David Leavitt’s Spy Tale
David Leavitt agreed to write an original short story for Studio 360’s Science & Creativity series, and said he wanted to write about book codes, a venerable, low-tech way of encrypting secrets using any printed book. We put him in touch with cryptographer Steve Bellovin, a professor at Columbia University and a major figure in internet encryption. After their conversation, Leavitt wrote an original story for Studio 360 called The Cheese Pastries of Sintra. It’s read for us by actor Ed Herbstman. Produced by Sarah Lilley.
Bonus Track: The Cheese Pastries of Sintra David Leavitt’s original story about cryptography, espionage, and pastry-themed codes, read by Ed Herbstman
embed_audio(
‘http://audio.wnyc.org/studioblog/studioblog050611_sintra.mp3’,
‘id1172639752795d5c2dcbc-22a3-4b13-b868-cf2482d60f78’,
400,
”,
”
);
U.S. Department of State Code D-1, issued for classified communication in 1929 (Ryan Somma/flickr)
The story you just read is available to read for free because thousands of listeners and readers like you generously support our nonprofit newsroom. Every day, the reporters and producers at The World are hard at work bringing you human-centered news from across the globe. But we can’t do it without you: We need your support to ensure we can continue this work for another year.
When you make a gift of $10 or more a month, we’ll invite you to a virtual behind-the-scenes tour of our newsroom to thank you for being with The World.