Speaker 1: A happy Saturday, everybody, chuck here. I hope you're enjoying
Speaker 1: your weekend. I hope you're enjoying your year, your month.
Speaker 1: I hope you're enjoying the very hour in which you
Speaker 1: are coming across this. It is the select episode for
Speaker 1: the week, and I'm picking this one because honestly don't
Speaker 1: remember much about it, and I got to listen to it,
Speaker 1: so maybe I'll learn it all over again. It's about
Speaker 1: number stations and it's called what is a number Station?
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with
Speaker 2: Charles W Chuck Bryant, and this is oh Jerry and this.
Speaker 3: Is Stuffish seven four two five eight.
Speaker 2: Can you say it in German? You speak German? Don't
Speaker 2: even jog me.
Speaker 3: It's why dry boom ah Steven, Now, can.
Speaker 2: You do that in a little girl voice?
Speaker 3: You're just toying, Come on, do it. No, you always
Speaker 3: make me play Saint Paly Girl. I'm tired of it.
Speaker 2: Same poly girl. Now. This is apparently even younger than
Speaker 2: the Saint Poly Girl. It's like a little girl and
Speaker 2: it was a live little girl who in the Swedish
Speaker 2: rhapsody number station. It was a young little girl reading
Speaker 2: out numbers and letters in German.
Speaker 3: Which makes it even creepier.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's very creepy.
Speaker 4: This is a very neat subject, so kudos to you
Speaker 4: for tossing this one out there.
Speaker 2: Well, I've been waiting for it to publish. Yeah, I'd
Speaker 2: seen it in the calendar coming up and coming up.
Speaker 2: I'm like, come on and publish, and I think it
Speaker 2: published on Friday is Tuesday, yes, and we're talking about
Speaker 2: it just as they are completing their decline, so we
Speaker 2: are on top of this.
Speaker 3: Well I think that well, we'll get into it.
Speaker 4: I think that's what makes it even more interesting is
Speaker 4: that it's still happening, all right.
Speaker 3: Numbers stations, number stations.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like you said number, both words are pluralized. It's
Speaker 2: a little clumsy, and number stations are we should just
Speaker 2: come out and say their short wave radio transmissions or
Speaker 2: transmitters making really weird baffling is the best word for it.
Speaker 2: Transmissions and have been doing so apparently since at least
Speaker 2: World War One.
Speaker 3: Oh really.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Supposedly, the first mention of a numbers station came
Speaker 2: from a German magazine in World War One and World
Speaker 2: War Two, they were in full swing, sure, but apparently
Speaker 2: they somehow popped up first around World War One, which
Speaker 2: makes them some of the earliest shortwave transmissions in the world,
Speaker 2: because shortwave radio didn't come around at least into commercial
Speaker 2: use until about nineteen twenty. World War One was a
Speaker 2: few years before that, if you'll remember correct.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's why I didn't even think that that was possible.
Speaker 4: But like you said, World War II is when they
Speaker 4: were in full swing. Yeah, they really peaked in the
Speaker 4: Cold War and they have been dying out slowly ever since.
Speaker 4: But I think one of the neatest things is they
Speaker 4: are still If you have a short wave radio, you
Speaker 4: can tune into a frequency and here beep one, two, seven,
Speaker 4: five eight. You know, it's usually like some sort of tone.
Speaker 2: We should mention to Jerry of the future. Yeah, you're
Speaker 2: supposed to leave that beep in because it's part of
Speaker 2: the numbers station.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we beep Jerry to signal when we want something edited.
Speaker 4: But yeah, number station. That's not always a beep, it'll
Speaker 4: just have some sort of Sometimes it's a bit of
Speaker 4: a song.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like this Swedish Rhapsody or the Lincolnshire poacher a
Speaker 2: British English uksh folk song.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I'm so scared of thetuff like that. And
Speaker 4: the reason that the transmission starts off with a tone
Speaker 4: or a beep or a song so you can it
Speaker 4: alerts like here comes a transmission in your station. Hone
Speaker 4: in make sure you get some good reception because the
Speaker 4: secret code is about to be revealed.
Speaker 2: And that's exactly what everyone is pretty much in consensus
Speaker 2: on that what comes after this and what is broadcast
Speaker 2: over these numbers stations are secret codes.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Again, like for the Swedish rhap City station, it is
Speaker 2: a little girl in speaking in German, reading numbers and letters,
Speaker 2: random seemingly random numbers and letters, and then the transmission
Speaker 2: is over and that happens like or it used to happen.
Speaker 2: That's a defunct numbers station now, but it happened on
Speaker 2: a fairly regular schedule. There's other ones. The Intension station
Speaker 2: is a woman saying a tension and then reading Spanish
Speaker 2: numbers and repeating them over and over again and then
Speaker 2: going on to the next set and everybody. No one
Speaker 2: can say for certain, but virtually everyone in the world
Speaker 2: from Cecil Adams at Straight Dope to the head of
Speaker 2: the UK's Trade and Industry Agency say these are secret
Speaker 2: transmissions for spies. The whole basis of them was for espionage.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And the reason why everyone is speculating that that is
Speaker 4: absolutely the case, which it almost certainly is, like we said,
Speaker 4: is because no government to this day has come forward
Speaker 4: and admitted this or owned this. It is all still
Speaker 4: technically speculation because you cannot point to a factual statement.
Speaker 4: The closest we've ever come is.
Speaker 3: They finally got someone from the United Kingdom, a spokesperson.
Speaker 2: That was the dude from the Trade Agency.
Speaker 4: Oh really, Yeah, the exact quotas people should not be
Speaker 4: mystified by them. They're not, shall we say, for public consumption. Yeah,
Speaker 4: And that's the only thing on record that any government
Speaker 4: has ever spoke about what these transmissions are.
Speaker 2: Right, So the idea that they are government transitions are
Speaker 2: the reason we have to speculate is because the government's
Speaker 2: never claimed them. On the flip side, the reason everyone
Speaker 2: thinks that they are government backed clandestine transmissions is because
Speaker 2: these are pirate radio frequencies, pirate radio transmitters. Yeah.
Speaker 4: My first thing was like, just find one of these
Speaker 4: and look it up and find out what the deal is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you would think.
Speaker 1: So.
Speaker 2: They're totally unlicensed. Nobody knows exactly where they are.
Speaker 3: They're illegal technically.
Speaker 2: Yes, they're very illegal because they transmit over air traffic
Speaker 2: control frequencies. Well that's a big one. And no one
Speaker 2: investigates them. There's no investigation into these number stations whatsoever.
Speaker 2: So the fact that the government won't say anything about them,
Speaker 2: and the fact that the government isn't investigating these very
Speaker 2: blatantly out in the open, weird baffling transmissions suggests that, Yeah,
Speaker 2: everybody's right that these are government backed transmissions used to
Speaker 2: communicate anonymously and in one direction two spies embedded in
Speaker 2: foreign countries.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I was about to call it a conversation, but it's
Speaker 4: really not. It's I think on the BBC documentary Saw
Speaker 4: they called it a monologue.
Speaker 3: You're just sending a one way message exactly.
Speaker 4: All right, Right after this break, we're going to talk
Speaker 4: a little bit about shortwave radio technology. The secret key
Speaker 4: to sending these messages, all right, The key to this
Speaker 4: whole thing is sending a short way Like you might
Speaker 4: think in this day and age, why not just send
Speaker 4: a telefax?
Speaker 2: Right now?
Speaker 4: Why not send an email or you know, there's surely,
Speaker 4: surely there are safer ways to send espionage, this information,
Speaker 4: highly classified instructions to go kill the leader of a country, perhaps.
Speaker 2: Right, like if you want to activate Reggie Jackson to
Speaker 2: kill Queen Elizabeth kill Norberg. Yeah, yeah, that's that's how
Speaker 2: would you do it in this day and age, you'd
Speaker 2: think an email would do it? No, And you want
Speaker 2: to know who proves definitively that that is not safe
Speaker 2: for secure?
Speaker 3: Who Jimmy Fallon, Edward Edward Snowden.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there there are. If you use a computer, you
Speaker 2: leave a trace. Yeah, it's virtually impossible to erase anything
Speaker 2: on a computer.
Speaker 3: Yeah, if you think you have, then you haven't.
Speaker 2: Plus, if you are, say emailing somebody, you're transmitting what's
Speaker 2: supposed to be highly sensitive even encrypted information over a network.
Speaker 2: That stuff can be captured, like go listen to our
Speaker 2: employer as your employer spying on you episode. Yeah, you
Speaker 2: can't do it, Like you can communicate like that, but
Speaker 2: you're leaving digital traces everywhere. The beauty of the short
Speaker 2: wave radio transmission is that again it's anonymous and it's
Speaker 2: one directional. But if you get caught with a short
Speaker 2: wave radio. At least, say back in the sixties or
Speaker 2: the seventies or something, it wasn't weird. It didn't prove
Speaker 2: that you were a spy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you done, just tuning into my my stories.
Speaker 2: Exactly, just listening to the BBC World.
Speaker 4: Service shortwave energy radio energy. It's all determined by the
Speaker 4: power of your transmitter. So if you've got a humongous transmitter,
Speaker 4: you can send and any be that big, but you
Speaker 4: can send a message one way message to the other
Speaker 4: side of the world, right, And the reason it can
Speaker 4: travel across the planet is because it's bouncing off of
Speaker 4: it literally is bouncing off the ionosphere of the Earth
Speaker 4: or well, yeah, of the Earth, fifty to three hundred
Speaker 4: and seventy five miles up above our surface. It's in
Speaker 4: the upper atmosphere, and solar ionization creates an electrical charge
Speaker 4: and that charge reflects that signal right back down to Earth.
Speaker 4: It's called skywave or skip and skywave. Yeah, And that's
Speaker 4: why you can with a seemingly pretty simple piece of equipment,
Speaker 4: I can send a message to the South Pacific. Yeah,
Speaker 4: from my bedroom. Well, I don't know if i'd have
Speaker 4: one big enough for my Bedroom's pretty big. I wanted
Speaker 4: to see how big these things were actually, you know,
Speaker 4: like if they say really big ones, to send them
Speaker 4: further and further, Like how big do they get?
Speaker 2: They get very huge. They can cover scores of acres.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, a big shortwave antenna, which is why it
Speaker 2: can get very expensive.
Speaker 3: So that's bigger than my bedroom.
Speaker 2: You can also use ones that are the size of
Speaker 2: your bedroom. It depends not only like you said, on
Speaker 2: the size of the transmitter, it depends on the atmospheric
Speaker 2: conditions too, so uppusually shortwave transmissions are received best at
Speaker 2: sunrise and sunset. And no one's one hundred percent sure,
Speaker 2: but it has to do with the ion a sphere.
Speaker 2: And because that's where the northern lights are happening. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's where solar rays hit the hit the Earth's atmosphere
Speaker 2: and they the atoms loose their electrons, I believe, so
Speaker 2: they become ions forming the iono sphere. And because this
Speaker 2: is constantly changing, you can't predict exactly how shortwave radio
Speaker 2: wave will act, but you can kind of guess, well,
Speaker 2: this time the Sun's least active or most active, whatever,
Speaker 2: it has some impact on that sky. What's it called
Speaker 2: the sky? What skywave, the skywave effect, So you can
Speaker 2: communicate with somebody in a foreign country, right, yea. And
Speaker 2: not only can it not be tracked, it's very difficult
Speaker 2: to trace who sent that, where that transmission's coming from.
Speaker 2: It's impossible to trace who's receiving it.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 2: So you have no idea who in your country is
Speaker 2: getting this, which means that you're broadcasting to anybody and
Speaker 2: everybody who feels like listening to this a secret code.
Speaker 2: But the fact is, if you use the right kind
Speaker 2: of secret code, no one can crack all right.
Speaker 4: That brings up an important point because you would think also,
Speaker 4: you can hack into the most secure computer system on
Speaker 4: the planet if you're good enough as a hacker. So
Speaker 4: how in the world could sending a coded key like
Speaker 4: it's nineteen fifty five and you're trying to get your
Speaker 4: decoder ring, you know from.
Speaker 3: The Red Was it the Red Rider?
Speaker 2: No story? No, that's way off.
Speaker 3: No, what was it? It was?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 3: No, no, I'm talking about it in the Christmas story.
Speaker 2: It was a little orphan any that was the show.
Speaker 3: I didn't think it was.
Speaker 2: He didn't he didn't care about pirates and all that jazz,
Speaker 2: pirates and smugglers and all that jazz. He listened to
Speaker 2: a little Orphan Anne.
Speaker 3: And I'll take it word for it. I remember, now
Speaker 3: do you know?
Speaker 2: But I'll take your word for it, dude, I'm telling
Speaker 2: you it's a little orphan any I will. That's say,
Speaker 2: I'm taking my hat. I don't have a hat on
Speaker 2: right now, but I would eat it if I if
Speaker 2: I were wrong.
Speaker 4: At any rate, you're not little Ralphie decoding the message
Speaker 4: from little Orphanani. But it is actually the most secure
Speaker 4: way that you can send a secret message is by
Speaker 4: creating a unique code that you know and have written
Speaker 4: down on a piece of paper, and your buddy knows
Speaker 4: who has it written down on a piece of paper.
Speaker 4: You only use it once, that's the kind of the
Speaker 4: key here, and then you destroy it afterward. That still
Speaker 4: the most it's unbreakable.
Speaker 2: So what it's called is a one time pad, the
Speaker 2: old one time because you only use it once, and
Speaker 2: it is old. It's from the nineteenth century.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's still uncrackable. It is.
Speaker 2: And the reason why it's uncrackable is because you each
Speaker 2: have like you said, you each have a copy of
Speaker 2: this this code. But it's randomly generated. Right, So let's
Speaker 2: say you have the sheet of paper and the other
Speaker 2: person as the sheet of paper, and the sheet of
Speaker 2: paper says, it's just like strings of random numbers, like
Speaker 2: four or five numbers long, and it's just totally random,
Speaker 2: and it just covers, you know, several sheets of paper. Well,
Speaker 2: you guys start at the same place, and when the
Speaker 2: person transmitting the message wants to encrypt it, they run
Speaker 2: their message. So say you guys have agreed like zero
Speaker 2: is a, B is one, C is two, et cetera.
Speaker 2: So you take that and you'd get you I know, dude,
Speaker 2: it is mind boggling, Like this is about as simple
Speaker 2: a cryptology gets. In it it makes me bleed from
Speaker 2: my ears.
Speaker 3: Because all you have to do is agree on what's what.
Speaker 3: You know, it could be anything, right, So.
Speaker 2: You're agreeing on what's what, but you also have this
Speaker 2: randomly generated code. Sure key, right, So let's say I
Speaker 2: want to say, what up, chuck? That's w h A
Speaker 2: t U P C h U c K. So that's
Speaker 2: eleven letters, right. So if you have your your key
Speaker 2: and you're encoding it, you would use these first, the
Speaker 2: first eleven numbers to encode what's already encoded. So the
Speaker 2: w is say, Y says it's the number twenty two, okay, right,
Speaker 2: and then so on. So like there's a number assigned
Speaker 2: to each letter, so you have that, and then you
Speaker 2: run it through this code, this randomly generated code. So
Speaker 2: you add that and then so you have twenty what
Speaker 2: I say, twenty two, yeah, and then say the first
Speaker 2: letter or the first number of this code is seven,
Speaker 2: so you have twenty nine.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So that's what the little German girl reads on the air,
Speaker 2: twenty nine, yeah, fifty two, thirty seven eighteen.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: It means nothing to anyone else in the entire world
Speaker 2: except for you and the person who has the other
Speaker 2: copy of this code, since there's only two copies and
Speaker 2: you're only using it once and.
Speaker 3: You're gonna eat it afterward.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And the key is that it's randomly generated numbers. Yeah,
Speaker 2: then it'll it's theoretically it will never be broken.
Speaker 3: Yeah. But I mean that's just one example. You could
Speaker 3: You could have five pre code rules.
Speaker 4: To confuse someone trying to crack this code, right, yeah,
Speaker 4: and they don't eat It's not like the simplest code
Speaker 4: is this letter represents this number, this represents this letter.
Speaker 4: It gets more complex than that. You could both have
Speaker 4: agreed upon a book. You have to kill a mockingbird.
Speaker 4: I've got to kill a mockingbird. Four eight twelve ninety thirteen.
Speaker 4: Four means go to page four. Thirteen means now you're
Speaker 4: really going to page thirteen. Ignore the four then look
Speaker 4: at the twelfth line. Then look at the eighth word
Speaker 4: on that page.
Speaker 2: Right. What a one time pad would do is take
Speaker 2: that already agreed upon code and encrypt it even further.
Speaker 4: Yeah, But the point is it doesn't have to represent letters.
Speaker 4: It can represent full words in a text that you've
Speaker 4: agreed upon. True, And it's basically like thumbing through this
Speaker 4: book picking out all these various words to make a sentence.
Speaker 2: Right. The problem is that's its vulnerability as well. Like
Speaker 2: to get a copy of the randomly generated key that's
Speaker 2: used to encrypt this message, right, you have to have
Speaker 2: some sort of contact with somebody. Yeah, So that's one
Speaker 2: vulnerability of it. The thing is is like, depending on
Speaker 2: how long this is, as many numbers as there are is,
Speaker 2: as long as as many transmissions as you can transmit.
Speaker 2: Does that make any sense? No?
Speaker 3: Say it clearer?
Speaker 2: So I said, what up, Chuck, Yeah, that's eleven. That
Speaker 2: uses the first eleven numbers on this key. But say
Speaker 2: there's fifty thousand numbers on the key, Well, we have
Speaker 2: a lot more messages I can send to you that
Speaker 2: we're going through the pad. Eventually, though, we're going to
Speaker 2: use up this pad and we need to meet again
Speaker 2: so I can give you another randomly generated.
Speaker 3: Key at Kinko's.
Speaker 2: That's the vulnerability of it.
Speaker 4: Well, the other fit well and not a fail safe.
Speaker 4: But the thing that makes it even safer is a
Speaker 4: lot of times they would send and presumably are still
Speaker 4: sending dummy messages, so you don't even know if it's
Speaker 4: real to begin with, And there are only so many
Speaker 4: person hours you can dedicate as a government to code crackers,
Speaker 4: and they might be working on a it's not even real, right,
Speaker 4: you don't know what transmissions are legit.
Speaker 2: And that is a proposal by a group called Enigma.
Speaker 2: And we'll talk about Enigma right after this message because
Speaker 2: they're pretty awesome. So, Chuck, we were talking about Enigma.
Speaker 2: I mentioned Enigma, and Enigma is this group that of
Speaker 2: basically amateur radio people, short.
Speaker 4: Wave radio enthusiast. They really get into this. Yes it's
Speaker 4: a thing, and.
Speaker 2: They started this is pre pre internet days. I think
Speaker 2: it was in the eighties, the late eighties early nineties
Speaker 2: that ENIGMA first came around and kind of coalesced. And
Speaker 2: ENIGMA stands for European Numbers Information Gathering and Monitoring Association.
Speaker 2: And basically it was just a group of these people
Speaker 2: who had all yeah, right, who had all and I
Speaker 2: think they reverse engineered that well we always do, but
Speaker 2: they had all kind of started to talk or find
Speaker 2: each other and say have you heard this weird transmission
Speaker 2: and they're like, yes, I've heard that one, and you should.
Speaker 2: You should check out this frequency on Tuesday nights at
Speaker 2: eight pm because it transmits this. And they suddenly realized
Speaker 2: there's this whole community of people out there, so they
Speaker 2: set up a newsletter, they started a naming convention, and
Speaker 2: they started assigning, collecting and assigning names to these different things.
Speaker 3: So like E.
Speaker 2: Designated an English speaking trans numbers station, S was Slavic
Speaker 2: v is various, which encapsulates everything from like French to Spanish.
Speaker 2: And ENIGMA really took this thing and put it into
Speaker 2: you understandable terms. And they are basically eavesdropping or they
Speaker 2: were eaves dropping on the spy community.
Speaker 3: Are they not doing that anymore.
Speaker 2: So Enigma disbanded I think in two thousand and then
Speaker 2: almost immediately another group came and said, well, we're Enigma
Speaker 2: in two thousand. We're going to carry this on. And
Speaker 2: that's pretty fortunate because they were around to put all
Speaker 2: this on the internet. Before it was like you had
Speaker 2: to like subscribe to newsletters and have a shortwave radio.
Speaker 2: Now it's like you can just go on the internet
Speaker 2: and listen to all sorts of archives of these defunct
Speaker 2: number stations as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean they're creepy sounding. I don't like. It's
Speaker 3: kind of cool.
Speaker 2: I've got one for you. We've talked about it before.
Speaker 2: Do you remember the Yosemite Sam transmission.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm convinced that that's just a person having fun.
Speaker 2: Well, let's play it. I like that one. I think
Speaker 2: it's full of info. It's cool.
Speaker 4: It's coming from somewhere out in Albuquerque in the desert
Speaker 4: in New Mexico, and it's been going since what like
Speaker 4: two thousand and four. Yeah, And what makes this one
Speaker 4: interesting is that it's not a code, it's just Yosemite
Speaker 4: Sam saying that thing.
Speaker 2: Well, then it's followed by that data burst, yeah, which
Speaker 2: they think is some sort of compressed information.
Speaker 4: Yeah, seah, I don't believe it. I think this is
Speaker 4: a short wave enthusiasts having a good time.
Speaker 2: Well, he's been doing it like, it's pretty sophisticated. It
Speaker 2: does it like over and over again, I think, for
Speaker 2: forty seconds and switches to the next frequency and it
Speaker 2: just goes through the band. Yeah, on a then he's
Speaker 2: got a computer doing.
Speaker 3: It for him.
Speaker 2: Maybe if it is just some dude, But either way,
Speaker 2: I like the use of useemite Sam. No, it's cool,
Speaker 2: but it's pretty It's exemplar of a number station, of
Speaker 2: a numbers transmission. There's something that indicates that this is
Speaker 2: about to happen, and then there's the happening, the transmission
Speaker 2: of the secret code, whether it's digital in nature or
Speaker 2: whether it's spoken. And then there it is ended by
Speaker 2: you know, assumity Sam again or something like that. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's saying here's the beginning, here's the information, here's the end.
Speaker 3: Now go kill Nordburg. Right.
Speaker 4: One of the other cool things about this is, and
Speaker 4: you know, when we were talking about surely there's better ways,
Speaker 4: and the government could theoretically shut down the Internet. They
Speaker 4: could zap a satellite transmissions, they could shut everything down.
Speaker 4: This is almost unstoppable. You can't shut down shortwave radio.
Speaker 4: I mean, I guess you've cut power maybe.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well no, supposedly no, I mean yeah, and then
Speaker 2: I guess if people have batteries though in their shortwave radio.
Speaker 3: Good point.
Speaker 2: The one way to combat it is called jamming. Frequency jamming,
Speaker 2: And basically it's just broadcasting on the same frequency that
Speaker 2: these other transmitters, the numbers stations are transmitting on. And
Speaker 2: so if you're broadcasting within your country, you're probably gonna
Speaker 2: reach those shortwave radios better than somebody on the other
Speaker 2: side of the planet's transmission. Well, and so apparently Russia
Speaker 2: spent billions or the Soviets spent billions of dollars during
Speaker 2: the Cold War jamming frequencies from all sorts of different transmissions,
Speaker 2: and they play things like the sound of seagulls or
Speaker 2: random beeps or whatever. And it was just to prevent
Speaker 2: people from transmitting into Russia. But even with all of
Speaker 2: that money and technology mustard or marshalled against it, they
Speaker 2: still weren't entirely successful. Like shortwave radio transmissions get through.
Speaker 2: It's just too big to fight.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you can't jam the entire frequency of all shortwaves,
Speaker 4: like every single frequency.
Speaker 3: If you have ever heard the uh the Wilco.
Speaker 4: Remember Yankee Hotel Foxtrot that album, Yeah, that was on
Speaker 4: the album at some point. I can't remember what song
Speaker 4: it Yankee Hotel fox Trot in a woman's voice and
Speaker 4: that is a famous.
Speaker 3: Is it code?
Speaker 2: Was that from the Content project?
Speaker 3: No, I don't think so, but we should talk about that.
Speaker 3: For sure.
Speaker 4: That was a project and it was also I guess
Speaker 4: in the wild West days where you're talking about pre internet,
Speaker 4: if people wanted to hear the stuff, some people got
Speaker 4: together and put together the greatest hits sort of on
Speaker 4: CD with a lot of accompanying material about what you're
Speaker 4: listening to, and none of them. Obviously, you can't break
Speaker 4: these codes. That's the thing I find interesting is people
Speaker 4: sit around listen to this stuff but with no aim
Speaker 4: of cracking the code.
Speaker 2: I think some people do attempt to crack the code
Speaker 2: and it's impossible. Well, it's not impossible, and we should
Speaker 2: say with the reason why it's not impossible is because
Speaker 2: if you're using a computer generated random number A computers
Speaker 2: not capable of truly of generating a truly random number
Speaker 2: because computers run on algorithms. Yeah, algorithms are designed to
Speaker 2: follow patterns, so they're just incapable of it. So you could,
Speaker 2: especially today, a hacker could conceivably crack one of these,
Speaker 2: especially old transmissions.
Speaker 4: But yeah, but you still don't know what those numbers
Speaker 4: stand for. Even if you find a pattern of numbers.
Speaker 2: Right, they're still an agreed upon thing that you would
Speaker 2: have to figure out, but it would it makes it
Speaker 2: possible if you could crack that one time pad key,
Speaker 2: then you have a real chance at de deciphering the
Speaker 2: message itself.
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, if you know what they stand for. But
Speaker 4: I still maintain if only you and I know what
Speaker 4: those numbers represent.
Speaker 2: Right to kill a Mockingbird pages.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: Uh, well, you were saying the Content Project thing. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so it's a four CD compilation and apparently I read
Speaker 2: an article from the time when it came out, which
Speaker 2: is the nineties. It was like perfect timing because there
Speaker 2: was y two K going on, there was millennium angst,
Speaker 2: there was the X files, and this thing came out
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety seven and Selon wrote an article on it,
Speaker 2: and this guy who wrote it was like a music
Speaker 2: Concrete Aficionado. So people appreciated it, not just for the
Speaker 2: fact that it's like recordings of real live spy transmissions,
Speaker 2: but some people like the kind of avant garde noise
Speaker 2: that it had going on too.
Speaker 4: And I'm sure the Flaming Lips are currently planning an
Speaker 4: album composed of nothing but messages from number stations.
Speaker 2: Number eight.
Speaker 3: There's a movie that exists that I had never heard of,
Speaker 3: called The Number Station.
Speaker 2: I hadn't heard of it either.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't think it was released really. It said
Speaker 4: it from twenty thirteen, and like I know most movies
Speaker 4: that are released, it probably went straight to video or something.
Speaker 4: I watched trailer day. It's John Cusack and Malin Ackerman,
Speaker 4: and you know, they work at a number station and
Speaker 4: he's to protect the number station, but something bad happens
Speaker 4: and they're compromised.
Speaker 3: Right and is who he says he is? And is
Speaker 3: she who she says she is?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: Who knows? You'll have to rint that turkey to find out.
Speaker 2: Did it look bad?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Sure, it's looked pretty bad.
Speaker 2: Sorry John Cusack, Yeah, sorry John Cusack. So I think
Speaker 2: one of the most interesting things about numbers stations is that,
Speaker 2: like you said they peaked during the Cold War right
Speaker 2: when the Berlin Wall fell, and then in the few
Speaker 2: years after that the number of transmissions supposedly just dropped
Speaker 2: off dramatically, although I did see in at least one
Speaker 2: place that supposedly they increased, but I didn't see that
Speaker 2: supported anywhere else. But the idea that they're still around
Speaker 2: it all in twenty fourteen, that there's still no stations
Speaker 2: transmitting gibberish really says a lot. So it says a
Speaker 2: couple of things, and you've already mentioned one. It's possible
Speaker 2: they are just transmitting gibberish to throw off anybody listening. Yeah,
Speaker 2: this one to basically just kind of sap their resources.
Speaker 3: Right, like keep them riskies busy listening to our bach.
Speaker 2: Sure. Another one is that they're keeping them going in
Speaker 2: case they need to use them again.
Speaker 3: I think that's totally the reason.
Speaker 2: In which case that's pretty smart, because that's just you're
Speaker 2: not showing your hand, like where all of a sudden
Speaker 2: an inactive radio station suddenly starts up again indicase activity
Speaker 2: or it's been doing the same thing for ten years,
Speaker 2: and on year seven it actually transmitted a real secret message.
Speaker 2: But it seemed just like the everything else in those
Speaker 2: ten years, you're doing some pretty good spycraft there.
Speaker 4: Yeah, or just to keep that, like you may not
Speaker 4: be actively using it, but just to keep that a
Speaker 4: method relevant, right, Like you know, if you quit doing something,
Speaker 4: it's going to die off. No one's going to know
Speaker 4: how to do it anymore. Sure, Yeah, so you know,
Speaker 4: just keep those people working. And you know, they may
Speaker 4: not even know if they're transmitting real messages or not.
Speaker 2: I would guess if you're just saying, oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: if you just hand them a sheet of paper and
Speaker 2: it's just yeah.
Speaker 4: In fact, that may be a pretty safe way to
Speaker 4: do things. Sure, it's like the person with the nuclear key.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's just a test.
Speaker 2: Who knows, war games. We'll find out in thirty minutes.
Speaker 4: There are also other theories that they are and I
Speaker 4: think some of this does go on, maybe drug runners
Speaker 4: right using stuff like this, because some of them are
Speaker 4: less than professional. Apparently the ones from Cuba or Cuba, sorry, Jerry,
Speaker 4: are a little.
Speaker 2: Comical. Well, they were renowned for just having really bad
Speaker 2: slip ups, especially during the whole war.
Speaker 4: Like you'd hear people talking and laughing in the back ground,
Speaker 4: or an accidental transmission of a radio station.
Speaker 2: Right, Radio Havana.
Speaker 4: Right, Yeah, so they were kind of known for not
Speaker 4: being too skilled at it. But I imagine the drug
Speaker 4: runners are the same.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's virtually the same thing. And I mean there's
Speaker 2: absolutely no reason why drug runners couldn't have also couldn't
Speaker 2: also use this. Yeah, alongside the espionage community too.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's might be as one b as two, right,
Speaker 4: and they get the message, says huh Chipman of Kilo's
Speaker 4: coming in Miami Beach tomorrow night.
Speaker 2: Right, let's go get them kill one. I'm one.
Speaker 4: But I do think there may be a little bit
Speaker 4: of that. I think it's a mixed bag of why
Speaker 4: they're still being broadcast. I think there are enthusiasts that
Speaker 4: are probably just doing their own.
Speaker 3: Thing for fun.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that'd be fun, man, if I was in Guam
Speaker 4: and I could send you a private message to be
Speaker 4: a short.
Speaker 2: Wave Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I thought you meant people
Speaker 2: who are just doing it just to mess with, like
Speaker 2: the Enigma community or something.
Speaker 3: I think that probably happens too. I bet you it's
Speaker 3: all kinds of things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm sure you're right.
Speaker 3: There's one guy out there, trust me.
Speaker 2: There have been some some actual spies who have been
Speaker 2: busted in this century, long after the Cold War, who
Speaker 2: had shortwave radios and one time pads in their apartments
Speaker 2: or houses. Apparently, in twenty eleven in Germany, a couple
Speaker 2: who'd lived there since nineteen eighty eight and were spying
Speaker 2: for the Russians were caught in the act of receiving
Speaker 2: a Numbers transmission in their home when they were apprehended
Speaker 2: and busted for spying.
Speaker 3: I can see that scene.
Speaker 4: He's got like one headphone up and he's holding it
Speaker 4: with his hand and he's writing something down in pencil
Speaker 4: and his wife's trying to eat it really quick, spit
Speaker 4: it out.
Speaker 3: And in two thousand and one, Anna A.
Speaker 4: Montes worked for the US Civil Defension Intelligence Agency and
Speaker 4: she was convicted of spying for Cuba. And when they
Speaker 4: searched her home they found a short wave radio in
Speaker 4: a code sheet. And so, yeah, I mean that's it's
Speaker 4: still going on, man. I think it's pretty neat. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I do too, Like it's old school but almost fool proof.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The big vulnerability is getting the random randomly generated
Speaker 2: key to the spy.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And they also point out on the article who wrote
Speaker 4: this one by the way, Nathan Chandler. Nathan points out
Speaker 4: that these days, you're likely your one timer might be
Speaker 4: sent to you, maybe digitally somehow, but it's not It
Speaker 4: doesn't like tip anyone off necessarily.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but not quite sure how.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I would think if you're being watched, then an
Speaker 4: email with a lot of random numbers might dip somewhere.
Speaker 2: Right. Well, it used to be they'd print them on
Speaker 2: the kind of paper that like dissolved quickly or burned
Speaker 2: and left no ash or whatever. They were on such
Speaker 2: tiny piece of paper you had to use a really
Speaker 2: good magnifying oh like lens to read it. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: you could hide them in like a walnut shell or
Speaker 2: something like that. Oh wow, who knows what they're doing now, Yeah,
Speaker 2: but they are doing something.
Speaker 4: Yeah, i'd like to I thought about getting a short
Speaker 4: I was a little bit inspired, but then I thought, man,
Speaker 4: I've got so many other things to do.
Speaker 3: I don't know if I could do fall into their
Speaker 3: rabbit hole.
Speaker 2: So that's numbers stations. If that peaqued your interest, just
Speaker 2: type in numbers stations into your favorite search engine and
Speaker 2: it will lead you down the rabbit hole of short
Speaker 2: wave radio. Did you say rabbit holes there where I
Speaker 2: got that from?
Speaker 3: I said rabbit hole. But I didn't invent it.
Speaker 2: No, I know, but it just popped up in my head. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it wasn't my own invention.
Speaker 4: And I think if you have a short wave radio
Speaker 4: you probably tune into these anyway because you're just into
Speaker 4: that lifestyle. But I think there's a website called spy numbers, yeah,
Speaker 4: where you can actually find the frequencies and just go
Speaker 4: right there and you don't want to search.
Speaker 2: For them, right, And if you want to read this article,
Speaker 2: you can type the words numbers stations in the search
Speaker 2: part HowStuffWorks dot com. And since I said search part,
Speaker 2: it's time for listener mayo.
Speaker 4: I'm going to call this a bit on sushi from
Speaker 4: someone in Japan. Hey, guys, and Jerry he spelled Jerry
Speaker 4: right as well.
Speaker 2: Man, it's Jerry's day.
Speaker 4: I enjoyed the sushi episode quite a bit and have
Speaker 4: something to add. As a result of modern food production
Speaker 4: following World War Two in Japan and of course the
Speaker 4: US and elsewhere, the quality and traditional methods of making
Speaker 4: show you miso and other Japanese food items sadly plummeted.
Speaker 4: For example, miso can be fermented and aged a matter
Speaker 4: of weeks with the use of temperature control tanks, where
Speaker 4: traditional dark miso would age up to two years. Same
Speaker 4: goes with other ferminted products like show you Meran no
Speaker 4: longer at sweet rice cooking wine is practically sugar water.
Speaker 4: Speaking of sugar, modern Japanese food wouldn't exist without it.
Speaker 4: Bumi boshi, the sour salty pickled plum is lousy with
Speaker 4: artificial color, sugar and refined salt.
Speaker 2: They're still good.
Speaker 4: As much as I loved Japanese food and culture, it's
Speaker 4: quite heartbreaking to see these centuries of traditional food processing
Speaker 4: supplanted by the Japanese version of a twinkie chemically made
Speaker 4: in process as an alternative. There are good quality Japanese
Speaker 4: products to be had, particularly those imported from Eden. Foods
Speaker 4: just high quality, organic and widely distributed.
Speaker 2: Is this the president of eating food?
Speaker 3: I don't know. Are they based in Alameda, California?
Speaker 2: Sounds like you.
Speaker 4: That is from Lear in Alameda, California. I meant to
Speaker 4: mention to you, I had the worst sushi I've had
Speaker 4: my life.
Speaker 3: The other day. Oh no, where I'm not going to
Speaker 3: say it, but I'm not going back.
Speaker 4: I'll tell you off air. I don't think you wouldn't
Speaker 4: go there anyway, But it was the rice was gummy
Speaker 4: and really gummy to the point where I ate it
Speaker 4: just because I was starving, and I ate it really fast,
Speaker 4: and I was like, oh, this kind of gummy. Then
Speaker 4: afterward I was like, man, that was terrible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like you say that to yourself and like you
Speaker 2: smiled in their whole mouth was coated and rice.
Speaker 3: It was gross, man, I was. I was ticked off afterward.
Speaker 4: After I paid the bill and complained the who way
Speaker 4: home to Emily, I was like, I really should have
Speaker 4: said something because that was like they should have known
Speaker 4: they shouldn't have served that rice.
Speaker 2: Well, why didn't you say something?
Speaker 4: Because, like I said, I just shoved it in my
Speaker 4: face hole and left and complained afterward, which is that's
Speaker 4: how I do things usually.
Speaker 3: I don't like to make a scene. I just like
Speaker 3: to play the martyr afterward. I've talked about that gummy sushep.
Speaker 2: For two days. Yeah. Oh it was that bad.
Speaker 3: Huh. Yeah. The fish and stuff was good, but that
Speaker 3: rice was just very subpar. They should have known better.
Speaker 2: Okay, well tell me where it is afterwards. Oh, will
Speaker 2: okay if you want to, I guess inadvertently or quietly
Speaker 2: clandestineley promote your business like Leir did with his eating
Speaker 2: foods subversively. Yeah, you could send us an email to
Speaker 2: stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
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