SciShow Tangents - Cryptography

Episode Date: November 12, 2019

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Hello and welcome to SciShow Tangents, the lightly competitive knowledge showcase starring some of the geniuses that make the YouTube series SciShow happen. This week, as always, I'm joined by Stefan Chin. Hi, I'm here. What's your tagline? Mac and cheese as an adult. Sam Schultz is also here. Hello.

What's your favorite noodle? I kind of like the big hollow ones. Oh, penne? Rigatoni? Oh, I like a penne. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or like bigger hollow ones, though? Seedy?

No, no, no. Sometimes they're like big, like they're tube, like toilet paper roll. That's the rigatoni. Too big. That's the good stuff. Because then little bits of ground beef get stuck in there. That's nice. What's fusilli? Is that spiral? Those are fun. Wait, aren't those bow tie? No, bow ties

are bow tie shaped. Today's tangents about pasta. And what's your tagline? Barely hanging in there. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm a little sick. Happy to share the couch with you then. I'm far away from you.

Sari's here too. Yep, I'm here. What's your tagline, Sari? Made of goo. Whoa. Yes, ultimately. We're just all goo. Space goo.

That's what Carl Sagan said. We are all star goo. And I'm Hank Green. And my tagline is tickle nose. Every week here on SciShow Tangents, we get together here in the basement to try to one-up a maze and delight each other with science facts. We're playing for glory. And we're also keeping score, awarding Sam bucks from week to week. They're called Sam bucks because Sam won season one.

And we all get to start with zero points, which is great news for me. Because you're a loser. Yeah, I have way less of a deficit to make up now. We do everything we can to stay on topic, but judging from previous conversations, we won't be great at that. So if someone deems your tangent unworthy, you have to give up one of your Sam Bucks. And yes, you can go negative. And now it's time to introduce this week's topic with the traditional science poem this week from Stefan. Hello there, Alice. My name is Bob.

I've looked at your profile. Can we talk about love? Alice said sure, so we exchanged public keys and began a series of private messaging. No one could see our super hot secure connection because of the way we were using high bit encryption. This was no random integer, no game of darts. We were unlocking the enigmas of each other's hearts and all was going well until an alarming notification.

Someone has changed all my account information. How could this be? The permutations were endless. To brute force that encryption would be stupendous. But alas, I'm locked out for good, I despair. Alice is lost and my feelings undergo slow repair. The worst thing, it's my own fault. I wasn't being secure.

That's the last time I use the password 1234. So it's cryptography is the topic of today. I love Stefan's poems because sometimes he doesn't have a rhyme, so he just says a word weird. So it's cryptography is the topic of today. I love Stefan's poems because sometimes he doesn't have a rhyme, so he just says a word weird. Slant rhyme is still rhyme. That was like a powerful poem to kick off the new season. That was steamy and had a joke at the end. And also I am ready for the sequel. I want to know how it ends.

Did she steal his password? Is that what the implication is? You'll have to wait and see. Sari, what's cryptography? So cryptography very broadly is writing or solving codes. And for a while, like a really long time,

it focused on messages, like secret messages and encoding them and decoding them. So a lot of people, I don't know, spies and militaries used a lot of cryptography. But now in computer science, cryptography refers to a bunch of information security techniques like you were talking about with Alice and Bob, which are the two stand-ins for person A and person B in modern day cryptography.

I didn't know that. Yeah, so now encryption and cryptography is much more complicated. It has a lot of algorithms and the codes are much harder to crack, I think, because we have computers creating the patterns. It seems like to me part of why you need so many bits is because computers got more powerful and so they can brute force things much faster. We'll eventually have quantum computers and there is concern about this will they be able to hack everything yeah well the thing is that

then they will have more advanced computers to do the cryptography it will always be easier to create a cipher than break one so if you got a more fancy computer you should be able to make more fancy encryption but i don't know maybe not not. But I have heard this thing, this concern that we may soon someday have computers that will sort of have no issue with the way we're currently doing encryption. So basically, cryptography is any way of passing information secretly. Information is public, but you can't know what the meaning of the information is. Yes, I think so. Because passing information secretly might just be like, I hid it under a rock. But that's not cryptography.

No, that's steganography. The dinosaur? I also had not heard this word before researching today. But yeah, it's the practice of concealing a file, message, image, or video within another file, message, image, or video. That's when you create a new folder on your computer. Who knows what's in there? Yeah.

And in there is new folder two. New folder two. And then the inside of that one is like, do you really want to keep going? Because it's probably best for everybody if you don't. And now it's time for where one of our panelists has prepared three science facts, but only one of those is true, and the rest of us have to guess. And if we get it right, we get a Sandbuck.

If not, Sari gets the Sandbuck, because you're the one who's trying to trick us today. What do you got? I don't really have a good preamble for this. Which of these encryption methods that I liked was real? Back to basics for episode one of season two. Number one, sending a message where the key is random letters on a page in a nitrocellulose film notepad with many sheets so you can rip out a page and destroy it after each use.

Number two, sending a message in building blueprints where the hidden key was derived from things like the particular building, which doors were drawn as open, and how many windows there were. Ooh, good. Or number three, sending a message in pamphlets that looked like children's drawings featuring ghost characters where their dialogue was a combination of gibberish and rhyming spells that could be decoded. So we've got number one. could be decoded. So we've got number one, there is a random key that was on a page of nitrocellulose that you could just tear off and vaporize it instantly with a match. Number two, sending a message through building blueprints where the keys were based on details in the blueprints, like open doors and how many windows there were. Or three, sending a message in pamphlets that

looked like children's drawings featuring ghost characters that did a bunch of weird gibberish spells that could then be deciphered. Hmm. Okay. So I think the blueprint one, you can't draw a door closed in blueprints, can you? You can? Yeah. Why? And how?

Just make it. I think the main thing with doors being open in blueprints is so you know how to install it to open in or out. But if it's a kind of door that doesn't open in or out, maybe it's a pocket door or it's like a frump frump at the grocery store. Any door that opens in a blueprint would have like a little pizza slice that shows you what space that occupies while it's going through its motion. Yes. So you don't hit the toilet. Which I've been in that bathroom where you're like, oh, they didn't

think of this, but I guess I will just... Just cut a little hole in the door. Toilet hole. Toilet hole. Yeah, and then you can look through the toilet hole and make sure everything's going on okay. Slip notes through it. So my logic is flawed, I suppose. But I still think that one's not real because of my good deduction.

That's the one I like the most. There's something that pleases my spreadsheet brain about it. Like all these little details hidden in the diagram. You could hide so much hidden in the diagram. You could hide so much stuff in a blueprint. Yeah. And a lot of people just look at it and be like, boring. Right.

Exactly. I like the ghost one. I like the ghost one a lot too. Because I want to hear about it. Yeah. Because I want it to be real. I want it to be real because I want to know more. Yeah. So I'm going to pick that one.

So but with the cellulose one, are you destroying the key after you've decoded the message? So you have like a notepad full of keys. And then the idea was that you like use the key and then you rip it off and then you burn it up so that it can never be used again. Piece of paper. But nitrocellulose burns very fast. So if there's like the Nazis got you and you're like, I got to burn my code book. Well, I'm going with the architecture one. Okay.

I really like burning nitrocellulose. Seems real, but I'm going to go ghosts. Ooh. I'm going to go ghosts. It was the nitrocellulose. Oh, God. I got a powerful start to this season. Three points for Sari.

She's too strong to stop now the blueprints i just made up because i also thought it would be really cool yeah and i was sad no one had done it yeah anytime that you make blueprints people are going to look at them really carefully you screwed up the ghost drawings are sort of based on the steganographia, which was written around 1500 by a monk called Johannes Trithemius. And he was like a chronicler, as many monks were, and also maybe an occultist

and into like magic stuff. And so he wrote three volumes of a book that looked like they were just about magic, but they were actually about cryptography. And so if you knew how to read his books or decipher the symbols in it then it was actually like three volumes on how codes worked and these codes that he either invented or worked with like everything that looked like a magic spell was really a code and also maybe some magic spells because he believed

in that stuff his books all got banned because they thought that they were about magic. So they were on like a forbidden book list for a long time. And then people thought that the third book actually was about magic. But then I think recently, like within the last couple of decades, somebody figured out that it also was not about magic and that there is a code in it. They just haven't figured it out quite yet. Yeah. But in book one and two. Yeah. Yeah.

But in book one and two. So the reason why I thought about ghost pamphlets is because in a summary of it, someone wrote that ostensibly the book explains how to use spirits to send secret messages over distances. And so they like listed out a bunch of like ghosts and the ranks of those ghosts and like example messages that you could tell the ghost to send across this time and distance. Ghosts is the best way to send secret messages. Yeah. Because you can trust them. If you have something that you can hold over them, you're like, oh. It's all about blackmail with the ghosts.

I have this letter from your long lost love. Right. You'll finally be released from this plane. Yeah. Your business will be done. But first. You got to go order me a pizza. And so the real one is called a one-time pad and it's really interesting because it's apparently

the only form of encryption that has been mathematically proven to be uncrackable because every time you send a message the pad the notepad part of it has a new page filled with random characters and the person who sent the message has the exact same page with random characters. So you have like two copies of the notebook, and that's it. And then once you're done, you destroy the page. And so it's like encrypted by a random string of letters and numbers or whatever you choose,

and then decrypted by that that only appears once. What if you accidentally receive an extra message, and then you burn a page, and then you're out of sync? Well, you got to send your ghost friend to be like, hey, let them know that I got pretty confused. Skip to page 22 in the notebook. Yeah. So, I don't know. Flawed system.

But apparently a lot of military folks used it. It was first invented by a Californianian banker named frank miller uh for telegraphs and i guess he wanted to keep bank transactions confidential but then it was developed again by gilbert vernam of bell telephone laboratories and joseph mauborgne of the u.s army signal corps so what they would do is like to their i don't know whoever they're corresponding with they would print two exactly same booklets or make punch cards of two exactly same things and then hand them off but that issue of key transfer of giving the key to the people is what makes it less efficient especially nowadays where it's like we have computer encryption you can do that over long distances without having to like physically hand something to someone but these are like the

booklets i don't know if there were other messages that were shrunk down really small, but in the Soviet Union or Russia, I don't know at what point in the history, they were like hidden in walnut shells because they were just like very, very small, random booklets that you'd send to your, whoever needed to receive these messages.

And so you'd hide them in all sorts of weird ways in briefcases or in nuts or next up we're going to take a short break and then it'll be time for the fact off Hello, welcome back. So, Sandbuck totals. Sari has three, Stefan has one. Sam and I are tied with nothing. I do love hearing Sandbuck said over and over again. It's really great, yeah.

Now it's time for the Fact Off, where two panelists have brought in science facts to present to the others in an attempt to blow their minds. The presentees each have a Sandbuck to award to the fact that they like the most. And I am going to be going head to head with Sam. And to decide who goes first, Sarah's got a trivia question for us. On today, Monday, November 4th, 2019, how much is one Bitcoin worth? How much is one Bitcoin worth? I'm going to say one Bitcoin is worth $700. I'm going to say $420.

Can I guess too? Yeah. Well, yeah. Yeah, just for fun. I'm going to guess $7,000. I don't actually know. $9,464.07. What the heck?

A single coin? Yeah, just one coin. So I go first because I was closest, though barely. So invisible ink is a thing. You can leave a message behind, and then if you have a special compound, that message will appear. We don't really need that so much anymore. will appear. We don't really need that so much anymore. But a group of scientists at the Weissman Institute of Science decided to design a system that instead of using chemistry to write the message, they could use chemistry to encrypt the message. So their idea was based on the Enigma machine, which was used by Germany in World War II. And that worked by generating an encryption

for the message you were sending. So if you received the message, all you needed to know was the machine's settings used to encrypt it. For this system, though, instead of relying on a machine, the scientists created a chemical system which they called MSMS that can produce distinct emissions when you add a chemical of your choosing. The idea is that you start by converting the letters of your message, and these are very small messages generally, into numbers, which gives you a starting code where the words are represented by a series of numbers. But then to add extra protection and hide that code further, you take the chemical MSMS, dissolve it in ethanol, and add whatever additional chemical signal you want, which could be something easy to get, like a brand of soda or beer or eyedrop solution.

The idea, though, is just that it's something secret between you and the receiver. So you take a cheap handheld spectrometer, use that on your MSMS and a random chemical solution, and you get a fluorescent emission spectrum whose values you can use to further scramble the numbers that hold your message. The receiver gets the scrambled numeric code get a fluorescent submission spectrum whose values you can use to further scramble the numbers that hold your message. The receiver gets the scrambled numeric code and decodes the message by repeating

the process above. They dissolve the MSMS in ethanol, add the secret chemical, and generate the encryption key. Using that method, the scientists were able to hide top-secret messages like, please send me the results ASAP. And my supervisor drives me crazy. They also created a way to make this method more secure, requiring multiple chemicals that are added in a distinct order, like a password to generate the encryption key. They're doing this like physically in the real world. Yes. Chemicals.

We know how the chemicals are going to react. Couldn't they just make a computer program? Not really. It would simulate. Well, so like, but then if it's just in a computer, then you can't like pass a chemical that contains the information. But also we don't really know. Like ultimately a lot of chemical reactions,

if you're using a bunch of like weird stuff, like the chemical reactions are, if it's like a mixture, it's going to be weird. I thought chemistry was predictable. Chemistry is predictable if you know exactly what's in there. But with a beer or a soda, like you literally don't know the chemicals. But even those things, couldn't those vary enough from bottle to bottle to be bad, to not work great? Not so much with things that are like major brands.

They work pretty hard to hit consistency. So your top secret message relies on the quality control of Coca-Cola. Which I mean, Coca-Cola probably has better quality control than a lot of chemical companies. It just seems like it's a lot of work. A lot of work. It's most, I mean, and the messages you can get across are going to have to be like low information messages because there's just not enough resolution in an emission spectrum. Is it low information or just low word count? Because what if you, like, you could have a password that's one name.

Sure, sure. Who do you kill? This name. Yeah, yeah. It's not very many characters, but it is a big deal. Yeah. Right. Yeah, it's not very many characters, but it is a big deal.

Yeah. I just really like how because we've gotten better at decrypting things just by brute force and probability and finding patterns in the messages, the new encryption methods that we've come up with, it's like invisible ink was so 2000 years ago. Let's do like a bunch of random chemicals that you first have to get your hands on. But is there like a big movement back to physical things because of the way the computers are? Is that like a new frontier of... I don't know, man. We should get these burning notebooks again. Those ones

definitely worked. Sounds like a pain in the butt, though. Yeah, having a bunch of them around the office might not be a great idea. You can't like leave them in sunlight for too long. Is it my turn now? Yeah. All right. So password-based security is a pretty flawed system. Some statistics that I read said that 73% of people use duplicate passwords for everything.

Oh, for God. I can't believe it's not more than that. Yeah, right? And one-fourth of those people, not necessarily the same people, but one-fourth of people have not changed their password in more than 10 years. Wow. Well, if it ain't broke. It is. It is broke.

If it's been 10 years, I guarantee you it's broke. So researchers and tech companies are always on the hunt for more secure systems that are also feasible to get into people's homes because of affordability and stuff like that. And there are lots of options that we see already like eye and face and fingerprint scanning that are becoming more and more common as that stuff gets cheaper.

But in 2013, a team at UC Berkeley tested a type of security key that is potentially even more secure than fingers, eyes, and faces, all of which could be cut off of your body. You can't cut my knees off. Your brain waves. John Travolta.

Well, I could try. Your brain waves is what I said while you said John Travolta. So using a $200 gaming headset with a built-in EEG, which apparently is a thing, they devised seven different activities these researchers did, such as focusing on your breathing, imagining singing a song, and thinking about your favorite sport, and had 15

test subjects repeat these five times to produce a specific brain pattern key. Then they trained the program to authenticate users based on their brain patterns, and ended up being able to correctly identify users 99% of the time. 99% is not good enough.

It's not enough. That's what they said too. But it wasn't. You're getting there. Yeah. What else could I picture? I want to know what else my password could be.

Could my password be like just the image of a dog with wings jumping out of a plane? So one of the things they said was that they gave people the option to think of whatever they wanted as their password, but that the people always picked things

that were too complicated and it didn't work. So you just showed us how that works. Oh, wow. Great. Good job, me. So based on my understanding of the paper, which probably isn't the best, it's like when you're signing into Google and you put your email address in,

except instead of typing the password, after that you would think the password. It wasn't just like you could plug in and think like, I am Sam, and it would know who you were. Because they tried to do a thing with the same setup where they were identifying people just based on their brainwaves, and they could only do it 22% of the time. So you have to have a password, and then it's like, this is what your brain should look like, and then it matches it against what your brain has looked like previously. I just have to think about my favorite sport.

It's like, ah, sport people, look at them go. And then my computer's unlocked? Yeah, pretty much. So they narrowed the activities down. So at first they were having people go through all seven of the activities, but eventually they narrowed it down to just the breathing task where you think about your breathing for 10 seconds and then a weird audio task where you listen to a tone

and you look at a dot on the screen. And those two things together were just as effective as all of them combined. Wow. Okay. Yeah. And then some of them were too boring, like moving your finger. There's one where you just moved your finger

and that was too boring and it didn't work right. So basically what they concluded was that they were able to, with carefully designed tests, make a really cheap EEG reader work just as well as a really advanced one. But there is a wrinkle that I found. So other researchers looked at similar EEGs and they found that if you're too drunk, caffeinated, or you just worked out, it can make all of the authentication fail up to the point of like 33%. That's already a problem. Well, it's a problem or it's not a problem where your email is like, you too drunk.

Or your car is like, you're too drunk. No, but sometimes I couldn't get into my phone when it was the touch, when there was a fingerprint, if I had worked out too hard. Because you're swelled up different? Yeah, I don't know. Same with me except for long baths. It's hard to unlock your iPhone after you you're all pruney that's true yeah also i want to know other physical activities because this finger that's obviously not going to work but what if i do the

that might be too complicated hank you're thinking too big what if i do like the honk honk movement that would be that would be a good one yeah finger there's not enough muscle. And you make the noise too. Yeah, you gotta get more joints involved. I just want to be able to unlock my iPhone by doing a dance. It sounds to me like you have to use different parts of your brain. Like that's what they're going for.

So like focusing on your breathing is like calm down. And then focusing on a point is like intense something. And that's why why or like if you're thinking about a dog with wings or you're doing something complicated then that's just like your frontal lobe all over the place or like a lot of things yeah at once so i can imagine if you feel things very strongly i don't know i don't know enough about neuroscience but it's like okay i'm gonna think about a really sad thing i'm gonna think about a really funny thing i'm gonna do the truck horn honk.

Like, that might be enough of a discrete sequence as long as, like, each thing is different. Oh, as long as you didn't necessarily have to think of a specific sad thing. Right. You just, like, go between. You have to be, like, sad, happy, honk. Or, like, really visual stimulation, really audio stimulation. Because I think that's what, like, imagining a song is like. It's probably, like like stimulating auditory parts. Do it based on taste?

Yeah, you have to eat a hamburger. I like that a lot. Hank, why are you listening to Do You Believe in Life After Love while eating Cool Ranch Doritos so much? It's my password! Well, we have to replace passwords. By the time I'm dead,

I want there not to be passwords that's the legacy I want to leave well so when I was reading this I was thinking but you could just have a fingerprint scanner

or a face scanner and that's just as good is that just as good or is that more secure I think because I'm watching too much crime TV you can cut off a finger

there are ways to preserve fingerprints in ways that certain scanners can be fooled because it's just like the loops and whorls pressing on it. I don't know about face, how facial recognition works, but computers have flawed facial recognition programs all the time. Yeah, you just 3D print somebody's face. But then they have thermal cameras now. A heated bust.

I think they have that technology. So, it's time for you guys to vote for whose fact you liked the best. Are you ready? Three, two, one. Hank. Sam. I can't believe I got a point out of that. Sam's was so good.

Sam's was very good. I liked the idea of soda secrets. That is cool. I like that too, soda secrets. Yeah. All right, it's time to ask the science couch. We've got some listener questions for our couch

of finely honed scientific minds. This question is from at Ninja Frost Pam. Maybe. What is the

oldest known example of cryptographic writing? You want to take a yes? Well, there's the Caesar thing,

which is like the simplest cryptographic example that I can think of. But I don't know if it's the most ancient. That's where you like just shift the alphabet by a certain number of letters. Is that what Caesar did? Julius? I think so. Am I correct?

Yes, I'm getting a nod from the science. Go on. That's all I know about it. Yeah, the Caesar cipher is pretty old. Julius Caesar used it allegedly, I think we're pretty sure, from like 50 to 60 BCE. That's a crappy cipher. Yeah, but he liked an alphabet shift of three, so not even very many. Just so you can't glance at it yeah before that from like 600 to 500 bc was the atbash cipher um which started

originated in hebrew and that's most commonly where you have like the alphabet forwards and then the alphabet backwards and so like z maps to a and b maps to y but it's another like fairly commonly used one as far as like teaching kids codes before that also around the fifth century bce there is a device called a skiddley that the spartans used those are the rods yeah so what it is it's like a strip of fabric with letters written on it and then you have to have a rod of a certain circumference to wrap it around and the sender and the receiver have to have a rod of a certain circumference to wrap it around. And the sender and the receiver have to have the same diameter rod so that it actually forms a message when you spiral it around instead of just like jumbling the letters weirdly.

Cool. And so it wasn't a super good wave. It doesn't seem super secure. No. Like everyone's just going to have a set of rods. You get a bunch of different rods. Ace hardware. Do it around your pinky finger.

Do it around your index finger. Do it around your leg. Humans are made of rods. Get a bunch of different rods. Ace hardware. Do it around your pinky finger. Do it around your index finger. Do it around your leg. Humans are made of rods of various sizes. What a terrible system. And there's some dispute as to whether that actually existed. Some people are like, we're basing this off of some of Plutarch's writings

saying that there was a skittling. But it might have just been a method of communication. So not encryption. It just could have been like... A fun way to send messages. saying that there was a skittling anything but it might have just been a method of communication so not encryption it would just could have been like a fun way to send messages yeah do you know what else plutarch said no the mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be light i did know that the oldest one allegedly is the egyptian tomb of knumhotep II from 1900 BCE where the normal hieroglyphics were replaced with like

fancy strange ones. The thing is, so like a lot of people list this as the oldest code, the oldest encryption, because the writing was being changed from what was normal, so not everyone would have been able to decipher it. But people, historians, aren't sure whether it's trying to hide a message to decipher it but people like historians aren't

sure whether it's trying to hide a message or if it's just like a fancy version it's just cursive yeah or instead of writing out like 1863 for 1863 they they were writing like the year of our lord 1863 like a fancy version because it's four score because. Because he's a fancy man. So that is the commonly cited oldest form of cryptographic writing. Around the 8th and 9th century CE were when we started like really formalizing cryptographic messages. And these were all Arabic scholars because they were developing a bunch of math and then also like cryptography. Bunch of nerds. Yeah. Just a bunch of math and then also cryptography. Bunch of nerds. Yeah.

Just a bunch of Arabic nerds. If you want to ask the Science Couch, follow us on Twitter at SciShowTangents. We will tweet out topics for upcoming episodes every week. Thank you to at Bozaster, at The Beekeeper, and everybody else who tweeted us your questions for this episode. Sam Buck, final scores. Sari is the winner with three

and the rest of us are all, if we all add up, we have three. Get used to it, I think. That's my prediction for this season. It's going to be the season of Sari. Yeah, totally. If you like this show

and you want to help us out, it's easy to do that. You can leave us a review wherever you listen. That's very helpful. It also helps us know what you liked about the show and we're going to be looking at iTunes reviews

for topic ideas for future episodes. Second, tweet out your favorite moment from the episode. You can find me on Twitter. I'm at Hank Green. I'm at C.E. Reilly. I'm at It's me, Stefan Chin. And I'm at Slam Schultz. S-C-H-L-T-Z. It's spelled wrong everywhere. Finally, if you wanted to show your

love for SciShow Tangents, just tell people about us. Thank you for joining us. I've been Hank Green. I've been Sari Reilly. I've been Stephen Chang. And I've been Sam Schultz. SciShow Tangents is a co-production of Complexly

and the wonderful team at WNYC Studios. It's created by all of us and produced by Caitlin Hoffmeister and Sam Schultz, who also edits a lot of these episodes, along with Hirokumatsu Shima. Our editorial assistant is Deboki Chakravarti. Our sound design is by Joseph Tuna-Medish. Our social media organizer is Victoria Bongiorno. And we couldn't make any of this Thank you. But one more thing.

In 2017, preservationists were restoring a church in Spain. And when they were moving a big sculpture of Jesus' crucifixion, they noticed something rattling around inside of it. They were looking at the statue and found a secret compartment in the statue's butt. And inside was a letter from a chaplain at the church from 1777. That's not very scientific, but he did talk about it being a particularly good year for crops, that malaria and typhoid were going around, and that the Inquisition was doing its thing. And then historians put the note back in the butt for future generations to enjoy. What was the note?

Who was it to? The future? I think it was just like for fun. Yeah, I don't know. It wasn't addressed to anybody, I don't think. He just felt like putting it in there. In a time capsule. Yeah, it was just a time capsule.

Everyone's going to look at the butt. So that's where you got to hide your stuff. 17th century pastors are like, right now we're really a bit stuck up about butts in the future. Everybody's going to be looking at them.