How The Voynich Manuscript Works

Let's right, they're gonna break the box office. Yeah. Uh so, Chuck, where you ever? Um? Have have you ever heard of the Voytage Manuscript before? Prior to this? It's it's fairly famous. Yeah, but just a few years ago, like through working here. Yeah, thanks to the stuff they don't want you to know boys today. I'm sure they covered this already. Certainly, there's just no way. It may have been their first episode. You know. You just say the words ancient codex and

guys come flying. Yeah, they're like, what do you want? When they open their trench coats and they got ancient codices aligning it. Um. Well, for those of you who don't know what the Voyage Manuscript is It is a what appears to be a legitimate medieval codex, which is stuff that was formerly a loose leaf manuscript that's been bound later on. That's what a codex is. Um. That is written in a language that no one has any idea how to read. It's never read it, it's never

been seen before. Um. It doesn't appear in any other type of writing that's known to survive. And it's also illustrated with some really bizarre pictures, like otherworldly plants, women doing things that you are aren't readily identifiable. They're hears to be a recipe section, yes, pharmac pharmacological section. Yeah. It's almost like a a farmer's almanac of sorts from medieval times, written in language and depicting plants and things

that have never existed. And the reason why it's it seems legitimate is that it bears a striking resemblance two similar books at the time. But those books are written in things like Old English or Italian or things that people can read, and they have pictures of plants in them that you point to and say, oh, well, that's a holly bush or something. This is not the case. The thing is a mysterious otherworldly tome that clearly made an appearance. Somehow it crossed over from a parallel multiverse

into this one accidentally. Yeah, I've got my theory, which I'll just go ahead and tease the listener with it. I'll throw out later. Okay, that's it. That's your teeth. I'll throw out my you've got the theory, but I just laid mine on the table. Which is what that it's it's a book from a parallel multiverse to ours. Dude, it's slipped into this. It's like that. Have you heard that barren Stain bears theory? Yeah? Sure, I don't remember it is barren Stein. I always remember, is Barren Stain.

Oh really, huh you're the only one. No, that's not true. You're one of the few. I was really surprised to hear people thought it was barren Stein. But apparently as far as that theory goes, and if you don't know what I'm talking about, just like a barren Stain Bears theory, I guess. Yeah. I mean I was convinced that barren Stein Berenstein, Yeah, but not a e instead Berenstein Bears always always Barren Stain. For me, it's so weird, and

I'm one of those that was so convinced. I was like, no, this is clearly some weird hoax because it's the Berenstein Bears. Everybody knows that that's so funny. And I'm not alone, like it seems like the majority of people are definitely, they're very You're one of the few barren Stainers. Well, its supposedly, according to this this hypothesis, I actually managed to slip over from a multiverse into this one without

realizing it from the baron staying in the universe. So um, anyway, Let's get back to the Voyage Manuscript, shall we, because it is a real deal thing, um, and it apparently it has a certain amount of providence to it. We know about when it first popped up thanks to a seventeenth century letter that identifies it as having been purchased by one Rudolph the Second, who was the Holy Roman Emperor for a while. Um. And Rudolph loved curious things, right,

he collected um little people apparently. Uh, he had a cabinet of curiosities of sorts, and he was very interested in this Voyage manuscript, so much so that he paid six hundred gold dukits for it, which is apparently about the same as ninety thou dollars today for this book because he a lot and he supposedly was the first owner of the Voyage manuscript. That's right. It has been dated um with carbon dating to the early fourteen hundreds. Uh, And it has a very strange it's not written on

parchment or any kind of regular paper. It's written on calf skin, which is not a it's sort of is a somewhat of a giveaway or at least a big clue what that it dates it. Yeah, well, we'll talk about whether or not it's a hoax if someone found this this vellum, and that'd be very strange to create a hoax and dig up hundreds of year old calf skin. So it's not likely that's a hoax. No, there's all sorts of reasons it's it's not a hoax, but that

that rumor still persists. So in six nine, this antique collector and progue named George Bresch he uh sent a letter to this dude uh a fantasist I think so, a fantasyist cuature. He was a scholar in Rome. And he basically said, and this is so weird to me. He's he teases this guy, It's like, I've got this thing. It's really weird. It's got all these crazy symbols and images and this alphabet that is uh, unknown to anyone. But I'm just not gonna send it t Im, just

gonna tell you about it. Well, he loved it himself. He tried to crack the code himself, the guy who was the owner of it at the time. But I send that letter, just teasing the guy and be like, have a nice day, because he wanted him. He he wanted him to crack it for him, but he didn't want to give up the book. Well how can you crack it if you don't send it. Well, you can send like, um, facsimiles of it that kind of stuff. So he did that, I believe. So I know he

was cracking it himself. But this guy UM an atheist Kirk creature. He uh. He was supposedly very well known at the time for having cracked Egyptian hieroglyphics, even though it later turned out he had gotten it wrong. But that's why I wonder why I didn't send it to the guy. Well, the lesson has learned because um what was the dude's named barsh the original guy who wrote the letter. Yeah, George boresh So, um, he dies and he's he dedicated his life to cracking the Voynage Manuscript,

which wasn't called the Voyage Manuscript by that point. No, I should point out I don't think I had a name at the time. I actually called this something. Um, well, they definitely didn't call it the Voyage Manuscript. We'll see in a minute. But um, George boresh Uh, he died and he gave it to a friend of his, Jan

Mark Marcy. And Marcy is pretty good reason or supports the idea that Borresh didn't want to give up the book for good reason, because he actually did contact um the Jesuit living living in Rome Kircher and said, hey, here's the book, figure it out, and the guy never got it back. So if Borsch wanted to keep his book, he was very smart to not send it to Kircher. Well, and when he sent it, when Marcy sent it to Kircher, he said, by the way, um, I know a little

bit about the background. It looks like it was of the work of Roger Bacon. Yeah, even though there was no nothing to back that up. Well there there isn't anything to back it up. And that's actually it turns out Rudolph the Second believed that it was a work of Roger Bacon when he bought it. That's right. Roger Bacon was this. Um, he was basically a proto scientist

from the thirteenth century in England. And we've talked about him before, I think in the Scientific Method episode, like he really helped lay the groundwork for science in the Western world. Yeah, he's credited with a lot of things he didn't do too. Oh is that right? Yeah? Um, well, anyway, this is possibly one of them. They there's still a persistent legend that it was Roger Bacon's work, that it

did come from England. But um, the prevailing ideas about the voyage manuscripts providence, um kind of drifted a little further east, as we'll see. But um, when Rudolph the Second bought the thing, uh, he thought it was Francis Bacon and all this were we know, second hand, Chuck, like, we don't. Like, there's no documents showing that Rudolph the Second purchased this book. There's not a sales receipt, no but there's something close that does kind of back it up.

Rudolph the Second had a dude um named Jacobus the temper Nets I believe it's how you pronounced that, And this was his um court pharmacists, basically his court botanist um. And he was actually a really rich man. And Rudolf the Second, out of an appreciation to this guy for saving his life, gave him the Voyage Manuscript as a gift. And this dude's watermark or seal or signature appears very

faintly in the Voyage Manuscript. So it definitely backs up the idea that Rudolf the Second own this book at one point in time, and it's entirely possible that he did think Roger Bacon created it, but that doesn't mean that Roger Bacon did create it. Uh So, for a couple hundred years, it kind of, you know, wasn't on the forefront of anyone's mind, basically disappeared until when here we go, Wilfrid Voynage bought it in Italy, uh and

get said, I guess let's name it after me. Yeah, Well they he in the manuscript became like very uh pretty famous because he was tireless in trying to get this thing cracked. This book has this really neat um trait of like bringing people under its sway. You know, it's well, it's a mystery, it is, and everybody loves

a mystery. It seems like it's possibly an impenetrable mystery, which I think makes people want to crack it even more sure because you get to be the one, you know, Yeah, and you could change the name to the Josh Clark Manuscript and say Voynage. Get bit, who's that? Do you remember some company like bought the Sears Tower and tried to change the name to their company's name for the tower, and she, howgo do you learn that a few years ago?

Is it not the serious tower anymore? They tried to change Everybody's like, no, we're still calling it the Sears Tower. Oh Like even if they did change it, people are still going to call it that. Yeah, gotcha. So I think the same thing would happen with the Voyage Manuscript even if I cracked it, right. That's like with a lot of professional sports stadiums, I'll still refer to it as the original cool name and not you know, right,

the r c A Dome or whatever. Although the new stadiums are are they just don't even bother naming them. They just go ahead and say who's got the most money? Right? Uh? So voyage Uh, this manuscript he worked tirelessly. Uh and it eventually ended up in modern times at Yale University in nine where it still resides today. Right. So that's just the story of it. And there's a lot more detail to who have had their hands on this thing over the years. Yeah, we'll talk about that, um right

after this break. Big announcement, folks. It's called a podcast event called The Message, that's all right. Thanks to ge Podcast Theater and Panoply, there is an eight part series out right now called The Message, and you can get it wherever you get your podcasts. Yeah, and you know what, it's gonna blow your collective scientific minds because it's currently

rocking our worlds. So The Message follows the story of Nicki Tomlin, who's a PhD in linguistics, right, that's right at the University of Chicago, if I'm not mistaken, that's right. And she's following a team of cryptologists, which really, if you say cryptology, you've really got me hooked already. Their research thank tank called Cipher and they're trying to dacode a message received from outer space from seventy years ago. Yeah,

it's from outer space, we think. And if you're not familiar with the story, well then I guess you'd better go listen to the message. You can get it on iTunes, you can get it on any of your podcast apps. Just go search for the message and subscribe today. So thanks to g E Podcast Theater and panopally for pushing the boundaries of the medium. You guys are doing a great job. Go subscribe to the message and listen today.

So Chucky, you're saying that um Voyage, it went from Voyage ultimately to Yale, but in between that, like, Voytage really kind of brought this manuscript into the four. Like he he identified people who were professionals at cracking codes and said, can you can you do this? The first guy he went to was a University of Pennsylvania philosopher UM and he had a really weird idea of what

the Voyage manuscript is really all about. Yeah, so if you, um, if you look at the Voyage manuscript, the script is like this weird really ornate lettering, right and it's actually called gallows because a lot of it were like looks a bit like a hangman's gallop, and um this uh. University of Pennsylvania professor philosophy professor decided that it wasn't the text itself that mattered. It was the little tiny microscopic figures that the ink made inside each letter that

was the actual code. And I think Voytage like just took his manuscript back and slowly backed out of the room when the guys told him, man, yeah, he said, they corresponded to Greek letters. Uh. And he actually said, there's a message in here that confirms that it's Roger Bacon inside the inc with these Greek letters. Uh. And not only that, but Bacon well just some other theories that's not even worth getting into, other theories that Bacon hid in this inc. It was all untrue though, right.

Other people went back and said, oh, let us look at these little weird um letters, microscopic letters that you're seeing in the ink. Oh, well, that's just the ink cracking as it dries, So you're nuts. Yeah, he I mean, he tried to decrypt some of it, and it held water for a little while, but it was only like a very small part that was that even matched what his decryption uh theory. So yeah, it didn't hold any water. So that was the first guy who took a real

crack at it UM. The second people who did were actually world War two codebreakers UM and the guy who founded the n S a William Friedman who gets a lot of the credit, but his wife is actually at least as equal, if not as better, in in cryptography, his wife Elizabeth, and they actually UM as World War Two was waning, These people like broke the Japanese code right, the Purple Code, I think is what it was called.

So they weren't like slouches as far as cryptography went. UM, but they got together as the war was waning and winding down and they weren't as needed any longer. They got a bunch of their fellow cryptographers together and said, let's work on the Voyage manuscript. And I guess they probably figured that they would have it handled in short order. That's not at all how it worked out. No, he

did not figure anything out. He gave up I think he spent like thirty years working on it and then finally declared that the thing was impossibly couldn't do it and surrendered. I think it's how it was put. And so after that this thing, once this guy and his group said we can't do this, it kind of got relegated to Yale for a while, and then the internet came. That's right, So you want to talk about the book

itself a little bit, man, I would love to. The book itself is two hundred and forty six pages, although they think it is missing up to uh, you know, fifty fifty five pages. Uh. I mean they don't know, but they're guessing right, it could have been up to two hundred and seventy three pages long. It's about nine inches uh tall by six inches wide, and um, like we said, it's on calf skin, which lends credence to

the fact that it's from the fourteen hundreds. It it matches up with the carbon dating, so that makes some sense, it does. They think that up to eight people worked on the righting itself, and it is written from left to right, which also lends credence to the fact that could be European in nature. Makes sense, of course, uh, although there are other theories that it is from the eastern side of the world. But I don't know what

evidence they have on that. There's also the theories that it's from the far west as well, if like Mexico or Central Americas. Some people say that's right. Um. And then so with the actual words themselves, the letters, there's I think forty to forty characters in this weird alphabet and understand, and that depends on who you ask. I've seen as low as fifteen. Yeah, the highest I saw is forty, but average I saw was thirty. Is what

people typically cite. Um, and these things, these letters are put together to form what we would think of his words, and then the words are put together without any punctuation, and then occasionally are put into paragraphs. But for the most part, it's just like world World World word, World World Word. And then on almost every single page of the codex itself, Um, there's an illustration of some sort

or another. Yeah, about two and twenty illustrations. Um. The fact that it didn't have punctuation isn't a big deal. Apparently that was pretty normal for the time, so that doesn't really give anything away. Um. And it's also not

divided into chapters via text, but via illustrations. They believe it might be divided into six different chapters, which are a botanical this is where you're gonna find your weird unknown plants, um astronomical which uh zos, adiacal signs, and celestial bodies stuff like that, which are and we should say the zodiac symbols and um drawings of the zodiac are the only things that are unquestionably recognizable in the whole book, which makes it even stranger that it's not

just completely fantastic. There's also some stuff that's recognizable. There's a biological chapter with naked ladies doing weird things and bathtubs um or possibly water slides. It kind of looks like in at least one a water slide. Yeah, I don't know what you would call it a water slide. Maybe it would be uh No, there's one there's a Roman aqueduct or something. There's another one though that's like

it's a vertical drawing straight up and down. Uh And there's like three women that are clearly like together in the way that that three people would go down a water slide at once. There's one a little further down and she's like on her back going downward, and then there's another woman at the bottom who's like basically splashed down the almost spitting image of a water slide, a green water slide. Uh. There's cosmological um with just these

weird circular patterns. It almost looks like um, like crop circles, just weird designs that make no sense. Uh. And then pharmaceutical this is where they have like different parts of plants broken down and these like jars and things that doctors you know, may have put things in right, which they did at the time in the medieval era. This is what it like a pharmacist, a doctor would have stored their pharmacological herb zoom, which is why they're like,

this is the pharmacological section. And then finally, um, no illustrations in the recipe section. Uh, it's just nothing but deliciousness. I don't know how they know it was a recipe section. Even so, they divided the book up into these six chapters and they actually think that, um, remember the book was loose pages at one point, what was it, I

think a hundred and twenty folded pages, um. And they think that when the whoever bounded because it was bounding goat skin of a younger age than the actual manuscript, that whoever bounded, got the pages out of order here or there, so that there's some pages that are in the wrong chapter, but that roughly it's in the right order. Yeah, uh,

they have. Um. Another reason it might be Europeans because the average length of the word is four or five letters, although there are no two letter words and nothing with more than ten characters, which is just more confounding. It is because none of it is there's no consistency that points exactly in one direction basically. Well, even more confounding is there are examples of the same word used in succession two or three times. Here there up to five times,

so that's very odd. You don't see that very often, and say English. Maybe they were just trying to make a point. Times they're like I like this recipe very very very very very much. You never know. Yeah, it was written by Chainsaw and Dave from Summer School, who remember that movie Summer School. They had to write like a five word essay, so they used like the last forty words where they like texas Chainsaw mask are very

very very battle trick. Yeah. So check. We've laid out a lot of details here and we're not the first person in the first people who notice these details, right, Other people have and they really like studied them, especially as the use of computing and linguistics has come together in the twenty first century. And we will talk about all that jazz right after this. So chuck, there's weird things like the same word being used up to five times in a row. There's no punctuation, which apparently is

fairly normal, no word over ten letters. All this stuff like it seems weird. But if you put that into a computer with what we know about language these days, you can spit out some pretty interesting conclusions about the Voyage Manuscript. One of the things that people have long said, especially after William Friedman and his wife Elizabeth threw up their hands and said we're done after thirty years of studying this thing, a lot of people said, it's just

a hoax. It doesn't mean anything. It's gibberish. The reason that no one will ever be able to crack it is because it doesn't mean anything. And um, that's still a longstanding theory. Like you can find plenty of journal articles in um, you know, respectable pure of your journals

about how this thing is hoaxed. And in fact, there was one a few years back that said, we found a Renaissance cipher key, which is used for encoding anything, but it was Renaissance era, and that if you took gibberish and put it into it, you could conceivably come up with what's in the Voyage manuscript. And everybody said, that's great, you proved that it's possible, but you didn't actually show how they did that to produce the Voyage manuscript.

So the thing is still a mystery. It doesn't really prove anything, but it does support this idea that is, it's possible, and no one involved in looking at the Voyage Manuscript will disagree. It is possible that it is just a hoax and that it is just gibberish. So the hoax, there's a hoax theory, right, But there are plenty of other theories as to this thing, and a lot of them say, no, this thing is real. Uh yeah, Well. One theory is that it's just a language that we

don't know and haven't seen. I don't buy that, no, I mean, how could this possibly be the only surviving evidence of that language you know exactly? Another theories that it's just it's so well coded that it's impenetrable. But that raises a good question too. So if you wanted to code something, especially if it were safe for art or a hoax or to show what an incredible mind you had, why would you make it so impenetrable that

no one can ever possibly crack it. Yeah, it seems like you would eventually be doing that for some sort of recognition. Sure, so that kind of kicks a little bit, kicks the legs out of that theory to me, or that it's so important and secretive, like the meaning of life is contained here in and it doesn't look like it from looks like the illustrations. It doesn't because I mean you say you're correct, the illustrations are kind of hockey a little. Um, it's not the most Uh, it's

not the most gorgeous book you've ever seen. If it's the Secrets in the Universe, then I'm pretty disappointed. Yeah. Yeah, what's the third theory? Uh, there's another one that, um, well, now that basically that it's gobbledygook, that that's sort of the hoax thing. There's two different parts. One that it's just gobbledygook and it was someone having fun, and another one is that it was a hoax trying to fool people into thinking something right, So that's sort of split

into two parts. Uh, mental illness is another theory. Yeah, like um, Franciscan monk locked away in a room with autism who like just really went to town. Yeah, that's a that's actually a theory as well, or that it might be religious like speaking in tongues transcribed. Yeah, you want to hear my theory. Yeah, you think it's drugs. Yeah, man, so kind of like where you'll find like the doodles

in a college textbook margin. I think someone uh got ahold of a lot of really good hallucinogenics and over the course of a few months did them and did this. Yeah, so went on like a three month bender and ended up spitting out the voyage spanning script or a lifelong bender. And this was just one of the things they produced. I mean, that's pretty interesting, to tell you the truth.

I don't think it's pretty druggy to me. It does also again, the quality of the um the illustrations themselves kind of suggest like this is really awesome, but I don't have full control over my my motor cortex right now. Yeah. Plus it it would solve the problem of like it has meeting, or it can be transcribed, or this person was trying to get famous. Yeah, they're just making it. Yeah,

so that's a pretty good theory. Um, let's go back to the hoax theory, right, Yeah, there's a lot of people who shout down the hoax theory because they say, do you know how much time this thing took? Sure, like, yeah, that's a that's one. So the hoax people would say back, well, people still made hoaxes in the Renaissance, which is the

time this book first popped up. They made fraudulent medieval documents because that's when antiquarian book collecting really started and you could make some money from some suckers like Rudolph the Second. Right, So I mean there's like a there's definitely teeth in both arguments as to whether it's a hoax or whether it's not. But as we've gotten a lot better with um using computers to figure out things like statistical distribution and stuff like that, and have applied

it to things like language. When looking at the Voyage manuscript, it actually follows a lot of the patterns that a natural language does, which leads a lot of people to believe that no, there's actually real meaning in the Voyage Manuscript that we just haven't unlocked. Yeah. So for example,

like um, the different sections have their own vocabulary. There's words that show up and say like the pharmacological sect and do not appear anywhere in the cosmological section, which again is something that you would find in natural language. If you're reading a chapter of a textbook on cosmology, and you pick up a book on far pharmacology, like, there's gonna be words in each one that would not appear in the other one, right, And that's how the

Voyage Manuscript is. That's a big one. There's this thing called Zip's law, which is probably a podcast episode in and of itself. But Zip's laws this weird statistical law that says that, um, say, the second most common word, the second most frequently used word, will be used twice as much as the third most frequently used word, The third most frequently used word will be used three times

as much as the fourth most frequently used word. It's a really weird thing, and it appears to be a natural law, and apparently natural languages follow this kind of distribution, so does the Voyage Manuscript. So to come up with Zip's Law, which wasn't discovered until the nineteen thirties. I think, so to create this text understanding that Zip's Law was eventually going to be discovered, and then going to the trouble of predicting the frequency of these words that you're

going to use and then spreading them out accordingly. Again, it's not impossible, but it's mind boggling the amount of work that would have been put into this being a hoax. Yeah, here's my deal too. Let's say it is a cipher um. From from looking at the thing, it would just end up being you know, this is this plant, this is this recipe. It just seems kind of boring to begin with. And for that reason, a lot of people hope that

the Voyage Manuscript has never cracked that one was. Yeah, they don't want to discover that they Yeah, I mean like because ultimately it is there's pictures of plants there and they look weird and everything. But if we cracked this code, it would as as this one. I, um, what is his name? He a dude named Read Johnson

wrote a New Yorker article on it. I don't think there's been a podcast this year where we didn't mention a New Yorker article that that magazine is banging read read Johnson said he'd put it that right now, the Voyage manuscript is in this quantum state where it's in all positions at once. But once we crack it, they'll be forced to take this collapse into this one single position and it'll lose all of its mystery or aura. It'll just be the farmer's almanact. Yeah, and that it's

as it is right now. It's in basically it's perfect form to stop working people. Right. But that's not the case at all, because, as I said before, the Internet is on this and there are a lot of people who think that they have cracked it, but I haven't. Necessarily. Yeah, there's this one guy, Um Stephen Backs. He's a professor of applied linguistics at the University of Bedfordshire in England,

and he said he claims he's deciphered fourteen characters. The reason that this is somewhat believable because he's not saying, hey, I know what the whole thing means. He's he's being very modest and saying, of cipher deciphered only fourteen characters based on what he thinks are matching plants Juniper coriander and Hella bore uh specifically and Taurus an illustration um, basically the constellation Taurus. So he thinks, I would if you can identify those pictures, then you should be able

to correspond the letters saying those names next to them. Right. He went on a hunt for like proper nouns in the text, Yeah, which is pretty good approaches. Yeah. Yeah, I think he said he identified fourteen right, fourteen characters only Oh I thought it was fourteen words, no ten words. Um, And he's the first to say, like, I might be right, it might be wrong. This is certainly not a closed case.

But here's my best crack at it. Well, there's a live science article on our podcast page for this episod so that has um kind of a rundown of his discovery. And I think embedded in it is a YouTube video that he made demonstrating how he found this. Yeah, and he's not a crackpot. He seems like a good guy. He's at Bedfordshire. There's another dude, is that the latest theory is from guy named Nick pelling um Britain. Nick Pelling, I guess that's his name. I thought two thousand six. Uh,

he came up with this theory. That was an Italian architect name Antonio Abolino um as the author and he says, you know what, I think this guy tried to escape a Tanbul around five and before he left recorded his knowledge of said place. UM. But basically that's been shot down for various reasons. So there are a lot of people believe that northern Italy is where it was made where it's from um. So that part's not entirely like

out of the realm of possibility, but um. And the reason why they think it was actually in the Tyrolean Alps is the predominant view of where the Codex was made. UM. But if you look at some of the pictures just drawing on the margins of castles, the architecture depicted is peculiar to the Northern Alps from that time, in northern Italian Alps from that time, and usually write about in

pain about what you know? Yes plus around uh trent to I believe, um, there there are some healing waters and I think possibly that's what's depicted with the women bathing and water sliding and water sliding. Uh. So I think I do agree that let's well, I mean, keep on trying, but I don't think anyone's gonna correct this thing. So I think the mystery will remain, which is kind of neat. But you do think that there's actual language encoded in it? No, I think it's drugs, Okay, So

you think it's just total gibberish. Yeah, or or you know, this dude and his drug friends made up a language that exists that within their turret. But again it's following almost unpredictable, just so unbelievably complex statistical distribution of of words and letters that it's like that the genius it would take to fake that or even accidentally make it up, as I'm saying, maybe they did have have their own little language, Well they were, there were some smart burnouts. Yeah,

there were a lot of smart burnouts back then. I wonder if they would be blown away to know that people were still trying to crack that code that they made in high school listening to Van Halen. Or maybe there's some other discovery yet to be made of another text, a legend, perhaps you know, a Rosetta stone as it were. Yeah, maybe they just haven't found it yet, and there maybe there's a whole series of things. Um, you would think it would have popped up by now, but you never know,

or maybe that has lost the time forever. I'm sticking with the multiverse idea. Yeah, it's fun to theorize if you want to fall down a rabbit hole. I also want to say, before we sign off, go to Voynage dot nu. There is a dude named Renee zanderberg In who is a pre eminent voyage scholar. Uh, and he actually discovered a letter. It was like the the only the second letter associated with the Voyage manuscript ever discovered.

The first one was discovered with the voyage manuscript. Um. So he's like hardcore knows what he's doing when it comes to the Voyage manuscript. And he's compiled this really amazing website where it's like, here's all the information we have, here's what we know. Not slanted, not like I'm right or anything. That's just a really interesting website to go check out. Does he have did you have everything pasted on his wall with like yarn at the scratched out

on all the pictures. I think it's pretty neat. I mean I just like things that are unknown and you can speculate all day, and it's not one of these unknowns where, uh, you know, where skeptics can come in and say, you know, this doesn't even exist, like it's a real thing. Yeah, they're like it's a hoax. They just got their hands on some velum. But really, and they predicted that we would be carbon dating fifty years later.

I don't think so, Buddy goes down. It's nice like it's a genuine bona fide mystery residing in the Yale Library. If you want to know more about the Voyage Manuscript, like I said, go to voytage dot and you. You can also visit our website at um how stuff works dot com by typing voyage in the search bar. And since I said dot and you, it's time for listener mail or the Yale Library is it on display or is it chucked away? They actually, I'm glad you brought

that up. There's another um uh, the Yale Collection. They did high resolution scans of every single page. You can go on to the Yale Library site and basically browse the Voyage Manuscript. You have to have a an appointment and get permission first, which I imagine would be the result of like an extensive letter writing campaign. You have to make an appointment to go see the actual thing, yes, but I mean not just like. I'll be there at

five Tuesday. How's our for your Like you have to get permission and submit your credentials and all that stuff. But you could conceivably see it. You have to be a friend of John Hondgman he holds the keys um all right, Uh okay, So the answer is they don't have it on display prominently. That's another way of saying what I said. All right, I'm gonna call this. Uh,

my baby won't sleep. Hey, guys, I'm sure you get a handful of thanks every day, Actually not as many as you'd think, But I just want to offer up my thanks for my wife, my daughter, and I. My wife and I recently had a baby, Madeline. At times we find ourselves up all hours of the night attending to a sleepless baby. I think she was born on a twelve hour jet lag, and for that we take

the Red Eye every night until she ad just. Uh. When we have tried every method in the book to try and get her to sleep, it just seems like nothing will do. However, we've come to find that she loves car rides. So whether it's one am, two am, or four in the morning, there's a good chance we are in the car driving around the neighborhood, listening to stuff you should know that sounds really creepy, hearing our voices echoed down empty streets. Yeah, while we're trying to

get our daughter to fall asleep. And now it's cute again when I can assure you that I don't fall asleep in the cars, being the one driving, I can say. I can't say the same for my daughter. It's not to say that you guys put her to sleep, but I think it's the combination of a car seat or running engine and the background background noise of two podcasters. So thank you for keep us, keeping us up listening to your show at the same time putting my daughter

to sleep. You may have the youngest stuff you should know fan at only a month old, and that is sleepless and hat Field p a wow. So we've been told by plenty of adults that we put them to sleep, so it's nice that there's just a little cute to be now. So our one month old Fan is not our youngest. We have one that's even younger one born on October. We want to wish a huge, huge hearty congratulations to our buddy Adam and serena huge congrats the

utes couple. Cute baby yes uh right out of the womb cute, which is yes, not often the case, he really is. His name is Henry Hollis, so do you guys. Congratulations Henry, Welcome to the Stuff you Should Know family, and UM. Way to go, dude, agreed. Um. If you want to get in touch with us, you can tweet to us at s y s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook dot com, slash Stuff you Should Know.

You can send us uh an email to Stuff Podcast at house stuff works dot com and has always join us at our home on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com. For more on this in thousands of other tappics, isn't Hasta works dot com