November 29, 2022 • 36 mins
If you live near any large city outside of mainland China, you may have seen advertisements for the world-famous Shen Yun Performing Arts Company, a US-based non-profit known for its elaborate shows in over 130 locations across the planet. But you might not know the full story of this company's origin. In today's episode, Ben, Noel and Max explore the strange origin of Shen Yun -- along with that of the religious movement, Falun Gong.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
much for tuning in. Shout out to our super producer,
Mr Max Williams. This one might be the one that
gets us in uh and yet I don't want to
say hot water uh in Dutch? Maybe in Dutch, maybe
a Mandarin, maybe in Campanese. Yeah. Well, yeah, it's definitely
(00:51):
not something that we've shied away from on our other
show Stuff they Don't Want You to Know. But it's
definitely a subject that a lot of people may be
more familiar with this from the ubiquitous add and marketing
campaign of this thing that we're talking about today, shin
n There's like literally memes where it's like you Shin
yun Billboard on the moon. Because whoever does in the
(01:14):
marketing for this thing has it on lock pretty good.
Their budget must be through the roof. Yeah, I'm ben
your knowl what's true? We do another show called Stuff
they Don't Want You to Know, where we have an
episode that might be a good counterpart to this called
What's going On with the Fa Lon Gong. We also
(01:35):
want to tell you, you know, I'm not a big
fan of over hyping stuff. But Stephen via SNL style,
this story has everything. It's got some romance like you
would see in our Sisters show, ridiculous romance. It's got
some crime like you would see in our Peer podcast
ridiculous crime. And this thing is always in the news
(01:57):
such that I wouldn't be surprised if our pals I've
ridiculous News cover it soon. It's very true. It's also
just kind of in the zeitgeist. It's everywhere you look,
whether it's in like a little you know, leaflet that's
shoved under your you know, car windshield wiper, like a
little door knob hanger thingy, or just a flyer in
(02:17):
a restaurant for example, or like I said before, a billboard.
Shen Yun is a theatrical experience that really sort of
almost circle style, focuses on dance and and um, you know,
acrobatics and you know, the drama and all of that stuff.
Is it's there's not really a story per se. It's
more of a variety show and it on the surface,
(02:40):
it's meant to highlight kind of the culture of China. Yeah, yeah,
and it's visually it's stunning, like you could see it
in Vegas the same way you would see Circle or
Siegfried and Roy. It's also very transparent in uh it's
overall narrative in a way that surprises some theater goers,
which will we'll get into You wouldn't You wouldn't be
(03:02):
able to tell uh much about the history and ownership
of Nyan if you just looked at the flyers. But
you have probably seen these if you live in a
big city in the United States. One of the more
popular taglines have used in the past is five thousand
years of civilization reborn. Uh you can you like it's
(03:24):
as his as ubiquitous as those cars for kids jingles.
You will see a lot of people going just because
they love the visuals. It feels like a cultural experience.
But today's episode is about the the true owners, the orchestrators,
you could say the puppet masters, but definitely the choreographers
(03:47):
of shen Yan, a spiritual movement known as following gong
or following data. Before maybe we get to their before
we unpack that well maybe we uh, maybe we give
the official like the shen Yan narrative of what shen
Yan is. So according to the troop who performs this
(04:09):
all over the country based out of their headquarters in
New York. What is shen Yan? What what do they
do in the story? Yeah, I mean it's like, well,
it's like the tagline suggests, you know, it's it's it's
a highlighting of the rich cultural history of China as
a country, as a people. It really has a cultural
(04:29):
kind of hub um and you know, in terms of
the dance and the costumes and the various you know
eras uh. They describe from the Yellow Emperor of antiquity
to the splendor of the Tang dynasty, all the way
to the exquisite elegance of the Qing. The lineage of
Chinese civilization runs five millennia deep. It is a story
(04:51):
brimming with heroes real and imagine, their legacy preserved in
tales of courage and sacrifice, integrity and loyalty, co passion
and virtue and stuff. Yeah. And they talk about China's
ancient name, the land of the Divine. It is true
that the history of the country of China does date
(05:14):
back into mythology, especially when you get into the ancient days,
and this is the place where people figured out some
fundamentals of medicine, of calligraphy, paper, gunpowder, lots of stuff
come from ancient China, and this seems like it's a
cultural celebration of this. However, you're not gonna see the
(05:38):
shen Yuan show actually in the PRC, the People's Republic
of China, because the Communist Party thinks the UH thinks
that shen Yuan and the its creators are a threat
to the rule of the party, which sounds weird. It
sounds like it almost sounds like we're saying, you know,
(06:00):
the White House has banned cirque for all of their
you know, anti capitalist leanings or something like. You would
you would wonder, why are you hitting up a circus
act like this. But as we'll see, there's a lot
more to this story. China has systematically, especially during the
Cultural Revolution, destroyed ancient treasures, they uprooted traditional beliefs. According again,
(06:25):
this is shen Yan side of the story. According to them,
in two thousand and six, a group of Chinese artists,
classical artists, came together an n y C and they said,
we're gonna revive the traditional divinely inspired culture of China.
We're gonna share it with the world. We're gonna do
it through this thing we're calling shin Jun, and you'll
(06:46):
see no like you can find their literature online or
in person. When they talk about the artistic freedom they enjoy,
they talk about how nothing like this can be seen
in China today and they're not still not allowed to
perform there, that's true. Uh, And they say that they're
sparking a cultural renaissance. Fascinating, isn't it when these kinds
(07:08):
of regimes come into power in a part of the
world where so much history has laid the groundwork for
for what is you know, the now, whether it be uh,
you know, Romans sweeping in and trying to get rid
of other faiths or whatever it might be. We just
know that this typically does not work. But it creates
(07:29):
so much division and um and backlash. So it is
a really interesting thing to think about this being kind
of this cultural revolution. But it turns out it's not
quite as simple as that, right, Yeah, that's correct. The
(07:51):
issue here is the organization the Spiritual Movement Fa Lung Gong.
It was founded by a man named Lie hong Shi,
who registered the group with the Chinese government back in
nineteen two, and uh Le Hongi had to do this
because after the Tianamen Square protests, the Chinese part Communist
(08:11):
Party excuse me, required all social organizations to register with
the party. He blew up really quickly. A lot of
people started following him. They started holding these huge rallies.
And if you look at if you look at what
they're doing, they're practicing uh keegong or chi gong breathing exercises,
(08:37):
right and and Lee himself said he developed this system
after consulting and learning from more than twenty masters. But
in addition to the kind of breathing exercises you might
be thinking of or picturing, he added a lot more
mythological lore or spiritual lore teachings about a world full
(08:58):
of demons and aliens, and his books became best sellers.
There were more than two thousand following Gong practice stations
in Beijing alone by the mid nineties. And at first,
from what I understand, the at the very beginning, the
Chinese government wasn't super opposed to them the way they
(09:20):
are now. Yeah, that's right. Um, it was a little
bit more of a of a cozy relationship at first,
because it did focus on this pursuit of virtue and tradition,
which I guess was something that the Chinese government officials
were able to kind of get behind. UM even were
(09:43):
praised for the focus on these kinds of these kinds
of values. So the founder back then fell and Gong
was credited in one of China's UM state run you know,
UM bodies the Ministry of Public Security as a way
of promoting traditional crime fighting virtues of the Chinese people,
(10:07):
in safeguarding social order and security, and in promoting rectitude
in society. Yeah, and then even the National Sports Commission said, hey,
following Dafa, following Gong is helpful for individuals from a
medical perspective, and it actually saves our country some money
when it comes to healthcare. But as we explored and stuff,
(10:29):
they don't want you to know, there was a turn,
uh that there's a turn that went down in the
ninety nineties, and the Communist Party began to be concerned
that a large chunk of the population was more loyal
to the leader of Following Gong than they were to
the party, which is always a big, big no no
(10:51):
in an authoritarian regime. So by this is where numbers
get sticky, right, because movements Let's be honest, can some
times embellish their numbers, and governments can sometimes embellish the
numbers of what they see as opponents, so take it
with a grain. Assault by the Chinese government was estimating
(11:13):
the group had seventy million members, which sounds like a
cartoonishly impossible number until you remember that the country of
China has one point three billions something people living in it,
so it's not impossible. They started cracking down. There was
there were protests that were being held in front of
(11:35):
government compounds, as described by Jia Tolentino in The New Yorker.
Eventually the authorities put out arrest at arrest warrant for Lee,
but Lee was already long gone. He knew something was
in the wind, and so he ghosted out the Queens
New York, which would later go out to be the
headquarters of shen Yan. Connecting some Charlie Day dots here.
(11:59):
But as we know, a big hallmark of the Communist
Party and of the Chinese Communist Party specifically is information
controlled and censorship. Although that actually was one of the
less problematic bits of backlash that Foulon Gong folks had
to deal with. According to an access wire Peace that
(12:24):
was republished in Yahoo Finance. In March of this year,
human rights organizations estimated that thousands of Foulonog followers have
been jailed and even killed for refusing to denounce their
beliefs because again, a lot of this, this true backlash
came from a concern that these folks were more loyal
(12:47):
to the the founder of Foulonong they were to the
Communist Party. So when they refused to denounce their beliefs
essentially bend the knee, you know, or swear fealty if
imhnee Game of Thrones fans out there, they were jailed
and potentially even killed in certain situations. So Felling Gong
(13:08):
went from being this sort of you know, running mate
of the state, I guess, to being kind of persona
non grata, and anyone associated with it had the potential
to be you know, harassed and dealt with in the
harshest possible terms. Oh yeah, yeah. The the idea of
(13:28):
making a movement illegal sounds might sound very strange to
people based in the US, but this is exactly what happened.
The PRC since had been trying to crack down on
the movement by blocking Internet access to websites that mentioned
Following Gong. They called it an auretical organization. They even
(13:52):
on the official website of the Chinese embassy in the
United States, described Lee Hongshi as an evil figure who's
udulent behavior has quote seriously disrupted social order and sabotage
the hard earned social stability of China. And Following Gong
also has been accusing the Chinese government of harvesting organs
(14:17):
from imprisoned Following Gong followers. Yeah, and and now that's
a hot that's that's a hot accusation. Many experts will
dispute this, but nobody is disputing that the government is
cracking down on Following Gong. And there's one thing that's
tough here, which is that both both entities in this conflict,
(14:39):
Following Gong and the PRC, the or the Communist Party,
excuse me, they both communicate via propaganda. Remember how I
mentioned earlier the tricky thing about embellishing numbers. It's kind
of tough to triangulate the truth from these sources. You
will see that Following Gong has been described for this
reason as one of the most miss serious chapters in
(15:01):
the history of modern China. The censorship regimen is simply
growing and exploding. Still, we know that Following God members
are genuinely persecuted. We just don't know to what degree
that occurs. And you wouldn't know any of this if
you look at just a shen yan ad now, and
(15:22):
you wouldn't know any of this if it weren't for
folks you know, in the system. They're putting themselves at
serious risk because again, as we know, the kind of
iron fisted control of the Chinese Communist Party has over
information uh is very very real. So yeah, we were
not going to get any of the real details here
um outside of certain human rights watch groups who aren't
(15:45):
given access because they don't have to be right right,
they don't really have a way to force the government
to give them unfettered access. And you see similar issues
with the weakers in Xinyang. So this is like, this
is a known pattern. But with shin Yun itself, you
(16:05):
gotta you gotta admit like it's a super lavish production.
It's everywhere. You might be surprised to learn shen Yuan
is a nonprofit despite the fact that has more than
seventy five million dollars in assets, more than twenty two
million dollars in annual revenue, and if you look at
how much money they spend, you might be surprised to
(16:27):
learn that they're in the black in terms of accounting, right, like,
they're not a losing proposition. And there's a great piece
in The Guardian that our research associate doctor Zach found
by Nicholas Hughan Brown, who talks about just how coordinated
the advertising campaign is because it really is propaganda. And again,
(16:50):
propaganda is not always inherently bad, just to be clear,
but this this definitely does have a narrative and it
it is a persuasive it's trying to convince you to
believe certain things. And in that New York Or article
I mentioned earlier, you can get in the weeds of
the finances. You can see that we're talking about millions
(17:11):
and millions and millions of dollars. But we need to
note that the reason shen Yan's finances seemed to pencil
out is because they have a lot of volunteers working there,
a lot of following Gong followers, like just the one
in the office in San Francisco has a hundred volunteers.
(17:32):
The theater company has two hundred and eleven, they're making
a lot of money and off air, no, we've talked
about whether or not this was us coming down too
hard on the government of China. But just like in
our stuff, they don't want you to know episode we
see that there's a lot of questionable stuff on Following
(17:53):
Gong side too. I mean, Following Gong is really waging
a I want to call the war, but a propaganda conflict.
They're using what's called anti communist ad jets, prop agitating propaganda,
and things got really weird for a lot of US
residents when they teamed up with a former Trump administration
(18:15):
what record scratch, So any New Yorkers might be aware
of any number of you know pamphlets are small kind
of run newspapers associated with certain ethnic groups in the city,
some of which are really cool and and very very
interesting um and and not necessarily fully propaganda at all.
(18:36):
But one in particular, The Epic Times that once was
a very small, low budget newspaper with kind of an
anti China, not anti Chinese, anti China the state you
know bent that was handed out and like much like
those other ones that I was talking about, for free
on the streets of New York. But around teen on
(18:57):
the paper kind of pivoted uh and in a couple
of very important ways, and became one of the United
states most ubiquitous and and powerful really online um distributors
of information. The changes also gave way to the publication
(19:18):
essentially becoming a let's just say, a means of disinformation,
not specifically about China, but about American politics. It became
kind of a leading uh spreader of right wing propaganda.
Yeah yeah, big Thanks to Kevin rose Over the New
(19:40):
York Times wrote an excellent article about this. Because the
they bet it, they bet big on Facebook and became
a world class source of right wing misinformation. They treated
President Trump as an ally in following Gongs fight against
the rule in Communist Party, and as US politics became
(20:05):
more divisive during the rise of the Trump candidacy in
later presidency, they bet increasingly on Trump and criticized his opponents.
So they were able to do something that you know,
Russian discan foe forces have done as well, creating dozens
and dozens of dummy Facebook pages, getting a lot of
(20:28):
viral clickbait like hey look at these unusual animal friends, Oh,
what's that penguin doing? With that tiger stuff like that,
I made up the penguin tiger video, but send me
one if there's a real one, I'll watch it. They
found that this goal here, the goal of the Facebook
strategy was to turn the Epoch Times into the world's
(20:49):
largest and most authoritative media and then leverage that to
introduce millions of people to the teachings of following Gong.
And now even as we record, the Epic Times and
its affiliates are a big force and right wing media.
They have tens of millions of social media followers against
you know, when you aggregate all the platforms and all
(21:09):
the pages together. They also like there their audiences could
go toe to toe numbers wise with bright Bar or
The Daily Caller. And they also started influencing Trump's inner
circle absolutely. And it's interesting if you go to the website, uh,
the Epic Times dot com, you see exactly what we're
(21:30):
talking about. It is it looks pretty much like you
see something something you see on the front page of
Bright Bar and they're, uh, you know, much like a
lot of these um kind of spurl us let's say sources.
They have a tagline that really emphasizes really hits home
just how just right and and uh and insteadfast and
(21:53):
and you know pure. They are truth and tradition, fact based, unpassed.
So let's throw some more. Whereas some buzzwords there that
probably means the opposite of what is actually true. And
again we're not a political show here, but this these
types of whether you whatever side of the divides you
fall on, there are certain sources that it is impossible
(22:16):
to ignore that they are just absolutely capitalizing on fearmongering
and this information in order to serve another goal. And
the interesting thing here is it isn't even like the
right wing goal of of of American politicians. It's something
else entirely m yeah, yeah, And it's just sort of
(22:38):
a a coincidental common cause. We know that Trump administration
sat with reporters from Epic Times for interviews. They were
in White House press briefings. Uh, this is this is
a success story because they're getting closer and closer to
the levels of power inside one of China's largest rivals,
(23:00):
China's largest rival geopolitically full stop. Uh, they even you know,
they still you know, we're repping their stripes. In two
thousand and six, Epic Times reporter disrupted a White House
visit by the Chinese president and they busted in and
they were just yelling evil people will die early. Uh.
(23:21):
Kind of hard to smooth that one over, you know, Like,
what do you say that's a compliment in Queen's sir? Right?
How do they reconcile, Like, you know how much America
needs China and how just to kind of entrench the
two countries are with one another. And you know, whereas
I know that Trump did do some rhetoric kind of surrounding,
you know, big talk against China, but then ultimately ended
(23:42):
up cozying to President She pretty good. Yeah, and that's
cheese and ping the Yeah. The the issue is that
they're hoping to leverage a already increasingly radicalized base and
then insert their own beliefs and cause into that base,
(24:04):
sort of make it a combo meal, right, Like how
big Coleslaw made it self part of every Chick fil
a combo. That's not a true story, but you believed
it for a second, didn't you did. Yeah, I'm I'm
an enemy of it as well. Sorry, I love most food,
but cole slaw is just something's not right with it.
(24:32):
So we have to we have to point this out.
They also promoted a lot of conspiracy theories against Trump's
political rivals were enemies. Uh, They've been linked to promotion
of q and on conspiracy theories and spreading miss info
about voter fraud and so on. They also, of course,
(24:52):
when covid hit called it the CCP virus, trying to
link it to the Chinese Communist Party directly, I believe
are required to say that. The Epoch Times themselves says
they're independent and nonpartisan and absolutely not officially associated with
following Gong. That's right. And if we buried the lead
there and that that is where this this this publication
(25:14):
in its earliest forms was very much connected, you know,
That's what it was. It was an anti Chinese state
publication that was handed out like almost like you'd you know,
get literature from Hari Krishna's at the airport or something
like that. It was very much you know, spreading in
particular ideology and then it morphed into this. So if
(25:35):
that affiliation went by the wayside, it's not really clear
from the from the record, but it honestly serves them
better to say they're not affiliated with that organization. Yeah,
and just the issue is at least for me, I
don't think that's true. I think they've just been told
to say that. Uh. The New York Times contacted Following
(25:57):
Gong practitioners and employees of Epoch Times to try to
figure this out, and they said they couldn't divulge details
of how the paper was actually run or how the
media outfit was run, and they said that speaking negatively
about the Epoch Times would be the same thing as
disobeying Mr Lee, who, of course the Following Gong disciples
(26:20):
referred to as Master Uh and the outlet. When when
The New York Times asked them some of these hard questions,
Epoch Times report replied by saying, you're defaming and diminishing
us because we're a competitor, and you are either being religious,
you're attempting religious intimidation or outright bigotry by linking us
(26:43):
the Following Gong. We will not be intimidated, we will
not be silenced. We will consider all legal options. But again,
it seems like they're related from every everything that has
been discovered and is all in public record, it's true,
and so that's just one weird turn of the story.
(27:05):
And again we're not intending this to be a hit
piece on any of these organizations, But there are some
very odd kind of details that that emerged the deeper
you dig. So we've we've gone into the China part
of it, We've gone into how chin Yon was definitely
at one point is associated with this epic times. Now
let's get more into what the actual beliefs in practices
(27:27):
of uh Follonong are and where maybe there might be
some slightly sketchy stuff contained there in as well, because
we you know, the early part of the story really
makes them out to kind of be these protectors of
Chinese culture and these freedom fighters against you know, something
that we could rightly identify with as being a negative force,
(27:49):
the idea of the totalitarian regime that that does, you know,
clamp down on censorship and and information control and all
of that stuff. But when you really dig into the
organization itself, there's some pretty stuff in there. Two yeah,
and this is where you get to the argument about
whether or not this organization should be considered a cult,
(28:10):
which is very sensitive because as as we know, I'm
sure you don't have to tell you, folks, most organizations
that you would think of as cults will get offended
if you use the C word to refer to them.
So Lee hung sheet. If we're getting into beliefs, then
we see that former believers have some pretty disturbing pictures
(28:32):
of daily life under his control. They said, you know,
we don't have access to information. We can't use modern medicine.
He will tell us who to have a romantic relationship
with the practitioners. The followers are expected to devote their
lives to the message of following Gong and Master Lee.
You've got to cut off friends and family members who
(28:52):
aren't going to get on board with the message. This
is classic day one cult stuff, Lee. If we want
to get to this special of it beliefs, Lee says,
stuff like evolution is made up. It's a hoax, it's
a fraud. He also says heaven practices racial segregation. People
that Heaven is real, people of different races are going
to be separate. Homosexuality and promiscuity are unnatural. Let's see
(29:18):
what else. Oh, the reason people are dependent on modern
science is because aliens are trying to control humans through it. Yeah, yeah,
that's that's an interesting detail. The the aliens, they are
the ones that are that really have the strangle hold
on on the information UM not the Chinese government. So
that's yeah, this is almost like the stuff you find
out about scientology once you get further down the bridge. Uh.
(29:41):
And in one you know, very important hallmark of cults
that we've talked about um is in the past here
on the show and also on stuff they don't want
you to know is the necessity of members too cut
off ties with outsiders, whether it be to whether it
(30:01):
be their family or friends or anyone that could be
seen as a negative influence or or in some way
contradicting what they're being taught under the tutelage of like
you know, the leader of the movement or whatever it
might be. Also to proselytize and spread the word and
pass out these pamphlets and you know, go forth and
all of that stuff. And that is a thing that
appears to be part of Fallon Gong's practices and the
(30:25):
in the way they're you know, they expect their adherents
to behave m HM. And they also seem very at
least outsiders. They seem incredibly defensive and reactive not just
a criticism, but the basic questions, you know, the kind
of stuff that you might ask as a person on
the street if you want to learn more, you know,
(30:47):
teach me more about following Gong. What do you think
about this? Blah blah blah. That's why cult experts like
Rick Allen Ross, who founded the Cult Education Institute, devotes
two chapters to following going in his book Cults Inside Out,
How People Get In and Can Get Out. Uh. He
has worked in d programming following Gong followers. He says
(31:09):
they are a cult. He says they're a destructive cult.
He compares Master Lee to l Ron Hubbard, founder of Scientology,
and uh. He apparently also Ross has been able to
get more ideas about the inner workings of following Gong,
and he said Lee claims to possess supernatural powers, and
(31:29):
uh says that shen Yuan is ultimately, at the end
of the day, a multimillion dollar marketing and recruiting arm
of Lee's financial empire. I still gotta say, though, man,
I really wanted to go back to Shenya and back
in my college days, and after learning the stuff we
did on Stuff Then What You Know and a couple
(31:49):
of other shows that I appeared on, I feel pretty conflicted,
like would you guys still go to Shenyan Shenyan performance
knowing this, Oh no, not knowing where the money is
funneling back. I don't think so. I actually did they.
I used to work at a theater back in in Augusta,
where I grew up. I worked at the kind of
a mid sized you know, maybe a thousand seats the
(32:11):
theater a little less, and we hosted shen Yan once.
Or if it wasn't Shenion, it was something very Shenyon adjacent.
It was very similar, and I might be conflating it
in my mind. If that's the case, then then forgive me.
But uh no, I don't think I would. You know,
there there are also reports that, you know, people that
have left, or let's call it escaped. I guess this.
This organization have claimed that, uh, the leader believed that
(32:35):
he could or they they were led to truly believe
that the leader could read their minds and uh and
and pull out their deepest, darkest thoughts and judge them accordingly. Yeah,
I know, I was. I was actually pretty creeped out beforehand,
because right before we're recording, I was teaming lunch and
I was just like watching the news and a shen
(32:56):
Yon commercial came on. I'm like, oh wow, we are
literally about recording episode about this. I've been reading about
this like this is a creeping me. But I have
one question for you guys. This cult expert Rick Allen Ross,
that's a different Rick Ross, right, Yeah, No, Unfortunately it's
a different Rick Ross, which is why he had to
go with Alan Ross. It would be cool if if
(33:18):
they were the same guy. Yeah, and uh, I believe
Rick Ross, the MC and producer has has in the
past compared Baby Williams to something of a cult leader
or definitely predatory, but that might be a story for
another day. Again, this is one of the most important
things we have to say here is we're obviously not
(33:40):
denigrating anybody's personal spiritual beliefs. We just think it's important
to know what, uh like the murky story behind shen
Yan and when we know on we did this for
stuff they wants you to know. We had a lot
of folks writing and what their experiences watching the show
and how they how they felt about the themes of
(34:01):
persecution that are tied into the historical narrative of the performance.
So we would love to hear your thoughts folks on
If you've ever been to a Shenyane performance, did you
enjoy it? Have you ever been to like a falloon
gong gathering? If so, what did you think? Did you
meet Master Lee? Is he chill? What's he like? Just?
(34:23):
Could he read your mind? Because he was he like
shining at you? Uh, let us know you can find us.
It's best to just find us as individual people. Ben,
I believe you're on Twitter, um until until that thing
implodes in the meantime, aren't you Ben Bowling hs w uh?
No you remember, thanks, but it's nameing my birthday. Yeah,
(34:44):
I'm on Twitter as appen Bowling hs w uh one
of the big things there is. You can also find
Max Williams on Twitter until until uh Ellen burns it
down and you can you can also find me on Instagram.
You can see all the weird adventures I'm getting into
and research i'm doing. Uh spoiler, I guess stuff coming
(35:04):
up that I probably can't talk about air, but I'll
sneak mentions of it on the old I g where
I am at ben Boland And if you're on Instagram,
that's where you can also find Mr Noel Brown. It's
sure I'm an open book. You can find me at
how Now Noel Brown on the old Instagrams In the meantime,
Huge thanks to super producer Max Williams uh for just
(35:27):
sticking with us. I know you said you were a
little punchy and and I didn't notice any of that.
I think, yeah, you have you really you rolled right
through those punchies. Big big thanks to a research associate,
Dr Zach Big thanks to our own master Lee Jonathan Strickland,
a k a. The Quister, Eve's Jeff Coach Christopher Hasciotis
you know him? You love them all the hits, Folks.
(35:49):
It's Friday. We're about to get out of here. I
think I might go see a show. I don't know
what it'll be, but it's probably not gonna be Chanelle Saving.
I think I might just go to like a Farmer's
mark It or something instead. Uh, we'll see you next time, folks.
For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I
(36:11):
Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
much for tuning in. Shout out to our super producer,
Mr Max Williams. This one might be the one that
gets us in uh and yet I don't want to
say hot water uh in Dutch? Maybe in Dutch, maybe
a Mandarin, maybe in Campanese. Yeah. Well, yeah, it's definitely
(00:51):
not something that we've shied away from on our other
show Stuff they Don't Want You to Know. But it's
definitely a subject that a lot of people may be
more familiar with this from the ubiquitous add and marketing
campaign of this thing that we're talking about today, shin
n There's like literally memes where it's like you Shin
yun Billboard on the moon. Because whoever does in the
(01:14):
marketing for this thing has it on lock pretty good.
Their budget must be through the roof. Yeah, I'm ben
your knowl what's true? We do another show called Stuff
they Don't Want You to Know, where we have an
episode that might be a good counterpart to this called
What's going On with the Fa Lon Gong. We also
(01:35):
want to tell you, you know, I'm not a big
fan of over hyping stuff. But Stephen via SNL style,
this story has everything. It's got some romance like you
would see in our Sisters show, ridiculous romance. It's got
some crime like you would see in our Peer podcast
ridiculous crime. And this thing is always in the news
(01:57):
such that I wouldn't be surprised if our pals I've
ridiculous News cover it soon. It's very true. It's also
just kind of in the zeitgeist. It's everywhere you look,
whether it's in like a little you know, leaflet that's
shoved under your you know, car windshield wiper, like a
little door knob hanger thingy, or just a flyer in
(02:17):
a restaurant for example, or like I said before, a billboard.
Shen Yun is a theatrical experience that really sort of
almost circle style, focuses on dance and and um, you know,
acrobatics and you know, the drama and all of that stuff.
Is it's there's not really a story per se. It's
more of a variety show and it on the surface,
(02:40):
it's meant to highlight kind of the culture of China. Yeah, yeah,
and it's visually it's stunning, like you could see it
in Vegas the same way you would see Circle or
Siegfried and Roy. It's also very transparent in uh it's
overall narrative in a way that surprises some theater goers,
which will we'll get into You wouldn't You wouldn't be
(03:02):
able to tell uh much about the history and ownership
of Nyan if you just looked at the flyers. But
you have probably seen these if you live in a
big city in the United States. One of the more
popular taglines have used in the past is five thousand
years of civilization reborn. Uh you can you like it's
(03:24):
as his as ubiquitous as those cars for kids jingles.
You will see a lot of people going just because
they love the visuals. It feels like a cultural experience.
But today's episode is about the the true owners, the orchestrators,
you could say the puppet masters, but definitely the choreographers
(03:47):
of shen Yan, a spiritual movement known as following gong
or following data. Before maybe we get to their before
we unpack that well maybe we uh, maybe we give
the official like the shen Yan narrative of what shen
Yan is. So according to the troop who performs this
(04:09):
all over the country based out of their headquarters in
New York. What is shen Yan? What what do they
do in the story? Yeah, I mean it's like, well,
it's like the tagline suggests, you know, it's it's it's
a highlighting of the rich cultural history of China as
a country, as a people. It really has a cultural
(04:29):
kind of hub um and you know, in terms of
the dance and the costumes and the various you know
eras uh. They describe from the Yellow Emperor of antiquity
to the splendor of the Tang dynasty, all the way
to the exquisite elegance of the Qing. The lineage of
Chinese civilization runs five millennia deep. It is a story
(04:51):
brimming with heroes real and imagine, their legacy preserved in
tales of courage and sacrifice, integrity and loyalty, co passion
and virtue and stuff. Yeah. And they talk about China's
ancient name, the land of the Divine. It is true
that the history of the country of China does date
(05:14):
back into mythology, especially when you get into the ancient days,
and this is the place where people figured out some
fundamentals of medicine, of calligraphy, paper, gunpowder, lots of stuff
come from ancient China, and this seems like it's a
cultural celebration of this. However, you're not gonna see the
(05:38):
shen Yuan show actually in the PRC, the People's Republic
of China, because the Communist Party thinks the UH thinks
that shen Yuan and the its creators are a threat
to the rule of the party, which sounds weird. It
sounds like it almost sounds like we're saying, you know,
(06:00):
the White House has banned cirque for all of their
you know, anti capitalist leanings or something like. You would
you would wonder, why are you hitting up a circus
act like this. But as we'll see, there's a lot
more to this story. China has systematically, especially during the
Cultural Revolution, destroyed ancient treasures, they uprooted traditional beliefs. According again,
(06:25):
this is shen Yan side of the story. According to them,
in two thousand and six, a group of Chinese artists,
classical artists, came together an n y C and they said,
we're gonna revive the traditional divinely inspired culture of China.
We're gonna share it with the world. We're gonna do
it through this thing we're calling shin Jun, and you'll
(06:46):
see no like you can find their literature online or
in person. When they talk about the artistic freedom they enjoy,
they talk about how nothing like this can be seen
in China today and they're not still not allowed to
perform there, that's true. Uh, And they say that they're
sparking a cultural renaissance. Fascinating, isn't it when these kinds
(07:08):
of regimes come into power in a part of the
world where so much history has laid the groundwork for
for what is you know, the now, whether it be uh,
you know, Romans sweeping in and trying to get rid
of other faiths or whatever it might be. We just
know that this typically does not work. But it creates
(07:29):
so much division and um and backlash. So it is
a really interesting thing to think about this being kind
of this cultural revolution. But it turns out it's not
quite as simple as that, right, Yeah, that's correct. The
(07:51):
issue here is the organization the Spiritual Movement Fa Lung Gong.
It was founded by a man named Lie hong Shi,
who registered the group with the Chinese government back in
nineteen two, and uh Le Hongi had to do this
because after the Tianamen Square protests, the Chinese part Communist
(08:11):
Party excuse me, required all social organizations to register with
the party. He blew up really quickly. A lot of
people started following him. They started holding these huge rallies.
And if you look at if you look at what
they're doing, they're practicing uh keegong or chi gong breathing exercises,
(08:37):
right and and Lee himself said he developed this system
after consulting and learning from more than twenty masters. But
in addition to the kind of breathing exercises you might
be thinking of or picturing, he added a lot more
mythological lore or spiritual lore teachings about a world full
(08:58):
of demons and aliens, and his books became best sellers.
There were more than two thousand following Gong practice stations
in Beijing alone by the mid nineties. And at first,
from what I understand, the at the very beginning, the
Chinese government wasn't super opposed to them the way they
(09:20):
are now. Yeah, that's right. Um, it was a little
bit more of a of a cozy relationship at first,
because it did focus on this pursuit of virtue and tradition,
which I guess was something that the Chinese government officials
were able to kind of get behind. UM even were
(09:43):
praised for the focus on these kinds of these kinds
of values. So the founder back then fell and Gong
was credited in one of China's UM state run you know,
UM bodies the Ministry of Public Security as a way
of promoting traditional crime fighting virtues of the Chinese people,
(10:07):
in safeguarding social order and security, and in promoting rectitude
in society. Yeah, and then even the National Sports Commission said, hey,
following Dafa, following Gong is helpful for individuals from a
medical perspective, and it actually saves our country some money
when it comes to healthcare. But as we explored and stuff,
(10:29):
they don't want you to know, there was a turn,
uh that there's a turn that went down in the
ninety nineties, and the Communist Party began to be concerned
that a large chunk of the population was more loyal
to the leader of Following Gong than they were to
the party, which is always a big, big no no
(10:51):
in an authoritarian regime. So by this is where numbers
get sticky, right, because movements Let's be honest, can some
times embellish their numbers, and governments can sometimes embellish the
numbers of what they see as opponents, so take it
with a grain. Assault by the Chinese government was estimating
(11:13):
the group had seventy million members, which sounds like a
cartoonishly impossible number until you remember that the country of
China has one point three billions something people living in it,
so it's not impossible. They started cracking down. There was
there were protests that were being held in front of
(11:35):
government compounds, as described by Jia Tolentino in The New Yorker.
Eventually the authorities put out arrest at arrest warrant for Lee,
but Lee was already long gone. He knew something was
in the wind, and so he ghosted out the Queens
New York, which would later go out to be the
headquarters of shen Yan. Connecting some Charlie Day dots here.
(11:59):
But as we know, a big hallmark of the Communist
Party and of the Chinese Communist Party specifically is information
controlled and censorship. Although that actually was one of the
less problematic bits of backlash that Foulon Gong folks had
to deal with. According to an access wire Peace that
(12:24):
was republished in Yahoo Finance. In March of this year,
human rights organizations estimated that thousands of Foulonog followers have
been jailed and even killed for refusing to denounce their
beliefs because again, a lot of this, this true backlash
came from a concern that these folks were more loyal
(12:47):
to the the founder of Foulonong they were to the
Communist Party. So when they refused to denounce their beliefs
essentially bend the knee, you know, or swear fealty if
imhnee Game of Thrones fans out there, they were jailed
and potentially even killed in certain situations. So Felling Gong
(13:08):
went from being this sort of you know, running mate
of the state, I guess, to being kind of persona
non grata, and anyone associated with it had the potential
to be you know, harassed and dealt with in the
harshest possible terms. Oh yeah, yeah. The the idea of
(13:28):
making a movement illegal sounds might sound very strange to
people based in the US, but this is exactly what happened.
The PRC since had been trying to crack down on
the movement by blocking Internet access to websites that mentioned
Following Gong. They called it an auretical organization. They even
(13:52):
on the official website of the Chinese embassy in the
United States, described Lee Hongshi as an evil figure who's
udulent behavior has quote seriously disrupted social order and sabotage
the hard earned social stability of China. And Following Gong
also has been accusing the Chinese government of harvesting organs
(14:17):
from imprisoned Following Gong followers. Yeah, and and now that's
a hot that's that's a hot accusation. Many experts will
dispute this, but nobody is disputing that the government is
cracking down on Following Gong. And there's one thing that's
tough here, which is that both both entities in this conflict,
(14:39):
Following Gong and the PRC, the or the Communist Party,
excuse me, they both communicate via propaganda. Remember how I
mentioned earlier the tricky thing about embellishing numbers. It's kind
of tough to triangulate the truth from these sources. You
will see that Following Gong has been described for this
reason as one of the most miss serious chapters in
(15:01):
the history of modern China. The censorship regimen is simply
growing and exploding. Still, we know that Following God members
are genuinely persecuted. We just don't know to what degree
that occurs. And you wouldn't know any of this if
you look at just a shen yan ad now, and
(15:22):
you wouldn't know any of this if it weren't for
folks you know, in the system. They're putting themselves at
serious risk because again, as we know, the kind of
iron fisted control of the Chinese Communist Party has over
information uh is very very real. So yeah, we were
not going to get any of the real details here
um outside of certain human rights watch groups who aren't
(15:45):
given access because they don't have to be right right,
they don't really have a way to force the government
to give them unfettered access. And you see similar issues
with the weakers in Xinyang. So this is like, this
is a known pattern. But with shin Yun itself, you
(16:05):
gotta you gotta admit like it's a super lavish production.
It's everywhere. You might be surprised to learn shen Yuan
is a nonprofit despite the fact that has more than
seventy five million dollars in assets, more than twenty two
million dollars in annual revenue, and if you look at
how much money they spend, you might be surprised to
(16:27):
learn that they're in the black in terms of accounting, right, like,
they're not a losing proposition. And there's a great piece
in The Guardian that our research associate doctor Zach found
by Nicholas Hughan Brown, who talks about just how coordinated
the advertising campaign is because it really is propaganda. And again,
(16:50):
propaganda is not always inherently bad, just to be clear,
but this this definitely does have a narrative and it
it is a persuasive it's trying to convince you to
believe certain things. And in that New York Or article
I mentioned earlier, you can get in the weeds of
the finances. You can see that we're talking about millions
(17:11):
and millions and millions of dollars. But we need to
note that the reason shen Yan's finances seemed to pencil
out is because they have a lot of volunteers working there,
a lot of following Gong followers, like just the one
in the office in San Francisco has a hundred volunteers.
(17:32):
The theater company has two hundred and eleven, they're making
a lot of money and off air, no, we've talked
about whether or not this was us coming down too
hard on the government of China. But just like in
our stuff, they don't want you to know episode we
see that there's a lot of questionable stuff on Following
(17:53):
Gong side too. I mean, Following Gong is really waging
a I want to call the war, but a propaganda conflict.
They're using what's called anti communist ad jets, prop agitating propaganda,
and things got really weird for a lot of US
residents when they teamed up with a former Trump administration
(18:15):
what record scratch, So any New Yorkers might be aware
of any number of you know pamphlets are small kind
of run newspapers associated with certain ethnic groups in the city,
some of which are really cool and and very very
interesting um and and not necessarily fully propaganda at all.
(18:36):
But one in particular, The Epic Times that once was
a very small, low budget newspaper with kind of an
anti China, not anti Chinese, anti China the state you
know bent that was handed out and like much like
those other ones that I was talking about, for free
on the streets of New York. But around teen on
(18:57):
the paper kind of pivoted uh and in a couple
of very important ways, and became one of the United
states most ubiquitous and and powerful really online um distributors
of information. The changes also gave way to the publication
(19:18):
essentially becoming a let's just say, a means of disinformation,
not specifically about China, but about American politics. It became
kind of a leading uh spreader of right wing propaganda.
Yeah yeah, big Thanks to Kevin rose Over the New
(19:40):
York Times wrote an excellent article about this. Because the
they bet it, they bet big on Facebook and became
a world class source of right wing misinformation. They treated
President Trump as an ally in following Gongs fight against
the rule in Communist Party, and as US politics became
(20:05):
more divisive during the rise of the Trump candidacy in
later presidency, they bet increasingly on Trump and criticized his opponents.
So they were able to do something that you know,
Russian discan foe forces have done as well, creating dozens
and dozens of dummy Facebook pages, getting a lot of
(20:28):
viral clickbait like hey look at these unusual animal friends, Oh,
what's that penguin doing? With that tiger stuff like that,
I made up the penguin tiger video, but send me
one if there's a real one, I'll watch it. They
found that this goal here, the goal of the Facebook
strategy was to turn the Epoch Times into the world's
(20:49):
largest and most authoritative media and then leverage that to
introduce millions of people to the teachings of following Gong.
And now even as we record, the Epic Times and
its affiliates are a big force and right wing media.
They have tens of millions of social media followers against
you know, when you aggregate all the platforms and all
(21:09):
the pages together. They also like there their audiences could
go toe to toe numbers wise with bright Bar or
The Daily Caller. And they also started influencing Trump's inner
circle absolutely. And it's interesting if you go to the website, uh,
the Epic Times dot com, you see exactly what we're
(21:30):
talking about. It is it looks pretty much like you
see something something you see on the front page of
Bright Bar and they're, uh, you know, much like a
lot of these um kind of spurl us let's say sources.
They have a tagline that really emphasizes really hits home
just how just right and and uh and insteadfast and
(21:53):
and you know pure. They are truth and tradition, fact based, unpassed.
So let's throw some more. Whereas some buzzwords there that
probably means the opposite of what is actually true. And
again we're not a political show here, but this these
types of whether you whatever side of the divides you
fall on, there are certain sources that it is impossible
(22:16):
to ignore that they are just absolutely capitalizing on fearmongering
and this information in order to serve another goal. And
the interesting thing here is it isn't even like the
right wing goal of of of American politicians. It's something
else entirely m yeah, yeah, And it's just sort of
(22:38):
a a coincidental common cause. We know that Trump administration
sat with reporters from Epic Times for interviews. They were
in White House press briefings. Uh, this is this is
a success story because they're getting closer and closer to
the levels of power inside one of China's largest rivals,
(23:00):
China's largest rival geopolitically full stop. Uh, they even you know,
they still you know, we're repping their stripes. In two
thousand and six, Epic Times reporter disrupted a White House
visit by the Chinese president and they busted in and
they were just yelling evil people will die early. Uh.
(23:21):
Kind of hard to smooth that one over, you know, Like,
what do you say that's a compliment in Queen's sir? Right?
How do they reconcile, Like, you know how much America
needs China and how just to kind of entrench the
two countries are with one another. And you know, whereas
I know that Trump did do some rhetoric kind of surrounding,
you know, big talk against China, but then ultimately ended
(23:42):
up cozying to President She pretty good. Yeah, and that's
cheese and ping the Yeah. The the issue is that
they're hoping to leverage a already increasingly radicalized base and
then insert their own beliefs and cause into that base,
(24:04):
sort of make it a combo meal, right, Like how
big Coleslaw made it self part of every Chick fil
a combo. That's not a true story, but you believed
it for a second, didn't you did. Yeah, I'm I'm
an enemy of it as well. Sorry, I love most food,
but cole slaw is just something's not right with it.
(24:32):
So we have to we have to point this out.
They also promoted a lot of conspiracy theories against Trump's
political rivals were enemies. Uh, They've been linked to promotion
of q and on conspiracy theories and spreading miss info
about voter fraud and so on. They also, of course,
(24:52):
when covid hit called it the CCP virus, trying to
link it to the Chinese Communist Party directly, I believe
are required to say that. The Epoch Times themselves says
they're independent and nonpartisan and absolutely not officially associated with
following Gong. That's right. And if we buried the lead
there and that that is where this this this publication
(25:14):
in its earliest forms was very much connected, you know,
That's what it was. It was an anti Chinese state
publication that was handed out like almost like you'd you know,
get literature from Hari Krishna's at the airport or something
like that. It was very much you know, spreading in
particular ideology and then it morphed into this. So if
(25:35):
that affiliation went by the wayside, it's not really clear
from the from the record, but it honestly serves them
better to say they're not affiliated with that organization. Yeah,
and just the issue is at least for me, I
don't think that's true. I think they've just been told
to say that. Uh. The New York Times contacted Following
(25:57):
Gong practitioners and employees of Epoch Times to try to
figure this out, and they said they couldn't divulge details
of how the paper was actually run or how the
media outfit was run, and they said that speaking negatively
about the Epoch Times would be the same thing as
disobeying Mr Lee, who, of course the Following Gong disciples
(26:20):
referred to as Master Uh and the outlet. When when
The New York Times asked them some of these hard questions,
Epoch Times report replied by saying, you're defaming and diminishing
us because we're a competitor, and you are either being religious,
you're attempting religious intimidation or outright bigotry by linking us
(26:43):
the Following Gong. We will not be intimidated, we will
not be silenced. We will consider all legal options. But again,
it seems like they're related from every everything that has
been discovered and is all in public record, it's true,
and so that's just one weird turn of the story.
(27:05):
And again we're not intending this to be a hit
piece on any of these organizations, But there are some
very odd kind of details that that emerged the deeper
you dig. So we've we've gone into the China part
of it, We've gone into how chin Yon was definitely
at one point is associated with this epic times. Now
let's get more into what the actual beliefs in practices
(27:27):
of uh Follonong are and where maybe there might be
some slightly sketchy stuff contained there in as well, because
we you know, the early part of the story really
makes them out to kind of be these protectors of
Chinese culture and these freedom fighters against you know, something
that we could rightly identify with as being a negative force,
(27:49):
the idea of the totalitarian regime that that does, you know,
clamp down on censorship and and information control and all
of that stuff. But when you really dig into the
organization itself, there's some pretty stuff in there. Two yeah,
and this is where you get to the argument about
whether or not this organization should be considered a cult,
(28:10):
which is very sensitive because as as we know, I'm
sure you don't have to tell you, folks, most organizations
that you would think of as cults will get offended
if you use the C word to refer to them.
So Lee hung sheet. If we're getting into beliefs, then
we see that former believers have some pretty disturbing pictures
(28:32):
of daily life under his control. They said, you know,
we don't have access to information. We can't use modern medicine.
He will tell us who to have a romantic relationship
with the practitioners. The followers are expected to devote their
lives to the message of following Gong and Master Lee.
You've got to cut off friends and family members who
(28:52):
aren't going to get on board with the message. This
is classic day one cult stuff, Lee. If we want
to get to this special of it beliefs, Lee says,
stuff like evolution is made up. It's a hoax, it's
a fraud. He also says heaven practices racial segregation. People
that Heaven is real, people of different races are going
to be separate. Homosexuality and promiscuity are unnatural. Let's see
(29:18):
what else. Oh, the reason people are dependent on modern
science is because aliens are trying to control humans through it. Yeah, yeah,
that's that's an interesting detail. The the aliens, they are
the ones that are that really have the strangle hold
on on the information UM not the Chinese government. So
that's yeah, this is almost like the stuff you find
out about scientology once you get further down the bridge. Uh.
(29:41):
And in one you know, very important hallmark of cults
that we've talked about um is in the past here
on the show and also on stuff they don't want
you to know is the necessity of members too cut
off ties with outsiders, whether it be to whether it
(30:01):
be their family or friends or anyone that could be
seen as a negative influence or or in some way
contradicting what they're being taught under the tutelage of like
you know, the leader of the movement or whatever it
might be. Also to proselytize and spread the word and
pass out these pamphlets and you know, go forth and
all of that stuff. And that is a thing that
appears to be part of Fallon Gong's practices and the
(30:25):
in the way they're you know, they expect their adherents
to behave m HM. And they also seem very at
least outsiders. They seem incredibly defensive and reactive not just
a criticism, but the basic questions, you know, the kind
of stuff that you might ask as a person on
the street if you want to learn more, you know,
(30:47):
teach me more about following Gong. What do you think
about this? Blah blah blah. That's why cult experts like
Rick Allen Ross, who founded the Cult Education Institute, devotes
two chapters to following going in his book Cults Inside Out,
How People Get In and Can Get Out. Uh. He
has worked in d programming following Gong followers. He says
(31:09):
they are a cult. He says they're a destructive cult.
He compares Master Lee to l Ron Hubbard, founder of Scientology,
and uh. He apparently also Ross has been able to
get more ideas about the inner workings of following Gong,
and he said Lee claims to possess supernatural powers, and
(31:29):
uh says that shen Yuan is ultimately, at the end
of the day, a multimillion dollar marketing and recruiting arm
of Lee's financial empire. I still gotta say, though, man,
I really wanted to go back to Shenya and back
in my college days, and after learning the stuff we
did on Stuff Then What You Know and a couple
(31:49):
of other shows that I appeared on, I feel pretty conflicted,
like would you guys still go to Shenyan Shenyan performance
knowing this, Oh no, not knowing where the money is
funneling back. I don't think so. I actually did they.
I used to work at a theater back in in Augusta,
where I grew up. I worked at the kind of
a mid sized you know, maybe a thousand seats the
(32:11):
theater a little less, and we hosted shen Yan once.
Or if it wasn't Shenion, it was something very Shenyon adjacent.
It was very similar, and I might be conflating it
in my mind. If that's the case, then then forgive me.
But uh no, I don't think I would. You know,
there there are also reports that, you know, people that
have left, or let's call it escaped. I guess this.
This organization have claimed that, uh, the leader believed that
(32:35):
he could or they they were led to truly believe
that the leader could read their minds and uh and
and pull out their deepest, darkest thoughts and judge them accordingly. Yeah,
I know, I was. I was actually pretty creeped out beforehand,
because right before we're recording, I was teaming lunch and
I was just like watching the news and a shen
(32:56):
Yon commercial came on. I'm like, oh wow, we are
literally about recording episode about this. I've been reading about
this like this is a creeping me. But I have
one question for you guys. This cult expert Rick Allen Ross,
that's a different Rick Ross, right, Yeah, No, Unfortunately it's
a different Rick Ross, which is why he had to
go with Alan Ross. It would be cool if if
(33:18):
they were the same guy. Yeah, and uh, I believe
Rick Ross, the MC and producer has has in the
past compared Baby Williams to something of a cult leader
or definitely predatory, but that might be a story for
another day. Again, this is one of the most important
things we have to say here is we're obviously not
(33:40):
denigrating anybody's personal spiritual beliefs. We just think it's important
to know what, uh like the murky story behind shen
Yan and when we know on we did this for
stuff they wants you to know. We had a lot
of folks writing and what their experiences watching the show
and how they how they felt about the themes of
(34:01):
persecution that are tied into the historical narrative of the performance.
So we would love to hear your thoughts folks on
If you've ever been to a Shenyane performance, did you
enjoy it? Have you ever been to like a falloon
gong gathering? If so, what did you think? Did you
meet Master Lee? Is he chill? What's he like? Just?
(34:23):
Could he read your mind? Because he was he like
shining at you? Uh, let us know you can find us.
It's best to just find us as individual people. Ben,
I believe you're on Twitter, um until until that thing
implodes in the meantime, aren't you Ben Bowling hs w uh?
No you remember, thanks, but it's nameing my birthday. Yeah,
(34:44):
I'm on Twitter as appen Bowling hs w uh one
of the big things there is. You can also find
Max Williams on Twitter until until uh Ellen burns it
down and you can you can also find me on Instagram.
You can see all the weird adventures I'm getting into
and research i'm doing. Uh spoiler, I guess stuff coming
(35:04):
up that I probably can't talk about air, but I'll
sneak mentions of it on the old I g where
I am at ben Boland And if you're on Instagram,
that's where you can also find Mr Noel Brown. It's
sure I'm an open book. You can find me at
how Now Noel Brown on the old Instagrams In the meantime,
Huge thanks to super producer Max Williams uh for just
(35:27):
sticking with us. I know you said you were a
little punchy and and I didn't notice any of that.
I think, yeah, you have you really you rolled right
through those punchies. Big big thanks to a research associate,
Dr Zach Big thanks to our own master Lee Jonathan Strickland,
a k a. The Quister, Eve's Jeff Coach Christopher Hasciotis
you know him? You love them all the hits, Folks.
(35:49):
It's Friday. We're about to get out of here. I
think I might go see a show. I don't know
what it'll be, but it's probably not gonna be Chanelle Saving.
I think I might just go to like a Farmer's
mark It or something instead. Uh, we'll see you next time, folks.
For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I
(36:11):
Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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