1
00:00:02,320 --> 00:00:06,120
Speaker 1: Happy Saturday. Our classic episode today is one that has

2
00:00:06,160 --> 00:00:10,920
Speaker 1: been all over the news recently. On September, The Times

3
00:00:11,039 --> 00:00:16,160
Speaker 1: Literary Supplement published an article called Voyage Manuscript The Solution

4
00:00:16,760 --> 00:00:22,080
Speaker 1: by Nicholas Gibbs, which purportedly decoded the Voyage Manuscript. Okay,

5
00:00:22,640 --> 00:00:26,360
Speaker 1: we were immediately skeptical for a few reasons. One is

6
00:00:26,400 --> 00:00:29,400
Speaker 1: at the Times Literary Supplement builds itself as quote the

7
00:00:29,480 --> 00:00:33,360
Speaker 1: leading international weekly for literary culture, but it's not an

8
00:00:33,360 --> 00:00:36,559
Speaker 1: academic journal or otherwise subject to peer review, so that

9
00:00:36,680 --> 00:00:41,120
Speaker 1: kind of, you know, it maybe lovely, but that doesn't

10
00:00:41,120 --> 00:00:46,360
Speaker 1: always make it a scientifically representative publication. Great of salt time,

11
00:00:46,440 --> 00:00:49,360
Speaker 1: sort of like when a discovery is announced as a

12
00:00:49,400 --> 00:00:52,080
Speaker 1: press release for a TV show, just as an example, right.

13
00:00:52,600 --> 00:00:55,680
Speaker 1: And another is that for a purported solution, it didn't

14
00:00:55,800 --> 00:00:59,360
Speaker 1: really offer that much detail. The Atlantic has a good

15
00:00:59,440 --> 00:01:02,000
Speaker 1: roundup of various other criticisms, and we're going to link

16
00:01:02,040 --> 00:01:04,360
Speaker 1: to that in the show notes. Aside from all that,

17
00:01:04,440 --> 00:01:07,679
Speaker 1: we were skeptical because we've been through all this before.

18
00:01:08,280 --> 00:01:13,960
Speaker 1: Our classic episode today is actually update to our installment

19
00:01:14,000 --> 00:01:16,360
Speaker 1: on the Voytage Manuscript, so at the start you will

20
00:01:16,360 --> 00:01:18,840
Speaker 1: get to hear us kind of gleefully talk about two

21
00:01:18,880 --> 00:01:23,200
Speaker 1: completely contradictory solutions in air quotes that had come out

22
00:01:23,240 --> 00:01:25,280
Speaker 1: within just a few weeks of each other at that time.

23
00:01:25,360 --> 00:01:32,759
Speaker 1: So let's go Welcome to Stuff you missed in history

24
00:01:32,760 --> 00:01:43,000
Speaker 1: class from how Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome

25
00:01:43,040 --> 00:01:46,920
Speaker 1: to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson, and we are

26
00:01:47,000 --> 00:01:50,360
Speaker 1: continuing and doing some updates because I am being a

27
00:01:50,400 --> 00:01:53,760
Speaker 1: slacker and taking time to to not be at work

28
00:01:54,400 --> 00:01:56,920
Speaker 1: for a little while, and so we're updating some of

29
00:01:56,920 --> 00:02:01,360
Speaker 1: our previous episodes to keep things going in my absence. Uh.

30
00:02:01,360 --> 00:02:03,320
Speaker 1: And this is actually an update to an episode that

31
00:02:03,400 --> 00:02:07,080
Speaker 1: Holly and I recorded together, which is that we you know,

32
00:02:07,160 --> 00:02:09,240
Speaker 1: most of our stuff is within the last twelve months,

33
00:02:09,240 --> 00:02:13,280
Speaker 1: and so there's not often a need to update things. Uh.

34
00:02:13,400 --> 00:02:16,760
Speaker 1: Not so with the Voyage Manuscript, which has had multiple

35
00:02:16,840 --> 00:02:21,360
Speaker 1: needs for updates since it originally came out. Yeah, this

36
00:02:21,440 --> 00:02:23,800
Speaker 1: came out originally in March of which is a little

37
00:02:23,840 --> 00:02:26,880
Speaker 1: more than a year ago. So the Voyage Manuscript, if

38
00:02:26,960 --> 00:02:29,800
Speaker 1: you missed out on that episode, it's a two forty

39
00:02:29,840 --> 00:02:33,680
Speaker 1: page book full of illustrations and a seemingly indecipherable text.

40
00:02:34,280 --> 00:02:36,520
Speaker 1: Lots and lots of people wrote to us after that

41
00:02:36,560 --> 00:02:39,440
Speaker 1: episode originally came out reminding us of the x K

42
00:02:39,560 --> 00:02:43,600
Speaker 1: C D comic that implies that it was the equivalent

43
00:02:43,639 --> 00:02:47,480
Speaker 1: of a fifth fifteenth century Dungeons and Dragons manual. I

44
00:02:47,520 --> 00:02:50,400
Speaker 1: do love x K C D. I had just forgotten

45
00:02:53,240 --> 00:02:56,280
Speaker 1: about it too, So Yeah, however, there have been other

46
00:02:56,360 --> 00:03:00,600
Speaker 1: new developments. Yeah, and the first two months to completely

47
00:03:00,639 --> 00:03:04,359
Speaker 1: different teams came up with two completely different theories about

48
00:03:04,400 --> 00:03:07,000
Speaker 1: the manuscript, and both of them were kind of allegedly

49
00:03:07,040 --> 00:03:10,120
Speaker 1: build as breakthroughs. Yes, we're both of them. We got many, many,

50
00:03:10,160 --> 00:03:13,799
Speaker 1: many emails and tweets and Facebook notes from people saying

51
00:03:13,840 --> 00:03:16,640
Speaker 1: they've cracked the Voyage manuscript and we were sort of like,

52
00:03:16,720 --> 00:03:22,320
Speaker 1: which one are you talking about again? Yeah, didn't that

53
00:03:22,400 --> 00:03:25,280
Speaker 1: just happen three weeks ago. The first of these is

54
00:03:25,320 --> 00:03:29,240
Speaker 1: on January, and that's when the American Botanical Council published

55
00:03:29,240 --> 00:03:31,760
Speaker 1: a paper and its peer reviewed journal, which is called

56
00:03:31,800 --> 00:03:35,600
Speaker 1: Herbal Graham. This was written by botanist Dr Arthur O.

57
00:03:35,920 --> 00:03:39,560
Speaker 1: Tucker as well as Rexford H. Talbert, and the paper

58
00:03:39,640 --> 00:03:44,880
Speaker 1: focused on the manuscripts botanical illustrations instead of doing what

59
00:03:44,920 --> 00:03:46,440
Speaker 1: a lot of people do, which is just straight up

60
00:03:46,480 --> 00:03:49,120
Speaker 1: tin trying to decipher the text. The two compared the

61
00:03:49,160 --> 00:03:52,320
Speaker 1: illustrations to ones from other manuscripts that had existed at

62
00:03:52,320 --> 00:03:55,440
Speaker 1: about the same time that the Voyage Manuscript was first discovered,

63
00:03:56,040 --> 00:03:59,080
Speaker 1: and they found an illustration that looked very similar to

64
00:03:59,160 --> 00:04:02,400
Speaker 1: a soap ant that was shown in the Mexican codex

65
00:04:02,720 --> 00:04:06,880
Speaker 1: Cruise Bodianas, so, using this as a starting point, they

66
00:04:06,880 --> 00:04:10,760
Speaker 1: reportedly identified thirty seven plants, six animals, and one mineral

67
00:04:10,840 --> 00:04:14,280
Speaker 1: from the Voyage Manuscript that also appeared in Central and

68
00:04:14,320 --> 00:04:17,680
Speaker 1: South American texts, and from there they worked up a

69
00:04:17,760 --> 00:04:21,120
Speaker 1: theory that this manuscript is in an extinct dialect of

70
00:04:21,160 --> 00:04:26,320
Speaker 1: a Mexican indigenous language known as Natal. And then on

71
00:04:26,400 --> 00:04:29,640
Speaker 1: February fourteenth, so we're talking about less than a month later,

72
00:04:30,200 --> 00:04:33,760
Speaker 1: the University of Bedfordshire announced that Stephen Back's professor of

73
00:04:33,800 --> 00:04:37,320
Speaker 1: Applied Linguistics, had cracked the code on the Voyage Manuscript.

74
00:04:38,200 --> 00:04:42,039
Speaker 1: In his approach and conclusions were completely different, except that

75
00:04:42,680 --> 00:04:45,560
Speaker 1: he had also started with the plants right. He looked

76
00:04:45,560 --> 00:04:48,880
Speaker 1: at medieval manuscripts in Arabic and other languages and started

77
00:04:48,920 --> 00:04:52,120
Speaker 1: trying to identify the plants and the Voyage Manuscript based

78
00:04:52,160 --> 00:04:55,400
Speaker 1: on the plants in these other texts, and once he

79
00:04:55,440 --> 00:04:58,440
Speaker 1: had pinned down some of the plant's probable names, he

80
00:04:58,520 --> 00:05:02,200
Speaker 1: started working on deciphering the text, kind of using those

81
00:05:02,240 --> 00:05:05,320
Speaker 1: plant names as the key I were like the Rosetta

82
00:05:05,360 --> 00:05:08,880
Speaker 1: stone for his right thing. Uh. And based on this work,

83
00:05:08,920 --> 00:05:12,280
Speaker 1: Bax claims that he decoded about ten words and fourteen

84
00:05:12,320 --> 00:05:15,760
Speaker 1: signs and clusters, and he theorized that the manuscript is

85
00:05:15,800 --> 00:05:18,840
Speaker 1: a coded version of a Near Eastern or Asian language.

86
00:05:19,200 --> 00:05:22,640
Speaker 1: So again, too, they can't both be right. They could

87
00:05:22,680 --> 00:05:25,479
Speaker 1: be both right if the text is not entirely in

88
00:05:25,520 --> 00:05:28,080
Speaker 1: one language, like that's the only way they were. If

89
00:05:28,120 --> 00:05:31,200
Speaker 1: it's one text written in multiple languages, that would work.

90
00:05:32,680 --> 00:05:35,480
Speaker 1: But we got so many notes from people who were

91
00:05:35,520 --> 00:05:39,640
Speaker 1: so excited and so hopeful, and I hate to burst

92
00:05:39,640 --> 00:05:42,799
Speaker 1: the bubble, but at the same time, this definitely seemed

93
00:05:42,839 --> 00:05:46,839
Speaker 1: like something we should take the opportunity to update. So

94
00:05:47,440 --> 00:05:49,479
Speaker 1: let's take a moment for a word from our sponsor

95
00:05:49,520 --> 00:05:51,680
Speaker 1: before we turn you back over to us to talk

96
00:05:51,720 --> 00:05:54,359
Speaker 1: to you from the past about what we talked about

97
00:05:54,360 --> 00:06:03,080
Speaker 1: with the Voindage manuscript before. Okay, here here's our original

98
00:06:04,120 --> 00:06:15,560
Speaker 1: from back in marchisode on the Voyage Manuscript. They were

99
00:06:15,560 --> 00:06:18,720
Speaker 1: going to talk about one of those great history mysteries

100
00:06:19,040 --> 00:06:23,520
Speaker 1: that's persisted for hundreds of years, which I always love those,

101
00:06:23,560 --> 00:06:26,440
Speaker 1: because you know, once it's it just remains a mystery

102
00:06:26,480 --> 00:06:29,279
Speaker 1: for x amount of time. It's just probably always going

103
00:06:29,320 --> 00:06:31,200
Speaker 1: to be a mystery. And even if it gets solved,

104
00:06:31,320 --> 00:06:33,919
Speaker 1: I think there will always be detractors, which makes it

105
00:06:34,000 --> 00:06:35,800
Speaker 1: kind of well and I it's one of those things

106
00:06:35,800 --> 00:06:37,960
Speaker 1: that I always am a little bit annoyed at the

107
00:06:38,120 --> 00:06:40,920
Speaker 1: unselved mystery because I want to know the real story.

108
00:06:41,480 --> 00:06:43,320
Speaker 1: I don't know that we ever can, because there will

109
00:06:43,360 --> 00:06:46,239
Speaker 1: never probably be an accepted version of the real story

110
00:06:46,480 --> 00:06:49,000
Speaker 1: by every universally accepted. Yes, there would have to be

111
00:06:49,080 --> 00:06:52,280
Speaker 1: some kind of new discovery on this one, I think so, Yes.

112
00:06:52,920 --> 00:06:55,360
Speaker 1: But we're talking about today is a document called the

113
00:06:55,440 --> 00:06:58,520
Speaker 1: Voyage Manuscript. You may or may not have heard of it.

114
00:06:59,040 --> 00:07:03,280
Speaker 1: Some sort of code breaking fans have have done a

115
00:07:03,360 --> 00:07:05,760
Speaker 1: lot of study on it. Some historians are really into it.

116
00:07:05,960 --> 00:07:08,280
Speaker 1: But what it is is a book that no one

117
00:07:08,320 --> 00:07:14,320
Speaker 1: can read. Yes, is in an unknown language. Yes. Most

118
00:07:14,320 --> 00:07:20,400
Speaker 1: people consider it to be a cipher text of some sort. Perhaps, um,

119
00:07:20,440 --> 00:07:23,840
Speaker 1: it could be that it could also be nonsense. Uh.

120
00:07:23,880 --> 00:07:27,960
Speaker 1: There are the outliers that like to say aliens brought it,

121
00:07:28,000 --> 00:07:31,480
Speaker 1: but there's some scientific evidence that that is not really

122
00:07:31,480 --> 00:07:35,080
Speaker 1: the case. UM. So for some basic background on it,

123
00:07:35,080 --> 00:07:38,920
Speaker 1: it's actually named after a fairly modern person, Wilfred Voynage,

124
00:07:38,920 --> 00:07:41,320
Speaker 1: who was an anti Korean bookseller that acquired the text

125
00:07:41,720 --> 00:07:46,120
Speaker 1: in um. He was Polish American and he found it

126
00:07:46,240 --> 00:07:49,000
Speaker 1: in a Jesuit library near Rome and purchased it there.

127
00:07:49,720 --> 00:07:54,480
Speaker 1: Two forty pages long and written an unknown text. It's

128
00:07:54,520 --> 00:07:56,760
Speaker 1: kind of pretty and loopy to look at. It is

129
00:07:56,800 --> 00:08:01,040
Speaker 1: a very curly, it's flowing script. It's very pretty um

130
00:08:01,040 --> 00:08:05,640
Speaker 1: and colorful. Yes, it's currently housed at um Yale, and

131
00:08:05,680 --> 00:08:07,480
Speaker 1: we'll talk about that a little bit later. But they

132
00:08:07,800 --> 00:08:11,560
Speaker 1: have this great descriptor in their page about it, where

133
00:08:11,560 --> 00:08:13,760
Speaker 1: it says is drawn in ink with vibrant washes in

134
00:08:13,880 --> 00:08:16,960
Speaker 1: various shades of green, brown, yellow, blue, and red. It

135
00:08:17,040 --> 00:08:19,320
Speaker 1: just sounds so sweet and quaint the way they describe

136
00:08:19,320 --> 00:08:21,000
Speaker 1: it as this, And when you look at it, it's

137
00:08:21,040 --> 00:08:25,560
Speaker 1: both quaint and weird because it's illustrated throughout. There are

138
00:08:25,600 --> 00:08:29,440
Speaker 1: a hundred and thirteen unidentified plant species drawn in there,

139
00:08:30,240 --> 00:08:34,800
Speaker 1: astronomical and astrological drawings. There are basically drawings of some

140
00:08:34,880 --> 00:08:38,640
Speaker 1: sort of like the botanical slash scientific variety on almost

141
00:08:38,640 --> 00:08:41,559
Speaker 1: every page of the thing, um, some of which is

142
00:08:41,600 --> 00:08:46,680
Speaker 1: not immediately recognizable as no there. That's one of the

143
00:08:46,760 --> 00:08:48,679
Speaker 1: ways that people have tried to approach it is by

144
00:08:48,720 --> 00:08:51,000
Speaker 1: identifying some of the plant life that's drawn in it

145
00:08:51,559 --> 00:08:53,720
Speaker 1: and trying to backwards engineer that way, but that hasn't

146
00:08:53,720 --> 00:08:57,120
Speaker 1: really panned out. Um. There are also some interesting female

147
00:08:57,280 --> 00:09:00,840
Speaker 1: nudes in it. Yes, Uh, it's interesting. I looked at

148
00:09:00,880 --> 00:09:02,800
Speaker 1: some of these pictures and I couldn't tell. They all

149
00:09:02,840 --> 00:09:06,280
Speaker 1: have swollen abdomens, But I can't tell if it's trying

150
00:09:06,280 --> 00:09:10,040
Speaker 1: to depict pregnancy or just the more sort of round

151
00:09:10,120 --> 00:09:14,319
Speaker 1: body type that has been popular throughout history at certain points.

152
00:09:14,880 --> 00:09:16,720
Speaker 1: It's a little bit hard to know for sure. Well,

153
00:09:16,800 --> 00:09:20,480
Speaker 1: I love the Yale description of it. Miniature female nudes,

154
00:09:20,800 --> 00:09:24,720
Speaker 1: most with swelled abdomen's immersed or waiting in fluids and

155
00:09:24,880 --> 00:09:29,720
Speaker 1: oddly interacting with interconnecting tubes and capsules. Yeah, I think

156
00:09:29,760 --> 00:09:33,560
Speaker 1: that's part of what has caused people to want to

157
00:09:33,760 --> 00:09:37,040
Speaker 1: attribute it to alien origin. It is a little bit

158
00:09:38,080 --> 00:09:41,120
Speaker 1: it's odd, it's a little bit freaky. It's odd, and

159
00:09:41,160 --> 00:09:45,640
Speaker 1: just from that description brings up sort of connotations of weird, fertility,

160
00:09:45,920 --> 00:09:50,319
Speaker 1: something strangeness. Yeah, people being strung together. It's it's a

161
00:09:50,360 --> 00:09:54,319
Speaker 1: little bit weird. There are also nine cosmological medallions and

162
00:09:54,400 --> 00:09:57,280
Speaker 1: they're many of those are huge, and they're drawn across

163
00:09:57,520 --> 00:10:02,560
Speaker 1: um folded folio pages and in some cases they may

164
00:10:02,600 --> 00:10:07,280
Speaker 1: be depicting geographical elements, but it's not, again always clear.

165
00:10:07,360 --> 00:10:11,600
Speaker 1: We haven't cracked this. And then medicinal herbs and roots,

166
00:10:11,640 --> 00:10:17,120
Speaker 1: which are considered separate from the plant species, and there's

167
00:10:17,120 --> 00:10:19,360
Speaker 1: no byline. No, we don't know who wrote it, which

168
00:10:19,400 --> 00:10:22,160
Speaker 1: is part of the mystery. So it is currently housed

169
00:10:22,160 --> 00:10:25,080
Speaker 1: at Yale University in the UH I believe it's pronounced

170
00:10:25,120 --> 00:10:28,480
Speaker 1: by Nicki Rare Book and Manuscript Library, and it's listed

171
00:10:28,600 --> 00:10:33,600
Speaker 1: as MS four oh eighty. There's a pretty cool page

172
00:10:33,640 --> 00:10:36,440
Speaker 1: at Yale that that gives more information about it, and

173
00:10:36,480 --> 00:10:38,120
Speaker 1: we will link to it from the show notes we

174
00:10:38,120 --> 00:10:40,760
Speaker 1: have started doing with this podcast. We'd like to have

175
00:10:40,920 --> 00:10:44,040
Speaker 1: a look at more detail about what it looks like

176
00:10:44,040 --> 00:10:46,640
Speaker 1: and what's in there. Yeah, they did a wonderful job

177
00:10:46,840 --> 00:10:51,320
Speaker 1: of breaking down and describing really every element of the

178
00:10:51,320 --> 00:10:55,760
Speaker 1: book um from a you know, an unbiased, pretty neutral standpoint,

179
00:10:55,800 --> 00:10:59,320
Speaker 1: just kind of I once worked in a library as

180
00:10:59,480 --> 00:11:04,960
Speaker 1: doing equi usians and cataloging assistants. So they're perfect basically

181
00:11:05,000 --> 00:11:08,760
Speaker 1: is what I'm saying. They're cataloging. UM is like an

182
00:11:08,800 --> 00:11:11,760
Speaker 1: ideal version that you would catalog something that you don't understand,

183
00:11:11,920 --> 00:11:15,360
Speaker 1: right it is. It is a very fascinating read. There

184
00:11:15,400 --> 00:11:18,320
Speaker 1: is also linked from there a chemical analysis of the

185
00:11:18,360 --> 00:11:20,440
Speaker 1: book itself and what the pages are made of and

186
00:11:20,440 --> 00:11:22,560
Speaker 1: what the inks are made of. Yeah, which is what

187
00:11:22,800 --> 00:11:26,880
Speaker 1: kind of uh squelches any of those alien origin theories

188
00:11:26,960 --> 00:11:30,600
Speaker 1: because they're identified elements from our planet. Yes, and we

189
00:11:30,640 --> 00:11:36,360
Speaker 1: have also scientifically, we being other researchers us identified the

190
00:11:36,520 --> 00:11:39,439
Speaker 1: approximately when it was created. There was a two thousand

191
00:11:39,559 --> 00:11:44,160
Speaker 1: nine University of Arizona project. Researchers carbendated it to the

192
00:11:44,200 --> 00:11:47,920
Speaker 1: early half of the fifteenth century, so there's a probability

193
00:11:48,000 --> 00:11:51,640
Speaker 1: that it was written between fourteen of four and fourteen

194
00:11:51,720 --> 00:11:54,000
Speaker 1: thirty eight. I mean, that's the basic description of it.

195
00:11:54,080 --> 00:11:57,480
Speaker 1: So then we're kind of onto what is this thing?

196
00:11:58,200 --> 00:12:00,840
Speaker 1: I don't know? And everybody has theory reason because it's

197
00:12:01,040 --> 00:12:04,000
Speaker 1: never proven out, everyone thinks their theory might be the

198
00:12:04,080 --> 00:12:06,640
Speaker 1: right one. Um. Some people think it could be a

199
00:12:06,640 --> 00:12:10,680
Speaker 1: book of secrets like it's alchemy or some other secret knowledge,

200
00:12:11,280 --> 00:12:13,840
Speaker 1: and that it is in fact a medieval ciphertext that

201
00:12:13,960 --> 00:12:17,800
Speaker 1: is intended to hide and prevent others from getting this

202
00:12:17,880 --> 00:12:22,319
Speaker 1: secret knowledge. Uh. Some have even suggested that it's actually

203
00:12:22,360 --> 00:12:25,760
Speaker 1: a record of inventions and discoveries of Roger Bacon, who

204
00:12:25,760 --> 00:12:29,600
Speaker 1: was a friar and scholar in the d Um but

205
00:12:29,679 --> 00:12:31,760
Speaker 1: that theory has mostly been discounted. Yeah, that was a

206
00:12:31,840 --> 00:12:34,280
Speaker 1: very circumstantial thing of there are things in here that

207
00:12:34,320 --> 00:12:36,760
Speaker 1: he was interested in, so maybe he made this and

208
00:12:36,800 --> 00:12:41,000
Speaker 1: that's Yeah, there's definitely a lot of circumstantial evidence around

209
00:12:41,000 --> 00:12:44,120
Speaker 1: all of it. Every theory about it, the remnant of

210
00:12:44,120 --> 00:12:47,800
Speaker 1: an ancient language theory doesn't really hold a lot of water.

211
00:12:48,520 --> 00:12:51,840
Speaker 1: It's one of those things that when you hear linguist

212
00:12:52,000 --> 00:12:56,600
Speaker 1: experts and cryptographers talk about, they immediately will say, when

213
00:12:56,640 --> 00:12:58,679
Speaker 1: you first look at it, it looks like something we

214
00:12:58,679 --> 00:13:01,160
Speaker 1: should be able to read. It looks like a text,

215
00:13:01,320 --> 00:13:04,640
Speaker 1: it looks like, you know, an alphabet. But the deeper

216
00:13:04,720 --> 00:13:07,959
Speaker 1: they get into it, the more they realize they can't.

217
00:13:08,280 --> 00:13:10,760
Speaker 1: It becomes sort of more elusive the more they study it,

218
00:13:10,800 --> 00:13:12,760
Speaker 1: which is kind of fascinat And that's one of those ideas.

219
00:13:12,800 --> 00:13:15,839
Speaker 1: That's pretty captivating because languages do go extinct. There are

220
00:13:15,840 --> 00:13:19,600
Speaker 1: definitely written languages that we have not been able to

221
00:13:19,679 --> 00:13:22,320
Speaker 1: decipher until we have found some other text that has

222
00:13:22,440 --> 00:13:25,320
Speaker 1: led us decipher it. So I think that's one of

223
00:13:25,320 --> 00:13:27,760
Speaker 1: those ideas that has an allure to it, but that

224
00:13:27,800 --> 00:13:30,600
Speaker 1: has not really panned out. Yeah, And one of the

225
00:13:31,880 --> 00:13:34,080
Speaker 1: one of the things that kind of discounts that theory

226
00:13:34,640 --> 00:13:37,840
Speaker 1: is that normally, in any language, the most common words

227
00:13:37,880 --> 00:13:40,600
Speaker 1: are normally quite short, like the repeated words. Just like

228
00:13:40,679 --> 00:13:46,080
Speaker 1: in English it would be you know, your articles, articles, prepositions, etcetera.

229
00:13:46,120 --> 00:13:48,640
Speaker 1: They tend to be compact, short little words, and in

230
00:13:48,679 --> 00:13:51,440
Speaker 1: this particular document, the most common words tend to be

231
00:13:51,520 --> 00:13:54,600
Speaker 1: very long and sort of complicated in comparison to the rest,

232
00:13:55,400 --> 00:13:59,120
Speaker 1: which kind of breaks the rules of language, which is

233
00:13:59,160 --> 00:14:02,640
Speaker 1: one of the things that at UM people who are

234
00:14:02,840 --> 00:14:05,600
Speaker 1: fond of the Gibberish theory like to site like this

235
00:14:05,679 --> 00:14:09,640
Speaker 1: doesn't make sense as a language. It's probably not, and

236
00:14:09,760 --> 00:14:12,160
Speaker 1: people have been trying to decrypt it since at least

237
00:14:12,160 --> 00:14:16,280
Speaker 1: the sixteen hundreds we know, uh, even in World War

238
00:14:16,320 --> 00:14:19,480
Speaker 1: Two Army codebreakers were just sort of taking a crack

239
00:14:19,480 --> 00:14:22,120
Speaker 1: at it. On the side and they couldn't make heads

240
00:14:22,200 --> 00:14:26,080
Speaker 1: nor tails of it. They couldn't really like even get

241
00:14:26,200 --> 00:14:28,200
Speaker 1: you know, sort of a toe hold in to be like, oh,

242
00:14:28,240 --> 00:14:31,360
Speaker 1: we think we might know, we have no idea. Again,

243
00:14:32,040 --> 00:14:35,520
Speaker 1: that almost seems suspicious to me that nobody, in four

244
00:14:35,640 --> 00:14:39,000
Speaker 1: hundred plus years of trying to analyze this document could

245
00:14:39,000 --> 00:14:42,800
Speaker 1: really get any sort of positive affirmation that they were

246
00:14:42,840 --> 00:14:44,880
Speaker 1: on the right track. They all kind of end up

247
00:14:44,880 --> 00:14:46,360
Speaker 1: throwing up their hands and shaking their heads like, I

248
00:14:46,680 --> 00:14:49,600
Speaker 1: don't know. Here's one of my favorites is that the

249
00:14:49,600 --> 00:14:53,200
Speaker 1: hoax theory it is uh. John d in case anybody

250
00:14:53,240 --> 00:14:56,760
Speaker 1: does not recognize that name was is kind of most

251
00:14:56,760 --> 00:14:59,280
Speaker 1: famous as being the astrologer and an adviser to Queen

252
00:14:59,320 --> 00:15:04,320
Speaker 1: Elizabeth the First, and some people attribute it or want

253
00:15:04,440 --> 00:15:07,320
Speaker 1: to support the theory that it's actually a hoax that

254
00:15:07,400 --> 00:15:13,080
Speaker 1: he perpetrated. At the time, I remember hearing a scholar

255
00:15:13,160 --> 00:15:15,560
Speaker 1: on this particular text say, you know, it was very

256
00:15:15,600 --> 00:15:19,040
Speaker 1: common for just as it's common now for people in

257
00:15:19,200 --> 00:15:23,480
Speaker 1: business or people of wealth to purchase great art to

258
00:15:23,600 --> 00:15:26,840
Speaker 1: show how cultured they are, at this time, it was

259
00:15:26,920 --> 00:15:30,960
Speaker 1: similarly popular for people to have an illuminated text in

260
00:15:31,000 --> 00:15:33,560
Speaker 1: their home to show that they were cultured, and so

261
00:15:34,000 --> 00:15:35,720
Speaker 1: it could have been like a money making scheme, like

262
00:15:35,720 --> 00:15:37,920
Speaker 1: a let's book to go there, a fake looking document

263
00:15:38,000 --> 00:15:40,760
Speaker 1: that looks like a really cool illuminated text, and we'll

264
00:15:40,800 --> 00:15:42,920
Speaker 1: just sell it to some businessman who wants people to

265
00:15:42,920 --> 00:15:46,040
Speaker 1: think he's smart. Um. I kind of love that one.

266
00:15:46,480 --> 00:15:49,720
Speaker 1: And another suspect implicated in that is Edward Kelly, who

267
00:15:49,760 --> 00:15:51,680
Speaker 1: was a hanger on in the court of Elizabeth one

268
00:15:52,000 --> 00:15:53,800
Speaker 1: and became very close with John D. A lot of

269
00:15:53,800 --> 00:15:56,000
Speaker 1: people dismissed him as a charlatan and a fake, but

270
00:15:56,080 --> 00:15:59,160
Speaker 1: John D for some reason, really formed um an affinity

271
00:15:59,240 --> 00:16:01,640
Speaker 1: and aloe friendship with him. One of the things that

272
00:16:01,680 --> 00:16:04,080
Speaker 1: makes people think that maybe this theory is the right

273
00:16:04,160 --> 00:16:07,560
Speaker 1: one is that there are no scratch outs or erasers,

274
00:16:07,840 --> 00:16:11,760
Speaker 1: and in the whole entirety of the book, which even

275
00:16:11,800 --> 00:16:14,520
Speaker 1: if you're copying, if you're making a copy of something

276
00:16:14,520 --> 00:16:16,280
Speaker 1: you have already written out, like I will do that

277
00:16:16,400 --> 00:16:18,360
Speaker 1: sometimes if I am writing a letter to somebody with

278
00:16:18,400 --> 00:16:20,920
Speaker 1: a pen on paper, it will be copying out something

279
00:16:20,920 --> 00:16:23,280
Speaker 1: that I've kind of drafted on another page. Even then,

280
00:16:23,320 --> 00:16:26,040
Speaker 1: at some point you make a mistake and you have

281
00:16:26,080 --> 00:16:28,360
Speaker 1: to either scratch it out or erase it, and there

282
00:16:28,440 --> 00:16:30,800
Speaker 1: is none of that at all, so it does not

283
00:16:30,920 --> 00:16:33,680
Speaker 1: seem like somebody was actually trying to make an accurate

284
00:16:33,720 --> 00:16:37,280
Speaker 1: set of words on the paper. Yeah, you would eventually

285
00:16:37,360 --> 00:16:41,080
Speaker 1: hit something where you would have to get rid of

286
00:16:41,120 --> 00:16:44,360
Speaker 1: it or clarify in some way. The big proponent of

287
00:16:44,400 --> 00:16:46,560
Speaker 1: the theory is Gordon rug And he's head of the

288
00:16:46,640 --> 00:16:50,400
Speaker 1: Knowledge Modeling group at Keele University and Staffordshire, England. UH

289
00:16:50,440 --> 00:16:53,760
Speaker 1: and he's done some interesting almost um sort of computer

290
00:16:53,840 --> 00:16:58,800
Speaker 1: science approaches to analyzing and recreating similar documents where he

291
00:16:58,880 --> 00:17:02,440
Speaker 1: lays out letter is on a grid and he's created

292
00:17:02,480 --> 00:17:05,480
Speaker 1: this little UM like a card that you can lay

293
00:17:05,480 --> 00:17:07,560
Speaker 1: on top of the grid and it has three cutouts

294
00:17:07,560 --> 00:17:10,199
Speaker 1: and so in that grid he's put in, you know,

295
00:17:10,320 --> 00:17:13,159
Speaker 1: character similar to the ones in this document. And just

296
00:17:13,240 --> 00:17:16,480
Speaker 1: by moving that card around and writing out in order

297
00:17:16,520 --> 00:17:20,000
Speaker 1: whatever characters happened to land in your open spaces, you

298
00:17:20,040 --> 00:17:22,920
Speaker 1: can create this gibberish that looks really realistic and really

299
00:17:22,920 --> 00:17:26,080
Speaker 1: like a language. UM. And he kind of believes this

300
00:17:26,119 --> 00:17:29,560
Speaker 1: supports again the the gibberish theory rather than it being

301
00:17:29,840 --> 00:17:38,959
Speaker 1: UM a cipher that's you know, well thought out. Another theory.

302
00:17:39,720 --> 00:17:41,800
Speaker 1: So many theories about us. There are and I mean

303
00:17:41,840 --> 00:17:43,520
Speaker 1: we could go on for days and days about all

304
00:17:43,560 --> 00:17:45,000
Speaker 1: of the theories, so we're kind of hitting the high

305
00:17:45,040 --> 00:17:47,160
Speaker 1: notes on this one. Yeah, there's there's a prayer book

306
00:17:47,400 --> 00:17:50,240
Speaker 1: theory about, you know, in some kind of Germanic slash

307
00:17:50,400 --> 00:17:53,639
Speaker 1: romance creole. Do you have you have? It was like,

308
00:17:53,720 --> 00:17:55,760
Speaker 1: what what has led to the idea of the prayer book?

309
00:17:55,840 --> 00:17:58,720
Speaker 1: You know? I think it's because it hasn't ever been decrypted.

310
00:17:58,760 --> 00:18:02,040
Speaker 1: It kind of whole olds popularity with people that want

311
00:18:02,080 --> 00:18:04,399
Speaker 1: to think it is a ciphertext and that it's a

312
00:18:04,440 --> 00:18:09,400
Speaker 1: prayer book of the Cather's that somehow managed to survive

313
00:18:09,760 --> 00:18:14,400
Speaker 1: the Inquisition when everything else was being burnt. Uh, because

314
00:18:14,440 --> 00:18:17,240
Speaker 1: everything else was burnt, there's nothing else to possibly give

315
00:18:17,320 --> 00:18:20,360
Speaker 1: us the key to decrypt this. So that's but that's

316
00:18:20,400 --> 00:18:22,199
Speaker 1: not a very popular one. I just thought it was interesting,

317
00:18:22,760 --> 00:18:25,080
Speaker 1: um And at one point people were even kind of

318
00:18:25,080 --> 00:18:29,280
Speaker 1: suspicious that Voinache himself had assembled the book um to

319
00:18:29,359 --> 00:18:33,679
Speaker 1: create a faux valuable for his antiquities collection. But carbon dating,

320
00:18:34,040 --> 00:18:38,800
Speaker 1: because the paper is from and the inks are all

321
00:18:38,880 --> 00:18:42,000
Speaker 1: dated further back, he would have to really be scientifically

322
00:18:42,040 --> 00:18:45,880
Speaker 1: pretty magical to all that. So that if he had

323
00:18:45,920 --> 00:18:48,960
Speaker 1: tried to. If that had been a forgery, it would

324
00:18:48,960 --> 00:18:52,560
Speaker 1: have been a masterful forgery, using information he would not

325
00:18:52,640 --> 00:18:56,080
Speaker 1: have had really at a time. And what's really interesting

326
00:18:56,160 --> 00:19:00,000
Speaker 1: is that it's um has changed hands quite a number

327
00:19:00,040 --> 00:19:06,160
Speaker 1: of times. The first one that will mention is actually

328
00:19:06,200 --> 00:19:10,480
Speaker 1: one of those circumstantial things so allegedly owned by John D,

329
00:19:10,560 --> 00:19:13,920
Speaker 1: who we talked about earlier, and it was bought from

330
00:19:14,000 --> 00:19:16,680
Speaker 1: D we know, by Emperor Rudolph the second of Germany,

331
00:19:16,760 --> 00:19:20,520
Speaker 1: so the Holy Roman Emperor, for six hundred gold dickets,

332
00:19:20,520 --> 00:19:24,480
Speaker 1: which is roughly thirty thousand dollars in today's economy. That

333
00:19:24,560 --> 00:19:29,399
Speaker 1: just makes me annoyed thinking that it was potentially the

334
00:19:29,400 --> 00:19:33,800
Speaker 1: writings of Roger Bacon. And the circumstantial evidence that supports

335
00:19:33,840 --> 00:19:36,040
Speaker 1: this idea or that he bought it from D and

336
00:19:36,080 --> 00:19:38,959
Speaker 1: not from someone else, is that there are accounts that

337
00:19:39,000 --> 00:19:41,200
Speaker 1: mentioned D having come into a sum of money that's

338
00:19:41,240 --> 00:19:43,560
Speaker 1: just a little bit bigger than this. I want to say,

339
00:19:43,640 --> 00:19:47,000
Speaker 1: it's like six hundred and fifteen or six D eighteen,

340
00:19:47,280 --> 00:19:49,119
Speaker 1: and I believe it's John D's son that wrote some

341
00:19:49,240 --> 00:19:51,880
Speaker 1: of those at least, so it's kind of like, well,

342
00:19:52,280 --> 00:19:54,440
Speaker 1: we know that it was purchased for this amount around

343
00:19:54,440 --> 00:19:57,000
Speaker 1: this time, and we know that suddenly this guy had

344
00:19:57,000 --> 00:19:59,080
Speaker 1: this amount of money in his pocket at this time

345
00:20:00,119 --> 00:20:03,360
Speaker 1: that that reminds me of one of the police procedurals,

346
00:20:03,680 --> 00:20:05,840
Speaker 1: and they have the person in the room and they're like, Okay,

347
00:20:05,920 --> 00:20:09,000
Speaker 1: we know this guy bodies documents for for thirty thou

348
00:20:09,200 --> 00:20:13,800
Speaker 1: dollars and you magically have a thirty thou dollar bank deposit. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

349
00:20:13,840 --> 00:20:16,639
Speaker 1: It's that is as as far as we can get

350
00:20:16,680 --> 00:20:19,680
Speaker 1: in terms of veracity with this one. Uh. And then

351
00:20:20,440 --> 00:20:24,920
Speaker 1: it appears Emperor Rudolph gave the manuscript to Jacobus Horse

352
00:20:24,960 --> 00:20:28,240
Speaker 1: a key the tepanis and I may be mispronouncing any

353
00:20:28,280 --> 00:20:31,959
Speaker 1: of that um And that exchange is based on an

354
00:20:31,960 --> 00:20:35,000
Speaker 1: inscription that's visible in the document in the on folio

355
00:20:35,160 --> 00:20:38,040
Speaker 1: one R. But you have to read it with ultraviolet light,

356
00:20:38,240 --> 00:20:40,800
Speaker 1: so that's ink that it's faded off, and that's all

357
00:20:40,800 --> 00:20:43,840
Speaker 1: that's sort of left is the chemical shadow, right. That

358
00:20:43,960 --> 00:20:46,440
Speaker 1: was one of the things that they found and documented

359
00:20:46,520 --> 00:20:49,040
Speaker 1: during the chemical analysis that we were talking about a

360
00:20:49,040 --> 00:20:52,160
Speaker 1: little bit earlier. One of the things that I read

361
00:20:52,160 --> 00:20:53,800
Speaker 1: in that analysis that I thought was pretty cool was

362
00:20:53,840 --> 00:20:56,120
Speaker 1: that an acid wash had been used on the pages

363
00:20:56,400 --> 00:20:58,919
Speaker 1: possibly to bring out the vibrancy of the ink, but

364
00:20:59,000 --> 00:21:02,000
Speaker 1: that that may have been washed away other writing in

365
00:21:02,000 --> 00:21:05,680
Speaker 1: the book. Uh, so it's it's not really that that

366
00:21:06,119 --> 00:21:09,040
Speaker 1: was written in an ink that required ultra violet light

367
00:21:09,119 --> 00:21:11,240
Speaker 1: to see at a time. It's ink that has faded

368
00:21:11,280 --> 00:21:13,400
Speaker 1: to the point that that's the only way to see it. Yeah,

369
00:21:13,440 --> 00:21:16,879
Speaker 1: it's been destroyed through time and treatment through the ages.

370
00:21:17,320 --> 00:21:19,719
Speaker 1: Not that does not in any way support the secret

371
00:21:19,840 --> 00:21:24,359
Speaker 1: or alien theories. Uh, there's there are some gaps in

372
00:21:24,440 --> 00:21:27,000
Speaker 1: the timeline of where it's been, but we do know

373
00:21:27,080 --> 00:21:33,439
Speaker 1: that it was given to Athanasius Kircher in sixteen sixty

374
00:21:33,480 --> 00:21:37,880
Speaker 1: six by Johannes Marcus Marcia of cromelind Uh. And then

375
00:21:37,880 --> 00:21:40,480
Speaker 1: there's another little kind of we're not sure what happened

376
00:21:41,640 --> 00:21:43,879
Speaker 1: or where the book was. We do know that during

377
00:21:44,200 --> 00:21:46,720
Speaker 1: some of these tradeoffs, people were trying to get people

378
00:21:46,760 --> 00:21:49,720
Speaker 1: to decrypt this text. So that's why we say for

379
00:21:49,760 --> 00:21:51,879
Speaker 1: more than four years people have been trying to figure

380
00:21:51,920 --> 00:21:55,480
Speaker 1: it out. And then it's suddenly, it seems said to

381
00:21:55,560 --> 00:21:57,480
Speaker 1: us because it's the first time we hear about it again.

382
00:21:57,520 --> 00:22:00,359
Speaker 1: But after there were many other things happening. After a

383
00:22:00,400 --> 00:22:04,520
Speaker 1: gap of two years, yeah. Then Voynage found it in

384
00:22:05,000 --> 00:22:08,640
Speaker 1: as I said, at Jesuit College near Rome, and then

385
00:22:08,640 --> 00:22:11,200
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty nine it was given to the Benicky

386
00:22:11,280 --> 00:22:14,520
Speaker 1: Library by an HP Krause who had purchased it from

387
00:22:14,520 --> 00:22:18,800
Speaker 1: the estate of Voynage's widow. Uh. It had passed to

388
00:22:18,840 --> 00:22:24,399
Speaker 1: her and then her executor ended up selling it to

389
00:22:24,440 --> 00:22:28,320
Speaker 1: this person. Now we're basically up to today. Yeah. In

390
00:22:28,320 --> 00:22:33,760
Speaker 1: December eleven, a finished businessman named vico let Valla I

391
00:22:33,840 --> 00:22:37,159
Speaker 1: may have mispronounced that claimed that he was a prophet

392
00:22:37,160 --> 00:22:39,920
Speaker 1: of God and that he had been given divine insight

393
00:22:39,960 --> 00:22:44,359
Speaker 1: into the contents of this manuscript. Probably not true well,

394
00:22:44,640 --> 00:22:47,720
Speaker 1: and people question his methods and they of course want

395
00:22:47,840 --> 00:22:51,840
Speaker 1: some backup on this, and it never happens. He has

396
00:22:52,000 --> 00:22:54,679
Speaker 1: um an associate named Ari Kitola who is pretty much

397
00:22:54,720 --> 00:22:59,479
Speaker 1: handling pr for him UM and his statement in an

398
00:22:59,480 --> 00:23:02,480
Speaker 1: interview was that Mr la Vala said that no, no

399
00:23:02,520 --> 00:23:04,919
Speaker 1: one normal human can decode it because there is no

400
00:23:05,000 --> 00:23:07,520
Speaker 1: code or method to read this text. It's a channel

401
00:23:07,560 --> 00:23:11,320
Speaker 1: language of prophecy uh and that basically God had told

402
00:23:11,400 --> 00:23:13,040
Speaker 1: him what it meant, and that there is no way

403
00:23:13,040 --> 00:23:15,960
Speaker 1: to decrypt it. There is no cipher for it. You

404
00:23:16,040 --> 00:23:17,840
Speaker 1: just have to trust him that God told him this

405
00:23:18,800 --> 00:23:23,280
Speaker 1: um and he says it's a botany journal basically, which

406
00:23:24,160 --> 00:23:26,240
Speaker 1: is kind of funny that that's kind of a mundane

407
00:23:26,280 --> 00:23:29,760
Speaker 1: thing to say after God told me it's a botany journal,

408
00:23:29,840 --> 00:23:35,680
Speaker 1: I had a divine revelation of this extremely ordinary thing. Yeah,

409
00:23:35,760 --> 00:23:39,200
Speaker 1: and there's a website that's maintained around him, but he

410
00:23:39,280 --> 00:23:43,280
Speaker 1: really this was, as Tracy mentioned in December, and then

411
00:23:43,320 --> 00:23:45,760
Speaker 1: he really hasn't gotten much press passed then, like nobody's

412
00:23:45,800 --> 00:23:48,200
Speaker 1: really paid a whole lot of attention to his claims anymore.

413
00:23:48,760 --> 00:23:50,919
Speaker 1: So that's where it stands. It's still a mystery. It's

414
00:23:50,920 --> 00:23:54,200
Speaker 1: still at Yale. I think to see it you would

415
00:23:54,240 --> 00:23:57,880
Speaker 1: have to jump through some hoops part of special collection,

416
00:23:58,040 --> 00:24:00,639
Speaker 1: often the case with special collections, and it can be

417
00:24:00,720 --> 00:24:04,240
Speaker 1: really difficult to get actual physical access to the manuscript

418
00:24:04,280 --> 00:24:06,399
Speaker 1: unless you have a reason to be there. Yeah, but

419
00:24:06,440 --> 00:24:09,000
Speaker 1: the good news is there are lots of scans and

420
00:24:09,040 --> 00:24:11,080
Speaker 1: photos of it online, so if you're curious about it,

421
00:24:11,119 --> 00:24:14,000
Speaker 1: you can really easily find pictures of it. We will

422
00:24:14,000 --> 00:24:16,880
Speaker 1: put those in our share notes also, go find them.

423
00:24:17,000 --> 00:24:18,960
Speaker 1: And it's interesting because it's one of those things to

424
00:24:19,000 --> 00:24:20,960
Speaker 1: me that even if it is a hoax. It's now

425
00:24:21,000 --> 00:24:25,800
Speaker 1: become really historically significant in that one. Just the idea

426
00:24:25,880 --> 00:24:28,879
Speaker 1: that it could be a hoax perpetrated by a fairly

427
00:24:28,920 --> 00:24:31,840
Speaker 1: famous historical figure kind of makes it interesting in and

428
00:24:31,880 --> 00:24:34,960
Speaker 1: of itself. Um, but also just that so many people

429
00:24:35,000 --> 00:24:37,840
Speaker 1: have spent so many years trying to decipher it and

430
00:24:37,880 --> 00:24:40,639
Speaker 1: reveal its meaning. That kind of has a meaning in

431
00:24:40,680 --> 00:24:43,240
Speaker 1: and of itself for me, Like it says a lot

432
00:24:43,280 --> 00:24:47,560
Speaker 1: about our desire to just crack unknowable things and sort

433
00:24:47,560 --> 00:24:50,640
Speaker 1: of our our persistence in doing so. So, Yeah, we'll

434
00:24:50,680 --> 00:24:54,200
Speaker 1: see if there's someone who magically cracks it. I will

435
00:24:54,560 --> 00:24:56,879
Speaker 1: be upfront and say I tend to favor favor the

436
00:24:56,920 --> 00:25:01,080
Speaker 1: jibberish theories, but we don't know something. As you said,

437
00:25:01,119 --> 00:25:04,440
Speaker 1: some other piece of evidence could come to light and

438
00:25:04,560 --> 00:25:06,000
Speaker 1: all of that will change. That would have to be

439
00:25:06,000 --> 00:25:10,000
Speaker 1: sort of a Rosetta Rosetta stone for the point, yes,

440
00:25:10,240 --> 00:25:13,480
Speaker 1: to to really figure out if it says anything, which

441
00:25:13,520 --> 00:25:16,120
Speaker 1: would be awfully cool. It would be both cool and sad,

442
00:25:16,680 --> 00:25:18,119
Speaker 1: which is the opposite of what I said at the

443
00:25:18,119 --> 00:25:20,440
Speaker 1: beginning of Unsolved Mystery is getting on my nerves. Yeah,

444
00:25:20,440 --> 00:25:22,440
Speaker 1: that's sort of the thing that I've noticed in doing

445
00:25:22,560 --> 00:25:27,240
Speaker 1: research on this is that even when there are pretty solid,

446
00:25:27,600 --> 00:25:30,680
Speaker 1: you know, pieces of I don't want to say evidence,

447
00:25:30,760 --> 00:25:36,280
Speaker 1: but pretty solid supporting UM concepts. Uh, like the man

448
00:25:36,320 --> 00:25:40,600
Speaker 1: who has been able to replicate pretty similar gibberish texts,

449
00:25:41,000 --> 00:25:44,720
Speaker 1: people don't really want to accept it. There are entire

450
00:25:44,800 --> 00:25:49,399
Speaker 1: message boards and online groups surrounding this manuscript because it

451
00:25:49,520 --> 00:25:51,760
Speaker 1: is so sort of engrossing and engaging for people that

452
00:25:51,840 --> 00:25:56,000
Speaker 1: love UM ciphertext and the idea of a mystery, and

453
00:25:56,200 --> 00:25:58,040
Speaker 1: it's interesting to watch them debate. And some of them

454
00:25:58,080 --> 00:26:00,000
Speaker 1: will be like, yeah, I see, and his methods are sound,

455
00:26:00,040 --> 00:26:01,800
Speaker 1: and that all makes sense, but I don't believe it

456
00:26:02,359 --> 00:26:04,719
Speaker 1: the end, Like they just don't want to believe it. Uh,

457
00:26:05,040 --> 00:26:08,080
Speaker 1: It's just it's fascinating stuff because nobody wants to kind

458
00:26:08,080 --> 00:26:10,640
Speaker 1: of lose the mystery. I think at this point, after

459
00:26:10,720 --> 00:26:13,840
Speaker 1: it's after gone on for some years, it's kind of

460
00:26:13,880 --> 00:26:20,440
Speaker 1: like giving up a good friend at that point. Hey,

461
00:26:20,480 --> 00:26:24,320
Speaker 1: since these episodes that we're sharing our past classics, we

462
00:26:24,440 --> 00:26:28,200
Speaker 1: have some updated information that will supersede the contact stuff

463
00:26:28,240 --> 00:26:30,360
Speaker 1: you've heard before. If you want to email us, our

464
00:26:30,600 --> 00:26:34,040
Speaker 1: email address is History Podcast at house to works dot com,

465
00:26:34,080 --> 00:26:36,320
Speaker 1: and you can find us across the spectrum of social

466
00:26:36,359 --> 00:26:39,280
Speaker 1: media as Missed in History. You can also find us

467
00:26:39,320 --> 00:26:41,640
Speaker 1: at Missed in History dot com, and you can visit

468
00:26:41,640 --> 00:26:44,600
Speaker 1: our parent company house to works at how stuff Works

469
00:26:44,600 --> 00:26:53,440
Speaker 1: dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics,

470
00:26:53,600 --> 00:27:03,280
Speaker 1: visit how staff works dot com.