Speaker 1: Imagine a world where a book bound in this really
ancient vellum holds secret so profound, so utterly unlike anything
we know that it's resisted while every attempt at understanding
for over six hundred years.
Speaker 2: Six centuries.
Speaker 1: It's incredible, locked away, maybe in a metal safety deposit box.
And there's this envelope with just seven words on it
do not open until after Ethel's death. Chilling almost an
inside this book a silent challenge really to the sharpest minds,
the most dedicated codebreakers, the smartest linguists. What if you
know such an enigma truly existed, a manuscript filled with
symbols illustrations that feel well, they feel both familiar and
just astonishingly alien, defying all classification.
Speaker 2: Well, it does exist. It's called the Voynish Manuscript. And
it's not just some legend. It's a real, absolutely, one
of a kind enigma, known globally really for its completely
undecipherable language and these fantastical, often really bizarre illustrations.
Speaker 1: Right, and where is it now today?
Speaker 2: It rests in the meticulously controlled environment of Yale University's
Benecki Rare Book and Manuscript Library, now direct physical access
that's strictly limited. It's incredibly fragile understandable, but thankfully high
resolution digital scans are available online, so it offers a
window into this profound and perplexing thing for anyone curious
enough to look. It truly stands as well a singular
object in the history of human knowledge, a testament to
enduring mystery.
Speaker 1: And our mission today you are curious listener, is to
embark on a deep dive into this very mystery. We're
going to unpack the incredible sort of winding journey of
this book's ownership, trace its path from hidden Jesuit libraries
to the hands of modern rare book dealers.
Speaker 2: It's quite a story.
Speaker 1: Well dell into the absolutely wild, sometimes unsettling illustrations that
just seem to defy all scientific and historical context. Then
we'll explore the cutting edge and sometimes yeah, wildly ambitious
attempts to translated secret.
Speaker 2: The translation attempts are fascinating.
Speaker 1: In themselves, and finally, will weigh the most compelling and yes,
some of the most unconventional theories about what it's actually for.
It's true purpose. This isn't just about you know, understanding
a book. It's about humanities and enduring quest for knowledge,
the thrill of the unknown, and this persistent fascination with
an enigma that has just refused to yield its secrets. Okay,
let's unpack this. So our story in its more recent chapters,
really kicks off in the nineteen sixties with a gentleman
named Hans P. Krauss. Now, Kraus wasn't just any book collector,
you know, he was a serious rare book dealer, known
for his extraordinary expertise in finding and acquiring.
Speaker 2: Valuable texts, the big name in the field.
Speaker 1: Exactly in nineteen sixty one, he gets his hands on
the Voyage manuscript. He saw his immense historical value, its
mysterious value, and he envisioned a very substantial return on
his investment, a big profit.
Speaker 2: He paid twenty four than five hundred dollars for it
back then, which is roughly two hundred and sixty thousand
dollars today. His plan sell it for something like one
point four million. Ambitious, very ambitious. But despite his expertise
and these grand plans, Kraus ultimately couldn't find a buyer,
couldn't shift it, which, you know, that says something in itself,
given how unique it is, and the price.
Speaker 1: Tag, yeah, it is interesting.
Speaker 2: After years of trying, in nineteen sixty nine, he decided
to donate it to Yale University and that's where it's
been preserved ever since. What's truly intriguing, though, is who
Kraus got it from. And this is where the story
gets really interwoven, involving those three figures most closely linked
to its modern reappearance.
Speaker 1: Right the key players Wilfred M.
Speaker 2: Voyage, the manuscript's namesake, his wife Ethel, Lillian Voyage and
their longtime associate, and Neil. This trio holds the immediate
key to its recent past, leading us straight back to
those mysterious instructions found with the book. Do not open
until after Ethel's death.
Speaker 1: That directive really adds a layer of personal intrigue, doesn't it.
It feels like something out of a novel.
Speaker 2: It really does.
Speaker 1: So to understand that, we need to journey back a
bit further to nineteen twelve and the man himself, Wilford M. Voyage.
He was a Polish book dealer, had a really keen
eye for the rare and unusual. His destination was this
old Jesuit retreat near Rome, villa Undergoney. He had heard
that the Jesuit Order was selling off some of their
massive manuscript collection to fund the villa's.
Speaker 2: Upkeep right, a practical necessity for them.
Speaker 1: So, sensing this unique opportunity, Voyage travels to Italy, eager
to browse through centuries of accumulated knowledge. He ends up
buying about thirty manuscript and a bundle deal, and among them,
one peculiar book just immediately stood out before he got it.
This book didn't even really have a name, did it.
Speaker 2: No, it's just another manuscript waiting to be rediscovered. What's
immediately striking is that Voinage, with his deep knowledge of
historical texts, instantly saw how unique it was. Neither the
script nor the illustrations look like anything he'd ever encountered
in his whole career.
Speaker 1: Wow, instant recognition of something weird.
Speaker 2: Exactly, and this sparked him a truly obsessive pursuit to
decipher it. He dedicated himself tirelessly seeking help from well
everywhere he could think of scholar's, cryptographer's linguist.
Speaker 1: He really went all out, he did.
Speaker 2: His efforts were profound. He publicly displayed the manuscript talked
about how enigmatic it was, sent out copies to anyone
he thought might offer a breakthrough. Yet despite this intense,
almost near obsessive dedication, Wilfrid Voinage never managed to decipher
a single word.
Speaker 1: Not one word, after all, that not one.
Speaker 2: He died in nineteen thirty with the manuscript secrets still
completely locked away, a silent testament to his unyielding but
ultimately unfulfilled quest.
Speaker 1: And after Wilfrid's passing, the manuscript went to his wife,
Ethel Lillian Voyage. Now, unlike Wilfrid, Ethel seemed well less
interested in the decoding part, perhaps maybe just overwhelms by
how impenetrable it was, or maybe just tired of her
husband's decades long obsession.
Speaker 2: Could be She continued managing the book business, her late
husband's business, and she did try to sell the manuscript,
but she ran into the exact same problem Wilfrid had,
which was nobody wanted to buy a book they couldn't read,
especially after the kind of money they were likely asking right.
Speaker 1: So, faced with this unsellable mystery, what did she do?
Speaker 2: She locked it away in that metal safety deposit box,
along with that very specific letter addressed to Anne Neil,
instructing that it only be opened upon Ethel's death. It
really is like something out of a classic mystery novel,
isn't it?
Speaker 1: Absolutely And Anne Neil's role here is pretty.
Speaker 2: Crucial, then, oh, absolutely crucial. She wasn't just some acquaintance.
She'd been Wilfred's longtime secretary, deeply involved in the day
to day running of his rare book.
Speaker 1: Business, so she knew the manuscript well.
Speaker 2: Presumably after Wilfrid diet her connection deepened. She became Ethel's
business partner, helping on on the enterprise, and on a
more personal level, she became Ethel's leaving companion during Ethel's
later years. So it was Anne Neil who, after Ethel
pass away, eventually facilitated the sale of the manuscript to
Hans P. Kraus in nineteen sixty one, bringing this full
circle to its acquisition by Yale and its sort of
public reemergence.
Speaker 1: But the Voyniche Manuscript's long, long journey definitely didn't start
with Wilfred when he bought it from the Jesuits at
Villa Mondragon. He also found something else inside, right, A
cover letter, that's right, a.
Speaker 2: Cover letter tucked inside. And this letter, dated around sixteen
sixty six, is like a historical treasure map. It offers
these tantalizing clues about the manuscript's much earlier life.
Speaker 1: Who was it addressed to?
Speaker 2: It was addressed to Athanagis Kurture, a really renowned Jesuit scholar,
celebrated for his huge intellect and his work as an
expert in Eastern languages. He famously tried to decode Egyptian hieroglyphs.
Speaker 1: Okay, so a serious scholar, very serious.
Speaker 2: The letter explained how the manuscript came into Kuircher's massive
collection at the Collegio Romano, which is now the Pontifical
Gregorian University in Rome. But just like everyone who followed, Kircher,
despite his considerable talents, couldn't decipher it.
Speaker 1: So even he was stumped completely, And.
Speaker 2: So the Voyage Manuscript just became another fascinating but ultimately
unreadable volume in his huge library, sitting there untouched for centuries.
Speaker 1: And this period in its history it highlights a pretty
significant historical moment, doesn't it, The hiding of treasures?
Speaker 2: It really does. In eighteen seventy, the newly unified Italian
government started systematically seizing church properties all over the country
to stop their invaluable libraries from being confiscated. The Jesuits
basically undertook this clandestine.
Speaker 1: Operation, really smuggling books.
Speaker 2: Essentially, yes, secretly relocating their most precious books, including the
Voyage Manuscript. These treasures were spirited away to private collections,
hidden safely from government hands.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: The Voynage manuscript specifically found it safe place at Villa
Mondragone in Frascotti, Italy, which housed the Jesuits Gislieri College,
and there it stayed largely forgotten, gathering dust until Wilfrid
Voyage stumbled upon it in nineteen twelve.
Speaker 1: Amazing. It underscores the manuscript's narrow escapes, doesn't it. It
could have easily been confiscated or just lost entirely. It
journeyed through this relative obscurity.
Speaker 2: Almost disappeared from history.
Speaker 1: So that cover letter Wilfrid found it revealed even earlier owners, right,
taking us further back.
Speaker 2: Yes, exactly, that same letter connects us to two more
prior owners. The letter to Kuirture was actually written by
Johannas Marcus Marcy. He was a distinguished physician and at
that time, the head of Charles University in Prague.
Speaker 1: Okay, Prague, so it was in Bohemia before Rome.
Speaker 2: Seems so is Marcy who sent the manuscript to Kirccure,
and Marcy in turn had gotten it from his friend,
a Prague based alchemist named George.
Speaker 1: Boresh, an alchemist. Now it's getting interesting.
Speaker 2: Right after Boresh passed away, probably in the sixteen thirties,
Marcy sent it off to Kuirture. Borresh himself had become
utterly consumed by the manuscript's strange contents. He spent years
trying to decode it.
Speaker 1: Another obsessive owner.
Speaker 2: Convinced it held valuable hidden knowledge. He was actually the
first person we know of who reached out to Kirsher
for help. He sent his own letter and even a
copy of some pages from the manuscript. So Borresh holds
the distinction of being the first confirmed owner in this
known chain, a man already deep into the world of
ancient secrets.
Speaker 1: But Borresh wasn't the creator, obviously, And this is where
the trail gets a bit well speculative, right using modern tech.
Speaker 2: Exactly, modern techniques like multi spectral imaging, which uses different
light wavelengths to see faded or hidden text. Have found
these faint traces of an erased signature on.
Speaker 1: The very first page, whose signature.
Speaker 2: It points to a man named Jakub Horski to Tepenek
as a likely previous owner, probably in the early sixteen hundreds.
There were also some Latin letters and voyinage symbols mixed in,
suggesting an early and likely frustrated attempt at deciphering.
Speaker 1: Him and who was Tepanek.
Speaker 2: Notably, he was the personal doctor of Holy Roman Emperor
Rudolph the Second, a figure deeply deeply entwined with the
set Terrek and the occult.
Speaker 1: And Rudolph the Second is a really pivotal figure here,
isn't he? The cover letter mentions him.
Speaker 2: Yes. That same cover letter voyage found identifies the Emperor
as a previous owner, likely sometime in the late fifteen
hundreds to early sixteen hundreds. It's widely believed he probably
gifted it, maybe his payment to his doctor teppanak Okay.
Speaker 1: So the emperor owned it, how did he get it?
There was that theory about John D.
Speaker 2: Right for a long time. The popular theory was that
the man who sold the Emperor of the book was
none other than John D, the famous English mathematician, nostrologer, occultist.
The story went that he brought it to Prague knowing
Rudolph's fascination with.
Speaker 1: The occult makes sense on the surface.
Speaker 2: It does, but John D was meticulous about his record keeping.
He kept extensive diaries, and crucially, there is absolutely no
mention of the Voyage Manuscript anywhere in the parts of
his diaries we have access to.
Speaker 1: Ah a lack of evidence.
Speaker 2: A significant lack, which makes it much more likely that
someone else entirely sold the Emperor this incredibly unique, unreadable book.
Speaker 1: And this is where it gets really captivating.
Speaker 2: With recent research, this is where Stefan Guzi's work comes in.
Presented in twenty twenty two, He's a dedicated manuscript researcher.
He described meticulously searching through old archives from the Roman Empire.
Speaker 1: What was he looking for?
Speaker 2: The cover letter to Characher mentioned Rudolph the Second bought
the manuscript for six hundred deucads. Ghuzi search for transactions
matching that amount.
Speaker 1: And did he find one.
Speaker 2: He found only one transaction in the archives, matching precisely
six hundred gold coins. It was a purchase in fifteen
ninety nine, not for a single book, but for a
collection of books, ah collection from who from a man
named Carl Wiederman. Given the going rate for books back then,
Guzi concluded Rudolph likely paid the six hundred ducats for
this whole collection, and the voyage manuscript was just part
of it.
Speaker 1: Okay, so Carl Weiderman is likely the owner just before
the Emperor.
Speaker 2: That's Guzi's strong hypothesis, and his research also brings another
potential owner into focus, Leonard Rawulf. Who is Rawulf a
celebrated German botanist, physician, and traveler born in fifteen thirty five.
Now there are several connections here. Rudolf the second had
previously bought four hand drawn botanical books by Rawulf a
few years.
Speaker 1: Earlier, okay, so a known supplier of botanical books to
the Emperor exactly.
Speaker 2: And Carl Wiederman, the seller of the collection, was known
to be a close friend of Rawulf. Plus, when Raoulf
died in fifteen ninety six, records show the books he
owned were sold off three years.
Speaker 1: Later in fifteen ninety nine, right when Rudolph likely bought
the collection from.
Speaker 2: Biederman, precisely While it's still speculative, the alignment of these
historical threads is incredibly compelling, especially given all the botanical
illustrations in the manuscript.
Speaker 1: It really opens up a whole new avenue, doesn't it.
Did Raoulf acquire it or could he even have authored
it himself?
Speaker 2: That's the tantalizing question. Unfortunately, that's where our historical cold
case currently stands. It just sort of fades out there.
Speaker 1: It truly is a historical puzzle that just keeps expanding.
We've traced ownership back centuries, but we still don't definitively
know if one of these owners wrote it, or if
that information is just lost to.
Speaker 2: Time, lost to the mists of time, as they say.
Speaker 1: But there's one last tantalizing clue about a possible, much
earlier author if we circle back to that same cover
letter Wilfrid Voinage found, the one he took so much
to heart. Yes, it stated that Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph
the second, and believe the manuscript had been authored by
a man named Roger Bacon, not Kevin Bacon. Just to
be clear, though, I do wonder if there's a six
degrees connection somewhere.
Speaker 2: Uh probably not, but Roger Bacon the thirteenth century one
was a genuinely extraordinary figure, an English philosopher, scientist, alchemist,
a true polymath of his time.
Speaker 1: So why would Rudolph think he wrote it centuries later?
Speaker 2: By the sixteen hundreds, when our ownership trail goes cold,
Bacon's reputation had ballooned far beyond his actual life, almost
legendary status. People didn't just see him as an old scholar.
They saw him as kind of wizard with tenure deeply
connected with alchemy, the occult mister glark Ah.
Speaker 1: So his reputation preceded him, maybe inaccurately exactly.
Speaker 2: A potent mix of legend and exaggeration meant Bacon was
widely believed to possess secret knowledge, even magical abilities. In reality,
he was an early passionate advocate for the scientific method, observation, experimentation.
Speaker 1: Quite the opposite of magic pretty much.
Speaker 2: But to people like Rudolph's the Second, fascinated by these
cult Roger Bacon was like a renaissance rock star and
names synonymous with profound hidden wisdom. So it makes total
sense why someone might attribute such a mysterious manuscript to him,
even without direct evidence.
Speaker 1: Especially if Bacon was rumored to know about prolonging.
Speaker 2: Life precisely, that alleged belief would have been incredibly tempting
for an emperor. But and this is a crucial point
we'll definitely come back to. This is just speculation from
an emperor in the sixteen hundreds about a man who
died centuries earlier.
Speaker 1: Right, No contemporary evidence linking Bacon directly, So the original
scribe still elusive.
Speaker 2: Still elusive, However, centuries of examination have cemented the manuscript's
repute and ignatic countless theories about its actual content. Let's
shift focus now, dive into the book itself. What clues
can we actually find inside its mysterious pages?
Speaker 1: Okay, so the physical book itself. What's it actually like?
Speaker 2: Physically? It's quite unassuming, almost modest really. It's bound in
this soft, pliable vellum cover. Its dimensions are fairly ordinary
twenty three point five centimeters high, sixteen point two wide,
roughly five centimeters thick.
Speaker 1: So not enormous or tiny, just book sized pretty much.
Speaker 2: It comprises around two hundred and thirty four pages currently,
though many scholars believe it originally had more. Several pages
seem to be missing, maybe torn out over the centuries,
lost to time, or perhaps even removed deliberately.
Speaker 1: Interesting and inside is it just a mess of text?
Speaker 2: No, far from it. We can actually see it's divided
into six distinct sections, each one visually striking and themed
around its illustrations, and for lack of a better word,
the whole visual experience is just well, it's otherworldly, okay.
Section one, the first and big section, more than half
the manuscript, is what scholars called the botanical section. It's
densely packed with drawings of plants. Now, while some elements,
maybe certain lee shapes, might vaguely resemble known species like
violets or lilies, maybe, but the overall impression is one
of biological impossibility. It's like someone took parts from different plants,
shuffle them like cards, and then stitch them together to
create entirely new, fantastical organism.
Speaker 1: Greankenstein plants kind of yeah.
Speaker 2: The flowers look alien, the lee's curve in these incredibly
bizarre ways, and some roots look like they were conjured
purely from imagination, like they were drawn by someone who
never actually seen a real plant root.
Speaker 1: So have botanists figured them out matched them to real plants.
Speaker 2: For over a century, botanists have tried rigorously to match
these peculiar plants to anything in the real world, with
remarkably little success. It's been a huge source of frustration.
Speaker 1: So what are the theories then? If they aren't real plants.
Speaker 2: Well, several ideas. Some propose they're purely symbolic. Maybe each
plant represents a concept in some complex mystical or al
chemical system, not a literal plant.
Speaker 1: Okay, symbolic what else?
Speaker 2: Others argue they are real herbs, just highly stylized, maybe
deliberately distorted, or just badly drawn to hide their true identities,
like a visual.
Speaker 1: Code, a code in the pictures themselves exactly.
Speaker 2: Then there's a particularly intriguing theory from Arthur Tucker and
Rexford Talbert. They argue the plants strikingly resemble flora from
sixteenth century Central America, Central America, not Europe, right, specifically
things like morning glory, tree flowers, prickly pairs. If they're right,
this radically suggests the manuscript didn't originate in Europe as
usually assumed. But maybe the New World and the language
might be an extinct dialect, maybe n waddle or something similar.
Speaker 1: Wow that would be huge. Is that widely accepted.
Speaker 2: It's heavily debated. The problem is these illustrations are so unique.
You can find something somewhere in the world that looks
a bit like them. So the exact geographical origin still
very much up in the air.
Speaker 1: Okay, so botanical section weird, possibly coded, maybe American plants.
What Section two?
Speaker 2: The second part is the astronomical section, and this is
where the imagery really starts to spiral out of this world,
quite literally. You see numerous circular diagrams, intricate wheels within wheels,
what look like zodiac symbols, often filling entire pages.
Speaker 1: So star charts, astrology.
Speaker 2: The first grants. Yeah, you might assume it's astrological charts, horoscopes,
maybe lunar cycle trackers, and some elements do seem to
track lunar phases or solar positions. You see these familiar
twelve part diagrams that align with the zodiac sciens Ares, Taurists, Gemini,
the usual suspects more or less.
Speaker 1: But again, there's a butt, isn't there.
Speaker 2: There's always a butt With voyage. The alignment starts to
unravel the constellations. They don't match any known star charts.
We have, not medieval European, not Arabic, not Chinese. Nothing.
It's almost as if the author was either inventing their
own night sky or you know, had knowledge of an
alternate universe with a totally different celestial layout. It's definitely
not your standard backyard stargazing guide.
Speaker 1: What are the theories for this section? Then? Bad astronomy?
Speaker 2: That's one idea. Maybe the author was trying to map
the cosmos but just didn't grasp the math or observational
astronomy needed. Others suggest it might not be about actual
stars at all.
Speaker 1: Symbolic again, could be.
Speaker 2: Purely symbolic, illustrating astrological principles, mystical concepts, maybe part of
some esoteric spiritual system where stars represent abstract ideas, not
precise coordinates.
Speaker 1: And the zodiac symbols themselves are weird too.
Speaker 2: They are some are recognizable, but others look distinctly altered
or just off. Like there's a Sagittarius figure, but he's
holding a crossbow, not a traditional bow and arrow artistic
license huh, or another layer of code.
Speaker 1: Frustratingly close but no cigar.
Speaker 2: Exactly that feeling of something familiar yet fundamentally different. It
drives researchers mad. Theories have tried to link it to
Jewish cabalistic diagrams, early as Islamic star maps, even Indian astronomy,
but nothing fully alliance. It's true astronomical meaning tantalizingly out
of reach.
Speaker 1: Okay, so strange plants, strange stars. What's next the biological section?
Does it get stranger?
Speaker 2: Oh? Somehow it managed to get even stranger. These pages
are filled with dozens of drawings of naked women, sometimes alone,
sometimes in groups. They're often lounging in what look like
tubs or pools connected by these long, winding tubes.
Speaker 1: It's connecting pools of women.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Entire pages show them sitting, standing, partly submerged in
these peculiar interconnected vessels. The tubes snake around them like
garden hoses, sometimes even sprouting stars or strange roots from
the women's bodies or the vessels. And the anatomy highly stylized,
often very puzzling, certainly not traditional anatomical drawings.
Speaker 1: What on earth could that represent?
Speaker 2: Well? Numerous interpretations, as you can imagine. Some suggest health
or fertility rituals, maybe reflecting ancient ideas. Of bodily humors
or baiting for purification, perhaps even some kind of proto
gynecology or alchemy. Again, others believe it's purely metaphorical, maybe
relating to alchemical processes the transformation of body and spirit.
What's really notable is that some of the tubes look
almost mechanical. Researchers have compared them to early water circulation
systems like primitive plumbing.
Speaker 1: Weird, just weird.
Speaker 2: The sheer quantity and unusual depiction make this section one
of the most debated and mysterious. Suggests a deeply symbolic
or a very specialized purpose, not just a literal picture
of people bathing.
Speaker 1: Okay, so we've had plants, stars, bathing, women with tubes,
what else cosmological section?
Speaker 2: Next up the cosmological section. This part is brimming with
even more circular diagrams and intricate symbols. Some visually echo
the star charts from the astronomical section, like a continuation
of that cosmic theme, but others others look totally different.
They resemble maps of imaginary cities maybe, or perhaps intricate
blueprints of the human body, seen as some kind of
complex cosmic clockwork.
Speaker 1: Wow, and there's a famous foldout in this section.
Speaker 2: Ah. Yes, The real standout here and maybe in the
whole manuscript, is the infamous nine Rosette falldout. It's huge,
a sprawling multi page spread spans six pages when fully unfolded,
featuring nine interconnected circles, each one filled with his dizzying
array of stars, miniature castles, intricate patterns.
Speaker 1: What do people think that?
Speaker 2: Is intense debate, tons of theories. Some think it's an
abstract representation of the universe, a highly esoteric cosmic map
showing a unique worldview. Others argue it's a complex al
chemical diagram, illustrating processes of transformation, the interconnectedness of elements
spiritual or material, or maybe spiritual. And then there are
those who see it as deeply spiritual or mystical, perhaps
a guide to some lost cosmological understanding. It's one of
the manuscript's ddys mysteries within a mystery.
Speaker 1: Okay, what's next, pharmaceutical More plants, Moving to.
Speaker 2: The pharmaceutical section. Yes, we see detailed drawings of various
plant parts, roots, and notably many many jars of jars.
Like apothecary jars, They're meticulously drawn but they don't really
seem to match anything found in no medieval alchemical or
apothecary practices, so interpretations vary. Some think they represent specific
medicinal plants or elixers derived from them. Others suggest that
jars are purely symbolic, maybe representing concepts.
Speaker 1: Within alchemy, but no labels, no recipes exactly.
Speaker 2: Without any accompanying recipes or text we could read, we're
left entirely to speculate on their true purpose, just pictures
of jars and plant.
Speaker 1: Bits, and speaking of recipes, the sixth and final section
is called the recipes section.
Speaker 2: That's right, though honestly, recipes is a pretty generous term
for what we see. This part has short paragraphs, each
one marked with a little starlike symbol, maybe indicating a
new entry or instruction.
Speaker 1: But we can't read them.
Speaker 2: Nope, all in the same undecipherable script, so they could
be anything chemical formulas, potion instructions, maybe the world's most
cryptic cooking.
Speaker 1: Guide, huh, lizard stew Yeah, who knows.
Speaker 2: You're left with absolutely no idea what they're meant to
be making, how to make it, or whether it's designed
to cure diseases or yeah, turn you into a lizard.
It's incredibly frustrating for anyone trying to follow along.
Speaker 1: Okay, so let's talk about the script itself, voina cheese
as some call it. It's the core problem, isn't it.
Speaker 2: It's the ultimate enigma. It simply doesn't resemble any known
language or cipher in recorded history. It's almost as if
someone meticulously set out to create the most confusing, impenetrable
system imaginable, and they succeeded beyond anyone's wildest dreams. This
sheer incomprehensibility has understandably led to speculation. Could it be
the result of a mental health condition like graphomedia, that
uncontrollable urge to write often meaningless stuff, or maybe glossal
alia speaking in tongues basically but written down.
Speaker 1: Or maybe it's just a fake, an elaborate.
Speaker 2: Hoax, That idea that an ancient prankster or maybe even
Voyage himself fabricated it has been floated repeatedly. There's even
some potential evidence debated around this, particularly concerting that signature
of jakub krshiki to tepanek we mentioned.
Speaker 1: The doctor's signature. What's the issue.
Speaker 2: While some specialists compare it to other authenticated Tepanek's signatures
and argue it's genuine based on characteristics. Another analyst, Jan Burke,
strongly contends they don't match at all. He even provides
side by side comparisons that really make you question it.
Speaker 1: So what does that imply?
Speaker 2: It leads to the suggestion that maybe Voyage himself added
the signature to boost the manuscript's value, or even that
he entirely fabricated the cover letter to give the book
a more illustrious, mysterious history.
Speaker 1: Could Voyage have faked the whole thing?
Speaker 2: Well, there's compelling evidence suggesting Wilfrid Voyage almost certainly did
not create the manuscript himself. Let's consider something called Zip's law.
Speaker 1: Zipf's law sounds technical.
Speaker 2: It's a linguistic principle basically describes the predictable frequency of
words in any natural language. Like in English, the most
common word the appears roughly twice as often as the
next most common of three times as often, and and
so on. This pattern holds true across most known.
Speaker 1: Languages, Okay, and the Voyage Manuscript.
Speaker 2: When applied to the Voyage Manuscript, its text surprisingly follows
Zip's law. It behaves structurally like a true language.
Speaker 1: Wow, So it's not just random scribbles exactly.
Speaker 2: This is a powerful indicator against random outputs like graphomania
or glossalalia, which typically lack that consistent statistical structure. So
the mystery deepens. It's not random. But does that mean
it's not a hoax?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the critical follow up. Isn't it if it
behaves like a language, could it still be a fake?
Speaker 2: Not necessarily impossible. According to Gordon Rugg, a researcher who's
spent over a decade on this rug, claims it's possible
to fake content that follows Zip's law. He developed a
method using a simple grid of syllables.
Speaker 1: And cards, cards and grids like a game sort of.
Speaker 2: By sliding the card over the grid, it generates combinations
that resemble Voyage words, and crucially, these generated words also
follows zip law.
Speaker 1: So proof it's a fake?
Speaker 2: Well, no, not definitive proof. And importantly, Rugg did his
research knowing about Zip's law, which is only really popularized
by George Kingsley Zip in the nineteen thirties and forties,
way after Voyage got the manuscript in nineteen twelve.
Speaker 1: Ah, So a fifteenth century hoaxer wouldn't have known about
Zip's law to fake it that way exactly.
Speaker 2: Rugg's method shows how a sophisticated hoax could be created now,
but it doesn't prove one was created centuries ago using
that knowledge.
Speaker 1: Okay, so Rock shows it's possible to fake, but not
that it was faked. What do other scholars think? Still
leaning towards hoax.
Speaker 2: Many others remain unconvinced it's a hoax at all. Doctor
Marcela Montemero and doctor Damien Zinnett, both experts in physics
and math, did an even deeper dive using information theory
goes beyond just word frequency and what do They find
fascinating consistent patterns in each of the six sections. They
found common words associated only with those specific sections, not
appearing elsewhere. They also found many words with similar spelling structures,
like how English words end in somepology.
Speaker 1: Consistency suggests meaning.
Speaker 2: That's monta Meuri's conclusion. She said that kind of consistency
suggests intent, like there is a meaning hidden somewhere deep
inside the mess. She added, if it's a hoax, it's
a masterclass in deception, layered, deliberate, and statistically convincing, which raises.
Speaker 1: The question, how could a medieval prankster pull off such
statistical sophistication without modern tools or math.
Speaker 2: It seems highly improbable Voinage himself in the early nineteen
hundreds unlikely, the medieval author even less likely. Regardless, one
of the biggest game changers came through radiocarbon dating.
Speaker 1: Ah the dating this was definitive, pretty definitive.
Speaker 2: Four small parchment samples were analyzed. The results conclusively showed
the book is much much older than any of its
confirmed owners. How old the parchment dates from sometime between
fourteen oh four and fourteen thirty eight. There's some debate,
maybe a slightly wider range like thirteen ninety one to
fourteen eighty three, but basically early fifteenth century.
Speaker 1: So when Emperor Rudolph got it in the sixteen hundreds,
he was.
Speaker 2: Already one hundred to two hundred years old, a venerable
artifact even then.
Speaker 1: And this dating completely rules out Roger Bacon.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, unequivocally. Bacon lived from twelve nineteen to twelve ninety two,
at least a century too early for when the partial
was made. So this dating reveals a crucial truth. Either
someone with an exceptional understanding of linguistics. Rivaling modern experts
created this as an elaborate hoax in the fourteen hundreds.
Or it's a genuine yet still undeciphered historical.
Speaker 1: Document, and if it's real, the quest to solve it continues.
Many have tried, right, even the early owners.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, yeah, voinich burresh tepanek, They all sought help.
Over time, numerous theories emerged, secret societies, references to the
Andromeda Galaxy centuries before.
Speaker 1: Telescopes, wild stuff debunks, though.
Speaker 2: Mostly debunked by rigorous scholarship. But some theories have shown
more potential.
Speaker 1: More resilience, like the idea it might be old Turkish.
Speaker 2: That's one, not modern Turkish, but a much older form
from the broader Turkic language family. In twenty eighteen, Amatt Ardisch,
a Turkish electrical engineer and language enthusiast, proposed this with
his sons.
Speaker 1: Not linguists, but language enthusiasts.
Speaker 2: Right, they noticed the statistical structure seem to align with
patterns in agglutinative.
Speaker 1: Languages, a glutinative like lego bricks exactly.
Speaker 2: Unlike English with prepositions in word order languages like Turkish,
build complex words by stacking small pieces of meaning together.
Ev is house, Evler's houses, Evler day is in the houses.
The Voynish words often show a similar layered construction.
Speaker 1: So Ardich thinks it's phonetic Turkish.
Speaker 2: See and his sons believe it's written phonetically a sound
based version of this ancient Turkish, maybe using an invented script.
He's even suggested it could be a diary travels people, places,
medical knowledge.
Speaker 1: Has he translated much?
Speaker 2: In twenty twenty, they claim to have translated about thirty
percent and published a translation of one whole page thirty
three V. They say they've decoded over six hundred words,
still sharing updates online and in Turkish academic.
Speaker 1: Circles, but not widely accepted yet not.
Speaker 2: Really by mainstream scholars. A big challenge is the lack
of a repeatable methodology. Other linguists can't easily verify their
findings independently. It seems to rely heavily on subjective interpretation.
Speaker 1: But somewhat important. Does See promise in it?
Speaker 2: Yes, Lisa Fagan Davis, and she brings her own potentially
game changing theory.
Speaker 1: Ah, Lisa Fagan Davis, you mentioned her expertise, what's her
big discovery?
Speaker 2: In twenty twenty, she published a groundbreaking article arguing the
manuscript wasn't written by one person, but by.
Speaker 1: Five, five different authors. How did she figure that out?
Speaker 2: Doctor Davis has a PhD in Medieval Studies from Yale,
taught Latin paleography there now at Simmons, Executive Director of
the Medieval Academy of America, basically a top expert. She
used a digital paleoghy tool designed to spot handwriting characteristics.
Speaker 1: And it found five distinct.
Speaker 2: Styles, five distinct handwriting styles throughout the manuscript. And what's more,
they didn't just do sections each sometimes they switch scribes midpage,
even several times on the same page or foldout.
Speaker 1: Has that been confirmed?
Speaker 2: Yes, Her finding has been reviewed and confirmed by at
least two other independent papers since twenty twenty one. It
significantly elevates the likelihood. This fundamentally changes how we see
the manuscript from.
Speaker 1: One person's obsession or prank to a community project.
Speaker 2: Exactly. It implies some sort of community, maybe a scriptorium
amongst a group of scholars. Put this book together opens
up entirely new lines of inquiry.
Speaker 1: So if it was a community. Maybe Hebrew speaking Jewish
community trying to keep knowledge secret.
Speaker 2: That's another theory proposed in twenty twenty by Rainier Hannick,
a German linguist. He suggested it might be Hebrew, but
disguised in an invented alphabet.
Speaker 1: How did he argue that.
Speaker 2: By analyzing word structures he found patterns matching Semitic languages,
especially Hebrew. He ruled out Latin, Arabic Aramaic based on
missing grammar markers or structures. Using Hebrew grammar and dictionaries.
He even translated phrases like the farmer groaned over.
Speaker 1: The Times, suggesting it's real text, just hidden.
Speaker 2: Right, Maybe ancient Hebrew, perhaps a local dialect deliberately written
in a secret script for privacy or to protect sacred knowledge. Unfortunately,
Hannig passed away in twenty twenty two, and no one
has really taken up his specific.
Speaker 1: Work to verify it, and like other theories, there's debate.
Speaker 2: Always. Critics point out his method, like others, assumes a
direct letter for letter link, and not everything he decoded
made consistent sense. Some translations were well odd, like I
am a bull ready, which facilitates and renews house and ruins.
You are a piece of lamb which opens the mouth
and is discouraged when I and.
Speaker 1: I, Yeah, that sounds a bit nonsensical.
Speaker 2: It often leads these promising starts into that forest of
theories that look brilliant initially but don't hold up across
the whole text. But Hannig wasn't the first to suggest
it's a code. That's one of the oldest ideas.
Speaker 1: Nakho could explain the weird pictures to another layer of secrecy.
Speaker 2: Possibly a way to mislead or protect the true meaning.
The most formidable attempt to crack it as a code
came from William F. Friedman.
Speaker 1: Friedman the World War II codebreaker Guy pre Nsa the.
Speaker 2: Very same a true legend in cryptography. In the nineteen forties,
while leading the US Army Signals Intelligence Service, he assembled
this elite team linguists, paleographers, egyptologists, mathematicians, scientists, real heavy hitters.
Speaker 1: What did they do?
Speaker 2: After hours? They formed the first Voytage Study Group. Their
ambitious goal transcribed the whole manuscript onto IBM punch cards
for computer analysis, one of the earliest attempts to apply
modern crypto to it.
Speaker 1: Did it work?
Speaker 2: They managed to punch at least forty eight thousand characters,
incredibly tedious work done strictly after hours. The group eventually
disbanded without conclusive results.
Speaker 1: But he tried again later.
Speaker 2: He did in nineteen sixty two a second voytage study group,
this time with more advanced RCA computers. Again after hours,
months of intense focus, grafts, charts, records. They even had
the wives women who transcribed and key punched.
Speaker 1: What happened that time?
Speaker 2: RCA eventually banned using their computers for extracurricular stuff, so
the group shut down prematurely. Friedman himself came to believe
it wasn't a simple cipher needing a key, but something
more complex, a deliberately invented language functioning as a sophisticated code.
Speaker 1: So even he admitted defeat.
Speaker 2: He ultimately concluded that breaking it might be possible, but
extremely difficult. You can only imagine what he might have
done with today's tech like AI.
Speaker 1: Has AI been used recently, oh.
Speaker 2: Yes, several times, mainly trying to spot subtle patterns or
compare tech structures to real languages. Some early AI projects
spark brief hopes finding names or repeating structures a twenty
twenty five attempt focused on symbol rules, not conventional writing
any breakthroughs. To date, no AI method has definitively solved it.
They've mostly added more intriguing but unproven theories. Most notably,
in twenty eighteen, University of Alberta researchers led by Greg
Condra used an AI trained on three hundred and eighty languages.
Speaker 1: What was their angle?
Speaker 2: They hypothesized it that might be anagrams, scrambled layers in
each word, which makes decoding way harder. The AI tried unscrambling,
matching to Hebrew roots. The first translated sentence was provocative.
She made recommendations to the priest man in the house,
and me and people.
Speaker 1: Sounds meaningful, but was it reliable?
Speaker 2: Critics weren't sold. They said it required interpretive gymnastics, reordering letters,
guessing vowels, making big assumptions about medieval Hebrew. Basically, the
AI might have just gotten lucky. The Verge critiqued it sharply,
saying the method was too subjective. Any sentence could be
twisted into meaning something.
Speaker 1: But the AI wasn't totally useless, not entirely.
Speaker 2: It helps solidify the theory that the word structure does
show patterns typical of real languages, syllable repetition, prefixes, suffixes.
A promising first attempt maybe, but clearly much more work
is needed if AI is going to crack this historical mystery.
Speaker 1: Okay, so we haven't cracked the words yet, but what
about the purpose of the book. We have promising theories,
but also some less promising ones.
Speaker 2: As with any profound, lingering mystery, you're always going to
get a degree of wild speculation, and the Voynish manuscript
definitely no exception there.
Speaker 1: It's true, it's almost impossible to resist the really far
fetched theories, isn't it. The sheer oddity of the illustrations
just begs the question, what if this isn't from our
world or even our reality?
Speaker 2: Ba alien theories?
Speaker 1: Could it be like a message from another dimension, maybe
old English from an alternate Earth, which explains why the
plants look close but not quite right, Or maybe from
another planet entirely alien language, alien plants. Those women in
the tubs could be some strange alien species and vats.
Speaker 2: It would certainly explain the weird tubes and the star
charts not matching ours. Maybe directions to a space seven
to eleven.
Speaker 1: Huh, directions to the cosmic slurpee machine. Do scholars take
any of this seriously?
Speaker 2: Not really. They tend to see them as entertaining thought experiments,
not serious hypotheses. When a BBC journalist visited Yale, the
curator joked, my favorite is that it is the illustrated
diary of a teenage space alien who left it behind
on Earth.
Speaker 1: Funny, but no actual evidence.
Speaker 2: Obviously, absolutely zero scientific or historical evidence for any extraterrestrial
or interdimensional claims. However, there is a much more grounded
and highly compelling explanation for why the illustrations, especially the
botanical ones, look so alien.
Speaker 1: Okay, what's the grounded explanation?
Speaker 2: Many researchers and I believe these aren't just strange unknown plants.
They are profoundly symbolic part of a much older, richer tradition,
the alchemical herbal manuscript.
Speaker 1: Alchemical herbal so not just about plants exactly.
Speaker 2: In these texts, plants weren't drawn just for how they looked,
but for what they represented or meant within a complex
system of spiritual and chemical transformation. They weren't field guides,
they were mystical recipe books full of metaphor coded ingredients,
planetary alignments, instructions for transformation, spiritual or material. Alchemy was
way more than just turning lead into gold.
Speaker 1: That distinction literal versus symbolics seems crucial, and there's evidence
linking Voyage to this genre.
Speaker 2: Yes, Voyage channalyist Dian O'Donovan argues the manuscript's botanical sections
share sort of genetic material with that genre. She points
to compelling similarities with known alchemical erbels, especially Lombard copies
of the trectatist.
Speaker 1: Arabis Lombard copies from Italy exactly.
Speaker 2: The resemblance is so striking some scholars propose the Voyage
was produced in the same scriptorium the writing room in
monasteries in northern Italy Lombardi region, sometimes in the fourteen thirties.
Speaker 1: Which fits the carbon dating perfectly.
Speaker 2: Perfectly, adds substantial weight. Plus the number of plant illustrations
around ninety eight full page images falls right in the
typical range of ninety to one hundred images found in
late medieval alchemical erbls like the Tractatus, reinforcing the connection.
Speaker 1: So the pictures look like other alchemical books from the
right time and place precisely.
Speaker 2: And when you put Voinage images next to illustrations from
real fifteenth century European alchemical erbls, often made by physician alcamists,
you see similarities. Those texts often had diagrams for distilling essences,
instructions for ritual baths, weird hybrid plants linked to elements
or zodiac signs.
Speaker 1: Okay, so it fits the visual style. What about the
weirdness itself the symbolism.
Speaker 2: O'Donovan argues the voyage might have been a sophisticated mnemonic system,
like flash cards for people already trained in highly specialized
esoteric knowledge. The plants weren't meant to be literal botanical specimens.
Speaker 1: They were visual triggers exactly to.
Speaker 2: Jog memory or unlocked complex knowledge passed on orally, never
meant for the average reader. Think about how other manuscripts
show snakewort with roots drawn like a snake, symbolic not literal.
Researchers J. K. Peterson and Edith Sherwood suggest similar things
in Voyage. Roots that look like a winged angel or
a cat's body might point to a plant whose folk name,
myth or alchemical treatment was symbolically linked to that creature
in the original language.
Speaker 1: So for a trained altemist, the weird roots weren't nonsense.
Speaker 2: They could have been shorthand precise instructions when to fire
up the still, which moon phase, which planetary metal the
plant was tied to, makes sense to the initiated, it's
bizarre to.
Speaker 1: Us, and other historians support the Italian herbal idea too.
Speaker 2: Yes. Alan Teto, well known historian, compares Voyage meticulously to
other fourteenth and fifteenth century illustrations, again fitting the dating.
These comparisons are often with erbels, which are basically alchemical
rbals stripped at the sorcery just focused on medicinal.
Speaker 1: Plants, and he found strong visual matches.
Speaker 2: Striking comparisons where plants look remarkably similar, if not identical,
the style is a strong match. Tod also argues the
other sections fit a comprehensive herbal The bathing pages he
sees them as clear references to traditional thermal baths known
from medicinal properties, and the recipes section he thinks it
isn't recipes at all, but functions more like an index,
a common feature at the end of big medieval texts.
Speaker 1: What about linguist Stephen bachs Rbal theory too.
Speaker 2: Bax also leans into the erbal theory tenty fourteen paper,
he detailed how erbals were often copied and with each copy,
illustrations got less recognizable, drifting from the source.
Speaker 1: Explain some distortions exactly.
Speaker 2: He also noted that in many urbls, the plant name
is usually the very first word of the first paragraph
on the page with the illustration. Using this and comparing images,
he tentatively identified drawings he believes are Juniper, hellebor, and century,
linking them to specific voyage words.
Speaker 1: His conclusion on origin.
Speaker 2: He ultimately concluded it was likely not European, maybe from
a culture and language now extinct.
Speaker 1: Okay, so the alchemical medicinal erbal theory seems really strong.
What about that women's health angle someone proposed?
Speaker 2: Ah? Yes, adding another fascinating layer. Back in the nineteen forties,
Leonel Strong, a cancer research scientist and amateur cryptographer, announced
he decoded part of it.
Speaker 1: What did he claim it was?
Speaker 2: He claimed the text was medieval English, focused on the
effects of plants on physiological processes, especially the diseases of women.
He supposedly decoded two specific pages folio seventy eight and
ninety three any examples. A compelling snippet polished at the
time described childbirth when the contents of the womb ripprepare
the membranes, the child comes slightly from the mother, issuing
with the legs stance skewed and bent, while the arms
bend at the elbow are knotted above the head like
the legs of a crawfish.
Speaker 1: Wow. That sounds specific, and it would explain bathing Women's
section two.
Speaker 2: It certainly would provide a logical explanation for that section. However,
Strong's theory quickly started to unravel why what went wrong,
largely because he never properly explained his method. His main
excuse was present war conditions World War II is happening,
plausible for general secrecy, but he hinted sharing his method
might be uniquely risky. He also never got full access
to the original manuscript to continue decoding.
Speaker 1: And after he died his notes.
Speaker 2: His personal notes were revealed. Scholars analyzing them found that
when words didn't fit his English interpretations, Strong had exc
explicitly erased characters in his notes clear erase marks to
force the words to sound English.
Speaker 1: Oh, cooking the books.
Speaker 2: Pretty much, and when the key he claimed to use
was tested rigorously on other sections, it just produced.
Speaker 1: Gibberish, so that theory died, but someone revived it recently.
Speaker 2: Fast forward to twenty seventeen, Nicholas Gibbs, a historical researcher
and TV scriptwriter, claimed he'd finally cracked it. Another grand declaration.
Speaker 1: What was his idea still women's health.
Speaker 2: Similar theme, but his mechanism was different. Gibbs argued it
wasn't encrypted at all, just written in a form of
shorthand Latin, like medieval doctor's scribbled notes lazy Latin. He
called it basically a medical doctor's.
Speaker 1: Notebook lazy Latin, modern doctor's handwriting exactly.
Speaker 2: Perhaps not much has changed there. He published, his research,
got huge traction, ran in the prestigious Times literary supplement,
tons of press. For a moment, it seemed the mystery
might be solved.
Speaker 1: But then the experts weighed in.
Speaker 2: Then the genuine experts weighed in, and the excitement filledzzl fast.
Gibbs had only managed to translate two lines, and even
those weren't grammatically proper Latin.
Speaker 1: Just two lines, just two.
Speaker 2: As journalist Annelie Knewitz observed, his analysis was a mix
of stuff we already knew and stuff he couldn't possibly prove.
Scholars universally pointed out, no consistent grammar, no confirmed matches
to non medieval shorthand it was like solving a crossword
by cherry picking clues fitting a preconceived answer.
Speaker 1: Wishful thinking.
Speaker 2: Basically, as Knuts put it, while Gibbs saw patterns, the
rest of the scholarly world saw wishful thinking, and that, unfortunately,
is the fate of many voyage theories. While we've covered
many intriguing ideas today, this is really just the tip
of the iceberg.
Speaker 1: So many more theories out there.
Speaker 2: Dozens, maybe hundreds, some more credible than others. A quick
search on vootage forms reveals an ocean of amateur cyptologists
claiming they finally solves it. It's understandable, though, everyone loves
a puzzle and this is the ultimate enigma hashtag tag
tag outro.
Speaker 1: So, after this really deep dive into century of mystery,
endless theories, what can we actually say we know about
the Voyage manuscript? While the ultimate solution, that kind of
risetta stone for the text still seems just beyond reach.
Speaker 2: We are certain about a few key things.
Speaker 1: Right we are We know with a high degree of
confidence that its script behaves like a real language, or
at least follows incredibly sophisticated linguistic rules. That's thanks to
rigorous statistical analysis like Zip's law.
Speaker 2: Okay, so it has structure. What else?
Speaker 1: We also know it wasn't written by just one person,
but by five distinct scribes. That discovery strongly suggests a
collaborative effort, maybe a community, a scriptorium of monks or scholars,
and the dating radiocarbon dating firmly places its creation in
the early fifteenth century, specifically between fourteen oh four and
fourteen thirty eight.
Speaker 2: Which links it to the herbal illustrations exactly.
Speaker 1: The botanical illustrations over half the book align remarkably well
with erbals from that precise era, strongly hinting at an
alchemical or medicinal purpose.
Speaker 2: So just as important as what it is is what
it is not. Precisely, It's not a hoax fabricated by
Voyanage himself. It wasn't written by Roger Bacon or any
of the other confirmed owners we traced, and sorry, sci
fi fans, it was definitely not a teenage alien's diary
left behind on Earth.
Speaker 1: Okay, So from these certainties, the speculation just branches out
wildly again.
Speaker 2: It continues to pull us in fascinating, often contradictory directions.
Is it an ancient form of Turkish, a clever Hebrew code,
another extinct language altogether? Was it made in northern Italy,
maybe in a secret script known only to a few?
Is it a true complex code or a painstakingly invented
language design never to be read.
Speaker 1: We just don't have that elegant, universally accepted solution yet exactly.
Speaker 2: Until that emerges, we may never truly know its ultimate purpose.
Perhaps the full truth will remain forever beyond our grasp.
And while yeah, one might see that as frustrating, I
think there's maybe a different way to look at it.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, instead of frustration, I think you can find real
joy in the mystery itself and in the sheer, boundless
creativity of the theories it sparks. Sometimes they're whimsical, even silly,
other times deeply thought provoking, pushing our understanding.
Speaker 2: But always engaging.
Speaker 1: They always, without fail utterly engaging. So, even though humanity
hasn't solved the voynish manuscript yet and maybe never will.
It remains one of the most compelling and just plain
fun mysteries to explore it really is, and maybe, just maybe,
somewhere across the centuries, a fifteenth century monk is having
a quiet laugh, knowing they successfully fooled the entire world
for over half a millennium with an utterly unsolvable joke,
which leaves us with a provocative question for you, our listener.
Speaker 2: What other hidden secrets might be waiting out there, hiding
in plain sight, patiently waiting for the right mind, the
right approach to come along and finally unravel them.
Speaker 1: Something for you, tomull over, or perhaps explore on your
own