Hey, welcome to Invention. My name is Robert Lam.

And I'm Joe McCormick. Today we're talking about an invention that

it's certainly been in the news a bit recently. We're talking about walls.

Okay. Now, we're not a political show, but some of the statements on the nature of

walls, the purpose of walls, the historical and modern effectiveness of walls are

unavoidable here. And hopefully, this is all going to be useful. By the time we finish

this episode, you're going to have a deeper context regarding the nature of walls and what

a wall is the next time you were subjected to the news.

Now, I noticed we've been on a tear recently of extremely ancient inventions. I think we

did roads and then the wheel and now we're on walls. It's almost like we're just going

further and further back in time. And so I'm sure we'll get back to some more recent

or high tech gadgets soon, but definite biographies involved too. Right. The thing about

the more modern inventions. But I do really like doing this kind of thing we're doing by

like looking at the most basic technologies that exist, like the wheel and the wall, because

there are so many interesting ways to look at their multi-millennial legacy and impact

on human culture and history. Now, I'd say in addressing the wall, we are going to be

talking a little bit about a few interesting tidbits of physical construction, but this

isn't going to be so much an episode about like wall materials and all that. Obviously,

that is a very rich subject on its own. But I think we're going to be thinking more about

the role that walls play in geopolitical history.

Yeah, yeah, because certainly the history of walls is kind of the history of construction

and engineering in a broader sense. And we have to be clear here too about how we're

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