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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to blow your mind. My name

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Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.

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Speaker 1: Time to go into the vault. This time we're gonna

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Speaker 1: be looking at part two of our exploration from December

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Speaker 1: of the Ark of the Covenant myth and uh and

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Speaker 1: some strange historical hypotheses people have had about that. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: In particular, this episode focuses mostly on the idea that,

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Speaker 1: uh that what if the Ark of the Covenant wasn't

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Speaker 1: so much a holy box of divine wrath it was

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Speaker 1: more just a giant battery. This was I remember, I

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Speaker 1: had some of the weirdest stuff we've ever read proposed

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Speaker 1: by Nicola tesla Um. So yeah, anyway, we hope you enjoy.

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Speaker 1: And Nate ab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, took

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Speaker 1: either of them his censer and put fire therein, and

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Speaker 1: put incense there on, and offered strange fire before the Lord,

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Speaker 1: which he commended them not. And there went out fire

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Speaker 1: from the Lord and devoured them, and they died before

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Speaker 1: the Lord. Now the Lord spoke to Moses after the

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Speaker 1: death of the two sons of Aaron, when they had

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Speaker 1: approached the presence of the Lord and died. The Lord

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Speaker 1: said to Moses, tell your brother Aaron that he shall

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Speaker 1: not enter at any time into the Holy Place inside

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Speaker 1: the veil before the mercy seat, which is on the Ark,

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Speaker 1: or he will die, or I will appear in the

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Speaker 1: cloud over the mercy seat. Welcome to Stuff to Blow

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Speaker 1: your Mind from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, welcome

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Speaker 1: to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert

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Speaker 1: Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back for Arc

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Speaker 1: too Electric Boogaloo, our second exploration of a bunch of

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Speaker 1: weird sort of bronze punk, takes on the stories of

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Speaker 1: the Ark of the Covenant from the Hebrew Bible. Right,

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Speaker 1: It's it's kind of perfect because is this is a

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Speaker 1: kind of this is kind of Hanaka content for Stuff

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Speaker 1: to Blow your mind. Oh, I didn't think about the timing. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: we're publishing these episodes the week of Hanaka almost entirely

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Speaker 1: by by by accident, but but a pleasant accident, I

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Speaker 1: would say. So. Last time we talked about the stories

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Speaker 1: about say, the Philistine captivity of the Ark of the

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Speaker 1: Covenant and the immrods and what all that meant. But

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Speaker 1: there is another aspect to the ark of God's story

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Speaker 1: that tends to tempt people into the techno mythology realm.

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Speaker 1: Not only was the Arc said to bring vast destructions

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Speaker 1: and plagues of m rods, there are also these Bible

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Speaker 1: stories that tell of the Arc lashing out with blasts

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Speaker 1: of power that kill offenders in an instant. Uh. And

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Speaker 1: so there are a couple of examples. One is the

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Speaker 1: story we just told about Erin's two sons. We don't

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Speaker 1: get a whole lot of details, but it seems like

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Speaker 1: Erin's two sons entered the presence of the Arc with

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Speaker 1: some kind of strange fire. Essentially that it sounds like

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Speaker 1: they were not doing the rituals of the tavern ackle

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Speaker 1: as they had been commanded. They were doing something incorrect.

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Speaker 1: Fun fact I I actually traveled home and attended a

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Speaker 1: Sunday School class at my mom's church recently, and this

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Speaker 1: was the passage they were discussing really well in the

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Speaker 1: last episode. I thought we were talking about how they

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Speaker 1: almost never bring these stories up in Sunday School, at

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Speaker 1: least when we were kidding. I saw a great example

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Speaker 1: of why. Because it's it's kind of difficult for folks

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Speaker 1: to have a like a casual, real life oriented conversation

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Speaker 1: about a passage like this about the strange fire of

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Speaker 1: the Lord, which apparently sometimes translated is alien fire. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: alien fire. They brought alien fire and the sensors before

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Speaker 1: the Lord, and the Lord did not like it, and

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Speaker 1: he lashed out and struck them dead, consumed them with

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Speaker 1: fire from the mercy seat. Now, before we get into

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Speaker 1: the bronze punk discussions today, we should tell at least

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Speaker 1: one more story of this kind. How about the story

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Speaker 1: of Uza. So remember how the arc was taken to

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Speaker 1: the land of the Philistines. That's one of the stories

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Speaker 1: and Bible about it. The Philistines. Uh, there's a battle

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Speaker 1: and Philistines take the arc and they put it in

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Speaker 1: the temple of Dagon until the arc messes them up

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Speaker 1: and it topples the statue of the god Dagon. And

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Speaker 1: eventually the Philistines repenteth and the Israelites get the arc back.

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Speaker 1: And so when the Israelites under King David are they're

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Speaker 1: bringing the arc back to their land that we get

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Speaker 1: to this passage quote. They placed the Ark of God

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Speaker 1: on a new cart that they might bring it from

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Speaker 1: the house of a ben a Dab, which was on

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Speaker 1: the hill, and Usa and Ahio, the sons of a

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Speaker 1: ben Adab, were leading the new cart, so they brought

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Speaker 1: it with the Ark of God from the house of

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Speaker 1: a ben Adab, which was on the hill, and Ahio

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Speaker 1: was walking ahead of the arc. Meanwhile, David and all

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Speaker 1: the house of Israel were celebrating before the Lord with

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Speaker 1: all kinds of instruments made of fir wood, with liars, harps, tambourines, castanets,

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Speaker 1: and symbols. But when they came to the threshing floor

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Speaker 1: of Nakon, Usa reached out toward the Ark of God

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Speaker 1: and took hold of it. For the oxen nearly upset it,

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Speaker 1: and the anger of the Lord burned against Usa, and

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Speaker 1: God struck him down there for this irreverence, and he

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Speaker 1: died there by the Ark of God. And then there's

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Speaker 1: a story that apparently this place comes to be named

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Speaker 1: what roughly translates to the breakthrough of Usa or the

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Speaker 1: bursting out at Usa, as we discussed at length in

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Speaker 1: the last episode. Uh, if you look at any of

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Speaker 1: these stories of the Ark of the Covenant, or if

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Speaker 1: you look at, of course, in the classic film Raiders

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Speaker 1: of the Lost Arc, you see great depictions of this

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Speaker 1: general fact that the Ark of the Covenant is considered

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Speaker 1: a dangerous item in the stories about it. It is

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Speaker 1: it is a thing that that manifests the presence in

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Speaker 1: the voice of God and uh, and therefore there are

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Speaker 1: a lot of dangers associated with misuse um even even

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Speaker 1: touching it, well, even even well meaning touching. Like the

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Speaker 1: idea here is that Usa wasn't trying to do, you know,

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Speaker 1: a blasphemy to the ark. He just reached out to

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Speaker 1: keep it from falling over because the oxen we're getting

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Speaker 1: all tipped around and so the arc might have fallen

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Speaker 1: on the ground. He reached out to steady it, and

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Speaker 1: that was enough that got him struck dead. So anyway,

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Speaker 1: I think, as with the arc stories that we discussed

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Speaker 1: last time, the most fruitful way of understanding these stories

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Speaker 1: is that they are legendary narratives, not based on actual events,

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Speaker 1: but rather to communicate values by telling a story. And

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Speaker 1: in this case, I think one of the values that's

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Speaker 1: primary here is that the commands of the Lord are

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Speaker 1: to be taken very seriously, and that even deviating from

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Speaker 1: God's commands in an accidental or well meaning way can

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Speaker 1: be met with extremely harsh consequences. Like Aaron's sons, they

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Speaker 1: screw up the rights of the tabernacle by offering alien fire.

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Speaker 1: They burned something in the sensor in a way they

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Speaker 1: weren't supposed to, and they get burned up themselves. USA

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Speaker 1: touches the arc even meaning well, just to prevent it

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Speaker 1: from falling over, and he gets blasted dead. I think

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Speaker 1: the lesson is pretty clear, right, Yeah, It's like it's

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Speaker 1: a basic Dungeons and Dragon's lesson as well. There is

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Speaker 1: a high, high level magical item in your presence, don't

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Speaker 1: touch it, don't don't, don't, don't do anything until you've

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Speaker 1: at least cast a few, you know, provisional spells, just

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Speaker 1: to see what's happening. Right is be very careful with

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Speaker 1: the commands of God to do everything you're told. But

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Speaker 1: in the last episode we discussed the concept of this

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Speaker 1: historical hermoneutic we were calling bronze punk, the desire to

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Speaker 1: for of modern interpreters with a little knowledge about science

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Speaker 1: and technology under their belt to look back at legends

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Speaker 1: like this assume that maybe they're based on some kind

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Speaker 1: of actual event, whether directly or in some exaggerated form,

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Speaker 1: and instead of assuming a magical explanation for the event

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Speaker 1: behind the story postulates some kind of lost world of

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Speaker 1: advanced technology hidden in the dust storms of history, which

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Speaker 1: again is of course risky because this is the place

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Speaker 1: where history and mythology can converge. So it's difficult to

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Speaker 1: really lean too heavily on anything that is described in

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Speaker 1: these stories. But at the same time we can't help

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Speaker 1: but do it right with the great example from the

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Speaker 1: last episode was was looking at the the plague of

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Speaker 1: mice and uh and tumors or emads and trying to

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Speaker 1: figure out, well, as this bubonic plague is that, what

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Speaker 1: is that? What's being described here? That's one of the

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Speaker 1: ways in which the Bronze punk hereameneutic, while not usually

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Speaker 1: a good method of explaining the origins of these legendary

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Speaker 1: tales and myths, does open up some interesting things to

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Speaker 1: consider about the ancient world. Like one of the things

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Speaker 1: we talked about in the last episode was, Okay, it

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Speaker 1: probably does not make sense to say that the legends

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Speaker 1: of the arc are caused by it actually being some

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Speaker 1: ancient bioweapon, But could there have been bioweapons in the

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Speaker 1: ancient world? Was their germ warfare before people had a

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Speaker 1: germ theory of disease, and we decided, you know, it

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Speaker 1: does seem like it's possible that that happened, and there's

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Speaker 1: even some evidence of specific cases where it looks like

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Speaker 1: it happened. Maybe not in this case, And for our

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Speaker 1: purposes here on the show, it's also just a great

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Speaker 1: excuse to talk about some of these things at the

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Speaker 1: end of the episode, and at the end of this

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Speaker 1: episode as well, we're probably gonna say, you know, I

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Speaker 1: don't think we should really um put a lot of

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Speaker 1: faith in this particular idea, but it does forces to

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Speaker 1: ask questions about about the inner workings of the world

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Speaker 1: in ancient times, applying what we know about science today

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Speaker 1: and sort of unwrapping it through an analysis of the past. Well,

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Speaker 1: there's an interesting question that's going to come out of

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Speaker 1: today's episode about what what causes major breakthroughs in the

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Speaker 1: progress of science in history. So we'll get back to

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Speaker 1: that towards the end of the episode. So last time,

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Speaker 1: we talked about the idea who could have been a

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Speaker 1: weapon of germ warfare. That's unlikely, but it's fun to consider. Um,

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Speaker 1: we talked about the pretty much impossible idea that it

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Speaker 1: was a bearer of some sort of radiation hazard. And

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Speaker 1: this has been popular with people like Eric von Danikin

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Speaker 1: and I don't know about him specifically, but some of

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Speaker 1: those ancient aliens. Yeah, anytime where you're like, oh, there's

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Speaker 1: some sort of of of crazy piece of technology. It's

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Speaker 1: a nuclear reactor or something. Uh. And then we of

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Speaker 1: course talked about the psychology of artifacts, like the arc

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Speaker 1: being a focal point for worship and how that affects

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Speaker 1: the altered states of consciousness, the mind and so forth.

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Speaker 1: But today we wanted to explore another very strange bronze

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Speaker 1: punk rabbit trail that many many authors have taken over

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Speaker 1: the years to explain stories like Errand's two Sons in

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Speaker 1: the Story of Uza, these people who are struck dead

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Speaker 1: in the presence of the arc, and that is the

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Speaker 1: idea of the electric arc. Yes, this is this is

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Speaker 1: a pretty fabulous notion because it doesn't really it doesn't

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Speaker 1: depend on aliens, it doesn't depend on any um, you know,

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Speaker 1: the alternative view of the evolution of consciousness or anything.

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Speaker 1: It basically just depends it basically asked questions about like

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Speaker 1: what were the what was the knowledge of electricity at

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Speaker 1: the time, and what were the capabilities and material capabilities

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Speaker 1: in many cases to construct a primitive device? I would

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Speaker 1: like to read with some abridgements, from an article published

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Speaker 1: in the Chicago Daily Tribune March five, ninety three by

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Speaker 1: the Reverend John Evans, called Scientists, says Sacred Box was

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Speaker 1: a condenser. Robert, will you help me read some sections

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Speaker 1: from this? Certainly, would you like to take the beginning here?

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Speaker 1: I shall It was a charge of some ten thousand

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Speaker 1: volts of static electricity, and not the wrath of God

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Speaker 1: that killed Uza when he touched the Ark of the Covenant. Such,

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Speaker 1: at least is the scientific conjecture of Dean Frederick Rogers

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Speaker 1: of the Department of Engineering at Lewis Institute of Technology,

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Speaker 1: concerning the mysterious powers of the Arc, which was not

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Speaker 1: only an object of reverence to the Israelites, but also

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Speaker 1: a troublesome possession. Right. So the article then goes on

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Speaker 1: to tell the story of Usa. As we told before,

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Speaker 1: the arc goes unsteady. Oxen were about to knock it over.

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Speaker 1: He touches it, he gets struck dead. Uh, And Evans writes,

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Speaker 1: quote Professor Rogers made a study of the construction of

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Speaker 1: the arc and discovered. Its design called for a perfectly

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Speaker 1: constructed simple electric condenser or Leiden john Are. And then

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Speaker 1: the article also goes on to tell the story of

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Speaker 1: the construction of the Ark of the Covenant. We talked

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Speaker 1: about that in the last episode. But basically the design

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Speaker 1: specifications are it's a big wooden box with gold on

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Speaker 1: the inside and the outside, and not just any wood

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Speaker 1: at shipham would right, Yeah, it's which I believe is

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Speaker 1: supposed to be the Acacia tree Acacia would uh. They

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Speaker 1: called it ship him wood and it's got gold on

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Speaker 1: the inside, gold on the outside, and then these gold

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Speaker 1: representative figures of Cherubim on the top. So going back

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Speaker 1: to the article, the scientific interest in the construction pointed

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Speaker 1: out by Professor Rogers was that the Acacia would box,

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Speaker 1: about forty inches long and slightly less than thirty inches

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Speaker 1: in width and depth, not only was lined with gold

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Speaker 1: leaf on the inside, but overlaid with the same metal without. This,

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Speaker 1: according to Professor Rodgers, is the first step that any

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Speaker 1: modern boy with a flare for electrical experimentation will take

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Speaker 1: to create a light in jar, and girls don't be

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Speaker 1: discouraged there. You can create ldon jars too. Also, I

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Speaker 1: don't never created a light in jar. I did the

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Speaker 1: potato battery, and that's about as far as I went

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Speaker 1: towards creating the arc. I never even made a potato battery.

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Speaker 1: But I should also say, boys and girls alike, if

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Speaker 1: you are actually constructing a light in jar, do some

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Speaker 1: with with proper safety precautions and adult supervision, because they

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Speaker 1: can actually be dangerous depending on their capacity. But anyway,

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Speaker 1: moving on, except that in a light in jar, a

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Speaker 1: glass receptacle is coated on the inside and the outside

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Speaker 1: with tinfoil instead of gold. Then with the aid of

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Speaker 1: a rod and a small knob at the top, and

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Speaker 1: a short chain at the bottom, which is inserted through

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Speaker 1: the cork so that the chain may make contact with

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Speaker 1: the bottom of the jar, a young experimenter is ready

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Speaker 1: to collect small charges of bottled lightning. Robert, would you

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Speaker 1: like to take over? In the section subtitled a condenser

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Speaker 1: of electricity? But the Ark of the Covenant was a

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Speaker 1: much larger condenser and thought by Professor Rogers to have

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Speaker 1: been capable of collecting death dealing charges. They divined erections

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Speaker 1: called for the creation of two chair, of them pure gold,

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Speaker 1: to be placed on a gold slab or mercy seat

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Speaker 1: atop the arc. These chairbim Professor Rodgers explained what he

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Speaker 1: believes to have been the positive pole of the circuit,

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Speaker 1: similar to the knob on the top of the light

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Speaker 1: and jar. When he was asked how the static charge

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Speaker 1: of electricity got into the arc, Professor Rogers admitted that

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Speaker 1: there was very little accepted authority among scientists concerning the

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Speaker 1: action and control of atmospheric electricity. He explained, however, that

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Speaker 1: it is known among physicists that a difference of potential

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Speaker 1: exists between the Earth and the air, which may be

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Speaker 1: collected in electrical charges under certain favorable conditions. The design

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Speaker 1: of the arc, at least as described in Exodus. Undoubtedly,

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Speaker 1: I love this certainty of people writing about these kinds

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Speaker 1: of kind of hair brained interpretations. Clearly there's no room

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Speaker 1: for for discussion here. That's what it was. Yeah. So

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Speaker 1: the article goes on to state that Rogers believes the

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Speaker 1: arc could have been electrically charged by air currents created

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Speaker 1: by smoke from the burning of incense and sacrifices, which

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Speaker 1: the Bible says often happened close to the arc. He

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Speaker 1: also says this could charge the light in arc enough

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Speaker 1: to allow it to deal fatal bolts of electricity, and

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Speaker 1: he cites a Hebrew commentary tradition that states that quote,

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Speaker 1: the wings of the golden Cherubim not only emitted fire,

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Speaker 1: but also an aura known among electricians as brush glow.

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Speaker 1: The fire emitted by the Cherubim could have been well

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Speaker 1: known electrical arc resulting from overcharge. Professor Rogers beliefs that

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Speaker 1: a number of accounts of destruction attributed by the scriptures

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Speaker 1: to the arc might be explained as being results of

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Speaker 1: purely natural phenomena, and he gives some examples that like

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Speaker 1: we talked about last time, the destruction of the Philistine

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Speaker 1: idol of Dagon quote a divinity supposed to be half

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Speaker 1: fish and half man. And just a side note, apparently

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Speaker 1: that association of the Canaanite god Dagon with fish that

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Speaker 1: I think that is supposed to be exonymic in origin,

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Speaker 1: meaning that the the ancient Hebrews related the name of

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Speaker 1: this god to the Hebrew word for fish. The original

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Speaker 1: Philistine Dagon appears to be more likely some kind of

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Speaker 1: grain and fertility gods. Sorry Lovecraft fans, Oh yeah, that

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Speaker 1: is kind of disappointment, because Dagon, of course is a

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Speaker 1: part of the Lovecraft mythos and uh and and then

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Speaker 1: it's one of those cool gods where you read about

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Speaker 1: it there, then you read about it in the Bible.

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Speaker 1: And if you, like I was, if you were a

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Speaker 1: you know, a high schooler who's who suddenly discovered Lovecraft

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Speaker 1: and then found one of these deities in the Bible

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Speaker 1: as well, it was a pretty awesome moment. Oh. I

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Speaker 1: can't help but think of the creatures of the sea

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Speaker 1: as the children of Dagon. I'm always going to go there,

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Speaker 1: even knowing what I know now that he probably wasn't

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Speaker 1: actually a fish god, right, But at the same time,

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Speaker 1: we do have a lot of We've discussed some tremendous

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Speaker 1: ancient fish gods on the show before, right. But anyway,

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Speaker 1: So they tell the story in the article of this

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Speaker 1: philistine idol repeatedly getting knocked over or off of the arc,

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Speaker 1: and Roger says, quote, if the idol had been constructed

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Speaker 1: out of some poorer metal in combination with wood, an

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Speaker 1: electrical charge arched far below the capacity of the arc

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Speaker 1: would have been enough to have accomplished the destruction. So

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Speaker 1: I think they're saying that the arc could have knocked

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Speaker 1: over the the idol just by discharging electricity. I'm I'm

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Speaker 1: not sure about that, but okay, yeah, I'm gonna try

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Speaker 1: to include some art that I found on the landing

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Speaker 1: page for this episode a stuff to blow your mind

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Speaker 1: dot com, because they are a number of wonderful depictions

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Speaker 1: of like the glowing arc and a top old uh

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Speaker 1: statue of the deity Dagon sometimes with a fish tail

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Speaker 1: that of course is now broken because it fell over

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Speaker 1: and uh and of course this is uh. This kind

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Speaker 1: of thing was was also referenced in Rages of the

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Speaker 1: Lost Arc. Again, that's scene where the Ark of the

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Speaker 1: Covenant burns through the swastika on the crate that contains it. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: like like destroying another false idle. Yeah. Uh. So to continue,

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Speaker 1: and we're getting close to the end of this article,

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Speaker 1: but there's some other good stuff here. So Evans talks

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Speaker 1: about how all these kinds of miracles could be attributed

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Speaker 1: to electricity, and he talks about the tendency of people

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Speaker 1: to attribute, you know, processes they don't understand, to divine intervention.

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Speaker 1: And then he says, thus, if Moses accidentally stumbled upon

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Speaker 1: the principle of the leiden Jar, the device would instantly

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Speaker 1: be accepted as the conveying medium of divine favor or disfavor.

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Speaker 1: Sounds again like a little bit too much certainty in

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Speaker 1: this interpretation here, but the author tells a bunch more

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Speaker 1: stories of the arc, and then also points out that

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Speaker 1: the ark of the Covenant was not the only arc

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Speaker 1: given sacred significance in the ancient world, and he discusses

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Speaker 1: ancient Egyptian arcs, speculating that Moses could have learned about

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Speaker 1: the creation of electrical arcs from the Egyptians when he

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Speaker 1: was growing up in the pharaoh's court. Again, that's that's

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Speaker 1: a nice story, but I think once again the problem

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Speaker 1: is just that it's taking the biblical source at face value.

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Speaker 1: And what's more likely is that the biography of Moses

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Speaker 1: is a legend. But but yeah, there there. He does

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Speaker 1: point out that there are other arc like things in

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Speaker 1: other cultures around the ancient Near East, and and and

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Speaker 1: the Egyptians are a great example, right. But then again

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Speaker 1: we have to come back to perhaps the simpler explanation

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Speaker 1: that an arc like thing is a box. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: and therefore, yes, the technology of box making was very

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Speaker 1: much in effect at the time, right uh. And so finally,

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Speaker 1: Robert do you want to read this very last paragraph here? Certainly,

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Speaker 1: while no historian would engage in such speculation, yet it

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Speaker 1: is the right of any man to fancy that it

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Speaker 1: was in Egypt that the properties of the gold coated

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Speaker 1: box were discovered by some hapless craftsman. He paid for

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Speaker 1: his discovery with his life, but gave his kinsmen a

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Speaker 1: home for a new and powerful god. Okay, so they've

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Speaker 1: got a theory here. Some Egyptian craftsman accidentally discovered how

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Speaker 1: to build alidon Jar by building boxes and covering them

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Speaker 1: with gold, and then that information was transmitted to Moses,

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Speaker 1: and then Moses carried the secret of how to build

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Speaker 1: alidon Jar, and that became the Ark of the Covenant,

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Speaker 1: and thus it gives us all these stories of like

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Speaker 1: people touching it and getting struck dead. Now, I think

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Speaker 1: it would be ridiculous to say that if the arc

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Speaker 1: actually existed, we're assuming something like it may have if

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Speaker 1: it existed, that it was best explained in these terms.

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Speaker 1: But well, I don't think we need to resort to

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Speaker 1: this to explain the Arc legend. I don't find it

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Speaker 1: implausible at all that someone in the ancient world and

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Speaker 1: someone in the ancient Mediterranean could have at some point

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Speaker 1: accidentally created a capacitor, which is what alidon jar is,

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Speaker 1: and that it could have injured or killed people. And

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Speaker 1: that is a really interesting thing to consider, right because

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Speaker 1: not I mean, not only, of course, the the accidental

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Speaker 1: creation of such a thing, but then the recreation such

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Speaker 1: a thing and the utilization of such a thing, either

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Speaker 1: as essentially a tool of divination, like what's going to

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Speaker 1: happen when I touch it? Like a fatal shock, as

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Speaker 1: a no, not dying as yes, you know that that

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Speaker 1: sort of thing, which which a lot of ancient practices

391
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Speaker 1: of religion and even modern practices of religion really boiled

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Speaker 1: down to that give me something to provide an answer

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Speaker 1: for some question I have, or or provide some sort

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Speaker 1: of a random answer to something that I am incapable

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Speaker 1: of generating my own random answer too. Yeah, and again

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Speaker 1: I think it's not hard to believe that that someone

397
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Speaker 1: could have accidentally discovered how to build something like this. Again,

398
00:21:17,760 --> 00:21:21,119
Speaker 1: like the discovery of the actual liden Jar was also

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Speaker 1: accidental somewhat and frightening someone. Maybe we should explore that

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Speaker 1: after a break. Thank alright, we're back. Okay, So we

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Speaker 1: mentioned before the break that in fact, the discovery of

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Speaker 1: the liden Jar itself. We've got these people saying that

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Speaker 1: the Ark of the Covenant was some kind of ancient

404
00:21:39,240 --> 00:21:42,240
Speaker 1: liden Jar, some kind of capacitor or condenser that would

405
00:21:42,280 --> 00:21:45,080
Speaker 1: store up electric charge and then discharge it all at once,

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Speaker 1: maybe killing somebody who touched it in the wrong way. Uh. So,

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Speaker 1: in Set there was this German Lutheran bishop named you all,

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Speaker 1: Georg von Kleist. I've also seen his name represented as

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Speaker 1: you want, Jurgen von Klist. I don't know if those

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00:22:00,200 --> 00:22:03,600
Speaker 1: are variations on the same name or if that's discrepancy.

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Speaker 1: I don't know, but either way, whatever his middle name was,

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Speaker 1: von Kleist was performing experiments with an electrostatic generator. At

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00:22:12,560 --> 00:22:14,760
Speaker 1: the time, this would have been something like the spinning

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00:22:14,880 --> 00:22:18,960
Speaker 1: globe generator of Francis Howkesby or of Benjamin Franklin, which

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00:22:19,040 --> 00:22:23,040
Speaker 1: was essentially like a glass sphere that you would rotate

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Speaker 1: rapidly against a wool cloth by turning a crank, charging

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Speaker 1: the sphere by friction, essentially gathering up electrons from the cloth. Now,

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00:22:32,800 --> 00:22:36,200
Speaker 1: once this principle had been demonstrated, uh, lots of people

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Speaker 1: were messing around with them, and von Kleist had a

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Speaker 1: glass medicine bottle that was filled with liquid. It was

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Speaker 1: water or alcohol, with a cork top and a nail

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Speaker 1: driven through the cork, poking down into the liquid inside.

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Speaker 1: And while he was doing his experiments, Von Kleist held

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Speaker 1: the outside of the bottle with his hand and he

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00:22:56,080 --> 00:22:59,159
Speaker 1: touched the nail to the generator that was, you know,

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Speaker 1: the friction generator. And after charging the inside of the bottle,

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00:23:03,520 --> 00:23:05,280
Speaker 1: he found that when he held the bottle with one

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Speaker 1: hand and touched the nail with his other hand, he

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Speaker 1: received a shock. Why because he just used his body

430
00:23:11,200 --> 00:23:15,439
Speaker 1: to complete a circuit and thus the spark the shock. Yes. Uh.

431
00:23:15,520 --> 00:23:18,800
Speaker 1: And then there's another guy around the same time, Peter

432
00:23:18,960 --> 00:23:22,880
Speaker 1: van mussen Brook of Leiden, Holland, who discovered the same

433
00:23:22,960 --> 00:23:26,160
Speaker 1: principle the following year, which is where the Lyden jar

434
00:23:26,280 --> 00:23:28,680
Speaker 1: gets its name. It's it's spelled like l e y

435
00:23:28,840 --> 00:23:31,399
Speaker 1: d e N. But I think Leiden Holland is with

436
00:23:31,560 --> 00:23:33,920
Speaker 1: like an ei, so I'm saying Lyden. I've heard people

437
00:23:33,960 --> 00:23:35,920
Speaker 1: say Leyden. I think I read it in my mind

438
00:23:36,080 --> 00:23:38,200
Speaker 1: is laden for years and years I may have said

439
00:23:38,280 --> 00:23:40,639
Speaker 1: laid in the past. Whichever way it is, I'm going

440
00:23:40,720 --> 00:23:42,639
Speaker 1: to be saying, lyden. If you don't like that, you

441
00:23:42,720 --> 00:23:48,000
Speaker 1: can email and complain. So von mussen Bruck was able

442
00:23:48,160 --> 00:23:51,760
Speaker 1: to charge up a glass jar full of water with

443
00:23:51,920 --> 00:23:54,800
Speaker 1: a metal rod plunging inside it. And he also discovered

444
00:23:54,880 --> 00:23:57,119
Speaker 1: that when you touched the rod while holding the outside

445
00:23:57,119 --> 00:24:00,320
Speaker 1: of the jar, you got this terrific shock. So the

446
00:24:00,400 --> 00:24:04,520
Speaker 1: principle here is the one of creating this electrical potential difference.

447
00:24:04,600 --> 00:24:06,800
Speaker 1: You know, by charging it up in this way and

448
00:24:06,920 --> 00:24:10,040
Speaker 1: having the insulator of the glass there between the inside

449
00:24:10,080 --> 00:24:13,439
Speaker 1: and the outside, you're creating this difference potential where one

450
00:24:13,480 --> 00:24:16,159
Speaker 1: side is positively charged, one side is negatively charged, and

451
00:24:16,240 --> 00:24:19,200
Speaker 1: they desperately want to equalize. And whenever you complete that

452
00:24:19,280 --> 00:24:22,760
Speaker 1: circuit circuit, they will equalize. And if you are the

453
00:24:22,840 --> 00:24:26,000
Speaker 1: thing that completes that circuit, that equalization can be unpleasant

454
00:24:26,080 --> 00:24:27,600
Speaker 1: for you. It can be bad for your body. Now

455
00:24:27,680 --> 00:24:30,800
Speaker 1: let's talk about how unpleasant because uh, we we experience

456
00:24:30,920 --> 00:24:33,040
Speaker 1: static shock all the time, especially during the winter in

457
00:24:33,080 --> 00:24:35,159
Speaker 1: our modern world. My son and I when we go

458
00:24:35,240 --> 00:24:37,240
Speaker 1: to a playground, we always do this thing called electric

459
00:24:37,359 --> 00:24:40,040
Speaker 1: high five where if there's if there's you know, static

460
00:24:40,080 --> 00:24:43,240
Speaker 1: electricity is generated when he goes down the slide because

461
00:24:43,840 --> 00:24:46,119
Speaker 1: because of friction, I wait at the bottom and he

462
00:24:46,160 --> 00:24:48,919
Speaker 1: gives me a high five, and sometimes there is an

463
00:24:48,920 --> 00:24:51,720
Speaker 1: alarming shock to it, like it's it's it's pretty intense,

464
00:24:51,800 --> 00:24:54,320
Speaker 1: but it's fun, right, It's not something that I would

465
00:24:54,320 --> 00:24:58,199
Speaker 1: attribute to the to the wrath of of of an

466
00:24:58,240 --> 00:25:01,159
Speaker 1: ancient god. When he goes down slide, he's becoming an

467
00:25:01,200 --> 00:25:05,320
Speaker 1: electrostatic generator and you, you are the You are the

468
00:25:05,400 --> 00:25:08,840
Speaker 1: ground terminal. So yeah, the question though, is could that

469
00:25:08,960 --> 00:25:13,520
Speaker 1: high five be dangerous or fatal? You bet? Actually, well,

470
00:25:13,600 --> 00:25:16,960
Speaker 1: not on the slide, but given given how much charge

471
00:25:17,000 --> 00:25:21,320
Speaker 1: you could store up under various circumstances, yeah, it's entirely possible.

472
00:25:21,440 --> 00:25:24,560
Speaker 1: Van Musson Brook reportedly said I would not take a

473
00:25:24,640 --> 00:25:28,640
Speaker 1: second shock for the Kingdom of France. And Benjamin Franklin,

474
00:25:28,720 --> 00:25:30,480
Speaker 1: We've talked about this on the show before, but the

475
00:25:30,840 --> 00:25:34,840
Speaker 1: year old American hero Benjamin Franklin, hanging out in Philadelphia,

476
00:25:35,080 --> 00:25:38,600
Speaker 1: loved experimenting with light in jars. He began to get

477
00:25:39,200 --> 00:25:42,359
Speaker 1: more power by chaining them together in a circuit so

478
00:25:42,520 --> 00:25:45,600
Speaker 1: that their combined capacity could be discharged all at the

479
00:25:45,640 --> 00:25:49,200
Speaker 1: same time, giving even more power, and Franklin kind of

480
00:25:49,280 --> 00:25:51,879
Speaker 1: turned into a mad scientist in this regard, he became

481
00:25:51,960 --> 00:25:56,159
Speaker 1: temporarily enthralled with the idea of using the powerful shock

482
00:25:56,320 --> 00:26:01,320
Speaker 1: from this parade of jars to deal lethal shocks to animals.

483
00:26:01,480 --> 00:26:03,800
Speaker 1: And he compared this row of lden jars all strung

484
00:26:03,920 --> 00:26:08,080
Speaker 1: together to a battery of cannons or military artillery, giving

485
00:26:08,200 --> 00:26:10,439
Speaker 1: us the term we still used today for a slightly

486
00:26:10,560 --> 00:26:13,920
Speaker 1: different form of storage for electrical potential. The battery is

487
00:26:14,000 --> 00:26:17,160
Speaker 1: like a you know, it's a battery. In the seventeen forties,

488
00:26:17,200 --> 00:26:19,359
Speaker 1: Benjamin Franklin told a friend of his that he had

489
00:26:19,400 --> 00:26:22,680
Speaker 1: figured out that the discharge of two lden jars was

490
00:26:22,800 --> 00:26:26,840
Speaker 1: quote sufficient to kill common hens outright. He even said

491
00:26:26,880 --> 00:26:29,960
Speaker 1: that since the electric shock killed so quickly, it might

492
00:26:30,080 --> 00:26:34,080
Speaker 1: become a more humane way of slaughter for butchers, so

493
00:26:34,240 --> 00:26:36,720
Speaker 1: that the birds that they butchered suffered less. And he

494
00:26:36,800 --> 00:26:40,560
Speaker 1: proposed that a butcher could kill a turkey by stringing

495
00:26:40,640 --> 00:26:44,119
Speaker 1: together six Lden jars into a battery, and then tied

496
00:26:44,200 --> 00:26:46,960
Speaker 1: the chain, which was one terminal, around the turkey's legs,

497
00:26:47,359 --> 00:26:49,760
Speaker 1: and then lift the turkey so that its head touched

498
00:26:49,840 --> 00:26:52,600
Speaker 1: the other terminal. Whether or not this was actually more

499
00:26:52,720 --> 00:26:56,000
Speaker 1: humane as a method of butchery. It probably wasn't the

500
00:26:56,080 --> 00:26:59,879
Speaker 1: safest method for butchers to use, because when Franklin himself

501
00:27:00,359 --> 00:27:02,399
Speaker 1: was trying to perform experiments like this, like there was

502
00:27:02,440 --> 00:27:04,840
Speaker 1: a time he wanted to have a turkey barbecue where

503
00:27:04,880 --> 00:27:08,560
Speaker 1: he was trying to kill turkeys with liden jars, he

504
00:27:08,800 --> 00:27:11,720
Speaker 1: ended up accidentally shocking himself horribly and he was like

505
00:27:11,880 --> 00:27:14,879
Speaker 1: knocked back and he felt bruised for days. Uh he

506
00:27:15,040 --> 00:27:17,359
Speaker 1: and he explicitly said that he was afraid that a

507
00:27:17,400 --> 00:27:20,280
Speaker 1: blow like that could easily kill a man. Yeah, I mean,

508
00:27:20,359 --> 00:27:22,879
Speaker 1: Benjamin Franklin here is really sounding like a man who

509
00:27:22,920 --> 00:27:27,040
Speaker 1: has never observed, who has never watched someone who knows

510
00:27:27,119 --> 00:27:30,280
Speaker 1: what they're doing kill a chicken or a duck, because

511
00:27:30,359 --> 00:27:34,040
Speaker 1: generally it is just I've seen like food documentaries where

512
00:27:34,040 --> 00:27:38,359
Speaker 1: you see like a loving, caring a duck farmer just

513
00:27:38,960 --> 00:27:40,760
Speaker 1: you know, one second they're holding the duck and then

514
00:27:40,800 --> 00:27:43,240
Speaker 1: it's like just a quick twist of the wrist and

515
00:27:43,320 --> 00:27:46,120
Speaker 1: they've rung its neck and it's dead. Yes, far better

516
00:27:46,200 --> 00:27:49,320
Speaker 1: than risking your own death. And it's like burning the

517
00:27:49,400 --> 00:27:51,400
Speaker 1: house down in the process. Well, and then it didn't

518
00:27:51,440 --> 00:27:53,440
Speaker 1: even always work, because he said so he was trying

519
00:27:53,520 --> 00:27:56,200
Speaker 1: to instantly and humanely kill turkeys this way, but he

520
00:27:56,240 --> 00:27:58,880
Speaker 1: would like knock them unconscious and sometimes they'd come back,

521
00:27:59,040 --> 00:28:02,440
Speaker 1: they'd be kind of woozed. Uh. It just sounds horrible,

522
00:28:02,680 --> 00:28:06,400
Speaker 1: what are you doing, Ben? But anyway, so eventually people

523
00:28:06,440 --> 00:28:09,320
Speaker 1: figured out that there are multiple ways of constructing alidon jar.

524
00:28:09,440 --> 00:28:12,520
Speaker 1: You can make one with a simple conductive foil on

525
00:28:12,640 --> 00:28:15,879
Speaker 1: the inside and the outside of a glass jar, or

526
00:28:16,000 --> 00:28:18,480
Speaker 1: you can make one with water on the inside. In

527
00:28:18,640 --> 00:28:21,240
Speaker 1: the eighteenth century, it became common to cram the inside

528
00:28:21,280 --> 00:28:23,879
Speaker 1: of the jar with gold leaf, and they're just a

529
00:28:23,960 --> 00:28:25,560
Speaker 1: bunch of ways to do it. But essentially what you

530
00:28:25,640 --> 00:28:28,240
Speaker 1: need is a thin layer of what's known as a dielectric,

531
00:28:28,359 --> 00:28:32,720
Speaker 1: which is an insulating non conductive material like glass, with

532
00:28:32,840 --> 00:28:35,520
Speaker 1: a way of charging up the potential difference between the

533
00:28:35,600 --> 00:28:39,440
Speaker 1: conductors on each side of that dielectric layer. You've got

534
00:28:39,480 --> 00:28:41,920
Speaker 1: the negative charge on the inside and the positive charge

535
00:28:41,960 --> 00:28:45,560
Speaker 1: on the outside. And so back to the idea of

536
00:28:45,760 --> 00:28:48,640
Speaker 1: of our friend professor Frederick Rodgers. He was saying, Okay,

537
00:28:49,160 --> 00:28:52,360
Speaker 1: that's how the arc is working. Right. You've got dielectric,

538
00:28:52,440 --> 00:28:55,960
Speaker 1: which is the wood, and then you've got the gold layering,

539
00:28:56,040 --> 00:28:58,360
Speaker 1: the gold plating on the inside and on the outside,

540
00:28:58,400 --> 00:29:00,840
Speaker 1: and those are forming the conductive foils like in a

541
00:29:00,920 --> 00:29:03,240
Speaker 1: liden jar. All you really need is like a way

542
00:29:03,280 --> 00:29:06,640
Speaker 1: of charging up the inside and having that potential difference.

543
00:29:06,880 --> 00:29:10,600
Speaker 1: And it's very possible that you have a lethal electro

544
00:29:10,720 --> 00:29:14,320
Speaker 1: static discharge machine capable of killing people who touch it

545
00:29:14,400 --> 00:29:18,520
Speaker 1: the wrong way. Now, our friend professor Frederick Rogers, who oh,

546
00:29:18,600 --> 00:29:23,280
Speaker 1: I just realized he's Fred Rogers, this is Mr Rogers. Well,

547
00:29:23,520 --> 00:29:26,240
Speaker 1: it's a beautiful day in the neighborhood, a beautiful day

548
00:29:26,280 --> 00:29:30,520
Speaker 1: for electrocution. Uh So, Mr Rogers wasn't the first person

549
00:29:31,000 --> 00:29:33,360
Speaker 1: to propose that the arc was a capacitor or a

550
00:29:33,440 --> 00:29:37,440
Speaker 1: liden jar. Actually found earlier evidence of different versions of

551
00:29:37,480 --> 00:29:40,120
Speaker 1: this theory, including one from one of my favorite discourse

552
00:29:40,200 --> 00:29:46,080
Speaker 1: communities of all time, late nineteenth century American Spiritualism. Remember

553
00:29:46,120 --> 00:29:49,480
Speaker 1: our old friend John Murray Spear, of course, Yes, yeah,

554
00:29:49,600 --> 00:29:53,600
Speaker 1: the spiritualist agitator for the spirit Land building that tremendous

555
00:29:53,760 --> 00:29:56,000
Speaker 1: contraption that was going to was was that a radio

556
00:29:56,080 --> 00:29:58,440
Speaker 1: for speaking to God? Yes? Essentially, I mean it was

557
00:29:58,640 --> 00:30:02,000
Speaker 1: very complicated his theology about that. But John Murray Spear

558
00:30:02,120 --> 00:30:05,400
Speaker 1: was a spiritualist who thought he was getting messages from

559
00:30:05,640 --> 00:30:08,600
Speaker 1: the spirits of the dead telling him how to build

560
00:30:08,640 --> 00:30:12,600
Speaker 1: an electro mechanical Messiah called the New Motor, which would

561
00:30:12,600 --> 00:30:15,080
Speaker 1: be a channel for the new motive power, which was

562
00:30:15,200 --> 00:30:18,920
Speaker 1: God's energy poured into the universe through the lens of

563
00:30:19,000 --> 00:30:22,160
Speaker 1: the Sun, which would be enlightening and would cause wisdom

564
00:30:22,320 --> 00:30:25,400
Speaker 1: and a new human that would be created by essentially,

565
00:30:25,600 --> 00:30:27,920
Speaker 1: what this machine was was like a coffee table with

566
00:30:28,040 --> 00:30:29,840
Speaker 1: like a bunch of metal stuff on top of it.

567
00:30:30,080 --> 00:30:32,640
Speaker 1: I remember looking at illustrations of this and it was

568
00:30:32,760 --> 00:30:35,280
Speaker 1: no arc, that's for certain. I remember exactly what you

569
00:30:35,360 --> 00:30:37,480
Speaker 1: said about it, which is that you said it looked

570
00:30:37,600 --> 00:30:42,520
Speaker 1: like if a coffee table mate it with a dalek. Yeah. Yeah,

571
00:30:42,560 --> 00:30:45,040
Speaker 1: it's pretty much what it looked like. No chair of him.

572
00:30:45,320 --> 00:30:49,200
Speaker 1: But anyway, I think we should explore some spiritualist bronze punk.

573
00:30:49,600 --> 00:30:52,360
Speaker 1: So I wasn't able to find an original version of

574
00:30:52,440 --> 00:30:54,560
Speaker 1: this article, but I want to talk about an article

575
00:30:54,640 --> 00:30:59,440
Speaker 1: that's reproduced in a book by the spiritualist author Moses Hull.

576
00:31:00,240 --> 00:31:03,200
Speaker 1: Whole quotes the entirety of this article, which was published

577
00:31:03,240 --> 00:31:06,480
Speaker 1: sometime in the eighteen nineties and a spiritualist periodical called

578
00:31:06,800 --> 00:31:10,000
Speaker 1: The Progressive Thinker, which has a great little subtitle, it's

579
00:31:10,120 --> 00:31:14,360
Speaker 1: science supplemented by an exalted morality, the Bible of the future.

580
00:31:15,320 --> 00:31:18,960
Speaker 1: And so you've got all these strange currents in nineteenth

581
00:31:19,000 --> 00:31:22,840
Speaker 1: century American spiritualism, which as in this case, often featured

582
00:31:22,920 --> 00:31:26,400
Speaker 1: like a combination of belief in the existence of spirits

583
00:31:26,560 --> 00:31:29,719
Speaker 1: and our ability to receive communications from them, but then

584
00:31:29,760 --> 00:31:34,120
Speaker 1: also like progressive politics, often abolition of slavery, women's suffrage,

585
00:31:34,200 --> 00:31:37,560
Speaker 1: that kind of thing, a kind of futuristic embrace of

586
00:31:37,680 --> 00:31:43,120
Speaker 1: scientific and technological progress, skepticism about some traditional doctrines of

587
00:31:43,200 --> 00:31:48,160
Speaker 1: religion while still embracing others. Given all this kind of stuff,

588
00:31:48,280 --> 00:31:51,120
Speaker 1: it's not surprising to me that spiritualist authors would be

589
00:31:51,160 --> 00:31:54,760
Speaker 1: embracing an electrical theory of the arc legend. They sometimes

590
00:31:54,840 --> 00:31:58,959
Speaker 1: had this sort of rationalism supernaturalism hybrid that made them

591
00:31:59,000 --> 00:32:01,800
Speaker 1: want to read the Bible as in some ways literally

592
00:32:01,880 --> 00:32:05,440
Speaker 1: true and in other ways like revealing hints of technologies

593
00:32:05,520 --> 00:32:09,040
Speaker 1: that we would later discover, maybe through the revelations of spirits.

594
00:32:09,120 --> 00:32:12,280
Speaker 1: Like remember John murray Spears belief that he was getting

595
00:32:12,320 --> 00:32:16,160
Speaker 1: messages from the Association of Electrizers. Who were these people

596
00:32:16,240 --> 00:32:18,760
Speaker 1: like Benjamin Franklin and all these dead people who were

597
00:32:19,040 --> 00:32:22,560
Speaker 1: giving him technological messages from beyond the grave. But anyway,

598
00:32:22,680 --> 00:32:24,960
Speaker 1: let's look at this article from the Progressive Thinker. So

599
00:32:25,400 --> 00:32:28,200
Speaker 1: the the author of this article says, there is nothing

600
00:32:28,280 --> 00:32:30,320
Speaker 1: new on the face of the earth, and there is

601
00:32:30,360 --> 00:32:33,480
Speaker 1: no doubt that electricity was well known to the Israelites

602
00:32:33,520 --> 00:32:36,560
Speaker 1: and probably to the Phoenicians. Again, no doubt. Why why

603
00:32:36,600 --> 00:32:40,160
Speaker 1: is it always no doubt uncertainty? We'll come back to

604
00:32:40,280 --> 00:32:43,600
Speaker 1: that particular question. Because on one hand, yes, there was

605
00:32:43,680 --> 00:32:47,480
Speaker 1: some knowledge of electricity, but was it working. I don't

606
00:32:47,480 --> 00:32:50,240
Speaker 1: know if we know that it was known to the Israelites. Yeah,

607
00:32:50,280 --> 00:32:53,480
Speaker 1: because I mean I have to admit I don't really

608
00:32:53,560 --> 00:32:57,160
Speaker 1: know what the what the weather, weather patterns are necessarily

609
00:32:57,320 --> 00:33:00,200
Speaker 1: like uh, in the Middle Middle East, like it to

610
00:33:00,280 --> 00:33:04,160
Speaker 1: what extent lightning is observed, But the observation of lightning

611
00:33:04,240 --> 00:33:09,600
Speaker 1: would be one slight level of knowledge of electricity, not necessarily,

612
00:33:09,640 --> 00:33:11,760
Speaker 1: I mean, not a working knowledge. You can look at

613
00:33:11,800 --> 00:33:14,400
Speaker 1: at a lightning storm, you can be impressed by it

614
00:33:14,520 --> 00:33:16,640
Speaker 1: and have no idea what it is. Sure given a

615
00:33:16,680 --> 00:33:19,880
Speaker 1: broad definition, okay, yeah, yeah, uh. And there's certainly what

616
00:33:20,000 --> 00:33:22,320
Speaker 1: the Greeks knew, which we'll get to a little bit.

617
00:33:22,760 --> 00:33:25,560
Speaker 1: So The author explains the story of the construction of

618
00:33:25,600 --> 00:33:27,880
Speaker 1: the arc, points out that the special type of wood

619
00:33:28,120 --> 00:33:31,040
Speaker 1: that was that was used to build the arc. They say, quote,

620
00:33:31,600 --> 00:33:34,720
Speaker 1: was this choice accidental on account of the great value

621
00:33:34,760 --> 00:33:37,480
Speaker 1: of the resinous would or was it in the choice

622
00:33:37,560 --> 00:33:40,760
Speaker 1: of the best known nonconductor among the great number of

623
00:33:40,920 --> 00:33:44,960
Speaker 1: various timbers. I don't know if that is correct. I

624
00:33:45,320 --> 00:33:49,000
Speaker 1: sort of doubt that premise, but you know who knows um.

625
00:33:49,200 --> 00:33:51,960
Speaker 1: I was wondering, is would a good insulator? And I

626
00:33:52,080 --> 00:33:54,800
Speaker 1: looked this up. It basically depends on factors about the

627
00:33:54,840 --> 00:33:56,760
Speaker 1: wood itself, such as the type of wood and the

628
00:33:56,800 --> 00:34:00,760
Speaker 1: moisture content. So, of course, the author points out correctly

629
00:34:00,840 --> 00:34:02,960
Speaker 1: that it is said that the inside and outside of

630
00:34:03,000 --> 00:34:05,440
Speaker 1: the arc were covered in beaten gold, and that this

631
00:34:05,600 --> 00:34:07,920
Speaker 1: is a good conductor of electricity. It is true that

632
00:34:08,000 --> 00:34:11,279
Speaker 1: gold is a good conductor of electricity. Quote. So much

633
00:34:11,400 --> 00:34:14,120
Speaker 1: is certain that if Edison or Tesla had lived in

634
00:34:14,239 --> 00:34:17,200
Speaker 1: those days, they could not have improved upon the choice

635
00:34:17,239 --> 00:34:20,480
Speaker 1: of material, and the result was a powerful leiden Jar.

636
00:34:20,800 --> 00:34:23,320
Speaker 1: I think they actually could have improved on it. For instance,

637
00:34:23,400 --> 00:34:26,560
Speaker 1: silver is an even better conductor than gold. Also, Sarah

638
00:34:26,640 --> 00:34:29,560
Speaker 1: the them a higher rank of angel saying they could

639
00:34:29,600 --> 00:34:34,440
Speaker 1: go from Cherban oh Toche. So the author also claims

640
00:34:34,480 --> 00:34:37,280
Speaker 1: that the arc was charged by the smoke of burnt offerings,

641
00:34:37,320 --> 00:34:40,240
Speaker 1: which is the same thing Roger said. Uh. The author

642
00:34:40,320 --> 00:34:43,640
Speaker 1: says that after Moses died, others improved upon the design

643
00:34:43,719 --> 00:34:46,080
Speaker 1: of the electrical arc by placing it in a temple

644
00:34:46,520 --> 00:34:49,120
Speaker 1: surrounded by a hundred and fifty foot poles covered in

645
00:34:49,200 --> 00:34:52,480
Speaker 1: gold to charge the arc with electrical storms. And then

646
00:34:52,560 --> 00:34:54,279
Speaker 1: we get to my favorite part, which is that the

647
00:34:54,360 --> 00:34:58,360
Speaker 1: author says that he essentially implies that Aaron in the

648
00:34:58,440 --> 00:35:02,320
Speaker 1: Bible stories used the arc as a murder weapon. Robert,

649
00:35:02,320 --> 00:35:04,760
Speaker 1: would you like to read this passage? I've got here, certainly,

650
00:35:05,480 --> 00:35:07,319
Speaker 1: and we'll just pretend that we threw in the law

651
00:35:07,360 --> 00:35:10,000
Speaker 1: and order sound effect right here, or maybe maybe we

652
00:35:10,040 --> 00:35:13,640
Speaker 1: can do that. I don't know. We'll see any coroner's

653
00:35:13,719 --> 00:35:16,600
Speaker 1: jury of today if it were to sit on an

654
00:35:16,680 --> 00:35:20,520
Speaker 1: inquest over the bodies of Aaron's sons, would it once

655
00:35:20,640 --> 00:35:25,160
Speaker 1: bring a verdict of death by discharge of electricity. Aaron

656
00:35:25,239 --> 00:35:28,360
Speaker 1: knew this power, and to make it effective. All he

657
00:35:28,520 --> 00:35:31,920
Speaker 1: had to do to deal death from this apparatus was

658
00:35:32,000 --> 00:35:35,720
Speaker 1: to remove the costly camel's hair carpet, which are almost

659
00:35:35,800 --> 00:35:39,720
Speaker 1: perfect non conductors of electricity and make the culprit stand

660
00:35:39,920 --> 00:35:44,000
Speaker 1: on terra FIRMA death would result instantly by fire breaking

661
00:35:44,040 --> 00:35:46,960
Speaker 1: out and leave no wounds or burns to account for

662
00:35:47,080 --> 00:35:51,000
Speaker 1: his death. That several members of revolting tribes of israel

663
00:35:51,080 --> 00:35:54,560
Speaker 1: Lites were thus electrocuted is also a matter of record

664
00:35:54,719 --> 00:35:58,360
Speaker 1: in the Bible. I wouldn't call them revolting necessarily. That

665
00:35:58,480 --> 00:36:02,960
Speaker 1: seems a little harsh. Oh means rebel, Yes, that is

666
00:36:03,360 --> 00:36:07,800
Speaker 1: again matter of record. It is just a certainty. What

667
00:36:08,040 --> 00:36:10,040
Speaker 1: what is with this? Well, I mean there's probably a

668
00:36:10,080 --> 00:36:12,680
Speaker 1: lot to unpack their interns. I mean, we haven't packed

669
00:36:12,680 --> 00:36:15,799
Speaker 1: this to a certain extent, uh, for instance, looking at

670
00:36:15,880 --> 00:36:18,880
Speaker 1: the uh the Great flood and the idea of a

671
00:36:18,920 --> 00:36:21,480
Speaker 1: biblical great flood and its effect on the study of

672
00:36:21,560 --> 00:36:24,360
Speaker 1: geology for so long, you know, I mean, the the

673
00:36:24,480 --> 00:36:29,279
Speaker 1: Biblical record as it was uh certainly influenced even scientific

674
00:36:29,600 --> 00:36:32,160
Speaker 1: understanding of the world for for quite a while. Well,

675
00:36:32,200 --> 00:36:34,320
Speaker 1: I just think it's so interesting that you've got this

676
00:36:34,560 --> 00:36:37,640
Speaker 1: weird hybrid approach of looking at the Bible here where

677
00:36:37,680 --> 00:36:41,080
Speaker 1: the person is saying, I'm going to question and interrogate

678
00:36:41,200 --> 00:36:43,960
Speaker 1: the source of this power. But I'm going to absolutely

679
00:36:44,040 --> 00:36:46,600
Speaker 1: take the story at face value except where it sort

680
00:36:46,640 --> 00:36:49,399
Speaker 1: of doesn't really match what I'm saying. But also I'm

681
00:36:49,400 --> 00:36:51,800
Speaker 1: going to take God completely out of the equation or

682
00:36:51,840 --> 00:36:54,320
Speaker 1: replace it with a device. But I'm also going to

683
00:36:54,400 --> 00:36:58,839
Speaker 1: treat the text this, uh, this translated text as if

684
00:36:58,960 --> 00:37:02,360
Speaker 1: it is a pleet historical records, as if it's just

685
00:37:02,440 --> 00:37:05,480
Speaker 1: a security cam footage of the Ark of the Covenant. Yeah,

686
00:37:05,480 --> 00:37:08,600
Speaker 1: that is exactly what I was, maybe inarticulately trying to say.

687
00:37:09,000 --> 00:37:11,480
Speaker 1: And then they in the article by saying, Franklin, the

688
00:37:11,560 --> 00:37:13,600
Speaker 1: electric chair in the state of New York, and the

689
00:37:13,680 --> 00:37:15,880
Speaker 1: discovery of the light in Jar itself in light in

690
00:37:15,960 --> 00:37:19,600
Speaker 1: Germany are all back numbers. History only repeats itself, whether

691
00:37:19,719 --> 00:37:22,319
Speaker 1: recorded or not. And then here's a here's an even

692
00:37:22,360 --> 00:37:25,960
Speaker 1: crazier one. It seems that none other than Nicola Tesla

693
00:37:26,520 --> 00:37:30,120
Speaker 1: toyed with this idea as well. In a nineteen fifteen

694
00:37:30,280 --> 00:37:33,640
Speaker 1: essay called The wonder World to be Created by Electricity,

695
00:37:34,120 --> 00:37:37,880
Speaker 1: Tesla wrote, the superstitious belief of the ancients, if it

696
00:37:37,960 --> 00:37:40,880
Speaker 1: existed at all, can therefore not be taken as a

697
00:37:40,960 --> 00:37:44,239
Speaker 1: reliable proof of their ignorance. But just how much they

698
00:37:44,320 --> 00:37:48,320
Speaker 1: knew about electricity can only be conjectured. A curious fact

699
00:37:48,480 --> 00:37:51,400
Speaker 1: is that the ray or torpedo fish was used by

700
00:37:51,440 --> 00:37:56,520
Speaker 1: them in electrotherapy. Some old coins show twins, stars, or sparks,

701
00:37:56,920 --> 00:38:00,680
Speaker 1: such as might be produced by a galvanic battery. The records,

702
00:38:00,760 --> 00:38:02,960
Speaker 1: though scanty, are of a nature to fill us with

703
00:38:03,120 --> 00:38:06,320
Speaker 1: conviction that a few initiated at least had a deeper

704
00:38:06,440 --> 00:38:11,200
Speaker 1: knowledge of amber phenomena. To mention one, Moses was undoubtedly

705
00:38:11,239 --> 00:38:15,000
Speaker 1: a practical and skillful electrician, far in advance of his time.

706
00:38:15,160 --> 00:38:20,759
Speaker 1: Undoubtedly the Bible describes precisely and minutely arrangements constituting a

707
00:38:20,960 --> 00:38:24,960
Speaker 1: machine in which electricity was generated by friction of air

708
00:38:25,400 --> 00:38:29,320
Speaker 1: against silk curtains and stored in a box constructed like

709
00:38:29,440 --> 00:38:32,680
Speaker 1: a condenser. It is very plausible to assume that the

710
00:38:32,760 --> 00:38:36,560
Speaker 1: sons of Aaron were killed by a high tension discharge,

711
00:38:36,840 --> 00:38:39,719
Speaker 1: and that the vestal fires of the Romans were electrical.

712
00:38:40,200 --> 00:38:42,800
Speaker 1: The belt drive must have been known to engineers of

713
00:38:42,920 --> 00:38:45,239
Speaker 1: that epoch, and it is difficult to see how the

714
00:38:45,320 --> 00:38:49,480
Speaker 1: abundant evolution of static electricity could have escaped their notice.

715
00:38:49,760 --> 00:38:52,279
Speaker 1: The words of Nicola Tesla impressive, I had no idea

716
00:38:52,360 --> 00:38:56,080
Speaker 1: that he ever commented on this again is certainly undoubtedly,

717
00:38:56,640 --> 00:38:58,560
Speaker 1: and then more recently, of course, the idea of the

718
00:38:58,640 --> 00:39:01,480
Speaker 1: electric arc as. I think we've mentioned this at the beginning.

719
00:39:01,520 --> 00:39:03,719
Speaker 1: If not, you will not be surprised to learn that

720
00:39:03,880 --> 00:39:06,760
Speaker 1: it seems popular with people operating in the ancient alien

721
00:39:06,880 --> 00:39:10,719
Speaker 1: cinematic universe. Eric van dani Can claimed this, while also

722
00:39:10,840 --> 00:39:13,200
Speaker 1: claiming that it was as part of his whole ancient

723
00:39:13,239 --> 00:39:16,840
Speaker 1: alien technology thing. It was. It was alien gift motif.

724
00:39:17,400 --> 00:39:19,400
Speaker 1: I think he said that it was like a radio.

725
00:39:19,640 --> 00:39:23,640
Speaker 1: Somebody said that it was a nuclear reactor. I know Rile,

726
00:39:23,760 --> 00:39:26,320
Speaker 1: the founder of the Aliens, had some idea that it

727
00:39:26,440 --> 00:39:28,759
Speaker 1: was a nuclear reactor or something like that. But to

728
00:39:28,880 --> 00:39:30,719
Speaker 1: what end, What good does it do to have a

729
00:39:30,840 --> 00:39:34,640
Speaker 1: nuclear reactor and just trot it about the desert. I'm

730
00:39:34,680 --> 00:39:37,640
Speaker 1: not sure that it does, because really the whole point

731
00:39:37,800 --> 00:39:41,560
Speaker 1: what makes this subject actually interesting is that building a

732
00:39:41,719 --> 00:39:45,640
Speaker 1: form of a capacitor is technically possible for the ancients

733
00:39:46,080 --> 00:39:50,040
Speaker 1: without supposing any kind of alien nonsense or intervention. That's true,

734
00:39:50,080 --> 00:39:53,160
Speaker 1: and then ultimately the use of it as religious technology

735
00:39:53,480 --> 00:39:55,800
Speaker 1: is also reasonable as well. I mean, we've discussed religious

736
00:39:55,800 --> 00:39:57,480
Speaker 1: technology in the show before. In the way that various

737
00:39:57,520 --> 00:40:01,160
Speaker 1: religions throughout history have used some sort of new technology

738
00:40:02,160 --> 00:40:04,640
Speaker 1: as ritual. All right, let's take one more quick break,

739
00:40:04,680 --> 00:40:09,640
Speaker 1: and then when we come back, we'll finish up our discussion. Alright,

740
00:40:09,640 --> 00:40:12,080
Speaker 1: we're back. So there are all these ideas people have had,

741
00:40:12,200 --> 00:40:13,920
Speaker 1: as we've been talking about about the Ark of the

742
00:40:14,000 --> 00:40:19,080
Speaker 1: Covenant as a capacitor some form of electrical device. And

743
00:40:19,200 --> 00:40:21,680
Speaker 1: while I think you don't need to go to these

744
00:40:21,760 --> 00:40:25,200
Speaker 1: kind of bronze punk explanations to explain the origin of

745
00:40:25,280 --> 00:40:28,120
Speaker 1: these legends, it is really interesting to think about the

746
00:40:28,239 --> 00:40:33,680
Speaker 1: idea and the possibilities for electrical technology in the ancient world. Now,

747
00:40:33,760 --> 00:40:37,920
Speaker 1: there isn't really much or any evidence of electrical technology

748
00:40:38,000 --> 00:40:40,120
Speaker 1: in the ancient world, but there is some indication that

749
00:40:40,880 --> 00:40:44,120
Speaker 1: there were the beginnings of understanding of electricity in the

750
00:40:44,200 --> 00:40:48,920
Speaker 1: ancient world. Yeah, I mean there again. Obviously, aspects of

751
00:40:48,960 --> 00:40:53,120
Speaker 1: our electrical world that are unmistakable. Lightning is probably the strongest,

752
00:40:53,239 --> 00:40:56,719
Speaker 1: clearest overt sign of electricity in our world. But of

753
00:40:56,800 --> 00:40:59,279
Speaker 1: course merely observing lightning is a far cry from having

754
00:40:59,320 --> 00:41:02,920
Speaker 1: a decent underst standing of what it is. Likewise, certain

755
00:41:02,960 --> 00:41:06,320
Speaker 1: circumstances can cause us to produce our own electrostatic discharge.

756
00:41:06,719 --> 00:41:09,680
Speaker 1: And the ancient Greeks knew about some of this. They

757
00:41:09,719 --> 00:41:13,799
Speaker 1: knew about the triboelectric effect. For instance, this occurs when

758
00:41:13,920 --> 00:41:18,320
Speaker 1: materials become electrically charged after they come into frictional contact

759
00:41:18,440 --> 00:41:21,080
Speaker 1: with a different material. This is the concept behind the

760
00:41:21,120 --> 00:41:24,759
Speaker 1: electrostatic generator infraction generator. Yeah. Again, rub a balloon on

761
00:41:24,880 --> 00:41:28,200
Speaker 1: someone's hair and you can witness this holy power. Uh,

762
00:41:28,680 --> 00:41:30,879
Speaker 1: do the electric high five with a six year old

763
00:41:30,920 --> 00:41:34,719
Speaker 1: and you can also feel the divine spark. They may

764
00:41:34,800 --> 00:41:37,800
Speaker 1: not have had our level of advanced playground equipment in

765
00:41:37,840 --> 00:41:40,960
Speaker 1: ancient Greece, but they've probably had some stuff you could

766
00:41:41,000 --> 00:41:43,520
Speaker 1: rub your butt on that would give you static discharge. Yeah,

767
00:41:43,520 --> 00:41:46,000
Speaker 1: because there's a whole list of materials that can, under

768
00:41:46,040 --> 00:41:49,439
Speaker 1: the right circumstances, produce this effect on the positive charge

769
00:41:49,520 --> 00:41:53,280
Speaker 1: side of things. The list includes human skin, hair, leather,

770
00:41:53,800 --> 00:41:57,080
Speaker 1: rabbit fur, cat fur, and wool. You know, think of

771
00:41:57,120 --> 00:42:00,799
Speaker 1: all those electric cats in ancient Easia. Right. And then

772
00:42:00,840 --> 00:42:03,320
Speaker 1: on the other side of the equation you have would

773
00:42:04,040 --> 00:42:07,680
Speaker 1: gold balloons and of course amber. We alluded to the

774
00:42:07,760 --> 00:42:10,600
Speaker 1: amber effect earlier in one of the quotes that that

775
00:42:10,680 --> 00:42:12,640
Speaker 1: I believe you were reading. Yeah, and amber is a big,

776
00:42:12,920 --> 00:42:16,640
Speaker 1: big issue here. Yeah, the ancient Greeks certainly knew about

777
00:42:16,760 --> 00:42:21,560
Speaker 1: the amber wool combination. Daileys of Melitis reported on this.

778
00:42:21,880 --> 00:42:24,680
Speaker 1: Uh He was a mathematician and astronomer from the Greek

779
00:42:24,760 --> 00:42:29,080
Speaker 1: city of Militis in uh Ionia, which is modern day Turkey,

780
00:42:29,280 --> 00:42:32,560
Speaker 1: and he lived from six four through five six b c.

781
00:42:33,440 --> 00:42:37,000
Speaker 1: He discovered that static electricity could be generated by rubbing

782
00:42:37,080 --> 00:42:39,839
Speaker 1: fur on a piece of amber, and the Greeks noted

783
00:42:39,920 --> 00:42:43,399
Speaker 1: that the this through a charged amber buttons as well,

784
00:42:43,600 --> 00:42:47,000
Speaker 1: especially because these could attract you know, light objects such

785
00:42:47,040 --> 00:42:49,080
Speaker 1: as hair. And I think this is this is key

786
00:42:49,120 --> 00:42:53,480
Speaker 1: to thinking about what ancient people's knew about electricity is

787
00:42:53,680 --> 00:42:57,240
Speaker 1: the materials they used and sort of the everyday circumstances

788
00:42:57,280 --> 00:43:01,279
Speaker 1: in which they would, through continual usage, have the uh

789
00:43:02,040 --> 00:43:05,080
Speaker 1: encounter the chance of creating that spark. Yeah, and it's

790
00:43:05,080 --> 00:43:08,120
Speaker 1: still there in the language we used to discuss electricity today,

791
00:43:08,239 --> 00:43:11,759
Speaker 1: like the word electron and electricity comes from the Greek

792
00:43:11,800 --> 00:43:15,400
Speaker 1: word electron, which means amber. Yeah, so you know some

793
00:43:15,680 --> 00:43:19,320
Speaker 1: level of understanding regarding static discharge as a property of

794
00:43:19,440 --> 00:43:22,399
Speaker 1: material interaction in the ancient world, even three thousand BC

795
00:43:23,120 --> 00:43:25,760
Speaker 1: is certainly not crazy. It would seem just a natural

796
00:43:25,880 --> 00:43:28,439
Speaker 1: result of, again, of working with those materials of human

797
00:43:28,480 --> 00:43:33,480
Speaker 1: invention and toolmaking exactly. Yeah, so the principles of friction

798
00:43:33,640 --> 00:43:37,799
Speaker 1: generators for electricity, much like Franklin's and Hawksby's friction generators

799
00:43:38,480 --> 00:43:42,120
Speaker 1: had it had basically already been discovered in ancient times

800
00:43:42,239 --> 00:43:46,120
Speaker 1: and didn't require any modern materials or technology to produce.

801
00:43:46,560 --> 00:43:48,920
Speaker 1: And then you've also come you compound that with the

802
00:43:48,960 --> 00:43:51,080
Speaker 1: rest of our discussion, which makes it seem that while

803
00:43:51,120 --> 00:43:54,200
Speaker 1: these stories of the arc probably have nothing to do

804
00:43:54,280 --> 00:43:57,080
Speaker 1: with this, the storage of electricity and some kind of

805
00:43:57,160 --> 00:44:00,160
Speaker 1: crude capacitor could also have been managed in the acient

806
00:44:00,239 --> 00:44:03,200
Speaker 1: world via basic types of Leiden jars. You've got to

807
00:44:03,320 --> 00:44:06,080
Speaker 1: you know, dielectric insulator, and you've got some kind of

808
00:44:06,120 --> 00:44:08,600
Speaker 1: like gold or something on either side of it. It

809
00:44:08,760 --> 00:44:11,359
Speaker 1: might have even been built by accident at some point.

810
00:44:11,719 --> 00:44:15,280
Speaker 1: This also doesn't require any kind of great crazy bronze

811
00:44:15,320 --> 00:44:18,560
Speaker 1: punk sci fi. So this kind of leads us to

812
00:44:18,640 --> 00:44:22,480
Speaker 1: a big question. If the ancients had pretty much all

813
00:44:22,600 --> 00:44:25,759
Speaker 1: they needed to generate and store electricity, at least in

814
00:44:25,800 --> 00:44:29,920
Speaker 1: the crudest sense, why didn't they harness these earlier. Why

815
00:44:29,960 --> 00:44:32,680
Speaker 1: didn't this lead them to to perform the step up

816
00:44:32,800 --> 00:44:35,920
Speaker 1: in in the next experiments, in the next experiments like

817
00:44:36,160 --> 00:44:39,759
Speaker 1: it did in say the eighteenth century. Uh, that would

818
00:44:39,840 --> 00:44:43,600
Speaker 1: lead to the subsequent development of electrically based technologies in

819
00:44:43,719 --> 00:44:46,600
Speaker 1: the ancient world. What if by the time of the

820
00:44:46,760 --> 00:44:51,080
Speaker 1: Roman Empire the world had electric power? How different would

821
00:44:51,120 --> 00:44:53,759
Speaker 1: the world be? Well, that is at once a tantalizing

822
00:44:53,840 --> 00:44:58,640
Speaker 1: question and a frightening question. Knowing knowing what inevitably occurs

823
00:44:59,080 --> 00:45:02,880
Speaker 1: as humans new technological breakthroughs. Yeah, I don't know that

824
00:45:02,960 --> 00:45:07,120
Speaker 1: I would have trusted the Romans with electricity. I got

825
00:45:07,480 --> 00:45:11,839
Speaker 1: I scarcely trust um any modern day cultures with electricity. Well,

826
00:45:11,880 --> 00:45:15,760
Speaker 1: as Carl Sagan said, humanity has become powerful before humanity

827
00:45:15,800 --> 00:45:18,840
Speaker 1: has become wise. And you know this is true even today,

828
00:45:19,000 --> 00:45:21,480
Speaker 1: I'd say, I'd venture a guest. We were even less

829
00:45:21,560 --> 00:45:23,640
Speaker 1: wise in the times of the Romans, or at least

830
00:45:23,640 --> 00:45:27,080
Speaker 1: the Roman Empire was less wise. How many chickens would

831
00:45:27,120 --> 00:45:31,280
Speaker 1: have been fried by by by by Roman Benjamin Franklin's

832
00:45:31,280 --> 00:45:35,359
Speaker 1: at the time, One can only imagine. Yeah, so there

833
00:45:35,440 --> 00:45:37,400
Speaker 1: must be some kind of answer to this question. Like,

834
00:45:37,480 --> 00:45:41,160
Speaker 1: it's not like there's some kind of magical ingredient they

835
00:45:41,200 --> 00:45:43,800
Speaker 1: did not possess that would not allow them to start

836
00:45:43,880 --> 00:45:47,600
Speaker 1: this chain of research to gain power over the electrical world.

837
00:45:48,120 --> 00:45:51,120
Speaker 1: I have to guess that the main impediment. Maybe there's

838
00:45:51,120 --> 00:45:52,920
Speaker 1: something I'm not thinking of here. I have to think

839
00:45:52,960 --> 00:45:55,800
Speaker 1: the main impediment is just like they didn't have the

840
00:45:55,960 --> 00:46:01,280
Speaker 1: proper ecosystem of scientific investigation, like all these different people

841
00:46:01,320 --> 00:46:04,279
Speaker 1: in different places doing their independent experiments and then all

842
00:46:04,360 --> 00:46:07,400
Speaker 1: coming together to compare notes. You know, this reminds me

843
00:46:07,440 --> 00:46:10,480
Speaker 1: of a discussion that we had for our new show,

844
00:46:10,640 --> 00:46:13,560
Speaker 1: our new podcast that is launching I believe next week,

845
00:46:14,280 --> 00:46:17,920
Speaker 1: UH invention podcast, all about inventions where they come from,

846
00:46:18,239 --> 00:46:20,560
Speaker 1: and uh, we're talking about the X ray, I believe,

847
00:46:20,920 --> 00:46:24,520
Speaker 1: and we were talking about, Okay, you have the materials

848
00:46:24,760 --> 00:46:27,520
Speaker 1: and the parts that were necessary to create the X ray,

849
00:46:27,680 --> 00:46:31,440
Speaker 1: the understanding limited as it was at the time, uh,

850
00:46:31,680 --> 00:46:35,839
Speaker 1: to create this machine. And yet there were a few

851
00:46:35,920 --> 00:46:39,080
Speaker 1: decades there before somebody actually really did, before they really

852
00:46:39,160 --> 00:46:42,560
Speaker 1: cracked the mystery of what was going on. And kind

853
00:46:42,640 --> 00:46:45,840
Speaker 1: of like the Leiden Yard, the discovery was partially an accident.

854
00:46:46,000 --> 00:46:49,480
Speaker 1: I mean, somebody was Uh. The discoverer of the X

855
00:46:49,600 --> 00:46:52,920
Speaker 1: ray machine was messing around with with electrical equipment. So

856
00:46:52,960 --> 00:46:55,000
Speaker 1: it wasn't like they were just like, you know, cleaning

857
00:46:55,040 --> 00:46:57,520
Speaker 1: their garage and they discovered the X ray machine, but

858
00:46:57,719 --> 00:46:59,960
Speaker 1: they weren't setting out to discover a way to look

859
00:47:00,080 --> 00:47:02,080
Speaker 1: inside the body, right, And part of it too was

860
00:47:02,160 --> 00:47:04,920
Speaker 1: like was also very literally where were they looking and

861
00:47:05,000 --> 00:47:06,960
Speaker 1: there when they were creating some sort of an effect?

862
00:47:07,680 --> 00:47:10,480
Speaker 1: What how are they trying to understand it? And so

863
00:47:10,960 --> 00:47:12,960
Speaker 1: I think there might be an answer there if and

864
00:47:13,000 --> 00:47:16,120
Speaker 1: again we're making a few different leaps here, but if

865
00:47:16,440 --> 00:47:18,960
Speaker 1: assuming for a second that the Arc of the Covenant

866
00:47:19,120 --> 00:47:22,319
Speaker 1: was indeed a light in jar and uh, and then

867
00:47:22,480 --> 00:47:26,919
Speaker 1: this was an electrostatic discharge that people were observing and experiencing,

868
00:47:28,280 --> 00:47:31,480
Speaker 1: what were they observing? How were they trying to observe it?

869
00:47:31,560 --> 00:47:34,080
Speaker 1: And what were they looking for? What answers were they

870
00:47:34,200 --> 00:47:37,920
Speaker 1: looking for in playing with this technology. Well, one of

871
00:47:37,960 --> 00:47:40,719
Speaker 1: the things that the people who were doing this kind

872
00:47:40,760 --> 00:47:44,160
Speaker 1: of like pseudohistory about the arc do is they say, well, okay,

873
00:47:44,719 --> 00:47:48,120
Speaker 1: clearly Aaron started using the arc as a murder weapon,

874
00:47:48,280 --> 00:47:50,319
Speaker 1: and they were using it as a weapon of war

875
00:47:50,560 --> 00:47:53,080
Speaker 1: or something like that. I would tend to think if

876
00:47:53,160 --> 00:47:55,399
Speaker 1: it actually were the case that there was an arc

877
00:47:55,840 --> 00:47:58,279
Speaker 1: and the arc was actually a light and jar. Again,

878
00:47:58,320 --> 00:48:00,279
Speaker 1: I am not at all saying I think this is likely,

879
00:48:00,400 --> 00:48:04,000
Speaker 1: but just suppose, I would think the most likely used

880
00:48:04,040 --> 00:48:06,719
Speaker 1: for it would be a piece of religious technology. The

881
00:48:06,840 --> 00:48:10,719
Speaker 1: purpose of it is to demonstrate some sort of supernatural

882
00:48:10,880 --> 00:48:14,440
Speaker 1: power by letting off this discharge or whatever it is

883
00:48:14,920 --> 00:48:18,320
Speaker 1: indication that something you don't understand that is powerful and

884
00:48:18,520 --> 00:48:21,359
Speaker 1: is unexplained is happening. And this gives you a kind

885
00:48:21,360 --> 00:48:23,640
Speaker 1: of like peek behind the curtain of reality and you

886
00:48:23,719 --> 00:48:26,640
Speaker 1: can see the powers that lie beyond. And really that

887
00:48:26,719 --> 00:48:29,600
Speaker 1: would be the most powerful application of the technology at

888
00:48:29,760 --> 00:48:31,839
Speaker 1: the time, because no matter what the stories are about

889
00:48:31,840 --> 00:48:34,399
Speaker 1: the arc um, you wouldn't be able to bring down

890
00:48:34,640 --> 00:48:37,279
Speaker 1: the walls of Jericho with this thing. You wouldn't be

891
00:48:37,360 --> 00:48:40,000
Speaker 1: able to stop the flow of the river Jordan's. Maybe

892
00:48:40,080 --> 00:48:43,440
Speaker 1: you could murder your nephew, maybe, But that's kind of

893
00:48:43,480 --> 00:48:48,760
Speaker 1: small potatoes compared to giving yourself some some powerful force

894
00:48:49,200 --> 00:48:51,920
Speaker 1: that not only was able to help like shore up

895
00:48:51,960 --> 00:48:55,640
Speaker 1: your religion, but also convince those that needed convincing that

896
00:48:55,800 --> 00:48:58,239
Speaker 1: you were privy to the divine word of God through

897
00:48:58,320 --> 00:49:01,400
Speaker 1: this device. Well, in fact, about the primary ways that

898
00:49:01,560 --> 00:49:05,239
Speaker 1: lead in jars were used. When people first started making them,

899
00:49:05,640 --> 00:49:09,480
Speaker 1: they became like a parlor game, entertaing thing. Yes, it

900
00:49:09,560 --> 00:49:12,440
Speaker 1: was entertainment. In fact, it was almost a form of

901
00:49:12,520 --> 00:49:15,520
Speaker 1: religious technology. There would be the stories of people they

902
00:49:15,560 --> 00:49:17,360
Speaker 1: get a bunch of light in jars together, or I

903
00:49:17,400 --> 00:49:19,640
Speaker 1: don't know about a bunch, maybe just one. They'd have

904
00:49:19,800 --> 00:49:22,000
Speaker 1: some kind of capacitor, and then they would get a

905
00:49:22,040 --> 00:49:24,520
Speaker 1: bunch of monks to hold hands, and then they'd shock

906
00:49:24,600 --> 00:49:26,759
Speaker 1: them all at the same time in a chain so

907
00:49:26,880 --> 00:49:28,680
Speaker 1: that they all felt it at once. It was almost

908
00:49:28,760 --> 00:49:32,320
Speaker 1: like a strange ritual. Yeah, you get into the power

909
00:49:32,360 --> 00:49:34,279
Speaker 1: of the performance, right, and it's it's it's a part

910
00:49:34,320 --> 00:49:36,440
Speaker 1: of religion, it's a part of entertainment. It's just a

911
00:49:36,520 --> 00:49:39,719
Speaker 1: part of the human experience. It was primarily useful, not

912
00:49:39,960 --> 00:49:42,919
Speaker 1: for work it would do in the material world, before

913
00:49:42,960 --> 00:49:44,680
Speaker 1: the work. It would do on the minds of the

914
00:49:44,719 --> 00:49:48,600
Speaker 1: people taking part and observing. It was performative. Yeah, all right,

915
00:49:48,680 --> 00:49:50,719
Speaker 1: so there you have it. Um. I hope everyone leaves

916
00:49:50,760 --> 00:49:53,239
Speaker 1: these episodes like maybe a little more interested and a

917
00:49:53,280 --> 00:49:56,360
Speaker 1: little more enthralled by the arc, you know, because ultimately

918
00:49:56,840 --> 00:50:00,520
Speaker 1: we can't explain what it actually was. If it was

919
00:50:00,640 --> 00:50:02,440
Speaker 1: a thing. I mean, it's just again, this is a

920
00:50:02,480 --> 00:50:06,040
Speaker 1: place where history and mythology converge. Yeah, but I do

921
00:50:06,239 --> 00:50:08,320
Speaker 1: love it as a jumping off point. It's almost like

922
00:50:08,400 --> 00:50:11,919
Speaker 1: it's the way station to all these strange bronze punk

923
00:50:12,000 --> 00:50:15,000
Speaker 1: planets you can visit that that are revealing once you

924
00:50:15,080 --> 00:50:17,279
Speaker 1: start thinking about them. Indeed, and we would love to

925
00:50:17,400 --> 00:50:20,799
Speaker 1: hear everyone else's thoughts on on the arc. Yeah, people

926
00:50:20,800 --> 00:50:23,080
Speaker 1: who learned about it from Raiders of the Lost Arc

927
00:50:23,440 --> 00:50:26,040
Speaker 1: first of all, and and from people who learned about

928
00:50:26,080 --> 00:50:28,960
Speaker 1: it in uh, you know, uh their history class, or

929
00:50:28,960 --> 00:50:31,960
Speaker 1: their Bible class, or uh, whatever kind of a religious

930
00:50:31,960 --> 00:50:35,040
Speaker 1: study they were involved in. Um, perhaps you have a

931
00:50:35,080 --> 00:50:37,640
Speaker 1: particular favorite theory. Perhaps you have your own brand new

932
00:50:37,719 --> 00:50:40,120
Speaker 1: theory that we haven't thought of. Maybe it contained a

933
00:50:40,160 --> 00:50:42,360
Speaker 1: giant squid. I don't know. I will leave it to

934
00:50:42,440 --> 00:50:46,239
Speaker 1: you to provide us with those new theories. But in

935
00:50:46,360 --> 00:50:48,120
Speaker 1: the meantime, be sure to check out Stuff to Blow

936
00:50:48,160 --> 00:50:50,080
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com. That is the mothership. That's where

937
00:50:50,120 --> 00:50:53,239
Speaker 1: you'll find all the episodes of the podcast. That's also

938
00:50:53,280 --> 00:50:56,160
Speaker 1: where you'll find links out to our various accounts. It's

939
00:50:56,200 --> 00:50:57,759
Speaker 1: also where you'll find a little tab at the top

940
00:50:57,800 --> 00:51:00,640
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941
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942
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943
00:51:07,200 --> 00:51:09,560
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944
00:51:09,840 --> 00:51:11,160
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945
00:51:11,200 --> 00:51:13,480
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946
00:51:13,520 --> 00:51:15,520
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947
00:51:15,640 --> 00:51:19,279
Speaker 1: Stuff Big Thanks as always to our excellent audio producers

948
00:51:19,360 --> 00:51:22,440
Speaker 1: Alex Williams and try Harrison. If you would like to

949
00:51:22,480 --> 00:51:24,280
Speaker 1: get in touch with us to let us know feedback

950
00:51:24,320 --> 00:51:26,560
Speaker 1: on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic

951
00:51:26,640 --> 00:51:28,560
Speaker 1: for the future of Stuff, to blow your mind, or

952
00:51:28,680 --> 00:51:31,279
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953
00:51:31,520 --> 00:51:33,719
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954
00:51:33,719 --> 00:51:35,360
Speaker 1: out about the show where you listen from all that

955
00:51:35,440 --> 00:51:37,759
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. You can email us at blow the

956
00:51:37,920 --> 00:51:49,279
Speaker 1: mind at how stuff works dot com for more on

957
00:51:49,400 --> 00:51:51,840
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff

958
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959
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