:16:14.240 young scientist there named William Friedman. And and again it's 0:16:14.280 --> 0:16:17.160 one of these kind of classic American tales, two young 0:16:17.280 --> 0:16:20.520 people from very different worlds. Elizabeth was, you know, a 0:16:20.560 --> 0:16:24.840 Quaker girl from the Midwest. William Friedman was a Jewish scientist, 0:16:24.880 --> 0:16:28.680 from Pittsburgh. Um, he had been brought to Riverbank to 0:16:28.720 --> 0:16:33.440 perform genetics experiments. He was breeding fruit flies. Ah, he 0:16:33.680 --> 0:16:37.840 was trying to breed different varieties of corn and wheat 0:16:37.960 --> 0:16:41.480 that might take root in different kinds of soil. But 0:16:41.520 --> 0:16:43.640 the thing about William Freedman is that he he had 0:16:43.640 --> 0:16:47.640 a talent for photography and a lot of the original 0:16:47.840 --> 0:16:50.800 work on the Bacon Cipher project. This, this project of 0:16:50.800 --> 0:16:56.600 finding secret messages in Shakespeare depended on enlarging photographs of uh, 0:16:56.640 --> 0:17:01.680 the original Shakespeare manuscript, the six Stafolio. So so because 0:17:01.720 --> 0:17:04.000 William was good with camera and he knew how to 0:17:04.040 --> 0:17:08.280 develop Prince and in dark Ram, George Fabian roped him 0:17:08.320 --> 0:17:12.280 into this project. And so William Friedman began to work 0:17:12.359 --> 0:17:15.520 with Elizabeth Smith on the Shakespeare project and and they 0:17:15.600 --> 0:17:18.920 both kind of looked at each other around the same 0:17:18.960 --> 0:17:23.560 time and had this had this epiphany which was, Um, 0:17:23.600 --> 0:17:26.760 everybody at this place is completely crazy except for us. 0:17:27.680 --> 0:17:29.400 You know, we are the we might be the only 0:17:29.520 --> 0:17:33.160 sane people here, and we need to, uh, we need 0:17:33.200 --> 0:17:35.840 to form a bond to kind of to protect ourselves 0:17:35.840 --> 0:17:38.840 from these lunatics. And while all of this craziness was 0:17:38.880 --> 0:17:42.560 swirling around them. Elizabeth and William did something extremely important, 0:17:43.600 --> 0:17:49.320 which is, together they invented the modern science of cryptology, 0:17:49.400 --> 0:17:52.040 which today is at the core of our intelligence agencies. 0:17:52.040 --> 0:17:53.879 So this is a remarkable thing. You know, in the 0:17:53.920 --> 0:17:57.000 span of about two or three years, starting in nineteen 0:17:58.280 --> 0:18:03.640 they invented new techniques of code breaking UM that had 0:18:03.680 --> 0:18:07.919 not been known in America. They wrote papers together, they 0:18:07.960 --> 0:18:10.360 worked across from each other in the same room, at 0:18:10.359 --> 0:18:13.359 the same desk, solving puzzles with pencil and paper. You 0:18:13.440 --> 0:18:15.760 gotta remember, this is before the era of computers. This 0:18:15.800 --> 0:18:17.520 is all pencil and paper. You're just sitting there with 0:18:17.600 --> 0:18:21.720 pencil paper in your mind. And because so little was 0:18:21.760 --> 0:18:25.520 known about code breaking in America, UM, they they very 0:18:25.600 --> 0:18:28.560 quickly had to invent new techniques. They had to become scientists, 0:18:28.600 --> 0:18:31.520 and they had to become explorers. And they did that. Uh. 0:18:31.560 --> 0:18:34.159 And they were able to do it because they just 0:18:34.200 --> 0:18:36.240 had this They had this bond, this link. You know, 0:18:36.359 --> 0:18:38.439 there's something kind of miraculous seemed to happen when they 0:18:38.440 --> 0:18:41.879 worked together. They made each other better UM and and 0:18:42.000 --> 0:18:45.840 very quickly they started to consider themselves a duo and 0:18:45.840 --> 0:18:48.760 and a team. UM. After they were married, William even 0:18:48.840 --> 0:18:50.520 even came up with the name he called them. He 0:18:50.600 --> 0:18:53.760 called them the Freedman Combination. And you know, and it's 0:18:53.800 --> 0:18:56.960 interesting because because these papers that they wrote together are 0:18:57.000 --> 0:19:01.399 known as the Riverbank Publications, and uh uh you know, 0:19:01.800 --> 0:19:05.320 they've historically been credited to William alone. You know, it's 0:19:05.359 --> 0:19:08.080 only his name that's on the papers. But I went 0:19:08.119 --> 0:19:11.160 back and I looked at the early drafts of these publications, 0:19:11.160 --> 0:19:14.040 which are in the New York Public Library, uh, in 0:19:14.080 --> 0:19:16.159 their Manuscripts and Archives division. And when you look at 0:19:16.200 --> 0:19:19.320 the drafts, you see that Elizabeth's handwriting has all over them. 0:19:19.440 --> 0:19:22.920 In fact, you know her her her name is even 0:19:22.920 --> 0:19:24.879 typed on some of the type scripts as the author 0:19:24.920 --> 0:19:27.120 of certain sections of the papers. So I think that 0:19:27.560 --> 0:19:32.200 for several of the papers, especially the early, the early papers, 0:19:32.240 --> 0:19:35.960 Elizabeth was every bit the co author, and in fact, 0:19:36.200 --> 0:19:38.320 William considered her to be the co author too. He 0:19:38.600 --> 0:19:41.520 referred to the papers as our papers. And uh. The 0:19:41.560 --> 0:19:43.560 thing that kind of seals the deal from me is that, 0:19:44.000 --> 0:19:47.360 you know, uh, in his personal archive, which is at 0:19:47.359 --> 0:19:51.239 a private library in Virginia, he has uh he he 0:19:51.320 --> 0:19:54.520 kept his own personal copies of the River Bank Publications 0:19:54.520 --> 0:19:57.280 and on one of them. He actually writes Elizabeth's name 0:19:57.840 --> 0:19:59.640 as a co author on the cover, even though it's 0:19:59.640 --> 0:20:02.080 not there in the printed version, and so so she was. 0:20:02.880 --> 0:20:07.360 She was the co founder I think of modern American cryptology. Wow. 0:20:07.440 --> 0:20:09.680 And you know when you talk about that, that impact 0:20:09.760 --> 0:20:12.160 that they had, and I guess finally the War Department 0:20:12.200 --> 0:20:15.120 wakes up to the fact that maybe they need more 0:20:15.160 --> 0:20:17.320 than just five people at this weird estate in the 0:20:17.359 --> 0:20:20.080 middle of nowhere and and decides to start their own 0:20:20.240 --> 0:20:22.679 code breaking units. But but that doesn't mean the end 0:20:22.680 --> 0:20:24.920 of it for for William and Elizabeth. Can you talk 0:20:24.920 --> 0:20:27.520 a little bit about what you know Elizabeth specifically was 0:20:27.600 --> 0:20:29.960 up to in between the world wars, because she was 0:20:30.000 --> 0:20:33.679 still very much involved in this world Sure, right, So 0:20:33.720 --> 0:20:36.040 you're right, the War Department comes to the conclusion that 0:20:36.080 --> 0:20:37.880 maybe it's not the best idea to have a crazy 0:20:38.359 --> 0:20:41.320 tycoon handling all of the code breaking bird and forward 0:20:41.400 --> 0:20:43.800 the United States. Uh, they started, they start to build 0:20:43.800 --> 0:20:49.159 code breaking teams and capacities in Washington. What happens is, eventually, uh, 0:20:49.200 --> 0:20:54.720 George Fabian sort of reveals his insanity. He begins to 0:20:54.800 --> 0:20:57.000 spy on the Freedman's while they're still at Riverbank. He 0:20:57.080 --> 0:21:00.760 surveils them, he intercepts them, nail. He becomes very controlling. 0:21:01.000 --> 0:21:05.120 There's a suggestion that he might have sexually harassed Elizabeth 0:21:05.560 --> 0:21:10.160 while William was serving in France briefly during World War One. 0:21:11.080 --> 0:21:13.639 William comes back from the war, they both get out 0:21:13.680 --> 0:21:16.600 of there. They make their escape. They essentially pack up 0:21:16.640 --> 0:21:18.120 their things in the middle of the night because they're 0:21:18.200 --> 0:21:20.240 terrified of Fabian and they moved to Washington, d C. 0:21:20.920 --> 0:21:22.680 And this is where they spend the rest of their 0:21:22.680 --> 0:21:27.040 careers and so um. Initially they're working in Washington, d C. 0:21:27.280 --> 0:21:31.119 Together starting they both they both start working for the army, 0:21:31.240 --> 0:21:34.000 and at first they're working in the same room just 0:21:34.040 --> 0:21:37.400 like they were before, designing new codes for the Army 0:21:37.480 --> 0:21:40.720 news safer codes for for the use of the dough boys. UM. 0:21:40.800 --> 0:21:44.480 Pretty quickly, Elizabeth gets bored with that and she quits. 0:21:45.119 --> 0:21:47.840 She she stays at home and starts to write children's books, 0:21:47.840 --> 0:21:51.119 which was a long ambition of her. She wanted to 0:21:51.160 --> 0:21:53.679