Speaker 1: You're listening to Part Time Genius, a production of Kaleidoscope
Speaker 1: and iHeartRadio. Guess what give? What's that Mango? So, as
Speaker 1: you know, I love spy stuff. I love detective stuff.
Speaker 1: And as a kid, I was very into creating secret
Speaker 1: codes and ridiculous ways to communicate to my friends and
Speaker 1: stuff like that, like what exactly what are we talking about?
Speaker 1: It was like secret knocks to get into a clubhouse,
Speaker 1: or passwords or phrases sometimes code words for other people.
Speaker 1: My friend Rajish made up this nonsensical language that was
Speaker 1: honestly just goofy, and so it was funny phrases for
Speaker 1: like passing the salt or pepper at the table and
Speaker 1: things that would make our parents confused. And then I
Speaker 1: had a friend later, this is more like sixth grade,
Speaker 1: we came up with a way of writing and passing
Speaker 1: notes that was really easy to write super quickly, but
Speaker 1: really hard to decipher if a teacher or like another
Speaker 1: kid found it. And so I was into that type
Speaker 1: of stuff. It was just like fun to do. And
Speaker 1: this week I was reading about one of the earliest
Speaker 1: secret languages, and honestly, it might be the weirdest communication
Speaker 1: method I've ever heard of, and not one I would
Speaker 1: have ever schemed up. It is scalp tattoos sounds painful,
Speaker 1: What is this? It definitely was, But sometimes you have
Speaker 1: to deliver a message. So this goes back to the
Speaker 1: fifth century VCE, when Isteos, the ruler of Malatas in
Speaker 1: Anchi in Greece, needed to get a very sensitive message
Speaker 1: to his buddy Aristogoros, and the message was maybe it's
Speaker 1: time to revolt against the Persians. Right, he can't exactly
Speaker 1: just send a courier with a scroll, because you know
Speaker 1: there are Persians everywhere. So here's what he does. He
Speaker 1: shaves the head of his most trusted servant, tattoos the
Speaker 1: message right onto the scalp, and then waits and weeks later,
Speaker 1: once the hair GRoWES back, the servant is sent off
Speaker 1: to Malatos, and when he arrives, Arista Goas shaves the
Speaker 1: poor guy's head again and boom, the revolt is on.
Speaker 1: Is both ingenious and horrified totally, but I guess it
Speaker 1: worked because the Germans apparently used it again in World
Speaker 1: War Two, which is insane. Anyway. I like it because
Speaker 1: it's like the ultimate don't shoot the messenger, and mainly
Speaker 1: because you have to shave him first. But that is
Speaker 1: the first of nine facts we've got today about secret languages,
Speaker 1: So let's dive in. Hey, their podcast listeners, welcome to
Speaker 1: Part Time Genius. I'm Munga Shiti there and Will is
Speaker 1: out today, but I'm here with writer extraordinary Gabe Lucier
Speaker 1: on the line.
Speaker 2: Hey, Gab, how's it going pretty good? How are you
Speaker 2: doing well?
Speaker 1: And of course, over in the corner, that's our wonderful
Speaker 1: friend and producer Dylan Fagan, who is holding up two
Speaker 1: giant que cards with random pictures of a banana, a biscuit. Oh,
Speaker 1: he's adding a few three squirrels on another one, which
Speaker 1: I guess is a secret language of his own.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I honestly can't believe he said that on air.
Speaker 2: That's pretty scandalous. I mean he added a tomato card.
Speaker 2: Uh uh Okay, Yeah, I see what he's saying now.
Speaker 2: That's actually really sweet, So thank you, Dylan.
Speaker 1: I take it back. Yeah, Dylan's a sweetheart. Okay, enough
Speaker 1: of that game. I mentioned I was into codes and
Speaker 1: secret languages. Also at home, we spoke like this obscure
Speaker 1: Indian dialect, so I practically had a secret language with
Speaker 1: my parents. Anyway, But do you have any secret language experience? Well,
Speaker 1: as a kid, I actually I used to talk out
Speaker 1: of the side of my mouth, and so pretty much
Speaker 1: only my family could understand what I was saying. They
Speaker 1: kind of had to interpret it. So that was a
Speaker 1: kind of secret language. I think it was more of
Speaker 1: a nervous habit really, But which side? Let me see
Speaker 1: if I can get back into the Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: the right side. Also, my brother and I we tried
Speaker 1: to teach ourselves pig Latin at one point, but we
Speaker 1: could never really understand what the other word's saying, so
Speaker 1: it didn't work out. I love it, so gave what
Speaker 1: is your first fact today? All right?
Speaker 2: So I am reasonably certain that neither of us have
Speaker 2: scalp tattoos. I can't really tell, I guess until one
Speaker 2: of us gets lice. But a little call back there.
Speaker 2: But one ancient form of secret messaging that I bet
Speaker 2: we've all tried before is writing with invisible ink. So
Speaker 2: most of us discover this as kids writing with lemon
Speaker 2: juice or vinegar and then holding the paper up to
Speaker 2: a light bulb to make the letters appear. But when
Speaker 2: the technique was developed in ancient Greece and Rome. It
Speaker 2: wasn't a game. It was used for military and political espionage.
Speaker 2: And the way it works is the acid weakens paper
Speaker 2: fibers and reduces their burn temperature, so when you apply
Speaker 2: heat to those areas, they turn brown faster than the
Speaker 2: rest of the paper. You can also write with a
Speaker 2: base ink like baking soda, and trigger a similar color
Speaker 2: change by applying an acid.
Speaker 1: You know, it's funny because on one hand it is
Speaker 1: seriously clever, right, but it also seems like it would
Speaker 1: only work the first few times, Like, once someone knows
Speaker 1: the trick, it's much easier to check for a hidden messages,
Speaker 1: I'd imagine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, yeah, And by the time the American Revolution
Speaker 2: rolled around, both sides were using invisible ink, and both
Speaker 2: sides knew it. It became standard practice, you know, to
Speaker 2: test intercepted messages with heat and acid, which kind of
Speaker 2: made the whole thing pointless. Luckily, though, an amateur chemist
Speaker 2: named James J was on the case. He developed a
Speaker 2: formula for a new kind of ink, one that could
Speaker 2: only be made visible by a specific corresponding chemical or reagent.
Speaker 2: So no matter how much heat the British applied, the
Speaker 2: invisible message would stay invisible. Once this ink was ready
Speaker 2: to go, James teamed up with his more famous younger brother,
Speaker 2: John Jay. Perhaps you've heard of it. Oh yeah, He
Speaker 2: helped get the ink into George Washington's hands. So Washington
Speaker 2: distributed it to spies in British occupied New York during
Speaker 2: the war, and they used it to write messages on
Speaker 2: blank pages of books. And despite being searched on multiple occasions,
Speaker 2: none of this secret writing was ever discovered by the British.
Speaker 1: That is incredible, And that's also incredible that John Jay
Speaker 1: had a connection to this. I didn't even know you
Speaker 1: had a brother, So what was in this secret formula?
Speaker 2: Jay never revealed what was in the ink because writing
Speaker 2: down the recipe would have been too dangerous. Fortunately, though,
Speaker 2: some of the letters written in his invisible ink survived
Speaker 2: the war, and in the nineteen thirties, a doctor named
Speaker 2: Lodovic Bendixen studied those samples to determine the ink's composition.
Speaker 2: Turns out it was made from the tannic acid of
Speaker 2: gall nuts, which aren't nuts at all.
Speaker 1: See when a wasp.
Speaker 2: Blazed its eggs on the branches of an oak tree,
Speaker 2: the tree defends itself by entombing the eggs inside a
Speaker 2: big woody growth. And that's what a goal nut is.
Speaker 2: It's a wooden cocoon full of dead wasp eggs. That
Speaker 2: is gross. I love it. I also love that like
Speaker 2: it took to the nineteen thirties for people to figure
Speaker 2: out what this was. You know, it's pretty amazing. But
Speaker 2: what was it about the reagent that revealed ink?
Speaker 1: Like? Do we ever find out what that was? And
Speaker 1: was it as disgusting as a call nut? Because if so,
Speaker 1: you can you can just not tell us. We did
Speaker 1: find out, but don't worry. It was just an iron
Speaker 1: supplement called ferris sulfate, which is often used to lower
Speaker 1: the pH level and soil. It was a pretty obscure
Speaker 1: pair of chemicals to put together. But that's exactly why
Speaker 1: the British didn't figure it out.
Speaker 2: Way to go, James, j right, Seriously, he's the lesser
Speaker 2: j But I don't know we could make the case for.
Speaker 1: Anyway. What do you got next, Mago? Well, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: take it to the Victorian area. And if you were
Speaker 1: a fancy lady back then, you were actually fancy, by
Speaker 1: which I mean, of course you didn't go anywhere without
Speaker 1: an elaborate handheld fan, typically made of silk or fine parchment.
Speaker 1: In fact, you'd have different fans for different occasions, and
Speaker 1: the one you took to church might have a Bible
Speaker 1: scene painted on it, while the one you use for
Speaker 1: parties would have a festive image of people dancing. Right. But,
Speaker 1: according to a famous French fan maker, women also used
Speaker 1: fans to send secret messages to their gentlemen admirers. For example,
Speaker 1: if a woman held a fan in front of her
Speaker 1: face with her right hand, that meant follow me. Twirling
Speaker 1: the fan in her left hand meant we're being watched.
Speaker 1: And perhaps my favorite, opening the fan and snapping it
Speaker 1: shut meant you.
Speaker 2: Are cruel, amazing. But how did the gentleman admirers understand
Speaker 2: all this? Was there some kind of codebook you had
Speaker 2: to buy. Yeah, so that's the thing that famous fan
Speaker 2: maker I mentioned. His name was Jules de vell Roy
Speaker 2: and he ran the family fan business with locations in
Speaker 2: London and Paris. Now, during the French Revolution, the French
Speaker 2: fan maker's guild had shut down and demand for fans
Speaker 2: had dropped because you know, they were really the symbol
Speaker 2: of the aristocracy. So many decades later, and this is
Speaker 2: In the eighteen fifties, Jewels decides to make fans a
Speaker 2: must have item again, and he publishes a pamphlet titled
Speaker 2: The Language of the Fan, with a list of over
Speaker 2: two dozen gestures and romantic meanings. And this is all
Speaker 2: just a marketing play, but you got to give them credit.
Speaker 2: The stunt worked sales took off, and devell Roy actually
Speaker 2: became Queen Victoria's go to fan guy. Huh, So it
Speaker 2: was all a hoax then, like the fancy Ladies weren't
Speaker 2: sending secret messages via fan.
Speaker 1: So first of all, let's call it marketing. Second, devell
Speaker 1: Roy didn't invent that idea out of thin air. In
Speaker 1: the seventeen hundreds, there were party games that involved fans
Speaker 1: printed with like trivia questions on one side and answers
Speaker 1: on the other. There were also some fans with the
Speaker 1: letters of the alphabet in the fold, so you could
Speaker 1: use them to spell out messages, and historians believe fans
Speaker 1: may have been used in pre revolutionary France to display
Speaker 1: political slogans. But none of this rose to the level
Speaker 1: of an actual widespread messaging system that everyone was using. Right,
Speaker 1: That part was all made up. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: you don't really need a codebook to figure out what
Speaker 1: it means. If someone flutters they're faning giggles, or if
Speaker 1: they suddenly point their fan towards the door where their
Speaker 1: angry father is running in through it, I think you
Speaker 1: pretty much get the gist there. Yeah, all right.
Speaker 2: So, as you know, I moved to Tennessee two years ago,
Speaker 2: and one of the most unexpected pleasures about that has
Speaker 2: been acquainting myself with the South's ubiquitous breakfast chain, the
Speaker 2: waffle House. Are you familiar, of.
Speaker 1: Course, I mean I went to school in North Carolina.
Speaker 1: We lived in Atlanta for a bit. I took photos
Speaker 1: of Ruby's first baby's first waffle house a milestone. It's
Speaker 1: a traditional Southern milestones.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, you really can't miss them, I guess if
Speaker 2: you drive through the South or the Midwest. But you know,
Speaker 2: the food is standard diner. Fair waffles are obviously a
Speaker 2: big draw, as are the hash browns, which you can
Speaker 2: order at least eight different ways. But what really won
Speaker 2: me over is the intensely complicated plate marking system that
Speaker 2: the staff uses to keep track of orders. So, unlike
Speaker 2: most restaurants, waffle House doesn't use a ticket system to
Speaker 2: relay orders to the kitchen. Instead, servers call them out verbally,
Speaker 2: and cooks immediately start marking plates with condiment packets and
Speaker 2: little scraps of ingredients so they won't forget the specifics.
Speaker 2: For example, if a customer wants a plane waffle, the
Speaker 2: cook puts one packet of butter on the plate right
Speaker 2: side up. For two waffles, they stack two packs of butter,
Speaker 2: and for a pecan waffle, they flip the butter upside down.
Speaker 1: I'd heard tell of like a system, but I haven't
Speaker 1: actually like watched for it. I feel like I need
Speaker 1: to look the next time there. But you know, it
Speaker 1: sounds easy enough, I guess if you figure it out.
Speaker 2: Well, Yeah, I started with waffles because they're the simplest
Speaker 2: the things spiral pretty.
Speaker 1: Fast with the other items.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like, to signify a standard order of two eggs,
Speaker 2: you put a right side up jelly packet on a plate.
Speaker 2: But if a customer wants just one egg, then you've
Speaker 2: got to put a ketchup packet underneath the jelly obviously,
Speaker 2: And if they want three eggs, you put a mustard
Speaker 2: packet underneath instead. Yeah, and it gets weirder from there. Actually,
Speaker 2: the position and orientation of each item on the plate
Speaker 2: communicates how the order should be prepared. So a jelly
Speaker 2: packet at the bottom center of the plate means two
Speaker 2: eggs scrambled, but for sunny side up the jelly goes
Speaker 2: at the top center, and for regular fried eggs, the
Speaker 2: jelly goes in the middle of the plate, on the
Speaker 2: left hand side for over easy, middle for over medium,
Speaker 2: and right for over heart.
Speaker 1: I don't know whether I'm dizzy from trying to like
Speaker 1: keep up with it or hungry from hearing about all
Speaker 1: these breakfast orders. But what if someone just wants like
Speaker 1: toast with their eggs? Okay, So in.
Speaker 2: That case, the cook would use a platter instead of
Speaker 2: a plate, and the jelly packet pulls double duty by
Speaker 2: indicating both the eggs and the toast. The jelly is
Speaker 2: placed right side up for white toast, upside down for wheat,
Speaker 2: and for raisin toast, just swap out the jelly for
Speaker 2: a packet of apple butter. As for those famous hash browns,
Speaker 2: they're indicated simply by sprinkling a few potato shreds at
Speaker 2: the top of the plate. And once you get into
Speaker 2: omelets and breakfast sandwiches, things get complicated again, but I'll
Speaker 2: let you discover those for yourself. There's actually a twenty
Speaker 2: minute training video online that breaks down all the possible
Speaker 2: permutations of the marker system, which every waffle House cook
Speaker 2: has to learn.
Speaker 1: You know, I am weirdly fascinating enough that I feel
Speaker 1: like I would go watch that twenty minute video but
Speaker 1: also recommend it. It doesn't it feel well, It feels
Speaker 1: one like it should be playing in the background of parties.
Speaker 1: But yes, I haven't made a few people watch it.
Speaker 1: But also like, wouldn't if you just so much easier
Speaker 1: to write down the orders like every other restaurant.
Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, sure, but I do kind of admire
Speaker 2: how needlessly elaborate it is. It's a very Rube Goldberg
Speaker 2: approach to to ordering breakfast.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I guess you know, waffle House already has
Speaker 1: endeared itself to people, and it makes it a little
Speaker 1: more special. Okay, so we have to take a quick break,
Speaker 1: but when we get back, we have four more weird
Speaker 1: messaging techniques that everyone should maybe not learn, but hear
Speaker 1: about it. Don't go anywhere. Welcome back to part time Genius.
Speaker 1: We're talking about nine of the strangest, most elaborate ways
Speaker 1: of sending messages. But if you want to send us
Speaker 1: a message, we have made it super easy. Just email
Speaker 1: us at high Geniuses at gmail dot com. That's Hi, Geniuses,
Speaker 1: or call our hotline at three oh two four oh
Speaker 1: five five nine two five. You can ask us a question,
Speaker 1: share an idea for a future episode, tell us what
Speaker 1: you think of the show, tell us what you think
Speaker 1: of waffle house. Whatever we want to hear from you.
Speaker 1: So please get in touch. Okay, So, Gabe, here's one
Speaker 1: I like, mostly because of the name. Have you ever
Speaker 1: heard of Wigwag? I don't think I've had the pleasure. No, Well,
Speaker 1: get excited. Wigwag goes back to the eighteen fifties and
Speaker 1: it was invented by an Army surgeon. His name was
Speaker 1: Albert J. Meyer. Meyer had actually done his doctoral thesis
Speaker 1: on a language for the hearing impaired. He'd been a
Speaker 1: telegraph operator in med school and later while stationed in Texas,
Speaker 1: he thought, what if you could take the idea of
Speaker 1: telegraph signals and do it visually, kind of like smoke signals.
Speaker 1: And so his solution was get one big flag and
Speaker 1: instead of semaphore, which uses two flags, wigwag just decided
Speaker 1: to use one right, so you wag it left for
Speaker 1: one symbol, right for another, and you'd use repeating motions
Speaker 1: to make letters. So I was a wag left, T
Speaker 1: was a wag right, and letter V was one left,
Speaker 1: followed by three rights, which from a distance to people
Speaker 1: who didn't speak, I'm sure either looked like you were
Speaker 1: trying to shoe bees or the world's saddest interpretive dance.
Speaker 2: I love that this is just as complicated as the
Speaker 2: waffle house marker system. But was there just like one
Speaker 2: colored flag that they were using for this, or could
Speaker 2: you use any flag you had handy?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's actually a good question. The flags were square,
Speaker 1: and they could be red, white, or black, and basically
Speaker 1: it was for whatever stood out against the background you
Speaker 1: were against right. And this is in the eighteen fifties
Speaker 1: into the eighteen sixties. So once the Union Army got
Speaker 1: serious about it, they actually built towers and used church
Speaker 1: steeples so the messages could be seen for miles. And
Speaker 1: there's a famous story where at Gettysburg, when the actual
Speaker 1: Signal Corps officer retreats, a Union soldier famously grabs a
Speaker 1: bed sheet and just keeps waving. Of course, there was
Speaker 1: a hitch here because you know, both sides had trained
Speaker 1: together before the war, so the Confederates actually knew the code,
Speaker 1: so the Union started using cipher dis to scramble their messages. Anyway,
Speaker 1: here's my favorite part. So after the war, Meyer's successor
Speaker 1: publishes the entire code in a book and then he
Speaker 1: gets fired for basically leaking state secrets. That is.
Speaker 2: It also just dawned on me that wigwag is probably
Speaker 2: short for wiggle waggles.
Speaker 1: Right, that's horrible.
Speaker 2: So how long did wigwag last?
Speaker 1: It was around for a while, but by World War One,
Speaker 1: you know, standing in a field waving a big red
Speaker 1: flag was basically making yourself a target. So the system
Speaker 1: was retired in favor of Morse code. Okay, mango, there's
Speaker 1: a piece of paper on the table in front of you.
Speaker 1: Don't worry about how it got there. Just take a
Speaker 1: look at it and tell.
Speaker 2: Me what you see.
Speaker 1: Okay, got it. It's a normal sentence, typed up. It
Speaker 1: says we should do more episodes about peanuts. I've heard
Speaker 1: this from you before. I know you love the peanuts.
Speaker 1: I love the peanuts, but Mary might kill us.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know, I still think you guys are wrong
Speaker 2: about this, but I don't mean the words on the page.
Speaker 1: Look closer, after.
Speaker 2: The words, what do you see, just the punctuation like
Speaker 2: the period no memi zens bingo. Yes, except that's not
Speaker 2: a period at all, It's a micro dot. So this
Speaker 2: is an incredible miniature messaging system that has its roots
Speaker 2: in the Franco Prussian War of eighteen seventy. A Parisian
Speaker 2: photographer named Renee de Grann invented microfilm, which allowed French
Speaker 2: troops to shrink messages onto tiny bits of film that
Speaker 2: could be flown out of occupied Paris by carrier pigeons.
Speaker 2: So at the nineteen twenty five International Congress on Photography,
Speaker 2: an inventor named Emmanuel Goldberg took this idea further. He
Speaker 2: shrank a page of text to an area of about
Speaker 2: zero point zero one square millimeters. Wow, and at that
Speaker 2: size you could print the entire Bible fifty times in
Speaker 2: a single squirt inch. That is insane, I know. And
Speaker 2: so Goldberg called his invention Mikrotz, which became known as
Speaker 2: micro dots, and during World War Two and the Cold War,
Speaker 2: micro dots played a huge role in secret communication spies
Speaker 2: shrank thousands of documents and hid them in eyeglass frames, dolls,
Speaker 2: book bindings, jewelry, even under their fingernails. And of course,
Speaker 2: because the average micro dot was about the size of
Speaker 2: a period, they'd sometimes adhere the dots to books and
Speaker 2: newspapers where they just looked like, you know, part of
Speaker 2: the printed page. And what's really impressive to me is
Speaker 2: that they were doing all of this before computers. Oh yeah,
Speaker 2: that's that's really fascinating. I mean, you think about that
Speaker 2: as something that's so easy to do with computers, but
Speaker 2: I hadn't considered that this is like an elaborate old process.
Speaker 1: It's so much more work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it could all be done with photography equipment today.
Speaker 2: There were different techniques, some more sophisticated than others, and
Speaker 2: along the way people did invent special cameras to generate
Speaker 2: micro dots. But even with a regular camera you could
Speaker 2: do it. Basically, you'd photograph a document so it filled
Speaker 2: a frame of film, develop that, then mount the negative
Speaker 2: on black cardboard with a whole cutout so you could
Speaker 2: light it from behind. That way the text on the
Speaker 2: negative was visible. And finally you take a close up
Speaker 2: photo of the negative, creating an image less than a
Speaker 2: millimeter long, and in order to see what was on
Speaker 2: the image, you just needed a microscope.
Speaker 1: That is so cool. But right now, more than anything,
Speaker 1: I'm curious what is in the micro dot that you made.
Speaker 2: It's a script for an episode about the greatest peanut
Speaker 2: strips in history. You know, it just incaded.
Speaker 1: So I know, I told you about the secret language
Speaker 1: of fans and the marketing trick behind their sales, which
Speaker 1: I love. But because I'm a little obsessed with how
Speaker 1: repressed people were in the Victorian era, I've actually got
Speaker 1: another one from those times. Now. As we've alluded to,
Speaker 1: social etiquette at the time was insanely strict. You basically
Speaker 1: couldn't say I like you without you know, fainting into
Speaker 1: a lace handkerchief, right. It was too much emotion, and
Speaker 1: so they had their fans. But people also invented another workaround,
Speaker 1: and that was floriography, aka the language of flowers, and
Speaker 1: basically it let you send text messages with bouquets. Now,
Speaker 1: men were particularly blunt about this. If they handed someone
Speaker 1: a nosegay, which was a little mini bouquet, they were
Speaker 1: basically trying to slid to your dms right, And so
Speaker 1: there's the obvious. There's a red rose, which means I'm
Speaker 1: in love with you, a yellow carnation which means I
Speaker 1: disdain you, and buttercups, which means you're childish. So a
Speaker 1: little negging perhaps there, but it gets more elaborate. Women
Speaker 1: in high society would wear flowers in their hair, are
Speaker 1: tucked into their gowns as accessories, but these were more coded.
Speaker 1: A sweet pea meant thank you. If you pair it
Speaker 1: with zinias, suddenly you've opped it to thank you, dear
Speaker 1: friend forever. If you add white lily's to the mix,
Speaker 1: now you're saying thank you, dear friend forever. Also, I'm
Speaker 1: pure and innocent, but not in a weird way.
Speaker 2: That's a complicated sentence, especially to send through flowers.
Speaker 1: I know. It feels like when Ruby was a kid
Speaker 1: and would send out emojis to friends from my phone
Speaker 1: and would just be a string of nonsense and people
Speaker 1: would be trying to decode it, like what does twenty horses,
Speaker 1: a few winks, arrows, gymnastics and an apple mean right?
Speaker 1: Like total sense. But luckily for Victorians there was, like
Speaker 1: the fans, a guidebook, the whole phenomena had started with
Speaker 1: Charlotte de la Tour's eighteen nineteen book Li Language def Fleur,
Speaker 1: which became a decoder ring basically for floral messages, and
Speaker 1: the idea caught fire because at the time, when women
Speaker 1: especially weren't encouraged to speak their minds, flowers became a
Speaker 1: sly way of pushing back. Right. You could gossip, you
Speaker 1: could flirt, you could dump someone, all while looking like
Speaker 1: you were just accessorizing and playing your role. Men actually
Speaker 1: found this useful as well, like there are cases where
Speaker 1: men would sneak more emotion into things, like if you
Speaker 1: look at the wreaths that noble men and kings placed
Speaker 1: on their mother's graves, historians have actually realized that there
Speaker 1: are actually more layers of emotion and feeling woven into
Speaker 1: the symbols when you look at the flowers and the
Speaker 1: specific flowers that were pulled in. In one case, I know,
Speaker 1: there was one king who they didn't think had a
Speaker 1: very deep relationship with the mother, and they realized just
Speaker 1: how much respect through the wreath, which is incredible. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's lovely. Anyway, the system was not perfect like emojis today.
Speaker 1: Content that mattered a pink flower in Thailand could be trust.
Speaker 1: In Japan, the same flower might mean health, and in Victoria.
Speaker 1: In London it might mean I'm into you, but chastely,
Speaker 1: which is you know, confusing, but also the Victorian way.
Speaker 2: I actually think, you know, we can bring this back.
Speaker 2: It's cool. But all right, this next one is something
Speaker 2: that should probably stay forgotten. It is one of the
Speaker 2: weirdest footnotes in the history of telecommunications, a little something
Speaker 2: called the psychic snail telegraph.
Speaker 1: I feel like you're making this up, but I'm very
Speaker 1: excited to hear more. Well, you know, sometimes the truth
Speaker 1: really is stranger than fiction, and this is one of
Speaker 1: those cases. So in the eighteen fifties, a French occultist
Speaker 1: named Jacques Benoit developed a theory that when two snails
Speaker 1: made it, their exchange of fluids forged a telepathic bond
Speaker 1: that would connect them across any distance. So if you
Speaker 1: poked one snail, its mate would flinch as if it
Speaker 1: had also been touched. So, in ben Wah's this kind
Speaker 1: of sympathetic action at a distance was really no different
Speaker 1: than electricity, and he figured that if those forces, you know,
Speaker 1: electricity and magnetism, could be harnessed for telecommunications as they
Speaker 1: recently had been with a telegraph. Then maybe this animal
Speaker 1: magnetism could serve the same purpose. I mean, in one sense,
Speaker 1: it sounds vaguely credible until you remember that snails are
Speaker 1: not psychic, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that is kind of a sticking point, I guess,
Speaker 2: but it didn't stop ben Wah from testing his theory.
Speaker 2: In eighteen fifty one, he claimed to have devised a
Speaker 2: telegraph that would use the psychic link between twenty four
Speaker 2: pairs of snails to send messages from one side of
Speaker 2: the world to the other. He even managed to smooth
Speaker 2: talk a wealthy Parisian named Monsieur Triat into funding his
Speaker 2: experiments and providing lodging and a stipend for him while
Speaker 2: he worked on the machine, which I'm sure was money
Speaker 2: well spent. But how is this supposed to work? So
Speaker 2: the final build consisted of two paired sets of twenty
Speaker 2: four snails each so forty eight snails total, which were
Speaker 2: glued to a pair of wooden boards alongside the letters
Speaker 2: of the French alphabet. And the idea was that if
Speaker 2: you pressed a snail on one board, its mate on
Speaker 2: the other board would stick out its tentacles in response,
Speaker 2: and those are the little things on top of its head,
Speaker 2: by the way. And just like regular telegraphs, this required
Speaker 2: an operator on each end, one to send the message
Speaker 2: and one to monitor the snail's movements to see which
Speaker 2: letters had been pressed.
Speaker 1: There is something both fishy and gross about the psychic
Speaker 1: snail telegraphy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you're not the only one to think that.
Speaker 2: So after months of frustration and nothing to show for it,
Speaker 2: Monsieur Triat demanded a demonstration, you know, to see where
Speaker 2: all his money was going. Benoa agreed, but surprise, surprise,
Speaker 2: it didn't go so well. During the trial, Benoa ran
Speaker 2: back and forth to make sure the operators were reading
Speaker 2: the snails correctly, so it was blatant cheating, and the
Speaker 2: messages still wound up totally garbled. Triot called for a second,
Speaker 2: more rigorous demonstration, but when the day of the second
Speaker 2: test arrived, Benoah didn't show up. He never contacted Triot
Speaker 2: again and died the next year. So it was all
Speaker 2: a big scam. But it's fun to imagine a world
Speaker 2: where ben Wah's vision became reality, Like he had plans
Speaker 2: to make personal snail telegraphs the size of a pocket
Speaker 2: watch because there are snail species, you know, as small
Speaker 2: as a pinhead, and if that had happened, we could
Speaker 2: all be carrying around psychic snail telegraphs instead of smartphone.
Speaker 1: You know, maybe it wouldn't be so bad. But all right,
Speaker 1: let's wrap this thing up with one last fact. So
Speaker 1: over the summer we did an episode where we took
Speaker 1: a virtual trip across Australia. Now I have never been
Speaker 1: to Australia in real life, but that episode was so
Speaker 1: much fun. I ended up doing some more reading about
Speaker 1: the landown under and I learned about a fascinating tool
Speaker 1: called message sticks.
Speaker 2: Which I'm assuming is Aussie slang for post it notes.
Speaker 1: Right. No, they're actual sticks, and they have an incredible
Speaker 1: history that goes back centuries. So, as you may know,
Speaker 1: Australia's Aboriginal people are considered the world's oldest continuous living culture,
Speaker 1: and within that culture are hundreds of different nations. They
Speaker 1: speak over two hundred and fifty languages eight hundred dialects,
Speaker 1: and yet for hundreds even thousands of years, Indigenous people
Speaker 1: were able to communicate with each other despite differences in
Speaker 1: their spoken language and the challenges of traveling across remote
Speaker 1: wilderness areas. So early European colonists witnessed thousands of First
Speaker 1: Nations people gathering from hundreds of kilometers away, all arriving
Speaker 1: at the same place at the same time, and they
Speaker 1: just assumed it was telepathy, right, a little like your
Speaker 1: snail telegraph. It was actually something simpler but just as impressive.
Speaker 1: They had these carved wooden sticks inscribed with images that
Speaker 1: gave precise instructions for meeting times and places, as well
Speaker 1: as other important news. So the process begins with an
Speaker 1: oral message that would be communicated to a messenger. As
Speaker 1: the stick was carved. That way, the sender could explain
Speaker 1: to the messenger how the symbols on the stick related
Speaker 1: to the message. Then the messenger carried the stick to
Speaker 1: the recipient and repeated the oral message that he'd memorized.
Speaker 1: So if there were any language barriers, the stick would
Speaker 1: make sure that he points got through. If the recipient
Speaker 1: wanted to send a message back, they'd repeat the process
Speaker 1: before the messenger went home.
Speaker 2: Have these message sticks been preserved in any way, It
Speaker 2: seems like they'd be an amazing cultural record.
Speaker 1: They have, and they are so. An anthropologist named Pierce
Speaker 1: Kelly has created the Australian Message Stick Project, which tracks
Speaker 1: down message sticks and museums and private collections. He actually
Speaker 1: works closely with Indigenous elders to decode the meaning of
Speaker 1: their symbols, and oddly enough, there are people alive today
Speaker 1: who understand the symbols because in some parts of Australia
Speaker 1: message sticks were still in use until the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: Plus many of the symbols refer to places and practices
Speaker 1: that remain important to Aboriginal life. So in fact, according
Speaker 1: to Kelly, there's been this message stick revival in Australia,
Speaker 1: particularly for formal interactions between institutions. So while message stakes
Speaker 1: are a connection to the past, they still have meaning
Speaker 1: in the present, which I really love. Yeah, I love
Speaker 1: that too.
Speaker 2: It's you. You somehow made this a little heartwarming. So
Speaker 2: think I think for that and floriography, you should probably
Speaker 2: take the trophy this time.
Speaker 1: I don't think I can because snail messaging is too gross.
Speaker 1: And also the John j fact about that what was
Speaker 1: it called something? Not? It was son nuts a new
Speaker 1: scravel word. Shout out to John Jay and Monsieur Benoa. Awesome.
Speaker 1: Well that does it for today's Nine Things episode of
Speaker 1: part Time Juniors. I do want to thank our good
Speaker 1: friends at CDM for letting us record here today. And
Speaker 1: I know I mentioned this earlier, but we love communicating
Speaker 1: with our fans, so send us your stories, ideas, messages, whatever.
Speaker 1: We would love to play some of those messages on
Speaker 1: the show. That number again and for the hotline is
Speaker 1: three two four oh five five nine two five. But
Speaker 1: from Will, Mary, Gabe, Dylan and myself, thank you so
Speaker 1: much for listening. Part Time Genius is a production of
Speaker 1: Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio. This show is hosted by Will Pearson
Speaker 1: and Me Mongas Chatikler and research by our good pal
Speaker 1: Mary Philip Sandy. Today's episode was engineered and produced by
Speaker 1: the wonderful Dylan Fagan with support from Tyler Klang. The
Speaker 1: show is executive produced for iHeart by Katrina Norvell and
Speaker 1: Ali Perry, with social media support from Sasha Gay, trustee
Speaker 1: Dara Potts and Vine Shoory. For more podcasts from Kaleidoscope
Speaker 1: and iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.
Speaker 2: The