Breaking Unbreakable Codes: The Evolution of Cryptography | Chaos Lever

Chaos Lever Podcast

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:
00:46 - 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

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