#cryptography
16 episodes
#4310: What Actually Happens When You Tap Your Phone to Pay
94% of money exists only as digital IOUs. Here's how the system actually works when you tap to pay.
#4161: How Your Password Manager's 6-Digit Code Actually Works
Your phone and a server generate the same code without ever talking. Here's the elegant math behind it.
#4010: What Happens When Everyone Votes on Everything?
Estonia, Switzerland, and Taiwan prove digital voting works. So why hasn't it replaced politicians?
#3216: EFF's 36-Year Fight for Digital Rights
How the Electronic Frontier Foundation has fought for internet freedom since 1990 — from the Crypto Wars to border phone searches.
#2671: How Your Phone Helps Strangers Find Lost Wallets
Your phone silently helps strangers find lost items. Here's how the cryptography and mesh networks actually work.
#2376: When States Mine Their Way Out of Sanctions
How Iran turns cheap electricity into cryptocurrency to bypass sanctions—and the tradeoffs of this digital alchemy.
#2375: Monero: The Digital Cash That Hides Everything
How Monero’s privacy tech makes every transaction untraceable—and why that’s becoming essential in a world of financial surveillance.
#2226: When Quantum Breaks Everything
Quantum computers will shatter RSA and elliptic-curve encryption—but the real danger is data being stolen and stored right now, waiting to be decry...
#2224: Why AI Can't Crack the Voynich Manuscript
A fifteenth-century text has defeated cryptanalysts, linguists, and AI models alike. What does its resistance tell us about language, encoding, and...
#2088: Quantum's First Real Benchmarks Are Here
From drug discovery to logistics, quantum computing is finally delivering measurable speedups over classical systems.
#1796: The Encryption Mirage: Are Your Keys Really Safe?
End-to-end encryption promises privacy, but hidden backdoors and metadata leaks can betray your trust.
#1772: PGP vs. Gmail: Who Really Holds Your Keys?
You see a padlock icon and think your email is safe. But does end-to-end encryption actually protect you, or just create a false sense of security?
#1771: Why Your Docker Images Depend on a 1990s Crypto War
PGP or GPG? We break down the alphabet soup of signing Docker images and AI models, and why it matters for supply chain security.
#1551: From Pixels to Projection: The Tech Behind the Big Screen
Forget film reels. Modern movies are 600GB encrypted "shipping containers" delivered by satellite. Discover the tech behind the big screen.
#943: Unbreakable: One-Time Pads and the Mystery of V-32
Discover why the one-time pad is the only unbreakable code and go inside the eerie world of shortwave number station V-32.
#404: Beyond the Screenshot: Proving Your Digital Evidence
Can a thumbs-up be a binding contract? Learn how to authenticate digital messages and protect your legal rights in the age of AI forgeries.