True Anon Truth Feed - Episode 284: Falun Gong Part 2: Qigong Fever
Aired: 2023-04-18
Duration: 01:07:49


=== Qigong Boom Practices (14:06) ===

[00:00:00]  Ladies and gentlemen, we have a lot to cover today, so we'll just get right into it.
[00:00:05]  My name is the Venerable Baby Master Brace Belden.
[00:00:09]  I'm Liz.
[00:00:10]  We are, of course, joined by our producer, Yank Chomsky, and this is Trunan, China before communism.
[00:00:39]  Ladies and gentlemen, if we want to explain to you what the fuck Falun Gong is all about, we actually got to start with a different Gong here.
[00:00:48]  And no, I'm not talking about the one that Jung Chomsky is about to insert.
[00:00:54]  I'm talking about Qigong.
[00:00:55]  Qigong.
[00:00:56]  This is basically like Chinese yoga, which sounds nice.
[00:01:01]  It does sound nice.
[00:01:02]  I mean, I'm sure, listen, a little, if you've ever walked through a park in Chinatown, I'm thinking particularly that one park next to the crazy blade runner-looking hotel, the Hilton, I think, in fucking Chinatown and San Francisco.
[00:01:14]  You walk through that motherfucker and there'll be like 40 people every at any given moment doing Qigong out there.
[00:01:20]  Or Tai Chi.
[00:01:21]  Or Tai Chi.
[00:01:22]  Yeah.
[00:01:23]  But Qigong is basically a slow series of movements that you do.
[00:01:29]  It's sort of like a physical spiritual practice, right?
[00:01:34]  It's usually a lot less intense, especially than some kinds of yoga.
[00:01:38]  I don't believe, for instance, they do hot Qigong.
[00:01:41]  No, they should, though.
[00:01:42]  They should.
[00:01:42]  That would be cool.
[00:01:43]  But we really have to get Qigong out of the way before we can actually get to Falun Gong and talk about that.
[00:01:50]  So what is Qigong?
[00:01:53]  Well, it's a series of movements.
[00:01:55]  Like you said, everyone knows what Tai Chi.
[00:01:56]  I think everyone knows what Tai Chi is.
[00:01:58]  But it's a series of specific kind of like hand-body movements that are meant to cultivate, that's gong, your qi, that's your energy, right?
[00:02:13]  I did a flipums with that, but you know what I'm saying.
[00:02:17]  And yeah, it's, you know, it's pretty popular.
[00:02:20]  It's very old, really like ancient.
[00:02:22]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:02:23]  I will say that.
[00:02:24]  Like that is no bullshit.
[00:02:25]  People have been doing variations of Qigong, although not named as such, which is very important.
[00:02:30]  But people have been doing variations of these sort of like slow spiritual physical practices in China for a really long time.
[00:02:38]  I mean, there's records of it from like over a thousand years ago, right?
[00:02:41]  Yeah.
[00:02:42]  But it was not Qigong as Qigong until actually relatively recently.
[00:02:49]  One reason for its popularity is, this is at least what some scholars think, is that in some Chinese cultures, not all Chinese culture written as a large, but in some, especially different like local village cultures, right?
[00:03:00]  There's less an emphasis on mind-body dualism than monism.
[00:03:05]  You know what I mean?
[00:03:06]  Like, it's basically it's like it's one system.
[00:03:08]  We've talked about it in the show.
[00:03:09]  Yeah.
[00:03:10]  You know, physical practices also have a pretty long history in China as well.
[00:03:14]  I mean, yoga also has been present in China for a long time.
[00:03:19]  Some Taoist practices, they practice inner alchemy, which is an elixir of life created from inside of you.
[00:03:25]  Of course, naturally.
[00:03:26]  Yeah, of course, classic.
[00:03:28]  But they've always sort of been a physical practice has been, I think, especially more than a lot of European cultures, a big part of Chinese spiritual life as well.
[00:03:37]  So there's also been for a long time, ever since, really ever since contact, like sustained contact with the West, but especially since the late 1800s, and I know that I'm probably painting with too broad a strokes here, but this is generally true, a real emphasis on scientizing, scientizing, and modernizing from essentially like the Chinese intelligentsia, right?
[00:04:02]  I mean, China is a massive country with huge rural areas.
[00:04:06]  And so you'd have these sort of like intellectuals or elites, but also intellectuals in the urban centers who would sort of decry this state of like the backwardsness of China and the backwardsness of rural village life in China, right?
[00:04:18]  And be like, we have to modernize.
[00:04:20]  We have to become like these Western countries.
[00:04:21]  We have to like, we have to, you know, become a real modern country.
[00:04:25]  This, especially in the Republican era, was a really, really big push.
[00:04:30]  And in fact, during like the 20s up until, well, I mean, as you'll see for a very long time, this was actually a big contradiction within Chinese society, right?
[00:04:39]  You had these sort of like, you had these like village cultures that were really in many ways medieval, or I mean, even more ancient than that, in a lot of their, in a lot of their practices.
[00:04:51]  And then you had these urban centers with people who were like, no, we actually have to, like, we have to modern medicine, technology, all these different practices.
[00:04:58]  And there was that tension between them.
[00:04:59]  And that tension really is something that is an important factor in the story of not only the Qigong boom that we'll get to, but also in the Falun Gong.
[00:05:08]  And in the revolution, right?
[00:05:11]  I mean, because Mao, I mean, everyone knows, like, or I think everyone knows, but, you know, Mao obviously from the countryside supporting the peasants.
[00:05:18]  But the push was to modernize the state.
[00:05:20]  I mean, that was...
[00:05:22]  You know what I'm saying?
[00:05:23]  Like, it wasn't.
[00:05:24]  So they were trying to, you know, kind of resolve some of those contradictions by, you know, heavily industrializing.
[00:05:31]  Exactly.
[00:05:32]  And so, I mean, also a very famous part of the Chinese Revolution, right, is that Mao and the red Chinese, the communists, right?
[00:05:40]  They were sort of pushed out to these rural areas during the Civil War, these base areas, right?
[00:05:44]  And in those base areas, not only did they have a civil war, but they also had a little Second World War going on, too, between them and Japan, which the nationalists weren't really fighting.
[00:05:53]  The red Chinese had to fight.
[00:05:56]  And they didn't really have access to a lot of modern medicine.
[00:05:59]  And that was a big, I mean, that was a big sticking point for the communists during the Civil War.
[00:06:05]  Not like the nationalists had an abundance of Western medicine either, of like modern medicine.
[00:06:11]  And there was this sort of reliance, especially in the more remote areas, like the Chinese, the communist base areas that were like very far away from supply lines or industrial centers.
[00:06:23]  They really had to rely upon local techniques of healing and of like, of practices, essentially.
[00:06:33]  Okay, 1949, right?
[00:06:36]  Civil war ends.
[00:06:37]  The good guys win.
[00:06:39]  We've got fucking red China.
[00:06:42]  Unfortunately, it's 1949 in China, and there's also still not a lot of modern medicine, right?
[00:06:48]  But in the liberated zone of southern Hubei, Communist Party cadre, Huang Yeoting, who I'm no doubt pronouncing his name wrong, following the example of Liu Guizhen, who is another local Communist Party cadre, basically invent Qigong.
[00:07:07]  Or they like standardized Qigong.
[00:07:09]  Qigong, as such, to be clear, did not exist before 1949.
[00:07:14]  It was just like kind of a set of practices that everyone kind of knew.
[00:07:17]  It was like, oh, this is like a little energy thing that you kind of do.
[00:07:19]  Exactly, yeah.
[00:07:20]  And like it differed from place to place.
[00:07:22]  There's regional differences.
[00:07:24]  100%.
[00:07:24]  But this dude, fucking Liu, let's just call his ass Liu.
[00:07:29]  Liu is out there and he's got all this shit wrong with him, right?
[00:07:31]  Like he's like, he's a Communist Party member, he's a cadre who works in office, but like his fucking blood, I think it's like his bladder's all fucked up.
[00:07:38]  His kidneys may be a little fucked up.
[00:07:40]  And he goes and he does what becomes known very soon as, soon after, as Qigong, and he fucking heals his own ass, right?
[00:07:48]  I mean, maybe I just want to wear on his own, but you know, he heals his own ass.
[00:07:51]  And like all good communists, party leadership was like, huh, let's check this out.
[00:07:56]  We should standardize this.
[00:07:58]  100%.
[00:07:58]  Centralize, standardize.
[00:08:00]  And so they have all these meetings.
[00:08:02]  They're like, well, we can name it this, or we can name it this, or we can name it this.
[00:08:05]  And they finally settle on Qigong.
[00:08:08]  And they basically are like, listen, we can't get a lot of modern medicine, but we also sort of have to like make, like, you know, the Chinese communists, of course, wanted to modernize the country, right?
[00:08:19]  But also huge mass of the base of the party was the peasantry.
[00:08:23]  And so they sort of had to, you know, figure out these contradictions, right?
[00:08:27]  Yeah.
[00:08:27]  Between a lot of peasant practices, oftentimes superstitious practices, and this like modernizing impulse and to create a modern industrial state, right?
[00:08:36]  So, I mean, they were like actively promoting it.
[00:08:38]  Yeah.
[00:08:39]  You know, kind of alongside acupuncture in the same way.
[00:08:42]  Exactly.
[00:08:42]  Right.
[00:08:43]  Wasn't it's not as like new agey goopy, obviously, at this point.
[00:08:48]  Yeah, I mean, that's something that you really see actually, well, up until a certain no, actually, you see it basically the whole time, but they sort of try to scientize it, right?
[00:08:56]  They try to be like, This is a material thing, like qi is a real thing, and like you know, these are actual medical practices.
[00:09:03]  And a lot of party elite, like you know, the people running the fucking show actually practice qigong at these sort of like health clinics, right?
[00:09:10]  They don't, they're not like trying to like cure their cancer with it or whatever, but they're like, you know, they're doing it to be like to promote healthy lifestyle.
[00:09:17]  Yeah, so bam, cultural revolution happens, mid-60s, got to destroy the four olds, all these superstitions, all these fucking you know, stupid motherfuckers, fuck this shit.
[00:09:29]  All these young people, they go fucking wild, and qigong falls way out of favor.
[00:09:34]  Yeah, that's not gonna last, yeah, yeah, not at all, and then something fucked up happens.
[00:09:42]  I don't even want to talk about it, but I guess we have to.
[00:09:45]  This is a really tough day for you.
[00:09:46]  I just, I just was like, I don't know why I have to like talk about this in public, but um, the great helmsman dies, Mao Zedong dies, and it's just like whatever, but yeah, I don't even care.
[00:09:58]  Uh, you're doing your succession thing, right?
[00:10:00]  I just, it's just, I haven't seen it, and so but he dies.
[00:10:05]  Okay, I'm pretending to care, but I actually haven't seen succession.
[00:10:07]  Um, so Mao Zedong dies, Gang of Four takes over.
[00:10:11]  Unfortunately, they're overthrown, and you know, everyone knows the story here, right?
[00:10:18]  China starts to maybe change the way their economy is open up, open up a little bit, why don't you?
[00:10:25]  Yeah, uh, some of the people involved in the coup against the Gang of Four are Qigong practitioners themselves.
[00:10:33]  And so, kind of what happens here is not only like are these markets opening up, right, but the media market is opening up, and there is a sort of boom of tabloid-style newspapers, right?
[00:10:49]  And now, China has, and this is in the late 1970s, early 1980s, a domestic market for a little something we hear in America, although I guess we're technically borrowing this term from India, I guess.
[00:11:02]  A market for gurus.
[00:11:04]  Yes.
[00:11:04]  And boy, is that motherfucking market filled.
[00:11:07]  This is basically the beginning of what becomes known as the Qigong boom.
[00:11:11]  Yeah.
[00:11:11]  And I mean, that makes sense.
[00:11:12]  I mean, it's in the 80s.
[00:11:13]  This is all very 80s.
[00:11:15]  So fucking 80s.
[00:11:16]  And so you've got this mass, this like new media market opening up, perfect for gurus in tablets, in newspapers, on TV, of like taking advantage of basically like, I mean, imagine, remember like televangelism?
[00:11:30]  100%.
[00:11:31]  It's that, but like for what looks like Tai Chi.
[00:11:35]  And it's funny.
[00:11:37]  I will say the televangelism comparison really works with a lot of this stuff, right?
[00:11:42]  Because a lot of the, I guess, major incidents in the Qigong boom resemble almost one-to-one like faith healing beings.
[00:11:49]  Yeah, absolutely.
[00:11:50]  And like the way that these guys act is almost like a direct comparison to like really over-the-top like Southern Baptist faith healers or something.
[00:12:00]  I was going to say that like Falun Gong is basically, I was describing them to someone today as like, it's like a weird Buddhist version of the Westboro Baptist Church.
[00:12:10]  Yeah, yes, absolutely.
[00:12:12]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:12:14]  I would say that's a Which is really fucking crazy when you think that they're at Lincoln's On already exactly.
[00:12:20]  So there's all these like gurus and grandmasters coming about.
[00:12:24]  And I mean, I should remind you, of course, there is this huge modernizing and scientizing impulse in Chinese society, right?
[00:12:32]  And so they actually have these like official licensing organizations who will license these grandmasters.
[00:12:39]  And I want to be clear here.
[00:12:40]  It's not like every Qigong practitioner in China is like, this will give me supernatural powers.
[00:12:46]  You know, it's not everyone.
[00:12:47]  People were just like, this probably has some health benefits for the most part.
[00:12:50]  And it's also sort of like a fad and it's a craze.
[00:12:53]  And there's tens of millions.
[00:12:55]  It's the macarena.
[00:12:56]  It's the fucking mock arena.
[00:12:57]  And there's tens of millions of people participating in this.
[00:12:59]  And, you know, from the early 80s until kind of the mid-90s, well, really until the late 90s until something happens, quite a lot of charlatans and frauds and freaks come out of the world.
[00:13:13]  Snake oils.
[00:13:13]  Snake oil.
[00:13:14]  And to hammer that point home a little more is the Qigong boom was not the only boom that happened during this time period.
[00:13:22]  It's part and parcel with what you might call a boom in the supernatural in China.
[00:13:31]  They kind of had the same thing going on at the same moment.
[00:13:34]  Exactly.
[00:13:34]  That's something that's so striking about this is like that stuff, this stuff was so huge here, right?
[00:13:40]  I mean, everybody believed that like there was, especially like there was also like the satanic panic and all this stuff.
[00:13:45]  Like the witchcraft and supernatural stuff was a stranger thing style, really big in the 80s.
[00:13:50]  Yeah.
[00:13:51]  But also faith healing and gurus and all that stuff.
[00:13:54]  Absolutely.
[00:13:55]  Massive.
[00:13:55]  And so I guess this was really a worldwide phenomenon that was happening.
[00:13:59]  In China, this sort of like supernatural paraphysical craze starts with a little something called ear reading.

=== Supernatural Paraphysical Craze (15:32) ===

[00:14:07]  What?
[00:14:08]  Yes.
[00:14:09]  Is that something like when someone hears to you?
[00:14:11]  Yes.
[00:14:12]  It's when someone hears to you.
[00:14:13]  I know I was telling my friend about this yesterday and she's like, you mean listening?
[00:14:18]  Yeah.
[00:14:18]  But no, ear reading as in being able to read a book with your ears.
[00:14:23]  So basically the first report of ear reading occurs with this child named Tang Yu in 1979 is like reported in all these sort of tabloid style newspapers as being able to read through his ears.
[00:14:36]  And all these other really similar reports start popping up throughout China.
[00:14:41]  Basically, like it's like bat boy shit, weekly world news, right?
[00:14:45]  Yeah, I touch Jesus when I have died.
[00:14:47]  Exactly.
[00:14:48]  Yeah, yeah, I saw, I, I, I don't know what that I touched Jesus and I have died.
[00:14:52]  No, you know about all the stories of the kids, like, oh, I died for like two minutes and I touched Jesus.
[00:14:58]  Wait, yeah, Colton Burpo.
[00:14:59]  Colton Burpo.
[00:15:00]  Yeah, exactly.
[00:15:01]  Wait, weren't we going to do a Burpo?
[00:15:02]  I think we're going to do a Burpo episode, but I also want to do an episode on a book that I read at Monarch called A Child Called It, Burpo, which is a child called It, which was like a similar thing, except he was like, I a fake abused child.
[00:15:16]  Like, he just made it all up, and his like sibling is his parents.
[00:15:19]  Like, you just, what are you talking about?
[00:15:20]  You had a normal life.
[00:15:22]  And I want to do it.
[00:15:23]  I also, a million little pieces.
[00:15:26]  Remember that?
[00:15:27]  No.
[00:15:28]  Oh, James Right.
[00:15:28]  The Oprah.
[00:15:29]  He now owns a massive esports company, which is really, that's kind of fancy.
[00:15:33]  Esports is so crazy.
[00:15:35]  And Oprah apologized to him.
[00:15:37]  Well, anyways, crazier than esports, check this one out, is ear sports.
[00:15:40]  And it's particularly the sport of reading, which many people were claiming to do with their ears.
[00:15:45]  You can't do that.
[00:15:46]  The Tucker style?
[00:15:48]  That makes no sense.
[00:15:49]  Well, that's what the Chinese government is.
[00:15:51]  Imagine you could just listen to a book.
[00:15:52]  Well, I guess that's 100%.
[00:15:54]  So, in fact, this young child, this young Chinese child, Tang Yu, Patreon.com, invented Audible.
[00:16:02]  So those are disproved by the Chinese government, which imagine having to be the scientist that gets sent out to be like, yeah, the kid can't read with his ears.
[00:16:12]  But that doesn't stop this crap.
[00:16:14]  All these people are saying that this is selling papers.
[00:16:16]  Good on them.
[00:16:18]  Because you know what?
[00:16:19]  We don't even do that.
[00:16:21]  So you think the U.S. government should debunk things?
[00:16:23]  Is that what you're saying?
[00:16:24]  I'm saying they didn't debunk any of the televangelists or anything.
[00:16:27]  Oh, that's their constitutional right.
[00:16:30]  I will say those guys mostly debunk themselves by just having rapacious sexual appetites.
[00:16:35]  Yeah, no one seems to care about it.
[00:16:37]  I don't understand that.
[00:16:38]  All those guys, is there not, is there one that's not horny?
[00:16:42]  No.
[00:16:42]  Anyways, so the ear reading thing, kind of like, they're like, all right, this isn't real, but people still believe it, obviously.
[00:16:50]  That maybe some unscrupulous newspaper editors and magazine editors realize that there's actually a great appetite for this stuff.
[00:16:57]  And so there's this sort of ESP craze that happens.
[00:17:00]  In fact, China does all these official studies on ESP.
[00:17:03]  And around this time, actually, I think this is in the 1970s, a scientist says he proves that Qi is a real material physical thing.
[00:17:10]  So again, it was the 70s.
[00:17:12]  This is the modern.
[00:17:13]  I know, I'm sure.
[00:17:14]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:17:14]  They're just catching up to what everyone was doing in the 60s.
[00:17:16]  Chi's real, man.
[00:17:18]  No, we, we found it.
[00:17:18]  I mean, the Soviets were looking into it.
[00:17:20]  That's the thing.
[00:17:21]  Yeah, I know.
[00:17:21]  It is funny because they're- They're like, we split with them, but.
[00:17:24]  I know.
[00:17:25]  And if only the Soviets and the fucking Chinese hadn't split, they could have had technology by now.
[00:17:31]  Exactly.
[00:17:31]  Okay.
[00:17:32]  Or we'd be able to teleport.
[00:17:33]  But all these like reports of supernatural powers were appearing in China.
[00:17:38]  The government was officially studying this stuff.
[00:17:40]  This stuff was all over the newspapers.
[00:17:42]  And at the same time, the Qigong masters were claiming to have these powers.
[00:17:47]  And so there were all these guys who were leading millions strong movements of Qigong practitioners who were like, I can fly.
[00:17:56]  And I can actually, if you have a kidney stone, I can destroy it with my mind.
[00:18:01]  And all this shit.
[00:18:01]  Basically, they were saying they could do magic.
[00:18:15]  So the Falun Gong was one of these groups, but not obviously the only one, right?
[00:18:20]  Like you said, there's a bunch of these groups coming, like popping up everywhere.
[00:18:23]  Yeah.
[00:18:24]  And the founder of the Falun Gong is one of these guru types.
[00:18:27]  100%.
[00:18:28]  There are some things that differentiate him from the others, but he is absolutely part and parcel with the rest.
[00:18:33]  Yeah, his name is Li Hongzi.
[00:18:35]  I'm going to probably call him Lee.
[00:18:37]  Yeah.
[00:18:38]  He is quite a doozy.
[00:18:43]  So if you're.
[00:18:45]  Let me give you some advice, listeners.
[00:18:47]  If you ever found a religious movement, you really got to get your biography out there way before anyone else can do it.
[00:18:53]  That's very tough in the day and age of Google.
[00:18:56]  I know.
[00:18:56]  That's what I'm saying.
[00:18:57]  So like, if you have a son who can do magic, if you were listening to this out there and you have a son or a daughter who can do magic, don't let them go on the internet and kind of debut them at 20, you know, because you don't want a digital footprint.
[00:19:09]  If your son can fly, you don't want him to have a digital footprint because then people will be like, yeah, he can fly, but he also loves Megan Trainer mother.
[00:19:16]  And he does dances to it.
[00:19:17]  That'll be magic.
[00:19:19]  It's going to hurt his guru.
[00:19:21]  To me, honestly, most of his magic sometimes.
[00:19:25]  Li Hongzhi's official, and by official, I mean the Falun Gong style biography, is sort of extraordinary, right?
[00:19:35]  I mean, in a way, he's like, he's a very average guy.
[00:19:40]  He says he was born on May 13th, 1951, which happens to be the day Buddha's birthday is celebrated in some parts of China.
[00:19:49]  Yeah, I'm calling fake on that.
[00:19:50]  He changed his birthday.
[00:19:51]  You're saying shenanigans?
[00:19:52]  Yeah.
[00:19:53]  You are correct.
[00:19:54]  He is shenanigan that.
[00:19:55]  He was actually born in July 1952, but he said the quote, records got changed during the Cultural Revolution.
[00:20:02]  Why does he want to be older?
[00:20:04]  I know.
[00:20:05]  Well, that's the thing is, Liz, he's enlightened.
[00:20:08]  A lot of people think they have to lie and say they're younger, but he's actually like, what if I was maybe.
[00:20:12]  But see, it's different for men.
[00:20:13]  He's trying to get, because, you know, men, when you're older, you know, you get to kind of cloony a bit, but women got to go younger.
[00:20:22]  So he was trying to get to the cloony part faster.
[00:20:24]  I like the idea of people breaking into hospitals and like the record during the cultural revolution and changing a guy's birthday by eight months or whatever, like seven months.
[00:20:35]  They're like, yeah, this will get him.
[00:20:38]  Yeah.
[00:20:39]  You know, he says he was born in these poor circumstances, raised by hardworking parents.
[00:20:44]  And at a very early age, in fact, at the age of eight, he was visited by all of these masters of Qigong who were awed at his extraordinary powers.
[00:20:54]  And the dude had superpowers at age eight.
[00:20:58]  He could fly.
[00:20:59]  He said during hide and seek, he could literally turn invisible.
[00:21:03]  This is what he claims like today.
[00:21:04]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:21:05]  This is in his official biography.
[00:21:07]  This is insane.
[00:21:08]  I know.
[00:21:08]  Imagine reading a book.
[00:21:09]  Like, you're like, huh, maybe I'll check out this meditative practice.
[00:21:12]  And the dude is like, yeah, when I was eight, and this is a real claim he makes, I could do, like, I could move my hand a little bit and I could take nails out of boards.
[00:21:21]  What if you're like, man, it was nice hanging out with Aunt Cheryl in New York City for the weekend.
[00:21:26]  And we caught a production of Xinya.
[00:21:28]  And maybe I'm going to look into this book I picked up at the show and talked to Aunt Cheryl about it at Thanksgiving.
[00:21:34]  And then you see, oh, he says you could fly.
[00:21:37]  He says he can fly.
[00:21:38]  And that is something that like this dude, it's not just like, sometimes you tell people, you're like, yeah, I graduated college or whatever.
[00:21:45]  Like, yeah, yeah, no, no, no.
[00:21:46]  Like, I'm sort of the, I'm kind of like the manager at the HM or whatever.
[00:21:50]  Like, you know, you tell a little white lie at a party and then like you're like, fuck.
[00:21:53]  No, I shouldn't have done that.
[00:21:56]  Lee says he can fly all the fucking time.
[00:21:59]  Yeah.
[00:22:00]  And I got to tell you, and this is my thing.
[00:22:02]  Anybody who can fly out there, show me air.
[00:22:06]  Give me an inch.
[00:22:08]  They can't do it.
[00:22:09]  They can't do it.
[00:22:10]  If anybody listening to this can float an inch off of the ground.
[00:22:14]  You know who says they can do it?
[00:22:15]  Who?
[00:22:15]  The Transcendental Meditation.
[00:22:17]  Really?
[00:22:18]  Yeah.
[00:22:18]  They say they can fly too?
[00:22:19]  It's not flying, but it is like a kind of hovering situation.
[00:22:24]  Wait.
[00:22:25]  They say they can hover?
[00:22:27]  Yeah.
[00:22:27]  But I think it's when they're sitting.
[00:22:29]  I don't know.
[00:22:30]  I'm not totally sure.
[00:22:31]  Like, do you think David Lynch thinks he can hover?
[00:22:34]  Today, I'm going to put these panties in my mouth.
[00:22:37]  I feel like he's talked about it, but I could be wrong.
[00:22:40]  He has a whole book on this.
[00:22:42]  I know, but who's going to read the David Lynch?
[00:22:44]  I didn't read it.
[00:22:44]  And I've said this before on the podcast.
[00:22:46]  You got to listen to it because you know who narrates it.
[00:22:48]  Who?
[00:22:48]  David Lynch.
[00:22:49]  Oh, well, yeah.
[00:22:49]  I get a stupid push on my part.
[00:22:51]  Wait, you listen to the David Lynch TM book?
[00:22:54]  Yeah, of course.
[00:22:55]  Fishing with, what is it, fishing with?
[00:22:57]  Catching the big fish.
[00:22:57]  Yeah, Catching the Big Fly.
[00:22:59]  I was going to call it Fishing with Water.
[00:23:01]  Fishing with Water is really good.
[00:23:03]  That's the name of a Shenyun dance.
[00:23:05]  Yeah, it fully is.
[00:23:08]  The Chinese government did a little bit of debunking on this motherfucker.
[00:23:12]  And basically what we find out is that his parents actually divorced at an early age.
[00:23:17]  They're like pretty normal parents.
[00:23:20]  He couldn't fly.
[00:23:22]  But all of the grandmasters he said visited him, it seems like he made them up.
[00:23:26]  Like they don't even exist in reality, let alone visited him.
[00:23:31]  He dropped out of school during the Cultural Revolution, respect.
[00:23:34]  But I mean, school was basically, I will say this.
[00:23:37]  China, we love it.
[00:23:38]  They just were like, you know what?
[00:23:40]  School's out for three years.
[00:23:41]  Go nuts.
[00:23:42]  He goes, you know, we don't really know what he was doing.
[00:23:44]  Yeah, but then they got to deal with this shit.
[00:23:46]  I know, exactly.
[00:23:47]  That's true.
[00:23:49]  He was probably flying all over the place during this point.
[00:23:51]  Yeah, they're like, try to keep him in school.
[00:23:53]  You can't.
[00:23:54]  He can just fly away.
[00:23:55]  Well, this motherfucker apparently learns the goddamn trombone.
[00:23:58]  I don't believe that.
[00:23:59]  You don't think he – no, he did learn the trombone.
[00:24:01]  No, they say that he was a prodigy.
[00:24:04]  Oh, yeah.
[00:24:05]  Oh, you're right.
[00:24:05]  No.
[00:24:06]  I do not believe that.
[00:24:07]  Well, the Chinese government would back you up.
[00:24:09]  He was a fucking horror.
[00:24:11]  He was a horn player.
[00:24:12]  He was kind of like, he was kind of like Ornette Coleman of the People's Liberation Army propaganda unit that he was in.
[00:24:18]  And he played the cool jazz horn for about six, I think six years, between 72 and 78, in the army, and then he became a clerk.
[00:24:29]  His mother says, well, Liz, actually, can you read this quote in your most matronly voice?
[00:24:33]  I brought him up.
[00:24:34]  Don't listen to his nonsense.
[00:24:36]  I don't know what that was.
[00:24:40]  Well, in the 1980s, he makes his mark, and he starts actually studying among real Qigong practitioners and masters.
[00:24:59]  So he is able to kind of start recruiting members very quickly because he, unlike a lot of other established gurus, is teaching practitioners his moves for free.
[00:25:14]  Yeah.
[00:25:14]  which is a great move.
[00:25:16]  100%.
[00:25:16]  Just undercut the competition.
[00:25:18]  And he's like, I'll make so much money from merch because he does start selling merch pretty quickly.
[00:25:24]  I'll make so much money from merch that I can just have the free, I'll get him in the door this way.
[00:25:29]  They'll buy the book.
[00:25:30]  Yeah.
[00:25:30]  So, yeah, you mentioned the book.
[00:25:31]  He published a couple of books that were pretty influential.
[00:25:34]  Didn't you read one of them?
[00:25:36]  I read, I wouldn't say I read the whole thing, but I read many excerpts.
[00:25:41]  I read much of the book in different chunks called, I don't know how to pronounce this, but I'm going to say it.
[00:25:49]  Suan Z-H-U-A-N Falun.
[00:25:52]  Zhuan Falun.
[00:25:53]  Zhuan Falun.
[00:25:54]  That's what I would think.
[00:25:55]  Zhuan Wick.
[00:25:59]  They were selling that at the merch booth.
[00:26:01]  The 15-year-old fucking white boy was selling that at the gig we went to.
[00:26:05]  Yeah, so his group, Falun Gong, I mean, it starts taking off.
[00:26:08]  Yeah.
[00:26:08]  Yeah.
[00:26:09]  It gets pretty popular pretty quickly.
[00:26:11]  It wasn't the biggest one that was going on in China, you know, in the late 80s, early 90s.
[00:26:16]  That's kind of where we're at right now.
[00:26:19]  But it was like pretty big.
[00:26:22]  Yeah.
[00:26:24]  He claims the Falun Gong now claims that they had 100 million members in China in the 1990s.
[00:26:31]  That claim, it's funny.
[00:26:34]  Like we were talking about this yesterday, Liz.
[00:26:36]  Falun Gong has all these claims that there's like I can see where they got it from and then I can see where kind of the lie starts to begin, right?
[00:26:47]  Because there are estimated probably about a hundred million Qigong practitioners in China in the 1990s.
[00:26:54]  That's like saying, like, okay, 100 million people practice yoga.
[00:26:58]  Yeah.
[00:26:58]  And you're like, well, that's probably true.
[00:27:01]  But they're just saying that for Qigong, but then attributing that to then the Falun Gong.
[00:27:05]  Exactly, exactly.
[00:27:06]  So it's like, it's like saying every yoga practitioner belongs to my fully nude hot yoga place that never fired its cleaning person two years ago.
[00:27:14]  Yeah, funky brace yoga.
[00:27:15]  Funky brace yoga.
[00:27:16]  And believe me, the funk is in the building.
[00:27:19]  So they start getting pretty big, right?
[00:27:23]  I mean, they're not the biggest, like you said, but they start getting pretty big.
[00:27:26]  And they have all these adherents.
[00:27:28]  And Qigong is like all these different groups, like you kind of nailed it.
[00:27:32]  Like they are like kind of these, like I would say they're even less centralized than like evangelical things, right?
[00:27:40]  Like they have these different centers and stuff, but like it's not like he's like holding worship mass every Sunday or whatever.
[00:27:48]  He's basically just traveling around the country giving these lectures.
[00:27:52]  And funnily enough, he's actually pretty heavily supported by not just the Chinese government, because there are like a lot of Qigong practitioners pretty high up in the Chinese government at this point.
[00:28:03]  But Falun Gong specifically is being promoted by the Ministry of Public Security.
[00:28:08]  So they actually are doing it right.
[00:28:10]  You know what I mean?
[00:28:11]  They're getting in with the cops there.
[00:28:14]  And then he actually gives all these lectures at the Ministry of Public Security University.
[00:28:19]  So he's like at the fucking cop school.
[00:28:21]  He's like, check this out.
[00:28:22]  Breathe.
[00:28:24]  And they're doing that for him.
[00:28:26]  He, yeah, he's, he's, I got to say, the man star is rising.
[00:28:30]  And he has official support from sections of the government.
[00:28:33]  Yeah.
[00:28:34]  But China as a whole starts to really kind of try to shut this stuff down starting in the kind of like early to mid 90s.
[00:28:42]  Yeah.
[00:28:43]  And they start really going after a bunch of these groups.
[00:28:46]  I mean, for a couple reasons, let's talk about one, turns out this isn't like yoga.
[00:28:51]  Yeah.
[00:28:52]  They can't really find a lot of scientific backing for a lot of the well-being claims.
[00:28:56]  I mean, I'm sure breathing and movement, that's great.
[00:28:58]  It's probably, you know, I'm just going to say, yoga, you know, it does a lot more than that.
[00:29:04]  Yeah, exactly.
[00:29:04]  But it's like, I get like standing there and kind of moving your arm isn't, I'm sure it's good for you in some way.
[00:29:11]  I don't think it's probably going to cure your kidney stone.
[00:29:15]  Well, them kind of coming in, the government kind of coming in and cracking down on this stuff then led to a lot of people being like, well, wait a second, why are you calling us quacks?
[00:29:26]  That's not fair.
[00:29:27]  And a lot of the Qigong leaders were then able to kind of position themselves as heretics against the crazy ideology of the CCP.

=== 12 Year Firestorm (12:35) ===

[00:29:39]  Yeah, exactly.
[00:29:40]  Funnily enough, some of those masters who don't do that try to be like, actually, I can prove that it's real.
[00:29:47]  And this one dude stood there and tried to blow up another guy's like, I think it's like a stone in his gallbladder or whatever with his mind.
[00:29:56]  And then he doesn't do it.
[00:29:57]  And then after two hours, he's like, oh, my bad.
[00:30:00]  You can only do it.
[00:30:01]  You can only do it to yourself.
[00:30:03]  So if I had that, I could do it.
[00:30:06]  But you only realized two hours into it.
[00:30:07]  Yeah, I can't fuck with it in his.
[00:30:09]  But oh, but I forgot.
[00:30:11]  I forgot that I couldn't do it.
[00:30:12]  And one of the public exhibitions of like that were like performing these activities went really wrong when one of the dudes he was trying to cure had a heart, a totally unrelated heart attack and died on stage.
[00:30:24]  And that was kind of a black mark.
[00:30:25]  Like, so all these kind of embarrassing things started to happen.
[00:30:29]  So the People's Republic starts kind of coming down on Qigong and they really start targeting these groups, different groups, especially more wacky ones, like Zong Gong.
[00:30:42]  And so Zong Gong's leader, who according to one of his like closed lieutenants, very likely murdered some of his followers and probably raped a woman.
[00:30:51]  This guy flees to America, I believe to Pasadena, which is we love.
[00:30:57]  That's nice.
[00:30:57]  I mean, what are you fleeing from Iran?
[00:30:59]  Jesus, what are you doing?
[00:31:00]  A rom-com?
[00:31:01]  Exactly.
[00:31:02]  He sort of sets up shop there and it's like, I'm a dissident or whatever, and then is immediately arrested by the American police for just beating the shit out of his female housekeeper.
[00:31:11]  Oh, Jesus.
[00:31:12]  Yeah.
[00:31:12]  And then he dies in a car accident, almost certainly his own fault.
[00:31:18]  And all his followers are like, it was the Chinese government that did it.
[00:31:21]  And then everyone stops believing in him.
[00:31:23]  Well, Falun Gong, unlike a lot of other groups, doesn't fold.
[00:31:27]  Because a lot of, you know, the PRC, they shut down these clinics.
[00:31:30]  They shut, you know, they're trying to get everyone to see that all this stuff is like basically pseudoscience quackery.
[00:31:35]  And Falun Gong just like doubles down, which I got to be real, if you're a movement leader facing some hard times, double down.
[00:31:43]  Double down.
[00:31:44]  Always double down.
[00:31:45]  And that's what they did.
[00:31:46]  They respond with these insane demonstrations where they basically sent like, you know, there's varying, you know, varying reports on how many followers were sent.
[00:31:58]  Anywhere between 10 and 20,000.
[00:32:00]  I find that to be a decent discrepancy.
[00:32:04]  That's about 100% discrepancy.
[00:32:07]  But they send them down to like basically the HQ for CCP members in Beijing do like a Jan 6 style, but Qigong style, which means they just sit outside quietly doing their movements.
[00:32:20]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:32:21]  I actually, I've seen them do this in front of like various, like they used to do this in front of the Chinese embassy in San Francisco.
[00:32:27]  They would just kind of like sit there.
[00:32:29]  Yeah.
[00:32:30]  And this, this was in April of 1999.
[00:32:32]  And I would say the party got kind of spooked by it, a little freaked out, mostly because they didn't know that they were going to do this.
[00:32:42]  They got pissed that they didn't have the intelligence on the ground that Falun Gong was going to kind of like start doing this stuff.
[00:32:48]  And they got a little, I would say, a little concerned that some of this could get out of hand.
[00:32:54]  Now, if you remember, this is about 10 years after something called the Tiananmen Square incident, I guess.
[00:33:02]  Yeah, we were both there.
[00:33:03]  We were both there.
[00:33:04]  Classic.
[00:33:04]  On opposing sides.
[00:33:06]  But interestingly enough, neither the demonstrators nor the government sides.
[00:33:10]  We were on two different seats.
[00:33:12]  The other side.
[00:33:12]  Third and fourth sides.
[00:33:14]  They were North-South, we were East-West.
[00:33:16]  Exactly.
[00:33:16]  In fact, we were East Meets West, which is really the original name of this podcast.
[00:33:21]  But that looms pretty large in the Chinese government's thinking in this, right?
[00:33:27]  Because there were different opportunities to basically have prevented the Tiananmen Square incident from happening.
[00:33:34]  This is according to the thinking of the government, but it's probably true.
[00:33:37]  And those opportunities were missed.
[00:33:40]  And the people who missed those opportunities basically had their careers ruined because of that.
[00:33:45]  And so they're being extra, extra.
[00:33:46]  I mean, this is a 10-year anniversary, extra, extra, extra, like, all right, this is, we got to stop this before we have another incident.
[00:33:55]  So the party bans them.
[00:33:58]  The party's like, shut it down.
[00:34:00]  You're done.
[00:34:00]  You're done.
[00:34:01]  You're hoodwinking people.
[00:34:04]  You're spreading lies.
[00:34:05]  This is all pseudoscience.
[00:34:07]  Like, they really focus on the social stability part where they're like, okay, everyone is believing all this quack science.
[00:34:13]  You're like disrupting the social fabric.
[00:34:16]  We're just trying to live, man.
[00:34:18]  Like, so they banned them.
[00:34:20]  They banned them.
[00:34:22]  And this is not received well by many Falun Gong practitioners.
[00:34:28]  And we actually have a pretty notorious incident, which funnily enough, if you read almost any Western reporting that's not contemporary from this period, because this was reported on the period, but like any contemporary Western reporting, this is never mentioned.
[00:34:43]  But at this time, in Tiananmen Square, seven Falun Gong practitioners travel quite a distance to get there and then set themselves on fire.
[00:34:53]  They immolate themselves, including, and this was a really big deal in China at the time, a 36-year-old woman douses herself on gasoline and sets herself on fire.
[00:35:02]  She dies, but her 12-year-old daughter, she douses in gasoline and sets on fire, lives.
[00:35:08]  And this is a really jarring incident for a lot of people because, I mean, this is, there's another factor to this as well.
[00:35:17]  I mean, this was not televised, but CNN was there to film it.
[00:35:22]  And there's some controversy about what's up with that.
[00:35:26]  Well, China says straight up, they're like, CNN knew about this ahead of time, obviously.
[00:35:32]  We're there to film it.
[00:35:33]  And basically are, you know, soft supporting with obviously the backing of the U.S. government.
[00:35:41]  Yeah.
[00:35:41]  Right.
[00:35:41]  This U.S. news station.
[00:35:44]  Soft, like, backing this organization that's trying to, in the classic U.S. way, just be the biggest nuisance ever in, you know, a government that we don't like.
[00:35:58]  100%.
[00:35:58]  Yeah.
[00:35:59]  Because Falun Gong, like, I mean, they are this, you know, kind of crazy cult, right?
[00:36:06]  Yeah.
[00:36:07]  But, like, to be clear, like, Falun Gong does not have the strength or the power to overthrow the Chinese government at any point in its history, today or then.
[00:36:16]  And like, I don't think, I mean, listen, I don't think the CIA are stupid.
[00:36:20]  And I definitely don't think they're stupid enough to think that like the Falun Gong were about to form a provisional government in China and like overthrow the state.
[00:36:28]  That was never on the menu.
[00:36:30]  But they are exactly what you say, like a very mischief-making organization, you might say.
[00:36:37]  I will say this too, though.
[00:36:38]  If, you know, I don't know, the tapes are gone.
[00:36:42]  I don't know exactly what went down that day.
[00:36:44]  You know, there's different reports, but the tapes exist somewhere.
[00:36:48]  The tapes do exist somewhere.
[00:36:49]  In fact, we know someone in the archives could probably help us find them.
[00:36:52]  Yeah.
[00:36:52]  Well, no, we're confiscated from CNN by the Chinese government.
[00:36:56]  Although, who knows?
[00:36:57]  Maybe they don't.
[00:36:58]  No, you always got to second tape.
[00:36:59]  You always got to second tape.
[00:37:00]  You always got to say tape.
[00:37:02]  But you're setting yourself on fire in front of me.
[00:37:04]  You know, listen, I'm no newsman, right?
[00:37:07]  But if a little 12-year-old girl is covered in gasoline in front of me, I can kind of guess what's going to happen.
[00:37:13]  And you pretty much got to do, you should stop rolling the camera and start stopping them from being on fire.
[00:37:20]  This is followed by a handful of other self-immolation incidents.
[00:37:24]  I'm sure we don't know of all of them because, you know, these things aren't always very well publicized.
[00:37:30]  The Chinese government may not always want to put this information out there, but people start setting themselves on fire all over China.
[00:37:39]  Yeah.
[00:37:40]  And this is when, I mean, I think public in China, the public reception of the Falun Gong really changed.
[00:37:48]  Because they were like, ah, these guys are just kind of like goopy weirdos.
[00:37:52]  It's totally fine, man.
[00:37:53]  And then, you know, they start like kind of doing like, you know, Paltro-style jihad.
[00:38:00]  Yeah.
[00:38:01]  And everyone's like, all right, we got to shut these guys down.
[00:38:04]  I'm with the government on this.
[00:38:05]  Yeah.
[00:38:06]  Really, there's a big backlash against the Falun Gong, especially because of the 12-year-old girl, right?
[00:38:11]  You don't want to set a 12-year-old girl on fire once your organization gets banned.
[00:38:15]  you're going to lose a lot of sympathy for that.
[00:38:17]  But a lot of Falun Gong, and so this is another big narrative that we see with the Falun Gong, and one that is, I mean, was pushed during Shenyun, but one, like any sort of Falun Gong material that you, that you might take in, will always mention this, is that some extraordinary number of Falun Gong adherents were arrested and continue to be arrested by the Chinese government.
[00:38:39]  And to be clear, like the Chinese government did take in a lot of Falun Gong members when they banned them.
[00:38:46]  Their whole thing was that they claimed they were trying to do that.
[00:38:49]  And again, like this is, we don't have a lot of insight on this, right?
[00:38:53]  Like the Chinese government has, for probably pretty obvious reasons, not like published a ton of stuff about this.
[00:38:59]  But we do know, you know, dribs and drabs that you can sort of see through the propaganda from the Falun Gong and like see what probably happened is that they took in a lot of people and put them in these sort of deprogramming courses that lasted anywhere from like, I don't know, six months to a year, sometimes less, sometimes more.
[00:39:17]  And to be clear, like probably some of those arrests were pretty brutal.
[00:39:20]  You know what I mean?
[00:39:21]  Like it's, I'm sure, like there are, there are reports of people being tortured.
[00:39:25]  There are reports of people being beaten that are different than the sensationalist reports that you'll hear from the Falun Gong.
[00:39:32]  One thing though, that is really sort of extraordinary and sets Falun Gong apart from a lot of groups is that they actually welcome this in their practice.
[00:39:44]  Yeah, this is like, I mean, this is something that's very disturbing.
[00:39:48]  And when you, Brace and I, you know, we were talking about this and I was saying that so much of it seems like more aligned with like jihad than anything you could think of as like meditation or kind of like innocuous, like Eastern, like centering your chi.
[00:40:11]  Like it doesn't have that because what they believe basically is that in confrontation, there's like a good versus evil confrontation that happens, right?
[00:40:22]  Sorry.
[00:40:23]  But that in that moment, that like battle, there's an energy exchange.
[00:40:29]  And like, it's a little like David Lynchy, which I don't love.
[00:40:35]  But, you know, you take the good with the bad.
[00:40:38]  There's an energy exchange of like evil energy and good energy.
[00:40:43]  And so actually, when one is fighting, and that includes like the police or the government or, I don't know, any kind of, you know, confrontation with non-believers and like repressive authorities, one is gaining more, like more good is getting spread into the world while one's absorbing the bad.
[00:41:07]  Yeah.
[00:41:08]  Right.
[00:41:08]  And so what it does is in these teachings, and these people really, I mean, they believe this, and they believe that this is how energy is exchanged, that it incentivizes and gets people to really believe in the purpose of immolation or the purpose of suicide.
[00:41:27]  And this has been a huge problem where you have like mass suicides and people basically, like followers or practitioners of this, purposely getting in huge confrontations with the police or with CCP authorities in order to like really injure themselves because they believe that is the way that you bring about, well, what will be a kind of like apocalyptic reign that will bring about everyone going to heaven except for the and spiritual purification for yourself.
[00:41:56]  Yeah.
[00:41:57]  And so there were a lot of suicides of Falun Gong practitioners in the labor camps and the sort of re-education facilities as well.
[00:42:07]  A lot of the suicides did not work also.
[00:42:11]  Like people would try to sort of do these mass hangings and only a few people would die.

=== Falun Gong's Apocalyptic Beliefs (12:18) ===

[00:42:14]  And it's really not great.
[00:42:17]  But that was a big factor in sort of the worm turning in public consciousness of them.
[00:42:24]  Because remember, this is the 1990s, early 2000s now.
[00:42:30]  And there is a lot of just in the general atmosphere, especially after the 1990s, you know, a lot of people, cults kind of came into the public consciousness in the 80s and 90s, right?
[00:42:42]  Amsharinko and Waco and Jonestown and all these things were actually like, these were things that were cited by the Chinese government as like, listen, we do not want something like this happening here.
[00:42:52]  And so there was this massively sort of like, there's this really heavy-handed response from the Chinese government that was met with a very heavy, heavy, heavy-handed response from the Falun Gong, sort of upping the ante on them.
[00:43:04]  But overall, they sort of lost the war within China.
[00:43:07]  Like Falun Gong ceases basically to exist as an organization within China.
[00:43:13]  And really, a lot of the center of gravity moves to upstate New York.
[00:43:30]  So, okay, 1999.
[00:43:33]  Lee has actually already moved to America.
[00:43:35]  Yeah, he moved, he set up shop.
[00:43:37]  He anticipated the crackdown and was like, I'm going to go to safer waters.
[00:43:42]  Yes.
[00:43:42]  Get out of here.
[00:43:44]  What better place than upstate New York?
[00:43:46]  New York City, baby.
[00:43:47]  He got tired of being a fashion consultant in Manhattan and just moved up.
[00:43:55]  And so, you know, China banning the Falun Gong was a pretty big deal in the international press, right?
[00:44:01]  I mean, one thing that you've learned, if you know a little bit about China and you know a little bit about the media, is that you can basically say whatever the fuck you want about China.
[00:44:09]  Oh, yeah.
[00:44:10]  And not only will people believe you, they'll be like, hey, I should write that into my congressional bill that I'm putting out on the floor of Congress where I'm going to demand that everyone listen to me and sign it into law.
[00:44:23]  Yeah, exactly.
[00:44:24]  You know what?
[00:44:24]  Actually, you know what we're doing here with these episodes, Liz?
[00:44:27]  We're actually being disinformation researchers because the Falun Gong are one of the biggest fonts of disinformation you can find outside of Yom Ni Park or whatever that fucking North Korea.
[00:44:38]  By the way, that chick, the North Korean broad, you know what I'm talking about?
[00:44:42]  She's like, she's like.
[00:44:43]  Pretty one?
[00:44:44]  Well, after her.
[00:44:45]  Wait, which one?
[00:44:47]  She's thinking of Kim Jong-un's.
[00:44:51]  Oh, his sister.
[00:44:52]  His sister.
[00:44:52]  Yeah.
[00:44:52]  Oh, yeah.
[00:44:53]  No, she's naturally.
[00:44:55]  She's natty.
[00:44:55]  Oh, you're talking about the one who is the dissident.
[00:44:58]  She's like, oh, the young Americans are free to get it.
[00:44:59]  Right, right, right.
[00:45:00]  I listen to the regime.
[00:45:02]  Crazy.
[00:45:02]  She's just crazy.
[00:45:03]  She's like, there was a recent article, she's like, or like, maybe just a clip of her, but it was being like passed around that she was saying that if you have dust on a portrait of Kim Jong-un, you will be executed in your home by the police.
[00:45:16]  But she is.
[00:45:16]  People believe that.
[00:45:18]  People are just like, ah, of course.
[00:45:20]  Of course.
[00:45:20]  You know what?
[00:45:21]  The Dragon Rises.
[00:45:22]  Oh, my God.
[00:45:22]  No dust.
[00:45:23]  The Korean Dragon Rises.
[00:45:24]  Yeah, no dust.
[00:45:26]  But she has gotten so much crazy fucking surgery done.
[00:45:30]  It is.
[00:45:31]  I will say that is as much as the influencer that I heard talking about her surgeries this morning at the hair salon.
[00:45:38]  Well, Yomni is looking a little better than her.
[00:45:40]  Oof, my lord, was she just yelling about something called Air Sculpt?
[00:45:44]  You should shout her name out on here.
[00:45:46]  I will not because I keep it right, keep it tight.
[00:45:49]  But I don't know what air sculpt is, but apparently you got to go under.
[00:45:52]  I'm just imagining somebody putting like one of those like airbrushing things.
[00:45:56]  I'm just thinking about Airbus doing plastic surgery.
[00:45:59]  Okay, that's a totally different direction.
[00:46:02]  This dog could be a doctor.
[00:46:04]  There's nothing in the medical, there's nothing in Graves and not in a retriever dog cancer.
[00:46:09]  Surgery.
[00:46:11]  All right.
[00:46:12]  So Lee's funky ass ensconced in the bosom of upstate New York.
[00:46:18]  99 happens, the big ban happens, and all these Western news organizations are like, we found our new dude, right?
[00:46:25]  Yeah.
[00:46:25]  We found our new Dolly Llama.
[00:46:28]  And another guy who shout out to Dolly Llama.
[00:46:31]  Shout out, Dolly Llama.
[00:46:32]  Also, shout out Dolly Lama Upstate New York hanging out with Keith Raniere from Nexium.
[00:46:38]  By the way, fuck the Dolly Llama.
[00:46:40]  Yeah.
[00:46:41]  I'm just saying this.
[00:46:42]  You pay this guy, this guy's job, you just give him like $50,000 and he shows up to your fucking weird pedophile compound.
[00:46:49]  And the photographer takes a picture of him laughing with you.
[00:46:53]  This motherfucker is the most, he will laugh at anything anyone says.
[00:46:57]  Don't call the White House a pedophile compound.
[00:46:59]  Okay, well, fair enough.
[00:47:00]  But he's like, the CIA is probably even sick of this guy by now.
[00:47:03]  It's like, all right, shut the fuck up.
[00:47:04]  He's old as hell.
[00:47:05]  He just says any old shit.
[00:47:07]  He just says any old shit.
[00:47:08]  By the way, he's just a guy.
[00:47:10]  Yeah, he's just a guy.
[00:47:11]  Also, China has their own Dalai Lama, which is, I think, is really cool.
[00:47:13]  I like how they always have their own version of one.
[00:47:16]  But we got one too.
[00:47:17]  We got one also.
[00:47:18]  Yeah.
[00:47:18]  There's another Dalai Lama.
[00:47:20]  But he's in China.
[00:47:22]  So anyway, well, he's not the Da.
[00:47:23]  I think he's a different Lama, but he's the equivalent.
[00:47:25]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:47:26]  So Lee moves to, Lee's in America.
[00:47:29]  There's all these presses focusing on Falun Gong.
[00:47:32]  And they're like, oh, you know, wow, Buddhism and these meditative practice, oh, they're like Taoists or whatever.
[00:47:38]  And they start doing interviews with Lee, and he starts saying some crazy shit.
[00:47:43]  Which no one really has a problem with.
[00:47:45]  Yeah.
[00:47:46]  By the way.
[00:47:47]  Which is very weird.
[00:47:49]  Yeah.
[00:47:49]  It's like people are always like, well, okay, he thinks he can fly, but his numbers are right.
[00:47:54]  Like, oh, well, this guy says that actually interracial children have a problem going to heaven because heaven is segregated by race.
[00:48:03]  And if you're two different races, your soul doesn't know which race to hang out with in heaven and you're sort of stuck in purgatory.
[00:48:10]  Oh my god, that's crazy.
[00:48:11]  People are like, okay, well, worst high school experience ever.
[00:48:15]  That sounds a little weird, but maybe he's right about all of the stuff he says about China.
[00:48:20]  Are you fucking stupid?
[00:48:23]  The stuff in this match, I mean, the interview, which, I mean, time has taken this down.
[00:48:28]  They have?
[00:48:28]  Oh, yeah.
[00:48:29]  You have to go through the Wayback Machine, but even recent Wayback Machine versions of it do not exist.
[00:48:34]  So you got to go back.
[00:48:35]  A bunch of reporting about the Falun Gong from the late 90s, early 2000s has been taken down because there was a big snafu where a bunch of politicians and I think like Willie Brown also.
[00:48:51]  Shout out Willie.
[00:48:52]  Warned about 9-11.
[00:48:53]  Were doubted about that.
[00:48:57]  Oh, that man is definitely Captain.
[00:49:01]  More ways than one.
[00:49:02]  This cap says Dumer.
[00:49:03]  Yeah.
[00:49:05]  But a bunch of politicians in the Bay Area were basically like, they nominated Lee to the Nobel Peace Prize.
[00:49:15]  And then Mercury News, which all of this reporting has been taken down, but Mercury News was like, oh, have you guys actually read some of the stuff that he said?
[00:49:23]  He was like, oh, homosexuality is the worst thing in the entire world.
[00:49:27]  He hates gay people.
[00:49:29]  No race mixing, not even in heaven.
[00:49:31]  And all these politicians were like, whoa, I never said anything about that.
[00:49:36]  It was just about the China stuff.
[00:49:38]  So there was a bunch of egg on their face.
[00:49:39]  It was very funny.
[00:49:41]  But the stuff in Time magazine that he says, the national publication Time Magazine, is fucking cuckoo bananas.
[00:49:48]  He's like, here's a quote.
[00:49:50]  Lee believes the ancient art of Qigong can endow practitioners with superhuman powers.
[00:49:57]  The world is in chaos today because the human race has been invaded by aliens from other planets who hope to challenge mankind through scientific means, especially through human cloning.
[00:50:11]  I will say this.
[00:50:13]  Lee, I am with you on one thing.
[00:50:16]  I also fucking hate aliens.
[00:50:18]  Lee Hongzhi hates fucking aliens.
[00:50:22]  But you know what it is?
[00:50:23]  It's one of those things where the thing that you hate the most, you start seeing everywhere.
[00:50:27]  It's true.
[00:50:27]  And my man sees aliens everywhere.
[00:50:30]  Yes.
[00:50:31]  He's like, oh, that's the alien.
[00:50:32]  Oh, that's the alien.
[00:50:33]  Oh, that's the alien.
[00:50:35]  Science?
[00:50:35]  Just capital S science.
[00:50:38]  Yeah.
[00:50:38]  I don't know what he means.
[00:50:39]  He doesn't like it.
[00:50:39]  But he also believes that.
[00:50:40]  He thinks the aliens brought it here to destabilize humans, replace all beings with, all human beings with alien clones so they can then take over the human race.
[00:50:52]  But that science is the thing that's like driving that.
[00:50:55]  He also, and I repeat, also believes, and I did read his entire long speech about this.
[00:51:02]  He also says there is a 2 billion, or no, I think 5 billion year old nuclear reactor that was found in Africa.
[00:51:12]  This is like, this is the shit that you see on like Patriot News Daily or whatever.
[00:51:17]  Yeah.
[00:51:18]  Well, because it's been syndicated by the Times.
[00:51:23]  So, yeah, he like has this weird relationship with science where like now he like, he talks about science a lot, but he just basically talks about it to prove that it's not real.
[00:51:31]  Like he's like, it's fake and it's made by aliens.
[00:51:34]  Yeah.
[00:51:35]  So in this interview with Time magazine, we're probably just going to have to read some of these because I'll be Time.
[00:51:43]  You can be Lee.
[00:51:44]  Does that work for you?
[00:51:45]  Sure.
[00:51:46]  I'm Clarence.
[00:51:47]  No, Clarence Dair's a lawyer.
[00:51:49]  I'm another guy.
[00:51:51]  Yeah, you're just a hard scrabble news guy.
[00:51:54]  All right, I'm trying to get in character for you.
[00:51:55]  Yeah.
[00:51:56]  You're like, oh, Woodward.
[00:51:57]  He was cool.
[00:51:58]  Have you seen?
[00:52:00]  No, you're normal.
[00:52:01]  You're not weird.
[00:52:03]  Sir, Mr. Lee, have you seen human beings levitate off the ground?
[00:52:07]  I have known too many.
[00:52:09]  I've known too many?
[00:52:11]  So funny.
[00:52:12]  I'm trying to do my best guru voice.
[00:52:14]  Can you describe any that you have known?
[00:52:18]  David Copperfield.
[00:52:20]  He can levitate.
[00:52:21]  And he did it during performances.
[00:52:24]  Pause.
[00:52:25]  Pause here for a second.
[00:52:26]  One, does he mean that there's two different ways to read this?
[00:52:30]  Many different ways to read this.
[00:52:32]  One, he saw a David Copperfield performance and saw him levitate.
[00:52:36]  Okay.
[00:52:37]  Two, he's friends with David Copperfield.
[00:52:40]  Epstein.
[00:52:42]  Jeffrey Epstein.
[00:52:44]  True.
[00:52:45]  And Lee Hongzi.
[00:52:46]  But my thing is this, is like, so does he know David Copperfield?
[00:52:51]  Yeah, it's unclear.
[00:52:52]  And if he knows David Copperfield, is he, he's under the, it's very clear.
[00:52:56]  What is clear here is that Lee Hongzhi literally believes that David Copperfield can actually fly.
[00:53:03]  You know, that's not a lot of good critical thinking.
[00:53:05]  If one of my friends told me that.
[00:53:08]  That David Copperfield could fly.
[00:53:09]  Yeah, I would.
[00:53:10]  First of all, you'd say, mind-free.
[00:53:13]  What?
[00:53:14]  First of all, I would believe them because I trust my friends.
[00:53:16]  But I would be like.
[00:53:17]  After you Google to see if they're right.
[00:53:20]  And listen to me.
[00:53:21]  If I say it, then you're Googling it to make sure I'm like, oh, yeah.
[00:53:24]  But your other friends, you're like, of course you can.
[00:53:27]  Of course you can fly.
[00:53:28]  Duh.
[00:53:28]  Duh.
[00:53:30]  Lee, that is crazy.
[00:53:33]  Like if I was adherent to this guy's philosophy and I read in Time Magazine and he thinks David Copperfield could fly, I'd be like, oh.
[00:53:41]  Like what if you're like a big – Where's the follow-up?
[00:53:44]  What if, yeah, exactly?
[00:53:45]  You're like, tell me more about how David Copperfield can fly.
[00:53:49]  Like, shouldn't the journalist be like, wait, you actually believe David Copperfield can actually fly?
[00:53:54]  No.
[00:53:56]  Why does the problem with journalism in America?
[00:53:59]  I'm back to being a journalist.
[00:54:00]  Okay.
[00:54:01]  Why does chaos reign now?
[00:54:03]  Okay, pause.
[00:54:04]  Crazy-ass question for a journalist.
[00:54:07]  That's crazy.
[00:54:07]  You know what?
[00:54:08]  He's working for you.
[00:54:09]  Here's a tip.
[00:54:10]  When you're, hey, kids out there, you want to become a journalist?
[00:54:13]  That's the only question you ask.
[00:54:14]  Me interviewing Megadeth in Kerrang Magazine in 1987.
[00:54:18]  Hey, why does chaos reign now?
[00:54:20]  Chaos reigns.
[00:54:24]  You interviewing Megan Trader.
[00:54:26]  Megan Traynor?
[00:54:27]  Dude, ask Megan Traynor all these questions would be so sick.
[00:54:30]  Why does chaos reign now?

=== Why People Doubt Orthodox Religion (07:19) ===

[00:54:33]  Of course, there's not just one reason.
[00:54:37]  The biggest cause of society's change today is that people no longer believe in Orthodox religion.
[00:54:42]  Okay, that's a pretty normal thing for a guru to say.
[00:54:44]  They go to church, but they no longer believe in God.
[00:54:48]  They feel free to do anything.
[00:54:50]  The second reason is that since the beginning of this century, aliens have begun to invade the human mind and its ideology and culture.
[00:54:59]  Okay, okay.
[00:55:00]  And the Time magazine reporter is thinking in his head, in modern parlance, let him cook.
[00:55:07]  And he says, where do they come from?
[00:55:11]  The aliens are from other planets.
[00:55:14]  They have introduced modern machinery like computers and airplanes.
[00:55:20]  Dude, the Wright brothers are fucking aliens.
[00:55:24]  You know what?
[00:55:24]  Notice how he doesn't say gunpowder.
[00:55:26]  Notice how he doesn't say gunpowder.
[00:55:29]  Everyone thinks that scientists invent on their own when, in fact, their inspiration is manipulated by aliens.
[00:55:38]  The ultimate purpose is to replace humans.
[00:55:41]  If cloning human beings succeeds, the aliens can officially replace humans.
[00:55:46]  Wait a minute.
[00:55:47]  I think this is from when like cloning dolly.
[00:55:52]  This dude is just watching like TV and being like, How did they not clone a llama?
[00:55:58]  They could have Dalai Lama.
[00:56:00]  Oh, yeah, that's really good.
[00:56:01]  Oh, my God.
[00:56:02]  Dolly sheep instead.
[00:56:04]  That's right there, people.
[00:56:06]  All right.
[00:56:07]  And so the Time Magazine reporter, no doubt scribbling in his note, I would have, this, by the way, this, I will say, this reporter does rule because it is like it is a tactic to let a guy hang himself by his, hoist himself by his own pitard.
[00:56:20]  Or petard.
[00:56:21]  Yeah, that's how you pronounce it.
[00:56:22]  But where I'm from, you pronounce it pitard.
[00:56:25]  He asks, are you a human being?
[00:56:28]  You could think of me as a human being.
[00:56:32]  And then he says, are you from Earth?
[00:56:35]  I don't wish to talk about myself at a higher level.
[00:56:39]  People wouldn't understand it.
[00:56:42]  You're goddamn right we wouldn't Lee.
[00:56:44]  Oh my God.
[00:56:45]  That reminds me of my favorite.
[00:56:47]  I mean, I've said this before on the podcast, so apologies.
[00:56:50]  But when Carl Lagerfeld was asked if he missed anything from before he went on like this crazy diet, and he said, I enjoyed French fries back when I was human.
[00:57:06]  And I was like, damn, that's sick as hell.
[00:57:08]  Carl Lagerfeld's that guy who looks like...
[00:57:10]  Who's human Carl Lagerfeld?
[00:57:11]  He's like a...
[00:57:11]  He's like a...
[00:57:12]  Because he does kind of look like a Matrix.
[00:57:14]  Yeah, he's dead.
[00:57:14]  He's dead?
[00:57:15]  He passed.
[00:57:15]  Oh, so he's no longer human.
[00:57:17]  He's just a spirit.
[00:57:18]  This was an old interview with him in El Magazine.
[00:57:21]  Because he was really fat and then he got skinny.
[00:57:23]  That dude?
[00:57:24]  Because my father's not.
[00:57:24]  And he got skinny because of Eddie Slimaine, which is so sad.
[00:57:27]  The guy's name is Slimaine.
[00:57:28]  That's a good name for a skinny guy.
[00:57:31]  He is very skinny.
[00:57:32]  Was at the height, at the height of skinny dumb when he was at Dior.
[00:57:37]  He was very skinny.
[00:57:38]  Well, I'll tell you one person who wasn't at Dior, but was at the door to heaven.
[00:57:42]  And that was Lee Hongzhi.
[00:57:44]  I mean, we haven't even touched the surface of what this man believes.
[00:57:49]  We got to wrap up this episode, but I want to ask you this, Liz.
[00:57:53]  So to me, it's Adam and Eve, but it also could be Adam and Steve.
[00:57:58]  But not to Li Hongzhi.
[00:57:59]  But not to Li Hong Zhi.
[00:58:00]  No.
[00:58:01]  What does he say about gay people?
[00:58:04]  Well, funny she'd ask because I have it right here.
[00:58:07]  In 1998, he said, Let me tell you.
[00:58:10]  Let me tell you.
[00:58:12]  If I weren't teaching this Fa Dharma today, the gods' first target of annihilation would be homosexuals.
[00:58:19]  It's not me who would destroy them.
[00:58:22]  Classic move.
[00:58:24]  But gods.
[00:58:25]  Gods can't tolerate their existence and will destroy them.
[00:58:28]  That's give me a break.
[00:58:29]  Yeah, he's this very classic esoteric, evangelical style religious homophobia.
[00:58:38]  Yeah, I know.
[00:58:38]  It's so funny because he really does just sound like those guys.
[00:58:43]  Yeah.
[00:58:43]  You know what I'm talking about?
[00:58:44]  He's a Jimmy Swagger.
[00:58:45]  But I think that's like, you know, our Horrible, you know, Orientalist, like, you know, history in this country, in the West, of not understanding or not having any interest in understanding the East.
[00:58:59]  Yeah.
[00:59:00]  And, like, just refuses to kind of see that.
[00:59:02]  Yeah.
[00:59:02]  Yeah.
[00:59:02]  And it's just like, ooh, wow, exotic.
[00:59:05]  Exactly.
[00:59:06]  I'm like, no, dude.
[00:59:07]  No, no.
[00:59:07]  This dude also thinks that God's raising gay people.
[00:59:09]  Racist, homophobic, like cult leader who has like commanded an army to perform to spread his propaganda at fucking Lincoln Center.
[00:59:19]  It's a motherfucking hill song, dude.
[00:59:21]  This dude is a hill song.
[00:59:22]  The worst hill song.
[00:59:24]  The most budget-ass missed style video game song.
[00:59:30]  Which that makes it sound cool, but it's not cool, you guys.
[00:59:32]  I told you I went to a like, I want to call it hipster because I feel like that gives you a presentation.
[00:59:38]  I went to like a Justin Bieber-style guy church in LA.
[00:59:42]  But it wasn't Justin Bieber's church.
[00:59:43]  It wasn't Justin Bieber's church.
[00:59:44]  No, but it was a Hillsong-style church I went to once in downtown LA.
[00:59:48]  It was crazy.
[00:59:49]  Have you guys been at church before?
[00:59:51]  Was it Ambient?
[00:59:53]  No, but which one was it?
[00:59:54]  Do you know what I'm saying?
[00:59:55]  I don't remember what it was.
[00:59:56]  Because I remember, like, when I lived in LA, there was, I mean, this was a while ago, but there were a bunch of people from like Santa Barbara that were like trying to get other people to kind of give into that.
[01:00:07]  There's a lot of hipster churches in LA.
[01:00:09]  Hillstong Salad Church.
[01:00:11]  Like before Donda.
[01:00:12]  Oh, yeah.
[01:00:13]  It was not Dawn.
[01:00:14]  Donda was crazier.
[01:00:15]  Donda's Carl Lagerfeld down, like hipster style.
[01:00:21]  You know what I mean?
[01:00:22]  This was just like a guy who clearly had just been like a normal evangelical guy until 10 years ago, who now wears super tight pants and like crazy sunglasses.
[01:00:30]  The Bieber church is really weird.
[01:00:32]  Hillsong, yeah.
[01:00:32]  I mean, they made that.
[01:00:33]  Apparently, the documenter wasn't.
[01:00:35]  No, I thought he was on a different church now.
[01:00:37]  Oh, yeah.
[01:00:37]  Oh, yeah.
[01:00:39]  Because a guy like left Hillsong and he's with his church, but I've heard some weird stuff about some things that they, some brain science stuff they do.
[01:00:46]  Some brain science stuff they do that might have had Justin Bieber and his wife both having fucking strokes.
[01:00:52]  That's so weird.
[01:00:53]  How come no one's looking into that?
[01:00:54]  Well, I don't know, because I can't really look into somebody else's stroke from like afar.
[01:00:59]  No, you can look into the church, though.
[01:01:01]  You can look into the church.
[01:01:01]  But we've got to find out what it's called first.
[01:01:17]  We thought we were doing two episodes, but we're not.
[01:01:18]  We're doing three.
[01:01:19]  There's so much.
[01:01:20]  There's so much more.
[01:01:20]  We haven't even gotten into organ harvesting yet.
[01:01:23]  Oh, my God.
[01:01:23]  We haven't gotten to the Epic Times yet.
[01:01:25]  Are the organs being harvested?
[01:01:26]  Read more at Epic Times YouTube.
[01:01:30]  I watch so many of these YouTubes.
[01:01:32]  So you sent me that one guy, Roman, something?
[01:01:34]  Yeah, he's big.
[01:01:35]  Those fucking ads that that dude did, when he was like, wait, let me show you.
[01:01:40]  There's more.
[01:01:41]  He talks exactly like the host guy at Shinyan.
[01:01:46]  It was that same Uncanny Valley presenter voice where he's like, oh, look, the news media lying again.

=== Kimono Wall Mysteries (03:40) ===

[01:01:52]  But here, click for real story.
[01:01:54]  And it's like, and then it's like, you know, organ harvesting, China.
[01:01:59]  Something that happens when.
[01:02:00]  Coronavirus, 5G, get the facts.
[01:02:02]  Yeah, you should.
[01:02:03]  Well, you should get the facts about that.
[01:02:05]  But something happens to a certain kind of dude from the West who gets into the East where it drives him mad.
[01:02:15]  I don't know.
[01:02:15]  That's probably Orientalist of me to say or whatever.
[01:02:18]  But like, I feel like for some people, they just go crazy.
[01:02:22]  When they see a yin-yang, it like blows their shit.
[01:02:25]  Have you seen, well, there's the classic kind of trope.
[01:02:31]  Have you seen, you know, in High Fidelity?
[01:02:33]  Yeah.
[01:02:34]  The character, what's Susan Sarandon's husband's name?
[01:02:38]  Okay.
[01:02:38]  Tim Robbins.
[01:02:39]  Don't remember any character except for John Cusack.
[01:02:42]  He's the one who's dating the girlfriend.
[01:02:45]  John Cusack really likes a girl, right?
[01:02:47]  No, he breaks up with the girl.
[01:02:49]  Okay.
[01:02:49]  And then she starts dating the neighbor who is, he's like that crazy like Kama Sutra guy who it's always about the wooden beads.
[01:02:57]  Yeah.
[01:02:58]  So it's like big wooden beads and he's got like a Buddha statue and it's like a very late 90s thing.
[01:03:04]  Yeah.
[01:03:05]  But that's the classic trope of the guy who gets like really into, you know.
[01:03:09]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:03:10]  The clacking.
[01:03:11]  Like he's got like kimonos on the wall and you're like, why are you doing this?
[01:03:14]  Okay, well, let's not get too close to my apartment living room.
[01:03:18]  You don't have kimonos on your wall.
[01:03:20]  I don't have a kimono, but I do be having a Chinese fan on my wall.
[01:03:23]  But you don't have like a giant kimono.
[01:03:27]  And you didn't paint your walls like burgundy.
[01:03:30]  No, but do you think that would help?
[01:03:32]  Because I'm trying with your velvet chip.
[01:03:34]  I don't want to tell Tethock too much about my home in the show.
[01:03:39]  But you do have a gilded buffet.
[01:03:41]  So I do.
[01:03:42]  Yes.
[01:03:43]  I do have a gilded.
[01:03:44]  Well, it's not actually gilded, but it's painted gold.
[01:03:48]  I will say this.
[01:03:49]  I have realized that I have the decorative taste of like a kind of the gourmand in a way.
[01:03:59]  No, but I feel like the gourmand goes dark.
[01:04:01]  Yeah.
[01:04:02]  Like he definitely has more of a like chalice.
[01:04:05]  I wish no, but I feel like you, maybe it is like kimono guy.
[01:04:10]  But mine is a little, but I don't have, to be clear, I don't have like funny stuff.
[01:04:14]  Thai stuff.
[01:04:15]  I don't have like Thai stuff.
[01:04:16]  No, but you do have like masks.
[01:04:19]  I do have masks.
[01:04:20]  That's insane.
[01:04:21]  Is I purposely, when I started like, like, kind of like assembling my things, I was like, I kind of want to have the home of like a of a, I don't know how else to say this, but an older gay man in the 1980s.
[01:04:37]  Okay.
[01:04:38]  Like that is kind of how I would like, but I'm too slovenly for that.
[01:04:43]  And so you just have like.
[01:04:44]  So it's aspirational.
[01:04:45]  It's aspirational.
[01:04:46]  You're like, if I build it, I will come.
[01:04:48]  Yeah, exactly.
[01:04:49]  Yeah.
[01:04:49]  This character will appear.
[01:04:51]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:04:52]  But instead, I just.
[01:04:53]  What's mine?
[01:04:54]  Yours, I would say, kin.
[01:04:58]  Kin?
[01:04:59]  It's so mad.
[01:05:00]  What's that?
[01:05:01]  Kin folk?
[01:05:02]  Is it what it was in those magazines you see?
[01:05:05]  What is it?
[01:05:05]  I don't know enough about things to really assess it, but your house is very clean, and I love your love your house.
[01:05:11]  Oh, thank you very much.
[01:05:12]  It's got, yeah.
[01:05:13]  I don't, it's kind of got a Harlan Crowe sort of vibe to a lot of the decor in there, which I thought was super unsettling, but like.
[01:05:23]  And you haven't seen the basement.
[01:05:25]  I have not seen the basement, but I do.
[01:05:27]  But you do know about my oddities.
[01:05:31]  I do know about your oddities.

=== Oddities Unveiled (02:16) ===

[01:05:32]  Yeah.
[01:05:33]  And I will say.
[01:05:34]  We don't hear enough about oddities.
[01:05:36]  I have some oddities.
[01:05:37]  You do.
[01:05:37]  I do have some oddities.
[01:05:38]  Your shrunken head.
[01:05:39]  I have a shark in a jar.
[01:05:43]  I do have some shit.
[01:05:44]  Here's what I'll say.
[01:05:45]  I think that that's like a fun direction for you and go with God on it.
[01:05:50]  Don't let it tip over into Ghalain.
[01:05:52]  I won't let.
[01:05:52]  No, no.
[01:05:53]  You know what I'm saying?
[01:05:54]  No, nothing I have is sinister.
[01:05:55]  Nothing I have is sinister.
[01:05:57]  But you know what I'm talking about.
[01:05:58]  I know what you're talking about.
[01:05:59]  That guy on the wall.
[01:06:01]  And just, you know, the drapes, the dinosaurs.
[01:06:04]  Well, you know me.
[01:06:05]  You know I don't have the wherewithal to cover my windows.
[01:06:07]  Yeah.
[01:06:08]  But you, yeah.
[01:06:09]  I have binoculars by them.
[01:06:11]  Yeah.
[01:06:11]  And I do be looking and fuck my neighbor's apartments.
[01:06:13]  I will say this.
[01:06:14]  I look at my neighbor's apartments basically every day with binoculars.
[01:06:18]  Clip that.
[01:06:18]  Let's put that on the internet.
[01:06:21]  I'm not even joking.
[01:06:22]  I do that.
[01:06:23]  That's freaky.
[01:06:23]  Don't do that.
[01:06:24]  Not girls.
[01:06:26]  That's not cool.
[01:06:27]  I'm not even kidding.
[01:06:28]  Remember I had night vision?
[01:06:31]  Oh, my God.
[01:06:32]  Okay, so let's wrap this up.
[01:06:34]  But it's only guys that I look at, and they're not naked.
[01:06:38]  I'm going to be clear.
[01:06:39]  I don't look at naked people, but I peep.
[01:06:41]  I'm not a peeping Tom, but I peeked.
[01:06:42]  Okay, okay, okay.
[01:06:43]  We do have another episode.
[01:06:44]  We got to talk about the Epic Times.
[01:06:45]  We got to talk about the organ harvesting.
[01:06:47]  We got, hey, you know him?
[01:06:49]  You love him?
[01:06:50]  Donnie T. He's he shows up.
[01:06:51]  Holy shit.
[01:06:52]  Yeah.
[01:06:53]  Donald Trump is all over this motherfucker.
[01:06:54]  Stephen Bannon?
[01:06:56]  Yeah.
[01:06:57]  Little freak.
[01:06:58]  By the way, that guy's got to hang out with some more normal Chinese people.
[01:07:02]  Every Chinese guy I know is just a normal guy.
[01:07:04]  Every Chinese guy Steve Bannon knows is the biggest fucking freak in the world.
[01:07:09]  Yeah.
[01:07:10]  And also like a crazy rapper.
[01:07:12]  Yeah, which, by the way, Silvergate.
[01:07:14]  Yeah, I know.
[01:07:16]  All right, let's wrap this up as if.
[01:07:18]  Nope, not going to say that.
[01:07:20]  My name is Bryce.
[01:07:21]  I'm Liz.
[01:07:22]  We are, of course, joined by producer Young Chomsky.
[01:07:25]  And this has been Truanon.
[01:07:28]  We'll see you next time.
[01:07:29]  Bye-bye.
[01:07:49]  Come in.