 Good afternoon everyone. Welcome to the William G. McGowan Theater at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. And a special welcome to our virtual audience watching us on YouTube today. I'm Lee Glazer. I'm the Museum Programs Director here at the National Archives. And it's a huge pleasure to welcome all of you to today's program, National Treasure Hunt, One Step Short of Crazy, with our special guests, Aubrey Parris and Emily Black, co-authors of the book and hosts of the National Treasure Hunt podcast. Today's program is really the perfect introduction and lead-in to our annual July 4th festivities at the National Archives. Hope that you'll be able to return on Tuesday on July 4th for all of the festivities. It includes a patriotic reading of the Declaration of Independence hosted by local Channel 9 news anchor Allison Seymour. The museum, of course, will be open and will also have a variety of educational and family-friendly programs with historical re-enactors and archives educators on hand. The full schedule, if you're interested, can be found at www.archivesjuly4.org. Now, 19 years ago, National Treasure's November 2004 release put the National Archives on the pop culture map. Our museum's annual attendance jumped by 40%, largely due to visits by National Treasure fans wondering if there really was a treasure map on the back of the Declaration of Independence. There is not. I can tell you for certain that the only thing on the back of the Declaration are the words Original Declaration of Independence dated 4 July 1776, and that's it. But the discovery of a map is key, of course you all know, to the movie's plot and fictional treasure hunter, Benjamin Franklin Gates, played by Nicholas Cage, who has to steal our cherished Declaration of Independence in order to keep it from evil treasure hunters. Rest assured that our own genuine documentary National Treasures are safely housed in the building at all times in National Archives facilities around the country and, of course, up in the Rotunda. You can see them upstairs after the program. We're actually opened through the 4th of July for extended hours until 7 p.m. So I hope if you haven't had a chance to visit the museum, you'll do that. I think many of you also know that we'll be screening National Treasure today in this theater at 5 p.m. And I hope many of you will be sticking around for that and that you've registered ahead of time because we are expecting a full house. And just a little bit of housekeeping. After this program, we will be clearing the theater. And, of course, we hope you'll visit the museum, the Rotunda, the gift shop. Feel free to, you know, take a walk, get a snack. And then, again, hopefully you've registered for the program which starts, or the film which starts at 5 o'clock. And now it's my pleasure to introduce today's speakers. Aubrey Parris is a foreign policy advisor who's worked on issues ranging from the gender climate change nexus to emerging technologies. For National Treasure Hunt, she specializes in assessments of history, science, and film production while leading creative direction. Parris received her PhD in chemistry and materials science from Princeton University, her MA in chemistry from Princeton, and a bachelor of science in chemistry and biology from Earth Sinus College. Her co-conspirator, Emily Black, is an adjunct professor and researcher whose work is focused on the neurobiology of traumatic stress and substance abuse. She provides musical assessments, ethical discussions, and pop culture analyses for National Treasure Hunt. And she also serves as the sound engineer for the podcast. So they're amazingly talented in a variety of disciplines. Black received her PhD in neuroscience from Drexel University College of Medicine, her bachelor of science in neuroscience, and a bachelor of arts in music also from Earth Sinus College. That's actually where Emily and Aubrey first met, so they go way back. I want to mention that they'll be signing their book just outside here in the lobby, and the book is for sale upstairs in our gift shop. So now let's get to it and join me in welcoming Aubrey and Emily to the stage. How's everyone doing today? We're talking National Treasure here. I hope you're doing well. Oh my goodness. It is such a pleasure to be here. Welcome. Thank you for joining us today. We are so honored to be here. Absolutely. My name is Aubrey. I'm Emily. And we are National Treasure Hunt. We are the podcast, the book, and the tour taking an ocular device to the National Treasure franchise. We honestly could not be more excited to be joining you this 4th of July weekend to celebrate the Declaration of Independence in the context of our favorite films, right? Yeah. So okay, can we address the elephant in the room right off the bat? Okay, who here has seen National Treasure? Okay, okay, good. Who's seen National Treasure Book of Secrets? Amazing. You all have amazing taste. Congratulations. So we're clearly all National Treasure fans here, but I wonder how much you know about the origin of how these films came to be. Would you believe it if I said that they were actually inspired by the place you're sitting right now, the National Archives? So it turns out that in the 1990s, co-creator of the franchise, Charles Seegers, was right here at the archives doing research for a Lewis and Clark themed miniseries. And while he was here, he took away two main realizations. Ironically, neither of which had to do with the Lewis and Clark. No, no, no. We didn't hear much more about that one. No, no we didn't. But those realizations were. They were, one, there weren't a lot of people to Charles' understanding that were really like in line to see the Charters of Freedom, the Declaration of Independence being one of them. And the second was that he noticed the faded condition of the Declaration of Independence. Yeah. And these two realizations really inspired Charles because he started thinking about, first of all, how are documents like the Declaration protected and conserved? And what or who might they need protecting from? And he started thinking if he could create a story, he's in the entertainment industry after all, if he can create a story kind of centered around these questions, could he succeed in helping to draw more interest and enthusiasm regarding the Charters of Freedom, the National Archives, and the other national treasures that we have? So he took this idea to his friend and colleague, Oren Aviv. And they, after many years of workshopping the idea, had the help of executive producer Jerry Brookheimer and director John Turtletob and of course Disney. They created the National Treasure film that we know and love today. But Charles will be very happy to admit to you that he had no idea how this movie was going to be received. No, he was actually, he was so nervous that at the test screening for the film, he would not get out of the car. So he said that he received like numerous text messages from Oren telling him like, you got to come in, come on. And when he finally got up the courage to come in, he entered the theater at the point which I'm sure you are all familiar with where Ben and Riley are sitting on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. And he said that everybody broke out into applause in that moment and that's when he knew. That's when he knew it was going to be a big hit. So National Treasure, as we heard, premiered in November 2004. Ended up grossing $350 million worldwide, which far exceeded expectations. And this movie was never meant to be a multi-part series, never meant to be a franchise. But it did so well that Disney immediately greenlights a sequel. And so we get National Treasure II Book of Secrets in December of 2007. It's out grossed its predecessor, reaching nearly $460 million worldwide in earnings. Now today, it is the year 2023. It's a huge audience of fans, perhaps you included, that is still clamoring for the third installment of this series. Yeah. Yeah? Yeah. If you're hearing us, Disney, let's go. And we do hope you ask us about the status of National Treasure III during the Q&A portion of this session. But most recently, in December of 2022, Disney did expand the franchise with a spin-off series called National Treasure Edge of History on Disney+. Which we'd love to hear your opinions about. But that's not what we are here today to talk about. We're here to talk about the movie that started it all, the first National Treasure film. And ultimately, I would say what the creators were able to create in this movie. It was ultimately a hunt for the legendary Templar treasure inspired by American history, featuring everyone's favorite Nicholas Cage as Benjamin Franklin Gates. Yeah, we can clap for that too. Yes, thank you. And what that looked like in practice ended up being, honestly, a tour of American landmarks, right? The movie starts, of course. Well, actually, Emily, do you want to give the summary? I feel like, Aubrey, you know me and I'm not great with chronology or summarizing things briefly. So I feel like it's probably better if you take it, but thank you for the offer. Okay. Any podcast listeners might. Yeah. Okay. I'll take over. The movie starts in the Arctic Circle, where Ben Gates finds a missing lost ship called the Charlotte. What he finds on the Charlotte leads him right here to Washington, D.C. Visit several landmarks and locations, including the Library of Congress, and of course, right here at the National Archives. What he discovers here at the Archives brings him to Philadelphia with his crew. That is first the Franklin Institute, and then they head to Independence Hall. We do have a brief interlude where Ben Gates has to escape FBI custody. And that happens on the flight deck of the USS Intrepid. And then we wrap up the film with protagonist and antagonist meeting once again in the historic Trinity Church in New York City. And that is in earnest where the story mostly concludes. There's a little bit of Boston, but it's not important. Okay. Sorry if you're from Boston. We like Boston. There's a lot going on in this movie. Someone argued even more going on in the second movie. And you can really dive into any scene in this franchise. And that's exactly what we do in our book, National Treasure Hunt, One Step Short of Crazy. But for purposes today, given our location, the holiday that we're here celebrating, we are really going to focus on this scene which results in Nicholas Cage using the Declaration of Independence sort of like a shield. Yeah. Trying to get all Captain America with it. Yeah, yeah. How did we get here? How did we get here? Well, of course, what Ben finds on the Charlotte is a clue that leads him to believe there's a secret message on the back of the Declaration of Independence. When he tells his financier, Ian Howell, this important information, Ian, how would you describe Ian? A little sketchy. A little sketch. Yeah. Ian's like, I'll just borrow the Declaration and we can take a look at it. And Ben is this upstanding guy. He's not having any of that. He goes to Washington, D.C. and he tries to tell and warn the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, and the National Archives of Ian's plan. He laughed out of the room. Understandably. Understandably, the Declaration of Independence is safe. And it's in this moment that Ben Gates knows what he has to do. And this is such an iconic moment that I think we can only really appreciate it with the help of a volunteer. Can we have a volunteer, maybe someone who's been interested in pretending to be Nicholas Cage at some point in their life? Can we get a volunteer for 60 seconds? I know someone. Okay. Yes. Right here. Amazing. Emily's going to meet you. Okay. A little hop up. This one, or do I go down there? Yeah, you come here. Good. This one? Okay. Yep. Yep, it's on. Okay, so what is your name? My name's Matt. Matt, and where are you from? I'm from Utah, Salt Lake City. Salt Lake City, Utah. Let's give it up for Matt for volunteering. Way to go. Okay, Matt. So here is your script. Okay. You are going to get your dream, obviously, of being Nick Cage or Ben Gates. Perfect. If you don't know me, but I am very like Riley. So I'm going to be Riley. Okay. Okay. So take it away. Okay, so I read this part? Yep. Okay. 180 years of searching, and I'm three feet away, of all the words written here about freedom. There's a line that's at the heart of all the others. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations pursuing invariably the same object, evences a design to reduce them under absolute depletism, it is their right, it is their duty to throw off such government and provide new guards for their future security. People don't talk that way anymore. Beautiful. No idea what you said. It means if there's something wrong, those who have the ability to take action have the responsibility to take action. I'm going to steal it. What? I'm going to steal the Declaration of Independence. Yes. Well done. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Re-enactment on National Treasure Hunt. So yeah, this, just like that, I'm going to steal it. I'm going to steal the Declaration of Independence becomes what I would argue is one of the most iconic heists in early 2000s cinematic history. And I think a lot of people love this movie for that reason. They think it's crazy. They think it's wild, ridiculous even. But what those people don't realize is that the creators of National Treasure were actually quite clever. Very, very clever. They were able to combine so many elements of the real world into this movie, into this scene without you even realizing it. You might even learn something from the movie without realizing it. And so what we're going to do today is use the scene surrounding the Declaration heist as a case study for how the creators of National Treasure were able to combine some of these real world elements to create what we think is an incredibly rewatchable, relevant, and iconic movie today. So we're going to start where I think most people think of starting when you talk National Treasure and that is how the film uses history. All right, so Declaration of Independence. I mean maybe you all went to the museum, took a look around, read some stuff, or remember your history classes from high school. Declaration of Independence was ultimately drafted in the summer of 1776 at Independence Hall in Emily's hometown of Philadelphia. I believe. Yeah, okay. Yes. It was debated and it was passed at Independence Hall July 4th, 1776. Fourth of July. It actually held its first public reading in the Independence Hall, or Independence Hall's outdoor courtyard really on July 8th. But it didn't start getting signed until a little later in the summer. August 2nd was when that began. But it actually took some time, right? I mean these founding fathers are coming to Philadelphia from 13 different colonies now states, right? And travel wasn't exactly an efficient at the time. No, I mean there was no train. No, northeast corridor. So yeah, it took some time. The signing started August 2nd, but it didn't actually even finish in the year 1776. 56 signers would ultimately put pen to paper and sign that document. And it's really at this moment when we get some national treasure skeptics or critics that will be like, Aubrey, Emily, that clue Ben found on the Charlotte, it said 55 in iron pen, not 56. National treasure got it wrong. Okay, Aubrey, just take a breath. Okay, it's a pet peeve of mine. It's really moments like these that I invite national treasure fans or skeptics to dive a little deeper into history and how the movie uses it. Because in national treasure, it is purported that this secret message that might exist on the back of the declaration would have been put there when the declaration was drafted, summer of 1776. But the 56th signer, Thomas McKeen of Delaware, actually didn't sign in 1776. He was the last signer and while the date of his signing is still up for debate, it is generally agreed that he signed somewhere between 1777 and 1781, which means at the time of the declaration of the independence clue for national treasure history, there were only 55 signers. Okay, let's get that straight. National treasure critics out there. Okay, let's maybe I should take a breath. Calm down. Let's talk about where it's been over the years. Yeah. So the declaration, I mean, obviously has had a story history and has traveled. So it was in the care of the Continental Congress during the Revolutionary War. They frequently had to travel with it to keep it away from the British forces. So they would roll it up from the bottom, which led to some of the names at the bottom starting to decompose over time. Then it came right here to D.C. And it was actually housed in the old Patton office building. Get this across from a window. Bad news. Yeah. So that doesn't sound great. That was around the mid-1800s. Then everyone wanted the Declaration of Independence. We're in D.C. I want the Declaration of Independence. We know, but you can't steal it. So the Library of Congress housed the Declaration for a little while. And then in 1952, the Declaration made its way to its hopefully permanent home here, where it still is at the National Archives. And we are told on very good authority, and you heard, I think, from Lee, that people to this day like to ask if there's something on the back of the Declaration. And as you heard, there is. And it does say original Declaration of Independence stated 4th July 1776. And that was honestly so when it was rolled up, people were able to identify the document. Yeah. But there's not a map. Sorry. But this idea of putting a secret message and associating it with the Declaration of Independence, what if that was inspired by something that actually happened in history, or was purported to have happened? That is the case. And it's the case of the Beale Ciphers. Has anyone here heard of the Beale Ciphers? Oh, I love an audience that doesn't know about the Beale Ciphers. Okay, so the story goes like this. In 1818, a man by the name of Thomas Jefferson Beale, no, I did not make that up, he goes out to the Santa Fe area in New Mexico and purports to find a massive treasure. He transports it back to Virginia and re-hides it and subsequently writes three coded letters that supposedly describe number one, the new location of the treasure, number two, the contents of the treasure, and number three, the treasure's rightful owners. Now, again, 2023 now, I'm here to report that two of the three ciphers, the coded letters, have not been cracked. But in 1885, a man named James Ward cracked letter number two. He found that this was a modified book cipher. Please keep that term in your mind for just a little bit later. And to crack it, he used the text of the Declaration of Independence. Sound familiar? So were Charles Orrin and their Disney colleagues inspired by the Beale Ciphers in this movie? Well, we'll let you decide that. Possible. All right, so that's some history for you. Let's move on to a topic that we both care very much about. Science, yeah? You can't do it without the science. I can't. I mean, that is our... Literally, yeah. That's our jail. Yeah, so we had to go into science here. It turns out that national treasure, both movies, use a lot of science and technology tricks, and we dive into all of them in our book, you know, how they would work or how they would not work. But we would be remiss if we didn't talk about one of those here today, right? Yeah. And that has to do with what Ben and his colleagues Riley and Abigail do to expose that secret message on the back of the Declaration. I'm told that this still makes folks here at the archives shudder today. So, of course, our characters suggest that the secret message is written in invisible ink, specifically ferrous sulfate invisible ink, so an iron-based compound. And it turns out that ferrous sulfate is a real invisible ink that was commonly used during the Revolutionary War era. Temporarily? Yeah. It works. Absolutely. But ferrous sulfate invisible inks are exposed using chemicals like sodium carbonate or potassium ferricyanide. Now, you all don't have to know what those are. You just have to know that it's not what they used in the movie. Right? And you can trust her on this because she is a chemist, so... A chemist. Okay. So, of course, our characters use the infamous combination of lemon juice and heat to reveal the secret message. And I'm very sorry to report that that would not actually do a good job of exposing a ferrous sulfate invisible ink. But interestingly, lemon juice and heat are themselves an invisible ink and reagent pair. So what this means is you could actually go home today. You could take a Q-tip. You could take some lemon juice. You could write a message on a piece of paper. Let it dry. And then carefully, in a controlled setting, you could take a candle or a flame and very carefully hold the paper near the flame. Do not light it on fire, please. We are not responsible for any fires that come as a result of this presentation. And your message will appear. Hopefully it was something good. Yeah, hopefully. It will appear because lemon juice is effectively comprised of organic, so carbon-containing compounds. When they come in contact with heat, they undergo a chemical reaction called oxidation. And what that means for our purposes is it turns brown. And that's why you can see your message again. Now, one of the questions that I feel like people then ask me, I don't know if you've experienced this, but why would the creators talk about ferro sulfate as their invisible ink and then expose it incorrectly? And I think the answer to that is actually accessibility to the audience. Y'all can't go home, I'm assuming, and just grab a bottle of potassium ferricyanide out of your medicine cabinet. I'm really hoping that you can. I mean, I couldn't even do that at the laboratory in which I worked. But we're all very familiar with lemons and hairdryers, right? So by using these tools, the creators are able to sort of invite the audience in and make them feel like they're a part of what's going on here, like they can relate to what's happening. All right, so that's our invisible ink spiel. We'd be remiss if we didn't acknowledge another science and technology-based topic pertinent to this scene, but also throughout the entire movie, mostly because of the character's blatant disregard for it. Yeah, so that is all of the science and technology that's used on a daily basis at a place like the archives to preserve and protect documents like the Declaration. That cannot be right. Right, cannot be right. And we have an archivist there, Dr. Abigail Chase, man. So what we want to do is we want to know if you would do a better job of protecting the Declaration of Independence than Benjamin Gates did. So we're going to quickly go through a couple of examples of what happens to it during this film, and I want you to shout out, good idea, bad idea, yes, no, would you do this? Are you guys ready? Okay, roll it up. No, no, no, of course not. Yes! You got to get it out. Okay, okay. If you got to steal it, you might be doing some questionable things to begin with, so I totally get that. Okay, make sense, make sense. In practice, of course, this would cause creases, bends, damages. It could cause the ink to flake off even further. What about touch it with the white gloves and Riley's apparently yellow gloves that you saw in that last picture? Yes, no, sure, maybe. Oh, I love, okay, I love a controversy. So it turns out that wearing gloves actually isn't really advised when working with artifact documents because gloves can limit your dexterity. You might not be able to tell if you're accidentally bending it if you're pressing down too hard or maybe you don't have a good enough grip and you're about to drop it, okay? What about putting it on the kitchen table? I heard somebody say yes. Yeah, so there's food residue there, you might get food on it, probably not the best idea. Yeah, okay, so wet it, wet it with lemon juice. Okay, that one, we have some people that were yes on the table, but no one, okay. So lemon juice can cause distortion of the text of the paper, it can leave a sticky residue, that residue could attract pests later on, all kinds of problems there. What about heating it with a hairdryer? No. Excellent, we got some good, good job. We got some computers and training here. Yeah, no, this could cause shrinkage, distortion. Just any abrupt change in temperature and humidity is no bueno. What about touching it with bare hands? Fingerprints. Okay, okay, but I did hear a lot of yeses though, you guys picked up on our trick question. Yeah, so it turns out of all the bullet points on this slide, this is the least bad. Least bad, right? Turns out that handling these sorts of documents, if you have to do so, clean, dry, bare hands is the way to go. So congratulations, most of you would do a better job of protecting the Declaration of Independence than Nicholas Cage. Excellent job. Round of applause for yourself, well done. Okay, let's move right along here and talk a little bit of ciphers. Now ciphers are super fun, they're super mysterious, kind of a combination of history and some like behavioral science, psychology. Right on my alley. Right up your alley. Ciphers are super important throughout the National Treasure franchise, the second film as well. Even National Treasure, Edge of History on Disney Plus, ciphers come into play. In National Treasure, the first movie, when they do their lemon juice and hairdryer trick, they end up exposing the secret message. And that secret message takes the form of an Atendorf cipher, also known as a book cipher. Do you remember that term? Yeah, the book cipher, we got that. Okay, so, sorry, I'm getting really pumped here, this is my jam, no pun intended for the Jams and Jellies line from the movie. So, book ciphers came about in 1526 or so. However, they were repopularized during the Revolutionary War. So once again, temporal relevance, something that was really important to the people that made the National Treasure films. Okay, these were actually named Atendorf ciphers after Major Nicholas Dietrich Baron de Atendorf. Okay, so he was a German mercenary, which, okay, that seems a little weird. But he actually was working with the Continental Congress to help kind of subvert the British during this time. So they were able to name it after him. Now, Atendorf ciphers themselves are pretty cool because not only is it like a collection of letters, numbers, as you can see here. That is the cipher itself, right? But you need a key to decode it. And the thing is that the key has to be the same exact thing, meaning it has to be the same edition of the same, say, book. If you were using a book. So for this reason, back in the day, a lot of people actually used to use the Bible as a way to crack or write these kinds of ciphers because most people had a Bible in their home and it was typically the same version. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. In terms of National Treasure, the key text that they end up using is the silence do-good letters. Does anyone here think the silence do-good letters are real? Got a couple hands? Okay. All right, all right. I like that bravery. Yeah, we like the bravery. We'll answer that question in just a moment because as a reminder, in National Treasure, our characters say that the silence do-good letters were written by Benjamin Franklin and published in a newspaper called The New England Current, and that the letters are currently in movie time, stored and on display at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. Well, it turns out that entire story is true with the exception of the Franklin Institute part. So, yes, the silence do-good letters are real. More real history in National Treasure. Who knew? Who knew? Okay, I'm going to tell you quickly the story of the silence do-good letters. It goes something like this. Benjamin Franklin, he grows up in Boston, not Philadelphia, common misconception. And at the age of 12, he begins working as an apprentice to his brother James at the New England Current newspaper. Now, the Current was pretty unique. It was the first colonial newspaper to publish controversial opinions and hot takes, I guess we would call them, on things like politics and religion. And this really intrigued Ben Franklin. Ben Franklin is fairly young at the time. He wants to share his opinions in the Current. No one takes him seriously. They're like, you're too young, kind of like, no. So, what he does is in his early teenage years, he adopts what is probably his first pen name or pseudonym. He will end up using multiple pseudonyms throughout his life. Poor Richard Zalmanac, anyone. But this is probably his first pseudonym. It is Mrs. Silence Dugud. Mrs. Silence Dugud purports to be the widow of a minister. And she has a lot of opinions. A lot. She is very sassy. And she is not afraid to express those opinions in 14 letters to the New England Current. The letters take on various themes. I think some notable examples are how she finds the public education system to be not good. How she thinks people write eulogies really weirdly, the way they eulogize people. And then also, my personal favorite, how she thinks religious people are hypocrites. That's part of her letters. They're super entertaining. Very entertaining to read. So they publish these letters. They're hugely popular with the readership of the current. And then when she stops writing, people genuinely get concerned for her well-being. They're like, what's up? Where is Mrs. Silence Dugud? And when they start publishing in the newspaper like calls for information, like to make sure she's okay. Remember, this is a secret. No one knows this is Ben Franklin. But this goes on long enough that Ben kind of feels like he has to come clean. So he finally admits to being the writer. And rumor has it, his brother James was so mad that he burned the letters. Remember we said earlier, don't burn paper. Don't burn paper. No, don't burn paper. Not a good idea. But they had already been published. So we know what they say today. And that is how national treasure or why national treasure says that they can be used as a key text for this cipher. If you want to go home and read something funny, literally go home and read The Silence Dugud Letters. It will entertain you, I promise. Yeah. So, now we should probably tell you how to crack an autendorf cipher. Yeah, probably. Turns out that if you have the key text that is required, it's pretty easy to crack an autendorf cipher. The key text we're going to use in this example is a page from our book, National Treasure Hunt, One Step Short of Crazy. And you see the series of numbers here. Each line of an autendorf cipher is comprised of these three number codes. The first number corresponds to the page number of your key text. The second number corresponds to the line on that page. And the third number corresponds to the letter in that line. Fairly simple, right? There are a couple of modifications to this. Sometimes instead of the page number, you'll lead off with the paragraph number. Sometimes instead of the final number corresponding to the letter, it'll correspond to a whole word. But this is the gist of how an autendorf or a book cipher works. So now I think we want to know if you have what it takes to join Ben Gates' treasure hunting team. We want to know if you can crack an autendorf cipher, okay? So we're going to issue you a challenge. This is a very simple five-letter autendorf cipher here on the screen. Your key text that you will use to crack it is this segment of the Declaration of Independence on the screen. We're going to give you a few minutes to crack it. We're going to give you a little musical accompaniment to inspire you. You have a tip for this? Yes, so if you want to take a picture and look at it on your phone, it might be a little easier to do that. I've tried to solve it on like a bigger screen before because that's a thing I do. And it's kind of difficult. Also, we're going here by the paragraph, the line and the letter, okay? So with that, you're going to have a couple minutes. Your challenge starts now. That's exactly round of applause. So if we learned nothing else here today, we talked about the real-world elements, the history, the science, ciphers. Let's see how this all comes together with just a little bit of Hollywood movie magic, all right? Some behind the scenes for you all. How did this scene come to be? Well, back in the 1990s, when Charles and Orrin were drafting up their first, second, maybe even third script, this went through a lot of scripts before it was made. They, believe it or not, wanted to make this heist seem as realistic as possible because they're in on the joke. They know this seems ridiculous. So they want to make it as realistic as they can. They go ahead and take as much publicly available information that they can find about how the declaration is stored and protected, and they create their heist. But then, early 2000s, pivotal major moment in American history happens that affects all of us in our daily lives and ends up unexpectedly affecting national treasure as well. Does anyone want to guess what that early 2000s moment was? Yep. Yes, September 11th, 2001. Now, September 11th, of course, affected many elements and aspects of our day-to-day lives and continues to do so today. But the way it unexpectedly impacts national treasure is after this event, the National Archives undergoes security upgrades. Yeah. So they have to scrap their heist, find out any new publicly available information about how the declaration is now protected, and recreate their heist. And they do so with the help of a law enforcement officer who they hire, someone who's a breaking and entering expert, to actually redevise their heist. And so that's how we get the heist that we see today. Now, when it comes to start filming this scene, really the whole movie, it becomes a question of where they get to film every element of this movie. And it turns out contrary to popular belief, most of the historical locations and landmarks that you see both in this movie and National Treasure 2 were actually filmed on site. Yes. They had to do it at off hours so as to not interrupt all of you lovely people from visiting, but they were filmed on site, except for here at the archives, inside at the archives. Turns out that there's a big concern with filming things in places like the Rotunda here at the archives. I don't know if you all are familiar with how movies are made, a lot of equipment, a lot of people, a lot of really hot lights. Not good for conserving things like the murals that you can see around at the Rotunda here at the archives. So what the production team ends up doing is they go back to Hollywood, they recreate a set version of the Rotunda and the rest of the interior that they will purport to use. They'll film their scenes there. However, the exterior shots of the archives, specifically two that are memorable, one of those being Ben Gates taking a photograph of a janitor's badge, the other one being after the heist, Dr. Abigail Chase crossing Pennsylvania Avenue with an iconic shot of the Capitol building in the background. Those scenes are actually filmed here in D.C. outside of this building. And those aren't the only scenes filmed here in D.C. for the record. The other ones include the Lincoln Memorial steps that Emily mentioned as part of the Charles entering the test screening story. That was filmed at the Lincoln Memorial. The Library of Congress actually features in both movies. Most people only think of the second film, but it is in the first film as well. Both of the Library of Congress scenes are filmed in the Library of Congress. In the second film, there is a scene outside of the Capitol building at the reflecting pool that was filmed here. And of course, the kidnapping of the President's scenes at Mount Vernon down the street, those were filmed at Mount Vernon. So it was a way for the creators to kind of invite people to visit sites of historical importance that they might otherwise not get to see, which I personally think is pretty cool. Oh, wonderful, wonderful. Now, we would really be probably doing something wrong if we didn't acknowledge casting in this behind-the-scenes element, because what is National Treasure synonymous with? Nicholas Cage. Okay, so whether you love him or you hate him, he's very memorable in this movie, if nothing else for our scene that we reenacted earlier with our excellent expert help. What if I told you that when the creators were making this movie, they actually had a different actor in mind to play and pursued a different actor to play the role of Benjamin Franklin Gates? I'm expecting surprised faces here. You're never going to guess who the actual actor was, but does anyone want to throw a guess? I heard somebody say the right thing. I heard one person say the right thing. It was Will Smith. We gotcha. Right? Wild, right? Think of how different the vibe of the movie would be. For the record, in that case, Patrick Gates, who ends up being played by John Voight, they had in mind Morgan Freeman to play Will Smith's father. Think of how different of a vibe the movie would have. It's something we think about a lot because it's kind of mind-blowing. But what happens is in the early 2000s, when they get to finally film National Treasure, Will Smith gets tapped for Bad Boys 2, leaving a massive Nicholas Cage-shaped hole in this movie. And the rest is history. But Nicholas Cage isn't the only important character here that we're talking about. As I like to continuously remind all of you. Emily's a big, big Riley Pool fan. Anyone else a Riley Pool fan? Yes! Yeah, Riley. Okay, so Justin Bartha ends up playing Riley Pool. Diane Kruger ends up playing Dr. Abigail Chase. Interestingly enough, for the big names like John Voight and Nicholas Cage, and the second movie Helen Mirren, Bruce Greenwood, like big names here, for our two other members of our team, this is kind of their first big role. Yeah, and so I personally really like the story of Diane Kruger's casting. Obviously Ben and Abigail are supposed to be intellectual equals, kind of leaving Riley in the dust a little bit. And they also need to have some romantic chemistry because they're the romantic leads of the film, regardless of how little a role people think the romance plays in the plot. But when Diane Kruger came in to audition, everybody who was doing the casting, they were looking for someone who could stand up to Nick Cage and kind of like present an opposing front. And Diane Kruger did just that. It was actually said that it seemed like she almost like put him off a little bit in her audition process. And when asked about it later on, Diane actually said that she has no recollection of that actually, like being her intention, but that she felt that she was so star struck in the moment that that must have been just like how it came off. However, obviously they needed to get over that. And so they did some bonding during filming and one of the things that they used to go do was karaoke with one another. Could anyone imagine doing karaoke with Nick Cage? What song would he pick? Who knows? What song would I pick this thing with him? That's a bucket list item right there. So that's a little bit on some of the casting in National Treasure. And so that's some of the Hollywood movie magic that goes into this and so many other scenes. So we went through the history and the science and the ciphers and the movie magic and this was all for just one scene. One scene. You can literally do this with any scene in this entire franchise because it's so dense. And that's something that I think people don't often appreciate about these movies. We would be here for hours if we went through each scene with you, but instead that is really what our book and even our podcast, National Treasure Hunt, is all about. What you see on the screen here is just a few examples of some of the historical scientific and other points that we cover in our book. It's not an exhaustive list. And then we also go into things like the ethics of how the characters make their decisions, how the characters develop over time and why they were selected to have the traits that they have. And then of course there's Emily's favorite part. I mean you gotta get the soundtrack. We just heard it, right? Amazing. Pretty good soundtrack. So this is the kind of interdisciplinary analysis that we really enjoy doing with National Treasure and we hope you've enjoyed doing with us here today. So we do hope that we've maybe intrigued you, maybe inspired you just a little bit to dive deeper into National Treasure, whether that might be involving reading our book, listening to our podcast, or even joining us on our semi-annual walking tour right here in Washington, D.C. We have someone who joined our tour earlier this year, so we have someone who can vouch, hopefully, for it. Or at the very least, I hope that the next time you watch National Treasure, whether that's today at the archives at 5 p.m. or the next time you turn on Disney Plus or maybe on 4th of July in a couple of days, the next time you watch it, I hope you look at it just a little bit differently. So with that, thank you so much for joining us on our National Treasure hunt today. Yes, thank you, and we will take any questions. So there are microphones here and here. I believe we have volunteers to take the microphones around. So we want to hear your questions and your opinions on National Treasure, maybe? Okay. Hello, stranger. I had a question about the ciphers. So, you know, you said that they would often use common texts like the Bible, right? So how would you say that they would use that to, like, how would the enemy not know, right, that they're using a common text? Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's one of the difficulties. So I believe from our research, the Bible was a frequent key text for not like the war purposes, right? No. Like nothing strategic or very confidential. It's kind of like fun little notes to one another. Things that aren't related to official purposes. This is more of, you know, if you're going to use an Autendorf cipher for whatever reason in your daily life for fun or not, but you're not like George Washington, you know, you might use something like a Bible. If they're using an Autendorf cipher in the war context or in the Continental Congress context, they're going to use much less common documents, but they're just going to make sure that both parties, the cipher creator and the cipher decoder have the same text, whatever that text may be. But that's what makes it so difficult, is this idea of needing to have the same material. And even today, I mean, think of how many different editions of books there are. Like it could still be kind of challenging. Other questions? Yes. So I was wondering how you kind of like copy, did they, how did they copy the map and like the way how they did it? Do you mean in terms of for the story or in the actual production of the movie? Either one. So I would say that the reason they chose for the story to put the cipher as well as what ends up being a map, we use map loosely because it's kind of just a picture, on the back of the declaration is because the founding fathers, the Freemasons amongst the founding fathers who put the message in the map there, they know that the declaration is going to be protected for the rest of time. So their map and their cipher not going to go anywhere. In terms of the movie and how they produced this, of course they have a replica of the Declaration of Independence that they use. They do their best to make it look as real as possible, right? Like you can't read it very well. It's pretty faded, it's kind of crinkly, right? It looks old. But they are going to predominantly use special effects and CGI to make the cipher show up and then to make the map show up later. That was a good question. That was a very good question. Hi, thank you for taking my question. How accurate was it when Gates uses the declaration as a shield for the bullets? That is always something I wanted to look at, but never took the time. That was a fantastic question. I believe it was the first season of our podcast. We interviewed some of the conservators from the National Archives, and that was something that we also asked them. We do believe that you probably can't just shoot a gun through the casing of the declaration, but we actually weren't able to get a ton of... There's only a limited amount of information that they are able to share with us surrounding how exactly it is encased. So I would say I think it's fairly realistic. Several inches of bullet-proof glass should be pretty good, but you shouldn't do it anyway, right? Just encase, you don't... But there is several inches of thick glass that are further encasings that are part of how the declaration is stored and protected. Again, like Emily said, we were only able to get so much information about its storage and whatnot. Which would make everyone feel good, like that means it's safe. But one of the things we wanted to know, too, is they were able to gain access to it because there are these conservation spaces. They call them the preservation room in the archives, and while they don't call them the preservation room, there are conservator spaces that have the temperature and the humidity control and everything that you would need to be able to work with documents at places like here at the archives as well as the other sites that the archives has off-premises in other states. The case, there is a cross-section of it in our public vaults exhibit that you can look at the science behind preserving the document. Amazing. I see a question here. And then one up there. So we'll go here, then up there. So the question is, in the second movie, there's the scene at Mount Rushmore at the end. Are you talking about the... All standing on Mount Rushmore? Yeah. In the Black Hills? Yes. Yes, it was. So the Mount Rushmore scenes, do you want to talk a bit about that? The Mount Rushmore scenes were highly inspired by what actually exists there, and we're filmed at Mount Rushmore. I will say that the rocks that they stand on when they're kind of wetting the rocks to find the eagle, those are right next to the Lake Sylvan, which is not actually right next to Mount Rushmore. So they took a little geographic liberty with some of that kind of stuff. But yeah, they actually took the cast up to the head. The heads of Mount Rushmore. They weren't really allowed to go. There's some vaults and stuff inside. They weren't really allowed to go inside there. And they did say, I remember they had some filming stuff because some people started following the cast because they knew they were there. It was tough because when they filmed at Mount Rushmore, it had to happen during the day. At many of the other locations, like Emily mentioned, they were filmed in off hours because you can't interfere with the visitor experience. And so if you're at a place like Independence Hall or something like that, it's a confined space. You can use big balloon lights and make it look like daytime if it's not. But at a big outdoor site like Mount Rushmore, not possible. So they actually had to film during the day there. They would have literally a wall of park rangers kind of acting as a human barrier that sort of followed the production around so that guests couldn't get too close. But yeah, when they walk kind of near the top of Mount Rushmore and everything, that was filmed there. But even guests, like you can't walk up there yourself. It's actually not allowed. We did ask. There was a question up here. Yeah, hi. Thanks for the great conversation. And you have so many different great facts about the book, so the movie as well as the history of that time. Is there something that really blew your mind, the most surprising thing that you learned that you went, oh, my God. Oh, man. So for me it was the Will Smith thing. That's why we put it in there. I think actually one of the things that I was most interested in learning was probably, actually let's do it at the Mount Rushmore stuff. The Mount Rushmore scenes and like the idea of Mount Rushmore and the Declaration of Independence, there's actually a connection there. Mount Rushmore was under consideration to be incorporated into the first movie. The reason for that is because of something called the Hall of Records at Mount Rushmore. Has anyone heard of the Hall of Records? Okay, we have a couple hands. Yeah, so basically Goodson Borglum, who is the sculptor, the main sculptor and architect of Mount Rushmore, he had this idea that he wanted to put a Hall of Records, a vault behind Lincoln's head at Mount Rushmore. Because there was space for it there, of all the heads, there was space for it there. And his idea was to build this vault to store our Charters of Freedom. So like the Declaration that's here, he wanted to put it there. That was his motivation for the Hall of Records. And so the creators had this idea, like what if the real Charters of Freedom were actually there and that could have been part of their story. So that wasn't what ended up happening in the film, obviously. So they kind of kept that in their mind and that's how National Treasure 2 ends up going to Mount Rushmore. For the record, the Hall of Records does exist sort of. They started building it, but it was fairly rudimentary, they didn't finish. And back around the time of Charles as an initial National Treasure idea, the National Park Service at Mount Rushmore would end up taking sort of ceramic versions, ceramic imprints or carvings almost, if you will, of the Charters of Freedom and they will put them in the vault at the Hall of Records. So they're there today. You cannot see them in person, but there is a virtual tour that you can take of the Hall of Records online. So that's probably what I found most interesting. We'll do that one second. Emily, did you have a most surprising? Oh, yeah, I think what I found most surprising was the fact that there was actually not a crypt beneath Parkington Lane. The Parkington Lane crypt is not real. We recently went to Trinity Church actually and got a very nice tour. And I don't know why I kind of assumed that there was maybe not to the extent that there was in the film. But I assumed that there were like underground crypts that you could, and there's not, so. No, that's unfortunate. Yeah, there was a question down here. Hi, yeah, so I was interested in that both of your background is in science, chemistry and in neuroscience, and that's one avenue of research that you clearly have plenty of experience in, but now you're looking at historical fiction and history, and I'm just curious what made you want to go that route for your podcast and that change and pivot for your research explorations? I mean, I think I'll take this one just because, yeah. So as it was mentioned earlier, we both went to Ursinus College, which is a small liberal arts college in Pennsylvania, ironically in a town named Collegeville, even though it's the only college there. And one of the kind of main things that was instilled in us from our freshman year at Ursinus was this idea of taking a kind of liberal arts approach and a multidisciplinary approach to everything. So I mean, all of our time on campus was spent doing, I mean, none of the same things, really, but totally different interdisciplinary things. And we had taken a class that all the freshmen have to take. It's called the Common Intellectual Experience. And in that class, we dove into some ethics and some history as well. And I think that that really is what, when Aubrey pitched the idea to me and pitched it as kind of like, we can kind of go CIE or the Common Intellectual Experience on this, I was just kind of like, no, that sounds good. Yeah, I think we both believe because of our college experience that no discipline can exist without the others, especially in the world that we live today that is so holistic and connected for better or for worse. And so to us, it was just a very natural progression to be like, okay, National Treasure, one of the few things we have in common is a love of National Treasure. How many different ways can we assess and pick apart this movie? And so there's a lot. Yeah, we're just starting our seventh podcast season. It's only two movies. Come on. Thank you for that question. Are there any other questions? Okay, back here. My question is I love both the movies. I love the National Treasure. I love the history. I'm just surprised that they haven't thought of a third one yet. Thank you. All right. I was waiting for this question. So we have had the distinct pleasure of interviewing many members of the National Treasure production team, including director John Turtle Tob. And we actually have, as on our podcast, probably the most recent update on National Treasure 3 that does exist out there. Somehow none of the media outlets have picked off. Rude. So we have it straight from the director. I guess the punchline is we're actually closer to the third film happening than we have ever been before right now. Yes. There is a script. You might have heard a couple of years ago that they hired Chris Bremner to write the most recent script. You might recognize that again from Bad Boys and other very popular films that Jerry Brookheimer is associated with. Chris Bremner did pen a script. There's a slightly modified version. That version recently was said to have gone to Nicholas Cage for his kind of perusal. But as of just a few months, if not weeks ago, this is actually not publicly available knowledge, but another scriptwriter has come on to make some tweaks. That scriptwriter, their name is not out publicly, but someone who is very familiar with the franchise, and so we are very close to a final script. If you had asked me before the WGA Writers Guild strike that started a little over a month or two ago now, if you had asked me before the strike, when do I expect National Treasure III to come out, I would have told you perhaps as early as winter of 2024. Now with the writer strike, it's a little unclear how that will affect things, but I'm very optimistic, you guys. So I think that's a perfect question for us to end on, and I think we are running up on our time. Do we have one more? Okay, one more question. We have time for one more. Hi. So in Edge of History, we got like a legacy character in the form of Sadaski's grandson. I'm wondering if you guys think we're going to get any like other sort of legacy characters, characters who are relatives of our characters from the original films in National Treasure III. We like William Sadaski. Okay. Very possibly. I think, I mean, yeah, now that Sadaski's not here, Liam would be... Spoiler alert? Oh my gosh. I mean, if the show's been out, I'm sorry. Yeah, I think we could get some more legacy characters, but I do know that a lot of the main cast are like interested in coming back. John Turtletop did share with us that they've been grappling with this idea of whether to introduce a child for Ben and Abigail. And that's something that we actually don't know if that will happen, but they've definitely thought about it. I think there's a general sense of like, would that make fans really happy or would it make them really mad? I think Emily would make her really happy. It would make me really mad. So like a good example of the conundrum they're facing. Now it is possible that we see, we could see a character from Edge of History pop up in National Treasure III as well. Now that Edge of History, it was not renewed for a second season, that might make it a little less likely that one of those characters pop up, but we do know they were considering one particular character that I am not at liberty to disclose for a possible National Treasure III appearance. So keep your eyes peeled. And now I think we'll say that that is our conclusion here. Thank you so much. Please feel free to join us out front for book signing if you need to get a copy of the book. You can head up to the gift shop, get one there and we will be at the table shortly. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, you did it before I could do the...