We are Ken Jennings and John Roderick. We speak to you from our present, which we can

only assume is your distant past, the turbulent time that was the early 21st century.

Fearing the great cataclysm that will surely befall our civilization, we began this monumental

reference of strange and obscure human knowledge.

These recordings represent our attempt to compile and preserve wonders and esoterica that would otherwise be lost.

So whether you're listening from an advanced civilization or have just reinvented the technology to decrypt our transmissions,

this is our legacy to you.

This is our time capsule.

This is the omnibus. Okay. You have accessed entry 1403 dot DA0515 certificate number 42634, the Voinich manuscript.

Does anybody else count the letters in the message header?

Why would anyone do that?

The message header is sweet characters longer than it used to be.

Not to give our listeners too much of a peak behind the curtain, but now that we're on a one episode

a week schedule, it's required that you and I changed our long and well-established

recording patterns so that it's not required but lately we've been doing three of

these in a sitting instead of four and because you are a cryptologist you've

devised this system whereby it's a constant, it's like a, it's like a rotary engine,

a triangle that's tripping through space.

I'm really hoping the Nazis don't break my secret code or

Alan Turing or whoever it is. But for how long have we been doing this show?

Four or five years? Five years. Five years. Five years we have always recorded with you going first and my

request and then I go second you have to wait for me to walk into rooms and then you

...