The History of China - #1 - Origins 1: The Mythical Origins Of The Middle Kingdom

Episode Date: November 25, 2013

In episode 1, we begin with an introduction to this podcast, followed by a brief overview of what we’ve come to know about early human migration and settlement in the region that will eventually become China. Finally, we’ll delve into the mythological origin story that purports to tell of the three divine Sovereigns who would create and then rule over the Han people. I’m very excited to be getting this journey underway! Once again welcome, and thank you for listening. UPDATE: As of 08/28/2016, this episode has been completely rebooted from the ground-up. Enjoy! Transcript Available (paywalled): Transcript Donate to Help the Show!: https://www.patreon.com/thehistoryofchina Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media Podcast. The French Revolution set Europe ablaze. It was an age of enlightenment and progress, but also of tyranny and oppression. It was an age of glory and an age of tragedy. One man stood above it all. This was the Age of Napoleon. I'm Everett Rummage, host of the Age of Napoleon podcast. Join me as I examine the life and times of one of the most fascinating and enigmatic

characters in modern history. Look for the Age of Napoleon wherever you find your podcasts. Hello, and welcome to the History of China. Episode 1. The Mythical Origins of the Middle Kingdom. China. It is a name. A place. An idea. Almost synonymous with ancientness. Even the Chinese themselves boast of having more than 5,000 years of culture. No matter how you slice it, it is a grand, epic story spanning almost the whole of recorded human history, and impacting cultures and kingdoms across the world in ways both big and small. Yet for all that import, it far too often remains shrouded in mystery to many of us

in the West, due in no small part to its sheer immensity. How could anyone think to go delving into a story that's 5,000 years long? It's surely an act of insanity. Well, that's where I come in, and I'll leave the question of my sanity up to you to ultimately decide. Over the past three years, I've been plunging my time into this immense tale and trying to make it something more relatable, approachable, and, well, interesting for the rest of us. Because it is a story worth knowing, and China is a culture and a country worth understanding, even if you never planned a visit.

Because it surely visits you almost every day. Look around you. Go ahead and check. How many items do you use every day that come from this country half a world away? My guess is quite a few. In this day and age especially, as China has gone from undeveloped backwater to global economic power in the span of four short decades, it is now more vital than ever for everyone to have a better idea of what China and its people are, how they see the world and themselves, and not to foolishly lump them all together into some undifferentiated mass of other. And in order to understand where China is today and how it got there,

we must start with where they came from. That is the goal of this show, to take us from the beginning of the Chinese story up through the 20th century. It is a long road, but never a boring one, and I hope you'll join me in this journey of romance, power, war, betrayal, and revolution. In the spirit of the show, from which I took inspiration to make this one, Mike Duncan's excellent The History of Rome podcast, The history of China proceeds chronologically for the most part, though we will from time to time have to take multiple accounts of the same

time period from different perspectives, which does involve some time hopping. I've broken this chronology further down into rough chapters, which roughly align with the respective dynastic orders in power during that era, or during the periods that China breaks into warring states by the common names of those eras of chaos. I do not have a set number of episodes per dynastic chapter, but rest assured, as we move ever forward in time and sources of information become ever more plentiful, chapter length will expand as well. I want to take the time to paint you as much of the story as I think is necessary and helpful towards understanding, and I don't wish to be constrained by an arbitrary length of chapter. One final note before launching in. This is the first episode of this show's

rebooted beginning. I began this show some three years ago with little more than a rather boorish sense of sarcasm and a default computer microphone next to a loudly whirring fan. My oh my how things have changed. I now have actual sources, an actual microphone, and a much better sense of how I want the show to proceed in sound. And so, I want the opening episodes, which is, after all, where most listeners do begin, to reflect my current standard of quality. This is, however, a side project within a side project, so I'll not be getting what I imagine will be a good two dozen shows rebooted all at once, or very quickly at all for that matter. So going forward, you will hit a point where the quality suddenly drops way

off, and then gradually improves once again, so just be forewarned. So let's launch right in, shall we? It's enough to say that humanity did not begin in China. Though at one point not too terribly long ago, that was indeed thought to be the case. Much as we know today about the origins of humanity in Eastern Africa, before paleoarchaeology began unearthing humans and proto-humans in places like Ethiopia, Asia was widely considered the origin point of Homo sapiens. What we do know for certain is that humans, as a species, like to wander. We see a horizon and inevitably begin to wonder what might lie beyond. And ultimately, that wanderlust is what has driven

us to colonize the entire planet, and even, however briefly, our sister satellite as well. It was that same wanderlust that drove bands of humans out of Africa, and across the isthmus of Suez and into Asia Minor, and then to everywhere else. That first trek across the vastness that is Central Asia is, of course, undocumented, and so we must speculate. Undoubtedly, it took generations at the least to complete. And yet, at some point roughly 10 or 15,000 years ago, the region surrounding the body of water that would come to be known as the Huanghe,

or the Yellow River, came to be settled by any number of small tribes, family bands, and eventually small permanent communities. And it is here, in the middle reaches of the Yellow River Valley, that the history and the mythology of China begin. The Yellow River is at the very heart of China, both geographically as it cuts through the center of Chinese heartland, and culturally as well. It has shaped the people just as it has shaped the land, and it has often been an exceedingly cruel teacher. It is the birthplace of China, yes, yet it is frequently called China's sorrow, and the scourge of the sons of Han. For as we will see again and again, it has a frequent and devastating tendency to flood, which has killed millions, and with tens of millions more dying

of the resultant famines across time. There is evidence of seed cultivation, dating back as far as 10,000 years ago, in both the north and the south of China. Millet would have been the crop of choice in the north, while evidence of rice cultivation has been found in the south, and both processing tools like mortars and pestles have been excavated from regions like southern Hebei, specifically at a site called Nanjiangtou. Here as well, dogs and pigs were eventually domesticated, though there is widespread evidence that hunting was still a hugely important aspect of these prehistoric cultures, with many bones and shells of animals like cranes, wolves, deer, turtles, clams, and snails dispersed throughout the settlement sites. There's also evidence of a

deep and sophisticated culture having formed quite early on at Nanjiangtou. Archaeologists have excavated objects like a seven-holed bone flute inscribed with symbols. Likewise rock and cave paintings totaling more than 8,000 individual symbols and characters remain intact. There are likewise turtle shell fragments with symbols carved into them. This might not sound like much, but keep in mind the timeframe that we're discussing at this point. The earliest evidence of true written Chinese language comes to us from the oracle bones that we will discuss at length in a later episode, but the oracle bones stem from the

Shang Dynasty, which is more than 6,000 years after the likes of the Nanjiangtou civilization ceased to exist. It's incredible to think about, and at the same time, something of a tragedy. I'll be spending the rest of this entire show going over the 5,000 years of Chinese history we have, and yet we're forced to sum up all we know about a civilization 6,000 years older than that in a paragraph or two, because any and all records they might have kept have been lost forever. As long as we might perceive and feel human history to be, it still accounts for less than 5% of humanity's time on this planet, and the other 95% is forever dark to us.

By around about 5000 BCE, both northern and southern China was dotted with culture groups. Make no mistake, it's not as though the south were devoid of people, or its own equally rich and vibrant civilizations developing. It's just that, as a show devoted to following China, such as it is, we're going to be focused on the peoples and cultures that will eventually forge into that identity, and thus we will remain along the shores of the Yellow River for now. There are two major culture groups of note along the Huanghe at this point. Along the coastal hills of what is today the Shandong Peninsula and the East China Sea, there was the

so-called Dawankou culture. And note that both of these names are not what they would have called themselves, they're simply names given long, long after the fact based on the geographical region. The Dawankou were millet farmers, and there is considerable evidence of burial of the dead and ornate funerary practices. They made bone and ivory eating and drinking utensils and used reddish-brown clay pottery. The most well-studied and best-known prehistorical culture of the Yellow River, however, is the Yangshuo culture of the middle reaches of the river. More than a thousand archaeological sites of this specific culture have been found distributed up and down the course of the waterway since its initial discovery in 1920 by the Swedish geologist J.G. Andersson. The Yangshuo people lived in family units within regularly laid out villages. They farmed millet and they likewise made pottery.

Here we can get a taste of what was perhaps their culture, since the Yangshuo frequently painted and decorated their vessels. From Harvard professor Kuang Chuchang, quote, One major feature of the Yangshuo culture worth noting is that it has yielded many remains that are indicative of shamanistic beliefs and practices. These include, for example, a skeletal or x-ray style of art, bisexualism in certain art, and resembles descriptions from the 3rd century AD, or, as I'll be referring to it from here on out, CE, standing for Common Era, whereas BCE stands for Before Common Era, is indicative of Taoist priests, which also employed dragons, tigers, and deers as helpers in

their journeys to heaven to meet with deities and acquire knowledge, medicines, and other supernatural benefits. It is largely the area of the Yangshuo culture that the formation of what Chang refers to as the Chinese mega-civilization would ultimately coalesce beginning in the 4th millennium BCE. Like the Yellow River itself, the path towards archaeologists and historians piecing together an effectual understanding of this process has been a twisted and winding one, with many backtracks and false starts. Yet today, most are very confident that our understanding of this formation has become clear.

We are limited to what has been written and then managed to be preserved across time. And as such, the central Yellow River plains have the longest historiographic records, and as such, take precedence by default. The traditional tellings have began with the San Huang, or the Three Sovereigns, followed by the Wu Di, meaning the Five Emperors. And these in turn are followed by the Xia, Shang, and Zhou periods, sometimes referred to as dynasties, though that's not exactly fitting for reasons we will get into later on. These eras of heroes, sages, demigods, and centuries-old rulers

all take place in the central Yellow River Plain. Or as put by the author of the first great work of Chinese history, the Records of the Grand Historian, or Shi Ji, written by the historian Sima Qian, The kingdoms of all three dynasties were between the Yellow River and the Low River. The eras we'll be covering today, then, are, first, the closest approximation we can really get to to the ancient Chinese creation myths, followed by the rule of the Three Sovereigns, the demigod progenitors of the Chinese people

and culture, which ran from approximately the 29th century BCE to the 21st. Though they're called the Three Sovereigns or the Three Augustones, there are actually four of them, kind of, as certain records include some but not others. But in the interest of being fair to all demigods present, we will include everyone. First, though, the beginning, or at least as close to it as we can really get. The cosmology and mythology of ancient China is a rather curious thing, especially to Western and specifically Judeo-Christian worldviews. In the words of K.C. Chang,

quote, one finds in China no myth of the kind that is found in the book of Genesis, no god or gods created ex nihilo or invacuo, heaven, earth, people, or animals, end quote. There is no let there be light moment to be found. Instead, what we have is a primordial antiquity with a number of superhuman and divine entities involved in a transformation process that is both awesome and terrifying, that would close an earlier world and open up the modern one. We have one accounting of this ancient era which comes from the Three Kingdoms period of the 3rd century CE from the scholar Xu Zheng, who relates the tale of one of these primordial gods, Pan Gu, who was fundamental to

this transformation process. Xu writes, quote, Another version tells that it was Pangu himself who transformed into the universe, rather than transforming it around him. This version reads, quote, His sinews became geographic features. His muscles became soils in the fields. His hair and beard became the stars and planets. His skin and skin hairs became the grasses and trees. His teeth and bones became bronzes and jades. His essence and marrow became pearls and stones. His sweat became rains and lakes.

And the various worms in his body, touched by the wind, became the black-haired commoners. End quote. History isn't black and white, yet too often it's presented as such. Grey History, The French Revolution is a long-form history podcast dedicated to exploring the ambiguities and nuances of the past. By contrasting both the experiences of contemporaries and the conclusions of historians, Grey History dives into the detail and unpacks one of the most important and disputed events in human history. From a revolution based on hope and liberty to its descent into the infamous reign of terror,

there's plenty to discuss and plenty of grey to explore. One can't understand the modern world without understanding the French Revolution. So if you're looking for your next long-form, binge-worthy history podcast, one recommended by universities and loved by enthusiasts, then check out Grey History, The French Revolution today. Or simply search for The French Revolution. Though it's impossible to say how closely this 3rd century story might actually relate to the belief structure of prehistoric Chinese cultures, it should be pointed out that the overarching structure of the cosmos it lays out is affirmed as such by the oracle bones.

The classic of mountains and seas, which was partially compiled during the Warring States period much earlier, during the 4th and 3rd centuries BCE, gives another interesting account of an entity it calls Zhu Yin, the god of Zhong Mountain. It describes him, quote, when Zhu Yin opens his eyes, there comes day. When he closes them, there is night. There are two further tales of cataclysm and destruction prior to the emergence of humanity and the modern world, and both of which involve the entity Nuwa, the female sovereign, who ruled over the race of proto-humanity for some 180,000 years. The first destructive event is known as the Myth of the Ten Suns, and describes a period in which all ten suns in the sky rose at once, turning the earth into a parched and broiling hot deathscape.

A heavenly archer known as Yi took up his bow and saved the world by shooting nine of its sons out of the sky with his arrows. The second myth concerns when a villain known as Gong Gong, having lost a competition for power, smashed his head in anger into the mountains that served as a foundational pillar for the heavens resting above the earth. The mountainous pillar collapsed, and so too did the northwestern part of the heavenly dome, and water began to come pouring in to flood the earth and drown all of Nuwa's people. Nuwa, moving quickly, was at last able to patch the hole in heaven by melting down a precious gem known as the Stone of Five Colors and used it to mend the break. In both of these tales, and in general ancient Chinese cosmology, it's interesting to note that in all cases, heaven is a dome above the earth, and earth itself is square,

with its corners in accordance to the cardinal directions of the cosmos. This brings us to the Age of Heroes, and at last to humanity and the Three Sovereigns. The first sovereign typically listed is the child of the Jade Emperor, who is the eternal ruler of heaven above. He is called Fuxi, and was either born or just descended to earth smack dab in the middle of the Yellow River Valley. Fu Xi was the younger sibling or half-sibling of Nuwa.

As such, and also because she had been the ruler of the old and now drowned race of pre-human people, this is why sometimes Nuwa is also listed among the three sovereigns. But more typically, she's left out. Both because the proto-people she'd ruled over weren't human, much less Chinese, but probably just as important because she was female, and her reign was a matriarchy, and there's little ancient Chinese historians loathe more than the idea of a woman in power. Regardless, her entire people had all been wiped out by the Deluvian flood as a result of the crack in heaven, leaving only Nuwa, and now her little

brother Fuxi still alive. Realizing that they would need to repopulate the earth, the pair ascended Mount Kunlun to entreat their Heavenly Father's blessing. The Jade Emperor declared them brother and wife and then empowered them to breathe life into figures of clay, sparking the human race. Now with new subjects to rule over, Fuxi overthrew the matriarchal order that had been Nuwa's period of reign and established the Patriarchal Union, as we all know and love today.

Nuwa wasn't out of the picture though, and she would become Fushi's empress, sister-wife, for the following 115 years of his earthly reign. As sovereign, Fuxi would teach the people of the Yellow River to hunt and fish and how to offer sacrifices to heaven underneath the open sky. He would also write a book, and not just any old book, the Yi Qing, or the Book of Changes. It is traditionally told that he found and copied down the markings on the back of either a dragon horse or a dragon turtle, each of which consisted of three horizontal lines with differing midpoint breaks, and representing the eight classical elements. Sky, lake, fire, thunder, wind, water,

mountain, and earth. Throw in psychic and ghost, and you've basically accounted for all of the Pokemon. The elemental symbols are still widely used in Asia even today. For instance, you can see the symbols for air, fire, earth, and water surrounding the Yin and Yang on the flag of South Korea. Having taught the people all of this, and after a reign of more than a century, Fushi departed the world after 179 years on it. Some accounts have him dying, while in others he proceeds back to heaven in true demigod fashion. With his departure, the slack is picked up by the second sovereign, named Shen Nong,

meaning divine farmer, and also known as the Yan, or flame, emperor. I'll give you two guesses as to what his two big contributions to Chinese culture are going to be. That's right, farming and fire. Oh yeah, and drugs. It's also around this time that the Chinese have archaeologically been discovered to have begun brewing alcohol as well. So all at once we've got fire, drugs, and beer, and all handed out by a fire-breathing demigod with horns on his head and see-through flesh. It doesn't get much more metal than that. Shen Nong is credited with inventing the tools that would be necessary to till and farm the fertile soil along the Yellow River, the plow and the axe, as well as irrigation techniques and how to dig and maintain wells. He taught the people that unplanted seeds

could be preserved for later use by keeping them in boiled urine. Since they were farmers now, the people would of course need a means to keep track of time and seasonal changes, and so Shen Nong created the calendar system. To clear off the land and prepare it for the plow, he used his fire magic to set the wild's plants aflame, creating slash-and-burn farming. His gifts to the people of the Yellow River were so tremendous that they began to call themselves the Shen Nong Shi, or the clan of the divine farmer, to which the modern Han identity can trace its earliest origins. How about those drugs, though? From plant medicines to acupuncture to everything in between, Chinese traditional medicine owes its very existence to the divine farmer.

And Shen Nong was infamous for using himself as a guinea pig to see what worked, what didn't, and what was a deadly neurotoxin. His skin, as I mentioned, was transparent, and so he would just ingest a plant and literally look inside himself to see its effect. Like I said, pure metal. Luckily enough, one of his early medical discoveries was the antidote effect of the tea leaf. And so when he ate something that was doing really bad things to his body, he'd guzzle a cup of tea, and then carry on with his day as though nothing had happened, and none worse for the wear. Well, not quite.

It's hard to be too surprised at just how the divine farmer would make his exit. When you're routinely poisoning yourself just to see what it does, and then relying on a pot of tea to save you, you're bound to press your luck a little too far at some point. That day would come after a reign of some 40 years, when after ingesting a highly toxic yellow reed from the riverbank, Shen Nong didn't reach his tea in time, and his intestines putrefied into liquid. The final member of the Justice League, I mean, three sovereigns, is Huang Di, the Yellow Emperor.

Huang Di actually has something approaching a human-ish biography, including an actual honest-to-goodness name, which if we render it in the typical last-name, first-name style of Chinese names, would have been Gongsun Xuanyuan. It's certainly debatable, but the amount of information and documentation of the Yellow Emperor is so much greater than either of the obviously fictional Fu Xi and Shen Nong that, in spite of being the last of the three, Huangdi is typically given the credit for being the first true Emperor of China. And his title of Yellow Emperor, again in Chinese Huangdi, will ultimately serve as the title of Emperor itself for the entire duration of the Chinese Empire.

The Yellow Emperor is said to have reigned for a century, between 2697 and 2597 BCE, and was born on the aptly named Longevity Hill in the Shandong Peninsula. From that place of birth, while Shandong still reigned in the Central River Valley, Huangdi moved westward and then took up farming nearby. This fits in general with what archaeological evidence suggests in a wider context. For instance, as noted by historian Su Bingqi, quote, In historical terms, the Yellow River Valley did indeed play an important part, frequently occupying a leading position during periods of civilization.

Nevertheless, during the same periods, the ancient cultures of the other regions were also developing in accordance with their own respective characteristics and courses. In the meantime, influence was always mutual. The central plains gave influence to the various places, and the various places gave influence to the central plains." At the risk of belaboring the point, the histories that have survived come from the Yellow River Valley civilization, and so they place it front and center in all things. We shouldn't confuse that bias, however, with the idea that this one culture was actually the prime mover and shaker in all things, though. This is actually a relatively recent understanding, though, and as K.C.

Chang puts it, actually a view that had prior to about the 1980s been regarded as nothing less than heresy against the traditional accountings, which put Chinese civilization as, quote, the end result of a radiating process from the core to the land of the barbarians, end quote. The actual building process of the Chinese identity, however, is not singular, but inclusive. Not one story or character, but many, and what Chang refers to as spheres of interaction. Back to the Yellow Emperor, though. He quickly became the leader of a group of his own, after impressing them with his ability to tame six wild animals using nothing more than his own force of will. They were a black bear, a brown bear, a tiger, a winged lion called a pixiu,

and another feline cryptid called a qu, which was renowned for its ferocity. Now that winged lion, the pixiu, is even today known as a powerful emblem of good fortune and wealth accumulation, owing to a peculiar curse inflicted upon the creature by heaven. After it defecated on the floor of the heavenly palace, the jade emperor sealed up the creature's anus and made it capable of only eating gold and silver. Thus, unable to rid itself of any of the precious metal it ever ate, it came to be the symbol of infinite wealth, and also a ward against evil spirits whom it would ruthlessly attack with its fangs and claws. For these two reasons, you'll often see Pishio guarding homes and worn as pendants on jewelry, and was likewise the mascot of the army in the imperial era due to its ferocity. Back to the story. By this point, Shen Nong, the Flame Emperor,

though revered, had allowed his reign to slip into mounting tensions, ineffectual rule, and rising factionalism, which as we will see in the dynasties to come, he was really a trendsetter in that sense. This inevitably led to a period of bloody war across the land, with the Shen Nong clan fighting against a group known as the Nine Clans, or Jiu Li, and one that the Shen Nong clan quickly found itself on the losing end of. In desperation, the Flame Emperor turned to the Yellow Emperor and his own clan for help, and Huang Di agreed to assist his neighbor since, after all, a hostile rebel group ransacking your neighbor's territory is not good for business. The two sovereigns joined forces in a band the likes of which had never been seen, and they called this new alliance the

Hua Xia. Duly assembled for war, they would meet the army of the nine clans at the Battle of Zhuoluo. The combat raged on for days on end, as the war chariots on both sides clashed in one bloody stalemate after another. At last, when it seemed that the Hua Xia army had gained the upper hand, the warlord of the nine clans, Chi You, cast a spell of darkness to fog over the whole region in an inky black fog in order to cover his own forces' escape back to the Hinterlands. Confident that his magic had given his armies the time they needed to escape, you can imagine Chi You's shock and dismay to find that the Hua Xia had not gotten lost in the fog, but had been able, somehow, to maintain their pursuit. How had they managed this? Well,

the Yellow Emperor had an ace in the hole. One of his greatest inventions was the compass, specifically a non-magnetic compass known as the Southern Pointing Chariot, an invention so legendary in Chinese history that inventors and scholars would try time and again to replicate it until at last the feat would be accomplished some 3,000 years later in the 16 Kingdoms era by the mathematician Zhu Congzhi. The warlord of the nine clans was trapped and then executed, and his men driven off and dispersed into the wild, where they would eventually splinter into the Miao and Li tribes of southern China. In victory, the Shen Nong and Yellow clans decided to permanently seal their alliance into the Hua Xia by establishing a joint capital city at the site of their great victory at Zhuolu. With the co-rule of these Flame and Yellow emperors, it seemed at last that a time of peace and prosperity was at hand.

But that, however, was not to be. At least, not yet. Chafing under the sense of lost pride at merely being co-ruler, Shen Nong eventually plunged the two halves of the Hua Xia people back into war, but this time a civil war, to wrest control of the kingdom from the Yellow Emperor. Shen Nong was defeated, and thereafter relegated

to concocting medicinal treatments rather than governance. There, he would of course meet his own demise via poison reeds sometime afterwards. As the now undisputed ruler of the reunited Huaxia people, the Yellow Emperor went about teaching his people how to build shelter, how to tame and domesticate the wild beasts of the world, and how to grow the five primary crops of China, known as the Five Cereals, soybeans, wheat, broom corn, millet, and rice. He likewise would develop astronomy, the basis of the Chinese lunar-solar calendar that remains in use today, mathematics and the first legal code, as well as an early version of soccer.

Huang Di reigned over his land for a hundred years, taking four wives and fathering 25 sons. Approaching the end of his life, he was visited by two legendary creatures. The first was a horned lion covered in flame called the Qilin, sometimes referred to as a Chinese unicorn. The Qilin would only appear during the imminent arrival or passing of an august ruler or visionary. Though this might sound ominous, it was actually taken as a sign of good fortune, prosperity, and serenity.

The second animal Huangdi encountered was a phoenix. Though in the West we typically associate the phoenix as the fiery bird of death and rebirth, the Chinese ideation of the bird is a symbol of the cosmos itself, and especially when it's in balance. It would only appear to those people or places with the utmost peace and prosperity. The message, therefore, was clear. The Yellow Emperor had brought tranquility, prosperity, and august leadership to the Huaxia people, and now his time on earth was at an end. Next time, we'll delve into the second phase of China's origin story, the period of legendary kings known as the Wu Di, or Five Emperors. It will be a time of solidification,

and one in which heaven and earth, once mutually accessible and interconnected, will be sealed off from one another forever, as well as a second great flood that will threaten to once again drown everything the three sovereigns strove to create and protect if something drastic isn't done. Thanks for listening.

400 years ago, Thanks for listening. I'm Samuel Hume, a historian of the British Empire, and my podcast, Pax Britannica, follows the people and events that built that empire into a global superpower. Learn the history of the British Empire by listening to Pax Britannica everywhere you find your podcasts, or go to pod.link slash pax.