Speaker 1: And Nate ab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, took
Speaker 1: either of them his censer, and put fire therein, and
Speaker 1: put incense thereon, and offered strange fire before the Lord,
Speaker 1: which he commanded them not. And there went out fire
Speaker 1: from the Lord and devoured them, and they died before
Speaker 1: the Lord. Now the Lord spoke to Moses after the
Speaker 1: death of the two sons of Aaron, when they had
Speaker 1: approached the presence of the Lord and died, the Lord
Speaker 1: said to Moses, tell your brother Aaron that he shall
Speaker 1: not enter at any time into the holy place inside
Speaker 1: the Vale before the mercy seat, which is on the Ark,
Speaker 1: or he will die, for I will appear in the
Speaker 1: cloud over the mercy Seat. Welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind from how Stuff Works dot com. Hey, welcome
Speaker 1: to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is Rob
Speaker 1: Land and I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back for Arc two.
Speaker 1: Electric Boogaloo, our second exploration of a bunch of weird
Speaker 1: sort of bronze punk takes on the stories of the
Speaker 1: Ark of the Covenant from the Hebrew Bible. Right. It's
Speaker 1: it's kind of perfect because this is a kind of
Speaker 1: this is kind of Hanaka content for stuff to blow
Speaker 1: your mind. Oh, I didn't think about the timing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're publishing these episodes the week of Hanaka almost entirely
Speaker 1: by by by accident, but but a pleasant accident, I
Speaker 1: would say. So. Last time we talked about the stories about, say,
Speaker 1: the Philistine captivity of the Ark of the Covenant and
Speaker 1: the m Roads and what all that meant. But there
Speaker 1: is another aspect to the Ark of God's story that
Speaker 1: tends to tempt people into the techno mythology realm. Not
Speaker 1: only was the Arc said to bring vast destructions and
Speaker 1: plagues of m rods, there are also these Bible stories
Speaker 1: that tell of the Arc lashing out with blasts of
Speaker 1: power that kill offenders in an instant. Uh. And so
Speaker 1: there are a couple of examples. One is the story
Speaker 1: we just told about Erin's two sons. We don't get
Speaker 1: a whole lot of details, but it seems like Erin's
Speaker 1: two sons entered the presence of the Arc with some
Speaker 1: kind of strange fire. Essentially that it sounds like they
Speaker 1: were not doing the rituals of the Tabernacle as they
Speaker 1: had been commanded. They were doing something incorrect. Fun fact,
Speaker 1: I actually traveled home and attended a Sunday School class
Speaker 1: at my mom's church recently, and this was the passage
Speaker 1: they were discussing really well in the last episode. I
Speaker 1: thought we were talking about how they almost never bring
Speaker 1: these stories up in Sunday school, at least when we
Speaker 1: were kiding. I saw a great example of why, because
Speaker 1: it's it's kind of difficult for folks to have a
Speaker 1: like a casual, real life oriented conversation about a passage
Speaker 1: like this about the strange fire of the Lord, which
Speaker 1: apparently sometimes translated is alien fire. Yeah, alien fire. They
Speaker 1: brought alien fire and the sensors before the Lord, and
Speaker 1: the Lord did not like it, and he lashed out
Speaker 1: and struck them dead. Can assumed them with fire from
Speaker 1: the mercy seat. Now, before we get into the bronze
Speaker 1: punk discussions today, we should tell at least one more
Speaker 1: story of this kind. How about the story of Uza.
Speaker 1: So remember how the arc was taken to the land
Speaker 1: of the Philistines. That's one of the stories in the
Speaker 1: Bible about it. The Philistines. Uh, there's a battle and
Speaker 1: Philistines take the arc and they put it in the
Speaker 1: temple of Dagon until the arc messes them up, and
Speaker 1: it topples the statue of the god Dagon, and eventually
Speaker 1: the Philistines repenteth and the Israelites get the arc back.
Speaker 1: So when the Israelites under King David are they're bringing
Speaker 1: the arc back to their land, that we get to
Speaker 1: this passage quote. They placed the Ark of God on
Speaker 1: a new cart that they might bring it from the
Speaker 1: house of a Ben a Dab, which was on the hill.
Speaker 1: And Usa and Ahio, the sons of a Ben a Dab,
Speaker 1: were leading the new cart. So they brought it with
Speaker 1: the Ark of God from the house of a Ben
Speaker 1: a Dab which was on the hill, and Ahio was
Speaker 1: walking ahead of the arc. Meanwhile, David and all the
Speaker 1: house of Israel, we're celebrating before the Lord with all
Speaker 1: kinds of instruments made of fir wood, with liars, harps, tambourines, castanets,
Speaker 1: and symbols. But when they came to the threshing floor
Speaker 1: of Nakon, Usa reached out toward the Ark of God
Speaker 1: and took hold of it. For the oxen nearly upset it,
Speaker 1: and the anger of the Lord burned against Usa, and
Speaker 1: God struck him down there. For this irreverence, and he
Speaker 1: died there by the ark of God. And then there's
Speaker 1: a story that apparently this place comes to be named
Speaker 1: h what roughly translates to the breakthrough of USA or
Speaker 1: the bursting out at Usa, as we discussed at length
Speaker 1: in the last episode. Uh, if you look at any
Speaker 1: of these stories of the Ark of the Covenant, or
Speaker 1: if you look at, of course, in the classic film
Speaker 1: Raiders of the Lost Arc, you see great depictions of
Speaker 1: this general fact that the Ark of the Covenant is
Speaker 1: considered a dangerous item in the stories about it. It
Speaker 1: is it is a thing that that manifests the presence
Speaker 1: and the voice of God, and and therefore there are
Speaker 1: a lot of dangers associated with misuse um even even
Speaker 1: touching it, well, even even well meaning touching. Like the
Speaker 1: idea here is that Usa wasn't trying to do, you know,
Speaker 1: a blasphemy to the ark. He just reached out to
Speaker 1: keep it from falling over because the oxen we're getting
Speaker 1: all tipped around and so the arc might have fallen
Speaker 1: on the ground. He reached out to steady it, and
Speaker 1: that was enough that got him struck dead. So anyway,
Speaker 1: I think, as with the Arc stories that we discussed
Speaker 1: last time. The most fruitful way of understanding these stories
Speaker 1: is that they are legendary narratives, not based on actual events,
Speaker 1: but rather to communicate values by telling a story. And
Speaker 1: in this case, I think one of the values that's
Speaker 1: primary here is that the commands of the Lord are
Speaker 1: to be taken very seriously, and that even deviating from
Speaker 1: God's commands in an accidental or well meaning way can
Speaker 1: be met with extremely harsh consequences. Like Aaron's sons they
Speaker 1: screw up the rights of the tabernacle by offering alien fire.
Speaker 1: They burned some thing in the sensor in a way
Speaker 1: they weren't supposed to, and they get burned up themselves.
Speaker 1: USA touches the arc even meaning well, just to prevent
Speaker 1: it from falling over, and he gets blasted dead. I
Speaker 1: think the lesson is pretty clear, right, Yeah, It's like
Speaker 1: it's a basic Dungeons and Dragons lesson as well. If
Speaker 1: there is a high level magical item in your presence,
Speaker 1: don't touch it, don't, don't, don't, don't do anything until
Speaker 1: you've at least cast a few, you know, provisional spells
Speaker 1: just to see what's happening. Right, is be very careful
Speaker 1: with the commands of God, do do everything you're told.
Speaker 1: But in the last episode we discussed the concept of
Speaker 1: this historical hermoneutic we were calling bronze punk, the desire
Speaker 1: to UH for of modern interpreters with a little knowledge
Speaker 1: about science and technology under their belt to look back
Speaker 1: at legends like this assume that maybe they're based on
Speaker 1: some kind of actual event, whether directly or in some
Speaker 1: exaggerated form, and instead of assuming a magical explanation for
Speaker 1: the event behind, the story, postulates some kind of lost
Speaker 1: world of advanced technology hidden in the dust storms of history,
Speaker 1: which again is of course risky because this is the
Speaker 1: place where history and mythology can converge. So it's difficult
Speaker 1: to really lean too heavily on anything that is described
Speaker 1: in these stories. But at the same time we can't
Speaker 1: help but do it right with the great example from
Speaker 1: the last episode was was looking at the the plague
Speaker 1: of mice and UH and tumors or emads and trying
Speaker 1: to figure out, well, as this bubonic plague is that,
Speaker 1: what is that? What's being described here? That's one of
Speaker 1: the ways in which the bronze punk hermeneutic, while not
Speaker 1: usually a good method of explaining the origins of these
Speaker 1: legendary tales and myths does open up some interesting things
Speaker 1: to consider about the ancient world. Like one of the
Speaker 1: things we talked about in the last episode was, Okay,
Speaker 1: it probably does not make sense to say that the
Speaker 1: legends of the arc are caused by it actually being
Speaker 1: some ancient bioweapon, But could there have been bioweapons in
Speaker 1: the ancient world? Was the germ warfare before people had
Speaker 1: a germ theory of disease? And we decided, you know,
Speaker 1: it does seem like it's possible that that happened, and
Speaker 1: there's even some evidence of specific cases where it looks
Speaker 1: like it happened. Maybe not in this case, and for
Speaker 1: our purposes here on the show, it's also just a
Speaker 1: great excuse to talk about some of these things at
Speaker 1: the end of the episode, and at the end of
Speaker 1: this episode as well, we're probably gonna say, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't think we should really um put a lot
Speaker 1: of faith in this particular idea, but it does forces
Speaker 1: to ask questions about about the inner workings of the
Speaker 1: world in ancient times, applying what we know about science
Speaker 1: today and sort of unwrapping it through an analysis of
Speaker 1: the past. Well, there's an interesting question that's going to
Speaker 1: come out of today's episode about what what causes major
Speaker 1: breakthroughs in the progress of science and history. So we'll
Speaker 1: get back to that towards the end of the episode.
Speaker 1: So last time, we talked about the idea that it
Speaker 1: could have been a weapon of germ warfare. That's unlikely,
Speaker 1: but it's fun to consider. Um, we talked about the
Speaker 1: pretty much impossible idea that it was a bearer of
Speaker 1: some sort of radiation hazard. I know this has been
Speaker 1: popular with people like Eric von Danikin and I don't
Speaker 1: know about him specifically, but some of those ancient aliens. Yeah,
Speaker 1: anytime where you're like, oh, there's some sort of of
Speaker 1: of crazy piece of technology. It's a nuclear reactor or something. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then we of course talked about the psychology of artifacts,
Speaker 1: like the arc being a focal point for worship and
Speaker 1: how that affects the altered states of consciousness, the mind
Speaker 1: and so forth. But today we wanted to explore another
Speaker 1: very strange bronze punk rabbit trail that many many authors
Speaker 1: have taken over the years to explain stories like Erin's
Speaker 1: two sons in the Story of Uza. These people who
Speaker 1: are struck dead in the presence of the arc, and
Speaker 1: that is the idea of the electric arc. Yes, this
Speaker 1: is this is a pretty fabulous notion because it doesn't
Speaker 1: really it doesn't depend on aliens, It doesn't depend on
Speaker 1: any um, you know, the alternative view of the evolution
Speaker 1: of consciousness or anything. It basically just depends. It basically
Speaker 1: asked questions about like what were the what was the
Speaker 1: knowledge of electricity at the time, and what were the
Speaker 1: capabilities and material capabilities in many cases to construct a
Speaker 1: primitive device. I would like to read with some abridgements,
Speaker 1: from an article published in the Chicago Daily Tribune March five,
Speaker 1: ninety three by the Reverend John Evans, called Scientists says
Speaker 1: Sacred Box was a condenser. Robert, will you help me
Speaker 1: read some sections from this? Certainly, would you like to
Speaker 1: take the beginning here? I shall. It was a charge
Speaker 1: of some ten thousand volts of static electricity, and not
Speaker 1: the wrath of God that killed Uza when he touched
Speaker 1: the ark of the Covenant. Such, at least is the
Speaker 1: scientific conjecture of Dean Frederick Rogers of the Department of
Speaker 1: Engineering at Lewis Institute of Technology concerning the mysterious powers
Speaker 1: of the Arc, which was not only an object of
Speaker 1: reverence to the Israelites but also a troublesome possession. Right.
Speaker 1: So the article then goes on to tell the story
Speaker 1: of Usa. As we told before, the arc goes unsteady
Speaker 1: oxen or out to knock it over, he touches it,
Speaker 1: he gets struck dead. Uh and evans rights quote. Professor
Speaker 1: Rodgers made a study of the construction of the Arc
Speaker 1: and discovered its design called for a perfectly constructed simple
Speaker 1: electric condenser or lighten jar. And then the article also
Speaker 1: goes on to tell the story of the construction of
Speaker 1: the Ark of the Covenant. We talked about that in
Speaker 1: the last episode. But basically the design specifications are it's
Speaker 1: a big wooden box with gold on the inside and
Speaker 1: the outside, not just any wood at shipham would right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's which I believe is supposed to be the Acacia
Speaker 1: tree Acacia would. Uh. They called it ship him would
Speaker 1: And it's got gold on the inside, gold on the outside,
Speaker 1: and then these gold representative figures of Cherubim on the top.
Speaker 1: So going back to the article, the scientific interest in
Speaker 1: the construction pointed out by Professor Rogers was that the
Speaker 1: Acacia would box about forty inches long and slightly less
Speaker 1: than thirty inches in width and depth, not only was
Speaker 1: lined with gold leaf on the inside, but over aid
Speaker 1: with the same metal without. This, according to Professor Rodgers,
Speaker 1: is the first step that any modern boy with a
Speaker 1: flare for electrical experimentation will take to create a lid
Speaker 1: in jar. And girls don't be discouraged there. You can
Speaker 1: create light in jars too. Also, I don't I never
Speaker 1: created a light in jar. I did the potato battery,
Speaker 1: and that's about as far as I went towards creating
Speaker 1: the arc. I never even made a potato battery. Oh
Speaker 1: but I should also say, boys and girls alike, if
Speaker 1: you are actually constructing a light in jar, do some
Speaker 1: with with proper safety precautions and adult supervision because they
Speaker 1: can actually be dangerous depending on their capacity. But anyway,
Speaker 1: moving on, except that in a light in jar a
Speaker 1: glass receptacle, he's coated on the inside and the outside
Speaker 1: with tinfoil instead of gold. Then with the aid of
Speaker 1: a rod and a small knob at the top and
Speaker 1: a short chain at the bottom which is inserted through
Speaker 1: the cork so that the chain may make contact with
Speaker 1: the bottom of the jar, A young experiment er is
Speaker 1: ready to collect small charges of bottled lightning, Robert, would
Speaker 1: you like to take over? In the section subtitled a
Speaker 1: condenser of electricity, but the Ark of the Covenant was
Speaker 1: a much larger condenser and thought by Professor Rogers to
Speaker 1: have been capable of collecting death dealing charges. The divine
Speaker 1: erections called for the creation of two chairubim of pure
Speaker 1: gold to be placed on a gold slab or mercy
Speaker 1: seat atop the arc. These chairubim, Professor Rodgers explained what
Speaker 1: he believes to have been the positive pole of the circuit,
Speaker 1: similar to the knob on the top of the light
Speaker 1: in jar. When he was asked how the static charge
Speaker 1: of electricity got into the arc, Professor Rogers admitted that
Speaker 1: there was very little accepted authority among scientists concerning the
Speaker 1: action and control of atmospheric electricity. He explained, however, that
Speaker 1: it is known among physicists that a difference of potential
Speaker 1: exists between the Earth and the air, which may be
Speaker 1: collected in electrical charges under certain favorable conditions. The design
Speaker 1: of the arc, at least as described in Exodus. Undoubtedly
Speaker 1: I love this certainty of people where about these kinds
Speaker 1: of kind of hair brained interpretations. Clearly, there's no room
Speaker 1: for for discussion here. That's what it was. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: the article goes on to state that Rogers believes the
Speaker 1: arc could have been electrically charged by air currents created
Speaker 1: by smoke from the burning of incense and sacrifices, which
Speaker 1: the Bible says often happened close to the arc. He
Speaker 1: also says this could charge the light in arc enough
Speaker 1: to allow it to deal fatal bolts of electricity, and
Speaker 1: he cites a Hebrew commentary tradition that states that quote,
Speaker 1: the wings of the golden Cherubim not only emitted fire,
Speaker 1: but also an aura known among electricians as brush glow.
Speaker 1: The fire emitted by the Cherubim could have been well
Speaker 1: known electrical arc resulting from overcharge. Professor Rogers beliefs that
Speaker 1: a number of accounts of destruction attributed by the scriptures
Speaker 1: to the arc might be explained as being results of
Speaker 1: purely natural phenomena, and he gives some examples that, like
Speaker 1: we talked about last time, the destruction of the Philistine
Speaker 1: Idol of day Gone quote, a divinity supposed to be
Speaker 1: half fish and half man and just a side note, apparently,
Speaker 1: that association of the Canaanite god Dagon with fish that
Speaker 1: I think that is supposed to be exonymic in origin,
Speaker 1: meaning that the the ancient Hebrews related the name of
Speaker 1: this god to the Hebrew word for fish. The original
Speaker 1: Philistine Dagon appears to be more likely some kind of
Speaker 1: grain and fertility god. Sorry Lovecraft fans, Oh, yeah, that
Speaker 1: is kind of disappointment, because Dagon, of course is a
Speaker 1: part of the Lovecraft mythos and uh and and then
Speaker 1: it's one of those cool gods where you read about
Speaker 1: it there, then you read about it in the Bible.
Speaker 1: And if you, like I was, if you were a
Speaker 1: you know, a high schooler who's who suddenly discovered Lovecraft
Speaker 1: and then found one of these deities in the Bible
Speaker 1: as well, it was a pretty awesome moment. Oh, I
Speaker 1: can't help but think of the creatures of the sea
Speaker 1: as the children of Dagon. I'm always going to go there,
Speaker 1: even knowing what I know now that he probably wasn't
Speaker 1: actually a fish god. Right, But at the same time,
Speaker 1: we do have a lot of We've discussed some tremendous
Speaker 1: ancient fish gods on the show before, right, But anyway,
Speaker 1: So they tell the story in the article of this
Speaker 1: philistine idol repeatedly getting knocked over or off of the arc,
Speaker 1: and Roger says, quote, if the idol had been constructed
Speaker 1: out of some poorer metal in combination with wood, an
Speaker 1: electrical charge far below the capacity of the ARC would
Speaker 1: have been enough to have accomplished the destruction. So I
Speaker 1: think they're saying that the arc could have knocked over
Speaker 1: the the idol just by discharging electricity. I'm I'm not
Speaker 1: sure about that, but okay, Yeah, I'm gonna try to
Speaker 1: include some art that I found on the landing page
Speaker 1: for this episode is stuff to blow your mind dot
Speaker 1: com because there are a number of wonderful depictions of
Speaker 1: like the glowing arc and a top old uh statue
Speaker 1: of the deity Dagon sometimes with a fish tail uh
Speaker 1: that of course is now broken because it fell over
Speaker 1: and uh and of course this is uh. This kind
Speaker 1: of thing was was also referenced in Rages of the
Speaker 1: Lost Arc. Again, that's scene where the Ark of the
Speaker 1: Covenant burns through the swastika on the crate that can
Speaker 1: haines it. Yeah, like like destroying another false idols. Yeah. Uh.
Speaker 1: So to continue and we're getting close to the end
Speaker 1: of this article, but there's some other good stuff here.
Speaker 1: So Evans talks about how all these kinds of miracles
Speaker 1: could be attributed to electricity, and he talks about the
Speaker 1: tendency of people to attribute, you know, processes they don't understand,
Speaker 1: to divine intervention. And then he says, thus, if Moses
Speaker 1: accidentally stumbled upon the principle of the leidon jar, the
Speaker 1: device would instantly be accepted as the conveying medium of
Speaker 1: divine favor or disfavor. Sounds again like a little bit
Speaker 1: too much certainty in this interpretation here, But the author
Speaker 1: tells a bunch more stories of the arc and then
Speaker 1: also points out that the Ark of the Covenant was
Speaker 1: not the only arc given sacred significance in the ancient world,
Speaker 1: and he discusses ancient Egyptian arcs, speculating that Moses could
Speaker 1: have learned about the creation of electrical arcs from the
Speaker 1: Egyptians when he was growing up in the pharaoh's court. Again,
Speaker 1: that's that's a nice story, but I think once again
Speaker 1: the problem is just that it's making the biblical source
Speaker 1: at face value. And what's more likely is that the
Speaker 1: biography of Moses is a legend. But but yeah, there
Speaker 1: there he does point out that there are other arc
Speaker 1: like things in other cultures around the ancient Near Eastern
Speaker 1: and and the Egyptian arcs are a great example. Right.
Speaker 1: But then again we have to come back to perhaps
Speaker 1: the simpler explanation that an arc like thing is a box. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and therefore, yes, the technology of box making was
Speaker 1: very much in effect at the time, right. Uh. And
Speaker 1: so finally, Robert, do you want to read this very
Speaker 1: last paragraph here? Certainly, while no historian would engage in
Speaker 1: such speculation, yet it is the right of any man
Speaker 1: to fancy that it was in Egypt that the properties
Speaker 1: of the gold coated box were discovered by some hapless craftsman.
Speaker 1: He paid for his discovery with his life, but gave
Speaker 1: his kinsmen a home for a new and powerful god. Okay,
Speaker 1: so they've got a theory here. Some Egyptian craftsman accidentally
Speaker 1: discus heard how to build a lidon jar by building
Speaker 1: boxes and covering them with gold, and then that information
Speaker 1: was transmitted to Moses, and then Moses carried the secret
Speaker 1: of how to build alidon jar, and that became the
Speaker 1: ark of the Covenant, and thus it gives us all
Speaker 1: these stories of like people touching it and getting struck dead. Now,
Speaker 1: I think it would be ridiculous to say that if
Speaker 1: the arc actually existed, we're assuming something like it may
Speaker 1: have if it existed, that it was best explained in
Speaker 1: these terms. But well, I don't think we need to
Speaker 1: resort to this to explain the arc legend. I don't
Speaker 1: find it implausible at all that someone in the ancient
Speaker 1: world and someone in the ancient Mediterranean could have at
Speaker 1: some point accidentally created a capacitor, which is what aliden
Speaker 1: jar is, and that it could have injured or killed people.
Speaker 1: And that is a really interesting thing to consider, right
Speaker 1: because not I mean not only, of course, the the
Speaker 1: accidental creation of such a thing, but then the recreation
Speaker 1: such a thing and the utilization of such a thing,
Speaker 1: either as essentially a tool of of a nation, like
Speaker 1: what's going to happen when I touch it? Like a
Speaker 1: fatal shock, as a no, not dying, as yes, you
Speaker 1: know that that sort of thing, which which a lot
Speaker 1: of ancient practices of religion and even modern practices of
Speaker 1: religion really boiled down to. That give me something to
Speaker 1: provide an answer for some question I have or or
Speaker 1: provide some sort of a random answer to something that
Speaker 1: I am incapable of generating my own random answer to. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and again, I think it's not hard to believe that
Speaker 1: that someone could have accidentally discovered how to build something
Speaker 1: like this. Again, like the discovery of the actual liden
Speaker 1: Jar was also accidental somewhat and frightening someone. Maybe we
Speaker 1: should explore that after a break. Thank thank Alright, we're back. Okay,
Speaker 1: So we mentioned before the break that, in fact, the
Speaker 1: discovery of the liden Jar itself, we've got these people
Speaker 1: saying that the Ark of the Covenant was some kind
Speaker 1: of ancient liden Jar, some kind of capacitor or condenser
Speaker 1: that would store up electric charge and then charge it
Speaker 1: all at once, maybe killing somebody who touched it in
Speaker 1: the wrong way. Uh So, in seventy there was this
Speaker 1: German Lutheran bishop named you alled Georg von Klist. I've
Speaker 1: also seen his name represented as you won Jurgen von Klist.
Speaker 1: I don't know if those are variations on the same
Speaker 1: name or if that's discrepancy. I don't know, but either way,
Speaker 1: whatever his middle name was, von Kleist was performing experiments
Speaker 1: with an electrostatic generator. At the time, this would have
Speaker 1: been something like the spinning globe generator of Francis Howkesby
Speaker 1: or of Benjamin Franklin, which was essentially like a glass
Speaker 1: sphere that you would rotate rapidly against a wool cloth
Speaker 1: by turning a crank, charging the sphere by friction, essentially
Speaker 1: gathering up electrons from the cloth. Now, once this principle
Speaker 1: had been demonstrated, uh, lots of people were messing around
Speaker 1: with them. And von Kleist had a glass medicine bottle
Speaker 1: that was filled with liquid. It was water or alcohol,
Speaker 1: with a cork top and a nail driven through the
Speaker 1: cork poking down into the liquid inside. And while he
Speaker 1: was doing his experiments, von Kleist held the outside of
Speaker 1: the bottle with his hand and he touched the nail
Speaker 1: to the generator that was, you know, the friction generator.
Speaker 1: And after charging the inside of the bottle, he found
Speaker 1: that when he held the bottle with one hand and
Speaker 1: touched the nail with his other hand, he received a shock.
Speaker 1: Why because he just used his body to complete a
Speaker 1: circuit and thus the spark the shock. Yes, uh. And
Speaker 1: then there's another guy around the same time Peter van
Speaker 1: mussen Brook of Leiden, Holland, who discovered the same principle
Speaker 1: the following year, which is where the Lyden jar gets
Speaker 1: its name. It's it's spelled like l e y d
Speaker 1: e N, but I think Leiden Holland is with like
Speaker 1: an ei. So I'm saying Lyden. I've heard people say Leyden.
Speaker 1: I think I read it in my mind is laden
Speaker 1: for years and years. I may have said Laden in
Speaker 1: the past. Whichever way it is, I'm gonna be saying Lyden.
Speaker 1: If you don't like that, you can email and complain.
Speaker 1: H So von Musson Breck was able to charge up
Speaker 1: a glass jar full of water with a metal rod
Speaker 1: plunging inside it, and he also discovered that when you
Speaker 1: touch the rod while holding the outside of the jar,
Speaker 1: you got this terrific shock. So the principle here is
Speaker 1: the one of creating this electrical potential difference. You know,
Speaker 1: by charging it up in this way and having the
Speaker 1: insulator of the glass there between the inside and the outside,
Speaker 1: you're creating this difference potential where one side is positively charged,
Speaker 1: one side is negatively charged, and they desperately want to equalize.
Speaker 1: And whenever you complete that circuit circuit, they will equalize,
Speaker 1: and if you are the thing that completes that circuit,
Speaker 1: that equalization can be unpleasant for you. It can be
Speaker 1: bad for your body. Now, let's talk about how unpleasant
Speaker 1: because uh, we we experienced static shock all the time,
Speaker 1: especially during the winter in our modern world. My son
Speaker 1: and I when we go to a playground, we always
Speaker 1: do this thing called electric high five where if there's
Speaker 1: if there's you know, static electricity is generated when he
Speaker 1: goes down the slide because because the friction, I wait
Speaker 1: at the bottom and he gives me a high five,
Speaker 1: and sometimes there is an alarming shock to it, like
Speaker 1: it's it's it's pretty intense, but it's fun, right, It's
Speaker 1: not something that I would attribute to the to the
Speaker 1: wrath of of of an ancient god. When he goes
Speaker 1: down that slide, he's becoming an electrostatic generator. And you,
Speaker 1: you are the you are the ground terminal. So yeah,
Speaker 1: the question though, is could that high five be dangerous
Speaker 1: or fatal? You bet? Actually, well, not on the slide,
Speaker 1: but given given how much charge you could store up
Speaker 1: under various circumstances, yeah, it's entirely possible. Van Musson Brook
Speaker 1: reportedly said I would not take a second shock for
Speaker 1: the Kingdom of France. And Benjamin Franklin. We've talked about
Speaker 1: this on the show before, but the year old American
Speaker 1: hero Benjamin Franklin, hanging out in Philadelphia loved experimenting with
Speaker 1: Lydon jars. He began to get more power by chaining
Speaker 1: them together in a circuit so that they're combined capacit
Speaker 1: that he could be discharged all at the same time,
Speaker 1: giving even more power, And Franklin kind of turned into
Speaker 1: a mad scientist in this regard. He became temporarily enthralled
Speaker 1: with the idea of using the powerful shock from this
Speaker 1: parade of jars to deal lethal shocks to animals. And
Speaker 1: he compared this row of Lyden jars all strung together
Speaker 1: to a battery of cannons or military artillery, giving us
Speaker 1: the term we still used today for a slightly different
Speaker 1: form of storage for electrical potential. The battery is like
Speaker 1: a you know, it's a battery. In the seventeen forties,
Speaker 1: Benjamin Franklin told a friend of his that he had
Speaker 1: figured out that the discharge of two Lden jars was
Speaker 1: quote sufficient to kill common hens outright. He even said
Speaker 1: that since the electric shock killed so quickly, it might
Speaker 1: become a more humane way of slaughter for butchers, so
Speaker 1: that the birds that they butchered suffered less. And he
Speaker 1: proposed that a butcher could kill a turkey by stringing
Speaker 1: together six Liden jars into a battery and then tie
Speaker 1: the chain, which was one terminal, around the turkey's legs
Speaker 1: and then lift the turkey so that its head touched
Speaker 1: the other terminal. Whether or not this was actually more
Speaker 1: humane as a method of butchery, it probably wasn't the
Speaker 1: safest method for butchers to use, because when Franklin himself
Speaker 1: was trying to perform experiments like this, like there was
Speaker 1: a time he wanted to have a turkey barbecue where
Speaker 1: he was trying to kill turkeys with Lidon jars, he
Speaker 1: ended up accidentally shocking himself horribly and he was like
Speaker 1: knocked back and he felt bruised for days. Uh he
Speaker 1: And he explicitly said that he was afraid that a
Speaker 1: blow like that could easily kill a man. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: Benjamin Franklin here is really sounding like a man who
Speaker 1: has never observed, who has never watched someone who knows
Speaker 1: what they're doing kill a chicken or a duck, because
Speaker 1: generally it is just I've seen like food documentaries where
Speaker 1: you see like a loving, caring a duck farmer just
Speaker 1: you know, one second they're holding the duck and then
Speaker 1: it's like just a quick twist of the wrist and
Speaker 1: they've rung its net and it's dead. Yes, far better
Speaker 1: than risking your own death. And it's like burning the
Speaker 1: house down in the process. Well, and then it didn't
Speaker 1: even always work because he said, so he's trying to
Speaker 1: instantly and humanely kill turkeys this way, but he would
Speaker 1: like knock them unconscious and sometimes they'd come back, they'd
Speaker 1: be kind of woozy. Uh. It just sounds horrible, what
Speaker 1: are you doing, Ben? But anyway, so eventually people figured
Speaker 1: out that there are multiple ways of constructing alidon jar.
Speaker 1: You can make one with a simple conductive foil on
Speaker 1: the inside and the outside of a glass jar, or
Speaker 1: you can make one with water on the inside. In
Speaker 1: the eighteenth century, it became common to cram the inside
Speaker 1: of the jar with gold leaf, and they're just a
Speaker 1: bunch of ways to do it. But essentially what you
Speaker 1: need is a thin layer of what's known as a
Speaker 1: dielectric which is an insulating, non conductive material like glass,
Speaker 1: with a way of charging up the potential difference between
Speaker 1: the conductors on each side of that dielectric layer. You've
Speaker 1: got the negative charge on the inside and the positive
Speaker 1: charge on the outside. And so back to the idea
Speaker 1: of of our friend, Professor Frederick Rogers, he was saying, Okay,
Speaker 1: that's how the ARC is working. Right. You've got die electric,
Speaker 1: which is the wood, and then you've got the gold layering,
Speaker 1: the gold plating on the inside and on the outside,
Speaker 1: and those are forming the conductive foils like in aliden Jar.
Speaker 1: All you really need is like a way of charging
Speaker 1: up the inside and having that potential difference. And it's
Speaker 1: very possible that you have a lethal electro static discharge
Speaker 1: machine capable of killing people who touch it the wrong way. Now,
Speaker 1: our friend, professor Frederick Rodgers, who oh, I just realized
Speaker 1: he's Fred Rogers, this is Mr Rogers. Well, it's a
Speaker 1: beautiful day in the neighborhood, a beautiful day for electrocution.
Speaker 1: Uh So, Mr Rogers wasn't the first person to propose
Speaker 1: that the ARC was a capacitor or aliden Jar. Actually
Speaker 1: found earlier evidence of different versions of this theory, including
Speaker 1: one from one of my favorite discourse communities of all time,
Speaker 1: late nineteenth century American spirit ritualism. Remember our old friend
Speaker 1: John Murray Spear, of course, Yes, yeah, the spiritualist agitator
Speaker 1: for the spirit land building that tremendous contraption that was
Speaker 1: going to was was that a radio for speaking to God? Yes, essentially,
Speaker 1: I mean it was very complicated his theology about that.
Speaker 1: But John Murray Spear was a spiritualist who thought he
Speaker 1: was getting messages from the spirits of the dead telling
Speaker 1: him how to build an electro mechanical messiah called the
Speaker 1: New Motor, which would be a channel for the new
Speaker 1: motive power, which was God's energy poured into the universe
Speaker 1: through the lens of the Sun, which would be enlightening
Speaker 1: and would cause wisdom and a new human that would
Speaker 1: be created by Essentially, what this machine was was like
Speaker 1: a coffee table with like a bunch of metal stuff
Speaker 1: on top of it. Yeah. I remember looking at illustrations
Speaker 1: of this, and it was no arc that's for certain.
Speaker 1: I remember exactly what you said about it, which is
Speaker 1: that you said it looked like if a coffee table
Speaker 1: mate it with a dalek. Yeah, yeah, it's pretty much
Speaker 1: what it looked like. No chair of you. But anyway,
Speaker 1: I think we should explore some spiritualist bronze punk. So
Speaker 1: I wasn't able to find an original version of this article,
Speaker 1: but I want to talk about an article that's reproduced
Speaker 1: in a book by the spiritualist author Moses Hull. Hull
Speaker 1: quotes the entirety of this article, which was published sometime
Speaker 1: in the eighteen nineties and a spiritualist periodical called The
Speaker 1: Progressive Thinker, which has a great little subtitle it's science
Speaker 1: supplemented by an exalted morality, the Bible of the future.
Speaker 1: And so you've got all these strange currents in nineteenth
Speaker 1: century American spiritualism, which as in this case, often featured
Speaker 1: like a combination of belief in the existence of spirits
Speaker 1: and our ability to receive communications from them, but then
Speaker 1: also like progressive politics, often abolition of slavery, women's suffrage,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing, a kind of futuristic embrace of
Speaker 1: scientific and technological progress, skepticism about some traditional doctrines of
Speaker 1: religion while still embracing others. Given all this kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: it's not surprising to me that spiritualist authors would be
Speaker 1: embracing an electrical theory of the arc legend. They sometimes
Speaker 1: had this sort of rationalism supernaturalism hybrid that made them
Speaker 1: want to read the Bible as in some ways literally
Speaker 1: true and in other ways like revealing hints of technologies
Speaker 1: that we would later discover, maybe through the revelations of spirits.
Speaker 1: Like remember John murray spears belief that he was getting
Speaker 1: messages from the Association of Electrizers. Who were these people
Speaker 1: like Benjamin Franklin and all these dead people who were
Speaker 1: giving him technological messages from beyond the grave. But anyway,
Speaker 1: let's look at this article from the Progressive Thinker. So
Speaker 1: the the author of this article says, there is nothing
Speaker 1: new on the face of the earth, and there is
Speaker 1: no doubt that electricity was well known to the Israelites
Speaker 1: and probably to the Phoenicians. Again no doubt. Why why
Speaker 1: is it always no doubt uncertainty? Yeah, well, we'll come
Speaker 1: back to that particular question, because on one hand, yes,
Speaker 1: there was some no uch of electricity, but was it working.
Speaker 1: I don't know if we know that it was known
Speaker 1: to the Israelites. Yeah, because I mean, I have to
Speaker 1: admit I don't really know what the what the weather,
Speaker 1: weather patterns are necessarily like uh in the Middle Middle East,
Speaker 1: like to what extent lightning is observed, But the observation
Speaker 1: of lightning would be one slight level of knowledge of
Speaker 1: electricity not necessarily, I mean, not a working knowledge. You
Speaker 1: can look at at a lightning storm and you can
Speaker 1: be impressed by it and have no idea what it is.
Speaker 1: Sure given a broad definition, okay, yeah, uh, And there's
Speaker 1: certainly what the Greeks knew, which we'll get to a
Speaker 1: little bit. So the author explains the story of the
Speaker 1: construction of the arc, points out that the special type
Speaker 1: of wood that was that was used to build the arc.
Speaker 1: They say, quote, was this choice accidental on account of
Speaker 1: the great value of the resinous would? Or was it
Speaker 1: in the choice of the best known nonconductor among the
Speaker 1: great number of various timbers. I don't know if that
Speaker 1: is correct. I sort of doubt that premise, but you
Speaker 1: know who knows. Um. I was wondering, is would a
Speaker 1: good insulator? And I looked this up. It basically depends
Speaker 1: on factors about the wood itself, such as the type
Speaker 1: of wood and the moisture content. So, of course, the
Speaker 1: author points out correctly that it is said that the
Speaker 1: inside and outside of the arc were covered in beaten gold,
Speaker 1: and that this is a good conductor of electricity. It
Speaker 1: is true that gold is a good conductor of electricity. Quote.
Speaker 1: So much is certain that if Edison or Tesla had
Speaker 1: lived in those days, they could not have improved upon
Speaker 1: the choice of material, and the result was a powerful
Speaker 1: lidon jar. I think they actually could have improved on it.
Speaker 1: For instance, silver is an even better conductor than gold. Also,
Speaker 1: Sarah the them a higher rank of angel, just saying
Speaker 1: they could go from oh touche. So the author also
Speaker 1: claims that the arc was charged by the smoke of
Speaker 1: burnt offerings, which is the same thing Roger said. Uh.
Speaker 1: The author says that after Moses died, others improved upon
Speaker 1: the design of the electrical arc by placing it in
Speaker 1: a temple surrounded by a hundred and fifty foot poles
Speaker 1: covered in gold to charge the arc with electrical storms.
Speaker 1: And then we get to my favorite part, which is
Speaker 1: that the author says that he essentially implies that Aaron
Speaker 1: in the Bible stories used the arc as a murder weapon. Robert,
Speaker 1: would you like to read this passage? I've got here,
Speaker 1: certainly and and we'll just pretend that we threw in
Speaker 1: the law and order sound effect right here. Maybe maybe
Speaker 1: we can do that. I don't know. We'll see any
Speaker 1: coroner's jury of today if it were to sit on
Speaker 1: an inquest over the bodies of Aaron's sons, would it
Speaker 1: once bring a verdict of death by discharge of electricity?
Speaker 1: Aaron knew this power, and to make it effective, all
Speaker 1: he had to do to deal death from this apparatus
Speaker 1: was to remove the costly camel's hair carpet, which are
Speaker 1: almost perfect non conductors of electricity, and make the culprit
Speaker 1: stand on terra FIRMA death would result instantly by fire
Speaker 1: breaking out and leave no wounds or burns to account
Speaker 1: for his death. That several members of revolting tribes of
Speaker 1: Israelites were thus electrocuted is also a matter of record
Speaker 1: in the Bible. I wouldn't call them revolting necessarily. That
Speaker 1: seems a little harsh. Oh he means rebel. Yes, that
Speaker 1: is again matter of record. Is just a certainty. What
Speaker 1: what is with this? Well, I mean there's probably a
Speaker 1: lot to unpack their in turn, I mean we haven't
Speaker 1: packed this to a certain extent. Uh, For instance, looking
Speaker 1: at the uh, the Great flood and the idea of
Speaker 1: a biblical great flood and its effect on the study
Speaker 1: of geology for so long, you know, I mean, the
Speaker 1: the Biblical record as it was, uh, certainly influenced even
Speaker 1: scientific understanding of the world for for quite a while. Well,
Speaker 1: I just think it's so interesting that you've got this
Speaker 1: weird hybrid approach of looking at the Bible here where
Speaker 1: the person is saying, I'm going to question and interrogate
Speaker 1: the source of this power, but I'm going to absolutely
Speaker 1: take the story at face value except where it sort
Speaker 1: of doesn't really match what I'm saying. But also I'm
Speaker 1: going to take God completely out of the equation or
Speaker 1: replace it with a device. But I'm also going to
Speaker 1: treat the text this uh, this translated text as if
Speaker 1: it is a complete historical record, as if it's just
Speaker 1: a security camp footage of the Ark of the Covenant. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that is exactly what I was, maybe inarticulately trying to say.
Speaker 1: And then they in the article by saying Franklin the
Speaker 1: electric chair in the state of New York and the
Speaker 1: discovery of the light in jar itself in light in
Speaker 1: Germany or all back numbers. History only repeats itself, whether
Speaker 1: recorded or not, And then here's a here's an even
Speaker 1: crazier one. It seems that none other than Nicola Tesla
Speaker 1: toyed with this idea as well. In a nineteen fifteen
Speaker 1: essay called the Wonder World to Be Created by Electricity,
Speaker 1: Tesla wrote, the superstitious belief of the ancients, if it
Speaker 1: existed at all, can therefore not be taken as a
Speaker 1: reliable proof of their ignorance. But just how much they
Speaker 1: knew about electricity can only be conjectured. A curious fact
Speaker 1: is that the ray or torpedo fish was used by
Speaker 1: them in electrotherapy. Some old coins show twin stars or sparks,
Speaker 1: such as might be produced by a galvanic battery. The records,
Speaker 1: though scanty, are of a nature to fill us with
Speaker 1: conviction that a few initiated at least had a deeper
Speaker 1: knowledge of amber phenomena. To mention one, Moses was undoubtedly
Speaker 1: a practical and skillful electrician, far in advance of his time.
Speaker 1: Undoubtedly the Bible describes precisely and minutely arrangements constituting a
Speaker 1: machine in which electricity was generated by friction of air
Speaker 1: against silk curtains and stored in a box constructed like
Speaker 1: a condenser. It is very plausible to assume that the
Speaker 1: sons of Aaron were killed by a high tension discharge,
Speaker 1: and that the vestal fires of the Romans were electrical.
Speaker 1: The belt drive must have been known to engineers of
Speaker 1: that epoch, and it is difficult to see how the
Speaker 1: abundant evolution of static electricity could have escaped their notice.
Speaker 1: The words of Nicola Tesla impressive, I had no idea
Speaker 1: that he ever commented on this again is certainly undoubtedly,
Speaker 1: and then more recently, of course, the idea of the
Speaker 1: electric arc as. I think we've mentioned this at the beginning.
Speaker 1: If not, you will not be surprised to learn that
Speaker 1: it seems popular with people operating in the ancient alien
Speaker 1: cinematic universe. Eric von dani Can claimed this, while also
Speaker 1: claiming that it was as part of his whole ancient
Speaker 1: alien technology thing. It was. It was alien gift motif.
Speaker 1: I think he said that it was like a radio.
Speaker 1: Somebody said that it was a nuclear reactor. I know Rile,
Speaker 1: the founder of the Aliens, had some idea that it
Speaker 1: was a nuclear reactor or something like that, but to
Speaker 1: what end? What good does it do to have a
Speaker 1: nuclear reactor and just trotted about the desert. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure that it does, because really the whole point what
Speaker 1: makes this subject actually interesting is that building a form
Speaker 1: of a capacitor is technically possible for the ancients without
Speaker 1: supposing any kind of alien nonsense or intervention. That's true,
Speaker 1: and then ultimately the use of it as religious technology
Speaker 1: is also reasonable as well. I mean, we've discussed religious
Speaker 1: technology on the show before, in the way that various
Speaker 1: religions throughout history have used some sort of new technology
Speaker 1: as ritual. All Right, let's take one more quick break,
Speaker 1: and then when we come back, we'll finish up our discussion. Alright,
Speaker 1: we're back. So there are all these ideas people have had,
Speaker 1: as we've been talking about about the Ark of the
Speaker 1: Covenant as a capacitor or some form of electrical device.
Speaker 1: And while I think you don't need to go to
Speaker 1: these kind of bronze punk explanations to explain the origin
Speaker 1: of these legends, it is really interesting to think about
Speaker 1: the idea and the possibilities for electrical technology in the
Speaker 1: ancient world. Now, there isn't really much or any evidence
Speaker 1: of electrical technology in the ancient world. But there is
Speaker 1: some indication that there were the beginnings of understanding of
Speaker 1: electricity the ancient world. Yeah, I mean there again. Obviously,
Speaker 1: aspects of our electrical world that are unmistakable. Lightning is
Speaker 1: probably the strongest, clearest overt sign of electricity in our world.
Speaker 1: But of course, merely observing lightning is a far cry
Speaker 1: from having a decent understanding of what it is. Likewise,
Speaker 1: certain circumstances can cause us to produce our own electrostatic discharge,
Speaker 1: and the ancient Greeks knew about some of this. They
Speaker 1: knew about the triboelectric effect. For instance, This occurs when
Speaker 1: materials become electrically charged after they come into frictional contact
Speaker 1: with a different material. This is the concept behind the
Speaker 1: electrostatic generator reflection generator. Yeah again, Rub a balloon on
Speaker 1: someone's hair and you can witness this holy power. Uh,
Speaker 1: do the electric high five with a six year old,
Speaker 1: and you can also feel the divine spark. They may
Speaker 1: not have had our level of advanced playground equipment in
Speaker 1: ancient Greece, but they've probably had some stuff you could
Speaker 1: rub your butt on that would give you static discharge. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because there's a whole list of materials that can, under
Speaker 1: the right circumstances, produced this effect on the positive charge
Speaker 1: side of things. The list includes human skin, hair, leather,
Speaker 1: rabbit fur, cat fur, and wool. Uh. You know, think
Speaker 1: of all those electric cats in ancient Esic, right. And
Speaker 1: then on the other side of the equation you have
Speaker 1: would gold, balloons, and of course amber. We alluded to
Speaker 1: the amber effect earlier in one of the quotes that
Speaker 1: that I believe you were reading, and amber is a big,
Speaker 1: big issue here. Yeah, the ancient Greeks certainly knew about
Speaker 1: the amber wool combination. Bailey's of Melitis reported on this.
Speaker 1: Uh He was a mathematician and astronomer from the Greek
Speaker 1: city of Militis in uh Ionia, which is modern day Turkey,
Speaker 1: and he lived from six four through five six b C.
Speaker 1: He discovered that static electricity could be generated by rubbing
Speaker 1: fur on a piece of amber, and the Greeks noted
Speaker 1: that the this through a charged amber buttons as well
Speaker 1: a special because these could attract you know, light objects
Speaker 1: such as hair. And I think this is this is
Speaker 1: key to thinking about what ancient people's knew about electricity.
Speaker 1: Is the materials they used and sort of the everyday
Speaker 1: circumstances in which they would, through continual usage, have the
Speaker 1: uh encounter the chance of creating that spark. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it's still there in the language we used to discuss
Speaker 1: electricity today, like the word electron and electricity comes from
Speaker 1: the Greek word electron, which means amber. Yeah, so you
Speaker 1: know some level of understanding regarding static discharge as a
Speaker 1: property of material interaction in the ancient world, even three
Speaker 1: thousand BC, is certainly not crazy. It would seem just
Speaker 1: a natural result of again, of working with those materials
Speaker 1: of human invention and toolmaking exactly. Yeah. So the principles
Speaker 1: of friction generators for electricity, much like Franklin's and Hawksby's
Speaker 1: friction generators had had basically already been discovered in ancient
Speaker 1: times and didn't require any modern materials or technology to produce.
Speaker 1: And then you've also come you compound that with the
Speaker 1: rest of our discussion, which makes it seem that while
Speaker 1: these stories of the arc probably have nothing to do
Speaker 1: with this, the storage of electricity and some kind of
Speaker 1: crude capacitor could also have been managed in the ancient
Speaker 1: world via basic types of liden jars. You've got to
Speaker 1: you know, dielectric insulator, and you've got some kind of
Speaker 1: like gold or something on either side of it. It
Speaker 1: might have even been built by accident at some point.
Speaker 1: This also doesn't require any kind of great crazy bronze
Speaker 1: punk sci fi. So this kind of leads us to
Speaker 1: a big question. If the ancients had pretty much all
Speaker 1: they needed to generate and store electricity, at least in
Speaker 1: the crudest sense, why didn't they harness these earlier? Why
Speaker 1: didn't this lead them to to perform the step up
Speaker 1: in in the next experiments, in the next experiments like
Speaker 1: it did in say, the eighteenth century. Uh that that
Speaker 1: would lead to the subsequent development of electrically based technologies
Speaker 1: in the ancient a world. What if by the time
Speaker 1: of the Roman Empire the world had electric power? How
Speaker 1: different would the world be? Well? That is at once
Speaker 1: a tantalizing question and a frightening question knowing knowing what
Speaker 1: inevitably occurs as humans make new technological breakthroughs. I don't
Speaker 1: know that I would have trusted the Romans with electricity.
Speaker 1: I got I scarcely trust um any modern day cultures
Speaker 1: with electricity. Well as Carl Sagan said, humanity has become
Speaker 1: powerful before humanity has become wise. And you know this
Speaker 1: is true even today. I'd say I'd venture a guess
Speaker 1: we were even less wise in the times of the Romans,
Speaker 1: or at least the Roman Empire was less wise. How
Speaker 1: many chickens would have been fried by by by by
Speaker 1: Roman Benjamin Franklin's at the time. One can only imagine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so there must be some kind of answer to this question,
Speaker 1: Like it's not like there's some kind of magical ingredient
Speaker 1: they did not possess that would not allow them to
Speaker 1: start this chain of research to gain power over the
Speaker 1: electrical world. I have to guess that the main impediment.
Speaker 1: Maybe there's something I'm not thinking of here. I have
Speaker 1: to think the main impediment is just like they didn't
Speaker 1: have the proper ecosystem of scientific investigation, like all these
Speaker 1: different people in different places doing their independent experiments and
Speaker 1: then all coming together to compare notes. You know, this
Speaker 1: reminds me of a discussion that we had for our
Speaker 1: new show, our new podcast that is launching I believe
Speaker 1: next week, UH Invention podcast all about inventions where they
Speaker 1: come from, and Uh, we're talking about the x ray,
Speaker 1: I believe, and we were talking about, Okay, you have
Speaker 1: the materials and the parts that were necessary to create
Speaker 1: the X ray the understanding limited as it was at
Speaker 1: the time, uh, to create this machine. And yet there
Speaker 1: were a few decades there before somebody actually really did,
Speaker 1: before they really cracked the mystery of what was going on.
Speaker 1: And kind of like the leiden jard the discovery was
Speaker 1: partially an accident. I mean, somebody was, uh, the discoverer
Speaker 1: of the X ray machine was messing around with with
Speaker 1: electrical equipment. So it wasn't like they were just like
Speaker 1: you know, cleaning their garage and they discovered the X
Speaker 1: ray machine, but they weren't setting out to discover a
Speaker 1: way to look inside the body, right. And part of
Speaker 1: it too was like was also very literally where were
Speaker 1: they looking and there when they were creating some sort
Speaker 1: of an effect? What how are they trying to understand it?
Speaker 1: And so I think there might be an answer there
Speaker 1: if and again we're making a few different leaps here,
Speaker 1: but if assuming for a second that the arc of
Speaker 1: the Covenant was indeed a light in jar and uh,
Speaker 1: and then this was an electrostatic discharge that people were
Speaker 1: observing and experiencing what were they observing, how were they
Speaker 1: trying to observe it, and what were they looking for?
Speaker 1: What answers were they looking for in playing with this technology. Well,
Speaker 1: one of the things that the people who were doing
Speaker 1: this kind of like pseudohistory about the ARC do is
Speaker 1: they say, well, okay, a clearly aaron started using the
Speaker 1: ARC as a murder weapon, and they were using it
Speaker 1: as a weapon of war or something like that. I
Speaker 1: would tend to think if it actually were the case
Speaker 1: that there was an ARC and the ARC was actually
Speaker 1: a light and joy. Again, I am not at all
Speaker 1: saying I think this is likely, but just suppose, I
Speaker 1: would think the most likely used for it would be
Speaker 1: a piece of religious technology. The purpose of it is
Speaker 1: to demonstrate some sort of supernatural power by letting off
Speaker 1: this discharge or whatever. It is indication that something you
Speaker 1: don't understand that is powerful and is unexplained is happening.
Speaker 1: And this gives you a kind of like peek behind
Speaker 1: the curtain of reality and you can see the powers
Speaker 1: that lie beyond. And really that would be the most
Speaker 1: powerful application of the technology at the time, because no
Speaker 1: matter what the stories are about the arc um, you
Speaker 1: wouldn't be able to bring down the walls of Jericho
Speaker 1: with this thing. You wouldn't be able to stop the
Speaker 1: flow of the river Jordan's. Maybe you could murder your nephew. Maybe,
Speaker 1: but that's kind of small, patay, it is compared to
Speaker 1: giving yourself some some powerful force that not only was
Speaker 1: able to help like shore up your religion, but also
Speaker 1: convince those that needed convincing that you were privy to
Speaker 1: the divine word of God through this device. Well. In fact,
Speaker 1: think about the primary ways that lad in jars were
Speaker 1: used when people first started making them. They became like
Speaker 1: a parlor game, entertainer thing. Yes, it was entertainment. In
Speaker 1: in fact, it was almost a form of religious technology.
Speaker 1: There would be these stories of people they get a
Speaker 1: bunch of light in jars together, or I don't know
Speaker 1: about a bunch, maybe just one. They'd have some kind
Speaker 1: of capacitor and then they would get a bunch of
Speaker 1: monks to hold hands, and then they'd shock them all
Speaker 1: at the same time in a chain so that they
Speaker 1: all felt it at once. It was almost like a
Speaker 1: strange ritual. Yeah, you get into the power of the performance, right,
Speaker 1: and it's it's it's a part of religion. It's a
Speaker 1: part of entertainment. It's just a part of the human experience.
Speaker 1: It was primarily useful, not for work it would do
Speaker 1: in the material world, before the work it would do
Speaker 1: on the minds of the people taking part and observing.
Speaker 1: It was performative. Yeah, all right, so there you have it. Um.
Speaker 1: I hope everyone leaves these episodes like maybe a little
Speaker 1: more interested and a little more enthralled by the Arc,
Speaker 1: you know, because ultimately we can't explain what it actually was,
Speaker 1: if it was a thing. I mean, it's just again,
Speaker 1: this is a place where history and mythology converge. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I do love it as a jumping off point.
Speaker 1: It's almost like it's the way station to all these strange,
Speaker 1: uh bronze punk planets you can visit that that are
Speaker 1: revealing once you start thinking about them. Indeed, and we
Speaker 1: would love to hear everyone else's thoughts on on the Arc. Yeah,
Speaker 1: people who learned about it from Raiders of the Lost
Speaker 1: Arc first of all, and and from people who learned
Speaker 1: about it in uh you know, uh their history class
Speaker 1: or their Bible class, or uh, whatever kind of a
Speaker 1: religious study they were involved in. Um, perhaps you have
Speaker 1: a particular favorite theory. Perhaps you have your own brand
Speaker 1: new theory that we haven't thought of. Maybe it contained
Speaker 1: a giant squid. I don't know. I will leave it
Speaker 1: to you to provide us with those new theories. But
Speaker 1: in the meantime, be sure to check out Stuff to
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