Kryptos
An essay by Richard Byrne. I went to the Smithsonian Institution’s Archive of American Art on September 2, 2025. My friend and colleague Jarett Kobek asked me to do so in late August, when he saw an online auction listing. Jim Sanborn, the creator of the Kryptos statue on
We have been overwhelmed at Richard Byrne Inc. by the whirlwind of front page news surrounding the recovery of the plaintext of the K4 strand of the Kryptos statue in Langley, Virginia. One highlight was the Daily Express labeling Jarett Kobek and myself as "complete amateurs." (The best
In November, I will have been publishing in newspapers and on websites for 40 years. But rarely have I been the subject of news coverage. That changed last Thursday when the New York Times published a story about my small but essential role in the recovery of the "plaintext&
There is no other way to put it: The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) are under attack today. The dry run for the current assault on public health came back in 2020, during the first Trump Administration's failed response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Bleach. Ivermectin. Tent morgues. Great
Recent events have brought home how placing power in the wrong hands can wreak fundamental and comprehensive damage upon a culture, an economy, and a society. Yet this terrible power cannot work its ills upon us without a larger complicity in the project of destruction from a significant number of
Moving is a pain in the butt. No one wants to do it. I have had a free newsletter since 2020. I chose Substack way back then because it was intuitive. The posts looked great. The email function and statistics were amazing. And as a writer who was not seeking