All language subtitles for The UnXplained S06E08 Unbreakable Codes 1080p HULU WEB-DL AAC2 0 H 264-playWEB_track4_[eng]

WILLIAM SHATNER:
Mysterious letters

that conceal a serial killer's
identity.

A sculpture outside
CIA headquarters,

with a cryptic message.

And a medieval manuscript

that could hold the secrets
of ancient sorcery.

There's nothing more
fascinating than a code

that can't be cracked.

For centuries, mankind has
devised ingenious ways to hide

valuable information,
using everything

from enigmatic puzzles,

to complex ciphers
and secret symbols.

If history's unbreakable
codes can be deciphered,

could we unlock answers
to some of the greatest

mysteries of both the past
and the present?

Well, that is what
we'll try and find out.

♪ ♪

Since the dawn of humanity,
our species has tried

to make order out of
what seems like chaos.

From divining the secrets
in our stars,

to deciphering lost languages,

we excel at finding
patterns in the noise.

It's all part of
our innate desire

to find meaning in that
which we don't understand.

And perhaps the best example
of this drive

is our long-held
fascination with codes.

Codes and ciphers
have always fascinated

humans throughout history,
in part because on the one hand,

there's always knowledge
that people want to hide.

And on the other hand,
it's human nature to want

to read what's hidden.

To want to uncover
what is disguised.

To try and be the person who has
broken the unbreakable code.

SHATNER: For centuries,
governments, mathematicians

and spies have used codes
and ciphers to hide secrets.

In turn, this spawned
a field dedicated to both

making and breaking codes.

Today, we call it cryptography.

(electronic blipping)

Any time you want to
keep information secret,

the study of cryptography
is involved.

It's like an arms race
of trying to figure out,

what's the clever way
to encode the message?

And then what's the clever way
to take advantage of weaknesses

in the encryption method?

There's a mystery-solving
aspect to it

that interests people because
everybody likes a good mystery.

And so when you break a code,
it's very satisfying,

kind of like putting
the last puzzle piece in place

when you're working
a jigsaw puzzle.

SHATNER:
What greater mystery is there

than a supposedly unbreakable
code that has yet to be solved?

Take, for example, one of
the most enigmatic codes

in recent history.

A cryptic message
known only as "Cicada."

On the popular
image-sharing website

known as "4chan"

an anonymous user posts
a mysterious image, consisting

of only a black graphic box
and plain, white text.

The message states,
in part: "Hello.

"We are looking for
highly intelligent individuals.

"To find them
we have devised a test.

"There is a message
hidden in this image.

Find it, and it will lead
you on the road to finding us."

The image was cryptically
signed "3301,"

and at first, no one could

figure out the meaning
of this bizarre post.

On the surface,
this makes absolutely no sense,

just saying how we were seeking
highly talented individuals.

And if all you do is
read that text in the image,

it's a dead end.

But some people went
a little bit farther trying to

figure out what's going on here,
and unravel the message.

SHATNER: Using specialized
decryption software,

codebreakers discovered that
the black square and white text

could be translated

into a different image--
a duck, of all things.

But the mystery didn't
end there,

because the duck could
then be decoded further,

leading to even more pictures,
puzzles and clues.

It quickly became clear that
solving this strange

Internet code would require

traveling down a deep
digital rabbit hole.

DAVID KUSHNER:
At the most basic level, they were a series of puzzles

that set off a massive
hunt and chase and

effort to figure out
how to solve them

and who was behind them.

It required cryptography,

and there were
all kinds of challenges.

People were starting to feel
that maybe this had turned

into some goose chase.

SHATNER:
Cryptographers tried hundreds

and even thousands of methods
to solve the code.

The mystery eventually caught
the attention of the media,

and the elaborate cypher
became known as Cicada 3301.

3301 was in reference to the
original signature of the code,

and the cicada insect
was featured

in several of the cypher's
confounding puzzles.

One of those caught
in Cicada 3301's grasp

was a cryptologist who goes by
the pseudonym Nox Populi.

If you were going along
with it at the time,

it was just this great mystery.

And that's because,
after a certain point,

uh, they started personalizing

the puzzles for each person
who had got to that point.

So, this, like, thing
that had expanded

to be global and just
absolutely wild, suddenly was,

like, personally talking to you,
the person solving it,

which was just, kind of
blew people's minds at the time.

These puzzles ran for three
years; 2012, 2013 and 2014.

So, I was one of the people
who finished the 2013 puzzle

after it got to the point
where it was individualized.

It was me and probably
about five or six other people

that were kind of considered
the winners of that year.

At the end, once you finally
put in your last piece,

what you received
was an emailed invitation

to work with them.

SHATNER:
The invitation to work with the secretive creator

of Cicada 3301 was intriguing,

but there was a catch.

Whoever designed
this fascinating enigma

refused to reveal
their true identity.

And it begs the question,
who would go to all the trouble

of designing this labyrinth
of codes and puzzles?

I think part
of what really drove

people's imagination
with the puzzles

was the question
of who 3301 actually is

because they worked very hard

to not have an answer
to that question.

KUSHNER:
The rumors definitely swirled around who was behind Cicada.

There was this kind of dude
in the basement theory,

but that kind of got
blown out of the water

when Cicada made the leap from
the Internet to the real world.

POPULI:
So, suddenly, Cicada 3301

starts posting GPS coordinates
all over the world.

Australia, USA,

South Korea, France--

just all over the place.

Then there were posters
around the globe

of these places.

The poster had a QR code on it
and a cicada.

And so, it's sort of
that realization that,

no, we're not just back on the
Internet, and we're in-in fact,

expanding well beyond
the kind of real-world impact

we thought this was gonna have.

BAUER:
Whoever was behind Cicada wanted to find people

who are not only
highly intelligent,

but also persistent.

Could this be somebody

from the American
Intelligence Community

just finding a clever way
to recruit people

to be American codebreakers?

Could it be a secret society?

Some group of, say,
civil libertarians

who just wants
to make the Internet

completely private and secure?

Or perhaps some third option?

SHATNER:
While the identity of the creators of Cicada 3301

remains elusive,
one thing is certain.

Since 2014,
they've gone underground.

No new messages have appeared,

and the mysterious invitation
to work with the code's creators

appears to have led nowhere.

Now, many years later,

we still don't know anything
about who they are.

It's almost like they fell off
the face of the Earth.

Whether they still even exist,

whether they're still
working on anything,

is a big point of debate
between people

who are involved in this

because there's definitely
not been any indication

that they are still working.

SHATNER:
Is the shadowy Cicada 3301 organization

gone for good?

We'll just have to wait and see.

But there are many other codes

that are hidden in plain sight,

like a perplexing sculpture,

built in the epicenter
of cryptology,

with a cipher that is still
unsolved to this day.

ORANCHAK:
The Kryptos sculpture is a sculpture

commissioned by the CIA.

SAMI JARROUSH: This fourth
section of Kryptos is one

of the most famous
unsolved ciphers in history.

SHATNER:
In a wooded expanse,

nine miles outside
the nation's capital,

lies the headquarters of the
Central Intelligence Agency.

Standing in a sleek courtyard
near the front of the building

is a rather cryptic sculpture.

It's a curved copper art piece
that is called Kryptos,

which is Greek for "hidden."

This highly secure
government facility

might seem like
an odd spot for fine art,

but Kryptos is actually one
of the greatest unsolved ciphers

of the modern era.

ORANCHAK:
Kryptos is a copper sculpture

with letters cut out of it
containing

four different
hidden secret messages

that are encrypted using

four different
encryption schemes.

The Kryptos sculpture
has created a lot of interest

in cryptography
because of its association

with secretive
government agencies,

and it's a very
compelling mystery.

SHATNER: Kryptos is
a fascinating enigma,

but why was this
encoded sculpture

placed outside
the world's biggest spy office?

The story goes back to 1988,
when the CIA

selected artist Jim Sanborn

to create the sculpture
for the agency.

JIM SANBORN:
At the time, the CIA was interested in polishing

their reputation,

and, uh, they figure that maybe
one way we can do this

is by introducing
an art program.

And so, I was awarded
the commission

and then started down
this long process.

I did a lot of research,

and I-I really want
to understand what the CIA does.

And I finally figured out
that most CIA missions

and spies involve
some sort of encoding.

And if it's gonna succeed,
the coding's got to be perfect.

And so, I went ahead
and used encoding

as a major part of it.

I figured, in popular culture,

the CIA is what we all think of
when we think about codes.

SHATNER:
After Jim Sanborn labored over its conception

and construction for two years,

Kryptos was dedicated
in November of 1990.

The resulting sculpture was
not only visually striking,

but also a seemingly
indecipherable code.

On closer inspection,
codebreakers around the world

noticed that Kryptos
resembles the pages of a book,

arranged side by side.

ORANCHAK:
When you look at the Kryptos sculpture,

you'll see a bunch of letters.

But if you split it
down the middle,

the letters on the left

contain four different
secret messages.

These are referred to as
K1, K2, K3 and K4.

And then,
the letters on the right

form a table of letters,

which includes
the word Kryptos itself,

that were used to encrypt
the four messages.

My whole coding system
was designed

to be slowly deconstructed

like layers of an onion,

and to say something.
That's key

because there are a lot
of people that believe,

"Well, this is just gibberish.

He hasn't written
anything there."

But it's not. It says something,

and, um, best of luck.

SHATNER:
As it turns out, codebreakers have actually had

some success cracking
Jim Sanborn's cipher.

Nine years after the sculpture
was put on display,

the first three messages
were solved.

K1, which is located
on the top left portion

of the sculpture, reads...

Below that, K2 says, in part...

And finally, on the bottom left
quadrant of the sculpture,

K3 reads, in part...

All of these strange messages
beg the obvious question:

what on earth is Jim Sanborn
talking about?

K1 and K2, those messages are

bits of writing
that Sanborn came up with.

They're a bit mysterious still
because they're

kind of a poetic passage.

K3 decodes to
a paraphrased version

of the account of Howard Carter

opening the tomb of King Tut.

And so, there's another puzzle
to be solved even after

all the messages
have been decoded.

BAUER:
Kryptos is tying together

some various sort
of esoteric arcana.

What this means towards
the greater mystery is unknown.

You're not gonna know exactly
what the artist intended.

He thought that the mystery
of what he had in mind

would never be fully cracked.

SHATNER:
Many cryptographers believe that the key

to unlocking the meaning
of Kryptos lies in solving K4,

the final message located
on the bottom left

of the sculpture.

But more than 30 years
after Kryptos was created,

K4 remains indecipherable.

I think that K4 is still
unsolved because we don't know

exactly what steps were taken
to create it in the first place.

The other three sections,

people were able to try
a lot of different methods

that are known
to cryptographers.

The fourth system uses
possibly something novel

or some combination
of cryptographic methods

that haven't really been
put together before.

The other challenge with K4
might be because it's so short.

There's not a whole lot
of data to work with.

So, we can't find
a lot of different

statistical clues
that might point

to characteristics
about the underlying text.

I personally think the fourth
panel of Kryptos will be solved.

There's just too much attention,

too many people with mad
computer skills going after it.

Maybe it'll take 50 years,

but I don't think
it can endure forever.

SHATNER:
Will K4, and with it the full meaning of Kryptos,

eventually be cracked,
as some believe?

Or is Jim Sanborn's
curious creation

a truly unbreakable code?

Artworks are at their strongest

when they're
slightly inscrutable.

And so, I certainly prefer

that Kryptos is not deciphered.

I would rather
it not be deciphered ever.

There are only two of us
who know what the code says.

It's myself and my wife, Jae Ko,

and, uh, we'll see what happens.

The secret message embedded
in the Kryptos sculpture

is a baffling mystery
that has remained unsolved

for 30 years.

However,
the most famous unbroken code

in American history was actually
written two decades earlier,

by a shadowy serial killer

who called himself the Zodiac.

BAUER:
Just like Jack the Ripper,

the Zodiac Killer

was never apprehended,
never identified.

MICHAEL BUTTERFIELD:
The murderer sent a letter

with a piece of the victim's
blood-stained shirt

to prove that he was responsible
for the crime.

SHATNER:
The city is gripped by fear

after a number of horrific
and unsolved murders

are committed by
a shadowy serial killer.

The panic reaches
a fever pitch when the killer

releases a series
of chilling notes,

in which he refers to himself
as the Zodiac.

Three virtually identical
handwritten letters

arrived at the offices
of three California newspapers.

And those letters
took credit for the crimes

and included details
from the crimes,

including the ammunition
that was used,

the positions of the victims,
and things like that.

And then, another letter that
was sent on August 4th of 1969,

was the first to use
the name the Zodiac.

The Zodiac's crime spree
is often referred to

as a reign of terror.

And that's because his murders
not only sent fear

throughout the community,
but he eventually threatened

to murder schoolchildren
on a bus.

He also said
he was gonna use a bomb.

He threatened to kill
dozens of people over a weekend.

So, there were a lot of threats

that sent fear
through the community.

ORANCHAK:
His name really got out there, and on top of that,

Zodiac's victims were selected
presumably randomly.

And so, people felt like,
"Well, he could be around

the corner
ready to kill me or us."

So, it became
kind of like a boogeyman

waiting to kill somebody
out of the blue.

SHATNER:
The Zodiac's reign of terror became national news,

not only because
of the frightening nature

of his crimes,

but also because some
of his mysterious letters

were written in code.

The Zodiac,
as macabre as this sounds,

turned his killings into a game,

not just for law enforcement
to try to figure out,

but for the average citizen.

These ciphers sort of served
as a way for people

to play his game.

Can you figure out who I am?

So, using these codes, while
it made Zodiac incredibly scary,

it also made him
intriguing because

anybody could figure out
who the Zodiac Killer is,

if you know how to play
his game correctly.

SHATNER:
The Zodiac's claim that the ciphers revealed

his true identity taunted
the police and the public.

Both the authorities
and amateurs alike

pored over
the encrypted letters,

hoping to crack
the killer's devious codes.

JARROUSH:
The first cipher of the Zodiac,

it's commonly referred to
as the 408 cipher.

That was actually solved
in a matter of days

by a couple of citizens
in the San Francisco Bay Area.

BUTTERFIELD:
A local high school economics teacher and his wife,

Donald and Bettye Harden,

decided to take
the killer's challenge

and spent a weekend
trying to solve that cipher.

And they were able
to find the solution.

Unfortunately,
the Hardens' solution

did not reveal
the killer's identity.

But it did begin
with the phrase...

Then he talked about collecting
slaves for his afterlife.

SHATNER:
The shocking content of the first cipher

heightened public panic
about the Zodiac.

But the killer's second cipher,

known as Z-340,
would not be solved so easily.

BUTTERFIELD:
The Zodiac's second cipher consisted of 340 symbols.

Unfortunately, that cipher was
very difficult to solve.

And he may have made it
that way deliberately

because he may have been
upset that his first cipher

was solved so quickly.

SHATNER:
Despite years of effort,

the Z-340 cipher
eluded decryption.

By 1974, the Zodiac had released
more than 20 letters,

in which he claimed
to have killed 37 people.

And then, after
a five-year reign of terror,

his communications
abruptly ceased,

and the case went cold.

It seemed that the codes
and the crimes

of this evil genius were
destined to remain unsolved.

More than 30 years would pass

before software engineer
David Oranchak became inspired

to take on the Z-340 cipher.

I first heard about
the Zodiac ciphers when

the Zodiac movie
came out in 2007.

And so there was already
kind of a vibrant community

of people involved with
the Zodiac cipher specifically.

So when I saw that, I thought,

"Hey, I want to take
a crack at that."

Because I'm a programmer,
I like puzzles,

and it would be very cool
to be able to crack that.

SHATNER:
To try and solve the cipher, David Oranchak teamed up

with Australian
mathematician Sam Blake,

and Belgian computer
programmer Jarl Van Eycke.

The team became kind
of this collaboration of people

that would run experiments,
try out different ideas,

come up with computer programs

and different kind
of specialized tools

in order to try out these ideas

or to just run a bunch of keys
and try to break the code.

SHATNER:
In spite of their combined efforts, the Z-340 cipher

seemed like it might be
an unbreakable code.

But then,

after 15 years
of challenging work,

the team finally cracked it.

ORANCHAK:
It was very satisfying to decrypt the message.

It was very exciting.

Once we had the solution,

I put together a report
and sent it to my contacts

in the codebreaking unit
of the FBI.

And then very quickly,
they came back to us and said,

"This looks good,
it looks strong,

looks like the real solution,"

and that's
when the media storm hit.

SHATNER:
The revelation that the Z-340 cipher

had been broken,
more than 50 years

after it was released,
made headlines around the world.

But, unfortunately,

the decrypted message did not
reveal the killer's identity.

However, the search continues,

because there are
other Zodiac ciphers

that are yet to be solved,

the most fascinating
of which is called Z-13.

This cipher will literally
make you pull your hair out,

because at first glance,

you would think
it's got to be easy.

There's only
13 characters in the cipher.

What's worse, is that it starts
with the phrase, "My name is."

He's literally telling you,
"Here's who I am."

And to this day, no one's been
able to figure it out as of yet.

Until cipher Z-13
can finally be solved,

it seems that the identity
of the Zodiac killer

will be a mystery.

And the frustrating reality
is that, sometimes,

a code can remain
uncracked for centuries.

Like in the case of a series
of cryptic hieroglyphs

that might explain the fate
of a civilization

that disappeared from history.

The Phaistos disc comes
from 1700 to 1600 BCE.

JARROUSH:
What appear to be just random symbols

appear in a spiral formation.

What do these symbols mean?
It's anybody's guess.

SHATNER: Phaistos, on the Greek
island of Crete, 1908.

Italian archaeologists
excavate the ruins

of an ancient palace

built by a mysterious
lost civilization

referred to as the Minoans.

The Minoan civilization
flourished from about 1900

to about 1450 BCE

in an amazingly advanced culture

that was not just
based on Crete,

but it sent its influence out

to the various
Greek islands as well.

The Minoans were great travelers
and traders and sailors.

They were trading in things

like perfumed oils
that brought them great riches.

One of the great mysteries
that we have here

really is what happened at
the end of the Minoan culture.

In the end,
how they finally disappeared

is argued about by scholars.

SHATNER:
The disappearance of the Minoan civilization

is one of the great unsolved
mysteries in ancient history.

But some believe
that a clue to their fate

may have been found during
the Italian excavations in 1908.

On the 3rd of July, in 1908,

at approximately 7:00 p.m.
in the evening...

...the foreman of the site
at the archaeological dig was

doing a final check of the site,

and discovered this amazing,

enigmatic piece
of ceramic wondrousness.

It has a uniqueness to it
that made it very special.

So it generated a huge amount
of interest very, very quickly.

SHATNER:
The gold-hued, 5.9 inch in diameter

clay object that the foreman
picked up was covered

in strange,
indecipherable markings,

that looked like some
kind of ancient hieroglyphs.

This curious artifact
came to be known

as the Phaistos Disc.

The Phaistos Disc
is a ceramic disc.

And it's imprinted
with a series of symbols

in a spiral pattern.

It's made of high-quality clay
that's been deliberately fired.

Someone had to make
the symbol on a stamp

and it was imprinted
on the clay when it was wet.

It's got to be
one of the very first

printed artifacts that we have
that survived to this point.

There are 123 symbols
on one side

and 119 on the other.

So these seem to be,
perhaps words,

perhaps sentences,
perhaps little concepts

that we're trying
to get to the bottom of.

SHATNER:
For decades, the strange symbols

on the Phaistos Disc
have been an unbreakable code

that historians have
tried to crack.

Many have wondered,
could this small disc

actually contain information

about the Minoan civilization?

The Phaistos Disc is

an incredible archaeological
find to be sure.

However, the bigger mystery is

what is embedded
into the clay in that disc.

You have a series

of what appear to be
just random symbols.

What do these symbols mean?

As of right now,
it's anybody's guess.

KERSHAW:
We don't know what language the Minoans spoke,

or what they wrote.

We don't know
what they called themselves.

Minoan is the name
that we give them.

People have been
desperately trying to unlock

the information
that might be on this disc.

JARROUSH:
People have posited that the Phaistos Disc

is actually a religious text.

A hymn in honor
of a mother goddess,

the goddess
of fertility and love.

But if it turns out
that it's not,

what else could
this disc possibly be?

What other mysteries could this
disc potentially hold for us?

SHATNER:
Unlocking the code to an ancient language

is a very unlikely proposition,
but it has happened before.

When you think
of mysterious ancient languages,

perhaps the most famous
are Egyptian hieroglyphs.

Transcription of these ornate,
pictographic writings

remained a mystery
for almost 1,400 years

until the discovery
of the Rosetta Stone in 1799

changed history forever.

KERSHAW:
With Egyptian hieroglyphics, we had the Rosetta Stone,

where there was an inscription
in Egyptian hieroglyphics,

but also one in Greek
that we could read.

So we knew exactly

what the Egyptian one
was supposed to say.

SHATNER:
So far, no Rosetta Stone has been uncovered

that would explain
the Phaistos Disc's markings.

It appears that for now,
the truth about both

the disc and the lost
civilization that created it

remains frustratingly
out of reach.

KERSHAW:
The problem is that the Minoans have taken away the key

that we need
to unlock their disc.

We haven't yet
deciphered it because

we don't have
enough information to use.

It is right now
a complete mystery.

While this conundrum continues
to perplex historians,

a similar air of mystery

surrounds
another curious ancient text.

It's a strange,
240-page medieval manuscript,

written in an unknown language,
that is often referred to

as "the world's
most mysterious book."

LUKE LINDEMANN:
The Voynich Manuscript is

not found
anywhere else in the world.

It looks like Latin script
although you can't read it.

DAVIS: It's quite possible
that Voynichese represents

a lost language.

SHATNER: On the campus
of Yale University stands

the Beinecke Rare Book
and Manuscript Library.

The library's towering shelves
preserve more than one million

literary works and the most
fascinating volume housed there

is a medieval European text
that, curiously,

was written
in an unknown language.

This cryptic book is referred to

as the Voynich Manuscript.

The Voynich Manuscript is
a book written by hand that

is reliably dated to the early
part of the 15th century.

The book consists of

around 102 pages.

And there are quite
a significant amount

of text and illustrations.

The manuscript was written
in an entirely unique language,

which we call "Voynichese."

When you are faced
with a language you can't read,

all we can do is
look at the illustrations.

There are basically five
sections in the manuscript.

About half of it is pictures,

drawings that take up
the entire page

of a plant,
an herb, or a flower.

And this looks like what we see
in medieval herbals of the time

that describe the usages
and the appearance of plants.

And then there is
a cosmological section.

We think it's cosmological,
because there are stars,

and suns and what look

like cosmological objects.

But then there are
various pages that are just

entirely paragraphs and
paragraphs of running text.

So we have no other examples
of this script anywhere.

We don't know what it's about.
We can't read any of it.

SHATNER: For centuries,
the Voynich Manuscript

has intrigued and baffled
people around the world.

While we are at a loss
as to what information

these pages contain,
we're not alone.

Because this strange writing
has been a secret code

for hundreds of years.

So why would anyone choose
to write

in a language
that can't be understood?

The fact that the manuscript
is written in a way that

nobody else could read it,

suggests that it is preserving

knowledge that someone
wanted to keep secret.

It could be a known language
that has been enciphered.

LINDEMANN:
When you look at the pictures,

it contains drawings that make
it look like an alchemical,

or magical text
that include incantations,

astrological information,
that sort of thing.

And so there's been some
suggestion that Voynichese

represents an attempt
to encipher what is considered

to be sacred and
potentially dangerous knowledge,

because of the taboos
of the day.

SHATNER: We've all heard tales
from the Middle Ages about

secret sorcerer's texts,

filled with forbidden knowledge
about alchemy and magic spells.

Is it possible
that the Voynich Manuscript

is a real-life version
of such legendary books?

For the moment,
we obviously can't say for sure,

because its language
remains indecipherable.

But perhaps further clues about
encoded ancient writings

can be found by examining a much
darker and more disturbing text

from the 16th century,
that is known

as the Book of Soyga.

JARROUSH:
The Book of Soyga in total is about 200 pages long.

Inside, you'll find
instructions for magic spells,

incantations, talk of witches,
talk of angels

and their genealogy,
talk of demons,

how they can possess someone,

and how they might tie back
to our natural world.

It's dark,
twisted stuff to be sure.

SHATNER: The Book of Soyga
was written in Latin,

and its contents are
both fascinating and unsettling.

But the most
enigmatic part of the text

is its final pages
which were all written in code.

The end of the Book of Soyga
is 36 pages.

Each of these pages contains

a 36-by-36 cell grid...

...with letters
in each of the cells.

We don't know the significance
of those letters.

You've got around
what appears to be 40,000

different letters,
characters, symbols

that seem to be
arranged in just a random order.

But in reality,
these letters all make up

encoded messages.

And so if the parts you can read

talk about some
pretty dark stuff,

what's the stuff
that they couldn't print

in a language
that you could read?

What dark magic
might potentially

be hidden
in that section of the book?

SHATNER: It's intriguing
to speculate about the forbidden

knowledge that may be contained
within the Book of Soyga

and the Voynich Manuscript.

But of course,
the more pressing question is,

will we ever actually decode

these mysterious ancient texts?

DAVIS: I believe that we will be
able to read these manuscripts,

because of new technologies,
new techniques

that our predecessors
didn't have access to.

We have more powerful
computers than they did.

And we have access
to a much larger pool

of theories
and linguistic analysis,

than anyone has had in the past.

And I do believe
that we will get there.

Deciphering either
of these cryptic books would be

fascinating
from a historical perspective.

However, there have been some
codes that needed to be broken,

not just for curiosity's sake,

but rather because
the fate of the free world

depended on it.

SHATNER: Shortly after
the outbreak of World War II,

British military
intelligence establishes

a top secret base at
this secluded country estate.

Referred to as "Station X,"

it is home to a handpicked team
of brilliant mathematicians

who are charged
with cracking an infamous

German encoding device called

the Enigma Machine.

The Enigma Machine is
an electromechanical

ciphering device for
encoding a plain text message

in such a way that it cannot
be deciphered or decoded.

When communicating
with an Enigma Machine,

an operator can key in
a plain text message

that's encoded by the device,

that can then be transmitted
as alphabet gobbledygook

to the other operator
who receives it.

And through adjusting
a series of rotors

and plug boards,
the receiving end can then

turn that alphabet soup
into a coherent message.

But anybody that's
listening in won't be able

to make sense of the message.

Enigma was such
a successful cipher

that it took a Herculean
effort to break it.

SHATNER: At the peak
of British decryption efforts,

nearly 9,000 personnel worked
tirelessly at Bletchley Park

and its substations to try
and crack German ciphers.

And then finally,
a breakthrough came

when mathematician
Alan Turing realized

that the Enigma Machine
had a critical flaw.

The Enigma Machine had
one big weakness.

And the weakness was
that a letter

cannot be encoded as itself.

So if it's the letter A,
no matter what,

the Enigma Machine
will never make it the letter A.

So you automatically
know what letter it is not.

You're able to work from that.

Alan Turing came up
with the idea

of we could automate
the process of running

through all the possibilities
of what letter this might be.

He worked with another person
by the name of Gordan Welchman

to come up with a device that
they called the Bombe device.

And the Bombe device by 1941,

was cracking Enigma-encoded
messages every day.

SHATNER:
While the Enigma Machine was ultimately deciphered

by the more sophisticated
Bombe device,

both contraptions are
prime examples of the power

of the human mind to create
and crack codes.

BAUER:
The Enigma is the best-known cipher system in history.

Just because Enigma
was broken during World War II,

doesn't mean we have
decrypts of everything.

Every so often, a researcher
finds Enigma messages

in archives where
we just have the cipher text.

And it's an ongoing battle.

So even now we have Enigma
messages that have gone unread.

SHATNER: The ongoing mystery
of the Enigma messages shows

how strongly human beings
are fascinated

by hidden information.

Throughout history,
our curiosity and ingenuity

have been sparked by
everything from military ciphers

to lost languages,
because we relish the challenge

of a seemingly unbreakable code.

Codes and cyphers are utterly
fascinating to so many people

because it's the allure
of the unknown.

This idea of hiding
information in plain sight

is, uh, so intriguing.

And if only we can
get to the bottom of it,

then it can reveal
wonderful truths,

and marvelous facts,
and great secrets.

POPULI: There's a whole history
around codes and their

kind of associations that
I think really excite people.

I think probably
the simplest explanation is

that if someone put all
of this effort into hiding it,

that there's something
interesting in there.

There's some reason
that this needed to be hidden.

When secrets are locked away
behind an impenetrable cypher,

it can be quite frustrating,
right?

And we have to accept
the possibility

that some codes
will never be cracked.

But if history is any
indication, humanity will keep

striving to decrypt and decipher
these intriguing codes that,

for the moment,
remain unbreakable and...

unexplained.

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