One-time Pod

In today’s One-Time Pod, Max dives into the history of hash functions, exploring how cybersecurity tries to stay ahead of hackers.

How to keep US secrets safe? Maybe make a deal with the devil… or at least a little start-up called IBM. Shivam explores the history of Lucifer (and the Data Encryption Standard) on today’s One-Time Pod.

“You can’t be afraid of spies, just like you can’t be afraid of flies. Because they’re everywhere.” Hannah tackles the mystery of numbers stations in the latest One-Time Pod.

Secret messages encoded using telephone touch-tones, passed between anti-apartheid activists in London and South Africa? Miles shares Operation Vula, a little-known 1980s crypto story, in today’s One-Time Pod.

Any sufficiently advanced cryptography is indistinguishable from magic. At least, that’s what Johannes Trithemius, 16th century German monk, found out. The hard way.

Welcome to Season 3 of One-Time Pod, a podcast on the history of cryptography produced by students in Derek Bruff's first-year writing seminar at Vanderbilt University. Each episode considers a different code or cipher, how it works, and why it's interesting.