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Scientists Who Were Horrifically Persecuted, Part Two: Alan Turing · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: Ridiculous Histories, a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to the
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Speaker 1: show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much for
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Speaker 1: tuning in. Shout out to our super producer, mister Max Williams.
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Speaker 1: Shout out, Yeah, I'm putting some italics on his name, apparently,
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Speaker 1: consider yourself.
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Speaker 2: Shout it out.
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Speaker 1: Shout it Mouse by none other than Ben Bullen and
0:45
Speaker 1: mister Noel Brown. Noel, how we doing.
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Speaker 2: You're pretty good. Yeah. We just had a marathon on
0:52
Speaker 2: weird sounding diseases.
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Speaker 1: We had a long episode about diseases wherein we occasionally
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Speaker 1: mentioned disease.
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Speaker 2: We did occasion and then, man, you think of the
1:02
Speaker 2: things people learn from that about the California raisins. If
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Speaker 2: you weren't of a certain generation that might have passed
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Speaker 2: you by entirely, you're welcome. The Internet.
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Speaker 1: History is always closer than it appears in the review mirror,
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Speaker 1: which is why like that dinosaur in Jurassic Park, Yes,
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Speaker 1: like uh this, this is why we're going somewhere with
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Speaker 1: this because you may remember, not too long ago, folks,
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Speaker 1: we explored a history of scientists who are horrifically persecuted
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Speaker 1: for daring to make the world a slightly better place.
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Speaker 1: Dare to dream, dare to dream, and the authorities will
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Speaker 1: burn you at the stake, is what we learned. You
1:41
Speaker 1: know the musical Pippin. Uh no, let's wait wait wait,
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Speaker 1: why is this sound?
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Speaker 2: Oh?
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Speaker 1: I'm thinking like Pippy longs Pippin.
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Speaker 2: Doesn't it have like a song about like the impossible
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Speaker 2: dream or something like that?
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Speaker 1: Oh? Is that where the dream the impossible dream comes from?
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Speaker 2: I think it is. No, it's corner of the sky
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Speaker 2: or impossible dreams, something else unrelated to any of this stuff.
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Speaker 2: What are we talking about today, Ben.
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Speaker 1: Today we are continuing Part two of scientists who were persecuted,
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Speaker 1: and heads up, folks, we're getting into some kind of
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Speaker 1: disturbing stuff. One of the most famously persecuted scientists Alan Turing.
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Speaker 1: Alan Turing was he's a little different from some of
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Speaker 1: our part one folks, because he was not persecuted like
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Speaker 1: you know, the way Galileo was persecuted for figuring out
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Speaker 1: parts of astronomy. Wasn't persecuted for what he studied, nor
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Speaker 1: his areas of expertise, but for his very identity who
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Speaker 1: he was.
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Speaker 2: Alan Turing was an Englishman born June twenty third of
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Speaker 2: nineteen twelve in London Town, England, UK. He was a
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Speaker 2: British mathematician and logician, which is not the same as
2:54
Speaker 2: being a magician, but it's magic in its own way.
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Speaker 2: He probably could tell you how magnets worked. He made
3:01
Speaker 2: serious contributions to things like mathematics, logic philosophy, which I
3:06
Speaker 2: always think is an interesting kissing cousin to science. Right,
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Speaker 2: mathematical biology what who even knew? That was a thing?
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Speaker 2: That sounds way too complicated for me?
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Speaker 1: I mean, is does that mean there's also biological math?
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Speaker 2: I think it must mean that has to mean that,
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Speaker 2: and also cryptanalysis. So he was really into like code
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Speaker 2: breaking and like stuff like that. Right, yes, that was
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Speaker 2: a big part of his relationship with history, right absolutely.
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Speaker 1: Yeah. He was the child of a civil servant and
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Speaker 1: he was fortunate enough to attend a top private school.
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Speaker 1: He studied mathematics in Cambridge in nineteen thirty one. He
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Speaker 1: graduated in thirty four and as soon as he got
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Speaker 1: out of Cambridge he snagged a fellowship at King's College.
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Speaker 1: And this was all based on his top notch research
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Speaker 1: in things like probability theory. He wrote some brain through
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Speaker 1: papers break through papers for the boffins for the people
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Speaker 1: who are better at math than we are.
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Speaker 2: Heads defencil net geeks.
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Speaker 1: The title of what is banging papers is uncomputable numbers
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Speaker 1: with an application to the unshy Dung's problem.
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Speaker 2: That's good, yeah, and and and Schidung's problem. Problem. There
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Speaker 2: we go, what does that mean? Uh, decision problem. Leave
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Speaker 2: it to the Germans to make something as innocuous as
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Speaker 2: that sound like being bludgeoned.
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Speaker 1: It's fantastic that language just agglomerates everything into one word,
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Speaker 1: you know. So he gets recommended for publication based on
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Speaker 1: this Based on the strength of this paper, and other
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Speaker 1: legends in the game are co signing them left and right,
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Speaker 1: folks like the American mathematical logician Alonzo Church. And this stuff,
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Speaker 1: as esoteric as it may sound, it has some real
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Speaker 1: importance for the urging science that we will later call computing.
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Speaker 1: So this guy's instrumental in the steps toward all the
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Speaker 1: things that make it possible for us to have a
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Speaker 1: podcast today. He moves to Princeton University in nineteen thirty six.
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Speaker 1: He's going to get his pH d in mathematical logic
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Speaker 1: under the guidance of the dude who you know, kind
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Speaker 1: of tapped him in earlier. Now, he despite being a
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Speaker 1: very very smart person, like many other very smart people
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Speaker 1: in the world, he had no idea that World War
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Speaker 1: II was on the way.
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Speaker 2: No, he certainly didn't, but it would alter the course
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Speaker 2: of his life, along with the course of history as
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Speaker 2: we know it, and he personally played a huge hand
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Speaker 2: and altering the course of that conflict and how it
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Speaker 2: pan out. I mentioned earlier that he was you know,
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Speaker 2: he really did. It contained multitudes. He contributed so much
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Speaker 2: to like modern computing, and most importantly, he was a
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Speaker 2: super important part of cracking the Enigma code, which was
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Speaker 2: something created by this massive computer system called the Enigma machine.
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Speaker 2: Again one of these kind of almost clockwork type machines
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Speaker 2: that took up an entire room early computing, and it
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Speaker 2: was a German cipher device that to this day is
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Speaker 2: considered one of the most advanced cipher machines of all time.
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Speaker 1: Exactly.
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Speaker 2: Yeah.
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Speaker 1: He goes back to King's College in nineteen thirty eight,
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Speaker 1: and from there he goes on to join the Government
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Speaker 1: Code and Cipher school. Think of it like kind of
6:34
Speaker 1: link their essay or something. And war breaks out with
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Speaker 1: Germany in September nineteen thirty nine, he relocates to the
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Speaker 1: wartime headquarters of the Code and Cipher School and.
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Speaker 2: By the way, at Bletchley Park, Buckingham Shear, which is
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Speaker 2: the most British sounding location ever has existed.
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Speaker 1: Exactly, and he helps develop this thing called the bumb
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Speaker 1: which is a huge piece of technology that Allied forces
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Speaker 1: were using to just cipher those German codes.
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Speaker 2: Is back in the day when like the kind of
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Speaker 2: computing power that we can now hold in the palm
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Speaker 2: of our hand would take up rooms, you know, these
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Speaker 2: massive punch card type computers right.
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Speaker 1: Right, and so this was kind of like a in
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Speaker 1: a way, it's a battle of mechanisms. It's like a
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Speaker 1: robot battle in very early days, because the Germans were
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Speaker 1: using some kind of cipher machine, it's Enigma machine to
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Speaker 1: create this code that they just couldn't crack until touring
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Speaker 1: came along. By nineteen forty two cryptanalysis at Bletchley Park,
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Speaker 1: we're getting thirty nine thousand different messages every month because
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Speaker 1: the group text during wartime is just crazy, really yeah,
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Speaker 1: and they were decoding these the number kept rising. It
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Speaker 1: got to eighty four thousand different messages per month. That's
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Speaker 1: two messages every single minute, day and night, and that
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Speaker 1: year nineteen forty two, Turing figures out how to break
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Speaker 1: like how to break this code, and to your point,
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Speaker 1: in a very real way, he may have turned the
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Speaker 1: tide of the war.
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Speaker 2: That's right. So in nineteen forty five, after the war
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Speaker 2: has ended, he gets recruited to the National Physical Laboratory
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Speaker 2: or the NPL in London to create sounds almost redundance,
8:36
Speaker 2: doesn't it. But it isn't because a lot of early
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Speaker 2: computers were more mechanical, like you said, to create an
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Speaker 2: electronic computer.
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Speaker 1: Ah, an electronic computer, which sounds a bit redundant today,
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Speaker 1: like ATM machine or ven number. But it was a
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Speaker 1: new thing. It was a hot, new cool thing.
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Speaker 2: And because because it's early ones, like you said, we're mechanisms.
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Speaker 2: They were almost like clockwork, cards, tubes, gears, tubes, all
9:01
Speaker 2: of that stuff, I feel like maybe not even tubes
9:04
Speaker 2: as much. I mean, because tubes are more electrical. I
9:07
Speaker 2: almost think I almost think they were like almost like
9:09
Speaker 2: like like automataw like wind up different one wear.
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Speaker 1: An audio podcast. So the problem is, you know, this
9:20
Speaker 1: is a very competitive space.
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Speaker 2: Yah point, It's like a space race kind of situation
9:25
Speaker 2: exactly like a space race situation.
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Speaker 1: So the National Physical Laboratory the NPL. They lose this
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Speaker 1: race to build the first working electronic digital computer that
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Speaker 1: has a stored program. Luckily they're beaten by some allies,
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Speaker 1: by some friendly fire. The people who do get across
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Speaker 1: the finish line first are the Royal Society Computing Machine
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Speaker 1: Laboratory in Manchester.
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Speaker 2: So not too bad, No exactly. That's something they say
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Speaker 2: of the rivalry between their related football clubs.
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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, no, totally different bloodbath, yes, they So Turing
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Speaker 1: is feeling kind of down. He's like MPL is delaying.
10:06
Speaker 1: We're moving so slow, you guys. So he gets a
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Speaker 1: gig as the deputy director of the Computing Machine Laboratory
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Speaker 1: in that year. Funny note here there is no actual director.
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Speaker 1: There's nowhere at the top.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, and then it seems like, you know, it's like
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Speaker 2: sort of like these these knobs go to eleven, you know,
10:28
Speaker 2: why not just make ten one? Louder is the deputy director.
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Speaker 2: If there's no actual director, isn't he just the director? Sorry?
10:35
Speaker 2: They were very into secrets at this time. They were
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Speaker 2: dealing with code breaking and the like. He arrived in
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Speaker 2: Manchester and started making some pretty significant contributions to the
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Speaker 2: development of this technology using a system that he designed
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Speaker 2: called an input output system.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, and this is incredibly important stuff. We're not
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Speaker 1: going to get too in the weeds here.
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Speaker 2: To understand any of it, right, just to be honest.
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Speaker 1: But we are going to establish this. He is recognized
11:09
Speaker 1: as one of the you could call them founding fathers
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Speaker 1: of artificial intelligence, modern cognitive to science, and he was
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Speaker 1: one of the early popularizers of the theory that the
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Speaker 1: human brain is its own kind of digital computing machine.
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Speaker 1: Oh it works biological math.
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Speaker 2: Oh, there we go. Yeah, you know, it's funny. I'm
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Speaker 2: a bit of a synthesizer nerd I may have mentioned
11:35
Speaker 2: a time or two and recently started diving into the
11:38
Speaker 2: very money pit ish world of modular synthesizers. And there
11:43
Speaker 2: is a very popular type of module called a touring
11:47
Speaker 2: turing machine. And what it does is it generates random
11:51
Speaker 2: voltage that can create what's called generative music. So it's
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Speaker 2: a very It basically allows you to set the terms
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Speaker 2: for a system that then kind of creates random notes
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Speaker 2: and rhythms based on sort of whatever conditions you set.
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Speaker 2: So very much this kind of early thinking around technology
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Speaker 2: and logic very much still at play today, you know,
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Speaker 2: in the world of you know, music production and the
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Speaker 2: ai of Like you said, I mean, it's obviously very
12:20
Speaker 2: much he is. It's more of like he is the
12:23
Speaker 2: philosophical father of a lot of this stuff, right.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, exactly. You know. He was kicking these ideas
12:30
Speaker 1: that sound almost metaphysical. He's saying, when the human is born,
12:34
Speaker 1: the core tex is an unorganized machine. Cool, and we
12:37
Speaker 1: can train it into a universal machine and then just
12:41
Speaker 1: to be safe, he said, or something like it. Yeah,
12:46
Speaker 1: but it is cool.
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Speaker 2: That is a very forward thinking way of looking at it.
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Speaker 2: He seems like a good. Hang he really did? It
12:52
Speaker 2: does seem like a good he Was he a secret
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Speaker 2: drunk or something? Did he have problematic elements to his personality?
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Speaker 1: The British government thought, so, ah, I see, I see,
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Speaker 1: We're getting to the person I don't think they. I
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Speaker 1: don't know if they had secret drunks back then everyone
13:06
Speaker 1: was like yeah so so. Turing is perhaps most famous
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Speaker 1: in pop culture for proposing the idea of the Turing test.
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Speaker 2: It's oh for is that for seeing if something is
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Speaker 2: a robot or android?
13:23
Speaker 1: Yeah, criteria for determining whether like a quote unquote artificial
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Speaker 1: intelligence is actually thinking.
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Speaker 2: I think probably correct me if I'm wrong. The stuff
13:34
Speaker 2: in Blade Runner where they're kind of asking questions to
13:37
Speaker 2: see if someone's a replicant or not. Its back right,
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Speaker 2: they're not helping it. It's sort of based around this
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Speaker 2: kind of test, right.
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Speaker 1: It's definitely inspired by that. Philip K. Dick was not
13:47
Speaker 1: working in vacuum. And you know, recently when large language models,
13:51
Speaker 1: most famously chapped GPT, came out into the into the world,
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Speaker 1: people started talking again. There was a renaissance and in
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Speaker 1: the discourse about whether or not the Turing tests have
14:02
Speaker 1: been met.
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Speaker 2: Uh.
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Speaker 1: And he would have been amazing on Twitter right.
14:07
Speaker 2: Now probably so the hot takes would be a flowing
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Speaker 2: the hot takes would be a floid.
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Speaker 1: I could I can you imagine what other weird metaphors
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Speaker 1: and philosophical stuff he would have had to say in
14:18
Speaker 1: twenty twenty.
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Speaker 2: Three, Oh, I'm sure. Yeah, No, this guy was definitely
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Speaker 2: a coiner, you know, yeah, in terms of like, yeah,
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Speaker 2: I mean he created whole concepts that he was you know,
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Speaker 2: it was like he didn't. It was one of those things,
14:29
Speaker 2: much like often happens in science fiction where somebody has
14:33
Speaker 2: the forethought, foresight, and the intelligence. The intellects sort of
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Speaker 2: literally see the future even though no such technology exists
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Speaker 2: yet they're describing a thing that then ultimately, over time,
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Speaker 2: all of the pieces come together. That's what Touring did.
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Speaker 1: I think that's an apt comparison, man, and I love
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Speaker 1: how you set up that. Look, this is not about
14:54
Speaker 1: this episode is not just inventors. We like, it's inventors
14:57
Speaker 1: who are persecuted. And you said, hey, there might be
15:00
Speaker 1: a darker side to this thing. In March of nineteen
15:03
Speaker 1: fifty two, Alan Turing is convicted of a crime called
15:07
Speaker 1: gross indecency that is a euphemism for homosexuality, which was
15:15
Speaker 1: an egregious crime in the country at that time. And
15:17
Speaker 1: his sentence is beyond cruel and unusual. He was sentenced
15:23
Speaker 1: to a full year of hormone therapy. God, and that
15:29
Speaker 1: is a euphemism.
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Speaker 2: That's worse than pray the gaoa. That's so like barbaric,
15:34
Speaker 2: you know. So when you say when you say it's
15:36
Speaker 2: a euphemism, what for like being the bottomized or something.
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Speaker 1: Kind of yeahical castration talking exactly, no way. Yeah, they
15:45
Speaker 1: just shot him up with synthetic estrogen injections. And eventually
15:49
Speaker 1: these will make you impotent. While also, of course I
15:53
Speaker 1: can only imagine wreaking havoc on your body. In other ways,
15:57
Speaker 1: why do.
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Speaker 2: They hate him so much? He'd done so much for
15:59
Speaker 2: the country. Why would they seek him out? Because a
16:01
Speaker 2: lot of times what we see in these cases of
16:03
Speaker 2: persecution is that that someone speaking truth to power, or
16:07
Speaker 2: they're saying something that's politically divisive, and then they're targeted
16:12
Speaker 2: because they're they're they're they want to shut them down
16:15
Speaker 2: because they're dangerous. That doesn't quite seem like what's happening here.
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Speaker 2: He had nothing but bona fides, and you know, like
16:21
Speaker 2: he's basically a war hero. Why why are they doing
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Speaker 2: this to the Yeah, I guess because they're homophobic.
16:29
Speaker 1: And also I think I think a lot of accusations
16:32
Speaker 1: are confessions, So you know, just like.
16:35
Speaker 2: How accuse the other of that which you yourself are guilty? Right?
16:38
Speaker 1: Like, look at how many and I'll say it not
16:40
Speaker 1: to get too political, but look at how many right,
16:43
Speaker 1: very far right politicians across the world make, you know, uh,
16:48
Speaker 1: make these statements, these barnstorming speeches about you know, family
16:52
Speaker 1: values and things like that. And later it turns out
16:54
Speaker 1: that they were grooming.
16:56
Speaker 2: Or or closeted or closetive day.
17:01
Speaker 1: Is that the guy Jerry Folwell Junior, Yeah, I mean
17:04
Speaker 1: one of many.
17:05
Speaker 2: One of many, Lindsey Graham. I mean it's it's not confirmed.
17:08
Speaker 2: I mean it's it's pretty much is confirmed. The guy
17:11
Speaker 2: is a regular visitor of male sex workers.
17:14
Speaker 1: Old ladybug.
17:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, they call him something like that. It wasn't quite that.
17:18
Speaker 2: They call oh yeah yeah, lady like Lady Godiva. It's
17:22
Speaker 2: like something like that, some kind of weird code name.
17:24
Speaker 2: Lady g I think is maybe okay.
17:26
Speaker 1: Yeah, And so Turing is persecuted again, not for his
17:31
Speaker 1: world changing work, but because they have decided his very
17:36
Speaker 1: identity is a crime. And so there's another kick in
17:41
Speaker 1: the pants here. Now he's got a criminal record, so
17:45
Speaker 1: he can never work for the British government's code breaking center,
17:50
Speaker 1: which is crazy because he's literally the best guy for
17:53
Speaker 1: the job, like throughout the world, he's the number one
17:58
Speaker 1: guy for the job, and the government refuses because they're
18:01
Speaker 1: saying tuts.
18:03
Speaker 2: Why would they This seems like they're shooting themselves in
18:05
Speaker 2: the foot. You know. It's like making hackers take drug tests,
18:10
Speaker 2: you know what I mean, which they've done away with
18:12
Speaker 2: in terms of the CIA and like the ability to
18:13
Speaker 2: hire stuff because they realized this is this is stupid
18:16
Speaker 2: where we're like literally narrowing the pool of capable individuals
18:21
Speaker 2: who can do this work for us. But you're right
18:22
Speaker 2: at this point that hate trumps all else. Yeah, because
18:26
Speaker 2: if anyone was going to get a pass, it's this
18:28
Speaker 2: guy again, war hero.
18:30
Speaker 1: Very much so, and so he has a He has
18:34
Speaker 1: a very abbreviated career after this. He returns to Manchester.
18:38
Speaker 2: Old is he around this time?
18:39
Speaker 1: So he's like forty jeez, that's all. It's like forty
18:44
Speaker 1: forty one, maybe just about to term forty one.
18:47
Speaker 2: And amazing how much he accomplished already though about that
18:50
Speaker 2: by this point you know, absolutely yeah. Yeah.
18:53
Speaker 1: So here we are in the early nineteen fifties. He
18:57
Speaker 1: has been working on what we would now call artific life.
19:00
Speaker 1: He publishes a paper called the Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis,
19:05
Speaker 1: and it's looking at form and pattern in nature and
19:09
Speaker 1: living organisms. And then he starts working on more stuff
19:16
Speaker 1: that's like at the edge of what we would call
19:18
Speaker 1: biotech for his time, comparing the natural world to created mechanisms.
19:23
Speaker 2: Such a versatile mind, this guy he used Manchester's Ferranti
19:31
Speaker 2: Mark one computer to create very as elaborate as the
19:36
Speaker 2: technology of the time would allow models of these hypotheses
19:41
Speaker 2: that he had about chemical mechanisms for the generation of
19:44
Speaker 2: anatomical structure in animals and plants. But this is when
19:48
Speaker 2: the story takes a really really, really really sad turn,
19:52
Speaker 2: because he is just a year later, in nineteen fifty four,
19:56
Speaker 2: found dead in his bed from a parent cyanid poisoning.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, and it is.
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Speaker 2: Ruled a suicide, but seems sketched to me.
20:06
Speaker 1: Dude, there was no motive established in the investigation, because
20:10
Speaker 1: at least they had an investigation into the death. Right Now,
20:21
Speaker 1: A lot of historians will tell you that his demise
20:24
Speaker 1: should be attributed to the hormone treatment he received at
20:29
Speaker 1: the at the hands of the British government after he's
20:33
Speaker 1: found guilty basically being a gay man, And well, I
20:37
Speaker 1: guess they shouldn't say most historians his historians will often
20:41
Speaker 1: say this, But if you look at the timeline he
20:45
Speaker 1: survived that year of hormone doses, he died more than
20:48
Speaker 1: a year after that dose sentence had ended, and he
20:54
Speaker 1: had the thing where a lot of you see this
20:56
Speaker 1: unfortunately often if people commit suicide, he had where people
21:01
Speaker 1: might not believe it, and one of his friends said,
21:04
Speaker 1: you know, he seemed fine, he had an amused fortitude
21:08
Speaker 1: to go.
21:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, Peter at Hilton is how is his friend who
21:12
Speaker 2: described his attitude about the treatment like that? And he has,
21:16
Speaker 2: you know, in many ways become a sad sort of
21:22
Speaker 2: case study on this kind of persecution around whether gender
21:28
Speaker 2: identity or sexuality or whatever it might be. He really
21:31
Speaker 2: is sort of like a lesson learned, I guess, or
21:35
Speaker 2: a case to point too of how what we're talking about.
21:38
Speaker 2: We're so mystified by this, Like how would they how
21:40
Speaker 2: could they shoot themselves in the foot like that? Like
21:42
Speaker 2: this guy who obviously literally turned the war in favor
21:47
Speaker 2: of his country, how could they just throw him out
21:50
Speaker 2: like a piece of garbage like that? And it doesn't
21:52
Speaker 2: make any sense.
21:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it's also you know, there's some kind of
21:57
Speaker 1: torn about because the story of his persecution and the
22:02
Speaker 1: prosecution against him for being gay, it grew over time,
22:07
Speaker 1: and by the early twenty first century or so, it
22:11
Speaker 1: was something everybody knew about and everybody admitted it was
22:15
Speaker 1: super messed up. In two thousand and nine, the Prime
22:18
Speaker 1: Minister at the time, Gordon Brown spoke up officially on
22:22
Speaker 1: behalf of the British government publicly apologized for the utterly
22:26
Speaker 1: unfair treatment of Turin and then.
22:28
Speaker 2: Better late than never, I guess, yeah, get this, this
22:31
Speaker 2: is so weird.
22:32
Speaker 1: Four years after that, Queen Elizabeth gave him a posthumous
22:36
Speaker 1: royal part.
22:37
Speaker 2: In symbolic I suppose.
22:38
Speaker 1: I guess, But I mean, does that help.
22:42
Speaker 2: No, But what maybe does help is that for a
22:45
Speaker 2: long time his legacy was sort of buried.
22:48
Speaker 1: You know.
22:48
Speaker 2: I don't think it was until the nineties because of
22:50
Speaker 2: classified type stuff, that it was even understood to what
22:54
Speaker 2: degree he was responsible for turning that tide of war,
22:58
Speaker 2: you know, in favor of the Allies.
23:00
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I kind of want to jump in here
23:02
Speaker 3: just to kind of point out Queen Elizabeth was the
23:04
Speaker 3: queen when this all happened.
23:06
Speaker 2: I was gonna ask if I thought that was probably
23:08
Speaker 2: the case. I wanted to check because I'm like, this
23:10
Speaker 2: has people now I was thinking the same thing, and
23:12
Speaker 2: so maybe that is a little bit again symbolic. It's
23:15
Speaker 2: sort of like her apologizing as well. But that's just
23:19
Speaker 2: sort of what's the word, too little, too late, way
23:22
Speaker 2: too little way too late. Yeah, but again, his legacy
23:25
Speaker 2: is now really established, you know, and when in the nineties,
23:29
Speaker 2: you know, when it was made clear how important he
23:32
Speaker 2: was in that effort, and now he's a legend, you know,
23:36
Speaker 2: which I guess is something. You know, legacy is important.
23:40
Speaker 2: I guess. I don't know that he would have cared.
23:42
Speaker 2: He doesn't seem like that.
23:43
Speaker 1: I don't think you would have cared. I genuinely don't
23:48
Speaker 1: think you would have cared. But that because that's like
23:51
Speaker 1: his areas a doer man, you know what I mean,
23:53
Speaker 1: Like that's he doesn't I don't think he was focused
23:55
Speaker 1: on legacy.
23:56
Speaker 2: Don't know he did. He have kids to speak of
23:59
Speaker 2: or family? Think so? Now I didn't think so. And
24:02
Speaker 2: if you want to read more about the sort of
24:04
Speaker 2: updated legacy that we're talking about here, there is a
24:08
Speaker 2: really good article in The New York Times by Alan
24:11
Speaker 2: Cowell called Overlooked No More. Alan Turning condemned codebreaker and
24:15
Speaker 2: computer visionary. Highly recommend that And this is what he
24:18
Speaker 2: had to say, kind of summing up everything we've been
24:20
Speaker 2: talking about to this day. Turning is recognized in his
24:23
Speaker 2: own country and among a broad society of scientists as
24:26
Speaker 2: a pillar of achievement, who had fused brilliance and eccentricity,
24:30
Speaker 2: moved comfortably in the abstruse realms of mathematics and cryptography,
24:36
Speaker 2: but awkwardly in social settings, and had been brought low
24:40
Speaker 2: by the hostile society into which he was born. And
24:44
Speaker 2: there's a quote here from John Graham Cumming, who's a
24:47
Speaker 2: computer scientist who campaigned for Touring to be part of this.
24:50
Speaker 2: Didn't have been on a vacuum either, this whole pardoning thing.
24:53
Speaker 2: He was a national treasurer and we hounded him to
24:56
Speaker 2: his death.
24:57
Speaker 1: And it's true, you know, and we're gonna, you know, work,
25:00
Speaker 1: going to keep this when a little bit shorter. There
25:02
Speaker 1: are so many scientists that we weren't able to get to.
25:07
Speaker 1: We do hope history remembers them. Shout out to people
25:10
Speaker 1: like Henry Oldenberg. This is a real story. He founded
25:15
Speaker 1: the Royal Society in London and he wanted to publish
25:18
Speaker 1: a lot of scientific papers, so he had to write
25:21
Speaker 1: to all these people living across Europe. He had a
25:23
Speaker 1: lot of correspondents, and he wrote and received so many
25:27
Speaker 1: letters that the government decided he was a spy, and
25:32
Speaker 1: they arrested him and locked him in the Tower of
25:34
Speaker 1: London because of his pin Pllory. Oh wow.
25:38
Speaker 2: Yeah.
25:38
Speaker 3: I also did a little restream of the guy and
25:40
Speaker 3: he was kind of footing the bill for all that too.
25:43
Speaker 3: To make it even worse, his dudes footing the bill
25:45
Speaker 3: to start basically the first medical publication, and the English
25:51
Speaker 3: government is like spy.
25:53
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, like, hey, nobody really likes mailing things or something.
26:00
Speaker 1: They thought they got him. But you know, with this,
26:03
Speaker 1: I think what we have to remember is a lot
26:06
Speaker 1: of times society can be its own enemy, you know
26:08
Speaker 1: what I mean.
26:09
Speaker 2: That's what I'm saying.
26:09
Speaker 3: All this.
26:10
Speaker 2: The way they persecuted the during it could have potentially
26:13
Speaker 2: robbed them of his genius. You know, the fact that
26:17
Speaker 2: this criminal record made it where he could no longer
26:19
Speaker 2: work for the government, which is who he did the
26:22
Speaker 2: most benefit towards society, right.
26:25
Speaker 1: Which almost sounds conspiratorial. It does, like they I keep
26:30
Speaker 1: going back to, it's literally the one guy who's best
26:33
Speaker 1: for the job in the world and someone in the
26:36
Speaker 1: boundary government. Yeah, like finds a reason. And I want
26:40
Speaker 1: to shout out a really cool graphic novel series that
26:44
Speaker 1: I've been enjoying I hope picks back up, called Uber
26:47
Speaker 1: and Alan Turing is a character in this graphic novel series.
26:51
Speaker 1: I don't want to ruin it, but I've got I
26:54
Speaker 1: got a copy if you want to snag it. It's
26:57
Speaker 1: you know how it is when you really like music,
26:59
Speaker 1: you really like a story book, and you just you
27:01
Speaker 1: want your friends to see it or hear it or experience. Absolutely, yeah,
27:06
Speaker 1: definitely I'm going through that and hopefully hopefully we can
27:09
Speaker 1: inspire something similar in you ridiculous historians. Not every scientist
27:15
Speaker 1: is persecuted, hopefully, And although scientists often work in realms
27:21
Speaker 1: that we candidly don't understand, the work they do is
27:24
Speaker 1: important and it matters to everyone.
27:27
Speaker 2: Magnets, Am I right?
27:29
Speaker 1: So again, no I'm letting no, no, no no. I
27:32
Speaker 1: said it last time, and poor Alex and Max have
27:37
Speaker 1: had to listen to that too often. But yeah, yeah,
27:41
Speaker 1: the the Juggalos of their time.
27:43
Speaker 2: Indeed, I think this is a good one. I think honestly, Turing, uh,
27:48
Speaker 2: he just deserved his due. I barely wanted to make
27:51
Speaker 2: this a listical episode, and I think this is a
27:52
Speaker 2: topic that we can just continue to come back to,
27:55
Speaker 2: sort of an ongoing series.
27:56
Speaker 1: Yeah, because unfortunately history is rife and riddled with scientists
28:02
Speaker 1: who have been persecuted. We can't wait to hear thoughts, folks.
28:06
Speaker 1: We are going to be returning soon with all sorts
28:10
Speaker 1: of strange and ridiculous stories, not all of which will
28:13
Speaker 1: be down as we promise.
28:14
Speaker 2: And you know, in the new year we might get
28:16
Speaker 2: the keys to our social media back for the show.
28:19
Speaker 2: It's been an ongoing struggle and impossible dream. I would
28:23
Speaker 2: hope so, but in the meantime we haven't said this
28:24
Speaker 2: in a while. You can reach out to us as
28:26
Speaker 2: individuals if you wish. I am pretty exclusively on Instagram
28:30
Speaker 2: at how Now, Noel Brown? How about you bet? Where
28:32
Speaker 2: can the fine folks find you?
28:34
Speaker 1: In a stunning burst of creativity and modesty, I am
28:39
Speaker 1: on Instagram as at Ben Bowling. You got led, You
28:43
Speaker 1: got it.
28:44
Speaker 2: We were the first to market.
28:46
Speaker 1: Sorry other Bends. The Covenant is broken. It's doggy dog now,
28:51
Speaker 1: no kidding. As Noel said, you can find us on
28:54
Speaker 1: individually on Instagram. We love hanging out, We love hearing
28:57
Speaker 1: from listeners. You are the most important part of the
29:01
Speaker 1: show and thank you so much for sharing your time
29:03
Speaker 1: with us today. Max. What if people want to find.
29:05
Speaker 3: You, bro? Yeah, if they want to find me, send
29:08
Speaker 3: Ben a message on Twitter and he can text it
29:11
Speaker 3: to me.
29:12
Speaker 1: And notice I didn't tell people my Twitter at bmbule
29:15
Speaker 1: ANDHSW what's Twitter?
29:17
Speaker 2: It's this.
29:17
Speaker 1: It was this really cool thing back in the day
29:20
Speaker 1: we happened to. Oh story for another time. Fair enough,
29:25
Speaker 1: but thank you for the beautiful set up, mister Brown.
29:27
Speaker 2: Also, if you want to be nice to us, maybe
29:29
Speaker 2: mentioned it in the previous episode, you can go on
29:32
Speaker 2: to iTunes and or Apple podcasts and leave us a
29:35
Speaker 2: nice review. We might start doing a thing where we
29:38
Speaker 2: like read some of they're funny, make them funny.
29:40
Speaker 1: We'll get through them when no pun's left behind. Okay, great,
29:44
Speaker 1: So thank you in advance for that. Thank you to
29:46
Speaker 1: our returning guest Alex Circa, who has been hanging out
29:50
Speaker 1: with us in the past few weeks.
29:51
Speaker 2: At Alex, I find me of the joke, Alex Circa,
29:54
Speaker 2: what like circa nineteen ninety four that's our cutoff.
29:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's when. Yeah, that's the mid nineties is when
30:01
Speaker 1: we decided we decided things were modern times. We might
30:05
Speaker 1: have to adjust that up a decade as this.
30:08
Speaker 2: Oh god, yeah, we've been May you live in interesting times?
30:13
Speaker 2: You said the wise man to the idiot. Definitely haven't
30:17
Speaker 2: heard that one before. Oh yeah, okay, now you're being psychastic.
30:21
Speaker 2: We're on a roll.
30:23
Speaker 1: So Alex has been hanging out a few weeks here
30:26
Speaker 1: with us and and has been graciously sitting through all
30:31
Speaker 1: kinds of beeps, all kinds of all kinds of hiccups
30:35
Speaker 1: and so on, and probably hearing Max curse like a sailor.
30:39
Speaker 2: Guy's got a foul mouth on it.
30:41
Speaker 1: He's invented dirty work. He really isn't in some of
30:44
Speaker 1: them already impressive. I hear him, and I'm like, that
30:46
Speaker 1: was Max.
30:47
Speaker 2: All Right, Well, I guess we'll see you next time, folks.
30:57
Speaker 2: For more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio
31:00
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows