September 23, 2025 • 31 mins
There are lots of ways we could tell you about the art of secret messaging: we could waggle a blanket, grab a bucket of gallnuts and iron supplements, flutter our fans, or tattoo some information on a hapless intern’s scalp. But that’s pretty complicated, so Mango and Gabe made a podcast about it instead.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
You're listening to Part Time Genius, a production of Kaleidoscope
and iHeartRadio. Guess what give? What's that Mango? So, as
you know, I love spy stuff. I love detective stuff.
And as a kid, I was very into creating secret
codes and ridiculous ways to communicate to my friends and
(00:36):
stuff like that, like what exactly what are we talking about?
It was like secret knocks to get into a clubhouse,
or passwords or phrases sometimes code words for other people.
My friend Rajish made up this nonsensical language that was
honestly just goofy, and so it was funny phrases for
like passing the salt or pepper at the table and
things that would make our parents confused. And then I
(00:57):
had a friend later, this is more like sixth grade,
we came up with a way of writing and passing
notes that was really easy to write super quickly, but
really hard to decipher if a teacher or like another
kid found it. And so I was into that type
of stuff. It was just like fun to do. And
this week I was reading about one of the earliest
secret languages, and honestly, it might be the weirdest communication
(01:20):
method I've ever heard of, and not one I would
have ever schemed up. It is scalp tattoos sounds painful,
What is this? It definitely was, But sometimes you have
to deliver a message. So this goes back to the
fifth century VCE, when Isteos, the ruler of Malatas in
Anchi in Greece, needed to get a very sensitive message
(01:42):
to his buddy Aristogoros, and the message was maybe it's
time to revolt against the Persians. Right, he can't exactly
just send a courier with a scroll, because you know
there are Persians everywhere. So here's what he does. He
shaves the head of his most trusted servant, tattoos the
message right onto the scalp, and then waits and weeks later,
(02:03):
once the hair GRoWES back, the servant is sent off
to Malatos, and when he arrives, Arista Goas shaves the
poor guy's head again and boom, the revolt is on.
Is both ingenious and horrified totally, but I guess it
worked because the Germans apparently used it again in World
War Two, which is insane. Anyway. I like it because
(02:25):
it's like the ultimate don't shoot the messenger, and mainly
because you have to shave him first. But that is
the first of nine facts we've got today about secret languages,
So let's dive in. Hey, their podcast listeners, welcome to
(02:58):
Part Time Genius. I'm Munga Shiti there and Will is
out today, but I'm here with writer extraordinary Gabe Lucier
on the line.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
Hey, Gab, how's it going pretty good? How are you
doing well?
Speaker 1 (03:09):
And of course, over in the corner, that's our wonderful
friend and producer Dylan Fagan, who is holding up two
giant que cards with random pictures of a banana, a biscuit. Oh,
he's adding a few three squirrels on another one, which
I guess is a secret language of his own.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
Yeah, I honestly can't believe he said that on air.
That's pretty scandalous. I mean he added a tomato card.
Uh uh Okay, Yeah, I see what he's saying now.
That's actually really sweet, So thank you, Dylan.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
I take it back. Yeah, Dylan's a sweetheart. Okay, enough
of that game. I mentioned I was into codes and
secret languages. Also at home, we spoke like this obscure
Indian dialect, so I practically had a secret language with
my parents. Anyway, But do you have any secret language experience? Well,
as a kid, I actually I used to talk out
of the side of my mouth, and so pretty much
(03:58):
only my family could understand what I was saying. They
kind of had to interpret it. So that was a
kind of secret language. I think it was more of
a nervous habit really, But which side? Let me see
if I can get back into the Yeah, it was
the right side. Also, my brother and I we tried
to teach ourselves pig Latin at one point, but we
could never really understand what the other word's saying, so
(04:20):
it didn't work out. I love it, so gave what
is your first fact today? All right?
Speaker 2 (04:26):
So I am reasonably certain that neither of us have
scalp tattoos. I can't really tell, I guess until one
of us gets lice. But a little call back there.
But one ancient form of secret messaging that I bet
we've all tried before is writing with invisible ink. So
most of us discover this as kids writing with lemon
juice or vinegar and then holding the paper up to
(04:47):
a light bulb to make the letters appear. But when
the technique was developed in ancient Greece and Rome. It
wasn't a game. It was used for military and political espionage.
And the way it works is the acid weakens paper
fibers and reduces their burn temperature, so when you apply
heat to those areas, they turn brown faster than the
rest of the paper. You can also write with a
(05:07):
base ink like baking soda, and trigger a similar color
change by applying an acid.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
You know, it's funny because on one hand it is
seriously clever, right, but it also seems like it would
only work the first few times, Like, once someone knows
the trick, it's much easier to check for a hidden messages,
I'd imagine.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
Yeah, right, yeah, And by the time the American Revolution
rolled around, both sides were using invisible ink, and both
sides knew it. It became standard practice, you know, to
test intercepted messages with heat and acid, which kind of
made the whole thing pointless. Luckily, though, an amateur chemist
named James J was on the case. He developed a
(05:46):
formula for a new kind of ink, one that could
only be made visible by a specific corresponding chemical or reagent.
So no matter how much heat the British applied, the
invisible message would stay invisible. Once this ink was ready
to go, James teamed up with his more famous younger brother,
John Jay. Perhaps you've heard of it. Oh yeah, He
(06:07):
helped get the ink into George Washington's hands. So Washington
distributed it to spies in British occupied New York during
the war, and they used it to write messages on
blank pages of books. And despite being searched on multiple occasions,
none of this secret writing was ever discovered by the British.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
That is incredible, And that's also incredible that John Jay
had a connection to this. I didn't even know you
had a brother, So what was in this secret formula?
Speaker 2 (06:33):
Jay never revealed what was in the ink because writing
down the recipe would have been too dangerous. Fortunately, though,
some of the letters written in his invisible ink survived
the war, and in the nineteen thirties, a doctor named
Lodovic Bendixen studied those samples to determine the ink's composition.
Turns out it was made from the tannic acid of
gall nuts, which aren't nuts at all.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
See when a wasp.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
Blazed its eggs on the branches of an oak tree,
the tree defends itself by entombing the eggs inside a
big woody growth. And that's what a goal nut is.
It's a wooden cocoon full of dead wasp eggs. That
is gross. I love it. I also love that like
it took to the nineteen thirties for people to figure
out what this was. You know, it's pretty amazing. But
(07:17):
what was it about the reagent that revealed ink?
Speaker 1 (07:19):
Like? Do we ever find out what that was? And
was it as disgusting as a call nut? Because if so,
you can you can just not tell us. We did
find out, but don't worry. It was just an iron
supplement called ferris sulfate, which is often used to lower
the pH level and soil. It was a pretty obscure
pair of chemicals to put together. But that's exactly why
the British didn't figure it out.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Way to go, James, j right, Seriously, he's the lesser
j But I don't know we could make the case for.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
Anyway. What do you got next, Mago? Well, I'm gonna
take it to the Victorian area. And if you were
a fancy lady back then, you were actually fancy, by
which I mean, of course you didn't go anywhere without
an elaborate handheld fan, typically made of silk or fine parchment.
In fact, you'd have different fans for different occasions, and
the one you took to church might have a Bible
(08:08):
scene painted on it, while the one you use for
parties would have a festive image of people dancing. Right. But,
according to a famous French fan maker, women also used
fans to send secret messages to their gentlemen admirers. For example,
if a woman held a fan in front of her
face with her right hand, that meant follow me. Twirling
the fan in her left hand meant we're being watched.
(08:30):
And perhaps my favorite, opening the fan and snapping it
shut meant you.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
Are cruel, amazing. But how did the gentleman admirers understand
all this? Was there some kind of codebook you had
to buy. Yeah, so that's the thing that famous fan
maker I mentioned. His name was Jules de vell Roy
and he ran the family fan business with locations in
London and Paris. Now, during the French Revolution, the French
fan maker's guild had shut down and demand for fans
(08:58):
had dropped because you know, they were really the symbol
of the aristocracy. So many decades later, and this is
In the eighteen fifties, Jewels decides to make fans a
must have item again, and he publishes a pamphlet titled
The Language of the Fan, with a list of over
two dozen gestures and romantic meanings. And this is all
just a marketing play, but you got to give them credit.
(09:20):
The stunt worked sales took off, and devell Roy actually
became Queen Victoria's go to fan guy. Huh, So it
was all a hoax then, like the fancy Ladies weren't
sending secret messages via fan.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
So first of all, let's call it marketing. Second, devell
Roy didn't invent that idea out of thin air. In
the seventeen hundreds, there were party games that involved fans
printed with like trivia questions on one side and answers
on the other. There were also some fans with the
letters of the alphabet in the fold, so you could
use them to spell out messages, and historians believe fans
(09:53):
may have been used in pre revolutionary France to display
political slogans. But none of this rose to the level
of an actual widespread messaging system that everyone was using. Right,
That part was all made up. On the other hand,
you don't really need a codebook to figure out what
it means. If someone flutters they're faning giggles, or if
they suddenly point their fan towards the door where their
(10:14):
angry father is running in through it, I think you
pretty much get the gist there. Yeah, all right.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
So, as you know, I moved to Tennessee two years ago,
and one of the most unexpected pleasures about that has
been acquainting myself with the South's ubiquitous breakfast chain, the
waffle House. Are you familiar, of.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
Course, I mean I went to school in North Carolina.
We lived in Atlanta for a bit. I took photos
of Ruby's first baby's first waffle house a milestone. It's
a traditional Southern milestones.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
Well, yeah, you really can't miss them, I guess if
you drive through the South or the Midwest. But you know,
the food is standard diner. Fair waffles are obviously a
big draw, as are the hash browns, which you can
order at least eight different ways. But what really won
me over is the intensely complicated plate marking system that
the staff uses to keep track of orders. So, unlike
(11:11):
most restaurants, waffle House doesn't use a ticket system to
relay orders to the kitchen. Instead, servers call them out verbally,
and cooks immediately start marking plates with condiment packets and
little scraps of ingredients so they won't forget the specifics.
For example, if a customer wants a plane waffle, the
cook puts one packet of butter on the plate right
(11:31):
side up. For two waffles, they stack two packs of butter,
and for a pecan waffle, they flip the butter upside down.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
I'd heard tell of like a system, but I haven't
actually like watched for it. I feel like I need
to look the next time there. But you know, it
sounds easy enough, I guess if you figure it out.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
Well, Yeah, I started with waffles because they're the simplest
the things spiral pretty.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
Fast with the other items.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
Yeah, Like, to signify a standard order of two eggs,
you put a right side up jelly packet on a plate.
But if a customer wants just one egg, then you've
got to put a ketchup packet underneath the jelly obviously,
And if they want three eggs, you put a mustard
packet underneath instead. Yeah, and it gets weirder from there. Actually,
the position and orientation of each item on the plate
(12:18):
communicates how the order should be prepared. So a jelly
packet at the bottom center of the plate means two
eggs scrambled, but for sunny side up the jelly goes
at the top center, and for regular fried eggs, the
jelly goes in the middle of the plate, on the
left hand side for over easy, middle for over medium,
and right for over heart.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
I don't know whether I'm dizzy from trying to like
keep up with it or hungry from hearing about all
these breakfast orders. But what if someone just wants like
toast with their eggs? Okay, So in.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
That case, the cook would use a platter instead of
a plate, and the jelly packet pulls double duty by
indicating both the eggs and the toast. The jelly is
placed right side up for white toast, upside down for wheat,
and for raisin toast, just swap out the jelly for
a packet of apple butter. As for those famous hash browns,
they're indicated simply by sprinkling a few potato shreds at
(13:12):
the top of the plate. And once you get into
omelets and breakfast sandwiches, things get complicated again, but I'll
let you discover those for yourself. There's actually a twenty
minute training video online that breaks down all the possible
permutations of the marker system, which every waffle House cook
has to learn.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
You know, I am weirdly fascinating enough that I feel
like I would go watch that twenty minute video but
also recommend it. It doesn't it feel well, It feels
one like it should be playing in the background of parties.
But yes, I haven't made a few people watch it.
But also like, wouldn't if you just so much easier
to write down the orders like every other restaurant.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
I mean, yeah, sure, but I do kind of admire
how needlessly elaborate it is. It's a very Rube Goldberg
approach to to ordering breakfast.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
Yeah, and I guess you know, waffle House already has
endeared itself to people, and it makes it a little
more special. Okay, so we have to take a quick break,
but when we get back, we have four more weird
messaging techniques that everyone should maybe not learn, but hear
about it. Don't go anywhere. Welcome back to part time Genius.
(14:33):
We're talking about nine of the strangest, most elaborate ways
of sending messages. But if you want to send us
a message, we have made it super easy. Just email
us at high Geniuses at gmail dot com. That's Hi, Geniuses,
or call our hotline at three oh two four oh
five five nine two five. You can ask us a question,
(14:54):
share an idea for a future episode, tell us what
you think of the show, tell us what you think
of waffle house. Whatever we want to hear from you.
So please get in touch. Okay, So, Gabe, here's one
I like, mostly because of the name. Have you ever
heard of Wigwag? I don't think I've had the pleasure. No, Well,
get excited. Wigwag goes back to the eighteen fifties and
(15:17):
it was invented by an Army surgeon. His name was
Albert J. Meyer. Meyer had actually done his doctoral thesis
on a language for the hearing impaired. He'd been a
telegraph operator in med school and later while stationed in Texas,
he thought, what if you could take the idea of
telegraph signals and do it visually, kind of like smoke signals.
And so his solution was get one big flag and
(15:41):
instead of semaphore, which uses two flags, wigwag just decided
to use one right, so you wag it left for
one symbol, right for another, and you'd use repeating motions
to make letters. So I was a wag left, T
was a wag right, and letter V was one left,
followed by three rights, which from a distance to people
who didn't speak, I'm sure either looked like you were
(16:02):
trying to shoe bees or the world's saddest interpretive dance.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
I love that this is just as complicated as the
waffle house marker system. But was there just like one
colored flag that they were using for this, or could
you use any flag you had handy?
Speaker 1 (16:17):
Yeah, that's actually a good question. The flags were square,
and they could be red, white, or black, and basically
it was for whatever stood out against the background you
were against right. And this is in the eighteen fifties
into the eighteen sixties. So once the Union Army got
serious about it, they actually built towers and used church
steeples so the messages could be seen for miles. And
(16:40):
there's a famous story where at Gettysburg, when the actual
Signal Corps officer retreats, a Union soldier famously grabs a
bed sheet and just keeps waving. Of course, there was
a hitch here because you know, both sides had trained
together before the war, so the Confederates actually knew the code,
so the Union started using cipher dis to scramble their messages. Anyway,
here's my favorite part. So after the war, Meyer's successor
(17:03):
publishes the entire code in a book and then he
gets fired for basically leaking state secrets. That is.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
It also just dawned on me that wigwag is probably
short for wiggle waggles.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
Right, that's horrible.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
So how long did wigwag last?
Speaker 1 (17:20):
It was around for a while, but by World War One,
you know, standing in a field waving a big red
flag was basically making yourself a target. So the system
was retired in favor of Morse code. Okay, mango, there's
a piece of paper on the table in front of you.
Don't worry about how it got there. Just take a
look at it and tell.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
Me what you see.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
Okay, got it. It's a normal sentence, typed up. It
says we should do more episodes about peanuts. I've heard
this from you before. I know you love the peanuts.
I love the peanuts, but Mary might kill us.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
Yeah, I know, I still think you guys are wrong
about this, but I don't mean the words on the page.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
Look closer, after.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
The words, what do you see, just the punctuation like
the period no memi zens bingo. Yes, except that's not
a period at all, It's a micro dot. So this
is an incredible miniature messaging system that has its roots
in the Franco Prussian War of eighteen seventy. A Parisian
photographer named Renee de Grann invented microfilm, which allowed French
(18:21):
troops to shrink messages onto tiny bits of film that
could be flown out of occupied Paris by carrier pigeons.
So at the nineteen twenty five International Congress on Photography,
an inventor named Emmanuel Goldberg took this idea further. He
shrank a page of text to an area of about
zero point zero one square millimeters. Wow, and at that
(18:42):
size you could print the entire Bible fifty times in
a single squirt inch. That is insane, I know. And
so Goldberg called his invention Mikrotz, which became known as
micro dots, and during World War Two and the Cold War,
micro dots played a huge role in secret communication spies
shrank thousands of documents and hid them in eyeglass frames, dolls,
(19:04):
book bindings, jewelry, even under their fingernails. And of course,
because the average micro dot was about the size of
a period, they'd sometimes adhere the dots to books and
newspapers where they just looked like, you know, part of
the printed page. And what's really impressive to me is
that they were doing all of this before computers. Oh yeah,
that's that's really fascinating. I mean, you think about that
(19:27):
as something that's so easy to do with computers, but
I hadn't considered that this is like an elaborate old process.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
It's so much more work.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
Yeah, and it could all be done with photography equipment today.
There were different techniques, some more sophisticated than others, and
along the way people did invent special cameras to generate
micro dots. But even with a regular camera you could
do it. Basically, you'd photograph a document so it filled
a frame of film, develop that, then mount the negative
on black cardboard with a whole cutout so you could
(19:56):
light it from behind. That way the text on the
negative was visible. And finally you take a close up
photo of the negative, creating an image less than a
millimeter long, and in order to see what was on
the image, you just needed a microscope.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
That is so cool. But right now, more than anything,
I'm curious what is in the micro dot that you made.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
It's a script for an episode about the greatest peanut
strips in history. You know, it just incaded.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
So I know, I told you about the secret language
of fans and the marketing trick behind their sales, which
I love. But because I'm a little obsessed with how
repressed people were in the Victorian era, I've actually got
another one from those times. Now. As we've alluded to,
social etiquette at the time was insanely strict. You basically
couldn't say I like you without you know, fainting into
a lace handkerchief, right. It was too much emotion, and
(20:46):
so they had their fans. But people also invented another workaround,
and that was floriography, aka the language of flowers, and
basically it let you send text messages with bouquets. Now,
men were particularly blunt about this. If they handed someone
a nosegay, which was a little mini bouquet, they were
basically trying to slid to your dms right, And so
there's the obvious. There's a red rose, which means I'm
(21:08):
in love with you, a yellow carnation which means I
disdain you, and buttercups, which means you're childish. So a
little negging perhaps there, but it gets more elaborate. Women
in high society would wear flowers in their hair, are
tucked into their gowns as accessories, but these were more coded.
A sweet pea meant thank you. If you pair it
(21:29):
with zinias, suddenly you've opped it to thank you, dear
friend forever. If you add white lily's to the mix,
now you're saying thank you, dear friend forever. Also, I'm
pure and innocent, but not in a weird way.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
That's a complicated sentence, especially to send through flowers.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
I know. It feels like when Ruby was a kid
and would send out emojis to friends from my phone
and would just be a string of nonsense and people
would be trying to decode it, like what does twenty horses,
a few winks, arrows, gymnastics and an apple mean right?
Like total sense. But luckily for Victorians there was, like
the fans, a guidebook, the whole phenomena had started with
(22:05):
Charlotte de la Tour's eighteen nineteen book Li Language def Fleur,
which became a decoder ring basically for floral messages, and
the idea caught fire because at the time, when women
especially weren't encouraged to speak their minds, flowers became a
sly way of pushing back. Right. You could gossip, you
could flirt, you could dump someone, all while looking like
you were just accessorizing and playing your role. Men actually
(22:28):
found this useful as well, like there are cases where
men would sneak more emotion into things, like if you
look at the wreaths that noble men and kings placed
on their mother's graves, historians have actually realized that there
are actually more layers of emotion and feeling woven into
the symbols when you look at the flowers and the
specific flowers that were pulled in. In one case, I know,
there was one king who they didn't think had a
(22:49):
very deep relationship with the mother, and they realized just
how much respect through the wreath, which is incredible. Yeah,
that's lovely. Anyway, the system was not perfect like emojis today.
Content that mattered a pink flower in Thailand could be trust.
In Japan, the same flower might mean health, and in Victoria.
In London it might mean I'm into you, but chastely,
which is you know, confusing, but also the Victorian way.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
I actually think, you know, we can bring this back.
It's cool. But all right, this next one is something
that should probably stay forgotten. It is one of the
weirdest footnotes in the history of telecommunications, a little something
called the psychic snail telegraph.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
I feel like you're making this up, but I'm very
excited to hear more. Well, you know, sometimes the truth
really is stranger than fiction, and this is one of
those cases. So in the eighteen fifties, a French occultist
named Jacques Benoit developed a theory that when two snails
made it, their exchange of fluids forged a telepathic bond
(23:50):
that would connect them across any distance. So if you
poked one snail, its mate would flinch as if it
had also been touched. So, in ben Wah's this kind
of sympathetic action at a distance was really no different
than electricity, and he figured that if those forces, you know,
electricity and magnetism, could be harnessed for telecommunications as they
(24:12):
recently had been with a telegraph. Then maybe this animal
magnetism could serve the same purpose. I mean, in one sense,
it sounds vaguely credible until you remember that snails are
not psychic, you know.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
Yeah, yeah, that is kind of a sticking point, I guess,
but it didn't stop ben Wah from testing his theory.
In eighteen fifty one, he claimed to have devised a
telegraph that would use the psychic link between twenty four
pairs of snails to send messages from one side of
the world to the other. He even managed to smooth
talk a wealthy Parisian named Monsieur Triat into funding his
(24:47):
experiments and providing lodging and a stipend for him while
he worked on the machine, which I'm sure was money
well spent. But how is this supposed to work? So
the final build consisted of two paired sets of twenty
four snails each so forty eight snails total, which were
glued to a pair of wooden boards alongside the letters
of the French alphabet. And the idea was that if
(25:08):
you pressed a snail on one board, its mate on
the other board would stick out its tentacles in response,
and those are the little things on top of its head,
by the way. And just like regular telegraphs, this required
an operator on each end, one to send the message
and one to monitor the snail's movements to see which
letters had been pressed.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
There is something both fishy and gross about the psychic
snail telegraphy.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
Yeah, I mean, you're not the only one to think that.
So after months of frustration and nothing to show for it,
Monsieur Triat demanded a demonstration, you know, to see where
all his money was going. Benoa agreed, but surprise, surprise,
it didn't go so well. During the trial, Benoa ran
back and forth to make sure the operators were reading
the snails correctly, so it was blatant cheating, and the
(25:57):
messages still wound up totally garbled. Triot called for a second,
more rigorous demonstration, but when the day of the second
test arrived, Benoah didn't show up. He never contacted Triot
again and died the next year. So it was all
a big scam. But it's fun to imagine a world
where ben Wah's vision became reality, Like he had plans
(26:18):
to make personal snail telegraphs the size of a pocket
watch because there are snail species, you know, as small
as a pinhead, and if that had happened, we could
all be carrying around psychic snail telegraphs instead of smartphone.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
You know, maybe it wouldn't be so bad. But all right,
let's wrap this thing up with one last fact. So
over the summer we did an episode where we took
a virtual trip across Australia. Now I have never been
to Australia in real life, but that episode was so
much fun. I ended up doing some more reading about
the landown under and I learned about a fascinating tool
(26:55):
called message sticks.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
Which I'm assuming is Aussie slang for post it notes.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
Right. No, they're actual sticks, and they have an incredible
history that goes back centuries. So, as you may know,
Australia's Aboriginal people are considered the world's oldest continuous living culture,
and within that culture are hundreds of different nations. They
speak over two hundred and fifty languages eight hundred dialects,
and yet for hundreds even thousands of years, Indigenous people
(27:22):
were able to communicate with each other despite differences in
their spoken language and the challenges of traveling across remote
wilderness areas. So early European colonists witnessed thousands of First
Nations people gathering from hundreds of kilometers away, all arriving
at the same place at the same time, and they
just assumed it was telepathy, right, a little like your
(27:43):
snail telegraph. It was actually something simpler but just as impressive.
They had these carved wooden sticks inscribed with images that
gave precise instructions for meeting times and places, as well
as other important news. So the process begins with an
oral message that would be communicated to a messenger. As
the stick was carved. That way, the sender could explain
(28:04):
to the messenger how the symbols on the stick related
to the message. Then the messenger carried the stick to
the recipient and repeated the oral message that he'd memorized.
So if there were any language barriers, the stick would
make sure that he points got through. If the recipient
wanted to send a message back, they'd repeat the process
before the messenger went home.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
Have these message sticks been preserved in any way, It
seems like they'd be an amazing cultural record.
Speaker 1 (28:26):
They have, and they are so. An anthropologist named Pierce
Kelly has created the Australian Message Stick Project, which tracks
down message sticks and museums and private collections. He actually
works closely with Indigenous elders to decode the meaning of
their symbols, and oddly enough, there are people alive today
who understand the symbols because in some parts of Australia
(28:46):
message sticks were still in use until the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
Plus many of the symbols refer to places and practices
that remain important to Aboriginal life. So in fact, according
to Kelly, there's been this message stick revival in Australia,
particularly for formal interactions between institutions. So while message stakes
are a connection to the past, they still have meaning
in the present, which I really love. Yeah, I love
that too.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
It's you. You somehow made this a little heartwarming. So
think I think for that and floriography, you should probably
take the trophy this time.
Speaker 1 (29:19):
I don't think I can because snail messaging is too gross.
And also the John j fact about that what was
it called something? Not? It was son nuts a new
scravel word. Shout out to John Jay and Monsieur Benoa. Awesome.
(29:40):
Well that does it for today's Nine Things episode of
part Time Juniors. I do want to thank our good
friends at CDM for letting us record here today. And
I know I mentioned this earlier, but we love communicating
with our fans, so send us your stories, ideas, messages, whatever.
We would love to play some of those messages on
the show. That number again and for the hotline is
three two four oh five five nine two five. But
(30:04):
from Will, Mary, Gabe, Dylan and myself, thank you so
much for listening. Part Time Genius is a production of
(30:25):
Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio. This show is hosted by Will Pearson
and Me Mongas Chatikler and research by our good pal
Mary Philip Sandy. Today's episode was engineered and produced by
the wonderful Dylan Fagan with support from Tyler Klang. The
show is executive produced for iHeart by Katrina Norvell and
Ali Perry, with social media support from Sasha Gay, trustee
(30:48):
Dara Potts and Vine Shoory. For more podcasts from Kaleidoscope
and iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
The
You're listening to Part Time Genius, a production of Kaleidoscope
and iHeartRadio. Guess what give? What's that Mango? So, as
you know, I love spy stuff. I love detective stuff.
And as a kid, I was very into creating secret
codes and ridiculous ways to communicate to my friends and
(00:36):
stuff like that, like what exactly what are we talking about?
It was like secret knocks to get into a clubhouse,
or passwords or phrases sometimes code words for other people.
My friend Rajish made up this nonsensical language that was
honestly just goofy, and so it was funny phrases for
like passing the salt or pepper at the table and
things that would make our parents confused. And then I
(00:57):
had a friend later, this is more like sixth grade,
we came up with a way of writing and passing
notes that was really easy to write super quickly, but
really hard to decipher if a teacher or like another
kid found it. And so I was into that type
of stuff. It was just like fun to do. And
this week I was reading about one of the earliest
secret languages, and honestly, it might be the weirdest communication
(01:20):
method I've ever heard of, and not one I would
have ever schemed up. It is scalp tattoos sounds painful,
What is this? It definitely was, But sometimes you have
to deliver a message. So this goes back to the
fifth century VCE, when Isteos, the ruler of Malatas in
Anchi in Greece, needed to get a very sensitive message
(01:42):
to his buddy Aristogoros, and the message was maybe it's
time to revolt against the Persians. Right, he can't exactly
just send a courier with a scroll, because you know
there are Persians everywhere. So here's what he does. He
shaves the head of his most trusted servant, tattoos the
message right onto the scalp, and then waits and weeks later,
(02:03):
once the hair GRoWES back, the servant is sent off
to Malatos, and when he arrives, Arista Goas shaves the
poor guy's head again and boom, the revolt is on.
Is both ingenious and horrified totally, but I guess it
worked because the Germans apparently used it again in World
War Two, which is insane. Anyway. I like it because
(02:25):
it's like the ultimate don't shoot the messenger, and mainly
because you have to shave him first. But that is
the first of nine facts we've got today about secret languages,
So let's dive in. Hey, their podcast listeners, welcome to
(02:58):
Part Time Genius. I'm Munga Shiti there and Will is
out today, but I'm here with writer extraordinary Gabe Lucier
on the line.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
Hey, Gab, how's it going pretty good? How are you
doing well?
Speaker 1 (03:09):
And of course, over in the corner, that's our wonderful
friend and producer Dylan Fagan, who is holding up two
giant que cards with random pictures of a banana, a biscuit. Oh,
he's adding a few three squirrels on another one, which
I guess is a secret language of his own.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
Yeah, I honestly can't believe he said that on air.
That's pretty scandalous. I mean he added a tomato card.
Uh uh Okay, Yeah, I see what he's saying now.
That's actually really sweet, So thank you, Dylan.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
I take it back. Yeah, Dylan's a sweetheart. Okay, enough
of that game. I mentioned I was into codes and
secret languages. Also at home, we spoke like this obscure
Indian dialect, so I practically had a secret language with
my parents. Anyway, But do you have any secret language experience? Well,
as a kid, I actually I used to talk out
of the side of my mouth, and so pretty much
(03:58):
only my family could understand what I was saying. They
kind of had to interpret it. So that was a
kind of secret language. I think it was more of
a nervous habit really, But which side? Let me see
if I can get back into the Yeah, it was
the right side. Also, my brother and I we tried
to teach ourselves pig Latin at one point, but we
could never really understand what the other word's saying, so
(04:20):
it didn't work out. I love it, so gave what
is your first fact today? All right?
Speaker 2 (04:26):
So I am reasonably certain that neither of us have
scalp tattoos. I can't really tell, I guess until one
of us gets lice. But a little call back there.
But one ancient form of secret messaging that I bet
we've all tried before is writing with invisible ink. So
most of us discover this as kids writing with lemon
juice or vinegar and then holding the paper up to
(04:47):
a light bulb to make the letters appear. But when
the technique was developed in ancient Greece and Rome. It
wasn't a game. It was used for military and political espionage.
And the way it works is the acid weakens paper
fibers and reduces their burn temperature, so when you apply
heat to those areas, they turn brown faster than the
rest of the paper. You can also write with a
(05:07):
base ink like baking soda, and trigger a similar color
change by applying an acid.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
You know, it's funny because on one hand it is
seriously clever, right, but it also seems like it would
only work the first few times, Like, once someone knows
the trick, it's much easier to check for a hidden messages,
I'd imagine.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
Yeah, right, yeah, And by the time the American Revolution
rolled around, both sides were using invisible ink, and both
sides knew it. It became standard practice, you know, to
test intercepted messages with heat and acid, which kind of
made the whole thing pointless. Luckily, though, an amateur chemist
named James J was on the case. He developed a
(05:46):
formula for a new kind of ink, one that could
only be made visible by a specific corresponding chemical or reagent.
So no matter how much heat the British applied, the
invisible message would stay invisible. Once this ink was ready
to go, James teamed up with his more famous younger brother,
John Jay. Perhaps you've heard of it. Oh yeah, He
(06:07):
helped get the ink into George Washington's hands. So Washington
distributed it to spies in British occupied New York during
the war, and they used it to write messages on
blank pages of books. And despite being searched on multiple occasions,
none of this secret writing was ever discovered by the British.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
That is incredible, And that's also incredible that John Jay
had a connection to this. I didn't even know you
had a brother, So what was in this secret formula?
Speaker 2 (06:33):
Jay never revealed what was in the ink because writing
down the recipe would have been too dangerous. Fortunately, though,
some of the letters written in his invisible ink survived
the war, and in the nineteen thirties, a doctor named
Lodovic Bendixen studied those samples to determine the ink's composition.
Turns out it was made from the tannic acid of
gall nuts, which aren't nuts at all.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
See when a wasp.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
Blazed its eggs on the branches of an oak tree,
the tree defends itself by entombing the eggs inside a
big woody growth. And that's what a goal nut is.
It's a wooden cocoon full of dead wasp eggs. That
is gross. I love it. I also love that like
it took to the nineteen thirties for people to figure
out what this was. You know, it's pretty amazing. But
(07:17):
what was it about the reagent that revealed ink?
Speaker 1 (07:19):
Like? Do we ever find out what that was? And
was it as disgusting as a call nut? Because if so,
you can you can just not tell us. We did
find out, but don't worry. It was just an iron
supplement called ferris sulfate, which is often used to lower
the pH level and soil. It was a pretty obscure
pair of chemicals to put together. But that's exactly why
the British didn't figure it out.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Way to go, James, j right, Seriously, he's the lesser
j But I don't know we could make the case for.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
Anyway. What do you got next, Mago? Well, I'm gonna
take it to the Victorian area. And if you were
a fancy lady back then, you were actually fancy, by
which I mean, of course you didn't go anywhere without
an elaborate handheld fan, typically made of silk or fine parchment.
In fact, you'd have different fans for different occasions, and
the one you took to church might have a Bible
(08:08):
scene painted on it, while the one you use for
parties would have a festive image of people dancing. Right. But,
according to a famous French fan maker, women also used
fans to send secret messages to their gentlemen admirers. For example,
if a woman held a fan in front of her
face with her right hand, that meant follow me. Twirling
the fan in her left hand meant we're being watched.
(08:30):
And perhaps my favorite, opening the fan and snapping it
shut meant you.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
Are cruel, amazing. But how did the gentleman admirers understand
all this? Was there some kind of codebook you had
to buy. Yeah, so that's the thing that famous fan
maker I mentioned. His name was Jules de vell Roy
and he ran the family fan business with locations in
London and Paris. Now, during the French Revolution, the French
fan maker's guild had shut down and demand for fans
(08:58):
had dropped because you know, they were really the symbol
of the aristocracy. So many decades later, and this is
In the eighteen fifties, Jewels decides to make fans a
must have item again, and he publishes a pamphlet titled
The Language of the Fan, with a list of over
two dozen gestures and romantic meanings. And this is all
just a marketing play, but you got to give them credit.
(09:20):
The stunt worked sales took off, and devell Roy actually
became Queen Victoria's go to fan guy. Huh, So it
was all a hoax then, like the fancy Ladies weren't
sending secret messages via fan.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
So first of all, let's call it marketing. Second, devell
Roy didn't invent that idea out of thin air. In
the seventeen hundreds, there were party games that involved fans
printed with like trivia questions on one side and answers
on the other. There were also some fans with the
letters of the alphabet in the fold, so you could
use them to spell out messages, and historians believe fans
(09:53):
may have been used in pre revolutionary France to display
political slogans. But none of this rose to the level
of an actual widespread messaging system that everyone was using. Right,
That part was all made up. On the other hand,
you don't really need a codebook to figure out what
it means. If someone flutters they're faning giggles, or if
they suddenly point their fan towards the door where their
(10:14):
angry father is running in through it, I think you
pretty much get the gist there. Yeah, all right.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
So, as you know, I moved to Tennessee two years ago,
and one of the most unexpected pleasures about that has
been acquainting myself with the South's ubiquitous breakfast chain, the
waffle House. Are you familiar, of.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
Course, I mean I went to school in North Carolina.
We lived in Atlanta for a bit. I took photos
of Ruby's first baby's first waffle house a milestone. It's
a traditional Southern milestones.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
Well, yeah, you really can't miss them, I guess if
you drive through the South or the Midwest. But you know,
the food is standard diner. Fair waffles are obviously a
big draw, as are the hash browns, which you can
order at least eight different ways. But what really won
me over is the intensely complicated plate marking system that
the staff uses to keep track of orders. So, unlike
(11:11):
most restaurants, waffle House doesn't use a ticket system to
relay orders to the kitchen. Instead, servers call them out verbally,
and cooks immediately start marking plates with condiment packets and
little scraps of ingredients so they won't forget the specifics.
For example, if a customer wants a plane waffle, the
cook puts one packet of butter on the plate right
(11:31):
side up. For two waffles, they stack two packs of butter,
and for a pecan waffle, they flip the butter upside down.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
I'd heard tell of like a system, but I haven't
actually like watched for it. I feel like I need
to look the next time there. But you know, it
sounds easy enough, I guess if you figure it out.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
Well, Yeah, I started with waffles because they're the simplest
the things spiral pretty.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
Fast with the other items.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
Yeah, Like, to signify a standard order of two eggs,
you put a right side up jelly packet on a plate.
But if a customer wants just one egg, then you've
got to put a ketchup packet underneath the jelly obviously,
And if they want three eggs, you put a mustard
packet underneath instead. Yeah, and it gets weirder from there. Actually,
the position and orientation of each item on the plate
(12:18):
communicates how the order should be prepared. So a jelly
packet at the bottom center of the plate means two
eggs scrambled, but for sunny side up the jelly goes
at the top center, and for regular fried eggs, the
jelly goes in the middle of the plate, on the
left hand side for over easy, middle for over medium,
and right for over heart.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
I don't know whether I'm dizzy from trying to like
keep up with it or hungry from hearing about all
these breakfast orders. But what if someone just wants like
toast with their eggs? Okay, So in.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
That case, the cook would use a platter instead of
a plate, and the jelly packet pulls double duty by
indicating both the eggs and the toast. The jelly is
placed right side up for white toast, upside down for wheat,
and for raisin toast, just swap out the jelly for
a packet of apple butter. As for those famous hash browns,
they're indicated simply by sprinkling a few potato shreds at
(13:12):
the top of the plate. And once you get into
omelets and breakfast sandwiches, things get complicated again, but I'll
let you discover those for yourself. There's actually a twenty
minute training video online that breaks down all the possible
permutations of the marker system, which every waffle House cook
has to learn.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
You know, I am weirdly fascinating enough that I feel
like I would go watch that twenty minute video but
also recommend it. It doesn't it feel well, It feels
one like it should be playing in the background of parties.
But yes, I haven't made a few people watch it.
But also like, wouldn't if you just so much easier
to write down the orders like every other restaurant.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
I mean, yeah, sure, but I do kind of admire
how needlessly elaborate it is. It's a very Rube Goldberg
approach to to ordering breakfast.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
Yeah, and I guess you know, waffle House already has
endeared itself to people, and it makes it a little
more special. Okay, so we have to take a quick break,
but when we get back, we have four more weird
messaging techniques that everyone should maybe not learn, but hear
about it. Don't go anywhere. Welcome back to part time Genius.
(14:33):
We're talking about nine of the strangest, most elaborate ways
of sending messages. But if you want to send us
a message, we have made it super easy. Just email
us at high Geniuses at gmail dot com. That's Hi, Geniuses,
or call our hotline at three oh two four oh
five five nine two five. You can ask us a question,
(14:54):
share an idea for a future episode, tell us what
you think of the show, tell us what you think
of waffle house. Whatever we want to hear from you.
So please get in touch. Okay, So, Gabe, here's one
I like, mostly because of the name. Have you ever
heard of Wigwag? I don't think I've had the pleasure. No, Well,
get excited. Wigwag goes back to the eighteen fifties and
(15:17):
it was invented by an Army surgeon. His name was
Albert J. Meyer. Meyer had actually done his doctoral thesis
on a language for the hearing impaired. He'd been a
telegraph operator in med school and later while stationed in Texas,
he thought, what if you could take the idea of
telegraph signals and do it visually, kind of like smoke signals.
And so his solution was get one big flag and
(15:41):
instead of semaphore, which uses two flags, wigwag just decided
to use one right, so you wag it left for
one symbol, right for another, and you'd use repeating motions
to make letters. So I was a wag left, T
was a wag right, and letter V was one left,
followed by three rights, which from a distance to people
who didn't speak, I'm sure either looked like you were
(16:02):
trying to shoe bees or the world's saddest interpretive dance.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
I love that this is just as complicated as the
waffle house marker system. But was there just like one
colored flag that they were using for this, or could
you use any flag you had handy?
Speaker 1 (16:17):
Yeah, that's actually a good question. The flags were square,
and they could be red, white, or black, and basically
it was for whatever stood out against the background you
were against right. And this is in the eighteen fifties
into the eighteen sixties. So once the Union Army got
serious about it, they actually built towers and used church
steeples so the messages could be seen for miles. And
(16:40):
there's a famous story where at Gettysburg, when the actual
Signal Corps officer retreats, a Union soldier famously grabs a
bed sheet and just keeps waving. Of course, there was
a hitch here because you know, both sides had trained
together before the war, so the Confederates actually knew the code,
so the Union started using cipher dis to scramble their messages. Anyway,
here's my favorite part. So after the war, Meyer's successor
(17:03):
publishes the entire code in a book and then he
gets fired for basically leaking state secrets. That is.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
It also just dawned on me that wigwag is probably
short for wiggle waggles.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
Right, that's horrible.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
So how long did wigwag last?
Speaker 1 (17:20):
It was around for a while, but by World War One,
you know, standing in a field waving a big red
flag was basically making yourself a target. So the system
was retired in favor of Morse code. Okay, mango, there's
a piece of paper on the table in front of you.
Don't worry about how it got there. Just take a
look at it and tell.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
Me what you see.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
Okay, got it. It's a normal sentence, typed up. It
says we should do more episodes about peanuts. I've heard
this from you before. I know you love the peanuts.
I love the peanuts, but Mary might kill us.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
Yeah, I know, I still think you guys are wrong
about this, but I don't mean the words on the page.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
Look closer, after.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
The words, what do you see, just the punctuation like
the period no memi zens bingo. Yes, except that's not
a period at all, It's a micro dot. So this
is an incredible miniature messaging system that has its roots
in the Franco Prussian War of eighteen seventy. A Parisian
photographer named Renee de Grann invented microfilm, which allowed French
(18:21):
troops to shrink messages onto tiny bits of film that
could be flown out of occupied Paris by carrier pigeons.
So at the nineteen twenty five International Congress on Photography,
an inventor named Emmanuel Goldberg took this idea further. He
shrank a page of text to an area of about
zero point zero one square millimeters. Wow, and at that
(18:42):
size you could print the entire Bible fifty times in
a single squirt inch. That is insane, I know. And
so Goldberg called his invention Mikrotz, which became known as
micro dots, and during World War Two and the Cold War,
micro dots played a huge role in secret communication spies
shrank thousands of documents and hid them in eyeglass frames, dolls,
(19:04):
book bindings, jewelry, even under their fingernails. And of course,
because the average micro dot was about the size of
a period, they'd sometimes adhere the dots to books and
newspapers where they just looked like, you know, part of
the printed page. And what's really impressive to me is
that they were doing all of this before computers. Oh yeah,
that's that's really fascinating. I mean, you think about that
(19:27):
as something that's so easy to do with computers, but
I hadn't considered that this is like an elaborate old process.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
It's so much more work.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
Yeah, and it could all be done with photography equipment today.
There were different techniques, some more sophisticated than others, and
along the way people did invent special cameras to generate
micro dots. But even with a regular camera you could
do it. Basically, you'd photograph a document so it filled
a frame of film, develop that, then mount the negative
on black cardboard with a whole cutout so you could
(19:56):
light it from behind. That way the text on the
negative was visible. And finally you take a close up
photo of the negative, creating an image less than a
millimeter long, and in order to see what was on
the image, you just needed a microscope.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
That is so cool. But right now, more than anything,
I'm curious what is in the micro dot that you made.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
It's a script for an episode about the greatest peanut
strips in history. You know, it just incaded.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
So I know, I told you about the secret language
of fans and the marketing trick behind their sales, which
I love. But because I'm a little obsessed with how
repressed people were in the Victorian era, I've actually got
another one from those times. Now. As we've alluded to,
social etiquette at the time was insanely strict. You basically
couldn't say I like you without you know, fainting into
a lace handkerchief, right. It was too much emotion, and
(20:46):
so they had their fans. But people also invented another workaround,
and that was floriography, aka the language of flowers, and
basically it let you send text messages with bouquets. Now,
men were particularly blunt about this. If they handed someone
a nosegay, which was a little mini bouquet, they were
basically trying to slid to your dms right, And so
there's the obvious. There's a red rose, which means I'm
(21:08):
in love with you, a yellow carnation which means I
disdain you, and buttercups, which means you're childish. So a
little negging perhaps there, but it gets more elaborate. Women
in high society would wear flowers in their hair, are
tucked into their gowns as accessories, but these were more coded.
A sweet pea meant thank you. If you pair it
(21:29):
with zinias, suddenly you've opped it to thank you, dear
friend forever. If you add white lily's to the mix,
now you're saying thank you, dear friend forever. Also, I'm
pure and innocent, but not in a weird way.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
That's a complicated sentence, especially to send through flowers.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
I know. It feels like when Ruby was a kid
and would send out emojis to friends from my phone
and would just be a string of nonsense and people
would be trying to decode it, like what does twenty horses,
a few winks, arrows, gymnastics and an apple mean right?
Like total sense. But luckily for Victorians there was, like
the fans, a guidebook, the whole phenomena had started with
(22:05):
Charlotte de la Tour's eighteen nineteen book Li Language def Fleur,
which became a decoder ring basically for floral messages, and
the idea caught fire because at the time, when women
especially weren't encouraged to speak their minds, flowers became a
sly way of pushing back. Right. You could gossip, you
could flirt, you could dump someone, all while looking like
you were just accessorizing and playing your role. Men actually
(22:28):
found this useful as well, like there are cases where
men would sneak more emotion into things, like if you
look at the wreaths that noble men and kings placed
on their mother's graves, historians have actually realized that there
are actually more layers of emotion and feeling woven into
the symbols when you look at the flowers and the
specific flowers that were pulled in. In one case, I know,
there was one king who they didn't think had a
(22:49):
very deep relationship with the mother, and they realized just
how much respect through the wreath, which is incredible. Yeah,
that's lovely. Anyway, the system was not perfect like emojis today.
Content that mattered a pink flower in Thailand could be trust.
In Japan, the same flower might mean health, and in Victoria.
In London it might mean I'm into you, but chastely,
which is you know, confusing, but also the Victorian way.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
I actually think, you know, we can bring this back.
It's cool. But all right, this next one is something
that should probably stay forgotten. It is one of the
weirdest footnotes in the history of telecommunications, a little something
called the psychic snail telegraph.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
I feel like you're making this up, but I'm very
excited to hear more. Well, you know, sometimes the truth
really is stranger than fiction, and this is one of
those cases. So in the eighteen fifties, a French occultist
named Jacques Benoit developed a theory that when two snails
made it, their exchange of fluids forged a telepathic bond
(23:50):
that would connect them across any distance. So if you
poked one snail, its mate would flinch as if it
had also been touched. So, in ben Wah's this kind
of sympathetic action at a distance was really no different
than electricity, and he figured that if those forces, you know,
electricity and magnetism, could be harnessed for telecommunications as they
(24:12):
recently had been with a telegraph. Then maybe this animal
magnetism could serve the same purpose. I mean, in one sense,
it sounds vaguely credible until you remember that snails are
not psychic, you know.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
Yeah, yeah, that is kind of a sticking point, I guess,
but it didn't stop ben Wah from testing his theory.
In eighteen fifty one, he claimed to have devised a
telegraph that would use the psychic link between twenty four
pairs of snails to send messages from one side of
the world to the other. He even managed to smooth
talk a wealthy Parisian named Monsieur Triat into funding his
(24:47):
experiments and providing lodging and a stipend for him while
he worked on the machine, which I'm sure was money
well spent. But how is this supposed to work? So
the final build consisted of two paired sets of twenty
four snails each so forty eight snails total, which were
glued to a pair of wooden boards alongside the letters
of the French alphabet. And the idea was that if
(25:08):
you pressed a snail on one board, its mate on
the other board would stick out its tentacles in response,
and those are the little things on top of its head,
by the way. And just like regular telegraphs, this required
an operator on each end, one to send the message
and one to monitor the snail's movements to see which
letters had been pressed.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
There is something both fishy and gross about the psychic
snail telegraphy.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
Yeah, I mean, you're not the only one to think that.
So after months of frustration and nothing to show for it,
Monsieur Triat demanded a demonstration, you know, to see where
all his money was going. Benoa agreed, but surprise, surprise,
it didn't go so well. During the trial, Benoa ran
back and forth to make sure the operators were reading
the snails correctly, so it was blatant cheating, and the
(25:57):
messages still wound up totally garbled. Triot called for a second,
more rigorous demonstration, but when the day of the second
test arrived, Benoah didn't show up. He never contacted Triot
again and died the next year. So it was all
a big scam. But it's fun to imagine a world
where ben Wah's vision became reality, Like he had plans
(26:18):
to make personal snail telegraphs the size of a pocket
watch because there are snail species, you know, as small
as a pinhead, and if that had happened, we could
all be carrying around psychic snail telegraphs instead of smartphone.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
You know, maybe it wouldn't be so bad. But all right,
let's wrap this thing up with one last fact. So
over the summer we did an episode where we took
a virtual trip across Australia. Now I have never been
to Australia in real life, but that episode was so
much fun. I ended up doing some more reading about
the landown under and I learned about a fascinating tool
(26:55):
called message sticks.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
Which I'm assuming is Aussie slang for post it notes.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
Right. No, they're actual sticks, and they have an incredible
history that goes back centuries. So, as you may know,
Australia's Aboriginal people are considered the world's oldest continuous living culture,
and within that culture are hundreds of different nations. They
speak over two hundred and fifty languages eight hundred dialects,
and yet for hundreds even thousands of years, Indigenous people
(27:22):
were able to communicate with each other despite differences in
their spoken language and the challenges of traveling across remote
wilderness areas. So early European colonists witnessed thousands of First
Nations people gathering from hundreds of kilometers away, all arriving
at the same place at the same time, and they
just assumed it was telepathy, right, a little like your
(27:43):
snail telegraph. It was actually something simpler but just as impressive.
They had these carved wooden sticks inscribed with images that
gave precise instructions for meeting times and places, as well
as other important news. So the process begins with an
oral message that would be communicated to a messenger. As
the stick was carved. That way, the sender could explain
(28:04):
to the messenger how the symbols on the stick related
to the message. Then the messenger carried the stick to
the recipient and repeated the oral message that he'd memorized.
So if there were any language barriers, the stick would
make sure that he points got through. If the recipient
wanted to send a message back, they'd repeat the process
before the messenger went home.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
Have these message sticks been preserved in any way, It
seems like they'd be an amazing cultural record.
Speaker 1 (28:26):
They have, and they are so. An anthropologist named Pierce
Kelly has created the Australian Message Stick Project, which tracks
down message sticks and museums and private collections. He actually
works closely with Indigenous elders to decode the meaning of
their symbols, and oddly enough, there are people alive today
who understand the symbols because in some parts of Australia
(28:46):
message sticks were still in use until the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
Plus many of the symbols refer to places and practices
that remain important to Aboriginal life. So in fact, according
to Kelly, there's been this message stick revival in Australia,
particularly for formal interactions between institutions. So while message stakes
are a connection to the past, they still have meaning
in the present, which I really love. Yeah, I love
that too.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
It's you. You somehow made this a little heartwarming. So
think I think for that and floriography, you should probably
take the trophy this time.
Speaker 1 (29:19):
I don't think I can because snail messaging is too gross.
And also the John j fact about that what was
it called something? Not? It was son nuts a new
scravel word. Shout out to John Jay and Monsieur Benoa. Awesome.
(29:40):
Well that does it for today's Nine Things episode of
part Time Juniors. I do want to thank our good
friends at CDM for letting us record here today. And
I know I mentioned this earlier, but we love communicating
with our fans, so send us your stories, ideas, messages, whatever.
We would love to play some of those messages on
the show. That number again and for the hotline is
three two four oh five five nine two five. But
(30:04):
from Will, Mary, Gabe, Dylan and myself, thank you so
much for listening. Part Time Genius is a production of
(30:25):
Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio. This show is hosted by Will Pearson
and Me Mongas Chatikler and research by our good pal
Mary Philip Sandy. Today's episode was engineered and produced by
the wonderful Dylan Fagan with support from Tyler Klang. The
show is executive produced for iHeart by Katrina Norvell and
Ali Perry, with social media support from Sasha Gay, trustee
(30:48):
Dara Potts and Vine Shoory. For more podcasts from Kaleidoscope
and iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
The
Part-Time Genius News
Hosts And Creators
Will Pearson
Mangesh Hattikudur
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