Philosophy of Health

In the 1950s, over 100,000 biracial children were orphaned in South Korea, sparking what is known today as international adoption. These were children largely abandoned by US military men and the Korean prostitutes the US military exploited during the war, by expanding the forced sexual labor camps established earlier by the Japanese, and which exist today. Grace M. Cho has written an homage to these women in her book Haunting the Korean Diaspora, telling a story which can only make sense in the retelling of the larger narrative of the Korean War. Join us, as we delve into the waters of sex workers, napalm, atomic bombs, and shamans, trying the piece together the fragments of lost voices. Special thanks to Jamie Ward for his standup. Visit philoofhealth.org to support this podcast and my path to healing by donating or using my ebay or amazon links, or to set up a personal consultation with me.

G.O.A.'L. (Global Overseas Adoptees' Link) is the only organization by adoptees for adoptees to assist in everything from requesting birth records to providing psychological assistance to helping you move to Korea. With First Trip Home, they remain the only non-religious sponsor for adoptees to return to Korea and the only program to specifically center around doing a Birth Family Search. While it involves trips to adoption agencies and your city of birth, it also includes sightseeing adventures typical of other motherland tours exclusively with other adoptees and native volunteers. In this episode, AK Salling, G.O.A.'L's Secretary General and tour guide extraordinaire, walks us through First Trip Home as well as G.O.A.'L.'s founding, mission, and future. We discuss the birth family search process (DNA testing, the Korean media, tips for adoption agencies, international legal issues, etc.), information about reuniting with birth families, and the relationship many adoptees have with Korea after coming back. To donate to G.O.A.'L.: Paypal: donations@goal.or.kr Bank transfer: Kookmin Bank 375301-04-00076 Special thanks to Caleb Yee for his artwork, Kevin Shea for his standup, and Kalyna Rakel for permission to use her song So Removed. Visit philoofhealth.org to support this podcast and my path to healing by donating or using my ebay or amazon links, or to set up a personal consultation with me. "The test of the morality of a society is what it does for its children." - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

http://philoofhealth.org/2017/07/children-of-empire.html

How do you solve a problem like Korea? This week we are joined by Kristi Brian, a cultural anthropologist and author of Reframing Transracial Adoption: Adopted Koreans, White Parents, and the Politics of Kinship. In it we ask everything from "what constitutes family?" to "how are children turned into products for American consumers?" We discuss adoption horror stories, the history of adoption in the United States, racism, adoption as charity and industry, capitalism, patriarchy, and white feminism. And after getting into some depressing details of a corrupt system, we talk about some possible ways of moving forward and imagine what the future of families could look like. Check out my post Health is the Great Paradox where I lay out the modern Western paradigm--what I see as the root of adoption issues. Special thanks to Ninja Sex Party for their cover of Everybody Wants to Rule the World and Take on Me. Visit philoofhealth.org to support this podcast and my path to healing by donating or using my ebay or amazon links, or to set up a personal consultation with me. "The test of the morality of a society is what it does for its children." - Dietrich Bonhoeffer https://www.gofundme.com/seoulsister http://philoofhealth.org/2017/07/children-of-empire.html

Peter KJ Park joins us for our third and final podcast to discuss mystical history, the alternate history competing with the story that we are all familiar with today. We discuss Georg Ast and Thaddeus Rixner, two philosophers who not only expounded a history that did not begin in Greece, but also saw India and Egypt as a part of the original progression of the history of philosophy and civilization. Unlike Kant and Meiners, they did not share the belief that non-whites were incapable of serious thought and were therefore not blinded by the astounding and undeniable achievements made by non-white cultures, their impact on the Western philosophy, and their place in Western history. Join us for the third episode of this three-part series as we explore theories of race and racism then and now, the quest for the origin of civilization, philosophical mysticism, the evolution of Spirit, and the double-consciousness of W.E.B. Dubois. Special thanks to Ninja Sex Party for their cover of Aha's Take On Me. Visit philoofhealth.org to support this podcast and my path to healing by donating or using my ebay or amazon links, or to set up a personal consultation with me.

Peter KJ Park joins us once again to delve into two historians of philosophy who rejected the emerging view of history, Joseph Marie de Gérando and Friedrich Schlegel, both of whom set upon the task of writing a comparative history of philosophy. This model was based on Enlightenment science, but instead of classifying all the natural stuff of this world, they were intent to classify all the systems of thought that have existed throughout the story of mankind. They thought to organize, divide, and compare the intellectual history of civilization. They part company, however, when it comes to precisely when that history begins, de Gérando being a Meiners devotee, and Schlegel being a scholar of Sanskrit and Persian. Join us for the second episode of this four-part series as we explore the where historians before Kant believed Western civilization was born, alternate views of history and development of philosophy, how those more accurate accounts of humanity's development became lost to history, and what these revelations mean to us today. Visit philoofhealth.org to support this podcast and my path to healing by donating or using my ebay or amazon links, or to set up a personal consultation with me.

Was Western civilization born with the spontaneous, creative genius of the ancient Greeks who passed their knowledge onto the Romans who then spread it throughout Europe? Or was it devised by racist philosophers of the enlightenment? Before the year 1780, virtually no scholar believed history began in Greece. What changed? In his groundbreaking book, Africa, Asia, and the History of Philosophy: Racism in the Formation of the Philosophical Canon, Peter KJ Park presents devastating evidence against the standard narrative of history. In this work he shows how Immanuel Kant, the towering mind of the enlightenment, rewrote that history alongside a little-known philosopher named Christoph Meiners, to not only champion solely white people's contribution to ancient and modern philosophy, but also remove people of color from contributing to Western culture as a whole by rewriting history and giving us our first theory of race. This theory led directly to the rise of the Nazis and to our current national and geo-political struggles with race relations. Join us for this three-part series as we explore the where historians before Kant believed Western civilization was born, alternate views of history and development of philosophy, how those more accurate accounts of humanity's development became lost to history, and what these revelations mean to us today. Visit philoofhealth.org to support this podcast and my path to healing by donating or using my ebay or amazon links, or to set up a personal consultation with me.

Dean Radin is Chief Scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences and author of Supernormal: Science, Yoga, and the Evidence for Extraordinary Psychic Abilities. He has held appointments at Princeton University and several Silicon Valley think tanks, including SRI International, where he worked on a classified program investigating psychic phenomena for the US government. In this episode we discuss that classified program (which has since been de-classified), the mystical origins and purpose of yoga, the dalai lama, the growing openness of discussing the world of magic and phenomena such as psychic abilities and levitation. We also ponder the brain as a quantum object and explore what it is that we know about mystical healing. Join us as we embark on this fascinating topic. Visit philoofhealth.org to support this podcast and my path to healing by donating or using my ebay or amazon links, or to set up a personal consultation with me.

Amalia Gnanadesikan, author of The Writing Revolution, was diagnosed with a serious illness and when she thought it would take her life, she quit her job and wrote the book she had always dreamed of writing: a book about the history of writing itself. This conversation takes us into tho roots of history all over the globe, even to the humans who uttered the first word. We discuss ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, dead languages, Sanskrit, cuneiform, cherokee, and perhaps the greatest king of all time, Sejong the Great. Join us for a fascinating exploration through recorded time. Visit philoofhealth.org to support this podcast and my path to healing by donating or using my ebay or amazon links, or to set up a personal consultation with me. http://philoofhealth.org/2016/06/writing-revolution.html

Ed Cohen, PhD and I discuss how the Roman concept of immunity in war, politics, and legal theory morphed into 21st century medicine's notion of biological immunity as well as his journey from a near death experience to health. check out Ed's website at healingcounsel.com his book "A Body Worth Defending" at http://www.amazon.com/Body-Worth-Defending-Biopolitics-Apotheosis/dp/0822345358/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1444443119&sr=8-1&keywords=ed+cohen and consider donating to gofundme.com/mandylives more at: http://philoofhealth.org/2015/11/autoimmunity-with-ed-cohen.html

Born an anchor baby in London, Mehran single-handedly rescued his Iranian family from the Ayatollah Khomeini. Ever gracious, teenage Mehran evened the score in the United States by dropping out of college and taking up homosexuality. Honing his sharp sense of the absurd while working at Harvard University, Mehran's early experience navigating regime change came in handy when he personally escorted deposed president Larry Summers off the property. He would later go on to produce several successful shows with the University-affiliated Oberon Theater. A quick riser in the Boston comedy scene, Mehran was named Best Comedian in Boston by the Boston Phoenix, and was a two time finalist in the International Boston Comedy Festival. At Emerson College's Semel Theater, Mehran recorded a half hour of comedy for Die Laughing, produced by Friends co-creator, Kevin Bright. Mehran has opened for such acts as Maz Jobrani, Tom Green and Eugene Mirman. He works regularly with some of the hottest up-and-comers in comedy and has been in the Eugene Mirman Comedy Festival for the last four years. He has played to crowds of thousands at leading venues, like the Wilbur Theater, the Berklee Performance Center, and the Lisner Auditorium and has toured extensively at colleges and universities. A leading MC in the emerging neo-burlesque scene, Mehran plays to an audience of 30,000 each December at the historic Somerville Theater. He recently moved to Manhattan, where he lives with his husband and his tiny idiot dog. We discuss his time working at Beth Israel and Harvard (Larry fucking Summers), his experience with the Iranian revolution, dogs, why medical science is bullshit (http://acsh.org/2015/05/science-publication-is-hopelessly-compromised-say-journal-editors/), marijuana dispensaries, transracial, being a gay iranian, Amanda Palmer, and magic. Enjoy. Please donate to https://www.gofundme.com/mandylives For more: http://philoofhealth.org/2015/10/sorcery-with-mehran.html

Dr. Gabor Maté joins us for a very personal conversation on the nature of illness and his experience treating cancer, MS, ALS, rheumatoid arthritis, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, lupus, depression, anxiety, addiction, etcetera with ayahuasca. Gabor is the only MD currently in North America using ayahuasca as a catalyst for healing on the physical, psychological, and spiritual levels and has been generously counseling me as I continue to cure my scleroderma. Today we discuss his personal use, his family, his experience as a practicing physician, his lecturing and retreats, as well as his observations regarding my own progress with this powerful medicine. more at: philoofhealth.org

Gary Lachman (aka Gary Valentine), once the bassist of Blondie, has since turned his sights toward being a popular writer of the occult. His traditional background in philosophy has given him a unique perspective into the history of esoteric systems, allowing him to see patterns and historical lineages across these disciplines which so rarely overlap. Gary has written on Jung, Swedenborg, Rudolf Steiner, and histories of the occult and consciousness, and joins us to talk about the spiritual practice of "reading and research and contemplating." We also talk about the physical health of mystics, creative illness, and revelatory knowledge vs academic knowledge. More at philoofhealth.com

Dr. Krimsky gives a balanced critique about the pros and cons of GMOs. Instead of arguing for or against them, he stresses that more research needs to be done and tells us what we know and don't know about this controversial topic. Even more importantly, he tells us why it isn't held up to the same scrutiny as all other products on the US market. More at philoofhealth.org

Gerard Russell worked for 14 years as a British and United Nations diplomat, which took him to the far stretches of the cradle of civilization including Cairo, Jerusalem, Baghdad, Kabul, and Jeddah right after the war in Iraq began. There, he was able to come face to face with those who still practice ancient pagan religions, some of which are older than 4,000 years and all of which are disappearing. His background in philosophy having studied at Oxford and London Universities positioned him to write his first book, Heirs to Forgotten Kingdoms, which took him four and a half years to write and brought him to eight different countries. To listen to his book for free visit audibletrial.com/philosophy. More at philoofhealth.org

Rudolf Steiner was a highly trained scientist, philosopher, architect, founder of biodynamic agriculture and the Waldorf Schools, social reformer, esotericist, and a clairvoyant we are far from catching up with. Not only was he once the steward of Goethe's scientific writings, but he was also offered to be the official archivist of Nietzsche's writings upon his death. He was a Rosicrucian, a mystic, a visionary, and the founder of the movement Anthroposophy. Brought to you by: fundwhatyoulove.com For more: PhiloOfHealth.org

Eve Mitchell joins us to discuss Silvia Frederici's notion that capitalism has fundamentally oppressed our bodies and to help us flesh out the feminist side of Marx's critique. We go into the connection between modern PCAs (home health aides), the witch hunts, and feudalism. We don't just talk theory, however, we also talk about activism, unionizing, and using history and philosophy to fight injustice. For more: PhiloofHealth.org

The daughter of the famous and infamous Edward Bernays and the double grandniece of Sigmund Freud, Anne Bernays is an accomplished writer in her own right with 10 novels under her belt as well as a number of works in nonfiction, including Back Then: Two Lives in 1950s New York, which she wrote with her late husband Justin Kaplan, who won the Pulitzer Prize and national book award for his biography on Mark Twain. Active in the literary and artistic community, Anne founded the executive board of PEN/New England and currently teaches writing at Harvard’s Nieman Foundation. More at: http://philoofhealth.org/2015/01/growing-up-rich-anne-bernays.html

Before transracial adoption, an openness to nonwhite cultures in general, the holocaust, civil rights, or a social awareness of the disabled, Pearl Buck was tirelessly pioneering on every front, using her talent as a writer and status as a nobel-prize winning celebrity to bring about social justice and global change. In the pantheon of great humanitarians such as Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Mother Theresa, and others, she has been lost to history. One of the world's first international celebrities, she was truly a citizen of the world and her message and life still resonates -- and needs to resonate far more loudly. It is so rare for someone who was constantly in the public eye to be on the right side of history in every respect. Her life is a testament to the human ideal, and we would be so lucky to have more like her. http://philoofhealth.org/2015/03/legacy-of-pearl-buck

Benjamin Bernstein hosts iTunes’ most popular astrology podcast, and received the calling to become a shamanic practitioner during an ayahuasca ceremony. When I was on my deathbed he generously consulted with me and taught me how to shamanize my own ceremonies given that I was too sick to travel. When we first spoke I was bedridden, and now over a year later I'm walking and on the path to healing. Benjamin is a shamanic healer who consistently facilitates powerful healings and spiritual awakenings in his clients. He has devoted himself to over 30 years of spiritual practice. His path has included Kriya Yoga, Vipassana Buddhism, Peruvian shamanism, ayahuasca and San Pedro plant spirit medicine, Deeksha/Oneness Blessing and invocations. We talk about miraculous healing from fourth stage diseases, his path to shamanism, the experience of awakening, the American South, shamanic astrology, and practical advice for a fledgling shamanic practitioner. http://philoofhealth.org/2015/02/shaman-astrologer-benjamin-bernstein

Nicholas A. Christakis, MD, PhD, MPH, is a social scientist and physician who thinks outside the box when it comes to modern medicine. He also has dire warnings and a scathing critique as well as information to arm patients. He looks at race, gender, and income as factors in illness, and even questions what we mean by 'disease'. Dr. Christakis teaches an amazing course at Yale called "Death and Dying in the USA". He was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences in 2006, and was made a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2010. In 2009, Christakis was named by Time magazine to their annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world. In 2009 and in 2010, he was listed by Foreign Policy magazine in their annual list of Top 100 Global Thinkers. Dr. Christakis joins us to tell us what he means when he says, "The main determinant of whether you live or die has nothing to do with medical care." We talk about his moving personal path to becoming a doctor, what led him to social networks, why most Americans die deaths worthy of the third world, and why he is in the minority in his views of what modern medicine can do. More at: http://philoofhealth.org/2015/02/social-medicine-with-nicholas-christakis

We’ve all heard of Near Death Experiences, but what about those who have actually physically died–been medically declared dead–and come back? Judy Bachrach is a contributing editor of Vanity Fair as well as a professor of journalism. Her journalism work for the Washington Post led National Geographic to commission her to write the book Glimpsing Heaven: The Stories and Science of Life After Death, a journalistic odyssey filled with the author’s extensive interviews with those who have died and then been resuscitated – ordinary individuals who return to life with vivid, specific and structured recollections of what Bachrach calls their “Death Travels”. She also interviews the doctors, scientists and nurses who have examined both the death travelers and their memories of what occurred during those voyages beyond life’s borders – scientists, doctors and nurses who find these memories credible and accurate. Clinical death—the moment when the heart stops beating and brain stem activity ceases—is not necessarily the end of consciousness, as a number of doctors are now beginning to concede. Modern medicine is reinventing death... More at: http://philoofhealth.org/2015/01/death-travels-jury-bachrach.html

Sally Fallon Morell is the President of the Weston A. Price Foundation and author of Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats. Dr. Weston A. Price (1870-1948) was a Cleveland dentist who has been called the “Isaac Newton of Nutrition.” In his search for the causes of dental decay and physical degeneration that he observed in his dental practice, he turned from test tubes and microscopes to unstudied evidence among human beings. Dr. Price sought the factors responsible for fine teeth among the people who had them–isolated nonindustrialized people. Join us to learn how to have babies that don't cry, how to grow naturally straight teeth, and what foods are sacred. More at http://philoofhealth.org/2015/01/sacred-foods-with-sally-fallon.html

Donna Giancola is a feminist philosopher at Suffolk University (with Gregory Fried) as well as the director of the Religion Department. Her interests span world religion, feminism, sustainability, and the ancient Greeks. In this episode we ask: WTF is feminism and what does it have to do with cosmology? Why aren't there any good gods anymore? Should philosophy transcend religion? Was Socrates the end of philosophy? When did Christianity take over paganism? Can we have a spiritual science? Please join us for an incredible conversation about how we might revolutionize the planet and our hearts. http://philoofhealth.org/2014/12/gaia-feminism-divine.html

Step into Plato's cave with Professor Gregory Fried as we discuss why we're no longer asking the original questions, why universities have failed us, and how we know experiences with ayahuasca are real. A self-described “Cambridge kid” who went from being a student at Harvard to becoming Chair of the “off-the-grid” Philosophy Department at Suffolk (and my professor at Boston University in between), Gregory Fried is a unique mind in academia and the current zeitgeist in general. Where some have seen Back to the Future or Titanic a million times, this guy has read and re-read Plato’s Republic and Heidegger’s Being and Time for decades. Unlike most academic philosophers, however, he is less interested in the pretension of clinging to this or that philosopher, and emphasizes rather the original questions, which point to the very mystery of Being and how we as humans can open ourselves to experience the wonder of the Ancients. He doesn’t shy away from the hard questions, and he is also very concerned with the practical. In this episode we ask: How does philosophy prepare us for Death? What connects philosophy with the sacred? Why isn’t anyone doing philosophy anymore? How do we make philosophy relevant to the public? Does philosophy even matter anymore now that we have science? What is up with all the Victorian pictures of dead people selfies with their loved ones? http://philoofhealth.org/2014/12/philosophy-death-sacred.html

I talk to Lisa of the Merwin Animal Clinic to learn how they're able to operate as the only free veterinary clinic in United States, how pets are becoming only for the rich, and why we anthropomorphize dogs and gods. http://philoofhealth.org/2014/12/episode-5-animal-human-health-lisa.html

Join me as I explore Howard Zinn for the first time, and get a taste of A People's History of the United States. Go here for a free audio download: audibletrial.com/philosophy For more history visit: http://philoofhealth.org/2014/11/czech-please-historian-igor-lukes.html

Professor Igor Lukes teaches History and International Relations at Boston University and is an associate at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University. He is an expert in Central European history, East European politics, and contemporary Russia as well as an Honorary Consul General of the Czech Republic in New England. He is also a captivating lecturer, storyteller, and the first person to awaken a feminist mindset in me without ever talking about feminism. He simply admired female leaders in history and presented them in such a rational, human way that I immediately became aware of my own prejudice, and how I was taught this prejudice. He greatly assisted me on the road to my unlearning. And it isn't until now, 14 years after taking his class, that we are having our first conversation after exchanging a few cordial emails with mutual admiration and regard to arrange this interview. I'm so pleased to bring you Professor Lukes as he tells us why penile dysfunction led to the French revolution, whether democratic leaders or communist dictators hate their kids more, and describes how future sultans were kept in solitary confinement and fed only by a deaf mute before leading one of the largest empires in history. http://philoofhealth.org/2014/11/czech-please-with-igor-lukes.html

Is homeopathy total bullshit pseudoscience? Why does every other country use it regularly except us? Join Dr. Peter Morrell and I as we discuss the science, history, and philosophy of this misunderstood medical model, the medical mainstream in general, and a dude who works in shit. Literally. We also explore another genius lost to history, Samuel Hahnemann, who gave birth to homeopathy and with it, modern medicine as we know it today. So how did allopathy (which Hahnemann named) become mainstream and homeopathy get thrown by the wayside? and why did this genius prefer the latter to the former? Join us as we delve into these questions. http://philoofhealth.org/?p=832

I speak with my caretaker Shyam about her life in Nepal, and why she cares for sick people for so little pay, and coming back from the dead. And please donate and check out our sponsors at http://philoofhealth.org/2014/11/episode-002-back-from-dead.html

Philosophy of health welcomes New York Times best-selling author Dr. Christopher Ryan to launch our first episode. We discuss magical, mystical childhood, angry, angst ridden adolescence, an hour left brained adulthood. We talked Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, the spiritual history of great scientists, and the future of ayahuasca. Join us for office hours, and check out ChristopherRyanPhD.com. And please donate and check out our sponsors at http://philoofhealth.org/2014/11/episode-001-office-hours-dr-christopher-ryan.html

For all links associated with this podcast please check out http://philoofhealth.org/2014/09/hello-friends.html

I discuss the thought of Mircea Eliade and his book the Myth of the Eternal Return: Cosmos and History. For more talk of the Sacred, see: http://philoofhealth.org/2014/11/episode-001-office-hours-dr-christopher-ryan.html