Selects: What is a Numbers Station?

Summary

Stuff You Should Know – "What is a Numbers Station?" (Selects, April 11, 2026)

Episode Overview

In this episode, Josh Clark and Charles W. "Chuck" Bryant take a deep dive into the mysterious world of numbers stations: strange, often creepy, shortwave radio broadcasts known for transmitting seemingly random series of numbers, tones, or coded messages. The hosts explore what numbers stations are, their historical usage, the technology and cryptography involved, and their enduring mystique. The conversation ranges from technical explanations to cultural references, with their signature lighthearted and curious tone.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. What Are Numbers Stations? (02:05–06:30)

• Definition: Shortwave radio transmitters that broadcast baffling transmissions—usually numbers, tones, or snippets of songs. These have existed since at least World War I.
  • "We should just come out and say. Yeah, they're shortwave radio transmissions ... making really weird. Baffling is the best word for it. Transmissions." – Chuck Bryant (03:27)
• Historic Timeline:
  • WWI: First mentions in German publications.
  • WWII & Cold War: Numbers stations peaked in use.
  • Today: While declining, some are inexplicably still on air.

2. Eerie Examples & The Mystery (02:29–06:00)

• Creepy Cases:
  • Swedish Rhapsody station: Young girl reading numbers in German set to music (note: defunct).
  • Lincolnshire Poacher: UK folk song preceding numbers.
  • Atencion Station: Repetitive numbers spoken in Spanish.
• Speculation & Secrecy: No government admits to their operation, though most intelligence experts, like UK’s Trade and Industry Agency, strongly imply government involvement.
  • "They're not, shall we say, for public consumption." – UK government spokesperson, quoted by Chuck Bryant (07:17)

3. Government Use & Theories (06:44–08:44)

• Espionage: Widely believed that stations serve as one-way messages to spies in the field, using illegal and unlicensed frequencies, often overlapping air traffic control channels.
• Non-investigation: The lack of official scrutiny or investigation into such open illegal broadcasts only reinforces the suspicion of government usage.
  • "There's no investigation into these number stations whatsoever." – Chuck Bryant (08:29)

4. The Technology: Why Shortwave Radio? (11:55–15:56)

• Why Not Use the Internet?
  • Digital communications leave traces (as evidenced by Edward Snowden).
  • Shortwave is anonymous and untraceable: transmitting and receiving can't be traced easily.
  • "If you use a computer, you leave a trace... The beauty of the shortwave radio transmission is that again, it's anonymous and it's one directional." – Chuck Bryant (12:43, 13:09)
• How it Works:
  • Shortwave signals “bounce” off the earth’s ionosphere (the “Skywave effect”), allowing for global reach with relatively modest technology.
  • Antenna/transmitter size, atmospheric conditions, and timing (sunrise/sunset best) all play roles.

5. The Unbreakable Code: The One-Time Pad (16:19–22:27)

• How Spies Use It:
  • A unique, randomly-generated code (“one-time pad”) is shared in advance, used only once, and then destroyed.
  • This renders transmissions unbreakable—even a supercomputer can’t crack one-time pad encryption if properly used.
  • "And then you destroy it afterward. That is still ... unbreakable." – Chuck Bryant (17:45, 17:50)
• Vulnerabilities:
  • Securing the one-time pad is the weak point: at some stage, physical delivery or exchange is required.

6. Enigma & Number Station Enthusiasts (22:52–25:24)

• Enigma Group: European Numbers Information Gathering and Monitoring Association, started in the late 1980s to track and catalogue stations.
  • Created naming conventions: “E” for English, “S” for Slavic, “V” for various languages.
• Legacy: Enigma disbanded in 2000, but “Enigma 2000” persisted, now making recordings available online.
  • "Now, it's like you can just go on the Internet and listen to all sorts of archives of these defunct number stations..." – Josh Clark (25:19)

7. Modern Fun & Oddities (25:27–27:05)

• Yosemite Sam Station: An example of a more playful or possibly “fake” number station, broadcasting snippets of the cartoon character and data bursts.
  • Highlights that not all are government-run—some could be radio enthusiasts having fun.
• Indestructibility: Despite efforts (like Soviet jamming), shortwave is hard to completely suppress.
  • Bands—such as Wilco—have even sampled numbers stations in their music, e.g., "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot". (28:00)

8. The Impossibility (or Possibility) of Cracking the Code (29:33–31:11)

• Cracking Limitations: While true one-time pads are unbreakable, computer-generated keys can sometimes be less secure due to predictable algorithms.
• Avant-Garde Appeal: Some collect these broadcasts for their peculiar and haunting audio—a sort of found-sound or musical concrete.

9. Cultural & Media References (31:25–32:13)

• Film: “The Number Station” (2013), with John Cusack and Malin Akerman, dramatizes the concept, though the hosts are unimpressed.
• Mystique Maintained: The stations’ use persists, with many broadcasts likely being decoys or practice. The fact that these “ghost sto” signals are still active is part of their continued allure.

10. Modern-Day Examples & Espionage (35:53–37:05)

• Recent Spy Cases:
  • 2011: German couple caught receiving number station messages on shortwave radio—a concrete instance of real-world usage.
  • 2001: US Defense Intelligence Agency officer Anna Montes convicted of espionage for Cuba, with shortwave radio and codes found in her home.
  • "There have been some actual spies who have been busted in this century ... who had shortwave radios and one time pads in their apartments or houses." – Chuck Bryant (35:53)

11. The Enduring Mystery & How to Listen (38:10–38:41)

• Still Ongoing: The stations persist for redundancy, practice, or as “red herrings” to keep adversaries guessing.
• Finding Broadcasts: Websites like “Spy Numbers” list active frequencies; shortwave hobbyists can still listen in.
  • "I think there's a website called Spy Numbers where you can actually find the frequencies..." – Charles W. Chuck Bryant (38:28)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "The reason that they ... transmission starts off with a tone or a beep or a song is so you can ... It alerts like, here comes the transmission. ...because the secret code is about to be revealed." – Charles W. Chuck Bryant (05:16)
• "No government to this day has come forward and admitted this or owned this. It is all still technically speculation..." – Charles W. Chuck Bryant (06:44)
• “If you use a computer, you leave a trace. ... It's virtually impossible to erase anything on a computer.” – Chuck Bryant (12:43)
• "It is actually the most secure way that you can send a secret message... It's unbreakable." – Charles W. Chuck Bryant (17:22, 17:56)
• "They can cover scores of acres. ...so that's bigger than my bedroom." – Josh Clark & Charles W. Chuck Bryant (14:42)
• "Even with all of that money and technology marshaled against it, they still weren't entirely successful. Like shortwave radio transmissions get through. It's just too big to fight." – Josh Clark (28:00)
• "It's old school, but almost foolproof." – Charles W. Chuck Bryant (36:59)
• "I'd like to ... I thought about getting a short... I was a little bit inspired. But then I thought, oh, man, I've got so many other things to do. I don't know if I could ... fall into that rabbit hole." – Charles W. Chuck Bryant (37:58)
• "If that piqued your interest just type in numbers stations ... and it will lead you down the rabbit hole..." – Chuck Bryant (38:10)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [02:05] – What is a numbers station? Early history.
• [04:49] – Swedish Rhapsody, Lincolnshire Poacher, and other creepy examples.
• [06:44] – Speculation and government silence.
• [11:55] – Why shortwave radio? The technology and the "Skywave" effect.
• [16:19] – Cryptography: one-time pads and unbreakable codes.
• [22:52] – The Enigma group and the long history of hobbyist monitors.
• [25:27] – Modern oddities: Yosemite Sam station and jamming attempts.
• [29:33] – The challenge (and appeal) of code-cracking.
• [31:25] – Cultural references: films, music, and the Conet Project.
• [35:53] – Modern spy cases, real-world busts linked to number stations.
• [38:10] – Resources to find and listen to numbers stations today.

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Final Thoughts

Josh and Chuck demystify the arcane world of number stations while preserving their intrigue and aura. These broadcasts, straddling the past and present of espionage, remain a piece of enduring analog mystery in the digital age. For those curious, resources abound—just be prepared to descend into a delightfully weird rabbit hole.

Transcript

[Josh Clark]

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[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Hey, happy Saturday, everybody. Chuck here. I hope you're enjoying your weekend. I hope you're enjoying your year, your month. I hope you're enjoying the very hour in which you are coming across this. It is the select episode for the week. And I'm picking this one because I honestly don't remember much about it. And I gotta listen to it. So maybe I'll learn it all over again. It's about number stations and it's called what is a Number Station?

[Josh Clark]

Welcome to Stuff youf Should Know, a production of iHeartradio.

[Chuck Bryant]

Hey, and welcome to the podcast Podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And this is. Oh, Jerry. And this is Sophie Schneider.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

74258.

[Chuck Bryant]

Can you say it in German? You speak German? Don't even jive me.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Zwei drei bund. Ach sieben.

[Chuck Bryant]

Now, can you do that in a little girl voice?

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

You're just toying with it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Come on, do it.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

No. You always make me play St. Pauli Girl. I'm tired of it.

[Chuck Bryant]

St. Paulie Girl. Now, this is apparently even younger than the St. Paulie girl. It's like a little girl. And it was a live little girl who. In the Swedish Rhapsody number station. Okay. It was a young. A little girl reading out numbers and letters in German, which makes it even creepier. Yeah.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

This is a very neat subject. So kudos to you for tossing this one out there.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, I've been waiting for it to publish. I'd seen it in the calendar coming up. And coming up, I'm like, come on and publish. And I think it published on Friday. This is brand new Tuesday.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Right out of the oven.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yes. And we're talking about it just as they are completing their decline. So we are on top of this.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Well, I think that. Well, we'll get into it. I think that's what makes it even more interesting, is that it's still happening. All right. Numbers stations.

[Chuck Bryant]

Number stations. Yeah. Like you said, both words are pluralized.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

It's a little clumsy.

[Chuck Bryant]

And number stations are. We should just come out and say. Yeah, they're shortwave radio transmissions or transmitters making really weird. Baffling is the best word for it. Transmissions.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

And have been doing so apparently since at least World War I. Oh, really? Yeah. Supposedly the first mention of a numbers station.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Came from a German magazine in World War I. In World War II, they were in full swing, but apparently they somehow popped up first around World War I, which makes them some of the earliest shortwave transmissions in the world. Because shortwave radio didn't come around, at least into commercial use until about 1920. World War I was a few years before that, if you'll remember. Correct.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. That's why I didn't even think that that was possible. But like you said, World War II is when they were in full swing.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

They really peaked in the Cold War.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

And they have been dying out slowly ever since. But I think one of the neatest things is they are still. If you have a shortwave radio, you can tune into a frequency and hear beep, 1, 2, 7, 5, 8. You know, it's usually like some sort

[Chuck Bryant]

of tone we should mention to Jerry of the future.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

You're supposed to leave that beep in because it's part of the numbers station.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. We beep, Jerry to signal when we want something edited. But, yeah, numbers station. It's not always a beep. It'll just have some sort of. Sometimes it's a bit of a song.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Like this Swedish Rhapsody or the Lincolnshire Poacher. A British, English, UK ish folk song.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

I'm so scared of them whenever I say stuff like that.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

And the reason that they. The transmission starts off with a tone or a beep or a song is so you can. It alerts like, here comes the transmission. Tune your station, hone in, make sure you get some good reception, because the secret code is about to be revealed.

[Chuck Bryant]

And that's exactly what everyone is pretty much in consensus on, that what comes after this and what is broadcast over these numbers stations are secret codes.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Again, like for the Swedish Rhapsody station, it is a little girl in speaking in German reading numbers and letters, random, seemingly random numbers and letters, and then the transmission is over and that happens like. Or it used to happen. That's a defunct numbers station now, but it happened on a fairly regular schedule. There's other ones. The atencion station is a woman saying atencion and then reading Spanish numbers and then repeating them over and over again and then going on to the next set. And everybody, no one can say for certain, but virtually everyone in the world, from Cecil Adams at Straight Dope to the head of the UK's Trade and Industry Agency, say these are secret transmissions for spies. The whole basis of them was for espionage.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And the reason why everyone is speculating that that is absolutely the case, which it almost certainly is, like we said, is because no government to this day has come forward and admitted this or owned this. It is all still technically speculation because you cannot point to a factual statement. The closest we've ever come is they finally got someone from the United Kingdom, a spokesperson.

[Chuck Bryant]

That was the dude from the trade agency.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Oh, really?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

The exact quote is people should not be mystified by them. They're not, shall we say, for public consumption.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

And that's the only thing on record that any government has ever spoke about what these transmissions are.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right. So the idea that they are government transitions, or the reason we have to speculate is because the government's never claimed them.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

On the flip side, the reason everyone thinks that they are government backed clandestine transmissions is because these are pirate radio frequencies. Pirate radio transmitters, yeah.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

My first thing was like, just find one of these and look it up and find out what the deal is.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, you would think so. They're totally unlicensed. Nobody knows exactly where they are. They're illegal, Technically, yes, They're very illegal because they transmit over air traffic control frequencies. Well, that's a big one. And no one investigates them. There's no investigation into these number stations whatsoever. So the fact that the government won't say anything about them and the fact that the government isn't investigating these very blatantly out in the open, weird, baffling transmissions suggests that. Yeah, everybody's right. That these are government backed transmissions used to communicate anonymously and in one direction to spies embedded in foreign countries.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I was about to call it a conversation, but it's really not. It's. I think on the BBC documentary I saw, they called it a MOC monologue. Right, you're just sending a one way message.

[Chuck Bryant]

Exactly.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

All right, right after this break, we're going to talk a little bit about shortwave radio technology. The secret key to sending these messages.

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[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

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[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

All right, the key to this whole thing is sending a short way. Like you might think in this day and age. Why not just send a telefax. No, why not send an email? Or, you know, surely there are safer ways to send espionage this information. Highly classified instructions to go kill the leader of a country, perhaps.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right. Like if you want to activate Reggie Jackson to kill Queen Elizabeth, kill Norberg.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's. How would you do it in this day and age? You'd think an email would do it. No. And you want to know who proves definitively that that is not safe or secure?

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Who? Jimmy Fallon.

[Chuck Bryant]

Edward Snowden.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

If you use a computer, you leave a trace.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's virtually impossible to erase anything on a computer. Yeah.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

If you think you have, then you haven't.

[Chuck Bryant]

Plus if you are, say, emailing somebody, you're transmitting what's supposed to be highly sensitive, even encrypted information over a network, that stuff can be captured. Like go listen to is your employer spying on you? Episode.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

You can't do it. Like you can communicate like that, but you're leaving digital traces everywhere. The beauty of the shortwave radio transmission is that again, it's anonymous and it's one directional. But if you get caught with a shortwave radio, at least say back in the 60s or the 70s or something.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

It wasn't weird. It didn't prove that you were a spy.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Just tuning into my stories.

[Chuck Bryant]

Exactly. I'm just listening to the BBC World

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Service shortwave energy, radio energy. It's all determined by the power of your transmitter. So if you've got a humongous transmitter, you can send. And it didn't need to be that big, but you can send a message one way message to the other side of the world.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

And the reason it can travel across the planet is because it's bouncing off of. It literally is bouncing off the ionosphere of the earth or of. Well, yeah, of the earth. 50 to 375 miles up above our surface. It's in the upper atmosphere and solar ionization creates an electrical charge and that charge reflects that signal right back down to Earth. It's called Skywave, or skip.

[Chuck Bryant]

I like Skywave.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Skywave.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

And that's why you can. With a seemingly pretty simple piece of equipment. I can send a message to the South Pacific. Yeah. From my bedroom. Well, I don't know if I'd have one big enough for. My bedroom's pretty big. I wanted to see how big these things were, actually. You know, like, if they say really big ones to send them further and further, like, how big do they get?

[Chuck Bryant]

They get very huge. They can cover scores of acres.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Oh, okay.

[Chuck Bryant]

A big shortwave antenna, which is why it can get very expensive.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

So that's bigger than my bedroom.

[Chuck Bryant]

You can also use ones that are the size of your bedroom. It depends not only, like you said, on the size of the transmitter, it depends on the atmospheric conditions, too. Supposedly, shortwave transmissions are received best at sunrise and sunset, and no one's 100% sure, but it has to do with the ionosphere. And because that's where the northern lights are happening. Yeah, that's where solar rays hit the Earth's atmosphere. And the atoms loose their electrons, I believe. So they become ions forming the ionosphere. And because this is constantly changing, you can't predict exactly how a shortwave radio wave will act, but you can kind of guess. Well, this time the sun's least active, or most active, whatever. It has some impact on that sky. What's it called? The sky what?

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Sky wave.

[Chuck Bryant]

The sky wave effect. So you can communicate with somebody in a foreign country, Right?

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

And not only can it not be tracked, it's very difficult to trace who sent that, where that transmission is coming from.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's impossible to trace who's receiving it.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

That's right.

[Chuck Bryant]

So you have no idea who in your country is getting this, which means that you're broadcasting to anybody and everybody who feels like listening to this.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

A secret code. But the fact is, if you use the right kind of secret code, no one can crack it.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

All right, that brings up an important point, because you would think also you can hack into the most secure computer system on the planet, if you're good enough as a hacker.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

So how in the world could sending a coded key like it's 1955 and you're trying to get your decoder ring, you know, from the Red. Was it the Red Rider?

[Chuck Bryant]

No story. No, that's way off. No.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

What was it?

[Chuck Bryant]

It was the Little Orphan Annie.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

No, no, no. I'm talking about in the Christmas story.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, it was the Little Orphan Annie.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

That was the show.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

I didn't think it was.

[Chuck Bryant]

He didn't care about pirates and all that jazz. Pirates and smugglers and all that jazz. He listened to Little Orph and Little.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

I'll take your word for it. I remember now.

[Chuck Bryant]

Do you?

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

No, but I'll take your word for it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Dude, I'm telling you, it's Little Orphan Annie.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

I will. That's it.

[Chuck Bryant]

I'm taking your word for it. My hat. I don't have a hat on right now, but I would eat it if I. If I were wrong.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

At any rate, you're not Little Ralphie. Decoding the message from Little Orphan Annie. But it is actually the most secure way that you can send a secret message is by creating a unique code that you know and have written down on a piece of paper. And your buddy knows who has it written down on a piece of paper. You only use it once. That's the kind of the key here.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

And then you destroy it afterward. That is still the most. It's unbreakable.

[Chuck Bryant]

So what it's called is a one time pad.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

The old one timer.

[Chuck Bryant]

Because you only use it once and it is old. It's from the 19th century.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And it's still uncrackable. It is.

[Chuck Bryant]

And the reason why it's uncrackable is because you each have, like you said, you each have a copy of this code, but it's randomly generated. Right. So let's say you have the sheet of paper and the other person has a sheet of paper. And the sheet of paper says it's just like strings of random numbers, like four or five numbers long, and it's just totally random. And it just covers several sheets of paper. Well, you guys start at the same place and when the person transmitting the message wants to encrypt it, they run their message. So say you guys have agreed, like, 0 is A. Yeah. B is 1, C is 2, etc.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

So you take that and you're really bad. I know, dude. It is mind boggling. Like, this is about as simple as cryptology gets. And it makes me bleed from my ears.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Well, because all you have to do is agree on what's what. Right. It could be anything.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right. So you're agreeing on what's what. But you also have this randomly generated code key. Right? So let's say. I want to say, what up, Chuck? That's W, H A, T, U, P, C, H, U, C, k. So that's 11 letters. Right. So if you have your key and you're encoding it, you would use these first, the first 11 numbers to encode what's already encoded. So the W is say X, Y,

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Z

[Chuck Bryant]

says it's the number 22.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Okay.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right. And then so on. So like there's a number assigned to each letter.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

So you have that and then you run it through this code, this randomly generated code.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

So you add that and then so you have 20. 20. What? I say 22.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

And then say the first letter or the first number of this code is seven. So you have 29.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

So that's what the little German girl reads on the air. 29, 52, 37, 18. It means nothing to anyone else in the entire world except for you and the person who has the other copy of this code. Since there's only two copies and you're only using it once and you're going

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

to eat it afterward.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And the key is that it's randomly generated numbers.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Then theoretically it will never be broken.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. But I mean that's just one example. You could have five pre code rules to confuse someone trying to correct this code. Right. And they don't. It's not like the simplest code is this letter represents this number, this number represents this letter. It gets more complex than that. You could both have agreed upon a book. You have to kill a mockingbird. I've got to kill a mockingbird. 4, 8, 12, 90, 13. Four means go to page 4, 13 means. No, you're really going to page 13, ignore the 4, then look at the 12th line, then look at the 8th word on that page.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right. What a one time pad would do is take that already agreed upon code and encrypt it even further.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, but the point is it doesn't have to represent letters. It can represent full words in a text that you've agreed upon.

[Chuck Bryant]

True.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

And it's basically like thumbing through this book, picking out all these various words to make a sentence.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right. The problem is that's its vulnerability as well. Like to get a copy of the randomly generated key that's used to encrypt this message. Right?

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

You have to have some sort of contact with somebody.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

So that's one vulnerability of it. The thing is, is like depending on how long this is, as many numbers as there are is as long as many transmissions as you can transmit.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yes.

[Chuck Bryant]

Does that make any sense?

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Nah. Say, say it clearer.

[Chuck Bryant]

So, so I said, what up, chuck? Yeah, that's 11 that uses the first 11 numbers on this key. But say there's 50,000 numbers on the key. Well, we have a lot more messages I can send to you that we're going through the pad. Eventually though, we're going to use up this pad and we need to meet again. So I can give you another randomly generated key at Kinko's. That's the vulnerability of it.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Well, the other. Well, not a fail safe, but the thing that makes it even safer is a lot of times they would send, and presumably are still sending dummy messages. So you don't even know if it's real to begin with. And there are only so many person hours you can dedicate as a government to code crackers. And they might be working on a code that's not even real.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

So you don't even know which transmissions are legit.

[Chuck Bryant]

And that is a proposal by a group called Enigma. And we'll talk about Enigma right after this message because they're pretty awesome. So Chuck, we were talking about Enigma or I mentioned Enigma and Enigma is this group that of basically amateur radio

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

people, shortwave radio enthusiasts. They really get into this.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yes, it's a thing. And they started, this is pre, pre Internet days. I think it was in the 80s, the late 80s, early 90s, that enigma first came around and kind of coalesced. And ENIGMA stands for European Numbers Information Gathering and Monitoring Association. And basically it was just a group of these people who had all just

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

happened to spell Enigma.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, right. Who had all. I think they reverse engineered that.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

They always do.

[Chuck Bryant]

But they had all kind of started to talk or find each other and say, have you heard this weird transmission? And they're like, yes, I've heard that one. And you should check out this frequency on Tuesday nights at 8pm because it transmits this. And they suddenly realize there's this whole community of people out there. So they set up a newsletter, they started a naming convention and they started assigning, collecting and assign names to these different things. So like E designated an English speaking trans. Number station.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

S was Slavic, V is various, which encapsulates everything from like French to Spanish.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

And Enigma really took this thing and put it into understandable terms. And they are basically eavesdropping or they were eavesdropping on the spy community.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Are they not doing that anymore?

[Chuck Bryant]

So Enigma disbanded, I think in 2000. And then almost immediately another group came and said, well we're Enigma 2000, we're gonna carry this on. And that's pretty fortunate because they were around to put all this on the Internet. Yeah, before it was like you had to like subscribe to newsletters and have a shortwave radio now. It's like you can just go on the Internet and listen to all sorts of archives of these defunct number stations as well.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I mean, they're creepy sounding. I don't like. It's kind of cool.

[Chuck Bryant]

I've got one for you. We've talked about it before. Do you remember the Yosemite Sam transmission?

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. I'm convinced that that's just a person having fun.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, let's play it. I like that one. I think it's full of info.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Well, it's cool. It's coming from somewhere out in Albuquerque in the desert in New Mexico. And it's been going since what, like 2004?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

And what makes this one interesting is that it's not a code. It is just Yosemite Sam saying that thing.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, then it's followed by that data burst which they think is some sort of compressed information.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, see, I don't believe it. I think this is a shortwave enthusiast having a good time.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, he's been doing it like it's pretty sophisticated. It does it like over and over again, I think for 40 seconds and switches to the next frequency. And it just goes through the band.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Then he's got a computer doing it for him. Maybe if it is just some dude. But either way, I like the use of Yosemite Sam. No, it's cool, but it's pretty. It's exemplar of. Of a number station, of a numbers transmission. There's something that indicates that this is about to happen. And then there's the happening, the transmission of the secret code, whether it's digital in nature or whether it's spoken. And then there it. It is ended by, you know, Yosemite Sam again or something like that. Yeah, it's saying, here's the beginning, here's the information, here's the end.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Now go kill Nordberg.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

One of the other cool things about this is when we were talking about surely there's better ways. And the government could theoretically shut down the Internet. They could zap satellite transmissions. They could shut everything down. This is almost unstoppable. You can't shut down shortwave radio. I mean, I guess you cut power maybe.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, well, no, supposedly. No. I mean, yeah. And then I guess if people had batteries, though, in their shortwave radio.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Good point.

[Chuck Bryant]

The one way to combat it is called jamming frequency jamming. And basically it's just broadcasting on the same frequency that these. These other transmitters, the number stations, are transmitting on. And so if you're Broadcasting within your country, you're probably going to reach those shortwave radios better than somebody on the other side of the planet's transmission will.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

And so I. Apparently Russia spent billions or the Soviets spent billions of dollars during the Cold War, jamming frequencies from all sorts of different transmissions. And they play things like the sound of seagulls or random beeps or whatever. And it was just to prevent people from transmitting into Russia. But even with all of that money and technology mustered or marshaled against it, they still weren't entirely successful. Like shortwave radio transmissions get through. It's just too big to fight.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, you can't jam the entire frequency of all short wave. Like every single frequency. If you've ever heard the. The Wilco. Remember Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, that album? Yeah, that was on the album at some point. I can't remember which song it. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot in a woman's voice. And that is a famous. Is it code.

[Chuck Bryant]

Was that from the Conant Project?

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

No, I don't think so, but we should talk about that. For sure. That was a project and it was also, I guess in the Wild west days where you're talking about pre Internet, if people wanted to hear this stuff, some people got together and put together a greatest hits sort of on CD with a lot of accompanying material about what you're listening to, and none of them, obviously you can't break these codes. That's the thing I find interesting is people sit around listening to this stuff, but with no aim of cracking the code.

[Chuck Bryant]

I think some people do attempt to crack the code.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

It's impossible.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, it's not impossible and we should say the reason why it's not impossible is because if you're using a computer generated random number, a computer's not capable of truly of generating a truly random number because computers run on algorithms and algorithms are designed to follow patterns, so they're just incapable of it. So you could, especially today a hacker could conceivably crack one of these especially old transmissions.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, but you still don't know what those numbers stand for. Even if you find a pattern of numbers.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right. There's still an agreed upon thing that you would have to figure out. But it makes it possible. If you could crack that one time pad key, then you have a real chance at deciphering the message itself.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Well, yeah, if you know what they stand for. But I still maintain if only you and I know what those numbers represent.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right. To Kill a Mockingbird pages.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, exactly.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, you were saying the Conant Project thing yeah. So it's a 4 CD compilation. And apparently I read an article from the time when it came out, which is the 90s, and it was like perfect timing because there was Y2K going on, there was Millennium Angst, there was the X Files. And this thing came out in 1997, and Salon wrote an article on it. And this guy who wrote it was like a music concrete aficionado. So people appreciated it. Not just for the fact that it's like recordings of real live spy transmissions.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

But some people like the kind of avant garde noise that had going on, too.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

I'm sure the Flaming Lips are currently planning an album composed of nothing but messages.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

From number stations.

[Chuck Bryant]

Number eight.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

There's a movie that exists that I had never heard of, called the Number Station.

[Chuck Bryant]

I hadn't heard of it either.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I don't think it was released really. It said it was from 2013. Like, I know most movies that are released. It probably went straight to video or something. But I watched the trailer today. It's John Cusack and Milen Ackerman. And you know, they work at a number station and he's to protect the number station. But something bad happens and they're compromised. And is who he says he is. And is she who she says she is?

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Who knows? You'll have to rent that turkey to find out.

[Chuck Bryant]

Did it look bad?

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, sure, it looked pretty bad.

[Chuck Bryant]

Sorry, John Cusack.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, sorry, John Cusack.

[Chuck Bryant]

So I think one of the most interesting things about number stations is that, like you said, they peaked during the Cold War. Right when the Berlin Wall fell. And then in the few years after that, the number of transmissions supposedly just dropped off dramatically. Although I did see in at least one place that supposedly they increased, but I didn't see that supported anywhere else. But the idea that they're still around at all in 2014, that there are still number stations transmitting gibberish, really says a lot. So it says a couple of things. And you've already mentioned one. It's possible they are just transmitting gibberish to throw off anybody listening.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. This one.

[Chuck Bryant]

To basically just kind of SAP their resources.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Right. Like, keep them. Ruski's busy listening to our gibberish.

[Chuck Bryant]

Sure. Another one is that they're keeping them going in case they need to use them again.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

I think that's totally the reason.

[Chuck Bryant]

In which case that's pretty smart because you're not showing your hand, like, where all of a sudden an inactive radio station suddenly starts up again, indicates activity, or it's been doing the same thing for 10 years. And on year seven, it actually transmitted a real secret message. But it seemed just like everything else in those 10 years. You're doing some pretty good spy craft there.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Or just to keep that. Like you may not be actively using it, but just to keep that method relevant. Like, you know, if you quit doing something, it's going to die off. No one's going to know how to do it anymore.

[Chuck Bryant]

Sure. Yeah.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

So, you know, just keep those people working and you know, they may not even know if they're transmitting real messages or not.

[Chuck Bryant]

I would guess if you're just saying, oh yeah, yeah. If you just hand him a sheet of paper and it's just. Yeah.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

In fact, that may be a pretty safe way to do things.

[Chuck Bryant]

Sure.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

It's like the person with the nuclear key.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Is this a test?

[Chuck Bryant]

Who knows?

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Is this War Games?

[Chuck Bryant]

We'll find out in 30 minutes.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

There are also other theories that they are. And I think some of this does go on. Maybe drug runners using stuff like this because some of them are less than professional. Apparently the ones from Cuba or Cuba, Sorry, Jerry. Are a little comical.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, they were renowned for just having really bad slip ups, especially during the Cold War.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Like you'd hear people talking and laughing in the background or an accidental transmission of a radio station.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right. Of Radio Havana. Right.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. So they were kind of known for not being too skilled at it, but I imagine the drug runners did the same.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, it's virtually the same thing. And I mean, there's absolutely no reason why drug runners couldn't have also. Couldn't also use this.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Alongside the espionage community too.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, there's might be A is one, b is two. And they get the message. Says, huh. Shipment of kilos coming in Miami beach tomorrow night. Let's go get them.

[Chuck Bryant]

Kill one. I'm Juan,

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

but I do think there may be a little bit of that. I think it's a mixed bag of why they're still being broadcast. I think there are enthusiasts that are probably just doing their own thing for fun. Yeah, that'd be fun, man. If I was in Guam and I could send you a private message via short wave.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I thought you meant people who are just doing it just to mess with like the Enigma community or something.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

I think that probably happens too. I bet you it's all kinds of things.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I'm sure you're right.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

There's one guy out there, trust me,

[Chuck Bryant]

there have been some, some actual spies who have been busted in this century long after the Cold War who had shortwave radios and one time pads in their apartments or houses. Apparently in 2011 in Germany, a couple who'd lived there since 1988 and were spying for the Russians were caught in the act of receiving a numbers transmission in their home when they were apprehended and busted for spying.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

I can see that scene. He's got like one headphone up and he's holding it with his hand and he's writing something down in pencil and his wife's trying to eat it really quick.

[Chuck Bryant]

Spit it out.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

And in 2001, Anna Montes worked for the U.S. civil Defense Intelligence Agency and she was convicted of spying for Cuba. And when they searched her home, they found a shortwave radio and a code sheet. And so, yeah, I mean, that's. It's still going on, man. I think it's pretty neat.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I do too.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Like, it's old school, but almost foolproof.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. The. The big vulnerability is getting the random. Randomly generated key to the spy.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And they also point out in the article. Who wrote this one, by the way?

[Chuck Bryant]

Nathan Chandler.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Nathan points out that these days you're likely your one timer might be sent to you maybe digitally somehow, but it doesn't like tip anyone off necessarily.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I'm not quite sure how.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. I would think if you're being watched, then an email with a lot of random numbers might tip someone.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right. Well, it used to be they'd print them on the kind of paper that like dissolved quickly or burned and left no ash or whatever.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

They were on such a tiny piece of paper, you had to use a really good magnifying. Oh, yeah, like lens to read it.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

And you could hide them in like a walnut shell or something like that.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Oh, wow.

[Chuck Bryant]

Who knows what they're doing now.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

But they are doing something.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I'd like to. I thought about getting a short. I was a little bit inspired. But then I thought, oh, man, I've got so many other things to do. I don't know if I could do fall into that rabbit hole.

[Chuck Bryant]

So that's number stations. If that piqued your interest, just type in number stations into your favorite search engine and it will lead you down the rabbit hol Wave radio. Did you say rabbit hole? Is that where I got that from?

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

I said rabbit hole, but I didn't invent it.

[Chuck Bryant]

No, I know, but it just popped up in my head.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

And it wasn't my own invention.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

And I think if you have a shortwave radio, you probably tune into these anyway because you're just into that lifestyle. But I think there's a website called Spy Numbers.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Where you can actually find the frequencies and just go right there and you don't have to search for them.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right. And if you want to read this article, you can type the words numbers stations in the search [e-mail] and since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

I'm going to call this a bit on sushi from someone in Japan. Hey, guys. And Jerry. He spelled Jerry right as well.

[Chuck Bryant]

Man, it's Jerry's day.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

I enjoyed the sushi episode quite a bit and have something to add. As a result of modern food production following World War II in Japan and of course the US and elsewhere, the quality and traditional methods of making shoyu miso and other Japanese food items sadly plummeted. For example, miso can be fermented and aged in a matter of weeks with the use of temperature control tanks, where traditional dark miso would age up to two years. Same goes with other fermented products like Shoyu Mirin. No longer a sweet rice cooking wine is practically sugar water. Speaking of sugar, modern Japanese food wouldn't exist without it. Umiboshi, the sour, salty, pickled plum.

[Chuck Bryant]

Those are good.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Is lousy with artificial color, sugar and refined salt.

[Chuck Bryant]

They're still good.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

As much as I love Japanese food and culture, it's quite heartbreaking to see these centuries of traditional food processing supplanted by the Japanese version of a Twinkie chemically made in process. As an alternative, there are good quality Japanese products to be had, particularly those imported from Eden Foods, which is high quality, organic, and widely distributed.

[Chuck Bryant]

Is this the president of Eden Foods?

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

I don't know. Are they based in Alameda, California?

[Chuck Bryant]

Sounds like it.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

That is from Lear in Alameda, California. I meant to mention to you I had the worst sushi I've had in my life the other day.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, no. Where?

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

I'm not gonna say it, but I'm not going back. I'll tell you off air.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, please do.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

I don't think you wouldn't go there anyway. But it was. The rice was gummy and really gummy to the point where I ate it just because I was starving and I ate it really fast and I was like, oh, this is kind of gummy. Then afterward, I was like, man, that was terrible.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Did you say that to yourself? And like, you smiled and your whole mouth was coated in rice.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

It was gross, man. I was ticked off afterward, after I paid the bill and complained the whole way home to Emily. I was like, I really should have said something. Because that was like, they should have known. They shouldn't have served that rice.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, why didn't you say something?

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Because, like I said, I just shoved it in my face hole and left and complained afterward, which is. That's how I do things usually. I don't like to make a scene. I just like to play the martyr afterward. I've talked about that gummy sushi for two days.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Oh, it was that bad, huh?

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, the fish and stuff was good, but that rice was just very subpar. They should have known better.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay, well, tell me where it is afterwards.

[Charles W. Chuck Bryant]

I will.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay. If you want to, I guess, inadvertently or quietly clandestinely promote your business like Lear did with his Eden Foods, subversively. Yeah. You can send us an email to stuffpodcastheartradio.com

[Josh Clark]

Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.