April 11, 2026 • 38 mins
If you think secretly coded messages sent via short wave radio is Cold War relic, think again. In this classic episode, Chuck and Josh are here to dispel that myth, along with many others relating to numbers stations, including why they might still be operational.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
A happy Saturday, everybody, chuck here. I hope you're enjoying
your weekend. I hope you're enjoying your year, your month.
I hope you're enjoying the very hour in which you
are coming across this. It is the select episode for
the week, and I'm picking this one because honestly don't
remember much about it, and I got to listen to it,
so maybe I'll learn it all over again. It's about
(00:22):
number stations and it's called what is a number Station?
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with
Charles W Chuck Bryant, and this is oh Jerry and this.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
Is Stuffish seven four two five eight.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Can you say it in German? You speak German? Don't
even jog me.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
It's why dry boom ah Steven, Now, can.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
You do that in a little girl voice?
Speaker 3 (01:04):
You're just toying, Come on, do it. No, you always
make me play Saint Paly Girl. I'm tired of it.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Same poly girl. Now. This is apparently even younger than
the Saint Poly Girl. It's like a little girl and
it was a live little girl who in the Swedish
rhapsody number station. It was a young little girl reading
out numbers and letters in German.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
Which makes it even creepier.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Yeah, it's very creepy.
Speaker 4 (01:31):
This is a very neat subject, so kudos to you
for tossing this one out there.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Well, I've been waiting for it to publish. Yeah, I'd
seen it in the calendar coming up and coming up.
I'm like, come on and publish, and I think it
published on Friday is Tuesday, yes, and we're talking about
it just as they are completing their decline, so we
are on top of this.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
Well I think that well, we'll get into it.
Speaker 4 (01:56):
I think that's what makes it even more interesting is
that it's still happening, all right.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
Numbers stations, number stations.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Yeah, like you said number, both words are pluralized. It's
a little clumsy, and number stations are we should just
come out and say their short wave radio transmissions or
transmitters making really weird baffling is the best word for it.
(02:25):
Transmissions and have been doing so apparently since at least
World War One.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
Oh really.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Yeah. Supposedly, the first mention of a numbers station came
from a German magazine in World War One and World
War Two, they were in full swing, sure, but apparently
they somehow popped up first around World War One, which
makes them some of the earliest shortwave transmissions in the world,
(02:54):
because shortwave radio didn't come around at least into commercial
use until about nineteen twenty. World War One was a
few years before that, if you'll remember correct.
Speaker 4 (03:03):
Yeah, that's why I didn't even think that that was possible.
But like you said, World War II is when they
were in full swing. Yeah, they really peaked in the
Cold War and they have been dying out slowly ever since.
But I think one of the neatest things is they
are still If you have a short wave radio, you
can tune into a frequency and here beep one, two, seven,
(03:28):
five eight. You know, it's usually like some sort of tone.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
We should mention to Jerry of the future. Yeah, you're
supposed to leave that beep in because it's part of
the numbers station.
Speaker 4 (03:38):
Yeah, we beep Jerry to signal when we want something edited.
But yeah, number station. That's not always a beep, it'll
just have some sort of Sometimes it's a bit of
a song.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Yeah, like this Swedish Rhapsody or the Lincolnshire poacher a
British English uksh folk song.
Speaker 4 (03:53):
Yeah, and I'm so scared of thetuff like that. And
the reason that the transmission starts off with a tone
or a beep or a song so you can it
alerts like here comes a transmission in your station. Hone
in make sure you get some good reception because the
secret code is about to be revealed.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
And that's exactly what everyone is pretty much in consensus
on that what comes after this and what is broadcast
over these numbers stations are secret codes.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
Again, like for the Swedish rhap City station, it is
a little girl in speaking in German, reading numbers and letters,
random seemingly random numbers and letters, and then the transmission
is over and that happens like or it used to happen.
That's a defunct numbers station now, but it happened on
(04:49):
a fairly regular schedule. There's other ones. The Intension station
is a woman saying a tension and then reading Spanish
numbers and repeating them over and over again and then
going on to the next set and everybody. No one
can say for certain, but virtually everyone in the world
(05:09):
from Cecil Adams at Straight Dope to the head of
the UK's Trade and Industry Agency say these are secret
transmissions for spies. The whole basis of them was for espionage.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (05:26):
And the reason why everyone is speculating that that is
absolutely the case, which it almost certainly is, like we said,
is because no government to this day has come forward
and admitted this or owned this. It is all still
technically speculation because you cannot point to a factual statement.
(05:48):
The closest we've ever come is.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
They finally got someone from the United Kingdom, a spokesperson.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
That was the dude from the Trade Agency.
Speaker 4 (05:57):
Oh really, Yeah, the exact quotas people should not be
mystified by them. They're not, shall we say, for public consumption. Yeah,
And that's the only thing on record that any government
has ever spoke about what these transmissions are.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Right, So the idea that they are government transitions are
the reason we have to speculate is because the government's
never claimed them. On the flip side, the reason everyone
thinks that they are government backed clandestine transmissions is because
these are pirate radio frequencies, pirate radio transmitters. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (06:35):
My first thing was like, just find one of these
and look it up and find out what the deal is.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
Yeah, you would think.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
So.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
They're totally unlicensed. Nobody knows exactly where they are.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
They're illegal technically.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
Yes, they're very illegal because they transmit over air traffic
control frequencies. Well that's a big one. And no one
investigates them. There's no investigation into these number stations whatsoever.
So the fact that the government won't say anything about them,
and the fact that the government isn't investigating these very
(07:07):
blatantly out in the open, weird baffling transmissions suggests that, Yeah,
everybody's right that these are government backed transmissions used to
communicate anonymously and in one direction two spies embedded in
foreign countries.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (07:26):
I was about to call it a conversation, but it's
really not. It's I think on the BBC documentary Saw
they called it a monologue.
Speaker 3 (07:33):
You're just sending a one way message exactly.
Speaker 4 (07:36):
All right, Right after this break, we're going to talk
a little bit about shortwave radio technology. The secret key
to sending these messages, all right, The key to this
(08:08):
whole thing is sending a short way Like you might
think in this day and age, why not just send
a telefax?
Speaker 2 (08:17):
Right now?
Speaker 4 (08:18):
Why not send an email or you know, there's surely,
surely there are safer ways to send espionage, this information,
highly classified instructions to go kill the leader of a country, perhaps.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
Right, like if you want to activate Reggie Jackson to
kill Queen Elizabeth kill Norberg. Yeah, yeah, that's that's how
would you do it in this day and age, you'd
think an email would do it? No, And you want
to know who proves definitively that that is not safe
for secure?
Speaker 3 (08:50):
Who Jimmy Fallon, Edward Edward Snowden.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
Yeah, there there are. If you use a computer, you
leave a trace. Yeah, it's virtually impossible to erase anything
on a computer.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
Yeah, if you think you have, then you haven't.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
Plus, if you are, say emailing somebody, you're transmitting what's
supposed to be highly sensitive even encrypted information over a network.
That stuff can be captured, like go listen to our
employer as your employer spying on you episode. Yeah, you
can't do it, Like you can communicate like that, but
you're leaving digital traces everywhere. The beauty of the short
(09:28):
wave radio transmission is that again it's anonymous and it's
one directional. But if you get caught with a short
wave radio. At least, say back in the sixties or
the seventies or something, it wasn't weird. It didn't prove
that you were a spy.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
Yeah, you done, just tuning into my my stories.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
Exactly, just listening to the BBC World.
Speaker 4 (09:49):
Service shortwave energy radio energy. It's all determined by the
power of your transmitter. So if you've got a humongous transmitter,
you can send and any be that big, but you
can send a message one way message to the other
side of the world, right, And the reason it can
travel across the planet is because it's bouncing off of
(10:09):
it literally is bouncing off the ionosphere of the Earth
or well, yeah, of the Earth, fifty to three hundred
and seventy five miles up above our surface. It's in
the upper atmosphere, and solar ionization creates an electrical charge
and that charge reflects that signal right back down to Earth.
It's called skywave or skip and skywave. Yeah, And that's
(10:33):
why you can with a seemingly pretty simple piece of equipment,
I can send a message to the South Pacific. Yeah,
from my bedroom. Well, I don't know if i'd have
one big enough for my Bedroom's pretty big. I wanted
to see how big these things were actually, you know,
like if they say really big ones, to send them
further and further, Like how big do they get?
Speaker 2 (10:55):
They get very huge. They can cover scores of acres.
Oh okay, a big shortwave antenna, which is why it
can get very expensive.
Speaker 3 (11:04):
So that's bigger than my bedroom.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
You can also use ones that are the size of
your bedroom. It depends not only like you said, on
the size of the transmitter, it depends on the atmospheric
conditions too, so uppusually shortwave transmissions are received best at
sunrise and sunset. And no one's one hundred percent sure,
but it has to do with the ion a sphere.
And because that's where the northern lights are happening. Yeah,
(11:29):
that's where solar rays hit the hit the Earth's atmosphere
and they the atoms loose their electrons, I believe, so
they become ions forming the iono sphere. And because this
is constantly changing, you can't predict exactly how shortwave radio
wave will act, but you can kind of guess, well,
(11:52):
this time the Sun's least active or most active, whatever,
it has some impact on that sky. What's it called
the sky? What skywave, the skywave effect, So you can
communicate with somebody in a foreign country, right, yea. And
not only can it not be tracked, it's very difficult
(12:13):
to trace who sent that, where that transmission's coming from.
It's impossible to trace who's receiving it.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
So you have no idea who in your country is
getting this, which means that you're broadcasting to anybody and
everybody who feels like listening to this a secret code.
But the fact is, if you use the right kind
of secret code, no one can crack all right.
Speaker 4 (12:38):
That brings up an important point because you would think also,
you can hack into the most secure computer system on
the planet if you're good enough as a hacker. So
how in the world could sending a coded key like
it's nineteen fifty five and you're trying to get your
decoder ring, you know from.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
The Red Was it the Red Rider?
Speaker 2 (13:01):
No story? No, that's way off.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
No, what was it? It was?
Speaker 2 (13:08):
No?
Speaker 3 (13:08):
No, no, I'm talking about it in the Christmas story.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
It was a little orphan any that was the show.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
I didn't think it was.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
He didn't he didn't care about pirates and all that jazz,
pirates and smugglers and all that jazz. He listened to
a little Orphan Anne.
Speaker 3 (13:20):
And I'll take it word for it. I remember, now
do you know?
Speaker 2 (13:23):
But I'll take your word for it, dude, I'm telling
you it's a little orphan any I will. That's say,
I'm taking my hat. I don't have a hat on
right now, but I would eat it if I if
I were wrong.
Speaker 4 (13:34):
At any rate, you're not little Ralphie decoding the message
from little Orphanani. But it is actually the most secure
way that you can send a secret message is by
creating a unique code that you know and have written
down on a piece of paper, and your buddy knows
who has it written down on a piece of paper.
(13:55):
You only use it once, that's the kind of the
key here, and then you destroy it afterward. That still
the most it's unbreakable.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
So what it's called is a one time pad, the
old one time because you only use it once, and
it is old. It's from the nineteenth century.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
Yeah, and it's still uncrackable. It is.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
And the reason why it's uncrackable is because you each
have like you said, you each have a copy of
this this code. But it's randomly generated. Right, So let's
say you have the sheet of paper and the other
person as the sheet of paper, and the sheet of
paper says, it's just like strings of random numbers, like
four or five numbers long, and it's just totally random,
(14:32):
and it just covers, you know, several sheets of paper. Well,
you guys start at the same place, and when the
person transmitting the message wants to encrypt it, they run
their message. So say you guys have agreed like zero
is a, B is one, C is two, et cetera.
(14:52):
So you take that and you'd get you I know, dude,
it is mind boggling, Like this is about as simple
a cryptology gets. In it it makes me bleed from
my ears.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
Because all you have to do is agree on what's what.
You know, it could be anything, right, So.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
You're agreeing on what's what, but you also have this
randomly generated code. Sure key, right, So let's say I
want to say, what up, chuck? That's w h A
t U P C h U c K. So that's
eleven letters, right. So if you have your your key
(15:29):
and you're encoding it, you would use these first, the
first eleven numbers to encode what's already encoded. So the
w is say, Y says it's the number twenty two, okay, right,
and then so on. So like there's a number assigned
(15:50):
to each letter, so you have that, and then you
run it through this code, this randomly generated code. So
you add that and then so you have twenty what
I say, twenty two, yeah, and then say the first
letter or the first number of this code is seven,
so you have twenty nine.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
So that's what the little German girl reads on the air,
twenty nine, yeah, fifty two, thirty seven eighteen.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
It means nothing to anyone else in the entire world
except for you and the person who has the other
copy of this code, since there's only two copies and
you're only using it once and.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
You're gonna eat it afterward.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
Yeah. And the key is that it's randomly generated numbers. Yeah,
then it'll it's theoretically it will never be broken.
Speaker 3 (16:41):
Yeah. But I mean that's just one example. You could
You could have five pre code rules.
Speaker 4 (16:50):
To confuse someone trying to crack this code, right, yeah,
and they don't eat It's not like the simplest code
is this letter represents this number, this represents this letter.
It gets more complex than that. You could both have
agreed upon a book. You have to kill a mockingbird.
I've got to kill a mockingbird. Four eight twelve ninety thirteen.
(17:13):
Four means go to page four. Thirteen means now you're
really going to page thirteen. Ignore the four then look
at the twelfth line. Then look at the eighth word
on that page.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
Right. What a one time pad would do is take
that already agreed upon code and encrypt it even further.
Speaker 4 (17:31):
Yeah, But the point is it doesn't have to represent letters.
It can represent full words in a text that you've
agreed upon. True, And it's basically like thumbing through this
book picking out all these various words to make a sentence.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Right. The problem is that's its vulnerability as well. Like
to get a copy of the randomly generated key that's
used to encrypt this message, right, you have to have
some sort of contact with somebody. Yeah, So that's one
vulnerability of it. The thing is is like, depending on
how long this is, as many numbers as there are is,
(18:07):
as long as as many transmissions as you can transmit.
Does that make any sense? No?
Speaker 3 (18:14):
Say it clearer?
Speaker 2 (18:15):
So I said, what up, Chuck, Yeah, that's eleven. That
uses the first eleven numbers on this key. But say
there's fifty thousand numbers on the key, Well, we have
a lot more messages I can send to you that
we're going through the pad. Eventually, though, we're going to
use up this pad and we need to meet again
so I can give you another randomly generated.
Speaker 3 (18:35):
Key at Kinko's.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
That's the vulnerability of it.
Speaker 4 (18:39):
Well, the other fit well and not a fail safe.
But the thing that makes it even safer is a
lot of times they would send and presumably are still
sending dummy messages, so you don't even know if it's
real to begin with, And there are only so many
person hours you can dedicate as a government to code crackers,
and they might be working on a it's not even real, right,
(19:01):
you don't know what transmissions are legit.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
And that is a proposal by a group called Enigma.
And we'll talk about Enigma right after this message because
they're pretty awesome. So, Chuck, we were talking about Enigma.
(19:37):
I mentioned Enigma, and Enigma is this group that of
basically amateur radio people, short.
Speaker 4 (19:44):
Wave radio enthusiast. They really get into this. Yes it's
a thing, and.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
They started this is pre pre internet days. I think
it was in the eighties, the late eighties early nineties
that ENIGMA first came around and kind of coalesced. And
ENIGMA stands for European Numbers Information Gathering and Monitoring Association.
And basically it was just a group of these people
who had all yeah, right, who had all and I
(20:10):
think they reverse engineered that well we always do, but
they had all kind of started to talk or find
each other and say have you heard this weird transmission
and they're like, yes, I've heard that one, and you should.
You should check out this frequency on Tuesday nights at
eight pm because it transmits this. And they suddenly realized
(20:32):
there's this whole community of people out there, so they
set up a newsletter, they started a naming convention, and
they started assigning, collecting and assigning names to these different things.
Speaker 3 (20:43):
So like E.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
Designated an English speaking trans numbers station, S was Slavic
v is various, which encapsulates everything from like French to Spanish.
And ENIGMA really took this thing and put it into
you understandable terms. And they are basically eavesdropping or they
(21:05):
were eaves dropping on the spy community.
Speaker 3 (21:09):
Are they not doing that anymore.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
So Enigma disbanded I think in two thousand and then
almost immediately another group came and said, well, we're Enigma
in two thousand. We're going to carry this on. And
that's pretty fortunate because they were around to put all
this on the internet. Before it was like you had
to like subscribe to newsletters and have a shortwave radio.
Now it's like you can just go on the internet
and listen to all sorts of archives of these defunct
(21:35):
number stations as well.
Speaker 3 (21:36):
Yeah, I mean they're creepy sounding. I don't like. It's
kind of cool.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
I've got one for you. We've talked about it before.
Do you remember the Yosemite Sam transmission.
Speaker 3 (21:44):
Yeah, I'm convinced that that's just a person having fun.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
Well, let's play it. I like that one. I think
it's full of info. It's cool.
Speaker 4 (22:02):
It's coming from somewhere out in Albuquerque in the desert
in New Mexico, and it's been going since what like
two thousand and four. Yeah, And what makes this one
interesting is that it's not a code, it's just Yosemite
Sam saying that thing.
Speaker 2 (22:20):
Well, then it's followed by that data burst, yeah, which
they think is some sort of compressed information.
Speaker 4 (22:26):
Yeah, seah, I don't believe it. I think this is
a short wave enthusiasts having a good time.
Speaker 2 (22:30):
Well, he's been doing it like, it's pretty sophisticated. It
does it like over and over again, I think, for
forty seconds and switches to the next frequency and it
just goes through the band. Yeah, on a then he's
got a computer doing.
Speaker 3 (22:42):
It for him.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
Maybe if it is just some dude, But either way,
I like the use of useemite Sam. No, it's cool,
but it's pretty It's exemplar of a number station, of
a numbers transmission. There's something that indicates that this is
about to happen, and then there's the happening, the transmission
of the secret code, whether it's digital in nature or
(23:05):
whether it's spoken. And then there it is ended by
you know, assumity Sam again or something like that. Yeah,
it's saying here's the beginning, here's the information, here's the end.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
Now go kill Nordburg. Right.
Speaker 4 (23:20):
One of the other cool things about this is, and
you know, when we were talking about surely there's better ways,
and the government could theoretically shut down the Internet. They
could zap a satellite transmissions, they could shut everything down.
This is almost unstoppable. You can't shut down shortwave radio.
I mean, I guess you've cut power maybe.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
Yeah, well no, supposedly no, I mean yeah, and then
I guess if people have batteries though in their shortwave radio.
Speaker 3 (23:49):
Good point.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
The one way to combat it is called jamming. Frequency jamming,
And basically it's just broadcasting on the same frequency that
these other transmitters, the numbers stations are transmitting on. And
so if you're broadcasting within your country, you're probably gonna
reach those shortwave radios better than somebody on the other
(24:10):
side of the planet's transmission. Well, and so apparently Russia
spent billions or the Soviets spent billions of dollars during
the Cold War jamming frequencies from all sorts of different transmissions,
and they play things like the sound of seagulls or
random beeps or whatever. And it was just to prevent
(24:31):
people from transmitting into Russia. But even with all of
that money and technology mustard or marshalled against it, they
still weren't entirely successful. Like shortwave radio transmissions get through.
It's just too big to fight.
Speaker 4 (24:46):
Yeah, you can't jam the entire frequency of all shortwaves,
like every single frequency.
Speaker 3 (24:53):
If you have ever heard the uh the Wilco.
Speaker 4 (24:57):
Remember Yankee Hotel Foxtrot that album, Yeah, that was on
the album at some point. I can't remember what song
it Yankee Hotel fox Trot in a woman's voice and
that is a famous.
Speaker 3 (25:09):
Is it code?
Speaker 2 (25:11):
Was that from the Content project?
Speaker 3 (25:13):
No, I don't think so, but we should talk about that.
For sure.
Speaker 4 (25:16):
That was a project and it was also I guess
in the wild West days where you're talking about pre internet,
if people wanted to hear the stuff, some people got
together and put together the greatest hits sort of on
CD with a lot of accompanying material about what you're
listening to, and none of them. Obviously, you can't break
(25:38):
these codes. That's the thing I find interesting is people
sit around listen to this stuff but with no aim
of cracking the code.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
I think some people do attempt to crack the code
and it's impossible. Well, it's not impossible, and we should
say with the reason why it's not impossible is because
if you're using a computer generated random number A computers
not capable of truly of generating a truly random number
because computers run on algorithms. Yeah, algorithms are designed to
follow patterns, so they're just incapable of it. So you could,
(26:08):
especially today, a hacker could conceivably crack one of these,
especially old transmissions.
Speaker 4 (26:16):
But yeah, but you still don't know what those numbers
stand for. Even if you find a pattern of numbers.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
Right, they're still an agreed upon thing that you would
have to figure out, but it would it makes it
possible if you could crack that one time pad key,
then you have a real chance at de deciphering the
message itself.
Speaker 4 (26:36):
Well, yeah, if you know what they stand for. But
I still maintain if only you and I know what
those numbers represent.
Speaker 2 (26:45):
Right to kill a Mockingbird pages.
Speaker 3 (26:47):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
Uh, well, you were saying the Content Project thing. Yeah,
so it's a four CD compilation and apparently I read
an article from the time when it came out, which
is the nineties. It was like perfect timing because there
was y two K going on, there was millennium angst,
there was the X files, and this thing came out
in nineteen ninety seven and Selon wrote an article on it,
(27:11):
and this guy who wrote it was like a music
Concrete Aficionado. So people appreciated it, not just for the
fact that it's like recordings of real live spy transmissions,
but some people like the kind of avant garde noise
that it had going on too.
Speaker 4 (27:30):
And I'm sure the Flaming Lips are currently planning an
album composed of nothing but messages from number stations.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
Number eight.
Speaker 3 (27:42):
There's a movie that exists that I had never heard of,
called The Number Station.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
I hadn't heard of it either.
Speaker 4 (27:49):
Yeah, I don't think it was released really. It said
it from twenty thirteen, and like I know most movies
that are released, it probably went straight to video or something.
I watched trailer day. It's John Cusack and Malin Ackerman,
and you know, they work at a number station and
he's to protect the number station, but something bad happens
(28:11):
and they're compromised.
Speaker 3 (28:12):
Right and is who he says he is? And is
she who she says she is?
Speaker 2 (28:16):
Right?
Speaker 3 (28:17):
Who knows? You'll have to rint that turkey to find out.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
Did it look bad?
Speaker 3 (28:23):
Yeah? Sure, it's looked pretty bad.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
Sorry John Cusack, Yeah, sorry John Cusack. So I think
one of the most interesting things about numbers stations is that,
like you said they peaked during the Cold War right
when the Berlin Wall fell, and then in the few
years after that the number of transmissions supposedly just dropped
(28:47):
off dramatically, although I did see in at least one
place that supposedly they increased, but I didn't see that
supported anywhere else. But the idea that they're still around
it all in twenty fourteen, that there's still no stations
transmitting gibberish really says a lot. So it says a
couple of things, and you've already mentioned one. It's possible
(29:08):
they are just transmitting gibberish to throw off anybody listening. Yeah,
this one to basically just kind of sap their resources.
Speaker 3 (29:16):
Right, like keep them riskies busy listening to our bach.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
Sure. Another one is that they're keeping them going in
case they need to use them again.
Speaker 3 (29:26):
I think that's totally the reason.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
In which case that's pretty smart, because that's just you're
not showing your hand, like where all of a sudden
an inactive radio station suddenly starts up again indicase activity
or it's been doing the same thing for ten years,
and on year seven it actually transmitted a real secret message.
(29:49):
But it seemed just like the everything else in those
ten years, you're doing some pretty good spycraft there.
Speaker 4 (29:54):
Yeah, or just to keep that, like you may not
be actively using it, but just to keep that a
method relevant, right, Like you know, if you quit doing something,
it's going to die off. No one's going to know
how to do it anymore. Sure, Yeah, so you know,
just keep those people working. And you know, they may
not even know if they're transmitting real messages or not.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
I would guess if you're just saying, oh yeah, yeah,
if you just hand them a sheet of paper and
it's just yeah.
Speaker 4 (30:22):
In fact, that may be a pretty safe way to
do things. Sure, it's like the person with the nuclear key.
Speaker 3 (30:28):
Yeah, it's just a test.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
Who knows, war games. We'll find out in thirty minutes.
Speaker 4 (30:35):
There are also other theories that they are and I
think some of this does go on, maybe drug runners
right using stuff like this, because some of them are
less than professional. Apparently the ones from Cuba or Cuba, sorry, Jerry,
are a little.
Speaker 2 (30:52):
Comical. Well, they were renowned for just having really bad
slip ups, especially during the whole war.
Speaker 4 (30:57):
Like you'd hear people talking and laughing in the back ground,
or an accidental transmission of a radio station.
Speaker 2 (31:03):
Right, Radio Havana.
Speaker 4 (31:05):
Right, Yeah, so they were kind of known for not
being too skilled at it. But I imagine the drug
runners are the same.
Speaker 2 (31:11):
Yeah, it's virtually the same thing. And I mean there's
absolutely no reason why drug runners couldn't have also couldn't
also use this. Yeah, alongside the espionage community too.
Speaker 4 (31:24):
Yeah, there's might be as one b as two, right,
and they get the message, says huh Chipman of Kilo's
coming in Miami Beach tomorrow night.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
Right, let's go get them kill one. I'm one.
Speaker 4 (31:38):
But I do think there may be a little bit
of that. I think it's a mixed bag of why
they're still being broadcast. I think there are enthusiasts that
are probably just doing their own.
Speaker 3 (31:47):
Thing for fun.
Speaker 4 (31:49):
Yeah, that'd be fun, man, if I was in Guam
and I could send you a private message to be
a short.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
Wave Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I thought you meant people
who are just doing it just to mess with, like
the Enigma community or something.
Speaker 3 (32:01):
I think that probably happens too. I bet you it's
all kinds of things.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
Yeah, I'm sure you're right.
Speaker 3 (32:05):
There's one guy out there, trust me.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
There have been some some actual spies who have been
busted in this century, long after the Cold War, who
had shortwave radios and one time pads in their apartments
or houses. Apparently, in twenty eleven in Germany, a couple
(32:27):
who'd lived there since nineteen eighty eight and were spying
for the Russians were caught in the act of receiving
a Numbers transmission in their home when they were apprehended
and busted for spying.
Speaker 3 (32:40):
I can see that scene.
Speaker 4 (32:41):
He's got like one headphone up and he's holding it
with his hand and he's writing something down in pencil
and his wife's trying to eat it really quick, spit
it out.
Speaker 3 (32:53):
And in two thousand and one, Anna A.
Speaker 4 (32:54):
Montes worked for the US Civil Defension Intelligence Agency and
she was convicted of spying for Cuba. And when they
searched her home they found a short wave radio in
a code sheet. And so, yeah, I mean that's it's
still going on, man. I think it's pretty neat. Yeah,
I do too, Like it's old school but almost fool proof.
Speaker 2 (33:17):
Yeah. The big vulnerability is getting the random randomly generated
key to the spy.
Speaker 3 (33:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (33:24):
And they also point out on the article who wrote
this one by the way, Nathan Chandler. Nathan points out
that these days, you're likely your one timer might be
sent to you, maybe digitally somehow, but it's not It
doesn't like tip anyone off necessarily.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
Yeah, but not quite sure how.
Speaker 4 (33:45):
Yeah, I would think if you're being watched, then an
email with a lot of random numbers might dip somewhere.
Speaker 2 (33:50):
Right. Well, it used to be they'd print them on
the kind of paper that like dissolved quickly or burned
and left no ash or whatever. They were on such
tiny piece of paper you had to use a really
good magnifying oh like lens to read it. Yeah, and
you could hide them in like a walnut shell or
something like that. Oh wow, who knows what they're doing now, Yeah,
but they are doing something.
Speaker 4 (34:11):
Yeah, i'd like to I thought about getting a short
I was a little bit inspired, but then I thought, man,
I've got so many other things to do.
Speaker 3 (34:19):
I don't know if I could do fall into their
rabbit hole.
Speaker 2 (34:22):
So that's numbers stations. If that peaqued your interest, just
type in numbers stations into your favorite search engine and
it will lead you down the rabbit hole of short
wave radio. Did you say rabbit holes there where I
got that from?
Speaker 3 (34:35):
I said rabbit hole. But I didn't invent it.
Speaker 2 (34:37):
No, I know, but it just popped up in my head. Yeah,
it wasn't my own invention.
Speaker 4 (34:41):
And I think if you have a short wave radio
you probably tune into these anyway because you're just into
that lifestyle. But I think there's a website called spy numbers, yeah,
where you can actually find the frequencies and just go
right there and you don't want to search.
Speaker 2 (34:53):
For them, right, And if you want to read this article,
you can type the words numbers stations in the search
part HowStuffWorks dot com. And since I said search part,
it's time for listener mayo.
Speaker 4 (35:06):
I'm going to call this a bit on sushi from
someone in Japan. Hey, guys, and Jerry he spelled Jerry
right as well.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
Man, it's Jerry's day.
Speaker 4 (35:15):
I enjoyed the sushi episode quite a bit and have
something to add. As a result of modern food production
following World War Two in Japan and of course the
US and elsewhere, the quality and traditional methods of making
show you miso and other Japanese food items sadly plummeted.
For example, miso can be fermented and aged a matter
of weeks with the use of temperature control tanks, where
(35:36):
traditional dark miso would age up to two years. Same
goes with other ferminted products like show you Meran no
longer at sweet rice cooking wine is practically sugar water.
Speaking of sugar, modern Japanese food wouldn't exist without it.
Bumi boshi, the sour salty pickled plum is lousy with
artificial color, sugar and refined salt.
Speaker 2 (35:58):
They're still good.
Speaker 4 (35:59):
As much as I loved Japanese food and culture, it's
quite heartbreaking to see these centuries of traditional food processing
supplanted by the Japanese version of a twinkie chemically made
in process as an alternative. There are good quality Japanese
products to be had, particularly those imported from Eden. Foods
just high quality, organic and widely distributed.
Speaker 2 (36:19):
Is this the president of eating food?
Speaker 3 (36:21):
I don't know. Are they based in Alameda, California?
Speaker 2 (36:24):
Sounds like you.
Speaker 4 (36:27):
That is from Lear in Alameda, California. I meant to
mention to you, I had the worst sushi I've had
my life.
Speaker 3 (36:33):
The other day. Oh no, where I'm not going to
say it, but I'm not going back.
Speaker 4 (36:38):
I'll tell you off air. I don't think you wouldn't
go there anyway, But it was the rice was gummy
and really gummy to the point where I ate it
just because I was starving, and I ate it really fast,
and I was like, oh, this kind of gummy. Then
afterward I was like, man, that was terrible.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
Yeah, like you say that to yourself and like you
smiled in their whole mouth was coated and rice.
Speaker 3 (37:03):
It was gross, man, I was. I was ticked off afterward.
Speaker 4 (37:05):
After I paid the bill and complained the who way
home to Emily, I was like, I really should have
said something because that was like they should have known
they shouldn't have served that rice.
Speaker 2 (37:14):
Well, why didn't you say something?
Speaker 4 (37:16):
Because, like I said, I just shoved it in my
face hole and left and complained afterward, which is that's
how I do things usually.
Speaker 3 (37:24):
I don't like to make a scene. I just like
to play the martyr afterward. I've talked about that gummy sushep.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
For two days. Yeah. Oh it was that bad.
Speaker 3 (37:34):
Huh. Yeah. The fish and stuff was good, but that
rice was just very subpar. They should have known better.
Speaker 2 (37:38):
Okay, well tell me where it is afterwards. Oh, will
okay if you want to, I guess inadvertently or quietly
clandestineley promote your business like Leir did with his eating
foods subversively. Yeah, you could send us an email to
(37:58):
stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1 (38:04):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3 (38:07):
For more podcasts myheart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
A happy Saturday, everybody, chuck here. I hope you're enjoying
your weekend. I hope you're enjoying your year, your month.
I hope you're enjoying the very hour in which you
are coming across this. It is the select episode for
the week, and I'm picking this one because honestly don't
remember much about it, and I got to listen to it,
so maybe I'll learn it all over again. It's about
(00:22):
number stations and it's called what is a number Station?
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with
Charles W Chuck Bryant, and this is oh Jerry and this.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
Is Stuffish seven four two five eight.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Can you say it in German? You speak German? Don't
even jog me.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
It's why dry boom ah Steven, Now, can.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
You do that in a little girl voice?
Speaker 3 (01:04):
You're just toying, Come on, do it. No, you always
make me play Saint Paly Girl. I'm tired of it.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Same poly girl. Now. This is apparently even younger than
the Saint Poly Girl. It's like a little girl and
it was a live little girl who in the Swedish
rhapsody number station. It was a young little girl reading
out numbers and letters in German.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
Which makes it even creepier.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Yeah, it's very creepy.
Speaker 4 (01:31):
This is a very neat subject, so kudos to you
for tossing this one out there.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Well, I've been waiting for it to publish. Yeah, I'd
seen it in the calendar coming up and coming up.
I'm like, come on and publish, and I think it
published on Friday is Tuesday, yes, and we're talking about
it just as they are completing their decline, so we
are on top of this.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
Well I think that well, we'll get into it.
Speaker 4 (01:56):
I think that's what makes it even more interesting is
that it's still happening, all right.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
Numbers stations, number stations.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Yeah, like you said number, both words are pluralized. It's
a little clumsy, and number stations are we should just
come out and say their short wave radio transmissions or
transmitters making really weird baffling is the best word for it.
(02:25):
Transmissions and have been doing so apparently since at least
World War One.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
Oh really.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Yeah. Supposedly, the first mention of a numbers station came
from a German magazine in World War One and World
War Two, they were in full swing, sure, but apparently
they somehow popped up first around World War One, which
makes them some of the earliest shortwave transmissions in the world,
(02:54):
because shortwave radio didn't come around at least into commercial
use until about nineteen twenty. World War One was a
few years before that, if you'll remember correct.
Speaker 4 (03:03):
Yeah, that's why I didn't even think that that was possible.
But like you said, World War II is when they
were in full swing. Yeah, they really peaked in the
Cold War and they have been dying out slowly ever since.
But I think one of the neatest things is they
are still If you have a short wave radio, you
can tune into a frequency and here beep one, two, seven,
(03:28):
five eight. You know, it's usually like some sort of tone.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
We should mention to Jerry of the future. Yeah, you're
supposed to leave that beep in because it's part of
the numbers station.
Speaker 4 (03:38):
Yeah, we beep Jerry to signal when we want something edited.
But yeah, number station. That's not always a beep, it'll
just have some sort of Sometimes it's a bit of
a song.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Yeah, like this Swedish Rhapsody or the Lincolnshire poacher a
British English uksh folk song.
Speaker 4 (03:53):
Yeah, and I'm so scared of thetuff like that. And
the reason that the transmission starts off with a tone
or a beep or a song so you can it
alerts like here comes a transmission in your station. Hone
in make sure you get some good reception because the
secret code is about to be revealed.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
And that's exactly what everyone is pretty much in consensus
on that what comes after this and what is broadcast
over these numbers stations are secret codes.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
Again, like for the Swedish rhap City station, it is
a little girl in speaking in German, reading numbers and letters,
random seemingly random numbers and letters, and then the transmission
is over and that happens like or it used to happen.
That's a defunct numbers station now, but it happened on
(04:49):
a fairly regular schedule. There's other ones. The Intension station
is a woman saying a tension and then reading Spanish
numbers and repeating them over and over again and then
going on to the next set and everybody. No one
can say for certain, but virtually everyone in the world
(05:09):
from Cecil Adams at Straight Dope to the head of
the UK's Trade and Industry Agency say these are secret
transmissions for spies. The whole basis of them was for espionage.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (05:26):
And the reason why everyone is speculating that that is
absolutely the case, which it almost certainly is, like we said,
is because no government to this day has come forward
and admitted this or owned this. It is all still
technically speculation because you cannot point to a factual statement.
(05:48):
The closest we've ever come is.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
They finally got someone from the United Kingdom, a spokesperson.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
That was the dude from the Trade Agency.
Speaker 4 (05:57):
Oh really, Yeah, the exact quotas people should not be
mystified by them. They're not, shall we say, for public consumption. Yeah,
And that's the only thing on record that any government
has ever spoke about what these transmissions are.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Right, So the idea that they are government transitions are
the reason we have to speculate is because the government's
never claimed them. On the flip side, the reason everyone
thinks that they are government backed clandestine transmissions is because
these are pirate radio frequencies, pirate radio transmitters. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (06:35):
My first thing was like, just find one of these
and look it up and find out what the deal is.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
Yeah, you would think.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
So.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
They're totally unlicensed. Nobody knows exactly where they are.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
They're illegal technically.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
Yes, they're very illegal because they transmit over air traffic
control frequencies. Well that's a big one. And no one
investigates them. There's no investigation into these number stations whatsoever.
So the fact that the government won't say anything about them,
and the fact that the government isn't investigating these very
(07:07):
blatantly out in the open, weird baffling transmissions suggests that, Yeah,
everybody's right that these are government backed transmissions used to
communicate anonymously and in one direction two spies embedded in
foreign countries.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (07:26):
I was about to call it a conversation, but it's
really not. It's I think on the BBC documentary Saw
they called it a monologue.
Speaker 3 (07:33):
You're just sending a one way message exactly.
Speaker 4 (07:36):
All right, Right after this break, we're going to talk
a little bit about shortwave radio technology. The secret key
to sending these messages, all right, The key to this
(08:08):
whole thing is sending a short way Like you might
think in this day and age, why not just send
a telefax?
Speaker 2 (08:17):
Right now?
Speaker 4 (08:18):
Why not send an email or you know, there's surely,
surely there are safer ways to send espionage, this information,
highly classified instructions to go kill the leader of a country, perhaps.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
Right, like if you want to activate Reggie Jackson to
kill Queen Elizabeth kill Norberg. Yeah, yeah, that's that's how
would you do it in this day and age, you'd
think an email would do it? No, And you want
to know who proves definitively that that is not safe
for secure?
Speaker 3 (08:50):
Who Jimmy Fallon, Edward Edward Snowden.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
Yeah, there there are. If you use a computer, you
leave a trace. Yeah, it's virtually impossible to erase anything
on a computer.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
Yeah, if you think you have, then you haven't.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
Plus, if you are, say emailing somebody, you're transmitting what's
supposed to be highly sensitive even encrypted information over a network.
That stuff can be captured, like go listen to our
employer as your employer spying on you episode. Yeah, you
can't do it, Like you can communicate like that, but
you're leaving digital traces everywhere. The beauty of the short
(09:28):
wave radio transmission is that again it's anonymous and it's
one directional. But if you get caught with a short
wave radio. At least, say back in the sixties or
the seventies or something, it wasn't weird. It didn't prove
that you were a spy.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
Yeah, you done, just tuning into my my stories.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
Exactly, just listening to the BBC World.
Speaker 4 (09:49):
Service shortwave energy radio energy. It's all determined by the
power of your transmitter. So if you've got a humongous transmitter,
you can send and any be that big, but you
can send a message one way message to the other
side of the world, right, And the reason it can
travel across the planet is because it's bouncing off of
(10:09):
it literally is bouncing off the ionosphere of the Earth
or well, yeah, of the Earth, fifty to three hundred
and seventy five miles up above our surface. It's in
the upper atmosphere, and solar ionization creates an electrical charge
and that charge reflects that signal right back down to Earth.
It's called skywave or skip and skywave. Yeah, And that's
(10:33):
why you can with a seemingly pretty simple piece of equipment,
I can send a message to the South Pacific. Yeah,
from my bedroom. Well, I don't know if i'd have
one big enough for my Bedroom's pretty big. I wanted
to see how big these things were actually, you know,
like if they say really big ones, to send them
further and further, Like how big do they get?
Speaker 2 (10:55):
They get very huge. They can cover scores of acres.
Oh okay, a big shortwave antenna, which is why it
can get very expensive.
Speaker 3 (11:04):
So that's bigger than my bedroom.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
You can also use ones that are the size of
your bedroom. It depends not only like you said, on
the size of the transmitter, it depends on the atmospheric
conditions too, so uppusually shortwave transmissions are received best at
sunrise and sunset. And no one's one hundred percent sure,
but it has to do with the ion a sphere.
And because that's where the northern lights are happening. Yeah,
(11:29):
that's where solar rays hit the hit the Earth's atmosphere
and they the atoms loose their electrons, I believe, so
they become ions forming the iono sphere. And because this
is constantly changing, you can't predict exactly how shortwave radio
wave will act, but you can kind of guess, well,
(11:52):
this time the Sun's least active or most active, whatever,
it has some impact on that sky. What's it called
the sky? What skywave, the skywave effect, So you can
communicate with somebody in a foreign country, right, yea. And
not only can it not be tracked, it's very difficult
(12:13):
to trace who sent that, where that transmission's coming from.
It's impossible to trace who's receiving it.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
So you have no idea who in your country is
getting this, which means that you're broadcasting to anybody and
everybody who feels like listening to this a secret code.
But the fact is, if you use the right kind
of secret code, no one can crack all right.
Speaker 4 (12:38):
That brings up an important point because you would think also,
you can hack into the most secure computer system on
the planet if you're good enough as a hacker. So
how in the world could sending a coded key like
it's nineteen fifty five and you're trying to get your
decoder ring, you know from.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
The Red Was it the Red Rider?
Speaker 2 (13:01):
No story? No, that's way off.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
No, what was it? It was?
Speaker 2 (13:08):
No?
Speaker 3 (13:08):
No, no, I'm talking about it in the Christmas story.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
It was a little orphan any that was the show.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
I didn't think it was.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
He didn't he didn't care about pirates and all that jazz,
pirates and smugglers and all that jazz. He listened to
a little Orphan Anne.
Speaker 3 (13:20):
And I'll take it word for it. I remember, now
do you know?
Speaker 2 (13:23):
But I'll take your word for it, dude, I'm telling
you it's a little orphan any I will. That's say,
I'm taking my hat. I don't have a hat on
right now, but I would eat it if I if
I were wrong.
Speaker 4 (13:34):
At any rate, you're not little Ralphie decoding the message
from little Orphanani. But it is actually the most secure
way that you can send a secret message is by
creating a unique code that you know and have written
down on a piece of paper, and your buddy knows
who has it written down on a piece of paper.
(13:55):
You only use it once, that's the kind of the
key here, and then you destroy it afterward. That still
the most it's unbreakable.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
So what it's called is a one time pad, the
old one time because you only use it once, and
it is old. It's from the nineteenth century.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
Yeah, and it's still uncrackable. It is.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
And the reason why it's uncrackable is because you each
have like you said, you each have a copy of
this this code. But it's randomly generated. Right, So let's
say you have the sheet of paper and the other
person as the sheet of paper, and the sheet of
paper says, it's just like strings of random numbers, like
four or five numbers long, and it's just totally random,
(14:32):
and it just covers, you know, several sheets of paper. Well,
you guys start at the same place, and when the
person transmitting the message wants to encrypt it, they run
their message. So say you guys have agreed like zero
is a, B is one, C is two, et cetera.
(14:52):
So you take that and you'd get you I know, dude,
it is mind boggling, Like this is about as simple
a cryptology gets. In it it makes me bleed from
my ears.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
Because all you have to do is agree on what's what.
You know, it could be anything, right, So.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
You're agreeing on what's what, but you also have this
randomly generated code. Sure key, right, So let's say I
want to say, what up, chuck? That's w h A
t U P C h U c K. So that's
eleven letters, right. So if you have your your key
(15:29):
and you're encoding it, you would use these first, the
first eleven numbers to encode what's already encoded. So the
w is say, Y says it's the number twenty two, okay, right,
and then so on. So like there's a number assigned
(15:50):
to each letter, so you have that, and then you
run it through this code, this randomly generated code. So
you add that and then so you have twenty what
I say, twenty two, yeah, and then say the first
letter or the first number of this code is seven,
so you have twenty nine.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
So that's what the little German girl reads on the air,
twenty nine, yeah, fifty two, thirty seven eighteen.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
It means nothing to anyone else in the entire world
except for you and the person who has the other
copy of this code, since there's only two copies and
you're only using it once and.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
You're gonna eat it afterward.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
Yeah. And the key is that it's randomly generated numbers. Yeah,
then it'll it's theoretically it will never be broken.
Speaker 3 (16:41):
Yeah. But I mean that's just one example. You could
You could have five pre code rules.
Speaker 4 (16:50):
To confuse someone trying to crack this code, right, yeah,
and they don't eat It's not like the simplest code
is this letter represents this number, this represents this letter.
It gets more complex than that. You could both have
agreed upon a book. You have to kill a mockingbird.
I've got to kill a mockingbird. Four eight twelve ninety thirteen.
(17:13):
Four means go to page four. Thirteen means now you're
really going to page thirteen. Ignore the four then look
at the twelfth line. Then look at the eighth word
on that page.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
Right. What a one time pad would do is take
that already agreed upon code and encrypt it even further.
Speaker 4 (17:31):
Yeah, But the point is it doesn't have to represent letters.
It can represent full words in a text that you've
agreed upon. True, And it's basically like thumbing through this
book picking out all these various words to make a sentence.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Right. The problem is that's its vulnerability as well. Like
to get a copy of the randomly generated key that's
used to encrypt this message, right, you have to have
some sort of contact with somebody. Yeah, So that's one
vulnerability of it. The thing is is like, depending on
how long this is, as many numbers as there are is,
(18:07):
as long as as many transmissions as you can transmit.
Does that make any sense? No?
Speaker 3 (18:14):
Say it clearer?
Speaker 2 (18:15):
So I said, what up, Chuck, Yeah, that's eleven. That
uses the first eleven numbers on this key. But say
there's fifty thousand numbers on the key, Well, we have
a lot more messages I can send to you that
we're going through the pad. Eventually, though, we're going to
use up this pad and we need to meet again
so I can give you another randomly generated.
Speaker 3 (18:35):
Key at Kinko's.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
That's the vulnerability of it.
Speaker 4 (18:39):
Well, the other fit well and not a fail safe.
But the thing that makes it even safer is a
lot of times they would send and presumably are still
sending dummy messages, so you don't even know if it's
real to begin with, And there are only so many
person hours you can dedicate as a government to code crackers,
and they might be working on a it's not even real, right,
(19:01):
you don't know what transmissions are legit.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
And that is a proposal by a group called Enigma.
And we'll talk about Enigma right after this message because
they're pretty awesome. So, Chuck, we were talking about Enigma.
(19:37):
I mentioned Enigma, and Enigma is this group that of
basically amateur radio people, short.
Speaker 4 (19:44):
Wave radio enthusiast. They really get into this. Yes it's
a thing, and.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
They started this is pre pre internet days. I think
it was in the eighties, the late eighties early nineties
that ENIGMA first came around and kind of coalesced. And
ENIGMA stands for European Numbers Information Gathering and Monitoring Association.
And basically it was just a group of these people
who had all yeah, right, who had all and I
(20:10):
think they reverse engineered that well we always do, but
they had all kind of started to talk or find
each other and say have you heard this weird transmission
and they're like, yes, I've heard that one, and you should.
You should check out this frequency on Tuesday nights at
eight pm because it transmits this. And they suddenly realized
(20:32):
there's this whole community of people out there, so they
set up a newsletter, they started a naming convention, and
they started assigning, collecting and assigning names to these different things.
Speaker 3 (20:43):
So like E.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
Designated an English speaking trans numbers station, S was Slavic
v is various, which encapsulates everything from like French to Spanish.
And ENIGMA really took this thing and put it into
you understandable terms. And they are basically eavesdropping or they
(21:05):
were eaves dropping on the spy community.
Speaker 3 (21:09):
Are they not doing that anymore.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
So Enigma disbanded I think in two thousand and then
almost immediately another group came and said, well, we're Enigma
in two thousand. We're going to carry this on. And
that's pretty fortunate because they were around to put all
this on the internet. Before it was like you had
to like subscribe to newsletters and have a shortwave radio.
Now it's like you can just go on the internet
and listen to all sorts of archives of these defunct
(21:35):
number stations as well.
Speaker 3 (21:36):
Yeah, I mean they're creepy sounding. I don't like. It's
kind of cool.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
I've got one for you. We've talked about it before.
Do you remember the Yosemite Sam transmission.
Speaker 3 (21:44):
Yeah, I'm convinced that that's just a person having fun.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
Well, let's play it. I like that one. I think
it's full of info. It's cool.
Speaker 4 (22:02):
It's coming from somewhere out in Albuquerque in the desert
in New Mexico, and it's been going since what like
two thousand and four. Yeah, And what makes this one
interesting is that it's not a code, it's just Yosemite
Sam saying that thing.
Speaker 2 (22:20):
Well, then it's followed by that data burst, yeah, which
they think is some sort of compressed information.
Speaker 4 (22:26):
Yeah, seah, I don't believe it. I think this is
a short wave enthusiasts having a good time.
Speaker 2 (22:30):
Well, he's been doing it like, it's pretty sophisticated. It
does it like over and over again, I think, for
forty seconds and switches to the next frequency and it
just goes through the band. Yeah, on a then he's
got a computer doing.
Speaker 3 (22:42):
It for him.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
Maybe if it is just some dude, But either way,
I like the use of useemite Sam. No, it's cool,
but it's pretty It's exemplar of a number station, of
a numbers transmission. There's something that indicates that this is
about to happen, and then there's the happening, the transmission
of the secret code, whether it's digital in nature or
(23:05):
whether it's spoken. And then there it is ended by
you know, assumity Sam again or something like that. Yeah,
it's saying here's the beginning, here's the information, here's the end.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
Now go kill Nordburg. Right.
Speaker 4 (23:20):
One of the other cool things about this is, and
you know, when we were talking about surely there's better ways,
and the government could theoretically shut down the Internet. They
could zap a satellite transmissions, they could shut everything down.
This is almost unstoppable. You can't shut down shortwave radio.
I mean, I guess you've cut power maybe.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
Yeah, well no, supposedly no, I mean yeah, and then
I guess if people have batteries though in their shortwave radio.
Speaker 3 (23:49):
Good point.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
The one way to combat it is called jamming. Frequency jamming,
And basically it's just broadcasting on the same frequency that
these other transmitters, the numbers stations are transmitting on. And
so if you're broadcasting within your country, you're probably gonna
reach those shortwave radios better than somebody on the other
(24:10):
side of the planet's transmission. Well, and so apparently Russia
spent billions or the Soviets spent billions of dollars during
the Cold War jamming frequencies from all sorts of different transmissions,
and they play things like the sound of seagulls or
random beeps or whatever. And it was just to prevent
(24:31):
people from transmitting into Russia. But even with all of
that money and technology mustard or marshalled against it, they
still weren't entirely successful. Like shortwave radio transmissions get through.
It's just too big to fight.
Speaker 4 (24:46):
Yeah, you can't jam the entire frequency of all shortwaves,
like every single frequency.
Speaker 3 (24:53):
If you have ever heard the uh the Wilco.
Speaker 4 (24:57):
Remember Yankee Hotel Foxtrot that album, Yeah, that was on
the album at some point. I can't remember what song
it Yankee Hotel fox Trot in a woman's voice and
that is a famous.
Speaker 3 (25:09):
Is it code?
Speaker 2 (25:11):
Was that from the Content project?
Speaker 3 (25:13):
No, I don't think so, but we should talk about that.
For sure.
Speaker 4 (25:16):
That was a project and it was also I guess
in the wild West days where you're talking about pre internet,
if people wanted to hear the stuff, some people got
together and put together the greatest hits sort of on
CD with a lot of accompanying material about what you're
listening to, and none of them. Obviously, you can't break
(25:38):
these codes. That's the thing I find interesting is people
sit around listen to this stuff but with no aim
of cracking the code.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
I think some people do attempt to crack the code
and it's impossible. Well, it's not impossible, and we should
say with the reason why it's not impossible is because
if you're using a computer generated random number A computers
not capable of truly of generating a truly random number
because computers run on algorithms. Yeah, algorithms are designed to
follow patterns, so they're just incapable of it. So you could,
(26:08):
especially today, a hacker could conceivably crack one of these,
especially old transmissions.
Speaker 4 (26:16):
But yeah, but you still don't know what those numbers
stand for. Even if you find a pattern of numbers.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
Right, they're still an agreed upon thing that you would
have to figure out, but it would it makes it
possible if you could crack that one time pad key,
then you have a real chance at de deciphering the
message itself.
Speaker 4 (26:36):
Well, yeah, if you know what they stand for. But
I still maintain if only you and I know what
those numbers represent.
Speaker 2 (26:45):
Right to kill a Mockingbird pages.
Speaker 3 (26:47):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
Uh, well, you were saying the Content Project thing. Yeah,
so it's a four CD compilation and apparently I read
an article from the time when it came out, which
is the nineties. It was like perfect timing because there
was y two K going on, there was millennium angst,
there was the X files, and this thing came out
in nineteen ninety seven and Selon wrote an article on it,
(27:11):
and this guy who wrote it was like a music
Concrete Aficionado. So people appreciated it, not just for the
fact that it's like recordings of real live spy transmissions,
but some people like the kind of avant garde noise
that it had going on too.
Speaker 4 (27:30):
And I'm sure the Flaming Lips are currently planning an
album composed of nothing but messages from number stations.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
Number eight.
Speaker 3 (27:42):
There's a movie that exists that I had never heard of,
called The Number Station.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
I hadn't heard of it either.
Speaker 4 (27:49):
Yeah, I don't think it was released really. It said
it from twenty thirteen, and like I know most movies
that are released, it probably went straight to video or something.
I watched trailer day. It's John Cusack and Malin Ackerman,
and you know, they work at a number station and
he's to protect the number station, but something bad happens
(28:11):
and they're compromised.
Speaker 3 (28:12):
Right and is who he says he is? And is
she who she says she is?
Speaker 2 (28:16):
Right?
Speaker 3 (28:17):
Who knows? You'll have to rint that turkey to find out.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
Did it look bad?
Speaker 3 (28:23):
Yeah? Sure, it's looked pretty bad.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
Sorry John Cusack, Yeah, sorry John Cusack. So I think
one of the most interesting things about numbers stations is that,
like you said they peaked during the Cold War right
when the Berlin Wall fell, and then in the few
years after that the number of transmissions supposedly just dropped
(28:47):
off dramatically, although I did see in at least one
place that supposedly they increased, but I didn't see that
supported anywhere else. But the idea that they're still around
it all in twenty fourteen, that there's still no stations
transmitting gibberish really says a lot. So it says a
couple of things, and you've already mentioned one. It's possible
(29:08):
they are just transmitting gibberish to throw off anybody listening. Yeah,
this one to basically just kind of sap their resources.
Speaker 3 (29:16):
Right, like keep them riskies busy listening to our bach.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
Sure. Another one is that they're keeping them going in
case they need to use them again.
Speaker 3 (29:26):
I think that's totally the reason.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
In which case that's pretty smart, because that's just you're
not showing your hand, like where all of a sudden
an inactive radio station suddenly starts up again indicase activity
or it's been doing the same thing for ten years,
and on year seven it actually transmitted a real secret message.
(29:49):
But it seemed just like the everything else in those
ten years, you're doing some pretty good spycraft there.
Speaker 4 (29:54):
Yeah, or just to keep that, like you may not
be actively using it, but just to keep that a
method relevant, right, Like you know, if you quit doing something,
it's going to die off. No one's going to know
how to do it anymore. Sure, Yeah, so you know,
just keep those people working. And you know, they may
not even know if they're transmitting real messages or not.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
I would guess if you're just saying, oh yeah, yeah,
if you just hand them a sheet of paper and
it's just yeah.
Speaker 4 (30:22):
In fact, that may be a pretty safe way to
do things. Sure, it's like the person with the nuclear key.
Speaker 3 (30:28):
Yeah, it's just a test.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
Who knows, war games. We'll find out in thirty minutes.
Speaker 4 (30:35):
There are also other theories that they are and I
think some of this does go on, maybe drug runners
right using stuff like this, because some of them are
less than professional. Apparently the ones from Cuba or Cuba, sorry, Jerry,
are a little.
Speaker 2 (30:52):
Comical. Well, they were renowned for just having really bad
slip ups, especially during the whole war.
Speaker 4 (30:57):
Like you'd hear people talking and laughing in the back ground,
or an accidental transmission of a radio station.
Speaker 2 (31:03):
Right, Radio Havana.
Speaker 4 (31:05):
Right, Yeah, so they were kind of known for not
being too skilled at it. But I imagine the drug
runners are the same.
Speaker 2 (31:11):
Yeah, it's virtually the same thing. And I mean there's
absolutely no reason why drug runners couldn't have also couldn't
also use this. Yeah, alongside the espionage community too.
Speaker 4 (31:24):
Yeah, there's might be as one b as two, right,
and they get the message, says huh Chipman of Kilo's
coming in Miami Beach tomorrow night.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
Right, let's go get them kill one. I'm one.
Speaker 4 (31:38):
But I do think there may be a little bit
of that. I think it's a mixed bag of why
they're still being broadcast. I think there are enthusiasts that
are probably just doing their own.
Speaker 3 (31:47):
Thing for fun.
Speaker 4 (31:49):
Yeah, that'd be fun, man, if I was in Guam
and I could send you a private message to be
a short.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
Wave Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I thought you meant people
who are just doing it just to mess with, like
the Enigma community or something.
Speaker 3 (32:01):
I think that probably happens too. I bet you it's
all kinds of things.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
Yeah, I'm sure you're right.
Speaker 3 (32:05):
There's one guy out there, trust me.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
There have been some some actual spies who have been
busted in this century, long after the Cold War, who
had shortwave radios and one time pads in their apartments
or houses. Apparently, in twenty eleven in Germany, a couple
(32:27):
who'd lived there since nineteen eighty eight and were spying
for the Russians were caught in the act of receiving
a Numbers transmission in their home when they were apprehended
and busted for spying.
Speaker 3 (32:40):
I can see that scene.
Speaker 4 (32:41):
He's got like one headphone up and he's holding it
with his hand and he's writing something down in pencil
and his wife's trying to eat it really quick, spit
it out.
Speaker 3 (32:53):
And in two thousand and one, Anna A.
Speaker 4 (32:54):
Montes worked for the US Civil Defension Intelligence Agency and
she was convicted of spying for Cuba. And when they
searched her home they found a short wave radio in
a code sheet. And so, yeah, I mean that's it's
still going on, man. I think it's pretty neat. Yeah,
I do too, Like it's old school but almost fool proof.
Speaker 2 (33:17):
Yeah. The big vulnerability is getting the random randomly generated
key to the spy.
Speaker 3 (33:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (33:24):
And they also point out on the article who wrote
this one by the way, Nathan Chandler. Nathan points out
that these days, you're likely your one timer might be
sent to you, maybe digitally somehow, but it's not It
doesn't like tip anyone off necessarily.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
Yeah, but not quite sure how.
Speaker 4 (33:45):
Yeah, I would think if you're being watched, then an
email with a lot of random numbers might dip somewhere.
Speaker 2 (33:50):
Right. Well, it used to be they'd print them on
the kind of paper that like dissolved quickly or burned
and left no ash or whatever. They were on such
tiny piece of paper you had to use a really
good magnifying oh like lens to read it. Yeah, and
you could hide them in like a walnut shell or
something like that. Oh wow, who knows what they're doing now, Yeah,
but they are doing something.
Speaker 4 (34:11):
Yeah, i'd like to I thought about getting a short
I was a little bit inspired, but then I thought, man,
I've got so many other things to do.
Speaker 3 (34:19):
I don't know if I could do fall into their
rabbit hole.
Speaker 2 (34:22):
So that's numbers stations. If that peaqued your interest, just
type in numbers stations into your favorite search engine and
it will lead you down the rabbit hole of short
wave radio. Did you say rabbit holes there where I
got that from?
Speaker 3 (34:35):
I said rabbit hole. But I didn't invent it.
Speaker 2 (34:37):
No, I know, but it just popped up in my head. Yeah,
it wasn't my own invention.
Speaker 4 (34:41):
And I think if you have a short wave radio
you probably tune into these anyway because you're just into
that lifestyle. But I think there's a website called spy numbers, yeah,
where you can actually find the frequencies and just go
right there and you don't want to search.
Speaker 2 (34:53):
For them, right, And if you want to read this article,
you can type the words numbers stations in the search
part HowStuffWorks dot com. And since I said search part,
it's time for listener mayo.
Speaker 4 (35:06):
I'm going to call this a bit on sushi from
someone in Japan. Hey, guys, and Jerry he spelled Jerry
right as well.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
Man, it's Jerry's day.
Speaker 4 (35:15):
I enjoyed the sushi episode quite a bit and have
something to add. As a result of modern food production
following World War Two in Japan and of course the
US and elsewhere, the quality and traditional methods of making
show you miso and other Japanese food items sadly plummeted.
For example, miso can be fermented and aged a matter
of weeks with the use of temperature control tanks, where
(35:36):
traditional dark miso would age up to two years. Same
goes with other ferminted products like show you Meran no
longer at sweet rice cooking wine is practically sugar water.
Speaking of sugar, modern Japanese food wouldn't exist without it.
Bumi boshi, the sour salty pickled plum is lousy with
artificial color, sugar and refined salt.
Speaker 2 (35:58):
They're still good.
Speaker 4 (35:59):
As much as I loved Japanese food and culture, it's
quite heartbreaking to see these centuries of traditional food processing
supplanted by the Japanese version of a twinkie chemically made
in process as an alternative. There are good quality Japanese
products to be had, particularly those imported from Eden. Foods
just high quality, organic and widely distributed.
Speaker 2 (36:19):
Is this the president of eating food?
Speaker 3 (36:21):
I don't know. Are they based in Alameda, California?
Speaker 2 (36:24):
Sounds like you.
Speaker 4 (36:27):
That is from Lear in Alameda, California. I meant to
mention to you, I had the worst sushi I've had
my life.
Speaker 3 (36:33):
The other day. Oh no, where I'm not going to
say it, but I'm not going back.
Speaker 4 (36:38):
I'll tell you off air. I don't think you wouldn't
go there anyway, But it was the rice was gummy
and really gummy to the point where I ate it
just because I was starving, and I ate it really fast,
and I was like, oh, this kind of gummy. Then
afterward I was like, man, that was terrible.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
Yeah, like you say that to yourself and like you
smiled in their whole mouth was coated and rice.
Speaker 3 (37:03):
It was gross, man, I was. I was ticked off afterward.
Speaker 4 (37:05):
After I paid the bill and complained the who way
home to Emily, I was like, I really should have
said something because that was like they should have known
they shouldn't have served that rice.
Speaker 2 (37:14):
Well, why didn't you say something?
Speaker 4 (37:16):
Because, like I said, I just shoved it in my
face hole and left and complained afterward, which is that's
how I do things usually.
Speaker 3 (37:24):
I don't like to make a scene. I just like
to play the martyr afterward. I've talked about that gummy sushep.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
For two days. Yeah. Oh it was that bad.
Speaker 3 (37:34):
Huh. Yeah. The fish and stuff was good, but that
rice was just very subpar. They should have known better.
Speaker 2 (37:38):
Okay, well tell me where it is afterwards. Oh, will
okay if you want to, I guess inadvertently or quietly
clandestineley promote your business like Leir did with his eating
foods subversively. Yeah, you could send us an email to
(37:58):
stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1 (38:04):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3 (38:07):
For more podcasts myheart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
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It’s the unlikeliest of criminal partnerships: a devout polygamist from an insular Utah sect joining forces with a shadowy Armenian tycoon from LA. The result - a billion dollar fraud conspiracy. In Kingdom of Fraud, investigative reporter Michele McPhee traces the origins of the extraordinary alliance between Jacob Kingston and Levon Termendzhyan. Together, the two men trigger the largest tax investigation in American history and weave around themselves a web of dirty cops, influential political relationships and transnational money laundering. All this is set against the backdrop of Jacob Kingston’s clan – The Order. A powerful and secretive polygamist organization in Salt Lake City. To whom Jacob is desperate to prove his worth. Kingdom of Fraud is produced by Novel for iHeart Podcasts. For more from Novel, visit https://novel.audio/. You can listen to new episodes of Kingdom of Fraud completely ad-free and 1 week early with an iHeart True Crime+ subscription, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Open your Apple Podcasts app, search for “iHeart True Crime+, and subscribe today!