Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot Com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. In
Speaker 1: this episode, we're talking about walls, which sounds a little big,
Speaker 1: is a big topic because we live in this world
Speaker 1: of walls all around us. We have walls that we've erected,
Speaker 1: walls that are physical walls that are made of stone,
Speaker 1: that are made of wood, walls that are legal walls,
Speaker 1: walls that are mental walls that are from those just
Speaker 1: of ideas, ideas of legacy, ideas of division, hidden walls,
Speaker 1: the walls naked to the eye, firewalls, censorship. With any
Speaker 1: situation with the wall, you have an outsider and you
Speaker 1: have an insider. Generally, when we're contemplating walls, were on
Speaker 1: one side of the other. I guess it's possible to
Speaker 1: stand on the top of the wall, but that's a
Speaker 1: that's a different situation, a precarious position to be in. Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: you don't want to star out of the wall. But
Speaker 1: this is one of the oldest ideas really in human civilization.
Speaker 1: But we've been building physical walls to protect cities and
Speaker 1: towns for ages. Walled cities are one of the earliest
Speaker 1: symbols of civilization. How do you protect a settlement against
Speaker 1: marauders who were using their horses to try and steal
Speaker 1: your agricultural excess? And in fact, the Chinese word for
Speaker 1: city and walls is the same chain, which I found
Speaker 1: is interesting because that's how that's how important walls were
Speaker 1: in the emergence of cities in Chinese history. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: if you guys haven't already figured out, we are seriously
Speaker 1: talking about walls today, like the actual physical structures. One
Speaker 1: of the things that I was thinking about is that
Speaker 1: walls are these concrete abstractions of what I think of
Speaker 1: as maps. Right, This this way to delineate territory, to
Speaker 1: try to say my power base is going to be here.
Speaker 1: And it's kind of like it's a very interesting way
Speaker 1: that we took this abstract notion of ownership and then said, ah,
Speaker 1: we'll show you will put up a wall through our points.
Speaker 1: It's like when you're in your back seat with your
Speaker 1: sister on a long car ride as a kid. You
Speaker 1: each have a side of the back seat that you're
Speaker 1: supposed to stay on, and your stuff is supposed to
Speaker 1: stay on those sides. But during borders disputes, it becomes
Speaker 1: necessary then to point out exactly where the line is.
Speaker 1: It may become necessary to put some tape down that
Speaker 1: line to market in the physical world, and maybe even
Speaker 1: construct a barrier out of luggage or pillows. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: from time to time, though, one might want to show
Speaker 1: their might by crossing that border and knocking down luggage
Speaker 1: and making a political statement really about how they feel
Speaker 1: about you humming for three hours in the car, right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And then of course you end up with everything that
Speaker 1: has a symbolic power. In human culture, walls take on
Speaker 1: multiple purposes, and I found this particularly a telling. In
Speaker 1: ancient Chinese tradition, you have the city gods cheng hung,
Speaker 1: who protect the moats and walls of towns, so that
Speaker 1: they're important because they're helping protect your very livelihood. Your
Speaker 1: very life and everything you hold dear is protected by
Speaker 1: these walls and moats, and therefore by the deity that
Speaker 1: attends to them. But the chiang Hung also make sure
Speaker 1: that the king of the dead doesn't take any souls
Speaker 1: away without his permission, And so not only is he
Speaker 1: a lord of walls and moats, he's also a lord
Speaker 1: of death, and I find that's an interesting just symbolic
Speaker 1: economy thing. What I like about this is that this
Speaker 1: city God are these lords of walls and moats, it's
Speaker 1: another name for them. Uh, there's a bit of bureaucracy
Speaker 1: involved with us, and that they're usually considered to be
Speaker 1: the reincarnation of a human being who had been an
Speaker 1: official in earlier times. And the city God was thought
Speaker 1: to change every three years, just like a living magistrate
Speaker 1: would change office every three years. And both the magistrate
Speaker 1: and the gods hold sway over the same administrative area.
Speaker 1: So as you say, you know there's some supernatural areas there,
Speaker 1: but there's this expectation that there's formal reverence paid to
Speaker 1: the city God. So in that you see both Chinese
Speaker 1: efficiency but also this very important notion of venerating your
Speaker 1: ancestors in culture, combined in this idea that that someone
Speaker 1: was dispatching their souls to the underworld realm. Speaking of China,
Speaker 1: this brings us, of course to the Great Wall of China,
Speaker 1: which is when you when you talk about walls, there
Speaker 1: are various examples that come to mind. There's the Whaling Wall,
Speaker 1: there's the Berlin Wall, there's Hadrian's Wall. There are plenty
Speaker 1: of examples, but the big one the main landers of
Speaker 1: the world is the Great Wall of China. And the
Speaker 1: history of the wall is really fascinating because it's easy
Speaker 1: to just sort of you've seen a picture of it.
Speaker 1: You know what it looks like. You know, it's a
Speaker 1: something to see if you're a tourist in China. But
Speaker 1: what is it? What is its history? How is it conceived?
Speaker 1: And the wall dates back more than two thousand years
Speaker 1: to a time of unification in China, and this is
Speaker 1: when you had the Chin dynasty uniting seven warring kingdoms
Speaker 1: that's including itself. And if they do that, they have
Speaker 1: all these separate walls that were built by independent kingdoms,
Speaker 1: and so dynasty be instiling them together. And the idea
Speaker 1: is to protect against marauders, so they can script hundreds
Speaker 1: and thousands of workers. We were talking groups of prisoners,
Speaker 1: political enemies, peasants, soldiers, and they worked for ten years
Speaker 1: on this project. Thousands upon thousands die, as tends to happen,
Speaker 1: and legend has it that the bones of individuals who
Speaker 1: died constructing the wall are then then become a part
Speaker 1: of the wall, making it in some people's words, the
Speaker 1: longest cemetery on earth. Yeah, and much of this is
Speaker 1: because this is happening during the Chin dynasty, right, And
Speaker 1: this is again you talked about the neighboring territories that
Speaker 1: were finally united, these little fiefdoms that had a lot
Speaker 1: of strife, but it was united under what I guess
Speaker 1: you could say was China's first emperor, because China wasn't
Speaker 1: China until this. This guy united them. And when I
Speaker 1: say guy, I mean thirteen year old, and this thirteen
Speaker 1: year old is Chin Chow Wong d He is I
Speaker 1: guess you could say a bit of a megalomaniac. He
Speaker 1: begins to actually think about this unification and becomes obsessed
Speaker 1: with this idea that demons in these barbarians are going
Speaker 1: to take over China. And so that's where he mandates
Speaker 1: this length of the wall to be constructed. And again
Speaker 1: there are bits of construction of these walls throughout these
Speaker 1: thousands of years. But this is the guy who decides
Speaker 1: that it's really important to have from the Gobi Desert
Speaker 1: to the Yellow Sea this fortress. Yes, it's fascinating the
Speaker 1: idea that the wall is protecting not only against actual barbarians,
Speaker 1: but also against demons, so that it's not just a
Speaker 1: military barrier, it's a it's a spiritual barrier as well. Again,
Speaker 1: keep in mind with all if this is two thousand
Speaker 1: years ago, so this is a time when spiritualism, megalomania
Speaker 1: and abuse of the peasantry we're pretty much in vogue everywhere.
Speaker 1: So so this is, you know, not unique to China
Speaker 1: by any aspect of the imagination, but the idea that
Speaker 1: that you're you're protecting against not only things, but against ideas.
Speaker 1: I think he's very telling because we see the symbolic
Speaker 1: power of the wall rather overtly, as we'll see in
Speaker 1: various examples of walls. We look at here too, when
Speaker 1: when humans build walls, they're almost always thinking of that
Speaker 1: symbolic power as well, not only to the outsider, and
Speaker 1: to the outside or the wall is a clear statement
Speaker 1: of hey, you're not welcome here. You stay on your
Speaker 1: side of the back seat and I'll stay on mine.
Speaker 1: And then to the insider, the wall says I have
Speaker 1: built you a wall. You were protected, you were safe,
Speaker 1: you know. It is saying there is a physical barrier
Speaker 1: between you and the things that you were afraid of.
Speaker 1: And you can thank me for it. Well, I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's very much like the Boogeyman, right. And to this point,
Speaker 1: this emperor decided that he wanted the circuitous wall built
Speaker 1: and not a straight path. And the reason is because
Speaker 1: a straight line, in demonology is great for demons because
Speaker 1: they're able to navigate only on straight lines and not
Speaker 1: on curves. So he's gonna make it even more difficult
Speaker 1: for these demons by making this this serpentine wall that's
Speaker 1: twenty four ft high. And certainly that's one of the
Speaker 1: things that's amazing about. Examples of the wall today and again,
Speaker 1: examples of the wall today, as we'll discuss fees are
Speaker 1: the wall has been added to and renovated numerous times
Speaker 1: throughout history, so we're not necessarily talking about the same
Speaker 1: physical wall in the same bricks. But you still see
Speaker 1: that shape. It's like a serpent lying across the hills. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it is fascinating because it's one of those things
Speaker 1: that people had long assumed was one big, coherent, linked
Speaker 1: up wall, but in fact it's not. That was one
Speaker 1: of the myths. Another myth is that you could see
Speaker 1: this from the moon. Yeah, I see it from space
Speaker 1: and it's it's just not so no, it's not so
Speaker 1: lovely story, but it is lovely. But to go back
Speaker 1: to this emperor and talk a little bit about Chinchu
Speaker 1: Woandi and how he treated peasants. You refer to this
Speaker 1: as the world's longest cemetery. At least some people have
Speaker 1: talked about this the Great Wall of China being this Again,
Speaker 1: he's sort of indulged in soothsaying and a little bit
Speaker 1: of paranoia, and it is said that his sus sooth
Speaker 1: sayer told him that the wall would actually never be built,
Speaker 1: which he was mortally frightened of right, because the barbarians
Speaker 1: were gonna come get him in the demons unless ten
Speaker 1: thousand men were entombed in the wall. Wow, what what
Speaker 1: sus can you imagine being that guy being on the
Speaker 1: payroll that takes a lot of comments really to you, like,
Speaker 1: you know, this is the message ten thousand You gotta
Speaker 1: you gotta execute them, throw them in there. So Shinchu
Speaker 1: Wonghdi decides, you know what, he's the ruler. He realizes
Speaker 1: that he full well can't just spare that many men,
Speaker 1: So he finds a loophole in the form of one
Speaker 1: guy who has the word or the character for ten
Speaker 1: thousand in his name. I guess what his fate is.
Speaker 1: He is killed and burying the wall. Yeah, he's tossed
Speaker 1: into the wall. But again there's this idea that this
Speaker 1: wall begins to take on meaning of forced labor, being subjugated.
Speaker 1: As you can start to see, peasants are not really
Speaker 1: digging this wall right. The symbolic power to the insider
Speaker 1: is not just an idea of protection, but an idea
Speaker 1: of This is the kind of thing that governments and
Speaker 1: rulers create out of your blood. Right. It becomes a
Speaker 1: symbol of oppression and actually is very much a symbol
Speaker 1: of that for a long time until we get to
Speaker 1: the twentieth century. And we'll talk about that in a moment.
Speaker 1: But let's talk about this as being an imperfect barrier.
Speaker 1: That's the thing. Obviously the wall is important, like we said,
Speaker 1: is an idea of protection, but does it actually offer
Speaker 1: protection On one level, you're building these walls often at
Speaker 1: the on the extremes there on the frontier there between
Speaker 1: civilization and the barbarians and the demons, so you're having
Speaker 1: to basically establish colonies there. I mean, think of it
Speaker 1: in almost in terms of like an off world colony
Speaker 1: kind of a situation. You're having to have soldiers there
Speaker 1: that are also growing their own food, and there are
Speaker 1: more a part of the frontier than they are of
Speaker 1: the homeland, so they actually end up having some sort
Speaker 1: of rapport with the local populations with the barbarians, and
Speaker 1: as such are susceptible to bribes. Just here's there are
Speaker 1: a few bucks, look the other way up while we
Speaker 1: march an army through and join our army or join
Speaker 1: our army, then that happens as well, So it becomes
Speaker 1: very difficult just to to man and protect it. And
Speaker 1: then you're gonna have gaps as well. For instance, just
Speaker 1: in terms of the wall itself, the wall is not
Speaker 1: you might think of the wall as being in this
Speaker 1: NonStop wall that actually sneaks across the entire country, But
Speaker 1: there are gaps in it, and there are places where
Speaker 1: just natural barriers are depended on to to serve as
Speaker 1: the wall well, and it has been maintained, so there
Speaker 1: are there are parts of it that are in ruins.
Speaker 1: So you have Genghis Khan or Genghis Khan is he
Speaker 1: some country for two k the big g K he
Speaker 1: brings with him a huge army and martial arts and
Speaker 1: a flair for psychological terror, and he reaches the wall. Right,
Speaker 1: and for a good hundred years, the rule of China
Speaker 1: comes under Mongol. Yeah, they were the ones in charge
Speaker 1: when Marco Polo visited. That's right, that's right, And so
Speaker 1: Mongols are really taking over. But then in thirteen sixty eight,
Speaker 1: a Chinese peasant leads a rebellion against Mongol rule and
Speaker 1: this helps to establish the Ming dynasty. I only mention
Speaker 1: this because the Ming dynasty is really important and actually
Speaker 1: giving a lot of shoring up to the wall. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this was thirteen sixty eight, and the Ming dynasty looks
Speaker 1: at the wall and says, you know, this is something
Speaker 1: we need to fix up. You need to get it
Speaker 1: going because we don't want to be conquered by the
Speaker 1: barbarians again. Right, And with it, they actually are responsible
Speaker 1: for architectural embellishments on it and beginning to document various
Speaker 1: points in history. So you really begin to see more
Speaker 1: of a coherent picture of the Wall with the Ming dynasty.
Speaker 1: But then here's another thing that happens under man Chew rule.
Speaker 1: The wall no longer matters since the land on both
Speaker 1: sides just ruled by Man Chew. When China is invaded
Speaker 1: yet again. Yeah, this is seventeen hundreds, the Manchew invade
Speaker 1: the Ming dynasty. The Man a number of changes to it,
Speaker 1: added to its length, to its width, double and triple
Speaker 1: walls in some places to really reinforce it. But then
Speaker 1: when the Man Chow's invade in seventeen hundreds, it's largely
Speaker 1: abandoned as a military power. It kind of stays that
Speaker 1: way for a while, pretty much the until very recent times.
Speaker 1: During that time, the wall crumbles, the wall is looted
Speaker 1: for building supplies because you have all of these stones
Speaker 1: right there are ready to use, and so people carry
Speaker 1: it off to build things that are of actual value
Speaker 1: to their lives because the walls just sitting there, it's
Speaker 1: not even a military factor anymore. And then when Mauston
Speaker 1: comes to power, he encourages Chinese people to use this,
Speaker 1: to use the bricks, to use parts of the wall
Speaker 1: to build things, and now brings in also this idea
Speaker 1: of the modern you know, part of the cultural revolution,
Speaker 1: cultural revolution, and a huge part of it is we're
Speaker 1: going to focus on the modern China and the future China. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're going to obliterate the past. Right, the wall is
Speaker 1: very much a piece of the past, and a piece
Speaker 1: of the past that has still leaves a bad taste
Speaker 1: in a lot of people's lives because it is this
Speaker 1: thing build out of their blood. It is this symbol
Speaker 1: of the domineering, violent rule. Yeah, it's not the one
Speaker 1: of the wonders of the world that we now think
Speaker 1: of it. But this it begins to to recast itself
Speaker 1: in modern times. Right around nineteen four, there's this idea
Speaker 1: that the wall begins to take on national pride, and
Speaker 1: they actually say, let us love our country and restore
Speaker 1: our great Wall. This becomes a big mission for them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you have important foreign heads of state visit. Reagan visits,
Speaker 1: Scorba Chop visits where they go to the Great Wall.
Speaker 1: Nixon visits. You know, and as I say, Nixon, who
Speaker 1: wasn't he the person who said something like only a
Speaker 1: great people could build this great wall, which starts to
Speaker 1: even then recast its image. Yeah. Luckily he was a
Speaker 1: wall enthusiast. He was all about putting Floyd but this
Speaker 1: wall is in general. So yes, he added to that
Speaker 1: vibe that this was something that was important and worth celebrating.
Speaker 1: And so over the last few decades you see this
Speaker 1: increasing restoration of portions of the wall, increased commercialization of
Speaker 1: portions of the Wall. I'm treating. In the Lonely Planet
Speaker 1: China Guide, they point out that there are sections of
Speaker 1: the Wall that are just insanely populated. Really, I mean,
Speaker 1: you just have tourists there almost all the time unless
Speaker 1: you go in the dead of winter. Their gift shops,
Speaker 1: their tourists, there are people selling things, and I mean
Speaker 1: that's just the way it goes with popular locations. But
Speaker 1: there are still plenty of portions of the Wall that
Speaker 1: are not super innovated, that are still beautiful and don't
Speaker 1: have like a restaurant in them. Not that their portions
Speaker 1: of the restaurants of them, but you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: don't have as in them. Yeah, there are places in
Speaker 1: China where you can go if you look into it
Speaker 1: and you do the research, where you can get more
Speaker 1: of a serene views the wall as opposed to a
Speaker 1: hyper commercialized version. But it's it's still it's even if
Speaker 1: you go to those areas where there are a lot
Speaker 1: of people and there's a lot of commercialization, it's still
Speaker 1: a stunning site. Indeed. All right, we're gonna take a
Speaker 1: quick break, and when we come back, we're going to
Speaker 1: move beyond the Great Wall of China and discuss some
Speaker 1: more modern examples of walls in our lives, including cosmic walls.
Speaker 1: All right, we're back. So when you think beyond the
Speaker 1: Great Wall of China and you think of modern walls,
Speaker 1: what comes to mind? Okay, Well, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: I think about Berlin Wall. I also think about the
Speaker 1: Atlantic Wall that Hitler was. I think it's like eight
Speaker 1: hundred miles of sea coast, at least in France that
Speaker 1: he had been constructing as a barrier of and and
Speaker 1: a bit of military might. Yeah, the stuff from saving
Speaker 1: brabt Ryan of remember that. Yeah. But of course, here
Speaker 1: in the US, one of the most strikingly obvious walls
Speaker 1: is more like a fence. The US Mexico border. Well
Speaker 1: we call it offense, but it sure as heck looks
Speaker 1: like a wall in many areas. And it's been in
Speaker 1: the news a lot, especially with the conservative primaries leading
Speaker 1: up to this year's presidential election. You've had a lot
Speaker 1: of people touched on this as a hot is a
Speaker 1: hot topic issue immigration in the United States. A lot
Speaker 1: of our listeners are US based, but a lot of
Speaker 1: you are based in other countries. US Mexican migrations are
Speaker 1: very much on voters minds, especially conservative voters. So you
Speaker 1: have people like Herman Kane, the pizza mogul, who came
Speaker 1: out and said we're going to build an electric fence
Speaker 1: made out of pizza, not made out of pizza. He
Speaker 1: did not rule out alligators, as I remember, so moats
Speaker 1: and walls, and then there were some other half cocked
Speaker 1: ideas that were thrown around by some other candidates, but
Speaker 1: it all comes down to this idea of the wall
Speaker 1: right sending this message to Mexico, saying Mexicans are not
Speaker 1: wanted here, and sending more importantly really, because these are
Speaker 1: politicians talking about wall building, sending this message to their
Speaker 1: constituents in the US to say we care about what
Speaker 1: you care about so much that we built this thing.
Speaker 1: We're going to erect this giant symbol of what we're
Speaker 1: talking about, even though their YouTube videos of people scaling
Speaker 1: up these things up and over them in seconds, and
Speaker 1: and it's the same situations coming to play that came
Speaker 1: into play with the Great Wall of China. They're gonna
Speaker 1: be gaps. They're gonna be places where care of the
Speaker 1: border is either less maintained or or it is not
Speaker 1: maintained at all. Well, here's the thing. Last year was
Speaker 1: the biggest sustained drop in immigration from Mexico to the
Speaker 1: United States, leave to be surpassed and scale only by
Speaker 1: losses in the Mexican born US population during the Great Depression.
Speaker 1: So we're actually seeing a drop in immigration to the
Speaker 1: United States from Mexico. And much of this is because well,
Speaker 1: first of all, the Mexican cartel are are acting as
Speaker 1: border agents on the Mexican border, and they're demanding money,
Speaker 1: and sometimes they actually use immigrants as drug mules, so
Speaker 1: it's become far more dangerous as if it weren't already
Speaker 1: to try to cross. But also um on the U.
Speaker 1: S side, it's become much more difficult and rigorous in
Speaker 1: terms of trying to prosecute people for for doing this.
Speaker 1: But of course there's been an economic downturn as well,
Speaker 1: and also you can factor and changes in legislation in
Speaker 1: some of the southern states that have cracked down on
Speaker 1: the use of migrant labor. Right, Yeah, So it is
Speaker 1: one of those things that we wanted to point out
Speaker 1: because it is a huge symbolic effort by the United States,
Speaker 1: but in terms of efficacy and really getting at the
Speaker 1: what they think, or what the United States politicians think
Speaker 1: is the root problem doesn't isn't really solved by this
Speaker 1: right and and those some people may have giggled at
Speaker 1: the idea of building a wall to keep demons at bay.
Speaker 1: Like I said, that is just an avert statement of
Speaker 1: what all walls ultimately symbolized, Like even this wall is
Speaker 1: about keeping demons of the mind at bay. To some
Speaker 1: people on the inside, it is a demonization of the
Speaker 1: threats that in a simple vocation of the threats that
Speaker 1: that lie outside and are waiting to get in. It's
Speaker 1: also worth noting, though, that when you build walls or
Speaker 1: fences of this nature, you're building them in environments that
Speaker 1: did not previously have barriers, So you're you're going to
Speaker 1: cut into not only the migration of people, but the
Speaker 1: migration of animals. So there have been a number of
Speaker 1: studies that have looked into what effects order fences on
Speaker 1: the US Mexican border have had on migrating animals, and
Speaker 1: it doesn't paint a pretty picture, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: you're altering the psychic and the geographical landscape, right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And it's interestingly mentioned the psychic because that was one
Speaker 1: of the things that has also been brought up about
Speaker 1: the Great Wall of China and throughout China's history, that
Speaker 1: there were people who thought of it as a disruptor
Speaker 1: of g You know, this is disrupt disrupting the earth energies.
Speaker 1: You're building this unnatural thing that breaks up natural flows
Speaker 1: in the environment. Of course, we raise the walls not
Speaker 1: only against human and imagined threats, we also raised them
Speaker 1: against mother nature. In Japan, the sea walls because as
Speaker 1: an island nation and given its past history with threats
Speaker 1: from the sea, you want to be able to mitigate
Speaker 1: that to some degree. Nearly half of the twenty two
Speaker 1: thousand mile coast in Japan actually has concrete sea walls,
Speaker 1: which would make sense, right because I mean that there's
Speaker 1: a lot of earthquake activity in that area and you
Speaker 1: would want to have some sort of structure try to
Speaker 1: protect you from really high waves. So there's something very
Speaker 1: practical about it. But some people, the opponents of it,
Speaker 1: say that it's not necessarily that effective, and in fact
Speaker 1: we saw that with a tsunami. They are fascinating constructions though,
Speaker 1: that well worth doing a Google image search on because
Speaker 1: if you've never seen when, you may imagine just a
Speaker 1: straight up wall, but there are a lot different because
Speaker 1: stopping of flow, a massive flow of water, is different
Speaker 1: than stopping some marauders on horseback. It's not just about
Speaker 1: putting up the straight barrier, but putting up a structure
Speaker 1: that will slow and halt this approach of water. And
Speaker 1: that's what proponents say. They say, Okay, well, maybe it
Speaker 1: didn't safeguard us against the nuclear reactors, right seawater got
Speaker 1: in there. The wall wasn't actually high enough. It should
Speaker 1: have been built much higher, but it did slow down
Speaker 1: the encroachment of those waves. Sometimes, you know, it gave
Speaker 1: people a couple of extra minutes to try to evacuate,
Speaker 1: which is, you know, the difference between life and death.
Speaker 1: And another example of walls that comes to mind if
Speaker 1: you think back to our episode on the black Blizzards
Speaker 1: of the of the Great Depression of the dust Bowl,
Speaker 1: we mentioned the green walls that you see popping up
Speaker 1: in some portions on green wall projects in China in Africa,
Speaker 1: and the idea here is building a wall against desertification,
Speaker 1: building a wall that will try to prevent the desert
Speaker 1: from encroaching on fertile lands. Yeah, there's something called the
Speaker 1: Yellow Dragon. And each spring, the dust from China's northern
Speaker 1: deserts are swept up by the wind and whipped eastward,
Speaker 1: and they blast into Beijing and they blank at the
Speaker 1: city in a huge coat of dust particles. And that
Speaker 1: has actually created a lot of respiratory ailments in the
Speaker 1: dust of also clogged machinery and posted down airports and
Speaker 1: destroys crops. I mean, it's a very serious problem. And
Speaker 1: really we see walls everywhere in the world around us.
Speaker 1: We see walls in our body, cell membranes, our skin
Speaker 1: even is often seen as a wall, even though when
Speaker 1: you actually examine it, we're talking about a porous layer.
Speaker 1: Things move in and out off, there's a lot of traffics.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like the Great Wall of China in
Speaker 1: that regard. It's not not a perfect barrier by any stretch.
Speaker 1: There are gaps, there are ways to negotiate your way
Speaker 1: inside and more like calanders, I suppose. Yeah, yeah, and
Speaker 1: not only when we're looking in our inward, but when
Speaker 1: we're looking outward as well. There's something called the Sloane
Speaker 1: Great Wall. And this is a far distant grouping of
Speaker 1: galaxies that spans over one billion light years. It's longer
Speaker 1: than any quote unquote structure ever measured. And I put
Speaker 1: structure in quotes because it's kind of hard to argue
Speaker 1: this is actually a structure. These are clusters of galaxies,
Speaker 1: so it's more it's no more a structure really than
Speaker 1: a constellation in the sky. It's a structure. But we're
Speaker 1: so fascinated with walls when we define our limits on
Speaker 1: things through the symbol and the language of walls. So
Speaker 1: as we stare out at these distant clusters of galaxies,
Speaker 1: we can't help but think of them in terms of walls. Well,
Speaker 1: and I guess we could say these are sort of
Speaker 1: cosmic webs, right, and they do create borders between things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's void beyond them. They're known as phalactic filament, so
Speaker 1: that's not like filaments in a giant light bulb the
Speaker 1: size of the moon or anything. They're actually known to
Speaker 1: span these vast distances and they're lattice like structures. And
Speaker 1: the cool thing about these filaments is that they are
Speaker 1: integral to the evolution of galaxy clusters in the way
Speaker 1: that they form. So there you have it, Walls. I
Speaker 1: would be remiss if I didn't mention Game of Thrones
Speaker 1: real quick finger with this book series, h and HBO
Speaker 1: TV series. I have heard you speak of it, and
Speaker 1: I know of it. I have not seen it that well,
Speaker 1: it's very entertaining and part of the plot revolves arounding
Speaker 1: northern Wall that is built against our barians and demons,
Speaker 1: though in this case built out of ice, and the
Speaker 1: series explore some of the ideas of at least the
Speaker 1: military ideas that we discuss with a Great Wall of China,
Speaker 1: like how do you maintain it? How does a political
Speaker 1: climate affect the maintenance and the staffing of the wall,
Speaker 1: and then is it ultimately an effective barrier against these
Speaker 1: outside forces? Well, I'm just gonna guess, Well, it would
Speaker 1: make a good story. How would you write seven books
Speaker 1: about it? Um? Seven plus books about it? If that's
Speaker 1: how you would do it? Well, Hey, if if you
Speaker 1: have something you would like to share about walls, your
Speaker 1: own experience with walls, a wall that you found particularly
Speaker 1: mind blowing, a concept of a wall and reality or
Speaker 1: fiction that you have some thoughts on, let us know
Speaker 1: about it. You can always find us on Facebook where
Speaker 1: we are Stuff to Blow Your Mind, and you can
Speaker 1: find us on Twitter where our handle is blow the Mind.
Speaker 1: And please do drop us a line. You can do
Speaker 1: that at blow the Mind at discovery dot com. For
Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics, is it
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