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

Philosophy of Health

Haunting the Korean Diaspora

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

Episode 38 - Adoption Series: First Trip Home w/ G.O.A.'L.

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

Bonus Episode with Kristi Brian

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

Episode 37 - Adoption Series: Children of Empire with Kristi Brian

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

Episode 34 - Origins of Racism: Mystical History

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

Episode 33 - Origins of Racism: An Alternate History

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

Episode 32 - Origins of Racism: The Dark Side of the Enlightenment

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

Episode 30 - Psychic Yoga with Dean Radin

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

Episode 26 - The Writing Revolution

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

Episode 24 - From Autoimmunity to Healing with Ed Cohen

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

Episode 23 - Sorcery with Mehran Khaghani

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

Episode 22 - How Beliefs Make Us Sick with Gabor Maté

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

Episode 21 - Philosophy, Mysticism, and the Occult with Gary Lachman

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

Episode 20 - The Science of GMOs w/ Sheldon Krimsky

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

Episode 19 - Secret Lost Religions with Gerard Russell

I interview philosophers, historians, shamans, scientists, journalists and other interesting people about spirituality and healing. www.philoofhealth.org

hubhopper

Philosophy of Health

hubhopper