Radiolab - Mixtape: Cassetternet

Episode Date: November 12, 2021

In 1983, Simon Goodwin had a strange thought. Would it be possible to broadcast computer software over the radio? If so, could listeners record it off the air and onto a cassette tape? This experiment and dozens of others in the early 80s created a series of cassette fueled, analog internets. They copied and moved information like never before, upended power structures and created a poisonous social network that brought down a regime.  In tape four of Mixtape, we examine how these early internet came about, and how the societal and cultural impacts of these analog information networks can still be felt today. Mixtape is reported, produced, scored and sound designed by Simon Adler with original music throughout by Simon. Top tier reporting and production assistance was provided by Eli Cohen. Special thanks to: Alex Sayf Cummings, Martin Maly, Piotr Gawrysiak, Joe Tozer, James Gleick, Jason Rezaian, Gholam Khiabany and Mo Jazi. And to Arash Aziz for helping us every step of the way with our story about Khomeini. And Simon Goodwin for making us that secret code. And to Micah Loewinger to tipping me off to these software radio broadcasts.  Support Radiolab by becoming a member today at Radiolab.org/donate.     

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Listening to radio lab radio from W and wise The gas was Chapter 14 enjoy the six top quality Bible tape. Jesus said unto them, give ye them to eat. And they said, we have here but five most and two fishes. This recording is copyrighted.

What would you be able to do with this Apple-to-personal computer? We can write information, focus on it. The set you were patient. I said you were patient. I believe you. I'm Simon Adler. This is Mixed Tape series about how the cassette tape allowed us to record,

reshuffle, and reimagine our lives. And in this case, usher in a new world order. Yeah. We're starting off today with a second Simon, Simon Goodwin. So I am indeed some in Goodwin. I've been inventing gadgets and writing computer software since the late 1970s.

These days he sports a white goatee with a waterfall of white hair falling down the back of his head Kind of has the vibe of a mad computer scientist. I'm afraid. Yeah, that's that's You got it. Absolutely. Yeah. I have to imagine that when you were growing up in the 1970s Like there weren't a lot of computers around Actually, the situation was that having a computer at home really set you out as a bit of a nutter, I would say, at that point.

I mean, it's sort of impossible to imagine today, but back then, most people had no experience with computers. Yeah. People understood computers as being, quote, giant electronic brains that couldn't be argued with. They were just big government-owned math machines. So Simon, he could only share his passion for these things with a small group of oddballs like him, which he did. On this local independent radio show he worked at.

It was a weekly magazine style show broadcast in West Central England. steps make up machine code? Heard by, I don't know, maybe a couple hundred people. We did things like which computer system I'd buy? Potentially, the Commodore 64 is the best machine on the market, although it's very economically priced. The answer to which should be one that hasn't been made yet, and what does the jargon mean? For no sensible reason, the contents of every memory location is called a byte. And then also, this week we've had three new titles in. Lads and lads of computer game reviews. One of those for the Commodore 64 called Everest. Righto. And while for Simon this was fun in a while, it seemed small. I mean, I'd already been

deeply, deeply moved and had my life changed by these obscure computers, and I knew that, per-computing, it's not about shooting games or driving racing games, it's about sharing. Huh, and how did you know that? Well, I used to ride my Vespa motor scooter to a pub where there was a computer club. We'd bring along the software that we've written ourselves, we'd show people, and they'd usually be, can have a copy of that, can have a copy of that, and you'd swap.

And when you did that, you weren't just handing them a program. You'd be swapping inspiration and ideas too. And so, really before most, he saw the future filled with these computers. Oh yeah, I believed. They were going to change the world. I mean, way back in 1983, he was already imagining open source software, file sharing,

a world where ideas and information would be shared across borders and between people frictionlessly. And so it was pretty obvious that we needed to do something innovative. Right, and if you press enter. BELL RINGS Obviously, me anyway. And that's it, mate.

Not really exciting, really, is it? And one day, I had an abnormal idea. That using nothing more than a simple cassette tape, he could create the internet, or at least an internet, of freely downloadable software to explain. All of the early computers, certainly this side of the Atlantic, even the apples used cassettes. Stranges this may sound before there were flash drives or floppy disks,

there were these data cassettes. I've actually got a couple of them with me right here. This is Finance 1 for 1979 Apple computers. This one's arcade classics for the Commodore 64. And I mean, these were the exact same cassettes you'd use to play music on your stereo. But instead of music, the cassette plays two different tones, a bit like Morse code. So, what I'll show you now is, this is the original 1982 model of the spectrum, sitting in his office over Zoom. He actually isolated these tones and played them for me.

Here we go. A deep note for a one and a note, an octave higher for a zero. And so to load a program, you'd literally play those tones into your computer off a cassette. The computer would listen to those tones flying by SuperDuperFast, convert each of them into a zero or a one, and then display whatever you're running on your screen. Roughly speaking, that's exactly right. And so Simon thought, I mean, the synonym with radio was obvious, because since this software is sound, we could use our little radio show to broadcast it.

And not only that, I mean, we were already using our cassette recorder to record hit records off the radio. So people could tape the radio broadcast, also a cassette, have their own copy, and then play it into their home computers. Did anybody, did anybody you were working with say like, Simon, what the hell are you talking about? This is a terrible idea. Well, in those days, if you'd got a home computer, you were regarded as mad anyway.

So you didn't get much challenging. And so one evening in December 1983, Simon wrote up a small bit of software to share with anyone who was listening. Inside radio station, Simon and his co-host walked people through what was about to happen, prepared them to hit record, and across the broadcast region. People were ready and waiting. Stand by for blasting because here it was. Well, presumably quite a few people switched off, but beyond that, it went. Yeah, it did.

Across the county, dozens of people had captured these mysterious tones. Antwicka set, played that cassette into their computer, and then on their screen. First they would see the pixels arrived on the screen, and then as the tones changed, Tambra, they would see... Something that I thought looked a bit like a reindeer. It was a little Rudolph animation. He's wagging his leg or something along those legs. Of course, you couldn't tell his nose, his red graphics were black and white.

Okay. And why Rudolph? It was Christmas. It was... Okay. Well, that's your present from the Radio Wyvern computer club for this evening, lots and lots of programs. And many thanks to everyone that sent in today, even in the nature of all sorts of Simon and all of that. Okay, so Simon's reindeer was sort of hilariously rudimentary, but this was 1983.

Before TikTok, before Twitter or texting or really even emails, Simon had managed to send an animation across space to hundreds of people instantaneously. I mean, at that time the only way to send someone a bit of text was telegram or letter, and the only way to share a picture or a song was by actually going over to someone's house and handing them the physical photograph or cassette. And well back then, yes, you could record something onto a cassette tape. Making a copy of that tape was a technological feat beyond the grasp of all but a few people.

Until that is, a long came a guy by the name of Lord Sugar. Yeah, Lord Sugar. I'm sick of looking at you at the moment. Get out that door, you're fired. Who currently, it's actually the host of the UK's version of The Apprentice. He plays the sort of the boss character. Was he knighted? And is that why he gets to call himself Lord Sugar? Yeah, because he built up an electronics industry just at exactly the time when that was the place to be. In 1984, he released this dual deck cassette recorder.

These machines that would allow you to record from one cassette tape to another cassette tape. This is legal academic Daniela Simone. She's an expert on UK copyright law who remembers this twin deck cassette player. It was a truly revolutionary technology of distribution and a very fond memory of my youth. So did you have one of these growing up? No, the people that had that at school were really like just the coolest, really. I wasn't... you could tell, having become an academic, I was not one of the coolest kids. Oh, I was willing to give you the benefit of the dough.

Oh, probably. I've just given myself away then. But Daniela says she does remember going over to her friend's house that did have one some twins Catherine and Timothy Um, of course they have the dual deck set player of course the twins have the twin cassette recording exactly And copying these tapes with her friends. She says was crazily empowering like magic, you know Because before this record companies were able to control the way in which you would access what they were selling. Like, you couldn't make a playlist. You couldn't even just buy the songs you wanted. You had to buy the entire album.

And so, the idea that you could have your own compilation that you made and you could have songs in any order you wanted, it's like a sort of a superpower. This technology was giving you. And this superpower wielded by millions of kids in their bedrooms was beginning to threaten the music industry. I'm taking this killing music. We are losing 20 million pounds a year.

I mean, there was this great degree of panic. The flood of illegally produced albums and cups. The country's teenagers take music. These people are the nice cry, I mean, we must not. And I mean, this panic even had Simon Goodwin nodding along. Probably for good commercial reasons. By this point, he was making and selling cassette-based computer games.

It was a side-graven-use stream, but the particular one that was a hit was a exploring underground game called Gold Mine. You'd play as this little stick figure burrowing down into the ground. With a pickaxe and they would start exploring the space trying to avoid getting crushed. Anyhow, Simon had spent dozens if not hundreds of hours working on this thing, and so with all this pirating going on, I spent as much time on the cockpit protection as I did on the game. Using a bit of computer magic, he slipped some code into the program that would detect if the cassette was a duplicate, and if so, it wouldn't play. I'm hearing a slight tension though, because on the one hand, Simon, you love the sharing

with your compatriots, but on the other hand, you're trying to lock that thing down so that it can't be used to its full extent potentially. So how did you square those two in your mind? I was being paid. I was being paid for the commercial software. Whereas for the radio program, I won't ask whether you're getting paid, but radio is not a way of making a living. Two shades, Simon.

Two shades. Viscat is quite clear. A pirate is a thief. The only investment he has is a piece of tape. And he is making money. The only investment he has is a piece of tape. And he is making money. And this was detention. Out of everyone.

Once money got involved, for people like Simon, the people making stuff, sharing effectively became stealing. However, across the Iron Curtain, questions like, who's the pirate and who's being harmed? Reven harder to answer. In fact, the whole situation was playing out in this fascinating, almost upside down kind

of way. First of all, the term software piracy was unknown back then. The pirate was only the guy with the parrot and one eye and nothing else. This is Frank. Franky Shack and that's Frank in English. But online he goes by a different name. Do you prefer sir, fuck soft or mr. fuck soft? No, now you've done the classic mistake. It's pronounced fuchsoft.

Fuchsoft, oh excuse me. I have had this problem with English speaking people for a long time. Anyhow, he says in Czechoslovakia at that time, the copyrights were something completely alien concept in our country. The idea that a person could own a song or an idea and therefore insist that it not be copied, like that just didn't exist. There is maybe interesting story which illustrates this. Many of Western songs were just adapted to check and officially released over here with completely different lyrics. What would the example of a song? Can you think of a specific song or two? Of course. a perfect song or two? Of course. So for example,

Berlin's take my breath away here, stolen and rewritten as please don't laugh at me. Really? Yeah. And there were literally like dozens of these song. Don't cry for me Argentina. It was released over here as a song about... Drive carefully in your car when you are going through the mountains. And Fuchsacht was so cut off that growing up he was convinced those were the original versions. Yes, I thought those were Czech songs. I'm not sure how much do you know about how socialism worked in fact. Treat me like I'm a child and I know nothing. Yeah, okay. So let's say you wanted something from the West, anything like clothing, computers, calculators, illegal,

there was simply no legal way to get it. So as late as 1980, he'd never seen the computer. But then I visited exhibition of achievement of Soviet republics. Sort of like a communist science fair. There were showing the best socialism has to offer. And there was a computer. It was probably some kind of stolen clone of Apple computer. By today's standard super simple. There was no graphic.

It was just green symbols on the black screen, and older guys than me were programming their computer, and that was like complete science fiction for me, and I was absolutely fascinated by this, and I immediately saw that this is something I want to do in my life. And so, Fuchsoft became like an Eastern Black version of Simon Goodwin, a French-speaking Fouca, a schismatist, a student. Only a little more celebrated. I was like a wonder-kint. There were making interviews for TV and newspapers with me like this boy, he understands computers. The program was very clear.

Because he taught himself to program, he became this sort of Communist Party show pony. We were being paraded, like, you see? This is our future, they are playing with computers. But, while the Communist Party was showing him off as the best of the best. He was about to realize just how far behind the curve he and everyone he knew really was. He said he doesn't recall the specifics perfectly, but signed off on me taking a few creative

liberties here for you. He says it happened. I would say 84 probably. I knew a guy who could get commercial games. He smuggled the cassettes in from Yugoslavia and somehow Fuchsoft got one of these games, either from him or someone else. Fuchsoft played it into his computer. And when this scree of data was finished playing, he began to play this game from the west. One of the first was a mooncraftite was called.

It's one of those games where you're a spaceship moving side to side at the bottom of the screen, shooting upwards at alien spaceships. Very, very simple game. But it was... it's hard to describe. It was better than anything I have seen in my life. I thought, this is amazing. There were like different graphics and levels.

The action was flashier. The sound effects were richer. This wasn't a game you just played and beat in an afternoon. The action was flashier, the sound effects were richer. This wasn't a game you just played and beat in an afternoon. You could play it for days. I mean, it's completely like changed my view of what's possible. It opened his eyes to what was happening on the other side of the Iron Curtain. This world that his own government had completely cut him off from. And eventually he thought, I have to share this with my friends, so they can experience this too.

Yes, yes, something like that. But it had a complete protection scheme. That bit of code that Simon put into his games, this game had one of those two instead of be able to copy and share it. I had to correct it. Essentially pick its digital lock. Okay, this shouldn't be too hard to do myself. Fook's off to went for it. So basically switch on computer and type in just load, decode loader. Inside another loading routine, Exit back to operating system.

But... Didn't work. They were really using all the tricks in the book. So we tried again. But I didn't work. Much to the glee of folks like Simon Goodwin. When I create something, I do my best to protect it. And so you don't put up something on the screen saying, you are a nasty pirate! What you do is mislead the person by reporting a tape loading error.

Because then they think, oh no, this is a world of pain I'm entering into. Who cares, let's copy somebody else's game. But for Fuchsoft, cracking this thing became its own sort of game. I was something like a Quint essential geek. So it was a challenge to me that I actually, I could like look into it and find tricks which they have used.

So what I had to do at the beginning, say if you get a loading start at a running game operating system was right, my every kilowatt was on the screen. I was hating this. More modifications, press T for change origin, cannot be copied over written, then exit. I don't think I'm ever gonna fully understand what you just said, which I think is okay. I think I can like say a cartoonish version of it that communicates the idea, but I won't understand it. However, what I do need to understand is, did it work or not?

Well, in that case, yes. I correct it and the game ran. And from that point on it could be copied throughout the whole country. Very very fast. That's Yaroslav Schvillik, professor at Charles University in Prague. He wrote a whole book on these pirated games and he says, just by people giving it to each other. This thing multiplied in spread internet style, almost as fast as that

root off the Red Nose reindeer broadcast. It took about six days to spread across the whole country. And there was a term for it, it's called sneaker net. Like, just the people in sneakers running around and distributing sets. We had so-called copy parties. Like dozens of people were meeting. All of them brought their small computers, put it on the tables and connected their tape decks

to the one device. Through this rat's nest of cables. They were doing copy to all of them at the same time. Somebody would then leave that copy party. Running around the neighborhood with a plastic bag full of cassette tapes. He gave it probably to some of his friends. They took their copies to copy parties. And each of the copies from the originals created five or ten more copies.

And those would then be copied. And so on and so on. And so on. It was the loaves and the fishes. Suddenly you could feed all of the people you wanted. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So basically for people around me, I was something like a goat.

This of course set off its own Cold War style arms race with folks like Simon creating new copy protections and folks like Fuchsoft figuring out how to break them. So over the course of your career, how many games do you think you cracked? I would say between 100 and 200. Wow. Actually, how do you call it in English? I was looking forward when there was a new copy protection methods.

Why? Because I learned so much just from debugging their copy protection schemes. Strangely, this arms race became its own form of sharing. So I got a great respect for the people who came up with those copy protection schemes. And Simon says he began to feel the same way. It became a collaborative and a creative process of forward and backward communication. Each time he updated his copy protections,

it became lessen angry attempt to deny robbers and more like, huh, okay, let's see what you can do with this. Yeah, so what we were doing there was partly we were sharing knowledge, and partly we were trying to show one another what was possible. And not just what was possible with zeros and ones or bits and bytes. I mean, by the late 1980s, more and more pirated material of all types was being smuggled in and shared

on these cassettes. And so folks who had always thought, don't cry for me, Argentina was about driving in the mountains. We're suddenly and simultaneously experiencing this onslaught of slapstick, explosive, stupid, dynamic, compelling media that capitalism is so good at pumping out. And when I talk to Fuchsoft, he told me that he thinks this media and the sharing that facilitated it was at least one reason why. Hundreds of thousands of Czechoslovak's are in the street.

The young want an end to communist rule altogether. So many people, all at the same time, were primed to want more and ready to take to the streets to get it. They packed into Welszislav Square. Definitely through pirated movies and music and computer games, more and more people including me could see how better it is for you to live in a capitalist society. It just came down because of this, because it was no longer terrible. Resign, resign, make the matter. And I think that's why basically the communism ended basically, Roll-off, is how we lose you. And they did all means ever free.

And after the Iron Curtain did fall, someone paid me to come up with Protect copy protection scheme for his game. Ha, ha, ha. Fuchsoft took full advantage of his newfound freedoms. Oh, what a good little capitalist you became. Did you react to the about bitcoins? Well, me and bitcoins?

No, no, no, no, tell me, tell me. Well, like later I started blogging about movies and I allowed people to send me like a voluntary amount of money. Just if you won't send me money. Like an early Patreon thing or something? Yeah, yeah. Basically. And 11 years ago, I said, okay, here is this thing, this Bitcoin. Here is how it works. It's very interesting. You can also send me bitcoins if you want. Wow, okay.

And then they sent me something over 200 bitcoins. 200 bitcoins. Let me look this up. Yep. Okay, into US dollars. Ten million dollars. No, I don't have 200 of them. But I can tell you, in the last year, I bought a new car and a new house with bitcoins. Turns out Simon Goodwin was right. Radio is just not a way to make a living. Now, whether or not Fooksoft is right, that these sneaker nets and cassettes helped bring down the Iron Curtain.

Sort of impossible to tell. right that these sneaker nets and cassettes helped bring down the iron curtain. Sort of impossible to tell. However, up next, you've got the story of a cassette internet that without a doubt sparked her revolution. That's after a quick break. This is Ronia from Ipsilanti Michigan. Mixed tape, a special series from Radio Lab, is supported in part by Science Sandbox, the Simon Foundation Initiative, the Shanahan Family Charitable Foundation, and the Alfred Peace Zone Foundation. This end, side one of Cassette 4. Please turn the cassette over and start side two at the same point. In politics you can say something and thousands of people or maybe millions of people pay attention

because it relates in their hands. Alright we're back, I'm Simon Adler, this is Mixed Tape, and for part two, sort of a B side here, I've got the story of how one man's voice upended a country's politics and get the important information that nobody reports in formal mellows or meetings. Starts off with the guy you just heard, Mosin Sazagara. I was born in Tehran in 1955. He was a percocious kid, bookworm, loved reading about political theory and political philosophy. I don't know, maybe you call it geek or something. I tried very hard during all my education years.

He left Iran, moved to Chicago in the mid-70s to study physics. But by 1978, his focus was very much back home. Making a revolution. His focus was very much back home. Making a revolution. At that time, Iran had already been engulfed in a years-long struggle against the country's tyrannical leader. Iran, inshaAllah, ke darmuhabil al-Harajilah.

The Shah. Shah came to power with a British and American plot, and he was a military dictator. He and his secret police, Savak, ran the country with an iron fist and impunity. The shadow of Savak was everywhere. And Mosin and all sorts of other folks wanted this guy out. I mean, there were nationalists fighting against the Shah,

Marxists and leftists like Mosin. And well, they'd made some strides, getting people out on the street to protest, things were stagnating. Yes. You thought that we have a long battle. And so, Mosin and his smarty pants leftist allies decided to hit reset, which is where our story really begins here. We went to a small village about half an hour, 45 minutes out of Paris.

This town, New Flichetto, would be their new base of operations. They knew someone there who owned this rudimentary house they could stay in. I remember there was one shower which had no hot water in the cold weather of France. And they were bunking up with this relatively unknown and very unlikely ally. This long-bearded cleric, the Ayatollah Khomeini. Khomeini was quite old. He had been in exile for quite some time. That's Kim Khatas.

Long time journalist who's covered the Middle East and the United States. She says Mosin's allies had handpicked Khomeini to join them. We needed a religious leader that was activist against Shah. Someone who could really inspire people to take to the streets and Khomeini fit that bill. Yes, he was very adamant, he was kind of crazy. He was the kind of guy who would not compromise. He said the Shah should get the hell out of Iran. This is Iranian writer and activist Arash Azizi. You know, he said, my marizah boy, I bet it.

Shah has to go. And so, you know, Mohsen and the other leftists, because all of us were well educated in best universities, Western countries, thought they could use Homanic over through the Shah and then cast Homania side. Yeah. And so, from this tiny town, these strange bedfellows hatched a plan to make Chomenea a superstar. This small village, 20 miles to the south of Paris, has become the center of resistance to the Shah of Iran. Most and in the leftists, with their connections, they set up literally a media office.

Made a bunch of calls, sent out tons of press releases, and before long, Newflish Atto became the center of the media universe. Good evening from Poshotran France. And with the cameras trained on him, Khomeini became the voice of the revolution, sort of. Because, and this is where things get a little complicated, sitting on the floor or out under an apple tree, how many would let the reporter ask their questions? If the peaceful demonstrations do not succeed, will you then order your followers to fight? And he then answered those questions in Farsi, which the reporters didn't speak.

So the leftists like Mosin would step into translate and what they said, what they translated, something soft, smart, and diplomatic. The cause that we are striking is the independence of the country and the liberty of our own people. It was often quite different from what Homanie had actually just said. Homanie believed in what he called Wiliat Al-Fakir. How do I translate? Sorry, let me just check how I translate that.

A state, a wilaya of the fakir of the wise man. So, you know, an Islamic state on Earth. Yeah, he thought that if you implement religious order from Middle Ages, everything will be right and we will have Eotopia on the earth And so it was like was that a red flag for you in anyways? No, you know why because We were in danger by secret service of Shah Savak we were in present by Shah and We were ready to sacrifice our life. So our first priority was to bring down regime of Shah, and without that Khomeini was in our

sight. And again, they also thought Khomeini was a useful puppet they'd eventually discard. They were the ones in control. And so, any time he brought up this idea of the Islamic State, they would omit that, as they called it, crazy talk. So, that part of the message did not reach the Western media. But the problem was that basically no part of the message was reaching the people of Iran. How are your orders communicated to the millions of your followers in Iran? The Shah of Iran, the Iron Group on media, and media would have been the radio and TV and the newspapers. Again, Erasha Zizi, who says the Shah had this media blockade that was effectively preventing all of this news coverage, all of this messaging from making it back into Iran to its target

audience. And there was not, of course, any WhatsApp or any internet services. So, they needed to find some underground analog way in. Enter the cassette tape. Every week at weekends, after evening praying, off time sitting in this blue and white stripe tent that they directed in the backyard. I told them that he had his speech about sometimes an hour or less than an hour. And this is where they'd let Khomeini be Khomeini.

And we recorded him to casetate. Shah, you are not a king, you are a nasty rebellious person. You are ruling the country against the rule of law. People want a politician, a ruler whose beliefs are based on Islam. Islam is the religion that half a century ago conquered all countries in the region to make them decent human beings. Islam is not dictatorship. It is God's rule. And when Homan had finished his speech and the recording was done, after his speech, I took that cassettes to the basement, recorded a little intro onto it. The speech of the great leader, then the date,

and one day, Mosin, or one of his allies thought, maybe there's a way to send these cassettes, these speeches back to Iran. Maybe by telephone. In that house, we had an international line and a colleague in Iran who was an engineer in telecom of Iran. And he and his friends, they could open international line, one international line from Iran for us, like a collect call. And while these speeches were less diplomatic, less polished than the messages most and had been passing to the Western press. They didn't mind whether the Iranians

who were religious heard this message about an Islamic state because they thought, okay, it would bring them out onto the street and it's never gonna happen anyway. So let him say whatever he want because it's all crazy talk. I remember the first time after one of Chomene's weekend speeches. I took the cassette,

up stairs to our colleagues. And I remember that the smoke cigarette cigarettes very much. And the, oh, yeah, the room was always covered by smoke. Gave it to them. And then our friend in Telecom connected the line. And with the revolutionaries in France, now speaking to the revolutionaries in Iran, they attached this tape player to the phone and pressed play.

And our colleagues in Iran using a little tape player on their end. The core they did when the call was finished, the folks in Iran, they took the tape out, You can just imagine the crackly quality that you would get and it worked. Suddenly, Homanie was there with them in that room. With their proof of concept, they started going wild with this. Yeah, yeah. Once a week from France, they'd set up a conference call. So there could be many phones calling at the same time. All the folks on the call would record it.

Answering machines were being used. From the various points in Iran, then they'd start making calls, spreading it further. And allowing each step of the way. This network of people you know have almost a little cottage industry duplicating the tapes they duplicated it thousands and thousands and thousands of times it becomes a flood a flood. So yes, it's estimated that it took about nine hours from a speech being given by Khomeini to it being spread in large numbers of tapes in Iran.

These things were spreading hand-to-hand from family member to friend in the bizarre in living rooms. I mean, at its peak, some 90,000 mosques were duplicating and distributing these tapes. Well, it feels to me like this is Chomene seeing how to create virality before virality was a word outside of epidemiology. Absolutely. Absolutely. Khomeini knew exactly what it meant. The art of Khomeini was, he exactly knew what to say to go viral. What to say and just as importantly, how to say it. Great politicians in the world, most of them can speak very well and have very good lectures. But I tell Khomeini was not like that.

His grammar is one of the worst. Maybe I gave him a D or F. He used the verbs in the wrong way. He had quite a provincial accent. This is Nizzi Lafatti, former New York Times correspondent based in Tehran for 17 years. She also grew up in Iran, as all this was happening, and she says his language was so strange that educated folks made fun of him. There was one of the jokes was that yogurt is white. Yogurt is white, three words,

because all his sentences were like that, very simple, and obvious things. But while the upper crust was mocking him, his speech was more attractive for ordinary people. He was from Ruzul, Iran, and so many, many Iranians, millions of Iranians. Even the ones who had grown up in the cities, their parents came from villages. And so this was a very familiar language to them. Similar to the language of their fathers or grandfathers. And on top of all this was the way they were hearing it.

People had cassette players at home, so you could listen to it at home and you could sort of gather around and altogether, listen to those cassettes. And when they did that, when they sat down and pressed play, it's not a politician speaking to a reporter. It's not a politician behind a lectern giving a stump speech. It's not even some image being beamed into your television and

your neighbor's television and their neighbor's television. It's a man in your living room speaking to you and saying that there is important work to be done and that you're invited to be a part of it. That you've been treated unfairly, to be a part of it, that you've been treated unfairly, that you've been wronged, but that with your help, we can fix it. We can make the world a better place. We can make the world as great as it used to be, and that the only thing standing in our way is one man. So his voice gave them an identity, purpose, the voice that they could keep hearing and it would drill in over and over and over again.

One Iranian man we spoke to, heard these tapes said in hindsight that it was almost like Homanie had hypnotized him. And he was not unique. Every everybody in Iran, in every faction, listened to it a lot. Millions of people. I mean, when Homanie called for strikes on these tapes, they happened. When he told people to take to these streets on these tapes, it happened. And when he told the Shah to get the hell out of Iran, that eventually happened as

well. It was through these cassette tapes that Horménie mobilized the masses and managed to hijack the revolution from all the other political parties. political parties. January 16, 1979, the Shah fled Iran. And what he would be replaced by, what Khomeini's victory actually meant for Iran, began to come into focus just two weeks later, as Khomeini was flying from France back to Iran. When they were on their way back to Tehran on the F-Hance plane that had been chartered for them. Again journalist Kim Khatas. As the plane entered the Iranian airspace, Peter Jennings of ABC of course managed to get up to Homanie and ask a question

And he asked him And the Ayatollah listens to the translation of the question into Persian and the answer is Hitchie, nothing. And the translator, as always, one of these leftist intellectual types. He just can't believe what he just heard, so he asks the Ayatollah, Hitchi? Hitchi is a chaos. And Khomeini repeats and I'm reading sort of phonetically, Hitchi, Ehassasi, Nadaram. I don't feel a thing.

Now, what he meant by nothing, none of us will ever know for sure. But listening to that interaction, and this is something that Kim Khatas felt too, you do get the clear sense of a man who sees himself as simply taking his next predestined step into power. A man who sees himself as apart from and above the trifling emotions of politics and men. Here is a man who's been in exile for 15 years and he's about to touch down in his home country and he feels nothing. And his translator almost didn't seem to know what to do with those words. He tells Peter Jennings, He doesn't make any comments.

He doesn't make any comments. You see happy or is he excited? He doesn't make any comments. He's a book guy that's at the question. That's your answer. So that's your answer. Thank you. OK.

Here. Morning. OK. Thanks. OK. That moment on the plane is when you start seeing the the danger of what Homanic actually Represents, but it was too late. I think it was too late

Mounting tension between the US and Iran 344 killed in recent protests and to day, the Islamic government is ruling Iran. Iran has launched a series of ballistic missiles to the ritual where the women should rear the hijab. Just as Iran, we don't have homosexuals. It's shot down, and Ukrainian passenger plane, the Iranian government responded with a five-day internet shutdown. I guess I wonder most in your voice on these tapes. How do you feel knowing that your voice is in some ways

forever intimately tied to Chomene's voice? Not so guilty, I have to say. Okay. Because now that I look back, we know that combining revolutionary ideology with religion is a wrong way. But in those days, nobody knew that. Not only me as a 23-years-old student, but none of the thinkers, even the Western thinkers. So I don't think I was a part of a big movement in Iran by the people of Iran. Like as I've been preparing to talk to you, the person that you remind me of is like the sales rep for Purdue Farma who is going out and pushing OxyCotten. Like, you didn't know how dangerous this thing was that you were pushing on people,

but you're doing it. Have you had to grapple with that fact? Yeah, I can say that, unfortunately, I didn't think about the future, the system that he suggests. We thought that we can make a utopia on the earth. We were wrong. I can't say now that all those thoughts were wrong. We got one more thing for you. It's actually a secret message that you can decode.

We'll have that for you right after one more quick break. I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, I'm not a man, After these messages will be right back. Alright, I'm Simon Adler. This is Mix Tape. Before I let you go today, Simon Goodwin, the mad computer scientist from our first story today, he went to the trouble of coding a little secret message for you. It's a secret message that he turned into zeros and ones and then high tones and low tones that we're going to play for you right here and right now. And so if you have an old ZX Spectrum computer

or you wanna go dig up an emulator online, you can take this sound that we're about to play, put it onto a cassette, and load the message. And in fact, if you're listening to this on the radio, you can go further. You could actually record this straight off the radio onto a tape and run it into a ZX Spectrum just like Simon Goodwin did back in 1983. this straight off the radio onto a tape and run it into as you expect from just like Simon Goodwin did back in 1983. Okay, anyhow, I'm gonna give you a moment to prepare yourselves. If you're gonna tape this, you know, put the tape in, get ready

to hit record, because here it goes. Three, two it is. If you get this to work, please let me know. I would love to hear about it. Shoot us an email or tweet at us. Yeah, I'm just super curious to know if this functioned at all. Okay, so Mix Tape is reported produced, scored in sound design by me Simon Adler with original music throughout by me.

Top tier reporting and production assistance with provided by Eli Cohen. We've got a bunch of folks to thank today. Alex Safe Cummings, Martin Malley, Piotr Garciak, Joe Tozer, James Glick, Jason Rezion, Golem Kiyabani, and Mojazi. And to Arasha Zizi for helping us every step of the way with our story about Homani, and to the one and only Simon Goodwin for making us that secret code. And Mike Alloinger for tipping me off to the software broadcasts in the first place. Okay, I'm Simon Adler, we'll have one final tape for you next week.

Radio Lab was created by Jada Broomrod and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser are our co-hosts. Suzy Lektonberg is our executive producer and Dylan Keef is our director of sound design. Our staff includes Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, Rachel Qsick, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gable, Maria Paz Gutierrez, Cinduña Nassambundam, Matt Kilti, Annie McEwan, Alex Niesin, Sarah Cary, Arian Wack, Pat Walters, and Molly Webster. With help from Tanya Chabla, Shima Oliai, and Sarah Sonbach. Our fact-checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger, and Adam Shibou.

and then continue with cassette 5.