You're listening to an Airwave Media podcast.

Past, present future is the History of Ideas podcast with me, David Rundsman, exploring ideas from politics to philosophy, from science to fiction, where they come from what they mean, why they matter.

We have series on the great political fictions, the great historical what-ifs,

the history of bad ideas, and much more. How ideas change and explain our world. Twice a week,

every week, wherever you get your podcasts, past, present, future.

Thank you for listening to Historical Blindness, the Odd Past podcast.

I'm Nathaniel Lloyd, your host.

You've found the debut of a new interstitial series, Blind Spots.

The principal installments of the historical blindness podcast require quite a bit of work on my part, including research, composition,

formatting each blog post, and recording, editing, and mixing the audio episodes, all of which I have

to find time to do myself. As such, the podcast has settled into an already somewhat hectic monthly release schedule.

I understand, however, as a podcast aficionado myself, that listeners like to find new episodes

of their favorite podcasts show up in their feeds far more frequently than this.

Therefore, in an effort to please existing fans and perhaps find a wider audience, I am now endeavoring to fill

the barren time span between the primary episodes of the show with these shorter blind spots,

in which I intend to further explore the most recent story I covered or briefly relate a somewhat peripheral story.

With this purpose in mind, recall our last episode, which opened the mysterious Voynich manuscript for your perusal.

Wilfred Voynich's manuscript is not, however, alone in its inscrutability and mystique.

Consider another mysterious antiquarian manuscript, unreadable and resistant to all attempts

at translation or decipherment, since it turned up nearly 200 years ago.

This mysterious tome, the Codex of Rojantz.

All his life, Gustav Batiani, had lived in England as a count, breeding racehorses and enjoying a life of wealth and leisure. Nevertheless, his heritage as a Hungarian nobleman was an important part of his identity.

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