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Speaker 1: Thinking Sideways up broke the ideas I don't know stories
Speaker 1: of things we simply don't know the answer to. Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: welcome to another episode of Thinking Sideways the podcast I
Speaker 1: Am Devin, joined as always by Joe and Steve Hi.
Speaker 1: This week we're going to talk about a mystery that
Speaker 1: I thought was an Internet mystery at first, but it's not.
Speaker 1: It's actually like a puzzle mystery of an Internet starts
Speaker 1: at to start out Internet mystery. It was suggested by
Speaker 1: Jack and Simon and maybe some other people. I don't
Speaker 1: but I think it was just Jack and Simon. Uh
Speaker 1: and it is called the Publius Enigmas. You guys argue
Speaker 1: about that. By the way, enigma is pronounced edema. Yeah. Okay,
Speaker 1: so I don't think so silent, and I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: say that. I at the night of recording this, so
Speaker 1: what three weeks ago, when you guys are listening to us,
Speaker 1: I tweeted that this was one of the most grueling
Speaker 1: research processes that I had ever had, and everyone so
Speaker 1: excite did because I think everybody meant that or thought
Speaker 1: that meant that it had just been doing it for
Speaker 1: years and it had been so deep and hard hitting. No,
Speaker 1: it was just like really painful. Uh so great, you
Speaker 1: guys ready to listen to my pain and fleffery. Okay,
Speaker 1: So this mystery is actually it's kind of an internet mystery,
Speaker 1: but it's mostly a Pink Floyd mystery, music mystery, kind
Speaker 1: of music fan mystery. Yeah, so who was this guy
Speaker 1: paint Floyd? Listeners want to know Pink Floyd is a band,
Speaker 1: not a person. And the mystery why we think it
Speaker 1: is kind of an internet mystery why you keep going
Speaker 1: back and forth? Is it actually originated on a u
Speaker 1: s net forum back in the nineties. You guys, remember
Speaker 1: you snat basic of basic Internet boards. Yeah, you can
Speaker 1: still find this forum on Google because as mentioned in
Speaker 1: the last episode that we talked about using you may
Speaker 1: or may not have listened to that episode, but using
Speaker 1: that kind of merged into Google goal forms forums. Excuse me,
Speaker 1: so most of them still exists in this world today.
Speaker 1: So when I see them on Google then looking at
Speaker 1: stuff this man like migrated over over from and archived exactly.
Speaker 1: But although you will may have noticed that in some
Speaker 1: of those that I linked, the updates were as recent
Speaker 1: as a couple of days ago, so it's not as
Speaker 1: though they're dead. One of the ones that you linked
Speaker 1: here actually was updated just this morning, Yeah, exactly, so
Speaker 1: it's still ongoing. This whole mystery began with a cryptic
Speaker 1: message posted by a user identifying him or herself only
Speaker 1: as Publius, which I keep wanting to say Polebius, but
Speaker 1: it's not. That's a different mystery, different mystery. This post
Speaker 1: was made to the unmoderated news group Alt dot Music
Speaker 1: dot Pink Dash Floyd. Publius proposed a riddle in connection
Speaker 1: with the Pink Floyd album The Division bell y'all didn't
Speaker 1: know that Pink Floyd released something in the nineties. Did yet, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they did. It didn't end after the wall. So the
Speaker 1: post basically promised that an answer to this riddle puzzle
Speaker 1: would lead to a reward, and to this day, which
Speaker 1: is like twenty three years later, it remains unclear if
Speaker 1: the quote unquote enigma involves a genuinely solvable puzzle or
Speaker 1: it's part of an early kind of Internet based contest
Speaker 1: or a hoax or something that helps entirely just not
Speaker 1: necessarily a hoax, but just not solvable. Yeah, totally. So
Speaker 1: this whole thing kind of it was primed, I would
Speaker 1: say by how Columbia Records promoted the Pink Floyd Division
Speaker 1: Bell Tour in America. And that was so same year
Speaker 1: as the album released. So Columbia Record Records, who was
Speaker 1: the record label, flew a giant zeppelin that they called
Speaker 1: the Division Bell with an E at the end. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they flew the Division Bell, this zeppelin that was a
Speaker 1: hundred and ninety four ft long, which is fifty They
Speaker 1: flew it between concert locations, so they would start in
Speaker 1: you know where the last concert had happened and then
Speaker 1: fly it to the next city where the concert was
Speaker 1: and they hit what two or three dozen cities in
Speaker 1: this country. It was pretty scible. And I saw with
Speaker 1: the map of all of the concert locations across the world,
Speaker 1: and they went everywhere on that door. Yeah. Absolutely, party, party, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess in conjunction with this, Columbia Records did release
Speaker 1: a electronic press kit, which are totally ubiquitous now, but
Speaker 1: in those times it was kind of new tangled things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And it included things like promo spots um that had
Speaker 1: been interviews with band members, footage of the airship in action,
Speaker 1: and a segment that included the following little snippet quote.
Speaker 1: A spokesperson for Pink Floyd has issued the following statement.
Speaker 1: You have spotted the Pink Floyd airship, Do not be alarmed.
Speaker 1: Pink Floyd have sent their airship to North America to
Speaker 1: deliver a message. The Pink Floyd Airship is headed towards
Speaker 1: a destination where all will be explained. Upon arrival, Pink
Speaker 1: Floyd will communicate unquote. That kind of made people think
Speaker 1: there might be something else going on with this tour
Speaker 1: or the album as a whole. So when Publius showed
Speaker 1: up on the use net forums, people were already a
Speaker 1: little inclined to believe that there was maybe something more
Speaker 1: going on here, just given that official statement from Columbia Records.
Speaker 1: So everybody's anticipating egg of some sort, or you know,
Speaker 1: even just additional press kit information, even just something little.
Speaker 1: But what happens is Publius on June posts a message
Speaker 1: called the Message onto that forum the dot music dot
Speaker 1: pink Floyd that says, Joe, can you read it? Sure?
Speaker 1: My friends, you haven't heard the message pink Floyd has delivered,
Speaker 1: but have you listened? Perhaps I could be your guide,
Speaker 1: but I will not sell the inding before you. All
Speaker 1: of you must open your minds and communicate with each other,
Speaker 1: as this is the only way the answers can be revealed.
Speaker 1: I may help you, but only if hop skills arise. Listen, read, think, communicate.
Speaker 1: If I don't promise you the answers, would you go
Speaker 1: cryptic a little? Yeah? Super cryptic, and especially when well
Speaker 1: some might say that, but some might say super meaningful,
Speaker 1: particularly when taken with the original release. Right this message,
Speaker 1: where this this hair airship is headed towards the destination
Speaker 1: where all will be explained. Yeah, So that that kind
Speaker 1: of spawned a lot of responses people saying, you know,
Speaker 1: like okay, dude, like what's what's going on here? Like really?
Speaker 1: And so there was a clarification post and I can
Speaker 1: I can read this one, so Joe doesn't have to
Speaker 1: read all of them. Yeah, I know, reading it's hard.
Speaker 1: So it said, as some of you have suspected, the
Speaker 1: division Bell is not like its predecessors. Although all great
Speaker 1: music is subject to multiple interpretations, in this case there
Speaker 1: is a central purpose and a designed solution for the
Speaker 1: ingenious person or group of persons who recognize this and
Speaker 1: where this information points to a unique prize has been secreted.
Speaker 1: How and where the division bell. Listen again, look again,
Speaker 1: as your thoughts will steer you leading the blind while
Speaker 1: I stared out the steel in your eyes. Lyrics, artwork
Speaker 1: and music will take you there. So a lot of
Speaker 1: these are actually lyrics from the album, a lot of
Speaker 1: these phrases. But obviously that did pique interest. One thing
Speaker 1: I mean to just pause here and say, off the bat,
Speaker 1: is that one of the really interesting things that was
Speaker 1: happening around this was many of these posts were reposted
Speaker 1: multiple times within seconds of each other, with varying degrees
Speaker 1: of grammatical and spelling errors. And just typographical errors. Honestly,
Speaker 1: so you can look through all of the posts. I
Speaker 1: don't remember, to be honest, we have looked at so
Speaker 1: many different versions of these posts. If they're all still
Speaker 1: on the forum, or if it's just people have the
Speaker 1: historic screenshots of what these looked like, I honestly can't remember.
Speaker 1: But either way, there it's kind of interesting to see
Speaker 1: that a post was posted in like two seconds later
Speaker 1: it was posted, and none of the errors that occurred,
Speaker 1: you know, in the first one, we're in the second
Speaker 1: one in etcetera, etcetera, and that, and that happened multiple times. Actually,
Speaker 1: all of these posts, if you get them as images
Speaker 1: and you're able to kind of, you know, flip through
Speaker 1: them one by one, one right after the X next,
Speaker 1: you can actually see the text change and shift as
Speaker 1: those little bits any happy on the time stamp, they're
Speaker 1: they're happening within seconds. They're really close. And again I
Speaker 1: don't have enough familiarity necessarily with usenet to know if
Speaker 1: you could go back and delete posts if you were
Speaker 1: rereading your thing and went, oh, crap, I misspelled that
Speaker 1: word or I put put a weird comma there or
Speaker 1: something to edit. Yeah, I was had a weird format thing.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you could edit or even delete
Speaker 1: and repost, and I don't know how good the the
Speaker 1: system was at deleting posts and the timely fashion listen.
Speaker 1: It is a giant pain even in Facebook sometimes to
Speaker 1: edit stuff or to get it to delete properly. Twitter.
Speaker 1: Looking at you, Twitter and something that's twenty plus years
Speaker 1: ago on the Internet, it doesn't shock me that it
Speaker 1: wasn't user friendly to edit or get rideut I think
Speaker 1: you'd probably so that could be one explanation for all
Speaker 1: these posts. And I'm gonna go ahead and say we're
Speaker 1: going to read one more post and then that's it,
Speaker 1: because there are a ton of posts. And if this yeah,
Speaker 1: well already you both are yawning already, which I'm really
Speaker 1: excited about, but not hot and hear anything. I will
Speaker 1: say there are tons of really great, great There are
Speaker 1: tons of analysis out there that go really, really in depth.
Speaker 1: And if this story is one that grabs you, we
Speaker 1: I'm trying to make this a not five hour long episode.
Speaker 1: I will tell you I watched a series of videos
Speaker 1: that was literally seven hours worth of analysis by one
Speaker 1: person just talking into a mic. I don't want this
Speaker 1: episode to be that. So we're not going to do that.
Speaker 1: But if that sort of thing, if this does interest you,
Speaker 1: go out and watch that and not will link to
Speaker 1: some of it or I'll just talk about it later.
Speaker 1: But there was one more post that I would do
Speaker 1: you want to talk about? Because there was this one.
Speaker 1: Well it's it's it's interesting. I don't know if it's
Speaker 1: proof or not, but it's an interesting thing that happened.
Speaker 1: So there was this outcry right of people just saying, hey,
Speaker 1: you're just a dumb internet troll. Obviously you know you
Speaker 1: have no connection. You're just you know, pulling our leg.
Speaker 1: Prove it, Prove it somehow, just prove it. So this
Speaker 1: third post that we're going to read, Steve, do you
Speaker 1: want to read? This? One? Sure to validate the trust
Speaker 1: of those who believe, as well as to reconcile the
Speaker 1: doubt of others. I have gone to great lengths to
Speaker 1: plan the following display of communication Monday, July East Rutherford,
Speaker 1: New Jersey, approximately thirty pm, flashing white lights. There is
Speaker 1: an enigma trust, and the crazy thing is is this happened.
Speaker 1: It actually happened, and it happened, so it's so happened
Speaker 1: that this footage from this particular live event is actually
Speaker 1: the footage they used in the archival. You know, they
Speaker 1: always release a DVD of it a live to. This
Speaker 1: is part of this particular one concert is in that
Speaker 1: so you can even pause a DVD and see, oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, actually happened. And so what happened is the
Speaker 1: setup of the stage. Thank you Pink Floyd. For those
Speaker 1: of you who aren't totally Floyd to file, well you don't,
Speaker 1: you have to, You just have to kind of vaguely
Speaker 1: know about them. They were kind of one of the
Speaker 1: last vestiges of these crazy rock concerts that were kind
Speaker 1: of experiential more than a laser light shows. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: Nine Inch Nails still does this, um but in the
Speaker 1: nine inch Nails but differing. Yeah, they're they're older, so
Speaker 1: they sunk and only eight inch Nails, um, but they
Speaker 1: do it's it's in a different, more artistic, less like
Speaker 1: flash bang way. But so the stage of this particular tour,
Speaker 1: the the division bell was they had this big kind
Speaker 1: of arch over the entire It was kind of like
Speaker 1: a Yeah, it was like a half to opening up
Speaker 1: and it had white lights all over it and then
Speaker 1: at the bottom of the stage, which was also an arc. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was kind of mirrored. Were just panels of LED lights? Well,
Speaker 1: it wasn't actually led s. I think it was probably
Speaker 1: just light bulbs. I think they were actually l E
Speaker 1: ed not not would they have been using L E
Speaker 1: D s in that kind of show Devon alright, it was,
Speaker 1: so it was it was light panels. It was you know,
Speaker 1: four by four panels with a bunch of little light
Speaker 1: bulbs in it, which I would call an L but
Speaker 1: you're right, it probably wasn't actually l E ed. So
Speaker 1: you could project, you could just do you know, flashes
Speaker 1: of light, but you could also write designs on their
Speaker 1: or words. And what happened is, I don't remember what
Speaker 1: exact time it would is almost exactly ten thirty pm
Speaker 1: on that night at that location across the bottom of
Speaker 1: the screen it said, or the bottom of the stage
Speaker 1: it says enigma, right, And you can see, like we
Speaker 1: I printed a picture on the it's there. And if
Speaker 1: you watch the footage of it, there's these really weird
Speaker 1: what appeared to be made up characters strong in that
Speaker 1: light panel across the bottom of the stage, and then
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, the intensity of some of them
Speaker 1: changes and that's when they morph into actual letters. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it is. It's almost like it's alien writing or
Speaker 1: it's not actual. I'm not claiming it's a language, but
Speaker 1: it's something it's that's what it's kind of modeled after. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I gotta admit to I stared at those weird, those
Speaker 1: weird hieroglyphics for a while and then lost patients and
Speaker 1: stop the video before it actually flashed to an enigma.
Speaker 1: But yeah, we do. Yeah, But so it actually happened
Speaker 1: and not to me is pretty crazy, although totally explainable
Speaker 1: under many of our theories, but I just think it's
Speaker 1: really interesting that that actually happened. Quick question for clarification
Speaker 1: is that obviously people were filming the Pink Floyd shows
Speaker 1: all the time when they were at them, and this
Speaker 1: didn't occur at any other show. Correct. It is my
Speaker 1: understanding that this was the only time that this happened.
Speaker 1: That was mine too, and I just want to make
Speaker 1: sure and on top of that, just to you know,
Speaker 1: reinforce the fact that not only was this the only
Speaker 1: time that happened, but this was the time that Pink
Speaker 1: Floyd put this performance on their DVD, which means at
Speaker 1: the very least something they were at least aware of
Speaker 1: something happening, although let's be honest, the lead members of
Speaker 1: that band did enjoy tweaking people a little bit for sure, yes,
Speaker 1: and might have actually been just cheer randomness that that
Speaker 1: they might have actually listened all the shows and this
Speaker 1: is the one where we screwed up the least, so
Speaker 1: that's going to be the official or this is the
Speaker 1: only one that we had the official video from because
Speaker 1: that happens too. Yeah. Absolutely, there are a lot of reasons,
Speaker 1: like I said, totally explainable but also at least a
Speaker 1: little interesting. But we're not we're not in the theories yet,
Speaker 1: so no, we're not. No, a little more to go. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: we have more to go. You mean awesome for twelve hours.
Speaker 1: As mentioned, there are a ton of other posts and
Speaker 1: will link to at least one resource for you to
Speaker 1: be able to see all of those posts. Now, there's
Speaker 1: a zine you guys knows you remember zine right the nineties.
Speaker 1: For those of you who don't know, I'm gonna do
Speaker 1: my NPR thing where they're like Batman. For those of
Speaker 1: you who don't know, is a zine is like a magazine.
Speaker 1: But it's more it's an independent, self published, self published
Speaker 1: I was going to say, a self published publication usually
Speaker 1: really small. Usually, you know, it's distribution is local, you know.
Speaker 1: We I used to see them at Powells a lot,
Speaker 1: and it would be the sort of thing where literally
Speaker 1: you could like they were printed off at home and
Speaker 1: stapled and put you know, the person who was creating
Speaker 1: them would come in and say, like, the twelve more
Speaker 1: copies of this this issue, and PALS employees would be like, okay,
Speaker 1: just put them over there. It's fine magazine, Yeah, old
Speaker 1: main entrance. Yeah, yeah, totally. And it's not you know,
Speaker 1: not to say that they were not of any value,
Speaker 1: but that is the kind of thing that they were.
Speaker 1: And this zine was called maybe still is called I
Speaker 1: couldn't I found one publication that is still in I
Speaker 1: guess what you would call circulation. That's called Brain Damage.
Speaker 1: But I don't think it's actually the same one anymore.
Speaker 1: I think it's it's it looks like it's just been
Speaker 1: around for the last couple of years. I don't think
Speaker 1: it's even a spinoff. I think it's just somebody like
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's it's like an anime drawing. It's different. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I don't think it's in any way related. But
Speaker 1: I also can't, for one say that that's not what
Speaker 1: this morphed into. I guess it's kind of probably a
Speaker 1: kind of a common name for yeah, novels and zines
Speaker 1: and everything else. Yeah, So this zne was called brain
Speaker 1: Damage and it was a Pink Floyd fan zine that
Speaker 1: started in April of nineteen eight six, and there was
Speaker 1: an alleged correspondence component of it. Yeah, but the way
Speaker 1: it was sold was you would write to this character
Speaker 1: named Uncle Custard that as in the food yea custard
Speaker 1: or yeah, like the food, and uh. They it seems
Speaker 1: like fans for some reason thought that this was somebody
Speaker 1: who was either an actual member of Pink Floyd or
Speaker 1: had very close relations to Pink Floyd. But a lot
Speaker 1: of people point to the fact that Jeff Jensen, who
Speaker 1: was the editor of Brain Damage, editor and creator, the
Speaker 1: only person on staff, he never revealed the identity of
Speaker 1: Uncle Custard, So that meant that to these fans, So
Speaker 1: that meant that this was a very credible source that
Speaker 1: was close to the band. I'm not a completely made
Speaker 1: up source. I'ment sure it was actually just Jeff Jensen
Speaker 1: answering these waters himself or making stuff up wholesale, which
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, he could have been writing the questions
Speaker 1: and the answers as well a national lampoon and penthouse
Speaker 1: always to totally totally Yeah, but you will see a
Speaker 1: lot of people say that this is a totally credible source.
Speaker 1: Close to a lot of people say yeah. A lot
Speaker 1: of people do say it's Nick Mason. And they say
Speaker 1: that because and I quote, Uncle Custard is phonetically similar
Speaker 1: to ugly car stud is such a fan, is such
Speaker 1: a car guy. Yeah, he is a car guy. First
Speaker 1: of all, I take Uncle Custard an ugly car stud. No,
Speaker 1: no for me. Second of all, do you think no,
Speaker 1: I just there's lots of lots and lots of big
Speaker 1: problems with this. But fine, whatever it could have been
Speaker 1: to that of this whole circle of people, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe they all contributed to. Maybe I said I had
Speaker 1: a great idea for a letter to the editor. I'm
Speaker 1: going to write the letter and the answer and just
Speaker 1: give it to you and you can publish it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I don't have the impression that there was actually
Speaker 1: any kind of even tangential relationship between the people at
Speaker 1: Brain Damage and the actual members of Pink Floyd and
Speaker 1: then whatsoever. I don't I don't have that, but I'm
Speaker 1: sure that some listener will be able to tell me
Speaker 1: more about that. Yeah, probably Uncle Custard himself. So if
Speaker 1: you are Uncle Custar pleas right, Yeah you can. You
Speaker 1: just wait till the end of the episodes find how
Speaker 1: our email address. Anyway, this is what this very credible
Speaker 1: source had to say about this, and I'll just read
Speaker 1: both parts of this. Actually, no, I'm gonna have Joe
Speaker 1: read the answer as Uncle Custard. But the question that's
Speaker 1: going to be your name from now on I think.
Speaker 1: I don't think so, I call me the Rock. No,
Speaker 1: You're far from it. Yeah, But the question that was
Speaker 1: posed was who is Publius Enigma? Pause? I'm sorry. Also,
Speaker 1: that's the only time I've ever seen it referred to
Speaker 1: as who is Publius Enigma? Not like what is the
Speaker 1: Publius Enigma? But whatever? Or who is? Plus? Yeah, who
Speaker 1: is Publius Enigma? What is the meaning of it all?
Speaker 1: And what is the treasure to be had? Questions all
Speaker 1: to know the answered to. Here's my answer is Uncle Custard. Quote. Yes,
Speaker 1: as the infamous Q has emphasized. Quote, you humans are
Speaker 1: so limited unquote. This is a project for all those
Speaker 1: out there with higher I q s. It does require
Speaker 1: a mastery of diverse languages, along with a lot of
Speaker 1: spare time. Now get with it. The lights were brighter,
Speaker 1: the meaning is worn inside out. The bell has told,
Speaker 1: and the surrogate band is coming back to life. The
Speaker 1: actualized nonlinearly within the paradox of the theme of the
Speaker 1: division bell communication breakdown Hint Perrine, Hint watch the Learning
Speaker 1: to Fly video close Perrinne. It may also involve an
Speaker 1: anomaly in the spacetime continuum. There's an obvious solution, and
Speaker 1: you do not need to be a pink floydd story
Speaker 1: and to figure it out. Winners will receive official entry
Speaker 1: into the Mensis Society and some dry hays to cool
Speaker 1: down all those neural pathways in your brain. It is
Speaker 1: important to note that neither I nor anyone involved with
Speaker 1: this zone will enter into any correspondence on this topic.
Speaker 1: It's a puzzle for you, devised by the one who
Speaker 1: loves you and to drive you mad. Besides, I'm much
Speaker 1: too busy creating crop circles and executing think tank projects
Speaker 1: for the Pentagon. So obvious, trolls obvious. But I will
Speaker 1: say that there are some people who have taken this
Speaker 1: to an extraordinary level of research to further support their
Speaker 1: claim that they have solved the Publius Enigma. But, as
Speaker 1: I said, an effort to keep this episode under four hours,
Speaker 1: we are not going to dive deep into this rabbit hole,
Speaker 1: because we could sit here and spend as I said,
Speaker 1: probably seven hours analyzing the lyrics to all of the
Speaker 1: different songs, and you know, diving deep into the artwork,
Speaker 1: which I know is Steve's favorite part of this whole thing.
Speaker 1: And but we'd rather not sit here talking about this
Speaker 1: for seven hours. I would really rather not. I'm sorry, Um,
Speaker 1: but like I said, I spent seven hours total of
Speaker 1: my life watching this video. See series called Unraveling the
Speaker 1: Publius Enigma on YouTube. This series is produced by a
Speaker 1: guy named David Valentine. And if this mystery hooks you
Speaker 1: and you have a high tolerance for monotone voices and
Speaker 1: um kind of crazy ideas, at the very least, he
Speaker 1: does do a very interesting breakdown of the lyrics of
Speaker 1: the songs. There is an hour and a half long video.
Speaker 1: I think it's the second video where he analyzes the
Speaker 1: artwork and at the very end of an hour and
Speaker 1: a half of my life said, but this artwork has
Speaker 1: nothing to do with it, which anyway, Um, but if
Speaker 1: you know that it was an interesting breakdown of the
Speaker 1: lyrics at the very least of some of the songs.
Speaker 1: His theories are a little out there for me. We
Speaker 1: are going to talk about his theories in the theory section,
Speaker 1: but I would recommend at the very least giving some
Speaker 1: of it to try there. You can also obviously follow
Speaker 1: the links well, try to post links not to his
Speaker 1: YouTube videos because I've just told you about the YouTube
Speaker 1: videos to watch him. Skip the artwork one because obviously
Speaker 1: he says it's bunk and it's different in every country. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true. I mean, Joe, I mean, Steve sent me
Speaker 1: this thing. Because I think I had moved far through
Speaker 1: all of these, I forgot to say, well, so, I
Speaker 1: actually I forgot to like tell you guys, you know
Speaker 1: the last we had said, I said, yeah, it's probably
Speaker 1: worth watching at least you know, some of this stuff,
Speaker 1: and that first one may or may not. It's kind
Speaker 1: of an interesting primer, but that second video is like
Speaker 1: don't don't bother. But I had forgotten to tell you that,
Speaker 1: and Steve sent me this email. It was like, here's
Speaker 1: all of the different artwork from all of the booklets
Speaker 1: from all around the world. So this video was dumb
Speaker 1: and I was like, ah, man, I could have saved
Speaker 1: you so much time and heartache a background noise. It
Speaker 1: wasn't It wasn't really worth it. Um But yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it's an interesting one. At least, Please don't email
Speaker 1: me saying like this was a waste of my time.
Speaker 1: I'm telling you right off the bat it might be,
Speaker 1: but it might also be really interesting to you, and
Speaker 1: you might actually watch it and actually, you know, you
Speaker 1: love a brainstorm, and you'll solve the mystery. It's totally possible. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all of that having been said, we're gonna um dive
Speaker 1: into theories. But first we're going to take a quick break.
Speaker 1: You have a hundred dollars in your pocket, Bobby asked
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Speaker 1: years we're back. Theory number one would be it's just
Speaker 1: an internet troll, But as previously mentioned, I don't think
Speaker 1: that's a very plausible theory. Just given the light show
Speaker 1: that happened, I would think that it would be at
Speaker 1: least somebody connected with it. Though, as my wonderful fiance
Speaker 1: pointed out, he said, Oh, it could still be a troll.
Speaker 1: It just happens that that troll is like the lighting
Speaker 1: designer or knows the lightnings. Yeah, I was gonna go
Speaker 1: there too. He works there or knows. I mean they
Speaker 1: hired kids to run the freaking gates. This is the
Speaker 1: middle of the show. The kid could have had access
Speaker 1: for a while to go in and just play with
Speaker 1: something and change if they know how that system works
Speaker 1: and had acts. I will tell you from working at
Speaker 1: venues for events not of this caliber, but of lesser caliber,
Speaker 1: so would probably likely be even heightened. It would be
Speaker 1: hard for somebody to gain access to that without the
Speaker 1: proper security. You would think that would not let somebody
Speaker 1: go in there and mess with their gear, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of vitally important. But if it were the lightning
Speaker 1: designer or somebody on the staff, somebody on staff, that
Speaker 1: could be possible. Sure, yeah, totally, so okay, fine there next. Well, No,
Speaker 1: I was just gonna follow up by saying, the other
Speaker 1: thing is that I saw in a couple of places,
Speaker 1: not all the places, but a couple of places that
Speaker 1: some of the rereleased mini discs and other you know,
Speaker 1: CDs that were being re released after this whole Publius
Speaker 1: Enigma thing reportedly had in the artwork, like there was
Speaker 1: a picture of a rock wall that had Enigma written
Speaker 1: in it, or like there's a picture of a field
Speaker 1: and there was like a Publius like hidden in the grains.
Speaker 1: Which I don't know how much I believe that I
Speaker 1: saw the pictures that these people were talking about, and
Speaker 1: I agree that in the pictures that they were showing
Speaker 1: online it looked like that. However, I do not believe
Speaker 1: that these people would have then above photos shopping them
Speaker 1: themselves and then putting them out there for public consumption
Speaker 1: and buy yourself some pink Floyd. Well, even if I did,
Speaker 1: you know, the argument is always like, oh, you just
Speaker 1: didn't get the right copy right. It's that same thing
Speaker 1: with the Aladdin the films, some of them that had
Speaker 1: to be recalled because the animators had put like sex
Speaker 1: and then the Little Mermaid with the castle thing right.
Speaker 1: So the argument, yeah, so the argument against those when
Speaker 1: you say like, well my copy didn't have it as,
Speaker 1: they're like, you just didn't get the right copy, right,
Speaker 1: So that would be the same argument there. But the
Speaker 1: whole Little Mermaid castle thing actually just an urban legend.
Speaker 1: I think that didn't actually see. That's exactly what I'm
Speaker 1: saying is that, like, it would be very easy to
Speaker 1: say to somebody you know, who says, oh, had that copy. Well,
Speaker 1: they say I had that copy, and you'd say, well,
Speaker 1: I didn't have that copy. Nobody knows except for you
Speaker 1: had that copy. And they'd say, well, you just had
Speaker 1: weird copies then, right, And then all of the pictures
Speaker 1: online are just photoshops, super easy to do. So I
Speaker 1: and I'm tired to believe actually animators would go to
Speaker 1: that much trouble. In me, animation, especially back in the
Speaker 1: old days, was a pretty labor intensive process whose movies,
Speaker 1: and I don't know, it wouldn't surprise me that much
Speaker 1: that they I mean, you know, there's some of the
Speaker 1: jokes I had on in current kids movies. They're adults,
Speaker 1: so it wouldn't surprise me too terribly much. But I
Speaker 1: don't think it's just random troll on the Internet that
Speaker 1: is responsible for this, but it's possible. I think it's
Speaker 1: some kind of troll, a Bank Floyd troll. Yeah. Next
Speaker 1: theory is the one that I spent a long time
Speaker 1: learning about because at the beginning of this whole ruling experience,
Speaker 1: this person David Valentine said, oh, the answer to this
Speaker 1: is spiritual enlightenment, and I thought, great, I'm really interested
Speaker 1: to see how this is going to pan out. But no,
Speaker 1: it turns out that theory is actually about possession. I
Speaker 1: have quote for one of his movies, say, right now,
Speaker 1: the Division Bell is literally an album whose songs incorporate
Speaker 1: themselves together to describe the process the spirit took in
Speaker 1: possessing the listener. Unquote. I didn't say quote any but
Speaker 1: let's quote it's quote. That's his theory is that actually
Speaker 1: this entire album is about how Pink Floyd m hm,
Speaker 1: how Pink Floyd possesses their listeners. Is that what he's
Speaker 1: saying that what he's saying the spirit. Is he saying
Speaker 1: the spirit, But the spirit does he mean just your
Speaker 1: own soul possessing your body? No, spirit of the band.
Speaker 1: It not even spirit means the actual band members are
Speaker 1: physically possessing. All five of them are in me at once. Weird,
Speaker 1: I know. And he says that actually, this is something
Speaker 1: that most artists do, is they possess their listeners. And
Speaker 1: this is and I should clarify that you it may
Speaker 1: be worth going and watching this for you guys to
Speaker 1: understand that I should clarify. This is not just like
Speaker 1: uh oh, the spirit of the music it's so good,
Speaker 1: like it possesses me and it overwhelms me. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: This is an actual physical overtake of your nervous system
Speaker 1: and body that these people are capable of doing through
Speaker 1: their music, through you listening to their music. According to
Speaker 1: this theory, so don't drive and listen to Pink Floyd
Speaker 1: because they'll take over and they may not be very
Speaker 1: good drivers and they take the car. Yeah. And so
Speaker 1: the argument of like, you know, me being able to say, well,
Speaker 1: like listen, dude, I listened to Division Bell and I
Speaker 1: didn't get possessed is like, well, okay, So it describes no,
Speaker 1: so it describes exactly the dif the situation and how
Speaker 1: it has to be in order for the possession to
Speaker 1: take place. So maybe you did den the lights when
Speaker 1: the artists told you to dim the lights so you
Speaker 1: were able to not get possessed, or maybe you looked
Speaker 1: away so you were able to not And so again
Speaker 1: if that you know, self confirmation of what you know
Speaker 1: what's going on? Really yeah, so if you if you
Speaker 1: wouldn't mind the tie, this seen exactly to the Enigma mystery.
Speaker 1: So the Enigma Mystery is thank you because I spent
Speaker 1: so much time in this that I didn't even tie
Speaker 1: it in. The whole Enigma Mystery is pointing you towards
Speaker 1: analyzing the lyrics of the Division Bell. And according to
Speaker 1: this theory, there's a silence triad, which is three of
Speaker 1: the songs that tie together. I should clarify on on
Speaker 1: this album there are two of the tracks are just instrumental,
Speaker 1: and then there's the silence triad, and then of that triad,
Speaker 1: two of the three of the songs. I wish this
Speaker 1: was like a physical thing so I could be showing
Speaker 1: you guys the listeners, But basically it's there's two songs
Speaker 1: that are the Horizontal Farm, and then there's the third
Speaker 1: and from that third one, the other two songs on
Speaker 1: the album are all describing the same event, these three songs.
Speaker 1: So it's a try. It's a major interpretation of the
Speaker 1: it is lyrics. It is I can embarrassingly enough, I
Speaker 1: can kind of get there with the explanation of how
Speaker 1: these all kind of get together, because there are actually
Speaker 1: recurring themes within the lyrics in all of the different songs,
Speaker 1: Like there are literally phrases recycled over and over again
Speaker 1: in different songs on the album that seemed to kind
Speaker 1: of describe the same sort of thing. And now Pink
Speaker 1: Floyd for you know, be fan or not. They're not
Speaker 1: lazy artists there. I mean, they may have become lazy
Speaker 1: artists by but I can I can get behind the
Speaker 1: thought process. I don't buy it, but I can understand
Speaker 1: where the thought process comes in of saying, like, listen,
Speaker 1: these are almost verbatim copy paste lyrics from one song
Speaker 1: to another. Therefore they must be describing a similar thing.
Speaker 1: There must be some reason for that. And you could
Speaker 1: say the same thing about straight out of Hampton Well
Speaker 1: to the same same phrases same. But here's the thing.
Speaker 1: But you you're this is where you're not listening to me,
Speaker 1: because I'm saying that this theory stipulates that every single
Speaker 1: recording artist to ever have existed does this exact same thing.
Speaker 1: The trick to this is that the division bell is
Speaker 1: meant to expose it. This trick, yeah, to expose the
Speaker 1: fact that artists are possessing there. But but here's the
Speaker 1: problem I have with this theory. I can't defend this
Speaker 1: theory very well. First of all, well, first of all,
Speaker 1: it has there there you know, there really is no
Speaker 1: tie in to the actual I mean, and that's the
Speaker 1: problem I have with Actually, this mystery, the enigma, the
Speaker 1: mystery that you're supposed to solve, Well, nobody ever says
Speaker 1: what it is. You don't know what it is. It's
Speaker 1: it's how can you solve a rider? But you don't
Speaker 1: know what it is? I mean, And well, I mean,
Speaker 1: but but usually a riddle has a beginning, in an
Speaker 1: in the middle, and an ending. Fair enough, in this
Speaker 1: particular case, the guy, the guy refers to a mystery,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't tell you what the mystery is. And
Speaker 1: so I guess, and this is what you're saying. This
Speaker 1: guy was saying, is that the mystery the contest is
Speaker 1: to say, listen hard to these lyrics and the true
Speaker 1: meaning will will pop out at you. Yeah, and that
Speaker 1: is and that is So that is the mystery is
Speaker 1: the mystery of what's in these lyrics. But of course
Speaker 1: that's all subjective because well, no, the mystery is I mean,
Speaker 1: there's a there's a reported tangible prize at the end
Speaker 1: when you solve the mystery of the division bell right,
Speaker 1: and a lot of listeners stipulated and we'll talk more
Speaker 1: about this like in later on in the theories, but
Speaker 1: a lot of fans said, well, obviously we have to
Speaker 1: travel to a physical location to physically retrieve a prize
Speaker 1: that has been hidden somewhere quote unquote secreted away to
Speaker 1: to quote Publius. But this theory stipulates that it's actually
Speaker 1: the prize is actually solving this riddle. That's this larger concept.
Speaker 1: I can't I honestly, I cannot defend it at all.
Speaker 1: I can see parts of it, I can get to
Speaker 1: parts of it. But I also think describing the same
Speaker 1: thing over three or four different songs on an album
Speaker 1: is just great album making, you know, just telling a
Speaker 1: story from multiple different angles. It's just a great storytelling.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's anything nefarious or anything. So I
Speaker 1: can get behind the idea of you know, there's an actual,
Speaker 1: you know, continuum of like this is this song is
Speaker 1: leading up to the events that's happening in these three
Speaker 1: songs from three different angles, and then this is the aftermath. Totally,
Speaker 1: I can totally get there, but I can't get to
Speaker 1: the part where it's like and then it was spiritual possession, man,
Speaker 1: Like I can't get there. I can't. It's not even spiritual,
Speaker 1: it's just it's possession. I can't. I can't get there.
Speaker 1: I'm so sorry. I can't even get halfway there to be.
Speaker 1: But he's not the only one who's come up with
Speaker 1: this kind of idea. I mean that I saw a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of stuff where people are like, it's all
Speaker 1: about connection, man, and it's one world and one love
Speaker 1: and one people. That I was going to say, that's
Speaker 1: the next the next kind of I don't even I
Speaker 1: don't even understand this one. But somebody else stipulated that
Speaker 1: actually the prizes feedback and control feedback. I couldn't wrap
Speaker 1: my head around this one. I'm only putting it out
Speaker 1: there because you'll see it out there. But I couldn't.
Speaker 1: I literally, I can just say that this person thinks
Speaker 1: that instead of actual possession, the solving of the riddle
Speaker 1: is feedback, feedback. The word feedback. I can't. I can't
Speaker 1: get there. Well, that feedback can be usedful, I suppose. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. There is a connection, interestingly to Douglas
Speaker 1: Adams another theory we're talking about here. It's kind of
Speaker 1: an addition. It's a weird bit of more information on
Speaker 1: the whole enigmas. Yeah, like maybe it's source. Yeah, maybe
Speaker 1: the source. Maybe you know, maybe Douglas Adams is responsible
Speaker 1: for the whole thing. So yeah, I guess it is
Speaker 1: a different theory. In general, I think if Douglas Adams
Speaker 1: have been involved in this, it would have been funnier. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, so there's this really interesting quote frum Douglas Adams.
Speaker 1: He did like a what I would call an a
Speaker 1: m A on a uth net forum in like two
Speaker 1: thousand on like the Douglas Adam fan And by the way,
Speaker 1: we're talking about the Hitchhiker's Guide author Douglas Adams and
Speaker 1: doctor just so everybody knows. Yeah, so he's actually responsible.
Speaker 1: He has credit on the album because he is reportedly
Speaker 1: responsible for naming the album. David Gilmour had asked him
Speaker 1: to kind of look at some lyrics and stuff like
Speaker 1: that as well. I don't know. I there's some so
Speaker 1: there's some speculation with him being involved in it. The
Speaker 1: speculation is that, well, maybe he was responsible for the
Speaker 1: whole concept behind He was actually responsible for the whole
Speaker 1: concept behind the album in in totality basically that he
Speaker 1: had essentially written the lyrics and that he had the album,
Speaker 1: and then he came up with this sort of prize
Speaker 1: thing so that he would be responsible for the concept
Speaker 1: behind it all. Not necessarily it's execution. Not necessarily it's execution.
Speaker 1: But I I wish, I guess would more explain why
Speaker 1: there would be some really crazy interpretations of it. But
Speaker 1: I don't think. I don't think he's actually responsible for
Speaker 1: most of it, So I don't really know. I agree
Speaker 1: with Joe that if Adams had been involved in that way,
Speaker 1: it would have been much cleverer. His style is pretty unmistakable. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would agree with that totally. Yeah, but I wanted
Speaker 1: to throw that in there because I thought it was interesting.
Speaker 1: I didn't really know that he was I mean that
Speaker 1: he was even involved with pain for apparently he was
Speaker 1: like a huge rock rockhead. Why do you say that
Speaker 1: rock fan, fan fan? He was fan groupie. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: definitely not a groupie. The next series one that I
Speaker 1: haven't actually seen anywhere else, but I thought was kind
Speaker 1: of an interesting It's kind of a half baked theory,
Speaker 1: but you have it, the idea that maybe Publius was
Speaker 1: actually just a Markov chain generator, because it's you know,
Speaker 1: that's the ergo of my life or airgot the Internet.
Speaker 1: But it's kind of an interesting idea of what if
Speaker 1: somebody just fed all of the lyrics of the division
Speaker 1: Bell into a Markov Chang generator. It would help explain
Speaker 1: all of the weird typos and stuff like that, and
Speaker 1: the you know, simultaneous reposting. The posts weren't necessarily they
Speaker 1: got longer as we as you go through the timeline,
Speaker 1: and they don't necessarily become more coherent. But I don't
Speaker 1: I don't actually I don't know if I really Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's one of those things where it was like I
Speaker 1: had the idea, so I had to add it. But
Speaker 1: also like the problem with this theory is that Markov chains,
Speaker 1: when they have access to a rather large library of words,
Speaker 1: have a hard time stringing sensible sentences together. And then
Speaker 1: if you only feed it the leader the lyrics for
Speaker 1: what eleven or twelve songs, it's a very small pool
Speaker 1: of words because most of those words are repeated, So
Speaker 1: it's it's got a much it can't it's not enough
Speaker 1: words for it to have done even a remotely comprehendible job.
Speaker 1: Or maybe they fed in the markout chain from everything
Speaker 1: Pink Floyd ever did. Maybe, but then the word I
Speaker 1: didn't talk about the wall, so that good point. Now
Speaker 1: I'm thinking the mark out change just remember this to
Speaker 1: mark out chains existed. But at the same time, I
Speaker 1: don't know pink Floyd in the gang where all that
Speaker 1: technologically advanced where they think about doing something like that. Rather,
Speaker 1: I would stipulate that it was just like that was
Speaker 1: an extension of the troll, that it was just some
Speaker 1: random person online. But again the light show. That's my
Speaker 1: big hold up with saying it was just like some
Speaker 1: random person. I just still man. I mean, the whole
Speaker 1: thing about Pink Floyd is they figured out very early
Speaker 1: on that they could go on big solos and they
Speaker 1: could use crazy light setups and big laser shows, and
Speaker 1: you said, make this kind of giant experience. So I
Speaker 1: I don't see it as being such a stretch as
Speaker 1: somebody saying, hey, dude, have you seen this crap? You
Speaker 1: should just like put it somewhere in there. It was like,
Speaker 1: go ahead and do it. I mean, I could just
Speaker 1: totally see that being the case. It's entirely it's the Tyler. Possibly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they saw that crap and I thought, hey, let's have
Speaker 1: some fun, like you said, totally and then the next
Speaker 1: show that the person who does it, hey, you want
Speaker 1: that in there? Getting no, and we just thought that
Speaker 1: was dumb. We shouldn't have done it. I don't care,
Speaker 1: you know, to put it back to normal totally. Next
Speaker 1: theory is that it was an actual physical treasure. And
Speaker 1: I found this little snippet on Reddit what the reward is, well,
Speaker 1: maybe where it is, and this user posted that some
Speaker 1: of us still chip away at this every once in
Speaker 1: a while. The page numbers of the Division Bell booklet
Speaker 1: contain hidden binary code, a zero for every even numbered
Speaker 1: page and a one for every odd numbered page. Stop
Speaker 1: looking at me like that coupled with the duel heads
Speaker 1: on page eleven, it winds up pointing to the date
Speaker 1: of the First Armistice, November eleventh, nineteen eighteen. The last
Speaker 1: of the Publius posts promised two clues that would lead
Speaker 1: to a physical location that needed to be visited. A
Speaker 1: reference to the page numbers holding great significance was the
Speaker 1: first clue. The second clue that was was never given.
Speaker 1: The anonymous remailer that Publius was using was shut down
Speaker 1: due to end quote unrelated circumstances. We never actually specified
Speaker 1: that the us eventually shut down, like not too long
Speaker 1: after this whole thing got going, right, how long after
Speaker 1: this did it? I actually don't remember the date that
Speaker 1: usenet got shut Well, it was that particular anonymous server
Speaker 1: that he was or she was the thing. But when
Speaker 1: did this this server do you remember? Don't to be honest,
Speaker 1: I suddenly can't remember if it was months or years later.
Speaker 1: I thought it was years later. It wasn't one to scenario, Okay,
Speaker 1: the shreaditorytelling is my best guess is that something was
Speaker 1: hidden at the glade of the armist armist the location
Speaker 1: where Germany surrendered in World War One, and we're France
Speaker 1: surrendered at World War Two. Of course that would have
Speaker 1: been twenty one years ago. No telling if what it
Speaker 1: would be or even if it were still there. Sure
Speaker 1: it was never there, because I mean, there's no point
Speaker 1: in hiding a treasure when people have no possible way
Speaker 1: of understanding how to find the treasure. Because all the
Speaker 1: ever done has made right vague references to the mystery
Speaker 1: which made may not exist. I will see the one
Speaker 1: interesting thing. Um. I don't know if you got a
Speaker 1: chance to actually go through all of the booklet artwork,
Speaker 1: but at least in the United States original release of
Speaker 1: the Division Bell, the page numbers were on little heads.
Speaker 1: They look like it looks like the heads from Eastern Island. Well,
Speaker 1: they look like the heads on the cover, right. Well
Speaker 1: I'm giving people who don't know what the heads looked like.
Speaker 1: They looked like the heads from me Islid Yeah a
Speaker 1: little bit, Yeah, they do. Um. But the page numbers
Speaker 1: were on little heads, and some of them there there
Speaker 1: was no consistent placement on the page, and they each
Speaker 1: number was in a different language. And some of the
Speaker 1: heads were transparent, and some of them were like bright orange,
Speaker 1: and some of them were black, and some of them
Speaker 1: one of them had like a cutout of this the
Speaker 1: next pages word under the white writing. So I mean
Speaker 1: there was like a lot of variants, so that varied
Speaker 1: from country to country as well. It did, for sure.
Speaker 1: But I think it was interesting certainly that there's some
Speaker 1: reference to the page numbers. And I think it's even
Speaker 1: more interesting that some people were like, yeah, obviously it's
Speaker 1: the binary instead of like looking into the crazy page
Speaker 1: numbering system. That well, part of the page numbering was
Speaker 1: in reference to God. There was one that was in God.
Speaker 1: I want to say, it was an Indian um, what
Speaker 1: is the what is the language in India? And thank you?
Speaker 1: And it was written in that based on the image
Speaker 1: that was on the page. Like that seemed to be
Speaker 1: from what I understood in the reading, that was the
Speaker 1: impetus of why this one was in this language and
Speaker 1: this one was in something different some of them, but
Speaker 1: the color scheme was different different, But again it's artistic.
Speaker 1: It's artistic, and it varies by country because that was
Speaker 1: the mirror ball page on in the one of the books,
Speaker 1: the words are on an arc that followed the ball,
Speaker 1: and on the other countries they're square, so it's it's inconsistent. Well,
Speaker 1: and it's I mean, there's all kinds of like weird
Speaker 1: things going on the artwork there. You could read all
Speaker 1: kinds of stuff and all kinds of things in the
Speaker 1: absence of the actual proof of any existence of a
Speaker 1: mystery at all, given that nobody has given us a
Speaker 1: clue what the mystery even is. Again, this is the
Speaker 1: problem I have with this story. Not nothing. I have
Speaker 1: a problem with you Devon at all, or with Pink Floyd.
Speaker 1: I love Pink Floyd, but this guy kept referring to
Speaker 1: a mystery. He told us. You never gave us the
Speaker 1: tiniest hand of what the mystery even was, fair enough.
Speaker 1: And that's the problem that I add with this. Okay,
Speaker 1: So I'm sorry. I see her. Yeah, the book that
Speaker 1: we're going to sell for like ten million dollars better
Speaker 1: you're going to burn. I'll probably try to sell it.
Speaker 1: I'll just steal it from you and not tell you. Guys.
Speaker 1: But dear Diary had my first kiss today. It was great. Um.
Speaker 1: But so that must mean you have something you want
Speaker 1: to add to this. Well, I didn't see it in
Speaker 1: your stuff. Was there is out there? God? I cannot
Speaker 1: think of the name of the website now, but it's
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's got pink Floyd in the name.
Speaker 1: But there's the guy Albert Moogli. Do you remember him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So this guy has these huge writings talking about how
Speaker 1: he has been involved with the band, almost as if
Speaker 1: he was a silent member in the band. It sounds
Speaker 1: like he started out more of a roady and then
Speaker 1: moved up through the ranks with them. But he tells
Speaker 1: this story about how, oh god, who is it. It's Mason, um,
Speaker 1: Nick Mason, thank you. I think it's Nick Mason came
Speaker 1: up with this crazy code because he was mixing languages
Speaker 1: to try and get everybody to know that Mooglie was
Speaker 1: in the background and was the secret partner and helped
Speaker 1: with all the lyrics. And if you translated it and
Speaker 1: figured it out, you would fig out that it was
Speaker 1: I can't remember what he called himself. His name is
Speaker 1: Albert Moogli, but he it was, you know, the moogie
Speaker 1: or something. And then he went on to say that
Speaker 1: Stephen Hawking wrote the band and he had cracked the code,
Speaker 1: but they couldn't tell Hawking because then it would all
Speaker 1: come out. Sounds sounds pretty legit. Oh yeah, just as
Speaker 1: legit as the story he told where he lost all
Speaker 1: the gear for the band in the river and then
Speaker 1: hit the van and punched himself a couple of times,
Speaker 1: and they believed that he had been beat up. You know.
Speaker 1: Actually reading all this stuff, you know, and I've gone
Speaker 1: through quite a bit of it, actually starts to make
Speaker 1: all the fandom surrounding princess and the paparazzi and all
Speaker 1: that scene almost rational. Yeah. So the last theory we have,
Speaker 1: either of you have any theories that you want to add, No,
Speaker 1: I think this whole thing is just interpretation of lyrics.
Speaker 1: So um, the last theory we have is that this
Speaker 1: was a marketing ploy by Columbia Records, which is the
Speaker 1: theory that I believe most of all. Reportedly in April
Speaker 1: of two thousand five, so ten years after the whole
Speaker 1: release of this thing. Nine, I guess Nick Mason, who
Speaker 1: I guess is the only member of Pink Floyd that
Speaker 1: would ever talk to anybody, because that's where all the
Speaker 1: quotes come from. Are He's the only one who talked
Speaker 1: about it. Maybe I don't know. He wrote he had
Speaker 1: written this biographical book called inside Out, A Personal History
Speaker 1: of Pink Floyd, Apparently he was at a book signing
Speaker 1: and somebody asked him about it and he said, yeah,
Speaker 1: the publius and does exist, but it had been started
Speaker 1: by the record company, the band had no involvement in it,
Speaker 1: and the prize was said to have been something like
Speaker 1: a crop of trees planted in the clear cut area
Speaker 1: of forest or something like that. Really crappy, actually, I
Speaker 1: think I think that's a joke. You know. It's like
Speaker 1: you win, you win, and they just show you a
Speaker 1: photograph of of a clear cut that's been replanted and
Speaker 1: they're like, here, here you go, this is your prize.
Speaker 1: Is actually happy, Well, it's similar to what Uncle Custard said.
Speaker 1: The prize was, right, was like complimentary entry to men
Speaker 1: and some dry eyes. Great, okay? Cool. Um. So the
Speaker 1: quote that it is attributed to Nick Mason about this
Speaker 1: is um. The ploy was done by E M I.
Speaker 1: They had a man working for them who adored puzzles.
Speaker 1: He was working for E M I and suggested that
Speaker 1: a puzzle be created that could be followed on the web.
Speaker 1: The prize was never given out into this day remains unsolved,
Speaker 1: and frankly, the puzzle for me is what was the
Speaker 1: puzzle Yeah, I know, I said that already, but you
Speaker 1: had twelve times. Apparently there had been a different interview
Speaker 1: with um the Pink Floyd lighting and production designer whose
Speaker 1: name is Mark Brickman. He was apparently the person who
Speaker 1: was responsible for putting a name up Publius and the
Speaker 1: like I like Publius because it sounds more like pop.
Speaker 1: I like Publius because it sounds like I'm going to
Speaker 1: go to the pub. All right, fair enough. Mark was
Speaker 1: responsible for putting the lights up, and he basically said
Speaker 1: that it was some CIA or FBI guy from some
Speaker 1: encryption guy. Yeah, who you know what, intentionally made it
Speaker 1: so there was no real mystery and no real solvable anything,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't really traced. Um. But however, later um
Speaker 1: Mark did we can't. He said, I didn't never say
Speaker 1: any of that in that interview, basically accused the interviewer
Speaker 1: of having made up that entire statement. Yeah, um, well,
Speaker 1: it is kind of an incomprehensible quote, so maybe it
Speaker 1: was made up. It could have totally been made up.
Speaker 1: Try and read it verbatim. Yeah, so I think marketing
Speaker 1: employee is the most likely of these. But I will
Speaker 1: say the storm thurgis Thurgerson, who was a longtime Pink
Speaker 1: Floyd collaborator, famously once said rumors are only true and denied.
Speaker 1: So the denial Pink Floyd continuing to deny that they
Speaker 1: had no personal involvement in it maybe means they actually
Speaker 1: did have some sort of personal involvement in it, just
Speaker 1: only because I know that they did love kind of
Speaker 1: toying with people. They did. But I really feel like
Speaker 1: that's just that's an easy answer. But I also feel
Speaker 1: like the whole answer to this thing is just read
Speaker 1: and interpret our lyrics, because everybody reads and interprets these
Speaker 1: things differently. And that's what you find on the internet.
Speaker 1: I can read a patchage of thorough and take it
Speaker 1: one way, and you can read it and take it
Speaker 1: in a slightly different way for a totally different ways,
Speaker 1: a totally different way, and you know, and and that's
Speaker 1: what that's what it is when you read stuff like that,
Speaker 1: because it's not it's not linear. It's not meant to
Speaker 1: be a linear thought, so which I don't think you
Speaker 1: know really, which to me means unless they have some
Speaker 1: encrypted message in their lyrics, which is possible. It is
Speaker 1: possible unless they had that. If you want to just
Speaker 1: read the words and discern the meeting. While you're like,
Speaker 1: you say, it's subjective, so that's really not a valid
Speaker 1: mystery puzzle at all. Totally agree it's not at all.
Speaker 1: So I just think it's a really interesting thing. I
Speaker 1: don't know why I grabbed me so much, because I did.
Speaker 1: Do you know, you may not know by the length
Speaker 1: of this episode, but I did so much research and
Speaker 1: and watching and listening and hours and hours seconds. Um,
Speaker 1: but I you know, it is interesting to me for sure,
Speaker 1: and I hope that it is interesting to at least
Speaker 1: some of our listeners and that they'll go do their
Speaker 1: own research and it will engage some sort of conversation.
Speaker 1: So while I will agree that I don't think the
Speaker 1: mystery is as robust as it is made out to be,
Speaker 1: the reading can and is interesting in places. So I
Speaker 1: mean it's I don't feel like I wasted time. Well
Speaker 1: I kind of do feel like I wasted time, but
Speaker 1: it didn't waste time, if that makes sense. It does
Speaker 1: because I'm in the same boat where I'm like, I
Speaker 1: was so mad, I like through things when I got
Speaker 1: to the end of that video series and was just like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, how did I just waste so much
Speaker 1: time on this. But at the same time, I am
Speaker 1: happy that I watched it because there's some really interesting
Speaker 1: stuff going on there. If only it's an interesting examination
Speaker 1: of how people can extrapolate out given the tiniest little
Speaker 1: bare bones of information. That's exactly it. And it said
Speaker 1: that the phenomenon of people reading so much into this
Speaker 1: that was and maybe that was the point of the
Speaker 1: whole thing, was to say something just really vague and
Speaker 1: meaningless and just see if people jumped on it and
Speaker 1: how far they took it. Well, I mean, it's an
Speaker 1: interesting idea, right, Like as as you said, Joe, when
Speaker 1: I was starting to talk about this mystery, You're like, well,
Speaker 1: it's a really old mystery though, right, it's from like
Speaker 1: the eighties, it's pre internet. And I said, no, no,
Speaker 1: it's from ninety four, and you said, but Pink Floyd
Speaker 1: was making right, you know. And I think there's something
Speaker 1: to be said for a marketing team to try to
Speaker 1: create almost like a pre viral sense around this. I mean,
Speaker 1: do you think as many people would still be talking
Speaker 1: about this album anymore if there wasn't this weird thing.
Speaker 1: I mean, we certainly wouldn't be doing an episode for
Speaker 1: our hundreds of listeners are tens of listeners, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, because it just wouldn't be like, we wouldn't
Speaker 1: care that Pink Floyd released an album in ninety four,
Speaker 1: but now we're talking about but a lot of people
Speaker 1: are going to be like, oh crap, they did, like,
Speaker 1: let's go listen to Actually, I was reading the song
Speaker 1: list and realized I knew at least one of the
Speaker 1: songs off of it. Yeah crap, But they's good. It's good.
Speaker 1: They are a band that I always associate to be
Speaker 1: farther back in time. It's like, yeah, except for it
Speaker 1: was like the Eagles, except for that that one Hell
Speaker 1: Freezes Over album that they made there. Yeah, yeah, And
Speaker 1: so you always just oh, well, now I'm going back
Speaker 1: to this time frame of music totally. Yeah, that's kind
Speaker 1: of that. That's when I knew Pink Floyd. I was
Speaker 1: a kid and I was listening to their stuff, you know.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I just thought it was kind of an
Speaker 1: interesting little industry. Oh yeah, it's sorry to make you
Speaker 1: guys trudge through the research again. It's it's just it's just,
Speaker 1: like I said, an interesting study for the psychologists of
Speaker 1: how people can see it's on one tiny, vague little
Speaker 1: thing and makes something huge out of it. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: do you have I mean, I think it was a
Speaker 1: marketing ploy. Um. Have you ever you know that that
Speaker 1: the word the title of Division Bell was supposedly maybe
Speaker 1: suggested about that Adams? Yes? Do you think maybe he
Speaker 1: was really talking about the Nazi bill? Yes? I mean
Speaker 1: I feel more comfortable talking about like World War two
Speaker 1: and Nazis and stuff like that, and I do about
Speaker 1: this gibberish. I know you do. I'm sorry, I'm sorry
Speaker 1: to make you talk about Steve. What do you think?
Speaker 1: I I well, I would like to think that there
Speaker 1: is something much larger to this. It is it is
Speaker 1: either the marketing ploy or it is some fan who
Speaker 1: just came up with a interpretation of lyrics and through
Speaker 1: some unknown stroke of luck, managed to get that onto
Speaker 1: the stage at the right time at the right I
Speaker 1: mean obviously had it set up beforehand, based on the
Speaker 1: fact that I didn't say this saying this now in
Speaker 1: the wrap up. But that post that Publius made was
Speaker 1: like almost a week before it actually happened, So it
Speaker 1: wasn't even like, oh crap, I like, man, I did
Speaker 1: it like it's an hour before and when you know,
Speaker 1: post real quick. Oh yeah, I mean like it would
Speaker 1: have had to have been at least a little bit
Speaker 1: planned out, which is interesting. I gotta do something, I
Speaker 1: gotta I gotta hurt up and meet the lighting designer
Speaker 1: and like persuade him and then uh, you know, and
Speaker 1: and then somehow get it done and he did, you know,
Speaker 1: and then yeah, yeah, I made drugs blackmail who whatever
Speaker 1: it took. Yeah, well, I will buy your theory though
Speaker 1: that it was a marketing ploy and I thought, let's
Speaker 1: do this new weird usenet thing and see if this
Speaker 1: new internet thing, yeah exactly. Well, well we all know
Speaker 1: it's not going anywhere. That internet thing, it's never gonna
Speaker 1: take off. Never. As previously mentioned, we're going to post
Speaker 1: some links. I'll try to post the most interesting, useful
Speaker 1: links to you. I can't make any promises. UM. Those links,
Speaker 1: along with links to merch and also UM. The ability
Speaker 1: to listen to and download our episodes can be found
Speaker 1: on our website, which is Thinking Sideways podcast dot com.
Speaker 1: You can find us. If you don't want to listen
Speaker 1: to us through our own website, you can find us
Speaker 1: on iTunes and almost all streaming sites. If your podcast
Speaker 1: provider of choice allows you to subscribe and leave a
Speaker 1: review in a rating, please do so. UM. That's how
Speaker 1: other people are able to find us and find out
Speaker 1: more about us before listening to us, though we hope
Speaker 1: they'll just listen to us, you know, blindly like sheep.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, do everything, stuff, do it? Do it. You
Speaker 1: can find us on social media. We have a Facebook
Speaker 1: group in a page, so you can like the page
Speaker 1: and join the group. We have a Twitter which is
Speaker 1: thinking Sideways. We also have a subreddit which is thinking
Speaker 1: Sideways no trend anywhere. If you are Publius or Uncle
Speaker 1: Custard or Uncle Custard or Nick Mason or any other
Speaker 1: person involved with this case, what I think he's yeah,
Speaker 1: that's okay. We've asked dead people to email us before
Speaker 1: you kid Arthur C. Clark. It doesn't work if you
Speaker 1: are anybody who wants to get in contact with us
Speaker 1: for any reason. If even you just want to yell
Speaker 1: at me for like butchering the idea of pink Floyd,
Speaker 1: that's fine with me. UM. You can send us an
Speaker 1: email at Thinking Sideways podcast at gmail dot com. UM,
Speaker 1: and we do respond to every single email we get.
Speaker 1: But it does sometimes take us a little while. So
Speaker 1: thanks for your patients. In that all of that having
Speaker 1: been said, I think we're going to go ahead on
Speaker 1: out of here. That wasn't a coherent sentence, wasn't. It
Speaker 1: was just like you've been reading great, Uh yeah, nothing,
Speaker 1: I'm nothing here by Hey, guys, you want to see
Speaker 1: that really cool wig that I got from the Pink
Speaker 1: Floyd concert. Yeah, we have hair again. Let's do it cool.
Speaker 1: Bye bye,