The Walls of Jericho
This episode appears to contain dynamically inserted ads. Transcript timestamps may be approximate.
Jad and Robert pit physics against a bible story with this simple question: could a team of trumpeters really bring down the walls of Jericho?
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
RIDILEB is supported by AT&T. We all love to connect via video calls or texts. Right now, at AT&T, you can get the new iPhone 18 Pro for $0 with iPhone trade-in. Any condition. It has the ultimate pro camera system and big leap in battery life, so you can turn this deal into a long-lasting connection. Learn how you can trade in your iPhone for the new iPhone 18 Pro requires trade-in of iPhone 14 or higher, excluding iPhone 16E, an eligible plan. Terms and restrictions apply, subject to change, visit an AT&T store for details. Hello, I'm Chad. I'm Robert. This is Radio Lab, the podcast. So today, slightly offbeat exploration of acoustic warfare, and we're going to do it by looking at the famous... Do you know this story? I know what we're doing. Shall I remind you of this story? I've heard the phrase "Walls of Jericho" and I know nothing else about it. It's most famous as a song, "Jasha for the Battle of Jericho, Jericho, Jericho." "Jasha for the Battle of Jericho" and the walls came tumbling down. No idea. You don't know that? No. No, before my time. Really before my time. No, no, no, no. It's a it's a it's a Nebo spiritual for black. It's a black American spiritual. It's like that. Anyway, so tell us the story so we can get started. Well, as you know, the Hebrew people crossed the Red Sea and then wandered around in the desert for a while. We'll just say I do that. 40 years. 40 years. And now we're up to we're almost into the Promised Land, but there is this city called Jericho. Who's inside Jericho? Well, the Jerichoans. Really? That Jerichoans. I don't know much about them, actually. Why aren't they friendly? Are they against God? No, they're just they just I think they have all these 40,000 people shut up and think, hey, who are these people? I get them out of here. So they were just looking after their property. I suppose or maybe they just didn't like what they saw. Okay. Now Jericho, you're reading now. I'm reading from the Bible. Okay. Now Jericho was tightly shut because of the sons of Israel. So I guess God said you got to take Jericho. Maybe that was it. I'm a little fuzzy here on the cause of the thing. It had to be done. Had to be done. However, now quoting the Bible, Jericho was tightly shut because it had a wall. Yeah. So read the part about how they knocked down the wall. Here's the formula from the mouth of God. And you shall march around the city, all the men of war circling the city once, and you shall do so for six days. And on the seventh day, you shall march around the city seven times, and seven priests shall carry seven trumpets of ram's horns. It's a so far, actually, is a ram's horn. And the priest shall blow the trumpets. And it shall be. The wall of the city will fall flat down. And they do this with seven trumpets, you say? Yes. Alright, so here we go. The question we have then for this podcast is, what would it really take? ♪ Joshua, I love Jericho ♪ To do this. Yeah. And I'm talking without God, only puny physics. You hear your headphones? Independent left and right volume control should be fairly comfortable. Is it just in principle possible for sound to blow down a wall? That's our question. We actually called up a guy who's thought about this. I'm an acoustical consultant. David Lubman. Is his name? And an acoustical scientist. And if you think about the nature of sound, it's a fluctuating pressure. You explain that when sound hits an object, the waves actually push the object, but also pull at it. Many times per second. In theoretically, he says, if you can get enough of those pushes and pulls on the wall. Eventually, it'll begin to crumble. So the first question he asked, naturally, is what kind of wall are we dealing with?
Transcription truncated.
Jad and Robert pit physics against a bible story with this simple question: could a team of trumpeters really bring down the walls of Jericho?