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Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name is Noah.
They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer Dylan, the Tennessee pal Fake and most importantly, you are here. That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. It is not only December fifth, if you're hearing this the evening this program publishes, it is also the rumors are true. Our weekly listener mail Exploration. Oh, we've got some good stuff here, laundering schemes or whatever they may be, still delicious. We've got some stuff about
your eyes and where your eyes go. We have a great list of episode suggestions at the end of fantastic email. Maybe a little about food, waste and retail. Maybe a little bit about genetic memory, which I'm really excited to explore before we do any of that. I think one of us has been to shen Yan, but not all of us, is it you, Matt?
Yeah, Yeah, When I lived on Buford Highway, I certainly checked it out in the early days. I quite enjoyed the show, and then we did some research and in some episodes on it, and my whole view of the experience was altered.
Well, it's such an interesting kind of multifaceted thing too, because we know that the Foul and Gong movements religious movement is an oppressed group in China, but they also has really problematic things, you know, and are almost like bordering on what one might call it cult. We've talked about this pretty extensively, and especially.
In February of twenty twenty one with our episode what is Fallun Gong? We we're incredibly I would say I.
Completely agree, and we had a listener that referenced that exact episode in writing into us about an update to that story, which we will hear after this quick briefest of breaks. And we returned with the message from call me Winter Juniper. Almost three years ago, says Winter Juniper, y'all did an episode about Shen Yun and fallon Gong. There's an interesting update in that they are now being
sued for human trafficking. Could this be them finally getting accountability? Well, Winter Juniper, we'll talk about just that There's a fabulous piece in The New York Times was published on November twenty fifth, just a couple of days before We Record Today,
by Nicole Hong and Michael Rothfeld. The headline is ex dancer accuses Shenyon of forced labor and trafficking in lawsuit, The former performer, who was recruited to join Shenyon at age thirteen, said the prominent dance group coerced children into making money for it. The dancer in question is Cheng
Chun co. A sixty eight page lawsuit was filed in Federal District Court in White Plains, New York, where she described shen Yun as a forced labor enterprise employing exploitative tactics to recruit underage dancers, using threats, public shaming, and other coercive tactics in order to generate hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. The article says, just a quick quote here. Miss Chang said she was recruited from Taiwan to join Shenyun as a dancer at age thirteen in
two thousand and nine. She performed with the group until she left in twenty twenty when she was twenty four. Miss Chang sued under a federal law that allows victims of forced labor to sue their traffickers. The lawsuits actually comes on the heels of another New York Times at revelation that Shan Yun's performers had been working under pretty significantly abusive conditions for many years. Miss Chang among the
children who were subjected to these conditions. The New York State Department of Labor has an open inquiry into the company's labor practices, including its use of child performers. The company itself actually claims that the children were not forced to join the group, that they were volunteers, and that
these labor practices do not apply to them. Some of the tactics named in the lawsuit included confiscating passports, cutting the children off from outside media, publicly shaming and denouncing them as Chinese government spies if they dared to question the group's practices, and also subjecting those who went against
these rules to public critique. Sessions organization itself shen Yun, which again is a kind of offshoot of the Fallongong movement in China, which is sort of a separatist group that themselves are subjected often to othering practices by the CCP, which we will get into in a little bit, claim that these labor practices do not apply to these children because they are in fact volunteers, and that they have
the option to leave any time they want. The Times Piece had this to say, many children arrive at Schnyun's headquarters, known as Dragon Springs, with little ability to speak English and no network in the United States. After being separated from their families, they are plunged into a quote system of coercion and control that extends to nearly every aspect of the dancers' lives. Shin Yun is registered as a nonprofit. However,
as we mentioned, it is incredibly for profit. It would seem I don't quite understand sometimes how these non profits do tend to evolve or devolve into being money making operations. These recruits, as they're referred to in the lawsuit and in the New York Times peace are They originate typically at what is called the phi Tian Academy of the Art, such as a boarding school inside that Dragon Springs compound
or Dragon Spring. Yeah, I guess the compound is probably the right way to put it, which then feeds into a college of the same name, also on the same campus, the Phi Tian College. These schools, though, however, seem to provide very little in the form of actual education, and it's really just a wave for dancers to be subjected to very excruciating in long hours of training and rehearsals
for the show itself. The lawsuit calls this an ongoing supply of forced child labor to Nyon without attracting scrutiny. Are the operation of these schools, so they're intended to do education is in doctrination for the tea of the leader Li Hongshi. That's exactly correct. Representatives of shen Yuan and Fellongong didn't respond to The New York Times requests
for comment. However, they have denied these very allegations or allegations of this type, saying that labor laws do not apply to their underage performers because they are students who tour with shen Yuan as a learning opportunity and not employees loophole much and that every student participates voluntarily.
Sure thing, we also do have to look please check out our episode on What's going on with Wallungngong, because in there we look at some of the actions, and I think you're getting to this and some of the actions of the CCP just in not to defend any kind of just evil labor practices, but it is worth a note that at repeated times in the organization's past, both in the US and in China and abroad, the Chinese government has attempted to infiltrate the organization.
No question about it. And I think this is actually a perfect opportunity to jump to a piece from Vision Times, which is a news organization I was not super familiar with, and I was maybe a little concerned that there was a slight agenda here in the reporting, but it did appear to be based in the United States and to be a source of uncovering issues in Chinese propaganda and how those efforts can kind of proliferate out into the
wider world. The pieces by Aleena Wong, a native New Yorker with a bachelor's degree in corporate communications from Baruq College who writes about human rights, politics, tech and society headline being inside the CCP's propaganda machine, how Beijing fuels disinformation against Fallen Gong and Shin Yun, and just just to quote a little bit from here to kind of
give you the sense. At the heart of this campaign lies a network of state owned pawns and foreign facing propaganda efforts, including the Beijing Dance Academy BDA and China's Ministry of State Security MSS, as they leverage their influence and resources to spread falsehoods both within and beyond China's borders. The BDA is a state owned art institute that has been directly linked to CCP propaganda efforts for many years.
Ostensibly an educational institution, the BDA actually operates as an arm of the regime's broader ideological machinery behind closed doors.
Just to wrap up.
According to research by the Fallon Dafa Information Center, the academy's leadership is almost entirely composed of CCP members, with many holding dual roles both within the school and the
party committee. The center had this to say, Foreign universities, dance programs, and journalists need to be aware of what they are engaging with when dealing with the BDA, noting that the academy intentionally downplays its party connections and its English language training brochures and materials, So it's a tricky thing to parse. Because, like you said, Ben you know, Fallon Gong is a separatist group. They are subjected to a lot of retaliatory actions by the CCP, and.
Even if they don't see themselves as separatists, their teachings are seen as a security concern to the domestic government of China. So you'll blake you said, no, It can be incredibly frustrating, difficult to parse through what is and is not true, especially when you look at the heavy accusations Following Gong the organization, or Following daffas it's also called, have levied against the government of China.
That's right, and I think there's there are clearly bad actors on both sides here, you know, no question as especially as we've seen some of these exposes about some of the clearly would would be considered child labor, you know, misconduct on the part of Fellongong. And it's kind of outreach organization. That's sort of the idea, right. Shan Yun is a classical Chinese dance company, and they do have this mission to kind of revive Like Matt, I'd be
interested to hear what the show is like. But the idea is to revive China's traditional cultures and to spread the sort of history of more ancient Chinese traditions out into the wider world.
Yeah, it's storytelling, right, it's storytelling very widely, trying to get a new vision of what people think about when they think China in their head. Right, Because that's one of the things we've talked about in this show. You have associations with like a country, person, concept and all these things, and you've got this little mind cloud that gets accessed every time you think about one of those things. It's a very different picture than you get in the show,
at least what you see in the news. So I think that's what this thing is, That's what shin Yun is meant to be. I don't know, that's my thoughts.
I agree with you there, because we're what we're seeing is you could call it. The more cynical people called a psychological operation. Not to entertainment, but propaganda disguised as entertainment, And a lot of entertainment is propaganda disguised entertainment. Of course, careful where we're throwing those stones. I will note though, that the idea one thing you say that stands out here, Matt, is maybe an abbreviated way to think about. This is
a narrative war. We are attempting to redirect narrative, right, We're attempting to tell the story that we would the way we would prefer to be told.
And the fact that it's so popular in the wider world outside of Beijing, you know, is a red flag for the powers to be.
They don't like that.
They don't want that narrative to spread. They are all about information control.
They're a long reach too, there's no getting around that.
I think we talked about the huge Academy of the Arts they have in New York. It's like it's not upstate New York, but it's you know, it's two hours north of the Newark Airport. Let's say, like if you're just thinking about where this place is or northwest, but it's it's called a face sean I think, or face I don't know how to say it. Fei dash t I a n Academy of the arts.
That's right, we were talking about that. That's part of that. That's a wing of they've got, like that's where there. The New York Times article accuses Foul and Gong of beginning its recruitment process for these underage.
Oh yeah, the isolating doctri that's right.
So it's a two hour drive from the airport. When you bring people in, right, you get them to this place. And if you look at it on the map, we're just I'm in a satellite maps mode thinking about the Pokemon ghost story we just did. If you look at that compound, it is not you know, it doesn't even look like a college campus. It looks like a huge compound. And I can imagine if you are taking people's passports,
you are controlling, you know, isolating them. You don't have to do much to isolate them if you got them there, because it is in kind of a middle of nowhere New York.
All right, it's got big scientology vibes, got big gold Base vibes. Oh yeah, I mean it just occurred to me when you were describing it at as a way of isolating people, and we know that the scientology likes to do that as well. If I think it's gold Base, is the one that's in Florida, right, isn't that the.
Is gold based the one that officially had the residence right where like where he was going to come back and live or something like that. I can't Remember, there's so many bases that they've.
Gold bases, the headquarters, I think you're sometimes going to hear it called Golden Era Productions International Base.
Also, oh, gold bases in California. It's in Santa Sinzo. There's another big, massive compound in Florida.
They basically like, oh, that's the town that they took over. That's right. Is that clear water?
Clearwater? Thank you. But it does have it just has a a It smacks of that cultish kind of indoctrination factory where when you have these young people who are coming into the country, they don't have any connections outside of this organization. They can't speak English. It is rife for this level of control and indoctrination. So I hope there's no feeling that we are trying to justify any
of this. We know it was just an opportunity to talk about how the CCP sees Fallongong as an enemy of the state practically, and there are bad things going on in both camps.
They also be interesting in a very disturbing way to see whether the signals toward mass deportation are going to apply to following Gong membership, just because again they're in a very dec very dicey legal place. So if you're hearing this, if you have experience with that organization, please be safe.
Oh for sure. Quick side note, guys, just when I was thinking about el Ron Hubbard again in that scientology place where he will return, it was some little splinter in my mind. That is in some of the teachings that we've read about. There's a place called Saint Hill Manor in Sussex, West Sussex. I think out in the UK. Ell Ron Hubbard owned this mansion a manor, right, and that's supposedly where he will return, if and when ell Around Hubbards spirit returns.
I look forward to that day.
Matt, don't call it a come back.
No, he's been here for years, hanging around in the wings.
Guy, I don't know.
I think this might be something to explore further, maybe both sides of what we're talking about here at the CCP angle and the separatist Fallonngong movement. It has been three years since we did cover this, so there might be something worth a bit of an update. I'm not sure we might have covered it here. But thank you so much to Winter Juniper for writing in and hipping us to this update to what was already a very fraught and fascinating topic.
Why don't we take a.
Quick break, hear a word from our sponsor, and then come back with more messages from you.
And we're back and we're turning to the phone lines. Let's hear a message from Chef Donnie, who I attempted to call back several times, y'all, because I wanted to get more information on this, but we don't have it for this episode. If we find out more, we'll let you know in the future, because there's a lot of questions I'm assuming that we want to ask him. After we hear this message, Johnny kept hanging up because he thought, again,
this happens quite frequently, y'all. Donny thought when we called back from the number, that it was just some spammer, right, because it is like our number starts with an eight, so it looks like an eight hundred number. It was not. It was just me sitting in my house trying to call you. Do put our number in your phone as a contact so you recognize it.
The void does indeed call you back sometimes, It's true, it, Ben says.
I Chef Donnie had to call back and leave another voiceman. I was like, ah, dang it, I'm sorry, but here we go. Here is Chef Donnie's original message.
Hey guys, this is a Chef Donnie. I wanted to call about money laundering. You guys were talking about money laundering today. That is cool as you're listening. Tuesday, November nineteenth, That messages ten. I used to work for a restaurant that was in downtown Tall Lake. It was an awesome spot. We did like local organic produce, super expensive ingredients, like crazy menu, change it all the time, and it was great.
But we hemorrhaged like twenty thousand dollars a month for years, and so the business was going to close and the owner decided to sell it. He sold it to a very wealthy couple and they came in and they did some painting and changed decorations and stuff, but as far as like business model goes, they pretty much kept it the exact same. And here's where it is crazy. The conspiracy among the employees is these people are so extremely wealthy.
The husband is a he's like a co owner of a bank in Salt Lake City, so they are they're pretty much infinite money goaged people. So what do you do when you have so much money and the only way you really can get more is to avoid taxes? Right, So go buy a restaurant that's losing money and keep it that way because now you're spending money on business extent. You know, it doesn't matter. All my restaurant lost thirty grand this month, but that's thirty grand lessing taxes I
have to pay as an individual. Very interesting, and I know it gets a little more complicated when you get into like individuals and businesses and entities, but that's the conspiracy. Feel free to use my voice or whatever. You can put the san in or throw it away, at least respond I love you guys, all right, fine.
We love you too, Chef Donnie.
I think, Chef Donnie, that's a great question.
Yeah it is. I love that. Please respall I love you guys, but this is Chef Donnie.
Guys.
I thought this spoke to a lot of things that we've discussed in the past. Specifically, you know that money laundering scheme, but in this case, just a tax avoidance scheme. And it does. It resonates, I think with some of the things we've discussed before, where you can write so many things off as a tax loss or perhaps.
As a loss it gives you, it sucks up some tax liability.
And it's also legal. The difference between the two phrases tax avoidance You probably already know this, Chef Donny. But tax avoidance is all the stuff you can do that is legal. Tax evasion is all the stuff you do that is, for one reason or another considered illegal. Hmmm, up to an including just not paying your taxes Like sorry, irs, I didn't know I couldn't do that.
Wow.
Man, Well, in this case, I feel like this is a pretty good win for everybody. If some wealthy person can run a like a good restaurant, maybe that's a
delight to go to once a year. Somebody you know who doesn't have an infinite money glitch the way, maybe maybe a co owner of a bank, does you at least get some great food again to stay open, and even though it's losing money, it's actually, I don't know, helping the wealthy person stay afloat feels like a good thing to me, but also a weird loophole.
Yeah, I mean it makes me think of I think it was pretty recently that this came up again, as it often does the idea of going into that restaurant that is a little bit abandoned feeling, and when you order some food they kind of look at you as scants. It's sort of like almost a cliche, the idea of like these sort of front operations.
Every dollar you spend is less money than they get to write off on taxes.
Yeah, helly, what are you doing. Get out of here.
I've got a suppering up. I do love those places, and I'm glad you gave him a shout out. And there's also the idea here, or the differentiating factor there would be the places we're talking about, or maybe fronts for organized crime. To put a fine point on it, and in this case, as it was described earlier, possible win win for folks involved. It's a case of ulterior motive. Right, we got the restaurant because we want it to be around, but we don't want it to do super well.
Yeah, but you could also funnel some money through there. You know, that could be almost like laundering in a way if you want it in that We're not.
Saying that it is it's like money laundering in that it is.
Well, I guess it just depends on Yeah, it depends on the purpose and how you do it, and there's a lot.
Of order of operations.
Yeah, there's a lot of stuff there. But potentially it could be both.
But there's also you know, the restaurant industry itself is such a cutthroat business. It's incredibly difficult to make it in restaurants are in hospitality because of numerous numerous factors. I'm always impressed when I see restaurant tours and even more so when I see self made chefs, because talk about serious you know what I mean, Like, there's not an off time for those folks.
Yeah, very true, especially for the staff, you know, the actual human beings that run them, the people who own them. Maybe it's a little different situation. All right, Well, hey, there you go, Chef Donnie, let us know what the restaurant is. Maybe I don't know, or maybe you can track it down figure out which restaurant chef Donnie's talking about. That would be fun. Then we could all go there and just like order way too much money's worth of food and drinks and just see what happens.
Love love firsthand investigations all about a side quest. Got some stuff going on in Knoxville in fact, we're gonna be on the road a little bit more than twenty twenty five man. So yeah, you know, want it right into us, give us a link or something like that, and we can keep it anonymous, you know, but you might have some interesting guys show up.
Yeah, that's right. We'll just do a meet up at that restaurant at some point at Salt Lake. All right, let's jump one more time to the phone lines and here from Valerie. Here we go.
Hey, guys, it's Valerie again in the Samandoa Valley. Sorry to call again. I was thinking about your episode on November twelfth where you talked about eye tracking and you guys should do well. I'm not going to tell you what to do. Sorry, that was rude. This thing called E MDR therapy that has been around for a long time and it has a ton of research. It initially was used for veterans with post traumatic stress and has since over the years been applied to all kinds of trauma.
It stands for I movement, desensitization and reprocessing. I know a little about it. I don't provide that therapeutic service, not trained for it. But I was listening to your podcast and I was like, gosh, I have to call these guys and tell them about that, because when they're talking about ies being tracked and stuff, this is pretty interesting. Anyway, Sorry to take up all your voicemail. I hope you guys are doing great and have a good week.
Oh thanks, Valerie, you too.
Oh yeah, Valerie is called in a couple of times now. Valerie is a psychotherapist in private practice out there in the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia. Very cool said some very kind things in the past. We definitely appreciate those. Valerie and I did not know about this, guys. I've never heard of em d R therapy until Valerie mentioned it. Are you guys? Were you guys aware of it before.
This only due to look like we're saying with PTSD, only due to some veteran friends, but never personally experienced it. Definitely don't know a ton about it, to be honest.
Oh dude, I knew nothing about this.
I believe it came up and with a previous therapist that I had just in conversation, just like as sort of like a thing that maybe I wasn't familiar with when we were talking about different forms of like regression type of therapy.
Oh interesting, Okay, so it does feel like maybe this is a cousin of some type of regression therapy, almost hypnosis.
To a degree. That's and that's sort of the context in which it came up. I was just asking about that sort of thing, and it was like someone something there.
It was.
It was not like something we were going to do. I was just asking about different forms of that kind of therapy.
Well, this is so, this is this is fascinating, y'all. Let's define it, at least as in the way that the EMDR Institute Incorporated defines it, which was founded by Francine Shapiro, PhD, by the way, and you can go to their website and find this if you want em DR dot com. It says i Movement desensitization and reprocessing or EMDR, is a psychotherapy treatment that is designed to
alleviate the distress associated with traumatic memories. And when I started reading about this, guys, you know what, it reminded me of what's up the scene in Get Out and the technique in the film get Out where the tea cup is moved around in a and you focus on the teacup and specifically the sound of the teacup while you are simultaneously remembering something that is traumatic to you a moment in your life.
Sure.
Now, in this case, I don't think the point is to send you into the deep place or whatever the termination sunken place, but it does feel as though it is meant to take your mind to a different place and create other associations with a specific traumatic thing that
has happened to you. On that website, they give the example of someone who has experienced sexual assault, so that basically you are shown an image in one part of like your vision, that is associated directly with your traumatic memory.
Then you are meant to track your eyes away from that image and focus on other things, stuff that's more positive, stuff that's more interfacing, right, or when I say that, not interfacing but inner facing, inward extrospective, and then changes that the feeling that you have and the associations you have with this specific thing more to about empowerment, self determination and those kinds of things rather than the scary
thing that you experienced in the past. I don't know, it seems pretty interesting and I kind of want to check this thing out.
Yeah, give it a try, Right, It's it's fascinating too, because we know that the human mind is something the human mind still itself doesn't understand, and often people have to endeavor to explore various different kinds of therapeutic treatment before they find something that really clicks with them. So this is also somewhat of a PSA from non medical professionals.
If you are in therapy or you're addressing some sort of thing going on in your past, present, or your life and the first for out doesn't quite do it before, you don't get discouraged. There are multiple resources and solutions out there, and if this is helping anyone, then I say it's worthwhile.
You know, well, can I just say I had a therapist for almost an entire year who I thought was pretty good until I decided to try something else. After this person went on hiatus for a while and after finding somebody new, I kind of realized that the person I had before wasn't very good at least for me at all. And I would never have really known that unless I had tried something different. So don't feel like you're stuck or you owe it to this person to
stick with them for the long haul. If you feel like there's more that you could be doing for yourself.
Wow, dude, there's stuff in here that almost feels like in the moment ASMR. Things like taps, tones that are played to change associations, specific eye movements, like instructions for eye movements while you are thinking about a negative thought. Oh man, definitely check this out if you're interested in this stuff or you are experiencing post traumatic stress disorder.
This definitely seems interesting. We don't know anything about it other than what we're reading and you know what we've been told, but it definitely seems like a fascinating, I don't know how fascinating at least something to attempt.
I'm looking into clinical trials and it seems like there's a pretty good track record of those since dating back to nineteen eighty nine, so there's definitely some efficacious sand to it.
Oh yeah, all right, Well, hey, that's it. Thank you so much, Valerie, Thank you so much, Chef Donnie. We'll be right back with more messages from you. After some messages from the ad folks.
And we have returned with our dear friend, Conspiracy realist going by Headmaster asked a question that I find quite intriguing.
Here we go, I did not turn back.
If that master again, you could use my voice if you wish. This is a call of basically ask a question of what you guys think now. I was listening to your listener Mail episode. I think it was your last one. As of the airing date, it is November twenty six, twenty twenty four. I'm calling you at twenty forty eight hours, so that's eight forty eight pm. I just wanted to say or ask you guys, do you think genetic memory is a thing? And the reason why I'm asking is because in your cold open to your
listener mail episode, you were discussing cats being afraid of seupcumbers. Well, no one told cats to be a read with septumbers. They instinctively know or think that it's a predator. So if they instinctively know that it's a predator, how did that instinct get there? And is instinct a form of genetic memory? To answer that, I don't know if anyone can answer that. I tried googling it and I got a whole bunch of weird responds, So thought i'd kick it up to you guys and see what you came
up with. Anyway, I'll let you guys, go Jeffer now.
Thank you so much, Headmaster. Oh I love that example because it takes us in so many fascinating directions. I was you probably hear me muttering Heath Ledger style from The Dark Knight on some of that stuff. But yeah, always love to hear response to a listener mail segment because this might inform an episode on the concept of not just genetic memory, but epigenetics. Going somewhere with this, you guys ever heard the idea that newborns instinctively know how to swim? Well?
I heard learned that from the cover of the seminal nineteen nineties Nirvana album Nevermind.
Ah. Yes, yeah. There is a great deal of controversy about this on the sci fi level. The furthest extension of it genetic memory would be the argument that you could, by nature of your lineage, your biology, and your genetic structure have specific memories. Right that you could be born or rotten too the world and know exactly where the best pizza is in Salt Lake City, and you could you would know it from cradle to grave. That has not been proven to exist, but a lot of people
like the idea of this of genetic memory. And unfortunately, at different times this somewhat Lamarckian concept has been weaponized, has been used to justify very terrible things, right like eugenics and so on. To step back there, the idea of Lamarckian evolution is a pre existing theory for Darwinism,
where they you would call it spontaneous generation. We have a couple episodes of ridiculous history about this, the idea that if you have a bunch of gray in a barrel and you leave it alone for long enough, then rats will just happen. The grain will create the rats. It sounds, you know, a little bit simplified now with the benefit of retrospect. But the fact of the matter is that people took that as leading scientific theory for a long time. We get to other things with genetic
memory before we continue. First I have to ask you guys, in full disclosure, do you have any specific genetic memories? Well, yeah, it's hard to always new.
It's hard, like I because you know, the idea of remembering being a baby is also controversial, you know, like what some people claim they remember being born and things like that, to which many would roll their eyes a bit and say I don't know about that. That sounds very wish fulfillment kind of, you know, I don't know, I mean, and I love the question that the listener posed about. Is this the same as instinct? Because this all kind of goes back into like the products of evolution.
I mean, you could argue that evolutionary traits are a form of genetic memory, because you know, a particular type of species evolves because a thing happens to it over and over and over again to the point where it changes it.
Well, how do the how do the baby turtles on the shoreline know they got to run fast af for the ocean the salmon?
You know?
How do they know the strange swum upstream and all of that?
How to eels even do the thing? Right? We figured out the answer that that's the story for a different day. They developed their sexual organs at certain times.
I remember the pounding of war drums across the hills in Middlesbrough.
Yeah, I don't. It's hard to answer that question, though, Ben, I think is what I'm getting at, because it's like it's not a memory per se as much as it is just like an innate thing.
You know, A tableau is sensation influence towards a certain set of a vibes. Yeah. Yeah, And you know what, this gets us into the arguments that are a little more spiritual and philosophical, the idea of reincarnation. I mean, I've said it before on the show, so I'll say it again. I do have a couple of memories I can't explain. I don't think that's necessarily supernatural. I just you know, I've been around a while and a lot of stuff has happened. But then there's also the idea
that we need to emphasize this Headmaster. The idea of inherited or genetic memory is partially difficult to really understand
because memory is so treacherous. You are the least reliable eyewitness of your past because every time you remember something, what you're doing neurologically is encountering the last time you remembered it, and so, like a copy of a copy, sometimes things shift, which goes back to the idea of therapeutic intervention, which can change some of those associations for good or for ill, hopefully for good.
That's why you write everything down, take copious notes on everything you do and every interaction, and make recordings of all of it, so you can go back in time and use your AI interface in five years from now. I'm just joking, but it is it is actually that
this concept that Ben is describing there. It is the reason that I take notes on literally everything now because I am nervous that I misremember things, because we know that we do so, like it's why doctor's writing notes is so important, y'all.
And defensive doctors sometimes, you know, they don't deserve that aspersion about having uniformly bad handwriting. Perhaps the're writing in Latin guys, you know, shorthand it's not always someone else's fault, you know. So this is Yeah. I love that we're bringing this up because you can go check out our twenty twenty two episode How to Change People's Memories that will be of interest if you haven't heard it yet Headmaster.
You can also check out your Brain on Love and a couple of other pretty kick ass videos series we did about this this concept. But that's the context of the concept. One of the best questions to answer with regard to genetic memory is language. You know, there have been previous experiments in evenings past to raise human children without any outside intervention and they will you remember this one to see if they naturally spoke a language. Was
it the language of God? Was it a language based on who their parents were and the languages they spoke. Very bad stuff to do to kids. But we also have learned that children born in a particular country are not genetically predisposed to speak the language of that country. Like being born in China or Bhutan, or being born in Tuvalu or Guatemala doesn't mean you're gonna speak Spanish or Mandarin, et cetera. Better, You'll just have more opportunities to learn it right.
Or there's even like arguments about, like, you know, how maybe human beings are born within innate ability to astrally project their consciousness, you know, or to in some way commune with you know, spiritual entities or what have you, and they're a young and super competent we but that we are taught to not do that right because it's not reinforced and we're not in a society that accepts
that that's a thing. There are studies into that kind of stuff that maybe there are innate parts of our brain that are capable of such things, but they're sort of shut down by the environments that we find ourselves in.
They're also formative learning stages. And I love that point. So if you don't learn a language by a certain point and your neurotypical human being, it's going to be tremendously difficult for you to learn any language after that?
Is it because of brain like elasticity and things like that? Like you just sort of get it gets a little made for lack of Maybe I'm over simplifying, but your pathway is just get a little bit more rigid as you get older personally.
It also seems that there are optimal times to learn some stuff right in what we call these various formatives stages. We also I love that you're bringing up and all the point about possibly having certain aspects or aptitudes shut down, right, Like, could you and this is a thought experiment here, could you encourage if you throw ethics out the window Russian style? Could you take a group of human children and by
raising them, encourage them to develop something like sennastasia. Could you just create those associations that then become physiological pathways in the break the same way that the hippocampus of someone who is a lending cab driver, for decades will physically be larger than average. This kind of stuff is possible. Yes, yeah, the knowledge what a cool name. But in either case that doesn't really answer your question, headmaster. We found something weird.
You might dig it if you don't know about this already. Epigenetics and the sins and experiences of the past carrying over from generation to generation. This is possibly the closest thing we have to something like genetic memory. Back in twenty thirteen, guys, there was a study with a super sexy name parental olfactory experience influences behavior and neural structure and subsequent generations. So shout out to Brian Ds and
carry wrestler. What they found was this, and they didn't do humans that we know of, but they trained mice to fear a specific smell to just lose their stuff. This is torturous for the mice. These are innocent mice too. These are not like war criminal rodents. These are not the kissingers of nim or anything like that. But they are trained, through various behavioral methods to freak the f out when they encounter this smell, this ol factory stimulus.
And what the researchers found is that later when they allowed or forced those mice to read their children, the subsequent generation without any intervention would have that same deep rooted, primal fear of that smell.
Whoa was it like cool water or something?
It was dracar and war God knew well.
But so many of those things are defense mechanisms, you know that are Again I'm sorry if I'm combining these concepts incorrectly, but it just feels like evolutionary to me that the things that stick around are the most beneficial to the individuals who are members of a species or whatever.
That's mind blowing that occurred, that that study occurred, and it worked right in putting that in that memory into an offspring. I want to give a counterpoint to the cat's cucumber thing because I and I don't know if maybe this is this person is just wrong that I'm reading about, but I I always get confused with these things because it feels right to me. Cats react to those cucumbers because they think it's some kind of predator behind them, right.
Would have been it?
And they remember but where they're just startled that see that's this is the thing? Is it? Is it one or the other? Is it both?
The cats are hard to startle though, they're so cool and like I'm collecting no o.
Well, listen, this is this is doctor Pamela Perry from the Cornell Feline Health Center behavioralist specialist. She says in an article you can find on vet dot Cornell dot edu. Quote, cats don't have a natural fear of snakes. In fact, a lot of them hunt snakes.
They do.
Yeah, cats have different personalities. It might be the fearful ones she's speaking about these videos. It might be the fearful ones are most likely to react to the appearance of a novel object behind them that was not there a minute earlier. So is it the appearance of something that is you know, all of a sudden they are like Ben, like like Ben was just saying, or is it?
Or is it a snake? And how the heck? Like, who's going to put a bunch of money behind testing that and to figure out if cats actually are fearful of a thing that appears to be a potential predator behind them.
Yeah, it's a good question, and I'd like to I think that can apply across different organisms. The reason to take it to the mice, The reason this is so fascinating is because one the best way to encode memory in a lot of mammals is smell. That's why Pruce wrote Taste of Things Remembered. It's all about how he eats a mattelin dipped in tea or something like that. And then he's like, here's a novel that definitely I will not allow to be edited because it goes on anyway.
If you want to learn more about the mice experiment, please check out. If you don't want to pony up for the paper, which is solid research, check out Smithsonian. Rachel newer in Uwer wrote a great article about this great primer from twenty thirteen.
Do we know what the smell was like? That that could be intriguing to me? Like, is it a fully novel smell that they would never encounter kind of thing?
Yes, yeah, you're anticipating this is what we're getting too. The smell is a seed of finone A C E T O P H E N O N E. I do not know exactly what that smell's like. Yeah, we know it's used in resins and different fragrances, so it's something you could get your hands on. But if I if we're looking at this idea. I think we would need to first off say it's not it's not sulfurous, it's not what you think is a bad smell. It's actually like charity blossoms.
WHOA, Okay, that's what throws my whole perspective kind of into disarray, like where is the self preservation aspect of this?
Because they have the idea is that these baby mice who first they inculcated the males with the smell of a thing that's kind of like cherry blossoms. It's like we had cherry blossoms at home. And then they took the sperm from those males, inciminated, artificially inciminated female mice.
So the baby mice never met their father. Why is this important Not because it's like a sad fival story or anything, but because it shows us they were not imprinted by watching the behavior of the parrot that have been exposed. Yes, so it's pretty strange because they had a control group and not only did not only did the mice kiddos. I'm trying not to anthropomorphize, but I can't help it. We brought up an American tale. Not only did the mice kiddos who had not been exposed.
Not only were they less afraid of the smell, but the kids who did come from the scared daddyos had more physical aceta finone smell receptors. They were physiologically different. That's a claim. Now, what does this mean? How much can you scope in on that kind of innergenerational information transfer if memory is to sticky a phrase we don't know yet. We also we haven't gotten to epigenetics. But epigenetics, which we've talked about in the past, is a related
idea here headmasters. The idea. It's the concept that environmental influences can affect how genes are expressed.
And usually it's associated with negative ones. Right, that's all.
Kinds of starvation and such. Yeah.
Yeah, there's even talk about people who survived the Holocaust or who were immediately close to nine to eleven and a bunch of other like traumatic experiences then passed some of that some of the traumatic response genes down there.
And it raises serious questions about oppression too. Every society as some group of people or multiple groups rather who have been oppressed.
If it makes it like is you gotta wonder too? Like is something like racism? And can that be epigenetic, you know, like like it's a fear of an other that your body just tells you is wrong. And that's why certain like you know, cultures get historically a bad rap. Beyond I don't have any reason to dislike Jewish people or whatever it is, but yet something within an individual might tell them scream out that there's a problem.
Yeah, it's that's interesting because that's that's a slightly different aspect. So we know racism is taught.
I agree, of course, I just we're positing wondering, you know.
Yeah, we know that racism does have these probably does have these deleterious effects in terms of people's health, you know, like because if you are experiencing the real life PTSD of functioning in a society that is always out to get you or treat you as less, then then that may influence things that happen when your children, you know, maybe into certain medical conditions. The research still isn't there,
but we know epigenetics is real. If you want to learn more about it, check out the New York Times article from twenty eighteen by Carl Zimmer. It's not the first time we've quoted your work. Carl welcome back. He talks about studies done on genes in Dutch populations, people who starved in the Dutch famine of nineteen forty four
to forty five. The kids of these children and the folks who survived the famine and the privation, they had markedly different health outcomes, like dying at higher rates, higher likelihood of having certain diseases. That is, I would argue that may not be a conscious memory, but that is a lot like a genetic memory. Does that sound fair?
I think so?
WHOA.
I don't know how else to think about it.
Guys, guys, you can buy a seat of penone fenone. However, we say it on this website called Scent Spiracy for twelve. It's twelve mil leaders for twelve pounds, but they're sold out. It's a conspiracy.
Indeed, so we're going to actually call it a little bit early today. We've got one letter from home. We are right now in full disclosure recording on what some of our friends call Thanksgiving Eve. We know the holidays can be tough for a lot of people. Candidly, one of those people depend on your family situation. So we do wish you the best and we want to thank you so much for being with us here and being
the most important part of the show. The letter from home will share, which I think we all saw, was.
Is that voicemail if you met oh Man?
All right, it's an email from someone who didn't give us a nickname. So we're gonna we're gonna freestyle here and we're gonna call you a tabby cat. So I like it to yeah, go with the cats, right, fear no cucumber Tabby Cat. Tabby you said, have you guys done an episode? This is just a cavalcade of the suggestions have you done an episode? On Harold Holt's disappearance,
former Australian Prime Minister Avid Swimmer. He believed oxygen tanks were inauthentic, and he famously said to one person, come on, Tony, what's the chance of an Australian prime minister drowning or being eaten by a shark? And then he went missing swimming off the coast on the eastern head of Melbourne. They named a swimming pool after him, but most people
believed he drowned. Because this happened at the height of the Cold War, there were a lot of conspiracy theories surrounding it, you could and then the other suggestions you could do episodes on Australian history and Tabikat. As you may have noticed by this point, we get a lot of Venn diagram with ridiculous history and stuff they once you know, as a matter of fact, we often get together and say which is better which show, or we'll do episodes both shows here. This may be a case.
Tabikat also asked about Kelly and about the New Zealand Treaty of Why Tongi and asked for an episode about the Tasmanian Tiger or Luu. We've done the Tiger man. I'm bullish on the tiger. I want that bad boy back so bad.
I remember that tiger Harold Holt was born exactly seventy five years before me to the day. Just found that out.
Okay, nice August being.
Coincidence, I think, I think, so oh oh, you're right.
And we also covered a flight MG three seventy. I went and sent you that episode as well, tabby Kat. We wanted to thank everybody for tuning in. We could have a great episode on Harold Holt, so stay tuned. We have so much that we didn't get to we are going to talk with Squirrel Girl about food waste in retail. We have we got a lot of court feedback to get to, but for now we are going to call it. In the evening, we're often activigate. Happy
Thanksgiving to all who celebrate. Kitty Thanksgiving is over by the time you hear this, so we hope you had a good one. Big big thanks to Tabbycat Headmaster Chef, Donnie, Valerie, Winter, Juniper and Squirrel Girl. Can't wait to hear from you, folks. Help us out making some new episodes. Find us on the emails, find us on the phones, find us on the lines, lines, line.
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