Stuff You Should Know - How Feng Shui Works

Episode Date: February 10, 2015

Feng Shui is an Asian concept that strives to unlock your chi by how your home or office is arranged. Or at least that's the simplified "Western" version. It's a little more complicated than that in reality. We'll unlock your chi by explaining how feng shui works in today's episode. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

attention bachelor nation. He's back. The host of some of America's most dramatic TV moments returns with the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison. During two decades in reality TV, Chris saw it all and now he's telling all. It's going to be difficult at times. It'll be funny. We'll push the envelope. We have a lot to talk about. Listen to the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. On the podcast, Hey Dude the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack

and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Jerry's over there. So it's the Stuff You Should Know. Our chi is flowing baby. Chi or ki? Yeah, there's a lot of different pronunciations that are going to happen today. Well supposedly it's just the different spellings, the same pronunciation, qi and ci are both chi. Yeah. Unless they're saying chi for ci in which case it's something totally different.

Yeah, that's that would be the Greek letter, correct. That means energy. Are we going to pronounce this feng shui? I usually say feng shui. But it could go either way. I mean it depends. If it's Mandarin that we're speaking, Chuck, we should say feng shui. I guess I usually say it in Mandarin. If we're speaking in Cantonese, we would say feng shui. So I guess we're going to go with the Mandarin. All right, great. Is that okay with you? Yeah, and I even looked up because I've always said daoism. Yeah, that's right, right? Well, a lot of people say there's been some confusion. So I actually looked it up and this author Derek Lin had a nice little thing. The first, the misconception he says

is that the first letter in tao, dao, is an approximation of a Chinese sound that does not have an exact English equivalent. Oh wow. Because apparently in England, I think they say taoism. Okay. But he says that's actually not true. There is an equivalent and it is a d. And he said the misconception was created by an author who had no understanding of Chinese and that was spread around. He did not name the author, but apparently he had high academic standing. Jonathan Franzin. And so he said it is daoism if you're speaking in English and that this author has spread a mistruth that there is no real translation. I see. So daoism, chi, feng shui. Nice. There you go. That was the glossary of this episode. Pretty much. So let's talk about chi

first, man. Okay. Because feng shui is the practice of allowing chi to flow in the best possible way. And chi is the Chinese concept of the energy that pervades and permeates the universe. That's right. Including us. And it is linked to daoism and goes all the way back to 6th century BC. And like you said, it's supposedly something that can't even be described in language. Right. So I even try. But you did a pretty good job, I think. Thanks. For someone who supposedly is not supposed to be able to do that. The thing is, well, I'm obviously an incredible person. The thing is this chi, this energy can be blocked. It can fall out of balance. It's not self-correcting necessarily. Sometimes it needs help. That's right. And so when we inhabit an area,

build a home, a community, a palace, what have you, we need to build it in such a way that it's not going to block this chi, or it's not going to throw things out of balance. Because we will be impacted negatively if that happens. That's right. Because in the east there is a long-held belief that the space we inhabit is not just the space we live in, but we are actually connected to that spiritually and with our energy. And that the way you lay out your home and the way you build, like even where you place your home on your property and the way you align it with the surrounding nature. That's actually a very important part of it. That is feng shui, which is translated literally as wind and water. Right. Pretty neat. A lot of people in the west have

jumped on this train since the 1980s. It's a very popular thing to do. Often misguided attempts, as far as traditional feng shui. Well, it's like a completely different school. Yeah, basically. No, entirely. But a lot of people in the west also will poo poo this. And a lot of people in the east poo poo it now. Apparently only about a third of people in modern China even believe it is a thing. Well, Chairman Mao rooted it out during the Cultural Revolution. Yeah. I mean, it is not illegal to practice it. It is illegal, though, to start a business in China, modern China, where you say that you're doing feng shui. Gotcha. But they can't really like, well, I guess they could have all the practice. They outlaw lots of stuff. Yeah,

from what I've been told. But apparently the younger generation, it's even less than a third. It's just kind of going the way of the dodo. Gotcha. But hey, we picked up on it in California and ran with it. Yeah, especially in the 80s. Yeah, sure. Man, that was a super 80s thing. But a lot of people poo poo it, though, as they do a lot of things in the east and say, and this is just a bunch of superstitious gobbity gook. There is no such thing as an energy flowing through your house or your body that needs to be aligned. So we're not here to, we're just going to explain it to you. Exactly. So just save your emails, people. So what's interesting about feng shui initially is that not just China, but also India, lay claim to its origins, actually. That's

right. And remember, I think you did a pretty good job defining it, but it bears saying again, feng shui is this practice of arranging your abode, your life, your workspace in a way that allows Qi to flow freely. That's right. Okay. And there's evidence, I think back 3,000 years ago, no, sorry, 5,500 years ago. So about 3,500 BCE, there is evidence of what the Indians call vastu shastra, which is basically a translation of building science, which is that you should follow certain practices, use certain geometries to allow energy to flow so that you can prosper and not be harmed negatively. Yeah. And this has been seen many times. I read a great article in, I think it was History Today

by a guy named Anthony Avini called Bringing the Sky Down to Earth, with basically the idea that many, many cities through history have been built with this concept in mind that the gods, bringing the gods down to your city, like, you know, he's a Stonehenge, Beijing, Washington, D.C., and this place in Mexico that I will pronounce as Teotihuacan. I don't know if that's right. I think it is. It's like in Mayan, ancient Mayan city. And they all have the same philosophy in mind, which is apparently if you go to Beijing, it's very famous for its layout, as is D.C. You can stand in Tiananmen Square and you can draw a straight line up the bell and drum towers straight through to the monument to the people's heroes,

to the mausoleum of Mao Zedong on a perfect north-south axis, like everything is planned out. And this is, I'm not saying Washington, D.C. was necessarily Feng Shui, Feng Shui, and I know that you shouldn't use that as a verb, but I'm going to. Yeah, it works. But it's the idea like Stonehenge that the cities are aligned cosmically somehow with the stars in mind. And it can be as simple as the entrance to the dwelling or the city or the burial mound or temple or Stonehenge, whatever, is aligned so that the sun comes right up through it on the winter solstice or something. That is the basis of Feng Shui, and it does show up in other cultures across time. Yeah. One of the famous cities that was laid out according to this Indian version of it,

Vastu Shastra, is Angkor Wat in Cambodia, very famous temple. Those were built in I think the 13th century CE, so it's not evidence that the Indians were first, but there is evidence elsewhere that there were Indian cities and buildings planned out according to these. And the idea was that a couple of thousand years later, some Indian monks, Hindu monks, made their way into maybe Tibet or Mongolia or China and started spreading the Vastu Shastra. And that's when China got their hands on it and turned it into what we now recognize as Feng Shui. That's one interpretation of the origin of the whole thing. Yeah. And in either way, what both of them are doing is looking and taking into account the five elements, earth, water, fire, air, and space, and how they affect

your pad or your city, like you said, or community or temple. And some people might say, well, this is, you know, you might want to call it Feng Shui, but I'm just building a house, and I think we've got this lovely mountain view, and I like the sunrise to come up through my kitchen, because I like a bright kitchen. So that's how I'm going to build my house. People that practice Feng Shui would say, brother, that's Feng Shui. They'd say TS, that's Feng Shui. They'd say, no, it's just how I like to build my house. They'd say, no, that's Feng Shui. Yeah. And then they fight. That's right. They leg wrestle for domination. So that, though, would be more Western Feng Shui, and we'll get into it. But basically, the distinction between Western Feng Shui, 80s Feng

Shui, and classic Feng Shui is the amount of scientific formulae put into it, the amount of calculations at least that are put into it. The amount of thought. It's like Western Feng Shui is Feng Shui light, and not even L-I-G-H-T, like L-I-T-E, like that kind of 80s light. Yeah. Well, we might as well talk about the schools then. It's a great segue. Before we do though, sorry to interrupt the segue because it was pretty good. Yeah. We should say that most historians now believe that it was actually China that came up with Feng Shui first. And not India. Yeah. The evidence is just earlier for the idea that it originated with burials in China. Gotcha. Like you bury people a certain way, and you built the burial

grounds in a certain way according to Feng Shui. So what you're saying is they leg wrestled. They won the leg wrestle. Very good. So the different schools, there are a lot of variations, but the three main categories are the form school, which was from southern China, and that is heavily based on the environment like we were talking about. Classic Feng Shui, it's the oldest form, and that's when you're talking about, and back then it was practical because what they were trying to do was build a safe place for your house to be. Right. So maybe you set your house up with a wind block at the mountains with that landscape that slopes, or the water flowing down to you is super important. Right. So you may want to open your house up to that. Yeah. But it was practical

though. Right. Exactly. And another practical way of figuring out where to put your houses found in the compass school. That one, just forget about it with me. That's the one I understand the most. Really? This one makes the most sense to me. Yeah. Because it's math and you're like weird like that. Well, a little, maybe a little bit. But basically what this says is it's kind of like the form school where you're looking for different features of the landscape to most benefit where to build your house. Sure. But this is using that same kind of thought process but aligning it with magnetism. And the stars too, right? Right. Well, you're using the stars to determine magnetism, like which way is north and south and that kind of thing. Sure. But it does

combine some math, Chinese astrology, and then feng shui together. Yeah. And you get what's called the compass school, which is also very frequently known as traditional feng shui. And it includes a lot of detailed research to figure out exactly what you're supposed to do, where your house is supposed to be facing. If it is facing a certain way, what you can do to kind of correct it. Yeah. There's just a ton of thought and calculation put into what we'll learn later is called the Bagua map. Yeah. So that's mostly the traditional school is the compass school. And it's based on the idea that magnetism dictates which way your whole jam should be facing and oriented. Okay. And I think to the north is the right way. That's the right way? Yeah. Where as far as your

entryway? Yes. Okay. And then we have what the westerners have latched onto the black hat sect. Or it does or the black sect esoteric Buddhism feng shui, which was founded by Professor Thomas Lin Yun, who was known and believed to be an enlightened man. And he basically came to the West and founded this sect of feng shui. And it blew up. And Westerners love this one because it's the one that most easily translates to an HGTV show. Right. Yeah. You know, like put this plant there, put a fountain there, put your door here and paint it this color. Right. And you're going to be wealthy and successful. Yeah. Don't put this there. Don't put that there. It's a lot of object placement. So it's easy for us dummies over here to understand. It's basically interior

design. Pretty much. So we'll talk a little more about the distinction and then what some of the commonalities they have are right after this. I'm Mangesh Atikular. And to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life in India. It's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention because maybe there is magic in the stars if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop.

But just when I thought I had a handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world can crash down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. On the podcast, HeyDude the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show HeyDude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use HeyDude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack

and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back

in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to HeyDude, the 90s, called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So Chuck, the black hat school, it's hilarious to me. Yeah. Like why would you call it that? I don't know. I'm sure there was a great reason. I couldn't find it anywhere. What I found instead is that most people call it Western feng shui. Sure. And a lot of feng shui practitioners, poo poo Western, they're like this. This is some like perversion of an interpretation of feng shui. Yeah, it's Americanized. And it's taught by people who don't even necessarily aren't feng shui masters even. They'll just if they can set up a website and say, pay me $1,000,

I'll come and tell you where to put your plants. Exactly. But Thomas Lin Yun and his followers say, no, we hit the basics. Like, yeah, definitely traditional feng shui is very detailed, very mathematically oriented. But we're still getting the same point across and coming to the same conclusions in just an easier corner cutting way. That's right. Why go to all the trouble if you can get the same results? What's more Western than that? Yeah, good point. So should we talk about the five elements a little bit, I guess? Yes. Like I said, there is earth, fire, metal, water, and wood. And these are the phases through which the energy or the chi or the chi moves. And I think this article said it very well. It's like a sort of a game of rock, paper,

scissors. If you look at a creative or productive way in which these elements can interact, you have wood producing fire, fire produces earth, as an ash, earth produces metal, metal produces water, water produces wood. Metal producing water, don't get that one. All the rest of them, like, yeah, made sense. My refrigerator is metal and it has a water dispenser in the door. There you have it. Is that it? Yeah. And then you have the destructive. This is when it's bad chi. And if you look at the little illustration on how stuff works, on the first one you have this great circle of arrows. And it's just lovely. And this other one has a a nasty bunch of arrows just laying all over one another. And it's just a big mess.

Yeah, like wood burdens earth. Yeah. Nobody wants that. Water douses fire. That's a clear one. Sure. Metal chops wood. Yes, it does. Yeah, it does. So the interaction between these elements in your house or the way you arrange your house will determine whether these phases of chi are destructive or productive in their interactions together. Sure. And if you have too much of one thing, you need to balance it out with something else, productively. Exactly. The other two for destructive are fire melts metal and earth blocks water like a dam. You don't want a dam. You want that water flowing, baby. Right. You know, you forgot Hulk smash. Was that the other one? Yeah. The final one. And then the yin yang, we can't go any further without mentioning that. No,

it's basically a really clever conception of chi. Yeah. The opposite states of chi light and dark night and day, young and old man woman. Sure. And there's actually a way that it's supposed to be properly represented. The white is supposed to be on top because the white represents in part heat. And the idea is that heat rises. But they're they're both constantly in motion. But if you ever see a yin and yang symbol displayed, though, the lighter one should be on top. That's right. And not only heat for the white, but masculinity and spirit and hardness and activity. And that's yang, by the way. Yeah. Oh, yeah, we didn't point that out. And it's not yin yang, by the way. No, we I used to say it that way. I think everybody did it. Sure. At some point. Yeah.

I quit in my early 40s. It's yin and yang. Yes. The yin is femininity, femininity, matter, nighttime, coldness, softness, passivity. And as long as you want those things balanced, and the way they just fit together in that little circle, man, it's just like it's pleasing to the eye. And I think that's kind of says it all, you know, right? It just looks nice. It's not jagged. It's like, it's like two people just cuddling up. Sure. You know, in the form of a tattoo, you wish you hadn't gotten. That's right. With some maybe Chinese characters that you don't know what they mean any longer. They're, well, I guess we're at the Bagua, right? Yeah. So this made sense to me. Right. Remember, what we're dealing with

here is Chi. Chi flows through the five elements. Yep. And you deal with the five elements in your house to figure out where in your house you need a little more of one element than another. You have to construct a Bagua map. Yeah, like this is where the rubber meets the road. We've been talking in esoteric terms. But if you're like great dudes, what does this mean for my freaking living room? Right. This is what it means for your freaking living room. Yeah. And the Bagua map is based on boxes, squares. They're the basic units of feng shui. Yeah, nine squares, three by three. Right. And you take those squares and somehow this is really clever too. But even though there's nine squares, you can take them and turn them into a hexagon.

If you take the center square and convert that into, well, a center and then the eight boxes around it become eight sides of a hexagon. If you shave off a little here or there. Yes. And all of a sudden what you have are is a Bagua. Yeah. And they can represent color as well as these elements as well as for the actual map that you're going to use for laying out your home. Aspects of your life like, you know, career and wealth and prosperity and love and marriage and things like that. Right. So there's multiple meanings and it also is if you've seen the TV show Lost, they totally ripped it off with the Dharma collective symbol. It is just that is nothing more than the Bagua grid with the yin yang in the center.

Right. And the yin and yang is frequently represented in the center. Yeah. Is yellow, correct? Yep. Yellow is the center of the Bagua map, which is actually the center of this nine squared box called the lo shu square. Yeah. And in each of the different boxes, there is a static representation. So this is, this is what you need to know about the Bagua map. It is a hexagon that the placement is always the same. What you do is you take your Bagua map and you orient it a certain way over your house, over your, your actual house or the room in your house or something like that. Yeah. And that's what changes. So if you look at the Bagua square, the yellow is always center and then black, which represents water and career

is always at the bottom. Okay. Yeah. AKA supposed to be the entrance to that room or your home. Okay. Exactly. Yeah. So yeah, it's not necessarily always at the bottom. It's always at the entrance. Well, you place the bottom at the entrance. So if I were to walk into my house, you can either visualize it or you can literally draw this square. You want the bottom, which is the bottom center is career or water. Bottom right is helpful people and travel. Bottom left is knowledge and self cultivation. You just want to find out where your front door is. In my case, mine is pretty much in the center of my home, which would be career, but it could fall if your door is on your left, it would fall under knowledge and self cultivation.

And so it's not like you move the map over to help yourself out like where your door is, is where it is. You can move it if you want. Yeah, you could move your door. But basically the map is just supposed to be static. Okay. So and it's static, like you said, it's oriented with the black on the entrance, right? No matter where the entrance is, the black is there. Yes. So when you orient your black box onto your entrance, what you're doing then is using your Bagua map to show you how you need to change your house in order to maximize the flow of chi through it. Yeah, it's basically, and by the way, you shouldn't supposedly use any additions built. You should do those separately.

Okay. So if you, if your living room has a big new addition to the left, you like you shouldn't even include that. So basically what you're doing is you're dividing your space up into zones according to this grid. And so if you were to look at my house, according to the low shoe square, my TV would be in the wealth and prosperity corner, which is probably not good. You're going to make money on TV. Well, that didn't exactly happen. My couch is the knowledge and self-cultivation. I'm not sure what that means. And then my sunroom would be helpful people and travel. That's what that means either. And in the center is my coffee table. If I wanted to have good chi, I'd have

a yellow rug there. Yeah. But I don't. But you should. We have some nice tile squares of varying colors. Yes. So you can do that, Chuck, for every room of your house and you're supposed to. Yes. Like what you just said, well, now I know where I should put a yellow rug in my house. Like you would want to put that in the center of where the Bagua map falls over that room. That's right. Right? You might also, so for example, if you just kind of had a dead space where the red box is, which is for fame and reputation, and you want to foster that kind of thing. Oh man, there's a dead space there. You would put something like awards there, animal related items, maybe a stuffed jack-o-pad or something would be a good spot

for that or a good thing for that spot. Yeah. And so you basically what you're doing is using the Bagua map to say you're just cross referencing spots of your house. And when you add these things and basically do interior decorating, you can maximize the flow of chi. Yeah. If you look at my master bedroom and bathroom, I have a bad feng shui because right in that top left corner, wealth and prosperity is my toilet. Oh yeah. So supposedly you're flushing it all down the toilet. Yeah. They say you should not put your bathroom or your toilet specifically in your wealth grid right square. So what we've just described is what a western practitioner would do. Yeah. Because again, western feng shui has a lot to do with interior decorating. And so too does,

to an extent, traditional feng shui. But a traditional feng shui practitioner, if they came to your house and they use the Bagua map over your house, they wouldn't just align it to an entrance. Right. They would align it to a magnetic direction. I'm pretty sure it's north. Okay. I think you're right. But the black square in the Bagua map would be oriented in that direction. So it wouldn't necessarily be facing your entrance. Right. And so it reveals this really big distinction between western feng shui and traditional feng shui. Whereas with western feng shui, it's like, oh, we'll just line it up to the entrance and maybe you got a problem with your toilet flushing your fame away in your bathroom or your money away in your bathroom.

And with traditional feng shui, there's no getting around it. Once it lays over your house, according to magnetic north, it gives you a really clear picture of what you're going to have to do. And you may have to tear down your house and start over and rebuild facing the right way. It could reveal a lot of real problems with your house. And you may have to fill in more areas than others. Whereas if you're just orienting each room based on its entrance, like in western feng shui, you're not going to find quite as many problems in a lot more easy solutions. That makes sense. Also with the traditional feng shui consultant who is basically telling you what you need to do with your house, they're going to do research on your house itself, too. They're

going to find out when it was built, when the roof was enclosed. That's a big one, too. Enclosed. And then they're going to also create this Bagua map in a chart based on Chinese astrology as well, because time factors in a lot with traditional feng shui way more than western. Again, western is very quick to the point and just put some stuff here. Another example that people criticize western feng shui in kind of point like it's just basically interior design is plaid is considered a form of the wood element. So if you have too much plaid, like a plaid couch in a room, you might need to counter that with a little fountain or something like that. But where did the idea that plaid was wood come from? That's definitely not traditional Chinese. I don't think so. I don't

think they have plaid in China, do they? I don't think so. But there is another thing, too. Another criticism of western feng shui is that very frequently feng shui consultants in the west will be like, oh, you just need to add a foo dog, you know, like that kind of lion looking dog, or you need to add some, you've seen a million times. Is it like a little statue or something? Yeah. Okay. Or you need to add like some Chinese pottery or a dragon mural or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Traditional feng shui practitioners are like, yeah, art counts, but it doesn't have to be Chinese art. Right. So if you're consulting the selling of Chinese art, and from your brother who's a Chinese artist. Right. This is essential. Yeah. That's not, that's not correct. It's a red

flag. Yeah. All right. Well, we have some more tips from feng shui experts that we'll get to right after this. All right. So we're talking the Bagua grid. Like we said, it's all represented with the different colors. Those colors also correspond to numbers. Yeah. And they also correspond to aspects of your life or Chi. Sounds confusing. It kind of is. Yeah. Let's just say it. But here are some things that feng shui practitioners say will help unlock that Chi. Black, which is your career. They say a fountain or a mirror might be a good thing to have there. Yeah. Blue, which is skills and wisdom. Maybe that's where you put your computer workstation or your library. Okay. Yeah. Books. Yeah, books. Green, your family. Maybe that's

where you want to put your family photos. And you want to arrange them nicely too. Yeah. Supposedly, if you have your family photos out of order in your green section, you're going to have misbehaving kids. Yeah. Actually, that's the white zone. That's children. Oh, sorry. That's okay. But yeah, that's what they say. If you want good kids, keep those photos nice. I'm not sure about that one. Purple is your prosperity zone. And that's where you want to have, it says healthy plants. Don't put your dying plants there. Or sailing ships. I guess that's just sailing towards prosperity. I guess. Yes. Maybe. Don't put a painting of a sinking ship. No, that is Western Feng Shui there.

Yeah, sure. That whole kind of psychology would be detrimental to the health of the area. Yeah. Why would you want that anyway though? Like who paints a sinking ship? Yeah. A depressed sea captain probably. I guess. Would be my guess. Red is a famian reputation. That's where you want to put your various awards. So yeah, we got a couple of those. And your jackalope head. Jackalope. Yeah. Animal related things. You're right. We should lay out our next studio according to Feng Shui. Did we totally should. You know what I just noticed is red supposedly is what you want to put on the back of your chair to block bad chi. Yeah. And we've got a huge red foam thing

in between us and Jerry. Oh, wow. So we got to get rid of that. Oh, I was going to say that explains why I've been able to put up with her chi for so long. No, Jerry, she is the good flow our way. So we need to open that up. Okay. In our new place. Pink, love and relationships. That's where you want to put maybe photos of your family or paired items. Again, with the family photos. Yeah, I don't have that many family photos. Paired items. That's cute. That makes sense. Sure. Like bookends, salt and pepper shakers. Yeah. Boxing gloves. That's where you hang your boxing gloves. Yeah.

Remember Joe Garden from the onion with those giant boxing gloves he had? Yeah. Those were so much fun. Yeah. He had a thing where he just wanted to get as many people opposed with those as possible. Yeah. And take a swing at him. White. What we already mentioned was children or creativity. That's where you might want to put some art or pictures of your little brats. Gray travel or helpful people. Put your souvenirs from Disneyland there. And not just Disneyland, any trip you've taken. Sure. The Disney Company wants you to just put Disney souvenirs there. And yellow, finally, health pottery and stone objects will help unlock your chi there. Yeah. But speaking of Disney, Hong Kong Disneyland, they apparently had a Feng Shui expert

consulted and they made some changes because of that consultation. Yeah. Probably that was probably a nice paying gig. Yeah. That consultant was like, catching. Yeah. Or they were saying, eating. Anyway, they opened on September 12th because they were told that was a lucky day, according to the astrological chart their consultant drew up. Yep. They changed the entrance by 12 degrees. Obviously, it was a traditional Feng Shui practitioner. Sure. And added some boulders. And apparently, one of the restaurants has a projection of a fire, which to me, that wouldn't count. But maybe it does. That's kind of lame. That seems pretty Western to me because one of the big bases of Western Feng Shui is psychology. If traditional

Feng Shui is based on magnetism and astrology, Western Feng Shui is based on psychology. And it is as simple as you don't put a painting of a sinking ship in the office of a business that's struggling to stay afloat. Yeah. Because the mind makes those kind of associations and it messes up your chi. That's right. And a lot of this stuff as well, like we said, I think like you just mentioned maybe like it just seems like common sense, like a horseshoe shaped building that opens up into a courtyard, it's going to feel good. It's pleasing. Feng Shui practitioners say that's energy or hey, don't build a house on a dead end street because it blocks the chi. I had a friend who lived at a dead end street and it just felt like every time I went over there, I felt closed

in and sort of weird. Did he end up killing his whole family? No, he did not. He did move though. They were saved. They were. Thanks to him moving. Your office, a lot of times these days, people will, their new offices, they will take this into account. Some very famous people like Richard Branson and Donald Trump have enlisted the help of Feng Shui experts to design their offices because they want that chi and ergo money flowing. Yeah, you don't have to be a Richard Branson or Donald Trump to arrange your office, whether it's a cubicle or what have you, so that you can maximize the flow of chi if you want to do a little messing around. Supposedly the one, one, one thing that you want to ensure as much as possible is that you're

facing the entrance to your office. Yes. That way the chi flows correctly toward you, not toward your back. Yeah, you don't want the chi at your back. No, remember the Southern China, the Southern China Feng Shui? Yeah. Placement, the form school. Yeah. Like you, you put your, the entrance of your house is facing away from a hill, so the back of your house backs up to a hill. Yeah. So the chi flows correctly. Right. Same thing. You want the entrance to your office to be flowing toward you facing it. If you, if you can't do that, then you just put up a mirror so you can reflect the chi toward you. Yeah, that makes sense. Like you said, you want to put something red on the back of your chair to block the chi from your back?

Yeah, actually, now that I think about it, this isn't so bad in here because the chi, the red is to our side. It's coming in that door and bouncing off of that right on. So Jerry's really the one who's getting the short end of the chi stick here. Short end of the chi stick. What else can you do? You can put a fountain or a plant, obviously water and wood. Yeah. And they said even a picture of a waterfall in your cubicle could help your chi, your workplace chi. Again, there's a lot of disagreement about what works and what doesn't with traditional Feng Shui. It's like, no, you need to know where magnetic north is and you need to orient your building according to that. And whatever you do inside is almost irrelevant. Yeah, get rid of

those fluorescent lights though. They all agree on that. Sure. You don't have to know anything about chi to know that fluorescent lights are terrible for you. Agreed. Do you have anything else? No. This is a pretty good overview, I think. Right? Sure. You feel good about it? I feel better than I expected. How's your chi? It's fine. Yeah. Yeah. All right. It's not out of balance. It's not jumping for joy. It's just it is today. Gotcha. If you want to know more about chi or Feng Shui or any stuff like that, you can type those words in the search bar how stuff works. And since I said that, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this GED success story. Oh, that's good. Hey guys, got my GED way back in 1986, so I could attend college.

Back then, the University of Illinois at Chicago, Co. Flames, allowed you in as a freshman if you graduated high school and had a pulse. They culled the student body after the first year though. You didn't perform, you're out. I did reasonably well there and ultimately ended up at the University of Cambridge in England. Got my PhD in archaeology there and worked in the field for a few years. Nice. I am now a stay-at-home dad of three boys, five, three and one, living in Karlsruhe, Germany. One of the things I love most about the American education system is that a guy who dropped out of high school at 17 still had the opportunity to attend college and ultimately end up with a PhD from one of the greatest universities in the world. Thanks for another

great episode, guys. Been listening since 2008 and actually remember the before Chuck days. Whoa. And that is from Chris. So way to go, Chris. Way to go, Chris. That is pretty awesome story. Yeah. GED, archaeologist, stay-at-home dad, five, three and one. Sounds like he's doing it right. Nice job, Chris. If you want to let us know about your personal success story, we love hearing about those. You can tweet to us at SYSK Podcast. You can join us on facebook.com slash stuff you should know. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast.howstuffworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com.

But we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it. And now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Attention, Bachelor Nation. He's back. The host of some of America's most dramatic TV moments returns with the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison. During two decades in reality TV, Chris saw it all. And now he's telling all. It's going to be difficult at times. It'll be funny. We'll push the envelope. We have a lot to talk about. Listen to the most dramatic podcast

ever with Chris Harrison on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.