This is a national emergency. The cost of living crisis has forced millions of people deeper into poverty.

Parents are skipping meals to feed their kids. They're choosing between eating or heating.

They're being crushed by rising costs. Please help them if you can.

10 pounds could help feed a family of three for a week, just 10 pounds. That's all it takes.

Go to ComicReleave.com forward slash cost of living to donate. Thank you.

This ad was brought to you by the lovely people at Acast.

Hello and welcome to the podcast that refuses to be restrained by the walls of history.

We've ranged from ancient Rome to modern Washington from Pompeii to Troy.

And today we have one foot on the Great Wall of China and another on the US Mexico border.

Because our subjects today is walls and borders. Why do we seek to separate? Do walls work?

Are they ever a good thing? Dominic Sambrook is with me and I would start with a wonderful

simple question we receive on Twitter from the excellently named Tom. Tom asks,

what makes a good wall? Dominic, what do you think? Golly, what makes a good wall? I suppose it depends

on you keeping people out or keeping people in. So the emblematic wall that you and I

grew up with is the Berlin Wall, right? That's the wall that we would have thought of for most of our

lives when people make walls. I'd have thought of Hadrian's Wall. Would you? Yeah. A man living in the

past. Yeah. I was much more interested in Hadrian's Wall than the Berlin Wall. The Berlin Wall,

of course, is the, it's actually should probably be known as the anti-fascist protection rampart,

which I think is a great name for a wall. I mean, I think a wall means a good name. And the

Berlin Wall had a great name. And it worked. That's the one thing people forget it. I mean, the Berlin

Wall was a monstrosity, but it actually did work in its purpose. Because it was set up to stop

people from East Berlin fleeing into the Western sectors. Right. So about 3 million people had fled

...