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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff

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Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, wasn't the stuff to blow your mind?

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Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and on Julie Teglass And

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Speaker 1: if all goes according to plan, I will be in

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Speaker 1: China abound the time this is published. I will be

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Speaker 1: with my wife, will be picking up our son and

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Speaker 1: returning home. So fittingly, we're going to replay our episode

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Speaker 1: on walls, which concerns a little bit of the Great

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Speaker 1: Wall of China as well as just our ideas about walls.

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Speaker 1: What are walls from a cultural symbolic uh level of thinking? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean we'll talk about sort of subtle mental walls,

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Speaker 1: like political maps, sriven as walls, even the walls of yourselves. Right.

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Speaker 1: Plus there's podcast Gold because I believe that Robert will

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Speaker 1: mention loving a disease cow over enemy lines in order

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Speaker 1: to gain some faction in the wall. Awesome stuff. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: all right, so let's roll it this episode. We're talking

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Speaker 1: about walls, which sounds a little big, and it is

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Speaker 1: a big topic because we live in this world of

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Speaker 1: walls all around us. We have walls that we've erected,

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Speaker 1: walls that are physical walls that are made of stone,

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Speaker 1: that are made of wood, Walls that are legal walls,

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Speaker 1: walls that are are mental, walls that are that are

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Speaker 1: composed of ideas, ideas of legacy, ideas of division, hidden walls,

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Speaker 1: walls naked to the eye, firewalls, censorship, and and with

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Speaker 1: any situation with the wall, you have an outsider and

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Speaker 1: you have an insider. Generally, when we're contemplating walls were

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Speaker 1: on one side of the other, I guess it's possible

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Speaker 1: to stand on the top of the wall, but that's

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Speaker 1: a that's a different situation, a precarious position to be in. Yeah, right,

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Speaker 1: you want to strad at the wall. But this is

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Speaker 1: one of the oldest ideas really in human civilization. We've

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Speaker 1: been building physical walls to protect cities and towns for ages.

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Speaker 1: Walled cities are one of the earliest symbols of civilization.

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Speaker 1: How do you protect the settlement against marauders who were

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Speaker 1: using their horses to try and steal your agricultural excess.

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Speaker 1: And in fact, the Chinese word for city and walls

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Speaker 1: is the same chain, which I found was interesting because

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Speaker 1: that's how that's how important walls were in the emergence

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Speaker 1: of cities in Chinese history. Yeah, and if you guys

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Speaker 1: haven't already figured out, we are seriously talking about walls today,

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Speaker 1: like the actual physical structures. One of the things that

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Speaker 1: I was thinking about is that walls are these concrete

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Speaker 1: abstractions of what I think of as maps. Right this

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Speaker 1: this way to delineate territory, to try to say my

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Speaker 1: power base is going to be here. And it's kind

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Speaker 1: of like, it's a very interesting way that we took

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Speaker 1: this abstract notion of ownership and then said, ah, we'll

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Speaker 1: show you. We'll put up a wall right from our points.

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Speaker 1: It's like when you're in your back seat with your

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Speaker 1: sister are on a long car ride as a kid.

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Speaker 1: You each have a side of the back seat that

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Speaker 1: you're supposed to stay on, and your stuff is supposed

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Speaker 1: to stay on those sides. But during borders disputes, it

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Speaker 1: becomes necessary then to point out exactly where the line is.

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Speaker 1: It may become necessary to put some tape down that

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Speaker 1: line to market in the physical world, and maybe even

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Speaker 1: construct a barrier out of luggage or pillows. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: from time to time, though, one might want to show

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Speaker 1: their might by crossing that border and knocking down luggage

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Speaker 1: and making a political statement really about how they feel

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Speaker 1: about you humming for three hours in the car, right, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: And then of course you end up with everything that

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Speaker 1: has a symbolic power and human culture. Walls take on

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Speaker 1: multiple purposes, and I found this particularly telling. In ancient

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Speaker 1: Chinese tradition, you have these city gods ching Hung who

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Speaker 1: protect the moats and walls of towns, so that they're

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Speaker 1: important because they're helping protect your very livelihood. Your very

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Speaker 1: life and everything you hold dear is protected by these

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Speaker 1: walls and moats and therefore by the deity that attends

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Speaker 1: to them. But the chiang Hung also make sure that

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Speaker 1: the king of the dead doesn't take any souls away

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Speaker 1: without his permission, and so not only is he a

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Speaker 1: lord of walls and moats, he's also a lord of death.

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Speaker 1: And I find that's an interesting just symbolic economy there.

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Speaker 1: What I like about this is that this city god,

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Speaker 1: or these lords of walls and moats, that's another name

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Speaker 1: for them. Uh. There's a bit of bureaucracy involved with this,

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Speaker 1: and that they're usually considered to be the reincarnation of

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Speaker 1: a human being who had been an official in earlier times,

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Speaker 1: and the city god was thought to change every three years,

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Speaker 1: just like a living magistrate would change office every three years,

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Speaker 1: and both the magistrate and the gods hold sway over

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Speaker 1: the same administrative area. So as you say, you know

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Speaker 1: there's some supernatural areas there, but there's this expectation that

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Speaker 1: there's formal reverence paid to the city god. So and

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Speaker 1: that you see both Chinese efficiency but also this very

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Speaker 1: important notion of venerating your ancestors culture combined in this

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Speaker 1: idea that that someone was dispatching their souls to the

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Speaker 1: underworld realm. Speaking of China, this brings us, of course

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Speaker 1: to the Great Wall of China, which is when you

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Speaker 1: when you talk about walls, there are various examples that

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Speaker 1: come to mind. There's the Whaling Wall, There's the Berlin Wall,

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Speaker 1: There's Hadrian's Wall. There are plenty of examples, but the

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Speaker 1: big one the mainlanders of the world is the Great

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Speaker 1: Wall of China. And the history of the wall is

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Speaker 1: really fascinating because it's easy to just sort of are

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Speaker 1: You've seen a picture of it, you know what it

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Speaker 1: looks like. You know, it's a something to see if

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Speaker 1: you're a tourist in China, But what is it? What

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Speaker 1: is its history? How is it conceived. And the wall

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Speaker 1: dates back more than two thousand years to a time

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Speaker 1: of unification in China, and this is when you had

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Speaker 1: the Tin dynasty uniting seven warring kingdoms, that's including itself.

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Speaker 1: And as they do that, they have all these separate

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Speaker 1: walls that were built by independent kingdoms and so the

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Speaker 1: Jin dynasty being slenk them together and the idea is

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Speaker 1: to protect against marauders, so they can script hundreds and

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Speaker 1: thousands of workers. We were talking groups of prisoners, politic onomies, peasants, soldiers,

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Speaker 1: and they work for ten years on this project. Thousands

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Speaker 1: upon thousands die, as tends to happen, and legend has

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Speaker 1: it that the bones of individuals who died constructing the

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Speaker 1: wall are then then become a part of the wall,

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Speaker 1: making it, in some people's words, the longest cemetery on earth. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and much of this is because this is happening during

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Speaker 1: the Chin dynasty, right. And this is again you talked

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Speaker 1: about the neighboring territories that were finally united, these little

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Speaker 1: fiefdoms that had a lot of strife, but it was

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Speaker 1: united under what I guess you could say was China's

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Speaker 1: first emperor. Because China wasn't trying to until this this

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Speaker 1: guy united them. And when I say guy, I mean

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Speaker 1: thirteen year old and this thirteen year old is Chin

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Speaker 1: Chi Wong d He is I guess you could say

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Speaker 1: a bit of a megalomaniac. He begins to actually think

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Speaker 1: about this unification and becomes obsessed with this idea that

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Speaker 1: demons in these barbarians are going to take over China.

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Speaker 1: And so that's where he mandates this length of the

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Speaker 1: wall to be constructed. And again there are bits of

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Speaker 1: construction of these walls throughout these thousands of years, but

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Speaker 1: this is the guy who decides that it's really important

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Speaker 1: to have from the Gobi Desert to the Yellow Sea

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Speaker 1: this fortress. Yes, it's fascinating the idea that the wall

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Speaker 1: is protecting not only against actual barbarians, but also it

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Speaker 1: against demons, so that it's not just a a military barrier,

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Speaker 1: it's a it's a spiritual barrier as well. Again, keep

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Speaker 1: in mind with all of this is two thousand years ago,

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Speaker 1: so this is a time when spiritualism, megalomania, and abuse

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Speaker 1: of the peasantry we're pretty much in vogue everywhere. So

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Speaker 1: so this is, you know, not unique to China by

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Speaker 1: any stretch of the imagination. But the idea that that

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Speaker 1: you're you're protecting against not only things, but against ideas.

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Speaker 1: I think it's very telling because we see the symbolic

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Speaker 1: power of the wall rather overtly, as we'll see in

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Speaker 1: various examples of the walls we look at here too.

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Speaker 1: When when humans build walls, they're almost always thinking of

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Speaker 1: that symbolic power as well, not only to the outsider

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Speaker 1: and to the outside or the wall is a clear

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Speaker 1: statement of hey, you're not welcome here. You stay on

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Speaker 1: your side of the back seat and I'll stay on mine.

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Speaker 1: And then to the insider, the wall says I have

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Speaker 1: built you a wall. You were protected, you were safe.

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Speaker 1: You know. It is saying there is a physical barrier

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Speaker 1: between you and the things that you were afraid of,

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Speaker 1: and you can thank me for it. Well, I mean yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's very much like the Boogeyman, right. And to this point,

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Speaker 1: this emperor decided that he wanted the circuitous wall built

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Speaker 1: and not a straight path. And the reason is because

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Speaker 1: a straight line in demonology is great for demons because

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Speaker 1: they're able to navigate only on straight lines and not

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Speaker 1: on curves. So he's gonna make it even more difficult

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Speaker 1: for these demons by making this this serpentine wall that's

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Speaker 1: twenty ft high. And certainly that's one of the things

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Speaker 1: that's amazing about examples of the wall today and again,

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Speaker 1: examples of the wall today, as we'll discuss fees are

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Speaker 1: the wall has been added to and renovated numerous times

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Speaker 1: throughout history, so we're not necessarily talking about the same

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Speaker 1: physical wall in the same bricks. But you still see

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Speaker 1: that shape. It's like a serpent lying across the hills. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and it is fascinating because it's one of those things

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Speaker 1: that people had long assumed was one big, coherent, linked

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Speaker 1: up wall, but in fact it's not. That was one

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Speaker 1: of the myths another methods that you could see this

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Speaker 1: from the moon. Yeah, I see it from space, and

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Speaker 1: it's it's just not so No, it's not so lovely story,

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Speaker 1: but it is lovely. But to go back to this

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Speaker 1: emperor and talk a little bit about Schinchu Wangdi and

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Speaker 1: how he treated peasants. You refer to this as the

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Speaker 1: world's longest cemetery. At least some people have talked about

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Speaker 1: this the Great Wall of trying to being this again,

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Speaker 1: he's sort of indulged in sooth saying and a little

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Speaker 1: bit of paranoia, And it is said that his soothsayer

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Speaker 1: told him that the wall would actually never be built,

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Speaker 1: which he was mortally frightened of right, because the barbarians

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Speaker 1: were going to come get him in the demons unless

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Speaker 1: ten thousand men were entombed in the wall. Wow, what

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Speaker 1: a sous can you imagine being that guy being on

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Speaker 1: the payroll that takes a lot of comments relate to

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Speaker 1: you know, this is the message ten thousand You gotta

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Speaker 1: you gotta execute them, throw them in there. So Shinchu

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Speaker 1: Wandi decides, you know what, he's the ruler. He realizes

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Speaker 1: that he full well can't just spare that many men.

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Speaker 1: So he finds a loophole in the form of one

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Speaker 1: guy who has the word or the character for ten

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Speaker 1: thousand in his name. I guess what his fate is.

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Speaker 1: He is killed and buried in the wall. Yeah, he's

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Speaker 1: tossed into the wall. But again there's this idea that

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Speaker 1: this wall begins to take on meaning of forced labor

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Speaker 1: being subjugated. As you can start to see peasants are

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Speaker 1: not really digging this wall, right. The symbolic power to

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Speaker 1: the insider is not just an idea of protection, but

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Speaker 1: an idea of This is the kind of thing that

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Speaker 1: governments and rulers create out of your blood right. It

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Speaker 1: becomes a symbol of oppression and actually is very much

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Speaker 1: a symbol of that for a long time until we

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Speaker 1: get to the twentieth century. And we'll talk about that

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Speaker 1: in a moment. But let's talk about this as being

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Speaker 1: an imperfect barrier. That's the thing. Obviously, the wall is important,

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Speaker 1: like we said, as an idea of protection, but does

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Speaker 1: it actually offer protection on one level, You're building these

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Speaker 1: walls often at the on the extremes there on the

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Speaker 1: frontier there between civilization and the barbarians and the demons,

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Speaker 1: So you're having to basically establish colonies there. I mean,

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Speaker 1: think of it in almost in terms of like an

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Speaker 1: off world colony kind of a situation. You're having to

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Speaker 1: have soldiers there that are also growing their own food,

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Speaker 1: and they are more a part of the frontier than

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Speaker 1: they are of the homeland, so they actually end up

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Speaker 1: having some sort of rapport with the local populations with

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Speaker 1: the barbarians, and as such are susceptible to bribes. Just

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Speaker 1: you know, here's there are a few bucks look the

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Speaker 1: other way. Uphon we march an army through and join

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Speaker 1: our army or join our army, then that happens as well.

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Speaker 1: So it becomes very difficult just to to man and

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Speaker 1: protect it. And then you're gonna have gaps as well. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: for instance, just in terms of the wall itself, the

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Speaker 1: wall is not You might think of the wall as

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Speaker 1: being in this NonStop wall that actually snakes across the

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Speaker 1: entire country. But there are gaps in it, and there

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Speaker 1: are places where just natural barriers are depended on to

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Speaker 1: to serve as the wall well, and it has been maintained,

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Speaker 1: so there are there are parts of it that are

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Speaker 1: in ruins. So you have Genghis Khan or Jengis Khan

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Speaker 1: see sometimes refer two K, the Big g K. He

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Speaker 1: brings with him a huge army and martial arts and

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Speaker 1: a flair for psychological terror, and he reaches the wall right,

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Speaker 1: and for a good hundred years, the rule of China

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Speaker 1: comes under Mongol. Yeah, they were the ones in charge

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Speaker 1: when Marco Polo visited. That's right, that's right, and so

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Speaker 1: Mongols are really taking over. But then in thirteen sixty eight,

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Speaker 1: a Chinese peasant leads a rebellion against Mongol rule, and

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Speaker 1: this helps to establish the Ming dynasty. I only mention

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Speaker 1: this because the Ming dynasty is really important in actually

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Speaker 1: giving a lot of shoring up to the wall. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: this was thirty eight, and the Ming dynasty looks at

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Speaker 1: the wall and says, you know, this is something we

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Speaker 1: need to fix up. You need to get it going

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Speaker 1: because we don't want to be conquered by the barbarians again. Right,

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Speaker 1: and with it, they actually are responsible for architectural embellishments

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Speaker 1: on it and beginning to document various points in history.

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Speaker 1: So you really begin to see more of a coherent

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Speaker 1: picture of the Wall with the Ming dynasty. But then

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Speaker 1: here's another thing that happens under man to rule, the

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Speaker 1: wall no longer matters since the land on both sides

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Speaker 1: just ruled by man Chow. When China is invaded yet again, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: this is seventeen hundreds, the Manchew invade the Ming dynasty,

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Speaker 1: the man a number of changes to it. They added

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Speaker 1: to its length, to its width, double and triple walls

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Speaker 1: in some places to really reinforce it. But then when

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Speaker 1: the Man Choos invade in seventeen hundreds, it's largely abandoned

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Speaker 1: as a military priority. It kind of stays that way

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Speaker 1: for a while, pretty much the until very recent times.

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Speaker 1: During that time, the wall crumbles, the wall is looted

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Speaker 1: for building supplies because you have all these stones right

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Speaker 1: there are ready to use, and so people carry it

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Speaker 1: off to build things that are of actual value to

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Speaker 1: their lives. Because the walls are sitting there, it's not

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Speaker 1: even a military factor anymore. And then when Mausadung comes

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Speaker 1: to power, he encourages Chinese people to use this, to

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Speaker 1: use the bricks, to use parts of the wall to

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Speaker 1: build things, and now brings in also this idea of

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Speaker 1: the modern you know, part of the cultural revolution, cultural revolution,

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Speaker 1: and a huge part of it is we're going to

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Speaker 1: focus on the modern China and the future China. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: we're going to obliterate the past. Right. The wall is

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Speaker 1: very much a piece of the past, and a piece

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Speaker 1: of the past that has still leaves a bad taste

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Speaker 1: in a lot of people's lives because it is this

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Speaker 1: thing build out of their blood. It is this symbol

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Speaker 1: of the domineering, violent rule. Yeah, it's not the one

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Speaker 1: of the wonders of the world that we now think

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Speaker 1: of it. But this it begins to to recast itself

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Speaker 1: in modern times right around are there's this idea that

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Speaker 1: the wall begins to take on national pride, and they

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Speaker 1: actually say, let us love our country and restore our

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Speaker 1: great Wall. This becomes a big mission for them. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: you have important foreign heads of state visit. Reagan visits,

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Speaker 1: Scorba Shop visits where they go, they go to the

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Speaker 1: Great Wall. Nixon visits, you know, And it was gonna

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Speaker 1: say Nixon, who wasn't he the person who said something

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Speaker 1: like only a great people could build this great wall,

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Speaker 1: which starts to even then recast its image. Yeah. Luckily

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Speaker 1: he was a wall enthusiast. He was all about putting

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Speaker 1: Floyd but this wall is in general, so yes, he

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Speaker 1: added to that vibe that this was something that was

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Speaker 1: important and worth celebrating. And so over the last few

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Speaker 1: decades you see this increasing restoration of portions of the wall,

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Speaker 1: increased commercialization of portions of the wall. I'm treating. In

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Speaker 1: the Lonely Planet China Guide, they point out that there

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Speaker 1: are sections of the wall that are just insanely populated. Really,

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Speaker 1: I mean, you just have tourists there almost all the time,

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Speaker 1: unless you go in the dead of winter. Their gift shops,

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Speaker 1: their tourists are people selling things, and I mean that's

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Speaker 1: just the way it goes with with popular locations. But

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Speaker 1: there are still plenty of portions of the wall that

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Speaker 1: are not super innovated, that are still beautiful and don't

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Speaker 1: have like a restaurant in them. Not that they're portions

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Speaker 1: of the wall, they have restaurants in them, but you

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Speaker 1: know what I'm saying, don't have ads in them. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: there are places in China where you can go if

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Speaker 1: you you look into and you do the research, where

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Speaker 1: you can get more of a serene via the wall

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Speaker 1: as opposed to a hyper commercialized version. But it's it's

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Speaker 1: still it's even if you go to those areas where

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Speaker 1: there are a lot of people and there's a lot

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Speaker 1: of commercialization, it's still a stunning site. Indeed, all right,

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Speaker 1: we're gonna take a quick break and when we come back,

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Speaker 1: we're going to move beyond the Great Wall of China

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Speaker 1: and discuss some more modern examples of walls in our lives,

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Speaker 1: including cosmic walls. Sow. All right, we're back. So um,

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Speaker 1: when you think beyond the Great Wall of China and

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Speaker 1: you think of modern walls, what comes to mind? Okay, well,

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Speaker 1: I mean, you know, I think about Berlin Wall. I

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Speaker 1: also think about the Atlantic Wall that Hitler was I

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Speaker 1: think it's like eight hundred miles of sea coast, at

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Speaker 1: least in France. Um that he had been constructing, um

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Speaker 1: as a barrier of and and a bit of military might. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: the stuff from saving brabt Ryan of everyone remembers that flicked. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: But of course, here in the US one of the

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Speaker 1: most strikingly obvious walls, it's more like a fence. The

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Speaker 1: US Mexico border. Well, we call it a fense, but

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Speaker 1: it sure as heck looks like a wall in many areas.

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Speaker 1: And it's been in the news a lot, especially with

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Speaker 1: the conservative primaries leading up to this year's presidential election.

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Speaker 1: You've had a lot of people touch on this as

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Speaker 1: a hot is a hot topic issue immigration in the

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Speaker 1: United States. A lot of our listeners are US based,

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Speaker 1: but a lot of you are based on other countries.

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Speaker 1: US Mexican migrations are very much on voters minds, especially

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Speaker 1: conservative voters. So you have people like Herman Kane, the

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Speaker 1: pizza mogul, who came out and said, We're going to

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Speaker 1: build an electric fence made out of pizza not made

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Speaker 1: out of pizza. He did not rule out alligators as

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Speaker 1: I remember, so moats and walls. And then there were

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Speaker 1: some other half cocked ideas that were thrown around by

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Speaker 1: some other candidates, But it all comes down to this

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Speaker 1: idea of the wall right sending this message to Mexico

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Speaker 1: saying Mexicans are not wanted here, and sending more importantly really,

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Speaker 1: because these are politicians talking about wall building, sending this

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Speaker 1: message to their constituents in the US to say, we

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Speaker 1: care about what you care about so much that we

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Speaker 1: built this thing. We're going to erect this giant symbol

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Speaker 1: of what we're talking about, even though their YouTube videos

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Speaker 1: of people scaling up these things up and over them

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Speaker 1: in seconds. And it's the same situations coming to play

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Speaker 1: that came into play with the Great Wall of China.

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Speaker 1: They're gonna be gaps, They're gonna be places where care

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Speaker 1: of the border is either less maintained or or it

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Speaker 1: is not maintained at all. Well, here's the thing. Last

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Speaker 1: year was the biggest sustained drop and immigration from Mexico

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Speaker 1: to the United States leave to be surpassed and scale

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Speaker 1: only by losses in the Mexican born US population and

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Speaker 1: during the Great Depression. So we're actually seeing a drop

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Speaker 1: in immigration to the United States from Mexico. And much

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Speaker 1: of this is because well, first of all, the Mexican

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Speaker 1: cartel are are acting as border agents on the Mexican

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Speaker 1: border and their demanding money and sometimes they actually use

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Speaker 1: immigrants as drug mules. So it's become far more dangerous

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Speaker 1: as if it weren't already to try to cross. But

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Speaker 1: also um on the U s side, it's become much

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Speaker 1: more difficult and rigorous in terms of trying to prosecute

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Speaker 1: people for for doing this. But of course there's been

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Speaker 1: an economic downturn as well, and also you can factor

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Speaker 1: in changes in legislation in some of the Southern states

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Speaker 1: that have cracked down on the use of migrant labor. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: so it is one of those things that we wanted

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Speaker 1: to point out because it is a huge symbolic effort

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Speaker 1: by the United States, but in terms of efficacy and

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Speaker 1: really getting at the what they think, or what the

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Speaker 1: United States politicians think is the root problem doesn't isn't

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Speaker 1: really solved by this fence, right, And and though some

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Speaker 1: people may have giggled at the idea of building a

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00:20:06,920 --> 00:20:09,159
Speaker 1: wall to keep demons at bay. Like I said, that

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Speaker 1: is just an advert statement of what all walls ultimately symbolized,

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Speaker 1: Like even this wall is about keeping demons of the

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Speaker 1: mind at bay. To some people on the inside, it

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Speaker 1: is a demonization of the threats that in a simple

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Speaker 1: vocation of the threats that that lie outside and are

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Speaker 1: waiting to get in. It's also worth noting, though, that

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Speaker 1: when you build walls or fences of this nature, you're

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Speaker 1: building them in environments that did not previously have barriers,

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Speaker 1: So you're you're going to cut into not only the

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Speaker 1: migration of people, but the migration of animals. So there

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Speaker 1: have been a number of studies that have looked into

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Speaker 1: what effects order fences on the US Mexican border have

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Speaker 1: had on migrating animals. And it doesn't pay a pretty picture, no,

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Speaker 1: I mean, you're altering the psychic and the geographical landscape, right, Yeah.

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Speaker 1: And it's interestingly mentioned the psychic because that was one

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Speaker 1: of the things that has also been brought up about

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Speaker 1: the Great Wall of China and throughout China's history, that

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Speaker 1: there were people who out of it as a disruptor

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Speaker 1: of g you know, this is disrupt disrupting the earth energies,

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Speaker 1: you're building this unnatural thing that breaks up natural flows

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Speaker 1: in the environment. Of course, we raise the walls not

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Speaker 1: only against human and imagined threats, we also raised them

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Speaker 1: against mother nature. In Japan, the sea walls because as

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Speaker 1: an island nation and given its past history with threats

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Speaker 1: from the sea, you want to be able to mitigate

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Speaker 1: that to some degree. Nearly half of the twenty two

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Speaker 1: thousand mile coast in Japan actually has concrete sea walls,

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Speaker 1: which would make sense right because I mean that there's

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Speaker 1: a lot of earthquake activity in that area and you

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Speaker 1: would want to have some sort of structure try to

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Speaker 1: protect you from really high waves. So there's something very

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Speaker 1: practical about it. But some people, the opponents of it,

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Speaker 1: say that it's not necessarily that effective, and in fact

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00:21:51,840 --> 00:21:55,640
Speaker 1: we saw that with the tsunami. They are fascinating constructions though,

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00:21:55,720 --> 00:21:57,960
Speaker 1: that well worth doing a Google image search on because

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Speaker 1: you've never seen when you may imagine just a it

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Speaker 1: up wall, but there are a lot different because stopping

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Speaker 1: a flow, a massive flow of water, is different than

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Speaker 1: stopping some marauders on horseback. It's not just about putting

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00:22:08,040 --> 00:22:10,880
Speaker 1: up the straight barrier, but putting up a structure that

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Speaker 1: will slow and halt this approach of water. And that's

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Speaker 1: what proponents say. They say, Okay, well maybe it didn't

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Speaker 1: sift guard us against the nuclear reactors, right, seawater got

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Speaker 1: in there. The wall wasn't actually high enough. It should

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Speaker 1: have been built much higher, but it did slow down

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Speaker 1: the encroachment of those waves. Sometimes, you know, it gave

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Speaker 1: people a couple of extra minutes to try to evacuate,

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Speaker 1: which is, you know, the difference between life and death.

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Speaker 1: And another example of walls that comes to mind if

431
00:22:38,080 --> 00:22:40,200
Speaker 1: you think back to our episode on the black Blizzards

432
00:22:40,240 --> 00:22:43,959
Speaker 1: of the the Great Depression of the Dust Boll, we

433
00:22:44,000 --> 00:22:46,679
Speaker 1: mentioned the green walls that you see popping up in

434
00:22:46,760 --> 00:22:50,320
Speaker 1: some portions on green wall projects in China in Africa,

435
00:22:50,800 --> 00:22:53,959
Speaker 1: and the idea here is building a wall against desertification,

436
00:22:54,119 --> 00:22:58,320
Speaker 1: building a wall that will try to prevent the desert

437
00:22:58,359 --> 00:23:01,760
Speaker 1: from encroaching on fertile lands. Yeah, there's something called the

438
00:23:01,840 --> 00:23:04,560
Speaker 1: Yellow Dragon. And each spring, the dust from China's northern

439
00:23:04,560 --> 00:23:07,720
Speaker 1: deserts are swept up by the wind and whipped eastward

440
00:23:07,800 --> 00:23:10,320
Speaker 1: and they blast into Beijing. They blank at the city

441
00:23:10,400 --> 00:23:14,199
Speaker 1: in a huge coat of dust particles. And that has

442
00:23:14,240 --> 00:23:18,040
Speaker 1: actually created a lot of respiratory ailments in the dustas

443
00:23:18,160 --> 00:23:23,000
Speaker 1: also clogged machinery and posted down airports and destroys crops.

444
00:23:23,000 --> 00:23:25,159
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a very serious problem. And really we

445
00:23:25,240 --> 00:23:28,360
Speaker 1: see walls everywhere in the world around us. We see

446
00:23:28,400 --> 00:23:31,480
Speaker 1: walls in our body, sell membranes, our skin even is

447
00:23:31,520 --> 00:23:33,720
Speaker 1: often seen as a wall, even though when you actually

448
00:23:33,720 --> 00:23:36,840
Speaker 1: examine it, we're talking about a porous layer. Things move

449
00:23:36,880 --> 00:23:38,719
Speaker 1: in and out off there's a lot of traffics. It's

450
00:23:38,800 --> 00:23:40,679
Speaker 1: kind of like the Great Wall of China in that regard.

451
00:23:40,720 --> 00:23:43,840
Speaker 1: It's not not a perfect barrier by any stretch. There

452
00:23:43,880 --> 00:23:46,520
Speaker 1: are gaps, there are ways to negotiate your way inside,

453
00:23:46,560 --> 00:23:49,399
Speaker 1: and that's more like calanders, I suppose. Yeah. Yeah, And

454
00:23:49,400 --> 00:23:51,439
Speaker 1: then not only when we're looking in our inward, but

455
00:23:51,480 --> 00:23:54,320
Speaker 1: when we're looking outward as well. There's something called the

456
00:23:54,400 --> 00:23:58,800
Speaker 1: Sloan Great Wall, and this is a far distant grouping

457
00:23:58,800 --> 00:24:02,400
Speaker 1: of galaxies that spans over one billion light years. It's

458
00:24:02,480 --> 00:24:06,280
Speaker 1: longer than any quote unquote structure ever measured. And I

459
00:24:06,320 --> 00:24:09,280
Speaker 1: put structure in quotes because it's kind of hard to

460
00:24:09,359 --> 00:24:12,760
Speaker 1: argue this is actually a structure. These are clusters of galaxies,

461
00:24:13,359 --> 00:24:15,800
Speaker 1: so it's more it's no more a structure really than

462
00:24:15,840 --> 00:24:18,760
Speaker 1: a constellation in the sky. It's a structure. But we're

463
00:24:18,760 --> 00:24:22,040
Speaker 1: so fascinated with walls when we define our limits on

464
00:24:22,200 --> 00:24:24,920
Speaker 1: things through the symbol in the language of walls. So

465
00:24:24,960 --> 00:24:27,560
Speaker 1: as we stare out at these distant clusters of galaxies,

466
00:24:27,800 --> 00:24:30,880
Speaker 1: we can't help but think of them in terms of walls. Well,

467
00:24:30,920 --> 00:24:33,000
Speaker 1: and I guess we could say these are sort of

468
00:24:33,000 --> 00:24:37,120
Speaker 1: cosmic webs, right, and they do create borders between things. Yeah,

469
00:24:37,160 --> 00:24:41,160
Speaker 1: there's void beyond them. They're known as galactic filament, so

470
00:24:41,320 --> 00:24:43,560
Speaker 1: that's not like filaments in a giant light bulb the

471
00:24:43,600 --> 00:24:46,040
Speaker 1: size of the moon or anything. They're actually known to

472
00:24:46,200 --> 00:24:50,560
Speaker 1: span these vast distances and they're lattice like structures. And

473
00:24:50,560 --> 00:24:53,440
Speaker 1: the cool thing about these filaments is that they are

474
00:24:53,560 --> 00:24:57,080
Speaker 1: integral to the evolution of galaxy clusters in the way

475
00:24:57,080 --> 00:25:00,000
Speaker 1: that they form. So there you have it, walls. Um,

476
00:25:00,200 --> 00:25:02,400
Speaker 1: I would be remiss if I didn't mention a Game

477
00:25:02,400 --> 00:25:04,960
Speaker 1: of Thrones with real quick uh or figure with this

478
00:25:05,080 --> 00:25:08,280
Speaker 1: book series and HBO TV series. I have heard you

479
00:25:08,440 --> 00:25:11,000
Speaker 1: speak of it, and I know of it. I have

480
00:25:11,080 --> 00:25:13,800
Speaker 1: not seen it. Now. Well, it's a it's it's very

481
00:25:13,920 --> 00:25:16,560
Speaker 1: entertaining and UH. In part of the plot revolves around

482
00:25:16,600 --> 00:25:20,960
Speaker 1: a northern wall that is built against our barians and demons,

483
00:25:21,320 --> 00:25:23,520
Speaker 1: though in this case built out of ice and UH

484
00:25:23,560 --> 00:25:26,840
Speaker 1: and the series explore some of the ideas of UH,

485
00:25:27,119 --> 00:25:29,680
Speaker 1: at least the military ideas that we discussed with a

486
00:25:29,720 --> 00:25:31,520
Speaker 1: Great Wall of China, like how do you maintain it?

487
00:25:31,840 --> 00:25:36,520
Speaker 1: How does a political climate affect the maintenance and the

488
00:25:36,640 --> 00:25:39,159
Speaker 1: and the staffing of the wall, And then is it

489
00:25:39,240 --> 00:25:44,880
Speaker 1: ultimately an effective barrier against these outside forces? I would say, now, well,

490
00:25:45,040 --> 00:25:46,800
Speaker 1: it's gonna guess well, it would make a good story.

491
00:25:46,840 --> 00:25:49,680
Speaker 1: How would you write seven books about it? Seven class

492
00:25:49,680 --> 00:25:51,960
Speaker 1: books about it? If that's how you do it? Yeah? Yeah,

493
00:25:57,200 --> 00:25:59,320
Speaker 1: So there you had it. It was a rerun, but

494
00:25:59,640 --> 00:26:01,399
Speaker 1: I think a really good one and one that I

495
00:26:01,600 --> 00:26:03,960
Speaker 1: imagine a number of our newer listeners may have missed.

496
00:26:04,160 --> 00:26:06,960
Speaker 1: So I hope you enjoyed hearing all about watz Uh.

497
00:26:06,960 --> 00:26:09,560
Speaker 1: In the meantime, you can certainly write to us as ever.

498
00:26:09,960 --> 00:26:12,199
Speaker 1: You can find us online Stuff to abole in your

499
00:26:12,200 --> 00:26:14,399
Speaker 1: Mind dot com. You can find us on social media

500
00:26:15,080 --> 00:26:17,239
Speaker 1: as stuff to Blew your Mind on Tumbler and on

501
00:26:17,240 --> 00:26:19,800
Speaker 1: Facebook and on Twitter. We are blow the Mind and

502
00:26:19,920 --> 00:26:22,080
Speaker 1: you can also drop us a line at blow the

503
00:26:22,119 --> 00:26:29,159
Speaker 1: Mind at discovery dot com for more on this and

504
00:26:29,200 --> 00:26:31,760
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics. Does it How stuff Works dot

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00:26:31,760 --> 00:26:37,359
Speaker 1: com