December 7, 2023 • 31 mins
Human history is absolutely riddled with cases of one person making a magnificent discovery -- only to be punished by the society in which they reside. In part two of this sadly continual series, Ben, Noel and Max explore the story of the legendary Alan Turing, who turned the tide of WWII... and was subsequently targeted, persecuted and betrayed by the United Kingdom.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous Histories, a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to the
(00:27):
show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much for
tuning in. Shout out to our super producer, mister Max Williams.
Shout out, Yeah, I'm putting some italics on his name, apparently,
consider yourself.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Shout it out.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Shout it Mouse by none other than Ben Bullen and
mister Noel Brown. Noel, how we doing.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
You're pretty good. Yeah. We just had a marathon on
weird sounding diseases.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
We had a long episode about diseases wherein we occasionally
mentioned disease.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
We did occasion and then, man, you think of the
things people learn from that about the California raisins. If
you weren't of a certain generation that might have passed
you by entirely, you're welcome. The Internet.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
History is always closer than it appears in the review mirror,
which is why like that dinosaur in Jurassic Park, Yes,
like uh this, this is why we're going somewhere with
this because you may remember, not too long ago, folks,
we explored a history of scientists who are horrifically persecuted
(01:31):
for daring to make the world a slightly better place.
Dare to dream, dare to dream, and the authorities will
burn you at the stake, is what we learned. You
know the musical Pippin. Uh no, let's wait wait wait,
why is this sound?
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (01:47):
I'm thinking like Pippy longs Pippin.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Doesn't it have like a song about like the impossible
dream or something like that?
Speaker 1 (01:53):
Oh? Is that where the dream the impossible dream comes from?
Speaker 2 (01:55):
I think it is. No, it's corner of the sky
or impossible dreams, something else unrelated to any of this stuff.
What are we talking about today, Ben.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Today we are continuing Part two of scientists who were persecuted,
and heads up, folks, we're getting into some kind of
disturbing stuff. One of the most famously persecuted scientists Alan Turing.
Alan Turing was he's a little different from some of
our part one folks, because he was not persecuted like
(02:25):
you know, the way Galileo was persecuted for figuring out
parts of astronomy. Wasn't persecuted for what he studied, nor
his areas of expertise, but for his very identity who
he was.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
Alan Turing was an Englishman born June twenty third of
nineteen twelve in London Town, England, UK. He was a
British mathematician and logician, which is not the same as
being a magician, but it's magic in its own way.
(02:57):
He probably could tell you how magnets worked. He made
serious contributions to things like mathematics, logic philosophy, which I
always think is an interesting kissing cousin to science. Right,
mathematical biology what who even knew? That was a thing?
That sounds way too complicated for me?
Speaker 1 (03:16):
I mean, is does that mean there's also biological math?
Speaker 2 (03:19):
I think it must mean that has to mean that,
and also cryptanalysis. So he was really into like code
breaking and like stuff like that. Right, yes, that was
a big part of his relationship with history, right absolutely.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
Yeah. He was the child of a civil servant and
he was fortunate enough to attend a top private school.
He studied mathematics in Cambridge in nineteen thirty one. He
graduated in thirty four and as soon as he got
out of Cambridge he snagged a fellowship at King's College.
And this was all based on his top notch research
(03:56):
in things like probability theory. He wrote some brain through
papers break through papers for the boffins for the people
who are better at math than we are.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Heads defencil net geeks.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
The title of what is banging papers is uncomputable numbers
with an application to the unshy Dung's problem.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
That's good, yeah, and and and Schidung's problem. Problem. There
we go, what does that mean? Uh, decision problem. Leave
it to the Germans to make something as innocuous as
that sound like being bludgeoned.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
It's fantastic that language just agglomerates everything into one word,
you know. So he gets recommended for publication based on
this Based on the strength of this paper, and other
legends in the game are co signing them left and right,
folks like the American mathematical logician Alonzo Church. And this stuff,
(04:55):
as esoteric as it may sound, it has some real
importance for the urging science that we will later call computing.
So this guy's instrumental in the steps toward all the
things that make it possible for us to have a
podcast today. He moves to Princeton University in nineteen thirty six.
(05:16):
He's going to get his pH d in mathematical logic
under the guidance of the dude who you know, kind
of tapped him in earlier. Now, he despite being a
very very smart person, like many other very smart people
in the world, he had no idea that World War
II was on the way.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
No, he certainly didn't, but it would alter the course
of his life, along with the course of history as
we know it, and he personally played a huge hand
and altering the course of that conflict and how it
pan out. I mentioned earlier that he was you know,
he really did. It contained multitudes. He contributed so much
to like modern computing, and most importantly, he was a
(06:00):
super important part of cracking the Enigma code, which was
something created by this massive computer system called the Enigma machine.
Again one of these kind of almost clockwork type machines
that took up an entire room early computing, and it
was a German cipher device that to this day is
considered one of the most advanced cipher machines of all time.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
Exactly.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
He goes back to King's College in nineteen thirty eight,
and from there he goes on to join the Government
Code and Cipher school. Think of it like kind of
link their essay or something. And war breaks out with
Germany in September nineteen thirty nine, he relocates to the
wartime headquarters of the Code and Cipher School and.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
By the way, at Bletchley Park, Buckingham Shear, which is
the most British sounding location ever has existed.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
Exactly, and he helps develop this thing called the bumb
which is a huge piece of technology that Allied forces
were using to just cipher those German codes.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
Is back in the day when like the kind of
computing power that we can now hold in the palm
of our hand would take up rooms, you know, these
massive punch card type computers right.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Right, and so this was kind of like a in
a way, it's a battle of mechanisms. It's like a
robot battle in very early days, because the Germans were
using some kind of cipher machine, it's Enigma machine to
create this code that they just couldn't crack until touring
came along. By nineteen forty two cryptanalysis at Bletchley Park,
(07:44):
we're getting thirty nine thousand different messages every month because
the group text during wartime is just crazy, really yeah,
and they were decoding these the number kept rising. It
got to eighty four thousand different messages per month. That's
two messages every single minute, day and night, and that
(08:04):
year nineteen forty two, Turing figures out how to break
like how to break this code, and to your point,
in a very real way, he may have turned the
tide of the war.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
That's right. So in nineteen forty five, after the war
has ended, he gets recruited to the National Physical Laboratory
or the NPL in London to create sounds almost redundance,
doesn't it. But it isn't because a lot of early
computers were more mechanical, like you said, to create an
electronic computer.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
Ah, an electronic computer, which sounds a bit redundant today,
like ATM machine or ven number. But it was a
new thing. It was a hot, new cool thing.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
And because because it's early ones, like you said, we're mechanisms.
They were almost like clockwork, cards, tubes, gears, tubes, all
of that stuff, I feel like maybe not even tubes
as much. I mean, because tubes are more electrical. I
almost think I almost think they were like almost like
like like automataw like wind up different one wear.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
An audio podcast. So the problem is, you know, this
is a very competitive space.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
Yah point, It's like a space race kind of situation
exactly like a space race situation.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
So the National Physical Laboratory the NPL. They lose this
race to build the first working electronic digital computer that
has a stored program. Luckily they're beaten by some allies,
by some friendly fire. The people who do get across
the finish line first are the Royal Society Computing Machine
Laboratory in Manchester.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
So not too bad, No exactly. That's something they say
of the rivalry between their related football clubs.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Oh yeah, no, totally different bloodbath, yes, they So Turing
is feeling kind of down. He's like MPL is delaying.
We're moving so slow, you guys. So he gets a
gig as the deputy director of the Computing Machine Laboratory
in that year. Funny note here there is no actual director.
(10:21):
There's nowhere at the top.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
Yeah, and then it seems like, you know, it's like
sort of like these these knobs go to eleven, you know,
why not just make ten one? Louder is the deputy director.
If there's no actual director, isn't he just the director? Sorry?
They were very into secrets at this time. They were
dealing with code breaking and the like. He arrived in
Manchester and started making some pretty significant contributions to the
(10:47):
development of this technology using a system that he designed
called an input output system.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
Yeah, exactly, and this is incredibly important stuff. We're not
going to get too in the weeds here.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
To understand any of it, right, just to be honest.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
But we are going to establish this. He is recognized
as one of the you could call them founding fathers
of artificial intelligence, modern cognitive to science, and he was
one of the early popularizers of the theory that the
human brain is its own kind of digital computing machine.
(11:27):
Oh it works biological math.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
Oh, there we go. Yeah, you know, it's funny. I'm
a bit of a synthesizer nerd I may have mentioned
a time or two and recently started diving into the
very money pit ish world of modular synthesizers. And there
is a very popular type of module called a touring
turing machine. And what it does is it generates random
(11:51):
voltage that can create what's called generative music. So it's
a very It basically allows you to set the terms
for a system that then kind of creates random notes
and rhythms based on sort of whatever conditions you set.
So very much this kind of early thinking around technology
and logic very much still at play today, you know,
(12:13):
in the world of you know, music production and the
ai of Like you said, I mean, it's obviously very
much he is. It's more of like he is the
philosophical father of a lot of this stuff, right.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. You know. He was kicking these ideas
that sound almost metaphysical. He's saying, when the human is born,
the core tex is an unorganized machine. Cool, and we
can train it into a universal machine and then just
to be safe, he said, or something like it. Yeah,
(12:46):
but it is cool.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
That is a very forward thinking way of looking at it.
He seems like a good. Hang he really did? It
does seem like a good he Was he a secret
drunk or something? Did he have problematic elements to his personality?
Speaker 1 (12:59):
The British government thought, so, ah, I see, I see,
We're getting to the person I don't think they. I
don't know if they had secret drunks back then everyone
was like yeah so so. Turing is perhaps most famous
in pop culture for proposing the idea of the Turing test.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
It's oh for is that for seeing if something is
a robot or android?
Speaker 1 (13:23):
Yeah, criteria for determining whether like a quote unquote artificial
intelligence is actually thinking.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
I think probably correct me if I'm wrong. The stuff
in Blade Runner where they're kind of asking questions to
see if someone's a replicant or not. Its back right,
they're not helping it. It's sort of based around this
kind of test, right.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
It's definitely inspired by that. Philip K. Dick was not
working in vacuum. And you know, recently when large language models,
most famously chapped GPT, came out into the into the world,
people started talking again. There was a renaissance and in
the discourse about whether or not the Turing tests have
been met.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
And he would have been amazing on Twitter right.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
Now probably so the hot takes would be a flowing
the hot takes would be a floid.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
I could I can you imagine what other weird metaphors
and philosophical stuff he would have had to say in
twenty twenty.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
Three, Oh, I'm sure. Yeah, No, this guy was definitely
a coiner, you know, yeah, in terms of like, yeah,
I mean he created whole concepts that he was you know,
it was like he didn't. It was one of those things,
much like often happens in science fiction where somebody has
the forethought, foresight, and the intelligence. The intellects sort of
literally see the future even though no such technology exists
(14:40):
yet they're describing a thing that then ultimately, over time,
all of the pieces come together. That's what Touring did.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
I think that's an apt comparison, man, and I love
how you set up that. Look, this is not about
this episode is not just inventors. We like, it's inventors
who are persecuted. And you said, hey, there might be
a darker side to this thing. In March of nineteen
fifty two, Alan Turing is convicted of a crime called
(15:07):
gross indecency that is a euphemism for homosexuality, which was
an egregious crime in the country at that time. And
his sentence is beyond cruel and unusual. He was sentenced
to a full year of hormone therapy. God, and that
(15:29):
is a euphemism.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
That's worse than pray the gaoa. That's so like barbaric,
you know. So when you say when you say it's
a euphemism, what for like being the bottomized or something.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
Kind of yeahical castration talking exactly, no way. Yeah, they
just shot him up with synthetic estrogen injections. And eventually
these will make you impotent. While also, of course I
can only imagine wreaking havoc on your body. In other ways,
why do.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
They hate him so much? He'd done so much for
the country. Why would they seek him out? Because a
lot of times what we see in these cases of
persecution is that that someone speaking truth to power, or
they're saying something that's politically divisive, and then they're targeted
because they're they're they're they want to shut them down
because they're dangerous. That doesn't quite seem like what's happening here.
(16:18):
He had nothing but bona fides, and you know, like
he's basically a war hero. Why why are they doing
this to the Yeah, I guess because they're homophobic.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
And also I think I think a lot of accusations
are confessions, So you know, just like.
Speaker 2 (16:35):
How accuse the other of that which you yourself are guilty? Right?
Speaker 1 (16:38):
Like, look at how many and I'll say it not
to get too political, but look at how many right,
very far right politicians across the world make, you know, uh,
make these statements, these barnstorming speeches about you know, family
values and things like that. And later it turns out
that they were grooming.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
Or or closeted or closetive day.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
Is that the guy Jerry Folwell Junior, Yeah, I mean
one of many.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
One of many, Lindsey Graham. I mean it's it's not confirmed.
I mean it's it's pretty much is confirmed. The guy
is a regular visitor of male sex workers.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
Old ladybug.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
Yeah, they call him something like that. It wasn't quite that.
They call oh yeah yeah, lady like Lady Godiva. It's
like something like that, some kind of weird code name.
Lady g I think is maybe okay.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
Yeah, And so Turing is persecuted again, not for his
world changing work, but because they have decided his very
identity is a crime. And so there's another kick in
the pants here. Now he's got a criminal record, so
he can never work for the British government's code breaking center,
(17:50):
which is crazy because he's literally the best guy for
the job, like throughout the world, he's the number one
guy for the job, and the government refuses because they're
saying tuts.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
Why would they This seems like they're shooting themselves in
the foot. You know. It's like making hackers take drug tests,
you know what I mean, which they've done away with
in terms of the CIA and like the ability to
hire stuff because they realized this is this is stupid
where we're like literally narrowing the pool of capable individuals
who can do this work for us. But you're right
at this point that hate trumps all else. Yeah, because
(18:26):
if anyone was going to get a pass, it's this
guy again, war hero.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
Very much so, and so he has a He has
a very abbreviated career after this. He returns to Manchester.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
Old is he around this time?
Speaker 1 (18:39):
So he's like forty jeez, that's all. It's like forty
forty one, maybe just about to term forty one.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
And amazing how much he accomplished already though about that
by this point you know, absolutely yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
So here we are in the early nineteen fifties. He
has been working on what we would now call artific life.
He publishes a paper called the Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis,
and it's looking at form and pattern in nature and
living organisms. And then he starts working on more stuff
(19:16):
that's like at the edge of what we would call
biotech for his time, comparing the natural world to created mechanisms.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
Such a versatile mind, this guy he used Manchester's Ferranti
Mark one computer to create very as elaborate as the
technology of the time would allow models of these hypotheses
that he had about chemical mechanisms for the generation of
(19:44):
anatomical structure in animals and plants. But this is when
the story takes a really really, really really sad turn,
because he is just a year later, in nineteen fifty four,
found dead in his bed from a parent cyanid poisoning.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
Yeah, and it is.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
Ruled a suicide, but seems sketched to me.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
Dude, there was no motive established in the investigation, because
at least they had an investigation into the death. Right Now,
A lot of historians will tell you that his demise
should be attributed to the hormone treatment he received at
(20:29):
the at the hands of the British government after he's
found guilty basically being a gay man, And well, I
guess they shouldn't say most historians his historians will often
say this, But if you look at the timeline he
survived that year of hormone doses, he died more than
a year after that dose sentence had ended, and he
(20:54):
had the thing where a lot of you see this
unfortunately often if people commit suicide, he had where people
might not believe it, and one of his friends said,
you know, he seemed fine, he had an amused fortitude
to go.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
Yeah, Peter at Hilton is how is his friend who
described his attitude about the treatment like that? And he has,
you know, in many ways become a sad sort of
case study on this kind of persecution around whether gender
identity or sexuality or whatever it might be. He really
(21:31):
is sort of like a lesson learned, I guess, or
a case to point too of how what we're talking about.
We're so mystified by this, Like how would they how
could they shoot themselves in the foot like that? Like
this guy who obviously literally turned the war in favor
of his country, how could they just throw him out
like a piece of garbage like that? And it doesn't
(21:52):
make any sense.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
Yeah, And it's also you know, there's some kind of
torn about because the story of his persecution and the
prosecution against him for being gay, it grew over time,
and by the early twenty first century or so, it
was something everybody knew about and everybody admitted it was
(22:15):
super messed up. In two thousand and nine, the Prime
Minister at the time, Gordon Brown spoke up officially on
behalf of the British government publicly apologized for the utterly
unfair treatment of Turin and then.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
Better late than never, I guess, yeah, get this, this
is so weird.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
Four years after that, Queen Elizabeth gave him a posthumous
royal part.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
In symbolic I suppose.
Speaker 1 (22:38):
I guess, But I mean, does that help.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
No, But what maybe does help is that for a
long time his legacy was sort of buried.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
You know.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
I don't think it was until the nineties because of
classified type stuff, that it was even understood to what
degree he was responsible for turning that tide of war,
you know, in favor of the Allies.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
Yeah, and I kind of want to jump in here
just to kind of point out Queen Elizabeth was the
queen when this all happened.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
I was gonna ask if I thought that was probably
the case. I wanted to check because I'm like, this
has people now I was thinking the same thing, and
so maybe that is a little bit again symbolic. It's
sort of like her apologizing as well. But that's just
sort of what's the word, too little, too late, way
too little way too late. Yeah, but again, his legacy
is now really established, you know, and when in the nineties,
(23:29):
you know, when it was made clear how important he
was in that effort, and now he's a legend, you know,
which I guess is something. You know, legacy is important.
I guess. I don't know that he would have cared.
He doesn't seem like that.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
I don't think you would have cared. I genuinely don't
think you would have cared. But that because that's like
his areas a doer man, you know what I mean,
Like that's he doesn't I don't think he was focused
on legacy.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
Don't know he did. He have kids to speak of
or family? Think so? Now I didn't think so. And
if you want to read more about the sort of
updated legacy that we're talking about here, there is a
really good article in The New York Times by Alan
Cowell called Overlooked No More. Alan Turning condemned codebreaker and
computer visionary. Highly recommend that And this is what he
(24:18):
had to say, kind of summing up everything we've been
talking about to this day. Turning is recognized in his
own country and among a broad society of scientists as
a pillar of achievement, who had fused brilliance and eccentricity,
moved comfortably in the abstruse realms of mathematics and cryptography,
but awkwardly in social settings, and had been brought low
(24:40):
by the hostile society into which he was born. And
there's a quote here from John Graham Cumming, who's a
computer scientist who campaigned for Touring to be part of this.
Didn't have been on a vacuum either, this whole pardoning thing.
He was a national treasurer and we hounded him to
his death.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
And it's true, you know, and we're gonna, you know, work,
going to keep this when a little bit shorter. There
are so many scientists that we weren't able to get to.
We do hope history remembers them. Shout out to people
like Henry Oldenberg. This is a real story. He founded
the Royal Society in London and he wanted to publish
(25:18):
a lot of scientific papers, so he had to write
to all these people living across Europe. He had a
lot of correspondents, and he wrote and received so many
letters that the government decided he was a spy, and
they arrested him and locked him in the Tower of
London because of his pin Pllory. Oh wow.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (25:38):
I also did a little restream of the guy and
he was kind of footing the bill for all that too.
To make it even worse, his dudes footing the bill
to start basically the first medical publication, and the English
government is like spy.
Speaker 1 (25:53):
Oh yeah, like, hey, nobody really likes mailing things or something.
They thought they got him. But you know, with this,
I think what we have to remember is a lot
of times society can be its own enemy, you know
what I mean.
Speaker 2 (26:09):
That's what I'm saying.
Speaker 3 (26:09):
All this.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
The way they persecuted the during it could have potentially
robbed them of his genius. You know, the fact that
this criminal record made it where he could no longer
work for the government, which is who he did the
most benefit towards society, right.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
Which almost sounds conspiratorial. It does, like they I keep
going back to, it's literally the one guy who's best
for the job in the world and someone in the
boundary government. Yeah, like finds a reason. And I want
to shout out a really cool graphic novel series that
I've been enjoying I hope picks back up, called Uber
(26:47):
and Alan Turing is a character in this graphic novel series.
I don't want to ruin it, but I've got I
got a copy if you want to snag it. It's
you know how it is when you really like music,
you really like a story book, and you just you
want your friends to see it or hear it or experience. Absolutely, yeah,
definitely I'm going through that and hopefully hopefully we can
(27:09):
inspire something similar in you ridiculous historians. Not every scientist
is persecuted, hopefully, And although scientists often work in realms
that we candidly don't understand, the work they do is
important and it matters to everyone.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
Magnets, Am I right?
Speaker 1 (27:29):
So again, no I'm letting no, no, no no. I
said it last time, and poor Alex and Max have
had to listen to that too often. But yeah, yeah,
the the Juggalos of their time.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
Indeed, I think this is a good one. I think honestly, Turing, uh,
he just deserved his due. I barely wanted to make
this a listical episode, and I think this is a
topic that we can just continue to come back to,
sort of an ongoing series.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
Yeah, because unfortunately history is rife and riddled with scientists
who have been persecuted. We can't wait to hear thoughts, folks.
We are going to be returning soon with all sorts
of strange and ridiculous stories, not all of which will
be down as we promise.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
And you know, in the new year we might get
the keys to our social media back for the show.
It's been an ongoing struggle and impossible dream. I would
hope so, but in the meantime we haven't said this
in a while. You can reach out to us as
individuals if you wish. I am pretty exclusively on Instagram
at how Now, Noel Brown? How about you bet? Where
can the fine folks find you?
Speaker 1 (28:34):
In a stunning burst of creativity and modesty, I am
on Instagram as at Ben Bowling. You got led, You
got it.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
We were the first to market.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
Sorry other Bends. The Covenant is broken. It's doggy dog now,
no kidding. As Noel said, you can find us on
individually on Instagram. We love hanging out, We love hearing
from listeners. You are the most important part of the
show and thank you so much for sharing your time
with us today. Max. What if people want to find.
Speaker 3 (29:05):
You, bro? Yeah, if they want to find me, send
Ben a message on Twitter and he can text it
to me.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
And notice I didn't tell people my Twitter at bmbule
ANDHSW what's Twitter?
Speaker 2 (29:17):
It's this.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
It was this really cool thing back in the day
we happened to. Oh story for another time. Fair enough,
but thank you for the beautiful set up, mister Brown.
Speaker 2 (29:27):
Also, if you want to be nice to us, maybe
mentioned it in the previous episode, you can go on
to iTunes and or Apple podcasts and leave us a
nice review. We might start doing a thing where we
like read some of they're funny, make them funny.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
We'll get through them when no pun's left behind. Okay, great,
So thank you in advance for that. Thank you to
our returning guest Alex Circa, who has been hanging out
with us in the past few weeks.
Speaker 2 (29:51):
At Alex, I find me of the joke, Alex Circa,
what like circa nineteen ninety four that's our cutoff.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
Yeah, that's when. Yeah, that's the mid nineties is when
we decided we decided things were modern times. We might
have to adjust that up a decade as this.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
Oh god, yeah, we've been May you live in interesting times?
You said the wise man to the idiot. Definitely haven't
heard that one before. Oh yeah, okay, now you're being psychastic.
We're on a roll.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
So Alex has been hanging out a few weeks here
with us and and has been graciously sitting through all
kinds of beeps, all kinds of all kinds of hiccups
and so on, and probably hearing Max curse like a sailor.
Speaker 2 (30:39):
Guy's got a foul mouth on it.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
He's invented dirty work. He really isn't in some of
them already impressive. I hear him, and I'm like, that
was Max.
Speaker 2 (30:47):
All Right, Well, I guess we'll see you next time, folks.
For more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows
Ridiculous Histories, a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to the
(00:27):
show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much for
tuning in. Shout out to our super producer, mister Max Williams.
Shout out, Yeah, I'm putting some italics on his name, apparently,
consider yourself.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Shout it out.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Shout it Mouse by none other than Ben Bullen and
mister Noel Brown. Noel, how we doing.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
You're pretty good. Yeah. We just had a marathon on
weird sounding diseases.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
We had a long episode about diseases wherein we occasionally
mentioned disease.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
We did occasion and then, man, you think of the
things people learn from that about the California raisins. If
you weren't of a certain generation that might have passed
you by entirely, you're welcome. The Internet.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
History is always closer than it appears in the review mirror,
which is why like that dinosaur in Jurassic Park, Yes,
like uh this, this is why we're going somewhere with
this because you may remember, not too long ago, folks,
we explored a history of scientists who are horrifically persecuted
(01:31):
for daring to make the world a slightly better place.
Dare to dream, dare to dream, and the authorities will
burn you at the stake, is what we learned. You
know the musical Pippin. Uh no, let's wait wait wait,
why is this sound?
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (01:47):
I'm thinking like Pippy longs Pippin.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Doesn't it have like a song about like the impossible
dream or something like that?
Speaker 1 (01:53):
Oh? Is that where the dream the impossible dream comes from?
Speaker 2 (01:55):
I think it is. No, it's corner of the sky
or impossible dreams, something else unrelated to any of this stuff.
What are we talking about today, Ben.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Today we are continuing Part two of scientists who were persecuted,
and heads up, folks, we're getting into some kind of
disturbing stuff. One of the most famously persecuted scientists Alan Turing.
Alan Turing was he's a little different from some of
our part one folks, because he was not persecuted like
(02:25):
you know, the way Galileo was persecuted for figuring out
parts of astronomy. Wasn't persecuted for what he studied, nor
his areas of expertise, but for his very identity who
he was.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
Alan Turing was an Englishman born June twenty third of
nineteen twelve in London Town, England, UK. He was a
British mathematician and logician, which is not the same as
being a magician, but it's magic in its own way.
(02:57):
He probably could tell you how magnets worked. He made
serious contributions to things like mathematics, logic philosophy, which I
always think is an interesting kissing cousin to science. Right,
mathematical biology what who even knew? That was a thing?
That sounds way too complicated for me?
Speaker 1 (03:16):
I mean, is does that mean there's also biological math?
Speaker 2 (03:19):
I think it must mean that has to mean that,
and also cryptanalysis. So he was really into like code
breaking and like stuff like that. Right, yes, that was
a big part of his relationship with history, right absolutely.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
Yeah. He was the child of a civil servant and
he was fortunate enough to attend a top private school.
He studied mathematics in Cambridge in nineteen thirty one. He
graduated in thirty four and as soon as he got
out of Cambridge he snagged a fellowship at King's College.
And this was all based on his top notch research
(03:56):
in things like probability theory. He wrote some brain through
papers break through papers for the boffins for the people
who are better at math than we are.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Heads defencil net geeks.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
The title of what is banging papers is uncomputable numbers
with an application to the unshy Dung's problem.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
That's good, yeah, and and and Schidung's problem. Problem. There
we go, what does that mean? Uh, decision problem. Leave
it to the Germans to make something as innocuous as
that sound like being bludgeoned.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
It's fantastic that language just agglomerates everything into one word,
you know. So he gets recommended for publication based on
this Based on the strength of this paper, and other
legends in the game are co signing them left and right,
folks like the American mathematical logician Alonzo Church. And this stuff,
(04:55):
as esoteric as it may sound, it has some real
importance for the urging science that we will later call computing.
So this guy's instrumental in the steps toward all the
things that make it possible for us to have a
podcast today. He moves to Princeton University in nineteen thirty six.
(05:16):
He's going to get his pH d in mathematical logic
under the guidance of the dude who you know, kind
of tapped him in earlier. Now, he despite being a
very very smart person, like many other very smart people
in the world, he had no idea that World War
II was on the way.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
No, he certainly didn't, but it would alter the course
of his life, along with the course of history as
we know it, and he personally played a huge hand
and altering the course of that conflict and how it
pan out. I mentioned earlier that he was you know,
he really did. It contained multitudes. He contributed so much
to like modern computing, and most importantly, he was a
(06:00):
super important part of cracking the Enigma code, which was
something created by this massive computer system called the Enigma machine.
Again one of these kind of almost clockwork type machines
that took up an entire room early computing, and it
was a German cipher device that to this day is
considered one of the most advanced cipher machines of all time.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
Exactly.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
He goes back to King's College in nineteen thirty eight,
and from there he goes on to join the Government
Code and Cipher school. Think of it like kind of
link their essay or something. And war breaks out with
Germany in September nineteen thirty nine, he relocates to the
wartime headquarters of the Code and Cipher School and.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
By the way, at Bletchley Park, Buckingham Shear, which is
the most British sounding location ever has existed.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
Exactly, and he helps develop this thing called the bumb
which is a huge piece of technology that Allied forces
were using to just cipher those German codes.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
Is back in the day when like the kind of
computing power that we can now hold in the palm
of our hand would take up rooms, you know, these
massive punch card type computers right.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Right, and so this was kind of like a in
a way, it's a battle of mechanisms. It's like a
robot battle in very early days, because the Germans were
using some kind of cipher machine, it's Enigma machine to
create this code that they just couldn't crack until touring
came along. By nineteen forty two cryptanalysis at Bletchley Park,
(07:44):
we're getting thirty nine thousand different messages every month because
the group text during wartime is just crazy, really yeah,
and they were decoding these the number kept rising. It
got to eighty four thousand different messages per month. That's
two messages every single minute, day and night, and that
(08:04):
year nineteen forty two, Turing figures out how to break
like how to break this code, and to your point,
in a very real way, he may have turned the
tide of the war.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
That's right. So in nineteen forty five, after the war
has ended, he gets recruited to the National Physical Laboratory
or the NPL in London to create sounds almost redundance,
doesn't it. But it isn't because a lot of early
computers were more mechanical, like you said, to create an
electronic computer.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
Ah, an electronic computer, which sounds a bit redundant today,
like ATM machine or ven number. But it was a
new thing. It was a hot, new cool thing.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
And because because it's early ones, like you said, we're mechanisms.
They were almost like clockwork, cards, tubes, gears, tubes, all
of that stuff, I feel like maybe not even tubes
as much. I mean, because tubes are more electrical. I
almost think I almost think they were like almost like
like like automataw like wind up different one wear.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
An audio podcast. So the problem is, you know, this
is a very competitive space.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
Yah point, It's like a space race kind of situation
exactly like a space race situation.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
So the National Physical Laboratory the NPL. They lose this
race to build the first working electronic digital computer that
has a stored program. Luckily they're beaten by some allies,
by some friendly fire. The people who do get across
the finish line first are the Royal Society Computing Machine
Laboratory in Manchester.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
So not too bad, No exactly. That's something they say
of the rivalry between their related football clubs.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Oh yeah, no, totally different bloodbath, yes, they So Turing
is feeling kind of down. He's like MPL is delaying.
We're moving so slow, you guys. So he gets a
gig as the deputy director of the Computing Machine Laboratory
in that year. Funny note here there is no actual director.
(10:21):
There's nowhere at the top.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
Yeah, and then it seems like, you know, it's like
sort of like these these knobs go to eleven, you know,
why not just make ten one? Louder is the deputy director.
If there's no actual director, isn't he just the director? Sorry?
They were very into secrets at this time. They were
dealing with code breaking and the like. He arrived in
Manchester and started making some pretty significant contributions to the
(10:47):
development of this technology using a system that he designed
called an input output system.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
Yeah, exactly, and this is incredibly important stuff. We're not
going to get too in the weeds here.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
To understand any of it, right, just to be honest.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
But we are going to establish this. He is recognized
as one of the you could call them founding fathers
of artificial intelligence, modern cognitive to science, and he was
one of the early popularizers of the theory that the
human brain is its own kind of digital computing machine.
(11:27):
Oh it works biological math.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
Oh, there we go. Yeah, you know, it's funny. I'm
a bit of a synthesizer nerd I may have mentioned
a time or two and recently started diving into the
very money pit ish world of modular synthesizers. And there
is a very popular type of module called a touring
turing machine. And what it does is it generates random
(11:51):
voltage that can create what's called generative music. So it's
a very It basically allows you to set the terms
for a system that then kind of creates random notes
and rhythms based on sort of whatever conditions you set.
So very much this kind of early thinking around technology
and logic very much still at play today, you know,
(12:13):
in the world of you know, music production and the
ai of Like you said, I mean, it's obviously very
much he is. It's more of like he is the
philosophical father of a lot of this stuff, right.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. You know. He was kicking these ideas
that sound almost metaphysical. He's saying, when the human is born,
the core tex is an unorganized machine. Cool, and we
can train it into a universal machine and then just
to be safe, he said, or something like it. Yeah,
(12:46):
but it is cool.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
That is a very forward thinking way of looking at it.
He seems like a good. Hang he really did? It
does seem like a good he Was he a secret
drunk or something? Did he have problematic elements to his personality?
Speaker 1 (12:59):
The British government thought, so, ah, I see, I see,
We're getting to the person I don't think they. I
don't know if they had secret drunks back then everyone
was like yeah so so. Turing is perhaps most famous
in pop culture for proposing the idea of the Turing test.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
It's oh for is that for seeing if something is
a robot or android?
Speaker 1 (13:23):
Yeah, criteria for determining whether like a quote unquote artificial
intelligence is actually thinking.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
I think probably correct me if I'm wrong. The stuff
in Blade Runner where they're kind of asking questions to
see if someone's a replicant or not. Its back right,
they're not helping it. It's sort of based around this
kind of test, right.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
It's definitely inspired by that. Philip K. Dick was not
working in vacuum. And you know, recently when large language models,
most famously chapped GPT, came out into the into the world,
people started talking again. There was a renaissance and in
the discourse about whether or not the Turing tests have
been met.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
And he would have been amazing on Twitter right.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
Now probably so the hot takes would be a flowing
the hot takes would be a floid.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
I could I can you imagine what other weird metaphors
and philosophical stuff he would have had to say in
twenty twenty.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
Three, Oh, I'm sure. Yeah, No, this guy was definitely
a coiner, you know, yeah, in terms of like, yeah,
I mean he created whole concepts that he was you know,
it was like he didn't. It was one of those things,
much like often happens in science fiction where somebody has
the forethought, foresight, and the intelligence. The intellects sort of
literally see the future even though no such technology exists
(14:40):
yet they're describing a thing that then ultimately, over time,
all of the pieces come together. That's what Touring did.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
I think that's an apt comparison, man, and I love
how you set up that. Look, this is not about
this episode is not just inventors. We like, it's inventors
who are persecuted. And you said, hey, there might be
a darker side to this thing. In March of nineteen
fifty two, Alan Turing is convicted of a crime called
(15:07):
gross indecency that is a euphemism for homosexuality, which was
an egregious crime in the country at that time. And
his sentence is beyond cruel and unusual. He was sentenced
to a full year of hormone therapy. God, and that
(15:29):
is a euphemism.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
That's worse than pray the gaoa. That's so like barbaric,
you know. So when you say when you say it's
a euphemism, what for like being the bottomized or something.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
Kind of yeahical castration talking exactly, no way. Yeah, they
just shot him up with synthetic estrogen injections. And eventually
these will make you impotent. While also, of course I
can only imagine wreaking havoc on your body. In other ways,
why do.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
They hate him so much? He'd done so much for
the country. Why would they seek him out? Because a
lot of times what we see in these cases of
persecution is that that someone speaking truth to power, or
they're saying something that's politically divisive, and then they're targeted
because they're they're they're they want to shut them down
because they're dangerous. That doesn't quite seem like what's happening here.
(16:18):
He had nothing but bona fides, and you know, like
he's basically a war hero. Why why are they doing
this to the Yeah, I guess because they're homophobic.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
And also I think I think a lot of accusations
are confessions, So you know, just like.
Speaker 2 (16:35):
How accuse the other of that which you yourself are guilty? Right?
Speaker 1 (16:38):
Like, look at how many and I'll say it not
to get too political, but look at how many right,
very far right politicians across the world make, you know, uh,
make these statements, these barnstorming speeches about you know, family
values and things like that. And later it turns out
that they were grooming.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
Or or closeted or closetive day.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
Is that the guy Jerry Folwell Junior, Yeah, I mean
one of many.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
One of many, Lindsey Graham. I mean it's it's not confirmed.
I mean it's it's pretty much is confirmed. The guy
is a regular visitor of male sex workers.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
Old ladybug.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
Yeah, they call him something like that. It wasn't quite that.
They call oh yeah yeah, lady like Lady Godiva. It's
like something like that, some kind of weird code name.
Lady g I think is maybe okay.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
Yeah, And so Turing is persecuted again, not for his
world changing work, but because they have decided his very
identity is a crime. And so there's another kick in
the pants here. Now he's got a criminal record, so
he can never work for the British government's code breaking center,
(17:50):
which is crazy because he's literally the best guy for
the job, like throughout the world, he's the number one
guy for the job, and the government refuses because they're
saying tuts.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
Why would they This seems like they're shooting themselves in
the foot. You know. It's like making hackers take drug tests,
you know what I mean, which they've done away with
in terms of the CIA and like the ability to
hire stuff because they realized this is this is stupid
where we're like literally narrowing the pool of capable individuals
who can do this work for us. But you're right
at this point that hate trumps all else. Yeah, because
(18:26):
if anyone was going to get a pass, it's this
guy again, war hero.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
Very much so, and so he has a He has
a very abbreviated career after this. He returns to Manchester.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
Old is he around this time?
Speaker 1 (18:39):
So he's like forty jeez, that's all. It's like forty
forty one, maybe just about to term forty one.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
And amazing how much he accomplished already though about that
by this point you know, absolutely yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
So here we are in the early nineteen fifties. He
has been working on what we would now call artific life.
He publishes a paper called the Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis,
and it's looking at form and pattern in nature and
living organisms. And then he starts working on more stuff
(19:16):
that's like at the edge of what we would call
biotech for his time, comparing the natural world to created mechanisms.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
Such a versatile mind, this guy he used Manchester's Ferranti
Mark one computer to create very as elaborate as the
technology of the time would allow models of these hypotheses
that he had about chemical mechanisms for the generation of
(19:44):
anatomical structure in animals and plants. But this is when
the story takes a really really, really really sad turn,
because he is just a year later, in nineteen fifty four,
found dead in his bed from a parent cyanid poisoning.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
Yeah, and it is.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
Ruled a suicide, but seems sketched to me.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
Dude, there was no motive established in the investigation, because
at least they had an investigation into the death. Right Now,
A lot of historians will tell you that his demise
should be attributed to the hormone treatment he received at
(20:29):
the at the hands of the British government after he's
found guilty basically being a gay man, And well, I
guess they shouldn't say most historians his historians will often
say this, But if you look at the timeline he
survived that year of hormone doses, he died more than
a year after that dose sentence had ended, and he
(20:54):
had the thing where a lot of you see this
unfortunately often if people commit suicide, he had where people
might not believe it, and one of his friends said,
you know, he seemed fine, he had an amused fortitude
to go.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
Yeah, Peter at Hilton is how is his friend who
described his attitude about the treatment like that? And he has,
you know, in many ways become a sad sort of
case study on this kind of persecution around whether gender
identity or sexuality or whatever it might be. He really
(21:31):
is sort of like a lesson learned, I guess, or
a case to point too of how what we're talking about.
We're so mystified by this, Like how would they how
could they shoot themselves in the foot like that? Like
this guy who obviously literally turned the war in favor
of his country, how could they just throw him out
like a piece of garbage like that? And it doesn't
(21:52):
make any sense.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
Yeah, And it's also you know, there's some kind of
torn about because the story of his persecution and the
prosecution against him for being gay, it grew over time,
and by the early twenty first century or so, it
was something everybody knew about and everybody admitted it was
(22:15):
super messed up. In two thousand and nine, the Prime
Minister at the time, Gordon Brown spoke up officially on
behalf of the British government publicly apologized for the utterly
unfair treatment of Turin and then.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
Better late than never, I guess, yeah, get this, this
is so weird.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
Four years after that, Queen Elizabeth gave him a posthumous
royal part.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
In symbolic I suppose.
Speaker 1 (22:38):
I guess, But I mean, does that help.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
No, But what maybe does help is that for a
long time his legacy was sort of buried.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
You know.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
I don't think it was until the nineties because of
classified type stuff, that it was even understood to what
degree he was responsible for turning that tide of war,
you know, in favor of the Allies.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
Yeah, and I kind of want to jump in here
just to kind of point out Queen Elizabeth was the
queen when this all happened.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
I was gonna ask if I thought that was probably
the case. I wanted to check because I'm like, this
has people now I was thinking the same thing, and
so maybe that is a little bit again symbolic. It's
sort of like her apologizing as well. But that's just
sort of what's the word, too little, too late, way
too little way too late. Yeah, but again, his legacy
is now really established, you know, and when in the nineties,
(23:29):
you know, when it was made clear how important he
was in that effort, and now he's a legend, you know,
which I guess is something. You know, legacy is important.
I guess. I don't know that he would have cared.
He doesn't seem like that.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
I don't think you would have cared. I genuinely don't
think you would have cared. But that because that's like
his areas a doer man, you know what I mean,
Like that's he doesn't I don't think he was focused
on legacy.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
Don't know he did. He have kids to speak of
or family? Think so? Now I didn't think so. And
if you want to read more about the sort of
updated legacy that we're talking about here, there is a
really good article in The New York Times by Alan
Cowell called Overlooked No More. Alan Turning condemned codebreaker and
computer visionary. Highly recommend that And this is what he
(24:18):
had to say, kind of summing up everything we've been
talking about to this day. Turning is recognized in his
own country and among a broad society of scientists as
a pillar of achievement, who had fused brilliance and eccentricity,
moved comfortably in the abstruse realms of mathematics and cryptography,
but awkwardly in social settings, and had been brought low
(24:40):
by the hostile society into which he was born. And
there's a quote here from John Graham Cumming, who's a
computer scientist who campaigned for Touring to be part of this.
Didn't have been on a vacuum either, this whole pardoning thing.
He was a national treasurer and we hounded him to
his death.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
And it's true, you know, and we're gonna, you know, work,
going to keep this when a little bit shorter. There
are so many scientists that we weren't able to get to.
We do hope history remembers them. Shout out to people
like Henry Oldenberg. This is a real story. He founded
the Royal Society in London and he wanted to publish
(25:18):
a lot of scientific papers, so he had to write
to all these people living across Europe. He had a
lot of correspondents, and he wrote and received so many
letters that the government decided he was a spy, and
they arrested him and locked him in the Tower of
London because of his pin Pllory. Oh wow.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (25:38):
I also did a little restream of the guy and
he was kind of footing the bill for all that too.
To make it even worse, his dudes footing the bill
to start basically the first medical publication, and the English
government is like spy.
Speaker 1 (25:53):
Oh yeah, like, hey, nobody really likes mailing things or something.
They thought they got him. But you know, with this,
I think what we have to remember is a lot
of times society can be its own enemy, you know
what I mean.
Speaker 2 (26:09):
That's what I'm saying.
Speaker 3 (26:09):
All this.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
The way they persecuted the during it could have potentially
robbed them of his genius. You know, the fact that
this criminal record made it where he could no longer
work for the government, which is who he did the
most benefit towards society, right.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
Which almost sounds conspiratorial. It does, like they I keep
going back to, it's literally the one guy who's best
for the job in the world and someone in the
boundary government. Yeah, like finds a reason. And I want
to shout out a really cool graphic novel series that
I've been enjoying I hope picks back up, called Uber
(26:47):
and Alan Turing is a character in this graphic novel series.
I don't want to ruin it, but I've got I
got a copy if you want to snag it. It's
you know how it is when you really like music,
you really like a story book, and you just you
want your friends to see it or hear it or experience. Absolutely, yeah,
definitely I'm going through that and hopefully hopefully we can
(27:09):
inspire something similar in you ridiculous historians. Not every scientist
is persecuted, hopefully, And although scientists often work in realms
that we candidly don't understand, the work they do is
important and it matters to everyone.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
Magnets, Am I right?
Speaker 1 (27:29):
So again, no I'm letting no, no, no no. I
said it last time, and poor Alex and Max have
had to listen to that too often. But yeah, yeah,
the the Juggalos of their time.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
Indeed, I think this is a good one. I think honestly, Turing, uh,
he just deserved his due. I barely wanted to make
this a listical episode, and I think this is a
topic that we can just continue to come back to,
sort of an ongoing series.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
Yeah, because unfortunately history is rife and riddled with scientists
who have been persecuted. We can't wait to hear thoughts, folks.
We are going to be returning soon with all sorts
of strange and ridiculous stories, not all of which will
be down as we promise.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
And you know, in the new year we might get
the keys to our social media back for the show.
It's been an ongoing struggle and impossible dream. I would
hope so, but in the meantime we haven't said this
in a while. You can reach out to us as
individuals if you wish. I am pretty exclusively on Instagram
at how Now, Noel Brown? How about you bet? Where
can the fine folks find you?
Speaker 1 (28:34):
In a stunning burst of creativity and modesty, I am
on Instagram as at Ben Bowling. You got led, You
got it.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
We were the first to market.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
Sorry other Bends. The Covenant is broken. It's doggy dog now,
no kidding. As Noel said, you can find us on
individually on Instagram. We love hanging out, We love hearing
from listeners. You are the most important part of the
show and thank you so much for sharing your time
with us today. Max. What if people want to find.
Speaker 3 (29:05):
You, bro? Yeah, if they want to find me, send
Ben a message on Twitter and he can text it
to me.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
And notice I didn't tell people my Twitter at bmbule
ANDHSW what's Twitter?
Speaker 2 (29:17):
It's this.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
It was this really cool thing back in the day
we happened to. Oh story for another time. Fair enough,
but thank you for the beautiful set up, mister Brown.
Speaker 2 (29:27):
Also, if you want to be nice to us, maybe
mentioned it in the previous episode, you can go on
to iTunes and or Apple podcasts and leave us a
nice review. We might start doing a thing where we
like read some of they're funny, make them funny.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
We'll get through them when no pun's left behind. Okay, great,
So thank you in advance for that. Thank you to
our returning guest Alex Circa, who has been hanging out
with us in the past few weeks.
Speaker 2 (29:51):
At Alex, I find me of the joke, Alex Circa,
what like circa nineteen ninety four that's our cutoff.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
Yeah, that's when. Yeah, that's the mid nineties is when
we decided we decided things were modern times. We might
have to adjust that up a decade as this.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
Oh god, yeah, we've been May you live in interesting times?
You said the wise man to the idiot. Definitely haven't
heard that one before. Oh yeah, okay, now you're being psychastic.
We're on a roll.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
So Alex has been hanging out a few weeks here
with us and and has been graciously sitting through all
kinds of beeps, all kinds of all kinds of hiccups
and so on, and probably hearing Max curse like a sailor.
Speaker 2 (30:39):
Guy's got a foul mouth on it.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
He's invented dirty work. He really isn't in some of
them already impressive. I hear him, and I'm like, that
was Max.
Speaker 2 (30:47):
All Right, Well, I guess we'll see you next time, folks.
For more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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