Stuff You Should Know - How Karma Works

Episode Date: July 21, 2011

While it's kind of perverted in the West, the concept of karma is a central tenet of several Eastern religions. Karma isn't just good or bad -- it's a natural law. Join Josh and Chuck to learn more about karma in this religiously respectful episode. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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grasp on France. They don't know her name, but they want this woman dead. They send a devious double agent to hunt down the limping lady, but Virginia Hall was tougher than they expected. Listen to Good Assassins on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, and wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me as always is Charles W. Chuck Bryant and that makes this stuff you should know, right? Yes. Yeah. Podcast. Have you noticed this

carbonated beverage that I'm drinking? It's just like carbonated water. Yeah. The one that rhymes with the boy. Yeah. I've noticed that I've gotten probably 90% burp your in podcast since I started drinking it. Yeah, that stuff is, you know, it's busy. I'm a fan. You can taste the CO2. Remember we talked about in the taste episode? Oh, I don't drink the plain one that much here at work. What do you drink? Well, I drink the green tea here at work iced, but I drink the lime flavored at home. So you pay for that yourself? Yeah. Wow. Well, you know, Discovery Channel pays for it. What? Well, it's, you know, who pays my bills? Oh, gotcha. Yeah, but that's an exchange for work. Yeah, they don't send me like a stipend for the boy lime soda.

They just send you the lime soda. Are we done with that one? Yes. It seems like we should be. Yes. Chuck. Josh. I'm sure you've heard the word karma bandied about a lot lately. Oh, man. It's all over. You could probably find a pretty recent spike in use on the internet's in association with a person's name that would be Casey Anthony. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Casey Anthony, the alleged killer of her daughter, Kaylee, who was let off, who was found not guilty, acquitted, I guess you'd say. Yeah, she's found guilty of something else today, right? She was found guilty of four counts of lying to the police. Yeah, I didn't follow this case that closely actually. I didn't either, but I mean, like people were crazy over it. Oh, yeah. I saw. And I get the impression that most people don't

think that that justice was done necessarily. That's the impression I get. So people have gone to their go to recourse when you have no other recourse and they are giving it over to karma, to the law of the universe. Yes, karma will get you. That karma's going to come around and get Casey Anthony one day. Yeah, I say that same thing. So it's a very new agey approach to karma. Like karma's going to get you for wronging me, right? Right. Or I did a good deed. So karma's going to smile on me. Right. And that you can't really approach karma from a true viewpoint, as far as the viewpoint of the people who created this concept are concerned without the positive and the negative. And for the most part, karma is actually very negative.

It's something you want to escape from. And if something bad happens to you, or you are born disfigured or whatever, it's because you did something in your past life. Westerners kind of find this distasteful. Right. So we've abandoned it largely and taken this new agey approach to karma. Let's talk about all forms of karma. It's like mech karma in the western world. That's exactly right. That's a really great way to pick it. You should coin that. I should. Chuck, before we get started, I want to say if you had a problem with acupuncture or acupuncture podcast or reincarnation podcast or voodoo podcast, any podcast where we showed respect to other people's beliefs that are weird or, you know, unlike yours and you had a real problem with it,

skip this one. We want you to continue to like us. We respect your opinions and we don't want to bristle you. So just go ahead and skip this one. Let's go to the next one. There's like 350 other ones. Just listen to those. Okay. Listen to the Muppets one. That's a good advice. No dissenters on that one. So let's give everybody a second. Okay. But you know, we're explaining how stuff works. That's what we do. Yeah. And it's not up to us to assault millennia of beliefs that billions of people across the world hold. So that's not what we're here for. We're here to explain it. Like you said. Right. So speaking from the eastern point of view, we'll get to the western view and how we got that later. How it got on my name is Earl. Exactly. Yeah. That's what the

basis of the show is, right? Oh, yeah. So yeah, because he gets hit by a car if you're winning a lottery. No, he just won the lottery and gets hit by a car and it gives him pause. I don't remember the car part. I just knew he won the lottery, but he was a bad guy and getting hit by the car made him think. I don't remember that. And I think there was like a song or something like karma like karma was on his mind and he gets hit by a car and like that was the sign from the universe. That must have been in the pilot episode. I don't know if I saw that. Yeah. So eastern, eastern philosophy. And we're talking four main organized religions that believe in karma. That would be Jainism, Sikhism, Jainism. Yeah. Jainism. Yeah. Sikhism, Hinduism and Buddhism. Right. Yes. The

word karma itself, we like to point out the roots sometimes of these words. It's Sanskrit. Karman, k-a-r-m-a-n, which means act, which kind of makes a lot of sense. Right. There's also a Pali word and Pali is the original language used for Buddhist texts, I believe. It's kama, k-a-m-m-a, and it means action. So virtually the same thing. Yeah. Well, it all makes sense because karma is all about the acts that you commit, good or bad. Right. Coming back to bichu or elevate you. Mostly to bichu. Yeah. So where should we start out here with, I guess, Hinduism? We should. We should also say the concept of karma is similar in a lot of ways, but among these four, there's a lot of really interesting differences. Yes. If you do remember our reincarnation podcast, you remember

us talking about samsara. And that is the eternal cycle of birth and rebirth that Hindus believe that humans go through. Right. And you're tied to that cycle through karma. Yes. Until you shed all your karma, as far as Hindus believe, you will never achieve moksha, which is basically salvation. You're freed from this cycle of rebirth. You don't have to waste any time on earth any longer. Right. But here's where I get confused. For some reason, this one confused me. Maybe because they're all so similar but slightly different. I thought in Hinduism, does the karma reset after each rebirth? No. It clings to the soul. Okay. So with Hindus, the soul survives transmutation. Okay. With Buddhists, karma is, we'll talk about it later, but yes, with Hindus,

it's your soul goes from body to body and the karma's attached to the soul. Okay. So moksha that you said is the goal of salvation. And that's the ultimate goal. And this is one of those things in Eastern religion, a lot of Westerners can't even comprehend. It can only be achieved after it is no longer desired. I can't, it's, it doesn't, like that blows my mind. I know. That's like son of one hand clapping. Well, and that's why they, I think, ponder that for their lifetime because it's hard to wrap your head around it. Right. And I wonder though, like the best way to not want that is to really enjoy your life on earth. But then moksha is a bad thing. So I don't think it necessarily happens like that. I think you're just kind of like whatever. So for Hindus,

good karma is you generally get good karma. If you perform the duties of your social status, your cast, and if you perform those well, then in your next life, you will be born into the next highest or maybe you'll skip a couple. Right. But you have to, like you said, fulfill your duties, right? Yeah. All right. You have to be a good priest or good laborer. Right. Or a good leader. Or whatever. And the one of the, I guess, aspects of Hindu karma is that it's a universal law that's independent of God or any of their gods. They have a pantheon, obviously. Right. But none of their gods can mess with karma. It's it's its own thing. Right. So a god can't be like, oh, I'm going to smack you down with some karma because you irked me so bad. They can't do it.

Right. And I don't know. I didn't, I didn't notice whether or not the gods are subject to karma. But I would assume probably that it's a natural law. Oh, yeah, sure. But they're subject to it as well. Yeah. Possibly. Possibly. Humans definitely are and gods can't mess with it. Right. Right. That makes sense. Yeah. You're explaining this to me. Buddhism. Well, hold on. There's three. Let me just say there's three types of karma. In Hindu. In Hindu. Okay. The stuff you do here in this life. Sure. Does not affect this life. Right. It's goes in store for the next life or another life down the down the way. Right. Okay. So you have three kinds of karma. You have prarabda, which is karma that you've

experienced during a path or your present life. But it's from a past life. Yes. Okay. But you're, it's, you're going through it right now. Gotcha. You're, you were born with a club foot. Okay. You did something in another life. Right. This is the idea behind karma. There's sanshita, which is the store of karma that you have coming in future lives, but it's not come to fruition, as they say. So you got a safe deposit box, chock full of whatever your needs are. Right. But you hope that through good actions in this life, you can cut down on that store necessarily. Right. And then the, the present karma that you're sowing that's going to come to fruition will be added to that store is called Agamon. Okay. That's like the stuff you're doing now.

And does that go into the storage when you die? I don't know. Okay. I shouldn't have asked that then. It's all right. Okay. But that's, that's Hindu karma. All right. Buddhist karma believes they believe that the soul accumulates karma and that it carries over to the next life. Right. It makes this very cool, but there's no soul in Buddhism. It's your karma that, that links one life to the next, right? Right. They don't believe in a soul like we think of a soul. No, here in the West. But the karma that you generate, that you have when you die, makes it to your next life and becomes, I think that just the coolest three words ever. Nirvana. No, that's one word. The cool Nirvana. No, it's two. Okay.

Germ of consciousness. Yes. Yes. I think that's really awesome. Like that's, it informs what you do in this life. Yeah. The vinyana, I believe is what they call it. But it's not your soul transmigrating from one life to the next. Right. Reincarnation. But it is a form of reincarnation. Yes. Yeah. And the soul consists of the five skandhas, sensation, body, sensations, perceptions, impulses and consciousness, but that's not the same as the germ of consciousness. Right. Right. Okay. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy. Number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy

to distribute a 2,200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah. And they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs. Of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm a prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Before. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, apple podcast, or wherever

you get your podcasts. Where are you in 92? Were you bouncing your butt to sir mix a lot? Wondering if you like Billy Ray Cyrus could pull off a mullet? Yes. 1992 was a crazier for music and a crazy time to be alive. And now iHeart has a podcast all about it. I'm Jason Launfier. And on my new show, where were you in 92? We take a ride through the major hits, one hit wonders and irresistible scandals that shape what might be the wildest, most controversial 12 months in music and pop culture history. They were angry at me. They thought I was uncontrollable and wild. I wanted to burst open. The president came after me. Everybody was mad. Imagine trying to put a record like that out right now. We canceled before it made it

to the post office. Featuring interviews and special guests like sir mix a lot, ice tea, Tori Amos and Vanessa Williams. This podcast poses the question. What was it about 1992 that made it so groundbreaking and so absolutely fabulous? So buckle up and tune into where are you in 92? New episodes drop every Wednesday. Listen and follow on the iHeart radio app, apple podcast, wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Yeah, all of them, all of the karma combined becomes the germ of consciousness in the next life. Right. And Buddhists like Hindus want to break the cycle of samsara to ultimately reach nirvana via the middle way or the eight fold path, which we already talked about in reincarnation as well. Right. Yes. See, is this confusing to me?

Like, am I weird? Because it's confusing. Not really. I mean, if you think about it, you can really, you can break all of these beliefs down to this. You, your actions have consequences. Well, yeah, I get that part. Right. And good deeds will get you closer to not having these sticky consequences from past lives any longer. Okay. At the very least, you won't generate new stuff. And in most of these beliefs, you can eventually shed all this or get rid of it through either just time, good deeds or the intervention of God, depending on what your religion is. Right. Because it's the same in Sikhism. They also want to, the whole goal is to exit the chain of reincarnation once again. Right. Basically, everybody thinks earth is just terrible. Right.

So the, the Buddhists, well, Buddha himself came up with some pretty good thoughts on karma. He had this famous quote saying, we are the heirs of our own actions. Right. Right. But he was really big on contradicting the idea that everything from our past lives informed everything in our current lives. And therefore we weren't, there's no such thing as free will. Right. That's a big sticky part of karma is that depending on how you look at it, it's just completely fatalist. Right. Right. To where there's nothing we could do any differently. This is going to happen to us anyway. So there's no reason to stop being a pervert or a thief in this life. Right. And the way that that's kind of, I guess, contradicted is,

that was one of his teachings. He said pervert. He said pervert. Yeah. Which stuck out to me. That is like that point. I know the Buddhists, the Buddha knew what perverts were. Yeah. But the way you get around that is to say, no, stuff you're doing now, you can control. And if it's bad, it's going to come back to bite you in your bottom in the next life. Right. Right. And that was Buddha. Yeah. The bite you in the bottom thing. That was, I paraphrased him. Are we on to Jainism? Did I just kind of briefly go over Sikhs or should we cover that in more detail? Well, hold on. Let me tell you two more things about Buddhism. Buddhism that I found interesting. One is Vipaka is the result of karma. So karma's action. Okay. Vipaka is the result of your act.

So it's like karma is to Vipaka seed is to fruit is an analogy I've seen. Very nice. Right. And then Asana is a type of karma, a good karma. You would hope it'd be good. It's the karma and act of karma that you commit on your deathbed. Right. So maybe you will all of your money or your possessions to like a local orphanage or something. They, the Buddhists give great import to Asana because it's so close to the beginning of the next life that it just, it's more potent, I believe. And does that outweigh even the bad deeds that you've done? Like, no, can you store, you know? No, but it'd be like if you compared maybe a bad thing you did when you were six to a good thing you did on your deathbed. Right. The Asana is going to just be, it'd be bigger

in scale, I guess. Gotcha. That's the impression I have. Again, I'm not Buddhist or Hindu or Jain or Sikh. Sikh. So this is all just outside research. I'm a strong member of the Church of Josh. Okay. Yeah. I am too. That's weird. Of Josh? Yeah. Wow. My first member. Oh, you've got more than one, my friend. So I mentioned Sikhism briefly. Do you have anything else on that? Yeah. I thought the Sikhs got kind of a short shift. Shrift. Shrift in this article. Yeah, a little bit. There's, you know, plenty of stuff out there. There's actually a very venerable scholar, Dr. Gobind Singh Mansookani. Okay. He's a learned Sikh scholar. So Dr. Mansookani took on the same idea that your acts in a previous life are having an effect on your

current life and that fatalistic view of like, well, there's such a thing as free will then. Right. He took that on and said, no, there is such a thing as fate and it is very strong. So fate will look at like a river, right? Okay. But man can still make waves in this in this river. Your actions are like a wave or like a whirlpool. So it's within this flowing river of fate, but you're still having a consequence through your actions. I can do good things. And Eddie was one of the ones he used. Oh, really? Yeah. So do good things, do good acts, and you will gain favor with God. That's not unique to Sikhism. I think the Hindus believe that God, no, the Hindus believe God can't have anything to do with it or that the gods can't.

The Sikhs say, no, God can create or destroy karma. Okay. And so if you find favor with God through good acts or through prayer or whatever, you will, there will be an effect of a loss of karmic debt. Boy, they did get the short shrift. They totally did. They got a sentence or two. And their view of karma is that it's the accumulation of effects of past deeds on your character and the character is tied to the soul. So therefore the character survives death. Wow. So you wake up in the next life with the same character, a character that was assembled by your previous life. Right. All right. I like that one. That's a good one. Plus they have the cool turbans. Yeah. Jainism is where we get a little Star Wars-y with the whole thing. This sort of

reminded me of the midi-chlorians, how they explain the force. And which one? Oh, it was one of the newer ones. You know, they explain the forces, midi-chlorians and the cells and everyone was kind of like, really? Yeah. Like you had to explain that? Yeah. The war on drugs impacts everyone. Whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2,200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah. And they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs. Of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm a prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff.

Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid for it. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Where were you in 92? Were you bouncing your butt to Sir Mix a lot? Wondering if you like Billy Ray Cyrus could pull off a mullet? Yes. 1992 was a crazier for music and a crazy time to be alive. And now iHeart has a podcast all about it. I'm Jason Launfier and on my new show, where were you in 92? We take a ride through the major hits,

One Hit Wonders, and irresistible scandals that shape what might be the wildest, most controversial 12 months in music and pop culture history. They were angry at me. They thought I was uncontrollable and wild. I wanted to burst open. The president came after me. Everybody, I'm Warner with madness. Can I just try to put a record like that out right now? We canceled before it made it to the post office. Featuring interviews and special guests like Sir Mix a lot, Ice Tea, Tori Amos and Vanessa Williams. This podcast poses the question, what was it about 1992 that made it so groundbreaking and so absolutely fabulous? So buckle up and tune into Where Are You in 92. New episodes drop every Wednesday. Listen and follow on the IHeart Radio

app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Anyway, Jainism actually believes that karma is an actual atomic substance with actual particles that attach itself to the jiva or your soul. And as long as your soul is burdened by karma, once again, you are trapped in that cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. But they believe it's a physical thing. Yeah, like a particulate matter that it can't be sensed or measured in their words. And I took that with the vibrations of your words, your thoughts, and your deeds. They collect it, right? They attract karma. These particulate matters. And Jainists have classified like, I think something like 158 subtypes. So there's eight types of karma,

two main types, physical and psychic. There's eight types and 158 subtypes. And they do it to a remarkable degree. So if you look at the number four subtype with a body-shaped nom, you're a hunchback if you have that kind of karma. So they have it down to that granular level. But what it reminded me of is epigenetics. What do you mean? Well, they're saying karma, this particulate matter, is attracted to the soul and it affects its function. But it doesn't change the nature of the soul in just the same way that these proteins are attached to your genes and they affect its expression. But they don't change the gene, they just change its function, how it functions. Isn't that weird? And they've been talking about

this for a while. Well, and Jainists believe that the bad deeds are more likely to stick. So in their life, sort of like Hindu and Buddhist, they live very meagerly, don't seek out the material things, obviously live a sober life and don't harm other living things. Yeah, I think they're the ones that have, there's a sect of Jains that have little brooms, Jains that have little brooms and they dust off before they sit down because they don't want to accidentally kill anything. Wow. Interesting. I've been letting moths out like crazy. Heavy. Dude, we're under attack. Really? Yeah. You should turn out your lights. I do eventually. I do have a good charm. So now can we move on to karma in the West?

Yeah. This interesting perversion, not a perversion, just here in the West it's become a half-truth. Yeah, half-truth, admit karma. It's become just a buzzword, meaning how to increase your luck, basically, by doing good things. Right, like tipping. Yeah. Like karma, a karma jar is a tipped jar. Yeah. That's kind of off a little bit. Well, have you ever wished bad karma on someone for real? Like thought that or said that? You mean like shodden fraud? No, I actually said like, oh man, you got some bad karma coming your way for that. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I used to extensively, like really, that was my thing. It's just so easy, just relinquish power. Like, oh, well, I don't have to do anything because karma is going to come back or the universe is

going to come back and get you. Well, in a way, though, it's kind of good because it means that you're not obsessed with revenge. Exactly. Yeah, it is very good in that sense. Yeah. I had a lady in LA that sold us a treadmill. I used treadmill that her name was Joan. And that's all I'll give you. But we remember the first and last name. We still say it today. LA? Yeah. Was it Joan Crawford? No, it wasn't Joan Collins. But she sold us this. She wasn't famous. She sold us a treadmill that clearly did not work when we got at home. Like, you know, I ran out of places. It was like, hey, this is cool. Turns out after like six or eight minutes, the thing overheats and stops. And it was just like that. And we called her back and we're like, hey, you know,

we were just at your house 45 minutes ago and we bought this treadmill and it's not working. It overheats and stops. And you knew this and like, we'd like our $200 back or whatever. We'd like to bring it back. And she said, I'm not a store. That's what she said. Well, and we were like, really? Like, you know, you kind of know the thing didn't work. Like we just, you know, you can tell someone else or whatever. We just want to make this right real quick. We'll be back over there in 30 minutes. And she was like, no, she's like, sorry, I'm not a store. I don't accept returns. Yeah. And I wanted to take the treadmill and get some friends and go throw it through this big bay window, throw it through her window in the middle

of the night. And Emily said, I couldn't do that. And she just said, that was probably good. Karma will get her one day. It's a good way to go. At the very least, you can serve a lot of energy that you can use elsewhere and more productive things than throwing something through a window or treadmill. Yeah. And plus, I mean, like accelerating or hastening karma by like burning someone's house down, we'll get you in trouble. Some people think that that generates bad karma for you. Weirdos. Yeah. So in the West, it's obviously become, well, you call it new age. It is very new age. And what's interesting is we can trace it back to a pretty much one person who introduced the idea, the concept of karma to the West. Helena Blavatsky. Yeah,

Madame Blavatsky. Madame Blavatsky? Yeah. She was a Russian. She was very well traveled. She was very well read. She was also something of a huckster during the era in the Northeastern United States where you could basically say, hey, I'm a medium. Look at this cheesecloth that I'm pulling out of my throat. It's spirit. Did she do that? She made a tea cup and tea saucer appear early on and just performed a few tricks. Right. They were like all sorts of spirits or depths that she worked with that were basically gave all these grand pronouncements and lessons that like she issued to her cult of followers. Right. But she was very charismatic too. She was incredibly intelligent and very charming. But she was also something of a fraud. But this lady

basically came up with this idea that she was coming down with this divine wisdom that was handed down to her theosophy. Yeah. She founded the Theosophical Society and I thought it was interesting as she was a huckster. She co-founded it with Henry Steele Alcott who was an attorney and a journalist. So you're going to hook up with something in a huckstery way. Yeah. You're really COA if you have an attorney on one side and then you can get pressed by the fact that he's a journalist. So I don't know if this woman was if she bought her own hype. From what I understand, I just read an entry on her in the skeptics dictionary. But from what I understand, she seemed fairly committed. She was finally run out of the organization, the theosophs. Oh, she was?

Yeah. Like in 1885 or six. Don't they still exist today? Yeah. Yeah. Because they accused her of trickery or something like that. But by the time this happened, they were in India. So she seemed very committed to the idea of this Hindu teachings. But basically, her idea was to that all of this occult scripture of like Zoroaster and the Gnostic texts, all that could all be reconciled with like the idea of Atlantis and that's where these supreme beings lived and there's astral projections and all of this, all the stuff that we take for granted today came from this lady in this era. And one of the things that she introduced was the concept of karma. Right. And it was to prepare us for what she called the Aquarian Age, which was the ultimate enlightenment

or time of brotherhood, I guess, aka the 1950s. Right. Well, was she was it sort of like akin to the rapture? Is that? No. No. I think it was just a change in consciousness among humanity as a whole. It's like the 60s. You know, it's the coming of the Age of Aquarius. Oh, sure. Yeah. What was that from here? Yeah. So there you go. Age of Aquarius meant everybody was on acid. That's right. John Lennon, instant karma is going to get you. Number three hit. I didn't know it was that big of a hit. I've never heard it before. Oh, yes, you have. I have not. Shut up. I'm not kidding. And we all shine on. You've never heard that chorus. Oh, I didn't know that was the name of the song. Well, yeah, instant karma is going to get you. And then the chorus is, and we all shine on. I had no idea

that was the song. It's also a Nike commercial. Yeah, that's where I've heard it. Yeah. And of course, my name is wrong, which we've already covered. Eventually it became fodder for television. And mustachioed guys who was also a Scientologist who Jason Lee is. Yep, man. Have you seen that Memphis beat show? No, he's on that. He stars in it. And apparently when he has a rough day, working the homicide beat, he goes out at night and like plays the blues. I saw him in a granddaddy show in LA. Yeah, and thought, Oh man, I love Jason Lee. Did they play that one song? Did they have a hit? Granddaddy? Yeah. Yeah. I was in 28 days later when they're in the grocery store. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. They played that song. Yeah, it's a good one.

Never heard any other granddaddy songs, but that's a good song. They can't top that one. No, actually, I think they have. Well, I have to go listen. Yeah. What else you got, Chuck? I got nothing, man. This one just befalled me for some reason. I apologize. You did great. Thank you. So I guess the lesson here is anytime you're thinking about karma and you sure tipping somebody an extra dollar is a good idea. But don't forget the other aspect of karma where if there's something bad has happened to you, somebody who's born disfigured or dismembered somewhere in life or just where it was killed or abused, people believe that that's karma too. So do you believe in karma in the very lucid sense of like, if you do good things,

like good things will return your way? I don't even know, to be honest. I think you should do good things because it's the right thing to do. But you know what? I do, but I don't believe it's any kind of natural law or cosmic force. I believe it's more like doing good deeds brings out a level of consciousness where you're attuned to goodness. So you notice it in other people in life more. So you open up that door? Very much so, yes. Whereas like if you judge other people, you become consumed with the idea of being judged and that like you dwell down there. I think I agree with you there. That's what I think it is. I think I agree with you completely. Church of Josh. Exactly. Well, if you want to read more about how karma works, type in

karma with a K. Don't be dumb with a K. In the handy search bar at howstuffworks.com and that will bring up that article written by Sarah Dowdy of Stuff You Missed in History Glass. That is right. And Chuck, I said search bar and they're somewhere. So listen to me. Listen to me. We asked for calls from people in the first murder podcast who might be related to John Billington. And lo and behold, we have one. Yeah. And also, can we mention what Dorcas means? Yeah. What does it mean? It means gazelle in Greek. Yeah. And we heard from quite a few people who have family members named Dorcas. Yeah. Grandmothers, usually. Dorcas. Dorcas Menorcas. Yeah. All right. This is from Ren in Elburn, Illinois. Hey, Josh and Chuck and Jerry.

You said you wanted to hear from people who are related to John Billington. Well, here I am. My aunt researched our family history a few years ago, put it all together in a book, and gave it to the family members for Christmas. It's a great gift. When I first got it, the Billington story was for sure the most intriguing. The girls from Stuff You Missed in History Class did a podcast about it a couple of years ago as well. And I loved that edition and played it for my dad, who thought it was cool. I have played it for almost everyone I know, saying at the end of the episode, and that's my family in a nutshell. I'm one of those people who is super excited to say I'm related to the first murder in the New World. And I also love to tell the story about

his son almost blowing up the Mayflower. I told my sister when she was pregnant that if she was having a girl, she should name the baby Dorcas. Dorcas. She didn't find it amusing and had a son anyway. And named it Dorcas. Just Dork. I think this is the male version. Dorko. D-O-R-C. Anyway, just want to express my excitement for the episode. I really love all the episodes. Keep it up. Ren from Elbrun, Illinois. Nice. Well, thanks a lot, Ren, Billington. I don't think that would last any minute. I know. If you've got a good deed that you did to somebody that you would consider good karma, right? You think you deserve a little good karma for it? Let's have a karma off. Or how about this? And have evidence of that return, like you did a good

deed and you won the lottery like the next day. That's a good one. That's a good one. We're holding a little mini contest. Whoever has the best one in our opinion will make it to listener mail. That's right, but it's not a real contest. It's unsanctioned. That's right. I didn't even use the word contest just now, did I? No. There's no prize, no nothing. It's a karma off. Anyway, if you want to let us know about that, you can tweet it to us at S-Y-S-K podcast. You can also go on to our Facebook, facebook.com, slash stuff you should know. Or you can send it or fetch an email at stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join How Stuff Works staff as we explore them as promising and

perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Thank you. Check out the podcast, Good Assassins, the unbelievable but true story of the greatest spy of World War II. A mysterious agent is strategically dismantling the Nazis' violent grasp on France. They don't know her name, but they want this woman dead. They send a devious double agent to hunt down the limping lady, but Virginia Hall was tougher than they expected. Listen to Good Assassins on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, and wherever you get your podcasts. to be present. Listen to the Happiness Lab on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts.