Thinking Sideways: Cicada 3301

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, we are looking for highly intelligent individuals. To find them,
we have devised a test. There is a message hidden
in this image. Find it and it will lead you
on the road to finding us. We look forward to
meeting the few that will make it all the way through.
Good Lucke. Thinking Sideways, I don't understand you never know

(00:35):
stories of things we simply don't know the answer to. Hey, everyone,
it's Thinking Sideways the podcast. Like usual, I'm Devin, joined
by Steve and Joe. So yeah, let's just go for it. Yeah,
what are we doing? Yeah, obviously I'm sweet, definitely not

(00:58):
solving this mystery. This is actual, Lea, Steve, this is
one of the mysteries you're gonna hate that. Actually, there's
this quote about this mystery. It's uh it says that, um,
not all mysteries are solvable, but prize comes in the pursuit,
And I know you hate those ones where like there's
not an actual answer or anything. Yeah, So tonight we're
going to talk about cicada or cicada, depending on you

(01:20):
say the name of that insect. Let's just call it.
Let's just cicada. Cicada is how I say it. So
I'm sorry if that you guys Cicada three three one,
which is let's just talk about it. You're not even
going to do a preamble ready, Yeah. On January and
image was posted to four chan, which is the best

(01:42):
way to get your stuff out there. It was on
the slash x thread. I guess I don't know. I
don't really use four chan, so I don't actually know
what they call that anyways, proving our ignorance yet again.
The message that we put in the beginning, before we
even introduced ourselves, that was attached to an image that

(02:07):
was essentially led to a series of clues of basically
one more impossible than the next to solve, which led
to who knows what, because everybody who solved this mystery
or the puzzles, the set of puzzles, is essentially Internet
silent at this point. There's one person who said that

(02:27):
they solved it, but when you read every interview with them,
they say they solved it up until it went into
real life situations and then suddenly they were like not
part of the solving it anymore. And there are some
people there's a lot of groups on the Internet that
are they are chats and forums and all that stuff

(02:48):
that worked together to solve it. But we're going to
talk about the puzzle, so it'll become apparent. But there's
only a select few people who have actually probably solved it.
There's no confirmation that those people act really exist, that
the solvers were actually chosen or whatever. And it wasn't
one of the ground rules from zero one that you

(03:09):
had to solve it on your own. You couldn't get
you couldn't band together with a bunch of people. That.
It's interesting because they do kind of say that, but
also many of the clues are are literally unsolvable unless
people from around the world come together. So let's we're
going to talk about the set of puzzles that came
about from the first round of these in two thousand twelve, primarily,

(03:33):
and we're going to walk through that. You guys are
gonna hear me talking a lot. It's super interesting, though,
listen to my words, the way did you solve the puzzle?
I definitely did not solve the puzzle. I didn't. I
didn't even bother to try. No. I think that's the
funny thing about the question of one person doing it
is it requires such a broad set of skills and

(03:55):
you know, in terms of understanding code in cryptography and
all these things, like there's just such a massive breadth
of areas that it covers, not to mention literature and
using Yeah, it just it would seem impossible for one
person to have all that jammed in their head. Definitely
made for crowdsourcing. It turns out, actually it's not so

(04:16):
impossible because there's there's we're gonna talk about two groups
in this, and I was gonna wait until later to
kind of delve into it, but we'll just say now
there's two groups. Really, um, they refer to one group
as the solvers, which are the people who like are
the front line who are actively solving these things, who
have the know how, who you know, are figuring this

(04:37):
stuff out, and then the followers who once this stuff
started to hit the forums. Let's see, there's um, there's forums,
web communities, websites, chat rooms, Skype groups, I I R
C groups, all sorts of different groups around solving these puzzles.
And what happens is that there's like one or two
saw actual solvers quote unquote in that group, and the

(05:00):
rest are followers who are getting the information sec at
hand and like going to the websites or like submitting
the clues or whatever, and they aren't they're not actually
solving anything, or they're saying, like you know, they're they're
inputting like one little, tiny little bit of something. So
there's a group of active solvers, and then there's the followers,
and the followers are what I was talking about a
little bit with like three three oh one was very

(05:23):
displeased with the followers, which we'll talk about again in
the context at the time. But you know, the interesting
thing is is I pondered this particular little mysteries that
of all the people on all those chat boards and
forums and stuff like that, how do you know that
members of three three or one aren't actually, you know,
posting comments in there. Yeah, you don't, you don't know,

(05:44):
you don't, you have no idea? Yeah. Um. So the
puzzles are, as I said, kind of impossible to solve
on their own, and they're impossible for most groups to
solve as well. You have to be really, really smart,
as he was saying, there's a lot of information you
have to have in your head to know how to
do this. To even like you don't even have to
have the first hand knowledge but you know, like you

(06:06):
don't have to know how to like decode this one
specific kind of coding language, but you have to know
well enough that that's what that's in enough to like
google how to you know what for whatever. Anyways, Yeah,
you'd be able to go out and get to get
that with that one specific thing which I can't remember
the name program, one program that that helps you to
find a messages embedded INFLUD. We're going to talk a

(06:29):
lot um now that we've trampled all over your train
of thought at the beginning. Sure, all right, you guys, Ready,
it's a picture in a message, right, it starts out
that way. Let's talk about two, since it's the longest
to go and it was kind of the first one.

(06:49):
There's good documentation of it two thousand thirteen. There's better
document documentation of the actual puzzle pieces, but not as
good documentation of what may have happened, like after there's
a there's a very distinct breaking point where the followers
stop being able to follow the puzzles, which we'll talk

(07:12):
about again. I'm sorry to keep doing this. Everybody hates
it when I think that comes after the break. Yeah,
but the stuff after the break from two thousand twelve.
There's actually some stuff from that from two thousand thirteen
and two fourteen, there isn't really and actually two thousand
fourteen it's hot. You can't. I don't even know if

(07:33):
it's actually been I mean, I think it probably has,
but I think that the people the solvers have kind
of wised up enough to know not to be solving everything.
And the span of these puzzles is like a month,
and there are people, you know, there's one wiki which
you know, we're going to put on the website that

(07:53):
is is literally a community dedicated to solving these and
there are two thousand fourteen, they're still stuff gone like
one of the very early puzzles in two four and
they're you know, a large, large group of people. So okay, ready, okay, okay,
And I want to start out on two thousand twelve
with the fact that in the two thousands, there was

(08:14):
this thing that was really really popular called our alternate
reality games. Do you guys remember those? No? Okay? So actually, Bungee,
the creators of the Halo series, used one of these
to promote Halo two before it's released, and I think
two thousand five, I think is when it came out.
They released this game called I Love Bees. That was

(08:34):
a game that was it was a game that was
a game inside the Halo universe, so it was a
game that you played in an alternate reality. Okay, So
these were really popular, and the way that these were
often promoted or released was the same kind of way
that three three oh one made their presence known. First,

(08:54):
they you would release an image or basically a ta
I guess is the word I'm looking for. I don't
think that's the right word. I'm looking for a tease maybe, yeah,
a clue of some kind, and then you know, then
you would then they would drop the game and everybody
would be like, oh, that's so cool, We're gonna play
this game. And it's like an ultimariality. Yeah. So a

(09:16):
lot of people initially thought that this was just like
a really complex a r G. The image that was posted.
People started to try and decodeed the picture. Which is
the really easy way to decode a picture, right is
you export it as a t x T file a
text file, and then there's probably some text attached to it.

(09:36):
Oftentimes it's just yeah, oftentimes it's just a string of numbers,
and letters, and that's fine. Sometimes if there's an embedded
message in it, it'll come up with something else. And actually,
when you downloaded this first picture as a t x
T file, they got what's called a Caesar cipher, which
Joe I know knows what it is, and we've talked
about well we've talked about it a little bit and
I'll remind people of it in just a second. But

(09:58):
it says type Arius Claudius Caesar says, and then a
string of kind of asky type numbers, letters, symbols. Wow,
talking about making it easy, Well, okay, so this type
of cipher, the Caesar cipher, it's just like it's the
one where you just bump letters over a certain number
kind of and you you use the pad of Tiberius

(10:19):
Caesar de cide or whatever. Anyways, so people um decoded
this message, they were like, ah, this is super easy,
this is awesome. This is a fun little game for
everybody to play. And it led them to a u
r L that contained all that was on this u
r L was an image of a duck decoy that
read whoops, just decoys this way looks like you can't
guess how to get the message out, which is hilarious

(10:41):
to me, but it's so much right, so people a
lot of people also were like, well, this is obviously
just a troll, like, but other people, that's just so
much work to go to. I mean, it's not that
much work, but it's a good enough amount of work
to go to just to like know that people are
going to think, oh, we'll just do this thing and

(11:03):
we're so clever, look at us solving a mystery and
have it, you know, not only to have that be
embedded in the t x T file of the image,
but to have it actually lead to your all that
actually has an image that points out how dumb people.
If I'd been saying this puzzle up though, I would

(11:24):
have not done that. I would not have had a decoy.
I would have had more clues and more false leads
and just lead people several steps down before you finally
show them the I gotta be honest with you. I
think that that's there's so much other stuff that goes
into this whole set of puzzles that like that was
probably all they had time for, Like really, that's all
they had time for. It turns out that you have

(11:48):
to have a program called out guests, which is a
stagnantography program. Is that how you say that word? I'm
not sure that's pounced at photography or something better know
how what that is. That's when you embed messages in
JPEG's or other photographs and you have to have this
specific program to pull the messages out right, Yeah, I

(12:10):
think so. And all those things you have a lot
of information embedded in them. I mean they all have
like the make of the camera, the date, um, it's
kind of made it metadata. Yeah, it's like yeah, as
it's got all kinds of information about the photo, you know,
like the you know, the lens and focal length and
all kinds of stuff. But there's no reason you can't
put other stuff in there, and a lot of people do,
like terrorists for example. Well, so okay, and and just

(12:34):
to be clear, you had to run that initial image. Yes,
we're still talking about that first image. This is how
deep this is through out guests. And you got the
following message. Here's a book code. To find the book
and more information, go to our favorite website Reddit. There's

(12:55):
a subreaddit and then there's a list of numbers and
then it says good luck three three one. All of
their messages are signed good luck period three three o one.
This subredit is it's just full of ridiculous ciphers. Let
me show you, guys, and and we'll link it on
the website. Of course. This is the subredit. You're welcome.

(13:15):
What it is this subreddit, it's just ciphers. So these
are just ciphers that people have made up. No, these
are all from three three oh one. There's this one
poster you can see if you go through here. It's
all just one poster, but it's all you guys should
go check it out. I highly encourage it. I know

(13:36):
many of your redditors anyways, so just go on. Don't
up vote these things, don't do it anyways. It's just
ciphers and the metadata that you found by running through
this one the very first image throughout guests Lou sent
you there. I mean, this is like crazy already, right,
this is crazy already to me at least, I'm not great,

(13:57):
not great with puzzle solving in ciphers, but already like
this is too much work for me, which means I'm
lazy and should be weeded out. Probably. I was gonna say,
you get frustrated with you know, puzzles. It's true doing this. Yeah.
The interesting thing about about the string of numbers, and
it could mean anything. It could mean like say a
given book sif as a book cipher the outright say

(14:21):
this is a book code. To find the book and
more information go to Yeah, and then you gotta bring
you gotta solve the puzzle to find out the book.
And of course they found out the name of the book,
but what book it was. But what's interesting to me
is that it's a series of paired numbers. There's like
there's a number coal and another night like one twenty
could be page one, line twenty one character. But what's interesting,

(14:45):
and I don't understand why they do it this way,
is that you know, it's the first digit of every
one of those pared sequences. You notice that they all grow. Yeah,
they're sequential. There's a question. There's no reason for that.
Well except for that that's a that's a very three
three on one thing. They do this. There's no I
noticed that in a lot of a lot of their
ciphers that they were all doing that, and I thought,

(15:06):
really that's necessary in a book code. In fact, it's
probably not even a good thing. If you want to
have an unbreakable code. Well they don't. They don't they
want them to be breakable. They just want them to
be difficult. And they also it cultivates this aura around them.
You know, it's a style. It's a stylistic choice almost,
which is interesting because at this point we're so far

(15:27):
into code writers right and cipher makers that we're talking
about the stylistic merits of each individual code. So that's
that's interesting. But anyways, on this subreddit, not only were
all these like jumbled letters and all of that stuff,
there are also two pictures images. I guess pictures is

(15:48):
not the right word. One was called welcome and the
other one was called problems. And from here on out
when we're talking about images, I'll just add they, um
all of them are decoded without guests, because at this
point people have figured out that's how you do it.
And they all contain a thing called a PGP signature,
which stands for pretty good pass key signature You're welcome,

(16:12):
which basically authenticates that the images and the embedded code
are coming directly from three three oh one. I'm not
going to get into how PGP codes work. Google it
if you're very curious it's kind of complex. It's a
little complex. It exists, and then you have to have
an authentication code. And yeah, so it's it's a go

(16:38):
google it if you have questions, or you can just
accept that that's a thing, whichever you prefer. And the now,
the thing with PGP PGP codes is is you can't
forge somebody others, somebody else, somebody else's signature. Correct well
you And that's this is where the whole key thing
comes in, is that they only work with a certain key,

(17:00):
and that it's impossible apparently to forge the signature plus
the key to get any kind of incorrupted data. As
I said, go google it if you guys have questions.
I am not a computer science person. So much time. Also,
we only have so much time. The episodes are exactly
forty two minutes. That allows that allows time for commercial breaks.

(17:24):
So talk fast. I'll talk really fast. Welcome the image.
The code revealed in this essentially just said Hey, from
now on, all of the images that come from US
are going to have this pass key. Here's the here's
the key. This is this is how you this is
how you authenticate that this stuff is from US. Problems message,

(17:46):
read the key has always been right in front of
your eyes. This isn't the quest for the Holy Grail.
Stop making it more difficult than it is. Good Luck
three one. That's so kind of them, isn't it. Yeah,
that's so kind of them. Good luck to be split in.
You guys are making this way harder than it is.
This is actually very simple. Just would you guys just

(18:06):
figure it out. It turns out that the subreddit header
is some symbols which were undecoded, and they gave some
numbers suce essentially, which was a key that allowed users
to decode all of the strings, and the subreddit which
produced some things useful, the most useful of which was

(18:30):
a phone number. So this is where things get a
little weird. You call the phone number and you get
a message. Do you guys want to hear what the
message sounded like? Very good? You have done well. There
are three prime numbers associated with the original final dot
j pegg image. One is one of them. You will

(18:55):
have to find the other two to apply all three
of these numbers together and at a dot com on
the end to find the next step. Good luck, goodbye. Well,
that's not creepy or anything, No, not at all. So
actually the next little puzzle clue, this is actually very
simple for them. Uh you know, it said that you

(19:18):
would find the there are three prime numbers associated with
the original final jpeg image. Right. It turns out there
was the three three oh one was one of them,
which they said. The other two were actually the height
and width of the image, which okay, okay, yes, it's
interesting that they made the height and with prime number
prime numbers, sure, whatever, But that's pretty simple, right compared

(19:41):
to like some of the other stuff that we've seen
so far, that that's a simple way to hide the information.
It's not a simple thing to figure out because you
know that everybody is combing back through the code of
the image and not looking at When you view a
image on your computer, you find it and it says

(20:02):
final name, and it says x by x size and
it gives you the dimensions. I met so many people
just blew right by that obvious thing that you see
all the time. Well now and and well you know,
and and they always put that up there. You know,
if you look at the image properties, they'll have you know,
twelve five pixels by pixels or something like that. But

(20:24):
you know, in retrospect, it seems pretty obvious, but probably yeah,
if you're like, a, yeah, they probably would not occur
to a lot of people. Now, So the two numbers
heighten them with multiplied by three three one resulted in
the number eight four five one five four five one
to seven of note this number is actually contained in

(20:46):
brackets in their PGP code. So that's cool. That right,
that's weird. That had to be a lot of work
to to figure out, Okay, what can we do? How
do we do this? That would be difficult. So I
guess if you were fairly savvy Internet user you could have.
I guess kind of guessed that, but probably not. And

(21:06):
it's interesting. This is something that you see kind of
happened a lot in these puzzles. There are these very weird,
really eerie coincidences that keep happening over and over again.
This I think is one of them. I think it
was obvious. They're they're well engineered, they're very well engineered,
and they're they tie back into themselves. You know, a

(21:28):
lot of a lot of times puzzles just keep going
clue after clue, and they just spawn in kind of
a linear fashion. And this is more like a folded
piece of paper just suddenly wraps back on itself and
goes in the opposite direction and then comes back to
it like a piece of origami almost. It's very elegant. Yeah.
So the website, obviously it was the number dot com.

(21:49):
If you went to it and it was too early,
you saw this countdown. It was an image of a
cicado with a countdown and the image run throughout. Guests
told people when to return to the site. They said
to return to the site on January nine. Just for
two seconds, let's talk about the fact that that first
image appeared on January five, and four days later. This

(22:13):
is where we are. This is four days you guys,
like the one out for like a month about Yeah,
the very last day of two thousand twelves puzzle was
February three. The Internet nerds must have been going insane.
And that's so freaking fast have to figure out any
of that. Was there an expiration on that website? Yes,

(22:35):
there was a start and an end on that website.
How long was it you remember, I'm going to say
a couple of hours at the most. Really, Yeah, and
so it's gonna get even more interesting, Yeah, for real?
When users returned at the specified time there was There
wasn't in fact, like a universal time is the u

(22:56):
TM or something like that time code stamped on it.
The image had changed and when you ran it throughout guests,
it returned a series of real world coordinates. This is
they were longitude and latitude coordinates. So this is when people,

(23:16):
the users or solvers realized that this was more than
just a you know, an Internet troll or a really
savvy you know, it could have been created by somebody
who was like super smart. It could have been their
masterpiece from their basement. But these longitude and latitude coordinates
pointed all over the world literally like South Korea, Dallas

(23:39):
were multiple. I think that I don't remember the number
on this one. I the other one. There's an actual
list on two thousand thirteen. There's an actual list, But
there were I think four or five in two thousand
and twelve, and they were far reaching. Well yeah, and
I was going to say, is I remember that they
popped up in a number of locations, you know, Australia

(24:01):
and Alabama and the UK. I mean, and I'm making
those locations ups, but yeah, you are, because none of
those are. But what I'm saying is that they were
all over and so in that when that happened, it
gave all it's just how many locations five I don't remember.
Let's just say it was five, because I know there's
been varying numbers and getting them all mixed up. There

(24:22):
better documentation for two teams, right, But if there's five locations,
all five locations coordinates were provided, is that correct? Y? Yeah?
And each one led to most of them led to
like telephone poles that had just printed paper with a
picture of a cicada with a QR code beneath it,

(24:42):
which is probably what most people are most familiar with
when it comes to this story, that image pictures of that,
you know, on a telephone pole. There are some that
were on bus stops, you know, posted in the back.
The one, the one in Korea from two thousand and
thirteen was like on the back of like a buff shelter,
public places, places anybody could get to. Yeah. So so

(25:04):
this is this kind of in a case to me
that either three zero one is a big organization like
m I six or the KGB or whatever, or more
likely it's a bunch of guys who were like, you know,
are scattered around the world and connected via Internet, right,
And that was actually the thing that's that's where I
was kind of going with it, was that it made
people realize that this wasn't just like one loan dude

(25:27):
sitting in his basement, that this was a far reaching
network that actually had to have some resources. You know,
they had this phone number, but you can hear I
think we've probably edited out the like redial redirect in
the video, but you can hear when they when you
called that phone number, you dial the phone number and
then it redirects to another phone number and then you

(25:49):
get the message. They hosted numerous websites. You know, it's anonymously.
It's not just hosting it because it's easy to buy.
We know firsthand it's easy to just buy a domain
and host something on it, but to do that anonymously
is less easy. And sure you can hack a thing
and find whatever, but to get your specific U r

(26:10):
L specific everything, you know, that's that's it requires resources. Yeah,
and so this also was when people realized that they
had to work together because there was no way that
people were going to be able to get to all
these places short of having their own private jet and
also a lot of permissions around the world to just

(26:31):
fly in wherever, whenever, because there was this feeling of
you know that the whole first part of this had
taken four days. You know, who knows how long the
time stamp on these QR codes was. And but also
you know, who knows how long that piece of paper
is going to last exactly? Yeah, And I guess, I
guess it's interesting because we're about to read the two messages.

(26:54):
There were two messages that were turned from the QR codes.
There are two separate ones from many of the different
QR code's in which three three oh one kind of
admonishes people for being followers not solvers on this specific puzzle,
because I just I think it's interesting because this clue
necessitates people working together so much. The two different codes

(27:18):
that you could find were in twenty nine volumes. Knowledge
was once contained how many lines of code remained when
the mab mab magnodon mamadozan pause, go for that far
in the beginning and find my first name. And then

(27:38):
there was a string of numbers similar to the ones
that we found in the previous with the you know,
two sets of numbers looking like a cipher. You've shared
too much at this point. We want the best, not
the followers. Thus the first few there will receive the
prize good luck through three O one admonishment for the followers. Right.

(27:59):
In fact, Cicada one the group three one are are
the people who coined the term followers. I did not
originally catch that. Yeah, that's the first time you see
that actually crop up up in anything. They're really directing
a lot of things that I don't know if that's

(28:19):
intentional or not, but that's definitely a lot of power
and it will be just to do you know what
I'm saying. Yeah, I think I think that it would
be hard to say that they were not aware of
what they're doing. It is, you know, this is part puzzle,
part social experiment, and that's I think the thing that
creeps people at the most about it. But let's read

(28:41):
what happened what the next one was to the other
QR code, since that's what we were talking about before
we went on a tiny little side track there read
a poema fading death, named for a king, meant to
be read only once, then vanished alas it could not
remain unseen. Numbers again, you share too much of this point.
We want the best, not the followers. Thus the first

(29:02):
few there will receive the prize. Good luck three one
book codes obviously they Steve is making a face like,
I don't know, I don't understand how it's obvious. Listen,
the numbers are the code, right, but the little refrains
the poems in front of it, our descriptions of the book.

(29:23):
Both of them put together our descriptions of the book. Okay,
and Agrippa also a Greek philosopher or some famous Greek guy.
Is it also refers to this book. It's called Agrippa
a Book of the Dead, which was banned. It's by
William Gibson, I think it was. It came out and
in fact, interesting fun facts about this book. It was

(29:46):
only ever released on a three point five floppy disc
program to encrypt itself after after a single use it
read is a one itself. Yeah, this is like the
Inspector gadget thing. This message will self destructed. They're using

(30:08):
this cipher that's right, that is, But what do you
think about it? It's like, you know, it's how many
people are going to know the existence of this book
and the fact that it goes away after the first
reading and can't be reviewed again, not many and then
and you know, I suspect that at this point, you know,
it's on Google Books or like somebody's upload a PDF
of it or something, right, you know, by two thou twelve,

(30:29):
it's not like, really you had to go find your
three point five floppy drive and go find an old
copy of it or whatever. That's you know, the timeline
of the solving of this does not lead to that.
I'm sure it exists somewhere on the internet. I have
not done my research to prove that it has exists
on the internet, but I'm just gonna everything else doesn't exist. Yeah,

(30:54):
of course it does. Yeah, anyways, it led to a
tour you or all you guys know what torres, right,
The Onion onions, the one that the dark the dark Web. Yeah,
the Tor project. It's an Onion network. It's basically anonymous.

(31:18):
It is anonymous. Actually, it's an onion network refers to
you guys are watching my hand right now, refers to
layers upon layers upon layers. Essentially, what an Onion network
will do is once you log into it, it masks
your i SP address in so many different layers. It
just pings you all around. It is a thing on

(31:43):
which you can access things that you cannot access any
other way. The Silk Road is a great example of it.
We just talked about. Anonymous makes great use of it.
Most hackers make great use of it. It's also free,
open source. If you feel like just playing around on
the dark web, you can download it and use it immediately.

(32:04):
Not condoning that, but do whatever you want to do. Yeah,
it's like that's one of those things you know, you don't.
You probably don't want to do that because who knows
that probably give some nar do well back door access
in your computer when you run that. So I just think, yeah,
it doesn't, but don't do it anyways. You'll see things
that cannot be unseen. Let's leave it at that. Let's

(32:24):
let's leave it at that. The tour site was a
message that read congratulations, Please create a new email address
with a public, free web based service once you've it
says once you've never used before. That's why I keep
stumbling on it. It means one you've never used before. Obviously,
we recommend you do this while still using tour for anonymity.

(32:47):
We will email you a number within the next few days,
in order of which you arrived at this page. Once
you've received it, come back to this page and append
the slash then the number you received this u r L.
For example, if you're saved this number, then you would
go to http colin slash slash the U r L
of the tour added dot onions slash the number that

(33:11):
you receive. That makes sense, you guys. I know you
guys are looking at it. I know that our listeners
are not looking at Any way to think about it
is there's a web address www dot Google dot com,
slash number, and then you would insert your number after
you know, slash Google, slash inner your number, and that
would take you somewhere else. Yeah. This is uh, this

(33:32):
is where the brake comes. Actually the brake, the brake
we were talking about the brake earlier. This is where
followers stop being able to follow because it's the interesting
three three oh one starts emailing only specific people, specific instructions. Now,
what happened in two thousand twelve is interesting. Everybody who

(33:56):
received this email, everybody that people generally except were the
solvers in two twelve, you know, probably got the everything right,
sent the right email, all that stuff disappears off the
interne at this point, at least with the handles that
they were using at their activity. Their activity drops off,
which is to be expected. I think if you are

(34:18):
granted access to the inner sanctum of a group like
three through one, you're probably gonna go dark. Even if
it's just that handle that you were using, you're probably
gonna go dark. Except for this one dude who's a ruiner.
And he's definitely that kid who cheated when you played
like heads Up seven Up as a kid, Like he
like saw your shoes and he was like, oh, I
know it was you. You know that guy. You guys

(34:40):
know that guy. I know that guy. But I don't
know what heads up seven up is. You don't know
what heads up seven up is? Oh man, okay something
for another episode. It doesn't matter anyways, So none of
this is verifiable. And he was the lucky few they
trusted him, and he's a jerk and an awful human being.
And I cannot stress enough how annoyed I am, but

(35:01):
also how happy I am that he mirrored and screen
capped and copy pasted onto many different websites the email
he received from three three oh one. What was the email. Well,
we're going to talk about that right now. The email
was a final clue, while it was instructions on a

(35:21):
final clue essentially, and it was an r s A puzzle.
You guys have so much googling to do. I'm so sorry.
I'm not even going to explain what an r s
A puzzle is. It's the except for to say that
it's kind of a fancy online cryptograph basically so complicated.
In fact, it's so complicated that every single website or

(35:43):
article that you read about three three oh one at
this point either like just glosses over the fact that
an r s A puzzle exists or literally says and
I quote, if you don't understand how it was solved,
go ask in a chat room. I am not lying.
That is how complicated in our essay code is. You
can't just google it. You can, but then you have

(36:04):
to read like a Wikipedia page that's like really really long, guys.
I promise it's gonna be way easier if you'd like
feel like you really need to know what it is.
I don't know that it's it's imperative to understand when
r s A code is to understand. If it's that,
just go google it or ask in a chat room. Yeah.
When this code was solved, the solver got a second

(36:26):
email containing an M I d I puzzle, a MIDI
puzzle if you will, which is audio. Yeah it is.
And that key to that puzzle was a song. I
am not lying. This is not the only time they
did this. I wish I could find this one but
three three one composed a song and each tone in

(36:49):
that song corresponds to a letter, which corresponds to a
word that you then have to decode, which is so
cool and easy. I can't even deal with it. So now,
so now each each note then on the on the
scale was corresponded to a letter. Okay, so and this

(37:12):
and the song again, the song was the encrypted message,
or the song was the key the song with the
encrypted message along with that, y uh, there was another
song that you had to figure out what it was
by like a weird also kind of the way that
people had to figure out what Agrippia or Agrippa was

(37:32):
just kind of a vague description of the song. They
found out it was this other song that was actually
the key to the code that they had found in
the tones of the song, was it Loving You by
Mini Ripton? It was not. Thank God. I'm at this point.
I feel the dumbest I've ever felt my entire life,

(37:53):
because there's literally no way that I could figure any
of this out. Ever. Ever, the message that you found
once you decoded the song, that was super easy to
figure out that it was tones that corresponded to letters.
The message was very good. You have proven to be
the most dedicated to come this far to attain enlightenment.

(38:14):
Create a it says GPG, but it probably means p
g P key for your email address and upload it
to the mick key servers. Then encrypted with the following
word list using the Cicada three three oh one public key.
Sign it with your key, send the askey armored cipher

(38:35):
text to the Gmail account from which you received your numbers,
and your words are And then there was a unique
list of words for each different solver, like this one
says garden ball, house, cat, shore head, gallon, and and
again this we know this because the spoiler there's a ruiner,
and this the spoiler put this out on the internet. Yeah, okay,

(38:58):
so messages were sent and no one knows what the
next part was nobody knows how long it took sa
Kadaree three oh one to reply. All anybody knows is
that about a month later, February third one posted on
the aforementioned subreddit. It's still the top message on that subreddit,

(39:21):
saying that they had found the individuals they were looking
for and thanks or whatever. They didn't actually say thanks
or whatever. It's a very diplomatic message, but that's what
they said. That was it for three and sixty six days,
and we didn't we don't know how many people actually
solved it. They found who they were looking for, apparently,

(39:43):
and that's the whole That's another bit of the puzzle, right,
is that like, for all we know, they found nobody
exactly exactly in the end, I mean, because because in
the end, if I recall, right, you went to a
website and that was like, you know, the Holy Grail,
and then but if you were and among the first people,
then they just basically shut the website down. That's that's

(40:05):
the later year. That was actually the three and sixty
six days later, Okay, when it started all over again
in two. It's all just similar puzzles, lots more complex now.
The first one happened January fourth, jan fifth. The first
one hit on the fifth of two twelve, so the

(40:26):
next one is the sixth of January. Because it was okay,
because it was weird that they bumped in a day. Yeah,
I don't know if it was intentional or time zones. Oh,
that's okay if that makes sense, possibility. But you know
the thing about it is, I'd like to point out
the people who are working on these puzzles, they really

(40:47):
need to get alive. Yeah, I think that's probably fair. Yeah,
this one had it's a little They also had a
song in this I'm not I'm obviously not going to
go into the kind of detail we just went into.
You you guys don't have to hear my voice for
another forty hours, But I do want to talk about
this song because it's very interesting. Uh, we're gonna play

(41:08):
a little bit of it at least, maybe Steve will
be generous to me and like edit the rest of
it in who knows, we'll see, But here's a little
bit of it. The music was accompanied by a message

(41:43):
way Yeah, I like it. I could listen to that
like all day. There's a hum underneath it that they
found that they don't totally know what's up with yet,
but that's fine. A crappy mixture like the one that
we were using. Yeah, Like, if you listen to all
of the episodes, we also have a We actually embedded
that on purpose in anticipation of this episode. The days

(42:06):
of the background tone. Yeah, listen to the variations of
the tone. There's a there's a coded message, there is
go for it. You were terrible. The Instar emergence parable
one billion, five million, two hundred and seventy seven thousand,

(42:27):
six hundred and forty one another that many parables there are,
like the Instar tunneling to the surface. We must shed
our own circumferences, find the divinity within the emergence, within
any merge, within any merge. Thank you. I'm just messing.
It was the numbers. It was the numbers. I got

(42:49):
confused because I got so excited about the numbers I'm
about to talk about right now. The song I think
it's two minutes and forty seven seconds long, which is
actually a hundred and sixty seven seconds long. Now, Yeah,
I'm sorry. I thought I misspoke, but I didn't, And
the file was saved as seven hundred and sixty one,
MP three, both prime numbers reversible of each other. They

(43:12):
call them emmerps, which are prime numbers that are anagrams
of no no no, which are with that board and
backwards of each other. An antagram is switching no. An
anagram is being able to switch the letters around for
something else. It's a I don't remember, it doesn't matter,

(43:35):
it doesn't matter, it doesn't really matter. That number will
come and play in just a second. We're not going
to talk a whole lot about it again. The two
thirteen also saw a Linux based OS only for Cicada.
That was how they launched it. Uh. They made use
of Twitter, which was almost literally impossible to solve. One

(43:56):
guy did it and shared it, but the community as
a whole was pretty stumped by all of the Twitter
stuff for like an entire day, which, if you guys
have learned anything about three three oh one, being stuck
on one clue for an entire day is like basically
death in top in the puzzle solving, the puzzles were
getting more and more complicated, because, you know, the two

(44:18):
thousand twelve puzzles had become popular and people had been
talking about the unsolved mystery qualities of it. So once
this two thirteen puzzle started, there were so many more
followers or almost solvers sort of, so the puzzles we're
getting really really complicated. And eventually the solvers revealed two

(44:42):
files within the original Linux OS that I just like
totally backhanded mentioned two seconds ago that were called Wisdom
and Folly. Wisdom was exactly the same as Folly, except
for that it didn't have a file type, which is
kind of weird. So Wisdom was wisdom. I'm just making

(45:04):
this up again, as I do with everything. Wisdom dot
t x T. No, it was just Wisdom was like
folly dot okay ahead of backwards. Okay, all right, I
got it. I was just making sure. So so basically
you had to just like randomly started signing file type
extensions to it. And both of those were the files

(45:24):
that contained the real world locations of the QR codes,
one of which was in Portland, Oregon. And actually, this
is this is interesting to me. I'm sorry, it's a
weird little tangent. I plugged the launch student latitude into
Google Maps to see where it was, street viewed it
and it's actually leads to a website how hosting storefront

(45:45):
on Powel Boulevard in Portland in southeast Portland that is
connected to a coffeehouse that I've been to recently and
still for some reason has an Internet cafe component to it,
like it has an old like an old old desktop
computer attached to like an Ethernet cable. True, which is weird.

(46:10):
Did you check out the telephone pole out in front? No,
but it's I just think that like I don't. I
didn't check out on any of the other ones. It
seems to mostly be just random telephone poles and bus
stops and stuff. For whatever reason, It's very odd to
me that that would be the place that they would
pick to put the one in Portland. But well, I'm
sure that all of their locations were seemingly random to

(46:34):
anybody that wasn't in the No fair totally fair again.
The QR code led to a tour dot onion site,
which led to the creation of emails for the solvers
which there were links sent to them by puzzles. Apparently
that led to there was a little bit of a
leaker in this one as well. It led to a
nineteen question questionnaire that started out as multiple choice questions

(46:58):
with a set of like kind of weird answers that
were like true false and determinate what will be will
be no answer, both sort of stuff. There were also
some questions that were filling your own answer. The quiz
doesn't really matter. I mean, it probably doesn't matter. Obviously,
it matters for the solvers. The interesting bit for us

(47:19):
is that the site that the quiz was hosted on
save two cookies to each solver's computer, which were a
hundred and sixty seven equals and asky code and seven
and sixty one equals and ask you code. You guys
remember those numbers. That's fine. So again we have that

(47:40):
moment where we're just like it again. It's that elegance
of tying it back into the beginning. So, I mean, really,
so I get this feeling that what they're doing is
that they're trying to get people who I think I
mentioned this before. It's it's the very linear and the

(48:01):
not so linear, and they're trying to weed out the
people who are thinking very linear and leaving the I
figured this part out behind and not really exploring everything
in that clue before they go on to the next bit.
It's you know, it's like those old legend of Zelda
and stuff used to do that as you'd I know,
this is weird, but you'd be playing the original legend

(48:23):
of Zelda and you'll be going through an area and
you'd see this thing and you think, wow, that was
really weird. I can't get to it. Oh well, and
you'd go along and then a couple of levels later
you'd get the bombs and you had to come back
with the bomb to get into. I mean, it's just
like this this weird looping and and stopping people from
just rushing forward instead of exploring the whole thing. Yeah,

(48:46):
it's like I guess that for me, it would be
kind of like the portal to train where you can
go through and like just do all the missions, but
you missed this entire like side story if you like
don't explore all the areas. And I think that that's
it's pretty significant that like they're these little like easter
eggs almost hidden throughout, but also speaks of something that's

(49:08):
very well planned. It's not like, you know, they just decide, oh,
or we'll do it again maybe and then we'll like
figure it out from there. It's so elegantly planned, so
everything has a purpose and a meaning yeah, So to
get back to the strings of so called ASKY code

(49:29):
or those in plain text, were they unencrypted or were
they encrypted? There were cookies, I don't I don't know
they were just I don't think you can encrypt a cookie. Well,
I mean what I mean is, so if it's a
string of ASKI code, then that represents letters and numbers. Correct.
And so did anybody you know, decipher the asking to
figure out what if there was a message there? No,

(49:51):
because there were instructions. I mean, it just kind of
continued to go on. I don't think that anybody tried
to decode it, or if they did, they didn't find anything.
This is my understanding of it, and I could be wrong.
The solvers were after that, asked to create a server
of their very own, with a lot of very specific
protocols that include a stipulation that if a user returned

(50:13):
a false something that it had to elegantly sign off
greeting or something like that. I mean, it's just it
was very complex. It was definitely targeted to weed out
the lazy people and the followers and only get the
solvers got it. That was it. I think it was
like two weeks after that they they said that had

(50:36):
to be created by February third, and then two weeks
after February three, the servers started to get pinged, and
that was the last thing anybody heard, or that's the
last week. That's the last that anybody who's around still
talk about it, or is still talking about it, heard
how many servers were talking about here a lot. I
don't know. I don't know if anybody knows the exact number,

(51:00):
because they're all user created, and it's totally possible that
somebody was figuring out these puzzles on their own and
never said anything to anybody anyways. And then again in
two thousand fourteen, this time they launched their puzzles with Twitter,
and as I said before, I'm not totally sure that
it's been solved. And there's some argument as to whether

(51:22):
or not it's a legitimate three three oh one recruitment
or not. So many things, is an impostor yeah, you know,
launched on Twitter slightly different all you know, a lot
of people are thinking impossible. But the Twitter handle that
was used in twenty two launch was also the same

(51:44):
Twitter handle that was used very briefly in and that handle,
if I correct me, if I'm wrong, but after he
did whatever it did in the beginning of just what
silent and just no activity, and suddenly it came to
life again. That's true. I will say Twitter not the

(52:06):
most secure thing. Um. Also, there is some kind of
speculation about ten maybe not being real. I think two
thirteen was probably real. I think that there's a lot
of stuff that went into that that three three oh
one it would have been too much work for any
person to recreate. But two fourteen it's hard to tell.

(52:30):
But really, I mean, the other big question are really
the big question here right now that we've talked about
all these puzzles, You're welcome, everybody is who the heck
is cicada? Three three oh one? M M. I guess
there's a couple of things that are like interesting. The
only one of which that I really want to talk
about is the fact that cicada, the word cicada is

(52:52):
in it in itself a prime word. What do you
what do you mean by that? Well, so we were
just talking about anagram's right word that you can make
using the letters of any other word, uh, and you can't.
Cicada is literally the only word that you can make
with those letters. In English. Well, yeah, okay, in English. Yeah,

(53:13):
but they don't call themselves cicada, right, They just put
up a picture of a cicada or what appears to
be a cicada, but which is not necessarily a cicada. Yeah,
but it's still interesting. I think it's still interesting. They
associate themselves with that animal and in English cicada. And
that's a It's a prime word, as is three three
oh one is also a prime number. Right, So there's

(53:34):
a prime quality that is fairly interesting, um, including the
fact that three three oh one not only is a
prime number, but if you add all the digits together,
it creates a prime number, which is seven. Interesting, I
guess a little bit. I don't know. I don't know
enough about math to know if all prime numbers are
if you add them up they return prime numbers or not.

(53:56):
I don't think that they do, not necessarily, but cicada.
But if you add them up, there's there's six letters
in the word though, right, yes, you say they add
up to seven. No, three three oh one, Okay, misunderstood.
That is a bit confusing. And of course, the thing

(54:16):
about primes is they are indivisible. In other words, their
individual because an individual is someone who cannot be divided down.
So in the sense, and then of course these guys
they're slogan is of course they're all about individualism, privacy, freedom,
that kind of thing, and security. So you guys want

(54:38):
to talk about the like big bulk theories of there's
no I was talking to Steve earlier and like, we're
just gonna like say some stuff like people say, hey,
it could be this person or could be that person.
There's literally no evidence to suggest any of it. We're
just going to say some stuff. That's literally how we're
going to do theories is I'm just going to say, oh,

(55:00):
it could be these people, but who knows. And then
I'm gonna say, or it could be these people and
who knows. Yeah, but this is not the whole idea
of like the intelligence services. And I know that's one
of the theories that's out there. It's like it's it's
been done in the past that they even back as
far as World War Two, I mean the Brits, British
intelligence was putting crossword puzzles and other things in the papers.

(55:22):
So the thing that's actually interesting about that for me
is that the it's we'll just jump into this. The
c I A the n s A M sixteen. I'm sorry, Emma,
intelligence NOMATIC M I six kgb. People say, oh, it's
recruitment for them. They model their tests for code breaking

(55:44):
and ciphers on these codes and ciphers. Sure, government agencies
can be shady. Absolutely. Could they be creating all of
these puzzles and ciphers and tests and then saying, oh,
my gosh, those are so good that we should pub
locally face create some stuff that is a test like that.

(56:04):
But they don't. Their their tests aren't as good as these,
like they're just not. So. Yeah, it could be. It
could be the government, but I I don't think it is.
And I also don't think you know, it's like really
far reaching and kind of it just doesn't seem right
to me. I don't know. Steve's got a eyebrow raised

(56:26):
face on um, Okay, this is way off the beaten path,
but that tends to be where I am with these
kind of stories, and I just hang out in the weeds.
I'm looking at the list of possible whoever is making
these and the thing that I tie together and and

(56:51):
bear with because I'm going to kind of trample through
this a little bit on Alright, So we've talked about
government agencies. The other ones that I see here are
anonymous Illuminati scientologists, which is hilarious, Google, terrorists, organizations, and

(57:17):
aliens and aliens, but aliens know how to use Twitter.
Is that I mean, that's that's just kind of a
snapshot of the organization. And I'm wondering if maybe we're
not making a huge air is when we're trying to

(57:38):
figure this out of presuming that this is made by
a group. And what I mean by that is the
puzzle is made by a group of very intelligent people
working together, very clever people working together. As I look
at some of these things, I mean we talked about

(57:59):
the prime numbers are always tied in and there's a
lot of serious math and a lot of serious codes.
Prime no. But I wish it was um Now, what
I'm what I'm looking at is I'm wondering if it
isn't that a savant of some kind. In other words,

(58:21):
let's just say that there is one person we'll just
call them the Sherlock Holmes of puzzles, that hyper intelligent
person who figures this out and just for a year
because This is how folks that think that way. They
just get so focused and they just work on these things,

(58:42):
and then somebody else is helping them to publicize and
to put it out and put it in all its locations.
But it could be a single individual. Do I think
it is not likely? I think some helpers. I think
that's that's underlings. Let's just say that. So, so we've

(59:05):
got we've got, you know, the super smart guy, and
then he's got his minions, and his minions are going
about and putting up the signs in South Korea or
where or Portland or wherever they are. I guess that
one person is doing I just the question for that is,
like to what end? You know? The reason that people
do the whole group thing that think it's a group

(59:27):
is that it's a recruitment, right that. That's how people
make sense of this, is that because it actually kind
of publicly says, right, hey, we're recruiting a lot of
really intelligent people, and you have to prove your intelligence
to even like be granted primary access to us. And
for one person who's a savant, like, what the what

(59:48):
the endgame there is? Is it just because they want
to like interact with other smart people, well their societies
for that, there groups for that. There's no need to
like do this and like have the underlings who somehow
are like being totally silent, because as we've learned, there
are ruiners everywhere, more than one, you know, pretty much
always get busted open. But yeah, I wonder if you

(01:00:10):
know there's there's there's a certain level with things where
people make extremely hard puzzles. Is they want to prove
that they are so good at doing it, that they
make it so well that nobody can figure out. Those

(01:00:31):
people are generally so prideful that like after that first year,
we would they would have been like, hey, guys, guess
what I did this, but nobody figured it out. I
did it, or at least maybe you know the fact
that it has continued on you guys. I'm not disagreeing
with you guys, but I think there's another way of
looking at it too, which is a reverse and that
it's not a recruitment program and it's it's it's actually

(01:00:53):
a resume. So let's suppose you want to catch the
eye of the N s A and you want them
to hire you. So and there was there was one
or two persons out there, Like there was one guy
who actually was interviewed for a fairly lengthy article about
his participation in this whole thing and how he solved
all this stuff and everything. So he was the one

(01:01:13):
who like went up to the break and was like, yeah,
I totally solved it. But actually he like he actually
created the whole thing and solved it and didn't really
solve it because he already knew that he already needs
the solutions to it. And this is a way of
looking at making himself appear to be incredibly uber smart
potential employers and not just It's really interesting is that,

(01:01:35):
Like when I read that article, I was just kind
of like, you don't know that the guy actually did anything? Yeah,
I didn't. I wasn't super impressed with his abilities. I
guess no. I mean as far as those leaked emails,
you don't even know if those things were real. Yeah, yeah,
there's no id there's no chance that you just don't
know it could have been. That's a great point, could
have been a red herring. Well, and that's why we

(01:01:57):
say we you know is your experts and three one
and that's why that there's that break, right, is that
you can say, up until this point, we can publicly
verify via you know, screenshots, via many anecdotal evidences, that
was the wrong phrasing, and we don't care that these

(01:02:19):
things had happening. There's hard proof of all those things.
And at that point, once they switch over to the
email stuff, you just take you're just taking on faith
that like that existed. You don't actually know. But yeah, anyway,
emails may never have actually happened. They were typed up
and then screen capped, and yeah, they never really or

(01:02:39):
not even I mean, or it was just somebody who
was like crap, like I wasn't smart enough to get
the email, like I better fake it and make people
think that I leaked it, and that's why I got
like shut out or whatever. You know that there is
no way to know. There's no way to know that
once you created your server, once you create your email.
Didn't the guy who, as you refer to him, the ruiner,

(01:03:03):
the ruiner, didn't the ruiner suddenly start saying didn't he
take down the stuff that he had put up? And
kind of backtracked a lot on what he did? Am
I incorrect and remembering it that way? I don't remember
that I thought that there was something about he put
some stuff up and then publicity came his way and

(01:03:27):
suddenly like sort of changed his tools. He put stuff up,
and then there was a second set of emails that
was sent out to a lot of people apparently that
essentially it was, well, there was a change to that
initial like website that said we're going to send out emails,
but said we're going to sound out a second round

(01:03:48):
of emails because y'all are ruiners. Everything that we sent
out no longer works. You have to do it again, essentially.
But I don't remember him like backtrack, and I may
have just inferred in the way that I read it,
but I thought that he kind of backtracked and changed
his tow and almost like whoever was in contact with
him got in contact with him saying, uh, nude screwed

(01:04:12):
up and if you don't fix this, I'm going to
break your legs. Kind of yeah, yeah, do you guys
want to talk about some more of the people that
already listen? Ye? The next group is anonymous, And I
think there is no need for Anonymous to do something
like this every day from just like super mundane hackers

(01:04:35):
like and that this is not the skill This is
not the skill set they're looking for. Well, and it
may be, but it doesn't matter because like they have,
they don't need to be recruiting like this. They have
so many like fanboys just like crying to be a
part of them, that are talented enough. Probably, I'm sure,
I'm sure of it. Yeah, No, I mean I think that,

(01:04:56):
like that's the whole thing is like Anonymous has enough
popularity they don't have like this they can weed people
out of. It doesn't fit their m Yeah that's at all.
It doesn't I don't see them going this way. Yeah,
it doesn't fit their mo except to say that they
kind of like that, like the elegance sort of thing,

(01:05:16):
and they do kind of oftentimes. Some of the quotes
the emails some members of Anonymous talk that way. But
also to say that Anonymous is like a single minded
hive mind is the most inaccurate thing I've ever heard
in my entire life. It's not this is so like
pointed and driven that uh yeah, I just know. Okay,

(01:05:44):
the Illuminati, who we don't even know really exists, but
they do, and they would have the resources for this
next scientology. That's how much credit I'm going to give
the Illuminati sorry everything. Yeah, actually, I know you really
want us to talk about the Illuminati at some point, yeah,
will maybe so. Scientology I don't quite understand. Again, I think,

(01:06:09):
like anonymous, they're not really looking for this particular skill set. Well,
and Scientology, I don't know a lot. I've done very
minimal investigation into scientology, but they seem to do some
kind of strange things, So in a way, I could

(01:06:30):
see them being the perpetrators here. But I don't get
why that that that they're not looking for people who
can solve puzzles and do cryptology. I mean, Scientology has
done some very off the rails kind of things. Are
you aware that they massively infiltrated the US government? Yeah?
They did, yeah, big time, especially the I R. S U. Yeah,

(01:06:53):
but that's not the kind of thing where crypto cryptological
skills and puzzle solving is really unnecessary thing. I don't
think it looking for people with the skill set. I mean,
I think that the thing that's interesting about scientology, right,
and the reason that this kind of crops up in
in this sort of theories is these sort of theories,
these sort of theories, is that honestly, like we don't
know what Scientology is doing, Like we don't know what

(01:07:16):
they actually actually don't know what they're endgaming. We do
know one thing about what they're doing, which is that
they're not doing very well. Well they have their membership
has collapsed, you know. I think the interesting thing on
that is that like that yes, from what we can from,
but who knows, Like maybe this is them like me,
I don't know, they are like an actual real world

(01:07:38):
secret organization. Maybe you're a Scientologist, I don't know, I
might be. You don't know. Google is the next one,
And I actually kind of like this theory a little
bit that like it's a Google or Facebook. Well, the
great thing about it is that is that the people
that are trying to solve the puzzle are going to
be going to Google a lot, doing a lot of Googling,
so it's good for their business. Yeah. No, I think

(01:07:59):
that Google was, at least for a time looking for
the most advanced kind of you know, they used to
do that thing. I think they still do actually where
they essentially offer somebody like a million bucks or whatever
if they can find a hole in their security. So
I would I guess I wouldn't put it past them

(01:08:19):
to do something like this, but it would also mean
that they would have to already have people on staff
who are capable of creating things like this, which they
probably do, but they could well well this is a tangent,
but it makes me think about I just recently read
a book called Circle. It's by a guy named Dave Eggers,

(01:08:40):
and it's it's really interesting, and it's it's about social media,
and it's set, you know, in the future at some point,
and there's this organization called the Circle that has replaced
things like Facebook and Google Plus and all those They've
all just been kind of subsumed or consumed by this
one thing. But they're always trying to be on the
cutting edge and create all these new things, and so

(01:09:03):
they go through these weird steps to attract and find people.
And so I could see a company like Google theoretically,
well yeah, they might say, hey, you know, Joe has
this crazy plan to find some really smart people to
work on this problem that none of our guys have

(01:09:25):
been able to figure out. So let's pool everybody and
then put them together and make this giant puzzle. And
then the people who solve it might be able to
solve these other problems that we haven't been able to crack. Yeah,
is that case? I don't know, but that's what it
makes me think of. Yeah, yeah, and I could be.
I mean, well, you're somebody like Google. You you want

(01:09:46):
to look for people who think outside the box and
definitely just solve the puzzles that we saw here that
you've seen this in this case, you have to be
able to think outside the box. You can't even live
in the box, not even close terrorists. I don't Again,
just like with scientology, I don't get why a terrorist

(01:10:06):
organization would do it. Is well, I think it goes
on the activist kind of side of it, right, less
than Yeah, not the boots on the ground terrorists, but
the like breaking into stuff and stealing stuff and wiki
leaks and stuff like that. But you know, again, this
is not the skill set that these guys will be
looking for. They're not looking for people who can. They

(01:10:28):
want people who can who can come up with good
crypto cryptograms and and and code stuff and keep stuff
off off the radar. But somebody who can actually solve
the vessel. They don't really care about that. Well, I
guess I think that the thing about this is that
I think it's less about the specific skill set and
more about the perseverance and intelligence and like know how

(01:10:53):
you know, I don't know that necessarily people are looking
for people who can crack this sort of stuff. It's
people that have the like tenacity to even try. I
don't know, I don't know. Next aliens aliens. I'm liking
this one. I don't see a cheap of cobraa on
there anywhere I want to believe. Ye, it could be
the alien I mean, it could be aliens trying to

(01:11:15):
get in contact, trying to find the smartest among us too. Yeah. Yeah,
I'm finding that one a bit of a stretch. Yeah,
I put it. I put it above scientology, but so
it's not at the bottom. I'm really trying to come
up with a plausible reason that aliens would do this.

(01:11:36):
I'm not joking. To test our intelligence obviously, to see
if we have come of age in the age of
space time. Oh so this is like a starfleet test. Yeah. Yeah.
The problem with that is is that the obviously intelligence
and talent varies widely in the you know, in the
human community, and I'm sure in an alien race. I'm

(01:11:59):
sure there's there's people who get to a man the
starships and go out to the stars and probe our
minds with the stuff like this. And then there's and
then there's people who work as janitors back home on
the home plans. Yeah, and so is there some particular
reason they want to find the very very smartest human beings. Well,
the other thing is, let's be honest, if aliens exist,

(01:12:21):
I'm not saying they don't, but if they exist, okay, Well,
the thing is, you're presuming the aliens are going to
be able to understand our way of writing code and
interacting with the Internet, and their language and technology base,

(01:12:42):
I would imagine would be so foreign. It would be
like me trying to write a computer code that my
cat could understand. I'm a ruiner, I'm sorry, but I
think that I think that if there are aliens who
have infiltrated us, what they've probably done is they've created

(01:13:04):
aies who inhabit, who inhabit various places in the Internet
and the AI s. I mean, obviously, we're we're working
working on that right now. We haven't gotten there yet.
The aliens presumably would be better at that kind of stuff,
So you can create an AI that lives on the
Internet and within the human community matrix, not the matrix necessarily,

(01:13:27):
but it is and I am saying an artificial intelligence
created by the Aliens that lives here on planet Earth
and basically investigates, snoops upon and provides information to the
Alien Master Race back on the home planet or circling
in their starship behind the Moon, whatever they're doing. And
there could be a bunch of aies for that matter.

(01:13:49):
I got I gotta tell you right now, I'm I'm
pretty sure that there's not an AI on the Internet
because I'm I'm pretty sure that inadvertently we have come
up with the best tool to destroy any AI out there.
Porn videos that rule the Internet, and could you imagine

(01:14:12):
Alien Race trying to create an AI, And it's just
like now the I just like totally addicted to porn
and cap videos. That's so awesome, the most human AI ever.
I see the scenes of a great sci fi movie

(01:14:33):
script there. So at the end of the theories, I
still haven't too much fun with that. I'm sorry, I
do like that, but I but I still want to
throw in my last my theory which I touched upon earlier,
which I said it could actually have been one guy
who had who had colleagues in various places to help

(01:14:53):
him out, who was trying to make himself look really
smart and man, really creative, and so you put the
puzzles out there and then solved them, and then and
then gave some interviews to some journalists and stuff like that,
and no doubt was contacted by the n s A
or somebody like that and got a high paying job
out of the deal. Maybe. I don't know, it's hard
to tell. I don't think there's any any good explanation, Steve,

(01:15:18):
do you have a Well, the one thing that I
will say is I I discount the idea that it
was done by a government organization. And there's some very
specific things that make me think that. First of which,
who is it that's got Kryptos in in front of
the the c I A. Okay, So they hire some

(01:15:39):
dude to make this piece of art, and it is
a giant puzzle, and they still haven't cracked it. It's
been there for what I don't need. They've cracked somebody's
cracked parts of the parts of it, but it's been
there for years and they still haven't figured it out.
But we're going to say that the government organization on

(01:16:02):
of that quote unquote caliber was able to engineer something
that's this complex and elegant at the same time. It's
just they can't crack cryptos, but they can't crack something
that's at their front. It's a lot easier to create
a cipher than it is to break a cipher. Well,
that is true, but I just I look at the

(01:16:26):
track record of things like that and go, well, if
you can't do this one, how does that lead credence
to you doing that one. That's That's that's what hinders
me from getting behind that theory. I guess I'll say.
One more thing is that I think a kind of
like a new world order society. The thing is not

(01:16:47):
the worst theory I've ever heard. You know, there's some
murmurings of the number three, three oh three. Actually I
think three is not a prime numbers by three who knows. Yeah,
but one refers to like the third century in which

(01:17:13):
this new world order of like peace and whatever will
come to be. I don't know. I mean, maybe it
is time travelers. There's so many it could be literally anything,
because we know literally nothing about any of this anyways,
And that is the best. That's what we're great at
is talking about things that we know nothing. Yes, it
is this. I think story has gone way too long already.

(01:17:38):
So if you want to check out the links, please
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(01:18:20):
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(01:18:41):
So bad at actually keeping up to dates. But I
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(01:19:02):
Sideways Podcast the sexiest podcast of the year. It doesn't matter,
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(01:19:24):
hear from you too. That email addresses as always Thinking
Sideways Podcast at gmail dot com. And I think with that,
unless either of you have anything else to add I
don't not really, I'm gonna stop talking. Yeah. Now, we
will solve this eventually, but it might take another week

(01:19:46):
or two tune in. Yeah, I mean it's not February yet,
so yeah, no, it's like a month from when this
a month and a half wet little time. Yeah, but
by then there will be a new one. Well, that's
whole idea. Fifteen is coming, Bye guys,