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I was recently listening to the 
final chapter of The Secret War 

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by Max Hastings and even now. 
Years. 

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After first learning the 
history, the story of Alan 

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Turing leaves me completely 
choked up. 

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Alan Turing, a man who helped 
defeat the Nazis, was chemically

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castrated by the very government
he helped save. 

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I asked Notebook LM to tell you 
the story because I don't think 

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I can't. 
It is arguably one of the 

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cruelest ironies in the history 
of the modern world. 

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Imagine a man who saves millions
of lives. 

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And I don't mean that 
metaphorically. 

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I mean a man who actually 
shortens the deadliest war in 

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human history by two years. 
Yeah, keeping entire cities from

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being bombed and keeping 
soldiers out of the trenches. 

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You expect statues for that, 
right? 

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Right. 
Parades A knighthood at the very

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least. 
Absolutely. 

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But instead, the government he 
saved turns around, breaks into 

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his home, strips him of his 
dignity and forces him to 

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undergo this barbaric medical 
procedure that fundamentally 

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destroys who he is. 
It sounds like some kind of 

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dystopian fiction, but this is 
the very real history of Alan 

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Turing. 
Today we are doing a deep dive 

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into the source material on 
Turing. 

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You've got his Wikipedia 
biography and a really moving 

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reflection text on his 
treatment. 

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And our mission today is to 
unpack the hidden history of a 

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queer icon. 
Right, because we aren't just 

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talking about the tech today. 
No, we're talking about a man 

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whose identity was criminalized 
by the very democracy he 

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protected. 
And especially for you 

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listening, if you're part of the
queer community and maybe 

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haven't heard the full 
background of Alan Turing, this 

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is going to be a heavy one. 
But it is so necessary. 

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It is. 
Most people know the name. 

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Maybe, you know, he cracked the 
Enigma code. 

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But to understand why his death 
was such a tragedy, we have to 

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look at his life, his first 
love, the crushing pressure of 

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his war work and the philosophy 
that actually drove him. 

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And the big what if that haunts 
this entire story. 

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If he hadn't been persecuted, 
what else would he have solved? 

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That is the question we should 
all be asking by the end of 

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this. 
So let's rewind Before he was a 

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war hero, before he was branded 
a criminal, he was just a kid, 

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and apparently a very smart one.
Oh, incredibly smart. 

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Even his primary school 
headmistress spotted it right 

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away. 
The biography quotes her telling

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his parents. 
I have had clever boys and 

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hardworking boys. 
But Alan is a genius. 

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Wow. 
But you have to picture the 

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setting here. 
This is the 1920s British public

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school system. 
Very rigid. 

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Exactly. 
Rigid, obsessed with sports and 

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classics. 
And here comes Alan, who is 

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eccentric, messy and totally 
obsessed with science. 

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He really didn't fit in. 
So he was the classic outcast 

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genius. 
Until he wasn't. 

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At Sherborn School, he met 
Christopher Morecam. 

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And this is a pivotal moment. 
This isn't just a study, buddy. 

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From what the text said, no. 
Not at all. 

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This is the emotional core of 
Turing's entire life. 

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Christopher was a year older. 
Small, slight, but 

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intellectually he was Allen's 
absolute equal. 

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So for the first time, Allen 
wasn't alone. 

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Right, they shared everything. 
Astronomy, math, codes. 

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They would pass these notes in 
class, deciphering ciphers. 

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It was this intense romantic 
friendship. 

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Christopher was Alan's first 
love. 

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I can imagine how huge that is 
for a kid who feels like an 

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alien finally finding your 
person. 

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It was everything. 
Alan absolutely worshipped him. 

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But there's a tragedy built into
this right from the start, 

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because Christopher had bovine 
tuberculosis. 

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Which back then was. 
A ticking clock. 

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Yeah, In 1930, Christopher died 
suddenly. 

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He was only a teenager and Alan 
was just completely shattered. 

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How does a teenage boy even 
process that kind of grief, 

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especially when he probably 
couldn't express the romantic 

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nature of it to anyone around 
him? 

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He processed it through his 
intellect and this is where the 

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reflection text gets really 
fascinating. 

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He write these letters to 
Christopher's mother that are 

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heartbreaking, he told her. 
I know I must put as much 

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energy, if not as much interest 
into my work as if he were 

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alive, because that is what he 
would like me to do. 

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He's taking on the burden of two
lives. 

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He is. 
But it goes deeper than that. 

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In his grief, Alan became 
obsessed with the question of 

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the spirit. 
He wanted to know, if the body 

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dies, does the mind survive? 
Can a mind exist without a 

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biological body? 
Wait. 

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Are you saying what I think 
you're saying? 

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I am the seeds of artificial 
intelligence. 

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The very idea that thinking can 
be separated from flesh likely 

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came from a teenage boy trying 
to figure out if his dead first 

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love was still out there 
somewhere. 

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That completely reframes the 
cold, logical computer for me. 

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It's born out of love and loss. 
It's basically a mechanism for 

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grief. 
He creates this concept that the

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mind is just software, and if 
you can replicate the software, 

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maybe the person isn't totally 
gone. 

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So, keeping that in mind, he 
goes to Cambridge, then 

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Princeton, and in 1936 he 
publishes this groundbreaking 

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paper on computable numbers. 
This is the big one. 

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Help us out here. 
Why is a paper on numbers so 

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critical? 
Because before this paper, the 

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word computer actually meant a 
person, usually a woman sitting 

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at a desk doing math. 
Machines in 1936 were single 

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purpose. 
A toaster toasts, a calculator 

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adds. 
They were hardwired. 

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Right. 
You couldn't tell a toaster to 

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suddenly become a radio. 
Exactly. 

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But Turing imagined what he 
called a universal machine, a 

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machine that could do anything 
if you just gave it the right 

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instructions. 
He realized you could separate 

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the hardware from the logic. 
He invented software. 

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He invented the fundamental 
architecture of the digital age.

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The phone you were listening to 
this on the laptop. 

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They are all Turing machines. 
He conceptualized this back in 

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1936. 
So he's mapped out the future of

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technology, but the president is
about to catch up with him real 

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fast. 
It's 1939 and war breaks out. 

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And the eccentricity that made 
him an outcast at school made 

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him an absolute legend at 
Bletchley Park. 

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Bletchley is the secret code 
breaking center and Turing shows

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up and they immediately start 
calling him the Prof. 

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The Prof He was such a character
he was terrified of his hay 

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fever, so he would cycle to the 
office wearing a full military 

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gas mask. 
That is a terrifying image for 

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the locals. 
Just a guy in a tweed suit and a

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gas mask pedaling through the 
English countryside. 

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And inside the Hut, he chained 
his favorite mug to the radiator

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because he was paranoid someone 
would steal it. 

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But beneath all those quirks, he
was facing an impossible math 

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problem. 
The German Enigma. 

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Let's breakdown in the Enigma. 
People know it was a hard code, 

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but why was it considered 
entirely unbreakable? 

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Because it wasn't static, it was
a machine with rotors. 

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Every time you pressed a key, 
the rotor spun, changing the 

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electrical circuit entirely. 
So if you pressed A three times,

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it might come out as G, then P, 
then X. 

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So you can't just look for 
patterns and say a = g. 

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No, and the Germans changed the 
starting rotor settings every 

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single day at midnight. 
There was something like 159 

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quintillion possible settings. 
I mean, tell him it's a number 

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so big it's meaningless to the 
human brain. 

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If you had 10,000 people 
checking one setting a minute, 

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it would take longer than the 
age of the universe to check 

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them all, and they only had 24 
hours before it changed again. 

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So it's humanly impossible. 
Which is why Turing said it's 

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not a human problem, it's a 
machine problem. 

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He needed a machine to beat the 
machine. 

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Enter the bomb. 
The Bomb. 

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This massive, ticking, whirring 
electromechanical beast. 

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Now a lot of people think the 
bomb just found the answer, but 

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it didn't do that. 
It found the lies. 

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What? 
Do you mean by? 

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That it used logic. 
Turing knew the Germans were 

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rigid with their protocols. 
They would sign off messages 

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with Heil Hitler or send a 
weather report at the exact same

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time every morning. 
Because we had a crib like a 

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CHEAT SHEET. 
Right, so he could tell his 

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machine assume these encrypted 
letters mean weather report. 

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The bomb would then race through
the wheel settings looking for 

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electrical contradictions. 
If the circuit implied that the 

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letter A was connected to A, 
that's physically impossible in 

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an Enigma machine. 
The bomb would know this setting

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is a lie and instantly Click to 
the next one. 

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It wasn't searching for the 
needle in the haystack, it was 

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blowing away the hay. 
Perfectly put. 

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It mechanically discarded the 
billions of wrong answers until 

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only a few plausible ones were 
left for the human code Breakers

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to check. 
And this worked, but it wasn't 

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fast enough initially, was it? 
The bio mentions this amazing 

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story about a letter to 
Churchill. 

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This really shows Turing's 
backbone. 

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The military brass didn't get 
what he was doing. 

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They were underfunding 
Bletchley. 

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So Turing and his team broke the
chain of command. 

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They wrote a letter directly to 
Prime Minister Winston Churchill

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saying we can win this war, but 
we need resources now. 

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That's incredibly risky. 
That's court martial territory 

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it. 
Is But Churchill read it and he 

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instantly recognized the 
urgency. 

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He slapped a red sticker on it 
that said action this this day. 

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Action this day. 
It meant give them everything 

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they want right now, no 
arguments. 

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That decision changed the course
of the war. 

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They focused on the naval Enigma
EU boats that were starving 

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Britain once Turing cracked that
the supply convoys could get 

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through the Atlantic. 
Historians estimate this 

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shortened the war in Europe by 
more than two years. 

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At least two years. 
Think about the Holocaust, think

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about the Eastern Front. 
Two more years of that we are 

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talking about 14,000,000 lives 
saved over. 18 million people 

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because of the guy with the mug 
chained to the radiator. 

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And the ultimate tragedy is when
the war ended, nobody knew. 

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Right, because of the Official 
Secrets Act. 

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They burned the papers, they 
dismantled the bombs. 

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Turing went from being arguably 
the most important man in the 

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Allied forces to just an 
academic in Manchester. 

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He couldn't tell his mother. 
He couldn't tell his friends. 

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That level of silence must have 
been incredibly isolating. 

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He dealt with it physically. 
This is a part of his life. 

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People often forget he was an 
Olympic level athlete. 

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He actually tried out for the 
1948 British Olympic team as a 

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marathon runner. 
Seriously. 

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A marathon runner. 
He came in fifth in the trials. 

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His time was only 11 minutes off
the Olympic gold medal pace. 

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He would run for miles and 
miles. 

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He told a colleague that he had 
such a stressful job, the only 

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way he could get it out of his 
mind was by running hard. 

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He's literally running from the 
secrets, running from the 

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pressure. 
And he's also continuing his 

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work. 
In 1950, he publishes Computing 

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Machinery and Intelligence. 
This is where he proposes what 

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we now call the Turing Test. 
I feel like this test is often 

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misunderstood. 
It's usually described as Can a 

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computer trick a human into 
thinking it's real? 

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That's the surface level 
reading, but philosophically 

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it's much more radical. 
Turing was asking, does it 

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matter if a machine has a soul, 
if it acts like it's thinking, 

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if it holds a conversation, if 
it makes you laugh? 

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Isn't that thinking? 
It's the fake it till you make 

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it theory of consciousness. 
It goes right back to 

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Christopher Morcombe. 
If the mind is just behavior and

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output, then the biological body
doesn't actually matter. 

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You are what you do, not what 
you're made of. 

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Which is a beautiful idea. 
But in 1952, the biological 

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reality of who he was came 
crashing down on him. 

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This is where the story turns 
incredibly dark. 

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00:11:04,120 --> 00:11:07,080
You have to understand the 
atmosphere of 1952 Britain. 

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It's the Cold War. 
Everyone is paranoid about 

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Soviet spies, and the government
didn't just view homosexuality 

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as illegal, they viewed it as a 
severe security risk. 

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00:11:17,360 --> 00:11:20,400
Following the defection of some 
gay spies like Burgess and 

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McLean, the state thought gay 
men were highly susceptible to 

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blackmail. 
So they were actively hunting 

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them. 
They were and Turing. 

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He was naive. 
He was radically honest. 

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00:11:30,120 --> 00:11:33,680
He met a 19 year old man named 
Arnold Murray and they started a

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relationship. 
And then the inciting incident 

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00:11:35,440 --> 00:11:37,480
happens, the burglary. 
Right. 

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00:11:37,560 --> 00:11:40,400
Turing's house was burgled. 
Arnold Murray admitted he knew 

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the guy who did it. 
So Turing, being the rigid, 

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honest man he was, went down to 
the police station to report a 

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crime. 
He's the victim in this 

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00:11:47,400 --> 00:11:49,120
scenario. 
He is, but during the 

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00:11:49,120 --> 00:11:51,800
investigation, the police 
naturally asked how he knew 

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Murray, and Turing just told 
them he candidly admitted to the

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sexual relationship. 
He wrote out a full statement. 

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00:11:57,800 --> 00:12:00,600
He basically thought, I'm a 
grown man, this is private, 

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what's the big deal? 
He vastly underestimated the 

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institutional hate of the time. 
He was immediately charged with 

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gross indecency under section 11
of the Criminal Law Amendment 

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Act 1885. 
Which is exactly the same law 

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they used to convict Oscar 
Wilde. 

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The very same And because of the
Official Secrets Act, Turing 

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00:12:19,400 --> 00:12:22,240
couldn't stand up in court and 
defend his character by saying, 

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hey, I'm the guy who saved you 
all from the Nazis. 

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00:12:24,200 --> 00:12:26,040
He just had to stand there and 
take the conviction. 

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00:12:26,120 --> 00:12:29,160
And the sentence he received. 
This is the part of the source 

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00:12:29,160 --> 00:12:32,600
material that is genuinely 
physically hard to read. 

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00:12:32,600 --> 00:12:36,120
He pleaded guilty and was given 
a choice, go to prison, which 

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would destroy his ability to 
work and cut him off from his 

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00:12:38,960 --> 00:12:43,000
research or take probation. 
But the probation came with a 

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00:12:43,000 --> 00:12:46,880
brutal condition organotherapy. 
Which is just a clinical 

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00:12:46,880 --> 00:12:49,000
euphemism for chemical 
castration. 

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00:12:49,000 --> 00:12:51,920
Yes, he chose the therapy to 
avoid PRISM. 

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00:12:52,120 --> 00:12:54,880
They injected him with 
Stilbostrol, A synthetic 

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00:12:54,880 --> 00:12:57,680
estrogen. 
The state's goal was to kill his

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00:12:57,680 --> 00:13:00,640
libido to effectively cure him 
of his identity. 

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00:13:00,840 --> 00:13:04,840
Think about the profound cruelty
of that This is a man who spent 

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00:13:04,840 --> 00:13:09,760
his entire life proving that the
mind and body are separate, that

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00:13:09,760 --> 00:13:11,800
the hardware doesn't matter, 
it's the software. 

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00:13:12,280 --> 00:13:15,920
And the government stepped in 
and said no, we are going to 

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00:13:15,920 --> 00:13:18,800
destroy your hardware and we 
will use it to break your 

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00:13:18,800 --> 00:13:20,720
software. 
And it did break him. 

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00:13:20,720 --> 00:13:23,720
The physical toll was horrific. 
The treatment rendered him 

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00:13:23,720 --> 00:13:26,320
impotent. 
It caused gynecomastia, the 

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00:13:26,320 --> 00:13:29,080
formation of breast tissue. 
He gained weight. 

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00:13:29,240 --> 00:13:32,000
The Olympic level runner. 
His body was completely 

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00:13:32,000 --> 00:13:34,440
revolting against him. 
But the professional and 

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00:13:34,440 --> 00:13:36,480
psychological toll was even 
worse. 

285
00:13:36,480 --> 00:13:38,160
Because they took his security 
clearance. 

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00:13:38,160 --> 00:13:40,720
That was the final blow. 
Because of the criminal 

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00:13:40,720 --> 00:13:43,840
conviction, he was officially 
labeled a security risk. 

288
00:13:44,040 --> 00:13:47,120
He was barred from GC DHQ, which
was the successor to Bletchley 

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00:13:47,120 --> 00:13:49,000
Park. 
He became a risk to the very 

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00:13:49,000 --> 00:13:51,600
state he had saved. 
He was locked out of the world 

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00:13:51,600 --> 00:13:53,880
he helped build, he wrote in a 
letter at the time. 

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00:13:54,160 --> 00:13:57,240
No doubt I shall emerge from it 
all a different man, but quite 

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00:13:57,240 --> 00:13:59,680
who I've not found out. 
Two years of this, two years of 

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00:13:59,760 --> 00:14:02,520
the hormones, the public shame, 
the surveillance, and then we 

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00:14:02,520 --> 00:14:06,520
reached June 8th, 1954. 
His housekeeper found him dead 

296
00:14:06,520 --> 00:14:09,200
in his bed. 
The cause of death was cyanide 

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00:14:09,200 --> 00:14:11,320
poisoning. 
And the apple was found next to 

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00:14:11,320 --> 00:14:13,760
him A. 
Half eaten apple on his bedside 

299
00:14:13,760 --> 00:14:16,800
table. 
Now the official inquest ruled 

300
00:14:16,800 --> 00:14:21,080
it a suicide and the apple is so
incredibly theatrical. 

301
00:14:21,720 --> 00:14:23,840
Snow White was his favorite 
fairy tale. 

302
00:14:24,320 --> 00:14:27,360
Biographers speculate he was re 
enacting the scene where the 

303
00:14:27,360 --> 00:14:29,600
wicked queen poisons the apple. 
Right. 

304
00:14:29,720 --> 00:14:32,800
Dip the apple in the brew. 
Let the sleeping death seep 

305
00:14:32,800 --> 00:14:33,920
through. 
Exactly. 

306
00:14:33,920 --> 00:14:37,000
It feels like a very deliberate 
message, a final defiant gesture

307
00:14:37,000 --> 00:14:38,920
from a man who loved codes in 
theatre. 

308
00:14:39,400 --> 00:14:41,480
But the sources do mention 
another theory right? 

309
00:14:41,480 --> 00:14:42,760
That it might have been an 
accident. 

310
00:14:42,800 --> 00:14:46,760
Yes, the gold plating theory. 
His mother favored this, and 

311
00:14:46,760 --> 00:14:49,840
some philosophers agree. 
Turing had a little amateur lab 

312
00:14:49,840 --> 00:14:53,040
set up in his spare room. 
He was gold plating spoons and 

313
00:14:53,040 --> 00:14:55,160
using potassium cyanide in that 
process. 

314
00:14:55,440 --> 00:14:58,360
He was known to be notoriously 
careless with chemicals, so it's

315
00:14:58,360 --> 00:15:00,640
impossible he accidentally 
inhaled the fumes. 

316
00:15:00,640 --> 00:15:02,960
Does the exact mechanism really 
matter though? 

317
00:15:03,080 --> 00:15:06,040
I don't think it does. 
Whether it was a deliberate exit

318
00:15:06,040 --> 00:15:09,320
using the Snow White apple or a 
reckless accident by a man who 

319
00:15:09,400 --> 00:15:12,480
been pushed to the absolute 
brink, the tragedy is exactly 

320
00:15:12,480 --> 00:15:14,440
the same. 
The world lost one of its 

321
00:15:14,440 --> 00:15:17,640
greatest minds at age 41 
following state sanctioned 

322
00:15:17,640 --> 00:15:20,160
persecution. 
And it took a remarkably long 

323
00:15:20,160 --> 00:15:22,400
time for the world to even try 
to make it right. 

324
00:15:22,680 --> 00:15:24,960
Decades. 
For decades, his conviction 

325
00:15:24,960 --> 00:15:27,880
stood and his war work remained 
totally classified. 

326
00:15:28,560 --> 00:15:32,360
It wasn't until a massive public
petition in 2009 that Prime 

327
00:15:32,360 --> 00:15:35,440
Minister Gordon Brown finally 
issued a public apology. 

328
00:15:35,720 --> 00:15:37,520
He called the treatment 
appalling. 

329
00:15:37,680 --> 00:15:40,480
And then Queen Elizabeth granted
A posthumous royal pardon in 

330
00:15:40,480 --> 00:15:43,080
2013. 
Right, which eventually led to 

331
00:15:43,080 --> 00:15:47,200
the Alan Turing Law in 2017. 
That legislation retroactively 

332
00:15:47,200 --> 00:15:49,600
pardoned thousands of other men 
who had been convicted under 

333
00:15:49,600 --> 00:15:51,640
those same historical anti-gay 
laws. 

334
00:15:51,640 --> 00:15:54,200
And now he's the face on the £50
note in the UK. 

335
00:15:54,320 --> 00:15:57,760
Which is a nice recognition, 
sure, but it doesn't bring him 

336
00:15:57,760 --> 00:15:59,720
back. 
That brings us right back to the

337
00:15:59,720 --> 00:16:01,400
what if we talked about at the 
start. 

338
00:16:01,800 --> 00:16:04,560
He was only 41 at the time of 
his death. 

339
00:16:04,760 --> 00:16:08,400
He was working on morphogenesis,
figuring out how leopards get 

340
00:16:08,400 --> 00:16:10,400
their spots through mathematical
biology. 

341
00:16:12,040 --> 00:16:16,000
He was expanding his thoughts on
AI if he had lived another 30 or

342
00:16:16,000 --> 00:16:18,240
40 years. 
He would have seen the personal 

343
00:16:18,240 --> 00:16:20,840
computer revolution. 
He would have seen the dawn of 

344
00:16:20,840 --> 00:16:23,400
the Internet. 
He might have solved biological 

345
00:16:23,400 --> 00:16:26,480
and computational problems that 
we are still struggling to 

346
00:16:26,480 --> 00:16:28,800
figure out today. 
It's a stark reminder that 

347
00:16:28,800 --> 00:16:32,400
prejudice isn't just cruel, it 
is deeply wasteful. 

348
00:16:32,720 --> 00:16:36,480
We threw away a singular mind, 
an atheist, a homosexual and 

349
00:16:36,480 --> 00:16:39,520
eccentric marathon runner who 
defined the modern. 

350
00:16:39,520 --> 00:16:41,520
World we did. 
And for anyone listening today, 

351
00:16:41,520 --> 00:16:44,760
remember that you are constantly
interacting with his legacy. 

352
00:16:44,800 --> 00:16:47,880
The man who saved the world and 
the man the world ultimately 

353
00:16:47,880 --> 00:16:48,960
failed. 
Exactly. 

354
00:16:49,000 --> 00:16:50,640
So here's the final thought to 
Mull over. 

355
00:16:50,880 --> 00:16:53,360
When you pull out your 
smartphone today or boot up your

356
00:16:53,360 --> 00:16:56,920
laptop, ask yourself if you're 
just looking at a machine or if 

357
00:16:56,920 --> 00:16:59,440
you were looking at the legacy 
of a man desperately trying to 

358
00:16:59,440 --> 00:17:01,400
keep the spirit of his first 
love live. 

359
00:17:01,880 --> 00:17:03,400
Thank you for joining us on this
deep dive. 

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00:17:06,560 --> 00:17:11,040
This is Elton Sherwin. 
Stay safe, be brave, and God 

361
00:17:11,040 --> 00:17:11,560
bless.