Podcasts about Yang

Sponsored by Kettenbach Dental.  Contact: (877) 532-2123 Website: www.kettenbach-dental.us Webshop: www.kettenbachusa.com   FFS Podcast Promotional Links:  ONLY $397: Dental Membership Master Course with Dr. Chris Phelps www.membershipmastercourse.com Dental Membership Direct www.dentalmembershipdirect.com Dental Financing Direct www.dentalfinancingdirect.com Dr. Yang will approach your oral health by practicing complete dentistry, a concept he learned through his continued commitment to advanced education. With a strong emphasis on early detection and prevention, Dr. Yang is trained to identify signs of dental problems before symptoms and damage manifest.  In many cases, this will save you from experiencing costly, repeated treatments and can reduce your overall time in the dental chair.  He is also very sensitive to fears of dentistry and has many options to assist his patients with unneeded pain and anxiety.  Over the years, patients have often commented about his gentle injection technique.  Dr. Yang insists on being available to his patients and as a result, he provides after hour consultation for dental emergencies. Dr. Yang moved to the beautiful city of Flagstaff after completing his general practice residency at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) in 2004. Dr. Yang particularly enjoys solving complex dental issues and resolving debilitating dental pain for his patients. To assist in these matters, Dr. Yang has spent countless hours furthering his education in endodontics (root canals), dental implants, cosmetic dentistry, oral surgery, TMD and complicated restorative cases (full mouth rehabilitation). He also continues to be a professor at Northern Arizona University (NAU) where he enjoys sharing his knowledge of dentistry and serving the greater student population.  Dr. Yang spends countless hours each year volunteering his dental services to local charities, benefiting the local Flagstaff community.  Apart from his dental commitments, Dr. Yang enjoys spending time with his wife Dr. Felicia Bleecker-Yang and their son Barron James.    About Dr. Sonny Spera Dr. Sonny Spera graduated from Union Endicott High School in 1981. With a four-year basketball scholarship he graduated from Syracuse University in 1985; majoring in Chemistry and Psychology. He was a member of the Sigma Alpha Mu fraternity. He was also the co-captain of the 1984-1985 Syracuse basketball team. Dr. Spera graduated from SUNY Buffalo Dental School in 1989 in the top 10% of his class. At SUNY Buffalo Dental School he was a member of the Omicron Kappa Upsilon Honorary Society. He was also UB Graduate Assistant Basketball coach.  Dr. Spera has been in private practice since 1989 and is a member of the American Dental Association, the New York State Dental Association, the Sixth District Dental Society and the Broome County Dental Society. He is also a member of the International Association of Orthodontics, the BC Dental Society and the BCDS Study Club. Away from the office, he volunteers with several community organizations, including the Elks Club, the Son's of Italy, the STNY Flyers, the Academy of General Dentistry, and the Basketball Coaches Association of New York. He is the founder and president of ME Hoops Inc. Dr. Spera currently resides with his wife Angela, whom he met at Syracuse University, and their three children, Marcus, Erica, and Carla. In his spare time, he enjoys spending time with his family, basketball, golf, music and movies. 607-624-2962 (Cell) Sonnyspera@gmail.com Www.progressivedentalny.com   Do you have a FFS practice? Would you like to be interviewed? Fill out the FFS Stories request form here: https://goo.gl/forms/7TaUF9Nqi49l1RFF2

Kencan Dengan Tuhan - Selasa, 9 Agustus 2022 "Memang ibadah itu kalau disertai rasa cukup, memberi keuntungan besar. Sebab kita tidak membawa sesuatu apa ke dalam dunia dan kita pun tidak dapat membawa apa-apa ke luar. Asal ada makanan dan pakaian, cukuplah. Tetapi mereka yang ingin kaya terjatuh ke dalam pencobaan, ke dalam jerat dan ke dalam berbagai-bagai nafsu yang hampa dan yang mencelakakan, yang menenggelamkan manusia ke dalam keruntuhan dan kebinasaan." (1 Timotius 6:6-9) Renungan: Ada sebuah cerita tentang seorang wanita bernama Mathilda yang sangat menginginkan penerimaan dan sambutan di tengah masyarakat luas. Padahal ia hanyalah istri dari orang biasa. Suatu hari suami Mathilda mendapat undangan untuk menonton sebuah pertandingan bola yang sangat bergengsi. Untuk menghadiri undangan tersebut, Mathilda meminjam sebuah kalung indah dari temannya yang terkaya. Atas penampilannya yang sangat anggun itu, ia memang menerima banyak pujian dari kalangan orang-orang atas. Tetapi sayang sekali kalung pinjaman yang mendatangkan banyak pujian itu hilang di keramaian masa. Suaminya terpaksa meminjam uang sebesar 37.000 franc dari sumber-sumber yang bersedia memberikan pinjaman. Ia membeli kalung yang bentuknya persis dengan kalung yang dihilangkan oleh istrinya. Matilda pun mengembalikan kalung itu kepada temannya tanpa menceritakan kejadian yang sesungguhnya. Selama 10 tahun yang sangat menyiksa, pasangan suami istri itu harus bekerja keras membanting tulang untuk mengembalikan pinjaman sebesar 37.000 franc tersebut. Mereka terpaksa menjual rumah, kehilangan pelayan karena tidak mampu lagi membayarnya dan tinggal di perkampungan miskin demi melunasi hutang 37.000 franc yang mereka pinjam. Mereka berdua mau mengerjakan apa saja demi melunasi hutang mereka. Setelah pinjaman itu lunas terbayar, Mathilda tergerak untuk menceritakan kepada temannya kejadian yang sebenarnya dan betapa menderitanya mereka selama 10 tahun untuk melunasi pinjaman itu. Tetapi Mathilda justru mendapat berita yang sangat mengagetkan sekaligus menyedihkan hati. Temannya pun menceritakan bahwa kalung yang dulu dipinjam oleh Mathilda itu hanyalah kalung imitasi yang terbuat dari semacam lem atau perekat. Harganya pun hanya 500 franc atau bahkan kurang dari itu. Betapa sering kita terjebak dalam rasa haus akan pengakuan dan pujian. Kita ingin kelihatan lebih hebat dan lebih berkelas, kalau bisa jangan ada yang mengalahkan. Penampilan dan gaya seolah menjadi prioritas di dalam kehidupan kita. Kita mengira dengan memakai barang-barang mewah dan mahal, itu akan menaikkan harga diri dan membuat hidup kita lebih berarti. Gengsi memaksa orang untuk melakukan apa saja yang akhirnya membuatnya tidak dapat menikmati karunia indah dari kehidupan berupa ketenangan dan damai sejahtera. Apa gunanya pujian dan penerimaan jikalau kita harus membayarnya dengan penderitaan berkepanjangan. Yang lebih menyedihkan lagi, rasa haus akan pengakuan, pujian dan penerimaan akhirnya hanya akan mengalihkan perhatian kita dari tujuan utama hidup ini yaitu hidup yang kekal. Kita lari dari tujuan utama dengan tidak mengejar apa yang bersifat kekal melainkan kesenangan serta kepuasan sementara. Tuhan Yesus memberkati. Doa: Tuhan Yesus, jauhkan aku dari pengaruh dunia yang seringkali lebih mengutamakan kepuasan sementara. Biarlah mataku selalu tertuju kepadamu. Amin. (Dod).

Last time we spoke about the harrowing tale of what could be one of the most evil leaders in human history, depending of course which sources you read about him. Indeed Zhang Xianzhong, regardless if he was fully, half or less guilty of the crimes against humanity laid against his name, has gone down in Chinese history as a significant figure. The people of Sichuan underwent a horror and it would take two full centuries for Sichuan to regain its lost population. Thus with the fall of Zhang Xianzhong, Li Zicheng and countless South Ming claimants to the throne, who was left for the remnants of the former to rally around? Well one of the self proclaimed Emperors to the South Ming regime was still alive and….fleeing. Emperor Yongli now had an opportunity to harness the scattered Dashun, Daxi and other Ming loyalists to his cause.    This episode is the Flight & Fight of Emperor Yongli   Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on the history of asia and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War.   Well after a rather horrifying episode dedicated just to Zhang Xianzhong's regime in Sichuan we now come back to the South Ming regime. Now while Zhang Xianzhong was busy turning Sichuan into a cemetery, the South Ming Loyalists were engaged in a life or death struggle for central and southeast China. A series of Ming claimants to the dragon throne rose and fell. Li Zicheng and Zhang Xianzhong are both dead leaving their Dashun and Daxi followers in a power vacuum to be swallowed up by mere Banditry, or perhaps defecting to the Qing or Ming. As for the largest victims, the common people, they were once again caught in the middle, soon to be subjugated to war, famine and general hardship. As one scholar one put it “The long conquest of central and south China required armed struggle in county after county, community after community, forcing countless people to face the grim choices on their own doorsteps.”. When the Qing took Beijing, they faced multiple enemies. Li Zicheng fled west and the South Ming Regime sprang up in the south. It meant the Qing would be forced to divide their forces, resources and attention. But their enemies were not only not cooperating, they we're all fighting another. Hell the South Ming Regime was arguably fighting another more than the Qing at many points. It made sense to take out Li Zicheng first of course, he was an easier target since the Qing smashed his army, and there was the bonus of looking like they were avenging the regicide of Emperor Chongzhen. In the meantime the South Ming Regime was killing itself allowing the Qing to kick the door to the rotting structure and soon a bunch of South Ming self proclaimed Emperors were defeated one by one. Yet when they got to Emperor Yongli…well he kept fleeing. Then they diverted their attention to Zhang Xianzhong and took him out, probably for the betterment of humanity. Now so many remnants of Dashun, Daxi, other Ming loyalist military groups and other bandit armies were roaming around. Many warlords sprang up taking control over them. What would happen if someone began to win over all these free chess pieces so to say to their side of the war?  Now we are going to go back to Emperor Yongli's situation. As I had mentioned 2 episodes ago Qu Shishi had argued with Emperor Yongli that they needed to make a stand, and one would be made at Guilin. Qu Shisi said to the Emperor ““If you want to defend Yue, you should stay in Yue. If you abandon Yue, then Yue will be imperiled. If we take one step forward, then the people will take one step forward. But if we flee far away in a single day, the people will also flee far in a day. If we run, then we cannot defend [territory]. How can we attract people to our cause?”. Well Emperor Yongli fled regardless for the 4th or 5th time I lost count at this point, Qu Shishi stayed behind at Guilin. Qu Shisi understood the necessity not to abandon cities so easily so as to rally more forces to the cause. He had seen the previous South Ming Regimes collapse because they abandoned bases too swiftly, undermining their causes.   Qu Shisi was accompanied by Jiao Lian and they would defend Guilin from multiple Qing attacks in April and June of 1647. During the first assault Jiao had led the defense of the city facing greater numbers and having lesser firearms at his disposal. Despite the deficiency in firearms Jiao's forces defended Guilin using sword and bow to great effect. Several hundred Qinq archer cavalry charged Guilin and pelted the defenders with arrows, one of them striking Jiao, but he kept fighting and held the south gate against the invaders. This inspired his troops and soon they charged out the south gate against the Qing force, smashing many troops of the Red banner. The Qing had to flee, and Jiao's men chased them killing thousands.Eventually Jiao and his men went too far and were surrounded and outnumbered by the Qing who wheeled around on them. It is said Jiao screamed and struck the invaders with his spear, raining blood and flesh all over as he and his men hacked their way out of the encirclement. They fought for some miles, just a force of 300 men against thousands but managed to make it back to Guilin.    This minor victory prompted Qu and Jiao to stress the tactical and strategic importance of Guilin and Wuzhou, urging Emperor Yongli to return and to make Guilin a base of operations. Meanwhile Emperor Yongli was being escorted by Liu Chengyin, an ambitious career military man who was nicknamed “the Iron Club” who protected him in western Huguang. For 3 months no rations were delivered to Guilin and when the Qing learnt about its supply issues they attacked again, this time at the Wenchang gate. Jiao charged out against the enemy covered by some western cannons given to him by some catholic missionary friends. The cannons cut the Qing forces to ribbons, killing hundreds as Jiao charged out to fight them in the fields. The fighting went on for 2 days with the cannons never stopping and although the Qing regrouped to attack again they were smashed so much they had to make a retreat, being pursued yet again by Jiao's forces losing thousands of men. For this victory, Jiao was made military commissioner in chief of the left, military superintendent of Guangxi, and the Earl of Xining. Liu “Iron Club” Chengyin, it seems had been holding Emperor Yongli under house arrest at Wugang the entire time and this began to look really bad. In May of 1647, the Qing captured Baoqing and in a series of battles defeated Liu Chengyin. Emperor Yongli barely was able to escape, sometimes only being just a few miles ahead of Qing scouts. Emperor Yongli made his way through the Guni Pass to Liuzhou, but soon had to reroute to Xiangzhou. By this point locals were shooting arrows at his royal barge, not a good look at all. After the constant urging of Qu Shishi, Emperor Yongli finally decided to return to Guilin by the end of 1647.    The Qing found they were having a hard time pacifying southern and western Huguang province, it held rough terrain and a large number of enemies. Bandit groups were operating by both land and water in numbers ranging from hundreds to thousands. To make matters worse the bandits had multiple spies working within the Qing giving them warning of their movements, allowing them to hide into mountains and forests when needed. Han bannerman Luo Xiujin argued that despite their victories, the enemy would always escape their clutches via mountains. The Qing like their Ming counterparts, were having the exact same problems dealing with confrontations with wandering bandits, particularly in the rugged border country between provinces. Qing officials complained repeatedly of ambushes in mountain passes and heavy casualties. There were also reports that such ambush attacks were making common cause with the Ming loyalists, and this was certainly concerning. The Qing were realizing that the Ming could offer legitimation to bandit groups and use them to ware the Qing down.   In Autumn of 1647, after the Qing attacked Yongzhou, after 10 days of combat, the Ming suddenly charged out of the city and pushed the Qing to flee near Quanzhou where they managed to defeat Qing commander Geng Zhongming forcing him to flee for miles. This was considered the first military triumph for Emperor Yongli's regime.    By early 1648, the Qing seized Quanzhou and managed to defeat some Ming forces near Guilin who routed. The forces who had routed ended up fleeing to Guilin and they quickly set about looting the city before further fleeing. Qu Shishi remained stern as some of his fellow Ming commanders looted, burned and fled Guilin as the situation deteriorated. Guilin soon fell into a mutiny as the city was engulfed in flames. Qu refused to leave his post but  was wounded and had to leave the city by river. When the Qing prince Jirgalang heard of the problems in Guilin he seized the opportunity to assault the city. This prompted, I guess the 6th flight of Emperor Yongli at this point. Qu Shishi was urging the Emperor to stay as Jiao came rushing from Pringle to help, but Qing forces blocked his route to Guilin. Qu urged the emperor “Victory or defeat is still unsure. But if your plan is to run away, then how can this place not be in danger?” Yongli replied, “Surely my minister does not want to see the Altars of State and Grain perish?”.  Qu tried to gather forces and calm things down to defend Guilin as the enemy approached, while Jiao kept fighting to get to the city. Soon Jiao found himself surrounded and fought with his spear courageously, buying enough time for the Ming commander Hu Yiqing to show up from the east joining the fight with his cavalry. It is said, Hu Yiqing had his horses manes clipped in such a way that the Qing thought they were riding bulls and proclaimed “This bull- riding monster is not easy to stand up against!”. The cavalry of Hu managed to smash the Qing force, sending them fleeing for a few miles. Despite all of this, Emperor Jongli continued to flee all the way to Nanning, much to the outrage of Qu Shishi “How can you flee every time the wind blows two hundred li away? How can the people take heart if their leader is so tremulous?”. His words had no effect on the Emperor, in only 18 months Yongli had traveled over 1800 miles across 3 provinces, spending no more than 4 months in any given place. This led to waves of defections, and the court of Yongli began to discuss where would be the best place to set up a base of operation.    Despite the flights of Yongli, in 1648 the Ming had some major successes. Ma Jinzhong took back Changde, He Tengjiao took back Quanzhou and this drove many to the Ming cause, even Yongzhou was taken back after a 3 month siege. Riding the wave of victories, the Ming took Hengzhou and they also began to capture valuable supplies, horses and other war materials. This all forced Qu Shishi to yet again urge Emperor Yongli to go back to Guilin and this time make it his capital. Qu's reasoning was quite sound, Guilin was centrally located in a resource rich area along a river. It was easy to communicate with other sectors and coordinate offensive campaigns. But time and time again Emperor Yongli refused and this had a damaging effect on morale. Soon Ming commanders recaptured Xiangyang and Yichang and this led Emperor Yongli to feel secure enough to return to Zhaoqing, which he hoped to turn into a base of operation. At this point Yongli and many in his court thought that a Ming restoration was truly possible and they now sought to push north of the Yangzi and seize Nanjing and Kaifeng. Sun Kewang had opened up negotiations with their regime and it was expected that he could be relied upon. Qu Shishi for his part argued that now they could push east from Sichuan and north cutting Qing supply lines from Hugaung. Things would all take a dramatic turn for the worse however.   One of the Ming's commanders, Li Chixin who was a former commander under Li Zicheng had been continuously stating in public that Li Zicheng was the former emperor, making quite a bit of trouble. Li then requested permission to take Changsha and Yuezhou on his own. He managed to defeat the Qing commander Xu Yong and marched north to assault Changsha where Xu Yong had retreated. He killed thousands, captured boats, horses and other war materials and word spread of his great success. However the people of Changsha, did not see Li Chixin as their liberator, in fact they threw their lot in with Xu Yong to defend their city. Let us not forget, Li Chixin like many other former commanders of the Dashun or Daxi bandit armies had a reputation of course, who knows what populaces thought of him. Thus Li Chixins command boat when approaching the city was struck by a cannon ball and he lost over 1000 men. Xu Yong was hit by an arrow, but this did not stop him from rallying the defense of the city atop the walls. Li kept up the pressure with his siege ladders, artillery and sappers. But Xu Yong fired arrows, cannons down upon the enemy and led men into the tunnels to attack the Ming sappers costing Li Chixin some thousand men. Then Xu Yong sent secret attacks with boats on the Xiang river and they hit Li's flanks forcing him to retreat.   When Li Chixin was defeated at Changsha he was order to simply move on and relieve forces at Nanchang, but he ended he only went as far as Chaling and hunkered down. In the meantime the two Ming commanders, Du Yinxi and He Tengjiao were forming plans in Xiangtan. Du decided he would head east to rescue Jiangxi while He would try to go to Nanjing linking up with other Ming loyalists there. As part of their campaigns, Li Chixin was appointed vice minister of war and supreme commander of Shandong and Henan, while other commanders received supreme commands over other areas. But nothing came of these appointments as the Qing quickly advanced and hit He Tengjiao as he was departing from Xiangtan. He tried to find allies to help him out, but none could do anything, thus Prince Jirgalang was able to defeat He and took him as a hostage. Prince Jirgalang knew He Tengjiao had quite a lot of military capability and spent many days trying to get He to defect, but it was to no avail. Eventually Prince Jirgalang ordered his execution, or He committed suicide, no report is sure of his fate. When He Tengjiao was dead, many of his men fled to join Qu Shisi at Guilin. Another issue however was the countless “Loyal and True” who were under He Tengjiao's command, since his death they were now without any semblance of order. Bandits will be bandits and soon they were looting and pillaging everyone.    The Qing soon besieged Nanchang and took it in short time, thus dramatically collapsing the Ming control in Huguang. Many Ming commanders defected to the Qing and Emperor Yongli put Qu Shishi in charge of defending the Huguang-Jiangxi Guangdong corridor, but at this point the Qing held the Fujian coast and much of Huguang. By 1649, Li Chixin's troops began to scatter and plunder the area as the Qing pursued them. Eventually Li's forces plundered their way back north earning the moniker “white felt bandits” for the way they dressed. It was hoped by the Ming that they could still coerce Li Chixin and his white felt bandits to return back into the fold, but Li Chixin would die of illness in Guangxi in the late year. The white felt bandits soon scattered off and fell into pillaging under new commanders mostly in Huguang and Sichuan provinces.     As the Ming forces collapsed at Yongzhou in late 1649, Qu Shishi said in anguish “For 2 years I've tried to create a bulwark, and in a single morning everything has collapsed. How can it be believed that Heaven if for the Ming?”. With the death of He Tengjiao and the absolute collapse of the South Ming regime's position in Huguang, Emperor Yongli, you guessed it, fled Zhaoqing for Wuzhou in early 1650. Thus the South Ming regime was barely a thing in Huguang anymore. Now Qu Shisi began begging the emperor to stay in Zhaoqing stating “Yuedong has lots of rivers alongside mountains; [even] good cavalry cannot unite in the wilderness [to attack here]. Since the time [Li] Chengdong returned to allegiance, this has been the secure area. Its resources and tax base are abundant, ten times that of Yuexi, and both competent officials and troops north and south are connected, and we can strengthen ourselves from within and defend ourselves from outside enemies. Moreover, Zhaoqing is one thousand li from Shao[xing]. With stout crossbows mounted on the walls and entrenched brigades in defense, we can wait for royal rescue troops to come from the four [directions]. Wherever we can go, the bandits can go as well. Although the realm is vast, there is only one boundary. If we retreat an inch, we lose an inch; if we retreat a foot, we lose a foot. Now if the court hears of danger and climbs aboard a boat in the middle of the night, where can you go?”.   As you probably guessed, Yongli did not listen and continued his flight. Qing commander Kong Youde, remember that guy all the way back from the very first episodes? Well he sent Qu Shisi a letter, trying to get him to surrender. Kong Youde had been battling the Loyal and True throughout the southwest smashing many of their armies. Qu allegedly burned the letter and killed the messenger. Meanwhile back in Sichuan, Sun Kewang had begun his own program of state building and was beginning to ask the South Ming Regime to install him as a Ming Prince.    Following in his former master's gruesome footsteps, Sun looted Guizhou and severed hands, ears and noses of those who resisted, apparently only 30% of the populace was left alive. Sun set to work training his troops for months, made deals with local cities to establish economic relations all while simultaneously harassing local Ming armies. His forces eventually captured the provincial capital of Guiyang and its surrounding area and he soon began to set up a new entire new regime. But just as Sun was settling down he received word of an extraordinary opportunity unfolding in Yunnan. Thus he and his Da Xi commanders marched southwest entering Yunnan, entering a new dawn for them all.    The collapse of the Ming dynasty at Beijing and that of the Hongguang South Ming regime in Nanjing had led the people of Yunnan to revolt against their former Ming leaders. Yunnan was one of the very last places conquered by the Ming Dynasty in the late 14th century and it remained relatively the same it had been prior. It had a huge aboriginal population governed by chieftains in a system called the Tulsi system. Yunnan thus was always a bit of a quasi-feudal state controlled by the strongest chieftains. Once the Ming Dynasty fell, the chieftains began to fight another for dominance. The Chieftain family that had the largest influence historically because of their relationship with the Ming royal family was known as the Mu clan. The Mu clan was pretty oppressive to the people and even more so when the Ming collapsed. When Hongguang's regime fell, most in Yunnan began to view the Mu clan as being weak and many other clans began to attack them. One clan, the Wu clan to make this all sound more confusing, was rising to prominence at the time and challenged the Mu clan. The Wu had limited military power and the Mu quelled their challenge fairly easily. But the challenge simply encouraged more and more clans to rise up and a leader named Sha Dingzhou used the opportunity. Sha was a military officer for a chieftain who died and Sha managed to get a stronghold of the clan. While the Mu's and Wu's fought, Sha began a campaign that extended to the Vietnamese border. Then Sha tried a coup against the Mu after they quelled the Wu. Sha's force stormed the Mu palace and burnt it down, killing many in the capital of Yunnanfu. This began a war between Sha and the Mu clan for several months with Sha gaining control of the east of Yunnan. However Mu's forces and other chieftains were fighting a war of attrition and likely would win, thus Sha sought external help.    Sha Dingzhou sent a letter to Sun Kewang “inviting” him to come to the rescue of Yunnan in 1647. Unfortunately, this would be a very very big mistake. Sun Kewang claimed to be the brother in law to Mu Tianbo and declared he would avenge his sister's family. Sun Kewang showed up with 100,000 battled hardened veterans who saw a force of just a few thousand disorganized local units under Sha's command. Sun Kewang defeated Sha's army easily and piled corpses in the streets of the first city they took, immersing the city in 3 to 4 inches of blood so it is said.    Sun then took Quijing, a city he expected to simply open up the gates and submit to him as he had just massacred a previous city sending fear throughout the region. They chose to not submit and fired cannons upon the invaders. Soon Sun's men tossed up a cloud of ladders and swarming over the walls of Quijing like ants. Sun's men rounded up all those in the city and severed hands   Sun then ordered his fellow adopted brothers Liu Wenxiu to the west and Li Dingguo to the east to kill all those who would not submit. Sha Dingzhou tried to send armies to attack the invaders where he could, but every army was defeated with ease. Sha would proclaim to all his confidence with his army, but secretly he was pulling his hair out knowing soon Sun would take the province.  Sun eventually marched on Yannanfu and smashed the Sha army defending it, but rather than immediately occupying the city, Sun Kewang instead announced he was going to restore the Jiao clan, that being his sister's clan who was married to a Mu husband. By this point Liu Wenxiu and Li Dingguo had spread a ton of fear into the populace with their campaigns in the east. Despite Yannanfu having a tiny garrison within it, the city was simply falling apart because of low supplies as Sun Kewang's army simply surrounded it and waited. Thus after a few months the gates of Yunnanfu opened and Sun's forces entered the city. Soon Sun Kewang began to proclaim all those who fled the city should come back, or they would soon be killed as rebels. All the wives within Yunnanfu who lost husbands were given to Sun's men. Then he began to force the children to work cutting grass and collecting firewood. Girls of the age 10 and up were forced into drama troupes, some put into brothels. Boys 12 to 20 years of age were castrated. The adult men were killed and their bodies were tossed into the wilderness. Many former Ming officials were killed or they themselves committed suicide. To restore a semblance of order, Sun began practices employed by Zhang Xianzhong such as prohibited fires at night amongst many other rules which could earn a citizen of Yunnanfu a beating or execution depending on the rule. Yunnanfu was basically becoming a Chengdu 2.0, but perhaps not nearly as bad. Then Sun sent his armies to scour the countryside of the city killing many. It was estimated that perhaps half the population of Yunnanfu was dead. It was even alleged that coffin makers ran out of wood in Yunnanfu. Within a month, Sun's forces began to conscript laborers to cultivate enough food for the army to survive. Many homes around the city were razed to make for space for Sun's army training grounds any who resisted were killed. Sun eventually established order through fear, but realized that in Yunnan you required the support of the Tulsi system to truly control the province, so he soon began to establish relations with all the chieftains. Those who resisted of course were threatened.    Sun then began calling himself Ping Dong Wang “Prince who pacifies the East” which was met with animosity from his adoptive brothers. Sun began to place royal titles on everyone, but kept his position elevated from his adoptive brothers who were supposed to all be equal. The 3 other brothers all recognized Sun Kewang nominally as the leader, but had agreed they should all have equal rankings.  Li Dingguo began to argue they should all be equal as things were with Zhang Xianzhong, which angered Sun. Sun then publicly punished Li Dingguo, though Liu Wenxiu and Ai Nengqi would manage to get the punishment lightened. Regardless Li Dingguo was livid stating ““We are brothers. How dare you strike me? Since the death of our father we have been like hands and feet with no ruler among us, yet now we are to honor you as superior? If this is how things are going to be from now on, how can we live together in peace?”. It is alleged Sun went to Li in private and told him he had to do it publicly because if not there could be a mutiny. Sun then tried to make amends with Li, tasking him with hunting down and killing Sha Dingzhou who was on the run.   Sha had run to Lin'an and had held out against the forces of Liu Wenxiu for quite a few months. When Li Dingguo's force showed up the defenders of Lin'an showered them with gunfire, but Li being a veteran commander easily broke their walls in no time using gunpowder. Sha's forces were shocked by the speed and efficiency of Li's army as they quickly overwhelmed the city. The entire city was torched in a single day, it is said 78 thousand were massacred. Sha and his family managed to escape to a nearby town called Ami. After the massacre at Lin'an, Li Dingguo was noted to not again perform such horrible acts against civilians, it seems he was trying to build himself a reputation afterwards that he was not like Zhang Xianzhong or Sun Kewang. In early 1648, Li Dingguo surrounded the town of Ami, cutting off its water supply. After 20 days, the defenders with Sha Dingzhou ran out of water and Li began sapping Ami's walls. Li then invited Sha to a fake banquet making it seem they would allow Sha to defect and take up a grand position in the new regime. The effect led many of the defenders to defect who soon simply opened the gates to Li's men. Li was brought to Sha and his family and instead of the banquet he promised he had the entire household brought to Yunnanfu and flayed alive. Li's successes were extravagant, showing his extreme capability as a military leader. Unfortunately they also bolstered Li Dingguo as a great leader and Sun Kewang began to become quite jealous of this.    Once Sun Kewangs army had secured enough food to sustain themselves for a year, they began government building efforts. Taxes began, agricultural reform, mines were opened, weapons manufacturing, the works. The weather proved great during that year and the harvests did very well, mines produced salt, gold, silver, iron and copper and the faith in the government rose up. In fact Sun had done better than some of the former Ming officials had in the past and he soon began to mint coins, print paper notes and open new roads, which all helped reduce conflict in the province. Within a year Sun's government was gathering much praise and the people were quite content. Things were really looking good and Sun began to explore the idea of formally uniting with the Ming to resist the Qing. Sun had heard the reports about how well the Loyal and True bandits had done under the Ming regime and thought his regime might benefit from this relationship as well. This would help Sun and his inner circle gain legitimacy and at the time it looked like the Ming were doing well. However old dogs can't learn too many new tricks, and Sun's administration still held some Zhang like favorites, like harsh punishments such as decapitation, flaying and flogging. Though Sun disregarded the policy of rewarding soldiers for body counts, so there was that.   But Sun Kewang was not content, he continued to make it more apparent that his position was more and more elevated compared to his adoptive brothers. He began to erect an ancestral temple for Zhang Xianzhong and referred to him as Taizu and linking himself to Zhang. Then he asked Emperor Yongli to invest with the Ming title of prince of blood “qin wang”. Ai Nengqi was perplexed by this and said ““I can name myself prince. What's the point?” Li Dingguo also added, “We haven't conquered an inch of territory, so how can we accept enfeoffment from the court?”. Sun explained to them that only an investiture from the Ming court was legitimate and that after he was invested with the title they would all refer to him as “you highness”. As you can imagine this would also most certainly help Sun alleviate himself over another rising star, Li Dingguo who was highly popular as a field commander. Li was appointed with the major responsibility of training the troops and was noted to share hardships with the men and always led from the front gaining their respect. Li was what you call a soldier's soldier. Li Dingguo soon established 5 rules for his army; done kill people, dont commit arson, dont commit rape, dont steal livestock and dont take money from peasants. Given how soldiers usually acted in this time in history, the response of the populace was ecstasy.    In the summer of 1649, Sun dispatched his court official Yang Weizhi as his emissary to Yongli's court to ask for the investiture of Prince of Qin and offered to fight the Qing on their behalf. By this time Sun had relocated his operations in Guizhou as it was more centrally located, leaving Li Dingguo in Yunnan to train the military. For Emperor Yongli's court the request was quite disturbing, to make Sun a blood prince might put him in line for the throne. Many in the Ming court had no illusions about Sun Kewang, they thought he was trying to vie for the dragon throne himself.  The title of Prince of Qin was normally reserved for the royal family. The court was divided, Qu Shisi called for Sun's execution, many argued Sun was nothing more than a bandit. But they were in a terrible situation, suffering many military defeats at the hands of the Qing. Eventually the court consented to giving Sun the lesser  title of Duke of Jingguo. Yang Weizhi was terrified of relaying the response to Sun who might simply execute him for failing to get the title Sun wanted and made a stop at Wuzhou before returned to Guizhou. In Wuzhou Yang met with Du Yinxi who advised him to simply forge a document to make Sun think he received a better title than what he had been given. Thus with Du Yinxi's help they forged a document stating Sun was invested with the title of Prince of Pingaliao. Meanwhile another official in the Ming court forged another document stating Sun was being invested with the Prince of Qin title he had originally asked for. Turns out that official, named Chen Bangfu wanted to curry favor with Sun.  All of this was done without the awareness of Yonglis court of course.    Thus the first to arrive in Guizhou was the envoy with Chen Bangfu's forgery and Sun was absolutely delighted upon seeing it. Then Yang Weizhi showed up with his forgery of the Prince of Pingliao title, enraged Sun Kewang. Then yes as you might imagine, a real envoy from Yongli's court arrived and Sun found out the truth that he actually received the Duke of Ingguo title, really really pissing him off. To add insult to injury, his 3 other adoptive brothers were also given titles by that envoy of Yongli   In his rage, Sun  sent more emissaries to Yongli who offered him the title of Prince of Yi, but Sun refused this, demanding the title he originally requested. In the meantime Ai Nengqi died as a result of a poisoned crossbow bolt while he was pacifying a rebellious region. He had been ambushed in a forest and his army was significantly battered. He had managed to return to Yunnanfu, but the doctors there could do little to nothing to stop the poison. His army was handed over to Sun Kewangs command, significantly increasing his power. Thus the first of the adoptive children of Zhang Xianzhong was dead, and he would not be the last. Now all the way back in Sichuan the struggle raged on between the Ming loyalists and the Qing. The Qing had sent commander Li Guoying into Sichuan on a pacification campaign and as he entered the wasteland that once was Sichuan he said “For a thousand li there is no smoke [from cooking fires] and on account of the depredations of the bandit gangs, the value of rice is greater than that of pearls.”. His forces occupied Baoning in northern Sichuan where he was attacked multiple times by bandit armies such as the Kuidong bandits, Tan Hong and others. Li eventually rode out of Baoning and attacked the bandit armies fast and hard sending them fleeing into the countryside. Soon his army took Shunqing and he began to stock up supplies in preparation  for a gradual march south. In spring of 1647 he marched into Chengdu and lamented at the ghastly scene, he said to those around him“Chengdu has been down a hard road. Where are all the people?”. Bones were strewn everywhere, and there was no sign of life to be seen. He was given reports that the people of Chengdu had first fled to Yazhou and ate grass and wild plants until they starved so much they resorted to cannibalism. Li left Zheng Desheng as commander of Chengdu which must have been the worst appointment ever, but soon his troops starved, killed their commander and fled back north. Li got a report that 1330 of the 1390 men assigned to Zheng Desheng died of starvation or disease. Even Li himself was quite ill through 1647-1648 and he was hampered by bandit attacks and a very stretched supply line. Reports flooded in that every fortress was ridden with hundreds of sick and starving troops. All the garrisons the Qing commander would set up in Sichuan amounted to a few hundred starving men. The starvation did not allow him to perform a sufficient offensive, the situation became so dire most of the Qing forces had to withdraw from Sichuan with a meager force left occupying Baoning. It was not just the starvation and disease alone they had to worry about, anywhere the Qing set up shop, bandit armies emerged to harass them.    Later on in 1650, the pacification commissioner of Sichuan Zhang Chun made a report that gives quite a lot of insight. He began by describing Sichuan as a den of tigers and that of the Yao-Huang bandits. One could travel for a great distance without seeing any smoke from cooking fires. He estimated that 2-3% of the population in Sichuan was still alive. He laid blame upon the destruction caused by the Yao-Huang bandits, while leaving out that of the Qing's actions and goes on to talk about man-eating tigers found everywhere. People in Sichuan were  terrified to travel just because of tiger attacks. He claimed that in one distinct of a previous population of 506, 228 people were killed by tigers, 55 died of illness and 223 were left alive. He ended the report stating “Many people escaped the clutches of bandits only to end up in the mouths of tigers”. Wow I am just trying to imagine, surviving the horrors of Zhang Xianzhong, then the war between the Qing and Ming and now you got tigers everywhere eating people yikes.   Li Guoying immediately began demanding assistance, and Qing emperor Shunzhi began to promise supplies would be on their way from places like Shaanxi. But all supplies were quickly used up and Li still had little in terms of soldiers. Li kept arguing that as his enemies grew larger in Sichuan his forces grew smaller. The problem was the supplies and men quickly starved and got sick because there was no foundation within Sichuan to feed them. Basically it was like putting bandaids upon bandaids upon even more bandaids for a large wound that needed a doctor to fix it. Thus the situation forced Li to develop a new plan which was “tuantian” “to nourish the troops, soothe the people, and allow for both offensive and defensive warfare”. He sent Qing officials into the countryside to investigate and promote agricultural productivity. As for his army he sent them throughout the north and east of Sichuan, killing and capturing thousands of bandit armies, many part of the Yao-Huang bandits. But like always, bandits could run and hide in mountains, and thats just what they did.  It was estimated by Li that upto 100,000 Yao-Huang bandits could be in Sichuan.    By 1649, Li was promoted to minister of war and vice censor in chief of the right with jurisdiction over the armies of Sichuan. He had multiple victories, one was dislodging Liu Wenxiu from Chongqing where he killed many Daxi.  If you remember way back when, Emperor Yongli dispatched a distant family member named Zhu Rongfan to Sichuan in 1647. Zhu Rongfan began parading around as a Prince of Chu, though in reality he wasn't and amassed 100,000 followers forming a base in Kuizhou. His forces fought the Qing and scored quite a few victories, but in reality they were just a bunch of opportunistic bandits. Then Zhu Rongfan picked a fight with the Ming loyalist commander Yang Zhan who brought the Ming attention upon him. As you might have guessed, he was preparing to proclaim himself emperor as one does and South Ming officials began to investigate the situation. When pressed by them Zhu claimed to be acting on behalf of Emperor Yongli and that he was merely suppressing bandits. They also accused him of trying to claim himself as an heir apparent despite not being a prince of blood. Zhu then tried to make a getaway but was caught by other officials in 1649 who executed him.    Meanwhile the situation in Sichuan kept growing worse and worse. Just because the tyrant Zhang Xianzhong was dead did not mean his lasting effects on the province were gone. In the midst of the war between bandits, Qing and Ming, the common people were starving and dying. Rice was selling at unbelievably inflated rates. Dogs ate human flesh and lurked in city streets. Most cities were empty though because tigers and wolves were prowling them. It was reported that bandits were robbing graves and that people were resorting to cannibalism en masse. Many people fled to mountains away from the threat of other people or tigers. Lighting a fire became like a death sentence inviting anyone to attack you. Disgusting euphemisms began to be said because of all the cannibalism such as “poor man's broth / xia geng” “surplus lamb / yang rao” “scorched bones  / gu yang”. On top of the famine were the terrible diseases which there were many. “Big head plague” as it was called was when one's head erupted in red boils, it was associated with the chills, fever, swelling of the head and neck and was very contagious. There was a similar disease known as “frog fever” where the boils were more so on the shoulders and back. Then there was “horse eye” a sickness when one's eyes became big and yellow. It is also assumed the Qing brought smallpox with them and this invested the south.   By autumn of 1649 most of north and western Sichuan was pacified and a quarter of the province under nominal control of the Qing. In Southern Sichuan the South Ming loyalist Yang Zhan had held control for quite awhile, aided greatly by the hoard of treasure he salvaged from Zhang Xianzhong's naval catastrophe in 1646. He was capable of feeding his own troops and thousands of refugees who stormed over to him. Despite all his good fortune, he had to contest with warlords in Sichuan named Li Qiande, Wu Dading and Yuan Tao. The 3 warlords  invited Yang to a banquet, its always a banquet eh? And yup, they poisoned his wine, typical. After killing Yang they divided his treasure and troops and southern sichuan yet again fell into chaos.    As this all went down, word spread and Sun Kewang, similar to how he took the opportunity with Yunnan's turmoil came back to Sichuan when he heard the south was fractured.  Sun seeking to put further pressure on Emperor Yongli to invest him as a Prince of Qin, sent Liu Wenxiu and Bai Wenxuan with 200,000 to avenge Yang Zhan. Sun's forces made quick work of the warlords and bandit leaders in southern Sichuan taking several cities.Yuan and Wu were captured and sent back to Sun who mocked them saying he would enroll them as regular soldiers in his army. Wu actually did end up serving in Sun's military and for quite a long time. Yuan managed to escape and flee but was caught and killed by Liu Wenxiu. Li Qiande drowned himself when Liu Wenxiu caught up to him. Sun's forces killed countless warlords, bandit leaders and such. Now Sun's army even had elephant cavalry from Yunnan. Many simply submitted to Sun Kewang joining his forces and growing his power.   Meanwhile Li Guoying had initially profited heavily from the death of Yang Zhan, but saw with horror the force of Sun Kewang sweep through the province like a swarm. Li Guoying pleaded with Emperor Shunzhi for more troops to combat the warlord in the south and was promised a mix of Han and Manchu troops under the control of Wu Sangui. Yet even with the extra forces, now the Loyal and Trust, Kuidong bandits, Yao-Huang bandits and other groups were flocking to Sun Kewangs banner and the south of Sichuan was just a minefield of trouble.  Sun asserted his control from Guizhou and began building it up similar to what he did in Yunnan and in a short time the southwest of Sichuan became an armed camp designed specifically to resist the Qing.    Kong Youde was made prince in charge of rectifying the south in 1649 and alongside the Manchu prince Jirgalang both were dispatched and in 1650 they took Longhu, Wugang and Jingzhou. Through their efforts they took 50,000 surrendered Ming troops and many officers and moved to take Quanzhou and then entered Guangxi. Qu Shishi tried desperately to rally troops to defend Guilin, but all efforts were in vain and no significant numbers came. Qu refused to leave as all his colleagues urged him to do so. In november of 1650, Kong Youde's army surrounded Guilin. To help defend the city, Qu Shishi was aided by the Ming official Zhang Tonchang a who had served the Shaowu Emperor and aided in defeating Zhu Rongfan. He had a Fu Manchu style mustache, was loved and respected by his men for being fearless in battle. When Zhang arrived Qu said to him “I have been entrusted with staying to defend [Guilin]. So I should die here. Those without such responsibilities can flee. The frontier has already been lost. How can I think of easily fleeing?” Zhang replied that he was impressed and called Qu a true gentleman, requesting permission to die alongside him, saying, “If it's to be death, then we die together.”Qu was delighted, and the two shared wine. Qu gave his seals of office to another official to send to Yongli. So a sort of bromance if you were.   Kong Youde repeatedly offered Qu and Zhang the chance to defect, but both men refused. Kong then wined and dined them, trying to win them over but to no avail. Zhang spat back at Kong “You are no more than a dog or a sheep. You disgrace the former Sage, and you deserve to die for your crimes!” You're nothing more than the slave who used to carry a bedpan in Mao Wenlong's house! How dare you sully the name of the Sage.”. For this Zhangs feet were severed, but Kong still did not kill him. He kept insisting the Qing were better for all and gave stories of his 20 years as a soldier. Then Kong tried to have their own family members come and talk sense into them, but still it was to no avail.  Both men were eventually  imprisoned and wrote depressing and falistic poems during the captivity before being executed outside Windy Cave at the foot of the celestial crane peak in what is called today, Diecai Shan (folded Brocade hill) public park. Kong Youde allowed proper burials for the two and soon took up residence in the mansion of the former Ming Prince of Jingjiang. Now Guilin and nearby Pingle were in Qing hands. Kong Youde sought to secure Guangxi by 1651, but he was also itching to face Sun Kewang in the west.   In the wake of Qu and Zhang's deaths, Yongli fled to Nanning, hahahahaha this guy. With a more vulnerable Emperor Yongli now in Nanning, Sun Kewang saw an opportunity to establish greater control over him. Sun Kewang sent him welcoming parties, offering him military protection and boasted of how powerful and wonderful he was.    After annoying Yongli enough he was finally invested as the Prince of Qin, though he had already taken to calling himself “guozhu” “ruler of the realm” and had been making appointments on his own authority at Guiyang. Once a bandit, always a bandit as they say. He was absolutely delighted by the news and renamed Yunnanfu Kunming and Yunnan as Yunxing province. Then he dubbed his personal troops the “jiaqianjun” “royal vanguard”. Li Dingguo and Liu Wenxiu retained their old titles and sat at Sun's left and right side begrudgingly.  Yang Weizhi, the poor guy who had to bear bad news and was punished harshly for it managed to become grand secretary at Emperor Yongli's court and would subsequently try to impeach Sun. Sun responded by having his thugs bring Yang to Guiyang and upon his arrival screamed “Traitorous bandits like you will never be anything else.”. Sun had Yang beaten and dragged through the streets and was trampled to death by horses. His loss was felt heavy by many, particularly by Li Dingguo and Liu Wenxiu who had become close friends with him. They took his corpse and buried him with a ceremony. With Yang well out of the way, Sun began to construct an imperial palace in Guiyang and used imperial forms of address in his decrees and instructions. Any officials who resisted him were trampled to death by horses. Only Liu Wenxiu and Li Dingguo were exempt from calling Sun “guozhu”. He minted his own coins and constructed more ancestral temples, making further links to Zhang Xianzhong. Sun then declared his state the “Later Ming” regime. His ascension ceremony was attended by 100 officials on July 3rd 1651.   Meanwhile the Qing captured Pingle and Qingyuan as well as other towns along the Huguang-Guangxi border. Jiao Lian was captured by the Qing who tried to persuade him to join them, but he opted for suicide. Emperor Yongli feeling pressured, you guessed it, fled Nanning. This time he and his court debated whether they should flee to Fujian or Vietnam. Most wanted to go east arguing they should join up with Sun Kewang. But Emperor Yongli thought the coast was too distant and the travel too dangerous, for the time being they would camp at Xixing. But as the Qing took Nanning, Emperor Yongli fled again, almost being caught by the Qing who were within just a few miles of his entourage. This prompted Emperor Yongli to accept Sun Kewangs offer of protection. At the beginning of 1652, Sun ordered his subordinate Lt. Genge Sanpin with 3000 troops to escort Emperor Yongli to Anlong. By the time Emperor Yongli arrived his entourage was down to 2900 members. Sun figured the location was convenient for the court of Yongli as it lay in conjunction with Yunnan, Guizhou and Guangdong provinces. It was also close enough to Guiyang for Sun to keep an eye on the Emperor. Sun then set himself up as Yongl's military protector, but refused to personally greet Yongli on the principle that quote “2 dragons cannot see one another”. Thus Anlong became the ostensible Ming capital, but in reality it was just a safe place where Sun could keep the Emperor while he pursued his own objectives.   I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me.  So the great and horrifying father Zhang Xianzhong is dead, but his 4 adoptive sons quickly took over the family business and are causing mayhem. Sun Kewang emerged the largest brother and soon built himself an empire, matching that of  the fleeing Emperor Yongli. Now Kewang had Emperor Yongli basically under house arrest, or better said kidnapped, all was his for the taking, what stood in his way, but the might of the Qing dynasty?

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"When you are steadfast in your abstention of thoughts of harm directed toward yourself and others, all living creatures will cease to feel fear in your presence." — Patanjali This week we dive into the power of inner and outer courage.. By cultivating a disciplined practice and a honest relationship with yourself and the world around you. May all beings everywhere remember the true causes of happiness. LOVE.Weekly talks are an offering to assist you in diving deeper into a spiritual practice, your inner landscape and cultivate inner peace. Awareness http://bit.ly/3cnNx83
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00:00.00 mikebledsoe Well I think we should record now then you got 2 Eight week puppies a week old puppies. Yeah, you don't seem much like ah. 00:01.45 Max Shank Yeah,, let's do it. Puppies are great. Yeah, ah. I don't seem like a dog owner at all. And in fact, so far I have not been. 00:13.52 mikebledsoe No. 00:19.17 mikebledsoe What did she do to you. 00:22.92 Max Shank Made me an offer I couldn't refuse I guess I mean it's it's funny. Um, we talk about basically on this show. We talk about benevolent selfishness not in so many words, but basically do as good for yourself as you can. Well doing good for other folks and I've never wanted to have the responsibility required but I love dogs. Someone brings a dog into the gym and I'll just play with it the whole time I'll completely ignore the people right? but. I don't know there's a really nice, beautiful connection between beings between a person and a dog and Lindsay my special lady friend. She ah she just fell in love with this dog right. And I watch the two of them together I'm like man I don't want to because Lindsay and I cohabitate so I don't want to stand in the way of that so I was like ah I guess you can have a dog and it can live at the house but outside basically and then. Within 1 trip. Um, it was put on the table like we should take her her brother also so a pair of dogs and that seemed really nice and i. Kind of started to question all the resistance I've had toward that because resistance is a funny thing. It's either the exact right thing and in fact, you should experience a lot of resistance toward stupid risky behavior ah like jumping off cliffs. With no safety equipment. It's not really a reward there. The resistance to do that is is a good thing. It's a safety mechanism but basically ah I thought it would be good to to shake things up a little bit might as well go to instead of one also is. My thanking. 02:32.35 mikebledsoe Yeah I think it's kind of like it's probably easier have 1 or 2 kids instead of 1 02:41.43 Max Shank It's like ah, an energy balancing thing I feel like um, it's ah, a boy and a girl puppy and of of course I'm a boy and my lady is a girl I shouldn't say of course I mean who knows I could be whatever I want to be but it's like ah it feels like a good. 02:55.73 mikebledsoe It's right can make it up anytime you want. 02:59.18 Max Shank Yin Yin and Yang balancing so husky pomeranian mutts they're adorable. They're the cutest dogs ever seen. Yeah, one of them is and 1 of them is not. 03:00.66 mikebledsoe Yeah I love that what kind dogs are these. 03:08.70 mikebledsoe Wow They probably are furry. 03:17.77 Max Shank It's they would don't even look like they're from the same litter. 03:18.69 mikebledsoe Ah, interesting. Yeah, we're looking to getting a dog I think we're gonna end up getting a pit. We want to get like a big tough dog and like a little tiny. Yeah and then I have like a little tiny Yipper you know. 03:22.26 Max Shank 1 1 03:28.67 Max Shank Ah, defense dog. 03:35.27 Max Shank like like fuck what's his partner's name like Lenny in of mice and men and then the little shorter smart guy kind of you know I'm talking about ah man it's like ah there are these 2 guy. 03:37.24 mikebledsoe So. 03:46.78 mikebledsoe Now. 03:54.39 Max Shank Someone and Lenny in of mice and men anyone who's read that book and remembers it is laughing right now because Lenny is this ah mentally challenged guy and then there's the who's huge and then there's the much smaller guy who basically. Calls all the shots and Lenny's like I like to pet rabbits and you know that kind of that kind of thing so you got the big. You got the big dog bringing the muscle and then you got the the smart dog. 04:13.33 mikebledsoe Right? Yeah, yeah, so. Exactly exactly we'll make it work. Yeah um I had an interesting weekend. The ah my my fiance and I did a little couple's Journey. So. 04:25.00 Max Shank Yeah. 04:38.14 Max Shank Oh. 04:40.88 mikebledsoe We took some special medicine. That's really good at opening the heart and creating more connection. So we had an all day experience together. Ah a variation variation which is. 04:46.47 Max Shank Is that mdma. 04:55.35 Max Shank Mdma is like hooking up your heart to an electrical socket. So. 05:01.45 mikebledsoe Ah, yeah I took ah a variation of that slightly different. Ah it's it's better for 1 on 1 connections or connection to self if you were to take it in a big group. You would kind of find yourself being a little more hermit versus mdma. 05:11.60 Max Shank Oh. 05:19.90 mikebledsoe Where you're going to want to you know, be friends and make love to everybody? Yeah, so um, it's yeah, but. 05:20.70 Max Shank Love everyone? Yeah right? What a horrible drug. What a horrific side effect you, you're gonna want to love everybody ban. It. 05:35.30 mikebledsoe Ah, it's really difficult not to love everybody? Um, but it's it's a really good experience for um, you know, even though Ashley and I have had an enormous amount of personal development work and and. Ah, communication work and all these things and and we're probably we're we're definitely in the the point zero one percent of couples on communication and yet even though we're there with sobriety. We use a substance a heart opening substance. And you know we just start digging into areas that we weren't willing to or you know I think I think that these these medicines are so um, things that are really working on the serotonin. You don't really There's there's a level of presence that you're able to stabilize for a period of time there where it allows you to get deep with somebody so beyond just the being really happy and loving There's also a heightened a much heightened level of of presence and so I got to learn a lot. Yeah, a lot of openness. So like. 06:33.91 Max Shank Oh. 06:42.95 Max Shank Sounds like openness to yeah. 06:49.50 mikebledsoe Like I'm open to hearing a prefer experience and she's open to sharing I'm open as open to listening. It's ah it's it goes both ways if 1 of us was using it the other unpleasant we wouldn't get nearly as far. Yeah. 06:51.50 Max Shank Right. 06:59.15 Max Shank Huh unless one of you was super enlightened and able to be very open on command I think that's that's why people say that comedians are modern day philosophers. Because that's ironically like None of the only people we listen to because you use humor and it drops a person's guard so it like opens them up in the here and now so they actually take it in rather than lecturing to someone where I don't know if you tried it, people don't love that they they close up. 07:21.81 mikebledsoe Yeah, so. 07:29.80 mikebledsoe Yeah now. 07:34.57 Max Shank Real quick and so that's kind of like a bit of a psychedelic experience for someone to ah catch you off guard with the surprise of humor so much that it rocks your balance off center and so you're like whoa and you just fully like take that. That bit of information in and you know this openness and boundaries thing makes me think about ah the openness to to welcome new lives into my home. It. Ah it feels already like a psychedelic. 07:53.64 mikebledsoe Um, yeah. 08:06.10 mikebledsoe And. 08:12.64 Max Shank I mean puppies are drugs Man are you kidding me now I'm like gonna love this thing Yo I'm like fucking rocking and rolling right now. It's insane. The fact that I've even accepted this I mean last week I would have never even considered it every time she asked I was like now I'm like I'm a. 08:12.94 mikebledsoe Oh yeah, you're gonna be high for at least six months you got it? yeah. 08:32.27 Max Shank I'm a cat I'm a cool cat I'm a fat cat I'm a fucking cat I don't want any other things around I don't want to love anything else. That's why I told her I was like I don't want to love anything else, but it can happen really fast and that openness right? So what you're saying. 08:41.16 mikebledsoe A Ah yeah. 08:51.30 Max Shank With the medicine which is ah an exogenous substance. Basically that's taking you to that level of openness that is required for let's just call it complete communication where there's no like. Coversion right? oh. 09:10.10 mikebledsoe About as complete as you're going to be able to get I mean if there's another more complete way I would love to be you know, be with that. But um, what we so fast. Well here's the thing is like I'm willing to share a lot of things. 09:20.62 Max Shank So fast too. 09:28.97 mikebledsoe Because I have some of the things I haven't shared up to this point because I'm afraid of how she'll receive. She'll receive it and when I'm having that experience and feeling this way I'm like well if she were to share if I were gonna were to share something that's triggering now's the time to do it because this't gonna be she. 09:33.90 Max Shank Ah. 09:42.40 Max Shank Wait till after you get married man. Forget it. 09:46.60 mikebledsoe Is when she's gonna be the most open. 09:51.39 mikebledsoe Ah, yeah, yeah, but yeah, so we had a nice time. It created a lot of closeness. Um and gave us like a really clear vision of where we're currently standing and where we want to go together and. 09:52.88 Max Shank Ah, just put it off till later. It'll be. It'll be fine. 10:00.45 Max Shank Yeah. 10:08.66 Max Shank Whom. 10:10.70 mikebledsoe Yeah, it was really really beautiful and I mentioned all this because it brought up because I know you and I like to have create distinction and we like to look at the juxtaposition of 2 things and the contrast of things and her and I both really care about. 10:29.40 Max Shank E f. 10:29.94 mikebledsoe People right? and we really care about helping people and being of service to people I know you are too and None of the the differentiating factors between how it expresses between her and me which I think expresses similarly amongst a lot of men and women. Is. She tends to really focus in on the individual like how do I how do I help this individual heal or how do I help this individual. You know, live out their best life and all that and whereas I'm much more concerned about humanity as a whole. 10:56.12 Max Shank Um. 11:02.77 Max Shank Move. 11:08.39 Max Shank Totally. 11:08.76 mikebledsoe How does how are how a society can benefit from how this person is behaving and so what's that what? well yeah, it's. 11:15.53 Max Shank I can relate I can relate. It's a bit grandiose isn't it I can absolutely relate the that desire ah for for like it's so exactly me too. It's a big difference of scope. 11:26.81 mikebledsoe Well well, that's where I'm making decisions from it's it's you know like I want to help this person but I'm not going to sacrifice the people around them in order for them to get what they need like they I want them to show up in a way that's good for everybody. Not just for themselves. 11:35.94 Max Shank Oh. 11:43.53 Max Shank Oh interesting I I took it to mean like she enjoys helping people 1 on one and you have this vision of being broadly beneficial to you know None or None or something like that. Oh. 11:58.39 mikebledsoe No, no yeah I think that's I think that's also true. Um, but yeah, my my desire to help there I used to have the desire to help millions of people and and I know I've touched maybe close to that I don't know. 12:03.20 Max Shank Misunderstood. 12:16.21 mikebledsoe Ah, with with some type of message. 12:18.77 Max Shank Depends if you count ricochets which I do and then and then like you've probably affected like a billion people right? I count ricochets. Ah. 12:23.10 mikebledsoe Totally totally Rick let's count Ricoche's here I'm going to keep that one. Yeah, ah. 12:31.23 Max Shank Ah, me too that was good that was like a little easter egg for us today. 12:37.11 mikebledsoe Yeah, so um, ah so I think that men and this isn't you know there are no absolutes here. But I think men in general probably think about humanity as a whole and and women think about the individual and that's probably why women are. Going to be much more compassionate to a single person having that's down on their luck versus a man who's more like you know we need to clean up the streets. You know we look at the we have ah a homeless population in Austin Texas which is um, improving. It's getting smaller because. 13:12.25 Max Shank Wow. 13:15.21 mikebledsoe The citizens of Austin got together and voted a little over a year ago to create a camping in the city ban. Um, because years ago the the city decided to make it where people could camp in the city which created. 13:29.17 Max Shank Yeah. 13:32.37 mikebledsoe Ah, tent you know several tent cities around town that were just insane and and there's still an issue but you know like we're in the car regularly and these people are on something that's causing them to scream at people that don't exist on the street while holding a sign to try to get. 13:33.78 Max Shank Um. 13:51.88 mikebledsoe You to hand them money and um, it's you know and she's like well you know can we help this one person and I'm looking around going. How do we clean this shit up because like you know how much how much do you give this person. 14:00.40 Max Shank Who. 14:11.52 mikebledsoe Over time. How much help do you give them before you say look We just gotta push you to the outskirts. We don't know what to do with you like you are your responsibility and you're causing problems for other people so where is that line where we're sacrificing the whole we're sacrificing you know. 14:18.54 Max Shank Yeah. 14:28.59 mikebledsoe Many individuals because 1 individual can't get their shit together and it's um so it's it's very interesting to me. Yeah, it's just an interesting place to be is because I I what I'm seeing is if I care about humanity then I have to. Ah. 14:31.95 Max Shank Totally. 14:47.89 mikebledsoe The the best place for human the thing that creates the best place for humanity as a whole is when if each each individual is taking on personal responsibility and so. 14:55.80 Max Shank You see that as just the best option was that the word used. Yeah. 15:02.36 mikebledsoe It's probably optimal like if if humanity as a whole is going to flourish that would only happen under the circumstance of every individual taking personal responsibility. But what we have is a lot of people caring about. 15:12.41 Max Shank Yeah. 15:18.71 mikebledsoe You know the feelings of 1 person and trying to get everybody around them to mold to what they desire sacrificing 20 people to make one person happy. It's very interesting. 15:26.49 Max Shank Ah, right? Well, it's all about it's all about so our our ah species is the the compassionate caring species now. We're still savage animals like a lizard dinosaur. Ah, baboon right? But we have this super high level of compassion which is the only reason ah and desire for connection emotionally and intellectually which is why people painted on cave walls. And left their handprints. There. There's no reason to do that unless you want another person to see it this desire to like leave your Mark and be part of the tribe and sustain and so that's also very easily leveraged to make absolute bad choices. But ah comparative good choices and it relates back to what we were talking about I think ah, it made me think of ah self versus system and I'm also very much system oriented like I it's hard for me to pick something specific to care about. Because the first thing I do is I see how it's connected to a none other things like like world hunger I always come back to this I'm like how is that even possible world hunger is impossible unless you're fucking with the ecosystem. You know what? I mean. 16:56.77 mikebledsoe Yeah. 16:58.60 Max Shank Like there's the right amount of creatures for a certain area or they overeat and then they under reproduce and it like has this normal recycling effect. So if you look at the big system. Totally so the difference between looking at an individual. 17:07.50 mikebledsoe Ah, the the planet is abundant with food. 17:17.80 Max Shank Person versus the system I mean look it's not good when someone shoots up a school. Let me be clear I don't think it's good when someone shoots up a school I think it's bad just so there's no confusion here but all but also um, like. 17:28.54 mikebledsoe Okay, okay. 17:36.28 Max Shank Let's just shut the fuck up like it becomes such a hot button story but it's such a low amount of the whole system right? So now we're like a fraction of a fraction I mean you could do the math like what's I'm not trying to. 17:45.62 mikebledsoe Right. 17:54.53 Max Shank Make light of the situation right? But it's None out of 350000000 people when you know a none are dying of diarrhea or something like that. It's like or fucking mosquitoes are taken out way more people than depressed teenagers with firearms. And so it's like we really don't it's so rare to see people think in systems because ironically the system itself is just taking people on a wave where they care about None thing at a time but they care about it with their whole heart. And they use none of their brain to think about the system at play here and they're like I care about Ukraine this month I care about George Floyd this month I care about police brutality this month or ooh I'm suddenly interested in Afghanistan again because they told me to be like what. What the fuck man I get it. 18:50.75 mikebledsoe Yeah, well, it's very and it is very interesting because I I don't know if it's just because I'm paying attention in a different way or things are actually have actually sped up the. The news cycle is perfectly paced to keep people distracted and if you try to stick with I'm like Afghanistan right? The Afghanistan issue went on the Afghanistan issue went on way longer than it was reported to have gone on. Ah. 19:13.33 Max Shank Yeah, a trillion miles an hour 19:26.83 mikebledsoe News about ukraine is dying off actually a lot of the news is now turning into the Ukrainian troops are are you know hiding in civilians' homes and Civilians are getting killed and they're they're breaking international law. But then the. The journalists are kind of like softening it Up. It's like yeah but they kind of have to and it's like no, that's fucking Illegal. Um. 19:48.42 Max Shank Um, there's a huge reason like it's so good to just look through an abbreviated version of the amendments like 1 of the None rules is no fucking troops can stay at your house and like these people were smart. 19:55.77 mikebledsoe Yeah, yeah, and that's a Us thing but that's also an international thing. 20:05.91 Max Shank I Mean these people were smart putting these rules together. So there's there's a reason and and you said it here's how it ah shakes out right? yeah. 20:12.90 mikebledsoe Yeah, things degrade and when troops starts staying in homes and ah you know their job is to protect the population and now they're just putting the population in danger so that the gangsters in charge can win. And yeah. 20:29.70 Max Shank Martial law mob mob rule. 20:31.51 mikebledsoe And so yeah, and you know people are just jumping from None thing to another so I'm just pointing out in that news cycle. How like things have to shift in order to keep people distracted and you're right? It keeps them from thinking about the whole system. It keeps them from thinking about. Like why are we always in some type of pickle like the amount of like the fear cycle is just insane and um, you know I don't really? ah. 21:00.27 Max Shank Because it pays because it because it pays I mean all of this is related to what you said about people making decisions on an individual basis. I mean it's very possible to run a tight ship as a dictator right? but. It doesn't rebalance as quickly or easily as when we're all just adjusting to the natural rhythms right? You vote with what you pay attention to you vote with your dollars you vote with who you spend time with and if you're always. 21:27.14 mikebledsoe E. 21:36.45 mikebledsoe It's ah it's a slower. It's a slower and smoother evolution for everybody the the centralized decision making can be very herky jerky it can it can create whiplash and often does. 21:42.81 Max Shank Yeah, oh no. 21:52.15 mikebledsoe Yeah, they get results quickly but how much harm is done in the process when when you're decentralizing the decision making like you're talking about it definitely creates slower reaction times but they're usually safer there. Any Danger is. Isolated to a single area and isn't replicated amongst the entire system and um people have a higher level autonomy which means that people are also experiencing the feedback of their behavior in a much tighter system that allows them to become you know, attain more knowledge and wisdom. 22:13.19 Max Shank Oh. 22:28.26 Max Shank O. 22:29.87 mikebledsoe Ah, without being robbed of that by having their decision making diffused over the entire population. 22:35.22 Max Shank Yeah I really think of it like a shock absorber. Basically ah, it just has more ah more little shock absorbers rather than just 1 linchpin where one guy is calling all the shots and of course it's always the guy who. 22:38.99 mikebledsoe E. 22:52.93 Max Shank Desperately wants the big chair and the big stick which coincidentally is the only person who should be disqualified from that position entirely It's just like it's good to remember with all this stuff. It. It is just mob rule based on a popularity contest. Like that's crazy. So I think it's um, maximizing attention but minimizing action. So if you have a news cycle. That's so quickly. Um with writers who know what fucking sets your ah heart and balls aflame ah they're going to. Use the software to even readjust and so there always have something that is commanding a tremendous amount of your attention but they'll never um, give you time to do any action about it. So you you have like None attention and zero percent action which is good if you're. Meditating about your unity with the universe but it's pretty shit if you're like watching people get murdered and bombed and. 23:58.29 mikebledsoe Yeah, well I think this puts us in a very precarious situation. So um I think you and I both agree that that the United States as far as a group of people is probably the most advanced. Um, the plan is I say the largest group that's the most advanced politically government wise. It's a big you know 33350000000 people are all participating in a yeah for this. 24:20.30 Max Shank That's such a huge group. Yeah I would say it has the best infrastructure for the most part. 24:33.36 mikebledsoe You know, a lot of times people like to compare what's happening like the Netherlands to here or Denmark. It's like it's like those people have like ah like less than 10000000 people in the entire country. We have 330000000 this is a different. It's a different situation. Um. 24:36.20 Max Shank Or Norway Norway. Yeah, right. Right. 24:50.70 mikebledsoe But you know just just the fact that our country is based on on a philosophical these philosophical concepts of natural law. You know puts us ahead of the curve in a lot of ways. Um the expression of that. Yeah, so. 25:00.79 Max Shank And it makes it more difficult. It makes it more difficult because it's a bit of a fractured culture Also like I think one of the things that I think that's why I interrupted you. It's so important I think I shouldn't do it anyway. But it's so important to recognize that. 25:11.63 mikebledsoe In. 25:18.98 Max Shank In America. The only thing that united us was a desire for freedom to manifest your own destiny now if that includes you know some native genocide then I think we were basically okay with that at the time not now. But at the time that was okay. But so that's the unifying idea but we don't have a culture like let's say Norway or let's say Japan some examples that I think of off the top my head where that there are so many things that are done that are not done because it's the law. Or even because it's profitable. It's done because that's what that culture does and that sort of unity makes things run way more smoothly. 26:00.68 mikebledsoe Yeah. Yeah, well and everything comes down to narrative and so what we have in the United States is you know Ah the United States was like the beginning of the decentralization of of power of personal response. Of responsibility. It's a decentralizing of that and it's just continued to decentralize decentralized decentralize and what's happened now is there's been a decentralization of narrative and we have you know human beings for none of years grew up in a. With a lot fewer people a lot fewer interactions. We're exposed to way fewer narratives and variations of that narrative and if you go to somewhere like China or Russia I guarantee you that narrative is pretty fucking tight. There's not a lot of variation from. Whatever the top is telling the bottom and it creates a lot of unity like if everybody were buying into the same narrative. This is what hitler was able to achieve you know at the the early years he unified everybody with a common narrative. 27:02.67 Max Shank Ah, right. 27:10.45 Max Shank Totally f. 27:19.96 mikebledsoe And everything went pretty well until you know he took control of all those people's minds and decided to take it sideways. But this I think a lot of people you know, either consciously or subconsciously are. Upset and I imagine a lot of people in these government agencies with ah a lot of these Intel agencies think that it's their job to create a common narrative to unify everybody even if it is reducing things like freedom of Speech. Um, and we know that by reducing things like freedom of speech that just leads to tyranny. Yeah. 27:58.62 Max Shank The ends justify the means the ends justify the means I mean whenever you get someone with a grandiose idea like that Hitler Napoleon whatever it doesn't matter. They will. That's why I think orwell said it was the most dangerous type of guy because they think they're. Ah, justified in what they're doing. They think they're the hero so they'll commit atrocities thinking that they're the good guy and then there's no way to work them out of that idea and they think oh god that's why you know with everything happening I'm i. It wouldn't surprise me one bit if some really clever people. Ah for good reasons were like we need the world to stop working the way it does because if they believe a story that we are destroying ourselves and the world. Um, you know 7000000000 people plus this giant. Ah, ball or disc. You're on depending on what people are thinking now. Ah the turtle show. Yeah, it's half. It's a half dome. That's a great place to visit by the way half down in Yosemite. Beautiful 10 out of 10 recommend but I would. 29:00.32 mikebledsoe The turtle show. Um, if. 29:15.37 Max Shank I could totally get it especially as a systems thinker if I could push a button right now and murder 1000000 people and it guaranteed utopia for the remaining ah billions I would be an asshole not to do it almost right? So if you have that belief. 29:30.59 mikebledsoe Yeah. 29:34.92 Max Shank You're like I gotta fucking rape and kill these people for for for the greater good and whenever you hear greater good that that should be like if you hear the word greater Good rest assured you're gonna be bleeding from the Asshole soon. Either literally or metaphorically. 29:53.00 mikebledsoe Yeah, yeah, so it it becomes concerning because I think that even though America and the ideals that it was founded on is create a situation where we have decentralized narratives and. And infinite narratives and variations of those narratives I mean you've got on. Um one side you've got say something like mainstream media and on the other side you have q and on and q and on is putting out None narrative and in ah in a very convincing way the mainstream. Media is putting out ah narratives and neither one of them are correct and both of them are probably just as far from the truth as the other one is and but then you have all these other variations and ah. 30:42.90 Max Shank It might be the truth from their perspective by the way like it might be false information but they might believe what they're saying which means they're telling the truth but they're telling a falsehood. Also. 30:50.85 mikebledsoe Of course. Yeah well I mean I like to define truth is just what has happened and what is happening and people's ideas or perceptions about the truth are are not the truth. 31:06.59 Max Shank I call that a fact good hard hard to have 1 You can't have a complete one either. That's the problem. 31:08.86 mikebledsoe So yeah, there you go? Yeah very few people have any facts. Um, yeah. Ah, yeah, so we we we were're in this really strange predicament predicament as americans and what triggered this thought for me was ah the other day China basically cut off like none of. Communication and interaction with the United States and basically said we're not going to participate in our military is communicating and all this stuff. This was ah Friday and I was like oh oh I've been in conflicts before and when one side goes. 31:46.80 Max Shank How exciting. 31:55.77 mikebledsoe Silent That's bad juju that's like everybody contracts everybody starts preparing everyone starts wondering who's going to strike first. These are these are these are the thoughts that run across people who are in conflict so people in the military. What do you think. 32:07.40 Max Shank Winding up. 32:11.66 Max Shank Move. 32:14.71 mikebledsoe China Goes silent. What do you think the American military does fucking getting ready just relaxing launch hairs. Yeah yeah, so yeah, just give some space I need some space. Ah but I get thinking about it and I go Wow I look at um, ah. 32:16.51 Max Shank Probably just just relaxes. No big deal. Yeah, they're fine. Give give them time. Give them some space. 32:34.64 mikebledsoe You know if you go to say Ukraine right now like there's not a lot of slobs hanging around Ukraine or Russia there there might be some drunks but there's not a bunch of so weak slobs and you come. 32:46.21 Max Shank Well, they're not a lot of weak people because they just can't be I don't know what you mean by slob but I definitely agree that if you're in an environment that doesn't permit it. It's kind of like that idea about world hunger like if you're in a place you're eating if you're in a really harsh dangerous place. You're tough and you're eating or you're dead. It's like when ah when that Ufc guy. Ah Kabib you remember him and I remember I was just watching because he was like trained in the mountains by his dad who was like a fourth generation. Wrestler. 33:05.10 mikebledsoe Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, so like. 33:24.61 Max Shank You know and he's just like running up a mountain with boulders when he's like 4 meanwhile you know you could have someone who's raised in Orange County and who's like you know I think I'm going to get into some kickboxing or something like that and they might meet in the same place like in the cage. That's just funny to me. 33:36.98 mikebledsoe Right. Yeah, no, no and and depending on the sport you know 3 minute rounds the orange county guy might do all right? but I bet if he took it to 20 minute rounds you know we're in a different. 33:44.26 Max Shank They're like not the same creature. Basically. 33:57.22 Max Shank Right? Yeah, yeah, it was kind of like ah rocky versus Ivan Draggo also right rocky is just training in the barn with big hunks of wood and the other drawgo in the science lab getting injected with stuff and there's like a. 34:00.73 mikebledsoe In a different place. So ah, yeah, yeah. 34:13.37 mikebledsoe Yeah, typical russian. 34:17.10 Max Shank Super computer on the on the wall. Yeah is awesome. 34:20.54 mikebledsoe Um, did you ever watch ah was it icarus the documentary on the russians doping program. It's really good. It's really good. You should check it out. It's on Netflix. So. 34:29.57 Max Shank Now sounds amazing. 34:38.22 mikebledsoe So I look at this and I and I look around in the United States and I'm I'm thinking I mean you and I both have been trying to help these people you know, get their shit together and there's a lot of people that need to get their shit together or it would would it be better for the rest of us if they got their shit together. 34:56.73 Max Shank Who are we talking about now just people. 34:57.23 mikebledsoe And um, you know if they did something you know people who think that they're doing their duty by getting a vaccine instead of just taking care of their health. Overall so a lot of fats. There's a lot of slobs getting ah vaccinations instead of just. 35:03.77 Max Shank Oh shots fired folks to totally. 35:17.10 mikebledsoe Creating some type of interest about their overall health or learning about how their body works. So. 35:20.26 Max Shank Yo that that's a shocking funny thing I mean it's tragic also like I never hear I got to get this out though I never hear ads anywhere but I clicked on the radio because I didn't have my like. Ah, phone on Bluetooth It's it when it whatever I'm listening to the radio. 35:38.42 mikebledsoe He's poor folks easy listening radio. 35:42.69 Max Shank Ah, and I heard like a fucking a fucking jingle like a little jingle song about how you should get your kids this shot and it's like yo what the fuck I'm I'm just I'm listening to this I'm like are you fucking kidding me. Like how how is this it it sounded like I was listening to mother Goose Barney on sesame street talking about how you should you know fucking inject your None ar old with this experiment for for what the fuck and. Bet a lot of people do that and that thought made me really sad that thought made me really sad because I was like what no don't and and I realize that is what's happening. 36:24.30 mikebledsoe Yeah, yeah. 36:31.84 mikebledsoe Yeah, was I think they created laws where like um, serial companies can't make can't target kids with like cartoon advertising. They basically can't advertise sugar cereal to kids anymore. 36:45.97 Max Shank Yep. 36:50.65 mikebledsoe But they're doing it with pharmaceuticals which is fucking insane. 36:52.98 Max Shank Why can we advertise pharmaceutical I mean I'm a hardcore capitalist when I get right down to it. But Jesus Christ like that. But then again, then again you I still have that strong belief that the customer is always right? So it's not too. Ah. Like fight against these companies. It's to illuminate and like help people understand how to apply some logic and I think a big part of it actually relates back to the openness that you and I were talking about you have to be open to not know what's going on to be. To be wrong and you have to be open to the idea that the people who are in charge of both countries and companies may not in fact, be having your best interest at heart. So you got to use your critical thinking a little bit. 37:48.93 mikebledsoe It's the only thing you have that's gonna that's gonna help you out like you can't rely on other people. Um well going to like ah I'm with you on the whole like you know both by the us being capitalists and that we believe in. Voluntary interaction between individuals and that means if someone is going to create and make a drug then I have every right to purchase that from them and there's no one has the right to get between the None of us on creating that transaction and here's the thing is with the. Pharmaceutical companies in the us. Yes, ah the us and New Zealand I think are the only None countries that allow pharmaceutical companies to advertise at a citizens through media and the rest of the countries don't but here's the thing is not only have they allowed that to happen. Which I think that people should be able to run an ad for anything they want ah but they have also cornered the market. There's an entire agency from the government called the Dea who harass people who are and kill and and jail people. 38:47.82 Max Shank Agreed agreed. 39:01.64 mikebledsoe Who are selling drugs that they don't think should be sold and so you have an entire agency that their job is to squash out anything. That's not the pharmaceutical companies. So the pharmaceutical companies have leveraged the violence of government. While also creating deals to be able to market. So. It's a double whammy if you were to say okay, we're going to open up the entire market and everyone can advertise like if I want to advertise my cocaine if I want to advertise whatever it is you know or Lipitor or whatever it is. And that would actually cause people at least should cause people to to activate their critical thinking because now they have to go? Well, what's the difference between these two things and ah. Because right now they think the difference between those 2 things is None is safe and None is not safe and it's not safe or safe based on what somebody else thinks so they don't even think about they don't even think to do the research on it and so there's um so going to. Should people be able to advertise I say yes and we should do away with some people getting preferential treatment from the government that that is giving some people more rights than others. 40:27.39 Max Shank Agreed and here's how I'm gonna tie it back to what we were discussing about openness and relationships and your experience. So there's this concept of nonviolent communication right? where you're not um. 40:42.55 mikebledsoe In. 40:46.64 Max Shank You're not an opponent.. You're a collaborator and in a country or a nation or a state of some kind. Ah they have a system of laws and the law is basically when the violence comes out. So imagine if you're in a relationship. And you have to use the threat of violence to control this party all the time that it's basically like the more you have to use the stick the more fucked you basically are you really shouldn't have to enforce. That many things with violence but ah, nothing is more effective. Certainly imagine if like every discussion you got into with a romantic partner. You were like blah blah blah. 41:34.21 mikebledsoe Yeah. 41:43.48 Max Shank Or I'll fucking beat you Yo I've never hit a woman unless she asked me to however, ah, there's like I would win easy in a in a in a fight. Of some kind if that was possible to just be like hey I say this goes or I will beat you like of course if you don't have any critical thinking. You'll just do that every time but it's pretty asshole move. But that's what law is it's like fucking do this or. 42:17.38 mikebledsoe Yeah, yeah. 42:21.47 Max Shank We will Imprison you or kill you or what the fuck ever and the irony is that it's all of the people who hide away from society the most who are voting the people in to control the people that they're. Afraid of because they're a little too free right? ooh that person might do a bad thing. We need more drugs off the streets. They got to stop with those violent video games. It's like fucking busybodies across the board. But ah you, um, you mentioned a good. 42:40.31 mikebledsoe Yeah. 42:58.20 Max Shank Ah, tonic for that realization which is to recognize that there's there's really no such thing as law. It's just consequences right? You do whatever you want? You know you're 100% free to do what you want all the time and there are just consequences right? I find that. 43:14.54 mikebledsoe Yeah, like. 43:17.71 Max Shank Find that a very ah, comfortable way to live and it's also very accepting too because then you go everyone else is always free to do as they like and talk about the burden. That's off your shoulders because look these people these busybodies These are not happy people. 43:35.29 mikebledsoe Now. 43:37.17 Max Shank These might be the most ah mentally ah tortured people ever because they have all this attention. They have no action within their own lives and they're just trying to gain control by leveraging the violence. Of a more powerful entity right? So They're not powerful themselves. They're just trying to diminish everyone else because they're always afraid that someone might do something that that's not a happy person. That's that's no way to go. You know we got Avoidance. We got exposure right. 44:08.57 mikebledsoe Okay, now. 44:16.98 Max Shank Avoidance is a path that only leads you to an underground bunker where you are in complete control of the environment. But also you're completely trapped complete exposure is you just have no discernment so you probably walk off of a cliff or get eaten by a tiger or what the fuck ever. But. Um I think part of what makes the slobs or the weak people is they engage in a little too much avoidance and not enough exposure. 44:44.97 mikebledsoe Yeah, agree. 44:51.78 mikebledsoe Out of thought that I lost but it'll come now we talked about um, rejection or acceptance tolerant. Yeah. 44:54.27 Max Shank Is it about openness and acceptance we talked about that last week right the difference between tolerance. Yeah I mean it's this is a perfect example of that. 45:09.50 mikebledsoe Yeah I. 45:18.82 Max Shank Comes come. 45:19.49 mikebledsoe This this cuts out the pauses. That's okay, if we pause. 45:25.12 Max Shank In my normal life I do way more and longer pauses than on a podcast. 45:33.84 mikebledsoe Yeah. 45:38.96 Max Shank Also have a different agenda. 45:50.20 Max Shank So what did you learn from your experience the one you were telling me about. Yeah. 45:53.33 mikebledsoe Which one with my lady. Um I learned a lot I learned that you know we we we we. Did a question prompt which was tell me a story I wrote it up on a chalkboard tell me a story about a time you felt fulfilled and then just kept asking each other about stories of fulfillment and looking for patterns and so. 46:22.51 Max Shank Oh. 46:28.61 Max Shank Ah. 46:31.46 mikebledsoe Um, was like oh okay I see a pattern of fulfillment for myself I see a pattern of fulfillment for her. It's like okay if we want to experience more fulfillment moving forward. We should probably do things that are similar to what made us fulfilled in the past and. 46:47.95 Max Shank A. 46:50.54 mikebledsoe Yeah, there's definitely patterns of that that was that was really cool to dive into you don't have to take anything to answer these questions or journal about that. But um, it does help and so that was really really beautiful. 46:58.46 Max Shank A. 47:07.76 mikebledsoe None of the things I want to I want to cut back over to is my concern and ah, we're kind of jumping back and forth. But my concern is we have ah an entire country of people who. Can't agree on a single narrative or even 2 or 3 narratives and then you have countries like Russia and China who have that single narrative and even though we may be because society progresses and as the pendulum swings between organization and chaos. 47:42.21 Max Shank Boom. 47:44.24 mikebledsoe Definitely in a chaotic place and when we're experiencing chaos. It's a great time for someone else who's experiencing organization to take advantage of the people who are in chaos. So that's my one concern is even though we're we are advancing. We are weak during the advancement and um, you know when I heard the news that China Cut Off Communications I was like ah you know I've never seen the country more divided what a what a perfect time to. 48:14.98 Max Shank Oh. 48:20.50 mikebledsoe To pull out more tricks. 48:21.19 Max Shank So when you say concern. Ah, that's like ah low grade fear perhaps of something specific ah happening because of that lack of open and ah. 48:40.71 mikebledsoe Yeah, absolutely got it? Yeah yeah, yeah. 48:41.80 Max Shank Congruent communication. So you're concerned maybe about like war. Yeah yeah, War is not that Cool. You know how earlier I was like really anti-school Shootings I'm also very anti-war. I Know it's a bold stance to take. 49:03.89 mikebledsoe Ah, yeah, Wars Funny man. It's just um, people just not getting along people people wanting to rule over ah over other people is what it comes down to. 49:16.50 Max Shank You know one of the one of the most consistent thoughts I've had is like you know when you're a kid at least in my experience when you're a kid and you see None people fighting and you know there's no need for them to be fighting. Like you have this perspective where them fighting is retarded. It's stupid. There's no need for it. You know you have this unique perspective where you can see what each of them want but neither of them can see what they want. Like they're just blinded in this like cloud of dust and one of the most prevailing thoughts I've had as an adult has been this. This is just ah, a failure to communicate everybody needs to just settle down like relax. We all want basically the same thing but it's it's so surprising. That's the most lasting idea it just seems so unnecessary for people to speak to each other with such venom and it seems like. All these disagreements are basically manufactured. Um, yeah, it's ah I used to get really sad about that honestly and now I I kind of like that. Ah, that quote that ends up. Where you try to change your nation realize you can't try to change your city realize you can't try to change your family realize you can't try to change yourself and you're like man if only I'd done this sooner. It would have had that ricochet effect on out and ah. Mentioned in the past how the the distance between your zone of awareness and zone of control is like your feeling of powerlessness. So if you're aware of like a thousand problems globally which is like I don't know whatever. Twenty Thousand Miles Pi are cubed or squared or some shit like that I don't fucking know I don't I don't remember surface area of a sphere right now but your control area is very small. It's like five feet versus you know. None of Square Miles 51:45.30 mikebledsoe Totally I've um, I've been experiencing like the the most grounded groundedness I've had in my entire life the last year and a half I just get more and more grounded and one of the results of getting more and more grounded is. Getting much more in touch with that reality of the only thing I can change is me and ah mikeness. Yeah, yeah, well because before I was had some grandiose thoughts about how I could make a. 52:04.85 Max Shank Of this. 52:13.78 Max Shank It's an it's a type of accept acceptance I think. 52:23.55 mikebledsoe You know, a really big impact by you know, being really influential and and you know having a lot of followers or whatever. Yeah, like I know what to do. 52:30.88 Max Shank I'll fix it I'll fix it. That was what I thought I'll I'll fix it and then ah I'm like I'm like just like those ah fucking grandiose big chair guys. It's like the same thing I Just don't want a big chair I'll fix it I'll fix it. 52:40.86 mikebledsoe Yeah, yeah, yeah, just do what I tell you to do ah so fuck your ideas. So you know I um I just got become less and less concerned. 52:47.54 Max Shank Yeah. 53:00.12 mikebledsoe I keep up with what's going on I don't let it dominate my my thinking you know it's 1 thing to have awareness or to learn of what's going on around the world. It's another thing that dwell on it. Um, and I become much more focused on what I can impact immediately like you know how. 53:03.76 Max Shank So. 53:20.20 mikebledsoe Comfortable Can I make my home. That's a sanctuary instead of you know, trying to worry about like I don't care if I drive a fancy car I need where I spend the most time at my home people come to my home people come to my home and they go Wow this. 53:22.79 Max Shank Ah. 53:29.29 Max Shank Right? You got different values. 53:39.45 mikebledsoe Place is really nice and comfortable. It's not It's not a big expensive home. It's ah it's a moderate home. It's a middle class home. Ah, but it's not but we've created a vibe inside that just. Very welcoming and peaceful and calm and so Ashley and I when we go out in the world. We we have this calmness and peacefulness about us and people they want to know how we do things and you know we get really strong reflections about us. And the thing is neither one of us are going out to try to teach people how to be much I mean this is about the extent of it right? Ah put a band man. Yeah there you go. 54:21.53 Max Shank What is a good man but a bad man's Teacher. What is a bad man but a good man's job. 54:32.36 mikebledsoe Ah, so you know the the thing that I keep circling ah since becoming more grounded is really the idea of leading. By example, if I'm not if I'm not happy with how other people are behaving then who I want. 54:45.84 Max Shank 5 54:51.40 mikebledsoe Everyone else to be I have not fully embodied myself in a way that it's noticeable or I haven't done it long enough or repeated the behavior enough for people to take note or the benefits of taking those behaviors I haven't been doing it enough in order for people to take note but I'll tell you. That the majority of benefit that I that I think I have helped people achieve has been through modeling and because people learn through modeling they create their desires are created because of modeling and and. 55:25.57 Max Shank Absolutely. 55:29.40 mikebledsoe For me to think that I said something in particular to get somebody to a specific goal is that is incorrect. You know if I if I wasn't living my life a certain way. People wouldn't give a shit about the words that I was using and in fact, they're probably modeling. 55:38.91 Max Shank On. 55:48.47 mikebledsoe A lot of my behavior but are giving credit to the words that I use because people people want. That's the logical things like oh I heard this thing and then I put it in place and now that's logical. But I think. 55:55.16 Max Shank Ah, well, you're. 56:03.60 Max Shank I fixed it I fixed it and what it's what's funny is by being a model you unburden yourself of the responsibility of getting them to behave a certain way and you're not burdening them with a fucking command. 56:05.74 mikebledsoe Most who are learning through modeling. 56:17.29 mikebledsoe Yeah, yeah. 56:23.29 Max Shank So You are completely unburdened. Ah because you're not trying to force them to be a certain way or manipulate them to be a certain way. People think the word manipulate has a lot of a negative connotation and it does but really, that's all we do. Is we manipulate the world and people for our benefit and sometimes for others. 56:41.84 mikebledsoe Yeah I think well I had a conversation with a woman yesterday about this. She was talking about manipulation I was like well I like to create the distinction between influence and manipulation and ah in it with influence I am I am. 56:50.23 Max Shank Um, yeah. 57:00.75 mikebledsoe Making somebody else more informed about something so that they can make a better choice for themselves. Manipulation is I'm likely trying to make them less informed or confuse them in a way so that they'll do do the behavior I'll do not because they have ah a greater understanding. 57:04.25 Max Shank The. 57:20.37 mikebledsoe So that's yeah, so it's like instead of thinking about it as just like a spectrum of manipulation and say no manipulation is this thing and influences this thing they're very different in my mind So when I'm approaching people. The question I have to ask myself is you know. 57:20.83 Max Shank It's like fraud. Yeah. 57:31.10 Max Shank Yeah, yeah. 57:38.41 mikebledsoe If you're if you're going out and you're going to talk to a girl are you are you practicing influence on the date or are you manipulating And yeah, that wasn't for you that wasn't for you. Um. 57:45.79 Max Shank Manipulating for sure I mean wait wait that was oh that was a rhetorical question. Got it? Yeah oh got it I mean I. 57:53.95 mikebledsoe Yeah, but I mean this happens a lot and like people talk about marketing and they're like they're like oh marketing is so manipulative I'm like well what kind of marketing are you doing? Are you. 58:04.31 Max Shank That's why I bring up machiavelli do the ends justify the means if you believe in a product this is an easy argument to make if you believe in a product you should be willing to say anything to sell as many as possible. That's one way of looking at it so you could totally. Ah. Forgive psychologically ah any kind of what might be considered a dirty tactic but I want to ah touch on something None things actually before we move on 1 one of the things that is taken away one of the burdens that's relieved by just being the example. Is. You're not lusting after your own acceptance I'm gonna say that again. So you're not lusting after your own acceptance because what you're doing is you are looking to have someone say you fixed it or you did it. Or whatever. So instead of lusting after that now that desire's gone and if you look at it from a zen buddhist ah framework that desire being gone is going to bring you a lot more peace and a lot more clarity and a lot more flow. You're not going to feel that burden like. Oh I got to I got to like remind myself that I'm good by helping this guy and then another thing you said, um, that was related to being the example and you said it to me like ah. 59:23.62 mikebledsoe Yeah, yeah. 59:36.73 Max Shank It was at your house out here. It was a long time ago. It was like maybe five to seven years ago and yeah, he's been enlightened for a long time. Ah you you it was just about it just was one of those times where I was very receptive and I listened and i. 59:43.17 mikebledsoe I've been enlightened for a while. All. 59:53.98 Max Shank Started putting it into practice. A lot was I stopped listening as much to what people were saying and more focused on how they were being and now what I'll do sometimes is I'll I'll just try to listen to the noise that someone's making and look at their posture. 01:00:10.37 mikebledsoe Yeah. 01:00:11.72 Max Shank And I'll try to look beyond the words and see do they go up and down and up and down with their talk and ah du and is their music ah did and you see how the how that flow is kind of coming out. Ah it's It's really interesting to see how people are being. Ah. Because I think that's actually a lot more honest than what that because people are very tricky like have you ever Seen. Ah a really good actor fucking say any word combination and their expression on their face will trick the shit out of me my god. 01:00:46.28 mikebledsoe That it's insane. Insane. Oh yeah, the the tonality thing is interesting. So your time about body language. Um, you know if somebody has really poor posture hunched over. Um I start I start. 01:00:49.99 Max Shank Yeah. 01:00:56.98 Max Shank And. 01:01:04.88 mikebledsoe Noticing when they're more hunched or more open which may be rare that they're open. But oh wow they they don't feel safe or they have a history of not feeling safe and they just haven't had the physical restoration of their body. Um. 01:01:06.16 Max Shank O m. 01:01:14.94 Max Shank The. 01:01:23.46 mikebledsoe It' not like like whatever is happening energetically takes a lot longer to manifest physically. And yeah me too. 01:01:29.28 Max Shank I Used to cross my arms all the time all the time all the time and I would do that thing where you flex your knuckles into your arms from the from the back so that ah your biceps look a little bigger and your little forearm. Extensor muscles look bigger so you get these? Ah, It's like the standard personal trainer photo and I look back at I look back at all these photos I took and every single one I've got like fucking sunglasses ah under armor ah shirt that's skin tight. And my arms are crossed and I'm like that guy doesn't want anyone to know who he is that guy So now I'm super sensitive to it I notice when I see people cross their arms I think it's a really funky posture the the arm crop. Yeah. 01:02:10.62 mikebledsoe Be yeah, exactly just. 01:02:23.65 mikebledsoe We're putting the hands in pockets too. 01:02:27.00 Max Shank What what do you do with your hands though. You can't just be like Ricky Bobby like I don't know what to do with them. 01:02:31.45 mikebledsoe Yeah, there's something about and there's a military thing. There's no hands in the pockets. Um, and what I noticed from years of not hanging out with hands in my pockets is. There's. 01:02:37.26 Max Shank Yeah, yeah, 1 01:02:47.69 mikebledsoe Hands in the pockets is a really safe place to put your hands when you're insecure about like having a more open posture. It's like it's like halfway open and yeah it is kind of strange sometimes I I have to find things to do with my hands every once in a while I'll let myself put my hands into my pocket. 01:02:56.22 Max Shank Yeah, interesting. 01:03:06.46 mikebledsoe Only when I know that um you know it's not coming from a place of insecurity. It's like I'm hanging out my friends I just feel like putting my hands in my pocket I'm gonna fucking do it but it it is something that I was I overdid until I couldn't do it anymore and then that's when I recognized oh this is something that. 01:03:10.34 Max Shank Yeah. 01:03:20.31 Max Shank What. 01:03:26.63 mikebledsoe It's a safety you know it's my safety blanket to put my hands in my pockets and kind of hard to be ready for shit when your hands in the pockets when you want to you want to be running down the road. 01:03:30.20 Max Shank That kind of curiosity Impossible I mean unless you got something good in there then it's even better. 01:03:41.66 mikebledsoe Running down the road with your hands in your pockets. That's that's when people knock their teeth out. No. 01:03:42.17 Max Shank Oh yeah, yeah, that's not good, but if you got something interesting in your pocket and could be a great spot. Hey now. Um, yeah I think. 01:03:50.27 mikebledsoe I've always got some interesting in there. So. 01:03:58.80 Max Shank The curiosity we're talking about about posture I mean look it's no, It's no mystery that you and I are are nerds about things like this about communication about the way the body moves about integrating the body mind heart The rest of them Chakras and so. I Think that's one of those things that can accelerate that openness if you so curiosity is such a ah powerful force of moving into the Unknown. It's the difference between the unknown being scary and the unknown being exciting. And interesting. It's like an a curious is an opportunity forward right? It's the exact opposite of fear right? which is like ah a threat an unknown threat oncoming versus an unknown opportunity oncoming. And we're talking about using different medicines to do that. The other option is to be extremely invested into what you and I are talking about. So I Think that's one of the things that is attractive about using different medicines like I'm. I'm ah experimenting with some puppy medicine right now I have a feeling it's going to ah increase openness probably patience Positivity Ah love Perhaps I I don't know yet. It'll be really interesting to see how that. Changes my paradigm but I think that's really the the pull of those different medicines psychedelics. Whatever cocktail you and your witch doctor can concoct um, is because it can. Increase your connection and alleviate burdens very quickly. It's like you can either get high by doing breathing exercises and going for a run or you can get high by smoking some cannabis or crack or something like that. You know there are a lot of there are a lot of ways to do it. Sometimes you just have something That's a little more push button so to speak and short term. Well but the effects are long term a lot of the time I mean the walls aren't melting forever. 01:06:12.79 mikebledsoe Yeah, and short term. Totally totally if done well now that would be terrible. 01:06:26.20 Max Shank Thankfully, but but you get the you get the alleviation of some of that that guard that dropping of the guard and openness is what allows you to. See some of the filters that you've put on kind of coming back to the stories like I feel sad when I talk to people and I see them hardcore into one narrative or the other because you know, um, there's basically nothing you can say that will resolve that and I I Think. Can pick up on queues and I know a lot of weird facts. But ah once someone's locked into a narrative like that. It's very tricky to get out unless they themselves are getting curious and then you have a chance to take away some of those layers but I think sometimes. 01:07:15.54 mikebledsoe Yeah. 01:07:22.89 Max Shank Using those substances can sort of accelerate that process. 01:07:25.50 mikebledsoe Um, yeah, it causes a can cause a pattern interrupt I think most people that they're in a pattern that whatever narrative they're in is a pattern of thinking feeling behaving and most people no matter how much. Information may be counter to you know this being a good idea or or whatever they can't seem to break it until there's a pattern interrupt you know, somebody somebody ends up with heart disease or cancer or something like that like wakes some of its pattern interrupt is like oh I can't keep eating the banas. 01:08:00.40 Max Shank Car accident for my mom car accident changed her life. She wasn't injured the car was totaled but ah the whole trajectory of her life changed and she was in her fifty s I mean she was already like a fully baked human so to speak. 01:08:04.25 mikebledsoe Car accident. Yeah. 01:08:12.20 mikebledsoe Yeah, yeah, so as it it. 01:08:19.90 Max Shank So anything that changes. It's kind of like the only absolute is relativity so you and I our stories are just in relation to everything that we understand so we're like part of a ah net and um so I think we're like None musical note. And when you get together with ah lsd you strike a different chord than if you do heroin and if you hang out with puppies or if you drink coffee like I I drink coffee basically daily um some sometimes I'll skip for like a week or something like that. But I've been pretty. Hot on coffee for at least like six months now and I I enjoy it It's just a different ah chord. You know I'm a note coffee's a note boom play them at the same time. That's this different type of resonance and everybody needs and likes different things like these two puppies. Different personalities. None person should have coffee None person should probably do a microdose mushrooms or something like that. There's not a one size fits all for everybody which is also why those ah dictatorships inevitably piss off so many people. Because not everybody wants the same sized solution right. 01:09:36.58 mikebledsoe Yeah, yeah. 01:09:40.82 Max Shank Who So here's what I'm thinking I think we want to do a show about ah all the stuff that we like and I want to do a

"When you are steadfast in your abstention of thoughts of harm directed toward yourself and others, all living creatures will cease to feel fear in your presence." — PatanjaliThis week we dive into the power of inner and outer courage.. By cultivating a disciplined practice and a honest relationship with yourself and the world around you.May all beings everywhere remember the true causes of happiness. LOVE.Weekly talks are an offering to assist you in diving deeper into a spiritual practice, your inner landscape and cultivate inner peace.Awareness http://bit.ly/3cnNx83Forgiveness http://bit.ly/3OZ0e7WEmotional Intelligence http://bit.ly/3Iei440Radiate Love http://bit.ly/39DMv78Trust http://bit.ly/3twCW0B"Peace can be reached through meditation on the knowledge which dreams give. Peace can also be reached through concentration upon that which is dearest to the heart." — PatanjaliMusicRandom Rab http://randomrab.net'Shine' by Cadre Scott http://cadrescott.comSound Suzanne Toro https://linktr.ee/omshetoroProduced by Dante Marino http://dantemarinomusic.comProduction brought to you by OmToro Wellness + Mediahttp://suzannetoro.com/be-simplyradio-blog/

Dibawkaan oleh Pastor Peter Tukan, SDB dari Komunitas Salesian Don Bosco Labuan Bajo, Keuskupan Ruteng, Indonesia. Kebijaksanaan 18: 6-9; Mazmur tg 33: 1.12.18-19.20.22; Ibrani 11: 1-2.8-19; Lukas 12: 32-48 MERAWAT KEPERCAYAAN-NYA TUHAN Tema renungan kita pada hari Minggu Biasa ke-19 ini ialah: Merawat Kepercayaan-Nya Tuhan. Seorang pastor misionaris mendirikan sekolah yang dilengkapi dengan asrama putra dan putri. Bagi masyarakat, sekolah dan asrama adalah suatu pendekatan yang baru dan pertama kali yang mereka temui. Ia selalu menekankan agar para siswa hidup dalam semangat bersyukur. Setiap fasilitas yang ada, suasana kebersamaan dan setiap orang yang terlibat adalah karunia Tuhan. Semua itu adalah kekayaan yang dipercayakan Tuhan, maka harus dirawat, dijaga dan dicintai. Untuk merawat sebuah kehidupan, manusia tidak boleh malas-malasan, bosan dan tidak peduli. Sikap yang dituntut ialah aktif, terlibat, dan peduli untuk bekerja dan memberikan hasilnya. Hal ini mirip dengan istilah kinerja, integritas, dan kreativitas yang umumnya kita pakai di dalam masyarakat. Karakter inilah dibutuhkan di kantor-kantor, perusahaan dan dunia kerja mana pun. Tidak mungkin mereka memberikan gaji kepada orang-orang yang malas, suka tidur, dan cepat bosan. Orang yang aktif, bekerja, dan terlibat yang dipercayakan. Dalam bahasa kitab suci, kita mengenal semangat siap sedia. Seseorang harus berjaga-jaga supaya setiap kali Tuhan dan sesamanya membutuhkan, ia mau dan langsung berbuat. Orang yang giat dan siap sedia akan selalu mengambil bagian dalam suasana kehidupan yang baik dan juga ketika kehidupan di dalam kesulitan. Orang tersebut dipandang kokoh dan tepat untuk menjalankan kepercayaan Tuhan. Maka dalam terang bacaan-bacaan pada hari ini, kita diminta untuk merawat semua kepercayaan Tuhan di dunia ini. Pertama ialah kehidupan itu sendiri. Anda wajib merawat dan memberi kelangsungan hidup bagi dirimu sendiri, saudara, keluarga, sahabat, masyarakat, bangsa dan alam lingkungan. Hidup kita adalah tanda kepercayaan Tuhan kepada kita. Kedua, kekayaan Tuhan berupa makanan bagi tubuh kita perlu dijaga dan dilestarikan, sebab sewaktu-waktu kita wajib memberikan makanan bagi orang-orang lapar dan haus. Yesus memampukan kita memberikan sesama kita makanan yang mereka perlukan. Ketiga, uang yang perannya sangat penting dalam kehidupan kita, juga dipercayakan Tuhan kepada kita. Yang harus kita perbuat ialah bukan uang yang menjadi raja atas manusia, tetapi uang adalah alat untuk membantu menyejahterahkan hidup kita. Kita harus ingat bahwa cinta akan uang adalah akar segala dosa. Keempat, kekuasaan adalah milik Tuhan yang harus kita rawat. Kuasa Roh Kudus adalah segala kekuasaan dalam hidup kita. Setiap jalinan relasi di antara kita dan bagaimana kita menempatkan diri di dunia ini, haruslah di dalam kasih dan persekutuan persaudaraan anak-anak Allah. Marilah kita berdoa. Dalam nama Bapa ... Ya Tuhan, semoga perayaan hari Minggu ini menguatkan iman kami kepada Bapa di surga, dan berkat iman itu kami semakin baik dalam menunaikan tanggung jawab kami. Bapa kami ... Dalam nama Bapa ... --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/media-la-porta/message

Selagi kita masih punya kesempatan untuk “menyangkal diri”—yang dikalimatkan sebagai mematikan keinginan, hasrat, minat, cita-cita, tujuan untuk diri sendiri—selagi masih punya kesempatan untuk itu, lakukan. Sebab, ada saatnya diri kita menjadi monster yang begitu kuat, sampai kita tidak akan mampu mematikan diri sendiri. Itu berarti kita memilih untuk tidak sampai kepada Bapa. Yang merusak banyak... Continue reading → The post Jejak Anak Allah appeared first on Truth Voice.

1. End Of Time (Extended Mix): Hidden Tigress, Hel:sløwed 2. INTO MY ARMS (Extended Mix): Markus Schulz, Emma Hewitt 3. Sleepless (Original Mix): Anton Trian 4. llusions (Extended Mix): Brych, Dalia Lily 5. Jordaan (3am Mix): Spanking Machine 6. Centaurus (Extended Mix): Tonerush 7. Dark Wind (Original Mix): Master Beat Projekt 8. I Miss You (Original Mix): Jameson Tullar, Rebecca Louise Burch, Alex van Sanders 9. Till Oblivion (Asteroid Extended Mix): Somna, Yang, Noire Lee 10. Galactica (Original Mix): UDM 11. Your Light (Sinstar Remix): Neonica, NatuneEvery Friday at 6pm (GMT+4) listen to Diversified with Spanking Machine.Los Angeles-based producers/performers Spanking Machine have created an innovative sound that's supported by Markus Schul... Download

Hai, Sobat Cuan.. Selamat hari Jumat.. Yang belum update informasi selama sepekan ini, ayo merapat! Karena di RISKAN (Rekap Informasi Sepekan) minggu ini, banyak banget informasi menarik, yang udah kita rangkum buat Sobat Cuan.. Mulai dari ramalan seramnya Pak Jokowi soal 800 juta orang akan terancam kelaparan, hingga situasi di kawasan Asia yang kini tegang, akibat permasalahan yang terjadi antara China dengan Taiwan... Gak usah lama-lama, langsung aja yuk kita dengerin.. Enjoy! Sobat Cuan, Jangan Lupa ya untuk follow IG @cuap_cuan, dan juga subcribe youtube channel Cuap Cuap Cuan, Kemudian di like, comment dan share ya. Salam cuan!

Dibawakan oleh Richardus dan Yosefina dari Paroki Roh Kudus Labuan Bajo, Keuskupan Ruteng, Indonesia. Daniel 7: 9-10.13-14; Mazmur tg 97: 1-2.5-6.9; Lukas 9: 28b-36 MATA DAN TELINGA YANG BERJAGA Renungan kita pada hari ini bertema: Mata dan Telinga Yang Berjaga. Seorang pemuda untuk kali ketiganya berpacaran dan ia berpikir kalau kali ini mesti memberikan hasil positif. Dua kali sebelumnya selalu berakhir dengan kesedihan lantaran ada banyak ketidak-sesuaian. Ia mengevaluasi diri dan mengetahui bahwa ada sisi negatif dari dirinya yang ikut menyebabkan kegagalan pacaran selama dua kali. Lalu ia bicarakan itu dengan kedua orang tuanya. Nasihat kedua orang tuanya begini: keputusan hati kita untuk berkata dan bertindak sangat bergantung pada kemampuan melihat dan mendengar. Mata dan telinga kita harus senantiasa aktif untuk mendapatkan kenyataan tentang orang lain yang kita kasihi. Ketika melihat bahwa orang di sampingmu sedang sibuk dengan berbagai pekerjaan, atau ketika telinga mendengar kalau orang tersebut suaranya sudah tidak berdaya, keputusan hatimu akan menentukan tindakan untuk memperhatikan dia. Pemuda itu mengamini nasihat itu dan bertekat untuk membuat kesempatan pacaran yang ketiga kali itu berbuah baik dan bisa meningkat menjadi hubungan ke jenjang perkawinan. Pada hari pesta Yesus menampakkan kemuliaan-Nya ini, Sabda Tuhan mengajarkan kita untuk mengalami kemuliaan dan kebesaran Tuhan melalui mata kita yang melihat dan telinga kita yang mendengar. Ketiga bacaan menggambarkan penglihatan dan pendengaran fisik yang dialami oleh nabi Daniel, rasul Petrus dan kedua rekannya. Mereka melihat penampakan Tuhan dan mendengar suara yang datang langsung dari Tuhan. Suatu pengalaman iman yang secara langsung seperti ini sangat didambakan oleh banyak dari kita. Kita bagaikan terangkat setinggi gunung Tabor tempat para rasul menyaksikan penampakan kemuliaan Tuhan. Saat ini hampir semua pengalaman iman kita ialah kejadian-kejadian tidak langsung namun dipertandai secara langsung. Yesus bersabda dan menampakkan kemuliaan-Nya melalui diri Bapa Suci, atau seorang imam, atau seorang saudara yang berbuat baik dan mengasihi kita. Yesus hadir secara pribadi langsung tetapi diperlambangkan oleh Roti Ekaristi yang selalu kita sembah dan santap. Yesus juga berdiri di mimbar dan bersabda secara langsung tetapi ditandai oleh seorang pewarta. Pengalaman-pengalaman seperti ini sangat bernilai tinggi dan membantu pertumbuhan iman kita. Mata dan telinga kita sangat berperan untuk pertumbuhan iman ini. Yang menjadi masalah ialah jika kita tidak mendengar dan melihat dengan suatu perhatian yang baik, kita bakal kehilangan pengalaman akan kemuliaan Tuhan yang hadir di dalam diri sesama, alam lingkungan, dan peristiwa hidup kita. Marilah kita berdoa. Dalam nama Bapa ... Ya Yesus yang baik, semoga kami selalu ingin melihat dan mendengarkan Dikau dalam setiap situasi hidup kami. Salam Maria penuh rahmat... Dalam nama Bapa ... --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/media-la-porta/message

"Yang akan memeluk kalian dan akan mengerti kalian seribu kali lipat yaitu cuma diri kita sendiri. Maka dari itu, sebelum kita mengasihi orang lain jangan lupa mengasihi diri kita sendiri" Nah, topik yg Tiana bawain kali ini deep banget deh. Gimana kita bisa melewati dunia yang penuh tipu daya ini, adakah tempat kita bersandar, dan sudahkah bersyukur. Selamat mendengarkan ❤️ | Podcaster: Tiana | Editor: Yuza | Follow Instagram @polimedia_radio

Kyle Caldwell and Sam Benstead run through the funds and investment trusts that investors have been buying to take advantage of stock markets returning to form in July. They also give their take on Scottish Mortgage breaching its unlisted stock limit, and Sam explains why the outlook for bonds is looking up. Later on in the podcast, the fund manager interview is Fiona Yang, co-manager of the Invesco Asia Trust, which invests in undervalued Asian franchises. Yang explains why she has been increasing exposure to Chinese stocks. Visit ii.co.uk/funds and ii.co.uk/stock-market-news for more investing insight and ideas. This material is intended for educational purposes only and is not investment research or a personal recommendation to buy or sell any financial instrument or product, or to adopt any investment strategy. The value of your investments can rise as well as fall, and you could get back less than you invested. The investments referred to may not be suitable for all investors, and if in doubt, an investor should seek advice from a qualified investment adviser. Past Performance is not a guide to future performance. Interactive Investor Services Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.

Jika kita memiliki usaha lebih baiknya jual sendiri atau kerja sama dengan reseller? Yang kita ketahui jika menjual sendiri produk tersebut maka margin kita akan lebih besar dan layanan kualitas yang kita berikan lebih terjaga karena kita sendiri yang melayani customer. Berbeda jika kita bekerja sama dengan reseller omset kita lebih cepat bertambah. Dua cara ini memiliki kelebihan dan kekurangan masing masing. Lalu lebih baik jual sendiri atau kerja sama dengan reseller?

ÖSYM'den Beklenen İptal Kararı Geldi, Yüksek Askeri Şura Toplantısı Sona Erdi, Eren Abluka-29 Operasyonu Başlatıldı, Barış Pınarı Bölgesinde Operasyon, Balıklı Rum Hastanesi'nde Yangın Çıktı, Et Ve Süt Kurumu'ndan Kuzu Eti Fiyatlarında Yüzde 25 İndirim

Attend DAS, crypto and macro's favorite institutional conference: http://digitalassetsummit.co/ Use code “guidance” to get 50% off Blockworks Research: https://blockworks.co/get-research/ -- In the summer of 2020, there was no greater proponent of the “commodity supercycle” thesis - the idea that commodity prices would appreciate for many years in a secular fashion - than Tian Yang, founder of Variant Perception. Since then, commodity prices - copper, oil, natural gas, you name it - have skyrocketed. Yet Yang now argues that the commodity supercycle is in “intermission” because economic growth is slowing rapidly and liquidity is collapsing as central banks rapidly tightening monetary policy in order to combat inflation. Yang argues that long-term bonds (“duration) will likely perform well in this environment. Yang also shares his view on the Fed, inflation, volatility, and the dollar. Filmed on August 1, 2022. -- Follow Tian Yang on Twitter https://twitter.com/VrntPerception Follow Jack on Twitter https://twitter.com/JackFarley96 Follow Blockworks on Twitter https://twitter.com/Blockworks_ -- Get top market insights and the latest in crypto news. Subscribe to Blockworks Daily Newsletter: https://blockworks.co/newsletter/ -- (00:00) Introduction (05:45) Liquidity Is Collapsing (10:04) How Quickly Will Inflation Fall? (21:38) Is The Fed Put Gone? (26:48) Recessions in Asia, Europe, and the U.S. (31:14) Are Chinese Stocks A Buy? (37:02) European Stocks (38:50) Is The Dollar Rally Over? (45:22) 1984 Historical Analogue (51:40) Term Premium, Explained (57:30) Confidence Levels About Future Inflation (1:02:08) Potential Hedges (1:07:44) Most Common Investor Mistake -- Disclaimer: Nothing discussed on Forward Guidance should be considered as investment advice. Please always do your own research & speak to a financial advisor before thinking about, thinking about putting your money into these crazy markets.

ÖSYM'den Beklenen İptal Kararı Geldi, Yüksek Askeri Şura Toplantısı Sona Erdi, Eren Abluka-29 Operasyonu Başlatıldı, Barış Pınarı Bölgesinde Operasyon, Balıklı Rum Hastanesi'nde Yangın Çıktı, Et Ve Süt Kurumu'ndan Kuzu Eti Fiyatlarında Yüzde 25 İndirim --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/haluk-kurtuncuoglu/message

Tidur itu fondasi dari hidup sehat. Dan ternyata cukup yang cukup itu berkaitan banget sama penurunan lemak. Yang menarik yang diulas Michael Greger adalah kalau tidur ga cukup, bisa aja turun berat badan, tapi yang turun itu masa otot bukan lemak loh! Selamat mendengarkan deh pokoknya!

In the Taoist tradition, the core teaching is that the key to our full potential is to balance our Yin (feminine) and Yang (masculine) energies.

Kencan Dengan Tuhan - Jumat, 5 Agustus 2022 "Hai anakku, janganlah pertimbangan dan kebijaksanaan itu menjauh dari matamu, peliharalah itu." (Amsal 3:21) Renungan: Seseorang berkata bahwa Ishak tidaklah terlalu miskin untuk dapat menyediakan makanan bagi keluarganya, atau Ribka adalah seorang ibu rumah tangga yang tidak bisa mengatur kebutuhan makanan untuk seisi rumahnya, sehingga Esau harus menjual hak kesulungannya demi mendapatkan bubur kacang merah. Sebenarnya tindakan bodoh Esau lebih disebabkan karena nafsu yang tidak bisa ditahan dan tidak adanya pertimbangan panjang. Yang ada dalam pikirannya hanyalah memuaskan nafsu makannya saat itu dan kalau tidak ia akan mati. Untuk saat itu tidak ada yang dapat menyenangkan serta memuaskan hatinya selain sepiring bubur kacang merah. Ia menganggap bahwa bubur kacang merah yang sangat menggoda itu lebih penting daripada sebuah hak kesulungan. Seseorang pernah berkata, "Kalaupun dia harus mati karena lapar dan lelah, bukankah lebih baik mati dalam kemuliaan daripada hidup menanggung cela? Bukankah lebih baik mati di dalam berkat daripada mati di bawah kutukan?" Amsal 3:21 berbunyi, "Hai anakku, janganlah pertimbangan dan kebijaksanaan itu menjauh dari matamu, peliharalah itu." Keputusan Esau menjual hak kesulungannya salah satunya disebabkan karena tidak Adanya pertimbangan atau tidak berpikir panjang. Tentunya Esau juga tahu apa itu hak kesulungan dan berkat-berkat apa saja yang akan diperolehnya melalui hak kesulungan tersebut. Buktinya, setelah ia tahu bahwa ayahnya telah memberkati Yakub, meraung-raunglah ia dengan keras sambil memohon agar bisa memberkatinya juga. Namun apa boleh buat semua sudah terlambat. Ketika Esau diperhadapkan pada keinginan yang besar untuk makan bubur kacang merah, ia sama sekali tidak berpikir panjang tentang pentingnya hak kesulungan. Ia terlalu terpikat dengan apa yang ada di depan matanya saat itu. Melalui kisah kehidupan Esau kita belajar tentang satu perkara penting yaitu membiasakan diri berpikir panjang sebelum mengambil keputusan. Seringkali kita begitu terpaku pada keadaan yang ada di depan kita, sehingga kita lupa untuk berpikir panjang dan menimbang-nimbang mengenai akibat atau konsekuensi dari keputusan yang kita ambil. Ada sebuah kata bijak yang berkata, "Mujurlah orang yang tidak tergesa-gesa memutuskan, karena pertimbangan akan mencegah air mata penyesalannya." Tuhan Yesus memberkati. Doa: Tuhan Yesus, tidak jarang aku bertindak terlalu cepat dalam banyak hal tanpa berpikir panjang. Tetapi aku bersyukur bahwa engkau kembali mengingatkanku betapa pentingnya pertimbangan itu bagiku. Amin. (Dod).

Dibawakan oleh Pastor Peter Tukan, SDB dari Komunitas Salesian Don Bosco Labuan Bajo, Keuskupan Ruteng Indonesia. Yeremia 31: 31-34; Mazmur tg 51: 12-13.14-15.18-19; Matius 16: 13-23 TIDAK ADA YANG DIHARAPKAN DARI ORANG BODOH Renungan kita pada hari ini bertema: Tidak Ada yang Diharapkan dari Orang Bodoh. Yohanes Maria Vianey adalah seorang santo yang mempertemukan dua kutub kualitas pribadi manusia, yaitu kerapuhan dan kebijaksanaan. Selama studi untuk menjadi seorang imam, ia dikenal sangat rapuh karena kemampuan intelektualnya sangat rendah. Akibatnya ia bukan hanya diberikan pekerjaan yang sederhana, tetapi juga secara alamiah tidak diperhitungkan atau diharapkan untuk berbuat banyak bagi orang lain. Maka wajar ia diremehkan dengan ujaran seperti ini: "Tidak ada yang diharapkan dari orang bodoh". Ia seorang manusia yang bodoh, mana bisa ia sebagai imam untuk mengajar dan menuntun orang lain? Tetapi karena Tuhan hendak mengangkat orang-orang kecil, Yohanes mendapat berkat yang istimewa. Di suatu paroki terpencil ia abdikan hidupnya, ia penuh dengan kebijaksanaan dan kasih Tuhan. Orang-orang datang dari seluruh penjuru Prancis dan dunia untuk mencarinya supaya dilayani pengakuan dosa, diberikan nasihat, didoakan, dan diberkati. Bagi Gereja kita, Santo dari desa L'Arch Prancis ini adalah pelindung para imam, khususnya pastor paroki. Tugas utama Yohanes Maria Vianney ialah menuntun umat beriman kepada Tuhan. Pekerjaan ini sama dengan membimbing, mengarahkan dan mengajarkan. Yang menuntun pasti seseorang yang memiliki kualitas lebih dan dipercayai untuk melakukannya. Sebuah bimbingan, pengajaran atau tuntunan tidak dapat terjadi kalau tidak ada kepercayaan. Tugas ini sangat mengandalkan dua kekuatan besar di dalam diri kita, yaitu akal budi sebagai faktor intelektual dan iman yang menjadi kebijaksanaan Ilahi. Nabi Yeremia menggunakan dua kekuatan ini untuk membuka kesadaran dan kepercayaan umat Israel tentang hukuman dan berkat yang layak diberikan. Orang-orang Farisi dan para ahli Taurat dikecam Yesus karena selain mereka terang-terangan menolak Yesus, mereka juga menuntun orang lain bukan kepada keselamatan tetapi kebinasaan. Mereka tidak seperti Yeremia, Yohanes Maria Vianney dan Yesus Kristus sendiri. Mereka yang buta tentang iman yang benar menuntun banyak orang lain yang ingin bertumbuh dalam iman yang benar dan yang masih perlu banyak belajar untuk lebih beriman. Maka tantangan kita yang amat besar saat ini ialah mencukupi diri kita dengan kualitas intelektual dan iman sebagai pengikut Kristus, sehingga kita tidak jatuh dalam kesalahan menjadi penyebab orang lain jatuh ke dalam dosa. Marilah kita berdoa. Dalam nama Bapa... Ya Tuhan dan Allah kami, semoga perkataan dan perbuatan kami selalu menjadi tuntunan yang benar bagi sesama kami. Kemuliaan kepada Bapa ... Dalam nama Bapa... --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/media-la-porta/message

Note: Kansas later in the evening defeated the anti-abortion ballot measure discussedhandily.We are joined by Emma Vigeland (@EmmaVigeland) of the Majority Report to talk about how Rashida Tlaib continues to show the way to fight for human rights & Yang's new centrist rebrand with the Forward Party. Also, are Dems learning the right lessons from the reactionary threat to win in southern Texas?Get the postgame at patreon.com/leftreckoning

Kekacauan akibat blokir Kementerian Kominfo terhadap PayPal, Steam, Yahoo, dan platform digital lain yang belum mendaftar sebagai penyelenggara sistem elektronik (PSE), hanyalah salah satu dampak kecil buruknya Peraturan Menteri Nomor 5 Tahun 2020. Di balik itu, ada ancaman yang lebih besar pada kebebasan berpendapat dan berekspresi kita. Aturan tersebut memuat pasal karet yang membuat pemerintah bisa meminta platform yang terdaftar PSE menghapus konten yang dianggap “meresahkan masyarakat” dan “mengganggu ketertiban umum”. Jika tidak, Kemkominfo bisa menjatuhkan denda ataupun memblokir layanan platform tersebut. Tak ada parameter jelas apa itu konten “meresahkan masyarakat” dan “mengganggu ketertiban umum”. Apakah sebuah kritik keras pada pemerintah akan dianggap “mengganggu ketertiban umum”? Yang lebih mengejutkan, platform digital harus bersedia memberikan data pengguna dengan dalih kepentingan pengawasan dan penegakan hukum. Ketentuan-ketentuan itu jelas menerabas privasi pengguna bahkan mengancam kebebasan pers. - - - Baca berbagai laporan-laporan mendalam majalah Tempo dan Koran Tempo dengan mengunduh aplikasi Tempo.

Mengingat “luka” di masa lalu bukan berarti kita bernostalgia dengan rasa sakit yang telah terjadi. Mengenal luka yang pernah kita lalui di harapkan dapat membuat kita menyadari hal “kurang baik” yang tidak bisa di tolak, apalagi di abaikan. Yang bisa kita lakukan adalah menerima dan memproses emosi tersebut. Jika kamu sedih, kecewa, marah, benci karena kejadian tersebut, itu hal yang wajar. Ekspresikan emosimu dan pahami bahwa setiap emosi adalah netral sebagai cara kita memaknai kejadian. Yang menjadikannya baik ataupun buruk sangat tergantung pada respon kita terhadap emosi tersebut. Marah tidak harus berlanjut dengan sikap merusak dan kecewa tidak selalu berakhir dengan dendam kan? Punya pertanyaan, saran, kritik atau request tema yang ingin di bahas. Yuk DM aja ke @psikologid atau @daudantonius Terima kasih sudah mendengarkan. Karena apapun yang kamu sampaikan akan jadi masukan yang membangun podcast ini menjadi lebih baik lagi.. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/psikologid/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/psikologid/support

Para este épico episodio cincuenta escogimos conversar sobre el infravalorado Adam Sandler. Exploramos el Yin y el Yang dentro de su filmografía. Por un lado está la obra maestra Click, con su particular encanto cinematográfico y espiritual; en el otro extremo está la porquería Jack y Jill, considerada una de las peores películas de todos los tiempos, en la cual Al Pacino intenta seducir a Adam Sandler vestido de mujer. La dualidad de este sujeto nos asombra y nos divierte.       Timecodes: 0:00 Intro, 11:46 ¿somos introvertidos o extrovertidos? 36:58 Click, 01:25:08 Jack y Jill. 

As we enter the last month of Winter here in the Southern Hemisphere, it's very tempting to daydream about the sweet Spring air and warmer weather that awaits us. However, as we will learn in today's Winter podcast, this last month of Winter is critical to how we show up in Spring, Summer, and beyond. So as much as you can- REST, sleep, nurture and nourish yourself in these last days before spring arrives... Reflection, restoration, rest- through these Winter practices, we are able to access the wisdom of the Kidneys and the cultivation of Jing that will sustain us through Spring, the peak of Summer, and beyond. Today on the podcast, Tahnee and Mason share the practices, Kidney herbs, and Taoist wisdom of Winter/ Water time in a way that calls us to reflect and ask ourselves- Are we getting enough rest? If we observe the health of the collective during our current Winter season, the answer points to no. Tahnee dives deep into the energy of the Kidneys- explaining why rest/sleep in these cooler water cultivating months is critical to our vitality in every season.  Mason speaks to the Kidneys relationship with fear- when it's useful- when it's destructive, and how when we surrender to the stillness and darkness this season grants us, there is an opportunity for profound transformation- spiritually-mentally-physically.  This conversation comes at a most significant time, bringing up the much broader and ubiquitous question of sustainability. How sustainable are the lifestyles we live- and at what cost do they come to our health?   "I'm sleeping until seven most mornings, and I'm really feeling this deep nourishment from sleep at the moment. Obviously, we have a business and children, so naturally, we still end up burning the candle. But how many of us push through winter not getting that hibernation time, that deep rest of restoration in the Qi and the Organs? Then we get sick, and then we're suddenly crook all the time. It's like this because- as a culture, we keep the momentum going all year round. We don't have this time of acknowledging and making sacred the rest and the sleep that we require".    -Tahnee Taylor   Mason and Tahnee discuss: -Qi Gong -Jing energy -Qi cultivation -The organ wheel -Fear and the Kidneys. -Yin Yang Kidney herbs. -Why we need rest in Winter. -Herbs and foods for Winter. -Transforming fear into wisdom. -The Heart and Kidney meridians. -The esoteric nature of the Kidneys. -Balancing our Yin and Yang energy. -The Water element and the Kidneys. -Why we need sleep to cultivate Jing. -Why we protect ourselves against the cold. -Practices and meditations to support us through Winter. -What the menstrual flow says about our Jing/Kidney essence.   Resource guide Tahnee's website  Tahnee's Instagram Mason's Instagram SuperFeast Instagram  Jost Sauer Qi cycle poster Yoga Nidra: Divine Sleep Yoga Nidra The Yellow Emperor's Classic of Medicine- a new translation of the Neijing.  Tonics: JING blend  Cordyceps Deer Antler Eucommia Bark Three Treasures bundle Relevant Articles:  Jing: What Is It? How To Cultivate It.  Adrenals and Kidney Health- Breathing and Movement. Relevant Podcasts: Adrenal Fatigue and Reapir with Dan and Sage (EP#170)  Water Element and Winter Food Therapy with Kimberly Ashton (EP#168) The Importance Of Sleep For Healthy Hun and Qi with Jost Sauer (EP#102)   Check Out The Transcript Here: https://www.superfeast.com.au/blogs/articles/winter-rest-tahnee-mason-ep-172  

Let's keep it a full stack: If you're someone who will not be voting in November's midterms and stand on the sidelines while our democracy crumbles to Christo-Fascist Nazis then you're not somebody I want to be friends with. Also, fuck Yang trying to be a third party spoiler. Dude was having bro downs( not #MeToo friendly if you catch my drift) in swanky offices with his buddies s before he decided to be a fake politician. Fuck that guy. Gas prices are back where they were in April. Can someone report about that? Ungrateful pricks. Sinema will mess the deal up with Schumer and Manchin. Manchin knows that. hence why he's for it.

Last time we spoke, the Qing took Beijing and immediately set out a campaign to destroy the nemesis of the Ming and man who had broken them, Li Zicheng. The Qing smashed his Dashun army and caught the bandit leader ending his life. Yet as they did so a new threat emerged, that of the South Ming Regime. A few Ming princes took the Dragon Throne, each bickering with the next until the Qing smashed each one. Last left standing was Emperor Yongli, who promptly fled for his life at every sight of the Qing enemy. With the South Ming regime on the ropes, the Qing began to focus on quelling the hundreds of peasant uprisings against their new state. But the more they suppressed the peasants, the more the peasants fought on even harder. Now we will tell the horrifying tale, of a man who many of the peasants flocked to, and with that I actually think I will give the audience a graphic content warning.   This episode is the holocaust of Zhang Xianzhong   Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on world war two and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War.   Before I start I would just like to make a little acknowledgement. To those listeners who learnt of the man I am about to talk about in the education system of mainland China, I apologize if my take on him does not mirror exactly what you might have learnt. I do not in anyway pretend what I am telling is the facts at all. I read 2 vastly differing accounts of Zhang Xianzhong and I mean vastttttly different. One portrays him as a peasant revolutionary who fought for the rights of the peasant class and was misconstrued later on by the Qing who placed blame upon him for crimes against humanity they performed during the unification period. That account was written by a Chinese historian of the PRC and I will just outright say it, it was written more so for political ideology than history in my opinion. Another source I read was by a renowned Historian of Chinese history and he states that Zhang was undeniably responsible for an unreal amount of crimes against humanity. The truth is probably a gray, I did my best to use both sources anyways on with the show. Ok so way back when many episodes back you might remember the name Zhang Xianzhong. He was basically the rival to Li Zicheng. Li Zicheng and his Dashun army managed to take Beijing, while Zhang Xianzhong and his Daxi army moved further southeast, fortunately for him considering the Qing blew the door open. Zhang Xianzhong's operations at the offset were brutal to say the least, he had a reputation for cruelty. He also acquired some of the best military bandit leaders under his banner. One was named Sun Kewang, a native of Yanchang, and although he had a peasant upbringing, he knew how to read and write which proved very valuable. There was also Li Dingguo who was a tall and sturdy man, kept himself clean at all times and was extremely gifted in leading armies. He ended up being one of Zhang Xianzhong's most trusted commanders who was able to restrain Zhang or his other colleagues when necessary. It is said while others raped and butchered cities after taking them, Li Dingguo prefered to avoid these activities and restrained his men. Then there was Liu Wenxiu and Ai Nengqi, each not as famous as the previous two, but equally were formidable commanders who earned the loyalty of their men.    In the year 1643, Zhang Xianzhong entered a new phase of his career. He had gained valuable experience in both siege and naval warfare, moving beyond commanding just a mere bandit army. He led some 100,000 or so men and was regarded on an equal level to Li Zicheng, the de facto largest bandit army leader. Unlike Li Zicheng however, Zhang was not as successful at building a regime and tending to just pillage and move on. Now the last time we mentioned Zhang Xianzhong he was raping and pillaging Hunan province. He had a bit of a dilemma, he had plans to take Nanjing, the secondary capital of the Ming, but Li Zicheng and the Ming commander Zuo Liangyu made it impossible to get near Nanjing. Zhang's forces though enormous at this point, some estimates indicating possibly half a million were under him, were taking heavy casualties. With so many men, he was concerned primarily with how to feed his army and he began to speak to his commanders. They all spoke to him about “heaven's storehouse”, a name given to Sichuan province. Many of the commanders pointed out the geography of Sichuan and how it would prove a better base of operations against Li Zicheng's Dashun forces. Thus Zhang Xianzhong abandoned Changsha which he had been occupying for some time and moved with his army upon Sichuan province. And here is the horrifying story of what happened to the people of Sichuan.    In 1644 Zhang camped in western Huguang capturing Xianyang and dozens of towns in its vicinity. Rumors spread in Sichuan that Zhang Xianzhong was leading an army 400,000 strong to sweep the province at any moment. The South Ming officials in Sichuan had completely ignored their own defenses. They lacked supplies because of a shortage of funds, corruption was rampant in all levels of government, they bickered amongst another and there were barely any disciplined troops to make much of a stand. As a result Chongqing was left with only 3000 troops to defend it. To make matters worse, like many cities in Sichuan, Chongqing had been infiltrated by bandit spies serving as the “eyes and ears” of Zhang's men.    The defense of Sichuan's capital, Chengdu was commanded by Zeng Ying. Zeng Ying was a large imposing man with a huge mustache, greatly feared by his enemies for his spirit and conviction in battle. Zeng Ying and his Ming general colleagues fought many battles against Zhang's invading forces. Zeng won a significant battle at Zhongzhou killing over 1000 of Zhang's bandits and sinking 100 boats, but overall the Ming were simply outnumbered and out gunned in Sichuan. Over the course of quite a few battles it is estimated the Ming loyalist armies would lose up to 100,000 men. Zhang eventually dislodged Zeng armies from Fuzhou where Zeng was wounded by arrows. Ming fronts began to collapse and Zeng had to withdraw Wangjiang pass, killing many during his retreat. With Zeng gone, Chongqing was open for the taking. Zhang's vanguard was 100,000 strong backed by 200,000 in reserve. He began his attack on Chongqing with probes while he built floating bridges. Zhang was eager to take Chongqinq as by this point in time, he received word that Li Zicheng had captured Beijing, and in Zhang's mind it was only a matter of time before Li Zicheng turned his army upon Sichuan.    Once he had constructed 100 boats his men sailed force with great yellow banners proclaiming dengqing Chuan yue” “quelling the disturbances in sichuan”. As told by  Historian James Parsons “the rebels converged on Chongqing from 2 directions: 1 force continued the advance up the Yangtze, and another, under Zhang's personal command went overlord and approached the city from the west. The magistrate of Chongqing, Chen Shiqi, was undoubtedly demoralized by the fall of Beijing to Li Zicheng and the suicide of the Chongzhen empror. He made no attempt to defend the approaches to the city, apparently because he was afraid that his troops would flee if he allowed them outside the city walls. Thus, in July 1644, Chongqing was completely surrounded. The outcome of the content was apparent, for Zhangs forces outnumbered the defenders, and he had by now acquired great skill in attacking walled towns. But fighting continued for several days with both sides using cannon as well as the more conventional, and probably more effective, bows and arrows. Finally the rebels succeeded in digging a large hole in the wall and filling it with gunpowder, which was exploded by a means of a fire arrow. Thus they were able to gain entrance to the city and all resistance was overcome on July 25, 1644”.    As the walls fell, the invaders swarme in like ants and the Ming defenders tried to repel them leading to blood street fighting, but all were cut down. The magistrate and commander of the defenses of Chongqing, Chen Shiqi was captured by Zhang who offered him the opportunity to surrender and join him. Chen spat “if a petty little official of the seventh grade doesn't fear death, how can I, who am still a court official of the second grade and a high frontier minister, submit to you a bandit?”. Zhang in fury tortured Chen before having him publically flayed. In the words of the Jesuit priest Gabriel de Magalhaens who heard the story secondhand “they begin the butchery with the toes until they complete it at the top of the head, cutting off small pieces of flesh, some smaller and some larger depending on the orders of the tyrant, which ranged ordinarily from 300, 500, 1000 and 10,000 pieces, a butchery so inhumane, prolonged from sunrise to sunset on one man”. The bloodbath of Chongqing is one of the most infamous moments of Zhang's rather dark career. Zhang began taunting Prince Rui asking if he was fiercer than Li Zicheng before telling him that heaven gave him a message in the form of lightning that he had to kill him an thus he executed him. Then it is said he ordered all the defenders of the city, 37,000 soldiers to have their sword arms severed off, though those who submitted peacefully “merely” had their ears, noses or hands cut off. Some accounts state Zhang severed the left arms of the women in the city so that couples would be matched sets, wow. Tales of people being strung up to walls and trees and used as target practice are told, countless thousand were butchered filling the rivers with blood.  Its hard to gauge what's exaggeration or not in these tales, but one thing is for sure, Zhang killed a significant amount of people for both strategic and psychological purposes. As seen countless time in history, engaging in one great atrocity might well convince others to submit without fighting, thus preserving resources and allowing someone like Zhang to capture cities intact further down the road. But in the case of Zhang, this behavior seems to persist and more and more massacres will occur. It should be noted that Li Dingguo and Sun Kewang were said to try and curb Zhang's murderous side when possible.    After Chongqing, Zhang's forces fanned out and attacked the localities, and in a short time 47 districts and prefectures fell to his men. Many independent bandit groups such as the Yao-Huang bandits would come to join his forces bolstering him by another 50,000 men. Then Zhang set his eyes upon Chengdu which he thought would make a perfect capital for his new regime. At Chengdu Prince Shu made the same mistake as his cousin, Prince Rui at Chongqing, he sat upon his treasure rather than spend it to bolster the cities defenses. The city's defenses were organized by Liu Jiachong and Yang Zhang who raised a force no larger than 10,000. They dug moats, repaired walls and trained the troops as best they could.    Zhang's troops approached Chengdu from 3 directions. At this point, the official Shen Yunzuo, fed up with the greed and incompetence of Prince Shu, gave up trying to press the prince for funds and raised a funds from other officials instead acquiring enough to hire a mercenary force of 2000 troops. They would not make much of a difference. As with Chongqing, Zhang first offered the city a chance to submit sending envoys ahead, but the envoys were executed. Li Dingguo pushed Zhang to slip some spies into the city to learn of its defenses which proved very useful. Zhang's army hit the city from all 4 sides on the first day. The initial assault of ladders was repulsed by the commander Liu Zhibo. Soon Zhang's men set to the old strategy of finding weak points along the walls and setting sappers in to use gunpowder to blow them up. Always reminds me of the Scene in Peter Jackson's LOTR two towers, sorry had to say it. As the charges went off , several parts of the walls collapsed and the bandit soldiers clambered through the breaches. The Prince of Shu tried to escape but failed, so he drowned himself in an old well when he heard the rebels had entered the city.  It is alleged Zhang Xianzhong began to systematically massacre the population of Chengdu for 3 days, though the numbers are disputed. Reports of bodies being tossed into the river or left on the streets to rot made for a horrific scene. But a lot of accounts also state that after the 3 days some sort of order was established. Some scholars argue Zhang's generals began to protest all the killing, such as Sun Kewang who said to Zhang “My king has fought battles for over a decade and has repeatedly slaughtered without acquiring an inch of territory to defend. Your generals and soldiers can no longer follow this way of thinking. Now we'd risk ten thousand deaths to see the completion of our king's enterprise. But if you kill the masses, who will be left to implement your plans? I beg my king to put up your sword and spare the common people from death.”. Eventually the other generals  joined in to convince Zhang to make Chengdu his new capital and stop killing its populace. Soon Zhang proclaimed himself emperor Da Shun. This of course was ironically the same title as Li Zicheng who was of course his former rival. His kingdom was called “Da Xiguo” the great western kingdom and Chengdu was renamed Xijing “western capital”.    Zhang then appointed special titles for his 4 adopted sons as he called them. Sun Kewang was made “pingdong Jiangjun” generalissimo who pacifies the east in charge of conquering Shandong, Liaodong, the coast and Korea.  Li Dinggou was generalissimo of the west in charge of conquering western Sichuan and Tibet. Liu Wenxiu was generalissimo of the south in charge of conquering Guizhou, Yunnan, Burma, Thailand and Southeast Asia. Last was Ai Nengqi generalissimo of the north in charge of conquering all northern provinces and Mongolia. Pretty ridiculous tasks, but the more you learn of Zhang Xianzhong, who might I add talked to himself in third person, heard and saw things no one else could, well it makes more sense. Zhang restricted his entire military into 120 camps and appointed countless commanders with 5 chief military commissions similar to the Ming Dynasty military structure. His force is loosely estimated to have grown at this point to 600,000 to a possible million strong. With such incredibly high numbers of mouths, a ton of feeding was required and this is the crux of a horrid story. Zhang soon had to form an intensively strict government designed specifically to maximize resource acquisition and find any semblance of sedition. Districts were organized into units which were expected to inform Zhang's authorities if there was any seditious talk or activity, failure to do so could result in execution of that person and or their entire families.  Light punishments could be a good old flogging, for example if you enter the wrong door or face the wrong direction during certain events. Then if you were caught lets say hoarding anything, well you could expect a ear, nose, a hand or foot cut off, so a more moderate punishment? If you did something a bit worse than that, there was decapitation, even worse crimes met with slower deaths, dismemberment for example. If you did something really bad, Zhang's favorite was to flay someone alive.  It is said the outer walls of Zhang's palace were decorated with flayed skins of offenders and piles of severed body parts, divided by type amassed in front of his residence…remember that last part because oh boy it comes around later.    Zhang had secret police everywhere, strict curfews were enforced, people required travel passes and if anyone was caught messing about it was a quick execution. The populace could be arrested and questioned for anything. It is alleged from the year 1644 to 1647 the land of Sichuan was drenched in blood. Yet despite the horror, Zhang apparently had plans for a peaceful administration of Sichuan. Seals of office were used, government organs operated all the while the citizens were threatened with death if they fled or resisted. Zhang set his army to work, hunting any Ming royal family members or supporters who were to be brought back to Chengdu, for some gruesome endings I imagine. His army fanned out into the countryside scouring for resources, anything that could be eaten or traded for food. It was reported that all cattle, pigs, chickens, dogs and even rats if it's to be believed were scavenged by his armies. Commoners were forbidden to hoard livestock or valuables and you can imagine how many would die as a result. It is alleged that Zhang “deemed a day without killing a wasted day” and he began to refer to himself as “heaven's executioner” claiming he had a divine mission to kill. Now I want to make another point like I did at the beginning of this episode. Modern Chinese historians stress the positive aspects of Zhang's regim, after all if you read between the lines you see how he was redistributed wealth and …well…for the most part the higher classes were the ones being squeezed the most, cause the peasants could only offer so much. There were many aspects of his government that seemed like they worked, surely everyone was kept in line. Zhang was extremely paranoid, we are talking Stalin levels here, he tried to control everything. His army was enormous and their tasks were even larger than them, this required an incredible amount of resources, which shows an incredible amount of capability…however it was done in quite a horrifying and irresponsible way. Regardless many of these modern Chinese scholars argue the merit for Zhang's promotion of the peasant class, one could see great revolutionary here. But their arguments are laid out with endless excuses for what is a known fact, one of the most insane death tolls imaginable for the people of Sichuan. They say, it was the Qing invaders who eventually show up, other bandit groups, climate problems and drought, which might I add is true, the climate at this time is responsible for unbelievable famine and death. But why do we face so many sources telling of unbelievable atrocities performed by a man, who quite frantically is seen to be the harbinger of doom. Anyways I wanted to give some of their side in this, cause from here on, its going to heavily skew to the anti-Zhang side. A Jesuit priest who was with Zhang had this to say of his early reign and I find it a bit revealing “His wisdom and perceptiveness are vast and exceed that of most people. He is certainly capable of governing a state.” “He began to govern at first with such liberality, justice, and greatness that all were taken by him; however, this benignity did not endure, because little by little he began taking off his human disguise and showing his ugly countenance of cruelty.” “So immense was this man's ferociousness that from the beginning of the world right up to the present day there has never existed a tyrant so wild and so inhuman.”.   Zhang made claims to those around him that he could see entities, ghosts or spirits if you were, because of his capacity as the Son of Heaven. At times these entities or better said heavenly spirits told him to commit slaughter. He would also go on to say the people he killed sometimes came back to speak to him and in his frustration he could not kill the entities.     After only a month of establishing his new Kingdom, matters began to spiral out of control. This would lead to 2 years which would go down in the annals of Chinese history as some of the bloodiest and in Sichuan, Zhang would earn the moniker “the butcher”.  Between 1646 and 1649, Sichuan which some called “heaven's storehouse” would become a charnel house. Zhang's forces lashed out all over Sichuan hunting anyone down who did not hand over food, funds or anything else necessary for the regime. Anyone who tried to flee Zhang proclaimed “would be regarded as a rebel in the eyes of the law”. He proclaimed to the countryside that he would punish bad officials and reassess land taxation for the peasants which did swing some of the peasants to him. Despite his best efforts to fleece the rich, there was such general chaos that tax collection or the conduct of official business was in quite disarray. Despite all of this his forces for at least the first month of the regime remained quite disciplined and many prohibitions were in place to stop looting, rape and pillage. But many  historians argue this was the work of his subordinates trying to build local level support and not so much Zhang himself.    Four different regimes were competing for Sichuan, Zhang's regime, Li Zichengs Dashun kingdom based at Xi'an, the Qing regime in Beijing and the Hongguang South Ming Regime in Nanjing. Zhang's northern forces managed to repel Li Zicheng's incursions on multiple occasions, the Qing were not yet this far south, but the South Ming regime remained a constant thorn. The South Ming loyalists were fighting back tooth and nail against the Zhang's Da Xi army on all frontiers. The Ming loyalist commander Yang Zhan soon established a base of operations in southern Sichuan. He inspired the locals to help resist Zhang Xianzhong's regime and harassed multiple cities under Zhang's control. Southern Sichuan soon became a hotbed for resistance against Zhang's rule furthering others to do the same. Another fire was the Ming commander Zeng Ying who also began raising forces in resistance and reclaiming some lost territory. Zeng Ying managed to recapture Chongqing and greatly bolstered its strength. To add to this injury, other bandit groups such as the Yao-Huang bandits within Sichuan began to rebel against Zhang in retaliation for his massacres upon the people. Some estimates suggest the Yao-Huang bandits numbers in Sichuan could had been up to 100,000, so this was no minor issue. Soon Xuzhou fell to the Ming loyalists and the more Zhang lost the more furious he became and unhinged. He soon sent his commanders with orders to indiscriminately kill, which was not a popular policy for them. Zhang had local militias rising up against him, Ming loyalist armies and soon the Qing would descend upon Sichuan.   On March 8th of 1645 he suddenly began multiple campaigns in all directions as Zhang declared his intention to recover vast lost territory. His 4 great generals went off in their respective directions. Liu Wenxiu was sent to pacify Chongqing, Sun Kewang and Ma Yuanli were sent into the north and Ai Nengqi was sent into the south.  It is said by the time their eradication campaigns had finished ““One could travel for a thousand li and see only red earth and in ten thousand homes there was no smoke [from cooking fires]. Travelers encountered no one living in Shu; there was land but no people, and the environment made it hard to stay there.”  Ai Nengqi won a few battles in the vicinity of Yazhou, driving the Ming forces further south, but it was only temporary as they kept coming right back recapturing lost territory. Its said half the residents of Yazhou died at the hands of Ai Nengqi's army before the Ming retook the city.  Liu Wenxiu with a force of 30,000 men hit Chongqing by land and water, but Zeng Ying sent 2 riverine units and land forces pincer attacking Liu's main force at Duogongcheng and smashed his army, apparently 3000 of Liu's men would survive. Zeng Ying was promoted vice commander and made an earl of Jinpingkou by Prince Fu for the great victory and his forces allegedly grew to 100,000. This was the first major defeat for Zhang Xianzhong in Sichuan. Xuzhou was captured soon by other Ming loyalists, taking the lives of 2000 Daxi soldiers. One of Zhangs commanders, Feng Shuangli retook Xuzhou only to lose it again to Yang Zhan who burnt Feng's boats not allowing him to retreat and killing most of his forces. Yang Zhan would follow this up by ambushing a force led by Zhang XianZhong's younger brother, capturing tons of men, money and supplies. With the booty in hand he soon hired 8000 more mercenaries and many spies to send into Zhang's armies to cause mayhem. Even Buddhist monasteries began joining the resistance against Zhang in Sichuan.     Zhang was livid at the reports and sent more and more forces out to kill indiscriminately. Zhang began to form repeated conferences with his advisers and noted that Chongqing needed to be rid of the Ming so that Zhang could refocus his attention upon the Dashun army in the north and the Qing even further north of them. By this point Zhang only really controlled an area of 30 miles around Chengdu. As he faced more and more defeats, his fury grew and massacres mounted. Corpses piled outside the offices of the Ministry of War as Zhang vented his rage. He began to purge his eunuch cohort, killing 280 out of a possible 300, possibly because he suspected them of being spies for his enemies. The courtyards and grassy areas around the palace were said to be stained with blood and the stench of rotting flesh. Official appointments became death sentences.   By the time Zhang's armies had finished their campaigns which can be better described as eradication campaigns all he had really done was create more and more resistance. As his enemies multiplied so did his paranoia. This is where you find a ton of sources talking about Zhang seeing and hearing things. In the early part of 1645 it is said he was seeing headless ghosts stalking the halls of his palace, he claimed at one point to one of his advisers that one of the ghosts stole food from his plate…perhaps a starving servant? He complained that he kept hearing the cries of those flayed outside his halls at night. It was around this time where Zhang became fixated with what he called his divine mission to slaughter. He claimed to receive directions from a “tianshu” “divine book” that only he could read and understand. He would rant “There are too many commoners in China, and their wickedness is unchecked. Therefore the Lord of Heaven has sent old Zhang to the world to kill people. . . . I want to fulfill the charge of Heaven, so my plan is to kill all the evil people in China.”. He told the populace of Sichuan to cleanse themselves lest he be forced to do it for them “His majesty is truly acting on behalf of Heaven. All of you, officials and commoners alike, must wash your hearts and cleanse your thoughts in order to avoid Heaven's wrath.”. It was after stating this to the Sichuan populace that we get that famous line he told his subordinate Wang Zhaolin about how “if a day went by and he did not kill somebody, then he was really unhappy”. How much of this is real and what is exaggerated or blemishing of character I leave up to you, but man does it make for a hell of a story.    It's frowned upon to give psychology diagnosis for people too far back in history who we cant really know how they were like, secondary sources and all. Even myself with a degree in neuroscience, not sure if I ever mentioned that hear on the podcast, bit bizarre to hear, my first degree is neuroscience and my second is in history, don't ask long story there. Anyways Zhang's condition based on these sources indicates he was at minimum suffering from paranoid delusions if not full blown schizophrenia. His apparent delight in the torture and murder of so many also indicats typical behaviors of anti-social personality disorder aka psychopathy.    Another account form the Portuguese Jesuit Gabriel De Magalhaens tells us “It seems that he ate and drank with greater gusto when people were being skinned alive or being cut up into pieces in his presence and at the same time that the pieces of human flesh were being cut off and dropping to the ground, he would be cutting up and eating the meat on his plate. And while the blood dripped, he drank his wine.”Things got so bad in Chengdu that Li Dingguo and Sun Kewang complained the capital had become a cemetery.    Things got much worse when Zhang began the practice of having soldiers submit severed body parts for rewards and promotions. Apparently Zhang was enticed by this practice because of a subordinate under Sun Kewang who showed up with 1700 hands to show his work. Chengdu became a scene of horror as shipments of hands, ears, and noses started coming in and piling up around the city. As one could imagine, with so many body parts came scavengers and soon the city became filled with scavengers such as wolves, leopards and tigers.    Now a lot of modern scholars point at Zhang's insanity leading to the desolation of Sichuan, but there is also another aspect I have mentioned. Zhang had an enormous army that required an enormous amount of food. Zhang was estimated to have a force of 600,000 to a possible million which required nearly twice what all of Sichuan's annual crop yields could manage. As the old saying goes, killing the chicken to get the eggs led to disaster. Zhang's men might have killed many on their own accord simply to acquire food and yes if you were wondering there were widespread reports of cannibalism.  As seen with so many tyrants throughout history, the policy of killing to overawe reached a breaking point. Local bandits, Ming Loyalists and commoners were resisting all over in greater numbers. Da Xi soldiers and officials alike were being killed wherever they went. Zhang's armies would systematically come to places, “pacify” them and as soon as they left the areas were in the words of Li Dingguo “as soon as we leave these righteous armies spring up. The officials we appoint are killed one by one and after 3 or 4 months they are all dead. If the previous dynasty had not tried to do this to us, we never would have survived. So we must prioritize protecting the people”. What could make matters worse for Zhang you might imagine, how about the new enemy finally reaching the scene, the Qing. The Qing finally managed to kill Li Zicheng and his Dashun army, well most of them defected to the Ming loyalists. At the same time the Qing also defeated Zuo Liangyu who would defect to them. Zuo Liangyu's defection bolstered the Qing with 100,000 troops, 40,000 boats and soon Henan, Huguang and Jiangxi were looking like easy grabs for them. Yet in order to take these places it was viewed that Sichuan required pacification as Zhang Xianzhong was a major menace with his giant army.    In 1645 the Dorgon sent emissaries to persuade Zhang Xianzhong to surrender proclaiming “everything Zhang Xianzhong's army had done during the Ming Dynasty was over, let bygones be bygones”. Provided Zhang Xianzhong and his army surrender, he would be appointed an official and his children would enjoy honor and wealth within the Qing dynasty. Well Zhang Xianzong chose to adopt a wait and see attitude, not surrendering, to no surprise the Qing were not too happy. Sun Kewang and some other generals began to complain to Zhang that the massacres of the population were creating more enemies and pushing them into the arms of the Ming and Qing. Zhang retorted simply that those who resisted must be slaughtered.    In the beginning of 1646 the Qing sent an expedition against Zhang Xianzhong, but it never reached Sichuan as it got held up by various Ming loyalist armies along the way. Then the Qing sent a 2nd expedition led by the Prince of Suqin, Haoge and Wu Sangui to march south and attack the Daxi army in Sichuan.    Now as bad as Zhang has been to the people of Sichuan thus far, it was at this point with the Qing coming to his doorstep where Zhang performed some of the most horrible atrocities against the people of Sichuan. Our portuguese man on the ground, Magalhaen claimed that Zhang's hatred for the people of Sichuan stemmed from his belief that their perfidy had undermined his campaign in Hanzhong the previous year. For whatever reason, Zhang resolved to kill all Sichuanese people. Specifics are hard to gauge, but it is estimated Zhang would kill 140,000 people in only 4 days. Just to showcase again the character that was Zhang during his regime in Sichuan, here is a little story.   Zhang was known for his cruelty and horribly stories are attributed to him, such as Shu Bi's story about Zhang's “heavenly-candles”. The story goes that Zhang got sick and vowed that if he recovered from his illness he would offer 2 heavenly candles as a sacrifice. No one understood what he meant at the time, but when he recovered, he ordered the small bound feet of many women to be cut off and placed in 2 large piles. The feet of one of his favorite concubines were unusually small and he had them served and placed at the very top of each large pile. Oil was poured on the piles and they were ignited fulfilling his vow to offer 2 heavenly candles. Have to say I've read some gruesome things but this one was particularly gross. According to Shu Bi Well that was just 1 story, during Zhang's rule in Sichuan, now let us talk about how he quote “engaged in one of the most hair-raising genocides in imperial history”.    When word came that the Qing were sending an army against him in Sichuan, Zhang ordered the massacre of all Sichuanese people. Zhang had people skinned alive, with their bodies stuffed with straw and sent ahead to their home villages to spread terror.  People were killed for the slightest offenses, like not cutting weeds in their courtyards or miscopying characters in official documents. Some people were simply pulled off the streets and executed for allegedly using seditious words like “defeat” in public. Magalheans wrote this of the decaying situation “There was no exchange among friends, no one visited anyone; even though they were relatives there could be no conversation between two men under pain of being skinned alive immediately. When doors were shut for the night, so were mouths. If a door was left open or a fire kindled in one's house, if one word were spoken, punishment was swift, not just for the culprit, but for those living in the ten neighboring houses on both sides of the guilty one's house. Parents accused children and children their parents, and those who did this were highly praised by the Tyrant. If a large group of people were talking together even though there were the mandarins living in the royal palace, spies would immediately arrive on the scene, if they weren't already there, and ask what was being discussed. This caused such horror and fear that these men no longer resembled living men but mute statues and portraits of death itself.”.   People were killed indiscriminately if seen outside their homes after dark. Women were being raped enmasse. If you had a lock on any of your doors, you died, if a Dr failed to cure any of Zhang's official, they died, if you failed to show travel papers you died, you get the picture. At one point someone lit a literary temple on fire and Zhang took this as an omen that he must kill all scholars in Chengdu…..cause of course. When Sun Kewang heard the order to kill all scholars he said “The intellectuals are scattered all over. How can we kill them all?”. Well here is a story of how Zhang figured out how to solve that problem.    During 1 incident it is said he organized an imperial examination at the Qingyang Daoist Temple under the guise he was recruiting scholars for his regime's new administration, only to have the an estimated 5 to 23 thousand candidates butchered. Apparently they entered through the east gate of the temple and were “processed” out of the west gate. Bodies were tossed into the nearby river and their exam writings were “piled up like a mountain in front of the temple”. Zhang followed this up by inviting Buddhist monks for ordination ceremonies at temples only to kill them. People were tied to horses to be torn apart at the blast of a cannon. Zhang men went into the countryside to purge and at Qiongzhou alone, Liu Wenxiu reportedly killed 10,000 refugees and 1000 Buddhist and Daoist monks. It was said that for 50 miles around Qiongzhou “the plains were awash with flesh and blood”. Another incident alleged Zhang killed 4975 out of his 5000 corut eunuchs because 1 of them used his given name at a banquet, that one I have a hard time believing, but these are the stories I read.   On january 8th of 1646 Zhang held a military conference and said that the massacre of the entire populace of Chengdu would commence the very next day “not a single person will be spared”. Accounts say the river of Chengdu was crimson red with blood and rose several feet up on the city walls. It got so bad, Zhang had to order his men to go in boats downriver from Chengdu to unclog it and the smell of decaying flesh filled the air for miles, imagine doing that job. Sun Kewang wrote of the massacres “This truncates our wishes. After all weren't our years of rebellion on behalf of the peasants? Now we're roaming back east and for what? If our fatherly king acts like this, then he's really not pondering things deeply. Our fatherly king should regard the peasants of Sichuan like his head, like the trunk of looting heaven's storehouse his body. Now if you've already cut off your hands and feet, how can the head survive? What kind of state has a king without subjects? Is this not only a king in name?”. After a couple of days of massacre, Zhang summoned all his court ministers, separating the Sichuanese from the rest and executed the Sichuanese ones. Chengdu was virtually empty by the end of the year and Zhang's armies fanned out into the countryside. All the while he proclaimed his forces were preparing to face against the Qing. Some have made comparisons to this moment to that of Hitler pursuing the holocaust while neglecting his military aims during the last years of WW2. Zhang was fixated on the extermination of the people of Sichuan over all other goals it seems. Some accounts go as far as to claim Zhang had fetuses ripped out of the womb and children rounded up for systematic executions. Mountains of hands and feet piled up outside Zhang's palace in Chengdu “like Mount Fenghuang”. Zhang is said to have been seen stalking his palace at night with his sword trying to kill ghosts. Zhang told advisors he was seeing disembodied hands stealing food from his plates, headless females playing instruments in rooms and all the while he heard the cries of the dead. Zhang began to believe Chengdu itself was haunted and had all his highest ranking officials flogged to break the curse.    Zhang had begun a new military program where his soldiers could be promoted based on how many limbs they brought to him. Feet, hands, heads, ears and noses were stacked in separate piles and Zhang would supposedly gather the severed heads together for banquets. Promotions and ranks for his soldiers were based on the number submitted. 200 pairs of hands and feet got a rank of squad commander, 1700 pairs could get you promoted from vice commander to commander. If 1 soldier killed hundreds in a single day, he could be promoted to supreme commander. According to Shun records for 4 months in 1646 alone, Sun Kewang, Liu Wenxiu, Ai Nengqi and Li Dingguo each killed around 10 million people, an exaggeration of course. Records state they razed up to 8 towns a day seeking grisly trophies. Anyone above the age of 3 was said to be subject to attack. Zhang would even kill disloyal soldiers, and it is said “that the trail of corpses extended for seventy li north and south of Chengdu and the “lands ran red with blood and bones piled up like mountains.”.    Jesuits in Sichuan claim that Zhang left the city in the summer of 1646 for a military campaign and spent 40 days on a killing spree in the countryside before returning to Chengdu and killing 25 out of 30 of his high officials, including his minister of war. Civilians were rounded up and killed in the central park in Chengdu. Children were cut to pieces, and officials were flogged without reason. Zhang then ordered his soldiers to kill their own wives and daughters so they would be less encumbered by them in the upcoming campaign. To set an example he killed 23 of his 300 serving maids and concubines. People were killed for drinking tea, soldiers were flayed for trying to flee, mandarins were killed for sleeping at a banquet, and more servants were killed for smoking tobacco. Hoarding a single tael meant decapitation, hoarding ten meant death by flaying. Some were even cut open and their skin stretched to resemble bird's wings.    The modern Chinese scholar Zheng Guanglu estimates that from 1.8 to 2 million people died in Sichuan between 1644 to 1645 out of a total population of around 3 to 3.6 million. He concluded that 1 million died as a result of direct military operation and the rest died from starvation, disease, marauding wildlife eeeek, and other factors. 40-50% of the Sichuanese population had been killed in just a few short years. Sichuan would see up to 75% of its population decline from death and people fleeing. It was a combination of the massacres and also drought and famine that led to the flight. This by the way occurred before and after Zhang, many Chinese scholars argue it may have been the Qing armies who performed many of the atrocities that may have been attributed to Zhang. For example in Chengdu a stele (stone carving) known as the Seven kill stele holds the inscription “Heaven brings forth innumerable things to nurture man. Man has nothing good with which to recompense Heaven. Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill.” In the summer of 1646, Zhang was receiving word of the military situation from Li Dingguo and Sun Kewang that both the Ming loyalists and the Qing were making significant inroads. Zhang had spent too much time and effort on his insane butchering of the people and not enough against the Ming loyalists. The Ming loyalists controlled south and east Sichuan now, the most fertile and productive areas. They drained Zhang's resources and drew the attention of the Qing towards Sichuan. They also controlled Chongqing which was the transport hub of the province especially by river.    Zhang gathered his officials and proclaimed “I've been in Sichuan for two years, but the Sichuanese haven't accepted my kindness, nor do they dread my awesomeness. The more I pacify, the more they rebel. As I consider what I can do, I've decided to abandon Sichuan and go to Shaanxi [lit. leave Shu for Qin] so I can take Chang'an [Xi'an] and use it as a springboard for recovering the central plain. This was my base of origins before, and my generals and soldiers are all folk of Qin. I can rely on Qin as the place to strengthen my troops and war horses. So my master plan is to return to Shaanxi and then follow the river south into Huguang and then come back into Sichuan.”. Sun Kewang argued they should not so easily abandon Sichuan and that they should begin extending relief to its people, in his words “replace killing with kindness”. With that perhaps they could restore a new government, to throw away all they had done in Sichuan would be such a waste. Li Dingguo concurred with his colleague and this forced Zhang to think a bit more on his decision. However in the end Zhang concluded he would follow through with what he proclaimed.  Thus Zhang prepared a sortie, spending months gathering all the treasure he could find or loot from all around stored on boats. He then ordered Chengdu burnt to the ground, which also allegedly took months. Zhang began to send out boats filled up with treasure and sent his 600,000 strong army forth by land and river southeast. Zhang made a rather bizarre strategic error and decided to attack Yang Zhang and seize his controlled territory, despite being hampered by his treasure and massive numbers of refugees.    Well Yang Zhan who had countless spies amongst Zhang's forces found out about Zhangs plan and ambushed him by land and river at Jiangkou near Pengshan. Yang managed to cut Zhangs fleet off from the shore and set fires to his boats. The battle almost immediately turned into a rout with most of Zhang's navy being sunk to the bottom of the river. It is said Yang Zhan would spend months salvaging tens of thousands of taels worth of treasure and supplies from the bottom of the river. Yang would use all of his new found funds to pay his own army and help refugees in southern Sichuan. Yang pursued Zhangs forces all the way to Hanzhou, but upon seeing the scene of rotting corpses everywhere he apparently turned back in horror, who can blame him. Zhang then attempted to take back Chongqing but was defeated by Zeng Ying yet again. It was around this time, Zhang's commanders began to lose the stomach for his campaigning and many deserted. This also prompted as you can imagine, Zhang to kill those who seemed to be faltering. He had 13,000 of his followers executed and apparently Liu Wenxiu captured 6000 soldiers trying to desert and flayed them alive.    Zhangs Da Xi army moved east, but he left many subordinate commanders to garrison key locals, but most were defeated by Ming loyalist armies. Zhang's army was so large and difficult to feed that he soon feared illness would spread amongst them and apparently he ordered his 4 great generals to kill anyone who looked sick. Allegedly this would see 4000 of his men butchered by their own commanders. Zhang reached Shunqing and besieged the city for 3 days before Zhang's cannons broke its walls and he burnt the city to the ground killing an estimated 100,000 people inside. When his army continued to march on, he sent forces into the mountains and forests to forage for food and any who came back without a required quota of food each day were executed.    Zhang then made his way to Mount Fenghuang located outside the city of Xichong. He attacked a fortified mountain stockade which was garrisoned by 2000 troops. Once he took the mountain he began to construct defensive works and built boats to try and head southeast on Haguang. But then his massive army ran out of food and he sent them fanning out to plunder, starting a wide array of massacres. It is at this point we get a lot of accounts of cannibalism amongst the troops. It is alleged Zhang had more visions telling him to kill more people and that at some points he was killing 10 to 20 thousand per day, beginning with Sichuanese, but soon people from Huguang and then Shaanxi. Supposedly he is said to have killed half of his own men in under 2 months, which has to be exaggerated. It is reported some of his advisers would often find Zhang talking to himself saying things like “Heaven has instructed me to kill. I dare not avoid killing.”.   Around the time Zhang and his army occupied Xizhou, Emperor Yongli took the throne at Zhaoqing and Emperor Shaowu at Guangzhou. Thus the Qing had plenty of work on their hands with the south east and soon appointed Prince Haoge to focus his attention on defeating Zhang Xianzhong.    Prince Haoge soon captured Xi'an and continued to march south into Sichuan. The Qing began proclaiming to all the areas the occupied that no one was to be killed and that they would protect them. As you can imagine many of the populace fled into the arms of the Qing immediately. One of Zhang's commanders Liu Jinzhong had an army of mostly Sichuanese who for understandable reasons did not want to butcher Sichuanese people and he decided to defect to the Qing, most likely fearing for his life. Liu Jinzhong fled north and met with Prince Haoge telling him the exact location of Zhang. Liu told him “to save the people from fire and water” and that he would guide Prince Haoge and his men to Zhang personally. Thus Prince Haoge and Liu's armies marched together into northern Sichuan finding roads strewn with bones. This prompted Prine Haoge to ask Liu if all of Sichuan was like this and Liu sighed and replied “For years Sichuan has endured the local bandits Yao and Huang and been trampled underfoot and since been subjected to the massacres of my old lord Xianzhong.”. Haoge replied “As soon as we encounter Huang, Yao, and the Zhang bandits, we must extinguish them immediately so as to alleviate the people's suffering.”. In early January of 1647, Prince Haoge was led by Liu to Mount Fenghuang and Prince Haoege sent his most elite bannermen as a vanguard to find Zhang Xianzhong.  Zhang got word of the incoming Qing force  and initially disbelieved his own scouts, in fact he killed them. He then exclaimed “The Awe of the Eighth Great King encompasses the realm and my name resounds over the Four Seas. Who comes here to die? I will personally go forth to greet them.”. Then Zhang emerged from his tent, grabbed a spear, mounted his horse and went to investigate with only 10 men. They reached the Taiyang Creek and saw enemy troops on the other side of the creek. As Zhang galloped into view, Liu allegedly pointed him out to he Qing force, prompting a Qing archer to shoot Zhang through his torso with a single arrow killing him. Prince Haoge recovered the body and decapitated it, cut him up and burned all the pieces on the spot. It is alleged when they cut Zhang's body open he had a heart that was as black as ink and that he had no liver. Stories told of strange thorns growing in the spot of Zhang Xianzhongs deaths and that a black tiger guarded his gravesite. OhhhhhHHhhHHH.    One of Zhang's men fled back to the army camp, relating what had happened. Upon hearing of Zhang's death, Zhang's surviving commanders immediately served under Sun Kewang who became the de-facto leader. They attacked Chongqing and managed to take this city this time and killed Zeng Ying. It seems Zeng Ying had finally made a tactical error and underestimated their force going out to fight them in the field and lost. Sun Kewang did not stay long in Chongqing, fearing the Qing pursuit and fled south taking Qijiang where Sun Kewang attempted to reorganize the Da Xi army and resurrect some form of government. They then marched on Zunyi and it is here, the former bandit army of Zhang Xianzhong had a change of heart. They began to join forces with the Ming loyalists, moving even further south to Guizhou. The Qing for their part had to abandon the pursuit rather quite owing to lack of supplies as Sichuan was a barren wasteland. They soon pulled up to Baoning where they butchered 10,000 of Zhang's former men.   Meanwhile the hardship of Sichuan would go on for many years. Famine was rampant in Sichuan as a result of Zhang's chaos. It was said “women of good families offered their bodies in exchange for food but could find no takers”. The land of Sichuan was desolate, people resorted to cannibalism and allegedly human flesh was sold by vendors and that bandits were making “lamb stew” out of their victims. There were tales of people looting coffins of the recently deceased for flesh. One source lamented “because of the long period of disorder, the cattle were all gone, so people replaced cattle”. Disease and pestilence sprang up everywhere as a result of malnutrition. Recorded illnesses such as “big head boils, horse eye disease, horse trot disease” were reported. Apparently in Sichuan the number of tigers increased 100 fold as did packs of wolves and wild dogs…so yeah on top of everything else imagine being chased by a tiger while your family is starving? I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me.

“To return to the root is to find peace. / To find peace is to fulfill one's destiny.” — Tao Te Ching This week we explore emotional capacity and psycho-spiritual transformation. By cultivating a disciplined practice and a honest relationship with your emotional capacity, you will become a conduit too assisting yourself in moving beyond the way we have all been conditioned and programed to relate with one and another. May all beings everywhere remember the true causes of happiness. LOVE.Weekly talks are an offering to assist you in diving deeper into a spiritual practice, your inner landscape and cultivate inner peace. Awareness Honesty Emotional Intelligence Radiate Love Trust Turn In. Hold the Line. Wetiko “The heart is the thousand – stringed instrument that can only be tuned with Love.”-Hafiz. Music Random Rab NEW SINGLE 'Don't Think. Just Feel.': Cadre Scott Dante Marino Suzanne Toro https://linktr.ee/omshetoro Production brought to you by OmToro Wellness + Media

In this episode we cover green tea, discussing whether the evidence points to any truth behind its purported health benefits. Highlights include studies on green tea and blood pressure, inflammation, cancer mortality, and more. Enjoy! References: Xu, R., Yang, K., Ding, J., & Chen, G. (2020). Effect of green tea supplementation on blood pressure: A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. Medicine, 99(6), e19047. https://doi.org/10.1097/MD.0000000000019047 Xu, R., Yang, K., Li, S., Dai, M., & Chen, G. (2020). Effect of green tea consumption on blood lipids: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. Nutrition journal, 19(1), 48. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12937-020-00557-5 Lin, Y., Shi, D., Su, B., Wei, J., Găman, M. A., Sedanur Macit, M., Borges do Nascimento, I. J., & Guimaraes, N. S. (2020). The effect of green tea supplementation on obesity: A systematic review and dose-response meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. Phytotherapy research : PTR, 34(10), 2459–2470. https://doi.org/10.1002/ptr.6697 Asbaghi, O., Fouladvand, F., Gonzalez, M. J., Aghamohammadi, V., Choghakhori, R., & Abbasnezhad, A. (2021). Effect of Green Tea on Anthropometric Indices and Body Composition in Patients with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Effekt von grünem Tee auf anthropometrische Indizes und die Körperzusammensetzung bei Patienten mit Diabetes mellitus Typ 2: eine systematische Übersicht und Metaanalyse. Complementary medicine research, 28(3), 244–251. https://doi.org/10.1159/000511665 Asbaghi, O., Fouladvand, F., Gonzalez, M. J., Ashtary-Larky, D., Choghakhori, R., & Abbasnezhad, A. (2021). Effect of green tea on glycemic control in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Diabetes & metabolic syndrome, 15(1), 23–31. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dsx.2020.11.004 Haghighatdoost, F., & Hariri, M. (2019). The effect of green tea on inflammatory mediators: A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized clinical trials. Phytotherapy research : PTR, 33(9), 2274–2287. https://doi.org/10.1002/ptr.6432 Filippini, T., Malavolti, M., Borrelli, F., Izzo, A. A., Fairweather-Tait, S. J., Horneber, M., & Vinceti, M. (2020). Green tea (Camellia sinensis) for the prevention of cancer. The Cochrane database of systematic reviews, 3(3), CD005004. https://doi.org/10.1002/14651858.CD005004.pub3 Yu, S., Zhu, L., Wang, K., Yan, Y., He, J., & Ren, Y. (2019). Green tea consumption and risk of breast cancer: A systematic review and updated meta-analysis of case-control studies. Medicine, 98(27), e16147. https://doi.org/10.1097/MD.0000000000016147 Zhao, H., Mei, K., Yang, L., Liu, X., & Xie, L. (2021). Green tea consumption and risk for esophageal cancer: A systematic review and dose-response meta-analysis. Nutrition (Burbank, Los Angeles County, Calif.), 87-88, 111197. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nut.2021.111197 Awortwe, C., Bruckmueller, H., & Cascorbi, I. (2019). Interaction of herbal products with prescribed medications: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Pharmacological research, 141, 397–408. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.phrs.2019.01.028 Supported by the Innovation Studio at the Ohio State University