WEBVTT - Fan Favorite: Who was the Woman Behind American Codebreaking? 0:00:00.040 --> 0:00:05.040 I guess we will. Oh yeah, so Will lost his voice, 0:00:05.080 --> 0:00:08.680 but he's waving vigorously at you, and he wants you 0:00:08.720 --> 0:00:10.760 to know that. We are doing a live dating a 0:00:10.800 --> 0:00:14.080 part time genius on July one at four pm in Philly. 0:00:14.160 --> 0:00:16.160 It's actually at the theater that's near and dear to 0:00:16.239 --> 0:00:18.840 my heart, the Trocadero, and it's all part of the 0:00:18.840 --> 0:00:21.960 Philly Podcast Festival. In fact, we're doing a double header 0:00:21.960 --> 0:00:24.279 with the wonderful guys from Ridiculous History. I'm sure you 0:00:24.280 --> 0:00:27.080 know them, Ben and Nol. They are so good. It's 0:00:27.080 --> 0:00:30.120 gonna be really fun and I can't wait to see you. 0:00:30.600 --> 0:00:34.120 So go to Philly podfest dot com pickup tickets, come 0:00:34.200 --> 0:00:37.559 meet us. I'd love to hang out anyway. For this 0:00:37.600 --> 0:00:40.760 week's classic episode, we're rewinding back to when we landed 0:00:40.760 --> 0:00:44.479 the wonderful Jason Fagoni on the program. He's this incredible 0:00:44.479 --> 0:00:47.360 writer and he has this extraordinary story about a woman 0:00:47.400 --> 0:00:50.800 who broke codes. It's honestly one of my favorite things ever. 0:00:51.080 --> 0:00:53.400 And he was actually living in Philly when we did 0:00:53.400 --> 0:01:01.800 this interview, so it ties back perfectly. Enjoy Guess what, Mango? 0:01:01.960 --> 0:01:04.280 What's that? Will? All right? So tell me this doesn't 0:01:04.280 --> 0:01:06.920 sound like a great premise for a movie. About a 0:01:06.959 --> 0:01:09.480 century ago, a young woman from a small town in 0:01:09.480 --> 0:01:13.360 Indiana heads off to college to study poetry and philosophy. 0:01:13.480 --> 0:01:16.240 Now she does this against her father's will, by the way, 0:01:16.280 --> 0:01:19.520 So she finishes college travels to Chicago to figure out 0:01:19.560 --> 0:01:22.120 what to do with her life. Already following so far, 0:01:22.360 --> 0:01:25.600 because here's where the crazy plot twist comes in. She's 0:01:25.600 --> 0:01:28.080 about to give up, and then she's discovered and hired 0:01:28.120 --> 0:01:31.720 by this really eccentric tycoon, makes a major shift in 0:01:31.760 --> 0:01:34.880 her life and realizes she has this remarkable ability to 0:01:34.959 --> 0:01:37.640 break code. She then goes on to become one of 0:01:37.680 --> 0:01:40.680 the greatest code breakers in history, helps the US win 0:01:40.760 --> 0:01:43.360 World War One, helps US defeat the Nazis in World 0:01:43.400 --> 0:01:46.120 War Two, and plays a major role in building the 0:01:46.200 --> 0:01:50.800 foundation for the intelligence agencies in the USA today. Boom, 0:01:50.840 --> 0:01:53.440 what do you think about this? I'd watched that movie. Yeah, 0:01:53.480 --> 0:01:55.440 and it should be a movie. But here's the thing, 0:01:55.800 --> 0:01:58.800 it's all true, and thanks to the years of research 0:01:58.880 --> 0:02:02.320 and writing by Jason Pagoni, we now have a brilliant book. 0:02:02.440 --> 0:02:05.120 It's called The Woman Who Smash Codes, and it tells 0:02:05.160 --> 0:02:08.720 the story of Elizabeth Smith Friedman. I can't stop thinking 0:02:08.720 --> 0:02:29.600 about this story, so let's dive in ye day their 0:02:29.639 --> 0:02:32.520 podcast listeners, Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson 0:02:32.560 --> 0:02:34.720 and as always I'm joined by my good friend Mangesh 0:02:34.720 --> 0:02:37.640 Ticketer and on the other side of the soundproof glass 0:02:37.639 --> 0:02:41.079 obsessing over his new Dacoda ring and what's he doing. 0:02:41.120 --> 0:02:44.000 He's he's like he's communicating with us in some sort 0:02:44.000 --> 0:02:47.320 of new language of signals. He and he's always so impressive. Mango, 0:02:47.880 --> 0:02:51.640 that's our that's our friend and producer Tristan McNeil. Now 0:02:51.680 --> 0:02:54.000 today we're talking about one of the most fascinating people 0:02:54.160 --> 0:02:58.120 history almost forgot and honestly might have forever had it 0:02:58.200 --> 0:03:00.840 not been for the book we're talking about today. I 0:03:00.880 --> 0:03:03.520 know it's it's just this incredible story. And when you 0:03:03.520 --> 0:03:05.840 started telling me about it, I'll be honest, I really 0:03:05.840 --> 0:03:08.040 didn't think it could be true. I mean, like this 0:03:08.120 --> 0:03:11.840 poet learning code breaking and then taking down Nazis and 0:03:11.919 --> 0:03:15.400 gangsters and cracking codes with pretty much this relative ease, 0:03:15.480 --> 0:03:19.080 Like it just sounded too good. And especially since you know, 0:03:19.160 --> 0:03:21.080 we've done a lot of stories and I've never really 0:03:21.120 --> 0:03:24.280 heard of Elizabeth Smith Friedman before. I know it's it's 0:03:24.320 --> 0:03:27.800 honestly why I can't stop talking about you really haven't 0:03:27.800 --> 0:03:30.160 stopped talking about it for a while. Well, I'm thrilled 0:03:30.200 --> 0:03:32.040 we finally have the right person on the line to 0:03:32.080 --> 0:03:34.120 talk about this story, and that's the author of The 0:03:34.160 --> 0:03:37.520 Woman Who Smashed Codes, Jason Foggoni. So, Jason, welcome to 0:03:37.560 --> 0:03:41.720 Part Time Genius. Hey, thanks, guys, I'm glad to be here. Well, Jason, 0:03:41.760 --> 0:03:44.760 I want to jump straight into this this really bizarre 0:03:44.840 --> 0:03:47.880 break that Elizabeth got, you know, becoming a code breaker, 0:03:47.880 --> 0:03:49.560 and of course we want to ask you about how 0:03:49.600 --> 0:03:52.320 you even stumbled into this story. But first, can you 0:03:52.360 --> 0:03:54.080 set the scene a little bit and just talk about 0:03:54.080 --> 0:03:56.760 what her early life was like before she got this 0:03:56.800 --> 0:03:58.960 big break. Yeah. So it's one of these kind of 0:03:59.000 --> 0:04:02.080 classic Americans els. You have a hundred years ago, a 0:04:02.080 --> 0:04:05.400 young woman in her early twenties is bored with her 0:04:05.440 --> 0:04:07.520 life and board with her job. She lives in a 0:04:07.560 --> 0:04:13.200 small town, uh in Midwest, in rural Indiana where she's from. 0:04:13.240 --> 0:04:16.599 She's teaching high school and for a bright young woman 0:04:16.680 --> 0:04:19.880 in nineteen fifteen, nineteen sixteen, this is kind of the 0:04:19.960 --> 0:04:23.479 end of the line right there. There is not really um, 0:04:23.520 --> 0:04:28.839 a lot of opportunity beyond teaching school. Elizabeth was extremely intelligent, ambitious, 0:04:28.960 --> 0:04:32.760 and brave, and she decided in June nineteen sixteen to 0:04:32.760 --> 0:04:35.479 take a risk. She quit her job teaching school and 0:04:35.520 --> 0:04:38.520 she moved to the big city, to Chicago, to look 0:04:38.560 --> 0:04:42.400 for something more unusual. And that was really all she wanted, 0:04:42.400 --> 0:04:45.320 was something a little bit more unusual. That brought her 0:04:45.360 --> 0:04:49.560 to a library in Chicago, the Newberry Library that happened 0:04:49.560 --> 0:04:53.080 to have a rare volume of Shakespeare from sixteen twenty 0:04:53.120 --> 0:04:56.719 three was the Shakespeare First Staffolio. And she happened to 0:04:57.040 --> 0:05:00.520 love Shakespeare. She had studied Shakespeare in school. She was 0:05:00.560 --> 0:05:04.000 a poet by training, literature scholar, and she just kind 0:05:04.040 --> 0:05:07.359 of wanted to see this rare book. She she hadn't 0:05:07.400 --> 0:05:10.120 had any luck finding a job in Chicago. She spent 0:05:10.200 --> 0:05:12.040 about a week, week and a half they're looking for work, 0:05:12.080 --> 0:05:14.240 had no luck. She was about ready to go back 0:05:14.240 --> 0:05:17.400 home and move in with her parents back in Indiana, 0:05:17.600 --> 0:05:20.480 but she made this one final stop at this library 0:05:20.520 --> 0:05:23.440 to see this Shakespeare book, and she happened to have 0:05:23.520 --> 0:05:26.679 a chance meeting there with an eccentric tycoon named George 0:05:26.760 --> 0:05:30.480 Fabian that that ended up transforming her life, but not 0:05:30.560 --> 0:05:33.640 just her life. Uh, it ended up changing the shape 0:05:33.680 --> 0:05:36.800 of the twentieth century. And to be clear, like she 0:05:36.920 --> 0:05:39.880 hadn't studied any code breaking, right, Like she was um 0:05:40.200 --> 0:05:42.719 more a liberal arts type, is that right? Yeah, absolutely 0:05:42.800 --> 0:05:44.760 she was. She was a poet in a literature person. 0:05:44.920 --> 0:05:47.520 So this is one of the surprising things about the story, 0:05:47.560 --> 0:05:49.120 and one of the things that pulled me in from 0:05:49.120 --> 0:05:50.960 the from the first day I began to read her 0:05:51.040 --> 0:05:53.080 letters is that I think we we kind of think 0:05:53.080 --> 0:05:56.159 of code breakers as mathematicians. We have this image of 0:05:56.200 --> 0:06:00.000 the code breakers as someone like Alan Turning, professional mathematicians, 0:06:00.160 --> 0:06:04.200 math professor. But the fact is code breakers often come 0:06:04.240 --> 0:06:07.239 from unusual places because the core thing about code breaking 0:06:07.880 --> 0:06:11.080 is it's really about seeing patterns. The code breaking is 0:06:11.400 --> 0:06:16.240 the science of solving a secret message without knowing the key. Um. 0:06:16.279 --> 0:06:18.400 It's akin to if you've ever solved the cryptogram and 0:06:18.440 --> 0:06:21.200 the in the puzzle page in the paper. Um. Elizabeth 0:06:21.240 --> 0:06:24.200 was doing this at a sort of more sophisticated level 0:06:24.240 --> 0:06:26.960 than than most people. But it's the same principle. You 0:06:26.960 --> 0:06:29.560 you you sort of take a block of letters that 0:06:29.600 --> 0:06:32.880 looks like gobbledygook, you chop them into their constituent parts. 0:06:32.880 --> 0:06:35.440 You whirl them around, count them and measure them and 0:06:35.720 --> 0:06:41.159 rearrange them into their original order. And Elizabeth was a 0:06:41.279 --> 0:06:44.960 genius at seeing patterns. Even though she wasn't mathematically trained, 0:06:45.040 --> 0:06:48.120 she she had a genius for seeing patterns, and that 0:06:48.120 --> 0:06:50.120 that's one of the things that made her one of 0:06:50.240 --> 0:06:53.400 the one of the most important code breakers of her era. 0:06:53.720 --> 0:06:57.280 And before she was doing the code breaking that obviously, 0:06:57.560 --> 0:07:00.480 you know, changed the world in many ways. It was 0:07:00.520 --> 0:07:02.680 an interesting first project. I mean, can you talk a 0:07:02.680 --> 0:07:05.159 little bit about Fabian because he seemed like such a 0:07:05.240 --> 0:07:08.279 bizarre character, and the and how this meeting came to be, 0:07:08.360 --> 0:07:10.720 and and and what she was actually asked to do 0:07:11.040 --> 0:07:14.320 in her first assignment with him. So Elizabeth went to 0:07:14.360 --> 0:07:17.440 this library, the Newbury Library, to see this rare book 0:07:17.440 --> 0:07:20.680 of Shakespeare, and she having to fall into conversation with 0:07:20.680 --> 0:07:23.240 the librarian there, who saw that she was interested in Shakespeare. 0:07:23.240 --> 0:07:25.600 The librarian comes over and says, you know, it's funny, 0:07:25.640 --> 0:07:28.080 but there's this odd, rich guy who keeps coming to 0:07:28.120 --> 0:07:31.200 the library looking at the same book of Shakespeare. He's 0:07:31.280 --> 0:07:36.080 convinced that there are secret messages embedded inside inside this 0:07:36.200 --> 0:07:39.120 book that have been planted there by the true author 0:07:39.160 --> 0:07:42.000 of Shakespeare's plays. He thinks that the true author is 0:07:42.040 --> 0:07:45.680 actually this guy who is a contemporary of Shakespeare's named 0:07:45.720 --> 0:07:49.640 Francis Bake. So the librarian is telling Elizabeth this, and 0:07:49.680 --> 0:07:52.920 the librarian says, uh, this rich guy, George Fabian. He 0:07:52.960 --> 0:07:55.120 says he's been looking for a research assistant. Would you 0:07:55.200 --> 0:07:58.000 be interested in something like that? Elisbath says, oh, sure, 0:07:58.080 --> 0:08:02.560 you know, maybe possibly. The librarian makes a phone call 0:08:02.640 --> 0:08:05.680 to George Fabian. George Fabian ends up coming to the 0:08:05.680 --> 0:08:10.480 library immediately, bringing bringing his chauffeurg limousine. He pulls up 0:08:10.760 --> 0:08:13.360 in front of the Newberry Library and this limo and 0:08:13.400 --> 0:08:16.360 he tumbles out of the limousine and Elizabeth Smith looks 0:08:16.400 --> 0:08:18.120 at George Fabian for the first time, and what she 0:08:18.200 --> 0:08:22.080 sees is an enormous human being. He is six foot 0:08:22.240 --> 0:08:27.600 for two pounds, big iron gray beard. Uh. He just 0:08:27.720 --> 0:08:31.320 he just sort of stomps towards her. Uh. He has 0:08:31.400 --> 0:08:34.080 big red face, and he's sort of full of energy 0:08:34.480 --> 0:08:37.640 and intent, and he's basically towering over her because Elizabeth 0:08:37.679 --> 0:08:40.280 is very petite. She's about five ft three and about 0:08:40.320 --> 0:08:43.640 a hundred and ten pounds um. And he looks at her, 0:08:43.679 --> 0:08:46.640 and he says, would you like to come to Riverbank 0:08:46.679 --> 0:08:49.920 and spend the night with me? This is you know, 0:08:49.960 --> 0:08:53.280 this is a completely scandalous question. Uh. You know, Elizabeth 0:08:53.360 --> 0:08:55.679 is from this from a fairly devout Quaker family, and 0:08:55.880 --> 0:08:57.959 and um, and she doesn't even know what to say 0:08:58.000 --> 0:08:59.679 to this. She doesn't know what Riverbank is, and so 0:08:59.880 --> 0:09:01.920 she kind of stammers reply. And she says, well, sir, 0:09:02.000 --> 0:09:04.360 I don't have anything to to sleep in. I don't 0:09:04.360 --> 0:09:06.880 have any of my nightclothes or my or my or 0:09:06.920 --> 0:09:08.920 my toiletries or anything like that. And he says, oh, 0:09:08.960 --> 0:09:10.800 don't mind that. We'll we'll set you up with all 0:09:10.800 --> 0:09:13.439 of that. Come on, and and and this guy, George Fabian, 0:09:13.960 --> 0:09:16.080 grabs her by the arm and sort of walks her 0:09:16.120 --> 0:09:19.240 out to his limousine and and takes her to the 0:09:19.440 --> 0:09:23.520 Chicago and Northwestern train station. And from there, Uh, she 0:09:23.640 --> 0:09:26.640 has brought to this place called river Bank. And what 0:09:26.720 --> 0:09:30.559 river Bank is is one of the most bizarre institutions 0:09:30.600 --> 0:09:34.720 in America at that time, nineteen sixteen. So George Fabian, 0:09:34.760 --> 0:09:39.560 it turns out, is a Chicago textile multimillionaire. He's made 0:09:39.600 --> 0:09:42.880 his fortune by selling different kinds of cloth, and he 0:09:42.920 --> 0:09:45.240 has kind of a marketing genius for selling different kinds 0:09:45.280 --> 0:09:48.679 of cloth to department stores. Um. Classic kind of self 0:09:48.720 --> 0:09:51.640 made guys. He's a high school dropout. He's not educated, 0:09:52.040 --> 0:09:54.200 but he has a lot of money, and he has 0:09:54.280 --> 0:09:57.120 kind of the ability in the Gilded Age to build 0:09:57.120 --> 0:09:59.400 a kingdom around himself and to and to kind of 0:09:59.440 --> 0:10:02.560 set the rule is for everybody in his orbit. And um, 0:10:03.280 --> 0:10:06.160 he's a lot like someone like Andrew Carnegie or William 0:10:06.240 --> 0:10:08.560 Randolph Hurst, these these guys of that era who just 0:10:08.600 --> 0:10:12.040 had more money than God. What distinguished George Fabian from 0:10:12.040 --> 0:10:15.040 those guys is that, you know, instead of spending his 0:10:15.080 --> 0:10:18.679 money on French Impressionist paintings or you know, building a 0:10:18.720 --> 0:10:23.080 big castle, what really interested George Fabian was discovering the 0:10:23.160 --> 0:10:25.920 secrets of nature. He was really into science. He wanted 0:10:25.960 --> 0:10:29.040 to discover things about nature that had never been discovered. 0:10:29.120 --> 0:10:34.240 And so he turned his private state, which was called Riverbank, 0:10:35.080 --> 0:10:39.200 into a kind of half rich man's fantasy land and 0:10:39.320 --> 0:10:45.080 half private scientific laboratory, very much like Thomas Edison's Menlo Park, 0:10:45.240 --> 0:10:48.000 New Jersey or Nicola Tesla's Lab in New York. It 0:10:48.040 --> 0:10:52.240 was a place where, you know, a single committed person 0:10:52.280 --> 0:10:55.400 with a lot of money, had built a scientific laboratory 0:10:55.440 --> 0:10:58.520 and institution to investigate secrets of nature. And there was 0:10:58.559 --> 0:11:01.160 all kinds of experiments how penning at Riverbank too. There 0:11:01.240 --> 0:11:07.600 was genetics experiments, agriculture experiments, acoustical experiments, and then there 0:11:07.679 --> 0:11:11.000 was this project that George Fabian wanted Elizabeth Smith to 0:11:11.000 --> 0:11:14.800 work on, which was the Bacon Cipher Project, the project 0:11:14.960 --> 0:11:19.240 of discovering these secret messages inside the works of Shakespeare, 0:11:19.840 --> 0:11:23.920 ripping them out and translating them into the plain text, 0:11:24.400 --> 0:11:27.640 and revealing the secrets of this Shakespeare book to the world. 0:11:27.640 --> 0:11:30.320 And that's that's what he told Elizabeth he wanted her 0:11:30.360 --> 0:11:32.760 to do when he went that day, when he met 0:11:32.800 --> 0:11:35.640 her in the library and whisked her off on the 0:11:35.720 --> 0:11:39.280 train to Riverbank. He wanted her to help him discover 0:11:39.559 --> 0:11:42.120 the secrets that were embedded in Shakespeare and sort of 0:11:42.200 --> 0:11:46.160 sort of transformed the history of English literature. It's just 0:11:46.280 --> 0:11:48.280 it's just unbelievable to think about it. I think about 0:11:48.320 --> 0:11:50.480 the number of hours, Mango, that you and I spent 0:11:50.600 --> 0:11:55.560 just sitting in libraries hoping that some eccentric tycoon would 0:11:55.600 --> 0:11:59.199 come along and discover us and lisk us away. And 0:11:59.240 --> 0:12:02.960 it just never happened, but it was. It's it's fascinating 0:12:03.000 --> 0:12:05.199 to read about it, to to think about our fantasy 0:12:05.240 --> 0:12:08.600 of that. But yet, so so that project, that Shakespeare 0:12:08.600 --> 0:12:12.960 project didn't exactly go you know, anywhere big from there. 0:12:13.000 --> 0:12:15.160 But but but can you tell us, like, how did 0:12:15.160 --> 0:12:18.760 she end up making this transition from trying to figure 0:12:18.760 --> 0:12:21.079 out the code within Shakespeare and seeing if there was 0:12:21.120 --> 0:12:24.400 any truth to this too what she eventually ended up 0:12:24.400 --> 0:12:27.560 doing and some of the very serious code breaking. Sure, 0:12:27.600 --> 0:12:30.200 that's a great question. So so she's brought out to 0:12:30.280 --> 0:12:34.960 Riverbank knowing nothing about code breaking. She's immediately plunged into 0:12:35.000 --> 0:12:40.120 this project to find secret messages in Shakespeare. And she 0:12:40.200 --> 0:12:43.320 can't find them. And she's there for months and months 0:12:43.360 --> 0:12:46.440 and months, and she's still having having trouble, you know, 0:12:46.679 --> 0:12:52.079 discovering these secret messages. Ultimately, she concludes that it's all 0:12:52.120 --> 0:12:55.559 a wild goose chase, it's all kind of a grand delusion. 0:12:56.160 --> 0:12:58.960 The secret messages aren't actually there. What's happening is that 0:12:59.040 --> 0:13:01.480 George Fabian and the people who believe what he believed 0:13:01.880 --> 0:13:05.040 are kind of seeing what they want to see. This 0:13:05.120 --> 0:13:07.319 is the thing about human beings is that we're we're 0:13:07.400 --> 0:13:10.000 very good at seeing patterns. Were all kind of born 0:13:10.040 --> 0:13:12.160 to do it. And sometimes we're so good at seeing 0:13:12.240 --> 0:13:15.440 patterns that we end up seeing patterns that aren't really there, right, 0:13:16.040 --> 0:13:18.160 and uh, and this is what was happening. They thought 0:13:18.160 --> 0:13:20.360 they saw these messages in the works of Shakespeare that 0:13:20.400 --> 0:13:24.320 weren't really there. Elizabeth had to figure this out. Um. 0:13:24.440 --> 0:13:28.640 But what that experience did is, you know, being dropped 0:13:28.640 --> 0:13:31.160 into this kind of delusion, it made her very interested 0:13:31.240 --> 0:13:34.520 and well, if I wanted to find patterns that really 0:13:34.559 --> 0:13:36.800 were there, and if I wanted to be sure that 0:13:36.880 --> 0:13:39.320 they were there, how would I do that? How would 0:13:39.320 --> 0:13:42.040 I develop a method? How would I develop a system 0:13:42.080 --> 0:13:44.959 to make sure that I wasn't tricking myself? And so, 0:13:45.880 --> 0:13:51.160 beginning in this kind of world of delusion um inspired 0:13:51.200 --> 0:13:53.720 her to try to create a true method and a 0:13:53.760 --> 0:13:57.920 true scientific system for discovering patterns in in these blocks 0:13:57.920 --> 0:14:01.240 of gobbledygook. And that's what launched her on her code 0:14:01.240 --> 0:14:04.679 breaking career, sort of in confluence with this other thing 0:14:04.720 --> 0:14:07.319 that happened, which is a year after she got to 0:14:07.440 --> 0:14:11.520 River Bank, America entered World War One. So April nineteen seventeen, 0:14:12.000 --> 0:14:15.320 you know, America enters the war and at that point. 0:14:15.840 --> 0:14:18.040 You know, it's amazing for me to go back and 0:14:18.200 --> 0:14:21.440 learn this history because you know, I had always kind 0:14:21.440 --> 0:14:24.840 of assumed that the American intelligence community that we that 0:14:24.920 --> 0:14:28.400 we know today that's mighty and powerful, the National Security Agency, 0:14:28.800 --> 0:14:31.720 the CIA, the FBI. I had always assumed that these 0:14:31.760 --> 0:14:34.520 institutions are always kind of always powerful, and it had 0:14:34.560 --> 0:14:38.040 always existed. But you know, in nineteen seventeen, when America 0:14:38.120 --> 0:14:41.640 entered World War One, there really was no American intelligence community. 0:14:41.680 --> 0:14:43.560 There was no n s A, there was no CIA, 0:14:44.160 --> 0:14:46.400 and the FBI was very young. And one of the 0:14:46.440 --> 0:14:48.240 things that you need to do when you're going to 0:14:48.320 --> 0:14:50.480 war is, you know, you need to read the secret 0:14:50.560 --> 0:14:52.720 messages that the enemy is sending. You need to know 0:14:52.880 --> 0:14:54.760 what they're saying and what they're doing so you can 0:14:54.800 --> 0:14:57.720 have an advantage. The thing is, you know, when America 0:14:57.760 --> 0:15:01.640 went to World War in World War One in nineteen seventeen, uh, 0:15:01.720 --> 0:15:03.840 it had no ability to do that. There were maybe 0:15:04.000 --> 0:15:07.200 five people in the entire United States who even knew 0:15:07.600 --> 0:15:11.040 what a code or a cipher, and so, uh it 0:15:11.200 --> 0:15:14.120 just so happened that some of these five people were 0:15:14.680 --> 0:15:18.680 Elizabeth and her colleagues at Riverbank Laboratories. This bizarre private 0:15:18.680 --> 0:15:21.360 institution run by a crazy rich guy on the Illinois Prairie. 0:15:21.440 --> 0:15:22.960 It's one of these things, you know, truth is stranger 0:15:23.000 --> 0:15:25.720 than fiction, and American history is very very weird. It 0:15:25.680 --> 0:15:28.160 gets very very weird, very very fast when you get 0:15:28.160 --> 0:15:31.040 beyond the surface. So what happened is, you know, through 0:15:31.080 --> 0:15:34.120 the urgency of war, the necessity of war, you know, 0:15:34.280 --> 0:15:37.520 the War Department, the Army realized they didn't have any 0:15:37.560 --> 0:15:41.360 code breakers and they needed code breakers very quickly. So, uh, 0:15:41.680 --> 0:15:45.040 just out of desperation, they ended up kind of annexing 0:15:45.360 --> 0:15:50.400 Riverbank Laboratories, which became kind of the first national security agency. 0:15:51.080 --> 0:15:53.400 The War Department and other departments of the U. S. 0:15:53.440 --> 0:15:57.800 Government began to send uh, secret messages that they couldn't 0:15:57.840 --> 0:16:02.160 read out to Riverbank, and Elizabeth and her colleagues they're 0:16:02.160 --> 0:16:05.160 working for this crazy tycoon, would solve the messages and 0:16:05.200 --> 0:16:07.160 send them back to Washington. And for the first eight 0:16:07.200 --> 0:16:11.120 months of World War One, um Riverbank, Elizabeth and her colleagues, 0:16:11.160 --> 0:16:15.120 they're handled the entire code breaking burden for the U. S. 0:16:15.200 --> 0:16:17.640 Government while it was at war, which is which is 0:16:17.640 --> 0:16:19.800 incredible to think about, because you know, you've got to 0:16:19.840 --> 0:16:23.240 realize Elizabeth is years old at this time, and she 0:16:23.280 --> 0:16:26.160 has just learned about code breaking in the last year, 0:16:26.240 --> 0:16:28.600 but all of a sudden she was the expert and 0:16:28.640 --> 0:16:41.920 she had to perform Welcome back to Part Time. Genius 0:16:41.920 --> 0:16:44.160 were chatting with Jason Fagoni, the author of The Woman 0:16:44.160 --> 0:16:47.600 who Smashed Codes. So, Jason, the whole thing about um, 0:16:47.640 --> 0:16:50.480 that code breaking really wasn't a thing before is is 0:16:50.560 --> 0:16:53.080 just kind of stunning to be because I always think 0:16:53.120 --> 0:16:55.400 about like things in the paper, like the cryptograms, or 0:16:55.680 --> 0:16:58.880 you think about like uh, Lewis Carroll and anagrams and 0:16:58.960 --> 0:17:02.040 people playing with words in crazy ways. But that this 0:17:02.400 --> 0:17:04.800 art isn't the thing is is just kind of amazing. 0:17:05.119 --> 0:17:07.520 She also wasn't alone in this endeavor, right, She had 0:17:07.560 --> 0:17:10.520 a sort of a love interest and partner during this 0:17:10.560 --> 0:17:14.400 time exactly she met a young scientist there named William Friedman. 0:17:14.520 --> 0:17:16.200 And and again it's one of these kind of classic 0:17:16.200 --> 0:17:20.760 American tales, two young people from very different worlds. Elizabeth was, 0:17:21.200 --> 0:17:24.560 you know, a Quaker girl from the Midwest. William Friedman 0:17:24.680 --> 0:17:28.120 was a Jewish scientist from Pittsburgh, UM. He had been 0:17:28.160 --> 0:17:32.560 brought to Riverbank to perform genetics experiments. He was breeding 0:17:32.600 --> 0:17:37.600 fruit flies. Ah he was trying to breed different varieties 0:17:37.640 --> 0:17:40.520 of corn and wheat that might take root in different 0:17:40.560 --> 0:17:43.720 kinds of soil. But the thing about William Freedman is 0:17:43.720 --> 0:17:47.119 that he he had a talent for photography and a 0:17:47.160 --> 0:17:51.160 lot of the original work on the Bacon Cipher project. This, 0:17:51.160 --> 0:17:53.879 this project of finding secret messages in Shakespeare depended on 0:17:54.560 --> 0:18:00.359 enlarging photographs of uh, the original Shakespeare manuscript, this sixteen 0:18:00.880 --> 0:18:03.960 ft folio. So so, because William was good with camera 0:18:04.280 --> 0:18:06.840 and he knew how to develop Prince in a dark room, 0:18:07.280 --> 0:18:11.840 George Fabian roped him into this project. And so William 0:18:11.920 --> 0:18:15.359 Friedman began to work with Elizabeth Smith on the Shakespeare 0:18:15.359 --> 0:18:18.120 project and and they both kind of looked at each 0:18:18.119 --> 0:18:22.080 other around the same time and had this had this 0:18:22.119 --> 0:18:26.440 epiphany which was, um, everybody at this place is completely 0:18:26.440 --> 0:18:29.800 crazy except for us. You know, we are we might 0:18:29.840 --> 0:18:33.639 be the only sane people here, and we need to, uh, 0:18:33.760 --> 0:18:35.600 we need to form a bond to kind of to 0:18:35.720 --> 0:18:38.960 protect ourselves from these lunatics. And while all of this 0:18:39.080 --> 0:18:42.400 craziness was swirling around them, Elizabeth and William did something 0:18:42.440 --> 0:18:49.040 extremely important, which is together they invented the modern science 0:18:49.200 --> 0:18:51.840 of cryptology, which today is at the core of our 0:18:51.880 --> 0:18:54.639 intelligence agencies. So this is a remarkable thing. You know, 0:18:54.680 --> 0:18:57.439 in the span of about two or three years, starting 0:18:57.440 --> 0:19:03.879 in nineteen they into new techniques of code breaking UM 0:19:03.920 --> 0:19:07.679 that had not been known in America. They wrote papers together, 0:19:08.720 --> 0:19:11.120 they worked across from each other in the same room, 0:19:11.160 --> 0:19:14.280 at the same desk, solving puzzles with pencil and paper. 0:19:14.280 --> 0:19:16.600 You gotta remember, this is before the era of computers. 0:19:16.600 --> 0:19:18.399 This is all pencil and paper. You're just sitting there 0:19:18.440 --> 0:19:22.520 with pencil paper in your mind. And because so little 0:19:22.600 --> 0:19:26.480 was known about code breaking in America, UM, they very 0:19:26.560 --> 0:19:29.520 quickly had to invent new techniques. They had to become scientists, 0:19:29.560 --> 0:19:32.480 and they had to become explorers. And they did that. Uh. 0:19:32.520 --> 0:19:35.119 And they were able to do it because they just 0:19:35.160 --> 0:19:37.199 had this They had this bond, this link. You know, 0:19:37.280 --> 0:19:39.359 there's something kind of miraculous seemed to happen when they 0:19:39.400 --> 0:19:42.800 worked together. They made each other better. UM. And and 0:19:42.960 --> 0:19:46.800 very quickly they started to consider themselves a duo and 0:19:46.960 --> 0:19:50.040 a team. UM. After they were married. William even even 0:19:50.160 --> 0:19:51.760 came up with the name he called them. He called 0:19:51.800 --> 0:19:55.160 them the Freedman combination. And you know, and it's interesting 0:19:55.200 --> 0:19:58.120 because because these papers that they wrote together are known 0:19:58.119 --> 0:20:03.280 as the Riverbank Publications, and uh uh you know, they've 0:20:03.560 --> 0:20:06.520 historically been credited to William alone. You know, it's only 0:20:06.560 --> 0:20:09.280 his name that's on the papers. But I went back 0:20:09.280 --> 0:20:12.080 and I looked at the early drafts of these publications, 0:20:12.119 --> 0:20:15.000 which are in the New York Public Library, uh, in 0:20:15.040 --> 0:20:17.119 their Manuscripts and Archives division. And when you look at 0:20:17.160 --> 0:20:20.280 the draft you see that Elizabeth's handwriting is all over them. 0:20:20.400 --> 0:20:23.840 In fact, you know her her her name is even 0:20:23.880 --> 0:20:25.840 typed on some of the type scripts as the author 0:20:25.880 --> 0:20:28.080 of certain sections of the papers. So I think that 0:20:28.520 --> 0:20:33.159 for several of the papers, especially the early, the early papers, 0:20:33.160 --> 0:20:36.840 Elizabeth was every bit the co author, and in fact, 0:20:37.160 --> 0:20:39.280 William considered her to be the co author too. He 0:20:39.560 --> 0:20:42.480 referred to the papers as our papers. And uh. The 0:20:42.520 --> 0:20:44.520 thing that kind of seals the deal from me is that, 0:20:44.960 --> 0:20:48.280 you know, uh, in his personal archive, which is at 0:20:48.320 --> 0:20:52.199 a private library in Virginia, he has uh he he 0:20:52.280 --> 0:20:55.560 kept his own personal copies of the Riverbank Publications, and 0:20:55.600 --> 0:20:58.960 on one of them he actually writes Elizabeth's name as 0:20:58.960 --> 0:21:00.600 a co author on the cup or, even though it's 0:21:00.640 --> 0:21:03.040 not there in the printed version. And so so she was, 0:21:03.840 --> 0:21:08.359 she was the co founder. I think of modern American cryptology. Wow, 0:21:08.400 --> 0:21:10.640 And you know, and you talk about that that impact 0:21:10.720 --> 0:21:13.120 that they had, And I guess finally the War Department 0:21:13.160 --> 0:21:16.080 wakes up to the fact that maybe they need more 0:21:16.119 --> 0:21:18.320 than just five people at this weird estate in the 0:21:18.320 --> 0:21:21.040 middle of nowhere and and decides to start their own 0:21:21.200 --> 0:21:23.600 code breaking units. But but that doesn't mean the end 0:21:23.640 --> 0:21:25.840 of it for for William and Elizabeth. Can you talk 0:21:25.880 --> 0:21:28.480 a little bit about what you know Elizabeth specifically was 0:21:28.560 --> 0:21:30.920 up to in between the World Wars, because she was 0:21:30.960 --> 0:21:34.639 still very much involved in this world Sure, right, So 0:21:34.680 --> 0:21:37.000 you're right, the War Department comes to the conclusion that 0:21:37.040 --> 0:21:38.840 maybe it's not the best idea to have a crazy 0:21:39.320 --> 0:21:42.280 tycoon handling all of the code breaking burd and forward 0:21:42.320 --> 0:21:44.720 the United States. Uh, they start, they start to build 0:21:44.760 --> 0:21:49.880 code breaking teams and capacities in Washington. What happens is, eventually, Uh, 0:21:50.119 --> 0:21:55.679 George Fabian sort of reveals his insanity. He begins to 0:21:55.760 --> 0:21:57.960