July 3, 2015 • 58 mins
We hear about this mysterious force all the time in fiction and film -- but what is it actually supposed to be? Is there any evidence that it might be real?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
From UFOs two, ghosts and government cover ups. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to now. Hello,
and welcome back to the show. My name is Matt
and I am Ben. Uh No sleep till Brooklyn Boland
(00:23):
here with our super producer, Noel the Iron Fist Brown.
Oh I knew that was you. Oh and there's Jason. Hey,
that's up Jason? All right? Yeah, are what one of
our bosses is named? Jason? That is true. We're not
just making that up. So listeners, as you know, usually
(00:45):
we have some hints about the show embedded in our
super producer's nickname. But some of you might be wondering, Hey, wait, Ben,
why did you give yourself a nickname in this Well there,
it was quite literal. Yes, it was quite literal and
remains so. First, of course, guys, we uh we we
(01:09):
may have been born yesterday, but we've been awake all night,
as the old joke goes, uh So we know you guys,
we know you're not supposed to give yourself your own nickname.
That's that's a crap move. I was going to do
it if you didn't. Yeah, I am coming to you
uh semi live depending on when you hear this, uh
(01:30):
without having had any sleep. I've been awake for about
uh thirty six hours met you actually caught me trying
to sleep in my car in the parking deck. So
this might be a little bit of a weird podcast
on my end. That's why I have a nickname. Today
it's gonna be great. That's how I like it. When
(01:50):
it gets nice and weird up in here. Send the
weird waves through these these chords and out into your ears.
So there you know we're today We're going to talk
about something that is a little out there. Some of
you might not really I don't know you. You might
be thinking, oh gosh, why why would they even talk
about this sub right right? But then others are are
(02:11):
going to are gonna go, oh man, they're finally talking
about this. Well, that happens pretty often that let's face
and then also we will have a contention of people
who will say, this is just terrible. You're doing a
terrible job. But but let's let's ease into it. Here's
one for the fans of comic books, okay, and I'm
(02:32):
gonna be very careful not to spoil too much of
this because if you're a fan of comic books, it
might come up in your life a few years from now.
But there is a character in Marvel Comics whose name
is iron Fist and Nol today iron Fist is your namesake.
(02:52):
Iron Fist has the has pretty much martial arts superpowers,
and he can focus this energy that he has to
give himself, uh slightly enhanced strength, but also you know,
superhuman reflexes, agility, the whole nine better senses, but not
(03:16):
as good as Daredevil, which is important. And he has
this this one big move. The power of it changes
depending on who's writing the story at that time, where
he can focus all of this energy into one punch
and this punch is amazing, and when it first started,
he can only do it once a day and he
(03:37):
was just garbage after that, so she had to be
very selective, like a smart bomb in um, you know,
in an old Atari game or something. But what was
but when he focused this thing, uh, it had a name?
What what was this energy he was focusing? Well, it
has a lot of different names depending on where you're
born and what culture surrounds you, but the most common
(04:01):
is ch Yes spelled with a Q I or c
h I. Uh, here's the deal. Today we are talking
about g is she real? What is she? What is real? Now?
I'm kidding, We're not. That's a lot for one episode. Yeah,
so let's just start here. The human body is an
(04:24):
astonishing thing. And the more we learn about the human body,
not just the brain, but the more we learn about
the human body in general, it seems the more questions
we have. So we were gonna do a little bit
of backstory, Matt, You and I were gonna do two
videos this week, one with our classic format and one
with the vlog, but I was in New York on
(04:46):
some completely non shady business, as you may have heard
me allude to on Facebook. So we're sticking with one
this week. And Uh, I'd like to talk to you
a little bit about, uh, the video that we actually
didn't make, so we can at least get some of
that story out here in the audio podcast. And then
when you're talking to other people who just watched the videos,
(05:07):
you can say, oh, well, if you listen to the
audio show, then you would you would know, you know,
you would be on like my level of noatude, the
noatude of knowing that the human body is crazy. Like
Ben said, there are things we're learning about it that
I never would have believed. Uh, I don't know, even recently.
(05:28):
It's tough for me to believe this stuff. But it
is true that the human body produces energies. Um. There
are a couple of different ones. Uh. One of the
first ones that we want to talk about is electricity. Yes,
I know it sounds crazy, but it's true. Without electricity,
your your brain wouldn't work. Yeah, and that's something that
we weaving the human species have known for a little while.
(05:52):
You know that electricity is the great impetus that makes
all the things happen, right, all the matt things, all
the null things, listener you, all the u things happen.
And there's there's a pretty good article about this on
the how Stuff Works website too. Yeah, it's called how
does the body make electricity and how does it use it?
(06:14):
And that's by one of the writers here, Julia Layton. Yeah,
and we've got a great quotation here from the article,
just to just to put into context electricity's role in
the body and the brain. When we talk about the
nervous system sending signals to the brain or synapses firing,
or the brain telling our hands to contract around a
(06:34):
door handle. What we're really talking about is electricity carrying
messages between point A and point B. It's sort of
like the digital cable signals that carry ones and zeros
that deliver true detective to your eyeballs, except in our bodies,
electrons aren't flowing along a wire. Instead, an electrical charge
is jumping from one cell to the next until it
(06:55):
reaches its destination. Right, yeah, I think that's a pretty
good explanation. Here's one of the things that the body
also produces that tripped you and I at this was
unexpected light. Uh. To paraphrase Rihanna, you do indeed shine
bright like a diamond. Well not not quite that right, right,
absolutely not that right. But we said, like so we
(07:17):
actually a little Here's the deal. The human body produces
a small amount of light. In two thousand nine, Life
Science and The Guardian both reported a study that showed
all human beings, in fact, virtually all living creatures emit
visible light, at least in small amounts. What. Yeah, it
sounds crazy, but stick with me here. We're not talking
(07:38):
about light that you and I could just see with
our naked eye when you're walking around. We don't glow
in the dark. We're talking about Uh, I'm so sorry
to what was that song with my naked eye? I
saw with my naked eye eyes land Rain coming down?
Oh yeah, yeah, who is who is that? Say? It
(08:00):
was Luscious Jackson. Luscious Jackson, bam so Luscious. I guess Luscious? Yeah, yeah,
she she understood? Is it? Is it she? Or is
it he is? It's like a group of people, a
group of ladies, a band, if you would, I apologize
for not being on my Luscious Jackson knowledge. I apologize
(08:21):
for interrupting you. Was this with his ramply thing? It's
been a it's been a long couple of days. But
good save No, I'm sorry, but back. I'm not saying
we go in the dark. What I'm saying is that, uh,
living things emit light that is roughly a thousand times
less intense than what we could detect with our eye.
(08:42):
It is detectable, right, Okay, I see what you're saying.
Similar to the way that some stars are visible only
through the aid of a telescope or something like that,
or or if you if you leave a lens open
for long enough Okay, that makes sense. This stuff also
showed that the light that people admitted varied throughout the day.
(09:05):
It was lowest that around ten am, and it was
peaking around four pm T when it gradually declined. Uh.
Your face, by the way, assuming you're human, as you
hear this, uh, will probably clobe brighter than the rest
of your body, according to this one study we have.
I have to say that just because this hasn't been
(09:27):
you know, studied a lot, but it was really interesting. Yeah,
it is interesting, and I can already foresee some of
the questions here, the question of like, well ten am
ware right, we can cranish meantime, it appears to be
tied to an individual's body clock, this slow rise and
(09:50):
fall of your your light source. So if you are
doing anything extremely important, try and time it somewhere around
four because maybe that light is having an effect that
you're not aware of. Wow, you know what, that would
be an interesting study to to see if it if
it mattered whatsoever, if there were animals that could sense
(10:11):
that light. Now, of course we're not talking about infrared,
and there are some animals whose vision verges into the
infrared spectrum. Right, But anyway, that's interesting because it shows
that human beings emit things like electricity and light. And
there are other examples of course, heat, electromagnetic force, etcetera,
etcetera at all. But we started looking at this because
(10:32):
we wanted to ask a different, somewhat related question. But
what what is? What is cheat? But we've heard about it.
I've heard about it since I was a kid or
stories and just you know, you see all the like
acupuncture and other things that make use of this energy,
(10:55):
like energy redirection, healing without the stuff. But we hadn't
really delved very deeply into this. So get ready, folks,
we're on the diving board. Here we go, right, Okay, Yeah,
it's true. Matt, you've you've heard it before. I've heard
it before, Nol, you've heard it before. Listeners, you have to.
It's often mentioned in the context of traditional Chinese medicine
(11:18):
maybe martial arts. It's also been used in fiction, and
it's been heavily exploited by Hollywood. It's been cited as
this miraculous curative force and more. It has also been
dismissed by critics as a scam or flim flam, a superstition,
a sham, so what what is the definition of this? What?
(11:39):
What gives? What would we call it? Well, in Chinese
philosophy and Chinese medicine, she is this vital thing that
exists in everything in the universe. It's it's invisible, and
it's this unique form that's often interpreted as some sort
of energy of let's see, Well, we'll get to the
(12:01):
whole idea of what the energy is in a in
a moment, but for now, let's take it as let's
take this as a fact, at least for the sake
of argument, agreed that this g is energy. So the
belief in this sort of ubiquitous energy isn't unique. It's
not unique to Chinese tradition or any of the other
places that you may have heard that it is unique to.
It's uh, it's known as in general vitalism. It's the
(12:25):
vital energy that runs all things, This belief in in
some kind of ubiquitous energies. Yes, okay, so okay, So
that would be kind of like prawna in Hinduism or
numa in Greek or even in physics. Right, even even
in even in physics, we we could also say, what
(12:45):
I'm thinking of another one, Oh, the Nazis real, real
energy real would be one. That's uh, that's a deep
cut for the people who would listen to our earlier
Nazi stuff that that quit quintestants. I think is the
name of it. The the fifth uh, the fifth element,
the element of the heavens was present in all nature
and the stuff of which celestial bodies was made. I
(13:08):
feel like dark energy. It's a hypotheti hypothetical version or
idea of what dark energy would be. So basically the Force, Yes,
if we want to if we want to go full
into full fiction references, then chi and this and this
is not meant in a derogatory way at all. This
is just meant to show, if anything, the the kind
(13:31):
of concept, that the kind of concept that the Force
was building upon real life. So so g would be
in some ways like the like a real life version
of the Force. And as we know, real life is
not like a film. So yeah, So I apologize to
everybody who expected they would get a lightsaber once they
(13:54):
completed their practice, once they become a Chee Gong master.
Chee Gong is the is the name for UH set
of practices that involves postures, exercises, a clear slow circular movements,
regulated breathing, focused meditation, things like that. There are three
different styles. They're classified as martial, medical, or spiritual. Uh.
(14:18):
Some cheong styles are gentler like tai chi and can
be adapted. Others are more vigorous. But one one of
the unique features of this is uh, the ability to
train the mind to direct the body's energy or che
to any part of the body. But uh, that's that's
just to explain what che gong is. So when we
(14:41):
say that we're talking about people, we're talking about the
practice of using chi consciously. But maybe maybe I'm getting
a little ahead of our Wait, I can't get ahead
of ourselves. Maybe I'm just messing up the show. What
what does she even mean? In English? Yeah? In so
(15:01):
she in English? If it's translated is air. That's what
it means. Literally. While this is often seen as an energy,
as we said before, authors like Chris Kessner argue that
it's best interpreted as oxygen rather than energy, a an
essential element. Almost right. Yeah. No, Chris Kesser we found
(15:22):
because he's a bit contrarian. When he talks about some
of this. He claims that there are a lot of
mistranslations or misconceptions, rather mistranslations of Chinese culture and language
that led to misconceptions in the West. And for the record,
I completely agree with him in principle. I don't know how,
(15:43):
I don't know how absolutely I would agree with his specifics,
but he claims this mistranslation of of chi as energy
instead of oxygen was single handedly created by a French
fellow named Suli de moron Uh. In traditional Chinese medicine,
she is thought to travel both through these channels called
meridians getting Kesser disputes this, calling them notes. Let's just
(16:07):
go ahead and assume for the rest of the show
that when we're talking about g and we're and we're
just touching on some of the high level stuff, that
that the that Chris Kesser is the person you would
go to to read about if you think this is
I don't want to say bunk, but if you think
this is a vast misconception, this is something different than
(16:30):
what's on the surface, right, right, So, if we talked
about acupuncture, acupuncture is insertion of needles in two points
along these channels or nodes, and this is done to
adjust the positive negative aspects of G. The the yang
being the positive, the end being the negative, to help
maintain a balance of such of sorts and other things
can affect this balance to right. Have you ever done acupuncture?
(16:53):
I have not. You know, I have huge have huge
issues with touching metal. Yeah, if they were like stone
or wooden needles, even if it Okay, so when the
metal thing, is it just your hands touching metal or
is it metal just touching your skin? No, it's it's
a body wide experience, like my sensory um inputs her
(17:17):
crossed and the associations are unpleasant. Okay. So, so my
wife tried acupuncture for the first time not long ago.
Oh no way, Yeah, she she said she felt great afterwards,
but she attributed that to just being in a relaxed
state for a long period of time. Very she had
a very stressful job for quite a while there, and
(17:39):
then just going into a room with quiet music and
someone gently touching you, even if they're shoving a needle
in you, just a little bit, just meditating him. Yeah,
so she felt great afterwards, and but that's what she Okay,
you know what, that's kind of cool, man, That's that's amazing.
I'd love to hear more about her. Her experience, because,
as you know, people have used acupuncture for very long time,
(18:03):
and it's popular across the world now and people swear
by it maw uh. And we know also that our
friends over at Stuff you Should Know have a great
podcast on acupuncture if you want to learn more about it.
So here's where we start to get into some of
(18:25):
the more divisive stuff. I know a lot of people
are not sold on acupuncture, and then a lot of
people think that Western medical institutions are suppressing acupuncture any
natural alternative medicine. So we we know those two sides
of the argument. Or there, let's let's bracket that for
a second and get into some of the weirder stuff
(18:47):
with the idea that practitioners of che gong are able
to direct the effects of ch just by using their
minds and their hands at racky massage right energy redirection.
Feel like reiky is kind of a low level version
of some of the key Goong practitioners I've seen, at
(19:08):
least on videos. Now, I'm not trying to diminish reiki
at all, know several people it's just a different thing.
It's a different thing. The key Goong masters that I've
seen are the ones that say they can create heat
they can actually create heat with their mind in their hands,
and a couple other things. I think magnetism was another idea. Oh,
(19:30):
remind me at the end of the episode, because I can,
I can explain some of that. Excellent, Okay, So another thing, though,
these are not the only claims you'll see. People who
are young doctors or master's claim to channel their own
energy or air into another person's energy kind of network, right,
(19:54):
correcting blockages as you can imagine, ladies and gentlemen. Surprise, surprise, surprise.
West Stern Medicine takes a dim view of many of
these claims. But we've we've seen enough so far to
know that without going into acupuncture, making this an acupuncture podcast, Uh,
we know that the definition of CH, of what is
(20:18):
CH isn't something as cut and dry due to all
these misconceptions. So maybe it's best to understand SHE in
terms of its functions and its activities. Right, So it
as the uh, we'll just walk through it as the
qualities of both matter and energy, right for those who
believe it exists, and as substance without structure. It possesses
(20:40):
qualities of energy, but it can't be measured. I hear
so many people on the other side of the microphone
now groaning or on the other side of this, because
you should be able to measure something, right if it's energy.
So they would say via analogy. There's a great comparison
in one of our articles that the force of a
(21:00):
thunderstorm could be understanding understood in terms of its chi
because you could measure the power of the chi in
the fallen trees and buildings in the storms aftermath. I
get it, but I'm a little hesitant with I'm a
little hesitant to uh totally subscribe to something because of
an analogy. Well yeah, and it makes me that analogy
(21:23):
in particular makes me think of the possible misinterpretation of
g as uh not energy but air, or you know,
the idea that you can't see the wind, but you're
pretty sure that that tree was standing up earlier. Right now.
There's also we can kind of skip past the Meridians
(21:45):
stuff here, but you know, we mentioned those meridians or
those nodes and the way that she is supposed to
travel from no to no passing through meridians. You'll hear
people say there's a cycle of twenty four hours, and
that there's certain times where wherein a certain organ is
is more powerful that the flow is strongest there. So
(22:08):
the concept here is that she is supposed to pass
through all the major channels or nodes and meridians of
your body, and manipulating these points with pressure, heat, needles,
et cetera is the crux upon which so much of
this treatment hinges to have the energy flow through those
(22:28):
points correctly. Um. So, so we've talked about this, let's
talk about other functions, or the main functions. Oh yeah, yeah,
there are five, right, yes, So the first one is transformation,
and this is the idea that she transform one type
of substance into another. Okay, so let's say the spleen,
(22:48):
she transforms food into ch and blood right, Okay, that
the body and the body can use that, so use
uses both of these things that she to make everything
else work. And then the blood, well, the blood to
make everything else working. Right. Uh, the kidney she transforms
fluids into pure essence and wastewater. And then you know,
(23:11):
in the same way you keep going on down to say,
the long transforms air into the energy to sustain life.
So transformation is the first one movement would be the
second all movement accompanied by its own CHI including growth, development, walking, breathing.
Thinking that she is the commander of the blood as
you might have heard before. What's the third one? Third
(23:32):
one is protection, the idea that she protects the body
against attacked by diseases, UM and other things. If if
a person's che is weak, that person may experience frequent
illnesses because they're white blood cells or chi aren't doing
so uh, and then they're the fourth wound be retention,
the fourth function of CHI. That's the idea that she
keeps the organs in their proper place. So that's the
(23:56):
reason that you're not vomiting up your hearts or some thing.
Thank good. That and numerous anatomical facts. But the uh.
The idea here is that deficiency can lead to prolapse,
bleeding disorders, excessive sweating or urination. And there's one last one.
The last one is warming the yang aspect of kidney
(24:19):
CHEE keeps the entire body warm, which is pretty nice. Um.
When it is deficient in this way, chronic cold extremities
like cold extremities as in your arms or your legs,
mostly uh, you will have decreased function in all activities
that require warmth, such as digestion or other things that
(24:39):
go on inside your innards. Okay, so we know that
g is at least attributed to doing a whole host
of things for the human body and of all other
living entities inside their bodies. We also know that as
we went through there, we were saying things like the lungs, cheating,
spleen ch that's weird, right, Yeah, those are different types
(25:02):
of chi because Chinese medicine typically divides in the various
types depending on source and function. So the original source
of this force would be your parents, and that she
inherited from them is known as prenatal chi. So this
is the basic constitution of a human being. It depends
upon genetics, the quality of the parents lives at the
(25:23):
time of conception and during pregnancy. This, ladies and gentlemen,
if you believe in she is your heritage. It cannot
be replenished. A healthy lifestyle, diet and breathing practices, however,
can conserve prenatal chi and slow down its depletion. That's
really cool. So I'm almost thinking of it as in
(25:46):
terms of stem cells or something. You're stem cell chi, right,
or maybe the way that a woman only has a
certain number of eggs in her life and those can
be depleted. But a um, but the argument here of
worse being that there are certain actions one can take
to slow that loss. But there's another type of g
(26:08):
there that's just as important. Yes, once you are postnatal,
you get the postnatal she. And this is she that's
acquired or derived from food you're eating, the stuff you're drinking,
the air you're breathing. This, when combined with prenatal CHI,
forms the totality of the body's power to perform all
of these things we're talking about, all the vital functions
(26:29):
of your body. And then there's lung, cheese, spleen she
true she, which is the totality of CHI, the results
from the combination of the prenatal and the postnatal stuff.
This is responsible for all the functions of the body.
Takes different forms. Uh, there's there's also uh nutritive she.
(26:50):
You can hear about these different types of CHI. But
what what I would like to get to is, uh,
the the claims attributed to these chich young masters, right,
so called sometimes self professed, let's be honest, sometimes self
(27:11):
professed and we're you know, We're not here in any
way to denigrate serious practitioners of something that people believe in,
but we will tell you that there are quite a
few claims made by people who also claim to be
che Gong masters. And uh, all these claims are not
(27:34):
created equal. I mean you can start with stuff like
someone is an acupuncturist, right, Uh, that's that's believable. People
around the world again engage in acupuncture, and I know
some people think it's utter bunk, some people swear by it.
But this is not an acupuncture episode because we're going
further afield, right, We're going to the people who claim
(27:56):
that they have superpowers. Essentially, I'm very I'm very as
you know, I'm very interested in having superpowers. So we're
aware of right, So I looked into this, uh, and
I just I don't want to spoil this surprise for anybody,
but let's take a closer look at some of these, right. So,
(28:16):
so checking can the idea that it can give you
superhuman abilities, particularly when it comes to a standing pain.
You'll see people being beaten with. Uh. Once you hear
the air quotes here, iron bars, you'll see and and
they may indeed be iron You know, I wouldn't want
to test it out, That's all I'm saying. Right, Yeah,
(28:38):
you definitely have to train. You know. It's like the
whole thing with when people say wrestling is fake, it's
there's still trained professionals, those athletes. Watch yourself, right, and
then and then it is true that there are people
who are trained to take massive amounts of damage that
would seriously injure another person. Right, absolutely, but maybe not
(29:00):
to a superhuman degree. You'll often hear skeptics Darren Brown's
one who attribute these sorts of performances to just that
performances stage magic. Right, But there's another bigger one that
that goes back to our friend Noel the Iron Fist Brown.
Oh yes, Ben, that would be the no punch knockout.
(29:22):
You may have seen videos of guys who were wearing
like the master belts in some kind of martial arts garb,
and there are a bunch of people running up to
them and they're just knocking them over. You may have
seen this. I watched the video like that recently because
I would. I somehow was watching an mm A video
and then it was on one of the you know,
(29:43):
on the right rail. Uh. It was kind of kind
of upsetting. Actually, it was one of these practitioners who
it's a video of the master and his students, and
he's just demonstrating how he can knock out all of
his students without the watching them. And then and yes,
and then he challenges and m M A fighter and
(30:07):
wagers lots of money and says that he can beat
him up without touching him, and the m M A
Fighter proceeds to break the guy's nose and hurt him
really badly. Uh is this one where the um it's old?
Is this the one where the guy says he'll put
up a force field? Remember? Yeah? I so this. Yeah,
(30:32):
this is a thing that's unfortunately fairly common to see
online now. And it is true that people can break
wood or cinder blocks with their bare hands. Yeah, they're
doing it. They used to do it as a kid.
What the as like martial arts? We're angry? Yeah, it
was both. Oh okay, did you did you break a
(30:54):
center block? Really? No, I've never got a center block.
Buddy Scott did, though. Wow, man in right, And that's
completely possible for someone to break cinder blocks with their
bare hands. Listeners, if you train yourself right, and you
are safe, and you are assiduous, and you practice and
practice practice, then you too can eventually break cinder blocks,
(31:16):
but in a very specific way. You you will probably
still injure yourself if you go up to a wall
of cinder blocks and say, hey, guys, watch this, I'm
gonna go and guarantee that that will happen. Yeah, it's
gotta be. There's there's a science to it. But when
it comes to the idea of knocking someone to the
ground without touching them, there is a glaring commonality for
(31:40):
all of the people supposedly affected by these no touch
super punches, and it is this, they are true believers.
They believe this stuff really works. That's and that's not
saying Ben and I aren't saying that these videos you
were watching they're just a bunch of people making and
(32:00):
acting as though they're getting punched out. They believe so
wholeheartedly that this this master has these abilities or even
they perhaps have the abilities, that it makes it true
for them. Right. Yeah, it's the power of suggestions, similar
to hypnosis. There being sincere. It's kind of like gloss alia,
(32:21):
which is the five dollar word for speaking in tongues. Right,
and what happens during that If you've ever seen footage
of this, and Matt, you and I have watched the
documentary stuff with this. I have seen people do it
in Tennessee. Uh. Some people do it in churches as well. Yeah.
(32:42):
And what this speaking in tongues UH thing is is
supposed to be in in various belief systems, is a
direct touch of the divine right, perhaps speaking or assumed
to be speaking uh in in a coherent manner, in
(33:04):
a language that the human I guess medium for this right,
the human vessel for this has has no knowledge of Uh.
We've seen some great research on glass Alelia that that
proves it is a real thing. And the people who
are undergoing this, just like the people who are falling
to a no touch knockout punch, uh, believe that it
(33:27):
is happening there. Sincere they're not trying to you know,
be cool or something. It's not like Craig is saying,
all I better fall down so I get promoted in
this thing or whatever. It's it's a real thing. They
believe on some level that this is the way they're
supposed to act. So every and you know, maybe I
(33:49):
would be so excited if I found somebody could really
do this, and if you know someone, please send them
our way. Yeah, we'd love to we'd love to see
it happen in real life. But in the fact of
the matter is, at this point, we we haven't found
anything like that. Uh, let's go to ah. Yeah, yeah,
you've seen this and you know what's coming up. Yeah,
(34:11):
there's another one you've probably seen videos of. Now, thank
goodness for YouTube, Thank you YouTube, where where someone can
use their cheap powers to ignite a world piece of paper,
a newspaper, some form of flammable substance. And Okay, so
(34:31):
I we just have to get started and say there
are several of these that are obvious hoaxes that we
have seen him been proven to be hoaxes. Um this,
there's this chemical reaction that you can obtain. I think
Darren Brown didn't turn around cover this scam school or
something like that. The chemical reaction is, here's what happens
(34:53):
that the person the claiming to have these amazing supernatural
abilities holds up in newspaper. Behind the newspaper, there's a
little plastic baggy and in that bag there there's glide
glycerol I believe, and potassium man unite seven and when
they crumple it up, they combine the two elements, which
(35:15):
creates a combustion, right reaction, And it will take a
second for the newspaper to catch a fire, but newspaper,
of course, being highly combustible, does catch a fire. And
then the people just sort of sort of stick for
you de roy around it, you know, David Copperfield stage
magic stuff. You can check out that video for free
(35:36):
online to see how that happens. What these are just
a few examples of the outlandish stuff. And yeah, can
I just take a second to say though at this point,
that I think it is so profoundly offensive to consciously
misinformed people about something that's thousands and thousands year old tradition.
You know, this idea that breathing, exercise, razing, being mindful
(36:01):
of what you eat and how you live. Like, who
could argue with that. That's a great idea. Call it,
call it what you want, you know what I mean.
But don't don't uh, don't try to swindle people by
telling them that you will have superpowers. That's very Yeah,
(36:21):
I completely agree, it's very scientology to me. They're also
claims about the health benefits of gong right, yes, Ben,
Like we said, acupuncture people swear that that acupuncture works
not only to relieve pain, but to relieve other symptoms
of problems that they're having. But currently, unfortunately, the scientifically
(36:42):
scientifically sound studies like pure reviewers, ones that you could
point to and say, okay, well, I really understand this,
and then other people in the field understand that this
is what is happening. They they're severely lacking currently, at
least by the standards of Western medicine and research well
and also by the standards of some members of the
(37:03):
Chinese scientific community. As a thing called the China Association
of Science and Technology or CASTE that has been conducting
that had conducted wide ranging studies of various che going
practices or practitioners and we're trying to eliminate the fake ones,
and they found that there was a wide variance of stuff.
(37:24):
There's a guy named Dr Stephen Barrett who noted that
many practice practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine will separately see
the same patient presenting the same symptoms or or you know,
telling them the same symptoms and have well why widely
(37:45):
varying diagnoses um far beyond what you would call a
second opinion, just just very different stuff. And at this point,
you know, I have to ask, I have to ask you, man,
what do you think about she? It's a tough one.
I currently this is the way I'm going to couch this, Okay,
(38:05):
I currently have no evidence to believe that she is
anything outside of the elements, the chemicals and biological functions
of the natural world and my body. Okay, Well that's
that's what the text of Ancient China saych is anyway.
(38:26):
Oh sure, I mean they just they just call all
of these things together g and that's and that's cool.
I'm down with that. It's just I don't believe that
it is a separate thing. I guess right, I I see,
I see what you're what you're saying. Um, I definitely
think it has been just woefully misrepresented in at least
(38:50):
here in the West. You know. Uh, it's it's gotta
be surprising. I'd love to hear um from from some
of our other listeners here. It's gotta be surprising sometimes,
especially if you yourself. If we have anybody who practices
alternative medicine or is an authority on it, I'd love
(39:10):
to hear from you, because I'd love to hear the
misconceptions that you feel people in the West have. Yeah,
I might have this completely wrong in my viewpoint of it. Well, well,
it's just like while we were looking at this, and
when I was looking through Western research about she one
thing that got me at that I started wondering, you know,
was is this sort of like the old Chinese restaurant problem?
(39:34):
You know when I was at when I was in college,
I would hang out with some of my friends were
four nationals right then from China, and we went to
a Chinese restaurant one time, and their reaction was very
much like what the hell is this? It was so
it was like, this is not Chinese food? Yeah, what
(39:55):
why are you pouring sugar on everything? You know, which
is actually common reaction for people outside the stakes to anything.
But I wonder how much of it is misinterpreted as
for the question of whether it is real, and then
it has to go back to um double blind studies
(40:15):
that can prove a statistically significant thing. But of course
you're listening to this show, you want to know. If
there's stuff they don't want you to know, then what
could it be? We found two possibilities, ladies and gentlemen.
One possibility being that, uh that it's bunk that the
(40:38):
thing that the they and the stuff they don't want
you to know are the self professed uh cheong masters
who will charge you money to listen to the air
quotes here teach you the no knockout punch. Yeah, well,
or anyone who profits off of it being a real thing,
(40:58):
right right. That's that's one. That's one option. Another option
is that they would be uh the A m A
or other Western medical institutions who repress alternative therapies in
hopes of continuing the great, um, the great and brutal
(41:19):
cycle of profiting from people's health their lack thereof right, Uh,
that one hurts just the way you said it, even,
I mean I can, I can clearly see some validity
and in that at least in that the brutal cycle
does exist. Right. Maybe somebody doesn't want you to know
(41:40):
that we're all interconnected with this energy, ben and we
all are have powerful keygong masters inside of us. Don't
avatarmy man. Okay, sorry, it's uh, I'm I'm joking. That's
that's possible. But then I would somebody want to repress
(42:01):
something like that, so they can control us Ben through
through that common connection, through that zeitgeist. Maybe there's a
film there for sure. We could definitely do that before
before we go into this thing, I wanted to want
to go back to the stuff we've mentioned at the top, Uh,
the idea that people could control magnetism, right or project heat. Yes,
(42:26):
so these things are partially true. These are real superpowers, Asterix.
And you already know some of this, right because one
of the things that intense meditation teaches people to do.
And this is just this is amazing. I would be
cursing up a storm if this were not in all
ages show, because I am just really very excited. Yes,
(42:52):
Matt sees me almost cursing here across this. Uh. What
what we find is it is possible to gain control
over your normally involuntary bodily functions if you meditate frequently,
and and they're they're numerous monks of varying different religions
(43:12):
who are capable of doing this. You can raise and
lower your body temperature, you can uh increase and decrease
your heartbeat, right, and you can see this stuff and
this is this is real. This is not any kind
of um stage magic. You can see footage of monks,
(43:34):
for instance, who practice the thing called I think Troumo
or tomo where they they're having ice cold wet sheets
thrown on them and they just start meditating. Yeah, and
they steam them dry, they steam dry to stuff or
and there was I think there's one European who learned
to do that and now he just jogs around. I
(43:54):
swear this is this guy was just jogging around uh
in like shorts. Yeah, and then just antarctic weather and
whether that would have given other people frost bite and
his extremities were not suffering frost bite because he had
this control over his body. You also see people getting
buried alive with their their hands in the in the
(44:16):
praying position and just lowering their body responses almost like
they're in hibernation. That's real. That's spooky to be able
to do that. So okay, okay, sorry, uh. The other
thing I've got to go on a rant here. The
other the other thing is the ability, the magnetic ability.
When I was looking at various possible real superpowers, there's
(44:41):
this there's this friction thing that's actually happening. You remember,
do you read about this. Yeah, it's a it's not
a magnetism, it's a stickiness, which is so much grosser. Yeah, yeah,
it really is. And it's genetic, so it's kind of cool.
You might see the the videos of a person and
putting a spoon or other metal objects on the body,
(45:03):
on their face, on their nose, on their chests, all over,
and it's like, oh man, this guy is a magnet.
Holy moldy and his children have the same power. What
race of mutants? Well maybe, well, it's just the genetic
condition that alters your skin. Yeah, and they have a
(45:23):
higher have a higher frictive ability. I believe things, things
are just more likely to stick to them. They are
stickier people. That is, that is the actual thing that's happening. There,
the the other, the other thing. And I think perhaps
one of the most important takeaways from this, because I
(45:43):
know we spent a lot of time today talking about
how untrue a lot of the claims might be right
and how unfair it might be too. You know, someone
who knows nothing about this stuff too to hear these
outrageous things first and then be inevitably disappointed. Here here's
(46:07):
the amazing thing. And I think you and I have
talked about this on the show, but I'll just wave
the flag again because, Uh, it's fascinating. There really is
such a thing as mind over matter. It is literal.
The way you think, just by the virtue of the
thought alone changes the physical world in the most direct,
(46:29):
amazing and terrifying way, which is it changes the structure
or the ratios of areas of your brain. We we've
talked before about studies of London cab drivers, right, Uh,
London cab driver's background have to take a test called
the Knowledge, and the knowledge is super ridiculously hard. People
are expected to fail at several times. But and the
(46:53):
reason so hard is because you you cannot use the GPS, etcetera.
You have to memorize all these different routes in the
way they interconnect. And after people have become lending cabbies
for you know, decades, the area of their brain that's
associated with spatial memory is larger than an average person.
The same thing happens with I think there was a
(47:13):
study Buddhist monks who were meditating for for the same time, right,
and the area of their brain with associate with compassion
or empathy was larger, not like a little bit, like
noticeably the way that you would look at someone who
only worked out their left arm and notice how much
(47:36):
bigger their left arm is. And now, just to clarify,
we're not talking about the secret style positive thinking getting
a lot of money because you think possibly you're finding
that's not at all what we're saying here. Yeah, we're
talking about the kind of thoughts you have literally changing
the way your brain grows are changing. Um m m,
(48:01):
brain grows very slowly, changing the uh the function perhaps
is more fair way to say it. But still that
that isn't that is an amazing thing. And if the
techniques of various forms of cheng can help you achieve
that kind of thing, or if they help you overall
(48:21):
in your life and your wellness and they uh lengthen
your lifespan or at least length in the good parts
of its, right? Was it like Dennis Leary who used
to say, you know, I don't want to live till
I'm ninety or whatever, because those last few years are
gonna suck. I think Dennis Leary said that, but I
it always makes you nervous quoting him, because I always
(48:42):
feel like somebody else said it first. Whoa way is
that a yeah, a little too much of a Louis
c k. You used your cheek to burn him. The
skin is sizzling. He got a burn. Notice had a
pop culture reference? Really nice. By the way, have you
(49:03):
seen the show this is Apropo nothing? Have you seen
the show Mr Robot on USA Network? I have not. No,
I don't. I don't watch a lot of dude. They
made that show for us and our listeners, and I'm
not getting paid to promote the show. Just I'm saying
give it a chance, because it's it's basically like fight
(49:23):
Club and the Matrix smash them together, plus uh, the
illuminatis in there. It's crazy. I love it all right,
I'm gonna check out Mr Robot and and Christians later.
By the way, who's Christians later on sea? Did you
(49:45):
hear that? Sound cute? That can only mean one thing. Hey,
it's our moment with nol So. I watched the trailer
for Mr. Robot the other day and it looks looks
really good. I haven't seen it yet, but like there's
like an anonymous esque oh yeah, anonymously about it really
with a slightly different mask to more of a mustache
(50:06):
because they didn't want to get sued. Can you imagine
Anonymous taking someone to court? Guys, I wanted and I'm
glad we're all here. I wanted to read a couple
of tweets from our from our last podcast because we
had some people talk, remember our podcast that we were
(50:26):
trying to figure out which animals. Well, we had some
people right to us with their choices. Do you guys
want to hear them? Yes? Please? Okay, let's see there's
one rather strange one. They Uh, somebody wanted to eat
be a small animal, eat coffee. Yeah. Shout out to
(50:46):
a baby lion cub who said the baby lion cub
chose to be an Asian palm civet because eating and
pooping out coffee beans all day is the ultimate dream job. Man. Now,
is that the coffee that's really expensive? Yes? What's good
about it? Is it and give you animal powers? It's
(51:09):
just like it's supposed to taste really good. It's of
its kind A certain mommy, yes, certain, a certain you mommy.
Uh and then uh then uh kelsey Eto writes to us, says,
if I could be in the animal, I would turn
(51:29):
into ter topsus dorney and be immortal that's a little jellyfish. Right,
fish turns into a baby continually. And then we had
we had some folks right in, Uh say, don't be
a cow. Uh. Jake Collins road In says, I know
it sounds weird, but I'd love to be a duck
skin walker, able to fly, swim and be cute beyond reason.
(51:53):
So kind sort of a one upping of mine. I mean,
I didn't think about that, but it's like, if you're
a duck, then you can fly and you can swim
and corkscrew thing. I don't know about that. We're family
show Family, Look up duck cork screw. Uh. Yeah, ducks
are horrible people. If ducks were people, they would be
(52:14):
bad people. Um, I just based on their behavior and
like they would mainly just swimming giant pools of golden coins.
Oh yeah, oh yeah. Did you know that you will
be seriously injured if you attempt to do that? Yeah.
For some reason, there was a study whereas the one said,
how would this work, just just in case I've wasted
(52:36):
all my time on paper? Punt would be less of
a splash and more of like a yeah, yeah, well no,
I'm sorry. I just I was excited to uh talk
more about the kind of animals who we would be,
because I clearly have my priorities aligned. But but what's
on your mind with this, with this whole cheese stuff.
Oh I don't know, man, I was too busy playing
(52:58):
the new Fallout Shelter iPhone game. What have you guys
seen this? You guys familiar with the Fallout games? I mean,
I know Fallout. Yeah, so there's a there's an iPhone
Fallout game that's sort of like a Fallout version of
the SIMS where you have your little vault dwellers and
you organize them in these various underground Fallout Shelter compartments.
And it sounds really cool. It's really But are are
(53:18):
you admitting to just sitting there and playing a game
while we Ben and I are having this philosophical discussion
about the energy inside all of us? I'm half admitting it,
but I'm not fully admitting it. Oh listen, I know.
I actually I've got a thing. You want to hear
my thing? I want to hear it? Yeah, I have it.
I literally have not slept. Man, give you something. No,
you got it, and you got This isn't very good,
(53:38):
But you know the band Tool you guys familiar with
the band. So their singer Maynard James Keenan, who I
think mainly just makes wine. Now. I don't think he
actually sings anymore, that's not sure. I'm kidding. I think
still refuses to wear a shirt that well. Yeah. Um.
But a friend of mine a long time ago who
lived in Los Angeles told me the story about being
(54:00):
with somebody and running into Maynard James Keenan on the
street and for whatever reason, like you do, his friend
decided he'd shoot a bottle rocket at him. He just
happened to have one, and maybe it wasn't a bottle rocket,
it was a it was a firecracker. Let's let's let's
just it's pretty fat. But here's what happened. So he
throws the firecracker at James Maynard James Keenan's feet and
(54:21):
Maynard kind of looks at it and it goes out,
and the guy's like, whoa, what what do you happened there?
And Maynard goes I put it out with my mind, man,
So I think Maynard's got some serious That's great, as
long as he can't ignite the firecrackers. I'm I don't know.
(54:44):
But I also don't throw firecrackers at strangers. No, it's
an odd story. It almost sounds made up, but I
like to tell it. That's a fun story. It's like
that getting tackled by Bill Murray in the hallway of
the hotel story, you know, where whispers is like in
your ear, like no one's going to believe you. Oh yeah, no,
I don't believe you. I often wonder how many of
those stories are true. We didn't get to everybody who
(55:06):
rode in to say which animals they would transform to,
but we got some. We got some fantastic suggestions. They
made me, uh, they made me rethink, you guys, I
I really, um, well, I well, I think we ended
on an octopus. I don't know, I think we really.
I kind of screwed us when I said no fictional animals.
(55:28):
You know. Yeah, there's so many of those, though, it
would have taken me a week to really narrow down
what I wanted to be. Yeah, well, let's keep thinking
like the octopus. Things seem cool because you know, there's
certain types of octopusts that can transform in different thing
as a try serah corn, because there should be tri
seric oh man, Yeah, wait is it a dinosaur horse? Well,
(55:52):
that's all up to your imagination. And yeah, it's a
three horned unicorn U dinosaur like creature. So all the
powers of those creatures combined. I love it. Uh. That
that's that's fantastic. I hope it doesn't have scales, but
that is that is fantastic. All right, So let us
know what you think about she and thank you so
(56:17):
much for listening. We mentioned a couple of different articles
that are on our website or parent website, how stuff
Works dot com if you want to learn more about this,
if you haven't checked out the video we had that
came out earlier this week, our our classic video on
the alleged Dragon family. And you'd like to hear about
(56:38):
Big Brother type world domination conspiracies, money printing and laundering,
World War two lost treasures, or counterfeiting, Uh, then check
it out. I think the best teaser for that, if
you haven't seen it, is that oh several years back
and you and I think it already started the show.
(56:59):
But several years two thousand nine exactly, Uh, several several
different foreign nationals were arrested on their way to Switzerland
or Yeah, one was arrest in Switzerland. Want to arrest
in Italy attempting to smuggle what the Treasury Department says
(57:23):
were clearly counterfeit uh billion and billion dollar notes, but
they were either professionally aged or they really were old
counterfeit notes. They were spelling errors. There were spelling errors,
which isn't ted give away uh or this is absolutely bunk,
but this is a fascinating story. Do check it out.
(57:44):
Let us know what you think. You can find us
on Facebook and Twitter, where you can see a lot
of stories that don't make it to the air for
one reason or another. But do check it out. We're
active on their conspiracy stuff at both of those. You
can visit our websites Stuff they don't want you to
know dot com and uh if you want to write
(58:06):
into us directly about about g recommendations for another topic,
the animal that you would be uh, we're all ears.
I mean you could just say hey to he is acceptable, Yeah,
hey is wonderful. That's fine. All you need to know
is where to send that email. We are conspiracy at
how stuff works dot com. From more on this topic,
(58:32):
another unexplained phenomenon, visit YouTube dot com slash conspiracy Stuff.
You can also get in touch on Twitter at the
handle at conspiracy stuff.
From UFOs two, ghosts and government cover ups. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to now. Hello,
and welcome back to the show. My name is Matt
and I am Ben. Uh No sleep till Brooklyn Boland
(00:23):
here with our super producer, Noel the Iron Fist Brown.
Oh I knew that was you. Oh and there's Jason. Hey,
that's up Jason? All right? Yeah, are what one of
our bosses is named? Jason? That is true. We're not
just making that up. So listeners, as you know, usually
(00:45):
we have some hints about the show embedded in our
super producer's nickname. But some of you might be wondering, Hey, wait, Ben,
why did you give yourself a nickname in this Well there,
it was quite literal. Yes, it was quite literal and
remains so. First, of course, guys, we uh we we
(01:09):
may have been born yesterday, but we've been awake all night,
as the old joke goes, uh So we know you guys,
we know you're not supposed to give yourself your own nickname.
That's that's a crap move. I was going to do
it if you didn't. Yeah, I am coming to you
uh semi live depending on when you hear this, uh
(01:30):
without having had any sleep. I've been awake for about
uh thirty six hours met you actually caught me trying
to sleep in my car in the parking deck. So
this might be a little bit of a weird podcast
on my end. That's why I have a nickname. Today
it's gonna be great. That's how I like it. When
(01:50):
it gets nice and weird up in here. Send the
weird waves through these these chords and out into your ears.
So there you know we're today We're going to talk
about something that is a little out there. Some of
you might not really I don't know you. You might
be thinking, oh gosh, why why would they even talk
about this sub right right? But then others are are
(02:11):
going to are gonna go, oh man, they're finally talking
about this. Well, that happens pretty often that let's face
and then also we will have a contention of people
who will say, this is just terrible. You're doing a
terrible job. But but let's let's ease into it. Here's
one for the fans of comic books, okay, and I'm
(02:32):
gonna be very careful not to spoil too much of
this because if you're a fan of comic books, it
might come up in your life a few years from now.
But there is a character in Marvel Comics whose name
is iron Fist and Nol today iron Fist is your namesake.
(02:52):
Iron Fist has the has pretty much martial arts superpowers,
and he can focus this energy that he has to
give himself, uh slightly enhanced strength, but also you know,
superhuman reflexes, agility, the whole nine better senses, but not
(03:16):
as good as Daredevil, which is important. And he has
this this one big move. The power of it changes
depending on who's writing the story at that time, where
he can focus all of this energy into one punch
and this punch is amazing, and when it first started,
he can only do it once a day and he
(03:37):
was just garbage after that, so she had to be
very selective, like a smart bomb in um, you know,
in an old Atari game or something. But what was
but when he focused this thing, uh, it had a name?
What what was this energy he was focusing? Well, it
has a lot of different names depending on where you're
born and what culture surrounds you, but the most common
(04:01):
is ch Yes spelled with a Q I or c
h I. Uh, here's the deal. Today we are talking
about g is she real? What is she? What is real? Now?
I'm kidding, We're not. That's a lot for one episode. Yeah,
so let's just start here. The human body is an
(04:24):
astonishing thing. And the more we learn about the human body,
not just the brain, but the more we learn about
the human body in general, it seems the more questions
we have. So we were gonna do a little bit
of backstory, Matt, You and I were gonna do two
videos this week, one with our classic format and one
with the vlog, but I was in New York on
(04:46):
some completely non shady business, as you may have heard
me allude to on Facebook. So we're sticking with one
this week. And Uh, I'd like to talk to you
a little bit about, uh, the video that we actually
didn't make, so we can at least get some of
that story out here in the audio podcast. And then
when you're talking to other people who just watched the videos,
(05:07):
you can say, oh, well, if you listen to the
audio show, then you would you would know, you know,
you would be on like my level of noatude, the
noatude of knowing that the human body is crazy. Like
Ben said, there are things we're learning about it that
I never would have believed. Uh, I don't know, even recently.
(05:28):
It's tough for me to believe this stuff. But it
is true that the human body produces energies. Um. There
are a couple of different ones. Uh. One of the
first ones that we want to talk about is electricity. Yes,
I know it sounds crazy, but it's true. Without electricity,
your your brain wouldn't work. Yeah, and that's something that
we weaving the human species have known for a little while.
(05:52):
You know that electricity is the great impetus that makes
all the things happen, right, all the matt things, all
the null things, listener you, all the u things happen.
And there's there's a pretty good article about this on
the how Stuff Works website too. Yeah, it's called how
does the body make electricity and how does it use it?
(06:14):
And that's by one of the writers here, Julia Layton. Yeah,
and we've got a great quotation here from the article,
just to just to put into context electricity's role in
the body and the brain. When we talk about the
nervous system sending signals to the brain or synapses firing,
or the brain telling our hands to contract around a
(06:34):
door handle. What we're really talking about is electricity carrying
messages between point A and point B. It's sort of
like the digital cable signals that carry ones and zeros
that deliver true detective to your eyeballs, except in our bodies,
electrons aren't flowing along a wire. Instead, an electrical charge
is jumping from one cell to the next until it
(06:55):
reaches its destination. Right, yeah, I think that's a pretty
good explanation. Here's one of the things that the body
also produces that tripped you and I at this was
unexpected light. Uh. To paraphrase Rihanna, you do indeed shine
bright like a diamond. Well not not quite that right, right,
absolutely not that right. But we said, like so we
(07:17):
actually a little Here's the deal. The human body produces
a small amount of light. In two thousand nine, Life
Science and The Guardian both reported a study that showed
all human beings, in fact, virtually all living creatures emit
visible light, at least in small amounts. What. Yeah, it
sounds crazy, but stick with me here. We're not talking
(07:38):
about light that you and I could just see with
our naked eye when you're walking around. We don't glow
in the dark. We're talking about Uh, I'm so sorry
to what was that song with my naked eye? I
saw with my naked eye eyes land Rain coming down?
Oh yeah, yeah, who is who is that? Say? It
(08:00):
was Luscious Jackson. Luscious Jackson, bam so Luscious. I guess Luscious? Yeah, yeah,
she she understood? Is it? Is it she? Or is
it he is? It's like a group of people, a
group of ladies, a band, if you would, I apologize
for not being on my Luscious Jackson knowledge. I apologize
(08:21):
for interrupting you. Was this with his ramply thing? It's
been a it's been a long couple of days. But
good save No, I'm sorry, but back. I'm not saying
we go in the dark. What I'm saying is that, uh,
living things emit light that is roughly a thousand times
less intense than what we could detect with our eye.
(08:42):
It is detectable, right, Okay, I see what you're saying.
Similar to the way that some stars are visible only
through the aid of a telescope or something like that,
or or if you if you leave a lens open
for long enough Okay, that makes sense. This stuff also
showed that the light that people admitted varied throughout the day.
(09:05):
It was lowest that around ten am, and it was
peaking around four pm T when it gradually declined. Uh.
Your face, by the way, assuming you're human, as you
hear this, uh, will probably clobe brighter than the rest
of your body, according to this one study we have.
I have to say that just because this hasn't been
(09:27):
you know, studied a lot, but it was really interesting. Yeah,
it is interesting, and I can already foresee some of
the questions here, the question of like, well ten am
ware right, we can cranish meantime, it appears to be
tied to an individual's body clock, this slow rise and
(09:50):
fall of your your light source. So if you are
doing anything extremely important, try and time it somewhere around
four because maybe that light is having an effect that
you're not aware of. Wow, you know what, that would
be an interesting study to to see if it if
it mattered whatsoever, if there were animals that could sense
(10:11):
that light. Now, of course we're not talking about infrared,
and there are some animals whose vision verges into the
infrared spectrum. Right, But anyway, that's interesting because it shows
that human beings emit things like electricity and light. And
there are other examples of course, heat, electromagnetic force, etcetera,
etcetera at all. But we started looking at this because
(10:32):
we wanted to ask a different, somewhat related question. But
what what is? What is cheat? But we've heard about it.
I've heard about it since I was a kid or
stories and just you know, you see all the like
acupuncture and other things that make use of this energy,
(10:55):
like energy redirection, healing without the stuff. But we hadn't
really delved very deeply into this. So get ready, folks,
we're on the diving board. Here we go, right, Okay, Yeah,
it's true. Matt, you've you've heard it before. I've heard
it before, Nol, you've heard it before. Listeners, you have to.
It's often mentioned in the context of traditional Chinese medicine
(11:18):
maybe martial arts. It's also been used in fiction, and
it's been heavily exploited by Hollywood. It's been cited as
this miraculous curative force and more. It has also been
dismissed by critics as a scam or flim flam, a superstition,
a sham, so what what is the definition of this? What?
(11:39):
What gives? What would we call it? Well, in Chinese
philosophy and Chinese medicine, she is this vital thing that
exists in everything in the universe. It's it's invisible, and
it's this unique form that's often interpreted as some sort
of energy of let's see, Well, we'll get to the
(12:01):
whole idea of what the energy is in a in
a moment, but for now, let's take it as let's
take this as a fact, at least for the sake
of argument, agreed that this g is energy. So the
belief in this sort of ubiquitous energy isn't unique. It's
not unique to Chinese tradition or any of the other
places that you may have heard that it is unique to.
It's uh, it's known as in general vitalism. It's the
(12:25):
vital energy that runs all things, This belief in in
some kind of ubiquitous energies. Yes, okay, so okay, So
that would be kind of like prawna in Hinduism or
numa in Greek or even in physics. Right, even even
in even in physics, we we could also say, what
(12:45):
I'm thinking of another one, Oh, the Nazis real, real
energy real would be one. That's uh, that's a deep
cut for the people who would listen to our earlier
Nazi stuff that that quit quintestants. I think is the
name of it. The the fifth uh, the fifth element,
the element of the heavens was present in all nature
and the stuff of which celestial bodies was made. I
(13:08):
feel like dark energy. It's a hypotheti hypothetical version or
idea of what dark energy would be. So basically the Force, Yes,
if we want to if we want to go full
into full fiction references, then chi and this and this
is not meant in a derogatory way at all. This
is just meant to show, if anything, the the kind
(13:31):
of concept, that the kind of concept that the Force
was building upon real life. So so g would be
in some ways like the like a real life version
of the Force. And as we know, real life is
not like a film. So yeah, So I apologize to
everybody who expected they would get a lightsaber once they
(13:54):
completed their practice, once they become a Chee Gong master.
Chee Gong is the is the name for UH set
of practices that involves postures, exercises, a clear slow circular movements,
regulated breathing, focused meditation, things like that. There are three
different styles. They're classified as martial, medical, or spiritual. Uh.
(14:18):
Some cheong styles are gentler like tai chi and can
be adapted. Others are more vigorous. But one one of
the unique features of this is uh, the ability to
train the mind to direct the body's energy or che
to any part of the body. But uh, that's that's
just to explain what che gong is. So when we
(14:41):
say that we're talking about people, we're talking about the
practice of using chi consciously. But maybe maybe I'm getting
a little ahead of our Wait, I can't get ahead
of ourselves. Maybe I'm just messing up the show. What
what does she even mean? In English? Yeah? In so
(15:01):
she in English? If it's translated is air. That's what
it means. Literally. While this is often seen as an energy,
as we said before, authors like Chris Kessner argue that
it's best interpreted as oxygen rather than energy, a an
essential element. Almost right. Yeah. No, Chris Kesser we found
(15:22):
because he's a bit contrarian. When he talks about some
of this. He claims that there are a lot of
mistranslations or misconceptions, rather mistranslations of Chinese culture and language
that led to misconceptions in the West. And for the record,
I completely agree with him in principle. I don't know how,
(15:43):
I don't know how absolutely I would agree with his specifics,
but he claims this mistranslation of of chi as energy
instead of oxygen was single handedly created by a French
fellow named Suli de moron Uh. In traditional Chinese medicine,
she is thought to travel both through these channels called
meridians getting Kesser disputes this, calling them notes. Let's just
(16:07):
go ahead and assume for the rest of the show
that when we're talking about g and we're and we're
just touching on some of the high level stuff, that
that the that Chris Kesser is the person you would
go to to read about if you think this is
I don't want to say bunk, but if you think
this is a vast misconception, this is something different than
(16:30):
what's on the surface, right, right, So, if we talked
about acupuncture, acupuncture is insertion of needles in two points
along these channels or nodes, and this is done to
adjust the positive negative aspects of G. The the yang
being the positive, the end being the negative, to help
maintain a balance of such of sorts and other things
can affect this balance to right. Have you ever done acupuncture?
(16:53):
I have not. You know, I have huge have huge
issues with touching metal. Yeah, if they were like stone
or wooden needles, even if it Okay, so when the
metal thing, is it just your hands touching metal or
is it metal just touching your skin? No, it's it's
a body wide experience, like my sensory um inputs her
(17:17):
crossed and the associations are unpleasant. Okay. So, so my
wife tried acupuncture for the first time not long ago.
Oh no way, Yeah, she she said she felt great afterwards,
but she attributed that to just being in a relaxed
state for a long period of time. Very she had
a very stressful job for quite a while there, and
(17:39):
then just going into a room with quiet music and
someone gently touching you, even if they're shoving a needle
in you, just a little bit, just meditating him. Yeah,
so she felt great afterwards, and but that's what she Okay,
you know what, that's kind of cool, man, That's that's amazing.
I'd love to hear more about her. Her experience, because,
as you know, people have used acupuncture for very long time,
(18:03):
and it's popular across the world now and people swear
by it maw uh. And we know also that our
friends over at Stuff you Should Know have a great
podcast on acupuncture if you want to learn more about it.
So here's where we start to get into some of
(18:25):
the more divisive stuff. I know a lot of people
are not sold on acupuncture, and then a lot of
people think that Western medical institutions are suppressing acupuncture any
natural alternative medicine. So we we know those two sides
of the argument. Or there, let's let's bracket that for
a second and get into some of the weirder stuff
(18:47):
with the idea that practitioners of che gong are able
to direct the effects of ch just by using their
minds and their hands at racky massage right energy redirection.
Feel like reiky is kind of a low level version
of some of the key Goong practitioners I've seen, at
(19:08):
least on videos. Now, I'm not trying to diminish reiki
at all, know several people it's just a different thing.
It's a different thing. The key Goong masters that I've
seen are the ones that say they can create heat
they can actually create heat with their mind in their hands,
and a couple other things. I think magnetism was another idea. Oh,
(19:30):
remind me at the end of the episode, because I can,
I can explain some of that. Excellent, Okay, So another thing, though,
these are not the only claims you'll see. People who
are young doctors or master's claim to channel their own
energy or air into another person's energy kind of network, right,
(19:54):
correcting blockages as you can imagine, ladies and gentlemen. Surprise, surprise, surprise.
West Stern Medicine takes a dim view of many of
these claims. But we've we've seen enough so far to
know that without going into acupuncture, making this an acupuncture podcast, Uh,
we know that the definition of CH, of what is
(20:18):
CH isn't something as cut and dry due to all
these misconceptions. So maybe it's best to understand SHE in
terms of its functions and its activities. Right, So it
as the uh, we'll just walk through it as the
qualities of both matter and energy, right for those who
believe it exists, and as substance without structure. It possesses
(20:40):
qualities of energy, but it can't be measured. I hear
so many people on the other side of the microphone
now groaning or on the other side of this, because
you should be able to measure something, right if it's energy.
So they would say via analogy. There's a great comparison
in one of our articles that the force of a
(21:00):
thunderstorm could be understanding understood in terms of its chi
because you could measure the power of the chi in
the fallen trees and buildings in the storms aftermath. I
get it, but I'm a little hesitant with I'm a
little hesitant to uh totally subscribe to something because of
an analogy. Well yeah, and it makes me that analogy
(21:23):
in particular makes me think of the possible misinterpretation of
g as uh not energy but air, or you know,
the idea that you can't see the wind, but you're
pretty sure that that tree was standing up earlier. Right now.
There's also we can kind of skip past the Meridians
(21:45):
stuff here, but you know, we mentioned those meridians or
those nodes and the way that she is supposed to
travel from no to no passing through meridians. You'll hear
people say there's a cycle of twenty four hours, and
that there's certain times where wherein a certain organ is
is more powerful that the flow is strongest there. So
(22:08):
the concept here is that she is supposed to pass
through all the major channels or nodes and meridians of
your body, and manipulating these points with pressure, heat, needles,
et cetera is the crux upon which so much of
this treatment hinges to have the energy flow through those
(22:28):
points correctly. Um. So, so we've talked about this, let's
talk about other functions, or the main functions. Oh yeah, yeah,
there are five, right, yes, So the first one is transformation,
and this is the idea that she transform one type
of substance into another. Okay, so let's say the spleen,
(22:48):
she transforms food into ch and blood right, Okay, that
the body and the body can use that, so use
uses both of these things that she to make everything
else work. And then the blood, well, the blood to
make everything else working. Right. Uh, the kidney she transforms
fluids into pure essence and wastewater. And then you know,
(23:11):
in the same way you keep going on down to say,
the long transforms air into the energy to sustain life.
So transformation is the first one movement would be the
second all movement accompanied by its own CHI including growth, development, walking, breathing.
Thinking that she is the commander of the blood as
you might have heard before. What's the third one? Third
(23:32):
one is protection, the idea that she protects the body
against attacked by diseases, UM and other things. If if
a person's che is weak, that person may experience frequent
illnesses because they're white blood cells or chi aren't doing
so uh, and then they're the fourth wound be retention,
the fourth function of CHI. That's the idea that she
keeps the organs in their proper place. So that's the
(23:56):
reason that you're not vomiting up your hearts or some thing.
Thank good. That and numerous anatomical facts. But the uh.
The idea here is that deficiency can lead to prolapse,
bleeding disorders, excessive sweating or urination. And there's one last one.
The last one is warming the yang aspect of kidney
(24:19):
CHEE keeps the entire body warm, which is pretty nice. Um.
When it is deficient in this way, chronic cold extremities
like cold extremities as in your arms or your legs,
mostly uh, you will have decreased function in all activities
that require warmth, such as digestion or other things that
(24:39):
go on inside your innards. Okay, so we know that
g is at least attributed to doing a whole host
of things for the human body and of all other
living entities inside their bodies. We also know that as
we went through there, we were saying things like the lungs, cheating,
spleen ch that's weird, right, Yeah, those are different types
(25:02):
of chi because Chinese medicine typically divides in the various
types depending on source and function. So the original source
of this force would be your parents, and that she
inherited from them is known as prenatal chi. So this
is the basic constitution of a human being. It depends
upon genetics, the quality of the parents lives at the
(25:23):
time of conception and during pregnancy. This, ladies and gentlemen,
if you believe in she is your heritage. It cannot
be replenished. A healthy lifestyle, diet and breathing practices, however,
can conserve prenatal chi and slow down its depletion. That's
really cool. So I'm almost thinking of it as in
(25:46):
terms of stem cells or something. You're stem cell chi, right,
or maybe the way that a woman only has a
certain number of eggs in her life and those can
be depleted. But a um, but the argument here of
worse being that there are certain actions one can take
to slow that loss. But there's another type of g
(26:08):
there that's just as important. Yes, once you are postnatal,
you get the postnatal she. And this is she that's
acquired or derived from food you're eating, the stuff you're drinking,
the air you're breathing. This, when combined with prenatal CHI,
forms the totality of the body's power to perform all
of these things we're talking about, all the vital functions
(26:29):
of your body. And then there's lung, cheese, spleen she
true she, which is the totality of CHI, the results
from the combination of the prenatal and the postnatal stuff.
This is responsible for all the functions of the body.
Takes different forms. Uh, there's there's also uh nutritive she.
(26:50):
You can hear about these different types of CHI. But
what what I would like to get to is, uh,
the the claims attributed to these chich young masters, right,
so called sometimes self professed, let's be honest, sometimes self
(27:11):
professed and we're you know, We're not here in any
way to denigrate serious practitioners of something that people believe in,
but we will tell you that there are quite a
few claims made by people who also claim to be
che Gong masters. And uh, all these claims are not
(27:34):
created equal. I mean you can start with stuff like
someone is an acupuncturist, right, Uh, that's that's believable. People
around the world again engage in acupuncture, and I know
some people think it's utter bunk, some people swear by it.
But this is not an acupuncture episode because we're going
further afield, right, We're going to the people who claim
(27:56):
that they have superpowers. Essentially, I'm very I'm very as
you know, I'm very interested in having superpowers. So we're
aware of right, So I looked into this, uh, and
I just I don't want to spoil this surprise for anybody,
but let's take a closer look at some of these, right. So,
(28:16):
so checking can the idea that it can give you
superhuman abilities, particularly when it comes to a standing pain.
You'll see people being beaten with. Uh. Once you hear
the air quotes here, iron bars, you'll see and and
they may indeed be iron You know, I wouldn't want
to test it out, That's all I'm saying. Right, Yeah,
(28:38):
you definitely have to train. You know. It's like the
whole thing with when people say wrestling is fake, it's
there's still trained professionals, those athletes. Watch yourself, right, and
then and then it is true that there are people
who are trained to take massive amounts of damage that
would seriously injure another person. Right, absolutely, but maybe not
(29:00):
to a superhuman degree. You'll often hear skeptics Darren Brown's
one who attribute these sorts of performances to just that
performances stage magic. Right, But there's another bigger one that
that goes back to our friend Noel the Iron Fist Brown.
Oh yes, Ben, that would be the no punch knockout.
(29:22):
You may have seen videos of guys who were wearing
like the master belts in some kind of martial arts garb,
and there are a bunch of people running up to
them and they're just knocking them over. You may have
seen this. I watched the video like that recently because
I would. I somehow was watching an mm A video
and then it was on one of the you know,
(29:43):
on the right rail. Uh. It was kind of kind
of upsetting. Actually, it was one of these practitioners who
it's a video of the master and his students, and
he's just demonstrating how he can knock out all of
his students without the watching them. And then and yes,
and then he challenges and m M A fighter and
(30:07):
wagers lots of money and says that he can beat
him up without touching him, and the m M A
Fighter proceeds to break the guy's nose and hurt him
really badly. Uh is this one where the um it's old?
Is this the one where the guy says he'll put
up a force field? Remember? Yeah? I so this. Yeah,
(30:32):
this is a thing that's unfortunately fairly common to see
online now. And it is true that people can break
wood or cinder blocks with their bare hands. Yeah, they're
doing it. They used to do it as a kid.
What the as like martial arts? We're angry? Yeah, it
was both. Oh okay, did you did you break a
(30:54):
center block? Really? No, I've never got a center block.
Buddy Scott did, though. Wow, man in right, And that's
completely possible for someone to break cinder blocks with their
bare hands. Listeners, if you train yourself right, and you
are safe, and you are assiduous, and you practice and
practice practice, then you too can eventually break cinder blocks,
(31:16):
but in a very specific way. You you will probably
still injure yourself if you go up to a wall
of cinder blocks and say, hey, guys, watch this, I'm
gonna go and guarantee that that will happen. Yeah, it's
gotta be. There's there's a science to it. But when
it comes to the idea of knocking someone to the
ground without touching them, there is a glaring commonality for
(31:40):
all of the people supposedly affected by these no touch
super punches, and it is this, they are true believers.
They believe this stuff really works. That's and that's not
saying Ben and I aren't saying that these videos you
were watching they're just a bunch of people making and
(32:00):
acting as though they're getting punched out. They believe so
wholeheartedly that this this master has these abilities or even
they perhaps have the abilities, that it makes it true
for them. Right. Yeah, it's the power of suggestions, similar
to hypnosis. There being sincere. It's kind of like gloss alia,
(32:21):
which is the five dollar word for speaking in tongues. Right,
and what happens during that If you've ever seen footage
of this, and Matt, you and I have watched the
documentary stuff with this. I have seen people do it
in Tennessee. Uh. Some people do it in churches as well. Yeah.
(32:42):
And what this speaking in tongues UH thing is is
supposed to be in in various belief systems, is a
direct touch of the divine right, perhaps speaking or assumed
to be speaking uh in in a coherent manner, in
(33:04):
a language that the human I guess medium for this right,
the human vessel for this has has no knowledge of Uh.
We've seen some great research on glass Alelia that that
proves it is a real thing. And the people who
are undergoing this, just like the people who are falling
to a no touch knockout punch, uh, believe that it
(33:27):
is happening there. Sincere they're not trying to you know,
be cool or something. It's not like Craig is saying,
all I better fall down so I get promoted in
this thing or whatever. It's it's a real thing. They
believe on some level that this is the way they're
supposed to act. So every and you know, maybe I
(33:49):
would be so excited if I found somebody could really
do this, and if you know someone, please send them
our way. Yeah, we'd love to we'd love to see
it happen in real life. But in the fact of
the matter is, at this point, we we haven't found
anything like that. Uh, let's go to ah. Yeah, yeah,
you've seen this and you know what's coming up. Yeah,
(34:11):
there's another one you've probably seen videos of. Now, thank
goodness for YouTube, Thank you YouTube, where where someone can
use their cheap powers to ignite a world piece of paper,
a newspaper, some form of flammable substance. And Okay, so
(34:31):
I we just have to get started and say there
are several of these that are obvious hoaxes that we
have seen him been proven to be hoaxes. Um this,
there's this chemical reaction that you can obtain. I think
Darren Brown didn't turn around cover this scam school or
something like that. The chemical reaction is, here's what happens
(34:53):
that the person the claiming to have these amazing supernatural
abilities holds up in newspaper. Behind the newspaper, there's a
little plastic baggy and in that bag there there's glide
glycerol I believe, and potassium man unite seven and when
they crumple it up, they combine the two elements, which
(35:15):
creates a combustion, right reaction, And it will take a
second for the newspaper to catch a fire, but newspaper,
of course, being highly combustible, does catch a fire. And
then the people just sort of sort of stick for
you de roy around it, you know, David Copperfield stage
magic stuff. You can check out that video for free
(35:36):
online to see how that happens. What these are just
a few examples of the outlandish stuff. And yeah, can
I just take a second to say though at this point,
that I think it is so profoundly offensive to consciously
misinformed people about something that's thousands and thousands year old tradition.
You know, this idea that breathing, exercise, razing, being mindful
(36:01):
of what you eat and how you live. Like, who
could argue with that. That's a great idea. Call it,
call it what you want, you know what I mean.
But don't don't uh, don't try to swindle people by
telling them that you will have superpowers. That's very Yeah,
(36:21):
I completely agree, it's very scientology to me. They're also
claims about the health benefits of gong right, yes, Ben,
Like we said, acupuncture people swear that that acupuncture works
not only to relieve pain, but to relieve other symptoms
of problems that they're having. But currently, unfortunately, the scientifically
(36:42):
scientifically sound studies like pure reviewers, ones that you could
point to and say, okay, well, I really understand this,
and then other people in the field understand that this
is what is happening. They they're severely lacking currently, at
least by the standards of Western medicine and research well
and also by the standards of some members of the
(37:03):
Chinese scientific community. As a thing called the China Association
of Science and Technology or CASTE that has been conducting
that had conducted wide ranging studies of various che going
practices or practitioners and we're trying to eliminate the fake ones,
and they found that there was a wide variance of stuff.
(37:24):
There's a guy named Dr Stephen Barrett who noted that
many practice practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine will separately see
the same patient presenting the same symptoms or or you know,
telling them the same symptoms and have well why widely
(37:45):
varying diagnoses um far beyond what you would call a
second opinion, just just very different stuff. And at this point,
you know, I have to ask, I have to ask you, man,
what do you think about she? It's a tough one.
I currently this is the way I'm going to couch this, Okay,
(38:05):
I currently have no evidence to believe that she is
anything outside of the elements, the chemicals and biological functions
of the natural world and my body. Okay, Well that's
that's what the text of Ancient China saych is anyway.
(38:26):
Oh sure, I mean they just they just call all
of these things together g and that's and that's cool.
I'm down with that. It's just I don't believe that
it is a separate thing. I guess right, I I see,
I see what you're what you're saying. Um, I definitely
think it has been just woefully misrepresented in at least
(38:50):
here in the West. You know. Uh, it's it's gotta
be surprising. I'd love to hear um from from some
of our other listeners here. It's gotta be surprising sometimes,
especially if you yourself. If we have anybody who practices
alternative medicine or is an authority on it, I'd love
(39:10):
to hear from you, because I'd love to hear the
misconceptions that you feel people in the West have. Yeah,
I might have this completely wrong in my viewpoint of it. Well, well,
it's just like while we were looking at this, and
when I was looking through Western research about she one
thing that got me at that I started wondering, you know,
was is this sort of like the old Chinese restaurant problem?
(39:34):
You know when I was at when I was in college,
I would hang out with some of my friends were
four nationals right then from China, and we went to
a Chinese restaurant one time, and their reaction was very
much like what the hell is this? It was so
it was like, this is not Chinese food? Yeah, what
(39:55):
why are you pouring sugar on everything? You know, which
is actually common reaction for people outside the stakes to anything.
But I wonder how much of it is misinterpreted as
for the question of whether it is real, and then
it has to go back to um double blind studies
(40:15):
that can prove a statistically significant thing. But of course
you're listening to this show, you want to know. If
there's stuff they don't want you to know, then what
could it be? We found two possibilities, ladies and gentlemen.
One possibility being that, uh that it's bunk that the
(40:38):
thing that the they and the stuff they don't want
you to know are the self professed uh cheong masters
who will charge you money to listen to the air
quotes here teach you the no knockout punch. Yeah, well,
or anyone who profits off of it being a real thing,
(40:58):
right right. That's that's one. That's one option. Another option
is that they would be uh the A m A
or other Western medical institutions who repress alternative therapies in
hopes of continuing the great, um, the great and brutal
(41:19):
cycle of profiting from people's health their lack thereof right, Uh,
that one hurts just the way you said it, even,
I mean I can, I can clearly see some validity
and in that at least in that the brutal cycle
does exist. Right. Maybe somebody doesn't want you to know
(41:40):
that we're all interconnected with this energy, ben and we
all are have powerful keygong masters inside of us. Don't
avatarmy man. Okay, sorry, it's uh, I'm I'm joking. That's
that's possible. But then I would somebody want to repress
(42:01):
something like that, so they can control us Ben through
through that common connection, through that zeitgeist. Maybe there's a
film there for sure. We could definitely do that before
before we go into this thing, I wanted to want
to go back to the stuff we've mentioned at the top, Uh,
the idea that people could control magnetism, right or project heat. Yes,
(42:26):
so these things are partially true. These are real superpowers, Asterix.
And you already know some of this, right because one
of the things that intense meditation teaches people to do.
And this is just this is amazing. I would be
cursing up a storm if this were not in all
ages show, because I am just really very excited. Yes,
(42:52):
Matt sees me almost cursing here across this. Uh. What
what we find is it is possible to gain control
over your normally involuntary bodily functions if you meditate frequently,
and and they're they're numerous monks of varying different religions
(43:12):
who are capable of doing this. You can raise and
lower your body temperature, you can uh increase and decrease
your heartbeat, right, and you can see this stuff and
this is this is real. This is not any kind
of um stage magic. You can see footage of monks,
(43:34):
for instance, who practice the thing called I think Troumo
or tomo where they they're having ice cold wet sheets
thrown on them and they just start meditating. Yeah, and
they steam them dry, they steam dry to stuff or
and there was I think there's one European who learned
to do that and now he just jogs around. I
(43:54):
swear this is this guy was just jogging around uh
in like shorts. Yeah, and then just antarctic weather and
whether that would have given other people frost bite and
his extremities were not suffering frost bite because he had
this control over his body. You also see people getting
buried alive with their their hands in the in the
(44:16):
praying position and just lowering their body responses almost like
they're in hibernation. That's real. That's spooky to be able
to do that. So okay, okay, sorry, uh. The other
thing I've got to go on a rant here. The
other the other thing is the ability, the magnetic ability.
When I was looking at various possible real superpowers, there's
(44:41):
this there's this friction thing that's actually happening. You remember,
do you read about this. Yeah, it's a it's not
a magnetism, it's a stickiness, which is so much grosser. Yeah, yeah,
it really is. And it's genetic, so it's kind of cool.
You might see the the videos of a person and
putting a spoon or other metal objects on the body,
(45:03):
on their face, on their nose, on their chests, all over,
and it's like, oh man, this guy is a magnet.
Holy moldy and his children have the same power. What
race of mutants? Well maybe, well, it's just the genetic
condition that alters your skin. Yeah, and they have a
(45:23):
higher have a higher frictive ability. I believe things, things
are just more likely to stick to them. They are
stickier people. That is, that is the actual thing that's happening. There,
the the other, the other thing. And I think perhaps
one of the most important takeaways from this, because I
(45:43):
know we spent a lot of time today talking about
how untrue a lot of the claims might be right
and how unfair it might be too. You know, someone
who knows nothing about this stuff too to hear these
outrageous things first and then be inevitably disappointed. Here here's
(46:07):
the amazing thing. And I think you and I have
talked about this on the show, but I'll just wave
the flag again because, Uh, it's fascinating. There really is
such a thing as mind over matter. It is literal.
The way you think, just by the virtue of the
thought alone changes the physical world in the most direct,
(46:29):
amazing and terrifying way, which is it changes the structure
or the ratios of areas of your brain. We we've
talked before about studies of London cab drivers, right, Uh,
London cab driver's background have to take a test called
the Knowledge, and the knowledge is super ridiculously hard. People
are expected to fail at several times. But and the
(46:53):
reason so hard is because you you cannot use the GPS, etcetera.
You have to memorize all these different routes in the
way they interconnect. And after people have become lending cabbies
for you know, decades, the area of their brain that's
associated with spatial memory is larger than an average person.
The same thing happens with I think there was a
(47:13):
study Buddhist monks who were meditating for for the same time, right,
and the area of their brain with associate with compassion
or empathy was larger, not like a little bit, like
noticeably the way that you would look at someone who
only worked out their left arm and notice how much
(47:36):
bigger their left arm is. And now, just to clarify,
we're not talking about the secret style positive thinking getting
a lot of money because you think possibly you're finding
that's not at all what we're saying here. Yeah, we're
talking about the kind of thoughts you have literally changing
the way your brain grows are changing. Um m m,
(48:01):
brain grows very slowly, changing the uh the function perhaps
is more fair way to say it. But still that
that isn't that is an amazing thing. And if the
techniques of various forms of cheng can help you achieve
that kind of thing, or if they help you overall
(48:21):
in your life and your wellness and they uh lengthen
your lifespan or at least length in the good parts
of its, right? Was it like Dennis Leary who used
to say, you know, I don't want to live till
I'm ninety or whatever, because those last few years are
gonna suck. I think Dennis Leary said that, but I
it always makes you nervous quoting him, because I always
(48:42):
feel like somebody else said it first. Whoa way is
that a yeah, a little too much of a Louis
c k. You used your cheek to burn him. The
skin is sizzling. He got a burn. Notice had a
pop culture reference? Really nice. By the way, have you
(49:03):
seen the show this is Apropo nothing? Have you seen
the show Mr Robot on USA Network? I have not. No,
I don't. I don't watch a lot of dude. They
made that show for us and our listeners, and I'm
not getting paid to promote the show. Just I'm saying
give it a chance, because it's it's basically like fight
(49:23):
Club and the Matrix smash them together, plus uh, the
illuminatis in there. It's crazy. I love it all right,
I'm gonna check out Mr Robot and and Christians later.
By the way, who's Christians later on sea? Did you
(49:45):
hear that? Sound cute? That can only mean one thing. Hey,
it's our moment with nol So. I watched the trailer
for Mr. Robot the other day and it looks looks
really good. I haven't seen it yet, but like there's
like an anonymous esque oh yeah, anonymously about it really
with a slightly different mask to more of a mustache
(50:06):
because they didn't want to get sued. Can you imagine
Anonymous taking someone to court? Guys, I wanted and I'm
glad we're all here. I wanted to read a couple
of tweets from our from our last podcast because we
had some people talk, remember our podcast that we were
(50:26):
trying to figure out which animals. Well, we had some
people right to us with their choices. Do you guys
want to hear them? Yes? Please? Okay, let's see there's
one rather strange one. They Uh, somebody wanted to eat
be a small animal, eat coffee. Yeah. Shout out to
(50:46):
a baby lion cub who said the baby lion cub
chose to be an Asian palm civet because eating and
pooping out coffee beans all day is the ultimate dream job. Man. Now,
is that the coffee that's really expensive? Yes? What's good
about it? Is it and give you animal powers? It's
(51:09):
just like it's supposed to taste really good. It's of
its kind A certain mommy, yes, certain, a certain you mommy.
Uh and then uh then uh kelsey Eto writes to us, says,
if I could be in the animal, I would turn
(51:29):
into ter topsus dorney and be immortal that's a little jellyfish. Right,
fish turns into a baby continually. And then we had
we had some folks right in, Uh say, don't be
a cow. Uh. Jake Collins road In says, I know
it sounds weird, but I'd love to be a duck
skin walker, able to fly, swim and be cute beyond reason.
(51:53):
So kind sort of a one upping of mine. I mean,
I didn't think about that, but it's like, if you're
a duck, then you can fly and you can swim
and corkscrew thing. I don't know about that. We're family
show Family, Look up duck cork screw. Uh. Yeah, ducks
are horrible people. If ducks were people, they would be
(52:14):
bad people. Um, I just based on their behavior and
like they would mainly just swimming giant pools of golden coins.
Oh yeah, oh yeah. Did you know that you will
be seriously injured if you attempt to do that? Yeah.
For some reason, there was a study whereas the one said,
how would this work, just just in case I've wasted
(52:36):
all my time on paper? Punt would be less of
a splash and more of like a yeah, yeah, well no,
I'm sorry. I just I was excited to uh talk
more about the kind of animals who we would be,
because I clearly have my priorities aligned. But but what's
on your mind with this, with this whole cheese stuff.
Oh I don't know, man, I was too busy playing
(52:58):
the new Fallout Shelter iPhone game. What have you guys
seen this? You guys familiar with the Fallout games? I mean,
I know Fallout. Yeah, so there's a there's an iPhone
Fallout game that's sort of like a Fallout version of
the SIMS where you have your little vault dwellers and
you organize them in these various underground Fallout Shelter compartments.
And it sounds really cool. It's really But are are
(53:18):
you admitting to just sitting there and playing a game
while we Ben and I are having this philosophical discussion
about the energy inside all of us? I'm half admitting it,
but I'm not fully admitting it. Oh listen, I know.
I actually I've got a thing. You want to hear
my thing? I want to hear it? Yeah, I have it.
I literally have not slept. Man, give you something. No,
you got it, and you got This isn't very good,
(53:38):
But you know the band Tool you guys familiar with
the band. So their singer Maynard James Keenan, who I
think mainly just makes wine. Now. I don't think he
actually sings anymore, that's not sure. I'm kidding. I think
still refuses to wear a shirt that well. Yeah. Um.
But a friend of mine a long time ago who
lived in Los Angeles told me the story about being
(54:00):
with somebody and running into Maynard James Keenan on the
street and for whatever reason, like you do, his friend
decided he'd shoot a bottle rocket at him. He just
happened to have one, and maybe it wasn't a bottle rocket,
it was a it was a firecracker. Let's let's let's
just it's pretty fat. But here's what happened. So he
throws the firecracker at James Maynard James Keenan's feet and
(54:21):
Maynard kind of looks at it and it goes out,
and the guy's like, whoa, what what do you happened there?
And Maynard goes I put it out with my mind, man,
So I think Maynard's got some serious That's great, as
long as he can't ignite the firecrackers. I'm I don't know.
(54:44):
But I also don't throw firecrackers at strangers. No, it's
an odd story. It almost sounds made up, but I
like to tell it. That's a fun story. It's like
that getting tackled by Bill Murray in the hallway of
the hotel story, you know, where whispers is like in
your ear, like no one's going to believe you. Oh yeah, no,
I don't believe you. I often wonder how many of
those stories are true. We didn't get to everybody who
(55:06):
rode in to say which animals they would transform to,
but we got some. We got some fantastic suggestions. They
made me, uh, they made me rethink, you guys, I
I really, um, well, I well, I think we ended
on an octopus. I don't know, I think we really.
I kind of screwed us when I said no fictional animals.
(55:28):
You know. Yeah, there's so many of those, though, it
would have taken me a week to really narrow down
what I wanted to be. Yeah, well, let's keep thinking
like the octopus. Things seem cool because you know, there's
certain types of octopusts that can transform in different thing
as a try serah corn, because there should be tri
seric oh man, Yeah, wait is it a dinosaur horse? Well,
(55:52):
that's all up to your imagination. And yeah, it's a
three horned unicorn U dinosaur like creature. So all the
powers of those creatures combined. I love it. Uh. That
that's that's fantastic. I hope it doesn't have scales, but
that is that is fantastic. All right, So let us
know what you think about she and thank you so
(56:17):
much for listening. We mentioned a couple of different articles
that are on our website or parent website, how stuff
Works dot com if you want to learn more about this,
if you haven't checked out the video we had that
came out earlier this week, our our classic video on
the alleged Dragon family. And you'd like to hear about
(56:38):
Big Brother type world domination conspiracies, money printing and laundering,
World War two lost treasures, or counterfeiting, Uh, then check
it out. I think the best teaser for that, if
you haven't seen it, is that oh several years back
and you and I think it already started the show.
(56:59):
But several years two thousand nine exactly, Uh, several several
different foreign nationals were arrested on their way to Switzerland
or Yeah, one was arrest in Switzerland. Want to arrest
in Italy attempting to smuggle what the Treasury Department says
(57:23):
were clearly counterfeit uh billion and billion dollar notes, but
they were either professionally aged or they really were old
counterfeit notes. They were spelling errors. There were spelling errors,
which isn't ted give away uh or this is absolutely bunk,
but this is a fascinating story. Do check it out.
(57:44):
Let us know what you think. You can find us
on Facebook and Twitter, where you can see a lot
of stories that don't make it to the air for
one reason or another. But do check it out. We're
active on their conspiracy stuff at both of those. You
can visit our websites Stuff they don't want you to
know dot com and uh if you want to write
(58:06):
into us directly about about g recommendations for another topic,
the animal that you would be uh, we're all ears.
I mean you could just say hey to he is acceptable, Yeah,
hey is wonderful. That's fine. All you need to know
is where to send that email. We are conspiracy at
how stuff works dot com. From more on this topic,
(58:32):
another unexplained phenomenon, visit YouTube dot com slash conspiracy Stuff.
You can also get in touch on Twitter at the
handle at conspiracy stuff.
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