The longest interview of my life
Together with Elonka Dunin I gave an interview to the Canadian journalist Andrew Van Wagner. From Kryptos to the Enigma to the Voynich manuscript, hardly any topic went unmentioned.
Today’s blog article is rather short. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t much to read this time. However, the actual text today does not come from me, but from the Canadian journalist Andrew Van Wagner. This is seen on the following video:
Andrew Van Wagner
Andrew is a Substack author. Substack is a US-based online platform where authors can offer newsletters and other content within a subscription. Substack claims to have over 100,000 paying users. Here’s an article Andrew posted there.
A few weeks ago, Andrew asked Elonka Dunin and me if we would like to give him an interview on the topic of encryption technology and code breaking. Of course we were up for it. So we arranged a transatlantic videoconference, which started for me at 10 p.m. on a Friday.
To say Andrew was well prepared for the interview would be an understatement. He knew very well the topics he wanted to ask us about and had prepared about 50 questions. More arose during the interview. In total, the interview lasted four hours – so I was in the video conference until 2 am. Despite this (or perhaps because of it), I really enjoyed it. When do you ever have the opportunity to talk about your favorite topic for four hours?
After the video conference, Andrew put the conversation on paper, which filled a total of 25 pages. After that, we needed a few more days to fine-tune it.
Does code-breaking blow your mind?
A week ago, the interview was finally published under the apt title “Will Codebreaking Blow Your Mind?” It’s available for free here. Over 25 pages, you can now read what Elonka and such have to say about encryption. Of course, Elonka’s favorite topic, Kryptos, comes up, and I get to vent about the Zodiac killer and the Voynich manuscript. Other topics include the NSA, Alan Turing, the Beale cryptograms, Herbert Yardley, Edward Snowden, quantum computing, timing attacks, BitCoin, and the Crypto-War. We were also able to promote our book, Codebreaking: A Practical Guide.
I hope my readers enjoy this interview as much as I enjoyed it. By the way, Andrew Van Wagner wants to interview more people from the crypto scene. I’m already looking forward to it.
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Further reading: Ungelöst: Zwei versteckte Nachrichten aus dem Zweiten Weltkrieg
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