Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck.
Speaker 3: It's just us.
Speaker 2: There's no Jerry there maybe never was camp and this
Speaker 2: is stuff you should know. Camp What Camp? Oh? Camp?
Speaker 3: Inside joke?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Jerry's at camp right now.
Speaker 3: Can I do a quick CoA at the head here?
Speaker 2: Sure?
Speaker 3: The things we're going to be talking about today, folks,
Speaker 3: Internet mysteries times three. There are a lot of people
Speaker 3: who get very into this stuff, specifically you know, the
Speaker 3: three things we're talking about, as with most Internet mysteries,
Speaker 3: but we are certainly not going to get into it
Speaker 3: in the detail that will satisfy you if this is
Speaker 3: something that you have researched a lot have been super into,
Speaker 3: because you know, they're getting about fifteen minutes apiece, and
Speaker 3: you know, just give us a break. We're doing our
Speaker 3: best to kind of cover it in a short amount
Speaker 3: of time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, I think that was a good CoA.
Speaker 2: That was like a true bonafide CoA.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because I've answered the question that you're probably going
Speaker 3: to want to email, which is how could you not
Speaker 3: talk about blank?
Speaker 2: Right exactly? We're going to talk about as much as
Speaker 2: we can. And like you said, we got three amazing
Speaker 2: unsolved mysteries of the Internet to discuss. There's plenty out there,
Speaker 2: but in my book, these are probably the three best.
Speaker 2: I think.
Speaker 3: Ooh, all right.
Speaker 2: I mean there's a lot out there, and I don't
Speaker 2: I'm saying I'm excluding true crime obviously. These are just
Speaker 2: oddities that have not been solved at this point, maybe
Speaker 2: never will be solved, but probably could be at some point.
Speaker 2: You never know.
Speaker 3: Well, now we're just eating into our cicada.
Speaker 2: So let's talk first, I guess, then yes, about Cicada
Speaker 2: thirty three oh one, shall we?
Speaker 3: Sure? This was a series of three puzzles that were
Speaker 3: put out starting January fourth, twenty twelve, then a year later,
Speaker 3: same date on the thirteenth, and then again same date
Speaker 3: on the fourteenth on four Chan, and then eventually some
Speaker 3: clues would come out on Twitter, but they were posted
Speaker 3: online under the banner thirty three oh one and have
Speaker 3: since become known as Cicada thirty three oho one because
Speaker 3: many of the messages and clues ended up containing an
Speaker 3: image of a cicada.
Speaker 2: Yeah, kind of like a stylized line drawing of a cicada.
Speaker 2: I've seen it compared very much to like the moth
Speaker 2: on the Silence of the Lambs poster.
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally.
Speaker 2: Especially the first image had a cicada, and cicadas are
Speaker 2: important because they come out every a certain number of years,
Speaker 2: but those years are always prime numbers. It's very interesting.
Speaker 2: And in that first message that they sent out, they
Speaker 2: posted it on four Chan, and the post said, Hello,
Speaker 2: we are looking for highly intelligent individuals. To find them,
Speaker 2: we have devised a test. There is a message hidden
Speaker 2: in this image. Find it and it will lead you
Speaker 2: on the road to finding us. We look forward to
Speaker 2: meeting the few that will make it all the way through.
Speaker 2: Good luck. Cryptic, it was super cryptic, but it definitely
Speaker 2: caught the attention of people. They posted it on the
Speaker 2: right social media platform. Four Chan was a great one
Speaker 2: to post it on to get the attention of people
Speaker 2: who would want to do this, and the whole thing
Speaker 2: spread pretty quickly. People have obviously immediately started trying to
Speaker 2: figure out what the hidden message was. Staganography is what
Speaker 2: it's called hiving a message inside something else, usually an image,
Speaker 2: And it turns out there's all sorts of tools out
Speaker 2: there on the Internet that you can use to decode
Speaker 2: stuff like this, and some people just kind of said
Speaker 2: about getting busy with it as some people.
Speaker 3: Say, yeah, and one of those kids, I assume you
Speaker 3: read the Rolling Stone article or no.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I don't think so. No, not for
Speaker 2: this one.
Speaker 3: Okay, they had a really big, super long one that
Speaker 3: talked to two of the guys who were teenagers at
Speaker 3: the time, who were the I mean, I think probably
Speaker 3: some of the first people that solved it. I'm not
Speaker 3: going to go on record and say the first, but
Speaker 3: one guy would only go by tech t e KK
Speaker 3: and another guy's name was Marcus Wanner and they would
Speaker 3: eventually hook up online. But initially this kid tech as
Speaker 3: a fifteen year old, learned that when he copied that
Speaker 3: image as a text document and notepad that you got
Speaker 3: what you would expect, which is a wall of text,
Speaker 3: but part of it was readable text that said Tiber
Speaker 3: Claudius Caesar says, and then it had a bunch of
Speaker 3: alphanumeric text. He knew that the Caesar cipher is one
Speaker 3: of the oldest ciphers, one of the oldest kinds of encryption,
Speaker 3: which is a substitution cipher, where like this, I don't
Speaker 3: know if the Caesar was literally as one bs two,
Speaker 3: but you can apply it to different you know, numbers,
Speaker 3: And he knew that Caesar was the fourth emperor, so
Speaker 3: he substituted four letters down from each of the letters
Speaker 3: that followed and discovered a hidden message. Yeah, a website in.
Speaker 2: Fact, Yeah, that was the thing. So one of the
Speaker 2: reasons why the Cicada thirty three to h one puzzles
Speaker 2: captured the attention of some really smart and capable people
Speaker 2: is because they were multi layered. Like if you wanted
Speaker 2: to unlock one puzzle, you had to kind of go
Speaker 2: off over here and unlock a couple of other puzzles
Speaker 2: to unlock the key that you would take back to
Speaker 2: unlock the first puzzle. Essentially, it was multi layered, multi
Speaker 2: step process. And this was no exception to it that
Speaker 2: that that cipher that you had to decode from the
Speaker 2: first image took you to a website, I guess an
Speaker 2: imager image of a duck that just said only decoys
Speaker 2: over here, and so you would think you just went
Speaker 2: were sent intentionally done a blind alley. No, there was
Speaker 2: another hidden message in there, even though it didn't say
Speaker 2: that there was one, and so people would decipher that
Speaker 2: it turned out that there was an encoded book. Uh.
Speaker 2: And then you could also find a link to a
Speaker 2: subreddit and there were more passages from that book, and
Speaker 2: it turned out that book was a Welsh ar theory
Speaker 2: and legend. And another reddit post contained some Mayan numerals
Speaker 2: that you had to decode. That became a key that
Speaker 2: you could use to analyze the Arthurian legend with. And
Speaker 2: then you got another solution or another hint I guess
Speaker 2: to use from that point on. And what it said
Speaker 2: when you use that that that key to decode the
Speaker 2: Arthurian legend, it said, Hey, here's a phone number, give
Speaker 2: us a call.
Speaker 3: Yes, all this to say that some super smart nerdy
Speaker 3: people were doing some super smart nerdy stuff. Yeah, having
Speaker 3: a good time figuring this stuff out. And when they
Speaker 3: eventually got that phone number and called it, they got
Speaker 3: a message that said, very good, you have done well.
Speaker 3: There are three prime numbers associated with the original JPEG image.
Speaker 3: Thirty three oh one is one of them. You will
Speaker 3: have to find the other two. Then multiply all three
Speaker 3: of these numbers together and add a dot com at
Speaker 3: the end to find the next step. Good luck, goobye.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I didn't read the Rolling Stone profile, but
Speaker 2: another solver I think he was profiled in a National
Speaker 2: Poster or Telegraph article the same is Joel Erickson. He
Speaker 2: was from Sweden. I'm not sure how old he was
Speaker 2: at the time, but he figured out that probably the
Speaker 2: other prime numbers were the dimensions of that image five
Speaker 2: hundred and nine pixels by five hundred and three pixels,
Speaker 2: and it turned out he was right. So he multiplied
Speaker 2: all those that took the answer, put a dot com
Speaker 2: on the end, and it took him to a website
Speaker 2: that had a countdown clock and a picture of a cicada,
Speaker 2: so he knew he was at the right spot. He'd
Speaker 2: multiplied correctly and guessed correctly, and when that clock finished
Speaker 2: counting down, the website updated and there were a bunch
Speaker 2: of GPS coordinates that were posted.
Speaker 3: All of a sudden, Yeah, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 3: it's had fined our symbol at the location nearest to you. So,
Speaker 3: all of a sudden, this thing jumped from the Internet
Speaker 3: out into the real world with real physical coordinates, and
Speaker 3: it turned into kind of a scavenger hunt. There were
Speaker 3: fourteen telephone poles all around the world America France, Japan, Poland, Russia,
Speaker 3: Spain and other places, and all of a sudden, like
Speaker 3: you would, I mean, if you could afford to and
Speaker 3: had the time, I guess you would go to the
Speaker 3: one closest to you find that telephone pole flyer and
Speaker 3: that had a QR code it again with a picture
Speaker 3: of that cicada, and that led to another cicada image
Speaker 3: with another riddle, and this one contained some poetry. I
Speaker 3: think it was from cyberpunk writer William William Gibson's poem
Speaker 3: Agrippa that was from nineteen ninety two. And if you
Speaker 3: applied the key that they originally came up with to
Speaker 3: that poem, it led to another puzzle that would eventually
Speaker 3: lead to a website. Wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the website was the end. And so there's the guy.
Speaker 2: Joel Erickson made it to the website. By the time
Speaker 2: he got there, it had been shut down for a
Speaker 2: couple of reasons. One I think it was shut down
Speaker 2: a little under a month, and I guess they had
Speaker 2: posted on that website that they were disappointed that some
Speaker 2: people were collaborating, and they said they wanted the best,
Speaker 2: not followers, so they stopped the game. But apparently in
Speaker 2: the meantime they had some people had solved it and
Speaker 2: gotten to the site, because a month later on that
Speaker 2: reddit subreddit that they've been posting Arthurian legends and mining
Speaker 2: codes on, they said, we found the intelligent individuals we
Speaker 2: were looking for, right, So, but the fact that Joel
Speaker 2: Erickson made it to that site, that was it, Like
Speaker 2: he solved everything. He's considered a solver. He just got
Speaker 2: there too late because he heard about this after other
Speaker 2: people who started before him did.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like Marcus Wanner and tech exactly.
Speaker 2: And Marcus Wanner is one of the few people who's
Speaker 2: known to have made it past that site or gotten
Speaker 2: to that site within the timeframe the alloted timeframe, and
Speaker 2: actually was in communication with the people who were behind
Speaker 2: Cicida thirty three to ZHO one. He still has no
Speaker 2: idea exactly what they were doing or what they wanted,
Speaker 2: but based on the interview that they subjected into and
Speaker 2: some of the interactions he had with them, he guess
Speaker 2: that they are some sort of hacker collective that is
Speaker 2: very much interested in promoting internet privacy and internet freedom.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it sounds like they may have been looking for
Speaker 3: code breakers, because they gave him a private test of
Speaker 3: creating a decryption mechanism right, and he failed that, I guess,
Speaker 3: or wasn't able to do it, so they, you know,
Speaker 3: they got rid of him.
Speaker 2: I had the impression he blew it off.
Speaker 3: Oh really, I saw that he didn't wasn't able to
Speaker 3: do it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he just didn't deliver the goods. But I for
Speaker 2: some reason, one of the readings I had about him,
Speaker 2: it just made it sound like he was just like
Speaker 2: he lost interest. Maybe I don't know.
Speaker 3: Oh interesting. So to be clear, I believe what we
Speaker 3: just described was just that first puzzle, right, and you know,
Speaker 3: we don't have the time to get into the rest
Speaker 3: of the puzzles. And I don't think I think the
Speaker 3: first two were solved. I don't think anyone ever solved
Speaker 3: the third really before they permanently just removed every reference
Speaker 3: to it. I think about a month after that final
Speaker 3: puzzle was removed, they did post a message on four
Speaker 3: Chan once again that said we have now found the
Speaker 3: individuals we sought, sort of like that original message. Thus
Speaker 3: our month long journey ends. You're undoubtedly wondering what it
Speaker 3: is that we do. We are much like a think tank,
Speaker 3: and that our primary focus is on researching and developing
Speaker 3: techniques to aid the ideas we advocate liberty, privacy, security.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you could tell it was written by a
Speaker 2: computer person because there's like very little punctuation and lots
Speaker 2: of run ons and all that, so it seems legit.
Speaker 2: It checks out.
Speaker 3: So who is it an SA or CIA or somebody.
Speaker 2: A lot of people say that that it was an
Speaker 2: elaborate scheme to recruit, you know, cybersecurity people and hackers
Speaker 2: from like the dark reaches of the Internet. Somebody said
Speaker 2: that doesn't really make sense because they posted on four
Speaker 2: Chan and this was the era of Snowden, so they
Speaker 2: probably wouldn't have wanted people from four Chan at the time.
Speaker 2: That's not true. Leaked in twenty thirteen, and the first
Speaker 2: puzzle was twenty twelve, so it's possible it was the government.
Speaker 2: Entirely possible, but there were some other aspects of the
Speaker 2: whole contest that suggests it might have been otherwise, Although
Speaker 2: some of this seems to have been purposely deliberately misleading, right,
Speaker 2: Like there was a poster named Wind from Michigan and
Speaker 2: she was kind of joining in like these this collaborations
Speaker 2: on different sites until somebody figured out that she seemed
Speaker 2: to deliberately be giving out misleading information. And then there
Speaker 2: was a claim on Pastebin from a somebody who said
Speaker 2: that they were an ex Cicada member, that they were
Speaker 2: a military officer from a non English speaking country that
Speaker 2: had been recruited by a superior and that he said
Speaker 2: Cicado is actually a left hand path religion disguised as
Speaker 2: a progressive scientific organization, and that it was comprised of
Speaker 2: very smart people who weren't happy with the way the
Speaker 2: world was going, so they wanted to trasform humanity into
Speaker 2: the Nietzschean uber minch.
Speaker 3: Well, I did see stuff about religion. I saw some
Speaker 3: people positive that it was Julian Assange there. I mean,
Speaker 3: there's all kinds of fun theories out there on who
Speaker 3: it might have been. I think the one thing is
Speaker 3: pretty clear it I feel really, really strongly that it
Speaker 3: probably wasn't just some like somebody having fun doing some
Speaker 3: cool scavenger hunt mystery puzzle thing on the internet, like
Speaker 3: it seemed like it was probably some kind of legit recruitment.
Speaker 2: I agree, But I think my money's on a hacker collective,
Speaker 2: whether white hat or black hat, I don't know, but
Speaker 2: a group of hackers.
Speaker 3: Does that mean good guys are bad guys?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: I don't know all this terminology.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean it's pretty straightforward. You know, you can
Speaker 2: guess you just did.
Speaker 3: All right, there you go? Did I pacitize?
Speaker 2: You did? You made it onto the next riddle?
Speaker 3: Did you just text me a wooden duck?
Speaker 2: That's right? Just here, I say, we take a break.
Speaker 2: Can we move on to the next mystery of the Internet?
Speaker 2: How about that?
Speaker 3: Oh, tension builds.
Speaker 1: Stuff you should know, Josh, And shock stuff you should know.
Speaker 3: All right, So mystery number two, and I'm shocked. I've
Speaker 3: never heard of this one as a music guy. Had
Speaker 3: you ever heard of it?
Speaker 2: Yes, I don't remember exactly where, but I'd never really
Speaker 2: researched it until we started researching this. So for all
Speaker 2: intents and purposes, not really.
Speaker 3: Okay, we're gonna be talking about what's become known as
Speaker 3: the most mysterious song on the Internet. And this was
Speaker 3: a song that sometime between eighty two and eighty four
Speaker 3: a guy named Darius s recorded in Germany on the
Speaker 3: north coast, the coast of Germany.
Speaker 2: Josh, there's no such thing. I mean, some sort of
Speaker 2: landlocked border.
Speaker 3: I think I think so reference to Old Bearer by
Speaker 3: the way. But yeah, this guy did what all of
Speaker 3: us did in the early eighties, as we would sit
Speaker 3: around listen to the radio and record songs from the
Speaker 3: radio onto our cassette deck so we could take them
Speaker 3: on the road with us. And he was doing this.
Speaker 3: Had a big mixtape of all these things from you know,
Speaker 3: the people that you would expect to hear from in
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty four, about twenty five of them. He wasn't
Speaker 3: sure who the songs were, and it sounds like he
Speaker 3: figured out who all of those songs came from. Save one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think so, I don't. I think that was
Speaker 2: the only one that he did never figure out. He
Speaker 2: called those unknown ones his unknown pleasures. A joy Division
Speaker 2: reference right, because most of this music was post punk
Speaker 2: new waves. And this song, this most mysterious song on
Speaker 2: the internet, is no exception. It sounds like a Rolling
Speaker 2: Stone writer put it. It has a rigid beat and
Speaker 2: dry monotone vocals and sounds like a synthpop hit you
Speaker 2: would have heard in a dance club in the eighties,
Speaker 2: which is true, like all of that is true, But
Speaker 2: it also it has like a strong guitar riff like
Speaker 2: early Joy Division. It kind of has a little bit
Speaker 2: of that, but it's also more produced than that, and
Speaker 2: the vocals, the lyrics and the vocals are incomprehensible except
Speaker 2: in little snippets that you hear just enough that to me,
Speaker 2: the fact that you can't fully understand what the person's
Speaker 2: saying and it's so open to interpretation, I think that's
Speaker 2: what starts to suck people in the most.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Probably so. The only thing I'll disagree with about
Speaker 3: the Rolling Stone is that it sounded like a hit.
Speaker 3: I don't think the song's very good.
Speaker 2: Oh really, I find it I wouldn't say good, but
Speaker 2: I find it definitely catchy.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's okay, and I have been walking around
Speaker 3: singing it, and so it must be a little catchy.
Speaker 3: But compared to the music of that era, and this
Speaker 3: is just my dumb opinion, I think it sounds like
Speaker 3: what I think it is, which was a fairly amateurish
Speaker 3: Eastern Bloc person recording a song. Okay, it sounded a
Speaker 3: little bit like, you know, the rest of the music
Speaker 3: of the era.
Speaker 2: So the thing is, I don't know if we've said
Speaker 2: entirely yet, no one on the planet seems to know
Speaker 2: what the song is, what the name of the song is,
Speaker 2: or who the artist is, who created this, what the
Speaker 2: band is or the solo arts whoever, not a single
Speaker 2: person on the planet, And you might be like, well,
Speaker 2: you know, maybe you just haven't looked deep enough. Wrong.
Speaker 2: People have looked into the depths of nineteen eighties Germany
Speaker 2: using all sorts of different tools to analyze the song digitally.
Speaker 2: I mean, like, people have really dug into this. And
Speaker 2: the other thing about it that makes it so impressive
Speaker 2: that it remains mysterious is that people have been searching
Speaker 2: for who made this song since for twenty ten. Let's
Speaker 2: tell them about that story, shall.
Speaker 3: We, Yeah, you mentioned using you know, modern tools. One
Speaker 3: of the one of the mysteries from Darius was he
Speaker 3: was like, I guess, in this German accent, which I'm
Speaker 3: not gonna try good said, I'm not even sure you
Speaker 3: know for sure that I taped it from this program
Speaker 3: on the in day oar Heintz station in Germany, the
Speaker 3: music for young people program that he listened to. He's like,
Speaker 3: because I recorded stuff from other stations and other programs.
Speaker 3: But they have since proven that proven that basically using
Speaker 3: spectrogram analysis, they actually pinpointed it and said, no, there
Speaker 3: was a ten kilohertz line that this station used as
Speaker 3: like a modulation scheme that isn't found on other stations.
Speaker 3: And they found that that modulation line in that song.
Speaker 3: So there was like, at least we know it was
Speaker 3: definitely from Inda our hes.
Speaker 2: Right, So they figured that out. They also figured out
Speaker 2: that it was at least from nineteen eighty four because
Speaker 2: the technics deck is it technics are techniques.
Speaker 3: I always said techniques, but who knows? That may have
Speaker 3: been wrong.
Speaker 2: Okay, the tape deck made by technics or techniques, you know,
Speaker 2: the brand that he was using to record off the
Speaker 2: radio wasn't made until nineteen eighty four, and you might think, well, okay,
Speaker 2: it could be nineteen eighty five eighty six. The song,
Speaker 2: the other songs that are on this tape, which are
Speaker 2: known as Cassette four, were songs from XSTC The Cure.
Speaker 2: I could not, for life of me find what songs
Speaker 2: they were, but everybody seems to be satisfied that these
Speaker 2: ecstasy songs and Cure songs and other songs that were
Speaker 2: played on that were recorded on the same tape came
Speaker 2: out in nineteen eighty four or right before nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 2: So the guess is that this this was taped off
Speaker 2: of the radio between nineteen eighty three and nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you know what, there's people that have time
Speaker 3: on their hand in technological wherewith all that we don't have,
Speaker 3: I'm calling on somebody somewhere to find and make a
Speaker 3: playlist of cassette four and put it on your whatever
Speaker 3: your favorite streamer is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I can't believe it's not out there.
Speaker 3: Actually, I bet that's a bangin playlist.
Speaker 2: I'll bet it is too. So back to the story,
Speaker 2: the initial story of where this all came from. Darius,
Speaker 2: he apparently was content with just putting a question mark
Speaker 2: next to the song or in the song's place on
Speaker 2: the track listing on the cassette, but his sister was
Speaker 2: not satisfied with that. His sister, Lydia, who just goes
Speaker 2: by Lydia h in this Rolling Stone interview, she always
Speaker 2: really wanted to know who made this song. I don't
Speaker 2: know if obsession is the right word, but it was
Speaker 2: certainly something that drove her to some extent, and as
Speaker 2: the Internet kind of blossomed and grew, I think in
Speaker 2: starting in two thousand and seven, she started sharing it
Speaker 2: on the Internet. There's a couple of sites that she
Speaker 2: put it posted it on initially, one a Canadian site,
Speaker 2: another German site that are kind of the crowdsource people
Speaker 2: to say what song is this? And that was the
Speaker 2: start of baffling internet users with this song.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's where I would have expected an answer
Speaker 3: if there was one. It's on YouTube. You can listen
Speaker 3: to it. They people on YouTube and other places to
Speaker 3: have tried to decipher the lyrics as best they can.
Speaker 3: It seems pretty clear that it's probably a foreign or
Speaker 3: at least, you know, a non American speaker foreign to us.
Speaker 2: But people are pretty sure it's in English.
Speaker 3: No, it's definitely in English. Okay, I mean, I think
Speaker 3: it's clearly in English. Great are people debating that?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 3: I don't think. Okay, you can't get all the words.
Speaker 3: You can get a lot of them. Like the Wind
Speaker 3: is the title that a lot of people have put
Speaker 3: on it, because you know, the very beginning of the song,
Speaker 3: it's like the wind. But is it I don't even
Speaker 3: know if it's saying like the wind. It almost sounds
Speaker 3: like something again, but I can't even tell that part Yeah.
Speaker 2: So there's a bunch of names for the song, which
Speaker 2: the official generic name for it is TMS the Mysterious
Speaker 2: Song or the most Mysterious song on the Internet, but
Speaker 2: people call it blind the Wind, locked away. Some people
Speaker 2: think that's what he's saying instead of like the wind.
Speaker 2: I can hear it actually, as a matter of fact,
Speaker 2: and I can't remember what the line is, but there's
Speaker 2: other lines in there that make it sound like he
Speaker 2: is talking about being locked up. Check it in, check
Speaker 2: it out, take it in, take it out, disco woman.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of different names for this song based
Speaker 2: on what people think this guy is saying, because no
Speaker 2: one can say what the lyrics are. No one knows.
Speaker 2: You can't do it, and it's beware there because there's
Speaker 2: madness that way. If you really start paying attention and
Speaker 2: trying to figure out what the lyrics are, friend, you
Speaker 2: are going to end up with a new hobby you
Speaker 2: may or may not want.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they've gotten in touch with that original DJ who said,
Speaker 3: you know, I don't know what that song was. I
Speaker 3: certainly don't remember playing it, no recollection of it whatsoever.
Speaker 3: This was a time, obviously, when Germany was split in
Speaker 3: half or maybe not technically half by the Cold War,
Speaker 3: and you know, the DJ DJs were like, you know,
Speaker 3: we would get like tapes thrown over the wall at
Speaker 3: us that we didn't even know what they were, but
Speaker 3: they were they were just music that people wanted us
Speaker 3: to hear and play. Here's my theory, Okay, Ockham's Razor Man.
Speaker 3: It's a song that someone made and they died, and
Speaker 3: no one knew they made it.
Speaker 2: I guess that is probably the simplest solution. Yes, it's
Speaker 2: just no one, no one knowing that that person made,
Speaker 2: no one recognizing that person's voice. I mean, this is widespread, Yeah,
Speaker 2: and it's possible just the right person hasn't heard it yet.
Speaker 2: I don't know, but I kind of tend to agree
Speaker 2: with you. I think that's probably what happened. It was
Speaker 2: an obscure East German or Eastern Bloc musician who managed
Speaker 2: to get their tape out. And I mean that's not unprecedented.
Speaker 2: Tapes went both ways through the Iron Curtain during the
Speaker 2: Cold War. There's a really great documentary called Chuck Norris
Speaker 2: Versus Communism that came out in twenty fifteen, and it's
Speaker 2: about how people smuggling in American action movies into Romania.
Speaker 2: They think essentially led to the downfall of Nikolai Chuchescu
Speaker 2: and his regime because people kind of saw how life
Speaker 2: could be. Isn't that amazing?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Did Chuck Norris win?
Speaker 2: Yeah? He won because there's no more communism in Romania
Speaker 2: as far as I know.
Speaker 3: Do you know what would be great? I mean, I'm
Speaker 3: fifty three years old, I'm in way into music, and
Speaker 3: I've gone down some rabbit holes about music. I had
Speaker 3: never heard of this before this week. Like, you know,
Speaker 3: maybe the person who made it literally has never heard
Speaker 3: this whole mystery. In that year, someone's like, hey, that
Speaker 3: was me.
Speaker 2: I know. I think that a lot of people would
Speaker 2: be really sad and when that happened.
Speaker 3: Yeah, then just keep it to yourself, buddy. If that's
Speaker 3: the case, everyone likes a mystery a little bit more.
Speaker 2: So, let's talk about a couple of couple more things
Speaker 2: that people have done for this investigation. I mean, you
Speaker 2: said spectography, right, am I saying that correctly?
Speaker 3: I don't know spectrograph Yeah, spectrography.
Speaker 2: I think so it sounds right, jeez. So in addition
Speaker 2: to that people, and in addition to getting in touch
Speaker 2: with Paul Baskerville, the DJ who hosted that show in
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty four. People have gotten in touch with the
Speaker 2: archivist at that radio station and gotten a full list
Speaker 2: of playlists for every single episod of that radio show.
Speaker 2: This song does not turn up on it. Don't forget, though.
Speaker 2: They've proven that it was played on this radio station.
Speaker 2: So they started looking at playlists for other radio shows.
Speaker 2: They've gotten a substantial number of them. Still hasn't turned
Speaker 2: up on any playlist anything that could be this song.
Speaker 2: And then someone else essentially pinned the song in between
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty three and nineteen eighty four because they believe
Speaker 2: that the synthesizer that was used was a specific type
Speaker 2: of Yamaha a DX seven that was not available until
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty three. In that nuts that people have done all.
Speaker 3: This, That one's the most believable because that's just how
Speaker 3: keyboard nerds are.
Speaker 2: But sure, yeah, I just think that's super cool that
Speaker 2: people have just tried all of this different stuff and
Speaker 2: it still is just not budging. It will not budge.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And again, if that guy's out there, just you know,
Speaker 3: let that be your own little secret. And maybe that's
Speaker 3: the case. Maybe this person knows this and they just
Speaker 3: think this is awesome. And you know who knows that's
Speaker 3: why it's a great mystery.
Speaker 2: His friends and family are like, why are you always
Speaker 2: tittering to yourself? It's so weird?
Speaker 3: Why are you talking about the Wind?
Speaker 2: So if you haven't heard the song, it's worth going
Speaker 2: to check out. Just look up the most mysterious song
Speaker 2: on the Internet and you will find it, for sure,
Speaker 2: although you can also look up like the Wind and
Speaker 2: mysterious and all that stuff and it'll turn it up.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And to be clear, I don't think it's like
Speaker 3: a bad song. I just think it's not like is
Speaker 3: it didn't become a big hit for a reason.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think hit is a little overly generous too.
Speaker 2: I'm with you. But you could still have turned it
Speaker 2: at like an eighties club on like bish wave night,
Speaker 2: for sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there was plenty of worse music than this then.
Speaker 2: Or sure, but there was also a lot of really
Speaker 2: good music too, like the Wind.
Speaker 3: A Way Disco Girl.
Speaker 2: Okay, well, I think we reached the end of the
Speaker 2: most Mysterious song on the Internet. That our second of
Speaker 2: our three mysteries of the Internet, And we'll take a
Speaker 2: message break we'll come back and we will reveal the
Speaker 2: third after this stuff.
Speaker 1: You should know, Josh and shock stuff. You should know.
Speaker 3: We're back, and you know, dude, this could be a
Speaker 3: whole other show for us. Just three mysteries per week,
Speaker 3: fifteen minutes of pop.
Speaker 2: You like that, huh? I don't know.
Speaker 3: It's kind of fun.
Speaker 2: Careful way you say this, Do you have time on
Speaker 2: your hands like that?
Speaker 3: No? No, no, I quit my other show for a reason.
Speaker 3: You as well.
Speaker 2: We need to edit that part out, man. I don't
Speaker 2: want the wrong people to hear that and be like, hey,
Speaker 2: that's a great idea.
Speaker 3: All right, take it away, my friend.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, here we got. We're talking about what, in
Speaker 2: my opinion, is one of the top three great mysteries
Speaker 2: of the Internet. Yeah, I think I agree, the Mystery
Speaker 2: of John Tider. I believe that's how it's pronounced. I've
Speaker 2: only ever seen it written down. I've never heard anybody
Speaker 2: say it out loud. But I've heard that name for
Speaker 2: a long time. Because this is an ancient Internet mystery,
Speaker 2: and as a matter of fact, it turns out it
Speaker 2: seems to pre date essentially the Internet, or at the
Speaker 2: very least it was. It finds its origin off the
Speaker 2: Internet through fax machines and the radio no less.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and this is another one that a lot of
Speaker 3: people have gotten really into. Like I went on Reddit
Speaker 3: and was kind of looking at some stuff, and it
Speaker 3: broke my brain such that I was like, all right,
Speaker 3: we're gonna we're gonna do our best to give a
Speaker 3: little overview here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think something about the the most mysterious song
Speaker 2: on the Internet. It seems far more wholesome and less
Speaker 2: dark for some reason, getting sucked into the John Tider
Speaker 2: mystery seems like you could really just go crazy essentially.
Speaker 3: Well, the first one was either like I six or CIA,
Speaker 3: this one is possible time traveler in Civil war, and
Speaker 3: the middle one was like a cool synthpop hit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so let's just tell him a little bit about
Speaker 2: John Tighter. Okay. John Tighter is a Internet based that
Speaker 2: no one's ever seen or spoken to him in real
Speaker 2: life poster who claimed to be a time traveler from
Speaker 2: the year twenty thirty six in America, an America that
Speaker 2: had been racked, like you said, by civil war that
Speaker 2: had gone on for a while but was ended by
Speaker 2: World War three, which presumably that brought America together again
Speaker 2: and that it seems like the American economy has completely
Speaker 2: collapsed and everybody's much more family and local community centered.
Speaker 2: Andy said that the average day in the life in
Speaker 2: twenty thirty six outside Tampa, Florida, where he's from, is
Speaker 2: like a day on the farm, and you might be like, wow,
Speaker 2: that's pretty descriptive. That is the tip of the iceberg
Speaker 2: of the information that John tier willingly gave out as
Speaker 2: a time traveler on the Internet starting in nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: seven or eight, and then in two thousand again.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he said the US had been divided into five
Speaker 3: zones and that time travel had been invented, had been
Speaker 3: invented two years previous, in twenty thirty four. But let's
Speaker 3: back up to where this started, because it all started in,
Speaker 3: like you said, pre internet, in a very kind of
Speaker 3: unlikely way, I think, by somebody sending a couple of
Speaker 3: faxes to a radio show Art Bells Coast to Coast
Speaker 3: AM and this was read on the air, and then
Speaker 3: a couple of years later posted basically the same thing
Speaker 3: online on the Time Travel Institute site, which is a
Speaker 3: site that's been around since ninety seven dedicated to temporal sciences,
Speaker 3: and the user's name was time travel under scre or zero.
Speaker 3: So like we said, time traveler from the future and
Speaker 3: started saying things like, you know, there were six components
Speaker 3: to the time machine. That was an onoard or on
Speaker 3: board caesium clocks, twin micro singularities which are tiny, very
Speaker 3: tiny black holes, that he traveled using a stationary mass
Speaker 3: temporal displacement unit powered by two topspin dual positive singularities,
Speaker 3: producing a typical offset tiplar sinusoid. And it was put
Speaker 3: in the back of a sixty six corvette. Yeah, very
Speaker 3: back to the part that gets me very back to
Speaker 3: the future.
Speaker 2: The thing about John Tier and the posts that he
Speaker 2: posted are that this stuff that is this what sounds
Speaker 2: like gibberish is actually not at all made up. For example,
Speaker 2: a tiplar sinusoid refers to a theoretical type of time
Speaker 2: travel that was proposed in the seventies by physicists named
Speaker 2: Frank Tipler, and he essentially figured out mathematically that if
Speaker 2: you could take two huge masses many times denser than
Speaker 2: the sun, say two black holes, and pull them out,
Speaker 2: spaghettify them essentially, and then spin them really fast like
Speaker 2: billions of rotations a second, you would what you would
Speaker 2: do is essentially pull open space time and open essentially
Speaker 2: a portal to somewhere in the future, possibly somewhere in
Speaker 2: the past, possibly galaxies away from where you started. And
Speaker 2: again this is hypothetical theoretical, but this is not something
Speaker 2: that the average person is walking around in their head
Speaker 2: like that. The Tiplar sinusoid exists. So I'm just impressed that.
Speaker 2: And that's just another example where if you put all
Speaker 2: this stuff together and all of the how different and
Speaker 2: complementary and very infrequently contradictory. The the information that John
Speaker 2: tier gave out was it's I see how some people
Speaker 2: who believe that time travel is possible consider John Tighter
Speaker 2: an actual time traveler. Okay, I don't, but I could
Speaker 2: see how people do. It's just so convincing, Like the
Speaker 2: stuff he says is so convincing, and he seems to
Speaker 2: have no agenda whatsoever. That's the other thing.
Speaker 3: I'm not so sure about that part. But he would
Speaker 3: go on to talk you know again, you know, he
Speaker 3: was a US soldier in Tampa living on a river
Speaker 3: in a treehouse, and said that he was there on
Speaker 3: an official mission. He was supposed to he was, you know,
Speaker 3: sent back in time by his I guess the army
Speaker 3: or the US government. But he stopped off for a
Speaker 3: personal personal reasons in two thousand, basically to get family
Speaker 3: pictures that were lost during the Civil War, mementos, to
Speaker 3: visit his family, that kind of thing, right, But the
Speaker 3: official mission that he was sent back for, supposedly by
Speaker 3: the federal government, was to go back to Minnesota in
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy five to get an IBM fifty one hundred,
Speaker 3: which was the first portable computer. And his grandfather supposedly
Speaker 3: worked on developing this thing, and so that's why he
Speaker 3: was sent back to get this computer so they could
Speaker 3: debug legacy computer programs that they you know, they were
Speaker 3: obsolete and they couldn't work with anymore because they didn't
Speaker 3: have this old working computer.
Speaker 2: Right, and what the So that's cool, that's an obscure computer. Again,
Speaker 2: most people aren't walking around with awareness that the IBM
Speaker 2: fifty one hundred ever existed. But even more than that,
Speaker 2: John Tiger said that the reason they wanted a fifty
Speaker 2: one hundred is because it had a specific unique component
Speaker 2: to it. It apparently could run other programs written for
Speaker 2: like those huge mainframes, and that that was the reason
Speaker 2: they needed it in the future and that IBM had
Speaker 2: actually kept us quiet. And it turns out that's true.
Speaker 2: The I think the Rochester, Minnesota Post Bulletin got in
Speaker 2: touch with one of their local residents who worked on
Speaker 2: the IBM fifty one hundred in the mid seventies, who confirmed, like,
Speaker 2: that's absolutely true. There was this little quirk that was
Speaker 2: peculiar to the fifty one hundred, and IBM did not
Speaker 2: publicize this at all. So it's just so bizarre that
Speaker 2: this person knew that and that that was the reason
Speaker 2: that they were sent back into the future. I mean,
Speaker 2: come on, dude, Like, think about how creative that is
Speaker 2: if the guy's just a hoaxter.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So he goes on to and this is a
Speaker 3: very key thing is he went on to say, by
Speaker 3: the way, the mini World's theory of physics is correct,
Speaker 3: which means that you know, for every possible different outcome,
Speaker 3: the universe splits into different versions to accommodate those outcomes.
Speaker 3: He's like, that's all true. So the fact that I'm
Speaker 3: saying he didn't say this part, but the fact that
Speaker 3: he talks about the George W. Bush election sewing discord
Speaker 3: and there being an uprising in a civil war in
Speaker 3: the two thousands. The fact that none of that happened,
Speaker 3: he said, that's just because that I went back in
Speaker 3: time and changed the outcome. So basically, anything I say,
Speaker 3: you can't prove wrong.
Speaker 2: That's one part of it. Yes, he was saying, like,
Speaker 2: because his very presence would change it, and that he
Speaker 2: came from a different timestream himself. The other implication of
Speaker 2: that is that he can't possibly create a paradox. Even
Speaker 2: going and visiting his family and I read his three
Speaker 2: year old self in two thousand would not create a
Speaker 2: paradox because he comes from a different timestream, did not
Speaker 2: exist in this timestream until he hopped over to it,
Speaker 2: So there's no paradox for him being there and meeting
Speaker 2: him himself as a younger kid. Right again, Really genius
Speaker 2: details that. So I feel like I'm coming off like
Speaker 2: I'm trying to convince listeners to believe that this is real.
Speaker 2: That's not the case. If you do believe it's real, great.
Speaker 2: I'm just so thoroughly impressed with the creativity behind every
Speaker 2: component and facet of what John Tyder said that it's
Speaker 2: just I'm just in awe agog even you could say.
Speaker 3: So as the thing gained steam over the years, he
Speaker 3: finally eventually made a post in March two thousand and
Speaker 3: one that said, this is you know, the last post
Speaker 3: I'm going back to twenty thirty six, Smell you later,
Speaker 3: And he wrote this big, long, kind of fairly deep
Speaker 3: philosophical take on what he learned and what he saw,
Speaker 3: and also the fact that he had already been talking
Speaker 3: about the fact that like, by the way, people in
Speaker 3: the future don't think you're too great, and that you
Speaker 3: guys haven't been doing the right things and you kind
Speaker 3: of screwed everything up for the future. So he kind
Speaker 3: of writes this kind of nice long thing at the end,
Speaker 3: which was just ended with farewell John. You know, there's
Speaker 3: a lot of symbolism going on, Like I encourage people
Speaker 3: to read it in full because it's pretty cool.
Speaker 2: It is. It is very cool, But he basically says, like,
Speaker 2: here's why I'm leaving and why I won't be back
Speaker 2: or recommend anybody come back here either, because you guys
Speaker 2: don't take care of one another. Like he talked about
Speaker 2: how people who with stranded on the side of the
Speaker 2: road with car trouble, people just drive past him. Nobody stops,
Speaker 2: and he asked his family that he was visiting why
Speaker 2: people don't stop, and they were saying, it's too dangerous
Speaker 2: to stop and pick somebody up. You never know if
Speaker 2: they're going to kill you. And they need to learn
Speaker 2: the lesson about making sure you don't run out of
Speaker 2: gas in the first place. And he's just like a
Speaker 2: gast at this at how people treat one another in
Speaker 2: America in the early two thousands, and in that farewell thing,
Speaker 2: he said, make sure you keep a gas can with
Speaker 2: you for when your car dies on the side of
Speaker 2: the road. And I'm going back to this time and
Speaker 2: place where you know, community and family is absolutely everything.
Speaker 2: A utopia if you will a bit, But he didn't
Speaker 2: talk it up like a utopia. It sounded like it
Speaker 2: was probably you or I would consider it hard living,
Speaker 2: but to him, it was fastly superior to the kind
Speaker 2: of lifestyle that we live pre Civil War here in
Speaker 2: the United States in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So this is one that a lot of people
Speaker 3: have tried to solve over the years. I feel like
Speaker 3: it's been solved. Yea personally, signs you know, were there
Speaker 3: were people that got on the web and started I'm
Speaker 3: looking at metadata, and like, what's it called when you
Speaker 3: can pinpoint where something came from? Oh, I can't think
Speaker 3: of it now, a pinpointing. No, something to deal with
Speaker 3: your computer and where where it was posting from anyway. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but there's another word for it. I know this is
Speaker 3: people are just yelling at me. But long story short,
Speaker 3: both the metadata and this method of pinpointing that a
Speaker 3: website called hoax Hunter conducted this investigation pointed to this
Speaker 3: area of Florida in both cases, so that really narrowed
Speaker 3: it down. And then I believe they also found a
Speaker 3: registration to like an LLC or company with the word
Speaker 3: Tighter in it that all it had was a PO
Speaker 3: box from that same area of Florida. And so they
Speaker 3: basically think that it is. There are three brothers, the
Speaker 3: Haber brothers. For my money, it's Larry or his younger
Speaker 3: brother John, and not the older I think older brother,
Speaker 3: Maury Haber.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so Larry Haber exists, Maury Haber exists. I've seen
Speaker 2: that John Haber does not exist. But the Habers do
Speaker 2: seem they certainly have something to do with this, because,
Speaker 2: like you said, they run the John Tighter Foundation and
Speaker 2: Larry Haber claims to be the legal representative of k Tighter,
Speaker 2: John Tighter's mother. She doesn't seem to exist either. And
Speaker 2: it's possible the whole thing was just a hoax carried
Speaker 2: out by these guys. Totally possible. But what's interesting is
Speaker 2: I turned up another article that interviews in part a
Speaker 2: guy named Joseph Matheny who's a multi media artist, who said,
Speaker 2: we were the ones who started this whole thing by
Speaker 2: sending those facts to art Bell, and we stopped after that,
Speaker 2: and apparently some coast to coast fans took up the
Speaker 2: mantle and carried it on from there a couple of
Speaker 2: years later. So two groups that weren't communicating or working
Speaker 2: with one another were inadvertently collaborating, or one was collaborating
Speaker 2: with the other later on to create this whole hoax
Speaker 2: that was the John Tider mystery.
Speaker 3: Now where did you see that the youngest brother didn't exist?
Speaker 2: Well, I know that Larry Haber. I believe it was
Speaker 2: Larry who said I don't have a brother John. And
Speaker 2: I think I saw somewhere else that John is not real,
Speaker 2: that there's not a Haber.
Speaker 3: Interesting because I saw stuff quotes from John. But like
Speaker 3: I think it's one of those things where you can't
Speaker 3: trust anything you're reading at this.
Speaker 2: Point exactly one, because again Larry Haber is saying that
Speaker 2: he represents Kay Tighter, and Kay Tighter doesn't seem to exist.
Speaker 2: Like there's a lot of people. Again, people have not
Speaker 2: met these people. Everything has been on the internet, so
Speaker 2: it's there's no telling who is involved, who isn't involved,
Speaker 2: who's real, who's not real. It's fascinating in that regard.
Speaker 2: So there's multi layers to what makes this whole mystery
Speaker 2: just so great.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I mean they're on the internet, those two guys.
Speaker 3: I mean, at least the two guys are. Yeah, and
Speaker 3: like one of them is a very well to do
Speaker 3: business person, and I don't know, it's very interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the Habers definitely exist, Larry and Maury, possibly John,
Speaker 2: but I saw he doesn't, right, I understand. Okay, Well, no,
Speaker 2: I was wrapping it up for everybody else, I know,
Speaker 2: you know, gotcha. I think that's it, right, Chuck.
Speaker 3: I got nothing else, I mean but a deep sense
Speaker 3: of unfulfilled you know podcast duty edom.
Speaker 2: Right, I'm with you on that. Since Chuck said duty edom,
Speaker 2: of course, that means he's just Unlocked listener mail.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna call this tomato fun fact from Brian Kreebol
Speaker 3: or maybe it's Crybol. In Germany it would be Kreebel,
Speaker 3: but who knows. Hey, guys, In this also episode, you
Speaker 3: mentioned that when Europeans first encountered tomatoes, they thought they
Speaker 3: were deadly because they remember the night Shade family. I
Speaker 3: forget where I learned this, but this idea was initially
Speaker 3: fueled because some of them were actually killed by eating tomatoes. However,
Speaker 3: it was not the tomatoes that killed them. They were
Speaker 3: eating them off lead plates, and the acid from the
Speaker 3: tomatoes does all some of the lead. Jesus then consumed
Speaker 3: along with the tomatoes, thus killing some. This is what
Speaker 3: led to the belief that tomatoes were poisonous and persisted
Speaker 3: throughout Europe for a little while. One little bit of
Speaker 3: hubris for a group that thought they knew everything there
Speaker 3: was to know and that they were a step above
Speaker 3: the indigenous communities.
Speaker 2: Burn Who is that from?
Speaker 3: That was from Brian.
Speaker 2: Brian, That's awesome, Thank you very much. I've definitely never
Speaker 2: heard that one, so thanks for filling that out for us.
Speaker 2: And if you want to fill something out for us,
Speaker 2: like Brian did. You can send it via email to
Speaker 2: wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, and send
Speaker 2: it off to stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
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Speaker 3: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.