The Cicada 3301 Cryptographers

One Strange Thing: True Paranormal Mysteries

Laurah Norton

Paranormalpodcast, History, True Crime, Paranormal, Mystery

4.6 • 763 Ratings

🗓️ 25 November 2025

⏱️ 23 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In 2012, a corner of the internet was lit ablaze by a series of puzzles and codes… posted by a mysterious entity with an unclear agenda. What was Cicada 3301, and what were they recruiting for? And why, so many years later, do we seem to have less information than we started with? One Strange Thing: True Paranormal Mysteries explores the archives of the unexplained, blending rigorous historical research with a wry, skeptical wit to investigate true supernatural stories and baffling mysteries that made headlines. Dive into our Episode Mystery Archive — a curated, topic-organized source for documented hauntings, UFO sightings, cryptids, folklore, and bizarre true mysteries. Check it out here! https://www.onestrangethingpodcast.com/episodes-by-topic-mystery-archive This episode was originally released as Premium Episode 62. Hosted by Laurah Norton Research by Anna Luria and Maura Currie Written, Engineered & Produced by Maura Currie Sources on our website: https://www.onestrangethingpodcast.com/ Join us on Patreon for early release and ad-free episodes, exclusive stories, and bonus episodes: https://www.patreon.com/OneStrangeThing Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/onestrangethingpod/ Facebook https://www.facebook.com/One-Strange-Thing-114307627035607 Subscribe to our Substack: https://substack.com/@onestrangething We have partnered with Libsyn to handle our advertising/sponsorship requests. They're great to work with and will help you advertise on our show. Please email ad-sales@libsyn.com or click the link below to get started. https://advertising.libsyn.com/OneStrangeThing 2025 All Rights Reserved One Strange Thing Podcast & The Fall Line Podcast LLC Works Cited Robert Cottrell, "Cicada 3301: The Internet…" BBC, 2013. Chris Bell, "The Internet mystery that…" The Telegraph, 2013. Chris Bell, "RIDDLE ME THIS: The…" National Post, 2013. Kim Nursall, "Looking for the…" Toronto Star, 2014. Chris Bell, "Internet puzzle with cult…" National Star, 2014. Kim Nursall, "The hunt continues…" Toronto Star, 2014. NA, "Want to be a spy?" Evening Standard, 2014. Mike Rothschild, "Who is QAnon…" Daily Dot, 2018. Inae Oh, "Anti-Abortion hackers claim…" Mother Jones, 2015. N/A, "PDI advierte sobre nueva…" Los Andes Online, 2012. 3301 on PasteBin

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Lauren Norton, and this is one strange thing, the show where we search the nation's news archives for stories that can't quite be explained.
0:26.1	It's easy to forget just how much can change in 10 years.
0:33.0	2014 doesn't sound that far in the past, but it is very much in the past. A baby born in 2014 is now watching Skibbitty toilet and terrorizing his fifth grade teacher
0:40.5	with a constant refrain of Giette.
0:44.4	2014's moody teen, posting Polaroids and Indie Sleeves on Tumblr, is now being told
0:51.1	that she's pushing 30, because she is.
0:55.3	The top memes of that year were, according to Paste magazine,
0:59.5	Kim Kardashian breaks the internet and Kermit, the frog sipping tea.
1:04.6	It was a simpler time.
1:07.1	But during this simple time, known as 2014,
1:10.7	there was also a very complicated story unfolding on the
1:15.2	internet, at least if you knew where to look. You see, 2014 was the last time that a very clever
1:24.0	corner of the World Wide Web was lit up by Cicada 3301. But to understand the gravity of
1:32.2	that sentence and why we're not actually talking about bugs, we really need to go back a few
1:37.5	more years to 2012, the first time the world got cicaded. It all started, as many strange things do, on the infamous
1:46.8	message board known as 4chan. According to the Telegraph, a Swedish computer analyst named
1:53.0	Joel was perusing the forum one evening in January, quote, looking for distraction, the paper
1:59.0	wrote, which we assume means that he had a lot of work
2:02.7	to do. And Joel did find that distraction, a strange-looking image on white text, on a black
2:10.1	background. That text read, quote, hello, we're looking for highly intelligent individuals.
2:20.3	To find them, we have devised a test.
2:22.8	There is a message hidden in this image.
	...

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