Chinese Immortality: Elixirs and Enlightened Beings

That's right. And since we just celebrated Chinese New Year and we're now officially in the Year of the Rooster, the fire Rooster, uh, it seemed appropriate to focus in on Chinese immortality because certainly immortality is is big business for us humans. And any myth cycle that you find is going to have a few immortals jumping around in there. A few there's usually a lot of yeah, yeah, a few a lot. You're gonna have some some undying heroes, gods, demigods, etcetera.

You know, whalen on each other, uh having a lot of the emotions about their undying state, that sort of thing. And there's just each each culture, each myth cycle is going to have a pretty rich history of this and and as well as their own mix of universal ideas and individual cultural ideas regarding UH life, undying. Yeah, I think it's very interesting to look at the diversity of the ideas of transcending death, but like what what they all remain or what they all have in common? I

guess yeah. Uh so, all over the world you see ideas about the survival of death or about ways that one could prolong ones life indefinitely, um and and there's so many details that change, like do you do you you survive death in some kind of immaterial state? Do you go to a different place or do you stay in the same place. Are there beings that naturally live forever or do they have to do something to sustain their immort plity? You know, do you have to eat

the fruit of of continued existence? And I don't know. I love that there there are all these little fruits that grow off the tree of the idea of immortality that are very different in various But the thing you've always got there is that you don't want to stop being there in your mind, right, Yeah, it's I mean, it's part of being human. Our earliest recorded stories, you can go back to the Epic of Gilgamesh in there there are that there's a plot line there about the

quest for immortality. But in this episode, we're going to focus in on Chinese mythology. And when I say focus, focus is maybe a poor word because Chinese mythology is a is a is a big tent and we'll get into into that as we go here. But but the Chinese treatment on the idea, uh, definitely have this mix of like universal ideas concerning living forever as well as

some uniquely Chinese ideas. We also want to you know, drive home here that you know, we know we have a number of Chinese listeners out there or listeners who grew up amid Chinese culture, so certainly feel free to chine in on any of this. I always love to hear from folks on on this topic and you help clarify things with your experience and provide specific takes on traditions and and tales that are often, you know, quite varied across the vast time and space of Chinese culture.

Right now, first of all, we should probably just take another step back from the specifics of Chinese culture and just talk about again about why we are so obsessed with immortality. Yeah, I guess that's a good thing to do. Like, what what is this concept? Because immortality is not something that is necessarily found in nature, So why is it such an obsession? I guess maybe I could frame it

like this, I'm gonna ask a stupid question. I like doing this on the podcast to ask a stupid question because a lot of the ideas that I find most interesting somehow start from intentionally asking a stupid question. And here it is, why we want to keep living? Why do all animals have what appears to be an overwhelming

desire not to die? Part of the answer is going to be obvious, of course, right, So if you think about the evolutionary basis for behaviors and drives that we have, one of the most basic drives we have is for reproduction, of course, but pretty much all the other ones are

based around survival. So genes that lead an organism to have more descendants are going to flourish in the gene pool, and so organisms that do not desire strongly to survive seem, like prima facy, to be likely to have fewer descendants. You're just not going to spread those genes that say don't care about living and dying around very much because a certain amount of survival is necessary for reproduction. But note that I say a certain amount, because here's something

I was just thinking about this last night. Many animals reach an age of peak reproductive fitness, after which, even if they survive, their ability to reproduce approaches zero. So, from an evolutionary basis, how come we don't lose our will to survive after we've passed childbearing age? Or how come we don't lose our will to survive if we've suffered, uh, say, injury to our reproductive organs or something like that that

prevents us from passing our genes along. What would be the evolutionary incentive for selecting genes that make us desire to just keep on living, going on and on and on, even in old age, desiring to just extend indefinitely into the future. I'm not sure, but I think that's interesting. I guess there are There are a few ideas. Maybe there's the idea that children with surviving grandparents have greater reproductive fitness because they're adult caregivers, that they've got more

adult caregivers. Basically, if you've got grandparents, great grandparents and all that. Uh. But here's another anomaly to think about. For complex mammals like human the desire for extended life doesn't just reside in the brain, but it applies specifically to the mind rather than the body. And this is so that seems obviously well, yeah, of course it would. You know, your mind is the thing that's thinking. But think about this again from a biological perspective. So imagine

a little weird illustration. You're lying in bed tonight, Robert and the robots come for you. The robot sorcerers come and sees you out of your bed. Uh. And these are robot sorcerers that delight in putting humans in weird dilemmas.

And so they give you two options. You've got option A, which is that your brain is going to be destroyed and an artificially intelligent computer impostor will be implanted in your former head and then we'll live out its stays, controlling your body with all normal function intact as if

it were still you. Okay, I'm not crazy about that option, but now let's hear what The next option B is that your body will be destroyed, but your brain will be inserted into a vat atop one of those Boston Dynamics darker robots, you know, so they want wandering around on the on the logs and stuff where you can live out your days as a brain in a vat in a robot body, Robert, which one do you pick? Well?

These are both horrible choices because they both hinge on the fallacy that that the mind is separate from the body, and that we don't have a mind body unity. Oh okay, well, but I'm saying you so, you wouldn't You wouldn't prefer your consciousness remain intact on the robot. Um I mean is the is if the robot brain goes into my body, is it going to is it going to raise my kid for me? Oh, let's say it would. Okay, then

I'll go with that like I would rather. It's as long as the the new robot me cannot tell anybody that I actually died. It has to keep going doing its thing, continue, you know, keeping up with my responsibilities. Uh yeah, and uh and keep everybody happy around me. Well, you could also keep up with your responsibilities as a brain in a robot boty. That's just gonna upset everybody, though nobody wants that at at Christmas dinner. That is a beautiful answer, Robert, But I sincerely believe that is

not the answer most people would actually choose. Really, most people would choose the vat I think you will, Yeah, as opposed to having your consciousness destroyed. I've just read theereny horror stories about like brains in like Nego brain canasters and whatnot, So I think even if it is an exceedingly cruddy robot body, I think most people would choose to have their consciousness preserved in a robot body as opposed to have their body continue to do things

but their consciousness destroyed. Fair enough, Uh, it might not be immediately clear why that's odd, but think about it in the same terms as the past reproductive age example. In option A, the impostor AI living in your body could still reproduce Option B cannot. Uh. So your answer there is probably the more biological, the intuitive one. But I think the answer that I feel confident most people would actually give if really faced by these robots sorcerers. Uh,

that that doesn't really make biological sense. So why does your mind generally prefer its own survival to the survival of the body that houses it and the genes that created it. I don't know. To me that that's a weird conundrum, And you can see this instantiated in many beliefs about immortality that people have where they continue to believe that their minds will go on existing after death, even after their bodies are destroyed and there's no continued

possibility of reproduction. Well, I mean, I guess it comes back to I think, therefore I am right. If I am not conscious of my existence, I don't exist my my and therefore my consciousness is my existence, even if it's completely extracted from every other important aspect of existence. Well. Yeah, I mean, it's certainly experientially clear to me why I

would prefer the the survival of my consciousness. But from a third party point of view, if an alien just came down and looked at people making that choice, it's not obvious why they would be doing that. Uh So, anyway, I think that's kind of interesting. Another side note, I wanted to go down. Uh this might be a tangent, but I also want to say that not everyone in history has expressed the view that it's good to desire

to live forever. Uh. Just one example I wanted to think of was the influential twentieth century philosopher Martin Heideger, who famously he had this whole logic of the relationship between authentic existence and the acceptance of death. And in this system, basically a person's life is given meaning by

the fact of its finitude. Uh. The fact that a person can exist in time, finitely in time, and then not exist at a later time gives life the possibility of a definite, authentic character and kind of makes sense to me, right like if if you live forever and

you always have the potential to change, who are you? Yeah, I mean, it's kind of like the difference between say, having a free hour on a given day to you know, engage in your hobbies or you know what have you or a chore around the house, versus having the full open day. Right now, people's approach this are gonna are gonna differ, But my approach has my experience has often been that if I only have an hour, I'm gonna be more inclined to make the best out of that hour.

And if, by some miracle having an entire day, then it's it's it's likely to be this unstructured, uh, just a bout of unproductivity. But it's even worse than that from my point of view, because think about, uh, all of the things that make you you, all the things that make you Robert lamb Uh. They're all expressions, I would say, of choices you make given the finitude of time and resources. The fact that like you are who you are hardly because of which books you've read and

which books you've read. That's just one aspect of your character. Obviously, not everything is as a function of the fact that you don't have time to read all books that exist in the world, right, Yeah, you have to pick and choose. And then this is this is actually a good point because also the books one has read changes, the books one remembers changes, the books that one puts stock in that too changes, and therefore the expression of self is

continually transforming. Um, this is something we'll get into it that when we look at the particular Chinese models here, because this is this is the thing, right when we when we talk about living forever, there's there's this classic idea of living forever is also eternal youth. I'm going to be young forever. I'm gonna be this idealized version of myself forever. Whereas which wouldn't really be you as

you the person who lives for a finite amount of time. Yeah, that that doesn't match up with the human experience like either you would be an inhuman thing this like like basically like a robot version of me that acts like like current me forever and never reads any new books, never forgets any books that are currently bouncing around my head, and it's just in this state, uh, just frozen in time.

Whereas in reality, like the immortal, I feel like the the sort of dark Methuselah immortals that we see in science fiction are kind of the more intriguing models because they often involved like somebody just getting older, older and more inhuman, you know, just awful awful, super rich old men and cyberpunk novels pan Well lo pan to to draw an example from a you know, an Eastern influenced Western property, we have a super ancient guy who's cursed

and just gets worse and worse for never dying, Like there's not a he just continues to spoil and doesn't reach the actual point where you throw him off the shelf. To quick asterisks on mentioning Heidegger, one of them was, I hope everything I said is contingent on the fact that I understand Heidegger right, which is debatable because his ideas are just notoriously hard to understand uses all this

weird specialized terminology. But then the other thing is saying that you can't really mention Heidegger these days, even his a political philosophy or seemingly a political philosophy, without also mentioning that he was an unrepentant Nazi. Uh. I don't know if that has any significance to the death philosophy, But I don't know. Maybe we're thinking about, well, they

sure like skulls. But anyway, so all of that stuff we've just said aside, I think we can say it's a decidedly unusual attitude toward death to say that, you know, yeah, it's a good thing that I'm going to cease to exist at some point, uh yeah, Or it's it's it's easier to embrace it in the abstract, yeah, but when when the the reapers actually coming around the corner, I feel like not every one is going to be as

game to embrace it. People go to enormous, enormous lengths to avoid acknowledging death or thinking about the inevitability of death. And there's actually the whole psychological framework known as terror management theory that hypothesizes that much of human culture, A lot of what we do as a species is all built around unconsciously designing frameworks to deny the reality of

death and put it out of mind. So people apply this hypothesis to explaining the existence of cultural norms like rules in society and things like that, traditions, religions, activities that we use to entertain ourselves. Art. Uh. And I'm not going to say whether terror management theory is a correct interpretation of human behavior, but I do think it has some purchase on our explanatory desires. Obviously, because humans just so clearly fear death above all else. It's it's

obvious everybody would have to acknowledge that this is going on. Yeah. I feel like, as with a lot of philosophical or even religious frameworks, I kind of see them as like a series of lenses that one may employ or or pull away, depending on how you want to try and

view your your reality. And I feel like terror management theory is one of those that, Yeah, I wouldn't want to go walking around my life all the time seeing everything within the framework of terror management theory, but occasionally it is helpful to pull it down and say, oh, well, this is it. Is interesting to view this aspect of the the human experience um in you know, in reference to our fear of death. Well, Robert, do you think now we should transition to looking at the idea of

immortality specifically in Chinese mythology. Yeah. Yeah, let's let's go ahead and dive in. So the important thing to drive home here, of course, is that immortality is are from a cut in dry topic in Chinese mythology, like they don't have a systematic theology of it, right, yeah, and and and again. Part of this is because Chinese mythology is the thing that is so deep and wide. It covers a great well of time as well as of

a vast geographic landscape. UM plus, a mythic history and history have long experienced a certain amount of fusion into a single timeline. And uh we we were chatting about this before we came into the podcast room. Here you you also see this, um there's less of a a fusion and cannon canonization of Chinese mythology. It's not like what we see in in the West, we say, Greek mythology, where you certainly as you grow up in school there's

sort of a strict pantheon that's thrown at you. There's there's more or less a strict canonization of Greek mythology in classical literature. Um, there's no Homer and Hesiod. Yeah. Yeah, that's the thing. In China and Chinese culture, you see far fewer examples of of of important artist or writers taking mythology and then using it to create something new

that in turn, uh, solidifies the tail. So in Chinese culture you still have a lot of these different versions of various myths and folk tales that retain their original form, and you'll have, you know, multiple versions of the same story depending on where you are and when you are. Yeah.

There is an interesting explanation of the sort of scattered source nature of Chinese mythology in the intro to one of the books we were using as a resource for this episode, uh, the Handbook of Chinese Mythology by Li Hui Yang and demming On with Jessica Anderson Turner. And the intro of this book is good. It it talks

about what a lot of the sources were. But these fragments that inform our understanding, our modern understanding of Chinese mythology come from all over the place and in many cases, they're they're like just small little inscriptions and things like that, and then or some other larger texts that have various

versions of narratives and things like that. But there's not like a Bible of Chinese mythology, right, Yeah, And sometimes I like to compare it to to to Hindu mythology, and Hinduism is another world where it's just a well of ideas and religions and traditions all thrown together. But yet there are there are several key epics that in

particular that help inform the backbone of the thing. If you think of a faith as a snake rising up through that well, uh, than Hindu mythology might be, you know, a spiraling snake, but you can you can definitely pinpoint keep key parts of its anatomy. So in Chinese mythology, the line between more mortality and immortality often becomes a bit blurred. Uh. You know, we mentioned a big trouble

little China earlier. Um, and this will be not a traditional text, not a traditional text, but just I will mention it one more time in this episode. Ah, I'm a fan of the film, and I feel like, even though it's very much a Western product. It actually does an okay job giving like a broad treatment of Chinese mythology.

Uh in that it um you know, it's I feel like it has a deceptively deep treatment of certain aspects of Chinese mythology, even though it kind of plays fast and loose with everything, but it grounds itself in some key principles. And certainly we see that with Lopan in his uh, his immortal and mortal duality. He's he's at once this this frail old man and this uh, you know,

you know, tin foot tall spirit character. So keep that in mind, you and as we move forward, Okay, so as you if you go back all the way to some of the earlier myths in in China, there's this presumption of immortality about the primeval gods. So this is a concept that falls in line with Judeo Christian concepts of the divine, etcetera. And yet gods such as the Yellow Emperor do suffer defeat and death. Though there's often

a metamorphosis trope here as well. So you might remember from our Great Flood episode, the legendary hero kon Uh drowns and becomes a bear or possibly a turtle or a dragon depending on which version you're looking at. So there's a transformation ELM. Yeah, so it's the idea of living forever is not simply one of retaining your current state,

but transcending to a different state. But also in some features of Chinese mythology we do see a kind of a middle or liminal state of right, like in the concept of undead creatures, like that they're not exactly immortals living forever, not exactly regular mortals. There's something in between or some state. We we do see some cool examples of that, and Baryl points out some of these in her excellent book Chinese Mythology and Introduction, which I highly recommend.

One of them is a woman show who is uh this deity. She's actually a drought goddess and she's said to have been born a corpse. Yeah, well maybe you know, but take it all in here now. She she lived through the world of the ten Sons. So there's this story in the mythology where at one point in the in the distant past, the Earth had ten sons in the sky, or you might conceive this as nine extra sons or nine extra sons, nine superfluous sons. So what are you gonna do. There nine extra sons, and it's

scorching the earth. It's burning up all the crops. Uh. And this is where ye the archer enters the picture. He'll come again, come up again later and he starts shooting down the surplus sons with his bow. Uh. Saves the world uh and uh, and then the show is able to come back to life. So she's affiliated with with the crab because the crab, and sort of mythic understanding,

sheds its shell and regrows. Ever, so here we see an idea of a of an immortal character who is also a character that dies, but it's a it's but there's a continual rebirth. I'm she drives out, but she comes back. I'm seeing here the uh the myth. Maybe this is the origin of that myth that was going around on the internet a few years ago that Arthur

pods like lobsters live forever. Remember that, Yeah, I do remember that that kind of going around, and it it does tie into into some of these mythic interpretations of what these animals are doing when they mold. From what I recall, that turned out to be a very incorrect understanding of what the research showed. Yes. Now another character that does she brings up is one sing Tane, who is this warrior god character, and he continues to fight

after being beheaded. So he's he's kind of a you know, a headless horseman or a roll in the headless Thompson gunner Um. He loses a battle to the Yellow Emperor, and so he's essentially a failed hero. He transforms though, rather than submit immediately to death, and it's quite a transformation. Yeah, tell me about it. Right, here's the here's the quote that Beryl rolls up. Sing Tane and the Yellow Emperor

came to this place and fought for divine rule. The Yellow Emperor cut off his head and buried it on chang Yang Mountain. Sing Tean made his nipples serve his eyes and his navel as a mouth, and brandishing his shield and battle axe, he danced whoa nipple ees naval mouth. Yeah, and there's some there's some like old images of this too.

It's pretty pretty monstrous awesome. But you know, he's stubborn and he's he's going to fight to the bitter end, even though he's gonna have to transform into something else to do it. Okay, So here you've seen a couple of examples of of survival of death or some form of survival of death or immortality in a liminal or

middle state, or through metamorphosis or t information. Yeah, we see this idea of immortality not as a state of eternal youth, but as a change into something stranger, something less human, something that's still very much like the biological process of aging, only for lack of a better word,

like aging up. You mean that kind of like leveling up. Yeah, Like, yeah, you're you're you're leveling up, you're getting older, because we certainly have you know, in the I feel like in certainly in western cult ravity universally, this is idea you know that you're gonna go over the hill, you're gonna peak, and then the uh, the the years on the back end, or even the decades in the back end are going

to be a decline. Right. But in some of these mythic ideas of undying beings, there's the sense of you're, they're aging, they're getting older and older, stranger and stranger, and yet they're still an upward trajectory. And certainly some, I mean some human lives are like that. If some people don't really get into their prime until their final years. Some great writers or artists have produced their finest work in those areads. Yeah, but uh, you know, it varies

from case to case. I wonder if this has something to do with a general cultural relevance for the elderly and and respect for for the wisdom that comes with age. Yeah, I think that's an excellent read on it. It does match up with the the idea of filial piety, of the veneration of ancestors, and the important role of of of grandparents in the traditional Chinese family. All right, well, maybe we should take a quick break and then when we come back we can have a look at mushrooms

and grasses of immortality. So Robert tell me about living forever through mushrooms. Well, so this is one of those areas where in in Chinese culture you have you have mythology and folklore, you have you have Taoism, you have Confusism, and you you also have like Chinese traditional medicine. So that's playing a role in all of this and getting in the mix. And so, uh, we their their stories, plenty of stories and continued use of the raci mushroom

or the ling mushroom in China. Uh. They're known for their life extending properties and they've been used medicinally for at least two thousand years because they have this reputation for promoting health and longevity. We talk about this one a Christian and I talked about it in our Weird Mushrooms episode of the podcast a few months back. And traditional Chinese medicine use continues to this day. In ancient use of this, uh go back at least to like

four s b C. Just based on their textual appearance. Okay, well, tell me about some kind of mythical plant that's going to give it immortality, because you've got to have that in your in your mythical basis, right. Oh yeah, yeah, I think you alluded to it in the in the intro. You always have like with the tree in the Garden of Eden, don't you know, various apples and fruits that have divine properties and may give you eternal or long life. Then the Greek gods have a tree like that, believe

they did. I mean yeah, I mean there's a world tree in Chinese tradition as well. But they're there also is grass. There's a there's mention of the Grass of Immortality. Uh, they're numerous magical grasses, but the grass of Immortality pops up in the legend of Lady White Snake. This is a pretty fun one. So it it grows along with other magical plants on the earthly paradise in the Koon

Loon Mountains. H Lady White Snake was a monster who turned into a woman married a kind man, but one day her husband sees her in her true form and it scares him to death. Yeah, it's kind of like, Uh, it reminds me a lot of the Lady in the Snow story from Japanese culture, and that was also adapted into the Gargoyle story and Tales from the Dark Side of the movie. If you remember that one um, there was a Gargoya woman who takes mortal form and marry

as a kind man. So anyway, she's distraught because he's dead now. So she flies to the Holy Mount and she retrieves the grass of Immortality and and she but she has to first convince the immortal Grandfather of the South Pole, the god of Longevity, to give it to her. And uh, this and this is a very interesting character as well as we're going to discuss. Well, don't make

me wait, tell me about the immortal Grandfather. Yes, we're talking about Nanji shing Wing a k A immortal Grandfather of the South Pole, also often attributed as as simply Show, which literally means longevity and mandarin um. He's also, you know, symbolically a jovial old man with a great swollen forehead because it's so full of knowledge and astrologically speaking, because he's a figure that plays into Chinese astrology. He's also

the class F giant star Cannabis. You would generally expect a person who is a giant star to have a quite swollen head. Yeah, yeah, I mean he's he's old, he's full of wisdom, and he's he's lined up with this particular star. And it makes sense. Canapis playsant into a number of different astrological traditions. It's the second brightest star in the sky. Uh. And if you're wondering how old it is, we're talking fifteen to twenty million years now. I was not expecting to make a Dune reference in

this episode, but this is crazy. In Frank Herbert's done universe, the planet Iracous such as the you know, the planet dune with the sandworms. Spice is actually orbiting Canapis, so the home of the geriatic, the geriatric spice Melange the mind expanding, life extending substance. In that fictional universe, it orbits the ancient Chinese god of longevity and wisdom. Do you think that's by design? I don't know. I wouldn't

put it past Herbert. I'm not as immersed in Herbert's bio biography as many are, so I can't say one. I know he doesn't seem to make a lot of specifically Eastern references, but he also does seemed to incorporate a lot about different does Yeah, I don't know, so I would not doubt it. If someone were to, you know, to say, oh, he definitely drew interpretation from Johnny's mythology, it would it would certainly, it would certainly make sense. I'm sensing the onset of a boat. Wait, there's more.

It's true. In Greek myth, Cannabis was the name of the pilot of the fleet of Mentalis, and Mentalais was in a tradees. Yeah. So in Greek myth, the tradees were the son the sons of the trays uh and of course, the Tradees Paul Trades. This is the central family in the Dune saga, right, So yeah that if you've seen the movie, they're the people with the pugy. So the more the more I look at it, the

more I'm like, surely, surely this is intentional. Yeah. Otherwise it's just the most wonderful coincidence for for me personally that these two things that I appreciate should be united. Wow, that's interesting. Well, okay, give me more about the immortal grandfather himself, so like what's his significance and in their whole pan theon Alright, So for a lot of people listening, you might have seen him if you go into either a Chinese home, a Chinese business, um, you know, Chinese restaurant.

I certainly noticed a lot of these for the first time when I was in China and saw them in hotel lobbies because you see these three individuals and and Uh and Show and in particular stands out because he has that that forehead. So you have these three stars, these three gods, and there's a Foo Lou and Show. So Foo represents good fortune and we see that symbolized in his scholars dress, cradled child and in fact, sometimes he's crawling with children like he's infested. Sometimes he has

a scroll as well. Uh. And then there's a Lou, and Lou has a fine clothes, a riyo scepter, and he's he's the one you want to venerate for business savvy and professional success. And then you have old man show with the loaded skull that represents longevity, the wisdom that comes with old age. Dallas mythology attributes his ancient appearance to ten years in his mother's womb, and and

that he was actually born an old man. And he also often carries the peach of immortality as well, which would have been obtained from another longevity god, the Queen Mother of the West. So there are a lot of symbols coming together in his in this particular figure. So here we have another specific piece of plant matter of immortality,

the peach of immortal. Yeah, I mean, if you start taking in global myths in general, there's just an entire salad buffet of of various things that will give you immortality, right down to the bacon bits, peach of immortality, bacon bits, fruit of the tree of life, ambrosia else what else. Well, if I'm imagining what the shownees all you can eat buffet, and you've got the seafood buffet at the end, so you get right down to the crab, I guess the

soft serve of immortality. So coming back this idea of aging up, of of the of the body, changing, of becoming this uh, this slightly in human aged form. We see that with show, and certainly Chinese myth is full of immortal and long living creatures, monsters, spirits, including the Wutong Shin who you've mentioned before, but one in particular ties in with what we're talking about here. So we're

talking about the Shan, the dallast immortal body. So there's a writing about this from one Zwang Joe who wrote about immortality for mortals in reference to an enlightened human sage. So he said, so so we can get it. That's the idea here is that there's a way for real, least certain humans to obtain this. Maybe not you and me, but maybe not not enlightened enough, but somebody could get

it right. So this is what he said. He said, there is a holy man living on far away Kushi Mountain with skin like ice or snow, and gentle and shy like a young girl. He doesn't eat the five grains, but sucks the wind, drinks the dew, climbs up on the clouds and missed rides of flying dragon, and wanders beyond the four seas. By concentrating his spirit, he can protect creatures from sickness and plague and make the harvest plentiful. So and Barrel points to a number of aspects of

this account that are noteworthy. So we have a hermit on a mountain. You're on a mountain, You're closer to heaven. Uh diet list, we have transformed gender, We see meditation, travel at will, magical powers of the beneficial nature, and UH carrying particular weight. In Dallas philosophy, this figure of the of the Chien the or the transcendental being Um. Though the particulars you know varied opinion on the exact reading Dallas Um Chinese alchemy, mythology, literature, folk tales, et cetera.

Perhaps the most famed use of this trope is in the the Eight Immortals, which are a group of Dallas immortals of feature into various works of art and literature, and they even show up in films. Hong Kong action movies, even the Drunken Master films. It's been forever since I saw one of those, but apparently the Eight Immortals show up there. They they they found new forms in comic books, so they're they're pretty big, big money. Do they still

embody these traditional characteristics? Yeah? Yeah, I mean these are kind of like the tropes of the the the Old Immortal Sage of of Dallas tradition, and I think it's it's all quite interesting. I mean, you can take a literal reading of them and just say how they're they're magical,

weird dudes. But I like how the aspects of the the enlightened transcendental body here seemed to be supernatural reflections of the actual biological factors of old age, right, changes in appetite, softening of gender, the potential for solitude, and

increased empathy. Well, one thing I was looking at this and I thought it was quite interesting how some of these features that are being associated with this transcendental immortal um are actually paralleled in real scientific research on longevity. Uh So, for example, one of them is so it's an old man who seems to lose some primary sex characteristics. And this made me think, well, that sort of goes along with some research we have indicating that men can

see increased longevity through castration. Oh yeah, this is probably not the option everyone will end up going for to prolong their life. But I just wanted to mention a couple of couple of studies. There was a nineteen sixty nine study in the Journal of Gerontology by James Hamilton and Gordon Messler UH, and its studied the longevity unfortunately in early mid to twentieth century institutionalized men who had been forcibly castrated as a result of the eugenics ideology

of the time. So that's pretty unfortunate circumstances. But what they did find out from it was that from so they looked at two hundred and ninety seven cast rated men and compared them with UH seven hundred and thirty five age matched controls, so men who were living in the same conditions, and they revealed that the castrated men had a significantly increased lifespan. I think it was a

difference of about six years. And if only that those that were castrated earlier in life were considered, that the effect on lifespan was even more drastic. It was more than eleven years. And there was also a study that was published in the twelve issue of Current Biology that um. It was called the Lifespan of Korean Unix by King Kung Jin, Men Chilkoo Lee, and Hannam Park, and they said that their goal was to look at the effects

of castration by analyzing historical Korean unis. So they looked at the genealogical records of eighty one historical Korean unix and then compared those two similar men of similar socioeconomic status but who had not been castrated. And they determined that quote, the average lifespan of unis was uh seventy plus or minus one point seventy six years, which was fourteen point four to nineteen point one years longer than the lifespan of non castrated men who had the similar

station in society. So this all feeds into this body of literature that people have been looking at to say that perhaps male sex hormones in some way decrease one's ability to live to an older age. Well, that raises some interesting possibilities then about the possible link between unis and this This this trope of the the the aged immortal beca I mean, certainly we we had unis in China in Chinese tradition. Uh. I don't know, it would

be interested to come I can explore that more. I would love I've long wanted to do an episode on UNIX sort of talk about not only the science of units, like what's actually happening, but also their role in society, which has has very greatly. You've had certainly you've had plenty of situations where units are treated as a third gender, as a second class kind of citizen, but they have also ascended to tremendous power at certain times and in

certain conditions. I think in many cases you can look at it as an analog to the way celibacy was practiced in other contexts where there there's like a fear of people establishing hereditary corruption. Uh. And in situations like that there is often either enforced celibacy or preference for castrated men or something like that. Um. But I want to go with another example of the the Enlightened Immortal. Uh. It says that the Enlightened Immortal what sucks the wind

and drinks the do that's their diet. I also wanted to tied this into the research on the link between caloric restriction and longevity, which is not um not fully established. I think that we've seen some back and forth in the research there, but the idea here is that restricting daily food intake below the level of satiation but above the level of malnutrition generally, I think what's looked at is about a thirty percent reduction below standard intake of

daily calories could lead to longer lifespan in animals. Uh And the effect has been observed in short lived species like mice and rats, but the question is wouldn't apply to big primates like us. Well, there now been several studies looking at long term caloric restriction and REESEUS monkeys

and the results have been mixed. So there was one study in two thousand nine that was a twenty year longitudinal adult on set caloric restriction study and REESEUS monkeys and they did find that the caloric restriction lead to

increased lifespan and the REESUS monkeys. Then there was a different study published in Nature in twelve that did a twenty three year study on Rhesis macaques and it did not find It found a very slight increase through caloric restriction as compared to a control group, but it was not The difference wasn't statistically significant, so they said, you know,

this is not replicated. But then I found one more analysis published in Nature Communications in teen looking at the previous twelve study that didn't find support for caloric restriction and longevity, and they ended up suggesting that what was really going on with the study. The problem there was that the control monkeys were effectively actually undergoing caloric restriction. Uh so there wasn't a proper control. Basically, all the

monkeys were having caloric restriction. So, uh so, the jury is not not in yet on exactly the relationship there, but there are some indications that there could be a real connection between to know, being this diet less kind of creature, well probably not eating nothing right but more than the dew in the wind um, but but less than you want to eat, and living much longer than average.

So yeah, perhaps the just the symbol of this ancient stage encompasses, uh some some basic ideas that are helpful for living a long life. Right now, that's all well and good to say, Oh, well, maybe you should, uh maybe you should eat less, Maybe you should be a little less masculine, Maybe you should you know, walk around in the mountains more. Yeah, that's all well and good. But here in modern times, what we want is a pill, right, what we want is a drink. What we want is

a magic potion. It's so much easier, so much easier than getting castrated and not eating all the pizza. Yeah. Well, fortunately, there is a long history of alchemy in Chinese history and in Chinese mythology, so we can turn to automical means to produce use the same effect, tell me, you know, mythologically speaking. So in Cohen's Biographies of Holy Immortals, this is a fourth century tone of immortality and longevity, sorcery,

counts of supernatural beings and what have you. It contains instructions for the creation of various potions, such as one for gold. And gold here I'm I'm fairly certain we are not to supposed to interpret is simply the element gold. It's something something more in line with Western alchemy's sorcerer's stone, kind of a thing which itself was not necessarily a stone,

but a substance. So we get this, this gold, and then you simply ingest one pound of the gold to cure disease and make quote three worms cry for mercy. What does that mean? I guess that like the three worms that would like eat its you and aide you. You know, you know the three worms. No, I don't. I'm confused. Okay, three pounds of the old will make

you live till the world's end, only till the world's end. Well, I think that the actual phrasing is essentially like, you will live as long as the natural world, like presumably you could still like if the world, if you've no where to live, you're you're done. So it's kind of like a biological immortality. I guess now I'm interested in the differentiation between indefinite immortality, like you will live forever versus you will just live for many thousands of years. Yeah, Like,

are these effectively actually different propositions? Well, yeah, I mean it comes down we we broke it down a little bit earlier. Yeah. Are you saying if you say you want to live forever? Are you saying I want to transform into something cosmic? Are you saying I want to

be exactly like I am right now forever? I want to be basically like I am right now, except I'm gonna keep getting smarter and stuff, or like I'm I'm going to continue to age as I'm aging, but with absolutely no stop date, Like I'm just going to get just take aging to the limit. I mean, I guess if you lived until the end of the universe, Uh, there'd be nothing left for you to do, right if the universe becomes homogeneous, just heat, death, everything is just

cold darkness. Yeah, I don't know. And if you love just hanging out on mountaintops and riding dragons and drinking the dew out of the air, like, none of that's gonna be around anymore, so why bother? Uh? So three three pounds of the gold will get you that far. But also you can put it in a corpse. You can put a pill of it in a corpse's mouth along with some spit and resurrect them from the debt. So there's that. I do find it interesting that seems to take far less to resurrect the dead and then

to simply um sustain human life. And definitely all right, Well, I think we should take a quick break and then when we come back we will talk about the elixir of immortality. So Robert tell me about the elixir of immortality in Chinese mythology. All right, So this is of all of the various potions and concoctions, this particular magic potion is probably the most famous of Chinese immatory immortality quest items, okay, in part because it involves a number

of big name gods and heroes. It concerns the moon. So as with all these stories, the details and the shape of the narrative changes depending on where you're dipping your net in the waters of Chinese myth. But these

are the basics, okay. So while various shamans and deities have access to this elixir, it's primarily a sad associated with the Queen Mother of the West, and a jade rabbit pounds it in a mortar for so, So imagine this, this divine feminine entity, and here is a magical jade rabbit pounding something in a in a mortar, and that it's creating this potion. And I've seen at least one ancient painting or depiction that has that. It's exactly as literal as it sounds. It's a rabbit holding a pestle

pounding in the mortar. Yes, okay, so that's established. Remember ye, the archer from earlier we're talking about who's shot down the surplus sons, right, we had nine too many. He took them out. Well, the Queen Mother of the West Uh I guess it, was impressed with this gives him the potion so that he might live forever and rule over men for ages to come. It makes sense, right, he's a big name hero. He either he's rewarded with this or he asked for it and he gets it.

But here's the thing. He has a wife, Uh changy okay, and she steals it, drinks it, and flees to the moon. Now, one of the things is that looking at the books we used for this episode, there are a lot of versions of this myth, and Chinese Uh role in them is vastly different depending on which version you read. It's kind of like looking in on if you look at these these heroes and gods as celebrities, it's kind of

like a celebrity domestic dispute of some sort. So at first we can just say, all we know are the basics. Here is this potion, she drank it, maybe she stole it, and then and then she went to the moon. What happened?

What are the details? Changy is the villain of this story, and in some versions she does sort of get punished, right, like she gets turned into a toad or yeah, like the earliest versions of it, she's punished by the gods for stealing essentially from the gods are stealing a gift of the gods, it was not hers, and she's transformed. She gets to the moon, but there she's transformed into a toad. And the toad is another symbolic animal of immortality.

But the idea is that you could look up at the moon and you could see a tree, a toad, uh, and and the rabbit. And we'll get to the tree in a bit. But there there are versions that are more complex too. So there's one version that I like to think of as like the love lady Hawk version. Okay, And in this one, he loved Changy so too much to drink the potion and become immortal without her. He only had the one dose, so he just gave it

to her for say of keeping. But then he's apprentice fing Ming comes along and he's a he's a bad dude. He invied the heroic archer wanted his skills and in some tales would eventually murder him. Yeah, what they get into like a duel with their bows and fing Ming can't match him in archery skills, so he clubs them to death with I think the bow of a peach tree. Wow, well, that's probably cheating in the duel is Yeah, Well, he's a he's a bad he's a bad characters. He's not

gonna play fair. The only way he's gonna defeat he is by cheating. So uh. In this particular story, Fingming catches wind of this. He finds out that his wife has the potion, so he comes to her to take it from her, and she won't let him have it. She swallows it instead to keep it from falling into

his vile hands. And she immediately flies into the sky and she chose, she chooses the moon to like fuse with to become stuck on, become part of however you want to interpret that, because it would be arrist to her beloved. Uh so remember immortality via transformation. He comes home and he's so saddened by all of this that he offers fruit and cakes. Is offering to her in the first Autumn Moon Festival, or at least in the offering that will become Autumn Moon Festival. That that's sad

but beautiful. Yeah, and I like this, and I feel like this is my my favorite of the two two versions. We're gonna look at here. Okay, well, what's the other one? But the other one is certainly more tragic, uh, And this one he is certainly a hero, but then he becomes the tyrannical ruler after the fall of the nine surplus suns. So he saved the day. But then when he actually when it actually comes down to him governing

and ruling, he proves to be just a horrible dude. Hey, this often happens, right, Yeah, I got a military hero. They save the day, but I don't know, during peacetime they get a little lancy. Yeah, power corrupts. And it's interesting that you, I mean, it makes sense that you would see a different interpretation of this through you know, all through all these different dynastics chichaels in Chinese history.

You have some good rulers, you have some terrible rulers, you have some beloved uh rulers, and you have some despise rulers. So the way you interpret a mythic hero like this, a military hero, is bound to be reinterpreted depending on what you have to work with. So in this version, he's awful, and he obtains the elixir so that he can rule forever. And Uh Changy does not want this to happen. She can't bear to see the people suffer, so she steals the elixir from him, drinks it,

and then she starts rising up into the sky. He shoots arrows at her if she flees to the into the sky, and then when she makes it to the moon, he dies of anger because he's so enraged by her treachery and her escape. Dies of anger. That's intense. And then she just occupies the moon and the Autumn Moon festival. He comes away for people to thank her for herself with sacrifice. Okay, so instead of Ye initiating the festival, it's people initiate it, thanking her for saving them from you. Yea.

So it's interesting. She's it's some sometimes she's vilified and punished by the gods, but her character is a lot more consistent as opposed to Ye's character. The ego seems to swing a lot broader from hero to villain in these in these two tellings, at any rate, now on the Moon, her life varies depending on when and where you're gathering your your story from Uh so she may have been turned into the toad perhaps this punishment, and also because the toad sheds its skin as in an

act of mythic immortality. Uh. And in the earlier tales she's more punished. In the later ones, they're you know, they're more sympathetic to her, and they forget the toad form. There she may be forced to pound the elixir into the mortar. Though. You also see this version where the jade rabbit joins around the moon and then does the work for And then to top things off, there is a tree on the moon and there's a guy there

that came apparently to to to like steal immortality. And his punishment, he has to continually chop at this tree. And every time he chops into it, yet uh, the the gouge in the tree heals back up. Oh no, yeah, so you have kind of, you know, a miss of Sissiphus going on on the moon pointless eternal labor. But will he live forever in this pointless eternal he will?

That's kind of the the interesting thing about it, irony, he got immortality, it's just a horrible immortality of doing the same thing over and over again, which is kind of a nice commentary on that, on what we were ripping on earlier, the idea like, why would you want

to live together in a constant state that doesn't change? Well, this guy got it um his name Woo Gang by the way, Yeah, if you're not living towards something, if you're if there's nothing you could ever finish and everything is stasis and always stays the same, do you want to live forever? Indeed? I mean this is the This is why these ideas are so so fun to to to talk about, so fun to explore in cultures both close to home and uh and distant, because we find

these universal ideas, these universal questions. Okay, well, maybe we should step back and say, uh, what do we make of all these uh, these myths and these cultural beliefs, Like what what does this have to do with our cognition and the way we think about death today? Death

end immortality? Well, you know, much has been written about the manner by which myth and religion emerge from the human mind, but the jury is still out on exactly what cognitive mechanisms are responsible for belief in such supernatural

concepts as survival of consciousness, ghosts, gods, etcetera. And much of what has been presented in in psychology and in these studies is based upon the study of Western populations, populations that are heavily influenced by Judeo Christian tradition, maybe some Islam, but generally you know, people of the book, people that are tied to this particular Abrahamic tradition and that have a maybe not totally unified, but more canonical

prescriptive understanding of what the afterlife is. Yeah, and also from societies that were have at least been like traditionally and historically religious tone. Now this leads out China, though, which is a has long been a secular state with a history of non religious philosophies and unique varied mythological and religious roots. In two thousand fourteen, Dr Melanie Nioff and Dr Kelly James Clark embarked on a study sponsored

by the John Templeton Foundation. And you see Riverside given the at least the preliminary title afterlife beliefs and their cognitive mechanisms among the Chinese past and present. And this is part of the Immortality Project. What's that? Uh, it's a let's say, broader like I forget the dollar amount is like a big dollar I um uh flight of studies that are looking into various topics of circling around the concept of immortality. So sadly this is not that

this is apparently still underway. They're apparently still working on this. There's no public study out with this title. Hopefully we'll get to see it in the in the near future. But still it drives on the importance of when if you're gonna look at the relationship between cognition and religion, cognition and myth. Uh, you can't just depend on one cultural model. You mean like studies on college students exacted

states in Great Britain or something. Right, Yeah, we see the same thing in in uh, in scientific studies all over where people have increasingly said, wait, you, how are we basing all of this supposed universal understanding on a very specific and select subset of human beings? Now? Um, all this being said Dr Melanie Nilov also on the Thrive Center project is Religion Natural the Chinese Challenge, which addresses many of these concerns through two thousand years of

Chinese culture uh. And it makes the following points, and most of these are points for universality. Okay, First, high gods as opposed to low gods and Chinese a myth served as moral and for enforcers. Okay, So they rewarded and punished the behaviors of human and in this we see uniformity with global trends toward human and vision gods. The theory of a mind powered personification of the human minds hunger for for reasons known and unknown, to explain

the universe. So this begins in early childhood and it persists in to adulthood. Mainland Chinese children shared much in common with Western children and adults in this so purpose based explanations for the world. So example given was when asked, you know, what's the deal with mountains? Well, mountains were created for climbing, just as hats were created for warmth. Oh yeah, this, I've read about this before. Like children

having a tendency to assume that things. Uh. If asked to give an explanation for the existence of something, they explain it in terms of its usefulness to them. So like the the reason this table exists is so I can sit at it. Well, that might be true. The reason this rock exists is so I can skip it over the water. Yeah, it's like they have a simplistic but very reasonable explanation incorrect explanation often for what the one of these things are there. And as we get older,

we we don't really abandon this line of thinking. We just make it a little more complex, right, Well, like maybe we know it's not necessarily correct, but we still want to feel that way, right Yeah, I mean it's just this tendency to see purpose in nature. So it's a teleological understanding of the world. Um, three to five year olds in this particular state, they displayed a natural ease and imagining all knowing and all say ing invisible beings. So the idea here is that our our minds cling

to intuitive religious ideas. I mean, gods and gods are just parents that love us for example. You know, we're just taking a relatable human relationship and extrapolating it into the supernatural scenario. But we also cling to counterintuitive ideas because they stand out, they're quirky, they're memorable, and God's

after all, they tend to be counterintuitive. I've read a little bit about this in in the idea of meme theory as well, that like a lot of the memes that catch on are those that are familiar enough to be tractable to our minds, but also weird enough to be memorable. So the thing that that really sticks out in our brain and and merits remembering and repetition is the thing that's kind of like the thing you know,

but also different enough that you don't forget it. Yeah, Like, I think a lot of examples that stick with me, like to go outside of Chinese mythology and think of like say Greek mythology or even Christianity. Like in Greek mythology, I instantly think of Zeus turning into random animals to have sexual relations with human women. Because when you hear about that, especially when you're a kid, you're like, that's that's insane. What this makes no sense? Why is that

even happening. It's so absurd that it sticks with you, and it ultimately is kind of is telling about this character, this sort of absurd, horrible, kind of tyrannical god. So in both the in the study, in both UK and Chinese subjects, children had an easier time with counterintuitive ideas why a while adults struggled with them. So the ideas that you had like some sort of strange idea of a god the kids would be more inclined to, but to believe in it, the adults would have maybe a

harder time digesting at all. But they found that quote natural intuitions underlying the practice of rituals exists across cultures, but the differences found between China and previously considered nations suggests that clatural differences may influence the types of rituals practice. Specifically in China, a few rituals were found in which a spirit or god acts upon humans, such as when a priest represents the god in a wedding to people,

a common ritual type in much of the world. So they're saying that that type of thing is not very common in Chinese religion. And then they also pointed out that since you have a largely secularized society seeing the downplaying of religious expression, they predicted that there would be a natural inclination for religious thought that would in the seculary secularized society leak out in novel ways. So kind of like you know, the steams building up, it's got

to release somehow. If religion is a natural inclination, you know, if of all these even though the strangest in the more elaborate supernatural beliefs have a grounding in the way our brains work. If we are if that is discouraged, is still going to have to find a way out. And I think this is one of these areas where you can you could probably chew on this concept for

quite some time and find various examples. But the one that they pointed to his World of Warcraft what really, Yeah, they they highlighted it is quote an unorthodox vehicle for religious, spiritual and moral expression in China. So okay, which I can see that. You know, I'm not a World of Warcraft player, but I know it is an immersive game with a you know, a fairly deep fantasy mythos, full of heroes, and I assume God's good and evil battling

against each other. Yeah, I mean, well, one of the things that, uh, that I guess this is implying is that you take a secular state and mostly secularized state where the importance of religion has greatly decreased um and yet people still have I mean, whatever the reason for the emergence of religion, it's easy to think about it having something to do with the desire for immortality or as are, for a belief in immortal beings of some kind,

some kind of continuing beyond mortality and death. Um. That desire probably doesn't go away even if you have a mostly secularized state. So like, how does it find expression? Um? And so one of the things I'm interested in is is the parallels between this thing we've seen throughout uh this episode looking at Chinese immortality on immortality through transformation, the idea that you transcend your your mortal existence by becoming something else. The parallel between that in the secular

immortality beliefs of trans humanism that we see today. I mean, this is a common thing now where you'll get all these very very smart, you know, technology oriented people saying oh yeah, yeah, I'm gonna live forever. I mean there are people who think that today, who think they are materialists in a non religious sense. Well you can debate the extent to which it's religious, but at least in

a non supernatural sense. They think that they're going to have an indefinite lifespan because computers will reach such a point of advancement that will be able to download our consciousness into them and transform ourselves into this new digital existence where you can live indefinitely. Yeah, and then likewise you have the Aubrey de Gray kind of approach to longevity, like breaking up death into various winnable battles. The war

against death is a bit too much to consider. But if we break it down into I think it's like eight different categories. Maybe it's twelve categories. He says, like, these are the categories. These are the advancements that need to take place for us to essentially defeat death. Yeah,

he's trying to reduce the problem to components. So he's saying, like, if we can solve these Yeah, I don't remember the number either, but it's like, if we can solve these eleven problems, Uh, then we will no longer age and die. Now that he has met a lot of resistance to that, there are a lot of people who disagree with him very strongly, despite his wizardly beard, sagely appearance. Maybe if he had just a slightly larger forehead, uh, in an

appetite for do and wind, we might buy into it more. Perhaps, I know you're joking, but I do think he gets a lot of mileage out of that beard. It it helps he has he he has the the appearance of of a wizard who is going to to help you achieve your goals. And uh, you know, and if you're a an aged individual with a lot of extra research dollars floating around, you might be inclined to to fund him.

You know. One more thing, sorry, I'm still thinking about this, the digital consciousness mortality thing that this is so assuming you have some kind of materialist conception of consciousness and you want to survive forever by having your consciousness downloaded into a computer. I'm skeptical of that idea too, by the way, because how does that transfer occur? But some

people think that will happen. Um uh, you have just fully abandoned your biological imperatives, Like the genes that built your brain, which generated the phenomenon of your mind, are just completely gone. Now like in our example where that you know, you're you are the brain and the vat on the robot. Now, um, what is that existence like? And at some point does that existence come back to bite you? Well? I mean it comes back to the moon. Right.

You can imagine obtaining the elixir and being told, hey, you sure you want to follow through with this? You know, you're gonna fly into the sky and become one with the moon or possibly live on the moon. Uh. I mean, yeah,

that's that's immortality. You've gotta be willing to transform. So maybe the idea of the digitizing consciousness, becoming a robot, having your brain living a vat like all these are just examples of sure, if you want immortality, you need to be open to the idea that immortality is transformation. And whatever you have now is not what you're going to have on the moon. It never is. Nope. All right, so there you have it. Uh. You know, you can

boil it down to specifics. You can certainly pick apart the details of Chinese symbolism, homophonic puns, the other particulars, but you know, in broader strokes, I think there's a lot of cohesion between these nit these universal ideas and questions concerning immortality, modern scientific inquiries into the possibility of immortality and our our hunger for it, uh, and these

myths and folklore traditions that we've looked at here. Oh and on one final note, if you have found this particular topic fascinating and you're interested in in Asian society, Asian culture, well, you should check out Asia Society and Asia Society dot org. It's the leading educational organization dedicated to promoting mutual understanding and strengthening partnerships among people's leaders and institutions of Asia and the United States in a

global context. So we're talking the fields of arts, businesses, culture, education, and policy. The society provides insight, generates ideas, and promotes collaboration to address present challenges and create a shared future. So check them out at AGES Society dot org. They have plenty of educational materials. There's a museum in New York City. Uh and you can donate and support at

that website. Now, I know what some of you are probably thinking, Hey, Chinese mythology is great, but there are these other wonderful wells of of myth out there, and they're full of immortals as well. You guys should cover them. Well, we very well, we might if there's enough interest out there.

I mean, immortality. It's a big subject. It's a big subject, and uh yeah, and I have a feeling that just about any major myth cycle is going to have something in there that it reflects something a little differently than what we looked at here today, so would be uh be cool to dive into them and there's enoughs and in the meantime, if you want to check out other episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, head and over the Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com, that's where

you'll find all the episod you'll find various blog posts, videos, links out to our social media accounts such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, Instagram, you name it, we're probably on. And if you want to get in touch with us directly, as always, you can email us at blow the Mind at how stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics. Is that how stuff Works dot com