Breaking Unbreakable Codes: The Fascinating Evolution of Cryptography 🔐

Welcome to another episode of Chaos Lever, where Ned and Chris explore the history, intrigue, and occasional absurdity of cryptography! 🤖🧠 This week, it’s Part Two of our deep dive into codes and ciphers, from ancient Rome’s Caesar cipher to Napoleon’s overly optimistic battlefield encryption. Discover how cryptography evolved to outwit spies, soldiers, and codebreakers, setting the stage for the digital cryptography we know today. Plus: existential robots, live skeeting, and crunchy peanut butter. 🥜 📚 In This Episode: ✨ Why polyalphabetic ciphers were unbreakable… until they weren’t. ✨ How the Vigenère cipher held strong for 250 years. ✨ The curious tale of Napoleon’s cracked code. ✨ Charles Babbage: Mathematician, cryptographer, and all-around genius. 🌐 Links Mentioned: - Vignere Cipher - History of Coding and Decoding: https://medium.com/@jamesjinghuang/the-vigen%C3%A8re-cipher-from-unbreakable-enigma-to-cryptographic-relic-215761d30af8 - The Vignere Cipher In Action: https://www.dcode.fr/vigenere-cipher - IBM’s History of Cryptography: https://www.ibm.com/think/topics/cryptography-history - Cypher Disk: By Hubert Berberich (HubiB) - Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25964875 - Union Army Disk: By Ryan Somma from Occoquan, USA - The Union Cipher Disk, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=109642380 - Listener survey: https://chaoslever.com/survey ⏰ Timestamps: 00:00 - Intro and Existential Robots 04:10 - Recap of Part One 10:52 - Polyalphabetic Ciphers Explained 15:49 - Napoleon’s Code: A Lesson in Optimism 18:50 - The Civil War Cipher Disk 24:15 - Babbage Breaks the Vigenère Cipher 29:59 - Outro and Survey Reminder 👍 Support Chaos Lever: Your feedback matters! Take our quick listener survey share your thoughts. https://chaoslever.com/survey