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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class from houtof

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Speaker 1: works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm

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Speaker 1: Holly Fry and I'm Tracy Wilson. And they were going

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Speaker 1: to talk about one of those great history mysteries that's

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Speaker 1: persisted for hundreds of years, which I always love those

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Speaker 1: because you know, once it's it just remains a mystery

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Speaker 1: for x amount of time. It's just probably always going

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Speaker 1: to be a mystery. And even if it gets solved,

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Speaker 1: I think there will always be detractors, which makes it

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Speaker 1: kind of well and I it's one of those things

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Speaker 1: that I always am a little bit annoyed at the

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Speaker 1: unsolved mystery because I want to know the real story.

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Speaker 1: I don't know that we ever can because there will

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Speaker 1: never probably be an accepted version of the real story

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Speaker 1: by every universally accepted. Yes, there would have to be

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Speaker 1: some kind of new discovery on this one, I think so, yes.

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Speaker 1: But well, we're talking about today is a document called

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Speaker 1: the Voytage Manuscript. You may or may not have heard

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Speaker 1: of it. Some uh sort of code breaking fans have

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Speaker 1: have done a lot of study on it. Some historians

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Speaker 1: are really into it. But what it is is a

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Speaker 1: book that no one can read. Yes. Is it an

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Speaker 1: unknown language? Yes, most people consider it to be a

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Speaker 1: cipher text of some sort. Perhaps, um, it could be that.

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Speaker 1: It could also be nonsense. Uh. There are the outliers

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Speaker 1: that like to say Aliens brought it, but there's some

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Speaker 1: scientific evidence that that is not really the case. Um.

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Speaker 1: So for some basic background on it. It's actually named

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Speaker 1: after a fairly modern person, Wilfred Voynage, who was an

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Speaker 1: anti Korean bookseller that acquired the text in um. He

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Speaker 1: was a Polish American and he found it in a

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Speaker 1: Jesuit library near Rome and purchased it there. Two forty

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Speaker 1: pages long and written an unknown text. It's kind of

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Speaker 1: pretty and loopy to look at. It is a very curly,

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Speaker 1: it's flowing script. It's very pretty, um and colorful. Yes,

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Speaker 1: it's currently house that um Yale, and we'll talk about

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Speaker 1: that a little bit later. But they have this great

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Speaker 1: descriptor in their page about it, where it says it

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Speaker 1: is drawn in ink with vibrant washes in various shades

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Speaker 1: of green, brown, yellow, blue, and red. And it just

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Speaker 1: sounds so sweet and quaint the way they describe it

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Speaker 1: as and when you look at it it's both quaint

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Speaker 1: and weird because it's illustrated throughout. There are a hundred

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Speaker 1: and thirteen unidentified plant species drawn in there, astronomical and

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Speaker 1: astrological drawings. There are basically drawings of some sort of

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Speaker 1: like the botanical slash scientific variety on almost every page

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Speaker 1: of the thing. Um, some of which is not immediately

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Speaker 1: recognizable as no there. That's one of the ways that

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Speaker 1: people have tried to approach it, is by identifying some

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Speaker 1: of the plant life that's drawn in it and trying

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Speaker 1: to backwards engineer that way, but that hasn't really panned out. Um.

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Speaker 1: There are also some interesting female nudes in it. Yes, Uh,

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Speaker 1: it's interesting. I looked at some of these pictures and

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Speaker 1: I couldn't tell. They all have swollen abdomens. But I

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Speaker 1: can't tell if it's trying to depict pregnancy or just

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Speaker 1: the more sort of round body type that has been

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Speaker 1: popular throughout history at certain points. It's a little bit

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Speaker 1: hard to know for sure. When I love the Yale

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Speaker 1: description of it, miniature female nudes, most with swelled abdomens,

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Speaker 1: immersed or waiting in fluids and oddly interacting with interconnecting

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Speaker 1: tubes and capsules. Yeah, I think that's part of what

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Speaker 1: has caused people to want to attribute it to alien origin.

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Speaker 1: It is a little bit it's odd, it's a little

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Speaker 1: bit freaky. It's odd, and just from that description brings

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Speaker 1: up sort of connotations of weird fertility, something strangeness. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: people being strung together. It's it's a little bit weird.

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Speaker 1: There are also nine cosmological medallions and they're many of

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Speaker 1: those are huge, and they're drawn across um folded folio

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Speaker 1: pages and in some cases they may be depicting geographical elements,

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Speaker 1: but it's not, again always clear. We haven't cracked this.

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Speaker 1: And then medicinal herbs and roots, which are considered separate

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Speaker 1: from the plant species, and there's no byline. No, we

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Speaker 1: don't know who wrote it, which is part of the mystery.

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Speaker 1: So it is currently housed at Yale University in the

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Speaker 1: UH I believe it's pronounced by Nicki Rare Book and

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Speaker 1: Manuscript Library and it's listed as MS four oh eighty.

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Speaker 1: There's a pretty cool page at Yale that that gives

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Speaker 1: more information about it, and we will link to it

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Speaker 1: from the show notes we have started doing with this podcast.

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Speaker 1: You would like to have a look at more detail

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Speaker 1: about what it looks like it was in there. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: they did a wonderful job of breaking down and describing

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Speaker 1: really every element of the book um from a you know,

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Speaker 1: an unbiased, pretty neutral standpoint, just kind of I once

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Speaker 1: worked in a library as doing acquisitions and cataloging assistance.

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Speaker 1: So they're perfect basically, is what I'm saying. They're cataloging

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Speaker 1: um is like an ideal version that you would catalog

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Speaker 1: something that you don't understand, right it is. It is

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Speaker 1: a very fascinating read. There is also linked from there

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Speaker 1: a chemical analysis of the book itself and what the

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Speaker 1: pages are made of and what the anks are made of. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: which is what kind of uh squelches any of those

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Speaker 1: alien origin theories. Right, they're identified elements from our planet. Yes,

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Speaker 1: And we have also scientifically, we being other researchers, identified

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Speaker 1: the approximately when it was created. There was a two

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Speaker 1: thousand nine University of Arizona project researchers carbon dated it

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Speaker 1: to the early half of the fifteenth century, so there's

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Speaker 1: a probability that it was written between fourteen and four

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Speaker 1: and fourteen thirty eight. I mean, that's the basic description

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Speaker 1: of it. So then we're kind of onto what is

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Speaker 1: this thing. I don't know, and everybody has theories, and

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Speaker 1: because it's never proven out, everyone thinks their theory might

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Speaker 1: be the right one. Um. Some people think it could

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Speaker 1: be a book of secrets, like it's alchemy or some

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Speaker 1: other secret knowledge, and that it is in fact a

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Speaker 1: medieval cipher text that is intended to hide and prevent

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Speaker 1: others from getting this secret knowledge. Uh. Some have even

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Speaker 1: suggested that it's actually a record of inventions and discoveries

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Speaker 1: of Roger Bacon, who was a friar and scholar in

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Speaker 1: the undreds. Um. But that theory has mostly been discounted. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that was a very circumstantial thing of there are things

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Speaker 1: in here that he was interested in, so maybe he

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Speaker 1: made this and that's yeah, there's definitely a lot of

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Speaker 1: circumstantial evidence around every theory about it. The remnant of

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Speaker 1: an ancient language theory doesn't really hold a lot of water.

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Speaker 1: It's one of those things that when you hear linguist

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Speaker 1: experts and cryptographers talk about, they immediately will say, when you,

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Speaker 1: for sho look at it, it looks like something we

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Speaker 1: should be able to read. It looks like a text,

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Speaker 1: it looks like you know, an alphabet. But the deeper

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Speaker 1: they get into it, the more they realize they can't write.

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Speaker 1: It becomes sort of more elusive the more they study it,

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Speaker 1: which is kind of fast. And that's one of those

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Speaker 1: ideas that's pretty captivating because languages do go extinct. There

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Speaker 1: are definitely written languages that we have not been able

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Speaker 1: to decipher until we have found some other texts that

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Speaker 1: has led us decipher it. So I think that's one

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Speaker 1: of those ideas that has an allure to it, but

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Speaker 1: that has not really panned out. Yeah, And one of

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Speaker 1: the one of the things that kind of discounts that

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Speaker 1: theory is that normally in any language, the most common

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Speaker 1: words are normally quite short, like the repeated words. Just

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Speaker 1: like in English it would be you know, your articles, articles, prepositions, etcetera.

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Speaker 1: They tend to be compact, short little words, and in

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Speaker 1: this particular document, the most common words tend to be

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Speaker 1: very long and sort of complicated in comparison to the rest,

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Speaker 1: which kind of breaks the rules of language, which is

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Speaker 1: one of the things that um people who are fond

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Speaker 1: of the Gibberish theory like to site like this doesn't

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Speaker 1: make sense as a language. It's probably not, and people

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Speaker 1: have been trying to decrypt it since at least the

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Speaker 1: sixteen hundreds, we know, uh, even in World War Two

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Speaker 1: army codebreakers were just sort of taking a crack at

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Speaker 1: it on the side, and they couldn't make heads nor

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Speaker 1: jails of it. They couldn't really like even get you know,

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Speaker 1: sort of a toe hold in to be like, oh,

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Speaker 1: we think we might know we have no idea. Again,

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Speaker 1: that almost seems suspicious to me that nobody, in four

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Speaker 1: hundred plus years of trying to analyze this document could

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Speaker 1: really get any sort of positive affirmation that they were

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Speaker 1: on the right track. They all kind of end up

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Speaker 1: throwing up their hands and shaking their heads, like, I

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Speaker 1: don't know. Here's one of my favorites is that the

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Speaker 1: hoax theory it is uh John d in case anybody

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Speaker 1: does not recognize that name was is kind of most

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Speaker 1: miss as being the astrologer and an adviser to Queen

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Speaker 1: Elizabeth the First, and some people attribute it or want

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Speaker 1: to uh support the theory that it's actually a hoax

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Speaker 1: that he perpetrated. At the time, I remember hearing a

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Speaker 1: scholar on this particular text say, you know, it was

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Speaker 1: very common for just as it's common now for people

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Speaker 1: in business or people of wealth to purchase great art

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Speaker 1: to show how cultured they are. At this time, it

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Speaker 1: was similarly popular for people to have an illuminated text

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Speaker 1: in their home to show that they were cultured. And

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Speaker 1: so it could have been like a money making scheme,

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Speaker 1: like a book together a fake look and document that

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Speaker 1: looks like a really cool illuminated text, and we'll just

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Speaker 1: sell it to some businessman who wants people to think

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Speaker 1: he's smart. Um. I kind of love that one. And

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Speaker 1: another suspect implicated in that is Edward Kelly, who was

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Speaker 1: a hanger on in the court of Elizabeth one and

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Speaker 1: became very close with John D. A lot of people

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Speaker 1: dismissed him as a charlatan and a fake, but John

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Speaker 1: D reason really formed um an affinity in a close

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Speaker 1: friendship with him. One of the things that makes people

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Speaker 1: think that maybe this theory is the right one is

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Speaker 1: that there are no scratch outs or erasers and in

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Speaker 1: the whole entirety of the book, which even if you're copying,

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Speaker 1: if you're making a copy of something you have already

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Speaker 1: written out. Mike, I will do that sometimes if I'm

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Speaker 1: writing a letter to somebody with a pen on paper,

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Speaker 1: it will be copying out something that I've kind of

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Speaker 1: drafted on another page. Even then at some point you

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Speaker 1: make a mistake and you have to either scratch it

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Speaker 1: out or erase it. And there is none of that

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Speaker 1: at all, So it does not seem like somebody was

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Speaker 1: actually trying to make an accurate set of words on

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Speaker 1: the paper. Yeah, you would eventually hit something like where

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Speaker 1: you would have to get rid of it or clarify

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Speaker 1: in some way. The big proponent of the theory is

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Speaker 1: Gordon rug and he's head of the Knowledge Modeling group

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Speaker 1: at Keele University and Staffordshire, England. UH and he's done

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Speaker 1: some interesting almost um sort of computer science approaches to

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Speaker 1: analyzing and recreate naing similar documents where he lays out

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Speaker 1: letters on a grid and he's created this little um

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Speaker 1: like a card that you can lay on top of

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Speaker 1: the grid and it has three cutouts, and so in

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Speaker 1: that grid he's put in, you know, characters similar to

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Speaker 1: the ones in this document. And just by moving that

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Speaker 1: card around and writing out in order whatever characters happened

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Speaker 1: to land in your open spaces, you can create this

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Speaker 1: gibberish that looks really realistic and really like a language. UM.

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Speaker 1: And he kind of believes this supports again the the

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Speaker 1: Gibberish theory rather than it being um a cipher that's

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Speaker 1: you know, well thought out another theory. So many theories

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Speaker 1: about this there are, and I mean we could go

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Speaker 1: on for days and days about all of the theories.

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Speaker 1: So we're kind of hitting the high notes on this one.

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Speaker 1: There's there's a prayer book theory about, you know, in

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Speaker 1: some kind of Germanic slash romance creole do you have have?

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Speaker 1: It was like, what what has led to the idea

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Speaker 1: of the prayer But I think it's because it hasn't

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Speaker 1: ever been decrypted. It kind of holds popular already with

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Speaker 1: people that want to think it is a ciphertext and

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Speaker 1: that it's a prayer book of the Cather's that somehow

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Speaker 1: managed to survive the Inquisition when everything else was being burnt. Uh,

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Speaker 1: because everything else was burnt, there's nothing else to possibly

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Speaker 1: give us the key to decrypt this. So that's but

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Speaker 1: that's not a very popular one. I just thought it

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Speaker 1: was interesting UM And at one point people were even

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Speaker 1: kind of suspicious that Voinache himself had assembled the book

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Speaker 1: um to create a faux valuable for his antiquities collection.

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Speaker 1: But carbon dating, because the paper is from and the

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Speaker 1: inks are all dated fur their back. He would have

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Speaker 1: to really be scientifically pretty magical ultiable, right, so that

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Speaker 1: if he had tried to, if that had been a forgery,

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Speaker 1: it would have been a masterful forgery using information he

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Speaker 1: would not have had really at a time. And what's

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Speaker 1: really interesting is that it's um it has changed hands

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Speaker 1: quite a number of times. The first one that Will

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Speaker 1: mention is actually one of those circumstantial things so allegedly

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Speaker 1: owned by John D who we talked about earlier, and

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Speaker 1: it was bought from D we know, by Emperor Rudolph

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Speaker 1: the second of Germany, so the Holy Roman Emperor, for

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Speaker 1: six hundred gold ducats, which is roughly thirty dollars in

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Speaker 1: today's economy. That just makes me annoyed thinking that it

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Speaker 1: was potentially the writings of Roger Bacon. And the circumstantial

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Speaker 1: evidence that supports this idea or that he bought it

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Speaker 1: from D and not from someone else, is that there

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Speaker 1: are accounts that mentioned D having come into a sum

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Speaker 1: of money that's just a little bit bigger than this.

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Speaker 1: I want to say, it's like six hundred and fifteen

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Speaker 1: or six hundred and eighteen and I believe it's John

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Speaker 1: D's son that wrote some of those at least. So

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Speaker 1: it's kind of like, well, we know that it was

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Speaker 1: purchased for this amount around this time, and we know

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Speaker 1: that suddenly this guy had this amount of money in

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Speaker 1: his pocket at this time. That that reminds me of

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Speaker 1: one of the police procedurals and they have the person

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Speaker 1: in the room and they're like, Okay, we know this

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Speaker 1: guy bodies documents for for thirty thou dollars and you

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Speaker 1: magically have a thirty thousand dollar bank deposit. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

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Speaker 1: It's that is as as far as we can get

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Speaker 1: in terms of veracity with this one. Uh. And then

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Speaker 1: it appears Emperor Rudolph gave the manuscript to Jacobus horse

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Speaker 1: a key the tepanis and I may be mispronouncing any

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Speaker 1: of that um and that exchange is based on an

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Speaker 1: inscription that's visible in the document in the on folio

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Speaker 1: one R. But you have to read it with ultraviolet light.

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Speaker 1: So that's ink that has faded off, and that's all

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Speaker 1: that's sort of left is the chemical shadow, right. That

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Speaker 1: was one of the things that they found and documented

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Speaker 1: during the chemical analysis that we were talking about a

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Speaker 1: little bit earlier. One of the things that I read

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Speaker 1: in that analysis that I thought was pretty cool was

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Speaker 1: that an acid wash had been used on the pages,

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Speaker 1: possibly to bring out the vibrancy of the ink, but

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Speaker 1: that that may have been washed away other writing in

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Speaker 1: the book. Uh, so it's it's not really that that

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Speaker 1: that was written in an ink that required ultra violet

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Speaker 1: light to see at a time. It's ink that has

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Speaker 1: faded to the point that that's the only way to

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Speaker 1: see it. It's been destroyed through time and treatment through

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Speaker 1: the ages. Not that does not in any way support

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Speaker 1: the secret or alien theories. Uh, there's there are some

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Speaker 1: gaps in the timeline of where it's been. But we

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Speaker 1: do know that it was given to Athanasius Kircher in

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Speaker 1: sixteen sixty six by Johannes Marcus Marcia of cromelind uh.

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Speaker 1: And then there's another little kind of we're not sure

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Speaker 1: what happened or where the book was. We do know

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Speaker 1: that during some of these tradeoffs, people were trying to

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Speaker 1: get people to decrypt this text. So that's why we

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Speaker 1: say for more than four years people have been trying

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Speaker 1: to figure it out, and then it's suddenly it seems

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Speaker 1: said to us, because it's the first time we hear

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Speaker 1: about it again after a there are many other things happening, Yes,

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Speaker 1: after a gap of two hundred of its two years. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: then Voynage found it in as I said, at Jesuit

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Speaker 1: College near Rome, and then in nineteen sixty nine it

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Speaker 1: was given to the Benicky Library by an HP Krause

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Speaker 1: who had purchased it from the estate of Voynage's widow.

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Speaker 1: Uh it had passed to her and then her executor

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Speaker 1: ended up selling it to this person. Now we're basically

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Speaker 1: up to today. Yeah. In December eleven, a finished businessman

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Speaker 1: named vico Let Vola I may have mispronounced that claimed

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Speaker 1: that he was a prophet of God and that he

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Speaker 1: had been given divine insight into the contents of this manuscript.

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Speaker 1: Probably not true. Well, and people question his methods and

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Speaker 1: they of course want some backup on this, and it

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Speaker 1: never happens. He has um an associate named Arikitola who

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Speaker 1: is pretty much handling pr for him um and his

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Speaker 1: statement in an interview was that Mr love Ala said

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Speaker 1: that no, no one normal human can decode it because

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Speaker 1: there is no code or method to read this text.

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Speaker 1: It's a channel language of prophecy, uh, and that basically

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Speaker 1: God had told him what it meant, and that there

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Speaker 1: is no way to decrypt it. There is no cipher

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Speaker 1: for it. You just have to trust him that God

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Speaker 1: told him this. Um And he says it's a botany

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Speaker 1: journal basically, which is kind of funny that that's kind

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Speaker 1: of a mundane thing to say after God told me

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Speaker 1: it's a botany journal. I had a divine revelation of

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Speaker 1: this extremely ordinary thing. Yeah, and there's a website that's

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Speaker 1: maintained around him. But he really this is as Tracy

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Speaker 1: mentioned in December, and then he really hasn't gotten much

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Speaker 1: press passed then, Like nobody's really paid a whole lot

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Speaker 1: of attention to his claims anymore. So that's where it stands.

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Speaker 1: It's still a mystery. It's still at Yale. I think

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Speaker 1: to see it you would have to jump through some

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Speaker 1: hoops of often the case with special collections, and he

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Speaker 1: can be really difficult to get actual physical access to

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Speaker 1: the manuscript unless you have a reason to be there. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: but the good news is there are lots of scans

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Speaker 1: and photos of it online, so if you're curious about it,

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Speaker 1: you can really easily find pictures of it. We will

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Speaker 1: put those in our share notes also, they'll find them.

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Speaker 1: And it's interesting because it's one of those things to

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Speaker 1: me that even if it is a hoax, it's now

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Speaker 1: become really historically significant in that one just the idea

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Speaker 1: that it could be a hoax perpetrated by a fairly

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Speaker 1: famous historical figure kind of makes it interesting in and

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Speaker 1: of itself. Um, but also just that so many people

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Speaker 1: have spent so many years trying to decipher it and

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Speaker 1: reveal its meaning. That kind of has a meaning in

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Speaker 1: and of itself for me, Like it says a lot

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Speaker 1: about our desire to just crack unknowable things and sort

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Speaker 1: of our our persistence in doing so. So, yeah, we'll

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Speaker 1: see if there's someone who magically cracks it. I will

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Speaker 1: be upfront and say I tend to favor favor the

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Speaker 1: jibberish theories, but we don't know. As you said, some

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Speaker 1: other piece of evidence could come to light and all

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Speaker 1: of that will change. They would have to be sort

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Speaker 1: of a Rosetta Rosetta stone to really figure out if

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00:19:11,359 --> 00:19:14,040
Speaker 1: it says anything, which should be awfully cool, it would

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Speaker 1: be both cool and sad, which is the opposite of

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Speaker 1: what I said at the beginning of Unsolved Mystery is

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Speaker 1: getting on my nerves. Yeah. That's sort of the thing

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Speaker 1: that I've noticed in doing research on this is that

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Speaker 1: even when there are pretty solid, you know, pieces of

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Speaker 1: I don't want to say evidence, but pretty solid supporting

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Speaker 1: UM concepts, uh, like the man who has been able

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Speaker 1: to replicate pretty similar gibberish texts, people don't really want

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Speaker 1: to accept it. There are entire message boards and online

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Speaker 1: groups surrounding this manuscript because it is so sort of

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Speaker 1: engrossing and engaging for people that love UM ciphertext and

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Speaker 1: the idea of a mystery, and it's interesting to watch

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Speaker 1: them debate. And some of them will be like, yeah,

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00:19:57,600 --> 00:19:59,280
Speaker 1: I see, and his methods are sound, and that all

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Speaker 1: makes sense, but I don't believe it the end, like

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Speaker 1: they just don't want to believe it, uh, which is

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Speaker 1: it's fascinating stuff because nobody wants to kind of lose

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Speaker 1: the mystery. I think at this point, after it's after years,

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Speaker 1: it's kind of like giving up a good friend. At

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Speaker 1: that point. I believe you also have listener, male, I

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Speaker 1: surely do. Uh. This comes from our listener, Emily, and

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Speaker 1: she says I just finished listening to the Okeechee episode.

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Speaker 1: Did I miss something I didn't hear? You mentioned Puccini's

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Speaker 1: opera Madama Butterfly as probably the most famous and most

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Speaker 1: enduring fictionalization of the Okeechee story. In fact, and Butterfly

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Speaker 1: by David Wang was a play in nineteen eight and

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Speaker 1: then adapted into a movie. Though not an extension of

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Speaker 1: the Okeeechee story, deals with interracial relationships and exoticism. Um

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Speaker 1: plus spoiler alert, she says, gender bending twist. I love

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Speaker 1: that play so much. Uh. There's also Madam Butterfly by

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Speaker 1: Malcolm McLaren, a pop music opera hybrid song from THEO.

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Speaker 1: For some reason, people all over the world just love

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Speaker 1: this tragic story. There's just something about it that's so adaptable.

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Speaker 1: Whether it's the story of the clash of cultures, promising

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Speaker 1: futures and dashed hopes, or the untenable position women find

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Speaker 1: themselves in because of societal mores. These are stories that

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Speaker 1: endure to this day, and maybe that's why creative people

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Speaker 1: all over the world continue to draw from the Okichi

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Speaker 1: Madame Butterfly story. So here's why I didn't mention it.

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Speaker 1: There is a relationship but it's several times removed. I mean,

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Speaker 1: I thought about it when preparing for that podcast, but

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Speaker 1: I was like, uh so, Puccini's opera is actually kind

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Speaker 1: of more inspired by several other pieces that were inspired,

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Speaker 1: probably by the Okeechi story that we don't have hard evidence,

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Speaker 1: but it doesn't make a lot of sense. There was

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Speaker 1: one called Madame Chrysanthemum that was in eight seven, that

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Speaker 1: was French, and then there was a short story version

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Speaker 1: which was called Madame Butterfly, which was written by John

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Speaker 1: Luther long In, and then that version was adapted by

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Speaker 1: David Belasco into a play in nineteen hundred and play

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Speaker 1: is what inspired Puccini, because that play was not a

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Speaker 1: musical and not an opera. It was just a straight

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Speaker 1: stage production, and Puccini, really my understanding is that he

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Speaker 1: primarily used Long's novella as the primary source. So at

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00:22:13,480 --> 00:22:16,320
Speaker 1: that point we're fairly where multiple levels removed from the

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00:22:16,320 --> 00:22:19,560
Speaker 1: original story. And that's why I didn't mention it, because

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00:22:19,560 --> 00:22:22,400
Speaker 1: it's it's a long line of lineage to get there,

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00:22:22,720 --> 00:22:24,439
Speaker 1: but a little bit of a long walk well, and

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00:22:24,640 --> 00:22:27,600
Speaker 1: it's often there are so many different influences on a

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00:22:27,640 --> 00:22:31,080
Speaker 1: particular play that tracing it back to one seems a

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00:22:31,119 --> 00:22:34,080
Speaker 1: little reductive. Yeah. Well, and uh, you know, chech a

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00:22:34,160 --> 00:22:37,000
Speaker 1: sound story ends up being so much about the daughter

408
00:22:37,080 --> 00:22:38,720
Speaker 1: in many ways, which was not a part of the

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Speaker 1: Oppuchi story. And it is certainly an influencer, probably, but

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Speaker 1: I don't know that it's you know, as I said

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Speaker 1: that the line of descendency takes on so many different

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Speaker 1: elements that it's it's a little wandering. Yeah. Uh. There

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Speaker 1: is a great um Cornell professor named Arthur Grouce who

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Speaker 1: has written extensively about sort of the the orientalism fascinating

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00:23:00,000 --> 00:23:02,640
Speaker 1: shin and how that kind of traces all the way

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00:23:02,680 --> 00:23:05,920
Speaker 1: to Puccini's opera. So I recommend it. It's good reading.

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Speaker 1: I haven't read all of his work. He's written several

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Speaker 1: books on the matter, but he's the pro. Uh. If

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Speaker 1: you would like to write to us, you should do

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00:23:12,560 --> 00:23:15,479
Speaker 1: so at History Podcast at Discovery dot com. You can

421
00:23:15,480 --> 00:23:17,639
Speaker 1: also connect with us on Twitter at mist in History

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00:23:17,960 --> 00:23:21,080
Speaker 1: and on Facebook at facebook dot com slash history class stuff,

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00:23:21,080 --> 00:23:24,280
Speaker 1: and we also have a interest board with historical fun things.

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00:23:24,960 --> 00:23:26,440
Speaker 1: If you would like to learn a little bit more

425
00:23:26,480 --> 00:23:28,960
Speaker 1: about what we've talked about today, you can go to

426
00:23:28,960 --> 00:23:31,640
Speaker 1: our website and type in the words code breaking and

427
00:23:31,800 --> 00:23:34,960
Speaker 1: you will find, amongst other things, an article called how

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00:23:35,000 --> 00:23:38,280
Speaker 1: code breakers work, and you can research that and many

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